One might have counted ten while the picture held with no other sound
than the breathing of two men and the strident clamour of a blue-jay in
a hickory sapling.
Rowlett had not been ordered to raise his hands, but he held them
ostentatiously still and wide of his body. The revolver in its holster
under his armpit might as well have been at home, for even had both
started with an equal chance in the legerdemain of drawing and firing,
he knew his master, and as it was, he stood covered.
Now, too, he faced an adversary no longer fettered by any pledge of
private forbearance.
This, then, was the end--and it arrived just a damnable shade too soon,
when with the falling of dusk he might have witnessed the closing scenes
of his enemy's doom. To-morrow there would be no Parish Thornton to
dread, but also to-morrow there would be no Bas Rowlett to enjoy
immunity from fear.
"Hit war jest erbout one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable
inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap
hes done come ter pass since then--don't ye want yore envellip, Bas?"
Silently and with a heavily moving hand, Rowlett reached out and took
the proffered paper which bore his incriminating admissions and
signature, but he made no answer.
"Thet other time," went on Thornton with maddening deliberation, "hit
was in ther moonlight thet us two stud hyar, an' when ye told me ye war
befriendin' me I war fool enough ter b'lieve ye. Don't ye recollict how
we turned and looked down, an' ye p'inted out thet big tree--in front of
ther house?"
The intriguer ground his teeth, but from the victor's privilege of
verbose taunting he had no redress. After all, it would be a transient
victory. Parish might "rub it in" now, but in a few hours he would be
dangling at a rope's end.
"Ye showed hit ter me standin' thar high an' widespread in ther
moonlight, an' I seems ter recall thet ye 'lowed ye'd cut hit down ef ye
hed yore way. Ye hain't hed yore way, though, Bas, despite Satan's
unflaggin' aid. Ther old tree still stands thar a-castin' hits shade
over a place thet's come ter be my home--a place ye've done vainly
sought ter defile."
Still Rowlett did not speak. There was a grim vestige of comfort left in
the thought that when the moon shone again Parish Thornton would have
less reason to love that tree.
"Ye don't seem no master degree talkative terday, Bas," suggested the
man with the pistol, which was no longer held levelled but
swinging--though ready to leap upward. Then almost musingly he added,
"An' thet's a kinderly pity, too, seein' ye hain't nuver goin' ter hev
no other chanst."
"Why don't ye shoot an' git done?" barked Rowlett with a leer of
desperation. "Pull yore trigger an' be damned ter ye--we'll meet in hell
afore long anyhow."
When Thornton spoke again the naked and honest wrath that had smouldered
for a year like a banked fire at last leaped into untrammelled blazing.
"I don't strike down even a man like _you_ outen sheer hate an'
vengeance," he declared, with an electrical vibrance of pitch. "Hit's a
bigger thing then thet an' ye've got ter know in full what ye dies for
afore I kills ye--ye hain't deluded me as fur es ye thinks ye have--I
knows ye betrayed me in Virginny; I knows ye shot at old Jim an'
fathered ther infamies of ther riders; I knows ye sought ter fo'ce
yoreself on Dorothy; but I didn't git thet knowledge from _her_. She
kep' her bargain with ye."
"A man right often thinks he knows things when he jest suspicions 'em,"
Bas reminded him, with a forced and factitious calm summoned for his
final interview, but the other waved aside the subterfuge.
"Right often--yes--but not always, an' this hain't one of them
delusions. I knows ther full sum an' substance of yore infamies, an' yit
I've done held my hand. Mebby ye thought my wrath war coolin'. Ef ye did
ye thought wrong!"
Parish Thornton drew a long breath and the colour gradually went out of
his brown face, leaving it white and rapt in an exaltation of passion.
"I've been bidin' my time an' my time hes come," he declared in a voice
that rang like a bronze bell. "When I kills ye I does a holy act. Hit's
a charity ter mankind an' womankind--an' yit some foreparent bred hit
inter me ter be a fool, an' I've got ter go on bein' one."
A note of hopefulness, incredulous, yet quickening with a new lease on
courage, flashed into the gray despair of the conspirator's mind and he
demanded shortly:
"What does ye mean?"
Thornton recognized that grasping at hope, and laughed ironically.
"I hain't goin' ter shoot ye down like ye merits," he said, "an' yit I
misdoubts ef hit's so much because I've got ter give ye a chanst, atter
all, es ther hunger ter see yore life go out under my bare fingers."
Slowly dying hope had its redawning in Bas Rowlett's face. His
adversary's strength and quickness were locally famous, but he, too,
was a giant in perfect condition, and the prize of life was worth a good
fight.
He stood now with hands held high while Thornton disarmed him and flung
his pistol and knife far backward into the thicket. His own weapon, the
Harper leader still held.
"Now, me an' you are goin' ter play a leetle game by ther name of
'craven an' damn fool'," Thornton enlightened him with a grim smile.
