(SHORT STORY.) The Hunchback's Legacy

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1934, Page 22

(SHORT STORY.) The Hunchback's Legacy

(By KERRY WOOD.)

The three reached Hunch's cabin within minutes of each other. This was pure chance. The wandering Niche who had been pressed into service by Hunch to deliver his message to the scattered trio had set no definite time of day for their arrival. "Mister Hunch, he say you come Friday," the stone-faced native had told each briefly. "He say be sure come. He say never mind what you think or what you do. He say it make you beeg rich if you come." The promise of riches the trick. Each of them had deserted his trap line to mush for Hunch's cabin, thinking that he alone had been summoned and lured on by the veiled hint of wealth. Now the three were gathered in the single room of the place, each secrctly surprised and disturbed at the presence of the others. They did not know that the Indian had obeyed Hunch's orders well, saying enough and no more than enough to each before stoically disappearing from the picture well paid for his part of the game. Hunch's gimlet eyes seemed feverishly bright to the three men standing silently round his bunk. They glittered with a strange light, as .they searched the men's faces. There was a peculiar satisfaction in their hidden depths while the wizened hunchback twisted and squirmed beneath, the blankets and appeared to fight seizures of wrenching pain. "You all here now, boys," Hunch started. "An' you're waitip' for me to tell you the reason. -Well, I made a mistake. I might as well say that first off, I should only sent for one of you. I bin thinkin' things over an' I see now I made a big mistake. -Three's, too many to split what I got... Your split each wouldn't do any of you'much good. But if only one has the'-' whole thing, he'll be able to do himself proud with it. So I'm going to to give my hoard to just one of you, an' I'll ask the other two to respect the last wish of a dyin' man an' forget I called you here." Knife Lavoie's thin face seemed to grow • tight with sudden strain. Dope Sloane's long fingers began to pluck at cach other, as though he had just taken a shot of his drug. Big Swede Olsen sucked in his thick lips like an animal hungering for meat. And again, unseen by the three, a gleam of fanatical pleasure danced in the dwarf's jewel-hard eyes. "How much ? What've you got?" Dope panted the question. "Ten thousand dollars!" Hunch said, and chuckled at the. sudden sensation his words caused. He knew how great that sum seemed to these men. They were his. kind—not true men of the North, but renegades who could not cope with the competition that must be faced in cities. They were "cheaps," every one of them. They had drifted up beyond the crowds because it was the easy way. Anyone with a gun can live in a country well stocked with game, given just enough money to buy himself flour and staples that are necessary extras to the wild fare. So they carried on a little desultory trapping, these men, in order to earn their grubstake money, and skulked in this wilderness retreat away from a world that moved too fast for their kind. But they were human enough to want another chance. And ten thousand dollars ... Hunch could read their thoughts. "Surprises you, eh?" he went on, his tiny eyes flaring again with that odd glitter of satisfaction. "Guess you're wonderin' how I got it? No; you ain t the kind to care about how it came, though you might wonder a bit at me havin' it an' being here. Never mind that last, either. The thing is, I got it. It's hid, of course—" "Where?" Knife Lavoie jerked out. "Ne\;er mind that yet," Hunch said, silkily! "I'll tell the one I choose where it's hid, all in good time. Right now, I want to make sure you understand about this mistake I made in sendin' for all three of you. Ten thousand is a lot of money in one lump, boys, but split three ways, it ain't so much. It wouldn't help you that way. But givin' it all to one man, he'll have a real chance to get somewheres, maybe. An' I want to give one of you boys a chance, to help make dyin' easier for me!" Mention of death, seemed to bring back pain, and the' man's deformed body threshed a moment under the soiled covers. The three stared at him unwinkingly, waiting for him to name the one who was to have the chance. " 'Course," the hump-back went on. "You ain't exactly what a man could call friends. None of you has ever done me any kind of favour. I ain't payin' no debts of gratitude an' you know it. I got every reason to hate you all!" His high-pitched voice shrilled as he said this, and his eyes were like a devil's; Only Knife Lavoie seemed indifferent. Hunch subsided and kept his tongue for a moment. "You, Swede Olsen," he resumed, twisting round to glare directly at the giant. "I got no reason to call you a friend. You once threw me out o' the settlement store when you was drunk. There _ were a dozen trappers watchin' at the time, too. You said I was a sight to scare dogs an' wasn't fit to be seen in human society, an' you threw me out in the snow!" There was malevolent mirth in his eyes as he watched the big man start under his accusation. "Ay wass droonky," Olsen spluttered in timid apology. "Me, Ay, lak' you. Always, Ay. lak' you. Und Ay use dot money right, if .you. geeve hims- to me. Don't you count dot times—Ay wass droonk!" "Sure you was," Hunch agreed, complacently. "You're always drunk. Nor I ain't holdin' that against you. I just mentioned it to show that I ain't tied to hand my pile,to you. But I ain't sayin' I won't, Swede. I got to make up my mind yet!" He eyed Dope Sloane next. "You never showed me any kindness, either," he said to Sloane. "You're my nearest neighbour when it comes down to distance. But it never helped me none. In fact, some of the traps I set over on your side o' my range I never had any luck with.'.Seems to me that someone stole the luck outa them. What about it, Dope?" Sloane waited just a little too long before meeting the charge, his yellow, fingers plucking feverishly at each other. "I didn't do it," he whispered, dry of mouth. "I didn't, I tell you. It—maybe it was some half-breed who was passin', through. It wasn't me." -He hid his face in his hands. "Please-give me the money, Huneli. I could.start right from' the beginnin' again if I got that money, j I'd give up dope, even—: —" ■ He cracked, sobs shaking his gaunt shoulders. j "Yes, you would!", taunted Hunch. 1 The other forced back his emotions, staring at the mocking figure on the bunk. When he dropped his gaze to the floor his. mouth wm suddenly hard. j

