The Merry Anne

“Hit my shin. Hold on – feels like a boat. Guess you’d better come across.”

Without a moment’s hesitation the special agent turned to the left and plunged into the stream. At this point it was deeper, and he found himself submerged to the armpits. To save time he drew up his feet and swam across until his knees struck bottom. And then the three of them, – Van Deelen waited on the farther bank, – now dimly visible to each other, stood side by side feeling of the boat.

“You ‘ll have to come over here,” said Beveridge to the farmer, “and tell us if it’s your boat.”

Van Deelen had no mind to swim. “Can’t you strike a match?” he asked.

“Strike your aunt!” growled Beveridge, wringing his wet clothes.

“Well, say, that ain’t necessary anyhow. My boat’s the only one on the creek.”

“Why didn’t you say that before I swam over?”

“Well, I – ”

“You want to watch out or you ‘ll be coming down with brain fever one of these days. Come, boys, we ‘ll go back.”

“You think what he did was to take to the road back up there and set the boat adrift?” asked Pink.

“Of course.” The words came from the deeper water, where the special agent was already swimming back. A moment more and Dick and Pink were after him.

“Now, Mister van Deelen,” said Beveridge, when they had gathered together, “take us to the road.”

“It’s right back up-stream. You know where it is as well as I do.”

“Can’t we strike right over through the woods?”

“Why, yes, you could do – ”

“All right, Dick. It ‘ll be lighter when we get up out of this hole.”

They floundered through a hundred yards of undergrowth and finally came upon the open road. They were a dismal enough party. The water in their shoes gurgled when they moved and spurted out at the lacings in little streams. Other streams ran down their clothing to the road, where the sand drank them up. Beveridge was without coat or collar, and the others were nearly as dilapidated. The physical strain of the chase, and the loss of sleep, not to speak of Beveridge’s fight with McGlory, had worn them down nearly to the point at which nature asserts her peremptory claims, – but not one of them knew it. They did not know that they were a desperate spectacle in the eyes of the bewildered farmer; even if they could have stood in the light of day and looked full at one another, it is to be doubted if any of the three would have observed the deep-lined, white faces, the ringed eyes, of the other two. For the spirit of the chase was in them.

“Now, Mister Van,” said Beveridge, almost gayly, “how far is it to the next house?”

“Why – why – ”

“Don’t think too fast. A man died that way once.”

“There’s an empty house about a mile from here.”

“All right, we ‘ll make for that. I want you, Van Deelen, to hitch up a wagon and come on after us as quick as you can.”

The farmer turned at once and walked rapidly up the road.

“Spencer hasn’t much start of us,” said Beveridge, as the three men started in the opposite direction.

“He couldn’t have. It took him a good while to work down here in that boat. We ‘ll get him if he keeps the road.”

“He ‘ll have to do that. If he took to the woods, he would be lost in an hour – and that means starvation.”

Pink ventured a pleasantry, “Maybe he’s got a compass,” of which the special agent took not the slightest notice; but said, turning to Smiley, “How are your legs, Dick?”

“Fine. Trim as they make them.”

“Feel up to a dog trot?”

“Half a dollar even, I ‘ll beat you to the deserted house.”

“Hold on, don’t get to sprinting. Save your wind. An easy jog will do it.”

All three fell at once into an easy running gait, Smiley and Beveridge side by side, Pink laboring along in the rear.

Five minutes later Beveridge paused for breath. “We must have run nearly a mile by this time, boys.”

“Easily.”

“Not so loud. Doesn’t it look to you as if the road turned – up ahead there?”

It did look so; and as they went on toward the turning it grew plain that they were approaching a clearing.

“Wait, boys,” whispered the special agent. “This ought to be the place, – we don’t want to move quite so carelessly now. Dick, you go around to the left, and I ‘ll take the right; Pink, you give us two or three minutes and then move in quietly toward the clearing. In that way we shall all three close in together. Wait a few minutes now.”

The two men disappeared in the woods, one on each side of the road, and Pink was left alone in the shadows. At first he could hear now and then a low rustle as one or the other brushed through the bushes, but soon these sounds died away. He was standing in the shadow at the roadside, gazing with fixed eyes at the opening in the trees and stumps a hundred yards farther along. He wondered if the three minutes were up. It was too dark to use his watch. Waiting there under the stars, the minutes spun out amazingly; all sense of the passage of time seemed to have left him. He moved forward a few steps, – but no, it was too early; Dick and Beveridge had surely not had time to get to their positions. Still, what if he should wait too long, and not arrive in time to act in concert with the others?

