"I'LL PAY THE DEBT!"
After several minutes the transfigured man before her spoke again:
"I'll pay the debt," he said, in a low tone of finality. "I'll wait here
till the sheriff comes. Up to now there hasn't been a force in all
Gawd's world that could 've come 'tween me an' the things you're
teachin'. I didn't care about Potter. He was in the way. I've got no
sorrows about anythin' since that day I drew sights on yoh Pappy's head,
an' now. Ruth said she an' I owed a debt to the State for what they'd
done for her, an' we couldn't be beholden to it; so I was goin' to pay
all that back by bein' the biggest man of my time, by goin' back in
those mountains, just as Lincoln would a-done, an' bringin' my people
out to light--by emancipatin' all of 'em from the ignorance that's been
makin' 'em slaves! But I reckon the first payment comes to you. You've a
right to it, an' I'll stay here till you get all the revenge you want!"
"Don't," she whispered huskily. "Don't talk to me! I don't know what
I've done!"
"You've done," he answered for her, "just what yoh Pappy's been callin'
on you to do;--just as I did once what my Granny called on me to do. I
reckon we're quits, now!"
"Oh, no, Dale!" she suddenly cried, looking up at the clock. "It isn't
right! Go, while you have a chance! Go! Go!" She even tried to push him
toward the door. "Go somewhere and begin your lessons again, and make
yourself big in spite of things! Go now, before they come after you!"
"I can't," he answered simply. "I wish I could. But that feller there,"
he pointed to a volume of Plutarch, "wrote that Cato said the soul of a
lover lives in the body of another. How can I go?"
A tremor passed over her at his new, this personal attitude. It arose
from no feeling of gratification, rather from a subtle repulsion. Yet so
frantically was she seeking arguments to make him save himself, that she
impulsively answered:
"But did we not also read of Kosciusko, who left his native Poland
solely on account of love? And do you not know what a gallant soldier he
made for freedom and humanity?"
"He loved just one," Dale murmured, waving his hand toward the shelves
of books, "but my soul is in all of these."
A blush overspread her face for having momentarily misunderstood, but
this was no time for embarrassments. He had not noticed it, and his
voice was saying calmly:
"He was lucky enough to die fightin', for that's a heap easier'n the
thickenin' of a rope, or the dry rot down in those stone walls. Still,
every man's got to take his medicine, an' I'm goin' to swaller mine
a-smilin'!"
"Dear Christ," she cried, pressing her hands to her cheeks and stepping
farther back from him, "what have I done? Into what has this man
turned?"
Through the silence that followed, from far out on the pike, a sound of
galloping horses faintly reached their ears. Each stood for a moment
listening, and then suddenly she flew at him.
"Dale, run for it! Out the back way, and I'll help you! Go far,
anywhere, Dale, and make good--but escape! When it's safe for you to
come back I'll send word--but hurry! Hurry! They're almost at the lane!"
"I can't go," he said, smiling at her, "till you're paid up--drop of
blood for drop of blood!"
A cry burst from her lips--a cry exquisite of all her mental agony. He
could not resist it, and his hand went quickly to her shoulder.
"Don't--oh, don't touch me!" she implored him. "Listen, only listen! I'm
half crazed by everything, and this is the last, the very last time I'll
have a chance to speak to you for--who can tell? So listen! I want you
to go, at once--fly now! You can take any of the horses--reach the
mountains and hide! I'll send you things--anything! Don't make me
suffer," she fairly screamed at him, "but go! Oh, what crucifixion I've
brought you to! Great God above, what crucifixion--and after you have
done so wonderfully well! Spare me, Dale, I can't endure it! Your life
must not go out, and suddenly lose its purpose, because of a human
vengeance that is worthless!"
He spoke more hurriedly, for the horsemen were in the lane and coming
fast:
"Nothing is worthless that calls a man to do his duty like a man! An'
I'd be worse'n a coward to turn back from a duty to the very person
who's taught me what duty is!"
"But think--think," she urged, "of the good there is in you to help that
great mankind whose voice you say you've heard! All of that good will
be--choked out," she shuddered, "or rot in those gray walls you dread!"
