LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066406349

Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I

       CHAPTER II

       CHAPTER III

       CHAPTER IV

       CHAPTER V

       CHAPTER VI

       CHAPTER VII

       CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      THE Turtles were a select crew of Mississippi River pirates. They knew the river so well that it was an instinct—so well that they could go straight across it in a fog, rowing a skiff. They waited in Tupelo Bend, above Mendova, for a favorable night to ply their occupation of loot, and, when at last a gray mist rose thickly from the surface of the water and drifted out over the sand-bars and eddied through the longshore trees, they dropped down.

      They landed on the sand-bar at the upper end of Mendova wharf and tied their shanty-boat to stakes already there. They walked fifty yards across the sand to the cobbled wharf, which had been masked by the bar, and climbed to the level of Front Street. They walked across the brick paving, and there a gloomy figure emerged from the wall and whispered:

      “All hunky! Get busy!”

      Four men entered the little recess in the wall of the building, which was between two plate-glass windows; they did something to the double door, and it opened before them. They entered the famous “Duck and Deer” store, and one sweep of the flash disclosed the fact that it contained goods to please their fancy. They wasted no time on imagination, however; they set to work.

      They dumped boxes of ammunition into bags; they caught up and tied rifles and shotguns into rolls; they filled a big tub with jack-knives and other cutlery—with flashlights, compasses, fishing-tackle and other sporting-goods-store material—and scurried across the street, down the wharf and over the sand-bar to the shanty-boat moored in the gray gloom.

      They returned to the store, gathered another load and hurried to the boat with it; and, as they worked separately, they were coming or going—all four of them, for half a dozen trips. No mere minute of business satisfied them. They dealt in no diamonds, pearls or cash affair; they were low-grade workers, but they made up in quantity what they failed to get in quality or price. Many and many a dip, post-office yegg, jewelry-case trader and the like might well envy their average winnings in the precarious game they played. They specialized in method, but not in loot. This happened to be a sporting-goods-store proposition; once they had handled, or turned over, the contents of a grocery store; another time they had taken a dry-goods store; they recalled with evil glee a pawnbroker’s establishment and a fur-buyer whom they had easily raided.

      The Ohio River knew their work by evidence only; in St. Louis they had a reputation not attached to names; they had even worked in New Orleans, and Kansas City and St. Paul; they were thorough, competent and of great discretion. All they wanted was a dull, foggy night, a beat seldom patrolled by police, a store of some kind and a line of disappearance. They were pirates, but they did not disdain the assistance of motor truck or flat car or even a purloined team of mules and truck.

      So now they operated with the skill of experience, the daring of many escapes and the carelessness of those whom the Mississippi has long favored or played with. To their minds, Old Mississip’ was sure their good old granddaddy, and they knew him, and he knew them, and the understanding was mutual. At the same time, it is possible that one should not be too sure that he knows the silent, swinging torrent whose moods are full of many seemings.

      Little remained in the sporting-goods store when they returned at last, all together, to get the safe. It wasn’t a very large safe; one of the four had given it a tentative lift with his hand and was surprized to discover that he could raise a corner. Accordingly, they all returned, caught their fists under the steel box and walked away with it.

      They stopped to close and lock the door, too, and, when they went down the levee, they were conscious of the fact that, when the policeman came along on his beat, he would see nothing wrong in the store, except that the electric light had burned out.

      The sand was loose on the bar, and that made lugging the safe a hard proposition. They grunted as they stumbled and staggered along—the involuntary grunts of men heavily burdened. A little noise did not alarm them, nor would it alarm any one. The banks of the Mississippi are strangely silent at times and curiously noisy at other times. No one pays much attention to minor sounds.

      They had a plain path to follow across the bar. Their four pairs of feet had trampled a trail which they could follow with their toes had their black-night instincts failed them. They arrived at the edge of the bar and lowered the safe to the place where the boat’s bow had been.

      “Where t'——s that shanty-boat?” one choked. “I cayn’t feel hit!”

      “Ner I!” another gasped for breath.

      Their feet were in the water, where they had bumped into the nine-foot-wide bow of their shanty-boat on every previous trip. They lowered the safe and scurried up or down the water’s edge. They returned and, hearing one another’s foot steps, stopped together.

      “Hit’s gone!” one whispered fiercely.

      “Who d’ ——”

      “Some sucker’s——”

      “Who’s done us?”

      There was no answer from the four pirates. From out in the fog, however, apparently close at hand—but it was fog—returned a laugh. It was a low, vibrating, merry, chuckling laugh.

      “Ha-ha-ha-ha!” in short, light expirations.

      It seemed low, but the faces of the buildings along River Street, Mendova, returned the laugh in an echo as loud but breaking.

      A minute later they heard another burst of laughter, further away, but carried with the uncanny distinctness which is the property of some kinds of fog. They stood there paralyzed by their disaster and heard the laugh again away down the bend.

      “The dad-blasted, no-’count, son of a sneakin’ thief!” one of the four on the sand bar cursed deeply.

      Another waded at the bottom of his breath:

      “He hadn’t no right to take that bo’t! What’d he rob us fer? Why didn’t he go up the bank an’ steal——”

      “An’ we doned all the work!” a third whined.

      “An’ then he laughed at us!” the fourth one gritted his teeth.

      They stood there, cursing and growling. Then, suddenly, away down River Street they heard a footfall, followed by another one and another,

Скачать книгу