“C. Q. D.”
IN the gray dawn of the winter morning, Mamie Welsh started wide awake
from the restless doze into which she had fallen. She sat up in bed, her
head to one side as though listening for some faint and distant sound.
Then, with a quick movement, she threw back the bed-clothes, slipped to
the floor, pulled a shawl about her, thrust her feet into a pair of
slippers, and ran to the door of the room where her father and mother
slept.
Mary Welsh, a light sleeper at all times, was awake at the first tap of
Mamie’s fingers.
“Who’s there?” she called.
“It’s me, Mamie.”
“What’s the matter, dearie?” cried Mrs. Welsh, jumping out of bed and
hastening to open the door. “What’s the matter?” she repeated, her arms
about her daughter. “Not sick?” For Mamie’s face in the dim light was
positively ghastly, so livid and drawn it was.
“No, I—I’m not sick,” sobbed Mamie, suddenly giving way and clinging
desperately to her mother. “I—I don’t know what it is, only I’m so
worried about Allan.”
And Mrs. Welsh, with a sudden tightening of the heart, understood.
“There, there,” she said, and she drew her daughter’s head down upon her
shoulder and patted her soothingly. “There, there; he’ll be back safe
an’ sound, dearie, never fear!”
“But oh! mother! I dreamed such a terrible dream. He was in some awful
danger, hurt and bleeding, in the dark, and a horrible man was torturing
him, and he called to me and held out his hands. I heard his voice,
mother, as plainly as I hear yours—it woke me up,” and Mamie shivered
convulsively at the remembrance.
Mrs. Welsh was no more superstitious than the ordinary Irish woman, but
there was something in the words—something in the voice which uttered
them—which somehow struck a responsive chord in her, and she shivered in
sympathy with the trembling figure she held in her arms.
Jack, meanwhile, disturbed by all this talking, suddenly awakened to
find his wife missing, and sat up in bed rubbing his eyes and staring at
the ghostly figures near the door.
“Who’s that?” he asked, but a convulsive sob from Mamie told who it was,
and thoroughly awakened at last, he was out of bed in an instant.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What’s the matter with you women?”
“Mamie’s worried about Allan,” answered Mrs. Welsh, hugging tight the
shivering figure in her arms.
“Oh, dad!” sobbed Mamie. “I dreamed about him and he—he was calling me!”
“Calling you? What d’ye mean, Mamie?”
“He was calling me to come to him. Oh, dad, we must go!”
“Go?” repeated Jack, in amazement. “Go where?”
“Out to Schooley’s—or wherever it is—you will, won’t you, dad?”
She had her arms around her father, now, and there was a pathos, an
entreaty in her voice that wrung his heart.
“I was goin’ out this mornin’, anyway,” he said, smoothing her hair
gently, “an’ I guess I might as well start now.”
“And I’m going with you, dad.”
“No, no,” he protested. “What good would that do, Mamie?”
“Good!” she cried. “Why, dad, you don’t know where to find him!”
“And do you?”
Her face changed—seemed to whiten and harden—and her eyes stared past
them into the gloom.
“Yes!” she whispered, her hands clasped tight against her heart.
Mrs. Welsh, her hand grasping Jack’s arm, nodded to him to consent.
“All right,” he agreed, his voice not wholly steady. “All right, Mamie.
Jump into your clothes. Maybe we kin ketch first ninety-eight.”
Neither Jack Welsh nor his wife could ever explain the spirit of
desperate haste which suddenly possessed them. Mamie, apparently in a
sort of trance, returned to her room and dressed herself deliberately
and calmly, but with a wonderful celerity, as surely as she could have
done in broad daylight; while Jack, in the semi-darkness, bungled into
his clothes somehow, his fingers all thumbs.
