When Ross returned to consciousness it was with a sense of bewilderment.
His head seemed alive with shooting pains: his eyes burned intensely; his
body was sore and stiff.
Gradually he fought the fog from his brain and opened his eyes. He was
dimly aware that he was back in his prison room, stretched out on the
table. Painfully he sat up.
And then he saw that he was not alone. There was another person in the
room. As his eyes pierced the semi-gloom he was aware that the man before
him was Arthur Ward.
Instantly his brain cleared, and he swung himself around to face his
jailor.
Ward was standing in the center of the room, his feet wide apart, his
hands behind his back. A sardonic smile disfigured his face.
“Well,” he inquired, “so you decided not to die?”
“Yes, I decided not to die,” said Ross. “I might remind you, too, that it
is no longer morning and I have not been hung.”
“No, and you’re not going to be, either. I have prepared a much more
pleasant death for you.”
“Thanks!”
“Don’t waste your thanks,” replied Ward. “Before you’re through you’ll be
far from thanking me. You see, Waring, your little outbreak this morning
set me to thinking. If you had taken things quietly I would have hung
you, and it would all be over now. But you had to try to escape and that
set me to thinking that hanging was too pleasant for you. It would be
over too quickly. There would be no time for reflection. So I devised
something really fitting for your case.”
While Ward was speaking the man Poole had entered, carrying a wooden box
which he deposited gingerly in one corner and then quickly withdrew. He
seemed afraid.
“Yes, Waring,” Ward went on, “I’ve planned a death for you that I like
much better than hanging. And, damn your rotten soul to eternity,” he
snarled, “you’ll know what real torture is before you go out!”
With a sudden movement, he whirled, kicked the lid from the box, darted
through the doorway, and had crashed the door shut before Ross fairly
realized what he was doing.
Half bewildered, it was a moment before he could attach any meaning to
Ward’s action. Then it dawned on him that there was a deep significance
to the box which Poole had brought in. Some sinister portent lay in that
box of wood.
Fascinated, Ross sat watching the box, realizing that it held his fate,
scarce knowing what to expect, and certainly not expecting what developed.
For a long minute nothing happened. Ross grew nervous with the strain.
Then a faint buzzing came from the box. Silence. Again came that strange
sound. And again. A slithering rustle as of stiff silk rubbed together.
And then Ross’s scalp prickled with horror and his blood fairly froze in
his veins, for over the edge of the box appeared a hideous, swaying head!
There came a second! A third! And then a fourth!
_They were huge diamond-back rattlesnakes!_
As Ross recognized the big diamond-backs he knew instantly that he was
trapped. To step down onto the floor meant death, a horrible, grewsome
death. To remain on the table—
Instinctively, he drew his feet up onto the table as the big reptiles
left the box, one by one. He counted eight in all.
Ross gave himself up to black despair. Down there on the floor awaited a
fate too hideous for words....
* * * * *
It must have been fully two hours later, and dusk was already settling
down and darkening the room, when Ross heard footsteps.
They approached his prison. For a moment his heart leaped within him at
the possibility of rescue. But the door did not open. Instead, he heard
the taunting voice of Ward from outside:
“Oh, you’re safe enough so far, Waring. They can’t get you as long as
you stay on that table. I planned that. Wasn’t it kind of me to be so
thoughtful? But there won’t be any food and there won’t be any water, and
all the time you’ll be going through hell. I planned that, too. And then
there’ll come a time when you can’t stand it any longer. You’ll either
fall from the table from weakness, or you’ll go mad and step down onto
the floor. They’ll always be waiting, Waring. And then they’ll get you,
damn you!” The voice, rising to a shrill crescendo of passion, ended in a
burst of wild maniacal laughter.
Receding footsteps told him that Ward had gone away.
As the gloom deepened into utter darkness it seemed to Ross that he would
go mad. His brain seethed with wild impulses. A hundred times he pictured
himself lying there on the floor, a bloated, blackened thing. A hundred
times he went through death. Only that hope which “springs eternal” kept
him from stepping down onto the floor and making an end of it.
Gradually Ross quieted. He finally settled back against the wall in a
state of apathy, little knowing or little caring when the end would come.
An hour passed.
Suddenly Ross became aware of an unusual sound. From somewhere in back
of him came a low “_Hist!_” so low as hardly to be heard. Stealthily, he
raised himself to the height of the barred window and peered into the
darkness.
Dimly he could make out a head outlined against the sky. A low, whispered
voice spoke:
“_You take!_”
Unmistakably it was the voice of Wong. There was a grating sound as of
something being passed between the bars.
Ross reached out his hand and it closed over cold steel.
An automatic!
“_You take!_” again came the whispered voice.
This time Ross found his hand closing over a cartridge belt.
“Me bring Ga’fin. _You shoot!_”
Like a ghost, the form at the window was gone without a sound.
