The conspiracy fathered by Lute Brown and Jase Mallows had its
inception in a small coterie whose ambitions had been stirred to
avarice by the bait of sharing among them a sum of over four thousand
dollars. Ramifications of detail had necessitated the use of a larger
force; a force so large, indeed, that anything like an equal
distribution of booty would have intolerably eaten into the profits of
the principals. Therefore the rank and file of employes were merely
mercenaries, working for a flat wage.
But in such an enterprise the danger of mutiny always looms large and
the bludgeon of blackmail lies ready to the hand of the mutineer.
Therefore the actual handling of the money had been a matter of extreme
care to Lute and those in his closest confidence. When the leader had
taken most of his men out of the mine he had led away those of whom he
had felt least sure--and had left the saddle-bags to the custody of the
supposedly reliable minority. His estimate had been seventy-five per
cent accurate. One only of the four was untrustworthy.
Lute himself had designated the custodian of the treasure and had fixed
a rendezvous at a long abandoned and decaying cabin in a remote and
thicketed locality. Shortly before dawn Lute arrived there,
unaccompanied and expecting to find his man awaiting him. But
complications had developed. When the quartette that left the mine
last held a hurried conference outside, the squad leader explained that
the very essence of precaution now lay in their separating and seeking
individual cover.
Two of them concurred but the fellow who had attacked Alexander had
become insurgent through drink, chagrin and cupidity.
"Boys," he darkly suggested, "we warn't hired ter go thro no sich rough
times es we've done encountered. I reckon these fellers owes us right
smart more then what they agreed ter pay fust oft--moreover what
sartainty hev we got thet we're goin' ter get anything a-tall?"
They argued with him but his obduracy stood unaffected.
"Thet small sheer thet I agreed ter tek hain't ergoin' ter satisfy me
now," he truculently protested. "I aims ter go along with ther money
hitself and git paid off without no sort of dalliance. I aims ter get
my own price, too."
Finally, since they could not overlook the menace of disaffection, the
leader agreed to take this man with him to Lute Brown for adjustment of
the dispute, and the two set off together, while the other two left
them at a fork of the trail. On the way to the cabin, the disgruntled
one drank more moonshine liquor than was good for him and when they
arrived there the place was seemingly empty, for Lute, watching with
hawk-like vigilance, had made out that instead of one man two were
approaching and he had slipped out through a back door into the void of
the darkness. A lantern without a chimney burned in the deserted room
and cabin and that was safe enough in a place so screened, but it
showed the two newcomers that there was no one waiting there. To the
inflamed and suspicious brother this seemed an indication of broken
faith. Perhaps after all he had been lured here to be paid off with
treachery and murder!
"So ye lied ter me!" he bellowed in passion. "Hit war jest like I
thought. Now I aims ter tek hit all myself!" And snatching out a
knife he hurled himself on his comrade of an hour ago.
That one dropped the saddle-bags and fumbled for his pistol, but before
it cleared the holster they had grappled and were stumbling about the
room. Lute, watching from without, considered this the moment for
intervention and he appeared in the door with drawn revolver shouting
out for an end to the struggle.
Unfortunately it was only his loyal adherent who heeded his voice, and
the other, freed from the grip that had so far held him in chancery
stabbed twice before the object of his attack collapsed. Then only,
Lute fired. Before that moment he must have fired through his loyal
man to reach his traitor. The hesitation was fatal, for the shot
missed its target and in a moment more, Lute, too fell under the knife.
The traitorous survivor stood for a moment, panting heavily, then,
still unsteady of step from his homicidal exertions, picked up the
saddle-bags, ransacked them with frenzied haste and plunged out of the
door with the package that bore the spots of red sealing wax.
At any time the others might come to investigate and they would find a
scene of double murder.
He did not stop to open the package. That could await a more opportune
moment. Just now the vital thing was flight.
When, at the end of much panic-stricken haste and the spurring of
terror he judged it safe to strike a match, he ripped open the bundle,
over which so many men and one woman had fought--and in it discovered
only tightly packed newspapers and a few small pieces of broken
brick--added to give it the plausibility of weight.
Halloway in accordance with his plan of leaving the stage before his
presence lost dramatic effect, did not offer to go all the way back to
Shoulder-blade Creek with Alexander. He accompanied her only to a
point where there was no longer danger, and then said farewell to her,
leaving her still under the escort of Brent, Bud Sellers and O'Keefe.
