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[Illustration: "What are you doing up here?"]
QUILL'S WINDOW
BY GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
FRONTISPIECE BY
C. ALLAN GILBERT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE FORBIDDEN ROCK
II THE STORY THE OLD MAN TOLD
III COURTNEY THANE
IV DOWD'S TAVERN
V TRESPASS
VI CHARLIE WEBSTER ENTERTAINS
VII COURTNEY APPEARS IN PUBLIC
VIII ALIX THE THIRD
IX A MID-OCTOBER DAY
X THE CHIMNEY CORNER
XI THANE VISITS TWO HOUSES
XII WORDS AND LETTERS
XIII THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL
XIV SUSPICION
XV THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
XVI ROSABEL
XVII SHADOWS
XVIII MR. GILFILLAN IS PUZZLED
XIX BRINGING UP THE PAST
XX THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ROSABEL VICK
XXI OUT OF THE NIGHT
XXII THE THROWER OF STONES
XXIII A MESSAGE AND ITS ANSWER
XXIV AT QUILL'S WINDOW
QUILL'S WINDOW
CHAPTER I
THE FORBIDDEN ROCK
A young man and an old one sat in the shade of the willows beside
the wide, still river. The glare of a hot August sun failed to
penetrate the shelter in which they idled; out upon the slow-gliding
river it beat relentlessly, creating a pale, thin vapour that
clung close to the shimmering surface and dazzled the eye with an
ever-shifting glaze. The air was lifeless, sultry, stifling; not a
leaf, not a twig in the tall, drooping willows moved unless stirred
by the passage of some vagrant bird.
The older man sat on the ground, his back against the trunk of a
tree that grew so near to the edge that it seemed on the point of
toppling over to shatter the smooth, green mirror below. Some of its
sturdy exposed roots reached down from the bank into the water,
where they caught and held the drift from upstream,--reeds and
twigs and matted grass,--a dirty, sickly mass that swished lazily
on the flank of the slow-moving current.
The water here in the shade was deep and clear and limpid, contrasting
sharply with the steel-white surface out beyond.
The young man occupied a decrepit camp stool, placed conveniently
against the trunk of another tree hard by. A discarded bamboo rod
lay beside him on the bank, the hook and line hopelessly tangled
in the drift below. He smoked cigarettes.
His companion held a well-chewed black cigar in the vise-like corner
of his mouth. His hook and line were far out in the placid water,
an ordinary cork serving as a "bob" from which his dreary, unwavering
gaze seldom shifted.
"I guess they're through bitin' for today," he remarked, after a
long unbroken silence.
"How many have we got?" inquired the other languidly.
"Between us we've got twenty-four. That's a fair-sized mess. Sunfish
don't make much of a showing unless you get a barrel of 'em."
"Good eating though," mused the young man.
"Fried in butter," supplemented the other. "What time is it?"
"Half-past nine."
"Well, that's just about what I'd figured. I've been fishin' in
this 'hole' for something like forty years, off and on, and I've
found out that these here sunfish get through breakfast at exactly
eighteen minutes past nine. I always allow about ten minutes' leeway
in case one or two of 'em might have been out late the night before
or something,--but as a general thing they're pretty dog-goned
prompt for breakfast. Specially in August. Even a fish is lazy in
August. Look at that fish-worm. By gosh, it's BOILED! That shows
you how hot the water is."
He removed the worm from the hook and slowly began to twist the
pole in the more or less perfunctory process of "winding up" the
line. The young man looked on disinterestedly.
"Ain't you going to untangle that line?" inquired the old man,
jerking his thumb.
"What's the use? The worm is dead by this time, and God knows
I prefer to let him rest in peace. The quickest way to untangle a
line is to do it like this."
He severed it with his pocket-knife.
"A line like that costs twenty-five cents," said the old man, a
trace of dismay in his voice.
"That's what it cost when it was new," drawled the other. "You
forget it's been a second-hand article since eight o'clock this
morning,--and what's a second-hand fish-line worth?--tell me that.
How much would you give, in the open market, or at an auction sale,
for a second-hand fish-line?"
