And yet on that day when the bobwhites had sounded and the blow had
fallen, Sim Colby was nowhere near the opportunity hound's house. He
sat tippling in a mining town two days' journey away, and he had no
knowledge of what went on at home. His companion was ex-Private
Severance--once his comrade in arms.
The town was one of those places which discredit the march of industry
by the mongrelized character of its outposts. The wild aloofness of
the hills and valleys was marred there by the shacks of the camp and
its sky soiled by a black reek of coke furnaces.
Filth physical and moral brooded along the unkempt streets where the
foul buzz of swarming flies sounded over refuse piles, and that spirit
of degradation lay no less upon the unclean tavern, where the two men
who had once worn the uniform sat with a bottle of cheap whisky
between them.
Colby, who had need to maintain his reputation for probity at home,
made an occasional pilgrimage hither to foregather with his former
comrade and loosen the galling rein of restraint. Just about the time
when the attack on Spurrier's house had begun, he had leaned forward
with his elbows on the table, his face heavy and his eyes inflamed,
pursuing some topic of conversation which had already gained headway.
"These hyar fellers that seeks ter git rid of Spurrier," he confided,
"kinderly hinted 'round thet they'd like ter git me ter do ther job
for 'em, but I pretended like I didn't onderstand what they war
drivin' at, no fashion at all."
"Why didn't ye hearken ter 'em?" questioned Severance practically.
"Hit hain't every day a man kin git paid fer doin' what he seeks ter
do on his own hook."
But Colby grinned with a crafty gleam in his eye and poured another
drink.
"What fer would I risk ther penitenshery ter do a killin' fer them
fellers when, ef I jest sets still on my hunkers they'll do _mine_ fer
me," he countered.
For a time after that whatever enemies Spurrier had seemed to have
lost their spirit of eagerness. One might have presumed that to the
rule of amity which apparently surrounded him, there was no
exception--and so the mystery remained unsolved. Even blind Joe Givins
made a detour in a journey to stop at Spurrier's house and sing a
ballad of his own composition anent the mysterious siege and to
express his indignation at the "pizen meanness" of men who would
father and carry forward such infamies.
And Glory, who had penetrated so deeply into the shadow that life had
seemed ended for her, was recovering. Into her pale cheeks came a new
blossoming and into the smile of her lips and eyes a new light that
was serene and triumphant. She had been too happy to die.
While the summer waned and the beauties of autumn began to kindle, the
young wife grew strong, and her husband, seemingly, had nothing to do
except to wander about the hills with her and discover in her new
charms. Neighborly saws and hammers were ringing now as his place was
transformed from its simple condition to the "hugest log house on
seven creeks."
In some respects he wished that his factitious indolence were real,
for he felt no pride in the occult fashion in which he was directing
the activities of his henchmen. And yet a few months ago this progress
would have been food for satisfaction--almost triumph.
His plans, as outlined to Martin Harrison were by no means at a
standstill. They were going forward with an adroit drawing in and
knitting together of scattered strands, and the warp and woof of this
weaving were coming into definite order and pattern.
The dual necessity was: first to slip through a legislature which was
supposedly under the domination of American Oil and Gas, a charter
which should wrest from that concern the sweet fruits of monopoly, and
secondly, to secure at paltry prices the land options that would give
the prospective pipe line its right of way.
As this campaign had been originally mapped and devised it had not
been simple, but now it was complicated by a new and difficult
element. In those first dreams of conquest the native had been no more
considered than the red Indian was considered in the minds of the new
world settlers. Spurrier himself had brushed lightly aside this aspect
of the affair. Every game has and must have its "suckers." And their
sorry destiny it is to be despoiled. Now the very term that he had
used in his thoughts, brought with it an amendment. It is not every
game that must have its suckers but every bunco game.
Martin Harrison did not know it, but his lieutenant had redrawn his
plans, and redrawn them in a fashion which the chief would have
regarded as insubordinate, impractical and sentimental.
