Cervera was laughing and capering around as if about to have a fit—­yet her laugh had a terrible and chilling ring.

“Oh, yes, I’ll guard him, Dave,” she shrilly cried, with a frightful menace in her strained voice. “Caramba, yes! let me alone for that.”

“So I do,” snarled Kilgore.

“Knot the line fast, Matt—­make sure of that,” the woman fiercely added.  “Yes, I’ll keep him quiet—­never doubt that, boys!  He shall be like a baby taking milk.  Perdition! but you shall have a sweet time, Mr. Nick, alone here with Sanetta Cervera!”

Kilgore paid but little attention to any of this, and only now and then bestowed a glance upon the vicious woman.

Within a minute after their arrival at the plant, the gang had Nick securely bound to a common wooden chair, when they condescended to remove the gag from his mouth.

“He may shout himself hoarse here, if he likes,” growled Kilgore.  “There will be none to hear him.”

Then he hurried Pylotte and Matt Stall back to the Venner house, to land Chick Carter.

Left alone with Nick, Cervera darted to the stone door in the solid wall, and secured it within.

There was murder in her glittering eyes when she shot the heavy bolts into their iron sockets.

CHAPTER XX.

The boot on the other leg.

In the heat of action and excitement ten minutes are as nothing.

The time seems longer, however, when one sits waiting in a motionless carriage, enveloped in the gloom of night, with grim distrust and uncertainty acting like spurs in the sides of one’s impatience.

Before five minutes had fairly passed, after Nick’s departure, Spotty Dalton had suffered his misgivings to the very limit of his endurance.

Chick sat mentally counting the passing seconds, then scoring each departed minute with his fingers, of which he had exhausted four and a thumb, the entire complement of one hand; and all the while his eyes were riveted with intense vigilance upon the growling ruffian on the seat above him.

Had Dalton ventured so much as a move to leave his perch, Chick would have been after him like a terrier after a rat.

At the end of five minutes, however, Dalton made a preliminary move.  He hitched the reins around the whipstock, then stared for a second or two toward Venner’s house, fifty yards away through the surrounding park.

Then he suddenly swung round on his seat, and growled ferociously at Chick, at the same time signifying with gestures the communication he imagined would not be verbally understood: 

“See here, you swarthy-faced snake fiend, I’m bound up yonder, to see what’s going on!  You sit where you are, d’ye hear, and I’ll be back in a jiffy, if things are all right!  If they’re not, ——­ you, I’ll be back just the same—­with a gun!”