9337
NE morning, three days later, Pole Baker slouched down the street from the wagon-yard and went into Garner & Dwight's office, finding Garner at his desk. The mountaineer looked cautiously about the room and asked, in a guarded tone: “Is Carson anywhars about?”
“Not down yet,” Garner said. “His mother was not so well last night, and it may be that he had to sit up with her and has overslept himself.”
“Well, I'm glad he ain't here,” Baker said, “for I want to speak to you about him sorter in private.”
“Anything gone wrong?” Garner asked, looking up curiously.
“Well, not yet, Bill, but I believe in takin' the bull by the horns before he takes you in the stomach. I've been powerful afeared for some time that Carson and Dan Willis would run together, and I dread it now more than ever. In the first place, I don't like the look in Carson's eye. He knows that devil has been on his track, and it has worked him up powerful; besides, Willis is more rampant than ever.”
“What's gone wrong with him?” Garner inquired, uneasily.
“Well, for a while, you know, he was full of hope that Wiggin was goin' to beat Carson, and that sorter satisfied him, but now that Wiggin is losin' ground, Dan don't see revenge that way. Besides, since old Sister Parsons made that rip-roarin' speech respectable folks are turnin' the'r backs on Wiggin and all his backers. The gal Willis was to marry has throwed 'im clean over, an' the preacher at Hill Crest just as good as called his name out in meetin' in talkin' of the open lawlessness that is spreadin' over the land. Oh, Willis is mad—he's got all hell in 'im, an' he's makin' more threats agin Dwight. Now, to-morrow is Friday, an' the next day is Saturday, an' on Saturday Dan Willis is comin' in town. I got that straight. Wiggin is a snake in the grass, and he's constantly naggin' Dan about his row with Carson, and it will take slick work on our part to prevent serious trouble. Wiggin wouldn't care. If the two met he'd profit either way, for if Carson was killed he'd have the field to himself, an' if Carson killed Willis the boy'd have to stand trial for his life, an' a man wouldn't run much of a political race with a charge of bloody murder hangin' over 'im.”
“True—true as Gospel!” Garner frowned; “but what plan had you in mind, Pole—I mean what plan to obviate trouble?”
“Why, you see,” the mountaineer replied, “I 'lowed you might be able to trump up some business excuse for gittin' Carson out o' town next Saturday.”
“Well, I think I can,” Garner cried, his eyes brightening. “The truth is, I was to go myself over to see old man Purdy, the other side of Springtown> to take his deposition in an important matter, but I can pretend to be tied here and foist it onto Carson.”
“Good; that's the stuff!” Pole said, with a smile of satisfaction. “But for the love of mercy don't let Dwight dream what's in the wind or he'd die rather than budge an inch.”
So it was that Carson the following Friday afternoon made his preparations for a ride on horseback through the country, his plan being to spend the night at the little hotel at Springtown and ride on to Purdy's farm the next morning after breakfast, and return to Darley Saturday evening shortly after dark. His horse stood at the hitching-rack in front of the office, and, ready for his journey, he was going out when Garner called him back.
“Are you armed, my boy?” Garner questioned.
“Not now, old man,” Dwight said. “I've carried that two pounds of cold metal on my hip till I got tired of it and left it in my room. If I can't live in a community without being a walking arsenal I'll leave the country.”
“You'd better make an exception of to-day, anyhow,” Garner said, reaching down into the drawer of his desk. “Here, take my gun.”
“Well, I might accidentally need it,” Dwight said, thoughtfully, as he took the weapon and put it into his pocket.
As he was unfastening his horse, Dr. Stone crossed the street from the opposite sidewalk and approached him.
“Where are you off to this time?” the old man asked.
Carson explained as he tightened the girth of his saddle and pulled the blanket into place.
“Well, I'd get back as soon as I could well manage it,” the physician said, his eyes on the ground. Carson started and looked grave.
“Why, doctor, you are not afraid—”
“Oh, she's doing very well, my boy, but—well, there is no use keeping back anything from anybody as much concerned as you are. The truth is, she's very low. I think we can pull her through all right, with care and attention, but I feel that I ought to warn you and lecture you a little, too. You see, as I've often said, she is a woman who suffers mightily from worry and excitement of any kind, and your adventures of late have not had the best effect on her health. I hope it's all over and that you will settle down to something more steady. Her life really is in your hands more than mine, for if you should have any more trouble of a serious nature it would simply kill her. I only mention this,” the doctor continued, laying his hand on the young man's arm half apologetically, “because there is some little talk going round that you and Dan Willis haven't quite settled your differences yet. If I were in your place, Carson, I'd take a good deal from that man before I'd have trouble with him right now, considering the critical condition your mother is in. A shooting-scrape on top of all the rest, even if you got-the best of it, would simply send that good woman to her grave.”
