The Danger Trail, James Oliver Curwood [best ereader for students TXT] 📗

strength of his limbs was leaving him. He no longer felt any sensation in his cramped feet. He measured the paralysis creeping up his legs inch by inch, driving the sharp pains before it--and then a groan of horror rose to his lips.
The light had gone out!
As if that dying of the little yellow flame were the signal for his death, there came to his ears a sharp hissing sound, a spark leaped up into the blackness before his eyes, and a slow, creeping glow came toward him over the rock at his feet.
The hour--the minute--the second had come, and MacDonald had pressed the little white button that was to send him into eternity! He did not cry out now. He knew that the end was very near, and in its nearness he found new strength. Once he had seen a man walk to his death on the scaffold, and as the condemned had spoken his last farewell, with the noose about his neck, he had marveled at the clearness of his voice, at the fearlessness of this creature in his last moment on earth.
Now he understood. Inch by inch the fuse burned toward him--a fifth of the distance, a quarter--now a third. At last it reached a half--was almost under his feet. Two minutes more of life. He put his whole strength once again in an attempt to free his hands. This time his attempt was cool, steady, masterful---with death one hundred seconds away. His heart gave a sudden bursting leap into his throat when he felt something give. Another effort--and in the powder-choked vault there rang out a thrilling cry of triumph. His hands were free! He reached forward to the fuse, and this time a moaning, wordless sob fell from him, faint, terrifying, with all the horror that might fill a human soul in its inarticulate note. He could not reach the fuse because of the thong about his neck!
He felt for his knife. He had left it in his room. Sixty seconds more--forty--thirty! He could see the fiery end of the fuse almost at his feet. Suddenly his groping fingers came in contact with the cold steel of his pocket revolver and with a last hope he snatched it forth, stretching down his pistol arm until the muzzle of the weapon was within a dozen inches of the deadly spark. At his first shot the spark leaped, but did not go out. After the second there was no longer the fiery, creeping thing on the floor, and, crushing his head back against the sacks, Howland sat for many minutes as if death had in reality come to him in the moment of his deliverance. After a time, with tedious slowness, he worked a hand into his trousers' pocket, where he carried a pen-knife. It took him a long time to saw through the rawhide thong about his neck. After that he cut the rope that bound his ankles.
He made an effort to rise, but no sooner had he gained his feet than his paralyzed limbs gave way under him and he dropped in a heap on the floor. Very slowly the blood began finding its way through his choked veins again, and with the change there came over him a feeling of infinite restfulness. He stretched himself out, with his face turned to the black wall above, realizing only that he was saved, that he had outwitted his mysterious enemies again, and that he was comfortable. He made no effort to think--to scheme out his further deliverance. He was with the powder and the dynamite, and the powder and the dynamite could not be exploded until human hands came to attach a new fuse. MacDonald would attend to that very soon, so he went off into a doze that was almost sleep. In his half-consciousness there came to him but one sound--that dreadful ticking of his watch. He seemed to have listened to it for hours when there arose another sound--the ticking of another watch.
He sat up, startled, wondering, and then he laughed happily as he heard the sound more distinctly. It was the beating of picks on the rock outside. Already MacDonald's men were at work clearing the mouth of the coyote. In half an hour he would be out in the big, breathing world again.
The thought brought him to his feet. The numbness was gone from his limbs and he could walk about. His first move was to strike a match and look at his watch.
"Half-past ten!"
He spoke the words aloud, thinking of Meleese. In an hour and a half he was to meet her on the trail. Would he be released in time to keep the tryst? How should he explain his imprisonment in the coyote so that he could leave MacDonald without further loss of time? As the sound of the picks came nearer his brain began working faster. If he could only evade explanations until morning--and then reveal the whole dastardly business to MacDonald! There would be time then for those explanations, for the running down of his murderous assailants, and in the while he would be able to keep his appointment with Meleese.
He was not long in finding a way in which this scheme could be worked, and gathering up the severed ropes and rawhide he concealed them between two of the powder sacks so that those who entered the coyote would discover no signs of his terrible imprisonment. Close to the mouth of the tunnel there was a black rent in the wall of rock, made by a bursting charge of dynamite, in which he could conceal himself. When the men were busy examining the broken fuse he would step out and join them. It would look as though he had crawled through the tunnel after them.
Half an hour later a mass of rock rolled down close to his feet, and a few moments after he saw a shadowy human form crawling through the hole it had left. A second followed, and then a third;--and the first voice he heard was that of MacDonald.
