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

tricks upon him indeed. The man's speech was not the argot he had assumed from his reading of crook stories to be the common utterance of the underworld. There was something attractive in the fellow. He carried himself jauntily, and his clean-shaven, rounded face and fine gray eyes would not have suggested his connection with burglary. He was an engaging sort of person, and overcoming his discomfiture at having sent a bullet into the foolish Hoky, Archie decided suddenly that the man might be of service to him. He was in pressing need of a change of clothes but he was in no condition to proceed to Portsmouth to redeem his suitcase; an impression that was confirmed unexpectedly by his captor.

"You will pardon my candor, but you certainly look like the devil. There's a rip in your trousers that needs explaining and that swipe on your face reminds me of a map of the Mississippi done in red ink. Let me introduce myself to you as the Governor. Among the powers that prey that is my proud cognomen, not to say alias. Now please be frank—what mischief brings you here at this pale hour?"

Archie gave serious thought to his answer. If he could convince this singular person that he was a crook he would be less likely to suspect that he had been the instrument of Hoky's undoing. And there was the possibility that if he met the Governor's friendly advances in a reciprocal spirit the man might help him out of his predicament. The Governor was waiting for his answer, humming pleasantly as he surveyed the heavens.

"I've got to make a getaway and be in a hurry about it," declared Archie with a confidential air that caused a humorous light to play in the Governor's eyes.

"A little trouble of some sort, eh? Perhaps fearing a collision with the revised statutes of this or adjacent states?"

"Something like that," Archie answered huskily.

"It rather occurred to me that you were not promenading for mere pleasure," replied the Governor, drawing his hand across his chin. "The causes that lead people to travel have been enumerated by no less an authority than Mr. Laurence Sterne as—

"Infirmity of body,

"Imbecility of mind, or

"Inevitable necessity.

"Unless my memory errs the same authority classifies travelers as the idle, the inquisitive, the lying, the proud, the vain, the splenetic; to which he added the delinquent and felonious traveler, the unfortunate and innocent traveler, the traveler without aim and the wandering sentimentalist. From the looks of your clothing I should judge that you belong to the necessitous group, though from a certain uneasy expression I might easily place you among the delinquent and criminal. A fashionable defaulter perhaps? No. Then let it go at murder, though I confess you don't look as though you'd have a stomach for homicide."

"I came damned near getting pinched!" asserted Archie stoutly. "The cops back there in that town gave me a hard run for it."

Feeling that he was making an impression on the Governor he warmed to his work.

"I was just crawling through the window of a drug store when here comes a chap tiptoeing through the alley flashing a dark lantern, and I bolted for the tall timber as hard as I could sprint. The fire bell rang and the whole town woke up and I got lost running through a garden back of one of those swell's houses on the shore. That's how I got this slash in the face, and I'm in a pretty pickle now. There'll be a whole army looking for me; and if your friend Hoky's been killed they'll be keen to pinch me as another member of the gang."

The Governor listened patiently as Archie jerked this out, nervously trying to conceal his Harvard training in the use of the English language by resorting to such terms as he imagined bold bad men employ in moments of mental stress.

"An amateur, I take it?" remarked the Governor with the humorous twinkle that seemed to be habitual with him.

"Hell, no," grumbled Archie scornfully. "But I always play the game alone; I never had any use for pals. They get in the way."

"Wrong, my boy; wrong! A good partner like me is essential to the successful prosecution of the art or craft felonious. As for myself I rarely venture to expose myself in these little affairs; but I advise and counsel the brethren. I am their confidant and assist them in innumerable ways purely for the joy of it, I assure you. Now Hoky and I had been on the road all spring, and he made a good haul or two under my direction; but he wouldn't let well enough alone. I warned him against making an attempt back yonder last night. A stormy night always makes honest householders wakeful. Take it from me, son, there couldn't be a worse time for a burglary than a night melodious with rolling thunder. You haven't the judgment of a month-old infant. I bought a toothbrush at that drug store yesterday evening and there's a light right over the safe at the end of the prescription counter. Your attempt, my son, speaks for courage but not for discretion. You should always ask me about such things."

"I'm sorry," replied Archie meekly, "that I didn't run into you sooner."

"The loss is mine!" cried the Governor heartily. "But let us be practical. The coast will ring with this, particularly if Hoky is lying cold at the undertaker's. He must be dead or pinched or he'd be here by this time. We shall make a long jump, son, and ponder the future."

He walked off briskly with Archie close beside him.

"When Hoky persisted in his ill-chosen enterprise I felt a weariness upon me and lifted a little roadster that I've tucked away down here in a peaceful lane. Thought I'd be all ready to give the old boy a long pull for freedom when he came back, but alas—!"

