The Luck of the Mounted Part 25

His commands were eagerly obeyed. Sheltered by the roaring burst of carbine fire he wriggled sideways in feverish haste and eventually gained the stricken man. The latter's convulsive threshing of limbs had ceased and an instant's examination convinced the inspector that Gully's random shot had been fatal.

For awhile the besiegers poured in brisk volleys upon the door and windows, until the inspector gave the command to "Cease Fire!"

Suddenly--mockingly--hard upon the last shot, the echoes of which had barely died away, came again the vicious, whip-like crack of the Luger; this time from the southern end of the shack. The long-drawn, nerve-shattering scream of the first casualty was duplicated, and a carbine volley crashed from the river bank.

Then up from the attacking party swelled an exceeding bitter, angry cry; the grim, deadly exasperation of men goaded to the point of recklessly attempting ruthless reprisal upon their hidden enemy. With a total disregard of personal safety many of them sprang up out of cover, as if to charge upon their hated objective.

"As you were! Back, men! back!" rang out the deep, imperious voice of Kilbride. The stern command checked the onrush of maddened men. "D'you hear me?" he thundered, "Take cover again immediately--everyone. . . .

I'll give the word when to rush him, and that's not yet."

It said much for the discipline of the Force that his commands were obeyed, albeit in somewhat mutinous fashion. The inspector turned to Slavin with fell eyes. "Christ!" he said, "there's two men gone! I won't chance any more lives in this fashion! I'll give him ten minutes to surrender and if he don't give up the ghost then . . . . I'll do what an emergency like this calls for--what I came prepared to do, if necessary. Sergeant! take charge of this side until further orders; I'm going down the bank to the other party awhile."

He stole away through the brush and presently they all heard his stentorian tones ring out from the river bank. "Gully! oh, Gully! It's Inspector Kilbride speaking. I'll give you ten minutes to come out and give yourself up. If you don't--well! . . . I've got a charge of dynamite here . . . and a fuse, and I'll blow you and your shack to h.e.l.l, my man. It's up to you--now!"

There was no response to the inspector's ultimatum. Amidst dead silence the prescribed time slowly pa.s.sed. Fifteen minutes--then, a gasping murmur of excitement arose from those on the eastern front, as in the rapidly whitening dawn they saw Kilbride suddenly reappear around the northern and blank end of the building. For some few moments they watched his actions in awe-struck, breathless silence as, with bent back, he busied himself with his dangerous task.

Presently he straightened up. "Now! Look out, everybody!" he bawled.

He struck a match and applied it to something that immediately began to splutter, and then he retreated a safe distance northward. All eyes were glued, as if fascinated, to the deadly, sputtering fuse. Soon came the dull, m.u.f.fled roar of an explosion. The walls of the building sagged outwards, the roof caved in, and the whole structure seemed to collapse like a pack of cards, amid a cloud of dust.

For some few seconds the party gazed fearfully at the work of destruction; then a loud cheer went up, and with one accord all dashed forward, filled with eager, morbid curiosity as to what they might find buried beneath the ruins.

Suddenly, midway between the brush and their objective they checked their onrush and halted, staring in speechless amazement. Pushing his way up, apparently from some hole beneath a pile of debris, appeared the figure of a huge man.

In their excitement the attackers had overlooked the possibility of a cellar existing below the stone foundation of the dwelling. At this juncture the party from the river bank was rapidly approaching the ruins from its western side. The posse was in a dilemma. Neither party dare fire at its quarry between them for fear of hitting each other.

Gully apparently either did not realize the situation or did not care.

With face convulsed with pa.s.sion, beyond all semblance to a human being, he crouched and rushed the party on the eastern side of his wrecked home, firing as he came. Badly hit, several of his a.s.sailants were speedily _hor de combat_, among them, Hardy and McCullough. The whole incident happened in quicker time than it takes to relate.

Then, from out the startled crowd there sprang a man. It was Slavin.

His hour had come. There was something appalling in the spectacle of the two gigantic men rushing thus upon each other. Suddenly, Gully tripped over a log and fell headlong, his deadly gun flying from his grasp. With a sort of uncanny, cat-like agility he scrambled to his feet and strove to recover his weapon. He was a fraction of a second too late. A kick from Slavin sent it whirling several yards away, and the next moment the opponents were upon each other.

At the first onslaught the issue of the combat seemed doubtful. The ex-sheriff was no wrestler like Slavin, but he speedily demonstrated that he was a boxer, as well as a gun-man. Cleverly eluding the grasp of his powerful a.s.sailant for the moment, twice he rocked Slavin's head back with fearful left and right swings to the jaw. With a b.e.s.t.i.a.l rumbling in his throat, the sergeant countered with a pile-driving punch to the other's heart; then, ducking his head to avoid further punishment, he grappled with the murderer. Roaring inarticulately in their Berserker rage, the pair bore a closer resemblance to a bear and a gorilla than men.

Once in that terrible grip, however, Gully, big and powerful man though he was, had not the slightest chance with a wrestler of Slavin's ability.

Shifting rapidly from one cruel hold to another the huge Irishman presently whirled his antagonist up over his hip and sent him crashing to the ground, face downwards. Then, kneeling upon the neck of his struggling and blaspheming victim, he held him down until handcuffs finally imprisoned the enormous wrists, and leg-irons the ankles.

The grim, long-protracted duel was over at last. But at lamentable cost.

Two men killed outright, and five badly wounded had been the deadly toll exacted by Gully in his last, desperate stand.

The rays of the early morning shone upon a strange and solemn scene.

