Майн Рид
The Death Shot: A Story Retold
Chapter Thirty Nine.
Is it a corpse?
“Surely Charl Clancy!” exclaims the mulatto as soon as setting eyes on the face. “Dead – shot – murdered!”
For a time he stands aghast, with arms upraised, and eyes staring wildly.
Then, as if struck by something in the appearance of the corpse, he mutteringly interrogates: “Is he sure gone dead?”
To convince himself he kneels down beside the body, having cleared away the loose coverlet still partially shrouding it.
He sees the blood, and the wound from which it is yet welling. He places his hand over the heart with a hope it may still be beating.
Surely it is! Or is he mistaken?
The pulse should be a better test; and he proceeds to feel it, taking the smooth white wrist between his rough brown fingers.
“It beats! I do believe it does!” are his words, spoken hopefully.
For some time he retains his grasp of the wrist. To make more sure, he tries the artery at different points, with a touch as tender, as if holding in his hand the life of an infant.
He becomes certain that the heart throbs; that there is yet breath in the body.
What next? What is he to do?
Hasten to the settlement, and summon a doctor?
He dares not do this; nor seek assistance of any kind. To show himself to a white man would be to go back into hated bondage – to the slavery from which he has so lately, and at risk of life, escaped. It would be an act of grand generosity – a self-sacrifice – more than man, more than human being is capable of. Could a poor runaway slave be expected to make it?
Some sacrifice he intends making, as may be gathered from his muttered words:
“Breath in his body, or no breath, it won’t do to leave it lyin’ here. Poor young gen’leman! The best of them all about these parts. What would Miss Helen say if she see him now? What will she say when she hear o’ it? I wonder who’s done it? No, I don’t – not a bit. There’s only one likely. From what Jule told me, I thought ’t would come to this, some day. Wish I could a been about to warn him. Well, it’s too late now. The Devil has got the upper hand, as seem always the way. Ah! what ’ll become o’ Miss Armstrong? She loved him, sure as I love Jule, or Jule me.”
For a time he stands considering what he ought to do. The dread spectacle has driven out of his mind all thoughts of his appointment with Blue Bell; just as what preceded hindered the coon-hunter from keeping it with him. For the latter, terrified, has taken departure from the dangerous place, and is now hastening homeward.
Only for a short while does the mulatto remain hesitating. His eyes are upon the form at his feet. He sees warm blood still oozing from the wound, and knows, or hopes, Clancy is not dead. Something must be done immediately.
“Dead or alive,” he mutters. “I mustn’t, shan’t leave him here. The wolves would soon make bare bones of him, and the carrion crows peck that handsome face of his. They shan’t either get at him. No. He’s did me a kindness more’n once, it’s my turn now. Slave, mulatto, nigger, as they call me, I’ll show them that under a coloured skin there can be gratitude, as much as under a white one – may be more. Show them! What am I talkin’ ’bout? There’s nobody to see. Good thing for me there isn’t. But there might be, if I stand shilly-shallying here. I mustn’t a minute longer.”
Bracing himself for an effort, he opens his arms, and stoops as to take up the body. Just then the hound, for some time silent, again gives out its mournful monotone – continuing the dirge the runaway had interrupted.
Suddenly he rises erect, and glances around, a new fear showing upon his face. For he perceives a new danger in the presence of the dog.
“What’s to be done with it?” he asks himself. “I daren’t take it along. ’Twould be sure some day make a noise, and guide the nigger-hunters to my nest – I mustn’t risk that. To leave the dog here may be worse still. It’ll sure follow me toatin away its master, an’ if it didn’t take to the water an’ swim after ’twould know where the dug-out lay, an’ might show them the place. I shan’t make any tracks; for all that they’d suspect somethin’, down the creek, an’ come that way sarchin’. ’Twont do take the dog – ’twont do to leave it – what will do?”
The series of reflections, and questions, runs rapidly as thought itself. And to the last, quick as thought, comes an answer – a plan which promises a solution of the difficulty. He thinks of killing the dog – cutting its throat with his knife.
Only for an instant is the murderous intent in his mind. In the next he changes it, saying:
“I can’t do that – no; the poor brute so ’fectionate an’ faithful! ’Twould be downright cruel. A’most the same as murderin’ a man. I wont do it.”
Another pause spent in considering; another plan soon suggesting itself.
“Ah!” he exclaims, with air showing satisfied, “I have it now. That’ll be just the thing.”
The “thing” thus approved of, is to tie the hound to a tree, and so leave it.
First to get hold of it. For this he turns towards the animal, and commences coaxing it nearer. “Come up, ole fella. You aint afeerd o’ me. I’m Jupe, your master’s friend, ye know. There’s a good dog! Come now; come!”
