But at the lake he found no searchers, only considerable evidence of trampling. He paused to listen, but not even a faint voice or rustle came to him. He half turned to go back, at the very point where the two of them had met the Bickrams. Then —
He saw it, the way his enemies had gone. Probably nobody else of the pursuers had seen it in the night, with only flashlights. But there were rumpled leaves and branches at the very point where the thicket seemed most solid. He walked close, even as the sun lifted its edge to peer over his shoulder. Sure enough, beyond the foliage was a trail made by the passage of several bodies in single file. Two or three steps along it brought him to a fallen log, and he mounted this, walked along it for several more steps, then paused again.
His eyes, questing to left and right, saw the fresh earth where a tussock of weedy grass had been pulled up. Stepping down to examine, Randy spied footprints. He knelt and, with sudden triumph, recognized a broad, coarse shoe- mark, with the traces of a hobnailed cross on the heavy heel. Back he mounted to the log, continued along it to where another log lay beyond. And at the end of that log the trail was strong and well traveled, so hard packed that no track showed in the early light.
Had Randy not been watching closely now, with a good notion of what to expect, he might have blundered past the turnoff, but it was marked for him, by the handful of weeds that had been uprooted back there beside the log. They helped him locate a branching trail, more narrow and much more dimly marked. There, too, he followed, encouraged when he found clean stripped twigs to one side and, at a bend some yards ahead, the leaves from those twigs.
"Good for Jebs,” said Randy to himself. "He’s not letting me lose the way. Any moment now —”
THE TRAP CLOSES
Jebs had no time to wonder, guess or be thankful about Randy’s sudden explosion into view and action. He jumped in close himself and hurled the whole pailful of gritty suds, at an angle so that most of it would miss Randy, full into Emory’s angry face. Emory’s mouth had gaped open as if to howl, and a generous portion of the suds flew squarely into that big opening. As the overgrown youth spluttered and gasped, Jebs swung the empty bucket by its bail, bringing it down hard on Emory’s right fist. The metal side of the bucket made solid contact, and the gun fell from Emory’s fingers to the ground.
Then Jebs dropped the pail and tackled Emory hard around the legs, football fashion. Locked together, the three boys fell heavily on the pine straw that covered the floor of the cave. As Emory shook his eyes clear of blinding suds, Jebs planted a hard knee upon Emory’s thick chest and made a fumbling grab for the bucket he had dropped. He flourished it over his head like a flail.
"Don’t move, Emory Bickram,” he warned sternly, "or I’ll smack you right on top of the head. Don’t move or make a noise or —”
"Here’s a better way to keep him quiet.” Rising, Randy ran to snatch up the fallen pistol. If he starts roaring, so will this gun. We've got to tie him up, Jebs.”
"Let’s use these ropes.” Jebs held out his wrist to show the length of clothes line dangling from it. Randy produced and opened his knife, Jebs took it and freed himself from the bonds. Quickly he made a noose and drew Emory’s wrists snugly together behind his broad back.
"How,” Emory managed to blubber at last, "how on earth —”
"How did I get here?” Randy finished for him. "It was the trail that Jebs —”
"It was part of my pal’s witchcraft I was telling you about,” broke in Jebs, leaning past Emory’s shoulder to grin into the scowling, mystified face. "Don’t you remember I said that he could find out all sorts of things without being told? You never had a chance from the first.”
"You can knock off all that kind of talk,” growled Emory. "My brother and cousin will be back here before you get through laughing. Then you’ll laugh out of the other side of your silly-looking faces.”
"He’s half right, at that,” said Jebs. "They left, Ferd and Noll Bickram, to go to their own house and gather supplies for a getaway from this part of the country. Then they’ll head back to this cave, get those traps you see hanging on the wall, and start after beaver.”
"Which means they may be showing up here any minute,” acidly chimed in the trussed-up Emory. "Then we’ll see who it is looks good all tied around like a Christmas package.”
"Nobody wants to find you in his stocking on Christmas morning,” said Jebs. "I can’t imagine even giving you away.”
