Outsideon the straggling streets clumps of perplexed men gathered to mull over the seven days' wonder which had been enacted before their eyes.
Slowly they watched the Kentuckians troop out of the court house, the late prisoner in their midst, and marvelled to see Will Turk join them with the handshaking of complete amity. Many of these onlookers remembered the dark and glowing face with which Turk had said yesterday of the man upon whom he was now smiling, "Penitenshery, hell! Hit's got ter be ther gallows!"
Public amazement was augmented when Kenneth Thornton and his wife went home with Will Turk and slept as guests under his roof.
"Ye needn't hev no fear erbout goin' on home, Ken, an' leavin' Sally hyar," said Turk when he and Thornton sat over their pipes that night. "I gives ye my hand thet she's goin' ter go free on bond an' when her case is tried she'll come cl'ar."
Kenneth Thornton knew that he was listening to the truth, and as his fingers, groping in his pocket for a match, touched the small walnut-shell basket, he drew it out and looked at it. Then turning to Dorothy, who sat across the hearth, he said seriously: "Ther luck piece held hits charm, honey."
But an hour later, when Kenneth had gone out to see to his horse in the barn and when Lindy was busied about some kitchen task, Will Turk rose from his seatand standing before Dorothy began to speak in a low-pitched and sober voice:
"Ye seems ter me like a woman a man kin talk sense ter," he said, "an' I'm goin' ter tell ye somethin' either you or yore man ought ter know. Ken hain't plum outen danger yit. He's got an enemy over thar in Kaintuck: an' when he starts back thet enemy's right like ter be watchin' ther trail thet leads home."
Dorothy held his eyes steadily when she questioned him with a name, "Bas Rowlett?"
Will Turk shook his head as he responded deliberately: "Whatever I knows come ter me in secrecy—but hit was at a time when I miscomprehended things, an' I sees 'em different now. I didn't say hit was Bas Rowlett ner I didn't say hit wasn't nuther, but this much I kin say. Whoever this feller is thet aims ter layway Ken, he aims ter do hit in Virginny. Seems like he dastn't ondertake hit in Kaintuck."
Dorothy drew a breath of relief for even that assurance, and for the duration of a short silence Turk again paced the floor with his head bent and his hands at his back, then he halted.
"You go on home termorrer an' leave Ken hyar," he enjoined, "he wants ter see his sister free on bail afore he leaves, anyhow. When he gits ready ter start back I'll guide him by a way I knows, but one a woman couldn't handily travel, an' I'll pledge ye he'll crost over ter Kaintuck es safe as he come."
So on the morrow Dorothy rode with the same cavalcade that had escorted her to Virginia, and near sunset a few days later, when low-hanging clouds were sifting down a thick veil of snow and the bare woods stood ghostly and white, Bas Rowlett lay numb with cold but warm with anticipation by the trail that led from the county seat in Virginia to the gap that gave a gateway into Kentucky.
He huddled under a tangle of briars, masking an ambuscade from which his rifle could rake the road and his eyes command it for a hundred yards to its eastern bend, and he had lain there all day. Kenneth Thornton would ride that trail, he felt assured, before dark, and ride it alone, and here, far from his own neighbourhood, he would himself be suspected of no murderous activity.
But as Bas lay there, for once prepared to act as executioner in person instead of through a hireling, Kenneth Thornton and Will Turk were nearing the state border, having travelled furtively and unseen by a "trace" that had put the bulk of a mountain between them and ambuscade.
The winter settled after that with a beleaguering of steeps and broken levels under a blockade of stark hardship. Peaks stood naked save for their evergreens, alternately wrapped in snow and viscid with mud. Morning disclosed the highways "all spewed up with frost" and noon found them impassably mired. Night brought from the forests the sharp frost-cracking of the beeches like the pop of small guns, and in wayside stores the backwoods merchants leaned over their counters and shook dismal heads, when housewives plodded in over long and slavish trails to buy salt and lard, and went home again with their sacks empty.
Those who did not "have things hung up" felt the pinch of actual suffering, and faces in ill-lighted and more illy ventilated cabins became morose and pessimistic.
Such human soil was fallow for the agitator, and the doctrine which the winter did not halt from travelling was that incitement preached by the "riders."
Every wolf pack that runs on its food-trail is made up of strong-fanged and tireless-thewed beasts, but at its head runs a leader who has neither been balloted upon nor born to his place. He has taken it and holds itagainst encroachment by title of a strength and boldness above that of any other. He loses it if a superior arises. The men who are of the vendetta acknowledge only the chieftainship which has risen and stands by that same gauge and proving.
Parish Thornton, the recent stranger, had come to such a position. He had not sought it, but neither, when he realized the conditions, had he evaded it. Now he had made a name of marvellous prowess, which local minstrels wove into their "ballets." He was accounted to be possessed of an almost supernatural courage and invulnerability; of a physical strength and quickness that partook of magic. Men pointed to his record as to that of a sort of superman, and they embellished fact with fable.
He had been the unchallenged leader of the Harpers since that interview with old Aaron Capper, and the ally of Jim Rowlett since his bold ride to Hump Doane's cabin, but now it was plain that this leadership was merging rapidly into one embracing both clans.
Old Jim had not long to live, and since the peace had been reestablished, the Doanes no less than the Harpers began to look to, and to claim as their own, this young man whose personal appeal had laid hold upon their imaginations.
But that is stating one side of the situation that the winter saw solidifying into permanence. There was another.
Every jealousy stirred by this new regime, every element that found itself galled by the rearrangement, was driven to that other influence which had sprung up in the community—and it was an influence which was growing like a young Goliath.
So far that growth was hidden and furtive, but for that reason only the more dangerous. The riders had failed to free Sam Opdyke, and Sam was in prison—butthe riders were not through. It pleased them to remain deceptively quiet just now but their meetings, held in secret places, brought a multiplied response to the roll call. Plans were building toward the bursting of a storm which should wreck the new dykes and dams—and the leaders preached unendingly, under the vicarious urging of Bas Rowlett, that the death of Parish Thornton was the aim and end beyond other aims and ends.
The riders were not striking sporadic blows now, as they had done at first, in petty "regulatings." They were looking to a time when there was to be one ride such as the mountains had never seen; a ride at whose end a leader living by the river bend, a judge, a Commonwealth's attorney living in town and the foreman of a certain jury, should have paid condignly for their offences.
Christmas came to the house in the bend of the river with a crystal sheeting of ice.
The native-born in the land of "Do Without" have for the most part never heard of Christmas trees or the giving of gifts, but they know the old legend which says that at the hour when the Saviour was born in a manger the bare and frozen elder bushes come to momentary bloom again in the thickets and the "critters and beasties" kneel down in their stalls, answering to some dumb mandate of reverence. This, however, is myth, and the fact is more substantially recognized that at this period the roisterous ride the highways, shooting and yelling, and the whiskey jug is tilted and tragedy often bares her fangs.
