Part 8

I managed to smile as I glanced significantly at the rifles which both men carried.

“And are you going gold-digging now, Captain Brack?” said I. “I thought picks and shovels were the proper utensils for mining.”

“Much easier to let others use them,” said he. “Much more satisfactory to use this—” he patted his rifle—“after others have used the picks and shovels. As you soon shall see, Mr. Pitt.”

“I——”

He lifted his right hand as if for a signal. Quicker than any normal thought of mine, instinct whispered the imminence of danger.

I ducked and crouched low before Brack’s signal was completed, and a fist grazed the top of my head from behind and a hand—Garvin’s—caught hold of my left arm. Terror drove me to action.

As instinctively as any attacked animal whirls upon its assailant, I turned on Garvin, sweeping my arms around wildly. He had expected no resistance, and one of my fists thudded viciously into the middle of his throat. He gurgled in strange fashion, throwing his head far back, and I struck him again, struck with a strength which I had not dreamed that I possessed. I saw him staggering, and turned to run.

Madigan leaped nimbly to block me. I dodged back, but the captain was there, so I turned to Madigan. He was on me with a rush; we clinched, struggled, fell, and got up again. This continued for some time. Then a great weight seemed to drop on the back of my head and my knowledge of what was happening ceased suddenly.

XXI

My next moment of consciousness consisted of a sensation of helplessness. I was awake; I heard sounds vaguely; but I could not see, nor could I move.

“There.” A voice seemed to speak from a far-away darkness. “He’s coming to; you didn’t kill him after all, cap.”

I felt something strike me heavily in the side.

“Yes. He’s coming to. Prod him again. —— him! He delayed us, and every minute counts.”

Once more the heavy blow fell on my side. I opened my eyes wearily. Painfully turning my head I looked toward my side and made out a heavy boot. Some one had been kicking me. My eyes moved up the boot; Garvin was its owner. The sight of his gross face brought back memory and consciousness. There was blood on his mouth; in the lower lip was a long cut, and I was glad.

Garvin was staring at me with a mingling of curiosity and respect in his expression.

“Where the —— did you learn that punch in the Adam’s apple?” he said. “That’s a new one to me. And, say, you’re quick; quickest man I ever see; and you’re all there for a middle-weight, bo.”

“Who hit me in the back of the head?” I demanded weakly. “That was a cowardly blow.”

I heard a growl somewhere which I recognized as Brack’s.

“We were in a hurry,” he said, “and you would not give us a chance to handle you gently. You delayed us. That may be serious.”

I strove to rise and struck my chest against a board. I was conscious of a rhythmic motion, and a dull, squeaky sound, repeated without cessation. My senses cleared. I turned my head. I was lying under a seat in one of the life-boats and the boat was being rushed onward under the impulse of eagerly pulled oars.

“What’s this?” I groaned. “What sort of an outrage is this?”

I twisted myself from under the seat and sat up, looking around for the yacht. There was no sight of it. There was no sight of anything but water and steep hills, and the second life-boat closely following us. We were pulling up a narrow, winding bay. Its width was fairly uniform, probably a hundred yards. Its water was pure blue. And on both sides, and before and behind us, rose the craggy, fir-clad hills, approaching the size of mountains, shutting us out from all the rest of the world.

“Sit down, Mr. Pitt; it is more comfortable.” From the bow Brack spoke, and I turned upon him.

“What do you mean?” I began, and there I stopped.

For, though Brack spoke in laughing fashion, there was no laughter about his lips, none in his eyes. His face was set like a bronze mask, his mouth was scarcely visible, his eyes shone hard and fiery between slitted lids. Brack had ceased to pretend; the brute in him was having its way, and he didn’t care who saw it.

“You would better have slept soundly this morning, Mr. Pitt,” he said. “If your foolish fight delayed us too long—you will soon know why.”

“I want to know why right now!” I cried, in spite of the terror that his face inspired. “You’ve assaulted me; you’ve taken me off the yacht by force. You’ll pay for this when we get back home.”

“Suppose,” said he musingly, “suppose you should never get back home?”

His tone, not his words, froze me. I could not speak. I looked at the faces of the men who were rowing furiously, at Garvin. And I looked at the cold blue water through which we were speeding and knew it was no more remorseless than the men in that boat.

