 | At the End Of His Rope |  |
II
John Gearing glanced hastily over the closely written pages of his note- book by the waning light, snapped the cover of his tin specimen case with a well-satisfied air, and rose to his feet.
"It must be getting along toward sunset," he reflected, with a cursory glance at his watch. "Capital day's work, though; I shouldn't like to have missed that scarlet-headed arachnid. As for the coleopteron, I doubt if it has been generally recognized as a genuine crotylid--which it unquestionably is."
He paused to drop a full spool into his pocket and disengage an empty one from the limb of a mighty spruce which stood among its fellows weeping odorous tears of purest gum. The bug-hunter eyed it thoughtfully, a cheerful vision of the camp frying-pan, replete with sizzling slices of fragrant bacon, to be succeeded by a long procession of substantial slapjacks, rising alluringly before him.
"Jove!" he muttered, "I forgot to eat my lunch!"
The reflections of the hungry scientist as he strode rapidly onward winding up his second spool were both comfortable and complacent. "A more useful device to save valuable time than this simple system of spools was never devised," he decided. "At this moment I am--approximately--one and one-half miles from supper; with no doubtful trail to follow, no delays to
"A deer!" he muttered; "and coming right this way!"
Arachnida, coleoptera, spools, and even supper were forgotten on the instant; and the bug-hunter, alert and silent, stood grasping his rifle, his eyes fixed on the low-growing tangle of evergreens from which the suspicious sounds had proceeded. A moment later and he was staring with undisguised amazement at the small figure which limped rapidly toward him.
"You are not Professor Gearing--I am so glad!" were the astonishing words with which the apparition introduced itself. It pushed back a scarlet tam-o'-shanter from a tangle of brown curls, and continued: "I don't know who you are, but I am Katherine Terrill and I am lost in these dreadful woods. Do take me home!" With that the figure sank back against a tree with a sound suspiciously like a sob.
"I--I do not understand," stammered the astounded bug-hunter lamely. "I can take you home, certainly; but I must acknowledge that I am John Gearing."
The wearer of the scarlet tam started up with a hysterical laugh. "Professor Gearing is an old man!" she cried, "and you--you are quite--quite young! I took his spool out of the camp, and I can't find the way back!"
"The spool--eh! You don't mean--"
"Yes, I do. I took it and wound it up to point B--I mean the second spool," faltered the mischief-maker,
"I hung that empty spool there merely as a tag at the end of my string," remarked John Gearing meditatively. "I certainly--"
"Say anything you like to me," interrupted Miss Terrill solemnly; "I deserve it. We shall never get home alive--never!"
John Gearing stared at the speaker for a full minute, then he threw back his head and laughed long and loud. "I--I beg your pardon, Miss Terrill," he said at length; "but really--"
"Oh, yes, you may laugh!" said the young lady with an indignant shrug. "I laughed too at first. But it hasn't seemed a bit funny for at least six hours. I tell you we can't get back! We shall starve to death; and it's--it's getting dark!"
The bug-hunter was sobered in an instant by the pitiful quiver in the tired voice.
"You don't mean to say that you have been wandering about since morning with nothing to eat?" he asked anxiously.
"Nothing but huckleberries--and I loathe huckleberries!"
John Gearing hastily swung his pack-basket to the ground. "These sandwiches"--producing a parcel of dubious aspect--"have suffered somewhat, I fear,
"They look perfectly delicious!" declared the young lady with unconcealed delight. "But I shall eat only one--it is just possible, you know, that we might--in time--"
"I beg that you will give yourself no further anxiety on that score!" cried John Gearing confidently. "We are only a trifle over a mile from camp; we'll be there inside of an hour."
The girl shook her head mournfully. "That we are so near is just the most dreadful part of it," she said, winking rapidly to keep back two big tears which were trying hard to pass the barrier of her long lashes. "But if you really think you can find the way, do let us start at once. Of course we can reach the second spool," she added. "I--I was frightened when I saw how late it was growing, so I came to meet you. I thought it was my duty to--to tell you--"
John Gearing surveyed the speaker in puzzled silence. "Do you--er mind telling me," he burst out after a long pause, during which the stealthy twilight made perceptible advances, "what--that is--why you were so sure that I was somebody else--at first, you know?"
"What must you think of me!" exclaimed Miss Terrill irrelevantly, stopping short in the midst of a vicious tangle of blackberry bushes for no other purpose, it appeared, than to wring her small hands. "It has all been so dreadful that I haven't realized that! You
"I have thought nothing of the kind!" retorted the bug-hunter with unnecessary warmth. "It was all the fault of those infernal spools! I wouldn't mind this"--with a comprehensive wave of the hand which seemed to include all the hostile forces of nature--"if it were not for you. I should get into camp all right, some time; but--"
"You may think so, but you couldn't," said the girl with a pitying glance at the stalwart figure. "It will be all the harder for you to bear; and when I think that I did it--that it is all my fault! But of course I didn't think--I could never have imagined--what a fatal thing I was doing when I touched that spool. No, wait till I have told you all." With that she poured forth the tale of the day's adventures, closing with a statement of the problem which she had spent six unhappy hours in trying to solve.
