HOAG had become so nervous and low-spirited that he found himself every day waking earlier than usual. The dusky shadows of night were still hovering over the earth one morning in August when, being unable to return to sleep, he rose and went to a window and looked out. He was preparing to shave himself when he happened to see a man leaning against the front fence watching the house attentively.
“It looks like Purvynes,” Hoag mused. “I wonder what on earth the fellow wants. This certainly ain't in his regular beat.”
Hoag put down his mug and brush, listened to see if Jack and his grandmother in the adjoining room were awake, then, hearing no sound in that part of the house, he cautiously tiptoed out into the corridor, opened the front door, and crossed the veranda to the lawn. He now saw that the man was indeed Purvynes.
“Some new trouble may be brewin',” Hoag surmised, “or he wouldn't be out as early as this.” Purvynes saw him approaching and moved along the fence to the gate, where he stood waiting, a stare of subdued excitement blended with other emotions in his dim gray eyes. His hair was tousled, his grizzled head untrimmed, and there were shadows, lines, and angles in his sallow visage.
“Early for you to be so far from home, ain't it?” was Hoag's introductory question.
“I reckon it is, Cap,” the man answered, sheepishly, his lips quivering. “I didn't know whether you was here or off in Atlanta, but—but I thought I'd walk over an' see. I've been awake for an hour or more—in fact, I hardly closed my eyes last night. My women folks are nigh distracted, Cap. I was here yesterday, but Cato said you was over at your new mill. I'd 'a' come after supper, if my women folks hadn't been afraid to be left alone in the dark.”
“Huh! I see.”
There was an ominous pause. It was as if Hoag dreaded further revelations. He felt sure that something decidedly unpleasant lay beneath the man's perturbed exterior. For once in his life Hoag failed to show irritation, and his next question was put almost in the tone of entreaty.
“What's got into you an' them all of a sudden?” he faltered.
“You may well ask it,” Purvynes said with a voluminous sigh. “A fellow may try to put on a brave front, an' act unconcerned when trouble's in the wind, but if he's got a gang o' crazy women an' children hangin' on to his shirt-tail heisin a fix.”
“Well, what is it—what is it?” Hoag demanded, with staccato asperity born of his growing anxiety.
For answer Purvynes fumbled in the pocket of his patched and tattered coat and produced a folded sheet of foolscap paper which he awkwardly attempted to spread out against the palings of the fence.
“Summoned to court?” Hoag smiled, riding a wave of sudden relief. “Ah, I see—moonshinin'. Well, you needn't let that bother you. We'll all stick together an' swear black is white. I see. You are afeard them young devils may turn ag'in' us out o' spite, but I can fix all that. You just lie low, an'—”
“God knows 'tain't that!” Purvynes held the quivering sheet open. “If that was all I'd not bother; I wouldn't mind goin' to Atlanta again, but we are up ag'in' som'n a sight worse. What do you think o' this paper?”
Hoag took the sheet, and looked at it with a dull, widening stare. It was headed by the crude design of two cross-bones and a skull which his “klan” had used in frightening the negroes with gruesome threats and warnings. Beneath the drawing was the following:
This is to inform the grate White mens klan that the Blak Foxes has met in secret session and took axion to protect ther rights. Paysyence has seased to bee a vurture. The white klan has lernt the foxes the trick of how to work in the dark. Wait and see the mighty fall. We know who the Captin is at last. We also know some of his main followers who is workin for his smile and his gold. We don't want his cash. We are after his meat and bones. Hel will take his sole. His body wil hang for crows to peck out the eyes. No power above or below this earth can save him. He wil never know the day or the hour. But his doom is seeled. They need Marse Jimmy down where the worm dyeth not. He has sowed his seed, and his harvest is rype. Woe unto hym and awl his gang.
Signed in the blood of Blak Buck the Captin of the Foxes.
his (Blak X Buck) mark.
The sheet of paper shook, though the morning air was as still as a vacuum. Hoag was as white as death could have made him. He silently folded the paper and handed it back. But Purvynes waved it aside with a dumb gesture of despair.
“Whar did you git it?” finally fell from Hoag's lips.
“It was tacked up on my corn-crib. I seed it from the kitchen window yesterday mornin' 'fore breakfast. I went out an' pulled it down.”
Hoag had never attempted a more fragile sneer. “An' you let a puny thing like that scare you out o' your socks,” he said, flamboyantly.
Purvynes's hat-brim went down and his eyes were not visible to the desperately alert gaze of his companion. “I can take my own medicine, Cap,” he answered, doggedly, “but I can't manage women. They read the thing 'fore I could hide it, an' you know what excited women would do at the sight of a sheet like that. My wife's been ag'in' our doin's all along, anyway.”
Hoag perused the sheet again, his putty-like lips moving, as was his habit when reading.
“How do you reckon,” he glanced at the drawn face beside him, “how do you reckon they got on tomeas—as the main leader?”
Purvynes was quite sure he could answer the question. “Nape Welborne's gang give it away. They've been braggin' right an' left about how Nape forced you to back down that night. They've been drunk an' talked 'fore black an' white like a pack o' fools.”
