THE QUICKSAND.
There was no other motive on Frank’s part otherwise than to see justice
done.
He was a great lover of fair-play and although Astley and all the
parties concerned were strangers to him, he wanted to see the wrong
righted.
Barney and Pomp had become fully as interested in the case as he had
himself.
“Yo’ kin jes’ bet we’ll stick by yo’ Marse Frank!” cried Pomp. “Yo’ hab
got de right ob it.”
“Be jabers, if that Mason was any part av a man, he’d cum forrard an’
shoulder the blame hisself,” said Barney.
“Ah! but I imagine that he is a big rascal!” declared Frank. “It will
be our work to find him.”
“Shure we’ll do that!”
“I hope so!”
So it happened, that one day the Steam Horse was packed in sections and
shipped to a small station on the verge of the Great American Desert.
Frank had got a slight clew that Mason was hiding in the desert to
avoid arrest.
If this was true, it would now be in order to find him.
This Frank meant to do if such a thing was possible.
The Steam Horse had been shipped to the nearest point to the desert.
Several hundred miles, however, of a wild country had to be crossed.
The young inventor knew that the deadly Comanche Indians frequently
ranged as far north as this.
To fall in with any of them would be unpleasant, to say the least.
However, Frank was not the one to borrow trouble.
He unloaded the Steam Horse at the little Western station and had the
sections put together by skilled mechanics who had come on the special
train.
Then, getting aboard the wagon with Barney and Pomp, after steam had
been got up, the start was made.
The Steam Horse started away across the desolate plains at a rapid
gallop.
Soon the railroad station and every other sign of civilization was out
of sight.
As far as the eye could reach upon either hand naught could be seen but
an unbroken expanse of plain.
It was a dreary and desolate sight.
For a whole day this sort of thing was encountered. Then at night a
small lake was sighted.
“Begorra!” cried Barney. “We’ll ’ave a dhrink av that water anyway!”
So the Celt alighted from the wagon when the shores of the lake were
reached, and bending down applied his lips to the water.
He took a deep draught of the liquid, and the next moment he wished he
had not done so.
With a gasping cry he leaped to his feet.
“Bad luck to the same!” he howled. “Shure it’s the divil’s own kind av
stuff. It’s nigh burned the mouth off me.”
“Why, of course, you silly fellow,” cried Frank. “Don’t you know that
the water in all of the lakes in this part of the country is salt.”
“Shure I know it now, to me sorrow,” cried Barney, holding on to his
mug.
Then a brilliant thought came to him.
The mischievous spirit of the fellow was at once aroused.
Pomp was in the wagon busying himself about the cooking and had not
seen Barney’s experience.
The Celt chuckled.
“Och hone!” he muttered. “I’ll paralyze that naygur now or me name
ain’t Barney O’Shea.”
With this he procured a dipper and filled it with the water from the
lake.
The liquid was as clean and fresh looking as if it had just come from
the best of springs.
Barney held the dipper up and shouted:
“Whurroo! I say, naygur! Wud yez luk this way?”
“What fo’ yo’ want ob me?” cried Pomp, coming to the door of the wagon.
“Don’t yez want a dhrink? Shure I think yez might be dhry.”
Pomp was very thirsty.
Therefore he replied eagerly:
“All right, I’ish, yo’ fetch me dat watah an’ I cook yo’ sumfin’ good
fo’ yo’ supper. Dat am a fac’.”
“All roight, bejabers,” cried Barney. “I’ll take ye on that, naygur.”
So Barney went up to the wagon with the dipper filled with the saline
fluid.
Pomp took the dipper and glanced at the water.
It looked to him as pure and delicious as nectar.
Tipping his head back, he proceeded to pour it down his throat in
copious draughts. The effect was terrific.
For a moment he was doubled up like a jumping jack, with awful
contortion of the features.
It was a question for a few moments if he would not actually collapse
with strangulation.
But he managed to get his breath after a moment.
As for Barney, he was turning somersaults in the sand, and fairly
killing himself with laughter.
“Begorra, that’s the funniest I iver seen in me loife yit!” he roared.
“Shure, the fools are not all dead yit, on me sowl!”
“Ki—yi—huh! Golly massy sakes! I’se mos’ dead, yes I is. Gorramighty, I
jes’ kill yo’ fo’ dat, I’ish!”
Pomp, now recovered, made a dash out of the wagon for Barney.
