Glacier County Chief

The Green Women

Copyright 1939: By News Syndicate Co., Inc.
IN TWO PARTS—PART TWO

The click of Dorr's reel suddenly screamed and he tightened the hold on his rod, yelling, "Strike!"

The stout bamboo bent, then astern of the boat the waters exploded in a burst of phosphorescent fire. Something huge and incredibly active rose out of the depths, shook itself and fell back; again it surged upward and turned a mighty somersault.

Dorr felt his line slacken, and cried: "Damn! He's off!"

"Too bad! That was a nice fish," said Bangs as he started aft to examine bait and leader.

But the tarpon had not thrown the hook. It had merely rushed towards the boat and now it leaped again so close and so high that it hung poised over the very stern. Dorr realized that it was coming aboard and with a cry of warning he snatched Mildred out of her seat and interposed himself between her and the fish. Its body all but brushed him as it crashed down upon the transom of the launch then somersaulted into the cockpit.

In a series of convulsions too swift to follow, it tossed itself about and the blows from its case-hardened body tore the chairs from their fastenings and threatened to smash the floor boards under it. It catapulted itself into the air and slithered from side to side.

Bangs had jerked his two passengers forward barely in time. Now he yelled at them to stand clear. Raising a boat hook he aimed a blow at the creature.

He struck time after time and meanwhile Dorr bore Mildred with him until they stood against the folded spray hood.

"Are you hurt?" he inquired breathlessly. He felt her hair brush his face as she shook her head and in the reaction from his sudden anxiety his arms tightened. He was aware of her breast rising and falling against his chest. Bangs, after a terrific struggle, finally subdued the big fish sufficiently to slide it overboard. Then, in a weak voice Alan said: "Gee! I was afraid you'd been struck. It turned me sick."

"That creature was magnificent," Mildred said. "If only people had the strength and the courage to dash themselves to death rather than be caught."

Alan was staring at her queerly and she inquired: "What is it?"

"I don't know," he confessed, "only that I've suddenly awakened from that mental daze I spoke about. I've been jolted out of myself and into love, I guess."

"Don't! Please!" Swiftly she laid her hand over his lips whereupon he kissed it, then took it in his own and held it tightly.

"What a dumbbell I've been," he breathed. "I'm seeing you at this moment for the first time. I shouldn't talk this way, but—"

"Why not. That's what you're expected to do." She laughed a bit wildly. "I mean it's the way to talk to any married woman, isn't it?"

With a slow shake of the head he told her: "It's not what I'm in the habit of saying. In fact, I've never said it before. But that's probably because I've never felt quite as I do at this minute. I can understand why you've heard it often—you're beautiful, you're—everything. How could any man keep from loving you? That doesn't excuse me for losing my head and blurting it out . . . I'm sorry! It makes a pretty rotten situation, doesn't it?"

"Yes . . . For both of us."

He peered at her sharply, then exclaimed: "I wouldn't do anything to embarrass or to offend you. I should have had more self-control. Forget it, please!" He fumbled for a cigarette and his hands shook as he lighted it.

Mildred came on deck late the next morning to learn from young Bill that her husband and his guest were out in the pass with the captain. But they wouldn't catch anything, Bangs Jr., declared. Nobody ever did.

That forecast was borne out when the anglers returned. Tom was in a temper. Alan paused on the deck long enough to tell his hostess.

"There certainly is something phony about this place. Imagine fish, big ones mind you, hanging you up in the rocks and tying knots in your line! Honestly they had a grand morning's sport with us. Tom accidentally snagged one but it came to life and almost tore the rod out of his hands. When he reeled in all he had on his hook was a hank of hair."

Mildred uttered a sound.

"It wasn't hair, of course. Hair isn't green. But I'll be damned if it didn't look like it. Tom's got his neck bowed and is going back tonight. Not for me!"

Shortly before supper, Murray, who had been drinking steadily during the afternoon, inquired of his wife:

"Well, what did our plutocrat say about the deal?"

"I had no chance to bring it up."

He stared at her fixedly. "You must have said something last night for he's leaving tomorrow. He asked me to send him back to Everglades in the speedboat."

"Hm-m! That's a relief."

Murray seized his wife by the arm so fiercely that she uttered a cry of pain. "You try my patience! I'm in deep water, up to my chin. You can pull me out or pull me under. Well! I'll never permit any woman to drag me down. If he gets off the hook you'll never be sorry but once, and that's from now on. I'll start something you'll both remember. I'll take him to town, all right!" The speaker laughed unpleasantly. "I'll boot him ashore and give the newspapers a story that'll make every front page in the country."