“Don’t you think now it would have been better for you to have slept?” said Brack.

“I think,” I retorted hotly as the power of speech came rushing back to me, “that you had better take me back to the yacht; and I know that I will see you punished for assault for this.”

A sound like laughter issued from his throat, but his expression did not change.

“Assault?” he repeated. “Ha! You forget that you are out of the land of courts now, Pity. Assault! Ha! Why, Pitt, that will be like a maiden’s kiss compared to what’s going to happen in the next half hour. Sit down; you’re in that oar’s way. Put him down, Garvin.”

Garvin obediently kicked me back of the knee-joints and I dropped with a noisy clatter to the bottom of the boat.

“—— you!” swore Brack in a loud whisper. “If you make another noise like that I’ll have you dumped overboard. You’ve made us late. Now just you lay still and nice where you are, Pitt; we’re having no noise on this excursion.”

I sat silent. I was half dazed from the blow on the head and by my situation, and for the next few minutes I observed what was taking place as one who is less than half awake. By this time we had come to the head of the bay and were entering the mouth of a small river which rambled crookedly down through a gap in the hills.

“More juice in your strokes, men,” whispered Brack. “It’s a strong current, and we haven’t much farther to go.”

His words stimulated the men. Their fierce eyes grew fiercer, and they bent to their oars with all their might. Most of them were panting from excitement and exertion.

“We’ll land here,” said Brack presently. “No noise, men.”

The boats swung in to the bank indicated and the men tumbled out, clutching their rifles eagerly.

“Come along, Pitt.”

“No,” I responded. “From what I hear you’re bound for some sort of a crime.”

“So are you. That’s why I took you along—to make you pay for sleeping so lightly. Get out.”

Two men sprang into the boat toward me, and I was forced to obey. With Brack in the lead a single file was formed and I started up a faintly marked footpath which ran along the stream. I was placed near the middle of the line; Madigan brought up the rear. I was the only man in the party who was not armed.

For the next ten minutes we hurried forward, through brush, over rocks and fallen logs, and through muddy spring-holes without a word being spoken. Brack in the lead, seemed to take no notice of the obstacles that presented themselves, and every man in the line with the exception of myself seemed imbued by the same fierce eagerness. I was helpless. The man behind me was continually treading on my heels, his heavy breath was on my neck, and I, too, was forced to hurry, driven along, moving as in a cruel nightmare.

Brack stopped suddenly and held up his hand. A sound had broken the silence ahead of us. It was repeated, a dull, slapping sound, and Brack whispered an oath.

“They’re up; chopping wood for breakfast. Follow me.”

He struck off into a wooded ravine at right angles to the trail. At a distance which I estimated to be three city blocks from the river he led the way by zigzags up a series of hills and presently we were nearing the crest of a ridge beyond which no further hills were visible.

“Get down now,” he ordered. “The lake’s in the valley over this hill. The man who shows himself above the brush or makes a noise’ll get hurt.”

He began to wriggle himself forward through the stunted trees until at last he was able to peer over the crest of the ridge, and the rest followed his example.

A small, blackish lake lay in the marshy valley below. On the shore opposite to us were two log cabins, several huge piles of dirt, and a crude derrick. Daylight was streaming into the valley, dispersing the night fogs, and we made out two men moving about the buildings. Brack swore much but softly.

“Slade and Harris!” He paused to curse again. “—— ’em! We’re too late. —— you, Pitt, you’ll pay for this.”

“What the ——!” snarled Madigan as the captain hesitated. “What’s all this foxy work for, Foxy? They’re two and we’re ten. Why don’t we go down an’ clean ’em up?”

“Easy—easy, Tad,” said Brack softly. “No noise. Slade and Harris are too good with the rifle to try any straight rushing. Besides, there’s a back trail over there, and they might get away. They’ve got the gold cached some place and we may need ’em alive to learn where it is. A little hanging up by the thumbs will make ’em tell. Gad! The fools! They’ve got three dumps; that means three shafts. The thing’s richer than I thought, and they’ve kept it all right down there because they swore to stay there till they had a hundred thousand apiece.”

“Gawd!” whispered Garvin. “Let’s take a chance, cap.”

