COMPLETE TRIUMPH.
Frank found the letter thrust under the door of his room at the hotel in
Prescott. He was reading it over and over when Brad Buckhart, wearing a
long, doleful face, came into the room.
"You don't find no trace whatever of my pard, do you, Frank?" he asked.
"I have a letter from him here," said Frank.
"What?" shouted the Texan, electrified by Merry's words. "A letter from
him?"
"Yes."
"Why should he write a letter? Why didn't he come himself, instead of
doing that?"
"Well, from what he says in the letter, I fancy it is impossible for him
to come," said Merry. "Here, Buckhart, read it and see what you make of
it."
He handed the missive to Brad, who read it through, his excitement
growing every moment. This is what the Texan read:
"Dear Frank: I now am held fast in hands that care little for my
life. No house shelters me. I am not near Prescott. If you
search, you will find wind and nothing more. Have had a hot mill
with my captors, but to no use whatever. S.tay here I must. Brad
will worry, so don't fail to show him this.
"The men who have me swear to mutilate and finally kill me
unless you come to terms immediately. You are to settle with the
man who has demanded from you your mines and has threatened you
with arrest for murder. As soon as you make terms with him, I am
to be set free. If you refuse to make terms, this man swears to
chop me up by inches. To-morrow you will receive one of my
thumbs; next day the other thumb. Then, if you still delay, an
ear will follow, and its mate will be delivered to you
twenty-four hours later. If you remain obstinate, I shall be
killed.
"Your brother,
Dick."
"Great horn spoon!" shouted Buckhart, flourishing the missive in the
air. "Great jumping tarantulas! This certain is a whole lot tough! Why,
Frank, what are you going to do about it? You've got to rescue him, or
else give in to old Morgan, for they will chop him up if you don't."
"How am I going to rescue him," said Merry, "when I don't know where to
find him?"
Brad now stood quite still, with his hands on his hips, a look of
perplexity and distress on his face.
"That's so, Frank," he muttered, shaking his head. "I am afraid they've
got you."
"Do you notice anything peculiar about that letter?" questioned Merry.
"Peculiar? Why, I dunno. Somehow it don't sound just like Dick, though
I'll swear it's his writing. I know his writing."
"Yes, I am certain it is his writing; still, the first part of it sounds
peculiar. I suppose that's because he was ordered to write certain
things and had to take them down from dictation. But look here, Brad,"
Merry continued, taking the letter from the Texan's hand. "Notice that
word, 'sta.y.' Why do you suppose he dropped a period into the midst of
it?"
"Accident," said Brad. "Must have been."
Frank shook his head.
"Somehow I don't think so," he declared. "Somehow there seems to me
there is a hidden meaning in this letter. I am half inclined to believe
it is a cipher letter."
"Gee whilikins!" cried the Texan. "Mebbe that's so!"
Together they puzzled over it a long time, and the Texan grew more and
more excited. Finally he shouted:
"Let me have it, Frank--let me have it! That's why he wanted you to show
it to me. See, he says for you to show it to me. He opined I'd tumble to
the cipher and read it all right."
The boy's hands were shaking as he held the letter. From head to feet he
quivered with the excitement he could not control.
"Steady, Buckhart," said Merry, laying a calming hand on his shoulder.
"Then you believe there is a cipher in it, do you?"
"Sure as shooting! I know there is! You hear me shout! Once on a time,
at Fardale, he studied out right before me a cipher letter that was
written this same way by one of his enemies. He reckoned I would
remember that. He reckoned I would tumble and read the cipher in this
letter."
Although Frank must have been excited also, he still restrained himself.
"If that's the case," he said, "you should be able to read this with
ease. Go ahead and do so."
"Gimme a pencil," panted the Texan.
Frank did so, and then Brad began by underscoring the first word of the
letter after Frank's name, following with the second word, having
skipped one, then he skipped two, and underscored the next word. Then
skipped three, underscoring the next, and so on through the greater part
of the first paragraph. When this was finished, the words underscored
read as follows:
"I am in little house near windmill sta.y."
"There she is!" Brad almost yelled, waving it wildly around his head.
"That's the message. I followed her up further, but it ends right there.
After that he just writes what they tell him to."
"'I am in little house near windmill sta.y,'" read Frank, having taken
the paper from the Texan's hand. "Are you certain that 'sta.y' comes
into it?"
