THE WARNING
Vane slept until Jard Hassock awoke him by pulling his toes. It was then
close upon nine o’clock of a fine morning.
“Say, what ails you?” asked Jard. “You act like you’d been up an’
roustin’ round all night.”
“It’s your fine fresh air,” replied Vane, sliding reluctantly out of
bed.
He breakfasted in the kitchen, but not a word did he say of the night’s
activities. He was told that McPhee had already called to say that young
Steve Dangler had already been in from Goose Creek with a message from
old Luke Dangler to old Dave Hinch. The gist of the message was that
Granddaughter Joe should remain where she was for as long as Grandpa
Dangler chose to keep her and if Grandpa Hinch didn’t like it the only
thing left for him to do was to lump it.
“It wasn’t eight o’clock, but Steve was slewed already,” concluded Jard.
“It’s a cruel, cryin’ shame and disgrace!” exclaimed Miss Hassock. “Dave
Hinch is a crooked old sinner and mean company for a girl like Joe—but
those Danglers are downright low. They’ll marry her to that swillin’,
bullyin’ rapscallion Steve, you see if they don’t; and not a man
hereabouts man enough to raise a hand!”
“What’s his tipple?” asked Vane. “I thought this country was dry. Surely
he is not drinking lemon extract—and alive to show it? You used the
word swilling.”
“He’s a hog, that’s why—whatever the stuff in his trough may be,”
retorted Liza.
Jard winked at Vane. “You don’t have to drink lemon extract round here
nowadays, nor ain’t for nigh onto two years,” he said. “There’s real
liquor—so I hear—to be had for eight dollars a bottle, an’ somethin’
that acts a darn sight more real for half the price. All you need’s the
money an’ the high sign.”
“And the law?”
“Law!” exclaimed Miss Hassock in a voice of angry derision. “Law! With
Danglers to bust it an’ a bunch of cowards an’ live-an’-let-livers to
look on, what’s the good of a law?”
Jard nodded at Vane. “If Liza had been born a man she’d of been dead
quite a spell now,” he said.
“But I guess there’d been a few other funerals about the same time as
mine,” said Miss Hassock, smiling grimly.
“Bootleggers?—moonshiners?” queried Vane.
This, he felt, explained the sentinels and the signals.
“You said it that time, Mr. Vane—and it’s a treat to hear a man with
grit enough in his crop to say it out loud, even if he is only askin’,”
returned Liza. “Bootleggers and moonshiners is right. The Danglers take
the lead in every low devilment.”
“Liza’s maybe right an’ maybe wrong,” said Jard. “I ain’t sayin’
anythin’ about it, whatever I’m thinkin’; an’ I hope you won’t,
neither—not while you live in Moosehead House, anyhow. Liza’s mighty
free with her mean names, talkin’ about cowards an’ the like—but—well,
her an’ my property is all right here—this hotel an’ the land an’ the
barns. So we got to stop right here, an’ I’d sooner stop here alive than
dead. I can’t afford to be so gosh darned brave—like Liza.”
The fire went out of the big woman’s eyes and the derision left her
lips. She strode over to her brother, stooped and laid a hand on his
shoulder.
“Please forgive me, Jard,” she said. “You are right and I am all wrong.”
Steve Dangler had not come to Forkville that morning for the sole
purpose of delivering old Luke’s defiant message to old Dave. He had
been instructed to hunt out and look over and size up the stranger who
was rigged out like a sport, and who had passed him and yet escaped him
the night before. There was no doubt in either Steve’s or old Luke’s
mind that this person was a police officer or law officer spying around
on behalf of the nearest Prohibition Enforcement Inspector. But even so,
it would be wise to make sure, and to size him up and get a line on his
character and methods, before deciding on the safest and surest way of
dealing with him. To date, the usual methods of lulling official
suspicion, combined with the long-established terror of the Dangler
name, had suffered to keep inviolate the secret activities of Goose
Creek.
When Steve reached the front door of Moosehead House, Jard Hassock was
gossiping at the village smithy, Miss Hassock was in the kitchen and
Robert Vane was up in his room writing a letter to a friend whose father
owned a town house in New York, a country home on Long Island and a
winter place in Florida. He was writing to the Florida address. Steve
opened the hotel door, entered, glanced into the empty office on the
right, and the empty “settin’-room” on the left, cocked his ear for
sounds of Miss Hassock, whom he feared, then ascended the stairs swiftly
and silently. After looking into three unoccupied bedrooms, he halted
and struck a casual attitude on Vane’s threshold.
“Where’s Simmons?” he asked. “He ain’t at the store.”
This was a lie, but Steve would rather tell a lie than the truth even
when no advantage was to be derived from it.
Vane looked up from his letter, which was progressing very slowly and
dully, and regarded the questioner from beneath slightly raised
eyebrows.
