He has found me as I am setting it. He springs upon me! He is strong--so strong! Ha! his feet slip! Down he goes! His head strikes! He is unconscious!"
The wretch seemed living over the terrible experiences through which he had pa.s.sed on a certain night in Denver, when he set fire to Merriwell"s office and tried to burn Frank to death. He thought he had accomplished his purpose, and the appearance of his intended victim alive had turned his brain.
As he listened Hodge shivered a little.
"Never mind, Worthington," said Frank. "He is all right. He will escape from the fire."
"No, no, no!" gasped the man, wringing his hands. "See him lying there!
See the fire flashing on his face! See the smoke! It is coming thick. I must go! I must leave him. It is a fearful thing to do! But if he escapes he will destroy me. He will send me to prison, and I must leave him to die!"
He covered his eyes with his hands, as if to shut out a terrible spectacle.
"No one sees me!" he whispered. "Here are the stairs! It is all dark--all dark! I must get out quick, before the fire is discovered. I have done it! I am on the street! I mustn"t run! If I run they will suspect me. I will walk fast--walk fast!"
Merry glanced at Hodge and sadly shook his head.
"Now the engines are coming!" exclaimed the deranged man. "Hear them as they clang and roar along the streets! See the people run! See the horses galloping! They are coming to try to put out the fire. What if they do it in time to save him! Then he will tell them of my treachery!
Then he will send me to prison! I must see--I must know! I must go back there!"
"He shall not send you to prison, Worthington," a.s.serted Merry soothingly. "He shall be merciful to you."
"Why should he? Here is the burning building. Here are the engines, panting and throbbing. See! they pour streams of water on the building.
No use! It is too late; you cannot save him. He is dead long before this. Who shall say I was to blame? What if they do find his charred body? No man can prove I had a hand in it. I defy you to prove it!"
Shaking his trembling hands in the air, the wretch almost shrieked these words.
"This," muttered Bart Hodge, "is retribution."
"I must go away," whispered Worthington. "I must hide where they can"t see me. Look how every one stares at me! They seem to know I have done it! These infernal lights betray me! I must hide in the darkness. Some one is following me everywhere. I am afraid of the darkness! I will always be afraid of the darkness! In the darkness or in the light, there is no rest for me--no rest! Did you hear that voice? Do you hear? It accuses me of murder! I am haunted! My G.o.d! Haunted, haunted!"
With this heartbroken cry he sank on his knees and crept toward Frank.
"You"re the ghost that haunts me!" he exclaimed. "It is my punishment! I must always be near you, and you must haunt me forever!"
Merry touched him gently.
"Get up, Worthington," he said regretfully. "Your punishment has been too much. Look at me. Look me straight in the eyes, Worthington. I am not dead. You didn"t kill me."
"No use to tell me that; I know better."
"It is hopeless now, Hodge," said Merry, in a low tone. "The only chance for him is that time will restore his reason. You may go, Worthington."
"I must stay near by, mustn"t I?"
"You may stay outside."
With bowed head and unsteady steps the man left the cabin and disappeared.
Little Abe had remained speechless and frightened in a corner. Now he picked up his fiddle, and suddenly from it came a weird melody. It was a crazy tune, filled with wild fancies and ghostly phantoms.
"He is playing the music of that deranged soul," murmured Frank.
The sound of the fiddle died in a wail, and the boy sat shivering and silent in the corner.
"This is a little too much of a ghostly thing!" exclaimed Merry as he arose and shook himself. "Let"s talk of something else, Hodge. To-morrow we start for the Mazatzals, and I have everything ready. If we can locate that mine, one-half of it is yours."
He took from his pocket a leather case and removed from it a torn and soiled map, which he spread on the table. Together he and Bart examined the map once more, as they had done many times before.
"There," said Frank, "is Clear Creek, running down into the Rio Verde.
Somewhere to the northwest of Hawley Peak, as this fellow indicated here on the map, in the valley shown by this cross, is Benson Clark"s claim."
"The location is vaguely marked," said Bart. "We may search for it a year without discovering it."
"That"s true; but we know approximately somewhere near where it is."
"Well," said Hodge, "we will do our best. That"s all any one can do. It is your fortune, Frank, to be lucky; and for that reason we may be successful."
"Something tells me we shall be," nodded Merriwell.
The start was made next day, and the journey continued until one afternoon Merry and Bart Hodge stood looking down into a deep, oblong valley in the heart of the Northern Mazatzals. With them was Cap"n Walter Wiley, a former seafaring man, who had been Frank"s friend in many thrilling adventures in the West. Little Abe had come with them from Mystery Valley, as had Worthington, but they were at the camp Merry had established some distance behind.
