Up and down the creek (or stream as it had become here; for they were getting now about the estuary) there were spread several dozens of all kinds of shelters—tents, shacks, and cabins; and there was a hoarse, far murmur of voices on the still night.
“Je-hosh!” said Monkton, amazed. “What’d you think of that now! If it ain’t a proper rush! Say, D.C.O., it’s like a merrickle! Why, it was all just wood an’ water when I was here less’n a fortnight gone—just that an’ them damned thieves campin’ on my claim—”
He broke out into a spate of insane blasphemy, at the memory of all that he had lost, his voice going rawly across the quietness of the stream.
But Cargunka turned on him like a tiger:—
“Stow that, you fool!” he said. “A fine lump you are to have wiv me. G’ Lor! I’d a done better to come alone! Cussin’ won’t ’urt that crowd. Ain’t you got sense an’ guts to know that, an’ do your share to get square!”
“I’m blame sorry, D.C.O.,” said Monkton. “I’m sure daft to let go like that; but it just got me goat proper, to be right here, an’ know I should ha’ been safe for life with the gold I’d ’a pulled out of that claim of mine.”
“Maybe you’ll not do so bad after all, my lad,” said Cargunka. “That’s your claim, ain’t it—away over to the right there, wiv the big-built cabin on it?”
“Sure,” said the miner. “I guess you don’t need me to show you round, D.C.O. I reck’n I built that, on me lonesome, before they came along. I’d reckoned I’d winter here…. Hell! What’s the use of talkin’! What you goin’ to do, anyhow, D.C.O.?”
“We’ll pull up a bit higher,” said Cargunka; and the two of them took to their oars again, keeping well over on the North side of the stream; for there were no buildings on that bank, until near the bight of the second bend, where the big gasoline flares blazed in front of the drink saloon.
“Ease a little!” said Cargunka, as they came opposite to the open doorway of the log-hut that stood at the top of the Southern bank, on the edge of Monkton’s claim. “Easy wiv your oar. Back! I’m goin’ to shove ’er in ’ere…. That’s right! In wiv her. Catch one of them branches an’ hold on while I gets the glasses.”
They had put the dingy in under the shadow of a far out-reaching pine bough; and Monkton held the boat in place, whilst Cargunka drew in his oar quietly, and reached into his locker for his night-glasses.
With these, he began now to examine the cabin opposite. The distance was about a hundred and fifty feet; but the glasses showed the interior of the shanty with wonderful clearness, with the men sitting round a big packing-case, for a table.
“Lord!” said Cargunka, after staring a bit. “It couldn’t be better. They’m playin’ (poker I reck’n) an’ they got the stuff on the table there…. Piles of it. You take a look, my lad, an’ see if that don’t do you good. I’ll hold the boat. You pull your oar in quiet, or it’ll go adrift.”
Monkton pulled in his oar, silently; and put the glasses to his eyes; then he swore.
“Quit that!” said Cargunka.
“There’s sure hundreds of ounces on the table, right now,” said Monkton, in a strange voice. “Hundreds an’ hundreds…. An’ they got a lot of it in hundred-ounce bags. By the size, that’s what I reck’n they are. Say, what you think of that now! That’s my dust—Say—!”
“Hold tight an’ keep the stopper on, my lad!” said Cargunka, under his breath. “I guess the more the better.”
“Say, D.C.O., how you goin’ to shape to touch all that?” asked the big miner, after a further look through the glasses. “There’s six of ’em in there. An’ don’t you make no error! Them’s bad men—They’re killers, an’ they got their guns right handy, as you can sure see. Say, d’you reckon we can shoot ’em up from outside, an’ then rush in the stuff?”
Cargunka laughed a little, under his breath.
“You’ll see, my lad, when the time comes,” he said. “We got a deal to do yet though, I’m thinkin’. Hand me back them glasses. We’re goin’ upstream a bit to scout round, an’ make sure we ain’t goin’ to get disturbed. Ship your oar quiet now, an’ pull careful.”