"I can,” put in Randy. "Deputy Sheriff O’Brien would love Emory for a gift. He’d keep him for a rare keepsake, all safe in a nice cell. He’d decorate him with charges of kidnaping, trespass, assault with deadly weapons, conspiracy —”
"Aw, shut up and wipe the rest of this soap out of my eyes," Emory almost wailed. "It stings like the blazes."
With the towel of floursacking, Jebs wiped the prisoner’s face.
"Emory speaks the truth when he says his partners will be back soon," said Jebs to Randy again. "Let’s get going."
"Okay." Randy hefted the pistol in his hand. "Get up on your feet," he commanded Emory. "Don’t think I won’t use this gun to back up my orders, either. When I came in, you were pointing it at Jebs."
Emory rose, obediently but not cheerfully, and stood waiting. "Take a peek outside," Randy directed Jebs, and Jebs thrust his way through the thickly hanging arrangement of foliage at the doorway.
The sun had risen to the tops of the trees, pouring early light into the ravine. Jebs saw the ground over which he had stumbled the night before. It was a sizable gash in the floor of the timber land, ten or twelve feet deep and thirty feet across, with the stream running along the lowest point of its bottom. On either lip stood the trees in thick, leafy belts. Jebs saw and heard nothing that seemed dangerous.
"It's probably safe," he said to Randy behind him. "We’ll have to hope so, anyway."
He led the way out. Randy, holding Emory by one tightly roped arm, followed him.
"Head this way," said Randy, and guided Emory along the ravine to a point where the bank was slightly less steep than elsewhere. "Now, we climb up here. Go first, Jebs, and then lean down to give our friend Emory a helping hand. I ll boost him from below."
It was done. After some resolute heaving and hoisting, the tethered captive was helped up the steep bank and in among the trees at the level above. Randy scrambled nimbly after him and moved into the lead position again. He pointed into the thick of the woods.
’There,” he said to Jebs. ’’That’s where we’ll head. It looks hidden, because the branches droop over and have to be shoved aside. But the foot path is clearly marked below, and it’s easy to follow.”
Emory’s narrow eyes opened wide. He looked blankly foolish. "Now I know your partner’s a witchcrafter,” he told Jebs. "Nobody else—”
"What’s all this witchcraft talk?” asked Randy, and Jebs chuckled as he explained his conversation with Emory and the big prisoner’s superstitious fears.
"But you don’t have the idea quite right, Emory,” said Randy when Jebs had finished. "There was magic, all right, but Jebs was doing it, not me. You and your two buddies tried to hide this trail, you’ve been hiding it for days, maybe weeks. But Jebs fixed it so that I could follow him along as soon as there was enough light for me to see by. Mister, you and your kinfolks never had a chance in the world, from the very moment you began to monkey with Jebs here.” Emory glowered at Jebs. "We should have knocked you off down there by that beaver pond,” he said bitterly. "Knocked you off permanent, the way we —”
Then he paused, transferring the glower to Randy. After a moment, he stopped glowering, and the blank, stupid look came back to his face. "Hey, look here now. We felt pure down certain you were finished when you sank down under that water. How in thunder—”
"Oh, I was sunk,” said Randy enigmatically. "But I wasn’t finished. I wasn’t even hurt, and I wasn’t in danger, not in real danger, for more than a second or two. That’s one of the things I’ll take time to explain to you la
ter. Come on, Jebs. We’ve got to head this rare captive specimen of Moore County wild life back to Laurels.”
"You just lay off that kind of talk,” Emory protested.
"We’d better all of us lay off of all kinds of talk,” advised Jebs. "We’d better keep completely quiet. Shoo, those other Bickram beaver-killers will be heading back toward their cave any moment, and fixing to follow us up. We don’t want them to hear us and make an easy job of the following.”
Randy said no more, but nodded agreement. Jebs’ serious admonition had brought back into his mind the unpleasant picture of the other two Bickrams, smarter by far than the captured Emory, and more dangerous.
"Are they armed?” he asked Jebs, very quietly.
"They had a shotgun,” said Jebs, also lowering his voice, "and I sure reckon they’d be ready and glad to use it on us.”
Randy wanted no reckoning with the Bickrams in these woods. With the pistol barrel he made a beckoning gesture, and began to lead them along the half-hidden pathway.
