AN ACCOUNT IS CLOSED
From the surprise of seeing those dreaded detectives two men recovered
quickest--Douglas, who had no fear of them; and Snake, who had every
fear of them.
Marion and Steve seemed frozen. Their guns had swerved from Snake’s
body. The door still stood open, and between officers and criminal
stood three people. Snake broke for freedom.
But Douglas had thought of that. Hardly had he glimpsed the officers
when he swung back. At Snake’s first move he sprang.
Snake reached the doorway. But he went no farther. With the
all-concealing darkness before his eyes--something struck him. An arm
swooped under his jaw, yanking fiercely back on his throat. A knee
smote the small of his back, numbing his legs. A savage fist crashed
under his right ear. He collapsed.
Still holding his throat-lock, Douglas dragged him back to the middle
of the room and flung him down with a thud that jarred the whole house.
“Here he is,” he said curtly. “Now grill him.”
“Good eye, Hampton,” Ward approved, smiling grimly. “We couldn’t
git to him with these kids in the way. Guess you got a whole lot of
satisfaction out of that wallop, huh?”
“A whole lot!” Douglas nodded, opening and shutting his right fist.
“Now you---- Steve! Quit that!”
The refugee, his wolfish teeth bared, was slowly backing doorward, his
gun now covering the hated trailers.
“Yeah!” snarled Bill, reaching backward again. “Put that gun down and
freeze right where y’are! We wantcha, my fine boid!”
“Ye ain’t got me,” came the hoarse answer. “An’ ye don’t git me! Ye
pull that gun o’ yourn an’ ye won’t never shoot! I got ye cold!”
It was deadly truth, and Bill knew it. One twitch of the fingers,
and he would be a riddled corpse. But he was brave enough. With his
long-sought quarry at last before him, he did not shrink from the cold
muzzles as he once had from the hammerless gun in Marion’s hands, up
the road.
“Ya got one chanst,” he growled. “Put that gun down and wait while we
sweat this guy. If he comes acrost ya’ll be free. If ya shoot I’ll git
ya before I hit the floor.”
“And so will I,” Ward coolly added. “Show some sense! We’re givin’
you a square deal. Now if you’re guilty as charged, try makin’ your
getaway. If you ain’t, stick around. This guy here is goin’ to talk.”
Marion also, who had been tensely watching the pair, turned on the
gaunt fugitive.
“Steve, you heard what he said,” she challenged, looking him straight
in the eyes. “If you shoot or run it’ll show you _did_ burn out the
Bumps! I want to know my own self whether you did or not. You better
stay here.”
Through a silent pause Steve stood slit-eyed, studying his foes: the
men who had hounded him so long, and the one who had caused that
hounding. Snake was reviving. He was staring blankly upward. On him the
hunted youth’s gaze fixed. Slowly he let his weapon sink.
“Ye keep often me,” he warned. “I ain’t a-runnin’. But I’m a-keepin’ my
gun. I’m a-stayin’ right where I be. Don’t ye come nigh me!”
“That’s good enough,” consented Ward, after a shrewd look. “You stay
right there. Now everybody shut up. I want to talk to this guy Sanders.”
In an undertone, however, he said to Douglas: “Kid looks sick and off
his nut. Is he?”
“Sick, yes. Lungs. May be pneumonia,” was the muttered reply. Ward
frowned. Then he snapped at Snake.
“You, Sanders! Git up and talk turkey! We’ve got you dead to rights. No
lies, now!”
Snake, sitting up, dizzily eyed each hard face.
“Wha--wha’d ye want?” he muttered thickly.
“Stand up! Back against that wall! Come on, move! And don’t pull any
gay stuff. You got some explainin’ to do, and the less wigglin’ and
dodgin’ you try the better off you’ll be. Understand?”
Snake got up, looking confused. The other three also glanced in a
puzzled way at the officers. Here was a murderer, condemned by the
revelations of the woman whom he had hurled to her doom; why did
they not drag him out forthwith? They acted as if they only meant to
question him, and then, perhaps, let him go.
But Douglas, studying Ward, felt that the man-hunter knew what he was
about, and said nothing. Marion and Steve, too, kept silence. Sanders
slouched against the blank inner wall designated by Ward.
“Now git this in your head, first off,” Ward said crisply. “We’ve been
in here quite awhile. We’ve been learnin’ a lot--about _you_. It’ll do
you no good to try any lyin’. You come clean, and you may save a lot of
trouble all around. Know what I mean?”