“Not here,” he said, and stared down at the half-written letter again
and crossed out the last line.
“He lives here, don’t he?”
“Not in this room.”
“He hangs out in this hotel, I guess.”
“He snores here, and eats here.”
“Guess I’ll go try the store ag’in.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Vane turned his eyes and attention back to his letter, and Steve shifted
his weight uneasily from foot to foot. Vane made no headway. He realized
that he was not in the least interested in the task under his pen and
suddenly wondered, with a disconcerting feeling of futility, if he had
ever been sincerely interested in the person for whom this letter was
intended. Or was it all part of a game—this unfinished letter and other
completed letters?
“Have a seegar, mister,” suggested the man on the threshold, digging
fingers into a pocket.
“I’ll smoke a pipe, if it’s all the same to you,” returned Vane. “Come
in and sit down, won’t you—if you’re not too busy?”
The other accepted the invitation, selected a comfortable chair, dropped
his cap on the floor, lit a cigar and spat neatly into the fire. Vane
laid aside his pen, turned an elbow upon ink and paper and lit his pipe.
“Sportin’?” queried Steve, in his best society manner.
“Not as you mean,” replied Vane. “I’m not lookin’ for anything to shoot.
Close season, for that matter. But my visit is certainly connected with
sport.”
“Zat so,” returned Steve, with honest curiosity and ill-hid suspicion
conflicting in his hot brown eyes. “Sport, hey?”
“Yes. I came here to find a horse.”
“A horse? Did you lose one?”
“No. But I have heard of good horses coming from this part of the
country, and I hope to be able to buy a young one of the good strain—of
the Strawberry Lightning strain. I’ve seen Hassock’s roan filly, but I
hear that the real breeder is an old man named Luke Dangler who lives up
on Goose Creek. You know him, I suppose. Do you know if he has any young
bays of that strain? Bay is the right color—the Willy Horse color. I
have a few hundreds that are ready and eager to talk horse.”
“Sure I know old Luke Dangler. My own name’s Dangler, an’ I come from
Goose Crick myself. He’s got a couple of young uns of the right color,
an’ the right lines. Say, I guess ye’re the gent who drug old Dave Hinch
an’ Joe out of the fire?”
“Yes, I happened along just in time.”
“I’ll say so. But why ain’t you been out to see Luke Dangler before
this? It ain’t far to his place.”
“I was thinking of calling on him to-morrow.”
“D’ye know the way to Goose Crick?”
“I’ll find it, don’t worry. Hassock will start me right.”
“Sure he’ll start you right, an’ it’s a straight road once you git
started; an’ you’ll find the old man all ready to talk horse. I’ll tell
him ye’re comin’.”
Steve Dangler went away, puzzled, but still suspicious. Vane was not
exactly what he had expected to find. The only thing in which the
stranger had met expectations was the matter of lying. He had lied
concerning his knowledge of the road to Goose Creek, but in everything
else he had proved unexpected. His manner was not that of any
enforcement officer known to or imagined by Steve. It was the manner of
the best type of “sport” known to Steve, of the two-guides sportsman.
And the talk about wanting to buy a horse! That was clever. He’d picked
up the dope from Jard Hassock, of course—but it was smart. But it
didn’t fool Steve. If the stranger had wanted to see old Luke’s horses,
why had he tried to sneak into the settlement in the middle of the
night—unless he’d figured on stealing one? No, even Steve could not
seriously suspect him of being a horse-thief. He was some sort of damn
detective looking for something he knew they wouldn’t show to him,
that’s what he was.
Steve went home and made his report and as many comments on the subject
of the same as old Luke had patience to listen to. Then Steve was
dismissed, Amos and Hen called in by the old man, and many methods of
eliminating the dangerous stranger from the existing scheme of things on
Goose Creek were discussed. Amos was a crafty plotter. He had a strong
imagination of the crafty and destructive sort, and a genius for detail.
No man had ever escaped from a plot of his planning except by chance.
Vane was at a loss to know what to do next. His curiosity concerning the
Danglers of Goose Creek was now quite as keen as his distaste for them,
and both his distaste and curiosity were keener than his original
purpose in visiting Forkville. It was still his intention to obtain a
young animal of the Willoughby Girl strain, a bay with white legs, for
choice; but to deal these Danglers a blow of some sort seemed to him now
a more worthy and more intriguing ambition. Something of the kind was
due them. Something of the nature of a nasty set-back had been due them
for years and years. He decided to have another session with Pete
Sledge.
It was eleven o’clock before Jard left him. Jard had talked of Eclipse
blood for two hours without a break, but he had not suggested a way of
commencing negotiations with Luke Dangler for the purchase of a horse.
