SKY BRIDGE
At the end of their next day's journey the Trail began to swing away
from the jungle, and thereafter led ever upward, skirting the foot-hills
of the mountain-ranges beyond which lay the lost cities of the Incas.
Three days after Will's escape from the pit he found himself once more
in terrible danger. During the siesta period at noon he had walked away
from the rest of the party to see what new birds he might find. Not far
from the camping-spot he came to a place where a colony of crested
black-and-gold orioles had built long, hanging nests of moss and fiber
among the branches of a low tree.
Curious to see whether their eggs looked like the scrawled and spotted
ones of the Northern orioles, Will started to climb the tree. Before he
was half-way to the nests, a cloud of clamoring birds were flying around
his head, and as he looked up he noticed for the first time, directly
above him, a great gray wasps' nest. Even as he looked, one of the
circling birds brushed against it, and a cloud of enormous red wasps
poured out. They paid no attention whatever to the birds, but flew down
toward Will, who was already scrambling out of the tree at full speed.
Even as he reached the ground, two of the wasps settled on his bare arm,
and instantly he felt as if he had been stabbed by red-hot daggers.
Never in his life had the boy known such agony. Trembling with pain, he
brushed the fierce insects off and rushed at top speed toward the camp.
In spite of the heat, a racking chill seized him as he ran. His teeth
chattered together and waves of nausea seemed to run over his whole
body, dimming his eyes and making his head swim He just managed to reach
the rest of the party when he staggered and fell.
"I've been stung by some big red hornets," he murmured, and dropped
back unconscious.
"It's the maribundi wasp," said Professor Ditson, looking very grave as
he helped Hen undress the boy and sponge his tortured body with cold
water. "Three of their stings have been known to kill a man."
By evening Will was delirious. All night long Hen and the scientist
worked over him, and by the next day he was out of danger, although
still in great pain and very weak. It was several days before he could
walk, and then only with the greatest difficulty. At first every step
was an agony; but Professor Ditson assured him that regular exercise was
the best way to free his system from the effect of the maribundi venom.
Once again death which had dogged the adventurers' trail for so long
peered out at them. They had finished the first stage of their day's
walk, and Will was lying white and sick under a tree, trying to gain
strength enough to go on. Ahead of them stretched a wide river, with a
ford showing, down to which the Trail led. Suddenly from the depths of
the near-by jungle came a horrid scream, followed by a chorus of baying
notes something between the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf. As
the travelers sprang to their feet, a shower of blood-red arrows, with
saw-edged points and barbs fashioned from flinty strips of palm-wood,
dropped all around them. Again the wailing, terrible cry broke the
silence.
"It's the jaguar-scream--the war-cry of the Miranhas," said Professor
Ditson quietly. "They are on our trail with one of their packs of wild
dogs."
Even as he spoke, from the forest far below them a band of Indians broke
into the open. Ahead of them raced a pack of tawny brown dogs nearly as
large as the timber-wolves of the North.
Hen unsheathed his great machete, while Jud fumbled with the holster of
his automatic.
"No! no!" said Professor Ditson sharply. "We can stand them off better
across the river. Hurry!"
Without a word, Hen picked up Will's limp body and raced ahead of the
others around a bend in the trail which hid them all for a moment from
the sight of their pursuers. At the river the scientist suddenly halted,
after a long look at the rapids which ran deep and swift on each side of
the ford.
"Don't splash as you go through," he said quietly. "I'll come last."
One by one, the little party, headed by Hen with Will in his arms,
waded carefully through the shallow water. As they went Jud thought that
he caught glimpses in the river of the squat, fierce forms of the
dreaded piranhas, but if they were there they paid no attention to the
men, who crossed with the utmost care. Just as Professor Ditson, the
last of the party to leave the bank, stepped into the stream, there
sounded with startling distinctness the same wild chorus which had come
from the jungle. Once or twice in a life-time a hunter in South American
forests hears the fearsome screech which a jaguar gives when it is
fighting for its life or its mate. It was this never-to-be-forgotten
sound which the Miranhas had adopted for their war-cry.
