CHAPTER VI.
NICK ACCEPTS THE TEST.
“You come in strange fashion, my stranger guests,” began the gray-bearded man deliberately, as if he were choosing his words, with plenty of time at his disposal. “What is your business?”
“We have business in Bolongu,” replied Nick. “Are you the representative of its government?”
The other ignored this question. He was not inclined to be catechized. He continued, as if he had not been asked anything:
“How you came by this road I cannot tell, seeing that the approach to it has been closed for many years—ever since our fathers’ fathers died. You must be brave men, and that tall black one there is quick with his spear. He killed three of my picked guards before they could even touch him.”
“Hear that, Jai Singh, old sport?” asked the irreverent Patsy. “The old geezer is firing bouquets at you with a machine gun.”
“Keep quiet, Patsy!” ordered Nick Carter.
“Also I see that you have death sticks in your hands. I have heard of them.”
“Death sticks is good, Chick!” murmured Patsy. “Gee! This will be a fine story to tell when we get back.”
“The death sticks can spurt death from afar,” continued the Bolongu; “making a great noise as they do it. When a white man of your race came and told me that, I did not believe. I thought he was a liar.”
“Yet you speak the same tongue as we,” remarked Nick Carter. “Where did you learn that, without finding out other things the white people know?”
“It has always been our language,” replied the other. “How we came by it I know not. But the death sticks I never heard of till the white man told me.”
“Where is that white man?” asked Nick.
The crafty face of the Bolongu seemed to become a mask to hide everything that might be in his mind. He kept on talking about what he called the death sticks.
“It would please me much to see them work,” he said. “Can you not make one of them spit fire and hit something that is not alive? It might crack that rock over there, eh?”
“Later I may show you what the death stick will do,” answered Nick Carter grimly. “You say a white man has told you about the death stick. We have come to find that white man.”
Up to this moment Leslie Arnold had kept in the background, so that his face had been hidden by the men in front of him.
This had been at the direction of Nick Carter. He had feared Leslie might be recognized by some of these men belonging to the Land of the Golden Scarab, and that it would cause an attempt to take him prisoner again.
Now, as the conversation turned on the white man who had informed this high priest, or whatever he might be, seated on the white mule, as to the uses of the death stick, Leslie could not restrain his eagerness.
He felt sure that the white man must be William Pike, and he wanted to rush forward and find out at once.
“What white man is it you want?” fenced the old man.
“It is the one you have,” was Nick Carter’s immediate answer. “Deliver him to me and we will depart in peace, doing you no harm. If you do not, then it will be bad for you.”
What might have been the result of this bold declaration of the detective if there had been no diversion cannot be positively told, because Leslie Arnold refused to stand back any longer.
He stepped before Nick Carter and stared steadfastly at the man on the mule.
“You are Calaman, the priest,” cried Leslie Arnold, in ringing tones, as he pointed a finger at the man’s face. “You ordered your men to take another white man and bring him here. But that white man got away.”
“Well, what if I am Calaman?” rejoined the priest, with dignity. “I have the right to command.”
“Not white men!” shouted Leslie. “It is there where you are to be punished. Do as you will in your own country, and with your own people. But when the Golden Scarab dares to interfere with the tiger that protects the white man, he shall die.”
“Leslie!” interposed his father anxiously. “What fool talk is this? Keep back, will you?”
“All right, dad!” answered Leslie, over his shoulder. “I know these fellows. Let me alone.” Then, bending toward Nick Carter, he whispered: “You have to bluff them. That is all they understand.”
“Who are you, to talk thus to Calaman?” demanded the priest, with sudden fury. “The Golden Scarab does as it wills.”
“It matters not who I am,” returned Leslie Arnold. “I am one who knows that the days of the Golden Scarab and all his priests are numbered if that white man you hide is not given up.”
“Let me think it over,” said the priest, with dignity. “We never do things till we have given them full consideration.”
He turned away from them, and his white mule, obeying a slight touch of the bridle, moved a few yards, carrying him out of earshot.
“Look here, Leslie,” said Jefferson Arnold earnestly. “Don’t you know that you are thrusting yourself into unnecessary danger?”
“How?”
“You were a prisoner to these people.”
“Well?”
“Now you have come back and got into a fuss with one of their big men. What do you do that for?”
Leslie smiled and toyed with his revolver.
“Well, you see, dad, the men who captured me, and from whom I escaped, are not here. This fellow, Calaman, who is practically the head of things in Bolongu, never saw me till to-day, although he knew his men had captured me.”
“He knew your name?”
“I don’t think so. All he heard was that his people had got hold of a white man who had much money, and that he could demand a fortune from the father of this white man if he chose.”
“And of course he would choose,” interposed Jefferson.
“There was no ‘of course’ about it. The people of the Golden Scarab have wealth themselves. They might have decided to offer me as a sacrifice to that interesting creature. In fact, I heard such talk among the men who caught me in the woods while I was on that tiger hunt, and that made me all the more determined to get away.”
“I am glad to know that Calaman has never seen you before. He is the sort of man that I should not like for an active enemy unless I had weapons and plenty of room to fight.”
