Nothing had been heard of any Ku-Klux operations since Alexander's adventure, and even of that episode no unclean circulated story had gone abroad. Those who had worn the black masks were not apt to talk overmuch, and those who had made up Bud's force were for quite different reasons equally discreet. Since Alexander had won through safe and unrobbed, those who had been, in a fashion, her clansman, had few outstanding grudges to repay. Jack Halloway, for example, had come with a satisfied heart out of the baggage-room, by way of the wrecked telegraph office. For him the matter was concluded, save that he had made three enemies who would nurse a malignant grievance and seek, some day, to requite it with the ambushed rifle. The telegraph operator had altogether disappeared from the country, and his two immediate confederates, who were "branch-water men" dwelling in some remote pocket of the hills, had withdrawn to their thicketed abodes.
Bud Sellers had pieced two and two together, and though he kept a Masonic silence on the point, he had reached a conclusion. The house where Jase Mallows had been nursed back to health after his mysterious wounding, was not far from the place where he and Brent had been ambushed. The wound might have been the result of the volley he had himself fired at the rifle-flash, and if that were true the balance of that encounter lay in his favor. If it were not true, he had no means of knowing to whom he owed an unpaid score for his "lay-wayin'."
Only, he must keep an eye on Jase—because if his inference were correct, Jase would never forget.
Besides the telegraph man, the only other principal, actually or definitely known to any of Alexander's friends had been Lute Brown, and upon him they need spend no further thought. A long while after the tragedy had been played out there by yellow lantern-light, a woodsman passed the rotting cabin where Lute and his faithful partisan had died. It was indeed so long after, that there was some difficulty in identifying the bodies, and an inconclusive coroner's verdict left the matter stranded in mystery—and so it promised to remain. Privately, those conspirators, whose lips were sealed as to legal testimony, had hunted the assassin for several weeks, but without success. Occasionally, in widely separated places, a haggard and emaciated man was glimpsed who always escaped unidentified and with ghost-like speed. Children were frightened with tales of his burning eyes, and in neighborhood gossip he was spoken of as the "wild man of the woods."
For when Lute Brown's murderer, fleeing for his life, had opened his parcel and discovered the worthlessness of that for which he had turned Judas, something snapped in his befuddled brain. He became an Ishmael driven before the torture of a fixed idea—terror of capture, until one day his body was found, worn to a skeleton; matted of beard and hair, and lying with its head in a creek bed at the foot of a cliff over which the assassin had fallen.
So the Ku-Klux became again only a name.
If, however, the men who had followed Alexander were willing to let sleeping dogs lie, the other faction had not only the rancor of defeat remaining with them, but also the incurable itch of uneasy consciences.
At any time that drink loosened a careless tongue, dangerous hints might be dropped, and over at Coal City a newly elected Commonwealth's attorney was manifesting a zealous interest in the mystery of those two dead bodies and all the surrounding facts.
That Halloway knew at least two of their number by sight, if not by name, was a cloud of menace which hung over all. Since Jerry O'Keefe and Bud Sellers were in the big man's confidence they as well as Alexander herself fell into the gang's list of undesirable citizens.
But on the surface of life between Coal City and Shoulder-blade there was no outward ripple; no hint that fires still smouldered which might again leap to eruption. Men who had followed Lute and those who had been enlisted by Bud from time to time "met and made their manners" on the highway—without evidence of animosity.
Then one day when the early freshness of summer had been sunburned and freckled into a warmer fullness, a thing happened which stirred the sleeping dogs.
One of the three men of whom Halloway had disposed at the station and who bore ugly scars on his face where the cuffs had marked him, became involved in a boundary dispute with a neighbor, and a shooting affray followed—in which the neighbor fell wounded.
The assailant was arrested and brought to the Coal City Jail, and as he was being led hither, Halloway and Jerry O'Keefe, who chanced to be in town that day, came out of the court-house together.
That coincidence was observed by a lounger in the public square who had, himself, been an alleged Ku-Klux man, on that memorable day and night. Out of his own anxieties he began weaving a pattern of fear.
He reasoned that if Halloway dropped a hint into the ear of the Commonwealth's Attorney that official might go lightly with the prosecution for shooting and wounding, provided, as an exchange of courtesies, this prisoner became fully and freely his tool in ferreting out the larger problem. He might be offered immunity on one indictment, if, as State's evidence, he made possible a number of true bills on graver charges.
The man kept Halloway and Jerry under observation until they left town and satisfied himself that so far they had not talked with the prosecutor—but that carried no assurance for the future, and several consultations ensued, in which certain measures were considered which did not enhance the safety of either Halloway or O'Keefe.
