“Not far,” answered Frank. “It is probable you will see us back to-morrow.”
The proprietor shook his head gravely.
“I fear for that,” he said. “You had better keep within a few miles of the city, for the plains at a distance are infested with robber bands, any of which would not hesitate to do murder. I do not understand why you are going outside the city, anyway, for there is nothing to be seen.”
Frank was not inclined to satisfy his curiosity, and they rode away, waving him a farewell, which he returned.
Not till they were beyond the city’s limits did the professor think that he had not told his friend, the United States Consul, of this foolhardy expedition. He would have turned back at once, but Frank said:
“Very well, professor, you may go; but we shall not wait for you, as we have no time to lose if we hope to overtake one of those caravans before nightfall.”
The professor had turned his horse about. A groan left his lips, and it changed to a cry of horror as he lifted his eyes to the high posts which stood on either side of the gate in the white wall of the city.
“Look!” he gasped. “It is horrible!”
The boys looked, and on each of those posts they saw a human head that had been severed from the body. These heads had been suspended by the hair to some curved points which projected from the posts, and they hung there in all their ghastly horror, dripping blood and gazing with sightless eyes toward the desert for which the boys and the professor were bound.
“Wal, I be gol derned!” gurgled Ephraim, his voice sounding husky and catching in his throat. “Them’s purty things to look at!”