THE LAST CHANCE
Of what happened immediately afterward Lockwood had no knowledge.
It seemed that almost whole days had passed before he half started up
in semilucidity. He could move neither his hands nor his feet. It was
still dark. He could hear the thud and wash of engines and waters, and
he imagined himself still on the river steamer. He smelled the heavy,
decaying odor of the swamps. His head ached terribly, and seemed
swollen to enormous dimensions. He could not think nor collect
himself, and he relapsed into dizzy unconsciousness.
But when he recovered intelligence there was light in his eyes. He lay
on his back; there was a ceiling of pine boards above him. Still
dreaming of the river boat, he tried to move himself, and found that
his arms were tied fast at the wrists, and his legs at the ankles.
He turned his head sideways, growing dizzy with the slight movement.
He was in a long room, perhaps ten feet by twenty. Opposite him a
couple of bunks were built into the wall, empty except for frightfully
tattered rags that might once have been called blankets. At each end
of the room was an open door, where the sunlight shone in, and he had
a glimpse of green thickets, and he smelled swamp water. Outside the
door human figures moved indistinctly.
Now he knew where he was. He was in a house boat, probably the boat he
had grown familiar with on the bayou; though how he had got there he
could not at the moment imagine. His head was too painful for thought;
he lay back, crushed down with unspeakable defeat and weakness and
despair.
The door darkened. A big figure came in, and Lockwood saw a face
brought close to his own—a bearded, brutal face, with a great bluish
stain or scar on the forehead.
“Done woke up, air ye?” said Blue Bob.
Lockwood stared back, incapable of speaking. The riverman laughed a
little and went out, returning with a lump of corn pone and a tin cup
of coffee.
“Here, swaller this,” he said, “an’ you’ll feel better.”
Three more men came in, and stood staring at the prisoner with the
stolid curiosity of animals. Lockwood’s wrists were loosened; the food
put into his hands. He could not eat the corn bread, but he drank the
bitter, black coffee, and it did stimulate him. His head cleared. He
looked round at the ring of hard faces.
“What’s this for? What are you going to do with me?” he demanded
weakly.
“Dunno,” said Bob. “We’re goin’ to take right good keer of you, so you
won’t git away.”
Lockwood shut his eyes again, beginning to remember, to
understand—slowly, painfully piecing out the situation. Hanna was in
alliance with the river gang, just as he had half suspected. It was a
winning alliance, too. Lockwood could not but feel that he had lost
his game—for the present. He was not much afraid for his life. The
pirates might have murdered him very easily, but they had spared him;
they said they were going to “take good keer” of him. Hanna wanted him
out of the way until the oil deal could be put through.
His coat was gone, his boots, his cambric shirt. There was not much
left but his trousers and underwear. His pistol was gone, of course,
and his pocketbook and his watch, even his handkerchief. But the money
belt was there. They had not thought to search him to the skin. He
felt the familiar rasp of the leather and the hardness of the
ten-dollar gold coins inside, and it gave him hope; so much does money
seem to be power.
He asked to be let up, but they refused; and really he was better
where he was. He spent the rest of the day in the bunk, dozing
fitfully into nightmares, sometimes feverishly awake, too sick to know
how the hours passed.
Twice more they brought him food, fried catfish and corn pone and the
same black coffee, strong as oak-ash lye. He drank, but he could not
eat; and after a time he found the cabin in darkness again. Some one
tied his hands up without any regard for his comfort.
A loud chorus of snoring went on from the pirates in their bunks. Thus
unguarded, he might have tried to escape, but he was far too ill to
think of any such thing. He slept himself instead, and was the better
for it. He awoke next morning with the swimming sensation almost gone
from his head, and even a slight appetite.
That day they let him out of the bunk, greatly to his relief, for the
place swarmed with fleas, and probably with worse vermin. His ankles
were still loosely hobbled, but he was allowed to sit on the open
stern deck.
His first glance was for familiar landmarks. He found none. The boat
was lying in a little bay or bayou, perhaps a creek mouth, surrounded
by dense thickets of titi and rattan. Through a tangle of overhanging
willow he thought he saw the Alabama River outside, but anybody might
have passed down the stream within fifty yards without suspecting the
presence of the house boat, or even of the harbor where it lay.
