"Over yonder, eastward." Gray pointed unsteadily. "Like it might have
been beyond the draw and them trees in it."
Lanark and Jager peered into the waning light, that was now dusk. Jager
mumbled what Lanark had already been thinking--that Newton had died
without wounds, at or near the moment when the horned image had been
shattered upon the cellar floor.
Lanark nodded, and dismissed several vague but disturbing inspirations.
"You say he died standing up, Gray. Was he leaning on his gun?"
"No, sir. He stood on his two feet, and held his carbine at the ready.
Sounds impossible, a dead man standing up like that, but that's how it
was."
"Bring his blanket and cover him up," said Lanark. "Put a guard over
him, and we'll bury him tomorrow. Don't let any of the men look at his
face. We've got to give him some kind of funeral." He turned to Jager.
"Have you a prayer-book, sergeant?"
Jager had fished out the _Long Lost Friend_ volume. He was reading
something aloud, as though it were a prayer: "... and be and remain
with us on the water and upon the land," he pattered out. "May the
Eternal Godhead also----"
"Stop that heathen nonsense," Lanark almost roared. "You're supposed to
be an example to the men, sergeant. Put that book away."
Jager obeyed, his big face reproachful. "It was a spell against evil
spirits," he explained, and for a moment Lanark wished that he had
waited for the end. He shrugged and issued further orders.
"I want all the lamps lighted in the house, and perhaps a fire out here
in the yard," he told the men. "We'll keep guard both here and in that
gulley to the east. If there is a mystery, we'll solve it."
"Pardon me, sir," volunteered a well-bred voice, in which one felt
rather than heard the tiny touch of foreign accent. "I can solve the
mystery for you, though you may not thank me."
Two men had come into view, were drawing up beside the little knot of
troopers. How had they approached? Through the patroled brush of the
ravine? Around the corner of the house? Nobody had seen them coming,
and Lanark, at least, started violently. He glowered at this new enigma.
* * * * *
The man who had spoken paused at the foot of the porch steps, so
that lamplight shone upon him through the open front door. He was
skeleton-gaunt, in face and body, and even his bones were small. His
eyes burned forth from deep pits in his narrow, high skull, and his
clothing was that of a dandy of the forties. In his twig-like fingers
he clasped bunches of herbs.
His companion stood to one side in the shadow, and could be seen only
as a huge coarse lump of a man.
"I am Persil Mandifer," the thin creature introduced himself. "I came
here to gather from the gardens," and he held out his handfuls of
leaves and stalks. "You, sir, you are in command of these soldiers, are
you not? Then know that you are trespassing."
"The expediencies of war," replied Lanark easily, for he had seen Suggs
and Corporal Gray bring their carbines forward in their hands. "You'll
have to forgive our intrusion."
A scornful mouth opened in the emaciated face, and a soft, superior
chuckle made itself heard. "Oh, but this is not my estate. I am allowed
here, yes--but it is not mine. The real Master----" The gaunt figure
shrugged, and the voice paused for a moment. The bright eyes sought
Newton's body. "From what I see and what I heard as I came up to you,
there has been trouble. You have transgressed somehow, and have begun
to suffer."
"To you Southerners, all Union soldiers are trespassers and
transgressors," suggested Lanark, but the other laughed and shook his
fleshless white head.
"You misunderstand, I fear. I care nothing about this war, except
that I am amused to see so many people killed. I bear no part in it.
Of course, when I came to pluck herbs, and saw your sentry at the top
of Fearful Rock----" Persil Mandifer eyed again the corpse of Newton.
"There he lies, eh? It was my privilege and power to project a vision
up to him in his loneliness that, I think, put an end to his part of
this puerile strife."
Lanark's own face grew hard. "Mr. Mandifer," he said bleakly, "you seem
to be enjoying a quiet laugh at our expense. But I should point out
that we greatly outnumber you, and are armed. I'm greatly tempted to
place you under arrest."
"Then resist that temptation," advised Mandifer urbanely. "It might be
disastrous to you if we became enemies."
"Then be kind enough to explain what you're talking about," commanded
Lanark. Something swam into the forefront of his consciousness. "You
say that your name is Mandifer. We found a girl named Enid Mandifer
in the gulley yonder. She told us a very strange story. Are you her
stepfather? The one who mesmerized her and----"
"She talked to you?" Mandifer's soft voice suddenly shifted to a windy
roar that broke Lanark's questioning abruptly in two. "She came, and
did not make the sacrifice of herself? She shall expiate, sir, and you
with her!"
