Chapter XXVIII: The Escape

Inspection of the ground in the neighborhood of the cave discovered only one line of fresh bootmarks, and these, it was self evident, had been made by Archie Preston. But there were older tracks, still visible in the thawing snow, and after investigation, Dexter decided that the stale prints corresponded in size and pattern to the soles of Devreaux's service boots. In places where the sun's rays reached the ground the impressions had almost disappeared, and the corporal estimated that the trail must be at least two days old. It would seem that the colonel, for some reason, had permanently abandoned his safe quarters under Saddle Mountain. The presumption might be that he had grown uneasy after long waiting, and had ventured into the wilderness to seek his missing comrade.

Dexter lingered only to make up a pack of the scanty provisions that still were left in the cave; and then, with a terse movement of his head, he beckoned Archie and Alison to accompany him and set out to look for his officer. The faint trail led him back across the plateau, over the flank of the mountain and down into the brook valley below. Unfortunately the thawing snows of the last couple of days had flooded into the lower levels, flowing over the mush-ice of the stream; and the embankment where Devreaux had walked was now submerged under a foot of running water. The trail had long since washed away.

The corporal, however, was not greatly disconcerted. If Devreaux had gone to search for him, he naturally would follow the brook course to the notch in the lower valley, where the police packs were cached. They must have passed each other unknowingly on the road. He had only to retrace the steps of his weary journey, and undoubtedly he would somewhere pick up the trail again.

Dexter was worried chiefly about the colonel's physical condition. He was not yet in fit shape to travel. Also there was a disquieting possibility that he might have encountered Stark and his gang at some point along the route. At the last thought an unpleasant glitter came into the corporal's eyes, and his jaw set with granite hardness. There was nothing to do but push onward as fast as he could.

He had supposed that he had reached the end of his endurance when he arrived at the cavern that afternoon, but for a comrade's sake he spurred his flagging energies to carry on a little longer. Until darkness set in he made his way southward along the banks of the creek, struggling through slush and mud, and forcing his lagging companions to keep up the pace. It was impossible to see the ground before him when he finally consented to halt for the night.

The three travelers ate their meal in dejected silence, and immediately afterwards stretched themselves on the wet ground by the embers of a dying fire. Dexter shared his blanket with Archie Preston, and he served a last warning before he allowed himself to drop off to sleep.

"You understand, of course, that you're my prisoner," he said. "I'll wake up at the least stir, and if you're wise you'll keep very quiet, and try to get a good night's rest."

Dexter aroused himself next morning before daylight, and, leaving his blanket mate in fretful, tossing sleep, he built a fire and started breakfast cooking. When the modest meal was ready, he awakened his fellow voyageurs to the new day of hardship and wet discomfort. Alison was the first to answer his call, and she shook off her blanket to stand yawning and shivering in the chilly dawn. She and the corporal pointedly avoided each other's glances, and such conversation as they were forced to exchange was brief and formal.

To Dexter's surprise when he took the trail once more, he found himself walking with some measure of his old free-swinging stride. A body and physique tempered by clean, active living, had begun to recuperate from the shock of injury and the exhausting effects of overexertion. His broken arm still pained him at intervals but mental alertness had returned, and the fever was gone from his blood. Save for the inconvenience of a useless right hand, he assured himself that within a few days he would be quite himself again.

They made a long march that day, and their evening camp was not far from the ravine where the corporal had nearly met death in the timber wreck. As he had worked down the long valley, Dexter had kept vigilant watch for signs that might tell him what had become of his lost comrade. At each bending of the stream, in every new opening among the trees, he gazed about him with a recurring sense of dread, always half expecting to see the dun shape of a khaki-clad figure sprawled motionless in the snow. But the glistening world of slush and trickling water stretched endlessly before him, and nowhere was there any clew to show that human beings had lately passed that way.

