“Sure,” said the miner. “I hung her myself. And I should know, if anyone does!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Cargunka. “I never did. The chap as scouted for me, knows it don’t pay none to tell me any fudge news. Now, I guess we got to hunt up a good hefty log an’ bring it along. There’ll be plenty around, I’m thinkin’. I guess we’ll sample the wood-pile. My scout said they’d a good heap of timber stacked away at the back of the shanty. This looks like there’s goin’ to be two niggers in the wood-pile, in a way of speaking! I wish t’ goodness yon phonygraft would shut that rotten noise!”
Yet, as it chanced, the far away rant of the phonograph proved useful enough to Cargunka and the miner; for it was screeching out again the same inane jargon: —
“Oh, she wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her lone,
On her own,
No, by Joan!
She wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her own!”
And the men in the big log-hut, took it up in a hoarse roaring chorus: —
“Oh, she wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her lone—”
“Now, my lad… while they’re makin’ that noise!” muttered Cargunka, and ran quickly and quietly round to the back of the heavily-built hut, with Monkton following.
“Here we are,” whispered Cargunka. “Step easy! Lift your end!”
He slipped the bight of the small sack he was carrying between his teeth.
“Now!” he grunted, softly, through his clenched teeth. “Up wiv her!”
The two of them lifted a heavy pine-log from the wood-pile, and began to carry it noiselessly round to the front of the shanty, near to where the heavy-timber door was standing open.
“Let her rest on her end a mo,” said Cargunka.
They rested the log, and Cargunka took the bight of the small sack out of his mouth, for a breather.
“We got to carry her close up to the door; an’ then I’ve a present wiv me, as I’m goin’ to heave in, gratis, my lad,” said Cargunka. “Then it’ll be shut the door smart, an’ I’ll give you a hand to get the log propped solid against it. After that, there’ll be some artillery play, I reck’n. If there is, I guess we’ll ‘ave to move extra smart, before there’s a crowd!
“Now, we’ll get going again.”
With infinite pains and caution, they carried the log nearer, and poised it on its end, just at the back of the open door.
Cargunka had been carrying the little sack in his teeth again. Now, he opened it, and lifted out a large glass Winchester, filled with some fluid. He took the big bottle by the neck, and swung it, once, twice, and let it fly in through the open door, where it shattered to fragments against the opposite wall.
In the same instant, he caught the door, and dashed it shut.
“Now,” he gasped, in a low quick voice, and the two of them hove the heavy log nearer, and let the upper end of it fall with a thud against the outer side of the door, wedging it immovably.
“Drop!” said Cargunka; and the two of them went flat on their faces, just as a spate of cursing broke out within, following the instant of curious silence that had ensued after the throwing of the bottle. The next moment, there came a volley of revolver shots, ripping through the planking of the door; and a good thing it was for the two of them, that Cargunka had thought in time to “lie low.”
Directly afterwards, there came shrieks — curious, breathless, gasping shrieks, and a loud, violent thudding against the door; and then, incredibly, an intense silence.
“What was it, D.C.O.?” asked the miner, in a somewhat awed voice. “What did you give ‘em?”
“Ammonia!” said Cargunka. “They’re stiff for a time, I guess; but they’ll come round with fresh air. Up with you, my son, and get the door open. No, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. There’s no room for playing possum, with all that stuff in their lungs.”
They rose to their feet, and hove the log away from the door. Cargunka pulled the door open, and found that something or someone had extinguished the lamp. Yet he did not pause. He whipped open the mouth of his small sack, pulled something out and fitted it over his mouth and nose; then, with the sack in his hand, he shut his eyes and strode over a silent body into the hut. He felt for the table; touched it; and swept heap after heap of the small, heavy lumps of metal into the stout-fibred sack. As he worked, in spite of his respirator, he gasped dizzily with the fumes of ammonia that still pervaded the shack; though the night air was blowing into the hut.
He cleared the table in ten seconds, and felt all over it, to make sure that no gold remained. As he reached over, his toe stubbed against something soft and heavy. He stooped for it, and felt a small, buckskin sack, about nine inches high by three in diameter, which was leaning against the side of the big packing-case, where it had slid down, in the brief riot, after the throwing of the bottle.
