CHAPTER X
SKY BRIDGE
At the end of their next day's journey the Trail began to swing awayfrom the jungle, and thereafter led ever upward, skirting the foot-hillsof the mountain-ranges beyond which lay the lost cities of the Incas.Three days after Will's escape from the pit he found himself once morein terrible danger. During the siesta period at noon he had walked awayfrom the rest of the party to see what new birds he might find. Not farfrom the camping-spot he came to a place where a colony of crestedblack-and-gold orioles had built long, hanging nests of moss and fiberamong the branches of a low tree.
Curious to see whether their eggs looked like the scrawled and spottedones of the Northern orioles, Will started to climb the tree. Before hewas half-way to the nests, a cloud of clamoring birds were flying aroundhis head, and as he looked up he noticed for the first time, directlyabove him, a great gray wasps' nest. Even as he looked, one of thecircling birds brushed against it, and a cloud of enormous red waspspoured out. They paid no attention whatever to the birds, but flew downtoward Will, who was already scrambling out of the tree at full speed.
Even as he reached the ground, two of the wasps settled on his bare arm,and instantly he felt as if he had been stabbed by red-hot daggers.Never in his life had the boy known such agony. Trembling with pain, hebrushed the fierce insects off and rushed at top speed toward the camp.In spite of the heat, a racking chill seized him as he ran. His teethchattered together and waves of nausea seemed to run over his wholebody, dimming his eyes and making his head swim He just managed to reachthe rest of the party when he staggered and fell.
"I've been stung by some big red hornets," he murmured, and droppedback unconscious.
"It's the maribundi wasp," said Professor Ditson, looking very grave ashe helped Hen undress the boy and sponge his tortured body with coldwater. "Three of their stings have been known to kill a man."
By evening Will was delirious. All night long Hen and the scientistworked over him, and by the next day he was out of danger, althoughstill in great pain and very weak. It was several days before he couldwalk, and then only with the greatest difficulty. At first every stepwas an agony; but Professor Ditson assured him that regular exercise wasthe best way to free his system from the effect of the maribundi venom.
Once again death which had dogged the adventurers' trail for so longpeered out at them. They had finished the first stage of their day'swalk, and Will was lying white and sick under a tree, trying to gainstrength enough to go on. Ahead of them stretched a wide river, with aford showing, down to which the Trail led. Suddenly from the depths ofthe near-by jungle came a horrid scream, followed by a chorus of bayingnotes something between the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf. Asthe travelers sprang to their feet, a shower of blood-red arrows, withsaw-edged points and barbs fashioned from flinty strips of palm-wood,dropped all around them. Again the wailing, terrible cry broke thesilence.
"It's the jaguar-scream--the war-cry of the Miranhas," said ProfessorDitson quietly. "They are on our trail with one of their packs of wilddogs."
Even as he spoke, from the forest far below them a band of Indians brokeinto the open. Ahead of them raced a pack of tawny brown dogs nearly aslarge as the timber-wolves of the North.
Hen unsheathed his great machete, while Jud fumbled with the holster ofhis automatic.
"No! no!" said Professor Ditson sharply. "We can stand them off betteracross the river. Hurry!"
Without a word, Hen picked up Will's limp body and raced ahead of theothers around a bend in the trail which hid them all for a moment fromthe sight of their pursuers. At the river the scientist suddenly halted,after a long look at the rapids which ran deep and swift on each side ofthe ford.
"Don't splash as you go through," he said quietly. "I'll come last."
One by one, the little party, headed by Hen with Will in his arms,waded carefully through the shallow water. As they went Jud thought thathe caught glimpses in the river of the squat, fierce forms of thedreaded piranhas, but if they were there they paid no attention to themen, who crossed with the utmost care. Just as Professor Ditson, thelast of the party to leave the bank, stepped into the stream, theresounded with startling distinctness the same wild chorus which had comefrom the jungle. Once or twice in a life-time a hunter in South Americanforests hears the fearsome screech which a jaguar gives when it isfighting for its life or its mate. It was this never-to-be-forgottensound which the Miranhas had adopted for their war-cry.
