Down dropped the match, and instantly Frank attacked the planks with the iron bar.
Fortune must have favored him, for had it been light he could not have been more successful. Every stroke was effective, and he began ripping off the planks.
There was wild excitement below, and Merry prayed for a little time. His heart was filled with a hope that Handsome Charley's fate would be a warning to others, so they would not be eager to rush up the stairs to the door.
In just about one minute he had torn the planks from the window.
Once more he heard men ascending the stairs. Instantly he dashed across the floor, finding the door in the darkness.
"Halt!" he cried savagely, from behind the closed door. "Halt, or I fire!"
Then he sought to prop the door with the iron bar, pressing it down in such a position that it might hold for some moments against an ordinary attack upon it.
"I'll shoot the first man who tries to open this door!" he shouted.
But he did not remain there to await an effort to open the door. Instead he quickly found the girl in the corner, lifted her limp body, and sought the window once more.
Reaching the window, Frank promptly kicked out sash and glass with two movements of his foot.
[Pg 312]
Bang! bang! bang!—sounded heavy blows on the door behind him, but the iron bar was holding well.
Merry swung his leg over the window-ledge. Desperate as he was, he meant to venture a leap from the window to the ground with the girl in his arms.
But just then, pausing to look down, he was amazed and delighted to see below him his four friends, who were on the point of entering the building, led by Bart Hodge. Instantly Frank hailed them.
"Catch her!" he cried, swinging the girl out over the window-ledge, so that they could see her below.
Immediately Bart and Ephraim extended their arms and stood ready.
"Let her come!" shouted Hodge.
Frank dropped the girl, and the two young men clutched at her as she fell directly into their arms.
At that moment the door behind Merry flew open with a slam and the ruffians came bursting into the room.
One of them held a lighted lamp.
The fellow in advance saw Frank in the window and flung up his hand. There was a loud report and a burst of smoke. When the smoke cleared the window was empty, Frank having disappeared.
"Nailed him!" shouted the ruffian who had fired. "Nailed him for sure!"
He rushed forward to the window and looked down, expecting to discover the body of his victim stretched on the ground. But in this he was disappointed, for neither Frank nor his friends were beneath the window.[Pg 313]Into the darkness of the crooked street some dusky figures were vanishing.
Frank had leaped from the window, being untouched by the bullet that fanned his cheek in passing. He struck on his feet, but plunged forward on his hands and knees. In a moment he was jerked erect by some one who observed:
"Methinks your parachute must be out of order. You descended with exceeding great violence. What think you if we make haste to depart?"
"Jack!" exclaimed Frank.
"The same," was the assurance, as Ready clutched his arm and started him on the run. "Dear me! I know this strenuous life will yet bring me to my death!"
Ahead of them Frank saw some figures moving hastily away.
"The girl——"
"They've got her," assured Jack. "Old Joe is with them. We'll talk it over later."
So they ran, well knowing the whole of Sunk Hole would be looking for them within thirty minutes. It did not take them long to come up with Bart, Ephraim, and old Joe.
Behind them there sounded shouts and commands, and it was well the whole of Sunk Hole had been at the dance, else the place must have been aroused so that they would have run into some of its inhabitants. Here and there amid the buildings they dodged until[Pg 314]they arrived at the edge of the collection and struck out for the side of the valley, Crowfoot leading.
It was necessary to trust everything to the old Indian. Without him they could not have known with any certainty that they were taking the proper course to enable them to get out of the valley.
The girl was passed from one to another as they ran. They did not waste their breath in words.
The old Indian ran with an ease that was astonishing, considering his years.
Looking back, they could see torches moving swiftly here and there through the town, telling that the search for them was being carried on.
Soon they came to a steep gully that led upward, and the ascent was very difficult, even at first. It grew more and more difficult as they ascended, and it became necessary for them to work slowly in the darkness, the girl being passed upward from time to time, as one after another took turns at creeping ahead.
Joe did not seem to have much trouble, but he did not bother with the girl. Finally he said:
"Here come bad palefaces! Make some big hurry!"
It was true that a party of men were running toward the gully. Their torches danced and flared, showing them with some distinctness.
To the right and left in other parts of the valley were clusters of torches.
"Heap try to stop us," exclaimed Crowfoot. "One way to go up there, 'nother way down there, this be[Pg 315]'nother way. They know all. That how um come here so fast."