The deer-hound, not afraid, does not flee him; and soon he has his hands upon it.
Pulling a piece of cord out of his pocket, he continues to apostrophise it, saying:
“Stand still, good dog! Steady, and let me slip this round your neck. Don’t be skeeart. I’m not goin’ to hang you – only to keep you quiet a bit.”
The animal makes no resistance; but yields to the manipulation, believing it to be by a friendly hand, and for its good.
In a trice the cord is knotted around its neck; and the mulatto looks out for a tree to which he may attach it.
A thought now strikes him, another step calling for caution. It will not do to let the dog see him go off, or know the direction he takes; for some one will be sure to come in search of Clancy, and set the hound loose. Still, time will likely elapse; the scent will be cold, as far as the creek’s edge, and cannot be lifted. With the water beyond there will be no danger.
The runaway, glancing around, espies a palmetto brake; these forming a sort of underwood in the cypress forest, their fan-shaped leaves growing on stalks that rise directly out of the earth to a height of three or four feet, covering the ground with a chevaux de frise of deepest green, but hirsute and spinous as hedgehogs.
The very place for his purpose. So mutters he to himself, as he conducts the dog towards it. Still thinking the same, after he has tied the animal to a palmetto shank near the middle of the brake, and there left it. He goes off, regardless of its convulsive struggles to set itself free, with accompanying yelps, by which the betrayed quadruped seems to protest against such unexpected as ill-deserved, captivity.
Not five minutes time has all this action occupied. In less than five more a second chapter is complete, by the carrying of Clancy’s body – it may be his corpse – to the creek, and laying it along the bottom of the canoe.
Notwithstanding the weight of his burden, the mulatto, a man of uncommon strength, takes care to make no footmarks along the forest path, or at the point of embarkation. The ground, thickly strewn with the leaves of the deciduous taxodium, does not betray a trace, any more than if he were treading on thrashed straw.
Undoing the slip-knot of his painter, he shoves the canoe clear of its entanglement among the roots of the tree. Then plying his paddle, directs its course down stream, silently as he ascended, but with look more troubled, and air intensely solemnal. This continuing, while he again shoulders the insensible form, and carries it along the causeway of logs, until he has laid it upon soft moss within the cavity of the cypress – his own couch. Then, once more taking Clancy’s wrist between his fingers, and placing his ear opposite the heart, he feels the pulse of the first, and listens for the beatings of the last.
A ray of joy illuminates his countenance, as both respond to his examination. It grows brighter, on perceiving a muscular movement of the limbs, late rigid and seemingly inanimate, a light in the eyes looking like life; above all, words from the lips so long mute. Words low-murmured, but still distinguishable; telling him a tale, at the same time giving its interpretation. That in this hour of his unconsciousness Clancy should in his speech couple the names of Richard Darke and Helen Armstrong is a fact strangely significant, he does the same for many days, in his delirious ravings; amid which the mulatto, tenderly nursing him, gets the clue to most of what has happened.
Clearer when his patient, at length restored to consciousness, confides everything to the faithful fellow who has so befriended him. Every circumstance he ought to know, at the same time imparting secrecy.
This, so closely kept, that even Blue Bill, while himself disclosing many an item, of news exciting the settlement, is not entrusted with one the most interesting, and which would have answered the questions on every tongue: – “What has become of Charles Clancy?” and “Where is his body?”
Clancy still in it, living and breathing, has his reasons for keeping the fact concealed. He has succeeded in doing so till this night; till encountering Simeon Woodley by the side of his mother’s tomb.
And now on Woodley’s own hearth, after all has been explained, Clancy once more returns to speak of the purpose he has but half communicated to the hunter.
“You say, Sime, I can depend upon you to stand by me?”
“Ye may stake yur life on that. Had you iver reezun to misdoubt me?”
“No – never.”
“But, Charley, ye hain’t tolt me why ye appeared a bit displeezed at meetin’ me the night. That war a mystery to me.”
“There was nothing in it, Sime. Only that I didn’t care to meet, or be seen by, any one till I should be strong enough to carry out my purpose. It would, in all probability, be defeated were the world to know I am still alive. That secret I shall expect you to keep.”
“You kin trust to me for that; an’ yur plans too. Don’t be afeerd to confide them to Sime Woodley. Maybe he may help ye to gettin’ ’em ship-shape.”
