IN THE LION’S DEN.
For once in his life, at least, Donald McKay was disappointed.
He was tolerably confident of intercepting the two Klamaths, and with this end in view, turned into a corridor which he thought would eventually lead him to the passage which the twain traversed. He had spent many hours in the lava-caves, and deemed himself thoroughly acquainted with the tortuous, subterranean passages. But the best of hunters err at times, and McKay was not an exception. He walked a long time before he halted, and then it was against a wall, whose smooth surface, feeling like glass, proclaimed its scoriac composition.
The corridor’s end had been reached.
For several minutes the chief stood in the gloom without speaking. He felt the walls of the narrow chamber into which he had stalked, and then gave himself up to reflection.
He cursed himself for allowing the Klamaths to escape. He could not prevent them from reaching Jack now, nor could he see how he had been led to the spot where he stood.
When a hunter gets lost in a place perfectly familiar to him, it galls his very heart, and generally throws him into a fit of anger.
This was the effect it produced upon Donald McKay, at no time a very impassionate man, and in audible tones he upbraided himself for a lack of caution.
But suddenly, between breaths, he paused, for a suspicious noise had saluted his practiced ear. The sound, whatever it might be, was not repeated, and this fact fastened itself upon the mind of the ranger.
“I’ll find out what it means!” he murmured, with determination. “If it’s an Indian, I’ll fix him. I’ve got to stay here till another night, for you don’t catch Don McKay crawling from these beds during the day.”
He moved slowly toward the entrance to the chamber, and then paused again. Then, after a minute, he moved down the dark corridor, feeling the wall on either side, until he discovered an opening on the left.
Here he stopped and crouched, and a moment later a heavy body leaped upon him.
He went to the ground at full length beneath the assaulter, and a brief struggle followed—a struggle in which the chief turned the tables and bore his antagonist back.
His left hand griped a slender throat, when a sudden writhing of his foe threw a sleeve across his face.
With a cry of surprise he partly released the grip, and bent forward.
“Artena,” he cried.
The other gasped a moment for breath, and then faintly uttered his name.
“Heavens! girl, how near you have been to the dark river,” he said. “It makes me shudder to think of it, and I fancy that Cohoon would not spare his chief if his hand were to send Artena to the hunting-lands of her people.”
The mention of the Indian’s name startled the girl.
“Did Donald cross Cohoon’s trail?” she asked.
“No.”
“Where has he been?”
“I came from the cave where the shell burst.”
“And not meet Cohoon? curious,” mused Artena, in an audible tone. “Cohoon brought Artena to the little cave by the hidden river, and told her to wait till he come back. He go after Kit and his girl.”
It was Donald McKay’s turn to start now.
“Kit dead?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Girl, you’re mad. Old Kit South is not dead. I feel it in my bones.”
“Baltimore Bob shoot him, and shell kill ’Reesa.”
The girl’s confident tone threw a spell of silence about the half-breed.
“Artena heard you come; she think you Cohoon, so she crawl from cave, but find you Donald. Come back to cave. We talk; Cohoon come back by’m by.”
So the Squaw Spy guided the chief to a small cavern which she had lit up with a delicate fire of sage-brush.
One of those many streams that flow beneath the fused surface of the Lava-Beds bordered one side of the cave, and Donald McKay stooped and drank of the cold water before he spoke.
Then he returned to the girl, who was carefully replenishing the fire, and for an hour she enchained his attention by a narrative of her adventures since they had met—adventures well known to the reader.
“You have bad news for the Rangers, Artena,” said Donald. “Kit dead, Cohoon missing, and Evan Harris’ fate wrapped in mystery. The Modocs seem to be getting the best of me. But,” and he sprung to his feet somewhat excited and quite angry, “but we’ll outwit them yet. Girl, you’ve got to go with me.”
“No; I must wait for Cohoon.”
“He will not, can not hunt you; you must hunt him.”
The next moment she stood before him, and her hand touched his arm.
“Do you really think so?” she asked, in a doubtful tone.
“I do. Cohoon should have been here long ere this. Circumstances keep him away. I want you with me. We go to the Bloody Cave. Jack is there.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, and the Klamaths are with him—curse their meddlesome hearts. If it hadn’t been for an arrow in the side, two hours ago, I would have defeated one red embassy. My revolver covered the head of one Klamath, and before he could have touched the ground, his comrade would have tumbled against him. But, Artena, we waste time here. I know where I am now. I was lost—utterly lost—when I heard the slight noise you made; but all is right now, I say. I’ve slept in this very cave more than once. We chased four horse-stealing Shoshones hither long ago, and caught them as they were launching a boat on that black river.”
