CHAPTER XI

THE LONE LIGHT

With one accord they turned and looked up the mountain. Just as the boy had announced, a single light was moving up, like some firefly on a wall.

For the moment it was in a cleared space and they could follow it. In another moment it had passed from sight and only a fleeting glimpse was to be seen as it flashed from between a tree screen.

Ted looked in perplexity around him, counting the boys. “Twenty, counting myself and Buck,” he murmured. “We are all here.”

“That must be our party, the gentleman who has been annoying us,” Buck said, as they stared up the slope.

“Perhaps it is. I wonder if he has any intentions tonight.”

“Hard to tell. Let’s follow him!”

“I don’t know as we ought to do that,” mused Ted. “Suppose it shouldn’t be the right person? If it isn’t the one we think it is, we’ll look silly chasing him.”

“Why not have half of the gang stay here in camp while half of us go out and trail him?” asked Buck, eagerly. “We could see where he is going, and if he is coming down this way for any foolishness we’ll have him red-handed.”

“That’s true. All right, I’m willing, but we can’t all go, because he would surely hear the noise made by twenty of us. One of us must stay here in the camp with the boys, and four or five of us can get on his trail.”

“Oh,” said Buck, with less enthusiasm than before.

“I’ll stay here in camp if you want to do the trailing,” spoke up Ted, quickly, aware of Buck’s disappointment.

“I’ll stay with the boys and take care of them,” said Ralph Plum, stepping forward. The chance of authority was a welcome one and he had no personal desire to climb the mountain after the man with the lantern. The two leaders looked at him in a moment of doubt, but his size impressed them, and as both of them wished to do the trailing, they consented.

“All right, you can take charge of the boys,” nodded Ted. “Bob and Charlie, Drummer, Buck and I will do the trailing. See to it that the lanterns are put back in the truck before you turn in or even as soon as possible, Ralph.”

“All right,” said the new camp director. “You kids get busy and put those lanterns in the wagon.”

“That’s no wagon, it’s a truck,” retorted one boy.

“Never mind any back talk. I’m in charge of this camp and I don’t want any suggestions from anyone,” was the loud answer.

“You won’t be in charge any longer than I can help it,” thought Ted, as he lighted his lantern.

When the five trailers were ready Ted gave Plum some final instructions. “When we come back to the camp we’ll whistle before we enter, so you’ll know that we are the ones who are approaching. If anything goes wrong, blow the automobile horn, which is detached and in my tent. We’ll surely hear that and come hotfooting it back to you.”

“Nothing will go wrong while I’m here!” returned Plum, with careless ease.

“Glad to hear you so confident,” half-smiled Ted. “Come on along, fellows.”

With lighted lanterns the others joined him and they set off once more for the slopes of the mountain. Nothing more had been seen of the vagrant light above them and they realized that their chase might be a vain one. But none of them felt content to go to sleep that night until they knew that everything was safe so far as the camp was concerned.

The initial climb was a hard one and they were all panting when they reached a less abrupt slope of the mountain. Here they halted to breathe in the air that they felt the need of.

“We’ll soon be up to the spot where we saw him cross that open glade,” Ted said to Buck. “That is just where I saw the light on the night I came up here alone.”

They pressed on, gaining the open stretch of the mountain and crossed this space, looking down to where the campfires gleamed like small red dots. They could make out a few of the boys standing around the fires and they knew that their progress was being watched. As a signal, they waved their lanterns.

They had just entered the higher wooded slope above the cleared spot, when a sound reached their ears which stopped them in their tracks.

“What was that?” Bob gasped, looking around. But the others knew at once.

“Thunder!” Ted said to Buck, raising his eyebrows significantly.

Buck looked away across the valley in which Black Riders’ Camp lay. “I don’t see any sign of lightning,” he said. “Probably it is miles away from here yet. We can do a little more hunting around and then go back.”

“I wonder if it is worth while?” asked Ted, looking up the slope. “I haven’t seen any sign of our friend with his light. Maybe he has gone home and to bed.”

