THE PURCHASE
The luck of the Danglers went wrong all at once. They got what was due
them and overdue them suddenly and swiftly, no mistake about that! Old
Luke and two others were caught in the coils of the law with enough
loops over them to hold them for years, and the still and the stock were
confiscated. Old Luke had money, but it availed him nothing now. And
Amos was dead—and none the less so because poor Pete Sledge’s queer
life had also suffered a violent and sudden conclusion. And young Steve
Dangler was missing. Steve had been last seen by his father, on the day
of the raid, on the road between Forkville and Goose Creek. Days passed
without further sign of him or any word of him. Even Miss Hassock was
sorry for the Danglers. Though she believed that nothing was too bad for
them, she felt that this deluge of disaster might better have been
thinned over a period of several years, thus offering opportunities for
remorse and perhaps for reform.
Robert Vane, the engine which had been selected by fate for the undoing
of the Danglers, did not permit pity for the men who had plotted his
death to halt his activities. The obstacles to his inspection of old
Luke’s stables having been removed with the removal of the old breeder,
Vane went ahead in that matter, advised by Jard. They did business with
an elderly spinster, a daughter of Luke’s, who had the old ruffian’s
power-of-attorney, but none of his pride in, and jealousy of, the horses
of the ancient strain. They found several bays with white legs among the
fast ones, and selected a colt going on three, after a searching
examination. The price was four hundred dollars, which Vane paid with
banknotes.
“An’ what about the pedigree?” asked Jard. “The old man kept a
stud-book, for I’ve seen it.”
“He took it away with him,” said Miss Dangler. “If you want that colt’s
pedigree you gotter go to jail for it.” She scowled at Vane defiantly,
then turned suddenly and burst into tears.
Vane was sorry for her, but he couldn’t think of a word of comfort to
say to her. He was embarrassed. He looked to Jard for help.
“Now don’t take on about that,” said Jard in a soothing voice. “There’s
worse places than jail, Miss Nancy, an’ there’s been better men in jail
than Luke Dangler.”
For some reason which was not clear to Vane, these words quieted the
woman. She dried her eyes with the back of a large hand.
“I reckon ye’re right, Jard Hassock,” she said.
“If the colt turns out half as well as I expect him to, he’s worth more
than four hundred,” said Vane; and, before Jard could stop his hand, he
slipped another bill to her.
“Maybe he’ll show you the book,” she said, yet more softened. “But
what’s the use of a pedigree, young man? Why d’you want somethin’ with a
colt you don’t ask for with a human? They tell me you be lookin’ to
marry Joe Hinch—my own niece, an’ own blood granddaughter to old Luke
Dangler an’ old Dave Hinch! Now what kinder pedigree d’ye call that,
mister?”
“She hasn’t asked for mine, and I don’t give a damn if all her
grandparents are devils!” exclaimed Vane. “I know her—and she’s what I
want!”
Miss Dangler smiled for the first time. “I reckon ye’re right,” she
said.
On the day of the great adventure in the snowstorm, Joe had promised to
marry Robert Vane in two weeks’ time.
Joe lived at the McPhees now, with her Grandfather Hinch; and Vane,
still the occupant of the state chamber of Moosehead House, spent
charmed hours of every day and evening with her. She had dropped the
last shred of doubt of his sincerity during the last few hours of their
battle toward Larry Dent’s sheltering roof. They argued sometimes as to
which had saved the other’s life that day, only to agree that neither
could have won through alive without the heroic devotion of the other.
The days and nights slipped along like enchantment toward the great day.
Vane lived in a world as new as dawn to him, a world which he had
sometimes in the past vaguely suspected and vaguely longed for, a world
unlike anything he had ever known.
One midnight, having returned from the McPhees’ at ten o’clock and
yarned with Jard for an hour and then smoked alone by his fire for
another hour, Vane was startled from his reveries by the slow and silent
opening of his door. He got lightly to his feet. A man entered, and
cautiously shut the door. It was an old man, bent a trifle at knees and
neck, broad-shouldered and white-bearded, wearing an old felt hat pulled
low over the forehead. He was a stranger to Vane. He laid a finger on
his lip and advanced.
“What do you want?” asked Vane. “And who are you?”
“Not so loud!” cautioned the other in a horse whisper. “I ain’t come for
any harm—but there’s no call to wake up Liza Hassock. ’Scuse me if I
set down. I’m Luke Dangler.”
Vane pointed him to a chair, and resumed his own seat.
“I thought you were in jail in Fredericton,” he said, in guarded tones.
“So I was, but I got out an’ run for it. I been home to Goose Crick. Now
look-a-here, mister, was one of my horses what you come onto this
country after? Tell me that now, straight!”
