Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
“The creature that followed her caught her at this point and carried her
on,” said the scout. “You will see that his feet sank more deeply into
the sand afterward. He carried her, and as there seems to be not much
sign of a struggle, I fancy that he moved so quietly in following her
that he was able to overtake her before she knew he was near.”
“You think it was a man?” said Bounderby, sticking his eyeglasses on his
nose and bending over to look at the tracks. “Dear me, this is
remarkable!”
“You are a scientist! What made those tracks? A man? Or were they made
by a beast? A while ago you said that often from a single bone you have
been able to determine the form of the creature of which that bone was a
part. Then, tell me what made those tracks!”
Bounderby got down on his knees and scrutinized the tracks. A call like
that aroused his professional pride and put him on his mettle.
“Mr. Cody, that is the track of an orang-utan!” he declared, as he rose
and dropped his eyeglasses from his nose with an air of finality.
“That is the track of an orang-utan. He sighted the young lady from the
higher ground back there, as she walked through the lower ground. She
had passed him, and he followed so slyly that she did not discover the
fact, and right here he captured her and carried her away.” His voice
trembled. “And that means, Cody, that we must follow at once. For, as
you say, these tracks are not old. This may have been done even while we
were at the iron mountain discussing what we should do.”
“But this is Mexico!” the scout protested. “Orang-utans are not found in
Mexico.”
“Cody, no one would have believed that snow existed on the planet Mars,
until astronomers discovered it as a fact. How this orang-utan got here
I don’t know. The creatures may be indigenous to the country. However
that may be, one is here, or has been here; and he has, it seems, seized
a lady, whom you declare to be an American. It calls for an
investigation.”
The scout started forward, and Bounderby and the German followed him.
But they could not pursue the trail far, as in a short time they reached
the limits of the sand, and after that the ground was of hard volcanic
origin, and left no tracks.
“They were pointed in that direction when they reached the rocks here,”
said the scout. “It is reasonable to infer that the creature continued
in the direction he was going, though he may really have turned to the
right or left.”
Buffalo Bill hastened on in the course he thought the creature had
taken. Though urged by unwonted excitement and the drawing power of a
strange mystery, he yet was as calm and careful as ever.
To know that a civilized woman was in that out-of-the-way place was a
thing marvelously strange, yet it did not equal the stupendous discovery
that an orang-utan was there.
But was the thing an orang-utan? Buffalo Bill was not yet ready to
believe it, though he admitted that had he seen that footprint in a land
where orang-utans were to be expected he should have guessed that animal
at once. As singular as anything was that the creature had walked on its
hind feet. Orang-utans do that at times, though not by choice; yet this
creature had walked on its hind feet even before it reached and seized
the woman.
The hills toward which it seemed the beast and its burden had gone were
farther off than either the scout or Bounderby thought, so that the day
was waning by the time they were reached. But neither there, nor in the
ground passed over in reaching them, was any indication found of the
singular thing that had captured the woman.
While Buffalo Bill still hunted about the base of the hills, loath to
give up, the darkness that came early because of the queer character of
the atmosphere, began to settle down, and they could do nothing further.
“We’ll try it again in the morning,” said the scout, still undaunted.
---------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SPOTS OF LIGHT.
Professor Felix Bounderby and Fritz Henselman were sitting bolt upright,
their backs against a tall white rock, which at a distance resembled the
white wall of a tent.
They were asleep and snoring at a terrific rate, in spite of the fact
that the morning was well advanced.
The reason for their somnolence was that the fatigues of the previous
day had been unusually wearing, and its excitements had kept them up
until a very late hour of the night.
Buffalo Bill, who had risen early, had walked away some distance, and
was searching again for the tracks he had failed to find the evening
before.
One thing pleased him. During the night the peculiar condition of the
atmosphere had passed away, so that the sun, which rose red in the
eastern sky, was, an hour afterward, shining with a clear, white light.
Knowing now which direction was the east, he had a knowledge of the
points of the compass, even though his magnetic needle still pointed
obstinately to the hill of magnetic iron.
The scout was returning from a vain search for tracks, when he came in
sight of Bounderby and Henselman sitting against the white rock.
Suddenly Bounderby snorted, twisted uneasily, and opened his eyes; but
he closed them again, and began once more to snore.
A little later Henselman gave a similar snort, and slapped at his face
as if a mosquito tickled it. A moment afterward he slapped again, so
energetically that he was half aroused from his sleep. Then he tumbled
forward on his knees, and put up his hands in supplication.
“Yaw!” he gurgled. “Blease, Misder Robber, ton’d shood me! Keep dose
bull’s-eye lighd oudt uff my faces! Keep it oudt! Take my moneys, but
ton’d shood me!”
Bounderby uttered a little squall, and sat up, and, hearing and seeing
Fritz Henselman making that ridiculous appeal, he stared.
“Henselman,” he said, with a superior air, “kindly tell me what you are
doing?”
Henselman opened his eyes, with a gurgling snort, stared around, and
then gazed at Professor Felix Bounderby. His face had a look of blank
foolishness.
“Yaw!” he gasped. “Dere vos no robber going to shood me, eh?”
