be took--not by no woman. Shoot, damn you, and have it done with.
I'm waitin'!"
"Keep up those hands!"
"I won't!" He lowered them defiantly. "I w-wanted to m-make
Partridgeville and see the old lady. She'd 'a' helped me. But
anything's better'n goin' back to that hell where I been the last
two years. Go on! Why don't you shoot?"
"You wanted to make Partridgeville and see--_who_?"
"My mother--and my wife."
"Have you got a mother? Have you got a--wife?"
"Yes, and three kids. Why don't you shoot?"
It seemed an eon that they stood so. The McBride woman was trying to
find the nerve to fire. She could not. In that instant she made a
discovery that many luckless souls make too late: _to kill a man_ is
easy to talk about, easy to write about. But to stand deliberately
face to face with a fellow-human--alive, pulsing, breathing, fearing,
hoping, loving, living,--point a weapon at him that would take his
life, blot him from the earth, negate twenty or thirty years of
childhood, youth, maturity, and make of him in an instant--nothing!
--that is quite another matter.
He was helpless before her now. Perhaps the expression on his face
had something to do with the sudden revulsion that halted her finger.
Facing certain death, some of the evil in those crooked eyes seemed
to die out, and the terrible personality of the man to fade.
Regardless of her danger, regardless of what he would have done to
her if luck had not turned the tables, Cora McBride saw before her
only a lone man with all society's hand against him, realizing he
had played a bad game to the limit and lost, two big tears creeping
down his unshaved face, waiting for the end.
"Three children!" she whispered faintly.
"Yes."
"You're going back to see them?"
"Yes, and my mother. Mother'd help me get to Canada--somehow."
Cora McBride had forgotten all about the five thousand dollars. She
was stunned by the announcement that this man had relatives--a mother,
a wife, _three_ babies. The human factor had not before occurred to
her. Murderers! They have no license to let their eyes well with
tears, to have wives and babies, to possess mothers who will help
them get to Canada regardless of what their earthly indiscretions
may have been.
At this revelation the gun-point wavered. The sight of those tears
on his face sapped her will-power even as a wound in her breast
might have drained her life-blood.
Her great moment had been given her. She was letting it slip away.
She had her reward in her hand for the mere pulling of a trigger and
no incrimination for the result. For a bit of human sentiment she
was bungling the situation unpardonably, fatally.
Why did she not shoot? Because she was a woman. Because it is the
God-given purpose of womanhood to give life, not take it.
The gun sank, sank--down out of the light, down out of sight.
And the next instant he was upon her.
The flash-lamp was knocked from her hand and blinked out. It struck
the stove and she heard the tinkle of the broken lens. The woman's
hand caught at the sacking before the window at her left shoulder.
Gripping it wildly to save herself from that onslaught, she tore it
away. For the second time the revolver was twisted from her raw
fingers.
The man reared upward, over her.
"Where are you?" he roared again and again. "I'll show you! Lemme at
you!"
Outside the great yellow moon of early winter, arising late, was
coming up over the silhouetted line of purple mountains to the
eastward. It illumined the cabin with a faint radiance, disclosing
the woman crouching beneath the table.
The man saw her, pointed his weapon point-blank at her face and fired.
To Cora McBride, prostrate there in her terror, the impact of the
bullet felt like the blow of a stick upon her cheek-bone rocking her
head. Her cheek felt warmly numb. She pressed a quick hand
involuntarily against it, and drew it away sticky with blood.
_Click! Click! Click_!
Three times the revolver mechanism was worked to accomplish her
destruction. But there was no further report. The cylinder was empty.
"Oh, God!" the woman moaned. "I fed you and offered to help you. I
refused to shoot you because of your mother--your wife--your babies.
And yet you----"
"Where's your cartridges?" he cried wildly. "You got more; gimme
that belt!"
She felt his touch upon her. His crazy fingers tried to unbutton the
clasp of the belt and holster. But he could secure neither while she
fought him. He pinioned her at length with his knee. His fingers
secured a fistful of the cylinders from her girdle, and he opened
the chamber of the revolver.
She realized the end was but a matter of moments. Nothing but a
miracle could save her now.
Convulsively she groped about for something with which to strike.
Nothing lay within reach of her bleeding fingers, however, but a
little piece of dried sapling. She tried to struggle loose, but the
lunatic held her mercilessly. He continued the mechanical loading of
the revolver.
