Frank Merriwell's Triumph Part 43

"He is giving you the dead-level truth, stranger," put in Brad,

"That's right," agreed Dash Colvin, coming up. "Look here, Pete Curry, you knows me and I knows you. This boy is Frank Merriwell's brother."

"That being the case," said Curry, "he wants to get a hustle on and join his brother some lively. That fine bunch you saw hiking down the valley is bound for Frank Merriwell's new mines, which they propose seizing a heap violent. We counts ourselves some in luck to get off with whole skins from such a measly outfit. All the same, if we had played our hand proper I reckon they'd never set that lot of mavericks loose. I am a-plenty ashamed of myself."

"But tell me," urged d.i.c.k, "how you came to have those men as prisoners?"

Curry then briefly related the whole story, to which d.i.c.k and his friends listened with the greatest interest.

"That's how it were," finished Curry. "I allows to your brother I sure could take that gang to the nearest jail. He and his pard, Hodge, stays to guard their mines, leaving the job of disposing of those tough gents to we three. We makes a fizzle of it, and now the whole outfit is bound back for the Enchanted Valley. They are frothing to get at your brother and do him up. At the same time, they counts on salivating the old Injun what fools them a-plenty."

"Frank will fight to the last," said d.i.c.k. "We must help him some way.

We're all armed, and I think we can furnish you with weapons. Are you with us, or are you ready to give up?"

"Pete Curry, of Cottonwood, gives up none at all," was the reply. "I counts on hiking somewhar to get weapons and horses and then hustling back for the purpose of doing whatever I can to help your brother."

"If you try to do that, you will be too late to render any a.s.sistance,"

declared d.i.c.k.

"Then give us some shooting irons and what goes in 'em and we're with yer," said Curry.

This arrangement was quickly settled on, after which d.i.c.k rode back for Felicia and little Abe. When he reached the spot where they had been left, however, he was not a little surprised and alarmed to find they were no longer there. In vain he looked for them. He called their names, but his voice died in the silence of the desolate hollows. There was no answer, and d.i.c.k's fears grew apace.

What had become of Felicia and little Abe?

Left to themselves, they fell to talking of the singular things which had happened.

Felicia's horse champed its bit and restlessly stamped the ground.

"That horse acts awful queer," said the boy. "He has got a funny look in his eye, just the same as a horse I once saw that was locoed. You know what that is, don't you?"

Felicia laughed.

"I was born in the West," she said. "Of course I know what it means when an animal is locoed. They have been eating loco weed and it makes them crazy. But I don't think this horse has been doing that."

"Never can tell," said the hunchback.

"Why, it should have shown on him before."

"Not always. Sometimes it breaks out awful unexpected. Look how your horse rolls its eyes. Say, I'm going to----"

Abe did not tell what he was going to do, for, starting his own horse forward, he reached for the bridle of Felicia's animal. To the horse it seemed that the boy's hand was large as a grizzly bear. The animal started back with a snort of alarm, quivering with sudden terror.

"Whoa! whoa!" cried Abe, hastening in his attempt to seize the creature's bit.

These efforts simply served to add to the horse's fear, and suddenly he wheeled and went tearing away, Felicia being unable to check its flight.

Immediately the hunchback pursued, his one thought being to overtake the girl and save her from danger, for he was now confident that something was the matter with the horse.

If the creature was really locoed, Abe knew it might do the most astonis.h.i.+ng and crazy things. To a horse thus afflicted a little gully a foot wide sometimes seems a chasm a mile across, or a great ravine, yawning a hundred feet deep and as many in width, sometimes appears no more than a crack in the surface of the earth. Deluded by this distorted view of things, horses and cattle frequently plunge to their death in gorges and ravines, or do other things equally crazy and unaccountable.

Felicia's horse fled madly, as if in fear of a thousand pursuing demons.

The girl was a good rider, and she stuck to the animal's back with comparative ease, although unable to check its wild career.

Doing everything in his power to overtake the runaway, the hunchback boy continued the pursuit, regardless of the direction in which it took them. The flying horse turned hither and thither and kept on and on until it was in a lather of perspiration and was almost exhausted to the point of dropping. Mile after mile was left behind them in this manner, Abe finding it barely possible to keep the runaway in sight. At length they came from the hills into a broad plain, and there, in the very midst of the waste, the runaway halted with such suddenness that Felicia barely saved herself from a serious fall. What had caused this sudden stopping of the horse was impossible to imagine, but the beast stood still with its fore feet braced, as if fearing to advance another inch.

It quivered in every limb and shook all over.

Felicia heard the clatter of horses' hoofs and turned to see little Abe coming with the greatest haste. The boy cried out to her, and she answered him.

"Oh, Felicia!" he panted, as he came up on his winded horse; "I'm so glad you're safe! Get down, quick--get down! He might run again!"

She slipped from the saddle to the ground, and little Abe also dismounted, but now neither of the horses showed the slightest inclination to run. Both were in such an exhausted condition that they stood with hanging heads, their sides heaving.

"I was afraid you'd be killed, Felicia!" gasped the boy.

Then he saw her suddenly sink to the ground and cover her pale face with her hands. Quickly he knelt beside her, seeking to soothe and rea.s.sure her.

"It's all right--it's all right," he said. "Don't you cry, Felicia."

"Where are we, Abe?" she whispered.

"We're right here," was the answer, which seemed the only one he could give.

"Where is d.i.c.k?"

"He will come pretty soon. Don't you worry."

"We must find our way back. Can you do that, Abe?"

"Of course I can," he a.s.sured stoutly. "Just you trust me."

Then once more he did his best to rea.s.sure her, and after a while succeeded in calming her somewhat. To his relief, she did not cry or become hysterical. Over and over the boy a.s.sured her that he could find the way back without the least trouble, and after a while he must have convinced her this was true.

"You're so brave, Abe," she half smiled.

"Brave!" he exclaimed. "Me! I reckon you don't know me! Why, I ain't brave at all! I'm just the biggest coward that ever lived."

She shook her head.

"Don't tell me that," she said. "I know better. You're just as brave as you can be."

"Well, I never knowed it before," he said wonderingly. "If I am brave, it is something I never found out about myself. My, but I was scared when I saw that horse run!"

"What will d.i.c.k think when he finds us gone?"

"Oh, he will foller us, he will foller us," nodded the boy. "Don't you worry about that. We'll meet him coming."