Benton of the Royal Mounted Part 21

"Should be some blood to trail him by," he muttered. "I got him twice.

h.e.l.lo! here it is!"

Pressing the b.u.t.ton at intervals, they followed the faint dribbles and spots along the ties. Clear past the station offices and freight shed, it led them, right to the shelving terminus of the platform, where they brought up a dozen or so yards beyond when the blood marks suddenly ceased.

"What place is that?" whispered the policeman, indicating a small structure whose shadowy outlines loomed up vaguely against the surrounding gloom.

"Section men's hut," the agent whispered back. "There's only some tools and a handcar in there. It's locked, though, and Petersen, the section boss, has the key. He can't get in there. Let's go on a piece-we may pick it up again."

They crept cautiously on for a short distance, but the sanguinary trail failed to reappear.

"No use goin' any farther," protested Ellis, in a low tone. "P'r'aps he's doubled back an' cached himself under the platform."

They retraced their steps and soon picked up the blood spots again.

Benton, gun in hand, halted irresolutely in front of the section hut.

"You _sure_ it's locked, Carey?" he said.

The other moved ahead impatiently. "Yes, _sure_" he answered. "It's no good lookin' there, Sergeant-let's rout around the platform."

A sudden impulse, though, moved Ellis to step over to the shed. Grasping the door handle, he pulled on it. To his surprise it swung open.

The next instant there came a rattle as of tools being displaced as a dark form arose. Followed a blinding spurt of flame and a deafening report right, it seemed, in his very face. Instinctively, he winced away, with a burning pain in his left ear and, ducking down, with deadly calculation he fired upwards twice as he did so.

The detonation in the galvanized-iron structure was terrific. When the echoes gradually died away, a curious sc.r.a.ping, thres.h.i.+ng noise, monotonous in its regularity, succeeded, coupled with a horrid, long-drawn, liquid gurgle, as of water issuing from the neck of an inverted bottle.

These ominous sounds, too, eventually ceased, and the silence of the night settled over all once more. Carey clutched Benton with a s.h.i.+ver, and his teeth chattered like castanets.

"Is-is he-dead-d'you think?" he quavered.

"Don't know," returned Benton in a low voice. "Sufferin' Moses! my _ear's_ hurtin' me somethin' fierce. I'm bleedin' like a stuck pig. Keep you well to the side, there, when I flash the light in. You never know what's goin' to come off."

Cautiously he pressed the spring of his torch and, as the little halo of radiance penetrated the obscurity, he gave a quick, searching look. With a satisfied sigh, he released the b.u.t.ton and turned in the darkness to his companion.

"All right, Carey," he said rea.s.suringly. "You can light up again now."

With shaking fingers, the other produced a match and, relighting his lamp, cast its rays into the opening. He beheld a sight that was to remain in his memory for many a day. With a cry of horror, he tumbled back, the lantern falling from his nerveless grasp.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" he cried. "Oh, Lord!"

Ellis stooped and picked up the smoking globe.

"Here, here!" he remonstrated callously. "What's wrong with you, Carey?

Get a hold of yourself, man. You're a peach to want to come man-hunting, you are. Have you never seen a stiff before? Get in an' have a good look at everythin', because you'll most likely be an important witness at the inquest.... O-oh!" he broke off, with a sharp intake of his breath, "my ear's givin' me h-l. Lend me your handkerchief."

Thus urged, and trembling violently with horror and repugnance, the agent nerved himself again to the ordeal. Raising the lamp once more, he gazed with morbid fascination at the ominous heap that but a short while back had been a strong, hot-blooded man.

With the handkerchief pressed to his wound, and cursing softly with the pain, the Sergeant jerked his gun back into its holster again. Stepping forward, he inspected his handiwork critically. The two heavy, smas.h.i.+ng bullets of the Colt's .45, fired at close range, had done their deadly work effectively. One, penetrating a little beneath the left eye, had blown away a portion of the skull in its exit, whilst the other, tearing its pa.s.sage through the thick, bull throat, had turned the place into a veritable shambles.

Still clutched in the stiffened right hand was a huge, unfamiliar type of pistol, which weapon the policeman examined with curious interest, coming-as it nearly had-to ending _his_ earthly existence. The terrible simplicity of the creed that was his in such matters forbade his evincing the slightest vestige of pity or remorse for his dead enemy.

The vision of a pale, pinched-faced young mother, with a little child, seemed to arise before his eyes, and the heart-broken cry of a stricken girl still rang in his ears and hardened his heart.

"Blast you!" he muttered savagely. "You only got what was comin' to you.

It was me or you, this trip, an' no error. You had an even break, anyway."

The agent turned aside, shaking in every limb.

