CHAPTER VI.
A RUNNING SKIRMISH.
“What’s that?” involuntarily exclaimed Nick, as he tried to make out the nature of the object.
“Looks like a stale doughnut,” offered Patsy Garvan. “But the old guy who dropped it is all in just the same.”
“Adil!” called out Jefferson Arnold.
“Hush!” warned Nick Carter. “Keep quiet till we see.”
“I do see,” insisted the impetuous millionaire. “That’s Adil, and I——”
“I’ll save him,” interrupted Nick. “But we’ve got to wait till we see what is behind those trees.”
Jefferson Arnold recognized the justice of this, and restrained himself from dashing out into the open, as he would have liked to do.
Adil seemed to have been released from his hypnotic trance by the jar of the rifle report. He stood still and looked about him with a light of intelligence in his eyes that had not been there before.
For a minute he seemed uncertain which way to go. Then, with a half-uttered ejaculation, he sprang over the body of the medicine man and the snake, and raced in the direction of the tree behind which Chick was still crouching.
The report of the rifle, and perhaps its flash, was the guide to the young East Indian, who, such a short time before, had been helpless, with the venomous snake twined about his neck.
As he dashed across the clearing, he stooped and picked up something about halfway. It was the object that had fallen from the dead snake charmer’s fingers, and which Patsy had said looked like a stale doughnut.
Holding this thing, whatever it was, tightly in his hand, the fugitive kept on till he reached the edge of the open space.
“Come on, Adil!” shouted Jefferson Arnold, regardless of everything except the fact that the young man was running to him. “This way, my boy!”
Adil stumbled as he got to the shelter of the trees. Then, with a gasp he fell into Arnold’s arms, in a dead faint.
“He isn’t hurt, is he?” asked Patsy, trying to see Adil’s face, but, of course, failing, in the darkness. “What’s the trouble? Fainted?”
“Leave him to me,” returned the millionaire. “I’ll take care of him.”
“How?”
“Let me get any kind of a start, and I’ll have him to our camp and into the boat before this gang can get out. There is a big crowd of rascals in the wood, over there.”
“There’s no doubt about that,” observed Nick Carter. “We’ll hold them there, too.”
“Sure we will!” declared Patsy energetically. “We can stand off all they can bring over. Eh, Chick?”
“I guess,” was Chick’s brief reply, as he brought another cartridge forward in his rifle. “You get, Mr. Arnold.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” was the pithy rejoinder.
He swung the light, but sinewy form of Adil over his shoulder, and broke his way through the wood the way they had come. Jefferson Arnold was a New York business man. But he had also hunted big game in several countries, and he was a woodsman who knew the game.
Hardly had Arnold gone, when a crowd of dark-skinned men broke cover across the clearing. They had knives and spears in their hands, and they were bent on mischief.
“Let go, boys!” cried Nick Carter.
He fired his rifle as he spoke, and simultaneously there was a report from the gun of each of his two assistants. They fired two more shots apiece as fast as they could pump them out, and the Hindus stopped in amazement that was dangerously near panic.
Yells of anger arose from them, but they did not seem to know what to do in the face of this sudden attack by the white men.
Nick Carter and his two assistants took advantage of the check they had given to dart to fresh cover, a hundred feet or so to the rear.
“It’s a good thing those dubs haven’t got guns,” remarked Patsy. “It’s a wonder they haven’t. What do you think they are?”
“Just ordinary ruffians, I suppose,” returned Nick carelessly. “They may be a gang from the hills, for anything I know. Look out! Here comes a spear!”
It was immediately apparent that, although there were no guns in the ranks of the dusky enemy, they could hurl spears with precision and viciousness.
Four or five of these weapons—exceedingly dangerous when in skillful hands—came hurtling among the trees.
The aim was good, too, for Chick had only just got behind a deodar when two spears came singing along and stuck in the trunk of the tree just where his head had been a moment before.
Patsy had a narrower escape than Chick, for one of the spears caught the sleeve of his white linen coat and fastened it to the tree.
“Gee! There goes a new coat sleeve!” exclaimed Patsy, with comic anger. “They’ve taken out a three-cornered bit just above the elbow, and I’ll have to go in rags till I get to a city where I can buy another coat. Holy mackerel! I’m always ‘it’ when there’s bad luck going about.”
Meanwhile, Chick found himself hard pressed. He could not get out from behind his tree without offering himself as a target for a spear, and he could not stay where he was indefinitely.
He had only six more shots left in the magazine of his rifle, and no time to reload.
“I’ll give them all I’ve got,” he muttered. “If that doesn’t clear the way, I’ll have to go out there and get into a rough-and-tumble scrap, taking chances.”
He fired a couple of shots into the ranks of the oncoming Hindus, hoping to hit some of them, but without knowing exactly where his bullets would go. It was impossible to take steady aim under the circumstances, and he did not try.
“I’ll fire low,” he thought. “That’s one of the fundamental rules in sharpshooting. Then, if you hit anybody, you are pretty sure to do something worth while.”
“Look out, Chick!” came excitedly from Patsy. “The woods are full of them! Mind they don’t crawl up behind. Gee! Here’s where I’ll beat it for the Bowery—or as near as I can get.”
“Back!” suddenly shouted Nick Carter. “Get back, both of you! They are working around on my side. They’ll cut you off in another minute!”
“That’s what!” roared Patsy. “But we can do some cutting ourselves. Whoop! Get out of my way! You black skunks! Come on, Chick!”
“Of course I will,” replied Chick, with the calmness of desperation. “I hear them on my left, but they haven’t got us yet. Hold together, boys! We’ll beat ’em!” he went on, hardly knowing, in his excitement, what he said.
Sending one more shot in the general direction of the enemy, Chick turned and lunged back into the darkness.
“Whoof!”
It was Nick Carter who made this involuntary ejaculation, for, in the blackness, Chick had plunged headlong into him.
“I beg your pardon!” blurted out Chick.
“That’s right!” laughed his chief. “Never forget your manners, old man. Bend low and run! It’s our only chance at this stage of the game.”
Side by side, the three detectives raced over the rotting undergrowth and leaves, and it was surely luck that prevented any of them dashing their brains out against some tree.
They had become somewhat used to the darkness by this time. What had appeared at first as merely a black wall resolved itself now into a forest, with trees spaced so that it was possible to get around them with some ingenuity, plus a great deal of agility.
