“Oh—am I going to be ill?” she panted. “No, no! I mustn’t! For the boy’s sake, I mustn’t! I can’t!”
With a tremendous effort, now crawling rather than walking—for her knees were as water—the girl dragged herself up the path almost to her doorway.
Again she heard the call, this time no hallucination, but reality.
“Beatrice! Beatrice!” the voice was shouting. “O-hé! Beatrice!”
His hail! Allan’s!
Her heart stopped, a long minute, and then, leaping with joy, a very anguish of revulsion from long pain, thrashed terribly in her breast.
Gasping with emotion, burned with the first sudden onset of a consuming fever, half-blind, shivering, parched and in agony, the girl made a tremendous effort to hear, to see, to understand.
“Allan! Allan!” she shouted wildly. “Where are you? Where?”
“Beatrice! Here! On the bridge! I’m coming!”
She turned her dimming eyes toward the suspension bridge hung high above the swift and lashing rapids of New Hope River—the bridge, a cobweb-strand in space, across the chasm.
There it seemed to her, though now she could be sure of nothing, so strangely did the earth and sky and cliffs, the bridge, the jungle, all dance and interplay—there, it seemed, she saw a moving figure.
Disheveled, torn, almost naked, lame and slow, yet with something still of power and command in its bearing, this figure was advancing over the swaying path of bamboo-rods lashed to the cables of twisted fiber.
Now it halted as in exhaustion and great pain; now, once more, it struggled forward, limping, foot by foot; crawling, hanging fast to the ropes like some great insect meshed in the wind-swung filaments.
She saw it, and she knew the truth at last.
“Allan! Allan—come quick! Help me—help!”
Then she collapsed. At her door she fell. All things blent and swirled, faded, darkened.
She knew no more.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BOY IS GONE!
The man, weak, wounded, racked with exhaustion from the terrible ordeal of the past days, felt fresh vigor leap through his spent veins at sight of her distress, afar.
He broke into a strange, limping run across the slight and shaking bridge; and as he ran he called to her, words of cheer and greeting, words of encouragement and love.
But when, having penetrated the palisaded area and stumbled down the terraces, he reached her side, he stopped short, shaking, speechless, with wide and terror-stricken eyes.
“Beatrice! Beta! My God, what’s—what’s happened here?” he stammered, kneeling beside her, raising her in his weakened arms, covering her pallid face with kisses, chafing her throat, her temples, her hands.
The girl gave no sign of returning consciousness. Allan stared about him, sensing a great and devastating change since his departure, but as yet unable to comprehend its nature.
Giddy himself with loss of blood and terrible fatigues, he hardly more than half saw what lay before him; yet he knew catastrophe had befallen Settlement Cliffs.
The river now foamed through strange new obstructions. A whole section of the cliff was gone. No sign of life at all was to be seen anywhere down the terraces or paths.
None of the Folk, their blinking eyes shielded by their mica glasses from the morning sun, were drying fish or fruit at the frames.
The nets hung brown, and stiff, and dry; they should, at this hour, have been limp and wet, from the night’s fishing. The life of the colony, he knew, had suddenly and for some incomprehensible reason stopped, as a watch stops when the spring is broken.
And, worse than all, here Beatrice now lay in his arms, stricken by some strange malady. He could not know the cause—the sleepless nights, the terrible toil, the shattering nervous strain of catastrophe, of nursing, of the swift rebellion.
But he saw plainly now, the girl was burning with fever. And, raising his face to heaven, he uttered a cry, half a groan, half a sob—the cry of a soul racked too long upon the torture-wheel of fate.
“But—but where’s the boy?” he asked himself, striving to recover his self-control; trying to understand, to act, to save. “What’s happened here? God knows! An earthquake? Disaster, at any rate! Beatrice! Oh, my Beta! Speak to me!”
Unable to solve any of the terrible problems now beating in upon him, he raised her still higher in his arms.
Loudly he shouted for help down the terrace, calling on his Folk to show themselves; to come to him and to obey.
But though the shattered cliff rang with his commands, no one appeared. In all seeming as deserted and as void of human life as on the first day he and Beta had set foot there, the cañon brooded under the morning sun, and for all answer rose only the foaming tumult of the rapids far below.
“Merciful Heavens, I’ve got to do something!” cried Allan, forgetting his own lacerations and his pain, in this supreme crisis. “She—she’s sick! She’s got a fever! I’ve got to put her to bed anyhow! After that we’ll see!”
With a strength he knew not lay now in his wasted arms, he lifted her bodily and carried her to the door of Cliff Villa, their home among the massive buttresses of rock.
But, to his vast astonishment and terror, he found the door refused to open. It was fast barred inside.
Even from his own house he found himself shut out, an exile and a stranger!
Loudly he shouted for admission, savagely beat upon the planks, all to no purpose. There came no sound from within, no answering word or sign.
Eagerly listening for perhaps the cry of his child, he heard nothing. A tomblike silence brooded there, as in all the stricken colony.
Then Allan, fired with a burning fury, laid the girl down again, and seizing a great boulder from the top of the parapet that guarded the terraced walk, dashed it against the door. The planks groaned and quivered, but held.
