It was a hopeless game and a grim one. He could not cover all the
defenses long in single-handed effort, and the best he could hope for
was to die in ample companionship. Now, two men had reached
broad-girthed oaks, halfway between thicket and house. There they were
safe for the next rush.
So this was the end of the matter! Spurrier reloaded his rifle and
went down the ladder. Hastily he carried Glory into the room at the
back and overturned his heavy table to serve as a final barricade. He
elected to die here when they swarmed the door from which he could no
longer keep them, crowning the battle with a finale of punishment as
they crowded through the breach.
But the minutes dragged with irksome tension. He was keyed up now,
wire-tight, for the finish, and yet silence fell again and denied him
the relief of action. To Spurrier it was like a long and cruel delay
imposed upon a man standing blindfolded and noosed on the scaffold
trap. Then the quiet was ripped with a totally wasteful fusillade, as
though every attacker outside were pumping his gun in a contest of
speed rather than effect.
Spurrier smiled grimly. Let them burn their powder--he would have his
till they massed in front of his muzzle and the barrier fell.
"When the barrier fell!" Crouched there behind the table where he
meant to sell his life in that brief space that seemed long, the words
brought with them the memory of one of the few poems that had ever
meant much to him--and while he awaited death his mind seized upon the
lines--a funeral address in soliloquy!
"For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall----"
He strained his ears to his listening and then through his head ran
other verses:
"I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore
And bade me creep past----"
Was that a battering-ram against timber that he heard? He fingered the
trigger.
"Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"
But the door did not fall. The rifle cracking became interspersed with
alarmed outcries of warning and confusion. He could even hear the
brush torn with the hurried tramping of running feet, and then the
pandemonium abruptly stopped dead, and after a long period of inheld
breath there followed a loud rapping on the door and a voice of
agonized anxiety shouted:
"In God's name open if ye're still alive. It's Cappeze--and friends!"
The psychological effect of that recognized voice upon John
Spurrier, and of its incredible meaning, was strange to the point
of grotesquerie. Its sound carried a complete reversal of everything
to which his mind had been focussed with a tensity which had keyed
itself to the acceptance of a violent death, and with the reversal
came reaction. There was no interim of preparation for the altered
aspect of affairs. It was precisely as though a runaway train
furiously speeding to the overhang of an unbridged chasm had
suddenly begun dashing in the contrary direction with no shade of
lessening velocity, and no grinding of breaks to a halt between time.
Spurrier had taken no thought of physical strain. He had not known
that he was wearied with nerve wrack and pell-mell dashing from firing
point to firing point. He knew nothing of the picture he made with
clothing torn from his scrambling rushes up-ladder and down-ladder and
his crouching and shifting among the rough nail-studded spaces of the
cockloft. Of the face, sweat-reeking and dust-smeared, he had no
realization, but when that voice called out and he knew that rescuers
were clamoring where assassins had laid siege, the stout knees under
him buckled weakly, and the fingers that had fitted his rifle as
steadily as part of its own metallic mechanism became so inert that
they could scarcely maintain their grip upon the weapon.
John Spurrier, emotionally stirred and agitated as he had never been
in battle, because of the limp figure that lay under that roof, stood
gulping and struggling for a lost voice with which to give back a
reply. He rocked on his feet and then, like a drunken man went slowly
and unsteadily forward to lift the bar of the door.
When he had thrown it wide the rush of anxious men halted, backing up
instinctively, as their eyes were confused by the inner murk and their
nostrils assailed by the acrid stench of nitrate, from the vapors of
burnt powder that hung stiflingly between the walls and ceiling
rafters. Old Cappeze was at their front and when he saw before him the
battle begrimed and drawn visage of the man, he looked wildly beyond
it for the other face that he did not see, and his voice broke and
rose in a high, thin note that was almost falsetto as he demanded:
"Where is she? Where's Glory?"