Dodging, swerving, stumbling over fallen limbs and upheaving roots, occasionally gasping for breath, and conscious all the while that the enemy was gaining, the trio rushed on.
Not only was there danger from those who were making a rear chase of it.
Some of the natives had flanked them. Their spears glistened as they were brandished fiercely, while their owners uttered low guttural threats which sounded supernaturally awful in the darkness.
Nick Carter had had experience enough as an army officer to know a great deal about military strategy. He was aware that the menace of a flanking movement was something whose importance no general overlooked.
If once the wings of their black pursuers outstripped them far enough to close in and get them in a ring, they would be as helpless as rats in a trap.
“Get to the river!” was Nick’s low-voiced instruction to his two assistants.
“How far ahead is it?” asked Patsy. “I’ve lost track of distances since I’ve been in this wood.”
“A hundred and fifty feet,” replied Chick. “Keep quiet! Don’t talk! Save your breath!”
“I notice you’re not using any sign language yourself!” retorted Patsy. “And you don’t sound as if you had more breath than the rest of us, either.”
Patsy Garvan could not have kept out of an argument if there had been a spear within six inches of his heart. He dearly loved the last word, no matter where he was.
A sullen gleam of water could be made out through the tangle of trees. Surely they could cover the short distance between them and their boat, lying at the river bank before the foe cut them off.
They were not there yet, however.
A dark figure shot up ahead of the three flying detectives. Hardly had this one figure come into view, when there was another and another.
“They’ve closed us in!” cried Chick. “Just what I was afraid of.”
“Looks like it,” assented Nick Carter. “Well, there’s only one thing to do. We must rush them and take our chances of breaking through.”
“They’ll be taking the chances—not us!” shouted Patsy, with his usual drive-ahead cocksureness. “We could lick that bunch if our arms were in a sling.”
“Of course we can, but we’ll have to fight. There’s more of them every moment. Blaze away, both of you, and fire from the hip. Don’t take the time to aim. After that, revolvers! Come on, boys!”
Nick Carter’s tone was full of confidence, and his two assistants would have charged a regiment at that instant.
Several spears whizzed in front. But the darkness caused them all to go wild, although they were near enough to be uncomfortable. Patsy insisted afterward that one scraped the skin off the end of his nose and mussed his hair.
“Here you are!” shouted Nick. “There’s a hole in their line.”
“Where?” questioned Patsy.
“If you don’t see it, make one!” snapped Chick. “Rush through somehow!”
Shoulder to shoulder, Nick Carter and his two men charged at the yelling natives and went through their formation like the center rush in a varsity football game.
It was at this moment that they heard Jefferson Arnold roaring excitedly:
“Swing to the right, Carter! Swing out to the right!”
The three obeyed this injunction, just as there came some more flying spears.
At the same instant two rifles spoke from the river bank. The shots took the Hindus by surprise, and for a few seconds they were completely demoralized.
Nick and his two assistants dashed through the undergrowth and gained the edge of the wood. They caught a glimpse of the river and their boat, with the four oarsmen seated, ready to row away at the word of command.
Patsy gave a low chuckle of satisfaction. As he said afterward, that boat, with the four black men as crew, looked very good to him just then.
Standing on the bank, close to the boat, were Jefferson Arnold and Jai Singh, each with a rifle in his hand. It was their shots that had taken the nerve out of the enemy.
“Jump for the boat!” bellowed Jefferson Arnold.
“Jump!” echoed Jai Singh.
CHAPTER VII.
ADIL TELLS HIS STORY.
It was a big leap in the darkness, especially for men half spent by a laborious run. But the three were all strung up, and they had more spring in them than might have been expected.
They dropped into the boat higgledy-piggledy, and immediately Jefferson Arnold and Jai Singh followed.
“Hack away that rope at the bow!” roared Arnold.
Jai Singh, ax in hand, obeyed, just as one of the pursuing natives poised his spear to send it at Chick.
Nick Carter had seen the action in time, however. Although the detective had dropped into the boat all in a heap, he had kept his automatic pistol in his right hand, while holding the now unloaded rifle in his left.
Up went his revolver as the Hindu raised his spear. The pistol roared before the spear could leave its owner’s hand.
The native crumpled up as the bullet reached him. His companions did not press forward quite so fast. They were disposed to be cautious now, although none the less vindictive.
The boat swung out to the middle of the river, as the rowers dug in their oars to save the yawl from yielding to the strong current made by the falls a little distance below.
As the coolies bent to their work, two spears flew at them. One went clear over their heads, but the other caught the stroke oarsman in the forearm, making a nasty, jagged wound.
The injured man rowed on doggedly, only glancing carelessly down at the great red scar in his brown arm, as if to see how bad it might be. He seemed satisfied that it would not disable him, and the shrug with which he took his eyes off it told how little he cared for what did not seem such a trifle, after all.
The river was wide at this point. So, five hundred yards farther up, and about that distance from the shore, Nick Carter directed Jai Singh to let go the light anchor they carried.
As the tall Hindu obeyed, the boat swung gently around to her cable.
In the after part of the boat there was an awning of bamboo, thatched with palm leaves. At Nick’s suggestion, lanterns were lighted under this awning, so that they might look themselves over and see what damage had been done.
First of all, Nick took a roll of antiseptic bandage from his pocket and bound up the wound on the arm of the stroke oar, putting on some salve that he always carried in his “first-aid” kit.
The man submitted in stolid silence while Nick examined the arm. When it was bound up, he said “Thank you!” in English. That was all, except that he looked rather curiously at the barbed head of the spear which lay in the boat where it had fallen.
The detective picked up the spear and made a close examination of the barbed point.
“No poison, I should say,” he remarked briefly. “If there were any, it would show in a sort of sticky glaze. Still, the antiseptic salve I’ve put into that gash on the arm won’t do any harm. Besides, it will help to close the wound quickly.”
The patient went back to his seat, and Nick glanced at Jefferson Arnold, who was speaking to Adil, as the young man lay, still nearly exhausted, on a blanket under the awning.
“What does he say, Mr. Arnold?” asked Nick.
“He has told me something about my boy,” answered Arnold, in shaky tones. “Carter, we’re going to catch up with him soon.”
“One day’s journey,” put in Adil, in a feeble voice.
“Who are those fellows who had you, Adil? And how did you come to be where you are?” asked Jefferson Arnold.
“We came to them farther up the country. Sahib Leslie wanted to hunt tigers, and he told me to be ready. I did what I was told.”
“Who else was with my son?”
