Part 7

The same thought must have been in Apache Kid's mind for I heard the quick patter of his pony as it came level with me. He passed me and he and I--I now a length behind him--came level with the five men clustered there behind their horses and the horse of the fallen man, Apache crying to me:

"Try a flying shot at them."

He fired at that, and a yell rose in the group and I saw one man fall and then I up with my revolver and let fly at one of the fellows who was looking at me along his gun-barrel.

And just at that moment it struck me, in the midst of all the fluttering excitement, that they let Apache Kid go by without a shot. But right on my shot my horse went down--his foot in a badger hole--and though afterwards I found that I had slain the horse that the fellow who was aiming at me was using as a bastion, I knew nothing of that then--for I smashed forward on my head.

The last thing I heard was the snort of pain that my horse gave, and the first thing, when I awakened, that I was aware of was that I was lying on my back looking up at the glaring sky, a great throbbing going on in my head.

My hands were tied together behind my back and my ankles also trussed up in a similar manner.

I was in the wrong camp. I had fallen somehow into the hands of our enemies.

*CHAPTER XI*

_*How It Was Dark in the Sunlight*_

You will hear persons speak of one who has been in a trance or swoon as "returning to consciousness." I remember once of hearing someone objecting to the phrase, saying that a person was either conscious or unconscious, and to speak of one returning to consciousness as though there was a middle state, he argued, was erroneous; but I discovered for myself, that day, the full meaning of the phrase; for first it was a sound that I heard, a sound as of rustling wings, and this presently changed and became the sound of whispering as of a whole chamber full of furtive, stealthy persons talking under the breath. Then I was aware of the sunlight in my face and at the same moment the number of voices dwindled and the power of them increased. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a mighty uncomfortable and strained position upon a slab of rock, so hot with the sun that my hands, which were behind my back and under me as I lay, were absolutely scorched. I made to withdraw them and then found they were fast tied together.

As for the voices I heard, they were only two in number, I think.

"He's all right; I see his eyes flickerin'," said one, and there, bending over me, was a face as full of evil as ever I desired to see.

I have seen a cast of an eye that almost seemed to give a certain quaint charm to a face; but the cast in these eyes that scrutinised me now was of the most diabolic.

My head was beating and thumping like a shipyard with all its riveters, and the pain between my eyes was well-nigh unbearable.

With puckering eyebrows I scrutinised my captor, and as I did so he cried out: "Here you are now, Farrell."

"Right!" came a voice from behind, and the man called Farrell shuffled down on us, a big-boned, heavy-browed man with a three days' stubble on his face which was of a blue colour around the upper lip and on the jaws--and over his right cheek-bone there was an ugly scar of a dirty white showing there amidst the sun-tan.

I thought at first it was a whip he carried in his hand, but suddenly what I took for the thong of the whip wriggled as of its own accord, and addressing himself to it, he said: "None o' your wrigglin', Mr. Rattler, or I 'll give you one flick that 'll crack your backbone."

Then I saw that what he carried was a stick, with a short string at the end of it and in the end of that string was a noose, taut around a rattlesnake's tail, just above the knob of the rattle.

"See what I've bin fishin' for you?" he said, and laughed in an ugly way.

He of the terrible eyes caught me roughly by the shoulders and drew me to a sitting posture, so that I saw where we were--on a rock-strewn ledge of some cliffs, which I supposed to be those we had seen on our left from the valley. But owing to the rise of the ledge toward the front I could not see the lower land, only the far, opposing cliffs, blue and white and yellow, with the fringe of trees a-top. And lying on their bellies at the verge of the shelf on which we were, I then saw two other men, with their rifles beside them, lying like scouts, gazing down intently on the valley.

I had no thought then as to how we came there, where my friends were, nor for any other matter save my own present peril. For before I was well aware, and while yet too feeble to offer any resistance, too dazed to make any protest, I was flung down upon my face in the sand, and then, "Give me a hand here, you two," said Farrell, and the scouts turned and rose, and, one of them clutching me by the back of the neck and thrusting my face down into the sand, I felt a weight gradually crushing upon my back and legs.