Lanark had had enough of this high-handed civilian's airs. He made
a motion with his left hand to Corporal Gray, whose carbine-barrel
glinted in the light from the house as it leveled itself at Mandifer's
skull-head.
"You're under arrest," Lanark informed the two men.
The bigger one growled, the first sound he had made. He threw his
enormous body forward in a sudden leaping stride, his gross hands
extended as though to clutch Lanark. Jager, at the lieutenant's side,
quickly drew his revolver and fired from the hip. The enormous body
fell, rolled over and subsided.
"You have killed my son!" shrieked Mandifer.
"Take hold of him, you two," ordered Lanark, and Suggs and Josserand
obeyed.
The gaunt form of Mandifer achieved one explosive struggle, then fell
tautly motionless with the big hands of the troopers upon his elbows.
"Thanks, Jager," continued Lanark. "That was done quickly and well.
Some of you drag this body up on the porch and cover it. Gray, tumble
upstairs and bring down that girl we found."
While waiting for the corporal to return, Lanark ordered further that
a bonfire be built to banish a patch of the deepening darkness. It was
beginning to shoot up its bright tongues as the corporal ushered Enid
Mandifer out upon the porch.
She had arranged her disordered clothing, had even contrived to put up
her hair somehow, loosely but attractively. The firelight brought out a
certain strength of line and angle in her face, and made her eyes shine
darkly. She was manifestly frightened at the sight of her stepfather
and the blanket-covered corpses to one side; but she faced determinedly
a flood of half-understandable invectives from the emaciated man. She
answered him, too; Lanark did not know what she meant by most of the
things she said, but gathered correctly that she was refusing, finally
and completely, to do something.
"Then I shall say no more," gritted out the spidery Mandifer, and his
bared teeth were of the flat, chalky white of long-dead bone. "I place
this matter in the hands of the Nameless One. He will not forgive, will
not forget."
* * * * *
Enid moved a step toward Lanark, who put out a hand and touched her
arm reassuringly. The mounting flame of the bonfire lighted up all
who watched and listened--the withered, glaring mummy that was Persil
Mandifer, the frightened but defiant shapeliness of Enid in her
flower-patterned gown, Lanark in his sudden attitude of protection,
the ring of troopers in their dusty blue blouses. With the half-lighted
front of the weathered old house like a stage set behind them, and
alternate red lights and sooty shadows playing over all, they might
have been a tableau in some highly melodramatic opera.
"Silence," Lanark was grating. "For the last time, Mr. Mandifer, let me
remind you that I have placed you under arrest. If you don't calm down
immediately and speak only when you're spoken to, I'll have my men tie
you flat to four stakes and put a gag in your mouth."
Mandifer subsided at once, just as he was on the point of hurling
another harsh threat at Enid.
"That's much better," said Lanark. "Sergeant Jager, it strikes me that
we'd better get our pickets out to guard this position."
Mandifer cleared his throat with actual diffidence. "Lieutenant
Lanark--that is your name, I gather," he said in the soft voice which
he had employed when he had first appeared. "Permit me, sir, to say but
two words." He peered as though to be sure of consent. "I have it in my
mind that it is too late, useless, to place any kind of guard against
surprise."
"What do you mean?" asked Lanark.
"It is all of a piece with your offending of him who owns this house
and the land which encompasses it," continued Mandifer. "I believe
that a body of your enemies, mounted men of the Southern forces, are
upon you. That man who died upon the brow of Fearful Rock might have
seen them coming, but he was brought down sightless and voiceless, and
nobody was assigned in his place."
He spoke truth. Gray, in his agitation, had not posted a fresh sentry.
Lanark drew his lips tight beneath his mustache.
"Once more you feel that it is a time to joke with us, Mr. Mandifer,"
he growled. "I have already suggested gagging you and staking you out."
"But listen," Mandifer urged him.
Suddenly hoofs thundered, men yelled a double-noted defiance, high and
savage--"_Yee-hee!_"
It was the rebel yell.
Quantrill's guerrillas rode out of the dark and upon them.
