Rainbow Landing: An Adventure Story by Frank Lillie Pollock - HTML preview

CHAPTER XX
 DEEP WATER

With a furious face Power drove the motor boat up through the choke of the smoke clouds, leaving the deserted house boat ablaze on its mud bank. Blackened and half suffocated, they came to the upper entrance of the bayou, into the channel that joined the two rivers, and looked this way and that.

Nothing was in sight either way. Tom suddenly silenced the engine. They were well away from the roar and crackle of the fire. A dead hush fell, and through it they heard a faint, distant beating, faint and elusive as the beat of a dying heart.

“That’s up the Alabama! They’ve headed up again!” everybody spoke at once.

The turn of the bayou checked the view. Tom started again at full speed and tore out into the wide water of the Alabama. Nothing was visible for the half mile they could see. They rushed up this reach and around the bend, and caught one glimpse of a flying black object rounding the next bend, a couple of miles ahead.

“There they go! I knowed they was headin’ up!” cried Ferrell.

“But there wasn’t no five men in that boat. One or mebbe two at the outside,” said Tom.

“Hanna’s put the rest ashore. They’re scattering,” exclaimed Lockwood. “Never mind. It’s Hanna we want.”

“Dunno ef we kin git him!” returned Tom. “That boat he’s got is the fastest thing on this river, and she ain’t carryin’ half the load we are.”

But he put Foster’s boat to all the speed she was capable of. She was certainly a heavier, clumsier, less powerful craft than Power’s racer. Weighted as she was, she sat low in the water; sheets of dirty spray drove back over her as the waves wallowed from her bow. When they swung round the next curve there was no boat in the visible mile of water ahead.

Lockwood had a sudden suspicion that Hanna might have taken to the woods. He remembered his own escape. The man might be making for the railway on the west shore. But probably he had no money. All his possessions were at the Power house. Was it possible that Hanna was doubling back to Rainbow Landing?

There was no telling—no guessing, even. But the rounding of the next bend still showed no boat ahead.

For half an hour they tore along, half through, half under the water, while no living thing appeared on the river, nor any human being along the shore. Foster’s landing came in sight again. The tall chimney was smoking now, and there was a shrieking of saws from the mill sheds. They had been seen coming, and Foster himself was at the landing with news.

“Missed him, didn’t you?” he cried. “A motor boat went up past here not half an hour ago—going lickety-split, water flyin’ clear over her. Only one man in her. Your man wouldn’t go back to Rainbow Landing, would he?”

“I never thought of it!” exclaimed Power, looking startled. “Jackson’s there, alone with sister and dad.”

“Hanna’s hunted and desperate. He’d do anything now for money—or revenge,” said Lockwood.

Tom jumped out of the boat.

“Where’s that car we left here?”

The car had been run under a shed. Its gasoline tank had to be replenished, its radiator filled. It was ten minutes before they were headed up the road again, leaving the wounded Fenway boy at the mill. But now they had a speed machine that no boat could match.

If Tom had driven recklessly on the way down, he drove murderously now. A negro with a mule got out of the way just in time, and stood trembling and swearing. A dozen times the car seemed about to turn turtle, but it was heavy, and heavily loaded, and rebalanced itself.

They reached the main road that led to the landing, and swept into it with a skidding swerve. A light car was jogging on ahead. They passed it like a flash, Ferrell leaning out, shouting and gesticulating for it to follow. The two men in it did speed up in pursuit, but they were hopelessly outdistanced.

The Power house came in sight, peaceful among its great trees in the blaze of sunshine. The yard was empty, no one in sight. Tom swept in the open gate and up to the house. Jerking open the doors they scrambled out of the car, and Lockwood was immediately aware of a thundering from the upper part of the house like some one beating on a closed door, and then an unmistakable scream.

With a rush they went over the gallery, into the hall, up the stairs. A shot crashed. Lockwood saw Louise at the door of a room; she had a revolver half raised in her hand, and he caught a glimpse of a man bolting toward the rear of the hall.

“Down there! The back way!” Louise was screaming.

The other three men rushed down the hall, toward the back stairs. Lockwood alone had the inspiration to plunge back down the front stairs again. As he darted out the door he saw Hanna running forward from the rear entrance, carrying a large leather club bag.

Lockwood fired twice, hurriedly, excitedly, missing him clean. Then the pursuers poured out from the rear door also with a yell and a burst of shooting. Hanna stumbled, recovered himself, and made a limping rush for the car that still stood throbbing with the running engine.

