Reube Dare's Shad Boat

In a short time conversation flagged, and then, listening to the lip-lip-lipping of the softly falling tide and the mellow far-off roar of the waters pouring through an aboideau, both the watchers grew drowsy. At last Will was asleep. Even Reube’s brain was getting entangled with confused and fleeting visions when he was brought sharply to himself by the queer sucking sound of footsteps in the mud.

He raised his head and peered over the gunwale. There was Mart Gandy within ten paces of the net reel. He had come by way of the dike. In his hand gleamed the polished curve of the sickle with which he was accustomed to reap his buckwheat, and Reube’s blood boiled at the thought of that long, keen blade working havoc in the meshes of his cherished nets. Gandy marched straight up to the reel, raised the sickle, and slashed viciously at the mass of woven twine.

Ere he could repeat the stroke a yell of wrath rang in his ear and Reube was upon him, hurling him to the ground. His deadly weapon flew from his grasp, and he was too startled to make much resistance. The weight of Reube’s knee on his chest, the clutch of Reube’s strong fingers at his throat, took all the fight out of him. He looked up with angry and frightened eyes and saw Will standing by, a meaning smile on his lips and a heavy tarred rope’s end in his hand.

Reube rubbed the culprit’s head rudely in the mud, and then relaxed the grip upon his gasping throat.

“I cannot pound the scoundrel now that I’ve got him down,” said he, turning his face toward Will. “What shall we do with him? You can’t lather a chap that doesn’t resist and that has his head down in the mud. It’s brutal!”

“We’ll tie his hands to the reel and give him a taste of this rope’s end,” suggested Will, judiciously.

“I don’t exactly like that either,” said Reube, rubbing his captive’s head again in the slime. “It’s too much like playing hangman. He deserves the cat-o’-nine-tails if ever a scoundrel did, but I don’t like the dirty work of applying it. We’d better just take him to jail. Then he’ll get a term in the penitentiary, and be out of the way for a few years. Fetch me that cod line out of the cuddy, will you?”

By this time Mart Gandy had found his voice. That word “penitentiary” had reduced him to an abject state of terror, and he began to plead piteously for mercy.

“Lick me! Lick me all you like!” he cried, in his queer, high voice. “I kin take a hidin’; but don’t send me to the penitentiary! What’d the old man do, as hain’t got his right senses no more? An’ the old woman’d jest plumb starve, for the gals they ain’t a mite o’ good to work. Le’ me off this time, Reube Dare, ’n’ I declare I won’t never do it ag’in!”

Mart’s imploring voice more than his words made Reube weaken in his purpose. As for Mart’s promise, he put no faith in that, and marked on Will’s face an unrelenting grin. Nevertheless he said:

“There’s something in what the rascal says, Will. If Mart goes to the penitentiary his family’s going to suffer more than he. I’ve a mind to let him off this time, after all.”

“Well,” grunted Will, “just as you say. But it would be nothing short of iniquitous to let him off altogether. You’d better give him a good ducking, to let him know you’re in earnest, anyway.”

Reube pondered this a moment.

“Mart Gandy,” he said, sternly, “I’m going to let you off this time with nothing more than a ducking, to fix the circumstance in your mind. But remember, if I find you again at any of your old pranks I’ll have a warrant out against you that very day! And I’ve got all the evidence needed to convict you. Now get up!” And he jerked the lanky and bedraggled form to its feet.

Mart, with the fear of prison walls no longer chilling his heart, had recovered himself during this harangue, and his eyes gleamed with a furtive, half-wild hate. Still he made no resistance. The sickle lay far beyond his reach, and he knew he was physically no match for either Reube or Will. He was led to the very edge of the steep, slippery incline of the channel, wherein the tide had dropped about fifteen feet. Will snatched a coil of rope out of the boat.

“Can you swim?” he asked, curtly.

“No,” said the fellow, eyeing him sidewise.

“He is lying,” remarked Reube, in a businesslike voice.

“Well,” said Will, “if he isn’t lying we’ll fish him out again, that’s all.”

Just as he was speaking, and while Gandy’s eyes were fixed upon his face with an evil light in them, Reube stepped forward and executed a certain dexterous trip of which he was master. Gandy’s heels flew out over the brink, his head went back, and, feet foremost, he shot like lightning down the slope and into the stream.

In a moment he came to the surface and began floundering and struggling like a drowning man.

“He’s putting that all on,” said Reube.

“Maybe not,” exclaimed Will. “Better throw him the end of the rope now.”

Reube smiled, gravely, but obeyed and a coil fell almost in Gandy’s arms. The struggling man seemed too bewildered to catch it. He grasped at it wildly, sank, rose, sank, and rose again. Will prepared to jump in and rescue him. But Reube interposed.

“No, you don’t,” said he, coolly; “not without one end of this rope round your waist and me hanging onto the other end!”

“Make haste, then,” cried Will, in some anxiety.

In a few seconds the rope was knotted firmly about Will’s waist, and he sprang into the water. Even as he did so the apparently drowning man disappeared. He came up again many feet away, and, swimming with wonderful speed, gained the opposite bank. He clambered nimbly up the slope and started at a run across the marsh. Reube, with derisive compliments, helped the dripping and disgusted Will to shore again.

