SQUIRE BRACKETT’S DOG
The island got a respite of at least a week, after the explosion, from
excitement of any sort. A calm like that of the primeval days before the
“boom” pervaded all the settlement. But it was not to endure. One morning
a little fishing-schooner, which had fallen into the hands of Squire
Brackett, through a mortgage which he had foreclosed upon a poor skipper
across the bay, and which was now lying at anchor in the harbour, was
found painted with broad stripes of blood red, and flying the skull and
cross-bones at the masthead, a veritable pirate craft.
The squire was never able to discover whether the authors of this piece
of mischief were the boys or some of his own townsmen, who, indignant at
his seizure of the only means of livelihood belonging to the unfortunate
skipper, had roundly denounced Squire Brackett for his meanness. However,
the incident resulted in the squire leaving on the boat one day for the
city of Benton to make a purchase.
What the squire purchased he brought back with him the next day. And, as
it is a matter of passing interest how his purchase arrived at the island
and how brief a time it remained there, it shall be here recorded. By the
same boat there came to the village an individual whose arrival made no
stir, but who remained long enough to create the greatest excitement the
village had ever known.
The arrival of the steamer from Benton was an event of great interest
daily, for it brought not only mysterious packages, bundles, and messages
from fathers whose business kept them in the city, but now and then a new
face, which was duly scrutinized and commented upon by the summer
colonists before its possessor had crossed the gangplank.
So that on this day when Squire Brackett returned to his native isle
there were many gathered upon the wharf, though, it is hardly necessary
to say, not for the purpose of welcoming his return. Yet one might
readily believe the squire thought otherwise; since, as the steamer
neared the wharf, this self-important individual, arrayed in a suit of
shining black, with a great deal of staring shirt-front, and with an
enormous slouch-hat surmounting his ponderous head, seemed the most
conspicuous person aboard.
The squire stood nearest the gangway, and, indeed, it looked from a
distance as though the other passengers, in recognition of the greatness
of this island magnate, had drawn respectfully back a little distance, to
wait till he should have gone ashore ere they approached the railing.
As the steamer came nearer, however, the reason for this seeming
deference on their part became apparent. It was plainly not due so much
to any awe inspired by the squire as it was to fear,—fear of the squire’s
purchase. The squire’s purchase was as ugly and vicious looking a bulldog
as ever walked on four legs. The squire held the dog by a stout piece of
cord, which was wound several times about his wrist.
The dog and the squire, being each in equally ill-humour, may have found
their companionship agreeable. Certain it was that the squire was the
only person whom the dog did not snarl and snap at. It growled and
snapped at every one, and even snarled and showed its teeth at the
good-natured cook aboard the steamer, who had offered it a scrap of meat.
This surliness on the part of his new acquisition had particularly
pleased the squire, who argued from it that here was an incorruptible
beast, that would meet in the same spirit any such advances upon the part
of strangers when it should be duly installed as guardian of his
farmhouse.
The squire would be magnanimous on this occasion, however, and, despite
the fact that the crowd on the wharf looked to him, as it always did in
his eyes, like invaders of his domain, he gave a bow accompanied by a
sweeping gesture of his hand, presumably intended to be a patronizing
greeting, which should include everybody, and nobody in particular, at
once.
Then the steamer made its landing. It was not always an easy matter here,
for the tide at certain times ran swift, and seemed to strive fiercely to
drive the boat away from the wharf. Therefore, when the steamer was as
yet at some distance from the wharf, a deck-hand at the bow skilfully let
fly a coil of small rope, which unwound in the air and was caught by a
man standing on the wharf. To an end of this rope was attached the usual
heavy hawser, which was then drawn on to the wharf by means of the small
rope, and the bight thrown over a spiling. In like manner the other big
hawser was drawn up astern on to the wharf.
When things were done shipshape, it was the rule of the steamer that the
small rope should be coiled again and at once thrown back to the boat
while one end was still fast to the wharf, so that when the hawser was
cast off from the spiling it could be drawn aboard by the small rope,
without its splashing down into the water and getting wet.
