Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
Flynn now standing as sentinels.
At length a key which fitted but poorly threw the bolt, and the door
swung slowly open, revealing a dark hole.
“Step inside!” the scout commanded, and when they were in with him, he
locked the door carefully. “I don’t know where we are, but we’ll see.”
He struck a match and held it aloft.
They were in a large room that seemed to have been hewn or dug out of
the bluff. It lay behind the big cabin, and he was sure that it
connected with the cabin by an inner door. He recalled that the girl had
come from a door on that side of the cabin, and he wondered if she were
not now held a prisoner somewhere in this place.
The match went out, but the scout and those with him had got a good look
at the room they were in. They had noticed that, though damp and close
by the river, the room seemed to be filled with stores of various kinds.
Bags and boxes were on the floor, and on the walls saddles and blankets.
“I wondher if anny of that gold is in this place?” Flynn whispered.
“I heahs de river down dar somewhars,” Cudjo declared, thinking of the
“’gator.” “Marse Cody, we’d better git out o’ dis. What we gwine tuh do
if dem men come back?”
“I want to learn if that girl is held anywhere in here.”
“But if we’s cotched in heah, Marse Cody?”
“What I’m axin’ mesilf is, can there be anny gold in here?” said Flynn.
“Bedad, the bags we sane on the flure was too big, but I think I’ll thry
wan av thim, to see what they howld.” He stopped and felt about. “Lind
me a match, Cody! Ah! I have wan mesilf! I’ll sthrike it, and luk round
ag’in. Wurra! but this is the iligant adventure! In the cave av the
robbers, wid bags of money layin’ round f’r the takin’. I’ve dr’amed av
such things, Cody, maybe the drame is goin’ to come thrue.”
He scratched his match, and, seeing a bag lying at the other end of the
room, close by the wall, he went up to it. It lay in an irregular heap.
When he stooped to touch it, the bag seemed to move. He sprang back,
letting the match fall.
“Cody,” he said, “come here.”
His voice trembled, but he had courage enough to strike another match.
As the match flamed, he kicked at the bag, and a man rolled from under
it.
Cudjo uttered a shriek which he tried hard to suppress, and Flynn
tumbled back in amazement. The scout whipped out a revolver.
But the flaming match was still held by Flynn, and by its light they saw
the beardless face of the man they had known as Klamath John.
“Hello!” he said, and then the match went out.
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CHAPTER XIV.
ASSAULT AND BATTERY.
“Hello, it is!” said Flynn, striking another. “An’ it’s you? By the
piper that played before Moses, but this is a quare place to be findin’
yez in.”
“No stranger than to find you here,” was the answer.
“Perhaps not,” said the scout, “but what were you doing here, hiding
under that bag?”
“That’s explained easily. I came in here to see if I couldn’t help that
girl, and then I heard you come in. Red Reynard and a man had gone out,
and I thought you were them. So I got under that bag, for I didn’t want
to be seen. I heard you talking, but the bag kept me from recognizing
your voices, or else I was too scared to remember how they sounded.”
As before, he seemed sincere.
“You came here to help the girl?” said the scout.
“Yes. I’ve been lying round outside almost ever since last night, to do
that, ever since I saw her and saw you, in the cabin. I’m sure she’s in
here. I heard her last night, after you had gone, and to-night I heard
her again. She’s in here. Just where I don’t know.”
He kept his voice low, and spoke rapidly, as if he valued time.
“What do you know about her?”
“Nothing, except what I heard.”
“What was that?”
“That she’s the daughter of a prosperous ranchman named Fernald, who has
a son in the army, and she was carried off by Red Reynard through
revenge for something the ranchman did. He intends to force the girl to
be his wife. Her folks don’t know where she is, nor anything about her;
and, of course, they don’t dream she’s in this place, which everybody
thinks can’t be entered.”
“How’ does it come that yez wasn’t dhrowned?” said Flynn, mentioning a
subject of which he had talked much since learning that Klamath John was
still alive.
“I hardly know, myself.”
“Ye climbed that rope?”
“Yes. I was hours doing it, it seemed. Then I kept on, after getting
above the mist; and finally I reached the top of the wall there. I
stayed there in a hole all night; and the next day I got down into the
Cup, though I nearly broke my neck doing it.”
“An’ why did yez lave the canoe? Was it treachery yez was playin’?”
The scout stopped whatever answer Klamath John might have made.
The match had burned to Flynn’s fingers and he dropped it, thus plunging
the room into darkness.
“Sh!” said the scout.
“What is it?” asked Flynn.
“I heard something.”
“Marse Cody,” said Cudjo, his voice trembling, “I heahs dat river, and
maybe it’s de ’gator!”
But the scout heard it again—a step, and instantly this was followed by
a scream in a woman’s voice, followed by a fall, and a loud oath from a
man. Though intervening walls deadened them, they were enough to
electrify Buffalo Bill’s little party.
“It sounded over that way,” he said, and he moved in that direction,
striking a match as he went.
As the light flamed up, he saw a box before him, against the wall. It
was open and showed candles, which had been stored there by the outlaws,
with other things.
The scout snatched a candle and stuck the flaming match to the wick.
Holding up the lighted candle, he looked about, and all listened again
for those sounds.
Klamath John stood behind the other men, having followed them.
“That was the girl,” he said, in a low tone. “I heard something like
that before, and I thought it came from over that way. I was working to
get over there, when you fellows came in.”
