Diamond Tolls/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
GOST, thus suddenly deprived of his partner, Urleigh, saw the departure of Delia and Urleigh in the motorboat with a burst of anger to which he had seldom permitted himself to yield. It wasn't the loss of Urleigh that dismayed him. The thing that caught him hardest was what he believed to be the fact that Urleigh and the woman were pals.
"They tricked me," he growled. "They worked Urleigh off on me, to get me. I'm lucky I didn't get killed!"
Convinced that he was a victim of an organized gang of crooks who had tripped down the Mississippi on his trail, he could see many things to prove the theory. First, the woman had appeared and caught him with her wiles, made a first-class case against him, in favour of self-defense, and then shot him down. Instantly she had captured his cabin cruiser with its precious hoard of diamonds.
"I'd be'n rich for life!" Cost mourned. "On'y they jobbed me."
He now gripped himself to see what he should do. He was still weak from his wound, but recovering as fast as might be expected. He could, at least, manage for himself, and he had a competent little motorboat which would enable him to make such a journey as he determined upon. He ran in to the bank, against the Ridge, where shantyboats tied in, and soon he met a man he knew—one Dolman, who was familiar with river gossip.
In five minutes he had learned that a man of the name of Murdong had purchased a 30-30 carbine rifle and four hundred shells, both hard and soft nose.
"They was talking funny about hit up to the gun store," Dolman declared. "Nuther funny thing, he carried away two sheets of boiler iron, off'n the Melgrit junk yard."
"What'd he take them for?" Gost asked.
"Lawse! I don't know, if 'twan't so's he couldn't git shot up. That's what whisky boaters does—line their cabins an' pilot houses with steel plates. But he didn't get to buy no whisky or liquor, not as I seen."
Gost made no comment. He went uptown to the gun store, and he soon learned the truth of the rumour. Murdong had bought a big supply of ammunition—enough to stock a soldier in the trenches. Gost, himself, then bought a high-power rifle and three boxes of cartridges.
"I 'low I'll lay off an' kill some wild geese down b'low," he explained. "Theh's deer down on some of them bars, too, and back in the bayous."
That was reasonable. No one there who would not have liked to stalk wild geese themselves, and shantyboaters used long, slim bullets on that kind of game.
Then Gost headed away down the river in the late evening of the day. Sunset found him around the first bend, and night found him still under way, settling down for the long chase that he thought was ahead of him.
"They'll meet down b'low, and they'll quit the river," he told himself. "I'm jes' goin' to shoot their heads off. I've quit monkey-shining with them; now that I know 'em. You can't trust nobody; they get you goin' an' they get you comin'. I want them diamonds. I got 'em an' they're mine."
He was willing, but his flesh was weak. He was dead tired within three hours following sunset, and accordingly he turned into an eddy and cast over his anchor.
"I work alone afteh this," he declared. "I was a fool to fall for that Urleigh's song 'n dance. He neveh in gawd's world was anything but a crook, an' Delia's another one."
The following day, at dawn, he set forth again, and keeping in mid-channel, he drove for Spanish Moss Bend. There, he believed, he would find the shantyboat carrying Murdong and the diamonds. Young Mahna had overheard, with river ears, and for a price he had yielded up the precious information.
All day long he drove, eating a cold snack at noon rather than stop the motor for a minute. Thus he travelled until late on the second day he spied a cabin-boat away down a crossing which instantly struck him as familiar. At first he could not place it, but when he was passing it, two or three hundred yards distant, he cursed himself for a fool.
"It's Delia's boat," he whispered. "I'd know hit into a thousand. The fool'll see me. He'll know me."
Gost kept right on down stream until he was miles ahead, and out of sight. Then he ducked into an eddy, swung up behind the tops of several trees that had recently caved in, and waited there. He had gained about two hours on the shantyboat, and he watched till an hour after dark—three hours in all.
The cabin-boat did not pass by, and toward mid-night a wind sprung up out of the north which promised to hold a long time. He heard with pleasure the roar in the trees overhead. It meant the cabin-boat could not float down. He had a good hope—that the girl and his late partner would miss the shantyboat, which was not conspicuous, and pass it by.
As if to answer his wish, the following morning Urleigh and Delia did pass down in their motorboat, not three hundred yards out. They were searching both banks with a pair of binoculars—his own glasses, as he surmised with an oath. They swept both shores, and soon went down and out of sight around the next bend.
No cabin-boat could float in that kind of a wind, and Gost figured that now he was below Murdong, and the woman and Urleigh were far down the river, having passed their partner without knowing it. That was easy to figure out.
Gost turned up stream that morning. Hugging the shore, he watched the banks, landing at intervals and going out on points to look for the shantyboat.
Sure enough! There was Murdong's boat in a bayou, which had once been a part of the river channel, or at least an island chute. Woods overhung the bayou on both sides, and it was not less than five miles through that timber into the clearings behind the levee.
"Now we'll see," Gost whispered to himself.
"He's hid so clost his own pals can't find 'im, but little old me did it. I've trailed too many men down Old Mississip', and I've played the game from little old N'York to Chi' an' the coast. Hue-e! That boy's something to learn, an' he'd better learn quick!"
