CHAPTER XXII.
CLARK JENNINGS GETS A SURPRISE
"Lucky thing for me my pony went lame and I had to drop out," muttered Clark Jennings triumphantly. "I've got a few things I want to say to you, Rob Blake."
"You'd better say them quick, then," rejoined Rob. "I'm not overfond of your conversation."
"Don't try to be fresh, young fellow!" warned Clark, raising his rifle menacingly. "I've got a corrective for back-talk in here."
"But you daren't use it."
"Don't be too sure."
"Well, what do you want to do with me?"
"All you have to do now is to obey, and obey pronto – see? Now march."
"Which way?"
"Toward the mountains."
"Very well." Rob wheeled obediently, and began to march off, but already he had conceived a daring plan, and unexpectedly an opportunity suddenly presented itself to carry it out. As Clark Jennings swung his pony, the animal spied, lying on the bare ground, a gleaming white skull – the relic of some dead and gone steer. With a snort, he gave a wild sidewise leap that almost unseated Clark, practiced rider though he was.
Rob heard the snort and the jump and Clark's sharp exclamation. In a flash his mind was made up. He wheeled like a streak, and bending down, grabbed his rifle. In far less time than it takes to tell it, the muzzle of the weapon was covering Clark Jennings's breast.
"Drop that rifle, Clark!"
The tables were turned with a vengeance now. But Clark Jennings, to do him justice, was no coward. Disregarding Rob's command, he instead raised his own rifle and aimed point blank at the lad. A stinging sensation cut through Rob's right shoulder and his muscles involuntarily contracted. His rifle was an automatic, and the "safety" slide was open. As Clark's bullet penetrated his shoulder, Rob's finger twitched on the light trigger.
Bang!
The bullet ploughed into the flank of Clark's pony. The animal gave a frightened, pained squeal and a terrific buck. Utterly unprepared as Clark was for such a contingency, he was shot through the air over the pony's head, and landed with a crash on the hard ground. His rifle flew out of his hand in the opposite direction, while his pony, which was only slightly wounded, galloped, riderless, off.
"Well, I hope you're satisfied now," growled Clark, raising himself on one elbow and gazing vindictively at Rob, who this time took no chances and kept his enemy covered. Clark, for all he knew, might have a revolver concealed about him.
"I'm not the one to be satisfied," rejoined Rob. "That is for Mr. Harkness to be. I should advise you to tell him the truth."
At that instant the sound of trampling hoofs was heard off to the south. It was the belated band of cow-punchers, headed by Mr. Harkness, sweeping at top speed in the direction of the retreating chase.
"Co-ee-ee!" yelled Rob.
"Who is it?" came back the hail.
"Rob Blake. I want to see you."
"Don't stop us now, Rob," came back Mr. Harkness's voice, "unless it is something serious. We don't want to lose that rascal Jennings."
"If you'll come this way, you can't miss him," called Rob cheerfully.
"Confound you, Rob Blake! I'll get even with you some day for this!" growled Clark, utterly dumfounded by the unexpected arrival of Mr. Harkness. A few seconds later the perhaps equally astonished rancher and his men loped up. A shrill cheer broke from the punchers as they saw the leader of the cattle raiders ingloriously squatted on the ground, nursing a sprained wrist and scowling like a cornered wildcat.
"Well done, Rob," cried Mr. Harkness, as he saw the crestfallen raider. "Here, Blinky, just take a few turns round this fellow with a rope. Joyce," to another of the punchers, "you stay here and guard him. We'll take no chance with so slippery a customer."
The rancher drew out an electric flash torch and illumined the scene. Suddenly his eyes fell on a dark, wet patch on Rob's shoulder.
"Why, boy, you are wounded!" he cried.
"Oh, just a touch. The bullet tore the flesh. It isn't anything," protested Rob.
"What, he fired at you?"
"Yes," Clark answered brutally, "and I'm sorry I didn't kill him!"
An examination of Rob's injury showed that it was only a slight flesh wound, and after it had been wrapped up with a strip of his shirt to keep dirt out till proper remedies could be applied, he mounted Joyce's pony, and the cavalcade swept on once more, leaving the appointed cow-puncher behind to guard Clark Jennings.
"Hullo," exclaimed Mr. Harkness suddenly, as they rode on. "I believe something's happening up ahead."
Indeed, it seemed so. Shouts and yells and imprecations filled the air.
Suddenly a volley of shots sounded, and a sharp cry rang out.
"Good gracious! They're shooting to kill!" cried Rob, dashing forward.
Mr. Harkness and the cow-punchers were close on his heels.
