Elsie Venner Part 26

"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't, I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been arfter ye f'r a week, 'n' I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother 'fore I'd done 'ith ye!"

d.i.c.k lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless, thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr.

Richard Venner, would be done for.

"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,--"I 'll give you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,--don't you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up!

I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own hands!"

"I'll see y' darned fust! Ketch me lett'n' go!" was Abel's emphatic answer. "Yeou lay still, 'n' wait t'll that man comes tew."

He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of resistance.

Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and then some few of his scattered wits, a little together.

"What is it?"--he said. "Who'shurt? What's happened?"

"Come along here 'z quick 'z y' ken," Abel answered, "'n' haalp me fix this fellah. Y' been hurt, y'rself, 'n' the' 's murder come pooty nigh happenin'."

Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked again, "Who's hurt? What's happened?"

"Y' 'r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the' 's been a murder, pooty nigh."

Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up, found the loop of the la.s.so, which he loosened, but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it.

By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He found it lying near him, c.o.c.ked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as still as if they were performing in a tableau.

"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of c.o.c.king the pistol, and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me that pistil, and yeou fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I 'll have this here fella,h fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."

Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at d.i.c.k's head.

"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while this man puts the rope mound y'r wrists."

d.i.c.k felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he was in a purely pa.s.sive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of twists and knots.

"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate d.i.c.k rose to his feet.

"Who's hurt? What's happened?" asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his memory having been completely jarred out of him for the time.

"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' Stan' askin' questions over 'n'

over;--'t beats all! ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"

As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.

"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that 'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute, Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."

Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round the neck of the miserable d.i.c.k Veneer, who made no sign of resistance,--whether on account of the pain he was in, or from mere helplessness, or because he was waiting for some unguarded moment to escape,--since resistance seemed of no use.

"I 'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "'T' th' ol Doctor, he's got a gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,--off that way, will ye?--'n' I Ill hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."

He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.

"Wal, naow, yeou be a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a hors on th' full spring at t' other eend!"

He looked at him from' head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg which had been caught under the horse.

"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r boot?"

It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly relieved him of.

The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in silence, still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust into his hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland, or whether he had pa.s.sed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told.

They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.

"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.

He fired.

Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal head-dresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments of the Nightblooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily, from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see what had happened.

"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what 's all this noise about?"

"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero of Lake Erie, in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"

The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.

"Richard Veneer!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"

Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.

"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.--Oh, yes!--wait a minute and it will all come back to me."

"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it.

Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or two,--will come right by to-morrow."

"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."

Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat of cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured.

The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.

"What 's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"

d.i.c.k answered sullenly, that he didn't know, fell on it when his horse came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his clothes.

"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel"

By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was a circle around d.i.c.k, who glared about on the a.s.sembled honest people like a hawk with a broken wing.

When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.