Gully, guarded by two constables, was seated upon the stone foundation that marked the site of his wrecked dwelling. Head in hands, sunk in a sort of stupor, his att.i.tude portrayed that of a man from whom all earthly hope had fled. Some distance away lay the wounded men, being roughly, but sympathetically attended to by their comrades. All were awaiting now the arrival of the coroner, and also the means of transportation which the inspector had ordered MacDavid to requisition for them.

Presently came those who reverently bore the dead upon hastily-constructed stretchers. Silently Inspector Kilbride indicated a spot near the fringe of brush; and there, side by side, they laid them down, covering the bodies with a blanket dragged from the debris of the shattered dwelling.

Bare-headed, the rest of the party gathered around their officer. Long and sadly Kilbride gazed down upon the still forms outlined under their covering. Twice he essayed to speak, but each time his voice failed him.

"Men!" he said at last huskily, as if to himself. "Men! is this what I have brought you into? . . . Is this--"

He choked, and was silent awhile; then; "Oh!" cried he suddenly, "G.o.d knows! . . . under the circ.u.mstances I used the best judgment I--"

But Slavin broke in and laid a tremulous hand on his superior's shoulder.

"No! no! Sorr! . . . hush! for th' love av Christ! . . . Ye must not--"

the soft Hibernian brogue sank to a gentle hush--"niver fear . . . for thim that's died doin' their juty! . . . 'Tis th' Peace, Sorr--th' Peace everlastin' . . . for Hornsby an' Wade. They were good men. . . ."

Yorke bent down and, drawing back a fold of the blanket, exposed two still white faces. In the centre of Hornsby's forehead all beheld Gully's terrible sign-manual. Wade had been shot through the throat.

"Hornsby!" gasped Yorke brokenly, "poor old Gus Hornsby!" . . . He turned a tired, drawn face up to Slavin's. "He was with us in the Yukon, Burke. Remember how we used to rag him when he first came to us as a cheechaco buck? But the poor beggar never used to get sore over it . . .

always seemed sort of . . . patient . . . and happy . . . no matter how we joshed him. . . ."

Gently he replaced the blanket, stared stupidly a moment at the grim, haggard face of his sergeant, then he burst out crying and wandered away from the sad scene.

CHAPTER XV

That very night, while gentle sleep The people's eyelids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, With gyves upon his wrist.

"THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM"

Slowly the memorable June day had drawn to a close, and now darkness had set in and the moon shone brightly down upon the old detachment of Davidsburg. It had been a strenuous day for Inspector Kilbride and his subordinates, as many details of the eventful case had to be arranged ere they could leave with their prisoner on the night's train for the Post.

The inspector's first care, naturally, had been the slow and careful conveyance of the wounded men (Redmond included)--and the dead--down to the special train which still awaited them on the Davidsburg siding. The bulk of the party departed with them, the officer retaining Slavin, Yorke, and McSporran. A coroner's inquest, held that afternoon upon the remains of the unfortunate hobo, Drinkwater, had resulted in a verdict of "wilful murder" being returned against Ruthven Gully. Two days later, at the Post, similar verdicts were rendered in the cases of poor Hornsby and Wade.

Throughout the day Gully had remained in a sort of sullen, brooding stupor. But now, with the coming of night, he seemed to grow restless--pacing within the narrow confines of his cell like unto a trapped wolf, his leg-shackles clanking at every turn. Seated outside the barred door, McSporran maintained a close and vigilant guard. It wanted four hours yet until train time and inside the living-room the inspector, Slavin, and Yorke were beguiling the interval in low-voiced conversation.

"Strange thing, Sergeant," remarked Kilbride musingly, "I can't place him now, but I'll swear I've seen this man, Gully, before; somewhere back of beyond, I guess. I've been in some queer holes and corners on this globe in my time--long before I ever took on the Force. Seems he has, too, from what you and Yorke have told me. D----d strange! . . . I've got a fairly good memory for faces but--"

He broke off and looked enquiringly at McSporran, who had silently entered just then. "What is it, McSporran?"

"Gully, Sirr!" responded the constable, saluting. "He wad wish tu speak wi' ye, Sirr."

The inspector's face hardened, and his steely eyes glittered strangely as he heard the news. For a brief s.p.a.ce he remained, chin in hand, in deep thought; then rising, he sauntered slowly over to the prisoner's cell.

"What is it you want, Gully?" he said quietly.

"Kilbride--Inspector!" came the great rumbling ba.s.s through the bars.

"If you keep me cooped up in this pen much longer . . . I tell you! . . . you'll have me slinging loose in the head--altogether!" He uttered a mirthless, wolf-like bark of a laugh. "My ears are keener than your memory--I heard you speaking just now. Listen!--" a curiously wistful note crept into his deep tones, for the inspector had made an angry, impatient gesture--"Listen, Kilbride! . . . I'm gone up--I know it--therefore, if I sing my 'swan song' now or later, it can matter little one way or the other; and I would rather sing it to you and Slavin and Yorke there than to anyone else. Before I am through, you all may--shall we say--p'raps judge me a trifle less harshly than you do now.

Regard this as . . . practically the last request of a man who is as good as dying . . . that--I be allowed to sit amongst you once more . . . and talk, and talk, and ta--"

His voice broke, and he left the sentence unfinished. For some few seconds the inspector remained motionless, with bent head, just looking--and looking--in deep, reflective silence at the doomed man who importuned him.

"Am I to understand that you wish to make a statement, Gully?" he said, in even, pa.s.sionless tones. "Remember!--you've been charged and warned, man--whatever you say'll be used in evidence against you at your trial."

The other, hesitating a moment, swallowed nervously in his agitation.

"Yes," he said huskily, "I know--but that's all right! . . . As I said before--it can make little or no difference . . . in my case. . . ."

Turning, Kilbride silently motioned to McSporran to unlock the cell-door.