“We’ll go a little further, anyway,” urged Buck. “Then we can fetch up in a wide circle and come in back of the camp. If anything is wrong down there we ought to arrive in time to be in on it.”

“Wait until I see what time it is,” Ted answered, and he glanced at his watch. “Just ten-thirty. We must get back pretty soon. All right, let’s go on.”

He wondered if he had been wise in giving in to Buck, for a more penetrating and rolling peal of thunder reached their ears, bringing with it a brooding sense of uneasiness that was disconcerting. The thunder rolled back and forth between the mountains, which seemed to toss it back and forth after a profound rolling that had a grinding sound attached to it. The air itself had been comparatively still but now a faint and disturbing little wind slipped in and out between the leaves and branches of the trees. Out of the corner of his eye Drummer caught a glimpse of a lightning flash.

“I saw that flash of lightning just then,” he proclaimed, confirming an impression that Ted had in his own mind. Drummer was not comfortable and longed to return to camp.

They came to a halt, uncertain, with the majority desiring to return to camp. Buck alone wanted to chance the thunder storm which there was now no doubt in the world was coming. But he knew that such a course was foolish and he gave in.

“All right,” he sighed. “I do hate to give up the chase, though.”

“I guess we all do,” agreed Ted. “But we’ll have to get right back. It will take us a good half hour as it is, even if we do have to go down instead of up, and we will be lucky if we reach the camp in time.”

“Oh, you’re right there,” his chum agreed, glancing for the last time up the mountain in a searching way. “We simply must get back. I was just—Ah!”

At the sharp exclamation in his tone the others looked at him, noted his startled facial expression, and then glanced up the slope to a ledge some twenty feet above them, and off to one side. The lantern was coming toward them, but even as they looked it stopped, hesitated, and began a speedy retreat. Whoever was behind it was represented merely by a blur.

They forgot the advancing storm at once and set off in pursuit. At the moment of seeing the light so near to them they were too startled to move, and had the man with the light advanced upon them, they would have been frozen to the spot with apprehension. But now that the man with the lantern ran from them the thing was put in a different light. Seeing it run away put courage into them.

“Stick together and don’t get lost!” cried Buck, as he ran up the slope to the ledge upon which the man had been walking.

This ledge could only be climbed by taking a diagonal course and Charlie Wells complicated matters by slipping when he was almost at the top and falling all the way down to the level upon which they had been a minute or two previously. Not wishing to run on without him they were compelled to wait and when he joined them, adorned with a few cuts and scratches, they ran on again. When they rounded a knob of the mountain there was no light to be seen and they guessed the story only too well. The mountain man had put his lantern out and all trace of him was lost, to the eye at least.

They stood in a cluster listening, but no sound except the wind greeted them. The stillness inspired a new idea.

“I’ll bet he just put out his light and is hiding around here somewhere,” said Drummer, voicing the thought.

“I’m afraid that is true,” agreed Ted. “Well, we don’t care to go looking all around the bushes for him. I can see now where we made our mistake in the first place.”

“Where?” asked Buck.

“By going around with five lanterns lighted, making ourselves absolutely conspicuous,” returned Ted. “If we had had only one light we wouldn’t have advertised ourselves as we did. Perhaps if he hadn’t thought there were five of us he would have offered to talk or fight instead of legging it away as fast as he did!”

“Yes, one light would have been enough,” admitted Buck.

“Sure it would have! Well, there isn’t anything that we can do about it now. I——”

He was interrupted by an ear-splitting crash of thunder and a flaming tongue of fire flashed across the mountains, causing them to jump severely. Ted turned back toward the camp.

“Come on, we’ve simply got to get back there!” he cried.

They started off on a fast walk, regretting that they had chased the man with the light as far as they had. In their enthusiasm they had covered a long distance and they had not descended very far down the side of the mountain before large rain drops began to spatter through the trees upon them.

“I’m afraid we’re not going to make it!” shouted Ted, above the noise of the rising wind.