Where was Hans?
The Dutch boy, who by reason of his roly-poly body and fat, short legs,
was not well adapted to mountain climbing, was much fatigued by the
headlong haste with which his friends proceeded.
"Some volks peen plame vools enough to call dos sbort," he secretly
grumbled, panting along at the heels of the procession. "Maype it vos
sbort vor me, alretty, py shimminy! put don't you pelief me! Ven I vos
caughd py a voolishness like dot again, I hope I vill gick someboty."
He was stumping along in this manner, dropping gradually behind, when at
a short turn in the path his friends vanished. At the same moment a
pebble that had found its way into one of his shoes began to cut his
foot so that he could hardly walk.
"Wa-ow!" he gurgled. "Dot feel shust like I pit a snake by. Dunder and
blitzens! Dot toe vos cud off, I pelief me!"
He stared along at the dim path and at the bushes beyond which he heard
the voices of his friends, then plumped himself down on a rock and began
hastily to unloose the shoe lace.
"Uf I get oudt uf dis scrabe, anudder vun von't go into me right avay, I
dell you!" he muttered. "I haf to haf a boultice vor dot toe, I pelief
me, der vay id veels. Waow!"
He pulled off the shoe with a jerk, felt of the injured toe, and gave
the shoe a shake to remove the pebble.
It rolled out, a tiny thing, not larger than a small shot, but with a
cutting edge almost as hard as a diamond.
"Some liddle dhings make a pigger vuss dan----"
He cocked an ear around, and listened for the voices, but they were no
longer to be heard.
"Shimminy Ghristmas! Dose vellers gid along like shain lighdnings. I vos
half to hurry uf dey gacht me oop, I tolt you!"
He crowded his foot back into the shoe, hurriedly laced and tied it,
then picked up his alpinstock and set his short legs in motion.
But it was a hopeless chase. They were swinging on at a swift pace, and
had gained so much that it was quite impossible for the Dutch boy to
come up with them.
Discovering this, he became terrified.
"Vot uf dose shinermoons shoult pe hiding dese pushes behint, und kilt
myselluf mit a club der head ofer?" he panted, staring about in
wild-eyed expectancy.
He heard a movement in the bushes, which almost raised the hair on his
head. The brush cracked. The sound came toward him.
He dropped his alpinstock and turned to run, but his short, fat legs
became so weak they would not sustain him.
He dropped to his knees with a bellow of fright, and pleadingly threw up
his hands.
The brush cracked again, sending cold shivers up the Dutch boy's back,
and a lean sow, followed by three or four thin, sharp-backed pigs, came
into view.
Hans scrambled up, with a screech of fear.
"Vilt hocks!" he squawked. "Shimminy Ghristmas! I vos deat alretty yet!"
The sow ridged the rough bristles along her spine and made a sound which
Hans thought her battle cry.
He gave another squawk and dived for the nearest tree. Into its low
branches he scrambled, throwing his feet across a bough and pulling
himself by his hands.
As it chanced, the tree was in the direct line of the sow's flight. She
dashed toward it, bringing another squeal of fear from Hans, and the
pigs scampered at her heels.
While hanging in this inverted position, with his cap gone and his
pockets upside down, some peanuts that Hans had thrust into a pocket to
munch on the mountain climb, dropped out to the ground.
One of the pigs saw and scented them. Its chronic hunger overcame its
fright, and, while its mother and the other members of the porcine
family bounded on into the depths of the laurel it stopped and began to
munch the peanuts.
"I vos a deat mans!" gurgled Hans, fairly paralyzed by terror. "He vos
going to ead up dose beanuds und my gap, und den he vill glimb dese dree
ub und I vill ead heem! Hel-lup! hel-lup!"
Now and then a peanut spilled out of the pocket, and when the pig had
devoured all, it looked up at the peanut fountain for more, placing
itself directly under Hans with its mouth expectantly open.
