THE TRAITOR’S FLIGHT.
“Pale-faces stay here till Harry see if path clear. Jack’s spies may be
near.”
The speaker was the individual known as New York Harry, who had
surrendered to the troops on the morning of Kit South’s return to camp,
and he addressed the three men whom he had led to the lava-beds, for
the purpose, as he averred, to surprise a small detachment of Modocs.
“Now look here,” said Sam Thatcher, one of the trio, who had been
warned by keen Kit South. “You’re not going alone. I’m going to crawl
for’ard with you, and by hokey! if I see a suspicious move on your
part, I’ll send a ray of starlight through your head.”
The Indian did not reply, and submitted to the border-man’s company,
with ill-humor plainly visible in his dark eyes.
“Now, stay hyar, boys, an’ keep eyes an’ ears open,” said Thatcher, and
as the guide, impatient to be off, moved slowly on, he added. “This
chap’s up to something--something devilish; I feel it away down in my
boots.”
Then the twain pushed forward together, and soon disappeared.
Ever and anon Harry would pause and listen intently, but not a sound
reached his ears. The stillness of the tomb brooded over the fortresses
of the renowned Modocs, and the stars shed a strange light upon the
death-traps of lava.
Sam Thatcher kept his eyes fastened upon his guide. He knew that Kit
South never suspicioned any one without cause, and when he told him to
watch Harry, he knew that treachery was in the air.
Suddenly the Modoc paused and turned his head.
“Hunter!” he whispered, and with cocked revolver, Thatcher moved to his
side.
“Well--heavens!”
The exclamation was not spoken in a loud voice; the hand of the Indian
prevented this, for it suddenly closed over the Californian’s mouth,
and he fell to the earth with the words dying on his lips.
New York Harry held a bloody knife in his hand, and Sam Thatcher, the
scout of five-and-twenty years, lay dead at his feet!
Quickly the scalp was jerked from the dead man’s head, and with an
ejaculation of triumph, the murderer turned toward the remaining
border-men.
He gained an elevated spot and looked down upon the couple, waiting,
ignorant of Thatcher’s doom, for his return.
For a moment the Modoc contemplated them, then deliberately cocked a
large navy revolver, and rested it on a shining rock.
No compunctions of conscience arrested the murderous design; the
trigger was drawn, and one of the hunters dropped like a stricken
bullock, without a cry or groan.
The last one, Luke Davis, looked up and caught a glimpse of the shining
pistol-barrel. Instantly he raised his carbine, but the Indian sent
another ball from the rock, and the hunter dropped on his knees, then
prone upon the ground--dead.
The scalping operation, as in Sam Thatcher’s case, followed the
consummation of treachery, and loaded with the arms of the murdered
men, New York Harry disappeared among the gray rocks.
Kit South’s warning had availed them naught; the hand of the traitor
was too swift for Thatcher’s eye. Had the Lava-Bed ranger stood in his
shoes, the result might have been an entirely different one.
The Indian soon disappeared below the surface of the lava formations,
and found himself in a high-ceiled corridor, whose sides he could touch
with his hands. He seemed familiar with its dubious windings, for he
pushed forward with alacrity, and surprised a score of Modocs in a
large cave, almost two miles from the spot where he had entered the
honeycomb.
“Mouseh missed Harry,” said the Modoc chief, greeting the Indian.
“Where he been?”
“To the camp of the blue-coats,” was the reply, in the Klamath tongue,
for New York Harry had spent many years among the Klamaths, and
therefore had acquired their language almost to the entire exclusion of
his own. “General going to send troops after Mouseh to-morrow. He give
Harry guns and pistols--see!”
He thrust the weapons forward, and in the action exposed the trio of
scalps that hung at his belt--a black, a brown and a sandy scalp.
“Where get these?” and a number of savages sprung forward with cries of
delight, as their chief put the interrogative.
“From their owners!” was the reply, and the story of his treachery fell
from the Indian’s lips.
The red rebels listened to it, highly pleased, and at the conclusion
clapped their approval.
“Where white Indian?” asked Harry, sweeping the crowd with the keenest
of sloe-black eyes.
“Dead!” said Jack, laconically.
“Dead?” echoed New York Harry.