_5. Blood in the Night_
Neither Lanark nor the others remembered that they began to fight for
their lives; they only knew all at once that they were doing it. There
was a prolonged harsh rattle of gun-shots like a blast of hail upon
hard wood; Lanark, by chance or unconscious choice, snatched at and
drew his sword instead of his revolver.
A horse's flying shoulder struck him, throwing him backward but not
down. As he reeled to save his footing, he saved also his own life;
for the rider, a form all cascading black beard and slouch hat, thrust
a pistol almost into the lieutenant's face and fired. The flash was
blinding, the ball ripped Lanark's cheek like a whiplash, and then the
saber in his hand swung, like a scythe reaping wheat. By luck rather
than design, the edge bit the guerrilla's gun-wrist. Lanark saw the
hand fly away as though on wings, its fingers still clutching the
pistol, all agleam in the firelight. Blood gushed from the stump of the
rider's right arm, like water from a fountain, and Lanark felt upon
himself a spatter as of hot rain. He threw himself in, clutched the
man's legs with his free arm and, as the body sagged heavily from above
upon his head and shoulder, he heaved it clear out of the saddle.
The horse was plunging and whinnying, but Lanark clutched its
reins and got his foot into the stirrup. The bonfire seemed to be
growing strangely brighter, and the mounted guerrillas were plainly
discernible, raging and trampling among his disorganized men. Corporal
Gray went down, dying almost under Lanark's feet. Amid the deafening
drum-roll of shots, Sergeant Jager's bull-like voice could be heard:
"Stop, thieves and horsemen, in the name of God!" It sounded like an
exorcism, as though the Confederate raiders were devils.
Lanark had managed to climb into the saddle of his captured mount. He
dropped the bridle upon his pommel, reached across his belly with his
left hand, and dragged free his revolver. At a little distance, beyond
the tossing heads of several horses, he thought he saw the visage of
Quantrill, clean-shaven and fierce. He fired at it, but he had no faith
in his own left-handed snap-shooting. He felt the horse frantic and
unguided, shoving and striving against another horse. Quarters were too
close for a saber-stroke, and he fired again with his revolver. The
guerrilla spun out of the saddle. Lanark had a glimpse he would never
forget, of great bulging eyes and a sharp-pointed mustache.
Again the rebel yell, flying from mouth to bearded mouth, and then
an answering shout, deeper and more sustained; some troopers had run
out of the house and, standing on the porch, were firing with their
carbines. It was growing lighter, with a blue light. Lanark did not
understand that.
Quantrill did not understand it, either. He and Lanark had come almost
within striking distance of each other, but the guerrilla chief was
gazing past his enemy, in the direction of the house. His mouth was
open, with strain-lines around it. His eyes glowed. He feared what he
saw.
"Remember me, you thieving swine!" yelled Lanark, and tried to thrust
with his saber. But Quantrill had reined back and away, not from the
sword but from the light that was growing stronger and bluer. He
thundered an order, something that Lanark could not catch but which
the guerrillas understood and obeyed. Then Quantrill was fleeing. Some
guerrillas dashed between him and Lanark. They, too, were in flight.
All the guerrillas were in flight. Somebody roared in triumph and fired
with a carbine--it sounded like Sergeant Jager. The battle was over,
within moments of its beginning.
Lanark managed to catch his reins, in the tips of the fingers that held
his revolver, and brought the horse to a standstill before it followed
Quantrill's men into the dark. One of his own party caught and held the
bits, and Lanark dismounted. At last he had time to look at the house.
It was afire, every wall and sill and timber of it, burning all at
once, and completely. And it burnt deep blue, as though seen through
the glass of an old-fashioned bitters-bottle. It was falling to pieces
with the consuming heat, and they had to draw back from it. Lanark
stared around to reckon his losses.
Nearest the piazza lay three bodies, trampled and broken-looking. Some
men ran in and dragged them out of danger; they were Persil Mandifer,
badly battered by horses' feet, and the two who had held him, Josserand
and Lanark's orderly, Suggs. Both the troopers had been shot through
the head, probably at the first volley from the guerrillas.
Corporal Gray was stone-dead, with five or six bullets in him, and
three more troopers had been killed, while four were wounded, but not
critically. Jager, examining them, pronounced that they could all ride
if the lieutenant wished it.
