Theyhelped Opdyke into the house and bandaged a wound in his leg, but old Jim sat looking on with a stony face, and when the first aid had been administered he said shortly: "Parish Thornton an' me hev jest been a-studyin' erbout how ter handle ther likes ofyou. Ye come in good season—an' so fur as kin be jedged from ther place whar thet ball hit, no man kin say which one of us ye shot at. We aims ter make a sample of ye, fer others ter regulate theirselves by, an' I reckon ye're goin' ter sulter in ther penitenshery fer a spell of y'ars."
And when County Court day came there rode into town men of both factions, led by Hump Doane and Parish Thornton, and the courtroom benches were crowded with sightseers eager to hear that examining trial. It had been excitedly rumoured that Opdyke would have something of defiant insurgency to say and that perhaps a force would be found at his back sufficiently strong to give grim effect to his words.
The defendant himself had not been "hampered in the jail-house" but had walked free on his own recognizance, and, if report were true, he had been utilizing his freedom to organize his sympathizers for resistance. All in all, it promised to be a court day worth attending, with a measuring of neighbourhood influences, open and hidden.
Now the judge ascended the bench and rapped with his gavel, and when the name of Sam Opdyke was called, heads craned, feet shuffled, and an oppressive silence fell.
Then down the centre aisle, from rear door to crescent-shaped counsel table, stalked Opdyke himself with a truculent glitter in his eyes and a defiant swing to his shoulders, though he still limped from his recent wounding. A pace behind him walked two black-visaged intimates.
He looked neither to right nor left, but held the eyes of the man on the bench, and the judge, who was slight of stature, with straw-coloured hair and a face by no means imposing or majestic, returned his glance unwaveringly.
Then at the bar Opdyke halted, with nothing of the suppliant in his bearing. He thrust a hand into each coat pocket, and with an eloquent ringing of ironmongery, slammed a brace of heavy revolvers on the table before him. The two henchmen stood silent, each with right hand in right pocket.
"I heered my name called," announced the defendant in a deep-rumbling voice of challenge, "an' hyar I be—but, afore God on high, I aims ter git me jestice in this co'te!"
Had the man on the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when a margin of pause had intervened to give his words greater effect he spoke in a level voice that went over the room and filled it, and he spoke, not to the defendant, but to Joe Bratton the "high-sheriff" of that county.
"Dorothy flashed past him ... and a few seconds later he heard the clean-lipped snap of the rifle in a double report""Dorothy flashed past him ... and a few seconds later he heard the clean-lipped snap of the rifle in a double report"
"Mr. Sheriff," he said, slowly and impressively, "the co'te instructs you to disarm Sam Opdyke an' put him under arrest fer contempt. An', Mr. Sheriff, when I says ter arrest him ... I mean to put him in ther jail ... an' I don'tonlymean to put him in ther jail but in a cell and leave him there till this co'te getsready for him. When this co'teisready, it will let you know." He paused there in the dead hush of an amazed audience, then continued on an even key: "An', Mr. Sheriff, if there's any disquiet in your mind about your ability to take this prisoner into custody, an' hold him securely in such custody, the co'te instructs you that you are empowered by law to call into service as your posse every able-bodied man in the jurisdiction of this county.... Moreover, Mr. Sheriff, the co'te suggests that when you get ready to summons this posse—an' it had ought to be right here an' now—you call me fer the fust man to serve on it, an' that you call Hump Doane and Parish Thornton fer ther second an' third men on it...."
A low wave of astonished voices went whispering over the courtroom, from back to front, but the judge, ignoring the two revolvers which still lay on the table fifteen feet away, and the livid face of the man from whose pockets they had been drawn, rapped sharply with his gavel.
"Order in the co'teroom," he thundered, and there was order. Moreover, before the eyes of all those straining sight-seers, Opdyke glanced at the two men who composed his bodyguard and read a wilting spirit in their faces. He sank down into his chair, beaten, and knowing it, and when the sheriff laid a hand on his shoulder, he rose without protest and left his pistols lying where he had so belligerently slammed them down. His henchmen offered no word or gesture of protest. They had seen the strength of the tidal wave which they had hoped to outface, and they realized the futility of any effort at armed resistance.
* * *
It was when he had ridden home from the county seat after attending that session of the County Court, thatParish Thornton found Bas Rowlett smoking a pipe on his doorstep.
That was not a surprising thing, for Bas came often and maintained flawlessly the pose of amity he had chosen to assume. In his complex make-up paradoxes of character met and mingled, and it was possible for him, despite his bitter memories of failure and humiliation, to smile with just the proper nicety of unrestraint and cordiality.
Behind the visitor in the door stood Dorothy with a plate and dish towel in her hand, and she was laughing.
"Howdy, Parish," drawled Bas, without rising, as the householder came up and smiled at his wife. "How did matters come out over thar at co'te?"
"They come out with right gay success," responded the other, and in his manner, too, there was just the proper admixture of casualness and established friendship. "Sam Opdyke is sulterin' in ther jail-house now."
"Thet's a God's blessin'," commended Bas, and then as Dorothy went back to the kitchen Parish lifted his brows and inquired quietly, "Ye war over hyar yistiddy an' the day afore, warn't ye, Bas?"
The other nodded and laughed with a shade of taunt in his voice.
"Yes. Hit pleasures me ter drap in whar I always gits me sich an old-time welcome."
"Did ye aim ter stay an' eat ye some dinner?"
"I 'lowed I mout—ef so be I got asked."
"Well ye gits asked ter go on home, Bas. I'm askin' ye now—an' hereatter ye needn't bother yoreself ter be quite so neighbourly. Hit mout mek talk ef ye stayed away altogether—but stay away a heap more than what ye've been doin'."
The other rose with a darkening face.
"Does ye aim ter dictate ter me not only when an'whar's we fights our battles at, but every move I makes meanwhile?"
"I aims ter dictate ter ye how often ye comes on this place—an' I orders ye ter leave hit now. Thar's ther stile—an' ther highway's open ter ye. Begone!"
"What's become of Bas?" inquired the young wife a few minutes later, and her husband smiled with an artless and infectious good humour. "He hed ter be farin' on," came his placid response, "an' he asked me ter bid ye farewell fer him."
But to Bas Rowlett came the thought that if his own opportunities of keeping a surveillance over that house were to be circumscribed, he needed a watchman there in his stead.
