After several hours of powwow, they seemed to reach some decision, and slept. They left a man to watch us and see that we didn’t work loose from the ropes which held us.
But we had been tied by Indians, and there wasn’t much chance of working loose.
The guard regarded us with eyes in which glittered a hatred that made chills ripple the spine. It was clear that his sole desire was to wreak vengeance upon us.
“I’ve got to lie down. I’m weak and the cords are hurting my arms. There’s no feeling in my finger tips,” said Bender.
I laughed at that. They meant to keep us standing, without sleep. If we so much as relaxed our muscles and slumped forward against the bonds, the rope around our necks would strangle us to death unless they decided to loosen the knot after it had bit into our wind, and save us for a more horrible death. I explained as much to Bender.
He seemed to be thinking things over.
“What about the car?” he asked.
“I don’t understand all they said,” I told him. “It’s a mixture of part Spanish, part Indian, and part of a dialect I’ve never heard before. But they’ve set fire to the automobile and covered the wreckage over with sand. They’re worried about how we got into the cave. They think we came in past their guards. But they’ll trail us when it comes daylight and find the entrance we came in by.”
He let his aluminium-colored eyes narrow in thought, and I got an idea.
“Can you hypnotize the guard?” I asked.
He suddenly stiffened to alert attention. “I can try. Talk to him in a low voice. Get his attention on you. Then, when I start to talk, you keep silent.”
I told him I would. The Mexican was listening to us with a frown of perplexity on his features.
Soon the guard came close.
“Would you like gold?” I asked of him.
He scorned to answer me, after the fashion of an Indian.
“Gold, lots of gold, a fortune in sacred gold,” I told him, and let my voice sink to a droning monotone. “You could be wealthy. You could traffic with the white men and buy all that you desired. You would never need to hunt, never need to work. You could have everything that any one in the tribe could have, and a thousand times more. You would be powerful, you would be chief.”
He approached me and spat in my face.
I waited a few moments, then droned again: “Gold, gold, gold, ever the thing of power. There is plenty of gold. You can have sacred gold, precious gold...”
And then, from my right, the voice of the man with pinpoint eyes took up the refrain.
“Gold, gold, gold,” he said, speaking in Spanish. “Gold, gold, gold. Look at me, gaze into my eyes. In them you will see that there is honesty.
“Gold, gold, gold. You are feeling drowsy. Sleep is coming to you. Gold, gold, gold. Always there is the glitter of gold. The firelight on the wall is like gold in the rocks. You see it and the light hurts your eyes. You close them to shut out the sight of the gold, gold, gold.”
And I noticed that the Indian was indeed closing his eyes. He fought against the drooping lids, but the fight was a losing one.
“Gold, gold, gold,” droned the man with pin-point eyes. “And before you go to sleep you must kill the white men. You hate me. You want to kill me. When I am dead you can sleep. But you must kill me first. Take your knife from your belt, hold it in your hand, ready to cut.”
And the brown hand sleepily went to the belt, took out the knife, and looked stupidly at it.
“Gold, gold, gold,” droned the voice in its monotone of sleepy intonations. “Gold, gold, gold. The easiest way for you to kill me is to cut my arteries. See, I am tied up with my arteries, and my arteries stretch to the others. They are not ropes, but arteries in which there courses blood.
“Cut those arteries and watch us slowly die in great agony. Then you can sleep. You cannot call out, you cannot stay awake. You have to sleep, and then you will wake up and find gold. Gold, gold, gold.”
And I saw the hand that held the knife raise it and start sawing at the ropes. As the first of the ropes parted I could see the expression upon the savage features.
Never have I seen such an expression of horrible blood lust before, nor do I care to again. It was as though I could study, through the lens of a slow-motion picture camera, the face of a man who was murdering me in a burst of savage hatred.
The eyes were maniacal. The lips slavered. The facial muscles writhed with the animal pleasure of torture inflicted upon an enemy.
“I groan, I scream, I cry out in my anguish,” purred the man with the aluminium-colored eyes, “and the sound is as music to your ears. Not too fast do you work the knife, but just fast enough to let the blood flow from my arteries and leave me in agony. The warm blood is splashing upon your arms now. You are bathed in it, and you are being revenged. And presently you will sleep, and when you wake up you will find gold, gold, gold.”
The words droned on while the Indian cut through the bonds that held us together and anchored us to the wall.
“Now I am dead and you can sleep,” said the droning voice. “You will lie back upon the floor and your eyes will close. You will relax your hold upon the knife. You have avenged your tribe. And you will sleep a deep and dreamless slumber. When you awaken it will be to find gold. Gold, gold, gold.”
The Indian slumped to the rocky floor, flung one arm under his head and instantly went to sleep.
“What magic is this?” demanded the Mexican.
“Shut up!” I hissed at him in a whisper.
The council fire was some little distance from us, and the men slept about it like logs of wood. I knew the Indian delicacy of sense. They would be almost certain to hear us before we could make good our escape. But every second was precious now.
I sat down on the rock floor and inched my way toward the sleeping Indian, took the knife from his nerveless fingers, and held it rigid in my hand.
By an effort I got to my feet. The aluminium-eyed man leaned against the blade of the knife and sawed the last of his bonds across it. When they had dropped to the floor he took the knife and cut my ropes, then those of the soldier.
Chapter 10
Through the Blackness
Our swords had been taken from us and flung into a corner of the rock chamber. We retrieved them, and I was barely able to restrain the soldier from then and there giving his battle cry by pointing out to him in a whisper that he was accompanied only by a charioteer and a scrivener who were worse than useless in battle. He regretfully agreed, and then we wormed our way silently toward the arched opening through which we had been marched.
In one of the pockets carved in the rock wall by the action of the elements, were stacked some pitch knots to be used as torches, and I gathered up two or three of these.
“You have the matches?” I asked of Bender.
He nodded.
Back of us some one stirred.
“Run!” I whispered.
There was a shout from behind us, but it was the confused shout of one who is not in full possession of his faculties.
Some sleeping Indian, hearing the faint sound of our feet, had doubtless awakened, looked toward the wall and seen that we had gone. But he did not know in which direction.
“Feel your way through the darkness,” I cautioned them. “Do not show a light and do not make noise. They don’t know which way we have gone.”
They followed my instructions, although the Mexican grumbled at being forced to flee from a horde of ignorant heathens.
I had no time to explain to him the development of the modem revolver, or the repeating rifle. I could only urge him to run by warning him that he was with two cowards. It was the only argument which moved him.