"I wish it, all right," said Lanark ruefully. "We leave first thing in
the morning. Hmm, six dead and four hurt, not counting poor Newton,
who's there in the fire. Half my command--and, the way I forgot the
first principles of military vigilance, I don't deserve as much luck as
that. I think the burning house is what frightened the guerrillas. What
began it?"
Nobody knew. They had all been fighting too desperately to have any
idea. The three men who had been picketing the gulley, and who had
dashed back to assault the guerrillas on the flank, had seen the blue
flames burst out, as it were from a hundred places; that was the best
view anybody had.
"All the killing wasn't done by Quantrill," Jager comforted his
lieutenant. "Five dead guerrillas, sir--no, six. One was picked up a
little way off, where he'd been dragged by his foot in the stirrup.
Others got wounded, I'll be bound. Pretty even thing, all in all."
"And we still have one prisoner," supplemented Corporal Googan.
He jerked his head toward Enid Mandifer, who stood unhurt, unruffled
almost, gazing raptly at the great geyser of blue flame that had been
the house and temple of her stepfather's nameless deity.
* * * * *
It was a gray morning, and from the first streaks of it Sergeant Jager
had kept the unwounded troopers busy, making a trench-like grave
halfway between the spot where the house had stood and the gulley to
the east. When the bodies were counted again, there were only twelve;
Persil Mandifer's was missing, and the only explanation was that it had
been caught somehow in the flames. The ruins of the house, that still
smoked with a choking vapor as of sulfur gas, gave up a few crisped
bones that apparently had been Newton, the sentry who had died from
unknown causes; but no giant skeleton was found to remind one of the
passing of Persil Mandifer's son.
"No matter," said Lanark to Jager. "We know that they were both dead,
and past our worrying about. Put the other bodies in--our men at this
end, the guerrillas at the other."
The order was carried out. Once again Lanark asked about a prayer-book.
A lad by the name of Duckin said that he had owned one, but that it had
been burned with the rest of his kit in the blue flame that destroyed
the house.
"Then I'll have to do it from memory," decided Lanark.
He drew up the surviving ten men at the side of the trench. Jager took
a position beside him, and, just behind the sergeant, Enid Mandifer
stood.
Lanark self-consciously turned over his clutter of thoughts, searching
for odds and ends of his youthful religious teachings. "'Man that is
born of woman hath but short time to live, and is full of misery'," he
managed to repeat. "'He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower'."
As he said the words "cut down," he remembered his saber-stroke of the
night before, and how he had shorn away a man's hand. That man, with
his heavy black beard, lay in this trench before them, with the severed
hand under him. Lanark was barely able to beat down a shudder. "'In
the midst of life'," he went on, "'we are in death'."
There he was obliged to pause. Sergeant Jager, on inspiration, took one
pace forward and threw into the trench a handful of gritty earth.
"'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust'," remembered Lanark. "'Unto Almighty
God we commit these bodies'"--he was sure that that was a misquotation
worthy of Jager himself, and made shift to finish with one more tag
from his memory: "'... in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection
unto eternal life'."
He faced toward the file of men. Four of them had been told to fall in
under arms, and at his order they raised their carbines and fired a
volley into the air. After that, the trench was filled in.
Jager then cleared his throat and began to give orders concerning
horses, saddles and what possessions had been spared by the fire.
Lanark walked aside, and found Enid Mandifer keeping pace with him.
"You are going back to your army?" she asked.
"Yes, at once. I was sent here to see if I could find and damage
Quantrill's band. I found him, and gave at least as good as I got."
"Thank you," she said, "for everything you've done for me."
He smiled deprecatingly, and it hurt his bullet-burnt cheek.
"I did nothing," he protested, and both of them realized that it was
the truth. "All that has happened--it just happened."
He drew his eyes into narrow gashes, as if brooding over the past
twelve hours.
"I'm halfway inclined to believe what your stepfather said about a
supernatural influence here. But what about you, Miss Mandifer?"
She tried to smile in turn, not very successfully.
"I can go back to my home. I'll be alone there."
"Alone?"
"I have a few servants."
"You'll be safe?"
"As safe as anywhere."
He clasped his hands behind him. "I don't know how to say it, but I
have begun to feel responsible for you. I want to know that all will be
well."
"Thank you," she said a second time. "You owe me nothing."
"Perhaps not. We do not know each other. We have spoken together only
three or four times. Yet you will be in my mind. I want to make a
promise."
