All this while the girl crouched close to earth, immovable, breathless,
keenly alert amid the gruesome shadows hovering along the broken line of
rock. There was a strange and terrible fascination in the scene enacted
below her--a fascination she would fain shake off, yet felt powerless to
overcome, like the fatal spell a serpent weaves when it charms a victim.
To her perturbed brain it seemed an oppressive dream, an unhappy
nightmare, born of the surrounding gloom, and still she understood that
it was most real, that the little drama, with its environment of night
and secrecy and threatened crime, was one of momentous import to her and
to her lover.
Was it now time for her to act, to take her part in it, or must she wait
a little longer for her cue? Should she reveal her presence and appeal
to the members of this lawless band, denouncing its unscrupulous
leader, and his traitorous ally? Would the raiders believe her story,
and listen to a petition for her sweetheart's liberty, after having
heard Steve Judson's strong testimony, strengthened by the captain's
philippic?
True, she might conduct them to the very spot wherein the real traitor
had concealed his ill-gotten gains, and where she had overheard him
plotting with the captain against the prisoner, but the money was no
longer there, and with Steve and the captain both against her, she could
hope to accomplish little. Neither would hesitate to go to any length to
prove her statements false; besides, there was no time to prove words
true--it was a moment for action, not for words. Whatever was done must
be done this very night--at once.
On one point her mind was fully set--harm should not befall the innocent
victim of this foul conspiracy, while she could raise a voice or hand to
prevent it. A plan of succor must be speedily decided upon. Persuasion
seemed the only feasible one in her present strait. Might she not state
the whole case calmly and dispassionately to them? Surely they would
not be deaf to reason or entreaty. When they were brought to realize the
fact that it was through her the band had been warned of the gate being
under guard the night of the attack, their gratitude alone should insure
her both justice and mercy for the one whose cause she pleaded.
Among these lawless men there were two who stood in the way of Milt's
liberty, the others were negative save as their own personal safety was
concerned, and of these two active enemies, the captain was by far the
most dangerous. With his evil influence removed, Steve would no longer
be an enemy to the prisoner. Yet how could that influence be taken away
in time to be of benefit to Milt? A sudden thought came to the girl that
startled and terrified her with its meaning.
There was a solution to the problem. The means for removing this baneful
influence was close at hand--within her very grasp. But could she do
this deed? Had she the courage to attempt it? She resolutely nerved
herself to the effort.
Slowly drawing the pistol from her belt, and noiselessly sinking on one
knee, that she might the better rest her arm and take a more accurate
aim, the girl carefully sighted the captain's dark form, while her
finger trembled nervously on the hammer of the weapon.
Just a slight pressure--the mere movement of a finger--and a soul would
be sent quickly into eternity. Yet what an evil soul it was and to what
lasting punishment! As she thought of it, in all its terrible import,
her own soul turned faint, and her fingers grew limp and purposeless.
Oh! it was a fearful thing to do, to shoot one down like a wild beast,
and far worse to hurry one so deeply charged with wickedness into
eternity, without a moment's time in which to cry out for forgiveness
for his evil life.
Were she to commit this deed, would not its terror abide with her for
all time--a hideous ever-present spectre, that would follow her through
life? She recalled to mind a sermon she had once heard in Alder Creek
glen, in which had been pictured in powerful intensity the wrong of
taking human life, and the murderer's unrest and troubled conscience
forever after. Must she be a taker of human life?
Then would her own soul be stained with crime, her own hand prove the
fatal instrument for sending a lost soul to a judgment in which there
could be no hope, from which there was no appeal. The word of God
himself was against such an act, for in letters of flame the sentence
seemed to flash into her brain--"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I
will repay."
No! no! she must not blot her soul with this awful act, there was surely
some other means to employ, some method less dreadful by which she could
save the one in peril. She would wait a little longer, hoping without
hope as it were.
Her arm rested idly on her knee, her finger fell away from the trigger
she had come so near to pressing, while a half exultant joy leaped in
her soul that she had not obeyed the first savage impulse to which her
troubled mind gave birth. Not yet had she usurped God's prerogative.
"Am I to be shot down like a dog?" cried the prisoner sharply.
