The Spoilers Part 34

"Ha! I knew it. Your neck cords quiver."

The gambler grimaced. "I can't do it. If I could, I'd have shot you before you turned. But you'll have to fight, you dog. Get up and draw."

Roy refused. "I gave Cherry my gun."

"Yes, and more too," the man gritted. "I saw it all."

Even yet Glenister had made no slightest move, realizing that a feather's weight might snap the gambler's nervous tension and bring the involuntary twitch that would put him out swifter than a whip is cracked,

"I have tried it before, but murder isn't my game." The Kid's eye caught the glint of Cherry's revolver where she had discarded it.

"There's a gun--get it."

"It's no good. You'd carry the six bullets and never feel them. I don't know what this is all about, but I'll fight you whenever I'm heeled right."

"Oh, you black-hearted hound," snarled the Kid. "I want to shoot, but I'm afraid. I used to be a gentleman and I haven't lost it all, I guess. But I won't wait the next time. I'll down you on sight, so you'd better get ironed in a hurry." He backed out of the room into the semi-darkness of the kitchen, watching with lynx-like closeness the man who sat so quietly under the shaded light. He felt behind him for the outer door-k.n.o.b and turned it to let in a white sheet of rain, then vanished like a storm wraith, leaving a parched-lipped man and a zigzag trail of water, which gleamed in the lamplight like a pool of blood.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHEREIN A TRAP IS BAITED

Glenister did not wait long after his visitor's departure, but extinguished the light, locked the door, and began the further adventures of this night. The storm welcomed him with suffocating violence, sucking the very breath from his lips, while the rain beat through till his flesh was cold and aching. He thought with a pang of the girl facing this tempest, going out to meet the thousand perils of the night. And it remained for him to bear his part as she bore hers, smilingly.

The last hour had added another and mysterious danger to his full measure. Could the Kid be jealous of Cherry? Surely not. Then what else?

The tornado had driven his trailers to cover, evidently, for the streets were given over to its violence, and Roy encountered no hostile sign as he was buffeted from house to house. He adventured cautiously and yet with haste, finding certain homes where the marshals had been before him peopled now only by frightened wives and children. A scattered few of the Vigilantes had been taken thus, while the warring elements had prevented their families from spreading the alarm or venturing out for succor. Those whom he was able to warn dressed hurriedly, took their rifles, and went out into the drifting night, leaving empty cabins and weeping women.

The great fight was on.

Towards daylight the remnants of the Vigilantes straggled into the big blank warehouse on the sand-spit, and there beneath the smoking glare of lanterns cursed the name of McNamara. As dawn grayed the ragged eastern sky-line, Dextry and Slapjack blew in through the spindrift, bringing word from Cherry and lifting a load from Glenister's mind.

"There's a game girl," said the old miner, as he wrung out his clothes. "She was half gone when she got to us, and now she's waiting for the storm to break so that she can come back."

"It's clearing up to the east," Slapjack chattered. "D'you know, I'm gettin' so rheumatic that ice-water don't feel comfortable to me no more."

"Uriatic acid in the blood," said Dextry. "What's our next move?"

he asked of his partner. "When do we hang this politician? Seems like we've got enough able-bodied piano-movers here to tie a can onto the whole outfit, push the town site of Nome off the map, and start afresh."

"I think we had better lie low and watch developments," the other cautioned. "There's no telling what may turn up during the day."

"That's right. Stranglers is like spirits--they work best in the dark."

As the day grew, the storm died, leaving ramparts of clouds hanging sullenly above the ocean's rim, while those skilled in weather prophecy foretold the coming of the equinoctial. In McNamara's office there was great stir and the coming of many men.

The boss sat in his chair smoking countless cigars, his big face set in grim lines, his hard eyes peering through the pall of blue at those he questioned. He worked the wires of his machine until his dolls doubled and danced and twisted at his touch. After a gusty interview he had dismissed Voorhees with a merciless tongue- las.h.i.+ng, raging bitterly at the man's failure.

"You're not fit to herd sheep. Thirty men out all night and what do you get? A dozen mullet-headed miners. You bag the mud-hens and the big game runs to cover. I wanted Glenister, but you let him slip through your fingers--now it's war. What a mess you've made!

If I had even ONE helper with a brain the size of a flaxseed, this game would be a gift, but you've bungled every move from the start. Bah! Put a spy in the bull-pen with those prisoners and make them talk. Offer them anything for information. Now get out!"

He called for a certain deputy and questioned him regarding the night's quest, remarking, finally:

"There's treachery somewhere. Those men were warned."

"n.o.body came near Glenister's house except Miss Chester," the man replied.

"What?"

