The white was succeeded by a flush in her cheeks. She looked up into his
honest eyes and was thrilled by an emotion that was new to her. It was
impossible not to answer back to that earnest affection he was
expressing. Gratitude glowed in her--and gratitude is a sister of love!
"I beg your pardon," put in Crowley, "But can't the three of us step
inside and have a little private talk?"
He made a gesture to indicate the gallery of listeners on the tavern
porch.
Once that morning Lida had found protection by handling an important
crisis in a public place. She was having no time just then to think
clearly. She was feeling sure of Latisan, after his look into her eyes.
She mustered a smile and shook her head when the drive master mutely
referred the matter to her, raising his eyebrows inquiringly.
"You'd better," warned Crowley, bridling.
The girl felt that she had no option except to keep on in the bold
course she had marked for herself. She could not conceive that the
operative would prejudice the Vose-Mern proposition in public. "I cannot
understand what private matters we three have in common, sir. I have no
desire to listen. Mr. Latisan has no time, I'm sure. He is leaving for
the north country."
"That's true," agreed Latisan, under the spell of her gaze, won by her,
loyal in all his fiber, determined to exclude all others in the world
from the partnership of two. He had put aside his anxiety to know what
she had been in the city, as Crowley knew her; that quest seemed to be
disloyalty to her. "I'm starting mighty sudden! Sorry, sir! Let Brophy
put your business with us in his refrigerator till the drive is down."
Careless of the onlookers, the girl patted his cheek, encouraging his
stand. "Till _our_ drive is down. Remember, it's ours!" she whispered.
"Harness in my horses," Latisan called to Brophy's nephew in the door of
the tavern stable.
She was human; she was a girl; Latisan's manner assured her that she had
won her battle with Crowley, whatever might have been the methods by
which he had tried to prevail over the drive master. She could not
resist the impulse to give the Vose-Mern operative a challenging look of
triumph that was lighted by the joy of her victory.
Crowley's slow mind speeded up on its one track; he opened the throttle,
smash or no smash! He marched up to Latisan and displayed a badge,
dredging it from his trousers pocket. "That's what I am, mister, an
operative for a detective agency. So is she!"
"I am not," she declared defiantly.
"Maybe not, after your flop in this case. But you were when you struck
this place, if your word means anything!"
"You're a liar," shouted Latisan. He doubled his fist and drew it back;
the girl seized the hand and unclasped the knotted grip and braided her
fingers with his.
"I don't blame you, Latisan. It's natural for you to feel that way
toward me right now," agreed Crowley. "She has slipped the cross-tag
onto you. But you're no fool. I don't ask you to take my word. Go down
to that railroad station and wire to an address I'll give you in New
York. Ask her if she dares to have you do it."
There was no longer a smolder in Latisan--it was all a red flame!
He had not realized till then how penetratingly deep had been his
conviction that this girl was something other than she assumed to be.
Crowley pulled a letter from his pocket, flapped it open, and shoved it
under Latisan's nose.
There was no further attempt to deal behind doors with the affair. It
was in Crowley's mind, then, that spreading the situation wide open
before the gaping throng, which was increasing, crowding about in a
narrowing circle, would assist his plan to make intolerable Latisan's
stay in that region.
"Look at the letterhead--Vose-Mern Agency! Look and you'll see that it's
addressed to Miss Patsy Jones, Adonia. Take it and read it! It's orders
to her from the chief!"
Latisan was plainly in no state of mind to read; he crumpled the letter
in his hand and stuffed the paper into his trousers pocket.
"Here's a telegram," continued the operative. "It's for her to go back
to New York. It hasn't been enough for her to double-cross you; she's
doing the same thing to the folks who have hired her. Nice kind of dame,
eh? I don't know just what her game is, friend! But I'm coming across to
you and tell you that the big idea is to keep you off the drive this
season. Good money has been put up to turn the trick."
In the midst of the whirling torches which made up his thoughts just
then, Latisan was not able to give sane consideration to her zeal in
urging him to duty; he was conscious only of the revelation of her
character. Out of the city had come some kind of a design to undo him!
The village was still agog with the news of his engagement; the news
bureaus on legs had gone north to tattle the thing among all the camps;
and she was a detective sent to beguile him! The faces of the bystanders
were creasing into grins.
"Ask her!" urged Crowley, relentlessly. "Or ask New York."
Postponement of the truth was futile; denial was dangerous; a confession
forced by an appeal to New York would discredit her motives; she had not
formally severed her connection with the agency. She determined to meet
this man of the woods on his own plane of honesty.