“Sahib Pike.”
“Ah! He went tiger hunting, too?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“We had gone far up, near the head of the Brahmapootra, when Sahib Pike he go away. Sahib Leslie he sorry, but nothing could be done. He was afraid Sahib Pike got hurt, but he did not know.”
“I’ll bet he didn’t get hurt,” threw in Patsy Garvan wisely. “This Pike person was working a frame-up on Leslie Arnold, for a dollar.”
“There seems reason in your opinion, Patsy,” nodded Nick Carter. “But we haven’t heard it all, remember.”
“I don’t see where we want to hear much more,” growled Jefferson Arnold. “It’s a pretty clear case, I think. I’ll fix Pike when I meet him. It is all his doings. I am confident of that.”
“You haven’t told us how Leslie Arnold got into the power of these men up in the hill country,” Nick Carter reminded Adil.
“We were in camp one night, when Pike called out that there was danger. Sahib Leslie was asleep, in his blanket, to keep off the snakes that go about at night in the forest. We had a fire, but it had gone down.”
“You bet it had gone down,” remarked Patsy Garvan. “I never knew a camp fire that didn’t go down, unless you lay down before it and blew it most of the night.”
Nick Carter and Chick both smiled. They gave Patsy credit for close observation. Both had noticed this peculiarity of camp fires themselves.
“There was a fight, and I believe Sahib Leslie killed some of them,” continued Adil. “We could not tell how many there were. But it seemed as if fifty men jumped out of the darkness and grabbed at him.”
“They wanted to take him prisoner, eh?”
“That’s what they did at last,” answered Adil. “But for a while there was a fight which was good. I stood by the side of Sahib Leslie, and we shot four—five—many men. They had spears like that.”
He pointed to the lance that had wounded the oarsman in the arm, and which lay in the bottom of the boat.
Nick Carter had taken the implement in his hand, and was looking it over thoughtfully.
He had seen at a glance that it was different from any of the weapons used by the Sepoys or other men in the lower part of Hindustan. Still, it was well made, and there were strange figures burned into the iron head with some strong acid.
“The party must have divided, Adil,” he suggested. “You were brought down here a prisoner. But Mr. Leslie went somewhere else.”
“Yes. Those who brought me wanted much money before they went back to their own country. They said they would make me get it for them.”
“I see. You were to be a decoy?”
Adil evidently did not exactly understand this word “decoy,” but he knew, in a general way, what it meant, and he nodded.
“What did you tell them?”
“I would not speak,” replied Adil. “That is why they told the medicine man to make me see clearly what must be done.”
“The blackguards!” ejaculated the millionaire. “They were trying to torture him into obeying them.”
“Say, chief!” interrupted Patsy. “Let’s pull out of this. We ought to get after the gang that have Mr. Arnold’s son without wasting any more time. Adil can take us to the place, can’t he?”
“If he can’t, I can,” boomed the deep tones of Jai Singh. “These men are of the low caste who are servants of the men of the Golden Scarab.”
“What’s a scarab?” asked Patsy. He always liked to get to the bottom of things without loss of time.
“It is a beetle, Patsy,” replied Nick Carter. “Go on, Jai Singh. What do you know about it?”
“I know there is a country far up above the hills where the snows are, and that the Golden Scarab is their god. They are big men, who fight well, and they have cities as fine as any in India, with great temples, on which are signs cut in stone by their ancestors, and where they worship the Golden Scarab. It is in one of those cities that we shall find Sahib Leslie.”
“Holy pancakes!” broke out Patsy. “I feel as if I were going nutty. I’ll be glad when I get back to the good old United States. This India is too rich for my nerves.”
“Keep quiet, Patsy,” admonished Chick. “I want to get at the rights of this thing. So does the chief. What’s the use of you interrupting all the time?”
“Interrupting?” echoed Patsy. “If I didn’t say something once in a while, I’d blow up.”
“Go on with your story, Adil,” requested Nick Carter. “And, Patsy, please do not ask any more questions. I’ll do the cross-examining, if there has to be any.”
“They brought me to the forest over there, where you saw me, and the medicine man passed his hands before my eyes, so that I had to do what he said, and keep on moving about in the clearing. He had made me take off my clothing, except for what I have on.”
“I see,” nodded Nick. “Go on.”
“The medicine man had something in his hand that he kept on putting to his face. It seemed to talk to him.”
“Bosh!” growled Jefferson Arnold, below his breath.
“You picked it up, did you not?” asked Nick.
“Yes. It is still in my hand.”
He opened his hand and revealed the curious object that Patsy had described as a stale doughnut.
Nick Carter took it in his fingers and shuddered slightly. The thing was the ear of some image. It was about twice the size of a man’s ear, carved elaborately out of gray soapstone.
“What is it?” murmured Nick, as a strange feeling, uncanny and enervating, stole throughout his whole being.
“It is the ear of one of the little gods of the Land of the Golden Scarab,” rumbled Jai Singh. “When you find the image it belongs to, you will also find Sahib Leslie Arnold.”
CHAPTER VIII.
READY FOR INVASION.
“Well, the thing to do is to push on,” decided Nick Carter briskly, as Jai Singh handed back the soapstone ear to him. “We’ll keep this pretty relic as a sort of cue for what we are to do when we get to the Land of Golden Scarab. Are we on the right road to that interesting place?”
“Straight up this river till we get to where it pours out of the sacred rocks among the Himalayas,” replied Jai Singh.
“It is on the borders of Nepal, isn’t it?” asked Chick.
“Not far from there,” returned Jai Singh. “It would be well to take up the anchor and go on.”
“Aren’t we going to have another mix-up with that bunch of coffee-colored robbers over there?” grumbled Patsy.
“They have gone away,” Jai Singh told him gravely. “We may meet them when we get to the city beyond the snow. They are not likely to follow us now. No doubt they know a quicker way to get to the place where the Golden Scarab is supreme. But I do not know it. We can only go the way I will show.”
The anchor was lifted, and the four oarsmen settled down to their work in the dogged, matter-of-fact manner characteristic of them.
It was the middle of the next day when they reached the headwaters of the branch of the famous Ganges up which the boat had been toiling.
They had not seen anything of their enemies of the day before, and it seemed as if the men who had been with the medicine man were none too eager to avenge his death.
Soon the rest of the journey would have to be done on foot, with the men carrying such supplies as they might need on the way to the home of the Golden Scarab.
