Robert Howard: She Devil

His shoulders bulked against the South Sea stars as he held the schooner to her course; he might have posed for the image of intrepid exploration until a slender figure glided up the poop ladder.

“Does Harrigan know you’re out here?” he demanded.

“He sleeps like a pig,” she answered, her great dark eyes sad and wistful in the starlight. “He is a pig.” She whimpered a little and leaned against him as if seeking pity and protection.

“Poor kid,” he said with grand compassion, slipping a protecting arm about her waist—the paternal effect of which was somewhat marred by his patting of the swelling slope of a firm hip. A luxurious shudder ran through her supple body and she snuggled closer within the bend of his muscular arm and pressed her cheek against his shoulder.

“What did Harrigan say was the name of that island?” he asked.

“Aragoa!” she jerked her head back and stared at him, startled. “I thought you said you knew about it!”

“Never heard of it!” he declared. “I just said that to save you!”

“Oh!” she stood aghast. “What will we do when he finds out you lied?”

“I dunno,” he answered. “We’re in a jam that requires thought and concentration. Sneak down and steal me a few bottles of Harrigan’s booze.”

She cast him an uncertain glance, but moved away down the ladder, softly as an ivory-hued shadow, to return presently with an arm-ful of darkly gleaming bottles that made Clanton’s eyes glisten. He lashed the wheel, casually sighting at a star on the horizon, and sat down by the rail.

“Set ’em down here,” he requested, and when she complied, he grabbed her before she could straighten and pulled her down on his lap. For convention’s sake she struggled faintly for a moment, and then her arms went convulsively around his corded neck, and she gave him her full red lips in a kiss that he felt clear to the tips of his toes.

“Judas!” During the entire course of a roving life he had never encountered a human volcano like this before. He shook his head to clear the swimming brain, took a deep breath and dived. When he came up for air, she was gasping too, quivering from the dynamic impact of his kisses.

Contentedly he knocked the neck off the bottle, took a deep swig and held it to her lips. She merely sipped; the night was still young, and she needed no alcoholic stimulant to drive the hot blood racing through her veins. It was already breaking all speed records.

Clanton did not need any stimulants either; but drank because he was thirsty; because liquor was to him what moonlight and perfume are to some men. At each swig he gulped as though he were trying to see the bottom.

By the time he had tossed an empty overboard he was saying: “To hell with Harrigan! If he gets gay with me, I’ll kick his teeth out! I don’t believe there’s any such damn’ place as Aragoa, anyway!”

“Who cares?” she breathed, leaning her supple back against his breast, and lifting her arms up and back to encircle his brawny neck. He ran an appreciative hand over a warm, rounded shoulder, and let his other hand rest on a knee.

Just as grey dawn stole over the sea, a terrific shock ran through the Saucy Wench . There was a crash in the galley, blasphemy in the forecastle, as men fell out of their bunks. The schooner lurched drunkenly—and remained motionless, with a list to starboard. Preceded by a blue-streaked haze of profanity Harrigan came hurtling from the companion and pranced up the poop ladder in his drawers.

“What the blitherin’ hell?” he screamed. “My God, we’re aground!”

From a litter of empty bottles Clanton rose unsteadily, stretched, yawned, spat and stared appreciatively at the jungle-fringed beach which—with only a narrow strip of shallow water between—stretched away from under the port bow.

“There’s your island, Bully!” he announced with a magnificent gesture.

Harrigan tore his hair and howled like a wolf. “Did you have to run her onto the beach, you son of a slut?”

“That could have happened to anybody,” asserted Clanton, and added reprovingly: “Where’s your pants?”

But the captain had seen the broken bottles, and his howl had all the poignancy of a stricken soul. Then he saw something else. Raquel, awakened by the noise, rose uncertainly, rubbing her eyes childishly. She made a face, tasting again all the square-face she had guzzled the night before.

Harrigan turned purple; his arm windmilled, to the fascination of the crew who watched from the deck below. He found words, lurid and frenetic.

“You stole my liquor!” he roared. “You had my girl here all night! You’ve run my ship aground, and by God, I’m goin’ to kill you, ambergris or no ambergris!”

He reached for his gun, only to discover that he wore neither gun nor belt. Bellowing he snatched a belaying pin from the rail and made at Clanton who smote him with such effect that the captain’s head fractured the binnacle as his whole body performed a parabola backward.

At this moment a frightful figure appeared at the head of the starboard ladder—Mr. Richardson, bedecked in bandages, and with one good eye gleaming eerily. Not even such a beating as he’d received yesterday could long keep a true bucko in his bunk. In his hand was a revolver, and this he fired point-blank. But Mr. Richardson’s one good eye was bleared, and his aim was not good. His bullet merely burned a welt across Clanton’s ribs, and before he could fire again, Clanton’s foot, striking his breastbone with great violence, catapulted him headlong down the ladder at the foot of which his head again met the deck with a force that rendered him temporarily hors-de-combat .

But Captain Harrigan had seized the opportunity to flee down the port ladder yelling: “Gimme my gun! I’ll shoot ’em both!”

“Overboard!” yelled Clanton to Raquel, and then as she hesitated, he grabbed her around the waist, tossed her over the rail, and leaped after her.

The plunge into the water snapped her out of her hangover; she screamed, gasped, and then struck out for the beach, followed by Clanton. They reached it just as Harrigan appeared on the poop with a triumphant howl and a Winchester, with which he opened up on them as they raced across the sands and dived into the trees.

Under cover Clanton paused and looked back. The antics of Harrigan on the poop moved him to hearty guffaws, smiting his dripping thigh. Raquel glared at him, wringing out her skirt, and raking back a wet strand of hair.

“What’s so funny about being marooned?” she demanded angrily.

He spanked her jocosely and replied: “Don’t worry, kid. When the schooner sails, we’ll be on her. You stay here and watch ’em while I go inland and look for fruit and fresh water. She’s not stuck bad; they can warp her off.”

“All right.” She shucked her wet dress and hung it up to dry, while she lay down on her stomach on the soft dry sand to peer through the bushes at the ship. She made an alluring picture thus, her pink chemise dripping from their submersion, fitting her tighter than a glove. Clanton admired the view for a moment, and then departed through the trees, striding lightly and softly for so big a man.

Raquel lay there, watching the men piling into boats, with hawsers, where presently they were employed in yanking the schooner loose, stern-first, by main strength and profanity. But it was slow work. The sun rose, and Raquel got impatient. She was hungry and very, very thirsty.

She donned her dress, now dry, and started out to look for Clanton. The trees were denser than she had thought, and she soon lost sight of the beach. Presently she had to climb over a big log, and when she leaped down on the other side, a bramble bush caught up her skirt, twisting it high about her ivory thighs. She twisted about in vain, unable to reach the clinging branch or to free her skirt.