Left alone in Wellver's bedroom, Joe Gregory had been thrown back on the
companionship of his own thoughts, and they told him that a tide and a
wind were mounting which, unless they could he swiftly stemmed, would
leave a trail of wreckage along the heights and valleys of Marlin, like
drift in the wake of a spring flood-tide; but this would be human
wreckage.
None of Boone's adherents at home had supported his program of progress
more whole-heartedly than young Joe Gregory, and the infamous perfidy of
Saul Fulton was a hateful thing to him, burning in his heart with need
of reprisal, for Asa was his "blood-relation."
But as things had shaped themselves, Saul Fulton no longer stood alone,
and so long as he was sheltered under the wing of Tom Carr, no blow
could be struck him without reopening the "war." Joe knew what that
meant. The hills again would redden; again men would ride in fear of
death, and that fear would verify itself in murders; as Joe had put it,
in "mortal mischief." The whole archaic damnation would rear its head
over the new-taught security of peace. The sum of effort toward a
stabilized order which men like Boone and himself had built tediously
upon patience, would go the collapsing way of land behind a broken dyke.
If a human being lived who could stay that catastrophe it was Boone, so
to Boone he had come and found the single available mediator hot-blooded
for violence.
Now he shuddered. If Boone Wellver had the power to dissuade those
tempestuous clansmen and hold them in abeyance, how much more easily and
mightily could he spur them forward! If he, the apostle of peace,
breathed the one word, "war," they would be the wild-eyed followers of
a Geronimo cast loose on the blood trail.
And Boone's own future, the deputy sheriff mournfully reflected, when
this storm was past would be a bright bubble pin-pricked and ended. The
man whom local pride proclaimed a statesman to be reckoned with would
stand a relapsed son of the vendetta with blood-soiled hands and an
inconsistency-smirched record. Even the men whom he could so easily
inflame now would, in the end, turn on him, and his career would be as
brief as it was floridly picturesque.
They followed feud leaders--but they did not send them to Washington!
Yet Joe was of that blood, too, and could understand Boone's
reversion--a reversion willing in a moment to cast aside the armour
which he had served his term of years for the right to wear. The thing
now was to bring him back in time out of the crimson fog that blinded
him. Joe's eyes dwelt absently on the over-turned frame as he stood
there thinking, and the articles on the table were photographed on his
gaze with a pictorial accuracy of detail, yet because of his
abstraction, without meaning of their own.
So mechanically and without at first realizing what he was doing, he
read two outspread sheets of paper: Anne's note and McCalloway's
telegram. Then abruptly the messages became an integral part of his
thought.
Anne Masters, whom Boone loved, was going to marry another man--there
was the key to Boone's wild mood, and Victor McCalloway, his friend, had
gone away!
If it was Anne who had led Boone to the brink of this peril, it was her
duty to lead him back. So ran his elementally simple logic.
"Ef she's decent," declared Joe Gregory tensely to himself, "she kain't
skeercely do no less."
So after Boone had returned and begun packing his bag, Joe made a
plausible excuse and went out to seek a telephone pay-station. Over the
long distance he got Colonel Wallifarro's house, with the amused
assistance of an operator who saw only his rustic gaucherie, and who
missed entirely the simple, almost biblical, dignity of his bearing.
"Miss Anne? No, sir, she isn't here," replied Moses, the negro butler,
and, while Joe's heart sank, that admirable majordomo, recognizing the
long-distance call, secured a connection for the speaker with the
Country Club.
While the wire buzzed distractingly, Joe Gregory stood in the closed
booth and perspired. Outside he watched a travelling salesman who, with
a chewed cigar between stout fingers, bent over the switchboard and
chatted with the blonde operator. Then finally he heard a voice at the
far end. It was a somewhat frightened and faint voice, but even in his
anger he admitted that it held a sweet and gentle cadence.