"Come with me where we can talk privately," she urged; her demeanor told
Latisan that she was not able to back the defiant stand he had taken
with Crowley a moment before.
"It's too late now," he objected, getting his emotions partly under
control. "The thing has been advertised too much to have any privacy
about it now. When they are left to guess things in this section the
guessing is awful! I'm never afraid to face men with the truth. He has
said you came here as a detective. Those men standing around heard him.
What have you to say?"
"Won't you let me talk to you alone?"
"If I'm to stand up here before men after this, the facts will have to
come out later; they may as well come out now."
He spoke mildly, but his manner afforded her no opportunity for further
appeal; he was a man of the square edge and he was acting according to
the code of the Open Places. She put away womanly weakness as best she
was able and continued with him on his own ground.
"There is a plot to keep you away from your duty on the drive this
season. You know as well as I do what interests furnished the money for
such a purpose."
"And you know about it, do you, because you are one of the detective
gang?"
"I have worked for the Vose-Mern agency."
She could not deny the evidence of that letter which he had shoved deep
down into his pocket. He had reminded her of it by whacking his hand
against his thigh.
"So that's what you are!" Again he was losing control of himself.
Men in the crowd snickered. They were perceiving much humor in the
situation.
"I can explain later." She, too, was breaking down under the strain. She
whimpered, pleading with him. "After you have brought down the drive I
can explain and----"
"Now! It must be now! I can't bring down any drive till you do explain."
She did not understand.
But he knew all too bitterly under what a sword of Damocles he was
standing. Ridicule was ready to slay him! The Big Laugh was already
gurgling deep in the throats of all the folks. The news of his
engagement had gone ahead of him to the north country; the Big Laugh
would roar along in the wake of that news.
"The truth! It must come out now!" he shouted. "All the truth--the whole
truth about yourself!"
"I can't tell you!" wailed Lida Kennard, turning her back fearsomely on
the big house on the ledges.
"You've got a mouthful of truth out of me. Can't you see how it is?"
growled Crowley.
"So that's what you are, is it?" Latisan dwelt on the subject, twisting
the handle that Crowley had given him.
"Mr. Latisan, listen to me! I implore you to forget me--what I am! Go to
your work."
"My work has nothing to do with this matter between you and me. So
that's what you are!" he repeated, insistent on his one idea, looking
her up and down. "A detective sneak!"
"I am done with the work. I am a human being, at any rate, and you
promised me----"
He sliced his hand through the air. "That's all off! You lied to me. It
must have been a lie, seeing what you are. But I believed, and I stood
up and took you for mine. The word has gone out. Every man on the Noda
will know about it. I had no rights over your life till you met me. But
when a woman lies to a man to make him do this or that she is laughing
at him behind his back. You have played me for a poor fool in the tall
timber. That's the word that's starting now."
"If you have found out how worthless I am," she sobbed, "you can go on
with your work and be a real man."
He loosed the leash on himself. He mocked her with bitter irony, his
face working hideously. "'Go on with your work!' Don't you have any idea
what men are up these woods? Who'll take orders from me after this?
They'll hoot me off the river! I'm done. You have put me down and
under!"
More than the spirit of sacrifice was actuating her then. Her impulses
were inextricably mingled, but they all tended to one end, to save him
from error. His scorn had touched her heart; meeting him on his own
plane--on the level of honesty--woman with man, she was conscious of
bitter despair because he was leaving her life. She was fighting for her
own--for the old man in the big house, for the new love that was
springing up out of her sympathy for this champion from whom, without
realizing the peril of her procedure, she had filched the weapons of his
manhood at the moment when he needed them most.
"The heart has gone out of me! You have taken it out!" he cried.
"I swear before our God that I'll be straight with you from now on.
Won't it put heart in you if I'm your wife, standing by you through
everything?" She took a long breath. Her desperation drove her to the
limits of appeal. "I love you! I know it. I must have known it when I
urged you on to your duty. I'm willing to say it here before all. Take
me, and let's fight together."
In her hysterical fear lest she was losing all, she took no thought of
her pride; she was making passionate, primitive appeal to the chosen
mate.
But she did not understand how absolutely hopeless was the wreck of this
man's fortunes, as Latisan viewed the situation. Ridicule, the taunt
that he had been fooled by a girl from the city, was waiting for him all
along the river. Echford Flagg would be the first to deny the worth of a
man who had received the Big Laugh. No man on the Noda had ever incurred
mock to such a degree. And he had vaunted his engagement to her!
