Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
The storm, threatening since before daybreak, suddenly broke, and for the next hour the ranger had all he could do to make headway in the terrific wind, to say nothing of the necessity of bailing almost constantly. The rain fell in torrents, and Calhoun soon had evidence that the region about Swan Lake had suffered a deluge. Drift began to show on the river, logs from drifts disturbed by a sudden rise. That, he knew, would constitute a hazard for night traveling.
“If drifting logs delay me, they will also delay the quarry,” he argued. With that thought he was content.
The danger of rounding a bend and coming suddenly upon the quartette was ever present — a possibility fraught with disaster for the lone pursuer. Whether or not they would lie in frequent ambush depended upon how safe they felt against pursuit — depended, also, Calhoun’s life. He knew that, and took all turns with infinite caution, usually dropping into the cover of the backwater and returning to the current well below the bend. In that way he might easily become the pursued rather than the pursuer, but it was a chance he had to take.
The day wore on, the storm finally abated, but the drifting trees and logs increased in numbers. About five o’clock Cal, coming to a sharp bend, suddenly scented wood smoke, and took cover instantly.
“They’ve stopped to cook supper,” he reasoned. “Want to avoid a night fire. That looks as though they are going to run the river, logs and all, after dark.”
Tying up to the tallest tree he could find, the ranger climbed to the top and scanned the shore line below. At length a thin wisp of smoke, whirling above the tree tops, betrayed the location of the camp. It was less than a quarter of a mile distant.
Cal remained in the tree. The river channel was visible to a point several hundred yards beyond the camp’s location, and he meant to make sure that the campers were really the men he sought. A hunter might possibly be the builder of that fire, but there was not much likelihood of one being in that particular part of the forest. It was a bit too remote even for hunters.
Half an hour passed, and two dugouts crept out of the cane and headed downstream. Each was manned by two oarsmen — undoubtedly the same party Cal had seen at daybreak.
The ranger descended to his boat, waited three-quarters of an hour, then took up the trail again. Reaching the point where the camp had been, he paddled through the cane and stepped ashore beside the dying embers of a fire. Replenishing it, he boiled a pot of coffee, cooked supper, and fed heartily. While he ate he examined the ground about the fire. Tracks, a few burned matches, cigarette stubs, and the refuse from the meal of which the crooks had partaken was all he found.
After eating, it occurred to him that it might be well to scout among the bushes with which the ground was all but choked in the vicinity of the camp. Painstakingly he covered it and, just before nightfall, had his reward.
In the center of a clump of buckrush he located a small leather bag — such a one as mail messengers use for carrying registered matter. It had been gutted with a knife, and the contents removed.
“That argues that a divvy was made at this point,” Cal reflected. “Means, too, that they are going to split right away. Hell — suppose two go down the Mississippi and two go up? The question then will be: Which two shall I take first? The redhead, of course, since he is the man I’m after more than the others. He did the killing.”
Then another thought struck him.
“Suppose they mean to split before they reach the Mississippi. There are many small streams branching off from Little Bear, between here and its mouth. Against that, though, is this: They can’t get far, by boat, on any of those streams — and the going afoot is bad, gets worse the closer one comes to the Big River. No, I’m still betting they’re making for a get-away by steamboat, and that, for safety’s sake, they’ll stick together.”
Concealing the bag under his pack, he set out again. Night had come, and extreme precaution would be necessary until the moon rose, which was due to occur about nine thirty. The storm clouds of the day had dispersed, and the sky was studded with stars. There would be a moon.
The hour passed slowly, and slowly also went Cal’s bateau — barely moving at times. At length there was a sudden stir in the forest — as palpable as a gust of wind, but hardly as easily defined. An owl screeched weirdly off in the timber, and was answered from half a dozen leafy hiding places. The plop-plop-plop of a ’coon’s feet, splashing through shallow water; the startled leap of a larger animal — a deer, probably — which, disturbed by the ranger, went crashing off into silence; the high-keyed wail of a panther, somewhere close at hand on the left — all told Cal that the moon was up, and that presently it would rise above the tree line and whiten the waters of the river. The denizens of the forest were astir.
IV
Something else was astir, too. Cal rounded a bend just as the moon thrust itself above the trees and spilled its rays over the river. It revealed a moving object on shore in the bend, a quarter mile away, and glinted upon the polished metal of a rifle barrel. The revelation was kaleidoscopic, passing almost before Cal’s eyes had caught and identified the impression.
It was enough, however. The ranger slipped silently into cover, and cast his painter around a cypress tree.
“They’ve made a night camp,” he told himself. “Three sleeping, while one guards. Thanks to whoever it is that hangs out the moon, I’m still alive! Five minutes later — but why speculate? I’m here, and they’re there. Question is, does that fact mean anything, or doesn’t it?”
He knew the utter impossibility of sneaking up on that camp from the shore. Too much brush, and the exact location of the bit of high ground they occupied unknown. It was really as impossible to gain the camp from the river. The man on guard would shoot him the moment he nosed his bateau into the moonlight. That was certain.
“Yet they are there — and three of them no doubt asleep,” the ranger argued. “Now, if I can’t take four men, while three are dead to the world, what becomes of the chief’s boast about one good man? Hell—”
A big log drifted along in the current just outside the cover Cal was in, and an idea came to him. A possible method of gathering in the whole party — but one entailing immeasurable risk. A hundred-to-one shot it was. But, Cal argued, hundred-to-one shots sometimes win.
He removed his boots and, standing up, stripped to the skin. Then he buckled his gun-belt about his neck, allowing his six-shooter, in its waterproof holster, to swing between his shoulders. To that he attached his hunting knife, and four pairs of hand-cuffs, then, crouching in the bateau, he glued his eyes to the river.
Logs floated along occasionally, but none were to his liking. After a bit a big cottonwood drifted slowly into view, and Cal slipped overside into the water, making no more splash than a swimming fish would have done. The log came abreast of him and he let it pass, then swam silently until he over took it, and was covered by it from view of the man on shore. At the log’s stern he clung with one hand, his face barely above water.
The current carried the floater slowly downriver, Calhoun keeping its bow pointed not too directly toward the spot where he had caught a flash of the guard. Presently the outlines of two dugouts showed indistinctly along shore, and he steered the log closer in.