"I'm ther damn fool. Hit's fist an' skull, tooth an' nail, or anything
else ye likes, but fust I'm goin' ter put this hyar gun of mine in a
place whar ye kain't git at hit, an' then one of us is goin' ter fling
t'other one offen thet rock-clift whar she draps down them two hundred
feet. Does ye like thet play, Bas?"
"I reckon I'll do my best," said Rowlett, sullenly; "I hain't skeercely
got no rather in ther matter nohow."
Thornton stripped off his coat and rolled his sleeves high and the other
man followed suit. Bas even grinned sardonically in appreciation when
the other at length thrust his pistol under a rock which it strained his
strength to lift. The man who got that weapon out would need to be one
who had time and deliberation at his disposal--not one who snatched it
up in any short-winded interval of struggle.
Then the two stood glaring into each other's faces with the naked
savagery of wild beasts, and under the stress of their hate-lust the
whites of their eyes were already bloodshot and fever-hot with
murder-bent.
Yet with an impulse that came through even that red fog of fury Parish
Thornton turned his head and looked for the fraction of an instant down
upon the gray roof and the green tree where the shadows lay lengthed in
the valley--and in that half second of diverted gaze Rowlett launched
himself like a charging bull, with head down to ram his adversary's
solar plexus and with arms outstretched for a bone-breaking grapple.
It was a suddenness which even with suddenness expected came bolt-like,
and Thornton, leaping sidewise, caught its passing force and stumbled,
but grappled and carried his adversary down with him. The two rolled in
an embrace that strained ribs inward on panting lungs, leg locking leg,
and fingers clutching for a vulnerable hold. But Thornton slipped
eel-like out of the chancery that would have crushed him into
helplessness and sprang to his feet, and if Rowlett was slower, it was
by only a shade of difference.
They stood, with sweat already flowing in tiny freshets out of their
pores and eyes blazing with murderous fire. They crouched and circled,
advancing step by step, each warily sparring for an advantage and ready
to plunge in or leap sidewise. Then came the impact of bone and flesh
once more, and both went down, Thornton's face pressed against that of
his enemy as they fell, and Rowlett opened and clamped his jaws as does
a bull-dog trying for a grip upon the jugular.
That battle was homerically barbaric and starkly savage. It was fought
between two wild creatures who had shed their humanity: one the stronger
and more massive of brawn; the other more adroit and resourceful. But
the teeth of the conspirator closed on the angle of the jawbone instead
of the neck--and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and
writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of
dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While
he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed
to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch of
darkening sky went black.
It was only the collapse of the human mass in his arms into dead weight
that brought Parish Thornton again out of his mania and back to
consciousness. The battle was over, and as he drew his arms away his
enemy sank shapeless and limp at his feet.
For a few seconds more Thornton stood rocking on unsteady legs, then,
with a final and supreme effort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight
that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid.
With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man
from side to side, gaining momentum.
Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-shiny and
tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett
outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock.
How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now,
Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which
there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging
over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon
him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol--so there must have
been time enough for that.
But his perplexed brain reeled to the realization that he still lay up
here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken
two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning
consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity.
But Thornton's unaccountable whims had flown at another tangent.
"Git up, Bas," he commanded, briefly, "yore life b'longs ter me. I won
hit--an' ye're goin' ter die--but my fingers don't ache no more fer a
holt on yore throat--they're satisfied."
"What air--ye goin' ter do, now?" Rowlett found words hard to form; and
the victor responded promptly, "I've done concluded ter take ye down
thar, afore ye dies, an' make ye crave Dorothy's pardon on yore bended
knees. Ye owes hit ter her."
Slowly Rowlett dragged himself to a sitting posture. His incredulous
senses wanted to sing out in exultation, but he forced himself to demur
with surly obduracy.
"Hain't hit enough ter kill me without humiliatin' me, too?"
"No, hit hain't enough fer me an' hit's too tardy fer _you_ ter make no
terms now."
Bas Rowlett exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for
taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle
of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come
and the moon had risen, it would prove not only a respite but a full
pardon--capped with a reserved climax of triumph.
Down there at that house the mob would soon come, and circumstance would
convert him, at a single turn of the wheel, from humbled victim to the
avenger ironically witnessing the execution of his late victor.
After a while he rose and stood experimentally on his legs.
"I reckon I kin walk now," he said, drearily, "ef so be ye lets me go
slow--I hain't got much of my stren'th back yit."
"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste," responded Thornton; "we've got all
night afore us."
* * * * *
When they reached the house, it stood mistily bulked among shadows, with
its front door open upon an unlighted room.
The men had tramped down that slope in silence, and they crossed the
threshold in silence, too, the captive preceding his captor; and the
householder paused to bolt the door behind him.
Then, holding a vigilant eye on the forced guest who had not spoken,
Thornton lighted a lamp and backed to the closed bedroom door at whose
sill he had seen a slender thread of brightness. In all his movements he
went with a wary slowness, as though he were held by a cord, and the
cord was the line of direct glance that he never permitted to deviate
from the face of his prisoner.
Now while his right hand still fondled the revolver, he groped with his
left for the latch and opened the door at his back.