He did not know the place. He was sure it was no part of the bayou
near Craig’s camp. He recollected the thudding of engines he had heard
or felt soon after being kidnapped. The house boat was moving then.
They must have taken her out of the bayou, down the river for some
miles, and laid her in this hiding place, which they had probably used
before.
The boat was moored against a huge log that made a natural wharf. On
an open sandy space ashore a cooking fire was burning. Not far from it
two of the gang lay flat on their backs in the shade. Blue Bob stayed
aboard, with the fourth of the party, a young man, little more than a
boy, with a vacuous, animal face, and long, youthful down sprouting
from his chin.
“Well—going to let me go ashore?” Lockwood remarked, by way of being
conversational.
“Naw!” Bob growled, staring stupidly.
Lockwood tried again, getting no answer. Studying his captors, he
decided that it was not so much animosity as sheer lack of words. They
spoke little more to one another than to him. He observed them all
that day with growing amazement; he thought he had never seen men so
devoid of all the attributes of humanity. His amazement grew to a sort
of horror. He felt as if he had fallen into the hands of some
half-human animals, some soulless race without either understanding or
mercy.
They spoke mainly in drawled monosyllables; they played cards and shot
craps endlessly, but without excitement—perhaps having no money to
stake. No doubt they were all devoured with malaria and hookworms; but
all the same they could handle an ax with masterly dexterity, and on
occasion they could be as quick as cats.
Half asleep as they generally seemed, Lockwood felt their eyes
perpetually upon him. At every movement, some one turned his head like
a flash, and every one of these men carried a gun, the handle
protruding shamelessly from the hip pocket. Bob had two—one of them
being Lockwood’s own automatic.
After several futile attempts, Lockwood gave up trying to get on any
sort of relations with them. He watched them with dread and repulsion
as they rolled dice on the dirty deck. One of the “bones” fell through
a crack in the planking, and, trying to loosen a board to reach it,
the youngest of the men broke the blade of his sheath knife. He tossed
away the shortened blade with a curse, but the broken tip remained on
the deck and Lockwood fixed his eyes on it.
It was scarcely two inches long, but was the nearest approach to a
cutting tool that had come anywhere near his reach. He managed to
shuffle near it; he put his foot on it. Eventually he sat down on his
heels, got the triangular bit of steel into his hands, and transferred
it to his trousers pocket. It was not much, but it might be something.
The day dragged on. That afternoon something went by on the river
outside, invisible through the trees—probably a raft of timber. Toward
evening they fed him and put him back in his bunk, tying his hands
once more at the wrists.
A clammy white fog from the swamps drifted smokily through the
doorways. The whole cabin was hazy and damp. The pirates had a big
fire burning on the shore; he could see the red reflection of it; and
then, faint and rapidly increasing, he heard the distant drumming of
the engine of a motor boat coming down the river.
Every nerve thrilled in him. It was destiny that was coming, he knew.
He heard the boat slacken, then scrape through the willow boughs that
masked the bayou, and then a bump upon the house boat, and a voice.
His heart sank. It was worse than destiny; it was disaster.
“Got him safe?” said Hanna.
“Got him alive,” returned Bob. “Ruther hev him dead?”
“I sure would,” said the other earnestly.
Then there was a long, hoarse mutter of talk which Lockwood could not
make out. Hanna was arguing something. Then silence fell. Feet
trampled the deck outside, and Blue Bob came into the cabin, carrying
a flaring torch of fat pine, which filled the foggy room with resinous
smoke and a lurid light. Hanna followed him, and looked down at
Lockwood in his bunk.
“I’ve got no time to fool with you now,” he said curtly. “You asked
for this and you’ve got it. Now these fellows’ll float you down to
Mobile, and Harding’ll give you a ticket to Chicago and fifty dollars.
Right now you’ll give me the signed statement I mentioned, saying that
you’ve looked into my enterprise and consider it quite sound.”
“Nothing doing,” said Lockwood.
Hanna stepped closer and looked down at him curiously.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “You haven’t got a ghost of a show
now. You’re down and out. I’ve told the Power boys things about you.
