Майн Рид
The Death Shot: A Story Retold
Chapter Twenty.
Saved by a sister
The boat is slowly forging its course up-stream, its wheel in constant revolution, churning the ochre-coloured water into foam. This, floating behind, dances and simmers upon the surface, forming a wake-way of white tinted with red. In Helen Armstrong’s eyes it has the appearance of blood-froth – such being the hue of her thoughts.
Contemplating it for a time, not pleasantly, and then, turning round, she perceives that she is alone. The lovers have stepped inside a state-room, or the ladies’ cabin, or perhaps gone on to the general saloon, to take part in the sports of the evening. She sees the lights shimmering through the latticed windows, and can hear the hum of voices, all merry. She has no desire to join in that merriment, though many may be wishing her. Inside she would assuredly become the centre of an admiring circle; be addressed in courtly speeches, with phrases of soft flattery. She is aware of this, and keeps away from it. Strange woman!
In her present mood the speeches would but weary, the flattery fash her. She prefers solitude; likes better the noise made by the ever-turning wheel. In the tumult of the water there is consonance with that agitating her own bosom.
Night is now down; darkness has descended upon forest and river, holding both in its black embrace. Along with it a kindred feeling creeps over her – a thought darker than night, more sombre than forest shadows. It is that which oft prompts to annihilation; a memory of the past, which, making the future unendurable, calls for life to come to an end. The man to whom she has given her heart – its firstlings, as its fulness – a heart from which there can be no second gleanings, and she knows it – he has made light of the offering. A sacrifice grand, as complete; glowing with all the interests of her life. The life, too, of one rarely endowed; a woman of proud spirit, queenly and commanding, beyond air beautiful.
She does not think thus of herself, as, leaning over the guard-rail, with eyes mechanically bent upon the wheel, she watches it whipping the water into spray. Her thoughts are not of lofty pride, but low humiliation. Spurned by him at whose feet she has flung herself, so fondly, so rashly – ay, recklessly – surrendering even that which woman deems most dear, and holds back to the ultimate moment of rendition – the word which speaks it!
To Charles Clancy she has spoken it. True, only in writing; but still in terms unmistakeable, and with nothing reserved. And how has he treated them? No response – not even denial! Only contemptuous silence, worse than outspoken scorn!
No wonder her breast is filled with chagrin, and her brow burning with shame!
Both may be ended in an instant. A step over the low rail – a plunge into the red rolling river – a momentary struggle amidst its seething waters – not to preserve life, but destroy it – this, and all will be over! Sadness, jealousy, the pangs of disappointed love – these baleful passions, and all others alike, can be soothed, and set at rest, by one little effort – a leap into oblivion!
Her nerves are fast becoming strung to the taking it. The past seems all dark, the future yet darker. For her, life has lost its fascinations, while death is divested of its terrors.
Suicide in one so young, so fair, so incomparably lovely; one capable of charming others, no longer to be charmed herself! A thing fearful to reflect upon.
And yet is she contemplating it!
She stands close to the rail, wavering, irresolute. It is no lingering love of life which causes her to hesitate. Nor yet fear of death, even in the horrid form, she cannot fail to see before her, spring she but over that slight railing.
The moon has arisen, and now courses across the blue canopy of sky, in full effulgence, her beams falling bright upon the bosom of the river. At intervals the boat, keeping the deeper channel, is forced close to either bank. Then, as the surging eddies set the floating but stationary logs in motion, the huge saurian asleep on them can be heard giving a grunt of anger for the rude arousing, and pitching over into the current with dull sullen plash.
She sees, and hears all this. It should shake her nerves, and cause shivering throughout her frame.
It does neither. The despair of life has deadened the dread of death – even of being devoured by an alligator!
Fortunately, at this moment, a gentle hand is laid on her shoulder, and a soft voice sounds in her ear. They are the hand and voice of her sister.
Jessie, coming out of her state-room, has glided silently up. She sees Helen prepossessed, sad, and can somewhat divine the cause. But she little suspects, how near things have been to a fatal climax, and dreams not of the diversion her coming has caused.
“Sister!” she says, in soothing tone, her arms extended caressingly, “why do you stay out here? The night is chilly; and they say the atmosphere of this Red River country is full of miasma, with fevers and ague to shake the comb out of one’s hair! Come with me inside! There’s pleasant people in the saloon, and we’re going to have a round game at cards —vingt-un, or something of the sort. Come!”
Helen turns round trembling at the touch, as if she felt herself a criminal, and it was the sheriff’s hand laid upon her shoulder!