"Well, part of her comes into it," averred Brad. "She comes into it up
to the period, at least. I reckons that's why the period comes in there.
'Sta.'--what does that stand for, Frank?"
"Station," said Merry at once. "He has written that he is in a little
house near Windmill Station. That's it, Brad, my boy. We know where to
find him at last, thanks to you."
"No, Frank; thanks to that fine head of his. What are we going to do?"
Frank walked over to a corner of the room and picked up a Winchester
rifle, which he examined, a resolute grimness on his handsome face.
"We're going to find that little house near Windmill Station," he said,
in a calm, low voice. "And when we find it, Buckhart, there will be
something doing."
* * * * *
Another night had fallen when a party of at least a dozen persons, all
armed and ready for anything that might take place, surrounded and crept
up to the little house where Dick was held a prisoner near Windmill
Station. Frank led this party, and when the house was thoroughly
surrounded, he advanced without hesitation to the door, Buckhart at his
side, carrying in his hand an axe.
"Give me the axe!" whispered Merry, as he extended his rifle to Brad.
A moment later a crashing blow fell on the heavy door. When of a sudden
Frank swung the axe and made blow after blow at the door, it shook, and
cracked, and splintered before the attack upon it.
"Lay on! lay on!" urged Cap'n Wiley, who was close at hand and ready for
the encounter. "Knock the everlasting jimblistered stuffing out of her!"
Within the hut there was no small commotion.
Dick had been waiting. He heard the first blow, and it brought him to
his feet with a bound. He heard the ruffianly guards in the outer room
uttering excited exclamations. Then he shouted:
"Beat it down, Frank--beat it down! Here I am!"
He could not be sure his words were heard above the sounds of the
assault on the door, but at this moment, with a great splintering crash,
the door fell. Then came shouting, and shots, and sounds of a struggle.
It was over quickly, and Dick was waiting when the door of his prison
room was flung wide and his brother sprang in.
"Hello, Frank!" he cried laughingly. "You're on time. They haven't begun
chopping me up yet."
"Where's my pard?" shouted Buckhart, as he came tearing into the room.
"Here he is!" he whooped joyously, clasping Dick in his arms. "Say,
pard, you're a dandy! But I don't believe I'd tumbled to it that there
was a cipher message in that letter if Frank hadn't suspected such a
thing."
At this moment Cap'n Wiley appeared at the door.
"Mate Merriwell," he said, "there's a fine gent out here who has a
shattered knee and says he's bleeding to death. Perhaps you had better
take a look at him."
Frank turned back, followed by Dick and Brad. In the outer room both Mat
and Dillon were prisoners in the hands of Merriwell's comrades, one of
them having a bullet in his shoulder. But on the floor lay another man,
who had been found there with them, having arrived a short time before
the appearance of the rescuers. It was Macklyn Morgan, and his knee, as
Wiley had declared, was shattered by a bullet.
"I am dying, Merriwell!" said Morgan, his face ghastly pale. "You have
triumphed at last. I will bother you no more."
Frank quickly knelt and ripped open the man's trousers leg with a keen
knife. Then he called sharply for a rope, which he tied loosely about
Morgan's leg above the knee, thrusting through a loop in it a strong
stick supplied him by Wiley. With this stick he twisted the rope until
it cut into the flesh and stopped the profuse bleeding.
"Now, Morgan," said Merry, "we will do our best to save your life by
getting you to the nearest doctor in short order."
"Why should you do that?" whispered the money king wonderingly.
"I don't care to see even my worst enemy die in such a manner," was the
answer.
Macklyn Morgan did not die, although he must have done so but for the
prompt action of Frank at that critical moment. He lost his leg,
however, for it was found necessary to amputate the limb at the knee.
It was some days after this operation that Morgan called for Frank,
begging his attendant to bring Merry to him. When Merry stood beside the
cot on which the wretched man lay, Morgan looked up and said:
"I have been thinking this thing over, Mr. Merriwell, and the more I
think about it the greater grows my astonishment at your action. The
doctor has told me that you saved my life. I can't do much to even up
for that; but from this time on, Frank Merriwell, I shall never lift a
hand against you."
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Frank Merriwell's Triumph, by Burt L. Standish