Perhaps old Cappeze had spoken too late when he sounded his sharp
warning to the newcomer against unsettling the simple contentment of
his daughter's mind. Always realizing his transient status in the
aloofness of this life, Spurrier had scrupulously guarded his contact
with the girl who belonged to it and who had no prospect of escaping
it. He had sought to behave to her as he might have behaved to a
child, with grave or gay friendliness untouched by those gallantries
that might have been misunderstood, yet treating her intelligence with
full and adult equality.
But his inclination to see more of her than formerly was one that he
indulged because it gave him pleasure and because a failure to do so
would have had the aspect of churlishness.
Those self-confessed traces of snobbery that adhered to this courtier
at the throne of wealth, were attributes of which the girl saw
nothing. Neither did she see the shell of cynicism which Spurrier had
cultivated and this was not because her insight failed of keenness,
but because in these surroundings they were dormant qualities.
The self that he displayed here was the self of the infectious smile,
of the frank boldness and good humor that had made him beloved among
his army mess-mates before these more gracious qualities had been
winter-killed by misfortune.
So he was the picturesque and charming version of himself, and he
became to Glory an object of hero worship, whose presence made the day
eventful and whose intervals of absence were filled with dreams of his
next coming.
It was about this time that John Spurrier, the "opportunity hound,"
made a disquieting discovery. It came upon him one night as he sat on
the porch of Dyke Cappeze's log house at twilight, with pipes glowing
and seductive influences stealing into the senses. Daylight color had
faded to the mistiness of tarnished silver except for a lemon
afterglow above western ridges that were violet-gray, and the evening
star was a single lantern hanging softly luminous, where soon there
would be many others.
Cadenced and melodious as a lullaby fraught with the magic of the
solitudes, the night song of frog and whippoorwill rose stealingly out
of silence, and the materialist who had been city bound so much since
conviction of crime had shadowed his life discovered the thing which
threatened danger.
It came to him as his eyes met those of Glory, who sat in the doorway
itself--since she, at least, need not fear to show her face to any
lurking rifleman.
The yellow lamplight from within outlined the lovely contour of her
rounded cheek and throat and livened her hair, but it was not only her
undeniable beauty that caused Spurrier sudden anxiety. It was the eyes
and what he read in them. Instantly as their gazes engaged she dropped
her glance but, in the moment before she had masked her expression,
Spurrier knew that she had fallen in love with him. The eyes had said
it in that instant when he had surprised them. They had immediately
seized back their secret and hidden it away, but not in time.
The opportunity hound rose and knocked the ash from his pipe. He
wondered whether old Dyke Cappeze, sitting there inscrutable and dimly
shaped in the shadows, had shared his discovery--that grizzled old
watchdog who was not too far gone to fight for his own with the
strength of his yellowed fangs.
The visitor shook hands and walked moodily home, and as he went he
sought to dismiss the matter from his mind. It was all a delusion, he
assured himself; some weird psychological quirk born of a man's innate
vanity; incited by a girl's physical allurement. He would go to sleep
and to-morrow he would laugh at the moonshine problem. But he did not
find it so easy to sleep. He remembered one of those men in the
islands who had become a melancholiac. The fellow had been normal at
one moment; then without warning something like an impenetrable shadow
had struck across him. He had never come out of the shadow. So this
disquiet--though it was abnormal elation rather than melancholy, had
suddenly become a fact with himself, and instead of dismissing it
Spurrier found himself reacting to it. Not only was Glory Cappeze in
love with him but--absurdity of absurdities--he was in love with
Glory!
It was as irreconcilable with all the logic of his own nature as any
conceivable thing could be, yet it was undeniably true.
But Spurrier had been there in the hills when summer had overcome
winter. He had seen trickles of water grow into freshets and feed
rivers. He had seen clouds as large as one's hand swell abruptly into
tempests that cannonaded mightily through the peaks, with the lashing
of torrents, the sting of lightnings, and the onsweep of hurricanes.
He had seen the pink flower of laurel and rhododendron make fragrant
magic over wastes of chocolate and slag-gray mountain sides, and in
himself something akin to these elemental forces had declared itself.
He found himself two men, and though he swore resolutely that his
brain should dominate and govern, he also recognized in himself the
man of new-born impulses who drew the high air into his chest with a
keen elation, and who wanted to laugh at the artificial things that
life has wrought into its structure of accepted civilization.
That insurgent part of himself found a truer congeniality in the
company of grizzled old Dyke Cappeze than that of Martin Harrison; a
stronger comradeship in the frank laugh of Glory than in the cool
intelligence of Vivien's smile.