But Dorothy and Parish Thornton had each other, and the cloud that their imaginations had always pictured as hanging over the state border had been dispelled. Their hearts were high, too, with the reflection that when spring came again with its fragrancesand whispers from the south there would be the blossoming of a new life in that house, as well as along the slopes of the inanimate hills.
But now on Christmas morning, as Dorothy looked out of a window, whose panes were laced with most delicate traceries of frost rime, there was a thorn-prickle of fear in her heart.
Parish came in and stood looking outward over her shoulder, and his smile flashed as it had done that first day when it startled her, because, before she had seen it, she had read of just such a smile in a journal written almost a century and a half ago.
"Hit's plum beautiful—out thar," she murmured, and the man's arm slipped around her. It might almost have been the Kenneth Thornton who had seen Court life in England who gallantly responded, "Hit's still more beautiful—inhyar."
There had been an ice storm the night before, following on a day of snowfall, and the mountain world stood dazzling in its whiteness with every twig and branch glacéd and resplendent under the sun.
On the ice-bound slopes slept shadows of ultramarine, and near the window the walnut tree stood, no more a high-priest garbed in a green mantle or a wind-tossed cloak of orange-brown, but a warrior starkly stripped of his draperies and glitteringly mailed in ice.
He stood with his bold head high lifted toward the sky, but bearing the weight of winter, and when it passed he would not be found unscarred.
Already one great branch dropped under its freighting, and as the man and woman looked out they could hear from time to time the crash of weaker brethren out there in the forests; victims and sacrifices to the crushing of a beauty that was also fatal.
Until spring answered her question, Dorothy reflected, she could only guess how deep the blight, whichshe had discovered in the fall, had struck at the robustness of the old tree's life. For all its stalwartness its life had already been long, and if it should die—she closed her eyes as though to shut out a horror, and a shudder ran through her body.
"What is it, honey," demanded the man, anxiously, as he felt her tremor against his arm, "air ye cold?"
Dorothy opened her eyes and laughed, but with a tremulousness in her mirth.
"I reckon I hain't plum rekivered from ther fright hit give me when ye went over thar ter Virginny," she answered, "sometimes I feels plum timorous."
"But ther peril's done past now," he reassured her, "an' all ther enemies we had, thet's wuth winnin' over, hev done come ter be friends."
"All thet's wuth winnin' over, yes," she admitted without conviction, "but hit's ther other kind thet a body hes most cause ter fear."
Into the man's thought flashed the picture of Bas Rowlett, and a grim stiffness came to his lips, but she could hardly know of that remaining danger, he reflected, and he asked seriously, "What enemies does ye mean, honey?"
She, too, had been thinking of Bas, and she, too, believed that fear to be her own exclusive secret, so she answered in a low voice:
"I was studyin' erbout ther riders. I reckon they've done tuck thought thet you an' Hump hev been seekin' evidenceerginst 'em."
The man laughed.
"Don't disquiet yoreself erbout them fellers, honey. Wehevbeen seekin' evidence—an' gittin' hit, too, in some measure. Ef ther riders air strong enough ter best us we hain't fit ter succeed."
The smile gave slowly way to a sterner and more militant expression, the look which his wife had cometo know of late. It had brought a gravity to his eyes and a new dimension to his character, for it had not been there before he had dedicated himself to a cause and taken up the leadership which he had at first sought to refuse. Dorothy knew that he was thinking of the fight which lay ahead, before the scattered enmities of that community were resolved and the disrupted life welded and cemented into a solidarity of law.
Sim Squireswas finding himself in a most intricate and perplexing maze of circumstance; the situation of the man who wears another man's collar and whose vassalage galls almost beyond endurance.
It was dawning on Squires that he was involved in a web of such criss-cross meshes that before long he might find no way out. He had been induced to waylay Parish Thornton at the demand of one whom he dared not incense on pain of exposures that would send him to the penitentiary.
His intended victim had not only failed to die but had grown to an influence in the neighbourhood that made him a most dangerous enemy; and to become, in fact, such an enemy to Sim he needed only to learn the truth as to who had fired that shot.
Squires had come as Rowlett's spy into that house, hating Thornton with a sincerity bred of fear, but now he had grown to hate Rowlett the more bitterly of the two. Indeed, save for that sword of Damocles which hung over him in the memory of his murderous employment and its possible consequences, he would have liked Parish, and Dorothy's kindness had awakened in the jackal's heart a bewildering sense of gratitude such as he had never known before.
So while compulsion still bound him to Bas Rowlett, his own sympathies were beginning to lean toward the fortunes of that household from which he drew his legitimate wage.
But complications stood irrevocably between Sim and his inclinations. His feeling against Bas Rowlett was becoming an obsession of venom fed by the overweening arrogance of the man, but Bas still held him in the hollow of his hand, and besides these reefs of menace were yet other shoals to be navigated.
Squires had been compelled by Rowlett not only to join the "riders" who were growing in numbers and covert power, but to take such an active part in their proceedings as would draw down upon his head the bolts of wrath should the organization ever be brought to an accounting.
There was terrible danger there and Sim recognized it. Sim knew that when Rowlett had quietly stirred into life the forces from which the secret body was born he had been building for one purpose—and one purpose only. To its own membership, the riders might be a body of vigilantes with divers intentions, but to Bas they were never anything but a mob which should some day lynch Parish Thornton—and then be themselves destroyed like the bee that dies when it stings. Through Squires as the unwilling instrument Rowlett was possessing himself of such evidence as would undo the leaders when the organization had served that one purpose.
Yet Sim dared reveal none of these secrets. The active personality who was the head and front of the riders was Sam Opdyke's friend Rick Joyce—and Rick Joyce was the man to whom Bas could whisper the facts that had first given him power over Sim.
For Sim had shot to death Rick's nephew, and though he had done it while drunk and half responsible; though he had been incited to the deed by Bas himself, no man save the two of them knew that, and so far the murderer had never been discovered.
It seemed to Sim that any way he turned his facehe encountered a cul-de-sac of mortal danger—and it left him in a perplexity that fretted him and edged his nerves to rawness.
Part of Christmas day was spent by the henchman in the cabin where he had been accustomed to holding his secret councils with his master, Bas Rowlett, and his venom for the man who had used him as a shameless pawn was eclipsing his hatred for Parish Thornton, the intended victim whom he was paid to shadow and spy upon. For Dorothy he had come to acknowledge a dumb worship, and this sentiment was not the adoration of a lover but that dog-like affection which reacts to kindness where there has been no other kindness in life.
It was not in keeping with such a character that he should attempt any candid repudiation of his long-worn yoke, or declare any spirit of conversion, but in him was a ferment of panic.
"I'm growin' right restive, Bas," whined Sim as the two shivered and drank whiskey to keep themselves warm in that abandoned shack where they were never so incautious as to light a fire. "Any time this feller Parish finds out I shot him, he'll turn on me an' kill me. Thar hain't but jest one safe way out. Let me finish up ther job an' rest easy."