The semi-darkness of the hut, the outline of the moon afar through
the uncurtained window--these swam before her.... Suddenly her eyes
riveted on that curtainless window and she uttered a terrifying cry.
Ruggam turned.
Outlined in the window aperture against the low-hung moon _Martin
Wiley, the murdered deputy, was staring into the cabin_!
From the fugitive's throat came a gurgle. Some of the cartridges he
held spilled to the flooring. Above her his figure became rigid.
There was no mistaking the identity of the apparition. They saw the
man's hatless head and some of his neck. They saw his dark pompadour
and the outline of his skull. As that horrible silhouette remained
there, Wiley's pompadour lifted slightly as it had done in life.
The cry in the convict's throat broke forth into words.
"Mart Wiley!" he cried, "Mart Wiley! _Mart--Wiley_!"
Clear, sharp, distinct was the shape of that never-to-be-forgotten
pompadour against the disk of the winter moon. His features could
not be discerned, for the source of light was behind him, but the
silhouette was sufficient. It was Martin Wiley; he was alive. His
head and his wirelike hair were moving--rising, falling.
Ruggam, his eyes riveted upon the phantom, recoiled mechanically to
the western wall. He finished loading the revolver by the sense of
touch. Then:
Spurt after spurt of fire lanced the darkness, directed at the Thing
in the window. While the air of the hut reeked with the acrid smoke,
the echo of the volley sounded through the silent forest-world miles
away.
But the silhouette in the window remained.
Once or twice it moved slightly as though in surprise; that was all.
The pompadour rose in bellicose retaliation--the gesture that had
always ensued when Wiley was angered or excited. But to bullets
fired from an earthly gun the silhouette of the murdered deputy's
ghost, arisen in these winter woods to prevent another slaughter,
was impervious.
Ruggam saw; he shrieked. He broke the gun and spilled out the empty
shells. He fumbled in more cartridges, locked the barrel and fired
again and again, until once more it was empty.
Still the apparition remained.
The man in his dementia hurled the weapon; it struck the sash and
caromed off, hitting the stove. Then Hap Ruggam collapsed upon the
floor.
The woman sprang up. She found the rope thongs which had bound her
pack to her shoulders. With steel-taut nerves, she rolled the
insensible Ruggam over.
She tied his hands; she tied his ankles. With her last bit of rope
she connected the two bindings tightly behind him so that if he
recovered, he would be at her mercy. Her task accomplished, on her
knees beside his prone figure, she thought to glance up at the window.
Wiley's ghost had disappeared.
Sheriff Crumpett and his party broke into the Lyons clearing within
an hour. They had arrived in answer to five successive shots given a
few moments apart, the signal agreed upon. The mystery to them,
however, was that those five shots had been fired by some one not of
their party.
The sheriff and his men found the McBride woman, her clothing half
torn from her body, her features powder-marked and blood-stained;
but she was game to the last, woman-fashion weeping only now that
all was over. They found, too, the man they had combed the country
to find--struggling fruitlessly in his bonds, her prisoner.
And they likewise found the miracle.
On the snow outside under the window they came upon a black
porcupine about the size of a man's head which, scenting food within
the cabin, had climbed to the sill, and after the habit of these
little animals whose number is legion all over the Green Mountains,
had required fifteen bullets pumped into its carcass before it would
release its hold.
Even in death its quills were raised in uncanny duplication of Mart
Wiley's pompadour.
A MATTER OF LOYALTY
BY LAWRENCE PERRY
From _The Red Book_
Standing in the bow of the launch, Dr. Nicholls, coach of the Baliol
crew, leaned upon his megaphone, his eyes fixed upon two eight-oared
crews resting upon their oars a hundred feet away. From his hand
dangled a stop-watch. The two crews had just completed a four-mile
race against the watch.
A grim light came into the deeply set gray eyes of Jim Deacon as the
coach put the watch into his pocket. Deacon was the stroke of the
second varsity, an outfit which in aquatics bears the same relation
to a university eight as the scrub team does to a varsity football
eleven. But in the race just completed the second varsity had been
much of a factor--surprisingly, dishearteningly so. Nip and tuck it
had been, the varsity straining to drop the rival boat astern, but
unable to do so. At the finish not a quarter of a length, not fifteen
feet, had separated the two prows; a poor showing for the varsity to
have made with the great rowing classic of the season coming on
apace--a poor showing, that is, assuming the time consumed in the
four-mile trip was not especially low.
