Books: Harrigan
M >>
Max Brand >> Harrigan
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15
He stepped off through the trees in the direction of the shelter on the
beach, leaving Harrigan to throw himself upon the ground in a paroxysm
of shame and hate.
But McTee, with hope to spur him on--a vague hope; a thought half
formed and therefore doubly delightful--went with great strides until
he came to Kate where she sat tending the fire. He broke at once into
the heart of his question.
"I met Harrigan. He's changed. Something has happened. Tell me what it
is. He says you know."
He crouched close to her, intent and eager, his eyes ready to read a
thousand meanings into the very lowering of her lashes; but she let her
glance rove past him.
"Well?" he asked impatiently.
"It is hard to speak of it."
Cold doubt fell upon the captain; he moistened his lips before he
spoke.
"Hit straight from the shoulder. There's something between you and the
Irishman?"
She dropped a hand over his mighty fist.
"After all, you are our only friend, Angus. Why shouldn't you know?"
He stood up and made a few paces to and fro, his hands locked behind
him and his leonine head fallen low.
"Yes, why shouldn't you tell me! I think I understand already."
All desire to laugh went from her, and deep fear took its place; her
eyes were held fascinated upon his interlaced fingers, white under
their own terrific pressure; yet she understood that she must go on. If
she failed, this mighty force would be turned against Harrigan; and
Harrigan, not less grim in battle, as she could guess, would be turned
against him.
She said quickly, to conceal her fear: "I thought there was some
trouble between you and Dan. I asked him to promise that he would not
fight with you. But I don't need to ask you to promise not to fight
with him, for now that you know--"
He leaped up and beat his hands together over his head.
"And that was why! I taunted him and all the time he was laughing to
himself!"
He stopped and then whispered to himself: "Still, it's only postponed.
The tune will come! The time will come!"
She understood the promise.
"Angus! What are you saying?"
He said quietly: "Harrigan's safe from me while you care for him. Do
you think I'm fool enough to make a martyr of him? Not I! But when we
get back to the world--"
He finished the sentence by slowly flexing his fingers.
"I love you, Kate, and until the strength goes out of my hands, I'll
still love you. I want you; and what I want I get. You'll hate me for
it, eh?"
He went off without waiting for an answer, stumbling as he walked like
one who was dazed. Her strength held with her until he was out of sight
among the trees, but then she sank to the ground, panting. Sooner or
later they were sure to discover her ruse, and the moment one of them
learned that she did not love the other, they would rush into battle.
She only prayed that the discovery would not come till they were safely
off the island. Once back in the world the strong arm of the law might
suffice to keep them apart.
The falling of the fire roused her at last and she set about gathering
wood to keep it alive. It was the Irishman who returned first. He waved
her to the shade of the shelter and finished collecting the wood.
CHAPTER 14
Afterward he inquired, frowning: "Where's McTee? I met him an' he
started back to find you."
"He's gone off with his thoughts, Dan."
Harrigan sighed, looking up to the stainless blue of the sky: "Aye,
that's the way of the Scotch. When they're happy in love, they go off
by themselves an' brood like a dog that's thinking of a fight. But were
I he, I'd never be leavin' your side, colleen."
His head tilted back in the way she had come to know, and she waited
for the soft dialect: "I'd be singin' songs av love an' war-r-r, an'
braggin' me hear-rt out, an' talkin' av the sea-green av your eyes,
colleen. Look at him now!"
For the great form of McTee left the circle of the trees and approached
them.
"He's got his head down between his shoulders like a whipped cur. He's
broodin', an' his soul is thick in a fog."
"Dan, I trust you to cheer him up; but you'll not speak of me?"
"Not I. He's a proud man, Black McTee, an' he'd be angered to the core
of him if he thought you'd talked about him an' his love to Harrigan.
Whisht, Kate, I'll handle him like fire!
"The wood," he began, as McTee came in. "Did you find it on top of the
hill, lad?"
McTee rumbled after a pause, and without looking at Harrigan: "There's
plenty of it there. I made a little heap of the driest on the crown of
the hill."
"Then the next thing is to move our fire up there."
"Move our fire?" cried Kate. "How can you carry the fire?"
"Easy. Take two pieces of burnin' wood an' walk along holdin' them
close together. That way they burn each other an' the flame keeps
goin'. Watch!"