Down the slope not three hundred yards away came the hunting pack. Right
behind them, running nearly as fast as they, raced a band of some fifty
Miranhas warriors. As the fugitives looked back it was not the nearness
of the wild-beast pack nor the fierce band of Indian warriors rushing
down upon them which struck the color from the faces of Will and Joe. It
was the towering figure of a man with a black bar of joined eyebrows
across his forehead and a scar on his cheek which twisted his face into
a fixed, malignant grin.
"Scar Dawson!" muttered Will.
"Scar Dawson!" echoed Joe, despairingly.
As they spoke the outlaw seemed to recognize them too, for he waved
aloft a Miranha bow which he carried, and shouted hoarsely. By the time
they reached the other bank, Will lay half-fainting in Hen's arms.
"Fellows," he whispered, "I'm all in. Hide me in the bushes here, and
you go on. There's no sense in all of you sacrificing yourselves for
me."
"We stay," murmured Joe, while Hen nodded his head and Pinto fitted one
of his fatal little arrows into his blow-gun.
"Sure, we'll stay," chimed in Jud, unslinging his automatic, "an'
there's seven Injuns who'll stay too unless I've forgotten how to shoot.
But what in the world's the perfesser doin'?" he went on, peering out
over the river.
Unheeding the tumult of howls and screeches behind him, or the rush of
the fierce hounds and fiercer men toward him, the eminent scientist was
picking his way carefully through the ford. At the middle of the river,
where the water ran deepest, he rolled up his left sleeve, and with his
hunting-knife unconcernedly made a shallow gash through the skin of his
lean, muscular forearm. As the blood followed the blade he let it drip
into the running water, moving forward at the same time with long, swift
strides. Almost in a moment the river below the ford began to bubble and
boil with the same rush of the fatal hordes which had so horrified Jud
and Will at the Lake of the Man-eaters. As Professor Ditson sprang from
the water to the edge of the farther bank, the water clear across the
river seemed alive with piranhas. Unmoved, he turned to the rest of the
party.
"That ford is locked," he said precisely. "For three hours it can not be
crossed by man or beast."
Even as he spoke, the wild-dog pack splashed into the river. As they
reached the deeper water and began to swim, the flash of hundreds of
yellow-and-white fish showed ahead of them. In an instant the water
bubbled like a caldron gleaming with myriads of razor-edged teeth. There
was a chorus of dreadful howls as, one by one, the fierce dogs of the
jungle sank below the surface, stripped skeletons almost before their
bodies reached the bottom of the river. From the farther bank came a
chorus of wailing cries as the war-party watched the fate of their
man-hunting pack. Then, as if at some signal, the whole band threw
themselves on their backs on the ground. Only the towering figure of the
giant outlaw remained erect.
"What's happened to those chaps?" queried Jud, much perplexed. "I've
been with Injuns nigh on to forty year, but I never see a war-party act
that way."
As he spoke, Professor Ditson reached the summit of the slope where the
rest of the party were standing, and saw the prostrate band on the other
side of the river.
"Hurry out of here!" he said sharply, racing around a bend in the trail,
followed by the others.
Their retreat was none too soon. Even as they started, each of the men
of their far-away pursuers braced both his feet expertly against the
inside horn of his bow, and fitting a five-foot arrow on the string,
pulled with all the leverage of arms and legs combined, until each arrow
was drawn nearly to its barbed point. There was a deep, vibrating twang
that could be heard clearly across the river, and into the sky shot a
flight of roving shafts. Up and up they went until they disappeared from
sight, only to come whizzing down again from a seemingly empty sky, with
such force and accuracy that they buried themselves deep into the ground
just where the fugitives had been a minute before.
Jud, who had lingered behind the others, had a narrow escape from being
struck by one of the long shafts.
