Revenge! by Robert Barr (popular books of all time .TXT) 📕

I say, here. Help! I am betrayed."

"Hush," said Adolph, quietly. "Do not cry so loud. You will wake Lamoine, who is beside you. I am here; wait till I light a candle, the moonlight is waning."

"Adolph, you fiend, you are in league with the police."

"No, I am not. I will explain everything in a moment. Have patience." Adolph lit a candle, and Picard, rolling his eyes, saw that the slowly awakening Lamoine was bound like himself.

Lamoine, glaring at his partner and not understanding what had happened, hissed--

"You have turned traitor, Picard; you have informed, curse you!"

"Keep quiet, you fool. Don't you see I am bound as tightly as you?"

"There has been no traitor and no informing, nor need of any. A month ago tonight, Picard, there was blown into eternity a good and honest man, who never harmed you or any one. I am his brother. I am Adolph Delore, who refused to make your infernal machine for you. I am much changed since then; but perhaps now you recognise me?"

"I swear to God," cried Picard, "that I did not do it. I was in London at the time. I can prove it. There is no use in handing me over to the police, even though, perhaps, you think you can terrorise this poor wretch into lying against me."

"Pray to the God, whose name you so lightly use, that the police you fear may get you before I have done with you. In the police, strange as it may sound to you, is your only hope; but they will have to come quickly if they are to save you. Picard, you have lived, perhaps, thirty-five years on this earth. The next hour of your life will be longer to you than all these years."

Adolph put the percussion cap in its place and started the mechanism. For a few moments its quiet tick-tick was the only sound heard in the room, the two bound men staring with wide-open eyes at the dial of the clock, while the whole horror of their position slowly broke upon them.

Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick. Each man's face paled, and rivulets of sweat ran down from their brows. Suddenly Picard raised his voice in an unearthly shriek.

"I expected that," said Adolph, quietly. "I don't think anyone can hear, but I will gag you both, so that no risks may be run." When this was done, he said: "I have set the clockwork at sixty minutes; seven of those are already spent. There is still time enough left for meditation and repentance. I place the candle here so that its rays will shine upon the dial. When you have made your own peace, pray for the souls of any you have sent into eternity without time for preparation."

Delore left the room as softly as he had entered it, and the doomed men tried ineffectually to cry out as they heard the key turning in the door.

The authorities knew that someone had perished in that explosion, but whether it was one man or two they could not tell.



THE SHADOW OF THE GREENBACK.

Hickory Sam needed but one quality to be perfect. He should have been an arrant coward. He was a blustering braggart, always boasting of the men he had slain, and the odds he had contended against; filled with stories of his own valour, but alas! he shot straight, and rarely missed his mark, unless he was drunker than usual. It would have been delightful to tell how this unmitigated ruffian had been "held up" by some innocent tenderfoot from the East, and made to dance at the muzzle of a quite new and daintily ornamented revolver, for the loud-mouthed blowhard seemed just the man to flinch when real danger confronted him; but, sad to say, there was nothing of the white feather about Hickory Sam, for he feared neither man, nor gun, nor any combination of them. He was as ready to fight a dozen as one, and once had actually "held up" the United States army at Fort Concho, beating a masterly retreat backwards with his face to the foe, holding a troop in check with his two seven-shooters that seemed to point in every direction at once, making every man in the company feel, with a shiver up his back, that he individually was "covered," and would be the first to drop if firing actually began.

Hickory Sam appeared suddenly in Salt Lick, and speedily made good his claim to be the bad man of the district. Some old-timers disputed Sam's arrogant contention, but they did not live long enough to maintain their own well-earned reputations as objectionable citizens. Thus Hickory Sam reigned supreme in Salt Lick, and every one in the place was willing and eager to stand treat to Sam, or to drink with him when invited.

Sam's chief place of resort in Salt Lick was the Hades Saloon, kept by Mike Davlin. Mike had not originally intended this to be the title of his bar, having at first named it after a little liquor cellar he kept in his early days in Philadelphia, called "The Shades," but some cowboy humourist, particular about the external fitness of things, had scraped out the letter "S," and so the sign over the door had been allowed to remain. Mike did not grumble. He had taken a keen interest in politics in Philadelphia, but an unexpected spasm of civic virtue having overtaken the city some years before, Davlin had been made a victim, and he was forced to leave suddenly for the West, where there was no politics, and where a man handy at mixing drinks was looked upon as a boon by the rest of the community. Mike did not grumble when even the name "Hades" failed to satisfy the boys in their thirst for appropriate nomenclature, and when they took to calling the place by a shorter and terser synonym beginning with the same letter, he made no objections.