He selected two good-sized brands from the fire and raised them,
holding one in either hand and keeping the ignited portions of the
sticks together. McTee looked from Kate to Harrigan.
"Sit down and talk to Kate. I'll carry the sticks; I know where the
pile of timber is."
Harrigan made a significant and covert nod and winked at McTee with
infinite understanding.
"Stay here yourself, lad. I wouldn't be robbing you----"
Kate coughed for warning, and he broke off sharply.
"You've made one trip to the hill. This is my turn. Besides, you
wouldn't know how to keep the stick burnin'. I've done it before."
McTee stared, agape with astonishment. The meaning of that wink still
puzzled his brain. He turned to Kate for explanation, and she beckoned
him to stay. When Harrigan disappeared, he said: "What's the meaning?
Doesn't Harrigan want to be with you?"
She allowed her eyes to wander dreamily after Harrigan.
"Don't you see? He's like a big boy. He's overflowing with happiness
and he has to go off to play by himself."
McTee watched her with deep suspicion.
"It's queer," he pondered. "I know the Irish like a book, and when
they're in love, they're always singing and shouting and raising the
devil. It looked to me as if Harrigan was making himself be cheerful."
He went on: "I'll take him aside and tell him that I understand.
Otherwise he'll think he's fooling me."
"Please! You won't do that? Angus, you know how proud he is! He will be
furious if he finds out that I've spoken to you about--about--our love.
Won't you wait until he tells you of his own accord?"
He ground his teeth in an ugly fury.
"You understand? If I find you've been playing with me, it'll mean
death for Harrigan, and worse than that for you?"
She made her glance sad and gentle.
"Will you never trust me, Angus?"
He answered, with a sort of wonder at himself: "Since I was a child,
you are the first person in the world who has had the right to call me
by my first name."
"Not a single woman?" and she shivered.
"Not one."
She pondered: "No love, no friendship, not even pity to bring you close
to a single human being all your life?"
"No child has ever come near me, for I've never had room for pity. No
man has been my friend, for I've spent my time fighting them and
breaking them. And I've despised women too much to love them."
The tears rose to her eyes as she spoke: "I pity you from the bottom of
my soul!"
"Pity? Me? By God, Kate, you'll teach me to hate you!"
"I can't help it. Why, if you have never loved, you have never lived!"
"You talk like a girl in a Sunday school! Ha, have I never lived? Men
were made strong so that a stronger man should be their master; and
women--"
"And women, Angus?"
"All women are fools; one woman is divine!"
The yearning of his eyes gave a bitter meaning to his words, and she
was shaken like a leaf blown here and there by contrary winds.
Unheeded, the sudden tropic night swooped upon them like the shadow of
a giant bird, and as the dark increased, they saw the glimmering of the
fire upon the hill. She rose, and he followed her until they reached
the upward slope.
Then he said: "You will want to be alone with him for a time. Can you
find the rest of the way?"
"Yes. You'll come soon?"
"I'll come soon, but I have to be by myself for a while. I may hate you
for it afterward, but now I'm weak and soft inside--like a child--and I
only wish for your happiness."
"God bless you, Angus!"
"God help me," he answered harshly, and stepped into the blank night of
the shadow of the trees.
Harrigan shook his head in wonder when he saw her coming alone. He had
built up the fire and heaped fresh fuel in towering piles nearby. The
flames shot up twenty and thirty feet, making a wide signal across the
sea.
"He's gone off by himself again?" questioned the Irishman.
She complained: "I can't understand him. Will he be always like this?
What shall I do, Dan?"
He met her appeal with a smile, but the blue eyes went cold at once and
he sighed. It would never do to have the two sitting silent beside that
fire. The brooding of McTee would excite no suspicions in the mind of
Harrigan, but the quiet of the Irishman would be sure to excite the
suspicions of the other.
"Will you do something for me, Dan?"
He looked up with a whimsical yearning.
"Teach McTee manners? Aye, with all me heart!"
She laughed: "No; but cheer him up. You said that if you were in his
place, you'd be singing all the time."
"And I would."
"Then sing for me--for Angus and me--tonight when we're sitting by the
fire. He's fallen into a brooding melancholy, and I can't altogether
trust him. Can you understand?"
"And I'm to do the cheering up?"
"You won't fail me?"