Jessie notices the strange, strong emotion. She could not fail to do so. Attributing it to its remotest cause, long since confided to her, she says: —
“Be a woman, Helen! Be true to yourself, as I know you will; and don’t think of him any more. There’s a new world, a new life, opening to both of us. Forget the sorrows of the old, as I shall. Pluck Charles Clancy from your heart, and fling every memory, every thought of him, to the winds! I say again, be a woman – be yourself! Bury the past, and think only of the future —of our father!”
The last words act like a galvanic shock, at the same time soothing as balm. For in the heart of Helen Armstrong they touch a tender chord – that of filial affection.
And it vibrates true to the touch. Flinging her arms around Jessie’s neck, she cries: —
“Sister; you have saved me!”
Chapter Twenty One.
Seized by spectral arms
“Sister, you have saved me!”
On giving utterance to the ill-understood speech, Helen Armstrong imprints a kiss upon her sister’s cheek, at the same time bedewing it with her tears. For she is now weeping – convulsively sobbing.
Returning the kiss, Jessie looks not a little perplexed. She can neither comprehend the meaning of the words, nor the strange tone of their utterance. Equally is she at a loss to account for the trembling throughout her sister’s frame, continued while their bosoms stay in contact.
Helen gives her no time to ask questions.
“Go in!” she says, spinning the other round, and pushing her towards the door of the state-room. Then, attuning her voice to cheerfulness, she adds: —
“In, and set the game of vingt-un going. I’ll join you by the time you’ve got the cards shuffled.”
Jessie, glad to see her sister in spirits unusually gleeful, makes no protest, but glides towards the cabin door.
Soon as her back is turned, Helen once more faces round to the river, again taking stand by the guard-rail. The wheel still goes round, its paddles beating the water into bubbles, and casting the crimson-white spray afar over the surface of the stream.
But now, she has no thought of flinging herself into the seething swirl, though she means to do so with something else.
“Before the game of vingt-un begins,” she says in soliloquy, “I’ve got a pack of cards to be dealt out here – among them a knave.”
While speaking, she draws forth a bundle of letters – evidently old ones – tied in a bit of blue ribbon. One after another, she drags them free of the fastening – just as if dealing out cards. Each, as it comes clear, is rent right across the middle, and tossed disdainfully into the stream.
At the bottom of the packet, after the letters have been all disposed of, is something seeming different. A piece of cardboard – a portrait – in short, a carte de visite. It is the likeness of Charles Clancy, given her on one of those days when he flung himself affectionately at her feet.
She does not tear it in twain, as she has the letters; though at first this is nearest her intent. Some thought restraining her, she holds it up in the moon’s light, her eyes for a time resting on, and closely scanning it. Painful memories, winters of them, pass through her soul, shown upon her countenance, while she makes scrutiny of the features so indelibly graven upon her heart. She is looking her last upon them – not with a wish to remember, but the hope to forget – of being able to erase that image of him long-loved, wildly worshipped, from the tablets of her memory, at once and for ever.
Who can tell what passed through her mind at that impending moment? Who could describe her heart’s desolation? Certainly, no writer of romance.
Whatever resolve she has arrived at, for a while she appears to hesitate about executing it. —
Then, like an echo heard amidst the rippling waves, return to her ear the words late spoken by her sister —
“Let us think only of the future —of our father.”
The thought decides her; and, stepping out to the extremest limit the guard-rail allows, she flings the photograph upon the paddles of the revolving wheel, as she does so, saying —
“Away, image of one once loved – picture of a man who has proved false! Be crushed, and broken, as he has broken my heart!”
The sigh that escapes her, on letting drop the bit of cardboard, more resembles a subdued scream – a stifled cry of anguish, such as could only come from what she has just spoken of – a broken heart.
As she turns to re-enter the cabin, she appears ill-prepared for taking part, or pleasure, in a game of cards.
And she takes not either. That round of vingt-un is never to be played – at least not with her as one of the players.
Still half distraught with the agony through which her soul has passed – the traces of which she fancies must be observable on her face – before making appearance in the brilliantly-lighted saloon, she passes around the corner of the ladies’ cabin, intending to enter her own state-room by the outside door.
It is but to spend a moment before her mirror, there to arrange her dress, the plaiting of her hair – perhaps the expression of her face – all things that to men may appear trivial, but to women important – even in the hour of sadness and despair. No blame to them for this. It is but an instinct – the primary care of their lives – the secret spring of their power.
In repairing to her toilette, Helen Armstrong is but following the example of her sex.
She does not follow it far – not even so far as to get to her looking-glass, or even inside her state-room. Before entering it, she makes stop by the door, and tarries with face turned towards the river’s bank.
