Chapter IX: On the Viking Trail

There were five of the Vikings. As they came into sight along the path, Nick the Rat whispered to his gang, who lay, with rifles ready, concealed behind a clump of bushes: "When I say the word, give 'em the works."

"I tank--" began Swede.

"Fire!" shouted Nick, and out blazed five rifles.

Two Vikings fell. The three others stood irresolute for a moment. Then, hurling their spears before them, they rushed full at the bush. Once more the rifles blazed, and then the gangsters leaped to their feet and met drawn swords with the roar of automatics.

It was all over in an instant. The five Vikings lay on the ground, four of them motionless, the fifth propped up on one elbow, with his other hand to his chest, coughing.

Scutari had fallen flat on his back, with a spear through his heart. Nick Fratelli's right forearm was pinned to his side with a slender Viking sword which he was frantically trying to push out with his left hand. Cicero, torn and bleeding about one shoulder, had dropped his automatic, and was leaning against a tree, feeling of the injured part. Friday, the Eskimo, had fled.

Swede Johnson stood over the dying Viking. The latter coughed and murmured something. Swede bent low to catch the words, then straightened up.

"The curse of Thor!" he muttered in sudden superstitious horror.

The Viking coughed once more, transfixed Cicero with a baleful glance and dropped prone on the grass.

"I tank--" began Swede, but Nick interrupted him:

"Can the chatter, and pull out this butcher knife. Easy now," as Swede obliged him.

The hole in Nick's side turned out to be merely a flesh-wound, but the blade had penetrated his forearm right between the two bones.

As Swede dexterously tore off a part of Nick's shirt and bandaged the arm, the wounded man growled: "The nerve of those squareheads, fighting against all our guns."

"Dey vere Vikings!" asserted Swede proudly.

Friday reappeared, and was given quite a dressing-down by Fratelli in the Eskimo's guttural tongue. Then the four took Scutari's rifle, pistol, food and ammunition, and the helmets, swords, bucklers and other trappings of the dead enemy. Fratelli helped himself to a purple cloak which struck his fancy; Cicero took a jeweled dagger, marked with a jade swastika.

Laden with booty, the four started back down the trail, leaving the bodies of the five Vikings and Scutari, with perfect unconcern, to rot beneath the sweltering beams of the central sun.

"I tank--" began Swede.

"You think too much," interrupted Nick Fratelli testily. "What I think is that we better not get within reach of any more Vikings if we can help it. Come on, you guys, or we'll be in a jam."

* * * * *

About the time when Nick and his gang had started out on the exploring trip, Scarface and his party began their circuit of the plateau, which was to end in their utter rout by a woolly mammoth, which had run Scarface himself up a tree.

The beast had then continued to bunt at the tree, until the tree leaned at such an angle that the brute's head could no longer secure a purchase against the slanting bark.

Thereat the elephant changed its tactics. Going to the other side of the tree, the beast stood beneath the man, and, applying its trunk to the tree trunk, began pulling downward with all its strength. The tree, already very much loosened at the roots, could not long withstand the weight of such a huge animal.

But Scarface, coolly leaning down until his arm was within reach of the beast's trunk if it had seen fit to release its hold on the tree, blazed away all seven shots of his automatic, square at the center of the high flat forehead, which now constituted such a point-blank target.

Stunned, the mammoth recoiled on its haunches for an instant; then flung itself at the tree in a frenzy of rage. The shots must have missed the brain, which in these prehistoric elephants occupied but a very small part of the massive skull.

The tree was now swaying like a reed, but Scarface calmly inserted another clip, steadied himself with his left hand, and blazed away again, this time at the two little red eyes of hate that glared up at him.

Again the impact of the forty-fives stunned the beast and forced it back upon its haunches. And again it returned to its onslaught against the tree. But this time, totally blinded, it missed the tree completely, and went dashing off across the plain.

Dropping with a grunt of relief from the well-nigh horizontal tree, Scarface unslung his rifle, knelt, and discharged all five shots of his magazine at the departing animal; but, unaffected by his shots, it disappeared into the woods which lined the plain.

Scarface, exasperated, brushed off his soiled and disarranged yachting costume, as Mike Murphy, Tom Jones and Little Arty dropped one by one from neighboring trees.

From the air above them rang out a silvery laugh. All four looked up. Over the edge of the cliff-top, they saw a face, at each side of which an ash-blond braid hung down over the rocks.

Scarface doffed his hat, and blew a kiss to the lady from his finger-tips. The face promptly disappeared.

"It's hard to tell at this distance, but I think she's a pippin," remarked Little Arty.

"I believe that that must be the Swede girl that I've always dreamed of meeting some day," announced the handsome young gang leader.

"Good luck to you, Romeo," chimed in Tom Jones.

"That's all very well," said Murphy, "but how do we get up there, anyhow?"

"We holler, I guess," replied Scarface, and suited the action to the word.