In the first place, there was a paper somewhere under that roof bearing his signature which prudence required to be purloined. So long as it existed it hampered every move he made in his favourite game of intrigue. Also he had begun to wonder whether any one save Caleb Harper who was dead knew of that receipt he had given for the old debt. Bas had informed himself that, up to a week ago, it had not been recorded at the court house—and quite possibly the taciturn old man had never spoken of its nature to the girl. Caleb had mentioned to him once that the paper had been put for temporary safekeeping in an old "chist" in the attic, but had failed to add that it was Dorothy who placed it there.
Then one day Bas met Aaron Capper on the highway.
"Hes Parish Thornton asked ye ter aid him in gittin' some man ter holp him out on his farm this fall?" demanded the elder who, though he religiously disliked Bas Rowlett, was striving in these exacting times to treat every man as a friend. Bas rubbed the stubble on his chin reflectively.
"No, he hain't happened ter name hit ter me yit,"he admitted. "But men's right hard ter git. They've all got thar own crops ter tend."
"Yes, I knows thet. I war jest a-ridin' over thar, an' hit come ter me thet ye mout hev somebody in mind."
"I'd love ter convenience ye both," declared Bas, heartily, "but hit's a right bafflin' question." After a pause, however, he hazarded the suggestion: "I don't reckon ye've asked Sim Squires, hev ye? Him an' me, we hain't got no manner of use for one another, but he's kinderly kin teryou—an' he bears the repute of bein' ther workin'est man in this county."
"Sim Squires!" exclaimed old Aaron. "I didn't nuver think of him, but I reckon Sim couldn't handily spare ther time from his own farm. Ef he could, though, hit would be mighty pleasin'."
"I reckon mebby he couldn't," agreed Bas. "But ther thought jest happened ter come ter me, an' he don't dwell but a whoop an' a holler distant from Parish Thornton's house."
That same day, in pursuance of the thought "that just happened to come to him," Bas took occasion to have a private meeting with the man for whom "he didn't hev no manner of use," and to enter into an agreement whereby Sim, if he took the place, was to draw double pay: one wage for honest work and another as spy salary.
Three days later found Sim Squires sitting at the table in Parish Thornton's kitchen, an employee in good and regular standing, though at night he went back to his own cabin which was, in the words of his other employer, "only jest a whoop an' a holler away."
Household affairs were to him an open book and of the movements of his employer he had an excellent knowledge.
Theearliest frost of late September had brought its tang to the air with a snappy assertion of the changing season, when Parish Thornton first broached to Dorothy an idea that, of late, had been constantly in his mind. Somehow that morning with its breath of shrewd chill seemed to mark a dividing line. Yesterday had been warm and languorous and the day before had been hot. The ironweed had not long since been topped with the dusty royalty of its vagabond purple, and the thistledown had drifted along air currents that stirred light and warm.
"Honey," said the man, gravely, as he slipped his arm about Dorothy's waist on that first cold morning, when they were standing together by the grave of her grandfather, "I hain't talked much erbout hit—but I reckon my sister's baby hes done hed hits bornin' afore now."
"I wonder," she mused, as yet without suspicion of the trend of his suggestions, "how she come through hit—all by herself thetaway?"
The man's face twitched with one of those emotional paroxysms that once in a long while overcame his self-command. Then it became a face of shadowed anxiety and his voice was heavy with feeling.
"I've done been ponderin' thet day an' night hyar of late, honey. I've got ter fare over thar an' find out."
Dorothy started and caught quickly at his elbow, but at once she removed her hand and looked thoughtfully away.
"Kain't ye write her a letter?" she demanded."Hit's walkin' right inter sore peril fer ye ter cross ther state line, Cal."
"An' yit," he answered with convincing logic, "I'd ruther trust ter my own powers of hidin' out in a country whar I knows every trail an' every creek bed, then ter take chances with a letter. Ef I wrote one hit would carry a post-office mark on ther envellop ter tell every man whence hit come."
She was too wise, too sympathetic, and too understanding of that clan loyalty which would deny him peace until he fulfilled his obligation, to offer arguments in dissuasion, but she stood with trouble riffles in her deep eyes until at last she asked:
"When did ye aim ter start—over yon?"
"Hit ought ter be right soon now, while travellin's good. Come snowfall hit'll git ter be right slavish journeyin'—but I don't 'low ter tarry there long. I kain't noways be content away from ye."
The thoughts that were occupying Dorothy were for the most part silent ones but at length she inquired:
"Why don't ye bring her back with ye, ter dwell hyar with us—her an' ther baby?"
Thornton shook his head, but his heart warmed because she had asked.
"Hit wouldn't do—jest yit. Folks mout seek ter trace me by follerin' her. I kin slip in thar an' see her, though, an' mebby comfort her some small degree—an' then slip back home ergin without no man's knowin' I've ever been thar."
Instinctively the wife shuddered.
"Ef theydidfind out!" she exclaimed in a low voice, and the man nodded in frank comprehension.
"Ef they did," he answered, candidly, "I reckon hit would be hangin' or ther penitenshery fer me—but they hain't agoin' ter."
"I don't seek ter hinder ye none," she told him in afaltering voice, "despite hit's goin' ter nigh kill me ter see ye go. Somehow hit seems like I wouldn't be so skeered ef ye war guilty yoreself ... but ter hev ye risk ther gallers fer somethin' ye didn't nuver do——"
The words choked her and she stopped short.
"I'm goin' ter hev a mouty strong reason fer seekin' ter come home safe," he said, softly. "But even ef hit did cost me my life, I don't see as I could fail a woman thet's my sister, an' thet's been facin' her time amongst enemies, with a secret like thet hauntin' her day an' night. I've got ter take ther chanst, honey."
A sound came to them through their preoccupation, and they looked up to see Bas Rowlett crossing the stile.
His case-hardened hypocrisy stood valiantly by him, and his face revealed nothing of the humiliation he must feel in playing out his farcical role of friendship before the eyes of the man to whom it was so transparent.
"I war jest passin' by," he announced, "an I 'lowed I'd light down an' make my manners. I'd love ter hev a drink of water, too."
Without a word Parish turned and went toward the well and the visitor's eyes lit again to their avid hunger as he gazed at the girl.
Abruptly he declared: "Don't never fergit what I told ye, Dorothy. I'd do most anything, feryou."
The girl made no answer, but she flushed under the intensity of his gaze, and to herself she said, as she had said once before: "I wonder would he do sich a thing fer me as Cal's doin' fer his sister?"
The scope and peril of that sacrifice seemed to stand between her and all other thoughts.