Mike was an adaptive man, who mixed drinks, but did not mix in rows. He protected himself by not keeping a revolver, and by admitting that he could not hit his own saloon at twenty yards distance. A residence in the quiet city of Philadelphia is not conducive to the nimbling of the trigger finger. When the boys in the exuberance of their spirits began to shoot, Mike promptly ducked under his counter and waited till the clouds of smoke rolled by. He sent in a bill for broken glass, bottles, and the damage generally, when his guests were sober again, and his accounts were always paid. Mike was a deservedly popular citizen in Salt Lick, and might easily have been elected to the United States Congress, if he had dared to go east again. But, as he himself said, he was out of politics.

It was the pleasant custom of the cowboys at Buller's ranch to come into Salt Lick on pay-days and close up the town. These periodical visits did little harm to any one, and seemed to be productive of much amusement for the boys. They rode at full gallop through the one street of the place like a troop of cavalry, yelling at the top of their voices and brandishing their weapons.

The first raid through Salt Lick was merely a warning, and all peaceably inclined inhabitants took it as such, retiring forthwith to the seclusion of their houses. On their return trip the boys winged or lamed, with unerring aim, any one found in the street. They seldom killed a wayfarer; if a fatality ensued it was usually the result of accident, and much to the regret of the boys, who always apologised handsomely to the surviving relatives, which expression of regret was generally received in the amicable spirit with which it was tendered. There was none of the rancour of the vendetta in these little encounters; if a man happened to be blotted out, it was his ill luck, that was all, and there was rarely any thought of reprisal.

This perhaps was largely due to the fact that the community was a shifting one, and few had any near relatives about them, for, although the victim might have friends, they seldom held him in such esteem as to be willing to take up his quarrel when there was a bullet hole through him. Relatives, however, are often more difficult to deal with than are friends, in cases of sudden death, and this fact was recognised by Hickory Sam, who, when he was compelled to shoot the younger Holt brother in Mike's saloon, promptly went, at some personal inconvenience, and assassinated the elder, before John Holt heard the news. As Sam explained to Mike when he returned, he had no quarrel with John Holt, but merely killed him in the interests of peace, for he would have been certain to draw and probably shoot several citizens when he heard of his brother's death, because, for some unexplained reason, the brothers were fond of each other.

When Hickory Sam was comparatively new to Salt Lick he allowed the Buller's ranch gang to close up the town without opposition. It was their custom, when the capital of Coyote county had been closed up to their satisfaction, to adjourn to Hades and there "blow in" their hard- earned gains on the liquor Mike furnished. They also added to the decorations of the saloon ceiling. Several cowboys had a gift of twirling their Winchester repeating rifles around the fore finger and firing it as the flying muzzle momentarily pointed upwards. The man who could put the most bullets within the smallest space in the roof was the expert of the occasion, and didn't have to pay for his drinks.

This exhibition might have made many a man quail, but it had no effect on Hickory Sam, who leant against the bar and sneered at the show as child's play.

"Perhaps you think you can do it," cried the champion. "I bet you the drinks you can't."

"I don't have to," said Hickory Sam, with the calm dignity of a dead shot. "I don't have to, but I'll tell you what I can do. I can nip the heart of a man with this here gun" showing his seven-shooter, "me a- standing in Hades here and he a-coming out of the bank." For Salt Lick, being a progressive town, had the Coyote County Bank some distance down the street on the opposite side from the saloon.

"You're a liar," roared the champion, whereupon all the boys grasped their guns and were on the look out for trouble.

Hickory Sam merely laughed, strode to the door, threw it open, and walked out to the middle of the deserted thoroughfare.

"I'm a bad man from Way Back," he yelled at the top of his voice. "I'm the toughest cuss in Coyote county, and no darned greasers from Buller's can close up this town when I'm in it. You hear me! Salt Lick's wide open, and I'm standing in the street to prove it."

It was bad enough to have the town declared open when fifteen of them in a body had proclaimed it closed, but in addition to this to be called "greasers" was an insult not to be borne. A cowboy despises a Mexican almost as much as he does an Indian. With a soul-terrifying yell the fifteen were out of the saloon and on their horses like a cyclone. They went down the street with tornado speed, wheeling about, some distance below the temporarily closed bank, and, charging up again at full gallop, fired repeatedly in the direction of Hickory Sam, who was crouching