Only the coach could really know whether the time was satisfactory
or not. But Jim Deacon suspected that it was poor, his idea being
based upon knowledge he had concerning the capabilities of his own
crew; in other words, he knew it was only an average second varsity
outfit. The coach knew it too. That was the reason his jaws were set,
his eyes vacant. At length he shook his head.
"Not good, boys--not good." His voice was gentle, though usually he
was a rip-roaring mentor. "Varsity, you weren't rowing. That's the
answer--not rowing together. What's the matter, eh?"
"I thought, Dr. Nicholls, that the rhythm was very good----"
The coach interrupted Rollins, the captain, with a gesture.
"Oh, rhythm! Yes, you row prettily enough. You look well. I should
hope so, at this time of the season. But you're not shoving the boat
fast; you don't pick up and get her moving. You're leaking power
somewhere; as a matter of fact, I suspect you're not putting the
power in. I know you're not. Ashburton, didn't that lowering of your
seat fix you? Well, then,"--as the young man nodded affirmatively--
"how about your stretcher, Innis? Does it suit you now?"
As Innis nodded, signifying that it did, Deacon saw the coach's eyes
turn to Doane, who sat at stroke of the varsity.
"Now," muttered the stroke of the second varsity, his eyes gleaming,
"we'll hear something."
"Doane, is there anything the trouble with you? You're feeling well,
aren't you?"
"Yes sir. Sure!" The boy flushed. Tall, straight, handsome he sat in
the boat, fingering the oar-handle nervously. In appearance he was
the ideal oarsman. And yet----
Deacon, watching the coach, could almost see his mind working. Now
the time had come, the issue clearly defined. Another stroke must be
tried and found not wanting, else the annual eight-oared rowing
classic between those ancient universities Baliol and Shelburne
would be decided before it was rowed.
Deacon flushed as the coach's glittering eyeglasses turned toward him.
It was the big moment of the senior's four years at college. Four
years! And six months of each of those years a galley-slave--on the
machines in the rowing-room of the gymnasium, on the ice-infested
river with the cutting winds of March sweeping free; then the more
genial months with the voice of coach or assistant coach lashing him.
Four years of dogged, unremitting toil with never the reward of a
varsity seat, and now with the great regatta less than a week away,
the big moment, the crown of all he had done.
Words seemed on the verge of the coach's lips. Deacon's eyes
strained upon them as he sat stiffly in his seat. But no words came;
the coach turned away.
"All right," he said spiritlessly. "Paddle back to the float."
The coxswains barked their orders; sixteen oars rattled in their
locks; the glistening shells moved slowly homeward.
Tingling from his plunge in the river, Jim Deacon walked up the
bluff from the boathouse to the group of cottages which constituted
Baliol's rowing-quarters. Some of the freshman crew were playing
indoor baseball on the lawn under the gnarled trees, and their
shouts and laughter echoed over the river. Deacon stood watching them.
His face was of the roughhewn type, in his two upper-class years his
heavy frame had taken on a vast amount of brawn and muscle. Now his
neck was meet for his head and for his chest and shoulders; long,
slightly bowed limbs filled out a picture of perfect physique.
No one had known him really well in college. He was working his way
through. Besides, he was a student in one of the highly scientific
engineering courses which demanded a great deal of steady application.
With no great aptitude for football--he was a bit slow-footed--with
little tune or inclination for social activities, he had
concentrated upon rowing, not only as a diversion from his arduous
studies, an ordered outlet for physical energy, but with the idea of
going out into the world with that hallmark of a Baliol varsity oar
which he had heard and believed was likely to stand him in stead in
life. Baliol alumni, which include so many men of wealth and power,
had a habit of not overlooking young graduates who have brought fame
to their alma mater.
As Deacon stood watching the freshmen at play, Dick Rollins, the
crew captain, came up.
"They sent down the time-trial results from the Shelburne quarters,
Deacon."
Never in his life had one of the great men of the university spoken
that many words, or half as many, to Jim Deacon, who stared at the
speaker.
"The time--oh, yes; I see."
"They did twenty minutes, thirty seconds."
Deacon whistled.
"Well," he said at length, "you didn't get the boat moving much
to-day." He wanted to say more, but could think of nothing. Words
came rather hard with him.
"You nearly lugged the second shell ahead of us to-day, hang you."
