Over the ragged lands that lay on the "nigh side" of Hemlock Mountain
breathed a spirit of excitement and mighty hope. It had been two years
since John Spurrier had left the field he had planned to develop, and
in those years had come the transition of rebirth.
Along muddy streets the hogs still wallowed, but now they were deeply
rutted by the teaming of ponderous oil gear, and one saw young men in
pith helmets and pig-skin puttees; keen-faced engineers and oil
prospectors drawn in by the challenge of wealth from the far trails of
Mexico and the West. One heard the jargon of that single business and
the new vocabulary of its devotees. "Wild-catters" following surface
indications or hunches were testing and well-driving. Gushers rewarded
some and "dry holes" and "dusters" disappointed others. Into the
mediaeval life of hills that had stood age-long unaltered and aloof
came the infusion of hot-blooded enterprise, the eager questing after
quick and miraculous wealth.
In Lexington and Winchester oil exchanges carried the activity of
small bourses. In newspapers a new form of advertisement proclaimed
itself.
Oil was king. Oil and its by-product, gasoline, that the armies needed
and that the thousands of engines on the earth and in the air so
greedily devoured.
But over on the far side of the ridge men only fretted and chafed as
yet. They had the oil under their feet, but for it there was no
outlet. Like a land without a seaport, they looked over at neighbors
growing rich while they themselves still "hurted fer needcessities."
American Oil and Gas had locked them in while it milked the other cow.
It had its needed charters for piping both fields, but a man who was
either dead or somewhere across the world held the way barred in a
stalemate of controlled rights of way.
Glory thought less about the wonderful things that were going forward
than did others about her, because she had a broken heart. No letters
came from Spurrier, and the faith that she struggled to hold high like
a banner nailed to the masthead of her life, hung drooping. In the end
her colors had been struck.
If John Spurrier returned in search of her now she would go into
hiding from him, but it was most unlikely that he would return. He had
married her on impulse and under a pressure of excitement. He had
loved her passionately--but not with a strong enough fidelity to hold
him true--and now she believed he had turned back again to his old
idols. She was repudiated, and she ought to hate him with the
bitterness of her mountain blood, yet in her heart's core, though she
would never forgive him and never return to him, she knew that she
still loved him and would always love him.
She no longer feared that she would have hampered him in the society
of his more finished world. She had visited Helen Merriwell and had
come to know that other world for herself. She found that the gentle
blood in her veins could claim its own rights and respond graciously.
Hers had been a submerged aristocracy, but it had come out of its
chrysalis, bright-winged.
Then one day something happened that turned Glory's little personal
world upside down and brought a readjustment of all its ideas.
Sim Colby owned a little patch of land beside his homestead place,
over cross the mountain, and he was among those who became rich. He
was not so rich as local repute declared him, but rich enough to set
stirring the avarice of an erstwhile friend, who owned no land at
all.
So ex-Private Severance came over to the deserter's house with a
scheme conceived in envy and born of greed. He was bent on blackmail.
When he first arrived, the talk ran along general lines, because
"Blind Joe," the fiddler, was at the house, and the real object of the
visit was confidential. Blind Joe had also been an oil beneficiary,
and he and Sim Colby had become partners in a fashion. During that
relationship Blind Joe had told Sim some things that he told few
others.
But when Joe left and the pipes were lighted Severance settled himself
in a back-tilted chair and gazed reflectively at the crest of the
timber line.
"You an' me's been partners for a right long spell, Bud Grant, ain't
we?"
Colby started. The use of that discarded name brought back the past
with its ghosts of fear. He had almost forgotten that once he had been
Bud Grant, and a deserter from the army. It was all part of a bygone
and walled-in long ago. Though they were quite alone he looked
furtively about him and spoke in a lowered voice:
"Don't call me by thet name. Thar ain't no man but you knows
erbout--what I used to be."
"Thet's what I've been studyin' erbout. Nobody else but me."
Severance sat silent for a while after that announcement, but there
was a meaning smile on his lips, and Colby paled a shade whiter.
"_I_ reckon I kin trust ye; I always hev," he declared with a specious
confidence.
Severance nodded. "I was on guard duty an' I suffered ye ter escape,"
he went reminiscently on. "I knows thet ye kilt Captain Comyn, an'
I've done kept a close mouth all these years. Now ye're a rich man an'
I'm a pore one. Hit looks like ter me ye owes me a debt an' ye'd ought
ter do a leetle something for me."
So that was it! Colby knew that if he yielded at all, this man's
avarice and his importunities would feed on themselves increasingly
and endlessly. Yet he dared not refuse, so he sought to temporize.
"I reckon thar's right smart jestice in what ye says," he conceded,
"but I don't know jest yit how I stands or how much money I'm wuth.
