Alias-the-Blackbird-Chapter-10

THE BLACKBIRD rushed him at the door. He reeled, and caught up a chair, swinging it above his head. It crashed in full flight against the lintel, the Blackbird cowering and ducking aside, deftly.

“Come on! Come on!” shouted Hammer. “I’m here! You see me! Come on and fight it like a man!”

The Blackbird had disappeared around a corner of the doorway, quick and sly. Hammer picked up a pine bench, facing the entrance savagely. He lurched a step forward. There was no pain in his shoulder now. All his blood was thundering. Where was the Blackbird?

“Come on!” he roared. “You’ll not drill me in the back!”

Suddenly he dropped flat to the floor, for he heard a rustle in the grass below the rear window. The sharp-pointed face of the Blackbird appeared and flashed away—the yellowish, pointed nose; the black hair dropping over beady eyes. The Blackbird carried his automatic rifle in the crook of his arm. That much Hammer saw. He crawled breathlessly across the floor. Darkness had crept into the single room of the cabin, relieved only by the faint red glow of the cookstove in a corner. The Blackbird had been unable to see him. Hammer realized that the Blackbird was afraid, too, more afraid than he. Yet fearful men are desperate and do fiendish things.

He dragged himself silently to the far corner, where he commanded the doorway and was not to be seen from the rear window. Night was dropping on the world without. The long glade was already like ink. Surrounding trees had merged into a solid wall, rustling to the night wind, creaking with insects.

The hunted man tried to barricade himself behind the square cookstove, already growing cold, its wood embers dying; but the space between wall and stove was too narrow for him to squeeze into. His fingers felt about in the obscurity, creeping and reaching, hoping to touch on some missile. The Blackbird knew this cabin, and he did not. The air was thick and strangling. A pulse seemed beating in it.

Where was the Blackbird? Hammer breathed cautiously; his heart seemed to beat with a loud, constant ticking. Motes of blackness swam before his eyes.

Suddenly he sensed that the Blackbird had crossed the threshold.

The Blackbird was within this narrow room, and creeping inch by inch upon him—crawling, with rifle pointed, with the deadly earnestness of a fanged snake. The squeak of a board, or the thunder of his heart might betray Hammer’s whereabouts. The Blackbird, emerging from a greater darkness out of doors into this thick gloom, might be able to penetrate with bright eyes into the corner where Hammer crouched. Hammer’s fingers still dribbled about the floor, searching for some weapon. Somewhere the Blackbird was slithering toward him in that awful, dark hush.

Now Hammer was crawling, pulling his broken leg after him; and the Blackbird was crawling, too, in the blind night. There was no sound, no stir of breath.

Abruptly Hammer’s dragging knee struck against a hollow object on the floor, tin pot or washbasin, and it rolled with a great empty banging. Br-rup—rup-rup! The rifle streaked instantly. Hot flashes burst from a corner of the narrow darkness. Woodwork splintered with a zing-zing-zing! Bitter powder stench filled the thick air. Echoes shrieked, hammering with ear-splitting fury from wall to wall. Hammer grasped the cookstove with both arms and heaved it over on its side. He fell behind it.

The heavy crash of the square iron box as it toppled over must have frightened the Blackbird, because for an instant his rifle spoke no more. Disjointed sections of stovepipe rattled loose and tumbled over the floor, bumping and thundering in uncanny commotion.

Again the rifle racketed. Hammer cowered behind the stove. Steel smashed against the iron and streaked off with piercing screams.

Then came a moment of silence. Something clicked. The Blackbird was reloading his magazine.

“Come out and fight!” jeered Hammer, moistening his lips and speaking hoarsely. “Stand up, you skulking killer!” he cried. “Stand up, von Bernau, alias Amsel, alias the Blackbird! You’ll not drill me in the back!”

For another moment the silence endured. Then from the hidden darkness came the Blackbird’s sullen reply, stung to fury by Hammer’s taunt.

“You know too much!” he spat.

There he was; there was the Blackbird, not ten feet away in the narrow room! Hammer had picked up a round stove lid. He hurled it like a discus at the voice. The rifle streaked fire at him. He crouched behind his barricade.

Once more the clamor perished. Again Hammer heard the katydids in the moonless night, again the whispering of night wind. Where was the Blackbird? No breath stirred in the heavy air, nor could Hammer’s straining ears detect the least rustle of the creeper. Yet, at any moment now the Blackbird would be on him. At any moment now that iron muzzle would prod into his breast, spitting fire on the hair trigger.

Hammer felt immobile and cold. He thrust his arms out slowly and cautiously, pressing against the intangible air, vainly trying to feel for and fend off that softly approaching death. Where, where? To right, or left, or overhead? Slowly he moved his arms about him, like a blindfolded boxer.

