THE CAVE OF THE FORTUNE HUNTERS.
“Get up!”
It was Duff who spoke, and he accompanied the command with a volley of
oaths.
In wonderfully quick time Duff went through John’s pockets and the pouch
which hung at his belt, taking everything he found, which, fortunately,
was nothing more than a hunting knife and pistol.
“Take his gun and push out fast, ahead, Dexter. I’ll follow close
behind, and you, young fellow, keep just behind your good friend here,
and just ahead of me, and attempt no monkey business, or I’ll blow your
brains out! Now, march!”
With a quick glance around to get his bearings, John walked off as
Dexter led the way. He noticed regretfully that it was now quite dark in
the woods, and the wind was again blowing so hard that their tracks
through the snow would be quickly obscured.
For hours, it seemed to John, the silent march continued. At first he
knew just where he was, but as it became darker and wolves howled not
only on one but on all sides, and the wind swirled and swept so in all
directions that he could not keep his bearings, he lost all knowledge of
his whereabouts except to know that he was in a very unpleasant
predicament, to say the least, and he wished heartily that he was out of
it.
It was almost midnight, as nearly as John could judge, when, after
winding in and out for some time through dark ravines, whose rocky walls
rose high above their heads, making the darkness so intense that they
could scarcely see the snow at their feet, Duff and Dexter mounted to a
rough ledge four or five feet above the level of the valley in which
they were, and dragged their captive up after them. He knew at once, as
he found a low, rocky roof above his head, that they were in the mouth
of a cave of some sort.
“Make a light,” commanded Duff, and stepping forward he seized John’s
arm, as if afraid the boy might attempt to escape.
Dexter, obedient to his chief’s order, knelt in the darkness and by much
puffing and blowing kindled a small fire from a few live coals remaining
of a blaze the two men evidently had left when starting out.
“Get something to eat,” was the next order of the captain, and Dexter
slunk away to another part of the cave.
While he waited by Duff’s side John made as thorough an inspection of
the cave as he could by the flickering firelight. It did not appear very
deep though the roof was twice as high as a man, and its yawning mouth
extended nearly its entire width of probably twenty feet. Still
comparatively little snow had drifted in and the floor was dry and hard.
In one corner not far from the fire was a pile of leaves on which some
skins and blankets were spread, while hanging on the forks of a sapling
cut off half way up and now leaning against the wall, were a frying pan
and other cooking utensils.
“Kind of ghost-like around here,” the boy remarked, smiling grimly as
the firelight cast spectral shadows in the deeper parts of the cavern
and upon the rough walls. “Seems to me I can see the ghosts of Quilling
and Black Eagle right now.”
“Dry up! Blast your noisy tongue, dry up!” growled Duff beneath his
breath, while involuntarily he shuddered and glanced around.
“Oh, what a guilty conscience,” thought John, mentally resolving to make
use of this discovery that his captor was afraid of ghosts, if the
opportunity came to him.
Their meager supper of venison over, Dexter, at Duff’s command—it seemed
that the former was obliged to do all the physical labor—brought stout
thongs of twisted buckskin and John was speedily bound hand and foot,
and then pushed and thrown upon the bed of leaves and skins in the
corner. Duff and Dexter also lay down, one on either side of the
prisoner.
It was daylight when John awoke, the bonds upon his wrists and ankles
instantly, painfully reminding him of where he was and bringing to his
mind the unhappy recollection of all that had happened. Neither Duff nor
Dexter was on the bed beside him, and, rolling over, he looked around.
There sat Dexter on the log by the fire.
“Hi, there!” called John.
“Jest don’t you say nothin’. I’m to knock yer blasted brains out if ye
holler, er say a word. Them’s Duff’s own words. Lay still an’ don’t say
nothin’ an’ I won’t do ye no harm, an’ I’ll git ye a bite to eat.”
So saying Dexter sliced off a few cuts of meat from a nearly consumed
fore quarter of a deer and prepared it for the prisoner.
“It was too bad Quilling was killed the way he was,” said John, as he
ate, wishing to appear friendly, for he believed Dexter was not at heart
nearly so villainous as his companion.
“Bub, jest you shet up. Ye ain’t allowed to say nothin’. Them’s the
orders.”
But after a pause of several minutes, Dexter added: “Duff didn’t say as
I couldn’t talk none, though, an’ I kin say yes, ’twas too bad as
Quilling got killed. But it was his own fault. When Duff goes to yer hut
as an Injun, plannin’ to get what he was after, an’ left me an’ Quilling
at the edge o’ the woods t’ help him if he needed it, or to draw you
chaps out some way, an’ give him a better chance, if he didn’t come back
by midnight, Quilling an’ me stood under a tree with low limbs where we
wouldn’t be seen by anybody. Then Quilling got scared—allus was a blamed
baby anyhow,—an’ he begun to chatter an’ talk ’bout how he wished he had
stayed to home. ‘An’ I’m goin’ to holler to Duff this minute that I want
t’ go home an’ he’s got t’ go with me,’ he says, speakin’ up loud. An’
with that he steps out into the clearin’, when ‘bang!’ he tumbled over
like a rabbit, an’ in a jiffy there come pouncin’ onto him a devil of an
Injun that has been hangin’ round these parts a long time.
