Captured by Moquis

Too frightened to utter a sound, the others, who by this time had reached the summit of the cliff, gazed over into the inky depths beneath them. It was Merritt who first found his voice.

“Rob, oh, Rob! What has happened?”

“Don’t ask me yet,” gasped the boy below him, and, throwing himself flat on the narrow shelf, he peered over into the black void.

“Tubby, Tubby!” he called softly.

“Gee, that was a drop, all right!” came up a voice from below him.

The astonished Rob almost fell over the edge of the ledge himself in his excitement.

“Oh, Tubby, is that really you?”

“I guess so,” came the voice below, “but I wish you fellows would hurry up and get me out of this; I’m hungry.”

“Gracious!” thought Rob; “fancy thinking of hunger in such a position as he is in.”

“I’m clinging to a tree,” came up Tubby’s voice. “I grabbed it as I was falling. It’s only a very little tree, though, and I don’t just know how long it’ll bear me.”

“Get in as close to the roots of it as you can,” breathed Rob, hardly daring to speak above a whisper for fear of dislodging his chum by the mere vibration of his voice.

“All right,” said Tubby, and Rob could hear him cautiously making his way along his slender aerial perch.

Rob turned his face upward and hailed his corporal.

“Say, Merritt,” he cried, “take the fellows, and get back to camp as quick as your legs will carry you, and then get back up here again. Bring ponies and ropes with you all you can get of them, and maybe Blinky and some of the men had better come.”

“All right, Rob. But how about you?”

“I’ll wait here. Hurry back, now.”

“We will,” and an instant later Rob was alone, and his companions were making full speed to the camp.

“How are you making out, Tubby?” called down Rob in a low tone.

“All right. But my legs are cramped. Gee! I was lucky to strike this tree.”

“You bet you were. I noticed a few small ones clinging to the rocks as we peeped over, but I didn’t think they’d ever be the means of saving a life.”

“Don’t holler till we’re out of the wood. It’s bad luck.”

“Well, they ought to be back within an hour with the ropes. I guess they can get ponies up that trail.”

“I hope so,” groaned Tubby. “I don’t think I can hold out much longer.”

“Good gracious!” gasped Rob, “is the tree beginning to give?”

“No, without grub, I mean. I tried to eat some of the leaves off this tree, but they’re bitter and don’t taste just right.”

“What! You’ve been moving about?”

“Sure. I’ve got to have something to do.”

The very idea of any one’s stretching their limbs in such a position as the fat boy’s, almost made Rob’s hair stand on end.

“Tubby must have nerves of steel,” he murmured, “or else not know the meaning of fear.”

Then he went on aloud:

“For goodness’ sake, don’t move any more, Tubby. The slightest false move might send you off into space.”

“All right, I’ll keep still,” Tubby assured him, but in a free-and-easy tone.

“Well, perhaps it’s a good thing he isn’t scared,” thought Rob; “if he were, it would make the job of getting him up twice as difficult.”

For a long time he lay silent on the narrow ledge, so absorbed in the difficulties of the situation that he forgot everything. Even the recollection that there was a strong likelihood of the Indians pursuing them down the passage had entirely gone out of his mind displaced by Tubby’s accident. Suddenly the boy started up with a bound, which almost projected him over the ledge after Tubby.

A hand had been placed on his shoulder.

Before Rob could utter a sound another hand was placed over his mouth and he felt himself lifted from his feet. Peering down into his face, the startled boy could make out, in the faint starlight, half a dozen cruel countenances.

How bitterly he blamed himself for being thus caught off his guard! The simplest precaution would have kept him safe, but he had allowed the soft-moccasined red men to slip up on him without placing the slightest difficulty in their path. If ever a boy felt foolish and angry, it was Rob, as his silent captors slid noiselessly as cats into the black mouth of the tunnel of the cave-dwellers.

“I’m a fine scout to be caught napping like that,” was his thought.

But as the redskins bore him into the narrow portal, they were compelled to release one of his hands. Rob took advantage of this to break a shrub, in a way which he knew would indicate as plain as print to any Boy Scout who saw it which way he had been carried off.