Halloway was less confident as the weeks passed. That first swift moment of apparent victory had not been followed by a satisfactory sequence of progressive steps.
He had sought to wake Alexander out of that sex-lethargy which lay like a moat between the citadel of her heart and the advantage of suitors. In that he had succeeded, too well for his liking. Always Alexander held surprises in store for him, which only maddened him the more, fanning his passion into a hotter blaze. Now when he sought to press his initial advantage to a greater conclusiveness, she only told him to wait and, like Portia judging her lovers, allowed others to come pay court as well, while over all she reigned with a regal sort of despotism, encouraging no one more than another.
But she was splendidly, vitally awake.
She still did with joy the things men did, and did them better than most men, but she was no longer blind to the stronger asset of her arresting beauty and the effect of its charm.
She realized these newly discovered attributes naively and without vanity, but now instead of insisting on the equality of a man, she demanded the homage of a queen.
And though she would have found her world desolate without that tallest and keenest of her cavaliers, she no longer thought of him as the only important figure in the world that he had opened to her.
In a somewhat formless and intuitive fashion she felt a slight undercurrent of distrust for Halloway, which she combated as ungenerous but could not wholly overcome.
But in constant conflict with these moments of misgiving there were other, rather wild moments, when the draw and pull of his fascination seemed invincible. At those times she realized that, should he open his arms and say, "Come," she would have to go as the iron filing goes to the magnet. To Alexander the whole world of love was in a nebulous and constructive state of flux and lava.
But she had by instinct a wary defensiveness, and she was on constant guard.
"Alexander," said Halloway one day when they were walking together along the creek-bed between the dark, waxy masses of the rhododendron, "Hit strikes me right forceable, thet fer a gal thet didn't hev no time of day fer any man, ye've done swung round mighty suddent. They hangs 'round ye now like bees 'round locust blooms."
"Did ye 'low thet ef I let any come, I'd refuse ter welcome ther balance?" she inquired and he retorted with more heat than he usually allowed himself. "Most women contrives ter satisfy themselves with one man, I reckon."
"Thet's atter they've done picked out ther one, fer dead shore," was her calm retort. "An' mebby even then hit hain't frum choice."
A satirist might have derived pleasure from that situation of Alexander rejecting conventional pleas, urged by Jack Halloway.
The big man had halted and stood looking down at her. His hands gradually closed, then tautly clenched themselves. For a moment he contemplated throwing away caution and seeking once more to coerce her responsiveness in the imprisonment of his sudden embrace but he hesitated. Then while he still held his silence, Alexander spoke with that full and inevasive candor which was a cardinal of her nature.
"Ther gospel-truth is, Jack, I don't know yit whether I loves ye or hates ye, an' I kain't help mistrustin' ye somehow. I mout es well tell ye ther truth es ter lie ter ye."
"Mistrust me!" he echoed, incredulously. "Ye knows full well I loves ye. Ye kain't misdoubt thet!"
She shook her head. The sun was burnishing her hair into an aura, and the clear light shone searchingly on the fresh bloom of her cheek, the violet of her eyes and the crimson of her lips—revealing no flaw. She was all lovely and young, and yet Brent thought, she was alarmingly, almost paradoxically clever.
"Ye acts like ye loves me," was her seriously voiced response, "but somehow thar seems ter be a kind of greediness erbout hit. Take Bud Sellers fer instance—he's jest ther opposite. Thar hain't no greed in him."
Halloway might have retorted that also there was in Bud nothing to which her flaming personality could ever respond. His was the worship of a dumb and faithful beast. But he held his peace while the girl went steadily on.
"I oft-times takes myself ter task fer thet suspicion, because hit don't seem far ter feel thet-a-way an' not know no reason."
She looked at him questioningly and very gravely, as one resolved upon a full but difficult confession.
"I hain't nuver seed ye foller no reg'lar work. Ye hain't doin' nothin' hyar now but jest hangin' around." She became halting there, for she had reached the point of greatest embarrassment, but she forced herself ahead.
"I hain't no millionaire myself, but we've got a good farm, and we don't owe no man nothin'." Once more she broke off before, with an inflexible frankness, she finished up. "Jack, thar's been times when I've wondered ef hit wasn't my bein' es well-fixed as I am thet made ye think so master much of me."
Then indeed the sprites and goblins of ironic mirth rioted in Halloway's brain. The surge of laughter that sought outlet from his lips came near to smothering him, but he succeeded in smothering it—though the effort almost clicked him. He, with a wealth which would have seemed to her as the treasure of the Incas, was falling under suspicion as a lazy fortune-hunter, seeking haven in the meager opulence of a mountain farm! Yet he dared not confess that wealth now because such admission would stamp him an impostor.
