In the little room where Sam Turner had dragged him, Bruce came back at
last to the land of sentient things. The moonlight, streaming through a
crack in the chinked wall, fell on his white face. His head was racked
with splitting pains, and a dull ache made itself unpleasantly felt in
his shoulder.
When he sought to move his hands and feet, he found that they were tied.
Then memory awakened, and he stared about at the cabin walls, trying to
determine where he was, and just what had befallen him.
A heavy snore drew his attention, and he beheld the form of a man
stretched across the doorway of his room. There was a rifle by the man's
side, and he had evidently placed himself there to guard against any
attempt at escape.
All this was startling enough to Bruce Browning.
"And Merriwell! I was not able to get to him to warn him of his danger!
I wonder what has befallen him?"
Almost his first clear thought was of Frank, and the peril which he
believed threatened his friend.
He would have groaned aloud in the very agony of mental torture, if a
wholesome fear had not restrained him.
"I wonder what has become of Nell?" was his next mental query.
As if in answer, when he looked again he saw her tip-toeing in shoeless
feet toward the man who lay in front of the door of his prison. Her thin
face seemed unnaturally white and bloodless in the dim light. Her widely
distended eyes gleamed like those of some wild animal. In her right hand
she held something, which he soon made out to be a knife.
A sense of bewildered fascination fell on Bruce. He forgot the thumping
pain in his head and the ache in his shoulder.
"She is going to kill him as he sleeps!" was the horrible thought that
seized him.
He moved uneasily, and put out his bound hands, as if to beg her not to
do a thing so dreadful. He might have done more, but at that moment her
eyes met his. She saw that he was conscious, and put a finger to her
lips to enjoin silence.
Browning lay back and stared at her. His mind was not yet entirely
clear.
Again she put her fingers across her lips, and took another catlike step
toward the sleeping man.
She made no more sound than a gliding shadow. Browning readily might
have believed her a ghost, and it is quite certain that Toots, if
similarly placed, would have shrieked like a maniac from sheer fright.
With the stealthy silence of a panther creeping on its prey, Nell
Thornton advanced toward the open door.
Then Browning saw that her gaze was not fixed so much on the sleeping
man as on him, and awoke to a realization of the fact that Nell was
trying to come to his rescue, and that the knife was to sever the ropes
that held him, and was not intended as a weapon with which to do murder.
He could not restrain the sigh of relief and hope that welled from his
heart.
Nell Thornton's keen ears caught it, and again her finger went to her
lips, and she stopped, looking anxiously at the sleeper.
For several seemingly interminable seconds she stood thus, and when
Turner did not move, she took another cautious step.
With her eyes fixed on Turner's upturned face, she stepped warily over
his body, and stood in the room at Browning's side.
The knife gleamed in the moonlight. It was her father's keen-bladed
hunting knife.
"I hev come ter git ye out o' hyar," she whispered, laying her lips
against Browning's ear. "Don't ye so much ez whimper a sound, er----"
She pointed significantly with the knife toward the sleeping form of
Turner.
Then she pressed the blade against the rope that held Browning's wrists.
It was almost as sharp as a razor, and ate through the tough strands
with noiseless ease.
She worked quickly, but silently; then stood erect, and pointed toward
the door.
Browning moved his head to show that he understood.
"Do ye need ter hev me holp ye?" she whispered, stooping till her lips
again touched his ear.
For reply, Browning lifted himself cautiously and struggled slowly to
his feet.
She smiled encouragingly, and stepped through the doorway, Bruce
following close after her, as silently as he could. Thus he passed over
the sleeping form of Sam Turner, and moved toward the outer air.
He scarcely ventured to breathe till they were both outside, under the
flooding moonlight.
Here she took him by the hand, without speaking, and hurried him away
from the cabin, into a path that led toward the hills and in the
direction of the village.
"Hev you a knife?" she anxiously asked, stopping when they had gained
the friendly shelter of the trees.
"Yes. Why?" inquired Browning, venturing to speak for the first time.
"'Case, ef you hev, I'll slip back inter that thar room with it an' lay
it open on the floor, so that when Sam Turner hev come ter himself he'll
'low ez how you cut them ropes an' got away 'thout anybody holping ye."
Browning took out his pocketknife, opened the biggest blade, and placed
it in her hand.
"I'm 'bleeged ter ye!" she said.
"And I'm obliged to you, Nell--Miss Thornton!" declared Browning, with
an uncommon warmth of feeling. "Likely I should have been killed if you
hadn't come to my assistance. And at such a fearful risk! I owe you my
life!"
She was about to turn away, but faced around abruptly and looked him
squarely in the eyes.
"You ain't nary revnoo spy, air ye, come hyar ter hunt down the
moonshiners?"
"No!" said Browning, with sturdy emphasis. "I am not! Nor are any of my
friends. I came back to your house because I was lost."
Her lips parted in a smile.
"I knowed you warn't," she asserted.
Then, before Bruce could say anything more, or even bid her good-by, she
leaped away and hastened back toward the cabin.
The racking pains, which Bruce had temporarily forgotten, shot again
through his head and shoulder as he saw her vanish, and he turned toward
the mountain with a groan.
But ever, as he toiled on over the wild path, slipping, sliding,
groaning, he thought of Nell Thornton, going back into that room, over
the body of the slumbering rifleman, to place the pocketknife on the
floor by the side of the cut ropes, and his heart throbbed in sympathy
with her great peril.