Chapter VIII
A NEAR THING
The woman at the breakfast table was the first in the room to see Bill and Osceola spring through the open window. She screamed, the four men jumped to their feet, sending chairs crashing backward to the floor, the table rocking—and pandemonium broke loose.
Gripping their rifles by the barrels and swinging them like clubs, the lads charged the surprised kidnappers, who pulled revolvers and began shooting almost immediately. But after the first few shots, attackers and attacked became involved in a scrimmage so close and so heated that firing was impossible. Bill, wielding his rifle like a singlestick, managed to ward off the clubbing revolvers of his assailants, but Osceola, dropping his gun, went at them like a wild man, using fists alone.
In the midst of the fracas, a man sprang onto Bill’s back. By use of a jiu jitsu trick he catapulted his attacker over his head and on to the breakfast table which collapsed, sending broken china and glass in every direction. Osceola staggered and fell to the floor under the blow from a revolver butt, and Kolinski pressed the muzzle against the stunned Seminole’s temple. Like a streak of light, Bill jerked his automatic from its holster and the Pole went over backward with a bullet through his shoulder. Then Bill saw the woman, who still stood behind the debris of the breakfast table, pick up a plate and sail it through the air at him. He tried to duck, but was again held fast from behind. A burning pain seared his eyeballs and he, too, dropped insensible to the floor.
Bill awoke, gasping and sputtering, his head and shoulders drenched in water. His head was splitting, and the darkness round about him was shot with a myriad of dancing lights.
“Give the Indian another bucketful,” wheezed a cracked voice from the gloom.
Bill heard Osceola’s characteristic grunt as the water splashed over him. His mind began to clear, and soon he realized that he was bound hand and foot and that his eyes were bandaged. Again he heard the unmistakable wheeze in the cracked voice, and this time the high-pitched tones were full of sarcasm.
“And all this comes from entering where angels fear to tread!” A man’s voice, surely, thought Bill, but an old man—
The unseen speaker chuckled and went on with his monologue. “Although we have not met before, my young friends, I have climbed these many stairs to bid you goodbye. It pains me to send you off in this abrupt fashion,” again he chuckled, “but I cannot take you with me—and you are probably familiar with the adage that dead men tell no tales. You will be glad to hear that the young lady, Miss Deborah Lightfoot, will not mind her passing on to Happy Hunting Grounds quite as much as you two will. She was given a hypodermic in the car on the way up here, and is, to all intents and purposes, asleep.”
“But—surely you don’t mean to kill an innocent girl!” raged Bill.