AN UNEXPECTED RESCUE
"You may go home now," she was saying. There was a pause which carried
no sign or sound of movement. "You may go home, don't you understand?"
It was a voice that to the listening mountaineer seemed inexpressibly
sweet and caressing, in spite of the determination which made it a bit
unsteady. Still no answer. The silence was becoming unnatural.
"Tusk," she said again, "don't stand before me like this! Go home!"
Not knowing exactly what to do, but in a vague way feeling that he might
be needed, the stranger stepped cautiously to the door and peered in.
With her back to the blackboard and her arms rigid against her sides,
altogether in an attitude of one at bay, stood a girl. He first noticed
that her hands were tightly clenched, and then his look went upward.
Streaming through the window the same golden rays that burnished the
weatherboards and flag-pole touched the looser strands of her hair.
This, against the background of black, framed her upraised face with a
halo of lustrous glory, softening the parted lips rather than showing
them to be stamped with fear, but not disguising the terror which leapt
from her eyes as they stared, fairly hypnotized, at an ungainly man who
stood leering down at her. His head was set deep between massive,
stooping shoulders, and his arms were abnormally long, while the color
of his face indicated a diet, at some period of his life, of clay and
berries. Two fang-like teeth, curving outward as the tusks of a wild
boar--having furnished inspiration for the name by which he was most
popularly known--added a last fierce touch to his repulsive features.
"Go home," the girl repeated, now in a weaker voice.
"It ain't time to go home," he growled. "When kids don't know their
lessons you make 'em stay in, don't you? Well, I'm a-stayin', too!"
"Let me by this instant," she commanded, plucking another crumb of
courage from the sheer imminence of danger.
"Aw, come off yoh high airs," he leered. "Ain't you been standin' me up
afore the school an' actin' me like a fool? I ain't kicked, have I?
Well, what you want to go cuttin' up for now?"
Brains partly numbed, or over-excited by shock, sometimes take queer and
irrelevant channels of thought, and now the only thing on which she
seemed able to concentrate was a duel she had witnessed on that very
schoolhouse window sill but the previous day: a duel between a locust
and a wasp. They had fallen there in deadly embrace, the clumsier
holding his antagonist by brute strength that ultimately would break its
frail body; but the wily wasp, conscious of this danger, sent thrust
after thrust of its venomous stinger with lightning stabs up and down
its enemy's armor, trusting to chance that a vulnerable spot might be
found between the scales. She had watched this struggle with a
breathless pleasure--for at times she could be pagan as of old--and when
at last the little point slipped through, she felt no pity for the
locust; rather, was she tempted to stroke the victor as it crawled from
the suddenly relaxed grip of its stiffening foe, laved its wings,
polished its legs, and rose into the air.
Weak with the consciousness of her peril, this mental by-play urged her
to the necessity of speed; and, like the stinger, her mind began an
hysterical thrusting for a more subtle method of defense.
"Tusk, I'm sorry I stood you up before the class," she tried, in
speaking kindly, to hide her loathing. "But now you must go home at
once, or I shall never be able to let you come to school again!"
He laughed outright.
"Won't never let me come, no moh! Well, now jest heah that! Why, sissy,
you'd ortent git so mad! Kiss me like a nice gal, an' let's make up!"
"You beast," she cried, her fear suddenly bursting into an irresistible
rage. "You beast," she cried again, striking him in the face with all
her strength. "You'll be killed for this!"
For an instant he was stunned by the surprise of her attack, but then,
blind with fury, his gorilla-like arms shot out and caught her just as
she was turning to dash toward the door.
During this scene the newcomer had made several determinations to enter,
yet each was checked by a consciousness that he did not belong to this
country where he had been told strange customs prevailed. He was not at
all sure but that an interference would be seriously inapt. Once or
twice he had been on the verge of stealing back into the thicket for his
rifle, yet the schoolhouse drama held him too firmly chained for this.
Adopting now a middle course, he went up the four steps and entered with
an innocent air of one having just arrived. Blinking with a pretended
effort to make out the interior, he mildly asked:
"Is this Miss Jane's school?"
Tusk sprang back with a snarl, while the girl, twisting free and
frantically recovering her balance, came toward the new voice with hands
outstretched, bumping against the desks as one who had suddenly gone
blind. She could not speak, she could scarcely think, and only by the
sternest force of will would her knees bear up; but somewhere in front
of her stood deliverance, and to this she groped.
"Howdy," the new voice spoke again, as she felt a hand take one of her
own and press her toward a seat. "Ye look peak-ed; maybe ye'd better
set!"
Her composure was returning in bounds; for this girl, herself born in
the mountains, possessed too much innate fortitude to be long dominated
by fear.
"Thank you," her voice still trembled. "I--I must have been frightened."