“But fromthis,” Hoag tapped the fence with the folded sheet, “it looks like the nigger that wrote, this thinks I amstillthe head.”
“An' so much the worse,” Purvynes moaned, and he clutched the fence nervously as if to steady himself. “You an' me an' all us old members has to suffer for the drunken pranks of them young roustabouts. When they shot up nigger-town last week, an' abused the women an' children, the darkies laid it at our door. In fact, that is the cause of this very move. It was the last straw, as the sayin' is. They've got plumb desperate, an' when niggers work underhand they will resort to anything. It's quar, as my wife says, that we never thought they might turn the tables an' begin our own game.”
Hoag shrugged his shoulders, but made no comment. His shaggy brows had met and overlapped. His eyes had the glare of a beast at bay.
“My wife thought”—Purvynes evidently felt that the point was a delicate one, but he made it with more ease than he could have done on any former occasion—“she thought maybe your boy Henry might have got onto you an' talked reckless, but if he did, Cap, it was some time ago, for the boy ain't like he used to be. He's more serious-like. I got it straight from one o' the gang he used to run with that he's really quit his old ways an' gone to work.”
“It's Nape Welborne's lay-out,” Hoag declared. “They've done it out o' pure spite an' enmity ag'in' me.”
Purvynes had averted his eyes; he seemed to feel that the conversation was drifting into useless waters, so far as he was personally concerned. “Well, I just come over. Cap, to ask you what you thinkIought to do.” he finally got out, as if aided by his clutch on the fence, to which he clung quite automatically.
“You?”Hoag emphasized the word.
“Why, yes, me. You see, Cap, my women say they simply won't stay here a single day longer. They are scared as nigh death as any folks you ever saw. That's why I come to you for—for advice an' to ax a favor. I'm in an awful plight. I owe a good deal on my land. My brother is well fixed, out in Texas, you know, an' I can move thar, but I'll have to raise some ready cash. My farm would be good for another loan, an' you are the only money-lender I know. You see, you know why I have to have the money, an' I couldn't explain so well to a bank. So my wife said—”
“I don't care what she said.” Hoag's mind seemed to be making rapid flights to and from his own numerous holdings. “If you thinkyougot anything at stake, look at me,” he plunged, dejectedly. “Why, the black imps could—could—”
“I ain't carin' about my farm,” Purvynes broke in irrelevantly. “It's peace of mind I want, an' freedom from the awful chatter of my folks. Even the little ones are scared half to death. They've picked up a word here an' thar an' follow me about whimperin' an' beggin' to be tuck to a place of safety. Women may know how to scrub an' cook an' sew, but they can't keep a secret like our'n when they are under pressure like this. The wives of all the old klan—mark my words—will be together before twelve o'clock to-day. They will brand the'rselves an' us by it, but they won't care a red cent. They'd go to the gallows in a bunch if they could talk about it beforehand. Cap, a hundred dollars is all I need, an'—”
“Don't call me Cap no more,” Hoag snapped, angrily, “an' don't ask me for money, either. I hain't got none to lend. Besides, you can't leave your property no more than I can mine. We've got to stay an'—”
“Your wife's dead, Cap—Jim, I mean—an' you kin talk, but my folks will git away from these mountains if they have to foot it on ragged uppers. They simply won't stay. Jim, my trouble is a sight deeper than I've admitted. I—I feel like a dead man that nobody cares enough about to bury. Say, I'm goin' to tell you, an' then I know you will pity me if it is in you to pityanyman. Jim, I always thought my wife loved me as much as the average woman loves the father of her children; but last night—last night, away late, when she couldn't sleep, she come over to my bed an' set down on the rail an' talked straighter than she ever has in her life. Jim, she said—she said she thought I ought to be willin' to go away for good an' all, an' leave 'er an' the children, since I was responsible for this calamity. She said she was sure her an' the children would be let alone if I'd go clean off an' never show up ag'in, an' that she'd rather work 'er fingers to the bone than be bothered like she is. Lord, Lord, Jim, I felt so awful that I actually cried an' begged for mercy like a whipped child. I'd always thought she was a soft-hearted, lovin' woman, but she was as hard as flint. She said she'd rather never lay eyes on me ag'in than have this thing hangin' over her an' the children. She finally agreed, if I'd git the money from you an' leave at once, that maybe her an' the rest would follow. So that's why I come to see you. Jim, a rich man like you can rake up a small amount like that to accommodate an old—”
“And leavemewith the bag to hold.” Hoag's misery was eager for any sort of company. “I won't lend you a cent—not a cent!” he snorted. “We've got to—to fight this thing out. No bunch o' lazy niggers can scare the life out o' me.”
“But we are tied hand an' foot, Jim,” Purvynes faltered. “The black brain that writ that warnin' is equal to a white man's when it comes to that sort o' warfare. I know the threat word for word by heart. I can shut my eyes an' see the skull an' bones. Even if we went to law for protection we'd have to show that sheet, an' you wouldn't want to do that as it stands, an' I don't believe all the Governor's guards in the State could help us out, for in these mountains the niggers kin stay under cover an' pick us off one by one as we walk about, like sharpshooters lyin' in the weeds an' behind trees an' rocks. Then thar is a danger that maybe you hain't thought of.”