Then Parish came back with a gourd dipper, and forced himself for a few moments into casual conversation. Though to have intimated his purpose and destination would have been a fatal thing, it wouldhave been almost as foolish to wrap in mystery the fact that he meant to make a short journey from home, so as Bas mounted Parish said:
"I've got a leetle business acrost in Virginny, Bas, an' afore long I'm goin' over thar fer a few days."
When Elviry Prooner had consented to come as temporary companion for Dorothy, it seemed merely an adventitious happening that Sim, too, felt the call of the road.
"I don't know es I've named hit to ye afore, Parish," he volunteered the next day as the three sat around the dinner table, "but I've got a cousin thet used ter be more like a brother ter me—an' he got inter some leetle trouble."
"Is thet so, Sim?" inquired Parish with a ready interest. "War hit a sore trouble?"
"Hit couldn't skeercely be holped—but he's been sulterin' in ther penitenshery down thar at Frankfort fer nigh on ter two y'ars now. Erbout once in a coon's age I fares me down thar ter fotch him tidin's of his folks. Hit pleasures him."
Thornton began to understand—or thought he did, and again he inclined his head.
"I reckon, Sim," he said, "ye wants ter make one of them trips now, don't ye?"
"Thet's a right shrewd guess, Parish. Hit's a handy time ter go. I kin git back afore corn-shuckin', an' thar hain't no other wuck a-hurtin' ter be done right now."
"All right, Sim"—the permission came readily—"light out whenever ye gits ready—but come back fer corn-shuckin'."
When Sim related to Bas Rowlett how free of complication had been the arrangement, Bas smiled in contentment. "Start out—an' slip back—an' don't let him git outen yore sight till ye finds out whar he goes an' what he's doin'," came the crisp order. "He's upter suthin' thet he hain't givin' out ter each an' every, an' I'd love ter know what hit is."
Along the ridges trailed that misty, smoky glamour with which Autumn dreams of the gorgeous pictures she means to paint, with the woods for a canvas and the frost for a brush.
Bas Rowlett had shaved the bristle from his jowl and chin and thrown his overalls behind his cabin door. He had dressed him in high-laced boots and donned a suit of store clothes, for in his mind were thoughts livened and made keen with the heady intoxication of an atmosphere like wine.
He knocked on the door of the house which he knew to be manless, and waited until it was opened by Elviry Prooner.
His swarthy face with its high cheekbones bequeathed from the shameful mixing of his blood in Indian veins wore a challenging smile of daredeviltry, and the buxom young woman stood regarding him out of her provocative eyes. Perhaps she owned to a revival of hope in her own breast, which had known the rancour of unacknowledged jealousy because this man had passed her by to worship at Dorothy Harper's shrine. Perhaps Bas Rowlett who "had things hung up" had at last come to his senses and meant, belatedly, to lay his heart at her feet. If he did, she would lead him a merry dance of doing penance—but she would nowise permit him to escape.
But Bas saw in Elviry only an unwelcome presence interfering with another tête-à-tête, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking indignantly along the road toward Jake Crabbott's store at Lake Erie.
So Bas set his basket down and removed his hat and let his powerful shoulders relax themselves restfully against the door frame. He was waiting for Dorothy, and he was glad that the obnoxious Elviry had gone.
After a little Dorothy appeared. Her lips were innocent of the flippant sneer that the other girl's had held and her beauty was not so full-blown or material.
Bas Rowlett did not rise from his seat and the young woman did not expect it. Casually he inquired: "Is Parish hyar?"
The last question came so innocently that it accomplished its purpose.
Bas seemed to hope for an affirmative reply, and his manner robbed his presence of any apparent intent of visiting a husbandless wife. Since no one but himself knew that his jackal Sam Squires was at that moment trailing after Parish Thornton as the beagle courses after the hare, he could logically enough make such an inquiry.
"No. Didn't ye know? He started out soon this mornin'. I reckon he's fur over to'rds Virginny by now."
"Oh!" Bas Rowlett seemed surprised, but he made prompt explanation. "I knowed he hed hit in head ter go—but I didn't know he'd started yit." For more than an hour their talk went on in friendly channels of reminiscence and commonplace, then the man lifted the basket he had brought. "I fotched some 'simmons offen thet tree by my house. Ye used ter love 'em right good, Dorothy."
"I does still, Bas," she smiled with that sweet serenity that men found irresistible as she reached for the basket, but the man sat with eyes brimming melancholy and fixed on the violet haze of the skyline until she noticed his abstraction and inquired: "What ails ye, Bas? Ye're in a brown study erbout somethin'."
He drew back his shoulders then, and enlightened,"Sometimes I gits thetaway. I fell ter thinkin' of them days when you an' me used ter gather them 'simmons tergether, little gal."
"When we was kids," she answered, nodding her head. "We hed fun, didn't we?"
"God Almighty," he exclaimed, impetuously and suddenly. "How I loved ye!"
The girl drew away, and her answer was at once sympathetic and defensive. "Thet war all a right long time back, Bas."
The defeated lover came to his feet and stood looking at her with a face over which the passion of his feeling came with a sweep and surge that he made no effort to control.
In that instant something had slipped in Bas Rowlett and the madman that was part of him became temporarily all of him.
"Hit hain't so long a time ago," he vehemently declared, "thet I've changed any in hits passin'. So long es I lives, Dorothy, I'll love ye more an' more—till I dies."
She drew back another step and shook her head reprovingly, and in the gravity of her eyes was the dawning of indignation, disappointment, and astonishment.
"Bas," she said, earnestly, "even ef Cal hadn't of come, I couldn't nuver hev wedded with ye. He did come, though, an'—in thet way of carin'—thar hain't no other man in the world fer me. I kain't never pay ye back fer all thet I'm beholden ter ye ... fer savin' him an' fotchin' him in when thet craven shot him ... fer stayin' a friend when most men would hev got ter be enemies. I knows all them things—but don't seek ter spile none of 'em by talkin' love ter me.... Hit's too late.... I'm married."
For an instant he stood as though long-arrested passions were pounding against the dams that had heldthem; then his words came like the torrent that makes driftwood of its impediments.
"Ter hell with this man Thornton! Ye didn't never hev no chanst ter know yore own mind.... Ye jest thinks ye loves him because ye pitied him. Hit won't last noways."
"Bas," she spoke his name with a sharp and stinging note of command, "I'm willin' ter look over what ye've said so fur—because of what I owes ye—but don't say no more!"
In a frenzy of wild and sensuous abandon he laughed. Then leaping forward he seized her and crushed her to him with her arms pinioned in his and her body close against his own.
Her struggles were as futile as those of a bird held in a human hand—a hand that takes no thought of how severely it may bruise but only of making firm its imprisoning hold.
