The Mystery of Rainbow Gulch

by Norvin Pallas

“No,” Bob replied, “we’ll have to cross at least one or two gullies before we get to the hill. But we may be able to sweep the hillside with the searchlights from the top of the first ridge.”

  They discovered a path which seemed to lead in the direction they wanted to go, and Bob found himself taking the lead, the others confident that he was at least slightly more familiar with the lay of the land than they were. So far, and for a considerable distance up on Sandy Hill, the ground was heavily wooded, although many bleak stumps spoke of logging operations. And suddenly Ted recalled the speculations about a mountain lion somewhere in the woods, then quickly dismissed them. A mountain lion, even if there was one, would be unlikely to attack four of them; the blinding beam of the flashlight should be enough to scare him off. But Ted couldn’t help remembering that they were unarmed, unless Mr. Mac-Cafferty had a revolver.

  At the top of the incline was a little clearing, and Bob asked, “Shall we set up the lights and see what we can pick up?”

  “Might be a good idea,” Mr. MacCafferty agreed. He had the map out again and indicated with the point of a pencil: “As far as I can tell, we’re right about here.” The lead was almost touching the small circle Bob had drawn.

  The two lantern searchlights were set up and adjusted, and they began to sweep the hillside opposite. A careful search revealed nothing unusual, and they turned toward Sandy Hill itself, lying above and beyond, its slopes covered except for the barren top. Twice they covered every foot of ground that their beams could touch, but no sign of wreckage was disclosed. Surely they must have covered most of the territory which lay within the circle Bob had drawn. If there was a wreck, it seemed that Bob may have been mistaken about where it would be found.

  “But not necessarily,” said Mr. MacCafferty briefly. “It’s possible for a plane to disappear completely within the trees, or it may be on the lowest part of Sandy Hill.” Their lights could not reach there because of the intervening hill. Unless they found the plane there, they all knew they were probably in for a long search.

  In silence the searchlights were packed up again, and the party trudged on. Mr. MacCafferty obviously no longer thought they were to have an easy time of it.

  A fairly deep gully lay in front of them, and loaded down as they were, they anticipated some difficulty. Fortunately the slopes were not too steep, and they found a comparatively easy path down. Bob, who was leading the way, took a short tumble on a slippery clay patch, and the others, warned by his example, were able to avoid a similar mishap. The rivulet at the bottom of the gully was running unexpectedly full. They could see no easy dry crossing, so in they waded. Then they scrambled up the grassy incline on the other side.

  At the top of the hill they discovered they would have to go another hundred yards before they reached the summit of another slight ridge. Here the searchlights were set up again.

  The lower slope of Sandy Hill was now within range of their lamps, and they scanned it carefully several times without results. Gradually they raised their beams, covering some of the same territory they had explored from the previous ridge, without much hope. It was beginning to look as though the wreck was not on Sandy Hill.

  Then Mr. MacCafferty began to sweep the beam widely, almost hopelessly, touching beyond the foot of Sandy Hill. At that distance he had little expectation of discovering anything, and was about to give up when suddenly Nelson exclaimed:

  “Wait, sir, I think I saw something!”

  “Where?”

  “Right there, where your beam just missed.”

  Bob and Mr. MacCafferty brought the two lights to focus upon the spot. There they could make out the outline of a spruce tree, and some dark, ominous object seemed to be caught in the top limbs.

  “That’s it,” said Mr. MacCafferty dully. “If I’ve been thinking anything I shouldn’t in the last few minutes, boys, I want to apologize to you, but nine-tenths of the calls we get are duds.”

  “Think there’s any chance the pilot got out alive, Mr. MacCafferty?” asked Ted.

  “If that’s really the wing of the plane,” he answered slowly, “I would say that his chances of getting through the crash without serious injury would be pretty small. But escape by parachute is something else again.”

  “We didn’t see any parachute,” Nelson put in.

  “Anyway, we’d better get over there as quickly as we can.”

