The New Boys at Oakdale
Blowing out the lamp, he tiptoed down the dark stairs and presently found himself outside the house in which Mr. and Mrs. Carter were soundly sleeping. The air was raw and the night still dark. Later the moon would come up, though it might be smothered by clouds.
Shultz walked slowly, irresolutely, down the black road which led into Lake Street. After a time the academy loomed on his left, and on the right he saw the gymnasium and the fence of the athletic field. Like an avalanche a host of memories came rushing over him; memories of the days he had spent here since his expulsion from Berkley Academy.
For the first time he realized how pleasant those days had really been, and for the first time he perceived with wonderment that he had become attached to the place and it would give him regret to go away. Through his athletic prowess and his skill in baseball he had won a certain amount of popularity, which might have been much greater if he had only made some effort to curb his unpleasant characteristics. Osgood, his friend, was immensely popular; so popular, indeed, that it had seemed probable that, through a little maneuvering and scheming, he might supersede Nelson as captain of the nine. Without a thought of the moral or manly points involved, they had plotted to bring this about.
“Well, it will never happen now,” said Shultz, with a low, bitter laugh. “The jig is up, anyhow. I hardly thought Ned would agree when I proposed it, but he almost jumped at it. I believe he’d been thinking of the very same thing. There’s class to his people, and he’s a gentleman, so, when he did agree, it seemed all right to me.” In this manner he sought to excuse himself.
He recalled how he had scoffed at Oakdale, the school and the old professor. He had even dreamed of resorting to various harassing methods in order to make Professor Richardson’s task so difficult that, unable to govern his pupils with a stern hand, he would withdraw from his position to let it be filled by a younger and more efficient instructor. Yes, having instilled some of his own spirit into his associates, Shultz had started a campaign of nagging and annoyance and disregard for what he called old-fashioned rules, which had certainly given the principal no small amount of worry and trouble.
“I suppose,” he half laughed, as he walked slowly past the building, “the old relic thinks I’m a bad egg. What do I care what he thinks! What do I care what anybody thinks!” But for the first time in his life he did care.
At this hour the center of the village seemed dark and deserted. Only an occasional light was to be seen shining dimly from a window. Nevertheless, the boy hesitated about passing through the square, fearing that some one might see him, know him, and wonder what he was doing prowling about so late. This fear led him to turn from Lake Street and cross lots toward the rapids below the upper dam. In this manner he stole down the slope at the rear of the stores and houses which lined the western side of lower Main Street.
The water was gurgling and grumbling around the rocks which thrust themselves upward in the channel. At intervals, as Shultz passed, it hissed, like a living creature expressing scorn and hatred.
At the bridge he climbed upward to the roadway, where he stood for a few moments, peering and listening.
“I seem to be the only one alive in this old burg.” The thought brought Hooker to his mind – Hooker, dead, perhaps.
Cross Street, which ran back of the town hall and along the shore of the lower pond, would bring him into Lake Street again, near Willow, upon which was the home of the Hookers. He had almost reached Lake Street when he stopped short, halted by the sound of echoing footsteps, which were approaching from that part of the town he had avoided. In a moment he was pressing his body against the bole of a big tree.
The footsteps came nearer. The person began to hum a tune. Here was some one abroad with a light heart and fearless of observation.
“It must be Tuttle,” thought the boy by the tree. “Yes, it is. Why don’t he let his eternal peanuts stop his mouth?”
Chub Tuttle passed on the opposite side of the way, and, ceasing to hum as he trudged serenely homeward, began to whistle not unmelodiously. The notes of “The Last Rose of Summer” came drifting back to the ears of Charley Shultz, growing fainter and fainter in the distance and sounding inexpressibly sad.
Shultz thought it must be getting darker, and was amazed, on rubbing them, to find that his eyes were moist and blurred. He leaned against the tree and listened, almost against his will, as the whistling grew fainter and yet fainter, softened and sweetened by the distance. When he could hear it no longer he gave himself a savage shake.
“You fool!” he rasped. “What’s the matter with you? You never felt like this before. You’re growing silly.”
