by Max Brand
Lefty could not talk, his teeth were chattering so hard and so fast.
Denny Lawson was hardly in better shape, but he managed to stammer out that they hadn’t come north to get Larry.
“Then what brought you on board tonight. You meant to bump me off, didn’t you?” said Larry.
Lawson started to say no, and then stopped himself. Of course, it was as clear as anything in the world that he had come on board for that very purpose. It couldn’t have been robbery that he had in mind, and for what else except robbery or murder would two fellows come with guns, as he and Lefty had done?
Larry helped him out a little.
He said: “I could take you fellows down the docks and get the boys together, and let them know how we found you here. How long would you last then?”
There was not much doubt about what would have happened to them. They looked at one another, those two rascals, and said nothing, but looked a great deal.
Then Larry said: “On the other hand, you can tell me what made you come after me. And it might be interesting enough to make me turn you loose. You feel more like talking now?”
Lefty burst out, all of a shudder and a shake: “It was Big Ed!”
That was a shock to me. Ed Graem had sent hired men to do a murder for him? It didn’t fit into the picture that all Alaska had in its mind’s eye of that man.
Yet, Larry surprised me by saying, bluntly: “If you want me to believe that Ed hired you boys for the job, I’ll tell you that you’re lying.”
Said Denny Lawson: “You know, chief, that it wasn’t because he’d promised us any money, but all that he can think about is you, and all that he can do is to wander around and walk up and down, and, whenever your name is mentioned, he pretty near busts loose. I never seen anybody half so hot about anything as he is about you. So it seemed to me and to Lefty, here, that if we turned a trick that pleased him a lot, he’d be pretty good to us. Money’s nothing to Big Ed. He’d make the way easy. We come on board sort of intending to look things over and. . .”
He cringed as he said it. It was about the worst confession that I’d ever heard from anybody’s lips. But from my point of view, nearly all gunmen are bad actors to begin with, and cowards before they’re through. They’re bad actors, because they know that they can handle a gun a lot better than the other man, and they’re cowards because if they bump into a tight fit where their gun work won’t help them out, they’ve no idea what to do with themselves. They’re like strangers in foreign countries, not able to speak a word.
Steve Mannock growled and cursed. He said that he’d never heard of worms being able to crawl that far north without being killed by the weather, and that it was time for this pair to be exposed.
I know that Steve would have killed them offhand, without a thought, but Larry had given his word to that precious pair, and he kept it.
He simply said: “You boys can go, but there’s only one direction for you to travel in. That’s south. Get out of the country. Go back to wherever you belong, for you don’t belong up here. I’m going to inquire, from time to time, and, if I hear your names north of the White Horse, I’m going to look you up and I’ll look you up with a fine-toothed comb. Understand? Now get on shore!”
They went, all right. On the verge of the plank to the dock, that fellow Lefty, the sneak, had the nerve to turn around and beg for his gun, because he said that without a gun he was like a man with his head cut off.
Steve Mannock, for an answer, picked up a chunk of wood and slung it at him and hit him on the seat of the pants. He pretty nearly fell off the plank, and made the edge of the dock in one jump and one long howl. I wasn’t amused. Neither was Steve. But as we stood there, watching the pair soak out of sight in the mist, big Larry Decatur said: “Boys, I appreciate what you’ve done and the way that you’ve stood by me. It makes me want to tell you what I’ve got in my mind, and everything that I’ve planned. But there are a lot of reasons, nearly all selfish, why I can’t say a word to a living soul. Understand?”
I said that I understood, and Steve Mannock grunted that a man that was worth anything kept his own business to himself. He wanted to know what the plan was for the boat, but he wouldn’t talk about it; he wouldn’t ask any more questions.
Then we got the next jolt.
