XXI
Wolfe groveled in the deep snow for the old-fashioned shotgun his antagonist in the struggle of a few minutes before had lost. He found the long muzzle-loader, and hastened to the cabin's front door. Tot let him in, and he told her of his little adventure. They sat down before the wood fire, and counted the money.
"If you were to catch the robber and have him arrested," Tot asked hopefully, "wouldn't it clear you o' the charge o' stealin' this money?"
"Yes, it would clear me of that. But, you see," and Wolfe frowned, "it wouldn't wipe out the charges that I am an accessory after the fact to a felony and—and the other things. Whitney Fair is a hard man, Tot, and he's shrewd. He'd go to any end to make me smoke, on account of the beating I gave him. I couldn't risk going back, if that's what you're thinking about. I believe this would be our best plan:
"Tomorrow, I'll set out after the robber, and follow him by means of his track in the snow. I'll catch him, and we'll take him over to Ivins' place. We'll instruct Ivins to keep him for ten days, and then turn him over to the sheriff at Conradsville. You and I will steal into Conradsville, express the stolen money to Colonel Mason, and immediately afterward board a train for Asheville. In Asheville, you'll buy two fares for the Northwest, and I'll join youon the train; this to break possible pursuit. Ivins likes us, Tot, and he won't let our man talk him into doing anything we don't want done. Eh?"
"You ought to know what's best for us, honey," Tot answered promptly. "But I'll be anxious while you're gone after the robber. You see, it's Cat-Eye Mayfield you're goin' after."
"Of course—that is, it's probable."
"And if you're not mighty careful," seriously, "you'll follow him into a trap of some kind."
Her husband laughed boyishly. "Don't you think I'm capable of matching wits with Cat-Eye Mayfield?" he said. "I'll have the advantage of being armed, you know."
Tot poked the fire before she spoke again. Wolfe noted that her now ruddy face was decidedly troubled.
"It's like fightin' a snake in the dark!" she warned. "Cat-Eye maybe hasn't got any gun; but he's got the cunnin' of a fox, and the cunnin' of an Indian, and the cunnin' of a man born to be a killer all in one. I tell you again, Little Buck, if you're not mighty careful, you'll follow him into a trap. He knows you'll try to track him down, and he'll be ready for you. Remember, that man hates you a lot more than you can ever, ever understand, Little Buck!"
Wolfe laughed at her fears, though in this instance it was she that was the wiser of the two.
"I'll be careful," he promised.
They took a flat stone from the floor next to the hearth, exposing a tiny pit beneath. The canvas bag and its burden went into the pit with their savings money, and the stone was put back into place. Then they saw that the little cabin's doors and windows were securely fastened, and retired for the night.
An hour before the coming of the next dawn found them up and busy with the preparation of breakfast. When Wolfe had eaten, he strapped a full belt of cartridges around his waist, took up his rifle and his hat and a bundle of food, kissed his wife fondly and set out on his journey. The day promised to be clear, but the wind was out of the north and stinging, biting cold.
The footprints led him in an almost straight line to the southward. The robber had deviated only that he might avoid a cliff or a dense thicket of undergrowth. It was very evident that Mayfield, if Mayfield it was, had traveled with a fair knowledge of the wilderness and with some goal definitely in view from the start.
The air became even colder as the day wore on. Wolfe was forced to keep his feet moving at a lively rate, and to frequently beat his gloved hands together, to prevent frostbite. The snow now had a crust that impeded his going somewhat, and made his tramping noisy. He began to be a little nervous because of his everlasting, expectant watching ahead. Wolfe was not a man who bore suspense easily.
By the middle of the afternoon he had covered, he judged, fifteen miles. He now found himself in a perfect jungle of tall virgin timber that would have widened his eyes in admiration had the circumstances been different; it was spread over a rugged, rocky valley that few men, except for Cherokee Indians, had ever entered; the very primitiveness of it was at once both beautiful and terrible. A weird light reigned between the green of the treetops overhead and the white of the snow under foot. There was no sound except for the soughing of the wind through the needles of the gaunt, spectral hemlocks.
It was in here that the man whom Wolfe had been following had made camp. A pile of coals that were still glowing marked the spot. Wolfe paused for less than two minutes to warm his hands over the remains of the unknown's fire, then struck out at a faster gait than ever along the fresher trail; and he remembered Tot's warning, and tried to keep his wits about him.
Then he was suddenly confronted by a little canyon, in the bottom of which flowed a clear and sparkling mountain stream edged with ice. The footprints of the unknown ended abruptly at the brink. He knelt and peered over. The snow on the ledges below him had not been disturbed. His man had crossed, he figured, for there was no backward track—but how?