"I reckon," he said generously, though with just a touch of hurt pride. "I kin live down that distrust. Does ye suspicion Jerry O'Keefe too—or jest me?"
"Nobody couldn't suspicion Jerry," she said softly. "He's es straight es a poplar saplin' an' es plain ter see through es a clear spring-branch. He knows how ter gentle a woman, too."
"He don't understand ye an' ye'd mighty soon sicken of jest bein' gentled," argued Halloway. "He hain't got no idea of ther fires thet lays sleepin' in yore heart."
"He's got an idee of ther fire in his own, I reckon," replied Alexander.
It is the accepted rule of these mountains that when two men arrive to "set up" with a girl at the same time, she must choose between them and send the less favored away. Both Halloway and Jerry avoided the issue that might spring from such a situation. They met on the high-road with a full seeming of their old accord, but perhaps the semblance was an empty shell—or fast becoming one. There was a tacit understanding between them that certain evenings at Alexander's house belonged to each.
In Jerry's good-natured, whimsical eyes there had settled of late an unaccustomed gravity and since he was level-headed enough to recognize in Halloway a man who loomed brightly above others, his fear of him as a rival was genuine. It was O'Keefe's way to walk boldly and evenly through life, but a strong and tireless man will flinch in his gait from the hurt of a stone-bruised foot, and with Jerry the stone bruise was about the heart—which is worse. But it was more in the casual meeting than by the formal call, that O'Keefe conducted his courtship. He had a genius for materializing on the scene at the exact moment when he could perform some simple service, and of meeting Alexander by studious coincidence when she least expected him.
There was none-the-less the constant danger of a flareup because Halloway always bore himself with entire politeness yet with a courtesy which did not escape a sort of indulgent patronage; as though the serious thought of rivalry was absurd.
One day Bud Sellers came by the house. It was after he had been in jail and Alexander, who was standing on her porch, invited him in. Slowly and somewhat dubiously he accepted the invitation.
"I hain't seed ye fer quite a spell, Bud," began the girl smilingly, and with a brick red flush he answered. "Hit took holt on me ergin, Alexander. Hit war jest actually a-burnin' me up."
She did not ask what he meant by "it." She knew full well and she did not reproach him. She only inquired, "What happened, Bud?"
"I kep' my pledge ter yer, though." He spoke gruffly, because the sight of her was burning him up too, with another kind of thirst. "I went an' hed myself jailed. I reckon hit won't hardly master me ergin fer a spell."
Alexander felt a lump rising in her throat. Since her awakening she had not missed the meaning of that look in his eyes. Slowly and candidly, she asked: "Bud, war hit on account of me? War ye frettin' over me—not a-keering?"
Sellers looked up in astonishment.
"How did ye know?" he demanded. "I hain't nuver breathed no word ter ye erbout keerin'. I knowed full well hit warn't no manner of use."
"I'm a woman, now, Bud," she reminded him. "A woman don't need ter be told some things."
"I knowed hit warn't no use." He only repeated the words, dully, and Alexander laid a hand on his trembling arm.
"Bud, Bud," she exclaimed self-accusingly. "I wisht I'd stayed a man. I don't seem ter do nothin' at this woman-game but jest stir up trouble. I loves ye right dearly, Bud, but hit's ther same fashion thet I loves my brother Joe—an' I reckon—that hain't what ye're a-seekin'."
But Bud drew back his shoulders and spoke with a brave assumption of restored cheerfulness.
"I'm a-seekin' whatever I kin hev," he staunchly declared. "More'n anything else, 'though, I'm seeking ter see ye happy." He paused then with a forced smile that, for all his effort, was stiff-lipped, and said slowly, "I reckon hit'll be either Halloway or Jerry … they're both right upstanding men."
"Sometimes I thinks hit won't be nobody," she declared. "I'd done been raised up a boy so long thet since I turned back into a gal ergin, ther only thing I've been plum sartain of air thet I hain't been sartain of nuthin'. Sometimes I thinks a heap of Jerry, but more times Jack Halloway seems ter pintedly sot me on fire."
Jerry was tramping along the high-road, whistling an old ballad of lugubrious tune when a sharp turn brought him face to face with Jase Mallows. Jerry himself was for passing on with a brief salutation, but the other halted him and fell into voluble talk.
Jase complained that his wound had left certain after-effects which still gave him trouble.
"Hit's hell ter pay, when a law-abidin' man kain't travel ther highway withouten he's shot down like I was thet night," lamented Mallows virtuously. "I misdoubts ef I ever feels plum right inside me ergin. I wisht I knowed who thet feller war."
