The Inca Emerald Part 17

"I'm the one that's goin' to pa.s.s--pa.s.s out," panted Jud.

Soon he became so exhausted that, like Will, he had to be half-carried along 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 its dark depths rose and fell at intervals the hoa.r.s.e, roaring bellow of a river 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 before long he was able to walk without any help.

At length, far below them, looking like a white thread against the threatening blackness of the canon, they saw swinging in the wind a rude suspension bridge of the kind which travelers had used in these mountains ever since the days of the Incas. When Pinto, who knew the bridge 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 before the wind comes up; nor should more than one at a time pa.s.s over it."

"To-day," returned the scientist grimly, "you are going to see six men cross this bridge in the middle of the afternoon, wind or no wind; and what's more, they are all going to cross together." And he waved his hand toward the road along which they had come.

Against the white side of the mountain which the trail skirted showed a series 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 the river, and once more were hard on the heels of the treasure-hunters.

Along the Inca road the little party hurried at breakneck speed. At one place 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 partly built out of stones. At one point it made a sudden turn with a low parapet built around it in a semicircle to keep descending travelers from slipping off into the depths below from their own momentum. Once beyond this last danger-point, the fugitives found themselves before Sky Bridge itself.

So deep was the canon that from the river a thousand feet below the bridge 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, which stretched nearly a hundred yards from bank to bank of the gorge. Between and below these ran several smaller cables, fastened to the upper two, which served as guard-rails. Sections of cane and bamboo laid transversely across the three lower cables, and tied on by strips of rawhide, formed the flooring, which swung four or five feet below the upper cables.

From far below came the stern roar of the Speaker, and at the bottom of the sunless gulf gleamed the white foam of the river as it raged against ma.s.ses of rent and splintered stone. Over the abyss the bridge waved back 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, it swung fully ten feet out beyond its center, hung a second, and then dropped back with a jar that threatened to snap the cables or hurl into the abyss any human being who was crossing the bridge.

Not for all the treasure of the Incas would any one of the party have risked the crossing. The fear of death, however, is a great incentive to brave deeds.

"I'll go first," said Professor Ditson suddenly, "and see if it is possible to get over. Unless we cross this bridge within the next fifteen minutes, we're all dead men."

[Ill.u.s.tration: It showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, the second largest bird that flies]

Without further speaking, the scientist stepped out upon the swaying bridge and gripped the twisted cables firmly fixed in b.u.t.tresses of stone. At first he shuffled along with short, cautious steps. In front of him the footway of bamboo strips sloped away sharply clear down to the swaying center of the bridge. From far below, up through the mists which half hid the river, soared a bird the size of a pigeon. As it circled up through a thousand feet of s.p.a.ce, it seemed to grow and grow until, by the time it reached the level of the bridge, rocking on mighty motionless wings, it showed itself as the great condor of the Andes, the second largest bird that flies. From its grim, naked head its cold eyes gazed evilly upon the man clinging to the swaying bridge, and then turned toward the little group huddled against the side of the precipice, as if counting them as additions to its larder of death. As the great vulture swept by, blotting out a stretch of sky as it pa.s.sed, the wind hissed and sang through the quills of its enormous wings, taut and stiff as steel. Rocking, swaying, perfectly balanced in the rush of air that howled down the canon, the bird circled over the bridge, and then, without a flap of its vast wings, dipped down into the depths below until, dwindling as it went, it disappeared in the spray of the prisoned river. To the travelers, no other sight could so have plumbed the depths that lay beneath the bridge. For a moment the scientist, sick and giddy, clung to the swaying cables which seemed to stretch tenuous as 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 the professor, as the wind brought again to their ears the war-cry of the Miranhas.

Bending double and clinging desperately to the ropes woven from tough maguey fiber, he edged his way down the swaying slope, while the others watched him as if fascinated. At times the full force of the wind as it was sucked through the long canon swung the bridge out so far that he had to lie flat and cling for his very life's sake. When, at last, he reached the lowest part of the curve, instead of climbing up to the safety of the opposite sh.o.r.e, the scientist deliberately turned around and, taking advantage of every lull and pause in the sudden gusts which bore down upon him, began the long steep, slippery climb back to the point 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 the safety of the cliff-side, his face was white and drawn, and he was dripping with sweat, while his hands were bleeding from the chafing of the 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 in safety, and I believe that the cables are strong enough to hold the weight of us all," he said. "I will go first; Hen will go last. Don't look down. Hang on. Watch the man ahead, keep on going, and we'll get over--just in time."

He stretched his gaunt arm toward the trail, where now the Miranha band was in plain sight not half a mile away!

Again he turned and started out over the bridge, which swayed and swung above the death that roared far below. Without a word, but with teeth clinched grimly, Jud tottered after him, his long gray beard blowing in the wind. Next came Pinto, shaking with fright, but with a habit of obedience to his master stronger than his own conviction that he was going to his doom. Joe followed; and between him and Hen, who brought up the rear, was Will. As the full force of the wind struck the swinging structure, now loaded with their united weight, the taut cables and ropes creaked and groaned ominously, while now and again some weakened fiber would snap with a sudden report like a pistol-shot.

