With the half-realized familiarity of unplaced features, one face
besides that of his two distinguished companions, declared its existence
to Boone Wellver out of all the faces that set the stage that night.
When they had entered the room where the body lay and the soldiers had
turned and clanked out, they had been as devoid of personal entities as
links in a chain--except one.
An officer, though seen only through half shadow, had worn a stamp of
grief on eyes and a mouth which the Kentuckian did not seem to be seeing
for the first time.
Again under the night skies by the open grave, when the lanterns burned
yellow and the white shaft of an automobile lamp bit out a hard band of
glare, the figures of the burial party might have been effigies, but
once more the tight-drawn figure of that spare officer declared itself
human because only something human could, without word or motion, convey
such a declaration of suffering.
It was he who gave the orders, and as Boone watched the firing squad
step forward--gaunt, shadow shapes in silhouette--to fire the last
salute, he saw the details with a dazed and blunted gaze.
The sharp order which brought the pieces to shoulder; the other sharp
order, and the clean-tongued reports, single in unison but multiple in
their crimson jets--somehow these took a less biting hold on his memory
than the hint of the break in the officer's voice or the empty click of
the back-thrown breech-blocks and the light clatter of empty and falling
cartridge shells from the chambers.
It was over, and back in his bare inn room Boone sat in a heavy dulness,
alone once more, when a rap sounded on the door.
"You are Mr. Boone Wellver, sor'r, are ye not? I heard them call ye so."
With the Scotch rolling of the r's, a flood of memory came back to the
Kentuckian. This was the messenger who so long ago had come to the
mountain cabin, seeking to lure his preceptor out of his hermitage, to
China. The years had drawn him leaner and battered him, and his insignia
proclaimed him a major, but his beard and uniform had not Russianized
him.
"Major McTavish!" exclaimed the younger man, and across the older face
passed a momentary surprise, too trivial to endure long against the head
currents of graver emotion. "Yes, I am Boone Wellver. I was his
foster-son."
The veteran of forty years of soldiering stood stiff for a little while
and embarrassed. His undemonstrative nature was, just now, an ice-flow
racked by a warm and unaccustomed freshet, and his straight lip-line
twisted up, down, and up again under his effort.
"I have a message for ye, sor'r. He did not die at once--and I was with
him from the moment he was struck."
Boone closed the door and turned eagerly. He had been hungry for a
word--for a reassurance that in these last busy years this gallant
gentleman had remembered him; yet now he put another matter ahead of
that.
"But tell me first, sir, of his death," he begged. "I have heard little
of that."
"It was as he would have had it." The soldier spoke brusquely, as if
jealous of his superior's military devotion and in a monotone because
his voice needed guarding. "He fell under fire, holding steady a shaken
command."
"Was there--much suffering?"
"There was fever, sor'r, and he was out of his head at the end." The
officer reached into his tunic and brought out a pencil-scribbled paper.
"He had me write this for him. 'Tis to you."
Boone took the note in tremulous fingers and spread it close to the
lamp. While he read, the other stood stiff, but his breathing, with a
catch like the ghost of an inhibited sob, was audible.
"My dear boy," ran the message, "McTavish writes this for me. I
have fallen at last in what I believe to be a fight for God's
cause on earth. That is well. I go now to report to the Great
Commander-in-Chief, before whom mere appearances do not damn a
man if he go clean-hearted. Russia will collapse and the cause
will depend upon your own country--a country no longer aloof,
thank God.
"But, my dear boy, my thoughts that have been with you so long,
turn to you at the end. You filled with affection and pride an
emptiness that would have starved my soul. When I think of your
country, I think of you as an embodiment of its intrepid youth
and strength. Can I say more? God keep you. I--"
It broke off there, and Boone raised his eyes to the Major, who,
divining that the glance was an inquiry, said shortly, "He gave out
there, sor'r. The fever took him. What you have read required half an
hour to give me--between breaths, as it were."
"You say he was delirious--after that?"
The other nodded.
"He spoke your name--and another."
"Whose?" Boone whispered the question.
"A man named Prince. Some General Prince, of whom I never heard. He
fancied that this man came from God to fetch him, sor'r. It was part of
the lightheadedness."
"Can you recall his words?"
"I was holding his hand. He pressed mine a bit and said very faintly,
'Good-bye, Sergeant.'--'Twas so he remembered me from other
times.--'Tell Boone good-bye. General Prince has come for me.'"
The narrator broke off, and Boone refrained from hastening him. Finally
McTavish resumed:
"He said, 'General Prince has come. Don't ye hear him, McTavish? He
says, "The Commander-in-Chief sends His compliments, and you will report
to Him, in person."'--That was all, sor'r. I thought at the time he
meant Brussilov, but I comprehend now that it was of God he spoke."
