Читать книгу The Dark Highway - Arthur Gask - Страница 4

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THEY were the last words Eli Barton ever spoke. There was a sudden flash of fire from behind the small car in the shadows—the loud crack of a revolver fired at close range, and the great cattle king dropped lifeless upon the sands of the Coorong with a bullet in his brain.

With a cry of rage Sam Gover sprang forward and the man with the lantern went down under a fierce blow upon the head.

The lantern was extinguished in his fall.

Instantly Sam Gover darted to seize him, but the man was too quick, and, springing to his feet, he dashed off towards the small car.

Then the big revolver cracked again, but this time obviously without effect, for it was answered at once by the snapper and much sharper bark of a little automatic pistol.

Old Sam Gover had not passed half his life out West for nothing, and he could size up a situation as quickly as any man.

Three times the little automatic barked and there was a shrill squeal of pain from the man who had waved the lantern. Unhappily for him, he had not been quite quick enough in getting into cover, and with the bone of an arm shattered he subsided, a faint and huddled heap, upon the sands.

Then followed long moments of dreadful silence, the hard, tense silence of men waiting—with the angel of death hovering near.

All in an instant, as it were, a spirit of dark evil had descended on the place, and into the peace and stillness of the night had avalanched a hell of furious strife.

The smoke from the revolver clung like a funeral pall upon the track, and the acrid reek of powder, like incense in some horrible temple of pain, hung sickeningly upon the air.

Sam Gover had flung himself flat upon the sands, and, although his heart beat like a piston, his mind was deadly cold and clear.

He was making no mistake about the peril he was in. That they had fallen into a carefully prepared ambush he was sure, but what exactly was the strength of it he did not attempt to guess.

Eli Barton was most probably already dead, and he himself was in the worst predicament possible. Within a few yards of an assassin with a revolver, he was lying right out in the open air with no cover at all. The slightest sound and it would betray where he was.

He began to wriggle stealthily back along the sand.

Suddenly, however, there was a sharp click, and he was blinded in a ghostly glare. The man with the revolver had switched on the spot-light of his car.

Realising instantly the peril that now faced him. Sam Gover sprang to his feet and fired rapidly at the light, but for the third time the revolver spoke, and immediately the automatic dropped from his grasp. He tottered and half fell, but without mercy the revolver was fired again, and the old man, with no attempt now to recover himself, dropped bloody and unconscious upon the sands.

A moment later, and the man with the revolver stepped out from behind the light, walking warily, and ready upon the instant to fire again.

But that it was unnecessary was at once apparent, for Sam Gover lay quite motionless and his eyes were closed.

With his teeth chattering, the man turned quickly to the body of Eli Barton, and he shuddered when he saw the bullet-hole in the very centre of the forehead. He bent down, however, and tore violently at the dead man's coat, abstracting a thick wallet from the breast pocket. His eyes glistened as he noted the contents.

He bent down and tore violently at the dead man's coat.

Then, all at once, it seemed as if for the first time he had become afraid, and sweat burst out upon his forehead in big drops. He looked round wildly in every direction, and then, almost as if someone was actually pursuing him, ran to the top of the big sandhill near, and breathlessly regarded the outlook from every side.

But there was nothing to occasion any alarm. He could see nothing but the lights of Eli Barton's car behind the hummocks, the dim blackness everywhere upon the sands, and the bright stars peeping overhead.

He ran back to his own car.

"Look here," he exclaimed breathlessly to the small man who was lying on the sands and moaning faintly, "both of them are dead, and we shall be hanged for it if we don't look out."

"I shall say I didn't do it," wailed the other; "my arm's broken, and I'm bleeding to death."

"We shall be hanged, I tell you," went on the big man excitedly, and, jerking his head in the direction of the bodies lying out in the glare of the light. "We must get rid of them, quick, and their car, too. We haven't a second to spare. Someone may come by any moment. Do you hear?"

But the small man only shook his head. "I'm done with," he groaned. "I'm fainting with pain."