The next instant they were in the black tunnel. The Indians ran swiftly but noiselessly, bearing in their sinewy arms the powerless boy. Frightened Rob was not. His brain was too busy thinking up some plan of escape for that. His uppermost emotion was impatient anger at his folly. Even a loose rock, placed at the mouth of the passageway, would have been tripped over by the Indians, and thus have given him warning of their coming. Bitterly he blamed himself for his oversight. More bitter still were his thoughts, as his mind reverted to poor Tubby, hanging alone in space, without any means of knowing what had become of Rob, for the shelf, or ledge, on which the sudden drama of his taking off had been enacted, overhung the cliff face as an eyebrow does an eye.

On and on traveled the Moquis, almost noiselessly pitter-pattering along the dusty floor of the passage. They skillfully avoided treading on the carcass of the skinned mountain lion, and it was not long before they emerged in the bowl-like valley in which Rob had seen the solitary marksman who had made a sieve of his hat.

At the rocky portal the Moquis paused and grunted gutturally, and then started forward on a steady jog-trot once more.

“Well, this is a luxurious way of riding,” thought Rob, as he reposed in the sort of armchair the arms of the Indians formed, “if the circumstances were different, I wouldn’t mind taking a long trip like this.”

It was so dark in the cup-like valley that the boy could see but little of the country. He only knew they were in the strange depression by noting how the dark walls upreared against the lighter hue of the star-sprinkled sky.

Before long, however, his tireless kidnappers began to trot along over rising ground. For what seemed hours they traveled thus. Presently the boy became aware of a faint glare in the near distance. At the same time, the short, sharp yapping of a mongrel dog was borne to his ears. Before many moments had passed, they came in sight of several tepees, pitched under a grove of trees in a small, and seemingly inaccessible, canyon. The cook fires were lighted, and big pots hung over some of them. Children, squaws and dogs swarmed about, the curs yapping and snapping at each other. As the Indians who had captured the boy gave a shrill screech, the village literally boiled over with activity. From the tepees poured braves and squaws and more children. All rushed forward to meet the returning redskins.

“Well, they seem glad to see us,” thought Rob to himself; “wish I could say the same for myself. If only I knew how Tubby came out, I’d feel better.”

As he was borne into the circle of firelight, the boy was surrounded by a curious, chattering crowd, who pulled his clothes about, and poked him inquisitively. Suddenly, a tall Indian, his face hideously daubed with red, yellow and black, emerged with a stately stride from a tepee covered with rude pictures of hunts and battles. He regarded the boy with a piercing eye for a moment, and then, raising his arm, pointed to another tepee, and gave some sort of an order.

Instantly Rob’s arms were seized and pinioned by the Indians who had brought him from the cliff, and he was hustled over the ground and flung roughly into the tepee.

“So that’s their game, is it,” gritted out Rob savagely, every drop of his fighting blood aroused by the cold-blooded ferocity of his manner of entrance into the patched and smoky tent.

“Well,” he went on, “there’s no use getting mad, I suppose. Anyhow, it’s a strange experience captured by real Indians. That’s more than any of the Boy Scouts at home can say, anyhow.”

No attempt had been made to bind him, and Rob therefore peeped out of the flap of his place of confinement to see what was going on about him.

His experience of Indians had hitherto been confined to the Wild West show variety. He was deeply interested in the life of the tepee village, as he watched it busily moving about him. The savory smell of the Indians’ supper, as they dispatched it, caused a strange sensation of emptiness about Rob’s ribs, but no one came near him with food.

“I’ll be hanged if I’ll ask them for it,” grunted Rob to himself, “especially after the way they chucked me in here.”

When the meal was over, the braves pulled out their clay-bowled pipes and smoked stolidly. Not one threw even a glance at his tepee, and Rob began to think they must have forgotten him. He grew terribly thirsty, and not far from the camp there must be a brook, as he realized, by hearing the silvery tinkle, tinkle of its waters over the rocks.

“Well, as no one will bring me a drink, I’ll go and get one,” thought the boy to himself, and he boldly threw back the flap of the tent and marched out.

For an instant a wild hope flashed across him that he could escape. No attempt was made by any member of the smoking circle to check him, and the boy reached the bank of the stream without the slightest interference being opposed to his movements.

“I’ll try it,” thought Rob. “I believe they’ve forgotten me.”

He placed his foot on a rock and was about to spring to the farther bank of the little creek, when a sharp voice behind him checked him abruptly:

“White boy, come back!”

The words came in the guttural, grunting tone that was unmistakably Indian.

Rob wheeled, and found himself looking into the muzzle of a gleaming rifle-barrel.