Part 4
The days passed. The rajah, not deterred by Neranya’s curses often heaped upon him, spent even more time than formerly in the great hall, and slept there oftener at night, and finally Neranya, wearied of cursing and defying him, maintained a sullen silence. The man was a study for me, and I noticed every change in his fleeting moods. Generally his condition was one of miserable despair, which he attempted bravely to conceal. Even the boon of suicide had been denied him, for when he was erect the top of the rail was a foot above his head, and he could not throw himself over it and crush his skull on the stone floor below; and when he had tried to starve himself the attendants forced food down his throat, so that he abandoned such attempts. At times his eyes would blaze and his breath would come in gasps, for imaginary vengeance was working within him; but steadily he became quieter and more tractable, and was pleasant and responsive when I conversed with him. Whatever the tortures the rajah had decided upon, none had as yet been ordered, and although Neranya knew that they were in contemplation, he never referred to them or complained of his lot.
The awful climax of this terrible situation was reached one night, and even after this lapse of years I can not approach a description of it without a shudder.
It was a hot night, and the rajah had gone to sleep in the great hall of the palace, lying on a high cot. I had been unable to sleep in my apartment, and so I stole softly into the hall through the heavily curtained entrance at the end furthest from the balcony. As I did so, I heard a peculiar soft sound above the gentle patter of the fountain. Neranya’s cage was partly concealed from my view by the spraying water, but I suspected that the unusual sound came from him. Stealing a little to one side and crouching against the dark hangings of the wall, I could faintly see him in the dim light which illumined the hall, and then I discovered that my surmise was correct--Neranya was at work. Curious to learn more, I sank into a thick robe on the floor and watched him. My sight was keen and my eyes soon became accustomed to the faint, soft light.
To my great astonishment Neranya was tearing off with his teeth the bag which served as his outer garment. He did it cautiously, casting sharp glances frequently at the rajah, who, sleeping soundly on his cot, breathed heavily. After starting a strip with his teeth, Neranya would by the same means attach it to the railing of his cage and then wriggle away, much after the manner of a caterpillar’s crawling, and this would cause the strip to be torn out the full length of his garment. He repeated this operation with incredible patience and skill until his entire garment had been torn into strips. Two or three of these he tied together with his tongue, lips, and teeth, and secured the ends in a similar way to the railing, thus making a short swing on one side. This done, he tied the other strips together, doubling some which were weak, and in this way he made a rope several feet in length, one end of which he made fast to the rail. It then began to dawn upon me that he was going to make an insane attempt--impossible of achievement without hands or feet, arms or legs--to escape from his cage! For what purpose? The rajah was asleep in the hall----! I caught my breath. Oh, the desperate, insane thirst for revenge which consumed the impotent, miserable Neranya! Even though he should accomplish the impossible feat of climbing over the railing of his cage and falling to the stone floor below (for how could he slide down the rope?), he would in all probability be killed or stunned; and even if he should escape these dangers it would be impossible for him to climb upon the cot without rousing the rajah, and impossible even though the rajah were dead! A man without arms or legs might descend by falling, he never could ascend by climbing. Amazed at his daring, and fully convinced that his sufferings had destroyed his reason, I watched him with breathless, absorbing interest.
He caught the longer rope in his teeth at a point not far from the rail. Then, wriggling with great effort to an upright position, his back braced against the rail, he put his chin over the swing and worked toward one end. He tightened the grasp of his chin upon the swing, and, with tremendous exertion, working the lower end of his spine against the railing, he began gradually to ascend. The labor was so great that he was compelled to pause at intervals, and his breathing was hard and painful, and even while thus resting he was in a position of terrible strain, and his pushing against the swing caused it to press hard against his windpipe and nearly suffocate him.
After amazing effort he elevated the lower end of his body until it protruded above the railing, the top of which was now across the lower end of his abdomen. Gradually he worked his body over, going backward, until there was sufficient excess of weight on the outer side, and then with a quick lurch he raised his head and shoulders and swung into a horizontal position. Of course, he would have fallen to the floor below had it not been for the rope which he held in his teeth. With such nicety had he calculated the distance between his mouth and the point of fastening, that the rope tightened and checked him just as he reached the horizontal position on the rail. If one had told me beforehand that such a feat as this man had accomplished was possible, I would have thought him a fool. I continued to watch with intense interest.
Neranya was now balanced on his stomach across the top of the railing, and he eased his position somewhat by bending his spine and hanging down as much as possible. Having rested in this position for some minutes, he began cautiously to slide off, slowly paying out the rope through his teeth. Now, it is quite evident that the rope would have escaped from his teeth laterally when he slightly relaxed his hold to let it slip, had it not been for a very ingenious device to which he had resorted. This consisted in his having made a turn of the rope around his neck before he attached the swing, thus securing a three-fold control of the rope--one by his teeth, another by friction against his neck, and a third by his ability to compress it between his cheek and shoulder.
