“Forgive me,” she pleaded. “If heedless for myself I should have remembered your danger. Now with uncle gone and him armed—”
“It matters none his having the gun,” he deprecated. “I’ll make a try for it tonight—”
When old Cumber finished feeding his pets and entered the house he was unarmed. Nor could Dix locate the weapon although he searched the shed and peeped into Cumber’s room. The fact that the man was cunning enough to keep the rifle concealed bespoke a sinister purpose. Dix did not dare to wander from the immediate vicinity of the house, for once he strayed aside he knew the dogs would hunt him as fair game. Undoubtedly the rifle was in the hovel, but to search there with the brutes unmuzzled meant a horrible death.
When he returned to the living-room, his ears tingling with the cold, he found old Cumber crouched on the floor and brooding before the leaping flames.
“It’s zero or lower,” Dix announced to the girl who had withdrawn to the shadows in one corner.
Cumber jerked up his head and staring at the two remarked, “The master is gone to a fair country far to the North. The ice holds and tomorrow I must be off to find him.”
The light from the fireplace flared in Dix’s eyes and the glance he exchanged with the girl contained a message. She caught his inspiration and her own gaze warmed and she slowly nodded her head in acquiescence. Bowing over her he whispered, “We will start early and get ahead of him.”
“The dogs will stay in the hovel because of the cold,” she murmured. “I will be ready.”
“Pack up food, matches and a compass. Make a bundle of blankets and put on your warmest clothes. Where are the skates?”
“Hanging in the shed behind the door. I’ll secure the provisions now.”
* * * *
The glowing coals in the fireplace vaguely illumined the room as Dix tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack. The sharp air whipped the blood to his face and filled him with a strange exultation. The half-lights in the east were announcing the morning. The dogs were quiet, doubtlessly crowded together in the hovel for warmth. Old Cumber was in his room, asleep, Dix hoped.
He tapped softly on the girl’s door and immediately she appeared, a mackinaw swathing her small figure. She carried a roll of blankets and a bag of provisions. “We must bring the sled through the house,” he whispered.
Moving as softly as possible they gained the shed and picked up the sled. It was necessary to pass old Cumber’s door, but this, fortunately, was closed. The skates had been already secured. Dix was now in something of a quandary. He did not believe he could drag the sled to the lake without arousing both Cumber and the dogs. The girl guessed the dilemma and insisted she be allowed to help. He was loath to consent. His indecision was interrupted by the sound of a shuffling step in the kitchen. Dropping the provisions and blankets into the sled Dix pushed it through the door, whispering:
“Drag it to the ice. It’s a case of must.”
“And you?” She shivered.
“I’ll be along directly. Go.”
He closed the door on her and turned just as Cumber stole into the room. For a moment his heart jumped and he fancied he was facing a new and grotesque evil—a beast that walked erect like a man. A second glance revealed the cause for such grim imagining. Cumber had pulled a heavy fur cap down to his ears and what with his beard and deep-set eyes he resembled anything savage except a man. He took in the situation at a glance and with a growling cry turned to retreat. With a spring Dix was upon him and had him by his broad shoulders. Outside came the rasping shriek of the iron-shod runners as they grated over the frozen ground, to be quickly answered by the fierce qui vive of the dogs. “You are a devil!” screamed the madman, twisting and seizing Dix around the waist and with terrible strength hurling him across the room.
Again Dix overtook him before he could make the kitchen, and this time managed to avoid the crushing embrace. The sled complained shrilly and the dogs increased their protest. The two men fought blindly, Cumber striving to break clear and release the dogs, Dix grimly determined to stop him. In one of their gyrations they crashed against the table and as Dix fell across it his outstretched hand brushed across the skates. With a mighty effort he drew clear of the groping fingers and struck at random. Cumber fell with a crash. Still grasping the skates Dix sprinted down the slope and arrived just as the girl drew the sled onto the ice.
“Jump in and roll up in the blankets,” he barked, as he rapidly adjusted the skates.
“Cumber?” she choked.