“Then we won't have any shooting-scrape!” Carson said, his voice quivering. “You can depend on that, doctor.”
The road Dwight took as the most direct way to his destination really passed within two miles of the home of Dan Willis, and yet the likelihood of his meeting the desperado never once crossed Carson's mind. In this, however, he was to meet with surprise. He had got well into the mountains, and, full of hope as to his campaign, was heartily enjoying a slow ride on his ambling horse through a narrow, shaded road, after leaving the heat of the open thoroughfare, when far ahead of him he saw a horseman at the side of the way pinning with his pocket-knife to the smooth bark of a sycamore-tree a white envelope. The distance was at first too great for Dwight to recognize the rider, though his object and occupation were soon evident, for suddenly wheeling on his rather skittish mount the man drew back about twenty paces from the tree, drew a revolver and began to fire at the target, sending one shot after the other, as rapidly as he could rein and spur his frightened animal to an approved distance and steadiness, until his weapon was empty. The marksman, evidently a mountaineer, as indicated by his wide-brimmed soft hat and easy gray shirt, thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket and took out sufficient cartridges for another round, and was thumbing them dexterously into their places when Carson drew near enough to recognize him.
A thrill, a sort of shock, certainly not due even to subconscious fear, passed over Dwight, and he almost drew upon his rein. Then a hot flush of shame rose in him and tingled through every nerve in his body, as he wondered if for one instant he could have feared the presence of any living man, armed or unarmed, and running his hand behind him to be sure that his own revolver was in place, and with his head well up he rode even more briskly forward. He had no thought of caution. The sharp warning Dr. Stone had given him so recently never entered his brain. That was the man who, on several occasions, had threatened to kill him, and who, Carson firmly believed, had once tried it. That there was to be grim trouble he did not doubt. Averting it after the manner of a coward was not thought of.
When the two riders were about a hundred yards apart, Dan Willis, hearing the fall of horses' hoofs, looked up suddenly. There was no mistaking the evolution of his facial expression from startled bewilderment to that of angry, bestial satisfaction. Uttering an unctuous grunt of delight, and with his revolver swinging easily against his brawny thigh, by the aid of his tense left hand the mountaineer drew his horse squarely into the very middle of the narrow road and there essayed to check him. The animal, quivering with excitement from the shots just fired over his head, was still restive and swerved tremblingly from side to side, but with prodding spur and fierce command Willis managed to keep him in the attitude of open opposition to Carson's passage, which was, as things go in the mountains, a threat not to be misunderstood.
Carson Dwight read the action well, and his blood boiled.
“Halt thar!” Dan Willis suddenly called out, in a sharp, fierce tone, and as he spoke he raised his revolver till the hand holding it rested on the high pommel of his saddle.
“Why should I halt?” almost to his surprise rang clearly from Dwight's lips. “This is a public road!”
0343
“Not foryoresort,” was hurled back. “It's entirely too narrow for a gentleman an' a dog to pass on.I'mgoin' to pass, but I'll walk my hoss over yore body. I've been praying for this chance, an' God or Hell, one or t'other, sent it to me. Some folks say you've got grit. I've my doubts about it, for you are the hardest man to meet I ever wanted to settle with, but if you've got any sand in yore gizzard you've got a chance to spill some of it now.”
“I don't want to have trouble with you,” Dwight controlled himself enough to say. “Bloodshed is not in my line.”
“But you'vegotto fight!” Willis roared. “If you don't I'll ride up to you an' spit in yore damned, sneakin' face.”
“Well, I hardly think you'll do that,” said Carson, his rage overwhelming him. “But before we go into this thing tell me, for my own satisfaction if you are the one who tried to kill me the night Pete Warren was jailed.”
“You bet I was, and damned sorry I missed.” Willis's revolver was raised. The sharp click of the hammer sounded like the snapping of a metallic twig. Then alive but to one thought, and that of alert and instantaneous self-preservation, Dwight quickly drew his weapon. With his teeth ground together, his breath coming fast, he took as careful aim as was possible at the shifting horseman, conscious of the advantage his antagonist had over him in the calmness of his own mount. He saw a puff of smoke before Willis's eyes, heard the sharp report of the mountaineer's revolver, and wondered if the ball had lodged in his body.
