When he came back for a short stay in the hills between periods of
quiet but strenuous affairs in Louisville, he brought gifts that
delighted Glory and a devotion that made her forget her misgivings.
She had him back, and he found the house expressing in many small ways
a taste and discrimination which brought to him a flush of pleasurable
surprise. Glory knew the menace that hung over Spurrier. She knew of
the malevolent and elusive enmities to which her own life had so
nearly become forfeit, and the old terror of the mountain woman for
her man became the cross that she must carry with her. Because of her
militant father's antagonisms she had been inured from childhood to
the taut moment of suspense that came with every voice raised at the
gate and every knock sounding on the door.
There was an element of possible threat in each arrival. She had
become, as one has need to be, under such circumstances, somewhat
fatalistic as to the old dangers. Now that the fear embraced her
husband as well as her father, the philosophy which she had cultivated
failed her. Yet their happiness was so strong that it threw off these
things and drew upon the treasury of the present.
Spurrier, who talked little of his own dangers, was far from
forgetting. His suspicion of Colby strengthened, and he looked forward
to the day as inevitable when there must be a reckoning between them,
which would not be a final reckoning unless one of them died, and for
that encounter he went grimly prepared.
One thing puzzled him. Of Sim Colby he had thought as a somewhat
solitary character, whose relations with his neighbors, though
amicable, were yet rather detached. He had seemed to have few
intimates, yet if he had led this attack, he was palpably able to
muster at his back a considerable force of men for a desperate
project. That meant that the infection of hatred against himself had
spread from a single enmity to the number, at least, of the men who
had joined in the battle, and it had been a battle in which more than
one had fallen. Before, he had recognized a single enemy. Henceforth
he must acknowledge plural enmities.
And along that line of reasoning the next step followed logically.
Who would suggest himself as so natural a leader for a murder
enterprise as Sam Mosebury, whose record was established in such
matters? Certainly if this suspicion were well-founded it would be
safest to know.
Spurrier, despite all he had heard of Sam Mosebury, was reluctant to
entertain the thought. The man might be, as Cappeze painted him, the
head and front of an infamously vicious system, yet there was
something engaging and likable about him, which made it hard to
believe that for hire or any motive not nearly personal he would have
conspired to do murder.
So among the many claims upon Spurrier's attention was the effort to
find out where Sam Mosebury stood, and it was while he was thinking
of that problem that he encountered the object of his thoughts in
person. The spot was one distant from his own house. Indeed it was
near Colby's cabin--still apparently empty--that the meeting took
place.
The opportunity hound had made several trips over there of late,
because he required to know something of Colby's activities, and, of
course, when he came he observed a surreptitious caution which sought
to guard against any hint leaking through to Colby of his own
surveillance. He firmly believed that Sim was "hiding out," and that
despite the seeming emptiness of his habitation he was not far away.
So it was Spurrier, the law-abiding man, who was skulking in the
laurel while the notorious Mosebury walked the highway "upstanding"
and openly--and the man in the thicket stooped low to escape
discovery. But his foot slipped in the tangle and a rotting branch
cracked under it, giving out a sound which brought Mosebury to an
abrupt halt with his head warily raised and his rifle poised. He, too,
had enemies and must walk in caution.
There had been times when Sam's life had hinged on just such trivial
things as the snapping of a twig, and now, peering through the
thickets Spurrier saw a flinty hardness come into his eyes.
Sam stepped quietly but swiftly to the roadside and sheltered himself
behind a rock. He said no word, but he waited, and Spurrier could feel
that his eyes were boring into his own place of concealment with a
scrutiny that went over it studiously and keenly, foot by foot.
He hurriedly considered what plan to pursue. If Mosebury was in
league with Colby, to show himself would be almost as undesirable a
thing as to show himself to Colby direct. Yet if he stayed there with
the guilty seeming of one in hiding, Mosebury would end by locating
him--and might assume that the hiding was itself a proof of enmity. He
decided to declare himself so he shouted boldly: "It's John Spurrier,"
and rose a moment later into view.
