“It was Alf Arnold, the squatter of the lake, who told me of this
underground passage,” said Sergeant Dick. “I see it has a concrete
flooring. As sure as a button, inspector, Seymour and his wife will
return this way, unless they have caught the alarm--heard us
breaking in, or, for some other reason, don’t intend coming back.
Will you remain here with half the men, and I will take the rest
through the passage to the cave and wait there for awhile in hopes
of their coming? Do you know, I’ve an idea, too, that that cave will
tell us something.”
“You don’t think they were in the house and fled through the
passage?”
“No, sir; they couldn’t have got here before us, I’m certain.”
“Very good, sergeant! Select your men. I hope the pretty pair
haven’t given us the slip--_will_ return to their nest. Of course,
many of these log huts in the wilds, as you know, both here in
Canada and across the border in the United States, have underground
passages like this to provide a means of escape for the occupants in
case of attack by any desperadoes, so its existence proves nothing.”
Sergeant Dick chose his five men, and they dropped down one after
the other through the trapdoor in the floor, and followed him on
hands and knees along the little tunnel under the ground.
These subterranean galleries in the wild and woolly West are very
simply and easily contrived. A trench, some four feet deep and as
many wide, is dug in the soil from the house, the floor made hard
with concrete or something similar, and the sides boarded up and
over. Then the earth and sods of grass are replaced.
As a rule, the exit is in the middle of a thick clump of bushes some
forty or fifty feet from the hut, and may be used as a rifle-pit, of
course, in case of an attack on the house, the inmates contriving
thus to take the assailants in the rear.
Crawling along on all fours in the inky blackness of the tunnel,
Sergeant Dick came to a similar trapdoor to that he had descended.
Faint rays of light penetrated through cracks in it.
He pushed upward upon it, and it rose on hinges. Standing upright
within the aperture, he flashed an electric torch he had been given
by Inspector Medhurst, and saw that he was within a small cave, the
mouth of which was covered over outside by a thick mass of creeper,
through which, however, silvery light faintly struggled.
The moon had peeped out through a break in the clouds and was
flooding the plain outside with its ghostly radiance.
Dick scrambled out of the hole, and, turning to the back of the
cave, proceeded to flash his torch over it.
All at once he switched off the light, and, stooping over the trap
and the trooper getting upon his feet in it, whispered:
“S’sh, I heard something. They are coming, I believe--our quarry!
Bid the others come out softly.”
A noise as of heavily booted feet on hard rock had reached his
quick, trained ear. It came not from outside the cave, _but from the
roof at the back_.
Or was it only his fancy that it did?
Silently the troopers drew themselves up out of the hole in the cave
floor, and lowered the trap in place again behind them. The
moon-light, which entered through the interstices of the creeper
marking the entrance to the cave, was just sufficient to show each
man his neighbor’s dim silhouette or outline.
The noise without or beyond the cave continued, and grew louder, now
changing to the sounds that a man makes in climbing a ladder--the
sound of heavy boots clumping up wooden rungs.
And then to the amazement and momentary superstitious horror of the
troopers a bright light shot into the cave above a ledge close to
the roof at the back!
The light grew stronger, and danced about, accompanied by a rubbing,
rustling noise, then resolved itself into a glowing orb, which moved
about on top of the shelf and almost immediately turned its back, so
to speak, on the cave.
“I’m all right now, Martha,” said a gruff voice. “Here’s the torch
if you wants it, and shove the ladder along.”
Sergeant Dick and his fellow-troopers were all standing around the
cave, with rifles at the ready and eyes riveted upon that lighted
shelf over their heads. They were invisible in the darkness to the
fellow on the ledge. He had his own light in his eyes for one thing,
and, as related, he did not flash his torch around the cave but
handed it back to his companion in the inner depths.
His dark, shapeless figure could just be discerned in the halo of
the torch, squirming and pulling at something within another little
tunnel measuring about three feet in diameter.
The end of a ladder protruded from this second tunnel.
He and his companion were pulling it through, and he now proceeded
to lower it to the floor of the cave.
As he placed it in position, Sergeant Dick sprang forward, revolver
in hand, and bounded swiftly up it.
The young police officer’s swiftness, however, was almost a case of
more haste less speed. For the ladder, insecurely set half turned
under him. But he saved himself by clutching the shelf of rock with
his left hand, and luckily the ladder did not slip aside, so that he
was not thrown off it.
He promptly grabbed then with his left hand at the man, even as the
latter uttered a yell of fright and made to wriggle back inside the
tunnel.
Sergeant Dick caught the man by the collar, and, holding him
tightly, sprang up the remaining rungs of the ladder and thrust his
head, shoulders, and revolver into the tunnel at the second human
form he could dimly perceive within it by the light of the electric
torch.
