McCloud spent the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs,
listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprig
of mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of his
well-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. When
at length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber a
voice from the road below aroused him.
He listened lazily; again came the timid call; he arose, brushing his
shabby coat mechanically.
Down the bramble-choked path he slouched, shouldering his wood-axe as a
precaution. Passing around the rear of his house, he peered over the
messed tangle of sweetbrier which supported the remains of a rotting
fence, and he saw, down in the road below, a young girl and a collie
dog, both regarding him intently.
"Were you calling me?" he asked.
"It's only about your road-tax," began the girl, looking up at him with
pleasant gray eyes.
"What about my road-tax?"
"It's due, isn't it?" replied the girl, with a faint smile.
"Is it?" he retorted, staring at her insolently. "Well, don't let it
worry you, young woman."
The smile died out in her eyes.
"It does worry me," she said; "you owe the path-master two dollars, or a
day's work on the roads."
"Let the path-master come and get it," he replied.
"I am the path-master," she said.
He looked down at her curiously. She had outgrown her faded pink skirts;
her sleeves were too short, and so tight that the plump, white arm
threatened to split them to the shoulder. Her shoes were quite as ragged
as his; he noticed, however, that her hands were slender and soft under
their creamy coat of tan, and that her fingers were as carefully kept as
his own.
"You must be Ellice Elton," he said, remembering the miserable end of
old man Elton, who also had been a gentleman until a duel with drink
left him dangling by the neck under the new moon some three years since.
"Yes," she said, with a slight drawl, "and I think you must be Dan
McCloud."
"Why do you think so?" he asked.
"From your rudeness."
He gave her an ugly look; his face slowly reddened.
"So you're the path-master?" he said.
"Yes."
"And you expect to get money out of me?"
She flushed painfully.
"You can't get it," he said, harshly; "I'm dog poor; I haven't enough to
buy two loads for my rifle. So I'll buy one," he added, with a sneer.
She was silent. He chewed the mint-leaf between his teeth and stared at
her dog.
"If you are so poor--" she began.
"Poor!" he cut in, with a mirthless laugh; "it's only a word to you, I
suppose."
He had forgotten her ragged and outgrown clothing, her shabby shoes, in
the fresh beauty of her face. In every pulse-beat that stirred her white
throat, in every calm breath that faintly swelled the faded pink calico
over her breast, he felt that he had proved his own vulgarity in the
presence of his betters. A sullen resentment arose in his soul against
her.
"I don't know what you mean," she said; "I also am terribly poor. If you
mean that I am not sorry for you, you are mistaken. Only the poor can
understand each other."
"I can't understand _you_," he sneered. "Why do you come and ask me to
pay money to your road-master when I have no money?"
"Because I am path-master. I must do my duty. I won't ask you for any
money, but I must ask you to work out your tax. I can't help it, can I?"
He looked at her in moody, suspicious silence.
Idle, vicious, without talent, without ambition, he had drifted part way
through college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idle
through the great universities, leaving unsavory records. His father had
managed to pay his debts, then very selfishly died, and there was nobody
to support the son and heir, just emerging from a drunken junior year.
Creditors made a clean sweep in Albany; the rough shooting-lodge in the
Fox Hills was left. Young McCloud took it.
The pine timber he sold as it stood; this kept him in drink and a little
food. Then, when starvation looked in at his dirty window, he took his
rifle and shot partridges.
Now, for years he had been known as a dealer in game out of season; the
great hotels at Saratoga paid him well for his dirty work; the
game-wardens watched to catch him. But his ice-house was a cave
somewhere out in the woods, and as yet no warden had been quick enough
to snare McCloud red-handed.
Musing over these things, the young fellow leaned on the rotting fence,
staring vacantly at the collie dog, who, in turn stared gravely at him.
The path-master, running her tanned fingers through her curls, laid one
hand on her dog's silky head and looked up at him.
"I do wish you would work out your tax," she said.