Spurrier intended that when the smoke cleared from the field upon
which the forces of Harrison and those of Trabue had been embattled,
the Harrison banners should be victoriously afloat and the Trabue
standards dust trailed. But also he intended that the native
land-holders, upon whom both combatants had looked as mere unfortunate
onlookers raked by the cross fire of opposing artillery, should emerge
as real and substantial gainers.
Of late the man had not escaped the penalty of one who faces
responsibility and wields power. He had abandoned as puerile his first
impulse, after his marriage, to throw up his whole stewardship to the
Wall Street masters. That would have amounted only to an ostentation
of virtue which would have surrendered the situation into the
merciless hands of A. O. and G., and would have left the mountain folk
unprotected.
Yet he could not escape the realization that he would stand with all
the seeming of a traitor and a plunderer to any of his simple friends
who learned of his activities--for as yet he could confide to no one
the plans he was maturing.
It was when the refurnished and enlarged place had been completed that
the neighbors came from valley, slope, and cove to give their blessing
at the housewarming which was also, belatedly, the "infaring."
That homely, pioneer observance with which the groom brings home his
bride, had not been possible after the wedding, but now Aunt Erie
Toppitt had come over and prepared entertainment on a lavish if homely
scale since Glory was not yet well.
To the husband as he stood greeting the guests who arrived in jeans
and hodden-gray, in bright shawls and calicoes, came the feeling of
contrast and unreality, as though this were all part of some play
quaintly and exaggeratedly staged to reflect a medieval period. In the
drawing rooms of Martin Harrison and his confreres he had moved
through a social atmosphere, quiet, contained, and reflecting such a
life as the dramatist uses for background in a comedy of manners.
Closing his eyes now he could see himself as he had been when,
starting out for such an entertainment, he had paused before the
cheval glass in his club bedroom, adding a straightening touch to his
white tie, adjusting the set of his waistcoat and casting a critical
eye over the impeccable black and white of his evening dress. Here,
flannel shirted and booted, corduroy breeched and tanned brown, he
stood by the door watching the arrival of guests who seemed to have
stepped out of pioneer America or Elizabethan England. There were
women riding mules or tramping long roads on foot and trailing
processions of children who could not be left at home; men feeling
overdressed and uncomfortable because they had donned coats and
brushed their hats; even wagons plodding slowly behind yokes of oxen
and one man riding a steer in lieu of a horse!
So they came to give Godspeed to his marriage--and they were the only
people on God's green earth who thought of him in any terms of regard
save that regard which sprung from self-interest in his ability to
serve beyond others!
Men who were blood enemies met here as friends, because his roof
covered a zone of common friendship and under its protection their
hatreds could no more intrude on such a day than could pursuit in the
Middle Ages follow beyond the sanctuary gates of a cathedral. Inside
sounded the minors of the native fiddlers and the scrape of feet
"running the sets" of quaint square dances.
The labors of preparation had been onerous. Aunt Erie stood at the
open door constituting, with Spurrier and his wife, a "receiving line"
of three, and her wrinkled old face bore an affectation of morose
exhaustion as to each guest she made the same declaration:
"I hopes an' prays ye all enjoys this hyar party--Gawd knows _my_
back's broke."
But Spurrier had not in his letters to Harrison mentioned his
marriage, and to Vivien he had not written at all. He thought they
would hardly understand, and he preferred to make his announcement
when he stood face to face with them, relying on the force of his own
personality to challenge any criticism and proclaim his own
independence of action. Just now there was no virtue in needlessly
antagonizing his chief.
Among the guests who came to that housewarming was one chance visitor
who was not expected. He came because the people under whose roof he
was being sheltered, had "fetched him along," and he was Wharton, the
man whose purpose hereabouts had set gossip winging aforetime.
It seemed to some of the local visitors that despite his entire
courtesy, Spurrier did not evince any profound liking for this other
"furriner," and since they had come to accept their host as a
trustworthy oracle, they took the tip and were prepared to dislike
Wharton, too.