"I guess we'd better be gittin' back to the house," said the other,
ignoring the question. "Got to clean these fish if we're expectin'
to have 'em for dinner,--or lunch, as you fellers call it. I'll
bet your grandfather never called it lunch. And as for him callin'
supper DINNER,--why, by crickey, he NEVER got drunk enough for
that."
"More than that," said the young man calmly, "he never saw a cigarette,
or a telephone, or a Ford, or a safety-razor,--or a lot of other
things that have sprung up since he cashed in his checks. To be
sure, he did see a few things I've never seen,--such as clay-pipes,
canal boats, horse-hair sofas, top-boots and rag-carpets,--and he
probably saw Abraham Lincoln,--but, for all that, I'd rather be
where I am today than where he is,--and I'm not saying he isn't in
heaven, either."
The older man's eyes twinkled. "I don't think he's any nearer heaven
than he was forty years ago,--and he's been dead just about that
long. He wasn't what you'd call a far-seeing man,--and you've got
to look a long ways ahead if you want to see heaven. Your grandma's
in heaven all right,--and I'll bet she was the most surprised mortal
that ever got inside the pearly gates if she found him there ahead
of her. Like as not she would have backed out, thinking she'd got
into the wrong place by mistake. And if he IS up there, I bet he's
making the place an everlastin' hell for her. Yep, your grandpa was
about as mean as they make 'em. As you say, he didn't know anything
about cigarettes, but he made up for it by runnin' after women and
fast horses,--or maybe it was hosses and, fast women,--and cheatin'
the eye teeth out of everybody he had any dealings with."
"I don't understand how he happened to die young, If all these things
were true about him," said the other, lighting a fresh cigarette
and drawing in a deep, full breath of the pungent smoke. The old
man waited a few seconds for the smoke to be expelled, and then,
as it came out in a far-reaching volume, carrying far on the still
air, his face betrayed not only relief but wonder.
"You don't actually swaller it, do you?" he inquired.
"Certainly not. I inhale, that's all. Any one can do it."
"I'd choke to death," said the old man, shifting his cigar hastily
from one side of his mouth to the other, and taking a fresh grip on
it with his teeth,--as if fearing the consequences of a momentary
lapse of control.
"You've been chewing that cigar for nearly two hours," observed
the young man. "I call that a filthy habit."
"I guess you're right," agreed the other, amiably. "The best you
can say for it is that it's a man's job, and not a woman's," he
added, with all the scorn that the cigar smoker has for the man
who affects nothing but cigarettes.
"You can't make me sore by talking like that," said his companion,
stretching himself lazily. "Approximately ten million men smoked
cigarettes over in France for four years and more, and I submit
that they had what you might call a man's job on their hands."
"How many of them things do you smoke in a day?"
"It depends entirely on how early I get up in the morning,--and
how late I stay up at night. Good Lord, it's getting hotter every
minute. For two cents, I'd strip and jump in there for a game of
hide and seek with the fish. By the way, I don't suppose there are
any mermaids in these parts, are there?"
"You stay out of that water," commanded the old man. "You ain't
strong enough yet to be takin' any such chances. You're here to get
well, and you got to be mighty all-fired careful. The bed of that
river is full of cold springs,--and it's pretty deep along this
stretch. Weak as you are,--and as hot as you are,--you'd get cramps
in less'n a minute."
"I happen to be a good swimmer."
"So was Bart Edgecomb,--best swimmer I ever saw. He could swim
back an' forth across this river half a dozen times,--and do you
know what happened to him last September? He drowned in three foot
of water up above the bend, that's what he did. Come on. Let's be
movin'. It'll be hotter'n blazes by eleven o'clock, and you oughtn't
to be walkin' in the sun."
The young man settled himself a little more comfortably against
the tree.
"I think I'll stay here in the shade for a while longer. Don't be
uneasy. I shan't go popping into the water the minute your back's
turned. What was it you said early this morning about sniffing rain
in the air?"
"Thunderstorms today, sure as my name's Brown. Been threatening
rain for nearly a week. Got to come some time, and I figure today's--"
"Threats are all we get," growled the young man peevishly. "Lord,
I never dreamed I could get so sick of white skies and what you call
fresh air. You farmers go to bed every night praying for rain, and
you get up in the morning still praying, and what's the result?
