"Right down here in Adamson coun-teeWhere they have no church of our Lord,Frank Smith sold Pate Art'b'ry some whis-keyAnd caused him to get shot in the for'd."
"Right down here in Adamson coun-teeWhere they have no church of our Lord,Frank Smith sold Pate Art'b'ry some whis-keyAnd caused him to get shot in the for'd."
His fellows, in all solemnity, took up the ludicrous chorus and trumpeted in through their noses.
"Oh, whis-key's the root of all ev-il,It fills up a drunkard's hell,So why not vote out this old ev-ilAnd say farewell, whis-key, farewell!"
"Oh, whis-key's the root of all ev-il,It fills up a drunkard's hell,So why not vote out this old ev-ilAnd say farewell, whis-key, farewell!"
I smiled as I thought how little they were changed from rude retainers in an old, oak-raftered hall of feudal England. I felt as remote from civilization as though I were living behind the moat and draw-bridge of some embattled baron. In such a place anything might happen.
And then as the singers fell silent again, I became aware of a faint and distant sound of voices. The hound which lay curled upon the top step of the porch rose and sniffed the keen air, his bristles rising. In a moment he was off toward the road, barking blatantly.
The voices became more distinct and I moved from my position in the moonlight to the corner of the house where the shadow fell black enough to swallow me. As I did so a shuffling of feet in the loft told me that the men there had also caught the sound. The approaching party must be coming to this house, since we had no neighbor within three-quarters of a mile and the road ran out and ended at our gate.
Shortly a group of horsemen came into view, climbing the hill a quarter of a mile away. They seemed to be riding close together, knee to knee, and except when they crossed the intervals of the moon's spotlight one could see them only in a massed effect. They came to a halt in the shadow at a little distance from the gate.
The noiseless opening of a door and a momentary glimpse of a stealthy, rifle-armed figure slipping out into the shadow of the kitchen assured me of the preparedness of the impecunious clansmen who played watchdogs for their keep.
Then a loud and affable voice from the road gave greeting, "Hello, Cal Marcus!"
There was no immediate reply. Those inside were awaiting a more conclusive guarantee of pacific intent. Seemingly amicable salutations shouted from the night had before now brought householders into the excellent target of a lighted door, where they had lain down and died.
"Hello, Cal Marcus!" called the voice again, "we're a-comin' in."
"Who be ye?" challenged a voice from the interior. "Don't come till we know who ye be."
In the next moment I started violently and found myself in a tremor from head to foot, for the voice which answered the question was a woman's voice, and it was the voice of rich contralto which I had once heard and often imagined.
"It's I, Frances Weighborne," was the response, "and some gentlemen who rode over with me from the train." In corroboration came other voices, deep and masculine, and evidently recognized within as the voices of friends. The man in the shadow of the kitchen came out from his concealment and started down to the gate swinging his rifle at his side. A door opened and framed the emaciated, half-clad figure of Calloway Marcus. "Come right in, Ma'm," he shouted. The group rode up into the light and dismounted.
I saw her come in at the gate. The moonlight was full upon her, and I stood skulking in my concealment of shadow like a thief, held fast in a paralysis of jealousy and worship.
This was no place for me. I, of all men in the world, could least endure or be endured at that greeting between Weighborne and his wife who had ridden these mountains to be with him.
He and I had labored across those twenty miles in a wagon by daylight. I could guess what it meant at night and in the saddle—and she had done it! She had come alone, except for such chance escort as she could recruit at the mining town, and now as she walked in the moon-bath of the clearing, there was not a man of them all who carried himself with so free and unwearied a stride. She was dressed in a short riding-skirt and a heavy sweater. Her shoulders swung back as free as an Indian's, and I knew at that moment, and without doubt, that this was the elusive lady of Europe who had walked out of Shepheard's Hotel the night when I sat on the terrace. She was no fragile ornament of drawing-rooms; she was the woman who strode like a goddess and for whom timidities had no existence. She was not then, after all, I exultantly reflected, the hot-house orchid; a mere whisper and fragrance on waxy petals. She was the splendid flower I had conceived, fit for God's good open skies. And that thought sent a rich bugle note of triumph ringing through the chaos of my misery.
Of a surety it was no place for me. In what was to be said behind that door I had no part. She had come splendidly, but she had not come to me. These thoughts raced tumultuously through my mind, and when she reached the steps of the porch, and the light showed the mud and dust on her corduroy skirt, and caught the gold of her hair under an upturned hat brim, I bit savagely at my lips and turned away.
I sat for an hour or more in the shadow of a fence line, with the night mists rising and congealing under the pale moonlight like the tracery of frost on a julep mug. I had left my coat inside and at last I was conscious of being deeply chilled. As often as I turned my eyes out upon the mountain and forest they came back to dwell on the rough log wall that separated her from me. I felt the drawing of the magnet. Inside at least I could look at her, devour her with my eyes though I might not open my arms to her or even my lips except to utter commonplaces. But then the thought would come of the tenderness of the reunion which was perhaps at that moment being enacted so near me, yet so far from me, and at the picture I ground my teeth. Why had I at last discovered her to be the sum of all my dreams, and more, only to sit outside a wall of logs and know that inside she was pouring out on another man the miracle of her tenderness?
