CHAPTER XII

The next thing Tad knew was a sensation of intense physical discomfort. His head throbbed fiercely, his wrists were chafed, and he lay, in a very painful position, face down, across the saddle-bow of a galloping horse. When his senses had cleared enough for him to remember what had happened, he tried to figure out where these desperadoes were taking him. But all that he could see, facing the ground, was the packed brown earth of the roadside and the flashing green of undergrowth beyond. He had a vague recollection of having been carried up a long, steep hill; so he supposed they must have climbed one of the roads that ran up along the bluff.

One other thing he noticed, and that seemed to increase the hazards of a situation which surely was already serious enough. As he swung, head down, he could watch the rhythmic movement of the horse’s legs. Both forelegs white up to the knee--one hind leg white above the hock; three white “stockings.” Where had he heard, in the last few days, of a “three-stocking” horse?

Then he remembered, and it came over him with a sickening feeling that his life was worth very little, indeed. For the black-haired man who had once before tried to kill him and who now had him prisoner could be none other than the terrible John Murrell himself.

There were two other horses, one behind them and one ahead. Occasionally one of the riders would speak in a guarded voice, but for the most part they rode hard and in silence.

It might have been only half an hour that they traveled, after Tad regained consciousness. If so, it was the longest thirty minutes he had ever spent in his life.

At last, when it seemed as if he must cry out with pain if he were jolted any farther, his captor pulled the big horse, lathered and champing, to a stop.

Without ceremony he caught Tad by his shoulder and dropped him in a heap on the ground. The boy was helpless, his ankles and his wrists bound tightly. But his brain was still working, and after the first moment of relief he began looking around, to see, if possible, where he was.

Dense brush and tall trees flanked the narrow, grassy track on both sides, and there was no view that would show him how far they had come from the river.

The riders had stopped in front of a house that stood at the left of the road--a high, bleak frame building, with no trees in front to soften its harsh outline. The shutterless windows leered down like evil eyes on the unkempt, desolate dooryard. An unnatural silence hung about the premises. There was no singing of birds, and in the flat gray light of a cloudy noonday, the whole atmosphere of the place seemed lonely and sinister beyond compare.

The riders dismounted and talked together for a moment.

“Here,” said the tall leader at length, “we can settle all that presently. You ride back down the road, Sam, and you, Bull, keep watch up the other way till I get him out of sight.”

Tad heard the names with a shudder. He had guessed right, then. Bull Whaley and Sam Jukes were the chief lieutenants of the famous outlaw. He had heard of them and their cruelty from the keel-boat hands on the river.

Murrell stood looking down at him for a moment, an ironical smile twisting his pale face.

“I see you recall our havin’ met before, suh,” he said with his polite Southern drawl. “That’s as it should be, fo’ you are goin’ to be my guest fo’ a while. We’ll see, now, if there are any quarters ready to receive you.”

He put two fingers between his lips and gave a singularly piercing whistle, so shrill that it hurt Tad’s eardrums. In a few seconds the house door opened, and a gigantic negro, in the rough clothes of a field hand, ran down the steps.

Murrell looked from Tad to the huge negro and back at Tad again. He seemed to relish the situation. “This,” he explained to the boy, “is Congo, my bodyguard. He was the son of a great African chief, and when they brought him off the slave ship he killed four men. They tortured him so that he will never hear or speak again. But I rode by at the right moment and saved him from death. At a sign from me he would pick you up now and tear you into forty pieces.”

The giant black seemed to sense what his master was saying, for he flexed his mighty fingers, and his sides shook with a great, silent laugh. Tad, looking into that cavernous mouth, saw that there was no tongue back of the gleaming white teeth, and the negro’s ears had been cropped and mutilated in horrible fashion.

Murrell gestured toward the house and led the way to the steps, and Congo picked the boy up as easily as if he had been a baby. Through the doorway and along a narrow hall he carried him, and then at another signal from Murrell, he climbed with him up a flight of steep, rickety stairs. Opening a door at the top, he flung his burden down, and stood awaiting the further commands of his master.