“Keep still, you in there, or I shoot,” he roared. “Keep as you are.
Put your hands in front of you. I’ve got the drop on you, as you can
see. Come up, men some of you, quick, and relieve me of the husband
here.”
Three of the troopers sprang up the ladder behind him, while the
other two held it firm. Bill, or “Bud” Seymour, too amazed,
apparently, to be able to offer any resistance, was hauled down from
the shelf, neck and crop, and head first, by the three troopers,
allowing the sergeant to crawl into the narrow tunnel and lay hold
of Martha Seymour.
Fierce and bold as the woman was in the ordinary way, she had not
dared to disobey John Dick’s mandate to lie still and keep where she
was. As a matter of fact, she, like her husband, seemed to have her
energies paralyzed--to be bereft of the power of volition or action
by the unexpected attack.
Sergeant Dick, too, had promptly snatched the electric torch from
the outstretched hand and was shining the light blindingly in her
bewildered, horror-stricken eyes.
The tunnel was so narrow the pair had had to wriggle along it on
their stomachs and her prone position was therefore also against
her.
Leaning still farther in, Sergeant Dick grasped her by the wrist
now, and, backing and exerting all his strength, began to pull her
bodily out of the tunnel.
He had got her half out of it when two of the troopers came to his
aid, and, between them, they dragged her helplessly forth on to the
shelf, then bore her down the ladder to the cave floor.
She was dressed as a man, and in the dark it really would have been
hard to tell that she was not one. Like her husband, she was big and
burly, and her face was red and coarse, and bloated even worse than
his, while her eyes and mouth were hard and cruel-looking, whereas
his were weakly vicious.
They both wore overcoats, “wide-awake” hats, and topboots.
“So you’ve got us, have ye? Well, what are ye goin’ to do with us
now you’ve caught us?” asked the woman with an attempt at mockery,
as if she entertained some faint hope that their captors did not
associate them with the dreaded White Hood gang, or might very
easily be imposed upon. “Who do you think ye’ve got hold of, anyway?
What fules you all are! Don’t you know us? Yon’s Bill Seymour, and
I’m his wife.”
“We are quite aware of that, Mrs. Seymour, and we also know you to
be two of the White Hood gang. You two are alone, I take it. There
are no more of you coming through that interesting little tunnel?”
“Curse you! I recognizes you. You are the police sergeant we was--”
The woman stopped and bit her tongue, in evident concern at having
so unequivocally betrayed herself.
“Why don’t you finish, Mrs. Seymour? Whom you and your ruffianly
fellow-rustlers were going to hang, when my comrades here came up so
unexpectedly and timely.”
“Curse you! Oh, curse you!” was all the infuriated and mortified
woman could find to say.
Her husband broke out into bitter reproaches against her, for having
let her tongue run away with her and betray them both as it had
done.
Sergeant Dick sent one of the troopers across the open space outside
the cave to the hut to fetch Inspector Medhurst, and that officer
came quickly. Needless to say, he was delighted over the capture.
“Search their pockets, men,” he ordered. “We may find evidence upon
them of their own guilt and the identities of their late
companions.”
A brace of automatic pistols was found upon either prisoner. The
pair had already been relieved of their rifles of course.
And then one of the troopers, searching Bill Seymour, found in an
inner pocket a folded scrap of paper, which he handed to Medhurst.
The inspector unfolded it eagerly, and flashed an electric torch
upon it.
In a reddish fluid, presumably blood, was scrawled upon it:
“To old Alf Arnold and his little lot at ‘Water Carstle,’--We was
fules to let you and your sons orf so light, and, now that cussed
policeman who was a-stayin’ wid you ’as escaped us, we believes some
of you set the traps on to us. So, look out! The White Hoods hev
sworn revenge upon all on you, and we ull burn the b’ilin’ lot on
you one night afore long in your bloomin’ ‘Water Carstle.’ Ef you
did beat orf the redskins, you won’t us, so, again we says, look
out!”
Inspector Medhurst read this precious effusion out aloud.
“H’m! Ha!” he observed. “We must take means at once, sergeant, to
protect the Arnolds and entrap the rest of these ruffians around
‘Water Castle.’ They may strike there at once when they learn of the
arrest of these two. Take your five men again, now, and explore this
second tunnel--see where it leads to. If you come upon the trail of
others of the band, let me know at once, and we’ll try to run the
wretches down. Let me know immediately in any case what’s on the
other side of this tunnel.”
John Dick saluted without a word, and, bidding the five troopers
follow him again, mounted the ladder and wriggled head first, inside
the hole behind the rocky shelf.