“Well, we are getting action,” muttered Nick Carter. “I only hope Chick was not too hasty.”
It happened that they had got to the place where the priest wanted a second demonstration of the power of the death sticks. It was a large open space, like a market place or public square, with houses all around.
One of the houses was that at whose window they had seen the face of the white man, and into which Chick had just run to see what had become of Jefferson and Leslie Arnold, and incidentally to look after William Pike.
Calaman, who had been at a little distance, giving instructions to some of his men, rode his mule up to Nick Carter and those of his party who remained, and nodded to the famous detective. He did not appear to notice the absence of Chick and the two Arnolds.
“If you will, my stranger guests,” he said, “I want to see how you use those death sticks against those who are not goats.”
“Gee! The whole caboodle of them around here look like goats to me,” was Patsy Garvan’s inward comment.
Patsy was much disgusted with the whole of the population of Shangore, particularly with Calaman, and he could not help expressing it to any one who would listen—or to himself, in the absence of any other sympathetic listener.
“I have already shown you that I can kill at a distance,” returned Nick Carter, regarding the priest somewhat defiantly. “Does not that satisfy you of the power of the death stick?”
“Not quite. It may kill mountain goats, but be useless against men. There are three malefactors who have been sentenced to death. They shall die at your hands if the sticks you have can do it. See!”
Several of the guards who had been doing something at the other side of the large square moved at this moment, and Nick saw that three men, naked save for their loin cloths, were bound to stakes fixed firmly in the ground.