He got down onto his hands and knees, fumbling round on the floor, and avoiding the insensible men, more by sense than sight. Three times, he came upon small bags of the dust; and he scraped up a double handful of fallen nuggets, cramming all, as he found them, into his sack.
Abruptly, as he groped, he heard a man sigh, and then someone stirred, and sat up, questioning. Another man moved; and another voice broke out confusedly into query, coughing and stuttering. Cargunka began to back slowly towards the door, keeping near the ground so as not to be seen against the vague loom of the open doorway. He had the sack of dust in his arms.
Suddenly, a man’s voice bellowed the words: —
“The dust! Collar the dust! There’s some tough in the shack! Light the lamp!”
There came a chorus of shouts, coughings and gaspings, as the men all about in the darkness began to recover; and then, like thunder in that small shanty, the bang of the heavy revolver.
“The door’s open. Watch the door!” shouted the man again. He was evidently one of those in the bunks; and Cargunka heard him leap with a heavy thud to the ground. There came a scrape of a match; but already Cargunka was at the door, still creeping. He backed out, swiftly; just as the match flared. Then he was with Monkton, who had stayed at the door, as Cargunka had bid him. He dumped the small sack heavily onto the ground, and jumped at the door.
“Now,” muttered Cargunka, and with one movement, they crashed-to the door, and let the log fall back against it, jamming it firmly. Cargunka caught his companion, and dragged him out of a line with the door, just as a perfect storm of revolver shots broke out inside, and the bullets burst through and through the door. Cargunka lifted the sack, and tied the mouth of it with both method and speed.
“Down to the boat,” he said. “Catch hold!”
The shooting continued as they ran; and from higher up the river bank, there broke out a loud shooting in the still night. There were fresh shouts; and then the noise of feet running. And, all the time the shooting and pounding continued inside the hut.
Cargunka and Monkton kept on the steady run. They carried the small canvas sack between them, by its two strong, rope grommets; and it weighed so heavily, that they staggered in the darkness, breathless, as they ran.
Behind them, the shouting grew louder. It seemed as if the whole of the inhabitants of the new “rush” town had been roused by the persistent shooting, and were arriving at a run.
“Leg it, my lad! Leg it!” said Cargunka grimly through his teeth, as the bigger man seemed to slacken his pace under the enormous strain. “It’ll be a quick lynch party if we’re caught!”
The big miner’s stride quickened at the remark, and as it did so, there came a dull heavy thud of a falling log, away behind them.
“They’ve unbottled ‘em!” muttered Cargunka. “Now look out for squalls. Down here. Leg it, my lad! Leg it!… Where the devil’s the boat!”
The shooting had ceased now; and there was a hoarse murmur of talk, and shouted questions and threats.
Then a voice, a huge drunken voice, that Cargunka recognised: —
“It weren’t th’ jim-jams! It weren’t th’ ji
m-jams! It were sure a nigger! Look around fer a nigger, b’ys. Hic! I seen ‘im! Sure, don’t the dawg niff ‘im! Foller-on! Foller-on, Billy! Foller ‘im!”
There ensued a babel of questions and further shouted talk; and then, just as Cargunka located the vague outline of the dingy in the darkness, there was a shout of:— “Get pine knots, boys, an’ try downstream, after Sandy’s dawg. Coom along!”
Cargunka and Monkton came to a clumsy stop at the bows of the boat.
“Now,” said Cargunka, huskily, “together!” And they swung the enormously heavy little sack of gold in over the bows.
“In wiv you, my lad!” said Cargunka; and ran to cast off the painter from the spike of rock.
“Cut it!” gasped out Monkton, who had tumbled himself heavily into the boat. “Cut the darn thing!”
“Get them oars out an’ don’t talk silly!” said Cargunka. “We ain’t leavin’ no cloos this trip; not if I knows it!”
The crowd of miners was now racing downstream towards them, along the top of the river bank. They were carrying a number of flaring pine knots. In front of everyone, a big man was running, staggering drunkenly from side to side and holding a blazing torch above his head with one hand, whilst with the other he held the end of a long piece of old lariat. The piece of the lariat was made fast to a big, pointed-eared wolf-dog, which was running along the top of the bank, with its nose close to the ground, tracking them without a whimper.
