CHAPTER XVI.
HOW HAVERLY CHECKED THE STAMPEDE.
FOR half an hour the fugitives raced on, every muscle straining in a mad effort to outdistance their pitiless pursuers. Their feet seemed shod with lead as they turned and twisted among the boulders; their breath came and went in great, panting gasps that shook their bodies, yet for all their frenzied endeavours, their relentless enemies drew nearer. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the wolfish creatures gained upon them.
Then, in the grim wall of cliffs upon their left, appeared the dark mouth of a canyon.
“Quick!” gasped the Yankee; “in here with you!”
Like a flash the fugitives turned, and—with what was almost their last effort—plunged into the great cleft that split the range of hills in twain. Six yards from the entrance they swung round and stood at bay, Seymour and the millionaire fingering the triggers of their rifles.
Some time passed, but there came no sign of their pursuers; even their howls had ceased, and the three grew puzzled to account for the strange silence. It was not natural! They knew the character of the wolf-men too well by this time to think for a moment that they had given up the pursuit—had abandoned the chase! What could be the meaning of their sudden silence?
“They’ve got some devil’s card up their sleeve,” Silas muttered. “I guess they ain’t gone dumb all of a sudden for nothing. Say, there’d be no harm in prospecting a bit further along this gully? If there’s no back entrance, we’ll be in a darned awkward position.”
“You’re right,” assented the baronet. “Mervyn, if you’re in want of a feed, you can peck a bit as we go along.”
Cautiously they crept along the canyon, pausing occasionally to listen for any sound of their foes. But the underworld might have been deserted for all they could hear. Never had the silence been more profound.
The cliffs on either side rose steep and inaccessible as the wall of a house. Not a crevice or foothold of any description presented itself in the face of the towering walls. As straight were they as though the hills had been split asunder by the stroke of some giant sword. Here and there, at the base of the cliffs, grew a solitary fungus or a cluster of puff-balls, the weird, bloated forms of these latter betraying nothing of their terrible explosive power.
For an hour, perhaps, the three men moved forward, plunging deeper and deeper into the heart of the hills, and still there came no sound from the wolf-men. They had almost begun to believe—incredible though it seemed—that they had shaken off their pursuers. What else could be the meaning of their inaction?
Had they known of the coup which, even then, the crafty Nordhu was preparing against them, they would have lost little time in making their way out of the gorge. As it was, they took their ease, resting at intervals during their journey. Their future movements they had not decided upon, their time being fully taken up with the exchange of their experiences.
The loss of the Seal seemed to the professor an overwhelming blow.
“We are lost indeed without the vessel,” he remarked gloomily.
“I guess if there’s a road out of these infernal regions, we shouldn’t ha’ struck it with the Seal,” was Haverly’s sharp answer; “but that ain’t the trouble at present. You say you’ve seen nothin’ of Garth?”
“Not a sign,” was the reply.
“Wal, that’s a licker! Say, Seymour, what do you make of it?”
“He’s either been murdered by the savages or else he has escaped,” answered the baronet.
“Put your money on the last of them two; I calculate they’d hardly be likely to knock him on the head, seeing as how all prisoners are reserved for spider-meat. Anyway, we’ll assume he’s got clear, though what he’ll do now the Seal’s gone, Heaven alone knows!”
“What of Wilson?” asked Mervyn suddenly.
“When we know his fate,” returned Seymour, “the mystery of the Seal’s disappearance will be a mystery no longer.”
Hereafter silence fell upon the trio. Each man’s thoughts were busy with the things of the future. Would they ever find a way out of this underworld, or were they doomed to wander in its ghostly wilds until death released them? At the moment their prospect was not an alluring one!
Without any settled plan for the future, save to put as great a distance as possible between themselves and the wolf-men, they seemed helpless. Haverly’s active mind revolved all the expedients which presented themselves, yet, even to him, the case seemed almost hopeless.
“Say, professor,” he cried, breaking the long silence, “ain’t you got——”
His sentence was never finished, for at that instant, from far behind, came a series of hideous yelps. Softened by distance though they were, the sounds were frightful enough to the ears of the fugitives.