“What's that?” Hoag asked, with a dumb stare into the other's waxlike countenance.
“Why, if they take a notion they kin poison all the drinkin'-water anywhars about. Niggers don't look far ahead. They wouldn't even think o' the widespread results to them as well as us.”
A desperate look of conviction crept across Hoag's eyes. At this juncture he heard the front door of his house open, and, turning, he saw Jack come out on the veranda and eagerly start down the steps toward him.
“Stay thar!” Hoag waved his hand dejectedly. “I'm comin' up right away.”
Jack paused on the steps, a beautiful figure with supple, slender limbs, high, white brow under waving curls. Even at that distance, and through the lowering mists which lay on the grass like downy feathers dropped from the wings of dawn, the two men marked the boy's expression of startled surprise over being so peremptorily stopped. He sat down on the steps, his beautiful eyes fixed inquiringly on his father.
“I'd send that boy off, anyway,” Purvynes said, as if thinking for himself.
“You say you would!” slowly and from a mouth that twitched. “What do you mean by—that?”
“I mean all the niggers know how you dote on 'im, Jim. I've heard folks say that they didn't believe you ever loved any other human alive or dead. The niggers that got up that warnin' wouldn't hesitate to strike at you even through a purty innocent chap like that.”
Hoag dropped his stare to the ground. He clutched a paling with a pulseless hand and leaned forward. “I reckon maybe you are right,” he muttered. “I've heard of 'em doin' the like, even kidnappin' an' makin' threats of bodily torture.”
Hoag glanced at his son again, and, catching his eyes, he waved his hand and forced a smile. “I'm comin'!” he called out. “See if our breakfast is ready. We'll have it together.”
He was turning away as if forgetful of the caller's presence, when Purvynes stopped him.
“What about that money, Jim?” he inquired, slowly, desperately.
“I can't let you have it,” was Hoag's ultimatum, in a rising tone of blended despair and surliness. “We've got to fix some way to head this thing off an' must stand together. Your folks will have to be reasonable. I'll come over an' talk to—”
“No, no, no, no!” in rapid-fire. “Don't come about, Jim. That would scare 'em worse than ever. They was afraid some nigger might see me here this mornin', an' if you was to come—”
“Huh, I'll be looked on like a leper in a pest-house 'fore long, I reckon!” Hoag snarled, but perhaps not so much from anger as from a sense of the fitness of the remark.
“Well, don't come, Jim,” Purvynes repeated, bluntly. “If you hain't got no money for me, all well an' good, but don't come about. My women are crazy, an' the sight of you wouldn't help at all.”
IN the few days immediately following this incident Hoag became convinced that he had reached the gravest crisis of his career. For the first time in his experience his helplessness was as real a thing as had been his prowess in the past. A drab veil reeking with despair seemed to hang between him and every visible object. He looked in stunned amazement at the people who were going on with their daily duties as if nothing serious had happened or was impending. He saw them smile, heard them laugh, and noted their interest in the smallest details.
Death! He had been absolutely blind to its claims, but now it had taken a grim clutch upon his mind. It was made plain by men whom he had seen die—yes, by men whom he had caused to die. Their pleadings rang in his ears, and they themselves seemed to dog his steps like vague shapes from a persistent nightmare.
In some unaccountable way he was conscious of a sense of being less and less attached to his body. There were moments in which he felt that his limbs were dead, while he himself was as vital as ever. He was in a sort of conscious trance, in which his soul was trying to break the bonds of the flesh, and flee to some point of safety which was constantly appearing and vanishing.
Above all, the sight of his child playing about the place was the most incongruous. He avoided joining Jack on the lawn at any time, fearing that the act might result in disaster of some easily comprehensible sort. But within the house he tried to atone for the neglect by a surplus of affection. He would hold the boy in his arms for hours at a time and fondle him as he had never fondled him before. He became desperate in his confinement to the house, and one day he decided that he would visit some of the most faithful of his friends, and on his horse he started out. He rode from farm to farm, but soon noticed that a rare thing was happening. Invariably the women, like awed, impounded cattle, would come to the doors, and with downcast eyes and halting voices inform him that their fathers or husbands were away. At one farm he saw Bert Wilson, the owner, and one of the older members of the klan, on the bank of the little creek which ran through his place, and hitching his horse to the rail fence, Hoag, unnoticed by the farmer, climbed over and approached him. Wilson was fishing, and with his eyes on his rod failed to see Hoag till he was suddenly addressed.
“Hello, what sort o' luck?” Hoag asked, assuming a lightness of tone and mien that was foreign to his habit.
The man was heavy-set, florid, unbearded, and past middle age. He turned suddenly; his blue eyes flashed and glowed; he looked toward the roof of his house above the thicket in the distance and furtively bent his neck to view the road as if fearful of being seen.
“Oh, just so so!” he answered, doggedly.
“What sort o' bait are you usin'?”
“Crickets an' grasshoppers. The traps up at your mill catch all the big fish. Minnows an' suckers are good enough for us common folks, Jim Hoag.”
