The Spoilers (16 page)

Steam was up, and when the Captain had let them aboard Dextry gave him instructions, to which he nodded acquiescence. They bade the lawyer adieu, and the little craft slipped its moorings, danced down the current, across the bar, and was swallowed up in the darkness to seaward.

“I'll put out Wheaton's light so they'll think he's gone to bed.”

“Yes, and at daylight I'll take your place in McNamara's loft,” said Glenister. “There will be doings to-morrow when they don't find him.”

They returned by the way they had come to the lawyer's room, extinguished his light, went to their own cabin and to bed. At dawn Glenister arose and sought his place above McNamara's office.

To lie stretched at length on a single plank with eye glued to a crack is not a comfortable position, and the watcher thought the hours of the next day would never end. As they dragged wearily past, his bones began to ache beyond endurance, yet owing to the flimsy structure of the building he dared not move while the room below was tenanted. In fact, he would not have stirred had he dared, so intense was his interest in the scenes being enacted beneath him.

First had come the marshal, who reported his failure to find Wheaton.

“He left his room some time last night. My men followed him in and saw a light in his window until two o'clock this morning. At seven o'clock we broke in and he was gone.”

“He must have got wind of our plan. Sand deputies aboard the
Santa Maria;
search her from keel to top-mast, and have them watch the beach close or hell put off in a small boat. You look over the passengers that go aboard yourself. Don't trust any of your men for that, because he may try to slip through disguised. He's liable to make up like a woman. You understand—there's only one ship in port, and—he mustn't get away.”

“He won't,” said Voorhees, with conviction, and the listener overhead smiled grimly to himself, for at that moment, twenty miles offshore, lay Mac's little tug hove to in the track of the outgoing steamship, and in her tiny cabin sat Bill Wheaton eating breakfast.

As the morning wore by with no news of the lawyer, McNamara's uneasiness grew. At noon the marshal returned with a report that the passengers were all aboard and the ship about to clear.

“By Heavens! He's slipped through you,” stormed the politician.

“No, he hasn't. He may be hidden aboard somewhere among the coal-bunkers, but I think he's still ashore and aiming to make a quick run just before she sails. He hasn't left the beach since daylight, that's sure. I'm going out to the ship now with four men and search her again. If we don't bring him off you can bet he's lying out somewhere in town and well get him later. I've stationed men along the shore for two miles.”

“I won't have him get away. If he should reach 'Frisco—Tell your men I'll give five hundred dollars to the one that finds him.”

Three hours later Voorhees returned.

“She sailed without him.”

The politician cursed. “I don't believe it. He tricked you. I know he did.”

Glenister grinned into a half-eaten sandwich, then turned upon his back and lay thus on the plank, identifying the speakers below by their voices.

He kept his post all day. Later in the evening he beard Strove enter. The man had been drinking.

“So he got away, eh? ” he began. “I was afraid he would. Smart fellow, that Wheaton.”

“He didn't get away,” said McNamara. “He's in town yet. Just let me land him in jail on some excuse! I'll hold him till snow flies.” Strove sank into a chair and lit a cigarette with wavering hand.

“This 's a hell of a game, ain't it, Mac? D' you s'pose we'll win?”

The man overhead pricked up his ears.

“Win? Aren't we winning? What do you call this? I only hope we can lay hands on Wheaton. He knows things. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but more is worse. Lord! If only I had a
man
for judge in place of Stillman! I don't know why I brought him.”

“That's right. Too weak. He hasn't got the backbone of an angleworm. He ain't half the man that his niece is,
There's
a girl for you! Say! What ‘d we do without her, eh? She's ft pippin!” Glenister felt a sudden tightening of every muscle. What right had that man's liquor-sodden lips to speak so of her?

“
She's a brave little woman all right. Just look how §he worked Glenister and his fool partner. It took nerve to bring in those instructions of yours alone; and if it hadn't been for her we'd never have won like this. It makes me laugh to think of those two men stowing her away in their state-room while they slept between decks with the sheep, and her with the papers in her bosom all the time. Then, when we got ready to do business, why, she up and talks them into giving us possession of their mine without a fight. That's what I call reciprocating a man's affection.”