"No use letting a patient die because he doesn't know he's sick."
Rollins grimaced.
"Yes, we were sick. Doc Nicholls knows a sick crew when he sees one.
He--he thinks you're the needed tonic, Deacon."
"Eh?"
"He told me you were to sit in at stroke in Junior Doane's place
to-morrow. I'd been pulling for the change the past few days. Now he
sees it."
"You were pulling----But you're Doane's roommate."
"Yes, it's tough. But Baliol first, you know."
Deacon stared at the man. He wanted to say something but couldn't.
The captain smiled.
"Look here, Deacon; let's walk over toward the railroad a bit. I
want to talk to you." Linking his arm through Deacon's, he set out
through the yard toward the quaint old road with its little cluster
of farm cottages and rolling stone-walled meadow-land bathed in the
light of the setting sun.
"Jim, old boy, you're a queer sort of a chap, and--and--the fact is,
the situation will be a bit ticklish. You know what it means for a
fellow to be thrown out of his seat just before a race upon which he
has been counting heart and soul."
"I don't know. I can imagine."
"You see, it's Doane. You know about his father----"
"I know all about his father," was the reply.
"Eh?" Rollins stared at him, then smiled. "I suppose every rowing
man at Baliol does. But you don't know as much as I do. On the quiet,
he's the man who gave us the new boathouse last year. He's our best
spender. He was an old varsity oar himself."
"Sure, I know."
"That's the reason the situation is delicate. Frankly, Jim, Doc
Nicholls and the rest of us would have liked to see Junior Doane
come through. I think you get what I mean. He's a senior; he's my
best friend."
"He stroked the boat last year."
"Yes, and Shelburne beat us. Naturally he wants to get back at that
crowd."
"But he can't--not if he strokes the boat, Rollins. If you don't
know it, I'm telling you. If I thought different, I'd say so."
Deacon abruptly paused after so long a speech.
"You don't have to tell me. I know it. We're not throwing a race to
Shelburne simply to please old Cephas Doane, naturally. I know what
you've got, Jim. So does Dr. Nicholls. You'll be in the varsity
to-morrow. But here's the point of what I've been trying to say;
Junior Doane hasn't been very decent to you--"
"Oh, he's been all right."
"Yes, I know. But he's a funny fellow; not a bit of a snob--I don't
mean that, but--but--"
"You mean he hasn't paid much attention to me." Deacon smiled grimly.
"Well, that's all right. As a matter of fact, I never really have
got to know him. Still, I haven't got to know many of the fellows.
Too busy. You haven't paid much attention to me, either; but I like
you."
Rollins, whose father was a multimillionaire with family roots going
deep among the rocks of Manhattan Island, laughed.
"Bully for you! You won't mind my saying so, Jim, but I had it in my
mind to ask you to be a bit inconsequential--especially when Doane
was around--about your taking his place. But I guess it isn't
necessary."
"No,"--Deacon's voice was short--"it isn't."
"Junior Doane, of course, will be hard hit. He'll be game. He'll try
to win back his seat. And he may; I warn you."
"If he can win it back, I want him to."
"Good enough!" The captain started to walk away, then turned back
with sudden interest. "By the way, Jim, I was looking through the
college catalogue this morning. You and Doane both come from
Philadelphia, don't you?"
"Yes."
"I asked Doane if he knew you there. Apparently not."
"No, he didn't." Deacon paused as though deliberating. Suddenly he
spoke. "I knew of him, though. You see, my father works in the bank
of which Mr. Doane is president."
"Oh!" Rollins blinked. "I see."
Deacon stepped forward, placing his hand upon the captain's arm.
"I don't know why I told you that. It isn't important at all. Don't
say anything to Doane, will you? Not that I care. It--it just isn't
important."
"No. I get you, Jim. It isn't important." He flung an arm over the
young man's shoulder. "Let's go back to dinner. That rotten time-row
has given me an appetite."
There was that quiet in the Baliol dining room that evening which
one might expect to find after an unsatisfactory time-trial. Nations
might be falling, cities burning, important men dying; to these boys
such events would be as nothing in the face of the fact that the
crew of a traditional rival was to be met within the week--and that
they were not proving themselves equipped for the meeting.
"If any of you fellows wish to motor down to the Groton Hotel on the
Point for an hour or two, you may go," said the coach, pushing back
his chair. He had begun to fear that his charges might be coming to
too fine a point of condition and had decided that the relaxation of
a bit of dancing might do no harm.
