CHAPTER II.
WHAT THEY FOUND IN THE CAVE.
“The fact that we know the rascals are two miles away makes it unnecessary for us to care about the moonlight,” remarked Nick Carter, as, ten minutes afterward he strode along a narrow ledge that wound its way up the mountainside.
“I am glad of it,” grunted Jefferson Arnold. “I didn’t want to wait for anything.”
Nick did not reply. He turned to see that all his little army was coming along, and that all were properly equipped for anything that might happen in the way of fighting.
There were his two assistants, the two Arnolds, Adil, and Jai Singh, with the four coolies, whom he could perhaps be able to depend on in a scrimmage, but who, at all events, were useful to carry most of the baggage.
In addition to all these, there was one member of the party who said nothing, but who was not to be despised in a pinch—the magnificent bloodhound, Captain.
Trained to do police work from his puppyhood, and with a scent that never failed so long as there was anything for him to follow, Captain might still prove himself to be the most valuable individual in the party when it was desirable to follow some slippery and cunning foe.
They were walking along a narrow path of rock, with a towering wall on one side and a seemingly bottomless cañon on the other. It was such a trail as is often found in the mountainous districts of the Far West of America.
“Be cautious,” Nick Carter admonished his followers. “This is the kind of place where there might easily be a guard at intervals, if the Bolongu men know as much about the strategy of warfare as I believe.”
“You need not fear, sahib,” came from Jai Singh. “They are frightened. They will not attack us till we have got out of this part of the mountains. They shout, but that is all.”
“I wish they would show up a little nearer,” observed Patsy. “I’m getting as rusty as an old gate for want of a scrap.”
“Keep quiet, Patsy!” growled Chick, by his side. “You’ll get all the fighting you want before this trip is over—perhaps a little more. What’s this cave just in front of us, I wonder? I see several of them.”
“They have been used by outposts,” volunteered Jai Singh. “See! Here is a rusted spear head. It has been here for years, from the look of it. But it shows that sentries have used these caves at some time.”
“There always have been fights in this part of the country, I should say,” remarked Nick Carter. “Is that a flight of steps I see yonder?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“How far is it away?”
“Three miles.”
“It does not look so far,” declared Nick. “Don’t you think you are stretching it, Jai Singh?”
“It may be a little nearer as the eagle flies,” replied the Hindu. “But the trail is even more than three miles.”
“Gee! This is more like a Marathon than a healthy scrap,” grumbled Patsy. “He talks about three miles as easily as if it were only three feet. This kind of stunt might fit a letter carrier from the Bronx. But I wish we had horses or a motor car.”
Patsy Garvan liked to complain in this way. It was exercise for his tongue and gave his lively mind something to do. His discontent was only skin-deep, however. He did not mean anything, and Nick Carter, who overheard, smiled in amusement.
The path became narrower, so that only one person could walk at a time, and even then with the greatest of care. Then again it widened out, with room for three men abreast without being crowded.
“There are the steps!” exclaimed Nick Carter, as they turned a sharp corner. “We are getting into warm quarters.”
“Some of the Bolongu men may be at the top,” suggested Jai Singh.
“Do you think so?” asked Jefferson Arnold.
“I do not,” returned the Hindu.
“You don’t?” spluttered Jefferson. “Then why in thunder do you say——”
“It is wise to be steady,” was Jai Singh’s grave rebuke.
The flight of steps was a long one. When they got to the top, Patsy Garvan said he had counted three hundred and nine steps.
“That is correct,” confirmed Jai Singh. “I have counted them before, as well as now. I have often thought that, with a picked twoscore of men I could hold it against a hundred. What do you say, sahib?”
He turned to Nick Carter—as he generally did when he sought confirmation of some statement he had made.
“I think you are right,” returned the detective. “But I am glad the Bolongus are not here, keeping us off. These steps have saved us going a long way around, from the appearance of it.”
“They have,” assented Jai Singh. “You want to get to their land quickly, and I help you to do it. We could have gone a longer and safer way. But this is straight.”
“What do you mean by ‘a safer way,’ Jai Singh—Bolongus?”
“There would have been no fear of meeting Bolongus. But we may have to fight our way after coming up these steps.”
Nick Carter did not reply. It would have been waste of time to tell the Hindu that there was no desire to avoid the Bolongus. Jai Singh knew that as well as anybody.
