The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916)/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN HUNT
THE rolling, ravine-gullied land where Harriet had left Eaton was wooded thickly with oaks, maples and ash; the ground between these trees was clear of undergrowth upon the higher parts of the land, but its lower stretches and the ravines themselves were shrouded with closely growing bushes rising higher than a man's waist, and, where they grew rankest, higher than a man's head. In summer, when trees and bushes were covered with leaves, this underbrush offered cover where a man could conceal himself perfectly; now, in the early spring before the trees had even budded, that man would be visible for some distance by day and nearly as clearly visible by night if the headlights of the motor-cars chanced to shine into the woods.
Eaton, fully realizing this chance as he left Harriet, had plunged through the bushes to conceal himself in the ravine. The glare from the burning bridge lighted the ravine for only a little way; Eaton had gained the bottom of the ravine beyond the point where this light would have made him visible and had made the best speed he could along it away from the lights and voices on the road. This speed was not very great; his stockinged feet sank to their ankles in the soft mud of the ravine; and when, realizing that he was leaving a trace easily followed even by lantern-light, he clambered to the steep side and tried to travel along its slope, he found his progress slower still. In the darkness he crashed sometimes full against the tree-trunks; bushes which he could not see seized and held him, ripping and tearing at his clothes; invisible, fallen saplings tripped him, and he stepped into unseen holes which threw him headlong, so that twice he rolled clear to the bottom of the ravine with fierce, hot pains which nearly deprived him of his senses shooting through his wounded shoulder.
When he had made, as he thought, fully three quarters of a mile in this way and must be, allowing for the winding of the ravine, at least half a mile from his pursuers, he climbed to the brink of the bank and looked back. He was not, as he had thought, half a mile from the road; he was not a quarter of a mile; he could still see plainly the lights of the three motor-cars upon the road and men moving in the flare of these lights. He was certain that he had recognized the figure of Avery among these men. Pursuit of him, however, appeared to have been checked for the moment; he heard neither voices nor any movement in the woods. Eaton, panting, threw himself down to recover breath and strength to think.
There was no question in Eaton's mind what his fate would be if he surrendered to, or was captured by, his pursuers. What he had seen in Santoine's study an hour before was so unbelievable, so completely undemonstrable unless he himself could prove his story that he felt that he would receive no credence. Blatchford, who had seen it in the light in the study, was dead; Santoine, who would have seen it if he had had eyes, was blind. Eaton, still almost stunned and yet wildly excited by that sight, felt only, in the mad confusion of his senses, the futility of telling what he had seen unless he were in a position to prove it. Those opposed to him would put his statement aside with the mere answer that he was lying; the most charitably inclined would think only that what he had been through had driven him insane.
Besides, Eaton was not at all sure that even if he had attempted to tell what he had seen he would be allowed to tell it, or, if he attempted to surrender to the men now pursuing him, he would be allowed to surrender. Donald Avery was clearly in command of those men and was directing the pursuit; in Avery, Eaton had recognized an instinctive enemy from the first; and now, since the polo game, he sensed vaguely in Avery something more than that. What Avery's exact position was in regard to himself Eaton was not at all sure; but of Avery's active hostility he had received full evidence; and he knew now—though how he knew it was not plain even to himself—that Avery would not allow him to surrender but that, if he tried to give himself up, the men under Avery's orders would shoot him down.
As Eaton watched, the motor, which from its position on the road he knew must be Harriet's, backed out from the others and went away. The other motors immediately afterward were turned and followed it. But Eaton could see that they left behind them a man standing armed near to the bridge, and that other men, also armed, passed through the light as they scrambled across the ravine and gained the road on its opposite side. The motors, too, stopped at intervals and then went on; he understood that they were posting men to watch the road. He traced the motor headlights a long way through the dark; one stopped, the other went on. He remembered vaguely a house near the place where the car he watched had stopped, and understanding that where there was a house there was a telephone, he knew that the alarm must be given still more widely now; men on all sides of him must be turning out to watch the roads. He knew they did turn out like that when the occasion demanded.