Cargunka gave just one comprehensive look, as he cleared the painter hitch. As he did so, there came the loud bang of a heavy six-shooter behind him, and the big wolf-dog flung itself up suddenly on its hind legs, its front legs pawing crazily at the air. Then it fell over on its back, kicking madly for an instant, and afterwards lay still.
“I guess that pup don’t smell us out none again,” said Monkton’s voice, as Cargunka whirled round towards the boat, with the painter loose in his fist.
The racing crowd of men had come to an almost instantaneous halt, and there was an extraordinary moment of complete silence. Cargunka could even hear the sharp, bubbling, resinous spluttering of the burning pine knots.
“You damned fool!” he said in a fierce whisper to Monkton, as he put his shoulder against the bow of the dingy, pushed off, and jumped smartly in over the bows.
And in that instant, the crowd which had halted in that strange immediate silence about the suddenly slain dog, came to life again.
A tremendous crash of revolver-fire broke the night; and hundreds of bullets splashed into the water all about them, with ugly, hissing plop-plop-plop sounds, as the crowd fired in the direction from which the shot had come.
“Pull, you fool!” said Cargunka. “See what you got us in for, wiv your damn silly ways! Pull!”
The crowd was charging down bodily now, towards where the boat had been moored, and the shooting had eased temporarily; for most of the weapons were empty. But, already, Cargunka and Monkton were ripping the dingy downstream with fierce strokes; so that when the crowd reached the place where the boat had been, they were a good couple of hundred yards away, and going well with the current.
“Was you reckoning we’d look better as sieves, than the way we was born an’ made?” said Cargunka, over his shoulder. “We’d ‘a’ got away wivout a shot, if you hadn’t ‘a gone an’ done that damn silly game! What was you thinkin’?”
“I didn’t reckon to have no dawgs put to trackin’ me, like as if I wer’ a bloomin’ criminal!” said the big man, in a grim half-sulky voice.
Cargunka laughed, suddenly.
“You got spunk, my lad, all right!” he said; “but God didn’t mean you to run to the brains, I’m thinkin’! Pull!”
Chapter VII
The dingy was round the bend now; and Monkton thought the chase was done; but Cargunka guessed better.
“They’ll cut across the bend!” he said, “an’ head us off, if we ain’t mindin’. We got to pull our insides out to stop ‘em!”
And he was right; for, suddenly, a clamour of shouting broke out ahead; and, turning on his thwart, he saw the flicker of torch-light, among the pine woods away on the port bow of the dingy.
“Pull!” he muttered, and bent his muscular back to a still greater effort.
The boat shot past the threatening part of the riverbank, just as the first of the crowd of men burst through into the open space, on the riverside. The flicker of the torches shone out over the water, and showed them, vaguely, on the fringe of the light.
“Got ‘em!” yelled several voices; and a splatter of gun-fire broke out. But hard running through dark pine woods, by torch-light, is not conducive to good shooting, and the two in the boat passed out of range, into the darkness upon the river, without being hit; though the boat had been struck several times.
Yet the crowd was not minded even now to give up; but began to run after them, along the bank, in a determined fashion; though they seemed unable to overhaul the dingy.
“We’re leavin’ ‘em!” gasped Monkton, at last…. “Leavin’ ’em sure! They won’t be able to run far, when we gets out on the big water!”
“Hold your wind, my lad, an’ pull,” said Cargunka, between strokes. “We, maybe, got the worst to come. You remember them two canoes!… We ain’t got to be followed an’ located; an’ that’s what they’ll do, if we don’t drop this bunch, before we hit the briny…. Them two in the canoes’ll come monkeying round; an’ I’m not out for any killin’. It ain’t my way. It’s ugly an’ it ain’t Christianlike…. You pull, my lad!”
The dingy moved fast under the tremendous efforts, and the current helped them all the time. Astern of them, on the South bank, there were the bobbing lights of the many torches, and odd shouts, with now and again a crash and a curse as some man caught his foot and tumbled headlong.