Glory's brain was as alert as quicksilver, and her heart as high and
clean as the hills. Yet in his own world these two would be as
unplaced as gypsies strayed from their dilapidated caravan. Moreover,
it was ordained that he was to win his game and upon him was to be
conferred an accolade--the hand, in marriage, of his principal's
daughter.
Spurrier laughed a little grimly to himself. Of the woman whose hand
had been half-promised him he could think dispassionately and of this
other, whom he could not take with him into his world of artificial
values, he could not think at all without a pounding of pulses and a
tumult which he thought he had left behind him with his early youth.
In character and genuine metal of mind, Glory was the superior of most
of those women he knew, yet because she was country bred and trained
to a code that did not obtain elsewhere, she could no more be removed
from her setting than a blooming eidelweiss could be successfully
transplanted in a conservatory. He himself was fixed into a certain
place which he had attained by fighting his way, in the figurative
sense at least, over the bodies of the less successful and the less
enduring. It was too late for him to transplant himself, and he and
she were plants of differing soil, as though one were a snow flower
and one a tropic growth.
Also there were immediate things of which to think, such as an
unexpired threat upon his life.
Already he had escaped the assassin's first effort, and he had no
guess where the enmity lay which had actuated that attack. That it
still existed and would strike again he had a full realization. He was
not walking in the shadow of dread but, because he knew of the menace
lurking where all the faces were friendly, he had begun to feel that
companionship of suspense: that nearness of something in hiding under
which men lived here; and under which women grew old in their
twenties.
And it is not given to a man to live under such conditions, and remain
the man who fights only across mahogany tabletops in offices. Yet John
Spurrier scornfully reasoned that if he could not remain himself even
in a new and altered habitat, he was a weakling, and he had no
intention of proving a weakling.
His hand had grasped the plow-haft and, for the present, at least, his
loyalty belonged to his undertaking.
This inward conflict went with him as he rode across the singing hills
to gather up his mail at the nearest post office and he told himself,
"I am a fool to ponder it."
Then his thoughts ran on: "It is dwelling on factitious things that
gives them force. Life presents a Janus aspect of the double-faced at
times, but a man must choose his way and ignore the turnings. Glory
has pure charm. She has a quick mind and a captivating beauty, but so
far as I'm concerned, she is simply out of the picture. I could be mad
about her, if I let myself--but presumably I am not adrift on a gulf
stream of emotionalism."
When he had spent an hour in the dusty little town and turned again
into the coolness of the hills, he dismounted under the shade of a
"cucumber tree" and glanced through those letters that were still
unopened. One envelope was addressed in a hand that tantalized memory
with a half sense of the familiar, and Spurrier's brow contracted in
perplexity.
Then his face grew abruptly grave. "By heavens!" he exclaimed. "It's
Withers--Major Withers! What can he be writing about?"
He opened it and drew out the sheet of paper, and, as he read, his
expression went through the gamut of surprise and incredulity to a
settled sternness of purpose that made his face stony.
"If it's true," he exclaimed, "the man is mine to kill! No, not to
kill, either, but to take alive at all costs."
He stood for a moment, his sinewy body answering to a tremor of deeply
shaken emotion. Had he been mountain-bred and feud-nurtured, the
sinister glitter of his eyes could have been no more relentless. He
was for that moment a man dedicating himself to the blood oath of
vengeance.
Then he composed his features and smoothed out the letter that his
clenched fingers had unconsciously crumpled. Again he read what Major
Withers had to say:
I am writing because though I infer that you have succeeded in
material ways, I have heard nothing of your progress in clearing
your name and I know that until that is accomplished, no success
will be complete for you.
Quite recently I have had as my striker a fellow named Wiley, who
used to be in your platoon--and I have talked with him a good bit.
Not long ago he declared to me his belief that Private Grant who
is listed as officially dead, did _not_ die in the Islands.
He seems to think that Grant made a clean getaway and went back to
the Kentucky mountains from which he came. He confesses that he
gets this idea from nothing more tangible than casual hints
dropped by Private Severance, whose discharge came shortly after
you left us, yet his impression is so strong as to amount to
conviction. Possibly if you could trace Severance you might learn
something. It's a vague clew, I admit, but I pass it along to you
for whatever it may be worth.
Slowly, as though his tireless limbs had grown suddenly old, Spurrier
mounted and rode on with reins hanging. He was so deep in thought that
he forgot the other unopened letters in his pocket.
Grant might be in these same hills with himself; Grant upon whom his
counsel had sought to place the blame for the murder of Captain
Comyn. If they could meet alone for the period of a brief interview,
either that question would be finally answered or in the reckoning one
of them would have to die.
