The La Chance Mine Mystery. Jones Susan Morrow
in saying so. I got the horses back on the pole, and Paulette in the wagon holding the reins, still talking to the horses quietly and by name. But as I jumped up beside her the quiet flew out of her voice.
"The bottle," she all but shrieked at me. "Mind the bottle!"
But I had not noticed she had put it on my seat when she got out to hold the horses. I knocked it flying across her, and it smashed to flinders on the near fore wheel, drenching it and splashing over Danny's hind legs. I grabbed the reins from Paulette, and I thought of skunks, and a sulphide factory, – and dead skunks and rotten sulphide at that. Even in the freezing evening air the smell that came from that smashed bottle was beyond anything on earth or purgatory, excepting the stuff I had spilt over myself at Skunk's Misery. "What on earth," I began stupidly. "Why, that's that Skunk's Misery filth again!"
Paulette's hand came down on my arm with a grip that could not have been wilder if she had thought the awful smell meant our deaths. "Drive on, will you?" she said in a voice that matched it. "Let the horses go, I tell you! If there's anything left in that bottle it may save us for a – I mean," she caught herself up furiously, "it may save me from being sick. I don't know how you feel. But for heaven's sake get me out of that smell! Oh, why didn't I throw the thing away into the woods, long ago?"
I wished she had. The stuff was on Danny as well as on the wheel, and we smelt like a procession of dead whales. For after the first choking explosion of the thing it reeked of nothing but corruption. It was the Skunk's Misery brew all right, only a thousand times stronger.
"How on earth did Skunk's Misery filth get in my wagon?" I gasped. And if I had been alone I would have spat.
"I – can't tell you," said Paulette shortly. "Mr. Stretton, can't you hurry the horses? I – Oh, hurry them, please!"
I saw no particular reason why; we could not get away from the smell of the wheel, or of Danny. But I did wind them up as much as I dared with our kind of a pole, – and suddenly both of them wound themselves up, with a jerk to try any pole. I had all I could do to keep them from a dead run, and if I knew the reason I trusted the girl beside me did not. It had hardly been a sound, more the ghost of a sound. But as I thought it she flung up her head.
"What's that?" she said sharply. "Mr. Stretton, what's that?"
"Nothing," I began; and changed it. "Just a wolf or two somewhere."
For behind us, in two, three, four quarters at once rose a long wailing howl.
CHAPTER VI
MOSTLY WOLVES: AND A GIRL
Oh, what was that drew screaming breath?
"A wolf that slashed at me!"
Oh, who was that cried out in death?
"A man who struck at thee!"
The sound might have come from a country hound or two baying for sheer melancholy, or after a cat: only there were neither hounds nor cats on the Caraquet road. I felt Paulette stiffen through all her supple body. She whispered to herself sharply, as if she were swearing – only afterwards I knew better, and put the word she used where it belonged: "The devil! Oh, the devil!"
I made no answer. I had enough business holding in the horses, remembering that spliced pole. Paulette remembered it too, for she spoke abruptly. "How fast do you dare go?"
"Oh, not too fast," my thoughts were still on the pole. "They're not after us, if you're worrying about those wolves."
But she took no notice. "How far are we from Billy Jones's?"
We were a good way. But I said, "Oh, a few miles!"
"Well, we've got to make it!" I could still feel her queerly rigid against my arm; perhaps it was only because she was listening. But – quick, like life, or death, or anything else sudden as lightning – she had no need to listen; nor had I. A burst of ravening yells, gathering up from all sides of us except in front, came from the dark bush. And I yelled myself, at Bob and Danny, to keep them off the dead run.
It was rot, of course, but I had a queer feeling that wolves were after us, and that it was just that Skunk's Misery stuff that had started them, as it had drawn the wolf that had taken my clothes. I could hear the yelping of one after another grow into the full-throated chorus of a pack. The woods were full of them.
"I didn't think he'd dare," Paulette exclaimed, as if she came out of her secret thoughts.
But it did not bring me out of mine, even to remember that young devil Collins. I had pulled out my gun to scare the wolves with a shot or two, – and there were no cartridges in it! I could not honestly visualize myself filling it up the night before, but I was sure I had filled it, just as I was sure I had never troubled to look at it since. But of course I could not have, or it would not have been empty now. I inquired absently, because I was rummaging my pockets for cartridges, "Who'd dare? Whoa, Bob! What he?"
"They," Paulette corrected sharply. "I meant the wolves. I thought they were cowards, but – they don't sound cowardly! I – Mr. Stretton, I believe I'm worried!"
So was I, with a girl to take care of, a tied-on pole and whiffletree, and practically no gun; for there was not a single loose cartridge in my pockets. I had been so mighty secure about the Caraquet road I had never thought of them. I cursed inside while I said disjointedly, "Quiet, Bob, will you? – There's nothing to be afraid of; you'll laugh over this to-night!" Because I suddenly hoped so – if the pole held to the Halfway – for the infernal clamor behind us had dropped abruptly to what might have been a distant dog fight. But at a sudden note in it the sweat jumped to my upper lip.
"Dunn and Collins!" I thought. They had been missing when we left. Paulette had said she did not trust Collins, and since he had had the nous to get hold of the Skunk's Misery wolf dope, he or Dunn could easily have stowed it in my wagon in the night, and been caught by it themselves where they had started out to waylay us by the boulder they put in my road. But all I said was, "The wolves have stopped!"
"Not they," Paulette retorted, and suddenly knocked me silly with surprise. "Oh, I haven't done you a bit of good by coming, Mr. Stretton! I thought if I were with you I might be some use, and I'm not."
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