“I'm goin' to do away with them traps, Bert,” Hoag said, diplomatically, and he sank down on the grass, and thrusting his hands into his pockets he took out two cigars and some matches. “Have a smoke,” he said, holding a cigar toward the fisherman.
“No, thanky.” Wilson drew his line from the water and looked at the hook. Hoag noted, with a touch of dismay, that the hook held no vestige of bait, and yet the fisherman gravely lowered it into the water and stood regarding it with a sullen stare.
“Hain't quit smokin', have you?”
Wilson stole another look at the road, and allowed his glance to sweep on to his house. Then he raised his rod, caught the swinging line in a firm grip, and glared at the face in the cloud of blue smoke.
“I ain't a-goin' to use none o'yoretobacco, Jim Hoag.” The words sank deep into the consciousness of the listener.
“You say you ain't!” Hoag shrank visibly. Desperate compromises filtered into his brain, only to be discarded. “Say, Bert, what's got into you, anyway?”
The fat man hesitated. His cheeks and brow flushed red.
“This much has got into me, Hoag,” he began, “an' I'm man enough to speak out open. Us fellows have been followin' your lead like a damned lot o' idiotic sheep. You always talked up protection, protection to our women an' homes, when it now looks like you was just doin' it to feel your importance as a leader in some'n or other. You kept the thing a-goin', rid it like a hobby-hoss. Time after time my judgment told me to stay out o' the raids you instigated, but thar was always a fool notion among us that what one done all had to do or be disgraced, an' so we went on until natural hatred o' you an' your bull-headed game has brought down this calamity. Now, what I ask, an' what a lot more of us ask, is fur you to take your medicine like a man, an' not pull us into the scrape. If you will do this, all well an' good. You are the only one singled out so far, an' if you will stay away from the rest of us, an' not draw fire on us, all may go well; but, Jim Hoag—I reckon it's my Scotch blood a-talkin' now—if you don't do it, as God is my holy witness I wouldn't be astonished to see the old klan rise an'—an' make an example of you, to satisfy the niggers an' show whar we stand. I needn't say no more. You know what I mean. The klan has turned ag'in' you. You fooled 'em a long time; but since you knuckled down to Nape Welborne like you did they believe YOU are a rank coward, an', Jim Hoag, no coward kin force hisse'f on a lot o' men with families when by doin' it he puts 'em all in danger. Most of us believe that if you was shot, or poisoned, an' put plumb out o' the way, this thing would blow over. You kin act fair about this, or you needn't; but if you don't do it you will bemadeto. You fed an' pampered this thing up an' it has turned its claws an' fangs ag'in' you—that is all. I'm desperate myself. You are a rich man, but, by God! I feel like spittin' in your face, as you set thar smokin' so calm when my wife an' children are unable to sleep at night, an' afraid to go to the spring in daytime. Now, I'll say good-momin'. I'm goin' furder down the creek, an' I don't want you to follow me.”
“Looky' here, Bert.” There was a piteous, newborn frailty in Hoag's utterance. “Listen a minute. I—”
“I'm done with you,” Wilson waved his hand firmly. “Not another word. You are in a hell of a plight, but it don't concern me. Under your rule I was tryin' to protect my family, an' now that I am from under it I'll do the same. My folks come fust with me.”
With the sun in his face, his knees drawn close to his chin, Hoag sat and watched the man as he stolidly strode away through the wind-stirred broom-sedge. The drooping willows, erect cane-brake, and stately mullein stalks formed a curtain of green which seemed to hang from the blue dome covered with snowy clouds. When Wilson had disappeared Hoag slowly rose to his feet, and plodded across the field to his horse. Here again, in mounting, he experienced the odd weightiness of his feet and legs, as if his mental unrest had deprived them of all physical vitality, and him of the means of restoring it.
Reaching home, he went to the barn-yard to turn his horse over to Cato. The negro was always supposed to be there at that hour, but though Hoag called loudly several times there was no response. Swearing impatiently, and for the first time shrinking from his own oaths, he took off the bridle and saddle and fed the animal. While he was in the stall he heard a sudden, cracking sound in the loft overhead, and his heart sank like a plummet into deep water. Crouching down under the wooden trough, he drew his revolver and cocked it. For a moment he held his breath. Then the cackling of a hen in the hay above explained the sound, and restoring his revolver to his pocket he went to the house.
Mrs. Tilton was at her churn in the side-gallery. Her slow, downward strokes and easy poise of body seemed wholly apart from the uncanny realm which he occupied alone. She looked up and eyed him curiously over her silver-rimmed spectacles.
“Whar's that nigger Cato?” he demanded.
“I'm afraid he's left for good,” she returned. “He's acted odd all day—refused outright to fetch water to the kitchen. I told 'im I'd report to you, but he stood with the most impudent look on his face, an' wouldn't budge an inch. Then I watched an' saw him go in his cabin. Purty soon he come out with a bundle under his arm, an' started toward town. After he was out o' sight I went to his shack an' found that he had taken all his things—every scrap he could call his own. I reckon he's off for good. Aunt Dilly won't talk much, but she thinks it is all due to the raid the mountain men made on the negroes in town the other night. I know you wasn't inthat, Jim, because you was here at home.”