The scout moved on, with the others creeping at his heels.
The uneven floor of earth and natural stone fell away toward the river,
and became damp, and then oozy; but that was the direction from which
the sounds had come. Where the floor was the lowest, they beheld a dark
line of water. The water of the river rose there through a large hole
which connected with the stream.
“One might get out that way, by diving,” said the scout, when he
observed it. “It will be well to remember that, if we’re cornered in
here.”
Cudjo looked at the water with frightened eyes. “Marse Cody,” he said,
in a hollow whisper, “dat ’gator could come in frough dat place!”
“Kape shtill, an’ the baste won’t know yez aire in here,” was the advice
of the Irishman.
“But, Marse Flynn, dem creeturs kin smell scan’lous good, dey kin smell
a mile!”
“Wurra! Kape shtill, will yez?”
Close by the water, and to be reached over a jumble of slimy stones, the
scout now saw a door.
“Could those sounds have been beyond that door?” he asked, flashing the
candlelight upon it.
“Like’s not,” said Klamath John. “It shows, anyway, that there’s a room
beyond this. I’m guessin’ that room is a prison, where the girl is
held.”
Flynn stared at him. “Begorra, if yez aire wan av Red Reynard’s min,” he
remarked, “ye’d ought to know what’s behind that dure!”
“One of Red Reynard’s men?”
“That’s what I’m sayin’! If ye’re wan av thim, ye ought to know this
place. Ar-re yez playin’ a game wid us ag’in? It’s me that will cr-rack
yer nick, av yer ar-re!”
“I’m playing no game!”
“No? Thin, be all the powers, what did yez mane by wearin’ thim whiskers
and that wig? And why did yez thry to sind us to death in that river,
afther preparin’ to save yersilf by jumpin’ f’r that rope? Thim
questions have been ’atin’ into me, an’ the answers to thim would be
roight welcome.”
“I can explain all that, I——”
“Don’t speak so loud,” the scout ordered. “Cudjo, come on here and hold
this candle. I heard a sound there again. Flynn, back there I saw a
miner’s pick or two. Will you get them and bring them?”
The scout moved forward, climbing over the rocks till he reached the
door. Cudjo followed him and took the candle, while Buffalo Bill bent
over by the door and put his eye to the keyhole.
As he did so, he became aware of the fact that beyond this door was a
lighted room. Footsteps were heard in it, and, as he listened, with ear
against the keyhole, he thought he heard a groan.
“Some one is in there!” he said.
Flynn and Klamath John came over the slippery rocks, armed with picks
they had found in the stores, and Flynn had also a huge hammer.
“Whurroo!” he whispered. “We can bate the dure down with these things.”
“Sh!” warned the scout. Then, all listening, they heard a groan.
Following this groan, came the sound of an opening door, and footsteps.
Then Red Reynard’s voice reached them.
“Git up!” he commanded harshly. “I don’t stand no more of this
pretendin’. There’s nothing the matter with you but stubbornness, and I
can cure that with a cowhide.”
Klamath John pushed close up to the scout.
“That’s Red Reynard,” he whispered.
In intense excitement they listened.
“Git up, I say!” they heard Red Reynard command. Then there was a sound
as if he had seized and was dragging some one; and this was followed by
a scream, which seemed near now coming through that keyhole.
“In the name of Heaven, can’t we do something?” whispered Klamath John.
Buffalo Bill began to apply his keys to the keyhole, working quickly.
One of them stuck, and when he tried to get it out, he twisted it, and
it remained fixed, so that he could not move it.
The woman screamed again, this time as if she were being murdered.
This was too much for even the calm nerves of Buffalo Bill. He caught
the big hammer from the hand of the Irishman and swung it against the
door, which shook under the terrific blow.
A curse was heard, and the screams of the girl increased.
“Stand guard there, you fellows, with your revolvers, while I smash in
this door!” the scout ordered. “We’ll fight these devils to the death,
if we have to.”
Cudjo was nothing loath to get back from that door, which was too near
the water to suit him. So he set down the candle and retreated. When he
had clambered to the top of the slippery rocks, he drew his revolver and
stood guard, his eyes wandering round into the darkness beyond the
candlelight.
“If we ain’t all killed in heah, it will be a wonder!” he declared.
The hammering blows of the scout were making the room resound, and the
door trembled and creaked. Cudjo suddenly uttered a little screech of
fear.
“What’s the matther wid yez?” Flynn demanded angrily.
“Marse Flynn, dat candle is walkin’ off all by itself!” Cudjo chattered.
“See it dar!”
Flynn looked at the candle, and uttered a cry of amazement. “By all the
saints, the nagur’s right, or I’m dr’amin’.” He went climbing across the
slippery rocks toward the candle, as Buffalo Bill swung the hammer again
and brought it down against the door.
Cudjo was in a panic, but still he poked up his head, to see what was
happening to the candle.
“One o’ dem ’gators!” he shouted.
“Yis, but ’tis a little wan. Ye crazy nagur, ye set the candle down on
the crather’s back!”
A small saurian, no more than a foot or two long, had been lying close
by the water, and the darky had taken it for a rock. In his haste to get
away from the water, he had stuck the candle down on the creature’s
back. It had been too sluggish to move until the melted tallow ran down,
burning it into activity.
“A movin’ candleshtick!” said Flynn humorously. “Cudjo, yez ought to git
a patent on it. ’Twould pay ye big.”