THE MEETING
Lockwood rode his rounds the next day with a queer feeling of change.
It had been coming on for days, that feeling—in fact, ever since the
night when he had watched that magical moonlight on the white front of
the colonial house; and it had culminated in the meeting of yesterday.
Memory came back to him slowly and in scraps. He certainly recollected
Louise in New Orleans. He remembered having spoken to her casually as
she passed him; he had once had some dealing or other with her in the
office; but he could not remember a single word she had ever said to
him. Evidently, however, she had remembered him, and the thought
brought a stir of warmth to his blood.
He wondered anxiously what Hanna’s relations with the girl might be.
It made him furious to think that he should have any relations at all.
But what, indeed, were Hanna’s relations with the whole family?
In a broad way, Lockwood thought he could answer that. It was
undoubtedly a confidence game that was being worked. Hanna was winning
the money at cards, perhaps, or appropriating it in some even more
crafty manner. Lockwood chuckled rather grimly as he thought how
opportunely he had arrived. It would put a fine edge on his vengeance
to spoil Hanna’s game before killing him.
The next morning a thunderstorm passed crashing over the woods, with
torrents of terrific rain that lasted for twenty minutes. A jet of
hail followed it. Lockwood and his horse sheltered in a deserted negro
cabin, and immediately afterward the sun burst out again with torrid
heat. The earth steamed and reeked.
In this hot weather the turpentine gum had been running very fast, and
the cups filled rapidly. “Dipping” was going on in Lockwood’s area. At
intervals through the woods he came upon a sweating, half-naked negro
staggering with one of the enormously heavy wooden “dip buckets,”
filling it from the gum cups. At intervals empty barrels had been sent
down, into which the buckets were emptied, and mule wagons were slowly
making the rounds, hauling the full barrels to the camp and leaving
empty ones. In a day or two the still would be at work.
Lockwood had a continual, unreasoning expectation of again seeing
Louise in the motor boat every time he went by the bayou. He took
pains with his costume; he polished his boots, removed some of the gum
stains from his khaki breeches, and put a preen tie under his low
collar. But she did not come.
On the third day afterward, however, he did hear the throbbing of the
motor boat coming up the water, and his heart jumped. He was fifty
yards back from the bayou, but he drove his horse hastily forward,
just in time to see the boat come in sight. It was the Powers’ boat
certainly, but all it held was young Jackson Power. Lockwood rode down
to the shore and halloed a greeting, and the boy steered in at once.
“Engine running all right now?” Lockwood inquired.
“Seems like. I don’t reckon there was nothing wrong with her really.
This boat sure ought to run good. She cost three thousand dollars.”
“What?” exclaimed Lockwood.
“Yes, sir. We got her in Mobile.”
Lockwood scrutinized the boy, suspecting a stupid lie.
“Well, I think you paid too much,” he said. “You could have got it for
fifteen hundred at the outside if you’d gone to the right place.”
“Well, it did seem a heap of money to me,” Jackson admitted. “But Mr.
Hanna said it was all right. It was Mr. Hanna sent the order.”
Hanna had bought the boat! Lockwood seemed to get a sudden glimpse of
his enemy’s game. Jackson was looking at him with a half question,
reflective and sober; but Lockwood judged that criticisms would be
premature just then.
“Well, maybe it’s a better boat than I thought,” he said easily.
“Reckon it must be.” Jackson lounged back comfortably, took out a
silver and pearl cigarette case and offered to toss it to Lockwood,
who shook his head.
“Sis says she used to know you in N’Orleans,” he remarked, striking a
match.
“Oh, I wasn’t in her class,” Lockwood laughed. “She was a young
business lady. I was just an auto mechanic in overalls. It’s kind of
her to remember me at all.”
“Great place, N’Orleans, they say,” went on Jackson wistfully. “I
expect you’ve seen lots of fine towns like that, though.”
The turpentine rider smiled. He knew that throughout the Gulf States
New Orleans is the ideal of metropolitan romance. It is what Paris is
to Europe, what New York is to the Northeast.
“I ain’t never been nowhere,” the boy continued. “I do sure aim to go
to Mobile and N’Orleans one day. We’re green, but what’s it matter?
We’ve got the price. I’d like to go by Pascagoula, too. We-all have
got investments there,” he added with pride.
“Buying land?”
“Naw. A heap better’n land. Say,” he pursued in a confidential tone.
“I reckon you know a whole lot about cars. What do you reckon our big
car cost?”
“Well, I know just what the catalogue price of that car is—or what it
was last fall,” Lockwood returned. “I could have got you that car in
New Orleans for two thousand six hundred dollars.”
