The Courage of Captain Plum - James Oliver Curwood (the best novels to read .TXT) 📗

half a step forward. His lips moved as if he was on the point of speaking, the defiant smile went out of his face, the flush faded in his cheeks. Then he turned quickly and held out his hands to the guards.
As the young man kneeled before the post Nathaniel heard a smothered sob at his side which he knew came from Obadiah.
"Come, Dad," he said softly. "I can't stand this. Let's get away!"
He shoved the councilor back. The lash whistled through the air behind him. As it fell there came a piercing cry. It was a woman's voice, and with a snarl like that of a tortured animal the old man struck down Nathaniel's arm and clawed his way back to the edge of the line. On the opposite side there was a surging in the crowd and as MacDougall raised his whip a woman burst through.
"My God!" cried Nathaniel, "it's--"
He left the rest of the words unspoken. His veins leaped with fire. A single sweep of his powerful arms and he had forced himself through the innermost line of spectators. Within a dozen feet of him stood Strang's wife, her beautiful hair disheveled, her face deadly white, her bosom heaving as if she had been running. In a moment her eyes had taken in the situation--the man at the stake, the upraised lash--and Nathaniel. With a sobbing, breathless cry, she flung herself in front of MacDougall and threw her arms around the kneeling man, her hair covering him in a glistening veil. For an instant her eyes were raised to Nathaniel and he saw in them that same agonized appeal that had called to him through the king's window. The striking muscles of his arms tightened like steel. One of the guards sprang forward and caught the girl roughly by the arm and attempted to drag her away. In his excitement he pulled her head back and her hair trailed in the dirt. The sight was maddening. From Nathaniel's throat there came a fierce cry and in a single leap he had cleared the distance to the guard and had driven his fist against the officer's head with the sickening force of a sledge-hammer. The man fell without a groan. In another flash he had drawn his knife and severed the thongs that held the man at the stake. For a moment his face was very near the girl's and he saw her lips form the glad cry which he did not wait to hear.
He turned like an enraged beast toward the circle of dumfounded spectators and launched himself at the second guard. From behind him there sounded a shout and he caught the gleam of naked shoulders as the man who had been at the stake rushed to his side. Together they tore through the narrow rim of the crowd, striking at the faces which appeared before them, their terrific blows driving men right and left.
"This way, Neil!" shouted Nathaniel. "This way--to the ship!"
They raced up the slope that led from the town to the forest. Even the king's officer, palsied by the suddenness of the attack, had not followed. From a screened window in the king's building two men had witnessed the exciting scene near the jail. One of these men was Strang. The other was Arbor Croche. At another window a few feet away, hidden from their eyes by a high desk and masses of papers and books, Winnsome Croche was crumpled up on the floor hardly daring to breathe through fear of betraying her presence. From these windows they had seen the girl run from behind the jail; they had watched her struggle through the line of spectators, saw Nathaniel leap forward--saw the quick blow, the gleaming knife, and the escape. So suddenly had it all occurred that not a sound escaped the two astonished men. But as Nathaniel and Neil burst through the crowd and sped toward the forest Strang's great voice boomed forth like the rumble of a gun.
"Arbor Croche, overtake those men--and kill them!"
With a wild curse the chief of sheriffs dashed down the stairway and as she heard him go the terror of Winnsome's heart seemed to turn her blood cold. She knew what that command meant. She knew that her father would obey it. As the daughter of the chief of sheriffs more than one burning secret was hidden in her breast, more than one of those frightful daggers that had pricked at the soul of her mother until they had murdered her. And the chief of them all was this: that to Arbor Croche the words of Strang were the words of God and that if the prophet said kill, he would kill. For a full minute she crouched in her concealment, stunned by the horror that had so quickly taken the place of the joy with which she had witnessed the escape. She heard Strang leave the window, heard his heavy steps in the outer room, heard the door close, and knew that he, too, was gone. She sprang to her feet and ran to the window at which the two men had stood. The chief of sheriffs was already at the jail. The crowd had begun to disperse. Men were swarming like ants up the long slope reaching to the forest. Three or four of the leaders were running and she knew that they were hot in pursuit of the fugitives. Others were following more slowly and among these she saw that there were women. As she looked there came a sound from the stair. She recognized the step. She recognized the voice that called her name a moment later and with a despairing cry she turned with outstretched arms to greet the girl for whom Nathaniel had interrupted the king's whipping.


CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERY
Hardly had Nathaniel fought his way through the thin crowd of startled spectators about the whipping-post before the enormity of his offense in interrupting the king's justice dawned upon him. He was not sorry that he had responded to the mute appeal of the girl who had entered so strangely into his life. He rejoiced at the spirit that had moved him to action, that had fired his blood and put the strength of a giant in his arms; and his nerves tingled with an unreasoning joy that he had leaped all barriers which in cooler moments would have restrained him, and which fixed in his excited brain only the memory of the beautiful face that had sought his own in those crucial moments of its suffering. The girl had turned to him and to him alone among all those men. He had heard her voice, he had felt the soft sweep of her hair as he severed the prisoner's thongs, he had caught the flash of her eyes and the movement of her lips as he dashed himself into the crowd. And as he sped swiftly up the slope he considered himself amply repaid for all that he had done. His blood was stirred as if by the fire of sharp wines; he was still in a tension of fighting excitement. Yet no sooner had he fought himself clear of the mob than his better judgment leaped into the ascendency. If danger had been lurking for him before it was doubly threatening now and he was sufficiently possessed of the common spirit of self-preservation to exult at the speed with which he was enabled to leave pursuit behind. A single glance over his shoulder assured him that the man whom he had saved from the prophet's wrath was close at his heels. His first impulse was to direct his flight toward Obadiah's cabin; his second to follow the path that led to his ship. At this hour some of his men would surely be awaiting him in a small boat and once aboard the _Typhoon_ he could continue his campaign against the Mormon king with better chances of success than as a lone fugitive on the island. Besides, he knew what Casey would do at sundown.
At the top of the slope he stopped and waited for the other to come up to him.
"I've got a ship off there," he called, pointing inland. "Take a short cut for the point at the head of the island. There's a boat waiting for us!"
Neil came up panting. He was breathing so hard that for a moment he found it impossible to speak but in his eyes there was a look that told his unbounded gratitude. They were clear, fearless eyes, with the blue glint of steel in them and, as he held out his hands to Nathaniel, they were luminous with the joy of his deliverance.
"Thank you, Captain Plum!"
He spoke his companion's name with the assurance of one who had known it for a long time. "If they loose the dogs there will be no time for the ship," he added, with a suggestive hunch of his naked shoulders. "Follow me!"
There was no alarm in his voice and Nathaniel caught the flashing gleam of white teeth as Neil smiled grimly back at him, running in the lead. From the man's eyes the master of the _Typhoon_ had sized up his companion as a fighter. The smile--daring, confident, and yet signaling their danger--assured him that he was right, and he followed close behind without question. A dozen rods up the path Neil turned into a dense thicket of briars and underbrush and for ten minutes they plunged through the pathless jungle. Now and then Nathaniel saw the three red stripes of the whipper's lash upon the bare shoulders of the man ahead and to these every step seemed to add new wounds made by the thorns. As they came out upon an old roadway the captain stripped off his coat and Neil thrust himself into it as they ran.
Even in these first minutes of their flight Nathaniel was thrilled by another thought than that of the peril behind them. Whom had he saved? Who was this clear-eyed young fellow for whom the girl had so openly sacrificed herself at the whipping-post, about whom she had thrown her arms and covered with the protection of her glorious hair? With his joy at having served her there was mingled a chilling doubt as these questions formed themselves in his mind. Obadiah's vague suggestions, the scene in the king's room, the night visits of the girl to the councilor's cabin--and last of all this incident at the jail flashed upon him now with another meaning, with a significance that slowly cooled the enthusiasm in his veins. He was sure that he was near the solution of the mysterious events in which he had become involved, and yet this knowledge brought with it something of apprehension, something which made him anticipate and yet dread the moment when the fugitive ahead would stop in his flight, and he might ask him those questions which would at least relieve him of his burden of doubt. They had traveled a mile through forest unbroken by path or road when Neil halted on the edge of a little stream that ran into a swamp. Pointing into the tangled fen with a confident smile he plunged to his waist in the water and waded slowly through the slough into the gloom of the densest alder. A few minutes later he turned in to the shore and the soft bog gave place to firm ground. Before Nathaniel had cleared the stream he saw his companion drop to his knees beside a fallen log and when he came up to him he was unwrapping a piece of canvas from about a gun. With a warning gesture he rose to his feet and for twenty seconds the men stood and listened. No sound came to them but the chirp of a startled squirrel and the barking