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

only laughed like a madman, and thrust her away.

      Stabs of fire pierced the evening. Splinters flicked up from the rail; steel-jacketed bullets slapped into the black waters and skittered swiftly away. Others zoomed past—wasps of death, potent of sting.

      Blinking, with the woman fearless beside him, ’Polyte stared back full in the eye of that pitiless search-light.

      “Rotten, you are!” jeered the convict through hollowed palms. “You pas capab’ hit de balloons! Nom de Dieu! If I have a gun now, me—”

      “First thing,” cried Kate, “we’d bust that light! Then—them skunks! Lay down, I tell you. Idiot! Lay down!”

      She dragged him to the floor of the slow-moving scow; her strength surpassed his now, as they struggled together.

      “Ouay—you been right,” he admitted, panting. “Only I like better to face ’em, moé!”

      Beside him she crouched—beside him—between him and the sheriffs. Her arm circled his shoulder; her breast was shield for his.

      “’Polyte! You come back to me, anyhow! We’re together again, an’—”

      “Shut up, you!” he growled with an oath. “Lemme ’lone! All I want is get across de rivière, an’ den—”

      “I’ll get you over, ’Polyte. We’ll be there in a couple o’ minutes now. You can shift into some of pa’s duds. Afore they can get a bateau an’ cross—with this here current and all—you can be over t’other side of Saddleback and away, away!”

      “An’ then?”

      “Break for the shack up beyond Restigouche, the huntin’ camp where you an’ I—you know—you remember! I’ll stake you, ’Polyte. I’ll get grub to you some way. Take pa’s rifle an’ belt an’ knife. Head for the Saguenay! They’ll never get you there! An’ sometime maybe I—we—”

      With a sudden lurch, a sickening quiver of abandonment, the great cable fell slack. Into the tumbling waters it splashed. Both pulleys dropped.

      The boat, yawing violently around, began to drift down-stream. Through the useless wheels the cable swiftly ran as it lay writhing in the sluicing river.

      “They’ve cut—they’ve cut the cable!”

      Shuddering with horror, the girl’s wail rose on the murk.

      “The cable, ’Polyte—an’ Tobique Rapids only four miles below!”

      CHAPTER III

      The outlaw burst into a laugh as the boat slewed down-current; laughed like a maniac and staggered to his feet.

      “Eh, canaille!” he howled, shaking his fist with frightful imprecations in his patois French, while Kate stared, dumb with horror. “Let her go! We mak’ good finish, anyhow. No more de cell for mine. No more rottin’ in de cell!”

      “Listen, ’Polyte! Listen!”

      The girl beside him clutched him desperately, her eyes aflame, her mackinaw flapping in the wind that swept the turbulent floods. Out of the search-light now, safe from the rifle-fire, they stood there peering.

      Her breath was hot on his wasted and unshaven face, so wanly pale and haggard. His fevered eyes dimly saw hers, dark, big and eager in the gloom.

      Suddenly she took his prison-ravaged head in both her hands, and pressed a burning kiss upon his mouth.

      “Here, you!” he growled. “Stop dat dam’ nonsense!”

      He pushed her roughly back and wiped his lips savagely on his dripping sleeve of gray and black.

      “Listen to me, ’Polyte!”

      “Eh, quoi? W’at?”

      “I’m still a lovin’ you, ’Polyte—lovin’ you, even after all you done.”

      “Shut up, shut up, you!”

      “No, I won’t shut up! I’m goin’ to tell you; I want you to know it. If—if, we don’t get through this here, why—afore we go, kiss me, ’Polyte. Just once. Once more again, the way you used to!”

      “Hell, no! Stop dat, can’t you?”

      He would have struck her down, but her circling arms impeded him.

      “’Polyte, I forgive you. No matter what you done, it’s all right. All right every way. I’m goin’ to stick. Nothin’ can take me away. I was with you an’ belonged to you, livin’—only to you, nobody else! I’ll go with you, dyin’. All the way, ’Polyte—all the way, to the end!”

      Stupid and brutalized, he peered at her in silence. Then he stared about him—at the swift, dun water and the sliding shore, now barely silhouetted against the darker hills that rimmed the sullen sky.

      Suddenly he passed a hand over his eyes and blinked. He seemed to be taking fresh thought and new decision. The exultation of having cheated the sheriffs had died in his veins. And now the distant threnody of the rapids, borne to his ears on the wind, stirred him to new endeavor.

      “Tais-toi! Shut up dat nonsense!” he growled with an oath. “You ain’t got no sweeps aboard here, hein?”

      “Nary sweep, and I’m glad of it! It’s good that I ain’t. Now you an’ me can finish together. I ain’t scared to! Are you?”

      “Huh! W’at you mean now?”

      Her eyes were filled with infinite yearning.

      “Leggo my arm! You’re crazy! W’at for you hang to me dat way?”

      She looked at him there in the dusk, silent a moment, while the great waters leaped and laughed in their wild strength.

      “We’ll go together!” she cried suddenly, her voice quivering with terrible eagerness.

      “Dieu! No! Go not’in’! I’m goin’ swim!”

      “’Polyte!”

      “Eh?”

      “I’ve gave you everything I ever had to give—gave you my own self, ’Polyte, and my love. And you never give me even a ring! Now do this for me, to pay for it—kiss me, just once, and let’s see if we cant scare up a prayer, somehow or ’nother.”

      “Va chez l’diab’! I’m goin’ to get t’rough this, moé! Get to land, I tell you, if you don’ butt in. Crazy, you! Shut up now, an’ lemme t’ink!”

      He shook himself free from the girl with a curse; and now, clinging to the rail, peered at the Canadian shore, drifting back and away with terrifying speed. Louder now and ever more ominous the thunders of the long rapids rose to his ears.

      “You can’t make it, nohow, ’Polyte,” the girl urged again close beside him, luring him eagerly to non-resistance and to the death she burned to share with him. “Nobody could live in this here current, and—”

      “Ferme ta gueule!” he howled, raising his fist in menace, while the boat reeled drunkenly down-stream.

      “No, I won’t keep still!” she retorted. “Looka here, ’Polyte! Even if you did make the shore in them striped clothes, what chance would you have? First woodsman you met he’d nail you. An’ without me—me to get grub to you up in our shack on Restigouche—”

      He menaced her so savagely with upraised fist that she held a moment’s silence.

      “Shut up an’ lemme t’ink, nom de Dieu!” he screamed at her with furious imprecations.

      But she would not be denied her plea. She seized his hand.

      “’Polyte,” she said, “you’ll go with me?”

      “No, by God!”

      “Then listen!”