Beadle's Dime Library No. 384 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Injun Dick, Detective. 5 The candle was upon the table just as it had been left. Talbot applied the match to it, the wick sput- tered for a moment as though it had been wet, and then the light began to illuminate the apart- ment. A howl of despair came from the fat bum- mer as he looked toward the hiding-place of the | secret hoard. All the back of the fireplace had been torn out. ‘ The gold was gone! ** Sold ag’in and somebody’s got the money!” Bowers exclaimed, sinking into a chair with a melodramatic action that would have made the fortune of an ordinary tragedian. Even calm and quiet Injun Dick was betrayed | into an exclamation of annoyance. It was no joke to be robbed of so large a sum, for fortune had not gone well with our hero since the time when we last described his ad- ventures; unlucky investments had swept away nearly all his hard-earned money, and he relied upon this gold to give him a fresh start in the race for wealth, ** Look-a-hyer, old pard Dick, is thar any con- nection atween these hyer two things—the pig- sticking of Limber Bee and this hyer raid on our treasure-box?” Bowers cried, abruptly. ‘* Well, I don’t know; that is a difficult ques- tion that you have put and it is impossible for me to answer it decidedly at present. ‘** All I can say is that it looks mighty like it.” ‘* Wot is to be done, old pard?” ‘‘What is to be done?’ exclaimed Talbot, his eyes flashing fire. ‘‘ Why, there is only one thing, Bowers, that we can do, and that is to hunt down the scoundrels who perpetrated these deeds. ‘* Limber Bee was not a man that I loved, but he was my pard; [ had good reason for joining company with him, and it is my duty to avenge his murder, no matter who did the deed.” ***Tain’t possible, is it, that the wife was the feller that stuck him?’ Bowers asked, slowly, with a sideway glance. A dark look gathered upon Talbot’s face, and from the expression, it was plain that the sur- mise had occurred to him, but he fought against it, unwilling to give shelter to the thought. ‘See here, Bowers, old fellow, we have no business to think that way about the woman,” he replied. ** We haven’t a particle of proof against her, and as far as we know she thas always acted on the square, hasn’t she?” ““Oh, yes,” the veteran was forced to admit. “T can’t really say as how I kin put my finger on anything she ever did, since I’ve known her, ‘that wasn’t right up to the mark.” ‘‘ That is exactly how I have found her, and I hate to think, even for a moment, that she ain’t all right.” ‘*She had cause to kill the:skunk twenty times over, but that don’t go to prove that she did the job,” Bowers observed. “But I say, ole pard, how about our gold? Who gave that little riffle away?” ‘‘ A careful search may have revealed the secret.” ‘* That’s true, but it ain’t likely. The woman wouldn’t go back on us, would she?” ‘*T should hate to think of her in that way!” ‘Talbot replied, earnestly. At this point the candle which was quite a short one began to splutter ina very peculiar way. Talbot watched it for a moment, and then suddenly cried in alarm: ‘Run for your life, Bowers, we are in a death- trap; the candle is connected with a fuse!” «4 Hardly had the words left his lips when there came a terrific explosion. A mine had been fired. CHAPTER VL. THE OATH. ‘TALBOT had guessed correctly. A death-trap had been set to catch whoever should come into the cabin and light the candle. The apparently harmless bit of tallow was so arranged, that after it had burned down to a certain point, it connected with a fuse which passed through a hole in the table down to a mine formed in the floor under that article of furniture. . The explosion was a terrible one, and it came so quickly upon Talbot's pac of the death- trap, that it was utterly impossible for either of the two to escape from the doomed cabin. The very foundations of the house were shaken by the force of the explosion, and the walls and roof lifted up bodily. Talbot, who happened to be standing in front of the door, was carried by the force of the ex- plosion right out into the middle of the river and hurled headlong into the startled waters, trembling in their bed at the force of the shock. For the moment our hero was stunned, and he fancied, as he was being wafted like a feather through the air, that his last hour had come. In such moments of peril the brain works quickly, and remembrances of all the tight ‘places in