The Boy Scouts On The Range Part 14

Hollow echoes of his merriment went gurgling off down the dark pa.s.sage, almost as if distant voices had taken them up and were repeating the joke over and over, till it died away in a tiny tinkle of a laugh, like the ghost of a baby's whisper.

"Ugh, I guess I won't laugh again," remarked Merritt.

"Say, Rob, how about a light?" asked Jeb Cotton suddenly.

"I've got a bit of candle here in my pocket," rejoined Rob. "I put it there the other night when Harry was developing some pictures. By the way, I wish you'd brought your camera, Harry."

"So do I. This would make a dandy flashlight in here."

The boys gazed about them admiringly, as Rob struck a match from his waterproof match-safe and lit the candle. They had penetrated fully a hundred feet into the cliff by this time, and the walls about them were marked with curious paintings and carvings, the work of the long-vanished cave-dwellers.

Under their feet was a thick, choking dust, that entered their eyes, ears and noses as they breathed, almost suffocating them. But not one of them was inclined to notice this, when there was so much to take up his attention elsewhere.

"I wonder what the cave-dwellers ate----" began Tubby, when his words were fairly taken out of his mouth by a startling occurrence.

A sudden puff of wind, chill as the breath of a tomb, blew toward them down the tunnel, and at the same instant Rob's candle was blown out. It was all the boys could do to keep from shouting aloud with alarm as they stood plunged into sudden blackness.

The next instant there came an appalling sound, an onrush like the voice of a hundred waterfalls. The wind puffed in their faces in sharp blasts, and something swept by them in the darkness with a strange, m.u.f.fled shriek.

CHAPTER X.

THE GHOST OF THE CAVE DWELLING.

"L-l-let's get out of here--_quick_!"

Tubby gasped the exclamation, as with a resounding rush the mysterious sounds swept by.

"Ouch, somebody hit me in the face!" howled Jeb Cotton suddenly.

"Me, too!" yelled Bill Simmons.

"Say, fellows," shouted Rob suddenly, as the noise lessened, "be quiet, will you, till I light a candle. I've an idea what that noise was, and it was nothing to get scared at."

"Oh, it wasn't, eh?" protested Tubby angrily. "Well, something hit me a bang on the nose."

"And me on the ear," chimed in Jeb Cotton.

"And me----" Bill Simmons was beginning, when Rob checked him.

"Let up a minute, will you, and give me a chance? All that racket was caused by nothing more than a lot of old bats."

"Cats, you mean, or flying rats," said Tubby scornfully.

"No, bats. Look here. I knocked down one."

Rob held his candle high above his head, and the astonished boys saw lying under a projecting bit of rock one of the leathern-winged cave-dwellers.

"Huh," remarked Tubby, "and I thought it was ghosts. The ghost of the cliff. The one the cow-puncher said he saw."

"I guess that ghost has leather wings and a furry body, if the truth were known," laughed Rob, as he flung the bat he had knocked down into the air, and the creature flapped heavily off toward the cave mouth.

"Yes, ghosts are----" began Merritt, when he broke off suddenly. His mouth opened to its fullest extent, and his eyes grew as round as two big marbles. "Great hookey--what's that?"

His frightened expression was mirrored on the rest of the countenances in the candle-lit circle, as a strange sound was borne to the ears of the Boy Scouts.

"It's footsteps," gasped Jeb Cotton.

"Coming this way, too," stuttered Tubby, edging back.

"Nonsense," said Rob sharply, but nevertheless loosening his revolver in its holster. "It's the wind or something."

"The funniest wind I ever heard," interrupted Tubby scornfully. "It's got feet--hark!"

Nearer and nearer came the mysterious sound. They could now hear it distinctly--a soft "phut-phut" on the dusty floor of the pa.s.sage.

"Wow-oo, I see two eyes!" yelled Tubby, suddenly taking to his heels.

His toe caught on a hidden rock, and he fell headlong in the choking dust.

Scarcely less startled than the fat boy was Rob, as he made out, glaring at them from beyond the friendly circle of light, two big green points of fire.

"Who's there?" he cried sharply.

There was no answer, but the two green globes never moved.

"Speak, or I'll fire!" cried the boy.

"A-choo-oo-o--o-o-o-o-o!"

The tense silence was shattered by a loud sneeze from Tubby, whose nostrils had become filled with the irritating dust. At the same instant an unearthly howl rang through the rocky corridors--a cry so terrible that it set Rob's heart to beating fiercely.

He pulled the trigger more by instinct than anything else, and six spurts of flame leaped from the barrel of his automatic. With a howl more ear-piercing than the first, the points of fire vanished, and there was the sound of a heavy body falling.

"Dead! whatever it is," was Rob's thought, but nevertheless he proceeded cautiously. It was well that he did so, for as he held his candle aloft, the huge, dun-colored body, which lay on the ground directly in front of him, made a convulsive spring. Rob, on the alert as he was, leaped back, and avoided it by a hair's breadth.

"A mountain lion!" cried Harry.

"That's what, and a whumper, too," exclaimed Merritt. "I guess we've laid the ghost all right. In the moonlight a light-colored creature like this would look white against the cliff face."

"I wonder if that last sneeze of mine killed it?" remarked Tubby, who had leisurely sauntered up. There was now no doubt that the great tawny creature was dead. Its final spring must have been a purely convulsive act, for Rob's bullets had pierced its skull in three places.

"Say, fellows," exclaimed Rob suddenly, "the fact that this brute was in here proves a mighty interesting fact."

"And that is, that it's dead."

"Please be quiet for two consecutive minutes, Tubby, if you can do it without injuring yourself. It means that there is another entrance to this place somewhere."