  On Mr. MacCafferty’s orders, one of the searchlights was left standing with its beam focused on the spruce tree. “Sometimes those things are visible only from a certain angle, and we may lose sight of the tree later,” he explained. The other light was taken down again, and the party began its grim trek toward the scene of the crash.

  With the beam to guide them, they had little trouble covering the rest of the distance to the scene. Approaching, they saw that the object in the tree was undoubtedly the wing of the plane, sheared off by heavy branches. The actual wreck lay fifty yards farther on, in the midst of a small clearing. A few feet had made the difference between safety and disaster, for if the pilot had been able to clear the tall spruce, he might have been able to make a successful crash landing.

  Flares were set up at the edge of the clearing, illuminating the whole circle. In addition to the missing wing, the motor was also gone, as well as part of the tail. The landing gear had been crushed, along with part of the cabin, but the plane was not as completely demolished as they had expected.

  “Now to see what goes,” said Mr. MacCafferty. He seemed to brace himself, then approached the plane, using his pocket flashlight to look inside. He stared steadily for a moment, then turned away. “He’s still at the controls,” he announced. “He never had a chance to use his chute.”

  He had expected difficulty in forcing the door, but it opened easily. He went inside, while the boys stood some distance away, unwilling to approach any closer to the wreck.

  After long minutes he reappeared. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing anyone can do. He must have been killed instantly. If it’s any consolation, that’ll save him from trying to explain to me where he stopped previously, and why.” Mr. MacCafferty was trying to speak lightly, but they knew he was deeply affected.

  Now that the plane had been found, the boys’ excitement vanished. Somewhere in the back of their minds had been the hope of bringing about a rescue. It was too late for that now.

  “I don’t think there’s much you can do here right now, boys,” said Mr. MacCafferty. “I want to make a preliminary inspection before anything is touched. Wait, Bob, there is something you can do for me. Go back to the car and bring a litter. I’d like to get the body out of here tonight, if we can.”

  “Right!”

  “You won’t have any trouble finding the car, will you? And I don’t suppose there’s any danger from wild animals around here.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bob, crossing his fingers but in a manner that only his friends could see. “I’ll go back the same way we came. There may be a shorter way, but there’s no use looking for trouble.”

  “There’s no doubt about the identity of the plane, is there?” asked Ted, after Bob had departed.

  “No, the pilot had identification papers on him, so apparently this really is Jeff Leonard. The numbers on the plane check, too, so this is obviously the missing Starburg-Mayors-town plane. Funny, there seems to be enough fuel left in the tanks, so that couldn’t have been the cause of the wreck. It’s a miracle it didn’t catch on fire, although I guess it wouldn’t have made any difference to the pilot even if it did. If you boys would scout around a little and try to locate parts of the plane, it may help me reconstruct the accident.”

  Thankful for any excuse to get away from the plane, Ted and Nelson started off. The engine lay about midway between the spruce tree and the rest of the wreck. It appeared that the wing must have caught in the spruce tree and ripped off, whereupon the plane nosedived into the ground. There the engine had fallen off, but the rest of the plane bounced and skidded between the
trees to its present position in the clearing. Other pieces of wreckage were scattered about at random, and they picked these out by the light of the flashlight Nelson was carrying. It was surprising how far some of the parts had been thrown. A piece of the tail lay many rods away, partway up the slope of Sandy Hill itself.

  “Ted, this isn’t a newspaper story, is it?” Nelson asked.

  “No, I guess not,” said Ted reluctantly. “They don’t have a local paper here. They get a city paper which comes a day late. I suppose that paper might give it a small notice written from the police reports, but I doubt that any of the other papers or a wire service would pick it up.”

  But still, Ted could not help noticing all the small details he could, just as though he were going to write a newspaper story on it. As the CAP man had said, any information they picked up might be useful in his report.

  They found the fatal spruce tree. The searchlight had either burned out or else Bob had turned it off on his way back to the car, and the flares around the cabin of the plane did not quite reach there. But they turned their flashlight upward to study the fragment closely. It seemed to have nothing more to tell, and Ted began to look around. A little path led off through the woods, and almost idly he began to follow it.

