The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "Jack crushed his hand against a piece of iron," explained the captain.

  At which Miss Evelyn murmured. "Oh!" and inquired how long it would probably be before we reached the Bay of Panama.

  "Using only our canvas we may reach there to-morrow night, and we may not. We can't make very good time till we start the engines again," Blythe said.

  "And when are you going to start them?" Miss Berry asked.

  "Don't quite know. I'm shy of engineers. The only ones I have are on a vacation," Sam answered with a smile.

  They were not to enjoy one very long, however. About sunset the Argos began to rock gently on a sea no longer glassy.

  "Cap says we're going to have trouble," Yeager informed me. "When you get this sultry smell in the air and that queer look in the sky there is going to be something doing. She's going to begin to buck for fair."

  I noticed that Blythe was taking in sail and that the wind was rising.

  "Knock the irons off the Flemings and send Gallagher down into the engine room to stoke for them. We'll need more hands. This thing is going to hit us like a wall of wind soon," he told me.

  When I returned from the forecastle the sea had risen. As I was standing on the bridge a voice called my name. I looked down to see Evelyn on the promenade deck in a long, close-fitting waterproof coat, her hair flying a little wildly in the breeze. In the face upturned to mine was a very vivid interest.

  "We're in for it. There's going to be a real squall," she cried delightedly.

  I stepped down and tucked her arm under mine, for the deck was already tipping in the heavy run of seas.

  Most of our canvas was in, and the booming wind was humming through the rest with growing power. The Argos put her nose into the whitecaps and ran like a racer, for the engines were shaking the yacht as she plowed forward.

  The young woman turned to me an eager, mobile face into which the wind had whipped a rich color.

  "What would you take to be somewhere else? Back in your stuffy old law office, say?"

  The lurch of the staggering yacht threw her forward so that the lithe, supple body leaned against me and the breath of the dimpling lips was in my nostrils.

  Just an instant she lay there, with that smile of warm eyes and rose-leaf mouth to tantalize me, before she recovered and drew back.

  "Not for a thousand dollars a minute," I answered, a trumpet peal of indomitable happiness ringing in my heart.

  From the wheelhouse Blythe shouted a warning to be careful. His voice scarcely reached us through the singing of the wind. I nodded and took hold of the little hand that lay close to mine.

  "You must be a rich man to value the pleasure of the hour so highly," she answered lightly, with a look quick and questioning at me.

  The squall that had flung itself across the waters hit us in earnest now. We went down into the yawning troughs before us with drunken plunges and climbed the glassy hills beyond to be ready for another dive.

  "The richest man alive if last night was not a dream."

  Our fingers interlaced, palms kissing each other.

  "Does it seem to you a dream?" she asked, deep in a valley of the seas.

  From the top of the next comber I answered:

  "It did until you joined me here, but now I know you belong to me forever, both in the land of dreams and waking."

  "Did the storm teach you that?"

  I looked out at the flying scud and back at the storm-bewitched girl with laughter rippling from her throat and the wild joy of a rare moment in her eyes.

  "Yes, the storm. It brought you to my arms and your heart to mine."

  "I think it did, Jack; the wee corner of it that was not yours already."

  Her shy eyes fell and I drew her close to me. In the dusk that had fallen like a cloak over the ship her lips met mine with the sweetest surrender in the world.

  So in the clamorous storm our hearts found safe anchorage.

  CHAPTER XIX

  SENSE AND NONSENSE

  The squall passed as suddenly as it had swept upon us, and left in its wake a night of stars and moonbeat.

  Apparently there was no question of returning the mutineers to the irons from which we had freed them. Alderson, Smith, Neidlinger, and Higgins were grouped together on the forecastle deck in amiable chat.

  Blythe was still at the wheel, and our cheerful friend from the cattle country at the piano bawling out the identical chorus I had interrupted so ruthlessly just before the first blow of the mutiny was struck.

  He was lustily singing as Evelyn and I trod the deck.

  "Tom sings as if with conviction. I hope it may not be deep-rooted," I laughed.

  "If you mean me----"

  "I don't mean Miss Berry."

  To my surprise she took the words seriously.

  "It isn't so, Jack. Say it isn't so."

  "Does that mean that it is?" I asked.

  "No-o. Only I can't bear to think that our happiness will make anybody else unhappy."

  "It doesn't appear to be making him unhappy."

  "But he doesn't know--yet."

  "Then he's really serious? I wasn't quite sure."

  She sighed.

  "I wish he wasn't. How girls can like to make men fall in love with them I can't conceive. He's such a splendid fellow, too."

  "He's a man, every inch of him," I offered by way of comfort. "It won't hurt him to love a good woman even if he doesn't win her. He'll recover, but it will do him a lot of good first."

