The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

      “I’ll take ’em both over at once,” murmured Kate. “That’ll save one trip, anyhow. Guess he can’t be in such a ’tarnal hurry he can’t wait five minutes. Though he seems to be in an all-fired to-do about somethin’ or other, that fella does!”

      A kind of instinctive uneasiness pervaded her.

      “What in time can be the matter o’ him, anyhow?” she questioned as she peered anxiously at the approaching shore. “Somebody sick or dyin’? But nobody’d cross over this way, into the big Temiscouata woods, if there was! They’d be goin’ to Fort Kent, more likely.

      “I been at this here ferry, with pa, six years, and I don’t recollect no such ’tarnation hurryin’, to cross. New Brunswick’s all right, but most folks can wait a few minutes to get out o’ the States. What’s up now, I’d like to know?”

      Again the siren yelled, startlingly loud as a slatch of wind bore its harsh note to her ears. Kate looked down stream.

      For a moment she thought to glimpse a vaguely shining glow, as if high-powered electric lights of a car shooting up a grade had cast some reflection on the low-hung mists that lagged along the valley of the Rivière St. Jean.

      But all at once this vanished; and so she stood there wondering, her back against the high board siding of the boat.

      Now, already, she had nearly reached the Maine shore. Slowly and still more slowly the complaining wheels lagged along the cable as the speed slackened. Kate strode to the forward end of the boat, pole in hand, to make a proper landing.

      “Hello! Who’s there?” she called. “Who’s wantin’ to cross?” For her keen eyes, sweeping the road that plunged to the water, detected no one. “Hello, hello!”

      No answer.

      Puzzled, she laid hold on the lever to raise the current-board so it should not drag upon the shelving bottom.

      “Who blew that there horn?” she demanded. “Anybody here?”

      All at once a crouching figure rose from the dense alders fringing the stream. Once more the siren screeched, nearer now by a mile.

      “Zat you, Kate?” hoarsely cried the man on the bank, his voice aquiver with feverish haste.

      She found no word, but stared blankly in the gathering gloom. This voice from the shadows touched every nerve. Clutching the pole, she peered with wide eyes at the vague form now plashing out into the river toward the drifting boat.

      “Set your boards de odder way!” cried the man, already waist-deep. “Let out your forrard rope! Send her back, vite, vite!”

      The girl’s heart lashed wildly. Motionless and mute she stared, her face now tense and pallid in the wan dusk. Then she drew up the steel-shod pole, like a harpoon, as though to stab.

      “You—who—what’s the matter? she stammered. “What is it?”

      With a tremendous splash the man plunged, swam a few powerful strokes and reached the boat. He gripped the hinged end-board and drew himself up, streaming like a water-rat.

      “Quick!” he panted. “Dey’re after me! Vite!”

      She seized him by the dripping arm, wrenched him around, and peered into his face. As in a daze she saw his close-cropped, bullet-shaped head, his wild eyes, his sodden stripes of black and gray.

      “Dey’re after me!” he chattered between dancing teeth. He wrenched her hand away. “Sacré bleu! Let go my arm, you! After me, an’ I ain’t got no gun, moé! Dem boards; dat rope—For God’s sake, quick!”

      “’Polyte!” she choked, and staggered backward, clutching at her heart.

      CHAPTER II

      Of a sudden, a lull in the wind made audible the ripping exhaust of the onrushing car. And, as it swept around a bend in the road half a mile to westward, the glare of the search-light shot the thin mist with white and ghostly radiance.

      The siren, wailing now in long, continuous dissonance, racketed across the river, summoning the ferry.

      Cursing in bitter “habitant” French, he snatched the pike-pole from Kate’s hand, and with a maniac’s strength plunged it into the muddy bottom. The boat’s drift checked, it hung a moment motionless, hauling against its taut pulley-ropes.

      And in that moment the girl, voiceless still, lived, as it seemed to her, a lifetime. She comprehended nothing. How this miracle had come to pass she knew not.

      All she knew was that this furtive, fleeing man; this man gaunt, gray-faced, gray-striped with the shameful garb of the felon; this cowering man, a million miles removed from the bronze-cheeked and quick-eyed ’Polyte Garneau of other days, lay in her power now.

      Though he had fled to her in his last and bitter extremity, she gloried that she held him in the hollow of her hand. And, with her face ablaze, she sprang at him and snatched him from the windlass, whither he had run.

      “No, you don’t!” she gasped. “What d’ you mean, comin’ to me now, after I been through hell? An’ you—you got the nerve to come to me?”

      “Eh? Quoi?” he stammered, trying in vain to shake her off. “You ain’t—ain’t goin’ for geeve me up? You, Kate—you ain’t goin’ for—”

      A sudden brightening of the glow, then a dazzling glare as the pursuing motor swung steeply down the last hill to the river, struck her speechless. The wailing of the siren seemed the screeching of a million fiends, tearing her heart-strings, numbing all her wrath and bitter hate.

      “Va donc!” he cried savagely, facing her. “Go on, kill me!” And now by the waxen light she saw his eyes—those eyes which, waking or in sleep, had never ceased to haunt her. “Kill me, if you want to. But I tell you, I ain’t goin’ back! Never, so help me God! I’m out t’ree day, Kate, starvin’. Kill one man for get away. If dey take me now, I go up for life. But dey ain’t goin’ for take me! Bon Dieu, never! Never!”

      He flung a hand at the blazing cone of light, now sweeping with wild lurches down the rocky and precipitous road to the ferry.

      “Not dat, Kate; not dat. One bullet—all right. Down in de rivière—all right. But not dat, not dat!”

      A wild hail shivered down the dusk. And vicious in its anger, a sudden, silvery spurt of water leaped to spray beside the flat-boat. Then the smack of a rifle cracked from hill to wooded hill.

      The girl’s fingers, gripping like steel, ridged the flesh on his wrist.

      “Lemme go!” snarled the habitant, hurling her away. “Dem boards—time enough yet! Dey can’t hit nothin’ till dey stop de machine. Quick!”

      The barriers of her hate swept downward in shattered fragments as the flood-tides of memory—of all that had been—surged over her.

      Another water-jet, flicked upward by a second bullet, leaped into the air. Another crackling shot startled the gloom.

      Kate sprang to the lever.

      “Out with the rope, ’Polyte!” she cried. “I’ll drop the boards!”

      As she slid them, splashing, into the black waters that foamed and quarreled around them ’Polyte struck up the ratchet. The windlass-wheel spun madly. Out whirled the rope, letting the aft end of the boat sag down-stream.

      Creaking, the pulley-wheels began to turn again dragged unwillingly along the cable as the heavy boat, caught by the current, once more trolled back toward the Canadian shore.

      ‘Polyte, his white face blazing with rage and hate, snatched up the pike-pole again and drove it to the river-bottom, pushing till the veins swelled in his powerful neck.

      “Peste!”

      The steel point no longer found a hold. With a blasphemy he flung it down, then shook his fist at the receding bank. Yells answered