Vainly the crew of highwaymen in the mine awaited the arrival of the seeming rescuer who was to take their captive off their hands and relieve them of the necessity of murder. It had been understood that Jase was to employ only a few attackers in the accomplishment of this knightly deed. Few men could be spared from other duties, and the smaller the force which he led to victory the more lustrous would be his glory of achievement. There was to be a great deal of shooting and shouting through the narrow entrance to the place—and the exaggerating echoes of the rocky confines would multiply it into a convincing din of battle.
The alleged Ku-Klux clansmen would fight their way out, leaving their prisoner behind—and in the confusion—but not until then—the saddle-bags would disappear.
It was all very simple, and prettily adjusted, but the difficulty was that Jase had failed to arrive and the act was lagging without its climax.
He failed because of unforeseen events. Pending the cue for his entrance he and his fellow heroes were being employed as sentries guarding the approaches to the place against invasion by outsiders.
Jase himself had for several hours been lying as flat as a lizard under a matted clump of laurel on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a ford which could not be rapidly crossed. His function was to see to it that no one passed there whose coming might prove an embarrassment.
The rawness of the air caused his bones to ache and his muscles to cramp, but he had been steadfast. He was playing for high stakes. Finally two horsemen had appeared—and they were two who must not pass. One of them was Brent and the other was Bud Sellers.
So Jase had opened fire and Bud had returned it—returned it and fled.
That left the sentinel with a result half successful and half disastrous, and made it necessary for him to make a hurried short-cut to another point past which Brent must shortly ride. There he would finish the matter of disputing the road.
Mallows drew himself out of his cramped ambuscade and started for his new point, to the completion of his business—but before he had taken many steps a sudden and violent distress assailed him. He pressed his hand to his side with a feeling of vague surprise and it came away blood-covered. He stopped and took account of his condition—and found himself shot in the chest. In the excitement of the moment he had not felt the sting, but now he was becoming rapidly and alarmingly weak. He stumbled on, but several times he fell, and each time it was with a greater burden of effort that he regained his feet. He clamped his teeth and pressed doggedly forward, but the ranges began to swim in giddy circles and a thickening fog clouded his eyes. When he dropped down next time he did not rise again.
As night fell in the mine the temper of the men there became increasingly ugly. Some had recourse to the flasks that they carried in their pockets, and as their blood warmed into an alcoholic glow, their eyes, through the slits in their masks, began dwelling on Alexander's beauty of figure and face with a menacing and predatory greed.
Alexander McGivins was in the most actual and imminent of conceivable perils.
The girl's hands were no longer bound. When the commander of the group had realized that her imprisonment was not to terminate so shortly as had been planned he had been magnanimous to the extent of freeing her wrists, but he had granted her no further extension of freedom.
The girl had given them no satisfaction of weakening nerve, but in her heart she kept hidden a qualm as the time lengthened and a number of the men went on drinking their fiery moonshine.
The pack was growing restive, openly restive now, and after yet another council among the more important bandits, the leader came over and made an announcement.
"Ther Clan aims now ter discuss yore case amongst themselves. We air goin' ter leave four men hyar ter keep watch over ye whilst we're away—an' them four has orders ter kill ye if ye seeks ter escape."
He raised his hand above his head, and wheeling, marched out through the shaft's opening, while behind him, trailing in single file and dead silence, trooped all the henchmen save the four left on guard. Alexander noted with a certain degree of satisfaction that the saddle-bags were not removed by those who departed.
The blazing pine torches went out with the small procession, leaving the cavern gloomily shadowed. The only light came now from two lanterns—and the girl sickened with the realization that at least one of her jailers was drunk.
As soon as the withdrawal of the chieftain brought a laxening of discipline, he lurched over toward her and, crossing the trickle of running water, bent forward, staring brazenly into her face.
Only his eyes were visible, but they were bestial and lecherous. After a little he thrust out a hand and stroked the white shoulder which the torn clothing had left bare. Instantly, in a transport of white-hot fury, the girl sprang sidewise and sought to drag the mask from his face. But sodden as he was, the fellow still held to his instincts of self protection. He twisted and seized her in a violent grip, pinioning her arms at her sides.
In Alexander's lithe body dwelt a strength quite equal to a fair fight and had it been a fair fight she would probably have made short work of him. Now caught unexpectedly into helplessness she still writhed and twisted, fighting with savage knee-blows until she had freed her right hand and then she struck out with no feminine uncertainty. The fellow reeled back, and Alexander followed him up with lightning speed.
She had become a fury animated by a single purpose. She meant to unmask her assailant and register his face for a future reprisal of death. The man, recognizing that at all costs he must defeat that recognition, was compelled to throw both elbows across his face and to bear without further retaliation the blows she rained upon him—all blows that were soundly effective.
The thing happened quickly and for an instant the other three stood looking on in astonishment—even, at first, with amusement. But as the fellow backed across the tiny brook he tripped and he fell sprawling and his out-thrown hand carried down and extinguished one of the lanterns from its precarious niche on a small shelf of rock.