"Mebby he mistook ye fer somebody else," suggested Jerry. "Thet war ther same night them highwaymen sought ter lay-way Alexander—thar war right smart shootin' goin' on hyar an' thar."
"Did ye ever gain any knowledge of who them fellers war?" Mallows sought to couch his question in the manner of interest for the wrongs of another, but just a shade too much eagerness on his own part marred the effect.
Jerry smiled. He had caught that note and it piqued his curiosity, so with mountain secretiveness he became cryptic in his response. "Wa'al, mebby we hain't tellin' all we knows—jest yit. Mebby we're kinderly bidin' our time for a leetle spell."
It was not a comprehensive announcement. It was nine-tenths inspired by a spirit of teasing gossip-hunger into fuller revealment, but it happened to start a train of serious thought in the hearer.
Jase had recently returned from Coal City, and there he had talked with men who were watching with alarm the possibilities of an impending trial. The man who had shot his neighbor over a fence-line dispute was to face his prosecutors at the next term of court, and if he talked too much, large and portentous results might ensue.
The Commonwealth would know nothing of its potential leverage on the accused unless Halloway, O'Keefe or Alexander broke silence, and it followed that their silencing was highly important.
Through Jase's thoughts ran, in a threatening refrain, the words, "Mebby hit won't be long now."
So Jase saddled his mule that evening, despite the misery which was the relic of his wounding and started back to Coal City to convene a committee of ways and means.
The mail came irregularly to Shoulder-blade creek, but even irregular deliveries may bring bad news. Halloway received a letter, one day, containing a summons which he could not disregard. He had spoken contemptuously to Brent of money-grubbing, but his inflated wealth carried certain responsibilities which even he acknowledged.
He was perfectly willing that his world should see in him an incorrigible scoffer at moral conventions. He rather enjoyed being the object of maternal warnings to young daughters, but in financial affairs no stern moralist could have been more observant of rigid integrity, and in that, as in other things, he reversed the usual order. The business involved in the letter does not concern this narrative save in so far as it called him in peremptory terms away from Alexander and, at that, he fumed sulphurously.
He had, for the present, one more evening with her and he meant to make the most of it. If there was in him any power of hypnotism, and he still believed there was, he meant to exert it to the full.
Even in midsummer, there are chill nights in the mountains, and as he approached Alexander's house he thought gratefully of the fire that would be burning on her hearth.
She was sitting alone when he entered, by a small table, sewing, and she did not rise to welcome him. Lamp and firelight mingled in an orange and carmine glow that fell softly upon her. For a moment, as Halloway, pausing just inside the door, gazed at her, that adventurous hunger that fed upon her beauty became a positive avidity. Perhaps because he was leaving her, her beauty seemed what no earthly beauty is—absolute.
"Alexander," said Halloway slowly, "I've got ter go away fer a spell, an' I hates hit—I hates hit like all torment!"
She looked quickly up, and his narrow scrutiny told him that she had given ever so slight a start and that into her eyes had come a quickly repressed disappointment.
"I'll miss ye, Jack," she said simply. "What business calls ye away?"
That was an expected question and its answer was ready.
"I've done heired me a small piece of property from an uncle, way acrost ther Verginny line, an' I've got ter fare over thar an' sign some papers or do somethin' ter thet amount."
"How long does ye 'low ter be gone?"
He shook his head moodily. "Hit's a long journey through ther roughs an' I don't know how much time I'll hev ter spend over ther business, but I reckon ye knows thet I won't tarry no longer then need be."
"Don't hasten unduly on my account," she coolly counseled him. "I'll strive ter mek shift somehow ter go on livin'."
The man had taken a chair near her and was bending forward, almost, but not quite, touching her. Now he rose and his voice trembled.
"Fer God's sake, Alexander, don't belittle me ner mek light of me ternight. I kain't endure hit. Heven't ye got no idee how master much I loves ye? Don't ye see thet ther two of us war made fer each other? I don't aim ter brag none—but ye knows I'm ther only man hyar-abouts thet understands ye—thet holds ye in full-high appreciation!"
He paused and she inquired calmly, "Air ye?"
"Ye knows hit!" He was talking tumultuously with the onrush of that dynamic spirit which drove him and gave him power. He stood there with his coat open over his magnificent chest, and his eyes alight with the forces that made him exceptional.
"Ye knows thetyouhain't no every-day woman nuther. Ye knows thet ther like of yore beauty hain't been seed afore in these hills—not in mortal feature ner in ther blossomin' woods ner in ther blue skies over 'em all!"
Again he paused, and even while he adhered to a crude vernacular, there was, in the cadence of his voice, a forceful sort of eloquence. In the latent intensity of his personality dwelt a sheer wizardry which few women could have withstood.