Reaching Willow Street, he gazed toward Hooker’s home, but, even had the darkness not prevented him from seeing the house, it stood so far back on the Middle Street corner that he could not have surveyed it from his present position. Dread heavily upon him, yet hope not entirely dead, he walked slowly up the street. He had almost reached the corner when he stopped again.
He could see the house now, and his heart hammered furiously as he perceived that something was taking place there. There were lights flashing from room to room; he heard excited voices calling; the house was in a commotion.
“What’s that mean? What’s that mean?” whispered Shultz over and over.
Suddenly the door of the house was flung open. A man came running out, some one calling after him. Down the steps he sprang; across Lake Street he dashed; along Middle Street he raced.
Panting, one hand clutching a nearby fence-railing, Shultz was certain he knew the cause of this commotion. Mr. Hooker was running for the doctor. They had just discovered that Roy was dead.
Turning sharply about, Schultz ran also.
CHAPTER XVIII – FLIGHT
As he ran, the terrible fear that had clung to him grew to gigantic proportions. Panting and gasping, he exerted every effort in that first burst of speed. The sound of his flying feet echoed through the silent streets, and those echoes, flung back to his ears, made it seem that a part of the sound was produced by other feet than his own. It seemed that there was a fearsome pursuer at his very heels, reaching for him with eager, clawlike hands. He dared not pause an instant in his flight to look back. On and on he ran, down through Cross Street, retracing his course up the slope to Lake Street, and still on past the silent and gloomy academy.
From exhaustion and lack of breath his pace had slackened perforce. In all his experience in athletics, never before had he exerted himself until, the breath wholly pumped from his lungs, he could only gasp in exquisite pain, while his very head threatened to burst.
At length, just beyond the academy, he stumbled and fell. Half stunned by the shock, he fully expected to feel himself pounced upon by that unknown pursuer.
Recovering, he looked around as he struggled to his feet. He was quite alone; he could see no moving, living object.
“Still,” he thought, as he stood gulping in air to relieve his collapsed lungs, “I could swear something chased me. It was right behind me all the way. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. If it’s that sort of a thing, it’s no use to run; I can’t run away from it.”
But when he started on again the fear returned, and it was only by the most tremendous effort that he restrained the impulse to resume running. Every moment or two he looked back, and sometimes he stopped and turned squarely in his tracks.
His relief was great when he saw, near at hand, the house where he boarded. He would get inside, close the door quickly behind him, and shut the unseen pursuer out.
But the door did not open beneath his hand. He tried it again and again, presently realizing with dismay that he had failed to fasten back the catch of the spring lock when he came out. Yesterday, in changing his clothes, he had discovered that his latch key was missing. Search for it had been vain, and Mrs. Carter had not been able to furnish another key.
“Well, this is a fix!” he whispered. “I’m locked out. I don’t want to rap and get them up, for I would have to explain. Then, too, if they got a look at me they’d know there’s something wrong. I must show it plain enough.”
He walked silently around to the rear of the house. There was the ell, upon the roof of which his window opened, and close to the end of the ell stood the chestnut tree, with one stout branch projecting over the roof. He thought of climbing the tree, reaching the roof by means of that limb, and crawling along to obtain admittance through the window of his chamber.
Remembering the fearsome spectacle revealed to him outside that window this very night, he faltered and drew back. He was terrified lest, having climbed to the roof, he should find himself once more face to face with the apparition.
“It’s no use,” he almost sobbed; “I can’t do it! Anyhow, why should I wish to get in there? If it’s a ghost, I couldn’t shut it out. I may need the things in my bag; I’d certainly like to have them; but I must do without them.”
He knew that a hostler slept all night in Hyde’s livery stable, and that there was a bell by which the man might be aroused. Now, however, for the first time it occurred to him that he lacked money. Having paid Osgood a small debt, less than three dollars remained in his pocket. It was thirty-four miles to Watertown, and it would require many times three dollars to pay for a rig to carry him there.
“Perhaps they’ll trust me,” he muttered. “I’ll tell a good story. I’ll make it out a case of life or death – and perhaps it is.”
