CHAPTER XXVI—FORCED TO WRITE.CHAPTER XXVI.FORCED TO WRITE.
CHAPTER XXVI.
FORCED TO WRITE.
Dick’s daring and reckless break for liberty might have been successful but for the fact that the outer door had been closed and securely fastened after the entrance of Spotted Dan.
Dan went down with a shock that jarred the whole building, and the boy leaped toward the door. Both Dillon and Mat uttered cries of astonishment and grabbed at him. He avoided their hands and reached the door, but as he was trying to unfasten it they fell on him.
Young Merriwell’s fighting blood was up, and for at least five minutes he gave the ruffians the hardest sort of a struggle. Using hands and feet in unison, he made them howl as he repeatedly hit and kicked them. With all his force, he drove his knee into Mat’s stomach and doubled the fellow up like a jackknife.
At this juncture the boy had nearly whipped both the men. Dillon was panting and dazed, but he had drawn a pistol and reversed it in his hand, so that he gripped the barrel. With the butt of the weapon he struck a blinding blow at the fighting boy’s head, and by chance the blow landed full and fair.
Down Dick dropped and lay stunned on the floor. Dillon stood looking down at the lad, muttering savagely, while Mat gasped for breath and held both hands on his stomach. Spotted Dan had recovered from the first shock, and now stood, with his hands on his hips and his feet wide apart, watching what transpired. He had not even lifted a hand to take part in the struggle.
“Well, drat the kid!” snarled Dillon. “He sure comes nigh slipping right through our fingers.”
“Confound him!” panted Mat, still gasping for breath. “He soaks his knee inter my solar plexus and pretty nigh puts me out.”
“Haw! haw! haw!” laughed Spotted Dan, throwing back his head. “Well, you two gents sure has a highly interesting time of it. So that was why yer didn’t want me to go for my blanket! So that’s what yer had in the back room yer didn’t want me ter see! Well, I reckons I has clapped my peepers on this yere youngster before. I opines I smells your little game. I rather jedge I understands why you drops the railroad job. You seems ter strike another job that interests you a heap more.”
Without paying any attention to the pockmarked fellow, Dillon bent over the motionless boy, muttering:
“I wonder if I cracks his skull? That certain was a good rap I gave him.”
Blood was trickling down from Dick’s hair, and on one side of his head was a cut.
“I don’t care ef you did finish him!” grated Mat.
“Well, I does,” asserted Dillon. “We knocks ourselves out of a good thing ef that happens.”
“A good thing,” laughed Spotted Dan. “Well, gents, you counts me in on that good thing. You plays no game like this on me, none at all!”
Dick stirred and opened his eyes.
“He is all right,” said Mat.
The boy looked up at the two ruffians near him and then struggled to his elbow, his black eyes full of defiance.
“Give me a fair show and I’ll try it again!” he weakly exclaimed. “If I’d a fair show then I wouldn’t be here now. I was weaponless. You were three to one against me, and still you had to use a weapon to put me down and out.”
“Haw! haw! haw!” again roared Spotted Dan. “These yere Merriwells sure is fighters.”
Mat turned on him hotly.
“I reckon you found that out in Prescott the first time you met Frank Merriwell,” he said.
Dan suddenly stopped laughing and scowled blackly.
“Don’t git so personal!” he cried. “Mebbe I don’t like it any!”
Dick lifted his hand to his head and saw blood on his fingers when he looked at them. Then from his pocket he took a handkerchief, which he knotted about his head.
“Better put your bird back into the cage,” advised Dan. “Ef yer don’t, mebbe he flutters some more. When he flutters he is dangerous.”
“That’s right,” nodded Dillon, laying hold of Dick. “We will chuck him back there in a hurry.”
“Take your hands off me, you brute!” panted the boy. “I will go back of my own accord. Let me alone.”
Dillon dragged him to his feet, but, with a wrench, he suddenly tore free. If the ruffians expected him to resume the effort, they soon found he had no such intention, for, with a remarkably steady step, he walked across the floor to the open door of his prison room.
In the doorway he turned and faced them, the handkerchief about his head already showing a crimson stain on one side. His dark eyes flashed with unutterable scorn and contempt.
“I know you all three!” he exclaimed. “Wait till my brother finds out about this business. The whole Southwest won’t be large enough to hide you in safety.”
Then he disappeared into the room, scornfully closing the door behind him.
“Gents,” said Spotted Dan, “for real, genuine sand, give me a kid like that!”
Then the bar was once more slipped into its socket, and the door was made secure. With throbbing headand fiery pulse, Dick lay on the bunk in that back room as the remainder of the night slipped away.
With the coming of another day he heard the faint hoofbeats of a horse outside, and knew some one had ridden up. Then the muttering of voices in the next room came to him, and his curiosity, in spite of his injury, caused him to again slip to the door and listen at the crack beneath it.
He heard the voice of a strange man saying:
“I am to take the letter back myself. The youngster must be forced to write it. Leave it to me; I will make him do it.”
“Partner,” said the hoarse voice of Spotted Dan, “I opines you takes a mighty big contract when you tries to force that kid inter doing anything of the sort.”
“Leave it ter me,” urged the stranger. “Let me in there, and I will turn the trick.”