  “What are we doing?” asked Nelson, following Ted’s lead nevertheless.

  “There’s a little spring up ahead there.”

  “So what?”

  “It looks like it would moisten the ground. I wonder what a path like this is used for, and who follows it. There might be some footprints to give us a lead. I don’t think Mr. Mac-Cafferty would like looters going over the plane, before he has a chance to check it out in daylight.”

  “You’re crazy, Ted. A person wouldn’t have to be much of an acrobat to jump over the wet parts.”

  But when he came up to Ted, and they turned the flashlight upon the mud, the footprints were there. Ted’s newspaper instincts had proved sound.

  “Of course I didn’t know they were here,” Ted explained, as Nelson shook his head in wonder. “I just thought it would be a good place to look.”

  The footprints led away from the scene of the wreck, but just when they had been made was uncertain.

  “They might have been made hours before the wreck, Ted—maybe even a day or two ago.”

  “No, I don’t think so. That flow of water seems pretty steady, and though it’s making the mud in which footprints would easily show, it also gradually washes them out after they are made. I don’t think those prints are many hours old.”

  “But I don’t see why anybody would step through this mud, Ted, when he could easily avoid it.”

  “What if he didn’t have a light?”

  “Well, yes, that’s true enough, I suppose, but he’d have to have the eyes of a cat to get through here at all after dark. Maybe when he came to the plane it was still light enough and he could see his way, but when he went back it was dark, and he stumbled through the mud. I wonder where this path goes?”

  “Partway up and around Sandy Hill, I suppose, and then winds through the rest of the hills. It might be an old hunters’ trail. Bob said there weren’t any farms out this way. What are you doing, Nel?”

  Nelson was busy making his own footprints, close beside the ones that they had found. “Just checking. My prints seem to be about the same size, and my stride is about the same. They say you can estimate a man’s height from his stride.”

  “I know, but—” Ted was studying the prints with narrow eyes. “You notice anything strange about those prints?”

  “You mean the shape? It is kind of an unusual shape for a shoe or boot, but I suppose lots of men wear something like that.”

  “No, I wasn’t referring to the shape. Look here, Nel. You notice how deep these other prints are?”

  “Holy mackerel!” Nelson whistled. “Those prints seem to be almost twice as deep as mine.”

  “You’re right. This man may wear about the same size shoe as you do, and he may be about the same height, but it looks to me as though he’s about twice as heavy. He must weigh over three hundred pounds!”

  “Wow! That’s a mountain of a man. You may have something there, Ted. Maybe this is going to turn out to be a newspaper story, after all.”

  By the time they returned to the plane, Bob was also back, and they told him and Mr. MacCafferty about the footprints. Although Bob was interested, Mr. MacCafferty seemed to have more pressing problems on his mind. Possibly, Ted thought, he didn’t want to commit himself on a matter about which there was considerable doubt. The government man had an easy manner, but he wasn’t telling everything he knew.

  The most unpleasant part of their job lay ahead, that of removing the body from the wreck. However, they all got busy and the body, covered with a canvas, was soon outside on the litter.

  “Will these flares last till morning?” asked Bob.

  “And then some,” Mr. MacCafferty responded. “Chances are I’ll be back before they’re burned out.”

  “Then you’re returning in the morning?”

  “Oh, yes, and maybe half a dozen more times before Fm through. I’ll want an expert to go over the plane to try to determine the cause of the crash. Then there’ll be insurance inspections, and the present owner may want to look over the wreck to see if there’s anything worth salvaging.”

  “There won’t be much,” Nelson said and the others silently agreed with him.

  Then they picked up the litter and headed for the truck. The return journey began as soon as Mr. MacCafferty had called the rangers to cancel the alert.

  “I’d like to thank you boys for everything you’ve done,” he said as they neared the farm. “But there’s one more favor I want to ask. Do you think you could write up a report on the accident? Just tell in simple words what you saw from the ridge and what we found at the wreck.”

  “Is this a joint effort, or should we each write separately?” Ted inquired.

