The crowd had fallen back a little now, sensing that the mood of the events had changed, as Lee and the bear and the Captain walked on towards the five men who stood between them and the schooner. Hester was checking all around for other figures lurking in the alleys between the warehouses, or at a window above, or across the water on the west quay; for a handy shot with a good rifle could pick them off easily.
Lee was very conscious of the sound of their boots on the flagstoned quay, of the ceaseless scream of seagulls, of the chugging of the steam crane across the water and the clank and crash of the great bucket as it unloaded coal from the hold of the tanker and dumped it in the wagons. Every separate sound was bright and clear, and Lee and Hester both heard the little click at the same moment. It was the sound of a revolver being cocked, and it came from up ahead, Lee thought; but Hester’s ears could pinpoint an ant on a blade of grass, and she said at once, ‘Second man, Lee.’
The men were standing abreast in a line about fifteen yards ahead. Three of them were holding cudgels or sticks, but the other two had their hands behind their backs, and before Hester had finished saying ‘Lee’, Lee’s pistol was in his hand and pointing straight at the second man from the left.
‘You drop that gun right now,’ Lee said. ‘You just let go and let it fall behind you.’
The man had stiffened in surprise. He probably hadn’t expected Lee to move so fast, and quite possibly no one had pointed a gun at him with intent before; he was just a boy no older than twenty. His eyes widened and he swallowed nervously before dropping the pistol.
‘Now kick it over here,’ Lee said.
The boy groped behind him with the toe of his boot and sent the pistol bouncing over the flagstones. The Captain bent to pick it up.
Then the man at the right of the line, the other man with his hands behind his back, did a stupid thing: he swung his right hand round and fired a shot from the big pistol he was holding.
But he didn’t take time to aim properly, and the bullet went over Lee’s head. The crowd behind screamed and scattered, but Lee had fired before the first cry arose, and his bullet caught the man’s hip and spun him round so that he fell right at the edge of the quay, and then, unable to hold himself safe, he fell into the water, taking the gun with him. His cry was caught short by the splash.
Lee said to the other men, ‘Now he’s going to drown unless you pull him out. You don’t want that on your conscience. Hurry up and do that, and get out of our way.’
He strode forward. The other men fell aside sullenly, and two of them slouched to the help of the man in the water, who was now splashing and shouting with pain and fear.
‘Let me see that pistol, Captain,’ said Lee, and the Captain handed it to him. It was a cheap and flimsy piece, and the barrel had bent when the boy dropped it. Anyone who fired it would be in danger of losing his hand. Lee tossed it into the water with regret, because he knew, in the moment he squeezed the trigger of his own revolver, that the cylinder had stuck for good. That was the one shot he was going to get.
‘I’m going to need that rifle of yours real soon, Captain,’ he said.
He put his gun back in the holster and looked around. The crowd behind was much bigger now, and the sounds had changed: across the water, the steam crane was still, the operator and the ship’s crew staring across at the place where the shots had come from. In the absence of the clank and crash of the great bucket, Lee could hear the steady chugging of the dredger near the harbour mouth, and the excited murmur of the crowd behind.
The three of them moved on. They were not far from the schooner now, and Lee could see the crew gathered on the poop, watching wide-eyed as the little group made its way along the quay towards them.
But then one of them pointed at something back in the town, and the others shaded their eyes to look, and Hester said, ‘Lee, you better look and see what’s coming.’
By this time they were level with the stern of the ship, and opposite the last warehouse. A little alley ran between that and the one before it. Lee looked down the alley, looked up at the two rows of windows in the warehouse façade, looked across the harbour at the steam crane and the coal tanker, checking everything before looking back where Hester was indicating, and he noticed the bear doing the same.
‘What the hell is that?’ said the Captain hoarsely.