Bas Rowlett shook his head decisively.
"When I gits ready ter hev ye do thet," he ruled, imperiously, "I'll let ye know. Right now hit's ther last thing I'd countenance."
"I kain't no fashion make ye out," complained Sim. "Ye hired me ter do ther job an' blackguarded me fer failin'. Now ye acks like ye war paid ter pertect ther feller from peril."
Rowlett scowled. It was not his policy to confide in his Myrmidons, yet with an adherent who knew as much as Squires it was well to have the confidential seeming.
"Things hev changed, Sim," he explained. "Any heedless killin's right now would bring on a heap of trouble afore I'm ready fer hit—but ye hain't no more fretful ter hev him die then what I be—an' thet's what we're buildin' up this hyar night-rider outfit ter do."
"Thet's another thing thet disquiets me, though," objected Squires. "I'm es deep inter thet es anybody else, an' them fellers, Thornton and Old Hump, hain't nuver goin' ter rest twell they penitensheries some of ther head men."
Bas Rowlett laughed, then with such a confidential manner as he rarely bestowed upon a subordinate, he laid a hand on his hireling's arm. "Thet's all right, Sim. Ther penitenshery's a right fit an' becomin' place fer them men, when ye comes ter study hit out. We hain't objectin' ter thet ourselves—in due time."
Sim Squires drew back and his face became for the moment terror-stricken. "What does ye mean?" he demanded, tensely, "does ye aim ter let me sulter out my days in convict-stripes because I've done s'arved yore eends?"
But Bas Rowlett shook his head.
"Not you, Sim," he gave assurance. "I'm goin' ter tek keer ofyouall right—but when ther rest of 'em hev done what we wants, we hain't got no further use fer them riders. Atter thet they'll jest be a pest an' burden ter us ef they goes on terrifyin' everybody."
"I don't no fashion comprehend ye, but I've got ter know whar I stands at." There was a momentary stiffening of the creature's moral backbone and the employer hastened to smooth away his anxiety.
"I hain't nuver drapped no hint of this ter no man afore," he confided, "but me an' you air actin' tergither es pardners, an' ye've got a license ter know. These hyar riders air ergoin' ter handle ther men that stands in my light—then I'm goin' ter everlastin'ly bustup ther riders. I wouldn't love ter see 'em git too strong. Ye fights a forest fire by buildin' back-fires, Sim, but ef ye lets ther back-fires burn too long ye're es bad off es ye war when ye started out."
"How does ye aim ter take keer of me?" inquired the listener and Bas replied promptly: "When ther time comes ter bust 'em up, we'll hev strength enough ter handle ther matter. Leave thet ter me. You'll be state's evidencethen an' we'll prove thet ye ji'ned up ter keep watch fer me."
Over Sim Squires' face spread the vapid grin that he used to conceal his emotions.
"But thet all comes later on," enjoined Bas. "Meanwhile, keep preachin' ter them fellers thet Thornton's buildin' up a case erginst 'em. Keep 'em skeered an' wrought up."
"I reckon we'd better not start away tergither," suggested Sim when they had brought their business to its conclusion, "you go on, Bas, an' I'll foller d'reckly."
When he stood alone in the house Sim spent a half-hour seeking to study the ramifications of the whole web of intrigue from various angles of consideration, but before he left the place he acted on a sudden thought and, groping in the recess between plate-girder and overhang, he drew out the dust-coated diary that Bas had thrust there and forgotten, long ago. This Sim put into his pocket and took with him.
* * *
The winter dragged out its course and broke that year like a glacier suddenly loosened from its moorings of ice. A warm breath came out of the south and icicled gorges sounded to the sodden drip of melting waters. Snowslides moved on hundreds of steeply pitched slopes, and fed sudden rivulets into freshet roarings.
The river itself was no longer a clear ribbon but aturgid flood-tide that swept along uprooted trees and snags of foam-lathered drift.
There was as yet neither bud nor leaf, and the air was raw and bone-chilling, but everywhere was the restless stirring of dormant life impulses and uneasy hints of labour-pains.
While the river sucked at its mud bank and lapped its inundated lowlands, the walnut tree in the yard above the high-water mark sang sagas of rebirth through the night as the wind gave tongue in its naked branches.
But in the breast of Sim Squires this spirit of restlessness was more than an uneasy stirring. It was an obsession.
He knew that when spring, or at the latest early summer, brought firmness to the mired highways and deeper cover to the woods, the organization of which he was a prominent member would strike, and stake its success or failure upon decisive issue. Then Parish Thornton, and a handful of lesser designates, would die—or else the "riders" would encounter defeat and see their leaders go to the penitentiary.
Bas Rowlett, himself a traitor to the Ku Klux, had promised Sim safety, but Sim had never known Bas to keep faith, and he did not trust him now.
Yet, should he break with the evil forces to which he stood allied, Sim's peril became only the greater. So he lay awake through these gusty nights cudgelling his brain for a solution, and at the end, when spring had come with her first gracious touches of Judas-tree and wild plum blossoming, he made up his mind.
Sim Squires came to his decision one balmy afternoon and went, with a caution that could not have been greater had he contemplated murder, to the house of Hump Doane, when he knew the old man to be alone.
His design, after all, was a simple one for a man versed in the art of double-crossing and triple-crossing.
If the riders prevailed he was safe enough, by reason of his charter membership, and none of his brother vigilantes suspected that his participation had been unwilling. But they might not prevail, and, in that event, it was well to have a friend among the victors.
He meant, therefore, to tell Hump Doane some things that Hump Doane wished very much to know, but he would go to the confessional under such oath of secrecy as could not recoil upon him. Then whoever triumphed, be it Bas, the white-caps, or the forces of law and order, he would have a protector on the winning side.
The hunchback met his furtive visitor at the stile and walked with him back into the chill woods where they were safe from observation. The drawn face and the frightened eyes told him in advance that this would be no ordinary interview, yet he was unprepared for what he heard.
When Squires had hinted that he came heavy with tidings of gravest import, but must be given guarantees of protection before he spoke, Hump Doane sat reflecting dubiously upon the matter, then he shook his head. "I don't jest see whar hit profits me ter know things thet I kain't make no use of," he demurred, and Sim Squires bent forward with haunted eyes.
"They'refacts," he protested. "Ye kin use them facts, only ye mustn't tell no man whar ye got 'em from."
"Go ahead, then," decided Hump Doane after weighing the proposition even further. "I'm hearkenin', an' I stands pledged ter hold my counsel es ter yore part in tellin' me."
The sun was sinking toward the horizon and the woods were cold. The informer rose and walked back and forth on the soggy carpet of rotted leaves with hands that clasped and unclasped themselves at hisback. He was under a stress of feeling that bordered on collapse.