"That's him!" said one, and then my neck was freed.

The weight upon my buttocks and legs was nothing else than a great, flat slab of rock. I thought, though it had been lowered gently enough on me, that the heaviness of it would alone be sufficient to crush my bones. Certainly to move below the waist was quite out of the question.

All this I suffered in a dumb, half-here, half-away fashion, my head hammering and my tongue parched in my mouth like a piece of dry wood. But when these four laughed brutally among themselves and began a series of remarks such as: "See and don't give it an inch too short," or, "See that the string's taut or we 'll not get what we want," I came more to my senses and wondered what was to befall me. Then, for the first time, I was addressed directly by Farrell.

"Well, kid," he said, "you 're in a tight corner--you hear me?

"I hear you," said I, speaking with difficulty, so dry was my throat.

"Well," said he, "you can get out of this fix right off by telling us where the Lost Cabin Mine lies. And that's business right off, with no delay."

"I can never do that," said I, "for I don't know myself."

There was a chorus of unbelieving grunts and then: "All right," snapped the voice. "Fact is, we have n't much inclination to loiter here. You 've taken a mighty while to come round, too, as it is--shove it in," he broke off.

But the last words were not for me.

One of the others stepped before me, his foot grazing my head, and I heard him say, "There?"

"No," said another. "That's over close--yes, there. That's the spot."

And then they all stepped back from me, and I, lying with my chin in the dust, saw what the man had been about; for directly before me was the point of the stick, thrust into the ground, with the snake noosed by the tail to it.

No sooner had the man who fixed it in leaped back (and he did so very smartly, while the others laughed at him and caused him to rip out a hideous oath) than the reptile coiled fiercely up the stick; but the hand was gone from the end of it, and down it slithered again.

Then it saw me with its beady eyes, rattled fiercely, again coiled, and--I closed my eyes and drew in my head to the shoulders and wriggled as far to the side as I could.

But something smote me on the chin. I felt my heart in my throat, and thought I to myself, "I am a dead man now"; but before I opened my eyes again I heard another rattle, opened my eyes in quick horror, saw the second leap of the snake toward me, and shrivelled backward again.

"Close shave!" cried one of my tormentors; but this time, after the tap on my chin I felt something moist trickle down upon the point of it, and I thought me that I was close enough to get the poison that it spat, but not close enough to allow of its fangs reaching me.

"But if this stuff should reach my eye it might be fatal," thought I, heedless now of headache or weariness, or anything but the terrible present. My mouth, too, I kept tight closed, as you may guess.

"Will you tell us now, kid?" cried Farrell. "Will you spit it out now?"

Thought I to myself: "I must die now for certain. I trust that even if I knew, I would not reveal this that they ask. But assuredly, to reveal it or to keep it secret is not mine to choose. I must even die."

It came into my head that soon the thin string would, at one of these leaps, cut clean through the snake's tail, and then-- Then it leapt again.

"I do not know!" cried I. "I cannot tell you!"

"Then you can just lie there!" snapped one of the four, and went back to his place of outlook on the ledge. And the other, who had been watching the valley, came and stood by my shoulder, irritating the snake, by his presence, to fresh efforts.

"You 're a fool," he said. "Your partners have deserted you. They 're off. There ain't hide nor hair to be seen of them. If they 'd leave you in a lurch like this, you 're a fool not to let us know the location. We 'll follow 'em up again and take vengeance on 'em for you--see?"

And just then, as though to refute his remarks as to the heedlessness of my partners, I heard a faint snap of a rifle, and the man with the squint, who had taken his turn on guard at the place this fellow had vacated, turned round and said he: "Boys, O boys, I 'm hit!"

Something in the tone of his voice made me glance at him sharply, but with half an eye for the snake, as you may be sure, and my ears alert for its warning rattle. I was never more alert in my life than then, and, strange though it may seem, the predominating thought in my mind was, "How sad, how very sad to leave this world, never to see the rich, rich blue of that sky again!"