Down the slope not three hundred yards away came the hunting pack. Rightbehind them, running nearly as fast as they, raced a band of some fiftyMiranhas warriors. As the fugitives looked back it was not the nearnessof the wild-beast pack nor the fierce band of Indian warriors rushingdown upon them which struck the color from the faces of Will and Joe. Itwas the towering figure of a man with a black bar of joined eyebrowsacross his forehead and a scar on his cheek which twisted his face intoa fixed, malignant grin.
"Scar Dawson!" muttered Will.
"Scar Dawson!" echoed Joe, despairingly.
As they spoke the outlaw seemed to recognize them too, for he wavedaloft a Miranha bow which he carried, and shouted hoarsely. By the timethey reached the other bank, Will lay half-fainting in Hen's arms.
"Fellows," he whispered, "I'm all in. Hide me in the bushes here, andyou go on. There's no sense in all of you sacrificing yourselves forme."
"We stay," murmured Joe, while Hen nodded his head and Pinto fitted oneof his fatal little arrows into his blow-gun.
"Sure, we'll stay," chimed in Jud, unslinging his automatic, "an'there's seven Injuns who'll stay too unless I've forgotten how to shoot.But what in the world's the perfesser doin'?" he went on, peering outover the river.
Unheeding the tumult of howls and screeches behind him, or the rush ofthe fierce hounds and fiercer men toward him, the eminent scientist waspicking his way carefully through the ford. At the middle of the river,where the water ran deepest, he rolled up his left sleeve, and with hishunting-knife unconcernedly made a shallow gash through the skin of hislean, muscular forearm. As the blood followed the blade he let it dripinto the running water, moving forward at the same time with long, swiftstrides. Almost in a moment the river below the ford began to bubble andboil with the same rush of the fatal hordes which had so horrified Judand Will at the Lake of the Man-eaters. As Professor Ditson sprang fromthe water to the edge of the farther bank, the water clear across theriver seemed alive with piranhas. Unmoved, he turned to the rest of theparty.
"That ford is locked," he said precisely. "For three hours it can not becrossed by man or beast."
Even as he spoke, the wild-dog pack splashed into the river. As theyreached the deeper water and began to swim, the flash of hundreds ofyellow-and-white fish showed ahead of them. In an instant the waterbubbled like a caldron gleaming with myriads of razor-edged teeth. Therewas a chorus of dreadful howls as, one by one, the fierce dogs of thejungle sank below the surface, stripped skeletons almost before theirbodies reached the bottom of the river. From the farther bank came achorus of wailing cries as the war-party watched the fate of theirman-hunting pack. Then, as if at some signal, the whole band threwthemselves on their backs on the ground. Only the towering figure of thegiant outlaw remained erect.
"What's happened to those chaps?" queried Jud, much perplexed. "I'vebeen with Injuns nigh on to forty year, but I never see a war-party actthat way."
As he spoke, Professor Ditson reached the summit of the slope where therest of the party were standing, and saw the prostrate band on the otherside of the river.
"Hurry out of here!" he said sharply, racing around a bend in the trail,followed by the others.
Their retreat was none too soon. Even as they started, each of the menof their far-away pursuers braced both his feet expertly against theinside horn of his bow, and fitting a five-foot arrow on the string,pulled with all the leverage of arms and legs combined, until each arrowwas drawn nearly to its barbed point. There was a deep, vibrating twangt
hat could be heard clearly across the river, and into the sky shot aflight of roving shafts. Up and up they went until they disappeared fromsight, only to come whizzing down again from a seemingly empty sky, withsuch force and accuracy that they buried themselves deep into the groundjust where the fugitives had been a minute before.
Jud, who had lingered behind the others, had a narrow escape from beingstruck by one of the long shafts.
