NO WAY OUT?
While Cliff went to call Tom, Huayca, not too far away up the cleft,
slipped closer and when he saw Cliff disappear into the gloomy ruin he
whipped across the grass and into hiding at the ruins themselves.
He was within the guarded zone, therefore, when Tom took up his vigil.
But Cliff’s move to the ledge surprised Huayca. Also, it annoyed him: it
might disrupt his plans. He counted on a surprise. He desired to remain
silent until dawn, while men from the settlement crept up the pass. At
dawn his plan was to shout and begin firing arrows into the camp. Then
they would rush for the ladder and so plunge down into the arms of the
men who would then be waiting in the pass.
But Cliff, as Huayca could tell when he crept close, flat on his
stomach—Cliff was watching something. Perhaps one of the men had a
light—down in the pass!
As Cliff turned, alarmed by whatever he saw, Huayca, a panther in
quickness and a shadow in the gloom, leaped!
He got a hand over Cliff’s mouth.
Then Tom came running, there was the shot. Huayca tried to fling Cliff
away, to escape and hide; but Cliff, too, had determination. He clung to
his assailant!
Then, at the shot, there rose from the pass the angry, ominous roar of
many voices.
The Andes growled over their prey!
Everybody was awake on the higher level. They all came running, Tom
first. He caught Huayca in a tackle that helped to upset both struggling
adversaries; but, striking sideways, he sent them to the turf with Cliff
uppermost. Nicky piled on, then, and there was no chance of Huayca
rising right away, squirm though he might.
Bill, when he came pelting, wasted no time: he saw the gleam of bright
steel, for Huayca’s knife came from Spain. Bill saw that it was no time
for niceness. He kicked Huayca’s wrist and with his screech of a wounded
leopard Huayca’s wrist became limp; Bill snatched the weapon from the
ground.
Mr. Whitley was there by that time. It took very little longer to trice
up Huayca, a snarling, defeated Indian.
They peered over the ledge cautiously, but there was nothing to see: the
pass was like a deep well, jet black, impenetrable. They dragged Huayca
back to the hut, tried to force from him the secret of the pass, but he
would not speak. Bill hinted at some methods a little more forceful but
both Mr. Gray and Mr. Whitley demurred. Dawn would soon be upon them:
they were all wide awake, and, dividing into two groups, one with Bill’s
rifle, the other with two revolvers, each led by the older men, they
watched at the cleft and near the ledge.
Beneath them those on the ledge could hear mutterings and growls, as of
angered animals.
“It sounds as though there were lions down there,” said Nicky.
“What puzzles me about the affair, tonight, is: How could Huayca get
past us and go down the pass?” Cliff said. “Or—if those people down
there are from Quichaka—how they got past us.”
It was dawn before they discovered the reality.
Then Bill, looking carefully over, to be greeted with a flung stone
which, however, did not reach the ledge, made a statement.
“There are forty men down there,” he said. “They are not from Quichaka.
They are men of some settlement: I can tell by their clothes.”
“Then Huayca must have passed us,” Cliff declared. “But how?”
“There must be another way around this ledge,” Mr. Whitley said.
“If we could find it——” Tom did not finish. It would give them a chance
to escape, was the thought in his mind. But Bill shook his head.
“If they know it they are watching it,” he assured his friends.
One of the men on the lower road shouted up at them.
“Oho!” Bill said, interpreting. “He says for us to give ourselves up. He
calls us robbers. Huayca must have gotten past us and told about the
gold.”
“Then let’s give them the gold and go,” suggested Mr. Whitley.
“Giving them the gold won’t help. They are furious. Whackey must have
said we robbed some tomb. That’s what I make out of that fellow’s
yelling.
“Then we are trapped,” Mr. Gray said.
“Looks like it,” Bill admitted. “But they can’t get up from where they
are any more than we can get down—all we have to do is double-guard the
cleft.”
“Until they starve us out,” said Nicky ruefully.
It seemed as though that was the intention. If the men on the road could
not reach them, hunger would.
“Is there no way out?” Mr. Whitley said, at noon. He felt the
responsibility he had incurred for the safety of his young charges. But
no one gave him any answer.