"A traitor may meet his death by rope, bullet, or knife. He deserves to
suffer by each separate means," said the leader with a significant
glance rather at Steve than at the prisoner.
"See that the prisoner is safely bound." At his command Steve stepped
forward and closely examined the cords with which Milt's ankles and
wrists were bound. His hands were tied behind him, and with his feet in
the shadow the watcher on the rocky ledge above had not noticed until
this moment how utterly helpless he was.
Once more she grasped the pistol with a determined grip, and
breathlessly looked down on the group beneath her. A crisis was surely
approaching.
The captain gave a brief command.
Two of his henchmen--men as unscrupulous and callous as he--began to
remove some flat stones that were laid on a pile of cedar logs near the
rocky sides of the quarry just beyond the prisoner. This spot was partly
in the shadow, and Sally had not noticed it until her attention was
directed thither.
She leaned forward cautiously, and looked down in wonder and perplexity
while the stones were lifted off, then two of the logs were shifted to
one side, while a dark, irregular opening was revealed in the rock
floor, as if the mouth of a small cave had been uncovered.
Indeed, such was the case, for on blasting away the rock, some years
before, this aperture had been discovered, and as it was a dangerous
opening, descending far downward into the very heart of the hill, it had
been closed by means of the cedar logs, and the large flat stones laid
on top of them.
As the logs were lifted to one side, a member of the band standing near,
dropped a loose stone into the opening, while the girl anxiously
listening, quickly caught her breath as she heard the object falling
down and down, striking against the uneven sides of the pit in its
descent until it seemed to have penetrated the very bowels of the earth.
The man who had dropped the stone shuddered and turned away.
"The devil take me! if I believe that hole has any bottom to it," he
said in an awed voice, and quickly the thought flashed into Sally's
brain as to the purpose for which the pit had been uncovered, and why
the abandoned quarry had been selected for a meeting-place this night.
Was a human body to be sacrificed to the fearsome depths of that dark
cavern? The thought appalled her more than all else that had gone
before, and she grew faint with terror. Even the prisoner seemed to look
in speechless horror toward the black opening as if he, also, guessed
the peril that threatened him.
The very members of the secret conclave gazed with awe-stricken faces on
the yawning, ominous hole, as though they were beginning to weaken at so
dire a punishment. Even the act of a traitor seemed scarcely to merit a
fate this terrible. Only the captain and his ally appeared unmoved and
unrelenting. On the former's face a look of fiendish triumph slowly
settled, as he gazed steadfastly into the awesome blackness of the
cave-like opening--a hard, evil face it was, that held neither pity nor
regret.
"To your horses, boys!" The leader spoke quickly, commandingly, for his
keen eyes saw signs of weakening among his followers. "Remember your
oath! Remember your safety!" he called out warningly.
"And remember the blood of an innocent man is on your hands!" cried the
doomed man despairingly. "I sought to save your lives--you are
wrongfully taking mine!"
"He lies!" thundered the captain. "He sold himself to the officers of
the law, an' but for a premature shot we might all now be dead, or in
prison. They did not fire on him, bear in mind, but waited until he had
passed on, an' given the signal that all was safe, an' we come near
ridin' into the trap that was laid for us. He is a traitor to us, an' to
our cause, an' deserves a traitor's death!"
The accused began again to speak, but the captain cut short his words,
fearful of their effect on the hearers.
"Gag the prisoner!" he commanded, and despite Milt's protests, the order
was speedily carried out, and soon the prisoner was lying bound and
gagged, close to the dark opening piercing the very earth. "To your
horses!" the leader cried savagely, "and to hell with all traitors."
For a moment the members of the little band appeared to hesitate, moved
by conflicting impulses, but the instinct of self-preservation is
strongly implanted in the human breast, and will crowd out many noble
qualities. The vacillation was but momentary; slowly and silently the
men began to move away, each one eyeing his neighbor askance, as if to
discover who held the fatal red bean within his keeping.
Thus they melted into the night, stealing like dissolving shadows down
to the thicket below where the horses were hitched.
Soon after the tread of many horses' feet broke into the hush of the
lonely scene. Some seemed going in one direction, some in another, and
on the sleeping hills a darkness lay heavily--a darkness such as hides
many a ghastly crime.