But things were more often done hurriedly than shipshape at the Southport
landing. The steamer’s crew had all they could do usually to land freight
and get it out quickly enough, so that the boat could go on down the bay
without losing time. The line thrown to the wharf was usually caught by
the village storekeeper, who had little time to spare, or by whatever man
or boy happened to be standing near at hand. The boat’s rule was seldom
obeyed. Scarcely any one ever took the trouble to coil up the small rope
and throw it back. When the hawsers were cast off they fell into the
water, regardless of the fact that they thereby got wet and became
heavier, dragging the small ropes after them, and were hauled aboard as
the boat steamed away.
The steamer having, on this occasion, been made fast to the wharf and the
gangplank put out, Squire Brackett crossed it, dragging his purchase
behind him,—the purchase skulking very unwillingly across the plank and
showing its teeth at the crowd upon the wharf.
The squire hated and despised boys, and made it a point to ignore them
whenever it was possible. For this very reason they delighted to annoy
him by hailing him whenever they met him. Young Joe Warren had a way of
driving the squire nearly into fits by pretending to mistake him for one
Captain Kendrick, who was the bitterest enemy the squire had, and then
always apologizing for his mistake by explaining to the squire that he
could not tell them apart.
“Good morning, Squire Brackett, glad to see you back again!” cried Henry
Burns, in the heartiest fashion imaginable, as the squire stepped on to
the wharf.
“Humph! Morning—morning,” grunted the squire, as he eyed Henry Burns
suspiciously.
Henry Burns smiled most affably, as though the squire had been his
dearest friend and adviser.
“Why, how do you do, squire?” said George Warren, cordially.
Squire Brackett scowled angrily at him, but answered, “How d’ye do?” as
short as he could.
Just then young Joe made his appearance.
“How are you, Captain Kendrick?” he bawled, loud enough to be heard all
over the wharf.
The crowd began to smile, and young Joe added, hastily:
“Oh, I beg pardon, Squire Brackett—always take you for Cap’n
Kendrick—strange how you do look so much alike.”
“You little idiot,” yelled the choleric squire, “I’d Cap’n Kendrick you
with a rawhide, if I had the say of you,—insulting an honest man with a
name like that,—every one of you ought to be in State prison. And you,
you’re the worst one of all, Jack Harvey,” pointing to the latter, who
had just come upon the wharf. “And you, too!” shaking his fist at Tom and
Bob. “You’re sly, but you’ll get caught yet. You’re a pack of young
rascals, every one of you. Don’t any of you come around my house, if you
don’t want to be chewed up. Here, you brute! Quit that!”
The dog had snapped viciously at a child that ran past, causing her to
scream with fear.
Just then the freight-agent called out to the squire:
“You’ll have to come in here and see about this freight of yours,” he
said. “It’s all mixed up. And don’t bring that dog in here, or the crew
may take him for a piece of freight and run a truck against him.”
At one corner of the freight-house on the wharf was a big iron ring, to
which the squire tied the dog.
“I wouldn’t advise anybody to meddle with him,” he said; but the advice
seemed hardly necessary, for the dog showed its teeth and sprang savagely
at any one who ventured to come near.
There were some expressions of indignation that such a dangerous brute
should be brought to the island.
Every one did keep as far out of the dog’s way as possible, excepting Tim
Reardon, who, after a whispered consultation with Jack Harvey, after
which the latter disappeared behind the freight-house, seated himself
just out of the dog’s reach, and caused that animal to froth at the mouth
and nearly strangle itself in trying to get loose, by pointing a finger
at the dog and making a loud hissing noise between his teeth.
Not content with this form of annoyance, Tim Reardon varied it now and
again by darting a hand out at the dog, as though in an attempt to seize
him by the throat. To which the maddened animal, with true bulldog
ferocity, responded with savage rushes as far as the rope would permit,
his wide-open jaws fairly dripping with rage and disappointment.
If there was any design on the boy’s part to distract the dog’s attention
from what Jack Harvey was doing at the corner of the freight-house, to
which the dog was tied, it succeeded admirably. Moreover, it is certain
that, when Harvey reappeared, Tim stopped teasing the brute, and he and
Harvey walked around to the rear of the freight-house.