"Yes?"
They had paused in their little stroll, almost beside the newly filled
grave trench. Lanark was frowning, Enid Mandifer nervous and expectant.
"This war," he said weightily, "is going to last much longer than
people thought at first. We--the Union--have done pretty well in the
West here, but Lee is making fools of our generals back East. We may
have to fight for years, and even then we may not win."
"I hope, Mr.--I mean, Lieutenant Lanark," stammered the girl, "I hope
that you will live safely through it."
"I hope so, too. And if I am spared, if I am alive and well when peace
comes, I swear that I shall return to this place. I shall make sure
that you, too, are alive and well."
He finished, very certain that he could not have used stiffer, more
stupid words; but Enid Mandifer smiled now, radiantly and gratefully.
"I shall pray for you, Lieutenant Lanark. Now, your men are ready to
leave. Go, and I shall watch."
"No," he demurred. "Go yourself, get away from this dreadful place."
She bowed her head in assent, and walked quickly away. At some distance
she paused, turned, and waved her hand above her head.
Lanark took off his broad, black hat and waved in answer. Then he faced
about, strode smartly back into the yard beside the charred ruins.
Mounting his bay gelding, he gave the order to depart.
_6. Return_
It was spring again, the warm, bright spring of the year 1866, when
Kane Lanark rode again into the Fearful Rock country.
His horse was a roan gray this time; the bay gelding had been shot
under him, along with two other horses, during the hard-fought
three days at Westport, the "Gettysburg of the West," when a few
regulars and the Kansas militia turned back General Sterling Price's
raid through Missouri. Lanark had been a captain then, and a major
thereafter, leading a cavalry expedition into Kentucky. He narrowly
missed being in at the finish of Quantrill, whose death by the hand of
another he bitterly resented. Early in 1865 he was badly wounded in a
skirmish with Confederate horsemen under General Basil Duke. Thereafter
he could ride as well as ever, but when he walked he limped.
Lanark's uniform had been replaced by a soft hat and black frock coat,
his face was browner and his mustache thicker, and his cheek bore the
jaggedly healed scar of the guerrilla pistol-bullet. He was richer,
too; the death of his older brother, Captain Douglas Lanark of the
Confederate artillery, at Chancellorsville, had left him his father's
only heir. Yet he was recognizable as the young lieutenant who had
ridden into this district four years gone.
Approaching from the east instead of the north, he came upon the plain
with its grass-levels, its clumps of bushes and trees, from another
and lower point. Far away on the northward horizon rose a sharp little
finger; that would be Fearful Rock, on top of which Trooper Newton had
once died, horrified and unwounded. Now, then, which way would lie the
house he sought for? He idled his roan along the trail, and encountered
at last an aged, ragged Negro on a mule.
"Hello, uncle," Lanark greeted him, and they both reined up. "Which way
is the Mandifer place?"
"Mandifuh?" repeated the slow, high voice of the old man. "Mandifuh,
suh, cap'n? Ah doan know no Mandifuh."
"Nonsense, uncle," said Lanark, but without sharpness, for he liked
Negroes. "The Mandifer family has lived around here for years. Didn't
you ever know Mr. Persil Mandifer and his step-daughter, Miss Enid?"
"Puhsil Mandifuh?" It was plain that the old fellow had heard
and spoken the name before, else he would have stumbled over its
unfamiliarities. "No, suh, cap'n. Ah doan nevah heah tella such gemman."
Lanark gazed past the mule and its tattered rider. "Isn't that a little
house among those willows?"
The kinky head turned and peered. "Yes, suh, cap'n. Dat place b'long to
Pahson Jaguh."
"Who?" demanded Lanark, almost standing up in his stirrups in his
sudden interest. "Did you say Jager? What kind of man is he?"
"He jes a pahson--Yankee pahson," replied the Negro, a trifle nervous
at this display of excitement. "Big man, suh, got red face. He Yankee.
You ain' no Yankee, cap'n, suh. Whaffo you want Pahson Jaguh?"
"Never mind," said Lanark, and thrust a silver quarter into the
withered brown palm. He also handed over one of his long, fragrant
cheroots. "Thanks, uncle," he added briskly, then spurred his horse and
rode on past.