Out on the Lakes, with a slanting deck underfoot and a dim shore-line somewhere off in the night, Pink’s soul would have thrilled in unison with the stars, but here, buried in the gloom of the pine stumps, – those straight, blackened poles that stood in endless monotony, – his soul was overwhelmed. A panic seized him; he knew he would be late; and he took to gliding along in the shadows, nearer and nearer, until, seeing plainly that the road swung around to the right, and that the clearing was overgrown with tall weeds and was surrounded by a stump fence, he paused again. His feet sinking at each step in the sand, he made no sound.

He stood motionless. Over the weeds he made out the sagging roof of a small building. Then, forgetting that his own figure was invisible against the black of the forest, he dropped to the ground and, flat on his face, wriggled forward. A row of sunflowers grew inside the fence. At one point was a cluster of them, standing out high above the weeds. Cautiously inch by inch he crept nearer. The bunched stalks, outlined so distinctly against the sky, fascinated him by their resemblance to the hat, head, and shoulders of a human being.

Nearer – nearer – a moment more and he would be able to place his hand against the fence. He was holding his breath now; afterward he could never tell what was the slight noise he must have made. Or perhaps it was the sense that tells one when a person has silently entered a room that caused the figure – just as Pink, lying there on the sand and looking up, had made sure that it was a figure and not a clump of sunflowers – to look around, up and down. Pink scrambled to his feet and plunged recklessly forward. The man, who had been sitting on the fence, quietly dropped down on the inner side.

A stump fence is not easy to climb, and Pink was on the outer side, where the tangled masses of roots spread out into a cheveau-de-frise which, in the dark, seemed insurmountable. When he had finally got to the top, at the expense of a few scratches, a disturbance in the weeds near the front of the house told him where the fugitive had taken refuge. He promptly set up a shout.

“Ho-o-ho!” came simultaneously from Smiley and Beveridge.

“Here he is!”

“Where?”

“In the – ” Pink was balancing on the fence. Before he could finish his shout a revolver shot sounded from the house, and he went tumbling down into the enclosure.

“What’s that! Are you hit?”

“No – just lost my balance. Close in – he’s in the house.” He was getting to his feet during this speech and feeling himself, not sure, in spite of his statement, whether it was the noise or the bullet that had upset him. But he could find no trace of a wound.

“Keep your places!” Beveridge was calling to the others. “Keep your places! Now then, Mr. Spencer, we have you cornered. You can have your choice of giving up now or being starved out. Which will it be?”

No answer from the house.

“Speak up! I don’t propose to waste much more time on you.”

This time the fugitive decided to reply; but his reply took the form of a second shot, sent carefully toward the spot in the weeds from which the voice seemed to be coming.

“Hi!” shouted Pink, “did he get you?”

“No. Shut up, will you?”

The man with the revolver was plainly an old hand, for now he fired a third time; and the shot came dangerously near, whether by luck or otherwise, to shutting up the speaker for all time. Beveridge dropped hastily behind a log that lay at his feet. Then, disgusted with himself, he scrambled boldly up and stood on the log.

Pink was obediently silent, ‘though trembling with excitement. The stillness of the forest fell suddenly in upon them. For a few moments nothing was said or done. The man in the house had a momentary advantage which all recognized. What light the sky gave was all upon the clearing, and to move, however cautiously, through that tangle of weeds and bushes without setting the tops to waving, was impossible. The building was so small that the man could, with little effort, command all four sides. And so Beveridge decided on a council of war with Smiley. At his first movement another shot came cutting through the bushes; but he laughed aloud, and went deliberately on in a quarter circle until he found Smiley. “Well,” he said softly and gleefully, “we’ve got him.”

“If we can keep awake as long as he can. What are you going to do now?”

“Wait till dawn, and see how he stands it. No, don’t look at me. Keep your eyes on the house. He’s too slippery to run chances with. It oughtn’t to be so very long now. How about you – can you keep up all right?”

“Me? Why, certainly.”

“All right, then. I ‘ll go around and take the boy’s place, so he can rest a bit. Keep a close watch. So long.”

“So long.”

The special agent went on around his circle, and found Pink near the fence. “I ‘ll be here for a while, Harper. You’d better try to get some sleep.”

“Me – sleep?”

“Take your chance while you have it.”

“Moses and the bulrushers! You don’t think I could sleep now?”

“Just as you like.”

