CHAPTER XXII
The Taste of Rope
Stubbs was lying flat upon his chest staring anxiously down into the fissure where Wilson had disappeared when suddenly he felt a weight upon his back and another upon each of his outstretched arms. In spite of this, he reached his knees, but the powerful brown men still clung. He shook himself as a mad bull does at the sting of the darts. It was just as useless. In another minute he was thrown again, and in another, bound hand and foot with a stout grass rope. Without a word, as though he were a slain deer, he was lifted to their shoulders and ignominiously carted down the mountain side. It was all so quickly done that he blinked back at the sun in a daze as though awaking from some evil dream. But his uncomfortable position soon assured him that it was a reality and he settled into a sullen rage. He had been captured as easily as a drunken sailor is shanghaied.
They never paused until they lowered him like a bundle of hay within a dozen feet of where he had tethered his burros. Instantly he heard a familiar voice jabbering with his captors. In a few minutes 266 the Priest himself stepped before him and studied him curiously as he rolled a cigarette.
“Where is the other?” he asked.
“Find him,” growled Stubbs.
“Either I or the Golden One will find him,––that is certain. There is but one pass over the mountain,” he added in explanation.
“Maybe. What d’ ye want of us, anyway?”
The Priest flicked the ashes from his cigarette.