TELLING HOW BRANDON BEARDED THE LION IN HIS LAIR
AS Brandon Tarr entered the apartment behind the bar room of the New
England Hotel, the man at the table raised his head and surveyed him
surlily. Evidently he had been drinking, and the liquor had changed
his mood greatly from that of the affable sailor who had accosted the
captain’s son in the Chopmist woods.
“Well, how came _you_ here?” inquired the sailor, in no very friendly
tone, gazing at Brandon, with bloodshot eyes.
“I came down on the train.”
“Ain’t you lost?”
“Guess not,” responded the boy.
The man shifted his position uneasily, keeping his eyes fixed upon his
visitor.
“Can’t say as I expected to see you--just yet, any way.”
“No?” returned Brandon coolly.
“Say! wot the blazes do you want, any way?” demanded the sailor
fiercely, after an instant’s silence. “It won’t pay you to be sassy
here, my lad, now I can assure ye.”
“Think so? Seems to me you’re not as glad to see me as I reckoned you
would be. It didn’t exactly pay you to come ’way up to Rhode Island to
pump me, did it?”
The fellow hissed out an oath between his teeth and clinched his fist
angrily.
“You’re too fresh, you are!” he declared.
“Maybe.”
“So I went up there to pump you, eh?”
“I reckon.”
“And what did _you_ come down here for?”
“To pump you,” responded the captain’s son, laughing.
The sailor stared at him in utter amazement for a moment.
“Of all the swabs----” he began, but Brandon interrupted him.
“See here, Wetherbee, I’ve come here for a purpose. My father intrusted
you with some papers for me (though why he ever did so _I_ don’t see--I
mistrusted your ugly face the first time I ever saw it), and now you
are trying to play me false.”
“You know too much!” roared the sailor, rising and thumping the table
with his clenched fist.
“Yes, I _do_ know too much for your good--or for the success of your
plot,” Brandon replied, with cool sarcasm. “See this?”
He took the bit of newspaper from his pocket and tossed it upon the
table before the man.
“What is it?” demanded the sailor, clutching at the clipping.
“The newspaper item stating that the Silver Swan is a derelict, instead
of being sunken, as you declared to me. Had I not found it in the
woods after you left, I might have still believed your lying yarn,
Wetherbee.”
The sailor crumpled the bit of paper in his fist and shook the clenched
member in the boy’s face.
“Young man,” he said with emphasis, “ye think ye’re smart; but do ye
know that ye’re likely ter git inter trouble ’fore ye get out o’ this
place? I don’t ’low no boy ter sass me.”
“I’m sorry for that,” said Brandon, thinking the fellow’s threat but
mere bombastic eloquence; “for I reckon you’ll have to stand it.”
His very fearlessness caused the man to hesitate ere he used
violence, for it _might_ be that the boy had friends within call. The
sailor therefore bit his thick lip in fury, and poured a shower of
vituperations upon his visitor’s head.
“Let me tell you something else, also,” continued Brandon. “I propose
to have those papers that father gave you.”
“Oh, you do?” half screamed the man, stamping up and down the room in
ungovernable rage.
“Yes, sir; and no amount of swearing will scare me. Those papers are
mine and if you won’t give them up peaceably, the law will make you.”
Suddenly the man stopped storming and became more tranquil.
“So you’re goin’ ter law erbout it, be ye?”
“No, I don’t think I’ll have to; I think you’ll see plain enough that
it will be best for you to give them up. By your own confession you
don’t know where the treasure is hid; _but I do_. Somehow I’m going
to find the wreck of the brig and get--whatever it was father hid. But
first, I want those papers that I may know _what_ the--the treasure
consists of.”
“Oh, ye do? Well, how be ye goin’ ter prove that I’ve got the
docyments?”
“Very easily indeed,” Brandon responded frankly. “I’m going to look up
the sailor who was with you on the raft. If father gave you the papers
_he_ doubtless knows it, and I don’t believe that there are _two_ men
as dishonest as you, Wetherbee.”
“So you know where the old man has hid the stuff, hey? An’ yer goin’
ter see th’--th’ other sailor an’ git his evidence, be ye?”
The man’s ugly face turned a deep reddish hue and he reached out
his hands and clutched the empty chair as though he were strangling
somebody. The gesture was so terribly realistic and the man’s face so
diabolical, that Brandon involuntarily shrank back.