But how to trace him in this ragged territory covering a great and
broken area--a territory which God had seemed to build, as a haven and
a hiding place for men who sought concealment? Grant would in all
likelihood see him first and--he entertained no illusions as to the
result--the deserter would kill him on sight. On the other hand, it
would do Spurrier no good to kill Grant. If Grant were to serve him it
must be with a confession wrung from living lips, and on oath.
Of course, too, the years would have changed Grant so that if they
came face to face he would probably fail to recognize the man he had
known only in khaki.
The scarred chin? A beard would obliterate that. The stature? Added
weight or lost weight would make it seem another man's.
By processes of elimination Spurrier culled over the possibilities
until at length his glance brightened.
In one particular Private Grant could scarcely disguise himself. His
eyes were in a fashion mismated. One was light gray and one pale blue.
Yes, if ever they met he would have his clew in that.
And that memory reminded him that he had recently been impressed to an
unusual degree by a pair of eyes. Whose were they? Oh, yes, he
remembered now. It was the man at whose house he had met Sam
Mosebury--Sim Colby who dwelt over beyond Clubfoot Branch.
But Colby's eyes had been noticeable by reason of their extraordinary
blackness. So that only helped him in so far as it enabled him to
eliminate from all the thousands of possible men the one man, Sim
Colby.
The afternoon had spent itself toward sunset as he dismounted and
stabled his horse, and it was with a face still somberly thoughtful
that he fitted his key into the padlock which held his door and
entered.
The interior was dusky in contrast with the outer light, but from one
window a shaft of golden radiance slanted inward and in it the dust
motes danced.
Spurrier paused and glanced about him, but before he had thrown down
the hat he had taken from his perspiring forehead, a sound hideously
unmistakable caused his heartbeat to miss its rhythm and pound in
commotion.
Every man has his one terror, or, at least, one antipathy which he is
unable to treat with customary calmness. With Spurrier it was
everything reptilian. In the islands he had dreaded the snake menace
more than fever or head hunters. Now, from the darkened floor near his
feet came the vicious whir of rattles, and as his eyes flashed toward
the sound he saw coiled there a huge snake with its flat, arrow-shaped
head sinuously waving from side to side.
With an agility made lightning-quick by necessity, he leaped aside
and, at the same instant, the snake launched itself with such venomous
force that the sound of its striking and falling on the puncheon floor
was like the lashing of a mule whip. The man had felt the disturbed
air of its passing as of a sword stroke that had narrowly missed him.
But he had no leisure to regain the breath that had caught startled
in his throat, before, from his left, he heard again the ominous note
of warning, and felt his scalp creep with horror. The place which he
had left locked and believed to be mosquito proof, now seemed alive
with the loathsome trespassers.
As Spurrier leaped for his couch he heard again the sound of a living
coil released and its hawserlike lashing of the floor. Now he could
see more plainly and, calculating his distance, he jumped for the
table from which he could reach the loaded shotgun that hung on his
wall. If he fell short, he would come down at their mercy--but he
landed securely and without capsizing his support. His elevation gave
him a precarious sort of safety, but on the floor below him he counted
three rattlesnakes, crawling and recoiling; their cold-blooded eyes
following his movements with baleful intentness.
Spurrier was conscious of his trembling hands as he leveled the
weapon, and of a crawling sensation of loathing along his spine.
Twice the gun roared, splintering the flooring and spattering its
ricochetting pellets, and two of the rattlers twisted in convulsive
but harmless writhings. But the third head--and it seemed the largest
of the three--had withdrawn under the cot. He was not even sure that
these three made up the total. There might be others.
With painstaking care Spurrier came down and armed himself with a
stout hickory flail which had been used in other days by some
housewife in her primitive laundry work as a "battling stick."
Then he advanced to the battle, swinging one end of the cot wide and
shiftily sidestepping. The rattler which lay in piled circles of
coppery length regarded him with steely venom, turning its swaying
head deliberately as its enemy circled. With the startling abruptness
of an electric buzzer it warned and sprang. He escaped by an
uncomfortable margin and attacked it with the flail before it could
rearrange its coils. Finally he stood panting with exertion over the
scene of slaughter.
As he searched the place with profoundest particularity his mind was
analyzing the strange invasion. His house was as tight as he had
thought it. There was no cranny that would have let in three large
rattlers. How had they come there?
Spurrier went out and studied his door. The hasps that held his
padlock were in place, but the woodwork about them had been recently
scarred. The lock fastenings had been pulled out and replaced.
With a nervous moisture on his brow the man recognized the fiendish
ingenuity of his mysterious enemy. These slithering creatures had come
here by human agency as brute accomplices in the murder that had
failed from the rifle muzzle. The pertinacity and cunning of the
scheme's anonymous author gave promise of eventfulness hereafter.