The dog that has been kicked and knocked about from puppyhood has in it the accumulated viciousness of his long injuries. Such a beast is ready to run amuck, frothing at the mouth, and Sim Squires was not unlike that dog. He had debated this step through days and nights of hate and terror. He had faltered and vacillated. Now he had come, and the long-repressed passions had broken all his dams of reserve, transforming him, as if with an epilepsy. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks were putty-yellow and, had he been a dog instead of a man, his fangs would have been slathered with foam.
Heretofore he had spoken hesitantly and cautiously. Now like the epileptic or the mad dog, he burst into a volcanic outpouring in which wild words tumbled upon themselves in a cataract of boiling abandon. His fists were clenched and veins stood out on his face.
"I'm ther man thet shot Parish Thornton when he fust come hyar," was his sensational beginning, "but albeit my hand sighted ther gun an' pulled ther trigger hit was another man's damn dirty heart that contrived ther act an' another man's dollars thet paid fer hit. I was plum fo'ced ter do hit by a low-lived feller thet hed done got me whar he wanted me—a feller thet bull-dozed an' dogged me an' didn't suffer me ter call my soul my own—a feller thet I hates an' dreads like I don't nuver expect ter hate Satan in hell!"
The informer broke off there and stood a pitiable picture of rage and cowardice, shaken with tearless sobs of unwonted emotion.
"Some men ruins women," he rushed on, "an' some ruins other men.Hedone thet ter me—an' whenever I boggled or balked he cracked his whip anew—an' I wasn't nuthin' but his pore white nigger thet obeyedhim. I ached ter kill him an' I didn't even dast ter contrary him. His name's Bas Rowlett!"
The recital broke off and the speaker stood trembling from head to foot. Then the hearer who had listened paled to the roots of his shaggy hair and his gargoyle face became a mask of tragic fury.
At first Hump Doane did not trust himself to speak and when he did, there was a moment in which the other feared him almost more than he feared Bas Rowlett.
For the words of the hunchback came like a roar of thunder and he seemed on the verge of leaping at his visitor's throat.
"Afore God, ye self-confessed, murderin' liar," he bellowed, "don't seek ter accuse Bas Rowlett ter me in no sich perjury! He's my kinsman an' my friend—an' I knows ye lies. Ef ye ever lets words like them cross yore lips ergin in my hearin' I'll t'ar ther tongue outen yore mouth with these two hands of mine!"
For a space they stood there in silence, the old man glaring, the younger slowly coming back from his mania of emotion as from a trance.
Perhaps had Sim sought to insist on his story he would never have been allowed to finish it, but in that little interval of pause Hump Doane's passion also passed, as passions too violent to endure must pass.
After the first unsuspected shock, it was borne in on him that there are confessions which may not be doubted, and that of them this was one. His mind began to reaccommodate itself, and after a little he said in a voice of deadly coldness:
"Howsoever, now thet ye've started, go on. I'll hear ye out."
"I'm tellin' ye gospel truth, an' sometimes ther truth hurts," insisted Sim. "Bas war jealous ofDorothy Harper—an' I didn't dast ter deny him. He paid me a patch of river-bottom land fer ther job, albeit I failed."
Hump Doane stood, his ugly face seamed with a scowl of incredulous sternness, his hand twitching at the ends of his long and gorilla-like arms. "Go on," he reiterated, "don't keep me waitin'."
Under the evening sky, standing rigid with emotion, Squires doggedly went on. He told, abating nothing, the whole wretched story from his own knowledge: how Bas had sought to bring on the war afresh in order that his enemy Parish Thornton might perish in its flaming; how with the same end in view Bas had shot at Old Jim; how he himself had been sent to trail Thornton to Virginia that his master might inform upon him, and how while the Virginian was away, in jeopardy of his life, the arch-conspirator had pursued his wife, until she, being afraid to tell her husband, had come near killing the tormentor herself.
"Hit war Bas thet stirred up ther riders into formin'," declared the spy in conclusion. "He didn't nuver take no part hisself, but he used two men thet didn't dast disobey him—two men thet he rules over like nigger slaves—an' ther riders hev got one object over an' above everything else, thet he aims ter hev 'em carry through. Thet is ter kill Parish Thornton."
Hump Doane walked over and stood looking up from his squat, toad-like deformity into the face of the man who towered above him, yet in his eyes was the blaze with which a giant might look down on a pigmy.
"Ye says he used two men, Sim," the falsetto of the hunchback's voice was as sharp as a dagger's point. "Ef ye came hyar fer any honest purpose, I calls on ye, now, ter give me them two names."
Squires' face turned even paler than it had been. The veins along his temple were pulsing, and his wordscaught and hung in hesitancy; but he gulped and said in a forced voice: "I was one of 'em, Hump."
"An' t'other one? Who war he?"
Again the informer hesitated, this time longer than before, but in the end he said dully:
"Hump, t'other one war—yore own boy, Pete."
Strangelyenough it was as though the old man's capacity for being shocked or infuriated had been exhausted. There was no roar of maddened wrath or denunciation of denial now. Never had Sim seen on a human face such a despair of stricken grief. Hump Doane only passed an open palm across his forehead. Somehow this hideous recital, which had made him an old man in the space of a few minutes, blasting him like a thunder bolt, could not be seriously doubted. It was not allegation but revelation.
Pete was young and impressionable. He was clay upon the wheel of Bas Rowlett's domination, and of late he had been much away from home.
The father tried to straighten his twisted shoulders and his warped back. He turned his eyes to the west where the fires of sunset were crimson and purple, then he spoke again in a manner of recovered and hard-held self-control.
"Ef these things ye tells me be true," he said, "I hev need ter know 'em an' I'm beholden ter ye. Ef they're false ye've done struck me a blow I kain't nuver fergive, an' I don't see how you an' me kin both go on livin'. I aims ter find out fer myself, an' meanwhile—I'll keep my pledge ter ye." He paused, then the leader triumphed over the stricken individual.
"Keep right on goin' ter every meetin' ther riders holds," he directed, quietly. "Don't suffer 'em ter suspicion no falsity."
But when Sim had left him Hump Doane stood there while the sunset faded, while the afterglow livened and died, while the cold twilight settled.
He was thinking of the son he loved and despised, of the soft human metal that had been hammered into debauchery by this other man whom he had trusted.
He was acknowledging, too, that if the riders numbered among their secret adherents such men as Bas Rowlett and his own boy, his fight was upon a poison that had struck deeper and more malignantly into the arteries of the community than he had heretofore dreamed.
He must talk with Parish Thornton, whose strength and judgment could be trusted. He would see him to-night.
But at that point he halted. As yet he could not reveal his unsubstantiated information to another. A pledge of sacredly observed confidence had been the price of his learning these things—and over there at the Thornton house a baby was expected before long. It would be both wise and considerate to defer the interview that must of necessity bring the whole crisis to violent issue until the young father's thoughts were less personally involved. It was a time to make haste slowly. Old Hump Doane laughed bitterly. He was a father himself, and to-night he had learned how the heart of a parent can be battered.
