The Death Shot Part 31

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 circ.u.mstance 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 mis...o...b.. 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 s.h.i.+p-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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sa.s.sinating 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 pa.s.sion 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 c.o.o.n-hunter had never told Jupe of Helen Armstrong's letter. Perhaps, engrossed with other cares, he had forgotten it; or, supposing the circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.sa.s.sin-- there kill him.

"The poor old place!" he says, pointing to the cottage as he pa.s.ses 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' d.i.c.k Darke 'll be sure to k.u.m 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' d.i.c.k 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, n.o.ble 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 d.i.c.k 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 a.s.sa.s.sin. 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 hors.e.m.e.n is seen crossing the boundary river, with faces turned toward Texas. The place where they are making pa.s.sage 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.