Although they had neither seen or heard anything of the men belonging to the medicine man who had given them such a lively tussle when the snake charmer met his death, they had a strange sense of being watched, without being able to explain exactly what the feeling was.
There had been several places where, on account of rapids or shallows in the river, it had been necessary to carry the boat around.
Each time this had happened, they had posted a guard to look out for lurking enemies, but nothing had been seen of the rascals they believed were not far away.
Patsy had expressed his disgust on each occasion because there had been no chance of battle.
But Patsy always had a chip on his shoulder. So Chick only laughed at his pugnacious comrade, while Nick Carter pretended to be wholly oblivious.
“I wish they’d come out of their holes,” grumbled Patsy. “I’d rather have them sting me than stay back there, where you can’t tell what they are after. What do you think about it, chief?”
“Ask Jai Singh,” was Nick Carter’s response.
Jai Singh spoke for himself, without being questioned.
“Such is not their way,” he told them, in his deep voice. “So long as they see we keep guard, they hide away deep in the forests. Yet they watch—they watch! Look you! See you that way to the left—far away, above the big trees yonder above the sun. It looks like a pinch of wind-driven dust?”
“What is it?” asked Jefferson Arnold.
“They are forest birds, disturbed by their scouts,” replied Jai Singh impressively. “Aye, you may laugh. But my eyes are keen, and I tell you that it is so. It is a warning.”
They gazed at the snow-capped mountains some distance ahead of them, and which were hazy on that account. Nick Carter knew them for part of the great range of the Himalayas, mysterious and grim—as if they locked in their bosom the secrets of ages.
The forest land near the head of the river soon began to open out on either side into a barren plain, and the stream constantly dwindled, until it was scarcely a hundred yards across and flowed sluggishly over the shoals that gave hardly depth enough for the flat-bottomed boat to navigate.
“By all accounts, the Golden Scarab country should lie over there, beyond the mountains,” was Nick Carter’s comment. “Little is known of it, and I cannot even give it a better name than the one I have just used. But there is no doubt in my mind that it exists, and that it is such a place as Jai Singh has described.”
“I speak according to the knowledge that has come to me,” put in the tall Hindu, with dignity.
“I pray heaven that my poor boy is safe, and that we shall not get there too late,” was the fervent hope of Jefferson Arnold. “Does anybody know the time of day and the date? It must be many weeks since my son was captured.”
“My watch got full of water coming up the river, when we moved the boat at the big falls,” remarked Nick. “Time is a matter of guesswork in these regions. All we can do is to push on as quickly as we can.”
“That rascally Pike does not mean to let us find my boy if it can be helped,” returned Jefferson, with a sad shake of the head. “I suppose he was afraid Leslie would keep after him to get back that hundred thousand dollars—or, failing in that, bring the scoundrel to justice. That is the secret of my son’s disappearance, I feel sure.”
“Probably,” conceded Nick. “If it is, we may have strong hope of saving him. Jai Singh says the feasts of the Golden Scarab, when there are many living sacrifices of human beings, are few and far between. We shall get there before the next one, if we keep on steadily as we are doing now.”
Jefferson Arnold leaned forward to look into the detective’s face.
“Do you mean, Mr. Carter, that there is actual danger of my boy being killed in some fanatical ceremony among those people over there?”
“I mean that we must go after him quickly, Mr. Arnold,” was all Nick Carter would say. “Let me take a look at those mountains through my glasses.”
For perhaps two minutes the detective stared through his double field glasses at the mighty hills in the distance. When at last he took the glass from his eyes, there was a smile of satisfaction just visible at the corners of his mouth.
“From what I can make out, there is some sort of pass on the right shoulder of the main peak,” was his decision.
“The sahib has spoken truly,” agreed Jai Singh. “There is such a pass. So far as I know, it is the only one where a man may pass in safety.”
“You have been through it?” queried Chick.
“No.”
“Gee! How do you know about it, then?” interjected Patsy Garvan. “Just a hunch?”
“The wisdom of the hills where I live is not understood by white men,” returned Jai Singh gravely. “I know what I know.”
“Well, you know a great deal more than I do about this forsaken country,” muttered Patsy. “I wouldn’t care if I didn’t find out any more about it, either. If we weren’t going after young Mr. Arnold, and that crook, William Pike, I’d be satisfied to quit right here. I’m not inquisitive—about some things.”
“Yet, how do you know about the pass?” pressed Nick Carter.
Jai Singh did not reply at once. He bent his head and seemed to be in a deep reverie for some moments—almost as if in a trance. Suddenly he straightened up, and speaking in a low, dreamy tone, answered:
“How can I tell exactly how it is that I know? It may be that, long years ago, before I was born, my people forced their way through to battle with those who worship the Golden Scarab. Sometimes, in the night, I seem to see a picture of men of my race and caste going through a pass, with spears ready to strike.”
“Punk!” muttered Patsy.
Nick Carter gave his second assistant a sharp glance. Jai Singh did not hear the remark, apparently, for he continued, in the steady monotone he had been using:
“One of our royal house may have been in the battle, and I, who am of his blood, keep it in my memory.”
“That may be all so,” commented Jefferson Arnold. “But I didn’t take much stock in this second sight, or whatever you call it. That sort of thing doesn’t go in business; I know that.”
So matter-of-fact a person as the millionaire, who had made his money by plain hard-headedness and commercial acumen, was not likely to make much belief in, or patience with, the occultism of the East. He was not ashamed of his skepticism, either.
“Yet will I prove that my words are true,” was Jai Singh’s dignified rejoinder. “We shall soon meet men of the Golden Scarab.”
As he said this, he skillfully brought the boat to a stop in the shallow water near the shore, and jumping in, followed by his four oarsmen, pulled at the craft till it was firmly fixed in the soft mud of the bank.
With the four men to help, the labor had been nothing.
“This is as far as we go on the river,” announced Jai Singh. “Now we walk. Will the sahib give orders to the men?”
Nick Carter nodded and directed the oarsmen to line up in front of him. Adil, without being told, took his place by the side of the oarsmen.
“Not you, Adil,” put in Jefferson Arnold.
“I go with the others,” returned Adil briefly. “I must find Sahib Leslie, and yonder is the way.”
“You shall go, of course,” Nick Carter told him. “But not all these four men. Some of them must be left behind, and I am going to find out which ones by drawing straws. It is a custom in my country. You may stand with my two young men from America.”
He indicated Chick and Patsy Garvan, and Adil willingly enough took his position by their side.
