United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Ye bes after Black Dennis Nolan, sir," said Wick. Mr. Darling nodded, placed two loaded pistols in his pocket and vanished up the tangled slope of the drook. Wick listened to the upward scrambling until it suddenly died away and fog and silence covered him deep like a flood. Then he filled and lit his pipe and sat down in the shelter of a tarpaulin to think it over.
Out from the dark that hedged in the fire crawled six vague shapes which, as they came into the illuminated zone, proved to be Black Dennis Nolan and five of his men of Chance Along with ropes in their hands. They stooped over the blanket-swathed sleepers, working quickly and cunningly with the ropes. They also bandaged the eyes and mouths of the unconscious mariners with strips of blanket.
Geordie was bending over him, had seized him by the arm, was slinging him on his broad young back before ever Shiner saw the face of his rescuer, and Geordie, with his helpless burden, was stumbling up the height again before Nolan could join and aid him.
The men they had counted on, one man in particular on whose account many of their number had braved the guard and threatened the owners one man, Long Nolan himself, refused point blank to have aught to do with them or their plans. Another man, he whose son lay dying in the village, shot down by the guards, was there, sad-eyed yet stern-faced, to stay and dissuade them.
I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he might never hear her name again. He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September 23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country. Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked.
Wilkinson's chief aids were the Irishmen, O'Fallon, Nolan, and Powers. Through Nolan, he also vended Spanish secrets. He sold, indeed, whatever and whomever he could get his price for. So clever was he that he escaped detection, though he was obliged to remove some suspicions. He succeeded Wayne as commander of the regular army in 1796.
Old Nolan, soldier of the Civil War and veteran of many an Indian skirmish, disdained to notice it. Geordie, bemoaning the luck that had left his pet rifle in Denver, busied himself with Nolan in "herding" the party within before himself following. Then Shiner was found missing. "He started with us," cried Nolan. "He wanted to go back to be with his boy, but we showed him he'd never get through.
Chance Along bes fair stinkin' wid gold an' wracked stuff." He went on excitedly and gave a brief and startling outline of the recent history of Black Dennis Nolan and Chance Along, not forgetting his own heroic stand against the tyrant. "B'ys, all we has to be doin' bes to go an' take it an' then to scatter. This here captain wid the rings in his ears has the right idee, sure!
McCrea had escorted him all the way from Chicago, where John Bonner would have held him for a week of lionizing, but he could not be stopped for an hour. Nolan and Toomey had ridden every mile to the railway to see their young leader aboard, but over the meeting with that yearning mother there was none on earth to spy.
She showed no sign of life. She lay in so desperate a place that even Black Dennis Nolan, with all his gear and wits, could do nothing but wait until the full fury of the gale should diminish. It was close upon noon when the first line was made fast between the cliff and the broken foremast of the wreck. The wind had slackened and the seas fallen in a marked degree by this time.
Word Of The Day