With the wind roaring through the trees overhead, and rolling up the waves on the river so that it was not possible for a boat without power to float out even as far as the current, Murdong was indeed trapped in a lonesome bend.
Gost was in a hurry, but he knew better than to make haste. He must make sure that he was safe—that he could make his own getaway undiscovered and without danger of being captured. No matter how lonesome a bend may seem, one must take a look at it first.
Also, the cabin-boat was moored on the up-stream side of the bayou, which was fifty or sixty yards wide, and probably it was a mile or two around the end of it if not more.
"I'll run my little boat up above," Gost grinned. "Then I'll make an evening call."
Lurking in the switch cane, he soon saw Murdong step out on the deck, rifle in hand. That perturbed him till he saw that the cabin-boater was about to fire a few practice shots. The marksman slipped five shells into the magazine—Gost counted them—and then fired four times up the bayou away from the river. The bullets slapped into a log end one hundred yards distant.
"I got a hunch I mustn't take no chances with that little boy," Gost grimaced. "He's shot a gun before. He'd cave my face in now if he saw me."
Gost aimed his own rifle at Murdong, with his finger on the trigger, but he thought he knew better than to shoot in broad day. He thought that he ought to wait for night to do the thing he was to do. It was not in him to commit a daylight crime when a little patience would make it possible to have friendly night for the same job.
He retreated to his boat down the bend and after dark he drove out into the river and up stream. Apparently, there was nothing to prevent him from performing his task. He steered wide of the entrance of the bayou, thinking that perhaps Murdong would be watching for his friends to drop down.
Swinging wide, he felt his motor jerk, missing a stroke. A minute later it missed again, and with a curse he tried to look at it in the dark. A few more explosions, followed by alternate misses, and the engine died where he was, in midstream, with one hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds almost in sight in a dark and lonely bend—just the place for what he had to do.
"What in h—l!" he choked, giving the wheel a savage whirl over.
The motor started up hopefully, and turned over for a full minute. He began to breath easier; and then it died down once more.
"Ain't that h—l?" he asked, fervently. "Ain't it? I lose a hundred thou' because I ain't a cup full of gasolene. I forgot to fill my tank."
He couldn't even pull ashore, for the boat had no oars—a curious omission for a river man to make. And he had to sit and wait while the wind and current swept him down the bend and at last drove him in at least ten miles below the entrance of the bayou.
"Now I got to wait for the wind to lay, too," he grunted in disgust, adding, "but the son of a gun ain't got away yet."
He rigged him a pair of oars out of two poles and a section of board which he found in the drift along a sandbar just below him. With two loops of rope fastened in holes bored in the splash board he could swing his oars. Getting clear of the eddy, he worked out into the current, despite the wind, and floated down watching for a ferry, a gasolene boat, or a landing. Fifteen miles down stream he ran into a landing and two hours later he had a drayman hauling fifty gallons of gasolene in a barrel to the river bank, and the two of them emptied it into the boat's tank, filling it. Then they filled two five-gallon cans with the remainder.
"Now we'll see," Gost exclaimed, when he was clear of the landing and was bucking the current and the cross swells from the gale. He entered the bayou bend late in the day, and in the dark he hugged the opposite shore till he was well up toward the head of the bend. He crossed over and drifted down, his motor turning slowly and almost noiselessly.
It was pitch dark, cloudy, and the air full of the murk of a dry gale, threatening rain. He passed the government light hardly fifty feet from it, and then ran into a short eddy which he felt close to the bank, not a hundred yards up stream from the entrance to the bayou.
"I lost a little time, 's all," Gost grinned to himself. "We'll see how you'll answer to a hail, eh? And if you got a light Um-m. I don't give a damn, now—I got ye."
He made certain that his motorboat was well fastened, but with knots that would be easy to find and cast off in the dark. He studied the skyline to make certain that he would recognize the mooring place of his boat when he returned.
Rifle in hand, his pistol in his pocket holster, he slipped along the top of the river bank to the bayou and followed that till he could see the dim outline of the boat against the paleness of the bayou waters. No streak or trace of light showed from the boat anywhere.
Gost stepped along, foot by foot, keeping himself near a tree trunk or back from the bank. He could not have been more careful. He believed that he was on the edge of perfect success. He had but to put in practice an old river trick of hailing a shantyboater saying he was a lost man, and asking the way to the levees.
He paused, taking his time and calming his breath. His excitement, his exertions, his wound had greatly wearied and weakened him. He must be careful now. He smiled, as he thought, perhaps, of fooling Urleigh and the girl and all the rest of the gang, whoever they might be.
Luck was better than he had hoped for. He did not have to hail. He heard footsteps on the floor of the cabin-boat crossing toward the near end, or bow. The bolt was turned back in the lock and the door flung open. In the doorway appeared the shantyboater.
"Now! Now!" whispered Gost, bringing his rifle up.
As he did so, he heard something. He turned his face to look over his shoulder. Then on his head fell the crash of ages. The rifle went off. He fell to his knees and upon his face. On his head rained a hundred frantic blows, while a shrill cry went up in the timberland.