CHAPTER XV. THE HUT IN THE WOODS.

Following his first flush of surprise at the strange reappearance and vanishment of the mysterious man, Ralph was conscious of a feeling closely akin to hot indignation.

“I’m going to catch him,” thought the lad fiercely. “What does he mean by going on like this? What’s he following us for and spying on us? I’d like to find out what sort of tricks he is up to, and I’m going to.”

So saying he set off through the woods at a good pace, following as nearly as he could the direction the man had taken. But it soon dawned on him that he had undertaken an almost hopeless task. Judging from the man’s appearance, he had been a denizen of the woods for a long[141] period, although just how he lived was not apparent.

At any rate, before he had gone far Ralph was compelled to admit that there did not appear to be much chance of his catching up with the man. No sign of him was visible, and no crackling of brush or sound of footsteps betrayed in what direction he had gone.

“Guess I’ll have to give it up,” mused Ralph disgustedly. “At any rate I’m sure of one thing now, I’ve got nothing to fear from this strange customer, whatever may be his object in hanging about us like this. He must have followed us and——”

Ralph paused abruptly. He had last seen the man on the other side of the brulee. It was hardly likely that he could have passed through such a tract of country. Yet, on the other hand, the boy could not doubt that the man he had seen on the rock overlooking their camp and the wild figure of the valley were one and the same.[142] There was a deep mystery about it all. One too deep for the boy to fathom, for he broke off his meditations with a sigh.

“It’s no use keeping up the chase to-day,” he declared to himself with emphasis, “but if that fellow keeps on dodging our tracks he’s going to hear from me in no uncertain fashion.”

He rose from the stump on which he had sat down to think things over and resumed his search for the stray ponies. As he moved along he munched his bread and chocolate, taking his lunch “on the hoof,” so to speak.

Before long he struck the trail of the missing ponies once more. This time it soon led him into a swampy country and he followed it rapidly. Along the floor of the valley he went till suddenly, on coming around a pile of great rocks, hurled from the summit of the ridge in some prehistoric convulsion, he saw something that gave him a big surprise. In a little clearing stood[143] a ruinous log cabin, and tethered outside it was one of the missing ponies!

Of the other there was no trace. All at once Ralph heard a scrambling and clambering among the rocks above him on the steep hillside. He glanced quickly and just in time to see the mysterious man remounted on the other pony, rapidly urging it away from the hut.

“Stop thief!” yelled Ralph, carried away by excitement. “Come back here!”

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” he shouted the next instant throbbing with indignation.

He had no intention of hitting the fugitive, but he did mean to frighten him into stopping if he could. For an instant the form of the stolen pony and its rider became visible among the trees through which the afternoon sun was sending down oblique shafts of light.

Ralph raised his rifle, sighted it to carry a bullet well above the fugitive’s head and fired.

“The next will come closer,” he warned; but[144] the next minute all other thoughts were rushed abruptly out of his mind when a bullet whizzed by his head close enough to fan his ear. The ping-g-g-g-g-g-g of the ball as it sped by, ruffling his hair, did not appeal to Ralph. Evidently the fugitive was a dead shot and was not inclined to be pursued if he could avoid it by putting his tracker out of the way.

“Jove!” exclaimed Ralph as he slipped behind a tree trunk, “that bullet was a message meant for me, all right. I don’t care to be at home to such callers.”

He listened an instant and then came the sound of the pony’s hoofs making off at a good pace through the trackless forest.

“He’s escaped me again,” exclaimed Ralph angrily. “Confound him, he’s worse than a mystery now. I’ll bet that it was he who stampeded the ponies last night and now he turns out to be a miserable horse thief. Wonder if I can’t get a clew to him at that hut yonder? At any[145] rate there’s Baldy tied up and safe and sound as ever. I suppose I ought to thank our mysterious friend for leaving him behind.”

The boy slipped from behind his tree trunk and made his way toward the hut. Baldy whinnied as the boy approached. It was plain that the pony was glad to see him.

“Good Baldy! Good old pony,” exclaimed Ralph, slapping the animal’s thigh and then giving him some bread. “I wish you could talk, old fellow, and then maybe you could throw some light on what in creation all this means anyhow.”

Ralph then looked all about him with much curiosity. The hut was moss-grown and moldering into decay. Judged from its exterior it had not been lived in for many years. At the rear of it a spring bubbled into a rusty iron pot beside which lay a rust-eaten dipper.

The door of the shack—windows it had none—hung on one crazy hinge made of raw-hide.

“Guess I’ll take a look inside,” said Ralph, feeling[146] a very lively curiosity, “but from general appearances I don’t think our mysterious friend and horse thief actually lives here. Looks to me more as if he used it as a temporary camping place. Yet he could hardly have found his way here unless he previously knew of its existence.”

Cautiously, and with his rifle ready for a surprise, for he did not know what he might encounter next, Ralph entered the hut. It smelled moldy and stuffy, and in the dim light he could not at first see very much of its interior.

Bit by bit the details began to grow out of the gloom. In the center of the shack was a rough board table and on it stood some rusted plates and cups. In a corner hung some old garments and a few moldering furs, skins of raccoons and minks. A rusty stove stood in another corner, one leg missing and sagging drunkenly.

By the door Ralph now noticed a yellow bit of paper tacked up, with some writing on it. He[147] came closer to read it and made out in faded characters:

“Gone on April 16, 1888, Jess Boody, Trapper.”

This inscription made one thing plain to Ralph. The hut had once been occupied by one of those solitaries of the wilds whose trap lines are sometimes forty or fifty miles long. This Jess Boody had been such a man and had either “made his pile,” or getting disgusted with the location as a source for peltries had, as he tersely put it, “gone on.”

There were no traces of more recent occupancy of the hut, and Ralph was compelled to come back to his first theory; the mysterious man had used the place simply as a convenient shelter from time to time. Some ashes in the stove, that looked fairly fresh, appeared to lend color to this belief. Probably the horse thief had spent the night there.

“Well, if this hasn’t the makings of a first-class[148] mystery about it,” gasped Ralph, pushing back his sombrero and running one hand through his curly hair.

As there seemed to be no use in making any further investigation of the tumble-down shanty, Ralph untied the pony left behind by the horse thief, and mounting it rode back toward camp in a thoughtful mood. He was deeply puzzled, and small wonder, by the events of the day.

He reached camp that evening shortly before dusk, and found that Mountain Jim had returned with the ponies that he had been after and which he had found in a glade across another ridge. The professor, and Jimmie, too, had had a successful day, having gathered in almost a sackful of what the professor called “specimens,” and Mountain Jim “rocks.” But of Harry Ware and Percy Simmons there was no sign.