Never-Fail Blake Part 18

"Then it's a good thing I got up with you."

The sick man rolled his eyes in their sockets, so as to bring his enemy into his line of vision.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I 'm not going to let you die," was Blake's answer.

"You can't help it, Jim! The jig 's up!"

"I 'm going to get a litter and get you up out o' this h.e.l.l-hole of a swamp," announced Blake. "I 'm going to have you carried up to the hills. Then I 'm going back to Chalavia to get a doctor o' some kind.

Then I 'm going to put you on your feet again!"

Binhart slowly moved his head from side to side. Then the heat-lightning smile played about the hollow face again.

"It was some chase, Jim, was n't it?" he said, without looking at his old-time enemy.

Blake stared down at him with his haggard hound's eyes; there was no answering smile on his heavy lips, now furzed with their grizzled growth of hair. There seemed something ignominious in such an end, something futile and self-frustrating. It was unjust. It left everything so hideously incomplete. He revolted against it with a sullen and senseless rage.

"By G.o.d, you 're not going to die!" declared the staring and sinewy-necked man at the bedside. "I say you 're not going to die. I 'm going to get you out o' here alive!"

A sweat of weakness stood out on Binhart's white face.

"Where to?" he asked, as he had asked one before. And his eyes remained closed as put the question.

"To the pen," was the answer which rose Blake's lips. But he did not utter the words. Instead, he rose impatiently to his feet. But the man on the bed must have sensed that unspoken response, for he opened his eyes and stared long and mournfully at his heavy-bodied enemy.

"You 'll never get me there!" he said, in little more than a whisper.

"Never!"

XVI

Binhart was moved that night up into the hills. There he was installed in a bungalow of an abandoned banana plantation and a doctor was brought to his bedside. He was delirious by the time this doctor arrived, and his ravings through the night were a source of vague worry to his enemy. On the second day the sick man showed signs of improvement.

For three weeks Blake watched over Binhart, saw to his wants, journeyed to Chalavia for his food and medicines. When the fever was broken and Binhart began to gain strength the detective no longer made the trip to Chalavia in person. He preferred to remain with the sick man.

He watched that sick man carefully, jealously, hour by hour and day by day. A peon servant was paid to keep up the vigil when Blake slept, as sleep he must.

But the strain was beginning to tell on him. He walked heavily. The asthmatic wheeze of his breathing became more audible. His earlier touch of malaria returned to him, and he suffered from intermittent chills and fever. The day came when Blake suggested it was about time for them to move on.

"Where to?" asked Binhart. Little had pa.s.sed between the two men, but during all those silent nights and days each had been secretly yet a.s.siduously studying the other.

"Back to New York," was Blake's indifferent-noted answer. Yet this indifference was a pretense, for no soul had ever hungered more for a white man's country than did the travel-worn and fever-racked Blake.

But he had his part to play, and he did not intend to shirk it. They went about their preparations quietly, like two fellow excursionists making ready for a journey with which they were already over-familiar.

It was while they sat waiting for the guides and mules that Blake addressed himself to the prisoner.

"Connie," he said, "I 'm taking you back. It does n't make much difference whether I take you back dead or alive. But I 'm going to take you back."

The other man said nothing, but his slight head-movement was one of comprehension.

"So I just wanted to say there's no side-stepping, no four-flushing, at this end of the trip!"

"I understand," was Binhart's listless response.

"I'm glad you do," Blake went on in his dully monotonous voice.

"Because I got where I can't stand any more breaks."

"All right, Jim," answered Binhart. They sat staring at each other.

It was not hate that existed between them. It was something more dormant, more innate. It was something that had grown ineradicable; as fixed as the relationship between the hound and the hare. Each wore an air of careless listlessness, yet each watched the other, every move, every moment.

It was as they made their way slowly down to the coast that Blake put an unexpected question to Binhart.

"Connie, where in h.e.l.l did you plant that haul o' yours?"

This thing had been worrying Blake. Weeks before he had gone through every nook and corner, every pocket and crevice in Binhart's belongings.

The bank thief laughed a little. He had been growing stronger, day by day, and as his spirits had risen Blake's had seemed to recede.

"Oh, I left that up in the States, where it 'd be safe," he answered.

"What 'll you do about it?" Blake casually inquired.

"I can't tell, just yet," was Binhart's retort.

He rode on silent and thoughtful for several minutes. "Jim," he said at last, "we 're both about done for. There 's not much left for either of us. We 're going at this thing wrong. There's a lot o'

money up there, for somebody. And _you_ ought to get it!"

"What do you mean?" asked Blake. He resented the bodily weakness that was making burro-riding a torture.

"I mean it's worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to you just to let me drop out. I 'd hand you over that much to quit the chase."

"It ain't me that's chasing you, Connie. It's the Law!" was Blake's quiet-toned response. And the other man knew he believed it.

"Well, you quit, and I 'll stand for the Law!"

"But, can't you see, they 'd never stand for you!"

"Oh, yes they would. I 'd just drop out, and they 'd forget about me.

And you 'd have that pile to enjoy life with!"

Blake thought it over, ponderously, point by point. For not one fraction of a second could he countenance the thought of surrendering Binhart. Yet he wanted both his prisoner and his prisoner's haul; he wanted his final accomplishment to be complete.

"But how 'd we ever handle the deal?" prompted the tired-bodied man on the burro.

"You remember a woman called Elsie Verriner?"

"Yes," acknowledged Blake, with a pang of regret which he could not fathom, at the mention of the name.