"I reckon," he announced abruptly when they stood on the crest of a
steep hill, "I'll turn back hyar. I don't dwell over yore way an' thar
hain't no use fer me ter fare further. I'll bid ye farewell--an' mebby
some day all us fellers'll meet up again."
Alexander was surprised, and a sharp little pang of disappointment shot
through her breast. She did not analyze the emotion, but, just then
and with no reason that emerged out of the subconscious, she remembered
the instant when she had hung to the sycamore branch and he had swept
her in and pressed her close. She only nodded her head and spoke
gravely. "I reckon we'll all miss ye when ye're gone, but thet hain't
no reason fer takin' ye no further offen yore course."
Then for the first time Halloway said anything that might have been
construed as a compliment to the girl and he disarmed it of too great
significance with a quizzical smile.
"I reckon, Alexander, thar hain't nothin' better then a good man--an'
ye've done proved yoreself one--but afore God thar's a mighty
outstandin' woman wasted when ye does hit."
Alexander flushed. Perhaps the germ of the awakening that Halloway had
predicted was already stirring into unrecognized life, but she was
ashamed of the blush and in order to cover it made a retort which was
not by any stretch of the imagination a compliment.
"Thar's gals aplenty, Jack"--the people of the hills fall very
naturally into the use of the first name--"A feller like you mout find
hisself one ef he tried hard enough--an' I'll give ye some mighty good
counsel, because atter all I was _borned_ female an' I knows thet much
erbout 'em."
"Wa'al?" Halloway smiled inquiringly, and the girl went on.
"Ye won't nuver make no headway with none of 'em whilst ye goes round
lookin' es bristly an' es dirty es a razor-back hog thet's done been
wallowin' in ther mire. Ef ye ever got clean once hit mout be right
diff'rent."
The big fellow roared with laughter as he turned to Brent.
"Kin ye beat thet now, Mr. Brent? Kin ye figger me in a b'iled shirt,
with a citified shave an' perfume on me a-settin' out sparkin'."
None of the rest knew why Brent laughed so hard. He was trying to
picture the expression that would have come to Alexander's face had she
seen Jack Halloway as he himself had seen him, groomed to perfection,
with pretty heads turning in theater foyer and at restaurant tables, to
gaze at his clean chisseled features and god-like physique.
Bud had little to say and after the parting the girl traveled in a
greater silence than before. Both were thinking of the time, now
drawing near, when they should reach the house of Aaron McGivins and
learn whether or not it was a house of death. Both too were thinking
of the man who had turned back, but their thoughts there were widely
different.
Then they came to the road that ran by the big house, and before they
had reached it Joe McGivins, who sighted them from afar came to meet
them. When Alexander saw her brother she found suddenly that she could
not walk. She halted and stood there with her knees weak under her and
her cheeks pallid. The moment of hearing the life-and-death verdict
was at hand and the sorely-tried strength that had carried her so far
forsook her.
But Joe, however weak, was considerate and when still at a distance he
saw her raise a hand weakly in a gesture of questioning and
insufferable suspense and he shouted out his news: "He's gittin' well."
Then the girl groped blindly out with her hands and but for Jerry
O'Keefe who caught her elbow, she would have fallen. The taut nerves
had loosened to that unspeakable relief--but for the moment it was
collapse.
Brent had left the mountains a week after Alexander's safe return, but
within two months he had occasion to return and he rode over to the
mouth of Shoulder-blade. He had been told that Aaron McGivins, though
he had made a swift and complete recovery from his wound, had after all
only been reprieved. He had recently taken to his bed with a heart
attack--locally they called it "smotherin' spells," and no hope was
held out for his recovery.
As Brent rode on from the railroad toward the house he gained later
tidings. The old man was dead.
He dismounted at the stile to find ministering neighbors gathered there
and, as never before, the unrelieved and almost biblical antiquity of
this life impressed itself on his realization. Here was no undertaker,
treading softly with skilled and considerately silent helpers. No
mourning wreath hung on the door. The rasping whine of the saw and
clatter of the hammer were in no wise muted as men who lived nearby
fashioned from undressed boards the box which was to be old Aaron's
casket. Noisy sympathy ran in a high tide where doubtless the bereaved
sought only privacy.