  "Would you feel so complacent if it were you?" she asked slyly, with a flash of merry eyes.

  We happened to be in the shadow of the smokestack. After the interlude I expounded my philosophy more at length.

  "He's young yet--at least his heart is. A man has to love a nice girl or two before he is educated to know the right one when he meets her. I don't pity Yeager--not a great deal, anyhow. It's life, you know," I concluded cheerfully.

  "Oh, I see. A man has to love a nice girl or two as an educative process." Her voice trailed into the rising inflection of a question. "Then the right girl ought to thank me for helping to prepare Mr. Yeager for her--if I am."

  "That's a point of view worth considering," I assented.

  "But I suppose she will never even know my name," she mused.

  "Most likely not," was my complacent answer.

  Whereupon she let me have her thrust with a little purr of amusement in her voice.

  "Any more than I shall know what nice girls prepared you for me."

  "Touché," I conceded with a laugh. "I didn't know you were the kind of young woman that lays traps for a fellow to tumble into."

  "And I didn't know you were a war-worn veteran toughened by previous campaigns," she countered gaily. "You've been very liberally educated, didn't you say?"

  "No, I didn't say. This is how I put it to myself: A boy owes something to the nice girls all about him. One would not like to think, for instance, that the youths of Tennessee had been so insensible as never to have felt a flutter when your long lashes drifted their way," I diplomatically suggested.

  "How nicely you wrap it up," she said with her low, soft laugh. "And must my heart have fluttered, too, for them? Unless it has, I won't be properly educated for you, shall I?"

  "Ah, that's the difference. You are born perfect lovers, but we have to acquire excellence through experience."

  "Oh!"

  An interjection can sometimes express more than words. My sweetheart's left me wondering just what she meant. There was amusement in it, but there was, too, a demure suppression to which I had not the key.

  She, too, I judged, had known a few love episodes in her life. Perhaps she had been engaged before, as is sometimes the custom among Southern girls. The thought gave me a queer little stab of pain.

  Yeager came out of the deck pavilion as we passed.

  "I say, let's have some music, good people."

  I looked at my watch.

  "My turn at the wheel. Maybe Blythe will join you."


  He did. From the pilot-house I could hear his clear tenor and Evelyn's sweet soprano filling the night with music. Presently they drifted into patriotic songs, in which Tom came out strong if not melodious. But when the piano sounded the notes of "Dixie" Evelyn's voice rose alone, clear and full-throated as that of a lark.

  After being relieved by Alderson I turned in and slept round the clock. The tune of drumming engines was in my ears when I woke.

  "Sam is making her walk," I thought, and when I reached the deck I learned that we had entered the Gulf of Panama. A long, low line showed dimly in the foggy distance to the left. We were running parallel with it, Prieto Point directly in front of us.

  With the exception of the older Fleming, who had been transferred to the same cabin as Bothwell, all the crew were at work. Only the true men, however, were armed. From the looks cast by the former mutineers toward the blurred shore line it was plain that they looked forward to Panama with anxiety.

  In the canal zone, with the flag of the United States flying to the breeze, the law would give them short shrift. We observed that whenever their duties permitted it, they drew uneasily together in earnest talk.

  Blythe smiled grimly.

  "Our friends don't like the wages of sin, now that pay day is at hand. I'll give you two to one, Jack, that before an hour is up you'll see a delegation to the captain."

  He was right. As Sam stepped down from the bridge, having turned the wheel over to Alderson, he was approached timidly by Neidlinger and Gallagher. Higgins, in partial payment for his share in the revolt, was taking a turn at shoveling coal in the stifling furnace room.

  Gallagher touched his hat humbly.

  "We'd like a word with you, Captain Blythe."

  "I thought Bothwell was your captain?"

  The sailor flushed.

  "No, sir. We're through with him."

  "Now that he's a prisoner?" suggested Sam.

  "We wish we'd never let him bamboozle us, sir. It would 'a' been a sight better for a lot of poor fellows if we'd never seen him. That man's a devil, sir."

  "Indeed!"

  As he stood there, a lean brown man straight as a ramrod, efficient to the last inch of him, it struck me that the mutineers would get justice rather than mercy from our captain.

  The sailor moistened his dry lips and went on.

  "Captain Blythe, we--we're sorry we let ourselves be led into--into----"

  Gallagher stumbled for a word. Sam supplied it quietly:

  "Mutiny."

  "Yes, sir; if you want to put it that way, sir."

  "How else can I put it?"

  "We were led astray by that man Bothwell, sir. He promised there would be no bloodshed. We're sorry, sir."

  "I don't doubt it," the Englishman assented dryly.

