The Arizona Callahan
The same distinguished writer who gave you such thrilling stories offar places as “The Brazen Peacock” and “Lou-Lou” knows the oddcorners of his own country too—as witness this exciting story ofadventure among the untamed Beaver Islanders.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the March 1924 issue ofBlue Book Magazine.]
CHAPTER I
Nelly Callahan was the only one to see just what happened. Everyoneelse in camp had gone down the island that day to get a count of thehalf-wild cattle among the blueberry swamps.
The wild drive of rain and low clouds to the westward hid GardenIsland from sight and lowered all the horizon, until Lake Michiganseemed a small place. Beaver Island was clear vanished, and so wasHigh Island with its colony of Israelites. Nothing was to be seenfrom this north end of Hog Island except the foaming shallows andthe deeper water beyond, and the huge rollers bursting in from theWisconsin shore—with two other things. One, as the keen blue eyes ofthe watching girl could make out, was or had been a boat; the otherwas a man.
She had heard shots, faint reports cracking down the wind, drawingher to the point of land to see what was happening out there towardGarden Island. For a long while there was nothing to see, until theboat came into sight. It was only a blotch, rising and then goneagain, gradually sinking from sight altogether. Few would have seenit. Nelly Callahan, however, was an island girl, and her eye wasinstantly caught by anything outside the settled scheme of things.So she knew it for a boat, and after a time knew that it had gonedown entirely.
Presently she made out the man. To her intense astonishment he wassitting in the stern of a canoe, and paddling. Canoes are rarethings in the Beaver Islands these days; here in the center of LakeMichigan, with the nearest land little more than a mirage above thehorizon, there are other and safer playthings, and life is toobitter hard to be lightly held.
Yet here was a canoe driving down the storm, a rag of sail on astumpy mast forward, tarpaulins lashed over freight-rolls amidships,the man paddling in the stern. What connection was there between himand that sunken boat, and those shots behind the curtain of rain andmist?
That he was trying to get in under the curving line of exposed ledgeand shoal that ran out from the point was obvious. If he missed, hewould be carried on out to the open lake, for once around the pointhis chances of getting to land were slim. Nelly Callahan watched himadmiringly as he fought, gaining inch by inch, now leaning hard onhis paddle, now stroking desperately as the gusty wind threw off thecanoe’s head. The odds were worse than he could realize, too; allalong the point there were shoals, running only two to three feet ofwater, and his canoe evidently carried a centerboard.
Suddenly she saw the paddle snap in his hands. The canoe swayedwildly over, swayed back again, rose on a sweeping foam-crest andwas flung forward. Another instant, and she would have been rolledover, but the man snatched out another paddle and dug it in. Againthe stubborn, straining fight, but he had lost ground, and thecurrent was setting out around the point of land.
Still, he had a good chance to win. He was closer, now; NellyCallahan could see that his