But, as I say, the tone of the man's voice breaking in on my thoughts and terrors was peculiar, and, with my head still as low in my shoulders as I could manage to hold it, I laid my cheek to the hot sand and looked at him. He had turned to the man who had been standing by me, but at sound of the shot had dropped to his knees.

"Does it look bad?" said he, drawing his finger across his forehead, where was a tiny mark, and then holding out his hand and looking on it for traces of blood, raising up his face for inspection by the man beside me at the same time, and a question in his eyes, very much as you have seen a child, "Is my face clean, mother?" Yes, and with a very childish voice, too.

"It don't look bad," was the reply--and neither it did.

But when he turned away again to the other sentry who lay further off, repeating his question to him in that simple voice, I saw the back of his head. And his brains were dribbling out behind upon his neck. A terrible weakness filled my heart. I heard him say, with no oath, as one might have expected, but in a soft voice: "Dear me!" and again, "Dear me! How very dark it is getting!"

Which was an awful word to hear with the sun blazing right in his eyes out of the burnished, palpitating sky. And then he put it as a question and still with the note of astonishment: "Dear me, isn't that strange? Is n't it getting very----" and he sank forward on his face; but what followed I do not know. In the terror of my own position I kept all my faculties alert; but at the sight of that man's back and the bloody wound, and at the childish voice of him, the world seemed to wheel. A sickness came on me and I fainted away.

*CHAPTER XII*

_*I Am Held as a Hostage*_

It must have been more of a momentary squeamishness, that, rather than a fainting fit, I think; for I heard myself moan twice, was conscious of the moaning. There seemed something pressing on my heart and forcing me to gasp for breath and relieve the tension on it. A sweat broke on me then, and after that I felt myself, as it were, swinging through space, and with another gasp and a great gulp of air the world spun back again and there I lay, the cold sweat standing on my brow, and the rattlesnake coiling afresh.

"Why! What's this move now?" I heard one of my captors cry. "What's he doin' with his rifle carried and waggling his hand in the air that ways?"

"Don't you know what that is? That's the peace sign--flat of the hand held up, palm open and pushed forward wi' that there kind o' to-and-fro movement."

"Peace sign be durned! If I was sure we could get the information out of this here kid laying behind us, I'd put a bullet through his skull and let out his brains--front of his face or back of his neck like Cockeye there--all the same to me."

"Reckon you 'd be safer not to do that."

"Think the kid here won't speak, then?"

"No; I don't think he'll speak. I've just been figurin' that neither Apache Kid nor Larry might tell him. He's liable to be givin' you straight goods and no lie when he says he don't know the location."

"Pity we did n't drop Apache Kid's hoss that time they charged down. We could ha' got him, instead, that way. Reckon we need n't have been so scared o' killin' Apache Kid himself without gettin' the news. But say! This won't do. I don't like the looks of this thing. They all are getting a move on 'em and edgin' up this way, the whole three of 'em."

"Three of them," thought I, with my eye on the rattler. "That's one short. I wonder who has been killed or disabled."

"Say! Shout to him to stop. Tell him if he wants to pow-wow with us to come up alone."

"Yes, and leave his rifle down. You do the talkin' now, Farrell."

"Right," said Farrell, and then he shouted, "Well, what do you want?"

"I want to come up and talk this out with you," hailed a voice that I recognised for Apache Kid's.

"He can't come up here," said Farrell. "We don't want 'em to know that we 're only a threesome now, same as 'em."

"I 'll tell you what to do," said one of them, with the voice of a man who has been visited by a sudden inspiration.

"Stop there a minute!" cried Farrell, and then turning to the speaker he said sharply: "Spit it out then, Pete; what's your notion?"

"Loosen the kid there," said Pete, "and set him on the front here and hold your gat to his head while we hear what they 've got to palaver."

"Hum!" mused Farrell. "Kind o' hostage notion? Heh? Well, there's something in that," and he stood upright fearlessly and held his hand aloft, the palm facing away to those in the valley.

"You can come up the length o' that there white rock," he cried, and then to his companions: "See! Lend a hand here."