The voice of the big man hardened into rage. "Pull yourself together, you whining fool," he exclaimed furiously. "It's all your fault that you were hit at all. You oughtn't to have stopped them when you saw there were two in the car, and then you muddled everything by starting to run. You're not much hurt, anyhow—it's only a scratch."

He snapped viciously at the spot light, and turned it round so that its rays fell full upon the wounded man. Then his jaw dropped in dismay. The face of his companion was ghastly white, his right arm lay at a dreadful angle, and he was drenched in blood.

The big man cursed deeply. "Now, what are we to do, with you like this?" he asked desperately. "We must get their car off the track at once. It must be hidden 20 miles in the bush before we shall be safe." His breath came in trembling gasps. "The black trackers will be put on, if anything's found here." His voice broke to a sob. "The black trackers, do you understand? And there'll be the bloodhounds, too."

But the small man only shook his head again. "I can't do anything," he moaned. "I shall faint if I move. I believe I'm going to die."

For a long minute the big man stood speechless in his fears, but then, suddenly resolved upon some course of action, he ran at full speed to the big Jehu car.

It was barely 50 yards away, but he was panting hard when he reached it.

He jumped in, and, starting the engine, drove fiercely through the heavy sand. Arriving where the bodies lay he pulled up, and, springing out bundled them both into the back of the car. Then, without an instant's further delay, he drove on again, and as furiously as the big Jehu could plough its way, proceeded along the track in the direction of Meningie.

But he did not drive that way very far.

A couple of hundred yards, at most, and he turned off sharply at right angles to the track. The ground was very heavy, but by putting the car on to its lowest gear he managed to make headway, although at times the wheels were buried almost to their axles in the sand.

Soon he was well away from the Coorong track and deep among the sandhills. His surroundings were now as desolate and lonely as the mind of any human being could conceive, but for all that he kept on looking round as if he were expecting any moment to encounter someone.

All at once he saw that he was passing close to a small gully, and after a moment's indecision he stopped the car abruptly and lugging out the body of Sam Gover dragged it to the gully-side, and rolled it in. He was about to do the same to Eli Barton, when, on the still night air, there came up the distant barking of a fox.

He knew at once that it was only a fox, but the suddenness of the sound startled him, and, with an oath of terror, he dashed round the car and switched off both the engine and the lights.

Then, holding his breath, he stood motionless. His face had taken on a dreadful hunted look and his eyes were strained and bulged with fear. He listened.

But there was now no sound to be heard anywhere. The stillness of a dead world and the silence of the grave encompassed him.

Pulling himself together with an effort, and with no care any longer for the car and its ghostly burden, he dashed off at a feverish run, back along the way he had just come.

And all the time he was thinking hard.

He had killed two men and he was faced starkly with the consequences of his crime. He was in danger, great danger, for he could not now, he saw, effectively cover up all traces of the murders, hampered as he was with a wounded man.

If only he could have driven the car away to where he had intended, he would have felt quite safe, he told himself, for exactly what had happened to Eli Barton might then never have become known.

Out in the loneliness of the great Ninety-Mile Desert there were places that he knew of where no one ever came, and, given there to the winds and the sands, the car with its contents would soon have become impenetrably hidden from all human eyes. It could never have been proved then with any certainty that, whatever had occurred to the two men, their fate had overtaken them upon the track of the Coorong.

No one would have ever been sure that the two travellers had not successfully negotiated the whole length of the Coorong, and vanished in some other part of the State of South Australia.

But now everything was different.

He had been able to take the car only a short distance away, because every yard he had driven it into the desert he had had to retrace himself on foot, for with his companion helpless there was no one to follow behind with the second car. And so the big Jehu was lying close at hand as damning evidence within a half- mile of the track itself.

Then what would happen when, within a few hours, the hue and cry was raised for the missing man? Eli Barton was an important person in the Commonwealth, and, once the sinister nature of his disappearance was suspected, the police of South Australia would be turned hot-foot upon the trail.

The Coorong would, of course, become at once the starting point for all investigations, for the last thing definitely known of the travellers would be that they had taken the track from Kingston. So search parties would be rushed down, and the vicinity of the Coorong track would be combed from end to end.