To-morrow I would deliver her husband over to her and go back. Finally, however, I realized that for to-night the Marcus house was my only available abode, and that by this time the first affections of greeting would be over. I could safely return.
Decency and civility demanded that I shake her hand and give an account of my rough nursing. The cabin was already crowded. What shifting and rearranging her arrival might necessitate was a thing to which I should accommodate myself before the household settled down to sleep. Already I might have caused inconvenience by my disappearance.
As I drew near the house, the cracks of the shutters still held threads of light. At the threshold of the room where I had left Weighborne I hesitantly knocked.
"Come in," said a low voice—her voice.
I opened the door and halted in astonishment.
She was sitting before the fire in the rough chair which was usually occupied by the old woman and her eyes were fixed on the flaring logs and the white ashes below them. She was leaning forward with her brows slightly drawn in a troubled and pained expression. The blaze threw shifting dashes of carmine on her cheeks and heightened the rose-madder of her lips. Her slender fingers were intertwined across her knees and one foot, cased in a riding-boot, was tapping the floor in evident annoyance.
Her discarded sweater hung over the chair back and against its white background her graceful slenderness was clear drawn despite the loose folds of a blue flannel shirt. The open collar revealed the arch of her throat, and though it was now circled by rough fabric instead of pearls, it was the same throat and neck that had so imperiously supported the head of the island goddess. But the deep wistfulness of her face and the troubled rise and fall of her bosom with breathing that was akin to a sigh filled me with wonder. Then the complete loveliness of her, the yearning for her swept me, and I had to grip myself resolutely for control.
I must have let myself in very quietly, for she did not turn her head. But what held me in pause and anger was the discovery that Weighborne lay asleep and breathing heavily, as though the last hours had brought no exciting incident. Could it be possible that he had slept uninterruptedly? At the thought a wave of savage resentment swept me. Had she come to me I should have arisen to meet her, though I had to shake off the sleep of death itself and push my way through the heavy weight of the grave.
I went very quietly over to her, without speaking, and still she did not raise her eyes. I looked down, cursing myself that I had dared to suspect she could burgeon only in the affluence of satins.
Slowly her gaze came up and on seeing me she gave a little start. Then she spoke in a low voice which was a trifle cool.
"Do you think your welcome is very prompt?"
I stiffened and flushed. Could she be so blindly indifferent as not to know that I had taken myself off in misery and loneliness only because I was not cad enough to intrude on that meeting? And now she permitted herself to grow piqued over the only evidence of consideration it lay in my power to show her.
"Do you think I could have done otherwise?" I inquired.
"I think if I were a man, and a woman had come across the mountains—" she halted suddenly and colored. Then she added in an altered tone of flat indifference, "It doesn't matter."
For a moment I stood there with no answer to frame. Her words bewildered me. So she might have spoken had she been free or affianced to me. I was standing above her looking down and her eyes, with the same pained wideness, were looking at some picture which the flickering flames and white embers held for her imagination. Then I understood. Her words were not after all really addressed to me. She, too, was thinking of the man asleep in the huge four-post bed who had not awakened to receive her, and upon me was falling the expression of what was in her heart because I was the only person with whom she could speak. Since he had not aroused himself she had noticed my absence. Had it been otherwise I should have been forgotten. It was the final note of my quaint and unprecedented torture that I should come in as her husband's proxy for a chiding that should have been his.
For the next few moments I stood helplessly silent. Outside I heard the distant baying of hounds off on some ungoverned chase. She sat there while the longings in my heart welled and the reason in my brain reeled, until I could feel only one thing—that she should belong to me; that my arms should enfold her—that everything which balked that end was a monstrous and hideous injustice. Then as a drunken man may suddenly sink into the irresponsible vagueness that carries him into total irresponsibility, the tidal wave mastered me. There was an inarticulate sound in my throat; something between a groan and a sob, which must have startled her, for she looked suddenly up, and as she did so I dropped to my knees beside her and carried both her hands to my lips. She flinched back with a sudden little start of astonishment, but I was now the primitive creature bereft of sanity and I gathered her to me and crushed her in my arms and covered the cool softness of her cheeks and eyes and lips with my kisses until they flushed hot and crimson. In an instant the thing was over. A wave of returning reason swept me like a sluicing from a bucket of ice-water, and I came to my feet sane and unspeakably mortified. She was still sitting very silent and her flushed color had at once died to pallor. Her eyes were wide with mystified incomprehension. Her lips moved, but shaped no words. I tried to speak, but the sense of my outrageous conduct stifled me.