Perhaps the girl half hoped that this ring which called her from guests
to whom her engagement was being announced carried a twentieth-century
equivalent for the appearance of Lochinvar. Perhaps she only feared bad
news. At all events, she spoke low.
"Miss Masters, I'm Joe Gregory," announced an unfamiliar voice which
held across the wire a straightforward and determined significance. The
name, too, carried its effect, for Anne knew of this man as Boone's most
stalwart disciple. "The thing I've got ter tell ye hain't skeercely
suited ter speech over a telephone, an' yet thar hain't no other way.
Hit's about him, an' he's in ther direst peril a man kin stand in.
Thar's just one human soul thet hes a chanst ter save him--an' thet's
you."
Sometimes the long-distance wire hums with confusion. Sometimes it
enhances and clarifies the ghost of a whisper. Now Joe Gregory heard a
choking breath, and for an instant there was no other sound; the man,
catching the import of the gasping agitation, went on talking to its
speechlessness. It was if between them "he" could mean only one man.
"He hain't skeercely in his rightful senses, or I wouldn't hev no need
ter call on ye. He's goin' back ter--well, back home tonight. I kain't
handily tell ye what ther peril is, but ef I was ter say thet two days
hence he'll be past savin'--an' others along with him--I'd only be
talkin' text ter ye."
"But how"--there was desperation of panic in the question--"how could
I--save him?"
"He needs savin' from hisself, ma'am. Thar's a train of cars leavin'
Looeyville nigh on midnight. Ef ye teks hit I'll meet ye at ther station
when ye gets _thar_ in ther mornin'. Him an' me is leavin' on one thet
starts from hyar an hour from now. Thet's all I kin say afore I sees
ye--save thet matters are plumb desperate."
"But I can't--I don't see how--"
Anne had never quite realized such a quietly unbending sternness as that
of the voice which interrupted her:
"Ef ye don't aim ter stand by an' see his ruin, ye needs must _find_ a
way. Jest _come_, thet's all--an' come alone. No other way won't do.
I'll be at ther deppo."
And the receiver clicked with a finality that brooked no argument,
leaving the girl leaning unsteadily against the wall of the booth. She
opened the heavy door a little but did not go out. From the dining-room
came a sally of laughing voices, and from the dancing floor haunting
scraps of the "Merry Widow" waltz. A clock across the passage ticked
above these sounds, and on its dial the hands stood at eight forty-five.
Upon her ears these impressions fell with a sense of remoteness and
lightness as if they could be thrust away, but more oppressive and close
was the unnamed something brooding in the hills two hundred miles--yes,
and two centuries--away.
She knew that she stood at one of those unequivocal moments that cannot
be met with life's ordered deliberation. By tomorrow things might be
done which could never be undone. An hour hence, decision would be the
harder for newly recognized difficulties. The penalty of faltering
might be a life of self-accusation for herself--for Boone a tragedy.
She had assured herself with passionate reiteration that Boone was a
character in a chapter torn out of her life, but the heartache remained
in stubborn mutiny against that ordaining. It had been first gnawingly,
then fiercely, present while she laughed and talked at the table with an
effervescence no more natural than that pumped into artificially charged
wine, and she had needed no death's-head to sober her against too
abandoned a gaiety at that feast. Joe Gregory's words had, for all their
want of explicitness, been inescapably definite. They meant ruin--no
less--unless she intervened and came at once.
To go meant to stir tempests in teapots--to defy conventions, and
perhaps by a vapidly rigid interpretation, to compromise herself. To
refuse to go meant to abandon Boone to some undescribed, and therefore
doubly terrifying, disaster.
Anne Masters was not the woman to shrink from crises or from the
determined action for which crises called. Almost at once she knew that
she was going by the midnight train to the hills, and let the problems
that sprung from her going await a later solution. But how?