“What about these others?” asked Jefferson Arnold. “If they can fight as well as they row, they’ll be useful fellows to take with us.”
“I’m going to talk to them,” replied Nick. Then, turning to the four oarsmen, he began: “We go yonder, across the mountains, to find the white man who has been taken away. You know that?”
They bowed with the native dignity of all men of their race and muttered an unintelligible assent. Nick continued:
“It is a strange country, and the men there are fierce and cruel. They have strange worship, and their gods are not yours. Whether we will come out of that country alive no one can say. It is possible that the white man who went into the forests with Sahib Arnold may have taken him into the strange land beyond the mountains, and that he will tell the men of the Golden Scarab enough about us to give them power we cannot beat.”
“Not by a jugful!” interrupted Patsy Garvan. “I’ll bet we lick them if ever we get within striking distance. That’s a cinch.”
“We will all go,” said one of the oarsmen. “It is not necessary to draw lots. We will save the young sahib.”
“I knew it!” exclaimed Patsy. “Those boys are the goods, if they are the color of an old tan shoe.”
But Nick Carter shook his head.
“Only two can go. The other two must stay and take care of the boat and what is in it till we get back.”
But the detective knew, even as he said this, that it would be useless to talk. Surely enough, when the procession began to move, the whole four oarsmen were included.
CHAPTER IX.
OVER THE PRECIPICE.
With the boat hidden in the reeds which grew along the river shore, and everybody carrying some of the baggage that Nick believed might be required, the party plunged into the foothills and slowly arose toward the lower ridges of the mountains.
All the rifles had been cleaned and oiled by Nick Carter and his two assistants. Then the former had inspected them all carefully.
“It would be awkward if some of these guns were to jam just when we were in the middle of a scrimmage with the people over there,” he observed, after he had pronounced them all right.
They came to a belt of forest where the ground rose sharply. On the other side of the thicket was a bare, precipitous rock, which formed a natural barrier to the mysterious land where the rites of the Golden Scarab threatened the existence of Jefferson Arnold’s only son.
They were traveling in the daytime now. The fierce heat of the lower country had become tempered by the breezes from the mountains, and Nick Carter desired to have the benefit of the light now that they were in a region that even Jai Singh did not know very well.
They were obliged to skirt the bare rock for several miles. The silence was awesome, and the glare of the sun on the rock became more and more oppressive as they went on.
Ahead of them was the opening that Nick divined was the entrance to the upper passes. The little party swung in to get to it as quickly as possible.
It was lucky that they did swing in, for at that instant an arrow whizzed by them and struck with a sharp ring of metal against the face of the rock.
“The people of the Golden Scarab use the weapons of their fathers,” remarked Jai Singh calmly. “Their arrows kill when they strike.”
“Poisoned?” asked Nick.
The tall Hindu shrugged his shoulders, as he repeated, in a significant tone:
“I have said that they kill.”
Nick Carter, Chick, and Patsy had all thrown up their rifles almost simultaneously with the passing of the arrow. But Jai Singh called out:
“Don’t shoot! There may be more of them. Keep under cover! If you shoot, the sound would carry far, and would bring the others down on us. I saw the one who sent the arrow. Leave him to me.”
“I’d like to get that fellow myself,” grumbled Patsy.
Nick Carter motioned him to lie down close against the rock, where the others had already thrown themselves, and Patsy had to obey.
But Chick broke through restraint. He simply could not lie there while an exciting incident was in progress in which he felt he could take a useful part. So, while Nick Carter was holding Patsy down, Chick followed Jai Singh over the rocks and into the heart of the mountain.
Chick carried his rifle, and his revolver was in his pocket. Jai Singh had his spear—a weapon which, in his capable hands, was equal to any firearm—and he kept it ready in his muscular fingers, ready to hurl it when a foe should appear.
The fellow who had sent the arrow was too cunning to allow himself to be seen. When he had drawn his bowstring he was some eighty yards away, and above the party headed by the detective, and he had kept out of sight.
Jai Singh and Chick had covered a good half of that distance before the foe could notch another arrow to the string.
Just as the two pursuers showed themselves above a ledge of rock, an arrow flashed toward them.
It was like a striking snake, and the “whang” it made sounded to Chick as if it were right in his ear.
But there was another flash just as the arrow came. It was Jai Singh’s spear.
He swept it sideways just in time to prevent the missile burying itself in Chick’s chest. There was a sort of snapping sound, followed by the tinkle of metal on stone.
Jai Singh had cut the arrow in two with one stroke, and it was the barbed-iron head falling upon the rock that had caused the tinkling Chick had heard.
The barbed arrow point had been so near to Chick that the side of it had grazed his shoulder, tearing the white linen of his coat, but not breaking the skin below.
“Go ahead, Jai Singh!” sang out Chick. “We’ve got to get that fellow!”
The Hindu and the detective dashed up the rough slope until they came to a narrow, slanting ledge about two hundred feet above the narrow chasm in which the rest of the party were standing.
They were jammed against the side, so as to be out of reach of possible arrows or spears.
Jai Singh forced his way ahead of Chick and was at once almost on top of his man on a path where there was hardly room to turn around.
Just as Jai Singh was about to seize the fugitive, the latter dropped to his knee, holding the point of a spear aimed at the chest of his assailant, while the butt of the weapon rested on the ground.
Jai Singh could not stop himself. He had the choice either of hurling himself upon the spear or falling over the precipice.
“Wait a moment!” shouted Chick. “I’ll get him!”
He had his rifle poised, but he could not shoot while Jai Singh was in the way.
There was little time for consideration.
The latter had already decided what to do, and, as Chick rushed forward, determined to close with the enemy at any cost, Jai Singh disappeared into the abyss.
Chick could not look to see what had become of him. Urged on by his own impetuosity, he was flung upon the man with the spear.
How he managed to avoid the point of the weapon he never could tell. But he did it somehow.
The sudden disappearance of Jai Singh over the precipice disturbed the Golden Scarab warrior, and his spear dropped almost to his side.
He did not hesitate to fight, however.
It was a desperate combat in which Chick found himself. Even without the threatening spear, there was peril enough to have satisfied the most reckless searcher for adventure.
Chick noted, even as he grasped the fellow’s two arms in his strong hands and forced him backward, that there were certain points of resemblance between the dark, scowling faces before him and those he had glimpsed in the forest when the poisonous snake had made an end of the fanatical “holy man” who had tortured Adil.
