style="font-size:15px;"> “Lordy massy sakes teh goose-grease!” gasped Toots, again shivering with terror. “Didn’t I done tole yeh, chilluns! If yo’ know when yo’ am well off, yeh’ll git erway from heah jes’ as quick as yeh can trabbel! Oh, mah goodness!”
Shaking in every limb, the colored boy tried to get his bicycle out from the others, lost his balance, fell over, and sent the entire stack of wheels crashing to the ground.
“Well, this seems to be a regular sleight-of-hand performance,” coolly commented Browning. “Now you see it, and now you don’t; guess where it’s gone. It drives me to a cigarette.”
But he discovered that his cigarettes were gone, which seemed to concern him far more than the vanishing of the skeleton. He declared he had lost a whole package, and seemed to feel quite as bad about it as if they were solid gold.
Rattleton was excited.
“What sort of pocus-hocus – no, hocus-pocus is this, anyway?” he spluttered. “Where’s it gone? Who wayed the old thing a took. I mean who took the old thing away?”
“It couldn’t have gone away of its own accord,” said Frank, “so some one must have removed it.”
“Don’ yeh fool yo’se’f dat way, Marser Frank!” cried Toots, sitting up amid the fallen wheels. “Dat skillerton am de berry ol’ scratch hisse’f! De next thing some ob dis crowd will be disumpearin’ dat way. Gwan ter git kerried off, chilluns, if yo’ don’ git out ob dis in a hurry.”
“Oh, shut up!” snapped Diamond. “You make me tired with your chatter!”
“Mistah Dimund,” said the colored boy, with attempted dignity, “if yo’ll let dat debbil kerry yo’ off yo’ll nebber be missed – no, sar.”
Jack pretended he did not hear those words.
“Here goes to see what has become of the thing!” cried Frank, as he scrambled up to the niche where the skeleton had sat.
“I am with you!” cried Diamond, as he followed Frank closely.
Reaching the nook in the face of the cliff, they looked about for some sign of the skeleton that had been there a short time before, but not a sign of it could they see. The ghastly thing was gone, and the glittering ornaments had vanished with it. The block of stone on which the object had sat was still there.
“Well, fat do you whind – I mean what do you find?” cried Rattleton, impatiently.
“Not a thing,” was the disgusted reply. “It has gone, sure as fate!”
“So have my cigarettes!” groaned Browning.
“The treasure – is any of that there?” asked Harry, eagerly.
“Not a bit of it.”
“Well, that’s what I call an unfair deal,” murmured Bruce. “It is a blow below the belt. If the old skeleton had desired to go away, none of us would have objected, but it might have left the trimmings with which it was adorned.”
Frank was puzzled, and the more he investigated the greater grew his wonder. He knew they had seen the skeleton, yet it had vanished like fog before a blazing sun.
Jack shrugged his shoulders and shivered, saying:
“There’s something uncanny about it, old man. I believe it is a warning.”
“Nonsense!” cried Frank. “What sort of a warning?”
“A warning of the fate that awaits all of us.”
“You are not well, Jack.”
“Oh, it is not that! First we see a lake of water, and that disappears; then we see this skeleton, and now that has vanished. You must confess that there is something remarkable in it all.”
“The vanishing of the mirage came about in a natural manner, but – ”
“But you must confess there was something decidedly unnatural about the vanishing of the skeleton.”
“It was removed by human hands – I will wager anything on that.”
“Then where is the human being who removed it?”
“I don’t know.”
Unable to remain below, Rattleton came climbing up to the niche.
“I’ve got to satisfy myself,” he said, as he felt about with his hands, as if he expected to discover the vanished skeleton in that manner. “I can’t see how the blamed old thing could get away!”
“Well, you can see quite as well as we can,” acknowledged Frank. “It is gone, and that is all we can tell about it.”
The boys satisfied themselves that the thing had really disappeared, and they could not begin to solve the mystery. After a time they returned to the ground.
“It am de debbil’s work!” asserted Toots. “Don’ yeh mek no misteks ’bout dat, chilluns.”
They held a “council of war,” and it was resolved that they should go on through the pass and try to find the second water-hole before darkness fell.
Already night was close at hand, and they must needs lose no time.
“We can come back here in the morning and see if we’re able to solve the mystery,” said Merriwell. “I, for one, do not feel like going away without making another attempt at it.”
“Nor I,” nodded Rattleton.
“It is folly,” declared Jack, gloomily. “I say we have been warned, and the best thing we can do is get away as soon as possible.”
“By golly! dat am de firs’ sensibul fing I’ve heard yo’ say in fo’ days!” cried Toots, approvingly.
They picked up their wheels, and soon were ready to mount.
“Here’s good-by to the vanishing skeleton for to-night,” cried Frank.
He was answered by a wild peal of mocking laughter that seemed to run along the face of the cliff in a most remarkable manner.
“Ha! ha! ha!” it sounded, hoarsely, and “Ha! ha! ha!” came down from the rocks, like a mystic echo.
“O-oh, Lordy!”
Toots made a jump for the saddle of his bicycle, but jumped too far and went clean over the wheel, striking his knee and turning in the air, to fall with a thump on the back of his neck.
“Mah goodness!” he gurgled, as he lay on the ground, dazed by the shock of the fall. “De ol’ debbil done gib meh a boost then fo’ suah!”
The other lads looked at each other in perplexity.
“Well, wh-wh-what do you think of that?” stammered Rattleton.
“He ought to file his voice, whoever he is,” coolly observed Browning. “It’s a little rough along the edges.”
“It strikes