Then something seemed to whisper in his ear that he could not endure the scrutiny of any one without betraying himself. Furthermore, if he should hire a rig and a man to drive him to Watertown, that would betray the direction of his flight. Should they desire to stop him and bring him back, the telephone would serve them well.
“I’m done for,” he groaned – “done for! I don’t know what to do.”
Desiring sympathy, longing for advice, he thought of Osgood, and at once he decided that Ned ought to know without delay what had happened.
Crossing lots and open fields, he avoided the streets of the town as far as possible. He was still pursued by the conviction that some unseen thing was following him, but with set teeth, he restrained the desire to run, holding himself down to a sharp, jerky walk, which was interrupted occasionally as he looked back. Finally he saw before him the big white two-story house of Mrs. Chester.
Now another problem arose, how to reach Osgood. If he rang at the door he would eventually bring either the maid or Mrs. Chester to answer the bell. What could he tell them?
“I know what I’ll do,” he decided, stooping to run the palm of his hand over the loose earth of the street bed.
It did not take him long to gather up a handful of small pebbles, and with these he approached the house. One after another he flung them upward and heard them clink against the window glass, but he used them all without perceiving a token that he had awakened Osgood. The house remained dark and silent. A rising breeze caused the limbs of some trees to knock together; it swept Shultz’s clammy cheek and made him shiver.
“I must get Ned up,” he muttered. “Fool that I am, I’ve been trying the wrong window. He’s in his bedroom, of course, and the window to that is on the side of the house.”
Back to the street he went for more pebbles. He was crouching froglike, feeling for them with his hands, when he heard a sound that turned him rigid for an instant.
Footsteps were approaching on the sidewalk; some one was coming up the street. Why should any one in that sleepy, well-behaved little town be out at this hour? Was it possible they had already begun searching for him?
Then he heard voices. There were two persons approaching.
Rising to a crouching position, he ran to the fence across the way from Mrs. Chester’s and flung himself over. And, again started in flight, the terror that had driven him in the first place came back with additional force; and this was augmented by the sound of voices shouting after him – the voices of the two men on the street, who had seen his shadowy figure as he vaulted the fence.
“There he is!” “That’s him!” “There he goes!” “Stop! stop!”
Crying after him in this manner, they came on in pursuit. Venturing to look back, he saw them tumbling over the fence he had leaped, and once more he strained every nerve.
There was now no doubt in his mind; they were after him. Perhaps before the coming of the end Roy Hooker’s mind had cleared sufficiently for him to tell who struck the fatal blow. Perhaps Roy’s father, running from the house, had been hurrying to set the officers at work.
In advance, he perceived a dark, straggling line of bushes and low trees. Amid them he turned sharply to the left, hoping somehow to double on his tracks and baffle the pursuers. Through a thicket of shrubbery he plunged, with the tiny branches viciously whipping his face and tearing at his clothes, as if even they sought to grasp and hold him.
Suddenly he stopped short, his mouth wide open, that he might listen the better. The two men had reached the growth, and he could hear them floundering amid it.
“This way!” one of them cried. “He went this way!”
“Keep still!” urged the other. “We ought to be able to hear him. Keep still a minute.”
The crashing sounds ceased, and the listening boy knew the men were listening also. Through a great effort of self-command, he kept himself from resuming the flight, waiting until the noise of their own movements should prevent them from hearing what sounds he might make.
They soon grew impatient and began beating about in the underbrush in an aimless search.
As soon as this happened Shultz moved away, proceeding with a certain amount of caution. Keeping just within the border of the timber and thickets, he went forward as fast as he dared, putting out his hands to part the bushes and slipping through them as silently as possible. At times twigs snapped beneath his feet, but, as he had hoped, the men were themselves making sufficient noise to drown such minor sounds, and gradually he left them far behind.
In the blackness he ran full against a wire fence, and the barbs of the lower strands slashed his trousers and cut his legs. He tore himself free, felt for the smooth upper strand, bent it downward and straddled over.
Following the line of the fence, he turned full upon the course he had been pursuing when he plunged into the timber. Leaving that shelter behind him, bending low, he ran on until he returned to the highway some distance above the home of Mrs. Chester. In the middle of the road he paused uncertainly.
