XXVII
THE FATAL TRESS
Was she dead?
The question was thundered out in the sound of the runner's own steps onthe flinty places, and echoed by the stones that rolled away from underhis feet. The thought throbbed in his brain, the unspoken words sang inhis ears: Was she dead?
The face of Alice was before Ryan as he ran: the pale, delicate face ofthis last week, not the face of old days. The early days of summer wereold days, though it was summer still. June by the Thames was burieddeeper in the past than last year in Australia, though it was but Augustnow. What had come over the girl in these few weeks? What had changedand saddened her? What made her droop like a trampled flower? What wasthe matter--was it the heart?
The heart! Suppose it was the heart. Suppose the worst. Suppose thisshock had killed her. Suppose he--the criminal, the outlaw, the wretchunfit to look upon good women--had murdered this sweet, cruel, wayward,winsome girl! Even so, he must still push on and bring her aid. If thataid came too late, then let his own black life come to a swift andmiserable end. His life for hers; the scales of justice demanded it.
The afternoon was dull but not dusky. The clouds were so high andmotionless that it seemed as if there were no clouds, but one wide vaultof tarnished silver. To point to that part of this canopy that hid thesun would have been guesswork.
Between the tall hedges the air was heavier than in the morning; theflies and midges swarmed in myriads. Even on the moor there was now nobreath of wind. The heather looked lifeless, colourless; the greenfronds peeping between had lost their sparkle; the red-brown of theundulating belt of road was the brightest tint in the landscape upthere.
When Ryan was half-way across the moor, rain began to fall. He threwback his head as he ran, and the raindrops cooled his heated face. Hishat had long ago been jerked off, and his hair lay plastered byperspiration to the scalp. The man's whole frame was on fire from hisexertions. The breath came hard through his clenched teeth. His blueeyes were filled with a wild despair. Since the last backward look, thatshowed him the solemn group on the steps, he had thundered on without aninstant's pause; and the time lost in toiling up the banks was made upby dashing headlong down the other side.
Now he was climbing the steep ascent that culminated at the spot wherethe road was curved round the face of the cliff, and protected on theright by the low stone parapet. Once at the top, he would soon be inMelmerbridge, for the remainder of the road was down-hill.
The wall of cliff on the left was jagged and perpendicular, and of thesame russet tint as the road. Detached fragments of the rock rested inthe angle formed by its base and the rough-hewn road. Among theseboulders was an object that attracted Ryan's curiosity as he climbed upfrom below: it was so like a boulder in rigidity and colour, and inoutline so like a man. Ryan saw the outline alter: of course it was aman, and he was crouching with his back to the rock for shelter from therain. Suddenly the man rose, and staggered into the middle of the pass,between rocky wall and stone parapet, while Ryan was still some yardsbelow. It was Pound.
Ryan had seen him in the street at Melmerbridge, in coming from church.Pound had reeled out of a public-house and caught him by the arm. Ryanhad shaken him off with a whispered promise to meet him in the eveningas arranged; and had explained the occurrence to his companion by someready lie.
So Pound was on his way back to Gateby, drunk. This was evident from hisattitude as he stood barring the pass, and from the hoarse peal oflaughter that echoed round the cliff, and from the tones of blusterousbanter with which he greeted his quondam leader.
"Welcome! Glad to see ye! But who'd ha' thought you'd be better thanyour word? Better, I say--you're better than your blessed word!"
"Stand clear!" shouted Ryan, twenty paces below.
Pound leered down upon him like a satyr. His massive arms were tightlyfolded across his bulky chest. His smooth face became horrible as hestood looking down and leering. His answer to Ryan was hissed savagelythrough his teeth:
"Stand clear be----! I want my money. I'll have my whack o' the swag,and have it now! D'ye hear? Now!"
"I have nothing about me," Ryan answered. "You drunken fool, standclear!"
The twenty paces between them were reduced to ten.
"Nothing about you!" jeered Pound, spitting upon the ground. "Ay, Iknow--you carry your nothing round your neck, old man! And I'll have myshare of it now or never!"
They were almost at arm's length now.
"Never, then!" cried Ryan, half drawing his revolver.
In a flash Pound's arm unfolded, and his right arm shot out straightfrom the shoulder. There followed a streak of fire and a loud report.Thin clouds of white smoke hung in the motionless air. From their midstcame a deep groan and the thud of a dead weight falling. And Pound wasleft standing alone, a smoking pistol in his hand. For a minute he stoodas still as Ryan lay.