By the time the men with the torches reached the foot of the gully Frank and his comrades were so far above that they were not betrayed by the torchlight. But one of the ruffians bade the others listen, and at that very moment Ephraim Gallup dislodged a stone that went clattering and rattling downward with a great racket.
Instantly a wild yell broke from the lips of the ruffians below.
"Here they are!" they shouted. "They're up here!"
Then one of them began to blaze away with his pistols, and the bullets whistled and zipped unpleasantly close to the party above.
Bart Hodge stooped and found some rocks as large as ducks' eggs in the hollow of the gully. He knew it would expose their position if he should answer the fire with his revolvers, and so he simply hurled those rocks with all the accuracy and skill that had made him noted on the baseball diamond as a wonderful thrower to second base.
The first rock struck a fellow on the wrist and broke it. The third hit another man on the shoulder, and not many of the six Bart threw failed to take effect.
Astonishing though it seemed, this method of retorting to the shooting proved most effective, and the ruffians scattered to get out of the way, swearing horribly.
The fugitives continued till the top of the gully was[Pg 316]reached and they struck something like a natural path that soon took them where they could no longer see the valley nor hear their enemies.
Knowing they would be followed still farther, they halted not for a moment until their horses were reached. Then they paused only to make ready and swing into the saddle.
Even as June was passed up to Frank she sighed and seemed to come a little to herself. And as they rode into the dusk of the night she recovered consciousness, the cool breeze fanning her face. She wondered and shuddered until she heard the voice of Frank Merriwell reassuring her, and then she was certain that it was all a dream. In her prison room she had listened with shaking soul to the sounds from below, she had crept to the barred door and heard Cimarron Bill and Eliot Dodge talking below, and the horror of knowing the rascally lawyer was in the plot that had brought about her abduction and detention in that den had been a fearful shock to her. When the quarreling and the shooting began, she was filled with mortal dread. She heard some one on the stairs and fumbling at her door, and then, kneeling in a corner of the room, all the world slipped away from her, and she remembered nothing more until she awoke in the arms of her brave rescuer, Frank Merriwell.
[Pg 317]
Haggard from worriment and need of sleep, her face seeming drawn and old, her eyes feeling like coals in her throbbing head, Mrs. Arlington welcomed Eliot Dodge, who came into the room, looking dejected yet seeming to appear hopeful.
"June! June, my child?" cried the tortured mother. "Have you no news of her?"
"Nothing but—this," said Dodge, pulling out an unsealed letter.
Then he briefly told of being held up by three ruffians, who had given him the letter.
Mrs. Arlington read it, and fell half-fainting on the couch, while Dodge bent over her with protestations of sympathy.
"My poor girl!" gasped the miserable woman. "And she is in the power of such monsters! The ransom money must be paid! She must be saved at once!"
"Is there no way to avoid paying the money?" said Dodge. "Is it not possible she may be saved in some other manner?"
"I think it is," said a clear voice, as the door was thrust open and Frank Merriwell, covered from head to heel with the dust of the desert, escorted the rescued[Pg 318]girl into the room. "Mrs. Arlington, I have brought you your daughter."
With a scream of joy, Mrs. Arlington leaped up and June ran into her arms.
Eliot Dodge seemed to turn green. He stood and stared at the girl in a sort of blank stupor, failing to observe that just behind Frank Merriwell, who still wore the clothes taken from the intoxicated Mexican, there was the officer newly appointed to fill the place left vacant by the death of Ben File.
"June! June! June!" cried Mrs. Arlington, her face flushed with gladness. "Is it you, my poor girl! I can scarcely believe it! How does it happen? Tell me how you come to be here!"
"I am here, mother, because I was rescued from those horrible ruffians by that brave gentleman whom you have so greatly wronged, Frank Merriwell. He risked his life for me. I will tell you all, but first—first I must tell you that you have trusted a snake. I mean that monster there!"
She pointed her finger at Dodge, who started and looked startled, but pretended the utmost amazement.
"He is the villain who planned it all!" declared June. "I know, for I heard them talk it over. But he shall not escape!"
"I hardly think so," said Frank. "Officer, he is a desperate man. Be careful of him."
"This is an outrage!" declared Dodge, as the new city marshal grasped him. "I'll not permit it! I——"
[Pg 319]
Frank clutched him on the other side, and, a moment later, the officer had ironed his prisoner.
