THE WARNING
“So you know Blue Bob,” he remarked, overtaking the girl after some
fifty yards.
“Know him! I reckon so! I’ve always known him, I think, and I’ve
dreaded and hated that man all my life.”
The trail ended suddenly at a cut-over slash, growing up again with
bushy small pines and scrub oak. Away to the left a strip of the
Alabama showed greenish and reddish. Below them, down in the hammock
land Lockwood saw a squalid wooden shanty in a small clearing. A woman
was apparently cooking at a fire in the yard. Louise checked her horse
and sat looking over the landscape, but evidently she was not thinking
of it.
“How mamma and I dreaded it when Bob’s house boat came down the river,
in the old days!” she exclaimed bitterly. “The boys were always going
aboard it. There was always drinking and gambling and fighting; and
one terrible night——”
She stopped, and turned her eyes on the dilapidated pine cabin with
its acre of growing corn.
“That’s the sort of place we used to live in. Do you wonder that I
don’t want to go back to it?” she said intensely.
Lockwood looked at the paintless pine shanty, roofed with small
rough-split boards, curled up with the weather. It probably had three
rooms; a wide open passage, or “dog-trot,” extended from front to
rear. A crumbling chimney of stone and mud rose at one end. The
clearing, with its corn and ragged garden was fenceless, and a wild
jungle of mixed peach trees, rose bushes, and blackberry canes blocked
the front of the yard.
He looked back at Louise’s flushed face. Her constraint had dropped
suddenly away; the episode of the snake and the meeting with the river
pirate had broken up the ice.
“There’s no danger of having to go back to that,” he said.
“I don’t know. I’m frightened,” she said somberly.
“Tell me,” he ventured, “did your brother repeat to Hanna what I said
about the oil investment?”
“Yes. Tom told him,” she answered reluctantly.
“Hanna was furious, I suppose.”
“Not furious. He was—well, coldly indignant. He said that we could
have our money back any time we wanted to draw out of the oil
investment. He said nothing more before me. But I know he said
something about you to papa and the boys. Well, you saw for yourself
that there was a difference. Do you really think that oil speculation
is dangerous?”
“I can’t judge. I certainly never heard of any oil wells around
Pascagoula.”
“But it’s being kept quiet—not to let the public in, they say,” she
pleaded anxiously.
“Oil borings can’t be kept secret. There has to be heaps of heavy
machinery, a derrick built, gangs of men. It’s conspicuous a mile
away. All I say is, that I do hope that before going any deeper your
father will get a report from some good business firm in Mobile.”
Louise sighed.
“It was just like that!” she said, pointing again at the squatter’s
cabin. “There were just three rooms, and only one fireplace. We cooked
outdoors mostly, but it was often freezing cold in the winter. There
was wood all around us, but we never had enough to burn. The boys
always forgot to cut it. Papa and Tom worked sometimes on the river or
in the turpentine camps, and they planted an acre or two of corn, but
all they took any interest in was hunting and trapping and fishing.
They used to go away down into the delta sometimes for weeks.
“We always had plenty of rabbits and sweet potatoes and squirrels, but
that was all. I don’t think I ever tasted milk. There never was any
money. I had hardly clothes enough for decency. But there was money
for whisky. Not that the boys were ever cruel or even unkind. You can
see how they are now. But we used to hear them come home down the
river at night, drunk and shouting and firing their pistols——”
She stopped with a shudder, and then broke out again.
“There was one awful night, three years ago. It was a drinking and
gambling carouse on Blue Bob’s boat, and a man was killed. Nobody ever
knew who did it, but Bob left the Alabama River for nearly a year
after that. I wish he had never come back. Jackson was on the boat
that night, but he never told us anything about it. Men don’t tell
women about such things. But the women know all the same, and have to
carry the weight of them.”
She was flushed and shaking, and she winked to keep the tears back.
Lockwood had never seen her so moved. It tortured him, but he was
afraid to try to comfort her.
“Don’t think of those miseries. You’re safe from all that now,” he
reminded her again.