"Let's get!" he said, with an oath. "Ugh! I can't stand it no longer. I guess sights and happenings like this ain't nothing to you, Sergeant ...

you're used to it in your line of business. Besides, you've been through a war and must have killed and seen lots of fellers killed before. It don't turn you up like it does me. Come away, for the love of G.o.d. By Gos.h.!.+ but I could have sworn that place was locked. Petersen must have forgot to snap the padlock. I've got a duplicate key here. Guess I'd better lock everything up tight, eh? and give you the key."

"Yes," said Ellis. "And give Petersen strict orders not to open it up again till I say so. Nothing's got to be touched till the coroner gives the word. Old Corbett acts in this district. Wonder whether he's at his place?"

"Oh, he's there, all right," said Carey. "But he's sick-all crippled up with rheumatism. His daughter-you know, the one that rides-she was in today and I was talking to her."

"That settles it," said Benton. "I'm goin' to wire the O.C. now, an'

I'll get him to send a coroner down by the mornin' train. Let's have that key for a bit. I want the doctor to have a look at this body."

Some twenty minutes later he returned to the cottage. Musgrave and old Wardle met him on the threshold, and the former, with a significant gesture enjoining silence, softly closed the door. With the light of a strange exultation showing in his haggard face and bloodshot eyes, he proceeded to acquaint them with all that had happened. They listened with eager curiosity.

"Whew!-some shave, all right," remarked the doctor. "Here, Ellis! Let's fix up that ear of yours. You're bleeding like the deuce, and that tunic of yours is soaked." And, as Benton removed the handkerchief. "Why, man, it's clipped the lobe clean away! Come on in, then, but be as quiet as you can-I've put her on the bed in the other room. I've given her a strong morphine injection to ease the pain. It'll keep her quiet for a time."

He turned, with his hand on the doork.n.o.b, but Ellis caught him by the arm.

"Charley," he said, with a catch in his voice. "That girl saved me. Is she-is there any-"

"No," answered the doctor quietly. "That slug's gone slap through the right lung and out under the shoulder. She's done for, though she may live for a few hours. Must have been an awful high-pressure gun that he used."

"It sure was," said the Sergeant. "It was one of those German 'Lugers.'

You'll see it still clutched in his fist when you go down there."

"Eh, laad!" said the kindly old postmaster, who originally hailed from Yorks.h.i.+re. "But she's rare an' weak ... an' th' doctor don't think as 'er'll last th' night out. It's n.o.bbut o' a deposition she were able to gie us, th' poor la.s.s, for 'er could scarcelins speak, an' I had'na th'

heart to worrit 'er. She says as 'ow 'er name's Elsie Baxter, an' that yon man o' 'ers as she calls 'Arry-shot at yo' but 'it 'er, instead, accidental, when she got betune ye. She wouldn't tell me where 'er coom fra', tho', or what _'is_ other name be. Fair frightened, 'er is, 'bout 'im bein' ketched, an' 'er keeps on a-cryin' out 'is name real pitiful-like, an' sayin' as 'e did'na _mean_ to shoot 'er. I 'ad 'Arry Langley, from th' 'otel, in there, an' 'im an' th' doctor's witnessed it. Did yo' say yo' gaffled 'un, laad?"

The Sergeant, with his brooding mind still obsessed with the memory of his recent conflict, regarded his questioner absently, with a livid, scowling face.

"Eyah!" he snarled darkly, with an ugly oath, and with grimly unconscious humor imitating the other's dialect: "A gaffled 'un, all right, Dad!-n.o.bbled 'un proper. A knaws 'un's name, too, an' all 'bout 'un!"

Quickly and deftly, the doctor dressed the Sergeant's torn ear, bandaging the wound with an antiseptic pad against it. Whilst this was in progress, they conversed in low tones.

"Why, come to think of it," said Musgrave, "I remember now seeing an account of that business in the paper, at the time. Lord! I was slow-not to have tumbled before. I wouldn't make much of a sleuth, I'm afraid."

He carefully replaced his surgical apparatus in his bag. "Didn't you see it?" he inquired.

Ellis shrugged indifferently. "Lord, no!" he said. "Why, I go from a month on end and never _see_ a paper-out there at the 'Creek.' Besides, we don't go by the _papers_. I was officially notified in this case.

'Course, I'm not forgettin' if it hadn't been for you tellin' me what you did, I'd never been able to connect up."

He was silent for a moment or two. "How about the other chap, Charley?

Walters-Wilks-or whatever his name is," he asked, a trifle anxiously. "I suppose it'll be safe enough to leave _him_ till tomorrow?"

"Oh, sure," said the doctor rea.s.suringly. "I don't think he's exactly able to 'take up his bed and walk' _just_ yet. I'll keep an eye on _him_. There! that'll do for the time. I'll fix it up again tomorrow for you."