Chapter 22

Jack, the Giant Killer

"That you, Sam?" half whispered a man's voice. There was no light.

"Sh!" hissed Bonner, muffling his voice. "Is everybody in?"

"Bill's waitin' fer you outside. Ma an' me are here. Come on down. What's up?"

"How's the girl?"

"Bellerin' like a baby. Ma's with her in the cave. Hurry up! This thing's heavy."

For reply Bonner seized the edge of the door with his left hand, first pushing his revolver in his trousers' pocket. Then he silently swung the heavy cane through the air and downward, a very faint light from below revealing the shock head of Davy in the aperture. It was a mighty blow and true. Davy's body fell away from the trap, and a second later Bonner's dropped through the hole. He left the trap wide open in case retreat were necessary. Pausing long enough to assure himself that the man was unconscious and bleeding profusely, and to snatch the big revolver from Davy's person, Bonner turned his attention to the surroundings.

Perhaps a hundred feet away, at the end of a long, low passage, he saw the glimmer of a light. Without a second's hesitation he started toward it, feeling that the worst of the adventure was past. A shadow coming between him and the light, he paused in his approach. This shadow resolved itself into the form of a woman, a gigantic creature, who peered intently up the passage.

"What's the matter, Davy?" she called in raucous tones. "You damn fool, can't you do anything without breaking your neck? I reckon you fell down the steps? That you, Sam?"

Receiving no answer, the woman clutched the lantern and advanced boldly upon Bonner, who stood far down the passage, amazed and irresolute. She looked more formidable to him than any of the men, so he prepared for a struggle.

"Halt!" he cried, when she was within ten feet of him. "Don't resist; you are surrounded!"

The woman stopped like one shot, glared ahead as if she saw him for the first time, and then uttered a frightful shriek of rage. Dashing the lantern to the ground, she raised her arm and fired a revolver point blank at Bonner, despite the fact that his pistol was covering her. He heard the bullet crash into the rotten timbers near his ear. Contrary to her design, the lantern was not extinguished. Instead, it lay sputtering but effective upon the floor.

Before Bonner could make up his mind to shoot at the woman she was upon him, firing again as she came. He did not have time to retaliate. The huge frame crushed down upon him and his pistol flew from his hand. As luck would have it, his free hand clutched her revolver, and she was prevented from blowing his brains out with the succeeding shots, all of which went wild.

Then came a desperate struggle. Bonner, a trained athlete, realised that she was even stronger than he, more desperate in her frenzy, and with murder in her heart. As they lunged to and fro, her curses and shrieks in his ear, he began to feel the despair of defeat. She was beating him down with one mighty arm, crushing blows, every one of them. Then came the sound which turned the tide of battle, for it filled him with a frenzy equal to her own. The scream of a woman came down through the passage, piteous, terror-stricken.

He knew the fate of that poor girl if his adversary overcame him. The thought sent his blood hot and cold at once. Infuriatedly, he exerted his fine strength, and the tide turned. Panting and snarling, the big woman was battered down. He flung her heavily to the ground and then leaped back to pick up his revolver, expecting a renewal of the attack. For the first time he was conscious of intense pain in his left leg. The woman made a violent effort to rise, and then fell back, groaning and cursing.

"You've done it! You've got me!" she yelled. "My leg's broke!" Then she shrieked for Davy and Bill and Sam, raining curses upon the law and upon the traitor who had been their undoing.

Bonner, his own leg wobbling and covered with blood, tried to quiet her, but without success. He saw that she was utterly helpless, her leg twisted under her heavy body. Her screams of pain as he turned her over proved conclusively that she was not shamming. Her hip was dislocated. The young man had sense enough left to return to Davy before venturing into the cave where Miss Gray was doubtless in a dead faint. The man was breathing, but still unconscious from the blow on the head. Bonner quickly tied his hands and feet, guarding against emergencies in case of his own incapacitation as the result of the bullet wound in his leg; then he hobbled off with the lantern past the groaning Amazon in quest of Rosalie Gray. It did not occur to him until afterward that single handed he had overcome a most desperate band of criminals, so simply had it all worked out up to the time of the encounter with the woman.

A few yards beyond where the old woman lay moaning he came upon the cave in which the bandits made their home. Holding the lantern above his head, Bonner peered eagerly into the cavern. In the farthest corner crouched a girl, her terror-struck eyes fastened upon the stranger.

"How do you do, Miss Gray," came the cheery greeting from his lips. She gasped, swept her hand over her eyes, and tried piteously to speak. The words would not come. "The long-prayed-for rescue has come. You are free--that is, as soon as we find our way out of this place. Let me introduce myself as Jack, the Giant Killer--hello! Don't do that! Oh, the devil!" She had toppled over in a dead faint.

