by Max Brand
All desire to laugh went from her, and deep fear took its place; her eyes were held fascinated upon his interlaced fingers, white under their own terrific pressure; yet she understood that she must go on. If she failed, this mighty force would be turned against Harrigan; and Harrigan, not less grim in battle, as she could guess, would be turned against him.
She said quickly, to conceal her fear: “I thought there was some trouble between you and Dan. I asked him to promise that he would not fight with you. But I don’t need to ask you to promise not to fight with him, for now that you know—”
He leaped up and beat his hands together over his head.
“And that was why! I taunted him and all the time he was laughing to himself!”
He stopped and then whispered to himself: “Still, it’s only postponed. The tune will come! The time will come!”
She understood the promise.
“Angus! What are you saying?”
He said quietly: “Harrigan’s safe from me while you care for him. Do you think I’m fool enough to make a martyr of him? Not I! But when we get back to the world—”
He finished the sentence by slowly flexing his fingers.
“I love you, Kate, and until the strength goes out of my hands, I’ll still love you. I want you; and what I want I get. You’ll hate me for it, eh?”
He went off without waiting for an answer, stumbling as he walked like one who was dazed. Her strength held with her until he was out of sight among the trees, but then she sank to the ground, panting. Sooner or later they were sure to discover her ruse, and the moment one of them learned that she did not love the other, they would rush into battle. She only prayed that the discovery would not come till they were safely off the island. Once back in the world the strong arm of the law might suffice to keep them apart.
The falling of the fire roused her at last and she set about gathering wood to keep it alive. It was the Irishman who returned first. He waved her to the shade of the shelter and finished collecting the wood.
CHAPTER 14
Afterward he inquired, frowning: “Where’s McTee? I met him an’ he started back to find you.”
“He’s gone off with his thoughts, Dan.”
Harrigan sighed, looking up to the stainless blue of the sky: “Aye, that’s the way of the Scotch. When they’re happy in love, they go off by themselves an’ brood like a dog that’s thinking of a fight. But were I he, I’d never be leavin’ your side, colleen.”
His head tilted back in the way she had come to know, and she waited for the soft dialect: “I’d be singin’ songs av love an’ war-r-r, an’ braggin’ me hear-rt out, an’ talkin’ av the sea-green av your eyes, colleen. Look at him now!”
For the great form of McTee left the circle of the trees and approached them.
“He’s got his head down between his shoulders like a whipped cur. He’s broodin’, an’ his soul is thick in a fog.”
“Dan, I trust you to cheer him up; but you’ll not speak of me?”
“Not I. He’s a proud man, Black McTee, an’ he’d be angered to the core of him if he thought you’d talked about him an’ his love to Harrigan. Whisht, Kate, I’ll handle him like fire!
“The wood,” he began, as McTee came in. “Did you find it on top of the hill, lad?”
McTee rumbled after a pause, and without looking at Harrigan: “There’s plenty of it there. I made a little heap of the driest on the crown of the hill.”
“Then the next thing is to move our fire up there.”
“Move our fire?” cried Kate. “How can you carry the fire?”
“Easy. Take two pieces of burnin’ wood an’ walk along holdin’ them close together. That way they burn each other an’ the flame keeps goin’. Watch!”
He selected two good-sized brands from the fire and raised them, holding one in either hand and keeping the ignited portions of the sticks together. McTee looked from Kate to Harrigan.
“Sit down and talk to Kate. I’ll carry the sticks; I know where the pile of timber is.”
Harrigan made a significant and covert nod and winked at McTee with infinite understanding.
“Stay here yourself, lad. I wouldn’t be robbing you—”
Kate coughed for warning, and he broke off sharply.
“You’ve made one trip to the hill. This is my turn. Besides, you wouldn’t know how to keep the stick burnin’. I’ve done it before.”
McTee stared, agape with astonishment. The meaning of that wink still puzzled his brain. He turned to Kate for explanation, and she beckoned him to stay. When Harrigan disappeared, he said: “What’s the meaning? Doesn’t Harrigan want to be with you?”
She allowed her eyes to wander dreamily after Harrigan.
“Don’t you see? He’s like a big boy. He’s overflowing with happiness and he has to go off to play by himself.”
McTee watched her with deep suspicion.
“It’s queer,” he pondered. “I know the Irish like a book, and when they’re in love, they’re always singing and shouting and raising the devil. It looked to me as if Harrigan was making himself be cheerful.”
He went on: “I’ll take him aside and tell him that I understand. Otherwise he’ll think he’s fooling me.”
“Please! You won’t do that? Angus, you know how proud he is! He will be furious if he finds out that I’ve spoken to you about—about—our love. Won’t you wait until he tells you of his own accord?”
He ground his teeth in an ugly fury.
“You understand? If I find you’ve been playing with me, it’ll mean death for Harrigan, and worse than that for you?”
