CHAPTER XXIV--IN THE HANDS OF MERCILESS FOES

The sky was overcast and there was no moon, as they set forth in two canoes, the one Sergeant Dick had come back in and one of the craft kept beneath the house.

Old Alf, Abel, and the sergeant went in the first canoe, and Aaron, Amos and Abner in the second.

Paddling softly to the western shore, they landed with equal stealth, for there was no saying what watch the rustlers were in the habit of keeping on the woods thereabouts.

They hauled their two craft ashore, and concealed them amongst the bushes.

“I suggest,” said Abel, then, “that we march in single file, you leading the way, sergeant.”

“Very good,” answered the police officer.

They threaded their way warily through the dense woods; and, in spite of the darkness, Dick led them unerringly to the foot of the waterslide.

For that matter, they all of course knew where it was, had frequently seen and passed it, but, according to their own story, had never had the curiosity to climb it as he had done, or explore the perpendicular, terraced rocks behind it.

“We had better climb up in the same way as I did--by means of the trees over-arching the water,” John Dick whispered. “Sling your rifles securely now, and make sure your pistol-holsters are--”

“Hands up, all, or you’re dead men!”

The unexpected mandate made even Sergeant Dick jump.

He whipped round and saw five awful, ghostly, white-hooded, white-clad forms confronting him and his companions, with two pointed automatics each.

It would have been madness--certain death to have attempted resistance or defiance in the teeth of those ten leveled little tubes. Nevertheless, Sergeant Dick was the last of the punitive force to put up his hands.

The five squatters hoisted theirs promptly.

None of the prisoners had his rifle unslung or a pistol drawn.

“Tie them up, Bud,” ordered the leader of the White Hoods.

And one of the five ghostly forms thrust his pistols into his belt and advanced. The gang had clearly been posted behind a large rock close by the water-slide.

In their ghostly disguise the fellows did not look human. Their high-peaked hoods, drawn down to their chins so as to conceal the face, had only two holes cut for the eyes, and their long, white, shapeless smocks descending to the tops of their knee-boots completely concealed their figures, and added to their spectral appearance.

“Let’s see who they be,” said the leader in a voice which sounded _feminine_ and also familiar to the sergeant’s ears.

He flashed an electric torch, and shone it first upon Dick’s face and form.

“Curses! A trooper, and a sergeant at that! So the cops have tumbled to whar we hang out, lads. That’s bad. Hullo! You are the squatter of the lake, Old Alf Arnold, the father of ‘Water Castle.’ And you’re his son, and you, and you,” as he flashed his torchlight in turn upon the faces of the young men.

“You dodrotted fools! What are you doing roving round here at this hour of the night? Don’t tell me a lie, you were out arter us?”

“Nothing of the kind,” lied old Alf. “’Ow should we know as ’ow we’d run up agin you ’ereabouts? We are out a-settin’ of our traps, and the sergeant’s come with us just acause he’s bin a-stayin’ wi’ us at ‘Water Castle’ durin’ this ’ere Injun risin’. Didn’t you ’ear ’ow he helped us to beat ’em off? They besieged us hot and ’eavy in the ‘Castle’ several nights runnin’.”

“Yus, I heerd all about that, but your comin’ here looks darned suspicious-like, all the same, and so I’m not agoin’ to let ye go yet awhile. Tie ’em up, Bud, and blindfold ’em, too. We can’t take no risks.”

“Bud” proceeded to bind the sergeant’s hands behind his back, and then to blindfold him, after which he was relieved of all his weapons and valuables.

He was then kept waiting while his fellow-prisoners were, apparently, likewise being attended to.

“’Urry up, ’urry up, Bud!” the chief at last said, impatiently; and a minute or two later a heavy hand fell on Dick’s shoulder and he was told to step out.

Almost immediately he felt the ground rising steeply as he was conducted along, and he was climbing up a slope which obliged his captors to give him a helping hand. The gang were now evidently joined by as many more men, for he heard them moving in front and around him as well as whispering to one another.

Up and up the steepest of paths or rocky defiles they climbed, until presently a halt was called, and the voice of the leader added:

“Now put the rope round his neck, and throw it over the branch, and I’ll jist scribble the message to pin on his breast. You kin remove the bandage from his eyes, one of ye. I mout as well tell you, sergeant, we’re a-going to hang you, as a hexample to your fellow-cops, to show ’em what they’ve to expect from us if they try to hunt us down. Your fellow-prisoners we’ve let go, without their arms, watches, money, and other trifles. We’ve no great grudge agin them, and we allus likes to keep in wi’ men like Squatter Arnold, as ain’t got much to lose or tempt us, and who can be of great sarvice to us by giving us information when the cops are arter us.”

The cloth was removed from the young police officer’s eyes, at the same time as a noosed rope was slipped round his neck.

