CHAPTER XXXIV HUAYCA PLAYS DECOY
"This is how the situation shapes up," Bill said, finally. "We couldwait until dark and then attract their attention to the place, aroundthe pass bend, where the ladder was: get them all there, waiting for usto come down, while we sneak down the rope out of their sight on the farside and run for it.
"The objection," he went on, "is that when they discover that we arerunning down the pass they can run after us and most likely they canovertake us."
"What we want to do," Cliff said, "if we can, is to get them somewherethat we can cut them off."
"That's talking!" Bill agreed. "But where?"
"Well, if we could have them come up here while we went down," Nickybegan. Then he shook his head for he saw that his idea was ratherimpossible.
"The way everything is laid out here," Cliff declared, "it keeps themfrom us but it keeps us from getting away. If we could just get them tocross that osier bridge over the gulf, we could cut the strands of thesupport and that would block them for good."
The bridge he referred to spanned the chasm from one side of it, wherethe pass they were above ended, to the other, where another path began.
That was the way they had gone toward Quichaka. Returning the secretway, they had gone through the bed of the chasm, with the bridge overtheir heads, to one side.
"If there was some way to get from the gulf up to the pass on the farside----" Tom said. "There must be. That would account for Whackeygetting past us to see the men who are yelling at us right now."
Bill said that there must be such a way and he took his larger revolverand set out, up the cleft, toward the steep steps. If a man had gonefrom the chasm up to and across the bridge, he would see some signs andfind a way, he declared.
The party passed the intervening time throwing stones to keep the lowerenemies interested. Had they been able to surprise the antagonists itwould have been easy to stone them away, as the Incas had no doubt donein the old days. But the men on the pass were on their guard and hadtaken refuge close under the lip of the ledge which overhung the pass atrifle. To fling stones accurately the chums would have had to look farover and invite arrows or possibly bullets if any of the men of themountain settlements carried arms. The stones were flung simply to keepthe others close under the ledge until Bill's reconnoitering trip wasfinished.
"Here he comes!" cried Nicky, just before the sun dropped behind thepeaks and sent the lower levels into a deep gloom.
"And he has found it," cried Tom. "I can tell by his face."
Bill had, indeed, found the way taken by Huayca previously. He explainedthe method to them.
"But it doesn't help us any, as far as I can see," he said. "If we wentthat way we would still have those fellows between us and safety."
But Cliff took him aside and whispered: then they came back and theentire party discussed a plan Cliff had thought out.
Huayca sullenly refused to obey when Bill shortly ordered him to getmoving. Bill, carrying out Cliff's idea, compelled Huayca, his own knifepricking the back of his neck, to go ahead of his tormenter, along thepath through the cleft.
"Keep them interested," Bill urged. "Light dry brush and throw it down.Do anything you can think of to make them sure you are up here--for halfan hour. Then--just keep still until I get back."
He drove the disgruntled and frightened Indian before him, down thesteep steps. Bill had a flashlight and was able to prevent the boundarms from doing him any injury: in fact, Huayca had enough to do,keeping ahead of the pricking point of his knife, as he clung to thebracing osiers along the steps, with just enough loose rope between hiswrists to enable him to help himself.
It would have been foolhardy to try to make Huayca climb the cliff onthe far side of the chasm, as well as to get down the other cliff to thefar end of the bridge.
Cliff's plan was otherwise arranged.
Once in the chasm, Bill forced Huayca ahead of him until they hadcrossed the deep gulf.
There, in the shelter of a clump of brush almost under the end of theosier bridge he compelled Huayca to sit down: Bill bound him securely inthat position. Then he walked a few feet away and gathered some smalltwigs and a few larger sticks. With those he made ready a fire. Once itwas ignited and began to blaze he fired his revolver twice.
That was the signal. Those on the ledge grew tense. Bill--good oldBill!--had done his part. He was racing back across the chasm toward thesteps. In an hour or a little more he would be in their midst. But--inthe meanwhile!----
The men on the pass heard the shots. They began to look around. Wherehad they come from? They knew what firearms were. But the sound had notcome from the ledge above them: indeed, the people on the ledge had beenso quiet that it might be that they had gone--if there was any way forthem to go. And there was: the mountaineers knew there was a cleft inthe walls above that ledge.
One of them ran around the bend in the pass and shouted, pointing. Theyall rushed in his direction.
Far below, and in the extreme distance of the chasm's far side, they sawa tiny fire and what might be a man sitting near it.
The ones on the ledge, then, they argued hastily, had used the passagethrough the cleft and down the old Inca steps.
They must be over the chasm, camped there, thinking they were safebecause there was no way to get at them. The men who hated them andsought their lives could not climb to the ledge and get to them throughthe cleft: but there was another way to reach them, camped there in thechasm.
Stones! Stones would reach that camp!
The men, shouting like wild things heated by the lust of the kill,snatched up hands full of large stones: several even lugged largeboulders.
It was a bad time for Huayca--or it would have been only that Bill, morekindly than the Indian would have been, had adjusted the bonds so thatstrenuous effort would loosen them after a while.
Over the bridge of swaying planks raced the exultant mountaineers withtheir missiles; and Huayca, realizing at last what the queer situationmeant to him, redoubled his efforts to loosen his hands so that he couldfree his bound feet.
Down the ladder, which they had saved and drawn up when it had been cutfree, went Tom, Nicky, Mr. Whitley and Cliff.
Two of the enemy had not reached the bridge; they turned as they saw theyouthful trio and man drop down the side of the ledge; but Cliff andTom, first down, plunged at them so menacingly in the dark that they ranout a ways on the bridge.
Mr. Whitley carried an axe, and Tom and Cliff and Nicky all had strongclaspknives.
While the men on the bridge wondered, hesitated, those far toward theother side were pelting the campfire in the chasm with their rocks,shouting and yelling so that they did not hear the warnings of theircomrades whom Nicky held off with the rifle because Mr. Whitley wasswinging the axe with steady, telling strokes.
Crunch! Smash! Crumble!
One strand of the two great cables supporting the bridge planks was cut.
Then the men saw what was happening and turned to rush back across theswaying, teetering, weakening structure.
But Tom and Cliff were hacking away the smaller twists of osier so thatsoon there was a space several feet wide where there was no support forthe planks.
Crack! Crack! Crunch! Crash!
Mr. Whitley was cutting through the osier on the other half of theswinging bridge. The more deliberate Mr. Gray had by now come down theladder and he held up a torch for them to see by.
The light served to show the men on the bridge how dangerous was theirsituation. Any minute the second strand might part and the end of thebridge would then go swinging down--down----
In terror, stumbling over one another, pushing, screaming, they made forthe far side of the bridge, which was naturally the nearer to them, forsafety.
Mr. Whitley withheld his axe until he was certain that there were nomore men on the bridge.
Crash! Two or three more blows and the bridge, weakened and strained,par
ted and went crashing down.
Between them and their enemies yawned a bridgeless chasm. Long beforethe men could get up one cliff, over and down, across the valley wherethey found the terrified Huayca hiding, up the steep stone stairway andonto the ledge, Cliff, Nicky, Tom, Mr. Whitley, Mr. Gray, and Bill--whohad come back safely, were on their way toward Cuzco.
And this time their adventures were truly over and they had plenty oftime to disguise their golden burdens, to bleach off their dye where itwould show, and to return to civilization, satisfied for the time beingthat the Mystery Boys had saved a white man from eternal captivity and,in the bargain, brought out a nice collection of golden treasure!