The Rover Boys in the Jungle Part 35

"Dun shoot him on sight," suggested Aleck.

"You shall not touch me!" said the former teacher with a s.h.i.+ver.

"Chester--Rand--will you not aid me against this--er--savage young brute?"

"Don't you call d.i.c.k a brute," put in Sam.

"If there is any brute here it is you, and everyone in our party will back up what I say."

"Mr. Crabtree, I have nothing to say in this matter," said d.i.c.k Chester. "It would seem that your attack on Rover was a most atrocious one, and out here you will have to take what punishment comes."

"But you will help me, won't you, Rand?" pleaded the former teacher, nervously.

"No, I shall stand by Chester," answered Rand.

"And will you, too, see me humiliated?" asked Crabtree, turning to the other Yale students. "I, the head of your expedition into equatorial Africa!"

"Mr. Crabtree, we may as well come to an understanding," said one of the students, a heavyset young man named Sanders. "We hired you to do certain work for us, and we paid you well for that work.

Since we left America you have found fault with nearly everything, and in a good many instances which I need not recall just now you have not done as you agreed. You are not the learned scientist you represented yourself to be--instead, if we are to believe our newly made friends here, you are a pretender, a big sham, and a brute in the bargain. This being so, we intend to dispense with your services from this day forth. We will pay you what is coming to you, give you your share of our outfit, and then you can go your way and we will go ours. We absolutely want nothing more to do with you."

This long speech on Sanders' part was delivered amid a deathlike silence. As the student went on, Josiah Crabtree bit his lip until the blood came. Once his baneful eyes fairly flashed fire at Sanders and then at d.i.c.k Rover, but then they fell to the ground.

"And so you--ahem--throw me off," he said, drawing a long breath. "Very well. But I demand all that is coming to me."

"You shall have every cent."

"And a complete outfit, so that I can make my way back to the coast."

"All that is coming to you--no more and no less," said Sanders firmly.

"But he shan't go without that thras.h.i.+ng!" cried d.i.c.k, and catching up a long whip he had had Cujo cut for him he leaped upon Josiah Crabtree and brought down the lash with stinging effect across the former teacher's face, leaving a livid mark that Crabtree was doomed to wear to the day of his death. "There you are! And there is another for the way you treated Stanhope, and another for what you did to Dora, and one for Tom, and another for Sam, and another--"

"Oh! oh! let up! The boy will kill me!" shrieked Crabtree, trying to run away. "Don't--I will be cut to pieces! Don't! don't!"

And as the lash came down over his head, neck, and shoulders, he danced madly around in pain. At last he broke for cover and disappeared, not to show himself again until morning, when he called Chester to him, asked for and received, what was coming to him, and departed, vowing vengeance on the Rovers and all of the others.

"He will remember you for that, d.i.c.k," said Sam, when the affair was over. "He will be your enemy for life."

"Let him be--I am not afraid of him," responded the elder brother.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE JOURNEY TO THE MOUNTAIN

By noon of the day following the Rover expedition was on its way to the mountain said to be so rich in gold. The students from Yale went with them.

"It's like a romance, this search after your father," said Chester to d.i.c.k. "I hope you find him. You can rest a.s.sured that our party will do all we can for you. Specimen hunting is all well enough, but man hunting is far more interesting."

"I would like to go on a regular hunt for big game some day," said Tom. He had already mentioned Mortimer Blaze to the Yale students.

"Yes, that's nice--if you are a crack shot, like Sanders. He can knock the spots from a playing card at a hundred yards."

"Maybe he's a Western boy," laughed Sam.

"He is. His father owns a big cattle ranch there, and Sanders learned to shoot while rounding up cattle. He's a tip-top fellow."

They had pa.s.sed over a small plain and were now working along a series of rough rocks overgrown with scrub brush and creeping vines full of thorns. The thorns stuck everybody but Cujo, who knew exactly how to avoid them.

"Ise dun got scratched in 'steen thousand places," groaned Aleck.

"Dis am worse dan a bramble bush twice ober, by golly!"

For two days the united expeditions kept on their way up the mountain side, which sloped gradually at its base, the steeper portion still being several days' journey distant.

During these days they shot several wild animals including a beautiful antelope, while Sam caught a monkey. But the monkey bit the boy in the shoulder, and Sam was glad enough to get rid of the mischievous creature.

On the afternoon of the second day Cujo, who was slightly in advance of the others, called a halt.

"Two men ahead ob us, up um mountain," he said. "Cujo Vink one of dern King Susko."

"I hope it is!" cried d.i.c.k quickly.

The discovery was talked over for a few minutes, and it was decided that Cujo should go ahead, accompanied by Randolph Rover and d.i.c.k. The others were to remain on guard for anything which might turn up.

d.i.c.k felt his heart beat rapidly as he advanced with his uncle and the African guide through the tangle of thorns and over the rough rocks. He felt that by getting closer to King Susko, he was also getting closer to the mystery which surrounded his father's disappearance.

"Dar him am!" whispered Cujo, presently. "See, da is gwine up into a big hole in de side ob de mountain?"

"Can you make out if it is Susko or not?"

"Not fo' certain, Ma.s.sah d.i.c.k. But him belong to de Burnwo tribe, an' de udder man too."

"If they are all alone it will be an easy matter to capture them,"

said Randolph Rover. "All told, we are twelve to two."

"They have disappeared into the cave." Cried d.i.c.k a minute later.

"Come on, and we'll soon know something worth knowing, I feel certain of it."

Cujo now asked that he be allowed to proceed alone, to make certain that no others of the Burnwo tribe were in the vicinity.

"We must be werry careful," he said. "Burnwos kill eberybody wot da find around here if not dare people."

"Evidently they want to keep the whole mountain of gold to themselves," observed d.i.c.k. "All right, Cujo, do as you think best--I know we can rely upon you."

After this they proceeded with more care than ever-along a rocky edge covered with loose stones. To one side was the mountain, to the other a sheer descent of several hundred feet, and the footpath was not over a yard wide.

"A tumble here would be a serious matter," said Randolph Rover.

"Take good care, d.i.c.k, that you don't step on a rolling stone."