“I am fully justified,” something within him seemed to say as he pressed the trigger of his revolver. His hand had never been more steady, his aim never better, and yet the smile and taunting laugh of Willis proved to him that he had missed. The eyes of his assailant gleamed like those of an infuriated beast as he tried to steady his rearing and plunging horse to shoot again. Once more he fired, but the shot went wild, and with a snort of fear his horse broke from the road and plunged madly into the bushes bordering the way. Carson could just see Willis's head and shoulders above a thick growth of wild vines and at these he aimed steadily and fired. Had he won? he asked himself. There was a smothered report from Willis's revolver, as if it were fired by an inert finger. The mountaineer's head sank out of sight. What did it mean? Carson wondered, and with his weapon still cocked and poised he grimly waited. It was only for an instant, for the frightened horse plunged out into the open again. Willis was still in the saddle, but what was it about him that seemed so queer? He was evidently making an effort to guide his horse, but the hand holding his revolver hung helplessly against his thigh; his left shoulder was sinking. Then Carson caught sight of his face, a frightful, blood-packed mask distorted past recognition, that of a dying man—a horrible, never-to-be-forgotten grimace. The horses bore the antagonists closer together; their eyes met in a direct stare. Willis's body was rocking like a mechanical thing on a pivot.
“You forced me to do it!” Carson Dwight said, his great soul rising to heights of pity and dismay never reached before. “God knows I did not want to shoot you. Dan, I never have had anything against you. I would have avoided this if I could.”
The stare of the wounded man flickered. With a moan of pain he bent to the neck of his horse and remained there a moment, and then, dropping his revolver and resting both quivering hands on the pommel of his saddle, he drew himself partially erect. His eyes were rolling upward, his purple lips moved as if to speak, but his vocal organs seemed to have lost their power. Holding to his pommel with his left hand, he raised his right and partially extended it towards Dwight, but he had not the strength to sustain its weight, and with another moan, a frothing at the mouth, Dan Willis toppled from his horse and went to the ground, the animal breaking away in alarm and running down the road.
Quickly dismounting, Carson bent over the dying man. “Dan, were you offering me your hand?” he asked, tenderly. But there was no response. The mountaineer was dead. There he lay, a pint whiskey flask nearly empty of its contents protruding from his shirt.
Carson looked up and about him. The sky had never seemed clearer, the forest never so beautifully lush and green, so full of sylvan recesses and the gladsome songs of birds. Higher and more majestic never had the mountains seemed to tower into God's infinite blue. And yet here at his feet lay the remains of one who had been created in the image of his Maker, as lifeless as the clod from which he had sprung. Allthis—and Carson's horse nibbling with bitted mouth the short grass which grew about. There were no fires of satisfied revenge at which the spiritually chilled young man could warm himself. Regret steeped in the vat of remorse filled his young soul. Seating himself at the side of the road, he remained there a long time calmly laying his plans. Of course, knowing the law as he knew it, he would give himself up to the sheriff. Then with a start and a shock of horror he thought of his mother. Dr. Stone's warning now loomed up before him as if written in letters of fire. Yes, this—this, of all things, would kill her! Knowing her nature, nothing that could happen to him would be more fatal. Not even his own death by violence would hold such terrors for her sensitive, imaginative temperament, which exaggerated every ill or evil that beset his path. After all, he grimly asked himself, which way did his real duty lie? Obedience to the law he reverenced demanded that he throw himself upon its slow and creaking routine, and yet was there not a higher tribunal? By what right should the legal machinery of his or any other country require the life of a stricken woman that the majesty of its forms might be upheld and the justice or injustice to an outlaw who had persistently hounded him be formally passed upon?
No, he told himself, the right to protect his mother washis—it was even more, as he saw it, it was his first duty. And yet if he kept his own counsel, he asked himself, his legal mind now active, what were the chances of escape from accusation? Noticing the target still pinned to the trunk of the tree with the dead man's pocket-knife, the shots showing on the bark and paper, and the sprawling attitude of the corpse with the wound over the region of the heart, he asked himself, with faintly rising hope, what more natural than to assume that death had resulted from accident? What more reasonable than the theory that on his frightened horse Dan Willis had accidentally directed his shot upon his own body? What better evidence that he was not at himself than the almost empty flask in his shirt? Yes, Carson Dwight decided, it was his duty to wait at least to see further before taking a step which would result in even deeper tragedy. Besides, he knew he was morally guiltless. His conscience was clear; there was consolation in that at all events. But now what must he do? To go on to Springtown by that road was out of the question, for only a mile or so farther on was a store and a few farm-houses, and it would be known there that he had passed the fatal spot. So, remounting, he rode slowly back towards Darley, now earnestly, and even craftily, hoping that he would meet no one. He was successful, for he reached the main road, which was longer, not so well graded, and a more sparsely settled thoroughfare to his destination.