Going unaccompanied from a country-club dinner party to desperate
affairs brewing in the Cumberlands presented difficulties too tangible
to be dismissed. To confide in Colonel Tom or Morgan would mean only
that they would insist upon accompanying her. To confide in her mother
would mean burning up precious moments in hysteria. The one unobstructed
alternative appeared to be the unwelcome one of flight without
announcement.
But back to the table she carried little outward agitation. If her heart
pounded it was with a sort of exaltation born of impending moments of
action. If her face had paled it gave a logical basis for the plea of
violent headache upon which she persuaded Morgan to drive her home as
soon as the guests rose, and to make the necessary explanations only
after she had gone.
When Mrs. Masters returned she found a note entreating her not to give
way to undue anxiety. Anne was gone, and the hurriedly written lines
said she would telegraph tomorrow from her father's house, but that it
was not illness which had called her there.
* * * * *
In such a situation, provided one approach it in the mood of Alexander
toward the Gordian knot, the greater complexities appear in retrospect.
It was looking back on those pregnant hours that their various
enormities were made plain to her, chiefly through the expounding of
_ex-post-facto_ wisdom operating cold-bloodedly and without the urge of
a peril to be met.
With much the same acceptance of the bizarre as that which marks the
fantasy of dreams, she endured the discomforts of that night's journey
and found herself at daybreak looking into gravely welcoming eyes on the
station at Marlin Town.
Her own eyes felt sunken and hot with fatigue, but to Joe Gregory, who
had also spent a sleepless night, she seemed a picture of the fresh and
dauntless.
They went first to her father's bungalow, and there a new difficulty
presented itself. Larry Masters had gone away to some adjacent town and
had left his house tight locked.
"Boone's on the move today," Joe Gregory informed her, "but matters'll
come to a head ternight. Twell then things won't hardly bust, but when
ther time comes, whatever ye kin do hes need ter be done swiftly. When I
talked with ye last night I misdoubted we'd hev even this much time ter
go on."
Then as they sat on the doorstep of the closed house, which no longer
afforded her the conventional sanction of paternal presence, the deputy
sheriff outlined for her with admirable directness and vigour the
situation which had driven him to her for help. To clear away all
mystification he sketched baldly the little episode of the down-turned
photograph and the bitterness of the three words, "I'm ruined now."
"Thet's how come me ter know," he enlightened simply, "thet Boone war
sort of crazed-like--an' thet _you_ mout cure him, ef so be ye _would_."
Then with a sterner note he added: "Whatever took place betwixt ther two
of ye air yore own business, but thar's some of us thet would go down
inter hell ter save Boone Wellver. I needed ye, an', despite yer bein' a
woman, ef ye're a man in any sense at all, ye'll stand by me right now."
Anne rose from the doorstep where she had been dejectedly sitting and
held out a hand.
"You see, I came," she said briefly; "and I aim to be man enough to do
my best."
From the door of the wretched hotel as the morning grew to noon, she
watched the streets, and it seemed to her that, quite aside from the
usual gloom of the winter's day and the scowl of the heavy sky, there
was a new and intangible spirit of foreboding upon the town. That, she
argued, could be only the creative force of imagination.
She wished for Joe Gregory, but among many busy people that day he was
the busiest, and it was not until near sunset that he came for her,
leading a saddled horse. Riding along the steep and twisting ways, a
sense of sinister forces oppressed her.
It seemed to her that the dirge through the brown-gray forests and the
shriek of blasts along the gorges were blended into an untamable litany.
"We are the ancient hills that stand unaltered! We and our sons refuse
to pass under the rod. Wild is our breath and fierce our heritage. Let
the plains be tamed and the valleys serve! Here we uphold the law of the
lawless, the nihilism of ragged freedom!"
Once Joe halted her with a raised band. "Stay hyar," he ordered, "twell
I ride on ahead. Folks hain't licensed ter pass hyar terday ontil they
gives ther right signal."