These waste places bordering upon the lake to north and south of Chicago, and within easy car-ride of the great city, had been the scene of many such man-hunts. Hobos, gypsies, broken men thrown off by the seething city, wandered through them and camped there; startling crimes took place sometimes in these tiny wildernesses; fugitives from the city police took refuge there and were hunted down by the local police, by armed details of the city police, by soldiers from Fort Sheridan. These fugitives might much better have stayed in the concealment of the human jungle of the city; these rolling, wooded, sandy vacant lands which seemed to offer refuge, in reality betrayed only into certain capture. The local police had learned the method of hunting, they had learned to watch the roads and railways to prevent escape.
Eaton understood, therefore, that his own possibility of escape was very small, even if escape had been his only object; but Eaton's problem was not one of escape—it was to find those he pursued and make certain that they were captured at the same time he was; and, as he crouched panting on the damp earth, he was thinking only of that.
The man at the bridge—Dibley—had told enough to let Eaton know that those whom Eaton pursued were no longer in the machine he had followed with Harriet. As Eaton had rushed out of Santoine's study after the two that he had fought there, he had seen that one of these men was supporting and helping the other; he had gained on them because of that. Then other men had appeared suddenly, to give their help, and he had no longer been able to gain; but he had been close enough to see that the one they dragged along and helped into the car was that enemy whose presence in the study had so amazed him. Mad exultation had seized Eaton to know that he had seriously wounded his adversary. He knew now that the man could not have got out of the car by himself—he was too badly wounded for that; he had been taken out of the car, and the other men who were missing had him in charge. The three men who had gone on in the machine had done so for their own escape, but with the added object of misleading the pursuit; the water they had got at Dibley's had been to wash the blood from the car.
And now, as Eaton recalled and realized all this, he knew where the others had left the machine. Vaguely, during the pursuit, he had sensed that Harriet was swinging their motor-car in a great circle, first to the north, then west, then to the south. Two or three miles back upon the road, before they had made their turn to the south, Eaton had lost for a few moments the track of the car they had been following. He had picked it up again at once and before he could speak of it to Harriet; but now he knew that at that point the car they were following had left the road, turning off onto the turf at the side and coming back onto the road a hundred yards beyond.
This place must be nearly due north of him. The road where he had left Harriet ran north and south; to go north he must parallel this road, but it was dangerous to move too near to it because it was guarded. The sky was covered with clouds hiding the stars; the night in the woods was intensely black except where it was lighted by the fire at the bridge. To the opposite side, a faint gray glow against the clouds, which could not be the dawn but must be the reflection of the electric lights along the public pike which followed the shore of the lake, gave Eaton inspiration. If he kept this grayness of the clouds always upon his right, he would be going north.
The wound in Eaton's shoulder still welled blood each time he moved; he tore strips from the front of his shirt, knotted them together and bound his useless left arm tightly to his side. He felt in the darkness to be sure that there was a fresh clip of cartridges in his automatic pistol; then he started forward.
For the first time now he comprehended the almost impossibility of traveling in the woods on a dark night. To try to walk swiftly was to be checked after only two or three steps by sharp collision with some tree-trunk which he could not see before he felt it, or brought to a full stop by clumps of tangled, thorny bushes which enmeshed him, or to be tripped or thrown by some inequality of the ground. When he went round any of these obstacles he lost his sense of direction and wasted minutes before he could find again the dim light against the eastern sky which gave him the compass-points.
As he struggled forward, impatient at these delays, he came several times upon narrow, unguarded roads and crossed them; at other times the little wilderness which protected him changed suddenly to a well-kept lawn where some great house with its garages and out-buildings loomed ahead, and afraid to cross these open places, he was obliged to retrace his steps and find a way round. The distance from the bridge to the place where the three men he was following had got out of their motor, he had thought to be about two miles; but when he had been traveling more than an hour, he had not yet reached it. Then, suddenly he came upon the road for which he was looking; somewhere to the east along it was the place he sought. He crouched as near to the road as he dared and where he could look up and down it. This being a main road, was guarded. A motor-car with armed men in it passed him, and presently repassed, evidently patroling the road; its lights showed him a man with a gun standing at the first bend of the road to the east. Eaton drew further back and moved parallel to the road but far enough away from it to be hidden. A quarter of a mile further he found a second man. The motor-car, evidently, was patroling only to this point; another car was on duty beyond this. As Eaton halted, this second car approached, and was halted, backed and turned.