John Spurrier sought to speak but the best he could do was to indicate
with a gesture half appealing and half despairing to the door of the
other room, where she lay on his army cot. The father crossed its
threshold ahead of him and dropped to his knees there with agonized
eyes, and Bud Hawkins, the preacher and physician, not sure yet in
which capacity he must act, was bent at his shoulder, while Spurrier
exhorted him with a recovered but tortured voice, "In God's name, make
haste. There's only a spark of life left."
From the crowd which had followed and stood massed about the door came
a low but unmistakable smother of fury, as they saw the unmoving
figure of the girl, and those at the edge wheeled and ran outward
again with the summary resoluteness that one sees in hounds cast off
at the start of the chase.
Upon those who remained Brother Hawkins wheeled and swept out his
hands in a gesture of imperative dismissal.
"Leave us alone, men," he commanded. "I needs ter work alone
hyar--with ther holp of Almighty God."
But he worked kneeling, tearing away the clothing over the wounded
breast, and while he did so he prayed with a fervor that was fiercely
elemental, yet abating no whit of his doctor's efficiency with his
surprisingly deft hands, while his lips and heart were those of the
religionist.
"Almighty Father in Heaven," he pleaded, "spare this hyar child of
Thine ef so be Thy wisdom suffers hit."
There he broke off and as though a different man were speaking, shot
over his shoulder the curt command: "Fotch me water speedily--Because
Almighty Father, she's done fell a victim of evil men thet fears Thee
not in th'ar hearts!"
After a little Brother Hawkins dismissed even the father and Spurrier
from the room and worked on alone, the voice of his praying sounding
over his activity.
Ten minutes later, in a crowded room, Bud Hawkins, preacher and
physician, laid one hand on Spurrier's shoulder and the other on
Cappeze's.
"Men," he said in a hushed voice, "I fears me ther shot thet hit her
was a deadener. Yit I kain't quite fathom hit nuther. She's back in
her rightful senses ergin--but she don't seem ter _want_ to live,
somehow. She won't put for'ard no effort."
Spurrier wheeled to face them both and his voice came with tense,
gasping earnestness.
"Before she dies, Brother Hawkins," he pleaded, "you're a minister of
the gospel--I want you to marry us." He wheeled then on the rescuers,
who stood breathing heavily from exertion and fight.
"Two of you men stay here as wedding witnesses," he commanded. "One of
you ride hell-for-leather to the nearest telephone and call up
Lexington. Have a man start with bloodhounds on a special train. The
rest of you get into the timber and finecomb it for some scrap of
cloth--or anything that will give the dogs a chance when they get
here."
Once more Spurrier was the officer in command, and snappily his
hearers sprang to obedience, but when the place had almost emptied,
the three turned and went into the back room, and, kneeling there
beside the wounded girl, Spurrier whispered:
"Dearest, the preacher has come--to wed us."
Glory's eyes with their deeps of color were startlingly vivid as they
looked out of the pallid face upon which a little while ago John
Spurrier had believed the white stamp of death to be fixed.
The features themselves, except the eyes, seemed to have shrunken from
weakness into wistful smallness, and if the girl had returned, in the
phrases of the preacher, "to her rightful senses" it had been as one
coming out of a dream who realizes that she wakes to heartburnings
which death had promised to smooth away.
Now, as the man stretched out his hand to take hers and drew a ring
from his own little finger, the violet eyes on the rough pillow became
transfigured with a luminous and incredulous happiness. But at once
they clouded again with gravity and pain.
Spurrier was offering to marry her out of pity and gratitude. He was
seeking to pay a debt, and his authoritative words were spoken from
his conscience and not from his heart.
So the lips stirred in an effort to speak, failed in that and drooped,
and weakly but with determination Glory shook her head. She had been
willing to die for him. She could not argue with him, but neither
would she accept the perfunctory amends that he now came proffering.