The freight-house was situated almost at the end of the wharf on its
seaward side, so near to the edge of the wharf that there was only room
for a single person to walk along on the outside, and that at the risk of
losing one’s balance and falling off the wharf. The ring to which the dog
was tied was on the side near the end, and was not visible to those
standing on the front of the wharf. Any one going around to the further
side of the freight-house at this moment might have seen Harvey and Tim
standing there,—Harvey nearest the ring and holding a knife in his hand.
The steamer in landing had made a complete circuit in the harbour, and
had come alongside the wharf with her head pointing out into the bay, so
that now, as Captain Chase called out “All aboard,” and gave orders to
cast off bow and stern lines, the boat was ready to steam directly away
from the wharf. The gangplanks were drawn in. There was a tinkling of
bells; a great commotion as the steamer’s wheels began to revolve
rapidly; a general waving of handkerchiefs from the wharf to those who
were bound farther down the bay; the steamer began to glide away from the
wharf, when suddenly somebody shrieked:
“The dog! The dog! Run! Run! He’s broken loose.”
And before the crowd had time to scatter, the dog, infuriated with the
tormenting it had received at the hands of Tim Reardon, dashed toward it.
Men, women, and children fled in terror. Squire Brackett, who came
running out of the freight-house, did not dare face the dog, but dodged
back into the freight-house and slammed the door shut, in a cold sweat of
fear.
The boys, most of them, rushed for points of safety, clambering up the
ends of the spiling that jutted above the floor of the wharf, and young
Joe and Tom Harris, being at the very edge of the wharf, and having no
other means of escape, and nothing to defend themselves with, dropped off
the wharf into the water and swam to shore. Several of the other boys and
some men scrambled about for clubs to ward off the brute’s fierce rush.
Among these latter was Henry Burns. Realizing on the instant that to
attempt to flee was worse than hopeless, he had glanced about for
something to defend himself with, and had seized upon a broken piece of
oar. Grasping it with both hands, he stood, calmly awaiting the attack.
The dog, seeing him right in his path, rushed at him, and when within a
yard of the boy suddenly gave a spring, as though to seize him by the
throat.
Henry Burns, summoning all his strength, aimed a terrific sweeping blow
at the dog, but it missed its mark. Meeting no obstruction, the force of
the blow swung the boy completely around, so that he lost his balance and
fell sprawling upon the wharf, while the piece of oar flew from his hands
and landed far out in the water.
A strange thing had happened. The crowd, pausing breathlessly in the
midst of flight, had seen with horror the dog spring at Henry Burns; but
the animal’s leap had a most extraordinary termination. All at once the
dog was jerked violently backward through the air, and fell heavily on
the wharf, yelping with surprise and fright. Then it was dragged rapidly
across the wharf, and the crowd yelled with derision as they saw that the
rope by which the dog had been tied to the ring had been unfastened or
cut from the ring, and had been fastened to the rope which had been
thrown from the steamer, and the other end of which was made fast to the
steamer’s hawser.
As the boat steamed away it drew the rope after it. There was no possible
escape for the dog. Struggling as best it could, barking and yelping, and
snapping madly at the rope, it braced itself for one instant on the edge
of the wharf, and then was dragged over and fell, still struggling, to
the water below. The steamer kept on its way a short distance, and then
stopped. The rope was drawn in by a deck-hand and the dog hauled to the
railing of the steamer, but it was not taken aboard, for nobody on board
wanted a dead dog. The deck-hand cut the rope, and the body splashed into
the water.
Thus perished the squire’s bulldog, unmourned, save for the squire
himself, who raged about the wharf, looking for some boy whom he might
accuse of the trick, and vowing untold vengeance upon the perpetrators of
it. But, one and all, they had wisely dispersed, the guilty and the
innocent alike, and the squire was soon left alone in his wrath.
Who had done the thing? The crowd did not know, for it had been too
excited to notice that Jack Harvey and Tim Reardon had emerged from
behind the freight-house just at the critical moment when the dog had
sprung at Henry Burns.
