that man.”
His heart was pounding loudly, though no word had passed between Maria and
himself. Stephan eyed him steadily.
“But I’m getting tired,” added Cunningham, “of explaining why I came here
and where I came from. Nobody believes me. But you didn’t come to ask me
those things only.”
“No,” said Stephan harassedly. “We came to ask you what to do.”
“About what?”
“All things,” said Stephan fiercely. “A man was killed. You know that.
There is another man here. You call him Vladimir, and he will have to be
killed also. And the sheriff comes and tries to take us away. What shall
we do?”
Cunningham had trouble in thinking of an answer. He wanted to talk to
Maria. He wanted to take her to one side and say innumerable things.
“About the first man,” he said at random, “you ought to get a lawyer to
advise you. And keep out of the way of Vladimir and the sheriff until he
can tell you what you ought to do.”
Stephan’s face mirrored a resolute despair.
“No. We will not do that. He would ask who we were and why we killed that
other man.”
“He might,” agreed Cunningham lightheartedly. He wanted desperately to
talk to Maria. “People do that sort of thing around here.”
Stephan looked at his daughter questioningly. She nodded, with shining
eyes that evaded Cunningham’s. Stephan tugged at his belt and placed
something on the floor before him. He unknotted a string about a coarse
cloth bag and poured out upon the floor a shining heap of gold-pieces. But
they were not like any gold-pieces Cunningham had ever seen before. They
were hammered from nuggets or bars by hand. They were square, about the
size of a double-eagle and twice as thick, and still showed the marks of
the hammer that had formed them.
“We will give you these,” he said quietly, “if you will get us gats like
the one you showed my people today.”
“Gats? Oh ... guns. Pistols.”
Stephan nodded and swept the gold-pieces into a shining array. The sight
of them sobered Cunningham abruptly.
“But what will you do with them?” he asked. “How will you use them? What
do you want them for?”
Stephan spread out his hands.
“Then we will not need a lawyer,” he said grimly. Cunningham caught his
meaning.
“How many people do you chaps plan to kill with them?”
Stephan smiled sadly.
“Not many. Only until we are left alone.”
“You people do need a guardian,” growled Cunningham. Maria was watching
him with soft eyes that always just evaded meeting his. Cunningham felt
that a tremendous responsibility was being thrust upon him. “Look
here----”
There was a sharp knock at the door.
Cunningham hurled himself at the doorway to bar entrance until Stephan and
Maria should have time to get away. All the Strangers were considered
outlawed now. Cunningham had only their safety in mind, but Stephan
misread his swiftness of movement. With lightninglike quickness he was on
his feet with bared knife, darting likewise to the doorway.
Cunningham’s hand came down with a jerk. The knife flew from Stephan’s
hand and stuck quivering in the floor. The next second Cunningham’s
revolver was out.
“Steady!” he whispered sharply. “Steady!”
Then Maria had flung herself in front of the revolver. All this was done
in fractions of seconds and almost without sound.
“You shall not let him be taken!” she whispered fiercely. “You shall not!”
Stephan’s whole frame was alert and his eyes were flaming as if he were
sure this was a trap and waited but the ghost of a chance to seize his
knife and rush Cunningham as well as whoever might be outside.
To take his eyes from the man was to risk his life. To refuse to answer
the knock was to take another risk. The knock came again, sharp and
peremptory. A hand tried the door. And there was a tiny sound by the
window, as if other Strangers were without, peering in suspiciously and
ready to fling their flying knives at a hint of danger.
8
Maria defied Cunningham without words. And Cunningham saw her father’s
hand stealing to a part of her dress where a weapon might be concealed.
Sweat came out on his forehead. He could not shoot, and in another
instant----
Then the defiance in her eyes turned to pleading and the deliberate
wordless reiteration of the thing he had read in her face before.
Cunningham spoke suddenly in a fierce whisper.
“I love you!” he cried softly and desperately. “Do you think I will let
harm come to your father?”
The terror faded from her eyes and without a sound she clasped her
father’s hands fast in her own, though still before him. Stephan stood
tense, watching Cunningham through eyes that showed nothing whatever.
Cunningham turned his head.
“Who’s there?” he called. The answer was an anticlimax.
“Gray,” said Gray’s voice dryly. “I say--if you want to send any mail or
telegrams, you’d better give them to me. I think they’d be opened, here.”
“I know they would,” Cunningham growled. “But I won’t have anything to go
out. Anything else? I’m in bed,” he added as an afterthought.
