the men were straggling back, talking loudly and excitedly in the darkness. as he ran down the stairs lockwood met tom on the gallery, hot, furious, defeated.
“how is he?” asked tom.
“jackson’s not so bad,” returned lockwood, “think he’ll be all right. we’ve phoned for the doctor. hanna got away?”
“yes, in the motor boat. he was a-scootin’ down the bayou ’fore we could git near him. but we’ll git him!” he hesitated. “reckon there’s all kinds of apologies comin’ to you, lockwood. i’m mighty sorry——”
“sure, we’re all mighty sorry,” put in postmaster ferrell. “we never——”
“never mind about that! i know where he’s gone,” said lockwood instantly. “he’s after his friends—blue bob and the house boat, down the river. can’t we get another motor boat?”
“nearest motor boat’s at foster’s mills,” said ferrell. “it’s eleven miles.”
“get into the car!” cried tom. “we can git there ’fore he does. come on, lockwood. got a gun?”
somebody handed him a revolver. he jumped into the front seat beside tom. three men piled into the rear—jim ferrell, the son of the postmaster, one of the fenway boys who had played poker at that house, and a third man whom he did not know.
tom drove at a reckless clip. down the hill they went, over the creek, up past the post office to the crossroads, and then turned south down a road that lockwood had never before traveled. leaning over, he sketched his story half breathlessly into tom’s ear, the words jolted from his teeth by the speed of their travel.
“i dunno why that young fool didn’t tell me the fix he was in,” said tom. “between us, we’d have fixed blue bob. hanna was playin’ us all for suckers, seems like.”
the road seemed to be following the river. twice lockwood caught a glimpse of the wide, black water. halfway, and a tire blew out. it took ten feverish minutes to place the spare one. they rushed through an endless swamp, where the road wound in short, dangerous curves, and then came in sight of foster’s mills—a little village of cabins and frame houses around the great sheds of the sawmills, all utterly dark.
springing out, tom rushed up to foster’s own dwelling and beat on the door. a window opened; there was a startled exclamation, and in two minutes foster came out at a run, in shirt and trousers.
“sure you-all can have the boat!” he exclaimed, starting toward the river. “here, this way! i heerd something goin’ down the river with engines, i reckon not quarter of an hour ago.”
“a motor boat?” cried lockwood.
“mebbe. sounded heavy for a motor boat, though. i didn’t look out, and it was too dark anyway to see nothin’.”
“bob’s house boat, you bet!” exclaimed ferrell.
“never mind. she can’t make six miles an hour,” cried lockwood.
“we’ll never find nothin’ in this dark—an’ there’s fog, too!” tom murmured. “well—come along!”
packed together in the boat, they put out, with power at the wheel. the glaring lights of the car on the landing went dim. there was a little mist lying low on the water, mixing with the darkness, making obscurity doubly blank. the river surged and gurgled about them almost invisibly, and overhead the stars looked few and lightless.
“not a bit of use in this,” said tom, after running a couple of miles. “we can’t see nothin’, and they’ll hear us comin’, and just lay up by the bank and let us go by.”
he stopped the engine. the boat drifted, and in the silence they all listened, but vainly, for the sound of another motor.
“but by daylight they’ll be all the way to mobile,” lockwood objected.
“i reckon not. i reckon they’ll be makin’ for the delta. that’s where them river pirates always hides out,” said fenway.
power steered toward the left bank, skirted it a little way, and ran in at a place where there seemed to be high and dry land. they scrambled ashore silently, with a sense of being checked. two of the men groped for wood and lighted a smudge to keep off the mosquitoes. tom sat down humped at the foot of a tree, his chin almost on his knees.
lockwood was tired, hungry, overstrung, but he felt no need of either sleep or rest. he walked up and down in the darkness for some time, smoking intermittently, anxious only for light that they might go ahead. flashes from his past misery and hatred passed over him, mixing feverishly with his visions of the future. he remembered the wonderful look louise had given him; he remembered hanna’s exultant, vindictive face. both filled him with the same passion of action. he was boiling with exultation and vindictiveness himself.
“what was that you was sayin’ about havin’ a feud with hanna up north?” tom asked him suddenly. “seems like he swindled you.”
“swindled? he cleaned me out of everything i had in the world!” lockwood cried. “it wasn’t a feud. i’ve just been trailing him to kill him. hanna said i was under a false name, but it was only a guess. he didn’t know who i was.”
he poured out the whole story in passionate excitement, concealing nothing. the men came up from the smudge to listen. he did not care now who heard it. it was a relief to get the black flood off his heart. his audience listened in grave silence. they knew what blood-quarrels meant.
“well, your time’s comin’ right close now to git him,” said tom. “seems like hanna has done us all, but i reckon he’s done you wuss’n anybody. we’ve got to git blue bob, too. i cain’t think why young jackson never told me that bob was worryin’ him. none of us ever believed he had any hand in killin’ jeff forder, and it’s so long ago now that nobody’d have cared ef he had.”
