Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
stone of sacrifice and from under the very knives of the sacred priests.
Buffalo Bill whipped out his revolver.
The girl had fainted, fortunately, and lay as if dead in his arms.
“Stand back!” cried the scout, and he swung the revolver round.
But there was a rush, as those in front tried to seize him, while a very
frenzy of clamorous sound arose.
Then the scout’s revolver spoke, its report booming like thunder within
those temple walls. The man who had sought to stop him uttered a cry of
pain and bewilderment, and fell backward, his arm broken and dropping
helpless at his side.
The effect of that revolver shot was unexpected even by the scout.
Wild cries of fright rose within the doorway and beyond it, where the
packed Indians struggled now to gain the open air, and the men close by
the scout, stunned apparently by the concussion of that revolver
explosion, threw themselves face downward on the temple floor.
The way was open. At a bound the daring scout cleared it, reaching the
outer steps of the temple. As he did this, the girl struggled in his
arms, unconscious that she was hampering him.
The scout held her on his strong left arm, and clutched with his right
hand his revolver.
Before him was a mass of Indians falling back out of his way. Behind him
in the temple he heard voices wailing. Nearer at hand were those
prostrate figures that had dropped to the temple floor when the revolver
roared its defiant message.
The scout was looking beyond the crowd toward the trees where he
expected to behold his friends in waiting, and was surprised that he did
not see them there. He ran down the steps, for delays were dangerous,
determined to fight his way through the compacted mass of Indians.
In this moment, when it seemed the path was hopelessly blocked, he
recalled how a single soldier of Cortez, pitted against the Aztecs of
his own day, had been equal to hundreds of them.
“Stand back!” he commanded again, as he passed down the temple steps.
The Indians near him tried to fall back, but those behind prevented
them, and the result was a wild jumble and scramble of crowding Indians,
that filled up every avenue of escape.
At this juncture, there was a wild American yell, the packed Indians in
front of the scout were thrown apart, and through the opening thus made
came Lieutenant Butler and Tom Lawler, with Bounderby and the German at
their heels. It was something like a football wedge splitting open an
opposing eleven.
The four white men had broken the line there by force of the surprise
more than by the mere battering strength with which they had hit it. But
the line closed instantly behind them and seemed to become more tightly
packed than before.
They gained the side of the scout. Turning, with drawn revolvers,
Lieutenant Butler and young Lawler placed themselves by him. Bounderby
tried to line up with them, but Fritz Henselman made no such heroic
effort. He had only come because he was afraid to stay, and he now ran
behind Butler, and tried to crouch down. When he saw that Indians were
coming from the other direction as well, his plight became pitiable.
The path of least resistance seemed to lie close along the temple wall
now, and the scout and his daring comrades took it. But no sooner had
they started along the wall than the Indians began to close in upon
them, as if gaining courage.
“We shall have to fight our way through,” said Butler, flourishing his
revolver. “Just give the word, Cody. We’ll have to down these fellows.”
“Fire a shot now and then, but do not shoot anybody unless you have to,
and then shoot only to wound,” were the scout’s instructions. “We don’t
want to enrage them. What we want to try to do is to scare them.”
He shot a bullet into the ground at his feet, and as it tore up the
earth and the sound broke on their ears, the Indians fell back before
him as if in amazement.
Seeing the effect, Lawler and Lieutenant Butler began to imitate him,
with the same effect.
The Indians fell back, yet they did not vanish; they merely kept two or
three yards away, as if they feared more than anything else the powder
smoke and the earth that flew about when the bullets struck the ground.
“We’ll have to fight our way through,” said Lieutenant Butler, and
Buffalo Bill was beginning to think this offered the only hope.
Then the unexpected happened.
A bag resembling a huge fishing seine dropped over them with a swishing
sound, and instantly it so entangled them that they were helpless. It
wrapped around their arms and their legs, enveloped their heads and
necks, and closed about their heads and faces in smothering folds.
Buffalo Bill understood the nature of this trap at once, and he tried to
draw his knife to cut his way through it, but the clinging net so held
his hands that he could not quickly get out his knife. He stumbled and
fell as he tried to walk, and the girl he had been carrying dropped to
the ground. She tried to rise, but, her feet being caught in the net,
she, too, was entangled.
Henselman was yelling for assistance like a madman, as he clawed and
sputtered and tried to push back the folds of the strange thing that had
fallen upon him.
The Indians were not idle. They swarmed forward as soon as they saw the
white men caught in the clinging folds of the net, and throwing
themselves boldly upon them, they held them down.
Hundreds of Indians were all around the net. Escape was impossible. The
white men were trapped.
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CHAPTER XXVI.
INDIANS AND PRISONERS.
The red priests of Zataclin had not been thrown long into confusion, nor
had they permitted their superstitious fears to keep them from taking
prompt action against the daring invader of the temple.
Around the upper floor of the temple ran an inside gallery, which at
intervals opened on an outer gallery.