Sure enough the roadster was there; a very handy little car indeed, and Archie was profoundly interested to know that it was in this fashion that a man who from his own confession was counselor extraordinary to thieves, toured the country. The Governor had become suddenly a man of action. Kneeling down he detached a New York license tag from the machine, drew from his pocket a Maine tag and attached it, humming meanwhile.

"The rural police haven't learned this simple device," he explained, as he sent the discarded tag skimming into a corn field. "I've got about forty miles to run inland. The back roads only and Providence our guide!"

He jumped in and bade Archie take the seat beside him. The car was soon bumping merrily over a rough road that wound through a pine wood. As near as Archie could reckon from the sun that was crawling into view they were bound for Halifax, but to be going anywhere was an infinite relief, and to be traveling with a man whose comrade he had shot and probably killed only a few hours earlier, imparted a piquant flavor to the journey. This astonishing person who called himself Governor might, for all he knew, be hurrying him to some lonely place to murder him, but if this was his plan he was most agreeable about it. He had taken off the mackinaw coat in which he had first appeared in the road and the brown coat underneath was of modish cut; and as his foot played upon the brake Archie noted that he wore silk hose. He had never dreamed that outlaws were so careful of their raiment. And the man's talk was that of a cultivated gentleman who wore his learning lightly and was blessed with an easy conscience; not at all like the philosopher and guide of criminals.

"You seem to know this country well," Archie remarked as they penetrated more deeply into the woods and followed a grass-grown trail that ended abruptly at an abandoned lumber camp.

"Oh, I know most of the whole United States just as well," remarked the Governor, steering the car slowly among the deep ruts. "We'll shoot the car around behind that pyramid of sawdust and walk a bit to stretch our legs."

There was no trace of a path where he struck off into the woods but he strode along with the easy confidence of one who is sure of his destination. They brought up presently beside a brook and in a moment more reached a log hut planted on the edge of the high bank.

"What do you think of that, Sir Archibald?" inquired the Governor carelessly.

Archie paused, wavering in the path. The man had called him by his right name, throwing in the prefix with a tinge of insolence.

"Oh, your name?" remarked the Governor turning from a leisurely survey of the dwelling. "Perfectly easy! Archibald Bennett was neatly sewed into your coat pocket by your tailor as I observed when I rubbed my hands over your waistcoat to see if you wore a badge. Your bill-fold is there intact—it's rather indelicate of you to feel for it! If I'd meant to rob you I'd have biffed you on the head long ago and thrown your carcass to the buzzards."

"I got these duds out of a suitcase I sneaked from an auto in Boston, and that's no name of mine," Archie explained hurriedly, still anxious to convince the Governor that he was a thief.

"A deft hand, son; but very careless of you not to rip out the label. Men have been hanged on slighter evidence. But Archibald is not a name to sneeze at, and I rather like Archie; and Archie I shall continue to call you. Now we'll see what we can do to shake up a breakfast."

He drew out a key and opened the door of the hut. On one side stood a dilapidated cook stove of an obsolete pattern, surrounded by a few kitchen utensils. In the far end were two bunks, one above the other, and on a chair beside them a pile of blankets neatly folded. In the middle of the room was a table littered with old magazines.

"Not a bad place, Archie! I stumbled upon it a couple of years ago quite by accident and use it occasionally. The retreat of some artist who probably starved to death. When I first found the shack it was full of impressionistic studies that looked as though the poor boob stood on his head to paint. I made a burnt offering of the whole lot to outraged Nature." He opened a cupboard revealing a quantity of provisions. "Poor old Hoky was a great lover of ham; I never saw such an appetite for smoked pork, and he had just stocked us up with a few specimens he lifted somewhere."

Besides three hams there were coffee, cartons of crackers and cans of condensed milk.

"We fellows who live by our wits need the open air just as much as bank presidents, for our business makes a heavier drain on the nerves," continued the Governor after they had prepared breakfast. "Your pallor suggests that you may have emerged quite recently from one of those institutions designed for the moral reconstruction of the weak and erring."

Archie's eyes fell under the Governor's keen gaze. But he realized that he must firmly establish himself in the man's confidence by palming himself off as a crook with a prison record. In no other way could he be sure of the assistance and protection which the Governor alone could give him.

"Three months' jail sentence," he replied smoothly.

"Ah! A minor felony, I judge, from the brevity of your incarceration," replied the Governor, emptying the coffee pot into Archie's cup. "I have never been in jail and to the best of my knowledge I have never been indicted; or if I have the sheriff has never caught up with me! My heart bleeds nevertheless