Had he been struck, according to the evident intention, as he entered
his house, he would probably have died there, unsuccored, leaving the
door open. The rattlers would either have found their way out after
that, or, when his body was discovered, the open door would have
explained their presence inside, and no suspicion of a man's
conspiracy would have remained.
One thing stood out clear in Spurrier's summing-up. Whatever the
source of the enmity which pursued him, it had its nerve center in an
ingenious brain and it threw about itself that element of mystery
which a timid man would have found terrifying and unendurable. Also it
operated with a patience which was a manifest of its unswerving
determination. Effort might be expected to follow effort until success
came--or the unknown plotter were discovered and disposed of.
Yet the author of these malignant attempts worked with an unflurried
deliberation, allowing passive intervals to elapse between activities,
like the volcano that rests in the quiet of false security between
fatal eruptions.
Of course, the letter with the mention of Private Grant might be a
clew of identity, yet calm reflection discounted that assumption as a
wild and unconfirmed grasping out after something tangible.
Perhaps Spurrier as nearly approached the absolute in physical
fearlessness as it is given to man to come--but the mystery of a
pursuing hatred which could not be openly faced, filled him with a
sense of futility, and the futility inspired rage which was unsettling
and must be combated.
That night he lay long awake, and after he had fallen asleep he came
often to a sudden and wide-eyed wakefulness again at the sound of an
owl's call or the creaking of a tree limb.
The next morning found him restless of spirit, and it occurred to him
that his secret enemy might be lurking near to inspect the results of
his handiwork, so he went down to the road and hung the three dead
rattlesnakes along the fence where no passer-by could miss seeing
their twisted and mutilated lengths. That should be his retort to any
inquiring and hostile eye, that he was alive and the creatures put
there to destroy him had paid with their lives.
From a place screened from view he meant to watch that gruesome
exhibit and mark its effect upon any one who paused to inspect it.
Possibly in that way a clew might be vouchsafed--but he did not at
once take cover in the thickets.
It was a glorious morning. The sun had ripped away the mists that, in
the mountains, always hang damp and veillike between gray dawning and
colorful day. The cool forest recesses were vocal with the twitterings
and song from feathered throats.
Spurrier sat down by the road and gave himself up to thoughts that it
was safer to banish: thoughts that came with those sights and sounds
and that made long-stilled pulses awaken and throb in him.
This morning made him feel Glory's presence and gave him a fine
recklessness as to responsibility and consequence. Suddenly he came to
himself and seemed to hear the cool cynicism of Martin Harrison's
voice inquiring, as it had once actually inquired: "Growing
sentimental?"
He pulled himself together and stiffened his expression into one more
suitable upon the face of a man who has taken the severe vows of
service to a cold ambition.
But a little later he heard a sound and looked up sidewise to see
Glory herself standing near him in the road; a materialization of the
truant dreams he had been entertaining.
She wore a dress whose simplicity accentuated the slender erectness
of her young body and the litheness of her carriage. Her hair hung in
braids and the sunbonnet had fallen back from the brightness of her
hair. In her eyes played the violet lights of a merriment that lifted
and curved her lips beguilingly.
Spurrier came to his feet, and perhaps Glory, who had succumbed to her
moment of self-revelation there on the twilight porch, had her revenge
now. For that first startled moment as their glances met, the eyes
that looked into hers were lover's eyes, and their unspoken message
was courtship. If he maintained the stoic's silence forever, as to
words, at least his heart had spoken.
"Before Heaven," said the man slowly, and the tremor of his voice was
out of keeping with the ingrained poise of his usual self-command,
"when they called you Glory, they didn't misname you!"
The girl flushed pink, and he took a step toward her with the absorbed
intensity of a sleep-walker.
Glory stood there--watched him coming and did not move. To her, though
she had sought to hide it, he had become the One Man. Her unconfessed
love had magnified and deified him--and now his own eyes were blazing
responsively with love for her!
Suddenly she was shaken by a rapturous tremor that seemed almost like
swooning or being lifted on some powerful wave that swept her clear of
the earth, so that she made no effort at disguise, but let the
laughing light in her eyes become softer, yet more glowingly intense.
It was as if they had met in the free realm of dreams where there are
no hamperings of impossibility. As he drew near her, his arms came
out, and he halted so that, under that same delightful sense of
irresponsibility, it seemed to her quite natural to step into their
welcome.
Possibly the happenings of yesterday and the sleepless hours of last
night had left Spurrier momentarily light-headed. Certainly had one of
the rattlers stung him and poisoned his reason, he could not be doing
a thing more foreign to his program of intention.
He felt his arms close about her; felt the fragrance of her breath,
found himself pressing his kisses on lips that welcomed them, and
forgot everything except that this was a moment of ecstasy and
passion.