THE BOOT ON THE OTHER LEG.
In the heat of action and excitement ten minutes are as nothing.
The time seems longer, however, when one sits waiting in a motionless
carriage, enveloped in the gloom of night, with grim distrust and
uncertainty acting like spurs in the sides of one's impatience.
Before five minutes had fairly passed, after Nick's departure, Spotty
Dalton had suffered his misgivings to the very limit of his endurance.
Chick sat mentally counting the passing seconds, then scoring each
departed minute with his fingers, of which he had exhausted four and a
thumb, the entire complement of one hand; and all the while his eyes
were riveted with intense vigilance upon the growling ruffian on the
seat above him.
Had Dalton ventured so much as a move to leave his perch, Chick would
have been after him like a terrier after a rat.
At the end of five minutes, however, Dalton made a preliminary move. He
hitched the reins around the whipstock, then stared for a second or two
toward Venner's house, fifty yards away through the surrounding park.
Then he suddenly swung round on his seat, and growled ferociously at
Chick, at the same time signifying with gestures the communication he
imagined would not be verbally understood:
"See here, you swarthy-faced snake fiend, I'm bound up yonder, to see
what's going on! You sit where you are, d'ye hear, and I'll be back in a
jiffy, if things are all right! If they're not, ---- you, I'll be back
just the same--with a gun!"
As if moved by a wish to understand him, Chick arose in the body of the
carriage while Dalton was thus declaring himself. He heard and
understood, all right, and it necessitated his getting in his work a
little earlier than was planned. For Chick would take no such chances as
this that Nick's operations in the house would be interfered with.
As the last word left Dalton's lips, the arm of the detective shot out
through the darkness, and closed with the grip of a vise around the
ruffian's neck, throttling him to silence.
"With a gun, eh?" Chick fiercely muttered, yanking Dalton backward into
the body of the carriage. "You open your lips again for so much as a
whisper, and I'll close them with six inches of cold steel."
In the glare of a distant lightning flash, Dalton, though struggling
furiously, caught the gleam of a polished blade at his throat, and a
glimpse of the flaming eyes in the face above him.
He shrank, gasping for breath, as the truth dawned upon him; and then
the voice of another sounded close beside the open carriage.
"Want any help, Chick?"
Nick's youthful assistant, to whom a wire had been sent from the house
of the snake charmer, had appeared like an apparition out of the
roadside gloom.
"Ah! you're here, Patsy!" muttered Chick. "Yes. Clap a gag into this
cur's mouth. We'll choke off his pipes first of all."
Dalton uttered a vicious growl, then felt the point of the knife pierce
the skin at his throat, and he wisely relapsed into silence.
For Patsy to fish out a gag, and bind it securely in the scoundrel's
mouth, was the work of a few moments only.
Then Chick jerked Dalton up from the rear cushion and out into the road,
in far less time than is taken to record it.
"Off with his coat and hat, Patsy," he hurriedly commanded. "Now the
false beard, my lad. Now get into them yourself, as quickly as you can."
"I'm all in, Chick," chuckled Patsy, working like a trooper.
"Got all the traps with you?"
"Sure!"
"Clap the bracelets on him, then. Now give me a second pair, and a strip
of line. That's the stuff."
"Oh, I brought the whole shooting match," laughed Patsy.
"Good for you! Now mount to the box, and leave this dog to me. I'll
return in half a minute."
Patsy climbed up to the seat from which Dalton had been so speedily
snatched and overcome, and Chick now ran the rascal a rod or more into
the woodland on the opposite side of the road.
There he threw him to the ground beside a small oak, around the trunk of
which he quickly twined Dalton's legs, and then fastened them at the
ankles with a pair of irons.
"I reckon you'll stay there quietly until I want you, barring that you
pull up the tree," he grimly remarked, as he turned to hasten back to
the carriage, in which he quickly resumed his seat.
A moment later Venner peered from the distant window--and was satisfied
with what he saw.
Five minutes later he came striding down the walk and approached the
carriage. Without a word to the driver, whom he supposed to be Dalton,
he opened the carriage door and laid his hand on Chick's arm, at the
same time pointing toward the house.
Chick signified that he understood, and held out both hands, as if he
wished to be helped to the sidewalk.
Venner promptly raised both of his--only to suddenly hear a quick,
metallic snap, and feel links of cold steel confining his wrists. Their
icy chill went through him like a knife, and he reeled as if stricken a
blow.
"Good God!" he gasped, hoarsely. "What's this?"