To the inner gallery they rushed as soon as they discovered that the
white man had escaped from the temple with the captive. They yelled to
the people below, urging them to crowd the white men close up against
the walls, yells which the white men heard without comprehending their
meaning.
The people obeyed, forcing them along the wall, so that they were
brought under the priests on the gallery. Then at the opportune moment
the priests flung down that big net which enmeshed the white men and
made them prisoners.
In a very few minutes the entire party of white men and the woman were
captives in the hands of the howling inhabitants of Zataclin. Instead of
being tied, they were simply dragged along enmeshed in the net—dragged
back to the wide door of the temple, and then dragged on inside. The
Indians yelled shrilly, and the priests who superintended this curious
method, shouted loud commands.
When within the temple, the ends of the net were caught up by scores of
hands, and the net and those within it were lifted bodily and borne up a
broad stairway into a room. Having been pulled into this room, the
prisoners were dropped to the floor, still swathed in the binding folds
of the net. Then a heavy door was closed on them and they were left
alone. Beyond the closed door they heard the Indians yelling fiendishly.
It was as strange a capture as was ever made; the prisoners were like
snared birds. For a few moments after their rough usage they could do
nothing but lie panting on the floor. At length Buffalo Bill got out his
knife, after prodigious effort, and began to cut the cords of the net.
He called to the other men to do the same, and they, too, got out their
knives and began to slash at the net.
Not a weapon or other bit of property belonging to the white men had
been touched. Perhaps the Indians feared to touch the things the white
men had in their possession, since the strange fire sticks had the power
to inflict wounds and to make that thunderous roar and spout deadly
smoke.
It took Buffalo Bill but a moment to free himself, and then he began to
cut the cords that held Miss Fernald.
The girl had swooned again under her rough treatment, and the scout and
Lieutenant Butler were trying to restore her. She was not long
unconscious. When she was helped to her feet, and Lieutenant Butler led
her to a couch by the wall, the couch being formed of the coats of the
men, she tried to smile her gratitude, yet urged them not to take so
much trouble for her. She looked earnestly at the famous scout, whom she
recognized with intense gratitude, for she was aware that it was he who
had so daringly invaded the temple to release her.
Within their close prison they listened to the ominous sounds outside.
“There is one thing,” said the scout, as he fingered his trusty
revolver, “they have favored us greatly by letting us keep our weapons.
We can hold a regiment at bay here.”
“But they can starve us out without much trouble,” said Lieutenant
Butler.
Young Lawler was walking slowly round the room, studying its
configuration.
“There is a hole up there, where the light and air come in,” he said.
“There may be something above it.”
“If we could get up there we should be only that much farther from the
ground,” suggested Lieutenant Butler, and, acting upon that suggestion,
the scout studied the opening in the roof of the room.
“We can get up there, if we think it best,” he said. “We can make ropes
out of the cords of this net, and use them to climb with. That part will
be easy enough. I fancy we shall want to see where that hole will lead.”
Seeing that she had recovered somewhat, Lieutenant Butler began to ask
questions of Miss Fernald. Soon they heard her story. She had wandered
forth for a stroll, and had got turned around, as they had supposed, and
lost herself; after that she had wandered on and on in a vain endeavor
to find the camp. While crossing the sandy area where they had seen her
footprints, she had been pounced upon by a hideous creature.
“An orang-utan!” said Professor Bounderby, with the accent of positive
knowledge. “It must have frightened you very much.”
“It frightened me almost to death,” she said, “but he was not an
orang-utan.”
“No?” he cried. “Not an orang-utan?” He got out his pencil and notebook.
“What was it, then?”
All were now bending to listen.
“My dear young lady, if it was not an orang-utan, what kind of beast was
it?”
“It was a man.”
“Not a beast, but a man! That is impossible. We saw its footprints,
and——”
“It was a gnarled, bent man, hump-shouldered, with very large, long
arms, and twisted, naked feet like claws. And he was an Indian, though
he did not wear paint nor feathers, his clothing was simply some skins
sewed loosely together. When he pounced on me, I fainted. But I regained
consciousness by the time we reached the high bluffs that encircle this
valley.
“In those bluffs was an opening, which held a queer elevator, and down
that elevator and through a black tunnel he took me. When we came out I
saw this valley and this temple, with the houses.
“I was so frightened that when he ordered me on I did not try to resist.
I was helpless, and I think I was nearly crazy. He brought me to this
temple, and here I was placed in a room somewhat like this. To-day I was
tied, taken out, put in a pavilion that men carried on their shoulders,
and set in the midst of a vast procession. When we got to the temple
again, I discovered that I was to be murdered—killed by the priests as a
sacrifice to their gods.”
Her face grew paler at the recollection of her experience, and she
closed her eyes as if to shut it out of her mind. She opened them, and
went on with her story.
“And then this brave man came—this man whom you call Buffalo Bill, the
American scout. The rest you know.”