Murrell nodded. When the negro had gone out, he stooped and dragged Tad a few feet into a shadowy corner. Here he picked up a heavy iron fetter attached to a three-foot chain, and clasped it around one of the boy’s ankles. With a brass key taken from his pocket, he secured its ponderous lock.

“That and our hospitality,” he chuckled, “ought to be plenty to keep you here. I’ll let you have the use o’ yo’ hands to keep the fleas from bein’ too familiar.” So saying, he whipped out a clasp knife and cut the cords that had bound Tad’s wrists and ankles. And with an exaggerated bow he went out, closing the door after him.

When the sound of his footsteps had died away at the bottom of the stairs, Tad raised himself to a sitting posture and looked about at his prison. In what he saw there was nothing to lighten the gloom of his desperate situation. The room was a long, narrow garret, lighted only by one window, at the farther end. Yellow, mildewed plaster was dropping off the walls in flakes. The floor was a mass of filth. Around him in the corner where he sat were dirt and grease and foul-smelling rags, and the whole place had a close, sickly odor that nauseated him.

But Tad was not one to give up easily. He had a stubborn sort of courage that rose to occasions of this kind. And when he had conquered his first feeling of illness, he set himself to test every possible avenue of escape.

The chain attached to his ankle-iron was heavy and strong--a trace-chain from a wagon, he judged. At the other end it was fastened to a huge iron staple, driven solidly into one of the timbers of the floor. A tug or two convinced him of the utter futility of trying to pull it out. The fetter, he was quite certain now, had been designed to hold big, powerful men--the stolen slaves who were said to be the special prey of Murrell and his outlaw gang.

When he felt of the leg-iron itself, it seemed large and loose about his ankle, though much too small to allow his heel to pass through. His fingers moved over the surface of the fetter and paused suddenly in a deep, rough notch at the back, near the hinge. With trembling hands he turned it as far as he could and peered down at it through the dim half-dusk. At some time or other the iron had been partly cut through by a file.

Tad’s pulses leaped as he made this discovery. For a moment he thought he might finish what had been so well begun by some earlier prisoner. But as he searched about the floor in his corner he realized that there was nothing in sight that could possibly be used as an abrasive.

The afternoon dragged by with sickening slowness. The heat of the garret nearly suffocated him, and there was nothing to do but fight the flies and wait--for what, he did not know.

An intermittent drone of voices could be heard in the room downstairs. Gradually they grew louder--as the bottle was passed, Tad supposed--and he could even catch occasional words. Perhaps he would be able to overhear some of their plans. Crawling as far as the chain would permit, he stretched full length on his stomach, and laid an ear to the floor. As he did so, one of the boards moved a trifle under his hand. He touched it again and found it loose. By working his finger nails into the crack at one end he was able to lift it. The board was a short one that had been put in as a filler between two longer pieces. When Tad put his head down over the hole there were only thin lath and plaster between him and the room below.

Lying still and listening, he could now catch quite distinctly the louder parts of the conversation. There was a deep, angry voice which he recognized as that of Bull Whaley, and a thin whine that he thought must come from Sam Jukes. Murrell himself seemed to be saying very little.

“But five thousand dollars, man--why, that’s the price of four or five good cotton niggers!” Whaley was roaring. “Don’t the notice say ‘dead or alive’? He’s supposed to ha’ been drowned, ain’t he? Well,” he finished triumphantly, “we kin fix that part of it easy enough.”

“That’s too risky,” Jukes answered. “They’d be pretty sure to look into it if he was brought in dead. What I say is, let him be rescued by one of our New Orleans men. The boy won’t ever suspect, an’ his old man will be so thankful that he was delivered out o’ the hands of the ruffians--meanin’ you, Bull--that he’ll pay the five thousand without a whimper. Let’s see, now, LeGrand would be the chap to put it through. He’s a good Creole an’ stands well with the police.”

“Huh!” Whaley grunted. “An’ what’d LeGrand want for the job? Half the reward, if I know him. No, sir, take him in dead, I says. There’s more in it fer us that way.”

Then Tad heard the husky drawl of the chief.

