Chapter XLI: Music Hath Charms

“Since I have been held here,” Prince Mogador went on, “attempts have been made to get me to sign papers relinquishing my rights to the throne of my country. I refused; I would have died first. I think ultimately I should have been murdered in this place. Perhaps even now my false-hearted brother sits on the throne, for my father’s health was precarious. I have not heard from my native land for months. But whatever befalls, my beautiful Irene will stand by my side, and if I should one day mount to the throne of my fathers, she will be with me even then.”

But the next moment he was bewailing the fate that held him a prisoner in the tower and declaring that they would never be able to get out with their lives.

While Prince Mogador was still talking, the scout, looking from the window at the fire below, had an inspiration.

“You will notice, prince,” he said, “that a good many men are down there round that fire; it seems to me from the number I see that nearly all the garrison of this place must be there.”

“They have guards stationed in the hall, no doubt, and at the door below,” said Prince Mogador, in a despairing tone.

The scout turned to the women and Spalding.

“I have been informed by your uncle, Miss Nelson, that you are a noted singer.”

“Singing is my profession,” she admitted.

“I have hit on a plan, and shall want your coöperation. Will you sing for me?”

“Here?” she said, astonished.

“Yes, here; I want to see what effect it will have on those men below.”

Irene went to the window and looked out. Then she began to sing in a voice of marvelous beauty and strength. Old Enos Spalding listened enraptured.

“Cody, what’s this singin’ fur here?”

The scout was watching the men from the window. He advised the girl to stand back a little, lest some reckless devil down there might send a bullet at her; and, for the same reason, when he looked forth, he was careful not to expose his person to their view.

The singing seemed at first to startle the men below. The scout beheld the false Leon Ruiz among them, and pointed him out to Prince Mogador.

“Ah, that man! That is Malvolio Ducraz, my worst enemy of all there. So, he would take the estate of the noble Don Leon Ruiz? May the curses of Heaven blast him!”

The men stood up in the midst of the trees, listening to the singing from the barred window of the high tower. The woman’s voice floated clear and birdlike out into the night air. It certainly was a strange stage for an opera singer.

The scout walked softly over to the door and listened.

“Keep on singing!” he said. “It has drawn their attention.”

He fitted to the lock one of the keys on his key ring, and listened as he twisted it around.

When he drew the door open, he saw that the hall beyond was empty of human beings, but that across it there had been slipped into place, down some grooves in the walls, a series of iron bars that effectually cut off escape in that direction. Apparently there was no need for the keepers of the hacienda to watch that hall; the bars were enough.

Down the short flight of steps the scout descended to the bars, and tested them. So far as he could discover there was no one near, though he heard voices below the farther stairs, which told him guards were stationed there.

Soon he heard some of these guards ascending. Thereupon he retreated quickly into the tower room and relocked the door behind him.

“If you can continue that singing, I think we may have a chance to get out of here,” he said to the woman, as he listened for the approach of the guards from below.

All heard them as they came up to the door, where for a few moments they stood to hear the singing. Though it puzzled them when they discovered that the door was as they had left it, they retreated, closing the barred exit in the hall as they went.

“Now, my plan!” said the scout, speaking hurriedly. “I have here, in the brim of my wide hat, a saw of finely tempered steel, made for the especial purpose of cutting through iron bars. It will take long work to cut through out there, as it will be necessary to sever two of the bars; but if Miss Nelson can hold those men by her singing, and so cover up the noise I may make, perhaps I can do it. I want to make the trial.”

All were eager for him to do so, even Irene stopped her singing for a brief time to discuss this new hope with him.

“We must do something of the kind,” he declared, “if we are to get out of here. They think they have us secluded securely, and that we have not a single chance of getting out. Perhaps we may be able to surprise them.”

Irene began again to sing by the window, while the scout and Spalding crept down the short flight of stairs, after the scout had again unlocked the door of their prison room.

“You watch while I work,” was the scout’s orders. “I don’t want them to surprise me. Your ears are good?”

“The best ever,” said the Yankee, dropping down on his knees and laying an ear against the crack under the lower bar. “If they git up them steps without me hearin’ em, they’ll have tew come paowerful quiet.”

From the wide rim of his hat the scout, in the darkness, drew out a fine saw, the texture of which was so superior that he could bend the thin blade about in his fingers almost as if it were a ribbon. This saw he applied to one of the bars, and began work.

