“We may not kill you,” he hissed. “We shall try to take you alive. If we do, I would remind you that we, of the Land of the Golden Scarab, have ways of dealing with our prisoners that are not known to others.”
There was no mistaking the awful meaning of these last words. Nick Carter knew that, if he should be taken prisoner, it would be to serve as a sacrifice to the wretched gods these people worshiped. He knew, also, that his death would be indescribably horrible.
But he showed nothing in his calm face of what thoughts passed through his brain. He turned away from the priest, saying curtly:
“Enough words! Draw your mule a little to one side, so that I may have a clear view of what I am to shoot.”
Calaman did as Nick requested, and the detective glanced over to where the goat was browsing placidly on the hilltop, quite unsuspicious of the plans against its life. It was a rather larger animal than the goat commonly seen in the United States, and it had long, backward-curving horns that gave it the appearance of being bigger than it really was.
Nick Carter was not deceived by this, however. He knew exactly what he had to do, and he estimated the size of his target as closely as was necessary.
“It will be easy shooting if there are no flickering clouds,” he muttered to himself, as he leveled his rifle and steadied his elbow against a rock.
Jefferson Arnold, his son, Chick, and Patsy all held their breath in suspense, and Jai Singh stopped cleaning his spear.
While the air was perfectly still, the light was tricky, as Jefferson Arnold had remarked. It was all against a clean kill.
“You’d better sight for something over two hundred yards, don’t you think?” suggested the millionaire, as Nick Carter glanced along his rifle barrel.