“That’s all right, dad,” answered Leslie reassuringly. “You need not fear for me. I shan’t be hurt. But I’m not going to leave this part of the country until I have that scoundrel, Pike, in a pair of handcuffs.”
It was clear that Calaman did not recognize Leslie Arnold. But Nick Carter was by no means certain that there were not some of the men who had taken Leslie prisoner hidden among the rocks around.
He had not forgotten the Golden Scarab guards who had appeared so suddenly, and then had as abruptly vanished.
Some of them would be likely to recognize the young man. If they did, it was easy to predict what would happen.
Calaman turned his mule around and rode again toward Nick Carter.
“My stranger guest,” began the priest, with much dignity. “I cannot give up the white man to you. It would not be satisfactory to my people.”
“Gee! As if we care for his people!” muttered Patsy.
“We have come to get that white man,” was Nick Carter’s stolid reply to Calaman. “You do not deny that you have him.”
“I do not deny it,” replied Calaman. “One of your race has been in our city of Shangore, that you see across the valley, for five moons past. He cannot get away, and nobody can get to him except through my orders.”
“He’s pretty nearly the whole works, Chick!” whispered Patsy. “I knew that from the first. Now, if I were to plug him, don’t you see that——”
“Hush!” admonished Chick.
“No, but, Chick!” persisted Patsy. “I could raise my gun without being noticed, and I could land a cartridge in his shoulder or somewhere and knock him out, without killing him. Then we could——”
“Patsy!” thundered Nick Carter, who had overheard the last part of his assistant’s proposition. “Let me manage this matter.”
“Oh, all right! You’re the boss!” grumbled Patsy. “All the same——”
“Shut up!” whispered Chick.
“Now, Calaman, what is your final answer?” demanded Nick Carter, stepping forward a little from his companions and looking straight into the eyes of the priest. “I have told you that I must take that white man back with me. It is only a question of how it is to be done.”
The priest smiled cynically.
“As you say, it is a question of how it is to be done,” he purred, in his softest tones. “While I do not say that I will yield him to you, if you will come with me to the city, you shall see him. It may be that I shall be willing to exchange him for some of those death sticks you have. I do not say it will be so—only that it may be.”
“We will go with you,” answered Nick Carter.
“Very well. But, first, I would have a test.”
“A test?” repeated Nick. “What sort of test?”
The priest stretched out one of his long arms and pointed to a goat that stood on a pinnacle of rock, clearly defined against the soft blue of the sky.
“There is one of our mountain goats,” he said. “The other white man told me he could kill a goat at eighty paces with his death stick. Therefore, I told him he lied.”
“The nerve of him!” grunted Patsy, deep in his throat.
“I put him to the test,” continued Calaman, “and he failed. Let me see if you can kill that one. Then I may believe in some of the things you tell.”
Jefferson Arnold swore softly to himself.
“It’s an infernally long shot, Carter!” he whispered. “The old rip knows that as well as we. And there’s a whole lot hanging on the result. It’s a good two hundred yards, and the light is tricky.”
“But it can be done,” returned Nick Carter quietly.
“I know it can. But it isn’t certain—or wouldn’t be to me. You’re a better shot than I am. You’ll have to take the job. That is, if you let him dictate to you at all. My advice is to tell him to go to Halifax and fight it out right here.”
“We shouldn’t have a chance,” declared Nick. “I would rather fight than make terms with him. But we have to consider what we can do—not what we would like.”
“I suppose you’re right,” conceded Jefferson disgustedly. “But I know I’d like to wade in and take a chance. I’d give him a couple of minutes to get to cover, and after that we’d get busy. Durn these people in these out-of-the-way corners of the world, anyhow.”
“Amen!” was Patsy Garvan’s fervent indorsement of this sentiment.
But Nick Carter shook his head decidedly.
“It wouldn’t do, Mr. Arnold,” he replied. “If we refuse this challenge, our last hope is gone. I don’t trust him any more than you do. But I’m going to get that fellow Pike, no matter how hard it may be. I can nail that animal at two hundred yards if there is no accident.”
“There won’t be any accident,” put in Chick. “Your hand is steady, and I never knew you to miss a shot like that in your life.”
Nick Carter put a friendly hand on his assistant’s shoulder.
“Of course you believe in me, Chick,” he smiled. “And I believe in myself. Still, shooting is not an exact science, after all. But I’ll do the best I can, and I hope I shall make a good, clean shot.”
“If you should miss, I’ll plug that priest before he can say ‘Git up!’ to his mule,” announced Patsy Garvan. “I half wish you would, so that I could have an excuse to shoot. But I know you won’t.”
“I don’t think I will,” admitted Nick. “Keep that priest covered, both of you. I don’t tell you to shoot him, mind. But make him understand that you have the drop on him.”
The detective walked toward Calaman and looked him steadily in his dark, deep-sunken eyes.
“Well?” asked the priest, in a tone that he could not help being slightly sneering.
“I accept your test,” replied Nick Carter. “I’ll shoot at that goat.”