Alexander, making most of her brief moment, leaped across the body that had gone down and recovered from its place on top of the saddle-bags the pistol that had been taken from her at the time of her capture.
The three who had so far remained non-combatants could maintain that role no longer.
"Drop thet gun," yelled one as their own weapons leaped out. But Alexander had thrown herself to the ground and at the same instant she fired a single shot—not at any one of her jailers, but at the sole remaining lantern, which was only ten feet distant.
Then as the place went black she came to her feet and plunged through the darkness to the opposite wall where she had marked a pulpit-like rock that would give her temporary shelter.
She guessed rightly that now for a while at least since she was known to be armed, there would be a hesitation in the relighting of lanterns or even in the striking of matches. That caution, in a situation which had abruptly undergone a change of complexion, went farther. There was even no sound of voices or of movement.
Alexander herself was groping warily for the rock, setting down each foot with extreme and noiseless caution. At last she gained the protection which she sought and waited. She wished she might have regained her rifle but that had not been lying within reach when she made her hurricane entrance into action.
There were remaining to her five cartridges in the revolver, and somewhere there in the inky blackness about her were four men, presumably ammunitioned without stint. Also their confederates would shortly return, bearing flambeaux—and then her little moment of advantage would end. Even if every cartridge at her command went fatally home, the supply was inadequate to cope with such numbers.
The silence hung with a suspense that was well nigh unendurable and when the filthy wings of a bat brushed her cheek again she had to bite the blood out of her lips to stifle an outcry.
As black and seemingly as lifeless as the coal which men had sought there was the cavern where she crouched. Alexander wondered why the sound of her pistol, which must have thundered in ragged echoes through the shaft, had not brought back the others. Now she was trapped and there was no conceivable possibility of escape. At the touch of unclean fingers she had seen red and struck out—and the rest had followed as an avalanche follows a slipping stone.
At last when the breathless stillness could no longer be borne, she cautiously stooped and raked her hand back and forth until it came in contact with a loose stone. She must force those silent antagonists to some sort of action so she tossed the missile outward and as it struck with a light clatter, a waiting pistol barked and Alexander's own roared back at the tiny spurt of flame.
Instantly, too, three others spoke, aimed at her flash and she heard the spatter of lead against stone nearby. In the confined space the fusillade bellowed blatantly, and slowly diminishing echoes lingered after the firing itself ceased. Then once more the silence which was more trying than gunnery settled.
Slowly an idea dawned in the girl's mind, and strengthened into conviction. If the main group who had trailed out with torches had been anywhere nearby, that crescendo of noise must have recalled them in hot haste. That they had not come back must indicate that they had never meant to return. They had permanently departed, leaving her in the hands of a quartette selected as a robbing party, and an execution squad. With that realization the matter resolved itself into a new phase. She would eventually be murdered here in this rat-hole unless she could, one by one, shoot to death the four unseen men who were her companions there. Four enemies stood between herself and freedom—and four cartridges were left in her weapon.
At last she crept cautiously out and made her tedious way to the center of the place again. She must do something and the audacious plan born of necessity involved the need of a light. If her hand felt flesh instead, her pistol was ready.
But after much noiseless groping she came upon the overturned lantern and she had encountered nothing else.
Back in the lee of the rock she boldly struck a match, kindled the wick—and still as she reached up and set the thing on the boulder's top the unbroken silence held.
She had hoped to draw their fire and account for some of them at least, but now as she peeped cautiously out she found to her astonishment that except for herself the cavern was empty.
She also became sure of another thing. Her saddle-bags were gone.
She came out then and having repossessed herself of her rifle took up a position well to one side of the shaft's opening where anyone who entered must pass her muzzle, but she did not venture into the passage itself because she was sure that that way lay an ambuscade.
Then, beside the sickly illumination within, she recognized a new waver of kerosene rays from beyond the entrance.
There was no sound, except that of very stealthy feet, and the light came slowly.
Alexander hastened hack to her rock, holding close to the walls of the cavern as she went, then ensconcing herself there, almost invisible in the shadow, she waited with parted lips and a cocked rifle.
Time had hung heavy on Jack Halloway's hands after he had heard Brent announce his departure. The chair scraped on the floor, had been his only assurance that the other had understood him and that might, within possibility, have been a coincidence. Still Brent's promptness in cutting him off on the arrival of the operator had seemed a hopeful sign indicating team-work.
Halloway had declared himself a man who took joy in the savage strain which that civilization had failed to quench out of his nature. Now that strain was mounting into volcano stirrings presaging an eruption. If he could free himself there would ensue a tempest of wreckage about that railroad station such as Samson brought down between the pillars of the temple—but no chances had been taken in his binding.
He did not relish the thought of being left there over night, yet he strongly doubted whether they would venture to take him out on the streets in the sight of possible friends.
He fell to wondering what they would do with him. Except in extremity, they would hardly murder him out of hand, and yet to explain to him why they had treated him so hardly, would be a delicate matter. But the answer lay in the operator's total freedom from suspicion that his captive had read the wire. So far as that backwoods Machiavelli divined, there was no link establishing himself with the conspiracy to rob, and when the time came he thought he could clear his skirts by a simple means.
