CHAPTER IX
DEPUTY JENNEY was a big man. In his stocking feet he stood a fraction more than six feet and two inches, but he possessed more breadth than even that height entitled him to. He was so broad that, if you saw him alone, with no ordinary individual beside him for comparison, he gave the impression of being short and squat. His weight was nearer three hundred than two hundred pounds. He was not fat.
Most big men are hard to provoke. It is rarely you find a giant who uses his size as a constant threat. Such men are tolerant of their smaller fellows, slow to anger, not given to bullying and meanness. Deputy Jenney was a mean big man. He was a blusterer, and it was a joy to him to use his fists. You never knew where you stood with Deputy Jenney, nor what unpleasant turn his peculiar mind might give to conversation or circumstance. He was easily affronted, not overly intelligent, and in his mind was room for no more than a single idea at a time. He was vain of his size and strength, and his chief delight was in exhibiting it, preferably in battle. So much for Deputy Jenney’s outstanding characteristic.
As he left Abner Fownes’s office his humor wasunpleasant. It was unpleasant for two reasons, first and foremost because he was afraid of Abner, and it enraged him to be made afraid of anybody. Second, he had been held up to ridicule in theFree Pressand he could not endure ridicule. So the deputy required a victim, and Evan Bartholomew Pell seemed to have selected himself for the rôle. If Jenney comprehended the desires of Abner Fownes—and he fancied he did in this case—he had been directed to do what he could to induce Evan to absent himself permanently from Gibeon.
He walked down the street fanning himself into a rage—which was no difficult matter. His rages were very much like the teams which draw fire engines—always ready for business; trained to leap from their stalls and to stand under the suspended harness.... It was the noon hour, and as he arrived at the door of theFree Pressoffice it was Evan Pell’s unpleasant fortune to be coming out to luncheon. Deputy Jenney roared at him.
“Hey, you!” he bellowed.
Evan paused and peered up at the big man through his round spectacles, a calm, self-sufficient, unemotional little figure of a man. The word little is used in comparison to Deputy Jenney, for the professor was not undersized.
“Were you speaking to me?” he asked.
“You’re the skunk that wrote that piece about me,” shouted Deputy Jenney.
“I certainly wrote an article in which you were mentioned,” said Evan, who, apparently, had notthe least idea he stood in imminent danger of destruction.
“I’ll teach ye, confound ye!... I’ll show ye how to git free with folkses’ names.” Here the deputy applied with generous tongue a number of descriptive epithets. “When I git through with you,” he continued, “you won’t waggle a pen for a day or two.” And then, quite without warning the professor to make ready for battle, the deputy swung his great arm, with an enormous open hand flailing at its extremity, and slapped Evan just under his left ear. Evan left the place on which he had been standing suddenly and completely, bringing up in the road a dozen feet away dazed, astounded, feeling as if something had fallen upon him from a great height. It was his first experience with physical violence. Never before had a man struck him. His sensations were conflicting—when his head cleared sufficiently to enable him to perceive sensations. He had been struck and knocked down! He, Evan Bartholomew Pell, whose life was organized on a plane high above street brawls, had been slapped on the jaw publicly, had been tumbled head over heels ignominiously!
He sat up dizzily and raised his hand to his eyes as if to assure himself his spectacles were in place. They were not. He stared up at Deputy Jenney with vague bewilderment, and Deputy Jenney laughed at him.
Then Evan lost track of events temporarily. Something went wrong with his highly trained reasoningfaculties; in short, these faculties ceased to function. He sprang to his feet, wholly forgetful of his spectacles, and leaped upon Deputy Jenney, uttering a cry of rage. Now Evan had not the least idea what was needful to be done by a man who went into battle; he lost sight of the fact that a man of his stature could not reasonably expect to make satisfactory progress in tearing apart a man of Jenney’s proportions. Of one thing alone he was conscious, and that was a desire to strew the deputy about the road in fragments.
Some one who saw the fracas described it later, and his phrase is worth retaining. “The professor,” said this historian, “jest kind of b’iled up over Jenney.”
