CHAPTER IVTHE FUGITIVE
Dumb, Douglas leaned his gun against the wall and moved outward.
“Don’t you touch him!” blazed Marion. “Don’t you put a hand onto him or I’ll—I’ll use that gun onto you! I might have knowed you was lyin’—if I’d knowed Steve was out I’d never trusted a word you said. Now you’ve got him, leave him to be buried where he was borned. Oh, Steve, Stevie lad! And I—I give this feller the word to git his gun and do for you! If I’d only knowed you was out! Oh, Stevie boy!”
In a storm of grief she dropped her head on the thin chest, hugging the limp lad to her with convulsive strength. A few feet away the blond man halted, dazed by the unintentional tragedy and the violence of the girl’s outburst. For minutes he stood there motionless, hardly grasping the significance of her denunciation.
Then his brain began to work. Her words, repeating themselves, became appallingly plain. This young Steve was “out”—and his swarthy pallor was not merely that of unconsciousness or death: it was that of long confinement in some place whence he had just escaped—a place where hair was kept cropped. And he, Douglas Hampton, who had been half acceptedby this girl as the chance camper he claimed to be, now had become in her mind a far blacker monster than a mere “detective”—a merciless bloodhound who killed poor fugitives on sight. Gazing miserably on the mountain maid mourning her luckless boy lover, he found the sight unendurable. His head drooped, and his eyes rested unseeing on the stones between him and the pathetic pair.
Up overhead fluttered the yellowhammers, scared by the shot but emboldened by the ensuing silence to wheel about and whet their curiosity in scrutiny of the tragic group on the stones. High on the cliff behind, an unseen squirrel fussed and fumed; and from crack and cranny along the wall and from crevices among the fallen fragments more than one furtive little eye peered out. Steadily the sun slipped upward in the clean blue sky, lighting up in pitiless nakedness one more spectacle such as it had seen all too often in the long stretch of time since men first penetrated into this grim gulf. The wretched man neither heard nor saw any of these things. Stone-still he stood, staring down at a spattered splotch of white on a gray rock.
All at once his blank gaze focused sharply on that white spot. He started. In one stride he was beside the rock. As he stooped and squinted, a light flamed in his face. With a bound he was up and leaping toward the limp form beyond.
“Git away!” shrilled Marion, lifting a tear-swollen face and turning on him like a tigress. “Keep your bloody hands off him—he’s mine! My onliest——”
“Listen to me!” he commanded. “I never hit him!The shot struck that stone yonder—the whole charge! It was an accident anyway—and he was out of line—the shot couldn’t hit him from where I stood. Let me see that wound.”
For an instant she sat rigid, unable to believe, yet thrilled with hope. Quickly, but gently, he raised the head of the youth and probed the injury he found. Then he nodded vehemently.
“This is no gunshot wound,” he asserted. “It’s a cut and a bump. He tumbled and knocked his head against a stone. Got a hard crack, but nothing dangerous. Poor kid, he looks half starved, and that smash he took just finished him—for awhile. All he needs is water, food, rest, and safety. I’ll give him all of them.”
After one stare at the split scalp now turned toward her, she sprang up, her cheeks aglow with joy. But then she paused and shot a glance at the gun near by.
“And you’ll take him back! No you won’t—I’ll——”
In the nick of time he caught her wrist as she started toward the weapon.
“Take him back where?” he snapped. “I’ll take him nowhere, except back among the rocks. After he’s able to walk he can go where he likes. He’s nothing to me. If he’s anything to you, don’t stand in his way. I’m trying to help him. Now behave!”
She was tugging furiously away, but as he released her she stood where she was, fighting now against her distrust of him. He lifted the sagging body, got afirm grip, and lurched back toward the cliff. As he passed the shot-scarred stone he grunted and jerked his head downward toward it. Following, she paused an instant and studied the white patch, glanced at the little cañon, then moved on with clearer face. She knew well how shot-marks looked; saw, too, that the tall stranger had spoken truth when he said Steve was out of his line of fire from the walled passage. Though she had not seen the gun fired, she realized now that hardly any man would have made so poor a shot if he had actually been trying to hit the hunted youth.
Yet, when Douglas edged into the slit and bore his burden through, she halted behind him and put a tentative hand on the gun, still loaded in one barrel. Narrowly she inspected the “newfangled” weapon—so unlike the ancient muzzle-loaders common in the Traps—wavering between a desire to draw its remaining charge and fear lest it might disastrously explode again. After a dubious moment she shook her head and went on. She must trust this man, whether she would or not.