! "Don't you feel you got no chance, though," purred the mis-shapen man in the bunk. "You ain't been no friend, but I ain't made up my mind." He turned to the impassive Knife Lavoie. "As for you," he whipped out, his voice trembling with hate, "you and the way you play with that damned knife of yours! I got no call to love you, Lavoie, and a hundred reasons to hate you." Lavoie's taut face did not change. "Still," said Hunch, softly, after a little, "I guess it was all in fun, an' I ain't decided yet." He lay back and lapsed into silence, as though he had finished a job and done it well. The three watched him like animals of prey. A smile twisted the mean features of the hunchback. And as suddenly a moan came from him., "Quick!" he whispered. "Water! Quick!" '•> He waved a claw at a tin pail on a nearby box. Knife Lavoie sprang to it, filled the tin dipper at one plunge, hurried with it to the bunk side. Hunch raised himself; eagerly swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then his body tensed. His mouth worked. "The money —it's in ten-dollar bills —in a leather bag under the blankets, in my other hand." A smile played on the dwarf's ugly lips. "I leave it—to— to the one —that gets it." A terrible sound of anguish came from him then. His body twisted grotesquely, in a last paroxysm. His tiny eyes: grew large with pam. Then he flopped back in limp collapse. But his lips 'still smiled. "Dead!" shouted Swede. "Und he say—" { i:. Dope Sloane got up quickly and moved away." Hard determination was set on his weak features and his fingers were quiet. Knife Lavoie lost no time in tearing the blankets aside, exposing Hunch's lean body. Olsen and he caught a glimpse of a leather pouch, newly fallen from Hunch's slack fingers. Then j Knife spun round, sensing their danger. | "Swede!" he shouted, jumping after Dope Sloane, who had snatched Hunch's rifle from its hook near the door. "Help!" He reached Dope just in time to dash the muzzle aside. The two nien closed with each other, grappling for possession of the weapon. Swede Olsen took all this in with one glance, then swooped a big hand into the bunk and slid the money pouch into a pocket before lumbering to Lavoie's aid.

What happened then is a mystery. Sloane was sobbing, his ruse detected and his nerve gone. He may have done it as the easiest way out. Or it may have been Knife who worked it, twisting the rifle into position. However it was, there was a muffled explosion. They felt Sloane's body slump through their fingers and sprawl to the floor. The bullet had torn straight into his sick -brain. Knife shrugged liis shoulders and hurried back to Hunch's bunk. ft- Swede Olsen was-still ogling stupidly at Sloane's body when Lavoie turned slowly away ' from the looted bunk. Olsen woke" then. Knife stood still, facing him. They measured their chances. At Olsen's feet lay' the rifle. At Lavoie o side hung his 'razor-keen knife, and the manscould sink its point two inches in pine wood behind the centre of any ace in the pack at 20 paces. "If you make a move for that gun," said Lavoie, gently, "I draw my knife and throw." "Ay know dot," rumbled the big man. "Und don' go pullin' dot knife first." . They measured each other again. Olsen's breath came in wheezy gasps. He had thought out one move ahead of Knife. "Ay cut cards with you," he proposed after a minute. "Winner tak' all." Lavoie shook his head. • "No chance, Swede. Whoever gets out of this shack alive is going to be blamed for Dope's death. Soon or. late, the police will find that Indian messenger Hunch sent to us and find out about you and me being here. If we both get out of here alive, one of us will have the money and the other won't. That means that one of us could afford to skip the country, while the other faced the murder charge alone. We better ■ settle it now." Olsen's face was streaked with sweat. "Ay split even;" he offered. Again Lavoie shook his head.

"Hunch was right; there isn't enough to split. There's just enough to give one of-us a decent chance." . Again they' waited. Then Knife remembered. The rifle had been fired once. An empty shell was in the breech;" The weapon would have to ? be pumped-before it was ready for shooting. "And perhaps Hunch had kept only one live cartridge in it. This was !Olsen's. worry: his move ahead. '• "Oho!" Lavoie smiled his thin smile. "I see now why you're so anxious, to eettle it otherwise. I've got the edge on you. You'll have to work the lever of that gun before you can shoot. I can draw and throw in half the time. So—"-' •■• - - -

His hand shot down to liis knife liilt. Olsen screamed and ducked for the gun. His hands had barely touched it when Lavoie threw. The knife snicked into Swede's open throat. He flung up his arms, wheeled, then toppled over Sloane's body. Knife secured the rifle in a single bound. But he did not need to use it. Swede was dea-d. Lavoie smiled again as he reached down and deftly extracted the money pouch from the other's pocket. "I get the chance," he whispered. The draw-strings were tightly tied. He pulled his knife from its red sheath, wiped it carefully oil the dead man's clothing, then sliced the knots and delved into the bag. His fingers closed on a liugo roll. He pulled it out to gloat. Money! One ten-dollar bill wrapped around a thick roll of newspaper! Lavoie's face went dead white. His hands twitched and trembled; he faltered across the room to the water pail, fished into it with a handy cup and gulped down the contents. Instantly fiery pains shot through his frame. "Poisoned!" lie muttered. Knife sagged*to the floor. In seconds he saw the plot of it all. The hatred of the little hunchback for them all. . . . His play on their greed. . . . His suicide scheme of the poisoned water. . . . His clever acting of pain and his damning accusations and his tempting bait of wealth. . . . His reliance on their kind to kill for the money, for a chance — That was wliy Suncli lia<l died smiling!