“I came to try to buy a horse of that strain you breed.”
“What d’you know about that strain?”
“Plenty. I know all about Willoughby Girl, that English mare that was
stolen from an Englishman ninety-nine years ago. She was a granddaughter
of Eclipse.”
“Was she now? Where’d you l’arn all that?”
“I learned all that from my father, when I was a small boy. I’m the
grandson of the man who brought Willoughby Girl to this country, and
lost her by theft. He hunted for her over half the world—almost
everywhere but on Goose Creek.”
“Sufferin’ cats! An’ you come lookin’ for a bit of the old strain of
blood! Why the hell didn’t you say so first off? If you’d told me who
you was I’d believed you an’ sold you a horse. But you be from the
States, an’ the gent who owned the English mare was an Englishman! My pa
told me so many’s the time.”
“It was your mistake—all your own fault! As to my grandfather being an
Englishman—why not? We are all Americans now.”
“Hell! Maybe a Dangler done yer gran’pa a dirty turn a hundred years
ago, but you’ve squared that account with enough left over and to spare
to settle for twenty stolen mares. There’s Amos dead—an’ where’s young
Steve? Here’s me in jail—or leastwise had oughter be—an’ penitentiary
awaitin’ me; an’ the same for Ned an’ Benjamin an’ maybe for two-three
more. An’ there’s the business shot to hell! An’ all because you come
onto this country to buy a horse, an’ didn’t have courage enough to come
an’ tell me the truth!”
“If it amuses you to say so, go ahead. It was my fault that two of your
dirty cowards ambushed me and knocked me senseless a couple of times,
and left me to die in the woods, I suppose? Don’t be a fool!”
“Sure it was yer fault! If you hadn’t been drug off, that damn saphead
Jard Hassock wouldn’t have raised the village ag’in us, an’ the deputy
sheriff—damn his eyes!—wouldn’t have spied out the still an’ what not,
an’ Amos would be alive now, an’ so would young Steve, an’ I’d be
settin’ safe in my own house instead of here tryin’ to make a deal.”
“A deal? What’s the idea?”
“Nancy says you want my pedigree book. All right—an’ I want some money.
She give me a couple hundreds of what you paid her for the colt—an’ a
mean price that was paid, mister! I need moren’t two hundred for to make
a gitaway, but I can’t touch a doller of all my money, for it’s in the
bank down to Frederickton, an’ that’s where they cal’late I’m in jail
at. I’ll give you the pedigree book for five hundred dollars. You
couldn’t git it for thousands, if it wasn’t that the police is after me
to put me back in jail, an’ I need the money the worst way.”
“Dangler, you are hard-boiled. And you’re a fool! Why do you imagine for
a moment that I’ll supply you with money to escape with? Anything the
law may hand to you will be less than you deserve. If you were to
receive your deserts you’d be hanged for a murderer. Hasn’t it occurred
to you that I’m much more likely to hand you back to the police than to
buy your stud-book?”
The old man smiled. “That would be a hell of a way to treat Joe’s
gran’pa!” he said. “Wouldn’t it read rotten in the newspapers? I could
tell them reporter lads quite a lot about pedigrees they don’t know yet,
‘Robert Vane, New York sport, weds the great-granddaughter of the thief
who stole a horse from his gran’pa. Mr. Vane of New York weds Miss Hinch
of Goose Crick. The bride’s gran’pa an’ uncles wasn’t to the weddin’,
bein’ in jail for moonshinin’ an’ bootleggin’ an’ murder.’ Say, wouldn’t
it read great in the newspapers?”
“Go to it, Dangler! You haven’t got me right.”
The old man eyed him keenly, then produced a notebook bound in oilcloth
from an inner pocket. He handed it to Vane. “There’s the record back to
the English mare of every foal an’ filly me an’ my pa ever bred of that
old strain of blood.”
Vane glanced through the book, and saw that this was probably so.
“It’s yer own,” said Luke Dangler. “But I tell you ag’in you give Nancy
a mean price for the bay colt. Do I go back to jail, or don’t I?”
“You may go to hell, for all I care,” replied Vane, calmly.
“Thanky, gran’son-in-law. Well, I’ll be startin’.”
“One moment.” Vane dug into an inner pocket, fingered crisp papers and
passed four hundred dollars to the old man.
“I think the colt is worth every cent of it,” he said. “You know your
way out. Good morning.”
“Say! You’re a real sport! Thank God you didn’t git lost in the woods
that day? Shake on it.”
Old Luke Dangler extended his hand. Vane overlooked it.
“Shut the window after you,” said Vane.
So the old rogue went. There was nothing else for him to do.