Frank Merriwell's Champions: or, All in the Game

Bob Thornton got on his feet, and Ward Hammond closed the knife with which he had been whittling.

“Air ye goin’ up thar ter-night?” the younger man drawled.

“It air my ’pinion that it’ll be better,” said Thornton, in a husky tone. “Ef you hev a thing ter do, do it. Them’s my sentiments, an’ I allus acts on ’em. Ef you hev a thing ter do, do it!”

“I do believe there is to be an attempt to murder Frank this very night,” Bruce Browning inwardly groaned, almost afraid to move an eyelid lest it should bring discovery. “I’ve got to get back to the cottages ahead of these fellows, or break my neck trying.”

Then he almost groaned aloud as he thought of the dark woods and the paths that seemed little better than squirrel tracks, where he had already lost himself, and could hardly hope to do better in a wild race for the cottages against these miscreants.

Hammond and Thornton moved away. Bruce heard the third man strike a match, and caught the odor of burning tobacco. Then he noticed that the moon was rising behind him over a shoulder of the mountain, and that the night was growing lighter.

“I can get along with that moon,” he reflected. “But I’m afraid it’s going to puzzle me to get away from this cabin without detection.”

He was on the point of making a dash and trusting to his heels for safety, for, though he was large-limbed and heavy, the bicycle trip across the continent had trained him down into fair condition for running, and the malarial trouble that seemed to have fastened on him had not yet materially affected his strength. But he was kept from this by the voice of Nell Thornton, who entered the cabin at this juncture, singing that old, old song of the backwoods:

“Fair Charlotte lived by the mounting side,In a wild an’ lonely spot,No dwellin’ thar fur ten mile ’roun’,Except her father’s cot!”

The voice was not unmusical, but it had the piping twang of the mountaineers.

“She has been away somewhere, and heard none of that talk,” thought Browning, with a sigh of relief. “I guess her arm was not so badly hurt by that arrow as I fancied. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to be suffering much now, judging by the way she sings.”

He inclined his head toward the cabin wall, expecting to catch the voice of the younger man from the bench under the tree and Nell’s answer to his words. But he heard only Nell singing of that other mountain girl who went sleighing to a dance in defiance of parental authority and was punished for her disobedience by being frozen to death in the sleigh.

Had Browning looked behind him, his thoughts would have been given another turn, for he was never in more peril in his life than at that moment.

The man on the bench, chancing to glance around the corner of the cabin toward the increasing light, had seen Bruce clearly outlined against the moon’s silver rim. His instant thought was that Bruce was the man against whom he and Bob Thornton had been warned – that here was the officer of the revenue service, with head pressed close to the cabin wall, having already spotted Bob Thornton as a moonshiner and tracked him to his home.

The man was a muscular giant of a fellow, as big and as strong in every way as Bruce. He was smoking and nursing a heavy stick, almost a club, which he habitually carried as a cane, but which, in his hands, was a weapon to fell an ox.

He quickly and stealthily slipped out of his shoes, then stole with catlike steps around the building, and approached Browning from the rear.

Step by step he moved forward, as silent as a shadow and as merciless as a red Indian. His face, revealed by the faint moonlight, was distorted with rage and hate, and his grip on the deadly club was so tense that the muscles on his right arm stood out in a knotted mass under the sleeve of his thin, cotton shirt.

Bruce still stood, with head inclined toward the cabin wall, listening for the words he was not to hear, wholly unaware of his peril.

Lifting himself slowly erect, the man poised the club for a brief instant, then brought it down with an inarticulate cry.

That cry saved Bruce’s life, but it did not ward off the terrible blow. Bruce straightened his head and tried to leap back, instinctively throwing up an arm as a shield.

But the club descended, beating down the arm and striking the head a glancing blow, under which Bruce sank down with a hollow groan.

The blow, the groan, the man’s fierce curse as Browning fell, reached the ears of Nell Thornton, stilling the words of the song.

She was out of the cabin in a flash.

“What hev ye done, Sam Turner?” she demanded, as she hurried around the corner of the cabin, and saw the man standing over the senseless form, with the murderous club still in his hands. “Who hev ye killed, hyar, I’d like ter know?”

“Shet yer yawp, Nell Thornton, an’ go back inter the house!” Turner harshly commanded. “Go back inter the house, whar ye belong, stiddy botherin’ with bizness that don’t consarn ye!”