It was no quick and easy task, even though Randy had previously traced the way for himself. Emory could have helped, of course, but he made no offer to do so. The three moved slowly along, Randy at the head of the procession, then Emory tramping ill-humoredly, then Jebs with a hand on Emory’s shoulder. Birds raised their song in the morning air above the trees. Once some small animal, probably a rabbit, startled them momentarily by leaping from under Randy’s very feet and scuttling away into the woods. As they trod past a swampy place, a spotted snake lifted its head where it lay on the ground before them. Randy came to a sudden halt, Emory and Jebs almost stumbling over him, and pointed his pistol. But then he saw that the snake’s head was a simple, lean-jawed spike no wider than the neck that bore it, and not the broad, heavy-jowled head that marks a poisonous variety. Stooping, Randy picked up a bit of dead wood and threw it. The snake went wriggling away out of their sight.
"He wouldn’t hurt anything he couldn’t swallow, but I’m always jumpy about snakes,” confessed Randy.
"When Noll and Ferd get their hands on you, you’ll be glad to settle for a bunch of copperheads,” muttered Emory.
"You hush that fuss, prisoner,” commanded Jebs. "Keep going, Randy, we have worse snakes behind us than in front.”
Thus urged, Randy resumed his tracing of the homeward journey. Twice he was forced to stop, poke and decide, but each time he found the trail again. At last, with a sense of triumphant relief, he came to a point from which he could see the butt of a great fallen log, first of the two along which the Bickrams had laid their hidden travel way. Beyond that point, as Randy remembered, the trail was more strongly defined, and the stealthy signs Jebs had left would help to define it for them. Within brief moments they would come to the shore of Beaver Lake, and there would be no trouble about getting beyond to the safe haven of Laurels. What would Major Hunter say when they appeared with a captive, taken redhanded and safely bound?
Just then Jebs brushed quickly past Emory and caught Randy by the sleeve. "Listen,” said Jebs in a fierce whisper close against Randy’s ear, as he pulled his friend to a halt.
Randy stood quietly, listening as Jebs had commanded him. The woods seemed tranquil, hushed. But then —
Wheeeeet. It was a whistle somewhere among the trees, soft and stealthy. A moment later, it was repeated from beyond the thicket on the other side of where they had come to a halt. Wheeeeet. "That’s what I heard,” whispered Jebs.
“It was a bird or something, perhaps,” offered Randy, whispering himself, but as he spoke he knew it was no bird.
Behind them Emory snickered.
At once Randy wheeled and sprang back toward the prisoner, the pistol raised in his hand.
“Make a noise,” he told Emory, softly but earnestly. “Go on, just make a noise, and I’ll wrap the barrel of this gun around your head as if it was a wet towel.”
Emory tightened his lips, and his meaty face grew a shade paler, for he saw that Randy meant what he said. Again Jebs was nudging Randy, and pointing silently backward along the way they had come.
Randy nodded complete understanding. If Noll and Ferd had taken their trail and were moving parallel to them on opposite sides of the trail, ready to close in, the best countermove would be a surprise one, a retracing of their steps. Randy took the guard position beside Emory, pistol ready in his hand. Jebs became the leader, stooping low to keep from rustling the branches overhead, and moved quickly away. Randy shoved Emory along in Jebs’s wake. After some cautious steps Jebs paused again, his hand lifted shoulder high to signal a halt.
Wheeeet, sounded the whistle, and Wheeeeet, it was answered. To Randy those two soft, menacing sounds seemed to come from very close together, as though their trailers had come almost to the point where he had first heard them. At any moment Ferd and Noll might burst into view.
Emory shifted position as he stood. Glancing down, Randy saw Emory digging his cross-nailed heel deep into the earth of the trail. At once Randy kicked the big shoe warningly, and Emory turned a grinning face toward him, winking one narrow eye in bitter defiance. The prisoner was marking a way for his rescuers, as Jebs had done earlier.
FLIGHT
Jebs, too, plainly recognized the danger of being seen and trapped on that semi-open stretch of trail. He beckoned to Randy, pointed to one side among some of the most thickly growing trees, then plunged quickly into them. Randy prodded Emory into following. As they left the trail in turn, Jebs’s sturdy back and disordered tow-colored hair could be seen but dimly among the branches.
