THE RESULT OF A PRACTICAL JOKE.
The woods rang with their whoops and yells; their circling figures cast
flitting, grotesque, fantastic shadows. The helpless captive choked and
strangled; the fire had begun to scorch his shins.
Suddenly, with a series of answering yells, half a dozen masked fellows
charged forth from the darkness and fell upon the savages, who, in
seeming panic, took to their heels and fled, after a brief show of
resistance. Two or three of the newcomers had apparently made an effort
to dress themselves like cowboys, while the remainder simply wore
rough, ill-fitting clothes, or garments turned wrongside out. One, who
seemed to be the leader, scattered the blazing leaves and sticks with
his feet and began stamping out the fire.
“Pards,” he said, “we’ve put the pesky redskins to rout and saved this
poor fellow from a frightful death. I reckon he will be very grateful.”
The still choking captive, blinking the smoke from his eyes, gazed
sharply at the speaker.
“I’m sure much obliged for the temporary relief, Mr. Barker,” he said;
“but I’m not chump enough to opine you’re through with your shindig,
and I allow there’s something more coming to me.”
“What’s this?” cried the other. “His voice sounds familiar. His
face—I’ve seen it before. So help me, he’s the galoot that led the
cowpunchers who lynched my partner, poor old Tanglefoot Bill. I swore
vengeance upon him, and my hour has come. He shall pay dearly for what
he did to Tanglefoot. Eh, pards?”
“That’s right; that’s right,” they cried, glaring threateningly at the
captive through the eyeholes of their masks.
“Let’s swing him from a limb,” proposed a stout chap, who was
occasionally losing a peanut from a hole in the bottom of the well
stuffed side pocket of his coat. “Many a time and oft has he boasted of
what he has done to cattle rustlers like us.”
“My deduction is——” began a little chap; but instantly some one gave
him a poke in the ribs, which cut him short.
“We’ll bear him to our retreat amid the mountains,” proposed the
leader, “and there we can decide what fate shall be meted out to him.
Release him from the tree, but blindfold his eyes, in order that he may
not observe the trail we follow.”
These instructions were carried out, although they took care to leave
Grant’s hands pinioned behind his back. A thickly folded handkerchief
was placed over his eyes and securely tied at the back of his head.
Barely was this done when the three redskins and the renegade came
sneaking back from the shadows of the woods and joined the self-styled
cattle rustlers. Threatening Grant if he made an outcry, they hurried
him forth from the woods and away toward the twinkling lights of the
distant village. Down the Barville road they went, approaching the dark
and silent academy and the gymnasium. Among themselves at intervals
they muttered fierce threats of vengeance for the death of the mythical
“Tanglefoot Bill.”
Once or twice a sound like a suppressed, smothered giggle came from
behind the mask of the fat fellow, causing one of his companions to
give him a vigorous punch and hiss into his ear an order to “dry up.”
Within the gymnasium a shaded light glowed dimly. Beneath this light
they gathered, with the unresisting and still blindfolded captive in
their midst.
“What shall we do with him, comrades?” questioned the leader.
“String him up to a rafter,” urged one of his followers.
“Show him no mercy,” advised another.
“Make short work of him,” growled still another.
“Had we known who he was,” said the leader, “we’d never risked our
lives to rescue him from the redskins. Comrades, listen. In yonder
small, dark room lie the bleaching bones of poor Tanglefoot Bill. While
we are debating over the proper fate for Bill’s slayer, I would suggest
that we place the wretched captive in that room with the remains of his
victim.”
This proposal meeting no opposition, Grant was pushed toward a door, at
which one of the masked fellows took his place with his hand on the
knob. At a signal from the leader, the door was opened, the blindfold
snatched from Rod’s eyes, and he was given a push that sent him
staggering into the room. At the same time some one cried in his ear:
“Behold the bones of your victim!”
The door slammed and the key was hastily turned in the lock.
Barely succeeding in keeping upon his feet, Rodney Grant stumbled
against something that rattled; and then in the deep darkness of that
place he saw lying at his very feet what seemed to be a skeleton, every
bone of which glowed with a dull, phosphorescent luminosity.
Involuntarily he backed away from the thing until he had retreated
against the door.
“Great jackrabbits!” he gasped. “It can’t be——” He choked, the words
seeming to stick in his throat, for, to his added amazement and
consternation, the skeleton moved, its head rising slowly from the
floor and the upper part of its body following. Little by little it
continued to rise, until at last it was in an upright position. Then
one long, faintly gleaming arm was lifted from its side until it became
outstretched toward the shivering, cowering lad. From some source a
hollow groan sounded, followed immediately by a faint, huskily spoken
word, twice repeated:
“Retribution! Retribution!”
Outside that room, which in the days when the building had served as a
bowling alley had been a washroom and a closet for the keeping of
clothing and various other articles, one of the masked jokers was
manipulating the cords that had caused the skeleton to rise and lift
its arm. Another fellow, with his mask removed, had applied his lips to
a knothole in the partition, through which he sent the groan and spoke
that terrible sounding word.
“Gee whiz!” giggled the fat chap. “I’ll bet he’s pretty near frightened
into fits. I know I’d be.”
“Shut up, Chub!” hissed the leader, who was listening at the door. “Of
course he’s scared stiff, for he’s a coward, anyhow.”
“He ought to be yelling blub-bloody murder by this time,” murmured
Osceola, the Seminole.
“Can yeou hear anything, Berlin?” asked Tecumpseh, the Shawnee.
“How can I hear anything with all you fellows pushing and chattering?”
fretfully retorted the one at the door.
“My deduction is,” said the chap who had pulled the cords, “that he’s
too scared to even utter a chirp.”
“I bate a hundred dollars,” laughed King Philip, “that this will cook
him so he won’t tell no more yarns about hunting Indians and lynching
cattle thieves.”
“Shut up!” once more ordered the leader. “I can hear something now.
Listen to that. What’s he doing?”
The sounds, low and weird and doleful, issuing from that small, dark
room, filled them with unspeakable astonishment.
“So help me, Bob,” spluttered King Philip, “he’s singing!”
It was a sad and doleful wailing, like a funeral dirge, and the jokers,
who had been ready to shriek with laughter a few moments before, were
now struck dumb by wonderment, and more than one of them felt a shiver
creep along his spine. Suddenly the singing ceased, but it was followed
by a burst of wild laughter even more startling.
“He’s gug-giving us the ha-ha,” said Osceola. “Now what do you think of
that!”
There seemed, however, to be no merriment in the strange, wild peals of
laughter which reached their ears. Agitated and apprehensive, one
fellow seized the shoulder of the chap who stood at the door.
“Open up, Bark,” he urged—“open up! Turn the lights on, somebody. Let’s
see what’s the matter in there.”
As the lights were turned on the door swung open, and those practical
jokers, crowding forward, beheld a spectacle that made more than one
recoil. In some manner Rodney Grant had succeeded in freeing his hands
from the rope. His coat had been torn off and flung aside. His shirt
was ripped open at the throat, and one sleeve had been torn into
shreds. He was crouching on one knee directly in front of the dangling
skeleton, and the flood of light from the open door fell on a face so
wild and terrible that the disguised boys shuddered at beholding it. He
was white as a sheet; his eyes glared, and a frothing foam covered his
lips.
“Avaunt!” he shrieked. “Quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy
bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; thou hast no speculation in
those eyes which thou dost glare with!”
“Great mercy!” gurgled one of the group at the door. “He’s gone
mad—stark, staring mad!”
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