But before he went to his bed he had talked with his son, while his son sat cowering. It had been a stormy interview during which Pete had denied, expostulated, and at the end broken down in confession, and when Hump Doane rose he had abandoned that slender shred of hope to which, in the teeth of conviction, he had been clinging, that his boy might still be able to clear himself.
"Ye've done lied ter me, an' ye've done broke my heart," declared the hunchback, slowly, "but ye'vedone confessed—an' I'm too damn weak ter turn ye over ter ther law like my duty demands. Don't nuver go ter no other meetin', an' ef they questions why ye don't come, tell 'em ter ask me! An' now"—the old man crumpled forward and buried his great head in his knotted hands—"an' now git outen my sight fer a spell, fer I kain't endure ther sight of ye!"
But when he rode abroad the next day no man suspected the cataclysm which had shattered Hump Doane's world into a chaos of irretrievable wreck.
A closer guard of caution than ever before he set upon his speech and bearing, while he sought to run down those devastating truths that had come to him with such unwelcome illumination.
* * *
In those days of first bud and leaf Dorothy Thornton looked out of her window with a psychological anxiety. If the first hint of life that came to the great tree were diseased or marked with blight, it would be an omen of ill under which she did not see how she could face her hour, and with fevered eyes she searched the gray branches where the sap was rising and studied the earliest tinge of green.
"Ef harm hed done come ter hit," she argued with herself, "hit would show, by this time, in them leetle buds an' tossels," but she was not satisfied, and reaching through the attic window she broke off from day to day bits of twig to see whether the vitality of rising sap or the brittleness of death proclaimed itself in the wood.
Slowly, under soft air and rain, the buds broke into tiny spears, too small and tender, it seemed to her, to live against the unkind touch of harsh winds, and the rudimentary filaments spread and grew into leaves.
But the time that seemed to Dorothy to lag so interminably was passing, and the veils of misty greenthat had scarcely showed through the forest grays were growing to an emerald vividness. Waxen masses of laurel were filling out and flushing with the pink of blossom. The heavy-fragranced bloom of the locust drooped over those upturned chalices of pink, and the black walnut was gaunt no more, but as brightly and lustily youthful as a troubador whom age had never touched.
Warm with swelling life and full throated with bird music the beginnings of summer came to the hills, and the hills forgot their grimness.
But Old Jim Rowlett, over there in his house, was failing fast, men said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So toward the younger and more robust influence of Parish Thornton his adherents turned in his stead.
In those places where secret night sessions were held were the stir of preparation and the talk of punishing a traitor—for young Pete had deserted the cause, and the plotters were divided in sentiment. A majority advocated striking with stunning suddenness toward the major purpose and ignoring the disaffection of the one young renegade, but a fiercer minority was for making him an example, and cool counsels were being taxed.
To Dorothy Thornton's eyes contentment had returned because gay and hopeful young flags of green flew from every twig of the tree of augury, and in her deep pupils dwelt the serene sweetness that broods on thoughts of approaching motherhood.
Then one morning before dawn Uncle Jase Burrell and a neighbour woman, versed in the homely practises of the midwife, came to the room where Parish Thornton sat with tightly clenched hands before the ruddy hearth.
"He's done been borned," said Uncle Jase, cheerily; "he's hale an' survigrous an' sassy—an' he's a boy."
Sim Squires had not gone home that night, and now he rose from his chair and picked up his hat. "I reckon I'll be farin' on," he announced, "hit's all over now but ther shoutin'." At the door, though, he turned back and from his coat pocket drew a roll of sheafed paper bound in a limp cloth.
"I found this hyar thing layin' behind a barrel up thar in ther attic," he lied, as he restored the lost journal of the revolutionary ancestress. "I 'lowed hit mout be somethin' ye prized."
* * *
One night, when June had come to her full-bosomed richness, young Pete Doane did not return to his father's house and the old hunchback's face darkened anxiously.
The warm night was a blue and moonlit glory of summer tranquillity and from the creek bottom came the full-throated chorus of the frogs. Back in the dark timber sounded the plaintive sweetness of the whippoorwills, and from everywhere drifted an intangible blending of fragrances.
But Hump sat alone and morose in the house where no one dwelt but himself and his son—save the neighbour woman who came in the daytime to cook and clean house for the widower. He sat there until midnight had passed and the moon was riding low to the west; he was still sitting in the darkness that comes before dawn, and young Pete had not yet come. Then when even June could not make gracious that dismal hour that brings fog and reek before the first gray streaks the east, the old man heard a voice outside his door and rose heavily to answer it.
He was a marked man, and should not have been soincautious, but in these days death held no threat for Hump Doane. It was life that brought him torture.
So he ignored those precepts of wariness which had been taught him by years of experience, and when he stood unarmed in the doorway, against a background of pale lamplight, he felt the thrust of a rifle muzzle against his ribs, and heard a disguised voice ordering, "Come with us."
Hump did not flinch or give back. Neither did he obey. Instead, he laughed with a hollow callousness and replied, "Shoot ef ye've a mind ter. I hain't goin' ter stir a step ter foller ye."
But masked men closed in and caught his misshapen elbows, and the voice that had first accosted him went on in the level tones of its disguise:
"We don't aim ter harm ye, Hump; leastways not yit—but we aims ter show ye somethin' we've brought ye fer a gift."
They led him, too dull and apathetic of spirit to resist, too indifferent of any consequence to protest, out and across his own fog-wrapped yard and down to the sledge-trail road.
There in the bleak obscurity of blackness his eyes could make out a squad of silent figures, but nothing more.
"Ye kain't rightly see hit yit, Hump," announced the spokesman, "but thar's a fodder-sledge standin' thar at ther aidge of ther road—an' on hit thar's somethin' thet b'longs ter ye. Hyar's a pine faggot thet's soaked with kerosene—an' hyar's matches ter light hit with—but—on pain of death—wait twell we've done gone away."
Into the heavy indifference of the old man's mood flashed a sickening shaft of dread. He took the torch and the matches, and then with a cowardice that was alien to his character he stood trembling like a frightened child, while the dark figures disappeared as though they had melted.
Hump Doane was afraid to kindle his torch, not afraid because of any threat to himself, but terrified for what he might see.
Then he braced himself, and with his back turned, struck the match and saw the guttering flames leap greedily upon the oiled pine splinter.
Slowly he wheeled, and his eyes fell on the illuminated sledge—his own sledge stolen from his barn—and there stretched lifeless, and shamefully marked with the defacement of the hangman's rope, lay what was left of his son.
Old Hump Doane, who had never stepped aside from any danger, who had never known tears since babyhood, stood for a moment gulping, then the light dropped from his hand and the agony of his shriek went quavering across the silent hills and reëchoed in the woods.
The pine splinter burned out in the wet grass and old Hump lay beside it insensible, but after a while he awakened out of that merciful sleep and crawled on his hands and knees over to where the sledge stood, and he knelt there with his face buried on the lifeless breast.