The moon was rising. Its light, although somewhat muffled by the clouds, was sufficient to enable him to perceive the outlines of objects at a considerable distance; it would also reveal him far better to pursuers, and make his escape more difficult were he again seen by them.
“Good-by, Ned,” he whispered. “You’re asleep, and you don’t know anything about it. Probably you’ll never realize just what I’ve had to go through this night.”
Fearing to follow the highway, he again struck across the fields, before him the deep stretch of timberland to the north of Turkey Hill. By making his way through those woods and passing round the hill, he could reach the Barville road some miles from Oakdale.
At the edge of the timber the night wind bore to his ears a sound that again halted him dead in his tracks. The bells of Oakdale were ringing – ringing wildly, furiously, as they might ring to arouse the villagers to battle with a conflagration. Peal upon peal vibrated through the night air, and their clanging strokes stabbed the miserable boy like dagger thrusts.
“I know what it means!” he half panted, half sobbed. “They’re turning the whole town out to hunt me down! I’m alone, alone, with everybody against me! What chance have I got? Well, they’ll have to catch me before I give up.”
The woods swallowed him; he was gone. The bells continued to fling forth their wild alarm. As if wondering at it, and curious to know what it was all about, the silvery moon peered through a break in the clouds, flooding the open space with its light.
But in the woods through which Charley Shultz staggered on it was dark. In his heart it was darker still.
CHAPTER XIX – THE APPARITION IN THE WOODS
In the midst of the woods Shultz stopped to rest, seating himself upon a log against which he had stumbled. The clouds having dispersed, the moon was silvering the tree-tops above his head, but it had not yet risen high enough to cast its light upon the ground of the little glade. On every hand were the mysterious night shadows of the woods.
The boy’s legs quivered as he sat there, grateful for this respite, although he felt that time was precious and he should waste no moments. No longer could he hear the village bells; they had ceased to ring, and he was glad of that.
It was a melancholy and terrible thing to feel himself an outcast and a fugitive from justice, practically with the hand of mankind in general turned against him. He had read stories of daring fugitives in similar positions, and always the fugitives had seemed enfolded by a glamor of romance, which had almost made him long to pass through such an experience; but, now that the experience was his, it held no glamor, no single feature of allurement or romance. It was simply a horrible situation, to be freed from which he felt that he would willingly give up years of his life.
That he could escape, he still had a faint hope; but it was faint indeed, and, had he heeded sober judgment, he would have put it aside as something false and deceptive and merely adding to his suspense and torture. With the telephone and telegraph, the surrounding country could be warned and every loophole stopped. With the bulk of the villagers searching for him, it was simply a matter of time before he would be run down.
“I’ll never give up,” he kept telling himself; “I’ll never give up till they catch me.”
He had always thought of the night woods at this season of the year as silent and lifeless. Now, however, resting upon that log, he became aware of many strange sounds all around him. There seemed to be faint rustlings and whisperings, as if the very trees were telling one another that he was there, and pointing him out with their bare, extending arms. Continually he kept turning his head to look first in one direction and then in another. Several times he was startled by shadows that seemed to move, but when he watched them more closely they were motionless enough.
Nevertheless, the fancy that something was drawing nearer, creeping upon him bit by bit, increased with the passing moments. He could feel it approaching silently, stealthily, steadily. He had escaped the two men who had tried to run him down, but there was something he could not escape, and, recalling what he had beheld through the window of his chamber, he leaped up and resumed his reckless flight.
This way and that he turned and darted to avoid the trees and the denser thickets. The woods seemed endless. Long ere this, he told himself, he should have passed through them and reached the Barville road.
Presently before him the moonlight showed a broad open space, and with a gasp of thankfulness he tottered forth from the forest. His clothes were in tatters. There was blood on his legs from the wounds inflicted by the barbed wire fence. His hands and his face were scratched and bruised. Seeing him now, a stranger must surely have wondered with curiosity to know what had brought him to such a pitiful plight.
But the woods, they were behind him. The Barville road must be near at hand. Not far away the moonlight showed him an orchard and some buildings.