“They’ve struck our trail again,” remarked Seymour, stopping for a moment. Then a puzzled expression passed over his features, as a low, rumbling roar, not unlike far-away thunder, rolled up out of the distance, accompanied by a further series of wolfish cries.
“I opine we’re going to strike trouble very shortly,” averred Silas, “though I allow I don’t hardly tumble to the meanin’ of this yer rumbling.”
Quickly the rumbling grew into the pounding of giant hoofs, and the ground shook beneath the fugitives’ feet.
“A stampede!” the baronet cried. “The devils have stampeded a herd of animals! Run for your lives!”
But his friends needed no urging. They ran as men with the fear of death upon them, gazing eagerly to right and left in hope of finding some cave or cleft in the cliffs in which they might hide.
But never a crack or a crevice appeared in the iron walls, and ever the pitiless thunder of the great hoofs drew nearer. It seemed as though nought could save the ill-fated trio from the vengeance which the devilish priest had designed for them. Then, almost at the last moment, an inspiration flashed into Haverly’s mind.
He pulled up short, and, drawing his sheath-knife, sprang to where grew half a dozen or more huge puff-balls. Three of these he detached, handling them with great care. Carrying them out into the very centre of the gorge, he piled them in a heap.
His friends had stopped their flight as they noted his strange actions, and now stood watching him, Seymour admiringly, Mervyn with blank astonishment depicted on every feature.
“You’re a genius, Silas!” exclaimed the baronet, as, under the American’s orders, they placed a safe distance between themselves and the puff-balls. “I should never have thought of that.”
“But surely,” Mervyn began, “you don’t mean to say that those things are explosive? Why——”
“It was one of them same that bust the elk-hunters we told you about, anyway,” retorted the Yankee, his voice almost lost in the thunder of hoofs.
The next instant a dozen huge forms loomed through the twilight, racing three abreast down the gorge. The foremost of them were almost upon the fungi pile, when Silas and the baronet fired, their shots crashing simultaneously into the puff-balls. A dazzling sheet of flame leapt high above the pile, illuminating for a moment the great shaggy bodies and huge curved tusks of the stampeding animals.
“Mammoths!” gasped the scientist.
His exclamation was drowned in the shrill trumpeting of the terrified pachyderms, which was drowned in turn by the thunderous roar of the explosion as the puff-balls did their work.
The fugitives, flung violently to the earth by the shock, were scarcely conscious of what followed. The ground rocked furiously beneath them, creating a violent nausea, which left them sick for hours; immense masses of rock, torn from the face of the cliffs by the frightful force of the explosion, crashed heavily into the gorge, and above all the terrible uproar rang the shrill screaming of the dying animals.
But the din ceased at length, and then the three comrades staggered to their feet. Badly shaken they were, but otherwise they had received no hurt, and they gave thanks as only men can who have escaped from the very jaws of death.
The vengeance of the high priest of the wolf-men had failed!
“I guess we scored that time,” Silas said; “but I’m sorry for the tuskers. It was real cute of the niggers to stampede the brutes.”
“Thanks to you and the puff-balls,” put in Seymour, “the trick didn’t work.”
Mervyn had not yet recovered from his stupefaction at the marvellous explosive agent which was hidden away in the quaint fungi; but when he did at last find voice he could scarcely find words to express his wonder.
“It passes all belief,” he cried, “that such curious growths should have so deadly a power! They are natural bombs!”
The scene of the explosion entirely bore out this statement. The gorge was completely blocked by an enormous mass of débris, still quivering flesh and rock splinters being mingled in sickening confusion. Of all the herd of monster quadrupeds not one had escaped annihilation.
Turning, the three friends strode forward on their way, Mervyn dilating as they went on the subject of the explosive fungi.
“I guess them niggers’ll be considerable riled,” Haverly asserted with a chuckle, breaking in on the scientist’s discourse. “It ’ud be almighty elevating to see the old priest’s face when he knows we’ve pulled through an’ that his trick’s gone bust.”