She could not understand and I could not tell her, of all the torture which had so culminated. After this, even should the powers of miracle clear away every other obstacle between us, she would never listen. I heard my voice groan miserably, and with no further effort at explanation or apology, I walked, or rather stumbled, to the peg where my coat hung beside the door and let myself out into the night.
Where I went I could not say. I was tramping along with the aimlessness of the man whose steps are unguided. My one conscious intention was to keep going, to kill the rest of the night and to try, as best I might to bring myself to such a point of sanity that with to-morrow morning I could return and take my medicine with at least the dignity of the condemned criminal. Vaguely I planned self-destruction—after I had faced whatever ordeal awaited me first and I had met the obligation of supporting Marcus in court. I should tell the two of them my story and let them at least realize that before I had become the madman and the brute I had been through such things as might craze a man. Weighborne was not the sort of husband who would tamely pass without punishment such an affront to his wife and himself. I hoped that his method of reprisal would be summary. That would bring a sort of relief, yet for her sake he must let me be my own executioner, that it might end there.
The night was all a-sparkle under the moonlight, and the air, spiced with frost, went into the lungs with the tingling stimulation of needles. I tramped endlessly along the road, and all the heat of my paroxysm cooled into a chill of self-contempt. Still I had no definite idea of where I was going—I was simply plunging ahead in an effort to burn up with physical exertion the restlessness and misery that possessed me.
It was only when I had walked and run alternately for hours, frequently halting to sit by the roadside and curse myself, that I realized I must have come a long way from the house of Cal Marcus, and that the night must be well spent. I might not have even then returned to a realization of outward things had I not heard the sound of voices and the patter of unshod hoofs on the roadbed. Some roistering riders of the night were making their late way home, and had I been in a less heedless mood, Marcus' frequent injunction and the things I myself had seen would have prompted me to avail myself of the concealment offered by the fence row's tangle. But these matters were all far from my thoughts, and I merely turned back to the side to let the horsemen pass. I was walking with my head downcast at a point where the moon bathed the road, when the horses behind broke into a canter. As they passed me one of the riders, with a surprised shout to his companions, wheeled his mount to a halt just before me.
"Hold on thar!" sang out a voice. "Let's take this feller along with us."
I looked resentfully up and as I did so recognized the figure above me as that of Curt Dawson. When I met his eyes I met also the glitter of a leveled pistol.
I was in no mood to be trifled with and I knew that surrender to such a capture meant disaster to Marcus's plan of attack. Their purpose was to dispose of a dangerous witness, and since my testimony was to be damning to Curt Dawson, he above all others had a motive to serve which would make him recklessly desperate. I was unarmed, but I sprang forward meaning to strike up the weapon or force him to shoot without parley. I did not greatly care which alternative he chose, but I had no mind to be taken alive. Even if I succeeded in overpowering Garvin's gun-man, there was still his ally to reckon with. However, neither thing happened. Curt Dawson, merely laughed in his indolent fashion and jerked his horse back in its haunches, sliding from the saddle as he did so.
His fellow-traveler had now reinforced him and the two of them came over and faced me.
"Bud," said the gun-man with a slow, contemptuous drawl, "we hain't ergoin' ter kill this feller—leastways not yit. Them's the orders. He hain't ergoin' ter pester us inter hit, but we're goin' ter take him along with us. He hain't got no gun. I reckon you kin put up yours." Then he turned calmly to me and added, "Now, stranger, I low yer gwine ter come along—or get the hell of a lickin'—and then come along anyhow."
The second mountaineer slipped his revolver back into the case which, mountain fashion, he wore strapped to his side beneath his left armpit. Both men carefully buttoned their leather holsters. Meantime, I looked from one to the other, gauging their distances, and made up my mind to attack Dawson first. Then I heard the assassin calmly direct, "Now, Bud, take hold of him."
It was precisely as one might have given the command of attack to a dog, and under the sting of indignity, my reason once more slipped from me. I dived for Dawson and saw him reel backward under the blow I planted on his sneering mouth, but at the same instant the second pair of arms went round me from behind. Bud had "taken hold" of me and I am forced to say he did it with the effective enthusiasm of an octopus. I fancy that had there been an audience, that would have been pronounced a good fight. Sometimes the three of us swayed from side to side of the road in a triangular wrestling match; sometimes we rolled about and clawed at each other on the ground.