They went upstream for another couple of hundred yards; then Cargunka put the boat across to the South bank, and told Monkton to stand-by her, ready to shove off, whilst he went up the bank, and took a look round.
Yet, he found, as he had hoped, that there seemed to be no one knocking about. The nearest shanty (a wretched little lean-to of packing-cases and sacking) was, however, lit up, and Cargunka thought he would take a look in. He walked quietly over to it, and found that the sacking curtains which apparently occupied the place of a door, were half looped back, and he could look in.
Somewhere, farther up the stream, probably in the saloon, there began the metallic rant of a phonograph:—
“Oh, she wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her lone,
On her own,
No, by Joan!
She wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her own!”
“That’s a damn rotten instrument!” said Cargunka to himself; but it was evidently “good enough,” for a voice in the lean-to took up the song, drunkenly, in a tremendous bass roar:—
“Oh, she washn’t goin’ ter shtan’ it on’er ownsh!”
And under cover of the roar of sound, Cargunka stole up, and peeped in.
He found two very drunk men sitting at an Armour’s canned meat box, trying to play cards; but though this was amusing enough, in its way, the thing that attracted Cargunka’s attention was the amount of the stakes, which they were risking drunkenly on simple nap hands.
“I guess this here’s a rich strike, right enough,” he muttered, and leant forward to get a better view. At that instant, the bigger of the two men looked up, and gave out a yell:—
“A blimy nigger, s’elp me!” he said, “or I got the jim-jams!”
But before the second man had time to turn round, Cargunka had pulled back into the shadow; and he left the man to decide the nice point, to his own satisfaction.
Chapter VI
“All clear now, my lad, for runnin’,” he told the big miner, five minutes later. “Shove ’er off!”
He let the boat drift downstream silently, past the cabin that stood on Monkton’s claim.
About a hundred yards below the shanty, he beached the nose of the boat gently, and made the painter fast to a spike of rock.
“Come along, my lad, step quiet,” said Cargunka. “Pass me out that sack, gently now! That door opens outward, don’t it? That’s what my scout told me.”
“Sure,” said the miner. “I hung her myself. And I should know, if anyone does!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Cargunka. “I never did. The chap as scouted for me, knows it don’t pay none to tell me any fudge news. Now, I guess we got to hunt up a good hefty log an’ bring it along. There’ll be plenty around, I’m thinkin’. I guess we’ll sample the wood-pile. My scout said they’d a good heap of timber stacked away at the back of the shanty. This looks like there’s goin’ to be two niggers in the wood-pile, in a way of speaking! I wish t’ goodness yon phonygraft would shut that rotten noise!”
Yet, as it chanced, the far away rant of the phonograph proved useful enough to Cargunka and the miner; for it was screeching out again the same inane jargon:—
“Oh, she wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her lone,
On her own,
No, by Joan!
She wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her own!”
And the men in the big log-hut, took it up in a hoarse roaring chorus:—
“Oh, she wasn’t goin’ to stand it on her lone—”
“Now, my lad… while they’re makin’ that noise!” muttered Cargunka, and ran quickly and quietly round to the back of the heavily-built hut, with Monkton following.
“Here we are,” whispered Cargunka. “Step easy! Lift your end!”
He slipped the bight of the small sack he was carrying between his teeth.
“N
ow!” he grunted, softly, through his clenched teeth. “Up wiv her!”
The two of them lifted a heavy pine-log from the wood-pile, and began to carry it noiselessly round to the front of the shanty, near to where the heavy-timber door was standing open.
“Let her rest on her end a mo,” said Cargunka.
They rested the log, and Cargunka took the bight of the small sack out of his mouth, for a breather.
“We got to carry her close up to the door; an’ then I’ve a present wiv me, as I’m goin’ to heave in, gratis, my lad,” said Cargunka. “Then it’ll be shut the door smart, an’ I’ll give you a hand to get the log propped solid against it. After that, there’ll be some artillery play, I reck’n. If there is, I guess we’ll ’ave to move extra smart, before there’s a crowd!
“Now, we’ll get going again.”
With infinite pains and caution, they carried the log nearer, and poised it on its end, just at the back of the open door.