To the three watchers there seemed to be a breakdown somewhere on the line that leads to dawn. The hours dragged until they stopped short. All the real things of this world, cities and schooners and houses on stilts and long reaches of blue water, had slipped back into the dim land of dreams. Nothing was real but the brooding forest, the rank weeds with their tale of desolation, the sand – sand – sand. Even Beveridge, sitting on his log, gave way. At each sound from the forest, – a crackle or a rustle, – he started like a nervous woman. Chilled by the night air and his wet clothes, he shivered until his teeth rattled.

A husky, plaintive voice rose into the night, singing. It came from Harper’s post near the stump fence.=

"A fu-nee-ral per-cession was a-passin’ down a streetThat was lin’d with mansions stately, rich, and grand;A tiny girl was sobbin’, her lit-tull heart most broke,A tear-stained hank-er-chuff was in her hand.A tall and stately gentlemun, touched by her sorry plight,For she was pale and ragged, thin and wan,He stopped and took her lit-tull hand, and gently bending o’er,‘Don’t cry, my child, I ‘ll help you if I can.’”=

All the horrors of the night and the forest were gathered up into that wailing voice. Beveridge shuddered. But Pink was warming up to it now, sharing his misery with the night. If the verse had been doleful, the refrain was worse: – =

“‘Mother’s in the coffun, sir,Mother’s left her home;The ainjulls come and took her up on high.But if I’m good and kindly, sir,And never off do roam,I ‘ll meet her in the sweet by-and-by.’”=

Beveridge rose uncertainly to his feet. The song went on: – =

“‘Tell me your name, my lit-tull child,’ the gentlemun did say,And when the words she lisping did repeat,He staggered back in horror with remorse wrote on his face,And – “=

At this point Beveridge began moving through the weeds. Pink sang on; and he was just breaking out into the refrain, – =

Mother’s in her coffan, sir,Mother’s left her home;

The ainjulls come and took her up – ‘”

when he heard a sound, started, looked up, saw a dark figure bending over him, and stopped singing with a gasp.

“That ‘ll do for you,” said the dark figure.

“Oh, it’s you!” exclaimed Pink, with relief. “That ‘ll do for you. Understand?”

Pink was silent. Beveridge slipped silently back to his log.

Night has a way of giving place to day, even such interminable nights as this. Neither hastening nor resting, with no heed for the miserable little company that surrounded the deserted house in the wilderness, the hours stepped silently on into eternity. The darkness slowly changed to blackness; then the east brightened, the sky paled, the new day tossed its first flaming spears, and the shivering dawn was upon them.

Beveridge got up very slowly, – for a new kind of pain was shooting through his joints, – stretched, and, walking bent, like an old man, cautiously made his way to Smiley’s post. The sailor was awake; but whether he had been awake all night could hardly be, decided from his face. Beveridge had his suspicions, but decided not to air them.

“Look here, Dick,” he began.

“All right. Go ahead.”

“How are your joints?”

“Never worse. How about yours?”

“Same way. I don’t know how you feel, but I’ve had enough.”

“Can’t help that, can we?”

“I can help it, and I’m going to.”

“I’d like to know how.”

“Keep your eyes open and you ‘ll see. I want you to stay here under cover.”

“You aren’t going to storm the house?”

“Yes, sir, that’s just what I’m going to do.”

“Have you thought it over? He ‘ll shoot you know.”

“There are two ways of leaving this world, Dick, that I know of. One way is to catch your death of rheumatism and go off slow; the other is to let a man who can handle a revolver make a neat, clean job of it. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I prefer the neat way. Now you wait here while I – ”

“Hold on, Bill. Here we have him nicely penned and our plan of siege all settled, when you up and change your tactics. I don’t see the use of putting yourself up for a target when we have him sure the other way.”

“That’s all right, Dick.”

“Here’s another thing. Wilson’s out of the running – suppose he puts you out too. What are Pink and I going to do? We have no authority to arrest the man. I’m not even sure that it would be to our interest to try it in such a case. Why not wait – just settle down to it. We can get something to eat from Van Deelen. Say, didn’t you tell him to follow us with the wagon last night?”

Beveridge indulged in a dry smile. “Yes, I did. But I didn’t more than half think he’d do it. You do as I tell you, Dick, and – ”

“Well, if your mind’s made up, I suppose – ”

Beveridge’s mind was made up. He set out without further words, and Dick watched him, uncertain of his movements, until he saw that he was circling around in the direction of the stump fence and Pink. Dick’s thoughts were unsettled. Such actions were foolhardy, now that it was nearly broad daylight. It would have been no trick at all to put a few balls into the body below the waving weeds that marked the progress of the special agent. For some reason, however, the shots did not come.