Mrs. Welsh, meanwhile, throwing a wrapper around her, hastened
downstairs, and when the other two came down five minutes later—Mamie
having assisted her father in the last stages of his toilet—she had a
cup of hot coffee for each of them, and a lunch done up in a napkin for
them to take along. She kissed them both at the front door and stood
watching them until they were out of sight. Then she turned slowly back
into the house, blew out the lamp in the kitchen, and mounted to her
bedroom. But not to sleep. In the cold light of the dawn, she sank on
her knees beside the bed and buried her face in her hands.
* * * * *
Jack and Mamie reached the yards just as Bill Grimes, the conductor of
first ninety-eight, was raising his hand to give the signal to start. He
was charmed to have them as his guests, and hustled them into the
caboose, much to the embarrassment of an impressionable young brakeman,
who was just changing his shoes. He thought he had never seen anything
so lovely as Mamie, and stammered profuse apologies, which Mamie
acknowledged with an absent-minded nod. Poor fellow! her thoughts were
far away from him.
He cheerfully undertook to climb forward over the long train and to ask
the engineer to slow up at the spot where the abandoned train had been
discovered, and fifteen minutes later, at some risk to life and limb, he
was at the caboose steps to assist Mamie to alight.
As the train gathered speed again, conductor and brakeman shouted back
good wishes; then the rumble died away in the distance, and the train
disappeared in the morning mist.
“Well, and now what?” asked Jack Welsh, looking down at his daughter.
Something in her face arrested his gaze, a certain strained and fixed
expression, as though she were gazing inward instead of outward, as
though she were stretching every sense to catch the sound of some inward
voice, faint and far-away.
Jack felt a little shiver creep along his spine and up over his scalp,
as he noted that fixed gaze.
“Well, and now what?” he asked again. “What is it you’re listenin’ for,
Mamie?”
“His voice,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “‘Twill guide us.”
“Surely,” protested Jack, “you don’t expect—”
But without waiting for him to finish, Mamie turned abruptly away from
the railroad, and plunged into the strip of woodland which stretched
beside it. There was no semblance of a path, but she hurried forward
without pausing, and at the end of a few minutes they came to a road.
Without an instant’s hesitation, Mamie turned eastward along it.
“Toward Schooley’s,” Jack muttered to himself. “That’s all right. But
how the dickens did she know it was here?”
Mamie, meanwhile, looking neither to the right nor left, hurried along
the road as fast as her feet would carry her. It was hard and rutted and
anything but easy walking, yet the girl seemed to take no account of the
roughness of the way, and Jack, panting and stumbling along behind,
marvelled at the ease with which she hastened on. The sun had not yet
risen, and gray cold mist of the morning still lingered among the trees.
To the superstitious Irishman there seemed to be something ghostly and
supernatural in the air; he felt that some mysterious and unseen
influence was at work, and the thought brought a cold sweat out across
his forehead. Yet never for an instant did he think of trying to stop
her or of turning back himself.
Then suddenly, from afar off, Jack’s ears caught the sound of a faint
singing or crying, that rose and fell in a sort of weird cadence,
impossible to describe.
“What’s that?” he cried, and stopped short; but instead of pausing,
Mamie broke into a run, and would have been out of sight in a moment had
not Jack followed at top speed. In the end, his strength and agility
told even against the strange spirit that possessed her, and he gained
her side just as they reached the edge of a clearing, in the midst of
which stood an old stone house.
“Good God! It’s afire!” gasped Jack, and, indeed, a black swirl of smoke
was pouring from the broken windows at the front of the house, lighted
redly here and there from instant to instant by a tongue of flame.
“Wait, Mamie,” he added, grasping her arm as she started forward. “What
’r you goin’ t’ do?”
“He’s there!” Mamie cried, shaking him away, and without another word,
she started toward the house.
Jack, gritting his teeth tight together, followed her. There was need of
courage, for that weird sing-song chanting still persisted, and as they
neared the house, a strange figure appeared around the corner—a squat,
deformed figure, surmounted by a hideous face and great shock of dirty
hair. It was dancing in a clumsy and ungainly fashion and was emitting
from time to time the hoarse shouting which had set Jack’s nerves on
edge.