"Oh, I vos deat! I vos kilt!" he howled. "Someboty gome guick und shood
me, so dot I von't ead mineselluf ub!"
It was impossible for him to climb higher, both on account of his
weakness, and the springy nature of the bough, and he was dimly
conscious of the fact that he could not hold on much longer.
Ordinarily, the pig would have fled from him, but its hunger now caused
it to half lift itself on its hind legs and stretch its long nose up
toward him.
In that moment of supreme terror the Dutch boy's strength entirely
deserted him, and he fell from the bough, striking the pig directly in
the center of the back.
It went down, with a squeal. Hans rolled quickly over and tried to
scramble to his feet. He could do nothing, however, but thresh his heel
in the air and bellow for assistance.
After a while it began to dawn on him that the dreaded monster was not
devouring him alive, as he had fully expected, and that, since his fall,
he had not heard a sound, except such as he made himself.
"Id vos skeert me avay," he thought, stopping his flailing heels and
turning his head slowly to the point where the ravenous beast might be
expected to be seen.
He lifted himself slowly on his hands and stared, his eyes rounding out
in astonishment.
The pig lay on the ground as if dead.
"Id vos maging a vool uf me, maype," he reflected. "It vos shust agting
like I vos deat. Id shust vant to play mit me, like I vos a gat und id
vos a mouses."
Still, when the pig maintained that strange silence, Dunnerwust's
courage began to come back.
He lifted himself still higher, ready to drop down and play the game of
"'possum" for all it was worth if the pig showed signs of life and
pugnacity. Still, the pig did not move.
Hans rolled over, and slowly got on his hands and knees, then lifted
himself to a standing position, ready to run if the pig so much as
moved.
"It maype is sdill voolin' me, alretty yet!" he gurgled. "Dere vos no
tepending on me somedimes. I haf heert apout dose vilt peasts dot blay
sleeby to vool demselves like dot!"
But the pig was dead. There could be no doubt of it, and if Hans had not
been insane from fright, he must have discovered the fact sooner. He had
struck with all his weight, and that was not small, in the middle of the
pig's curved spine, and had snapped it as if it were a pipestem.
"Whoop!" he yelled, as soon as he was sure the pig was dead. "Dot vos a
recklar knock-oud, you pet me! He vos kilt me der virst lick!"
Then, to make sure that the pig could not by any possibility come back
to life to frighten him again, he picked up an enormous club, and
proceeded to belabor it to such an extent that if there had been any
life remaining in the pig's body, it would have been beaten out.
Having done this, Hans walked around his fallen foe with the victorious
air of a conquering hero, uttering exclamations of delight, and
figuratively patting himself on the back for his valor.
"Who vos a cowart?" he demanded, squaring his shoulders and striking out
at imaginary foes. "I vould bunch mine heat uf you sait nottings like
dot, Hans Dunnerwust, you vos der pinking uf vighting mans dis moindain
on, und don'd let dot vorget me! I pet him you vos der beacherino uf der
Lilywhites!"
Then, still strutting like a peacock, he threw the dead pig over his
shoulders, picked up his alpinstock, and marched along the path like a
high-stepping horse.
From the top of the bluff, where his friends had found their way
seemingly blocked, he heard voices calling to him--the voices of Harry
Rattleton and Jack Diamond, who had turned back to search for him.
Hans answered, with a squeak of delight.
"See dot!" he cried, taking the pig from his shoulders and holding it
above his head. "Dot vos a vilt hock vot kilt me ven I dried to ead him
ub! I vos a fighder, I tolt you, ven I ged him starded!"
It was with the utmost difficulty that Ward Hammond concealed his
intense chagrin and bitter hate when he arrived with his companions at
the goal of the mountain-climbing race and found that Frank Merriwell's
party had beaten them by more than thirty minutes.
