UP the street tramped the two young fellows, Lance silent,
pulling his hat down over his face, Fuson whistling in an
absent, tuneless fashion. When they came to the store, Buck
paused and gave the instructions.
"I'll go in. You walk a-past two or three times, and when you
see me standin' with my back to you and my hands behind me,
that'll mean that Flenton's thar and the talk started. Hit'll be
yo' time to come in."
Lance nodded without a word. He passed the lighted doorway.
Beyond it was a butcher shop--for days after he could remember
the odor of raw meat from the place, the sight of the carcasses
hung up in the frosty winter air. At the corner he turned and
walked back. There was no sign of Fuson as he glanced swiftly
into the store. On the other side of the way was the vacant lot
where he had instructed the boy from the wagon-yard to tie
Satan. Lance took the precaution to go down in the shadows and
see if the black horse had arrived. He found his mount, the
bridle rein looped over a bit of scrubby bush. He examined the
saddle and [331] equipments, and found all as it should be. When
he came back to the store door and once more glanced in, he
descried Fuson's figure, standing, hands behind the back, in the
aisle between the counters.
Quietly, neither hiding nor displaying himself, Lance entered
and made his way down the long room toward the far lighted end.
After dark, trade in the main portion of the store was practically
dead, and only one smoky lamp on the counter illuminated the
entrance. In the rear, half-a-dozen men were grouped around a big,
rust-red barrel stove, talking. The whole place back there reeked
with the odors of whiskey, of the fiery, colorless applejack that
comes down from the mountains, kerosene and molasses, with a
softening blend from the calico, jeans and unbleached cottons
heaped on the counters, narrowing in the approach to this retreat.
He paused beside a tall pile of outing flannel, putting up one
hand against the rounded edges of their bolts. Fuson, glancing
over his shoulder, was aware of the figure in the shadow, and at
once spoke in a slightly raised voice.
"Flent, I hear you've sold yo' filly."
"Well, then, you hearn a lie," returned Flenton Hands's tones
drawlingly. "I hain't sold that filly, and I'm not aimin' to.
That thar nag belongs to my wife."
He laughed uproariously at his own jest, and [332] some of the
other men laughed too. Greene Stribling, down from Big Turkey Track
to do a bit of trading, had sold a shoat. Instead of getting the
coffee and calico and long sweetening it should have purchased,
and carrying them, with the remaining money, up to his toil-worn
mother and younger brothers and sisters, he had bought a jug of
the Derf & Hands wildcat whiskey; and having borrowed the small
tin cup from beside the water bucket, he was standing treat to
the crowd.
"Fust time I ever heared you had an old woman," Derf said,
accepting the cup from the assiduous Stribling.
It was evident, now that Lance had a view of the faces, that
this was a Flenton Hands nobody on Turkey Track Mountain ever
met. He had, as it were, come out into the open. Certainly he
was not drunk; it would have taken a very considerable amount of
stimulant to intoxicate that heavy, dense spirit and mentality;
but there was color in his cheek, a glint of courage in his pale
eye, a warming and freeing of the whole personality, that bore
witness to what he had been drinking.
"I reckon you mean the wife that you're a-_goin_' to have," put in
Fuson. "Hit's a good thing to git the pesky old stags like you
married off. They have the name of breakin' up families. Bein' a
settled man myself in these days, I ain't got no use for such."
[333]
Hands turned on him eagerly.
"Well, I have shore broke up one family," he declared. "I am a
church member and a man that keeps the law; but that thar is a
thing I'm not ashamed of."
"Yet I reckon you ain't a-braggin' about it," suggested Buck.
"I don't know as I'm braggin' about it, but I shore ain't
denyin' it," maintained Hands. "I'm ready to tell any person
that will listen at me that me an' Callista Gentry aims--"
"I'm a-listenin'," said a quiet voice from the shadows, and
Lance stepped into the circle, clear-eyed, alert, but without
any air of having come to quarrel.
For a moment Flenton quailed. Then he looked about him. This was
not the wild Turkey Tracks. He was down in the Settlement. There
was law and order here. He had a peace warrant out against this
man Cleaverage. He glanced across at his cousin, the sheriff.
Beason would back him. Why, he was a deputy sheriff himself, and
the feeling of the gun in his pocket reassured him. Lance stood
at ease, composed, but definitely changed from the light-footed
Lance who had come swinging buoyantly down over the little hill
that Sunday morning two years ago. Something told Hands that the
other was unarmed.
"Now see here, Cleaverage," he began, wagging [334] his head and
backing off a little, "I don't want to hurt your feelin's. I may
have said to friends, and it may have got round to you, that the
part you had did by--that the part you had did was not to your
credit. She--"
He hesitated. There was silence, and no one stirred. He went on.
"She's a-workin' for her livin', and a-workin' mighty hard.
She's a-supportin' the child. Divo'ces can be had for such as
that--you know they can."
"That isn't what I heard you say--what you said you would tell
anyone that'd listen," argued Lance, his eyes fixed unwaveringly
upon the other. "You've got to take back all that other talk,
here before them you said it to. Hit's a pack o' lies. I'm goin'
to make you take it back, and beg pardon for it on your knees,
Flenton Hands--on your knees, do you hear me?"
The circle of men widened, each retiring inconspicuously, with
apprehensive glance toward a clear exit for himself. The two
opponents were left in the center of the floor, confronted,
their faces glared upon by lamp-shine and the light from the
open door of the stove; drawn by passionate hate, and with a
creeping terror much more dangerous beginning to show itself in
the countenance of the older man.