"We'd have all looked like porcupines if we'd stayed there thirtyseconds longer," he remarked to Joe, as he joined the rest of the party."Them Miranhas are sure the dandy shots with a bow."
"Huh!" returned Joe jealously, "that nothing. My uncle out in Akotan,where I come from, he kill a man with an arrow half a mile away, and nouse his feet either."
"That uncle of yours was some performer with a bow," returned Judcautiously. "Half a mile is good shootin' even with a rifle."
"Some performer is right," chimed in Will weakly. "I learned long ago,when Joe and I were up by Wizard Pond, that that uncle of his held aworld record in everything."
"Set me down, Hen," he went on. "I think I can do a mile or so on my ownlegs."
"From here on Pinto and I have been over this route," announcedProfessor Ditson. "Ten miles farther on is 'Sky Bridge.' If we can crossthat and cut it behind us, we're safe."
Two by two, the members of the party took turns in helping Will alongthe Trail, which soon widened into a stone-paved road.
"This is one of the Inca highways," explained the scientist. "It leadsfrom their first city clear to the edge of the jungle. Once," he wenton, "the Incas ruled an empire of over a million square miles, equal tothe whole United States east of the Mississippi River; but they neverwere able to conquer the jungle."
The road sloped up more and more steeply, and the going becameincreasingly difficult, but Professor Ditson hurried them onremorselessly.
"The Miranhas never give up a chase," he said, "and if they havesucceeded in crossing the river above or below the ford, they may evennow be hard on our heels."
Before long they were in a wilderness of bare, stern peaks whosesnow-covered summits towered high against the horizon. At times the roadzigzagged along narrow shelves cut in the faces of precipices andguarded here and there by low retaining-walls built of cut stones laidwithout mortar, but so perfectly that the blade of a knife could not bethrust between them. The air became colder, and the scientist told themthat often the temperature in these mountain-valleys would vary as muchas one hundred degrees within twenty-four hours.
As they approached the crest of a great ridge which towered above them,Jud began to find great difficulty in breathing and complained of nauseaand a feeling of suffocation.
"It's the _soroche_, the mountain-sickness," explained Professor Ditson."It will pass soon."
"I'm the one that's goin' to pass--pass out," panted Jud.
Soon he became so exhausted that, like Will, he had to be half-carriedalong the trail.
"You an' me are a fine pair to fight Injuns," he whispered to the boy,who smiled wanly in reply.
Beyond the ridge the road ran downward toward a vast gorge. From itsdark depths rose and fell at intervals the hoarse, roaring bellow of ariver rushing among the rocks a thousand feet below.
"It is Apurinac, the Great Speaker," said Pinto.
As the trail led downward again, Jud began to feel better, and beforelong he was able to walk without any help.
At length, far below them, looking like a white thread against thethreatening blackness of the canyon, they saw swinging in the wind a rudesuspension bridge of the kind which travelers had used in thesemountains ever since the days of the Incas. When Pinto, who knew thebridge well, learned that Professor Ditson intended to cross it at once,he was much disturbed.
"No one, Master," he protested, "ever crosses it except at dawn beforethe wind comes up; nor should more than one at a time pass over it."
"To-day," returned the scientist grimly, "you are going to see six mencross this bridge in the middle of the afternoon, wind or no wind; andwhat's more, they are all going to cross together." And he waved hishand toward the road along which they had come.
Against the white side of the mountain which the trail skirted showed aseries of moving black dots, while down the wind, faint and far away,came the tiger-scream of the Miranhas. They had found a way across theriver, and once more were hard on the heels of the treasure-hunters.
Along the Inca road the little party hurried at breakneck speed. At oneplace it ran between a vertical wall of rock and a dizzy precipice.Farther on it led down by rude stairs partly cut in the rock and partlybuilt out of stones. At one point it made a sudden turn with a lowparapet built around it in a semicircle to keep descending travelersfrom slipping off into the depths below from their own momentum. Oncebeyond this last danger-point, the fugitives found themselves before SkyBridge itself.