The moon had set and between gasping breaths, out of sweat-blinded and battered eyes, I was occasionally conscious of a steel-blue sky in which the stars seemed to dance about and of unsteady silhouetted trees. But I was more sensible of the cruel ruttiness of the road on which our feet slipped and our ankles twisted. Curt Dawson was one of those rough-and-tumble battlers who laugh as they fight. His companion kept up a running string of muttered curses, but both of them were strong, wolf-like huskies of tireless sinews and savage determination. There was, of course, no fairness of combat, but I had the advantage of trying to kill while they were fighting to take me alive, though with odds of two to one. I suppose it did not last long, but it seemed to me as interminable as the wars of Valhalla. I was very dizzy and nauseated from their kicks in the stomach and blind from blood that ran down out of a cut in my forehead—Curt Dawson wore a heavy ring—still I had the satisfaction of seeing that "Bud" was badly lamed, possibly from a twisted ankle, and that the gun-fighter himself was far from fresh. At last Garvin's head villain came into a clinch with his arms about me and under his vice-like grip I felt my ribs creaking. Bud thought me whipped and had drawn off for a moment of much-needed rest. Then I got my hands up and had the satisfaction of feeling my fingers close on Dawson's throat. The touch of flesh in my grasp seemed to rally my ebbing strength and I closed down with all the vicious force I could muster, until my nails sunk deep under the skin and his own arms relaxed and his agonized breath rattled in his windpipe. We went down locked together, but my grasp at his throat held, and as we rolled and wallowed I found myself on top and gripped the harder. I knew only one desire—to choke the last breath from his lungs, and I should have accomplished it had not the second man recognized the situation in time. If I had been fighting sanely I might have risen in time to meet him, and in his condition could have disposed of him, but I had forgotten his existence and remembered only the enemy upon whose chest my knee was pressing and whose life was fast waning under my ten clinging fingers. The mania to kill with bare hands is strong when it has once obsessed, and the second feudist found it an easy thing in my absorbed condition to throw his handkerchief about my neck and strangle me first into helplessness and finally into unconsciousness.
I came to my senses lying at the roadside, trussed up like a pig being taken to market. On either side of me lay my captors stretched at full length and resting, though a line of gray over the eastern peaks bespoke the coming of dawn, and a thin ribbon of rosy pinkness was edging the gray at the margin of the morning.
When I endeavored to rise Curt Dawson also sat up and gazed at me. His face wore scars that gave me a moment of sincere pleasure, and he found only one eye available for his scrutiny. His open shirt showed upon his neck the deep-written autograph of my finger nails, but his lips wore a grin as he reached for his broad-brimmed felt hat and placed it on the back of his head.
"Well, stranger," he drawled as good naturedly as though our combat had partaken only of elements of friendly sport, "I want ter name it to yer that you ain't noways er cripple in er fight. I told yer yer'd haf' ter come along, an' I reckon I was about right. Ef yer ready ter ride we'll heave yer up an' hike."
"What are you going to do with me?" I demanded.
"We'll figger on that by an' by," he assured me; "the fust thing we do will be plum friendly. We'll take yer where yer kin git a drink of licker."
I found that prospect grateful, for from head to foot I ached with bruises and a great weakness possessed me, but I did not propose to submit tamely at any point.
"I don't see how you are to keep me out of court unless you kill me," I suggested, "and if you are going to kill me you've got to do it here and now."
"What fer?" he queried with his tantalizing coolness. "Ef we're ergoin' ter kill yer, I reckon we'll pick our own time and place. But mebby we won't haf ter."
He rose indolently and came over with an effort to conceal the hobble of a limp, and propping my bound body against his knee proceeded to wrap his blue cotton bandana around my eyes. This being accomplished to his satisfaction, the two of them loosened my ankles and raised me to one of the saddles, leaving my hands fast bound, and passing straps around my legs. Then Dawson mounted behind me, holding me in place, for I found myself reeling feebly and in danger of collapse. The other man led the horse that carried the double burden and we started on a journey of which I have no clear remembrance, since from time to time I drifted into a condition bordering on unconsciousness.
It was full daylight but still very early when they took me from the saddle, and of course I had no idea of the road by which we had come or the country through which we had passed. The blindfold was not removed until we had entered a house and I had been helped up a steep stairway and laid on a bare, corn-shuck mattress. Then I was allowed to look on the bare walls of a loft-like room. The mattress was stretched on the floor; a tin basin surmounted a box. Otherwise there were no furnishings of any sort. Dawson was grinning down on me with a stone jug supported in the crotch of his right elbow and a tin cup in his left hand.
"Say when, stranger," he invited as he began to pour the white whiskey. "This here is your domicile fer ther present time. Yer victuals will be along presently." At the door he paused and looked back. "Ef yer needs anything," he added, "kick like hell on the flo'. They ain't nobody here that minds a little noise. The latch string hangs outside, but yer kin see fer yerself there ain't none on this side the do'."
I was for an hour satisfied to lie quietly on the mattress and rest and after they had brought me a meal of cold bread, greasy bacon and coffee, I continued inactive except for thinking. The trial was two days off and the least hardship I need expect would be imprisonment until it was over. After that I was at a loss to forecast their designs. Even then I could not be set free to tell my story, but I felt sure that nothing would be done until the arch-conspirator and dictator, Jim Garvin himself, had been consulted and had issued his imperial decree.