A stupendous and seemingly impossible part of his task was accomplished. Could he reach the floor in safety? Gradually he worked himself backward over the rail, in momentary imminent danger of falling; but his nerve never quivered, and I could see a wonderful glitter in his eyes. With something of a lurch, his body fell against the outer side of the railing, and he was hanging by his chin. Slowly he worked his chin away and then hung suspended by the rope, his neck bearing the weight of his trunk. By almost imperceptible degrees, with infinite caution, he descended the rope, and finally his unwieldy body rolled upon the floor, safe and unhurt!
What next? Was this some superhuman monster who had accomplished this impossible miracle? Would he immediately spring to invisible feet, run to the rajah’s bedside, and stab him with an invisible dagger held in an invisible hand? No; I was too philosophic for such mad thoughts; there was plenty of time for interference. I was quick and strong. I would wait awhile and see what other impossible things this monster could do.
Imagine my astonishment when, instead of approaching the sleeping rajah, Neranya took another direction. Then it was only escape after all that the miserable wretch contemplated and not the murder of the rajah! But how could he escape? The only possible way to reach the outer air was by ascending the stairs to the balcony and leaving by the corridor, which opened upon it, and surely it was impossible for Neranya to ascend that long flight of stairs! Nevertheless, he made for the stairs. He progressed by lying on his back, with his face toward the point of destination, bowing his spine upward, and thus causing his head and shoulders to slip nearly an inch forward, straightening his spine and pushing forward the lower end of his back a distance equal to that which his head had advanced, each time pressing his head to the floor to keep it from slipping. His progress was slow, painful, and laborious, as the floor was slippery, rendering difficult the task of taking a firm hold with his head. Finally, he arrived at the foot of the stairs.
It was at once manifest that his purpose was to ascend them. The desire for freedom must have been strong within him. Wriggling to an upright position against the newel-post, he looked up at the great height which he had to climb and sighed; but there was no dimming of the bright light in his eyes. How could he accomplish the impossible task before him?
His solution of the problem was very simple. While leaning against the newel-post, he fell in a diagonal position and lay safe upon the bottom step on his side. Turning upon his back, he wriggled forward along the step the necessary few inches to reach the rail, scrambled to an upright, but inverted, position against the rail, and then fell and landed safely on the second step. This explains the manner in which, with inconceivable labor, he accomplished the ascent of the entire flight of stairs.
It being evident that the rajah was not the object of Neranya’s movements, the anxiety which I had felt on that account was entirely dispelled, and I watched Neranya now only with a sense of absorbing interest and curiosity. The things which he had accomplished were entirely beyond the wildest imagination, and, in a sense, I was in a condition of helpless wonder. The sympathy which I had always felt for the unhappy man was now greatly quickened; and as small as I knew the chances of his ultimate escape to be, I nevertheless hoped that he would succeed. There was a bare chance that he would fall into the hands of the British soldiery not far away, and I inwardly prayed for his success. Any assistance from me, however, was out of the question; nor should it ever be known that I had witnessed the escape.
Neranya was now upon the balcony, and I could dimly see him wriggling along as he slowly approached the door. The rail was low, and I could barely see him beyond it. Finally he stopped and wriggled to an upright position. His back was toward the hall, but he slowly turned around and faced me. At that great distance I could not distinguish his features, but the slowness with which he had worked, even before he had fully accomplished the ascent of the stairs, was evidence all too eloquent of his extreme exhaustion. Nothing but a most desperate resolution could have sustained him thus far, but he had about drawn upon the last remnant of his strength.
He looked around the hall with a sweeping glance, and then upon the rajah, who was soundly sleeping immediately beneath him, over twenty feet down. He looked long and earnestly, sinking lower, and lower, and lower upon the rail. Suddenly, to my inconceivable astonishment and dismay, he toppled over and shot downward from his lofty height. I held my breath, expecting to see him crushed into a bloody mass on the stones beneath, but instead of that he fell full upon the rajah’s breast, crashing through the cot, and hurling him to the floor. I sprang forward with a loud cry for help, and was instantly at the scene of the disaster. Imagine my indescribable horror when I found that Neranya’s teeth were buried in the rajah’s throat! With a fierce clutch I tore the wretch away, but the blood was pouring out in torrents from the frightfully lacerated throat, the chest was crushed in, and the rajah was gasping in the death agony. People came running in, terrified. I turned to Neranya. He lay upon his back, his face hideously smeared with blood. Murder, and not escape, was his intention from the beginning; he had adopted the only plan by which there was a possibility of accomplishing it. I knelt beside him, and saw that he was dying--his back had been broken by the fall. He smiled sweetly into my face; and the triumphant look of accomplished revenge sat upon his face even in death.