"You wasn't never fitten for her," Hands [335] cried out finally,
his voice rising almost to falsetto with excitement. "She's glad to
be shut of you." Then like a fellow making a desperate leap,
half in fright, half in bravado, "When her and me is wedded--"
He broke off, staring with open mouth. Lance had scarcely moved
at all, yet the crouching posture of his figure had something
deadly in it. Flenton's clumsy right hand went back toward the
pocket where that gun lay. With the motion, Lance left the floor
like a missile, springing at his adversary and pinning his arms
down to his sides. It was done in silence.
"Hold on thar!" cried Derf in alarm. "You-all boys better not
git to fightin' in my store. Sheriff!--hey, you, Beason!--Why
don't you arrest that feller?"
The two wrestled mutely in that constricted place. Hands
struggling to get his pistol out, Lance merely restraining him.
Beason came forward, watching his chance and grabbing for
Cleaverage. He finally caught Lance's arm, and his jerk tore
loose the young fellow's grip on Flenton Hands. Swiftly Lance
turned, and with a swinging blow freed himself, sending the
unprepared sheriff to the floor. As he flung his head up again,
he had sight of Hands with a half-drawn weapon. Flenton backed
away and stumbled against the stove. The great iron barrel
trembled--toppled--heaved, crashing over, sending [336] forth
an outgush of incandescent coals, its pipe coming down with a
mighty, hollow rattle and a profuse peppering of soot. The
strangling smoke was everywhere.
"Name o' God, boys!" yelled Derf, climbing to the counter, to
get at a bunch of great shovels that hung on the wall above;
"you'll set this place afire! Flent, you fool, we ain't got a
dollar of insurance!"
At the moment Lance closed with his man, locked him in a grip
like a vise, went down with him, and rolled among the glowing
cinders, conscious of a sudden burning pang along the left arm
which was under him.
Fuson, watching Hands strain and writhe to draw the pistol, and
Lance's effort to prevent him, saw that it was going against his
friend. He thrust the haft of a knife into Lance's right hand.
The men were jumping about ineffectually, coughing and choking
with the sulphurous fumes, divided between the fascination of
that struggle on the floor, and the half-hearted effort to upend
the stove by means of a piece of plank. The corner of a cracker
box began to blaze.
"Lord God A'mighty!" Derf was protesting, threshing at the
burning goods, "We'll be plumb ruined!" Fuson ran for the water
bucket. Some fool dashed a cup of whiskey on the coals, and in
the ghastly light of the blue blaze. Lance Cleaverage,
staggering up, saw a dead man at his feet. [337]
[Illustration: "He broke off, staring with open mouth."]
He was not conscious that he had struck at all with the knife,
yet there it was in his hand, red. The sleeve was half burned
off his left arm, and still smoking. It was dark away from the
fire. Beason, stunned, was getting to his feet and hallooing,
"Hold Cleaverage! Somebody hold Cleaverage! He's killed Flent."
And then Lance felt the shoving of a palm against his shoulder.
Buck was pushing him quietly away, down between the lines of
piled commodities. They were running together toward Satan. Back
in the room they could hear the sheriff yelling for lights.
"I thought I might just as well knock them lamps over for good
measure," Fuson muttered as they ran. "Here's your horse--my
pistol's in that holster, Lance. Air ye hurt?"
"No," Lance returned. "Nothin' but my arm. I reckon I burnt it a
little. It's only the left one. Thank you. Buck. You've been a
true friend to me this night."
And he was away, down the bit of lamplit street that ran so
quickly into country road, past outlying cabins already dark,
till he struck the first rise of Turkey Track and slacked rein.
A moment he turned, looking over his shoulder at the lights.
Upon the instant the Court House bell back there broke out in
loud, frightened clamor. [338]
"Clang! Clang! Clang!" Somebody was pulling wildly on the rope
to call out the little volunteer fire company. He heard cries,
shouts, and then the long wavering halloo that shakes the heart
of the village dweller.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
Derf's store must be blazing. He wondered dully if they had
dragged Flenton's body away from the flames. Hearkening, he
suffered Satan to breathe a bit on the rise that would take him
to the great boulder where the roads branched, one going up
Little Turkey Track, the other leading aside direct to the Big
Turkey Track neighborhood.
Suddenly he stiffened in his saddle, cut short a groan wrenched
from him by his injury, and listened strainingly. Above the now
diminishing noise from the village, he distinguished the sound of
hoofs that galloped hard, growing louder with each moment,--the
feet of one who pursued him. Looping the bridle rein over the
pommel of his saddle horn, he got at the pistol Buck had provided,
and thereafter rode warily but as rapidly as he dared, looking
back to catch the first glimpse of the shape or shapes which
might be following.
He had just rounded the turn at the fork of the way, when
somebody burst into it close at hand, coming through the short
cut by Cawthorne's Gulch, and he thought he heard his name
called. [339]
To be taken now, to be dragged back to the jail, and, if not set
upon and lynched by the Beason-Hands following, to rot there
till such time as they chose to try him, and possibly pay for
his act of wild justice with his own life, this was a vista
intolerable to Lance Cleaverage. Raising the weapon he fired at
his pursuer.
"Oh, don't!" wailed the unseen; and the next moment Sylvane
leaped from the mule he rode, ran forward and caught at Satan's
mane, panting, "Lance--Lance! I was a-goin' to you as fast as I
could. I struck down thar 'bout the time you must have left. I
come Dry Valley way. Is it--have you--"
At the sound of Sylvane's voice, the heritage of Cain came home
to Lance Cleaverage. A great upwelling black horror of himself
flowed in on the fugitive. To what had he sunk! A murderer
fleeing for his life, in his panic terror of pursuit menacing
his own brother who came to help and succor!
"Oh, Buddy--Buddy--Buddy!" he cried, doubling forward over the
pommel of his saddle, clutching Sylvane's shoulder, and closing
his eyes to shut out the face of the dead man which swam before
them in that quivering blue light. [340]