The Jungle Fugitives: A Tale of Life and Adventure in India<br />Including also Many Stories of Amer, Ellis [ebook reader online txt] 📗

Stepping into the room, Harvey laid his hand on his aunt's shoulder and in a trembling voice said:

"Why, aunt, what does this mean? Are you in earnest? What has become of Dollie? Tell me, I beseech you."

"She is lost; she is lost! Oh, why did we ever bring her to this dreadful country? I wish none of us had ever seen it."

"But what about Dollie? Where is she? How long has she been gone? Compose yourself and tell."

It was not until he spoke sharply that the hysterical woman was able to make known that the child had been absent for hours, no one knew where. When she learned that noon that her big brother would not be back till night, Dollie had pouted because he had gone off without telling her. She was not sure she could ever forgive him. However, she ate her dinner, and soon after went out to play. Some hours later her aunt went to the door to call her, but she was not within sight or hearing. Maggie was sent to look for her, but soon came back with word that she could not be found.

The child had been seen a couple of hours before, running in the direction of the path that led into the mountains, as if she was fleeing from some one, Maggie had gone as far as she dared in quest of her, but her loudest shouts brought no reply and she returned.

The word brought by the servant, as may well be believed, filled the aunt with the wildest grief. Beyond all doubt, Dollie had formed a sudden resolve to hunt up her brother Harvey, who had gone away and left her at home. She had strayed so far into the mountains that she was lost. Fortunately, she was warmly dressed at the time, but exposed as she must be to the wintry winds and cold, she could not hold out until morning unless rescued very soon.

Harvey was stricken with an anguish such as he had never known before, but he knew that not a minute was to be lost. Dollie must be found at once or it would be too late. It added a poignancy to his woe to know that in coming down the mountain path, he must have passed close to her, who was in sore need of the help he was eager to give.

"Have you made no search for her?" he asked.

"I could not believe she would not come back until it began to grow dark. I thought she could not be far away; Maggie and I hunted through the village, inquiring of every one whom we saw; many of the people were kind, and two or three have gone to hunt for her; I started to do so, but did not go far, when I was sure she had come back while I was away, and I hurried home only to find she was not here."

"Are you sure any one is looking for her?"

"There are several."

"Well," said Harvey, impatient with the vacillation shown by his aunt, "I shall not come back until she is found."

His hand was on the knob of the door when his distressed relative sprang to her feet.

"Harvey;" she said in a wild, scared manner, "shall I tell you what I believe?"

"Of course."

"Dollie did not lose herself: some of those awful men did it."

"Do you mean the strikers?"

"Yes; they have taken her away to spite you."

"Impossible!" exclaimed the young man, passing out the door and striding up the single street that ran through the village.

But though unwilling to confess it to himself, the same shocking suspicion had come to him at the moment he learned that Dollie was lost. Could it be that some of the men, grown desperate in their resentment, had taken this means of mortally injuring him? Was there any person in the wide world who would harm an innocent child for the sake of hurting a strong man? Alas, such things had been done, and why should they not be done again? The words that he overheard between Hugh O'Hara and Tom Hansell proved them capable of dark deeds. Could it be that some of the hints thrown out by them during that brief interview in the cabin bore any relation to the disappearance of Dollie.

At the moment Harvey turned away from his own house it was his intention to rouse the village and to ask all to join in the hunt for the child, but a feeling of bitter resentment led him to change his purpose. No; they would rejoice over his sorrow; they would give him no aid, and, if they had had a hand in her taking off, they would do what they could to baffle him in his search. Slight as was his hope, he would push on alone.

"O'Hara and Hansell know all about it; I will search the neighborhood of the path all the way to their cabin and then compel them to tell what they know; if they refuse——"

He shut his lips tight and walked faster than ever. He strove to fight back the tempestuous emotions that set his blood boiling. He was moved by a resolve that would stop at nothing; he would not believe that there was no hope; he knew he could force the miscreants to give up their secret, and had a hair of his little sister's head been harmed the punishment should be swift and terrible.

"When Dollie is found," he muttered, determined to believe she must be restored to him, "I will send her and Aunt Maria away, and then have it out with these fellows; I'll make them rue the day they began the fight."

These were dreadful thoughts, but there was excuse for them, his grief made him half frantic.

The path over which he believed Dollie had either strayed or been led or carried, entered the woods about a hundred yards from the village and gradually sloped and wound upward for a mile, when it passed the door of Hugh O'Hara's cabin and lost itself in the solitude beyond.

The sky had cleared still more during the interval since he came down the mountain side, and he could not only see the course clearly, but could distinguish objects several rods away, when the shadow of the overhanging trees did not shut out the light. But the season was so far along that few leaves were left on the limbs and it was easy, therefore, for him to keep the right course.

He had not gone far when he stopped and shouted the name of Dollie. The sound reached a long way, and he repeated the call several times, but only the dismal wind among the limbs gave answer.

Striding forward, he stood a few minutes later on the margin of the creek that was spanned by the fallen tree.

"She would not have dared to walk over," was his thought: "she must have been on this side, if she wandered off alone."

A moment later he added:

"No; for the very reason that it is dangerous, Dollie would run across; it