Down and down the first terrible incline crept the little train of desperate men. There were times when the bridge would swing so far out that only by clinging and clawing desperately at the guard-rope could the travelers keep from being tipped into the depths below. When that happened, each would grip the one next to him and, with linked arms and legs, they would make a human chain which gave and swung and held like the bridge itself. At last they reached the low-swung center of the bridge, and caught the full force of the wind, which howled down the gorge like a wolf. For a long minute they lay flat on their faces as the bridge swung forth and back like a pendulum.

As the gust pa.s.sed, they heard close at hand the tiger-screech of the Miranhas rushing at headlong speed down the trail as they saw their prey once again escaping. Up the farther slope, crouching low and gripping desperately with twining hands and feet, the fugitives pressed on foot by foot. At the worst places Will felt Hen's mighty arms holding him tight to the swinging ropes, while from ahead Joe risked his life time and again to stretch out a helping hand to his friend.

By inches, by feet, by yards, they wormed their way up, until Professor Ditson was able to get a firm foothold on the side of the cliff, where a narrow path had been cut in the living rock. Even as he struggled to his feet, the war-party dashed around the sharp curve that led to the entrance of the bridge.

With all their courage and relentless vindictiveness, the Miranha band yet hesitated to cross where the white men had gone. As Jud and Pinto joined Professor Ditson on the little platform of rock which towered above the canon, they saw their pursuers actually turn their heads away from the deep that opened at their feet, after one glance along the narrow swaying bridge by which alone it could be crossed. Then, with a fierce yell, they dropped their bows and, whipping out long, narrow-bladed knives from their belts, fell like furies upon the tough woven cables anch.o.r.ed among the rocks. It was Jud who first realized that they were trying to cut the bridge.

"Hurry for your life!" he called down to Joe, who, holding on to Will with one hand, was slowly hauling himself up the last few feet of the steep ascent. Even as he spoke, the taut cables began to quiver and sing like violin-strings transmitting with fatal clearness every cut and slash and chop of the destroyers at the other end. Will was half-fainting with the strain of the crossing, which his weakened body was not fitted to endure long. Jud's shout seemed to pierce the mist of unconsciousness which was slowly closing over his head, and he struggled upward with all his might.

In another minute Joe was near enough to be reached by the party on the landing, and three pairs of sinewy arms gripped him and pulled him upward, 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 as Will reached the refuge of the cliff, with an ominous snapping noise the bridge began to sag and drop. Hen gave a desperate spring and wound one arm around a little pinnacle of rock which stood as a hawser-post for one 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 swished through the air under the knife-strokes of the Indians!

As, doubled by its drop, the full weight of the structure fell upon the strained cables, they snapped like threads and cables, ropes and footway rushed down into the abyss with a hissing roar which died away in the dim depths a thousand feet below.

CHAPTER XI

THE LOST CITY

Hardly had the rumble of the falling bridge pa.s.sed when Jud slipped his arm about Will's shoulders and half-led half-dragged the fainting boy around the corner of a great rock.

"Those yellin' devils shoot too straight for us to take any chances," he remarked briefly.

The same idea had come to the rest of the party, and they followed hard on the old trapper's heels. Here Professor Ditson again took the lead.

"It'll take them some time to get across that river, now the bridge is down, if they follow us," he observed with much satisfaction. "We ought to reach Machu Pichu to-day and Yuca Valley in two days more. There we'll be safe."

"What's Machu Pichu, Chief?" questioned Jud, using this t.i.tle of respect for the first time; for the professor's behavior at the bridge had made an abiding impression on the old man's mind. "It was the first city that the people of the Incas built," explained Professor Ditson.

"When the Inca clan first led their followers into these mountain valleys, they were attacked by the forest-dwellers and driven back into the mountains. There they built an impregnable city called Machu Pichu.

From there they spread out until they ruled half the continent. Only the forests and the wild tribes that infested them they never conquered. At the height of the Inca Empire," went on the scientist, "Machu Pichu became a sacred city inhabited mostly by the priests. After the Spanish Conquest it was lost for centuries to white men until I discovered it a few years ago."

"Where do we go from Yuca?" questioned Jud again.

"Follow the map to Eldorado," returned the Professor, striding along the path like an ostrich.

Beyond the rock, and out of sight of the canon, gaped the mouth of a tunnel fully three hundred yards in length. Narrow slits had been chiseled through the face of the precipice for light and air, and although cut out of the living rock with only tools of hardened bronze by the subjects or captives of forgotten Incas, it ran as straight and true as the tunnels of to-day drilled by modern machinery under the supervision of skilled engineers. Through the slits the adventurers caught glimpses of the towering peak down which they had come, but there was no sign of their pursuers. In a moment they had vanished from the naked rock-face against which they had swarmed.

Joe stared long through one of the window-slits, while below sounded the hoa.r.s.e, sullen voice of the hidden river.

"I not like their going so soon," he confided at last to Jud. "Perhaps that Dawson have another secret way down the mountain, as he did at Wizard Pond."

"It's not likely," returned Professor Ditson, who had overheard him.