Between Dick and the house there was a comparatively open space. By stepping forward a few yards he would emerge into full view of the man in the house, whereas on Pink’s side the growth was rank, and Beveridge, if he should go directly to the house after giving Pink his directions, would not be visible until he should have nearly reached the door. But the telltale weeds! – there was something in the thought of Beveridge being shot down like a porcupine as he floundered through the tangle that made Dick shudder.

It would be better to walk straight out into the open and be done with it.

Peering from his hiding-place, he could see that all was quiet. Beveridge had reached Pink, and was probably talking with him. But he could not hear their voices – the clearing was absolutely still. He watched – and watched – his eyes fixed on the spot where Beveridge had stopped. Perhaps his arguments had taken effect; perhaps the plan had been changed. But no, the weeds were moving again.

Dick’s blood was up. He drew his revolver and plunged straight out into the open toward the house.

“Here you in there!” he shouted. “Come out or fight! Do you hear me? Come out or fight! We’ve got you on all sides – you can’t hit us all – come out and be done with it.”

The house was still. Beveridge heard Dick’s voice, and knew what he was doing. He tried to run forward, tripped, and fell headlong in the briers, cursing like a buccaneer. Pink heard both the voice and the tumble, and at the instant he too was fighting madly forward through the weeds. Could he be expected to obey orders? To sit and twiddle his thumbs while Dick was fighting? Not a sound came from the house.

Dick walked deliberately to the door and hammered with the muzzle of his revolver.

“Come out,” he called, “or I ‘ll smash it in.” He heard the man stir.

“Come out, or by – !”

The man was walking slowly across the floor. Dick went on shouting: —

“No tricks, now! Open your door! I’ve got a gun on you – I’ve got a gun on you!” The rusty old key turned and the door swung back. As it opened, Beveridge broke out of the weeds, with Pink close after, and the three men stood bewildered, motionless, staring at the square-built figure and quiet face of – Henry Smiley.

They could not speak. Even Beveridge had lowered his weapon.

“Put up your guns, boys,” said Henry, with a sort of smile. “Put up your guns; I ‘ll go back with you.”

CHAPTER XIV – HARBOR LIGHTS

BEVERIDGE recovered first, and said in a businesslike way, “You ‘ll have to give me your weapons.”

Henry at once handed over two large-caliber revolvers, and emptied his pockets of fully half a hundred cartridges. “It’s a lucky thing for you, Mister Beveridge,” he said, “that Dick came out just when he did. A minute more and I should have finished you.”

But Beveridge’s thoughts were not heading in the same direction. His reply was, “Where’s Spencer?”

“Spencer? You didn’t get him?”

“No.”

“Then he’s in Canada.”

“Oh, I see.” Beveridge turned to Smiley. “Well, Dick, for a man that got things exactly wrong, you came nearer to being right than I should have thought possible.”

As they walked back toward Van Deelen’s, Henry fell in with his cousin. “You don’t seem very talkative, Dick. Guess I must have surprised you.”

But Dick could not find his voice to reply.

“And you surprised me too, rather. How did you happen to be up here with this man?”

“Then you don’t know that he’s holding me for Whiskey Jim?” cried Dick.

“No – is he?”

Dick, overcome with fatigue and emotion, nodded. Henry stopped and turned to the special agent, who was walking close behind.

“You didn’t think Dick here was in this business, did you?”

“We ‘ll discuss that later. Move along, please.”

“But this won’t do, Beveridge. Dick has nothing to do with it, nothing whatever.”

“I suppose he didn’t know where his schooner went and what he carried aboard her, eh?”

“Oh, I can explain all that. He’s all right. I’m the man you want.”

“I ‘ll talk with you again, Mr. Smiley. We can’t stop now.”

They found Wilson in a bad way. Mrs. van Deelen had been doing her utmost during the night for her two patients, but to attempt moving either was out of the question. Beveridge left some money to cover the expense of caring for his subordinate, and Henry good-naturedly contributed toward the care of Estelle. It was arranged that Van Deelen should drive Beveridge and his party back to Spencer’s, stopping on the way to send Lindquist or his boy to Hewittson for a doctor. Nothing more could be done here, and so they hurried Van Deelen into hitching up at once. Beveridge could not sleep in comfort until his prisoner should be safe under guard on the revenue cutter.

