The boys ran up the alley, Sidney leading with both the blanket rolls,
and Raymond following a short distance behind. Close after them came
the man who had rushed around the corner of the jail, and who was
evidently doing his best to overtake them.
The boys found that the alley climbed up a steep slope, and they
stumbled up the ascent with breathless haste. The man who pursued
them was shorter, older, and less agile, so, although he was carrying
nothing, and Sidney, at least, was well loaded, the boys managed to
keep ahead. Raymond, however, stepped on a loose stone and floundered
along, barely saving himself, with his hands on the rising ground,
from a complete fall. He felt, rather than saw, that their pursuer was
close upon him. He made up his mind that if it came to a grapple he
would call out to Sidney for help, and run the risk of bringing others
whom they would not want. But with a supreme effort he recovered his
balance in time to save himself from the grasp of the man behind.
Up, up, they struggled until their pounding hearts and panting lungs
nearly suffocated them. The walls continued along the sides with no
change that was perceptible in the darkness, and the boys wondered on
what plan the village could be constructed.
At last Sidney came to the end of the alley and found there was an
opening, a similar narrow passageway, to the left. Around that corner
the alley extended on a level, and having made the turn, Sidney’s road
was much easier. He soon came to a blind wall across the passage, and
groping along its face, in the corner between that wall and the wall of
the alley, he felt a ladder.
Sidney hesitated for a moment, wondering where the ladder could lead,
but as he could find no opening in the wall, and as he could not well
turn back, he went up it. After climbing eight or ten feet he stepped
over the top of the ladder to a level surface that was apparently a
dozen feet or so wide. At the left there seemed to be only space, but
on the right rose a wall in which dimly showed an opening. He stood
and listened. From down in the alley came the noise of Raymond and his
pursuer running. Then for a moment there was a pause in the sound,
followed by a heavy thud, and in another moment the sound of a blow.
Sidney strained his eyes to see into the gloom below, to discover,
if possible, what was happening there. Failing in that he threw his
blankets down on the ground and grasped the ladder to descend, fearing
that harm had come to his brother. As he did so, one person instead of
two came running along the darkness below, and the figure blundered
into the wall at the end.
“Is that you, Ray?” Sidney whispered.
“Yes,” was the reply from below.
“There is a ladder, a little to your left,” he directed.
When Raymond had reached the angle of the alley, the man behind was so
close that he believed he would be overtaken, especially as his breath,
from the violent running uphill, was becoming very short. So he decided
to resort to a trick. After running for a few feet along the level
floor of the alley beyond the turn, he dropped to one knee and turned
to face his pursuer, crouching closely to the ground. The fellow came
on at full tilt and Raymond grasped him by one leg and rose with his
burden. The impetus the man had acquired in running sent him hurtling
through the air and he crashed, head first, against the wall. Stunned
by the blow, he fell in a huddled heap.
Instead of running on after Sidney, as Raymond’s first impulse had been
when his pursuer was placed _hors de combat_, with a sudden thought
he stopped to examine his fallen antagonist. Something in the aspect
of the man as he was flying over Raymond’s head had seemed familiar.
He turned the form over to bring the face upward and, stooping,
peered closely. It was just as he had suddenly suspected, the man
was the English-speaking policeman. That meant that he probably had
a revolver stuck in his belt, and Raymond immediately fumbled under
the man’s coat. Pulling out the gun which he felt there, an instant’s
examination, even in the dark, convinced him that it was indeed a .38
caliber. He wanted to whoop for joy that he once more had a serviceable
weapon to fit the ammunition which they still possessed. It did not
occur to him for a moment that in appropriating the revolver he was
doing practically the same thing that the policeman had attempted when
he coveted their money. The gun was so precisely what they needed that
it only seemed as though a kind fortune had presented it to him.
As Raymond straightened up with the revolver in his hand the prostrate
man raised himself to his elbow. The thick lamb’s wool cap which he
wore, and which is the usual head-covering of men in the Caucasus,
had so protected his head that the shock of being thrown against the
wall had only slightly stunned him. Raymond was confronted with a new
danger. With the man conscious, he would not be able to hide from him
or to escape him in the end, though he might at first outdistance him
in running.
The thought of a possible return to the filthy jail was more than
Raymond could endure; he simply _must_ prevent any danger of that. He
had a savage, momentary impulse to shoot the man as he lay before him,
but he could not bring himself to do that, and, anyway, it would make
too much noise. There was one other way, and clubbing the pistol he
brought it down with full force on the man’s head. The fellow sank back
on the ground without a sound and lay without moving. Raymond sped on
and in a moment came plump against the wall at the end, when Sidney
hailed him, and he climbed the ladder.
