Finally he felt the bonds loosening slightly.
Some of the rope strands were cut through.
“It won’t be long now,” Jack thought,
gladly.
Again and again on the jagged edge of the glass knife
did he rub the cords, and finally, with a sudden spreading
apart of his hands, he found he could break the remaining
strands.
His hands were free!
Jack’s heart beat high with hope now. He
waited a few minutes to let the slackened circulation
of blood take up its work. Then it was the work
of but an instant, with the same piece of glass that
had served him so well, to sever the ropes about his
legs. But when Jack tried to stand up he nearly
toppled over, so weak was he, and so numb were his
legs. They had gone to sleep from the lack of
circulation of the blood.
But in a little while he was all right, and could
walk about.
“Now, the question is, what’s the best
thing to do?” he asked himself. “Make
for home, as soon as I can, and give the alarm,”
he reasoned. “I’ve got to give the
alarm, if Sunger hasn’t already gotten there
and given it for me.”
Off on the dark and lonely trail he started.
It was quite different from traveling over it on the
back of his speedy pony. But it was something
to be free, and free sooner than the robbers had any
idea he would be.
“I may even be able to catch up to them, and
trace which way they go,” Jack thought.
He walked on for nearly an hour, when he heard the
trot of a number of Horses some distance ahead of
him. Jack halted and listened intently.
“I wonder if those are the hold-up men coming
back, to make sure I’m still tied up, or if
it’s my friends?” thought Jack. “I
can’t afford to take a chance. I’ll
hide in the bushes until I see who they are.”
He knew every inch of the trail. Near the spot
where he was, was a hole in the side of the hill where
some badly directed man had once started to dig a
gold mine. He had not gone far before he discovered
that iron pyrites was the only “gold”
in that locality. The hole was never filled up,
and was now almost hidden from sight by a heavy growth
of underbrush.
“That’s the place for me,” Jack
mused. A few strides took him to it, and he stepped
in to await, in concealment, the passage of the oncoming
horsemen.
Something soft and yielding came in contact with Jack’s
foot. He started, thinking he must have stepped
on some sleeping beast. But there came no outcry,
which would have followed in that case.
“It can’t be dead leaves,” mused
the lad, “it doesn’t feel that way.
What—”
He stooped down and felt with his hands. A thrill
ran through him.
“The mail pouches!” he exclaimed in a
hoarse whisper. “The mail pouches the robbers
took from me! They hid them here, and I’ve
found them! What luck!”
DUMMY LETTERS
