Читать книгу Mark Gilmore's Lucky Landing - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 8

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Mark lingered a while at the window looking at the vague outline of hills all about them. As the moonlight grew brighter they seemed to rise until their peaks were lost in the dark night itself.

The scent of pine floated in on the elfin breeze and strange noises came from the surrounding thickets. Now and then Mark could hear a tree rustling and once espied a rabbit hopping from the little yard out to the narrow road.

Suddenly his attention was drawn to the thicket at the right of the house. The breeze was not strong enough to do more than quiver a bit of protruding laurel, yet Mark distinctly saw the whole patch move for at least two seconds. Then for a moment it was still. When it again moved he whispered to Hammil.

“What do you think of it?”

Hammil’s lanky body crouched against the small window, tense and alert. Devlin’s bass voice still trailed out through the partly opened window in the parlor. They could hear him telling Old Pete that he was born and raised this side of Lexington, but that it didn’t prevent him from being on to “blockadin’ hillbillies.”

Old Pete was still a good listener evidently for his soft voice could not be heard. Devlin, however, seemed not to mind this silence on the part of his host. Perhaps he was too vigorous and too intent in the recitation of his plans to notice any lack of response.

“Buck Rose tells me you Hammils hain’t been on friendly terms with these no-account Riggses fer years?” he asked with booming accents. “Now mebbe it wouldn’ go agin yer conscience ter help me a leetle. I just heard accidental like that this Dake Riggs has got quite a set-up somewhere back o’ Hoss Run.”

Suddenly they heard the parlor window slam down. Old Pete’s soft goodnight echoed up the stairway and then his determined footsteps rang vigorously as he crossed from the parlor to the downstairs bedroom. Hammil nodded with satisfaction.

“Wa’al, pap gave Devlin his answer—goodnight!” he chuckled. “Reckon we don’t hate no Riggs bad enough to turn informer. They got ter live even if they are plumb lazy,” he added and turned back to the window. “Look! It’s somebody in that thar thicket!”

Mark looked in time to see the gaunt figure of a rather young man emerge from the thicket. He carried a rifle and wore his battered-looking hat low on his forehead. For a moment he stood like a statue, while Hammil breathed heavily.

“I’ve got ter let him know I see him,” he whispered.

“What for?” Mark demanded to know. “Why not let him go on. After all, he hasn’t done anything....”

“It’s doin’ a heap ter snoop, Brother Mark,” Hammil interposed, falling into the mountain vernacular with angry vehemence. “It hain’t safe ter let a man snoop like that without challengin’ him what his bizness be.”

Before Mark could stop him, Hammil had shoved up the window as far as it would go and was squeezing his long, lanky body through the small aperture. The trespassing stranger seemed not to see him until he had climbed out and was sliding down the sloping roof.

By the time Hammil’s long legs had touched the ground, the fellow had retreated to the protection of the thicket. Instinctively Mark pushed himself out onto the roof also. When he got to the ground he noticed that the parlor lamp had been extinguished. Devlin had evidently retired.

Hammil had already slipped into the thicket in pursuit of the trespasser. Mark stood in the shadow of the eaves, nonplussed. He hadn’t any idea just what part of the luxuriant growth his friend had slipped into. Suddenly he decided to take a chance.

He ran straight ahead and plunged. Briers pricked at his ankles and an overhanging branch sideswiped him, cutting his face, painfully. But so intent was he upon listening for some sound of Hammil, that he was oblivious to physical discomfort.

He heard nothing, however, except the usual night sounds of June. It struck him as singular for it wasn’t possible that two men—three men including himself—should be plunging in a thicket without making a sound. He himself was making noise enough, but when he stopped to listen the silence was like that of a tomb.

Two or three times he was prompted to call Hammil’s name, but instinct warned him against it. Then suddenly he found himself out of the thicket—on the road. As he turned to look he saw the house just opposite where he stood. He smiled, for he had simply circled the thicket.

At that juncture he caught sight of something which robbed him of the power of speech. For a moment, he could do nothing but think, and subsequent activities proved that he must have brought his mental powers into full play in that fleeting instant.

Not ten feet distant stood the gun-toting stranger, his back to Mark. About fifteen feet beyond that gaunt figure, was Hammil, his back turned also toward Mark. His posture indicated that he was listening, totally unaware that he was being watched. Perhaps not a quarter of a second passed in this tense attitude when the trespasser aimed his gun with catlike agility.

The muzzle pointed directly at the back of poor Hammil’s defenceless head!

Mark threw all caution aside and leaped with blind fury, landing with his dead weight full on the would-be murderer’s back.