“He won’t bother us,” he panted. “But the dogs may break loose any minute…”
“They’re shut in or they would have been here before now,” she shuddered, staring horrified at the dark bulk of the cabin.
A high-pitched, ululating cry ascended from the top of the knoll in a hideous spiral of warning and a door slammed violently.
“By heavens! He’s able to do mischief,” groaned Dix, fumbling at the last clamp. “He’s gone to the hovel,” moaned the girl.
“Sit tight!” commanded Dix. The next moment the sled was gliding over the ice, the clear musical clang of the skates cutting the crisp air like knives. He took a course paralleling the shore and as he found his stride the uproar on the knoll changed into a purposeful chant, the deep, swinging chorus of the dog-pack hot on the trail, pricked through with the sharp strident cries of the madman.
“They’re coming!” gasped the girl, peering back.
Dix swung farther from the shore and cast a glance behind. Dark shapes were darting along the edge of the ice. Suddenly a spurt of flame punctured the gloom and something whined viciously overhead.
“He’s using the rifle,” muttered the girl.
Dix mended his stride, spurred on by the singing lead. He was now at the tip of a cedar-draped point and as he rounded this and left Cumber’s range of vision he breathed in deep relief. But his meandering course had cost them distance as was emphasized by a crashing in the undergrowth on his left and just ahead. Without pausing to reason he swerved at right angles from the shoreline and darted toward the middle of the lake. As he gave his heel to the ice in making the turn, a sprawling, snarling shape struck the ice by his side and slid along helplessly beside him, the hot glow of the cruel eyes causing the girl to mask her face with the blanket. This loathsome companionship endured only for a moment, however, as with another backward thrust Dix headed the sled down the lake. The rest of the pack were now on the ice, running rapidly.
* * * *
Skating easily and hugging the shore now he knew all the dogs were behind him, Dix allowed the animals to draw within some fifty feet of him, when he turned sharply. The maddened brutes essayed in vain to change their courses as they slid helplessly along. Enraged by their failure and pricked on by the fearful cries of their master, somewhere behind the point, they frantically regained their feet and streaked once more after the fugitives. Dix held straight ahead until they were dangerously near, then repeated his maneuver and sped for the outlet. But now he was within the zone of the rifle as Cumber had gained the point. Several times the bullets clipped the ice on either side of the sled.
Either the instinct of the chase or the commands of their master now worked a change in the brutes’ tactics, for immediately following their last grotesque failure they scrambled ashore and disappeared in the spruce. The girl cried out in relief, but Dix gritted his teeth and put every ounce of energy into his feet. Ahead was the outlet of the lake, and the winding stream connecting it with Little Purgatory seemed very narrow in the gray dawn. He knew the dogs would attempt to head him off once he quit the open expanse of the lake. Already they were racing in a straight line while he was held to the curving course of the river. A wild impulse to trust to luck and enter the overflowed areas was entertained for a moment, but he feared the shadows and the logs and reeds, and held to the stream.
“We’ve left them behind,” rejoiced the girl.
“Sit tight,” he panted. “They may try to head us o
ff.”
The stream curved and twisted and in places doubled back on itself. Between strokes Dix listened for the menace he knew was threading the covert ahead. At last he located the danger, a low rasping growling. His aching back straightened, his sagging arms grew rigid, and before the girl detected the danger he had picked up speed to the sprinting point, and he thanked God he had learned to skate as a youth.
“Open water!” she shrilly warned, pointing to a black streak in the middle of the channel. Too late to swing to the right, he skirted it on the left, plunging into the face of the crouching danger.
Then it was upon him, and with an inarticulate cry in which was blended the shrill scream of the girl, he lunged ahead just as the mass of infuriated beasts leaped out to pull them down. Like a meteor the sled shot ahead. Something grabbed at his steel-shod heel and relinquished it with a howl of pain. And he was clear of them and they were sliding into the black water.
“That’ll hold them for a bit,” he choked, bending low over the back of the sled.
“I’m proud of you,” she cried.