"He didn't fly over!" muttered Wolfe to himself. "And yet——"
Ever suspecting trickery, he searched the thick woodland around him with his eyes. Everything seemed quite as it should be. Another moment, and his gaze fell upon a great wild vine that hung within arm's reach of him; it ran almost to the top of a tall hemlock, and—it had been cut at a point near the snowy ground.
"I see—" Wolfe smiled—"he swung himself across by means of this!"
It was not an unreasonable conclusion. The distance over was not more than thirty feet; the vine's first fastening was on a branch fully twenty yards above. Human destinies sometimes hinge upon the tiniest things; if Wolfe had but noted that there were no footprints on the other side of the little canyon, for instance——
He tested the vine; it held his weight with no sign whatever of giving away. He looked below, and considered; if he fell, he would be hurt: neither the snow that covered the farther half of the canyon's bottom, nor the water that covered the nearer half, would keep him from being hurt if he fell. Therefore, he tested the strength of the vine again. Again it held his weight without the least sign of breaking or tearing loose in the tree overhead.
"I should be able to do anything that the other fellow can do," he told himself.
With that, Wolfe proceeded to fasten his rifle and the bundle of food to his cartridge-belt. Then he took a firm hold on the vine, stepped fifteen steps backward, ran forward swiftly, and launched himself out over the chasm—and the vine parted high in the tree with a sharp snap. He loosed his grip on it and flung out his arms, turned completely twice in the air, and landed hard upon the ice-coated stones beside the rippling creek. A few seconds of spasmodic writhing, a faint moan, and he lay face-downward, motionless and silent.
Had he been unconscious for long, doubtless he would have frozen. Perhaps the penetrating chill helped to bring him to. He sat up dazedly, and dazedly noted that his hat, coat, rifle, cartridge-belt and rations were gone—and that there were dozens of fresh footprints, the same footprints that he had been trailing, in the snow about him.
In spite of his watchfulness, he had fallen into a trap very neatly!
Wolfe tried to get upon his feet then. A fiery streak of pain in his right leg wrung a hoarse cry of pain from him. He dragged himself to the shelter of a nearby overhanging ledge, and on the way came upon his bundle of food; it had been torn from his belt in the fall, and the friendly snow had hidden it from the robber's eyes. He sat up on the dry earth, and hurriedly took stock of his injuries. His forehead was bruised and swollen; six inches above his right ankle there was a fractured bone.
A small heap of driftwood lay nearby. Wolfe took a knife from his pocket, whittled a few handfuls of shavings from a stick of dry heart-pine, and started a fire to keep off the bitter cold. When the wood was burning well, he tied a handkerchief about his throbbing head, removed his right boot and ripped the trousersleg to the knee, and bound his injured limb in a set of crude splints. The pain of the fracture was now as much as he could bear without shrieking.
He stretched himself out on his left side, with his back to the rock wall. Suddenly he realized that he was staring at the smaller end of the wild vine. It had been smoothly cut; his man had been waiting for him in the top of the hemlock that had supported it.
"Of course, that was it!" nodded Wolfe, with a bitter little smile. "I—I might have known."
Perhaps the robber, thinking him done for, had gone away for good. Then he would put out the fire, that the smoke from it might not reveal the fact that he was still alive. Anyway, he must begin dragging himself homeward. If Tot became so uneasy that she followed him, and something happened to her—the thought made Little Buck Wolfe's face as hard as a mask of marble.
But his precaution was for nothing. A pair of opaque, uncanny black eyes watched him toss the burning wood to the snow. He chanced to look toward the hemlock above; he saw Cat-Eye Mayfield standing with one lean shoulder touching the body of the tree. Mayfield wore Wolfe's coat and hat over his own coat and hat; around his slender waist was Wolfe's cartridge-belt, and in his hands was Wolfe's repeater.
The two men glared at each other for a full minute without speaking. Mayfield was proud of his cunning; his villainous triumph was written over his narrow, dark face and in his lustreless eyes. Wolfe was defiant, and so full of rage that every nerve and fibre of him trembled; the veins in his temples stood out and throbbed violently.
"Well?" snapped Wolfe.
"Haw-haw-haw!" laughed Mayfield. "Howdy, and hello! A-judgin' from the way ye've got that 'ar leg o' yore'n fixed up, Little Buck, I'd say ye'd missed yorecallin'. Ye'd ort to been a doctor, shorely! Ye could git plenty o' cases o' bots and pip, anyhow—haw-haw-haw!"