Shortly before noon I heard footsteps on the stairs, and since one set of feet came with the creaking caution of a person who did not wish to be heard, I feigned sleep and breathed with a deep regularity that was almost a snore. The door opened and Dawson entered. By this time I knew his delicate tread. He crossed the room and looked at me for a while, bending low down to listen to my breathing. I did not stir nor open my eyes and after a time he went again to the door and announced in a carefully guarded voice, "He's asleep all right enough."
There was no reply, so my straining ears, seeking to do duty also for the eyes I dared not open, could make no identification, but my face was turned toward the door and some inner sense declared to me with insistent conviction that the silent visitor was no other than the county judge himself. Finally Dawson turned and I counted his steps until they stopped, as I presumed, at his companion's side. At that juncture, and with infinite caution I stole a momentary peep between closely drawn lids, and the brief glimpse revealed the broad back and shoulders of the man who had so affably chatted with us at the store on the day when Weighborne and myself had arrived. Even in so cursory a survey, I knew that I was taking a decided risk, but it seemed necessary.
My room never had more than a half-light, which filtered through shutter slats so slanted that I could see nothing between them save the sky and a few stark sycamore branches. Consequently I lay in comparative darkness while they were etched against the full light of the partly open door. Now, should I regain my liberty—a thing highly improbable—I could testify that Garvin himself had knowledge of my imprisonment.
Outside my door there was silence and I told myself that they were listening. My simulated sleeping breath stole out to them and reassured them, for finally I heard Garvin's low voice. "That's the man," he said. "Just keep him here till I let you know what to do." Then their descending footsteps on the stairs drowned the words and I was once more alone.
The next day Dawson and his understrapper, "Bud," whose last name I had never learned, permitted me to accompany them to the lower floor of the house and a somewhat larger measure of freedom.
Among the many activities of his young life, Mr. Dawson had at one time enjoyed that expression of public confidence which is dear to the mountain man. He had held office as a deputy sheriff. That honor had been short-lived, but as a memento of his days of power he retained a very good pair of heavy nickeled handcuffs, and when I was made free of the lower floor these ornaments adorned my wrists. The connecting chain was long enough to give my hands a limited scope. My two jailers and myself beguiled an hour or two with a game of casino, and I was able to shuffle the cards when the deal fell to me, but the manacles were sufficiently hampering to give them a sense of entire security.
I welcomed with some eagerness an opportunity to visualize my environment, since there was now only one day left before the calling of the Marcus cases on the county court docket, and if I was to learn anything which might facilitate my escape it must be shortly accomplished.
I presumed that I had been brought to some remote and isolated point in the hills, and that even if I could rid myself of handcuffs and guardians, there still lay ahead of me the problem of a journey, probably a long one, through an unknown country.
I had still much to learn, and one of the things which did not occur to me, but which time made clear, was that Garvin never played his game twice in the same fashion. He had known that my disappearance would wake into frantic activity the smaller, but no less vigilant force of private investigators who served Cal Marcus. All the inaccessible hiding places in the heart of the timbered hills would be under espionage. He accordingly decided that the best method of keeping me under cover would be somewhat similar to that of the man in the story who knew his rooms were to be searched for a document he sought to conceal, and who adopted the method of putting it in full sight on the mantel shelf, where the searchers into corners and secret places did not take the trouble to open its envelope.
I had, in fact, been brought to a cabin which, although it nestled in a deep gorge a half-mile from the public road, and was invisible to passers-by, was still less than a mile and a quarter from the town itself. These things I was to discover on the morning of the trial when, feeling secure that it was now too late for me to avail myself of the information, Curt Dawson yielded to the temptation of informing me just how fully I had been stung.
But on my first visit to the ground floor I saw little that added to my knowledge. For months the place had palpably been swept by winds and battered by hail, tenantless and dilapidated. Indeed, the loft where I had been confined was more habitable than the lower floor. I at once recognized that they meant to leave the cabin with its air of desertion unchanged, so that any straggling investigator would pass it by with unaroused curiosity. There were two rooms, and the walls were vulnerable to windy gusts through cracks between rotting logs. The windows were glassless and an insufficient heat came from a fire which burned feebly on an open and smoke-blackened hearth. My two jailers rose constantly to fall back shivering on the jug of moonshine. There was no sign of beds or furniture of any sort. Until we arrived there the house had been abandoned.
Dawson permitted me to walk to the door and look out. The morning was gray and chilling. A slight rise in temperature had brought cold moisture and under a raw sky the hills stretched up all about us in reeking veils of foggy desolation. I saw only rattling weed stalks feeding on the decayed skeleton of what had been a fence-line before the days of abandonment, and a basin choked with volunteer timber, around which the hill-sides rose like a spite-fence, cutting off whatever lay beyond. A small front porch had graced the cabin in earlier times, but of that there now remained only one upright, and a few broken planks. I tried to locate the stable, but there was no evidence of any outhouse except some charred and over-grown timbers. Palpably the mountaineers had not kept their horses with them. If I escaped I must do so on foot.
