Stringybark

“ Then he popped his left fist into his right palm and his right fist into his left palm, to warm up his finger action.
"Now, this is the rage," he explained with a faint patronage in his voice; "this is what runs 'em ragged in New York," and, lifting his hands high, he boomed into the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle."
Strawbridge did not see the señora's face during the opening bars of his jazz, and therefore had no means of determining her mood. When, presently, he looked about at her, she was much as usual; her black eyes a trifle wider, perhaps, her smile a little less mechanical. ”

“ The day came when Blake suggested it was about time for them to move on.
"Where to?" asked Binhart. Little had passed between the two men, but during all those silent nights and days each had been secretly yet assiduously studying the other.
"Back to New York," was Blake's indifferent-noted answer. Yet this indifference was a pretense, for no soul had ever hungered more for a white man's country than did the travel-worn and fever-racked Blake. But he had his part to play, and he did not intend to shirk it. ”

“ For by this time she was scrambling across the broken sloping roofs, as quick and agile as a cat, dropping over ledges, climbing up barriers and across coping tiles. Where she was leading him he had no remotest idea. She reminded him of a cream-tinted monkey in the maddest of steeplechases. He was glad when she came to a stop.
The town seemed to lay to their right. Before them were the scattered lights of the harbor and the mild crescent of the outer bay. They could see the white wheeling finger of some foreign gunboat as its searchlight played back and forth in the darkness. ”

“ Blake knew that the last door would be the one leading to Binhart's room. The moment he was alone in the hall he tiptoed to this door and pressed an ear against its panel. Then with his left hand, he slowly turned the knob, caressing it with his fingers that it might not click when the latch was released. As he had feared, it was locked.
He stood for a second or two, thinking. Then with the knuckle of one finger he tapped on the door, lightly, almost timidly.
A man's voice from within, cried out, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" ”

“ If any one knew of Binhart's whereabouts, he remembered, it would surely be this woman, this woman on whom, he contended, he could still hold the iron hand of incrimination. The first move would be to find her. And then, at any cost, the truth must be wrung from her.
Never-Fail Blake, from the obscure down-town hotel, into which he crept like a sick hound shunning the light, sent out his call for Elsie Verriner. He sent his messages to many and varied quarters, feeling sure that some groping tentacle of inquiry would eventually come in touch with her. ”

“ For once Blake found himself uncertain as to the other's intentions. The fugitive now seemed possessed with an idea to get away from the sea, to strike inland at any cost, as though water had grown a thing of horror to him. He zigzagged from obscure village to village, as though determined to keep away from all main-traveled avenues of traffic. Yet, move as he might, it was merely a matter of time and care to follow up the steps of a white man as distinctly individualized as Binhart. ”

“ He could also see the running and wavering lines of fire as the oars puddled and backed in the phosphorescent water under the gloomy steel hull. Then he heard a low-toned argument in Spanish. A moment later the flotilla of small boats had fastened to the ship's side, like a litter of suckling pigs to a sow's breast. Every light went out again, every light except a faint glow as a guide to the first boat at the foot of the landing-ladder. Along this ladder Blake could hear barefooted figures padding and grunting as cases and bales were cautiously carried down and passed from boat to boat. ”

“ A lightheadedness crept over him as he came panting down to the water's edge. The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a sampan, seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed little skiff was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying Binhart out into the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming from across foggy water. ”

“ He knew that Binhart was headed westward again. He also knew that Binhart had awakened to the fact that he was being followed, that his feverish movements were born of a stampeding fear of capture.
Yet Binhart was not a coward. Flight, in fact, was his only resource. It was only the low-brow criminal, Blake knew, who ran for a hole and hid in it until he was dragged out. The more intellectual type of offender preferred the open. And Binhart was of this type. He was suave and artful; he was active bodied and experienced in the ways of the world. ”

“ Then will triumphed over the weakness of the body. But before Blake could get to the woman's side he saw the Chinaman's loose-sleeved right hand slowly and deliberately ascend. As it reached the meridian of its circular upsweep he could see the woman rise on her toes, rise as though with some quick effort, yet some effort which Blake could not understand.
At the same moment that she did so a look of pained expostulation crept into the staring slant eyes on a level with her own. The yellow jaw gaped, filled with blood, and the poised knife fell at his side, sticking point down in the flooring. ”

“ But Blake did not despair. Their whole barbaric East, he told himself, was only a Chinatown slum on a large scale. And he had never yet seen the slum that remained forever impervious to the right dragnet. He did not know how or where the end would be. But he knew there would be an end. He still hugged to his bosom the placid conviction that the world was small, that somewhere along the frontiers of watchfulness the impact would be recorded and the alarm would be given. A man of Binhart's type, with the money Binhart had, would never divorce himself completely from civilization. ”

“ She made him think of a painted marionette, so maintained were her poses, so unreal was her make up.
"You 're the party who 's on the man hunt," she announced.
"Am I?" equivocated Blake. She had risen to her feet by this time, with monkey-like agility, and showed herself to be much taller than he had imagined. He noticed a knife scar on her forearm.
"You 're after this man called Binhart," she declared.
"Oh, no, I 'm not," was Blake's sagacious response. "I don't want Binhart!" ”

“ Then he heard the tinkle of a bell below deck, and he realized that the engines had stopped.
In the lull of the quieted ship's screw he could hear the wash of distant surf, faint and phantasmal above the material little near-by boat-noises. Then came a call, faint and muffled, like the complaining note of a harbor gull. A moment later the slow creak of oars crept up to Blake's straining ears. Then out of the heart of the darkness that surrounded him, not fifty feet away, he saw emerge one faint point of light, rising and falling with a rhythm as sleepy as the slow creak of the oars. ”