But the cliffs above might just as well have been barren, uninhabited rocks for all the effect that their shouting developed, then or later. They separated to circle the plateau.

* * * * *

They met again, two meals later, at their starting point, without any of them being able to report any progress. Accordingly they withdrew for another "night" of turns at watching and sleeping.

Finally rested, they ate breakfast--the last that was left of their compressed rations--and then decided that some change of tactics was imperative if they would rescue Terry. So they set out to the southward along the trail which they had seen taken by the Vikings who had left the plateau two days ago. In this way they hoped either to reach wherever the Vikings might be bound, or to meet them coming back.

The trail led sometimes through tangled forests and sometimes through open plains. The central sun beat pitilessly down, and aloft in the heavy air circled one huge and solitary leather-winged _skwaa_, in search of carrion. After several hours, hunger began to gnaw at them, and the circling _skwaa_ took on a menacing aspect.

A bit further on, a long-legged rabbitlike creature suddenly appeared in the trail ahead of them. All four rifles blazed simultaneously, and the little creature fell.

"Bedad, we eat!" exclaimed Murphy.

"Let's carry it till we come to water," suggested Tom.

They had not gone far, when they came to a grove of gigantic orange-trees beside a little river which crossed their path at right angles. There they halted and built a fire, and soon the little animal, skinned, dressed, and spitted, was sizzling savorily over the crackling flames.

After the meat, they peeled and divided one monster orange, and reclined, their backs against trees, eating the segments as though they had been huge slices of watermelon.

A cool breeze blew through the little grove. The brook tinkled merrily over its pebbles. The moss which covered the ground beneath the trees was thick and comfortable. Large green and blue and silver butterflies fluttered lazily about in the shafts of crimson sunlight that fell through the openings in the leafy canopy. The four men were replete, and would have been completely at peace with the world, if it had not been for their thoughts of little Terry.

But their rifles lay handy, Scarface's across his knees, for they hadn't yet forgotten the elephant episode.

"Not a bad meal at all," mused their dark curly-haired leader, rising to his feet. "There is not an eating-joint in the States could beat it."

"_Staap!_" came a challenging shout from across the stream.

Murphy leaped erect. Tom and Little Arty rushed back for their rifles. On the other bank of the stream stood two Vikings, with weapons alert.

* * * * *

Now that the first moment of surprise was over, Scarface threw his rifle into the crotch of his left elbow, where it was handy, but not threatening and holding his right hand aloft in what he had read somewhere was a gesture of friendship, he said: "We've been looking for you--"

"_Yee forstaar ikka_," replied one of the Norsemen.

"I guess you're right," agreed Jimmy, advancing with his friendliest smile, "Now the idea is--"

But the Vikings motioned him back and brandished their spears menacingly. Jimmy halted and frowned, then held up his rifle and pointed to it. He could be threatening, too, if the occasion demanded. How absurd they were, these men out of the past, to dare to match their puny spears and swords against Springfield rifles and Colt automatics! Well, they ought to know what firearms were, from their experience with Eric and Angus.

This gave him an idea.

"Eric Redmond. Angus Selkirk," he pronounced clearly and distinctly.

"_Yah! Yah!_" replied the Norsemen, their expressions indicating that they now realized that these four strangers were compatriots of the two young Americans which he had named.

Jimmy's three henchmen now stood at his side. And more Vikings had joined those on the opposite bank of the stream. But still both parties hesitated to make further overtures.

At this moment a glad girlish cry broke from the thicket behind the Vikings.

"Yoo-hoo, Mr. Jimmy," she cried. "Gee, but I'm glad to see you again."

And Theresa Ferreira bounded onto the scene.

With this introduction, the Vikings signalled to the Americans that they might cross, and soon Theresa was delightedly hugging her former comrades, much to their present embarrassment.

"Terry!" exclaimed Tom fervently.

"Where did you come from? And how do you happen to know these men?" inquired Scarface.

"It's a long story. I ducked out from the wop, and these squareheads picked me up," said the girl. "Tell you all about it in a minute."

Then the Vikings warmly shook hands with the four Americans.

"Isn't this better, Scarface," asked Tom, when they secured a moment's breathing space, "than to shoot down these fine fellows and try to steal their country away from them?"

But Scarface Boston Jimmy reserved his opinion on that subject. In spite of his reading and the superficial culture that had won him the half derisive, half respectful title of "Boston" Jimmy, he was at heart a Chicago gangster.

Suddenly Terry looked around her with puzzled bewilderment.

"But where's father?" she asked.

"You poor child," replied Scarface, putting his arm protectingly across her shoulders. "Your father is dead. He was shot in the fight for the Miami."

Theresa burst into tears.

"The thing to do," suggested Scarface gently, "is to get your friends to back-trail and help me recover possession of our boat."

"Yeah?" said she, smiling through her tears. "But how are we going to tell it to them? Can any of you talk Viking?"