The Mad King, Edgar Rice Burroughs [best pdf ebook reader TXT] 📗

not pay the debt Yellow Franz stole me from my home and says that he will keep me until my father pays him, and that if he does not pay he will make a bandit of me, and that then some day I shall be caught and hanged until I am dead.”

“Can’t you escape?” asked the young man. “It would seem to me that there would be many opportunities for you to get away undetected.”

“There are, but I dare not. Yellow Franz says that if I run away he will be sure to come across me some day again and that then he will kill me.”

Barney laughed.

“He is just talking, my boy,” he said. “He thinks that by frightening you he will be able to keep you from running away.”

“Your majesty does not know him,” whispered the youth, shuddering. “He is the wickedest man in all the world. Nothing would please him more than killing me, and he would have done it long since but for two things. One is that I have made myself useful about his camp, doing chores and the like, and the other is that were he to kill me he knows that my father would never pay him.”

“How much does your father owe him?”

“Five hundred marks, your majesty,” replied Rudolph. “Two hundred of this amount is the original debt, and the balance Yellow Franz has added since he captured me, so that it is really ransom money. But my father is a poor man, so that it will take a long time before he can accumulate so large a sum.

“You would really like to go home again, Rudolph?”

“Oh, very much, your majesty, if I only dared.” Barney was silent for some time, thinking. Possibly he could effect his own escape with the connivance of Rudolph, and at the same time free the boy. The paltry ransom he could pay out of his own pocket and send to Yellow Franz later, so that the youth need not fear the brigand’s revenge. It was worth thinking about, at any rate.

“How long do you imagine they will keep me, Rudolph?” he asked after a time.

“Yellow Franz has already sent Herman to Lustadt with a message for Prince Peter, telling him that you are being held for ransom, and demanding the payment of a huge sum for your release. Day after tomorrow or the next day he should return with Prince Peter’s reply.

“If it is favorable, arrangements will be made to turn you over to Prince Peter’s agents, who will have to come to some distant meeting place with the money. A week, perhaps, it will take, maybe longer.”

It was the second day before Herman returned from Lustadt. He rode in just at dark, his pony lathered from hard going.

Barney and the boy saw him coming, and the youth ran forward with the others to learn the news that he had brought; but Yellow Franz and his messenger withdrew to a hut which the brigand chief reserved for his own use, nor would he permit any beside the messenger to accompany him to hear the report.

For half an hour Barney sat alone waiting for word from Yellow Franz that arrangements had been consummated for his release, and then out of the darkness came Rudolph, wide-eyed and trembling.

“Oh, my king?” he whispered. “What shall we do? Peter has refused to ransom you alive, but he has offered a great sum for unquestioned proof of your death. Already he has caused a proclamation to be issued stating that you have been killed by bandits after escaping from Blentz, and ordering a period of national mourning. In three weeks he is to be crowned king of Lutha.”

“When do they intend terminating my existence?” queried Barney.

There was a smile upon his lips, for even now he could scarce believe that in the twentieth century there could be any such medieval plotting against a king’s life, and yet, on second thought, had he not ample proof of the lengths to which Peter of Blentz was willing to go to obtain the crown of Lutha!

“I do not know, your majesty,” replied Rudolph, “when they will do it; but soon, doubtless, since the sooner it is done the sooner they can collect their pay.”

Further conversation was interrupted by the sound of footsteps without, and an instant later Yellow Franz entered the squalid apartment and the dim circle of light which flickered feebly from the smoky lantern that hung suspended from the rafters.

He stopped just within the doorway and stood eyeing the American with an ugly grin upon his vicious face. Then his eyes fell upon the trembling Rudolph.

“Get out of here, you!” he growled. “I’ve got private business with this king. And see that you don’t come nosing round either, or I’ll slit that soft throat for you.”

Rudolph slipped past the burly ruffian, barely dodging a brutal blow aimed at him by the giant, and escaped into the darkness without.

“And now for you, my fine fellow,” said the brigand, turning toward Barney. “Peter says you ain’t worth nothing to him—alive, but that your dead body will fetch us a hundred thousand marks.”

“Rather cheap for a king, isn’t it?” was Barney’s only comment.

“That’s what Herman tells him,” replied Yellow Franz. “But he’s a close one, Peter is, and so it was that or nothing.”

“When are you going to pull off this little—er—ah— royal demise?” asked Barney.

“If you mean when am I going to kill you,” replied the bandit, “why, there ain’t no particular rush about it. I’m a tender-hearted chap, I am. I never should have been in this business at all, but here I be, and as there ain’t nobody that can do a better job of the kind than me, or do it so pain-lessly, why I just got to do it myself, and that’s all there is to it. But, as I says, there ain’t no great rush. If you want to pray, why, go ahead and pray. I’ll wait for you.”