He turned and occupied himself for a moment by hurling great armfuls of
wood upon the fire. The flames burst up with showering sparks, roaring
and leaping. Then, as if inspired by the sight, he came to her with his
head tilting back hi the way he had.
"I'll do it--I'll sing my heart out for you."
As McTee came up, the three sat down; a strange group, for the two men
stared fixedly before them at the fire, conscientiously avoiding any
movement of the eyes toward Kate and the other; and she sat between
them, watching each of them covertly and humming all the while as if
from happiness. Each of them thought the humming a love song meant for
the ears of the other. Finally McTee turned and stared curiously, first
at Kate and then at Harrigan. Manifestly he could not understand either
their silence or their aloofness. It was for the Scotchman that she
would have to play her role; Harrigan was blind. The Irishman also, as
if he felt the eyes of McTee, turned his head. Kate nodded
significantly and moved closer to him.
Obedient to his promise, he turned away again and raised his head to
sing. Alternate light and shadow swept across his face and made fire
and dark in his hair as the wind tossed the flame back and forth. At
the other side of her McTee rested upon one elbow. Whenever she turned
her head, she caught the steel-cold glitter of his eyes.
The first note from Harrigan's lips was low and faltering and off key;
she trembled lest McTee should understand, but the Scotchman attributed
the emotion to another cause. As his singing continued, moreover, it
increased hi power and steadiness. One thing, however, she had not
counted on, and that was the emotion of Harrigan. Every one of his
songs carried on the theme of love in a greater or less degree, and now
his own singing swept him beyond the bounds of caution; he turned
directly to Kate and sang for her alone "Kathleen Mavourneen." There
was love and farewell at once in his singing, there was yearning and
despair.
She knew that a crisis had come, and that McTee was pressed to the
limits of his endurance. The game had gone too far, and yet she dared
not appear indifferent to the singing. That would have been too direct
a betrayal, so she sat with her head back and a smile on her lips.
There was a groan and a stifled curse. McTee rose; the song died in the
throat of Harrigan.
CHAPTER 15
"Is this what you feared?" said the Scotchman. "Is this what you wanted
protection against? No; you're in league together to torture me, and
all this time you've been laughing up your sleeves at my expense!"
"At your expense?" growled Harrigan, rising in turn. "Is it at your
expense that I've been sittin' here breakin' me heart with singin' love
tunes for you an' the girl?"
She sprang up in an agony of fear.
"Go! Go!" she begged of McTee. "If you doubt me, go, and when you come
back calm, I will explain."
He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan.
"Love songs for _me?_" he repeated incredulously.
"Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till I
was brought in to be the piper while you an' Kate danced!"
"While I and Kate danced?" thundered McTee. "My God, man--"
He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes.
"Harrigan," he said quietly, "did Kate tell you she loved me?"
"Ye fool! Why else am I sittin' here singin' for your sake? Would I not
rather be amusin' myself by takin' the hollow of your throat under my
thumbs--so?"
McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye.
"Well?" he said.
"Yes, I lied to you."
She turned to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on the
verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What
else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other.
Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?"
Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like one
from whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a long
imprisonment.
"McTee, are ye ready? There's a weight gone off my
soul!"
"Harrigan, I've been a driver of men, but this girl has put me under
the whip. When I'm through with you, I'm coming back to her."
"It'll be your ghost that returns."
Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest force
toward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands of
McTee, those strong, cruel hands.
"If you will not fight, I'll--I'll be kind to you, I'll be everything
you ask of me--"
"You're pleading for him?"
"No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!"
"Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I'll answer that there's a claim on
Harrigan filed away in hell. He's too strong to have lived clean."
"Angus, we're all alone here--on the rim of the world, you've said--and
in places like this the eye of God is on you."
He laughed brutally: "If He sees me, He'll look the other way."
"Have done with the chatter," broke in Harrigan. "Ah-h, McTee, I see
where my hands'll fit on your throat."
"Come," McTee answered without raising his voice; "there's a corner of
the beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You've been a
traveling man, Harrigan. When I've killed you, I'll throw your body
into the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of the
world."
"Come," said Harrigan; "I'd as soon finish you there as here, and when
you're dead, I'll sit you up against a tree and come down every day to
watch you rot."