A few minutes later Dick hastily got away from the door and pretended to be sleeping on the bunk, his ears telling him the bar was being removed. A flood of light shone in, for there was no window to that dark room to admit daylight. The four men entered, one of them bringing a lighted lamp in his hand.
The boy pretended to awaken and then sat up. He saw that the newcomer had a mask over his face, making it plain he feared recognition by the captive.
“Yere,” said Spotted Dan, “is a gent what wants ter see you some, my young gamecock. He has a right important piece of business to transact with yer, and I reckons it pays yer ter do as he tells yer.”
The masked man came and stood looking at the boy.
“Kid,” he said, in what seemed to be an assumed manner of fierceness, “you’ve got to write a letter to your brother, and you will write it just as I tells yer. Understand that? If you refuse, we will stop bothering with you any by wringing your neck and throwing you out for buzzard bait. We can’t afford to wastetime fooling, and we mean business. Time is mighty important to us.”
“What do you want me to write?” asked Dick.
“We wants you to write a letter telling your brother that you are in the hands of men who proposes to carve you up piecemeal unless he makes terms with a certain gent who wants to deal with him for some of his property. No need to mention this gent’s name, mind that. Don’t put it into the letter. You tells your brother nothing whatever about us save that we has you all tight and fast. But you tells him that, onless he comes to terms immediate, we sends him to-morrow one of your thumbs. In case he delays a while longer, we sends him t’other thumb. Then, if he remains foolish and won’t deal any, we kindly sends him your right ear. If that don’t bring him around a whole lot sudden, we presents him with your left ear. Arter that we gits tired when we waits twenty-four hours, and we shoots you full of lead and lets it go at that. Mat, pull over that yere box right close to the kid’s bunk, where he can sit all comfortable-like and write on it.”
A box was dragged out of a corner and placed before young Merriwell, who sat on the edge of the bunk. Then a sheet of paper was produced and spread in front of the lad, while the stub of a lead pencil was thrust into his fingers.
“Now write,” savagely ordered the masked man—“write just what I tells yer to a minute ago!”
Dick hesitated, but seemed to succumb. Through his head a wild scheme had flashed. It bewildered him for a moment, but quickly his mind cleared and he began to write. He did so, however, with the utmost slowness, as if the task was a difficult and painful one. Spotted Dan was surprised to see the boy give in so quickly. He had fancied Dick would have obstinately refused until compelled to obey.
“Don’t put in a thing but just what I tells yer to,”commanded the masked man. “If yer does, youngster, you has ter write another letter, for we won’t deliver this one any at all. If you wants to get free, you has good sense and obeys all peaceful-like.”
“All right,” muttered Dick, as he slowly labored over the beginning of the message to Frank.
“Why, seems ter me this yer boy’s eddication has been a heap neglected,” said Dillon. “He finds it a whole lot hard to write.”
The masked man resumed his position where he could read what was being written. Somehow it didn’t seem to please him, for of a sudden he seized the sheet of paper and tore it up.
“Why for do you ramble around that yere way?” he demanded. “You puts it down plain and brief, with no preliminaries. Understand that?”
Then he produced another sheet of paper and laid it upon the box. Immediately Dick flung down the pen and lay back on the bunk.
“You go to Halifax!” he exclaimed, his eyes flashing. “I will write it just as I want to, or I won’t write it at all.”
The man instantly whipped out a long, wicked-looking knife.
“Then I slits your oozle!” he snarled.
“Slit away!” defiantly retorted the boy.
Spotted Dan broke into a hoarse laughter.
“What did I tell yer!” he cried. “I certain knowed how it would be.”
The masked man seized Dick and held the knife menacingly before his eyes.
“Will you do as I tell you?” he hissed.
“I will do as I choose,” retorted the nervy lad. “I don’t propose to write anything save what you order, but I will write it in my own way. If I can’t, then I won’t write at all.”
The man hesitated, then straightened up.
“Well, you sure has sand, or you’re the biggest fool for a kid I ever saw,” he declared. “Go ahead and write her out, and then I’ll examine her and see that she’s all right.”
So once more Dick took the pencil and began to write. He preserved the same deliberate slowness in constructing the early portion of the missive, but finally began to write faster and faster, and finished it with a rush, signing his name.
“Well, the kid’s eddication seems to be all right, arter all,” observed Mat, as he admiringly watched the boy speedily scribble the last sentence. “Mebbe he is out of practice some, to begin with, and so he writes slow till he gits his hand in.”
The masked man took the letter and carefully read it over.
“Why were you so particular to say, ‘No house shelters me?’” he asked. “That yere is dead crooked. Is you trying to fool your brother up some?”
Dick actually laughed.
“I put that in just to help you out, gentlemen,” he declared. “You have been so very kind to me I should hate to see anything happen to you.”
The masked man wondered vaguely if the boy was mocking them, but decided almost immediately that he had really frightened Dick to such an extent that the young captive had put those words in to show his willingness to hold to the demands made upon him.
“Well, this will do,” nodded the wearer of the mask, folding the paper and thrusting it into his pocket. “Now, pards, just keep the boy all ca’m and quiet, and mebbe his brother comes to his senses and settles the deal, arter which we evaporates and leaves them to meet up with each other and rejoice.”
Then he strode out of the room, and his three companions followed, closing the door and leaving Dick once more to gloom and solitude.