A Man to His Mate Part 21

Lund took a lurching step forward over the p.r.o.ne bodies of the men on the deck, that was splotched with blood.

"By G.o.d!" he said slowly, his arms opening, his great fingers outspread, his gaze on the girl, "by G.o.d!"

The girl's face altered. Her eyes grew frightened, cold. The retreating blood left her cheeks pale, and she wheeled and fled, dodging behind Tamada, who gave way to let her pa.s.s, his ivory features showing no emotion, closing up the fore companionway as Peggy Simms dived below.

Lund did not follow her. Instead, he laughed shortly and appeared to see Rainey for the first time.

"Jumped me, the bunch of 'em!" he said, his chest heaving, his breath coming in spurts from his laboring lungs. "Couldn't use my gun. But I licked 'em. d.a.m.n 'em! _Equals?_ h.e.l.l!"

He seemed to have a clear recollection of the fight. He smiled grimly at Deming, who glared at him, nursing his broken arm, then glanced at the man that Rainey had mastered.

"Did him up, eh? Good for you, matey! You didn't have to use your gun.

Jest as well, you might have plugged me. An' the gal had one, after all."

He seemed to ruminate on this thought as if it gave him special cause for reflection.

"Game!" he said. "Game as they make 'em!"

He surveyed the rueful, groaning combatants with the smile of a conqueror, then turned to the seamen.

"Here, you!" he roared, and they jumped as if galvanized into life by the shout. "Chuck a bucket of water over 'em! Chuck water till they git below. Then clean the decks. Off-watch, you're out of this. Below with you, where you belong. Jump!

"They all fought fair," he went on. "Not a knife out. Only Deming there, when he knew he was licked, tried to git my gun. Yo're yeller, Deming,"

he said, with contempt that was as if he had spat in the hunter's face.

"I thought you were a better man than the rest. But you've got yores.

Git down below an' we'll fix you up."

He strode over to Hansen, stolid at the wheel.

"Wal, you wooden-faced squarehead," he said, "which way did you think it was coming out? d.a.m.n me if you didn't play square, though! You kept her up. If you'd liked you could have chucked us all asprawl, an' that would have bin the end of it, with me down. You git a bottle of booze for that, Hansen, all for yore own Scandinavian belly. Come on, Rainey.

Tamada, I want you."

While Tamada got splints and did what he could for the badly shattered arm, Lund taunted Deming until the hunter's face was seamed with useless ferocity, like a weasel's in a trap.

"I wonder you fix him at all, Tamada," he said. "He wanted to cut you out of yore share. Called you a yellow-skinned heathen, Tamada. What makes you gentle him that way? You've got him where you want him."

Tamada, binding up the splints professionally, looked at Deming with jetty eyes that revealed no emotion.

Lund pa.s.sed his hand over his face.

"I'm some mess myself," he said, stretching his great arms. "Give me a five-finger drink, Rainey, afore I clean up. Some sc.r.a.p. h.e.l.l popping on deck, and a dead man in the cabin! And the gal! Did you see the gal, Rainey?"

Out of the b.l.o.o.d.y mask of his face his agate eyes twinkled at Rainey with a sort of good-natured malice. Rainey did not answer as he poured the liquor.

"Make it four finger," exclaimed Lund. "Deming's goin' to faint. One for Doc Tamada."

The j.a.panese excused himself, helping Deming, worn out with pain and consumed by baffled hate, forward through the galley corridor. Then he came back with warm water in a basin--and towels.

"After this cheery little fracas," said Lund, mopping at his face, "we'll mebbe have a nice, quiet, genteel sort of ship. My gun went overboard, didn't it? Better let me have that one you've got, Rainey."

He stretched out his hand for it. Rainey delivered it, reluctantly.

There was nothing else to do, but he felt more than ever that the _Karluk_ was henceforth to be a one-man ship, run at the will of Lund.

But the girl, too, had a weapon. He hugged that thought. She carried it for her own protection, and she would not hesitate to use it. What a girl she was! What a woman rather! A woman who would _mate_--not marry for the quiet safety of a home. Rainey thought of her as one does of a pool that one plumbs with a stone, thinking to find it fairly shallow, only to discover it a gulf with unknown depth and currents, capable of smiling placidness or sudden storm.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RIFLE CARTRIDGES

The girl did not appear for the evening meal. She had refused Tamada's suggestions through the door. Lund drank heavily, but without any effect, save to sink him in comparative silence, as he and Rainey sat together, after the j.a.panese had cleared the table. In contrast to the excitement of the fight, their moods had changed, sobered by the thought of the girl sitting up with her dead in the captain's room.

Rainey was bruised and stiffened, and Lund moved with less of his usual ease. The flesh of his face had been so pounded that it was turning dull purple in great patches, giving him a diabolical appearance against his naming beard.

"We've got to git hold of those cartridges," he said, after a long-pause. "Carlsen had 'em planted somewhere, an' it's likely in his room. Best thing to do is to chuck 'em overboard. Cheaper to dump the cartridges an' sh.e.l.ls than the rifles an' shotguns.

"You see," he went on, "Deming ain't quit. That's one thing with a man who's streaked with yeller, when he gits licked in the open an' knows he's licked proper, he tries to git even underhanded. He knows jest as well as I do that Carlsen was lyin' that time about there bein' no more sh.e.l.ls. O' course the skipper may have stowed 'em away, but I doubt it.

An' jest so long as he thinks there's a chance of gittin' at 'em, he'll figger on turning' the tables some day. An' he'll be workin' the rest of 'em up to the job."

"They can't do much without a navigator," suggested Rainey.

"Mebbe they figger a man'll do a lot o' things he don't want to with a rifle barrel stuck in his neck or the small of his back," said Lund grimly. "It's a good persuader. Might even have some influence on me.

Then ag'in it might not."

"Where is the magazine?" asked Rainey.

"In the little room aft o' the galley. We'll look there first. Come on."

"How about keys? Carlsen's must have been in his pockets. I didn't see them when I was hunting the morphine. We can't go in there." Rainey made a motion toward the skipper's room. Lund chuckled.

"I had my keys to the safe an' the magazine when I was aboard last trip," he said. "They was with me when we went on the ice. An' I hung on to 'em. Allus thought I might have a chance to use 'em ag'in."

The strong room of the _Karluk_ was a narrow compartment, heavily part.i.tioned off from the galley and the corridor. There was a lamp there, and Rainey lit it while Lund closed the door behind them. The magazine was an iron chest fastened to the floor and the side of the vessel with two padlocks, opened by different keys. It was quite empty.

"Thorough man, Carlsen," said Lund. "Prepared for a show-down, if necessary. Might have put 'em in the safe. Wonder if he changed the combination? I bet Simms didn't, year in an' out."

He worked at the disk and grunted as the tumblers clicked home.

"It ain't changed," he said. "No use lookin' here." But he swung back the door and rummaged through books and papers, disturbing a chronometer and a small cash-box that held the schooner's limited amount of ready cash. There was no sign of any cartridges.

"We'll tackle Carlsen's room next," he announced. "I don't suppose you looked between the bunk mattresses, did you?"

"I never thought of it," said Rainey. "I didn't imagine there would be more than one."

"I've got a hunch you'll find two on Carlsen's bunk. An' the sh.e.l.ls between 'em. He kep' his door locked when he was out of the main cabin an' slep' on 'em nights. That's what I'd be apt to do."