“No. Nothing else.” Gray’s tone was very dry. Cunningham heard his
footsteps retreating.
He silently picked up Stephan’s knife and handed it back. He replaced his
pistol in his pocket.
“It’s dangerous to talk here,” he said grimly. “I suppose these partitions
are thin. Let me come up to the hills tomorrow. I’ll tell you anything I
can to help you. But please don’t kill anybody else until I’ve had time to
explain. Don’t you understand that you can’t get away with that sort of
thing in the United States? Where did you come from, anyhow?”
Stephan smiled faintly. He ignored the whisper to Maria of a moment
before. He suddenly reached over and put his hand on Cunningham’s
shoulder.
“Good man,” he said gravely. “We will talk to you, yes. But we will not
tell you anything. Come up into the hills tomorrow. We will kill nobody
else until you say.”
“But--I tell you you mustn’t kill anybody at any time,” protested
Cunningham anxiously. “You can’t get away with it. Don’t you understand?”
“No,” said Stephan. He spread out his hands in a confession of despair.
“We do not understand anything! Maria says you are our friend. We need a
friend. Else we die. And if you do not help us----”
Cunningham stared from one to the other, but it was hard to think of
anything when he looked at Maria. He had taken the Strangers seriously
enough when he knew of the first man’s being killed. Now it looked as if
he was called upon to prevent deadly serious trouble in the hills.
“I’ll try,” he said hopelessly. “Yes, I’ll try. Maria----”
The color mounted in her cheeks. Then she seemed to summon all her pride
and met his eyes fairly. They told him many things, her eyes.
“I--I will wait for you,” she told him. And in the words she said much
more than the words themselves.
Cunningham was tingling all over, at the same time that he felt a curious
sense of absurdity in escorting callers to the window instead of to the
door. But before they reached it a head appeared there. It was that of the
young Stranger who had been the first to appear from the woods that
afternoon.
“The sheriff,” he whispered. “He came. We hit him on the head. Shall we
kill him?”
“No!” said Cunningham sharply. “Tie him up until you get clear away. Did
he see you coming up to my window?”
“No.” The young man shrugged and disappeared. There were whispered
instructions below. To Cunningham it seemed that the whispers were in a
strange tongue. Maria and her father slipped out. Then there were little
rustlings below. The ladder, probably, being taken down and carried
elsewhere, and the marks it had made in the earth erased.
Cunningham sank into a chair and stared before him. His blood was still
pounding in his veins. And Maria had glanced back at him as she
disappeared from view. But there was no denying that a tremendous and
unwelcome responsibility had been thrust upon him.
They were foreigners. They must be. They did not understand the laws of
the United States--and they were hated now and would soon be subject to
persecution. Why, otherwise, did Vladimir bribe the sheriff and try to
keep both Gray and Cunningham away from the Strange People? Why,
otherwise, had such unreasoning hatred been expressed that morning in
Bendale?
And it was up to Cunningham to prevent a wholesale tragedy. For some
unknown reason they believed that he was their friend. They would not kill
anyone until he had spoken to them. That was the promise Stephan had made
in their behalf,--and yet they were not bloodthirsty. He had said they
only wished to be let alone, and he could not understand that that was the
surest way to be thoroughly investigated. They depended now upon
Cunningham. Before, without a counselor, they had killed. Now, unless
Cunningham aided them, they would kill again. And Cunningham felt that the
responsibility of human lives was more than he had bargained for.
Adventure was all very well, and romance was all very well, but this was
different and in deadly earnest. And Cunningham could not feel any sense
of superiority to them, as most men feel toward most uninformed
foreigners. They were unlike him, but they were certainly not inferior to
him. They knew less, but they gave no indication of lesser intelligence.
And Maria----
Cunningham stood up, a trifle pale.
“Well,” he muttered, “I asked for adventure and I guess I’ve got it.”
There was another knock on the door.
“What is it?” he demanded. He wanted to be alone to think.
““Gray,” said a dry voice. “Have you gotten out of bed, Cunningham?”
Cunningham opened the door.
“I came in,” said Gray dryly, “to mention that Vladimir went through my
room while I was gone. One key will unlock any door in this sort of
hotel.”
“He went through mine, too,” said Cunningham abstractedly.
“And also,” said Gray still more dryly, “to mention that the partitions
here are very thin and that I heard all of the conversation just now.”
Cunningham looked up with a start.
