Part 39 (2/2)

And such a grave! It went indeed hard with the elder Brill. The spoiler of his mine, and his murderer, had not even given him decent burial. We sent for the others; and then and there we dug a grave, and Norris was able to summon out of his memory a few words of the burial service. We left Carlos kneeling beside the mound. And when he rejoined us, much comfort showed in his face.

That bit of experience somehow drove, in large part, the gloom from our spirits, and we went about our further doings with more semblance of cheer.

Norris volunteered to go down and watch for Duran's possible return. I guessed his thought; that he felt that his bungling, in allowing himself to be discovered, had made him deserve this less agreeable task. The rest of us set ourselves to the business of searching out Duran's hidden storehouse. In spite of our zeal and numbers, the afternoon was nearly gone, and we no nearer the solution. We explored that cavern that Andy Hawkins had told us of; and moved forward in a pa.s.sage that went upward in its windings. I marvelled at the singular freshness of the air, till--having traversed some couple of hundred yards--I discovered the reason. The cave had but the one gallery, and that ended in a chimney, just over our heads where we now stood, and through which showed the light of day. That little opening, in which a hat would have stuck, was high in the cliff-side, as we were to learn.

Ray and I hurried down the path in the dark, to Norris, to report our failure and to relieve him on watch. But he refused to budge from the place.

”I gave us all away,” he said, ”and now I'm going to make it up somehow.

I'm going to make that skunk show us where he's got the stuff. And he'll do it, too, when I tell him a few of the things I've seen done to carca.s.ses like him.”

When he would not leave the watch to us, we decided to remain with him.

He was not cheerful.

”You see,” began Ray, then, ”you'll have us to prove things by, when you're trying to convince that polecat. You'll say 'Isn't that so, Ray?'

And I'll answer, 'Yes, that's so, Norris.' And then Wayne, here, he'll say, 'Yes, Norris, that's right, I know, because you never tell--'”

”Hist!” I interrupted him. ”Listen.”

Some little time back I thought I heard a thing like thunder, far back in the mountains. But it had been momentary, and I set it down as an illusion. While Ray prattled his nonsense, I seemed to hear it again. We c.o.c.ked our ears, but heard not even so much as the trill of a tree-toad.

”Ah, say,” began Ray, ”What--” And this time he interrupted himself, to listen.

There was that quavering, rolling, rumble that we had heard weeks before. Each succeeding wave of sound seemed to join with, and accentuate, the preceding. And then came a decadency, like a wagon rolling out of ear-shot. And again--we could not tell just the moment we began to hear the sound--there came from afar that eerie rumble, swelling, slowly to die away once more.

”The voodoo drum,” said Ray. ”Some more voodoo doings--that's what he went for.”

”Yes,” said Norris, ”and I'm afraid we'll have a _taste_ of some more voodoo doings before we get through.”

Neither of us cared to ask Norris what he meant. We continued to give ear to that weird music for long; and to each of us it seemed full of a portent; and each dreaded to hear another put it in words.

I do not know how many hours we three continued to squat there, at the edge of the wood; seldom talking, and then avoiding the thought uppermost in our minds. But at last it came, and we heard voices over by the cliff wall. They were coming down the rope ladder.

We rose to our feet, and scurried off in the edge of the wood, till we crossed the ridge and came to the beginning of the path. And there we crouched in the brush and waited.

At last came the stealthy, black figures, moving in silence, and in single file. We counted twenty as they went by us, and each carried some kind of gun. My heart pounded with the emotion; I have never before nor since experienced such fear as gripped me at sight of the martial array.

When they had pa.s.sed, we got over across the stream to our friends, and gave them our ill news. The coming of those twenty dusky voodoos could have but the one explanation: Duran had brought them to hunt down, and destroy, the six of us. He would madden them with rum, mixed with the blood of fowls, and sick them on to us. And he made sure of us, since there was but the one exit from this vale; and there he doubtless had stationed some trusty black at the cliff-top, to keep the ladder and the halliard, till he should have need of it--when the work shall have been completed.

We trapped ones, got our heads together for some talk of our situation.

How we lamented our lack of foresight, in leaving behind our arms and ammunition! Norris's lone rifle, with but a handful of cartridges, would but delay for a little the inevitable end. But for a time I had had my mind full of a wild thought. And I pulled Norris to one side, and opened the thing to him. My plan was so desperate that I hadn't the courage to tell it to anyone less bold spirited than he. It was no less than to employ that under-water way that Duran had used to transport the gold--to sink into the stream and be carried through that hole, and fetch up within that cavern; and so out to our camp in the forest, and return with the three rifles and the ammunition by way of the ladder--that was the plan.

Norris seized me by the arms. ”The very thing!” he said, ”----if it can be done. We'll find out!”

When we told the others of the plan, they took it without enthusiasm; declared it impossible--suicidal.

”You've no idea how far it is in to the cave,” said Ray.

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