“But it do consarn me, ef murder is bein’ done!” she asserted.

Then her voice rose in a shriek, as she bent over Browning, and recognized in him the youth who had been so kind to her that afternoon.

Browning lay as he had fallen, without movement or sign of life.

“Ye’ve killed him, Sam Turner!” she cried, facing the mountaineer, with white face and flashing eyes. “Ye’ve killed him!”

“That thar’s what I meant ter do!” Turner declared. “An’ I’ll kill ever’ other revnoo spy that the guv’ment sends down hyar ter ’rest me an’ yer dad!”

Nell turned from him, with hot, dry eyes and choking words, and again bent over Browning, even as he had bent over her when she lay in a faint in the wild mountain path.

Then she grasped him by the shoulders and tried to lift him.

“Help me ter git him inter the cabin!” she wildly commanded. “He ain’t no revnoo, Sam Turner! If he’s dead, you’ll hatter answer fur killin’ a man that never harmed ye. You’ll hatter answer fur it ’fore God, and that’ll be wuss’n the jedge at the co’tehouse down in the valley. Holp me ter git him inter the cabin, I tell ye!”

She gave another surging lift at the shoulders, and Bruce groaned.

Sam Turner raised the club again.

“Put that down!” she shrieked, flying at him with the ferocity of an enraged panther.

Turner staggered back under the force of her rush, and she tore the club from his hands and sent it whirling far out into the bushes.

“If ye won’t holp me, I’ll drag him in myself,” she declared, again seeking to lift Browning by the shoulders.

There was another groan from Browning’s lips, and then Sam Turner, moved by curiosity rather than pity, consented to assist Nell in getting the unfortunate lad into the house.

By the light of the kerosene lamp, Turner inspected Bruce’s injuries, while Nell stood by, with clasped hands, in an agony of suspense.

She broke the silence.

“’Fore God, Sam Turner, I tell ye you hev made a mistake! That man hev never hed nuthin ter do with the revnoo. He belongs up ter the village with them thar summer folks. It’s bloody murder ef ye hev killed him!”

“What do you know ’bout him?” Turner asked, suspiciously, irritated by her reproof. “I hev never said he didn’t b’long up ter the village. I reckon, now, you must hev thought ’cause he air a revnoo spy that he’d be goin’ ’roun’ through the mountings a-hollerin’ out his bizness ter the owls. I reckon you must hev thought that. Ef he ain’t a revnoo, why war he standin’ with his head agin’ the cabin a-listenin’?”

Browning groaned again, and moved.

“He ain’t so much killed ez he mout be!” Turner declared. “That club didn’t ketch him squar’. He dodged, an’ his shoulder got most o’ it.”

“You’re not goin’ ter strike him ag’in!” Nell screamed, clutching Turner by the arm.

“Who said ez how I war goin’ ter?” he growled, shaking her off. “Yer ole dad’ll do that quick ernuff when he gits back. He’s out now a-aimin’ an’ a-contrivin’ fer a safe plan ter git at this feller, an’ when he gits back, an’ finds that I’ve got him hyar, he’ll be plum tickled out o’ one fit inter fifty!”

He stooped toward Bruce.

“What air you a-goin’ ter do to him, Sam Turner?” Nell demanded, her eyes blazing with a dangerous light.

Turner caught her and hurled her from him.

“Will you quit a-naggin’ of me, Nell Thornton? I’m a-goin’ ter drag him inter t’other room, an’ tie him up fer yer ole dad ter look at when he gits back. I ’low I’ll hev ter tell him, too, that you’ve acted clean crazy over the feller.”

There was no answer to this fling, and Turner, lifting Bruce by the shoulders, dragged him into the adjoining room, the only remaining room of the cabin, with the exception of the garret.

When he had done this, he hunted up a piece of rope, with which he securely tied Browning’s hands and feet. Then he deliberately relighted his pipe, took down a long rifle from its rack, and, seating himself in the doorway in a rude, hickory-bottomed chair, he rested the rifle across his knees, and stared moodily off over the ridges, on which the moonlight now fell with silvery radiance.

CHAPTER VI – NELL RETURNS A KINDNESS

In the little room where Sam Turner had dragged him, Bruce came back at last to the land of sentient things. The moonlight, streaming through a crack in the chinked wall, fell on his white face. His head was racked with splitting pains, and a dull ache made itself unpleasantly felt in his shoulder.

