Boys of Oakdale Academy. Scott Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ poorly atone for the suffering he has caused our people; for has he not with his own lips boasted that he tortured three noble warriors to death by tickling them on the bottoms of their bare feet with feathers? What torture can we devise that will serve as sufficient retaliation? I would listen to the wisdom from the lips of the great Seminole, Osceola.”

      “It is my idea,” said Osceola, “that we ought to soak it to him heap much. I’m in favor of skinning him alive.”

      “What do you propose, Tecumpseh?”

      “I would hang him by the heels over a slow fire. I guess that would warm him up some.”

      “Simon Girty, even though your skin is the color of the despised paleface, you have renounced your people and become one of us. You are even more bloodthirsty and cruel than the bloodiest warrior that roams the primeval forest. What say you? Spit it out.”

      “Burn him to the stake,” growled Girty.

      “Good! It shall be done. Lift him and tie him, standing, with his back to a stout sapling. Here’s another hunk of rope.”

      The captive, although somewhat recovered, made resistance when they raised him from the ground and dragged him to the sapling.

      “Go ahead with your funny business, you onery coyotes!” he exclaimed. “I opine I know you all, in spite of your rigs; and when I promise to get even a plenty I certain mean it.”

      Scoffing at him, they tied him fast, and then piled in a circle about his feet a mass of dry leaves and broken branches, taking care, however, that this combustible material did not touch him by a foot or more.

      “We’ll toast him gently at first,” chuckled King Philip. “When a victim is too quickly burned at the stake it is a sad mistake, for it ends our fiendish joys all too soon. Apply the torch.”

      Girty seized a burning stick of wood and touched it to the leaves near the prisoner’s feet. The fire blazed up and began creeping round the circle of combustible material. The heat of the flames reached the helpless boy’s face and hands, while the smoke filled his eyes and nostrils, making him choke and gasp. In a moment King Philip, Tecumpseh, Osceola, and Girty, the renegade, were dancing and whooping around Rod Grant, flourishing their tomahawks and knives.

      From the midst of the enveloping mass of smoke and sparks came a harsh voice, vibrant with intense rage:

      “Whoop it up, you skunks! You’d better carry the game through and finish me, for if you don’t I’ll make every one of you dance a different jig before long!”

      CHAPTER VI.

      THE RESULT OF A PRACTICAL JOKE

      The woods rang with their whoops and yells; their circling figures cast flitting, grotesque, fantastic shadows. The helpless captive choked and strangled; the fire had begun to scorch his shins.

      Suddenly, with a series of answering yells, half a dozen masked fellows charged forth from the darkness and fell upon the savages, who, in seeming panic, took to their heels and fled, after a brief show of resistance. Two or three of the newcomers had apparently made an effort to dress themselves like cowboys, while the remainder simply wore rough, ill-fitting clothes, or garments turned wrongside out. One, who seemed to be the leader, scattered the blazing leaves and sticks with his feet and began stamping out the fire.

      “Pards,” he said, “we’ve put the pesky redskins to rout and saved this poor fellow from a frightful death. I reckon he will be very grateful.”

      The still choking captive, blinking the smoke from his eyes, gazed sharply at the speaker.

      “I’m sure much obliged for the temporary relief, Mr. Barker,” he said; “but I’m not chump enough to opine you’re through with your shindig, and I allow there’s something more coming to me.”

      “What’s this?” cried the other. “His voice sounds familiar. His face – I’ve seen it before. So help me, he’s the galoot that led the cowpunchers who lynched my partner, poor old Tanglefoot Bill. I swore vengeance upon him, and my hour has come. He shall pay dearly for what he did to Tanglefoot. Eh, pards?”

      “That’s right; that’s right,” they cried, glaring threateningly at the captive through the eyeholes of their masks.

      “Let’s swing him from a limb,” proposed a stout chap, who was occasionally losing a peanut from a hole in the bottom of the well stuffed side pocket of his coat. “Many a time and oft has he boasted of what he has done to cattle rustlers like us.”

      “My deduction is – ” began a little chap; but instantly some one gave him a poke in the ribs, which cut him short.

      “We’ll bear him to our retreat amid the mountains,” proposed the leader, “and there we can decide what fate shall be meted out to him. Release him from the tree, but blindfold his eyes, in order that he may not observe the trail we follow.”

      These instructions were carried out, although they took care to leave Grant’s hands pinioned behind his back. A thickly folded handkerchief was placed over his eyes and securely tied at the back of his head. Barely was this done when the three redskins and the renegade came sneaking back from the shadows of the woods and joined the self-styled cattle rustlers. Threatening Grant if he made an outcry, they hurried him forth from the woods and away toward the twinkling lights of the distant village. Down the Barville road they went, approaching the dark and silent academy and the gymnasium. Among themselves at intervals they muttered fierce threats of vengeance for the death of the mythical “Tanglefoot Bill.”

      Once or twice a sound like a suppressed, smothered giggle came from behind the mask of the fat fellow, causing one of his companions to give him a vigorous punch and hiss into his ear an order to “dry up.”

      Within the gymnasium a shaded light glowed dimly. Beneath this light they gathered, with the unresisting and still blindfolded captive in their midst.

      “What shall we do with him, comrades?” questioned the leader.

      “String him up to a rafter,” urged one of his followers.

      “Show him no mercy,” advised another.

      “Make short work of him,” growled still another.

      “Had we known who he was,” said the leader, “we’d never risked our lives to rescue him from the redskins. Comrades, listen. In yonder small, dark room lie the bleaching bones of poor Tanglefoot Bill. While we are debating over the proper fate for Bill’s slayer, I would suggest that we place the wretched captive in that room with the remains of his victim.”

      This proposal meeting no opposition, Grant was pushed toward a door, at which one of the masked fellows took his place with his hand on the knob. At a signal from the leader, the door was opened, the blindfold snatched from Rod’s eyes, and he was given a push that sent him staggering into the room. At the same time some one cried in his ear:

      “Behold the bones of your victim!”

      The door slammed and the key was hastily turned in the lock.

      Barely succeeding in keeping upon his feet, Rodney Grant stumbled against something that rattled; and then in the deep darkness of that place he saw lying at his very feet what seemed to be a skeleton, every bone of which glowed with a dull, phosphorescent luminosity. Involuntarily he backed away from the thing until he had retreated against the door.

      “Great СКАЧАТЬ