Then quickly: "Yes, this is Miss Jane's school, and I am Miss Jane."
A curious sound rattled in the newcomer's throat, and his chin dropped
with stupid amazement. For a long moment he stared at her, his pupils
dilating and contracting in a strangely fascinating way, and his body
beginning slowly to rock from side to side as it had done in the thicket
across the road. But just now she was meeting his gaze with a look of
excited gladness.
"Yeou! Miss Jane?" he murmured, each syllable vibrating with some deep
timbre of admiration and protection. Another moment he stared, then his
eyes turned and rested unflinchingly on Tusk. It was a look particularly
expressive neither of surprise nor condemnation, hatred nor scorn, yet
its very impassivity carried a pulsing sense of danger, as though
something terrible were on the verge of happening and the various
elements of destruction were being hurriedly assembled. But quietly he
turned again to the girl.
"Lucy's outside. Maybe ye'd better let her take ye home!"
"Oh, ask her to come in," she cried, feeling the need of a woman perhaps
more than at any time in her life, and now fearful of another sort of
tragedy. She was not sure of how much this newcomer had seen, but his
look at Tusk was eloquent of one thing: that if these men were left
alone the building would receive its first stain of human blood. She
wanted to spare her schoolhouse this. It was her boast that no life
should go out by violence beneath its roof: for it had long been a
recognized custom in wilder regions of this country for men to choose
the wayside schools, the scattered churches or crossroads stores as
places from which to usher obtrusive neighbors into eternal rest.
"Wall, she can't do that," the newcomer thoughtfully replied, "seein' as
how she's my ole mare. But ye mought take her 'n' go home. Me 'n' this
feller'll watch yo' school!"
Looking from one to the other, weighing the chances of outwitting Tusk,
she lightly suggested:
"My own horse is in the shed. You may help me put on the saddle!"
"All right," he readily answered. "'N' yeou," he turned to Tusk, now
watching them with growing malignancy, "wait hyar till I git back: then
verily, verily, I say unto ye, we'll cast another devil outen the Lawd's
temple!"
She was alert to acquiesce in this. Her instinct said that unless
something tentative were left in view, some further part of the drama
held out to be played, the simple-minded Tusk would stop their going.
His dwarfed intelligence, gauged to one idea, might be satisfied to wait
only if waiting promised a climax. And as for the other's
returning--this new-found deliverer who was so thoroughly of the
mountains, yet whose dialect just now had savored of the "circuit-rider"
type--she felt able to cope with that exigency after they were outside.
So in her eagerness she had arisen, when Tusk stepped roughly to the
door and slammed it.
"Nobody's goin' home to-night," he growled, turning and glaring at them.
His eyes, set unusually deep and close together, flashed murder, and the
girl sank weakly back into a seat. For she knew Tusk's strength. She had
seen him shoulder a log under which two men were struggling and walk
firmly away with it. The very consciousness alone of this power was
oppressive. He could crush this other man with a blow.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath," a quiet voice whispered down to her,
and continued: "Let the gal out; she wants ter go home!"
"If you're some kind of a preacher," Tusk snarled at him, having also
noticed the Biblical character of speech, "git out yohse'f. But the gal
stays right heah till I'm ready fer her to go! An', young feller, mebbe
she'll be let go home, or mebbe she'll come 'long with me--I ain't
decided, but I won't be hindered by no one!" His voice was trembling
with increasing passion. "Now's yoh time to git, Mister Preacher, or, by
Gawd--" He drew a long, dirty knife from a hidden sheath, and seemed
unable to complete the sentence for his excited breathing.
"I hain't a preacher," the other quietly replied to him, "but I've jest
been sendin' a message ter the Lawd this very evenin', 'n' I reckon He
had me come in heah ter look ye over, bein' as how ye air one of them
sorry skunks I'm arter." And without warning he sprang like a panther at
the offender's throat.
The shock of his body sent Tusk backwards, tripping him over a desk
where both men went down in a heap. Almost before they struck the floor
the newcomer cried to her:
"Git the critter 'n' ride, Schoolteacher! Hit's yo' only chance!"
He had no more time to warn, for a series of sounds, sickening, bestial
sounds, told of a terrific struggle as feet and bodies and elbows dully
crashed against the desks on either side. It was a narrow aisle in which
to fight.
Yet she was not made of the stuff that would mount a horse and fly. Her
early life, when as a slip of a girl she stood many a night with rifle
in hand filling the place of lookout for an outlaw father who trafficked
in moonshine whisky, had taught her to be careless of physical dangers.
The terrors of a different sort of passion she had never known; but now,
with this averted, her nature leapt beyond the past eight years of
training--eight years spent in fitting herself as teacher for this
school--and transported her to those early days of partial savagery.