"I said 'ter hell with him'," repeated the man in a low voice but one of white-hot passion. "I says hit ergin! From ther time thet ye fust begun ter grow up I'd made up my mind thet ye belonged ter me—an' afore I quits ye'regoin'ter belong ter me. Ye talks erbout bein' wedded an' I says ter hell with thet, too! Mebby ye're his wife but ye're goin' ter be my woman!"
The senses of the girl swirled madly and chaotically during those moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that held her powerless, and they seemed to her hours.
The hot breath of the face which had suddenly grown unspeakably horrible to her burned her like a blast, and through her reeling faculties rose that same impression of nightmare that had come to Parish when he lay wounded on his bed: the need of altering at a flash her whole conception of this man's loyal steadfastness to a realization of unbelievable and bestial treachery.
The fact was patent enough now, and only the hideous possibilities of the next few minutes remained doubtful. His arms clamped her so tightly that she gasped stranglingly for breath, and the convulsive futility of her struggles grew fainter. Consciousness itself wavered.
Then Rowlett loosened one arm and bent her head upward until he could crush his lips against hers and hold them there while he surfeited his own with an endlessly long kiss.
When again her eyes met his, the girl was panting with the exhaustion of breath that sounded like a sob, and desperately she sought to fence for time.
"Let me go," she panted. "Let me go—thar's somebody comin'!"
That was a lie born of the moment's desperation and strategy but, somewhat to her surprise, it served its ephemeral purpose. Rowlett released his hold and wheeled to look at the road, and with a flashing swiftness his victim leaped for the door and slammmed it behind her.
An instantlater, with a roar of fury, as he realized the trick that had been played upon him, Bas was beating his fists against the panels and hurling against them the weight of his powerful shoulders. But those hot moments of agitation and mental riot had left him breathless, too, and presently he drew away for a quieter survey of the situation. He strolled insolently over to the window which was still open and leaned with his elbows on the sill looking in. The room was empty, and he guessed that Dorothy had hurried out to bar the back door, forgetting, in her excitement, the nearer danger of the raised sash.
Bas had started to draw himself up over the sill when caution prompted him to turn first for a look at the road.
He ground his teeth and abandoned his intention of immediate entry for there swinging around the turn, with her buxom vigour of stride, came Elviry Prooner.
Rowlett scowled as he folded his arms and leaned by the window, and then he saw Dorothy appear in the back door of the room and he cautioned her in a low voice: "Elviry's comin' back. I warns ye not ter make no commotion."
But to his astonishment Dorothy, whose face was as pale as paper no longer, wore in her eyes the desperation of terror or the fluttering agitation that seemed likely to make outcry. In her hand she held a kitchen knife which had been sharpened and re-sharpened on the grindstone until its point was as taperingly keen as that of a dirk.
She laid this weapon down on the table and hastily rearranged her dishevelled hair, and then she said in a still and ominous voice, more indicative of aggressive temerity than shrinking timidity:
"Don't go yit, Bas, I'm comin' out thar ter hev speech with ye—an' ef ye fails ter hearken ter me—God knows I pities ye!"
Waiting a little while to recover from the pallid advertising of her recent agitation she opened the front door and went firmly out as Elviry, with a toss of her head that ignored the visitor, passed around the house to the rear.
Dorothy's right hand, armed with the blade, rested inconspicuously under her apron, but the glitter in her eyes was unconcealed and to Bas, who smiled indulgently at her arming, she gave the brief command, "Come out hyar under ther tree whar Elviry won't hear us."
Curious and somewhat mystified at the transformation from helplessness to aggression of bearing the man followed her and as she wheeled to face him with her left hand groping against the bark, he dropped down into the grass with insolent mockery in his face and sat cross-legged, looking up at her.
"Ef I'd hed this knife a minute ago," she began in a low voice, throbbing like a muffled engine, "I'd hev cut yore heart out. Now I've decided not ter do hit—jest yit."
"Would ye ruther wait an' let ther man with siv'ral diff'rent names ondertake hit fer ye?" he queried, mockingly, and Dorothy Thornton shook her head.
"No, I wouldn't hev him dirty his hands with no sich job," she answered with icy disdain. "Albeit he'd t'ar hit out with his bare fingers, I reckon—ef he knowed."
Bas Rowlett's swarthy face stiffened and his teethbared themselves in a snarl of hurt vanity, but as he started to speak he changed his mind and sat for a while silent, watching the splendid figure she made as she leaned against the tree with a breast rising and falling to the storm tide of her indignation.
Rowlett's thoughts had been active in these minutes since the craters of his sensuous nature had burst into eruption, and already he was cursing himself for a fool who had prematurely revealed his hand.
"Dorothy," he began, slowly, and a self-abasing pretence of penitence sounded through his words, "my reason plum left me a while ago an' I was p'int blank crazed fer a spell. I've got ter crave yore pardon right humbly—but I reckon ye don't begin ter know how much I loves ye."
"How much ye loves me!" She echoed the words with a scorn so incandescent that he winced. "Love's an honest thing, an' ye hain't nuver knowed ther meanin' of honesty!"
"Ye've got a right good license ter git mad with me, Dorothy," he made generous concession, "an' I wouldn't esteem ye ef ye hedn't done hit—but afore ye lets thet wrath settle inter a fixed hate ye ought ter think of somethin' ye've done fergot."
He paused but received no invitation to present his plea in extenuation, so he proceeded without it:
"I kissed ye erginst yore will, an' I cussed an' damned yore husband, but I did both them things in sudden heat an' passion. Ye ought ter take thought afore ye disgusts me too everlastin'ly much thet I've done loved ye ever since we was both kids tergither. I've done been compelled ter put behind me all ther hopes I ever hed endurin' my whole lifetime an' hit's been makin' a hell of tormint outen my days an' nights hyar of late."
He had risen now, and into his argument as he boweda bared and allegedly stricken head he was managing to put an excellent semblance of sincerity.
But it was before a court of feminine intuition that Bas Rowlett stood arraigned, and his specious contriteness fell flat as it came from his lips. Dorothy was looking at him now in the glare of revelation—and seeing a loathsome portrait.
"An hour ago," she declared with no relenting in the deep blaze of her eyes, "I believed all good of ye. Now I sees ye fer what ye air an' I suspicions iniquities thet I hedn't nuver dreamp' of afore. I wouldn't put hit past ye ter hev deevised Cal's lay-wayin' yoreself. I wouldn't be none astonished ef ye hired ther man thet shot him ... an' yit I'd nigh cut my tongue afore I'd drap a hint of thet ter him."