When he sought to move his hands and feet, he found that they were tied. Then memory awakened, and he stared about at the cabin walls, trying to determine where he was, and just what had befallen him.

A heavy snore drew his attention, and he beheld the form of a man stretched across the doorway of his room. There was a rifle by the man’s side, and he had evidently placed himself there to guard against any attempt at escape.

All this was startling enough to Bruce Browning.

“And Merriwell! I was not able to get to him to warn him of his danger! I wonder what has befallen him?”

Almost his first clear thought was of Frank, and the peril which he believed threatened his friend.

He would have groaned aloud in the very agony of mental torture, if a wholesome fear had not restrained him.

“I wonder what has become of Nell?” was his next mental query.

As if in answer, when he looked again he saw her tip-toeing in shoeless feet toward the man who lay in front of the door of his prison. Her thin face seemed unnaturally white and bloodless in the dim light. Her widely distended eyes gleamed like those of some wild animal. In her right hand she held something, which he soon made out to be a knife.

A sense of bewildered fascination fell on Bruce. He forgot the thumping pain in his head and the ache in his shoulder.

“She is going to kill him as he sleeps!” was the horrible thought that seized him.

He moved uneasily, and put out his bound hands, as if to beg her not to do a thing so dreadful. He might have done more, but at that moment her eyes met his. She saw that he was conscious, and put a finger to her lips to enjoin silence.

Browning lay back and stared at her. His mind was not yet entirely clear.

Again she put her fingers across her lips, and took another catlike step toward the sleeping man.

She made no more sound than a gliding shadow. Browning readily might have believed her a ghost, and it is quite certain that Toots, if similarly placed, would have shrieked like a maniac from sheer fright.

With the stealthy silence of a panther creeping on its prey, Nell Thornton advanced toward the open door.

Then Browning saw that her gaze was not fixed so much on the sleeping man as on him, and awoke to a realization of the fact that Nell was trying to come to his rescue, and that the knife was to sever the ropes that held him, and was not intended as a weapon with which to do murder.

He could not restrain the sigh of relief and hope that welled from his heart.

Nell Thornton’s keen ears caught it, and again her finger went to her lips, and she stopped, looking anxiously at the sleeper.

For several seemingly interminable seconds she stood thus, and when Turner did not move, she took another cautious step.

With her eyes fixed on Turner’s upturned face, she stepped warily over his body, and stood in the room at Browning’s side.

The knife gleamed in the moonlight. It was her father’s keen-bladed hunting knife.

“I hev come ter git ye out o’ hyar,” she whispered, laying her lips against Browning’s ear. “Don’t ye so much ez whimper a sound, er – ”

She pointed significantly with the knife toward the sleeping form of Turner.

Then she pressed the blade against the rope that held Browning’s wrists. It was almost as sharp as a razor, and ate through the tough strands with noiseless ease.

She worked quickly, but silently; then stood erect, and pointed toward the door.

Browning moved his head to show that he understood.

“Do ye need ter hev me holp ye?” she whispered, stooping till her lips again touched his ear.

For reply, Browning lifted himself cautiously and struggled slowly to his feet.

She smiled encouragingly, and stepped through the doorway, Bruce following close after her, as silently as he could. Thus he passed over the sleeping form of Sam Turner, and moved toward the outer air.

He scarcely ventured to breathe till they were both outside, under the flooding moonlight.

Here she took him by the hand, without speaking, and hurried him away from the cabin, into a path that led toward the hills and in the direction of the village.

“Hev you a knife?” she anxiously asked, stopping when they had gained the friendly shelter of the trees.

“Yes. Why?” inquired Browning, venturing to speak for the first time.

“’Case, ef you hev, I’ll slip back inter that thar room with it an’ lay it open on the floor, so that when Sam Turner hev come ter himself he’ll ’low ez how you cut them ropes an’ got away ’thout anybody holping ye.”

Browning took out his pocketknife, opened the biggest blade, and placed it in her hand.

“I’m ’bleeged ter ye!” she said.

“And I’m obliged to you, Nell – Miss Thornton!” declared Browning, with an uncommon warmth of feeling. “Likely I should have been killed if you hadn’t come to my assistance. And at such a fearful risk! I owe you my life!”

She was about to turn away, but faced around abruptly and looked him squarely in the eyes.

“You ain’t nary revnoo spy, air ye, come hyar ter hunt down the moonshiners?”