For Larry said: “You fellows go and finish out your sleep. Then, when you’re ready, go ashore and hunt up some boys who are looking for a couple of days’ work. Pay them anything you like. You can buy good, dry wood as cheap as dirt. Buy plenty of that, too, and load it into the bunkers. And, Mannock, you get up steam as fast as you can, and look over the engine with your grease can and oil pot, will you?”
XIII
It isn’t often that one can speak of a chill of interest going through a person, far less a whole community, but that’s what happened in that whole gang of interested people. When Mannock and I went on shore to drum up a crew, we had the whole bunch to pick from. It was true that everybody was more than half scared, but it was also true that everybody was nearly crazy with excitement.
That silly yarn of Mannock’s, about making the great kite and hitching the whole body of the Thomas Drayton to it, was actually seriously repeated, believe it or not!
I heard four men speaking of it in the saloon, and they were more than half in earnest, and they wanted to know what I thought of the scheme and was anybody crazy enough to attempt it? Then they got to talking about the lifting power of a strong wind, and before long they were defending the scheme not as a probable one, but as a possibility.
Well, as I was saying, we got our crew together and started them to work, loading wood onto the ship and packing some supplies on board. We didn’t need much food, said Larry Decatur. Once the real work started, he added, eating and drinking was not what people would be interested in.
He said this with a smile that I’ve never forgotten to this day.
We were busy getting the ship ready. The fires were built up and the smoke went shooting up through the stacks. Now and then, Mannock turned the engines over and tuned ’em up, oiling and greasing to his heart’s content, till he was as shiny and black as a greased pig, from head to foot.
We did this work in the same fog of which I’ve spoken. I’ve never seen before or since such a fog in Alaska. Of course, it wasn’t a sea mist, at that distance from the sea. It was simply a long exhalation from the water and the marsh land, brought on I don’t know by what, perhaps some change of temperature. There had been dense fog even when the wind was blowing. Now the wind had fallen and, of course, the mist was thicker than ever. It got so that you could hardly recognize a man at eight or ten feet.
While we were fixing things aboard the ship, our boss had the painting platform slung over the bows, and he went to work with the paintbrush and painted in a new name. Then he went aft and painted the name again on the paddle box.
Nobody paid much attention to what he was doing. I think nearly everybody took it for granted that he was simply repainting the old name more clearly, the Thomas Drayton. And because they thought that, they didn’t look at his work.
But I looked at it, and what do you think that I saw, after I’d walked back and forth for a long time, and peered through the mist?
He had painted, in place of the old name, Denver Belle!
Why, it packed ice all around my heart, and I had the first dim, far-off inkling of what might be in the mind of Larry Decatur. However, I put the thing far away from me. It was too crazy, too impossible.
When Larry had finished his job, I got hold of him and said: “None of the boys have noticed what you painted on the Thomas Drayton. D’you want their attention called to it?”
He looked back at me with that glimmer of mischief and danger in his eyes that I had often seen there before, and he said: “It might just as well be kept in the dark, partner.”
I kept it in the dark. Mannock, also, knew. But he said nothing about it. The joy went out of his face, that was all, and he went abou
t his work with a dark, thoughtful look.
Old White-Water Sam came out to see us all; he had been hearing about the preparations for the cruise, of course. He spotted one of the boys who he knew best on the deck of the ship, and he said: “Hello, Willie. Where you boys going to take that old boat?”
“Going north, Sam,” said Willie.
“Going north? Going north?” murmured Sam. “Now, that’s a funny thing. How in thunder you gonna get her north? On sleds or on wings?”
“With a kite,” said Willie, laughing.
Sam laughed, too.
“Who was fool enough to say that we were going north?” asked one of the deck hands, standing nearby.
“Where else would we go, except on a pleasure cruise around Lake Bennett?” asked Willie.
“Yeah, and there’s something in that, too,” said the other fellow. “And Decatur, he don’t look like there was much pleasure ahead for us.”
That was true. There was a grimness in the face of Larry all the time.