“No, I wasn't in it.”
“I certainly am glad of it.” The woman seemed to churn the words into her butter. “The whole thing has been run in the ground. It is near cotton-pickin' time, an' if the niggers all leave the country help, won't be had. The crops will rot in the field for the lack o' hands to pick it from the bolls.”
Hoag passed on into the house and through the hall into his own chamber. Here the air seemed oppressively warm, the plastered walls giving out heat as from the closed door of a furnace. Throwing off his coat, he sat down before a window. Such a maze and multiplicity of thoughts had never before beset his brain. The incidents of his life, small and large, marched past with the regularity of soldiers. How strange that Sid Trawley's face, ablaze with its new light, should emerge so frequently from amid the others! How odd that he should recall Paul Rundel's notion of giving himself up to the law and suffering the consequences of his supposed crime! And the effect on both men had been astounding. Sid had nothing to fear, and to Paul all good things were falling as naturally as rain from clouds. Then there was Henry, who had suddenly turned about and was making a man of himself.
At this moment a childish voice was heard singing a plantation melody. It was Jack at play on the lawn. Hoag leaned from the window and saw the boy, with hammer and nails, mending a toy wagon. Paul Rundel was entering the gate. Hoag noted the puckered lips of his manager and heard his merry whistle. He saw him pause, tenderly stroke Jack's waving curls, and smile. Who had ever seen a face more thoroughly at peace than this young man's—a smile more spontaneous?
Hoag went to the front door and stood waiting for Paul to approach. The terror within him suggested that the young man might bring fresh news concerning the things he so much dreaded.
“Be careful, Jack,” Paul was advising the boy. “If you start to coast down a steep hill in that thing you might not be able to guide it, and—zip! against a tree or stump you'd go, an' we'd have to fish you out among the splinters.” This was followed by some low-spoken directions from Paul, in which the listener on the veranda caught the words, “friction,” “nuts and bolts,” “lubricating oil,” and “electric motor.”
Then the young man turned, and seeing Hoag he came on. There was a triumphant beam in his eye, an eager flush in his cheeks, as he approached the steps.
“Glad you are at home,” he began. “I was going to look you up the first thing.”
“Did you want to—see me about—I mean—”
“Yes, I've landed that thing at last—put it through.”
“You say you've—” Hoag's thoughts were widely scattered. “You say—”
“Why, the shingle contract, you remember.” Paul stared wonderingly. “You know you were afraid the Louisville parties would not sign up at my price, but they have. They take ten car-loads of pine stock at that figure and give us two years to fill the order. But have you”—Paul was studying the man's face—“have you changed your mind? Yesterday you thought—”
“Oh, it's all right—it's splendid!” Hoag's voice was lifeless; he looked away with the fixed stare of a somnambulist; he wiped his brow with his broad hand and dried it on his trousers. “You say they take five cars?”
“They taketen,” Paul repeated, his elation oozing from him like a vapor. “It will keep our force busy summer and winter and all the extra teams we can get. I've found a place for your idle saw-mill, too—over at the foot of the ridge. I'm sure, when you have time to look over my figures, that you will see plenty of profit for you and good wages for the hands. The men are all tickled. You don't look as if you were pleased exactly, Mr. Hoag, and if anything has happened to change your mind—”
“Oh, I am pleased—I am—I am!” Hoag asseverated. “You've done well—powerful well. In fact,verywell. I'll glance at your figures some time soon, but not now—not now. I'll leave it all to you,” and Hoag retreated into the house and shut himself in his room.
THERE was a galvanized sheet-iron mail-box near the gate of the tannery, and in it once a day a carrier passing on horseback placed the letters and papers which came for the family. Little Jack loved to take the key and open the box after the carrier had passed and bring the contents to the house and distribute it to the various recipients. Hoag sat on the veranda one afternoon waiting for Jack, who had just gone to the box, having heard the carrier's whistle. Presently the boy came in at the gate holding several letters in his hands, and he brought them to his father.
“Here's one without a stamp,” Jack smiled. “That's funny; I thought all U. S. letters had to have stamps on them.”
Hoag saw only that particular envelope in the lot which was laid on his knee.
“It must have been an accident,” he muttered. “The stamp may have dropped off.”
“More likely that somebody passed along, and put the letter into the box,” Jack's inventive mind suggested.
Hoag made no reply. He had already surmised that this might be the case. There was a title prefixed to his name which he had never seen written before, and it held his eyes like the charm of a deadly reptile.
“Captain Jimmy Hoag,” was the superscription in its entirety, and the recipient remembered having seen the scrawling script before. Automatically he singled out the letters for Paul and for Ethel and her mother, and sent Jack to deliver them.
When his son had disappeared Hoag rose and crept stealthily back to his room. Why he did so he could not have explained, but he even locked himself in, turning the key as noiselessly as a burglar might have done in the stillness of night. He laid the envelope on the bed and for a moment stood over it, staring down on it with desperate eyes. Then, with quivering, inert fingers he opened it and spread out the inclosed sheet. It bore the same skull and crossbones as the former warning, and beneath was written:
The day and the hour is close at hand. Keep your eye on the clock. We will do the rest.
his (Blak X Buck) mark.