Then he came forward, thinking fast, and when the two met in the road,
mendaciously said:
"I guess it looks queer for a man with a clear conscience to take to
the timber that way, Mr. Mosebury--but you may remember that I was
recently attacked, and I don't know who did it."
Mosebury nodded. "I'd be ther last man ter fault ye fer thet," he
concurred. "I was doin' nigh erbout ther same thing myself, but I
didn't know ye often fared over this way, Mr. Spurrier."
"No, it's off my beat." Spurrier was now lying fluently in what he
fancied was to be a game of wits with a man who might have led the
siege upon his house. "I was just going over to Stamp Carter's place.
He wanted me to advise him about a property deal."
For a space Sam stood gravely thoughtful, and when he spoke his words
astonished the other.
"Seein' we _hev_ met up, accidental-like, I've got hit in head ter
tell ye somethin' deespite hit ain't rightly none of my business."
Again he paused, and it was plain that he was laboring under
embarrassment, so Spurrier inquired:
"What is it?"
"Of course, I've done heered ther talk erbout yore bein' attacked.
Don't ye really suspicion no special man?"
"Suspicion is one thing, Mr. Mosebury, and knowledge is another."
"Yes, thet's Bible truth, an' yit I wouldn't marvel none yore
suspicions went over thet-away--an' came up not fur off from hyar." He
nodded his head toward Sim Colby's house, and Spurrier, who was
steeled to fence, gave no indication of astonishment. He only
inquired:
"Why should Mr. Colby hold a grudge against me?"
"I ain't got no power of knowin' thet." Mosebury spoke dryly. "An' es
I said afore, hit ain't none of my business nohow--still I does know
thet ye've been over hyar some sev'ral times, an' every time ye came,
ye came quietlike es ef ye sought ter see Sim afore Sim seed _you_."
"You think I've been here before?"
"No, sir, I don't think hit. I knows hit. I seed ye."
"Saw me!"
"Yes, sir, seed ye. Hit's my business to keep a peeled eye in my
face."
So Spurrier's careful secrecy had been transparent after all, and if
this man was an ally of Colby's, Colby already shared his knowledge.
More than ever Spurrier felt sure that his suspicions of the man whose
eyes had changed color, were grounded in truth.
"Howsomever," went on Mosebury quietly, "I ain't nuver drapped no hint
ter Sim erbout hit. I ain't, gin'rally speakin', no meddler, but ef so
be I kin forewarn ye ergainst harm, hit would pleasure me ter do
hit."
There was a cordial ring of sincerity in the manner and voice, which
it was hard to doubt, so the other said gravely:
"Thank you. I did suspect Colby, but I have no proof."
"I don't know whether Sim grudges ye or not," continued Mosebury. "He
ain't nuver named ther matter ter me nowise, guise, ner fashion--but
Sim _wasn't with ther crowd thet went atter ye_. He didn't even know
nothin' erbout hit. Sometimes a man comes to grief by barkin' up ther
wrong tree."
Again suspicion came to the front. This savored strongly of an attempt
to alibi a confederate, and Spurrier inquired bluntly:
"Since you broached this subject, I think it's fair to ask you another
question. You tell me who _didn't_ come. Do you know who _did_?"
For a moment Mosebury's face remained blank, then he spoke stiffly.
"I said I'd be glad ter warn ye--but I didn't say I war willin' ter
name no names. Thet would be mighty nigh ther same thing es takin'
yore quarrel onto myself."
"Then that's all you can tell me--that it wasn't Colby?"
"Mr. Spurrier," rejoined the mountaineer seriously, "ye _knows_
jedgmatically an' p'intedly thet ye've got enemies that means
business. I ain't nuver seed a man yet in these hills what belittled a
peril sich as yourn thet didn't pay fer hit--with his life."