“Come on!” he taunted. “I’m here! I’m waiting for you! Are you afraid, Blackbird? Come and get me!”

His mouth was dry. No answer came to him.

As the silence lingered, the suspicion slowly increased in him that the Blackbird was no longer in the room. Hammer was alone. He was as alone as a dead man in a tomb.

What next? He did not have long to wonder.

The reek of gasoline touched his nostrils. A little twisted wisp of burning paper flashed suddenly around a corner of the doorway, and dropped in a parabola to the floor. At once, with a swift hollow roar, the doorway was all ablaze. A sheet of flame shot up to the cobwebbed rafters, licking and lapping at the dry timbers of the cabin.

Behind the overturned stove Hammer crouched, while red shadows leaped toward him and the flame roared in. He could make his choice instantly—stand up and take the racket from that bright-eyed, deathly killer skulking in the night beyond, or stay there and be cooked.

ALONG the narrow, flinty trail that came from Bitter Lake there rode the sound of galloping. Dull on drifts of leaves, loud on naked stone. Cedar Rudd’s big white mule was coming with steady thunder of hoofs. Cedar Rudd was drumming down, giving the spur at breakneck speed, riding hell-for-leather.

The loud voice of the woodsman broke into boisterous song, all cheerful and unheeding.

“Mammee! Ma-ha-ha-mam-hee! Hee-haw! Mam-maw! Ma-ham-mee!”

Drunk, drunk, crazy drunk with Irish whisky. Shouting out his nearness with a barroom roar, as if the sound of his own galloping was not enough to bring his death on him. And out there in the great whispering night, beyond the red shadows of the burning cabin, sly, watchful, ready, the Blackbird waited for him.

Where? Where? If Hammer had known where that skulking fiend lay ambushed, he might have chanced a dash for the rear window before the fire caught him.

“My mammy was a blushing mare;
My old man was a stallion,
And half of me is centipede,
The rest of me is hellion!
For I’m a mule, a long-eared fool.
And I ain’t never been to school!
Mammee! Ma-ha-ha-mam-hee!
Hee-haw! Mam-maw!
Ma-ham-mee!”

The racket of that wild galloping changed beat to a quick trot. Klop-klop-klop-klop! It came on through the forest. The voice of Cedar Rudd gasped and panted, as he neared the burning cabin. But still he was singing.

“Stop where you are! The Blackbird’s gunning for you!” roared Hammer with all his voice.

The drubbing hoofbeats of the heavy mule had betrayed Cedar already. The Blackbird had him spotted. If he were drunk, let him die singing.

Flame seeped and flickered toward Hammer. Half of the cabin was a red roar. There were no shadows now, save in the narrow corner where he hid. He began to feel the dry heat of it upon the flesh of his face. Tentacles of fire flung themselves about the rafters overhead. He crouched like a runner on the mark, tense and shivering, turning his body toward the rear window. With cold gray look he measured distances, measured chances. In the moment when the Blackbird unloosed the rifle racket on Cedar Rudd, he would dash for it.

Where was the Blackbird, where lying in ambuscade? In a moment Hammer would know, by the rattle and the flash. But Cedar Rudd would never know. Wild and drunken on his hard-ridden mule, he would take death from the darkness.

The mule bounced on at its steady trot. Suddenly it emerged into the open, a ghostly beast with thudding hoofs.

Then it came! The fireworks! Br-rup—rup-rup-rup-rup!

There was a steady, blazing stream in the darkness, not far from the cabin door. Hammer lunged forward, across floorboards already creeping with flame ripples, and plunged head foremost out of the unguarded rear window into tall grass dank with dew.

He dragged himself past the edge of the cabin, away from the fire. The rifle crackle ceased. Across the black glade the ghostly mule was galloping crazily, snorting and screaming, lashing out with its heels. It was riderless now; there was no hand to hold it.

From a clump of bushes near the blazing cabin door, the Blackbird arose and darted forward. He held his rifle to his breast, finger hooked about the trigger. Red shadows played on his quick body. Bending nearly double, he ran toward the spot where the mule had emerged from the forest. His eyes scanned the earth. He was making a curious, low, laughing sound.

Grass stirred beside Hammer. Out of the tangled undergrowth that fringed the glade, directly opposite the trail entrance and so near to Hammer that he might have touched his hand, Cedar Rudd stepped with inaudible lightness. He threw a rifle to his shoulder.

“Did you think I was such easy pickings, Amsel?” he drawled in a hard, sober voice. “Poke ’em up! I want your socks!”

The Blackbird turned his ghastly white face. He changed his direction and fled like the wind. Cedar grunted an oath. His rifle cracked. The Blackbird stumbled; but still he was running.