Part 32 (1/2)

He fell back with a crash.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FOUR-UP FOR HELP

Bound and helpless, Jerkline Jo Modock lay on the ground and listened to the sounds of the battle raging around her. She knew that her hero from Wild-cat Hill had come with his terrorizing panther scream, and she heard curses and thudding clubs, then popping revolver shots.

She was struggling desperately to free herself of her bonds, but she only wearied herself and accomplished nothing. With her teeth she chewed at the cloth that covered her face, trying to draw it down below her eyes, so that she could at least see; but her efforts here proved futile, too. Then she began twisting her head from side to side and hunching her shoulders, which she found she could move, in an effort to loosen the knot at the back of her head, or to sc.r.a.pe the cloth away.

This last in time she accomplished, but it was long after all sounds of the conflict had ceased.

As the cloth came loose she moved it along by sticking out her tongue and working it from side to side, at the same time tossing her head about. At last it slipped off, and, by raising her head, she gazed about through the dark, wet trees.

She had heard the thud of horses' hoofs, but now not a horse was to be seen. Fifty feet from her, perhaps, lay the silent form of Hiram Hooker, flat on his back. No other human being save herself and Hiram seemed to be in all that dripping wilderness.

Time and again she called to the man to whom she had given her heart, but Hiram's lips remained motionless. A great fear clutched at her.

Hiram was dead.

She fought down her terror, the horror of it all, and sought desperately for a way to release herself. She was bound round and round until she was so stiff that even to roll over and over on the ground was impossible, as she could get no purchase whatever for her strong, tough muscles. She began striving to bend her knees, and in this, as the bonds gradually changed position and gave a little, she was eventually successful. Once she had a start in this tiresome process, she gained more and more, and finally she could move her legs from their straight position.

She rested then, and when she began squirming again found that she was able to flop over on her side.

In this new position she looked about over the ground for something to help her, and close at hand she saw the dull gleam of steel.

As yet she had not the remotest idea of why she had been kidnaped; nor had she seen any of the persons who had perpetrated the act. Not a word had been spoken to her or in her presence before the fight. She had heard the man yelling about ”the paper,” though, toward the close of the battle, but no other words throughout the entire ordeal.

The blade that showed its dull steel against the soggy brown pine needles lay five feet beyond her reach. But now she could roll to it, and began to do so, flopping along like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

She rested when her face was close to it, and began to study how she might make use of it.

She might be able to take it in her teeth, but doubted if she could reach that part of the rope about her shoulders, even then. If it was a dagger, she could not think how she could utilize it, as it probably would have no cutting edge. If it was a pocketknife, it doubtless would be dull, as pocketknives usually are, and therefore useless.

With any pressure that she might be able to command, a keen cutting edge would be necessary to free her from the coils of the lariat.

By now she had regained her strength, and once more began wriggling and worming until her eyes were close to the blade, half hidden by pine needles. Then she realized with surprise and a thrill of hope that the object was a razor.

How such a tool came to be dropped by her a.s.sailants was more than she could fathom. She did not try. Working her face closer and closer to the razor she took the end of the handle between her teeth, and, twisting her head from side to side, finally managed to close the blade without cutting herself by pressing it against the ground.

Then she rolled so that her face was directly over it, and took both handle and blade in her mouth, by the middle. Her brain had been active through these clumsy maneuvers; she had a plan.

Now for a tree from which suckers were growing close to the ground.

The pines were hopeless in this respect, but off a way she saw the naked branches of a black oak, and toward it she rolled, the closed razor in her mouth.

It was a long, tiresome trip, and when she reached the tree there was not a sucker growing from it. She saw another black oak close at hand, and continued her flopping, seallike progress, toward it.

Here, to her unbounded delight, slender suckers grew up from an exposed root. She released the razor and chewed upon one of them until she had browsed it down to a leafless stub four inches high.

Then, working with her teeth and tongue and straining every muscle in her neck, she contrived, at the risk of slas.h.i.+ng her face, to insert the stump of the sucker between the two halves of the razor handle.