NEW FORCES
Lockwood rode the woods dreamily that next forenoon.
It was going to be impossible to kill Hanna, unless in the heat of
sudden self-defense. He wondered at himself, for life had suddenly
come to seem once more valuable to him. The old black purpose that had
driven him so long was fading away. Not that he had forgiven his
enemy; he was as determined as ever to defeat Hanna’s purposes, to see
him sure of prison, if possible—not that he had any objection to
taking his life, but he was no longer willing to wreck his own life to
compass Hanna’s death. He had, in fact, developed an interest keener
even than that of hate.
His horse trod almost without sound on the deep carpet of pine
needles, and as he came to the bayou he perceived the loom of a great,
gray bulk. Coming nearer, he recognized it as the house boat he had
seen before, moored now directly across the bayou from him. It had not
been there the day before. It must have been brought up early that
morning.
A small fire smoldered on the shore by the mooring, with a coffee pot
and iron frying pan beside it, but there was no one near the fire. On
the little railed deck space at the stern a man sat fishing and
smoking. It was the bearded pirate Lockwood had seen before. His bare
feet were propped on the deck rail; he tilted back in a rickety chair;
he smoked his pipe with his hands in his pockets, and the fishing rod
was wedged into a crevice of the deck. His hat was off, and Lockwood
could see a great bluish stain or scar covering much of one side of
his forehead, which might have been a powder burn from a pistol fired
at close range. For some moments the two men stared at one another in
silence across the muddy water.
“Ho-owdy!” the riverman drawled at last.
“Good mo-ornin’!” Lockwood responded with equal languor. “You stopping
here?”
“For a while, mebbe.” He examined the horse and rider. “Reckon you’re
one of the turpentine riders?”
“Yes. And I expect you’re Blue Bob.”
“Mebbe some calls me that. My name’s Bob Carr. This hyar’s my house
boat. You reckon Craig’s got anythin’ to say ’bout hit?”
“I reckon not,” said Lockwood amiably, “so long as you don’t interfere
with his camp.”
“Ef nobody don’t bother us none we don’t bother them none,” growled
the river dweller, returning Lockwood’s grin with animosity; and the
woods rider turned his horse into the pines again. He had nothing
whatever to say to the river pirate, but he promised himself to keep a
watchful eye on that boat.
He sighted it again that afternoon, apparently deserted, but next
morning he did not go to the woods. The turpentine still was set
going, and he remained at the camp to assist in “running a charge.”
The copper retort bricked in on the top of the furnace was a large
one, and a “charge” meant a good many barrels. One by one the shouting
negroes swayed the heavy barrels of “dip” up to the platform around
the retort, emptying the gum into the mouth, together with a due
allowance of water, anxiously watched by the expert still man. The cap
was then screwed down, and a carefully regulated fire of pine logs set
going in the furnace below.
The spiral worm went off from the shoulder of the retort, passed
through a tank of cold water, and ended in a tap below. In due course
steam began to issue from this orifice, then there was a slow,
increasing drop of liquid. The still man watched it carefully,
collected the drops and tasted them. It was turpentine. The spirit was
coming off, and a bucket was set to catch it.
Being more volatile than water, the spirit came off first. The slow
drops quickened to a stream. The bucket was filled and emptied many
times, filling one barrel after another, while the furnace fire was
kept at a steady glow. Too much heat would boil off the water as well
as the turpentine. It went on for hours, until at last the experienced
eye and nose of the “stiller” detected that what was coming through
the worm was not turpentine but water. He closed the tap. The
turpentine was done. It was the rosin next.
Three negroes dragged open a large vent in the lower side of the
retort, and a vast gush of blackish, reeking, boiling rosin tumbled
out into a huge wooden trough. It was the residue of the distilling,
less valuable than the spirit, but still valuable. It passed through
three strainers—the first of coarse wire mesh to catch the chips and
large rubbish, one of fine mesh, and lastly a layer of raw cotton,
known technically as a “tar baby.” As the trough filled, the still
intensely hot rosin was drawn off at the farther end and poured
bubbling and reeking into rough casks. Here it slowly hardened into
rocklike solidity, to be headed up finally for shipment down the
river.
It was hard, hot, dirty, delicate work, though Lockwood was not
capable of any of the skilled part of it. His duty mainly was in
seeing that the negroes brought up the gum barrels promptly, handled
the rosin with exactitude and kept the fire right. After the retort
was screwed up, everything had to go with precision, or the whole
charge would be ruined.
When the rosin was cleared, the fire was drawn and the still allowed
to cool. Late that afternoon Lockwood made a hasty round of the woods
to see the run of the gum, but he was tired and dirty and sticky, and
he felt in no condition to pay a visit to the Powers.
The next day, however, there was no distilling, and he was able to
take a couple of hours off in the afternoon. It was rather a failure.
Hanna was not at home, but neither was anybody else, with the
exception of old Henry, who sat as usual upon the gallery in his
rocking-chair. He urged Lockwood to stay and “eat supper,” when the
rest of the household would probably be back; but Lockwood had to
return to the camp.
Next day the still was run again—a day of terrible heat, when the bare
sand of the camp seemed to glow and burn white-hot in the sun, and
even the tough turpentine negroes complained bitterly. Lockwood’s own
head swam, especially as the blazing hot rosin poured out in the
blazing sun, but he kept going until the charge was run; and then
everybody suspended work, and, dripping with sweat, got into the
shade.
