Read Ebook: Fighting Byng: A Novel of Mystery Intrigue and Adventure by Stone A Bird Leslie Pern Illustrator

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Ebook has 773 lines and 42875 words, and 16 pages

"Isn't there--isn't there something you can suggest?"

I meditated for some minutes. Howard Byng, if not desperate enough to destroy himself and child, would go back to the pine woods of his birth, I reasoned. Finally I said, "I will give you a letter to a friend of mine in the Excise Department, who travels the turpentine country constantly. He might get trace of him. Howard would return there if living."

"That's so. I never thought of that before. As lowly as was his start in life, he never ceased loving the woods," she recalled, brightening. "How long will you be away?"

Knowing the disappointment the truth would bring to her, I answered ambiguously. "I hardly know. One never can tell, but I hope not very long. Meanwhile keep up a stout heart. Everything straightens out in time. Keep busy, don't brood, be brave." I will never forget how forlorn she looked as she bade me good-bye. If she had known I would be away for several years she would have broken down completely. She felt that I could help her.

I gave her a letter to Charlie Haines, and that was the last I saw of Norma Byng for eight or nine years. Charlie told me that he spent three or four years beating every pine bush in the South without results, and, moreover, that he had somehow lost track of Mrs. Byng. He decided she had married again, as she was too attractive to stay single. Eight or nine years work wonderful changes in any life. It appeared to me that Charlie might be right.

Seemingly some people never observe the fact that the calendar travels on a non-stop schedule, and the longer we live the faster it speeds.

After my talk with Charlie Haines about Norma Byng, I spent another four years in Europe, and by that time we were up to the catastrophe that rocked the world and butchered millions of people.

It caught us short of men in all departments. I was given some odd jobs outside the regular schedule, while we were trying hard to be neutral, and waiting for the Monarch of Death and his cohorts of three-cornered, degenerate minds, to discover they had overlooked another big bet besides Belgium and Italy.

Suddenly I drew a trip to Florida. I was to attach myself to the United States' Court as an ostensible necessity, for the purpose of learning what the Boche were doing toward helping themselves to our cotton, copper and crude rubber in the Gulf by means of undersea cargo carriers, and also, if they were trying to cash in on their mortgage on Mexico.

One morning the judge, hard-headed and practical, called me into his chambers and gave me two warrants to produce dead or alive the body of a certain man in court to answer charges of smuggling tobacco from Cuba, and violating our neutrality. He said the "Paper case," which meant the affidavits, upon which the warrants were based, were altogether regular, but there was a distinctive odor about them that indicated "a nigger in the woodpile." And that meant that if I went slow, it was believed that I would find out something worth while.

The clerk and myself studied elementary geography for a while, and found that the best we could do was to locate the defendant by longitude and latitude, either on the barren Keys, or on one of the numerous islands nearby. The affidavits appeared to be made by members of the firm of Bulow and Company, in Key West, and thither I went at once.

Bulow and Company were big handlers, wholesale and retail, of heavy hardware, ship chandlery, and spongefishers' supplies. They had a few sponge boats themselves, deep-sea vessels, also docks and tugs. I saw nothing to justify the honorable judge's angle on the case, but took his advice and went slow.

At the hotel in Key West I met Ike Barry, a traveling man in just such a line.

"Been selling the Bulow people for twenty-five years," he informed me. "Always discount. The manager is director in the People's National. The Bulows were German--all dead now. Will take you down and introduce you to present managers--fine people. No--well, I'm going to be here a week or two fishing--see me if I can make you happy--I know what Key West has for breakfast."

I was making no progress in getting a line on the man Canby charged in the warrants. Finally I changed clothes and went down to the waterfront looking for a job as marine engineer, or anything in that line. It may have been an accident that I got on the Bulow wharf first with my license, membership card, and enough letters to convince even a doubting Thomas that I was fit and willing.

I found Scotty in the engine room of a speedy gasoline craft and pried his mouth open with a hard-luck story. This boat was used as sort of scout for trade all the way from the Bermudas and Cuba to Vera Cruz and New Orleans.

Scotty soon showed his Highland Scotch by starting in to brag.

"It'll split the water faster than anything on the Gulf," said he, looking proud, "but I've got to give the Devil his due--there's one boat down here that passes us at our best, like we hadn't cast off yet, and the old man is wild about it--or maybe it's something else that's the real reason."

This was the first information I had received regarding Canby. It was his boat that excited Scotty, and I soon had the story and enough geography to locate him.

Scotty walked uptown with me, and before parting said, after swearing me to secrecy, that unless things looked better on the other side he was going back home to take his old place in the Royal Navy, and that if I stuck around awhile I might have his job. In fact, there were some things about his job he didn't like, he informed me, getting more friendly before I left him.

I had to get an order from the superintendent to have the train stop the next morning about midway between Key West and the Everglades. The conductor, a veteran on the road, said he had never stopped there. As far as he knew it was a sort of a Saturday and Sunday rendezvous for spongers and thought that, without an arsenal on my person, I was taking chances. "Queer fish," he added, shaking his head, "but someone there knows something about flowers."