He looked toward the gate, through which the sheriff now might dash at
any moment. She saw in his face the terrible dread of that alternative
and, to help him win the way she wished, grasped his arm. But slowly his
eyes turned back, moving affectionately across the rows of books lining
the walls, and, as though echoing impressions gathered from their great
storehouse, he whispered:
"What good there is in a man is there to stay. God, Himself, couldn't
take it out. It's only wickedness that twists it in a different shape,
and makes people think it never was! Do you reckon your good'll go when
you die?"
"But its opportunities to extend--they will be stopped!" she cried.
"Yours will be stopped!" The horses were in the circle now, and she
implored even more frantically: "Run for it--run!"
"No! The biggest men in those covers," he pointed again to the shelves,
"wouldn't be there today if they'd run! Jesus would be a by-word, and
the world couldn't raise its head to a single hero." The horses had
stopped, and a man was dismounting. "Good-bye," the big mountaineer said
quietly.
He put out his hand, but she did not see it. She had slipped into a
chair and was burying her sobbing face in her arms. Steps sounded on the
porch, and a bell far back in the house jingled. He looked at her
another long, breathless moment, then turned and walked out through the
French window.
"Good mawnin', sheriff," her tortured brain heard him say.
Old Jess Mason eyed him over high cheek bones and hawk-like nose for the
fraction of a second before taking his hand from beneath his coat. Then
it came slowly out, empty.
"Good mawnin', yohse'f!" The sheriff was fairly bristling with anger.
"Look-ee-heah," he savagely demanded, "what's this funny business about,
anyhow? Do you-all reckon you're goin' to poke fun at me an' the law,
an' git away with it? Or what?"
"I don't reckon there's been such an awful lot of fun poked around heah,
Jess," Dale sullenly answered.
"You don't! Well, there'd better not be, that's all I got to say!" He
wiped his forehead and glared. "Then s'pose you explain somethin'! I'm
ridin' through town a while back, when the telephone gal sticks her
head outen the winder an' squeals: 'Git to the Cunnel's a-flyin',
Jess--they say Dale Dawson's done kilt Tusk Potter!'"
"That's all right," Dale said.
"Keep yoh 'pinions to yohse'f till I ask for 'em! I put my hawse's belly
to the ground an' we've gone 'bout two mile, when young McElroy comes
chargin' up behind a-yellin' for me to stop." 'What's the matter?' I
asks, pullin' 'round an' facin' 'im. 'You've got a blame good hawse,
Jess,' he grins, 'I thought I couldn't ketch you!!' Then he comes up
clost an' says: "That message come wrong!' 'How d'you know?' I asks. 'I
heerd it,' he says, 'an' Dale ain't never kilt Tusk!' 'Then who did?' I
asks agin. 'Me,' he says."
Jane's nails bit into the palms of her hands as she sprang up,
breathlessly listening. The sheriff went on:
"I looks at 'im an' seen he was cold sober, but I knowed the other
message come straight, too. So I says: 'Then you're under 'rrest; go
back an' set on the cou'thouse steps till I come from the Cunnel's,' I
says. 'If you go out thar I won't stay,' he says. 'You will if I asks
you, Brent,' I says, 'No, Jess, I'll be damned if I do,' he says. Wall,
we argyed, an' he was so pig-headed I thought I'd have to shoot 'im
right thar; but arter 'while he says he'll go back an' set, an' then I
come on. Now I want to know what kind of fun you fellers is tryin' to
git outen me!"
Little did the sheriff, Dale or Jane know that Brent rode back to town
like mad, threw himself from his horse and dashed up the stair leading
to the telephone office above the drug-store. He fairly bounded in upon
Miss Gregget, crying:
"Quick! Give me the Colonel's!"
While she was inserting a plug and turning a crank--for Buckville's
central switchboard was many years behind the times--he unceremoniously
lifted the operator's head-set from her coiled hair and fitted it upon
his own head. Several times she spun the little crank, breathlessly
repealing:
"I've just been trying them, but they must have left the receiver off!"
"Wait!" he whispered.