Alexander's face, as she met Brent at the door, was pale with the waxen
softness of a magnolia petal and though the vividness of her lips and
eyes were emphasized by contrast, suffering seemed to have endowed her
remarkable beauty with a sort of nobility--an exquisite delicacy that
was a paradox for one so tall and strong.
The appeal of her wistfully sad eyes struck at his heart as she greeted
him in a still voice.
"I heard--and I wanted to come over," he said and her reply was simple.
"I'm obleeged ter ye. I wants ye ter look at him. He war a godly man
an' a right noble one. Somehow his face----" she spoke slowly and with
an effort, "looks like he'd done already talked with God--an' war at
rest."
At once she led him into the room where, upon the four-poster bed lay
the sheeted figure, and with a deeply reverent hand, lifted the
covering.
To Brent it seemed that he was looking into features exemplifying all
the wholesome virtues of those men who built the Republic. It was a
face of rugged strength and unassuming simplicity. Its lines bespoke
perils faced without fear and privations endured without complaint.
Here in a pocket of wilderness which the nation had forgotten survived
many others of those unaltered pioneers. But in the expression that
death had made fixed, as well as in facial pattern, Brent recognized
that simple kindliness to which courtesy had been a matter of instinct
and not of ceremony and the rude nobility of the man to whom others had
brought their tangled disputes, in all confidence, for adjustment.
"I understand what you mean," he declared as his eyes traveled from the
father to the daughter, "and I'm glad you let me see him."
Moving unobtrusively about, engaged in many small matters of
consideration, Brent recognized Bud Sellers and Jerry O'Keefe. He
himself remained until the burial had taken place, and was one of those
who lowered the coffin into the grave. But when those rites had been
concluded and another day had come Brent sought for Alexander to make
his adieus.
She was nowhere about the house and he went in search of her. He could
not bear to remain longer where he must endure the pain of her stricken
face. Of all the women he had ever known she stood forth as the most
unique--and in some ways the most impressive. She was undoubtedly the
most beautiful. He realized now that, though they were of different
and irreconcilable planes of life, there had never been a moment since
he had first seen her when he would not, save for his dragging on the
steady curb of reason, have fallen into a headlong infatuation. Now he
wished only to prove himself a serviceable friend.
When he had vainly sought her about the farm, it occurred to him to go
to the ragged "buryin' ground" and though he found her there he did not
obtrude upon her solitary vigil.
For Alexander was abandoning herself to one of those wild and
nerve-wracking tempests of weeping that come occasionally in a lifetime
to those who weep little. She had thrown herself face-down on the
ground beneath which Aaron McGivins slept, with arms outflung as though
seeking to reach into the grave and embrace him. As she had been both
son and daughter to him, he had been, to her, both father and mother.
Spasmodically her hands clenched and unclenched, and her fingers dug
wildly into the earth.
Brent turned away and left her there and it was a full two hours later
before he met her and led her, passive enough now, to a place from
which they overlooked that river that, not long ago, they had ridden
together. Under his gently diplomatic prompting she found relief in
unbosoming herself.
"He war all I hed----" she rebelliously declared. "An' whilst he lived
thet war enough--but now I hain't got nothin' left."
After a little she broke out again. "I hain't a woman--an' hain't a
man. I hain't nuthin'."
"Alexander," said Brent gently, "when I looked at your father's face in
there, I was thinking of what Parson Acup once told me. He said that
if your father had been a wishful man,"--he used the hill phrase for
ambition quite unconsciously, "he could have gone to the Legislature.
Perhaps to Congress."
"I reckon he mout ef hed any honors he craved," she replied. "Folks
was always pesterin' him ter run fer office."
The man looked off across the valley which was so desolate now and
which would soon be so tenderly green; so tuneful with leaf and blossom.
His eyes were seeing a vision and some of it he tried to voice.
"Suppose, Alexander, he _had_ gone. Suppose he had taken his seat in
Congress, instead of staying here. He would have become a figure
trusted there, too--but how different your life would have been. There
would have been schools and--well, many things that you have never
known."
"I hain't hankerin' fer none of them things," she said. Then with a
sudden paroxysm of sobs that shook her afresh, she added, "All I wants
is ter hev him back ergin!"
But Brent was thinking of things that could mean little to her because
she lacked the background of contrast and comparison. He was seeing
that beauty and that personality in the social life of official
Washington; seeing the triumph that would have been hers--and wondering
what it would have meant to her in the balance of contentment or
unhappiness.