He had lost time, and he now put his horse into a brisk canter and sped onward with a queer blending of emotions. The thought of possibly saving his mother from a terrible shock buoyed him up while the grewsome happening put a weight upon him he had never borne before.
9350
T was after dark when he finally reached Springtown and rode through the quiet little street to the only hotel in the village kept by a certain Tom Wyman, whom Dwight knew. Dismounting, he turned his tired horse over to a negro porter and went into the room which was used at once as parlor and office. A dog-eared account-book lay open on a table, and here, at the request of the cordial Wyman, a short, portly man with sandy hair and mustache, Carson registered his name.
“You are out electioneering, I know,” the proprietor smiled, agreeably, as he rubbed his fat hands together. “Well, you are going to run like a scared dog. I hear your name everywhere. It looked as black as Egyptian darkness for you once, but you are gaining ground. No man ever had a better campaign document than the speech Jabe Parsons' wife made. Gee whiz! it was a stem-winder; it set folks to laughin' at Wiggin, and that was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Jabe Parsons is for you now, though he headed one wing of the mob agin your pet darky. You see, Jabe wants to prove that his wife was right in the way she first felt about the matter, and he's a strong man.”
As if in a dream, so far into the background had even his contest been thrust by the tragedy, Carson heard himself as if from the mouth of another explaining that it was legal business that had brought him thither, and calmly asking the best road from the village to Purdy's farm, whither he intended to go the following morning after breakfast.
A few minutes later the supper bell was rung by a negro, who carried it with deafening clangor through the main hall and round the house, and two or three drummers, of the small-trade class, a village storekeeper, and a stock-drover or two clattered in on the uncarpeted floor to the dining-room, and with more noise drew out their chairs and sat down. It happened that Carson knew none of them, and so he sat silent through the meal. Usually of robust appetite, to-night all inclination to physical nourishment had deserted him. Try as he would to fasten his mind upon more cheerful things, the view of Dan Willis's body stretched upon the ground, the ghastly features struggling in the throes of death, came again and again before his eyes with tenacious persistency. Morbidly, he asked himself if that state of mind would continue always. The disaster really had crept upon him through no deliberate fault of his. In fact, he could trace its very beginning to his determination to turn over a new leaf and make a better man of himself—to that and to a natural inborn pity for a persecuted creature, and yet here was he, his hands stained red, unable by any stoicism or philosophy to rid himself of a gloom as deep as the void of space. Genuine man that he was, he pitied the giant who had fallen before him. His mind, trained to logical reasoning in most matters, told him that he was more than justified in what he had done; but then, if so, to what was due this strange shock to his whole being—this restless sense of boundless debt to something never met before, the ominous flapping of wings in a new darkness around him?
After supper, to kill time until the hour of retiring, Carson declined the proffered cigar of his host, and to avoid the—to him—empty chatter of the others, now assembled on the little porch, he strolled down the street. Here groups of men sat in front of the stores in the dim light thrown from murky lamps within, but it happened that he was not recognized by any of them though there were several gaunt forms he knew, and he passed on, walking feverishly. On and on he strode till he had covered more than a mile and suddenly came upon a little church surrounded by a graveyard. He leaned upon the rotten fence and looked over at the mounds marked by white marble slabs in some cases, plain, unlettered natural stones in others, and some unmarked by any sort of monument, but having little white palings around them.
Carson Dwight shuddered and turned his face back towards the village as he asked himself if this might be the resting-place of the man he had slain. Life to him had been so bounteous, despite all the trials he had encountered, that to think that he had by his own hand, even under gravest provocation, deprived a human being of its privileges gave him pain akin to nothing he had ever felt before.
Reaching his room in the hotel, which was at the head of the stairs in the front part of the house, his first impulse was to lock his door—why, he could not have explained. It was not fear; what was it? With a defiant smile he left it unfastened and proceeded to undress himself. As he threw himself on his bed he became conscious of the impulse to say his prayers. What a queer thing! It had been years since he had actually knelt in prayer, and yet tonight he wanted to do so. A strange, hot, rebellious mood came over him a few minutes later as he lay staring at the disk on the sky-blue ceiling cast by the lamp-chimney. He felt like crying out to the infinite powers in tones of demand to lift the weird, stifling pall that was pressing down on him.
The words his father had spoken in a rage when the old gentleman had first seen the wound on his forehead after Pete Warren's rescue now came to him with startling force: “All this for a trifling negro! Have you lost your senses?”
What, Carson asked himself, would his father say to this deeper step—this headlong plunge into misfortune as the outcome of the cause he had espoused?
