The Mena weekly star., 1913-01-23
CHAPTER XxVII.
Ress Leads to Betty.

Bess Leads to Betty.
 Just where he had parted from Ware, Darlington sat his horse, his brows knit and his eyes turned in the direction of the path. He was on his way to a plantation below Birard, the owner of which had recently import ed pack of bloodhounds; but this unexpected encounter with Ware had affected him strangely. He still heard Toms stammering speech, he was still seeing his ghastly face, ard ho had come upon him with startling suddenness. He had chanced to look back over his shoulder and when he faced about there had been the plant CT within a hundred yards of him.
 Presently Carrington's glance ceas- ed to follow the windings of the path. He stared down at the gray dust and saw the trail l. by Hues and his party For a moment he hesitated; if tho dogs were to be used with any hope or success he had no time to spare, and this was the merest sus- picion, illogical conjecture, based on nothing beyond his distrust of Ware. In the end he sprang from the saddle, and leading his horse into the woods, tied it to a sapling.
 A hurried invel tigation told him that five men had ridden in and out of that path. Of the five, all coming from the south, four had turned south again, but the fifth man-Ware, in other words-had gone north. He weighed the possible significance of these facts.
 T am only wasting time!" he con fessed reluctantly, and was on the point of turning away, vixen, on the very edge of the road and just where the dust yielded to the hard clay of the path, his glance lighted on the print of small and daintily shod foot. The throbbing of his heart quickened curiously.
 'Betty!" The word leaped from his lips.
 That small foot had left but the one impress. There were other signs, however, that claimed his attention; namely, the boot-prints of Slosson and his men; and he made the in- evitable discovery that these tracks were all confined to the one spot. They began suddenly and as sudden ly ceased, yet there was no mystery about these he had the marks of the wheels to help him to sure conclu- sion. A carriage had turned just here, several men had alighted; they had with them a child, or woman. Either they had re-entered the car riage and driven back as they had come, or they had gone toward the .r.ver. He felt the soul within him turn sick.
 He stole along the path; the, terror of the river was ever in his thoughts, and the specter of his fear seemed to fit before him and lure him on. Pres entity he caught his first glimpse of the bayou and his legs shook under him; but the path wound deeper stili- into what appeared to be an un- touched solitude, wound on between the crowding tree forms, little back from the shore, with an intervening tangle of vines and bushes. lie scanned this closely as he hurried forward, scarcely conscious that he was searching for some trampled space at the waters edge; but the verdant wall preserved its unbroken continuity, and twenty minutes later he came within sight of Hicks clear ing and the keel boat, where 1t rested against the bank.
 A little farther on he found the spot where Slosson had launched the skin the night before. The keel of his boat had cut deep into the slippery clay; more than this. the impress of the small shoe was repeated here, and just beside it was the print of chiid'c hare foot.
 He no longer doubted that Betty and Hannibal had been taken across the bayou to the cabin. and he ran back up the path the distance of mile and plunged into the woods on his right, his purpose being to pass around the head of the expanse of sluggish water to point from which he could later approach the cabin. But the cabin proved to be better defended than he had foreseen; and as he advanced. the difficulties of the task he had set himself became sl- most insurmountable; yet sustained as he was by his imperative need, he hs ..,o.z 4bss,stoh fha fahyrinfh uf