THE GHOST OF THE CAVE DWELLING.
"L-l-let's get out of here--_quick_!"
Tubby gasped the exclamation, as with a resounding rush the mysterious
sounds swept by.
"Ouch, somebody hit me in the face!" howled Jeb Cotton suddenly.
"Me, too!" yelled Bill Simmons.
"Say, fellows," shouted Rob suddenly, as the noise lessened, "be quiet,
will you, till I light a candle. I've an idea what that noise was, and
it was nothing to get scared at."
"Oh, it wasn't, eh?" protested Tubby angrily. "Well, something hit me a
bang on the nose."
"And me on the ear," chimed in Jeb Cotton.
"And me----" Bill Simmons was beginning, when Rob checked him.
"Let up a minute, will you, and give me a chance? All that racket was
caused by nothing more than a lot of old bats."
"Cats, you mean, or flying rats," said Tubby scornfully.
"No, bats. Look here. I knocked down one."
Rob held his candle high above his head, and the astonished boys saw
lying under a projecting bit of rock one of the leathern-winged
cave-dwellers.
"Huh," remarked Tubby, "and I thought it was ghosts. The ghost of the
cliff. The one the cow-puncher said he saw."
"I guess that ghost has leather wings and a furry body, if the truth
were known," laughed Rob, as he flung the bat he had knocked down into
the air, and the creature flapped heavily off toward the cave mouth.
"Yes, ghosts are----" began Merritt, when he broke off suddenly. His
mouth opened to its fullest extent, and his eyes grew as round as two
big marbles. "Great hookey--what's that?"
His frightened expression was mirrored on the rest of the countenances
in the candle-lit circle, as a strange sound was borne to the ears of
the Boy Scouts.
"It's footsteps," gasped Jeb Cotton.
"Coming this way, too," stuttered Tubby, edging back.
"Nonsense," said Rob sharply, but nevertheless loosening his revolver in
its holster. "It's the wind or something."
"The funniest wind I ever heard," interrupted Tubby scornfully. "It's
got feet--hark!"
Nearer and nearer came the mysterious sound. They could now hear it
distinctly--a soft "phut-phut" on the dusty floor of the passage.
"Wow-oo, I see two eyes!" yelled Tubby, suddenly taking to his heels.
His toe caught on a hidden rock, and he fell headlong in the choking
dust.
Scarcely less startled than the fat boy was Rob, as he made out, glaring
at them from beyond the friendly circle of light, two big green points
of fire.
"Who's there?" he cried sharply.
There was no answer, but the two green globes never moved.
"Speak, or I'll fire!" cried the boy.
"A-choo-oo-o--o-o-o-o-o!"
The tense silence was shattered by a loud sneeze from Tubby, whose
nostrils had become filled with the irritating dust. At the same instant
an unearthly howl rang through the rocky corridors--a cry so terrible
that it set Rob's heart to beating fiercely.
He pulled the trigger more by instinct than anything else, and six
spurts of flame leaped from the barrel of his automatic. With a howl
more ear-piercing than the first, the points of fire vanished, and there
was the sound of a heavy body falling.
"Dead! whatever it is," was Rob's thought, but nevertheless he proceeded
cautiously. It was well that he did so, for as he held his candle aloft,
the huge, dun-colored body, which lay on the ground directly in front of
him, made a convulsive spring. Rob, on the alert as he was, leaped back,
and avoided it by a hair's breadth.
"A mountain lion!" cried Harry.
"That's what, and a whumper, too," exclaimed Merritt. "I guess we've
laid the ghost all right. In the moonlight a light-colored creature like
this would look white against the cliff face."
"I wonder if that last sneeze of mine killed it?" remarked Tubby, who
had leisurely sauntered up. There was now no doubt that the great tawny
creature was dead. Its final spring must have been a purely convulsive
act, for Rob's bullets had pierced its skull in three places.
"Say, fellows," exclaimed Rob suddenly, "the fact that this brute was in
here proves a mighty interesting fact."
"And that is, that it's dead."
"Please be quiet for two consecutive minutes, Tubby, if you can do it
without injuring yourself. It means that there is another entrance to
this place somewhere."
"How do you make that out?" asked Jeb Cotton.
"By applying a little scout lore. There are no tracks at the mouth of
the cave, yet this lion is fat and well-fed, so that it must get its
food outside somewhere. Therefore, there must be another entrance to the
cave."
"Quod erat demonstrandum," quoth Tubby learnedly.
"Which is all the Euclid you know," teased Merritt.
"Well," asked Rob, while Harry Harkness skillfully skinned the lion,
"shall we go on or turn back?"
"We'll go on!" shouted everybody.
"If you guarantee no more scares," amended Tubby.
With the tawny pelt slung over Harry's broad shoulder, the little party
therefore pressed on into the darkness.
"We'll have to hurry," said Rob suddenly, regarding his candle, of which
not much was left.
"How far do you guess it is from the entrance?" questioned Harry.