"The Judge's niece. We caught her by mistake in the dark."

Later, one of the men who had been with Voorhees at the Northern asked to see the receiver and told him:

"The chief won't believe that I saw Miss Chester in the dance-hall last night, but she was there with Glenister. She must have put him wise to our game or he wouldn't have known we were after him."

His hearer made no comment, but, when alone, rose and paced the floor with heavy tread while his face grew savage and brutal.

"So that's the game, eh? It's man to man from now on. Very well, Glenister, I'll have your life for that, and then--you'll pay, Miss Helen." He considered carefully. A plot for a plot. If he could not swap intrigue with these miners and beat them badly, he deserved to lose. Now that the girl gave herself to their cause he would use her again and see how well she answered. Public opinion would not stand too great a strain, and, although he had acted within his rights last night, he dared not go much further.

Diplomacy, therefore, must serve. He must force his enemies beyond the law and into his trap. She had pa.s.sed the word once; she would do so again.

He hurried to Stillman's house and stormed into the presence of the Judge. He told the story so artfully that the Judge's astonished unbelief yielded to rage and cowardice, and he sent for his niece. She came down, white and silent, having heard the loud voices. The old man berated her with shrewish fury, while McNamara stood silent. The girl listened with entire self-control until her uncle made a reference to Glenister that she found intolerable.

"Hus.h.!.+ I will not listen!" she cried, pa.s.sionately. "I warned him because you would have sacrificed him after he had saved our lives. That is all. He is an honest man, and I am grateful to him.

That is the only foundation for your insult."

McNamara, with apparent candor, broke in:

"You thought you were doing right, of course, but your action will have terrible consequences. Now we'll have riot, bloodshed, and Heaven knows what. It was to save all this that I wanted to break up their organization. A week's imprisonment would have done it, but now they're armed and belligerent and we'll have a battle to- night."

"No, no!" she cried. "There mustn't be any violence."

"There is no use trying to check them. They are rus.h.i.+ng to their own destruction. I have learned that they plan to attack the Midas to-night, and I'll have fifty soldiers waiting for them there. It is a shame, for they are decent fellows, blinded by ignorance and misled by that young miner. This will be the blackest night the North has ever seen."

With this McNamara left the house and went in search of Voorhees, remarking to himself: "Now, Miss Helen--send your warning--the sooner the better. If I know those Vigilantes, it will set them crazy, and yet not crazy enough to attack the Midas. They will strike for me, and when they hit my poor, unguarded office, they'll think h.e.l.l has moved North."

"Mr. Marshal," said he to his tool, "I want you to gather forty men quietly and to arm them with Winchesters. They must be fellows who won't faint at blood--you know the kind. a.s.semble them at my office after dark, one at a time, by the back way. It must be done with absolute secrecy. Now, see if you can do this one thing and not get balled up. If you fail, I'll make you answer to me."

"Why don't you get the troops?" ventured Voorhees.

"If there's one thing I want to avoid, it's soldiers, either here or at the mines. When they step in, we step out, and I'm not ready for that just yet." The receiver smiled sinisterly.

Helen meanwhile had fled to her room, and there received Glenister's note through Cherry Malotte's messenger. It rekindled her worst fears and bore out McNamara's prophecy. The more she read of it the more certain she grew that the crisis was only a question of hours, and that with darkness, Tragedy would walk the streets of Nome. The thought of the wrong already done was lost in the lonely girl's terror of the crime about to happen, for it seemed to her she had been the instrument to set these forces in motion, that she had loosed this swift-speeding avalanche of greed, hatred, and brutality. And when the crash should come--the girl shuddered. It must not be. She would shriek a warning from the house-tops even at cost of her uncle, of McNamara, and of herself. And yet she had no proof that a crime existed. Although it all lay clear in her own mind, the certainty of it arose only from her intuition. If only she were able to take a hand--if only she were not a woman. Then Cherry Malotte's words anent Struve recurred to her, "A bottle of wine and a woman's face." They brought back the lawyer's a.s.surance that those doc.u.ments she had safeguarded all through the long spring-time journey really contained the proof. If they did, then they held the power to check this impending conflict. Her uncle and the boss would not dare continue if threatened with exposure and prosecution. The more she thought of it, the more urgent seemed the necessity to prevent the battle of to-night. There was a chance here, at least, and the only one.

Adding to her mental torment was the constant vision of that face in the curtains at the Northern. It was her brother, yet what mystery shrouded this affair, also? What kept him from her? What caused him to slink away like a thief discovered? She grew dizzy and hysterical.

Struve turned in his chair as the door to his private office opened, then leaped to his feet at sight of the gray-eyed girl standing there.

"I came for the papers," she said.