"God fergive me," he murmured with a strangled voice. "He didn't nuver hev no mammy ter raise him up aright. I reckon I failed him when he needed me most—but Bas Rowlett's accountable terme!"
When the neighbour woman came the next morning to prepare breakfast she fled screaming away from the gruesome sight that met her eyes: the sight of a dead man lying on a sledge, and a hunchback, who seemed dead, too, stretched unconscious across the body. It was so that men found them later, and carried them in, and it would have been more merciful had Hump Doane been as lifeless as he seemed instead of coming back to the ordeal he must face.
* * *
Through a community stunned and appalled into breathlessness the news ran like quicksilver, and the easy-pacing mule from Parish Thornton's barn was lathered with sweat as the young man called upon it to annihilate time and space over the broken ways between his house and that of his stricken friend.
At Hump Doane's stile Thornton flung himself out of his saddle and paused for no word with those neighbours who stood gathered about the dooryard. He heard the whine of a saw and the pounding of a hammer off somewhere to the rear, and knew that volunteer and amateur undertakers were fashioning a coffin—but he hurled himself like a human hurricane across the threshold and demanded briefly: "War's Hump at?"
The room was dim and murky at its corners, but through the two doors poured a flood of morning light, and into its shaft projected an unhinged shutter supported on two saw-horses, with a sheeted burden upon it. As his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom beyond the room's centre, Parish could make out the hunched figure that sat at the head of the body, still mercifully wrapped in something like lethargy and too numbed for full acuteness of feeling.
Other figures to the number of two or three moved as silently as dark wraiths about the place, but when Parish entered they drifted out, leaving him alone with his friend, and one of the doors closed upon their going.
Then the lightnings of outraged wrath that seemed to crackle in the young clansman's eyes stilled themselves and altered into something like tenderness as he moved with catlike softness of footfall to where the elder man sat, and let a hand fall on his malformed shoulder.
"Hump," he said, briefly, "my heart's plum sufferin' fer ye. I jest heared of hit."
Hump Doane stirred and looked stupidly at him fora space, then with laboured slowness he came to his feet, and his only answer was the eloquent gesture with which one hand swept toward the dead body.
A stupefaction of grief had held him since they had brought him in this morning from the road where they had found him, and thought had moved so haltingly that it had scarcely been thought at all.
But now the vitalizing light of sympathy and outrage in those other eyes seemed to rouse him out of his long coma with an awakening like that which comes after ether.
As gray dawn quickens gradually out of darkness, a numbed indignation in his pupils began to liven into unquenchable wrath.
"I hain't been able ter talk ... ter these hyar kindly neighbours of mine...." he faltered, "but somehow, I believes I kin withyou."
"I'm hyar ter s'arve ye, howsoever I kin, Hump," Parish assured him. "Ef ye was my own father I couldn't love ye better."
Hump Doane held out a crumpled paper that had been crushed in his taut hand, and Thornton stepping to the light smoothed it and read, pencilled in roughly printed characters, "A warning to all traitors."
"Hit war pinned on him...." explained the father. "Ther riders done hit ...he'ddone jined 'em ... an' he quit."
Parish Thornton stood with the light full on his face and the paper grasped in his hand. The angle of his clean-cut jaw seemed to harden from the plastic texture of flesh to the hardness of granite, and in his narrowed eyes spurted jets of those blue-and-white fires that hold intensest heat.
"I always aimed ter raise him up in godly ways," went on the father with self-accusing misery, "but I war a hard man, an' I never gentled him none. I reckonI driv him ter others ... thet debauched an' ruint him."
He had been, to that point, the man conscious only of his hurt, but now his face became contorted and livid with a sudden hurricane of rage.
"But them thet hanged him," he cried out in abrupt violence, "vile es they war ... they warn't nothin' ter ther man thet made a dupe out of him ... ther man thet egged them on.... Bas Rowlett's accountable ter me—an' afore ther sun sets I aims ter stand over his dead body!"
Parish Thornton flinched at the name. He had turned his face toward the sheeted figure, but now he wheeled back, crouching and straightening with the spasmodic quickness of a boxer who sidesteps a blow.
"Bas Rowlett!" he echoed in a low but deadly tensity of voice. "Steady yoreself, man, an' construe what ye means!"
Hump Doane had shaken off his torpor now and stood trembling under all the furies of repressed years. His words came in a torrent of vehemence that could not be stemmed, and they mounted like gathering winds.
"I've preached peace day in an' day out.... I've striven ter keep hit ... an' I knows I did aright ... but this day I'm goin' ter stultify myself an' kill a man ... an' when I finishes him, I'm going ter keep right on till I'm either kilt myself or gits all them thet's accountable ferthis!" He paused, breathing in gasps, then rushed on again: "I trusted Bas Rowlett ... I believed in him ... some weeks back I l'arned some things erbout him thet shocked me sore, but still I held my hand ... waitin' ter counsel withyouatter yore baby hed been borned."
"What war hit ye l'arned, Hump?" The youngerman's voice was almost inaudibly low, and the answer came like volley-firing with words.
"Hit war Bas thet hired ye laywayed.... Hit war Bas thet egged Sam Opdyke on ter kill ye.... Hit war Bas thet sent word over inter Virginny ter betray ye ter ther law.... Hit war Bas thet shot through old Jim's hat ter make a false appearance an' foment strife.... Hit war Bas thet stirred men up ter organizin' ther riders ... an' used my boy fer a catspaw!"
"Listen, man!" Parish Thornton was breathing his words through lips that scarcely moved as he bent forward with the tautness of a coiled spring. "I knowed Bas Rowlett hired me shot ... but we'd done pledged ourselves ter settle thet betwixt us.... I held my hand because of ther oath I give ye when we made ther truce ... but these other things, I hain't nuver even dremp' of ther like afore. Does ye know aught more of him?"
"I knows thet whilst ye war away in Virginny he went over an' sought ter make love ter yore wife ... an' she come nigh killin' him fer hit ... but she feared fer bloodshed ef she bore thet tale teryou."
The old man paused, and Parish Thornton made no answer in words, but between his lips the breath ran out with the hiss of sobbing waters.
"I kain't prove none of them things in law," went on Hump, and his eyes travelled back to the hideous fascination of the sheeted body, "yit I knows, in my heart, every one of 'em's true—an' thet's enough fer me. Now I'm goin' ter be my own law!"
The cripple turned and walked unsteadily to the corner of the room, and from its place behind a calico curtain he took out a repeating rifle.
"Thar's my co'te of jestice," he declared, and his voice trembled as with hunger and thirst.
But Parish Thornton had thrown back his head and unaccountably he laughed as he laid on the other's arm fingers that closed slowly into a grip of steel and rawhide.
"Hump," he said, "hit would be a turrible pity fer us ter quarrel—but I don't aim ter be robbed, even byyou! Thet man belongs terme... an' I aims ter claim him now. When my blood war bi'lin' like a mortal fever ... right hyar in this room ... didn't ye fo'ce me ter lay aside my grudge till sich day es ye give me license ter take hit up ergin?... an' hain't thet day come now?... From thet time till this I've kep' my word ... but hell hitself couldn't hold me back no longer.... Ye kain't hev him, Hump. He'smine!"