A large machine powered by some kind of gas-engine was making its way along the waterfront, and turning on to the quay. In the moment or two Lee saw it in profile he remembered the model he’d seen the night before in the parlour behind the stage at the town hall – the model of the gas-gun the Larsen Manganese people had been showing off. It was monstrous. The steel wheels and the half-track behind were grinding their way along the flagstones, and the crowd shrank back against the Harbour Master’s office wall to make room for it.
‘A gun?’ said Iorek Byrnison.
‘Yep,’ said Lee.
‘I do this.’
And the bear turned and ran silently into the alley.
‘Captain, the rifle, if you please,’ said Lee. ‘Right now.’
‘Oh ja. Ja. Mr Mate!’ the Captain bellowed, and a voice from the rail called:
‘Aye, skipper!’
‘Mr Johnsen, would you go and bring my rifle and the box of ammunition from the lazaret, if you please. Look lively.’
Further down the quay, the gun had stopped. The crowd was backing away to give it room. A man in maroon stood beside it, and shouted something through a megaphone which was utterly incomprehensible. Lee spread his hands wide.
The man shouted again, and again it was impossible to understand him. Lee shook his head.
Someone ran down the gangplank behind him, and hurried up to the Captain. A moment later, van Breda handed the rifle to Lee.
‘Oh, thank you, Captain. Well, my sweet Aunt Betsy! A Winchester! How about that?’
‘You know this rifle?’
‘Best there is. And in good order, too.’
He swiftly filled the magazine, cursing his carelessness over the pistol, and enjoying the feel of a well-balanced and well-oiled piece of machinery. He felt much better having it in his hands.
‘Captain,’ he said, ‘this is the warehouse, this one right here?’
‘It is.’
‘Do you know exactly where your cargo is stowed?’
‘Yes. All we need to do is open the door.’
Lee took a handful of cartridges from the box and dropped them into his pocket, then turned to look back along the quay.
For the gas-gun had resumed its grinding forward movement, and Lee could see now how it was crewed: it looked like one man to drive it, two to fire and reload. The long barrel rose and swung from left to right and back again, before settling on the stern of the schooner. It was a thing to smash down buildings with, a thing to sink a ship, and Lee thought that if they fired it just once it would be the end of this adventure, and the end of him, too.
It came closer, and Lee lifted the rifle to his shoulder. It was nearly at the end of the middle warehouse, just opposite the alley between that and the next to last, and Lee’s finger tightened on the trigger –
But before anything else happened, there came a thunder of feet and a roar such as Lee had never heard, and out of the alley burst Iorek Byrnison, to hurl the huge weight of himself against the bulk of the gun.
Lee gave a cry of surprise – he couldn’t help it.
The gunners cried out in alarm as the wheels and the track skidded and scraped on the stone. Iorek’s first smash had swung the front of the gun round so that the barrel was pointing out over the harbour, and the driver desperately hauled at the brake; but then Iorek set his shoulder to the side of the carriage, and heaved and shoved until the two front wheels had rolled over the edge, and the whole gun tilted forwards. The gunners were shouting with alarm and struggling to swing the barrel back round, and then Iorek shoved again and the gun went off with a flash of fire and smoke and a deafening bang, sending a shell
skipping across the water, right into the side of the quay beside the coal tanker. It exploded with a plume of water, and rock hurled high into the air, scattering the ship’s crew and the crane driver. But few noticed them, because the blast of the gun had infuriated Iorek, and now he had his claws under the rear of the carriage, and while the engine roared and the caterpillar tracks screamed on the stone, the bear straightened his back with an immense effort and heaved the whole weapon and its three-man crew into the water with a huge splash. One of the men jumped clear; the other two disappeared with the gun.
Cheers from the ship’s crew, a yell of delight from Lee.
The bear dropped to all fours again and sauntered along to join Lee at the schooner.
‘Well, I’d hate to see you get angry, York Byrnison,’ said Lee.