“Where is that fellow who was chasing us?” asked Sidney in a whisper,
when his brother appeared at the head of the ladder.
“I tripped him up and he’s down there in the alley,” replied Raymond in
an equally low tone.
“I thought I heard the sound of a blow,” said Sidney.
“You did; I clouted him over the head with his own revolver, and I’ve
got the gun here.”
“I wish you hadn’t done that, Ray.”
“But what _could_ I have done, Sid?--just turn my money over to him and
wait meekly to see if he wanted to kill me?”
“Of course not, but you needn’t have taken his gun.”
“I wasn’t going to lose so good a chance to get a gun, and I simply
_had_ to make him keep quiet till I could get out of the way.”
“Well, I’m glad enough to have you safe here, anyway.”
“What kind of a place is this?” asked Raymond.
“I can’t imagine,” replied his brother. “I thought it might be the roof
of a house when I climbed the ladder, but there seems to be a house of
some sort up here; I think that is a door.”
“Suppose we go and investigate,” suggested Raymond.
“We must be pretty careful if we do; there may be people here.”
The boys proceeded cautiously toward the dim opening in the wall that
rose on their right. The surface over which they walked was smooth,
but had the feel, under their feet, of earth. They paused outside the
doorway and listened intently, but could hear no sound.
“I’m going to strike a match,” said Raymond, “and see what there is
inside.”
“Don’t make a light out here,” remonstrated Sidney; “that would show us
too plainly to any one who might be looking this way. I think it would
be safer to step inside the door. I don’t believe there is any one here
or we should have heard some sound.”
Raymond stepped carefully inside the door and struck a match, holding
it up till the flame burned steadily. When the light shone clear it
revealed a good-sized room that was perfectly bare. The walls were of
rough stone, similar to the walls of the jail, and the floor was of
earth packed hard and smooth. There was no indication that the room had
been occupied, and it certainly was empty enough then.
The match died down and Raymond turned back to the doorway where
Sidney waited. The mystery of their surroundings made both of them
thoughtful,--the strange, narrow alley that climbed the steep hill,
shut in on both sides by walls or buildings, they did not know which;
then the house in whose door they were standing, that was reached, so
far as they knew, only by a ladder, and that was so providentially
unoccupied; the silence that covered the place, too, though to be sure
it was probably after midnight, an hour when a town should be silent,
if ever. All the conditions were weird and mysterious.
The boys stood in the doorway and tried vainly to pierce the darkness
about them. The sky was clear and starlit, but there was no moon, and
the mountains, which seemingly nearly surrounded them, were black and
without form, and shut out most of what light there would otherwise
have been. In front of them was the narrow, level space on which they
had landed when they climbed the ladder, and beyond that fell a slope
which appeared, in the gloom, to be set with knobs. Whether those knobs
were rocks or buildings the boys could not tell. They thought, however,
that they must be buildings, else what had become of the village? Back
of them rose the mountains.
“What do you make of it, Sid?” asked Raymond, still in a whisper, for
they had a sort of feeling that there were people near.
“I can’t make anything of it. If this is a town, and I suppose it must
be, it’s the most curious one I ever heard of. We’ll just have to wait
till daylight, and I hope we shan’t find then that we are in the midst
of a hornet’s nest of savage mountaineers.”
“We’d better go into that room and get some sleep,” said Raymond; “I
begin to feel pretty used up after that run uphill. I should think
you’d be too, with the heavy load you had to carry.”
“Yes, it was a hard stunt. What do you say to pulling the ladder up,
Ray? Then if anybody comes into the alley they can’t get up here
without bringing another ladder.”
“That’s a good idea, Sid. It takes you to make things safe.”
“And it takes you, Ray, to clear the road of undesirables. What do
you think that fellow down in the alley will do when he comes to his
senses? I don’t suppose you really killed him?”
“I’m afraid not, his cap was too thick. I don’t know whether he will
imagine that we came up here, or not.”
“You know when he said there was no other village near, I told him that
we should have to go back to Timour Khan Shoura. I wanted to fool him,
and maybe he’ll think we have started back that way.”
“I hope he will, and chase after us.” While the boys were talking, they
carefully drew the ladder up and laid it down, well back from the
edge. Then they went into the room, opened up their blankets close to
the wall on one side of the door, and in about a minute were both fast
asleep.