Across a tree-shaded public square from the courthouse and "jail
house" at Carnettsville stood a building that wore the dejected guise
of uncomforted old age, and among the business signs nailed about its
entrance was the shingle bearing the name of "Creed Faggott, Atty. at
Law."
The way to this oracle's sanctum lay up a creaking stairway, and on a
brilliant summer day not long after Spurrier had entertained his blind
guest it was climbed by that guest in person, led by the impish boy
whose young mouth was stained with chewing-tobacco.
This precocious child opened the door and led his charge in and, from
a deal table, Creed Faggott removed his broganned feet and turned sly
eyes upon the visitors, out of a cadaverous and furtive face.
"You don't let no grass grow under your feet, do you, Joe?" inquired
the lawyer shortly. "When the day rolls round, you show up without
default or miscarriage." He paused as the boy led the blind man to a
chair and then facetiously capped his interrogation. "I reckon I don't
err in surmisin' that you've come to collect your pension?"
The blind man gazed vacantly ahead. "Who, me?" he inquired with
half-witted dullness.
"Yes, you. Who else would I mean?"
"Hit's due, ain't hit--my money?"
"Due at noon to-day and noon is still ten minutes off. I'm not sure
the company didn't make a mistake in allowing you such a generous
compensation for your accident." There was a pause, then Faggott added
argumentatively: "Your damage suit would have come to naught, most
likely."
"Thet ain't ther way ye talked when I lawed ther comp'ny," whined the
blind man. "Ye 'peared to be right ambitious ter settle outen co'te in
them days, Mr. Faggott."
"The company didn't want the thing hanging on. They got cold feet.
Well, I'll give you your check."
"I'd ruther have hit in cash money--silver money," stipulated the
recipient of the compromise settlement. "I kin count _thet_ over by
ther feel of hit."
Faggott snorted his disgust but he deposited in the outstretched palm
the amount that fell due on each quarterly pay day, and the visitor
thumbed over every coin and tested the edges of all with his teeth.
After that, instead of rising to go, he sat silently reflective.
"That's all, ain't it," demanded the attorney, and something like a
pallid grin lifted the lip corners in the blind man's ugly face.
"Not quite all," replied Joe Givins as he shook his head. "No, thar's
one other leetle matter yit. I'd love ter hev ye write me a letter ter
ther comp'ny's boss-man in Looeyville. I kinderly aims ter go thar an'
see him."
This time it was the attorney who, with an incredulity-freighted
voice, demanded: "Who, you?"
"Yes, sir. Me."
"The Louisville manager," announced Faggott loftily, "is a man of
affairs. The company conducts its business here through its local
counsel--that's me."
"Nevertheless an' notwithstandin', I reckon hit'll kinderly pleasure
ther boss-man ter talk ter _me_--when he hears what I've got ter tell
him."
A light of greed quickened in the shyster's narrow eyes. It was
possible that Blind Joe had come by some scrap of salable information.
It had been stipulated when his damage suit was settled, that he
should, paradoxically speaking, keep his blind eyes open.
"See here, Joe," the attorney, no longer condescending of bearing,
spoke now with a wheedling insistence, "if you've got any tidings,
tell 'em to me. I'm your friend and I can get the matter before the
parties that hold the purse strings."
Joe Givins stretched out a wavering hand and groped before him. "Lead
me on outen hyar, boy," he gave laconic command to his youthful
varlet. "I'm tarryin' overlong an' wastin' daylight."
"What's daylight to you, Joe?" snapped Faggott brutally, but
recognizing his mistake he, at once, softened his manner to a mollifying
tone. "Set still a spell an' let's have speech tergether--an' a little
dram of licker."
Ten minutes of nimble-witted fencing ensued between the two sons
of avarice, and at their end the blind man stumped out, carrying
in his breast pocket a note of introduction to a business man
in Louisville--whose real business was lobbying and directing
underground investigations--but the lawyer was no wiser than he
had been.
And when eventually from the murky lobby of the Farmers' Haven Hotel,
which sits between distillery warehouses in Louisville, the shabby
mountaineer was led to the office building he sought, he was received
while more presentable beings waited in an anteroom.
It chanced that on the same day John Spurrier spoke to Dyke Cappeze of
Glory.
"When we went fishing," he said, "I asked her whether she never felt a
curiosity for the things beyond the ridges--and her eagerness startled
me."
An abrupt seriousness overspread the older face and the answering
voice was sternly pitched.
"I should be profoundly distressed, sir," said Cappeze, "to have
discontent brought home to her. I should resent it as unfriendly and
disloyal."
"And yet," Spurrier's own voice was quickened into a more argumentative
timber, "she has a splendid vitality that it's a pity to crush."
"She has," came the swift retort, "a contented heart which it's a pity
to unsettle."