THE MAN-HUNTERS’ REWARD
By Buckey O’Neill
“That isn’t a bad reward!”
“No; if a fellow could catch him, he would make pretty good wages. Let’s see,” and the second speaker began to read the postal-card that the postmaster at Hard Scrabble had just tacked to the door of the store that constituted the “office,” so that every one might read:
TAKE HIM IN!
$500 Reward will be paid for the arrest and delivery of Rube White to the sheriff of Yavapai County. He is about twenty-five years old, six feet tall, and slim, with light complexion, and has a big scar on the right side of his face. He is wanted for robbery and other crimes. If killed in resisting arrest the reward will be paid on satisfactory proof of his identity. When last heard from was making for the Tonto Basin country.
By the time the reader had finished, a crowd of half a dozen or more men surrounded him.
“Now, if that feller is headed for the Tonto Basin country, it wouldn’t be much of a trick to take him,” said the first speaker, reflectively, as if debating with himself the advisability of making the attempt.
“If you hear me, he ain’t going to be taken in, and the feller that tries it is going to have his hands full. They have been after him for two or three years and aint got him yet. They say he’s right on the shoot,” remarked another of the crowd.
“Well, a feller ought to know him as soon as he sees him, from that description,” hazarded the first speaker, “if he got up close enough to see the scar; and then all he’d have to do would be to turn loose at him if he didn’t throw up his hands when you told him. Besides, nobody but him would try to cross over the mountains into the basin with this snow on the ground. Blamed if I don’t think I’ll go after him.”
“Well, somebody ought to round him up,” asserted some one in the crowd; “he’s been foolin’ roun’ hyah long enough, jes havin’ his own way, sorter as if the country belonged to him. Durned if I wouldn’t go with you, Hi, if I didn’t have to take this grub over to the boys in camp.”
“Well, if any of you want to go, all right. I’m going,” replied the man addressed as Hi.
It was not the first time that Hi Lansing had been on such expeditions. He was one of those men for whom danger seems to have a fascination. At his remark, Frank Crandall, a young fellow who had been standing quietly by, volunteered to accompany him. The crowd turned toward him with more interest than they had thus far evinced during the entire proceedings. It was but a few months since he had come among them, fresh from the East, to take charge of one of the mines which had been closed down by the winter’s storms. For weeks he had been cooped up in the isolated settlement, and he longed for something to break its monotony.
“Well, get your horse and gun, and come,” replied Hi, and, in an instant, the two men had left the room to arm and equip themselves for the chase, while the loungers gathered around the stove to discuss the probabilities of their success. In a few minutes, the two men rode past the door, each armed with a rifle and six-shooter, and the crowd, stepping out, bade them good-by, with the oft-repeated warning: “Be keerful and don’t let him get the drop on ye.”
The crust of the unbroken snow cracked crisply under foot as the two rode on fast, leaving the little settlement in their rear. For some time neither spoke; but, at last, the silence was broken by Lansing, asking his young companion: “Did you ever try this kind of thing before?”
“No,” replied the young man; “I never have.”
“Well, then, you want to be keerful. If you don’t lose yer head, you’re all right. The only danger is that we may run on him before we know it.”
“And if we do, what then?” asked the young man.
“Well, he will probably commence shooting, and if he does, and you arn’t hit the first rattle out of the box, why you want to git off’n your horse and git behind something and shoot back. If ther aint anything to git behind, keep your horse between you and him, and keep a-shooting. Whatever you do, don’t let go of your gun. But what we want to do is to see him first, and then we’ve got the play on him, and all you have to do is to tell him to throw up.”
“And if he don’t throw up?” asked Crandall.
“Why, then you let him have it. The reward will be paid just the same.”
The apparent indifference with which Lansing spoke of the entire matter, much as if he were discussing the best method of hunting a wild animal, shocked the young man; but he had committed himself too far to withdraw. Besides he had that feeling that all men have when they are young--the curiosity to know whether or not he could rely on himself when danger threatened.
“We should strike his trail on the hills here, if he is really headed for the basin country,” said Lansing. They had been riding for several hours in silence through the snow, unbroken by aught save the scattered pines that here and there dotted the mesa. Before them towered the mountains through whose passes the man whom they were after would have to pass in his search for safety in the half-settled wilds beyond.
As the two men rode along, scanning in each direction the snow-covered mesa, Lansing suddenly wheeled his horse to the right, and when Crandall joined him he pointed to a narrow trail where two horses had passed through the snow.
“That’s him. He’s driving one horse and leading another, and he hasn’t passed by very long, either. See, the snow hasn’t had time to drift in it,” said he.