Reaching the patch of willows, he found that the trees formed an open
curve that faced the road, and that within this curve stood a rough
but snug-looking cabin, built of sawn, unpainted planks and home-split
shingles. Among the brush to the rear stood a smaller shed, apparently
a stable, and a pen for chickens or a pig. Lanark reined up in front,
swung out of his saddle, and tethered his horse to a thorny shrub at
the trail-side. As he drew tight the knot of the halter-rope, the door
of heavy boards opened with a creak. His old sergeant stepped into view.
Jager was a few pounds heavier, if anything, than when Lanark had last
seen him. His hair was longer, and his beard had grown to the center of
his broad chest. He wore blue jeans tucked into worn old cavalry boots,
a collarless checked shirt fastened with big brass studs, and leather
suspenders. He stared somewhat blankly as Lanark called him by name and
walked up to the doorstep, favoring his injured leg.
"It's Captain Lanark, isn't it?" Jager hazarded. "My eyes----" He
paused, fished in a hip pocket and produced steel-rimmed spectacles.
When he donned them, they appeared to aid his vision. "Indeed it is
Captain Lanark! Or Major Lanark--yes, you were promoted----"
"I'm Mr. Lanark now," smiled back the visitor. "The war's over, Jager.
Only this minute did I hear of you in the country. How does it happen
that you settled in this place?"
"Come in, sir." Jager pushed the door wide open, and ushered Lanark
into an unfinished front room, well lighted by windows on three
sides. "It's not a strange story," he went on as he brought forward
a well-mended wooden chair for the guest, and himself sat on a small
keg. "You will remember, sir, that the land hereabouts is under a most
unhallowed influence. When the war came to an end, I felt strong upon
me the call to another conflict--a crusade against evil." He turned up
his eyes, as though to subpoena the powers of heaven as witnesses to
his devotion. "I preach here, the gospels and the true godly life."
"What is your denomination?" asked Lanark.
Jager coughed, as though abashed. "To my sorrow, I am ordained of no
church; yet might this not be part of heaven's plan? I may be here to
lead a strong new movement against hell's legions."
* * * * *
Lanark nodded as though to agree with this surmise, and studied Jager
anew. There was nothing left in manner or speech to suggest that here
had been a fierce fighter and model soldier, but the old rude power was
not gone. Lanark then asked about the community, and learned that there
were but seven white families within a twenty-mile radius. To these
Jager habitually preached of a Sunday morning, at one farm home or
another, and in the afternoon he was wont to exhort the more numerous
Negroes.
Lanark had by now the opening for his important question. "What about
the Mandifer place? Remember the girl we met, and her stepfather?"
"Enid Mandifer!" breathed Jager huskily, and his right hand fluttered
up. Lanark remembered that Jager had once assured him that not only
Catholics warded off evil with the sign of the cross.
"Yes, Enid Mandifer." Lanark leaned forward. "Long ago, Jager, I made a
promise that I would come and make sure that she prospered. Just now I
met an old Negro who swore that he had never heard the name."
Jager began to talk, steadily but with a sort of breathless awe, about
what went on in the Fearful Rock country. It was not merely that men
died--the death of men was not sufficient to horrify folk around whom
a war had raged. But corpses, when found, held grimaces that nobody
cared to look upon, and no blood remained in their bodies. Cattle,
too, had been slain, mangled dreadfully--perhaps by the strange,
unidentifiable creatures that prowled by moonlight and chattered in
voices that sounded human. One farmer of the vicinity, who had ridden
with Quantrill, had twice met strollers after dusk, and had recognized
them for comrades whom he knew to be dead.
"And the center of this devil's business," concluded Jager, "is the
farm that belonged to Persil Mandifer." He drew a deep, tired-sounding
breath. "As the desert is the habitation of dragons, so is it with
that farm. No trees live, and no grass. From a distance, one can see a
woman. It is Enid Mandifer."
"Where is the place?" asked Lanark directly.
Jager looked at him for long moments without answering. When he did
speak, it was an effort to change the subject. "You will eat here with
me at noon," he said. "I have a Negro servant, and he is a good cook."
"I ate a very late breakfast at a farmhouse east of here," Lanark put
him off. Then he repeated, "Where is the Mandifer place?"
"Let me speak this once," Jager temporized. "As you have said, we are
no longer at war--no longer officer and man. We are equals, and I am
able to refuse to guide you."
