Off came the saddle, then the water-bucket, aside went the blankets, and his arm plunged into the hole.
Standing in the entrance, they saw him rise, reel, stagger, and fall directly under his horse’s hoofs with a wild cry, and a brief, hoarsely yelled sentence. Then Pedro fainted, with the echo of his cry ringing and dying through the gloomy cavern:
“Gone—gone—all gone!”
They rushed in and lifted him up, the guide first. Taking him tenderly in his arms, he held the torch to his face; then he laid him gently down; then he shook his head slowly; then, with every muscle, feature and lineament of his face showing his earnestness, with wild eyes, with voice trembling and hollow in spite of himself, he said:
“Gentlemen, thar’s suthin’ wrong ’bout this cursed, ugly black hill; the strongest, coolest, bravest man in the world has fainted clean away—dead away!”
“And the girl—where is she?—she is gone,” muttered Cimarron Jack.
“She is gone—gone!”
CHAPTER X.
WORSE YET.
The guide, lifting the torch, looked round on a small band of vaguely-frightened, nervous men. Why should they be frightened—why nervous? Nearly all were accustomed to hob-nob with Nature in her strangest and most incomprehensible moods—were accustomed to sudden surprises and alarms, and all were endowed with at least ordinary courage and “nerve.”