"We'd have all looked like porcupines if we'd stayed there thirty
seconds longer," he remarked to Joe, as he joined the rest of the party.
"Them Miranhas are sure the dandy shots with a bow."
"Huh!" returned Joe jealously, "that nothing. My uncle out in Akotan,
where I come from, he kill a man with an arrow half a mile away, and no
use his feet either."
"That uncle of yours was some performer with a bow," returned Jud
cautiously. "Half a mile is good shootin' even with a rifle."
"Some performer is right," chimed in Will weakly. "I learned long ago,
when Joe and I were up by Wizard Pond, that that uncle of his held a
world record in everything."
"Set me down, Hen," he went on. "I think I can do a mile or so on my own
legs."
"From here on Pinto and I have been over this route," announced
Professor Ditson. "Ten miles farther on is 'Sky Bridge.' If we can cross
that and cut it behind us, we're safe."
Two by two, the members of the party took turns in helping Will along
the Trail, which soon widened into a stone-paved road.
"This is one of the Inca highways," explained the scientist. "It leads
from their first city clear to the edge of the jungle. Once," he went
on, "the Incas ruled an empire of over a million square miles, equal to
the whole United States east of the Mississippi River; but they never
were able to conquer the jungle."
The road sloped up more and more steeply, and the going became
increasingly difficult, but Professor Ditson hurried them on
remorselessly.
"The Miranhas never give up a chase," he said, "and if they have
succeeded in crossing the river above or below the ford, they may even
now be hard on our heels."
Before long they were in a wilderness of bare, stern peaks whose
snow-covered summits towered high against the horizon. At times the road
zigzagged along narrow shelves cut in the faces of precipices and
guarded here and there by low retaining-walls built of cut stones laid
without mortar, but so perfectly that the blade of a knife could not be
thrust between them. The air became colder, and the scientist told them
that often the temperature in these mountain-valleys would vary as much
as one hundred degrees within twenty-four hours.
As they approached the crest of a great ridge which towered above them,
Jud began to find great difficulty in breathing and complained of nausea
and a feeling of suffocation.
"It's the _soroche_, the mountain-sickness," explained Professor Ditson.
"It will pass soon."
"I'm the one that's goin' to pass--pass out," panted Jud.
Soon he became so exhausted that, like Will, he had to be half-carried
along the trail.
"You an' me are a fine pair to fight Injuns," he whispered to the boy,
who smiled wanly in reply.
Beyond the ridge the road ran downward toward a vast gorge. From its
dark depths rose and fell at intervals the hoarse, roaring bellow of a
river rushing among the rocks a thousand feet below.
"It is Apurinac, the Great Speaker," said Pinto.
As the trail led downward again, Jud began to feel better, and before
long he was able to walk without any help.
At length, far below them, looking like a white thread against the
threatening blackness of the cañon, they saw swinging in the wind a rude
suspension bridge of the kind which travelers had used in these
mountains ever since the days of the Incas. When Pinto, who knew the
bridge well, learned that Professor Ditson intended to cross it at once,
he was much disturbed.
"No one, Master," he protested, "ever crosses it except at dawn before
the wind comes up; nor should more than one at a time pass over it."
"To-day," returned the scientist grimly, "you are going to see six men
cross this bridge in the middle of the afternoon, wind or no wind; and
what's more, they are all going to cross together." And he waved his
hand toward the road along which they had come.
Against the white side of the mountain which the trail skirted showed a
series of moving black dots, while down the wind, faint and far away,
came the tiger-scream of the Miranhas. They had found a way across the
river, and once more were hard on the heels of the treasure-hunters.
Along the Inca road the little party hurried at breakneck speed. At one
place it ran between a vertical wall of rock and a dizzy precipice.
Farther on it led down by rude stairs partly cut in the rock and partly
built out of stones. At one point it made a sudden turn with a low
parapet built around it in a semicircle to keep descending travelers
from slipping off into the depths below from their own momentum. Once
beyond this last danger-point, the fugitives found themselves before Sky
Bridge itself.
