“Then I’ll have to carry you,” decided Frank, “I’ve done it when you were a little fellow, and I guess I can manage it now. Put your arms round my neck—so. Now then.”
With his added burden Frank struggled gamely on, though every step was telling heavily on him.
If they could only reach the little glade of cabbage palms, there was a pile of rocks there, he recollected, behind which they could hide. Speed meant everything, and pressing his lips together determinedly, Frank swore to himself that he would make the rocks or die.
And somehow by a supreme effort of will, he made them. Though how he managed that last sickening effort of half dragging and half carrying his inanimate burden across the little grove he never recollected.
But he made it and, having scrambled up the rough crevices in the pile of stone in which he hoped to find a safe asylum, he dragged his half-fainting brother into position beside him.
And now he could hear far back in the brush loud shouts and orders coming thick and fast. What a fool he had been not to realize that men engaged on such a hazardous enterprise as were the bogus manufacturers of Chapinite would have more cunning than to leave their retreat unguarded by alarm appliances. If only he had watched the trail more carefully.
But it was too late for vain regrets now; they would have to trust to luck to avoid detection for, judging by the noise and the number of different voices, the search for the invaders was to be a hot one. The young leader tried grittily to choke back the great, panting gasps in which his breath came after his exertions. But he might as well have attempted to stop a cataract, as to check his sobbing respiration. To him his deep breaths sounded as loud as the reports of minute guns.
And now a fresh peril made itself manifest. A deep baying sound arose far up the trail, which Frank recognized, with a violent throb of the heart, as the sound of bloodhounds, giving tongue on the scent. Their discovery was inevitable.
“Can you handle your revolver, Harry?” he asked of his younger brother, who was now somewhat recovered, thanks to the shade and the rest he had had.
“Yes, Frank,” whispered Harry, hoarsely, and then the next minute, noticing Frank’s troubled face, as the baying grew louder and nearer, “you needn’t tell me, old fellow, what that means—it’s bloodhounds.”