“Indians!” breathed Sandy. “Quick!”
With alacrity, the three quaking refugees pivoted about. For a few paces they hurried forward. Another stone rattled down almost at their feet. In dismay, they came to a sudden halt.
“Trapped!” gurgled Dick.
His legs were growing limp under him. Fearfully, his eyes endeavored to pierce the surrounding darkness. Was it illusion, or did he actually see something?
Vague shapes took human form. Dick had barely time to reach out and draw his two companions closer to him, to squeeze Sandy’s hand, and brace himself for the final shock—when the blow fell. One long, piercing, fiendish scream cut the silence. A wild scramble, hideous faces leering out of the dark, the sensation of being pummelled, struck, thrown back; the faint memory of a strangled sob—then complete oblivion!
When he woke to consciousness, Dick was being bounced and jerked about in a most unusual and disconcerting way. He tried to raise his arms above his head, but the effort proved futile. His wrists were bound. Across his chest and around his legs he could feel the pressure of tightly drawn rope. By turning his head slightly and squinting down along the curved surface of the object under him—to which he had been tied—he discovered the cause of his trouble.
He was strapped to a horse. The horse was slipping and sliding over treacherous underfooting, and was one in a long string of similar pack animals. The pack-train was advancing through the uncertain light of early morning, moving very slowly to the accompaniment of hoarse, guttural shouts.
In a sudden flash, the memory of the events of the preceding night came back. Up to a certain point he retained a vivid, clear-cut impression of everything that had passed—the Indian attack at Henderson’s encampment, the flight across the plateau and finally the harrowing experience among the rocks. What had happened afterwards he did not know. Had Sandy and Toma been killed? Why had the Indians taken him prisoner? Where were they going now, and what did they purpose to do with him, when they got there?
But whatever fate lay in store for him—it mattered little. Just then Dick was not particularly concerned with worry over himself. His mental images had taken a gruesome and awful shape. Before his eyes he could see the bruised and lifeless bodies of his two chums—Sandy and Toma. A burning sob escaped him. He turned his head again, gazing up in the gray, shadowy vault of the sky.
With the coming of the morning light Dick saw that the country around no longer possessed the aspect of grim, forbidding desolation. The plateau had been left far behind. They were now winding their way over a beautiful rolling woodland, whose varied scenic effects were pleasing to the eye. At one place the ponies forded a shallow creek and a little farther on skirted the shore of a lovely lake. This lake was narrow and long, sparkling like an emerald in the slanting rays of the morning sun.