  “Well—one report will be enough, I suppose, but if you have differences of opinion, get them all in. I don’t want the most positive member convincing all the others. I’m sure that Ted knows, as a newspaperman, that the most positive persons are often the worst witnesses.”

  “Where shall we send the report?” asked Bob.

  “You can send it to—on second thought, don’t send it to me. I’ll stop by for it in a few days.”

  “Do you want us to mention the footprints?” Nelson demanded.

  Mr. MacCafferty hesitated. “Yes, you’d better mention the footprints,” he decided. “Whether they have anything to do with the wreck remains to be determined.”

  As the car approached the farm, Bob suggested, “Just leave us off at the drive. There’s no use turning in.”

  The car stopped, and Mr. MacCafferty shook hands with each of them, then drove off. Cougar hadn’t barked, but on the driveway his cold nose suddenly touched Ted’s hand, startling him. Though everyone had gone to bed, the door was open and a light was on.

  “Let’s have something to eat,” was Bob’s suggestion, and the others agreed he had a good idea there.

  CHAPTER 4.

  A HITCH

  Ted spent a restless night, and when he heard the family stirring, got up to join them at the breakfast table. With Nelson and Bob still sleeping soundly, Ted described their search for the plane and what they had found. The Fontaines listened attentively, and asked a few questions, but it was clear that they wanted to make as light of it as they could while Tony was there.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone around here weighing three hundred pounds,” was Mr. Fontaine’s comment on the footprints. “Those prints could be deceptive, and might lead you astray.”

  “Will Bob get up in time for us to go?” asked Tony.

  “Go where, Tony?” Mrs. Fontaine inquired.

  “For our airplane ride.”

  “Why, Tony, I’m sure he didn’t mean today. He said sometime.”

  Tony looked disappointed. “Will we go
tomorrow, then?”

  “No, Tony,” her mother explained gently. “I’m afraid it may be a long time before you go. There aren’t any private planes around here, so you’d have to go in a commercial plane, and those cost a lot of money.”

  Tony had a rubber ball, and wanted Ted to play with her for a little while. He consented, and she chatted away as they bounced the ball back and forth.

  “Do you know what my last name is? It’s going to be Fontaine pretty soon.”

  “Is it?” said Ted unthinkingly, and then he suddenly realized that Tony was revealing family secrets that perhaps the Fontaines would rather she didn’t. “Say, why don’t we find Cougar and see if we can teach him to fetch the ball.”

  Then Ted noticed Mr. Fontaine standing close by. He realized that he had probably overheard this little conversation with Tony. She was soon busy with the dog, and Ted walked over to his host.

  “I hope you don’t think I was prying into matters that don’t concern me, Mr. Fontaine,” he apologized.

  “Of course not, Ted. As a matter of fact, I was looking forward to talking to you privately about this matter. I was pleased when Bob told me something about your newspaper experience, for I felt you might be able to give me some advice.”

  “You mustn’t make too much of my newspaper connections, Mr. Fontaine. I’ve just been lucky that I could work with a wonderful editor named Mr. Dobson.”

  “I know, Ted,” said Mr. Fontaine with a smile. “Bob has told me that you praise him to the skies every chance you get. But I do need a little help on newspaper procedures, and before I go into that I’ll have to tell you a little more about Tony.

  “You realize now that she isn’t our daughter, but that we are trying to adopt her. The truth is that we have no idea at all who she really is, and that she almost literally dropped in on us out of nowhere. She came to us one morning just after daybreak. Cougar put up a terrific barking and wouldn’t be quieted, and when I went out to see what was wrong, there she was, a bewildered little girl of about three. She was crying, but didn’t appear to be in any way injured or neglected. Other than the clothes she was wearing, she brought nothing with her. She was too little to explain anything to us, and when we asked her name, she said something that sounded like Tony, so that is the name we have used ever since. I found some tire tracks in the road, and there were some reports of a strange black sedan in the neighborhood, but neither clue proved of any use to us. She must have been deliberately left by people in a car, and once they were sure that an alarm had been raised, they drove off.”