At the base of the hill crowned by the Marlow house the woods came close to the road. Years before the pines had been cut off, and in their place had come in a second growth of hard wood, scrubby, tangled and dense. On many of the trees, especially the oaks, dead leaves still were thick, affording cover for game and adding considerably to the difficulties of hunting novices.
Sam climbed the fence, and plunged into the thickets to the right. It was his intention to work around the base of the hill, and thus reach the old orchard, of which Lon Gates had spoken; but he quickly discovered that the plan was more easily made than carried out. There was a good deal of underbrush, and the ground was rough, stony in places and swampy in the tiny valleys. Moreover, as he tried to advance as silently as possible, and to keep a keen, if limited, lookout, his progress was slow as well as wearisome. With all his vigilance, however, he saw nothing and heard nothing to indicate the presence of anything which would serve as target for his aim. No rabbit scurried away, and there was no whir of wings among the branches. As for deer—why, there was nothing to hint that buck or doe was to be found thereabouts.
He had slipped a couple of cartridges into his gun, and felt prepared for any emergency; but an emergency declined to present itself. Even when he reached the little brook, which skirted the hill, the silence of the woods was unbroken, except by the subdued murmur of the stream. He paused for a moment, listening intently but vainly; then moved on, following the course of the brook. The going was now a trifle easier, though clumps of trees and bushes still narrowed the view.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour his progress was absolutely uneventful, and unrelieved by even a false alarm. A turn in the brook warned him that he had passed the farmhouse, and was nearing the old orchard. More cautiously than ever he changed his course, and began to climb the slope on his right, the first, as he knew, of a series of low ridges. He reached its top without mishap, and halted to reconnoiter.
From somewhere, afar off, the wind brought a sound to his ears, which set his pulse bounding and made him tighten his hold on his gun. It was a sound he could not mistake, faint though it was. Some other hunter had found something to fire at; perhaps the lucky fellow had sent a charge of buckshot into a deer!
Just in front of Sam, and on the verge of the farther slope, was a mass of tangled bushes. He dropped to his knees, and slowly tunneled a way through the barrier. From its shelter he could look down into a ravine, beyond which rose the second ridge.
For several minutes he lay motionless in his burrow, peering into the gully and straining his ears for the rustle of branches or the crack of dried twig. Once he thought he heard both from the lower ground to his left; but he could not be sure, and the disturbance was not repeated.
Suddenly, from another direction—straight across the ravine and near the top of the ridge—came sounds of movements in the undergrowth. Instinctively, Sam brought the gun to his shoulder; its muzzle barely protruded from the branches. His finger trembled on the trigger. And then his eager eye had a glimpse of a darker patch amidst the dried leaves, a patch which seemed to be moving very, very slowly.
Sam had heard tales of “buck fever,” and had laughed at the plight of its victims; but now he could sympathize with them. His heart was pumping furiously; he was trembling from head to foot; every muscle seemed to be relaxed and helpless. And, as if to mock him, that dark spot across the ravine grew clearer and more distinct. It was too high from the ground to suggest the presence of any of the smaller animals likely to be found in the woods.
“That—that’s a deer over there!” Sam told himself desperately. “It—it can’t be anything else!”
With an effort he summoned all his will. The swaying barrels along which he glanced steadied. His finger pressed the trigger. There was a roar which seemed to him as loud as thunder. His right shoulder ached under what was like a smart blow from the butt of the gun. A thin wisp of smoke blew away from the muzzle, and was lost in the branches.
On the other side of the gully was violent commotion. The dark spot vanished. In its stead appeared the bare head of a man!
Sam uttered a queer, faint, choking cry of horror. The gun dropped from his hands. His head sank to the ground, and he lay, face downward, for the moment utterly overcome. Through his recklessness and folly he had shot a fellow being. Terrible certainty was his that he had not missed his aim, and that he had wounded, perhaps fatally, the victim of his criminal carelessness. There flashed upon him all the possible consequences of his act—arrest, imprisonment, disgrace; sorrow and suffering for his parents; pain and anguish for the stranger, even if he survived his wounds.
For a little Sam closed his eyes, but he could not keep from his ears the ominous sounds from the other ridge. The man had not cried out; but there was a wild crashing of brush, as if he were writhing convulsively in the thicket. Presently the sounds grew less distinct. The man must be weakening from loss of blood! Sam’s imagination pictured him lying in a crimson pool, and the boy shuddered at the thought. Yet it nerved him to the duty which he knew was his to do.
Sam had faults enough, but lack of courage to face the music, as the saying goes, was not among them. Plainly, the way for retreat was open for him, if he chose to take it; there was nobody to interfere. But Sam, once he had recovered somewhat from the shock of his disaster, set himself resolutely to the task of making such amends as he might.
He crawled out of the protecting bushes, and got upon his feet. For a moment or two he stood, listening intently; but now there was no sound from beyond the ravine. Then, with a sort of grim and unhappy determination, he began to descend the slope. At the bottom he paused again, but heard nothing either to lessen or to increase his anxiety. Then he went on, climbing doggedly and steadily to the clump where first had appeared the dark spot, and then the head of a man. The quiet of the place was unbroken. A new and terrible fear laid hold upon him: perhaps the wounded man had already succumbed. It needed all his grit and courage at last to part the branches and look in at the spot where the man had stood.
Sam looked, and looked again; and felt that he could not believe the evidence of his eyes. For three or four feet in each direction the brush had been trampled down, but there was nobody there!
A great sense of relief filled the boy. At all events, he had not killed anybody! There was even a second in which he cherished wild hope that what he had seen had been merely a vision raised by some trick of over-taxed nerves. But the hope was doomed to swift dismissal. There was blood on the dried leaves on the ground—not much blood, to be sure, but enough to make a fresh, dark stain.
Kneeling, Sam examined the sanguinary traces very carefully. As he rose, his expression curiously combined satisfaction and bewilderment. It was manifest that the stranger’s wound had neither bled copiously nor crippled him; and that he had been able to make off. But whither had he gone? Why had he not charged across the gully? And why had he not raised a warning shout to prevent a second shot?
“Jiminy!” said Sam to himself. “Jiminy! but I don’t believe he got sight of me at all! I was covered by the bushes, and there was hardly any smoke, and if he were looking another way—why—why——” He broke off, frankly unable to weigh and decide the probabilities of the strange affair.
There still remained the possibility of finding and following the man’s trail; but Sam was not especially skilled in such matters. He fancied that for a few yards he could make out evidences of somebody forcing a way through the undergrowth, but then he came to a sort of woods path along the backbone of the ridge, and there lost the slender clews upon which he had depended. Certainly he could discover no more drops of blood.
Sam went back to the trampled space, and searched it minutely from end to end, and from side to side. He had his trouble for his pains. He found nothing to throw light upon the mystery.
“Well, this does beat me!” he confessed, and shook his head in perplexity. “I never heard of anything like it. And I don’t want to hear of anything like it again—ugh!” He gave a little shiver. “I know when I’ve had enough—and too much. I’m going home, and I’m going to get there, and put up this gun, as quick as my legs will carry me to the house. And you can bet I’m going to keep quiet about this. And—and I hope the other fellow will keep quiet, too. Come now, Sam Parker! Brace up! Forward march!”
Thus encouraging himself, Master Sam set off at a round pace for the highway, but when he reached it his speed lessened. He had a new sense of merciful escape from perils when he was out of the dark woods and in the open road; and with it came a peculiar weakness and uncertainty in his knees. He was glad to sit down on a boulder beside the ditch and rest for what seemed to him a long, long time. Finally he rose, and trudged toward the town. He went slowly, and his face was thoughtful.