Night had fallen when at last the prisoner heard the door open and saw the Agent enter, accompanied by the two gunmen who had been his companions that morning. They came with a lantern and the telegraph man held a heavy rasp in his hand. Halting before the bound figure, he spoke slowly and with a somewhat shamefaced note of apology.
"I reckon I've got ter pray yore forgiveness, Stranger," he began. "A right mean sort of mistake 'pears ter hev took place—but hit war one I couldn't help without I defied ther law."
"How's thet?" demanded Halloway shortly, and his informant went on.
"When thet message come from ther town marshal at Coal City, he warned us 'Violent man—take no chances.' Thet's why we fell on ye so severe an' tied ye up so tight."
"Wa'al," Halloway was schooling his demeanor warily into the middle course between a too ready forgiveness and a too bellicose resentment, "wa'al what air ye cravin' my pardon fer, then?"
"We've done heered ergin from Coal City—an' ther town marshal says thet hit war all a fool mistake—thar hain't no sufficient grounds ter hold ye on. He bids me set ye free forthwith."
"Go on, then, and do hit. I've done hed a belly-full of settin' here strapped ter this cheer."
But the operator hesitated.
"Afore I turns ye loose, I'd like ter feel plum sartin thet ye hain't holdin' no grudge."
Halloway knew that, should he seem easily placated, he would not be believed, so he spoke with a voice of stern yet just determination.
"So holp me God, I aims ter demand full payment fer this hyar day—but I aims ter punish ther right man. Ye says ye only acted on orders from an officer, don't ye?"
"Thet's true es text."
"All right then, ye hain't ther man I'm atter, ef that's so. Mistakes will happen. As ter ther other feller, I kin bide my time fer a spell. I reckon my wrath won't cool none."
The Station Agent heaved a sigh of relief. "Hit's a right unfortunate thing," he declared sympathetically. "I've been studyin' erbout hit an' I said ter myself, 'what ef some enemy of his'n sent both them messages?'"
This seemingly innocent suggestion was by way of discounting the future when Halloway learned that the town marshal knew nothing of the matter.
The operator bent and unfastened the binders about the ankles and waist. That left only the handcuffs, and when he came to them once more a note of apologetic anxiety crept into his voice.
"Ther key ter them things is lost," he deprecated. "Ther best I kin do fer ye air ter file ther chain. Ye kin stick yore hands in yore pockets, though, an' nobody won't see 'em."
"Thet's good enough fer ther present time," assented Halloway. "Ef ye'll loan me thet file, I'll git 'em off myself—later on."
So while the giant stood with outstretched hands, the other filed through a link at the middle of the chain, and together the four men left the baggage room and went into the outer office. Its door was closed but Halloway, who walked ahead, laid a hand on the knob and paused to inquire, without rancor, "I reckon ye aims ter give me back my gun, don't ye?"
The operator promptly produced the weapon from the drawer of his table and Halloway made no examination to see whether it came back to him full-chambered or empty.
He had his own guess on that score, but he wished to appear unsuspicious just now, so he thrust the thing into its holster.
Then deliberately he turned the key in the door and that was, for a time, his last deliberate act. Seizing the fellow who stood nearest him, he swung him forward and held him as a partial shield before his own body.
"Thar's three of ye hyar," he announced in an abruptly ominous voice, "and one of me. Ef any man makes a move ter draw a gun, I aims straightway ter break this feller's neck. Don't let no man move from where he stands at!"
Astonishment enforced a momentary obedience, save that the man upon whose shoulders the gigantic hands lay—not as yet heavily—attempted to squirm away. Iron-like fingers bit into his flesh and, wincing with a smothered yell of pain, he stood trembling. Halloway passed one hand over his hostage's shoulder and drew the pistol from its holster—then he sent the fellow spinning from him like a top, and covered the others, who huddled close together. "Yore guns—grip-fust—an' speedily," he directed, in that still voice that carried terror, and brought immediate obedience.
"Ye promised us—thet ye wouldn't hold us accountable," whined the operator, and Halloway laughed, as he unloaded the captured pistols and tossed them into a corner.
"What I promised war not ter visit no revengeance on ther wrong fellers," he corrected. "Never mind how I knows hit—but I does know thet no message ever come from ther Coal City town marshal. Ther one that did come told about a plot ter lay-way an' rob a woman—an' ther three of ye war in on hit."
The terror of the unaccountable and wholly mystifying situation held them now in its paralysis. In no conceivable way could he have learned these things—yet he knew them and fears crowded as they wondered what else he might know as well.
But Halloway allowed them little leisure for abstract reflection.
"I've done throwed away them guns. I reckon ye knows whether mine's loaded or not—I don't. Now ther four of us air going ter hev a leetle frolic, right hyar an' now—a leetle four-cornered fight—jest fist an' skull fashion."
He walked across and locked the baggage-room door, though it was shuttered from the outside, and dropped the key within his pocket.