That is what Evan did. He boiled up over the big man, inchoate, bubbling arms and legs, striking, kicking. Deputy Jenney was surprised, but delighted. He pushed Evan off with a huge hand and flailed him a second time under the ear. Evan repeated his previous gymnastics. This time he picked himself up more quickly. His head was clear now. The wild rage which had possessed him was gone. But there remained something he had never experienced before—a cold intent to kill!
He sprang upon the deputy again, not blindly this time, but with such effect as a wholly inexperienced man could muster. He even succeeded in striking Jenney before he was sent whirling to a distance again.... Now, your ordinary citizen would have known it was high time to bring the matter to a discreetconclusion, but Evan came to no such realization. He knew only one thing, that he must somehow batter and trample this huge animal until he begged for mercy....
At this instant Carmel Lee issued from the office, and stood petrified as she saw the deputy knock Evan down for the third time, and then, instead of screaming or running for help or of doing any of those things which one would have expected of a woman, she remained fascinated, watching the brutal spectacle. She was not indifferent to its brutality, not willing Evan should be beaten to a pulp, but nevertheless she stood, and nothing could have dragged her away. It was Evan who fascinated her—something about the professor gripped and held her breathless.
She saw him get slowly to his feet, brush his trousers, blink calmly at the deputy as at some rather surprising phenomenon, and then, with the air of a man studiously intent upon some scientific process, spring upon the big man for the third time. Carmel could see the professor was not in a rage; she could see he was not frightened; she could see he was moved by cold, grim intention alone.... The deputy was unused to such proceedings. Generally when he knocked a man down that man laid quietly on his back and begged for mercy. There was no sign of begging for mercy in Evan Pell. Hitherto Jenney had used the flat of his hand as being, in his judgment, a sufficient weapon for the destruction of Evan Pell. Now, for the first time, he used hisfist. The professor swarmed upon him so like a wildcat that Jenney was unable to deliver the sort of blow on the exact spot intended. The blow glanced off Evan’s skull and the young man seized Jenney’s throat with both hands. Jenney tore him loose and hurled him away. Again Pell came at him, this time to be knocked flat and bleeding. He arose slowly, swaying on his feet, to rush again. Carmel stood with gripped fists, scarcely breathing, unable to move or to speak. The sight was not pleasant. Again and again the big man knocked down the little man, but on each occasion the little man, more and more slowly, more and more blindly, got to his feet and fell upon his antagonist. He was all but blind; his legs wabbled under him, he staggered, but always he returned to his objective. That he was not rendered unconscious was amazing. He uttered no sound. His battered lips were parted and his clean, white, even teeth showed through.... The deputy was beginning to feel nonplused.... He knocked Evan down again. For an instant the young man lay still upon his back. Presently he moved, rolled upon his face, struggled to his hands and knees, and, by the power of his will, compelled himself to stand erect. He wavered. Then he took a tottering step forward and another, always toward Jenney. His head rolled, but he came on. Jenney watched him vindictively, his hands at his sides. Pell came closer, lifted his right fist as if its weight were more than his muscles could lift, and pushed it into the deputy’s face. It was not a blow, butthere was the intention of a blow, unquenchable intention.... The deputy stepped back and struck again. No more was necessary. Evan Pell could not rise, though after a few seconds he tried to do so. But even then the intention which resided in him was unquenched.... On hands and knees he crawled back toward Deputy Jenney—crawled, struggled to his enemy—only to sink upon his face at the big man’s feet, motionless, powerless, unconscious.
Jenney pushed him with his foot. “There,” he said, a trifle uncertainly, “I guess that’ll do fer you.... And that’s what you git every time we meet. Remember that. Every time we meet.”
Carmel seemed to be released now from the enchantment which had held her motionless. She had seen a thing, a thing she could never forget. She had seen a thing called physical courage, and a higher thing called moral courage. That is what had held her, fascinated her.... It had been grim, terrible, but wonderful. Every time she saw Evan return to his futile attack she knew she was seeing the functioning of a thing wholly admirable.