With the discovery his whole demeanor had changed. A new look came into his eyes, and his voice sounded strange. He even grasped his weapons in a manner different to that he had heretofore displayed. “He’s right ahead, and we want to look out,” the older man continued, as they began to follow the trail. As they approached the summit of each hill they would stop their horses, and Lansing would dismount and crawl to the top so that he might look, without being discovered, into the valley beyond, in order that they might not come on the fugitive too suddenly.
They had traveled this way for several miles, when, reining in his horse, Lansing pointed to what seemed an old road leading off to the right of the one they were following, and said: “That’s the ‘cut-off’ into the basin. I thought he would take it, but he probably doesn’t know the country. You had better take it and ride on ahead until you strike the road we’re on again. Then if you can’t find his tracks, you had better ride back to meet me until you do. I will follow the trail up.”
The young man tried to expostulate with Lansing for the great risk he was assuming, in thus following the trail alone, but his companion was obdurate, and, cutting the argument short by again warning the young man to be on his guard, he rode on, following the trail in the snow, while the younger man, finding objection useless, took the “cut-off” road. He had no difficulty in following it, and he wondered why the man they were in pursuit of had not taken advantage of it. The whole pursuit seemed almost like a dream to him. The snow, unbroken save by his horse’s footfall, stretched away mile after mile in every direction, with here and there a pine through whose branches the wind seemed to sob and sigh, making the only noise that broke the stillness of the wintry afternoon. It added to this feeling. Not a thing in sight. He began to depict in his own mind the manner of man they were pursuing. He had almost forgotten his name. After all, what had the man done that he, Frank Crandall, should be seeking his blood? Perhaps, like himself, the man had a mother and sisters to grieve over any misfortune that would overtake him. These and a hundred kindred thoughts passed through his mind. The sun was fast declining as he passed from the “cutoff” into the main road again. The air was getting chilly with the coming of evening, and the snow in the distance took on colors of pink and purple where the rays of the setting sun touched the mountain peaks. He scanned the main road eagerly to see if the man they were in pursuit of had passed, but the snow that covered it was unbroken. Then he rode back on the main road, in the direction from which he had come, to meet his comrade and the fugitive. He had just ascended one of the many rolling hills, when, in the distance, he discovered a man riding one horse and driving another. At the sight his heart almost stood still. He dismounted, and leading his horse to one side, concealed him in a clump of young pines. Then he returned to the road-side and waited. The man was urging his horses forward, but they seemed to be wearied, and made but slow progress. Crandall felt his heart beat faster and faster at the length of time it took the man to reach him. He examined his revolver and rifle, cocking each, to see that they were in order. It seemed to relieve the tension of his nerves. After he had done this, he knelt down so that he could fire with surer aim, and waited. He did not care much now whether the man resisted or not. If the fugitive resisted, he would have to stand the consequence of resistance. It was nothing to him. He could hear the footfall of the approaching horses in the snow, and he cocked his rifle so as to be ready. The setting sun shone full in the man’s face, but Crandall forgot to look for the scar that the notice had said was on the right cheek, although he had resolved to do so particularly. When he first discovered the fugitive, he scanned the road behind him to discover Lansing, but the nearer the man approached, the less Crandall cared whether Lansing came or not. He let the man approach nearer and nearer, so that his aim would be the more accurate. He could not afford to throw away the first shot. The face of the man grew more and more distinct. He seemed to be oblivious to his surroundings. Crandall felt almost disposed to let him pass, but the thought that every one would think him a coward if he did so, spurred him on, and, rising erect, he ordered the man to surrender. The horse that the man was driving in front of him, frightened at Crandall’s appearance, swerved from the road, leaving the two men facing each other. For an instant, Crandall looked straight into the other’s eyes. Then the man raised his rifle from the pommel of the saddle, and Crandall fired. The horse which the man was riding sprang from the road, and, at the same moment, its rider’s gun was discharged. The smoke from Crandall’s own gun blew back into his eyes, and he turned from it to follow the movements of the man at whom he had fired. As he saw the man still erect in his saddle, he felt the feverish haste to fire again come over him that men feel when they have shot and missed, and know that their life may be the forfeit of their failure. He threw another cartridge into the chamber of his rifle, and raised it to his shoulder, but before he could fire, the man reeled from his saddle and fell, while his frightened horse galloped off through the pines.
Crandall stepped toward him, holding his rifle prepared to fire again, if necessary. As he did so, the man raised his hand and said, simply: “Don’t fire--you’ve got me.”
The snow was already red with blood where he lay. For the first time, Crandall looked for the scar that the description said was on the right cheek. For an instant he did not see it, and his heart seemed to stop beating with the fear of having made a mistake, and when, on drawing nearer, he saw that it was there, that only the pallor which had spread over the man’s face had made it indistinct, he could have cried out with joy at the feeling of relief that passed over him.
“Are you badly wounded?” he asked.