Blacksheep! Blacksheep! - Meredith Nicholson (freenovel24 .txt) 📗

an acquaintance so pursued by storms! I wonder where the blow will fall next?"

"Not on your head," he answered decisively, "not if the Governor and I can prevent it. But let us not waste time on that; I want your assurance that you are really well."

"Oh, perfectly; not an ache from the ducking; only this little reminder my hand will carry for a day or two; but that's nothing to worry about!"

There was a restraint upon them, due perhaps to the calming influence of the stars, the murmurings of the shore in conference with the pines.

"The things that have happened since we first met would make a large book," he said with an accession of courage, "but a separate volume would have to be written about your hands."

She fell back at once upon her defenses.

"Oh, are they as large as that!"

"They are as dear as that!"

"How absurd you are! Here we are with only a few minutes to talk; not more than ten—that's official from the doctor; and you're talking foolishness. If I were extremely sensitive I might imagine that my face was displeasing to you!"

"The face is too remote, too sacred; I wouldn't dare let myself think about it. The hand encourages belief in our common humanity; but the face is divine, a true key to the soul. The hand we think of commonly as a utilitarian device of nature, and in your case we know it to be skilled in many gracious arts, but beyond its decorative values—"

"Dear me! Just what are you quoting?"

"Please suffer the rest of it! Your hands, I was about to say, not only awaken admiration by their grace and symmetry, but the sight of them does funny things to my heart."

"That heart of yours! How did it ever manage to survive the strain and excitement of last night?"

"Oh, it functioned splendidly. But it was at work in a good cause. Pray permit me to continue. Your hands are adorable; I am filled with tenderest longings to possess them. If I should touch them I might die, so furious would be my palpitations!"

"The minutes fly and you are delivering an oration on the human hand, which in the early processes of evolution was only a claw. If you are not careful you'll be writing poetry next!"

"The future tense does me an injustice. I've already committed the unpardonable rhyme! I never made a verse before in my life, and this hasn't been confided to paper. I thought it out at odd moments in my recent travels. The humming of the wheels on the sleeper coming up gave me the tune. If you will encourage me a little I think I can recite it. It needs smoothing out in spots, but it goes something like this:

"I view with awe and wonder Her hands so slim and long,— I must not make the blunder Of clasping them—in song! "But sweet the memory lingers Of happy fleeting times When I have kissed her fingers And folded them in rhymes. "Hands shouldn't be so slender, So dear and white and strong, To waken thoughts so tender That fold them like a song!"

"Charming! I never thought when I talked to you that night at your sister's that I was addressing my inanities to a poet. Those are very nice jingles. I'm struck by the imagination they show—in the second verse I think it is—?"

He repeated the verse.

"Are you daring me?" he asked.

"I dared you once and got you into a lot of trouble. Please remember that we are unchaperoned and the dear little girls asleep in those tents back yonder would be shocked—"

"I shall make the shock as gentle as possible," he said and kissed her unresisting hand.

"The poem seems in a way to have been prophetic!" she remarked. "I must run now or the doctor will scold me, or I shall be scolding you! I must say one thing before we part. I've had time today to do a good deal of thinking, and my opinion of myself isn't very high. Out of sheer contrariness that night in Washington I teased you into doing things that led you into grave danger—and the danger is still all about us. I'm sorry; with all my heart I'm sorry! If anything should happen to you, it would be my fault—my very grievous sin! And maybe there are other men that I may have said similar things to—oh, you were not the first!" she laughed forlornly. "They, too, may have plunged into the same pit I dug for you. Oh, how foolish I've been!"

There was no questioning the sincerity of her dejection and contrition, and he felt moved to tell her of Putney's confession in the park at Chicago, that they might laugh together at the curious fling of fate that had brought two of her victims together In deadly combat. But her mood did not encourage the idea that she would view the matter in a humorous light.

"I wish you could tell me truly," she went on, "that what I said that night really didn't impress you; that it wasn't responsible for your giving up your plans for going to the Rockies?"

"Honestly, I can't say anything of the kind! And if we hadn't had the talk, and if you hadn't sent the verse, I shouldn't be here trying to help you now."

"But it was flirting; it was the silliest kind of flirting!"

"That is always a legitimate form of entertainment, a woman's right and privilege! Please put all this out of your mind!"

"It's not a thing to be dismissed so lightly. I'm very unhappy about it; I'm deeply ashamed of myself!"

"You exaggerate the whole matter," he urged. "You are making me out a miserable weakling indeed when you think I ambled off toward perdition just because you dared me to assert myself a little!"

"I want you to promise," she said slowly, "that you won't in any way interfere with my cousin here. I can't have you taking further risks. After last night I doubt whether he bothers us. Ruth feels as I do about it; you must go away. You will promise, please—"

"You would have us run just as the game grows interesting! Of course we're not going to quit the field and leave that fellow here to annoy you! He's a dangerous character and we're going to get rid of him."