Carson could not sleep, and fancying that if his light were out he might do so, he rose and extinguished it and went back to bed. But he was still restless. The hours dragged by. It was after twelve o'clock, when on the still night air came the steady beat of a horse's hoofs in the distance, growing louder and louder, till with a cry of “Woah!” the animal was reined in at the hotel door, and the stentorian voice of the rider called out: “Hello! hello in thar!”
There was a pause, but no response. The landlord was evidently a sound sleeper.
“Hello! hello!” Again the call rang jarringly through the empty hall below and up the stairway.
Carson sat erect, put his feet on the floor, and stood out in the centre of the room. He told himself that it was an officer of the law in pursuit of him. How silly to have imagined that such a thing could remain hidden! And his mother! Yes, it would kill her! Poor, poor, gentle, frail woman! He had tried to obviate the blow, resorting to deception, to actual flight; he had submerged himself in the mire of criminal secrecy, according to the letter of the law, that he might shield her, and for what purpose? Yes, the blow would kill her. Dr. Stone had plainly said so.
He went to the window and looked out. At the gate below he saw a man on a horse, and heard him muttering impatiently.
“Hello in Thar!” The cry was accompanied by an oath. “Are you-uns plumb deaf? What do you keep a tavern fur, anyhow?”
There was a sound in the room below of some one getting out of bed, and then a drowsy voice cried: “Who's there?” It was the landlord.
“Me, Jim Purvines. Let me in, Tom. I've got to have a bed an' a stall fer my nag. I'm completely fagged out.”
“All right, all right. I'll join you in a minute. Where in the thunder have you been, Jim?”
“To the inquest. They made me serve. Samson called a jury right off so they could move the body home. The dead man's mammy didn't want it to lie thar all night.”
“Good Lord! Jury? Dead man? Why, what's happened, Jim?”
“Oh, come off! You don't mean you hain't heard the news?” The rider had dismounted and was leading his horse through the gate to the steps on which the landlord now stood. “Why, Tom, Dan Willis has gone to his last accountin'. The Webb children, out pickin' huckleberries, come across his remains on the Treadwell road a mile t'other side o' Wilks's store. At first it was thought he'd met his death by bein' throwed from his colt, fer somebody seed it loose with saddle an' bridle on, but when we examined the body we found a bullet-hole over the heart.”
“Good Lord! Who done it, Jim?”
Carson's heart was in his mouth; his breath was held; there was a pause which seemed without end.
“Done it hisself, Tom. The jury had no difficulty comin' to that decision from ample evidence. He'd tuck his pocket-knife an' stuck up an envelope with his name on it agin a tree, an', half drunk, as we judged from his flask, he was shootin' at it over the head of a young colt that hain't been broke a month. Dan must have had the devil in 'im, an' was determined to train the animal to stand under fire, fer we seed whar the dirt was pawed up powerful all around. We calculated that the colt got to buckin' an' to keep from bein' throwed off Dan turned his gun the wrong way. Anyhow, he's no more.”
“Yes, an' I reckon a body ought to respect the dead, good or bad,” said the landlord; “but there won't be a river of tears shed, Jim. That fellow was a living threat to law and order.”
“Yes, I have heard that he was the chap that shot Carson Dwight the night he saved that nigger from the mob.”
“Sh! He's up-stairs now,” The landlord lowered his voice.
“You don't say! Sort o' out of his beat, ain't he?”
“I don't know—on his way to Purdy's. Go on in; I'll attend to your horse and come back and find you a place to bunk.”
Carson sank back on his bed. A sense of vast, almost soothing relief was on him. His mother was saved. The verdict that had been rendered would forever bury the facts. Now, he told himself, he could sleep with his mind at rest. And yet—
He heard the new-corner ascend the stairs with heavy, shambling tread and enter the room adjoining his own. Through a crack between the floor and the thin partition he saw a pencil of candle-light and heard the grinding of boot-soles on the floor as the man undressed. Then the light went out, the bed-slats creaked, and all was still.
9357
WIGHT reached Darley the following evening shortly after dusk, and rode straight through the central portion of the town and past his office. All day long he had debated with himself whether it would be wise to take Garner into his confidence, and at last had decided that it would do no good, and only cause his sympathetic partner to worry needlessly, since Garner nor no one else could point out any better course than the one to which, perforce, he had committed himself. Carson now comprehended his insistent morbidness. It was not fear; it was not a guilty conscience; it was only the galling shackles of unwonted and hateful secrecy, the vague and far-reaching sense of uncertainty, the knowledge of being, before the law (which was no respecter of persons, circumstances, or sentiment), as guilty of murder as any other untried violator of peace and order.