He paused, then with something like a sob he repeated in a dazed voice, "An' ye says he aimed ter fo'ce Dorothy with his love-makin'. God!"
Hump Doane was still clinging to the rifle upon which Thornton had laid his hands, and they stood there, two claimants, neither of whom was willing to surrender his title to a disputed prize—the prize of Bas Rowlett's life.
But at length the older fingers loosened their hold and the older man took a stumbling step and knelt by his dead. Then the younger, with the gun cradled in his elbow, and a light of release in his eyes—a light that seemed almost one of contentment—went out through the door and crossed the yard to the fence where his mount was hitched.
Sim, standing at the barn door, had watched Parish Thornton ride away that morning with a troubled heart, as he wondered what sequel these events would bring for himself. Then he went to the house and called softly to Dorothy. She was crooning a lullaby, behind the closed door of her room, to the small mite of humanity that had come, in healthy pinkness, to the comparatively mature age of one month.
"Thar hain't nuthin' ter be done right now," the hired man told her, "an' I've got ter fare over ter my own place fer a spell. A man's comin' ter haggle with me over a cattle deal."
But Sim was not going to his own house. He was acting under standing orders which might in no wise be disobeyed.
The organization that had been born in secret and nurtured to malignant vigour had never held a daylight session before. No call had gone out for one now, but an understanding existed and an obligation, acknowledged by its membership in the oath of allegiance.
If ever at any time, day or night, shine or storm, such an occasion developed as carried the urge of emergency, each rider must forthwith repair to his designated post, armed and ready for instant action.
This prearranged mobilization must follow automatically upon the event that brought the need, and it involved squad meetings at various points. In its supporta system of signalling and communication had been devised, whereby separated units might establish and hold unbroken touch, and might flow together like shattered beads of quicksilver.
Unless Sim Squires was profoundly mistaken, such a time had come.
But Sim went with a heavy heart of divided allegiance. He dared not absent himself, and he knew that after last night's happening the space of twenty-four hours could scarcely pass without bringing the issue of decisive battle between the occult and the open powers that were warring for domination in that community.
He realized that somehow a hideous blunder had been committed and he guessed with what a frenzy of rage Bas Rowlett had learned that the organization into which he had infused the breath of life had murdered one of his two confidential vassals.
At the gorge that men called a "master shut-in", which was Sim's rendezvous for such an emergency meeting, he found that others had arrived before him, and among the faces into which he looked was that of Rick Joyce, black with a wrath as yet held in abeyance, but promising speedy and stormy eruption.
The spot was wild beyond description, lying in the lap of mountains that had in some day of world infancy been riven into a mighty boulder-strewn fissure between walls of sheer and gloomy precipices.
It was a place to which men would come for no legitimate purpose; a place which the hounded bear and deer had avoided even when hard driven, and inviting only to copperhead, skunk, and fox. About it lay "laurel-hells" thick-matted and gnarled, briars that were like entanglements of barbed wire, and woods so black of recess that bats flew through their corridors of pine at midday. But these men had cut, and used familiarly, tortuous and hidden zig-zags of entry andexit, and they came separately from divergent directions.
When Sim arrived they were waiting for their informal quorum, but at last a dozen had assembled and in other places there were other dozens. Each group had a commander freshly come from a sort of staff meeting, which had already decided the larger questions of policy. There would be little debate here, only the sharp giving of orders which none would venture to disobey.
Rick Joyce took inventory of the faces and mentally called his roll. Then he nodded his head and said brusquely, "We're ready ter go ahead now."
The men lounged about him with a pretence of stoical composure, but under that guise was a mighty disquiet, for even in an organization of his own upbuilding the mountaineer frets against the despotic power that says "thou shall" and "thou shalt not."
"Thar's been treason amongst us," announced Rick Joyce, sharply, and every man seemed to find that wrathful glance resting accusingly upon himself. "Thar's been treason that's got ter be paid in full an' with int'rest hereatter. Thet thing thet tuck place last night was mighty damnable an' erginst all orders. Ther fellers thet did hit affronted this hyar army of riders thet they stood sworn ter obey."
Whether among those followers gathered about him there were any who had participated in last night's murder Rick Joyce did not know, but he knew that a minority had run to a violence which had been neither ordered nor countenanced. They had gotten out of hand, wreaked a premature vengeance, and precipitated the need of action before the majority was ready. But it was now too late to waste time in lamentation. The thing was done, and the organization saddled with that guilt must strike or be struck down.
The Ku Klux had meant to move at its own appointedtime, with the irresistible sweep and force of an avalanche. Before the designated season a lighter snowslide had broken away and the avalanche had no choice but to follow.
To-morrow every aroused impulse of law and order would be battle-girt and the secret body would be on the defensive—perhaps even on the run. If it were to hold the offensive it must strike and terrorize before another day had dawned—and that was not as it had planned its course.
"Hit's too late now ter cry over spilt milk," declared Joyce with a burr in his voice. "Later on we'll handle our own traitors—right now thar's another task thet won't suffer no delay."
He paused, scowling, then enlightened his hearers briefly:
"We warn't ready ter finish up this matter yit but now we hain't got no choice. Hit's ternight or never. We stands disgusted by all mankind, an' in sheer self-defence we've got ter terrify mankind so they won't dast utter what disgust they feels. Old Jim's nigh ter death an' we don't need ter bother with him; Hump Doane kin wait—one blow's done fell on him already—but thar's yit another man thet won't never cease ter dog us whilst he lives, an' thet's Parish Thornton—so ternight we aims ter hang him."
Once more there was a pause, then as though pointing his moral the spokesman supplemented his remarks:
"Hit hes need ter be a thing," he said, solemnly, "thet's goin' ter terrify this whole country in sich dire fashion thet fer twenty y'ars ter come no grand juror won't dast vote fer no investigation."
There remained those exact details that should cause the elaborate operation to function together without hitch or miscarriage, and to these Rick Joyce addressed himself.
The mob was to participate in force of full numbers and no absentees were to be tolerated.
"When ther game starts up hit's got ter go quick as a bat flyin' through hell," enjoined the director. "Every man teks his slicker an' his false-face, an' goes one by one ter ther woods eround Thornton's house es soon es dusk sottles. Every man's got ter be nigh enough afore sun-down ter make shore of gettin' thar on time. Then they all draws in, holdin' ter ther thickets. Ther signal will be ther callin' of whippoorwills—a double call with a count of five betwixt 'em. When we're all drawed up eround ther house, so no way hain't left open thet a rabbit could break through, I'll sing out—an' when I does thet ye all closes in on ther run. Thar's a big walnuck tree right by ther door ter hang him on—an' termorrer mornin' folks'll hev a lesson thet they kin kinderly take ter heart."