He saw that he was standing under a tree at the edge of a ravine, some forty feet deep, through which ran a fairly wide and level road. On either side of him were his captors, the dreaded White Hoods--nine now in number. A tenth ghostly form was climbing into the tree, to pass the rope over a stout branch.

Not one of the Arnolds was to be seen.

The chief put a paper flat against the tree-trunk, and, while a companion flashed an electric torch, proceeded to write something upon it.

Sergeant John Dick gave himself up for lost. It was plain that the murderous ruffians meant to hang him there above the mountain road, where his dead body would be found on the morrow by the first ranchman or homesteader who chanced to ride that way.

Nevertheless, he scorned to ask for mercy from the villainous gang--to beg for his life.

“Ho! ho! me bowld trooper, your goose is cooked now, anyways,” gloatingly jeered the White Hood above him--in the tree.

Sergeant Dick could barely suppress a start, _for he knew that voice also_.

“You may hang me, you atrocious scoundrels,” he said, boldly and fearlessly, “but, as sure as there is a heaven above me, you will reap a terrible reward for such a crime. Heaven will not let you go unpunished. You--”

For the second time that night he was not allowed to finish a sentence. There were startled cries in the ravine below--two exclamations of horror and anger. And, as all eyes were turned in the direction of the unexpected sounds, Sergeant Dick beheld, to his infinite relief and joy, two police troopers, in the familiar Stetson hats and red coats, sitting astride horses at the turn in the road.

Their sudden appearance there, without a sound having broken the stillness, except their startled ejaculations at the sight of the terrible drama about to be enacted above them, was quite spectral. And so several moments the White Hoods stood staring aghast at them.

The troopers, indeed, were the first to act. They had their rifles at the ready in front of them. Promptly jerking the butts to their shoulders, they fired upwards at the gang on the cliff.

In spite of the haste of the marksmen, the bullets were well aimed. Two of the White Hoods staggered and nearly fell, and Sergeant Dick heard, he believed, _two distinct clangs_ as if the bullets had struck against iron or steel!

Flinging themselves from the saddles immediately on firing, the two troopers sheltered behind their horses and let drive again up at the gang. And the fellow in the tree over Dick’s head came clambering down so hurriedly that his long white smock caught on one of the branches and was lifted up, exposing a coat of dull, gleaming iron.

He was unable to free the entangled garment for a moment or two, and the amazed young police-sergeant saw plainly that he was wearing under it a rudely made breastplate and backpiece of armor, fastened together with straps at the side--a perfect iron corselet such as knights or rather men-at-arms wore in medieval days!

Furthermore, hanging from the lower edges of this coat of iron were rounded pieces to cover the thighs, both back and front, almost to the knees.

Surprised beyond measure at the revelation that the gang wore armor, Sergeant Dick remembered, however, at the same time that the notorious Ned Kelly gang of bushrangers in Australia in 1880 wore similar protection, and so were able for a long period to laugh at the bullets of the Mounted Police.

Without a doubt these White Hood rustlers had got the idea of armoring themselves from the well-known story of the Kelly gang.

Two more of the ruffians had staggered under the well-directed shots of the two troopers in the ravine. But now the gang had got over its surprise. It fired back in a volley, and one of the policemen’s horses reared, plunged wildly, and, breaking away, tore off down the road.

Its master dodged quickly behind his companion’s horse. Some dozen or more troopers, now, however, came galloping noiselessly, like so many specters, round the bend in the ravine. They ranged themselves alongside the first two and poured in a deadly fire at the bandits.

It was plain that the hoofs of all the police-horses were muffled.

“Furies! Fly, lads! Run! We can’t fight so many,” shouted one of the White Hoods.

The fellow hanging by his white smock from the tree wrenched himself free with a desperate effort and a savage oath, leaving a strip of the garment clinging to the branch. He made as if to spring upon Sergeant Dick, but two of the others dragged him off.

“Dead min tell no tales,” howled another bandit, however, rushing at the prisoner with upraised knife in one hand and smoking rifle in the other.

The knife would have been sheathed in the young police-sergeant’s breast; but, swift as thought, he raised his right foot and dashed it with all his force into the chest of his would-be murderer, even as the idea struck him that _the voice sounded strangely like a woman’s_. Woman or man, the White Hood was sent reeling heavily backwards, Sergeant Dick’s boot eliciting a ringing clang from the concealed coat of iron under the white smock. The knife went flying over the edge of the cliff into the ravine.

Its owner went down flat on the back, but was promptly dragged upright by another of the gang who snarled:

“Cuss it! ain’t ye got no sinse, Martha? Afore their very eyes! We must git, _woman_!”

And then all ten fled, crouching, into the bushes, and were quickly swallowed up by these and the darkness.