THE FUGITIVE
Dumb, Douglas leaned his gun against the wall and moved outward.
“Don’t you touch him!” blazed Marion. “Don’t you put a hand onto him or
I’ll--I’ll use that gun onto you! I might have knowed you was lyin’--if
I’d knowed Steve was out I’d never trusted a word you said. Now you’ve
got him, leave him to be buried where he was borned. Oh, Steve, Stevie
lad! And I--I give this feller the word to git his gun and do for you!
If I’d only knowed you was out! Oh, Stevie boy!”
In a storm of grief she dropped her head on the thin chest, hugging the
limp lad to her with convulsive strength. A few feet away the blond
man halted, dazed by the unintentional tragedy and the violence of the
girl’s outburst. For minutes he stood there motionless, hardly grasping
the significance of her denunciation.
Then his brain began to work. Her words, repeating themselves, became
appallingly plain. This young Steve was “out”--and his swarthy pallor
was not merely that of unconsciousness or death: it was that of long
confinement in some place whence he had just escaped--a place where
hair was kept cropped. And he, Douglas Hampton, who had been half
accepted by this girl as the chance camper he claimed to be, now had
become in her mind a far blacker monster than a mere “detective”--a
merciless bloodhound who killed poor fugitives on sight. Gazing
miserably on the mountain maid mourning her luckless boy lover, he
found the sight unendurable. His head drooped, and his eyes rested
unseeing on the stones between him and the pathetic pair.
Up overhead fluttered the yellowhammers, scared by the shot but
emboldened by the ensuing silence to wheel about and whet their
curiosity in scrutiny of the tragic group on the stones. High on the
cliff behind, an unseen squirrel fussed and fumed; and from crack and
cranny along the wall and from crevices among the fallen fragments
more than one furtive little eye peered out. Steadily the sun slipped
upward in the clean blue sky, lighting up in pitiless nakedness one
more spectacle such as it had seen all too often in the long stretch
of time since men first penetrated into this grim gulf. The wretched
man neither heard nor saw any of these things. Stone-still he stood,
staring down at a spattered splotch of white on a gray rock.
All at once his blank gaze focused sharply on that white spot. He
started. In one stride he was beside the rock. As he stooped and
squinted, a light flamed in his face. With a bound he was up and
leaping toward the limp form beyond.
“Git away!” shrilled Marion, lifting a tear-swollen face and turning
on him like a tigress. “Keep your bloody hands off him--he’s mine! My
onliest----”
“Listen to me!” he commanded. “I never hit him! The shot struck that
stone yonder--the whole charge! It was an accident anyway--and he was
out of line--the shot couldn’t hit him from where I stood. Let me see
that wound.”
For an instant she sat rigid, unable to believe, yet thrilled with
hope. Quickly, but gently, he raised the head of the youth and probed
the injury he found. Then he nodded vehemently.
“This is no gunshot wound,” he asserted. “It’s a cut and a bump. He
tumbled and knocked his head against a stone. Got a hard crack, but
nothing dangerous. Poor kid, he looks half starved, and that smash he
took just finished him--for awhile. All he needs is water, food, rest,
and safety. I’ll give him all of them.”
After one stare at the split scalp now turned toward her, she sprang
up, her cheeks aglow with joy. But then she paused and shot a glance at
the gun near by.
“And you’ll take him back! No you won’t--I’ll----”
In the nick of time he caught her wrist as she started toward the
weapon.
“Take him back where?” he snapped. “I’ll take him nowhere, except back
among the rocks. After he’s able to walk he can go where he likes. He’s
nothing to me. If he’s anything to you, don’t stand in his way. I’m
trying to help him. Now behave!”
She was tugging furiously away, but as he released her she stood where
she was, fighting now against her distrust of him. He lifted the
sagging body, got a firm grip, and lurched back toward the cliff.
As he passed the shot-scarred stone he grunted and jerked his head
downward toward it. Following, she paused an instant and studied the
white patch, glanced at the little cañon, then moved on with clearer
face. She knew well how shot-marks looked; saw, too, that the tall
stranger had spoken truth when he said Steve was out of his line of
fire from the walled passage. Though she had not seen the gun fired,
she realized now that hardly any man would have made so poor a shot if
he had actually been trying to hit the hunted youth.
Yet, when Douglas edged into the slit and bore his burden through, she
halted behind him and put a tentative hand on the gun, still loaded in
one barrel. Narrowly she inspected the “newfangled” weapon--so unlike
the ancient muzzle-loaders common in the Traps--wavering between a
desire to draw its remaining charge and fear lest it might disastrously
explode again. After a dubious moment she shook her head and went on.
