Part 34 (1/2)
”Ha! I knew it. Your neck cords quiver.”
The gambler grimaced. ”I can't do it. If I could, I'd have shot you before you turned. But you'll have to fight, you dog. Get up and draw.”
Roy refused. ”I gave Cherry my gun.”
”Yes, and more too,” the man gritted. ”I saw it all.”
Even yet Glenister had made no slightest move, realizing that a feather's weight might snap the gambler's nervous tension and bring the involuntary twitch that would put him out swifter than a whip is cracked,
”I have tried it before, but murder isn't my game.” The Kid's eye caught the glint of Cherry's revolver where she had discarded it.
”There's a gun--get it.”
”It's no good. You'd carry the six bullets and never feel them. I don't know what this is all about, but I'll fight you whenever I'm heeled right.”
”Oh, you black-hearted hound,” snarled the Kid. ”I want to shoot, but I'm afraid. I used to be a gentleman and I haven't lost it all, I guess. But I won't wait the next time. I'll down you on sight, so you'd better get ironed in a hurry.” He backed out of the room into the semi-darkness of the kitchen, watching with lynx-like closeness the man who sat so quietly under the shaded light. He felt behind him for the outer door-k.n.o.b and turned it to let in a white sheet of rain, then vanished like a storm wraith, leaving a parched-lipped man and a zigzag trail of water, which gleamed in the lamplight like a pool of blood.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHEREIN A TRAP IS BAITED
Glenister did not wait long after his visitor's departure, but extinguished the light, locked the door, and began the further adventures of this night. The storm welcomed him with suffocating violence, sucking the very breath from his lips, while the rain beat through till his flesh was cold and aching. He thought with a pang of the girl facing this tempest, going out to meet the thousand perils of the night. And it remained for him to bear his part as she bore hers, smilingly.
The last hour had added another and mysterious danger to his full measure. Could the Kid be jealous of Cherry? Surely not. Then what else?
The tornado had driven his trailers to cover, evidently, for the streets were given over to its violence, and Roy encountered no hostile sign as he was buffeted from house to house. He adventured cautiously and yet with haste, finding certain homes where the marshals had been before him peopled now only by frightened wives and children. A scattered few of the Vigilantes had been taken thus, while the warring elements had prevented their families from spreading the alarm or venturing out for succor. Those whom he was able to warn dressed hurriedly, took their rifles, and went out into the drifting night, leaving empty cabins and weeping women.
The great fight was on.
Towards daylight the remnants of the Vigilantes straggled into the big blank warehouse on the sand-spit, and there beneath the smoking glare of lanterns cursed the name of McNamara. As dawn grayed the ragged eastern sky-line, Dextry and Slapjack blew in through the spindrift, bringing word from Cherry and lifting a load from Glenister's mind.
”There's a game girl,” said the old miner, as he wrung out his clothes. ”She was half gone when she got to us, and now she's waiting for the storm to break so that she can come back.”
”It's clearing up to the east,” Slapjack chattered. ”D'you know, I'm gettin' so rheumatic that ice-water don't feel comfortable to me no more.”
”Uriatic acid in the blood,” said Dextry. ”What's our next move?”
he asked of his partner. ”When do we hang this politician? Seems like we've got enough able-bodied piano-movers here to tie a can onto the whole outfit, push the town site of Nome off the map, and start afresh.”
”I think we had better lie low and watch developments,” the other cautioned. ”There's no telling what may turn up during the day.”
”That's right. Stranglers is like spirits--they work best in the dark.”
As the day grew, the storm died, leaving ramparts of clouds hanging sullenly above the ocean's rim, while those skilled in weather prophecy foretold the coming of the equinoctial. In McNamara's office there was great stir and the coming of many men.
The boss sat in his chair smoking countless cigars, his big face set in grim lines, his hard eyes peering through the pall of blue at those he questioned. He worked the wires of his machine until his dolls doubled and danced and twisted at his touch. After a gusty interview he had dismissed Voorhees with a merciless tongue- las.h.i.+ng, raging bitterly at the man's failure.
”You're not fit to herd sheep. Thirty men out all night and what do you get? A dozen mullet-headed miners. You bag the mud-hens and the big game runs to cover. I wanted Glenister, but you let him slip through your fingers--now it's war. What a mess you've made!
If I had even ONE helper with a brain the size of a flaxseed, this game would be a gift, but you've bungled every move from the start. Bah! Put a spy in the bull-pen with those prisoners and make them talk. Offer them anything for information. Now get out!”