On the way down the street to his home he met Dr. Stone, who was also riding, and reined in.
“My mother—how is she, doctor?” he asked. “I've been away since I saw you yesterday.”
“You'll really be surprised when you see her,” the old man smiled. “She's tip-top! I never saw such a change for the better in all my experience. She had old Linda in her room when I was there about noon, and they were laughing and cracking jokes at a great rate. She'll pull through now, my boy. I tried to get her to tell me what had happened, but she threw me off with the joke that she had changed doctors and was taking another fellow's medicine on the sly, and then she and Linda laughed together. I believe the old negro knew what she meant. I'll tell you one thing, Carson, if I wasn't afraid of hurting your pride I'd congratulate you on what happened to that chap Willis. Really, if that thing hadn't taken place you and he would have had trouble. Some think he was getting ready for you when he was shooting at that target.”
“Perhaps so, doctor,” Carson said, glad that the dusk veiled his face from the old man's sight. “Well, I'll go on.”
At the carriage gate at home he found old Lewis standing ready to take his horse.
“Hello!” Carson said, with a joke that was foreign to his mood; “when did Major Warren discharge you?”
“Hain't discharge me yit, young marster,” Lewis smiled, in delight, as he opened the gate and reached out for the bridle. “I knowed you'd be along soon, en so I waited fer you. Marse Carson, Linda powerful anxious ter see you. She settin' on yo'-all's veranda-step now; she been axin' is you got back all evenin'. Dar she come now, young marster. I'll put up yo' horse.”
“All right, Uncle Lewis,” and Dwight, seeing the old woman shambling towards him, went across the lawn and met her.
“Oh, young marster, I been waitin' fer you,” she said. “I got some'n' ter ax you, suh.”
“What is it?” he asked: “If it is anything I can do I'll be glad to help you.”
“I don't like ter bother you, young marster,” Linda said, plaintively; “but somehow it don't seem lak anybody know what ter do. I went ter young miss, en she said fer me ter see you—dat you was de onliest one ter decide. Marse Carson, of course you done heard dat man Willis done killed hisse'f, ain't you?”
“Oh yes, Mam' Linda—oh yes!” Dwight said, his voice holding an odd, submerged quality.
“Well, young marster, you see, me'n Lewis thought dat, bein' as dat man was de ringleader, en de only one left on de rampage after my boy, dat, now he's daid, I might sen' ter Chattanoogy fer Pete en let 'im come on home.”
“Why, I thought he was doing well up there?” Carson said again, in a tone which to himself sounded as expressionless as if spoken only from the lips.
“Dat so; dat so, too,” Linda sighed; “but, Marse Carson, he de onliest child I got en I wants 'im wid me. I wants 'im whar I kin see 'im en try ter 'fluence 'im ter do what's right. In er big place lak Chattanoogy he may git in mo' trouble, en—” She went no further, her voice growing tremulous and finally failing.
“Well, send for him, by all means,” Dwight said. “He'll be all right here. We'll find something for him to do.”
“En, en—dar won't be no mo' trouble?” Linda faltered.
“None in the world now, mammy,” he replied. “The people all over the country are thoroughly satisfied that he's innocent. No one will even appear against him. He is all right now.”
Tears welled up in Linda's eyes and she wiped them off on her apron. “Thank God, young marster; one time I thought I never would want ter live another minute, en yit right now—right now I'm de happiest woman in de whole world, en you done it, young marster. You stood up fer er po' old nigger 'oman when de world was turn agin 'er, en God on high know I bless you. I bless you in every prayer I sen' up.”
He turned from her as she stood wiping her eyes and went on to his mother's room, finding her, to his delight, sitting up in an easy-chair near the table on which stood a lamp and a book she had been reading.
“Did you see Linda?” Mrs. Dwight asked, as he kissed her tenderly and stood, still with that everpresent alien weight at his heart, stroking her soft cheek. He nodded and smiled.
“And did you tell her—did you decide that Pete could come back?”
He nodded and smiled again. “She seems to think I'm running the country.”
“As far as her interests are concerned, youhavebeen,” the invalid said, proudly. “Oh, Carson, you know somehow it has happened that I never knew Linda so well as some of our own slaves, but since this thing came up I have thoroughly enjoyed having her come to see me. I keep her here hours, at a time. Do you know why?”
He shook his head. “Not unless it is because she has such a strong individuality and is so original.”
“No, that isn't it—it is simply, my boy, because she worships the very ground you walk on, and I love to hear her express it in the thousands of indirect ways she has. Oh, Carson, I'm simply foolish—foolishabout you! I have never been able to tell you how I felt about your heroic conduct. I was afraid to. I gloried in it, but your constant danger tied my tongue—I was afraid you'd take more risks. I've got a secret to tell you.”