“Easy, Garvin, easy!” chuckled Brack. “They’re a couple of suckers, but they can shoot.

“Well,” growled Madigan, “let’s have it—when do we go get ’em?”

Brack studied the scene before him for several minutes before replying.

“We’ve got to wait until they’re in the shafts,” was his decision. “This is too big a risk, giving ’em a chance. If we jump ’em now from this side they’ll put up a stiff fight and at the same time have a chance of getting away over their back trail. And if they get into the woods, they won’t leave the gold where we can find it easily. We’ve got to spoil that back trail for ’em.”

“Yep;” said Garvin, “leave ’em no getaway.”

“Madigan,” said Brack, “You take your men and circle around on this side of the ridge and go north until you strike their trail running out of the valley.”

“That’ll take a couple of hours.”

“A little longer, probably. When you’re set, fire three shots and we’ll start to rush ’em from this side. The rest’ll be easy. Boys, by ten o’clock we’ll all be rich.”

We fell back from the top of the ridge, and in a ravine well out of sight Madigan led his four men into the forest. Brack waited until they were out of sight and then hurried us back to the boats. Pulling Madigan’s boat behind us we were swiftly rowed down the river into the bay. Here the empty boat was tied up in a well-hidden nook, and we went on toward the yacht.

I now had an opportunity to note the distance which we had traveled. The fiord curved raggedly from the river’s mouth toward the sea. In spite of the foothills which shut us in I saw that our course at first took us away from the river and the lake. Then, where the bay began to widen, we began to curve backward until when, at last the _Wanderer_, riding serene and white on her cradle of blue water, appeared before us, I knew that our course had been such that the distance overland to the miner’s lake could not be much more than half of what it was by water. I judged the distance down the bay from the river-mouth to the _Wanderer_ to be about three miles.

As we made out the yacht in the distance, the Captain looked at his watch.

“Back in nice time for breakfast,” he said. “Well, Pitt, how does it feel to belong to a gang of robbers? Please don’t say you don’t belong. You do, you know; we’ve elected you. Yes; you’re one of us now, and we’re going to keep close watch on you until this little job is over.”

“What is your object?” I asked. “Why did you drag me up there with you?”

“Because I suspect that you like to talk, Pitt,” said he, as he suddenly changed the course of the boat. “You were unfortunate enough to see us leaving ship. Had I permitted you to stay on board you would have talked. You might have talked in alarming fashion, and I do not wish Miss Baldwin to be alarmed—until our work here is done, at least.”

“Then why did you bring me back?” I cried. “For you certainly can not expect me to keep silent after what I have seen and heard.”

“You can talk all you want to now, Pitt,” he laughed. Then I saw that the boat was pointing toward the shore. “Talk your head off, Pitt. Because no matter how loud you talk your voice won’t be among those heard aboard.”

The boat shot into a tiny indentation of the fiord, from which the _Wanderer_ could not be seen, and grounded on the gravelly beach.

“Will you get out sensibly, Pitt, or will you have to be knocked down and dragged out?” said Brack carelessly.

I stepped out.

“Barry, you stay here with him.”

A vicious-looking seaman of medium height followed me onto the beach, his rifle under his arm.

“We’ll be back in an hour or so,” continued Brack as the boat backed away. “Must look after our passenger, you know. And be nice, Pitt, and you won’t get hurt.”

“Yes, and make it —— nice, too!” growled the man Barry, scowling at me. “’Cause I don’t half like this job an’ I sort o’ figger the cap’ wouldn’t be sore if he come back and found I’d had to put you out of business.”

XXII

I stood with my head up until the boat had whisked Brack out of sight, then slumped down in despair upon a convenient boulder. I was horrified and frightened. My thoughts had cleared by now and the full significance of what I had seen, heard, and undergone came to me. Brutal robbery, probably murder; such was the sum and substance of Brack’s plans. The expedition and the _Wanderer_ turned in the tools of a piracy which would have been unbelievable with any other man than the captain! And Miss Baldwin back there on the yacht, ignorant of the morning’s happenings, unsuspecting of Brack’s true character, and I helpless to warn her or be of any assistance.

Brack would keep up the pretense. He would be the smooth-talking captain this morning as if nothing untoward had happened, or was going to happen. He would maintain this pose until he had accomplished the robbery, until it pleased him to drop it. And after this morning I knew that he would go to any lengths to fulfil his will.