She made her glance sad and gentle.
“Will you never trust me, Angus?”
He answered, with a sort of wonder at himself: “Since I was a child, you are the first person in the world who has had the right to call me by my first name.”
“Not a single woman?” and she shivered.
“Not one.”
She pondered: “No love, no friendship, not even pity to bring you close to a single human being all your life?”
“No child has ever come near me, for I’ve never had room for pity. No man has been my friend, for I’ve spent my time fighting them and breaking them. And I’ve despised women too much to love them.”
The tears rose to her eyes as she spoke: “I pity you from the bottom of my soul!”
“Pity? Me? By God, Kate, you’ll teach me to hate you!”
“I can’t help it. Why, if you have never loved, you have never lived!”
“You talk like a girl in a Sunday school! Ha, have I never lived? Men were made strong so that a stronger man should be their master; and women—”
“And women, Angus?”
“All women are fools; one woman is divine!”
The yearning of his eyes gave a bitter meaning to his words, and she was shaken like a leaf blown here and there by contrary winds. Unheeded, the sudden tropic night swooped upon them like the shadow of a giant bird, and as the dark increased, they saw the glimmering of the fire upon the hill. She rose, and he followed her until they reached the upward slope.
Then he said: “You will want to be alone with him for a time. Can you find the rest of the way?”
“Yes. You’ll come soon?”
“I’ll come soon, but I have to be by myself for a while. I may hate you for it afterward, but now I’m weak and soft inside—like a child—and I only wish for your happiness.”
“God bless you, Angus!”
“God help me,” he answered harshly, and stepped into the blank night of the shadow of the trees.
Harrigan shook his head in wonder when he saw her coming alone. He had built up the fire and heaped fresh fuel in towering piles nearby. The flames shot up twenty and thirty feet, making a wide signal across the sea.
“He’s gone off by himself again?” questioned the Irishman.
She complained: “I can’t understand him. Will he be always like this? What shall I do, Dan?”
He met her appeal with a smile, but the blue eyes went cold at once and he sighed. It would never do to have the two sitting silent beside that fire. The brooding of McTee would excite no suspicions in the mind of Harrigan, but the quiet of the Irishman would be sure to excite the suspicions of the other.
“Will you do something for me, Dan?”
He looked up with a whimsical yearning.
“Teach McTee manners? Aye, with all me heart!”
She laughed: “No; but cheer him up. You said that if you were in his place, you’d be singing all the time.”
“And I would.”
“Then sing for me—for Angus and me—tonight when we’re sitting by the fire. He’s fallen into a brooding melancholy, and I can’t altogether trust him. Can you understand?”
“And I’m to do the cheering up?”
“You won’t fail me?”
He turned and occupied himself for a moment by hurling great armfuls of wood upon the fire. The flames burst up with showering sparks, roaring and leaping. Then, as if inspired by the sight, he came to her with his head tilting back in the way he had.
“I’ll do it—I’ll sing my heart out for you.”
As McTee came up, the three sat down; a strange group, for the two men stared fixedly before them at the fire, conscientiously avoiding any movement of the eyes toward Kate and the other; and she sat between them, watching each of them covertly and humming all the while as if from happiness. Each of them thought the humming a love song meant for the ears of the other. Finally McTee turned and stared curiously, first at Kate and then at Harrigan. Manifestly he could not understand either their silence or their aloofness. It was for the Scotchman that she would have to play her role; Harrigan was blind. The Irishman also, as if he felt the eyes of McTee, turned his head. Kate nodded significantly and moved closer to him.
Obedient to his promise, he turned away again and raised his head to sing. Alternate light and shadow swept across his face and made fire and dark in his hair as the wind tossed the flame back and forth. At the other side of her McTee rested upon one elbow. Whenever she turned her head, she caught the steel-cold glitter of his eyes.
The first note from Harrigan’s lips was low and faltering and off key; she trembled lest McTee should understand, but the Scotchman attributed the emotion to another cause. As his singing continued, moreover, it increased in power and steadiness. One thing, however, she had not counted on, and that was the emotion of Harrigan. Every one of his songs carried on the theme of love in a greater or less degree, and now his own singing swept him beyond the bounds of caution; he turned directly to Kate and sang for her alone “Kathleen Mavourneen.” There was love and farewell at once in his singing, there was yearning and despair.
She knew that a crisis had come, and that McTee was pressed to the limits of his endurance. The game had gone too far, and yet she dared not appear indifferent to the singing. That would have been too direct a betrayal, so she sat with her head back and a smile on her lips.
There was a groan and a stifled curse. McTee rose; the song died in the throat of Harrigan.
CHAPTER 15
“Is this what you feared?” said the Scotchman. “Is this what you wanted protection against? No; you’re in league together to torture me, and all this time you’ve been laughing up your sleeves at my expense!”