"Come on boys, let's start right in," he invited. "Fer yore own sakes hit's kinderly a pity ye couldn't git these irons offen me … they're right apt ter scar somebody up."
They knew that to get out they must fight their way out—and after all there were three of them. Flinging a heavy chair above his head, the quickest-witted of the trio hurled himself forward to the attack.
From Halloway's eyes shot bolts of Berserker battle-lust, and from under the down-sweep of the clubbed missile he glided as a trout slips away from a startling shadow. Before that assailant had recovered his equilibrium, Halloway had seized him up as a grown man might seize a small child and hurled him headlong at the operator, so that the two went down in a tangle of writhing bodies.
The third had not been idle and as Halloway straightened and wheeled, he met the cyclonic lunge of a snarling adversary with a lifted and wickedly gleaming dirk.
As the knife flashed down, the dodging Goliath felt its sting in his left shoulder—but only with a glancing blow which had been aimed at his throat. Blood was let but no great hurt done save that it roused him to a demoniac fury. The embrace in which the wielder of the blade was folded was like the snapping of a bear-trap and, not slowly but almost instantly, its victim dropped his weapon and hung gasping with broken ribs and stifled lungs.
Halloway cast him aside and wheeled again with lowered head, for two men were at him afresh with whatever things of weight came to their hands. Neither dared pause and desperation had endowed them with a strength as unwonted and exaggerated as that which his frenzy brings to a maniac.
The fallen figure lay quiet enough, but the remaining three swept in tempestuous chaos about the place. The table was wrecked—the furniture shattered—all were bleeding and panting in sob-like brokenness of breath.
Two bore the brand-like marks of handcuffs; the other a great welt across the forehead, left there by the large file, but at the end one figure straightened up—his task ended—and behind him lay three that would not soon be ready to fight again. Then, unlocking the door, Halloway let himself out into the night.
He paused on the platform and drew a long breath and after that, plunging his hands deep into his pockets, he strolled along whistling. But when he had come to the edge of the town and the road toward Wolf-Pen Gap, he broke into a run.
Alexander had stood waiting for a while at the edge of the rock, wondering who these men might be who were approaching with such an extremity of caution. Once more she was called on to endure the heart-chill of suspense, but when finally two figures slipped through the shaft-mouth with cocked rifles thrust out before them that tautness of nerve eased into relaxation. One of them—palpably nervous—was Will Brent. The other, with eyes agleam and an eagerness keyed for battle, was Jerry O'Keefe.
Yet as both took in the narrow and seemingly deserted area between the coal-seamed walls, their faces became heavy with disappointment. Other men followed them until eight or ten had crowded into the cavern, and very dejectedly Brent said, "We're too late. They've been here and gone."
Alexander, peering silently over the top of her rock, missed the face of Bud Sellers, the one man she had wholly trusted. She told herself that to suspect Brent or O'Keefe was ungenerous, yet out of her recent viscissitudes an exaggerated instinct of caution had been born, and she waited to judge the complexion of affairs before she revealed herself.
Jerry's engaging face grew vengefully dark as he turned toward Brent and spoke apprehensively.
"Ther place stinks with burnt gun-powder! Does ye reckon she showed fight—and they hurt her? Afore God, men, ef thet's true, I aims ter do some killin' my own self—I hain't nuver seed her but oncet—but I aims ter wed with thet gal!"
Then with a laugh that pealed through the place and brought them all around startled, Alexander emerged from her concealment.
"I almost feels sorry thet they didn't finish me—ef thet's ther fate thet's in store fer me," she announced.
Her eyes squarely met those of Jerry O'Keefe, and he reddened furiously, but at once Brent began asking and answering questions and in that diversion of attention the young mountaineer found escape from his discomfiture. The rescue party had encountered none of the men who had so recently vacated the mine. Outside the woods were "masterly wild and la'relly" and poroused with cavernous crags. The conspirators had evidently scattered and melted from sight as bees melt into a honeycomb.
But Alexander's face grew again serious and pained as she gave her most important information. "You men come a leetle too late. I driv 'em off—but them thet went last tuck my saddle-bags away with 'em."
Brent's only response to that was a brief gesture of despair. So after all the plotting, the counterplotting, the dangers and hardships; after all her own gallant efforts, the girl had lost the game.
He looked at her as she stood there repressing under a stoical blankness of expression, emotions which he thought must sum up to a worm-wood bitterness of spirit.
"We're wasting time here," he announced after a brief and painful pause. "They can't have gone far—we must comb these woods."
But Alexander shrugged her shoulders.
"Thar hain't no possible way of runnin' 'em down ternight," she said. "They've scattered like a hover of pa'tridges thet's been shot at, an' whichever one's got them saddle-bags is in safe hidin' afore now. I've got one more plan yit, but hit's fer termorrer. Let's go back thar an' sot thet Halloway feller free."
But halfway back they met a gigantic figure whose wrists jangled with the clink of steel chains as he swung his long arms. He was calm—even cheerful—of mood, now that he had appeased his wrath, nor did he seem concerned as to what might be the fate of the trio he had left behind him.