Cargunka had been carrying the little sack in his teeth again. Now, he opened it, and lifted out a large glass Winchester, filled with some fluid. He took the big bottle by the neck, and swung it, once, twice, and let it fly in through the open door, where it shattered to fragments against the opposite wall.
In the same instant, he caught the door, and dashed it shut.
“Now,” he gasped, in a low quick voice, and the two of them hove the heavy log nearer, and let the upper end of it fall with a thud against the outer side of the door, wedging it immovably.
“Drop!” said Cargunka; and the two of them went flat on their faces, just as a spate of cursing broke out within, following the instant of curious silence that had ensued after the throwing of the bottle. The next moment, there came a volley of revolver shots, ripping through the planking of the door; and a good thing it was for the two of them, that Cargunka had thought in time to “lie low.”
Directly afterwards, there came shrieks—curious, breathless, gasping shrieks, and a loud, violent thudding against the door; and then, incredibly, an intense silence.
“What was it, D.C.O.?” asked the miner, in a somewhat awed voice. “What did you give ’em?”
“Ammonia!” said Cargunka. “They’re stiff for a time, I guess; but they’ll come round with fresh air. Up with you, my son, and get the door open. No, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. There’s no room for playing possum, with all that stuff in their lungs.”
They rose to their feet, and hove the log away from the door. Cargunka pulled the door open, and found that something or someone had extinguished the lamp. Yet he did not pause. He whipped open the mouth of his small sack, pulled something out and fitted it over his mouth and nose; then, with the sack in his hand, he shut his eyes and strode over a silent body into the hut. He felt for the table; touched it; and swept heap after heap of the small, heavy lumps of metal into the stout-fibred sack. As he worked, in spite of his respirator, he gasped dizzily with the fumes of ammonia that still pervaded the shack; though the night air was blowing into the hut.
He cleared the table in ten seconds, and felt all over it, to make sure that no gold remained. As he reached over, his toe stubbed against something soft and heavy. He stooped for it, and felt a small, buckskin sack, about nine inches high by three in diameter, which was leaning against the side of the big packing-case, where it had slid down, in the brief riot, after the throwing of the bottle.
He got down onto his hands and knees, fumbling round on the floor, and avoiding the insensible men, more by sense than sight. Three times, he came upon small bags of the dust; and he scraped up a double handful of fallen nuggets, cramming all, as he found them, into his sack.
Abruptly, as he groped, he heard a man sigh, and then someone stirred, and sat up, questioning. Another man moved; and another voice broke out confusedly into query, coughing and stuttering. Cargunka began to back slowly towards the door, keeping near the ground so as not to be seen against the vague loom of the open doorway. He had the sack of dust in his arms.
Suddenly, a man’s voice bellowed the words:—
“The dust! Collar the dust! There’s some tough in the shack! Light the lamp!”
There came a chorus of shouts, coughings and gaspings, as the men all about in the darkness began to recover; and then, like thunder in that small shanty, the bang of the heavy revolver.
“The door’s open. Watch the door!” shouted the man again. He was evidently one of those in the bunks; and Cargunka heard him leap with a heavy thud to the ground. There came a scrape of a match; but already Cargunka was at the door, still creeping. He backed out, swiftly; just as the match flared. Then he was with Monkton, who had stayed at the door, as Cargunka had bid him. He dumped the small sack heavily onto the ground, and jumped at the door.
“Now,” muttered Cargunka, and with one movement, they crashed-to the door, and let the log fall back against it, jamming it firmly. Cargunka caught his companion, and dragged him out of a line with the door, just as a perfect storm of revolver shots broke out inside, and the bullets burst through and through the door. Cargunka lifted the sack, and tied the mouth of it with both method and speed.
“Down to the boat,” he said. “Catch hold!”
The shooting continued as they ran; and from higher up the river bank, there broke out a loud shooting in the still night. There were fresh shouts; and then the noise of feet running. And, all the time the shooting and pounding continued inside the hut.
Cargunka and Monkton kept on the steady run. They carried the small canvas sack between them, by its two strong, rope grommets; and it weighed so heavily, that they staggered in the darkness, breathless, as they ran.