“I don’t remember,” said Barney, “when I have met so generous a party as you, my friend. Your self-sacrificing magnanimity quite overpowers me. It reminds me of another unloved Robin Hood whom I once met. It was in front of Burket’s coal-yard on Ella Street, back in dear old Beatrice, at some unchristian hour of the night.

“After he had relieved me of a dollar and forty cents he remarked: ‘I gotta good mind to kick yer slats in fer not havin’ more of de cush on yeh; but I’m feelin’ so good about de last guy I stuck up I’ll let youse off dis time.’”

“I do not know what you are talking about,” replied Yellow Franz; “but if you want to pray you’d better hurry up about it.”

He drew his pistol from its holster on the belt at his hips.

Now Barney Custer had no mind to give up the ghost without a struggle; but just how he was to overcome the great beast who confronted him with menacing pistol was, to say the least, not precisely plain. He wished the man would come a little nearer where he might have some chance to close with him before the fellow could fire. To gain time the American assumed a prayerful attitude, but kept one eye on the bandit.

Presently Yellow Franz showed indications of impatience. He fingered the trigger of his weapon, and then slowly raised it on a line with Barney’s chest.

“Hadn’t you better come closer?” asked the young man. “You might miss at that distance, or just wound me.”

Yellow Franz grinned.

“I don’t miss,” he said, and then: “You’re certainly a game one. If it wasn’t for the hundred thousand marks, I’d be hanged if I’d kill you.”

“The chances are that you will be if you do,” said Barney, “so wouldn’t you rather take one hundred and fifty thousand marks and let me make my escape?”

Yellow Franz looked at the speaker a moment through narrowed lids.

“Where would you find any one willing to pay that amount for a crazy king?” he asked.

“I have told you that I am not the king,” said Barney. “I am an American with a father who would gladly pay that amount on my safe delivery to any American consul.”

Yellow Franz shook his head and tapped his brow sig-nificantly.

“Even if you was what you are dreaming, it wouldn’t pay me,” he said.

“I’ll make it two hundred thousand,” said Barney.

“No—it’s a waste of time talking about it. It’s worth more than money to me to know that I’ll always have this thing on Peter, and that when he’s king he won’t dare bother me for fear I’ll publish the details of this little deal. Come, you must be through praying by this time. I can’t wait around here all night.” Again Yellow Franz raised his pistol toward Barney’s heart.

Before the brigand could pull the trigger, or Barney hurl himself upon his would-be assassin, there was a flash and a loud report from the open window of the shack.

With a groan Yellow Franz crumpled to the dirt floor, and simultaneously Barney was upon him and had wrested the pistol from his hand; but the precaution was unnecessary for Yellow Franz would never again press finger to trigger. He was dead even before Barney reached his side.

In possession of the weapon, the American turned toward the window from which had come the rescuing shot, and as he did so he saw the boy, Rudolph, clambering over the sill, white-faced and trembling. In his hand was a smoking carbine, and on his brow great beads of cold sweat.

“God forgive me!” murmured the youth. “I have killed a man.”

“You have killed a dangerous wild beast, Rudolph,” said Barney, “and both God and your fellow man will thank and reward you.”

“I am glad that I killed him, though,” went on the boy, “for he would have killed you, my king, had I not done so. Gladly would I go to the gallows to save my king.”

“You are a brave lad, Rudolph,” said Barney, “and if ever I get out of the pretty pickle I’m in you’ll be well rewarded for your loyalty to Leopold of Lutha. After all,” thought the young man, “being a kind has its redeeming features, for if the boy had not thought me his monarch he would never have risked the vengeance of the bloodthirsty brigands in this attempt to save me.”

“Hasten, your majesty,” whispered the boy, tugging at the sleeve of Barney’s jacket. “There is no time to be lost. We must be far away from here when the others discover that Yellow Franz has been killed.”

Barney stooped above the dead man, and removing his belt and cartridges transferred them to his own person. Then blowing out the lantern the two slipped out into the darkness of the night.

About the camp fire of the brigands the entire pack was congregated. They were talking together in low voices, ever and anon glancing expectantly toward the shack to which their chief had gone to dispatch the king. It is not every day that a king is murdered, and even these hardened cutthroats felt the spell of awe at the thought of what they believed the sharp report they had heard from the shack portended.

Keeping well to the far side of the clearing, Rudolph led Barney around the group of men and safely into the wood below them. From this point the boy followed the trail which Barney and his captors had traversed two days previously, until he came to a diverging ravine that led steeply up through the mountains upon their right hand.

In the distance behind them they suddenly heard, faintly, the shouting of men.

“They