“yes, i reckon this puts blue bob off’n the river for good,” said ferrell. “we’ve had more’n enough of that house boat hangin’ round rainbow landing.”
the excitement of the talk died out in feeble words and silences. young fenway was snoring, lying face down on pine needles. lockwood felt of a sudden desperately weary, and lay down. he did not think he could sleep, but he slept. he roused two or three times from vague nightmares, and slept again, till he was awakened by ferrell shaking his shoulder.
within five minutes the boat was thudding down the river again. daylight was in the air. the mist had vanished even before the dawn, and clung only in pale streaks on the water or lay white over the great swamps ashore. for half a mile they went straight downward, and then tom steered across to investigate a creek mouth where a boat might lie hidden.
but there was nothing in it. down they went again, sweeping around one after another of the vast curves of the river, empty always of life, looking as deserted as it must have looked when de soto’s canoes first sailed it.
“they’ve sure made for the delta,” he heard repeated more than once.
they had lost time in zigzagging investigations from one shore to another, and it was still more than half an hour before they actually came in sight of the low swamps of the delta itself, where the tombigbee river joined the alabama, both streams splitting into a multiplicity of channels, bayous, creeks, flowing sometimes in opposite directions, through a wild tangle of swamp. few white men claimed to know the delta, and few men had explored it except some half-wild negro hunters, and the house boat men who made a refuge of its intricacies.
the river swept away to the west in a great curve. a second channel split away, possibly at one time the main channel of the ever-shifting river. it was a crooked, deep, sluggish backwater now, flowing between white, dead timber, and a jungle of titi, black gum, and bay tree. tom surveyed it dubiously.
“blue bob’ll shore get off the main channel,” said fenway. “looks like this is just his place.”
he steered into the shallow of the swamp. fog still seemed to linger here, with a heavy, malarial smell. great curtains of gray, spanish moss hung over the rotting channel. blackened snags of cypress thrust up from the bottom, and mosquitoes attacked them in clouds, with the worse-biting yellow-flies.
no boat was anywhere in sight. a little farther a second channel seemed to open, but it extended only a hundred feet, and ended in a mud bank where half a dozen snakes aired themselves. the tortuous waterway doubled on itself. the woods ceased. they came into a deep, still channel between a great tract of tall weeds and reeds, backed by forests of vivid pine.
there was no concealment for anything there. the power boat rushed through one cross channel after another to the edge of the woods again. at the very margin, something swift and invisible went tingling through the air so close that everybody ducked. whack! it struck a tree.
“where’d that come from?” cried tom, stopping the boat instantly.
nobody had heard the report, drowned by the noise of their own engines; but as they listened tensely they heard the diminishing thud-thud of a motor launch. impossible to say where it was. the sound seemed to spread and echo indefinitely in that maze of trees and water. it was dying away. tom started the boat fast ahead into the swamp. within fifty yards the crooked channel was blocked by fallen timber. he turned with difficulty, ran back to the great meadow, and drove through the crisscross channels seeking a way out. he found one and they raced through it; but the distant thudding had long become silent, and now not one of them had any idea in which direction it had gone.
“might hunt through this d—d place till you lost yourself, an’ find nothin’!” young ferrell growled.
for nearly three hours the boat wound in and out this ghastly labyrinth of swamp and bayou and jungle. it was certain now that the enemy was somewhere in the delta, but it seemed to lockwood that anybody with the slightest cunning need never be caught in that place at all.
the other men, bred on the alabama as they were, were almost as much at a loss as himself. not one of them had ever explored the delta so deeply; perhaps no other white man’s boat at all had threaded it so far. time and again they had to turn back; continually they diverged into fresh, mysterious tangles. they came out once more into the alabama, went clear around the tip of the “delta” and some way up the tombigbee, then cut into a wide, briskly flowing stream that seemed to connect the two rivers.
it really brought them to the alabama again. a bayou diverged from it parallel to the latter river, a hundred feet of swamp between them. the bayou crooked like an elbow; it was impossible to see far, and tom steered the boat into it. both banks were grown up with thickets of titi and bay tree, tangled with rattan and trumpet flower, and they thumped slowly down the muddy water, peering ahead to see around the bend.
they were just at the tip of the elbow, when ferrell threw up his arm, pointing at the shore alongside.
“what’s that yonder?” he yelled. “stop her—it’s——”
lockwood’s startled eye caught the loom of something gray and houselike behind the screen of shrubbery. he saw the unmistakable varnished glimmer of the motor boat; and then all the greenery suddenly spurted smoke.
the air was full of a whiz and tingle. one—two bullets ripped the boat’s side. the fenway boy reeled over, clutching his arm that ran blood. ferrell let off both barrels of his shotgun wildly, and tom, putting on full speed, ran ahead out of the storm and down the bayou. dropping revolver shots followed them, falling astern. a hundred yards down power eased the boat, drawing close inshore for shelter.
