Boys of Oakdale Academy. Scott Morgan
took care to leave Grant’s hands pinioned behind his back. A thickly folded handkerchief was placed over his eyes and securely tied at the back of his head. Barely was this done when the three redskins and the renegade came sneaking back from the shadows of the woods and joined the self-styled cattle rustlers. Threatening Grant if he made an outcry, they hurried him forth from the woods and away toward the twinkling lights of the distant village. Down the Barville road they went, approaching the dark and silent academy and the gymnasium. Among themselves at intervals they muttered fierce threats of vengeance for the death of the mythical “Tanglefoot Bill.”
Once or twice a sound like a suppressed, smothered giggle came from behind the mask of the fat fellow, causing one of his companions to give him a vigorous punch and hiss into his ear an order to “dry up.”
Within the gymnasium a shaded light glowed dimly. Beneath this light they gathered, with the unresisting and still blindfolded captive in their midst.
“What shall we do with him, comrades?” questioned the leader.
“String him up to a rafter,” urged one of his followers.
“Show him no mercy,” advised another.
“Make short work of him,” growled still another.
“Had we known who he was,” said the leader, “we’d never risked our lives to rescue him from the redskins. Comrades, listen. In yonder small, dark room lie the bleaching bones of poor Tanglefoot Bill. While we are debating over the proper fate for Bill’s slayer, I would suggest that we place the wretched captive in that room with the remains of his victim.”
This proposal meeting no opposition, Grant was pushed toward a door, at which one of the masked fellows took his place with his hand on the knob. At a signal from the leader, the door was opened, the blindfold snatched from Rod’s eyes, and he was given a push that sent him staggering into the room. At the same time some one cried in his ear:
“Behold the bones of your victim!”
The door slammed and the key was hastily turned in the lock.
Barely succeeding in keeping upon his feet, Rodney Grant stumbled against something that rattled; and then in the deep darkness of that place he saw lying at his very feet what seemed to be a skeleton, every bone of which glowed with a dull, phosphorescent luminosity. Involuntarily he backed away from the thing until he had retreated against the door.
“Great jackrabbits!” he gasped. “It can’t be – ” He choked, the words seeming to stick in his throat, for, to his added amazement and consternation, the skeleton moved, its head rising slowly from the floor and the upper part of its body following. Little by little it continued to rise, until at last it was in an upright position. Then one long, faintly gleaming arm was lifted from its side until it became outstretched toward the shivering, cowering lad. From some source a hollow groan sounded, followed immediately by a faint, huskily spoken word, twice repeated:
“Retribution! Retribution!”
Outside that room, which in the days when the building had served as a bowling alley had been a washroom and a closet for the keeping of clothing and various other articles, one of the masked jokers was manipulating the cords that had caused the skeleton to rise and lift its arm. Another fellow, with his mask removed, had applied his lips to a knothole in the partition, through which he sent the groan and spoke that terrible sounding word.
“Gee whiz!” giggled the fat chap. “I’ll bet he’s pretty near frightened into fits. I know I’d be.”
“Shut up, Chub!” hissed the leader, who was listening at the door. “Of course he’s scared stiff, for he’s a coward, anyhow.”
“He ought to be yelling blub-bloody murder by this time,” murmured Osceola, the Seminole.
“Can yeou hear anything, Berlin?” asked Tecumpseh, the Shawnee.
“How can I hear anything with all you fellows pushing and chattering?” fretfully retorted the one at the door.
“My deduction is,” said the chap who had pulled the cords, “that he’s too scared to even utter a chirp.”
“I bate a hundred dollars,” laughed King Philip, “that this will cook him so he won’t tell no more yarns about hunting Indians and lynching cattle thieves.”
“Shut up!” once more ordered the leader. “I can hear something now. Listen to that. What’s he doing?”
The sounds, low and weird and doleful, issuing from that small, dark room, filled them with unspeakable astonishment.
“So help me, Bob,” spluttered King Philip, “he’s singing!”
It was a sad and doleful wailing, like a funeral dirge, and the jokers, who had been ready to shriek with laughter a few moments before, were now struck dumb by wonderment, and more than one of them felt a shiver creep along his spine. Suddenly the singing ceased, but it was followed by a burst of wild laughter even more startling.
“He’s gug-giving us the ha-ha,” said Osceola. “Now what do you think of that!”
There seemed, however, to be no merriment in the strange, wild peals of laughter which reached their ears. Agitated and apprehensive, one fellow seized the shoulder of the chap who stood at the door.
“Open up, Bark,” he urged – “open up! Turn the lights on, somebody. Let’s see what’s the matter in there.”
As the lights were turned on the door swung open, and those practical jokers, crowding forward, beheld a spectacle that made more than one recoil. In some manner Rodney Grant had succeeded in freeing his hands from the rope. His coat had been torn off and flung aside. His shirt was ripped open at the throat, and one sleeve had been torn into shreds. He was crouching on one knee directly in front of the dangling skeleton, and the flood of light from the open door fell on a face so wild and terrible that the disguised boys shuddered at beholding it. He was white as a sheet; his eyes glared, and a frothing foam covered his lips.
“Avaunt!” he shrieked. “Quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with!”
“Great mercy!” gurgled one of the group at the door. “He’s gone mad – stark, staring mad!”
CHAPTER VII.
THE ONE WHO LAUGHED LAST
While they stood paralyzed Rodney Grant suddenly leaped to his feet, still jabbering and laughing wildly, seized the skeleton, tore it from the ropes by which it was suspended, and charged them with the grisly thing in his grasp. Right and left they scattered, terrified beyond words, some of them actually uttering screams of fear. Their one great desire seemed to be to get out of the way and give Grant plenty of room.
Having driven them in this manner, the victim of the joke hurled the skeleton aside, rushed across the open floor of the gymnasium, caught up a chair and dashed it through a window, carrying away sash and glass. A single step he retreated, and then, with a forward bound and a yell, he followed the chair through the broken window, disappearing into the darkness outside. The appalled boys heard the sound of running feet swiftly die out in the distance.
“Well, we’ve done it!” said Cooper huskily, as he tore off his mask and revealed a face almost as ghastly as that of the lad who had leaped through the window.
“You’re right, Chipper,” agreed Chub Tuttle, also unmasking. “We drove him plumb daffy. It’s awful!”
“He busted the skeleton,” said Sleuth Piper, gazing ruefully at the broken thing, which lay on the floor where Grant had flung it. “The prof will raise the dickens about this.”
“Oh, hang the sus-skeleton!” stuttered Phil Springer. “Think of driving that fellow out of his wits! Gee! boys, it’s bad business.”
“Yeou bate it is,” agreed Sile Crane. “We’d orter knowed he wasn’t well balanced, for his old aunt has been half crazy all her life.”
Tuttle, his peanuts forgotten, had dropped his mask