Cursed

“Rolling Rio,
To my rolling Rio Grande!
Hooray, you rolling Rio!
So fare ye well, my bonny young girls,
For I’m bound to the Rio Grande!”

Hal nodded as he heard the springs of the doctor’s bed creak, and knew the old man had really laid down for his mid-afternoon nap.

“It’s working fine,” said he. “Gramp’s gone, Ezra’s good for half an hour on ‘Rio Grande,’ and the doc’s turned in. Looks like a curse was sticking to me, doesn’t it? Not much! Nothing like that can stick to me!”

At his feet two or three ants were busy with a grasshopper’s leg. Hal smeared them out with a dab of his sole.

“That’s the way to do with people that get in your way,” he muttered. “Just like that!”

He slouched back to the porch. The resemblance to what Captain Briggs had been in the old days seemed wonderfully striking at just this moment. Same hang of heavy shoulders, same set of jaw; scowl quite a simulacrum of the other, and even the dark glowering of the eyes almost what once had been.

As Hal Briggs lithely stepped on to the porch again he formed how wonderful an image of that other man who, half a century ago, had swung the poisoned kris upon the decks of the Silver Fleece, and, smeared with blood, had hewn his way against all opposition to his will!

“Afraid of an old Malay curse!” sneered Hal. “Poor, piffling fool! Why, Filhiol’s loose in the dome, and grandpop’s no better. They’re a couple of children – ought to be shoved into the nursery. And they think they’re going to dictate to me?”

He paused a moment at the front door to listen. No sound from within indicated any danger.

“Think they’re going to keep me in this graveyard burg!” he gibed. “And stop my having that girl! Well, they’ve got another think coming. She’s mine, that young porpoise. She’s mine!”

Into the cabin he made his way, noiselessly, closed the hall door and smiled with exultation.

He needed but a moment to reach the desk, take out the little slip of paper on which the captain had written the combination, and go to the safe.

A few turns of the knob, and the iron door swung wide. Open came the money-compartment. With exultant hands, filled with triumph and evil pride, Hal caught up the sheaf of bills there, quickly counted off five hundred dollars, took a couple more bills for good luck, crammed the money into his pocket, and replaced the pitifully small remnant in the compartment.

“Sorry I’ve got to leave any,” he reflected, “but it’ll be safer. It may keep him from noticing. The old man wouldn’t let me have a boat, eh? And Laura turned me down, did she? Well now, we’ll soon see about all that!”

“Master Hal, sir! What in the name o’ Tophet are you up to?”

The sound of Ezra’s voice swung Hal sharp around. So intent had he been that he had quite failed to notice the cessation of the old cook’s chantey. A moment, Hal’s eyes, staring, met those of the astonished servitor. Ominous silence filled the room.

“Why, Master Hal!” Ezra quavered. “You – ain’t – ”

“You sneaking spy!” Hal growled at him, even in his rage and panic careful to keep his voice low, lest he awake the doctor, abovestairs. Toward the old man he advanced, with rowdy oaths of the fo’cs’le.

Ezra stood his ground.

“I ain’t no spy, Master Hal,” he exclaimed, tremblingly. “But I come into the dinin’-saloon, here, an’ couldn’t help seein’. Tell me it ain’t so, Master Hal! Tell me you ain’t sunk so low as to be robbin’ your own grandpa, while he’s to town in all this rain, settlin’ up things fer you! Not that, Master Hal – not that!”

“Ezra, you damn son-of-a-sea-cook!” snarled Hal, his face the face of murder. “You call me a thief again, and so help me but I’ll wring your neck!” His hand caught Ezra by the throat and closed in a gorilla-grip, shutting off all breath. “You didn’t learn your lesson from the club last night, eh? Well, I’ll teach you one now, you old gray rat! I’ll shut your mouth, damn you!”

Viciously he shook the weak old man. Ezra clawed with impotent hands at the vise-clutch strangling him.

“It’s my money, my own money, understand?” Hal spat at him. “Every penny of it’s mine. He didn’t want me to have it just yet, but I’m going to, and you’re not going to blow on me! If you do– ”

He loosed his hold, snatched down from its supporting hooks the Malay kris, and with it gripped in hand confronted the trembling, half-fainting cook.

“See this, Ezra?” And Hal shook the envenomed blade before the poor old fellow’s horror-smitten eyes.

“Master – Master Hal!”

“If you breathe so much as one syllable to the captain, I’ll split you with this knife, as sure as I’m a foot high! What? Butting in on me, in my own house, are you? Like hell! Take a slant at this knife here, and see how you’d like it through your guts!”

He raised it as if to strike. Ezra cowered, shrinking with the imminent terror of death.

“Master Hal, oh, fer God’s sake, now – ”

“You’re going to keep your jaw-tackle quiet, are you, to the captain?”

“I – I – ”

Wickedly Hal slashed at him. Ezra opened his mouth, no doubt to cry aloud, but Hal clapped a sinewed hand over it, and slammed him back against the wall.

“Not a word more!” he commanded, and released the trembling old man. “I’ve got to turn you loose, Ezra, but if you double-cross me, so help me God – ”

“You callin’ on God, Master Hal?” quavered Ezra. “You, with your heathen curses an’ your Malay sword, an’ all the evil seed you’re sowin’ fer a terrible crop o’ misery?”

“Shut up, you!”

“Goin’ on this way, Master Hal, after you jest promised the cap’n you was goin’ to begin at the bottom o’ the ladder an’ climb ag’in? This here ain’t the bottom; this here is a deep ditch you’re diggin’, fur below that bottom. Oh, Master Hal,” and Ezra’s shaking hands went out in passionate appeal, “ef you got any love fer the memory o’ your dead mother; ef you got any fer your grandpa, what’s been so wonderful good to you; ef you got any little grain o’ gratitude to me, fer all these long years – ”

“Ezra, you bald-headed old pot-walloper, I’m going to count ten on you,” Hal interrupted, terrible with rage. “If, by the end of that time you haven’t sworn to keep your mouth shut about this, I’m going to kill you right here in this room! I mean that, Ezra!”

“But ef it’s y’r own money, Master Hal, why should you be afeared to let him know?”

Hal struck the old man a staggering blow in the face. “You keep your voice down,” he snarled. “If you wake the doctor, and he comes down here, God help the pair of you! Now, Ezra, I’m not going to trifle with you any longer. You’re going to swear secrecy, and do it quick, or take the consequences!”

He turned, caught up the captain’s well-thumbed Bible from the desk, and with the Bible in one hand, the poisoned kris in the other, confronted Ezra.

“Here! Lay your hand on this book, damn quick!” he ordered. “And repeat what I tell you. Quick, now; quick!”

The argument of the raised kris overbore Ezra’s resistance. With a look of heart-breaking anguish he laid a trembling, veinous hand on the Bible.

“What is it, Master Hal?” quavered he. “What d’ye want me to say?”

“Say this: ‘If I betray this secret – ’”

“‘If I – if I betray this secret – ’”

“‘May the black curse of Vishnu fall on me!’”

“‘May the’ – listen, Master Hal! Please now, jest one minute!”

“Ezra, say it, damn your stiff, obstinate neck! Say it, or you get the knife!”