  “This is how the situation shapes up,” Bill said, finally. “We could wait until dark and then attract their attention to the place, around the pass bend, where the ladder was: get them all there, waiting for us to come down, while we sneak down the rope out of their sight on the far side and run for it. “The objection,” he went on, “is that when they discover that we are running down the pass they can run after us and most likely they can overtake us.” “What we want to do,” Cliff said, “if we can, is to get them somewhere that we can cut them off.” “That’s talking!” Bill agreed. “But where?” “Well, if we could have them come up here while we went down,” Nicky began. Then he shook his head for he saw that his idea was rather impossible. “The way everything is laid out here,” Cliff declared, “it keeps them from us but it keeps us from getting away. If we could just get them to cross that osier bridge over the gulf, we could cut the strands of the support and that would block them for good.” The bridge he referred to spanned the chasm from one side of it, where the pass they were above ended, to the other, where another path began. That was the way they had gone toward Quichaka. Returning the secret way, they had gone through the bed of the chasm, with the bridge over their heads, to one side. “If there was some way to get from the gulf up to the pass on the far side——” Tom said. “There must be. That would account for Whackey getting past us to see the men who are yelling at us right now.” Bill said that there must be such a way and he took his larger revolver and set out, up the cleft, toward the steep steps. If a man had gone from the chasm up to and across the bridge, he would see some signs and find a way, he declared. The party passed the intervening time throwing stones to keep the lower enemies interested. Had they been able to surprise the antagonists it would have been easy to stone them away, as the Incas had no doubt done in the old days. But the men on the pass were on their guard and had taken refuge close under the lip of the ledge which overhung the pass a trifle. To fling stones accurately the chums would have had to look far over and invite arrows or possibly bullets if any of the men of the mountain settlements carried arms. The stones were flung simply to keep the others close under the ledge until Bill’s reconnoitering trip was finished. “Here he comes!” cried Nicky, just before the sun dropped behind the peaks and sent the lower levels into a deep gloom. “And he has found it,” cried Tom. “I can tell by his face.” Bill had, indeed, found the way taken by Huayca previously. He explained the method to them. “But it doesn’t help us any, as far as I can see,” he said. “If we went that way we would still have those fellows between us and safety.” But Cliff took him aside and whispered: then they came back and the entire party discussed a plan Cliff had thought out. Huayca sullenly refused to obey when Bill shortly ordered him to get moving. Bill, carrying out Cliff’s idea, compelled Huayca, his own knife pricking the back of his neck, to go ahead of his tormenter, along the path through the cleft. “Keep them interested,” Bill urged. “Light dry brush and throw it down. Do anything you can think of to make them sure you are up here—for half an hour. Then—just keep still until I get back.” He drove the disgruntled and frightened Indian before him, down the steep steps. Bill had a flashlight and was able to prevent the bound arms from doing him any injury: in fact, Huayca had enough to do, keeping ahead of the pricking point of his knife, as he clung to the bracing osiers along the steps, with just enough loose rope between his wrists to enable him to help himself. It would have been foolhardy to try to make Huayca climb the cliff on the far side of the chasm, as well as to get down the other cliff to the far end of the bridge. Cliff’s plan was otherwise arranged. Once in the chasm, Bill forced Huayca ahead of him until they had crossed the deep gulf. There, in the shelter of a clump of brush almost under the end of the osier bridge he compelled Huayca to sit down: Bill bound him securely in that position. Then he walked a few feet away and gathered some small twigs and a few larger sticks. With those he made ready a fire. Once it was ignited and began to blaze he fired his revolver twice. That was the signal. Those on the ledge grew tense. Bill—good old Bill!—had done his part. He was racing back across the chasm toward the steps. In an hour or a little more he would be in their midst. But—in the meanwhile!—— The men on the pass heard the shots. They began to look around. Where had they come from? They knew what firearms were. But the sound had not come from the ledge above them: indeed, the people on the ledge had been so quiet that it might be that they had gone—if there was any way for them to go. And there was: the mountaineers knew there was a cleft in the walls above that ledge. One of them ran around the bend in the pass and shouted, pointing. They all rushed in his direction. Far below, and in the extreme distance of the chasm’s far side, they saw a tiny fire and what might be a man sitting near it. The ones on the ledge, then, they argued hastily, had used the passage through the cleft and down the old Inca steps. They must be over the chasm, camped there, thinking they were safe because there was no way to get at them. The men who hated them and sought their lives could not climb to the ledge and get to them through the cleft: but there was another way to reach them, camped there in the chasm. Stones! Stones would reach that camp! The men, shouting like wild things heated by the lust of the kill, snatched up hands full of large stones: several even lugged large boulders. It was a bad time for Huayca—or it would have been only that Bill, more kindly than the Indian would have been, had adjusted the bonds so that strenuous effort would loosen them after a while. Over the bridge of swaying planks raced the exultant mountaineers with their missiles; and Huayca, realizing at last what the queer situation meant to him, redoubled his efforts to loosen his hands so that he could free his bound feet. Down the ladder, which they had saved and drawn up when it had been cut free, went Tom, Nicky, Mr. Whitley and Cliff. Two of the enemy had not reached the bridge; they turned as they saw the youthful trio and man drop down the side of the ledge; but Cliff and Tom, first down, plunged at them so menacingly in the dark that they ran out a ways on the bridge. Mr. Whitley carried an axe, and Tom and Cliff and Nicky all had strong claspknives. While the men on the bridge wondered, hesitated, those far toward the other side were pelting the campfire in the chasm with their rocks, shouting and yelling so that they did not hear the warnings of their comrades whom Nicky held off with the rifle because Mr. Whitley was swinging the axe with steady, telling strokes. Crunch! Smash! Crumble! One strand of the two great cables supporting the bridge planks was cut. Then the men saw what was happening and turned to rush back across the swaying, teetering, weakening structure. But Tom and Cliff were hacking away the smaller twists of osier so that soon there was a space several feet wide where there was no support for the planks. Crack! Crack! Crunch! Crash! Mr. Whitley was cutting through the osier on the other half of the swinging bridge. The more deliberate Mr. Gray had by now come down the ladder and he held up a torch for them to see by. The light served to show the men on the bridge how dangerous was their situation. Any minute the second strand might part and the end of the bridge would then go swinging down—down—— In terror, stumbling over one another, pushing, screaming, they made for the far side of the bridge, which was naturally the nearer to them, for safety. Mr. Whitley withheld his axe until he was certain that there were no more men on the bridge. Crash! Two or three more blows and the bridge, weakened and strained, parted and went crashing down. Between them and their enemies yawned a bridgeless chasm. Long before the men could get up one cliff, over and down, across the valley where they found the terrified Huayca hiding, up the steep stone stairway and onto the ledge, Cliff, Nicky, Tom, Mr. Whitley, Mr. Gray, and Bill—who had come back safely, were on their way toward Cuzco. And this time their adventures were truly over and they had plenty of time to disguise their golden burdens, to bleach off their dye where it would show, and to return to civilization, satisfied for the time being that the Mystery Boys had saved a white man from eternal captivity and, in the bargain, brought out a nice collection of golden treasure! |
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