So deep was the cañon that from the river a thousand feet below the
bridge seemed on a level with the clouds and to deserve well its name.
It was made of two thick cables, woven out of braided withes, which
stretched nearly a hundred yards from bank to bank of the gorge. Between
and below these ran several smaller cables, fastened to the upper two,
which served as guard-rails. Sections of cane and bamboo laid
transversely across the three lower cables, and tied on by strips of
rawhide, formed the flooring, which swung four or five feet below the
upper cables.
From far below came the stern roar of the Speaker, and at the bottom of
the sunless gulf gleamed the white foam of the river as it raged against
masses of rent and splintered stone. Over the abyss the bridge waved
back and forth in the gusts which all day long swept through the gorge.
At times, when the frail structure caught the full force of the wind, it
swung fully ten feet out beyond its center, hung a second, and then
dropped back with a jar that threatened to snap the cables or hurl into
the abyss any human being who was crossing the bridge.
Not for all the treasure of the Incas would any one of the party have
risked the crossing. The fear of death, however, is a great incentive to
brave deeds.
"I'll go first," said Professor Ditson suddenly, "and see if it is
possible to get over. Unless we cross this bridge within the next
fifteen minutes, we're all dead men."
[Illustration: It showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, the
second largest bird that flies]
Without further speaking, the scientist stepped out upon the swaying
bridge and gripped the twisted cables firmly fixed in buttresses of
stone. At first he shuffled along with short, cautious steps. In front
of him the footway of bamboo strips sloped away sharply clear down to
the swaying center of the bridge. From far below, up through the mists
which half hid the river, soared a bird the size of a pigeon. As it
circled up through a thousand feet of space, it seemed to grow and grow
until, by the time it reached the level of the bridge, rocking on mighty
motionless wings, it showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, the
second largest bird that flies. From its grim, naked head its cold eyes
gazed evilly upon the man clinging to the swaying bridge, and then
turned toward the little group huddled against the side of the
precipice, as if counting them as additions to its larder of death. As
the great vulture swept by, blotting out a stretch of sky as it passed,
the wind hissed and sang through the quills of its enormous wings, taut
and stiff as steel. Rocking, swaying, perfectly balanced in the rush of
air that howled down the cañon, the bird circled over the bridge, and
then, without a flap of its vast wings, dipped down into the depths
below until, dwindling as it went, it disappeared in the spray of the
prisoned river. To the travelers, no other sight could so have plumbed
the depths that lay beneath the bridge. For a moment the scientist, sick
and giddy, clung to the swaying cables which seemed to stretch tenuous
as cobwebs across the sheer blackness of the abyss.
"Come back, Master," called Pinto. "No man can cross that bridge!"
"No man here will live who doesn't cross this bridge," returned the
professor, as the wind brought again to their ears the war-cry of the
Miranhas.
Bending double and clinging desperately to the ropes woven from tough
maguey fiber, he edged his way down the swaying slope, while the others
watched him as if fascinated. At times the full force of the wind as it
was sucked through the long cañon swung the bridge out so far that he
had to lie flat and cling for his very life's sake. When, at last, he
reached the lowest part of the curve, instead of climbing up to the
safety of the opposite shore, the scientist deliberately turned around
and, taking advantage of every lull and pause in the sudden gusts which
bore down upon him, began the long steep, slippery climb back to the
point from which he had started.
"He's riskin' his life twice to show us the way," said old Jud,
suddenly. "Come on! I'm more ashamed to stay than I'm scared to cross."
Foot by foot, clinging desperately to the sagging, straining cables,
Professor Ditson fought his way back. When at last he regained the
safety of the cliff-side, his face was white and drawn, and he was
dripping with sweat, while his hands were bleeding from the chafing of
the ropes; but there was a compelling gleam in his eyes, and his voice,
when he spoke, was as precise and level as ever.
