Half an hour later the car swerved out of the woodland road and entered a clearing. It surrounded an isolated, miserable old house, with a stable and numerous tumble-down outbuildings, the home of two members of the bandit gang, Solomon Mauler and his brother.
Chick Carter, then bound hand and foot, sized up the miserable place—but appeared to have no interest in its surroundings.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RESULT OF THE RUSE.
It was in the miserable place, in part described, that Nick Carter awoke to a realization that something unexpected had befallen him. Returning consciousness brought a sense of cramped limbs and bruised muscles, the results of the blows he had received and the violence of his fall from the moving train, when Sol Mauler rudely rolled him from the express car.
The effect of all this was to leave Nick unconscious for several hours, how many he hardly knew when he finally revived.
He found himself lying on the floor of a stall in a miserable stable, bound hand and foot in a way that precluded liberating himself. He was sore, stiff, and scarce able to stir, but he could use his eyes and ears, and his brain soon became cleared of the cobwebs.
He could hear the movements of horses in the near stalls. He could see the sunlight through chinks in the walls of the old building. He knew that day had dawned, if not already well spent, for the early songs of birds in the trees through which he could hear the sweep of the wind had ceased, and he reasoned that the morning was far advanced.
All this was confirmed a little later, when the steps of approaching men fell upon his ears, and the broad door of the stable swung open on its rusty hinges. A blaze of sunlight was shed into the dismal building.
Two men strode in and around to the stall in which the detective was lying. They were Sol Mauler, who had impersonated Cady, and his brother—Zeke Mauler. Why they dwelt alone in that desolate region and how they earned their living was a mystery to many, but there were hints at moonshine whisky.
“I reckon he’s still in dreamland, Zeke,” Sol Mauler was saying, when they approached. “He was hardly breathing half an hour ago, when I fed the nags. Mebbe he’ll croak on our hands and save us the trouble of—no, blast him! here he is with eyes wide open. His head’s like a hickory nut. So you’re not going to croak without help, eh?”