CHAPTER XXLIBERTY OR DEATH
Alonga dim, winding trail, through baffling undergrowth and around half-buried blocks of stone and over prostrate tree-trunks, a man and a maid passed in silence. Under foot the damp leaves, not yet dried by sun or wind, gave out no betraying crackle. The pair spoke no word, made hardly a rustle as they touched bare stems or twigs. They seemed bound on an all-day hunting trip, for the man carried a shotgun, and the girl a little apron knotted into a bag, containing food. Yet it was the girl who led the way.
Upward, ever upward they climbed on a slope whose pitch grew more and more steep. At length they paused at the edge of a gigantic mass of bowlders, above which towered stark crags split by a yard-wide fissure.
“We go up into that crack, then ’long the top of the ledge to the left, then down again,” Marion breathed.
“Why?” he remonstrated. “Why not work along here without going up and down?”
“You ain’t much of a detective if you can’t guess that,” she laughed. “Up on top we can watch back and see if we’re follered. Down here we can’t.”
“Quite right,” he conceded. “You’re a better dodger than I am. A better climber, too, probably. These boots don’t grip bare rock very well.”
“Go ’long, and go slow. Don’t bump and scrape. We’ve got all day.”
After surveying the jumble above, he began working up into it, moving with caution but with creditable speed. For a time he was so engrossed with the toil of quietly moving himself, his damp-soled boots, and his gun, that he gave no attention to her. When at length he paused at the foot of the fissure he looked back—and found her close at his heels.
“You’re awful slow and stiff,” she taunted, as if she had not just warned him to proceed cautiously. “I’ll go ’long up and wait. G’by.”
And up she went with a flash of tanned ankles and a swirl of swaying skirt, her toes gripping with unerring surety at the soil slanting down within the crevice, her lithe young body swinging with easy grace, her hair flaming like an upshooting meteor. At the top she swung and laughed once more with the exhilaration of strenuous activity. Then she moved from sight.
“Whew!” breathed Douglas, contemplating the slope. “Our catamount can climb! Imagine a corseted, high-heeled city girl doing that. Imagine me doing that! If I don’t come flopping back down here end-over-end I’ll be lucky. Well, here goes.”
Digging in his toes, he started. For a few feet all went well. Then his soles began to slip, and only a clutch with his free hand stopped his slide. By the time he was half-way up he was clambering crabwise, forcing in his heels. And when he neared the top he was using every support he had—feet, hands, and gun-butt.However, he made the ascent without a fall; and, thanks to his recent days of roving, without much loss of wind.
Marion had disappeared, but the little bundle of food lay beside the cleft. Presently she came creeping back on hands and knees from the outer brink and stood erect.
“Well, Mister Slowpoke, you got here before noon after all,” she gibed. “I ’most went to sleep waitin’, the sun’s so hot out yender. There ain’t any detectives into sight, so when you git rested we can travel ’long.”
“Rested? I’m not so feeble as you think,” he smiled. “And just remember that I have to lift about seventy or eighty more pounds of bone and meat at every step than you do. You’re only a flyweight. Bet I can lift you with one arm.”
“Bet you can’t!” she flashed.
Forthwith he laid down his gun and swept her off her feet. Steadying her with the right hand lightly laid against her shoulders, he raised her on his rigid left forearm. She wriggled, slipped, and instinctively seized him around the neck. Both his arms suddenly tightened around her. Her face came close to his.
The next instant a firm little hand set itself against his chin. Though his grip still held her, her face now was more than a foot away. The slender arm between them was like a steel bar.
“Let go!” she commanded.
“What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll kiss you?” His eyes were dancing recklessly. “Or are you afraid I won’t?”
“Afraid—you—won’t? That’s ’bout ’nough! You ain’t under a bridge now!”
The twit stung. His face darkened. He set her down abruptly, picked up his gun, moved away toward the left.
“I—I didn’t mean that,” she quickly added. “I dunno why I said it—it jest come, like. But—remember, we come up here to see somebody.”
He nodded sombrely and strode on. Confound it! Why did these hill girls take things so seriously? He hadn’t meant to kiss her anyhow. Or had he? He didn’t know; maybe, in that momentary devil-may-care mood, he would have done it. And what if he had? There was nothing fatal about a careless kiss or so, all in fun. But then, there was Steve, of course. Yes, that was it. That fierce, vengeful, desperate boy—she was cleaving to him, one of her own people, and the kiss of any other man was not to be lightly taken. So be it. She was right enough, of course.
Yet, in his unintrospective way, he felt a vague irritation over the eternal presence of Steve. If only the youth did not exist—— He let the thought go no farther. He did not consider what might be if Steve were removed. Neither did he recall that this girl’s blood was tainted by her parentage. He let the whole matter die, and instead put his mind on the lonely, sick boy himself, victim of Snake Sanders’ machinations and fugitive from the insensate monster which killed men’s souls—the Law. Sympathy for him again warmed his heart. He pressed on in his errand of aid.
