THE HAMMER-LOCK
Day was breaking as Glenister came down the mountain. With the first
light he halted to scan the trail, and having no means of knowing that
the fresh tracks he found were not those of the two riders he followed,
he urged his lathered horse ahead till he became suddenly conscious that
he was very tired and had not slept for two days and nights. The
recollection did not reassure the young man, for his body was a weapon
which must not fail in the slightest measure now that there was work to
do. Even the unwelcome speculation upon his physical handicap offered
relief, however, from the agony which fed upon him whenever he thought
of Helen in the gambler’s hands. Meanwhile, the horse, groaning at his
master’s violence, plunged onward towards the roofs of Nome, now growing
gray in the first dawn.
It seemed years since Roy had seen the sunlight, for this night,
burdened with suspense, had been endlessly long. His body was faint
beneath the strain, and yet he rode on and on, tired, dogged, stony, his
eyes set towards the sea, his mind a storm of formless, whirling
thoughts, beneath which was an undeviating, implacable determination.
He knew now that he had sacrificed all hope of the Midas, and likewise
the hope of Helen was gone; in fact, he began to realize dimly that from
the beginning he had never had the possibility of winning her, that she
had never been destined for him, and that his love for her had been sent
as a light by which he was to find himself. He had failed everywhere, he
had become an outlaw, he had fought and gone down, certain only of his
rectitude and the mastery of his unruly spirit. Now the hour had come
when he would perform his last mission, deriving therefrom that
satisfaction which the gods could not deny. He would have his vengeance.
The scheme took form without conscious effort on his part and embraced
two things--the death of the gambler and a meeting with McNamara. Of the
former, he had no more doubt than that the sun rising there would sink
in the west. So well confirmed was this belief that the details did not
engage his thought; but on the result of the other encounter he
speculated with some interest. From the first McNamara had been a riddle
to him, and mystery breeds curiosity. His blind, instinctive hatred of
the man had assumed the proportions of a mania; but as to what the
outcome would be when they met face to face, fate alone could tell.
Anyway, McNamara should never have Helen--Roy believed his mission
covered that point as well as her deliverance from the Bronco Kid. When
he had finished--he would pay the price. If he had the luck to escape,
he would go back to his hills and his solitude; if he did not, his
future would be in the hands of his enemies.
He entered the silent streets unobserved, for the mists were heavy and
low. Smoke columns arose vertically in the still air. The rain had
ceased, having beaten down the waves which rumbled against the beach,
filling the streets with their subdued thunder. A ship, anchored in the
offing, had run in from the lee of Sledge Island with the first lull,
while midway to the shore a tender was rising and falling, its oars
flashing like the silvered feelers of a sea insect crawling upon the
surface of the ocean.
He rode down Front Street heedless of danger, heedless of the comment
his appearance might create, and, unseen, entered his enemy’s
stronghold. He passed a gambling-hall, through the windows of which came
a sickly yellow gleam. A man came out unsteadily and stared at the
horseman, then passed on.
Glenister’s plan was to go straight to the Northern and from there to
track down its owner relentlessly, but in order to reach the place his
course led him past the office of Dunham & Struve. This brought back to
his mind the man dying out there ten miles at his back. The scantiest
humanity demanded that assistance be sent at once. Yet he dared not give
word openly, thus betraying his presence, for it was necessary that he
maintain his liberty during the next hour at all hazards. He suddenly
thought of an expedient and reined in his horse, which stopped with
wide-spread legs and dejected head while he dismounted and climbed the
stairs to leave a note upon the door. Some one would see the message
shortly and recognize its urgency.
In dressing for the battle at the Midas on the previous night he had
replaced his leather boots with “mukluks,” which are waterproof, light,
and pliable footgear made from the skin of seal and walrus. He was thus
able to move as noiselessly as though in moccasins. Finding neither
pencil nor paper in his pocket, he tried the outer door of the office,
to find it unlocked. He stepped inside and listened, then moved towards
a table on which were writing materials, but in doing so heard a rustle
in Struve’s private office. Evidently his soft soles had not disturbed
the man inside. Roy was about to tiptoe out as he had come when the
hidden man cleared his throat. It is in these involuntary sounds that
the voice retains its natural quality more distinctly even than in
speaking. A strange eagerness grew in Glenister’s face and he approached
the partition stealthily. It was of wood and glass, the panes clouded
and opaque to a height of some six feet; but stepping upon a chair he
peered into the room beyond. A man knelt in a litter of papers before
the open safe, its drawers and compartments removed and their contents
scattered. The watcher lowered himself, drew his gun, and laid soft hand
upon the door-knob, turning the latch with firm fingers. His vengeance
had come to meet him.