“I don’t know. We ought to be. We ought to be so happy, with all the
money and comfort. Mamma died before she ever saw it. Safe? With all
this reckless spending? Neither papa nor the boys will listen to
anything I say. Women don’t know anything about money, of course. But
I’m ten times as wise as they are. Ten thousand dollars seems
something with no end to it to them. Do you know, I’ve let them give
me diamonds, expensive jewelry, because I knew they could be turned
back into cash again if the need came. I did hope that you could make
friends with Tom and Jackson, so that they would take advice from you;
but now Mr. Hanna seems to have turned them all against you.”
“I expect he has. Never mind,” said Lockwood. “I’ll bring pressure on
Mr. Hanna soon.”
“What sort of pressure?”
“A sort he’ll understand. Don’t lose your nerve, Miss Louise. You
won’t have to go back to the swamps.”
“Of course, for myself, I could always go back to the city again and
earn my living.”
“You won’t have to do that either. Trust me. It’ll all come out
right.”
She looked at him in a perplexed way, pathetic, like a puzzled child,
and sighed deeply again.
“You’re encouraging. But I don’t see what you can do, really. Unless
you kill Mr. Hanna,” she added, smiling.
“That would be one way,” Lockwood agreed gravely.
“I didn’t mean that, of course!” Louise cried, shocked. “You didn’t
think that I really meant it?”
“Of course not. Neither did I. But Hanna will trip himself up sooner
or later. Do what you can to check the spending, and I want to be kept
posted as to how things are going. How can you let me know? I don’t
suppose I’d be a welcome visitor at your house. You ride often, don’t
you? Can’t I go with you again? I can always take an hour off, and if
I could meet you any time, morning or evening——”
“Oh, I’m afraid—I’m afraid I couldn’t!” exclaimed Louise, obviously
startled at the suggestion, and coloring hotly. She stooped over the
reins, looked at her wrist watch.
“It’s almost noon,” she cried. “Goodness! I must go home this minute.”
She turned her horse and started back at a fast canter along the
trail.
She kept well ahead and dropped only casual words over her shoulder
till they reached the main road. The noon sun beat down fiercely. The
yellow dust wavered up like flames around the horses’ hoofs. Here she
pulled up, and turned back to him.
“Please don’t come any farther,” she said nervously. “You really have
made me feel lots more encouraged. The worst of it was that I never
could talk about these things to anybody. And—and I do ride sometimes.
I think—I might have to go down the road over the bridge across the
bayou—not to-morrow—perhaps the next evening—right after supper——”
“Watch for me on the bridge if you do,” said Lockwood, as she almost
broke down in confusion.
She gave him a quick smile and rode off without a word of good-by. He
watched her moving figure through the dust until she was out of sight
beyond the creek swamp, and then he proceeded more slowly toward the
turpentine camp. He was both elated and uneasy, with such a sense of
tingling delight in his heart as he had never expected to feel again.
Directly after supper, on the second day afterwards, he was waiting in
the saddle on the bayou bridge. He waited a quarter of an hour before
he saw Louise riding slowly down the slope.
“What news? Anything?” he questioned.
“Nothing changed. Everything the same,” she answered. She did not seem
to want to talk about it this evening. There was an hour and a half of
daylight left, and they rode slowly down the soft road through the
turpentine pines.
They saw nobody but a couple of negroes with mule teams. Louise did
not appear depressed; on the contrary she was in nervously high
spirits, ready to chatter lightly. The big issues were dropped. They
talked of trifling matters, of their likes and dislikes, intimate and
personal things. They exchanged reminiscences of the motor shop in New
Orleans; Louise told amusing incidents of her childhood up the river.
Those old days had not been all bad, it seemed. That ride brought them
into closer personal touch than anything before, Lockwood felt; but it
was too short. Dusk seemed to fall like an evil magic, and they turned
back. Lockwood stopped on the bridge where they had met, and he
watched Louise fading up the road through the twilight.
That was the first of four such rides—once more in the evening, once
on the afternoon of a day when heavy sudden rain had driven the wood
negroes in, and all the clay roadsides glittered red and vermilion and
green as if freshly washed with rainbow paint; and once in the cool of
an early Sunday morning.