"Hev ye ever seed a comet in ther heavens?" he abruptly demanded and without waiting for a reply swept rapidly on. "Well ye're like ter a comet, Alexander. Every star thet shines out thar ternight is hung high up in heaven an' every one is bright. But when a comet goes sweepin' acrost ther skies, with a furrow of light trailin' along behind hit—we plum fergits them leetle stars—hit's like they'd all been snuffed. Hit's ther same way with you, Alexander. Deep down in yore heart thar's powerful fires a-burnin' thet no weak man kain't satisfy. When I looks at ye I clean fergits every other star that ever shone—because I've done seedyou."
Once more Alexander began to feel that old uncertainty of reeling senses. His intonations were caresses. His eyes were beacons, and she took a tight hold on herself—for despite the hypnotic spell that he was weaving about her, a voice within her cautioned, "Be steady!" That indefinable ghost of suspicion stirred and troubled her.
"An' so sence I'm ther comet amongst them numerous small stars," she observed with an even voice, though her pulse beat was far from regular, "ye 'lows thet I'd ought ter belong teryou?"
He ignored the teasing brightness of her eyes; a light of defensive disguise.
"I 'lows thet hevin' oncet seed ye, an' loved ye, I hain't nuver goin' ter be satisfied with no lesser star."
The fire had leaped up and the room had grown warm. Halloway, in his impetuous fashion, ripped off his coat, flinging it to the floor, and stood with his great shoulders and chest bulking mightily beneath his flannel shirt.
Under the hurricane sweep of his love-making the girl from time to time closed her eyes in an effort to hold to her waning steadiness. This was one of those occasions when the fire in her responded to the fire in him; when she felt, with a sense of deep misgiving, that she could not resist him.
"Alexander," said the man, abruptly, dropping his voice from its impetuous pitch, to a more quiet and yet more ardent quality, "Ye 'lowed oncet thet I shouldn't never tech ye withouten ye said I mout. I've done obeyed ye—but now." He slowly extended both arms and stood upright in gladiatorial strength and compelling erectness. "But now ye're a-comin' inter my arms—of yore own accord—because we was made fer one another."
Again her lids came down over the girl's eyes and her fingers tightly gripped the chair-arms for support. Something in her heart was driving her irresistibly into those outstretched arms and something else—though that was growing weaker, she thought—kept whispering its warning, "Steady! Go steady! This is a spell but it isn't love."
She heard the hypnotic voice again. "Ye're a-comin' inter my arms, Alexander—ye're a-comin'—now!"
Her glance, ranging in desperation, fell on his coat at her feet, and with the instinct of grasping at any pretext, for a moment of thought and reprieve, she exclaimed:
"Give me thet coat, Jack!" Having breathlessly gone that far, she was able to finish with greater self-command. "Ther linin's in sheer rags. I kin be mendin' thet wust place by the sleeve thar—whilst ye talks."
"The coat kin wait," he declared. Her line of defense was bending now, under the weight of his onslaught, and it was no time for trivial interruption, but Alexander leaned forward and picked the thing up.
She had not yet begun to sew—her fingers lacked the needful steadiness—but she was making a pretense of studying the torn lining. She must avert her gaze from him for a moment or the tides that he was lashing about her would lift and carry her on their outsweep.
Then suddenly she gave a violent start, and from her lips explosively broke the one word, "Jack!"
He knew that she was under a strained tension of emotion, and though the way she had flashed out that word was a marked contrast with her past attempts to seem controlled, he construed it as an evidence of final surrender to her feelings. She was already very pale and so she turned no paler, but in that moment something had happened to Alexander. Some thought or instinct or fact had brought her up short—transformed her out of weakness into strength, and when she spoke again it was with the self-containment of one who has been near the cliff's edge but who has definitely drawn back.
"I hed hit in head ter ask ye a question," she announced, slowly, "but I've done decided not ter do hit. This thread hain't suited ter ther job. I'll git me another spool."
She rose from her chair, and dismayed at the astonishing swiftness of her changed mood, Halloway took an impulsive step toward her. His arms were still receptively outstretched, but suddenly he felt that attitude to have become absurd. An altered light shone in her eyes now, and it was unpleasantly suggestive of contempt. She turned, absent-mindedly carrying the coat, and went into the other room.
What had happened, wondered the man. Something portentous had been born and matured in a breathing space—but what it was he could not guess. He knew only that victory had been between his open fingers and had slipped away. In this new and hardened mood of Alexander's, he might as well talk passionate love to the Sphinx.
