The scene went out of sight as the current swept him behind a wooded point. It was the end of poor Jackson. If he were not shot dead he would be presently finished; and his body, too, would go rolling down the Alabama eddies. It meant the end of Hanna, too. Lockwood had a vague plan of heading a lynching party, if he ever got ashore. But Hanna’s downfall had cost too much.
The tree drifted and swirled about on the twisting currents. He clung to it for life, for he felt now that he would surely go to the bottom if he let go. Twice again he heard the tremendous nearing blast of the steamboat, and occasionally saw the wavering, white ray of her searchlight playing among the treetops. He was numbed and cold and half stupefied; and clung to the treetop with the instinct of desperation.
He was roused suddenly. A blinding glare like the sun was turned into his eyes. It shifted; down the next curve below he saw the white bulk of the steamer, magnified by the mist, like a vast mass of incandescence, poking out the long tentacle of her searchlight. She glowed all over with electric light, reflected from her white paint, and on either side she carried the low, black bulk of a loaded barge.
Lockwood thought of trying to signal, but they could not see him without turning the searchlight on him again. The crash of her stern paddles drowned the shout he set up. She might pass him—she might run him down—she might grind him up in her paddles. He could do nothing to affect his destiny. He watched the white bulk looming larger, hearing the increasing crash of her machinery.
For a moment he thought she was going right over him. The bluff prow seemed aimed straight at his head. Then she veered a little. He could see the pilot high in his glass box; he caught the red flash from her furnace on the lower deck; and then she surged ponderously by, and the bow of the left-hand barge brushed smashing through the twigs of his tree.
He made a scrambling leap. The side of the barge was not two feet out of water, and he caught the rough planking, held on, and dragged himself aboard. Nobody was on the barge. He dropped behind the heaped crates and barrels and lay there.
The boat crashed and wallowed up the river. He saw the warehouse at that fatal landing as they passed it. No light showed there now. The tragedy was over. He fancied the murderous scattering in the darkness. In an hour Blue Bob’s house boat would be driving full speed for Mobile. He did not care about Blue Bob, but he was determined that this should be the end of Hanna’s rope.
Within fifteen minutes the boat blew for Rainbow Landing, still two or three miles away. Lockwood’s head was clearing, his strength coming back. He lay quietly in the dark behind the freight until the boat rounded in to the warehouse opposite the scarlet-striped bluff. When the gangplank was down he made his way through the roustabouts and went ashore, without any one having detected his stolen ride.
CHAPTER XVIII
RESURRECTION
He slipped through the warehouse and up the hill to the road. It was intensely dark, but he knew the way this time. He hurried, full of the driving energy of revenge. Then for the first time the horror came upon him of the difficulty of going to the Power house with the story of their son’s death. Jackson had been the favorite of his sister and of his father. It would look as if he had led the boy into an ambush. But it could not be helped; the story would have to be told. Within an hour they would have a posse out.