Of course had Aaron McGivins begun his political career young enough,
every trace of mountain illiteracy would long ago have been shed away
by the growing girl. As for her blood, there is in all America no
other so purely Anglo-Saxon.
"I rather think it's a pity he didn't go," Brent mused aloud. Then he
added, "Now that he's--not with you any more--Alexander, there is
something you must let me say. You've never thought about it much, but
you have such a beauty as would make you famous in any city of the
world. Men will come--and they won't be turned back."
For the first time since Aaron's death the old militant fire leaped
into her eyes and her chin came up as she flared into vehemence.
"Like hell they won't be turned back!"
But Brent smiled. "You think that now, but Alexander, nature is nature
and there must be something in your life. You've played at being a man
and done it better than many men--but men can marry women, and you
can't. Along that road lies a heart-breaking loneliness. Sometime
you'll see that, since you can't be a man, you'll want to be a man's
mate."
She shook her head with unconvinced obduracy.
"I knows ye aims ter give me kindly counsel, Mr. Brent, but ye're plum
wastin' yore breath."
The man rose. "After all, I only came to say good-bye," he told her.
"You aren't going to keep men from loving you. I know because I've
tried to keep myself from doing it--and I've failed. But this is
really my message. If you do change your ideas, for God's sake choose
your man carefully--and if you ever reach a point where you need
counsel, send for me."
Along Fifth Avenue from Washington Arch to the Plaza, Spring was in the
air. Trees were putting out that first green which, in its tenderness
of beauty, is all hope and confidence. With the tide of humanity
drifted Will Brent, whom business had brought from Kentucky to New
York, but his thoughts were back there in the hills where the almost
illiterate Diana, who knew nothing of life's nuances of refinement and
who yet had all of life's allurements, was facing her new loneliness.
He reached a bookstore and turned in, idly looking through volumes of
verse, while he killed the hour before his appointment. His hand fell
upon a small volume bearing the name of G. K. Chesterton, and opening
it at random he read those lines descriptive of the illuminated
breviary from which Alfred the Great, as a boy, learned his spiritual
primer at his mother's knee:
"It was wrought in the monk's slow manner of silver
and sanguine shell,
And its pictures were little and terrible keyholes of
Heaven and Hell."
Brent closed the covers with a snap. "That's what my memories of it
all come to," he mused, "'--little and terrible keyholes of Heaven and
Hell.'"
But that evening he went to dine with Jack Halloway at his club which
looked out across the Avenue and the Park. He had written to Halloway
in advance of his coming and by wire had received an invitation couched
in terms of urgency not to be denied.
This was not Appalachia but Manhattan yet, when Halloway met him, Brent
could but smile at life's contrasts. The huge fellow rose from his
chair to greet him, as splendid a physical thing as human eyes could
look upon. There was no stubble now on the face that seemed cast in
smooth bronze. In lieu of that calculatedly slovenly disguise which he
had affected in the hinter-land, he was immaculate in the fineness of
his linen and the tailoring of his evening clothes. But as he held out
his hand, he drawled, "Wa'al, stranger, how fares matters back thar on
Shoulder-blade?"
Brent sketched briefly the occurrences that had taken place there; the
death of Old Aaron and the fact that Jerry O'Keefe had been trying to
sell his farm near Coal City in order, he surmised, that he might take
up his abode nearer the McGivins' place.
Talk ran idly for a time, then Halloway rose and stood towering in the
Fifth Avenue window. Across Park and Plaza the sky was still rosy with
the last of the afterglow. Under the loftily broken roof-lines of the
great hotel multitudinous window panes were gleaming. Over it all was
the warm breath of spring.
The big man's hands, idly clasped behind his back, began to twitch and
finally settled into a hard grip. His shoulders heaved and when he
spoke there was a queer note in his voice.
"See the rhododendron over there in the park? Soon now it will be in
flower--not only _that_ rhododendron but----" He ended it abruptly,
and then broke out, low-voiced but tense. "This atmosphere is stifling
me--God! It's horrible--
"Send your path be straight before you,
When the old spring fret comes o'er you,
And the Red Gods call to you.'"
Into Brent's tone came something almost savage.
"I know what you're thinking. Quit it. It won't do!"
Slowly Halloway turned. For a moment his fine face was drawn with
actual suffering. Then he added:
"You're quite right, Will, it won't do. But it's hard to forget--when
one has seen a comet. Touch that button if you don't mind. It's time
for the cocktails."