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enough to preclude their making this temporary refuge in
safety.
As Barney turned both the men fired simultaneously, and
both missed. The American raised his revolver, and with the
flash of it the foremost brigand came to a sudden stop. An
expression of bewilderment crossed his features. He ex-
tended his arms straight before him, the revolver slipped
from his grasp, and then like a dying top he pivoted once
drunkenly and collapsed upon the turf.
At the instant of his fall his companion and the American
fired point-blank at one another.
Barney felt a burning sensation in his shoulder, but it was
forgotten for the moment in the relief that came to him as
he saw the second rascal sprawl headlong upon his face.
Then he turned his attention to the limp little figure that
hung across his left arm.
Gently Barney laid the boy upon the sward, and fetching
water from the pool bathed his face and forced a few drops
between the white lips. The cooling draft revived the
wounded child, but brought on a paroxysm of coughing.
When this had subsided Rudolph raised his eyes to those
of the man bending above him.
"Thank God, your majesty is unharmed," he whispered.
"Now I can die in peace."
The white lids drooped lower, and with a tired sigh the
boy lay quiet. Tears came to the young man's eyes as he
let the limp body gently to the ground.
"Brave little heart," he murmured, "you gave up your life
in the service of your king as truly as though you had not
been all mistaken in the object of your veneration, and if
it lies within the power of Barney Custer you shall not have
died in vain."
VII
THE REAL LEOPOLD
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TWO HOURS later a horseman pushed his way between tum-
bled and tangled briers along the bottom of a deep ravine.
He was hatless, and his stained and ragged khaki be-
tokened much exposure to the elements and hard and con-
tinued usage. At his saddle-bow a carbine swung in its boot,
and upon either hip was strapped a long revolver. Am-
munition in plenty filled the cross belts that he had looped
about his shoulders.
Grim and warlike as were his trappings, no less grim was
the set of his strong jaw or the glint of his gray eyes, nor
did the patch of brown stain that had soaked through the
left shoulder of his jacket tend to lessen the martial atmos-
phere which surrounded him. Fortunate it was for the brig-
ands of the late Yellow Franz that none of them chanced in
the path of Barney Custer that day.
For nearly two hours the man had ridden downward out
of the high hills in search of a dwelling at which he might
ask the way to Tann; but as yet he had passed but a single
house, and that a long untenanted ruin. He was wondering
what had become of all the inhabitants of Lutha when his
horse came to a sudden halt before an obstacle which en-
tirely blocked the narrow trail at the bottom of the ravine.
As the horseman's eyes fell upon the thing they went wide
in astonishment, for it was no less than the charred rem-
nants of the once beautiful gray roadster that had brought
him into this twentieth century land of medieval adventure
and intrigue. Barney saw that the machine had been lifted
from where it had fallen across the horse of the Princess
von der Tann, for the animal's decaying carcass now lay
entirely clear of it; but why this should have been done, or
by whom, the young man could not imagine.
A glance aloft showed him the road far above him, from
which he, the horse and the roadster had catapulted; and
with the sight of it there flashed to his mind the fair face of
the young girl in whose service the thing had happened.
Barney wondered if Joseph had been successful in returning
her to Tann, and he wondered, too, if she mourned for the
man she had thought king--if she would be very angry
should she ever learn the truth.
Then there came to the American's mind the figure of the
shopkeeper of Tafelberg, and the fellow's evident loyalty to
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the mad king he had never seen. Here was one who might
aid him, thought Barney. He would have the will, at least
and with the thought the young man turned his pony's head
diagonally up the steep ravine side.
It was a tough and dangerous struggle to the road above,
but at last by dint of strenuous efforts on the part of the
sturdy little beast the two finally scrambled over the edge
of the road and stood once more upon level footing.
After breathing his mount for a few minutes Barney
swung himself into the saddle again and set off toward
Tafelberg. He met no one upon the road, nor within the
outskirts of the village, and so he came to the door of the
shop he sought without attracting attention.
Swinging to the ground he tied the pony to one of the
supporting columns of the porch-roof and a moment later
had stepped within the shop.
From a back room the shopkeeper presently emerged, and
when he saw who it was that stood before him his eyes went
wide in consternation.
"In the name of all the saints, your majesty," cried the old
fellow, "what has happened? How comes it that you are
out of the hospital, and travel-stained as though from a long,
hard ride? I cannot understand it, sire."
"Hospital?" queried the young man. "What do you mean,
my good fellow? I have been in no hospital."
"You were there only last evening when I inquired after
you of the doctor," insisted the shopkeeper, "nor did any
there yet suspect your true identity."
"Last evening I was hiding far up in the mountains from
Yellow Franz's band of cutthroats," replied Barney. "Tell me
what manner of riddle you are propounding."
Then a sudden light of understanding flashed through
Barney's mind.
"Man!" he exclaimed. "Tell me--you have found the true
king? He is at a hospital in Tafelberg?"
"Yes, your majesty, I have found the true king, and it is
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so that he was at the Tafelberg sanatorium last evening. It
was beside the remnants of your wrecked automobile that
two of the men of Tafelberg found you.
"One leg was pinioned beneath the machine which was
on fire when they discovered you. They brought you to my
shop, which is the first on the road into town, and not
guessing your true identity they took my word for it that
you were an old acquaintance of mine and without more
ado turned you over to my care."
Barney scratched his head in puzzled bewilderment. He
began to doubt if he were in truth himself, or, after all,
Leopold of Lutha. As no one but himself could, by the
wildest stretch of imagination, have been in such a position,
he was almost forced to the conclusion that all that had
passed since the instant that his car shot over the edge of
the road into the ravine had been but the hallucinations
of a fever-excited brain, and that for the past three weeks
he had been lying in a hospital cot instead of experiencing
the strange and inexplicable adventures that he had believed
to have befallen him.
But yet the more he thought of it the more ridiculous
such a conclusion appeared, for it did not in the least explain
the pony tethered without, which he plainly could see from
where he stood within the shop, nor did it satisfactorily ac-
count for the blotch of blood upon his shoulder from a
wound so fresh that the stain still was damp; nor for the
sword which Joseph had buckled about his waist within
Blentz's forbidding walls; nor for the arms and ammunition
he had taken from the dead brigands--all of which he had
before him as tangible evidence of the rationality of the
past few weeks.
"My friend," said Barney at last, "I cannot wonder that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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