“It’s one of the same gang,” thought Chick. “Those fellows weren’t down the river for nothing.”
He and his foe were both on the very brink of the precipice. The ledge was only a few feet wide. To make it worse, the ledge sloped slightly toward the great chasm, and Chick instinctively drew back as he felt himself slipping toward the edge.
“One of us has to go over,” he muttered. “I’ll try to prevent the pair of us taking the leap. But—”
There was a sudden movement by the native, as he glared evilly into Chick’s face, and Chick felt himself going past his enemy and slipping!
For one wild moment he glanced about him, to see whether there was hope of rescue anywhere.
He saw that Nick Carter, Patsy, Adil, Jefferson Arnold, and the four natives of the party were gazing at him anxiously, and he knew that Nick had waved to him, while saying something that Chick could not make out.
“It’s no use!” he groaned. “This is where I pass in! Well, I’ll take this brute with me!”
He struggled frantically to keep on the sloping ledge, while holding tightly to the other man’s arm.
“You go!” grunted the native, in laconic English. “You go!”
“Wonder whether that is all he knows of United States,” thought Chick.
It may be wondered that Chick would pay attention to such a triviality as this Hindu’s knowledge of English at such a time, when inevitable death seemed to stare him in the face.
The answer to that is that, in moments of awful danger, the mind will often run on things that are of no importance. Many a soldier in a wild bayonet or cavalry charge goes to his death humming ragtime without knowing what he is doing.
“You go!” repeated the tugging, straining man from the mountains.
As he said this again, Chick’s foot slipped from the sloping rocky ledge, and he was hurled into space!
CHAPTER X.
THE LOST ONE FOUND.
For the merest splinter of a second, Chick was in a confusion of mentality that took no note of anything. Then, before he could realize that he was plunging to a horrible death, there was an agonizing tug at his right wrist, and he thought his hand had been taken off by some kind of saw-edged knife.
“Ugh!” he ejaculated involuntarily.
Something swept past his eyes, and just as he knew that it was the body of his foe plunging downward into the valley, he also understood that he was hanging by one arm over the awful depths!
His hand had caught in a crevice in the rock, and though his wrist was bleeding and the rough edges of the stone seemed to be cutting him to the bone, still he was hanging in comparative safety.
“Bad enough; but it might have been worse,” he muttered philosophically.
Even if he could not get up to the ledge, at least he had not yet dived to certain death on the bowlders and ridges that floored the cañon.
“Hold on, Chick!” shouted Nick Carter, at the top of his voice. “We are coming!”
Chick did not hear what his chief had said, but he knew that he must have been seen by his friends below. The only question was whether he could bear the pain and hang on where he was till they got to him.
For three minutes, which seemed to Chick like three hours, he hung there, with the edge of the rock digging deeper into his flesh, and his heart skipping beats oftener and oftener as his strength seemed to be leaving him.
“I’ll lose my senses soon,” he thought. “I can feel myself going. Well, the sooner the better!”
“Keep still, sahib!”
It was the deep voice of Jai Singh, and it seemed to be behind, as well as below, him. The sound gave Chick new courage.
“Hello, Jai Singh!” he managed to reply.
“I come up soon. We both get out!” went on Jai Singh. “Only, don’t let go. That would end it. Wait till somebody comes.”
So Jai Singh could not help him! Chick had hoped at first that the powerful Hindu was in a situation to lend him a hand.
As a matter of fact, Jai Singh had had a narrower escape than Chick. He had grasped the root of a shrub growing from a crack in the face of the rock, and thus had saved himself from going to the bottom.
If the shrub had not happened to be of a tough species, the root would have broken off under the tremendous strain put upon it by the weight and thrust of the falling Hindu.
But Jai Singh did not fear.
With the fatalistic calmness of his race, he retained his grip, and, though he felt the root giving way a little under his weight, decided that it would hold him—unless the fates had decided that his time to die had come.
In either case, there was nothing he could do except to wait and see.
Suddenly two arrows came whizzing from above. One struck close to Jai Singh, the other narrowly missed Chick.
Instantly there was the response of three shots from below, echoed by shouts from somewhere around out of sight.
“What is happening?” muttered Chick. “Are they fighting over me, and I not able to make a move for myself? If I could only get up to that ledge!”
Jai Singh said nothing. He knew perfectly well that he was an open target for the men who were sending their arrows from some safe cover above him. But, since he could not help himself, why should he give way to futile lamentations?
There were no more arrows. Instead, a chorus of shrieks and oaths in a strange tongue burst forth. Then Chick saw a white man tearing down a narrow path which wound around the face of the rock above him.
Seemingly there was nothing to prevent him diving over the edge when he should come a little farther.
Chick had just time to see the fugitive on his headlong way, and to note that two dark-skinned men who resembled the rascals they had met when the medicine man had been killed by the snake in the forest were following. Then something else seemed to leap into his vision from nothingness, although common sense told him it had been there all the time.
The something was a cleft in the rock at the edge of the precipice. It was only a few feet from that which held him by his one wrist.
“If I can reach that crack,” he murmured, “I might be able to drag myself up, and——”
Chick did not finish the sentence even to himself. Taking a firm grip of himself, so that he should not allow mere pain to swerve him from the purpose he had formed, he swung, with all his power, in the direction of the crevice he had just noticed.
As he did so, it seemed as if the wrist held in the other fissure might be torn apart. But he persisted, and, as the tips of his fingers caught the rough rock, he pulled himself up.
It was indescribable agony, because he was obliged to pull to some degree on his maimed wrist.
Nevertheless, he did not flinch. With a tremendous tug, he raised himself so that half his body lay on the rock.
“If I can pull up the rest of the way, I’ll make it yet,” he thought. “That chap above will be over if I don’t stop him.”
The young man—hatless, and with his white garments rent in all directions—still showed in his face and general aspect not only that he was a gentleman, but that he was not of a nature to be easily subdued.
“By George!” was Chick’s exclamation, as, with a last painful effort, he got to the narrow path and lay panting for breath. “It looks like——”
He got to his knees and braced himself for a shock that would mean life or death to two people.
The white stranger had lost control of himself entirely now. There had been curves in his downward path on the face of the rock that he had taken advantage of to check himself twice. The second time he had almost stopped.
Now he was on the last bit of path, and there was nothing to hold him back. Twenty steps more and he would be on the narrow ledge where Chick crouched, waiting!