“Nonsense. I was scared blue,” he panted. “Plenty of room ahead. No more ambushes.”
He took it leisurely and over his shoulder watched the dogs struggling to crawl back to the ice. The plunge evidently had lessened their lust, for they whined and shivered as old Cumber trotted up and dragged them from their bath. Dix was halfway across Little Purgatory before the last brute was rescued. Cumber frantically discharged his rifle and raged at his pets. But their ardor was dampened and they would not resume the pursuit. Strangely indifferent to the occasional bullets Dix watched the scene with grim satisfaction. The dogs refused to advance and Cumber’s wild rage had spoiled his marksmanship.
A slow smile of triumph was overspreading Dix’s haggard face when there came a wrench at his right foot and he would have fallen if not for his grasp on the back of the sled. As it was he sagged to his knees. As the girl felt herself whirled about she cried out, “Are you hurt?” And there was a world of agony in her voice.
“Clamp given out,” he explained. “Give me a piece of cord—anything.”
“Better than cord. Here’s a strap,” she rejoiced by replying.
As he knelt to repair the damage he noted with alarm that Cumber had detected his predicament and with renewed zeal was urging the dogs forward. But the brutes were mutinous and moved uneasily in a circle about their master, Infuriated to see his victims within reach and about to escape, the crazed man began belaboring the dogs with the butt of his rifle. They fell back from him, snapping and snarling as the blows fell. With a wild cry Cumber swung his rifle at the leader, holding it by the muzzle. The blow fell heavily, the dog reared with rage and grabbed it between his powerful teeth, there was an explosion and the man went down in a heap.
“He’s shooting at us,” mumbled the girl.
“He’ll not harm us,” comforted Dix, rising to his feet once more and resuming his flight.
“We shall soon be there,” he encouraged, pointing to the smoke of the settlement.
“You’ve been good to me,” she said.
“Who wouldn’t be?” he murmured. “Sometime I shall have something to say to you, sometime when I have the right.”
“The right? You have that now,” she impulsively cried.
“No; not till you’re back home among your kin and friends,” he awkwardly corrected.
Then she understood and a crimson wave swept up from beneath the mackinaw collar and made her eyes appear very moist and tender. “I shall always be glad to see you,” she shyly whispered.
WHEN MANHATTAN SANK, by George S. Brooks
Those who survived the destruction of Manhattan will never forget the morning of September sixteenth. I have an almost equally vivid remembrance of the evening before.
Many persons have since claimed that they sensed impending disaster for varying lengths of time prior to the first shock. Women, alleged to possess psychic power, have said that there seemed to be a great weight hanging above their heads, or that for days they felt they were walking on the edge of a great abyss. Supernatural warnings, too, were conveyed to persons who failed to heed these omens. Figures of deceased relatives, they maintain, appeared to them in their dreams and in waking visions. Others assert that, when they went to bed on the night of the fifteenth, they found difficulty in breathing.
A former night watchman at the Postum Building told me—and he evidently believed it—that about midnight he observed a blazing meteor or comet, dagger-shaped and flame-colored, streaking across the sky.
It is true that almost everybody had thought about an earthquake, because of the statement of the eminent British geologist, Sir Maurice Lockwood. About the first of the month, he had announced that there appeared to be a “fault” in the rock strata under Manhattan and added that this might slip, causing an earthquake like that which destroyed the Japanese cities. His theory, however, was not new: other scientists have held it. It was given wide publicity chiefly because of the energetic labors of a lecture-bureau press agent.
I believe any unbiased observer will agree with me that all the elaborate warnings are mere post-facto invention, although the stories may be credited by the persons who tell them. Never did downtown New York seem more prosperous, more stimulating, more alive than on the late afternoon and evening of September fifteenth. It was a perfect late-summer day, almost too warm for comfort. The evening was luxuriously cool.
Since my brother was ending his annual week’s visit to the city that night, he refused to go to a theater, saying that he preferred to talk. We ate a leisurely dinner, washed down with white wine and Swedish punch, at a little Scandinavian restaurant on upper Broadway. Matt had made sleeper reservations on a train that left the Grand Central at eleven-thirty o’clock. So, when we lighted our after-dinner cigars, we had more than two hours to waste.
