The Death Shot: A Story Retold

“You think she saw me?” asks the assassin, with increasing uneasiness.

“Think! I’m sure of it. More than saw – she recognised ye. I could tell that from the way she shot back into the shadow. Did ye not notice it yourself?”

“No,” rejoins Darke, the monosyllable issuing mechanically from his lips, while a shiver runs through his frame.

His questioner, observing these signs, continues, —

“T’ike my advice, and come with us fellows to Texas. Before you’re long there, the Mexikin girls will make you stop moping about Miss Armstrong. After the first fandango you’ve been at, you won’t care a straw for her. Believe me, you’ll soon forget her.”

“Never!” exclaims Darke, in the fervour of his passion – thwarted though it has been – forgetting the danger he is in.

“If that’s your detarmination,” returns Borlasse, “an’ you’ve made up your mind to keep that sweetheart in sight, you won’t be likely to live long. As sure as you’re sittin’ thar, afore breakfast time to-morrow mornin’ the town of Naketosh ’ll be too hot to hold ye.”

Darke starts from his chair, as if it had become too hot.

“Keep cool, Quantrell!” counsels the Texan. “No need for ye to be scared at what I’m sayin’. Thar’s no great danger jest yet. There might be, if you were in that chair, or this room, eight hours later. I won’t be myself, not one. For I may as well tell ye, that Jim Borlasse, same’s yourself, has reasons for shiftin’ quarters from the Choctaw Chief. And so, too, some o’ the fellows we’ve been drinkin’ with. We’ll all be out o’ this a good hour afore sun-up. Take a friend’s advice, and make tracks along wi’ us. Will you?”

Darke still hesitates to give an affirmative answer. His love for Helen Armstrong – wild, wanton passion though it be – is the controlling influence of his life. It has influenced him to follow her thus far, almost as much as the hope of escaping punishment for his crime. And though knowing, that the officers of justice are after him, he clings to the spot where she is staying, with that fascination which keeps the fox by the kennel holding the hounds. The thought of leaving her behind – perhaps never to see her again – is more repugnant than the spectre of a scaffold!

The Texan guesses the reason of his irresolution. More than this, he knows he has the means to put an end to it. A word will be sufficient; or, at most, a single speech. He puts it thus —

“If you’re detarmined to stick by the apron-strings o’ Miss Armstrong, you’ll not do that by staying here in Naketosh. Your best place, to be near her, will be along with me.”

“How so, Mr Borlasse?” questions Darke, his eyes opening to a new light. “Why do you say that?”

“You ought to know, without my tellin’ you – a man of your ’cuteness, Quantrell! You say you can never forget the older of that pair o’ girls. I believe you; and will be candid, too, in sayin’, no more is Jim Borlasse like to forget the younger. I thought nothin’ could ’a fetched that soft feelin’ over me. ’Twant likely, after what I’ve gone through in my time. But she’s done it – them blue eyes of hers; hanged if they hain’t! Then, do you suppose that I’m going to run away from, and lose sight o’ her and them? No; not till I’ve had her within these arms, and tears out o’ them same peepers droppin’ on my cheeks. That is, if she take it in the weepin’ way.”

“I don’t understand,” stammers Darke.

“You will in time,” rejoins the ruffian; “that is, if you become one o’ us, and go where we’re a-goin’. Enough now for you to be told that, there you will find your sweetheart!”

Without waiting to watch the effect of his last words, the tempter continues —

“Now, Phil Quantrell, or Dick Darke, as in confidence I may call ye, are you willin’ to be one o’ us?”

“I am.”

“Good! That’s settled. An’ your comrade, Harkness; I take it, he’ll go, too, when told o’ the danger of staying behind; not that he appears o’ much account, anyway. Still, among us mustangers, the more the merrier; and, sometimes we need numbers to help in the surroundin’ o’ the horses. He’ll go along, won’t he?”

“Anywhere, with me.”

“Well, then, you’d better step into his bedroom, and roust him up. Both of ye must be ready at once. Slip out to the stable, an’ see to the saddles of your horses. You needn’t trouble about settlin’ the tavern bill. That’s all scored to me; we kin fix the proportions of it afterward. Now, Quantrell, look sharp; in twenty minutes, time, I expect to find you an’ Harkness in the saddle, where you’ll see ten o’ us others the same.”

Saying this, the Texan strides out into the corridor, Darke preceding him. In the dimly-lighted passage they part company, Borlasse opening door after door of several bedrooms, ranged on both sides of it; into each, speaking a word, which, though only in whisper, seems to awake a sleeper as if a cannon were discharged close to his ears. Then succeeds a general shuffling, as of men hastily putting on coats and boots, with an occasional grunt of discontent at slumber disturbed; but neither talking nor angry protest. Soon, one after another, is seen issuing forth from his sleeping apartment, skulking along the corridor, out through the entrance door at back, and on towards the stable.

Presently, they fetch their horses forth, saddled and bridled. Then, leaping upon their backs, ride silently off under the shadow of the trees; Borlasse at their head, Quantrell by his side, Harkness among those behind.

Almost instantly they are in the thick forest which comes close up to the suburbs of Natchitoches; the Choctaw Chief standing among trees never planted by the hand of man.

The wholesale departure appearing surreptitious, is not unobserved. Both the tavern Boniface and his bar-keeper witness it, standing in the door as their guests go off; the landlord chuckling at the large pile of glittering coins left behind; Johnny scratching his carroty poll, and saying, —

“Be japers! they intind clearin’ that fellow Quantrell out. He won’t long be throubled wid that shinin’ stuff as seems burnin’ the bottom out av his pocket. I wudn’t be surrprized if they putt both him an’ ’tother fool past tillin’ tales afore ayther sees sun. Will, boss, it’s no bizness av ours.”

