Dick Merriwell's Pranks Part 48

Both d.i.c.k and Brad started toward this tent, but immediately the Texan was stopped, while the chief informed him that he was not to enter.

"If there's any trouble, pard," said Buckhart, "just raise the war cry.

I'll try to join you."

d.i.c.k nodded and walked into the tent, the flap of which he was compelled to lift.

A single person occupied the tent. He was sitting on a mat at the rear, smoking a cigarette. His garments were Turkish and there was a fez on his head. About him there was something familiar.

A muttered exclamation of surprise rose to d.i.c.k's lips. Dropping the tent flap behind him, he stepped quickly forward. As he did so the cigarette smoker lifted his head, and young Merriwell was face to face with Miguel Bunol!

CHAPTER XXIII-THE FOUNT OF FURY

"You?" exclaimed d.i.c.k, in astonishment.

Bunol inhaled a deep whiff of smoke, permitted it to escape in a thin, blue cloud, and smiled triumphantly.

"As you see," he said insolently.

"Here?" gasped the American boy.

"Here," nodded the Spaniard.

"I don't understand it!"

"I didn't think you would."

d.i.c.k's hands were clenched and his breast heaving. He stood staring at his malignant and persistent enemy, his heart overflowing with anger.

Bunol was languidly triumphant, his contemptuous glance an irritating insult, his triumphant smile like a stinging blur in the face of the duped lad.

"Fooled!" muttered d.i.c.k bitterly.

"Completely," nodded Bunol.

He was enjoying his triumph to the fullest. He felt that this was his hour, and he meant to make the most of it.

It was a moment when a weak boy in d.i.c.k's place would have collapsed.

d.i.c.k did not. Although astonished and dismayed for the moment, he showed no sign of weakness.

Bunol laughed harshly.

"You have pretty good nerves," he admitted; "but I think you do not yet understand the situation. Look, Merriwell, you are in my power!"

"Where do you obtain the power?"

"I have it. You left me tied and gagged in Damascus, while you made good your escape. Only for the uproar in the hotel you would not have escaped. I beat against that closet door, but no one heard me for a very long time. I was in there hours. It seemed days. I suffered. My jaws ached, I was suffocated, I nearly perished. When they did find me and pull me out the exhaustion so overcame me that I could not talk. I tried to tell them how you had escaped, but my senses fled. Not until the following morning could I tell. Then it was too late."

"Which was our good luck," said d.i.c.k quietly.

"I had heard enough while in that closet to know something of the course you might pursue. I resolved to follow you. I found a Bedouin chief, Ali Beha, who knew the country about for hundreds of miles. I paid him well to aid me in finding you. He is chief over many men, and all the country was scoured in search of you. Finally we learned that you were with a camel train bound to the south. Then we located the train. Ali Beha went for you, while I waited here until he should bring you to me. I knew you expected to hear from the friends from whom you had become separated, so I told him to say a friend had sent for you, but to mention no names.

You were fooled with ease the greatest, and now I have you-I have you!"

Again Bunol laughed.

"You are surely the most persistent rascal in the world," said d.i.c.k.

"Perhaps so. Many times you have thought me crushed, but each time I rose again."

"You are sure to come to some bad end in time."

"But you will not live to know about that."

"I presume you mean to murder us?"

"Oh, not with my own hands! I would not take so much trouble. But I shall see you suffer-I shall hear you whimper and beg!"

"You think you will."

"I know. I have bought these dirty Arabs, and they are ready to do my bidding. I shall take great pleasure in having you stripped and whipped until your back is cut into ribbons. This before I bid you a last farewell and return to look for Nadia Budthorne, who shall become mine."

"So that is the revenge you have planned. I thought--"

"You thought-what? That I meant to have you carried back to Damascus?"

"I fancied you might."

"Ha, ha! You do not know me. I shall take no chances that my revenge may miscarry. Were you taken back to Damascus, you would appeal to the American consul, and he might save you, for, though you were present when Hafsa Pasha was slain, I know you well enough to know you took no part in that. You haven't the blood in you to kill a man outright!"

The Spaniard uttered these final words with a sneer.

"Do you think so?" said d.i.c.k, and Bunol failed to note the deadly gleam in the dark eyes of the trapped boy.

"I know it," nodded Miguel. "So I shall give you no chance to escape.

You shall meet a fate worse than death. After I have seen you cut up with whips, I shall leave you to that fate. Do you not suspect what it is?"

"No."

"Then I will tell you. These Bedouins are men who deal in slaves. You will be taken from Syria into Arabia and sold as a slave to black men.

There can be no escape. You will become a beast of burden. All day long you will labor like a camel beneath the scorching sun of Arabia, driven by black men, who will beat you when you falter. Your soft and tender hands will become hardened and calloused. Your fine shoulders will become stooped and your back bent. Your rounded, muscular body will grow thin and emaciated. But the distress of body that must suffer will not compare with your distress of mind. Think of it!

"Think of yourself, a wretched and hopeless slave, lost in the desert, weary and footsore, trying to sleep at night, but haunted with dreams of your home far across the ocean. You will dream of those days when you were a leader at school; when you were triumphant on the football field or the diamond; when you were lifted on the shoulders of your shouting companions and carried aloft in triumph. Then you will 'wake to realize your pitiful state and know that never again can you look on the faces of those comrades and friends, but that you must go on through the wretched days of your wretched life, a thing to be beaten, scoffed at, spit on, and perhaps finally cut to death with whips. How like you the revenge I have planned? Isn't it a fine thing, indeed?"

d.i.c.k had grown gray and rigid as the venomous Spaniard painted the picture.