"A shake longer," he muttered at length, "and I'd have been there andyou here. As it is--as it is, I think you're cooked at last, skipper!"
He put the revolver back in his pocket, and stood contemplating hiswork. The sight completely sobered him. To a certain degree itfrightened him as well. Of the other sensations, such as might ensueupon a first murder, Jem Pound experienced simply none. Even his fearwas not acute, for it was promptly swallowed by cupidity.
"Now for them notes!"
He knelt down beside his victim, eyeing him cautiously. The fallen manlay stretched across the road, on his back. He had torn open his coatand waistcoat while running, and the white shirt was darkened with astain that increased in area every instant. Pound wondered whether hehad hit the heart. The upturned face, with closed eyelids and mouthslightly open, was slimy and wet with perspiration and the soft Augustrain. By holding the back of his hand half-an-inch above the mouth,Pound satisfied himself that Ryan was still breathing--"his last,"thought Jem Pound, without any extravagant regret. Blood was flowingfrom a scalp-wound at the back of the head, received in falling; butthis escaped the murderer's notice. What he next observed was that thearms lay straight down the sides, and that the right hand grasped arevolver. At sight of this, Jem Pound leapt to his feet with an excitedexclamation.
He drew forth again his own revolver, to assure himself that he was notmistaken. No, he was not. The pistols were an original brace, and alikein every particular. The smooth, heavy face of the murderer lit up withinfernal exultation. He pointed with a finger that trembled now--fromsheer excitement--to the pistol in the lifeless hand, then tapped thebarrel of his own significantly.
"Suicide!" he whispered. "Suicide--suicide--suicide!" He reiterated theword until he thought that he appreciated its full import. Then he kneltdown and leant over the prostrate Ryan, with the confident air of alucky man on the point of crowning a very pyramid of good fortune.
Slowly and daintily he unfastened the studs in Ryan's shirt; he wasplaying with blood now, and must avoid unnecessary stains. He would justtake what he wanted--take it cleverly, without leaving a tracebehind--and satisfy himself that it was what he wanted, more or less.Then he would fire one chamber of Ryan's revolver, and make off. Butfirst--those notes! The chest was already bathed in blood; but Pound sawat once the object of his search, the cause of his deed, and his blackheart leapt within him.
Well, the little oiled-silk bag was small--unexpectedlysmall--incredibly small; but then there were bank notes for enormoussums; and one bank-note, or two, or three, would fold quite as small asthis, and press as thin. To Pound's ignorant mind it seemed quitenatural for Sundown, the incomparably clever Sundown, to have exchangedhis ill-gotten gold for good, portable paper-money at some or other timeand place. Dexterously, with the keen broad blade of his knife, he cutthe suspending tapes and picked up the bag on its point. The oiled-silkbag was blood-stained; he wiped it gingerly on the flap of Ryan's coat,and then wiped the blood from his own fingers. He knew better than toallow bank-notes to become stained with blood.
Yet ho
w light it was in his palm! It would not be lighter if theoiled-silk contained nothing at all. By its shape, however, it didcontain something. Pound rose to his feet to see what. His confidencewas ebbing. His knees shook under him with misgiving. He movedunsteadily to the low stone parapet, sat down, and ripped open thelittle bag with such clumsy haste that he cut his finger.
Jem Pound sat like a man turned to stone. The little bag was still inhis left hand, and the knife; his right hand was empty the contents ofthe bag, a lock of light hair, had fallen from his right palm to theground, where it lay all together, for there was no wind to scatter it.
Jem Pound's expression was one of blank, unspeakable, illimitabledisappointment; suddenly he looked up, and it turned to a grimace ofspeechless terror.
The barrel of the other revolver covered him.
Bleeding terribly from the bullet in his lungs, but stunned by the fallon his head, Ned Ryan had recovered consciousness in time to see Poundrip open the oiled-silk bag, in time to smile faintly at whatfollowed--and to square accounts.
Ryan did not speak. The faint smile had faded from his face. In therelentless glare that took its place the doomed wretch, sitting in aheap on the low parapet, read his death-warrant.
There was a pause, a hush, of very few moments. Pound tried to use histongue, but, like his lips, it was paralysed. Then the echoes of thecliff resounded with a second, short, sharp pistol shot, and when thewhite smoke cleared away the parapet was bare; Jem Pound had vanished;the account was squared.