The little party of travelers was afoot early next day, trudging downstream along the margin of the rising brook. Before noon they reached the spot where Dexter had attempted to leap from the path of the snow slide. Broken, splintered tree trunks were piled like jack straws across the course of the creek, forming a dam that backed the water along the bordering banks. All trace of recent footprints had vanished with the melting snows. There was nothing to be learned here, and after a grim survey of his changed surroundings, the corporal gave the word to push forward again.

By midafternoon they found themselves approaching the snow-choked defile that led out through the lower valley, and the corporal sighted the landmarks that located the colonel's buried store of supplies. The cache had not been disturbed since Dexter's recent visit, and there was no evidence to show that any other person had set foot in that part of the valley. Devreaux either must have fallen somewhere by the wayside, or else, for some reason unguessed, he had wandered off another direction, to lose himself in the deeper wilderness.

The corporal was too tired to seek farther that afternoon so he contented himself with rifling the provision bags and cooking the first square meal he had eaten in days. The wayfarers passed the night on a dry ledge of rock, warm and comfortably fed, sleeping like three weary children.

But by daylight Dexter was on the move again, continuing his hunt for the missing police officer. For nearly a week he kept up his fruitless searching; ranging through miles of the dense wilderness, penetrating the tangled depths of gulch and ravine, scrambling across steep mountain slopes and climbing onward to the higher ridges, whence he could scan the desolate stretches of country below him. And wherever he went, Archie and Alison were always forced to go with him.

Days passed, and day by day the sun marched north and poured warmth and brightness upon a reawakened world. Bare patches of earth began to appear where deep winter snows had lain; and then, almost over night, it seemed, the meadows and exposed hill slopes were carpeted with green. The claw marks of wandering grizzlies were sometimes found, scuffling beside deep pools, where cut-throat trout were leaping; and sheep and goats showed themselves once more, posing against the blue sky on far, dizzy pinnacles of the mountains. Along the brooksides the willows and alders were tipped with bursting life, and the ice had broken out at last and rode downstream with the brawling waters. Dexter realized that within a few more days the mountain passes would be accessible to travel.

What had become of the colonel, he could not imagine. Perhaps the old man had fallen somewhere along the route; perhaps he was still alive, hidden in some wilderness fastness, waiting until he was strong enough to take the trail again. Dead or alive, however, he had already issued his command; and the law of the mounted permits no deviation from the stern line of duty, even for the sake of a comrade. It might take months to find a lost man in that vast, trackless forest. Meanwhile a grim and urgent business awaited, and it was time to act. So one morning Dexter abandoned his futile search, and turned his face resolutely to the northward.

Alison and her brother had tramped the forests with him for days. The girl had given him her promise not to escape, and he somehow had the feeling that she would keep her word. But he knew by the furtive, restless look in the boy's eyes that he would make a break for liberty the first chance he was given. So Dexter always kept Archie close beside him, never for an instant relaxing his vigilance. He did not tell his companions of his intentions, but when he left off his wandering and turned abruptly on a straight line north, no doubt they guessed that he was once more following the outlaws' trail.

He had crossed over the ridge into the eastern part of the valley, and made his way up the brook where Constable Graves had met death. If he hoped to get in touch with Stark's crowd, he knew he must find the upper pass without delay, so he forced as fast a pace as he could. He was confident that men from Fort Dauntless would soon put in an appearance, and he kept a pocket ax in hand, blazing his path behind him, leaving marks that any policeman would read and follow.

They reached the spruce forest of tragic memory, and the corporal made a detour that brought him past the burned cabin. There remained only an ugly, blackened heap of debris to tell where the structure had stood, and an inspection of the clearing convinced Dexter that no one had set foot there since his own departure on the morning after the double murder. There was a haunted look in Alison's eyes as she stared at the sodden pile of wreckage, and she gasped in audible relief when he finally beckoned her to come away.

The next noonday was spent at Stark's cabin, ten miles farther upstream, where Alison and her brother had lived during the winter months. There were no fresh trails in the neighborhood, and Dexter lingered only for a short rest, and then resumed his journey.