The boat, tacking across stream, has sheered close in shore; so close that the tall forest trees shadow her track – the tips of their branches almost touching the hurricane-deck. They are cypresses, festooned with grey-beard moss, that hangs down like the drapery of a death-bed. She sees one blighted, stretching forth bare limbs, blanched white by the weather, desiccated and jointed like the arms of a skeleton.
’Tis a ghostly sight, and causes her weird thoughts, as under the clear moonbeams the steamer sweeps past the place.
It is a relief to her, when the boat, gliding on, gets back into darkness.
Only momentary; for there under the shadow of the cypresses, lit up by the flash of the fire-flies, she sees, or fancies it, a face! It is that of a man – him latest in her thoughts – Charles Clancy!
It is among the trees high up, on a level with the hurricane-deck.
Of course it can be but a fancy? Clancy could not be there, either in the trees, or on the earth. She knows it is but a deception of her senses – an illusive vision – such as occur to clairvoyantes, at times deceiving themselves.
Illusion or not, Helen Armstrong has no time to reflect upon it. Ere the face of her false lover fades from view; a pair of arms, black, sinewy, and stiff, seem reaching towards her!
More than seem; it is a reality. Before she can stir from the spot, or make effort to avoid them, she feels herself roughly grasped around the waist, and lifted aloft into the air.
Chapter Twenty Two.
Up and down
Whatever has lifted Helen Armstrong aloft, for time holds her suspended. Only for a few seconds, during which she sees the boat pass on beneath, and her sister rush out to the stern rail, sending forth a scream responsive to her own.
Before she can repeat the piercing cry, the thing grasping her relaxes its hold, letting her go altogether, and she feels herself falling, as from a great height. The sensation of giddiness is succeeded by a shock, which almost deprives her of consciousness. It is but the fall, broken by a plunge into water. Then there is a drumming in her ears, a choking in the throat; in short, the sensation that precedes drowning.
Notwithstanding her late suicidal thoughts, the instinctive aversion to death is stronger than her weariness of life, and instinctively does she strive to avert it.
No longer crying out; she cannot; her throat is filled with the water of the turbid stream. It stifles, as if a noose were being drawn around her neck, tighter and tighter. She can neither speak nor shout, only plunge and struggle.
Fortunately, while falling, the skirt of her dress, spreading as a parachute, lessened the velocity of the descent. This still extended, hinders her from sinking. As she knows not how to swim, it will not sustain her long; itself becoming weighted with the water.
Her wild shriek, with that of her sister responding – the latter still continued in terrified repetition – has summoned the passengers from the saloon, a crowd collecting on the stern-guards.
“Some one overboard!” is the cry sent all over the vessel.
It reaches the ear of the pilot; who instantly rings the stop-bell, causing the paddles to suspend revolution, and bringing the boat to an almost instantaneous stop. The strong current, against which they are contending, makes the movement easy of execution.
The shout of, “some one overboard!” is quickly followed by another of more particular significance. “It’s a lady!”
This announcement intensifies the feeling of regret and alarm. Nowhere in the world more likely to do so, than among the chivalric spirits sure to be passengers on a Mississippian steamboat. Half a dozen voices are heard simultaneously asking, not “who is the lady?” but “where?” while several are seen pulling off their coats, as if preparing to take to the water.
Foremost among them is the young Creole, Dupré. He knows who the lady is. Another lady has met him frantically, exclaiming —
“’Tis Helen! She has fallen, or leaped overboard.”
The ambiguity of expression appears strange; indeed incomprehensible, to Dupré, as to others who overhear it. They attributed it to incoherence, arising from the shock of the unexpected catastrophe.
This is its cause, only partially: there is something besides.
Confused, half-frenzied, Jessie continues to cry out:
“My sister! Save her! save her!”
“We’ll try; show us where she is,” respond several.
“Yonder – there – under that tree. She was in its branches above, then dropped down upon the water. I heard the plunge, but did not see her after. She has gone to the bottom. Merciful heavens! O Helen! where are you?”
The people are puzzled by these incoherent speeches – both the passengers above, and the boatmen on the under-deck. They stand as if spell-bound.
Fortunately, one of the former has retained presence of mind, and along with it coolness. It is the young planter, Dupré. He stays not for the end of her speech, but springing over the guards, swims towards the spot pointed out.
“Brave fellow!” is the thought of Jessie Armstrong, admiration for her lover almost making her forget her sister’s peril.
She stands, as every one else upon the steamer, watching with earnest eyes. Hers are more; they are flashing with feverish excitement, with glances of anxiety – at times the fixed gaze of fear.