The skies had cleared and a moon had risen. No longer refusing the attendance of her bodyguard, Alexander insisted upon pushing on through Viper to her kinsman's house at Perry Center. It was as well that her foes should imagine her forces in full flight.
Though they had all spent arduous days and nights they made the last stage of the trip at an excellent rate of speed. After Wolf-Pen Gap and its vicinity had been left behind, the unspeakable wildness of the country gave way abruptly, as it so often does in Appalachia, to higher grounds where for a little way the roads run through almost parklike stretches, now silver and cobalt under a high moon.
Jerry O'Keefe had friends at Perry Center whose doors would open to him and his companions even at this inhospitable hour between midnight and dawn, and when they left Alexander at her threshold, she paused for a moment and turned with the moonlight on her face.
"Boys," she said softly, "I'm beholden ter every one of ye! Even ef we fails 'atter all, hit hain't because we didn't try hard and we hain't done yit."
Two of the men to whom she spoke were gazing at her with rapt eyes. O'Keefe was riding on that moonlit night at the gallop of bold dreams, and in his mind were visions of wedding and infare. Halloway's thoughts would perhaps have suffered by comparison, but in desire and the wild dream they were no less strong, and later when he and Brent lay on the same palet, in the cock-loft of a log house, he heaved a deep sigh and gave rein to his fancy.
"I'm going away from here," he announced, "and God knows I shall miss her as a man misses the brilliance of tropic seas and the luster of tropic skies."
"I thought you boasted that you meant to stay," commented Brent drowsily, but Halloway went on and soon he was talking to an unhearing and unconscious bed-fellow.
"I did—but I'm not a sheer fool. I told you that I had gauged my entrance with a nicety of judgment for dramatic values. I shall regulate my exit with the same sense. She likes to think herself a man, which means that she hasn't waked up yet, but some day she will."
He paused and his own voice became heavy with coming sleep. "She's had adventures that she won't forget—if I go away—her imagination will be at work. Later when Spring comes and the sap rises—and the birds—the birds——" There the voice trailed off into the incoherence of slumber.
Jase Mallows was sleeping, too, at that hour, and it was only by a lucky chance that it wasn't his final sleep. The terrain over which the group of highwaymen had been operating had centered about the mine shaft just back of the Wolf-Pen Gap. The distances between all the points involved had been short of radius save as prolonged by the broken formation of mountain and chasm, of precipice and gorge. There were caves and thickets and the Gap itself was what local parlance termed a "master shut-in."
When the chief body of alleged Ku-Klux operators had trailed out of the mine shaft, they had removed their masks and scattered into the raggedness. They could, if need exacted, have remained there for days, safe from discovery, each in his separate hiding place. One unfamiliar with this country of eyrie and lair, wonders at the stories of men hiding out successfully, but one who knows it marvels only that any man who has taken to the wilds is ever captured.
One of the last contingent to leave had stumbled on an inert and prostrate body in the dark as he crossed a ridge not far away. Cautiously he had investigated and had recognized Jase, who was unconscious and had lost much blood. His confederate paused for a time in a quandary as to what disposition to make of him. When to-morrow's news leaked out, wounded men would be suspected men, and those who accompanied them might share in that suspicion.
Yet to desert a comrade in that fashion was abhorrent even to the slack conscience of this desperado. So he grudgingly hefted the burden of the senseless figure and plodded under its weight to the nearest cabin.
There he told a story of how he had stumbled on his grewsome find in the open high-road—which was a lie—and his mystification of manner was so great as to constitute for himself a practical alibi.
Early the next morning, Brent, Halloway and O'Keefe went to consult with Alexander as to the next step. None of them meant to give up after going this far and the men fretted for immediate action, but Alexander to their mystification shook her head. "Not yit," she ruled. "I'm waitin' hyar now fer tidin's thet may holp us."
While they stood in the yard of the log house, a figure appeared plodding slowly along the roadway, and the girl's eyes were bent on it with a fixed anxiety. It came with such a weary lagging, with such a painful shuffling of feet and such an exhausted hanging of head that Brent at first failed to recognize Bud Sellers. The left arm hung with that limpness which denotes a broken bone.
"Good God," exclaimed the timber buyer under his breath, "I should hardly think he'd have the nerve to show himself here!"
But Bud looked only at the girl. He was on foot now but over his shoulders hung his saddle-bags. He halted and threw them at Alexander's feet.
"My mule got shot out from under me," he informed her quite simply, "an' I busted an arm—hit war a right slavish trip. Open them bags."
Alexander obeyed—and drew out a parcel bound in brown paper, bearing the bright red spots of the bank's sealing wax.
"I reckon, men," she said quietly, "we won't hev ter sot out afresh."
Brent, Halloway and O'Keefe gazed stupidly each on each. Incredulous amazement and perplexity tied their tongues. Finally Halloway found his voice to stammer, "What's done happened? How did Sellers git hit."
Then only Alexander threw back her head and let her laughter peal out.