* * * * *
After lying in wait during the long night, certain that the Vigilantes
would spring his trap, McNamara was astounded at news of the battle at
the Midas and of Glenister’s success. He stormed and cursed his men as
cowards. The Judge became greatly exercised over this new development,
which, coupled with his night of long anxiety, reduced him to a pitiful
hysteria.
“They’ll blow _us_ up next. Great Heavens! Dynamite! Oh, that is
barbarous. For Heaven’s sake, get the soldiers out, Alec.”
“Ay, we can use them now.” Thereupon McNamara roused the commanding
officer at the post and requested him to accoutre a troop and have them
ready to march at daylight, then bestirred the Judge to start the wheels
of his court and invoke this military aid in regular fashion.
“Make it all a matter of record,” he said. “We want to keep our skirts
clear from now on.”
“But the towns-people are against us,” quavered Stillman. “They’ll tear
us to pieces.”
“Let ’em try. Once I get my hand on the ringleader, the rest may riot
and be damned.”
Although he had made less display than had the Judge, the receiver was
no less deeply worried about Helen, of whom no news came. His jealousy,
fanned to red heat by the discovery of her earlier defection, was
enhanced fourfold by the thought of this last adventure. Something told
him there was treachery afoot, and when she did not return at dawn he
began to fear that she had cast in her lot with the rioters. This
aroused a perfect delirium of doubt and anger till he reasoned further
that Struve, having gone with her, must also be a traitor. He recognized
the menace in this fact, knowing the man’s venality, so began to reckon
carefully its significance. What could Struve do? What proof had he?
McNamara started, and, seizing his hat, hurried straight to the lawyer’s
office and let himself in with the key he carried. It was light enough
for him to decipher the characters on the safe lock as he turned the
combination, so he set to work scanning the endless bundles within,
hoping that after all the man had taken with him no incriminating
evidence. Once the searcher paused at some fancied sound, but when
nothing came of it drew his revolver and laid it before him just inside
the safe door and close beneath his hand, continuing to run through the
documents while his uneasiness increased. He had been engaged so for
some time when he heard the faintest creak at his back, too slight to
alarm and just sufficient to break his tension and cause him to jerk his
head about. Framed in the open door stood Roy Glenister watching him.
McNamara’s astonishment was so genuine that he leaped to his feet, faced
about, and prompted by a secretive instinct swung to the safe door as
though to guard its contents. He had acted upon the impulse before
realizing that his weapon was inside and that now, although the door was
not locked, it would require that one dangerous, yes, fatal, second to
open it.
The two men stared at each other for a time, silent and malignant, their
glances meeting like blades; in the older man’s face a look of defiance,
in the younger’s a dogged and grim-purposed enmity. McNamara’s first
perturbation left him calm, alert, dangerous; whereas the continued
contemplation of his enemy worked in Glenister to destroy his composure,
and his purpose blazed forth unhidden.
He stood there unkempt and soiled, the clean sweep of jaw and throat
overgrown with a three days’ black stubble, his hair wet and matted, his
whole left side foul with clay where he had fallen in the darkness. A
muddy red streak spread downward from a cut above his temple, beneath
his eyes were sagging folds, while the flicker at his mouth corners
betrayed the high nervous pitch to which he was keyed.
“I have come for the last act, McNamara; now we’ll have it out, man to
man.”
The politician shrugged his shoulders. “You have the drop on me. I am
unarmed.” At which the miner’s face lighted fiercely and he chuckled.
“Ah, that’s almost too good to be true. I have dreamed about such a
thing and I have been hungry to feel your throat since the first time I
saw you. It’s grown on me till shooting wouldn’t satisfy me. Ever had
the feeling? Well, I’m going to choke the life out of you with my bare
hands.”