"Hurry, you,” Randy ordered Emory. "I’m not letting go of you until I put you in the hands of —”
At the moment they followed Jebs into the woods, a yell rang out on the trail they were quitting. They had not been seen, but some motion of their departure had been spotted!
Emory made as though to turn back, but Randy jabbed him hard between his shoulders blades with the muzzle of the pistol and fairly rushed him after Jebs. The two caught up, and Jebs set his fingers in Emory’s collar and bodily hauled him off at an angle through thicker brush, and thicker. Back behind them, the voice that had yelled was speaking in an excited manner, and another voice answered it.
"It’s Noll and Ferd,” said Jebs harshly. "Get down here, Emory. Lie flat on your face, quick.”
Randy backed up this direction by waving the pistol under Emory’s nose, and the big fellow obeyed.
“Gag him," said Jebs to Randy, then turned and began wrenching leafy branches from the trees to right and left, hurriedly collecting a great armful.
Stooping down close to Emory’s prone form, Randy drew the bandanna handkerchief from Emory’s pocket and motioned for the heavy jaws to open. Into the gaping mouth he stuffed the bandanna, then whipped his own handkerchief from his pocket and pulled it tight around Emory’s face, then knotted it at the shaggy nape of Emory’s bull neck. Even as he finished this, Jebs threw branches and sprays of leaves upon the two of them, blanketing them from view. Finally Jebs himself crept in close, lying at Emory’s other side, and quickly draped the remainder of his armful of foliage over himself. The three lay breathlessly quiet.
There was a crashing among the woods. To Randy it sounded as though a whole army of searchers was pushing its way here and there. He heard a voice muttering hoarsely, as though issuing orders. Then the crashing was resumed, quite near to them, and was answered by more crashing at a little distance. His ear lay flat to the ground, and Randy heard the thud-thud of approaching footsteps, seemingly as heavy as an elephant’s, bearing down upon them.
He could hardly have seen through the screen of torn boughs had he dared to lift his head. He tightened his hand upon the pistol, and crooked his forefinger around the trigger. Jebs had said that the Bickrams were bringing a shotgun. Perhaps, if the hasty screen was found, Noll and Ferd would hesitate before firing at the boys lying so close to Emory. A scatter of shot might hurt friend as well as foe. In that case, Randy might be able to shoot first, at clos
e range. Would he dare to send a bullet at a fellow human being? He would have to dare. It was literally a matter of life and death. All night and all morning, the Bickrams had been ready, even eager, to destroy him and Jebs.
The mighty thudding footfalls were very near now. They paused. Were hostile eyes studying the fallen branches? Was the muzzle of a shotgun pointing at them even now? And if not, would not two or three more strides bring a broad boot right down upon him? But then, wheeeeet, the same whistle signal came from a distance. The owner of the heavy feet answered it, and with a mighty sensation of thanks Randy could hear those feet departing, thud-thud- thud. Bushes and twigs rattled somewhere, then farther off still. They had escaped once again.
With the utmost caution Jebs pushed aside a spray of leaves, peered out into the open, then lifted his whole head clear for a better look. He shoved away from the rest of the branches that had concealed him and began to rake them off of Emory and Randy.
"Quick now, before they come nosing around these parts again,” he whispered. "Let’s be getting far away from here.”
"Where?” asked Randy, as softly as he could.
"Back to the trail again. But first—”
Jebs grasped Emory by a thick ankle. He fairly ripped open the untidy bow of Emory’s shoelace and yanked off one of the big shoes with the telltale cross of hobnails on its heel, then the other. He knotted them together by their laces and slung them around his neck. "Come on,” he said, and went trailward at a crouching run. Randy followed with Emory.
Again on the trail, the boys retraced their steps toward the logs. Behind them they heard the continued movement of bodies among the timber, and yet again the wheeeeet- wheeeeeet of the whistle signals. The search was continuing, and might return to the trail at any moment.
Eagerly Jebs made his way to the first log and walked nimbly along it. “Follow him,” said Randy to Emory, “and don’t go jumping down or marking the dirt to either side.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 Page 13