William Arden - The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow

“Up to the hills!” Jupiter panted.

They ran across the road and reached the first steep slope of the low mountains that ringed Rocky Beach. With Bob ahead, and Jupiter puffing behind him, they crashed their way up through the stiff, dry brushwood. The hard, thick, grey brush tore at their clothes. Behind them, they could hear the two dark men giving chase.

“What are they shouting?” Bob panted.

“I don’t know,” Jupiter cried. “I don’t understand any of it! Just keep running!”

“Can we outrun them?”

“I… hope… so.”

t the top of the first steep slope, they reached an old dirt road. They had gained on their pursuers. Out of sight for a moment, they turned and ran along the dirt road. They were running away from Rocky Beach, the Vegetarian League house, and their bikes, but there was no other way they could go. So they pounded along the dirt road looking for a way to escape.

“Oh, no!” Bob suddenly exclaimed.

The dirt road ended in a deep ravine. There had once been a bridge, but it was gone, and the steep sides were much too dangerous to climb down. The boys stopped in dismay.

“The bridge washed out in a flood!” Bob cried.

“Up the hill!” Jupiter pointed.

They began to climb up the slope of the mountain that towered hot and dusty above Rocky Beach. Below, they heard shouts. The two men had seen them and were pointing upwards. While the boys were still looking back, their pursuers began to climb the slope with amazing speed and skill.

“They’re gaining, Jupe!” Bob said.

“Keep climbing!”

They climbed and crawled upwards in the blazing sun on the scorching slope. Their hands were bleeding from the sharp, iron-hard brushwood. At last they reached a high shoulder of the mountain. Jupiter dropped, panting, to the dirt. Bob looked back down.

“They’re still coming!”

Jupiter groaned weakly. “Let them come. I’m dying.”

Bob shaded his eyes. “We’re faster runners, but they can climb better. They climb like goats. Hey, maybe they’re two of those Yaquali! The Devils of the Cliffs.”

Jupiter struggled up, revived by the prospect of seeing two Yaquali. “Maybe they’re speaking Yaquali. No wonder we can’t understand them.”

“I don’t care if they’re speaking Eskimo,” Bob declared. “How do we get away? Do you suppose Mr. Harris saw them chasing us?”

“I doubt it,” Jupiter said, peering across the distance. “Everything is quiet around the house.”

“If we could only get back to our bikes!”

“We can’t. They’ve cut us off. We’ll just have to keep running.”

“Where?” Bob said in despair, looking round the barren. scorched shoulder of the mountain. Then his eyes lit up. “Jupe, come on! I know where we are now. I think there’s a way to get away.”

Bob started running along the shoulder that curved round the mountain. Jupiter puffed along behind; once more they were momentarily out of sight of their pursuers. Some fifty yards away, round the corner of the mountain, Bob ran straight for a thick. dense growth of twisted live oaks and the impenetrable brushwood.

“Where are we running?” Jupiter was panting.

“Right there,” Bob said.

Jupiter stared as Bob ran straight at the wall of dusty green trees and brushwood. “Where? I don’t see… ”

Bob vanished into the heavy brush before Jupiter could finish his question. The First Investigator plunged after the smaller boy — and suddenly found himself running in empty space!

He fell and landed with a thump at the bottom of a narrow gully totally hidden on all sides by the trees and the brushwood. Panting and bruised, Jupiter sat up, dusted himself off gingerly, and glared at his chum.

“You could have warned me,” he complained.

“There wasn’t time. I fell into this gully once when I was chasing a bull snake. They won’t find us in here.”

“Maybe,” said Jupiter, unconvinced.

“Shhhhhhhh!” Bob hissed.

The boys crouched down in the gully and crawled silently to the bank. Bob peered through a thin gap in the brush. The two pursuers were standing not fifty feet away! They were talking, pointing all around and arguing. Jupiter slumped down to the bottom of the gully.

“They know we’re around here somewhere!”

“What do we do?”

“We keep quiet,” the First Investigator pronounced.

They lay silent, listening. The two pursuers were walking and talking somewhere out beyond the dense brush. The boys could hear clearly, but they had no idea what the two dark men were saying — except that it sounded harsh and menacing.

Helpless, the boys could do nothing but wait. The voices came closer. There was the rustle and crash of bushes being searched.

Jupiter whispered, “I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time until they find us. They seem to know that we didn’t run beyond this point.”

“This gully is pretty well hidden. They might miss it.”

“Or they might stumble right into it. Is there any way we can get out of here unseen?”

Bob thought a moment “There’s a big ravine to the left that leads right back down to the road near the Vegetarian League house. Only we’d have to cross about fifty feet of open space from the end of this gully to get there.”

“Fifty feet of open space?” Jupiter’s brow was furrowed with concentration. “Then we have to have a diversion. Something to distract those men from seeing us cross that open space. If we could just get them down in here while we run for that ravine.”

“If we were ventriloquists,” Bob suggested, “we could throw our voices back here. Then, while they were coming down here after us, we could get to the ravine.”

“Bob, that’s it!” Jupiter seemed excited.

“What do you mean that’s it? We’re not ventriloquists. We can’t throw our voices anywhere.”

“Yes, we can! By electronics.” Jupiter picked up his walkie-talkie. “We’ll leave one walkie-talkie here, turned up full volume, with the receiving button held down. Then we’ll go down to the end of the gully closest to that ravine, and —

“And talk into the walkie-talkie so they’ll hear us and think we’re down here!”

“Exactly,” Jupiter said. “They’ll, hear us, come to get us, and while they’re out of sight down here we’ll run to the ravine. By the time they find the walkie-talkie, they won’t know where to look for us.”

Quickly, Jupiter laid his walkie-talkie behind a bush at the bottom of the gully and placed a stone on the receiving button. He picked up Bob’s walkie-talkie, and the two boys crawled silently along the bottom of the gully until Bob nodded that they were as far as they could go.

“You see that big tree across the open space?” Bob whispered. “That’s where the ravine is.”

“Here goes,” Jupiter whispered back. He squatted down and spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Bob! I hear them coming!”

Bob spoke into the speaker. “They won’t find us down here! We’re safe!”

Jupiter listened and heard Bob’s voice, faint but clear, farther back in the gully where they had been hiding. He spoke once more into the walkie-talkie, while Bob peered through the brush to see what was happening.

“They hear it,” Bob whispered. “They’re going into the bushes.”

“Now, Bob!” Jupiter hissed.

They jumped from the gully and ran full speed towards the big tree and the ravine. When they reached the tree, they looked back. The two dark men were nowhere in sight. The boys plunged down into the ravine and scrambled along the bottom towards the road far below.

Breathing hard, they came out into the street a half-block from the Vegetarian League house. The two men were still nowhere in sight.