“I never see sich grit,” she heard a bystander say, and with the dictum she agreed. It had been pure grit, the possession of the quality of indomitability.... And this was the man she had looked down upon, patronized!... This possession had been hidden within him, and even he had not dreamed of its presence. She caught her breath....
In an instant she was bending over Evan, lifting his head, wiping his lips with her handkerchief. Shelooked up in Deputy Jenney’s eyes, and her own eyes blazed.
“You coward!... You unspeakable coward!” she said.
The deputy shuffled on his feet. “He got what was comin’ to him.... He’ll git it ag’in every time I see him. I’ll drive him out of this here town.”
“No,” said Carmel—and she knew she was speaking the truth—“you won’t drive him out of town. You can kill him, but you can’t drive him out of town.”
The deputy shrugged his shoulders and slouched away. He was glad to go away. Something had deprived him of the enjoyment he anticipated from this event. He had a strange feeling that he had not come off victor in spite of the fact that his antagonist lay motionless at his feet.... Scowls and mutterings followed him, but no man dared lift his hand.
Evan struggled to lift his head. Through battered eyes he looked at the crowd packed close about him.
“Er—tell this crowd to disperse,” he said.
“Can you walk?”
“Of course,” he said in his old, dry tone—somewhat shaky, but recognizable.
“Let me help you into the office.”
He would have none of it. “I fancy I can walk without assistance,” he said, and, declining her touch, he made his way through the crowd and into the office, where he sunk into a chair. Here he remained erect, though Carmel could see it was nothing buthis will which prevented him from allowing his head to sink upon the table. She touched his arm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I want to apologize for—for things I have said to you.”
He looked at her in his old manner, rather superciliously. “Oh, doubtless you were right,” he said. “I—er—do not seem to be a success as a—pugilist.”
“You were——”
“If you please,” he said, holding up a hand which he strove to keep from shaking. “If you will be so good as to go to luncheon.”
“But——”
“If you get pleasure out of seeing me like this!” he said with acerbity, and she, seeing how his pride was wounded, how he was shaken by this new experience, and understanding very vaguely something of the emotions which must be seething within him, turned away and left him alone....
When Carmel returned to the office Evan Pell was not there, nor did she see him until the following day.
That evening, after her supper, she walked. She could not remain in her room to read, nor go to the office to work. She was lonesome, discouraged, frightened. The events of the day had upset her until she seethed.... Motion was necessary. Only in rapid exercise could she find the anodyne necessary to quiet the jangling of her nerves. The evening was fine, lighted by a summer moon which touched the mountains with magic and transformed the forest into a glowing mystery of silver. She did not walk to think, but as the distance unrolled betweenher feet and the disturbed nerves became quiescent, she did think.
For the first time she considered Evan Bartholomew Pell as a human being. Never before had he been human to her, but a crackling, parchment creature, not subject to joys and sorrows, not adaptable to friendships and social relations. She had pictured him carelessly as an entity to himself, unrelated to the world which moved about him, and loved and hated and coveted and covered itself with a mantle of charity. He had aroused her sympathy by his helplessness and his incapacity—a rather contemptuous sympathy.... Her contempt was gone, never to return. She speculated upon the possible workings of his mind; what was to become of him; why he was as he was. He became a human possibility in her mind, capable ofsomething. She saw how there resided in him, in spite of his wasted years, in spite of the incubus of precocity which had ridden him from childhood, the spirit of which men are created.... She wondered if he were capable of breaking through the crust and of emerging such a man as the world might admire.... She doubted it. The crust was so thick and so hard.
Of one thing she was certain—never again could she sneer at him or treat him with supercilious superiority, for, whatever his patent defects, she had been compelled to recognize that the foundations of him were admirable.... She vowed, in her impulsive way, to make amends. She went even farther, as is the way with girls both impulsive and calculating—shedetermined to remake Evan Pell, to remodel him along lines of her own designing.... Women love to renovate men; it is, perhaps, the major side line to the primary business of their lives—and God knows what that may be!
