第16章

The darkness hid the scarlet flush which mounted to the boy's cheeks--so hot that he thought it must surely glow redly through the night.He waited in dumb misery for Bridge to demand the proof of his guilt.Earlier in the evening he had flaunted the evidence of his crime in the faces of the six hobos; but now he suddenly felt a great shame that his new found friend should believe him a house-breaker.

But Bridge did not ask for any substantiation of Char-lie's charges, he merely warned the two yeggmen that they would have to leave the boy alone and in the morning, when the storm had passed and daylight had lessened the unknown danger which lurked below-stairs, betake themselves upon their way.

"And while we're here together in this room you two must sit over near the window," he concluded."You've tried to kill the boy once to-night; but you're not going to try it again--I'm taking care of him now.""You gotta crust, bo," observed Dopey Charlie, bellig-erently."I guess me an' The General'll sit where we damn please, an' youse can take it from me on the side that we're goin' to have ours out of The Kid's haul.If you tink you're goin' to cop the whole cheese you got another tink comin'.""You are banking," replied Bridge, "on the well known fact that I never carry a gun; but you fail to perceive, owing to the Stygian gloom which surrounds us, that I have the Kid's automatic in my gun hand and that the business end of it is carefully aiming in your direc-tion."

"Cheese it," The General advised his companion; and the two removed themselves to the opposite side of the apartment, where they whispered, grumblingly, to one another.

The girl, the boy, and Bridge waited as patiently as they could for the coming of the dawn, talking of the events of the night and planning against the future.

Bridge advised the girl to return at once to her father;but this she resolutely refused to do, admitting with ut-most candor that she lacked the courage to face her friends even though her father might still believe in her.

The youth begged that he might accompany Bridge upon the road, pleading that his mother was dead and that he could not return home after his escapade.And Bridge could not find it in his heart to refuse him, for the man realized that the boyish waif possessed a sub-tile attraction, as forceful as it was inexplicable.Not since he had followed the open road in company with Billy Byrne had Bridge met one with whom he might care to 'Pal' before The Kid crossed his path on the dark and storm swept pike south of Oakdale.

In Byrne, mucker, pugilist, and MAN, Bridge had found a physical and moral counterpart of himself, for the slender Bridge was muscled as a Greek god, while the stocky Byrne, metamorphosed by the fire of a wom-an's love, possessed all the chivalry of the care free tramp whose vagabondage had never succeeded in sub-merging the evidences of his cultural birthright.

In the youth Bridge found an intellectual equal with the added charm of a physical dependent.The man did not attempt to fathom the evident appeal of the other's tacitly acknowledged cowardice; he merely knew that he would not have had the youth otherwise if he could not have changed him.Ordinarily he accepted male cowardice with the resignation of surfeited disgust; but in the case of The Oskaloosa Kid he realized a certain artless charm which but tended to strengthen his lik-ing for the youth, so brazen and unaffected was the boy's admission of his terror of both the real and the unreal menaces of this night of horror.

That the girl also was well bred was quite evident to Bridge, while both the girl and the youth realized the refinement of the strange companion and protector which Fate had ordered for them, while they also saw in one another social counterparts of themselves.Thus, as the night dragged its slow course, the three came to trust each other more entirely and to speculate upon the strange train of circumstances which had brought them thus remarkably together--the thief, the murderer's ac-complice, and the vagabond.

It was during a period of thoughtful silence when the night was darkest just before the dawn and the rain had settled to a dismal drizzle unrelieved by lightning or by thunder that the five occupants of the room were suddenly startled by a strange pattering sound from the floor below.It was as the questioning fall of a child's feet upon the uncarpeted boards in the room beneath them.Frozen to silent rigidity, the five sat straining ev-ery faculty to catch the minutest sound from the black void where the dead man lay, and as they listened there came up to them, mingled with the inexplicable foot-steps, the hollow reverberation from the dank cellar--the hideous dragging of the chain behind the nameless horror which had haunted them through the intermin-able eons of the ghastly night.

Up, up, up it came toward the first floor.The patter-ing of the feet ceased.The clanking rose until the five heard the scraping of the chain against the door frame at the head of the cellar stairs.They heard it pass across the floor toward the center of the room and then, loud and piercing, there rang out against the silence of the awful night a woman's shriek.

Instantly Bridge leaped to his feet.Without a word he tore the bed from before the door.

"What are you doing?" cried the girl in a muffled scream.

"I am going down to that woman," said Bridge, and he drew the bolt, rusty and complaining, from its cor-roded seat.

"No!" screamed the girl, and seconding her the youth sprang to his feet and threw his arms about Bridge.

"Please! Please!" he cried."Oh, please don't leave me."The girl also ran to the man's side and clutched him by the sleeve.