Again she was the little mountain outlaw, and the feeling was good, and
her heart bounded with a primeval pleasure of this excitement which was
routing every previous qualm of fright. Bent breathlessly forward, her
hands clenched into revengeful little fists, her cheeks and eyes aflame
and eager, her lips apart, and her nostrils dilated as though in very
truth they sought the smell of battle, she was not a picture of one who
would mount a horse and fly.
At the first rush Tusk's knife had fallen from his hand and now lay
almost at her feet. Stooping impulsively, she seized it, while at the
same moment he uttered a low chuckle of satisfaction and started to
arise. He did not move as one entirely free, but clinging to a burden,
and when his shoulders slowly appeared she saw that he was lifting the
other man, who still struck ineffectually at his face. Handling him
with no great exertion, he backed against a desk and forced the body
between his knees; then placing one huge, hairy hand behind his victim's
ear, and the other beneath his chin, he began calmly to twist.
Jane realized the hellishness of this move which with cruel certainty
would break the yielding neck. The mountaineer also knew, and put his
remaining strength into the struggle, yet only for a moment did it seem
to divert Tusk's purpose.
If the girl had previously looked the beautiful savage, she now became
its incarnation. With an agonized cry she screamed at him to stop, but
his answer was to pin the man more firmly and recommence the murderous
twisting.
It was a matter of seconds now. Any instant she might hear the snap, and
see the one who was giving his life for her quiver and become still. No
longer hesitating, she flew at them with the blade raised high and
poised herself for the stroke. Yet she could not send it. Again she
tried, and a sob of rage burst from her throat as the hand refused to
obey. Had the creature turned, it might have been less difficult; but
the utter revulsion of driving steel into unsuspecting and unresisting
flesh was more than she could master. Slowly the head was yielding to
those horrible hands, and the newcomer's eyes rested on her own for the
merest instant. It was the look of a courageous man sinking beneath
waves; but the sweat and whipcord veins were eloquent of his frenzied
resistance.
"Someone's coming! Someone's coming!" she suddenly cried, rushing to the
door and flinging it wide open.
Tusk looked up with a snarl.
"Quick! Quick!" she cried again. "Here, this way--quick! He's killing a
man! Oh, thank God!" She sprang back into the room, rapturously clasping
the knife to her breast. "They've come! They've come!"
With an oath Tusk flung his victim heavily to the floor and dashed to a
rear window through which he disappeared. She watched only long enough
to see that his rout was absolute--that her ruse of approaching help had
been successful. Then she turned.
The room seemed dark to her eyes which had just been peering into the
sunset's fading glow, and she walked with feeling steps toward the spot
where she knew the body lay, asking in a whisper: "Are you alive?" The
heavy silence made her shiver. There, at her feet, sprawled the shadowy
bulk, twisted and grotesque, and an uncontrollable feeling of loathing
crept over her.
With startling suddenness a quail, close by the open door, ripped out
his evening call, and she sprang back as though the thing upon the floor
had moved. Yet she continued to stare down at it, her cold hands pressed
against her burning cheeks--fascinated, horrified. A few little minutes
ago he had been a moving, feeling being like herself; and now he had
entered the portals of that mysterious eternity--at this very moment he
was standing before the calm scrutiny of God Himself! How was he
behaving in that great inspection? Trembling with bowed head, like
herself? Or smiling with a courage he had shown during his last earthly
moments while giving his life for her?
So vivid were these thoughts which raced like fury through her brain
that when the body did actually move she gave a piercing shriek of
terror. But she had recovered even before the echo of her voice
resounded through the little room and, instantly alert, brought the
drinking bucket from its shelf to bathe his face.
Kneeling there--or, rather, in an attitude of sitting on her crossed
feet--eagerly watching for another sign of life, the tenderness which
spoke in mute eloquence from every movement of her ministrations for the
stranger who had stood between her and insult, was a boon that might
have repaid any man for worse hurts than his. She drew his head upon her
lap and began carefully to staunch a trickle of blood flowing from a
small cut in his temple.
The sun went down, regretfully backing out of sight, and by its slow
retreat seeming loath to leave them to the somber night. She did not
notice its decline, but in the afterglow leaned nearer, pushing back his
matted hair and searching each of his well-molded features. There was
nothing of a personal interest in the look; there was nothing in the
contact of their touch that aroused in her the least personal appeal. He
was merely a thing hurt, a thing wounded in her defense.
Again from outside the window came a call, the swinging, twilight-eerie
notes of a whip-poor-will; while, from afar off, somewhere in the black
woods, hooted an owl. Softly, but with a restless spirit, the
night-wind began to stir; and a murmur, like the winnowing of many
wings, passed tremulously through the branches which swept the
schoolhouse roof. But now she was unafraid.