Glenister's nails cut into his flesh, while his face went livid at the words. He could not grasp it at once. It made him sick—physically sick—and for many moments he strove blindly to beat back the hideous suspicion, the horror that the lawyer had aroused. His was not a doubting disposition, and to him the girl had seemed as one pure, mysterious, apart, angelically incapable of deceit. He had loved her, feeling that some day she would return his affection without fail. In her great, unclouded eyes he had found no lurking-place for double-dealing. Now—God! It couldn't be that all the time she had
known!

He had lost a part of the lawyer's speech, but peered through his observation-hole again.

McNamara was at the window gazing out into the dark street, his back towards the lawyer, who lolled in the chair, babbling garrulously of the girl. Glenister ground his teeth—a frenzy possessed him to loose his anger, to rip through the frail ceiling with naked hands and fall vindictively upon the two men.

“She looked good to me the first time I saw her,” continued Struve. He paused, and when he spoke again a change had coarsened his features. “Say, I'm crazy about her, Mac. I tell you, I'm crazy—and she likes me—I know she does—or, anyway, she would—”

“Do you mean that you're in love with her?” asked the man at the window, without shifting his position. It seemed that utter indifference was in his question, although where the light shone on his hands, tight-clinched behind his back, they were bloodless.

“Love her? Well—that depends—ha! You know how it is—” he chuckled, coarsely. His face was gross and bestial. “I've got the Judge where I want him, and 111 have her—”

His miserable words died with a gurgle, for McNamara had silently leaped and throttled him where he sat, pinning him to the wall. Glenister saw the big politician shift his fingers slightly on Struve's throat and then drop his left hand to his side, holding his victim writhing and helpless with his right despite the man's frantic struggles. McNamara's head was thrust forward from his shoulders, peering into the lawyer's face. Struve tore ineffectually at the iron arm which was squeezing his life out, while for endless minutes the other leaned his weight against him, his idle hand behind his back, his legs braced like stone columns, as he watched his victim's struggles abate.

Struve fought and wrenched while his breath caught in his throat with horrid, sickening sounds, but gradually his eyes rolled farther and farther back till they stared out of his blackened visage, straight up towards the ceiling, towards the hole through which Glenister peered. His struggles lessened, his chin sagged, and his tongue protruded, then he sat loose and still. The politician flung him out into the room so that he fell limply upon his face, then stood watching him. Finally, McNamara passed out of the watcher's vision, returning with a water-bucket. With his foot he rolled them unconscious Wretch upon his back, then drenched him. Replacing the pail, he seated himself, lit a cigar, and watched the return of life into his victim. He made no move, even to drag him from the pool in which he lay.

Struve groaned and shuddered, twisted to his side, and at last sat up weakly. In his eyes there was now a great terror, while in place of his drunkenness was only fear and faintness—abject fear of the great bulk that sat and smoked and stared at him so fishily. He felt uncertainly of his throat, and groaned again.

“Why did you do that?” he whispered; but the other made no sign. He tried to rise, but his knees relaxed; he staggered and fell. At last he gained his feet and made for the door; then, when his hand was on the knob, McNamara spoke through his teeth, without removing his cigar.

“Don't ever talk about her again. She is going to marry me.”

When he was alone he looked curiously up at the ceiling over his head. “The fats are thick in this shack,” he mused. “Seems to me I heard a whole swarm of them.”

A few moments later a figure crept through the hole in the roof of the house next door and thence down into the street. A block ahead was the slow-moving form of Attorney Struve. Had a stranger met them both he would not have known which of the two had felt at his throat the clutch of a strangler, for each was drawn and haggard and swayed as he went.

Glenister Unconsciously turned towards his cabin, but at leaving the lighted streets the thought of its darkness and silence made him shudder. Not now! He could not bear that stillness and the company of his thoughts. He dared not be alone. Dextry would be down-town, undoubtedly, and he, too, must get into the light and turmoil. He licked his lips and found that they were cracked and dry.