The shooting had ceased entirely; for the boat was quite out of sight of the chasing crowd, and they were making far too much noise to hear the muffled oar-roll of the padded oars in the rowlocks.
But with all their efforts, Cargunka and the big miner could not lose the men who were after them; for the boat was never more than some three hundred yards ahead, at any period of the mad chase, and Cargunka was thinking all the time of the canoes that were somewhere ahead, in the mouth of the creek’s estuary.
Some of the men in the crowd astern were sure to know that a couple of the camp “providers” had come down the estuary, and the torch-light was certain to bring the men in the canoes up to see what was happening. That was, possibly, what the miners were counting on. And Cargunka knew that if the men they had seen in the canoes took a hand in the chase, it would mean gun-fighting.
“We’m there, D.C.O.!” gasped out Monkton, suddenly, after taking a look over his shoulder. “Now we’ll lose ‘em!”
“Lose nothin’, my lad!” said Cargunka, as the boat rode out into the open sea. “Look astern! That’ll bring them canoes up, in mighty quick time.”
The thing that Cargunka was pointing to, was the flaring blade of the torches, as the miners rushed out of the wood, and down on to the shore at the mouth of the estuary, where they began to shout, and wave their torches.
From somewhere over the sea, came a loud “cooee,” sounding strange and hollow, in all that immensity.
“There you are, my lad!” said Cargunka, in an I-told-you-so voice. “Now we got to handle that!”
“Well,” said Monkton, “ain’t I got me gun on me! Je-hosh! but I’d like to perforate some of ‘em. I bin shot over a deal tonight.”
“Hark to that,” said Cargunka, ignoring the big miner’s grumble; for a great voice, the drunken voice of the big man who had been so relieved in his mind about the nigger, came booming out across the ever-widening gap of water: —
“Stop ‘em. Buck!… Buck Kessel!… Buck Kessel, stop ‘em!… Ahoy, Buck, perforate ‘em. They got your pardners’ dust.”
“Je-hosh!” said Monkton, “I guess that was sure that Buck swine that was in one of them canoes. I’ll sure perforate
him for keeps, if he’s the nerve to get in my track!”
“Keep her moving good-oh, my lad,” said Cargunka. “We don’t want to be too near in, when the fun starts.”
“Buck Kessel!” came the great voice again from the beach, sounding clear through the boom of the surf on the shores to the North and South. “Buck Kessel! Stop ‘em. They got your pardners’ dust. Fill ’em up with lead.”
And then, suddenly, Buck’s voice ringing across the sea, from somewhere on the port side of the boat: —
“Sure! I’m after ‘em!”
“There’s two of ‘em!” came the great voice from the shore. “We’ve shot away all our lead. Plug ‘em, Buck! Try the duck-gun on ‘em!”
“Sure!” shouted Buck’s voice, out of the darkness.
“Duck!” said Cargunka, and the two of them ducked their heads below the gunnel, pulling their oars in-board, just as a heavy gun roared out, from a short distance away on their port side.
There was a screaming hiss of shot all about them, and the side of the boat sounded as if it had been struck by a sudden gust of the largest and most vigorous kind of hail.
“He’s peppered the boat proper,” said Cargunka. I guess we don’t want that to happen again, when he’s any nearer, or it’s going to punch the side of the boat out.”
“Sure!” said Monkton, and the two of them pulled out their guns.
As they did so, the voice of Buck Kessel sounded again, apparently not more than some sixty yards away.
“I guess that peppered ye! I’ll fill ye up solid with lead if ye play any hanky on me! You turn right around now, and pull for the shore.”
As he spoke, Monkton loosed off his revolver at the sound, once, twice and, at the second shot, there was a little cry of pain from out of the darkness, and then a brutal spate of threats and cursing.
“Down!” said Cargunka sharply, and caught Monkton by the collar, and dragged him into the bottom of the boat. In the same instant, the big duck-gun roared out again, and the crash of the heavy duck-shot on the side of the boat was sickening. Several of the shot passed clean in through the side, and drove dangerous splinters of the hard wood in all directions, so that the two of them were bleeding in half a dozen places; but not really harmed.
Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson Page 152