Carmel paid scant attention to the road she followed. It was a pleasant road, a silvery-bright road. It contented her and seemed a road which must lead to some desirable destination. The destination was vague and distant; she did not hope to reach it, but it amused and stirred her to think there must be such a terminal.
She walked away from Gibeon for an hour before she realized that every step she took meant two steps, one coming and one returning. She was unconscious of loneliness, nor did she feel any apprehension of the silent woods. The spot where she paused was lovely with cold light and warm shadows and she looked about for a place to sit and rest a moment before her return journey. She stepped from the roadside and seated herself upon a fallen, rotting log, partially screened from the thoroughfare by clump growth of young spruce.
Hardly had she taken her seat when a small automobile roared around a bend and jounced and rattled toward Gibeon. It was going at high speed. On the front seat she saw two male figures, but so uncertain was the light and so rapid the passage that she was unable to identify them. She started to her feet to stare after the car, when, to her amazement, it came to a skidding stop, with screaming of brakes, a scanthundred yards beyond her. It maneuvered a moment, and then, departing from the road, groaning through the dry ditch that bordered it, the car forced its way into the woods where there was no road at all.
Carmel was intrigued by this eccentric behavior. Automobiles, as she knew them, did not habitually leave excellent roads to roam about in a trackless forest. The cars she knew were creatures of habit, adhering to the beaten paths of hurrying civilization. She could not imagine one adventuring on its own, and most especially she could not conceive of one rambling about in the woods. She had a feeling that it was not right for one to do so—which was natural to her as a human being, for all human beings have a firm belief that anything not sanctioned by immemorial custom must be evil. New paths lead inevitably to damnation.
She was startled, but not frightened. Whatever was going on here could not threaten her, for she knew herself to have been unseen; appreciated how easy it would be to remain in concealment.
Presently she heard the sound of axes.... She crouched and waited—possibly for fifteen minutes. At the end of that time the car pushed its rump awkwardly out of the woods again, swung on to the road, and, stirring a sudden cloud of dust, sped toward Gibeon.... It was only then she realized the car had been traveling without lights.
She waited. The sound of the automobile vanished in the distance and she judged it safe to investigate.Somewhat gingerly she emerged upon the road and walked toward the spot where the car had entered the woods. The wheel tracks were plainly to be seen, and she followed them inward. It was but a step, perhaps fifty yards. At the end there was nothing but a pile of freshly cut sprucelings. Had the season been other than summer, she would have concluded some one was cutting Christmas trees for the market—but one did not cut Christmas trees in July! But why were the little spruces cut? There must be a reason. She stirred them with her foot. Then, with impulsive resolution, she began flinging them aside.
Underneath she came upon a square of canvas—a cover—and concealed by this the last thing in the world she would have expected to come upon.... Bottles and bottles and bottles, carefully laid and piled. Instantly she knew, even before she lifted a bottle and read the label which identified it as whisky of foreign distillage, she had witnessed one step in a whisky smuggler’s progress; had surprised acacheof liquor which had evaded the inspectors at the border, a few miles away. She did not count the bottles, but she estimated their number—upward of a hundred!
She was frightened. How it came about, by what process of mental cross-reference, she could not have said, but the one thing obtruding upon her consciousness was the story of the disappearance of Sheriff Churchill! Had he come upon such a hoard? Had his discovery become known to the malefactors?Did that, perhaps, explain his inexplicable absence?
Carmel’s impulse was to run, to absent herself from that spot with all possible celerity. She started, halted, returned. There could be no danger now, she argued with herself, and there might be some clew, something indicative of the identity of the men she saw in the car. If there were, it was her duty as proprietor of theFree Pressto come into possession of that information.
Fortune was with her. In the interstices of the bottles her groping hand came upon something small and hard. She held it in the moonlight. It was a match box made from a brass shotgun shell.... Without pausing to examine it, she slipped it securely into her waist, then—and her reason for doing so was not plain to her—she helped herself to a bottle of liquor, wrapped it in the light sweater she carried, and turned her face toward Gibeon.