“D’you shave every day?” sounded a small voice at his heels.
“Uh? Shave?” He groped, bewildered by the sudden change of thought. “Why—yes. Every morning after breakfast. Why?”
“Your chin’s so smooth. It ain’t all full of splinters like pop’s. And your face always looks so clean. I never see any other man that kept his face clean every day. I—I kind of like it.”
The ingenuous statement made him laugh.
“Glad there’s something about me that you like,” he mocked. “But to me it’s not so much a matter of appearance as of comfort. I can’t stand a mess of bristles on my face and throat. It’s prickly. So I slice it off.”
They trudged on, following a faintly defined path well back from the brink, invisible to any eye which might look up from below. After awhile she said softly, as if talking to herself: “Steve’s gittin’ awful whiskers onto his face.”
Remembering the bristly black beard he had noticed on the fugitive’s unshaven face at their last meeting, he nodded carelessly.
“Of course. How can he shave?” he reminded her. “But maybe he can clean it off soon. We’ll see.”
“What you figgerin’ to do?”
“Ask him to come down and hide in my house, where he’ll be dry and warm.”
She gave a little gasp.
“Why—why, he can’t! With them detectivespesterin’ round—if they should come he’d be caught into a reg’lar trap. And you’d git ’rested too.”
“Maybe. But it’s getting too cold for him to lie up here. To-day’s hot, but to-morrow—— He’s got to move somewhere soon.”
Soberly she studied him.
“That’s so, but he won’t come, I don’t b’lieve. I tried to git him to come down and stay to our house, but he wouldn’t. He dasn’t trust pop. And them detectives, they watch everywheres. They come there one time and asked pop a lot of questions. I dunno what they asked him—I wasn’t round; but pop’s apt to say ’most anything or do ’most anything—depends on how drunk he is.”
“Steve’s wise not to go there, then. But it’s different at my place.”
No more was said. Marion looked often at him as they journeyed on, and her face was troubled. He kept his forward-ranging gaze on the vague path.
After a time he found himself emerging at the brink. Here she resumed the lead. Down over a jagged confusion of leaning bowlders she picked a tortuous way, followed by the more slowly moving man. Presently they were under the cliff, amid thick brush, on steep but firm-soiled ground whence protruded a few deep-sunk blocks. She moved a rod or two to the left and paused.
“See anything?” she questioned.
He studied the surroundings and shook his head. In the blank face of the precipice showed no opening—not even a crack. The cliff, the ground, the brush,the half dozen juts of gray stone—there was no sign of a hiding-place. True, there were two fair-sized bowlder-tops close together, with a small black hole between; but the hole must be only a cranny in the earth, like hundreds of others along the wall—a good place to break a leg, but not to hide in. He did not give it a second glance.
Yet it was at this despised hole that she knelt. Into it her head vanished, and from it sounded her signal—a soft “Hoo-hoo” almost inaudible above ground. From somewhere down in the bowels of the tightly packed earth floated a faint sound in reply. Her head reappeared.
“I’ll go down first to tell him it’s all right,” she murmured. “You wait ’bout two minutes or so, then come ’long. It’ll be tight squeezin’—you’re so wide acrost the shoulders—but you can git through.”
She pushed the apron-package into the hole. Then she turned once more to him.
“This here is my little secret, that I’ve come to for years,” she told him. “There ain’t anybody ever been into it but me—and Steve. The place Uncle Eb took Steve to wasn’t so good—it was too easy to find—so I brought him here.”
With that she was gone into the gloomy opening.
For a minute or two he waited, looking at the hole and picturing to himself a lonely, heart-sick little girl coming here year after year to forget the drunken coarseness of her father and the profane nagging of her mother. A disappointing place, this prosaic cavity; not at all the picturesque grotto his fancy had paintedwhen, in idle moments, his mind had reverted to her confession of a “playhouse” where she took refuge by her “own self.” Yet somewhere within it must be a real cavern among the sunken rocks, where, forgetful of the raw crudity of her life, she had lain many a time gazing star-eyed at the figments of her dreams. Did she ever, he wondered, dream of a Prince Charming who should bear her over the hills and far away into a world of lights and laughter, music and perfume?
Perhaps her untutored imagination could not even vision such a world. Perhaps her soul, like her body, was hemmed in by the eternal rim of the rock bowl—that soul which yet groped vaguely upward with its unconscious artistry, its vision of dead men who shook the hills with their tramping, its effort to place on paper the beauty of the green pool in Coxing Kill. Perhaps Lou Brackett’s dictum was inexorably true:Them that’s borned into the Traps lives into the Traps and dies into the Traps.
Recalling himself, he dropped to his knees, dubiously sized up the passage, sank prone, and began worming his way inward.
