"Can she!" growled Kilgore, with derisive vehemence. "You let her alone for that."

"Yes, yes, let me alone for that!"

"We must get back to stand by Venner. That Chick Carter is nearly as tough a customer as this fellow."

"I guess you'll find that that's no dream," said Nick to himself, as the ruffians bound him to the chair mentioned.

Cervera was laughing and capering around as if about to have a fit--yet her laugh had a terrible and chilling ring.

"Oh, yes, I'll guard him, Dave," she shrilly cried, with a frightful menace in her strained voice. "_Caramba_, yes! let me alone for that."

"So I do," snarled Kilgore.

"Knot the line fast, Matt--make sure of that," the woman fiercely added.

"Yes, I'll keep him quiet--never doubt that, boys! He shall be like a baby taking milk. Perdition! but you shall have a sweet time, Mr. Nick, alone here with Sanetta Cervera!"

Kilgore paid but little attention to any of this, and only now and then bestowed a glance upon the vicious woman.

Within a minute after their arrival at the plant, the gang had Nick securely bound to a common wooden chair, when they condescended to remove the gag from his mouth.

"He may shout himself hoa.r.s.e here, if he likes," growled Kilgore. "There will be none to hear him."

Then he hurried Pylotte and Matt Stall back to the Venner house, to land Chick Carter.

Left alone with Nick, Cervera darted to the stone door in the solid wall, and secured it within.

There was murder in her glittering eyes when she shot the heavy bolts into their iron sockets.

CHAPTER XX.

THE BOOT ON THE OTHER LEG.

In the heat of action and excitement ten minutes are as nothing.

The time seems longer, however, when one sits waiting in a motionless carriage, enveloped in the gloom of night, with grim distrust and uncertainty acting like spurs in the sides of one's impatience.

Before five minutes had fairly pa.s.sed, after Nick's departure, Spotty Dalton had suffered his misgivings to the very limit of his endurance.

Chick sat mentally counting the pa.s.sing seconds, then scoring each departed minute with his fingers, of which he had exhausted four and a thumb, the entire complement of one hand; and all the while his eyes were riveted with intense vigilance upon the growling ruffian on the seat above him.

Had Dalton ventured so much as a move to leave his perch, Chick would have been after him like a terrier after a rat.

At the end of five minutes, however, Dalton made a preliminary move. He hitched the reins around the whipstock, then stared for a second or two toward Venner's house, fifty yards away through the surrounding park.

Then he suddenly swung round on his seat, and growled ferociously at Chick, at the same time signifying with gestures the communication he imagined would not be verbally understood:

"See here, you swarthy-faced snake fiend, I'm bound up yonder, to see what's going on! You sit where you are, d'ye hear, and I'll be back in a jiffy, if things are all right! If they're not, ---- you, I'll be back just the same--with a gun!"

As if moved by a wish to understand him, Chick arose in the body of the carriage while Dalton was thus declaring himself. He heard and understood, all right, and it necessitated his getting in his work a little earlier than was planned. For Chick would take no such chances as this that Nick's operations in the house would be interfered with.

As the last word left Dalton's lips, the arm of the detective shot out through the darkness, and closed with the grip of a vise around the ruffian's neck, throttling him to silence.

"With a gun, eh?" Chick fiercely muttered, yanking Dalton backward into the body of the carriage. "You open your lips again for so much as a whisper, and I'll close them with six inches of cold steel."

In the glare of a distant lightning flash, Dalton, though struggling furiously, caught the gleam of a polished blade at his throat, and a glimpse of the flaming eyes in the face above him.

He shrank, gasping for breath, as the truth dawned upon him; and then the voice of another sounded close beside the open carriage.

"Want any help, Chick?"

Nick's youthful a.s.sistant, to whom a wire had been sent from the house of the snake charmer, had appeared like an apparition out of the roadside gloom.

"Ah! you're here, Patsy!" muttered Chick. "Yes. Clap a gag into this cur's mouth. We'll choke off his pipes first of all."

Dalton uttered a vicious growl, then felt the point of the knife pierce the skin at his throat, and he wisely relapsed into silence.

For Patsy to fish out a gag, and bind it securely in the scoundrel's mouth, was the work of a few moments only.

Then Chick jerked Dalton up from the rear cushion and out into the road, in far less time than is taken to record it.

"Off with his coat and hat, Patsy," he hurriedly commanded. "Now the false beard, my lad. Now get into them yourself, as quickly as you can."

"I'm all in, Chick," chuckled Patsy, working like a trooper.

"Got all the traps with you?"

"Sure!"

"Clap the bracelets on him, then. Now give me a second pair, and a strip of line. That's the stuff."

"Oh, I brought the whole shooting match," laughed Patsy.

"Good for you! Now mount to the box, and leave this dog to me. I'll return in half a minute."

Patsy climbed up to the seat from which Dalton had been so speedily s.n.a.t.c.hed and overcome, and Chick now ran the rascal a rod or more into the woodland on the opposite side of the road.

There he threw him to the ground beside a small oak, around the trunk of which he quickly twined Dalton's legs, and then fastened them at the ankles with a pair of irons.

"I reckon you'll stay there quietly until I want you, barring that you pull up the tree," he grimly remarked, as he turned to hasten back to the carriage, in which he quickly resumed his seat.

A moment later Venner peered from the distant window--and was satisfied with what he saw.

Five minutes later he came striding down the walk and approached the carriage. Without a word to the driver, whom he supposed to be Dalton, he opened the carriage door and laid his hand on Chick's arm, at the same time pointing toward the house.