A Woman at Bay: or, A Fiend in Skirts

It was only a little bit after dark – and the night was not a dark one at that. Already the moon was shining down upon the world.

But around the immediate vicinity of the camp fire it seemed quite dark by contrast, and the light thrown back by the trunks of the trees rendered the scene a picturesque one.

Nick Carter had purposely been the last one to arrive at the trysting place, if such it may be termed; but he had been a close observer of the arrival of the others, nevertheless; and he accomplished that by arriving in the vicinity early in the day, and by later climbing among the boughs of one of the trees, from which perch he was enabled to watch the coming of his assistants.

Patsy came first. His eagerness led him to do that, and Nick had expected it; and as the detective watched his youngest assistant he was pleased to see the manner in which he made his approach.

Had Nick Carter, concealed in the boughs of the tree, been an enemy, instead of a friend, he could not have had one suspicion aroused by Patsy's manner.

The young fellow was most disreputable in appearance. His hair, and it was his own, too, he had managed to dye to brick-red hue. His face and his hands were grimy, and there was a considerable growth of beard upon the former. He wore good shoes – just out of a store, they appeared to be, and he carried a string of three other pairs, equally new, in one hand. His coat was much too large for him, and he had turned the sleeves back at the wrists for convenience. His hat had once been a Stetson; it had also quite evidently been a target for a shotgun.

When Nick first spied him he was walking along the track, whistling; but directly opposite the place of meeting he stopped, and, after a moment, he dived quickly over the fence into the woods, and approached with care the place which he finally selected for the fire.

And there he scraped some dried boughs together, made his fire, brought an old tie from the track to aid it, arranged his crane of green sticks, and, from a bundle that he carried slung upon one shoulder, he produced the kettle, a package of meat, some bread, and other articles, with which he began the preparation of his supper.

A little later a second figure appeared so suddenly out of the gathering gloom that neither Patsy, at the fire, nor Nick, in the tree, had any idea of its near approach.

"Hello, pal!" he said gruffly; and Patsy wheeled like lightning, with a gun already half drawn, to face him.

"Hello yourself!" he growled, not too cordially, and eying the newcomer suspiciously. "Who are you lookin' for?"

The other came slowly forward without deigning to reply to this direct question, and without so much as glancing again at Patsy; but he slung his own bundle on the ground, and, after a moment, stalked away in the gathering darkness again.

Presently he returned with another tie, which he dropped near the fire; and then he looked sullenly toward Patsy.

"Share up, or chuck it alone?" he demanded, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

"What you got?"

"As much as you have, and as good as you have."

"All right. I'm agreeable. Chuck it down."

Half an hour later, when it was almost dark, a third one appeared.

He was shorter and slimmer than the others, and the best dressed one of the three, although he was disreputable enough in all conscience.

He came noisily over the fence from the track, and the two at the fire could hear him long before he reached them. But they made no move. Anybody who approached them with as much noise as that was not to be dreaded, it appeared.

When he arrived within the circle of the firelight, he stopped and strangely enough began to laugh; and he laughed on, boisterously, amazingly, in fact; he laughed until there were tears in his eyes, and until he had to hold to a sapling near him for support.

"Aw, what's eatin' you?" called out one of the men from the fire. "What you see that's so funny; must be in your own globes. Come along inside if you wants to, and don't stand there awakin' up the dead."

"I ain't got any chuck of my own," he called back to them. "I was laughing to think how near I came to getting it – and didn't."

"Well, there's enough here for three – 'r four, for that matter. Come in and set down, pal."

And it was not until the meal was cooked, and spread out upon all sorts of improvised arrangements, that the fourth member of the party appeared – and he made his arrival in a most surprising manner.

He dropped literally among them, seemingly from the clouds – or the tree – just as they were beginning to eat; and he squatted beside them, and, reaching out without a word, helped himself to a hunk of the toasted meat, which he began to tear viciously with his teeth.

"Nice guy, ain't he?" said Patsy, leering at the one with whom he had agreed to share.