Ryan fell back. The pistol dropped from his hand. Again he becamewell-nigh senseless, but this time consciousness refused to forsake himutterly; he rallied. Presently he fell to piecing together, in jerky,delirious fashion, the events of the last few minutes--or hours, he didnot know which--but it was all the same to him now. The circumstancescame back to him vividly enough, if out of their proper sequence. Thatwhich had happened at the moment his senses fled from him was clearestand uppermost in his mind at first.
"The cur!" he feebly moaned. "He gave me no show. He has killed me--I ambleeding to death and not a soul to stop it or stand by me!"
Yet, very lately, he had decided that his life was valueless, and eventhought of ending it by his own hand. Some dim reflection of this recentattitude of mind perhaps influenced him still, for, if an incoherentmind can be said to reason, his first reasoning was somewhat in thisstrain:
"Why should I mind? Who am I any good to, I should like to know? Whatright have I to live any more? None! I'm ready. I've faced it night andday these four years, and not for nothing--not to flinch now it'shere!... And hasn't my life been gay enough, and wild enough, and longenough?... I said I'd die in the bush, and so I will--here, on theseblessed old ranges. But stop! I didn't mean to be shot by a mate--Ididn't mean that. A mate? A traitor! What shall we do with him?"
His mind had annihilated space: it had flown back to the bush.
A curious smile flickered over Ryan's face in answer to his ownquestion.
"What have I done with him?" he muttered.
He raised himself on his elbows and looked towards the spot where he hadseen Pound last. The formation of the parapet seemed to puzzle him. Itwas unlike the ranges.
"He was always the worst of us, that Jem Pound," he went rambling on;"the worst of a bad lot, I know. But those murders were his doing. So atlast we chucked him overboard. And now he's come back and murdered me.As to that, I reckon we're about quits, with the bulge on my side. Nevermind, Jem Pound"--with a sudden spice of grim humour--"we'll meet againdirectly. Your revenge'll keep till then, old son!"
All this time Ryan's brain was in a state of twilight. He now lay stilland quiet, and began to forget again. But he could not keep his eyeslong from the spot whence Pound had disappeared, and presently, after afruitless effort to stand upright, he crawled to the parapet, slowlylifted himself, and hung over it, gazing down below.
Nothing to be seen; nothing but the tops of the fir-trees. Nothing to beheard; for the fir-trees were asleep in the still, heavy atmosphere, andthe summer rain made no noise. He raised his head until his eyes fellupon the broad flat table-land. The air was not clear, as it had been inthe morning. That pall of black smoke covering the distant town wasinvisible, for the horizon was far nearer, misty and indeterminate; andhis eyes were dim as they never had been before. The line of white smokeleft by an engine that crept lazily across the quiet country was what hesaw clearest; the tinkling of a bell--for Sunday-school, mostlikely--down in one of the hamlets that he could not see, was the onlysound that reached his ears.
Yet he was struggling to recognise as much as he could see, vaguelyfeeling that it was not altogether new to him. It was the struggle ofcomplete consciousness returning.
He was exhausted again; he fell back into the road. Then it was that henoticed the parapet streaming with blood at the spot where he had hungover it. To think that the coward Pound should have bled so freely in soshort a time! And how strange that he, Ned Ryan, should not haveobserved that blood before he had drenched himself in it! No! Stop! Itwas his own blood! He was shot; he was dying; he was bleeding to hisdeath--alone--away from the world!
A low moan--a kind of sob--escaped him. He lay still for some minutes.Then, with another effort, he raised himself on his elbow and lookedabout him. The first thing that he saw--close to him, within hisreach--was that fatal tress of light-coloured hair!
In a flash his mind was illumined to the innermost recesses, and clearfrom that moment.
Now he remembered everything: how he had come to his senses at the verymoment that Pound was handling this cherished tress, which alone wassufficient reason and justification for shooting Jem Pound on the spot;how he had been on his way to fetch help--help for Alice Bristo!
He pressed the slender tress passionately to his lips, then twined ittightly in and out his fingers.
Faint and bleeding as he was, he started to his feet. New power wasgiven him; new life entered the failing spirit: new blood filled theemptying vessels. For a whole minute Ned Ryan was a Titan. During thatminute the road reeled out like a red-brown ribbon under his stride. Theend of that minute saw him at the top of Melmerbridge Bank. There, withthe village lying at his feet, and the goal all but won, he staggered,stumbled, and fell headlong to the ground.