The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig Read Free Book Online Page A

hammer blows onto red metal. He seemed to find it of interest that the man was amounting to something more than arm.
    Wennberg meanwhile tried to reciprocate as much scrutiny as he got, but was at the disadvantage of having to share it around the trio of them: fancy-mouth Melander, this mute fox-nosed one Karlsson, Satan's choirboy Braaf.
    "We have a tiling to tell you, Wennberg," Melander set in at once. "Since you're new to our midst we can't really know whether your fondest wish is to go with us from here or to sell us to the Russians as runaways. Dance on one foot of that and then the other, a man might. So if you've had wavering, it'll be relief to you to learn we've made up your mind for you. There's no profit whatsoever for you to pigeon off to the Russians."
    Challenge of this raw sort was not at all what Wennberg had come shopping for.
    "Your goddamned tongue's fatter than your judgment, Melander," the blacksmith flared. "It's not for you to tell me who stands where. You forget. Walk straight out of here, I can, and show the Russians the hidey-hole in that hulk where you've had Braaf stashing, these months."
    "But Wennberg, heart's friend," Melander said with such politeness it seemed almost an apology, "there's nothing there."
    Wennberg stared at Melander as if the lanky seaman just had changed skin color before his eyes.
    "Since you've invited yourself along with us we thought we ought get ourselves a new hidey-hole," Melander went on. "Braaf has the knack of stumbling onto such places, aye? So this new cache now, you can know where it is when we load the canoe, and not an eyeblink before. Trot to the Russians whenever you feel like it, but you'll have nothing in the hulk to show them."
    "Except mouse turds." This unexpectedly from
Braaf, whose gaze now floated steadily along three foreheads instead of two. Wennberg shot him a look which all but thundered.
    "Yes, except mouse turds." Melander chuckled. "And even the Russians might find it hard to believe that we've been busy storing away treasure of such sort. No, Wennberg, you against the three of us, that's the tilt of it, and we'll see who the Russians choose to believe. Our souls are fresh and there's spring green in our eye, so far as they know. Nor'd you be the first one here to he thought off his head, or a merchant of mischief for some other reason,"
    Melander paused, then went on in Ins know-all fashion: "You play a hand of cards now and again, don't you, Wennberg? I suggest you take a second look tip the queen's skirt before you wager."
    The blacksmith began to retort hotly: "Now listen, you walrus pizzles—" But Melander beat him to speech yet again.
    "Careful of your words, Wennberg. If you're coming with us, we have a lot of time ahead together and don't need a sack of bad feelings. If you're going off to the Russians"—an even more eloquent Melander pause—"you don't want your last sentiments to your own dear countrymen weighing wrongly on your soul, do you now?"
    Wennberg was boulder-still, in stare at Melander, Fury had him, but evidently something other, too, his mouth now clamped until his lips all but vanished. Words were having their spines snapped there, the other three could see.
    Finally Wennberg broke his glower. Swung a heavy look to Braaf. At last, and longest, to the silent one, Karlsson.
    "You goddamned set of squareheads may be better at this than I thought," he rumbled. "I'm with you, Christ help pie. Now you've to tell me, as if you know down from up. How do we go be pilgrims in the wilderness of water?"

    Circle the plan as he would, like a farmer working at a stump, Wennberg found only a few questions to hack at when Me lander was finished.
    "Why all this fuss with old Bilibin? Whyn't we just cut bis stupid throat when we're ready?"
    This theorem shifted Karlsson forward in his seat a bit.
    "Because if we kill one of his men, Rosenberg will have to have his people chase us," Melander said instructively. "If we leave Bilibin