Frank Lillie Pollock

“ 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. ”

“ The hot, sandy yellow road was empty but for a great gasoline truck trundling up the distant rise. He galloped down to the creek, through the shade and steamy dampness of the swamp, and up the slope. Negroes were chopping cotton in the fields under a broiling sun; they looked up lazily. A white man overseeing them on horseback waved a salutation to him. There was the usual knot of loafers on the gallery of Ferrell’s store, but Lockwood did not pull up. He rode on to the forking of the road, and looked up the way to Smith’s. ”

“ He had caught sight of Hanna’s scared face as the crowd shifted. He seemed to collect himself with a vast effort, and swung up his arm, the hand closed, as if he fancied it still held a gun. For two or three seconds Hanna faced that unsteady, wavering arm; then his nerve broke. He gave a swift glance to right and left, ducked under the arms of the men next him, and bolted, disappearing toward the rear of the house.
There was an instant yelling rush in pursuit. Gun flashes split the darkness. Lockwood was left alone with Henry Power, still supporting Jackson’s almost inert body. ”

“ Looking down, Lockwood caught a glimpse of her searchlight over the trees, like sheet lightning on the sky. The river surged past at his feet, running strong with the recent rains. Drift of plank and timber went dimly by. Fifteen or twenty minutes passed nervously. They seemed an hour. Jackson had lighted a cigarette, and walked up and down as he smoked, invisible but for the moving spark of fire. Then there was a faint, low call from the edge of the woods. The boy stopped sharply, answered it; and then a trail of moving shapes came out into the clearing. Bob had brought his whole boat’s crew. ”

“ Considering the long drive from Bay Minette to Craig’s camp, and the uncertainty of being able to obtain a motor, he thought that his chance was probably better by boat than by rail.
The boat, as always, was an hour late in getting off. Lockwood did not sleep much that night. He did not undress, but he lay down in his berth for a few hours, marking each landing as they passed it. The great searchlight swung its long finger of light ahead; the cypress swamps, the marshy headlands, the ghostly line of sycamores and live oaks slipped past. A heavy, hot smell of vegetable decay came off the land. ”

“ He was hustled out of the gallery. Lockwood had never before met the hostility of a mob. It is something that cows and crushes the spirit. He lost his head; he tried stumblingly to tell his story as they were shoving him down the steps. Nobody paid him any attention. His words sounded weak even to himself. He saw a man carrying a heap of loose rope over his arm.
At that moment Hanna came hastily out from the rear hall, wearing hat and leggings, and carrying a rifle. At sight of Lockwood he stopped dead, a sort of wild amazement on his face, changing to a fire of victory and vindictiveness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lockwood continued to go backward, shivering and hot all at once.
This was no place to prowl in the dark. These hammock lands are always haunted by rattlers. He groped back almost to the edge of the wet ground, discovered a great branching willow, and clambered into its fork.
Here he settled himself, determined to travel no more in darkness. He was tired and wet through. There was a deadly chill in the air, smelling of fog and rotten water, and he felt the ache and shivering that might mean incipient malaria. ”

“ He struck something—a half-submerged snag, and clung to it. The canoe dashed nearer, without outlines, a moving blur of light; and he ducked completely under, holding his breath.
It passed so close that the glare of the torches shone on his eyes through the water. But for the fog he would certainly have been detected. The blur faded. He put his eyes and nose up. The boat was circling away downstream, and a shot blazed suddenly from it, probably at a drifting log. The pirates were taking a chance at anything. Lockwood let go and floated again. The canoe came about and sped upriver. ”

“ Occasionally the whole boat vibrated and shook with the terrific blast of the whistle, a powerful siren made to carry twenty miles over the swamps, to let every landing know the boat was coming, and give plenty of time to meet her.
The air was full of dampness and fog and a woody, musky smell of rotting vegetation from the vast swamps. No light, no sign of human occupation showed anywhere along the shores. Lockwood returned to his stateroom, wearied and mosquito bitten, lay down in his berth, and tried to read yesterday’s Mobile paper. ”

“ Lumps of rosin littered the earth; empty and full rosin barrels stood everywhere; there was a powerful smell of pine and tar and turpentine, but the still was not working that day.
No white man was in sight, but he picked out a house of superior quality, painted green and with curtained windows, which must be the quarters either of Craig himself or of the foreman. Close to it stood a long, low building, much resembling the Atha post office, which was undoubtedly the commissary store. This place is always the real center of a turpentine camp, and Lockwood went in to make inquiries. ”

“ Hanna was dead—McGibbon was dead! That long bitterness was ended. He had hunted his enemy to death, but he had not drawn one drop of his blood, through all the fighting and chasing. It was hard to grasp that this long phase of his life was over, and the new phase would call for new adjustments.
“And now—what?” he said to Louise in a still lower tone. Tom and his father were still sorting over the contents of Hanna’s bag. “I’m neither a farmer nor a turpentine man. Do I go back to the cities now, with Rainbow Landing only a memory?” ”

“ He imagined Hanna arriving in this wilderness, suave, dignified, experienced, swooping down upon these newly rich poor whites, and he imagined the tremendous weight and influence the man would carry.
Even so McGibbon had swooped down upon him at Melbourne, seven years ago—handsome, dignified, wise, with an apparently vast experience of men and affairs, and Lockwood had fallen under the impression, though he had had considerable experience of men and affairs himself. He had a real-estate business at that time in Melbourne, Virginia, a fast-growing city, and his business was growing with it. ”