For two solid hours Irene Nelson entertained with her singing the ruffians gathered around the bonfire amid the trees below the barred window of that high tower. She sang as she had never sung before any audience in either the New or the Old World. Hitherto she had sung for fame and money, now she felt that she was singing for liberty and life.

The Spanish are a music-loving people. Those men knew what good singing was, and they had seldom heard anything so good as this. They stood as if enraptured. If they suspected the meaning of it, they gave no sign. Apparently they believed she was thus singing to lighten the hearts of her fellow prisoners. Now and then there were cries of “Bravo!” and a clapping of hands.

Buffalo Bill worked without stop. At the end of two hours he had cut away two of the iron bars.

Before announcing his success even to Spalding, he replaced the precious saw carefully in the brim of his big hat.

“There!” he said. “Two bars are off, and that will let us out of here. We’ll have to fight in the room below, to get past those guards; but by making a rushing surprise we can go through, I don’t doubt.”

Spalding wanted to yell, but he restrained this wild desire.

The man and women in the other room were informed of the success of the scout’s labors. The singing stopped.

“Now, follow me!” said the scout. “Take this revolver, Prince Mogador, and use it. Spalding, I can rely on you. This is to be a desperate break for freedom, and we must get through.”

Then they followed him out of the room, through the cut bars in the hall at the foot of the short stairs, and on down to the guardroom just below. Into this guardroom they dashed, shooting at the men they saw there.

Six men were in the room, all armed, all smoking; they had been listening to the singing, and were asking themselves why it had continued so long and then so abruptly had stopped.

Through the room, still shooting and now yelling, rushed the scout, with his companions dashing along right behind him; and so sudden did they come that the guards were overwhelmed, and offered no resistance to their quick passage. Less than five minutes later they were outside of the big hacienda.

Here along the wall the scout led, while the startled men who had been by the bonfire were coming up at a fast run.

The fugitives were soon out beyond the trees on the opposite of the big house, and well under cover of the darkness.

Straight northward the scout led the way, avoiding all pitfalls with wonderful skill—the sort of skill that has made Buffalo Bill famous the world over. The next morning they were far away, and had baffled pursuit. The scout concealed their trail and hid his little party in the hills, and for their sustenance he killed game with his revolver.

The next night they pressed on again. They baffled and distanced their pursuers, and two days later safely reached some outposts of civilization. Thence, after resting a day or two, they proceeded to Klamath, where they were joined by Emily’s anxious lover and her father, to whom they related their adventures.

“Emily,” said Mr. Fernald, with mock severity, “you’ve got to do either one of the only two things that’ll keep you out of danger: stay home with me at the ranch, or—marry John Butler. Take your choice!”

“I choose—John,” said the girl.

“Cody, you’ll have to stay here and be best man at our wedding,” said Butler, when he found words to speak.

* * * * *

It was three months after the wedding when the scout received the following letter, bearing a queer foreign postmark; it was from Enos Spalding:

“MY DEAR CODY: Well, we arrived in this confounded country
all right and O. K. But fer me it was the most seasicky
voyage you ever heard about. The prince was the real thing.
He married Irene in New York, ye know, before we set out fer
this place; and here he married her again, according to the
customs of this country. Two weddin’s ought to make the
nupshal tie plenty good and strong, hadn’t it?

“Well, you’d ought to be here to see things. They’d surprise
ye. I’m more and more surprised every day I live; and to
think I never ever dreamp that there was sech a country as
this kingdom!

“Ye see, the old king he died; and the brother what made all
the trouble fur the prince, he cut out when he found that he
was likely to lose his head fur what he’d done to Moggie. I
call the new king Moggie, though Irene she says ’tain’t
befittin’ and proper. Well, you’d ought to see things here!
I jes’ wish you could see some of these heathen when they
drap down and paound their heads on the pavement when I pass
by! ’Twould shore tickle ye. Fur, ye see, I’m the queen’s
uncle, and that means I’m a big man in these parts. Haow’s
that fur old Enos Spalding, of Spalding’s Corners, Vermont?
By heck, at night sometimes I think shore I’m dreamin’ it,
and that I’ll wake up in the mornin’ and find I’m back tew
Spalding’s Corners.

“Come over, Cody, I’ll give ye the time of yer life.

“Your old friend,
ENOS SPALDING.”