The trail seemed now more perilous than ever. So narrow was it in places that they had to edge along sideways, with their toes actually overhanging the dizzy abyss. And it was some three thousand feet to the bottom, at that.
Once the butt of Jefferson Arnold’s rifle touched a projection behind him. He tilted forward, and it was only the quick throwing out of Nick Carter’s arm that saved him from lurching headlong into space.
It was Chick who saved the next man from deadly danger. One of the four coolies stepped on a loose pebble, which rolled under his feet and caused him to half turn toward the brink of the precipice.
The coolie was carrying rather a heavy load. Chick saw him sway under it, and an agonized expression came into his face.
“Look out there, son!” called out Patsy.
But Patsy was too far away to help, willing as he was to do it. It was up to Chick. He gripped the man by the legs below the knees and flung him flat, to take the jerking strain which he knew must come.
It did come, too. The coolie flung up his arms and fell over the edge of the precipice. But Chick held on grimly till the man had wriggled back to safety. That was what he had laid himself out to do.
It was all over in two or three seconds. But it seemed more than a minute before they heard the reverberating crash as the load he had carried reached the bottom of the cañon.
The sound sent a chilly feeling to Chick’s heart that nothing in the way of any ordinary danger could have done.
“I reckon we’ll use ropes,” decided Nick Carter, who saw that his assistant had actually turned a little pale. “We won’t take any more chances.”
Two long lines of rope were knotted together and a loop turn taken around the waist of each man in the party.
Nick Carter took the lead, while Jai Singh was in the middle, they being the heaviest members of the party, and Chick at the rear end. Captain trotted along behind. He was sure-footed enough not to require ropes to keep him out of trouble.
“What’s that big cave ahead of us, Jai Singh?” asked Nick Carter, when they had proceeded in this manner for two miles or more.
“It is the first sign that we are getting near Bolongu,” was the reply. “We should stop before we go into it. What there is inside it is not for me to say. We must see.”
“That sounds rather pleasantly mysterious,” remarked Jefferson Arnold.
The Hindu did not reply, but kept his eyes fixed on Nick, to see what the detective meant to do.
“I understand,” said Nick, quietly. “We will make camp just inside the cave, to be out of the wind. How far does the cave go back?”
“Farther than any white man has ever been. Neither has Jai Singh gone in. It belongs to the men of the Golden Scarab.”
“Do you mean that we shall find a lot of the rascals inside?” asked Jefferson. “If that is the case, it will not be wise to light a fire.”
“There is nothing to fear,” returned Jai Singh. “Only priests ever go into this cave, and they are a long, long way back. We will see.”
Nick Carter had perfect faith in the tall Hindu. He proved it by having a fire lighted in the entrance of the cave, and telling Adil, who had been appointed chief cook, to get supper.
They all dispatched their supper with appetites that might be expected in men who had been following a rough and difficult trail all day. But every one had his rifle ready for use, and Jai Singh’s spear was always at his hand, while the revolver he carried in a regular cartridge belt at his waist could have been brought into use at any instant.
Nothing was seen to disturb them, however, and when, at last, Nick Carter got to his feet and announced that he was going to explore the cave, his two assistants, Jefferson Arnold, and Jai Singh were ready to go with him.
Leslie Arnold and Adil would have liked to go, too. But the detective told them to stay and guard the entrance to the cave, in company with the four coolies and the bloodhound.
Nick Carter gave his orders quietly, but at the same time in a manner that told of his determination to be obeyed. No one thought of disputing him.
“I will take one of our lanterns, and you, Chick, carry the other,” he directed. “We can give light enough with them for all of us.”
The entrance of the cave was some thirty feet wide, and of about the same height.
They had not gone in more than two or three hundred yards, however, before they found themselves in a very circumscribed space. At the same time, they noticed that the cave seemed no longer to have been the work of nature, but of a human skill that struck them, under the circumstances, as decidedly uncanny.
The sides and roof of the rock had been smoothed until they glistened in the light of the lanterns, while the floor was paved with regularly laid blocks of different-colored stone that had the appearance of veined marble.
This was not all. On the smooth walls were engraved pictures of battles between warriors in the garb of Indians of long ago, intermingled with representations of strange animals which might have belonged to another world.
“Gee! This kind of thing gives me the willies!” exclaimed Patsy. “Look ahead there! What’s that?”
He was pointing to a sort of stone table. On it lay the body of a man without a head!