We walked across the city to the Kelton Hotel where I lived, at Lexington Avenue near Forty-eighth Street.
“Have a good lunch?” I asked. Bob Wiston had taken Matt to luncheon that day at the Bankers’ Club.
“Oh, yes. Wiston seems like a good fellow.”
“None better,” I agreed. “And how about Miss Hull?” We had had dinner at Mary Hull’s apartment the night before.
“She’s smart.” Matt is not given to wordy praise. “She’s good-looking, too. And she certainly wears clothes.”
As Matt packed his bags, we split a pint of Scotch. Then Matt suggested that we go up on the hotel roof.
In the sun parlor, we found the lights turned discreetly low. Several couples were surreptitiously “necking” in the least conspicuous corners, as they do in all big hotel lounging rooms. I heard Matt sniff contemptuously.
“This is a hell of a place to live,” he growled, as he walked out on the deserted roof. “The damned apartments are so small that people have to go to hotels and theaters to make love. No privacy anywhere.”
“It’s just your upstate farmer inhibitions that make you think it’s indecent.”
“I didn’t say I thought it indecent,” Matt retorted. “I said it was rotten taste.”
I laughed at him. He always had those fits about New York. He would be enjoying himself hugely when he would suddenly remember that he did not approve of the things he was seeing and doing. Whereupon he would burst out with one of his rumbling tirades. Matt is big, blond, broad-shouldered and afraid of nothing except city traffic and rattlesnakes. I think he prefers snakes to taxis, however.
“Take that pigeonhole apartment of Miss Hull’s, for instance,” Matt grumbled with fine scorn, although he knew as well as I did that Mary Hull paid as much rent for those three or four rooms as Matt makes in net income from a large fruit and stock farm. “Where would you hold hands there? There’s no place, if her mother was home. I looked in the kitchenette, but you couldn’t get two persons inside it, even if they were parked close. Any romance in this town has to be as synthetic as the gin, I guess.”
&n
bsp; I laughed, handing Matt one of his favorite cigars. I remembered his comment when we got caught in a midnight subway jam. “Who pours the olive oil over us?” he demanded, as we stood sardine-wise, in the choked aisle.
Matt struck a match on the seat of his trousers, a habit which he refuses to discontinue although it ruins his best clothes. “It’s the one masculine gesture left in smoking,” is his explanation. He puffed out an immense cloud of smoke and pointed down the street to the great bulk of another hotel, where hundreds of lighted windows gleamed through the night.
“See?” Matt indicated them. “Mother’s waiting up for her boys.” Without preface or apology, he turned to me. “Going to marry Miss Hull?” he demanded bluntly.
“I’m afraid not,” I returned, wondering how he had guessed that I wished to.
“Why not? If you’re satisfied, go ahead.”
“Thanks for your permission. That’s all I’ve been waiting for.”
Matt allowed a mouthful of smoke to drift away from his lips in half-formed rings.
“Maybe you think that banker fellow’s competition is too strong,” he continued, in a Dorothy Dix tone, giving advice to the meek. “Don’t mind him. I watched them together and she doesn’t care for him.”
“He’s Robert Breek Wiston, with plenty of money, family and brains,” I retorted hotly. “Besides, he’s a darned good fellow in the bargain. He’s a thousand percent better match for any girl than I am.”
“Remember you’re Alexander McNair Tennay, without family, money or brains,” said Matt with fraternal candor. “That’s why she’s apt to pick you. Women love to make martyrs of themselves.”
“Shut up. Besides I don’t think Mary Hull cares to marry anyone.”
“Don’t you believe it. I’ve heard a lot about the ‘new women’ down here, but they don’t come as new as that.”
“Why should she?” I grew quite warm in defending Mary’s right to remain unmarried. “She’s made a name and a place for herself in the import trade. She’s really important, a celebrity.”
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 13
