Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
“The sender of that message and his instrument must be in that
direction!” said the scout. “The light could not well be flashed to this
spot from any other direction. Over there must be the red bluff
mentioned in the message. The way to clear up this mystery is to go
there and find the sender of the message. Perhaps we will in that way
get more speedily on the tracks of the girl and the wild creature that
carried her away.”
“We supposed, Cody, that we were the only people in this forsaken
country,” said Bounderby, still scratching his bald head. “It appears we
were mistaken. That young lady must have belonged to the party which is
trying to signal us. But why are they trying to signal us? It can’t be
that they know us.”
“The way to find out is to go over there, and I’m ready to start at
once.”
“Cody, we are with you! Henselman, get the hand bag. I am feeling a bit
hungry, but we can eat something as we go on. Yes, Cody, this is
important. The spots were not thrown directly from the sun, but by a
heliograph! I must put that in the notes for my lecture. Cody, we are
ready to start at once. This is certainly a remarkable adventure.”
They had not had breakfast, yet they set out, heading in what the scout
was sure was the right course, Bounderby gnawing at some meat as they
pressed on, and Henselman sweating and puffing under the weight of the
hand bag, which was made heavy by many specimens of rocks and ores.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PARTY WITH THE HELIOGRAPH.
A hard tramp through the hills over rough ground brought Buffalo Bill
and his companions, after a time, in sight of a tall cliff of red
sandstone, which had at one side a projecting shelf some distance above
the earth.
Upon this shelf stood a youthful fellow, scarcely more than a boy in
years, and by him was the heliograph. When he sighted Buffalo Bill’s
party he leaped off the shelf and slid rapidly down the side of the
cliff to the ground. In another minute he came running out from the foot
of the cliff, and with him ran a young man dressed in semimilitary
clothing.
“We saw your heliographic flashes on the side of the white rock off
there, and I was fortunately able to read the message,” said Buffalo
Bill, addressing them. “So we came at once.”
The scout discovered that these senders of the message had not meant it
for him, but for some missing members of the heliographic party, who had
become separated from them the day before.
These two—the youth and the young man—were young Tom Lawler, who had
charge of the burro train, and Lieutenant Butler, second in command, of
an expedition which had been recently sent out from Klamath to make
railway surveys.
“We thought this was the section where we were to do our work,” said
Butler, “but I confess that a week ago, when the hazy atmosphere began,
we got lost. When we followed our compass we were led here; but this
morning I found that our compass is utterly unreliable. It points east,
instead of north. When the sun rose the compass was pointing right at
it. I was wondering if some electrical storm on the sun could have
affected it?”
Yet the thing that now most concerned Lieutenant Butler and young Tom
Lawler was that the sister of Major Fernald, the commander of the
expedition, was missing, and had been gone for many hours. She had set
out for a little walk through the hills, and had not returned. They had
hunted for her, and Major Fernald and all his men, with the exception of
these two, were out searching for her now.
“We have a considerable party,” said Butler. “We have surveyors and
chainmen and a hunter or two whose business it is to shoot game for us,
and we have been out two weeks. We haven’t accomplished anything, except
to get lost; and now, since the singular disappearance of Miss Fernald,
the whole expedition is demoralized. When I flashed that message on that
rock we saw you, but at the distance you were we thought you members of
our party. It was a hit-and-miss chance, and couldn’t be done often, yet
it worked this time.”
Buffalo Bill and his companions made explanations, so that soon both
parties had all needed information. The scout told of the discovery of a
girl’s tracks, and of the strange tracks following hers, and of what had
been inferred.
“This is important,” said Butler. “Those tracks were no doubt made by
Miss Fernald. She came in this general direction, you say, but you lost
the tracks after they left the sand? We must search for them there
again. I wish Major Fernald were here. He and his party have been gone
all night, and I’ve no idea where they are. We shifted our position
after their departure, and, though we left marks for them to follow,
they may not even find their way back to them. What you say about the
magnetic hill which has made the compasses useless, and worse, is
interesting. Probably they don’t know about that yet. No doubt we are
many miles from the spot where we supposed ourselves to be. Even you
don’t know just where we are?”
Fritz Henselman had put down the heavy hand bag.
“Vat iss?” he said. “Vonce I seen a sugar barrel, mit flies yoost flying
to id from efery tirection. Here id iss de same vay. Dot magnedic hill
iss de sugar barrel, unt ve are de flies; it draw us, unt here ve iss.
Uff id keep on drawing beobles, ve vill haf more as a rigimend uff men
in dis blace peety qvick.”
Professor Bounderby had produced his notebook, and was making notes for
his lecture.