Nothing except a whiter sky than the day before, and a greater
shortage of fresh air. Don't talk to me about country air and
country sunshine and country quiet. My God, it never was so hot
and stifling as this in New York, and as for peace and quiet,--why,
those rotten birds in the trees around the house make more noise
than the elevated trains at the rush hour, and the rotten roosters
begin crowing just about the time I'm going to sleep, and the
dogs bark, and the cows,--the cows do whatever cows do to make a
noise,--and then the crows begin to yawp. And all night long the
katydids keep up their beastly racket, and the frogs in the pond
back of the barns,--my God, man, the city is as silent as the grave
compared to what you get in the country."
"I manage to sleep through it all," said the old man drily. "The
frogs and katydids don't keep me awake."
"Yes, and that reminds me of another noise that makes the night
hideous. It's the way you people sleep. At nine o'clock sharp,
every night, the whole house begins to snore, and--Say, I've seen
service in France, I've slept in barracks with scores of tired
soldiers, I've walked through camps where thousands of able-bodied
men were snoring their heads off,--but never have I heard anything
so terrifying as the racket that lasts from nine to five in the
land of my forefathers. Gad, it sometimes seems to me you're all
trying to make my forefathers turn over in their graves up there
on the hill."
"You're kind of peevish today, ain't you?" inquired the other,
grinning. "You'll get used to the way we snore before long, and
you'll kind of enjoy it. I'd be scared to death if I got awake in
the night and didn't hear everybody in the house snoring. It's kind
of restful to know that everybody's asleep,--and not dead. If they
wasn't snoring, I'd certainly think they was dead."
The young man smiled. "I'll say this much for you farmers,--you're
a good-natured bunch. I ought to be ashamed of myself for grousing.
I suppose it's because I've been sick. You're all so kind and
thoughtful,--and so darned GENUINE,--even when you're asleep,--that
I feel like a dog for finding fault. By the way, you said something
awhile ago about that big black cliff over yonder having a history.
I've been looking at that cliff or hill or rock, or whatever it is,
and it doesn't look real. It doesn't look as though God had made
it. It's more like the work of man. So far as I can see, there isn't
another hill on either bank of the river, and yet that thing over
there must be three or four hundred feet high, sticking up like a
gigantic wart on the face of the earth. What is it? Solid rock?"
"Sort like slate rock, I guess. There's a stretch of about a mile
on both sides of the river along here that's solid rock. This bank
we're standin' on is rock, covered with six or eight foot of earth.
You're right about that big rock over there being a queer thing.
There's been college professors and all sorts of scientific men
here, off and on, to examine it and to try to account for its being
there. But, thunderation, if it's been there for a million years
as they say, what's the sense of explaining it?"
"There's something positively forbidding about it. Gives you the
willies. How did it come by the name you called it a while ago?"
"Quill's Window? Goes back to the days of the Indians. Long before
the time of Tecumseh or The Prophet. They used to range up and down
this river more than a hundred years ago. The old trail is over
there on the other bank as plain as day, covered with grass but
beaten down till it's like a macadam road. I suppose the Indians
followed that trail for hundreds of years. There's still traces
of their camps over there on that side, and a little ways down the
river is a place where they had a regular village. Over here on
this side, quite a little ways farther down, is the remains of an
old earthwork fort used by the French long before the Revolution,
and afterwards by American soldiers about the time of the War of
1812. We'll go and look at it some day if you like. Most people
are interested in it, but for why, I can't see.
"There ain't nothing to see but some busted up breastworks and
lunettes, covered with weeds, with here and there a sort of opening
where they must have had a cannon sticking out to scare the squaws
and papooses. You was askin' about the name of that rock. Well, it
originally had an Indian name, which I always forget because it's
the easiest way to keep from pronouncing it. Then the French came
along and sort of Frenchified the name,--which made it worse, far
as I'm concerned. I'm not much on French. About three-quarters of
the way up the rock, facing the river, is a sort of cave. You can't
see the opening from here, 'cause it faces north, looking up the
river from the bend. There are a lot of little caves and cracks in
the rock, but none of 'em amounts to anything except this one. It
runs back something like twenty foot in the rock and is about as
high as a man's head.