Across the water, the crew of the coal tanker were cautiously inspecting the damage to the wharf. The crane driver was shaking his head at the bosun, who was yelling at him to get back to work, and the driver in charge of the rail trucks was running back from the engine to see what had happened. Even the dredger had stopped work for a minute, but presently the steady chugging resumed.
For the moment, no one was moving among the crowd further down the quay. Lee looked around more carefully. To his right as he faced towards the town loomed the bulk of the warehouse: a three-storey building in grey stone, with a row of windows on the top and middle floors. The massive doors were of steel, and opened inwards. Projecting from the centre of the wall above the top floor, just under the eaves, was a beam and tackle for lifting goods directly up. The sun was bright now, for the clouds had blown away, and it shone full on the warehouse front from over Lee’s left shoulder when he faced down the quay.
Behind him, the Captain was shouting orders, and Lee heard a muffled bang from below decks, followed by a coughing throb, which told of the detonator starting the heavy-oil engine. On the foredeck, two sailors were busily removing the cover from the forward hatch, while another man was checking the tackle on a derrick that had been rigged over it on the foremast.
Suddenly Hester said, ‘Top floor right, Lee.’
He swung the rifle up towards the warehouse and saw what she’d seen: a flicker of movement behind the third window in from the end. He kept the rifle trained directly on it, but saw no more movement.
Iorek Byrnison stood beside Lee, glaring down the length of the quay towards the crowd. The Captain and the mate came down to join them.
‘Now, Mr Mate,’ said Lee, ‘how you going to move that cargo of yours?’
‘It’s on trucks,’ the mate said. ‘We set it all up ready before they locked us out. It won’t take half an hour.’
‘Right. Captain, tell me this: what’s the layout in the warehouse? What do we see when we open the door?’
‘The space is fully open. There are columns, I don’t know how many, stone columns supporting the floors above. On the ground floor at present there are mostly bundles of furs and skins. My cargo is near the far wall on the left-hand side, stacked ready on trucks.’
‘These bundles of skins – how high are they stacked? Can I look right across the whole space in there, or are they too high to see over?’
‘Too high, I think.’
‘And what about stairs?’
‘In the centre at the back.’
‘And the upper floors?’
‘I don’t know what –’
‘Lee! Top left!’ said Hester, and in the same moment Lee caught a flash of sunlight as a window opened.
He swung the rifle up, and that must have put the sharp-shooter off, because the one snatched pistol shot went past him and thudded into the deck of the schooner. Lee fired back at once. The window shattered, scattering broken glass down three floors to the ground, but there was no sign of the gunman.
Iorek Byrnison looked up briefly, and then said, ‘I open the door.’
Lee half expected to see him charge and flatten it in one rush, but the bear’s behaviour was quite different: he touched the steel door several times in different places with a claw, tapping, pressing, touching with the utmost delicacy. He seemed to be listening to the sound it made, or feeling for some quality in the resistance it offered.
Lee and Hester were standing back from the building, at the edge of the quay, from which point he could see all the windows.
‘Lee,’ said Hester quietly, ‘if that’s McConville in there –’
‘Ain’t no if, Hester. I’ve known he was in there from the first.’
‘Mr Scarsby,’ said the bear, ‘shoot a bullet at this spot.’ He scratched an X at a point near the upper hinge of the right-hand door.
Lee looked up to make sure the gunman at the window was still out of sight, checked back along the quay to see the crowd hanging back still, unwilling to come closer just yet, checked with the Captain that the men were ready.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now this is what we’ll do. York Byrnison and I will open the door, and I’ll go in first. There’s a gunman in there – maybe more than one – and I want to make sure they’re not intending any unpleasantness. If you take my advice, Mr Mate, you and your crew will wait on board and out of sight till you hear from me or York Byrnison that the place is safe.’
‘You expecting more trouble?’
‘Oh, I always expect trouble. York Byrnison, you ready?’
‘Ready.’
‘Here goes.’
He lifted the rifle, took aim at the X on the door, and fired. A neat hole appeared in the steel sheet, and that was all; but then Iorek Byrnison reached out a paw and pushed gently, and the entire door fell inwards with a deafening crash.