* * * * *

As to how the dagger of gold dropped out of the sky, Buffalo Bill never knew certainly. We may reasonably believe that the gull carried it for a time, tied to its neck, and that the hurriedly knotted string at length gave way. When this occurred, and let the dagger fall, the gull must have been flying over the steep wall of the Superstition Range; the bird’s motion must, also, have given a forward impetus to the falling dagger, and by chance it struck point foremost in the bosom of Ramon Periguez, killing him. There was certainly more than one dagger, just alike, which explains the mystery.

THE END.

No. 195 of the BUFFALO BILL BORDER STORIES, by Colonel Prentiss
Ingraham, is entitled “Buffalo Bill’s Redskin Disguise.”

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Transcriber’s Notes

▪ Note: Printer’s errors and apparent misspellings have been changed
and are noted below

▪ Note: For the reader’s convenience, a Table of Contents has been
created and is released into the public domain

▪ Pg. 2: Corrected typo: ‘Buffalo Bill and the Red Maurauders’ to
‘Marauders’

▪ Pg. 3: Assumed typo fixed: ‘B. W. B. Lawson’ to ‘By W. B. Lawson’

▪ Pg. 6: Missing punctuation at paragraph end: ‘This he proceeded to
read’ to ‘read:’

▪ Pg. 7: Added missing open-quote: ‘Klamath John.”’ to ‘“Klamath
John.”’

▪ Pg. 18: Assumed typo fixed: ‘... into a tunnellike’ to ‘tunnel-like’

▪ Pg. 28: Assumed typo fixed: ‘DOWN THE CANON’ to ‘CAÑON’—CAÑON
elsewhere, assuming the printer didn’t have tildes for capitals

▪ Pg. 33: Best guess filling blank in scan: ‘... in that wild way he
sprang’ to ‘in that wild way, he sprang’

▪ Pg. 39: Assumed typo fixed: ‘... Bill read from this letter’ to
‘letter.’

▪ Pg. 39: Added missing open-quote: ‘... I’se wonderin’ dat I’se livin’
dis minute.”’ to ‘“I’se’

▪ Pg. 40: Best guess filling blank in scan: ‘... dunnaw. But whatever
it is’ to ‘I dunnaw’

▪ Pg. 54: Added missing close-quote: ‘... crossbones on the stick pins
with those over that door’ to ‘door”’

▪ Pg. 54: Corrected typo: ‘... cabins here in the Colconda Cup.’ to
‘Golconda’—Golconda elsewhere

▪ Pg. 56: Best guess filling blank in scan: ‘... with a slow and sulen’
to ‘sullen’

▪ Pg. 102: Corrected typo: ‘... they heard Rey Reynard command’ to
‘Red’—Red elsewhere

▪ Pg. 113: Added missing period at end of paragraph: ‘... with
ill-concealed displeasure’ to ‘displeasure.’

▪ Pg. 115: Added missing period at end of paragraph: ‘... Bounderby
turned to Fritz Henselman’ to ‘Henselman.’

▪ Pg. 130: Removed extra period: ‘... and scratched his bald head..’ to
‘head.’

▪ Pg. 179: Added missing close-quote: ‘will have aroused the Indians.’
to ‘Indians.”’

▪ Pg. 205: Added missing open-quote: ‘The chances are not great’ to
‘“The’

▪ Pg. 206: Removed extra close-quote: ‘... flash his message for
help.”’ to ‘help.’

▪ Pg. 226: Corrected typo: ‘Señor Ruis has gone to attend him’ to
‘Ruiz’—Ruiz elsewhere

▪ Pg. 228: Added missing close-quote: ‘“I am from Madrid. He lifted’ to
‘“I am from Madrid.”’

▪ Pg. 269: Added missing open-quote: ‘Leon Ruiz.”’ to ‘“Leon Ruiz.”’

▪ Pg. 274: Corrected typo: ‘... or the horses would’t be where they
are.’ to ‘wouldn’t’

▪ Pg. 303: Corrected typo: ‘From the palace there I was kidnaped’ to
‘kidnapped’

▪ Pg. 308: Corrected typo: ‘... Miss Nelson. that you are a’ to ‘...
Miss Nelson, that’

▪ Pg. 318: Best guess filling blank in scan: ‘STREET & SMITH CORPORAT’
to ‘CORPORATION’

▪ Pg. 318: Best guess filling blank in scan: ‘New York’ to ‘New York,
N. Y.’