It was a strange scene into the midst of which they rode at top speed. Harry Harkness, Bill Simmons, Jeb Cotton and Frank Price each had their ponies "backed" on their lariats, and at the end of each taut, stretched rope lay a dark object, rolling about and muttering angry imprecations.
Round the group rode the Boy Scouts, yelling at the top of their voices and cheering vociferously. And no wonder. At the end of the different lariats lay four cattle raiders, their clumsy disguises dragged half off, giving a grotesque appearance to them.
The captives were examined one by one, and found to be Hank Handcraft, Bill Bender, Jess Randell and old man Jennings. None of them would say a word except profanity, and so they were each tied and left, while the cow-punchers and victorious Boy Scouts set out to round up the crazed mavericks. The steers had now scattered in every direction, and getting them into a bunch was no slight job. Of the rest of the cattle raiders no trace could be found. It was learned afterward that they had galloped off when the Boy Scouts roped their leaders, and they made good their escape later across the border. The Boy Scouts, however, had not escaped lightly. Several of them had minor wounds, none serious, where the bullets of the cowardly raiders had struck them. It took a good hour or more to round up the cattle and quiet them, and then a sort of general inspection was made of the ranch forces. This resulted in a startling discovery. No Tubby Hopkins was to be found.
"Who saw him last?" asked Rob.
"I did," said Jeb Cotton. "He was riding off after a tall fake Indian."
"Any one see him since?"
No, nobody had.
At this moment, while things looked grave, there came a sudden yell, off in the distance. A few minutes later Tubby's rotund form appeared. To the boys' amazement, the fat boy led behind him a mounted figure, bound up like a valuable parcel, with fold on fold of rawhide.
"Why, Tubby, wherever have you been?" demanded Rob.
"On special duty," announced the fat boy importantly. "I have made a prisoner of war."
"What! Why, how?" gasped Merritt.
"Who is it?" shouted Merritt, edging round to get a look at the muffled prisoner.
Mr. Harkness turned his searchlight in the captive's face. In vain the fellow tried to bury his features in the folds of his blanket. His attempts at concealment were useless. A shout of amazement went up as Rob and Merritt recognized the face of Tubby's captive.
It was Jack Curtiss!
Arriving unexpectedly at the Jennings ranch that evening, he had been persuaded to take part in the raid. Knowing little about riding, the former bully of Hampton Academy had boastfully declared he would outride any of the raiders. He had been accommodated with a pony and had taken part in the onslaught which had had such an unexpected conclusion. Tubby, carried away by excitement, had chased the huddled figure, little knowing whom the blanket shrouded. Suddenly Jack Curtiss's pony stumbled, throwing the bully headlong. Tubby had immediately pressed his rifle to the fallen figure's head with the curt command:
"Shut up!"
As soon as his astonished eyes had recognized Jack Curtiss, he saw a fine chance to redeem himself as a hero in the eyes of the Boy Scouts. Tricing Jack up with his lariat, he had led him back in triumph to the rest.
"Hooray, Tubby, I didn't think you had it in you!" cried Merritt, clapping the fat boy on the back.
"Hum! I don't show all my good qualities at once," remarked Tubby, grandiloquently strutting about.
"I wonder what you'd have done if it had been a real Indian?" laughed Harry Harkness.
"Just the same – just the same," rejoined Tubby.
A roar of laughter greeted the stout youth's complacent remark, but it was suddenly checked as a horseman came dashing up to the party.
"Hullo, what's up now?" exclaimed Mr. Harkness amazedly, as the rider drew rein almost at his feet.
"It's an Indian!" exclaimed Merritt.
"Another fake," declared Tubby sagely.
But this time it was a real Indian, and he drew Mr. Harkness aside and spoke some rapid words. The rancher's face showed traces of great excitement, although his voice was calm enough as he turned to the interested group, after some moments of conversation with the red man.
"Ray and Sumner, you join Joyce back there and take these prisoners to the ranch, and see that they are kept under strong guard," he ordered.
"What! Aren't we going back?" inquired Rob.
"No, my boy. I have grave news. The Moquis have rebelled against Black Cloud's authority, and Mr. Mayberry is a prisoner in their camp."
"Is he in danger?"
"He is in the gravest peril. Only prompt action can save his life. Such is the message Black Cloud gave this Indian to bring to me."
A few moments later Rob, mounted on a pony previously ridden by old man Jennings, a tough, wiry little cayuse, was riding beside Mr. Harkness, listening eagerly to the details of his kind-hearted friend's predicament. Behind them spurred the Boy Scouts and the few cow-punchers remaining after a guard had been detailed. Minutes counted, as they well knew, and no rider in the party spared his pony as they pressed rapidly forward, under the Indian's guidance, for the valley of the snake dance.