“I knocked on your door,” Gray added, smiling cryptically, “because I knew
you wouldn’t open it. I was doing what I could to cement their confidence
in you. Are you going to help them?”
“I guess I’ve got to try,” said Cunningham grimly. “But I wish I knew what
to do.”
“Keep them from killing,” Gray told him with sudden sharpness. “And also,
keep them out of jail. You’ve got to do it, Cunningham! There’ll be hell
to pay in those hills if you don’t. These people are scared. That’s why
they killed that man we saw on the train. And they will be worse scared of
Vladimir. He hasn’t gone, and if I can read faces he’s planning devilment
for them. I tell you there’ll be wholesale killings in the hills unless
you go up there! Stay with them. Argue with them. Educate them if you
must. But keep them from killing anybody!”
“And who,” asked Cunningham grimly, “is going to keep Vladimir from
starting something?”
Gray spread out his hands. Then he said curtly, “Look here. I tell you
nothing----”
“Just like most other people,” interpolated Cunningham none too cordially.
“----nothing,” went on Gray, ignoring the interruption, “but I can promise
that you won’t get into trouble through trying to keep the peace.”
“You’re a detective?”
“No,” snapped Gray. “I’m not. But I can promise that much.”
“All those who have made mysteries of themselves so far,” observed
Cunningham grimly, “have offered me money. What do you offer?”
Gray stopped short. He seemed to realize for the first time just what sort
of a predicament Cunningham was in, hopelessly at sea regarding the
motives of every person in the extraordinary triangle.
“Advice,” he said soberly after an instant. “I’ll offer you advice. That
girl is devilish pretty and I heard what you said to her. And it’s
insanity to say it, but--either avoid her entirely or marry her at once.
And I mean at once! I’ve a reason for warning you.”
And just as he put his hand on the knob of the door there was a scream on
the ground outside. Maria had screamed. There was a crashing of glass, and
as Cunningham hurled himself to his feet a shot followed, which was
sickeningly loud and reverberated horribly in the stillness.
Then Vladimir’s voice came purringly from a spot near by, as if he were
gloating to himself, “Ha! I got her!”
[Illustration: “Rebellion was in every line of her figure.”]
9
With a face like death Cunningham flung through the door. He sped down the
steps with his heart, it seemed, stopped dead. There were sounds behind
him and angry voices. Gray roaring at Vladimir, perhaps. But Cunningham
could think of nothing but Maria.
The darkness smote his eyes like a blow. He stumbled and fell, then
started up, crying out wildly.
A figure flitted up to him and put a soft hand over his mouth.
“Hush! Hush! I am safe,” she whispered breathlessly. “He saw us about the
sheriff, and fired. When he saw the sheriff fall he thought I was killed.
Hush!”
Cunningham’s arms were about her and he kissed her in an ecstasy of
relief.
“If he’d killed you!” he gasped. “If he’d killed you!”
Feet thundered indoors.
“I must go!” she whispered swiftly. “Please!”
She thrust him away and fled. Figures were waiting for her. She joined
them, and all melted into nothingness beneath the trees. Then Gray
stumbled outside with his hand in Vladimir’s collar.
“Did he get her, Cunningham?” he cried shakenly. “If he did, I swear I’ll
fling him to them! Did he get her?”
“N-no,” said Cunningham unevenly. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
“They’re all gone. But----”
He knelt beside a dark bundle on the ground. A groan came to his ears,
curiously muffled. He struck a match and found the sheriff securely
trussed up and blinking at the match-flame with panic-stricken eyes.
“It’s the sheriff,” said Cunningham. “Maybe he’s hurt.”
But a babble of words that began before the gag was completely out of his
mouth proved that the sheriff was only scared.
“Scared green, that’s all,” said Gray curtly. He shook Vladimir as a
terrier might shake a rat. “You thought there were burglars?” he roared.
“Try to get away with that again! You aimed for that girl!”
He tossed Vladimir to the ground, wrathfully.
“What girl?” purred Vladimir, as he scrambled to his feet. “Was there a
girl? Are you in communication with my brother’s murderers? And helping
them to escape, too? I think you will go to jail, my friend.”
But Gray went indoors with Cunningham, laughing.
* * * * *
When day came again Cunningham awoke with the conviction that something
very pleasant had happened. He puzzled vaguely over it for a long time.