"Don't you see," she said in a shaking voice, "how utterly improbable it is that we shall ever reach point A?"
John Gearing had smiled more than once during this recital; he also frowned as he stared anxiously into the black depths of the forest which shut them in like a wall.
"Miss Terrill," he said gravely, "your conclusions are undeniably logical and unpleasantly correct--from your premises; but luckily there, are other factors which you have overlooked, and which must be introduced. One is, that the guides are sure to beat the
"You might attach a second spool at point B." interrupted the girl, knitting her pretty brows; "our chances would then be multiplied by two."
"But I object to the preliminary division," said John Gearing decidedly; "it simply isn't to be thought of. The darkness has closed in upon us at an unconscionably early hour," he went on rapidly. "I can not understand it, unless, to add to our perplexity, it is about to--" A drop of water which landed squarely on the tip of his nose explained the phenomenon.
"It is raining," observed Miss Terrill with the calmness of despair. "But of course that was to be expected. We will go on," she added firmly. "No - - I am not at all tired, and I am quite accustomed to the woods." This last with a superb gesture of refusal as her victim offered his arm.
Two minutes later her foot slipped on a treacherous log, and with a cry she plunged forward into the darkness.
John Gearing was at her side in an instant. "My poor little girl," he murmured, lifting her with all possible gentleness, "are you much hurt?"
"At all events I have not sprained my ankle," said the girl with a faint laugh. "But I slipped once before to-day, and--"
John Gearing groaned. "I shall never forgive myself for my outrageous folly!" he declared savagely, and quite involuntarily he tightened the clasp of his strong arms.
Miss Terrill laughed again in spite of herself. "Put me down, please, Mr. Gearing," she said. "If you should change most of the pronouns in your last statement to the second person, it would be quite what I deserve. I fear I shall have to stop where I am; but you must go on. Please go at once before it gets any darker."
"And leave you here alone?"
"Yes."
By way of answer, John Gearing hastily divested himself of his thick shooting-jacket and wrapped it about his companion with an authoritative firmness which admitted of no question.
"I have four matches--and a half, to be exact," he said, after a careful search through his various pockets. "Luckily it hasn't rained long enough to wet the ground; if the fates aren't too unkind we'll have a camp-fire inside of five minutes."
A flash, a sizzle, an impatient exclamation announced that match number one had weakly succumbed to the untoward influences of the place and hour. Two, three, and four followed with disheartening unanimity, during intervals plainly occupied in a frantic search for drier material.
"If you only had some paper," ventured a timid voice out of the darkness.
"Of course! Thank heaven you reminded me before I struck that last half match!"
Another moment, and a score of closely written pages treating learnedly of the coleoptera and arachnida of the great northern wilderness were blazing merrily in the midst of a skilfully constructed pile of twigs and branches.
"Wasn't it fortunate you happened to have that paper?" observed Miss Terrill, as she leaned forward to warm her chilled fingers at the now thoroughly established fire.
"Fortunate!" echoed John Gearing, dropping his specimen-box as he stooped to lay another stick on the fire--whereat the scarlet-headed arachnid and the coleoptera, one and all, wriggled out and away with joyful haste. "It was by all odds the most fortunate thing I know of."
"Perhaps you will think me a coward," began the girl, after a prolonged pause which the raindrops filled with a soft, insistent murmur. "Do you think it would be very wrong for me--that is, for you--" She turned her head away from the searching firelight as she continued in so low a voice that John Gearing was forced to bend his tall head to listen--"if they find us? You said they would search for us?"
"They will search for us--certainly, and find us."
"If they know--that is, if you--if--I must tell them that I took the spool to to find you, I could not face them--I could not bear it!"
"Ah, but the fact is that I found you!" said John Gearing in his deepest voice.
"Yes--but--the spools!"
The bug-hunter leaned forward and deliberately dropped a full half dozen of them into the red heart of the fire.
"There are no spools," he said calmly.
A more unpleasant spot than the virgin forest of the Adirondacks on a wet night it would be difficult to find. Mr. Percy Algernon Smith put this fact more forcibly; he said--But why repeat the words of a man who has forced his way through some six or eight miles of soaking coves, pursued all the way by jubilant throngs of mosquitoes--his energies being still further taxed by laborious and systematic performance on a big tin horn?
"I say, Jake," he bawled, pausing after a succession of ear-splitting blasts, "d'ye hear anything?"
The guide nodded, "To the west on us," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "'Tain't fur, neither."
The sagacious reader has already divined that this is only the beginning of the story. Its ending was after the old, old fashion, of which wise people the world over never grow tired, and which in truth is the end--or the beginning--of every story that is at all worth the telling. In this place it must be set down in just four words--afterward they were married.
It was my good fortune, not many months later, to hear Mrs. John Gearing relate the above romantic circumstances, which she did with the prettiest smiles and blushes imaginable.
In closing she declared solemnly that never in all the course of her existence had such a welcome, glad, cheerful, happy, enlivening, and altogether delightful vision greeted her eyes as the round, freckled face of "Cinnamon" Smith as he burst through the dripping branches on that rainy August night.
But she never so much as mentioned the spools; it was their ashes that told the tale.
| At the End Of His Rope | |