Ye'll have ter give me a leetle time ter find out."
But when Severance mounted his mule and rode away, Sim Colby gave him
only a short start and then hurried on foot through the hill tangles
by a short cut that would intercept his visitor's course.
He knew that Severance would have to ride through the same gorge in
which Sim had waylaid Spurrier, and he meant to get there first,
rifle-armed.
It was sunset when, quite unsuspecting of danger, at least for the
moment, Severance turned his mule into the gorge. He was felicitating
himself, since without an acre of land or a drop of oil he had
"declared himself in" on another's wealth. His mule was a laggard in
pace, and the rider did not urge him. He was content to amble.
Back of the rock walls of the great cleft, the woods lay hushed and
dense in the closing shadows. An owl quavered softly, and the water
among the ferns whispered. All else was quiet.
But from just a little way back, a figure hitched forward as it lay
belly-down in the "laurel hell." It sighted a rifle and pressed a
finger.
The mule snorted and stopped dead with a flirt of ears and tail and
with no word, without even a groan, the rider toppled sidewise and
slid from the saddle.
The man back in the brush peered out. He noted how still the crumpled
figure lay between the feet of the patient, mouse-colored beast, that
switched at flies with its tail. It lay twisted almost double with one
arm bent beneath its chest.
So Colby crept closer. It would be as well to haul the body back into
the tangle where it would not be so soon discovered, and to start the
beast along its way with a slap on the flank.
But just as the assassin stooped, Severance's right hand darted out
and, as it did so, there was a quick glint of blue steel, and three
instantly successive reports.
Colby staggered backward with a sense of betrayal and a horrible
realization of physical pain. His rifle dropped from a shattered hand
and jets of blood broke out through his rent clothing. Each of those
three pistol balls had taken effect at a range so close that he had
been powder-burned. He knew he was mortally hurt, and that the other
would soon be dead if he was not so already.
Colby began crawling. He was mangled as if by an explosion, but
instinct drove him. Twice he fainted and recovered dim consciousness
and still dragged himself tediously along.
* * * * *
Glory was alone in her house. Her father, who had been living with her
of late, had gone to the county seat overnight.
The young woman sat in silence, and the sewing upon which she had been
busied lay in her lap forgotten. In her eyes was the far-away look of
one who eats out one's heart in thoughts that can neither be solved
nor banished.
Then she heard a faint call. It was hardly more than a gasped whisper,
and as she rose, startled, and went to the door she saw striving to
reach it a shape of terrible human wreckage.
Sim Colby's clothes were almost torn from him and blood, dried brown,
and blood freshly flowing, mingled their ugly smears upon him. His
lips were livid and his face gray.
Glory ran to him with a horrified scream. She did not yet recognize
him, and he gasped out a plea for whisky.
With the utmost effort of her young strength she got him in, and
managed to straighten out the mutilated body with pillows under its
head.
But after a little the stimulant brought a slight reviving, and he
talked in broken and disjointed phrases.
"Hit war Severance," he mumbled. "I fought back--I reckon I kilt him,
too."
Glory gazed in bewildered alarm about the house. Brother Bud Hawkins
was at Uncle Jimmy Litchfield's place, and she must get medical help,
though she feared that the wounded man would be dead before her
return.
When she came back with the preacher, who also "healed human bodies
some," Colby was still alive but near his passing.
"Ef thar's aught on your conscience, Sim," said the old preacher
gently, "hit's time ter make yore peace with Almighty God, fer ye're
goin' ter stand afore him in an hour more. Air ye ready ter face
Him?"
The dying man looked up, and above the weakness and the suffering that
filled his eyes, showed a dominating expression of terror. If ever a
human being needed to be shriven he thought it was himself.
They had to bend close to catch his feeble syllables, as he said: "Git
paper--write this down."
The preacher obeyed, kneeling on the floor, and though the words were
few, their utterance required dragging minutes, punctuated with breaks
of silence and gasping.
"Hit warn't John Spurrier--thet kilt Captain Comyn back tha'r in the
Philippines.... I knows who done hit----" He broke off there, and the
girl closed her hands over her face. "I sought ter kill Spurrier--but
I warn't with them--thet attackted him hyar--an' wounded ther woman."
Once more a long hiatus interrupted the recital and then the mangled
creature went on: "Hit was ther oil folks thet deevised thet murder
scheme."
The preacher was busily writing the record of this death-bed statement
and Glory stood pale and distraught.
The words "oil people" were ringing in her ears. What connection could
Spurrier have had with them: what enmity could they have had for him?
