In Mr. Knox's Country Part 32

I said to myself, waveringly: "Old blackguard! I won't touch it if he offers it to me."

M'Cabe went on fumbling:

"d.a.m.n these woolly gloves! I can't do a hand's turn with them."

In the dark I could not see what followed, but I felt him raise his arm. There was a jerk, followed by a howl.

"Hold on!" roared M'Cabe, with a new and strange utterance, "Thtop the horth! I've dropped me teeth!"

The driver did his best, but with the push of the hill behind her the mare took some stopping.

"Oh, murder! oh, murder!" wailed M'Cabe, lisping thickly, "I pulled them out o' me head with the glove, trying to get it off!" He scrambled off the car. "Give me the lamp! Me lovely new teeth----"

I detached the lamp from its socket with all speed, and handed it to M'Cabe, who hurried back on our tracks. From motives of delicacy I remained on the car, as did also the rest of the party. A minute or two pa.s.sed in awed silence, while the patch of light went to and fro on the dark road. It seemed an intrusion to offer a.s.sistance, and an uncertainty as to whether to allude to the loss as "them," or "it,"

made enquiries a difficulty.

"For goodneth'ake have none o' ye any matcheth, that ye couldn't come and help me?" demanded the voice of M'Cabe, in indignation blurred pathetically by his gosling-like lisp.

I went to his a.s.sistance, and refrained with an effort from suggesting the employment of that all-accomplished setter, the dentist's dog, in the search; it was not the moment for pleasantry. Not yet.

We crept along, bent double, like gorillas; the long strips of broken stones yielded nothing, the long puddles between them were examined in vain.

"What the dooth will I do to-morrow?" raged M'Cabe, pawing in the heather at the road's edge. "How can I plead when I haven't a blathted tooth in me head?"

"I'll give you half a crown this minute, M'Cabe," said I brutally, "if you'll say 'Sessions'!"

Here the Sergeant joined us, striking matches as he came. He worked his way into the sphere of the car-lamp, he was most painstaking and sympathetic, and his oblique allusions to the object of the search were a miracle of tact.

"I see something white beyond you, Mr. M'Cabe,"' he said respectfully, "might that be them?"

M'Cabe swung the lamp as indicated.

"No, it might not. It's a pebble," he replied, with pardonable irascibility.

Silence followed, and we worked our way up the hill.

"What's that, sir?" ventured the Sergeant, with some excitement, stopping again and pointing. "I think I see the gleam of the gold!"

"Ah, nonthenth, man! They're vulcanite!" snapped M'Cabe, more irascibly than ever.

The word nonsense was a disastrous effort, and I withdrew into the darkness to enjoy it.

"What colour might vulcanite be, sir?" murmured a voice beside me.

Jerry had joined the search-party; he lighted, as he spoke, an inch of candle. On hearing my explanation he remarked that it was a bad chance, and at the same instant the inch of candle slipped from his fingers and fell into a puddle.

"Divil mend ye for a candle! Have ye a match, sir? I haven't a one left!"

As it happened, I had no matches, my only means of making a light being a patent tinder-box.

"Have you a match there?" I called out to the invisible occupants of the car, which was about fifteen or twenty yards away, advancing towards it as I spoke. The constable politely jumped off and came to meet me.

As he was in the act of handing me his match-box, the car drove away down the hill.

I state the fact with the bald simplicity that is appropriate to great disaster. To be exact, the yellow mare sprang from inaction into a gallop, as if she had been stung by a wasp, and had a start of at least fifty yards before either the carman or the constable could get under weigh. The carman, uttering shrill and menacing whistles, led the chase, the constable, though badly hampered by his greatcoat, was a good second, and the Sergeant, making the best of a bad start, followed them into the night.

The yellow mare's head was for home, and her load was on its own legs on the road behind her; hysterical yelps from the dentist's dog indicated that he also was on his own legs, and was, in all human probability, jumping at the mare's nose. As the rapturous beat of her hoofs died away on the down-grade, I recalled the a.s.sertion that she had pulled the lungs out of two men, and it seemed to me that the prisoner had caught the psychological moment on the hop.

"They'll not ketch him," said M'Cabe, with the flat calm of a broken man, "not to-night anyway. Nor for a week maybe. He'll take to the mountains."

The silence of the hills closed in upon us, and we were left in our original position, plus the lamp of the car, and minus our guns, the dentist's dog, and M'Cabe's teeth.

Far, far away, from the direction of Coppeen Road, that sinister outpost, where evil rumours were launched, and the night trains were waylaid by the amber-bushes, a steady tapping sound advanced towards us. Over the crest of the hill, a quarter of a mile away, a blazing and many-pointed star sprang into being, and bore down upon us. "A motor-bike!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed M'Cabe. "Take the light and thtop him--he wouldn't know what I wath thaying--if he ran over them they're done for! For the love o' Merthy tell him to keep the left thide of the road!"

I took the lamp, and ran towards the bicyclist, waving it as I ran.

The star, now a moon of acetylene ferocity, slackened speed, and a voice behind it said:

"What's up?"

I stated the case with telegraphic brevity, and the motor-bicycle slid slowly past me. Its rider had a gun slung across his back, my lamp revealed a crammed game-bag on the carrier behind him.

"Sorry I can't a.s.sist you," he called back to me, keeping carefully at the left-hand side of the road, "but I have an appointment." Then, as an afterthought, "There's a first-rate dentist in Owenford!"

The red eye of the tail light glowed a farewell and pa.s.sed on, like all the rest, into the night.

I rejoined M'Cabe.

He clutched my arm, and shook it.

"That wath Jefferth! _Jefferth_, I tell ye! The dirty poacher! And hith bag full of our birdth!"

It was not till the lamp went out, which it did some ten minutes afterwards, that I drew M 'Cabe from the scene of his loss, gently, as one deals with the bereaved, and faced with him the six-mile walk to Owenford.