Perhaps the disappointment of my cursory reconnoiter showed itself in my expression. Curt Dawson, who stood with his arms folded and his loose length draped against the door-jamb, grinned at my dolorous face.
"Nice place, ain't hit—fer a murder?"
"That's about all," I responded affably enough. I had discovered that I was gaining nothing by a sullen attitude and I am afraid that I was even yielding to a cheap desire to impress these desperadoes with my indifference.
"By the way," I added, "what's the delay about? Why don't you finish up your job and get to a more comfortable place?"
Again he grinned. "Say, stranger," he questioned, "ain't we treatin' yer pretty well? Was you ever in any other jail where yer got better handled? I've done laid myself out ter make yer visit memorable."
"It will be," I assured him, "provided I live long enough to remember it—and—" I reached out my manacled hand for some of his "natural leaf" and loaded the cob pipe with which I had been presented, "whenever I pass through Frankfort in after years, Dawson, I promise to drop into the penitentiary and pay you a visit."
"No Dawson ain't never put up thar yit," came his quick retort, with a flash that showed I had touched his raw nerve of fear, but the smile came back as he added, "as fer me, I venerates the traditions of my family."
I had never succeeded in trapping this unique man-killer into any admission which he did not care to make, and I had begun to understand his ability to take the witness stand and run, unscathed, the gantlet of cross-examination. Still, I could not refrain now from putting a leading question.
"How did it occur to you to bring me here? Had the judge arranged in advance that I should be kidnaped?"
"The who?" he inquired.
"Judge Garvin."
"Aw!" his laugh was hearty and prolonged. "So that's the idee that's bitin' yer? The jedge thinks I'm in Virginny. In fact, stranger, I am in Virginny. I just seems ter be here, but I hain't. I brought yer here because yer'd done been firin' off yer face ter the effect that yer thought yer saw me shoot at yer from the laurel. I didn't low ter have yer testifyin' ter no sich false notion. Hit mout injer my rep'tation fer peace and quiet."
Still he later made me a proposal which I promptly rejected. "I done been studyin' right smart, an' we ain't doin' no good fer ourselves, stayin' round here," he ventured. "I done sort figgered that mebby if hits plum agreeable ter you, we mout take yer down ter the railroad cars, an' let yer promise to leave the mountings and keep yer face shet."
"What reason have you to suppose that I'd keep a promise made under duress?"
"I got two reasons ter spose hit. In the fust place the minnit yer busts yer contrack an' comes back inter this jurisdiction I gives yer my word I'm goin' ter kill yer thar same's I would er houn' dawg. In the second place, I'd have this here—" He fumbled awkwardly in his pocket and brought out a paper which he handed me to read. It was an affidavit legally drawn, with blank spaces for my signature, and that of witnesses. It purported to have been written in an attorney's office in Virginia and to be duly attested. The document represented me as stating voluntarily that I had seen Curt Dawson (in Virginia) and had realized that he was not the man whom I had recognized among our assailants. I was leaving the mountain country, so I was asked to swear, because, being an Easterner, I did not find the environment congenial. The fantastic bit of perjury culminated in this highly colored peroration:
"I feel that, in intimating that the said Curt Dawson made said or any attempt upon the lives of my party, I have been guilty of an unpardonable injustice, which I deeply deplore and for which I feel sincere chagrin." As I read that passage I laughed with an amusement that was not feigned, and then I tore the paper into fragments which I scattered among the ashes.
Dawson watched me and shrugged his shoulders.
"We don't hardly like ter kill furriners—" he said. "Them folks down below misunderstands hit an' raises hell—but I reckon ef they won't take nuthin' but killin' they kin git kilt."
So they had planned not only to keep me out of court, but to present my affidavit when it became convenient: an affidavit purporting to have been made by me across the Virginia line, while I was abjectly fleeing. Weighborne and maybe his wife as well, whom I had already grossly insulted, would hear the reading of my Iscariot betrayal. If it were possible for them to think more contemptuously of me than they already did, this would be the precise climax to bring about such a result.
Most of that day I spent below stairs. In the afternoon Bud left the cabin and shortly after returned in great excitement.
"Git that damned feller upstairs quick," he cautioned. "A couple of them Marcus men is stragglin' round here, an' they mout come in."
Dawson leaped from his chair as though electrified, and his face showed a passion of anxiety. He sprang toward me and seizing my shoulder pivoted me, pointing to the stairs.
"Hustle," he shouted as he pushed me toward the door. "Git movin'." Naturally I did not obey. I scented the possibility of rescue, so I laughed at him and stolidly stood my ground.
"This place suits me," I said.
With the swiftest demonstration of the art of weapon-drawing I have ever seen he brought his magazine pistol from its holster and thrust it into my chest. His chin shot belligerently out and his eyes narrowed into blazing slits. His profanity came in a wild torrent.