"Looks as if he might have come over in the steerage of a cattle ship, inside a rawhide, don't he?" assented the other, who was Chick. But neither Chick nor Patsy was at all assured that this new arrival was their chief, and they determined to play their parts to the end, or, at least, until they were absolutely certain.

In reality Nick Carter looked like a Sicilian bandit in hard luck. He certainly looked the Italian part of it, all right; but even among his rags there was some display of color, which an Italian is never happy without.

When the other referred to him in this slighting way, he raised his eyes sullenly toward them, and he also released his hold upon the food he was eating long enough to finger the hilt of his knife suggestively; for Nick was aware of the fact that not one of the three was sure of his identity, and he preferred not to make himself known just yet.

"Me understands da Inglis you spik," he muttered, in a sort of growl. "Better hava da care wota you say dees times. I hava da bunch uh banan in da tree ifa you want more chuck. Go getta it – you!"

He drew his knife quickly and leveled the point of it at the one whom the others had already christened 'Laughing Willie'; but Ten-Ichi, nothing daunted by the implied threat, only shrugged his shoulders, and went on eating.

"Go getta da banan, or I slice you up fora de chuck," repeated the supposed Italian, rising slowly from his seat by the fire and advancing toward Ten-Ichi; but he had not taken a step before he found himself looking into the muzzle of a pistol, and Patsy, in his capacity as host over the meal, said sourly:

"Sit ye down, dago, or I'll make a window of your liver. We're three friends enjoying a feast, and you're welcome to part of it if you want it, but if you make any more breaks, out you go – feet first, if you prefer it that way."

The Italian subsided with a grunt, and the meal continued undisturbed until all but Ten-Ichi, who appeared to have been really very hungry, had drawn back from the fire; and then it was that Chick made the remark about his hurrying that was mentioned in the beginning of this story.

But Nick had in the meantime managed to make it known to the others who he was, although he had said no word in reference to it. They each one of them knew that there might still be others concealed in the trees or somewhere near at hand watching them. There was no telling how many pairs of eyes had observed them when they entered the wood. Yeggmen are as cautious and as careful about what they do in the lonely places among their brethren as the cave man used to be in primitive times.

For they prey upon one another, those men, as readily as they prey upon society. Among them it is always merely a question of the survival of the fittest – and the fittest is always the quickest, and the strongest, or the most alert.

It was not likely that they would have this firelight to themselves for a very long time, and they knew it; and, in fact, it was not ten minutes after their meal was finished, and their pipes were alight, before, like shadows, three other men suddenly loomed beside the fire, as if they had sprung out of the ground.

And they stalked forward from three sides at once – came forward as if they owned the woods.

But not one of our four friends, already seated there, made a motion or uttered a word. They smoked stolidly on, but with their eyes alert for anything that might happen.

And then, out of the darkness around them, appeared three more figures, and then two more; and the eight, who had seemed to come together, grouped themselves with their backs to the fire, and gazed sullenly and silently down upon the four they found there.

CHAPTER III.

THE "KING'S" LIEUTENANT

The moment was an ominous one, and no one was better aware of the fact than Nick Carter. Everything depended now upon the perfection which his three assistants had attained in the parts they were to play.

The sudden coming of the eight yeggmen, arriving as they had, so closely together, could not be the result of mere chance, and Nick had no doubt that they were in reality members of the very gang he was seeking. For the detective had determined in the beginning that the headquarters of the gang was somewhere in this vicinity. Everything in his first investigations pointed to that. And if their headquarters were located near that wood, or below the track in the swamp, it was certain that they kept outposts stationed where the arrival of newcomers could be reported at once.

Thus the appearance of Nick Carter on the scene, and the coming of the others soon after his arrival, had doubtless been reported, and their actions carefully watched from the very beginning.

The detective was intensely glad now that his own actions, and those of his friends, had been so perfect – that is, perfect in the sense of creating the impression in the mind of a possible observer that they were strangers to one another. He knew perfectly well that if a watch had been kept upon them there could be no doubt in the minds of the watchers that the four men grouped around the fire were unknown to one another.