But out of the confusion of her thoughts another thing stood forth
with the sudden glare of revelation. This man might die before he
finished and if he could not tell all he knew, he must first tell that
which would clear her husband's name. Though that husband had turned
his back on her, her duty to him in this matter must take precedence
over the rest.
"Joe Givins--" began Colby once more in laborious syllables, but
peremptorily the girl halted him.
"Never mind Joe Givins just now," she commanded with as sharp a
finality as though to her had been delegated the responsibility of his
judgment. "You said you knew who killed Captain Comyn. Who was it?"
The eyes in the wounded and stricken face gazed up at her in mute
appeal as a sinner might look at a father confessor, pleading that he
be spared the bitterest dregs of his admission.
Glory read that glance and her own delicate features hardened. She
leaned forward.
"I brought you in here and succored you," she asserted with a
sternness which she could not have commanded in her own behalf.
"You're going before Almighty God--and unless you answer that
question honestly--no prayers shall go with you for forgiveness."
"Glory!" The name broke in shocked horror from the bearded lips of the
preacher. "Glory, the mercy of God hain't ter be interfered with by
mortals. Ther man's dying!"
Upon him the young woman wheeled with blazing eyes.
"God calls on his servants for justice to the living as well as mercy
to the dying," she declared. "Sim Colby, who killed Captain Comyn?"
"I done hit," came the unwillingly wrung confession. "My real name's
Grant.... Severance aided me.... Thet's why I sought to kill Spurrier.
I deemed he war a huntin' me down."
"Now," ordered the young woman, "what about Joe Givins?"
Again a long pause, then: "Blind Joe Givins--only he ain't no blinder
than me--read papers hyar--he diskivered thet Spurrier was atter oil
rights--he tipped off ther oil folks--he war their spy all ther
time--shammin' ter be blind----" There the speaker struggled to
breathe and let his head fall back with the utterance incomplete. Five
minutes later he was dead.
"Hit don't seem ter me," said Brother Hawkins a short time later,
while Glory still stood in dazed and trance-like wonderment, "es ef
what he said kin be true. Why ef hit be, John Spurrier was aimin' ter
plunder us hyar all ther time! He was counselin' us ter sell out--an'
he was buyin'. I kain't believe that."
But Glory had drawn back to the wall of the room and into her eyes had
come a new expression. The expression of one who must tear aside a
veil and know the truth, and who dreads what that truth may be.
She had said that justice, no less than mercy, was God's command laid
upon mortals. She had, almost by the extremity of withholding from
Colby his hope of salvation until he spoke, won from him the
declaration which would give back to John Spurrier an unsmirched name.
Once Spurrier had said that was his strongest wish in life. But now
justice called again: this time justice to her own people and perhaps
it meant the unveiling of duplicity in the man she had married.
"Brother Hawkins," she declared in a low but fervent voice, "if it's
not true, it's a slander that I can't let stand. If it _is_ true, I
must undo the wrong he's sought to do--if I can. Please wait."
Then she was tearing at the bit of paneling that gave access to the
secret cabinet, and poring over papers from a broken and rifled strong
box.
There was the uncontrovertible record, clear writ, and at length her
pale face came up resolutely.
"I don't understand it all yet," she told the preacher. "But he was
buying. He bought everything that's been sold this side the ridge. He
was seeking to influence the legislature, too. I've got to talk to my
father."
* * * * *
It was the next night, when old Dyke Cappeze had ridden back from the
county seat, that he sat under the lamp in the room where Sim Colby
had died, and on the table before him were spread the papers that had
lain unread so long in John Spurrier's secret cabinet.
Across from him sat Glory with her fingers spasmodically clutched and
her eyes riveted on his face as he read and studied the documents,
which at first he had been loath to inspect without the permission of
their owner. He had been convinced, however, when Glory had told the
story of the dying confession and had appealed to him for counsel.
"By what you tell me," the old lawyer had summarized at the end of her
recital, "you forced from this man his admission which cleared John
Spurrier of the charge that's been hanging over him. You set out to
serve him and refused to be turned aside when Colby balked.... But
that confession didn't end there. It went on and besides clearing Jack
in that respect it seems to have involved him in another way. You
can't use a part of a confession and discard the balance. Perhaps we
can serve him as well as others best by going into the whole of the
affair."
So now Glory interrupted by no word or question, despite her anxiety
to understand and her hoping against hope for a verdict which should
leave John Spurrier clean of record.
But if she refrained from breaking in on the study that engrossed her
father and wrinkled his parchment-like forehead, she could not help
reading the expression of his eyes, the growing sternness and
indignation of his stiffening lips--and of drawing the moral that when
he spoke his words must be those of condemnation.
The strident song of the katydids came in through the windows and the
moon dropped behind the hill crests before Dyke Cappeze spoke, and
Brother Hawkins, who was spending the night at that house, smoked
alone on the porch, unwilling to intrude on the confidences that these
two might wish to exchange.
