Bare Hands

Dan slipped past two blanketed figures snoring up at the stars, skirted the glow of a blazing fire, and tried to get his bearings.

The horses were feeding together up on a plateau. From time to time he could hear the snorts of the animals. There was a strong guard watching them. The dictator knew too well the advantage his mounts gave him. Playing the game of banditry that he was carrying on, swift mobility of troops was all that enabled him to hold out.

Dan groaned. He must have horses, and yet the getting of horses would be the most difficult part of his work. He picked his way through the fires. A tent glowed ahead. The oil lamp within showed distorted shadows on the canvas.

A sentry was silhouetted against the glow, standing stoically, his rifle at his side.

Dan advanced toward the tent.

Some subtle sense warned Dan in time of the horseman that was coming from the rear. He threw himself down amid a knot of blanketed sleepers.

The rider picked his way between the fires, peering to right and left. A pistol showed in his hand.

“I saw him walking,” he muttered as he went by, talking to himself in low tones. Evidently he had seen Dan’s great figure against the glow of the tent and had come to investigate.

Dan lay still for several seconds. One of the sleepers flung out an arm, and it touched Dan’s body, but the sleeper failed to awake.

Dan noticed that the arms were stacked some little distance to one side and that a crouching figure was before them. Much as Dan wanted a weapon, he dared not risk alarming the camp.

At length he rolled to his stomach, crawled along on all fours, then stood erect.

He stood less chance of detection walking upright than in crawling. Occasionally men came and went through the camp. The sentries challenged them, but the others slept on or let them pass. A crawling man meant menace. A walker would presumably be one of the army.

And then Dan came within earshot of the tent, moving so that he was at the back, away from the sentry who guarded the flap.

“I feel that it is time for my daughter to retire, general,” came the tired tones of Standish.

“Not yet, not yet,” purred Ayala.

Dan could see the squat shadow cast by the general at the head of the table.

“Where are our two companions?” asked Standish casually. His voice showed that he hoped they had escaped; that he asked the question as a matter of form.

“Where are you going?” said Ayala.

Chapter V “The Devil of the Hands.”

What followed came too rapidly. Harder had no chance to interfere.

For a moment he caught a silhouette of the dagger as it was poised over the back of Robert Standish’s stool. Then there sounded a blow, the thud of a heavy object slumping to the ground, the shriek of a girl, and the laugh of a sentry.

Evidently the man on guard had been listening for that thud.

Upon the white canvas there showed a mass of struggling shadows. Once more there was the scream of the girl, and then men tramped upon the floor of the tent.

“Take him away,” said Huerta Hidalgo Martinez, and his voice was thick.

The men left the tent.

“And now I will leave you,” said Juan Ayala, his voice purring, the words in English.

The tent flap dropped, and there were two shadows facing each other. The girl’s profile showed with startling clarity, delicate, sensitive, frozen with horror.

The shadow of Huerta Hidalgo Martinez was more distorted by the light and the slope of the tent. He looked much like a huge black spider moving slowly but very surely indeed toward his prey.

Dan Harder fancied that other eyes than his were watching the shadows on the canvas. He prayed the girl would have sense enough to strike the light from the table. Dan advanced, his great hands spread before him.

The Wolf sprang forward. The girl upset the table, either consciously or accidentally. From within sounded little struggle noises.

Dan Harder pinched the canvas between thumb and forefinger. His great wrists snapped back and down and a long rent ripped in the back of the tent.

Harder crawled through. His hand rested for a moment upon the bare arm of the girl and then slipped along the smooth flesh to the coarse neck of Huerta Hidalgo Martinez.

“Eh?” grunted the dictator. “Who—”

He never finished.

For a few moments there was the sound of struggling feet beating a tattoo upon the floor.

Outside the guard laughed again.

The girl’s hands moved over the bulky form, rested for a moment upon the backs of Dan Harder’s hands.

“You!” she whispered.

“Yes,” said Dan Harder.

He hoped she would not realize just what those hands were doing.

The tattoo of the fluttering feet died away and all was silence.

“This way,” whispered Dan.

He led her from the tent, crawling through the rent he had torn in the back. The form of the dictator lay still. His feet had ceased their rapping.

Outside the sentry had stopped laughing. He was bent forward, listening.

“Quick, this way. There’s a horse over by that tent.”

“It’s Ayala’s horse,” she said.

They ran swiftly.