She was depressed, much as Ruth had been a few hours earlier and his efforts to win her to a happier frame of mind were unavailing.

"I love you; I love you!" he said softly.

"You must never say that to me again," she said slowly and determinedly. "After my stupid, cruel thoughtlessness you must hate me—"

"But, Isabel—"

She seized the lantern and hurried away, her head bowed, the cloak billowing about her. He watched the lantern till its gleam was swallowed up in the darkness.

It was ten o'clock. Leary had got the outgoing mail—a week's accumulation, and they crossed to Huddleston where one of Perky's men was waiting with a machine to carry it to Calderville.

"The Governor didn't want the launch goin' up there ag'in," Leary explained. "He dug up that car somewhere."

"The Governor's a great man," said Archie.

"The greatest in the world!" Leary solemnly affirmed.

II

Shortly before midnight Archie and Leary left the Arthur B. Grover and paddled cautiously toward the point fixed by the Governor for their rendezvous. They were fortified with a repeating rifle, a shotgun (this was Leary's preference) and several packets of rockets for use in signaling the tug. It was the strangest of all expeditions, the more exciting from the fact that it was staged in the very heart of the country. For all that shore or water suggested of an encompassing civilization, the canoe driven by the taciturn Leary might have been the argosy of the first explorer of the inland seas.

Archie, keenly alive to the importance of the impending stroke, was aware that the Governor had planned it with the care he brought to the most trifling matters, though veiled by his indifference, which in turn was enveloped in his superstitious reliance on occult powers. Whether through some gift of prevision the Governor anticipated needs and dangers in his singular life, or whether he was merely a favorite of the gods of good luck, Archie had never determined, but either way the man who called himself Saulsbury seemed able to contrive and direct incidents with the dexterity of an expert stage hand. The purchase of the Arthur B. Grover had seemed the most fantastic extravagance, but the tug had already proved to be of crucial importance in the prosecution of their business. The seizure of Eliphalet Congdon had been justified; Perky and Leary were valuable lieutenants and the crew of jailbirds was now to be utilized as an offensive army.

Leary, restless because he couldn't smoke, spoke only once, to inquire Archie's judgment as to the passage of time. The old fellow, long accustomed to lonely flights after his plunderings, possessed the acutely developed faculties of a predatory animal; and the point at which they were to debark having been fixed in his mind in a daylight survey he paddled toward it with certainty. He managed his paddle so deftly that there was hardly a drip that could announce their proximity to any one lying in wait on the bay. Several minutes before Archie caught the listless wash of calm water on a beach, Leary heard it and paused, peering at the opaque curtain of the woodland beyond the lighter shadow of the shore.

"We struck it right," he announced, returning from an examination of the shore markings.

They carried the canoe into the wood and lay down beside it, communicating in whispers.

"That girls' camp's on th' right; Carey's place to the left. Hear that!" His quick ear caught the faint moan of a locomotive whistle far to the south. It was a freight crossing a trestle, he said, though Archie had no idea of how he reached this conclusion.

"Th' rest o' th' boys are away off yonder," and he lifted Archie's hand to point.

"How many?" asked Archie, who had never known the number of men dropped from the tug to make the swing round Carey's fortress.

"Ten; and a purty sharp bunch! You be dead sure they're right er ole Governor wouldn't have 'em!"

Leary's confidence in the Governor as a judge of character reënforced Archie's own opinion of the leader's fitness to command. That he should have been received into the strange brotherhood of the road, which the Governor controlled with so little friction, never ceased to puzzle him. He was amused to find himself feeling very humble beside Leary, a poor, ignorant, unmoral creature, whose loyalty as manifested in his devotion to the Governor was probably the one admirable thing in his nature.

"Somebody may get hurt if we come to a scrimmage," he suggested. "What do you think of the chances?"

"When ole Governor's bossin' things I don't do no thinkin'," the old man answered. He raised his head, catching a sound in the gloom, and tapped Archie's shoulder. "It's him, I reckon."

An instant later the Governor threw himself on the ground beside them. He was breathing hard and lay on his back, his arms flung out, completely relaxed, for several minutes. Archie had often wondered at his friend's powers of endurance; he rarely complained of fatigue, and very little sleep sufficed him. He sat up suddenly and said crisply:

"Well, boys, everything's ready!"

One by one his little army assembled, rising from the ground like specters. They gathered stolidly about the Governor, who flashed his electric lamp over their faces,—evil faces and dull faces, with eyes bold or shrinking before the quick stab of the gleam.

"Remember, you're not to shoot except in self-defense," said the Governor. "It's Carey, the leader, we're after. Those poor fools he's got with him think there's big money in this; I've told