But that was Alexander, he reflected. The tempestuous change from sun to storm was the capricious climate of her nature. She had been close to surrender and had wrested her independence out of his closing grasp by pure will-power. The reaction, he inferred, had been instantaneous—bringing the old resentment against being forced. Again he had lost—but also again he would win.
Alexander was not gone long and she returned with a restored calm. The fingers that stitched industriously at his torn coat, were as steady as before his coming.
"I don't aim ter be fo'ced, Jack," she quietly announced. "Ye boasts thet ye kin mek me come into yore arms of my own free will. If ye kin—all right—but hit won't be afore ye fares back from yore journey. Hit won't be ternight."
Two weeks after Jack Halloway had started on his alleged trip across the Virginia boundary, Alexander also set out upon a journey.
She was going to Perry Center and meant to be there for some days, since matters concerning the farm were to be discussed with her uncle. This time the undertaking was less arduous than the trip from there back to Shoulder-blade had been.
Now it was midsummer and the railroad washouts had been repaired, so she had only to cross two mountain ridges and take the jerky little train from a point ten miles distant to her destination.
Perry Center was a hub about which swung a limited perimeter of rich farming lands. This fertile area was an oasis with steep desolation hedging it in on all sides, but within its narrow confines men could raise not only the corn which constituted the staple of their less fortunate neighbors, but the richer crop of wheat as well.
Therefore the men about Perry Center were as sheiks among goat-herds.
When Alexander set out on her ten-mile walk hefting the pack that held her necessaries for the trip, Jerry O'Keefe materialized grinning amiably from a clump of laurel. It was characteristic of Jerry to so appear from nowhere.
Now he nodded, and his eyes were brimming with that infectious smile of his.
"I jest kinderly happened ter hev a day off, Alexander," he assured her, "and I 'lowed hit wouldn't hurt none fer me ter come along es far es ther railroad train with ye an' tote thet bundle."
She gave it over to him, and since the trail there was narrow and thorn-hedged, she strode on ahead of him. Jerry was content, for through the midsummer woods, still dewy with morning freshness, he could follow no lovelier guide, and Jerry could be silent as well as loquacious.
They had put two-thirds of the journey behind them, when Alexander suggested, "Let's rest hyar a spell. Hit's a right good place ter pause an' eat a snack."
They stood on a pinnacle where time-corroded shoulders of sandstone broke eruptively through the soil. In a cluster of paw-paw trees there was a carpet of moss spread over ancient boulders, and off behind them stretched the nobility of forests unspoiled; of oak and ash and poplar and the mighty plumes of the pine. The crimson flower of the trumpet flower trailed everywhere, and a mighty vista was spread from foreground to horizon where the ashy purple of the last ridge merged with the sky.
But for Jerry the chief beauty was all close at hand.
"Alexander," he said, with his heart in his eyes, "ye're ther purtiest gal I ever seed—ther purtiest gal I reckon anybody ever seed."
The tease in her came to the surface. "Another feller likened me ter a comet amongst small stars, Jerry."
"I reckon I kin hazard a guess who thet feller war," he answered soberly. "There's only one man hyarabouts thet's got a gift of speech like thet. Myself, I don't like ter think of ye as a comet, Alexander, they're so plum outen reach."
She did not reply and Jerry went on. "An' yit mebby he's right—I reckon thet's jest another reason for likenin' ye ter one—an' I reckon he knows, too, thet he flames right bright hisself."
The girl lifted her brows questioningly and Jerry went on.
"Hit's right hard fer me ter think erbout anything else. He stands betwixt me an' you an' he bulks so big thet he's kinderly hard ter git eround."
Alexander was sitting on the mossy rock, her eyes wandering off across the far-flung landscape. Now their gaze came back, recalled by something wistful in her companion's voice, and it occurred to her that this man himself would have towered above the generality.
"Ye're a right sizable sort of feller yore own self, Jerry," she reminded him and he laughed a shade bitterly. It was a very unusual thing for bitterness to tingle Jerry's voice, and it augured a bruised heart.
"I'm big amongst leetle fellers," he replied. "But along side him, I'm a runt."
"Ef he's got some thing ye hain't got, like es not, hit wucks t'other way round too. Ye're strong enough an' ye've got gentleness."
Jerry leaned forward to her. His voice trembled and his eyes broke into a sudden snap of flame.
"Alexander—ye knows ther way I loves ye. Ye kain't fathom ther full extent of hit all, but ye knows some small part of hit. Ye're good ter me—but when a man feels like I does towards you, thar hain't but one sort of goodness thet counts. I knows thet I cuts a sorry sort of figger alongside him, an' I hes ter fight myself day-long an' night-long ter keep from hatin' him fer hit. I hain't no Goliath outen ther Bible, but after all a right puny leetle feller took his measure."
