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If the drink-crazed blacks could be kept out of his stateroom, it might be that he would not be molested until some passing vessel, noting the unseaman-like appearance and maneuvers of the Wanderer would come to his rescue. The blacks evidently did not know of his whereabouts, but considered that all of their whilom masters had been put to death.
Truth is, this drink-crazed madman was a hoodlum gunman from Chicago or Saint Louis, that had lost his nerve. A killer who couldn't take the finish that was due him. He had run from it, and like an ostrich, he thought he was hidden up here.
Strong as he was, Thayer tottered before the blow, for the strength of Lorimer just then was far beyond the human. Drink-crazed and brutalized, he had the fierce power of a maddened brute. There was a swift, sharp struggle, broken by strange, inarticulate cries, making the women hide their faces and cram their fingers into their ears to shut out sight and sound.
How saving a dispensation it is that men do not carry in their hearts perpetual ache at the pain of the world, that the body-thuds of the drink-crazed, beating out frantic strength against cell doors, cannot penetrate the beatitude of a mother bending, at that moment, above a crib. Men can sit in club windows while, even as they sit, are battle-fields strewn with youth dying, their faces in mud.
Deliberately watched them changed from sober, industrious, simple-hearted children of the wild into a howling, drink-crazed horde of beasts that thirsted for blood tore at each other's throats and, in the frenzy of their madness, burned their own homes, and their winter's supplies and provisions? You stood by and saw them glutted with the whiskey from your storehouse by your own paid creatures "
Calm, grim, and silent, conscious of their power, merciful in their strength, superb in their disdain of insult, their contempt of danger, their indifference to absolute outrage, for maddened men showered the ranks with mud and gravel, and foul-mouthed, slatternly women vile, unclean harpies of the slums dipped their brooms in the reeking gutters and slashed their filth into the stern, soldierly faces, for hours, for days, they coolly held that misguided, drink-crazed, demagogue-excited mob at bay, reopening railways, protecting trains, escorting Federal officials, forcing passage after passage through the turbulent districts, until the fury of the populace wore itself out against the rock of their iron discipline, and one after another the last of the rioters slunk to their holes, unharmed by even one avenging shot.
Other casks were opened, and the drink-crazed Indians yelled and fought and sang in a perfect frenzy of delirium. Fire-brands were hurled high into the air, to fall whirling among the cabins. And it was these whirling brands that riveted the attention of the occupants of the big canoe that approached swiftly along the shore from the direction of the Yellow Knife. LeFroy had timed his work well.
I believe no terror nor any torture could have stayed me then, and death would have seemed sublime if only I could have flung myself between the girl and this drink-crazed creature seeking in his irresponsible madness to take her life. It was not alone that this was Marjie, and there swept over me the full realization of what she meant to me.
The girl told him frankly of the many carouses that had taken place during the winter, of the deaths that had resulted from it, of the shooting of her only brother by a drink-crazed native. Johnny listened in silence. That she told it all without apparent emotion did not deceive him. Hooch was being brewed now. She wished it destroyed.
Inside the waiting room and the warehouses the drink-crazed deputies ran amuck, shooting wildly in all directions, often with some of their own number directly in the line of fire bullet holes in the floor and a pierced clock case high up on the waiting room wall giving mute evidence of their insane recklessness.
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