Chapter XV: Duel to the Death

SCHNEIDER was a very walking furnace, with his burning desire to meet again, on equal footing, any individual of the Cossack band that had thrust him, lamblike, into the stone tomb under the farmhouse, and, particularly, the fake peasant for whose wiles he had so foolishly fallen.

"Give us a biplane hunt for that gang," he importuned Roque, "or I will never get the red out of my eyes. Filimonoff himself might have been in the crowd, for all I know, and you ought to be doing some tall bidding for his headdress. It was just like one of his tricks."

The firebrand felt that he had hit the mark with the last part of his heated argument. Roque would have counted full reward for the chase in the bagging alone of the wily chieftain of the strange horsemen.

He turned to Stanislaws, remarking: "You men for awhile will have to resume the use of your own machines in the carrying service. I have concluded to give Schneider a chance to retrieve his blunder and return a lesson that will stick into savage hides."

"We won't stand in the way for a minute," quickly and earnestly stated the Austrian flyer, "and more power to you, sir. What's more," he added, "we can spare an aëroplane or two, and I know several full-blooded lads who would be mighty willing to join such an excursion."

"Meaning that you are one of the volunteers," rejoined Roque. "How about it, Schneider?"

"It is hitting the nail on the head," heartily approved the brick-top warrior, "Stanislaws, Breckens, Bishoff, and Mendell--there's two crews that would help some."

"What's the matter with us?"

The Aëroplane Scouts had edged into the circle. The idea of a biplane hunt especially appealed to them.

"Sure you're going," proclaimed Schneider, glancing first at Roque for sign of assent, which was given by a nod.

Four military biplanes twelve hours hence lay in readiness to start for the Cossack roundup. The Austrians in the party carried a supply of bombs for emergency work, but the most elaborately armed of all was Schneider, in the rôle of chief challenger. He bristled with revolvers, a shoulder-hung carbine and a heavy cavalry saber.

"If you should have a fall, old fellow," laughed Stanislaws, "it would sound like a barrel of tinware rolling down a mountain."

"Never you mind," said the one-man arsenal, "I have a job of making sieves on hand."

The plan was to hover for a time in the vicinity of the farm where Schneider and the boys had been held up, or, rather, down, and if no sight of the Cossack company, to reconnoiter still further north.

The flyers were given a great send-off by the soldiers at headquarters.

"Just like a balloon ascension at a county fair," observed Billy, as he took his place as pilot in front of Roque.

"Something new here, I see," Henri calling the attention of his aviation companion Schneider, to the fact that Stanislaws had provided telephone helmets for each of the crews, whereby pilot and observer could communicate with one another without yelling their heads off, receivers over the ears and a transmitter close to the mouth.

"This will save my voice for singing," jollied Henri.

Schneider, remembering the vocal effort in the cellar, came back with the expression of hope that the telephone invention would not serve to that extent.

"Oh, but you are a jealous cuss," declared the boy, as he guided the machine upward, in compliance with the signal given to all by Roque.

"We have all the advantage this time,"'phoned Billy to Roque, when the flight was well under way; "if the outfit below is too heavy for us we can stay out of reach; if we feel that we can lick them, a dive will settle the question--our choice both ways."

For the first few miles all the creeping figures below were of the friendly forces, but with the onrush of the aëroplanes all traces of the camp were obliterated and only a trackless waste presented itself to the view of the lofty travelers.

Directly, Schneider reported to his pilot that the farm enclosure was just ahead, with its yellow ribbon border, which the river wound around it.

The observers on the four biplanes gave the premises a thorough looking over with their glasses, but had no announcement to make of any human movement below.

Separating the machines, each distant from the other several hundred yards, the pilots guided northward, at reduced speed, and within a few hundred feet from the ground.

Some twenty miles forward, the little fleet encountered a snowstorm, and the earth was already covered with a dazzling white carpet.

A range of hills forced a higher flying altitude, and in an atmosphere growing decidedly chilly. The aviators were quickly compelled to close their coats at the throat, and to huddle down in the protecting folds of their service blankets.

On a high level, Roque instructed Billy to make a stop, so that the long sitting airmen might work the cramp out of their joints by a brisk runabout. The snow had little depth on the wind-swept plateau, and landing could be made with smooth certainty.

A spot of blackened surface showed bare through the powdery snow covering, indicating a recent campfire there.

"Trot out the coffee pot," Henri called to Schneider, "here are the makings of a blaze."

The recent heavy rains had filled with water the rocky basins near at hand, and the thin skim of ice now forming thereover was easily broken.

The Austrians elected tea as their special inspiration on the occasion, and the rival fumes soon ascended from the spouts of coffee and teapots.

As the sky above was now clearing, from the elevation the aviators could see the brown and white summits of other hills, divided by valley cuttings, as far as the eye could reach.

Schneider was just about to light his beloved briar pipe, when all of a sudden he dropped the ember he was lifting to the bowl, and pointed toward the high ground edging the opposite side of an intervening gulch to the right of their bivouac.

A solitary horseman had ridden into view, and both rider and steed posed, statue-like, on the verge of the steeply descending slope.

Roque like a flash covered the smouldering fire with a blanket, checking tell-tale spirals of smoke.

Fixing a glass on the equestrian, Stanislaws uttered the one word--"Cossack."

"He's our meat," snapped Schneider.

"It's your first go this time," reluctantly conceded Stanislaws, who was himself aching to draw first blood.

Schneider, taking general consent for granted, gave Henri a nod sidewise, and both moved as quickly as they could on all fours to their biplane. While the boy was getting the motors in play, the fighting observer shifted his carbine from shoulder to knee.

The buzzing of the aëroplane had evidently caught the ear of the wild cavalryman across the gulch, for the horse was rearing, lifted by an unexpected wrench of the bit.