  "Begging your pardon, sir, we asks to be taken back and punished by you. Whatever you give us we'll take and not a word out of our heads. Say a flogging and we'll thank you kindly, sir. But don't turn us over to the law."

  "Didn't I tell you what would come of it, Gallagher?"

  "Yes, sir; you warned us straight. But that man Bothwell had us bewitched."

  "If you're taken ashore at Panama you'll be hanged."

  "We know that, sir."

  Blythe considered for a minute and announced his decision sharply.

  "I'll give you another chance--you two and Higgins and young Fleming. I'll not let you off scot-free, but your punishment will depend on how faithful you are for the rest of the cruise."

  Once I saw a man acquitted of murder in a courtroom. The verdict was such a relief that he fainted. The captain's unexpected clemency took these men the same way, for virtually he had untied the noose from their necks. Tears started to their eyes. Plainly they were shaken with emotion.

  "You'll not regret it, sir. We'll be true to the death, Captain Blythe," the Irishman promised, his white lips trembling.

  After Alderson's turn at the wheel came mine. Evelyn presently joined me in the pilot-house.

  "When shall we get ashore?" she asked me.

  We were at the time, I remember, passing Taboga Island.

  "Not till morning. We'll have to be inspected. To-night we'll lie in the harbor."

  "How is your hand?" she asked, glancing at my bruised fingers.

  I flashed a look quickly at her.

  "My hand! Oh, it's all right now."

  "Jimmie's is better, too," she said quietly.

  In the language of my boyhood I was up a stump. So I played for time.

  "Jimmie's?"

  "Yes. I have been taking care of it for him. His fingers were not bruised much, though. It's odd, isn't it, that both of you were hurt in exactly the same place--by accident?"

  I murmured that it was strange.

  "So I had a little talk with him," she went on quietly.

  "Yes?"

  "And he told me all about it. Oh, Jack, I didn't think even Boris would do a thing like that!" She looked up at me with bright, misty eyes. "I asked Gallagher and Neidlinger about it. They both told me how brave you were."

  "I'm grateful for their certificate of valor," I answered lightly.

  Before I knew what she was at my sweetheart had stooped to kiss the bruises above my knuckles. I snatched my hand away.

  "Don't do that," I said gruffly. "It isn't exactly--you know--right."

  "Why not?" She looked at me with head flung back in characteristic fashion. "Why not? They suffered for us, the poor, bruised fingers. Why shouldn't I honor them with my poor best?"

  "Oh, well!" I shrugged, embarrassed by her shining ardor, even though in my heart it pleased me.

  She came close to me.

  "I love you better every day, Jack. You're splendid. Life is going to be a great, big thing for me with you."

  "Even though we don't find the treasure?" I asked, thrilling with the joy of her confession.

  "We've found the treasure," she whispered. "I don't give that"--she snapped her fingers with a gesture of scorn--"for all the gold that was ever buried compared to you, laddie. I just spend my time thanking God for you with all my heart."

  "But you mustn't idealize me. I'm full of faults."

  "Don't I know it? Don't I love your faults, too, you goose? Who wants a perfect man?"

  "I know, I know."

  The wheel was getting very little attention, for my darling was in my arms and I was kissing softly her tumbled hair and the shadows under her glorious eyes.

  "Love is like that. It doesn't want perfection. I care more for you because you're always wanting your own way. The tiny, powdered freckles on the side of your nose are beauty marks to me."

  "You are a goose," she laughed. "But it's true. I've seen lots of handsomer men than you--Boris, for example; but I've never seen one so good looking."

  "And that's just nonsense," I told her blithely.

  "Of course it's nonsense. But there is no sense so true as nonsense."

  I dare say we babbled foolishly the inarticulate rhapsody all lovers find so expressive.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE BIG DITCH

  Darkness had fallen before we dropped anchor in the harbor of Panama. It was such a night as only the tropics can produce, the stars burning close and brilliant, the full moon rising out of a silent sea. In front of us the lights of the city came twinkling out. Behind them lay the mystery of conquest.

  No spot in all the western hemisphere held so much of romance as this. Drake and Pizarro had tarried here in their blustering careers, Morgan had captured and burned the city.

  Many times in the past centuries the Isthmus had been won and lost, but never had such a victory been gained as that our countrymen had secured in the past half dozen years.

  They had overcome yellow fever and proved that the tropics might be made a safe place for the Anglo-Saxon to live. They had driven a sword through the backbone of the continent and had built a canal through which great liners could climb up and down stairs from one ocean to another.

&
nbsp; The dream of the centuries had become a reality through the skill and resolution with which the sons of Uncle Sam had tackled the big ditch.

  It may be guessed how anxious all of us were to get ashore. There was little sleep aboard the Argos that night. It was long past midnight before any of us left the deck.