“ As the cement seller, responding to that tug, pivoted about, it was noticeable that the man to whom his wrist was locked by the band of steel duly duplicated the movement. He moved when the other moved; he drew aside when the other drew aside, as though they were now two parts of one organism.
“I got him!” calmly repeated the old street-peddler.
“Yuh got who?” demanded the still puzzled young patrolman, oblivious of the quiescent light in the bewildered eyes of McCooey, close beside him.
“Binhart!” answered Never-Fail Blake, with a sob. “I’ve got Binhart!” ”

“ Blake could see her, as in a dream, assailing the Chinaman with her gestures, advancing on him, threatening him, expostulating with him, but all in pantomime. There was something absurd about it, as absurd as a moving-picture film which carries the wrong text.
"He 'll pretend to take you to the man you want," the woman was panting. "That's what he will say. But it's a lie. He 'll take you out to a sampan, to put you aboard Binhart's boat. But the three of them will cut your throat, cut your throat, and then drop you overboard. He 's to get so much in gold. ”

“ Then he sat up in the narrow berth, for it began to dawn on him that the engines of the Trunella were not in motion. "Why are n't we under way?"
"They 're having trouble up there, with the Commandante. We can't get off inside of an hour—and anything's likely to happen in that time. That's why I 've got to get you out of here!"
"Where 'll you get me?" asked Blake. He was on his feet by this time, arraying himself in his wet and ragged clothing.
"That's what I 've been talking over with the Chief," began the young engineer. Blake wheeled about and fixed him with his eye. ”

“ Blake stared at her, almost stupidly. His mind was groping about, trying to find some adequate motive for this new line of duplicity. He kept warning himself that she was not to be trusted. Human beings, all human beings, he had found, moved only by indirection. He was too old a bird to have sand thrown in his eyes.
"Why, you welched on Binhart yourself. You put me on his track. You sent me up to Montreal!" ”

“ Blake hired a tug and overtook her. He reached the steamer's deck by means of a Jacob's ladder that swung along her side plates like a mason's plumbline along a factory wall.
Binhart, he told himself, was by this time in mid-Pacific, untold miles away, heading for that vast and mysterious East into which a man could so easily disappear. He was approaching gloomy and tangled waterways that threaded between islands which could not even be counted. He was fleeing towards dark rivers which led off through barbaric and mysterious silence, into the heart of darkness. ”

“ He wanted more information than the fact that Binhart, on his flight north, had fallen ill of pneumonia in New Orleans, had wandered on to the dry air of Arizona with a "spot" on his lungs, and had there succumbed to the tubercular invasion for which his earlier sickness had laid him open. Blake's slowly awakening and ever-wary mind kept telling him that after all there might be some possibility of trickery, that a fugitive with the devilish ingenuity of Binhart would resort to any means to escape being further harassed by the Law. ”

“ It was the natural thing to do. He would go where his haul was hidden away. Sick of unrest, he would seek peace. He would fall a prey to man's consuming hunger to speak with his own kind again. Convinced that his enemy was not at his heels, he would hide away somewhere in his own country. And once reasonably assured that this enemy had died as he had left him to die, Binhart would surely remain in his own land, among his own people.
Blake had no proof of this. He could not explain why he accepted it as fact. He merely wrote it down as one of his hunches. ”

“ He was peering out over the rolling and sun-steeped plain.
"Eat—we must eat before those devils start back at us!" he said, as he caught up the can of gasoline-tainted water and gulped at it, savagely, for the sun by this time was cruelly hot overhead. Then he dragged out his brandy-flask, diluted its contents, and made the girl drink from it.
"If that fool back there'd only stop wasting powder!" he cried, as a bullet splattered against a car-wheel behind them. "They won't understand who we are, back there, until they see De Brigard's men coming in closer and closer, or trying to rush us. ”

“ Day by patient day, through the drought and heat and alkali of an Arizona summer, he sought some clue, some inkling, of the direction which that wanderer had taken. But about Binhart and his movements, Toluca and Phoenix and all Arizona itself seemed to know nothing.
Nothing, Blake saw in the end, remained to be discovered there. So in time the heavy-bodied man with the haggard hound's eyes took his leave, passing out into the world which in turn swallowed him up as completely as it had swallowed up his unknown enemy. ”

“ Blake stared down at him with his haggard hound's eyes; there was no answering smile on his heavy lips, now furzed with their grizzled growth of hair. There seemed something ignominious in such an end, something futile and self- frustrating. It was unjust. It left everything so hideously incomplete. He revolted against it with a sullen and senseless rage.
"By God, you're not going to die!" declared the staring and sinewy-necked man at the bedside. "I say you 're not going to die. I 'm going to get you out o' here alive!"
A sweat of weakness stood out on Binhart's white face. ”

“ After his initial baptism of fire in the Wisconsin Central railway yards, however, Blake yearned for something more exciting, for something more sensational. His hopes rose, when, a month later, he was put on "track" work. He was at heart fond of both a good horse and a good heat. He liked the open air and the stir and movement and color of the grand-stand crowds. He liked the "ponies" with the sunlight on their satin flanks, the music of the band, the gaily appareled women. He liked, too, the off-hand deference of the men about him, from turnstile to betting shed, once his calling was known. ”

“ Then came sharp cries of protest, in Spanish, and more cries and curses in harbor-English, and a second engine-room signal and a cessation of the screw thrashings. This was followed by a shower of carbine-shots and the plaintive whine of bullets above the upper-works, the crack and thud of lead against the side-plates. At the same time Blake heard the scream of a denim-clad figure that suddenly pitched from the landing-ladder into the sea. Then came an answering volley, from somewhere close below Blake. He could not tell whether it was from the boat-flotilla or from the port-holes above it. ”