Spurrier rose, pale, and with a tremor of voice as he said to the
others: "Please leave us alone--for a few moments." Then when no one
was left in the room but the girl on the bed and the man on his knees
beside it, he bent forward until his eyes were close to hers and his
words came with a still intensity.
"Glory, dearest, though I don't deserve it, you've confessed that you
love me. Now I claim the life you were willing to lay down for me--and
you can't refuse."
There was wistfulness in her smile, but through her feebleness her
resolution stood fast and the movement of her head was meant for a
shake of refusal.
"But why, dear," he argued desperately, "why do you deny me when we
know there's only one wish in both our hearts?"
His hands had stolen over one of hers and her weak fingers stirred
caressingly against his own. Her lips stirred too, without sound, then
she lay in a deathlike quiet for a moment or two summoning strength
for an effort at speech, and he, bending close, caught the ghost of a
whisper.
"I don't seek payment ... fer what I done." A gasp caught her breath
and silenced her for a little but she overcame it and finished almost
inaudibly. "It was ... a free-will gift."
John Spurrier rose and sat on the side of the bed. His voice was
electrified by the thrill of his feeling; a feeling purged of all
artificiality by the rough shoulder touch of death.
"I'm asking another gift, now, Glory; the greatest gift of all. I'm
asking yourself. Don't try to talk--only listen to me because I need
you desperately. Except for you they would have killed me to-day--but
my life's not worth saving if I lose you after all. I'm two men,
dearest, rolled into one--and one of those men perhaps doesn't deserve
much consideration, but there's some good in the other and that good
can't prevail without you any more than a plant can grow without
sun."
With full realization, he was pitching his whole argument to the note
of his own selfish needs and wishes, and yet he was guided by a sure
insight into her heart. Brother Hawkins had said she had no wish to
live and would make no fight, and he knew that he might plead
endlessly and in vain unless he overcame her belief that he was
actuated merely by pity for her. If she could be convinced that it was
genuinely he who needed her more than she needed him, her woman
quality of enveloping in supporting love the man who leaned on her,
would bring consent.
"I sought to strengthen myself for success in life," he went on, "by
strangling out every human emotion that stood in the way of material
results. I serve men who sneer at everything on God's earth except
the practical, and I had come to the point where I let those men
shape me and govern even my character."
She had been listening with lowered lids and as he paused, she raised
them and smiled wanly, yet without any sign of yielding to his
supplications.
"The picture that you saw," he swept on torrentially, "was that of a
girl whose father employs me. He's a leader in big affairs and to be
his son-in-law meant, in a business sense, to be raised to royalty.
Vivien is a splendid woman and yet I doubt if either of us has----" he
fumbled a bit for his next words and then floundered on with
self-conscious awkwardness, "has thought of the other with real
sentiment. Until now, I haven't known what real sentiment meant. Until
now I haven't appreciated the true values. I discovered them out there
in the road when you came into my arms--and into my heart. From now on
my arms will always ache for you--and my heart will be empty without
you.'"
"But--," Glory's eyes were deeper than ever as she whispered
laboriously, "but if you're plighted to her----"
"I'm not," he protested hotly. "There is no engagement except a sort
of understanding with her father: a sort of condescending and tacit
willingness on his part to let his successor be his son-in-law as
well."
She lay for a space with the heavy masses of her hair on the rough
pillow framing the pale and exquisite oval of her face, and her vivid
eyes troubled with the longing to be convinced. Then her lips shaped
themselves in a rather pitiful smile that lifted them only at one
corner.
"Maybe ye don't ... know it Jack," she murmured, "but ye're jest
seekin' ... ter let me ... die ... easy in my mind ... and happy."
"Before God I am _not_," he vehemently contradicted her. "I'm not
trying to give but to take. Whether you get well or not, Glory, I want
to fight for your life and your love. We've faced death, together.
We've seen things nakedly--together. For neither of us can there ever
be any true life--except together."
His breath was coming with the swift intensity that was almost a sob
and, in the eyes that bent over her, Glory read the hunger that could
not be counterfeited.