He stopped, stood still, gazed at those buildings. There was something familiar about them. Farther away, to the right, he could see more houses.
“Where am I?” he muttered hoarsely. “So help me, that looks like Sage’s home! It is! it is! I got turned round in the woods. I’ve come straight back to the place where I entered.”
This was true. The houses down the road were the scattering ones upon the outskirts of the village.
Sickened by this discovery, Shultz remained some moments in doubt and uncertainty. Here and there he could see lights in the windows of the houses. All Oakdale seemed awake. The bells had aroused the village, and everywhere posses of men were searching. Should he attempt to follow along the edge of the woods and pass round Turkey Hill to the south, it would bring him dangerously near town.
“My only safety lies in the woods until I can get farther away,” he decided. “I can get through them all right if I keep my head. With the moon on my back, the shadows will guide me. I can get my bearings in every little open space. I’ll do it.”
Setting his teeth, he turned about and again plunged into the timber. Precious time had been lost through his blunder, but now, he told himself, he would master his fears and make no false steps.
In time he came to an opening in the midst of the woods, where the moonlight fell upon the cleared ground. Half-way across this opening dread of the gloom at the far side made him falter. Again he was oppressed by the conviction that something terrible and uncanny had followed him in all his flight. Again he could feel it drawing nearer and nearer. Something like the sound of soft footsteps caused his heart to choke him, and, turning, he saw it coming.
In the shadows an object advanced. It was like a human body, white from the waist upward, and this white portion, which he could plainly see, seemed to float in the air.
But when the shadows were passed and it stepped forth into the moonlight, he perceived that the body was supported by legs encased in dark trousers. The moonlight revealed more than that. He was looking into the face of Roy Hooker! Even as Roy’s eyes had stared at him through the window of his chamber, they were now fastened upon him. Above those staring eyes, the turban-like bandage of white still encircled Hooker’s head.
“Hooker!” groaned Shultz. “Oh, Hooker, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it!”
The figure halted ten feet away. A hand was uplifted and extended accusingly. A voice – the voice of Hooker – demanded:
“Shultz, where did that other ace come from?”
The words sounded in a low, monotonous, dead-level tone. To Shultz, the voice seemed hollow and lifeless, like the voice of the dead.
He could not answer, but, flinging off the benumbing spell that had chained him in his tracks, he whirled and fled again. Through the woods he crashed and plunged like mad, almost blind with terror. Again and again he half collided with trees. Vines and low branches tripped him. Falling, he scrambled up and ran on, absolutely heedless of what course he followed.
In this manner he plunged at last into a deep gully. As he fell he tried to leap, and down he went in an upright position. When he struck the bottom, one foot twisted beneath him, and he dropped in a heap. A pain shot through his leg.
Getting his breath after the shock, he started to rise; but the moment he tried to bear his weight on his right foot the pain jabbed him frightfully, and he toppled over.
“My leg is broken!” he sobbed. “Now I’m done for, sure!”
CHAPTER XX – THE SEARCH
In the midst of troublesome dreams, Ned Osgood, half-awake, fancied he heard hail beating against the windows of his sitting room. Fully awake at last, he lifted his head from the pillow and listened; but, hearing it no more, he decided that it must have been a figment of his distasteful dreams.
He heard something else, however. Far away the voices of men were calling, but as he listened and wondered, the sounds grew more distant, became fainter, and died away.
Returning to his pillow, he settled down, seeking to compose himself, and praying that those rest-disturbing dreams might trouble him no more. But thoughts of Hooker would not let him sleep, and presently something else brought him bolt upright on the bed, startled and wondering.
It was a clamor of bells, beginning with a peal from the steeple of the Methodist church down the street. The night air vibrated with the sounds, which seemed to pour in upon him through the partly opened window of his bedroom. Why were those church bells ringing at such an hour? He could distinguish the tones of the academy bell, as well. In a moment he knew it must be an alarm meant to arouse the town, and out of bed he sprang, catching his trousers up from the back of a chair and getting into them as quickly as he could, trembling slightly all the while with excitement.
