"What is it? What's the matter?" cried Bridge, with whom The Kid had collided in his precipitate retreat.
"O-o-o!" groaned The Kid, shuddering. "It's dead! It's dead!"
"What's dead?" demanded Bridge.
"There's a dead man on the floor, right ahead of us," moaned The Kid.
"You'll find a flash lamp in the right hand pocket of my coat," directed Bridge. "Take it and make a light."
With trembling fingers the Kid did as he was bid, and when after much fumbling he found the button a slim shaft of white light, fell downward upon the upturned face of a man cold in death--a little man, strangely garbed, with gold rings in his ears, and long black hair matted in the death sweat of his brow. His eyes were wide and, even in death, terror filled, his features were distorted with fear and horror. His fingers, clenched in the rigidity of death, clutched wisps of dark brown hair. There were no indications of a wound or other violence upon his body, that either the Kid or Bridge could see, except the dried remains of bloody froth which flecked his lips.
Bridge still stood holding the quiet form of the girl in his arms, while The Kid, pressed close to the man's side, clutched one arm with a fierce intensity which bespoke at once the nervous terror which filled him and the reliance he placed upon his new found friend.
To their right, in the faint light of the flash lamp, a narrow stairway was revealed leading to the second story. Straight ahead was a door opening upon the blackness of a rear apartment. Beside the foot of the stairway was another door leading to the cellar steps.
Bridge nodded toward the rear room. "The stove is in there," he said. "We'd better go on and make a fire. Draw your pistol--whoever did this has probably beat it; but it's just as well to be on the safe side."
"I'm afraid," said The Oskaloosa Kid. "Let's leave this frightful place. It's just as I told you it was; just as I always heard."
"We can't leave this woman, my boy," replied Bridge. "She isn't dead. We can't leave her, and we can't take her out into the storm in her condition. We must stay. Come! buck up. There's nothing to fear from a dead man, and--"
He never finished the sentence. From the depths of the cellar came the sound of a clanking chain. Something scratched heavily upon the wooden steps. Whatever it was it was evidently ascending, while behind it clanked the heavy links of a dragged chain.