As for Henry Burns, he was the hero of the hour.
There had been on the whole so much excitement attending the squire’s
arrival that few had noticed a stranger who had come ashore soon after
Squire Brackett. He had not waited on the wharf, but had gone directly to
the hotel. There Henry Burns met him later; for the man sat at Colonel
Witham’s table, as that was the only one then available.
The new arrival was the sort of guest to please the colonel, for he was
extremely quiet. He walked only with the aid of a cane, and then,
apparently, with great effort, stopping frequently to rest. He told them
he had been very ill; that his health had broken down with overwork, and
he had accordingly tried cruising along the coast. His friends had left
him up the river some days before, and would call for him.
He was a man a little under middle age, of medium height and thick-set,
with black hair and a pale, smooth-shaven face. He was evidently somewhat
a man of the world and had travelled abroad, for, seated before the
fireplace in the office that evening, he talked for some time of his
travels.
But there were other things of more interest to the boarders than this
quiet, reserved stranger, who did not play cards and who hobbled about
with a cane. There was, above all, a morning paper from town, which
bristled with startling head-lines, descriptive of a robbery of the
residence of one of the richest men in the town. It told how the thieves,
three in number, had entered the house where Mr. Curtis, the owner, was
sleeping alone, in the absence of his family; how they had put a pistol
to his head and made him get up and open a safe, from which they had
taken several hundred dollars in money and a jewel-case containing a
diamond necklace and other gems to the value of several thousand dollars.
The jewels, it said, were the property of Mrs. Curtis, and most of them
had been bridal presents. A reward of $500 was offered for their return
or for information leading to the arrest of any one of the robbers.
The article stated further that Mr. Curtis was positive he could identify
the man who subsequently bound and gagged him, his mask having but
partially concealed his face. He was, he said, a man of about medium
height, with black hair, black moustache, and heavy black beard,
broad-shouldered, thick-set, and unusually active and powerful.
All this, as it was read aloud, threw the guests into the greatest
possible excitement, as a great part of them were from the very town and
knew the Curtis family, by reputation if not personally.
It did not, of course, interest the stranger guest, for he nodded in his
chair and nearly dozed off several times during the reading. Still, when
the guests had dispersed, he picked up the paper from a chair and took it
with him to his room.
It was the very next night following that of his arrival that Henry Burns
met with a surprise.
On the night in question there was a full moon about half-past ten
o’clock, and, as Henry had agreed with Tom and Bob to meet them at their
tent, he opened his window, stepped out on to the ledge and started to
climb to the roof.
Mackerel had struck in at the western bay, and the boys had planned to
paddle down the island that night, carry their canoe across the short
strip of land that saved the island from being cut into almost equal
halves by the sea, launch it again in the western bay, and paddle around
to where the Warren boys’ sloop lay anchored in Fish Hawk’s Cove. Then
they were all to try for mackerel early in the morning.
Henry Burns stepped softly out, grasped the lightning-rod, and, with a
quickness that would have amazed the worthy Mrs. Carlin, scrambled to the
ledge over the top of his window. There he paused a moment for breath,
and then climbed up the lightning-rod, hand over hand, and gained the
roof.
He had proceeded then across the roof but a little ways, when he heard
suddenly, almost directly beneath him, the sound of footsteps. Some one
was coming up the stairs that led to the roof.
Henry Burns had barely time to conceal himself behind a chimney when the
trap-door in the roof was softly opened, and he saw the head and
shoulders of a man emerge through the opening. Henry Burns lay flat on
the roof, in the dark shadow cast by the chimney. The moon shone full in
the man’s face, and Henry Burns saw, to his amazement, that it was the
stranger guest. The sickly, weak expression in the man’s face was gone,
and in its stead there was a sinister, bold look, which seemed far more
natural to his powerful physique.
Suddenly the man, with the strength and ease of an athlete, sprang
lightly out on to the roof. He still carried his cane, but he had no use
for it, save to clutch it in one hand more after the manner of a cudgel
than a cane.
Henry Burns, for once in his life, was afraid. It was all so strange and
incomprehensible.