CHAPTER XXIII.
WORSHIPPERS OF THE SNAKE
About a deep pit, filled to the brim with red-hot, glowing coals, swayed a long line of naked, copper-colored bodies. The glow of the flaming torches illuminated weirdly the surroundings. Steep, rocky walls, bare of timber or vegetation, and the flat, basin-like floor of the deep depression in the mountains formed the secret valley of the Moqui snake dancers.
In lines behind the braves, who were swaying their lithe bodies so rhythmically above the red-hot pit, were grouped scores of stolid-faced Indians. By not the twitch of a single muscle did they display the frenzy that was already at work within them, but their beady, dark eyes glittered as they watched the weird gyrations of the swaying line above the fire.
All at once a low chant arose from the line. Its regular rhythm and booming inflection marked it as being of religious character. Steadily it grew in volume, till half the Indians in that rock-bound basin in the hills were intoning it.
As the line of chief chanters swayed back and forth, from time to time the firelight gleamed on a row of earthen vessels, quaintly illuminated, which stood behind them.
Suddenly one of the dancers turned, and while the shrieks of his fellows grew more and more frenzied, he plunged his hand into the mouth of one of the vessels. He drew his arm forth again, embellished by a hideous ornament – a writhing, struggling diamond-back rattler!
The creature's flat head darted at the man's face, and its fangs seemed to bury themselves in his arm, but his bronze form danced more furiously than ever, and the singing grew louder and more frenzied. The Moqui had reached a pitch of exaltation in which the venom of the serpent was harmless to him.
As the other Indians witnessed the sight their expression of stoicism changed as if by magic. The excitement of the dance was upon them. Suddenly a blood-curdling yell echoed against the rock-bound walls.
A young brave, one of those who had been seated in the front row of the onlookers, sprang to his feet. He cast off his blanket with a shout, standing upright in the firelight, a nude figure of bronze. The play of his muscles showed plain as day in the glare of the glowing pit. Straight up to the earthen jars he gyrated, chanting the refrain of the weird ritual.
Uttering a wild screech, he plunged his arm up to the elbow into its wriggling, deadly contents, and drew forth a vicious-looking sidewinder, or desert rattlesnake – a distinct species from the big diamond-back – and even more deadly.
Without the slightest hesitation, he thrust the monster's spade-shaped head into his mouth, and with one clean bite severed it. He then spat it forth into the glowing pit, where it fell hissing.
This was the signal for yet wilder frenzies on the part of the Indians. One after another the young braves cast off their blankets and rushed forward to repeat the nauseous performance of the snake eater. The ground at the feet of the chanters of the ritual was littered with limp reptiles' bodies. An overpowering, musky stench arose on the air, the odor of scores of burnt envenomed heads.
In the midst of that maddened throng there was but one quiet, unmoved countenance, and that was that of a bearded man, who stood back some distance in the shadows. He eyed the ceremonies with a look that was half contempt and half pity. But he made no motion to interfere, nor did he, in fact, move at all. And for a very good reason. He was bound hand and foot to a post.
His face was white as ashes under its deep bronze, but not from fear, for not a tremor crossed his features. Perhaps a deep wound on the back of his head accounted for it. But Jeffries Mayberry – for our readers must have already recognized the Indian agent – never knew less fear than he experienced as he stood at that moment, captive among a dangerous tribe, rendered doubly formidable as they were by copious doses of cheap liquor and religious frenzy. The Indian agent knew well that the rattlers which the young braves were beheading were far less harmful than the human beings, of whom he was, perhaps, the only self-possessed one in that rocky bowl.
But if Jeffries Mayberry gazed on the ceremonies with contempt, mingled with pity, there was another in the valley who regarded them with almost similar feelings. That person was Black Cloud. The old chieftain had made as stiff a fight as he dared for Jeffries Mayberry's liberation, but had been hooted and jeered down. Diamond Snake was now in full control of the passions and adulation of the tribe, and Black Cloud, the only friend Jeffries Mayberry had within it, at that moment gazed powerlessly on the snake dance. One friendly turn, however, he had been able to do for his white friend, and that was to dispatch the messenger to the ranch of Mr. Harkness. But as Black Cloud, not daring to raise a voice of protest, gazed on the dance, his mind was busy with intense speculation. Even in the event of Mr. Harkness having been reached, it was doubtful if the rancher would arrive in time. The old Indian recognized the symptoms of an approaching climax in the ceremonies, and what that climax was to be he guessed only too well. No white man had ever seen the snake dance of the Moquis and lived to tell of it, if his presence were known. That Jeffries Mayberry was to share the fate of many another unfortunate victim in the tribe's past history, was what Black Cloud feared. That his fears were well grounded we shall presently see.