Wolfe set his teeth together, and refused to reply. Mayfield became demoniacally sober, and asked abruptly, "How'd ye like to be shot?"
There was certainly no levity anywhere in the question. Wolfe knew very well that he was facing the open jaws of death, knew that his life depended entirely on Mayfield's whim. Mayfield had little to fear. A man's bones might lie there in that wilderness, bleaching and bare, for years upon years before they were found. As for Tot—the man beside the hemlock figured that he could very easily take care of Tot!
"Have ye got any pa'tickler choice about jest whar ye'd ruther be shot?" he inquired with tantalizing calmness.
The man below forced himself to speak steadily: "There's no other way out? You're determined to top it all off with murder; eh?"
"Shorely." Mayfield's opaque eyes narrowed wickedly. "Shorely. I've lived my whole life to git to this one minute. Ef ye wants to say yore little 'Now I Lay Me,' git at it!"
Wolfe shuddered in spite of himself, though he bravely kept the other from seeing it. Death seemed inevitable. If he must go the long, long way, he would go as nearly without pain as he might; besides, he believed that a bold front would go farther than anything else toward saving him—and the wretch should not have the satisfaction of even suspecting that he was afraid.
"Harm Tot, if you dare—and if a man can rise from his grave I'll rise from mine," he said quietly. "Let's see whether you can hit my fingernail, Cat-Eye."
He put the tip of his right forefinger squarely on the center of his badly-bruised forehead. His hot mountaineer blood was thrumming in his ears now.
"Hold it thar!" said Mayfield.
Wolfe held it there. Mayfield drew back the rifle's hammer, and began to take aim without a rest; he was a good enough marksman for that. Wolfe watched Mayfield as though there was something about the villain that fascinated him. A minute passed, an eternity in sixty seconds, and then a spirit of terror seized the man below. The suspense bore down upon him with a weight that was smothering. He felt that he must cry out to Mayfield and implore him to put an end to it. But he kept his lips resolutely closed, and his gaze remained riveted unfalteringly upon the unwinking black eye beyond the sights of his own repeater.
"Huh!" Mayfield grunted suddenly.
There is no doubt that Wolfe's quite terrible gaze had something to do with it—Cat-Eye Mayfield lowered the rifle, and shrugged his narrow shoulders oddly.
"Huh!" he grunted again. "It wouldn't last nigh long enough to suit me, Little Buck."
The pain in Wolfe's injured limb was greater than ever in that moment, but he kept from wincing, for he knew that the other would certainly regard it as an exhibition of fright.
"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.
"Jest what I said; nothin' more, and nothin' less. I'm purty shore I can fix up somethin' 'at'll beat killin' ye this a-way. Yeuh, I'm purty dang shore I can."
"Probably," nodded Wolfe.
"Ye see," Mayfield went on devilishly, "I might hatch up some way to sep'rate you and Tot, or somethin' like that, ye know. Well, I reckon ye hain't never heerd what happened to yore pap and his outfit atter you and Tot left the basin, have ye? Ef ye hain't, I'll find big pleasure in a-bein' the one to tell ye. Hey?"
"What happened to them?"
"Well," and Mayfield caught the repeater into the hollow of an arm and began to chafe his cold hands, "well, Depity Cartwright he ketched yore pap on his knees clost to his moonshine still, which same he'd done tore all to pieces, a-prayin' to beat hell. Cartwright he took off his hat and waited untel Old Buck was through, when he chased Old Buck back to his cave whar he'd been a-hidin' at; and fin'ly Cartwright he ketched yore pap and took him down to the jail at Johnsville. How's that fo' news, Little Buck; hey?"
"It's news, all right," growled Wolfe. "Anything else?"
"Shorely!" grinned Mayfield. "Well, atter he had Old Buck all tight in jail, Cartwright—he's a reg'lar heller!—hewatched the Wolfe wimmen; and when they went to their men folks over in the Balsam Cone section, he follered 'em. And 'en Cartwright he went back to Johnsville and got up a big posse, and went back and ketched every one o' the rest o' the clan. How's that fo' news?"
Wolfe had gone ashen. He believed, somehow, that Mayfield had told him the truth. And Mayfield really had.
"The whole outfit of 'em had a trial," the man beside the hemlock went on eagerly, "and they was all sent up to the State prison at Nashville fo' five year!"
That, also, was truth. Violently-suffering Little Buck Wolfe bent his head in gratitude for the silver lining to the cloud; five years was not half the sentence usually meted out for the crime of arson. A beautifully bright spot, too, was the turning of his iron father.