* * *
On his way back from Hump Doane's house that morning Parish Thornton made a detour for a brief visit upon Jase Burrell, the man to whose discretion he had entrusted the keeping of Bas Rowlett's sealed confession. From the hands of that faithful custodian he took the envelope and thrust it into his breast pocket. Now that his own pledge of suspended vengeance had been exonerated he would no longer need that bond of amnesty. Moreover, he knew now that this compact had been a rope of sand to Bas Rowlett from the beginning, and would never be anything else. It only served to divert the plotter's activities and treacheries into subtler channels—and when the sun set to-day there would be either no Bas Rowlett to bind or no Parish Thornton to seek to bind him.
Then he rode home.
Thornton entered his own house silently, but with theface of an avenging spirit, and it was a face that told his story.
The rigid pose and the set jaw, the irreconcilable light in the eyes, were all things that Dorothy understood at once and without explanation. As she looked at her husband she thought, somehow, of a falcon or eagle poised on a bare tree-top at a precipice edge. There was the same alert restiveness as might have marked a bird of prey, gauging the blue sky-reaches with predatory eye, and ready to strike with a winged bolt of death.
Quietly, because the baby had just fallen asleep, she rose and laid the child on the bright patterned coverlet of the fourposter, and she paused, too, to brace herself with a glance into the cool shadows and golden lights of the ample branches beyond the window.
Then she came back to the door and her voice was steady but low as she said, "Ye've done found out who did hit. I kin read thet in yore eyes, Ken."
He nodded, but until he had crossed the room and laid a hand on each of her shoulders, he did not speak.
"Since ther fust day I ever seed ye, honey," he declared with a sort of hushed fervour, "standin' up thar in ther winder, my heart hain't nuver struck a beat save ter love ye—an' thet war jest erbout a y'ar ago."
"Hit's been all my life, Ken," she protested. "Ther time thet went ahead of thet didn't skeercely count atall."
Her voice trembled, and the meeting of their gaze was a caress. Then he said: "When I wedded with ye out thar—under thet old tree—with ther sun shinin' down on us—I swore ter protect ye erginst all harm."
"Hain't ye always done thet, Ken?"
"Erginst all ther perils I knowed erbout—yes," he answered, slowly, then his tone leaped into vehemence."But I didn't suspicion—until terday—thet whilst I was away from ye—ye hed ter protect yoreself erginst Bas Rowlett."
"Bas Rowlett!" the name broke from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted, that reckoning belonged to to-day and would be neither diverted nor postponed.
Her old fear of what the consequence would be if this revelation came to his knowledge rose chokingly and overpoweringly.
Why had she not killed Bas herself before Sim Squires came in to interfere that day? Why had she allowed the moment to pass when a stroke of the blade might have ended the peril?
Atavistic impulses and contradictions of her blood welled confusedly up within her. This was her own battle and she wanted to fight it out for herself. If Rowlett were to be executed it should be she herself who sent him to his accounting. She was torn, as she stood there, between her terror for the man she loved and her hatred for the other—a hatred which clamoured for blood appeasement.
But she shook her head and sought to resolve the conflicting emotions.
"I hid ther truth from ye, Ken," she said, "because I feared fer what mout happen ef ye found out. I wasn't affrighted of Bas fer myself—but I war feryou. I knowed ye trusted him an' ef ye diskivered he war a traitor——"
"Traitor!" the man interrupted her, passionately, "he hain't never deluded me es ter thet since ther fust night I laid in thet thar bed atter I'd been shot. Him an' me come ter an' understandin' then an' thar—but he sworeter hold his hand twell we could meet man ter man, jest ther two of us."
A bitter laugh came with his pause, then he went on: "I 'lowed you trusted him an' I didn't seek ter rouse up no needless fears in yore heart—but now we both knows ther truth, an' I'm startin' out d'reckly ter sottle ther score fer all time."
Dorothy Thornton caught his shoulders and her eyes were full of pleading.
"Ye've done built up a name fer yoreself, Ken," she urged with burning fervour. "Hit war me thet told ye, thet day when Aaron Capper an' them others come, thet ye couldn't refuse ter lead men—but I told ye, too, ye war bounden ter lead 'em to'rds peace an' law. Ye've done led 'em thetaway, Ken, an' folks trusts ye, Harpers an' Doanes alike. Now ye kain't afford ter start in leadin' 'em wrong—ye kain't afford ter dirty yore hands with bloodshed, Ken. Ye kain't afford ter do hit!"
The man stood off looking at her with a love that was almost awe, with an admiration that was almost idolatry, but the obduracy persisted in his eyes.
"Partly ye're talkin' from conscience thet don't traffic ner barter with no evil, Dorothy," he made sober response, "an' partly, too, ye're talkin', woman-fashion, outen a fear thet seeks ter shield yore man. I honours both them things, but this time I hain't follerin' no fox-fire an' I kain't be stayed." He paused, and the hand that closed over hers was firm and resolute for all the tenderness of its pressure.
"Hit's warfare now ter ther hilt of ther knife, honey, but hit's ther warfare of them that strives fer decency an' law erginst them thet murders in ther night-time. An' yit ther riders has good men amongst 'em, too—men thet's jest sorely misguided. I reckon ye don't know thet, either, but Bas Rowlett's ther one body thetbrought 'em ter life an' eggs 'em on. When he dies ther riders'll fall apart like a string of beads thet's been cut in two. Terday I aims ter cut ther thread."
The woman stood trembling with the fervour of outraged indignation as he told her all he knew, but when he finished she nodded her head, in a finale of exhortation, toward the bedroom. Possibly she was not unlike the lawyer whose duty is to argue for legal observances even though his heart cries out mutinously for a hotter course.
"Air hit wuth while—orphanin' him—an' widderin' me fer—Ken?"
"Hit's wuth while his growin' up ter know thet he wasn't fathered by no craven, ner yit borne by a woman thet faltered," answered Parish Thornton; then he set Hump Doane's rifle in the corner and took out his own with the particularity of a man who, for a vital task, dares trust no tool save that with which he is most familiar.
When he had gone Dorothy sat down in her chair again. She remembered that other time when her mind had reeled under anxieties almost too poignant for endurance. Now she was nursing a baby, and she must hold herself in hand. Her eyes wandered about the place, seeking something upon which her mind might seize for support, and at length she rose and ran up the boxed-in stairway to the attic.
When she came back again to the bedroom she carried the journal that had been so mysteriously lost and recovered, and then she drew a chair to the window and opened the document where she had left off in her reading. But often she laid the book absent-mindedly in her lap to listen with an ear turned toward the bed, and often, too, she looked out into the spreading softness of golden-green laced through by dove-gray andsepia-brown branches on which played baffling reflexes of soft and mossy colours.
* * *
Parish Thornton did not approach the house of his enemy from the front. He came upon it from behind and held to the shelter of the laurel as long as that was possible, but he found a padlock on the door and all the windows closed.