My attitude was still indifference as to whether or not I were killed. New developments had come fast since I turned from the door of the room where Weighborne's wife still sat before the fire with my stolen kisses fresh upon her lips and temples, but there had not been a moment of forgetfulness. I saw nothing ahead of me worth surrendering for, and now I felt that parlous as the situation was, it was Dawson rather than I who was frightened.
"Why don't you shoot?" I asked.
With a foul paroxysm of oaths and obscenity he threw the pistol aside, and crossing the room caught up the broken broomstick which served in lieu of a poker. I had never before been beaten. It was not pleasant, quite aside from the physical pain. And as to that phase of it, one who has not been bludgeoned with bracelets on his wrists may underestimate the actual bodily torture of the experience. At all events, I must confess that even now I sometimes awake from a nightmare in which I am being thrashed with a broomstick. I tried resistance, but one of them dragged at my chain while the other belabored me, until in a few moments I sank down in the wormwood bitterness of humiliation and defeat and was half-dragged, half-kicked up the stairs, and thrown into my room, where they gagged me against the possibility of outcry, and tied me so that I could not move from my mattress or kick upon the floor. Dawson himself remained with me. They had none too much time. Within a few minutes I heard the long-drawn halloo of persons without. The voices were friendly and the response from Bud was equally cordial. The all-pervading hypocrisy of these mountain hatreds lay over and whitewashed the attitudes of both parties. As they came they shouted their request for permission to enter, and the man inside responded with assurances of welcome. Those who were arriving were coming as spies. Those inside were bent on deceit.
We heard them calling, still from afar, that they wanted a drink of liquor, and we heard Bud shout back that his jug was at their command.
Then feet tramped about the lower floor. Curt Dawson stood back in the shadow of the eaves while this interview lasted with his weapon drawn, and never once until the visitors rode away from the house did his eyes leave the door at the head of the stairs.
When Bud came up after they had gone he was a little pale under the reaction and the strain of anxiety showed in his eyes.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "I 'lowed them fellers never was ergoin' ter leave hyar."
"What did you tell 'em?" demanded Dawson curtly.
"I told 'em I'd had a little business round hyar—let 'em think it was somethin' ter do with er still, an' said I'd jest spent the night hyar ruther then hoof hit back home."
Dawson jerked his head toward the stairway. "Did they say anythin' 'bout comin' up here?"
"No. They kinder eyed them steps, but they didn't say nothin'."
For a moment Garvin's chief henchman walked the floor, then he snarled out, "Did they ask anything erbout me?"
"Jim Calloway 'lowed that somebody'd done seed you in this country, an' I said no, that you was over thar in Virginny."
Again there was a moment's silence after which Dawson's orders came in quick staccato violence.
"Bud, you've got ter go ter town, so's they'll believe thet story. Don't come back hyar no more. Them fellers'll ride back before sundown. They suspicions somethin' an' they'll jest about slip back ter make shore. I'll take this feller an' lay out in the timber tell night. Here, give me a lift."
The two of them raised me, still gagged, and carried me down the stairs. Keeping the house between themselves and the general direction of the road, they bore me by a path that ran along a cliff to a dense clump of timber. Then the lesser villain started on with his ambling step, pausing at the cabin to pick up the jug which was to corroborate his claim that his business had to do with illicit distilling. He also stopped indoors to obliterate all traces of human occupancy.
It was perhaps a mark of respect to my belligerency which led Dawson to leave me gagged, but it was a painful compliment. He propped me up so that I might have my back against a tree, and from our place of concealment we could look down unseen on the house. This time my captor did not favor me with conversation. He sat silent with his visage black and snarling, and his hand from time to time crept involuntarily toward his holster. As for myself, I was distinctly uncomfortable. The gag cramped my jaws and the rope about my ankles was unnecessarily tight. But during the three hours that I had to sustain this position, events were transpiring which gave a certain interest to the situation. The men who had come earlier returned, as Dawson's suspicion had prophesied. They shouted as before and when they received no answer they approached with a caution that carried me back to childhood stories of Indian attacks on block houses. Finally they entered the place, and Dawson sat there looking on, his hands wrapped about his knees and his shoulders shaking with silent laughter, as he surveyed their elaborate caution. They remained in the house for more than an hour and then reconnoitered the premises, at one time passing very near our place of hiding. Once more my custodian's lean hand caressed the grip of his pistol, and his thumb slipped down the safety catch. But in the end they rode away and I sorrowfully recognized their conviction that they had been running down a false clue.
It was cold and quite dark when Dawson removed the ropes from my feet and ordered me to walk back to the house.
That night I slept the sleep of exhaustion, and it was not until my breakfast arrived the next morning that I awoke.