Lockwood ran out to cut him off, shooting again in vain. Hanna dived into the front seat, and, as the car started Lockwood sprang on the running board, and leaned over with the pistol not a foot from his enemy’s head.

He caught the queer, sidelong, startled look that Hanna turned on him as he pulled the trigger. There was no explosion. He pulled again—again, with only a series of soft clicks. The gun was empty; and it flashed upon him that it was a borrowed one, and he had no cartridges.

The car was speeding down toward the gate. Lockwood clutched the top supports and hung on, holding the useless pistol. Hanna never glanced aside. He went out the gate at high speed, turned to the right, and dashed down the road.

Lockwood had a glimpse over his shoulder of his companions running across the yard to the road. The light car was just coming up. They were stopping it, getting aboard, but he could spare no more attention.

He could not attack, but he would not let go. He had to cling with both arms to avoid being pitched headlong. There was deep sand on the road, and Hanna tore through it like a madman. The big car reeled and skidded. Hanna never once glanced aside, bending low over the wheel, and they clung there within a yard of one another, as if unconscious of each other’s presence.

He might have clubbed the man with the gun butt, but he was afraid to touch him; it would turn the car over. He made an effort to get into the rear seat; but the catch stuck, and the curtains were down.

He thought dizzily of getting his hands on Hanna, of throttling him from behind. A violent lurch of the car nearly flung him off. For a minute he clung trailing by his hands, till he could get footing on the running board again.

He was determined not to let go. He caught a glimpse of the other car racing behind. They were shouting at him, motioning him to jump. He was in their way. But he knew that Hanna’s car could outdistance anything on the road, and if he let go he was sure he would never sight it again.

Jets of dust flew up from the road, instantly passed. He heard the reports. They were shooting at the tires. A bullet ripped the top. The light car was falling behind. Bullets were their only chance; and now the heavy sand was past, and Hanna let her out a little more.

The bridge over the bayou was just ahead. A distant crash of firing came from behind. The fabric top r-ripped. A great splintered star flashed into the glass windshield. The planks of the bridge roared under the wheels, and then a long, white streak flew up out of the steering wheel under Hanna’s very hands.

Like a flash the great car swerved, so violently that Lockwood was jerked loose, flung to the other side of the bridge. As he went sprawling, he heard a crash of breaking timber, a vast splash, and a sheet of muddy water flew high and rained upon him.

The light car was up and had stopped before the waves had ceased frothing. Twenty feet of the bridge railing was torn away. It was floating on the bayou below, but Hanna and the big car were deep down.

“Got her up!” said Tom Power, coming wet and mud-splashed and tired upon the gallery of his house, and setting down a large leather club bag on the floor, where it streamed water.

It was nearly sunset, and for hours a crowd of men had been dragging and grappling for the drowned car. The whole population for miles seemed to have assembled. There was an incessant coming and going through the house of excited men, eager to hear and discuss all the details of the affair. Jackson, too, had insisted on Lockwood coming up to his bedside to tell the story. Henry had already heard it. Men came up to speak to Lockwood by dozens, men whom he did not know, men who had been wild to stretch his neck twenty-four hours before, but who now were anxious to make amends, to apologize, to show their good will.

Lockwood accepted it all, and shook hands with them all. He was too used up for anything but placid acquiescence in everything. He hardly knew how he had got back to the house after the car had gone to destruction under him. They had put him on the gallery in a long wicker chair, a glass of orange juice and whisky at his elbow, and Louise hovered about and ministered to him.

“It took four mules to haul it up,” Tom continued. “The car’s badly busted. The body’s smashed considerable, and the radiator’s crushed, and the fenders clean gone, but I don’t believe the engine’s hurt much, and maybe it kin be repaired.”

“Yes—but did you find——” Lockwood began.

“Hanna? Sure. He was wedged into the wheel. He wasn’t shot. I reckon he couldn’t get free and he just drowned there like the rat ez he was. They’ve carried him up to Cole’s store.”

There would have to be an inquest, but under the circumstances it was sure to be the mildest formality. The local jury would bring in a verdict of “death by accidental drowning,” as likely as not. Hanna dead! It seemed impossible to realize it. Lockwood’s face must have expressed a mixture of emotions.

“It’s shorely doggone hard luck that you didn’t git to kill him after trailin’ him all them years!” said old Henry sympathetically.

“No—no. I’m only too glad I didn’t,” he said hastily.

“Oh, so am I,” said Louise; and her father looked with disgust at the sentimentalists.

“If he hadn’t come back here we’d never have got him,” said Tom, trying the lock of the leather bag.