McNamara squared himself.
“I wouldn’t advise you to try it. I have lived longer than you and I was
never beaten, but I know the feeling you speak about. I have it now.”
His eyes roved rapidly up and down the other’s form, noting the lean
thighs and close-drawn belt which lent the appearance of spareness,
belied only by the neck and shoulders. He had beaten better men, and he
reasoned that if it came to a physical test in these cramped quarters
his own great weight would more than offset any superior agility the
miner might possess. The longer he looked the more he yielded to his
hatred of the man before him, and the more cruelly he longed to satisfy
it.
“Take off your coat,” said Glenister. “Now turn around. All right! I
just wanted to see if you were lying about your gun.”
“I’ll kill you,” cried McNamara.
Glenister laid his six-shooter upon the safe and slipped off his own wet
garment. The difference was more marked now and the advantage more
strongly with the receiver. Though they had avoided allusion to it, each
knew that this fight had nothing to do with the Midas and each realized
whence sprang their fierce enmity. And it was meet that they should
come together thus. It had been the one certain and logical event which
they had felt inevitably approaching from long back. And it was fitting,
moreover, that they should fight alone and unwitnessed, armed only with
the weapons of the wilderness, for they were both of the far, free
lands, were both of the fighter’s type, and had both warred for the
first, great prize.
They met ferociously. McNamara aimed a fearful blow, but Glenister met
him squarely, beating him off cleverly, stepping in and out, his arms
swinging loosely from his shoulders like whalebone withes tipped with
lead. He moved lightly, his footing made doubly secure by reason of his
soft-soled mukluks. Recognizing his opponent’s greater weight, he
undertook merely to stop the headlong rushes and remain out of reach as
long as possible. He struck the politician fairly in the mouth so that
the man’s head snapped back and his fists went wild, then, before the
arms could grasp him, the miner had broken ground and whipped another
blow across; but McNamara was a boxer himself, so covered and blocked
it. The politician spat through his mashed lips and rushed again,
sweeping his opponent from his feet. Again Glenister’s fist shot forward
like a lump of granite, but the other came on head down and the blow
finished too high, landing on the big man’s brow. A sudden darting agony
paralyzed Roy’s hand, and he realized that he had broken the metacarpal
bones and that henceforth it would be useless. Before he could recover,
McNamara had passed under his extended arm and seized him by the middle,
then, thrusting his left leg back of Roy’s, he whirled him from his
balance, flinging him clear and with resistless force. It seemed that a
fatal fall must follow, but the youth squirmed catlike in the air,
landing with set muscles which rebounded like rubber. Even so, the
receiver was upon him before he could rise, reaching for the young man’s
throat with his heavy hands. Roy recognized the fatal “strangle hold,”
and, seizing his enemy’s wrists, endeavored to tear them apart, but his
left hand was useless, so with a mighty wrench he freed himself, and,
locked in each other’s arms, the men strained and swayed about the
office till their neck veins were bursting, their muscles paralyzed.
Men may fight duels calmly, may shoot or parry or thrust with cold
deliberation; but when there comes the jar of body to body, the sweaty
contact of skin to skin, the play of iron muscles, the painful gasp of
exhaustion--then the mind goes skittering back into its dark recesses
while every venomous passion leaps forth from its hiding-place and joins
in the horrid war.
They tripped across the floor, crashing into the partition, which split,
showering them with glass. They fell and rolled in it; then, by consent,
wrenched themselves apart and rose, eye to eye, their jaws hanging,
their lungs wheezing, their faces trickling blood and sweat. Roy’s left
hand pained him excruciatingly, while McNamara’s macerated lips had
turned outward in a hideous pout. They crouched so for an instant,
cruel, bestial--then clinched again. The office-fittings were wrecked
utterly and the room became a litter of ruins. The men’s garments fell
away till their breasts were bare and their arms swelled white and
knotted through the rags. They knew no pain, their bodies were insensate
mechanisms.