He paused for an instant then swept feelingly on. "I wants ye ter answer me one question. Air hit jest because he's so monster big an' fine-looking thet ye thinks he's a piece of ther moon?"
"I hain't nuver said I thought he was," she interrupted, but Jerry stubbornly proceeded, and no one looking at his set face could doubt that he meant all he said.
"Because ef thet's hit, Alexander, afore God Almighty I'm plum willin' ter meet him an' fight him fer ye with my bare hands 'twell one of us dies. I hain't none afeared of him, ef so be I'm fightin' fer you—an' ef he wins ther fight I'd rather be dead anyhow."
Alexander had never seen him so passion-ridden of manner before—and she thought that if such a combat took place, even with the odds uneven, the outcome would not be altogether certain.
Had Jerry known it, he was at that moment nearer to stirring the girl in the way that Halloway had stirred her, than he had ever been before, but her reply came in a grave and low-pitched voice.
"I hain't ter be won by no battle, Jerry."
"No, o'course not." He had brought himself back with an effort to a quieter mood and he even sought valiantly to muster the twinkle into his eyes and the whimsical note into his tone as he said:
"But atter all, I'm a right easy sort of feller ter git along with, an' I mout be kinderly handy eround ther house. These masterful husbands sometimes don't w'ar so well. Hit's like havin' ter live with a king, I reckon."
Now, it was the woman who insisted on gravity. "Look at me, Jerry," she commanded and their glances held level as she went on in deep earnestness.
"I'd hate fer ther two of ye ter think thet I'm playin' fast an' loose with ye. I'd hate ter think hit myself. Hit hain't thet—I was raised up a boy—I thought I'd always stay thet-a-way. Then I found I couldn't."
"Yes, I knows thet, Alexander. Thar hain't no censure fer ye es ter thet."
"Mebby thar ought ter be though. But ye sees hit's kinderly like I was livin' in a new world—an' I don't know hit well yit. I've got ter go slow. I hain't made up my mind an' then changed hit—I hain't blowed hot an' cold. Hit's jest thet I hain't been able ter come ter no conclusion one way ner t'other."
She had spoken with a defensive tone, one hardly certain, but as she finished a prideful note crept into her voice. "But when I does decide, I decides fer all time an' ther man I weds with kin trust me."
Jerry bade Alexander farewell after depositing her parcel by the threadbare seat of the battered day coach which was to carry her to Perry Center, but as he said good-by, he was, for once, acting without candor. He meant to go to Perry Center too, but being called by no business, except to follow her, he thought it wiser to make no announcement of his intention. When the engine wheezed and groaned to its start. Jerry swung himself into the baggage compartment, and after the elapse of a safe interval presented himself, grinning, in the day coach.
The girl pretended indignation, but her wrath was neither convincing nor terrifying. After a space she inquired, "Jerry, does ye know whar Jack Halloway come from afore he struck this section?"
O'Keefe shook his head. "I don't jedgmatically know what creek he was borned on, ef thet's what ye means, but I reckon hit warn't so fur away."
Her eyes narrowed a trifle. "Does ye even know—fer sure—thet he's a mountain man?"
Jerry laughed. "I hain't nuver heered tell of no man thet war raised up in the settlemints claimin' ter be a benighted boomer," he answered. "Hit's right apt ter be ther other way 'round." He paused, then judicially added: "When a man's co'tin a gal, he gin'rally seeks ter put hisself in ther best light he kin—not ther wust."
"Yes, thet sounds right reasonable," she admitted.
"What made ye ask, Alexander?"
After a dubious pause, she spoke hesitantly, "I jest fell ter studyin' erbout hit. Ef I tells ye, ye mustn't never name ther matter—ter nobody."
"I gives ye my hand on thet."
"Wa'al, Mr. Brent told me afore he left, thet ef I ever needed counsel I should write ter him. When Jack went away, I writ—an' yestiddy I got an answer back. My letter ter Mr. Brent asked ther same question thet I jest put up teryou."
"What did Brent say?"
She was looking out of the car window with eyes that were serious and preoccupied.
"He said he knowed all erbout him—but thet a question like thet ought rightfully ter be put ter a man fust-handed. He bade me ask Jack myself when he come back—but he pledged hisself ter answer all my questions ef Jack should happen ter refuse, atter he'd hed one chanst."
The gray-blue eyes narrowed for a moment, then O'Keefe inquired, "Does hit makes any great differ whar a man was borned at?"
"Mebby not. I just fell ter wonderin'."
"Does ye want my fam'ly Bible ter look me up in?" demanded Jerry and the girl laughed.
But she did not tell Jerry what lay back of this whole discussion. She did not confide to him the mystery of a coat with a patched lining.
