Early that afternoon two parties from the Sachem started for the top of Mount Battie. One party, including Mrs. Crossgrove and the captain’s daughter, decided to make the ascent by teams. It was Inza who proposed to Frank and Frank’s friends that they should take the footpath up the southern side of the mountain.
Near two o’clock they started, having induced Browning to accompany them, much to Merry’s secret satisfaction.
“If I find any one is lying to me about this old trail up the mountain,” said the big fellow, as with his coat on his arm he came puffing after the others, “I will certainly deal out retribution in large quantities. Inza says the path is perfectly delightful. Frank says it’s a simple climb. Hodge says it’s almost too easy. While others have told me it’s a simpler matter climbing up the footpath than riding up the road. In fact, I have received the impression that it’s just about as easy to climb the mountain by this footpath as it is to slide down hill on a toboggan.”
A little later, when they had struck the first steep ascent and were climbing a path where loose stones abounded and frequently rolled beneath their feet, Bruce began to growl, and gurgle, and make strange sounds in his throat. Looking back, they could see him with his face flushed and perspiring, and his eyes glaring ominously.
“What’s the matter, Bruce?” cried Inza laughingly.
“No matter! no matter!” he declared, with a touch of savageness in his voice.
“But I fancied there must be from the strange sounds coming up to my ears. I fancied a whole pack of wild animals were at our heels.”
Again Browning made one of those singular growling gurglings, and then, as a rock rolled beneath his feet and he nearly fell down, he paused and cried:
“Where’s Frank Merriwell? Let him come back here just a minute. I want to show him something.”
“Can’t stop, Bruce,” laughingly called Merry. “It’s altogether too much trouble.”
“Hang you!” panted Browning. “I always regarded you as a man of veracity. I took you to be a second George Washington. But let me tell you now, sir, that my opinion has changed. You have Cap’n Wiley, Baron Munchausen, and old Ananias whipped to a finish. Easy climbing up this path! Simple thing sauntering up this path! Delightful promenade up this path! Can almost go to sleep walking up this path! Yah-h-h-h!”
The shouts of laughter these words invoked did not seem to soothe Browning’s feelings or cool him down in the slightest degree.
“Laugh, confound you—laugh!” he shouted. “There will be a settlement with somebody! Say, we’re pretty near the top, aren’t we?”
“Yes, pretty near the top,” said Frank. “We’ll be there in a short time. Come ahead, Bruce.”
“You wait till we do get to the top,” growled Bruce threateningly as he resumed the climb after his amused companions.
In a short time Browning found most of the party assembled on a flat ledge where there was an open view of the village below, the country beyond it, and the bay and islands.
“Ah!” exclaimed Bruce, in great relief. “Reached the top at last! By George, that was a climb!”
“The top?” said Elsie Bellwood. “Why, this isn’t the top of the mountain!”
“W-h-a-t?” roared the big fellow in astonishment.
Then he glanced upward and saw the precipitous slopes above him, with the path winding in and out amid the rocks and bushes and showing itself only at intervals. For some moments he stood with his mouth open, seemingly thunderstruck.
“Well, I’m a liar if I ever saw a mountain grow before!” he muttered. “This one has grown about three thousand feet taller than it was when we started to climb it. Jumping jingoes! you don’t mean to tell me we’ve got to scratch gravel all the way up that declivity, do you? Why, look at those cliffs! Look at those smooth rocks! We’ll never get up there in a thousand years.”
Dick Merriwell and Brad Buckhart had been admiring the view. The Texan nudged his friend with his elbow, chuckling in a low tone:
“I sure opined Bob Singleton was some lazy, but this gent certainly has him beaten to a custard.”
“It’s not half as lad as it books—I mean it’s not half as bad as it looks,” said Harry Rattleton.
“That’s right,” agreed Frank. “You know at a distance a thing looks small and insignificant many times, but in this case, being close under the mountain makes it look more precipitous and difficult than it really is.”
“Oh, yes! oh, yes!” grated Browning, glaring at Merry. “You’re a fine talker, you are! I have heard you talk before. You told me it was such a delightful thing to jog up the side of this mountain by this old footpath. It was such a simple matter that one might fall asleep while walking up the path! If there’s anything that exasperates me, it’s a liar! If there’s anything I have no use for, it’s a liar! Fabricators are dangerous. They should be abolished, and here’s where I think I will abolish one.”
As he said this he clinched his fist, turned it over and over, and examined it as if making a critical inspection; and then, with it shaking ominously, he advanced toward Frank, who was standing close to the edge of the rock.
“What are you going to do?” asked Inza.
“I am going to kill him,” said Bruce, in a deliberate manner. “I am going to throw him clean over the village and into the harbor out yonder. I will throw him out so far he’ll never be able to swim ashore.”
“Oh, please—please don’t, for my sake!” entreated Inza, with mock terror. “Spare him and give him a chance to repent of his sins!”
“Well, for your sake I will spare him,” said Bruce. “You spoke just in time. He owes you his life. Say, children, let’s not climb the mountain to-day. Let’s rest here a while, call it a full day, and go back.”
They laughed at him mockingly, and finally he flung himself down with a hopeless groan.
“I think I will go back, anyhow,” he said. “I don’t think I’d ever survive the rest of this climb.”
“But you can’t go back, Bruce,” said Elsie. “We won’t let you go back. We want you with us. We want you to provide amusement for us.”
“Oh, so that’s it?” he exclaimed, with another pretended burst of anger. “So you want me to come along and make a holy show of myself, do you? You think I am better than a three-ring circus, I suppose! You think I am better than a cage of monkeys, I suppose! I have heard you laughing and saying things to one another in low tones. I am onto the whole of you. You’re a heartless lot of heathens! You enjoy human suffering! You have no sympathy or tenderness in your marble hearts! Pretty soon I will get mad and tell you just what I think of you.”
“Don’t do it,” entreated Henry Rattleton. “You might knock our sherves—that is, shock our nerves.”
Having admired the view spread beneath them and refreshed themselves by a rest on the ledge, ............