Behind them, the shouting grew louder. It seemed as if the whole of the inhabitants of the new “rush” town had been roused by the persistent shooting, and were arriving at a run.
“Leg it, my lad! Leg it!” said Cargunka grimly through his teeth, as the bigger man seemed to slacken his pace under the enormous strain. “It’ll be a quick lynch party if we’re caught!”
The big miner’s stride quickened at the remark, and as it did so, there came a dull heavy thud of a falling log, away behind them.
“They’ve unbottled ’em!” muttered Cargunka. “Now look out for squalls. Down here. Leg it, my lad! Leg it!… Where the devil’s the boat!”
The shooting had ceased now; and there was a hoarse murmur of talk, and shouted questions and threats.
Then a voice, a huge drunken voice, that Cargunka recognised:—
“It weren’t th’ jim-jams! It weren’t th’ jim-jams! It were sure a nigger! Look around fer a nigger, b’ys. Hic! I seen ’im! Sure, don’t the dawg niff ’im! Foller-on! Foller-on, Billy! Foller ’im!”
There ensued a babel of questions and further shouted talk; and then, just as Cargunka located the vague outline of the dingy in the darkness, there was a shout of:— “Get pine knots, boys, an’ try downstream, after Sandy’s dawg. Coom along!”
Cargunka and Monkton came to a clumsy stop at the bows of the boat.
“Now,” said Cargunka, huskily, “together!” And they swung the enormously heavy little sack of gold in over the bows.
“In wiv you, my lad!” said Cargunka; and ran to cast off the painter from the spike of rock.
“Cut it!” gasped out Monkton, who had tumbled himself heavily into the boat. “Cut the darn thing!”
“Get them oars out an’ don’t talk silly!” said Cargunka. “We ain’t leavin’ no cloos this trip; not if I knows it!”
The crowd of miners was now racing downstream towards them, along the top of the river bank. They were carrying a number of flaring pine knots. In front of everyone, a big man was running, staggering drunkenly from side to side and holding a blazing torch above his head with one hand, whilst with the other he held the end of a long piece of old lariat. The piece of the lariat was made fast to a big, pointed-eared wolf-dog, which was running along the top of the bank, with its nose close to the ground, tracking them without a whimper.
Cargunka gave just one comprehensive look, as he cleared the painter hitch. As he did so, there came the loud bang of a heavy six-shooter behind him, and the big wolf-dog flung itself up suddenly on its hind legs, its front legs pawing crazily at the air. Then it fell over on its back, kicking madly for an instant, and afterwards lay still.
“I guess that pup don’t smell us out none again,” said Monkton’s voice, as Cargunka whirled round towards the boat, with the painter loose in his fist.
The racing crowd of men had come to an almost instantaneous halt, and there was an extraordinary moment of complete silence. Cargunka could even hear the sharp, bubbling, resinous spluttering of the burning pine knots.
“You damned fool!” he said in a fierce whisper to Monkton, as he put his shoulder against the bow of the dingy, pushed off, and jumped smartly in over the bows.
And in that instant, the crowd which had halted in that strange immediate silence about the suddenly slain dog, came to life again.
A tremendous crash of revolver-fire broke the night; and hundreds of bullets splashed into the water all about them, with ugly, hissing plop-plop-plop sounds, as the crowd fired in the direction from which the shot had come.
“Pull, you fool!” said Cargunka. “See what you got us in for, wiv your damn silly ways! Pull!”
The crowd was charging down bodily now, towards where the boat had been moored, and the shooting had eased temporarily; for most of the weapons were empty. But, already, Cargunka and Monkton were ripping the dingy downstream with fierce strokes; so that when the crowd reached the place where the boat had been, they were a good couple of hundred yards away, and going well with the current.
“Was you reckoning we’d look better as sieves, than the way we was born an’ made?” said Cargunka, over his shoulder. “We’d ’a’ got away wivout a shot, if you hadn’t ’a gone an’ done that damn silly game! What was you thinkin’?”
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 61