She must trust this man, whether she would or not.
Down on the tumbled blanket and the bough-tip bed Douglas laid the
youth. Then he reached for the canvas water-pail. Its lightness brought
a frown to his brow. Hardly a cupful remained in it.
“I’ll git somethin’,” she volunteered, reading his thought. Before he
could fathom her purpose she was leaving through the passage, limping
a little but moving as if sure of herself. Presently she returned,
carefully bearing a jug.
“Well, you witch! Where did you dig up that?”
“That’s one of the questions you better not ask round here,” she
parried. “Jest hold up his head while I give him a good snort.”
Smiling grimly, he raised the lad’s head and opened his lax mouth
while she pulled the corn-cob plug. Deftly she put the nozzle to that
mouth and poured the “snort.” The aptness of the word was speedily
demonstrated by the uncouth noise which erupted from Steve.
His eyes flew open, rolled, blinked. He coughed, sprayed a mouthful of
the colorless but powerful liquor on his helpers, gasped, and struggled
up as if kicked out of sleep. Wildly he stared at the two faces so near
his. Then, as the girl put the jug again to his mouth, he grabbed it
with both hands and gulped thirstily. When he lowered the vessel he
licked his lips, and across them flitted a faint grin.
“Gawd, am I dead or dreamin’?” he breathed hoarsely. “Marry! Be ye
there? An’ this here licker--I’m a dunkey if ’tain’t real! Who--who’s
this feller?”
His brown eyes glared into the cool blue ones. Involuntarily his right
hand gripped the jug-handle as if it were a gun-stock. His gaunt face
tightened into a menacing mask. He wavered like a mortally wounded
wildcat gathering its last strength to spring.
“I’m all right, Steve,” soothed Douglas. “I’m not after you. You’re
safe, and this is Marry, and that’s real stuff in the jug. Calm down.”
Under the steadying influence of the quiet tone the youth relaxed a
little. Yet his lined mouth remained set as he demanded: “Who shot at
me?”
“Nobody,” Douglas told him. “My gun exploded accidentally. I didn’t
even see you. You fell and cracked your head.”
The boy still glowered suspiciously, but when Marion spoke his gaze
shifted to her.
“That’s right, Steve. You’re all right, ’cept a little cut and a bump.
Tell me quick--how long you been out? Are they after you?”
A savage smile twisted the thin mouth.
“I dunno if they’re trackin’ me--I reckon so. I ain’t seen ’em. I got
’way Monday night, an’ I ain’t goin’ back till I git Snake Sanders.
Cuss him, he put me away--an’ I never done it, Marry, I never! It was
Snake done it! An’ I got the blame. Three years I been doin’ time--but
I’ll take them three years outen him quick’s I git to a gun! Yas, an’
all the rest of his life too! I’ll----”
“Don’t you! He’ll git you, not you git him. You might’s well try to
git a copperhead by grabbin’ onto him with your bare hands. And you’ve
got to keep out till the officers quit huntin’--they’ll be into here,
if they ain’t here now. Don’t you go near the house or a gun--don’t
move or make a noise till I tell you, or you’re a goner! Now gimme
that jug and I’ll put it back. We’ve got to go quick to some other
hide-out--there’s been shootin’ up here and we don’t know who’ll
come--gimme that jug!”
“Not till I git ’nother big snort under my shirt,” refused Steve,
lifting the jug in unsteady hands. “I ain’t et much for four days,
an’----”
“Gimme that jug!” she stormed. “Know whose it is? Snake’s!”
The boy started as if stung. His grip relaxed, and she yanked the jug
from him and grabbed up the corn-cob. Douglas noticed, in an absent
way, that the clay was smeared with a streak of green paint.
“Snake’s? I been drinkin’ that varmint’s licker?” raged Steve. “I’d
ruther lap up p’ison! Gimme that jug back! I’ll bust it!”
“No you won’t!” She backed off. “He’s right round here now somewheres,
I shouldn’t wonder, a-sneakin’ and a-slidin’ along, and you’ve got to
lay low awhile--you ain’t even got a gun. I’m goin’ to put this right
back where ’twas. You keep quiet.”
She hobbled away. Steve struggled to rise and overtake her, but found
himself powerless in the grip of Douglas.
“Cool off, Steve,” advised the blond man. “Think what a joke this is on
Snake--you drinking up his licker. Wouldn’t it make him mad?”
