THE WOODS RIDER
The next morning Lockwood was assigned the brown horse and saddle
outfit that had been used by the injured man, and he began active work
as a turpentine woods rider. The “orchard” which he was to supervise
covered an irregular area of perhaps a couple of miles, in a long
strip around to the south and west of the Power property. All of it
had, indeed, originally belonged to the Burwell estate. The ground was
level, or very gently rolling, broken only by occasional strips of
dense creek swamp. Nearly all the underbrush had been cleared out the
preceding year, and the woods were easy and pleasant for riding.
About thirty negroes worked on this orchard, each assigned to a
definite “furrow,” or allotment of trees, which had to be freshly
chipped every week when the run of gum was good. It was Lockwood’s
duty to keep these men up to their work, to see that the cups did not
overflow or become displaced, that things went rapidly and smoothly,
and, above all, to see that no dropped match or cigarette started a
fire, for a fire in a turpentine orchard is as disastrous a thing as
can be imagined.
For three days he rode the woods, growing very saddle sore at first,
but gathering his ideas and reconstructing his plans, which seemed to
have fallen into chaos. He thought of his astounding failure to act on
the path by the river, but it did not seem astounding now. He had to
realize that assassination was a method barred to him; he would never
be able to bring himself to do it. He thought of other means.
He might discover himself to Hanna; he had no doubt that the man would
instantly accept the challenge to draw and shoot; and the issue would
be self-defense. Lockwood was not afraid of the chances; he had
practiced endlessly with the little blue automatic, and the weapon had
grown as familiar to him as his own fingers.
During those first days he did not leave the turpentine tract, and he
saw nothing of either Hanna or the Power boys. He heard a good deal of
them, however. In the evening there was always a group of white men at
the commissary store, employees of the camp, and occasional visitors
from the neighborhood, and bits of gossip were continually dropped
regarding these _nouveaux riches_ of the woods. They were the chief
objects of attention of the whole district, but it was an extremely
friendly attention.
Nobody grudged them their good luck, though they told amused and
admiring tales of the wild pace the boys seemed to be setting. The
motor car had cost seven thousand dollars; cases of smuggled wine and
liquor were coming in at two hundred dollars apiece—figures which
Lockwood could only regard as wild exaggerations. Tom Power had driven
the car to Flomaton, thirty-five miles over sandy roads, in less than
an hour.
They talked of Hanna with less freedom, and he seemed less popular.
Now and again Louise was mentioned, but it would have been beyond
their code of courtesy to discuss her. They said she was “a mighty
sweet girl,” and let it go at that.
Lockwood heard curious and amusing tales of the swamp country at these
gatherings, of flooded rivers and hurricanes, of bears and alligators,
of extraordinary snake superstitions, and shootings and outlaw negroes
and river pirates. There was a continued talk of the river, which,
though deposed from its old importance, yet loomed as the chief
physical fact of the district. It rose or fell with amazing rapidity;
it flooded the bottom-land cotton; it floated rafts of pine down to
Mobile; no one could talk of that part of Alabama without speaking of
the river and of the men who used it.
Among these last, Lockwood heard frequent mention of the house boat he
had seen moored at the shore. It had moved now and lay at the mouth of
the great bayou that bordered the turpentine tract, crossing the road
and passing directly behind Power’s house. The boat belonged to “Blue
Bob’s gang,” Lockwood heard—a crew that seemed to have made a
reputation for themselves all along the river. They were river
thieves, it appeared, and were said to drive a considerable trade,
mainly among the negroes, in “shinney.” This is a powerful beverage
usually distilled from the refuse of cane sirup-making, by means of a
couple of empty gasoline tins and a few feet of rubber tubing. Craig
did not care to have such an establishment camped so close to his
business, for shinney and the turpentine negro make an entirely
uncontrollable combination.
He had threatened several times to “run off” these undesirable
vagrants, but the Power boys had spoken in their behalf. Lockwood
gathered that in the old days the Power family had not been very much
better than the house boat people themselves; and they were generous
enough to remember their former associates of poverty.
Lockwood followed the course of this bayou every day on his rounds,
and only a couple of days later he heard the muffled thud-thud of a
motor engine. His first impression was that the house boat was coming
up, but the noise came on far too fast for that clumsy craft. He edged
his horse behind a titi thicket, and in a moment saw a motor boat come
round a swampy curve of the waterway and recognized the figures in it
as Hanna and Louise Power.
The girl was at the wheel, and Hanna appeared to be giving her a
lesson in navigating the boat. She steered crookedly and uncertainly.
Hanna had his face at her shoulder, and seemed to be talking fluently.
Lockwood thought that Louise looked uneasy and nervous, as if she were
having difficulty with the mechanism. He tried again to remember where
he had seen that face, certainly pretty enough to be recollected, and
just opposite him the engine stopped.
The boat drifted a little, while Hanna tried to start it. Then the
propeller swished, and the boat got under way again, moving slowly
past him for thirty yards, and sheering in toward shore where the bank
was low and dry enough to land. Hanna got out and held out his hand.