But here were eight burly men grouped around them, each standing in a position so that he could make himself extremely dangerous on the instant should he choose to do so. And there was no telling how many more might be concealed out there in the darkness of the woods around them.

It is not the fashion among yeggmen to welcome an addition to their party, no matter whether that addition is composed of one or of many. Sullen silence is the rule at first, during which each man studies the others. Suspicion is always the first impulse at such meetings. Their attitudes are exactly that of strange dogs which encounter each other for the first time, and walk round and round, with the hair on their backs raised, and with their tails straight out, every nerve on a tension, and every impulse prepared for mortal combat.

And people who have watched dogs while they go through with these mannerisms know that it requires only a few moments for them to determine whether they will be friends or foes, or if they will only politely tolerate the presence of each other on the scene.

So Nick Carter sat silent, making no movement, save to puff vigorously at the short pipe he was smoking; and so the others of his party did likewise; for the forces of the newcomers were much stronger.

This tableau – if tableau it could be called, continued for five minutes, and then one of the late arrivals cast aside the stub of a cigar he was smoking, and broke the silence.

"Where might you hoboes be from?" he demanded, in an even tone, and without a gesture of any kind.

Nobody made any reply whatever to this question, and after a moment he spoke again.

"Which one of you is the leader of this outfit?" he asked.

Again nobody replied to him; the assistants kept silent because they well knew that their chief would answer if he considered it wise to do so; and Nick remained silent merely because he did not consider that it was yet time to speak.

And now the spokesman of the other party addressed himself directly to Nick Carter, as being, doubtless, the fiercest and most villainous-looking one of the bunch.

"You heard me, didn't you?" he demanded.

"Yes; I heard you," was the calm reply.

"Hello! You can talk United States, can't you?"

"Quite as well as you, if necessary," was the cool response.

"You look like a dago."

"What I look like, and what I am, is none of your business – unless you show some authority for questioning me."

"Ho, ho, ho, ho! Hear him, my coveys! What do you think of that?" And then to Nick again: "What sort of authority do you expect me to show?"

Nick shrugged his shoulders, knocked out the ashes of his pipe, rose slowly to his feet, and stood facing the other calmly, as he responded:

"There is only one kind of authority, signor, in a party like this. You know what that is. I don't know you any more than I know these other guns around here. It may all be a put-up job, for all I know. I don't much care if it is. I am quite willing to fight you all, one at a time, if necessary – and with guns, or knives, or fists, as you please. I come here, and I get into a tree and wait. Why? Because I have been told of this place, and that always there is somebody around here. I thought I would see who the somebody was before somebody saw me. So I get myself into a tree. Pish! And then not only one, but two, and three arrive on the scene; and then eight more come. If you want to know who I am, and are brave enough to fight me, and man enough to lick me – then you'll know. If not – mind your own affairs, and leave me to attend to mine."

It was a long speech, and the others listened in absolute silence to the end of it. But the instant Nick ceased speaking, the man to whom he had addressed his remarks drew back his arm with a sudden motion, and drove his huge fist forward with the quickness of a cat.

Any other person than Nick Carter might have felt the force of that treacherous blow. Even he might have done so had he not been expecting it, and, therefore, been entirely ready for it.

But the bony fist of the man struck only the empty air, for Nick sidestepped in a manner that would have made Jim Corbett, in his palmiest days, green with envy; and the battering-ram flew past his ear harmlessly.

And then the man who had delivered it, before he could recover from the effect of his own effort, found himself seized in a viselike grip, raised from his feet, and hurled backward straight over the fire, and beyond it, so that he sprawled at full length among the bushes.

He leaped to his feet with a curse, and his hand flew to his hip pocket in search of a weapon; but he did not draw it forth again, for he found himself looking into the muzzle of an ugly-looking forty-four.

"Drop it!" Nick ordered sharply. "I didn't hurt you, when I might have done so easily. Are you satisfied?"

The anger of the man seemed to pass as quickly as it had arisen, and he grinned as he slowly resumed his former position beside the fire.