That last statement both amazed and gratified the intriguer. He had now two avowed enemies in this house and each stood pledged to a solitary reckoning. His warfare against one of them was prompted by murder-lust and against the other by love-lust, but the cardinal essence of good strategy is to dispose of hostile forces in detail and to prevent their uniting for defence or offence. It seemed to Bas that, in this, the woman was preparing to play into his hands, but he inquired, without visible eagerness:
"Fer why does ye say thet?"
Out of Dorothy's wide eyes was blazing upon him torrential fury and contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at the menace of his treachery against her man.
"I says hit," she answered, still in that level, ominously pitched voice that spoke from a heart too profoundly outraged for gusty vehemence, "because, now thet I knows ye, I don't need nobody ter fight ye fer me. He trusts ye an' thinks ye're his friend, an' so long es yedon't lift no finger ter harm him I'm willin' ter let him go on trustin' ye." She paused, and to her ears with a soothing whisper came the rustle of the crisp leaves overhead. Then she resumed, "Ef he ever got any hint of what's come ter pass terday, I mout es well try ter hold back a flood-tide with a splash-dam es ter hinder him from follerin' atter ye an' trompin' ye in ther dirt like he'd tromple a rattlesnake.... But he stands pledged ter peace an' I don't aim ter bring on no feud war ergin by hevin' him break hit."
"Ef him an' me fell out," admitted Bas with wily encouragement of her confessed belief, "right like others would mix inter hit."
"But efIkills ye hit won't start no war," she retorted. "A woman's got a right ter defend herself, even hyar."
"Dorothy, I've done told ye I jest lost my head in a swivet of wrath. Ye're jedgin' me by one minute of frenzy and lookin' over a lifetime of trustiness."
"Ef I kills ye hit won't start no war," she reiterated, implacably, ignoring his interruption, "an' betwixt ther two of us, I'm ther best man—because I'm honest, an' ye're as craven as Judas was when he earned his silver money. Ye needn't hev no fear of my tellin' Cal, but ye've got a right good cause ter fearme!"
"All right, then," once more the hypocritical mask of dissimulation fell away and the swarthy face showed black with the savagery of frustration. "Ef ye won't hev hit no other way, go on disgustin' me—but I warns ye thet ye kain't hold out erginst me. Ther time'll come when ye won't kick an' fly inter tantrums erginst my kisses ... ye'll plum welcome 'em."
"Hit won't be in this world," she declared, fiercely, as her eyes narrowed and the hand that held the knife crept out from under the apron.
The man laughed again.
"Hit'll be right hyar on y'arth," he declared with undiminished self-assurance; "you an' me air meant ter mate tergither like a pair of eagles, an' some day ye're goin' ter come inter my arms of yore own free will. I reckon I kin bide my time twell ye does."
"Eagles don't mate with snakes," she shot out at him, with a bosom heaving to the tempest of her disgust. Then she added: "I don't even caution ye ter stay away from this house. I hain't afeared of ye, an' I don't want Cal ter suspicion nothin'—but don't come hyar too often ... ye fouls ther air I breathes whenever ye enters hit."
She paused and brushed her free arm across her lips in shuddering remembrance of his kiss, then she continued with the tone of finality:
"Now I've told ye what I wanted ter tell ye ... ef need arises ergin, I'm goin' ter kill ye ... this matter lays betwixt me an' you ... an' nobody else hain't agoin' ter be brung inter hit.... Does ye onderstand thet full clear?"
"Thet's agreed," he gave answer, but his voice trembled with passion, "an' I've done toldyouwhat I wants ye ter know. I loves ye an' I'm goin' ter hev ye. I don't keer no master amount how hit comes ter pass, but sooner or later I gits me what I goes atter—an' from now on I'm goin' atteryou."
He turned and walked insolently away and the girl, with the strain of necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread her outstretched hands upward in embrace against the rough wood, as a frightened child might throw its arms about a protecting mother.
When Sam Opdyke had been taken from the courtroom to the "jail-house" that his wrath might cool into submissiveness, and when later he had been held to the grand jury, he knew in his heart that ahead of him lay the prospect of leaving the mountains. The hated lowlands meant to him the penitentiary at Frankfort, and with Jim Rowlett and Parish Thornton united against him, this was his sure prospect.
The two men who had shared with him the sensational notability of that entrance and the deflated drama of that exit had gone home rankling under a chagrin not wholly concerned with the interests of the defendant.
Enmities were planted that day that carried the infection of bitterness toward Harpers and Doanes alike, and the resentful minority began taking thought of new organization; a thought secretly fanned and inflamed by emissaries of the resourceful Bas Rowlett.
Back in the days following on the War of Secession the word Ku Klux had carried a meaning of both terror and authority. It had functioned in the mountains as well as elsewhere through the South, but it had been, in its beginnings, a secret body of regulators filling a void left by the law's failure, and one boasting some colour of legitimacy.
Since then occasional organizations of imitative origin had risen for a time and fallen rapidly into decay, but these were all gangs of predatory activity and outrage.
Now once more in the talk of wayside store and highroad meeting one began to hear that name "Ku Klux" though it came vaguely from the tongue as a thing of which no man had seen any tangible evidence. If it had anywhere an actual nucleus, that centre remained as impalpable and unmaterial as fox-fire.
But the rumour of night meetings and oath-bound secrecy persisted, and some of these shreds of gossip cameto Dorothy Thornton over the dooryard fence as passersby drew rein in the shadow of the black walnut. Nearer anxieties just now made her mind unreceptive to loose and improbable stories of that nature, and she gave them scant attention.
She found herself coming out to stand under the tree often, because it seemed to her that here she could feel the presence of the man who had gone away on a parlous mission—and it was during that time of his absence that she found more to fear in a seemingly trivial matter than in the disquieting talk of a mysterious body of avengers stirring into life.
When she looked up into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some blight that diseased the vigour of the tree.
Her heart was ready to be frightened by small things, and through her thoughts ran that old prophecy:
"I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and grows stronge and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem and branches of our family alsoe will waxe stronge and robust, but that when it fails, likewise will disaster fall upon our house."
Fromthe shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit of neglect and shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit gone slack.
Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back comeliness of proportion.
The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small, shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.
Under her feet the flooring of the porch creaked its complaint of disrepair and the baby in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of malnutrition.
As the mother clasped it closer and rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:
"Kain't ye, no fashion, gentle him ter sleep, Sally?"
The mother shook her head despondently.
"My milk don't seem ter nourish him none," sheanswered, and the voice which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.