The receiver was still off the hook at Arden, just as Jane had left it
dangling, and now he was listening--listening to interrupted portions of
a scene being enacted in that far away library, and illogically hoping
one of its actors might pass near enough the instrument for him to yell
and attract his or her attention. Only an occasional word could he
understand, but once a girl's voice very distinctly cried: "Dale, run
for it! Out the back way, and I'll help you!--They're almost at the
lane!"
A feeling of pleasure swept through the listener as he realized that she
was warning the mountaineer--that there was yet a chance! "They," must
have meant the sheriff and his darky boy attendant, for it was just
about time they should have covered the distance to Arden. But this
momentary triumph was succeeded by a heavy, sickening dread as he
realized that she must now know the truth; that the horrible
disappointment he would have spared her must have fallen--must now be
crushing her--since, otherwise, she would not be there warning. Yet, as
he leaned forward trying to catch more and not hearing it, he thought
how willingly he would change places with the murderer for just those
expressions of pleading from her lips!
"Excuse me, Mr. McElroy," Miss Gregget was saying, rather coolly because
of his impertinence in mussing her hair, "there are other calls--I'd
better take the board!"
He turned then and went down the stairs. He was stunned, but he was
smiling as he stepped out on the street which would bring him in contact
with men he knew. Crossing diagonally the shaded green where gray haired
"boys" pitched horse shoes at a peg--the "cou'thouse squar," bounded by
the town's four streets--he deliberately sat upon the whittled steps of
that old building, at about the moment Jess was ringing the Colonel's
front door bell.
Dale had stood as still as marble, except to moisten his lips which were
becoming very dry. He had been willing enough to accept Brent's plan of
refuge, before a blood equation developed, but now things were
different. His honour, as a man of the mountains knows and sustains his
honour, would permit him but one course.
"Brent ain't to be relied on, when it comes to this business," he said,
at last.
"Now, look-ee-heah," the sheriff bristled again, "I don't let no man
make Brent out a liar; I don't kyeer who he is!"
"I ain't makin' Brent out a liar, Jess; but you don't know how this
thing is! The night after I killed Tusk, Brent came in my room an' said
he's goin' to take the blame. He said he was doin' it for the fun of the
thing; but I knew better'n that from somethin' I heard one time. I knew
he was doin' it for Miss Jane. I reckon I was so blame thankful I didn't
think of it then--not till I went to his room later. But he was sittin'
in the dark, lookin' out the window, an', as he didn't hear me, I
slipped back."
The sheriff's face was a study, but no one could have described the look
on another face pressed close to the folds of the library window
curtains. Only the angels knew why her eyes grew wide and wonderingly
deep with a new sort of tears that never before had bathed them. The
imps of hell may have surmised why her nails again pressed into her
palms when Dale added:
"I was afraid he might be sorry for havin' made that promise; an', not
wantin' him to change his mind, I never went back. You see, it looked
like there might a-been a leetle chance one time of his takin' the
teacher away--so jail was the best place for 'im. I wouldn't be tellin'
you this, but--but there's other things to be considered."
"Are you drunk?" Jess suddenly asked.
"No, I ain't drunk! Come on; I'll go!"
"Don't be so danged fast, young feller," the sheriff advised. "When did
you kill Tusk?"
"Last week. Come on, Jess."
"Say, are you crazy?"
"No, I'm not crazy, neither!"
"Then I am," Jess spat decisively. "Not a mile from this heah gate I
seen Tusk no moh'n half hour ago! When I hollered at 'im, he ducked an'
run!"
Dale's tongue went again to his lips. He stared at the sheriff with
about as much surprise as the sheriff was staring at him. Finally he
said:
"I must a-missed 'im. Ruth was lookin' at me, an' maybe that throwed me
off. But, anyhow, you want me for killin' Bill Whitly nine year ago!"
The sheriff's jaws dropped.
"Say," he whispered, "what you tryin' to do--commit suicide? or write
yohse'f a invite to the pen?"
"I ain't hankerin' for neither," Dale answered in a dejected voice.
"Wall, you're hankerin' for somethin', that's a fac'! You jest shet up
with them ghost stories! The Cunnel don't want nothin' like that,
scarin' the wimmin-folks! I wa'n't sheriff nine year ago, no-how," he
thoughtfully fingered his chin, "an' I reckon if the statters of
limintation was looked up we'd find they'd done run out on that old
fracas."