“Well, she cost us close to six thousand.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. But she’s a special model—not another like her.”
“Seems a big price,” said Lockwood, still noncommittal.
“Yes, sir. It sure does. Looks like the dealers knowed we didn’t know
nothin’, and hit us all round, don’t it? Well, I reckon we kin stand
it—once or twice. But Hanna must certainly have picked out all the
high spots.”
It seemed as if Jackson was prepared to become confidential with a
little encouragement, but the habit of suspicion made Lockwood hold
back. The boy might be trying to pump him. Hanna might somehow have
scented hostility already.
“Oh, I expect it’s all right. I really didn’t look closely at your
car,” he said hastily. “Don’t tell Mr. Hanna what I said. It isn’t any
of my business. I expect he knows what he’s doing.”
“I’ll bet he does,” said Jackson with conviction. “He’s the wisest guy
I ever saw—up to all the city tricks. You don’t know him, do you?
Well, you’re going to see him to-night, I hope. I was just heading for
Craig’s camp to find you. We-all want you to come over and eat supper
with us to-night. Sis sent you a special invitation.”
“Thanks. I’ll be mighty glad to,” Lockwood accepted, after a momentary
shrinking from the idea of sitting at supper with his enemy. But the
meeting would have to come sooner or later.
“I dunno what she’s fixed to eat, but she’s been making the niggers
fly round the kitchen all mornin’,” Jackson added. “We kin sure give
you something to drink, anyway, and maybe we’ll play a little cards
after supper. I’ll come over with the car, and carry you across.”
“No, don’t trouble to do that. I can ride, or walk,” said Lockwood.
Lockwood returned to camp rather earlier than usual that afternoon,
shaved with care, and changed his clothes. It had come—the moment for
confronting his enemy, and a last-moment fear of being recognized
overcame him. He examined himself in the mirror, and then from his
baggage he rummaged out a small photograph, which he scrutinized in
comparison.
The picture showed a rather boyish face, with a short, soft, pointed
beard, and hair worn just a little longer than usual. He had had a
fancy in those days for looking artistic. That was less than seven
years ago, and it might have been twenty, he thought, looking at
himself in the glass. The absence of the beard and mustache threw out
the strong, rather hard lines of the mouth and chin. The hair was
short now, and slightly touched with premature gray—prison gray. The
face was crossed with scores of tiny wrinkles—prison wrinkles. The
expression had changed; it was no longer the same man. There was
little chance that any one from his former life would recognize him.
A little before six o’clock he reached the broken-down gate of the old
mansion. From the driveway he discerned a row of men in rocking-chairs
on the front gallery—Henry Power and his two boys, and a fourth, Hanna
himself.
The boys shouted a welcome to him at twenty yards, and a negro rushed
up to take his horse. Old Henry shook hands with him in a ceremonious
fashion, making him welcome in old-fashioned phrases; and then he was
introduced to Hanna. He had braced himself to the ordeal of shaking
hands, but at the last moment he could not bring himself to it. He
created a diversion by dropping his hat, which rolled down the gallery
steps.
A selection of chairs was offered him, but Tom Power beckoned him
mysteriously into the house with a wink. Inside, signs of age and
neglect were plain enough. Evidently the Powers had done little in the
way of repairs; but there was a new and gorgeously gaudy rug on the
hard-pine floor, and a magnificent hall lamp hung by gilded chains
from the ceiling. When Tom led him into the dining room there was the
same incongruity—a new table and sideboard of magnificent mahogany,
worthless new pictures on the walls in blinding frames. There were
cracked windowpanes and plaster, and smoked ceiling, and a vast
old-fashioned fireplace, big enough to roast a whole hog, yawning
black and sooty over its hearth of uneven red brick.
The table was already laid for supper, shining with new china and
silver. At that moment Louise came in hurriedly on some affair of
preparation. She gave a startled exclamation, shook hands charmingly
with Lockwood, and looked slightly disapproving as her brother led him
toward the sideboard. Then she disappeared again toward the kitchen.
“What’ll you take?” Tom inquired. “We’ve got ’most everything.”
The sideboard indeed resembled a bar. There was a row of all sorts of
bottles—plebeian native corn whisky, liqueurs, gin, cocktails, even
aristocratic gold necks. Lockwood was about to decline anything at
all; but he saw Tom’s shocked and mortified expression, and he
accepted a very small cocktail. Tom himself took a rather large one,
and it was plainly not his first that day. But he still could not be
called anything but sober, and they went back to the gallery, lighted
now by the sunset, and Lockwood found a chair as far from Hanna as
possible.