White-Water said: “She’s a good craft, and a true-built one. She ain’t like a boat that I heard a story told about once. Her name was the Denver Belle, and she had a good white-water pilot . . . he started out to run her. . .”
Said Willie loudly: “I know about that yarn, Sam. But, say, don’t you think that this here boat rides too deep after?”
White-Water was put off the scent of his tale, and he stood back and looked the boat over with the eye of one who knows.
Then he said: “No, sir. I don’t see nothing wrong. She rides like a gull, I’d say. You could take her out into the deep sea, if you strung up some bulwarks along the sides of her, and maybe put a keel under her. She’d roll a bit, but she’d do at sea, even. She’s built to stand something, is what she’s built for.”
I was glad that White-Water Sam approved of the ship. And I was even gladder that Willie had put him off the trail of the tale of the Denver Belle. But I was gladdest of all when I saw Sam wandering back down the dock toward his saloon. Because I was afraid that he might chance to peer close through the heavy mist and see the new name that had been painted so big and fresh on the Thomas Drayton.
We finished our day’s shifts, and Dick Wainwright, our cook, stewed up a fine mulligan, and the boys washed the mulligan down with black coffee, and turned into their bunks. They were a pretty happy lot. They weren’t very much worried about what might happen to the river boat, and I suppose, with all of them together, like that, they felt pretty much at ease. There’s a courage that comes out of numbers. I’ve heard old sailors say, even when a ship was sinking, there was a queer absence of fear if a man could stand on the deck and look around and see a lot of familiar forms and faces. I can imagine how the thing would be, too.
I turned in and slept about two hours and woke up with a start. I had had a catnap after lunch that day, to make up for the sleep I had missed when Lefty and Denny tried their dirty work on board the boat. Perhaps I was slept out now, or perhaps it was something else—I don’t dare to say what, for fear of seeming superstitious—that set all my nerves jumping at once and got me up out of bed.
I walked up on deck, loading a pipe, and lighting it. Then I stood in the white, slowly lifting fog, puffing at the pipe and tasting nothing. It’s hard to taste smoke when you can’t see it, I’ve found out.
After a time I saw a strange figure, coming through the mist, that seemed to walk like a man, yet it didn’t have a man’s shape at all. Then, when I looked closer, I saw that it was a man, but with something big and clumsy loaded on top of his shoulders. It looked like a great sack that he was carrying.
He came up to the gangway that had been run ashore when the work of preparing the ship began. When he turned in to board us, I stepped before him and said: “Who’s there?”
“Who the mischief wants to know?” asked the voice of Larry.
“Why, Larry,” I said, “and what in blazes are you doing with that thing on your shoulder, whatever it is?”
Whatever it was, it seemed to weigh a lot, and Larry was puffing and blowing as he came up the gangplank.
“I’ll give you a hand,” I said.
“Back up and leave me alone,” grunted Larry, and, getting toward the top of the gangway, he turned down the deck and disappeared down the companionway toward his own cabin.
I stared after him, with my eyes hurting, they were straining so hard, and my brain hurting, too, because it was trying to put things together.
Because, mind you, as Larry went by me, I was sure that I smelled chloroform, and smelled it good and strong.
There’s nothing else in the world that I know of that has the same odor. And it’s always been a rather welcome smell to me since one day a fool of a Texas mule planted both heels on my right shoulder and dislocated it so bad you’d hardly call it a shoulder at all. Well, I lay on my side groaning till a doctor came, and he clamped a cloth and a screen over my mouth, and then started to drop the chloroform on it. When I got a whiff or two of the stuff and felt it killing the pain and filling my brain full of numbness, I opened my lungs to it and it put me out like a light. When I woke up again, my arm and shoulder were plastered with bandages.
I tell you this yarn to let you know why it was that I was so sure of the whiff of chloroform that I had smelled.
Then I started to walk after Larry to ask him what he meant by shanghaiing somebody on board the boat. But I remembered a few things about Larry, and felt that perhaps it would be best not to say a word to him about it.