“Ha! if we but possessed a canoe now,” ejaculated Artena. “This water runs past the Bloody Cave.”
“I know it,” said McKay. “Let me look a moment. I hid the boat after we had killed the red thieves.”
The Indian spy watched the half-breed with bated breath while he searched for the boat, and when she saw him emerge from the gloom with a long canoe in his arms, she uttered an exclamation of joy.
“It’s hardly seaworthy, as the sailors would say,” said the chief, bearing the boat into the fire-light. “Time has warped the back and frame, but as we’re going down-stream, and that terribly fast, it may do.”
“It will do,” cried Artena, and then they fell to mending the large rents in the canoe.
Half an hour was spent in this labor, and amid expressions of satisfaction, the barque was borne to the stream.
The situation of the Bloody Cave was well known to the chief of the intrepid rangers. It was near three miles below the spot they now occupied, and the hidden river’s bed was devoid of dangerous rocks. But sharp crags projected from the banks, and it would take an experienced navigator of dark rivers to keep a canoe clear of them.
But Donald McKay knew the dangers, and wisely kept in the middle of the stream. He clutched the paddle firmly, and kept it in the water, but made no noise.
Artena sat silent in the bow of the boat, a revolver in her right hand, and with ears on the alert.
Eyes were not needed in that cimmerian gloom.
It was not the first time that the current had swept Donald McKay to the cave now tenanted by Captain Jack and his band, and, as he turned his head to tell Artena that the most dangerous places were passed, the faint report of a pistol reached their ears.
It was the shot that dropped Evan Harris before the deserter!
“Slowly now!” whispered Artena, bending forward, and touching Donald’s arm. “That means something.”
He did not speak; but drove his paddle down till it struck the river bed, when the boat began to move slowly.
Presently a faint gleam of light fell upon the water not far ahead of the voyagers, and at its edge the scout turned the boat ashore.
They soon discovered that the light on the water was caused by the reflection of the burnished roof of a corridor above the bank, and ascending to it, they looked through a brief passage upon an exciting scene in Bloody Cave.
Their position enabled them to look over the heads of the Indians, and they found that they had reached the spot in time to behold a thrilling tableau.
The tallest of the two Klamaths—Coquil by name—had just slain the Modoc boy, and was holding the body out to Captain Jack, who shrunk from receiving it, with horror depicted upon every lineament of his swarthy face.
The clicking of carbine and revolver locks were distinctly heard by the watchers on the bank, and the Indians looked at Mouseh, expecting him to order a massacre of the murderer.
But the Modoc had no intention of obliging his chiefs; for he stepped forward and addressed the Klamath.
“Coquil has killed a Modoc,” he said, sternly. “Let him tell why he did this?”
“Coquil will speak. He and Wiaquil were devouring some venison in the deep cave, when the boy came, and we gave him food. We told him that we were from Arrow-Head, and after awhile he went to get his gun which he had hidden beside the river. All at once he shot at his Klamath brethren—basely shot at them from behind a rock, and then fled like the deer. The ball crossed Wiaquil’s eyes, and made him blind for a while. So, Mouseh, when he came here, Coquil’s blood became as hot as boiling water, and when he thought of the base shot he could not bridle his knife arm.”
Captain Jack glanced at his chiefs when the Klamath finished, and saw the vengeful expression leave their faces.
They pardoned Coquil when they heard the cause for the death-blow he had just delivered.
“Coquil and his brother are still Mouseh’s friends. Sequesta was a wild boy at the best,” and the chieftain glanced at the corpse which the Klamath had lowered to the ground.
“We will stay and fight with Mouseh till Arrow-Head comes,” said Wiaquil, speaking for the first time, and when his voice reached the listeners on the cliff, Artena suddenly caught Donald’s arm. Then her lips touched his ears.
“Wiaquil is not a Klamath,” she whispered. “He is Cohoon!”
The words astounded the ranger and he shot her a look of incredulity.
“His voice can’t deceive Artena,” she returned.
Then McKay gazed intently at Wiaquil.
“Yes,” he said, at length. “It is Cohoon; but who is the other?”
“Whom but Kit?”
Another brief, but thorough scrutiny.
“Kit South it is, by my soul! Well, they’ve stalked into the lion’s den, and we stand on the threshold of the same dread place.”
“But look! look!” cried Artena. “Behold the pale girl and her lover.”
Donald McKay looked, and beheld ’Reesa South bending over Evan Harris.
The last scene had escaped his notice until that moment.
“I fear for my brave boys,” he said, returning to the self-styled Klamaths, no doubt recognized by the reader upon their appearance. “If the red fiends do not suspect, all may yet be well.”