“Dead and in the black river. Jack glad he’s gone. Good spy, good
scout; but a very dog!”
“Then where girl?” questioned the traitor.
“Oh, she in cave. Kit and Cohoon get away from Mouseh; but Artena still
in his fingers.”
“Good. The red girl is an accursed snake, and she should die.”
“She shall die!”
“Harry go now, if Mouseh has nothing for him to do,” said the spy,
after a long silence, during which Jack had been busy with his thoughts.
The Modoc raised his head.
“Harry done well,” and here the chief’s eye fell upon the scalps. “He
be Mouseh’s spy now in place of the white Indian.”
“Mouseh,” and the speaker stepped nearer the chief rebel, “Harry take
three scalps to-night--the scalps of three brave men. Now, he asks a
favor of you.”
“Speak,” said Jack. “Harry is brave; he done much to-night.”
“He wants the pale girl now. Long ago he saw her in her lodge on Lost
River, and loved her pretty face.”
“If Mouseh gives pale flower to Harry, he will not leave the caves?”
“Not while a Modoc lives to fight the blue-coats!”
“The pale girl is Harry’s. What will he do with her?”
“Take her to the little cave which Mouseh knows is Harry’s.”
“It is well. But when the day comes, meet us here. As you say, the
blue-coats will come to-morrow, and we must meet them.”
“I will be here,” said the spy. “When New York Harry turns on Mouseh,
may the Great Spirit strike him with His bolts of fire.”
Then the Indian turned and glided from the cave as noiselessly as he
had entered.
He hurried away as though some important errand demanded immediate
attention, and a few minutes later he confronted the three guards who
stood before the cavern that contained Artena and our whiter heroine.
A brief conversation with the guards enabled him to step into the
lighted place, and he confronted the captives with an exclamatory
salutation.
During the day just passed the imprisoned twain had slept but little,
although nature needed repose. The phantom of doom that hovered over
their heads served to keep their eyes painfully open, and their
thoughts were not of an enviable nature. Their guards had been as
reticent as statues concerning the designs of Mouseh against their
persons, but the women felt that at any moment the messenger of death
might arrive from the chief, and they would greet him with open
eyes--with every sense alive, keenly so.
’Reesa sprung to her feet when New York Harry’s exclamation fell upon
their ears; but Artena remained on the couch and looked searchingly up
into his eyes.
“So,” said ’Reesa, “Jack has sent for us at last.”
“No. Harry not take captives to Mouseh,” was the quick reply, and there
was an air of self-triumph in his mien. “The cave prisoners are to be
separated.”
“No! no!” and ’Reesa sprung to Artena. “Do not tear us apart.”
“The white girl is unfit to mate with the red traitress,” said Harry,
stepping forward and grasping ’Reesa’s arm. “Jack give you to New York
Harry, and you go with him now. White Indian dead, you see.”
“Yes, and I thank Heaven for it,” cried the scout’s daughter. “Artena,
he shall not--”
Before she could finish her sentence the Indian jerked her from the
Squaw Spy, and started back.
“Give her back to me!”
The cry sprung from Artena’s lips, and with the agility of the
jungle-tiger, she leaped from the couch, knife in hand.
But planting his feet firmly on the ground, the Indian met the charge,
and dexterously knocked the knife aside as it descended.
Then, before Artena could recover, he clutched her throat, and hurled
her with all his might back upon the couch.
“Is this the way you watch your captives?” he demanded, turning to the
guards who had watched the brief combat with bated breath, and ready
weapons. “Here, take the knife, and see that the scarlet tigress has no
more arms secreted upon her person. Mouseh shall hear of this if you
don’t watch his captive closer.”
With the last word he glanced at Artena, lying motionless on the skins,
then strode past the abashed sentries, and turned into the first
corridor that greeted his left hand.
“White girl’s Harry’s captive,” he said in a low tone, addressing the
burden that lay across his arm. “What does she say now? Surely she
recollects the Indians who used to lay flowers on her door-sill on Lost
River. Has the girl forgotten New York Harry? New York Harry--ha! ha!
ha!”
But ’Reesa South made no reply, and after an observation in the dark,
the Indian uttered an exclamation.
His captive was asleep.
