The Galloping Ghost | Page 4

girl over there beyond the log wall," he said to himself now, "she's different. Got spunk.
Stands up and defies them, she does, when she knows they are beasts, as all kidnapers are. Tells 'em she'll freeze here all winter rather than do the thing they want her to do. Nerve, that's what"
He was conscious of an invisible bond that bound his life to that of the girl. "In the end we may fight it out together."
The hour was late. Once again the drowsy warmth of this narrow cell settled down upon him.
"Football," he mused. "A tough business Thousands screaming their lungs out, ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand people losing their heads while you must keep yours. Wish this were the end, wish it were all over. Wish--"
Once again, in the twinkling of an eye, his mood changed.
"For all that," he muttered beneath his breath, "I've got to get away!" Leaping to his feet, he stood there, hard, straight, square, with purpose written in every line of his well formed body. "Tomorrow's game, that is nothing. But Saturday's game, that is everything. It is the end. Final, that's what it is. Defeat or victory, that's what it means. The championship or nothing.
And. Prang the Grand Old Man, says it depends on us!
"That means me!" There came a stoop to his shoulders as if a load had fallen upon them. "For the Grand Old Man, for the school that gave me a chance, for my mother, for clean sport all over the world, I must escape. I must I must win. I must! Must! Must!"
Yet, even as these words formed themselves into thought he seemed to hear others. "On a narrow island within a bay. Icy water. Another larger island. Fifteen, seventy five, a hundred miles from shore. Superior never gives up her dead." Of a sudden the boy cursed the school days when he had neglected his study of geography. He saw it all now. Geography was travel.
And how could one find travel dull? "But travel!" Again that silent, mirthless laugh.
"Who expects to travel as I have?"
His thoughts were not finished. From somewhere had come a long, low, hissing sound. It was followed by a whisper:
"Over here! Come close to the wall."
"Must be that girl." His heart skipped a beat.
"What did they take you for?" the whisper demanded.
"I--I don't know."
"Don't know?"
"Fact."
After that a great silence settled over the place. This Red could not understand. Why had she started the conversation if she did not expect to finish it? "Oh, well," he told himself at last, "girls are queer anyway." He settled back comfortably in his place.
Truth was, the girl suspected him of being a decoy placed there by the kidnapers. In the end she came to see that she had little to lose if she confided in a decoy.
Again came her long drawn signal, demanding attention. And after that:
"Don't you want to escape?"
"Never wanted anything half so much in my life!"
Then in a sudden burst of confidence he told her of the game that was to be on Saturday, of the veteran coach's fatherly interest in his career, of his hopes, his fears, his secret ambitions. All this he poured into a not unwilling ear. Only he did not tell her he was the far-famed "Red Rover." This he reserved for the future.
"Good!" the girl exclaimed, still in a whisper. "Then our purposes are one. We must join hands. Put her there! Shake on it!"
This, considering that a log wall eight inches thick lay between them, was of course impossible. But they pledged themselves in pantomime.
CHAPTER III
"WE MUST ESCAPE"
"WE must find some way of escape."
The girl's tone, low, mellow, earnest, was scarcely more than a whisper.
"But we are upon an island within an island. Or did that man lie to you?"
"He did not lie."
"What then?"
"We can do but one thing at a time. We must escape. And after that--" She did not finish.
The boy found it difficult, this discussing plans with one he could not see, had never seen.
"I could soon cut a small hole between two logs,"
he told himself.
He thought of suggesting this, but considered it better to wait.
He set about planning their escape methodically.
The staple that held the padlock to his door was large.
It was clinched on the inside. By working first with a nail pulled out of the wall, then a bit of wire, he managed to straighten these points. Then, little by little, without sound, he pushed the staple back until only the points showed.
"Two or three good yanks and the door will fly open," he confided to the girl.
"But mine? How are we to manage it?"
Red pondered this problem. He could, he told himself, pass his crude instruments through to her.
But were her fingers strong enough for the task? He doubted this.
He studied the wall that