With the feel of that cold steel in his hand Ross’s spirits rose like a
tide. All his waning confidence returned. He was instantly his own man
again, confident, cool, without fear.
Quickly he buckled the belt around his waist. With sure fingers, he made
certain that the gun was loaded. Slipping off the safety, he knelt on the
table, facing the door, and waited.
Ross did not know whether he would ever leave that room alive, but he did
know that the first men to open the door would die.
_CHAPTER EIGHT_
“YOU’LL SETTLE WITH ME”
Arthur Ward stood with his back to the big living-room fire, his feet
wide apart, hands crossed behind his back, head lowered, eyes peering
from beneath shaggy brows. It was a characteristic attitude and one which
peculiarly expressed the man’s calculated cruelty.
Beebe was seated on the wide fireplace bench, his feet stretched far in
front of him. He was slowly smoking, his whole sprawling attitude one of
indolent approval. Things were shaping themselves quite to the liking of
Larson Beebe.
The girl, Virginia, was seated in a chair somewhat in front of her uncle.
The wild look of her eyes and her agitated face told that she was going
through an ordeal that was breaking her bit by bit.
“But, Uncle Arthur,” she burst out, “surely you can’t mean to do this
terrible thing. Why, I don’t love Mr. Beebe at all. I scarcely know him,
and I don’t want to marry anyone.”
“My dear niece,” replied Ward evenly, “love has no part in my scheme of
things. Hate rules the world, and hate is my creed. Love makes people
soft and indolent. Hate is the great inspirator. Hate makes the world go
’round.
“Sentiment has no place whatever in this marriage. It is entirely a
marriage of convenience. Your personal inclinations have no weight
whatever. I wish you to marry Beebe; therefore you will do it.”
The girl’s color had heightened as she listened to her uncle’s ultimatum.
As he finished, a grim expression of defiance settled on his face.
“Well, I won’t!” she answered crisply.
“As you will, Virginia, but if you do not consent to marry Beebe within
twenty-four hours I shall leave you here alone with him. I imagine after
a couple of weeks of that you’ll be quite willing to marry him.”
“Oh, you beast!” For an instant, as Ward’s full meaning became clear to
her, it looked as though the girl would faint.
Then, like a wild beast at bay, she turned on Beebe in a burst of blazing
fury.
“And you, Larson Beebe, what have you to say? Are you going to be a party
to this? Are you as much a beast as my uncle?”
Beebe regarded her tolerantly for a moment out of his piggish eyes before
he spoke. A catlike smile of satisfaction curved his lips. He answered
slowly, indolently:
“Virginia, I am wild about you. I want you, and I am going to have you.
As long as you refuse to love me I’m not at all particular how I get you.
One way suits me as well as another.”
The girl turned back to her uncle. Her hands went out in an imploring
gesture. For an instant she seemed about to plead. Then she evidently
thought better of it.
“I suppose you understand, Uncle Arthur,” she asked in a low cold voice,
“that I will kill myself before I will let this happen?”
“My dear Virginia, you do not seem to understand the situation at all.
You are absolutely in my power. You cannot kill yourself because I will
not permit it. I will not give you the chance. You will do exactly as I
say.”
“_Not yet, Ward! First, you’ll settle with me!_”
Stanley Ross stood in the doorway. But it was not the Stanley Ross,
urbane, bored, carefree, who, a few days before, had whimsically sought
adventure up an unknown canon trail. He had found adventure now, and it
had used him roughly. His face and hands were grimy. His clothes were
dirty and torn. One sleeve had been almost rent from his shoulder. His
hair was riotously disheveled and clotted with blood. Down one side of
his face extended a great splash of dirty dried blood.
In his right hand was an ugly-looking automatic, and in his face and eyes
was a look of savage fury.
At the sound of Ross’s voice, Ward whirled and whipped out a gun. But
he was too late, for Ross, with a steadiness and coldness belied by
the savagery of his face and figure, had fired. A look of unutterable
amazement overspread the face of Arthur Ward. He wavered on his feet for
a moment, and then, when a spot of red began to widen on his shirt front,
he toppled backward, lifeless.
Almost at the same instant a hatchet hurtled through the room and buried
its blade deep in the wall beside Larson Beebe, missing his head by
the merest fraction of an inch. Wong was going into action. Beebe slid
forward from his seat and ducked to temporary safety behind the table.
Ward had not had time to aim, but he had instinctively pulled the
trigger. The bullet caught Ross on the head and cut a long shallow furrow
just above his left temple. The wound itself was not serious, but for a
moment it blinded Ross. That moment was fatal, for as he roused himself
from the shock he knew that he had forgotten Poole.
Instantly Ross whirled to face the other doorway, but was too late. The
heavy bullet spun him half around. For an instant he fought to retain his
balance. Then he pitched forward onto the floor.
Painfully, with almost a superhuman effort, Ross raised himself with one
hand and deliberately shot Poole through the chest.
Then, mercifully, consciousness was blotted out.
_CHAPTER NINE_