Miss Power shook her head. Lockwood could not hear what was said, but
the next moment the engine broke into faster explosions, the boat
backed off and came flying down the bayou again, leaving Hanna ashore.
Hanna shouted something laughingly and expostulatingly after her, but
she paid no attention. The boat drove past Lockwood, sending a great
wash of waves up the clay bank, and disappeared around the curve.
The laugh died out of Hanna’s face as he looked after the flying boat.
He glanced up and down the bayou, and Lockwood chuckled maliciously.
He was on the wrong side of the water; he would have to go by the
turpentine camp and up to the bridge over the creek in order to get
home—a full three-mile walk, and it was a hot day. Hanna looked
dubiously at the muddy water as if he thought of swimming; once
across, and it was not a mile in a bee line to Power’s house. But he
thought better of it, and turned into the woods.
Still greatly amused, Lockwood rode on his route which led down the
bayou shore. He guessed that Hanna had annoyed the girl by his talk,
and had been rightly served. Then as he rode round the curve of the
bayou he was astonished to see the boat lying motionless not far ahead
and close inshore.
Miss Power was leaning back in her seat, doing nothing—waiting
perhaps, Lockwood thought, for Hanna to come after her. But when he
came a little nearer he saw that the boat had run a third of its
length upon a sand bar projecting into the channel as it curved, and
was fast aground.
He rode down to the margin and took off his hat.
“Can’t I help you? I see you’re aground,” he said.
“I certainly am,” answered the girl without embarrassment, and she
gave him a quick smile that almost seemed to imply an understanding.
“But I don’t know whether you can help me much or not. I can’t start
the engine to back her off.”
“Well, I can try, anyhow,” Lockwood responded, dismounting. He hung
his reins over a gum-tree bough, and splashed through a little mud and
water to the stranded boat.
The sound of the girl’s voice deepened the certitude that he had
somewhere met her before. She had a soft, slurred Gulf-coast accent
that you could cut with a knife—not that this surprised him, for he
was used to it, and he had a fair share of Southern accent himself. He
took a quick, sharp look at her as he got into the boat. She must be
about twenty, he thought. Her dark hair was tucked under a red cloth
cap, and she was wearing a raw-silk blouse with a wide,
red-embroidered collar, showing the fine, somewhat sunburned curves of
her neck.
“I ran on this sand bar without seeing it. I was coming down the bayou
pretty fast, and I’m not used to this boat,” she explained.
“Yes, I saw you going by,” said Lockwood.
“You could see me? You saw——” she exclaimed, startled; and he fancied
she turned the least shade pinker under her tan.
“Going and coming,” Lockwood nodded, manipulating the levers. The
engine burst suddenly into intermittent explosions. It missed
frequently, but the propeller tore up the water, failing, however, to
pull the boat off the sand.
“I reckon you can manage to get home with it,” he said. “But I’ll have
to get out. You’ll never get clear with so much weight in her.”
He stepped out, and the lightened boat slid slowly back and floated
clear, backing out into the bayou, and then the throb of the engine
ceased.
“Oh, it’s stopped again!” Miss Power exclaimed hopelessly.
From the shore Lockwood directed and advised. Nothing worked. The boat
veered slowly on the almost imperceptible current, while the girl
fumbled with the levers.
There was only one thing to do. Lockwood waited till the bow swung
nearest land, then splashed out, only a little more than knee-deep,
and got carefully into the boat again. He applied an expert hand to
the machine, produced a few explosions, and then again obstinate
silence.
“If I could have this thing for an hour I’m sure I could put it in
order,” he said, growing irritated. “As it is——”
“You’ve surely had experience enough with motor engines, haven’t you,
Mr. Lockwood?” said Louise, smiling at him.
Lockwood absolutely jumped with the shock of it, and turned quickly to
look at her.
“You know me? I knew we had met. But I couldn’t——”
“You don’t remember Lyman & Fourget, in New Orleans?”
“Of course. I worked in their salesrooms and repair shop.”
“I was in the office. I recognized you at once when we passed you the
other day on the road. But I don’t suppose you noticed me.”
“Of course!” said Lockwood slowly. “Of course, I remember now.”
Really he remembered very hazily. Miss Power must have been one of
those girls, stenographers and bookkeepers, in the glass-inclosed
office in one corner of the main floor.
“Of course. I remember you perfectly now,” he said, not quite
truthfully. “Strange that I didn’t place you at first. How did you
remember my name? Of course, you’re Miss Power. I guessed that
anyway.”
“Yes, everybody knows me about here.” She looked at him with candid
curiosity. “I reckon everybody knows you by this time. Strangers are
rare, you know. What are you doing up here in the woods?”
“I’m a turpentine man, too—I’m all kinds of a man. The fact is, I
wanted to get out of the city for the summer. I’ve been in Mobile and
Pensacola. I left New Orleans late last fall.”
“Yes, I left not very long after you did. I was glad to get out of New
Orleans, too, and papa wanted me to come home.”