“At your expense?” growled Harrigan, rising in turn. “Is it at your expense that I’ve been sittin’ here breakin’ me heart with singin’ love tunes for you an’ the girl?”
She sprang up in an agony of fear.
“Go! Go!” she begged of McTee. “If you doubt me, go, and when you come back calm, I will explain.”
He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan.
“Love songs for me?” he repeated incredulously.
“Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till I was brought in to be the piper while you an’ Kate danced!”
“While I and Kate danced?” thundered McTee. “My God, man—”
He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes.
“Harrigan,” he said quietly, “did Kate tell you she loved me?”
“Ye fool! Why else am I sittin’ here singin’ for your sake? Would I not rather be amusin’ myself by takin’ the hollow of your throat under my thumbs—so?”
McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye.
“Well?” he said.
“Yes, I lied to you.”
She turned to Harrigan: “And to you. Don’t you see? I found you on the verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other. Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?”
Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like one from whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a long imprisonment.
“McTee, are ye ready? There’s a weight gone off my soul!”
“Harrigan, I’ve been a driver of men, but this girl has put me under the whip. When I’m through with you, I’m coming back to her.”
“It’ll be your ghost that returns.”
Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest force toward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands of McTee, those strong, cruel hands.
“If you will not fight, I’ll—I’ll be kind to you, I’ll be everything you ask of me—”
“You’re pleading for him?”
“No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!”
“Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I’ll answer that there’s a claim on Harrigan filed away in hell. He’s too strong to have lived clean.”
“Angus, we’re all alone here—on the rim of the world, you’ve said—and in places like this the eye of God is on you.”
He laughed brutally: “If He sees me, He’ll look the other way.”
“Have done with the chatter,” broke in Harrigan. “Ah-h, McTee, I see where my hands’ll fit on your throat.”
“Come,” McTee answered without raising his voice; “there’s a corner of the beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You’ve been a traveling man, Harrigan. When I’ve killed you, I’ll throw your body into the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of the world.”
“Come,” said Harrigan; “I’d as soon finish you there as here, and when you’re dead, I’ll sit you up against a tree and come down every day to watch you rot.”
The girl fell to the ground between them with her face buried in her arms, silent. The two men lowered their eyes for a moment upon her, and then turned and walked down the hill, going shoulder to shoulder like friends. So they came out upon the beach and walked along it until they reached the point of which McTee had spoken.
It was a level, hard-packed stretch of sand which offered firm footing and no rocks over which one of the fighters might stumble at a critical moment.
“Tis a lovely spot,” sighed Harrigan. “Captain, you’re a jewel of a man to have thought of it.”
“Aye, this is no deck at sea that can heave and twist and spoil my work.”
“It is not; and the palms of my hands are almost healed. Had you thought of that, captain?”
“As you lie choking, Harrigan, think of the girl. The minute I’ve heaved you into the sea, I go back to her.”
The hard breathing of the Irishman filled up the interval.
“I see one thing clear. It’s that I’ll have to kill you slow. A man like you, McTee, ought to taste his death a while before it comes. Come to me ar-rms, captain, I’ve a little secret to whisper in your ear. Whisht! ’Twillnot be long in the tellin’!”
McTee replied with a snarl, and the two commenced to circle slowly, drawing nearer at every step. On the very edge of leaping forward, Harrigan was astonished to see McTee straighten from his crouch and point out to sea.
“The eye of God!” muttered the Scotchman. “She was right!”
“The fire!” answered Harrigan, and pointed back to the hill, for Kate had allowed the flames to fall in their absence.
All thought of the battle left them. They started back on the run to build high their signal light, and when they came to the top of the hill, they found Kate lying as they had left her. She started to her knees at the sound of their footsteps and stretched out her arms to them.
“God has sent you back to me!”
“A ship!” thundered McTee for answer, and he flung a great armful of wood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, but all three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher than their heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did they pause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there were three lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green—the lights of a ship running in toward land.
In a moment the moon slipped up above the eastern waters, and right across that broad white circle moved a ship with the smoke streaming back from her funnel. Unquestionably the captain had seen the signal fire and understood its meaning.
They waited until the red light became fairly stationary, showing that the steamer had been laid-to. Then they ran for the beach and took up their position on the line between the glow of their fire and the position of the ship, guessing that in this way they would be on the spot where the ship’s boat would be most likely to touch the shore.
“McTee,” said Harrigan, “it may be half an hour before that boat reaches the beach. Is there any reason why both of us should go aboard it?”
“Harrigan, there is none! Stand up to me.”
“If you do this,” broke in Kate, “I will bring the sailors who come ashore to the spot where the dead man lies, and I’ll tell how he died.”
They looked at her, knowing that she could be trusted to fulfill that threat. The moon lay on the beauty of her face; never had she seemed so desirable. They looked to each other, and each seemed doubly hateful to the other.