Gradually the older man’s face was beaten into a shapeless mass by the
other’s cunning blows, while Glenister’s every bone was wrenched and
twisted under his enemy’s terrible onslaughts. The miner’s chief effort,
it is true, was to keep his feet and to break the man’s embraces. Never
had he encountered one whom he could not beat by sheer strength till he
met this great, snarling creature who worried him hither and yon as
though he were a child. Time and again Roy beat upon the man’s face with
the blows of a sledge. No rules governed this solitary combat; the men
were deaf to all but the roaring in their ears, blinded to all but hate,
insensible to everything but the blood mania. Their trampling feet
caused the building to rumble and shake as though some monster were
running amuck.
Meanwhile a bareheaded man rushed out of the store beneath, bumping into
a pedestrian who had paused on the sidewalk, and together they scurried
up the stairs. The dory which Roy had seen at sea had shot the breakers,
and now its three passengers were tracking through the wet sand towards
Front Street, Bill Wheaton in the lead. He was followed by two rawboned
men who travelled without baggage. The city was awakening with the sun
which reared a copper rim out of the sea. Judge Stillman and Voorhees
came down from the hotel and paused to gaze through the mists at a
caravan of mule teams which trotted into the other end of the street
with jingle and clank. The wagons were blue with soldiers, the early
golden rays slanting from their Krags, and they were bound for the
Midas.
Out of the fogs which clung so thickly to the tundra there came two
other horses, distorted and unreal, on one a girl, on the other a figure
of pain and tragedy, a grotesque creature that swayed stiffly to the
motion of its steed, its face writhed into lines of suffering, its
hands clutching cantle and horn.
It was as though Fate, with invisible touch, were setting her stage for
the last act of this play, assembling the principals close to the Golden
Sands where first they had made entrance.
The man and the girl came face to face with the Judge and marshal, who
cried out upon seeing them, but as they reined in, out from the stairs
beside them a man shot amid clatter and uproar.
“Give me a hand--quick!” he shouted to them.
“What’s up?” inquired the marshal.
“It’s murder! McNamara and Glenister!” He dashed back up the steps
behind Voorhees, the Judge following, while muffled cries came from
above.
The gambler turned towards the three men who were hurrying from the
beach, and, recognizing Wheaton, called to him: “Untie my feet! Cut the
ropes! Quick!”
“What’s the trouble?” the lawyer asked, but on hearing Glenister’s name
bounded after the Judge, leaving one of his companions to free the
rider. They could hear the fight now, and all crowded towards the door,
Helen with her brother, in spite of his warning to stay behind.
She never remembered how she climbed those stairs, for she was borne
along by that hypnotic power which drags one to behold a catastrophe in
spite of his will. Reaching the room, she stood appalled; for the group
she had joined watched two raging things that rushed at each other with
inhuman cries, ragged, bleeding, fighting on a carpet of débris. Every
loose and breakable thing had been ground to splinters as though by iron
slugs in a whirling cylinder.
To this day, from Dawson to the Straits, from Unga to the Arctics, men
tell of the combat wherever they foregather at flaring camp-fires or in
dingy bunk-houses; and although some scout the tale, there are others
who saw it and can swear to its truth. These say that the encounter was
like the battle of bull moose in the rutting season, though more
terrible, averring that two men like these had never been known in the
land since the days of Vitus Bering and his crew; for their rancor had
swollen till at feel of each other’s flesh they ran mad and felt
superhuman strength. It is true, at any rate, that neither was conscious
of the filling room, nor the cries of the crowd, even when the marshal
forced himself through the wedged door and fell upon the nearest, which
was Glenister. He came at an instant when the two had paused at
arm’s-length, glaring with rage-drunken eyes, gasping the labored breath
back into their lungs.
With a fling of his long arms the young man hurled the intruder aside so
violently that his head struck the iron safe and he collapsed
insensible. Then, without apparent notice of the interruption, the fight
went on. It was seen during this respite that McNamara’s mouth was
running water as though he were deathly sick, while every retch brought
forth a groan. Helen heard herself crying: “Stop them! Stop them!” But
no one seemed capable of interference. She heard her brother muttering
and his breath coming heavily like that of the fighters, his body
swaying in time to theirs. The Judge was ashy, imbecile, helpless.