They’ll shoot you at sight if you ever turn up there again. I don’t
need to do anything for you, but I felt as if I ought to give you a
last chance. That’s what’s the matter with me—got too tender a
conscience.
“These boys ain’t troubled that way, though,” he added, indicating the
boat’s crew. “I’ll just leave you with them. Let’s get out of here,
Bob. It’s hotter’n hell.”
He half turned and bestowed a piercing glance on the prisoner.
“It’s your last chance,” he said. “Well?”
“No,” said Lockwood.
“Well, you’ve had a run for your money, anyway,” returned the crook,
and he went out.
For another five minutes, perhaps, the men talked on the rear deck.
“Ain’t takin’ no sech chances. Do it yourself,” he heard Bob say.
“You done it once, I guess,” replied Hanna. “Hush!” as the pirate
uttered a loud oath of denial.
The talk sank again; and then the motor boat throbbed away into
silence. Hanna was gone; but the pirates talked long among themselves,
while the river fog drifted ghost-white over the boat. From time to
time some one came and looked at him through the misty doorway.
He had never known the river men so excited; he would not have thought
it possible for them to have had so much conversation. He guessed what
they were discussing. From moment to moment he almost expected the
attack, the shot, or a crushing club stroke. He was tied, helpless as
a sheep.
“If we-all do this hyar job,” he heard Bob say, “we gotter git cl’ar
offn the Alabama fer good. We kin sell the boat in Mobile, an’ go——”
Some one interrupted indistinctly. Bob swore and insisted.
“All same, Bob, this yere’s a heap safer’n that other time, an’ you
got outer that all right,” another voice drawled.
“Outer what?” Bob snarled savagely. “Outer nothin’. Jackson Power
knows he done it—thinks so, anyways. Mebbe he did. Everybody was
lettin’ off their pistols at once, an’——”
“Shucks, Bob. He was shot with an autymatic, an’ nobody hadn’t no
autymatic that night but you.”
“Ef you says I done it, I’ll cut your liver out!” Bob threatened. “I
tell you it shore was young Jack Power.”
“Well, jest so long’s he thinks so! Shet up, Bob! We’ve got to touch
up young Jackson again, anyways.”
“Sure we will,” said Bob. “A thousand this time, and Hanna don’t git
none of it. Then with what we gits fer——”
Echoes of some old affray, it seemed, that still had power to terrify.
The familiar mention of Jackson Power’s name startled him, recalling
what he had seen or heard himself; but he had no thought just then to
spend upon that wild youth’s connection with the river gang.
How long had he to live?—what chance had he? were the only problems
that his brain could hold. He could not possibly doubt that his fate
had been decided upon. Was it to be to-night, while he lay tied,
helpless as a sheep?
If he had some weapon, even a stick—even if his hands had been free,
he could have faced it better. He strained at the rope that bound his
wrists behind his back. It was dark in the cabin; no one could see
what he did; and the knots slipped and gave just a little. Not nearly
enough to release his hands, but with the tips of his fingers he could
feel the bit of knife point in his trousers pocket.
He worked it around, point against the cloth, and pressed it through
the slit it made. It must be sharp, he thought with satisfaction; and
at that moment the pirates from the deck came crowding in.
He fancied that it was his last moment. But no one paid him any
attention beyond a casual glance. They tumbled into their bunks, all
but Blue Bob, who produced a long tallow candle and lighted it. He set
it in the middle of the floor, squatted down on the floor himself,
with his back against a bunk, took a chew of tobacco, and fixed his
eyes on the prisoner.
Lockwood realized that the death watch had been put on him; but the
realization came with relief, for it meant that nothing was intended
for that night. But this night would certainly be the last.
The thick fog drifted and coiled about the pale candle flame burning
straight in the windless air. The air was full of moisture, steaming
hot. Mosquitoes buzzed thickly. Far ashore he heard the calling of
owls. He hoped that Bob would doze off, but the pirate remained
tenaciously awake, chewing tobacco like a machine. Lockwood had a wild
instant thought of trying to bribe him with the gold in his belt.
Madness! Blue Bob would take the gold, and dispatch him even more
certainly afterward.