Down on the tumbled blanket and the bough-tip bed Douglas laid the youth. Then he reached for the canvas water-pail. Its lightness brought a frown to his brow. Hardly a cupful remained in it.
“I’ll git somethin’,” she volunteered, reading his thought. Before he could fathom her purpose she was leaving through the passage, limping a little but moving as if sure of herself. Presently she returned, carefully bearing a jug.
“Well, you witch! Where did you dig up that?”
“That’s one of the questions you better not ask round here,” she parried. “Jest hold up his head while I give him a good snort.”
Smiling grimly, he raised the lad’s head and opened his lax mouth while she pulled the corn-cob plug. Deftly she put the nozzle to that mouth and poured the “snort.” The aptness of the word was speedily demonstrated by the uncouth noise which erupted from Steve.
His eyes flew open, rolled, blinked. He coughed, sprayed a mouthful of the colorless but powerful liquor on his helpers, gasped, and struggled up as if kicked out of sleep. Wildly he stared at the two faces so near his. Then, as the girl put the jug again to his mouth, he grabbed it with both hands and gulped thirstily. When he lowered the vessel he licked his lips, and across them flitted a faint grin.
“Gawd, am I dead or dreamin’?” he breathed hoarsely. “Marry! Be ye there? An’ this here licker—I’m a dunkey if ’tain’t real! Who—who’s this feller?”
His brown eyes glared into the cool blue ones. Involuntarily his right hand gripped the jug-handle as if it were a gun-stock. His gaunt face tightened into a menacing mask. He wavered like a mortally wounded wildcat gathering its last strength to spring.
“I’m all right, Steve,” soothed Douglas. “I’m not after you. You’re safe, and this is Marry, and that’s real stuff in the jug. Calm down.”
Under the steadying influence of the quiet tone theyouth relaxed a little. Yet his lined mouth remained set as he demanded: “Who shot at me?”
“Nobody,” Douglas told him. “My gun exploded accidentally. I didn’t even see you. You fell and cracked your head.”
The boy still glowered suspiciously, but when Marion spoke his gaze shifted to her.
“That’s right, Steve. You’re all right, ’cept a little cut and a bump. Tell me quick—how long you been out? Are they after you?”
A savage smile twisted the thin mouth.
“I dunno if they’re trackin’ me—I reckon so. I ain’t seen ’em. I got ’way Monday night, an’ I ain’t goin’ back till I git Snake Sanders. Cuss him, he put me away—an’ I never done it, Marry, I never! It was Snake done it! An’ I got the blame. Three years I been doin’ time—but I’ll take them three years outen him quick’s I git to a gun! Yas, an’ all the rest of his life too! I’ll——”
“Don’t you! He’ll git you, not you git him. You might’s well try to git a copperhead by grabbin’ onto him with your bare hands. And you’ve got to keep out till the officers quit huntin’—they’ll be into here, if they ain’t here now. Don’t you go near the house or a gun—don’t move or make a noise till I tell you, or you’re a goner! Now gimme that jug and I’ll put it back. We’ve got to go quick to some other hide-out—there’s been shootin’ up here and we don’t know who’ll come—gimme that jug!”
“Not till I git ’nother big snort under my shirt,”refused Steve, lifting the jug in unsteady hands. “I ain’t et much for four days, an’——”
“Gimme that jug!” she stormed. “Know whose it is? Snake’s!”
The boy started as if stung. His grip relaxed, and she yanked the jug from him and grabbed up the corn-cob. Douglas noticed, in an absent way, that the clay was smeared with a streak of green paint.
“Snake’s? I been drinkin’ that varmint’s licker?” raged Steve. “I’d ruther lap up p’ison! Gimme that jug back! I’ll bust it!”
“No you won’t!” She backed off. “He’s right round here now somewheres, I shouldn’t wonder, a-sneakin’ and a-slidin’ along, and you’ve got to lay low awhile—you ain’t even got a gun. I’m goin’ to put this right back where ’twas. You keep quiet.”
She hobbled away. Steve struggled to rise and overtake her, but found himself powerless in the grip of Douglas.
“Cool off, Steve,” advised the blond man. “Think what a joke this is on Snake—you drinking up his licker. Wouldn’t it make him mad?”