Into the lawless tangle of the "laurel-hell" that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew back at the sight of the older woman.
This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands, testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.
Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other woman go away.
At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were alive.
Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have been a potato patch.
The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the thicket—almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding there.
But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.
That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the yard.
Then Thornton let his whisper go out to her with an utterness of caution: "Don't say nothin', Sally.... Walk back inter ther woods ... outen sight of the house ... it's me ... it's yore brother, Ken."
For an instant she stood as tremulous as though she had seen or heard a ghost, while in her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded. Then she said: "I'll be thar d'reckly. I'll take ther baby back ter Mirandy."
"No," commanded the man, "bring hit with ye. I hain't nuver saw hit yit."
* * *
Parish Thornton had come safely home, and in forest stretches where fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist of violet. "Sugar trees" blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet of burgundy.
Before the house in the bend of the river the great walnut stood like a high-priest lording it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush the drifting cloud-fleece by day and the stars by night. It whispered with the wandering voices of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.
Mellow now and tranquil in its day of fruitage it had the seeming of meditation upon the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness of death and the miracle of resurrection.
Yet the young wife searched its depths of foliage with an eye of anxiety for, though she had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth and height with a contagion of unhealth.
Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were gathering and piling the walnuts that should in due season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the desolation of winter.
Dorothy straightened and, looking off down the road, made sudden announcement.
"Look thar, Cal. Ef hit hain't a stranger ridin' up on hoss-back. I wonder now whoishe?"
With unhurried deliberation, because there was languor in the air that day, the man rose from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted figure his features stiffened and into them came the expression of one who had been suddenly stricken.
Dorothy, still looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of one who calmly accepts the inevitable.
By that time the horseman had halted and nodded. He dismounted and threw his rein over a picket, then from the stile he accosted Thornton: "Ken, I reckon ye knows me," he said, "an' I reckon ye knows what brought me."
Parish went forward, but before he reached the stile he turned and in a level voice said, "Dorothy, this hyar man's Jake Beaver. He's ther high-sheriff—from over in Virginny ... I reckon he seeks ter take me back."
Dorothy stood with all her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace,the sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, and fanned himself with his hat.
The exact wording of the warrant was after all of no particular consequence. The announcement of its purport had carried all its necessary significance. Yet, before he spoke again, Kenneth Thornton, also known as Parish Thornton and as Cal Maggard—these names being included in the document as aliases—read it from preamble to signature and seal at the end.
Then he inquired: "How come ye ter diskiver wh'ar I was at, Jake?"
The officer shook his head. "Thet's a question I hain't got ther power ter answer ye, Ken. Somebody over thar got tidin's somehow and drapped a hint ter ther Commonwealth's Attorney."
With a nod of comprehension the man who was wanted accepted that explanation. He had not expected a fuller one.
Then, turning, he complied with the demands of courtesy. "Dorothy," he asked, "hain't ye goin' ter invite Jake ter come in an' eat him some dinner?"
The woman had not spoken. For her, stoic-bred though she was, it was impossible to separate calmly the personal side of this stranger from the abstract and menacing thing for which he stood. Now she gulped down a hot and inhospitable impulse of refusal and said briefly to her husband, "Youkin invite him ef ye've a mind ter, Cal.Iwon't."
The officer flushed in embarrassment. Sheriffs, like bloodhounds, are frequently endowed with gentle natures, and this mission was not of Beaver's own choosing. It was a pursuit he followed with nothing of the sportsman's zest.
"I reckon I mout es well git over an' done with all ther onpleasant jobs I've got on hand," he announced, awkwardly, "air ye willin' ter waive extradition, Ken,or does ye aim ter fight goin' back? Hit's jest a matter of time either way—but ye've got the privilege of choosin'."
The man he had come after was carefully folding the warrant of arrest along its folded lines as though it were important to preserve the exact creasing of the paper.
"Does I keep this hyar thing, Jake," he asked, "or give hit back to ye?"
"Keep hit," replied the sheriff, with an equal gravity. "Hit b'longs teryou."
There was a brief silence after that then Thornton said:
"This is a right grave matter ter me, Jake. Afore I decides what ter do I've got ter hev speech with some of my neighbours."
The foreign official inclined his head.
"I hain't drapped no hint ter no man es ter what business brought me hyar," he volunteered. "I 'lowed ter talk with ye in private fust. I knows full well I'm amongst yore friends over hyar—an' I've got ter trust myself in yore hands. This hain't no welcome task, Ken, any way ye looks at hit."
"I gives ye my hand, Jake," the accused reassured his accuser, "no harm hain't goin' ter come ter ye. Come on indoors and sot ye a cheer."
Parish Thornton stood under the black walnut again that afternoon and with his jackknife he was carving a small basket out of one of the walnuts that had fallen at his feet. About him stood a group including the custodian of "the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia" and the man who held like responsibility for the state of Kentucky.
Between the two, unexpressed but felt, lay the veiled hostility that had grown up through generations of "crossing the border" to hide out; the hostility of conflicting jurisdictions.
Hump Doane and Jim Rowlett were there, and Aaron Capper and Lincoln Thornton—a handful who could speak with the voice of public opinion thereabouts, and while he carved industriously at his watch-charm basket, Parish Thornton glanced at the cripple.
"Mr. Doane," he said, "once, standin' on this identical spot, ye asked me a question thet I refused ter answer. This man hes come over hyar, now, ter answer hit fer me. Jake, tell these folks what brought ye hither."
The sheriff cleared his throat and by way of preface remarked: "I didn't come of my own choosin', gentlemen. Ther state of Virginny accuses Parish Thornton of ther wilful murder of John Turk. I'm high-sheriff over in Lee County whar hit tuck place."
A grave restraint prevented any expression of surprise, but all the eyes were turned upon Thornton himself, and the accused gave back even glance for even glance.
"Now I'm goin' ter give ye my side of hit," he began, though to give his side in full justice he would have had to reveal a secret which he had no intent of disclosing.
"My sister, Sally, married John Turk an' he abused her till she couldn't endure hit no longer. Her pride was mighty high an' she'd hev cut her tongue out afore she'd hev told her neighbours ther way she war misused—but I knowed hit." As he paused his eyes darkened into sombre memory. "I reasoned with John an' he blackguarded me, too, an' ferbid me ter darken his door.... Deespite thet command I feared fer her life an' I fared over thar ... I went in at ther door an' he war a-maltreatin' her an' chokin' her. I railed out ... an' he hurt her wusser ... hit war his life or her'n. Ef hit war all ter do over ergin I wouldn't act no different." He paused again and no one offered a comment; so he resumed hisstatement: "I hain't told ye all of hit, but I reckon thet's enough. Thar warn't no witnesses ter holp me come cl'ar an' ther co'te over thar wouldn't vouchsafe me no justice.... Hit's jedge b'longed ter John Turk's kinfolks body an' soul ... so I come away."