I wondered what he meant.

He let me off at the open back door of a rambling building of many additions, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long, beginning near the track, and ending with two stories near the water on the Gulf side.

Not a soul was in sight and everything as still as a country church on a weekday. I went through the store stocked with fishermen's supplies, encountering no signs of life, until I emerged at the other end on a wide veranda with a double-canvas roof. Here I saw an old-time darkey standing near the side rail, sharpening an eighteen-inch, murderous-looking knife on a big whetstone held in his palm.

He jerked his head toward me and double-tracked his face from ear to ear, but did not speak. Then I saw a boy of about twelve, with a rifle beside him, a hundred feet away, his bare legs dangling over the pier, which began at the veranda and extended out into the water, terminating at a corrugated warehouse that looked like a daddy-long-legs, in the retreating tide.

The boy glanced at me, then riveted his eyes on a spot in the murky water twenty feet in front of him and seemed to forget my presence. The old darkey silently continued whetting the big knife. There was something in the situation that I didn't understand. Had I struck a crazy house?

But that straight-nosed, clear-featured boy, as alert as a sparrow, was not crazy. Faded khaki pants, puckered above his knees, and a sleeveless garment of the same material pulled down over his head covered a plump, well-developed chest and body, round and sinuous as a minnow.

The negro continued to whet, occasionally trying the edge with his thumb and glancing at the boy, who continued to gaze at the water as though hypnotized.

I moved a little uneasily, clearly unable to understand. I recalled what the conductor had said about flowers and noticed that the space between the veranda and high tide, more than fifty feet, and a hundred feet either side of the narrow pier that passed above it, was a most luxuriant flower garden, planted in artistic figures. The coral formation threw an arm nearly around the warehouse on the wharf, enclosing several acres of water, protecting it from the fierce tropical Gulf storms. A smart-looking motorboat tugging at its chain completed the scene.

I became fascinated and moved over near the edge of the veranda some distance from the negro, who had stopped work on his knife; the boy's hand moved cautiously toward the rifle, a watchful glitter in his eyes; then raising it to his shoulder, fired at a spot in the water he had been watching. Instantly the waters of the little bay were lashed into a crimson foam. He had shot a bull alligator through his sleeping eye.

"That's the fellow who has been wallowing among my flowers lately. Don't go near him yet, Don!" cautioned the boy, bounding to his feet with rifle in hand, and watching his victim like a hawk.

"He's done dead, ain't he?" asked the negro, seeing the giant saurian floating on his back, his yellow belly turned toward the sky.

"Maybe not, Don. Wait till I reach his heart through the flank," replied the youngster, moving near me in order to get a better shot.

The second aim was more effective than the first, the monster's tail lashing the deep water into a repulsive shade. He then turned belly up, inert; his heart had been pierced.

"Now he is safe!" exclaimed the boy to the negro, who was already wading out with the murderous knife and a short-handled axe. The boy then walked toward me with a frank, honest gaze of inquiry, still holding the rifle, which was fully as long as himself.

At that moment I discovered that this marksman was not a boy but a girl!

Shooting alligators is one thing in which I have never indulged, and I watched the show with undisguised wonder and admiration. Discovering that the little rifle expert was a girl excited me, and as she came closer she eyed me critically from shoes to hat. Then I observed that she was older than I first thought.

"I wouldn't want you to shoot at me," I said, attempting to put her at ease. I could detect a sort of distrust in her clear gray eyes.

"I never miss a 'gator, if that's what you mean," said she, toying with her rifle and reassured by my voice. "I've been shooting 'gators all my life."

"I think it's wonderful; few men could do as well."

Still doubting, she smiled slightly and continued to study my face, my tropical clothes, even my shoes.

"Mr. Canby is not about?" I asked as I smiled down upon her.

"No, Daddy went away before daylight," and turning away to glance out toward the Gulf added, as if reassured, "The weather is good and I don't know when to expect him." Then her innate courtesy moved her. I felt that if she raised her rifle and shot me through she would do so delicately--she could not be vulgar, her straight-chiseled nose settled that.

"Won't you have a seat?" she asked, pointing to a rustic table and some chairs worked out of wreckage which stood in the center of the veranda. I thanked her and sat down, while she hung timidly on the edge of a chair opposite, trying to account for my presence.

"Don't you get lonesome and feel afraid here all alone?"

"No, I'm never afraid, and Don is always here. At the end of the week the harbor is full of boats coming in to trade. I can protect myself. A long time ago my father taught me how to shoot with a rifle and a pistol, and also to use a knife. The knife's for sharks, though."

"Then your father is not here much?" I ventured.

"No--lately he lets me run the store, and he goes away to buy sponges, 'gators' hides and sharkskins."

"Where does he sell his stock?"

"Well, I don't exactly know--sometimes in Key West, sometimes in Tampa, sometimes in Havana. He takes the skins and hides to the tannery. What do you want to see my father for?" she suddenly asked, looking straight at me.

I was off my guard. A man's question would have been easy. I knew that to make any progress I must satisfactorily answer that question at once, and instantly I thought of Ike Barry.

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