“We will go on as soon as you are ready,” continued the priest, to Nick. “You shall visit our city, and you shall see the white man who is there. After that we will talk. Had I not seen you kill that mountain goat, I should not have believed—though I, too, can do something of the same kind, in another sort of way.”
He signed to three of his men to go and fetch the body of the goat. While they were gone, he sat quietly in his saddle, watching them as they came staggering along with their burden.
They held it up for him to look at, and he examined the bullet wound with much interest.
“It is a very small hole,” he muttered, half to himself. “My men say it was done at a distance of six good spear throws. The death stick must have great power. With twenty of those sticks I would be able to command——Ah, well, we shall see!”
He motioned to his men to lay the dead goat down, and beckoned Nick Carter to come closer.
“Stranger, how many men can you kill with that stick before its power is gone?” he asked. “And what is the greatest distance at which it will do its work?”
“Come here, boy?” called out Nick Carter to one of the coolies. “Bring two of the cartridge cases.”
When the boxes were brought over and laid on the ground by him, the detective touched one with his foot.
“In that box,” he said, “are the lives of a thousand men and more. As for the distance that they will kill, if you or one of your men will stand up at a thousand paces from where I am, I will lift my death stick and find him as easily as I did that mountain goat.”
There was nothing bragging in the detective’s tone. He spoke only as any one might tell a truth which was beyond dispute.