And then he realized that it was a thing that had come to him just before
he slept and had made his heart pump faster and more loudly. When he
kissed Maria, she had not struggled nor been angry. On the contrary she
had lifted her lips to his. And yet it had been no practised gesture, but
the response of sheer instinct to one man only.
Cunningham’s heart pounded a little and he got up with a serene
contentment filling him. The route to romance had led him to happiness, he
was sure.
He went downstairs and went out on the porch just to look up at the hills
in which he would find her presently.
Vladimir was there, talking to a newcomer whose clothing and air confirmed
the guess that he was a servant. But not an ordinary servant. His face was
gross and stupid where Vladimir’s was keen and cruel, but his features had
no less of instinctive arrogance, though veiled by servility at the
moment.
Vladimir’s lips twitched into a snarl of hatred when he saw Cunningham,
and he spoke to his servant. The man looked at Cunningham and scowled.
But Cunningham went indoors and had breakfast joyously. Then he started
out to find Maria. Technically, as he reflected, he was compounding a
felony in going to the Strange People to advise them how to keep out of
the clutches of the law. Some of them had been involved in the killing of
Vladimir’s brother. But Cunningham beamed as he clambered up the steep
hillside toward those mysterious thickets in which the Strange People
lurked.
He had gone up perhaps half the way when he heard a faint rustling behind
him. He turned and shouted, thinking it a Stranger who would lead him to
Stephan and Maria. But the rustling stopped. After a little while he went
on, frowning. Later the rustling began again, somewhat nearer.
And then Cunningham heard whistles far off in the thickets. He heard other
rustlings, as if men were moving swiftly through the undergrowth. These
last sounds came from both sides of him. And then he came suddenly upon a
young Stranger, running headlong toward him with his hand on his
knife-hilt. The Stranger lifted his hand, unsmilingly, and ran on.
“Stephan,” cried Cunningham; “where is he?”
The runner waved for Cunningham to continue as he was going and
disappeared. The mysterious sounds continued, to right and to left. Then
everything was abruptly very still.
Cunningham halted uncertainly. There was no trace of a path anywhere. The
earth fell away sharply at one side but he had lost all sense of direction
and did not know which way to go. Then he heard a thrashing below him as
if someone were moving rapidly to cut him off.
Then there was the sound of panting near by and a small boy ran into view.
He was a young Stranger, an aquiline-nosed, brown-eyed youngster with the
legs of a race-horse.
“Hi, there,” shouted Cunningham. “Where’s Stephan?”
The boy gasped in relief and flew toward him. He thrust a bit of paper
into Cunningham’s hand and stood panting. Cunningham unrolled the scrap.
On it was written in awkward letters:
“Someone follows to kill you. What will happen if we kill him?”
Cunningham started. Vladimir! He’d sent his servant to bushwhack him.
“They’ll hang,” he said grimly. “Tell them not to do it.”
The boy nodded and started off.
“Wait!” called Cunningham. “Will they stop, since I’ve said so?”
“No,” panted the boy. “They kill him already, I think.”
He sped away, down toward the spot where the thrashing in the bushes
sounded as if someone were trying to head Cunningham off. Cunningham
clenched his fists and ran after him, determined to stop the foolishness.
The boy vanished suddenly. A figure started up.
“Wait! He lives yet! Wait!”
But Cunningham plunged on, not understanding. He only hoped to be in time
to keep the Strangers from worse trouble than they were already in.
He burst through a thicket as warning cries sounded suddenly from all
sides. And there was Vladimir’s servant, staring stupidly about him in
sudden fright at the sound of many voices. He was waist-high in brushwood.
He swerved in panic at the sound of Cunningham’s rush; then his face
lighted with ferocity. With lightning quickness he had leveled a weapon
and fired.
Cunningham’s life was due to the fact that he had just tripped upon one of
the innumerable small boulders strewn all over the slopes. He was falling
as the bullet left the gun. He felt a searing pain in his left shoulder
and crashed to the ground. Maria’s voice shrilled in anguish.
“Dead! He is killed!”
The breath was knocked out of Cunningham, but he struggled to shout that
he was all right, and was afraid to because the servant might pot at him
again.
But then he heard half a dozen little metallic clangings, like the rattle
of steel knife-blades on rock. The air was full of minor whirrings. And
then he heard a sudden agonized bellow, like the roaring of a wounded
bull. And then a man screaming in horrible terror.
10
There was an air of formality, even of solemnity, in the gathering that
faced Cunningham several hours later. A full two hundred Strangers were
gathered in a little glade with slanting sides that formed a sort of
amphitheater. Scouts were hidden in the woods beyond.