Had he caught the Celt at that moment, he would no doubt have pitched
into him in good earnest.
But the Celt was too quick.
He was away over the plain like a bullet out of a gun.
Pomp chased him for full three hundred yards, when an astonishing thing
happened.
Suddenly Barney gave a yell, floundered about for a moment, and seemed
to be drawn by some irresistible power downward into the ground.
He sank to his hips in a jiffy in the clear sand, and seemed likely to
sink much deeper.
In an instant both Barney and Pomp realized the serious truth.
Barney had inadvertently jumped into a prairie quicksand.
The treacherous sand had closed over him with a vise-like grip, and was
every moment drawing him deeper.
Of course to be drawn to the depths of the fatal quicksand meant death.
At once all thoughts of fooling left the minds of both.
Pomp forgot the trick played upon him, and saw only that Barney was in
most imminent danger of his life.
At once the darky sought steps to relieve his companion.
“Golly sakes! what am de mattah, I’ish?” cried Pomp, in alarm, halting
on the verge of the bed of quicksand.
“Shure the sand is a-suckin’ me in fasther an’ fasther,” cried Barney.
“Shure wud yez help me, Misther Frank?”
But Frank Reade, Jr., had already seen the trouble.
He was coming to the spot as fast as he could.
In his hands he carried his rifle and a lariat.
“Keep cool, Barney,” he cried, as he came up. “Don’t make a move till I
tell you.”
“All right, sor,” cried Barney, readily. “Phwativer is it, sor?”
“Why, it is a prairie quicksand,” replied Frank. “They are not uncommon
hereabouts.”
“Shure, I’ve no desire to go to the cinter av the airth.”
“We won’t let you,” cried Frank. “Here, pass this under your arm.”
Frank placed the rifle across the space of quicksand and Barney passed
his arm over it.
This arrested the downward process and Barney was safe for the time.
But he was quite unable to extricate himself.
The question was, how to get him out of the clinging sands. But Frank
Reade, Jr., knew how to do it.
He threw the noose of the lariat over Barney’s shoulders. Then he said:
“Now hang on. We’ll try and pull you out.”
Frank and Pomp laid hold on the rope and exerted their full strength.
But they could hardly move the Celt. The sands were so mighty and
clinging that their resistance could not be overcome with that amount
of force.
“Golly, Marse Frank!” puffed Pomp, “I don’ fink we’re gwine fo’ to git
dat chile out ob dat place.”
“Keep cool!” said Frank, quietly. “We will find a way.”
Frank went back and brought the Steam Horse up.
He fastened one end of the lariat to the rear axle of the wagon.
Then he started the Horse slowly.
The result was that Barney suddenly began to emerge from his
imprisonment in the sand.
Slowly but surely he was dragged from his uncomfortable position. Clear
of the clinging sands Frank stopped the Steam Horse.
Then Barney scrambled to his feet.
He glanced at the treacherous spot from which he had just emerged and
then at his bedraggled person.
“Begorra, naygur, I think we’d betther call accounts square!” he cried.
“Shore it’s mesilf as has the divils ind av the bargain this toime.”
“A’right, I’ish, I’ll fo’gib yo’ dis time if yo’ don’ try any sich fing
on me agin,” replied Pomp.
“I’ll agree wid yez!”
And this ended the affair.
Camp was made by the saline lake that night, however.
Darkness settled down thickly and to enliven the dullness of the hour,
Pomp brought out his banjo and Barney his fiddle.
They played very well together, and as the melodies from the two
instruments floated forth upon the air, it did much to dispel the
natural feeling of desolation peculiar to the region.
Frank Reade, Jr., thus far had not dreamed of danger.
Nothing had been seen to warrant the assumption that there was another
human being within fifty miles.
Some hungry coyotes came snapping and snarling about the wagon.
Barney put one of them out of the way with his revolver and this for a
time silenced the rest.
But as the hour of midnight drew nearer Frank began to think of sleep.
He had hardly stretched himself out upon the bunk, however, when a
startling thing occurred.
Suddenly Barney dropped his fiddle and sprung up.
“Be me sowl, the divils are all about us!” he roared. “Shure, ye kin
see their forms iverywhere!”
At the same moment a flight of arrows came rattling against the metal
body of the wagon.
In an instant Frank was upon his feet. The gloom was broken with the
headlight of the Steam Horse now, and the foe could be plainly seen.
It was a critical moment.