It was out of the question that the flying man could stop there. He must keep on! Then—the leap to death!
“What can I do?” thought Chick.
It was not in a despairing tone that Chick asked himself this question. He put it to himself seriously, and with the object of finding an answer.
Of course, he had not the time to go into it in detail. This was only his general idea.
Fortunately, Chick was in the habit, in an emergency, of taking action instinctively, and generally such action turned out to be wise and effective.
So now, as he saw the white stranger coming toward him at frantic speed and utterly beyond self-control, Chick curled himself up in the path, planted his two feet firmly against some slight equalities of rock near him, and prepared for a tremendous concussion.
He got it. Hardly had he taken the position in which he hoped to be able to stop the helpless man, when the latter plunged down the last few feet.
“Throw yourself flat!” yelled Chick. “Come at me headfirst! Come on! I can hold you! Right down!”
Before Chick had finished shouting his instructions, the man had obeyed the first one.
He let himself go like a ball player sliding to first base. Flat on his stomach he hurled himself, and into the diaphragm of Chick went his head.
The shock was tremendous. Chick had braced himself to receive the charge, so that not all the breath was knocked out of him.
He had not much left, but what he had he utilized in warning the man he had saved to hold on for dear life.
“Lie still!” he shouted. “You’re all right! Don’t stand up! They’re after you!”
Chick had seen that three of the pursuing natives were dashing down the mountainside.
Each of them carried a spear, and there was no reason to doubt that he could hurl it with the precision of Jai Singh himself.
The only reason they did not send their weapons ahead of them now seemed to be that they had not time.
At least, that was Chick’s first reading of it. Then he changed his mind, as he saw that the spears were fastened to them by a cord that passed around their neck and over one shoulder.
The cords had become entangled in some way, and all three of the men were trying desperately to get them loose.
Down they came! Then—just as they were going to throw themselves upon Chick and the young man he had saved, and neither of whom had had time to get to his feet—there was a bang, and the foremost of the three rascals threw up his hands, whirled around, and went over the precipice!
“Get the other two!” roared the familiar voice of Patsy Garvan, as his good-tempered face appeared above the edge of the rocks at the back.
He was seen to be hurrying along to get to the narrow ledge, and his rifle was ready to send another shot at the companions of the fellow he had shot.
“Hold on!” roared Jefferson Arnold. “Don’t shoot! You might hit my son!”
“Your son?” cried Patsy.
“Yes,” replied Jefferson. Then darting forward until he was close to the young fellow who had come tearing down the rocks, he held out both hands, as, in sob-choked tones, he cried:
“My boy!”
It was Nick Carter who saved Jefferson Arnold from pitching over the precipice, by throwing both his arms around the millionaire as he leaped forward to grasp the hands of his son.
“What? Is this Leslie Arnold?” shouted Chick, bewildered.
It was not necessary to repeat this question, for the two Arnolds, father and son, had dropped each other’s hands, and Leslie now had his arms around his father’s shoulders.
“Look out!” roared Patsy. “Here they come, twenty of them!”
He pointed up the way the scoundrels had followed Leslie Arnold, and by which they had suddenly retreated.
It was apparent why the two men had gone back, although Nick Carter was the first to see it.
“Take cover! Quick!” he thundered. “Those two are bringing the whole pack about our ears.”
Everybody rushed behind rocks, rifle in hand, except Nick. He was looking over into the chasm.
“Chief!” cried Chick anxiously. “What’s the matter? What are you doing out there? They’ll fill you full of arrows and poison. Come back here!”
Nick Carter waved his hand to silence his terrified assistant. Then he flung himself flat upon the narrow path, with one of his long, sinewy, capable arms stretched down over the precipice.
There was a momentary strain, a quickening of the great detective’s breath. Then—a tall, dark, lean figure, in scanty white clothing, topped by a large white turban with a jewel in the center, leaped lightly upon the narrow path.
“Thank you, sahib!” said Jai Singh calmly, as, taking Nick Carter’s hand, he dragged him to the safety of the overhanging rock.
It was not Jai Singh’s way to offer effusive thanks, even for the saving of his life. But the detective knew that, even if he could not have depended on Jai Singh to the last drop of his blood before, he certainly could command it now.
“How many of those men are there, Mr. Arnold?” asked Nick of Leslie. “I mean, of those fellows from the other side of the mountains.”
“About twenty here,” was the reply. “In the whole country where they worship the Golden Scarab, many thousands.”
“I don’t care about the thousands,” answered Nick Carter. “What we have to attend to is the twenty or more who followed you.”
He put his head a little away out from the rock. A dozen of the peculiarly fashioned arrows rattled around him.
“Poor marksmen, those people,” remarked the great detective, with a smile, as he drew back his head.
CHAPTER XI.
NICK’S MOST POWERFUL WEAPON.
“They were taking me up in the hills,” explained Leslie Arnold, in reply to a question from his father. “I broke away two days ago, and have been wandering about ever since.”
“Without food?”
“No. I managed to get enough of the cakes they use over there in Bolongu to keep me alive. I took them from my guards when they were sleeping. Only half of them were ever awake at one time. Generally they left five or six to guard me, while the others rested.”
“Must be a tired lot,” remarked Patsy, as he peeped a little way out from the rocks to see what the enemy was doing.
“Who took you up there, and how was it?” went on the elder Arnold. “Was Pike in it?”
Leslie Arnold clenched his teeth and drove one fist hard into the palm of his other hand.
“Yes. The scoundrel! He took the money from the business, and he is over there, in Bolongu.”
“The Land of the Golden Scarab,” put in Jai Singh quietly. “It is also called Bolongu. I did not tell you.”
“If you had, I should have known a great deal more about it,” remarked Nick Carter. “Bolongu is a comparatively familiar name to me. I had heard of the Land of the Golden Scarab only occasionally. Pike is up there, is he?”
Leslie Arnold would have answered, but just then there came a concerted howl from above that indicated an intention on the part of the enemy to do something and to do it quickly.
Adil had been scouting without the knowledge of any of the party. He returned now, with a grave face.
He turned toward Nick Carter, as if to tell him something, when he caught sight of the face of Leslie Arnold. With a cry of pleasure there could be no mistaking, he rushed at his young employer and grasped both his hands.
“Adil!”
“Sahib!”
“Where did you come from, Adil? I thought they’d killed you.”
“They tried. But Sahib Carter would not let them. The medicine man died by a snake. The others ran away when Sahib Carter and the others from America bade them. But you, Sahib Arnold? How is it?”