No wonder at its being so. The moon has sunk to the level of the tree-tops, and the bosom of the river is in dark shadow; darker by the bank where the boat is now drifting. But little chance to distinguish an object in the water – less for one swimming upon its surface. And the river is deep, its current rapid, the “reach” they are in, full of dangerous eddies. In addition, it is a spot infested, as all know – the favourite haunt of that hideous reptile the alligator, with the equally-dreaded gar-fish – the shark of the South-western rivers. All these things are in Jessie Armstrong’s thoughts.
Amidst these dangers are the two dearest to her on earth; her sister, her lover. Not strange that her apprehension is almost an agony!
Meanwhile the steamer’s boat has been manned, and set loose as quickly as could be done. It is rowed towards the spot, where the swimmer was last seen; and all eyes are strained upon it – all ears listening to catch any word of cheer.
Not long have they to listen. From the shadowed surface comes the shout, “Saved!”
Then, a rough boatman’s voice, saying:
“All right! We’ve got ’em both. Throw us a rope.”
It is thrown by ready hands, after which is heard the command, “Haul in!”
A light, held high upon the steamer, flashes its beams down into, the boat. Lying along its thwarts can be perceived a female form, in a dress once white, now discoloured and dripping. Her head is held up by a man, whose scant garments show similarly stained.
It is Helen Armstrong, supported by Dupré.
She appears lifeless, and the first sight of her draws anxious exclamations from those standing on the steamer. Her sister gives out an agonised cry; while her father trembles on taking her into his arms, and totters as he carries her to her state-room – believing he bears but a corpse!
But no! She breathes; her pulse beats; her lips move in low murmur; her bosom’s swell shows sign of returning animation.
By good fortune there chances to be a medical man among the passengers; who, after administering restoratives, pronounces her out of danger.
The announcement causes universal joy on board the boat – crew and passengers alike sharing it.
With one alone remains a thought to sadden. It is Jessie: her heart is sore with the suspicion, that her sister has attempted suicide!
Chapter Twenty Three.
The sleep of the assassin
On the night after killing Clancy, Richard Darke does not sleep soundly – indeed scarce at all.
His wakefulness is not due to remorse; there is no such sentiment in his soul. It comes from two other causes, in themselves totally, diametrically distinct; for the one is fear, the other love.
While dwelling on the crime he has committed, he only dreads its consequences to himself; but, reflecting on what led him to commit it, his dread gives place to dire jealousy; and, instead of repentance, spite holds possession of his heart. Not the less bitter, that the man and woman who made him jealous can never meet more. For, at that hour, he knows Charles Clancy to be lying dead in the dank swamp; while, ere dawn of the following day, Helen Armstrong will be starting upon a journey which must take her away from the place, far, and for ever.
The only consolation he draws from her departure is, that she, too, will be reflecting spitefully and bitterly as himself. Because of Clancy not having kept his appointment with her; deeming the failure due to the falsehood by himself fabricated – the story of the Creole girl.
Withal, it affords him but scant solace. She will be alike gone from him, and he may never behold her again. Her beauty will never belong to his rival; but neither can it be his, even though chance might take him to Texas, or by design he should proceed thither. To what end should he? No more now can he build castles in the air, basing them on the power of creditor over debtor. That bubble has burst, leaving him only the reflection, how illusory it has been. Although, for his nefarious purpose, it has proved weak as a spider’s web, it is not likely Colonel Armstrong will ever again submit himself to be so ensnared. Broken men become cautious, and shun taking credit a second time.
And yet Richard Darke does not comprehend this. Blinded by passion, he cannot see any impossibility, and already thoughts of future proceedings begin to flit vaguely through his mind. They are too distant to be dwelt upon now. For this night he has enough to occupy heart and brain – keeping both on the rack and stretch, so tensely as to render prolonged sleep impossible. Only for a few seconds at a time does he know the sweet unconsciousness of slumber; then, suddenly starting awake, to be again the prey of galling reflections.
Turn to which side he will, rest his head on the pillow as he may, two sounds seem ever ringing in his ears – one, a woman’s voice, that speaks the denying word, “Never!” – the other, a dog’s bark, which seems persistently to say, “I demand vengeance for my murdered master!”
If, in the first night after his nefarious deed, fears and jealous fancies chase one another through the assassin’s soul, on the second it is different. Jealousy has no longer a share in his thoughts, fear having full possession of them. And no trifling fear of some far off danger, depending on chances and contingencies, but one real and near, seeming almost certain. The day’s doings have gone all against him. The behaviour of Clancy’s hound has not only directed suspicion towards him, but given evidence, almost conclusive, of his guilt; as though the barking of the dumb brute were words of truthful testimony, spoken in a witness-box!