A sudden hard grin split the pallid face. Steve sank back.
“That’s right, too—uh—what’s yer name?”
“Call me Hamp.”
“Hamp. Good ’nough. I dunno ye, an’ ye don’t b’long round here, but ye act right. Got anything to eat, Hamp? I been goin’ a long time, an’ it’s ’most took the tuck outen me.”
He began to blink a little uncertainly. The “licker”was fast getting in its work on his woefully empty stomach.
“Got a can of beans and some water, and they’re yours.”
“Gimme ’em!”
The demand crackled like an electric spark. The hard-set visage turned ravenous, and the wiry frame lifted itself and set its back against the wall. When Douglas tendered the opened can it was snatched and a quarter of its contents dumped into a grimy hand. An instant later the whole handful had been wolfed down and another was being stuffed into a fast-working mouth. When Marion came limping back from her mysterious pilgrimage only an empty tin and greasy lips remained to tell what had happened.
Unspeaking, the blond man opened another bean-can, put in a tin spoon, and handed it to the girl. She sank on a stone and began eating eagerly, but far more daintily than the boy. Douglas watched silently, but he nodded as he noted the instinctive difference in her way of feeding herself. Steve also watched, but with a different thought.
“Marry, ye’re gittin’ awful purty,” he vouchsafed. “When I went ’way ye was thin’s a rail, but now ye’re han’some as a little red wagon. Ain’t ye got a kiss for me?”
“Not till you wash your face, you dirty thing,” she composedly answered. He grinned and wiped his mouth on a tattered sleeve much too big for him. “Where’d you git the clothes?” she demanded.
“Them?” He glanced down at threadbare coat,thin shirt, and ragged overalls. “Found ’em into fellers’ barns down yender. Hid my pen-clo’es into one feller’s hay. Purty smart, hey?”
“Smart! Don’t you know the officers’ll track you that way? They will, sure’s you’re livin’.”
“They’ll have a job findin’ me now I’ve got here,” he muttered, though plainly disconcerted. “’Less’n somebody blabs.”
Brown eyes and gray eyes switched to the quiet man who sat taking it all in.
“Don’t worry,” said he. “I haven’t seen you folks at all—either of you.”
After a narrow stare Steve nodded slightly. Not another word was spoken until the meagre meal was finished and the water-bag was totally empty. Then Marion took command of the situation.
“We’ll be goin’ now,” she stated, rising. “No, don’t come with us. Steve and me, we’ll go ’long by our own selves, and then you won’t know what’s ’come of us if anybody should ask you. We’re awful obliged to you, stranger, and we wish you good luck. G’by.”
“I’m not saying good-bye. I’m staying here, as I told you before. Maybe we’ll meet again.”
She took several halting steps outward before responding, Steve trailing silently behind her. At the edge of the cañon she paused and spoke over one shoulder.
“If you’re stayin’, don’t stayhere. It’s no place for you. You’ll be better off down below. There’s Jake Dalton’s place, down towards the Clove, wherenobody lives any more, and you could go into there and live pretty safe and comf’table if you mind your own business—and if the ha’nt don’t git you.”
“Oho! A haunted house!”
“So folks say. Jake, he got kilt last spring by somethin’—nobody knows what. They found him after he’d been dead a week or so, and they couldn’t look at him right close. But he wasn’t shot or cut or clawed—he was jest swelled up terrible. Two or three fellers stayed into his house since, and they got drove out—somethin’ was there that they didn’t see, but they could hear it andfeelit. Some say it’s Jake’s ha’nt. Others say it ain’t Jake but the thing that kilt him. If you want to try livin’ there nobody’s likely to bother you much. It sets on the left of the Clove road, down yonder, with two big pines back of it.
“Now we’re goin’. Oh, and one other thing—you better not come round Nigger Nat’s house. He ain’t sociable. G’by.”
Out through the crack they passed. For a minute or two the blond man sat looking moodily at the exit. Then he arose and followed.
The rocks outside were vacant. The trees and undergrowth showed no sign of life. Even the curious yellowhammers were gone. Nowhere, except on two stones—one scarred by shot, one stained with blood—was anything to show that since the last sunset two young hill-folk had come suddenly into the life of Douglas Hampton and as swiftly vanished from it.
“Well,” he muttered, picking up his gun and turningback, “Steve, you tough young wolf, you don’t know how lucky you are. I only hope you’ll treat her right in the years to come.”