"Anyhow," she faltered, "we've had--this minute."
Spurrier rose at last and called the others back. He himself did not
know when once more he took her hand and the preacher stood over them,
whether her responses to the services would be affirmative or
negative.
To Spurrier marriage had always seemed an opportunity. It was a
thing in which an ambitious man could no more afford yielding to
uncalculating impulses than in the forming of a major business
connection. Marriage must carry a man upward toward the peak of his
destiny, and his wife must bring as her dowry, social reenforcements
and distinction.
Now, in the darkening room of a log house, with figures clad in
patches and hodden-gray, he held the hand that was too weak to
close responsively upon his own, and listened to the words of a
shaggy-headed preacher, whose beard was a stubble and whose lips moved
over yellow and fanglike teeth.
Confusedly he heard the questions and his own firm responses to the
simple service of marriage as rendered by the backwoods preacher, then
his heart seemed to stop and stand as the words were uttered to which
Glory must make her answer.
"Will you, Glory, have this man, John Spurrier----"
What would her answer be--assent or negation?
The pause seemed to last interminably as he bent with supplication in
his glance over her, and the breath came from his lips with an
unconscious sibilance, like escaping steam from a strained boiler,
when at last the head on the pillow gave the ghost of a nod.
Even at that moment there lurked in the back of his mind, though not
admitted as important, the ghost of realization that he was doing
precisely the sort of thing which, in his own world, would not only
unclass him but make him appear ludicrous as well.
As for that world of lifted eye-brows he felt just now only a
withering contempt and a scalding hatred.
Almost as soon as the simple ceremony ended, Glory sank again into
unconsciousness, and the father and preacher, sitting silent in the
next room, were unable to forget that though there had been a wedding,
they were also awaiting the coming of death.
The night fell with the soft brightness of moon and stars, and through
the tangled woods the searchers were following hard on the flight of
the assailants--doggedly and grimly, with the burning indignation of
men bent on vindicating the good name of their people and community.
Yet, so far, the fugitive squad had succeeded not only in eluding
capture or recognition, but also in carrying with them their wounded.
From Lexington, where Spurrier had formed strong connections, a deputy
sheriff was riding in a caboose behind a special engine as fast as the
roadbeds would permit. The smokestack trailed a flat line of hurrying
smoke and the whistle screamed startlingly through the night. At the
officer's knees, gazing up at him out of gentle eyes that belied their
profession, crouched two tawny dogs with long ears--the bloodhounds
that were to start from the cabin and give voice in the laurel.
Waiting for them was a torn scrap of blue denim such as rough overalls
are made of. It had been found in a brier patch where some fleeing
wearer had snarled himself.
Yet two days later the deputy returned from his quest in the timber,
shaking his head.
"I'm sorry," he reported. "I've done my best, but it's not been good
enough."
"What's the trouble?" inquired Cappeze shortly, and the officer
answered regretfully:
"This country is zigzagged and criss-crossed with watercourses--and
water throws the dogs off. The fugitives probably made their way by
wading wherever they could. The longest run we made was up toward Wolf
Pen Branch."
That was the direction, Spurrier silently reflected, of Sim Colby's
house, but he made no comment.
Brother Hawkins, who was leaving that afternoon, laid a kindly hand on
Spurrier's shoulder.
"Thet's bad news," he said. "But I kin give ye better. I kin almost
give ye my gorrantee thet ther gal's goin' ter come through. Hit's
_wantin'_ ter live thet does hit."
Spurrier's eyes brightened out of the misery that had dulled them, and
as to the failure of the chase he reassured himself with the thought
that the dogs had started toward Sim Colby's house, and that he
himself could finish what they had begun.
Those tawny beasts had coursed at the behest of a master who was bound
by the limitations of the law, but he, John Spurrier, was his own
master and could deal less formally and more condignly with an enemy
to whom suspicion pointed--and there was time enough.