Once outside, in that darkness and fog, they would never recapture
him, either on land or water. He held the bit of steel between his
fingers, behind his back. By twisting his fingers back he could just
touch the knife edge to the rope at his wrist. He might cut it, but in
the face of that black stare across the cabin he dared not move a
muscle.
He shut his eyes and pretended to sleep, peeping occasionally through
his lashes. Unceasingly Bob chewed his quid. Lockwood’s brain ached
with the nervous tension. He groaned and half turned, as if sleeping
restlessly, and for a moment Bob’s jaws stopped working.
At last he must really have slept, though he seemed to be always
conscious of the candlelight and the fog. But he came to himself with
a sense of waking, not out of but into a nightmare. The candle still
burned, but it was low now. The fog banked in wet clouds about it; and
Bob was gone. Another man had taken his place.
This watcher also chewed tobacco, but Lockwood saw at once that he was
less vigilant. He presently fetched a fresh candle and lighted it from
the first, then, sitting down, yawned loudly. He had been wakened from
his first sleep, and had trouble to keep from relapsing.
Lockwood lay with closed eyes, but tense, wide awake now, peeping at
intervals. The man kept firmly awake for fifteen minutes. His lids
drooped; he rubbed them with his knuckles and stared straight ahead;
then he shifted his position, sighed, and blinked heavily.
Holding the bit of steel between finger and thumb, Lockwood began to
saw at the cord with noiseless, imperceptible movements. By twisting
his fingers he could just reach the rope, but he could bring very
little force upon it. Fortunately the knife was almost razor sharp.
Once he cut his own flesh; twice he dropped the knife and had to feel
for it among the rags and corn shucks; but he could feel the strands
parting, and at last his hands went freely apart.
The guard was dozing, blinking, evidently dazed with sleep. Lockwood
sighed, snored, and drew his heels up to his body as if restless. The
watchman paid no attention, and Lockwood reached down with his left
hand and ripped through his ankle cords with half a minute’s quick
work.
Then he hesitated, as a man may when his life depends on the dexterity
of the next minute. The pirate had a sudden spell of wakefulness; he
knuckled his eyes and stretched, and it was full twenty minutes before
he relaxed into drowsiness again.
Lockwood gathered up the ragged blanket, and rose on his elbow,
measuring the distance to the doorway. He slipped his shoeless feet
over the ledge of the bunk—and then suddenly caught the wide-open,
amazed eyes of his guard.
Before the man’s open mouth could produce its yell Lockwood flung the
blanket over the candle, and bolted, crouching low, for the door.
Black darkness fell behind him. There was a howl, a shot exploded with
a deafening crash, and then an uproar of stamping feet, ejaculations,
and another shot as he dived through the door. But then he was out and
had jumped ashore upon the big log.
He halted bewildered. The dense fog lay all around him like a gray
wall. A low fire on the shore made a pale blur. That second of delay
almost ruined him. A man plunged after him from the boat, running
square into him. Lockwood caught him a heavy uppercut, putting all his
energy of vindictiveness into it. It lifted the pirate clean off his
feet, and he crashed over backward with a grunt.
Lockwood rushed down to the other end of the boat. He was afraid to
try the woods in that smother of dark and fog. He almost collided with
another ruffian who was leaping ashore from the stern. The man grabbed
at him and fired; but Lockwood had ducked, dropping flat. He smelled
the water close to him. He wallowed forward, into thick, deep mud,
then into deepening water.
“Hyar—hyar he goes!” he heard Blue Bob bellowing. “Git pine splinters!
Make a blaze, d—n you! He can’t git fur!”
Lockwood tried to sight the small canoe that usually trailed beside
the house boat. He had counted on it, but nothing was visible. If he
could secure it—but there was no use looking. Even the house boat was
a mere blur of blackness. He crawled forward into the gloom and,
getting into deeper water, began to swim with a long, noiseless
stroke.
He was a good swimmer, and was practically stripped but for his
trousers. Leaves, branches rustled over his head. He had come to the
screened mouth of the bayou. He strove to push through without sound,
but some snapping branch must have betrayed him. A perfect volley of
shots were fired at him, ripping the leaves, driving up the water, but
not one of them touched him. Careless of noise now, he struck out
strongly and went through, and felt the powerful pull of the big river
current outside.