Vane extinguished the lamp and replenished the fire upon Jard’s
departure. An hour passed, and he was about to venture forth and down
the stairs and out of the house in search of Pete when he was startled
by a sharp rap on one of his windows. He jumped to his feet and faced
the window. On the instant it sounded again, like the impact of a sliver
of ice or fragment of snow-crust on the thin glass. He jumped to the
window and raised the sash, and was about to stoop and thrust out his
head when something hit him smartly on the ribs and dropped to the
floor. It was a small white handkerchief weighted and knotted into a
ball. He undid the knots in a few seconds, and found inside a small
stone and a folded scrap of paper.
_Don’t go to Goose Creek to-morrow or ever. Please go away. You
are in great danger. I warn you in gratitude. Please destroy
this and go away to-morrow morning._
He read it, then stooped again and looked out and down from the window.
In the vague starshine he could see nothing of the secretive messenger.
He closed the window swiftly but silently, tossed the scrap of paper
into the fire, pocketed the stone and little handkerchief, slipped into
his outer coat, snatched up cap and mittens and left the room. He had
been fully dressed, with his moccasins on and everything ready for a
quick exit; and this fact was the very thing that upset the calculations
of the thrower of the warning.
Vane made a clean getaway from the window of the kitchen, and overtook
the running figure before him just short of the top of the hill. It was
Joe Hinch, carrying her snowshoes under an arm. She halted and turned at
the touch of his hand, breathing quickly. She glanced at him, then down,
without a word.
“I hope I haven’t frightened you,” he said hurriedly. “But I had to know
if it was you—or a trick. How did you come? How did you get away? Why
are you going back?”
“It is not a trick,” she replied. “You are in danger.”
“Now? Immediate danger?”
“To-morrow—and after. If you go, or if you don’t.”
“Who came with you? And why did you come?”
“Nobody. I slipped out easily, and took a long way through the woods.
And now I must hurry back. And you will promise to go away to-morrow.
Please promise me that.”
“But why do you go back to that place? You have a grandfather here, and
plenty of friends.”
“I’m as safe there as here. I’m not in any danger. You are in danger.
You must go away. To-morrow! Promise me that—please!”
“But why? What are they afraid of? I came only to buy a horse.”
“They don’t believe that.”
“What do they think I’m after?”
“I can’t tell you. But don’t you believe me? Don’t you know that I am
telling the truth—that you are in danger? Do you think I’d came all
that way alone through the woods at night for—for fun?”
“I believe you, of course. But I think you must have an exaggerated idea
of the danger.”
“Exaggerated! Do you think I’m a fool? You are in danger of—of—death!”
“Death? Then it is not for the first time; and why should it be the
first time for me to run away?”
“You must go!”
“I’m sorry, but it can’t be done. Even if the danger is as actual as you
say—and not for a moment do I doubt the sincerity of your belief in
it—I can’t allow my plans to be altered by people of that—by a few
suspicious countrymen.”
“They are—my people. Their leader—the oldest and worst of them—is my
grandfather. I know them better than you do.”
“I’m sorry, really I am; and I think you are a brick for coming out to
warn me. You have more than squared our little account, for what I did
at the fire required very little effort, and no courage whatever. I
promise not to venture alone into their headquarters to-morrow, but it
is absolutely impossible for me to run away from them just because they
happen to suspect me of being something I am not. If I were to do a
thing like that, I shouldn’t be able to live with myself afterward.”
“You won’t go?”
“My dear girl, how can I go? My mission is peaceful and lawful. I’m not
looking for trouble. I am sorry, but you can see how absolutely
impossible it is for me to run away just to humor a gang of—a violent
and suspicious old man and that ignorant young lout.”
And then he realized that she was weeping.
“Miss Hinch! Please—ah, you mustn’t, really! You are tired—the tramp
through the woods. Come, be a good girl, let me take you to Miss
Hassock, or to the McPhees. You have friends in this village—plenty of
them, the entire population, I’m sure. Come, you need a good rest. I’m
quite safe, and I’ll not make trouble. There’s really nothing to cry
about. Come to Miss Hassock, there’s a good girl. Why should you go back
to that place, anyway—against your guardian’s wishes?”
She shook her head. “I—have to—go—for the safety—of my—friends.”
“Then I shall go with you.”
“No! No!”
“Only through the woods. Only to within sight of the house.”
“The road is guarded.”
“Yes, I know that. I’ll get my snowshoes. Half a minute. You wait here.
I’ll be back in two ticks.”
He turned and ran. His rackets were in the woodshed; and he was soon
back with them. But the young woman was not where he had left her. He
went forward, studying the edges of the road. He turned into the Goose
Creek road; and then it wasn’t long before he found where she had jumped
off into a clump of brush. He tightened and tied the thongs of his
snowshoes with eager fingers and followed eagerly on her tracks.
[Illustration]