“No!” said Browning, with sturdy emphasis. “I am not! Nor are any of my friends. I came back to your house because I was lost.”

Her lips parted in a smile.

“I knowed you warn’t,” she asserted.

Then, before Bruce could say anything more, or even bid her good-by, she leaped away and hastened back toward the cabin.

The racking pains, which Bruce had temporarily forgotten, shot again through his head and shoulder as he saw her vanish, and he turned toward the mountain with a groan.

But ever, as he toiled on over the wild path, slipping, sliding, groaning, he thought of Nell Thornton, going back into that room, over the body of the slumbering rifleman, to place the pocketknife on the floor by the side of the cut ropes, and his heart throbbed in sympathy with her great peril.

CHAPTER VII – BY THE WATERS OF LAKE LILY

“It’s a trick to enable them to get out of the match!” asserted Ward Hammond, with a stinging sneer. “All this pretense of making a search is the veriest humbug! The idea that one of their number would wander away into the woods, or drown himself in the lake while out of his head from a little fever, is the greatest rot that any one ever tried to foist on the public.”

A considerable concourse of people had gathered on the margin of Lake Lily to witness the swimming match announced to come off that morning at nine o’clock sharp. They were seated on camp stools, on wooden benches, and on the rocks and grass. The boathouse of the Lake Lily Athletic Club was filled with them.

And now the rumor had gone forth that Frank Merriwell and his friends of the Lake Lily Club would not enter the contest because they were organizing to search for one of their number who had been strangely missing since the previous afternoon.

“It’s a clear backdown,” declared Hammond, walking up to a group of his Glendale friends. “They know they dare not meet us, and they’re simply making that an excuse. I’ll bet big money that, if the truth were known, the fellow they say is lost is hidden away somewhere in one of their cottages.”

Merriwell’s party, with Colson, Tetlow and others, came out of a cottage at that moment. They wore a sober, serious air. They had been talking the thing over, and were intending to institute another search through the woods and along the shores of the lake, though they had already made a number of such searches. Merriwell was to speak to the people, and explain why it was they could not enter the swimming match, and was to announce that if nothing was heard of Browning by noon, the lake would then be dragged for his body.

But scarcely were they out of the cottage, when Harry Rattleton swung his cap and gave a great cheer.

“There he is!” he whooped. “Just in sight, coming over that rise!”

He broke away from the crowd and ran swiftly to meet Browning, who had lost his way again, in spite of the moonlight, and had been forced to remain in the woods all night.

The story that Browning had strolled across the mountains for a walk, and had been assaulted and robbed by highwaymen, spread like wildfire.

It was not started by Browning’s friends, but when they found it current, they did not try to correct it, choosing to let it go at that, instead of giving the true account of his experiences.

Ward Hammond’s boasting came to a sudden termination when he saw Browning return, and knew that he would have to swim against the youths he had been so maliciously maligning.

It was ten o’clock, an hour later than the time fixed, when Frank Merriwell and Sep Colson, who had been selected by the members of the Lake Lily Club to uphold the club honors in the swimming match, came out of their dressing-room in the boathouse.

Ward Hammond and Dan Matlock, the chosen champions of the other club, were already at the starting point, and the spectators, who had been kept so long in waiting, were growing impatient at the delay.

“Oi’m bettin’ thot yez kin bate thim fellies out av soight, Frankie, me b’y!” cried Barney, jubilantly. “Thot Hommond sint up his rooster crowin’ a bit too soon, so he did, as he’ll be foindin’ out moighty quick, now!”

“I’m sure we’ll do our best, Barney,” promised Merriwell, touched by the Irish lad’s loyalty.

“We can always depend on you for that, Merry!” said Rattleton. “We want you to beat Hammond worse than you did in the shooting. And you can do it, too!”

“I don’t doubt he’s safe enough to do that,” grumbled Bruce, who had come down to the boathouse in spite of his aching head and generally used-up condition. “But as for me! Ugh! I wouldn’t leap into that water for wages. It makes me shiver to look at it!”

Rattleton gave a wink and thrust his hands into his pockets. Gallup and Mulloy imitated his example, and when their hands came out, they were seen to contain each a number of white capsules.

“Take another dose of quineen, and keep off that chill,” said Rattleton, extending the capsules toward Bruce.

“Gullup daown another dost of quinine an’ keep off that gol darn chill!” cried Ephraim, pushing the capsules into Browning’s face.