He went forward a few rods, and had Anne not been watching his lips she
would have sworn that it was only the caw of a crow she heard; but soon
from a cliff overhead and then from a thicket at the left came the
response of other cawing. Then with a nod to her to follow, her guide
flapped his reins on the neck of his mule, and again they moved forward.
It was dark when they came to the road that passed in front of Victor
McCalloway's house, and there Joe drew rein.
"I've still got some sev'ral things ter see to," he informed the girl,
"so I won't stop hyar now. Boone's inside thar, an' like as not hit'll
be better fer ther two of ye ter talk by yoreselves. I'll give ther call
afore I rides on, so thet ther door'll open for ye. Hit hain't openin'
ter everybody ternight."
Then for the first time Anne faltered.
"Must I go in there--alone?" she demanded, and Gregory looked swiftly
up.
"Ye hain't affrighted of him, be ye? Thar hain't no need ter be."
Anne stiffened, then laughed nervously. "No," she said, "I'll go in."
The deputy sitting sidewise in his saddle, watched her dismount, and
when she reached the doorstep he sung out: "Boone, hit's Joe Gregory
talkin'. Open up!"
Anne's knees were none too steady, nor was her breath quite even as the
door swung outward and Boone stood against its rectangle of light
peering out with eyes unaccommodated to the dark. He was flannel shirted
and corduroy breeched, and since yesterday he had not shaved. But his
face, drawn and strained as he looked out, not seeing her because he was
studying the stile from which the voice had come, was the face of one
who has been in purgatory and who has not yet seen the light of release.
"Boone," said the girl softly, and he started back with astonishment for
the unaccountable. Then as his gaze swung incredulously upon her, still
wraith-like beyond the shaft of the door's outpouring, he moved to the
side, and she stepped into the room.
"But you're in Louisville," he declared in the low voice of one whose
reason resents the trickery of apparitions, and his pupils burned with
an abnormal brightness. "You're announcing your engagement."
"Not tonight," she reminded him; and then his brain, like his eyes,
having readapted its perception to reality, he slowly nodded his head.
"No. That was--_last_ night," he answered, with a bitter change of tone.
"I'd forgotten.... Things are moving so rapidly, you see."
"I came," she said, with direct gravity, "because some one told me that
you were in danger--of wrecking your life. I came to speak ... for the
thought in time."
While her eyes held his, he returned her gaze with a steady
inscrutability, and the two stood there with a long silence between
them.
Then the man announced in a dead tone:
"It's too late. Come here!"
He led the way to the bedroom door and threw it open with an emotionless
gesture. The girl flinched as she looked in and succeeded in stifling a
scream only by bringing both her hands swiftly to her lips. But Boone
took a step over to the cot where Victor McCalloway had slept and lifted
the sheet from something that lay there.
"That's 'Little' Jim Bartleton--or was," he added slowly. "I folded his
hands there on his breast such a little while ago that they're hardly
cold yet." He paused a moment; then the flat quality went out of his
bearing and his voice, though no louder than before, became transformed.
It held the throbbing intensity of distant drums beating for action and
battle.
"He was trying to serve me by watching the enemies that plotted my
murder. He was riding my horse--and was mistaken for me. You see, you
come too late."
"But, Boone--when--did this--?"
"About an hour ago," the man interrupted her. "He fell just about where
you dismounted, drilled through by a bullet hired by Saul Fulton and Tom
Carr. I found him there--and brought him in."
"Do--do his people know?"
"Not yet. Only you and I know it--yet." Again the voice leaped
tumultuously: "But soon his people are coming here--his people and mine.
They are coming for my counsel, and, by God, it's ready for them!"
"And you'll tell them?"
"I'll tell them that I've come back from following after new gods. I'll
tell them that the blood of my forefathers hasn't grown cold in me, and
that if they follow me, tonight they will see 'Little' Jim avenged." He
paused an instant before adding passionately, "Not by a single man or a
couple, but with as many filthy lives as it takes to balance one decent
life."