Lanark got up from his chair. "That is true, but you will not be acting
the part of a friend."
"I will tell you the way, on one condition." Jager's eyes and voice
pleaded. "Say that you will return to this house for supper and a bed,
and that you will be within my door by sundown."
"All right," said Lanark. "I agree. Now, which way does that farm lie?"
Jager led him to the door. He pointed. "This trail joins a road beyond,
an old road that is seldom used. Turn north upon it, and you will come
to a part which is grown up in weeds. Nobody passes that way. Follow
on until you find an old house, built low, with the earth dry and bare
around it. That is the dwelling-place of Enid Mandifer."
Lanark found himself biting his lip. He started to step across the
threshold, but Jager put a detaining hand on his arm. "Carry this as
you go."
He was holding out a little book with a gray paper cover. It had seen
usage and trouble since last Lanark had noticed it in Jager's hands;
its back was mended with a pasted strip of dark cloth, and its edges
were frayed and gnawed-looking, as though rats had been at it. But the
front cover still said plainly:
John George Hohman's
POW-WOWS
Or
LONG LOST FRIEND
"Carry this," said Jager again, and then quoted glibly: "'Whoever
carries this book with him is safe from all his enemies, visible or
invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the
holy corpse of Jesus Christ, nor drown in any water, nor burn up in any
fire, nor can any unjust sentence be passed upon him.'"
Lanark grinned in spite of himself and his new concern. "Is this the
kind of a protection that a minister of God should offer me?" he
inquired, half jokingly.
"I have told you long ago that the _Long Lost Friend_ is a good book,
and a blessed one." Jager thrust it into Lanark's right-hand coat
pocket. His guest let it remain, and held out his own hand in friendly
termination of the visit.
"Good-bye," said Lanark. "I'll come back before sundown, if that will
please you."
He limped out to his horse, untied it and mounted. Then, following
Jager's instructions, he rode forward until he reached the old road,
turned north and proceeded past the point where weeds had covered the
unused surface. Before the sun had fallen far in the sky, he was come
to his destination.
It was a squat, spacious house, the bricks of its trimming weathered
and the dark brown paint of its timbers beginning to crack. Behind
it stood unrepaired stables, seemingly empty. In the yard stood what
had been wide-branched trees, now leafless and lean as skeleton paws
held up to a relentless heaven. And there was no grass. The earth was
utterly sterile and hard, as though rain had not fallen since the
beginning of time.
Enid Mandifer had been watching him from the open door. When she saw
that his eyes had found her, she called him by name.
_7. The Rock Again_
Then there was silence. Lanark sat his tired roan and gazed at Enid,
rather hungrily, but only a segment of his attention was for her.
The silence crowded in upon him. His unconscious awareness grew
conscious--conscious of that blunt, pure absence of sound. There was no
twitter of birds, no hum of insects. Not a breath of wind stirred in
the leafless branches of the trees. Not even echoes came from afar. The
air was dead, as water is dead in a still, stale pond.
He dismounted then, and the creak of his saddle and the scrape of
his boot-sole upon the bald earth came sharp and shocking to his
quiet-filled ears. A hitching-rail stood there, old-seeming to be in so
new a country as this. Lanark tethered his horse, pausing to touch its
nose reassuringly--it, too, felt uneasy in the thick silence. Then he
limped up a gravel-faced path and stepped upon a porch that rang to his
feet like a great drum.
Enid Mandifer came through the door and closed it behind her. Plainly
she did not want him to come inside. She was dressed in brown alpaca,
high-necked, long-sleeved, tight above the waist and voluminous below.
Otherwise she looked exactly as she had looked when she bade him
good-bye beside the ravine, even to the strained, sleepless look that
made sorrowful her fine oval face.
"Here I am," said Lanark. "I promised that I'd come, you remember."
She was gazing into his eyes, as though she hoped to discover something
there. "You came," she replied, "because you could not rest in another
part of the country."
"That's right," he nodded, and smiled, but she did not smile back.
"We are doomed, all of us," she went on, in a low voice. "Mr.
Jager--the big man who was one of your soldiers----"
"I know. He lives not far from here."
"Yes. He, too, had to return. And I live--here." She lifted her hands a
trifle, in hopeless inclusion of the dreary scene. "I wonder why I do
not run away, or why, remaining, I do not go mad. But I do neither."