"I reckon ye'd be plum daft ef ye didn't stay away," remarked the Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance at his colleague from another state. "Virginny officers hain't got no power of arrest in Kaintuck."
The Virginian bit a trifle nervously from a twist of "natural leaf."
"Hit's my bounden duty, though," he declared, staunchly, "ter call onyouter arrest him an' hold him till I gits me them extradition papers from Frankfort—an' then hit'syorebounden duty ter fotch him ter ther state line an' deliver him over ter me."
"I'm ther man thet decides what my duty is," came the swift retort, and Thornton raised a hand to quell incipient argument.
"Thet hain't ther p'int, men," he reminded them. "Ther law kin reach in an' take me out finally. We all knows thet—onless I forsook my home hyar an' lived a refugee, hidin' out. Atter they once diskivered whar I was, I mout jest es well be thar es hyar."
"Ther boy's right," ruled Hump Doane, judicially. "A man kain't beat ther law in ther long run." Then the cripple wheeled on the sheriff.
"Mr. Beaver," he said, "we hain't got no quarrel with ye fer doin' yore plain duty, but whether ye calls this man a criminal over thar in Virginny or not we knows over hyar thet he's a godly upholder of ther law—an' we don't aim ter see him made no scape-goat fer unlawful wrath ef we kin hinder hit. In so fur es we kin legally compass hit we stands ready ter fight ther stateof Virginny from hell ter breakfast. All he's got ter do is jest give us ther word."
"I hain't seekin' ter contrary ye none es ter thet, Mr. Doane," the officer gave ready assurance.
"Ef Mr. Thornton takes my counsel," went on the deformed leader, "he'll bid ye go back thar an' tell them folks ye comes from thet ef they'll admit him ter bail, an' pledge him a fa'r day in co'te, he'll come back thar without no conflict when ye sends fer him. But ye've got ter hev 'em agree ter let him stay over hyar till ther co'te sets ter try him. Es fer his bond ye kin put hit at any figger ye likes so long es thar's land enough an' money enough amongst us ter kiver hit."
The Virginia sheriff turned to the Kentucky officer.
"Will ye arrest this man an' hold him safe till I gits my order?" he demanded, and the Kentuckian in turn inquired of Parish, "Will ye agree to hold yoreself subject ter prompt response?"
Thornton nodded and casually the local officer replied:
"All right, Mr. Beaver. Ye kin ride on home now whenever ye gits ready. I've got this prisoner in a custody thet satisfies me right now."
Hadthose enterprising spirits who had undertaken to organize a vigilance committee, modelled upon the old Ku Klux, been avowedly outlaws, banded together only for the abuse of power, their efforts would have died of inanition. The sort of lawlessness that has given the Appalachian mountaineer his wild name is one that the outer world understands as little as the hillsman understands the outer world, and the appeal which the organization made was a warped and distorted sense of justice, none the less sincere.
So now though the organizers of the new body were scheming rascals, actuated by the basest and meanest motives, the tissue and brawn of their recruiting was built up from the adventure-love of youth or the grim and honest insurgency of maturer age.
As yet the membership was small and it met in shifting places of rendezvous, with weird rites of oath-bound secrecy. To-night it was gathered around a campfire in a gorge between towering cliffs to which access was gained by a single and narrow gut of alley-way which was sentinel-guarded.
The men were notably bi-partisan in make-up, for Sim Squires of the Harper faction sat on the same short log with young Pete Doane of the Rowletts, and so it ran with the rest.
"Couldn't ye contrive ter persuade Bas Rowlett ter jine us, Pete?" inquired one of the two men who had swaggered with Sam Opdyke up the court-house aisle, and gone out in crestfallen limpness. "Hit looks likehe'd ought ter hold with us. He war entitled ter leadership an' they cast him over."
Pete shook his head and answered with the importance of an envoy:
"Bas, he's fer us, body an' soul, an' he aims ter succour us every way he kin but he figgers he kin compass hit best fashion byseemin'ter stand solid with ther old leaders."
Sim Squires said nothing but he spat contemptuously when the name of Bas Rowlett was mentioned.
"Ther fust task that lays ahead of us," declared the voice of Rick Joyce who seemed to be the presiding officer of the meeting, "is ter see that Sam Opdyke comes cl'ar in cote. When ther Doanes met in council, Sam war thar amongst 'em an' no man denied he hed as good a right ter be harkened to as anybody else. But they rid over him rough-shod. A few men tuck ther bit in their teeth and flaunted ther balance of us. Now we aims ter flauntthemsome."
"How air we goin' ter compass hit?" came a query, and the answer was prompt.
"When ther panel's drawed ter try Sam we've got ter see that every man on the jury gits secretly admonished thet atter he finishes up thar, he's still got ter answer terus—an' meantime we've got ter handle some two-three offenders in sich a fashion thet men will fear ter disobey us."
So working on that premise of injustices to be righted, malcontents from the minorities of both factions were induced with fantastic ceremonials of initiation into the membership of the secret brotherhood. And though they were building an engine of menacing power and outlawry, it is probable that more than half of them were men who might have turned on their leaders, as a wolf pack turns on a fallen member, had they known the deceit and the private grudge-servingwith which the unseen hand of Bas Rowlett was guiding them.
The dreamy languor of autumn gave way to the gusty melancholy of winds that brought down the leaves from the walnut tree until it stretched out branches disconsolate and reeking with only the more tenacious foliage left clinging. Then Dorothy Thornton felt that the sand was running low in the hour glass of respited happiness and that the day when her husband must face his issue was terribly near.
Indian summer is a false glory and a brief one, with alluring beauty like the music of a swan-song, and it had been in an Indian summer of present possession that she had lived from day to day, refusing to contemplate the future—but that could not go on.
The old journal which had fired her imagination as a door to a new life had lain through these days neglected—but they had been days of nearer and more urgent realities and, after all, the diary had seemed to belong to a world of dreams.
One of these fall afternoons when the skies were lowering and Parish was out in the woods with Sim Squires she remembered it with a pang of guilty neglect such as one might feel for an ill-used friend, and went to the attic to take it out of its hiding and renew her acquaintance.
But when she opened the old horsehide trunk it was not there and panic straightway seized her.