Suddenly the frenzy died down with the same rapidity with which it had arisen. Above the rim of the rocky basin the silvery edge of the new moon had shown. The height of the excitement was at hand.
Diamond Snake stepped forward from his place in the row of chanters and began to address the tribe in a high, not unmusical voice. As Jeffries Mayberry gazed at his almost faultless form, gleaming like polished bronze in the glare of the fiery pit, he realized what an influence this fine-looking, fiery young Indian must sway among his people. His talk was listened to with deep attention, and seemed to be impassioned and fervid to the last degree.
Although Diamond Snake spoke fast in his excitement, the Indian agent managed to pick out enough of the sense here and there to make out that, as he had suspected, he himself was the subject of the chief's address.
Had he been in any doubt of this, his uncertainty would soon have been dissipated, for all at once every eye in that assemblage was turned on him with a baleful, malignant glare. If Jeffries Mayberry had ever felt one ray of hope, it died out of even his brave heart in that instant.
"Well, I guess Indians are all they say they are, after all," he thought to himself. "Just to think that, after all I've done for those rascals, they've no more gratitude for me than that! Go on, stare away!"
Jeffries Mayberry fairly shouted these last words.
"I wish, though," he continued to himself, while the young chief's voice went on addressing his people, "I wish, though, that they'd turned Ranger loose. I kind of hate to think of him ever being an Indian's horse, for of all maltreaters of horse flesh, they are the worst."
He turned his head – the only portion of his body which was free to move – and gazed back into the shadows where he knew Ranger was tied. For hours after his capture the splendid horse had fretted and raged, but now he had grown quiet.
"Poor old fellow, they've broken his spirit!" thought Jeffries Mayberry. Which goes to show – in the light of what was to come – that a man can get "pretty close," as the saying is, to a horse and yet not know him.
Mayberry could not forbear winking back a little moisture that arose in his eyes as he saw the well-known form of his horse dimly outlined in the darkness behind him. Ranger's head was abjectly hanging down. His whole attitude spoke dejection. As Jeffries Mayberry had said, the horse indeed seemed to be spirit-broken.
All at once, while Mayberry's mind was busy with these thoughts, the young chief ceased his oratory, and the moment for action appeared at last to have arrived. With a concerted yell, the band of naked warriors who had chanted the solemn ritual of the snake dance rushed at the Indian agent. Even in that trying moment he did not flinch. He gazed at them unmoved, as they cast him loose from the post, and then instantly rebound his hands. His legs, however, they left free.
Strange to say, the dominant feeling in Jeffries Mayberry's mind at that moment was one of curiosity. He wondered what they were going to do with him. For one instant a shudder passed through his frame. The fiery pit! Could they mean to thrust him into that?
Such, however, was evidently not their intention, for they led him round to the farther side of the glowing coals, past the rows of seated Indians and squaws, who growled and spat at him as he passed.
"You ungrateful bunch of dogs!" shouted Mayberry, fairly stung into speech. "I hope after I'm gone you'll get what is coming to you!"
If only the soldiers would come, he thought; but realized that without him to guide them it would take the troopers hours, perhaps days, to find the secret valley. No, there was no hope from that quarter. It should be explained here that, although Mr. Mayberry knew about the Indian messenger, he had little faith in the ultimate arrival of Mr. Harkness and the Boy Scouts. They might come, but it would be too late. However, any one would judge Jeffries Mayberry's character very much awry who should conclude that there was any bitterness in his soul. He accepted his fate as a brave man should, without complaint.
"Now what are they going to do?" he thought, as the young braves, having led him past the hissing, spitting ranks of the squaws, arraigned him close to the edge of the pit, which now lay between him and the crowd of cruel faces beyond. His eyes pierced the darkness keenly, but the glare thrown up at his feet prevented him seeing whether or not Ranger still occupied his same position.
Jeffries Mayberry was not to be left long in doubt as to what his fate was to be. A shudder ran through even his strong soul as he saw what the inhuman ingenuity of the Moquis had contrived for his execution.
His legs, which had remained free, were rapidly bound, and he was forcibly thrown upon his face. As he measured his length, the chanting began once more, and the hand of Diamond Snake himself dived into the biggest of the earthen snake jars. He withdrew it, clasping the largest rattler that Jeffries Mayberry had ever seen, – an immense creature of the diamond-back species, fully eight feet long.
As Mayberry's eyes encountered the leaden glint of the deadly rattler's dull orbs, he felt that this was the beginning of the end.