which he had been placed during his life of adventure, and the almost marvelous ways in which he had escaped death a hundred times, at least, floated across his memory; but he was forced to admit that this present peril bid fair to eclipse them all. Then he went souse into the waters of the Yampa, just about deep enough at this season of the year to give him a good, thorough ducking. He sunk like lead to the bottom, but the con- tact of the cold water restored his senses, mo- mentarily paralyzed by the force of the shock which he had experienced, and feeling that he heed pare) fully twenty dead men, he struck out ustily. A few strokes brought him to the surface, and a half a dozen more carried him out of deep water to a sand-bank from whence he could eas- ily wade ashore. The ruins cf the cabin had been set on fire by the explosion and were now burning fiercely. The mule, who had also been blown into the river, had made its way to the opposite shore, not materially damaged, and now stood upon the bank regarding the fire with a meditative look, evidently the most astonished animal that ever went on four legs. Bowers, the veteran, was nowhere to be seen, and our hero felt a pang of pain wring bis heart when he reflected that the mortal remains of the only original Joe Bowers were probably now being cremated by the devouring flames now raging so fiercely amid the ruins of the cabin. **Poor Joe Bowers! he did not deserve to die such a death as this,” Talbot exclaimed, regret- fully, as he stood upon the bank of the river and gazed upon the devouring flames licking up so rapidly the substance of the once cosey cabin. ‘You kin bet all your rocks on that, and you'll call the turn every time!” cried a voice which came, seemingly, from the clouds. ‘* See that you collect all my ashes, put ’em in a neat urn—an empty whisky demijohn would about fill the bill—sling a hefty verse or two in the funeral notice, say something arter this style: ‘** As squar’a man as ever flipped a card, always risky; Never ink back on his beer, or refused good whisky.’ ‘*Say, better change that into ‘ Never refused any whisky, good or bad!” y this time Talbot had discovered the where- abouts of the veteran bummer. A tall pine tree overshadowed the cabin, and the force of the explosion had sent the veteran whirling up into the air like a balloon; he had landed in the branches of the tree, and was not so dazed by this shock as not to be able to hold on for dear life. He was blackened and begrimed by the pow- der, though, and looked more like a huge baboon than a human as he peered down from amid the branches of the pine. ‘* Bowers, I believe that you have more lives than a cat!” our hero exclaimed. ‘*Same to you, Dick Talbot, bully rook!” the bummer cried, ‘‘and I tell youit is a mighty lucky thing that we are fixed in that way, or alse we would have been called upon to pass in our checks this time for a dead certainty.” ‘Have you escaped unhurt?” ‘*' Well, I reckon so, although Tl own up that I have been almost scared to death. ‘*This hyer mine, fired by a durned taller candle, is the biggest kind of a rise-party that I ever was invited to shake a leg at, and they'll never catch the ole, original Joe Bowers in sich a racket ag’in if the court knows herself, and she thinks she do,” ‘You had better get down out of that tree before the fire reaches it or you'll stand a chance to be roasted alive,” Talbot continued. ‘* That’s so; and like Captain Scott’s coon, I'm the gentleman w’ot knows when to come down.” Luckily for Bowers the tree slanted away from the cabin so he was able to descend without suffering material damage, although he was forced to admit that the atmosphere was somewhat hotter than he liked. ‘‘Durn me, if it ain’t kind of a foretaste of the wrath to come,” he remarked, when he reached terra firma and surveyed himself with a rueful face, “Tf its any hotter down below than it was in this hyer scrape, I jest want to be counted out afore I git in, and that’s the kind of sugar I like in mine.” ‘** Bowers, we have escaped death by a mira- cle,” Talbot remarked, “‘and now the question is, are you and I men to tamely submit to such an outrage as this?” “Not by a jugful!” the bummer replied, promptly. ; ‘* There isn’t the least doubt in my mind that this death-tre-» was set for our express benefit,” *“*Nary doubt!” **And by the hand of the same man, or men, who robbed us of our gold.” ‘** All down but nine; set ’em up ag’in!” j By this observation the veteran wished to