My captor should have left me in my loft that day and should himself have remained below where he could watch for possible intrusion. But he was overcome with a desire to talk and this impulse led to a strategic error. He wanted to point out (now that he felt certain that I could not be present when Marcus called his witnesses) how near I had been all along to the town. He described to me in elaborate detail how, were I at that moment free, I could walk in twenty-five or thirty minutes to the court-house door and proceeded to give me satirical and exact directions. He felt that he had achieved a Machiavellian victory, and it pleased him to watch me squirm with a sense of frustrated possibilities.
He even explained that while the clan was gathering he, himself, must remain away, not only because he was taxed with guarding me, but also because he was, as he facetiously insisted, "in Virginny and too fur away to git home."
"An' it's a damn shame, too," he confided, "because hit shore looks like there might be fun in town to-day. All them Marcus people is gatherin' there an' most of us fellers'll be on hand. Ef somebody gits filled up with licker thar's mighty ap' ter be a frolic. Thet co'te room hain't agoin' ter be no healthy place nohow." I shuddered. I was thinking that the woman who had come on horseback across the hills to join her husband, would probably be with him in that court-room—if he, himself, were now able to ride.
After awhile Dawson took me up stairs, and just before he closed the door, I pleaded that my handcuffs be removed, since one wrist was badly galled and lacerated. For a time he steadfastly refused, but in the end agreed to loosen the bracelet from the injured hand, and leave it dangling to the other. All morning I had been complaining of illness, and had seemed hardly able to move about. Indeed, my bruises were so apparent that I was no longer a formidable antagonist. My listlessness, in part at least, deceived him, and after the anxiety of yesterday, when his enemies were so close on his trail, he found himself in a state of reaction and buoyant over-confidence. He produced the key and fitted it into the lock of the fetter, but before he turned it he paused with a wink of self-satisfaction to say, "Jest a moment, stranger, I'll make sure of you fust."
The handcuffs were of that type which tightens with pressure as the lock tumbler slides over a series of notches. With such an arrangement the wrist can be squeezed and pinched in a refinement of torture that is disabling. Dawson now clasped his fist around the bracelet which he meant to leave locked.
"Now ef you tries to make a false move," he volunteered, "I'm goin' ter squeeze this, an' ef I has ter squeeze hit I ain't ergoin' ter loosen hit no mo'." I knew him rather well by this time and had no reason to doubt his truthfulness of intention, so I merely nodded my enforced acquiescence. I was bracing every nerve and muscle for the possible opportunity of the next moment, and at the same time was attempting to appear totally innocent of any threatening intent.
When, with his one free hand the mountaineer attempted to turn the key, something about the lock stuck, and after a mumbled oath of impatience, he bent over and took both hands to the task. That was his one incautious moment, but I stood docile while he removed the manacle, and then as he straightened up, loosely holding the chain, I sprang back, wrenching it from his grasp.
He was instantly after me, but I had put enough space between us to swing the metal weight over my head.
He saw that this time it was a fight to the death and instead of crowding in upon my blows retreated one step and thrust his hand under his armpit to the holster. But it was all too momentary even for his artistic draw. With the chain wrapped about my right hand and the left bracelet swinging free I lashed viciously out for his face—and landed. He dropped like a felled tree and as he collapsed the pistol, half-freed from its case, rattled on the floor.
He was not unconscious, but dazed and groggy, and the blood was flowing from a nasty cut perilously close to the left temple. I was on him and pinning him against the planks before he could recover himself. I picked up the fallen key, liberated my right hand, then closing his manacle about his own wrist, I dragged him over to an upright post and passing the chain about it fastened his other hand. I had learned something about gagging now, so by the time he had recovered his full senses, he found himself hitched quite securely to the unplaned pillar, bootless, trouserless and speechless—but above all else astonished. I took one mean scrap of vengeance which was unnecessary. I went to the grated shutters and threw the key to the handcuffs out. Then, donning his clothes before his eyes, since my own would have proclaimed me a stranger in these parts, I turned and made my way down the stairs, once more at liberty. I did not vouchsafe him a word of farewell nor turn my head to look back, though I heard his feet pounding the floor in a frenzy of rage and futile struggle. Of course, I had possessed myself of his pistol as well as his hat, boots and trousers.
If I had needed any disguise beyond these clothes it would have been provided for me by the ragged growth of beard on my face and the unkempt hair that had not felt a comb since I left the roof of Cal Marcus. I smiled to myself as I made my exit by the broken porch and thought what his reflections at the moment must be. He was doubtless recalling his own explicit directions for reaching the court-house door. It was now between nine and ten o'clock. If I hurried there might still be time.
The town which I had seen only once before came into view as soon as I had reached the high road and made the first turn, but I was terrified to see in the distance two horsemen jogging along in leisurely approach. I scrambled across the rail fence and lay close to the earth waiting for them to pass and grudging the flight of each priceless minute. As they came nearer I heard a whining voice raised in an attempt at song.