Snake nodded dubiously, but with hope beginning to glimmer in his
shifting eyes. Douglas saw light. This assumption of omniscience
and of infallibility in detecting falsehood, this intimation that
full confession would benefit the prisoner--these were part of the
stock-in-trade of policedom, as the ex-newspaperman well knew. They
formed both a wordless threat and an unexpressed promise: absolutely
non-committal, yet subtly potent.
“Well, then, what about this lad? Did he do that burnin’ and shootin’,
or did you? Remember he’s right here, listenin’ to what you say. Bill,
move over a little. Sanders, you look the kid right in the eye. Now
then! What about it?”
As Bill, hovering ready at Sanders’ left, drew back, Snake turned
unwillingly and looked at Steve. The youth made no movement, spoke no
word; but his glittering eyes bored into Snake’s inmost being. Under
that baleful glare, under the chill scrutiny of four other pairs
of eyes, the yellow soul of Sanders shriveled. He quailed visibly.
Shifting his gaze, he encountered again the piercing orbs of Ward.
“I--done--it,” he whispered.
“You did,” Ward repeated clearly. “All right. That’s the stuff,
Sanders, tell it straight. Now just tell the whole thing--why you did
it and how you did it and all the rest of it. You’ll feel better then,
maybe. Come on, spill it all.”
Snake boggled over the start; but with a little more brisk urging by
Ward, whose manner was as matter-of-fact as if the crime were nothing
more serious than fishing out of season, he began a hang-dog recital.
Ward, reaching into an inner pocket, quietly stepped behind Douglas.
The latter felt a note-book being pressed against his back, followed
by the quiver of a rapidly moving pencil. Unseen by Snake, whose eyes
rested on the floor, the whole story was being recorded.
Shorn of twists and turns and blundering attempts to show justification
for the attack on the Bumps, the confession corroborated the tale told
by Steve that afternoon in Uncle Eb’s kitchen. Snake asserted that the
Bump crowd had cheated him in a berry-picking deal, stolen some of his
“pick” outright, assaulted him when he demanded his due; all of which
perhaps was true. He denied having plied Steve with liquor in order
to make him a scapegoat, but admitted having deserted him after the
commission of the crime. And, so far as the crime itself was concerned,
he cleared Steve absolutely.
When his stumbling narrative was concluded, Ward gave him no rest.
Whether or not confession be good for the soul, man-hunters know that
it is good for the ends of justice to keep a criminal talking when once
he has started. Wherefore he briskly asserted: “That’s good, Sanders,
that’s fine. Now tell us what happened to Nat Oaks. You were with him.
Come on, open up.”
“I--I--I dunno. I warn’t into this house with him. Honest to Gawd!”
“Not in the house? Outside, though. Sure. Out in the yard, now? You saw
him come out, anyway. What did he do?”
Snake wriggled; glanced around; licked his lips again; looked
cornerwise into Ward’s eyes.
“Wal--uh--I tell ye. Nat, he was crazy drunk. He come down here to--to
git Hampton. He was p’ison mad ’bout them dawgs that Hampton kilt. I
come with him--I was tryin’ to git him to go home--I didn’t want no----”
“Never mind that stuff. What did he do?”
“He--uh--he snuck in by hisself. I was out into the road. He was into
the house--all to oncet he give a yell an’ he come a-runnin’. He never
said nawthin’--he was a-fussin’, like, into his throat, a-groanin’ an’
a-grumblin’--an awful kind of a noise! He come a-tearin’ right by me
an’ went _kersmash_ into the bresh, an’ I hearn him a-thrashin’ round
into the dark, an’ then I didn’t hear him no more. An’ I was scairt--I
run right up the road an’ put for home. That’s Gawd’s truth, fellers. I
dunno what got him--’less’n ’twas Jake’s ha’nt.”
His head was up now, and he looked into the faces of the others as if
telling the truth--or part of the truth. Ward regarded him silently,
perhaps deciding to let the Oaks matter rest. Then Douglas shot a
sudden question.
“What did you have against Jake?”
Snake’s jaw dropped. He stared as if a ghost had risen from the floor.
Bill and Ward looked mystified, but watched him keenly. From Steve
sounded a low grunt, as if he partly understood and wholly approved the
question. Marion, a rapt witness of the proceedings, stood awaiting the
answer though not comprehending the purport of the demand.
“I--uh--me an’ Jake--we didn’t have no trouble,” stuttered Snake. “What
ye mean? We was good friends----”
“Ye lie!” broke in Steve. “Ye said Jake stole yer licker, an’ if he
done it ag’in ye’d git him! I hearn ye an’ Jake a-rowin’ ’bout it one
time up into the rocks--before I got sent away. Ye told him if he stole
’nother jug o’ yourn he’d find snakes into it!”