Mrs. Arlington would have interfered, but Merry declared he had sworn out the warrant for Dodge's arrest, and she saw it was useless.
"Madam," said Frank, "I will leave you alone with your daughter. When she has told you all, you will be ready, I am confident, to prosecute Eliot Dodge. I shall then withdraw my charge and permit you to have him arrested. In the meantime I bid you good day. I shall be in this hotel for the next day or so."
He bowed gracefully to both Mrs. Arlington and June and left the room.
[Pg 320]
When there was plenty of time, Frank and his friends talked it over. He told them of his experience in the dance-room, and they told him how they had lingered near, ready to rush to his rescue. When they heard the sounds of the quarrel between Cimarron Bill and Handsome Charley they hurried to the door, but there they halted, for they looked in and saw nothing of Frank. Thus it was that they beheld the shooting of Bill as he tried to draw on Charley. He was shot down from behind by Charley's tools, and they fired several bullets into his body as he lay weltering on the floor.
Frank shook his head as he heard this account of Bill's end.
"He was a bad man, a very bad man," he said; "but somehow I'm sorry that he met his end that way. They had to shoot him from the rear. Not one of them dared pull on him face to face."
Frank received a brief letter from Mrs. Arlington, thanking him for what he had done for her daughter. Not one word did she say of her own malevolence toward him, not one word of the manner in which she had wronged him. And the doctor, who brought the letter, told Merry that she was in such a precarious condition that she could not write more, nor could she be seen by any one but June.
Frank smiled grimly, disdainfully, over the letter, then deliberately tore it into shreds.
But he had proved his manhood, and June Arlington, for all of her mother, found time to see him a few moments before he left town. After that brief time with June he rode light-heartedly away, his friends galloping at his side and listening to the cowboy song that came from his lips.
Because of extensive use of dialect, all apparent errors within dialogue have been assumed intentional and retained.Page 5, "Merriell's" changed to "Merriwell's" (Frank Merriwell's Rough Deal)Page 24, changed erroneous period to comma ("I have no desire or intention of irking you up, sir," he said.)Page 27, "referrring" changed to "referring" (Certain papers referring to the Queen Mystery and San Pablo Mines, which I own.)Page 93, added missing opening quote ("I think I'll finish you!")Page 213, "Cimaroon" changed to "Cimarron" (Cimarron Bill watched his tool depart, smiling darkly and muttering to himself)Page 216, removed extraneous quote after "hurriedly" ("Oh, velly good, velly good!" answered the Celestial hurriedly, backing off a little, his face yellowish white.)Page 217, "cant" changed to "can't" ("I can't beat him at his own game.")Page 300, changed single quote to double quote at end of sentence ("In the first place," Frank distinctly heard Dodge say, "Ben File is dead.")Page 318, "Merriwel" changed to "Merriwell" (He stood and stared at the girl in a sort of blank stupor, failing to observe that just behind Frank Merriwell, who still wore the clothes taken from the intoxicated Mexican, there was the officer newly appointed to fill the place left vacant by the death of Ben File.)
Because of extensive use of dialect, all apparent errors within dialogue have been assumed intentional and retained.
Page 5, "Merriell's" changed to "Merriwell's" (Frank Merriwell's Rough Deal)
Page 24, changed erroneous period to comma ("I have no desire or intention of irking you up, sir," he said.)
Page 27, "referrring" changed to "referring" (Certain papers referring to the Queen Mystery and San Pablo Mines, which I own.)
Page 93, added missing opening quote ("I think I'll finish you!")
Page 213, "Cimaroon" changed to "Cimarron" (Cimarron Bill watched his tool depart, smiling darkly and muttering to himself)
Page 216, removed extraneous quote after "hurriedly" ("Oh, velly good, velly good!" answered the Celestial hurriedly, backing off a little, his face yellowish white.)
Page 217, "cant" changed to "can't" ("I can't beat him at his own game.")
Page 300, changed single quote to double quote at end of sentence ("In the first place," Frank distinctly heard Dodge say, "Ben File is dead.")
Page 318, "Merriwel" changed to "Merriwell" (He stood and stared at the girl in a sort of blank stupor, failing to observe that just behind Frank Merriwell, who still wore the clothes taken from the intoxicated Mexican, there was the officer newly appointed to fill the place left vacant by the death of Ben File.)