“Cold?” sneered Barry as I shivered. “Well, don’t worry, sissy, Cap’ll make it warm enough for you when he gets ready to ’tend to you.”

I turned to plead with him, and he laughed delightedly at the fear and wretchedness in my face. For I was afraid. This was no place for me. It was all too strange, too harsh. I was literally sick at my stomach; and yet I knew all the time that I was going to try to warn those unsuspecting miners whom Captain Brack planned to catch in their mine like rats in a pit. Heaven knows I did not wish to do it! In my heart I protested against the Fate that had placed such a task to my lot. I was unfit for it. Somebody else, more used to such things, should have had the job.

I would have pleaded with Barry, have sought to bribe him, but the expression on his vicious countenance made me hold my tongue. What could I do? This sort of thing was new to me; how did one go about it?

I thought of the two miners delving away in their shafts, of them suddenly looking up to find Brack grinning down at them. The unfairness of the thing was revolting. Did men do such things to their fellows in this day and age?

I glanced at Barry and his rifle and knew that they did. Craft and brutality, those were the laws governing this situation. And craft and brutality soon began to enter my thoughts as readily as they might enter those of Brack, Garvin, or the lout who was guarding me.

At my feet lay several stones the size of a man’s fist. Presently I feigned sleepiness, nodded, and slipped from the boulder to a seat on the sand.

“Sleepy, eh?” Barry sneered. “You’re a fine piece o’ cheese.”

“I’m sick,” I muttered. “My head aches.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” He prodded me carelessly with the butt of his rifle. “For two cents I’d give you a clout that’d take the ache out of that head for good.”

The minutes went by in silence. Half an hour later, perhaps, I saw Barry’s vigilance begin to relax.

My right hand dropped languidly at my side and found a round stone, slightly larger than a baseball. Barry did not see.

More time passed. At last Barry, catching himself nodding, straightened up and again prodded me with the butt.

“Don’t do that again,” I whined. “Please don’t.”

“‘Please don’t!’” mocked Barry.

In his estimation I was such a weakling that he had no need to be cautious. The rifle-butt again touched my side. I grasped it suddenly with my left hand, the fingers fastening themselves around the trigger-guard, and sprang up, the stone in my right hand. Barry jerked at the rifle, drawing me close, and I felled him to the ground with a blow from the stone on the temple.

I had the rifle now, and as he strove to rise I struck him on the head with the heavy barrel and he lay still. I stood over him, ready to strike again, but he did not move and with the rifle in my hand I ran through the green-leaved brush which fringed the fiord and started to climb the rocky hills that walled it in.

What I had to do I knew must be done in a hurry, before Brack or Madigan were in a position to keep a watch on the lake, and I ran on, regardless of the fissures and gaps with which the hill was pitted. In my haste I paid little attention to my path, and near the top I plunged suddenly through a tangle of brush and fell into what proved to be the mouth of a cave-like opening in the rocky portion of the hill.

The cave was so well hidden by the spring foliage that I had literally to walk into it before suspecting its existence. I hid the rifle there, clambered out and went on. If my senses of direction and distance were right the lake should be straight north and about a mile and a half away.

Though I ran and walked as rapidly as possible, it was half an hour before I struck the ridge which shut out the lake from sight of the bay. Then I knew that in spite of my ignorance of the woods, I had gone straight to my goal. I went down the farther side at once, keeping myself hidden in the brush as much as possible in case Madigan’s crew should be on the lookout, and finding the trail along the river I went straight up toward the miners’ camp.

A man was waiting for me as I stepped from the alder-brush into the clearing about the mine. My clumsy traveling had warned of my approach and he lay behind a pile of dirt before a shaft, a large blue pistol pointing straight down the trail where I emerged.

“Don’t shoot!” I cried running toward him, with my hands in the air. “I’m a friend. I’ve come to warn you that a man named Brack with a crew of cutthroats is on his way to raid your camp.”

The mention of Brack’s name had a pitiful effect upon the man. He leaped back, his eyes shifty with fright, and made as if to run back to the cabins. He caught himself, however, and swung his pistol steadily on the trail behind me.