It had been a very old coat, though at one time, long ago, a good one, and already it had been patched and repatched. When Alexander had picked it up that night before Halloway's departure, as she struggled to keep her feet against the elemental surge of his whirlpool passion, its inner breast pocket had spread a bit at the top, and her eyes had glimpsed a discolored tailor's label—bearing the words, "New York."
That had been the thing she needed: the floating spar to one who is drowning and it steadied her into instant resistance. She had gone to her own room and read there the full legend—almost obliterated by wear—almost, but not quite. Some letters and numbers were gone, but enough were left legible.
"Mr. J. C. Halloway," was written in ink with a number on Fifth Avenue, New York. Then there was the tailor's name and address—also on that main thoroughfare of Fashion.
Cumberland mountain loggers do not have their clothes hand tailored in Manhattan; and though the exact locality meant nothing to her, the town meant much.
The label was partly ripped away from the pocket, and the girl had snipped it loose altogether. Halloway had played a careful game. He had avoided carrying forwarded envelopes—he had held to the vernacular at times when sudden crisis threatened to drive him into forgetfulness. He had overlooked only one possible precaution—that of ripping out the tailor's trademark from his coat.
"Yes, we're right proud of thet thar wheat elevator. We all went partners ter raise ther money fer rearin' hit," said Warwick McGivins, as he dismounted from his old pacing mare and pointed to a huge wooden building that stood at the edge of a bluff, from which one could drop a rock down a sheer hundred and fifty feet.
Alexander, his niece, and Jerry O'Keefe, following suit, slid from their saddles and the three walked through a wide gate, over a set of wagon scales and into the yard of the huge structure.
"Kinderly looks ter me like ye'd done deesigned hit fer a fort ter fight In'jins," suggested O'Keefe and the guide nodded his iron gray head. "Hit don't hurt none ter hev a house like thet solid-timbered," he asserted. "When ther crop's in, thet buildin' holds erbout all ther wheat thet ther passel of us fellers raises amongst us—an' we seeks ter hev hit held safe. Thar's some car-loads in thar right now, an' threshin' time hain't nigh over yit."
Drawing a key from his pocket he took them into the small office, and showed them the spaciously dimensioned interior. There were no windows save high overhead, and only two doors. One of these was a great sliding affair where the wagons backed up, and the other was small but equally solid. It was a huge box of heavy timber, most of it constituting the bin itself, but the old fellow showed it proudly—nor was his pride misplaced, for with this great cube of massive timber, his neighbors had met and overcome a perplexing handicap of nature.
They climbed a ladder and looked down into the reservoir partly filled with golden grain, and Jerry, noticing a coil of rope hanging from an upright, inquired: "Did ye hev a lynchin' in hyar by way of house-warmin'?"
McGivins laughed, but his narrative had not yet come to uses of that rope, and he refused to be hurried.
"Ye sees," he zestfully enlightened, "we've got a sort of table land of wheat ground hyarabouts thet raises master crops—an' we've got a railroad runnin' right past our doors ter haul hit out ter ther world below."
"No wonder folks hyarabouts hes got prosperity," mused Alexander a little enviously, thinking of her rocky hillsides on Shoulder-blade.
"Yes, but ther road didn't do us no great lavish of good—'twell we deevised this hyar thing," her uncle reminded her. "Hit jest kinderly aggravated us. Ye see our fields lays on high ground an' ther railroad runs through a deep chasm. We kain't git down ter hit, nigh es hit be, withouten we teams over slavish ways fer siv'ral steep miles. Now I'll tek ye down ther clift an' show ye what's down thar—an' how we licked thet mountain."
He led them out and down a narrow path, where they had to hold to branch and root until they reached the bottom of a deep ravine—and there one hundred and fifty feet lower was another huge bin, open at its top, and connected with the upper structure by an almost vertical chute.
So after all it was a piece of highly creditable engineering. It enabled the grower to weigh and store his product above, and then by opening the runway to deposit it at the rails. In only one respect would an engineer have quarreled with the arrangement. The long lever that loosened and held the flowing tide of grain operated from outside the upper building instead of from within.
"What's ter hinder a thief from comin' in ther night-time," demanded Jerry practically, "an' runnin' hisself out a wagon-load of thet thar stuff an' haulin' hit off?"
The elder's face fell a little.
"Thet's a far question," he acknowledged, "but we couldn't skeercely tutor hit no otherwise—an' we keeps thet lever fastened with a chain an' padlock."
"But how erbout ther rope," persisted O'Keefe, and the older man explained. "Sometimes we has ter nail up loose planks inside thet runway, an' when we does a feller lets hisself down on thet rope."