"I see," responded Boone huskily. "I thank you."
* * * * *
In Cincinnati, loyal to the core, yet Germanic enough of feature and
accent to render him inconspicuous, a fair-haired Bavarian with borrowed
naturalization papers pursued an avocation which merited the attention
of a firing squad. One day in a boarding house of excellent repute, not
far from Eden Park, a stranger called to see him, whose dark hair fell
in a forelock over a face of sardonic cast.
This pair strolled out through the wooded acclivities of the park which
looks down over the city and, between blossoming redbud trees, found a
spot favourably secluded for their interview.
"I still don't see," admitted the sallow stranger in a dubious voice,
"what it's going to profit your Kaiser to preach draft resistance down
there in the hills. I'm not contending that they don't hate to have the
Government say, 'You must,' yet on the other hand, they don't hang back
on soldiering. What's the bright idea?"
The German lifted his straw-coloured brows indulgently.
"You Americans have no thoroughness. You cannot grasp the detail because
you are too impatient of small matters. One does not seek to administer
a cumulative poison with a single dosage. The German mind considers each
contributing element--and of the small things are born the large. I
sketch for you a picture: your mountaineer in resistance; the southern
negro stirred to sullenness; the reservation Indian made restive--all
small problems in themselves, perhaps, but taken together making a
sabotage of human machinery that destroys your unity. At all events, we
are paying those whom we employ. We can afford to be liberal since in
the end the foe will foot the bill."
Saul Fulton shrugged his shoulders. "All right, Gehr--"
"Not Gehr," the other irritably interrupted him. "That was my name when
we met in South America. It is not the name on my papers. Schultz, it
is. Please do not forget again."
"Schultz, then.... I'm willing to take my share of this wasted coin, but
I can't work in my home county. I tried going back there once and it was
enough."
"You know other mountain sections, though--and in your native county you
can influence lieutenants?"
"Yes, I reckon maybe I can do that, all right."
* * * * *
Saul Fulton, to whom intrigue was as the breath of life, had again
undertaken to earn the Iscariot wage, and he worked as covertly as if he
had lain hidden in the laurel thickets.
The result of his efforts was that in one county, not his own, a handful
of desperadoes listened greedily to his teachings, and in his own a
single man--or boy--of whom it was said that he "was pizen mean an' held
a grudge ergin all creation."
Save for that, he gained no disciples, and if, when the registration day
came, only one quarter of the men of military age went to enroll
themselves, it was because already, through the channels of recruiting
offices, the other three-fourths had flowed into the khaki-brown
reservoirs of the army. It is history now how the "feud counties"
responded; how in two of them not a single man claimed exemption; how in
one only two souls waited for the draft.
But Marlin County had her shameful exception in young "Dog" Burtree, who
lived alone in a log shack at the head of Pigeonroost Creek.
One Saturday night young Dog drank white whiskey at a blind tiger, and
it was reported of him that, in the Holly Hill barber shop, he "made
the brag thet he hedn't registered, an' didn't aim ter register." Those
who were present reported his manifesto with admirable promptness to the
local draft board, and the scandal winged its way along the creek-beds.
Dog may have been drunk beyond remembrance that evening, for when
neighbours with faces set in lines of patriarchal sternness rode to his
door demanding the truth, he turned putty pale and swore that he had
been libelled, and would make his detractors eat their calumnies.
It was on the next Saturday night and in the same barber shop, with much
the same group of loiterers present, that the ensuing act was staged.
The shabby little place, lighted by lamps with tin reflectors, was full
of pipe smoke and talk that evening, when some one, looking up from a
tilted chair, saw a figure in the door.
A startled silence fell and lasted, though not for long--because the
eyes of the face that looked in were blood-shot and the lips twisted to
an ugly snarl.
Except for its malevolence of expression it was not a repulsive face,
though its lower jaw was overly prominent. Its eyes were amber spots
beneath heavy brows, and under the back-thrust, felt hat a heavy mass of
chestnut hair bushed in curls about the temples. The lips were brightly
red like a girl's, but over the whole countenance now lay a spirit both
desperate and wicked.
Dog appreciated that what he did must be speedily done, and before the
pause broke; before the startled accusers had realised the mission that
had brought him his pistol had leaped from its holster; had, several
times, risen and fallen in the grasp of a hand hinged on a steady wrist,
and had barked each time its muzzle fell level.
Wreaths of smoke and the acrid smell of burnt powder drifted through the
barber shop, and four bodies lay on the puncheon floor--of whom two were
already dead.