“I got away four days after they took you down into the hills to offer you as a sacrifice in the land you came from. That was to make the sacrifice good for that part of the country,” answered Leslie.
“Gee! These people from Bolongu, or the Land of the Golden Crab, or whatever it is,” put in Patsy, “never overlook any bets. I suppose if they were going to sacrifice me, they’d frame it up in the Bowery or Union Square, so as to make it stick in New York. They make me sick.”
“What have you found up there, Adil?” asked Nick Carter, who had been waiting with what patience he could command to question the young Hindu.
“They are coming down all at once. They have been commanded to do it, even if some are killed. I heard them talking.”
“In English?” asked Chick.
“Yes. They use the tongue of the white man all over India,” supplied Jai Singh. “Even in Bolongu, which is outside the pale, they still carry on the language they learned from the white man two hundred and fifty years ago. The tribes over the Himalayas have all been in Lower Hindustan at different times.”
“I know that to be true,” remarked Nick Carter. “That is why they are so dangerous. Always, when Oriental races pass under the influence of the Caucasian, they must be kept in close communion with him ever after, or they will forget his civilization, and retain only his cunning.”
Patsy Garvan had heard this with some signs of weariness. He wanted action, not dissertations on the white and Hindu races.
“Are we going to try out those guys up there, chief?” he asked.
“We shall have to hold them back. Where are the four men of Jai Singh?”
“They are here, sahib,” returned the tall Hindu composedly. “I called them while I hung over the rock.”
“Gee! There’s nothing slow about Jai Singh,” observed Patsy. “He’s as slick as Jay Gould ever was.”
“Are the boys all here?” asked Nick Carter.
“They are here,” was the grave response.
“They’ll have to fight,” put in Jefferson Arnold. “Have we guns enough to go around, with one for my son?”
“He can have my rifle,” answered Nick Carter. “I will depend on my revolver. It is a weapon I am used to, and I have more confidence in it than in a rifle, especially at close quarters.”
Leslie Arnold took the rifle with a smile and word or two of gratitude. As he handled it familiarly, making sure that the magazine was properly supplied with cartridges, Nick had no fear that the young man would not give a good account of himself if there should be a mix-up with his late captors.
The detective, having seen that his party were all properly armed, determined to reconnoiter before going out to meet the enemy.
Even with everybody counted in, including the two Arnolds, Adil and Jai Singh, the four coolies, himself, and his two assistants, he could muster only eleven.
Captain, the bloodhound, had been left to guard the boat. He would have made the twelfth, and Nick rather regretted he had not brought the faithful animal with him.
“Captain always makes good,” said Patsy Garvan emphatically. “He could lick six of those Bolongu citizens, and then put a crimp in the hide of the Golden Cat, to make it more binding. I’d bet on good old Captain every time.”
“There are twenty against us,” observed Nick.
“At least that,” nodded Leslie Arnold. “There may be two or three over that number.”
“So that they have odds of at least two to one,” observed Chick. “Well, that isn’t bad. They haven’t any guns—have they?”
“They have their bows and arrows,” answered Leslie. “Their marksmanship is something that we cannot afford to despise, either. They have been shooting with bows and arrows for many centuries, and they get what they aim at.”
“Funny they never took to guns,” remarked Patsy. “They must know about them.”
“Of course they do,” returned Leslie. “But they despise them. At least, the fighting men do. I dare say there are people back in their cities—wise people, too—who would not know a gun if they saw one.”
While talking thus, they had been busy getting ready for the charge Nick Carter meant to make. He had seen that they did not mean to let Leslie Arnold go if they could help it, and that there would have to be a fight to keep him out of their hands.
“What are they so anxious to hold you for, Leslie?” asked his father.
“They know that you are a very rich man,” replied Leslie briefly.
“Well?”
“Pike has told them they can get many sacks of gold from you for me.”
“I see!” grunted old Arnold. “A plain case of holdup, eh? Brigandage and ransom? Well, we’ll see.”
Jefferson Arnold grimly examined his rifle and pistol, and looked at Nick Carter inquiringly.
The detective said nothing. He stepped away from the others, and, concealing himself behind a huge bowlder, managed to get a good view of the rascals who were perched about the rocks above them, ready to make a concerted rush at the command of their leader.
“Come on!” whispered Nick to his party. “We’ll steal as near them as we can, and then let fly at them all together!”
“That’s the stuff!” chuckled Patsy.
Cautiously, Nick Carter went forward, with Chick and Patsy close behind. Then came the other two white men, with the four coolies. Jai Singh and Adil brought up the rear.
They had managed to advance until they were within about fifty feet of the big rock behind which Nick knew the advance guard of the Bolongus was stationed.
There were four in this group, and Nick intended to overcome them first if he could, thus paving the way to the next lot.
If once he could get the weapons away from these twenty odd, he could safely leave them where they were, or send them down the river, bound, in care of the four coolies. Then he could take his own time about coming back with the Arnolds, unless they should determine to follow Pike over the mountains.
Whatever plans Nick Carter might have formed, they were quickly knocked aside by the fact that the whole twenty-four—which was the number of Bolongus ahead of them—came rushing down at once, while another party, whose presence they had not suspected, surged up from below, hemming them in.
“Let drive!” commanded Nick. “No quarter! It is fight or die now!”
He laid low two of the rascals who were preparing to drive their spears into them. Then he caught another who had taken his bow from his shoulder and was fitting an arrow to the string.
Chick and Patsy made good use of their pistols. Then they rushed forward, with a yell, to clean out everybody in front of them.
The skirmish became lively at once.
Nick Carter soon perceived that Leslie and Adil had either made a great mistake in the number of the men who had been bringing them down from the other side of the Himalayas, or else that the party had been unexpectedly augmented by other Bolongus that he had not thought were in the neighborhood.
In any case, it did not take him long to realize that they were surrounded, and that there must be lots of determined fighting if they were to get out at all.
“Keep close, Patsy! Mind they don’t get in between you and Chick, or me,” he warned, as he continued to pump bullets into the enemy. “Keep your heads low, both of you! They can’t send their arrows near the ground, because the rocks are in the way.”
“I noticed that,” returned Chick, as he shot down a big rascal who was about to hurl a spear at him point-blank. “Their spears are worse than their arrows, it seems to me.”
“Look out, Carter!” suddenly bawled Jefferson Arnold. “They’ve got Leslie again!”