“To tell me?” he said, still stroking her cheek. “Yes; Dr. Stone, seeing that I was so much better this morning tried to worm it out of me, but I wouldn't tell him the cause. Carson, for a long time I have harbored a gnawing, secret fear. It was with me night and day. I knew it was dragging me down, keeping me from proper sleep and proper nourishment, but I couldn't rid myself of it till this morning.”
“What was it, mother?” he asked, unable to see her drift.
“The fear, my boy, that you and that Dan Willis would meet face to face has for a long time been a constant nightmare to me. I had picked up in various ways, sometimes from remarks let fall by your father or one of the servants, more about your differences with that man than you were aware of. I tried to keep you from knowing how I felt, but it was secretly dragging me to my grave.”
“And now, mother?” he asked, an almost hopeful light breaking far away on his clouded horizon.
“Oh, it may be an awful sin, for I'm told Willis had a mother”—Mrs. Dwight sighed—“but when the news came to-day that he had accidentally killed himself I became a new woman. He was the one thing I dreaded above all else, for, Carson, if he had not shot himself you and he would have met and one of you would have fallen. Oh, I'm so happy. I'm going to get well now, my boy. You will see me out on the lawn in a day or two.”
His eyes were on the floor at her feet. Why he gave so much of his mental burden to mere utterance he could not have explained, but he said: “And even if wehadmet, mother, and he had tried to shoot me, and—and I, in self-defence you know, had been forced to kill him—really forced—I suppose even that situation would have—disturbed you?”
“Oh, don't, don't talk of that!” Mrs. Dwight cried. “I don't think it is right to think of unpleasant things when one is happy. God did it, Carson. God did it to save you.”
“All right, mother, I was only thinking—”
“Well, think of pleasanter things,” Airs. Dwight interrupted him. “Helen's been over to see me rather oftener of late. We frequently sit and chat together. It makes me feel young again. She is very free with me about herself—that is, about everything except her affair with Mr. Sanders.”
“She doesn't talk of that much, then?” he ventured, tentatively.
“She won't talk about it at all,” said the invalid; “and that's what seems so queer about it. A woman can see deeper into a woman's heart than a man can, and I've been wondering over Helen. Sometimes I almost think—” Mrs. Dwight seemed lost in thought and unconscious of the fact that she had ceased speaking.
“You were saying, mother,” he reminded her, eagerly, “that you almost thought—”
“Why, it seems to me, Carson, that any natural girl ought to be so full of her engagement to the man she is to marry that she would reallyloveto talk about it. Really it seems to me that Helen may be questioning her heart in this matter, but she'll end by marrying Mr. Sanders. It looks as if she has pledged herself in some way or other, and she is the very soul of honor.”
“Oh yes, she is all that,” Dwight said, in an effort at lightness. “Now, good-night, mother.”
Much fatigued from his journey and the mental strain upon him, he went up to his room. Throwing off his coat, the night being warm to oppressiveness, he lighted a cigar and sat in the wide-open window. What a strange, tempestuous life was his! How like a mere bauble of soul and flesh was he buffeted between highest heaven and lowest earth! And for what purpose was he created in the vast scheme of endless solar systems?
From the row of negro cabins and cottages below, across the dewy grass and shrubbery, on the flower-perfumed air came sounds of unrestrained merriment. Some negro in a cottage near Linda's was playing a mouth-organ to the accompaniment of a sweetly twanging guitar. There was a rhythmic clapping of hands, the musical, drumlike thumping of feet on resounding boards, snatches of happy songs, clear, untrammelled, childlike laughter.
They—and naught else—had brought him his burden. That complete justice might be meted out to such as they, he had dipped his hands into the warm blood of his own race, and was an outlaw bearing an honored name, stalking forth, pure of heart, and yet masked and draped with deceit, among his own kind. And for what ultimate good? Alas! he was denied even the solace of a look into futurity. And yet—born in advance of his time, as the Son of God was born ahead of His—there was yet something in him which—while he shrank from the depth and bitterness ofhiscup—lifted him, in his unmated loneliness, in his blindness, to far-off light—high above the material world. There to suffer, there to endure, and yet—there.
9365
T was the day following the burial of the body of Dan Willis. Old man Purdy, whom Carson had gone to see, was at Dilk's cross-roads store with a basket of fresh eggs, which he had brought to exchange for their market value in coffee. Several other farmers were seated about the store on nail-kegs and soap-boxes whittling sticks and chewing tobacco, their slow tongues busy with the details of the recent death and interment.