Once upon the roof, the man straightened himself up, threw out his chest
and squared back his broad shoulders. He was erect in stature, without
the suggestion of a stoop. He seemed to exult in the freedom of the
place, like one who had been kept in some confinement. When he walked
across the roof to the edge facing the sea, there was no suggestion of
any limp in his gait. It was quick and firm, but noiseless and almost
catlike.
What did it mean? Henry Burns thought of the robbery. Could the man have
had anything to do with that? Why had he pretended to be weak and ill?
Why had he come to this out-of-the-way place, pretending that he was an
invalid? Surely he could have no designs upon any one on the island.
There was no house there that offered inducement to a robber, if the man
were one.
It must be that his coming was an attempt to hide himself away—to secrete
himself. But why? The description of the robber that had bound Mr.
Curtis—did that tally with the appearance of this man? Broad shoulders,
medium height, active, powerful,—all these agreed. But the black
moustache and heavy beard. The stranger’s face was smoothly shaven. That
transformation, however, could have been quickly effected.
One thing was certain. It would not be well that this man, a pretended
invalid, but strong, and armed with a heavy cane, that had suddenly
become transformed from a cripple’s staff to a cudgel, who could but have
some dark motive in thus disguising and secreting himself, should find
himself watched and his secret discovered. Henry Burns crouched closer in
the shadow of the chimney, and hardly dared to breathe. The evil that he
had so accidentally uncovered in the man, his own helplessness compared
with the other’s strength, and the dangerous situation, there upon the
house-top, made him afraid. If they had been upon the ground he would
have feared less.
The man scanned the moonlit waters of the bay long and earnestly. His
survey done, he paced a few times back and forth, swinging the cane, and
then, stealing noiselessly to the doorway, disappeared down the stairs,
closing the trap-door after him.
Henry Burns lost little time in descending to the ground. On the way to
the boys’ camp that night he made two resolves: first, that he would keep
to himself, for the present, at least, the stranger’s secret; second,
that, whatever that secret was, he would find it out if any clue was to
be had upon that island. The second resolution, he thought, rather
included the first, since, the greater the number of those who knew of
the stranger’s secret, the greater the chances of his suspicions being
aroused.
Another thing that disturbed Henry Burns not a little was the knowledge
that his excursions over the roof were now attended with greater risk
than ever. It would not do to encounter the stranger there unexpectedly.
What might not the man, suddenly aroused, and desperate, as Henry Burns
believed him to be, do to him, if he found himself discovered? A fall
from such a height must mean instant death, and who was there to suspect
that he had not fallen, if he should be found next day lying upon the
ground?
In the future he must know whether the roof were occupied or not before
he ventured upon it, and especially must he be careful when returning
late at night.
Henry Burns resolved to keep the man’s secret for a time, for the reason
that he was firmly convinced he had not come to the island to commit any
wrong there, but to hide away. The island offered every advantage for the
latter, and no inducement for the former. The man’s design certainly was
to secrete himself. Still, Henry Burns had no intention of letting the
man escape from the island. He would watch also for those friends that
the man had said were to come for him with their yacht, and he would make
sure that they did not sail away again. Though but a boy, the stranger’s
secret was in dangerous hands, if he had but known it. And yet luck was
to effect more than Henry Burns’s scheming.
Tom and Bob were waiting impatiently when Henry Burns arrived at the
tent. They launched the canoe, the three embarked, and soon left the tent
and then the village behind. They glided swiftly along the picturesque
shore till they came at length to the narrows; here they carried the
canoe across and launched it again in the western bay. In an hour from
the time they had left the tent, they had come alongside the sloop
_Spray_ in Fish Hawk’s Cove, and the Warren boys had sleepily made room
for them in the cabin.
It was crowded for them all there, and it may have been for that reason
that Henry Burns did not sleep soundly,—either that, or because of the
figure of a man that he could not drive from his mind, and that appeared
to him, half-dreaming and half-awake, as a figure that hobbled along,
stooping and bent, but which suddenly sprang up before him, lithe and
threatening, and brandishing in his hand a cudgel that looked like a
cane.