Chapter XX: Lonely Days

“What in the world can have happened?” asked Tom, speaking aloud to himself. He had to do that to drive away some of the loneliness that thrust itself upon him as he walked around the deserted camp. “There’s something queer been going on, and I’m going to find out about it,” he added determinedly. “Maybe they’re hiding away from me for a joke.”

He made a round of the little spot there where they had camped in the wilderness, but there were few places for his chums to have hidden save in the woods themselves--the woods that were on three sides of the tents, the lake forming the fourth boundary.

“Well, if they’re in there they’ll wait a good while before I go hunting for them,” he said. “If it’s a joke they can come back when they get ready.”

And yet, somehow, he felt that it was not a joke. He and his chums were as fond of fun as any lads, and, in times past, the boys had played many a trick on each other. But there was a time for such antics, and Tom realized that this occasion was not now. He knew his comrades would realize the strain he was under, in losing his boat, and in trying to solve the mystery of the mill against the activities of Mr. Skeel and the two cronies.

“I don’t believe they’d do it,” mused Tom. “There is something wrong here. Hello, fellows!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Dick! Bert! Jack--Jack Fitch! Where are you?”

The echoes from the darkness were his only answers.

“They’re gone,” he said, “and yet, by Jove, I don’t believe they’d go willingly--unless--”

He paused, for many thoughts were crowding to his brain. He had a new idea now.

“Unless they saw something of Skeel, or Sam and Nick, and followed them off through the woods. Maybe the hermit himself passed here, and they thought he was on the trail of the treasure. They would naturally follow him, and if I wasn’t here they would not wait for me, knowing they could explain afterward. I’ll wager that’s it. They’ve gone for the treasure. It’s all right after all.”

He felt a little better, having arrived at this decision, and proceeded to get himself a meal. He lighted the stove, made coffee, and fixed up some sandwiches from a tin of beef. It was while sipping the hot beverage that another thought came to him.

“I wonder if they went away prepared to stay all night?” he asked himself. “I’ll take a look.”

In the main, or sleeping tent, the cots had been made up that morning, as was the rule, so that, no matter how late the chums returned to camp, they could tumble into bed. The cots showed no signs of having been disturbed when Tom inspected them with a lantern. And then the lad saw something else.

The caps and sweaters of his chums still hung from the ridge-pole of the tent.

“By Jove!” cried Tom aloud. “They would hardly go off that way--in the dampness of the night--without having taken more than they wore when I started on my walk. And they had on mighty little then. Even if they had to take the trail on the jump there would have been time enough to slip on a sweater, and grab up a cap. Those fellows went off in a big hurry.”

He paused, to gaze in silence around the tent. He was more lonely than ever, as he recalled the jolly faces that he had thought would greet him on his return from the stroll in the woods.

“And here’s another thing,” he reasoned. “If they _did_ take the trail after some of our enemies, one of them would most likely have remained to wait for me, and tell me to come along. I’m sure they’d have done that. And yet--they’re all gone, all three of them!”

Tom Fairfield shook his head. The problem was becoming too much for him. He sought for a ray of light.

“Of course,” he reasoned, “there may have been two parties of them. Skeel and the two cronies in one, and the old hermit by himself. In that case the boys may have divided themselves. Maybe that’s it. Oh, hang it all!” he exclaimed as if he found the puzzle too much for him. “I’m going to wait until morning.”

But the morning brought no solution of the problem. Tom awoke early, after a restless night, during which he several times imagined he heard his chums calling to him. He would jump up, rush to the flap of the tent, toss some light wood on the camp fire, and peer out eagerly, only to find that he had dreamed about or imagined it.

Once or twice he called aloud, listening and hoping for an answer, but none came. And so the night passed and morning came.

Tom felt little appetite for breakfast, but he knew he must eat to keep up his strength for the task that lay before him.

“I’ve got to find them!” he decided. “I’ve got to take the trail. Something may have happened to them. That bear we saw may have--” And then he laughed at the notion, for he knew that a bear, however large, could not make away with three strong, healthy lads. “Unless there were three bears,” he mused, with a smile, “and that’s out of the question.”

He was thinking deeply, so deeply in fact that he forgot to look to the oil stove, and the first he knew the coffee had boiled over, and the bacon was scorched in the pan.