Louise had not heard the boat come up, nor Hanna enter the house. She was sitting quietly with her brother, who had gone to sleep after having his wounds dressed. Old Henry was also asleep, having been up most of the night; and Hanna had quietly secured the key and locked the old man in his room.

“I thought once or twice I heard somebody moving in the house,” Louise said, “but I supposed it was one of the niggers. I was standing by the bureau; I had my back to the door, when I saw Hanna in the mirror. He was wet and blackened, and he had that valise in his hand.

“I’m ready to go,” he said. He spoke so queerly that I thought he’d been drinking. “Hand me over all those jewels of yours. All the diamonds. Quick!”

“I knew there was a little revolver in that bureau drawer, and I slipped my hand in and got it as I turned around. Hanna started into the room, and I aimed the little gun at him. He stopped, and then laughed, and dared me to shoot. I don’t know whether I’d have shot or not, but then I heard your car coming, and I screamed. Hanna ran for the back stairs. The gun went off in my hand. I hope I missed him.”

“You missed him all right, sis,” said Tom, still working in vain with the lock of the valise. Giving it up, he slit the leather open. “But he didn’t git what he come back for, after all.”

There were shirts, collars, and ties in the bag, a man’s ordinary traveling outfit. But under these was a thick packet of hundred-dollar bills, and in the bottom of the bag a mass of loose jewelry—pins, cuff links, a watch, a diamond ring—all the loot he had been able to pick up in his hurry, out of the expensive luxuries he had persuaded the Powers to buy.

“Yes, this was what he came back for,” said Lockwood. “He hadn’t any money with him, and he had to get this. Likely he’s had this ready for weeks, in case he had to bolt at any moment. Let’s see how much there is.”

The packet contained seven thousand one hundred dollars. Of this, five thousand dollars was undoubtedly the proceeds of the sale of the “oil stock;” the rest was of unknown origin, perhaps his commissions on the Powers’ purchases.

“I reckon that two thousand one hundred dollars is yourn,” said Tom. “Seems that Hanna done you worse’n any of us. Dog-gone it, here, take the hull lot! You shorely do deserve it!”

“Hold on! I’m not going to take Hanna’s plunder,” Lockwood laughed. “Wait. You’re going to need all your money.”

“Well, I certainly ain’t goin’ to buy no more autymobiles,” said Tom. “I’ll git this one fixed up mebbe. Nor no more wine nor two-bit cigars. Fine-cut an’ corn licker’s good enough for me, an’ not much of that, neither. I’m shore goin’ to buy some plows, though, an’ a couple of good mules, an’ some hawgs. This yere’s the porest land on earth, but I reckon it’ll grow somethin’. We might buy that fifty acres ’cross the road. That ain’t quite so pore. I been thinkin’ of what you said ’bout raisin’ hawgs an’ peanuts.”

“I reckon Mr. Lockwood’d better give up turpentinin’, and come here an’ advise us what we-all ought ter do with our money,” said Henry. “We could pay him a right good salary—better’n Craig pays any woods rider. It’d be money in our pockets.”

He meant it. He glanced interrogatively at Tom, who nodded an emphatic assent.

Lockwood smiled, looking from the gallery across the road to the woods, all mellow now in the late afternoon light. The crowds had dispersed; they had followed Hanna’s body to the store. Deep peace slept on the quiet landscape. It might be poor land, but he had grown to love it, that country of yellow sand and pine, of yellow-pine and rainbow sand. He liked its people, too, even those who had just wanted to lynch him. He had come there as an outlaw, and Rainbow Landing had made him over.

He met the amused glance of Louise, who was sitting on the gallery railing just beside him.

“My usefulness is past,” he said to her in an undertone. “You wanted me to influence the boys to thrift and industry, and now Tom’s taken such a turn to the right that you’ll have to hold him back. And Hanna is dead.”

His own words gave him a shock again. Hanna was dead—McGibbon was dead! That long bitterness was ended. He had hunted his enemy to death, but he had not drawn one drop of his blood, through all the fighting and chasing. It was hard to grasp that this long phase of his life was over, and the new phase would call for new adjustments.

“And now—what?” he said to Louise in a still lower tone. Tom and his father were still sorting over the contents of Hanna’s bag. “I’m neither a farmer nor a turpentine man. Do I go back to the cities now, with Rainbow Landing only a memory?”

Louise looked startled for a moment. She put out one hand almost instinctively, and Lockwood took it and squeezed it behind the screen of his chair. She glanced down at him caressingly, protectively.

“Do you think I’d let you go?” she whispered.

THE END