They were doing their work very badly. They got the rope around his
neck, and tied his wrists with moose-bush withes, but again he fell,
sprawling, turning, twisting over the leaves, tearing up everything
around him like a trapped panther.
He got the rope away from them; he clung to it with bleeding fists; he
set his white teeth in it, until the jute strands relaxed, unravelled,
and snapped, gnawed through by his white teeth.
Twice Tully struck him with a gum hook. The dull blows fell on flesh
rigid as stone.
Panting, foul with forest mould and rotten leaves, hands and face
smeared with blood, he sat up on the ground, glaring at the circle of
men around him.
"Shoot him!" gasped Tully, dashing the sweat from his bronzed brow; and
Bates, breathing heavily, sat down on a log and dragged a revolver from
his rear pocket. The man on the ground watched him; there was froth in
the corners of his mouth.
"Git back!" whispered Bates, but his voice and hand trembled. "Kent,"
he stammered, "won't ye hang?"
The man on the ground glared.
"Ye've got to die, Kent," he urged; "they all say so. Ask Lefty
Sawyer; ask Dyce; ask Carrots.--He's got to swing fur it--ain't he,
Tully?--Kent, fur God's sake, swing fur these here gents!"
The man on the ground panted; his bright eyes never moved.
After a moment Tully sprang on him again. There was a flurry of leaves,
a crackle, a gasp and a grunt, then the thumping and thrashing of two
bodies writhing in the brush. Dyce and Carrots jumped on the prostrate
men. Lefty Sawyer caught the rope again, but the jute strands gave
way and he stumbled. Tully began to scream, "He's chokin' me!" Dyce
staggered out into the open, moaning over a broken wrist.
"Shoot!" shouted Lefty Sawyer, and dragged Tully aside. "Shoot, Jim
Bates! Shoot straight, b' God!"
"Git back!" gasped Bates, rising from the fallen log.
The crowd parted right and left; a quick report rang
out--another--another. Then from the whirl of smoke a tall form
staggered, dealing blows--blows that sounded sharp as the crack of a
whip.
"He's off! Shoot straight!" they cried.
There was a gallop of heavy boots in the woods. Bates, faint and dazed,
turned his head.
"Shoot!" shrieked Tully.
But Bates was sick; his smoking revolver fell to the ground; his white
face and pale eyes contracted. It lasted only a moment; he started
after the others, plunging, wallowing through thickets of osier and
hemlock underbrush.
Far ahead he heard Kent crashing on like a young moose in November,
and he knew he was making for the shore. The others knew too. Already
the gray gleam of the sea cut a straight line along the forest edge;
already the soft clash of the surf on the rocks broke faintly through
the forest silence.
"He's got a canoe there!" bawled Tully. "He'll be into it!"
And he was into it, kneeling in the bow, driving his paddle to the
handle. The rising sun gleamed like red lightning on the flashing
blade; the canoe shot to the crest of a wave, hung, bows dripping in
the wind, dropped into the depths, glided, tipped, rolled, shot up
again, staggered, and plunged on.
Tully ran straight out into the cove surf; the water broke against his
chest, bare and wet with sweat. Bates sat down on a worn black rock and
watched the canoe listlessly.
The canoe dwindled to a speck of gray and silver; and when Carrots, who
had run back to the gum camp for a rifle, returned, the speck on the
water might have been easier to hit than a loon's head at twilight. So
Carrots, being thrifty by nature, fired once, and was satisfied to save
the other cartridges. The canoe was still visible, making for the open
sea. Somewhere beyond the horizon lay the keys, a string of rocks bare
as skulls, black and slimy where the sea cut their base, white on the
crests with the excrement of sea birds.
"He's makin' fur the Key to Grief!" whispered Bates to Dyce.
Dyce, moaning, and nursing his broken wrist, turned a sick face out to
sea.
The last rock seaward was the Key to Grief, a splintered pinnacle
polished by the sea. From the Key to Grief, seaward a day's paddle, if
a man dared, lay the long wooded island in the ocean known as Grief on
the charts of the bleak coast.
In the history of the coast, two men had made the voyage to the Key to
Grief, and from there to the island. One of these was a rum-crazed pelt
hunter, who lived to come back; the other was a college youth; they
found his battered canoe at sea, and a day later his battered body was
flung up in the cove.
So, when Bates whispered to Dyce, and when Dyce called to the others,
they knew that the end was not far off for Kent and his canoe; and they
turned away into the forest, sullen, but satisfied that Kent would get
his dues when the devil got his.
Lefty spoke vaguely of the wages of sin. Carrots, with an eye to
thrift, suggested a plan for an equitable division of Kent's property.
When they reached the gum camp they piled Kent's personal effects on a
blanket.
Carrots took the inventory: a revolver, two gum hooks, a fur cap, a
nickel-plated watch, a pipe, a pack of new cards, a gum sack, forty
pounds of spruce gum, and a frying pan.
Carrots shuffled the cards, picked out the joker, and flipped it
pensively into the fire. Then he dealt cold decks all around.
When the goods and chattels of their late companion had been divided by
chance--for there was no chance to cheat--somebody remembered Tully.
"He's down there on the coast, starin' after the canoe," said Bates
huskily.
He rose and walked toward a heap on the ground covered by a blanket. He
started to lift the blanket, hesitated, and finally turned away. Under
the blanket lay Tully's brother, shot the night before by Kent.
"Guess we'd better wait till Tully comes," said Carrots uneasily. Bates
and Kent had been campmates. An hour later Tully walked into camp.
He spoke to no one that day. In the morning Bates found him down on
the coast digging, and said: "Hello, Tully! Guess we ain't much hell on
lynchin'!"
"Naw," said Tully. "Git a spade."
"Goin' to plant him there?"
"Yep."
"Where he kin hear them waves?"
"Yep."
"Purty spot."
"Yep."
"Which way will he face?"
"Where he kin watch fur that damned canoe!" cried Tully fiercely.
"He--he can't see," ventured Bates uneasily. "He's dead, ain't he?"
"He'll heave up that there sand when the canoe comes back! An' it's
a-comin'! An' Bud Kent'll be in it, dead or alive! Git a spade!"
The pale light of superstition flickered in Bates's eyes. He hesitated.
"The--the dead can't see," he began; "kin they?"
Tully turned a distorted face toward him.
"Yer lie!" he roared. "My brother kin see, dead or livin'! An' he'll
see the hangin' of Bud Kent! An' he'll git up outer the grave fur to
see it, Bill Bates! I'm tellin' ye! I'm tellin' ye! Deep as I'll plant
him, he'll heave that there sand and call to me, when the canoe comes
in! I'll hear him; I'll be here! An' we'll live to see the hangin' of
Bud Kent!"
About sundown they planted Tully's brother, face to the sea.