The girl fell to the ground between them with her face buried in her
arms, silent. The two men lowered their eyes for a moment upon her, and
then turned and walked down the hill, going shoulder to shoulder like
friends. So they came out upon the beach and walked along it until they
reached the point of which McTee had spoken.
It was a level, hard-packed stretch of sand which offered firm footing
and no rocks over which one of the fighters might stumble at a critical
moment.
"Tis a lovely spot," sighed Harrigan. "Captain, you're a jewel of a man
to have thought of it."
"Aye, this is no deck at sea that can heave and twist and spoil my
work."
"It is not; and the palms of my hands are almost healed. Had you
thought of that, captain?"
"As you lie choking, Harrigan, think of the girl. The minute I've
heaved you into the sea, I go back to her."
The hard breathing of the Irishman filled up the interval.
"I see one thing clear. It's that I'll have to kill you slow. A man
like you, McTee, ought to taste his death a while before it comes. Come
to me ar-rms, captain, I've a little secret to whisper in your ear.
Whisht! 'Twill not be long in the tellin'!"
McTee replied with a snarl, and the two commenced to circle slowly,
drawing nearer at every step. On the very edge of leaping forward,
Harrigan was astonished to see McTee straighten from his crouch and
point out to sea.
"The eye of God!" muttered the Scotchman. "She was right!"
Harrigan jumped back lest this should prove a maneuver to place him off
his guard, and then looked in the indicated direction. It was true; a
point of light, a white eye, peered at them from far across the water.
Then the shout of McTee rang joyously: "A ship!"
"The fire!" answered Harrigan, and pointed back to the hill, for Kate
had allowed the flames to fall in their absence.
All thought of the battle left them. They started back on the run to
build high their signal light, and when they came to the top of the
hill, they found Kate lying as they had left her. She started to her
knees at the sound of their footsteps and stretched out her arms to
them.
"God has sent you back to me!"
"A ship!" thundered McTee for answer, and he flung a great armful of
wood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, but
all three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher than
their heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did they
pause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there were
three lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green--the lights of
a ship running in toward land.
In a moment the moon slipped up above the eastern waters, and right
across that broad white circle moved a ship with the smoke streaming
back from her funnel. Unquestionably the captain had seen the signal
fire and understood its meaning.
They waited until the red light became fairly stationary, showing that
the steamer had been laid-to. Then they ran for the beach and took up
their position on the line between the glow of their fire and the
position of the ship, guessing that in this way they would be on the
spot where the ship's boat would be most likely to touch the shore.
"McTee," said Harrigan, "it may be half an hour before that boat
reaches the beach. Is there any reason why both of us should go aboard
it?"
"Harrigan, there is none! Stand up to me."
"If you do this," broke in Kate, "I will bring the sailors who come
ashore to the spot where the dead man lies, and I'll tell how he died."
They looked at her, knowing that she could be trusted to fulfill that
threat. The moon lay on the beauty of her face; never had she seemed so
desirable. They looked to each other, and each seemed doubly hateful to
the other.
"Kate, dear," said Harrigan hastily, "I see the boat come tossin' there
over the water. Speak out like a brave girl. Neither of us will leave
the other in peace as long as we have a hope of you. Choose between us
before we put a foot in that boat, and if you choose McTee, I'll give
you God's blessin' an' say no more nor ever raise my hand against ye.
McTee, will ye do the like?"
"For the sake of the day of the fight and the wreck I will. If she
chooses you now, I'll raise no hand against you."
A shout came faintly across the rush and ripple of the breakers.
"Speak out," said Harrigan.
"Hallo!" she screamed in answer to the hail from the boat, and then
turning to them: "I choose neither of you!"
"McTee," growled Harrigan, "I'm thinkin' we've both been fools."
"Think what you will, I'll have her; and if you cross me again, I'll
finish you, Harrigan."
"McTee, ten of your like couldn't finish me. But look! There's the girl
wadin' out to the boat. Let's steady her through the waves."
They ran out and, catching her beneath the shoulders, bore her safe and
high through the small rollers. When they were waist-deep, the boat
swung near. A lantern was raised by the man in the bows, and under that
light they saw the four men at the oars, now backing water to keep
their boat from washing to the beach. The sailors cheered as the two
men swung Kate over the gunwale and then clambered in after her. The
man at the bows all this time had kept his lantern high above his head
with a rigid arm, and now he bellowed: "Black McTee!"