The snake had coiled again. I cannot guess how often it had sprung at me; I do not know. All that I know is that at every fresh rattle I crouched my head into my shoulders and gasped to myself the one word "God"; for we all, I believe, no matter what manner of lives we have led, at the last moment give a cry to the Unknown, in our hearts, if not with our lips. And every leap of the snake I was prepared to find the one that was to make an end of my acquaintance with the sunlight and with the sweet airs that blow about the world.

But that torment was over now, for with one swift drop of his rifle-butt Farrell cut the head clean from the hideous long body, and then lent the other two men a hand to roll the great stone from off my aching limbs.

"Stand up, you son of a whelp," he said, and spurned me with his boot.

After the terror of the snake there seemed little now that I need heed.

"It's easier said than done!" I cried, angry at his words. "I 'm like a block of stone from my waist down."

"I guess that's right. He must be feeling that way," said one of the others, with a touch of commiseration in his voice.

That was the first sign of any heart that I had discovered in the ruffians.

"Oh, you guess it's right, do you, Dan?" sneered Farrell. "Well, lend a hand and haul him here to the front of this ledge."

Next moment it was as if a thousand red-hot needles were being run into my stiff, trailing legs, for they caught me up by my arms and drew me like a sack to the front of the cliff.

And then I saw the whole plateau below us. Apache Kid was half-way up the rise, among the long wire-grass at the verge of the cliffs; further down, leaning upon a rock, his shoulders and head visible, was Larry Donoghue. The third man that had been spoken of I could not see and searched the hillside in vain for; but when Farrell stood upright beside me and waved his hand I saw the half-breed, Charlie, who had come after us with Mr. Pinkerton, rise behind a flat rock and lounge across it, looking up on us with his broad sombrero pushed back on his head.

Mr. Pinkerton, I supposed, had been prevailed upon to return out of our dispute, lest his life might be the forfeit for his interest in our behalf. But just as that explanation for his non-appearance had satisfied me I saw, half across the plain, something moving slowly--a pack of horses it seemed, and so clear was the air of that late afternoon that I recognised the form of the mounted man who guarded them, could almost, with a lengthy and concentrated survey, descry his great beard like a bib upon his breast.

"Well," said Farrell, "what do you want to pow-wow about? You see who we got here?"

"I see," said Apache Kid, putting a foot upon the white stone. "How are you, Francis?"

"He 's all right," said Farrell. "But he 's a kind o' prisoner o' war just now."

"Oh!" said Apache Kid. "Well, I suppose if we want to get him back we 'll have to buy him back?"

"That's what!" said Farrell, emphatically.

"Well," said Apache Kid, "we are going on,--my friends and I,--and, as we have your horses now as well as our own, we thought we might perhaps be able to trade you them back for the lad."

And here, as you will be wondering how the horses had changed hands, I must tell you what I had afterwards explained to me.

It seems that no sooner did I fall from my horse, at the time it put its foot in the badger hole (Apache Kid having gone past wildly, bringing down one man and one horse with his two running shots), than the four men, seeing my predicament, swung to their horses' backs, opened out, and two of them passing, one on either side of me, swung from their saddles and yanked me up by my arms.

Then full tilt they charged down the centre of the plain, intending evidently to make the rising knoll, of which I spoke, in the valley's centre. And with me lying across Farrell's saddle, they doubtless thought they had the key to the Lost Cabin. But Apache Kid wheeled his horse below, and Donoghue mounted again above, and from the hill-crest the half-breed spurred down, and so these three set after us, converging on each other as they came.

But Farrell's mount was falling behind with the burden of my extra weight, and they wheeled sharp to left and put their horses directly to the cliff-front. These ponies can do marvels in climbing, but they were over-jaded, having been very hard ridden, and right on the slope it was evident that not only the half-breed, but Larry next, and Apache Kid following, were coming within effect range. It was Farrell who proposed their move then, considering that with me in their hands half the battle was won if only they had something in the way of a fort from which to stave off attack. So they flung off there, and, letting their horses go, up they came, dragging me along. But at the foot of the hill the others stopped, seeing how they had all the odds against them then and were so fully exposed. For it had not yet occurred to them, as indeed was very natural it should not, that the last thing these men wanted to do was to fire upon them.