“ If Tom had driven recklessly on the way down, he drove murderously now. A negro with a mule got out of the way just in time, and stood trembling and swearing. A dozen times the car seemed about to turn turtle, but it was heavy, and heavily loaded, and rebalanced itself.
They reached the main road that led to the landing, and swept into it with a skidding swerve. A light car was jogging on ahead. They passed it like a flash, Ferrell leaning out, shouting and gesticulating for it to follow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hanna sat directly opposite Lockwood, and the woods rider compelled himself to meet his enemy’s eye with coolness. Hanna had changed little since he was McGibbon; he was handsome as ever, and as suave and dignified, but Lockwood had the key to that face now, and he read behind the hard mouth, the hard, watchful gray eyes. Hanna, for his part, had been observing Lockwood with a good deal of unobtrusive curiosity, though they had hardly exchanged three sentences. At last he said, across the table:
“You’re not an Alabama man, Mr. Lockwood?” ”

“ They could go to New Orleans. As the car jolted and splashed, his weary mind hazily dissolved itself into dreams. He could always earn a living. Or they might settle on the Gulf coast. He liked the South; there was an ease and balm about it that was medicine to the soul—only not here, not at Rainbow Landing. He could plant a grove of Satsuma oranges or figs or pecans. He might get a partner and go into turpentine ”

“ The glow of the boat’s deck lights showed the passing shore close alongside, a sliding series of bald white sycamore trunks, bare cypresses, water maples, clumps of mistletoe, Spanish moss, depths of unending swamp that looked as savage as Africa. The powerful searchlight at the bow shot ahead like an inquiring finger, touching the stream in the far distance, shifting and lifting, throwing into uncanny brilliance a clump of trees on the next bend a mile ahead, as the pilot picked out his landmarks for the deep channel. ”

“ Lockwood wrenched away Tom’s grip on his neck.
“What’s the matter?” he began chokingly. “I came to tell you—Jackson’s shot. I came to raise a posse.”
“The nerve he had to come back here!” somebody said at the edge of the crowd.
“Saves us a heap of trouble,” was the reply.
“We’ve got the posse,” said Tom grimly. “You needn’t bother about no posse. All you need’s a rope.”
“Here’s the rope,” some one called out. Old Henry Power pushed his way in, also belted with a gun. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked wrinkled and aged, but as deadly inflexible as fate. ”

“ Lockwood coveted that machine. With its aid he could make a hundred miles in a night, and an escape would be easily arranged. With acute interest he turned to look at the two young men who leaped out and came up the steps, passing loud and cheerful greetings by name to almost every one on the store gallery.
“Mornin’, Mr. Power! Howdy, Jackson! Good mornin’, sir!” went round, and Lockwood noticed that everybody looked pleased and interested. He was more than interested himself. These were more than the owners of the coveted car. These were the men he most wanted to see—McGibbon’s new friends. ”

“ He might discover himself to Hanna; he had no doubt that the man would instantly accept the challenge to draw and shoot; and the issue would be self-defense. Lockwood was not afraid of the chances; he had practiced endlessly with the little blue automatic, and the weapon had grown as familiar to him as his own fingers.
During those first days he did not leave the turpentine tract, and he saw nothing of either Hanna or the Power boys. ”

“ Evidently McGibbon was going ashore here as soon as the gangplanks were cleared of freight, for the two suit cases stood beside him, and the deck steward was hovering about, fearful of losing his tip.
Had it not been for this negro, Lockwood could have shot the man unseen, as they stood there. His hand unconsciously crept toward the little automatic that he had carried for years, awaiting this day. He could slip ashore in the darkness, hide in the swamps, reach the railroad. But the steward loitered behind them, and Lockwood waited, his head still awhirl, for the situation to develop itself. ”

“ Lockwood assured her sincerely.
“The fact is,” she went on, “I do hope you get to be friends with them. I think it would be good for them to have you for a friend. You’ll think it’s strange for me to say this, but after all we’ve known each other a long time—in New Orleans. You see, Mr. Hanna is the only friend we have here who knows anything of the world. I know far more than the boys do, but, of course, I’m only their sister, and they wouldn’t take my opinion on anything. ”

“ The ground was rising from the creek swamp into pine land, grown with pines of all sizes, from bushy shrubs to immense trunks rising arrow-straight and without a branch to the feathery, palmlike crest a hundred feet from the earth. Nearly every pine of more than eight inches in diameter had a great slash of bark chipped from one side, showing the bare wood smeared and frosted with drops of gum, oozing, dripping, or crystallized into solid white or bluish masses, looking livid and diseased. ”

“ All his life had been spent in contact with the long-leaf pine; he had turpentined the trees, lumbered them, run sawmills. The rosin of the gum must have preserved his youth, for he was past sixty, but still able to ride, run, or fight with almost any of the young fellows he employed.
“I understand you want a woods rider, Mr. Craig,” Lockwood explained himself.
Craig searched him up and down with piercing gray eyes.
“You understand the turpentine business? Come in and take a seat,” he said. “I may need another man for a while. One of my men got hurt. ”