How Wicker Bonner, with his wounded leg, weak from loss of blood, and faint from the reaction, carried her from the cave through the passage and the trap-door and into the tent can only be imagined, not described. He only knew that it was necessary to remove her from the place, and that his strength would soon be gone. The sun was tinting the east before she opened her eyes and shuddered. In the meantime he had stanched the flow of blood in the fleshy part of his leg, binding the limb tightly with a piece of rope. It was an ugly, glancing cut made by a bullet of large calibre, and it was sure to put him on crutches for some time to come. Even now he was scarcely able to move the member. For an hour he had been venting his wrath upon the sluggish Anderson Crow, who should have been on the scene long before this. Two of his captives, now fully conscious, were glaring at their companions in the tent with hate in their eyes.

Rosalie Gray, wan, dishevelled, but more beautiful than the reports had foretold, could not at first believe herself to be free from the clutches of the bandits. It took him many minutes--many painful minutes--to convince her that it was not a dream, and that in truth he was Wicker Bonner, gentleman. Sitting with his back against a tent pole, facing the cabin through the flap, with a revolver in his trembling hand, he told her of the night's adventures, and was repaid tenfold by the gratitude which shone from her eyes and trembled in her voice. In return she told him of her capture, of the awful experiences in the cave, and of the threats which had driven her almost to the end of endurance.

"Oh, oh, I could love you forever for this!" she cried in the fulness of her joy. A rapturous smile flew to Bonner's eyes.

"Forever begins with this instant, Miss Gray," he said; and without any apparent reason the two shook hands. Afterward they were to think of this trivial act and vow that it was truly the beginning. They were young, heart-free, and full of the romance of life.

"And those awful men are really captured--and the woman?" she cried, after another exciting recital from him. Sam and Bill fairly snarled. "Suppose they should get loose?" Her eyes grew wide with the thought of it.

"They can't," he said laconically. "I wish the marshal and his bicycle army would hurry along. That woman and Davy need attention. I'd hate like the mischief to have either of them die. One doesn't want to kill people, you know, Miss Gray."

"But they were killing me by inches," she protested.

"Ouch!" he groaned, his leg giving him a mighty twinge.

"What is it?" she cried in alarm. "Why should we wait for those men? Come, Mr. Bonner, take me to the village--please do. I am crazy, absolutely crazy, to see Daddy Crow and mother. I can walk there--how far is it?--please come." She was running on eagerly in this strain until she saw the look of pain in his face--the look he tried so hard to conceal. She was standing straight and strong and eager before him, and he was very pale under the tan.

"I can't, Miss Gray. I'm sorry, you know. See! Where there's smoke there's fire--I mean, where there's blood there's a wound. I'm done for, in other words."

"Done for? Oh, you're not--not going to die! Are you hurt? Why didn't you tell me?" Whereupon she dropped to her knees at his side, her dark eyes searching his intently, despair in them until the winning smile struggled back into his. The captives chuckled audibly. "What can I--what shall I do? Oh, why don't those men come! It must be noon or--"

"It's barely six A.M., Miss Gray. Don't worry. I'm all right. A cut in my leg; the old woman plugged me. I can't walk, you know--but--"

"And you carried me out here and did all that and never said a word about--oh, how good and brave and noble you are!"

When Anderson Crow and half of Tinkletown, routed out _en masse_ by Bud, appeared on the scene an hour or two later, they found Wicker Bonner stretched out on a mattress, his head in Rosalie's lap. The young woman held his revolver in her hand, and there was a look in her face which said that she would shoot any one who came to molest her charge. Two helpless desperadoes lay cursing in the corner of the tent.

Anderson Crow, after an hour of deliberation and explanation, fell upon the bound and helpless bandits and bravely carted the whole lot to the town "calaboose." Wicker Bonner and his nurse were taken into town, and the news of the rescue went flying over the county, and eventually to the four corners of the land, for Congressman Bonner's nephew was a person of prominence.

Bonner, as he passed up the main street in Peabody's sleigh on the way to Anderson Crow's home, was the centre of attraction. He was the hero of the hour, for was not Rosalie Gray herself, pale and ill with torture, his most devoted slave? What else could Tinkletown do but pay homage when it saw Bonner's head against her shoulder and Anderson Crow shouting approval from the bob-sled that carried the kidnapers. The four bandits, two of them much the worse for the night's contact with Wicker Bonner, were bundled into the lock-up, a sadly morose gang of ghosts.

"I owe you a thousand dollars," said Anderson to Bonner as they drew up in front of the marshal's home. All Tinkletown was there to see how Mrs. Crow and the family would act when Rosalie was restored to them. The yard was full of gaping villagers, and there was a diffident cheer when Mrs. Crow rushed forth and fairly dragged Rosalie from the sleigh. "Blootch" Peabody gallantly interposed and undertook to hand the girl forth with the grace of a Chesterfield. But Mrs. Crow had her way.

"I'll take it out in board and lodging," grinned Wicker Bonner to Anderson as two strong men lifted him from the sleigh.

"Where's Bud?" demanded Anderson after the others had entered the house.

"He stayed down to the 'calaboose' to guard the prisoners," said "Blootch." "Nobody could find the key to the door and nobody else would stay. They ain't locked in, but Bud's got two revolvers, and he says they can only escape over his dead body."