A CRY IN THE NIGHT.
Clancy, Ballard, and Blunt, on their way to town from the gulch, came
charging toward Merriwell and Lenning at full gallop. They drew to a
quick halt, very much surprised at sight of Merry and his old enemy. Nor
were the newcomers pleasantly surprised, as they were quick to make
manifest.
“Chip, or I’m an Indian!” exclaimed Ballard.
“And I’m another Indian,” snorted Blunt, “if he isn’t chin-chinning with
one of the fellows who stole Mrs. Boorland’s money!”
Clancy had nothing to say, but he looked his violent disapproval of his
chum’s actions.
“If that’s the way you fellows feel,” said Frank, temper flashing in his
eyes, “you can leave my horse here and ride on.”
That Lenning was in deadly fear of Blunt was plainly to be seen. The
cowboy had taken the trail of Lenning and Shoup, immediately after Mrs.
Boorland had been robbed, and for a time he had crowded the pair pretty
hard. Lenning, evidently, was still in doubt as to the cowboy’s
intentions toward him. His haggard face went white as chalk, and he
crouched shivering away at the trailside.
“Don’t get excited,” sneered Blunt, leveling his cold black eyes at the
youth. “If Chip Merriwell has taken you under his wing, I won’t lay a
hand on you. How about it, Chip?” he demanded, shifting his gaze to
Frank.
“I’ve helped Lenning get a job at the Ophir mine,” Merry answered.
“That settles it,” grunted Blunt, tossing the reins of Borak to Frank.
Scowling blackly, the cowboy pulled down the brim of his hat and set
spurs to his horse. He had not a word to say. Frank looked after him
grimly, then laughed a little, and vaulted into his own saddle.
With the going of Blunt, Lenning revived considerably. Straightening his
shoulders, he stepped back to the trail. Clancy and Ballard watched him
with a gaze far from friendly.
“Good-by, Lenning,” Frank called from the saddle. “Do your best, over
there, and everything will come out all right.”
“Thank you, Merriwell,” Lenning answered. “If I do come out all right
you can bet I’ll know who to thank for it.”
He threw a defiant glance at Clancy and Ballard, a look of gratitude at
Merriwell, then turned on his heel and started south. Slowly Frank put
Borak in motion the other way.
Clancy and Ballard rode on either side of Merriwell, and both preserved
a glum silence. They were displeased, but Merry had done what he thought
was right, and the attitude of his chums did not worry him.
“Have you hooked up with that crook, Chip?” asked Ballard, as they rode
into town and headed for the corral.
“I’m trying to help a fellow who doesn’t seem to have a friend in the
world,” was the answer. “If that’s what you call ‘hooking up’ with a
crook, Pink, I guess you’ve nicked it.”
“It was a foolish move,” began Clancy, “and I didn’t think----”
“It’s my move, Clan,” interrupted Merry, “so you needn’t sob your head
off about it. Your fingers won’t be burned if the move’s a bad one.”
Nothing more was said, and the ride to the corral was finished in an
atmosphere that was not particularly pleasant for anybody. When the
horses had been taken care of, and the three chums started on foot for
the hotel, Clancy’s loyalty to Merry got the better of his wrathful
feelings.
“Oh, well, hang this Lenning business, anyhow!” he exclaimed. “You never
go very far wrong, Chip, and if you think you’ve done right, why, that’s
enough for me.”
“Same here,” said Ballard, but rather gloomily. “Whenever I think of
Apache Point and that falling rock, I’m mad enough to fight. You’re
generous to a fault, but it’s your own fault, and why the blazes should
we take it out on you? But it’s still my private opinion that Lenning’s
a skunk.”
“I’m not trying to change your opinion,” Merry laughed, “so you needn’t
get your back up if I want to do a little reasoning for myself. Now,
forget it.”
They did forget it, and by the time they reached the hotel they were
laughing and jollying each other in their usual fashion. Blunt was
sitting on the veranda, when they arrived, and his burst of indignation
had also subsided.
“You’re one too many for me, Chip,” he remarked, shaking his head in a
puzzled way, “but I’m not the one to jump on you for making friends with
a rattler. If the varmint makes a strike at you, though, I reckon I’ll
show my hand quick.”
What Frank had done for Lenning was no longer discussed. The lads got
together on the less dangerous and more interesting ground of the canoe
race in the gulch, and talked it over until the hotel Chinaman came out
in front and pounded the supper gong.
The evening meal out of the way, Barzy Blunt went off to spend the
evening with Mrs. Boorland, Clancy and Ballard got into a game of
checkers in the hotel office, and Merry went upstairs to his room.
