Chapter VI: A Running Skirmish

“What’s that?” involuntarily exclaimed Nick, as he tried to make out the nature of the object.

“Looks like a stale doughnut,” offered Patsy Garvan. “But the old guy who dropped it is all in just the same.”

“Adil!” called out Jefferson Arnold.

“Hush!” warned Nick Carter. “Keep quiet till we see.”

“I do see,” insisted the impetuous millionaire. “That’s Adil, and I----”

“I’ll save him,” interrupted Nick. “But we’ve got to wait till we see what is behind those trees.”

Jefferson Arnold recognized the justice of this, and restrained himself from dashing out into the open, as he would have liked to do.

Adil seemed to have been released from his hypnotic trance by the jar of the rifle report. He stood still and looked about him with a light of intelligence in his eyes that had not been there before.

For a minute he seemed uncertain which way to go. Then, with a half-uttered ejaculation, he sprang over the body of the medicine man and the snake, and raced in the direction of the tree behind which Chick was still crouching.

The report of the rifle, and perhaps its flash, was the guide to the young East Indian, who, such a short time before, had been helpless, with the venomous snake twined about his neck.

As he dashed across the clearing, he stooped and picked up something about halfway. It was the object that had fallen from the dead snake charmer’s fingers, and which Patsy had said looked like a stale doughnut.

Holding this thing, whatever it was, tightly in his hand, the fugitive kept on till he reached the edge of the open space.

“Come on, Adil!” shouted Jefferson Arnold, regardless of everything except the fact that the young man was running to him. “This way, my boy!”

Adil stumbled as he got to the shelter of the trees. Then, with a gasp he fell into Arnold’s arms, in a dead faint.

“He isn’t hurt, is he?” asked Patsy, trying to see Adil’s face, but, of course, failing, in the darkness. “What’s the trouble? Fainted?”

“Leave him to me,” returned the millionaire. “I’ll take care of him.”

“How?”

“Let me get any kind of a start, and I’ll have him to our camp and into the boat before this gang can get out. There is a big crowd of rascals in the wood, over there.”

“There’s no doubt about that,” observed Nick Carter. “We’ll hold them there, too.”

“Sure we will!” declared Patsy energetically. “We can stand off all they can bring over. Eh, Chick?”

“I guess,” was Chick’s brief reply, as he brought another cartridge forward in his rifle. “You get, Mr. Arnold.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” was the pithy rejoinder.

He swung the light, but sinewy form of Adil over his shoulder, and broke his way through the wood the way they had come. Jefferson Arnold was a New York business man. But he had also hunted big game in several countries, and he was a woodsman who knew the game.

Hardly had Arnold gone, when a crowd of dark-skinned men broke cover across the clearing. They had knives and spears in their hands, and they were bent on mischief.

“Let go, boys!” cried Nick Carter.

He fired his rifle as he spoke, and simultaneously there was a report from the gun of each of his two assistants. They fired two more shots apiece as fast as they could pump them out, and the Hindus stopped in amazement that was dangerously near panic.

Yells of anger arose from them, but they did not seem to know what to do in the face of this sudden attack by the white men.

Nick Carter and his two assistants took advantage of the check they had given to dart to fresh cover, a hundred feet or so to the rear.

“It’s a good thing those dubs haven’t got guns,” remarked Patsy. “It’s a wonder they haven’t. What do you think they are?”

“Just ordinary ruffians, I suppose,” returned Nick carelessly. “They may be a gang from the hills, for anything I know. Look out! Here comes a spear!”

It was immediately apparent that, although there were no guns in the ranks of the dusky enemy, they could hurl spears with precision and viciousness.

Four or five of these weapons--exceedingly dangerous when in skillful hands--came hurtling among the trees.

The aim was good, too, for Chick had only just got behind a deodar when two spears came singing along and stuck in the trunk of the tree just where his head had been a moment before.

Patsy had a narrower escape than Chick, for one of the spears caught the sleeve of his white linen coat and fastened it to the tree.

“Gee! There goes a new coat sleeve!” exclaimed Patsy, with comic anger. “They’ve taken out a three-cornered bit just above the elbow, and I’ll have to go in rags till I get to a city where I can buy another coat. Holy mackerel! I’m always ‘it’ when there’s bad luck going about.”

Meanwhile, Chick found himself hard pressed. He could not get out from behind his tree without offering himself as a target for a spear, and he could not stay where he was indefinitely.

He had only six more shots left in the magazine of his rifle, and no time to reload.

“I’ll give them all I’ve got,” he muttered. “If that doesn’t clear the way, I’ll have to go out there and get into a rough-and-tumble scrap, taking chances.”

He fired a couple of shots into the ranks of the oncoming Hindus, hoping to hit some of them, but without knowing exactly where his bullets would go. It was impossible to take steady aim under the circumstances, and he did not try.

“I’ll fire low,” he thought. “That’s one of the fundamental rules in sharpshooting. Then, if you hit anybody, you are pretty sure to do something worth while.”

