Citadel of Fear | Page 8

may wait if you choose to be pig-stuck and robbed, but
my motto is--strike first and strike hard. Help me out of here and I'll
show you how to deal with this Biornson's sort."
"Will you so? Now hear me, Mr. Kennedy, and just remember that,
though you're older nor me and of perhaps more refined education, yet
in the last showing and betwixt the two of us 'tis myself has the upper
hand. You'll make no more disturbance, but you'll lay down, or sit there
in your chair, till such time as I see fit to act. Then you'll do as I say
and no otherwise. Dye understand all that?"
Kennedy glowered blackly up at him, making no reply, but Boots

seemed content to take his obedience for granted. Turning away, he
made a brief, careless inspection of door and shutters, then flung
himself on the bed and lay quiet.

Time passed. The candles burned down toward their sockets and the
closed room grew swelteringly hot, but still neither man spoke to the
other.
Once or twice Kennedy rose and paced up and down the floor, or drank
from a clay water-jar on the table. But the giant figure on the bed did
not stir. The iron muscles of a hibernating bear were never less restless
than the Irishman's when he had no occasion for their use.
Yet at last he yawned, stretched, and sat up. "We'll go now;" he coolly
announced. "Now blow out the candles!"
He caught at the edge of the shutter as the hinges gave way. Pushing it
a little further outward he worked the bolts loose and eased it carefully
down on the balcony outside.
Sullenly the other followed, as the dominant Irishman stepped out on
the balcony. Around them the inner walls of the hacienda rose dark and
silent. Not a light showed anywhere.
"A poor jailer who trusts to doors and shutters alone," thought Boots.
"It speaks well for his lack of practice that he's set not even the dog to
watch us--or we'll hope he's not set the dog!"
With his boots slung about his neck, he cautiously climbed the railing;
a moment later he was hanging by his fingers to the edge of the balcony
floor, whence he dropped, to land with scarcely any sound, for all his
weight, on the hard clay that paved the patio.
Again Kennedy followed, but not caring to risk a broken leg he
improvised a rope from the bedding, slid down it, and at that made
more noise than the Irishman.

No one, however, seemed to have been aroused, and in three minutes
they stood together safe outside the hacienda. Once clear of their room,
there had been nothing to hinder escape, for the wooden gates were
merely shut to, and neither locked, barred nor guarded.
About them night lay so black, so oppressively breathless, that it gave
almost the impression of a solid, surrounding substance. They were in a
region where rain, when it does fall, comes always between two suns.
This night the world was roofed with thick cloud, like a lid shut down
on the air, compressing it to the earth, making it heavy and unsatisfying
to the lungs.
"We're in for a storm," whispered Boots. "I'd not reckoned on a night
like this."
"Reckoned on it for what?" Kennedy's tone was keenly unpleasant. "To
go after another sand-bath? If you are too cowardly to settle with
Biornson, let me go back alone. I'll engage to find him, and by the time
I'm through he'll be glad enough to let us have supplies or anything
else--if he's still alive."
"Time enough for all that tomorrow. Body o' me, little man, have you
no curiosity? I brought you out here to find the secret Biornson's so set
on concealing, and all you can think of is retaliation and general
blood-letting! This ravine isn't all the plantation. 'Tis a grand big
hacienda. He's not crops enough in the ravine to support it, and I've a
notion that the upper end leads to the place or the thing he wants
hidden.
"We'll find out what it is, and then go leave the poor man in peace,
since he's so afeared of us. But see it I will, if only to make clear to him
his mistake in locking us up so uncourteously."
The other swore, as he realized that Boots' curiosity was a thing
cherished purely for its own sake. Boots steered him away from the
hacienda, down to the stream, and along the narrow path that followed
it.

Kennedy was cursing again, for he had stumbled against the
spike-tipped leaves of an agave with direful results, and then blundered
into the water before he knew they had reached it, but Boots was
cheerful.
An occasional