That evening, while blind Joe Givins fiddled, and dancers "ran their
sets" on the smooth, new floor, a group of men gathered on the porch
outside and smoked. Among them for a time were both Spurrier and
Wharton.
The latter raised something of a laugh when he confidently predicted
that the oil prosperity, for all its former collapse and present
paralysis, was not permanently dead.
"The world needs oil and there's oil here," he declared with unctuous
conviction. "Men who are willing to gamble on that proposition will
win out in the end."
"Stranger," responded Uncle Jimmy Litchfield, taking his pipestem from
between his teeth and spitting contemptuously at the earth, "ye sees,
settin' right hyar before ye a man that 'lowed he was a millionaire
one time, 'count of this hyar same oil ye're discoursin' so hopeful
about. Thet man's me. I'd been dirt-pore all my days, oftentimes
hurtin' fer ther plum' needcessities of life. I'm mighty nigh thet
pore still."
"Did you strike oil in the boom days?" demanded Wharton as he bent
eagerly forward.
"I owned me a farm, them days, on t'other side ther mounting," went on
the narrator, "an' them oil men came along an' wanted ter buy ther
rights offen me."
"Did you sell?"
Uncle Billy chuckled. "They up an' offered me a royalty of one-eighth
of ther whole production. They proved hit up ter me by 'rithmetic an'
algebry how hit would make me rich over an' above all avarice--but I
said no, I wouldn't take no eighth. I stud out fer a _sixteenth_ by
crickety!"
Both Spurrier and Wharton smothered their laughter as the latter
inquired gravely: "Did they play one of them royalty games."
"They done better'n thet. They said, 'We'll give ye two sixteenths,'
an' thet's when I 'lowed I was es good es a Pierpont Morgan. I
wouldn't nuver hurt fer no needcessity no more."
"And what was the outcome of it all?" asked Wharton.
Uncle Jimmy's face darkened. "The come-uppance of ther whole blame
business war thet a lot of pore devils what hed done been content with
poverty found hit twice as hard ter go on bein' pore because they'd
got to entertainin' crazy dreams ther same as me. Any man thet talks
oil ter me now's got ter buy outright an' pay me spot cash. I ain't
playin' no more of them royalty games."
"That's fair enough," said Wharton. "But it seems to me that you
people are taking the wrong tack. Because the boom collapsed once, you
are shutting the door against the possibility of its coming again--and
it's going to come again."
"A man kin git stung once," volunteered another native, "an' hit's
jest tough luck or bewitchment. Ef he gits stung twicet on ther same
trumpery, he ain't no more then a plum', daft fool."
Wharton lighted a fresh cigar and turned toward Spurrier.
"Mr. Spurrier here, is a man you all know and trust----" he hazarded.
"I understand that he's seen oil fields in the West and Mexico. I
wonder what he thinks about it all."
On the dark porch Spurrier looked at his visitor for a few minutes in
silence and his first reply was a quiet question.
"Did I tell you I'd seen oil fields in operation?" he inquired, and
Wharton stammered a little.
"I was under that impression," he said. "Possibly I am wrong."
"No--you are right enough," answered the other evenly. "I just didn't
remember mentioning it. What is your question exactly?"
"If I have a hunch that oil holds a future here and am willing to back
that hunch, don't you think I am acting wisely to do it?"
The host sat silent while he seemed to weigh the question with
judicial deliberation, and during the pause he realized that the
little group of men were waiting intently for his utterance as for the
voice of the Delphic oracle.
"I have seen oil operation and oil development," he said at last. "I
have lived here for some time and know the history of the former boom,
but I have not bought a foot of ground. That ought to make my opinion
clear."
"Then you don't believe in the future?"
"Don't you think, Mr. Wharton," inquired Spurrier coolly and, his
listeners thought, with a shaded note of contempt, "that what I've
already said, answers your question? If I _did_ believe in it,
wouldn't I be likely to seek investment at the present stage of land
prices?"