"I have proved that it is perfectly possible to go over this bridge in
safety, and I believe that the cables are strong enough to hold the
weight of us all," he said. "I will go first; Hen will go last. Don't
look down. Hang on. Watch the man ahead, keep on going, and we'll get
over--just in time."
He stretched his gaunt arm toward the trail, where now the Miranha band
was in plain sight not half a mile away!
Again he turned and started out over the bridge, which swayed and swung
above the death that roared far below. Without a word, but with teeth
clinched grimly, Jud tottered after him, his long gray beard blowing in
the wind. Next came Pinto, shaking with fright, but with a habit of
obedience to his master stronger than his own conviction that he was
going to his doom. Joe followed; and between him and Hen, who brought up
the rear, was Will. As the full force of the wind struck the swinging
structure, now loaded with their united weight, the taut cables and
ropes creaked and groaned ominously, while now and again some weakened
fiber would snap with a sudden report like a pistol-shot.
Down and down the first terrible incline crept the little train of
desperate men. There were times when the bridge would swing so far out
that only by clinging and clawing desperately at the guard-rope could
the travelers keep from being tipped into the depths below. When that
happened, each would grip the one next to him and, with linked arms and
legs, they would make a human chain which gave and swung and held like
the bridge itself. At last they reached the low-swung center of the
bridge, and caught the full force of the wind, which howled down the
gorge like a wolf. For a long minute they lay flat on their faces as the
bridge swung forth and back like a pendulum.
As the gust passed, they heard close at hand the tiger-screech of the
Miranhas rushing at headlong speed down the trail as they saw their prey
once again escaping. Up the farther slope, crouching low and gripping
desperately with twining hands and feet, the fugitives pressed on foot
by foot. At the worst places Will felt Hen's mighty arms holding him
tight to the swinging ropes, while from ahead Joe risked his life time
and again to stretch out a helping hand to his friend.
By inches, by feet, by yards, they wormed their way up, until Professor
Ditson was able to get a firm foothold on the side of the cliff, where a
narrow path had been cut in the living rock. Even as he struggled to his
feet, the war-party dashed around the sharp curve that led to the
entrance of the bridge.
With all their courage and relentless vindictiveness, the Miranha band
yet hesitated to cross where the white men had gone. As Jud and Pinto
joined Professor Ditson on the little platform of rock which towered
above the cañon, they saw their pursuers actually turn their heads away
from the deep that opened at their feet, after one glance along the
narrow swaying bridge by which alone it could be crossed. Then, with a
fierce yell, they dropped their bows and, whipping out long,
narrow-bladed knives from their belts, fell like furies upon the tough
woven cables anchored among the rocks. It was Jud who first realized
that they were trying to cut the bridge.
"Hurry for your life!" he called down to Joe, who, holding on to Will
with one hand, was slowly hauling himself up the last few feet of the
steep ascent. Even as he spoke, the taut cables began to quiver and sing
like violin-strings transmitting with fatal clearness every cut and
slash and chop of the destroyers at the other end. Will was
half-fainting with the strain of the crossing, which his weakened body
was not fitted to endure long. Jud's shout seemed to pierce the mist of
unconsciousness which was slowly closing over his head, and he struggled
upward with all his might.
In another minute Joe was near enough to be reached by the party on the
landing, and three pairs of sinewy arms gripped him and pulled him
upward, clinging to Will as he rose. Below him, Hen, bracing both feet,
heaved the boy upward with the full force of his mighty arms. Just as
Will reached the refuge of the cliff, with an ominous snapping noise the
bridge began to sag and drop. Hen gave a desperate spring and wound one
arm around a little pinnacle of rock which stood as a hawser-post for
one of the cables, while Pinto and Joe gripped his other arm in mid-air,
and pulled him to safety just as the far end of the bridge swished
through the air under the knife-strokes of the Indians!
As, doubled by its drop, the full weight of the structure fell upon the
strained cables, they snapped like threads and cables, ropes and footway
rushed down into the abyss with a hissing roar which died away in the
dim depths a thousand feet below.