Recoiling, exhausted by even this single effort, the disheveled, wounded man stared with haggard eyes at the barrier.
The very strength he had put into that door to guard his treasures, his wife and his son, now defied him. And a curse, bitter as death, burst from his trembling lips.
But now he heard a sound, a word, a phrase or two of incoherent speech.
Whirling, he saw the girl’s mouth move. In her delirium she was speaking.
He knelt again beside her, cradled her in his arms, kissed and cherished her—and he heard broken, disjointed words—words that filled him with passionate rage and overpowering woe.
“So many dead—so many!—And so many dying.—You, H’yemba! You beast! Let me go!—Oh, when the master comes!”
Allan understood at last. His mind, now clear, despite the maddening torments of the past week, grasped the situation in a kind of supersensitive clairvoyance.
As by a lightning-flash on a dark night, so now the blackness of his wonder, of this mystery, all stood instantly illumined. He understood.
“What incredible fiendishness!” he exclaimed, quite slowly, as though unable to imagine it in human bounds. “At a time of disaster and of death, such as has smitten the colony—what hellish villainy!”
He said no more, but in his eyes burned the fire that meant death, instant and without reprieve.
First he looked to his automatic; but, alas, not one cartridge remained either in its magazine or in the pouches of his belt. The fouled and blackened barrel told something of the terrible story of the past few days.
“Gone, all gone,” he muttered; but, with sudden inspiration, bent over the girl.
“Ah! Ammunition again!”
Quickly he reloaded from her belts. One belt he buckled round his waist. Then, pistol in hand, he thought swiftly.
Thus his mind ran: “The first thing to do is look out for Beatrice, and make her comfortable—find out what the matter is with her, and give treatment. I need fresh water, but I daren’t go down to the river for it and leave her here. At any minute H’yemba may appear. And when he does, I must see him first.
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“Evidently the thing most necessary is to gain access to our home. How can it be locked, inside, when Beatrice is here? Heaven only knows! There may be enemies in there at this minute. H’yemba may be there—”
Anguish pierced his soul at thought of his son now possibly in the smith’s power.
“By God!” he cried, “something has got to be done, and quick!”
His rage was growing by leaps and bounds.
He advanced to the door, and putting the muzzle of his automatic almost on the lock, shattered it with six heavy bullets.
Again he dashed the boulder against the door. It groaned and gave.
Reloading ere he ventured in, he now set his shoulder to the door and forced it slowly open, with the pistol always ready in his right hand.
Keenly his eyes sought out the darkened corners of the room. Here, there they pierced, striving to determine whether any ambushed foe were lying there in wait for him.
“Surrender!” he cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue. “If there be any here who war with me, surrender! At the first sign of fight, you die!”
No answer.
Still leaving the girl beside the broken door till he should feel positive there was no peril—and always filled with a vast wonder how the door could have been locked from within—Allan advanced slowly, cautiously, into their home.
He was cool now—cool and strong again. The frightful perils and exposures of the week past seemed to have fallen from him like an outworn mantle.
He ignored his pain and weakness as though such things were not. And, with index on trigger, eyes watchful and keen, he scouted down the cave-dwelling.
Suddenly he stopped.
“Who’s there?” he challenged loudly.
At the left of the room, not far from the big fireplace, he had perceived a dim, vague figure, prone upon the floor.
“Answer, or I shoot!”
But the figure remained motionless. Allan realized there was no fight in it. Still cautiously, however, he advanced.
Now he touched the figure with his foot, now bent above it and peered down.
“Old Gesafam! Heaven above! Wounded! What does this mean?”
Starting back, he stared in horror at the old woman, stunned and motionless, with the blood coagulating along an ugly cut on her forehead.
Then, as though a prescience had swept his being, he sprang to the bed.
“My son! My boy! Where are you?” he shouted hoarsely.
With a shaking hand he flung down the bedclothes of finely woven palm fiber.
“My boy! My boy!”
The bed was empty. His son had disappeared.
CHAPTER XXV
THE FALL OF H’YEMBA
Blinded with staggering grief and terror, stunned, stricken, all but annihilated, the man recoiled.
Then, with a cry, he sprang to the bed again, and now in a very passion of eagerness explored it. His trembling hands dragged all the bedding off and threw it broadcast. By the dim light he peered with wide and terror-smitten eyes.
“My boy!” he choked. “My boy!”
But beyond all manner of doubt the boy had been stolen.
Unable to understand, or think, or plan, Allan stood there, his face ghastly, his heart quivering within him.
What could have happened? How and why? If the door had been securely locked and the old nurse been with the child, how could the kidnapper have borne him away?
What? How? Why?
More, ever more, questions crowded the man’s brain, all equally without answer.
But now, he dimly realized, was no time for solving problems. The minute demanded swift and drastic action. He must find, must save, his son! After that other riddles could he unraveled.
“H’yemba!” he cried hoarsely. “This is H’yemba’s work! Revenge and hate have driven him to rebel again. To try to seize Beatrice! To steal my son! At this time of peril and affliction, above all others! H’yemba! The smith must die!”
But first he realized he must get Beatrice into safety.