Its headlights, as it turned, swept through the woods and revealed Eaton. The man standing in the road cried out the alarm and fired at Eaton point blank; he fired a second and third time. Eaton fled madly back into the shadow; as he did so, he heard the men crying to one another and leaping from the car and following him. He found low ground less thickly wooded, and plunged along it. It was not difficult to avoid the men in the blackness of the woods; he made a wide circuit and came back again to the road further on. He could still hear for a time the sounds of the hunt on the turf. Apparently he had not yet reached the right spot; he retreated to the woods, went further along and came back to the road, lying flat upon his face again and waiting till some other car in passing should give him light to see.
Eaton, weak and dizzy from his wounds and confused by darkness and his struggle through the woods, had no exact idea how long it had taken him to get to this place; but he knew that it could have been hardly less than two hours since he had left Harriet. The men he was following, therefore, had that much start of him, and this made him wild with impatience but did not discourage him. His own wounds, Eaton understood, made his escape practically impossible, because any one who saw him would at once challenge and detain him; and the other man was still more seriously wounded. It was not his escape that Eaton feared; it was concealment of him. The man had been taken from the car because his condition was so serious that there was no hope of hiding it; Eaton thought he must be dead. He expected to find the body concealed under dead leaves, hurriedly hidden.
The night had cleared a little; to the north, Eaton could see stars. Suddenly the road and the leafless bushes at its sides flashed out in the bright light of a motor-car passing. Eaton strained forward. He had found the place; there was no doubt a car had turned off the road some time before and stopped there. The passing of many cars had so tracked the road that none of the men in the motors seemed to have noticed anything of significance there; but Eaton saw plainly in the soft ground at the edge of the woods the footmarks of two men walking one behind the other. When the car had passed, he crept forward in the dark and I fingered the distinct heel and toe marks in the soft soil. For a little distance he could follow them by feeling; then as they led him into the edge of the woods the ground grew harder and he could no longer follow them in that way.
It was plain to him what had occurred; two men had got out of the car here and had lifted out and carried away a third. He knelt where he could feel the last footsteps he could detect and looked around. The gray of the electric lights to the east seemed growing, spreading; against this lightness in the sky he could see plainly the branches of the trees; he recognized then that the grayness was the coming of the dawn. It would be only a few minutes before he could see plainly enough to follow the tracks. He drew aside into the deeper cover of some bushes to wait.
The wound in his shoulder no longer bled, but the pain of it twinged him through and through; his head throbbed with the hurt there; his feet were raw and bleeding where sharp roots and branches had cut through his socks and torn the flesh; his skin was hot and dry with fever, and his head swam. He followed impatiently the slow whitening of the east; as soon as he could make out the ground in front of him, he crept forward again to the tracks.
There was not yet light enough to see any distance, but Eaton, accustomed to the darkness and bending close to the ground, could discern the footmarks even on the harder soil. They led away from the road into the woods. On the rotted leaves and twigs was a dark stain; a few steps beyond there was another. The stains had sunk into the damp ground but were plainer on the leaves; Eaton picking up a leaf and fingering it, knew that they were blood. So the man was not dead when he had been lifted from the car. But he had been hurt desperately, was unable to help himself, was probably dying; if there had been any hope for him, his companions would not be carrying him in this way away from any chance of surgical attention.
Eaton followed, as the tracks led through the woods. The men had gone very slowly, carrying this heavy weight; they had been traveling, as he himself had traveled, in the dark, afraid to show a light and avoiding chance of being seen by any one on the roads. They had been as uncertain of their road as he had been of his, but the general trend of their travel was toward the east, and this evidently was the direction in which they wished to go. They had stopped frequently to rest and had laid their burden down. Then suddenly he came to a place where plainly a longer halt had been made.
The ground was trampled around this spot; when the tracks went on they were changed in character. The two men were still carrying the third—a heavy man whose weight strained them and made their feet sink in deeply where the ground was soft. But now they were not careful how they carried him, but went forward merely as though bearing a dead weight. Now, too, no more stains appeared on the brown leaves where they had passed; their burden no longer bled. Eaton, realizing what this meant, felt neither exultation nor surprise. He had known that the man they carried, though evidently alive when taken from the car, was dying. But now he watched the tracks more closely even than before, looking for them to show him where the men had got rid of their burden.