imply that in his opinion the conclusion drawn by the other was correct. ‘“‘And now, then, to whom are we indebted for this proceeding?” Talbot continued. *““T have made plenty of enemies in my time, i i but I wasn’t aware that there was a single one of them in this neighborhood,” ‘**Ole pard, I don’t believe that thar is a man, woman or child in this deestrict who has reason for wishing to git squar’ with us. ** You hain’t trod on nobody’s toes, have ye?” ** Not to my knowledge.” ** Say, Dick, how will it do for to say that the cuss w’ot stuck a knife in Limber Bee is the head imp in this biling?” ‘ voiced the thought that he words exactl was in Talbot’s mind, ‘Well, Joe, old fellow, it does look as if the same man had a hand in both affairs,” Injun Dick observed, thoughtfully. ‘‘ And it is as deep ane dark a mystery as I have ever known,” ‘The woman, Dick, ole pard? W’ot does it mean? Whar is she? Why ain’t she to the fore?’ Bowers questioned. ‘*T hate tosay it, of course; but don’t it look as if she had something to do with this devil’s work?” ‘*Oh, I can’t bring myself to believe it!” Tal- bot declared. ‘* But how kin you explain her absence in any other way?” **T will not attempt to explain it; I hate to think about the matter!” Dick cried, im- patiently. ‘‘T had faith in the woman. She reminded me of an earthly angel that I loved and lost long years ago. ‘That was the reason that, when I came across her, | went out of my way to a her to some- thing better than the life she was leading. ‘“T spose you thought, old fellow, that I had a sneaking fondness for the woman, but as 1 am an honest man, and I believe, old pares you think I am all that, 1 looked upon her in the light of a sister only. ‘*T thought I saw that there was much good in her, and I was willing to try to do all in my power to keep her from sinking into the grave or going down past all redemption in the depths of sin. ‘‘And even now I am not willing to give up hope. Iam far more willing to believe she is a victim than either a tool ora partner in the fiendish work, although I own I fancied I saw a glance of recognition pass between her and the old man who inquired the way to Murphy's Gulch. ‘* But I may be wrong about that. It may be that she has been decoyed away, fallen by the assassin’s hand, and her bleeding body may now be lying in some mountain pass with its pale face upturned to the sky. ‘* But if she is alive—if she is a party to this. terrible work, then, woman though she is, she must be made to feel that the way of the trans- gressor is hard, and that they who tread the path of sin follow a winding, devious road full of thorns.” ‘*Limber Bee was our pard, Dick, and*though he wasn’t no great shucks of a feller, yet he was our brother and we are bound to avenge him!” Bowers observed. ‘*T will, I swear it on this blade that never yet proved false to me!” And cota 8 a sudden impulse, Tabot pluck- ed forth his bowie-knife and kissed the shining Bowers followed his example, and the bright moon re in wavy ripples on the surface of the polished blades witnessed the oath. ** Never will I know rest or peace until I bunt down and either slay with my own hands or ive to justice the murderer of Limber Bee!” albot cried. CHAPTER VII. ON THE TRAIL, AND now that they had come to this determin- ation, the pards held a brief consultation in re- gard to the best method to proceed to carry out their resolution. They came to the conclusion that the first thing to be done was to notify Yampa City camp of what had taken place, and so they set out for that noted burg. It was about three o’clock in the morning when they arrived at the town, and as there wasn’t a sign of life they were forced to go into camp on the outskirts in a scrubby growth of pines until the morning came. They had brought the mule with them, and Bowers was in a quandary as to how he could make matters satisfactory to the owner of the quadruped, for that useful beast had had his good looks meterially damaged by the startling experience through which he had passed. he hair was pretty well singed and the beast looked as if he had barely escaped with his life, although in reality he had not suffered any ma- terial harm. ‘‘ Better buy him,” Talbot suggested. ‘ We will need steeds; he seems like a good traveler, and now that he looks so badly you can proba- bly get him cheap.” ‘ Buy!” ejaculated Bowers; “ w’ot with? wind? ’cos that’s the best I kin do; gold and sil- ver have I none!” ‘** Broke, eh?” oan ,OO GOmic <S (E(o)