Few and brief as they were, these hours were the most delicious and
exciting that Lockwood had ever known. He was supposed to be gathering
information and planning tactics, but they hardly ever talked of the
problematic situation. Behind each of them was an unhappy past which
they put out of sight, and a threatening future which they ignored for
the moment. Things were at a standstill at the Power house; nothing
was to be done at the moment. They talked mostly of trivial things,
but these all seemed momentous. They were on terms of the frankest
comradeship, and not a word was interchanged that might not have been
pronounced in public; yet Lockwood had a heavily increasing sense of
guilt.
These half surreptitious rides were not the thing. Social customs are
rigid in the rural South. Under no circumstances would Louise’s family
have permitted them. Plenty of people had seen them, and the affair
would not be long in being talked of. Old Henry was sure to hear of
it. Trouble would come of it; Hanna would take advantage of it; for he
was certain that Hanna had already sensed Lockwood’s hostility. Yet he
could not give up this sole means of remaining in touch with Louise.
He had not set eyes on Henry Power since the day of his visit. Once
the boys had motored past him on the road, but at such speed that he
could not tell whether they had returned his salutation or not. But he
felt a coolness in the whole district, that must have proceeded from
that house. Mr. Ferrell was no longer so genial when he handed out the
mail; and the usual hearty greetings of the farmers about the store
had diminished to perfunctory nods, and side glances of suspicion.
Slander was going about him, but he could not guess what form it was
taking.
A few days later Charley Craig called him aside to the office.
“What’s this I hear about you being one of these here prohibition
spotters?” he demanded, fixing a penetrating eye on his woods rider.
“Why, nothing at all about it!” returned Lockwood, staggered. “It’s
the first I’ve heard of it. Who’s been saying that?”
“Well—a good many fellows are saying it,” said Craig. “I didn’t know
what to think. I’ll say you’re doing well here, but you ain’t no
turpentine man, I can see you’ve got something else on your mind. I
don’t want no government men round here. I can do all the prohibition
enforcement myself that I need in this here camp. If I find any man
bringing in a bottle of liquor I’ll take the hide off’n him. I’ve run
Blue Bob out of the bayou. I ain’t got no use for bootleggers, but I
ain’t got none for spotters either.”
“Well, I’m no spotter, I do assure you,” said Lockwood. “But I will
say that a spotter would find a mighty rich field here at Rainbow
Landing. I’ve no interest in bootleggers, one way or the other. Did
that story come from the Power place?”
“I dunno as I’d just say that it did,” returned Craig carefully. He
began to fill his pipe and spoke with elaborate casualness. “I’d hate
to get the Power boys worked up against me, if I was you. They’re good
boys, but they growed up rough and reckless. I’d look out right sharp
for ’em.”
It was meant for a warning, and Lockwood grasped that there might be
more danger in the air than he had imagined.
He met Louise the next Sunday morning. She was less cheerful than
usual. She looked tired, as if she had slept badly. She said she felt
exhausted with the heat, and did not want to ride far. They made a
mile circuit through the woods, and were coming back to the road
before Lockwood ventured to question her as to the movement of
affairs.
“Not so badly. The boys have decided not to buy the light car. Hanna
even advised against it. I wonder why. There was a card game at the
house last night. Jackson won nearly seven hundred dollars from the
Fenways. It lasted till nearly morning and I couldn’t sleep. That’s
why I feel worn out to-day. I wonder how long this is going to last.”
“Not long now. As I said before—just trust me.”
“I do trust you.” She laughed rather wearily. “You can see that I do,
or I wouldn’t be riding with you now, since Tom told me”—she glanced
up at him laughingly and grotesquely exaggerated the Alabama
drawl—“that I wasn’t ter have nothin’ more to do with you, nohow—at
all!”
If she laughed it was to cover the perturbation that her eyes
betrayed. Lockwood had half expected it, but he was appalled.
“So I’m afraid this will have to be our last ride,” she added soberly.