She went toward him, her hands outstretched; he had been backing away
from her.
"Look out!" he warned. "I never struck a woman!" He spread his big hand.
All the fury of his forebears was rioting in him.
He was not swayed by rage, merely; there would have been something petty
in ordinary human resentment at that moment. There was another quality
that was devilishly and subtly complex in the sudden mania which
obsessed him. He had seen woodsmen leaping and shouting in the ecstasy
of drunkenness; liquor seemed to affect the men of the woods in that
way--to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged
to pitch in and quell riots where woodsmen had heaped their clothes and
were making a bonfire of the garments they needed for decency's sake.
And a mere liquid had been able to put them into that temper!
But this that was sweeping through all his being was liquid fire!
He had never been else than a spectator of what alcohol would do to a
man; he had never tasted the stuff.
Here he was, all of a sudden, drunk with something else--he knew that he
was drunk--and he let himself go! He leaped up and tossed his arms above
his head. By action alone a woodsman expressed his feelings, he told
himself, and he was only a woodsman; the hellions of the world were not
allowing him to make anything else of himself! The north country was
closed to him; his power as a boss was gone. Look at those grinning
faces around him!
Then he yelled shrilly. Many who stood around understood what that whoop
meant, though it had not been heard for a long time on the Noda. It was
"the Latisan lallyloo"! It had echoed among the hills in the old days
when John Latisan was down from the river and had grabbed a bottle from
the hand of the first bootlegger who offered his wares.
The grandson, then and there, was veritably drunk with the frenzy of
despair!
Yanking his arms free, he dragged off his belted jacket and flung it on
the ground; on the jacket, with a pile-driver sweep of his arm, he drove
down his cap.
"Lie there, drive master!" he shouted.
The down train of the narrow-gauge was dragging out of the station; a
succession of shrill whistle toots, several minutes before, had warned
prospective passengers.
Latisan ran down the middle of the road and leaped aboard the slowly
moving train when it crossed the highway. Standing on the platform of
the passenger car, he shook his fists at assembled Adonia and yelled
again.
Brophy, from the tavern porch, looked hard at the girl and started down
the steps, making his way toward the jacket and cap which Latisan had
thrown away.
She ran and picked them up and hugged them in her arms with defiant
proprietorship.
"How come?" sneered Brophy. "Latest bulletin seemed to be that the
engagement was broke!" He was suddenly hostile.
She turned from the landlord and faced Crowley. The operative was
triumphant. "It's understood that I get the credit for this job," he
informed her, _sotto voce_. His air suggested that he was convinced that
the destiny of the Flagg drive had been settled.
All about her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no
misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a
woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented
completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild
creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the
city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin
in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of
her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of
Latisan--the breaking of her grandfather's last prop. She had
intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compassed
the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his
fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were
barred by the iron of unforgiveness and by these new fires of her fault,
involuntary though that fault was.
Brophy stood before her. "I reckon you ain't going to be very popular
hereabout as a hash-slinger, Miss Whatever-your-name is." He snapped his
fingers and stretched his hand to command the transfer of the jacket and
cap. "I'll take 'em and put 'em in Ward's room."
But she clung to what she had retrieved as if she felt that she held a
hostage of fortune. Brophy refrained from laying violent hands on the
articles, and to save his face and create a diversion he turned on
Crowley.
"Let's see! You have bragged about being a detective! We don't stand for
your kind or tricks in this neck o' woods."
There was the menace of growls in the crowd. The mob spirit was
stirring. A man said something about a rail and tar and feathers.
"I'll argue with the boys and try to give you a fair start," stated the
landlord. "But you'd better pack up in a hurry. You can't wait for
to-morrow's train under my roof. I'll furnish you a livery hitch to the
junction. Take the woman with you."
It was an ugly crowd; the landlord was obliged to push back men when
Crowley followed Lida into the tavern.
Miss Elsham was just inside the door, where she had posted herself as a
spectator and listener. "There's no telling what they'll do; they're
bound to find out that I'm an operative," she quavered. "You must take
me with you, Buck."
He had been appointed her guardian and he could not refuse. But he
glowered at Lida, white and trembling.
Brophy came in after a struggle at the door; he slammed the portal and
bolted it.
"They're usually pretty genteel up here where wimmen are concerned," he
told Lida, "but they're laying it all to you. They'll let you go,
Crowley, if you'll go in a hurry. Are you one of 'em, too?" he bluntly
asked Miss Elsham, ready to suspect all strangers.