Finally the lawyer folded the last paper and looked up.
"Do you want the whole truth, little gal?" he inquired bluntly. "How
much do you still love this man?"
Glory flushed then paled.
"I guess," she said and her words were very low and soft, "I'll love
him so long as I live--though I hate myself for doing it. He wearied
of me and forgot me--but I can't do likewise."
Then her chin came up and her voice rang with a quiet finality.
"But I want the truth ... the whole truth without any softening."
"Then as I see it, it's simply this. A war was on between two groups
of financiers. American Oil and Gas had held a monopoly and maintained
a corrupt control in the legislature that stifled competition. That's
why the other oil boom failed. The second group was trying to slip up
on these corruptionists and gain the control by a campaign of
surprise. Jack Spurrier appears to have been the ambassador of that
second group--and he seems to have failed."
The wife nodded. Even yet she unconsciously held a brief for his
defense.
"So far as you've gone," she reminded her father, "you show him to
have been what is commonly called a 'practical business man'--but no
worse than the men he fought."
Cappeze bowed his head gravely and his next words came reluctantly.
"So far, yes. Of course he could have done none of the things he did
had he not first won the confidence of those poor ignorant folk that
are our neighbors and our friends. Of course it was because they
believed in him and followed his counsel that they sold their
birthrights to men with whom he pretended to have no connection--and
yet who took their orders from him."
"Then," Glory started, halted and leaned forward with her hands
against her breast and her utterance was the monotone of a voice
forced to a hard question: "Then what I feared was true? He lived
among us and made friends of us--only to rob us?"
"If by 'us' you mean the mountain people, I fear me that's precisely
what he did. I can see no other explanation. Which ever of these two
groups won meant to exploit and plunder us."
For a little she made no answer, but the delicate color of her cheeks
was gone to an ivory whiteness and the violet eyes were hardening.
"Perhaps we oughtn't to judge him too harshly for these things,"
said the father comfortingly. "The scroll of my bitterness against
him is already heavy enough and to spare. He has broken your heart
and that's enough for me. As to the rest there are many so-called
honorable gentlemen who are no more scrupulous. We demand clean
conduct here in these hills," a fierce bitterness came into his
words, "but then we are ignorant, backwoods folk! There are many
intricate ins and outs to this business and I don't presume to speak
with absolute conclusiveness yet."
Outside the katydids sang their prophecies of frost to come and an
owl hooted. Glory Spurrier sat staring ahead of her and at last she
said aloud, in that tone which one uses when a thought finds
expression, unconscious that it has been vocal: "So he won our
faith--with his clear eyes and his honest smile--only to swindle and
rob us!"
"My God, if I were a younger man," broke out the father passionately,
rising from his chair and clenching the damaging papers in his
talon-like fingers, "I'd learn the oil game. I'd take this information
and use it against both their gangs--and I believe I could force them
both to their knees."
He paused and the momentary fire died out of his eyes.
"I'm too old a dog for new tricks though," he added dejectedly, "and
there's no one else to do it."
"How could it be done?" demanded Glory rousing herself from her
trance. "Between them they hold all the power, don't they?"
"As far as I can make out," Cappeze explained with the interest of the
legalistic mind for tackling an abstruse problem, "Spurrier had
completed his arch as to one of his two purposes--all except its
keystone. He had yet to gain a passage way through Brother Hawkins'
land. With that he would have held the completed right-of-way--and
it's the only one. The other gang of pirates hold the ability to get a
charter but no right of way over which to use it. Now the man who
could deliver Brother Hawkins' concession would have a key. He could
force Spurrier's crowd to agree to almost anything, and with
Spurrier's crowd he could wring a compromise from the others. Bud
Hawkins is like the delegate at a convention who can break a
deadlock. God knows I'd love to tackle it--but it's too late for me."
Glory had come to her feet, and stood an incarnation of combat.
"It's not too late for me," she said quietly. "Perhaps I'm too crude
to go into John Spurrier's world of cultivated people but I'm shrewd
enough to go into his world of business!"
"You!" exclaimed the father in astonishment, then after a moment an
eager light slowly dawned in his eyes and he broke out vehemently: "By
God in Heaven, girl, I believe you're the man for the job!"
"Call Brother Hawkins in," commanded Glory. "We need his help."
Before he reached the door old Cappeze turned on his heel.
"Glory," he said, "we've need to move out of this house and go back to
my place. Here we're dwelling under a dishonest roof."
"I'm going to leave it," she responded quickly, "but I'm going farther
away than that. I'm going to study oil and I'm going to do it in the
Bluegrass lowlands."