The affair cannot, will not, be allowed to rest thus. The suspicions of the searchers will take a more definite shape, ending in accusation, if not in the actual deed of his arrest. He feels convinced of this.
Therefore, on this second night, it is no common apprehension which keeps him awake, but one of the intensest kind, akin to stark terror. For, added to the fear of his fellow man, there is something besides – a fear of God; or, rather of the Devil. His soul is now disturbed by a dread of the supernatural. He saw Charles Clancy stretched dead, under the cypress – was sure of it, before parting from the spot. Returning to it, what beheld he?
To him, more than any other, is the missing body a mystery. It has been perplexing, troubling him, throughout all the afternoon, even when his blood was up, and nerves strung with excitement. Now, at night, in the dark, silent hours, as he dwells ponderingly upon it, it more than perplexes, more than troubles – it awes, horrifies him.
In vain he tries to compose himself, by shaping conjectures based on natural causes. Even these could not much benefit him; for, whether Clancy be dead or still living – whether he has walked away from the ground, or been carried from it a corpse – to him, Darke, the danger will be almost equal. Not quite. Better, of course, if Clancy be dead, for then there will be but circumstantial evidence against, and, surely, not sufficient to convict him?
Little suspects he, that in the same hour, while he is thus distractedly cogitating, men are weighing evidence he knows not of; or that, in another hour, they will be on the march to make him their prisoner.
For all his ignorance of it, he has a presentiment of danger, sprung from the consciousness of his crime. This, and no sentiment of remorse, or repentance, wrings from him the self-interrogation, several times repeated: —
“Why the devil did I do it?”
He regrets the deed, not because grieving at its guilt, but the position it has placed him in – one of dread danger, with no advantage derived, nothing to compensate him for the crime. No wonder at his asking, in the name of the Devil, why he has done it!
He is being punished for it now; if not through remorse of conscience, by coward craven fear. He feels what other criminals have felt before – what, be it hoped, they will ever feel – how hard it is to sleep the sleep of the assassin, or lie awake on a murderer’s bed.
On the last Richard Darke lies; since this night he sleeps not at all. From the hour of retiring to his chamber, till morning’s dawn comes creeping through the window, he has never closed eye; or, if so, not in the sweet oblivion of slumber.
He is still turning upon his couch, chafing in fretful apprehension, when daylight breaks into his bedroom, and shows its shine upon the floor. It is the soft blue light of a southern morn, which usually enters accompanied by bird music – the songs of the wild forest warblers mingling with domestic voices not so melodious. Among these the harsh “screek” of the guinea-fowl; the more sonorous call of the turkey “gobbler;” the scream of the goose, always as in agony; the merrier cackle of the laying hen, with the still more cheerful note of her lord – Chanticleer.
All these sounds hears Dick Darke, the agreeable as the disagreeable. Both are alike to him on this morning, the second after the murder.
Far more unpleasant than the last are some other sounds which salute his ear, as he lies listening. Noises which, breaking out abruptly, at once put an end to the singing of the forest birds, and the calling of the farm-yard fowls.
They are of two kinds; one, the clattering of horses’ hoofs, the other, the clack and clangour of men’s voices. Evidently there are several, speaking at the same time, and all in like tone – this of anger, of vengeance!
At first they seem at some distance off, but evidently drawing nigh.
Soon they are close up to the dwelling, their voices loudly reverberating from its walls.
The assassin cannot any longer keep to his couch. Too well knows he what the noise is, his guilty heart guessing it.
Springing to his feet, he glides across the room, and approaches the window – cautiously, because in fear.
His limbs tremble, as he draws the curtain and looks out. Then almost refusing to support him: for, in the courtyard he sees a half-score of armed horsemen, and hears them angrily discoursing. One at their head he knows to be the Sheriff of the county; beside him his Deputy, and behind a brace of constables. In rear of these, two men he has reason to believe will be his most resolute accusers.
He has no time to discriminate; for, soon as entering the enclosure, the horsemen dismount, and make towards the door of the dwelling.
In less than sixty seconds after, they knock against that of his sleeping chamber, demanding admission.
No use denying them, as its occupant is well aware – not even to ask —
“Who’s there?”
Instead, he says, in accent tremulous —
“Come in.”
Instantly after, he sees the door thrown open, and a form filling up its outlines – the stalwart figure of a Mississippi sheriff; who, as he stands upon the threshold, says, in firm voice, with tone of legal authority:
“Richard Darke, I arrest you!”
“For what?” mechanically demands the culprit, shivering in his shirt.
“For the murder of Charles Clancy!”
