Frank Merriwell's Champions: or, All in the Game. Standish Burt L.
Hammond was heard to mutter.
Merriwell walked down toward the target, anxious to observe the arrow as it struck, a proceeding that was perfectly allowable so long as he kept out of the archer’s way.
Diamond, who was watching Hammond, saw the latter’s face darken while the pupils of the boy’s eyes seemed to contract to the size of pin points.
“That fellow is a regular devil,” thought Diamond. “I must warn Frank to look out or he’ll be waylaid and shot by him some of these fine evenings.”
Hammond drew the arrow to the head with a steady hand, but, just as he released it, his foot slipped back on the grass and the arrow was sharply deviated from the line it should have taken to reach the target. Instead of flying toward the gold, it flew toward Merriwell.
“Look out!” screamed Diamond, jumping to his feet.
Merriwell had reached the narrow path that ran across the grounds and was directly in front of a tree that stood in the path and cut off the view toward the village.
He heard the “whir-r-r” of the arrow, heard Diamond’s cry, and dropped to the ground on his face.
At the same instant, the straight, lithe form of a girl of seventeen or eighteen appeared from behind the tree.
She was directly in the line of the arrow’s flight. She, too, heard the warning, but she did not understand it. She did not dream of peril.
Then the arrow struck her, and, uttering a cry, she staggered backward and went down in a heap.
CHAPTER IV – BRUCE BROWNING’S ADVENTURE
“Heavens, she is killed!” thought Frank, leaping up and running toward the fallen girl.
There were excited exclamations from the group of archers, and a sound of hurrying footsteps.
Frank saw the girl struggle into a sitting posture and pluck away the arrow, which seemed to have lodged in the upper part of her left arm or in her shoulder. Then she staggered to her feet. When he gained her side she was trembling violently, and her thin face was as white as the face of the dead.
Only a glance was needed to tell him that she was the daughter of one of the poor whites of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her dress was of faded cotton, her shoes heavy and coarse. In one hand she clutched a calico sunbonnet, which had dropped from her head as she fell.
“You are hurt!” gasped Merriwell. “Will you not let me assist you in some way?”
She shivered and gave him a quick glance, then stared toward the lads who were rushing in that direction. The sight galvanized her into activity.
“I dunno ez I’ve any call ter be helped!” she asserted, starting back and giving a last look at the arrow, which lay on the grass at her feet, where she had flung it as if it were a snake. “Leastways, I ’low ez how I kin make my way home. I war a good ’eal more skeered than hurt.”
“But I saw the arrow strike you!” Merriwell persisted.
She put out her hands as if to keep him from coming nearer, then sprang back into the path, and vanished behind the tree and into the depths of the woods before he could do aught to prevent the movement.
“She’s gone,” said Frank, as the others came up on the run. “There’s the arrow. I saw her pluck it out of her arm or shoulder, but she would not stay to explain how badly she was hurt.”
“That is Bob Thornton’s girl, Nell,” said Hammond, in a shaky voice. “I hope she isn’t much hurt. That was an awkward slip I made, and if I had killed her I could never have forgiven myself.”
Merriwell gave him a quick and comprehensive glance. It was caught by Hammond, and served to increase his agitation.
“It was a very awkward slip, as you say, Mr. Hammond. That arrow might have killed me. It would certainly have struck me, if I hadn’t dropped as I did.”
“Accidents will happen, you know!” pleaded Hammond. “I hope you don’t think I would do such a thing on purpose. It was a slip, just as when Dunnerwust shot the arrow into your nigger’s cap.”
He was about to say more, but checked himself, in the fear that he was beginning to protest too much.
“Perhaps we’d better gollow the firl – I mean follow the girl,” suggested Rattleton. “She may have tumbled down again.”
He did not wait for an order, but sprang into the path that led behind the tree, and hurried along it, with a half dozen curious fellows at his heels.
It was soon evident that the girl had not stuck to the path, which would have taken her back toward the village, but had plunged into the woods, which in places was thick with undergrowth.
“It’s no use to follow her,” said Hammond, joining the searchers. “It is likely she will make a short cut for home, where her father probably is, and where she can have the wound dressed. That is, if she was really wounded, which I doubt, from her actions. Perhaps the arrow only struck in her clothing, and frightened her. When I picked it up and examined the point, I could see no blood on it.”
The archery contest was virtually ended, with Merriwell and the Lake Lily Club the winners, and no one was in a hurry to go back to the shooting ground. But it was universally conceded in a little while that no good could be done by trying to follow one who knew the wilderness paths as well as any deer that roamed them, for it would be impossible to overtake her as long as she did not want to be overtaken.
While the boys talked and speculated, Nell Thornton was hastening on through the laurel scrub, unmindful of the stabbing pain in her shoulder; and, at the same time, Bruce Browning, wrapped in a heavy coat and with a handkerchief knotted about his shivering neck, was advancing slowly and languidly up the path in the direction of the archery grounds.
“I’m afraid that confounded chill is coming back,” Bruce grumbled, pushing a vine out of his way, “and I suppose I was a fool for leaving the cottage. I wish I had taken that other path, even if it is farther around. The bushes are thick enough here to make a squirrel sick, trying to worm through them. Hello! What does that mean?”
Nell Thornton, who had struck into this path from the woods, came into view, and was seen to reel and lurch like a boat in a gale.
Browning stopped and stared.
Then he saw her reach out to steady herself by a sapling, and sink down in an unconscious heap.
“By Jove! she’s fainted!” he muttered, stirred by the sight. “She must be ill or hurt! I wonder who she is?”
He forgot his lazy lethargy, and scrambled up the path with a nimbleness that would have been surprising to his friends, and which took him to Nell Thornton’s side in a very few moments.
“Blood on her hand and running down her arm!” he declared, with a gasp of astonishment. “Here’s a mystery for you!”
Nell Thornton lay with eyes closed, motionless, and seemingly without life. To Bruce her condition appeared alarming. He lifted her head, then let it drop back, and stood up and looked dazedly about, wondering what he should do. He recollected that he had seen a small stream of water trickling over the rocks a short distance below.
“Just the thing!” he thought. “I’ll carry her down there!”
As if she were a feather weight, he lifted her in his strong arms, and started down the path, moving in a hurry, now that his anxiety was thoroughly aroused.
“If the boys should see me now,” he groaned, “I’d never hear the last of it. Luckily, they’ll not be apt to see me. No doubt they are whanging away with their bows up on top of the hill. I wonder how she got hurt? Could it have been – ”
He stopped, and stared into the thin, pallid face.
“Could she have been hit by a wild arrow that missed the target and flew off into the woods? Heavens! I hope not!”
Down the steep path, slipping, sliding, maintaining his footing with difficulty, went Bruce Browning, with Nell Thornton