“Oh, hang it!” Tom exclaimed. “I can’t even cook!”

He fried more bacon, and an egg, and on that, and coffee, he made a lonely breakfast.

“Now to reason things out,” he spoke aloud. “I’m glad the rowboat is here anyhow, I can navigate the lake to a certain extent.”

He walked down to the shore, and what he saw there caused him to utter a cry of astonishment.

“There’s been a struggle here--a fight!” Tom cried. “The boys have been taken away against their will!”

He bent over and looked closely at the sandy shore. It was all too evident that some sort of a struggle had taken place there, and that recently. The marks visible by day but not at night proved this.

“Those marks weren’t there when we landed yesterday afternoon,” decided our hero. “Besides, they’re quite a distance from where we brought the skiff in. There’s been some sort of a boat here,” he went on, as he bent over the impression made by the sharp prow of some craft in the sand. “Someone came in a boat, got hold of the boys somehow, and carried them off. But there was a fight all right, and a good one, too, I’ll wager.”

It did not take a mind-reader to decide this. The sand in several places was scuffed about, raised up in ridges, or scratched into depressions, while the heel marks, deeply indented in the soft material, showed how desperate had been the struggle. But the chums had been overpowered, that was certain, for they had been taken away.

“And in my boat, too, I’ll wager!” cried Tom. “The impudent scallawags! To take my boat, and then use it to carry off my friends. They must have taken some of my gasolene, too. Oh, wait until I get a chance at them!”

The new discovery was overpowering for a time, and Tom sat down to think it out. Then he came to a decision.

“I’ve got to help my chums,” he said. “I’ve got to go to their rescue. There’s but one place where they would be taken. The old hermit, or Skeel and the cronies, have them in the old mill--or, hold on--maybe they’re captive in the cave where we stayed that night. Those are two places where they might be. What shall I do?”

It was no easy problem for the lone camper to solve, and Tom was frankly puzzled.

“I think I’ll tackle the old mill first,” he decided. “That’s the most likely place. Though I wonder why in the world the hermit or Skeel would want to capture Dick, Bert and Jack? Unless the treasure has been located, and they don’t want us to find out about it. But they haven’t got me!”

With Tom, to decide was to act, and so, putting himself up a lunch, he set off in the skiff for the old mill. It was hard rowing alone, for usually two worked at the oars, but our hero stuck to it, and in due time he reached the river. Then he decided to pay a visit to the cave.

He concealed his boat under some bushes, and, taking the oars with him, he hid them well up on the hill.

“If they get away with the boat, they can’t row, anyhow,” he reasoned, “and I don’t believe they’ll find her.”

He approached the cave cautiously, for he did not want to fall a victim to those who had captured his chums. But the cavern in the hillside was empty, and Tom felt a sense of disappointment.

“Now for the mill,” he mused, as he set off in the skiff again. He had almost reached it, and was debating within himself how best to approach it, when a new thought came to him.

“Suppose they catch me?” he asked himself. “They are four to one, and, though I don’t mind Sam or Nick, the hermit and Skeel would be more than a match for me. If they get me I can’t be of any help to the boys.”

Tom was no coward, and he would have dared anything to rescue his chums. Yet he realized that this was one of the occasions when discretion was the better part of valor.

“I think I can serve ’em best by staying on the outside a while,” he argued, as he got to a point where he could catch a glimpse of the old mill. “I’ll look about a bit,” he went on, “and see what sort of a plan I can think out.”

Keeping well in the shadow of the bushes that lined the river bank, he watched the mill. For half an hour or more there was no sign of life in it, and then, so suddenly that it startled Tom, there appeared at one of the third story windows the form of the old hermit, and he had a gun in his hands.

“There he is!” whispered Tom. “He’s on the lookout for me. Lucky I didn’t rush in. And he’s on that third floor, though there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting up to it. I’ve got to go for help,” and Tom, waiting until old Wallace had disappeared from the casement, slowly rowed away.

He reached the lonely camp late in the afternoon, for he spent some time going along the shore of the lake, searching for his motorboat. But he did not find it.

“Now what shall I do?” he asked himself as he sat down to a solitary supper. “Go for help, or try to make the rescue myself?”