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

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      “Huh!” she muttered scornfully. “They had to catch him asleep, anyhow! Couldn’t take him in a fair an’ square fight, an’ they knowed it. ’Polyte could ha’ licked the bunch with one hand if he’d had a chance. I don’t care if he did use to get full sometimes, an’ once give me a black eye. Guess I deserved it that time, tryin’ to knife him ’cause I seen him kissin’ that there Céleste Laplante.

      “It don’t matter if he did skip out an’ leave me—and me with nary ring! Don’t matter if I would shoot him down, now, same as pa would, if ever we set eyes on him again! He was a real man, anyhow, and I cal’late in a fair fight he could clean up any six o’ them white-livers that have got him penned. A man, ’Polyte was, and he loved me—once!”

      She frowned blackly, there in the gathering dusk, as she poled the craft out into the river. Her crimson mouth grew straight as a knife-blade, when—the current now gripping the boat and tautening the pulley-ropes—she applied herself to the two windlasses that controlled them.

      The forward rope she shortened, and let the aft one out. Then she dropped the boards; and now with no more effort on her part the ferry began to crawl across the flood. Unevenly the big wheels jerked along the hempen cable.

      Now they lagged and stopped, now spun swiftly forward. The huge rope swayed and gave; but, stayed by the massive tripods, held the craft. And so it crept, slowly, steadily, toward the gloomy further shore.

      Kate stood with the pike-pole in her capable hands, and listened to the gurgling swash of the current, which blended overtones with the dull roar of the rapids below.

      Suddenly a motor-siren ca-hooted through the chill evening air, far down the river-road that edged the torrent. Wildly it screamed, seeming to shout tidings of strange, unusual speed.

      Before its echoes died among the hills, once more the ferry-horn blared furiously. And then the hail rose once again:

      “Hal-loo-o! Hal-loo-o-o there! Halloo-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

      “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?”

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