So deep was the canyon that from the river a thousand feet below thebridge seemed on a level with the clouds and to deserve well its name.It was made of two thick cables, woven out of braided withes, whichstretched nearly a hundred yards from bank to bank of the gorge. Betweenand below these ran several smaller cables, fastened to the upper two,which served as guard-rails. Sections of cane and bamboo laidtransversely across the three lower cables, and tied on by strips ofrawhide, formed the flooring, which swung four or five feet below theupper cables.
From far below came the stern roar of the Speaker, and at the bottom ofthe sunless gulf gleamed the white foam of the river as it raged againstmasses of rent and splintered stone. Over the abyss the bridge wavedback and forth in the gusts which all day long swept through the gorge.At times, when the frail structure caught the full force of the wind, itswung fully ten feet out beyond its center, hung a second, and thendropped back with a jar that threatened to snap the cables or hurl intothe abyss any human being who was crossing the bridge.
Not for all the treasure of the Incas would any one of the party haverisked the crossing. The fear of death, however, is a great incentive tobrave deeds.
"I'll go first," said Professor Ditson suddenly, "and see if it ispossible to get over. Unless we cross this bridge within the nextfifteen minutes, we're all dead men."
It showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, thesecond largest bird that flies]
Without further speaking, the scientist stepped out upon the swayingbridge and gripped the twisted cables firmly fixed in buttresses ofstone. At first he shuffled along with short, cautious steps. In frontof him the footway of bamboo strips sloped away sharply clear down tothe swaying center of the bridge. From far below, up through the mistswhich half hid the river, soared a bird the size of a pigeon. As itcircled up through a thousand feet of space, it seemed to grow and growuntil, by the time it reached the level of the bridge, rocking on mightymotionless wings, it showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, thesecond largest bird that flies. From its grim, naked head its cold eyesgazed evilly upon the man clinging to the swaying bridge, and thenturned toward the little group huddled against the side of theprecipice, as if counting them as additions to its larder of death. Asthe great vulture swept by, blotting out a stretch of sky as it passed,the wind hissed and sang through the quills of its enormous wings, tautand stiff as steel. Rocking, swaying, perfectly balanced in the rush ofair that howled down the canyon, the bird circled over the bridge, andthen, without a flap of its vast wings, dipped down into the depthsbelow until, dwindling as it went, it disappeared in the spray of theprisoned river. To the travelers, no other sight could so have plumbedthe depths that lay beneath the bridge. For a moment the scientist, sickand giddy, clung to the swaying cables which seemed to stretch tenuousas cobwebs across the sheer blackness of the abyss.
"Come back, Master," called Pinto. "No man can cross that bridge!"
"No man here will live who doesn't cross this bridge," returned theprofessor, as the wind brought again to their ears the war-cry of theMiranhas.
Bending double and clinging desperately t
o the ropes woven from toughmaguey fiber, he edged his way down the swaying slope, while the otherswatched him as if fascinated. At times the full force of the wind as itwas sucked through the long canyon swung the bridge out so far that hehad to lie flat and cling for his very life's sake. When, at last, hereached the lowest part of the curve, instead of climbing up to thesafety of the opposite shore, the scientist deliberately turned aroundand, taking advantage of every lull and pause in the sudden gusts whichbore down upon him, began the long steep, slippery climb back to thepoint from which he had started.
"He's riskin' his life twice to show us the way," said old Jud,suddenly. "Come on! I'm more ashamed to stay than I'm scared to cross."
Foot by foot, clinging desperately to the sagging, straining cables,Professor Ditson fought his way back. When at last he regained thesafety of the cliff-side, his face was white and drawn, and he wasdripping with sweat, while his hands were bleeding from the chafing ofthe ropes; but there was a compelling gleam in his eyes, and his voice,when he spoke, was as precise and level as ever.