That was all. Hoag took it to the fireplace, struck a match, and was about to ignite the paper, but refrained. Extinguishing the match, he rested a quivering elbow on the mantelpiece, and reflected. What ought he to do with the paper? If it were found on his dead body it would explain things not now generally known. Dead body! How could he think of his dead body?Hisbody, white, cold, and lifeless, perhaps with a stare of terror in the eyes! Why, he had never even thought of himself as being like that, and yet what could prevent it now? What?
Some one—Ethel or her mother—was playing the piano in the parlor. Aunt Dilly was heard singing while at work behind the house. Jack ran through the hall, making a healthy boy's usual clatter, and his father heard him merrily calling across the lawn to Paul Rundel that he had left a letter for him on his table.
All this was maddening. It represented life in its full swing and ardor, while here was something as grim and pitilessly exultant as hell itself could devise. Hoag folded the paper in his bloodless hands and sank upon the edge of his bed. He had used his brain shrewdly and skilfully hitherto, and in what way could he make it serve him now? Something must be done, but what? He could not appeal to the law, for he had made his own laws, and they were inadequate. He could not evoke the aid of friends, for they—such as they were—had left him like stampeded cattle, hoping that by his death the wrath of the hidden avenger might be appeased. He could flee and leave all his possessions to others, but something told him that he would be pursued.
When the dusk was falling he went out on the lawn. Ethel and Paul were seated on a rustic bench near the summer-house, and he avoided them. Seeing Mrs. Mayfield at the gate, he turned round behind the house to keep from meeting and exchanging platitudes with her. In the back yard he pottered about mechanically, inspecting his beehives, his chicken-house and dog-kennel, receptive of only one thought. He wondered if he were really losing his mental balance, else why should he be so devoid of resources? He now realized the terrible power embodied in the gruesome warnings his brain had fashioned and circulated among a simple-minded, superstitious people. What he was now facing they had long cowered under. The thought of prayer, as a last resort, flashed into his mind, but he promptly told himself that only fools prayed. Biblical quotations flocked about him as if from his far-off childhood. And such quotations as they were!
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” These things seemed to be borne to him on the breeze that swept down from the beetling rocks of the mountains which leaned against the star-studded sky.
After an all but sleepless night, Hoag ate breakfast with the family the next morning, and announced his intention of running down to Atlanta for a day or so on business. Paul wanted to ask some questions pertaining to his work, but Hoag swept them aside with a turgid wave of the hand.
“Run it yourself; it will be all right,” he said. “Your judgment is as good as mine. I don't feel exactly well here lately. I have headaches that I didn't use to have, an' I think I'll talk to a doctor down thar. I don't know; I saymaybeI will.”
Riding to town, he left his horse at Trawley's stable, and going to the railway station below the Square he strolled about on the platform. A locomotive's whistle several miles up the valley announced that the train was on time. Approaching the window of the ticket-office, which was within the little waiting-room, he found the opening quite filled by a broad-brimmed farmer's hat, a pair of heavy shoulders on a long body, supported by a pair of gaunt jeans-clothed legs.
“Yes, I'm off for Texas.” He recognized Purvynes's voice in cheerful conversation with the agent. “My brother says I ought to come. He's got a good thing for me out thar—land's as black as a hat, an' as rich as a stable-lot a hundred year old. He was so set on havin' me that he lent me the money to go on. So long! Good luck to you!”
The head was withdrawn from the window; a pair of brown hands were awkwardly folding a long green emigrant's ticket, and Purvynes suddenly saw the man behind him.
“Hello, you off?” Hoag hastily summoned a casual tone.
The start, the dogged lowering of the head, the vanishing of Purvynes's smile, were successive blows to the shrinking consciousness of the inquirer.
“Yes, I'm off.” Purvynes's eyes were now shifting restlessly. Then he lowered his voice, and a touch of malice crept into it as he added: “You see, I didn't have to do it on your money, nuther, an' you bet I'm glad. It's tainted if ever cash was, an' I want to shake every grain o' Georgia dust off my feet, anyway.”
“I'm goin' as far as Atlanta,” Hoag said, tentatively. “I may see you on the train.”
“My ticket'ssecond class.” Purvynes shrugged his shoulders. “I'll have to ride in the emigrant-car, next to the engine. I reckon we—we'd better stay apart, Jim, anyhow. I want it that way,” he added, in a low, firm tone, and with smoldering fires in his eyes which seemed about to burst into flame.
“All right, all right!” Hoag hastily acquiesced. “You know best,” and he turned to the window and bought his ticket. The agent made a courteous remark about the weather and the crops, and in some fashion Hoag responded, but his thoughts were far away.
He found himself almost alone, in the smoking-car. He took a cigar from his pocket, lighted it, and, raising the window, blew the smoke outside. A baggage-truck was being trundled by. He could have put out his hand and touched the heap of trunks and bags with which it was laden. A burly negro was pushing it along. Raising his eyes suddenly, he saw Hoag, and there was no mistaking the startled look beneath the lines of his swarthy face. Another blow had been received. Hoag turned from the window. The train started on, slowly at first, and, going faster and faster, soon was passing through Hoag's property. Never on any other occasion had he failed to survey these possessions with pride and interest. The feeling had died within him. A drab disenchantment seemed to have fallen upon every visible object. All he owned—the things which had once been as his life's blood—had dwindled till they amounted to no more than the broken toys of babyhood.