The intention of this little company of cut-throats had been to follow up softly in the rear, as near as possible without being seen by us, until we came to our journey's end. What they had planned for us then it is, perhaps, needless to so much as hint. Little did they think that between them and us was Mr. Pinkerton, carrying the news of their possible pursuit. But when they saw him riding out of that plain, with the half-breed, the whole reason for his presence there was guessed by them, especially when they saw us halted within sight, the whole three of us turned round as though already watching for their approach. It was, undoubtedly, this upsetting of their plans that made them so short-tempered and snappish with one another.

But by now I think even Farrell was convinced that I was useless to them in so far as the giving of information went. And so I was now to be used as a hostage,--a sort of living breastwork before them,--as though they were to say: "See! if you fire, you kill your partner!"

Farrell laughed loud at Apache Kid's suggestion.

"Why," said he, "you talk as if you held the trumps; but you don't. And for why? Why, because we do." And he spat in the sand and put a hand on either hip. "We don't need our horses, my mates and me. We ain't in any hurry, and can set here as long as you like,--aye, or go away when we like, for that matter. What we want is that Lost Cabin Mine, and if you don't tell us where it is, why, then we'll let the wind out of your partner here."

"And where do we come in?" yelled Donoghue, rearing up beside his bush.

"Oh!" said Farrell, insolently, "are you talking, too? Well, you don't come in at all. There you are! That's something for you to consider!"

Donoghue broke out in a roar of laughter.

"Oh," he said, "the lad is nothing to us. You can do what you like with him."

Apache Kid turned upon him with a glance as of astonishment, and then again to Farrell he said:

"I 'll give you the offer we came up with, and you and your two mates can consider it."

"Three mates, you mean," snapped Farrell.

"Na! Na!" cried Donoghue. "When I look along a rifle I never err."

"Oh, it was you did it?" cried Farrell. "Well, what's your offer?"

"This is our offer," said Apache Kid. "You can come along with us. We are three, and so are you, and we can split the Lost Cabin between us."

Farrell turned to his two companions and looked a question at them.

"I guess you 'd better take that," said the man Dan, "for I reckon even if we did suggest killing this kid, it would n't bring the facts out of 'em."

"And anyhow," said the other, him they called Pete, speaking low, but yet I caught the drift of his words, "we can easy enough fix them all when we get there."

"Come on!" said Apache Kid. "How does our offer strike you? Are you aware that every hour we delay there may be others getting closer to the Lost Cabin Mine?"

"Take the offer, man. Take the offer," said Pete and Dan.

"All right," cried Farrell. "But mind, we're bad men, and this will have to be run on the square."

Donoghue laughed, and for a moment, as I looked at him, I saw an evil glitter in his eye. "Oh, yes!" he ejaculated, "we 're all bad men here."

My three captors made no delay; but as for their fallen friend, they paid no heed to him. Only Farrell took the cartridges from his belt and ran his hands through the pockets, which contained a knife, a specimen of ore, two five-dollar bills, and a fifty-cent piece.

For my part, I had the utmost difficulty in getting to my legs, and still more in descending the face of the precipice. I noticed, too, that Farrell kept close by my side, as though he thought still that it was as well to have me between Apache Kid and himself.

Just as we came down the rise, there was Mr. Pinkerton leading the horses along toward us.

"Say!" cried Farrell. "What about him?" And he pointed to Pinkerton.

"O!" said Apache Kid. "He wants nothing to do with this expedition whatever."

Then suddenly Farrell's face lighted with a new thought. "And he goes down to the camps and blabs the whole thing, eh?"

"I believe he won't say a word about it,--neither he nor the half-breed here."

Farrell seemed scarcely convinced, and we went down in silence a little way. Then suddenly he said: "I think you 've got some game on. Say! do you swear you are on the square with us?"