Frank was pestering himself with the question of that cyanide clean-up,
and the gold in the laboratory safe which Lenning was to guard. When he
had first heard of the clean-up and the gold, he had made up his mind to
stroll out to the Ophir workings during the evening, and sort of
reconnoiter the situation at the cyanide plant. Later, he had decided
that such an act would be foolish, and would show his distrust of
Lenning. Now he was again wondering if he had not better go to the mine.
He recalled that he had told Mr. Bradlaugh that he would be responsible
for the way Lenning did his duty. Suppose, on the first night of his
work, Lenning should yield to temptation and run off with a few bars of
bullion? Frank’s promise to the general manager would oblige him to go
down in his pocket and make good the mining company’s loss.
Frank could not believe that Lenning would do such a thing. He believed
that the fellow was honestly trying to retrieve his good name.
Reformation comes slow, however, and is not secured at a single jump.
Guarding bullion was a pretty hard position in which to place a fellow
like Lenning, on the very first night of his work. His newly formed
resolution would be put to a hard test.
Merriwell’s mind revolved around the subject until it began to get on
his nerves. At last he jumped up and began pulling off his coat.
“I’ll go batty over this if I don’t get it out of my mind somehow,” he
muttered. “Maybe if I go to bed I can sleep and forget it.”
He began to unlace one of his shoes, paused, then laced it up again.
“I don’t believe I could sleep, anyhow,” he grumbled. “The quickest way
to get this out of my system is to do a little reconnoitering around
that blooming cyanide plant.”
He looked at a tin clock which hung from a nail in the wall. The hands
indicated a quarter past nine.
“I can get back here by eleven,” he thought, “and have plenty of time to
look around at the mine. Clancy will wonder where I am, I suppose, but
what he doesn’t know hadn’t ought to trouble him. Here goes.”
Clancy occupied the room with Merry, and, when he came to bed, would, of
course, note his chum’s absence. It was possible that Frank might get
back before Clancy and Ballard broke away from the checkerboard; at any
rate, he would certainly be back very soon afterward.
Owing to the hostile attitude of his chums toward Lenning, Frank did not
intend to tell them where he was going. It would only open up a subject
on which he and they could not agree, but it would tend to show that
Frank had not the confidence in Lenning which he professed. This would
have been a false impression, and yet it would have been difficult to
explain the matter so Clancy and Ballard could understand the real
motive which sent Frank to the mine. It was a whole lot better to slip
away quietly, and then slip back again, without inviting questions or
trying to explain.
Frank went down the back stairs, then stole through the dining room to
the door that communicated with the office. Clancy and Ballard were
absorbed in their game.
“Wow!” Clancy was saying, “here I go slap into your king row, Pink! Why
don’t you wake up and make this game interesting for me?”
“I’ll make it interesting enough, you red-headed chump, before I’m
done,” grinned Ballard.
Frank turned back from the door and gumshoed his way into the kitchen
and then out at the rear of the hotel. There was no moon, but the sky
was clear and the stars were bright. He had no difficulty in following
almost the identical course Lenning had led him over in the afternoon.
When he struck the trail beyond the town, the thunderous roll of the
stamps from the gold mill came to him on the night wind. There were a
hundred stamps in the mill, and they raised a din like muffled thunder.
There was a crispness in the cool air that ran through Merry’s veins
like a tonic. His step was light, and he threw back his shoulders,
sniffed the air delightedly, and pushed on.
The desert, with its shadowy clumps of greasewood, stretched away into
the dim distance on either side of the trail. Now and then some bird
fluttered in the brush, or some skulking animal raced across the road,
but there was no other human being going or coming along the trail at
that hour.
As Frank drew nearer the mine, the steady clamor of the stamps grew in
volume. At last, when he stood on the slight rise overlooking the shaft
house, the bunk house, the mill, and the cyanide plant, the lad paused,
admiring the shadowy scene that lay stretched before him.
There were lights in the windows of the bunk house, but they were dull
gleams compared with the brightness that shone through every crack and
cranny of the great building that housed the beating stamps. There was
something ghostlike in the scene, and the effect was heightened by the
steady moaning of the mill. An uncanny sensation ruffled Frank’s nerves,
but he smothered it with a laugh and started down the slope.
Suddenly he paused. He had heard something--something like a smothered
cry breaking through the low growling of the stamps. What was it?
He bent his head and listened intently. Two or three minutes passed. The
sound was not repeated, and he laid it to his imagination, or to some
prowling coyote off in the hills.
He had no sooner started on again, however, before the muffled cry once
more struck on his ears. This time there was no mistake. It was a human
voice that had given the cry, and it seemed like a call for help.
Locating the spot from which it apparently came, Frank started at a run
to investigate the cause. Before he had taken a dozen steps he heard the
cry more distinctly, and felt positive that some one was in distress and
calling for aid.
Sure of the location of it, by then, he darted into a chaparral that lay
directly in front of him.