His route beyond this point carried him into an unfamiliar country--a country that grew wilder and more forbidding with every mile he advanced. Somewhere beyond, he knew, there must be an opening through the walls of the mountains. His problem was to find it; but as he pushed onward into the northern reaches of the long valley he began to appreciate the enormous difficulties he faced.

He was surrounded by great mountains; ridges and cliffs and misty snow caps; unscalable barriers, towering above and beyond him as far as the eyes could see. The land between was broken by cañons and deep ravines, running this way and that; overgrown by dark forests and tangles of underbrush, forming hidden labyrinths in which an army might have lost itself.

His natural course was to follow the brook to its source, hoping that the stream might lead him through a breach in the barricading mountains, but after nearly a day lost, he discovered that the flow of water originated in a nest of springs, bubbling out from the base of an unsurmountable precipice. Next day he tried another direction, crawling around the escarpment of a steep pitched ridge, over what appeared to be a faint goat path; but again he brought up in a blind pocket from which his only escape meant to retrace his steps.

When he finally gave it up and started back over the tortuous trail, he happened to catch Alison and Archie exchanging glances of furtive significance; and it struck him in a flash that they knew the route to the pass. He watched them surreptitiously thereafter, and on two or three occasions, when they thought he was not looking, he detected them in the act of whispering together and sizing up distantly looming landmarks. There was something in their manner to tell him that they were secretly elated at his failure to find the way, and he was thoroughly convinced that they might set him on the right path if they chose.

He had no comment to make, however, and he dropped to sleep that night like a man whose mind is free from trouble. But when he awakened next morning he found himself alone under the blanket he had shared with Archie Preston. The boy had slipped away some time in the night.

Dexter flung off his blanket and strode forward to touch the small, still figure on the other side of the dead fire. "Where's your brother?" he demanded.

Alison stirred under her cover, and her eyes opened to regard him sleepily in the gray dawn. "What?" she asked.

"Archie's gone," the corporal informed her. "Cleared out while I was asleep. Where is he?"

She sat up and gazed drowsily about her. "You were the one who was watching him," she remarked after a pause. "Don't you know what's become of him?"

"You two planned it out last night," Dexter declared. "You knew he meant to escape. It isn't worth while pretending otherwise."

Alison turned squarely to meet his gaze. "Yes," she admitted without further evasion. "I knew he was going. I told him to go if he could get away. I didn't want him to leave home in the first place, but as long as he did leave, matters will be a hundred times worse if he's taken back now. He's got to get away. That's the only thing left for him to do now--to get out of the country and start his life over again some place else." She threw up her head defiantly. "I not only urged him to escape, but I guess you know I'll do everything I can to keep you from finding him again."

The corporal had gathered a handful of sticks together, and he now stooped quietly to rekindle their fire. "So Archie was willing to beat it, and leave you behind to face it out alone," he remarked.

She turned on him with flashing eyes. "He could have done nothing for me by staying," she asserted. "But it was his chance and I persuaded him against his will--to go."

Dexter had taken a slab of bacon from the provision pack, and, wielding a knife in his left hand, he began cutting slices for breakfast. He was unhurried, seemingly unperturbed, and did not act in the least like a policeman who had just discovered that a prisoner was missing.

"You and Archie evidently know the way out of this maze of mountains," he declared casually. "I suppose Stark furnished you with the key to the puzzle, in case you chanced to be thrown upon your own resources. You were studying landmarks last night, and I assume that when Archie stole away, he knew just which course to take to hit the pass. No doubt he'll be with Stark and Crill and the others within a day or two."

"All I can say is, I hope he finds the way," she replied.

"So do I," said Dexter. He speared his bacon strips with a sharpened stick, and as he bent towards the fire, he turned a quizzical glance towards his companion. "I was certain yesterday that Archie knew how to locate the pass. It might take me days to work out the problem. And I can't afford to lose time. So I figured that I might let your brother show me the way. His trail shouldn't be hard to follow."

He smiled thoughtfully as he held his broiling stick over the flame. "I allowed myself to sleep soundly last night, feeling sure that Archie would accept the chance to escape."