"He's done hed hit all ther time," she announced. "You fellers hes done been staunch friends ter me—and I've got ter crave yore forgiveness ef I hain't trusted ye full free from then start." She paused and added solicitously, "But ye sees, ye forewarned me erginst them real robbers—an' Jase Mallows forewarned me erginstyou. I 'lowed he war lyin'—but I couldn't take no chances. Thar war jest one feller I knowed I could trust without question, an' thet feller was Bud. So he tuck ther money an' thet bundle I rid away from bank with was jest make believe. I aimed ter lead 'em over a false trail."
"Outwitted ther pack of us," bellowed Halloway gleefully. "Afore God, I takes my hat off ter ye—but why didn't ye suffer some man ter tote ther dummy bundle?"
"Ef airy man had undertook hit," she responded gravely, "they'd most likely hev kilt him first—an' s'arched him 'atterwards."
Bud had dropped down on a step of the stile that led from the road to the yard. His heavy lidded eyes were full of weariness and pain. His limp arm sagged but he said slowly:
"Thet's why I run away, Mr. Brent. I had to. Two of us couldn't cross thar without goin' slow—and I couldn't let them saddle-bags git lost."
"So ye couldn't be quite sure who you could trust," repeated Halloway. "I hopes ye knows now."
But Brent, watching the light in the great fellow's eyes did not miss their hungry gleam and in a low voice he said, "Jack,I'mnot sure yet."
The conspiracy fathered by Lute Brown and Jase Mallows had its inception in a small coterie whose ambitions had been stirred to avarice by the bait of sharing among them a sum of over four thousand dollars. Ramifications of detail had necessitated the use of a larger force; a force so large, indeed, that anything like an equal distribution of booty would have intolerably eaten into the profits of the principals. Therefore the rank and file of employes were merely mercenaries, working for a flat wage.
But in such an enterprise the danger of mutiny always looms large and the bludgeon of blackmail lies ready to the hand of the mutineer. Therefore the actual handling of the money had been a matter of extreme care to Lute and those in his closest confidence. When the leader had taken most of his men out of the mine he had led away those of whom he had felt least sure—and had left the saddle-bags to the custody of the supposedly reliable minority. His estimate had been seventy-five per cent accurate. One only of the four was untrustworthy.
Lute himself had designated the custodian of the treasure and had fixed a rendezvous at a long abandoned and decaying cabin in a remote and thicketed locality. Shortly before dawn Lute arrived there, unaccompanied and expecting to find his man awaiting him. But complications had developed. When the quartette that left the mine last held a hurried conference outside, the squad leader explained that the very essence of precaution now lay in their separating and seeking individual cover.
Two of them concurred but the fellow who had attacked Alexander had become insurgent through drink, chagrin and cupidity.
"Boys," he darkly suggested, "we warn't hired ter go thro no sich rough times es we've done encountered. I reckon these fellers owes us right smart more then what they agreed ter pay fust oft—moreover what sartainty hev we got thet we're goin' ter get anything a-tall?"
They argued with him but his obduracy stood unaffected.
"Thet small sheer thet I agreed ter tek hain't ergoin' ter satisfy me now," he truculently protested. "I aims ter go along with ther money hitself and git paid off without no sort of dalliance. I aims ter get my own price, too."
Finally, since they could not overlook the menace of disaffection, the leader agreed to take this man with him to Lute Brown for adjustment of the dispute, and the two set off together, while the other two left them at a fork of the trail. On the way to the cabin, the disgruntled one drank more moonshine liquor than was good for him and when they arrived there the place was seemingly empty, for Lute, watching with hawk-like vigilance, had made out that instead of one man two were approaching and he had slipped out through a back door into the void of the darkness. A lantern without a chimney burned in the deserted room and cabin and that was safe enough in a place so screened, but it showed the two newcomers that there was no one waiting there. To the inflamed and suspicious brother this seemed an indication of broken faith. Perhaps after all he had been lured here to be paid off with treachery and murder!
"So ye lied ter me!" he bellowed in passion. "Hit war jest like I thought. Now I aims ter tek hit all myself!" And snatching out a knife he hurled himself on his comrade of an hour ago.
That one dropped the saddle-bags and fumbled for his pistol, but before it cleared the holster they had grappled and were stumbling about the room. Lute, watching from without, considered this the moment for intervention and he appeared in the door with drawn revolver shouting out for an end to the struggle.
Unfortunately it was only his loyal adherent who heeded his voice, and the other, freed from the grip that had so far held him in chancery stabbed twice before the object of his attack collapsed. Then only, Lute fired. Before that moment he must have fired through his loyal man to reach his traitor. The hesitation was fatal, for the shot missed its target and in a moment more, Lute, too fell under the knife.
The traitorous survivor stood for a moment, panting heavily, then, still unsteady of step from his homicidal exertions, picked up the saddle-bags, ransacked them with frenzied haste and plunged out of the door with the package that bore the spots of red sealing wax.
At any time the others might come to investigate and they would find a scene of double murder.
He did not stop to open the package. That could await a more opportune moment. Just now the vital thing was flight.