“An’ this Injun ain’t no nat’ral critter at all. He comes an’ goes too
quick fer that. He’s a Injun witch, that’s what he is, an’ ’fore I knew
it I was yellin’ ‘help,’ an’ hootin’ like a owl, which was the sign
agreed on to call Duff out if we had to have him; an’ then I goes racin’
into the woods like all get out. Duff comes runnin’ after me, cursin’
awful, he was that mad. But he knew Quilling was a goner an’ we—we jest
lit out fer our cave here. We was watchin’ from the woods when you an’
the Quaker chap started out to the Injun town an’ then it was that Duff
says we would ketch ye, an’ we did, an’ what’s next to be did is fer me
to know an’ you to find out, as the sayin’ is.”
John, it is sure, was greatly interested in what he had heard. And now,
as Dexter showed no signs of speaking further, though he seemed to like
to hear his own tongue going, the captive tried hard to think of some
seemingly innocent question or remark which would start the fellow
talking once more. At last he said:
“Honest truth, Mr. Dexter, I was not spying on you that night away back
at the Eagle tavern when I went for a drink of water and found you and
Duff and Quilling reading a letter.”
“Young feller, you keep still. Don’t you say nothin’; that’s what! But
ye needn’t think Duff lays it up ag’in ye that ye came onto us
sudden-like that night at Quilling’s place. He don’t remember nothin’
about it, I don’t s’pose. Why, him an’ me had only got to Quilling’s
that same night; an’ of course we didn’t know what Quilling wanted till
we got there. He was jest a-goin’ to show us that letter or piece o’
one, when you chaps come along. Quilling didn’t know himself jest what
the thing meant, but he knew it told about money buried in the ground
an’ he knew that this chap Nesbit had done good business liftin’ jew’lry
an’ coin from folks along the roads an’ places. He knew enough to guess
pretty straight as how Duff would be the man to help find the other part
of the letter, ’cause he had seen Nesbit have it, an’ he sent fer him,
an’ Duff an’ me went together. But while yer talkin’, boy, only ye ain’t
allowed to talk none, an’ I’ll knock yer blasted brains out if ye do,
this here ain’t my reg’lar trade, an’ I vow, if there’s much more
killin’ an’ slavin’ fer Duff, I’m a-goin’ t’ quit it.”
Dexter paused and put a few sticks of wood on the fire.
“It’s ’bout time Duff was comin’ back,” he said, as he sat down again.
“Duff’s gone to hunt yer pardner an’ if he don’t give him what he wants,
he’s goin’ to knock yer blasted brains out an’ scalp ye jest the same as
though that Injun witch had did it, an’ it’ll be laid onto the Injun.
Duff’s wrote a letter on bark with charcoal that says that, an’ now ye
know what yer chances be.”
John was far from comfortable as he learned Duff’s monstrous plan. He
could not believe that Ree would surrender the letter, which was not his
property, but the property of Theodore Hatch, without a struggle, and he
knew that Duff would not hesitate to kill. The result, it was all too
likely, would be that Duff, in one of his furious passions would commit
murder and John Jerome would never greet his friends again.
“Ye see I was jest a farm hand an’ never was in the line as Duff was in,
until he got me into this one, sayin’ it would only be a job of findin’
a box o’ gold buried in the ground, an’ I could handle a spade so good,”
Dexter continued, talking as though to himself. “But it ain’t been like
he said. I ain’t no coward like Quilling, but if this here scheme Duff’s
now workin’ don’t do the business, I’m goin’ to quit—I’m goin’ to quit.”
Dexter shook his head gloomily. It was undoubtedly a “blue” day for him.
He rose and walked out just beyond the mouth of the cave.
“I’m goin’ to quit,” the fellow murmured despondently again, and his
words were as a prophecy.
From a clump of bushes above, at the top of the steep hill across the
ravine, clearly visible through the bare, gray trees, there came a puff
of smoke; a rifle sounded, and Dexter, shading his eyes with one hand,
looking down the valley in search of Duff, whom he would see never
again, sprang high into the air. As though it were some inanimate thing
his body fell backward at full length upon the ground, and from his
temple trickled a tiny stream of crimson, staining the snow.
So ended the life of Dexter. If the thrilling adventures that awaited
John Jerome, his prisoner, and Return Kingdom on the edge of
civilization urge you to further reading, turn with me the pages of
“_The Lone Indian_” that together we may learn the full history of the
little cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga.
W. B. C.
Transcriber’s Notes
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