“Swally anither dose av quoinin an’ kape aff thot ager,” advised Barney, doing the same.

Browning arose to his feet and shook his fist at them in mock rage, whereupon they dodged backward and made a feint of swallowing the capsules themselves.

“Mistah Browning’ll make you have wuss dan de fevah an’ chilluns,” warned Toots. “I’s su’mised dat Mistah Browning ain’t feelin’ berry good dis mawnin – no, sar!”

Suddenly Browning was seen to straighten up and stare toward the slope where the benches had been placed.

“There she is,” he whispered, nodding his head in that direction.

“She! Who? What are you talking about?” demanded Jack Diamond.

“Nell Thornton! Don’t look at her right now, and all at once. But you can see her on the end of that farthest bench. The slim girl, with the cotton dress and calico sunbonnet. Heavens! I’m glad to see her, for I know now that she succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of that villain, Sam Turner!”

“And she has come here for no other purpose than to let you see her, so that you may know that she is safe,” observed Diamond.

“I believe you are right,” assented Browning.

Then the entire party went out to the edge of the boat landing, from which point the swimmers were to dive and begin the race.

“Are you all ready?” asked the starter, as Merriwell and Colson, Hammond and Matlock stood up side by side, and faced the deep-blue water in which they were to contest for the supremacy.

“Ready!” ran along the line.

“One, two, three – go!”

At the word, four trim, muscular forms flashed in the air, shot downward, and slipped into the depths with scarcely a splash.

“They’re off!” some one yelled.

With a waving of handkerchiefs and a fluttering of fans and umbrellas, the spectators began to cheer.

Ward Hammond and Frank Merriwell came to the surface first, with Colson and Matlock close after them. Hammond was a full yard ahead of Frank, and the latter’s friends saw that Merriwell would not have an easy task if he defeated the Glendale youth, who seemed to be able to dive and swim like a fish.

But Merriwell was not worrying over the outcome of the race. He knew that a race is not always won by a brilliant start, and that the final stretch is what tests the strength of the swimmer. So while Ward Hammond spurted and increased his lead, Merriwell swam low and easily, with his head well back on his shoulders, and without any unnecessary expenditure of muscle.

Craig Carter, who had been seated in a boat beside the landing, now pushed the boat off, and dropping the oars into the rowlocks, prepared to follow the swimmers leisurely, that a boat might be at hand in case of accident. Of course, he was one of Hammond’s most fiery henchmen, and he did not hesitate to show his partiality by shouting encouraging cries to him.

“That’s right, Ward! Give full spread to your hands and feet. Gather a little quicker, frog fashion. That’s right! Go it, old man! They can’t any of them beat you! Hurrah for the Blue Mountain boys!”

“I hope he’ll fall out of that boat and drown himself,” was Rattleton’s uncharitable wish. “He actually makes me sick!”

“His friend hasn’t won the race yet,” said Diamond, studying the swimmers with a critical eye. “Colson is a good swimmer, too, isn’t he? He’s coming right up alongside of Merriwell.”

The race was to a stake, set far enough from the shore to test the strength and wind of the swimmers, thence back to the point of starting.

Up to this stake and around it Ward Hammond led, with Merriwell second, Colson third, and Matlock closely crowding Colson.

When the stake was turned and the swimmers headed shoreward, it was seen that Hammond was fully six yards in the lead.

Craig Carter was standing up in his boat, alternately sculling and swinging the oar aloft to give emphasis to his Indian-like yells, and the excitement among the spectators perceptibly increased.

“By Jove! I’m afraid Hammond is going to beat Merry!” confessed Bart Hodge, with an uneasy shifting of his feet. “See him spurt! He goes through the water like a torpedo boat!”

“I’ll het you my bat – I mean I’ll bet you my hat – that he doesn’t!” averred Rattleton, whose faith in Merriwell’s ability was always supreme. “Now look, will you? Hurrah for Merry! Talk about your torpedo boats! That’s the stuff, Frank! Hooray! hooray! hooray!”

Rattleton crowded so near the edge of the landing that he was in danger of tumbling into the water, and there, standing on tiptoe and swinging his cap, he sent his shrill cries ringing across the surface of the lake.

Merriwell seemed still to be swimming easily, with his body well under and his head poised lightly on his shoulders, but it was observed that he was greatly increasing his speed. Not in the spurting, jerky manner of Hammond, but with a steady pull, that was bound to tell in the outcome.