He was an old man with a patriarchal beard and a gentle face. When he saw that no one was following me he said—

“Come with me, stranger; we’ll get Bill.”

He retreated, walking backward, covering me and the trail with his weapon, while I followed. Arriving at the first shaft, still keeping his eyes on me, he called—

“Oh, Bill!”

A tall, laughing youth, with a soft, curly beard, came clambering out of the mine in response to his summons. At the sight of me his hand flashed to the pistol on his hip.

“Tell it to Bill, stranger,” said the patriarch. “Bill, the Laughing Devil’s back and this gentleman says he’s layin’ to come an’ clean us _pronto_.”

“Brack?” gasped the youth, with a frightened glance down the trail. “Foxy Brack?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s here to rob you. He’s sent one of his lieutenants around the ridge to cut off your back trail. He has ten of the worst men in Christendom with him.”

“Oh, my God!” groaned the young man. Steadying himself he said, “Who are you, stranger?”

I told about the _Wanderer_ and its party, and about the morning’s happenings as swiftly as possible.

“Why did you run the risk of coming here and telling us this?” asked the youth when I concluded. “And how do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“Bill!” said the old man reprovingly. “Can’t you see? Stranger, we take this right neighborly of you. My name’s Slade, and this is my partner, young Bill Harris. Pitt, you said your name was? Well, Mr. Pitt, you’re a man. This Brack, now, he’s a devil. Bill and me saved his life when he come ashore up at Omkutsk, and he spoke us fine and friendly, and acted like a man, and we took him in with us on this gold find.

“Then one day he tried to put us both out of business and we caught him in the act just in time. It’s hard to kill a man when you got him helpless, stranger, though we should ’a’ done it then. We give him a boat with grub, and when the wind was blowing offshore we sent him out to sea. The devil must ’a’ took care of its own, since he’s still living; and now he’s come back to clean us out. We been sort of ’fraid of it all the time.”

“How many d’ you say with him?” queried young Harris. “And all bad men, too, eh? God! There’s only two of us——”

“Bill,” said Slade patiently, “we can’t stay an’ fight him. You know what he is.”

“They’re circling round us now?” Harris was looking around wildly. “We’re cut off.”

“How many went around to cut our trail, neighbor?”

“Five.”

“We may be able to handle five of ’em, Bill,” said Slade. “We wouldn’t have no chance with ten. We mustn’t let ’em head us off. Brack ’ud use fire to make us tell where the gold is cached. We’ll start right away and travel light.”

Harris ran into the large cabin. I started to go back the way I had come.

“Wha-a-at? You ain’t going back to Brack’s boat, are you? Neighbor, there’ll be only hell where that devil is.”

“And for that reason I must go back there.”

“Why?”

“There is a girl—a young lady—on the yacht.”

Old Slade shook his head.

“That dirty devil! But we can’t stay and fight ten men and Brack. Well, Mr. Pitt, I reckon we owe you our lives and everything we got, but I dunno how we’re goin’ to square it with you.”

My eyes fell on the automatic pistol in his hand.

“You’re —— whistlin’!” cried Slade suddenly as he thrust the weapon into my hands. I put it inside my shirt. “That don’t square us. Best I can do, though. Now, Mr. Pitt—” he gripped my hand—“God bless yoh!”

XXIII

I hurried back down the river-trail until I reached the ridge. Here I quitted the way I had come and climbed away over the hills toward the sea. My plan was to step aboard the _Wanderer_ while Brack was absent, and without being seen by any of his men. Hence, I gave the cove where I had struck down Barry a wide berth. In fact, I did not follow the windings of the fiord at all but struck straight across the rough country toward where I judged the sea to be.

I got lost twice. Once I found myself turning toward the fiord and once I had circled back toward the lake. It was well into the afternoon when I found the rough seacoast and following it southward came to the mouth of the fiord and, from a hilltop looked down upon the _Wanderer_ at anchor.

I saw now why my first impression of the morning had been that the yacht was surrounded by mountains. This was nearly so. The hills, one of which I was lying on, walled the fiord in on both sides, while across its mouth, shutting it in from the sea and leaving only a narrow channel on either side, lay a narrow, crescent-shaped island consisting of a fir-covered hill of equal height to those of the mainland.

The Hidden Country! It was the inevitable name for the region.