"I don't belittle it, but what can I do?"
Sam Mosebury stood with a gaze that wandered off over the broken sky
line. So grave was his demeanor that when his words came they carried
the shock of inconsistent absurdity.
"Thar's a witch woman, thet dwells nigh hyar. Ef I war in youre stid,
I'd git her ter read ther signs fer me an' tell me what I had need
guard ergainst most."
"I'm afraid," answered Spurrier, repressing his contempt with
difficulty, "I'm too skeptical to pin my faith to signs and omens."
Again the mountain man was looking gravely across the hills, but for a
moment the eyes had flashed humorously.
"I reckon we don't need ter cavil over thet, Mr. Spurrier. I don't sot
no master store by witchcraft foolery my ownself. Mebby ye recalls
thet oncet I told ye a leetle story erbout my cat an' my mockin'
bird."
"Yes," Spurrier began to understand now. "You sometimes speak in
allegory. But this time I don't get the meaning."
"Waal, hit's this fashion. I _don't_ know who ther men war thet tried
ter kill ye. Thet's God's truth, but I've got my own notions an' mebby
they ain't fur wrong. I ain't goin' ter name no names--but ef so be ye
wants ter talk ter ther witch woman, _I'll_ hev speech with her fust.
What comes outen magic kain't hardly make me no enemies--but mebby hit
_mout_ enable ye ter discern somethin' thet would profit ye to a
master degree."
Spurrier stood looking into the face of the other and then impulsively
he thrust out his hand.
"Mr. Mosebury," he said, "I'll be honest with you. I half suspected
you--because I'd met you at Colby's and I knew you hated Cappeze. I
owe you an apology, and I'm glad to know I was wrong."
"Mr. Spurrier," replied the other, "ef I _hed_ attempted yore life I
wouldn't hev failed, an', moreover, I don't hate old Cappeze. Ther man
thet wins out don't hev no need ter harbor hatreds. He hates me
because he sought ter penitentiary me--an' failed."
"When shall we go to consult the oracle?" asked Spurrier, and Mosebury
shook his head.
"I reckon mebby I mout seem over cautious--even timorouslike ter ye,
in bein' so heedful erbout keepin' outen sight in this matter," he
said. "But them thet knows my record, knows I _ain't_, jest ter say
easy skeered. You go home an' wait an' afore long I'll write ye a
letter, tellin' ye when ter go an' how ter go. Then ye kin make ther
journey by yoreself."
"That looks like common sense to me," declared the other, and he went
home, forgetting the witch woman on the way, because of the other and
lovelier witchcraft that he knew awaited him in his own house.
Spurrier, despite his dangers, responsibilities, and conflict of
purposes, was happy. He was happy in a simpler and less complicated
way than he had ever been before, because his heart was in the
ascendancy, and Glory, he thought, was "livin' up to her name."
If he could have thrust some other things into the same dark cupboard
of half-contemptuous philosophy to which he relegated his own dangers,
he might have been even happier. But a mentor who had rarely troubled
him in past years became insistent and audible through the
silences--speaking with the voice of conscience.
He remembered telling Vivian Harrison, over the consomme, that pearls
did not make oysters happy and that these illiterates of the hills
might have hidden wealth in the shells of their isolation and gain
nothing more than the oyster. Indeed, he had thought of them no more
than the pearl fisherman thinks of the low form of life whose diseased
state gives birth to treasure. They inhabited a terrain over which he
and the forces of American Oil and Gas were to do battle, and like
birds nesting on a battlefield, they must take their chances.
It was no longer possible to maintain that callous indifference. These
men, to whom he could not, without disclosing his strategy and
defeating his purpose, tell the truth, had befriended him.
They were human and in many ways lovable. If he succeeded, they would,
upon his own advice, have sold their birthrights.
However, he gave an anodyne to his conscience with the thought that if
victory came to him there would be wealth enough for all to share.