And Maria was there, with a white and stricken face which dashed
Cunningham’s joyous mood. Vladimir’s servant was there too, ashen with
dread and with a crude bandage about his arm where a throwing-knife had
gone through his muscles as he tried to shoot Cunningham a second time.
And Stephan, Maria’s father, with his features worn and very weary.
Cunningham’s shoulder had been dressed with crushed plantain-leaves. It
was a tiny wound at best, hardly worth more than adhesive plaster. The
bullet had barely nicked the skin, but Maria had wept over it as she bound
it up.
Cunningham had felt that this was no time for common sense. He knew.
“I love you,” he whispered as she bent down above him.
Brimming eyes met his for an instant.
“And I love you,” she said with a queer soft fierceness. “I tell you,
because I will never see you again. I love you!”
Cunningham felt a nameless dread. Stephan looked at him with dreary,
resolute eyes. Maria’s lips were pinched and bloodless. The Strangers
regarded him with somber faces which were not unfriendly, but perturbingly
sympathetic.
The gathering seemed to be something like a court. The women were gathered
around the outer edges. The men stood about a rock on which Stephan had
seated himself. Maria stood beside him. Cunningham found himself thrust
gently forward.
“My friend,” said Stephan wearily, “you find us gathered in council. Men
say that you kissed my daughter, Maria.”
Cunningham flushed, then stood straight.
“I did,” he said evenly. “I ask your permission to marry her. Is it a
crime for me to speak to her first and have her answer?”
Stephan shook his head wearily.
“No. No crime. And if you were one of us I would be glad. I think you are
a man. I would join your hands myself. But you are not of our people.”
“And who are you,” demanded Cunningham, “that I am not fit to marry into?”
Stephan’s voice was gentle and quaintly sympathetic.
“We have killed one man who knew the answer to that question,” he said in
the teasing soft unfamiliar accent that all the Strange People had. “We do
not wish to kill you. And you are not unfit to marry my daughter. My
daughter, or any of us, is not fit to marry you.”
Cunningham shook his head.
“Let me be the judge of that.”
Again Stephan made a gesture of negation.
“I think you are our friend,” he said heavily. “We need a friend of those
who are not like us. We may die because we have not such a friend. But you
must come here no more. What says the council?”
A murmur went up about the amphitheater--a murmur of agreement. Cunningham
whirled with clenched fists, expecting to see hostile faces. Instead, he
saw friendly sorry ones.
“He must not come again,” ran the murmur all about the crowd, in the faint
and fascinating dialect that could not ever be identified. Men gazed at
Cunningham with a perturbing sympathy while they banished him.
“But why?” demanded Cunningham fiercely. “I am your friend. I came
hundreds of miles because the picture of Maria drew me. I refused offers
of bribes. That man”--he pointed at Vladimir’s servant--“tried to kill me
only today, only because I am your friend. And what have I asked of you?
If Maria tells me to go, I will go. But otherwise----”
Stephan put his hand on Cunningham’s shoulder.
“You must not come again,” he said quietly, “because Maria loves you also.
Our people know such things quickly. She has said that she loves you. And
we dare not let our women marry any man but one of ourselves. It is not
that we hate you. We kept that man from killing you today, and we would
have killed him if you said so. We will kill him for you now, if you tell
us. But we dare not let one of our women marry you. So you must go.”
“Will Maria tell me to go?” demanded Cunningham fiercely.
“Yes,” said Maria, dry-lipped. “Go! Oh-h-h-h. Go, if you love me!”
She flung herself down upon the grass and sobbed. Some of the women
murmured to each other and one or two moved forward and patted her
shoulders comfortingly.
“She tells you to go,” said Stephan wearily, “because we would have to
kill you otherwise.”
“But why? Why?” demanded Cunningham desperately.
Stephan rose from his seat and spread out his hands.
“Because no woman can ever keep a secret from the man she loves,” he said
wearily. “Some day she would tell you who we are. And then you would hate
her and hate us. You would turn from her in horror, and you would denounce
us. And we would die, swiftly. I am not happy, my son. Maria is my
daughter and I would see her happy. But some day she would tell you who we
are----”
Cunningham found himself being crowded gently away from Maria. He thrust
himself fiercely against the pressure.
“But who are you?” he cried savagely. “Dammit, I don’t care who you are!
You’re making her cry! Let me pass! Let me get----”