The doctor lifted his eyebrows in astonishment.
"Indeed! Then who is to pay the bills for his care and treatment?"
"I will," Frank promptly answered. "Here, take this as a fee in advance."
A bill was thrust into the physician"s hand.
After looking at the bill the doctor a.s.sumed a very deferential manner.
"He should have a first-cla.s.s nurse," he declared.
"He shall," a.s.sured Merriwell; "the best one to be obtained in Carson."
"This is very strange," said the physician. "I can"t understand why you should do such a thing for one who is a stranger to you. You must have an object."
"I have."
"Ah! I thought so!"
"My object is to see this poor, abused boy live and get his just due.
He has been misused, and the man who has misused him should be punished. I hope to live to know that man has been punished as he deserves."
"Ah!" came from the doctor once more. "Then you have a grudge against the man?"
"I never saw him in all my life. I never heard of him before this night."
The physician was more puzzled than before.
"Then I must say you are a most remarkable person!" he exclaimed.
Once more there were steps outside the door--heavy shuffling steps.
The boy on the bed heard those steps, and a gasp came from his pale lips, as he turned his head toward the door, his face distorted by fear.
"He is coming!"
The words came in a hoa.r.s.e whisper from the injured boy.
Frank started toward the door and the boy wildly entreated:
"Stop him--don"t let him come in here! Hark! There is another step!
They are both there! They have come for me--come to drag me back to a living death!"
"Why, he is raving!" exclaimed the doctor.
Bang!--open flew the door. Without stopping to knock or ask leave to enter, a tall, dark-bearded man stepped into the room.
At this man"s heels came a crouching figure that seemed half human and half beast. It had a short, thick body and long arms that nearly reached the floor. Its face was pale as marble, save for a red scar that ran down the left cheek to the corner of the mouth. The eyes were set near together, and they glistened with a savage, cruel light.
Frank stepped between the intruders and the bed, but the boy had seen them, and he sat up, uttering a wild scream of fear, then fell back on the pillow.
"Who are you? and what do you want?" demanded Merriwell, boldly confronting the man and the creature at his heels.
"Never mind who we are; we want that boy, and we will have him!"
declared the man. "He can"t escape us this time!"
Frank glanced at the figure on the bed, and then turned back, crying with great impressiveness:
"He can and has escaped you, Bernard Belmont; but he will stand face to face with you at the great bar of justice in the day of judgment!"
"What!" hoa.r.s.ely cried the man, starting back and staring at the ghastly face of the boy on the bed; "he is dead!"
CHAPTER XII.
AT LAKE TAHOE.
Poised like a sparkling gem in a grand and glorious setting of mountain peaks, lies Lake Tahoe, the highest body of water on the American continent.
The sun was shining from a clear sky when Frank Merriwell and Harry Rattleton reached a point where they could look down upon the bosom of the lake, from which the sunlight was reflected as from the surface of a mirror.
"There it is, old man!" cried Frank, enthusiastically--"the most beautiful lake in all the wide world!"
"That is stutting it rather peep--I mean putting it rather steep,"
said Harry, with a remonstrating grin.
"But none too steep," a.s.serted Frank. "People raved about the beauties of Maggiore and Como, and thousands of fool Americans rush over to the old world and go into raptures over those lakes, but Tahoe knocks the eye out of them both."
"I think you are stuck on anything American, Frank."
"I am, and I am proud of it, too. Rattleton, we have a right to be proud of our country, and we would be blooming chumps if we weren"t.
It is the greatest and grandest country the sun ever shone upon, and a fellow fully realizes it after he has been abroad and traveled around over Europe, Asia and Africa. I"ve been sight-seeing in those lands, my boy, and I know whereof I speak."
"You are thoroughly American, anyway, Frank."
"That"s right. I love my native land and its beautiful flag--Old Glory! I never knew what it was to feel a thrill of joy that was absolutely painful till I saw the Stars and Stripes in a foreign land.
The sight blinded me with tears and made me feel it would be a privilege to lay down my life in defense of that starry banner."
"Well, you"re a queer duck, anyway!" exclaimed Harry. "I never saw a chap before who seemed cool as an iceberg outside and had a heart of fire in his bosom."
Frank laughed.
"Every man is peculiar in his own way," he said "I never try to be anything different than I am. I am disgusted by affectation."
"We have found Lake Tahoe, but that is not finding the "buried heiress," as you call her."