Before McCloud could find voice to answer, the alder thicket across the
road parted and an old man shambled forth on a pair of unsteady bowed
legs.
"The kid's right," he said, with a hoarse laugh; "git yewr pick an' hoe,
young man, an' save them two dollars tew pay yewr pa's bad debts!"
It was old Tansey, McCloud's nearest neighbor, loaded down with a bundle
of alder staves, wood-axe in one hand, rope in the other, supporting the
heavy weight of wood on his bent back.
"Get out of that alder-patch!" said McCloud, sharply.
"Ain't I a-gittin'?" replied Tansey, winking at the little path-master.
"And keep out after this," added McCloud. "Those alders belong to me!"
"To yew and the _blue_-jays," assented Tansey, stopping to wipe the
sweat from his heavy face.
"He's only cutting alders for bean-poles," observed the path-master,
resting her slender fingers on her hips.
"Well, he can cut his bean-poles on his own land hereafter," said
McCloud.
"Gosh!" observed Tansey, in pretended admiration. "Ain't he neighborly?
Cut 'em on my own land, hey? Don't git passionate," he added, moving off
through the dust; "passionate folks is liable to pyralyze their in'ards,
young man!"
"Don't answer!" said the path-master, watching the sullen rage in
McCloud's eyes.
"Pay yewr debts!" called out Tansey at the turn of the road. "Pay yewr
debts, an' the Lord will pay yewr taxes!"
"The Lord can pay mine, then," said McCloud to the path-master, "for
I'll never pay a cent of taxes in Foxville. Now what do you say to
that?"
The path-master had nothing to say. She went away through the golden
dust, one slim hand on the head of her collie dog, who trotted beside
her waving his plumy tail.
That evening at the store where McCloud had gone to buy cartridges,
Tansey taunted him, and he replied contemptuously. Then young Byram
flung a half-veiled threat at him, and McCloud replied with a threat
that angered the loungers around the stove.
"What you want is a rawhide," said McCloud, eying young Byram.
"I guess I do," said Byram, "an' I'm a-goin' to buy one, too--unless you
pay that there road-tax."
"I'll be at home when you call," replied McCloud, quietly, picking up
his rifle, and pocketing his cartridges.
Somebody near the stove said, "Go fur him!" to Byram, and the young
road-master glared at McCloud.
"He was a-sparkin' Ellie Elton," added Tansey, grinning; "yew owe him a
few for that, too, Byram."
Byram turned white, but made no movement. McCloud laughed.
"Wait," said the game-warden, sitting behind the stove; "jest wait
awhile; that's all. No man can fire me into a ditch full o' stinging
nettles an' live to larf no pizened larf at me!"
"Dingman," said McCloud, contemptuously, "you're like the rest of them
here in Foxville--all foxes who run to earth when they smell a
Winchester."
He flung his rifle carelessly into the hollow of his left arm; the
muzzle was in line with the game-warden, and that official promptly
moved out of range, upsetting his chair in his haste.
"Quit that!" bawled the storekeeper, from behind his counter.
"Quit what--eh?" demanded McCloud. "Here, you old rat, give me the
whiskey bottle! Quick! What? Money to pay? Trot out that grog or I'll
shoot your lamps out!"
"He's been a-drinkin' again," whispered the game-warden. "Fur God's
sake, give him that bottle, somebody!"
But as the bottle was pushed across the counter, McCloud swung his
rifle-butt and knocked the bottle into slivers. "Drinks for the crowd!"
he said, with an ugly laugh. "Get down and lap it up off the floor, you
fox cubs!"
Then, pushing the fly-screen door open with one elbow, he sauntered out
into the moonlight, careless who might follow him, although now that he
had insulted and defied the entire town there were men behind who would
have done him a mischief if they had dared believe him off his guard.