She stopped suddenly, and glanced at him with some keenness. Lockwood,
sitting with his hand on the useless wheel, as the boat slowly veered
on the drift, thought of what he had heard in casual gossip—how this
girl had escaped from the primal squalor and discredit of the family
life “up the river,” and had gone out to mold her own fortunes.
Certainly she had not failed in it. She must have been drawing a fair
salary at Lyman & Fourget’s; and she had taken on a tone of city
smoothness and culture, a very different manner from the rollicking
roughness of her brothers.
“But how am I going to get home?” she cried plaintively. “We’re
drifting that way, aren’t we? About an inch an hour.”
“I’ll try again,” and once more he managed to start the engine into a
splutter of activity. For a few yards he navigated the boat, and then
turned.
“If you’ll allow me, I think I’d better drive her home for you. She
might last, though more likely she’ll play out again.”
“I wish you would. One of the boys will drive you back in our car. But
what about your horse?”
“He’ll do where he is. Everybody knows who that horse belongs to, and
I suppose I can be back in half an hour.”
He was really in no hurry to get back, and he almost wished the engine
would give trouble again. He wanted to talk with this girl; he was
anxious to get on some sort of terms with her; he desired very much to
know on what sort of terms she stood with Hanna.
“Not a very cheerful place to come for an excursion,” he said, as they
rounded a bend of raw clay banks, and saw a water moccasin slide off
into the bayou.
“Mr. Hanna was teaching me to run the boat. It’s easier in this still
water than out in the river. I expect,” she added with some
hesitation, “that you saw how I left him ashore.”
“I did.”
“I’d no idea anybody was looking. It was a joke, you know. He thought
I was going ashore, too, but I didn’t want to.”
“So you made him walk home,” said Lockwood, at this dubious
explanation. “Well, it’ll do him no harm. I expect he’s well on the
way by this time.”
So were they, it appeared. The bayou made another twist, and there was
a tiny pier, made of three pine logs, and a rough boat shelter of
planks. Lockwood steered in, and they landed.
“We’ll go up to the house and get the car,” said Louise, as Lockwood
paused dubiously. “You must meet my father besides. He knows about
you, and I think you’ve met my brothers already.”
They went up a path for a couple of hundred yards, through the strip
of pines, across a garden of collards and cabbages, and into the
great, smooth, sandy expanse of the back yard, which an old negro was
just sweeping with a huge broom of twigs. Louise opened a gate in an
arch smothered in roses, and they passed through into the front yard,
equally hard and sandy and swept, and they came to the steps of the
wide gallery that ran around two-thirds of the house.
Lockwood was in tense expectation of meeting Hanna, of the critical
moment of introduction, of speaking, of possible—though
unlikely—recognition. It was with a sensible letting down of the
strain that he saw only old Power on the gallery, his feet cocked up
on the railing, half somnolent, holding an unlighted cob pipe in his
teeth. On the steps young Jackson Power sat huddled up, still wearing
his expensive clothing, but coatless and with his sleeves rolled up,
looking half dead with boredom.
He jumped up joyfully as the pair came in. Henry Power awakened
completely, and they gave him so delighted a welcome that it was plain
they were overjoyed at anything to break up the monotony of life.
“Mr. Lockwood, sir! You’re Craig’s new woods rider, I believe. I’ve
heerd of you. Come up on the gallery an’ have a chair where it’s
cooler.”
Mr. Power had adopted none of the extravagant habits of his sons. He
wore a blue cotton shirt without any collar or vest, strong brown
trousers whose leather suspenders were very conspicuous, and he had no
shoes on. His speech was a little shaky with age; he must have been
far over seventy, for he had been in the Civil War as a mere boy, and
he had almost as rich and slurred an Alabama accent as any negro. He
had no grammar, and he looked what he was—a barbarian from the big
swamps, but a trace of old-time courtesy and “family” hung about him
yet.
Jackson meanwhile had hurried to bring out a bottle and glasses, and
was apparently appalled when Lockwood declined any refreshment. He
took a drink himself, while Louise, dropping into a rocking-chair,
explained Lockwood’s interposition, rather magnifying the assistance
he had given.
“You’ll have to drive Mr. Lockwood back to where I found him,
Jackson,” she said. “You can pick up Mr. Hanna as you come back.”
“Oh Lordy, sis!” Jackson exclaimed. “You ain’t gone and made Mr. Hanna
walk all that ways round to the bridge?”
He laughed, and yet looked uneasy. If Hanna had offered his sister any
insult, he would have to be shown the door, or perhaps thrashed, or
perhaps shot. But Louise laughed easily.
“He preferred to come that way,” she said, and Jackson looked
relieved.
“Sure I’ll drive you back,” he said to Lockwood. “But you ain’t in no
such hurry, surely. Say, why can’t you stop and eat supper with us?”
Lockwood pleaded his duty and his horse left in the woods. He was not
yet prepared to meet Hanna, to sit at table with him. But he felt a
conviction that he would have to face it sooner or later.