The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna Part 25

"How do you suppose he ever got there?" demanded Jess.

"The question is: How shall we get him up?" demanded Mrs. Case, briskly.

"I can get down to him--I know I can," cried Laura.

"You'll break your neck climbing down there!" declared the doctor's daughter. "I wouldn't risk it."

"But he's helpless. He may be badly hurt," reiterated Laura.

"My dear! it would be very dangerous climbing down to the ledge," warned Mrs. Case. "And how would you get back?"

"But somebody has got to go down to get Billy," declared Laura. "And perhaps moments may be precious. We don't know how long he has been there, or how badly he is hurt."

"Laura can climb like a goat," said her chum, doubtfully.

"And I'm going to try it If we only had a rope----"

"I'll run back to that farmhouse and get a rope--and some men to help, perhaps," suggested Jess.

"Good!" exclaimed Laura. "Go ahead, and I'll be getting down to Billy meanwhile."

"That would be best, I suppose," admitted their teacher. "But be very careful, Laura."

Jess had started on the instant, and her fleet steps quickly carried her out of sight. Laura swung herself down to the first rough ledge by clinging to the bushes that grew on the edge of the cliff.

"Oh, perhaps I am doing wrong!" moaned Mrs. Case, at this juncture. "I may be sending her to her death!"

"Don't worry!" called up Laura, from below. "It is not so hard as it looks."

But there were difficulties that those above could not see. Within twenty feet the girl came to a sheer wall which extended all along the face of the cliff, and fifteen feet in height. It looked for a minute as though she were balked.

But a rather large tree grew just above this drop, and its limbs extended widely and were "limber." Laura climbed into this tree as well as any boy, worked herself along the bending limb, which was tough, and finally let herself down and swung from it, bearing the lithe limb downward with her weight.

Her feet did not then touch the shelf below, however, and she really overhung the abyss. It was a perilous situation and she was glad that Mrs. Case could not see from above what she was doing.

To make matters worse, it was doubtful if she could climb back upon the limb. Muscular as she was, _that_ was a feat that took real practice to accomplish. She swung there, like a pendulum, neither able to get up, nor daring to drop.

Suddenly something snapped above her. She cast up a fearful glance and saw that the limb was giving with her weight. Dragged down so heavily, the bark and fibres of the wood were parting. There was already a white gash across the tree-trunk where the limb was attached to the tree.

She was falling. The splitting wood warned her that the entire branch was separating from the trunk!

With a crash she fell. Fortunately the splitting flung her toward the face of the cliff. She landed upon her feet, and held her position, letting go of the branch, which whirled down the cliff side to the sea.

Laura, trembling a good deal, gazed down upon the shelf where Billy Long was. He had not been disturbed, but lay as when she first saw him from the top of the cliff.

"But we'll never be able to get up _this_ place," murmured Laura, looking up at the sheer wall down which she had come so perilously.

But from this point where she stood to the spot where Billy lay was only a rough scramble. She was beside the youth in a very few moments.

Billy lay senseless, the stain of berries on his lips, and one foot drawn under him. When Laura shook him, he moaned. Then she saw that the shoe had been removed from the hurt foot and the stocking, as well.

Billy's ankle was painfully bruised and wrenched; it was colored blue, green and yellow, in streaks, and had evidently been bruised for some time.

"Billy! Billy!" cried Laura, shaking him by the shoulder.

"I--I fell. Oh! Water!" moaned Billy, without opening his eyes.

He was very weak, and completely helpless; nor did he regain consciousness. Laura had to await Josephine's return before she could do anything to aid him.

Then Jess produced nothing but a clothesline; there had been no men at the farm, and she had taken the only rope they had, and run all the way back. But it was a strong line, and there was more than a hundred feet of it.

"You can never raise either of us to the top of the cliff, Mrs. Case,"

shouted Laura from below. "I am going to take the line, double it, and lower Billy to the sh.o.r.e myself. Somebody can go back to the park and hire that launch that is to let there, and bring it around to this cove.

The man will come with it. The rest of you can go through the cave and meet us on the sh.o.r.e, or go back to the park landing."

And so it was arranged. Laura, with the expenditure of considerable ingenuity and muscle, got Billy safely to the foot of the cliff, and then worked her own way down by the rope without cutting her hands. She made a sling of her dress skirt in which to lower Billy, and had she not been a very strong and determined girl she would have dropped him.

The adventure broke up the walking party for that afternoon; but Short and Long, after being three weeks away from home, in hiding, was returned to his father and sister, and the doctor was called to attend him. He was too weak and confused, as yet, to tell his story.

CHAPTER XX

BILLY'S STORY

The Lockwood twins were among the first of Short and Long's school friends who called at the cottage the following morning for news of the injured boy. The physician had kept even the department store detective at a distance. The latter was an officious individual who would have put Billy in jail at once had he had the power to do so.

The regular police, however, seemed to have their doubts about Billy's complicity in the burglary of Stresch & Potter's store, and they kept away from the house, only the patrolman on beat inquiring how he was. As they had promised, either Mr. Belding, the jeweler, or Mr. Hargrew, the grocer, was ready to go bail for Billy Long, if he was arrested.

Of course the boy denied the accusation made against him. As little Tommy had said, he was certainly at home all the night of the robbery.

Whether any court would accept Tommy's testimony was another thing.

Billy admitted helping the surveyors in the lot behind the department store. He understood they were surveying for a railroad siding, not for a new street. Information of such engineers might be had at the offices of one of the railroads entering Centerport--if the surveyors had not been the burglars who later broke into the store and burst the safe.

"But those fellows were surveyors, all right, all right," declared Billy Long, weakly. "And they were not the fellows I saw afterward----"

"After what, Billy?" demanded Dora Lockwood, eagerly.

"Yes; do tell us all about it," urged Dorothy.

"I don't know anything about their old robbery," said the boy, angrily.

"That man from the store kept coming here and threatening to put me in jail. And I didn't want to go to jail. I guess I wouldn't have had any worse time than I _did_ have. For when Laura found me I hadn't eaten anything but a handful of berries that I could reach on that ledge, for 'most two days!"

"Oh, oh! How dreadful!" cried the twins.

"Guess I should have died," Billy said, more cheerfully, enjoying the sensation he was creating. "And you bet that stuff I swiped out of your boats last Sat.u.r.day a week ago, just came in handy."