When, at the end of much panic-stricken haste and the spurring of terror he judged it safe to strike a match, he ripped open the bundle, over which so many men and one woman had fought—and in it discovered only tightly packed newspapers and a few small pieces of broken brick—added to give it the plausibility of weight.
Halloway in accordance with his plan of leaving the stage before his presence lost dramatic effect, did not offer to go all the way back to Shoulder-blade Creek with Alexander. He accompanied her only to a point where there was no longer danger, and then said farewell to her, leaving her still under the escort of Brent, Bud Sellers and O'Keefe.
"I reckon," he announced abruptly when they stood on the crest of a steep hill, "I'll turn back hyar. I don't dwell over yore way an' thar hain't no use fer me ter fare further. I'll bid ye farewell—an' mebby some day all us fellers'll meet up again."
Alexander was surprised, and a sharp little pang of disappointment shot through her breast. She did not analyze the emotion, but, just then and with no reason that emerged out of the subconscious, she remembered the instant when she had hung to the sycamore branch and he had swept her in and pressed her close. She only nodded her head and spoke gravely. "I reckon we'll all miss ye when ye're gone, but thet hain't no reason fer takin' ye no further offen yore course."
Then for the first time Halloway said anything that might have been construed as a compliment to the girl and he disarmed it of too great significance with a quizzical smile.
"I reckon, Alexander, thar hain't nothin' better then a good man—an' ye've done proved yoreself one—but afore God thar's a mighty outstandin' woman wasted when ye does hit."
Alexander flushed. Perhaps the germ of the awakening that Halloway had predicted was already stirring into unrecognized life, but she was ashamed of the blush and in order to cover it made a retort which was not by any stretch of the imagination a compliment.
"Thar's gals aplenty, Jack"—the people of the hills fall very naturally into the use of the first name—"A feller like you mout find hisself one ef he tried hard enough—an' I'll give ye some mighty good counsel, because atter all I wasbornedfemale an' I knows thet much erbout 'em."
"Wa'al?" Halloway smiled inquiringly, and the girl went on.
"Ye won't nuver make no headway with none of 'em whilst ye goes round lookin' es bristly an' es dirty es a razor-back hog thet's done been wallowin' in ther mire. Ef ye ever got clean once hit mout be right diff'rent."
The big fellow roared with laughter as he turned to Brent.
"Kin ye beat thet now, Mr. Brent? Kin ye figger me in a b'iled shirt, with a citified shave an' perfume on me a-settin' out sparkin'."
None of the rest knew why Brent laughed so hard. He was trying to picture the expression that would have come to Alexander's face had she seen Jack Halloway as he himself had seen him, groomed to perfection, with pretty heads turning in theater foyer and at restaurant tables, to gaze at his clean chisseled features and god-like physique.
Bud had little to say and after the parting the girl traveled in a greater silence than before. Both were thinking of the time, now drawing near, when they should reach the house of Aaron McGivins and learn whether or not it was a house of death. Both too were thinking of the man who had turned back, but their thoughts there were widely different.
Then they came to the road that ran by the big house, and before they had reached it Joe McGivins, who sighted them from afar came to meet them. When Alexander saw her brother she found suddenly that she could not walk. She halted and stood there with her knees weak under her and her cheeks pallid. The moment of hearing the life-and-death verdict was at hand and the sorely-tried strength that had carried her so far forsook her.
But Joe, however weak, was considerate and when still at a distance he saw her raise a hand weakly in a gesture of questioning and insufferable suspense and he shouted out his news: "He's gittin' well."
Then the girl groped blindly out with her hands and but for Jerry O'Keefe who caught her elbow, she would have fallen. The taut nerves had loosened to that unspeakable relief—but for the moment it was collapse.
Brent had left the mountains a week after Alexander's safe return, but within two months he had occasion to return and he rode over to the mouth of Shoulder-blade. He had been told that Aaron McGivins, though he had made a swift and complete recovery from his wound, had after all only been reprieved. He had recently taken to his bed with a heart attack—locally they called it "smotherin' spells," and no hope was held out for his recovery.
As Brent rode on from the railroad toward the house he gained later tidings. The old man was dead.
He dismounted at the stile to find ministering neighbors gathered there and, as never before, the unrelieved and almost biblical antiquity of this life impressed itself on his realization. Here was no undertaker, treading softly with skilled and considerately silent helpers. No mourning wreath hung on the door. The rasping whine of the saw and clatter of the hammer were in no wise muted as men who lived nearby fashioned from undressed boards the box which was to be old Aaron's casket. Noisy sympathy ran in a high tide where doubtless the bereaved sought only privacy.
Alexander's face, as she met Brent at the door, was pale with the waxen softness of a magnolia petal and though the vividness of her lips and eyes were emphasized by contrast, suffering seemed to have endowed her remarkable beauty with a sort of nobility—an exquisite delicacy that was a paradox for one so tall and strong.
The appeal of her wistfully sad eyes struck at his heart as she greeted him in a still voice.
"I heard—and I wanted to come over," he said and her reply was simple. "I'm obleeged ter ye. I wants ye ter look at him. He war a godly man an' a right noble one. Somehow his face——" she spoke slowly and with an effort, "looks like he'd done already talked with God—an' war at rest."