McNamara’s distress was patent to his antagonist, who advanced upon him
with the hunger of promised victory; but the young man’s muscles obeyed
his commands sluggishly, his ribs seemed broken, his back was weak, and
on the inner side of his legs the flesh was quivering. As they came
together the boss reached up his right hand and caught the miner by the
face, burying thumb and fingers crablike into his cheeks, forcing his
slack jaws apart, thrusting his head backward, while he centred every
ounce of his strength in the effort to maim. Roy felt the flesh giving
way and flung himself backward to break the hold, whereupon the other
summoned his wasting energy and plunged towards the safe, where lay the
revolver. Instinct warned Glenister of treachery, told him that the man
had sought this last resource to save himself, and as he saw him turn
his back and reach for the weapon, the youth leaped like a panther,
seizing him about the waist, grasping McNamara’s wrist with his right
hand. For the first time during the combat they were not face to face,
and on the instant Roy realized the advantage given him through the
other’s perfidy, realized the wrestler’s hold that was his, and knew
that the moment of victory was come.
The telling takes much time, but so quickly had these things happened
that the footsteps of the soldiers had not yet reached the door when the
men were locked beside the safe.
Of what happened next many garbled accounts have gone forth, for of all
those present, none but the Bronco Kid knew its significance and ever
recounted the truth concerning it. Some claim that the younger man was
seized with a fear of death which multiplied his enormous strength,
others that the power died in his adversary as reward for his treason;
but it was not so.
No sooner had Roy encompassed McNamara’s waist from the rear than he
slid his damaged hand up past the other’s chest and around the back of
his neck, thus bringing his own left arm close under his enemy’s left
armpit, wedging the receiver’s head forward, while with his other hand
he grasped the politician’s right wrist close to the revolver, thus
holding him in a grasp which could not be broken. Now came the test. The
two bodies set themselves rocklike and rigid. There was no lunging
about. Calling up the final atom of his strength, Glenister bore
backward with his right arm and it became a contest for the weapon
which, clutched in the two hands, swayed back and forth or darted up and
down, the fury of resistance causing it to trace formless patterns in
the air with its muzzle. McNamara shook himself, but he was close
against the safe and could not escape, his head bowed forward by the
lock of the miner’s left arm, and so he strained till the breath clogged
in his throat. Despite the grievous toil his right hand moved back
slightly. His feet shifted a bit, while the blood seemed bursting from
his eyes, but he found that the long fingers encircling his wrist were
like gyves weighted with the strength of the hills and the irresistible
vigor of youth which knew no defeat. Slowly, inch by inch, the great
man’s arm was dragged back, down past his side, while the strangling
labor of his breath showed at what awful cost. The muzzle of the gun
described a semicircle and the knotted hands began to travel towards the
left, more rapidly now, across his broad back. Still he struggled and
wrenched, but uselessly. He strove to fire the weapon, but his fingers
were woven about it so that the hammer would not work. Then the miner
began forcing upward.
The white skin beneath the men’s strips of clothing was stretched over
great knots and ridges which sunk and swelled and quivered. Helen,
watching in silent terror, felt her brother sinking his fingers into her
shoulder and heard him panting, his face ablaze with excitement, while
she became conscious that he had repeated time and again:
“It’s the hammer-lock--the hammer-lock.”
By now McNamara’s arm was bent and cramped upon his back, and then they
saw Glenister’s shoulder dip, his elbow come closer to his side, and his
body heave in one final terrific effort as though pushing a heavy
weight. In the silence something snapped like a stick. There came a
deafening report and the scream of a strong man overcome with agony.
McNamara went to his knees and sagged forward on to his face as though
every bone in his huge bulk had turned to water, while his master reeled
back against the opposite wall, his heels dragging in the litter,
bringing up with outflung arms as though fearful of falling, swaying,
blind, exhausted, his face blackened by the explosion of the revolver,
yet grim with the light of victory.
Judge Stillman shouted, hysterically:
“Arrest that man, quick! Don’t let him go!”
It was the miner’s first realization that others were there. Raising his
head he stared at the faces close against the partition, then groaned
the words:
“I beat the traitor and--and--I broke him with--my hands!”