A sudden hard grin split the pallid face. Steve sank back.
“That’s right, too--uh--what’s yer name?”
“Call me Hamp.”
“Hamp. Good ’nough. I dunno ye, an’ ye don’t b’long round here, but ye
act right. Got anything to eat, Hamp? I been goin’ a long time, an’
it’s ’most took the tuck outen me.”
He began to blink a little uncertainly. The “licker” was fast getting
in its work on his woefully empty stomach.
“Got a can of beans and some water, and they’re yours.”
“Gimme ’em!”
The demand crackled like an electric spark. The hard-set visage turned
ravenous, and the wiry frame lifted itself and set its back against
the wall. When Douglas tendered the opened can it was snatched and a
quarter of its contents dumped into a grimy hand. An instant later the
whole handful had been wolfed down and another was being stuffed into a
fast-working mouth. When Marion came limping back from her mysterious
pilgrimage only an empty tin and greasy lips remained to tell what had
happened.
Unspeaking, the blond man opened another bean-can, put in a tin spoon,
and handed it to the girl. She sank on a stone and began eating
eagerly, but far more daintily than the boy. Douglas watched silently,
but he nodded as he noted the instinctive difference in her way of
feeding herself. Steve also watched, but with a different thought.
“Marry, ye’re gittin’ awful purty,” he vouchsafed. “When I went ’way ye
was thin’s a rail, but now ye’re han’some as a little red wagon. Ain’t
ye got a kiss for me?”
“Not till you wash your face, you dirty thing,” she composedly
answered. He grinned and wiped his mouth on a tattered sleeve much too
big for him. “Where’d you git the clothes?” she demanded.
“Them?” He glanced down at threadbare coat, thin shirt, and ragged
overalls. “Found ’em into fellers’ barns down yender. Hid my pen-clo’es
into one feller’s hay. Purty smart, hey?”
“Smart! Don’t you know the officers’ll track you that way? They will,
sure’s you’re livin’.”
“They’ll have a job findin’ me now I’ve got here,” he muttered, though
plainly disconcerted. “’Less’n somebody blabs.”
Brown eyes and gray eyes switched to the quiet man who sat taking it
all in.
“Don’t worry,” said he. “I haven’t seen you folks at all--either of
you.”
After a narrow stare Steve nodded slightly. Not another word was spoken
until the meagre meal was finished and the water-bag was totally empty.
Then Marion took command of the situation.
“We’ll be goin’ now,” she stated, rising. “No, don’t come with us.
Steve and me, we’ll go ’long by our own selves, and then you won’t know
what’s ’come of us if anybody should ask you. We’re awful obliged to
you, stranger, and we wish you good luck. G’by.”
“I’m not saying good-bye. I’m staying here, as I told you before. Maybe
we’ll meet again.”
She took several halting steps outward before responding, Steve
trailing silently behind her. At the edge of the cañon she paused and
spoke over one shoulder.
“If you’re stayin’, don’t stay _here_. It’s no place for you. You’ll be
better off down below. There’s Jake Dalton’s place, down towards the
Clove, where nobody lives any more, and you could go into there and
live pretty safe and comf’table if you mind your own business--and if
the ha’nt don’t git you.”
“Oho! A haunted house!”
“So folks say. Jake, he got kilt last spring by somethin’--nobody
knows what. They found him after he’d been dead a week or so, and
they couldn’t look at him right close. But he wasn’t shot or cut or
clawed--he was jest swelled up terrible. Two or three fellers stayed
into his house since, and they got drove out--somethin’ was there that
they didn’t see, but they could hear it and _feel_ it. Some say it’s
Jake’s ha’nt. Others say it ain’t Jake but the thing that kilt him. If
you want to try livin’ there nobody’s likely to bother you much. It
sets on the left of the Clove road, down yonder, with two big pines
back of it.
“Now we’re goin’. Oh, and one other thing--you better not come round
Nigger Nat’s house. He ain’t sociable. G’by.”
Out through the crack they passed. For a minute or two the blond man
sat looking moodily at the exit. Then he arose and followed.
The rocks outside were vacant. The trees and undergrowth showed no sign
of life. Even the curious yellowhammers were gone. Nowhere, except on
two stones--one scarred by shot, one stained with blood--was anything
to show that since the last sunset two young hill-folk had come
suddenly into the life of Douglas Hampton and as swiftly vanished from
it.
“Well,” he muttered, picking up his gun and turning back, “Steve, you
tough young wolf, you don’t know how lucky you are. I only hope you’ll
treat her right in the years to come.”