“Gorramity!” mutters Blue Bill; “dar’s a skrimmage goin’ on dar—a fight, I reck’n, an’ seemin’ to be def! Clar enuf who dat fight’s between. De fuss shot wa’ Mass’ Dick’s double-barrel; de oder am Charl Clancy rifle. By golly! ’taint safe dis child be seen hya, no how. Whar kin a hide maseff?”
Again he glances upward, scanning the sycamore: then down at his dog; and once more to the trunk of the tree. This is embraced by a creeper—a gigantic grape-vine—up which an ascent may easily be made; so easily, there need be no difficulty in carrying the cur along. It was the ladder he intended using to get at the treed coon.
With the fear of his young master coming past—and if so, surely “cow-hiding” him—he feels there is no time to be wasted in vacillation.
Nor does he waste any. Without further stay, he flings his arm around the coon-dog: raises the unresisting animal from the earth; and “swarms” up the creeper, like a she-bear carrying her cub.
In ten seconds after, he is snugly ensconced in a crotch of the sycamore; screened from observation of any one who may pass underneath, by the profuse foliage of the parasite.
Feeling fairly secure, he once more sets himself to listen. And, listening attentively, he hears the same voices as before. But not any longer in angry ejaculation. The tones are tranquil, as though the two men were now quietly conversing. One says but a word or two; the other all. Then the last alone appears to speak, as if in soliloquy, or from the first failing to make response.
The sudden transition of tone has in it something strange—a contrast inexplicable.
The coon-hunter can tell, that he continuing to talk is his young master, Richard Darke; though he cannot catch, the words, much less make out their meaning. The distance is too great, and the current of sound interrupted by the thick standing trunks of the cypresses.
At length, also, the monologue ends; soon after, succeeded by a short exclamatory phrase, in voice louder and more earnest.
Then there is silence; so profound, that Blue Bill hears but his own heart, beating in loud sonorous thumps—louder from his ribs being contiguous to the hollow trunk of the tree.
Chapter Seven.
Murder without remorse.
The breathless silence, succeeding Darke’s profane speech, is awe-inspiring; death-like, as though every living creature in the forest had been suddenly struck dumb, or dead, too.
Unspeakably, incredibly atrocious is the behaviour of the man who has remained master of the ground. During the contest, Dick Darke has shown the cunning of the fox, combined with the fiercer treachery of the tiger; victorious, his conduct seems a combination of the jackal and vulture.
Stooping over his fallen foe, to assure himself that the latter no longer lives, he says—
“Dead, I take it.”
These are his cool words; after which, as though still in doubt, he bends lower, and listens. At the same time he clutches the handle of his hunting knife, as with the intent to plunge its blade into the body.
He sees there is no need. It is breathless, almost bloodless—clearly a corpse!
Believing it so, he resumes his erect attitude, exclaiming in louder tone, and with like profanity as before—
“Yes, dead, damn him!”
As the assassin bends over the body of his fallen foe, he shows no sign of contrition, for the cruel deed he has done. No feeling save that of satisfied vengeance; no emotion that resembles remorse. On the contrary, his cold animal eyes continue to sparkle with jealous hate; while his hand has moved mechanically to the hilt of his knife, as though he meant to mutilate the form he has laid lifeless. Its beauty, even in death, seems to embitter his spirit!
But soon, a sense of danger comes creeping over him, and fear takes shape in his soul. For, beyond doubt, he has done murder.
“No!” he says, in an effort at self-justification. “Nothing of the sort. I’ve killed him; that’s true; but he’s had the chance to kill me. They’ll see that his gun’s discharged; and here’s his bullet gone through the skirt of my coat. By thunder, ’twas a close shave!”
For a time he stands reflecting—his glance now turned towards the body, now sent searchingly through the trees, as though in dread of some one coming that way.
Not much likelihood of this. The spot is one of perfect solitude, as is always a cypress forest. There is no path near, accustomed to be trodden by the traveller. The planter has no business among those great buttressed trunks. The woodman will never assail them with his axe. Only a stalking hunter, or perhaps some runaway slave, is at all likely to stray thither.
Again soliloquising, he says—
“Shall I put a bold face upon it, and confess to having killed him? I can say we met while out hunting; quarrelled, and fought—a fair fight; shot for shot; my luck to have the last. Will that story stand?”
A pause in the soliloquy; a glance at the prostrate form; another, which interrogates the scene around, taking in the huge unshapely trunks, their long outstretched limbs, with the pall-like festoonery of Spanish moss; a thought about the loneliness of the place, and its fitness for concealing a dead body.
Like the lightning’s flashes, all this flits through the mind of the murderer. The result, to divert him from his half-formed resolution—perceiving its futility.
“It won’t do,” he mutters, his speech indicating the change. “No, that it won’t! Better say nothing about what’s happened. They’re not likely to look for him here …”
Again he glances inquiringly around, with a view to secreting the corpse. He has made up his mind to this.
A sluggish creak meanders among the trees, some two hundred yards from the spot. At about a like distance below, it discharges itself into the stagnant reservoir of the swamp.
Its waters are dark, from the overshadowing of the cypresses, and deep enough for the purpose he is planning.
But to carry the body thither will require an effort of strength; and to drag it would be sure to leave traces.
In view of this difficulty, he says to himself—
“I’ll let it lie where it is. No one ever comes along hero—not likely. At the same time, I take it, there can be no harm in hiding him a little. So, Charley Clancy, if I have sent you to kingdom come, I shan’t leave your bones unburied. Your ghost might haunt me, if I did. To hinder that you shall have interment.”
In the midst of this horrid mockery, he rests his gun against a tree, and commences dragging the Spanish moss from the branches above. The beard-like parasite comes off in flakes—in armfuls. Half a dozen he flings over the still palpitating corpse; then pitches on top some pieces of dead wood, to prevent any stray breeze from sweeping off the hoary shroud.
After strewing other tufts around, to conceal the blood and boot tracks, he rests from his labour, and for a time stands surveying what he has done.
At length seeming satisfied, he again grasps hold of his gun; and is about taking departure from the place, when a sound, striking his ear, causes him to start. No wonder, since it seems the voice of one wailing for the dead!
At first he is affrighted, fearfully so; but recovers himself on learning the cause.
“Only the dog!” he mutters, perceiving Clancy’s hound at a distance, among the trees.
On