“well, we’ve done found ’em!” he said grimly.
the boat had two holes through her, but fenway was the only casualty. his was not a serious wound, but it was his right arm, and he was henceforth out of the fighting.
“they’d ’a’ let us run right by ef we hadn’t seen ’em,” said ferrell. “just one second, i seen the boat plain.”
“i saw the motor boat. hanna’s there,” said lockwood. “we’ve got them—but how are we going to get at them?”
their boat had been drifting slightly, and was now a good hundred and fifty yards from the point where they had been fired at. tom headed slowly out into the channel to reconnoiter. instantly a high-velocity bullet sang overhead, another zipped into the water just astern, and the boat hastily backed into the cover of the shore again. most of the shooting had been from revolvers, but there was evidently at least one rifle aboard blue bob’s craft.
“if we try to rush ’em they’ll put us outer business before we kin git near ’em,” said power anxiously. “we ain’t got but four men fit to shoot now, and they’ve mebbe got five.”
“couldn’t we get around behind them—take them from the land side?” lockwood suggested.
beside them the swamp was too tangled and boggy to land. tom let the boat drift down for fifty yards, crossed the channel with a rush, drawing another shot from above, and sped around a curve out of range. after a dozen twists the bayou wound back to the alabama again. they coasted up the low shore, a wall of shrubbery and creepers, and tom ran in beside a fallen tree.
“they must be just about opposite yere,” he said.
lockwood was nearest the log, and stepped upon it, forcing his way in through the thicket. at the end of the log he jumped upon a partly dry spot of ground. beyond lay a welter of wooded bog. the house boat might lie on the bayou across this jungle, but nothing could be seen of it.
tom had edged his way in after lockwood.
“can’t git through here—no use tryin’,” he said, after an expert glance. “liable ter go clean outer sight in the mud.”
“couldn’t we set fire to it, and burn them out?” lockwood was inspired to suggest. “the wind’s blowing the right way.”
tom looked up at the tangled treetops.
“dunno as it’d burn—too wet. might smoke ’em some, though.” he glanced overhead again, and half grinned. “no harm to try. it’s a good deal dead cypress and gum tree through here, after all. pull down all the dry branches an’ vines you kin reach, an’ pile ’em against this here dead cypress.”
while lockwood was doing it, tom went back to the boat and secured a tin cup of gasoline from the tank. he poured this on the dead tree, lit a match and tossed it.
there was a flash like an explosion. fire rushed up to the top of the tree and spread in a sheet. the hanging rick of moss and dead creepers seemed to catch like paper. a roaring flame went through the treetops like a blast, driven by the light breeze, and the two men scrambled hastily back to the boat with flakes of fire falling around them.
from the interior of the jungle came an intense popping and crackle. volumes of smoke rolled up, mixed with jets of light flame, but it did not last long. the force of the conflagration seemed to fail; the smoke lessened.
“gone out. i thought as how it was too wet,” growled power.
it was not out, though. smoke still rose persistently though not so dense; the sharp popping of twigs had died to a low crackle. lockwood went ashore and looked through the thickets again. the whole jungled interior was dense with smoke, but he could see flickers of flame creeping along the cypress trunks and through the branches. the light stuff had burned away in one flash, but the dead treetops had caught.
he went back and reported. if the solid wood got well burning the fire would go right across to the house boat.
“they’ll have to cut loose an’ clear out. let’s get back to where we was before, an’ watch,” said ferrell.
tom turned the boat, ran downstream, and into the twisting channel again, back to the spot where they had first stopped. by this time the fire was making visible headway. clouds of smoke rolled over the position of the ambushed house boat and went drifting up the bayou.
trusting to the smother of smoke, tom moved the boat up closer, and closer still, without drawing a shot. in the burning woods a tree crashed down heavily. snakes came wriggling out from all directions, and hurried into the water. once fairly going, the dry trees burned furiously, and already they could see the orange glow through the smoke at the very spot where the house boat must be lying.
“they’ll slip away upstream. we’d never hear nor see them in all this smoke and noise!” lockwood exclaimed.
a blazing tree fell crashing through the titi thickets, half its length in the bayou. fire was streaming out in plain sight now.
“i dunno!” muttered tom. “no—git ready, boys! there she comes!”
something shouldered heavily out through the smoke cloud. it was the house boat, catching the current and swinging slowly about. she was on fire at both ends, and the cabin roof was ablaze. she came down like a huge, dying bulk, turning helplessly end for end, and there was no man in sight aboard her.
a couple of burned rope ends trailed alongside her. there was no sign of any motor boat. she sagged across the bayou, grounded on a mud bank, swung her stern around, and lay there, crackling and blazing.
tom power exploded in a loud curse, and ran the boat up to her. he jumped aboard, revolver in hand, but boarding was hardly needed. the decks were clear, and nothing could have lived in that smoke-filled cabin.