Beyond his fertile lands and the roofs of his buildings rose a red-soiled hill which was the property of the village. Hoag turned his head to look at it. He shuddered. Tall white shafts shone in the full yellow light. One, distinctly visible, marked the grave of his wife, on which Hoag had spared no expense. There was room for another shaft close beside it. Under it a murdered man would lie. That was inevitable unless something was done—and what could be done? “Death, death, death!” The smooth, flanged wheels seemed to grind the words into the steel rails. They were written on the blue sky along the earth-rimmed horizon. They were whispered from the lowest depths of himself. His blood crept, cold and sluggish, through his veins. A chill seemed to have attacked his feet and ankles and was gradually creeping upward. He remembered that this was said to be the sensation of dying, and he stood up and stamped his feet in vigorous, rebellious terror.
BY and by Atlanta was reached. Slowly and with a clanging bell the train crept into the grimy switch-yards bordered by sooty iron furnaces, factories, warehouses, planing-mills, and under street bridges and on into the big depot. Here his ears were greeted with the usual jumble, din, and babble of voices, the escaping of steam, the calls of train-porters. Hoag left the car, joined the jostling human current on the concrete pavement, and was soon in the street outside. Formerly he had ridden to his hotel in a trolley-car, but none was in sight, and seeing a negro cabman signaling to him with a smile and a seductive wave of his whip he went forward and got in.
“Kimball House,” he said to the man, and with a snap of the latch the door was closed upon him.
Rumbling over the cobblestones, through the active scene which was bisected by the thoroughfare, he strove in vain to recapture the sensation he had formerly had on such outings—the sensation that he was where enjoyment of a certain sensual sort could be bought. Formerly the fact that he was able to pay for a cab, that he was headed for a hotel where servants would obey his beck and call, where food, drinks, and cigars would be exactly to his taste, and where he would be taken for a man of importance, would have given a certain elation of spirits, but to-day all this was changed.
Had he been driving to an undertaker's to arrange the details of his own burial, he could, not have experienced a more persistent and weighty depression. Indeed, the realization of an intangible fate, of which death itself was only a part, seemed to percolate through him. His body was as dead as stone, his soul never more alive, more alert, more desperate.
At the desk in the great noisy foyer of the hotel, where the clerks knew him and where he paused to register, he shrank from a cordiality and recognition which hitherto had been welcome enough. Even the clerks seemed to be ruthless automatons in whose hands his fate might rest. As one of them carelessly penciled the number of his room after lois signature, and loudly called it out to a row of colored porters, he had a sudden impulse to silence the voice and whisper a request for another room the number of which was to be private; but he said nothing, and was led away by a bell-boy.
They took the elevator to the fifth floor. The boy, carrying his bag, showed him to a chamber at the end of a long, empty corridor. The servant unlocked the door, threw it open, and, going in, put down the bag and raised the sash of the window, letting in the din of the street below. Then he waited for orders.
“A pint of best rye whisky, and ice water!” Hoag said. “Bring 'em right away, and some cigars—a dozen good ones. Charge to my account.”
“All right, boss,” the porter bowed and was gone. Hoag sat down by the window and glanced out. He noticed a trolley-car bound for a pleasure-resort near the city. It had been a place to which on warm days he had enjoyed going. There was an open-air theater there, and he had been fond of getting a seat in the front row, and smiling patronizingly at the painted and powdered players while he smoked and drank. But this now was like a thing which had lived, died, and could not be revived. He had, for another amusement, lounged about certain pool-rooms and bucket-shops, spending agreeable days with men of wealth and speculative tendencies—men who loved a game of poker for reasonable stakes and who asked his advice as to the future market of cotton or wheat; but from this, too, the charm had flown.
“What is a man profited—” The words seemed an echo from some voice stilled long ago—a voice weirdly like that of his mother, who had been a Christian woman. The patriarchal countenance of Silas Tye, that humble visage so full of mystic content and placid certitude, stood before his mind's eye. Then there was Paul, a younger disciple of the ancient one. And, after all, what a strange and wonderful life had opened out before the fellow! Why, he had nothing to avoid, nothing to regret, nothing to fear.
The bell-boy brought the whisky and cigars, and when he had gone Hoag drank copiously, telling himself that the stimulant would restore his lost confidence, put to flight the absurd fancies which had beset him. He remained locked in his room the remainder of the afternoon. It was filled with the smoke of many cigars, and his brain was confused by the whisky he kept drinking. Looking from the window, he saw that night had fallen. The long streets from end to end were ablaze with light. Groping to the wall, he finally found an electric button and turned on the current. He had just gone back to the window when there was a rap on his door. He started, fell to quivering as from the sheer premonition of disaster, and yet he called out:
“Come in!”
It was the bell-boy.
“A letter for you, sir,” he announced, holding it forward. “A colored gen'man lef' it at de desk jes' er minute ergo.”
