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

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СКАЧАТЬ then a dazzling glare as the pursuing motor swung steeply down the last hill to the river, struck her speechless. The wailing of the siren seemed the screeching of a million fiends, tearing her heart-strings, numbing all her wrath and bitter hate.

      “Va donc!” he cried savagely, facing her. “Go on, kill me!” And now by the waxen light she saw his eyes—those eyes which, waking or in sleep, had never ceased to haunt her. “Kill me, if you want to. But I tell you, I ain’t goin’ back! Never, so help me God! I’m out t’ree day, Kate, starvin’. Kill one man for get away. If dey take me now, I go up for life. But dey ain’t goin’ for take me! Bon Dieu, never! Never!”

      He flung a hand at the blazing cone of light, now sweeping with wild lurches down the rocky and precipitous road to the ferry.

      “Not dat, Kate; not dat. One bullet—all right. Down in de rivière—all right. But not dat, not dat!”

      A wild hail shivered down the dusk. And vicious in its anger, a sudden, silvery spurt of water leaped to spray beside the flat-boat. Then the smack of a rifle cracked from hill to wooded hill.

      The girl’s fingers, gripping like steel, ridged the flesh on his wrist.

      “Lemme go!” snarled the habitant, hurling her away. “Dem boards—time enough yet! Dey can’t hit nothin’ till dey stop de machine. Quick!”

      The barriers of her hate swept downward in shattered fragments as the flood-tides of memory—of all that had been—surged over her.

      Another water-jet, flicked upward by a second bullet, leaped into the air. Another crackling shot startled the gloom.

      Kate sprang to the lever.

      “Out with the rope, ’Polyte!” she cried. “I’ll drop the boards!”

      As she slid them, splashing, into the black waters that foamed and quarreled around them ’Polyte struck up the ratchet. The windlass-wheel spun madly. Out whirled the rope, letting the aft end of the boat sag down-stream.

      Creaking, the pulley-wheels began to turn again dragged unwillingly along the cable as the heavy boat, caught by the current, once more trolled back toward the Canadian shore.

      ‘Polyte, his white face blazing with rage and hate, snatched up the pike-pole again and drove it to the river-bottom, pushing till the veins swelled in his powerful neck.

      “Peste!”

      The steel point no longer found a hold. With a blasphemy he flung it down, then shook his fist at the receding bank. Yells answered him from shore, and shots began to crackle viciously.

      “Lay down, ’Polyte!” the girl entreated, plucking at his sleeve. “Look—see there!”

      She pointed where dark shadows, leaping from the car which now had stopped close by the water’s edge not two hundred yards distant, moved on the muddy bank with angry, impotent shouts.

      He 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 СКАЧАТЬ