He walked moodily on in the moonlight, disdaining to either listen or
glance behind him. There was a stoop to his shoulders now, a loose
carriage which sometimes marks a man whose last shred of self-respect
has gone, leaving him nothing but the naked virtues and vices with which
he was born. McCloud's vices were many, though some of them lay dormant;
his virtues, if they were virtues, could be counted in a breath--a
natural courage, and a generous heart, paralyzed and inactive under a
load of despair and a deep resentment against everybody and everything.
He hated the fortunate and the unfortunate alike; he despised his
neighbors, he despised himself. His inertia had given place to a fierce
restlessness; he felt a sudden and curious desire for a physical
struggle with a strong antagonist--like young Byram.
All at once the misery of his poverty arose up before him. It was not
unendurable simply because he was obliged to endure it.
The thought of his hopeless poverty stupefied him at first, then rage
followed. Poverty was an antagonist--like young Byram--a powerful one.
How he hated it! How he hated Byram! Why? And, as he walked there,
shuffling up the dust in the moonlight, he thought, for the first time
in his life, that if poverty were only a breathing creature he would
strangle it with his naked hands. But logic carried him no further; he
began to brood again, remembering Tansey's insults and the white anger
of young Byram, and the threats from the dim group around the stove. If
they molested him they would remember it. He would neither pay taxes nor
work for them.
Then he thought of the path-master, reddening as he remembered Tansey's
accusation. He shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, dismissing
her from his mind, but she returned, only to be again dismissed with an
effort.
When for the third time the memory of the little path-master returned,
he glanced up as though he could see her in the flesh standing in the
road before his house. She _was_ there--in the flesh.
The moonlight silvered her hair, and her face was the face of a spirit;
it quickened the sluggish blood in his veins to see her so in the
moonlight.
She said: "I thought that if you knew I should be obliged to pay your
road-tax if you do not, you would pay. Would you?"
A shadow glided across the moonlight; it was the collie dog, and it came
and looked up into McCloud's shadowy eyes.
"Yes--I would," he said; "but I cannot."
His heart began to beat faster; a tide of wholesome blood stirred and
flowed through his veins. It was the latent decency within him awaking.
"Little path-master," he said, "I am very poor; I have no money. But I
will work out my taxes because you ask me."
He raised his head and looked at the spectral forest where dead pines
towered, ghastly in the moon's beams. That morning he had cut the last
wood on his own land; he had nothing left to sell but a patch of
brambles and a hut which no one would buy.
"I guess I'm no good," he said; "I can't work."
"But what will you do?" she asked, with pitiful eyes raised.
"Do? Oh, what I have done. I can shoot partridges."
"Market-shooting is against the law," she said, faintly.
"The law!" he repeated; "it seems to me there is nothing but law in this
God-forsaken hole!"
"Can't you live within the law? It is not difficult, is it?" she asked.
"It is difficult for me," he said, sullenly. The dogged brute in him was
awaking in its turn. He was already sorry he had promised her to work
out his taxes. Then he remembered the penalty. Clearly he would have to
work, or she would be held responsible.
"If anybody would take an unskilled man," he began, "I--I would try to
get something to do."
"Won't they?"
"No. I tried it--once."
"Only once?"
He gave a short laugh and stooped to pat the collie, saying, "Don't
bother me, little path-master."
"No--I won't," she replied, slowly.
She went away in the moonlight, saying good-night and calling her
collie, and he walked up the slope to the house, curiously at peace with
himself and the dim world hidden in the shadows around.
He was not sleepy. As he had no candles, he sat down in the moonlight,
idly balancing his rifle on his knees. From force of habit he loaded
it, then rubbed the stock with the palm of his hand, eyes dreaming.
Into the tangled garden a whippoorwill flashed on noiseless wings,
rested a moment, unseen, then broke out into husky, breathless calling.
A minute later the whispering call came from the forest's edge, then
farther away, almost inaudible in the thickening dusk.
And, as he sat there, thinking of the little path-master, he became
aware of a man slinking along the moonlit road below. His heart stopped,
then the pulses went bounding, and his fingers closed on his rifle.
There were other men in the moonlight now--he counted five--and he
called out to them, demanding their business.