“You little fool!” hissed the other slowly. “You’ve put yourself right
inter my han’s an’ let me tell ye I’m a bad man ter monkey with. I’ve
let ye hev it all your own way so fur, but now ’twill be _my_ turn, an’
don’t you forgit it! Ye know where thet treasure is hidden aboard the
brig, hey? Then, by the great jib boom, ye’ll tell me or _ye’ll never
git out o’ here alive_!”
As he uttered the threat he sprang upon the boy so suddenly that
Brandon was totally unprepared for the assault. His victim was no match
for his great strength, and was borne to the floor at once.
The villain’s hand upon his throat deprived the boy of all power of
utterance, and he felt himself being slowly choked into insensibility.
Suddenly the door between the apartment and the bar room was flung wide
open as though a small hurricane had descended upon the establishment
of the New England Hotel. Don’s villainous assailant--big and burly
though he was--was seized in a grip of iron, pulled from his victim,
and thrown bodily to the other side of the room.
“You scoundrel!” roared Caleb (for it was he) in a voice that made the
chandelier tremble. “Would you kill the lad?”
But Brandon, now that the pressure was removed from his throat, was
on his feet in a moment, staring curiously at the big, wooden legged
sailor.
“Just saved you from adding murder to your other sins, did I?”
continued the mate of the Silver Swan. “Did he hurt you, lad?”
“Guess I’m all right,” responded Brandon, feeling of his throat as his
assailant arose to his feet, scowling ferociously at the newcomer.
“I’ll live to see you hung yet, Jim Leroyd!” Caleb declared, shaking
his huge fist at the sailor.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Brandon; “is _that_ his name? Why, he told me
he was Caleb Wetherbee!”
“He did, eh? Blast his impudence! Let me tell you, lad, if Cale
Wetherbee looked like that scoundrel, he’d go drown himself for very
shame. _I’m_ Caleb Wetherbee, myself, and _you_, I reckon, are Brandon
Tarr.”
Brandon was fairly stupefied by this announcement.
“But what about the--the papers father put into his hands for me?” he
asked, breathlessly.
“Your father give _him_ papers, lad? Well, I reckon not! He’s lied to
ye.”
“Then he hasn’t them?”
“Not he. I’ve got ’em myself, safe and sound.”
“You have them?” repeated Brandon.
“That I have,” replied the mate confidently, “and what’s more, I’ve got
’em right here!”
At this juncture the door behind them opened and the red faced
barkeeper came into the room.
“Look er-here, wot’s de meanin’ of all dis, hey?” he demanded, eying
Caleb with disfavor.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said the wooden legged sailor, in disgust. “I
know _you_, Jack Brady. Get out here, you walking beer keg! I’m having
a private seance with this gentleman,” intimating the cowed Leroyd.
A quick look of intelligence passed between Leroyd and the bartender.
“Ye’re tryin’ ter kick up a shindy in dis place, dat’s wot ye’re at!”
declared the latter, rolling up his sleeves, belligerently.
“Yes, and I’ll kick up a bigger row before I’m through,” Caleb replied
threateningly. “Now you run out and play, sonny, while I talk to my
friend, Mr. Leroyd, here.”
This so angered the pugilistic looking man that he made a dash at the
big sailor; but the consequences were exceedingly unpleasant.
Caleb’s hammer-like fist swung round with the force of a pile driver,
and an ox would have fallen before that blow. As Mr. Brady himself
would have put it, he was “knocked out in one round.”
But the treacherous Leroyd, taking advantage of his friend’s attack on
the mate, sprang upon Caleb from the other side. This flank movement
was totally unexpected, and, weakened by his long confinement in the
hospital, the mate of the Silver Swan could not hold his own with his
former shipmate.
Both went to the floor with a crash, and as they fell Leroyd tore open
his antagonist’s coat and seized a flat leather case from the mate’s
inside pocket. Dealing one heavy blow on the other’s upturned face, the
scoundrel sprang up and disappeared like a shot through the door at the
opposite end of the apartment.
“Stop him!” roared Caleb, and Brandon, who had stood utterly bewildered
and helpless throughout the scene, sprang forward to the door.
“The papers! He’s stolen the papers!” he gasped, seizing the knob and
trying to pull open the door.
But the key had been turned in the lock and the stout door baffled all
his attempts upon it.