A violent thunderstorm broke that night and cooled the air. The whole
atmosphere next morning seemed fresh-washed and alive with ozone, and
that afternoon Lockwood rode again to the Powers’ house, arriving more
fortunately. Louise was there; so were the two brothers, apparently in
their customary state of intense boredom in lack of any violent
amusement. After a few minutes’ general talk on the gallery the girl
disappeared, leaving him with her brothers.
Tom glanced aside at the bottle from which he had one drink, and
yawned dismally.
“Cawn-plantin’ time,” said Jackson indolently.
“What are you doing with your farm? Doing any planting?” said
Lockwood.
“Plantin’?” laughed Tom. “You ain’t never seen this farm, I reckon.
Yes, we’ve got a nigger plowin’ down in the bottom field. Come down
and see it, if you wanter.”
It was something to do. They all three strolled slowly down through
the oak grove, past a small frame barn where a few hens scratched
among corn shucks, and reached the bottom field, of about ten acres.
The soil looked like almost pure sand. It turned up like brown sugar
from the share, and where it had dried it was almost white.
“This yere’s the porest land on earth,” said Tom. “You can’t make five
bushels of cawn to the acre. We done put forty dollars’ worth of
fertilizer on this yere field, and I’ll bet we don’t get cawn enough
to pay for it.”
“The whole farm’s like this yere,” agreed his brother.
“Fact is, I never was cut out for no farmer,” Tom admitted. “I always
wanted to be a steamboat man. When we-all got this yere money, my
notion was to buy a river boat, and run between Mobile and Selma.”
“Well, I thought we oughter go into the cotton-brokerage business,”
said Jackson. “But dad, he wouldn’t hear of it. He likes the swamps,
seems like, and he was just bound he’d come and live on his old
place.”
“You could grow peanuts on this light soil,” Lockwood suggested. “With
the peanuts you could raise hogs.”
“Why, we did get some registered Duroc Jerseys,” said Tom. “But they
ain’t doin’ no good. Takes more cawn to feed ’em than they’re worth.
Fact is, we ain’t got no hog-proof fences on this place and I reckon
it’d take two hundred dollars to put ’em up. It’s more’n it would be
worth. Can’t make nothin’ outer this farm. It’s the porest land out
yere.”
“It shore is!” Jackson agreed.
It did look like it. Lockwood was amused, however, at this economical
spirit in the face of the wild spending that was continually going on;
but the explanation was clear.
The Power boys were not “cut out for farmers,” as Tom said. They took
no sort of interest in this plantation, a rather discouraging
proposition for anybody. They did not need the corn crop; they had
more money than they had ever dreamed of possessing.
Previous to getting it they had been desperately poor, but they had
never worked hard. From what Louise had told him, from what the boys
and old Henry had said, Lockwood was able to picture their life—the
three-roomed cabin up the river, a little corn planting, hunting,
fishing, drink, and gambling—a reckless, squalid, perhaps lawless
existence. No wonder Louise had wished to escape from it; the marvel
was that she had succeeded so well.
They had all escaped from it. They seemed to believe themselves
everlastingly rich. They were flinging away money with both hands. And
now entered Hanna—a mystery which Lockwood was not yet able to
penetrate.
He was not winning the boys’ money at poker; he was not inducing them
to cash checks for him, nor borrowing money, so far as Lockwood had
gathered. What was he getting out of it?
Lockwood reflected that he would like to know through whose hands went
these orders for motors, wines, and jewelry, through what medium they
were filled. From what Jackson had said about the car, he was pretty
sure that he already knew.
But definite discoveries were slow in coming, though he rode over to
the big house several times in the next ten days. Twice he found
Louise alone on the gallery and had half an hour’s talk with her, but
she did not recur to her confidences of the night of the poker party.
Once he found no one there but Hanna, and he spent a difficult twenty
minutes before he felt that he could leave. Lockwood had firm faith
now in his disguise; he felt sure that Hanna had not recognized him
and could not; but there was an instinctive antipathy between the two
men, though they talked politely about the weather, the land, and the
river. He soon excused himself and escaped.
His time was much taken up at the camp. A great accumulation of rosin
and spirit had been collected, to be shipped up the river to
Montgomery, and Lockwood went down to see it loaded on the boat. The
boat was at the landing when he arrived, discharging cargo, and there
was as usual a good deal of freight for the Powers. Tom was there
watching it carried ashore, and he had his car and a mule wagon to
transport it home.
Lockwood saw the crates and boxes, and on his next visit to the house
the family exhibited the contents to him with a great deal of pride.
There were two immense leather library chairs, a mahogany table, a
hanging lamp, and a case of table silver. There was a gift for Louise,
a pearl necklace, which she brought downstairs to show. Tom mentioned
what he had paid for it, and the price did not seem exorbitant, if the
pearls were as real as they looked.
He also had received a quantity of motor-car literature by post, and
he mentioned that he was thinking of buying a small, light car, better
for the sandy roads than the big one. Lockwood perhaps looked a trifle
startled.
“I reckon you think we-all is shore goin’ the pace,” said Tom, a
little defiantly.
“It’s all right to go the pace if you can stand the speed,” Lockwood
returned.
“Oh, I reckon we kin stand it. We ain’t blowin’ in all our money, not
as you think—no, sir, not by a long shot! Fact is, there’s more comin’
in than goin’ out. We’re saltin’ it down.”
“Investing it?”
“That’s what we’re doin’. If you’ve got a few hundred dollars, I kin
shore put you up to a good thing—or I dunno, neither. Afraid it’ll be
about all taken up.”
“Did Mr. Hanna put you up to it?” Lockwood asked, with assumed
carelessness, though he had the sense of an approaching revelation.