“Of course not, Henselman! What put such a ridiculous notion into your
head?”
“Unt nopody tidn’t t’row der light uff a pull’s-eye landern in my
faces?”
“Certainly not, Henselman! Don’t be ridiculous. It was the sun shining
in your face. See, the sun shines! I myself felt that light in my face;
but it was the sunshine, and it awoke me. Thank Heaven for the glorious
sunshine again, Henselman!”
The German still stared around. “But, brofessor,” he objected, “de sun
iss not shining so dat it can hid us in de faces! De sun shines pehint
dis rock. It coult nod haf peen der sunshine hid me der faces in. Nein!”
Bounderby stared, too, when he made that discovery.
“I must have dreamed that the sunshine struck me with blinding force in
the face. It is such a change from yesterday that it had that effect.
Henselman, that is the solution. Always remember that every phenomenon
of nature has a perfectly reasonable and sensible solution.”
“You mean I treamed dot a man mit a pull’s-eye landern vos shining de
lighd uff id in my faces?”
“Yes. Certainly. That is the true explanation. We both dreamed——”
But he stopped with a gurgling snort and tumbled back against the white
rock.
“Brofessor, vot——”
Then Henselman uttered a cry, like the squeal of a stuck pig, and also
tumbled back against the rock. He put his hand up to his face.
“Yiminy Gristmas! I am treaming again, ven I am avake unt my eyes iss
vide open. I am treaming dot de sunshine iss hidding my face in. Yaw!”
A spot of brilliant white light flickered and wavered over his
hand-covered face, flitted as a white dot on the white rock, and then
smote the professor once more, causing him to howl again and fall back.
Professor Felix Bounderby rolled to one side to get away from that
blinding spot of light, and Fritz Henselman rolled in the opposite
direction. Both stared at it, as it flickered on the rock. Then it was
gone.
“I am treaming, brofessor, dot de sunshine is hidding de rock, also, it
iss hidding my face in! Unt id vas hidding you, too, alretty. Vat iss? I
am treaming it mit my eyes vide open!”
“This is singular! This is very singular!”
Professor Felix Bounderby uncoiled his long frame and got on his feet,
as he made this admission. He stared at the sky and saw that the sun was
not in a position to throw spots of light on the rock at that point.
“This is a natural phenomenon which I must investigate, Henselman,” he
said. “I must add it to the notes for that lecture on ‘Peculiar Life in
a Wild Region.’ The sun throws spots of light on the face of a white
rock, when, according to all the known laws of light, it is not able to
do so. This is worthy of special investigation.”
He took out his eyeglasses, hooked them over his nose, and stared hard
at the rock where he had seen the moving light spots. Nothing of the
kind showed there now.
The German had risen, or, rather, had rolled, to his feet, and he, too,
was inspecting the white face of rock.
“By yiminy, id puzzle me alretty!” he admitted. “Maybe dis rock is vat
you call dransparent, so dot de lighd uff de sun can shood t’rough id.
Nein?”
“Impossible, Henselman. We are here in the presence of one of nature’s
great mysteries. If we can elucidate it, fame may be ours. I shall add
the discovery to those notes on my lecture on——”
He stopped. Buffalo Bill was coming up briskly, and the professor became
aware of the fact.
“Welcome!” he said. “Mr. Cody, we have here a strange thing. Though the
sun is behind this rock, yet white spots of light from it strike with a
dancing effect on this side of the rock. I have wondered if there can be
extra brilliant points of light in the sun, the opposite of sun spots in
effect, which would produce anything like that? There would need to be
some reflecting surface, however, and——”
The dancing spots came again, flickering in a queer and irregular way
over the rock.
The scout saw them for the first time. He watched them, as they flashed
and flickered for nearly a minute, then they were gone.
“Every phenomenon of nature has a perfectly natural solution, Cody, if
it can be known,” said the amazed Bounderby.
“Very true, professor,” the scout answered. “In this instance, the
explanation isn’t far to seek. Those are telegraphic spots of light from
a heliographic instrument.”
They came again, and the scout stared at them. He was reading them:
“‘We are at the red bluff. Join us at once. She is still missing and we
need you.’”
The spots disappeared.
Buffalo Bill repeated to Bounderby and Henselman what he had read.
“Over in the hills, there, at a point where its mirrors catch the
sunlight, is a heliograph instrument. By means of it a message was
flashed on that white rock, the flashes representing in their duration
the dots and dashes of the Morse telegraphic code. Fortunately, I
learned the code, and have practiced it enough to be able to read those
flashes.”
“Yaw! Dot iss a telegraph?”
“It is a sunlight telegraph. The light of the sun falls on its mirrors,
and is then reflected, or thrown, to this spot.”
The flashes were reappearing, and again the scout studied them.
“The same message again,” he said.
“But who is sending that message?” said Bounderby, who was so puzzled he
took off his tall hat and scratched his bald head.
“I don’t know,” the scout was forced to admit. “Perhaps they think they
know us. They call for help. And they speak of a missing girl. It must
be the girl whose tracks we followed, and who you thought had been
carried off by an orang-utan.”
“This—is—remarkable!” said Bounderby. “Remarkable!”