Zack, who had come in answer to the bell, was lingering inside the door
with his eyes rolling and every nerve a-tingle. At this last expression
of relenting from the man of law, he stepped out.
"Mawnin', Marse Jess," he bowed. "Ef you'se'll let me rest yoh hat, I'se
gwine fetch sumfin good fer de heat. De Cunnel'd be proud ef you'd 'cept
it, an' powerful outraged wid me ef I let you go home 'thout it!"
Jess left the porch to have a word with his man, and during the minutes
he was away Dale watched him with serious interest. There was something
more on the mountaineer's mind which had not been said; some further
part of his duty lay before him; so, as the sheriff returned, and at the
same moment Zack reappeared with refreshments, he announced:
"An' there was Tyse Brislow I killed on the raft goin' down to
Frankfo't!"
"Good Lawd, Marse Dale," the negro exclaimed in terror, "is you still
tellin' 'bout all dem mens you'se shot up?"
The sheriff poured his libation, swallowed it, and wiped his long
mustache on the back of his hand. Then he said: "U-um! A-ah!" Whereupon
Zack poured another and passed it to him. Old Zack did not understand
the drift of things in the least, but he did know that this
thirty-year-old bourbon of the Colonel's was a tremendously potent
mollifier in all times of stress. Jess held the glass fondly up to the
light, and was more careful now to brush away his mustache. It evidently
dawned on him that the flavor of the first "three fingers" had been
neglected through haste.
"I don't remember Tyse," he said at length, reaching for one of Zack's
store cigars. "When was that?"
"Three years before," Dale answered.
"Three yeahs befoh Tusk?"
"No, three years before Bill."
"Wall, I'll be--heah, Zack, give me another snifter!" Jess nervously
drank it, handed back the glass and looked at Dale. "In my jedgment, the
statters of limintation is clean busted on that case, too. But I'll
jest tell you as a friend, that if you go resurrectin' any moh of them
man slaughters--I don't care if they're older'n the 'sassination of
Garfield--I'll hang you for bein' a plain damn fool." With this he
uttered a loud guffaw, but once more grew sober and laid his hand on
Dale's shoulder: "Don't you go killin' no moh fellers 'round heah! I do
mean that! Leastwise, don't do it while you're stayin' at the Cunnel's.
It ain't right to his folks, an' I won't stand for it!"
"Then Tusk'd better keep away," the mountaineer grumbled.
"Wall, if the Cunnel don't want him 'round, I can mighty easy give him a
tip to vamoose--but you let me 'tend to it, understand? Now," he
chuckled, "I'd better git back an' unlock Brent from them steps!"
So it was that, when he mounted and rode away, his mind was distinctly
on Brent and the caressing quality of the Colonel's thirty-year-old
bourbon, and not at all concerned with the mission which had taken him
to Arden.
Dale stood looking after him, but not thinking. He stood in a sort of
ferment of happy thrills and deepest sorrow. The bars that had
momentarily been put up between him and his pasture of learning, now lay
again at his feet. He could pass through at will, any time he desired.
But what of Jane? Would she be there to welcome, to help him?--to take
his hand again and lead him into the cool places, into the mazy shadows,
through vista after vista of appealing outlook? He turned back to the
library and, with hesitation, stepped through the low window.
The room was empty. His eyes glanced down at the book which she had torn
from his hand and flung away. He saw that it had fallen, sprawled and
awkward, and was leaning drunkenly against the legs of the dictionary
stand. Across from it, by a deep leather chair, lay, also on the floor,
a dainty handkerchief, moist and pressed into a little ball. Each of
these held him with an esoteric charm; but his eyes remained upon the
tear-moistened, scented linen as though at any moment it might begin to
accuse him. He was afraid to touch it, and afraid to touch the book. He
felt that he had obtruded an unwelcome presence upon these two mute
evidences of passion which seemed now to be drawn momentarily apart for
breath before re-engaging in the fray. In this strained expectancy the
measured ticking of the old clock in the corner was startlingly loud.
One might have counted a hundred, and then, as quietly as he came, he
tiptoed out, crossed the porch and passed on through the trees.