At once Lee leapt past Iorek and ran into the warehouse, making for the open staircase he could dimly see straight ahead.
And at the same moment a shot blazed out from dead ahead, somewhere in the ranks and rows of stinking bundles. The bullet clipped the shoulder of Lee’s coat, feeling like the clutch of a ghost, and then came a cry and a crash from the ship outside. Lee stopped and took cover behind a row of bales. Stupid to rush in like that, he thought: after the bright sun on the quayside, this was almost like night, and his opponent’s eyes were already well adjusted.
‘Where is he?’ came the bear’s voice from behind him.
‘He fired from dead ahead,’ said Lee quietly. ‘But there’s at least one other man upstairs. If you take this one, I’ll go on up and deal with him.’
As he said that, he heard another shot, and another, from above, and a cry of distress and alarm from the ship. Lee and Iorek ran at the same moment – Lee lightly for the stairs, with Hester bounding ahead, and Iorek slow and ponderous for the first two or three steps as he drove against the inertia of his great bulk, but once moving he was unstoppable. Lee, halfway up the open iron staircase, saw bales of fur and skins hurled aside like thistledown, and then came two or three quick shots and a scream of fear, suddenly cut short in a hideous grunt.
More shots from high up. Lee leapt up to the next floor, which was largely empty, with just a few wooden cases resting on pallets near the back wall; but it was much lighter here, with sunlight pouring in through the long line of windows.
And there was no one in sight.
Lee doubled back and made for the next flight of stairs. He couldn’t run silently on these bare floors, and he knew that the man up there would hear him coming and have plenty of time to line up a shot towards the top of the stairs. He stopped just below the level of the upper floor, and raised his hat high on the rifle barrel, and at once a shot spun it round and round – a good shot, instant and accurate.
But it told him where the man was shooting from: the far corner, on the right as you looked at the warehouse from the quay. Lee stopped and considered.
What he didn’t know was how clear the floor was, whether there were barrels or boxes for the other man to hide behind, or whether he would have a clear shot to the corner.
Nor did he know whether McConville was alone, or whether he had an accom
plice who could shoot Lee in the back from the other corner. After all, the window that had opened when Lee was outside was on the left.
He looked at the staircase he was standing on. The steps were open ironwork, about ten feet wide, and they led up towards a landing at the back wall of the warehouse. His best chance was to take it at a run, hope to avoid any bullets, and shoot fast as soon as he could.
‘Lee,’ whispered Hester, ‘pick me up.’
He bent to lift her. She wanted to listen, and the higher she was the better. She sat tensely in his arms, flicking her ears, and then whispered:
‘There’s two of ’em. One left, one right.’
‘Just two?’ he whispered back.
‘There’s something in the way – maybe barrels. Use that smokeleaf tin.’
He put her down and fished in his waistcoat pocket for the tin he kept his cigarillos in. He tipped the last three out and slipped the tin back, keeping the lid. He’d polished the inside to a bright gloss until it was almost as good as a mirror.
The floor above was a foot or so over his head: heavy pine boards, with an iron flange at the edge and a guardrail around the opening for the stairs.
Moving cautiously up to the next step and keeping his head low, Lee lifted the tin lid up very slowly close to the nearest stanchion of the rail, and tilted it so he saw along the floor and towards the right-hand corner, where the shot had come from. He could see no one, but that was because a row of heavy barrels stood in the way: two rows, in fact, one stacked on top of the other, separated by the pallets the barrels were standing on.
Lee knew well how small a movement would catch a watching eye, and taking infinite pains to move slowly, he turned the lid round to face the other corner. That side was empty, apart from some piece of machinery under a tarpaulin, and Lee could see the gunman clearly, standing behind it and looking over the top, with his rifle pointed just above where Lee was standing. It was not McConville.
Once Upon a Time in the North Page 5