"I believe this valley is the one," Merry declared; "but how are we going to get into it? That"s the question that bothers me."
"There must be an inlet or outlet or something to the old valley," said Hodge. "It cannot be just a sink hole dropped down here like a huge oval basin in the mountains. There is a stream running through it, too. It is wooded and watered, and there is plenty of gra.s.s for grazing."
"I am almost positive this valley is the one Benson Clark told me of. I am almost positive it is the one marked on my map. Clark was shot and dying when I found him. He didn"t have time to tell me how to get into the valley."
"We seem to have struck something that impedes navigation and investigation and causes agitation," put in Cap"n Wiley. "I would truly love to have the wings of a dove that I could fly from these heights above. Poetry just bubbles from me occasionally. I must set my colossal intellect at work on this perplexing problem and demonstrate my astounding ability to solve entangling enigmas. (Webster"s Dictionary does contain the loveliest words!) Let me think a thought. Let all nature stand hushed and silent while I thunk a think."
His companions paid little heed to him; but he continued to discuss the problem of descending into the valley.
"I have visited the northern end and the southern end," said Frank, "and I have explored this side and surveyed the other side through my field gla.s.ses. There seems no break in these perpendicular walls. This valley seems like one of those Southwestern mesas inverted. They rise sheer from the plains, and it is impossible to reach the top of many of them.
This drops straight down here, and it seems impossible to reach its bottom."
"The more difficult it is," said Bart, "the greater becomes my desire to get down there."
"Same here," smiled Frank. "The difficulty makes it something of a mystery. Scientific expeditions have spent thousands of dollars in reaching the top of the Mesa Encantada, in New Mexico. By Americans it is called the Enchanted Mesa. Now, the mere fact that we can"t seem to get down into this valley throws an atmosphere of mystery over it, and to me it is an enchanted valley."
"Hush!" whispered Wiley, with one finger pressed against his forehead.
"A mighty thought is throbbing and seething in my cohesive brain. If I only had my gravity destroyer here! Ha! Then I could simply jump down into the valley and look around, and, when I got ready, jump back up here. By the way, mates, did you ever know why it was that Santos-Dumont retired from this country in confusion and dismay? You know he came over here with his old flying machine, and was going to do stunts to amaze the gaping mult.i.tudes. You know he suddenly packed his Kenebecca and took pa.s.sage to foreign sh.o.r.es. The secret of his sudden departure has never been told. If you will promise to whisper no word of it to the world, I will reveal the truth to you.
"Just before Santy arrived in the United States I succeeded in perfecting my great gravity destroyer. As I have on other occasions explained to you, it was about the size of an ordinary watch, and I carried it about in my pocket. By pressing a certain spring I immediately destroyed the force of gravity so that, by giving an easy, gentle sort of a jump into the air, I could sail right up to the top of a church steeple. When I got ready to come down, I just let go and sailed down lightly as a feather. When I heard that Santy was going to amaze this country with his d.i.n.ky old flying machine, I resolved to have a little harmless amus.e.m.e.nt with him.
"With this object in view, I had a flying machine of my own invented. It was made of canvas stretched over a light wooden frame, and along the bottom, to keep it upright, I had a keel of lead. My means of expulsion was a huge paddle wheel that I could work with my feet. That was the only thing about the machine that I didn"t like. There was some work connected with it. To the rear end of the arrangement I attached a huge fanlike rudder that I could operate with ropes running to the cross pieces, like on ordinary rowboats.
"Mates, there never was a truer word spoken from the chest than that the prophet is not without honor save in his own country. I had this flying machine of mine constructed in Cap"n Bean"s shipyard, down in Camden, Maine, my home. The villagers turned out in swarms, and stood around, and nudged each other in the ribs, and stared at my contrivance, and tried to josh me. Even Billy Murphy gave me a loud and gleeful ha-ha!
They seemed to think I had gone daffy, but I kept right on about my business, and one day the _s...o...b..rd_, as I called her, was finished. She was a beauty, mates, as she lay there, looking so light and airy and fragile.
"By that time I had become decidedly hot under the collar on account of so much chaffing from the rustic populace. Says I to myself, says I: "Cap"n, these Rubes don"t deserve to see you fly. If you let them see you fly you will be giving every mother"s son of them two dollars" worth of entertainment free of charge." Now, it isn"t my custom to give anything free of charge. Therefore I advertised in the _Herald_ that on a certain day I would sail the aerial atmosphere. I stated that before doing so I would pa.s.s around the hat, and I expected every person present to drop two dollars into it. I thought this was a clever idea of mine.