Having won his conquest, he could be generous, rendering back as a
gift a part of what should have been theirs by right. The means of
doing this he had worked out but he could confide to no one. He had
embarked as cold bloodedly as Martin Harrison had ever started on any
of the enterprises that had made him a money baron. Indeed it had been
Spurrier who had fired the chief with interest in the scheme, and if
the thing were culpable the culpability had been his own. Then he had
come to realize that in the human equation was a factor that he had
ignored: the rights of the ignorant native. He had fought down that
recognition as the voice of sentimentality until at last he had no
longer been able to fight it down. Between those two states of mind
had been a war of mental agony and conflict, of doubt, of vacillation.
The conclusion had not been easily reached. Now he meant to carry on
the war he had undertaken unaltered as to its objective of winning a
victory for Harrison over Trabue and the myrmidons of A. O. and G.,
but he meant to bring in that victory in such a guise that the native
would share in the division of the spoils. He knew that Harrison, if
he had an intimation of such an amendment of plan, would sharply veto
it, but when the thing was done it would be too late to object--and
meanwhile Spurrier regarded himself no less the trustee of the
mountain-land holder than the servant of Martin Harrison. He was
willing to shoulder, out of his own stipulated profits, the chief
burden of this division, and in the end he would have driven a better
bargain for his simple friends than they could have hoped to attain
for themselves.
Yet in him was being reborn an element of character, which had long
been repressed.
And there in the other section of the State where political
connections had to be established and the skids of intrigue greased,
much stood waiting to be done. Already most of what could be
accomplished here on the ground had progressed to a point from which
the end could be seen.
John Spurrier, the seeming idler, could control almost all the
territory needful for his right of way--all except a tract belonging
to Brother Bud Hawkins, cautiously left for the last because he
wished to handle that himself and did not yet wish to appear in the
negotiations.
In the intricate workings of such a project by a campaign of secrecy,
the matter was not only one of acquiring a certain expanse of a
definite sort of property in a given region, but of acquiring holdings
that commanded the only practicable route through passable gaps. This
special lie and trend of ground he thought of and spoke of, in his
business correspondence, as "the neck of the bottle." When he held it,
it mattered little who else had liquid in the bottle. It could come
out only through his neck and, therefore, under his terms. Yet even
when that was achieved, there remained the need of the corkscrew
without which he himself could make no use of his range-wide jug of
crude petroleum. That corkscrew was the charter to be had from a
legislature where American Oil and Gas was supposed to have sentinels
at the door.
He could not take Glory with him on these trips, because Glory was of
the hills, and loyal to the hills--and he could not yet take the
natives into his confidence. For the same reason he could give her
only business reasons of the most general and evasive character for
leaving her behind.
But the work that Spurrier had done so far was only the primary
section of a broader design. What he had accomplished affected the oil
field on the remote side of Hemlock Mountain, the part of the field
that the earlier boom had never touched, and his entire project looked
to a totality embracing also the "nigh" side, where his operations
still existed only in projection.
It was while this situation stood that there came to him one day two
letters calling upon him for two irreconcilable courses of action. One
was from Louisville, urging him to return there at once to busy
himself with political plannings; the other was a rude scrawl from Sam
Mosebury setting an appointment with the "witch woman."
Spurrier was reluctant to go to Louisville. It meant laying aside the
little paradise of the present for the putting on of heavy harness. It
necessitated another excuse to Glory, and more than that, being away
from Glory. Yet that was the bugle call of his mission, and he fancied
that whatever threatened him here in the hills was a menace of local
effect. If that were true he would not need the warning which the
unaccountable desperado, Sam Mosebury, meant to relay to him through
channels of alleged magic, until he came back.
Therefore, the witch could wait. But in that detail Spurrier erred,
and when he answered the summons that called him to town without his
occult consultation, he unwittingly discarded a warning which he
needed there no less than in the hills.
He was called upon to choose a turning without pause, and he followed
his business instincts. It happened that instinct misled him.