“All but one,” the Spaniard went on. “My men are escape. I have gun and I make them go forward, but we go in old water way.” The same one, Cliff mused, that they had used to get around the ambush; then he listened as Pizzara continued, “We find the ledge as it is on the map and there is your camp where you have leave some thing and the cord to haul the rope. It is very clever, si.”
“You left your natives there,” Bill said. “That’s my guess. Then you came down into this valley. But how did you expect to get any gold—or much!—all alone?”
“Ah!” grinned Pizzara, “this one is clever, as you. I plan all this and as I plan so it is come out—just exactly.”
“Plan?——” Cliff was puzzled. “How could you expect we would get into a dungeon and that you would save us—and what has that to do with your plan to get gold?”
“It is all simple,” Pizzara grinned. “I come and see that you are here: then I find ways to make Inca suspect you, and high priest to make you prisoner. You help that by what you do. So then I have you where I wish to have you! It is good fortune of my patron Saint that this soldier and his sister are mix up with you. It make two more to carry for me.”
“To carry?” demanded Mr. Whitley. “What do you mean?”
They had come to the place where the tunnel branched away in the direction of the break where the aqueduct used to flood the tunnels was situated: by common impulse they all swung after Tom who had memorized that way.
“Halt!” snapped Pizzara. They all stopped and looked at him. In the torchlight his face was a leering, triumphant mask of lustful delight. In his hand was the very “magic stick”—the small revolver—which he had caused the high priest to take from Bill when they were captured: Bill had not been able to use it, even in self rescue, for fear of shooting his friends; he had surrendered it with a scowl for his rifle, as he now knew, was in the hands of Pizzara’s natives, waiting, at the camp on the ledge.
“We can’t stop,” Mr. Whitley said. “Some one may discover us.”
“You stop when I say!” Pizzara gloated, lifting the shining muzzle. “If I shoot you will be capture. I will escape and come another time to take the gold. If you do what I say you get way and I may give you one little bit of gold as a—a souvenir.”