The elder eyes hardened and looked out over the wall of obstinacy that
had immured Dyke Cappeze's life, but his words quivered to a tremor of
deep feeling.
"I've given her an education of sorts. She knows more law than some
judges, and if she's ignorant of the world of to-day she's got a
bowing acquaintance with the classics. I'm not wholly selfish. If
there was some one--down below that I could send her to--some one who
would love her enough because she needs to be loved--I'd stay here
alone, and willingly, despite the fact that it would well-nigh kill
me." He paused there and his eyes were broodingly somber, then almost
fiercely he went on: "I would trust her in no society where she might
be affronted or belittled. I would rather see her live and die here,
talking the honest, old crudities of the pioneers, than have her
venture into a life where she could not make her own terms."
"Perhaps she could make her own terms," hazarded Spurrier, and the
other snapped his head up indignantly.
"Perhaps--yes--and perhaps not. You yourself are a man of the world,
sir. What would--one of your own sort--have to offer her out there?"
Under that challenging gaze the man from the East found himself
flushing. It was almost as though under the hypothetical form of the
question, the father had bluntly warned him off from any interference
unless he came as an avowed suitor. He had no answer and again the
lawyer spoke with the compelling force of an ultimatum.
"She must stay here with me, who would die for her, until she goes to
some man who offers her everything he has to offer; some man who would
die for her, too." His voice had fallen into tenderness, but a stern
ring went with his final words. "Meanwhile, I stand guard over her
like a faithful dog. I may be old and scarred but, by God, sir, I am
vigilant and devoted!" He waved his thin hand with a gesture of
dismissal for a closed subject, and in a changed tone added:
"I've recently heard of two other travelers riding through--and they
have taken up several land options."
"What meaning do you read into it, Mr. Cappeze?"
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. If he had no explanation to offer,
it was plain that he did not regard the coming of the strangers as
meaningless.
"I'm going," said Spurrier casually, "to make a trip up Snake Fork to
the head of Little Quicksand. Is there any one up there I can call on
for lodging and information?"
The lawyer shook his head. "It's a mighty rough country and sparsely
settled. You'll find a lavish of rattlesnakes--and a few unlettered
humans. There's a fellow up there named Sim Colby who might shelter
you overnight. He lives by himself, and has a roof that sheds the
rain. It's about all you can ask."
"It's enough," smiled Spurrier, and a few days later he found himself
climbing a stiff ascent toward a point where over the tree-tops a
thread of smoke proclaimed a human habitation.
He was coming unannounced to the house of Sim Colby, but if he had
expected his visit to be an entire surprise he was mistaken, and if he
had known the agitation that went a little way ahead of him, he would
have made a wide detour and passed the place by.
Sim was hoeing in his steeply pitched field when he saw and recognized
the figure which was yet a half-hour's walk distant, by the
meanderings of the trail. The hoe fell from his hand and his posture
stiffened so inimically that the hound at his feet rose and bristled,
a low growl running half smothered in its throat.
Doubtless, Colby reasoned, Spurrier was coming to his lonely house
with a purpose of venom and punishment, yet he walked boldly and to
the outward glance he seemed unarmed. Hence it must be that in the
former army officer's plan lay some intent more complex than mere
open-and-shut meeting and slaying: some carefully planned and guileful
climax to be approached by indirection. Very well, he would also play
the game out, burying his suspicion under a guise of artlessness, but
watching every move--and when the moment came striking first.
At a brook, as he hastened toward his house by a short cut, he knelt
to drink, for his throat was damnably dry, and in the clear water the
pasty pallor and terror of his face was given back to him, and warned
him. But also the mirroring brought another thought and the thought
fathered swift action. In the army he had been spare and clean-shaven
and a scar had marked his chin. Now he was bearded. He carried a
beefier bulk and an altered appearance.
Could there be any possibility of Spurrier's failing to recognize
him--of his having been, after all, ignorant of his presence here?
Yet his eyes would be recognizable. They were arrestingly distinctive,
for one of them was pale-blue and the other noticeably grayish.
By the path he was following, stalks of Jimson weed grew rank, and
Sim, rising from his knees, pulled off a handful of leaves and crushed
them between his palms. When he had reached the house his first action
was to force from this bruised leafage a few drops of liquid into a
saucer and this juice he carefully injected into his eyes.
Then he went to the door and squinted up at the sun. It would be
fifteen minutes before Spurrier would arrive and fifteen minutes might
be enough. He half closed his eyes, because they were stinging
painfully, and sat waiting, to all appearances indolent and
thoughtless.
Spurrier plodded on, measuring the distance to the smoke thread until
he came in view of the cabin itself, then he approached slowly since
the stiff climb had winded him.
Now he could see the shingle roof and the log walls, trailed over with
morning-glory vines, and in the door the slouching figure of a man. He
came on and the native rose lazily.