"I've no idea," was Rob's rejoinder. "I half believe now we were wrong
to try to find a way out this way."
He said this in a low voice, so as not to alarm the others, who were
behind the leaders. It did indeed begin to look as if the young
explorers had placed themselves in a predicament.
Presently, however, the air began to grow fresher, and, uttering a cheer
at this sign that they were near to daylight, the lads rushed forward.
Still cheering, they emerged into a place where the passage broadened,
and in another moment would have been out of the farther end of the
tunnel but for an unexpected happening that occurred at that moment.
Rob, who had been slightly in advance, gave the first warning of the new
alarm. As the welcome daylight poured upon his face, and he gazed into a
sort of cup-like valley beyond the passage mouth, he heard a sudden
"z-i-ip!" past his ear, like the whizzing of a locust.
The next instant fragments of rock scattered about his head and he heard
a sharp report somewhere outside.
Like a flash, the boy threw himself flat on his stomach and wriggled
back into the tunnel.
"They're firing at us!" cried Tubby.
"Yes, but who?" demanded Merritt.
"That's the question," was Rob's rejoinder. "I guess it must be Indians,
but then, again, it may be hunters, who, having seen something move,
fired. I'm going to try to find out."
"Oh, Rob, be careful," begged Merritt.
"That's all right. Here, Bill, lend me that long pole you've got."
Bill Simmons obediently handed over a long branch he had broken off to
use as a guiding staff, before they entered the dark passageway. Rob
pulled off his sombrero and stuck it on the pole.
Then he cautiously poked it out of the rocky portal.
"Bang!"
Rob drew in the hat and examined it.
"Phew!" gasped Tubby. "That's a fine way to ventilate a fellow's lid."
A bullet had bored a hole right through the soft gray crown.
"Guess that's Indians, all right," said Harry; "nobody else would be
able to shoot like that."
"It is Indians," announced Rob. "I saw one dodge behind some brush when
I looked out."
"Well, what are we going to do?" gasped Charley, the younger of the
Price brothers, a lad of about fourteen. His face grew long, and he
began to whimper.
"Hey, hush up, there," admonished Tubby. "Boy Scouts don't cry when they
get in a difficulty; they sit down and try to figure some way out of
it."
"And, in this case, that is easy," said Rob.
"Huh?"
"I said it is easy. All we've got to do is to go back again."
"What, without the candle? Make our way through that dark place?"
"Of course. That is, if you don't want to get drilled full of holes by
those Indian bullets."
"But supposing they follow us?"
"We'll have to take our chances on that," rejoined Rob.
"Well, you're a cool hand, I must say. You calmly propose that we shall
walk back through a dark tunnel, with Heaven knows how many Indians at
our heels?"
"It's all we can do, isn't it?"
"Um-m-well, I suppose so. Come on, then, if we've got to do it, the
sooner we start the better."
"Wait one minute," said Rob, and, stooping down, he pulled up some dry
brush that grew near the cave mouth. He piled this in a heap and set
fire to it.
"Whatever are you doing that for?" asked Tubby.
"I know," said Jeb Cotton, "so that the Indians, or whoever it is firing
at us, will see it and think we are still there."
Rob nodded approvingly.
"That's it," he said, and plunged off into the blackness of the tunnel.
He led the others through it at a rapid pace, but they did not travel so
fast that they beat the daylight, however, for when they emerged at the
other end it was dark, and the stars were shining above them. Far below
they could see little flickering points of fire, where the cow-punchers
were keeping watch.
"Wish we were down there," muttered Tubby, as they all emerged on the
ledge. "I'm hungry."
"So am I," agreed Rob, "and the quicker we get down the mountain the
quicker we'll get some hot supper."
As he spoke, from the mouth of the tunnel, which acted as a sort of
gigantic speaking-tube, there came what seemed to be the hollow echo of
a shout.
"The Indians!" gasped Rob; "they're after us! Up the steps, everybody,
quick!"
A rush for the rough stone steps followed, and so fast did the boys
press forward that Rob had to warn them of the danger of speed.
"If you slipped you'd be over the edge," he said.
It was enough. The rush moderated. The thought of slipping off into
black space was enough to alarm the stoutest hearts among them.
Tubby was the last up but Rob, who remained behind with drawn revolver.
He had nerved himself to fire at the first Indian head that showed out
of the tunnel.
"Come on, up with you," Rob urged, as the fat boy placed his foot on the
rough flight hewn in the sheer face of the cliff.
"All right, Rob," rejoined the stout youth, scrambling upward. "I'll be
up before----"
He broke off short, with a terrible cry that rang out far into the
night.
Rob, speechless with horror, saw the stout youth's feet slip from under
him, and his hands clutch unavailingly at the smooth face of the cliff.
The next instant--for the whole thing happened in the wink of an
instantaneous photographic shutter--Tubby was gone.
With a dreadful sinking of his heart, Rob stretched far over the edge of
the ledge, which hung like some flying thing, between heaven and earth.
Below him was utter blackness.