John Spurrier was glad that it was dark out there. He knew that the
mountain men awaited his judgment as something carrying the sanction
of finality and he felt like a Judas. He himself knew that back of his
seeming betrayal was a determination to safeguard their rights, but
the whole game of maneuvering and dissembling was as impossible to
play proudly as it would have been to undertake the duties of a spy.
"I'll admit," observed Wharton modestly, "that if I lost some money,
it wouldn't break me--and I'm a stubborn man when I get a hunch. Well,
I'm going in to watch them dance."
He rose and went indoors and Uncle Jimmy, when he put a question
acted, in effect, as spokesman for them all.
"What does ye think of thet feller, Mr. Spurrier?"
"I think," said the opportunity hound crisply, "that he's a fool, and
Scripture says, 'a fool and his money are soon parted.'"
"An' ef he seeks ter buy?"
"Sell--by all means--if the price is right!"
The next day when they were alone Glory said:
"I don't like that man Wharton. He's got sneaky eyes."
Her husband laughed. "I can't say that he struck me pleasantly," he
admitted. "We talked oil out on the porch. He was the optimist and I
the pessimist."
And it was to happen that the first rift in Glory's lute of happiness
was to come out of Wharton's agency, though she did not recognize it
as his.
For in these times, despite a happiness that made her sing through the
days, something like the panic of stage fright was settling over her:
a thing yet of the future, but some day to be faced.
So long as life ran quietly, like the shaded streams that went down
until they made the rivers of the greater and outer world, she was
confident mistress of her life and had no forebodings. Spurrier
loved her and she worshiped him--but out there beyond the ridges,
the activities of his larger life were calling--or would call. Then
they must leave here and she began to dread the thousand little
mistakes and the humiliations that might come to him because of her
unfamiliarity with that life. Since the bearings of achievement are
delicate, she even feared that she might throw out of gear and
poise the whole machinery of his success, and in secret Glory was
poring over absurd books on etiquette and deportment. That these
stereotyped instructions would only hamper her own naturally plastic
spirit, she did not know when she read and reread chapters headed,
"How to Enter a Drawing-room" and "Hints upon Refined Conversation."
That Spurrier would suggest going without her to any field into which
his work called him, she did not dream. That he would leave her to
wait for him here, as the companion only of his backwoods hours, her
pride never contemplated.
Yet in the fall Spurrier did just that thing, and to the letter which
induced its doing was signed the name of George Wharton. The latter
wrote:
"We must begin to lay out lines for work with the next legislature.
There are people in Louisville and Lexington whom you should meet
and talk with. I think you had better make your headquarters at
one of the Louisville clubs, and when you get here I will put you
in touch with the proper bearings."
That much might have puzzled any of the mountaineers who had taken
their own cues from Spurrier's thinly concealed manner of hostility to
Wharton, but the last part of the letter would have explained that,
too:
"The little game down at your house was nothing short of masterly.
Your acting was superb, and though you were the star, I think I
may claim to have played up to you well. The device of gaining
their confidence so that, of their own accord, they turned to you
for counsel--and then seeming to gloom on me when I talked oil,
was pretty subtle. I could openly preach buying and instead of
turning away from me in suspicion, they fell on me for a sucker.
I--and others acting for me--have, as the result, secured a good
part of the options we need--and you appear to be of all men, the
least interested."
Spurrier read the thing twice, then crushed it savagely in his
clenched hand and cursed under his breath. "The damned jackals," he
muttered. "That's the pack I'm running with--or rather I'm running
with them and against them at once."
But when Spurrier had kissed Glory good-by and she had waved a smiling
farewell, she turned back into her house and covered her face with her
hands.
"I don't want to believe it," she declared. "I won't believe it--but
it looks like he's ashamed to take me with him. Not that I blame
him--only--only I've got to make myself over. He's _got_ to be proud
of me!"