[Illustration: “THEN, WITH A HOARSE YELL OF RAGE, HURLED HIMSELF UPON
THEM.”]
For an instant, the fellow did not perceive them; then, as his bloodshot
eyes rested upon them, he stood for a breath as though carved in stone,
and then, with a hoarse yell of rage, hurled himself upon them.
How Mamie escaped that savage onrush, she never knew. Jack had a
confused recollection of seeing her spring aside to escape the madman’s
swinging arms, and in the next instant he found himself grappling with
him, hurled backward off his feet, with great, hairy hands tearing at
his throat. He felt himself helpless as a child in this powerful and
cruel grasp, and his heart turned faint within him as he stared upward
into the convulsed and hideous face glaring down at him. He dashed his
fists against it, with almost as little effect as though he had dashed
them against a rock, and ever those hands at his throat tightened and
tightened. The world danced red before him—it was no use—no use—
Then, suddenly, a thought flashed lightning-like into his brain—if he
failed her now, Mamie would be left alone with this monster—at his
mercy—
Mad with rage, fairly foaming at the mouth, fired with a strength almost
superhuman, Jack twisted his assailant to one side and tore his hands
from his throat. One full breath of the cold air—it was all he had time
for, before those hands closed upon him again. This was no human being,
he told himself despairingly; it was a monster against which he could
not hope to prevail; it wasn’t fair to put a man up against a thing like
this; nobody could blame him if he failed—but Mamie—there was Mamie—
His hand, flung out convulsively, touched something hard and round;
mechanically he grasped it—mechanically he struck with it at the face
above him—once—twice—thrice. And he felt the hands at his throat relax,
saw dimly the savage countenance running red with blood, felt the great
body lurch heavily forward across him—and lay gasping for breath, too
weak, for the moment, to throw it off.
But only for a moment; then, twisting the body to one side, he staggered
to his feet and stared first at it and then at the boulder he still
grasped in his hand; and not till then did he understand what had
happened—by what a slender chance he had been saved—and not he alone,
but Mamie—
Mamie! He turned to look for her. She was nowhere in sight, and
forgetting all else, he staggered forward toward the burning house. He
tried the front door and found it fastened, shook at it savagely without
effect, and then hastened around the house to the rear.
The back door was open, a flood of smoke pouring from it. And as he
stared stupidly at it, he saw a nebulous figure struggling through it.
The sight brought his senses back, brought his strength back. He sprang
forward, and in another moment, he and Mamie, between them, had dragged
Allan West out into the open air, bleeding, bound, unconscious.
“What they been doin’ to the boy?” cried Jack, a white-hot rage almost
choking him. “Have they kilt him—have the cowards kilt him?”
“Oh, no; oh, no!” sobbed Mamie, dropping on her knees beside him. “Oh,
look, dad, they’ve tied his hands and feet.”
“The scoundrels!” and Jack, whipping out his knife, had the bonds
severed in an instant. “His head’s all bloody,” he added, “an’ look how
that rope’s cut his wrists! Good God! What kind o’ fiends—”
But Mamie, with more self-control than he, laid a restraining hand upon
his arm.
“Don’t, dad,” she said. “Don’t think of that now. Time enough
afterwards.”
“You’re right,” and Jack mastered himself by a mighty effort.
“We must get some water,” said Mamie, and then as she looked down at the
white, bruised, unconscious face, a wave of misery swept over her, a
suffocating sense of her own helplessness. “We must do something!” she
cried wringing her hands in anguish. “We must—oh!—”
She stopped suddenly, and pressed her hands against her wildly-beating
heart, for Allan’s eyes slowly unclosed and he lay looking up at her.
Then his face brightened into a smile, and an instant later twitched
with the agony the slight movement cost him. His eyes were caught by the
cloud of smoke drifting upward from the house, and his expression
changed from agony to horror.
“We must get the others,” he gasped, and tried to rise.
“No, no,” protested Mamie, her arms about him. “Lie still—you must—”
But Allan had fainted dead away.
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