Chick and Patsy were already beside him.
"This," said Chick, sternly, "is your wind-up!"
"My--"
"Stop! Not a loud word, Mr. Venner, or worse will be yours! Now tell me
in whispers--where is Nick Carter?"
The sight of a revolver thrust under his nose had a potent effect upon
the dismayed man, yet even while he saw that he was cornered, he seized
upon the hope that Kilgore and the gang might discover and release him.
"Find him yourself, if you want him!" he hissed through his teeth, with
an ugly frown. "I'm cursed if I'll inform you!"
Chick did not delay for arguments or persuasion. With Patsy's help he
speedily put Venner in the same helpless condition in which he had left
Dalton, stretched upon the ground, within a rod of one another.
Then he threw off his disguise, and shifted his revolvers to his side
pockets.
"Now for yonder house, Patsy, and to see what the remainder of this gang
are at," said he. "Come with me, and have your guns ready."
"I'm with you," cried Patsy, coolly. "Guns and all."
A dash up the gravel walk brought them to the front door, which Venner
had left partly open.
There they paused and listened.
Not a sound came from within the house; but overhead the tempest now was
breaking, with frequent crashing peals of thunder, and flashes of
lightning that illumined all the landscape. Rain, too, now began pelting
down on the veranda roof.
"We'll steal in and see what we can find," whispered Chick, drawing one
of his revolvers.
"Go it, then."
He led the way, and Patsy followed. The silence in the house mystified
them at first. It appeared to have been entirely deserted.
When they reached the door of the dining room, however, Chick discovered
on the floor the disguise which Nick had discarded.
"I have it, Patsy," he cried, softly. "They have nailed Nick, just as he
expected, and have taken him somewhere to confine him."
"Perhaps in the cellar," suggested Patsy.
"I hardly think so, yet we'll have a look."
Moving as quietly as shadows, they entered the kitchen and easily
located the cellar door. It was closed and locked, with the key
remaining.
"Evidently they're not down there," whispered Chick.
"Let's try the upper floors," suggested Patsy. "They may be laying for
us up there, but I reckon we're good for them."
"We'll take the chance, surely. Come on."
They crept through the hall again, and then mounted the broad stairway,
which led to the next floor.
There the utter silence and the semidarkness quickly convinced them that
they were on the wrong track.
"The stable," muttered Chick, suddenly. "We'll try the stable."
"They certainly have vamosed this ranch," remarked Patsy.
"Plainly. Come on, then, and we'll try the stable."
Together they started downstairs.
A moment later Kilgore, Pylotte and Matt Stall came flurrying into the
house by the rear door.
In the bright light of the broad hall each party discovered the other
at precisely the same moment, and Kilgore instantly guessed the truth.
With a cry of rage, he whipped out his revolver and fired point-blank at
the two men on the stairs.
"Down 'em, boys!" he yelled furiously. "Down 'em, or our game is done
for!"
His bullet glanced from the baluster rail near Chick, and buried itself
in the wall behind him.
"Drop them, Patsy!" he shouted, instantly. "Shoot to kill! It's them or
us!"
"Let her go, Gallagher!" roared Patsy, pulling both guns.
Then, amid the tumult of the breaking tempest outside, there began a
fusillade the thunder of which rivaled that of the night, and which,
though comparatively brief, was as fast and furious as any man there had
ever experienced.
Pylotte went down at the first shot from Chick, however, with a bullet
in his brain.
Then shot followed shot with lightning rapidity.
Both detectives sprang down several stairs to evade the rain of lead,
for both Kilgore and Stall were rapidly emptying two revolvers.
A bullet singed Patsy's ear.
Another dislodged Chick's hat.
Then Kilgore reeled with a slight wound in his left arm.
A score of shots were fired and wasted, meantime, for all hands were
dodging about the hall and stairs in an utterly indescribable fashion.
It was the warmest kind of a fight for fully three minutes.
Then Chick got a line on Matt Stall from behind the baluster post, and
dropped him with a ragged wound in his hip.
Stall fell with a yell of rage and pain, and Kilgore found himself
alone, and against odds.
He turned like a flash, and darted out of the rear door of the house.
He knew that the game was up, his confederates done for, and his own
chances of escape but small; and the situation stirred to their very
depths the worst elements of this lifelong criminal.
But one thought possessed him--that of revenge, that of destroying the
chief cause of his downfall--Nick Carter.
With this end in view, Kilgore tore like a madman through the blinding
rain of that tempestuous night, and shaped his course back to the
diamond plant.