"I reckon you're a-wonderin' why I hain't never caused you to be ketched by the law, hain't ye?"
Mayfield's voice jarred. Wolfe shook his head.
"Not a bit, Cat-Eye. You're wanted, too, and you've no great wish to get anywhere near the authorities."
The man above eyed the man below peculiarly for a moment. Then the man above drawled, "Little Buck, you talk like a book. You look like a book. And you act like a book!"
Wolfe jumped as though he had been struck. His wife had told him that word for word one cold evening when they sat at their fireside; but she had said it admiringly, for she knew it was because he had, as it were, lived on a diet of books for eight years, so hungry had he been for education.
He knew that Cat-Eye Mayfield had eavesdropped at their cabin!
"I didn't tell anybody whar ye was at," said Mayfield. "Acause I had more ag'in ye 'an the law's got. Little Buck," and the lustreless eyes had never seemed so diabolical as now, "I've hated you all o' my life. I've hated ye so long and so much 'at I'm all hate; from the crown o' my head to the sole o' my feet, I'm all hate fo' you. Every dawg has his day, ye know. You've done had yore'n. Now I'm a-goin' to have mine. I'm a-goin' to make you wisht ye'd never been borned. I'm a-goin' to make ye wisht ye could die!"
Wolfe gave him a silent, unflinching stare. Mayfield continued.
"I hain't got it all planned out yit. But I think I can promise ye one thing faithf'ly; you hain't never a-goin to set yore two eyes on Tot Singleton any more."
"You cut-throat!" cried Wolfe.
"And," Mayfield grinned suddenly, "I plum' mighty nigh it fo'got to tell ye this here:
"Ye know a half a gallon o' licker and a half a gallon o' water makes a whole gallon o' licker, when a little tobacker or lye is put in it to stouten it up, don't ye? And it's considered a lowdown trick, as ye also know. Well, a long time ago, yore pap he sent me up to Alex Singleton's atter a gallon o' cawn-lightnin' when his still-worm had friz and bu'sted; and I swiped half o' the licker, and added water an a big leaf o' tobacker to make out. So when yore pap he found the tobacker in the jug, he went straight ater old Alex, which was the startin' o' the fightin' atwixt the Wolfes and Singletons. Some more news, hain't it? Haw—haw—haw! Well, I guess ye can make it to the lake in about three days o' good, hard crawlin' like a lizard. So long to ye, and bad luck!"
He disappeared. The sounds of his footsteps died away quickly, and there was silence save for the rippling of the creek and the soughing of the wind among the needles of the hemlocks.
Wolfe's heart was torn afresh with fears for Tot's safety. Mayfield possessed more cunning than he had been willing to believe; the plot, whatever it was, would be as black as the Pit and, probably, successful. Spurred to the highest degree of desperation, Wolfe stuffed his package of rations inside his shirt, and took a crude crutch from the pile of driftwood; then he began to make his way slowly and painfully down the stream. He soon came upon a rotting tree trunk lying across the creek, and by means of this he went to the other side of the canyon's bottom and to the base of a series of ledges that promised escape.
Twenty minutes later, he was crawling determinedly along the path that his feet and Mayfield's had made in the snow.
That journey through the frozen forest was difficult and terrible. He was forced to halt occasionally to rest himself, and always he built a little fire that he might not take cold while his overworked and trembling muscles were relaxed. He labored on all that night and all the next day, without stopping more than half an hour at a time. When there were yet five miles between him and the great spring that Tot had named "The Lake of Peace," he became utterly exhausted; the physical machine that was him was fine, but it had reached the limit of its endurance.
Since it was not humanly possible for him to go farther without rest and sleep, he made a fire in a sheltered spot and put on wood that would last for hours. This done, he fashioned himself a thin couch of laurel branches, collapsed upon it, and at once was wrapped in a slumber so deep that it was akin to death itself. But vague dreams tormented him when the first keen edge of his exhaustion was worn off; he heard Tot calling to him again and again, and he awoke in a fever of anxiety while it was yet night. He sat up stiffly. He had to go!
When he had eaten the last of the food that his wife had prepared for him, he took up his brushwood crutch and set out to the northward once more. He strove hard to make himself believe that Tot had been neither outwitted nor deceived by the foxlike and dastardly Mayfield. But the fear would not be driven away.
The middle of the afternoon had come when at last he reached the open space that lay around the head of Doe River. His heart ached with apprehension because Tot did not come out to meet him. He opened his lips to call and couldn't speak her name. Fear had made him dumb.