"It's all right," he said, with a sickly smile. "Though I do think you
fellows must have had wings hidden about you to get here so soon. But
wings weren't barred. Of course, we wanted to win, but we didn't, and
that's all there is to it."
While he was talking, old Bob Thornton, carrying the long rifle that Sam
Turner had taken from its peg in the cabin, was creeping through the
laurel and over the vines toward a point of rocks that commanded a view
of the path by which he was sure Merriwell and his friends would descend
from the mountains.
He did not try to conceal his bitter hate, as Hammond was doing. His
mind was inflamed with the angriest of passions, for Hammond had made
him believe that the mountain climb was an excuse on the part of
Merriwell to get into these hills, where Thornton's little copper still,
for making liquor, lay hidden.
The ravine that held it was less than a mile from the top of Bald
Mountain, in a wild and almost inaccessible gorge, and he was fairly
shaking with the fear that Merriwell had spotted the gorge from the
mountain's top, and would try to enter it later in the day.
"He'll never hunt anuther still ef I git a good crack at him!" the
mountaineer growled. "The guv'ment's got ter be larnt that it jes' ain't
ary bit o' use to send revnoo spies peekin' 'roun' hyar. We uns o' Bald
Mounting won't stan' it!"
Ward Hammond dissembled with considerable skill. He laughed, joked and
praised the climbing of the members of the Lake Lily Club, all the while
wondering if Bob Thornton would try the shot he threatened, and hoping
that the bullet would at least maim Merriwell for life.
Hammond held by inheritance from these rude mountaineers the fierce hate
that made them such a terror to their foes, and caused among them such
bloody feuds. In him Frank Merriwell had an enemy to be feared.
He had a purpose in playing a friendly part that day, and in staying
with Frank's party. He fancied that if Merriwell should be killed by a
shot sent from the woods by an unseen hand, he might be suspected as the
shooter, which could not be the case if he remained at Merriwell's side.
"Hammond doesn't seem so bitter as we've been led to believe," declared
Rattleton, speaking to Bart Hodge. "Perhaps he's been painted a good
deal blacker than he really is."
"I hope so," said Hodge, who more than once had been made uneasy by the
accounts given by Colson and others of Hammond's fire-eating and
unforgiving spirit. "He seems pleasant enough to-day, at any rate."
Without a thought of danger, Frank descended the mountain path, laughing
and joking.
Bob Thornton was still stealing through the bushes, with the long rifle
in the hollow of his arm.
But there was another stealing after him, with bated breath and shining
eyes. Nell Thornton, his daughter, who, having observed his movements,
suspected his evil intentions, and was now following to thwart them if
she could.
When he reached the rocky point, from which he expected to send the
shot, and from which he could dive into a jungly growth that would
protect him from view and pursuit, Nell was close at his heels, though
he was still unaware of it.
His face darkened as he dropped the rifle out of the hollow of his arm
and inspected the percussion cap, when Merriwell and the others came
into view around a bend in the path.
"He'll never hunt anuther moonshiner!" Thornton grated, through his set
teeth. "He'd better be a-sayin' of his prayers when I pull down on him
with this ole Bet!"
Nell heard the grated threat, and shivered, but the look of
determination grew in her white, thin face and shone brighter in her
glittering eyes.
Thornton waited until the party was near enough to make the shot safe,
but still far enough off to enable him to plunge into the undergrowth
and lose himself to pursuit before any one could reach him.
Then he threw the long rifle to his cheek, ran his eyes down the brown
barrel, and covered Frank Merriwell's heart with the sights. Though his
eyes were blazing, his muscles seemed as steady as iron.
The finger pressed the trigger, and there was a whip-like report.
But the bullet did not reach Frank Merriwell!
Just as Thornton's finger pressed on the trigger, Nell leaped from the
bushes that screened her and caught at his arm, thrusting the rifle
aside.
With a shriek, Ward Hammond threw up his arms and dropped to the ground.
The bullet intended for Merriwell had lodged in the body of his enemy.