"That would be pretty rough on me, wouldn't it?"

"Then do your stuff!"

Murray poured himself another drink and went on deck.

"Has Tom ever spoken to you about a lease of some fabulous oil fields in South America?" Mildred asked late that night. She and Alan had put in the early evening trolling and now were seated on the after deck of the Loretta.

"Never."

"He's in a desperate fix and you're his only hope."

"All right, I'll help him out."

"Would you? Why?"

"I'd do anything you asked me to do."

"Then—get away from here as quickly as you can! Forget that you ever met anybody by the name of Murray." Mildred spoke quietly.

"I've arranged to leave in the morning. After what happened last night I couldn't very well stay."

The woman hesitated, then in a small voice, she asked: "What did happen, Alan? . . . I'd like to hear, just so I'll have something to remember."

"Nothing, really! I merely had a dream. It was about a young fellow who fell in love with a married woman. He happened to have pretty strong convictions about such things, so—he up and walked out."

"You didn't dream, did you, that the husband knew what was going on from the start and had arranged the whole thing?"

"Good Lord!" Alan peered at her queerly.

"You didn't dream, did you, that any husband would bait a trap with his own wife? Or that he married her principally because she was young and quite good looking and he could use her to advantage? If it's money he wants, I'll give it to him. If he's looking for a fight, he can have that, but when I go you're going with me."

"He'll never permit it."

"And the day you're divorced, you'll marry me."

"But, Alan," the woman protested feebly. "I've told you I'm no good! This isn't the first time I've helped him rook people. I'm no better than he."

"Let me be the judge of that." He took her in his arms and she clung to him.

"You love me, don't you?"

"Too well to let you make a mistake like this. When I found myself in your arms last night I realized that I'd let him kill me before I'd do anything to hurt you. And that's what he'll do, Alan. He'll kill both of us."

Again he drew her close and said gently: "Don't worry. There's always a way out and here's where I take over."

Dorr was surprised on the following morning to learn that Murray had come in about daylight and, after rousing out Captain Bangs, had taken the speedboat and set out for Everglades. Under the circumstances it was a strange thing to do. Alan was mystified and Mildred was in such a panic of apprehension that he had a hard time to quiet her.

It was nearly dusk when the speedboat returned. As Murray came up the Loretta's ladder he called to his guest:

"I owe you an apology, Alan. I completely forgot that you wanted to go back to town this morning. Could have taken you as well as not, but I was pretty high last night and I had a brilliant idea. When I get a thought in my head there's no room for anything else, especially if I'm teed up. I hope one day more or less makes no difference to you."

"None whatever," said Dorr.

Mildred followed her husband down the companionway to inquire: "Did you go up there to set the stage?"

"For Alan? No. Of course I didn't altogether forget that he wanted to leave but I really had some business in town and besides I thought that you might profit by another day with him. How did you make out?"

"We had a frank talk."

"Get anywhere?"

"I said we had a frank talk. I told him everything."

"You mean—"

The woman nodded and for a moment she thought that he intended to strike her.

"I seem to smell something," he said slowly.

"Perhaps it's the odor of burning bridges," she told him.

"So that's it? You told him everything. And he was shaken to the core. Splendid! Now it's my turn to shake him."

"It's no use, Tom. I'm through."

"Indeed? My dear, never until this moment did I realize what a treasure I have in you. Why you've handled this in a manner to exceed my fondest expectations. You've made me look like a piker. The most I hoped for was a hundred thousand, now I see a million in sight. But let's not mar the happy occasion with an argument. Well put that off till tomorrow."

Captain Bangs snatched a bite of supper then transferred some packages from the launch to the rowboat. He was waiting to cast off when Murray finished his meal.

"You didn't dream that he pays her for things like this?" The speaker was swept along by a sudden surge of emotion. "You didn't dream that we're a couple of common blackmailers?"

"Mildred."

She rose, with a brittle laugh, "Well, let it be a lesson to you never to put faith in well dressed strangers."

Dorr rose with her. He seized her roughly by the arm, at which she winced and uttered an exclamation of pain. "Please! That arm isn't what it was. Tom has the strength of a gorilla."

She could hear the startled intake of his breath, then he said with difficulty: "I must get this straight."

"Very well. You fell into the clutches of crooks. One of them weakened and—"

"And for that she nearly got a broken arm . . . I see! Well, that tells me what I want to know."

At the tone of his voice she cried imploringly:

"Oh, Alan dear, you mustn't have anything further to do with us!"

"This is against the law and I don't intend to have any part in it."

"Don't be a simpleton. I'll take the responsibility."