Once inside, he found that it was not so black as it had looked. Somewhere ahead, light came faintly up from a lower level. The tunnel slanted at an easy grade and curved a little to the right. For the first few feet he found her surmise correct—it was a tight passage for him. But, after inching along in growing distaste for the squeezing discomfort of the hole, he found the rock walls veering aside and lifting abovehim. A few feet more, and he had room to rise to all fours. The dim light grew a shade stronger. He found his face hanging over a drop, below which was a steep, curving chute.
Swinging his feet foremost, he went over and down, sliding a little but holding himself by hand-grips along the wall. He stopped on the level lip of another drop.
Before him widened an oblong cavern, fairly well lighted by rifts in the stony walls and by another entrance at its farther end—a sizable hole at the floor-level, evidently leading downward. It looked quite dry, except for a tiny trickle of water down one side; its floor was well carpeted with leaves, obviously brought in from above; and in the walls were irregular natural shelves, most of which held small treasures of childhood—a cracked cup or two, worn-out cooking utensils—such things as a little girl might have brought there to make it a real “playhouse.” And some six feet away was the little girl herself—Marion—with her wild Steve.
“H’are ye, Hamp,” the youth hoarsely greeted him—and clutched at his chest. For a second or two he set his teeth; then, throwing one sleeve across his mouth to muffle the sound, coughed repeatedly. When he lowered the arm his lips were drawn. Dumbly he rubbed his chest.
“Howdy, partner,” Douglas returned, surveying him keenly and noting his haggard face and hollow eyes. “Sore inside?”
“Got cold,” nodded Steve. “Can’t stop this ’erecough a-rackin’. Can’t sleep good. An’ ther’s a misery onto my left lung. Lot o’ pains like red-hot needles. Got to breathe short. Cough nigh rips the lung outen me. Makes too much noise too. If them dicks hearn it——”
He spoke in short whispers, his hand rubbing mechanically, as if it had done the same thing at frequent intervals for many hours. The man above regarded him gravely. Though strong of lung himself, he knew what pleurisy was; knew, too, that there was such a thing as pleuropneumonia. The lad below looked to be rapidly heading into something of the kind. He certainly was not the healthy young fellow he had been that day in Uncle Eb’s barn.
“Head ache? Feel hot?” Douglas quizzed.
“Yuh. Head’s like to split. I’m hot all over, like.”
Another strangled cough, with its after-grimace of pain. Douglas looked below, found a couple of shelves forming natural steps, and descended. He laid a hand on Steve’s forehead. The hot skin seemed to burn him.
“H’m! I was afraid so,” he muttered. “Fever, headache, pleural pains, cough. H’m! Well, Steve, now listen. You’re sick. If you stay here you’ll be sicker. Now my place is sort of lonesome, and nobody calls on me; and the woods are right handy to the back door, so you could make a quick getaway if you had to; and it’s dry and——”
A determined shake of the head cut short his preamble.
“Marry told me,” the lad refused. “I ain’t a-goin’.Mebbe I’m sick. Mebbe I’ll die. But it’s all right. I’ll die by inches ’fore I’ll go wher’ I’ll git caught.”
“Don’t be a fool! What’s the good of——”
“Don’t say no more. I ain’t a-goin’. Ther’s things wuss’n me dyin’. Goin’ back to the pen’s one. Gittin’ my friends into trouble’s ’nother. I ain’t got but three friends into the world. Marry an’ you an’ Uncle Eb. I come awful nigh gittin’ two o’ ye into a mess t’other day. Them dicks’d make ye sweat blood if they knowed ye was a-helpin’ me. An’ I don’t danger ye no more.”
He writhed with another cough. Amazed by the unexpected chivalry of the hill boy, Douglas stood dumb. Presently Steve went on with the same pain-clipped sentences.
“’Sides, I can’t live into a house. Marry’ll tell ye that. I warn’t borned into a house. I was dropped into the woods like—like a wolf-pup. I can die like that same wolf: into the rocks or the trees. I ain’t a-dyin’ yet, anyways. An’ till I do die——
“I went to school a little. Not much. Couldn’t stand it ’less’n the winders was open. But I learnt readin’. I see a piece ’bout a feller that said ‘Gimme liberty or gimme death.’ That’s me. I live free—if it’s into a hole. Mebbe I die into the same hole. But I die free—not like a rat into a house-wall. Gimme liberty or——”
A tearing spasm of muffled coughing ended his talk. When it had passed he slumped down against the side of the cavern, his brow knotted in agony, his hand rubbing feebly, but his gaunt jaw set like the rockagainst which he leaned. And Douglas, after a moment more of grave study, gave him up. He was not to have company in his haunted house after all. His toil last night on the rear door and the bedroom window had come to naught.
Yet the time was to come when, despite the flat refusal of the fugitive to leave his den, that smooth-sliding back window in Hampton’s home was to serve Steve well.