Frank Merriwell's Backers Part 61

"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 cl.u.s.ters of torches.

"Heap try to stop us," exclaimed Crowfoot. "One way to go up there, 'nother way down there, this be '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.

Astonis.h.i.+ng 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 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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.suring 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE RETURN TO HOLBROOK.

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 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----"

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.

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.