Clancy is gratified at this offer of aid. For he knows that in the backwoodsman he will find his best ally; that besides his friendship tested and proved, he is the very man to be with him in the work he has cut out for himself – a purpose which has engrossed his thoughts ever since consciousness came back after his long dream of delirium. It is that so solemnly proclaimed, as he stood in the cemetery, with no thought of any one overhearing him.
He had then three distinct passions impelling him to the stern threat – three reasons, any of them sufficient to ensure his keeping it. First, his own wrongs. True the attempt at assassinating him had failed; still the criminality remained the same. But the second had succeeded. His mother’s corpse was under the cold sod at his feet, her blood calling to him for vengeance. And still another passion prompted him to seek it – perhaps the darkest of all, jealousy in its direst shape, the sting from a love promised but unbestowed. For the coon-hunter had never told Jupe of Helen Armstrong’s letter. Perhaps, engrossed with other cares, he had forgotten it; or, supposing the circumstance known to all, had not thought it worth communicating. Clancy, therefore, up to that hour, believed his sweetheart not only false to himself, but having favoured his rival.
The bitter delusion, now removed, does not in any way alter his determination. That is fixed beyond change, as he tells Simeon Woodley while declaring it. He will proceed to Texas in quest of the assassin – there kill him.
“The poor old place!” he says, pointing to the cottage as he passes it on return to the swamp. “No more mine! Empty – every stick sold out of it, I’ve heard. Well, let them go! I go to Texas.”
“An’ I with ye. To Texas, or anywhars, in a cause like your’n, Clancy. Sime Woodley wouldn’t desarve the name o’ man, to hang back on a trail like that. But, say! don’t ye think we’d be more likely o’ findin’ the game by stayin’ hyar? Ef ye make it known that you’re still alive, then thar ain’t been no murder done, an’ Dick Darke ’ll be sure to kum home agin.”
“If he came what could I do? Shoot him down like a dog, as he thought he had me? That would make me a murderer, with good chance of being hanged for it. In Texas it is different. There, if I can meet him – . But we only lose time in talking. You say, Woodley, you’ll go with me?”
“In course I’ve said it, and I’ll do as I’ve sayed. There’s no backin’ out in this child. Besides, I war jest thinkin’ o’ a return to Texas, afore I seed you. An’ thar’s another ’ll go along wi’ us; that’s young Ned Heywood, a friend o’ your’n most as much as myself. Ned’s wantin’ bad to steer torst the Lone Star State. So, thar’ll be three o’ us on the trail o’ Dick Darke.”
“There will be four of us.”
“Four! Who’s the t’other, may I axe?”
“A man I’ve sworn to take to Texas along with me. A brave, noble man, though his skin be – . But never mind now. I’ll tell you all about it by-and-by. Meanwhile we must get ready. There’s not a moment to lose. A single day wasted, and I may be too late to settle scores with Richard Darke. There’s some one else in danger from him – ”
Here Clancy’s utterance becomes indistinct, as if his voice were stifled by strong emotion.
“Some one else!” echoes Sime, interrupting; “who mout ye mean, Clancy?”
“Her.”
“That air’s Helen Armstrong. I don’t see how she kin be in any danger from Dick Darke. Thet ere gurl hev courage enuf to take care o’ herself, an’ the spirit too. Besides, she’ll hev about her purtectors a plenty.”
“There can be no safety against an assassin. Who should know that better than I? Woodley, that man’s wicked enough for anything.”
“Then, let’s straight to Texas!”
Chapter Forty.
“Across the Sabine.”
At the time when Texas was an independent Republic, and not, as now, a State of the Federal Union, the phrase, “Across the Sabine” was one of noted signification.
Its significance lay in the fact, that fugitives from States’ justice, once over the Sabine, felt themselves safe; extradition laws being somewhat loose in the letter, and more so in the spirit, at any attempt made to carry them into execution.
As a consequence, the fleeing malefactor could breathe freely – even the murderer imagine the weight of guilt lifted from off his soul – the moment his foot touched Texan soil.
On a morning of early spring – the season when settlers most affect migration to the Lone Star State – a party of horsemen is seen crossing the boundary river, with faces turned toward Texas. The place where they are making passage is not the usual emigrants’ crossing – on the old Spanish military road between Natchitoches and Nacogdoches, – but several miles above, at a point where the stream is, at certain seasons, fordable. From the Louisiana side this ford is approached through a tract of heavy timber, mostly pine forest, along a trail little used by travellers, still less by those who enter Texas with honest intent, or leave Louisiana with unblemished reputations.