In haste he ran to the door, picked up the girl and carried her to the bed. Here he disposed her at ease, covered her with the bedding, and bathed her face and hands with water from the cooling-jar.
The old nurse he laid upon the broad couch by the fire and likewise tended. He saw now she had been struck with a stone ax, a glancing blow, severe, but not necessarily fatal.
“Probably trying to defend the boy!” thought he. “Brave heart! Faithful even unto death—if death be your reward!”
Leaving her, he returned to his wife.
Now, he well understood, he had no time for emotion. There must be no false move. Even at the expense of a little time, he must plan the campaign with skill and execute it with relentless energy.
He alone now stood for power, rule, order, law, in this disintegrated community—this colony racked with disaster, anarchy and death.
Upon him alone now depended its whole fate and future, and, with it, the fate and future of the world.
“Merciful Lord, what a situation!” he whispered. “At home, disruption and savagery. Outside, the Horde—the Horde now pressing onward after me!”
He sat down beside the bed and forced himself to think. Weak as he was and wounded with a spear-thrust in the lower leg as well as a jagged cut across the breast, he felt that he might still keep strength enough for a few hours more of toil.
Of a sudden he realized an overpowering thirst. Till now he had not felt it. He arose, drank deeply from the jar, then—something cooler and more calm—once more returned to Beatrice.
“The first thing is to help her,” he said. “No use in losing my wits and rushing out unprepared to find the boy. If H’yemba has stolen him it’s certain the boy is hidden beyond my present power in some far recess of the inter-communicating rabbit-warren of caves below there in the cliff.
“I feel positive no bodily harm will be done the child. H’yemba will hold him for power over me. He will try to exact terms—even to leadership in the colony, even to possession of Beatrice. And the penalty of refusal may be the boy’s death—”
He shuddered profoundly, and with both wasted hands covered his face. For a moment madness sought to possess him.
He felt a wild desire to shout imprecations, to rush out, fling himself against the cave-door of H’yemba and riddle it with bullets—but presently calm returned again. For in Stern’s nature lay nothing of hysteria. Reason and calm judgment dominated. And before he acted he always reckoned every pro and con.
“It must be a battle of wits as well as force,” thought he. “A little time will decide all that. For now Beatrice demands my first care and thought!”
Now he examined the girl once more. Closing the door and lighting the bronze lamp, he carefully studied the sick woman, noting her symptoms, pulse and respiration.
“What to do?” he asked himself. “What means to tale?”
He arose and rummaged the stores for drugs. Above all, he must break the fever. He therefore prepared and administered a powerful febrifuge, covered the girl with all the available bedding, and determined, if possible, to make her sweat. This done, he found no further means at hand and now turned his attention once more to Gesafam.
Her wound he bathed and bandaged and, having given her a stiff drink of brandy, poured between resisting teeth which he had to separate with his knife-blade, he presently perceived some signs of returning consciousness.
But, though he questioned the old woman and tried desperately to make her answer, he could get no coherent information.
Only the name of H’yemba and some few disconnected mutterings of terror rewarded him. He knew now, however, with positive certainty that the smith was responsible for the kidnapping of his son.
“And that,” said he, “means I must seek him out at once. All I ask is just one sight of him. One sight, one bullet—and the score is paid!”
He arose and, again making sure his automatic was in complete readiness, stood for a se
cond in thought. Whatever he was now to do must be done quickly.
In a few hours, at the outside, he knew the vanguard of the pursuing Horde would enter the last valley on the other side of the cañon. By afternoon another battle might be on.
“Whatever happens, I must get my grip on the colony again at once!” he realized. “Such of the Folk as are still sound must be rallied. Otherwise nothing but annihilation awaits us all!”
But, even as he faced the exit of Cliff Villa, all at once the door was hurled violently open and a harsh, discordant cry of hatred and defiance burst into the cave.
Stern saw the detested figure of H’yemba standing there, loose-hung, powerful, barbaric, his eyes blinking evilly behind the mica screens that Allan himself had made for him.
With a cry Allan started forward.
“My son!” he gasped.
There, clutched in the smith’s left arm, lay the boy!
Allan heard his child crying as in pain, and rage swept every caution to the winds.
He sprang toward H’yemba, cursing; but the smith, with a beast-laugh, raised his right hand.
“Master!” he mocked. “No nearer or ye die!”
Allan, aghast, saw the flicker of sunlight on a pistol-barrel. With only too true an aim, H’yemba had him covered.
Came a little pause, tense as steel wire. Somewhere down the terrace sounded a murmur of voices. Allan seemed to sense that the rebel had now gathered his forces and that a general attack was imminent.
Time! At all hazards he must gain a moment’s time!
“H’yemba!” cried he. “What is your speech with me, your master?”
“Master?” sneered the smith again. “My slave! Power has passed from you to me. From you, who speak the false, who entrap us here to suffer and die, who slay and ruin us, to me, who will yet lead the people back to their far home, to safety and to life!”
“You lie, hound!”
The smith laughed bitterly.
“That shall be seen—who lies!” he gibed. “But now power is mine. I have your son in my hand. Move only and I fling him from the cliff!”
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