“There’s one thing,” said the special agent to Henry Smiley, as the four haggard men climbed into the wagon that was to take them on the long drive through the forest, “there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t you fellows pick up a horse at one of these places and drive, instead of footing it, – with a woman along, too?”

“We did start in Spencer’s wagon, but it broke down before we’d gone ten miles, the road was so bad.”

“But we didn’t see it,” said Pink.

“We must have passed it on the first stretch before we found the road.”

“And then,” said Henry, “I thought we’d better stick it out on foot. You see, I didn’t believe it would occur to you that we would take to the woods. And even if it should, I thought we should have plenty of time before you started after us. I misjudged it there, you see. I was thinking hardest about the other end of it – about what we should do when we got down into Indiana, with maybe your men on the lookout for us everywhere. And then a horse is a give-away – you can’t hide it. And the road is so heavy with sand that it’s ‘most as quick to walk. I thought it all over and decided it that way. So we dragged the wagon off into the bushes, and led the horse off and shot him. But why didn’t you ride?”

“We didn’t get a chance until we reached Lindquist’s. And then we were so close on your trail – and I knew you were on foot – that I decided the same way. If we had been rattling along in a wagon, you might have heard us quarter of a mile ahead, and all you would have had to do then would be to step into the bushes and let us go by.”

At a few minutes before noon the party alighted from the wagon at Spencer’s wharf, where the Merry Anne still lay, waved a signal to the launch, and were carried out past False Middle Island to the Foote.

“I guess there isn’t much doubt what we ‘ll do next,” said Beveridge, with a yawn, as the launch drew near to the companion-ladder, which had been let down forward of the paddle-wheel.

“I guess there ain’t,” Pink replied with another yawn.

“One thing, Dick,” said Beveridge, “before we go away from here, – it isn’t right to leave your schooner in there for the porcupines to chew to pieces.”

Dick, who had been studying the bottom of the boat, looked up quickly and with a peculiar expression. After Henry’s confession, would he be allowed to sail her back himself? Beveridge caught the look, and for an instant his face showed the faintest trace of confusion. “You see,” he went on, “I’ve been thinking it over on the way back from Van Deelen’s. It’s rather an irregular thing to do, but I’m willing, if Captain Sullivan will let us have a few men, to turn the schooner over to Harper here. He’s competent to handle her, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes,” Dick replied in a dry voice, “he is competent enough.”

Pink’s eyes brightened. “Sure thing,” he said, “I can run her easy.”

Dick glanced at Pink, then dropped his eyes again. The boy had heard only the words; he had not caught the thoughts that were passing between his captain and the special agent. To Dick this decision, coming in the lull after the excitement, coming after what seemed to him proof of his innocence, sounded like the judge’s sentence. Through the hour or two that followed, during the dinner on the steamer, after the launch had gone back into the harbor with Pink and his crew, even when the old side-wheeler had raised her anchor and started on her lumbering way around through the Straits and up Lake Michigan to Chicago, Dick, lying dressed in his berth, was trying to puzzle out the meaning of Beveridge’s words and of the momentary confusion that had accompanied them. And it did not raise his spirits that, after each struggle with the problem, his thoughts were directed to Annie. Perhaps Beveridge himself, if he had laid his thoughts bare, could not have helped him much. For it was not reasoning that had shown him the tactical folly of allowing Dick to come sailing gloriously in to Annie’s very front door, – red shirt, neckerchief, and all the appurtenances of a hero; it was the instinct that made it impossible for him to resist holding every advantage that came to his hand. Beveridge had done a big thing. He had run down – killed or captured or driven out of the country – several members of the most skilful gang in the history of smuggling on the Great Lakes. He had done it alone. He was even beginning to put down his surprise over the capture of Henry Smiley, and to feel that Henry was the one man he had been after from the first. Yes, he had made his success – the thing left was to win Annie. And to do this he must not only see her before Dick could see her; he must also arrange that Dick’s appearance on the scene, when all the delays had been exhausted, should be an inglorious one. Some of his finest work was yet to come. In thinking it over, lying in his berth in the room next to Dick’s, their heads not two feet apart, he fell asleep with a smile on his lips. And never had the Foote seen such sleeping as followed. When all three men, accusers and accused, had slept through the afternoon and on through the night, when they failed to hear even the breakfast gong, Captain Sullivan began to wonder if they meant to wake at all.