“I saw his game,” said he, while Will wrung out his clothes. “He’s just like a fish in the water, and he thought he’d make believe he was drowning, and so manage to drag you down without getting blamed for it. But he knew the game was up when he heard what I said and saw you had the rope tied to you.”

“Right you are this time, old man,” said Will.

The sky had cleared perfectly, and in the radiant moonlight Reube’s skillful fingers quickly mended the net. The cut was not a deep one, as the blade had been stopped by two of the large wooden floats with which the net was beaded. The mending done and the net made ready for the next night’s fishing, the boys turned their faces toward the uplands to seek a few hours’ sleep at Mrs. Dare’s.

Meanwhile Mart Gandy had never ceased running till he got behind an old barn which hid him from the scene of his punishment. Then he turned and shook his long, dark finger in silent fury toward the spot where his antagonists were working. When he reached home he crept to a loft in the shed and drew out a long, heavy musket, once a flintlock, which he had altered to a percussion lock, so that it made an effective weapon for duck shooting. This gun he loaded with a heavy charge of powder and a liberal proportion of buckshot. He muttered over his task till it was done to his satisfaction, and then stole off to sleep in the barn.

CHAPTER VIII.

A Midnight Visitor

REUBE and Will did not go shad fishing the next night, after all. A fierce sou’wester blew up toward evening, and drifting for shad was out of the question. Every boat was made secure with extra care, and all night the fury of an unusually high tide put the Tantramar and Westcock dikes to the test. They stood the trial nobly, for well had their builders done their work.

The Dares’ wide-winged cottage, set in a hollow of the hill, was little jarred by the gusts that volleyed down upon it. Having seen the Dido well secured behind the little wharf, Reube felt altogether at ease.

“Are you quite sure,” asked Mrs. Dare that evening, “that Gandy won’t make another attack on the shad boat or the net?”

“O yes, mother,” answered Reube; “I’m no longer anxious on that score. Mart feels madder than ever, I’ve no doubt, and I think he’d have tried to drown Will last night if I had left him half a chance. But he is just mortally afraid of the penitentiary, and, now he knows we can prove a case against him, I imagine he’ll bottle his wrath for a while.”

“Well, dear, I hope you are right,” said his mother. “But I must say I think Mart Gandy is more dangerous than you give him credit for being. I want you to be very careful how you go about alone at night. I know that blood, and how it craves for vengeance. Be watchful, Reube, and don’t make the mistake of undervaluing your enemy.”

“No, mother, I won’t,” answered Reube. “I know that wise head of yours is generally in the right. If you think I ought to keep my weather eye open, why, open I will keep it, I promise you. And now it’s my turn! What were you doing out so late alone, when it was almost dark, with those poor eyes that can’t see much even in broad daylight?”

“I know it was imprudent, Reube, and I did have some trouble getting home,” confessed Mrs. Dare. “But, dear, I couldn’t help it. I heard quite late in the afternoon that Jim Paul was on a spree again, after keeping steady for a whole year. He has been drinking hard for a week – drunk all the time – and his wife sick in bed, and nothing to eat in the house. I went right down with a basket, and I was glad I went. The children were crying with hunger. And such a house! And Mrs. Paul lying on the floor, white as a ghost, where she had just fallen! She had got out of bed and tried to make some porridge for the children – there was nothing in the house but a little corn meal. Her husband was out, and she was trembling with fear lest he should return in a drunken frenzy and beat them all. Poor woman! And Jim Paul is a good husband and father when he is sober. You see, Reube, it took me a long while, blind as I’m getting, to find the children and straighten things up.”

“Well, mother, this autumn, if all goes well,” said Reube, cheerfully, “we’ll get the poor eyes fixed as good as new. And then you may stay out late sometimes without me scolding you.”

That night, when Reube and his mother were sleeping soundly, they were roused by a crash which the roaring of the wind could not drown. It seemed to shake the whole house. Reube sprang out of bed. As he dragged on his trousers his mother came to the door with a lamp in her hand.

“What is it, mother?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Some one has broken in the outer door,” replied Mrs. Dare, calmly. “He is in the back kitchen now, but the inner door is bolted.”

Reube took the lamp from her hand and started down stairs.

“O, my boy, what are you doing? You have no weapon. O, if only we had – ”

But Reube interrupted these words, which now had an all-unwonted tremor in them.

“Nothing else to be done, mother,” he said, quietly. “Don’t be scared! He won’t bother me, whoever he is!” And as his mother looked at him she felt strangely reassured. Or, perhaps it was something in his voice which satisfied her. She snatched up her big Paisley shawl, flung it over her nightgown, and followed Reube at a discreet distance.

Reube opened a door leading from the hall to the inner kitchen. At the same moment the door between the two kitchens was battered in with a loud crash, and there entered a terrifying apparition. It was Jim Paul, drunk, and with a wild glitter in his bloodshot eyes. His face and huge, burly form were stained with the blood of various fights, and he carried in his hand the ax with which he had broken down the doors.

Jim Paul’s appearance was well calculated to daunt an older heart than Reube’s, but Reube’s heart was of a dauntless fiber. A cold, steady light seemed to shine from his pale eyes as they met the fierce and feverish gaze of the intruder, who promptly stopped and glanced aside uneasily. Reube’s mouth and broad brow, usually so boyish, looked as grim as iron as he stepped up coolly to the drunken giant and asked him what he meant by breaking into the house.