Had her ears been on the alert she might have recognized the voice in
the laugh that rung through the gloom.
“This is the fifth passage,” said Harry, suddenly pausing before what
his band told him was the mouth of a subterranean corridor. “I missed
Doctor Frank among the chiefs, and may be that the fool has played me
false. I’ll see while I’m here, for I’m never coming back to this spot
again. Wonder what Jack would say to hear that! But,” as he deposited
his captive on the floor and ignited several lucifer matches by
striking them against the wall, “I’ve had enough of this war, and when
an Indian can save his neck, he’s a fool if he doesn’t.”
For a moment the matches burned blue, and then began to reveal the
interior of the cave.
Slowly a dark object on the floor grew into shape, and the Indian
started back when he recognized it.
It was the figure of an Indian, and the necklace of claws and snake’s
teeth that encircled the swollen and putrid neck, proclaimed him a
medicine-man.
“That’s enough,” said Harry, turning from the bloated carcass to his
prize. “Some strong medicine has killed even a doctor,” and with this
he left the cave.
He depended in a great measure on the guidance of his band, for eyes
could not avail aught in the cimmerian gloom and at last he paused
beside a narrow torrent that pushed its way over many a rugged rock.
Overhead the stars shone with all the beautiful luster of planets, and
a fresh, cool night-breeze fanned the faces of the twain.
“I must cross this infernal river,” murmured the Indian, suddenly
turning his face up-stream. “And only a short distance up here I can
cross on a natural bridge made for devils--for the spirits of the
Modoc’s evil band.”
He took two steps forward when he suddenly halted, and grew into a
statue on the shore.
One hand covered ’Reesa’s lips, the other the hilt of a knife.
Something had dropped into the water from above--a lava pebble; but who
had loosened it?
He cast his eyes up at the stars, but they had been blotted out of
existence, at least to his orbs of vision.
Somebody was squeezing his person through the hole in the basaltic
ceiling!
There was no doubt of this.
Suddenly New York Harry started forward, knife in hand.
But he paused a second later, for a man had dropped upon the shore--a
man whom he could almost touch with his outstretched arm. And the
aperture was darkened again.
“All right,” whispered the man, in a cautious tone. “The coast is
clear.”
The Indian started, and hugged the black wall with his beautiful
captive. He dared not retreat, for the loose pebbles would betray him.
Then he saw two other figures join the first, and after a short council
all glided away--down the river.
New York Harry drew a breath of relief, and resumed his journey once
more.
“If I wasn’t going away for good to-night,” he murmured, “I’d spoil
the plans of them three pale faced dogs. Perhaps Mouseh will discover
before day that Donald McKay is not dead--that he still tramps the
lava-beds, and that with Kit South and this pale girl’s dog of a lover.
Let them go. New York Harry is done mixing in their affairs; he
wouldn’t turn back now to save the whole Modoc nation!”
The next moment he reached the foot of a strange bridge, that spanned
the stream with a single arch.
To the person acquainted with the wondrous interior of the lava-beds,
the mention of this bridge will occasion no surprise. The great
convulsion of nature that cast the _locale_ of our story into such
a horrid mold, fashioned the bridge, as the Modocs believe, for the
passage of evil spirits across the stream, and therefore no Indian had
the hardihood to approach the spot.
But “desperate diseases need desperate remedies.” None but a giant
could stem the torrent and gain the opposite bank by swimming, and
the bridge was the only avenue of escape that presented itself to the
traitor.
He secured a new hold on the girl, and griped the blade of the knife
with his teeth, as he climbed upon the structure and advanced.
It took the cunning of his right hand to steady him.
All at once he stopped and crouched to the stones, with a heart
suddenly stilled by terror.
A living object was on the bridge before him, but whether man or beast
he could not tell.
It was a moment of indescribable suspense.
The traitor, without knowing the nature of his foe, would not advance.
But he must cross the river; freedom, safety, lay beyond the further
bank.
At last he started forward again.
No noise.
Perhaps, after all, his senses had deceived him.
A step further.
Ah! there was an enemy on the bridge, for the traitor felt a hand close
on his throat.
It was the hand of an Indian!
New York Harry started up, dropping ’Reesa on the bridge as he did so,
and tried to cope with his still unseen antagonist!