Nothing, however, on four legs or two, would have a ghost of a chance to outdistance a racing aëroplane.

Spur as he would, the horseman was overhauled in the space of three minutes.

The aëroplane, skimming the earth, mixed its scattering of snow particles with those raised by the pounding hoofs of the wildly galloping horse.

So close together were pursuer and pursued, that the Cossack's first lance thrust came within a hairline of reaching the ribs of Schneider, leaning forward in preparation to make a flying leap from the aircraft when it should lessen speed sufficiently to enable him to keep his feet when alighting on the stony soil.

Why the observer did not immediately use carbine or revolver in return for the lance attack, queerly impressed the young pilot ahead, who, naturally, would expect such action on the part of his armed companion, gravely menaced by a wicked weapon too lengthy to be successfully resisted by counter strokes of a saber.

Henri's second thought was that Schneider had been touched in a vital spot by the steel point, and that he, too, would next get into the deal of death. To send the machine aloft was a third thought, following in a flash, but the execution of this purpose was as quickly delayed by a motion indicating a lift of weight behind. Schneider had jumped from the biplane, now wheeling the ground, and within two lengths of a precipice, hitherto unobserved.

The Cossack, on the very brink of this dizzy declivity, had jerked his horse to its haunches, at the same moment when Henri checked further movement of the biplane by a skillful side turn.

"It's you and me for it now," roared Schneider, "and the devil take the quitter!"

Turning in his saddle, the Cossack, desperately at bay, accepted the challenge with ferocious alacrity, backing the fiery animal he bestrode and taking to foot with drawn sword.

Henri saw that it was the same man who in the guise of a peasant had played them such a scurvy trick--the same, but yet seeming hardly possible, viewing this upstanding, powerful specimen of a hardy, unconquerable race.

Schneider, never forgetting a face, had known the impersonator at the first glance, which added to the incentive of wiping out the score created by the Cossack company at the farmhouse down on the plain.

Noting that his adversary was armed only with sword and dagger, having blunted his lance against the armored side of the biplane, the aviation firebrand discarded his carbine and pistol, tossing them one by one onto the snow carpet. He had the notion of settling this affair in a manner that would completely retrieve certain prestige of which he conceived himself to be the loser.

In the meantime, the balance of the aviation party swooped down upon this level, and leaving their biplanes, advanced to the scene of the impending duel.

"Keep back, all of you," shouted Schneider, the bloodlust gleaming from his eyes; "it is one to one here, and though he put twenty to one against me, I will give him his chance, and take mine."

"Better humor him," suggested Stanislaws in an aside to Roque, "he will never rest easy if he does not get rid of the black mark he has rubbed on his own nose."

"He may get a red mark or two in this combat," grimly observed Roque, "but let them fight it out. Schneider ought to be able to take care of himself."

Billy and Henri followed with fascinated gaze the movements of their champion, who, though he sized up almost half a head shorter than his extremely tall antagonist, was all wire and a swordsman without equal in the estimation of the Heidelberg student body.

The duelists indulged in no time-saving tactics. Schneider rushed his man from the outset, but every rapid lunge of his heavy saber found clashing counter from the curved and guardless steel in the practiced hand of the wily Cossack.

Forward and back, ever fiercely fencing, the sworn foes panted defiance at one another, and each with blasting words renewed efforts to strike a death blow.

"Oh!" Billy had seen blood dripping from Schneider's left sleeve, and leaving a tiny trail of carmine splotches in the trampled snow. In agony of apprehension, the boy again fairly shouted: "Don't let him down you, Schneider; look out for the next!"

Roque gave the excited lad a muttered order to hold his tongue.

"Ha!" This from Stanislaws. A scarlet seam crossed the forehead of the Cossack, and he wavered for a second, as if partially blinded. Only for a second, though, did his sword arm hesitate. Schneider received another wound, this time close to the throat.

"He's done for," tremulously whispered Henri, wondering why the soldier onlookers did not interfere, and eager to make a saving move himself.

Then, as though a whole row of wine glasses had been riven by a knife stroke, the Cossack's blade, cleft near the haft by a biting downward cut of the saber, fell tinkling at his feet.

This was the last flare of Schneider's waning strength, of which, however, the Cossack was apparently unaware. He did not wait to meet an expected heart thrust from the victor.

With a piercing yell, he turned, waved the sword stump about his head, and leaped far out into the void before him.

Schneider, on hand and knee, game, but all in, as the saying is, mournfully shook his head, and faintly murmured: "He would have had another chance to finish."

Stanislaws, something of a surgeon, stanched the blood welling from the wounds of his comrade, applied bandages, and soon had the fallen fighter on his feet.

The Cossack's mount had disappeared, a fact first noticed by the acute Roque. "Mark you," he predicted, "that riderless horse will be sure to stir up a wasps' nest, and somebody here will get stung if we attempt to hold this position. Schneider's punctures are enough for one day."

Roque's prediction was a sure shot, for he had hardly ceased speaking when a score or more of horsemen charged from the cover of a rocky defile and bore down in force upon the aviation party.

"To your places!" thundered Roque.

The pilots of the several aëroplanes were already making ready for hurried flight, and Henri, in addition, had assisted the wounded and weakened Schneider to his seat in their machine.

Breckens, Bishoff and Mendell emptied their carbines and revolvers in the direction of the oncoming lancers, clearing a saddle or two, and swung into the rigging of the waiting biplanes just in time to permit a clean getaway.

Right over the brink of the precipice the start was made--it had to be the quickest way--and a thousand feet of ascent gained without an upturn.

Circling about on high the soldier-observers scattered the horsemen on the plateau with a shower of bombs.

Schneider had had his innings, and returned in full measure all that was owing.