“The fellow possesses terrible power,” Mervyn returned. “He almost succeeded in hypnotising me, though I struggled against him with all the force of my will. I tremble now to think of what might have happened had he effected his purpose.”
“Great Scott!” Seymour ejaculated. “Though I only saw him from a distance, it struck me that he had remarkably weird eyes, but I never imagined that the fellow was a hypnotist. We must fight shy of him for the future.”
“I guess it’s goin’ to take us all our time,” drawled the Yankee. “You can gamble on it the old man’ll lose no time in gettin’ on our trail again.”
“You think he’ll pursue, then?” queried the baronet.
“Think!” Haverly repeated. “I guess we can put it stronger than that. It’s a dead cert. the galoot’ll be on our trail again within a couple of hours, an’ then there’ll be a circus.”
“The heap of débris may check pursuit for a time,” suggested Mervyn.
“It may,” was the dubious reply, “but I doubt it. I calculate if you could pile the hull range of the Rockies way back there it wouldn’t stop them wolf-men for more than a second or two. Their shanks seemed to be built of watch-springs. Anyway, with that old priest urgin’ ’em on, it’ll be little short of an earthquake as’ll check ’em. What the blazes is that?”
A scream rang out through the silence, menacing and terrible.
“Vampires!” cried Seymour, and examined the breech of his rifle. As he snapped to the lever an immense vampire dropped swiftly downward through the twilight. On the instant the baronet fired, and the brute, lurching, recovered itself with difficulty, and flapped out of sight.
“Whatever was it?” gasped the scientist, amazed at the vast size of the creature, of whose shape he had caught but a fleeting glimpse.
“A vampire,” Seymour replied; “the same kind of brute that attacked Silas and me as we were returning to the boat.”
“I had forgotten for the moment,” returned Mervyn. “What terrible brutes they are! Who would have dreamed that such creatures existed? Truly this——”
“Jupiter! If this don’t lick all! I guess we must ha’ struck a blamed cemetery!”
There was good cause for the Yankee’s interruption, for, rounding a curve of the gorge, the adventurers had come suddenly upon a valley. On either hand towered monster fungi, their unearthly radiance making the valley as light as day; and between the growths the ground was thickly covered with bones.
Everywhere the bleached and ghastly relics lay, a veritable harvest of death.
The bones were, for the most part, those of animals, but here and there among them a human skull grinned up mockingly at the intruders.
“What can it mean?” the Professor asked in a hoarse whisper, stepping cautiously amid the gleaming piles.
“I assume this is the feedin’ ground of the vampires,” the Yankee answered. As he spoke there was a rustle amid a fungi-clump some yards away, and a huge, black form emerged, to flap heavily away into the shadow of the surrounding cliffs. Parting the fungi, Haverly peered down at the spot whence the creature had arisen.
Lying with outstretched limbs, its ghastly outline revealed with hideous distinctness by the glistening growth around, was the carcase of a wolf-man.
But something else caught the Yankee’s eye. In the hand of the savage, tightly clenched in the stiffened fingers, was a white handkerchief!
A whistle of astonishment escaped Silas. What brought the wolf-man with that in his possession? Kneeling, Haverly forced open the hand of the dead savage, and, removing the handkerchief, held it out for the inspection of his friends.
“It’s Wilson’s,” cried Seymour. “See, here are his initials,” pointing to the letters, “T. W.” embroidered in one corner. “How the dickens did it get here?” he continued.
“Perhaps the savage had something to do with Wilson’s disappearance?” suggested the scientist; but Haverly shook his head. He was busy trying to figure out the puzzle, which as yet defied him.
“I allow it beats me,” he admitted at length. “What brings the engineer so far from the coast?”
“He may not have been here at all,” Seymour replied.
“I guess this handkerchief ain’t walked here!”
“What about the savage?” persisted the baronet.
“You can gamble on it as he picked it up. Say, has it struck you as bein’ kinder peculiar that we should find the nose-rag in this yer valley?”
“You mean?” interrogatively.
“Have the vampires had anything to do with it?”
“Heaven forbid!” cried Seymour; “the thought’s too horrible!”
“We shall see,” the Yankee answered as they moved on again.