It was quite true that he was not hurt; it was equally true that he knew that this stranger might have hurt him severely had he chosen to do so, and have been entirely excusable for doing it too.

"All right, pard, you pass," he said. "What's your handle?"

"I'm called Dago John by them as know me. What's yours?"

"Hand – The guns call me Handsome, by way of shortening it. Shake?"

"Yes," said Nick; and they clasped hands for an instant. Then Handsome added:

"Who might these gazaboes be?"

"Search me, Handsome," growled Nick, resuming his seat, and beginning to refill his pipe. "If they ain't a part of your outfit, they sure ain't a part of mine."

Handsome wheeled upon Chick then.

"Who are you?" he demanded, "and where are you from?"

"I'm the 'Chicken'; they know me around Chicago, if they don't here. Maybe you've heard of me; but it don't make any difference whether you have or not. I'm the Chicken, all right; and it's Chick for short." Chick did not so much as move an eyelash while he made this retort; but his questioner was plainly affected.

"The Chicken!" he exclaimed. "The Chicken is dead. We got it straight. Shot by – "

"Shot by a cop, eh? That's the story, and it goes, all right. Only it happens that it wasn't the Chicken as was shot; cause why? The Chicken is here."

"Who was it, then?"

"It was a pal of mine. A likely gun he was, too. I jest changed hats with him when he slid under. The rest of the clothes didn't make no difference. They thought he was the Chicken – and it didn't hurt him any to have 'em think so, while it helped me a lot."

"All right, Chicken," said Handsome, extending his hand a second time. "I know about you. You're all right. Who are these other two?"

"Search me, Handsome. I reckon we're all strangers."

Handsome turned to Ten-Ichi.

"What's your handle, covey?" he growled.

Ten-Ichi's answer was a peal of demoniac laughter; and he laughed on and on interminably, slapping his thighs and flinging his arms around him after the manner of a man who is warming himself, until the faces of the others around him developed broad grins – and until the man who called himself Handsome brought him to with a sudden thrust of his arm which nearly took the breath out of the lad.

"What's eatin' you, you loon?" he demanded.

"I was laughing," replied Ten-Ichi, now as solemn as an owl.

"You don't say so! Were you? What at?"

"You. It is so funny that you should be called Handsome."

Handsome grinned with the others.

"Well," he said. "What's your name? Out with it!"

"I'm Tenstrike – Ten, for short. That's what."

"All right, Ten; you pass. You're harmless, I guess – unless you let out that laugh of yours at the wrong time. I would advise you not to do that. And you?" He turned now to Patsy, with a sudden whirl of his body. "You were the first of this bunch to get here. Who are you?"

"Sure," said Patsy, with a slow drawl, "I'm an Irishman, and me name doesn't matter to you. It's enough that they call me Pat. If ye don't happen to like it, sure you can call me Tim, or Mike, or Shamus, or any old thing that suits ye. And what am I here for, is it? Sure, I'm on a still hunt for a man I want to find. Mebby ye're after knowin' him."

"Maybe I am. Who is he?"

"Faith, I wish I knowed that. He calls himself Hobo Harry – that same!"

A dead silence followed upon this unlooked-for announcement. The boldness of it surprised Nick, startled Chick, and frightened Ten-Ichi, lest unpleasant results should come of it. But it was evident that Patsy knew his ground, and had prepared for this very moment, for he was cool and smiling, and he appeared to enjoy hugely the effect that his words had had upon the others.

It was Handsome who finally broke the silence that ensued; and he replied:

"That's a name, Pat – if that's your own handle – which isn't spoken lightly around these parts. What do you want with him?"

"By your l'ave, mister, I'll tell that to him when I find him. In the meantime, if youse be afther mindin' yere own business, it wouldn't hurrt ye any. Ye seem to be making of yerself a sort of highcockalorum elegantarium bosski. If ye tell me that ye know Hobo Harry, an' will take me to him, so's I can tell me story to him, mebby I'll answer ye; but not unless."

Again there was silence; and this time it was Nick who brought it to an end.

"Handsome," he said sharply, "who's this other bunch? What I want to know is, are they wid you?"