While I was still turning these ideas back and forth in my mind, up comes Larry to the deck, still breathing hard, and his chest heaving, and he said to me: “Joe, rouse up Mannock and turn out the crew. We’re getting under way.”
I started to obey and turned away from him, saying over my shoulder quietly: “Who was that you brought on board filled with chloroform, just now?”
He only stared back at me, with the flame wavering in his eyes.
“Go turn out the crew, because we’re getting under way,” he repeated.
XIV
You may ask if I thought that all was well in this odd proceeding, and I shall answer that I was not such a fool. But what was I to do, and how was I to make any effective protest and against what?
At any rate, I went down and turned out the crew, and, since there was already a head of steam up, we would be ready in another moment to cast off the mooring lines and proceed—where?
Well, it was such a time as comes, now and then, when a man finds his mind far too hurried for dwelling upon the future; the present totally absorbs him.
When I had started things going below, I came above and got on deck in time to see a thing that I would not willingly have missed. Through that solid wall of mist came two forms up the dock, one huge and one small, then the gigantic voice of Big Ed Graem began to bellow for Larry Decatur.
Larry was there at the rail in a minute. The gangplank already had been pulled in and Graem was calling out that it would have to be thrust out again or he would shoot down every man who attempted to cast off a mooring line. He had a double-barreled shotgun in his hands to prove his point, as it were. It did not need an advanced imagination to guess that gun was not loaded with birdshot.
Said Larry: “What’s the matter with you now, Graem? I’ve had trouble enough with you already to suit me.”
“You’re going to have more trouble still,” said Graem, “and you may have so much trouble that you’ll never get over it. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” said Larry, as calm and cool as could be.
“You’ve got a man on board that boat who has to come off,” said Graem.
“What man is that?” asked my new boss.
“White-Water Sam,” said Graem.
I realized then that it was White-Water Sam who had been brought unconscious onto the ship.
“He’s not here,” said Larry.
“You lie,” said Graem. He brought his gun up to the ready.
“Whether I lie or not,” said Larry, “if you move that shotgun another inch toward your shoulder, I’ll plaster you with a halfinch slug of lead, my friend. Put down that gun or you’ll get it.”
And there was his Colt, resting on the rail of the boat.
He meant what he said, plainly enough. I was standing close up, and, through the mist, I could see the way his head was held, thrust forward, and I knew that another ounce of anger, in him, would pull the trigger of the revolver.
Well, what of it, when a man is threatened with a shotgun? It would be self-defense in any court in the world, I dare say.
Then, from that mist-shrouded smaller form beside Graem, came a cry. It was Nelly Bridgeman exclaiming: “Larry, don’t do it! Don’t fire! You’ve got father on board, and I must have him back!”
“The girl, too,” I heard Larry mutter. “Rotten luck.” He said finally: “What makes you think that your father’s on board, Nelly?”
“Because I saw you go into his room. I was awake and I saw
“Come on board, then,” said Larry Decatur in a hard, steady voice that did one no good to hear. “Come on board and see for yourself if you’re right. But leave that big hulk behind you when you come.”
“I go where she goes,” said Graem, standing closer to the girl. "
I heard Larry curse in a whisper. Then he said: “Did you bring Ed along to force a way on board this boat, Nelly?”
“I had to have someone with me,” she said.
“You couldn’t trust me, eh?” Larry said bitterly.
And she answered, half sadly and half defiantly: “I thought that it would be better to have Ed Graem along.”
Larry hesitated.
He was a fellow in whom any hesitation seemed a very strange thing. A moment’s pause with him was a greater wonder than a year’s delay in almost any other man.
At last he snapped over his shoulder at me: “Joe, get the gangplank on shore, will you?”
I called some deck hands, and we shoved out the gangway on its wheels, and up the passage, with its canvas-filled rails, came the girl, first, and Big Ed Graem second.