"My name's John Spurrier," called out the traveler, "and Lawyer
Cappeze cited you to me as a man who might shelter me overnight."
The man who had deserted chewed nonchalantly on a grass straw and
regarded the other incuriously--which was a master bit of dissembling.
Between them, it seemed to Sim Colby who had once been Private Grant,
lay the body of a murdered captain. Between them, too, lay the guilt
of his assassination. To the Easterner's appraisal this heavy-set
mountaineer with unkempt hair and ragged beard was merely a local type
and yet in one respect he was unforgettable.
It was his eyes. They were arrestingly uncommon eyes and, once seen,
they must be remembered. What was the quality that made one notice
them so instantly, Spurrier questioned himself. Then he realized.
They were inkily black eyes, but that was not all. There seemed to be
in them no line of demarcation between iris and pupil--only liquid
pools of jet.
The two men sat there as the shadows lengthened and talked "plumb
friendly" as Colby later admitted to himself. They smoked Spurrier's
"fotched-on" tobacco and drank native distillation from the demijohn
that Colby took down from its place on a rafter. Yet the host was
filling each tranquilly flowing minute with the intensive planning of
a hospitality that was, like Macbeth's, to end in murder.
Spurrier would sleep in an alcovelike room which could be locked from
the outside. Back through the brush was a spot of quicksand where a
body would leave no trace. One thing only troubled the planning brain.
He wished he could learn just who knew of his guest's coming here;
just what precautions that guest had taken before embarking on such a
venture.
From outside came a shout, interrupting these reflections, and Sim was
at once on his feet facing the front door, with a surreptitious hand
inside his shirt, and one eye covertly watching Spurrier, even as he
looked out. A snarl, too, drew his lips into an unpleasant twist.
The Easterner put down to mountain caution the amazing swiftness with
which the other had come from his hulking proneness to upstanding
alertness. But with equal rapidity, Sim's pose relaxed into ease and
he shouted a welcome as the door darkened with a figure physically
splendid in its spare strength and commanding height.
Spurrier rose and found himself looking into a face with most engaging
eyes and teeth that flashed white in smiling.
For a moment as the newcomer gazed at Sim Colby his expression
mirrored some sort of surprise and his lips moved as if to speak, but
Spurrier could not see, because Colby's back was turned, the warning
glance that shot between the two, and the big fellow's lips closed
again without giving utterance to whatever he had been on the point of
saying--something to do with eyes that had mystifyingly changed their
color.
"Mister Spurrier, this hyar's Sam Mosebury," announced the host.
"Mebby ye mout of heered tell of him."
Spurrier nodded. So this was the outlaw against whose terrorism old
Cappeze had broken his Quixote lances, the windmill that had unhorsed
him; the man with a criminal record at which a wild region trembled.
"I've heered tell of Mr. Spurrier, too," vouchsafed the murderer
equably. "He's a friend of old Dyke Cappeze's."
The "furriner" made no denial. Though he had been sitting with his
head in the jaws of death ever since he entered this door, it had been
without any presentiment of danger. Now he felt the menace of this
terrorist's presence, and that menace was totally fictitious.
"Mr. Cappeze has befriended me," he answered stiffly. "I reckon that's
not a recommendation to you, is it?"
The man who had newly entered laughed. He drew a chair forward and
seated himself.
"I reckon, Mr. Spurrier, hit ain't none of my business one way ner
t'other," he said. "Anyhow, hit ain't no reason why you an' me kain't
be friends, is hit?"
"It doesn't make any difficulty with me," laughed Spurrier in relief,
"if it doesn't with you."
Sam Mosebury looked at him, then his voice came with a dry chuckle of
humor.
"Over at my dwellin' house," he announced with a pleasant drawl, "I've
got me a pet mockin'-bird--an' I've got me a pet cat, too. Ther three
of us meks up ther fam'ly over thar."
Spurrier looked at the strong-featured face as he prompted, "Yes?"
"Waal," Sam Mosebury waved his hand, and even his gestures had a
spacious bigness about them, "ef God Almighty didn't see fit fer
thet thar bird an' thet thar cat ter love one another--I don't seek
ter alter His plan. Nonetheless I sets a passel of store by both of
'em." He filled his pipe, then his words became musing, possibly
allegorical. "Mebby some day I'll _ree_lax a leetle mite too much in
watchin' an' then I reckon ther cat'll kill ther bird--but thet's
accordin' ter nature, too, an' deespite I'll grieve some, I won't
disgust ther cat none."
That night Spurrier lay on the same shuck-filled mattress with the
man whom the law had not been strong enough to hang, and for a
while he remained wakeful, reflecting on the strangeness of his
bed-fellowship.
But, had he known it, his life was saved that night because the
murderer had arrived and provided an interfering presence when the
plans on foot required solitude.