"If I'd known you went to Everglades for dynamite I'd never have run you up there. I'm warning you to lay off before—"

"Before what?"

"I just don't know. I've got a feeling it's like murder."

"Well, I'm in a mood for murder, and I'll do a lot less damage out here than back yonder. At least I won't blow up your yacht." Viciously Murray tugged at the cord of one of the bundles whereupon his companion exclaimed:

"You leave that stuff alone till I'm out of this boat."

In silence he rowed ashore and stepped out of the skiff.

Feeling the imminence of something evil, shocking, he proposed to put himself out of sight and hearing of it if possible, but curiosity tugged at him so strongly that he went only as far as the point and there clambered up on one of the rocks that bordered the inlet.

Small, half transparent clouds obscured the moon at intervals, nevertheless, he could make out Murray seated in the skiff and working at his depth charge. It would serve him right if it blew up right now, Bangs thought. The man was no good and he never had liked him.

Murray shoved off finally, and rowed out into the channel. Bangs heard him ship his oars, then saw him lower the charge of dynamite over the side. After it had reached bottom, he continued to pay out line as the ebb tide drifted him closer to the inlet's mouth.

Bangs felt, rather than heard, the explosion an instant, then he beheld the surface of the waters bulge upward and break. Waves formed and went racing away from it as if frightened; the skiff bobbed and tossed.

Soon he could make out the bodies of fish, large and small, boiling up out of the depths, the bellies of some gleamed palely in the moonlight, from others which had been merely stunned came a feeble struggling. Murray rowed among them examining one after another.

Of a sudden he spun his skiff and drove it forward, then dropping his oars he leaned far out and seized something. He shouted excitedly to Bangs and the latter saw him striving to lift the thing, whatever it was, into the boat.

But in this he had difficulty. There came a commotion, a threshing close to the skiff. Other bodies surged to the surface and milled about it. To the astonished observer they looked like seals but—they appeared to be contending with Murray for the possession of their dead comrade. They piled over each other with such swiftness, however, that it was impossible to determine what was really going on. They rolled and darted and flung themselves about like hungry porpoises in a school of bait.

Then Bangs realized that they had taken the aggressive, for Murray leaped to his feet and began striking with an oar. He yelled again and now there was terror in his voice: it was a call for help, with it came other sounds unlike any the guide had ever heard.

Out of that frothing melee issued a mewing and a screaming similar to that from a flock of sea gulls except that a snarling catlike rage ran through it.

Something seized the gunwales of the boat and rocked it so violently that the occupant was flung to his knees. He bellowed hoarsely above the caterwauling and the noisy explosions of spray and foam, but he was in the grip of unseen hands, or tentacles. They dragged at him and caused the tender to careen. It dipped lower, water poured in over the side: it capsized.

For the space of a breath or two that underwater tumult persisted, then all was quiet.

Bangs was a strong swimmer and he was no coward, but nothing on earth would have induced him to undertake a rescue even had such a thing been possible. As a matter of fact he could not credit what he had seen. It was too inexplicable and too terrifying.

And yet it was no nightmare. The whole thing had occurred within a stone's throw and his eyes had not tricked him. Yonder floated his upturned skiff and closer in, drifting slowly towards the rock on which he stood, was the "Thing" that Murray had tried to lift into the boat. The captain stared at it until his vision blurred. After a while he crept closer to the water's edge, straining his eyes to see more clearly. Plainly it was dead, for there was no movement to it. He could make out, however, that it was no fish such as he had ever seen.

The moonlight brightened and Bangs heard the breath wheezing in his throat. He closed his eyes and looked again. Then he turned and ran.

Mrs. Murray and Alan Dorr bade goodbye to their fishing guide as they boarded a Pullman for the north. When the train had pulled out, the elder Bangs said.

"They'll be married inside of a year."

"Pshaw! You think they're in love?"

"I know it. I heard 'em that night the tarpon came aboard."

"And speaking of fish, whatever made you lie to the coroner about the way Mr. Murray was drowned?"

"He'd of said I was drunk or crazy. Remember, we got other parties booked. Think they'd hire a guide who was nuts?"

"You ain't even told me the truth about what you saw in the water that night," young Bill complained.

"There ain't any truth in it!" his father said irritably. "I thought I saw something but I didn't."

"What? . . . You can tell me."

Bangs passed a calloused palm across his chin and it rasped like a file. "Well, I thought I saw a woman—a green woman. The upper part of her was naked and the rest of her was scaled."

For a while the two walked on, then said the boy. "It must have been an otter."

"Sure! That's all it was," his father agreed. "An otter—with arms, and hair the color of seaweed."

—THE END