"I have proved that it is perfectly possible to go over this bridge insafety, and I believe that the cables are strong enough to hold theweight of us all," he said. "I will go first; Hen will go last. Don'tlook down. Hang on. Watch the man ahead, keep on going, and we'll getover--just in time."
He stretched his gaunt arm toward the trail, where now the Miranha bandwas in plain sight not half a mile away!
Again he turned and started out over the bridge, which swayed and swungabove the death that roared far below. Without a word, but with teethclinched grimly, Jud tottered after him, his long gray beard blowing inthe wind. Next came Pinto, shaking with fright, but with a habit ofobedience to his master stronger than his own conviction that he wasgoing to his doom. Joe followed; and between him and Hen, who brought upthe rear, was Will. As the full force of the wind struck the swingingstructure, now loaded with their united weight, the taut cables andropes creaked and groaned ominously, while now and again some weakenedfiber would snap with a sudden report like a pistol-shot.
Down and down the first terrible incline crept the little train ofdesperate men. There were times when the bridge would swing so far outthat only by clinging and clawing desperately at the guard-rope couldthe travelers keep from being tipped into the depths below. When thathappened, each would grip the one next to him and, with linked arms andlegs, they would make a human chain which gave and swung and held likethe bridge itself. At last they reached the low-swung center of thebridge, and caught the full force of the wind, which howled down thegorge like a wolf. For a long minute they lay flat on their faces as thebridge swung forth and back like a pendulum.
As the gust passed, they heard close at hand the tiger-screech of theMiranhas rushing at headlong speed down the trail as they saw their preyonce again escaping. Up the farther slope, crouching low and grippingdesperately with twining hands and feet, the fugitives pressed on footby foot. At the worst places Will felt Hen's mighty arms holding himtight to the swinging ropes, while from ahead Joe risked his life timeand again to stretch out a helping hand to his friend.
By inches, by feet, by yards, they wormed their way up, until ProfessorDitson was able to get a firm foothold on the side of the cliff, where anarrow path had been cut in the living rock. Even as he struggled to hisfeet, the war-party dashed around the sharp curve that led to theentrance of the bridge.
With all their courage and relentless vindictiveness, the Miranha bandyet hesitated to cross where the white men had gone. As Jud and Pintojoined Professor Ditson on the little platform of rock which toweredabove the canyon, they saw their pursuers actually turn their heads awayfrom the deep that opened at their feet, after one glance along thenarrow swaying bridge by which alone it could be crossed. Then, with afierce yell, they dropped their bows and, whipping out long,narrow-bladed knives from their belts, fell like furies upon the toughwoven cables anchored among the rocks. It was Jud who first realizedthat they were trying to cut the bridge.
"Hurry for your life!" he called down to Joe, who, holding on to Willwith one hand, was slowly hauling himself up the last few feet of thesteep ascent. Even as he spoke, the taut cables began to quiver and singlike violin-strings transmitting with fatal clearness every cut andslash and chop of the destroyers at the other end. Will washalf-fainting with the strain of the crossing, which his weakened bodywas not fitted to endure long. Jud's shout seemed to pierce the mist ofunconsciousness which was slowly closing over his head, and he struggledupward with all his might.
In another minute Joe was near enough to be reached by the party on thelanding, and three pairs of sinewy arms gripped him and pulled himupward, clinging to Will as he rose. Below him, Hen, bracing both feet,heaved the boy upward with the full force of his mighty arms. Just asWill reached the refuge of the cliff, with an ominous snapping noise thebridge began to sag and drop. Hen gave a desperate spring and wound onearm around a little pinnacle of rock which stood as a hawser-post forone of the cables, while Pinto and Joe gripped his other arm in mid-air,and pulled him to safety just as the far end of the bridge swishedthrough the air under the knife-strokes of the Indians!
As, doubled by its drop, the full weight of the structure fell upon thestrained cables, they snapped like threads and cables, ropes and footwayrushed down into the abyss with a hissing roar which died away in thedim depths a thousand feet below.