"Dorothy," he called in a low voice, "I wisht ye'd come in hyar, honey."
From within he heard a sound like a low moan; but he knew it was a sigh
of relief loosening tight nerve cords that had been binding his wife's
heart in suspense.
"Thank God, ye're back, Ken," she breathed. "Air ye all right--an'
unharmed?"
"All right an' unharmed," he responded, as he stepped to the side of the
door frame and stood there a rigid and unmoving sentinel.
But when Dorothy came to the threshold, she took in at once the whole
picture, pregnant with significance: the glint of lamplight on the ready
revolver, the relentless, tooth-marked face of her husband, and the
figure of the vanquished plotter with its powerful shoulders hunched
forward and its head hanging.
On the mantel ticked the small tin clock, which Bas Rowlett watched from
the tail of a furtive eye.
As Dorothy Thornton stood in gracious slenderness against the background
of the lighted door with a nimbus about her head, she was all feminine
delicacy and allurement. But in that moment she stiffened to an
overwhelming rush of memories which incited her to a transport of wrath
for which she had no words.
She saw Bas Rowlett stripped naked to the revolting bareness of his
unclean soul, and she drew back with a shudder of loathing and
unmoderated hate.
"Why did ye dally with him, Ken?" she demanded, fiercely; "don't ye know
thet whilst ye lets him live yere jest handlin' an' playin' with a
rattlesnake?"
"He hain't got long ter live," came the coldly confident response, "but
afore he dies, he wants ter crave yore pardon, Dorothy, an' he wants ter
do hit kneelin' down."
Bas Rowlett shot a sidelong glance at the clock. Time was soul and
essence of the matter now and minutes were the letters that spelled life
and death. He listened tensely, too, and fancied that he heard a
whippoorwill.
There were many whippoorwills calling out there in the woods but he
thought this was a double call and that between its whistlings a man
might have counted five. Of that, however, he could not be sure.
"I hain't got no choice, Dorothy," whined the man, whose craven soul was
suffering acutely as he fenced for delay--delay at any cost. "Even ef I
hed, though, I'd crave yore pardon of my own free will--but afore I does
hit, thar's jest a few words I'd love ter say."
Dorothy Thornton stood just inside the door. Pity, mercy, and tenderness
were qualities as inherent in her as perfume in a wild flower, but there
was something else in her as well--as there is death in some perfumes.
If he had been actually a poisonous reptile instead of a snake soul in
the body of a man Bas Rowlett could have been to her, just then, no less
human.
"Yes," she said, slowly, as a memory stirred the confession of her
emotions, "thar's one thing I'd like ter say, too--but hit hain't in no
words of my own--hit's somethin' thet was said a long spell back."
From the mantel shelf she produced the old journal, and opened its
yellowed pages.
"I've been settin' hyar," said Dorothy Thornton, in a strained quietness
of voice, "readin' this old book mighty nigh all day--I _hed_ ter read
hit--" her voice broke there, then went steadily on again--"or else go
mad, whilst I was waitin'--waitin' ter know whether Ken hed kilt ye or
_you'd_ kilt _him_." Again she paused for a moment and turned her eyes
to her husband. "This book sheds light on a heap of things thet we all
needs ter know erbout--hit tells how his foreparent sought ter kill ther
tree thet our ancestors planted--an' hit's kinderly like an indictment
in ther high co'te."
While Dorothy Thornton accused the blood sprung from the renegade and
his Indian squaw out of those ancient pages the men listened.
To the husband it was incitement and revelation. The tree out there
standing warder in the dark became, as he listened with engrossed
interest, more than ever a being of sentient spirit and less than ever a
thing of mere wood and leaf.
To Bas Rowlett it should have been an indictment, or perhaps an excuse,
with its testimony of blood strains stronger than himself--but from its
moral his mind was wandering to a more present and gripping interest.
Now he was sure he had heard the double whippoorwill call! In five
minutes more he would be saved--yet five minutes might be too long.
Dorothy paused. "Ye sees," she said with a deep gravity, "from ther
start, in this country, our folks hev been despitefully tricked an'
misused by ther offspring of thet Indian child thet our foreparents tuck
in an' befriended. From ther start, ther old tree hes held us safe with
hits charm erginst evil! Ever since----"
She broke off there and paused with astonished eyes that turned to the
door, upon which had sounded a commanding rap. Then she rose and went
over cautiously to open it an inch or two and look out.
But when she raised the latch a man, rendered uncognizable by a black
slicker that cloaked him to his ankles and a masked face, threw it wide,
so that the woman was forced, stumbling, back. Then through the opening
poured a half dozen others in like habiliments of disguise.
All held outthrust rifles, and that one who had entered first shouted:
"All right, boys, ther door's open."
Parish Thornton had not been able to shoot at the initial instant
because Dorothy stood in his way. After that it was useless--and he saw
Bas Rowlett step forward with a sudden change of expression on his pasty
face.
"Now, then," said Bas, exultantly, "hit's a gray hoss of another
colour!"