That these horsemen belong not to either category can be told at a glance. They have no waggons, nor other wheeled vehicles, to give them the semblance of emigrants; no baggage to embarrass them on their march. Without it, they might be explorers, land speculators, surveyors, or hunters. But no. They have not the look of persons who pursue any of these callings; no semblance of aught honest or honourable. In all there are twelve of them; among them not a face but speaks of the Penitentiary – not one which does not brighten up, and show more cheerful, as the hooves of their horses strike the Texan bank of the Sabine.
While on the terrain of Louisiana, they have been riding fast and hard – silent, and with pent-up thoughts, as though pursuers were after. Once on the Texan side all seem relieved, as if conscious of having at length reached a haven of safety.
Then he who appears leader of the party, reining up his horse, breaks silence, saying —
“Boys! I reckon we may take a spell o’ rest here. We’re now in Texas, whar freemen needn’t feel afeard. If thar’s been any fools followin’ us, I guess they’ll take care to keep on t’other side o’ the river. Tharfor, let’s dismount and have a bit o’ breakfast under the shadder o’ these trees. After we’ve done that, we can talk about what shed be our next move. For my part, I feel sleepy as a ’possum. That ar licker o’ Naketosh allers knocks me up for a day or two. This time, our young friend Quantrell here, has given us a double dose, the which I for one won’t get over in a week.”
It is scarcely necessary to say the speaker is Jim Borlasse, and those spoken to his drinking companions in the Choctaw Chief.
To a man, they all make affirmative response. Like himself, they too are fatigued – dead done up by being all night in the saddle, – to say nought about the debilitating effects of their debauch, and riding rapidly with beard upon the shoulder, under the apprehension that a sheriff and posse may be coming on behind. For, during the period of their sojourn in Natchitoches, nearly every one of them has committed some crime that renders him amenable to the laws.
It may be wondered how such roughs could carry on and escape observation, much more, punishment. But at the time Natchitoches was a true frontier town, and almost every day witnessed the arrival and departure of characters “queer” as to dress and discipline – the trappers and prairie traders. Like the sailor in port, when paid off and with full pockets – making every effort to deplete them – so is the trapper during his stay at a fort, or settlement. He does things that seem odd, are odd, to the extreme of eccentricity. Among such the late guests of the Choctaw Chief would not, and did not, attract particular attention. Not much was said or thought of them, till after they were gone; and then but by those who had been victimised, resignedly abandoning claims and losses with the laconic remark, “The scoundrels have G.T.T.”
It was supposed the assassin of Charles Clancy had gone with them; but this, affecting the authorities more than the general public, was left to the former to deal with; and in a land of many like affairs, soon ceased to be spoken of.
Borlasse’s visit to Natchitoches had not been for mere pleasure. It was business that took him thither – to concoct a scheme of villainy such as might be supposed unknown among Anglo-Saxon people, and practised only by those of Latinic descent, on the southern side of the Rio Grande.
But robbery is not confined to any race; and on the borderland of Texas may be encountered brigandage as rife and ruthless as among the mountains of the Sierra Morena, or the defiles of the Appenines.
That the Texan bandit has succeeded in arranging everything to his satisfaction may be learnt from his hilarious demeanour, with the speech now addressed to his associates: —
“Boys!” he says, calling them around after they have finished eating, and are ready to ride on, “We’ve got a big thing before us – one that’ll beat horse-ropin’ all to shucks. Most o’ ye, I reckin, know what I mean; ’ceptin’, perhaps, our friends here, who’ve just joined us.”
The speaker looks towards Phil Quantrell alias Dick Darke, and another, named Walsh, whom he knows to be Joe Harkness, ex-jailer.
After glancing from one to the other, he continues —
“I’ll take charge o’ tellin’ them in good time; an’, I think, can answer for their standin’ by us in the bizness. Thar’s fifty thousand dollars, clar cash, at the bottom of it; besides sundries in the trinket line. The question then is, whether we’d best wait till this nice assortment of property gets conveyed to the place intended for its destination, or make a try to pick it up on the way. What say ye, fellers? Let every man speak his opinion; then I’ll give mine.”
“You’re sure o’ whar they’re goin’, capting?” asks one of his following. “You know the place?”
“Better’n I know the spot we’re now camped on. Ye needn’t let that trouble ye. An’ most all o’ ye know it yourselves. As good luck has it, ’taint over twenty mile from our old stampin’ groun’ o’ last year. Thar, if we let em’ alone, everythin’ air sure to be lodged ’ithin less’n a month from now. Thar, we’ll find the specie, trinkets, an’ other fixins not forgetting the petticoats – sure as eggs is eggs. To some o’ ye it may appear only a question o’ time and patience. I’m sorry to tell ye it may turn out somethin’ more.”
“Why d’ye say that, capting? What’s the use o’ waitin’ till they get there?”