Hoag had the sensation of falling from a great height in a dizzy dream. “Whar is he?” he gasped, as he reached for the envelope.
“He's gone, sir. He tol' de clerk ter please have it tuck up quick, dat it was some important news, an' den he went off in er hurry.”
“Did—did you know 'im?” Hoag fairly gasped.
“Never seed 'im befo', sir; looked ter me like er country nigger—didn't seem ter know which way ter turn.”
When the boy had gone Hoag looked at the inscription on the letter. He had seen the writing before.
“Captin Jimmy Hoag, Kimball House, City of Atlanta,” was on the outside. He sank down into his chair and fumbled the sealed envelope in his numb fingers. His brain was clear now. It had never been clearer. Presently he opened the envelope and unfolded the sheet.
It ran as follows:
One place is as good as another. You cannot git away. We got you, and your time is short. Go to the end of the earth and we will be there to meet you. By order of his (Blak X Buck) mark.
With the sheet crumpled in his clammy hand, Hoag sat still for more than an hour. Then he rose, shook himself, and took a big drink of whisky, He resolved that he would throw off the cowardly paralysis that was on him and be done with it. He would go out and spend the evening somewhere. Anything was better than this self-imprisonment in solitude that was maddening.
Going down to the office, he suddenly met Edward Peterson as he was turning from the counter. The young man smiled a welcome as he extended his hand.
“I was just going up to your room,” he said. “I happened to see your name on the register while I was looking for an out-of-town customer of ours who was due here to-day. Down for long?”
“I can't say—I railly can't say,” Hoag floundered. “It all depends—some few matters to—to see to.”
“I was going to write you,” the banker continued, his face elongated and quite grave. “I regard you as a friend, Mr. Hoag—I may say, as one of the best I have. I'm sure I've always looked after your interests at this end of the line as carefully as if they had been my own.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, of course.” Hoag's response was a hurried compound of impatience, indifference, and despair.
Peterson threw an eager glance at some vacant chairs near by and touched Hoag's arm. “Let's sit down,” he entreated. “I want to talk to you. I just can't put it off. I'm awfully bothered, Mr. Hoag, and if anybody can help me you can.” Hoag allowed himself to be half led, half dragged to the chair, and he and his companion sat down together.
“It's about Miss Ethel,” Peterson went on, desperately, laying an appealing hand on Hoag's massive knee. “The last time I saw her at your house I thought she was friendly enough, but something is wrong now, sure. She won't write often, and when she does her letters are cold and stiff. I got one from her mother to-day. Mrs. Mayfield seems bothered. She doesn't seem fully to understand Miss Ethel, either.”
“I don't know anything about it.” Hoag felt compelled to make some reply. “The truth is, I haven't had time to—to talk to Eth' lately, and—”
“But you told me that youwould.” Peterson's stare was fixed and full of suppressed suspense. “I've been depending on you. My—my pride is—I may say that my pride is hurt, Mr. Hoag. My friends down here consider me solid with the young lady, and it looks as if she were trying to pull away and leave me in the lurch. I don't see how I can stand it. I've never been turned down before and it hurts, especially when folks have regarded the thing as practically settled. Why—why, my salary has been raised on the strength of it.”
Hoag's entire thoughts were on the communication he had just received. He expected every moment to see his assassin stalk across the tiled floor from one of the many entrances and fire upon him. Peterson's voice and perturbation were as vexatious as the drone of a mosquito. Of what importance was another's puppy love to a man on the gallows looking for the last time at the sunshine? He rose to his feet; he laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.
“You must let me alone to-night,” he bluntly demanded. “I've got a matter of important business on my mind and I can't talk to you. You must, I tell you; you must!”
“All right, all right!” Peterson stared and gasped as if smitten in the face. “I'll see you in the morning. You'll come around to the bank, won't you?”
“Yes, yes—in the morning. I'll be round.” When he was alone Hoag strolled back to the bar-room. He familiarly nodded to the barkeeper, and smiled mechanically as he called for whisky. He drank, lighted a cigar, leaned for an instant against the polished counter, and then, seeing a man entering whom he knew and wished to avoid, he turned back into the foyer. Presently he went to the front door and glanced up and down the street. A cab was at the edge of the sidewalk, and the negro driver called out to him:
“Ca'iage, boss? Any part de city.”
“All right, I'm with you,” Hoag went to the cab, whispered an address, got in, and closed the door. With a knowing smile the negro mounted his seat and drove away. At the corner he turned down Decatur Street, and presently drove into a short street leading toward the railroad. Here the houses on either side of the way had red glass in the doors, through which crimson rays of light streamed out on the pavement. The cab was about to slow up at one of the houses when Hoag rapped on the window. The driver leaned down and opened the door.
“What is it, boss?”
“Take me back to the hotel,” was the command.
The driver paused in astonishment, then slowly turned his horse and started back.
“It might happen thar, and Jack would find out about it,” Hoag leaned back and groaned. “That would never do. It is bad enough as it is, but that would be worse. He might grow up an' be ashamed even to mention me. Henry is tryin' to do right, too, an' I'd hate for him to know.”