"Tell me," he urged, and touched her elbow. She let him take her arm
and lead her from the porch into the yard that was like a surface of
tile. The spring sun comforted them, and he knew that it had been cold,
so near to the closed front door of Persil Mandifer's old house.
She moved with him to a little rustic bench under one of the dead
trees. Still holding her by the arm, he could feel at the tips of his
fingers the shock of her footfalls, as though she trod stiffly. She, in
turn, quite evidently was aware of his limp, and felt distress; but,
tactfully, she did not inquire about it. When they sat down together,
she spoke.
"When I came home that day," she began, "I made a hunt through all of
my stepfather's desks and cupboards. I found many papers, but nothing
that told me of the things that so shocked us both. I did find money, a
small chest filled with French and American gold coins. In the evening
I called the slaves together and told them that their master and his
son were dead.
"Next morning, when I wakened, I found that every slave had run off,
except one old woman. She, nearly a hundred years old and very feeble,
told me that fear had come to them in the night, and that they had run
like rabbits. With them had gone the horses, and all but one cow."
"They deserted you!" cried Lanark hotly.
"If they truly felt the fear that came here to make its
dwelling-place!" Enid Mandifer smiled sadly, as if in forgiveness
of the fugitives. "But to resume; the old aunty and I made out here
somehow. The war went on, but it seemed far away; and indeed it was far
away. We watched the grass die before June, the leaves fall, the beauty
of this place vanish."
"I am wondering about that death of grass and leaves," put in Lanark.
"You connect it, somehow, with the unholiness at Fearful Rock; yet
things grow there."
"Nobody is being punished there," she reminded succinctly. "Well, we
had the chickens and the cow, but no crops would grow. If they had, we
needed hands to farm them. Last winter aunty died, too. I buried her
myself, in the back yard."
"With nobody to help you?"
"I found out that nobody cared or dared to help." Enid said that very
slowly, and did not elaborate upon it. "One Negro, who lives down the
road a mile, has had some mercy. When I need anything, I carry one of
my gold pieces to him. He buys for me, and in a day or so I seek him
out and get whatever it is. He keeps the change for his trouble."
Lanark, who had thought it cold upon the porch of the house, now mopped
his brow as though it were a day in August. "You must leave here," he
said.
"I have no place to go," she replied, "and if I had I would not dare."
"You would not dare?" he echoed uncomprehendingly.
"I must tell you something else. It is that my stepfather and
Larue--his son--are still here."
"What do you mean? They were killed," Lanark protested. "I saw them
fall. I myself examined their bodies."
"They were killed, yes. But they are here, perhaps within earshot."
It was his turn to gaze searchingly into her eyes. He looked for
madness, but he found none. She was apparently sane and truthful.
"I do not see them," she was saying, "or, at most, I see only their
sliding shadows in the evening. But I know of them, just around a
corner or behind a chair. Have you never known and recognized someone
just behind you, before you looked? Sometimes they sneer or smile. Have
you," she asked, "ever felt someone smiling at you, even though you
could not see him?"
Lanark knew what she meant. "But stop and think," he urged, trying
to hearten her, "that nothing has happened to you--nothing too
dreadful--although so much was promised when you failed to go through
with that ceremony."
She smiled, very thinly. "You think that nothing has happened to me?
You do not know the curse of living here, alone and haunted. You do
not understand the sense I have of something tightening and thickening
about me; tightening and thickening inside of me, too." Her hand
touched her breast, and trembled. "I have said that I have not gone
mad. That does not mean that I shall never go mad."
"Do not be resigned to any such idea," said Lanark, almost roughly, so
earnest was he in trying to win her from the thought.
"Madness may come--in the good time of those who may wish it. My mind
will die. And things will feed upon it, as buzzards would feed upon my
dead body."
* * * * *
Her thin smile faded away. Lanark felt his throat growing as dry as
lime, and cleared it noisily. Silence was still dense around them. He
asked her, quite formally, what she found to do.
"My stepfather had many books, most of them old," was her answer. "At
night I light one lamp--I must husband my oil--and sit well within its
circle of light. Nothing ever comes into that circle. And I read books.
Every night I read also a chapter from a Bible that belonged to my old
aunty. When I sleep, I hold that Bible against my heart."
He rose nervously, and she rose with him. "Must you go so soon?" she
asked, like a courteous hostess.