It had grown easier to follow the tracks with the increase of the light, but the danger that he would be seen had also grown greater. He was obliged to keep to the hollows; twice, when he ventured onto the higher ground, he saw motor-cars passing at a distance, but near enough so that those in them could have seen him if they had been looking his way. Once he saw at the edge of the woods a little group of armed men. His dizziness and weakness from the loss of blood was increasing; he became confused at times and lost the tracks. He went forward slowly then, examining each clump of bushes, each heap of dead leaves, to see whether the men had hidden in them that of which he was in search; but always when he found the tracks again their character showed him that the men were still carrying their burden. The tracks seemed fresher now; in spite of his weakness he was advancing much faster than the others had been able to do in the darkness and heavily laden. As near as he could tell, the men had passed just before dawn. Suddenly he came upon the pike which ran parallel to the line of the lake, some hundred yards back from the shore.
He shrank back, throwing himself upon his face in the bushes; the men evidently had crossed this pike. Full day had come, and as Eaton peered out and up and down the road, he saw no one; this road appeared unguarded. Eaton, assured no one was in sight, leaped up and crossed the road. As he reached its further side, a boy carrying a fishpole appeared suddenly from behind some bushes. He stared at Eaton; then, terrified by Eaton's appearance, he dropped the fishpole and fled screaming up the road. Eaton stared dazedly after him for a fraction of an instant, then plunged into the cover. He found the tracks again, and followed them dizzily.
But the boy had given the alarm. Eaton heard the whirring of motors on the road and men shouting to one another; then he heard them beating through the bushes. The noise was at some distance; evidently the boy in his fright and confusion had not directed the men to the exact spot where Eaton had entered the woods or they in their excitement had failed to understand him. But the sounds were drawing nearer. Eaton, exhausted and dizzy, followed feverishly the footmarks on the ground. It could not be far now—the men could not have carried their burden much further than this. They must have hidden it somewhere near here. He would find it near by—must find it before these others found him. But now he could see men moving among the tree-trunks. He threw himself down among some bushes, burrowing into the dead leaves. The men passed him, one so close that Eaton could have thrown a twig and hit him. Eaton could not understand why the man did not see him, but he did not; the man stopped an instant studying the footmarks imprinted in the earth; evidently they had no significance for him, for he went on.
When the searchers had passed out of sight, Eaton sprang up and followed the tracks again. They were distinct here, plainly printed, and he followed easily. He could hear men all about him, out of sight but calling to one another in the woods. All at once he recoiled, throwing himself down again upon the ground. The clump of bushes hiding him ended abruptly only a few yards away; through their bare twigs, but far below him, the sunlight twinkled, mockingly, at him from the surface of water. It was the lake!
Eaton crept forward to the edge of the steep bluff, following the tracks. He peered over the edge. The tracks did not stop at the edge of the bluff; they went on down it. The steep sandy precipice was scarred where the men, still bearing their burden, had slipped and scrambled down it. The marks crossed the shingle sixty feet below; they were deeply printed in the wet sand down to the water's very edge. There they stopped.
Eaton had not expected this. He stared, worn out and with his senses in confusion, and overcome by his physical weakness. The sunlit water only seemed to mock and laugh at him—blue, rippling under the breeze and bearing no trail. It was quite plain what had occurred; the wet sand below was trampled by the feet of three or four men and cut by a boat's bow. They had taken the body away with them in the boat. To sink it somewhere weighted with heavy stones in the deep water? Or had it been carried away on that small, swift vessel Eaton had seen from Santoine's lawn? In either case, Eaton's search was hopeless now.
But it could not be so; it must not be so! Eaton's eyes searched feverishly the shore and the lake. But there was nothing in sight upon either. He crept back from the edge of the bluff, hiding beside a fallen log banked with dead leaves. What was it he had said to Harriet? "I will come back to you—as you have never known me before!" He rehearsed the words in mockery. How would he return to her now? As he moved, a fierce, hot pain from the clotted wound in his shoulder shot him through and through with agony and the silence and darkness of unconsciousness overwhelmed him.