Old Purdy was speaking of how the children had discovered the body, and remarked that it would have been found several hours sooner if Carson Dwight had only taken the shorter road that day to Springtown instead of the longer.
“Why, Dwight come from Darley, didn't he?” asked Dilk, as he wrote down the number of eggs he had counted on a piece of brown paper on the counter and waited before continuing.
“Why, yes,” Purdy made answer; “he told me, as we were goin' through the work he had to do at my house, that he had gone to Springtown an' stayed all that night an' then rid on to me.”
The store-keeper's hands hovered over the basket for an instant, then they rested on its edge. “Well, I can't make out what under the sun Dwight went so far out o' his way for. It's fully five mile farther, and the road is so rough and washed out that it's mighty nigh out of use.”
“Well, that does look kind o' funny, come to think of it,” admitted Purdy, as he gazed into the bland faces around him. “I never thought of it before, but it certainly looks odd, to say the least.”
“Of course thar may not be a thinginit,” said Dilk, in a guarded tone, “but itdoesall seem strange, especially after we've heard so much talk about the threats passin' betwixt them very two men. I mean, you see, neighbors, that it sort o' looks, providential that—that Dan met with the accident before Dwight an' him come together over here. That's what I mean.”
All heads nodded gravely, all minds were busy, each in its own individual way, and stirred by something more exciting than the mere accidental death of Willis or the formality of his burial.
There was a rather prolonged silence broken only by the click of the eggs which Dilk was counting into a new tin dish-pan. When he had finished he weighed out the coffee and emptied it into the white, smoothly ironed poke Purdy's wife had sent along for that purpose. Then he looked straight into Purdy's eyes.
“Did you notice—if thar ain't no harm in axin'—whether Dwight seemed—well, anyways upset or—or bothered while he was at your house?”
“Well,Ididn't,” replied the farmer; “but my wife was in the room while he was doin' the writin' that had to be done, an' I remember now she axed me after he left ef he was a drinkin' man. I told her no, I didn't think he wasnow, though he used to be sorter wild, an' I wanted to know why she axed me. She said she never had seed anybody's hands shake like his did while he held the pen, an' that he had a quar look about the eyes like he'd lost a power o' sleep.”
“Was—was anything said in his presence about Willis's death that you remember of?” the storekeeper pursued, with the skill of a legal crossexaminer, while the listeners stared, their cuds of tobacco compressed between their grinders.
Purdy's face had grown rigid, almost as that of an important witness on the stand in court. “I can't just remember,” he said. “There was so much talk about it on all sides that day. Oh yes—now I recall that—well, you see we was all at my house, eager for news, and it struck me, you know, as if Dwight wasn't as anxious to talk as the rest—in fact, it looked like he sorter wanted to change the subject.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was breathed simultaneously from several mouths.
“Of course, neighbors,” Purdy began, in alarm, “don't understand me for one minute to—” But he broke off, for Dilk had something else to observe.
“Them two men was at dagger's-p'ints, I've heard,” he declared. “Friends on both sides was movin' heaven an' earth to keep 'em apart. Now if Dwightdidtake that long, roundabout road from Darley to Springtown, why, they didn't meet. But ef Dwight went the way he alwayshastuck, an' I've seed 'im out this way often enough, why—” Dilk raised his hands and held them poised significantly in mid-air.
“But the coroner's jury found,” said Purdy, “that Willis was shootin' at a target he'd stuck up on a tree with his own knife, an' that his young hoss was skittish, an'—”
“All the better proof of bad blood betwixt 'em,” burst from a farmer on a nail-keg. “The truth is, some hold now that Willis was out practising so he could wing that particular game. The only thing I see agin what you-uns seem to think is that it's been kept quiet. Dwight is a lawyer an' knows the law, an' he wouldn't cover a thing like that up when all he'd have to do would be to establish proof that it was done in self-defence an' git his walking-papers.”
“Thar you are!” Dilk said, in a voice that rang with conviction; “but supposeonething—suppose this. Suppose the provocation wasn't exactly strong enough to quite justify killing. Suppose Dwight, made mad by all he'd heard, drawed an' fired without due warning, and suppose while he was thar in that quiet spot he had time to think it all over and decided that he'd stand a better chance of escape by not bein' known in the matter. A body never can tell. You kin bet your boots if Dwightdidkill 'im an' hid the fact, he had ample legal reasons fer not wantin' to be mixed up in it.”
The seed was sown, and upon soil well suited to rapid germination and growth. By the next day the noxious weed had its head well above the ground, and, like the crab-grass the farmers knew to be so tenaciously prolific, it was spreading rapidly.