"They are," was the quick reply. Then he wheeled quickly to Patsy again, and added:

"Come with me – you – if you want to see the chief. I'll take you to him. The rest of you can wait where you are."

CHAPTER IV.

THE OUTLAW'S HOME

A dead silence reigned around that camp fire for several moments after the two departed; but then the seven strangers who were left seated themselves in various attitudes, filled their pipes – or lit the stubs of half-smoked cigars, produced from their pockets; and after that, little by little, conversation was indulged in.

The night was warm and balmy. There was no reason why any of them should seek other shelter than the boughs of the trees which already covered them; but Nick knew from the manner in which Handsome had left them that he expected to return, and that there was some other place near by to which he intended to take them – if the chief should say the word. And he saw now that Patsy, by rare forethought, had prepared for that very emergency.

More than an hour had passed before Handsome made his appearance again; and then he loomed suddenly beside the camp fire, as silently and as stealthily as an Indian. Even Nick Carter, who was on the alert for his approach, did not hear him coming.

"I'll take you now!" he said briefly to Nick. "The others can wait."

Without a word more he turned away again, and Nick, leaping to his feet, followed him in silence through the darkness.

The night was almost black in there among the trees, although the moon was shining above them; but nevertheless Nick had no difficulty in following his guide.

They made directly for the railway tracks, and crossed the fence that intervened; but when they reached the top of the grade, Nick's guide halted and faced him.

"You said you are Dago John," he said slowly. "Who might Dago John be, pard?"

"They call me Dago John because I look like an Italian, I suppose, although I am not one," replied the detective. "But I try to carry out the idea. If you have worked your way through the South at all, maybe you've heard of Sheeny John. It will do as well as Dago John. A name doesn't make much difference."

"It makes a sight of difference here, my friend. What's your lay?"

"Anything that I can turn my hand to – or my brains."

"You have an education?"

"Yes."

"Can you write a good hand?"

"It's my one fault that I can – too good a one."

"Have you looked through the screens?" (Been in prison.)

"Never yet – to stay there. What do you want to know all this for?"

"I've been telling the main guy about you."

"What about me?"

"I told him of your strength, for one thing. There isn't another man in our outfit who could lift me off my feet the way you did it."

Nick shrugged his shoulders.

"I could have done it as easily if you had been twice the man you are," he said contemptuously.

"There is no doubt of that. I don't bear you any ill will for it, either. Neither does the boss."

"And who may he be, Handsome?"

"Don't you know, Dago John?"

"Maybe I do, and again maybe I don't."

"Didn't you come here looking for him?"

"Maybe so."

"Well, who were you looking for?"

"Maybe the same one that the other fellow was looking for – maybe not."

"That's all right. You can come along, I guess. But I warn you to have a care what you say to him."

"Say to who?"

"To Hobo Harry. He isn't one to be trifled with."

"Say, Handsome, on the level now, is there such a person?"

"Sure there is. You'll find that out all right, too, before you are much older. Didn't you come up here to get into the gang? Isn't that what you are here for?"

"Sure thing; but, on the level, I didn't think that I could do it so easy."

Handsome laughed as if he were intensely amused.

"If you think that you are in it now, you are very much mistaken," he said, with a shrug. "We don't take men into the bosom of our family quite as easy as that. But with us there is always room for a good man, and he always has a chance to prove whether he is good or not. That is the sort of chance you are going to get."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"I will if you will agree to teach me that hold by which you threw me over the fire into the bushes a little while ago."

"Sure thing, Handsome. I'll teach you that, and a lot of others as well, if you wish. That is one of the ju-jutsu tricks."

"I've heard about that. It's all right, all right."

"Sure thing. Now, where are we going? Are we to stay here all night, Handsome?"

"Not quite."

"Tell me what is expected of me, then; where we are going?"

"I am to take you to the chief; to Hobo Harry himself, for he happens to be here to-night. It is only once in a while that he is here, too; but it happens that he is to-night. He is to interview you. Otherwise – that is, if he were not here, you would have to hang around on the outside until he showed up to pass upon you in person."