"Right!" said McTee. "And you?"
"Salvain--put back for the ship, lads--Pietro Salvain. D'you mean to
say you've forgotten me?"
"Shanghai!" said McTee, as light broke on his memory. "What a night
that was."
"But you--"
"The _Mary Rogers_ took a header for Davy Jones's locker; first mate
drunk and ran her on a reef; all hands went under except the three of
us; we drifted to this island."
"Black McTee shipwrecked! By God, if we get to port with our old tramp,
I'll get a farm and stick to dry land."
"Your ship?"
"The _Heron_, four thousand tons, White Henshaw, skipper."
"White Henshaw?" cried McTee in almost reverent tones.
"The same. Old White still sticks to his wheel. He's as hard a man as
you, McTee, in his own way."
They were pulling close to the freighter by this time, and Salvain gave
quick orders to lay the boat alongside. In another moment they stood on
the deck, where a tall man in white clothes advanced to meet them.
"Good fishing, sir," said Salvain. "We've picked up three shipwrecked
people, with Angus McTee among them."
"Black McTee!" cried the other, and even in the dim light he picked out
the towering form of the Scotchman.
"It took a wreck to bring us together, Captain Henshaw," said McTee,
"but here we are, I've combed the South Seas for ten years for the sake
of meeting you."
"H-m!" grunted Henshaw. "We'll drink on the strength of that. Come into
the cabin."
They trooped after him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in the
roomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in their
white uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, their
hair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulging
through the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan looked battered
but triumphant. Kate Malone might have been the prize which they had
safely carried away. She was even more ragged than her companions, and
now she withdrew into a shadowy corner of the cabin and shook the long,
loose masses of her hair about her shoulders.
CHAPTER 16
The dark eye of Pietro Salvain was quick to note her condition. He was
a rather small, lean-faced man with the skin drawn so tightly across
his high cheekbones that it glistened. He was emaciated; his energy
consumed him as hunger consumes other men.
"There is a berth for me below," he said to Kate. "You must take my
room. And I have a cap, some silk shirts, a loose coat which you might
wear--so?"
"This is Miss Malone, Salvain," said McTee before she could answer.
"You are very kind, Mr. Salvain," she said.
He smiled and bowed very low, and then opened the door for her; but all
the while his glance was upon McTee, who stared at him so significantly
that before following Kate through the door, Salvain shrugged his
shoulders and made a gesture of resignation.
The captain turned to Harrigan. Henshaw was very old. He was always so
erect and carried his chin so high that the loose skin of his throat
hung in two sharp ridges. In spite of the tight-lipped mouth, the
beaklike nose, and the small, gleaming eyes, there was something about
his face which intensified his age. Perhaps it was the yellow skin, dry
as the parchment from an Egyptian tomb and criss-crossed by a myriad
little wrinkles.
"And you, sir?" he said to the Irishman.
"One of my crew," broke in McTee carelessly. "He'll be quite contented
in the forecastle. Eh, Harrigan?"
"Quite," said Harrigan, and his glance acknowledged the state of war.
"Then if you'll go forward, Harrigan," said the captain, and his voice
was dry and dead as his skin--"if you'll go forward and report to the
bos'n, he'll see that you have a bunk."
"Thank you, sir," murmured Harrigan, and slipped from the room on his
bare feet.
"That man," stated Henshaw, "is as strong as you are, McTee, and yet
they call you the huskiest sailor of the South Seas."
"He is almost as strong," answered McTee with a certain emphasis.
Something like a smile appeared in the eyes of Henshaw, but did not
disturb the fixed lines of his mouth. For a moment Henshaw and McTee
measured each other.
The Scotchman spoke first: "Captain, you're as keen as the stories they
tell of you."
"And you're as hard, McTee."
The latter waved the somewhat dubious compliment away.
"I was breaking that fellow, and he held out longer than any man I've
ever handled. The shipwreck interrupted me, or I would have finished
what I started."
"You'd like to have me finish what you began?"
"You read my mind."
"Discipline is a great thing."
"Absolutely necessary at sea."
Henshaw answered coldly: "There's no need for us to act the hypocrite,
eh?"
McTee hesitated, and then grinned: "Not a bit. I know what you did
twenty years ago in the Solomons."
"And I know the story of you and the pearl divers."
"That's enough."
"Quite."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15