“Every phenomenon has a perfectly natural and reasonable cause,” he
said, as he scribbled away, speaking as if to his notebook. “We have
seen why our compasses acted, so queerly, and why flashes of light hit
that white rock in so strange a way. If we continue, we shall discover
how it happens that an orang-utan is here in Mexico, and why it chose to
capture the young lady. I will just set down here that her name is Miss
Fernald, that she is the sister of the commander of this surveying
party, which came to make surveys for a railroad, and that she is a
young lady whose love of adventure led her to accompany her brother in
this expedition. Now she is lost, perhaps in great danger, maybe even
dead; and we are to learn as soon as possible the facts.”
He read over what he had written, tucked away the pencil, and dropped
the book into his pocket.
“Cody,” he said, taking the eyeglasses from his nose, “my servant and I
are at your disposal. We came to make geological researches, but human
nature and human needs are more interesting and important than cold
stone; hence we stand ready to help you to the extent of our ability.”
The lieutenant and his companion scrambled up to the rocky shelf and
brought down the heliograph and other things there.
“We have not a burro left,” said Butler. “When we came here we had a
large burro train, and Mr. Lawler had charge of it. The burros were
scattered a week ago in a violent night storm, and we couldn’t recover
them. Since that time we have been wandering, led astray by our
compasses.”
Buffalo Bill volunteered to guide Butler and Lawler to the sandy area
where the tracks of the young woman had been found, for they were
certain the footprints were those of Miss Emily Fernald, the sister of
their commander.
Before departing from the red cliff, Lieutenant Butler wrote out a
statement of what he had done and discovered, and what he now purposed
to do, which he affixed to a stick thrust into a crevice in the cliff,
where it could not fail to reach the eyes of Fernald’s party on their
return.
Once more the attempt was to be made to find out what had become of the
girl and her captor.
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CHAPTER XIX.
A STARTLING ATTACK.
Buffalo Bill and his companions camped that night at a distance even
farther in the hills than before. They had made no discovery. The tracks
of the girl and of the strange creature that had followed her could not
be traced beyond the sandy area.
Yet so persistent had been the search that the night camp was made only
after the light had failed, and the first satisfactory meal of the day
was then eaten.
Major Fernald and his party had not been sighted, and their present
location could not be guessed.
The distress of Lieutenant Butler and young Lawler was marked that
evening; they had almost given up hope.
“It’s a terrible thing,” said Butler. “That a young woman of refinement
and education, a woman of beauty and culture, should meet such a fate is
something almost too horrible to think about. And she was as kind and
good as she was beautiful. You would have said so, Cody, if you had
known her.”
“I begin to believe that I do know her,” said Buffalo Bill, with a
smile. “Unless I am greatly mistaken, she is the daughter of a ranchman,
a girl whom I recently had the honor of rescuing from the clutches of
Red Reynard. I am much interested in her fate.”
“This is going to kill her brother, the major.”
“I haven’t given up yet,” declared the scout. “I shall cling to hope
until we know that we can’t hope any longer. We’ll begin the work again
at daylight.”
Worn out by fatigue, Buffalo Bill slept rather soundly that night. But
shortly before day he was awakened by a strange feeling of fear, which
impressed him with a danger he could not combat or comprehend. He was
shivering with dread as he opened his eyes. He almost cried aloud when
he saw that he was looking straight up into another pair of eyes. The
darkness was great, and his position was such that he could see nothing
but the eyes, which looked down into his with a strange and
fear-inspiring glare.
The scout was held by a horrible spell. A weight seemed to be pressing
down on his chest. He struggled with the feeling, and, throwing it off
partly, he tried to turn his body, and reached up to push aside the face
that held those terrible eyes, even though he could not see the face.
When he did so he felt himself seized about the throat in so strong a
grip that it seemed as if the muscles of his neck had been compressed
suddenly by iron bands.
As those fingers, or claws, settled on his throat, his head was jammed
backward against the earth. This, together with the quick choking,
almost deprived him of his senses. Then he felt himself jerked to one
side, and dragged over the ground. It was like a horrible nightmare, and
he felt that he must be dreaming. Yet he knew better.
Struggling fiercely to throw off that awful clutch, which seemed to be
crushing his neck, the scout succeeded in drawing his knife.
With a swing he plunged the blade into the side of the thing that held
him. That swinging stroke was followed by a sound of some kind. There
was a blow in the scout’s face, and his head fell backward.
When he returned to consciousness, after having lain without sense or
motion for many minutes, darkness and silence were around and over him.
He put his hand to his throat, which ached with a heavy, dull pain. His
lungs were choked and wheezing, his head throbbed, and his eyes felt as
if they were about to jump out of their sockets. Worse than all was that
horrible fear, still chilling him and seeming to stop the very current
of life in his body. Yet he knew he was alone, that the creature,
whatever it was, had gone.
Then he heard a voice. It sounded far off at first, but a moment later
it seemed quite near. He recognized it as the voice of Lieutenant
Butler, and he knew then that Butler and the others were hunting for
him.
The great scout lifted himself on his elbow and looked around in the
gloom. He saw no one.