Swiftly the night took Dog Burtree to itself, and almost as swiftly a
posse was on the trail, with Joe Gregory, now high sheriff of Marlin
County, riding a blood-sweat out of his black colt to assume command of
the man-hunt.
The quarry circled over a wide arc of broken fastnesses and went to
earth in an abandoned cabin thickly timbered about, and shielded back of
huge boulders. There he barred the door and barked out his defiant
challenge, "Come in an' git me!"
The cordon closed about the house and awaited the light of day. Until
hunger and thirst conquered him, the few casualties were all of the
refugee's making, but after two nights and a day of siege, a white rag
appeared through a chink on the end of a ramrod.
"Tell Joe Gregory he kin come in," shouted the voice of the besieged
man. "I'm ready ter surrender ter _him_--but not ter nobody else!"
"No," shouted back Gregory, who already wore a bandage about a grazed
arm; "you come out, and come with your hands high."
So it was that Saul's single convert came, and it was three weeks
afterwards that, the jury having spoken and the higher court having
denied an appeal, Joe sat in a day-coach leaving Marlin Town, while in
the seat facing him sat Dog Burtree, with irons on his wrists, and a
journey before him which should have no return. He was going to the
electric chair at Eddyville.
Word ran mysteriously through the length of the train that the slight,
youthful prisoner in charge of the tall, grave-faced sheriff was the
Holly Hill murderer, and passengers sauntered, with specious
carelessness and inquisitive side glances, past the section where he
sat.
The condemned man gave them back stare for stare, seeking the sorry
refuge of a bravado which, when he forgot his pose and gazed out of the
window, sagged into a spiritless and haunted misery. The face of his
captor was harder to read, yet the young woman who had also boarded the
train at Marlin Town with a group of settlement school children bound
for trachoma treatment in Lexington thought that it held an unusual
magnetism.
Simplicity and courage were written in the sober eyes; responsibility
and self-knowledge were stamped on the firm mouth-line and jaw-angle.
Joe, who had once come to Frankfort to seek Boone's aid in curbing the
violence of Gregory wrath, was going through the capital now on another
mission, and he made no effort to conceal his heaviness of heart. He was
taking a fellow-man to die, and though the duty lay as clear-writ as
when it had called him into rifle fire from the fugitive's barricade, it
was no longer so easy to obey.
From time to time the condemned man leaned forward and talked, and Joe
bent with as considerate an attention as though he were listening to a
dignitary. Sometimes he smiled in answer to a forced jest; sometimes to
a more sincere and less brazen effort he nodded grave response. One
would have said that the two were friends, and against the approaches of
the morbidly curious Joe interposed an aloofness as repellent as
bayonets. What were they, he thought, but men anxious to see the wheels
turn in a head that was soon to wear a cap with electrodes fitting
against shaven temples?
From across the car Happy Spradling watched the mingled strength and
gentleness of the law's servant, and felt that she would like to know
this neighbour, whom, as it happened, she had never met.
The girl was going home, a few days after that, on the same train that
carried the returning sheriff--this time travelling alone--and coming to
her seat somewhat diffidently, he held out a book.
"If you'll excuse me for introducing myself," he said, "I'll give you
this. You left it in your seat when you got off the train coming down."
Happy smiled, and, since they were, after all, neighbours, talked with
him for the rest of the journey. Though it had been a long while since
her heart had admitted a flutter at the glances or speeches of a man,
the young woman found herself awakening to the discovery that she was
still young. He asked if he might come to see her, and often after that
his horse stood hitched at the settlement school. When one night a few
months later he smiled his grave smile and said, "I've come to bid you
farewell; I'm going away tomorrow," she acknowledged a sudden sharpness
of pang.
"Where?" she demanded. And he answered:
"Over there."
They were standing on the squared log that made a foot bridge between
the thicketed banks of Little Laurel, and through a heavy mass of clouds
the moon was just emerging into a narrow field of pearl and opal.
Because it was rising and still hung low, its face was not pallid but
rosy, and the top plumes of a single hemlock-clump showed outlined, and
swaying. Elsewhere the sky was still cloud-dark.
"I haven't known you long," Joe Gregory was saying, "and I've always
been a mighty plain, uninteresting sort of man, but if I come back,
there'll be things I've got to say to you." He paused, and there was a
touch of eager hope in his voice as he finished. "The war'll change lots
of things. Maybe it'll change me some, too."
"Don't let it change you too much, Joe," the girl cautioned him, and he
bent forward to assure himself that the light which he thought he saw in
her eyes was real.