If the yellowed document were lost, she felt that a guardian spirit had removed its talisman from the house, and since she was a practical soul, she remembered, too, that the note-release bearing Bas Rowlett's signature had been folded between its pages! With her present understanding of Bas that thought made her heart miss its beat.
Dorothy was almost sure she had replaced it in thetrunk after reading it the last time, yet she was not quite certain, and when Parish came back she was waiting for him with anxiety-brimming eyes. She told him with alarm in her face of the missing diary and of the receipt which had been enclosed and he looked grave, but rather with the air of sentimental than material interest.
"Thet old diary-book was in ther chist not very long ago," he declared. "I went up thar an' got ther receipt out when I fared over ter Sam Opdyke's arraignin'. I tuck hit ter ther co'te-house an' put hit ter record thet day—ther receipt, I means."
"How did ye git inter ther chist without my unlockin' hit?" she inquired with a relief much more material than sentimental, and he laughed.
"Thet old brass key," he responded, "war in yore key basket—an ye warn't in ther house right then, so I jest holped myself."
That brass key and that ancient record became the theme of conversation for two other people about the same time.
In the abandoned cabin which had come to be the headquarters of Bas Rowlett in receiving reports from, and giving instructions to, his secret agents, he had a talk with his spy Sim Squires, who had come by appointment to meet him there. In the sick yellow of the lantern light the lieutenant had drawn from his pocket and handed to his chief the sheaf of paper roughly bound in home-made covers of cloth which he had been commissioned to abstract from its hiding place.
"Hit's done tuck ye everlastin'ly ter git yore hands on this thing," commented Rowlett, sourly, as he held it, still unopened, before him. "But seems like ye've done got holt of hit at last."
"Hit warn't no facile matter ter do," the agent defended himself as his face clouded resentfully. "Ef Ilet folkssuspicionme I wouldn't be no manner of use ter ye in thet house."
"How did ye compass hit finally?"
"Thornton's woman always kep' hit in the old hoss-hair chist in ther attic an' she always kep' ther chist locked up tight as beeswax." Sim paused and grinned as he added, "But woman-fashion—she sometimes fergot ter lock up ther key."
Rowlett was running through the pages whose ancient script was as meaningless to him as might have been a papyrus roll taken from the crypts of a pyramid.
"Old Caleb," he mused, "named hit ter me thet he'd done put thet paper I wanted betwext ther leaves old this old book inside ther chist."
He ran through the yellow pages time after time and finally shook them violently—without result. His face went blank, then anxious, and after that with a profane outcry of anger he flung the thing to the floor and wheeled with a livid face on Sim Squires.
"Hit hain't thar!" he bellowed, and as his passion of fury and disappointment mounted, his eyes spurted jets of fury and suspicion.
"Afore God," he burst out with eruptive volleys of abuse, "I halfway suspicions ye're holdin' thet paper yore own self ter barter an' trade on when ye gits ther chanst ... an' ef ye be, mebbe ye've got thet other document, too, thet ye pretends ye hain't nuver seed thar—ther one in ther sealed envellup!"
He broke off suddenly, choked with his wrath and panting crazily. Suppose this hireling who had once or twice shown a rebellious disposition held his own signed confession! Suppose he had even read it! Bas had never suspected the real course which Parish Thornton had taken to safeguard that other paper and he had not understood why Sim had been unable to locate it and abstract it from the house. Thornton had,in fact, turned it over to the safekeeping of Jase Burrell, who was to hold it, in ignorance of its contents, and only to produce it under certain given conditions. Now Bas stood glaring at Sim Squires with eyes that burned like madness out of a face white and passion distorted, and Sim gave back a step, cringing before the man whose ungoverned fury he feared.
But after an unbridled moment Bas realized that he was acting the muddle-headed fool in revealing his fear to a subordinate, his hold over whom depended on an unbroken pose of mastery and self-confidence.
He drew back his shoulders and laughed shamefacedly.
"I jest got red-headed mad fer a minute, Sim," he made placating avowal. "Of course I knows full well ye done ther best ye could; I reckon I affronted ye with them words, an' I craves yore pardon."
But Sim, who had never served for love, found the collar of his slavery, just then, galling almost beyond endurance, and his eyes were sombrely resentful.
"I reckon, Bas, ye'd better hire ye another man," he made churlish response. "I don't relish this hyar job overly much nohow.... Ye fo'ced me ter layway ther man ... but when ye comes ter makin' a common thief outen me, I'm ready ter quit."
At this hint of insubordination Rowlett's anger came back upon him, but now instead of frothy self-betrayal it was cold and domineering.
He leaned forward, gazing into the face upon which the lantern showed spots of high-light and traceries of deep shadow, and his voice was one of deliberate warning:
"I counsels ye ter take sober thought, Sim, afore ye contraries me too fur. Ye says I compelled ye ter layway Parish Thornton—but ye kain't nuver prove thet—an' ef I hed ther power ter fo'ce ye then hit war becauseI knowed things erbout ye thet ye wouldn't love ter hev told. I knows them things still!" He paused to let that sink in, and Sim Squires stood breathing heavily. Every sense and fibre of his nature was in that revolt out of which servile rebellions are born. Every element of hate centred about his wish to see this arrogant master dead at his feet—but he acknowledged that the collar he wore was locked on his neck.
So he schooled his face into something like composure and even nodded his head.
"You got mad unduly, Bas," he said, "an' I reckon I done ther same. I says ergin ef ye hain't satisfied with ther way I've acted, I'm ready ter quit. If yeairsatisfied, all well an' good."
Bas Rowlett picked up the diary of the revolutionary Dorothy Thornton and twisted it carelessly into a roll which he thrust out of sight between a plate-girder of the low cabin and its eaves.
Jerry Black came one Saturday night about that time to the wretched cabin where he and his wife, a brood of half-clothed children, two hound-dogs, three cats, and a pig dwelt together—and beat his wife.
For years Jerry had been accustomed to doing precisely the same thing, not with such monotonous regularity as would have seemed to him excessive, but with periodical moderation. Between times he was a shiftless, indulgent, and somewhat henpecked little man of watery eyes, a mouth with several missing teeth, and a limp in one "sprung leg." But on semi-annual or quarterly occasions his lordliness of nature asserted itself in a drunken orgy. Then he went on a "high-lonesome" and whooped home with all the corked-up effervescence of weeks and months bubbling in his soul for expression. Then he proved his latent powers by knocking about the woman and the brattish crew, andif the whole truth must be told, none of those who felt the weight of his hand were totally undeserving of what they got.