"You're our business," shouted back young Byram. "Git up an' dust out o'
Foxville, you dirty loafer!"
"Better stay where you are," said McCloud, grimly.
Then old Tansey bawled: "Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yew
air meaner 'n pussley an' meaner 'n quack-root, an' we air bound tew run
yew into them mountings, b' gosh!"
There was a silence, then the same voice: "Be yew calculatin' tew mosey,
Dan McCloud?"
"You had better stay where you are," said McCloud; "I'm armed."
"Ye be?" replied a new voice; "then come aout o' that or we'll snake ye
aout!"
Byram began moving towards the house, shot-gun raised.
"Stop!" cried McCloud, jumping to his feet.
But Byram came on, gun levelled, and McCloud retreated to his front
door.
"Give it to him!" shouted the game-warden; "shoot his windows out!"
There was a flash from the road and a load of buckshot crashed through
the window overhead.
Before the echoes of the report died away, McCloud's voice was heard
again, calmly warning them back.
Something in his voice arrested the general advance.
"I don't know why I don't kill you in your tracks, Byram," said McCloud;
"I've wanted the excuse often enough. But now I've got it and I don't
want it, somehow. Let me alone, I tell you."
"He's no good!" said the warden, distinctly. Byram crept through the
picket fence and lay close, hugging his shot-gun.
"I tell you I intend to pay my taxes," cried McCloud, desperately.
"Don't force me to shoot!"
The sullen rage was rising; he strove to crush it back, to think of the
little path-master.
"For God's sake, go back!" he pleaded, hoarsely.
Suddenly Byram started running towards the house, and McCloud clapped
his rifle to his cheek and fired. Four flashes from the road answered
his shot, but Byram was down in the grass screaming, and McCloud had
vanished into his house.
Charge after charge of buckshot tore through the flimsy clapboards; the
moonlight was brightened by pale flashes, and the timbered hills echoed
the cracking shots.
After a while no more shots were fired, and presently a voice broke out
in the stillness:
"Be yew layin' low, or be yew dead, Dan McCloud?"
There was no answer.
"Or be yew playin' foxy possum," continued the voice, with nasal rising
inflection.
Byram began to groan and crawl towards the road.
"Let him alone," he moaned; "let him alone. He's got grit, if he hain't
got nothin' else."
"Air yew done for?" demanded Tansey, soberly.
"No, no," groaned Byram, "I'm jest winged. He done it, an' he was right.
Didn't he say he'd pay his taxes? He's plumb right. Let him alone, or
he'll come out an' murder us all!"
Byram's voice ceased; Tansey mounted the dark slope, peering among the
brambles, treading carefully.
"Whar be ye, Byram?" he bawled.
But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in the
long grass.
With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot
crashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes of
the shot died out; silence followed.
Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, still
clutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fell
clattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely.
"Up with them hands o' yourn!" he snarled; but McCloud only muttered and
began to rock and sway in the doorway.
Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. "Yew hev done fur Byram," he
said; "yew air bound to set in the chair for this."
McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes.
"It's well enough for you," he muttered; "you are only a savage; but
Byram went to college--and so did I--and we are nothing but savages like
you, after all--nothing but savages--"
He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across the
threshold.
"I want to see the path-master!" he cried, sharply.
A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine.
"She's here," said the game-warden, soberly.
But McCloud had started talking and muttering to himself.
Towards midnight the whippoorwill began a breathless calling from the
garden.
McCloud opened his eyes.
"Who is that?" he asked, irritably.
"He's looney," whispered Tansey; "he gabbles to hisself."
The little path-master knelt beside him. He stared at her stonily.
"It is I," she whispered.
"Is it you, little path-master?" he said, in an altered voice. Then
something came into his filmy eyes which she knew was a smile.
"I wanted to tell you," he began, "I will work out my
taxes--somewhere--for you--"
The path-master hid her white face in her hands. Presently the collie
dog came and laid his head on her shoulder.