"Shortly after General Harrison licked The Prophet and his warriors
up on the Tippecanoe, a man named Quill,--an Irishman from down
the river some'eres towards Vincennes,--all this is hearsay so far
as I'm concerned, mind you,--but as I was saying, this man Quill
begin to make his home up in that cave. He was what you might call
a hermit. There were no white people in these parts except a few
scattered trappers and some people living in a settlement twenty-odd
miles south of here. As the story goes, this man Quill lived up there
in that cave for about four or five years, hunting and trapping all
around the country. White people begin to get purty thick in these
parts soon after that, Indiana having been made a state. There was
a lot of coming and going up and down the river. A feller named
Digby started a kind of settlement or trading-post further up,
and clearings were made all around,--farms and all that, you see.
Your great grandfather was one of the first men to settle in this
section. Coming down the river by night you could see the light,
up there in Quill's Cave. You could see it for miles, they say.
People begin to speak of it as the light in Quill's window,--and
that's how the name happened. I'm over seventy, and I've never
heard that hill called anything but Quill's Window."
"What happened to Quill?"
"Well, that's something nobody seems to be quite certain about.
Whether he hung himself or somebody else done the job for him,
nobody knows. According to the story that was told when I was a
boy, it seems he killed somebody down the river and come up here
to hide. The relations of the man he killed never stopped hunting
for him. A good many people were of the opinion they finally tracked
him to that cave. In any case, his body was found hanging by the
neck up there one day, on a sort of ridge-pole he had put in. This
was after people had missed seeing the light in Quill's Window for
quite a spell. There are some people who still say the cave is
ha'nted. When I was a young boy, shortly before the Civil War, a
couple of horse thieves were chased up to that cave and--ahem!--I
reckon your grandfather, if he was alive, could tell you all about
what became of 'em and who was in the party that stood 'em up against
the back wall of the cave and shot 'em. There's another story that
goes back even farther than the horse thieves. The skeleton of
a woman was found up there, with the skull split wide open. That
was back in 1830 or 1840. So, you see, when all of them ghosts get
together and begin scrapping over property rights, it's enough to
scare the gizzard out of 'most anybody that happens to be in the
neighbourhood. But I guess old man Quill was the first white man
to shuffle off, so it's generally understood that his ghost rules
the roost. Come on now, let's be moving. It's gettin' hotter
every minute, and you oughtn't to be out in all this heat. For the
Lord's sake, you ain't going to light another one of them things,
are you?"
"Sure. It's the only vice I'm capable of enjoying at present. Being
gassed and shell-shocked, and then having the flu and pneumonia
and rheumatism,--and God knows what else,--sort of purifies a chap,
you see."
"Well, all I got to say is--I guess I'd better not say it, after
all."
"You can't hurt my feelings."
"I'm not so sure about that," said the old man gruffly.
"How do you get up to that cave?"
"You ain't thinking of trying it, are you?" apprehensively.
"When I'm a bit huskier, yes."
The old man removed his cigar in order to obtain the full effect
of a triumphant grin.
"Well, in the first place, you can't get up to it. You've got to
come down to it. The only way to get to the mouth of that cave is
to lower yourself from the top of the rock. And in the second place,
you can't get DOWN to it because it ain't allowed. The owner of all
the land along that side of the river has got 'no trespass' signs
up, and NOBODY'S allowed to climb to the top of that rock. She's
all-fired particular about it, too. The top of that rock is sacred
to her. Nobody ever thinks of violatin' it. All around the bottom
of the slope back of the hill she's got a white picket fence, and
the gate to it is padlocked. You see it's her family buryin'-ground."
"Her what?"
"Buryin'-ground. Her father and mother are buried right smack on
top of that rock."
The young man lifted his eyebrows. "Does that mean there are a
couple of married ghosts fighting on top of the rock every night,
besides the gang down in the--"
"It ain't a joking matter," broke in the other sharply.
"Go on, tell me more. The monstrosity gets more and more interesting
every minute."
The old man chewed his cigar energetically for a few seconds before
responding.
"I'll tell you the story tonight after supper,--not now. The only
thing I want to make clear to you is this. Everybody in this section
respects her wishes about keeping off of that rock, and I want to
ask you to respect 'em, too. It would be a dirty trick for you to
go up there, knowin' it's dead against her wishes."
"A dirty trick, eh?" said the young man, fixing his gaze on the
blue-black summit of the forbidden rock.