“Neither one of yo’ ideas is wu’th the powder to blow it up, gentlemen,” he said. “You’re used to makin’ small plans an’ takin’ small pickin’s. Five thousand dollars is all either of you can see in this. I aim to get fifty thousand.”

His words evidently left his hearers dumfounded. For a moment there was no sound. Then--“_Fifty_ thousand!” both exclaimed together.

“That was what I said,” Murrell returned. “This man Hopkins has offered a reward of five thousand. That means he is rich. He could scrape up, on his credit, all of fifty thousand dollars, and that is the sum I shall ask him to pay fo’ the safe return of his son.”

“Hold him fer ransom, eh?” said Whaley with a chuckle. “You win, Jack. I reckon if you sign the letter, they’ll know they’ve got to pay or they’ll never see him again.”

“Yes, that’s the plan, right enough,” Jukes put in. “We’ll have to fix up a good place for ’em to bring the money, though, so we can watch out for tricks.”

“As to that,” said Murrell, “I’ve worked out all the details. You know that island--” And here he dropped his voice too low for Tad’s ears. The rest of the conversation was evidently held in an undertone, heads close together over the table, for try as he would, the boy could catch only a stray word now and then.

The sun had evidently broken through the clouds, for a slanting beam came through the cob-webs of the room’s one window, which opened toward the west. And this feeble ray of light chanced to fall just inside the edge of the opening in the floor. It was a lucky chance for Tad. Glancing into the hole as he was about to crawl away, he saw something that made his heart jump into his throat. Quickly he reached down and brought it up into the light--a big, three-edged file.

The hole in the floor must have been the secret hiding-place used by that other prisoner, who had been taken away before his work on the fetter was finished.

Eagerly Tad felt the edges of the file. It was still sharp. He was just moving to a position where he could get at his ankle-iron when a step sounded on the stairs, and he had barely time to replace the tool in the aperture and cover it with the board. As he crawled back to his rags in the corner the door was opened and the giant slave, Congo, came in.

The negro set down a plate on which were some thick slices of buttered bread and a tin cup full of coffee. Tad waited for him to go, but he pointed down at the food and evidently expected to stay until it was finished. The boy had very little appetite, in spite of having tasted nothing since breakfast. He did manage, however, to eat two pieces of bread and gulp down the strong black coffee. Then an idea came to him. He had been wondering how he was to file his leg-iron without making too great a noise. If he could save the butter on the remaining piece of bread he might use it as a lubricant.

Picking up the slice he pretended to take a mouthful, meanwhile pushing the plate and cup toward Congo. The giant black stooped, picked them up, and stood for a moment grinning that terrible grin of his. Then he drew a forefinger slowly across his throat and rolled up his eyes till only the whites showed, in a ghastly pantomime of death. With this little token of farewell, he slipped through the door and bolted it on the outside.

Tad wasted no time in worrying over the meaning of the negro’s signs. As soon as the footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs he crept to his loose board and took the file from its hiding-place. In the fading twilight he could barely see the notch in the fetter, but it was easy to find by touch, and he soon turned it into a position where he could move the file back and forth comfortably. By rubbing a little butter along the cutting edge, he found that the noise was scarcely audible--certainly too slight to be heard on the first floor.

For the best part of an hour he worked, stealthily but with hardly a moment’s rest. He could feel the notch in the iron growing deeper. It must be two-thirds of the way through, he thought. And then catastrophe overtook him. He was just reaching for the piece of bread, to get more butter, when suddenly it was snatched from under his hand. The biggest rat he had ever seen had seized it and scurried away across the floor.

Tad was more than startled. For a moment his nerves were shaken, and he sat there trembling with weariness and fright. Then the ridiculous side of the situation struck him and he rocked back and forth with smothered laughter. When the spasm was over he tried to work on the fetter again and found that the scraping of the dry file was becoming more and more noisy. Saliva would quiet it for a stroke or two, but it dried too quickly. At last he gave up the effort. He put the file away, dropped the board back in place and curled up exhausted in his corner, wishing desperately for his snug blanket aboard the _Katy Roby_.