At rare intervals during the past years he had staggered in from a long march where, for hours, he had waged a bitter war with cold and hunger, his limbs clumsy with fatigue, his garments wet and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow could quench, but a savage yearning of his whole exhausted system for some stimulant, for some coursing fiery fluid that would burn and strangle. A thirst for whiskey—for brandy! Remembering these occasional ferocious desires, he had become charitable to such unfortunates as were too weak to withstand similar temptations.

Now with a shock he caught himself in the grip of
g,
thirst as insistent as though the cold bore down and the weariness of endless heavy miles wrapped him about. It was no foolish wish to drown his thoughts nor to banish the grief that preyed upon him, but only thirst! Thirst!—a crying, trembling, physical lust to quench the fires that burned inside. He remembered that it had been more than a year since he had tasted whiskey. Now the fever of the past few hours had parched his every tissue.

As he elbowed in through the crowd at the Northern, those next him made room at the bar, for they recognized the hunger that peers thus from men's faces. Their manner recalled Glenister to his senses, and he wrenched himself away. This was not some solitary, snow-banked road-house. He would not stand and soak himself, shoulder to shoulder with stevedores and longshoremen. This was something to be done in secret. He had no pride in it. The man on his right raised a glass, and the young man strangled a madness to tear it from his hands. Instead, he hurried back to the theatre and up to a box, where he drew the curtains.

“Whiskey!” he said, thickly, to the waiter. “Bring it to me fast. Don't you hear? Whiskey!”

Across the theatre Cherry Malotte had seen him enter and jerk the curtains together. She arose and went to him, entering without ceremony.

“What's the matter, boy?” she questioned.

“Ah! I am glad you came. Talk to me.”

“Thank you for your few well-chosen remarks,” she laughed. “Why don't you ask me to spring some good, original jokes? You look like the finish to a six-day go-as-you-please. What's up?”

She talked to him for a moment until the waiter entered; then, when she saw what he bore, she snatched the glass from the tray and poured the whiskey on the floor. Glenister was on his feet and had her by the wrist.

“What do you mean?” he said, roughly.

“It's whiskey, boy,” she cried, “and you don't drink.”

“Of course it's whiskey. Bring me another,” he shouted at the attendant.

“What's the matter?” Cherry insisted. “I never saw you act so. You know you don't drink. I won't let you. It's booze—booze, I tell you, fit for fools and brawlers. Don't drink it, Roy. Are you in trouble?”

“I say I'm thirsty—and I will have it! How do you know what it is to smoulder inside, and feel your veins bum dry?”

“It's something about that girl,” the woman said, with quiet conviction. “She's double-crossed you.”

“Well, so she has—but what of it? I'm thirsty. She's going to marry McNamara. I've been a fool.” He ground his teeth and reached for the drink with which the boy had returned.

“McNamara is a crook, but he's a man, and he never drank a drop in his life.” The girl said it, casually, evenly, but the other stopped the glass half-way to his lips.

“Well, what of it? Go on. You're good at W. C. T. U. talk. Virtue becomes you.”

She flushed, but continued, “It simply occurred to me that if you aren't strong enough to handle your own throat, you're not strong enough to beat a man who has mastered his.”

Glenister looked at the whiskey a moment, then set it back on the tray.

“Bring two lemonades,” he said, and with a laugh which was half a sob Cherry Malotte leaned forward and kissed him.

“You're too good a man to drink. Now, tell me all about it.”

“Oh, it's too long! I've just learned that the girl is in, hand and glove, with the Judge and McNamara—that's all. She's an advance agent—their lookout. She brought in their instructions to Struve and persuaded Dex and me to let them jump our claim. She got us to trust in the law and in her uncle. Yes, she hypnotized my property out of me and gave it to her lover, this ward politician. Oh, she's smooth, With all her innocence! Why, when she smiles she makes you glad and good and warm, and her eyes are as honest and clear as a mountain pool, but she's wrong—she's wrong—and—great God! how I love her!” He dropped his face into his hands.