“Our last? Never!” he ejaculated. “It mustn’t be. I’ve a thousand
things to say to you—things I haven’t told you yet—important things!”
It seemed to him suddenly that he had wasted all these hours of golden
opportunity. He should have told her his story. Some time she would
have to know it. It would be better to tell her himself, before the
catastrophe broke.
“Let’s turn back. Make it another hour, if this is to be the last,” he
pleaded, drawing up close beside her and extending his hand.
She put his hand aside and motioned silently ahead. They had come back
near the road. Through a screen of tall gallberry he saw something
that stood still and glittered in the sun. The trail turned, and he
saw the Powers’ car drawn up almost to block the opening of the way,
and Tom was leaning with both arms on the wheel and staring toward
them.
They were too close to turn back. He had seen them.
“Try to come up the bayou—in the motor boat—early any forenoon!”
Lockwood tossed to Louise under his breath. He did not know whether
she had heard him. She had turned very pale, sitting stiffly in the
saddle and gazing straight ahead at her brother. Lockwood thought they
must both have looked extremely guilty as they rode up to the standing
car.
Tom gave them a sullen grim look.
“You ride straight on home, sis!” he commanded. “I’ve got to have a
talk with Mr. Lockwood here.”
“What are you going to say?” Louise cried. “I won’t go. Tom! I won’t
have you quarrel.”
“Better go, as your brother says. We’re not going to quarrel,”
Lockwood advised cheerfully.
She hesitated, looking wildly from one to the other, then she pushed
her horse past the car and fled up the road. Several times she glanced
fearfully back, and then vanished over the bridge.
“What is it, Tom?” Lockwood asked amicably.
“I’ve got just this to say,” Power growled. “You ain’t no gentleman,
and ef I ketch you comin’ round my sister again I’ll kill you.”
“What’s the matter? What has Hanna been saying about me?” Lockwood
questioned, still pleasantly.
“What makes you think he’s been sayin’ anythin’? Well, he has. I
reckon you know what it is. Hanna says he knowed you the first time he
seen you here, but he didn’t want to make no trouble, and he didn’t
say nothing. He says you was arrested over in Mississippi for
swindlin’, and you’d have been jailed ef you hadn’t got away.”
“That’s a damned lie,” Lockwood returned.
“’Course you’d say that. I dunno whether you’re lyin’ or not
yourself.”
Tom suddenly produced a pearl-handled revolver and rested it across
the steering wheel. It was not exactly a threat, but the lie had been
as good as passed.
Lockwood dropped the reins and spread his hands wide to show them
empty, then folded his arms over his chest. Under his fingers he felt
the cold iron of his own pistol under his shoulder. He was not in the
least afraid. He was confident that he could draw and fire first, if
he needed. But he had no idea of being provoked into a shooting affray
and ruining his whole cause. He would almost rather take a bullet
himself then than put one into Tom Power.
“And you’re goin’ under a false name now, Hanna says,” Tom continued.
“What about that? Is your right name Lockwood, or not?”
Strangely, the necessary lie stuck in Lockwood’s throat. He stammered;
he jerked out a belated “of course!” that sounded strangely.
“Ain’t no ‘of course’ about it!” said Tom staring sharply. “Now I
reckon you know as well as I do ef you’re a fit man to be ridin’ with
my sister—agin’ her father’s orders, too.”
“God knows I’m not, Tom,” Lockwood assented.
Power gazed at him, perplexed. Lockwood felt a warm flash of sympathy
and liking for him, he looked so puzzled and honest and bewildered,
devoid of malice, anxious really to defend his sister, and perfectly
ready to commit murder.
“Don’t worry, Tom. I’m not as bad as you think,” he said, smiling.
“I dunno about that. Well, I’ve done warned you. I don’t want to start
no trouble, but I reckon you’d better leave this here district for
your own good. Don’t make no mistake now. You know what you’ve got
comin’ to you.”
He put his foot on the starter, and the engine murmured and hummed.
Laying down the pistol, he put in the clutch and moved off. He gave
Lockwood one more glance, half menacing, half perplexed, and did not
look back again.