At once she led him into the room where, upon the four-poster bed lay the sheeted figure, and with a deeply reverent hand, lifted the covering.
To Brent it seemed that he was looking into features exemplifying all the wholesome virtues of those men who built the Republic. It was a face of rugged strength and unassuming simplicity. Its lines bespoke perils faced without fear and privations endured without complaint. Here in a pocket of wilderness which the nation had forgotten survived many others of those unaltered pioneers. But in the expression that death had made fixed, as well as in facial pattern, Brent recognized that simple kindliness to which courtesy had been a matter of instinct and not of ceremony and the rude nobility of the man to whom others had brought their tangled disputes, in all confidence, for adjustment.
"I understand what you mean," he declared as his eyes traveled from the father to the daughter, "and I'm glad you let me see him."
Moving unobtrusively about, engaged in many small matters of consideration, Brent recognized Bud Sellers and Jerry O'Keefe. He himself remained until the burial had taken place, and was one of those who lowered the coffin into the grave. But when those rites had been concluded and another day had come Brent sought for Alexander to make his adieus.
She was nowhere about the house and he went in search of her. He could not bear to remain longer where he must endure the pain of her stricken face. Of all the women he had ever known she stood forth as the most unique—and in some ways the most impressive. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful. He realized now that, though they were of different and irreconcilable planes of life, there had never been a moment since he had first seen her when he would not, save for his dragging on the steady curb of reason, have fallen into a headlong infatuation. Now he wished only to prove himself a serviceable friend.
When he had vainly sought her about the farm, it occurred to him to go to the ragged "buryin' ground" and though he found her there he did not obtrude upon her solitary vigil.
For Alexander was abandoning herself to one of those wild and nerve-wracking tempests of weeping that come occasionally in a lifetime to those who weep little. She had thrown herself face-down on the ground beneath which Aaron McGivins slept, with arms outflung as though seeking to reach into the grave and embrace him. As she had been both son and daughter to him, he had been, to her, both father and mother. Spasmodically her hands clenched and unclenched, and her fingers dug wildly into the earth.
Brent turned away and left her there and it was a full two hours later before he met her and led her, passive enough now, to a place from which they overlooked that river that, not long ago, they had ridden together. Under his gently diplomatic prompting she found relief in unbosoming herself.
"He war all I hed——" she rebelliously declared. "An' whilst he lived thet war enough—but now I hain't got nothin' left."
After a little she broke out again. "I hain't a woman—an' hain't a man. I hain't nuthin'."
"Alexander," said Brent gently, "when I looked at your father's face in there, I was thinking of what Parson Acup once told me. He said that if your father had been a wishful man,"—he used the hill phrase for ambition quite unconsciously, "he could have gone to the Legislature. Perhaps to Congress."
"I reckon he mout ef hed any honors he craved," she replied. "Folks was always pesterin' him ter run fer office."
The man looked off across the valley which was so desolate now and which would soon be so tenderly green; so tuneful with leaf and blossom.
His eyes were seeing a vision and some of it he tried to voice.
"Suppose, Alexander, hehadgone. Suppose he had taken his seat in Congress, instead of staying here. He would have become a figure trusted there, too—but how different your life would have been. There would have been schools and—well, many things that you have never known."
"I hain't hankerin' fer none of them things," she said. Then with a sudden paroxysm of sobs that shook her afresh, she added, "All I wants is ter hev him back ergin!"
But Brent was thinking of things that could mean little to her because she lacked the background of contrast and comparison. He was seeing that beauty and that personality in the social life of official Washington; seeing the triumph that would have been hers—and wondering what it would have meant to her in the balance of contentment or unhappiness.
Of course had Aaron McGivins begun his political career young enough, every trace of mountain illiteracy would long ago have been shed away by the growing girl. As for her blood, there is in all America no other so purely Anglo-Saxon.
"I rather think it's a pity he didn't go," Brent mused aloud. Then he added, "Now that he's—not with you any more—Alexander, there is something you must let me say. You've never thought about it much, but you have such a beauty as would make you famous in any city of the world. Men will come—and they won't be turned back."
For the first time since Aaron's death the old militant fire leaped into her eyes and her chin came up as she flared into vehemence.
"Like hell they won't be turned back!"
But Brent smiled. "You think that now, but Alexander, nature is nature and there must be something in your life. You've played at being a man and done it better than many men—but men can marry women, and you can't. Along that road lies a heart-breaking loneliness. Sometime you'll see that, since you can't be a man, you'll want to be a man's mate."
She shook her head with unconvinced obduracy.
"I knows ye aims ter give me kindly counsel, Mr. Brent, but ye're plum wastin' yore breath."
The man rose. "After all, I only came to say good-bye," he told her. "You aren't going to keep men from loving you. I know because I've tried to keep myself from doing it—and I've failed. But this is really my message. If you do change your ideas, for God's sake choose your man carefully—and if you ever reach a point where you need counsel, send for me."