With this self-consolatory remark, to which the “boss” assents, Johnny proceeds to shut and lock the tavern door. Soon after the windows of the Choctaw Chief show lightless, its interior silent, the moonbeams shining upon its shingled roof peacefully and innocently, as though it had never sheltered robber, and drunken talk or ribald blasphemy been heard under it.

So, till morning’s dawn; till daylight; till the sun is o’ertopping the trees. Then is it surrounded by angry men; its wooden walls re-echoing their demand for admittance.

They are the local authorities of the district; the sheriff of Natchitoches with his posse of constables, and a crowd of people accompanying. Among them are Colonel Armstrong and the Creole, Dupré; these instigating the movement; indeed, directing it.

Ah knew, from yesterday’s newspaper, of the murder committed near Natchez, as also of the murderer having broken jail. Only this morning have they learnt that the escaped criminal has been seen in the streets of their town. From an early hour they have been scouring these in search of him; and, at length, reached the Choctaw Chief – the place where he should be found, if found at all.

On its doors being opened, they discover traces of him. No man named Darke has been there, but one calling himself Quantrell, with another, who went by the name of Walsh.

As, in this case, neither the landlord nor bar-keeper have any interest in screening that particular pair of their late guests, they make no attempt to do so; but, on the contrary, tell all they know about them; adding, how both went away with a number of other gentlemen, who paid their tavern bills, and took departure at an early hour of the morning.

The description of the other “gentlemen” is not so particularly given, because not so specially called for. In that of Quantrell and Walsh, Colonel Armstrong, without difficulty, identifies Richard Darke and the jailer, Joe Harkness.

He, sheriff, constables, crowd, stand with countenances expressing defeat – disappointment. They have reached the Choctaw Chief a little too late. They know nothing of Borlasse, or how he has baffled them. They but believe, that, for the second time, the assassin of Charles Clancy has eluded the grasp of justice.

Chapter Thirty Five.

A ghost going its rounds

It is nearly a month since the day of Clancy’s death; still the excitement caused by it, though to some extent subsided, has not died out. Curiosity and speculation are kept alive by the fact of the body not having been found. For it has not. Search has been made everywhere for miles around. Field and forest, creeks, ponds, swamp, and river, have all been traversed and interrogated, in vain. All have refused to surrender up the dead.

That Clancy is dead no one has a doubt. To say nothing of the blood spilt beside his abandoned hat and gun, with the other circumstances attendant, there is testimony of a moral nature, to many quite as convincing.

Alive he would long since have returned home, at thought of what his mother must be suffering. He was just the man to do that, as all who knew him are aware. Even wounded and crippled, if able to crawl, it would be to the side of the only woman at such a crisis he should care for.

Though it is now known that he cared for another, no one entertains a thought of his having gone off after her. It would not be in keeping with his character, any more than with the incidents and events that have conspired to make the mystery. Days pass, and it still remains one.

The sun rises and sets, without throwing any light upon it. Conjecture can do nothing to clear it up; and search, over and over unsuccessful, is at length abandoned.

If people still speculate upon how the body of the murdered man has been disposed of, there is no speculation as to who was his murderer, or how the latter made escape.

The treason of the jail-keeper explains this – itself accounted for by Ephraim Darke having on the previous day paid a visit to his son in the cell, and left with him a key that ere now has opened many a prison door. Joe Harkness, a weak-witted fellow, long suspected of faithlessness, was not the man to resist the temptation with which his palm had been touched.

Since that day some changes have taken place in the settlement. The plantation late Armstrong’s has passed into the hands of a new proprietor – Darke having disposed of it – while the cottage of the Clancys, now ownerless, stays untenanted. Unfurnished too: for the bailiff has been there, and a bill of sale, which covered its scant plenishing, farm-stock, implements and utensils, has swept all away.

For a single day there was a stir about the place, with noise corresponding, when the chattels were being disposed of by public auction. Then the household gods of the decayed Irish gentleman were knocked down to the highest bidder, and scattered throughout the district. Rare books, pictures, and other articles, telling of refined taste, with some slight remnants of bijouterie, were carried off to log-cabins, there to be esteemed in proportion to the prices paid for them. In fine, the Clancy cottage, stripped of everything, has been left untenanted. Lone as to the situation in which it stands, it is yet lonelier in its desolation. Even the dog, that did such service in pointing out the criminality of him who caused all the ruin, no longer guards its enclosures, or cheers them with his familiar bark. The faithful animal, adopted by Simeon Woodley, has found a home in the cabin of the hunter.

It is midnight; an hour still and voiceless in Northern climes, but not so in the Southern. Far from it in the State of Mississippi. There the sun’s excessive heat keeps Nature alert and alive, even at night, and in days of December.

Though night, it is not December, but a date nearer Spring. February is written on the heading of letters, and this, a Spring month on the Lower Mississippi, has commenced making its imprint on the forest trees. Their buds have already burst, some showing leaves fully expanded, others of still earlier habit bedecked with blossoms. Birds, too, awaking from a short winter’s silence, pour forth their amorous lays, filling glade and grove with music, that does not end with the day; for the mock-bird, taking up the strain, carries it on through the hours of night; so well counterfeiting the notes of his fellow-songsters, one might fancy them awake – still singing.

Not so melodious are other voices disturbing the stillness of the Southern night. Quite the opposite are the croaking of frogs, the screeching of owls, the jerking call of tree-crickets, and the bellowing of the alligator. Still, the ear accustomed to such sounds is not jarred by them. They are but the bass notes, needed to complete the symphony of Nature’s concert.

In the midst of this mélange, – the hour, as already stated, midnight – a man, or something bearing man’s semblance, is seen gliding along the edge of the cypress swamp, not far from the place where Charles Clancy fell.