"Give us the lantern, Bucky," he called back, and a gleam of light shot into the black chamber. The men walked cautiously toward the fuse, and Howland saw the little superintendent fall on his knees.
"What in hell!" he heard him exclaim, and then there was a silence. As quietly as a cat Howland worked himself to the entrance and made a clatter among the rocks. It was he who responded to the voice.
"What's up, MacDonald?"
He coolly joined the little group. MacDonald looked up, and when he saw the new chief bending over him his eyes stared in unbounded wonder.
"Howland!" he gasped.
It was all he said, but in that one word and in the strange excitement in the superintendent's face Howland read that which made him turn quickly to the men, giving them his first command as general-in-chief of the road that was going to the bay.
"Get out of the coyote, boys," he said. "We won't do anything more until morning."
To MacDonald, as the men went out ahead of them, he added in a low voice:
"Guard the entrance to this tunnel with half a dozen of your best men to-night, MacDonald. I know things which will lead me to investigate this to-morrow. I'm going to leave you as soon as I get outside. Spread the report that it was simply a bad fuse. Understand?"
He crawled out ahead of the superintendent, and before MacDonald had emerged from the coyote he had already lost himself in the starlit gloom of the night and was hastening to his tryst with the beautiful girl, who, he believed, would reveal to him at least a part of one of the strangest and most diabolical plots that had ever originated in the brain of man.


CHAPTER IX
THE TRYST
It still lacked nearly an hour of the appointed time when Howland came to the secluded spot in the trail where he was to meet Meleese. Concealed in the deep shadows of the bushes he seated himself on the end of a fallen spruce and loaded his pipe, taking care to light it with the flare of the match hidden in the hollow of his hands. For the first time since his terrible experience in the coyote he found himself free to think, and more than ever he began to see the necessity of coolness and of judgment in what he was about to do. Gradually, too, he fought himself back into his old faith in Meleese. His blood was tingling at fever heat in his desire for vengeance, for the punishment of the human fiends who had attempted to blow him to atoms, and yet at the same time there was no bitterness in him toward the girl. He was sure that she was an unwilling factor in the plot, and that she was doing all in her power to save him. At the same time he began to realize that he should no longer be influenced by her pleading. He had promised--in return for her confidence this night--to leave unpunished those whom she wished to shield. He would take back that promise. Before she revealed anything to him he would warn her that he was determined to discover those who had twice sought to kill him.
It was nearly midnight when he looked at his watch again. Was it possible that Meleese would not come? He could not bring himself to believe that she knew of his imprisonment in the coyote--of this second attempt on his life. And yet--if she did--
He rose from the log and began pacing quickly back and forth in the gloom, his thoughts racing through his brain with increasing apprehension. Those who had imprisoned him had learned of his escape an hour ago. Many things might have happened in that time. Perhaps they were fleeing from the camp. Frightened by their failure, and fearing the punishment which would be theirs if discovered, it was not improbable that even now they were many miles from the Wekusko, hurrying deeper into the unknown wilderness to the north. And Meleese would be with them!
Suddenly he heard a step, a light, running step, and with a recognizing cry he sprang out into the starlight to meet the slim, panting, white-faced figure that ran to him from between the thick walls of forest trees.
"Meleese?" he exclaimed softly.
He held out his arms and the girl ran straight into them, thrusting her hands against his breast, throwing back her head so that she looked up into his face with great, staring, horror-filled eyes.
"Now--now--" she sobbed, "_now_ will you go?"
Her hands left his breast and crept to his shoulders; slowly they slipped over them, and as Howland pressed her closer, his lips silent, she gave an agonized cry and dropped her head against his shoulder, her whole body torn in a convulsion of grief and terror that startled him.
"You will go?" she sobbed again and again. "You will go--you will go--"
He ran his fingers through her soft hair, crushing his face close to hers.
"No, I am not going, dear," he replied in a low, firm voice. "Not after what happened to-night."
She drew away from him as quickly as if he had struck her, freeing herself even from the touch of his hands.
"I heard--what happened--an hour ago," she said, her voice choking her. "I overheard--them--talking." She struggled hard to control herself. "You must leave the camp--to-night."
In the gloom she saw Howland's teeth gleaming. There was no fear in his smile; he laughed gently down into her eyes as he took her face between his hands again.
"I want to take back the promise that I gave you last night, Meleese. I want to give you a chance to warn any whom