“Aha!” Douglas pounced on the revelation. “And he did steal another,
eh? Did he? Quick, now!”
The vicious face reddened with quick anger.
“Yas, he did! He done it more’n oncet--the fat hawg-bellied fool!--he’d
steal every time he got a chance. He was too lousy lazy to make his
own----”
“And so you chopped off a rattler’s rattle and put the snake in here!
Didn’t you? Hurry up!”
“Yas, I did, ye smart Aleck! What of it? Puttin’ a snake into a house
ain’t killin’ nobody. I only done it to scare him.”
“So? A fine way to scare a man--cutting off those rattles! You’ll be
saying next that you only meant to scare me awhile ago when you shot
at me on the floor. You only intended to scare me when you let that
copperhead out of the box on Dickie Barre, maybe--without letting me
know it was there. Of course! You know mighty well what killed Jake,
and Nat, too, and you’ve been expecting the same thing to get me
here--that rattler. Now you all listen a minute while I tell you what
Dalton’s Death was.”
And for the first time Douglas revealed the truth about the ha’nt.
“That’s the only reason why you let me live here in peace,” he accused.
“You thought your snake would finish me as it finished Jake. When it
didn’t you put Nat up to stabbing me, while you stayed outside----”
“Ye can’t prove nothin’!” flared Snake, eyeing him in hot hatred. “I
wisht a dozen snakes had bit ye, ye meddlin’ sneaker! But ye can’t
prove what ye said--ther’ ain’t a witness nowheres! An’ how would I
know the snake had gone to livin’ into the bed? How’d I know it didn’t
go outen the house? I didn’t make it bite Jake--I didn’t know ’twas
here when Nat come--ye can’t prove I put Nat up to comin’--an’ that
shootin’ jest now was a accident--my thumb slipped----”
“Lies, lies, lies!” Douglas growled. “Accident? The same kind of
accident that threw Lou over the edge of the Wall! But your accidents
are finished now, thanks to the accident that she hit that tree and
wasn’t killed. All right, Ward. I’ll shut up. Take him away.”
Ward was scowling, as if Douglas had upset his program. But he nodded
shortly and reached under his coat. His hand came away with a pair of
handcuffs.
“No need of any more grillin’, I guess,” he said. “We’ve got all the
proof we need about the Brackett matter, and this guy can tell his side
to the judge. Stick out your hands, Sanders!”
Snake seemed paralyzed. His eyes were bulging, and he stared at Douglas
as if disbelieving his ears. His mouth worked twice before words came.
“She warn’t kilt?” he blurted. “She ain’t dead?”
“Not yet, but soon,” Ward snapped. “She’s dyin’, but we’ve got her
whole story wrote down and witnessed. Didn’t know that, did you?
Thought the fellows around here were shootin’ at you just on suspicion,
hey? Nothin’ to it, Sanders--you’re up against it cold. You give us the
double-cross once awhile ago, but we’re collectin’ on that little deal
now. Shove out those hands before I bust you one!”
Utter desperation blanched Snake’s face. His hands began to lift as if
weights were dragging them down. His hunted eyes flickered all about.
Suddenly he stiffened. His left hand flashed up, pointing.
“It’s a lie!” he screeched. “Ther’ she is--ther’ by the winder! Lou!
Lou! Come in an’ tell ’em it’s a lie!”
So real was his sudden appeal that involuntarily every man wheeled to
see that imaginary figure beyond. Instantly Snake struck.
His right fist shot against Ward’s neck, knocking him headlong. His
left smashed into the face of Bill, who was turning back to him. Bill,
too, toppled and fell--but reached for his revolver even as he dropped.
Hampton, jumping at his enemy, collided with the empty wall. Snake was
not there.
He was flashing across the room. At the window he stopped an instant.
His hand licked out, seized Hampton’s gun leaning against the wall.
He spun about, half leveled it at Hampton, jerked both triggers--got
no answering explosion. The safety was on, locking the weapon against
discharge. With an oath he whirled to throw himself through the window.
A sharp report cracked from the floor where Bill lay. It was drowned by
a stunning crash beyond the prone officer. The house heaved with the
terrific concussion. Blue smoke blurred the whole room.
Deafened, Douglas teetered on his heels, peering through the haze at a
mangled huddle under the window.
Faintly to his numbed ears came a piercing yell of sated vengeance.
“I got him!” screamed Steve. “Both barrils! _Yeeeeow!_”
Then, grinning like a mad wolf, the pain-racked boy slowly crumpled to
the floor and lay still.