“Look out, Chick!” came excitedly from Patsy. “The woods are full of them! Mind they don’t crawl up behind. Gee! Here’s where I’ll beat it for the Bowery--or as near as I can get.”

“Back!” suddenly shouted Nick Carter. “Get back, both of you! They are working around on my side. They’ll cut you off in another minute!”

“That’s what!” roared Patsy. “But we can do some cutting ourselves. Whoop! Get out of my way! You black skunks! Come on, Chick!”

“Of course I will,” replied Chick, with the calmness of desperation. “I hear them on my left, but they haven’t got us yet. Hold together, boys! We’ll beat ’em!” he went on, hardly knowing, in his excitement, what he said.

Sending one more shot in the general direction of the enemy, Chick turned and lunged back into the darkness.

“Whoof!”

It was Nick Carter who made this involuntary ejaculation, for, in the blackness, Chick had plunged headlong into him.

“I beg your pardon!” blurted out Chick.

“That’s right!” laughed his chief. “Never forget your manners, old man. Bend low and run! It’s our only chance at this stage of the game.”

Side by side, the three detectives raced over the rotting undergrowth and leaves, and it was surely luck that prevented any of them dashing their brains out against some tree.

They had become somewhat used to the darkness by this time. What had appeared at first as merely a black wall resolved itself now into a forest, with trees spaced so that it was possible to get around them with some ingenuity, plus a great deal of agility.

Dodging, swerving, stumbling over fallen limbs and upheaving roots, occasionally gasping for breath, and conscious all the while that the enemy was gaining, the trio rushed on.

Not only was there danger from those who were making a rear chase of it.

Some of the natives had flanked them. Their spears glistened as they were brandished fiercely, while their owners uttered low guttural threats which sounded supernaturally awful in the darkness.

Nick Carter had had experience enough as an army officer to know a great deal about military strategy. He was aware that the menace of a flanking movement was something whose importance no general overlooked.

If once the wings of their black pursuers outstripped them far enough to close in and get them in a ring, they would be as helpless as rats in a trap.

“Get to the river!” was Nick’s low-voiced instruction to his two assistants.

“How far ahead is it?” asked Patsy. “I’ve lost track of distances since I’ve been in this wood.”

“A hundred and fifty feet,” replied Chick. “Keep quiet! Don’t talk! Save your breath!”

“I notice you’re not using any sign language yourself!” retorted Patsy. “And you don’t sound as if you had more breath than the rest of us, either.”

Patsy Garvan could not have kept out of an argument if there had been a spear within six inches of his heart. He dearly loved the last word, no matter where he was.

A sullen gleam of water could be made out through the tangle of trees. Surely they could cover the short distance between them and their boat, lying at the river bank before the foe cut them off.

They were not there yet, however.

A dark figure shot up ahead of the three flying detectives. Hardly had this one figure come into view, when there was another and another.

“They’ve closed us in!” cried Chick. “Just what I was afraid of.”

“Looks like it,” assented Nick Carter. “Well, there’s only one thing to do. We must rush them and take our chances of breaking through.”

“They’ll be taking the chances--not us!” shouted Patsy, with his usual drive-ahead cocksureness. “We could lick that bunch if our arms were in a sling.”

“Of course we can, but we’ll have to fight. There’s more of them every moment. Blaze away, both of you, and fire from the hip. Don’t take the time to aim. After that, revolvers! Come on, boys!”

Nick Carter’s tone was full of confidence, and his two assistants would have charged a regiment at that instant.

Several spears whizzed in front. But the darkness caused them all to go wild, although they were near enough to be uncomfortable. Patsy insisted afterward that one scraped the skin off the end of his nose and mussed his hair.

“Here you are!” shouted Nick. “There’s a hole in their line.”

“Where?” questioned Patsy.

“If you don’t see it, make one!” snapped Chick. “Rush through somehow!”

Shoulder to shoulder, Nick Carter and his two men charged at the yelling natives and went through their formation like the center rush in a varsity football game.

It was at this moment that they heard Jefferson Arnold roaring excitedly:

“Swing to the right, Carter! Swing out to the right!”

The three obeyed this injunction, just as there came some more flying spears.

At the same instant two rifles spoke from the river bank. The shots took the Hindus by surprise, and for a few seconds they were completely demoralized.

Nick and his two assistants dashed through the undergrowth and gained the edge of the wood. They caught a glimpse of the river and their boat, with the four oarsmen seated, ready to row away at the word of command.

Patsy gave a low chuckle of satisfaction. As he said afterward, that boat, with the four black men as crew, looked very good to him just then.

Standing on the bank, close to the boat, were Jefferson Arnold and Jai Singh, each with a rifle in his hand. It was their shots that had taken the nerve out of the enemy.

“Jump for the boat!” bellowed Jefferson Arnold.

“Jump!” echoed Jai Singh.

They did jump.