"Yeaa!" In an instant that subdued dining apartment was tumultuous
with vocal outcry, drawing to the doorway a crowd of curious freshmen
who were finishing dinner in their room.
"All right!" Dr. Nicholls grinned. "I gather all you varsity and
second varsity men want to go. I'll have the big launch ready at
eight. And--oh, Dick Rollins, don't forget; that boat leaves the
hotel dock at ten-forty-five precisely."
"Got you sir. Come on, fellows. Look out, you freshmen." With a yell
and a dive the oarsmen went through the doors.
Deacon followed at a more leisurely gait with that faint gleam of
amusement in his eyes which was so characteristic. His first impulse
was not to go, but upon second thought he decided that he would.
Jane Bostwick was stopping at the Groton. Her father was a successful
promoter and very close to Cephas Doane, Sr., whose bank stood back
of most of his operations. Deacon had known her rather well in the
days when her father was not a successful promoter. In fact, the two
had been neighbours as boy and girl, had played together in front of
a row of prim brick houses. He had not seen her in recent years until
the previous afternoon, when as he was walking along the country road,
she had pulled up in her roadster.
"Don't pretend you don't remember me, Jim Deacon," she had laughed
as the boy had stared at the stunning young woman.
Jim remembered her, all right. They talked as though so many
significant years had not elapsed. She was greatly interested,
exceedingly gracious.
"Do you know," she said, "it never occurred to me that Deacon, the
Baliol rowing man, was none other than Jim Deacon. Silly of me,
wasn't it? But then I didn't even know you were in Baliol. I'm
perfectly crazy about the crew, you know. And Mother, I think, is a
worse fan than I am. You know Junior Doane, of course."
"Oh, yes--that is, I--why, yes, I know him."
"Yes." She smiled down upon him. "If you're ever down to the Groton,
do drop in. Mother would love to see you. She often speaks of your
mother." With a wave of her hand she had sped on her way.
Curiously, that evening he had heard Doane talking to her over the
telephone, and there was a great deal in his manner of speaking that
indicated something more than mere acquaintance.
But Deacon did not see Jane Bostwick at the hotel--not to speak to,
at least. He was not a good dancer and held aloof when those of his
fellows who were not acquainted with guests were introduced around.
Finding a wicker settee among some palms at one side of the orchestra,
Deacon sat drinking in the scene.
It was not until the hour set for the return had almost arrived that
Deacon saw Jane Bostwick, and then his attention was directed to her
by her appearance with Junior Doane in one of the open French
windows at his right. Evidently the two had spent the evening in the
sequestered darkness of the veranda. No pair in the room filled the
eye so gratefully; the girl, tall, blonde, striking in a pale blue
evening gown; the man, broad-shouldered, trim-waisted, with the
handsome high-held head of a patrician.
A wave of something akin to bitterness passed over Deacon--bitterness
having nothing to do with self. For the boy was ruggedly independent.
He believed in himself; knew what he was going to do in the world.
He was thinking of his father, and of the fathers of that young man
and girl before him. His father was painstaking, honourable,
considerate--a nobleman every inch of him; a man who deserved
everything that the world had to give, a man who had everything save
the quality of acquisition. And Doane's father? And Jane Bostwick's
father?
Of the elder Doane he knew by hearsay--a proud, intolerant wholly
worldly man whose passions, aside from finance, were his son and
Baliol aquatics. And Jane Bostwick's father he had known as a boy--a
soft-footed, sly-faced velvety sort of a man noted for converting
back lots into oil-fields and ash-dumps into mines yielding precious
metals. Jim Deacon was not so old that he had come to philosophy
concerning the way of the world.
But so far as his immediate world was concerned, Junior Doane was
going out of the varsity boat in the morning--and he, Jim Deacon,
was going to sit in his place.
It came the next morning. When the oarsmen went down to the boathouse
to dress for their morning row, the arrangement of the various crews
posted on the bulletin-board gave Deacon the seat at stroke in the
varsity boat; Junior Doane's name appeared at stroke in the second
varsity list.
There had been rumours of some sort of a shift, but no one seemed to
have considered the probability of Doane's losing his seat--Doane
least of all. For a moment the boy stood rigid, looking up at the
bulletin-board. Then suddenly he laughed.