Читать книгу: «The Portal of Dreams», страница 11

It appeared that every one had made the crossing unharmed, though for a few minutes each man held to such concealment as he had attained and there was no effort to reunite.

At last, like disorganized partridges coming back to the covey, we crawled out of our individual hiding-places and began collecting on the trail-like path which went twisting up to the house. Some led their horses and some, who like myself had been separated from their beasts, came on foot.

As we gathered without a sound the mountaineers were searching the timber with wide eyes that contended against the darkness.

Then came the startling outburst of a fresh volley. It was fired into the group and fired from cover on the attorney's own property. I felt a sensation not unlike a hornet sting in my left shoulder and clapped my right hand against the spot. I did not fall. I even had a sense of surprise at the comparative mildness and painlessness of the pang. I heard some one fall heavily, but in the darkness it was impossible to distinguish individuals. So close on the assassin's shots that they were hardly distinguishable came the cracks of our own guns, and without giving the concealed riflemen time to shift positions our men charged into the ambush.

Our policy was no longer one of retreat, but of attack. I saw a tall youth plough his way through the thicket toward a clump of cedar which had just belched fire, and having to do something, I followed at his heels. The silence had given way now to the ripping of bushes and the kicking up of dead leaves, and twice off at my side I heard the pop-popping of rifles. I, following my guide, was crouching and slipping from tree trunk to laurel bush and from laurel bush to boulder. Suddenly a spurt of flame and a report burst out in our faces, and the song of a bullet passing near made me duck my head. Then the man with me fired and there was a groan from the front and the crash of a body falling into a bush.

Afterward (I suppose in a very few minutes) quiet settled again, except for the treading of our men as they searched the timber. The assailants were clearly driven off. My companion even ventured to bend down as we returned and strike a match over the fallen body in the brush. As it flared up, I recognized with a shock, the thin, saddened face of the sockless man who had accosted us in the road, and whom our driver had called Rat-Ankle. He now lay doubled in a shapeless heap, and dead.

We already knew that the casualties had not been one-sided, and as my companion and I regained the road among the first we saw that some one still lay there, his horse standing quietly over him. A glance told me that it was Weighborne. His bulky size even in that crumpled attitude unmistakably proclaimed him. As we bent over him, we found that he was unconscious but breathing, and we hoisted him up to an empty saddle, where we held him as we made the trip to the house.

CHAPTER XX
A CAVALCADE FROM THE LAUREL

I have since searchingly asked myself whether, at that time, any mean thought entered my mind as to the possibilities which might open for me if Weighborne died. I set it down in justification, though it may rather be attributable to the excitement of the moment than to inherent guilelessness, that that phase of the matter did not occur to me. Had I entertained such speculations they must have been short lived, for when we arrived at the cabin and made an examination, and when later by relayed telephone messages we brought the doctor, it was to learn that the patient would have to lie in bed for perhaps a week or two, but need fear no grave consequences. His wound had narrowly missed the heart, but the margin was sufficient. My own injury proved to be a mere flesh scratch and a bandage did for it all that was needful.

I was rather surprised at the almost lethargic calmness with which the household greeted our disordered homecoming. Preparations for supper went on with little interruption. There was no excited demand from those who had stayed at home, for the full story, and even the children seemed uninquisitive. Only the aged woman showed a flash of unexpected fire as she demanded, "Didn't ye git nary one of them?"

"We got Rat-Ankle," drawled an unshaven lout with a revolting note of placid satisfaction.

"That's better'n not gettin' nary one," commended the old woman. Her voice revealed the hereditary source of Marcus' ability for sincere hating.

I looked at her aged, monkey-like face and the intensity of her beady eyes with wonderment. There was vindictiveness there but no fear, no excitement even, except the excitement of hate – and yet this old woman was the same who could not be induced to travel on a railroad train for fear of an accident.

It was several hours later that the doctor arrived. He was much like the men among whom he lived. If he had once been otherwise long association had roughened him to their own similitude. He entered with a wordless nod and went straight to the bed where the injured man lay unconscious. After a silent examination he opened his worn and faded saddle-bags and proceeded taciturnly but capably with his work. He asked no questions and Marcus volunteered no explanation. At last he rose and said, "He ain't in no great danger if he keeps quiet. Have you got a little licker in the house, Calloway?"

Before the fireplace he poured generously from a stoneware jug into a tin cup, but instead of tossing down his white whiskey at a gulp he sipped it slowly, while he gave directions to the lawyer or shouted them loudly into the ear of the old woman. The only allusion to the ambuscade came from her.

"Our folks got Rat-Ankle," she announced somewhat triumphantly. "But they didn't see nary other face of them that lay-wayed 'em."

"Don't pay no attention to Mother," said Marcus more hastily than I had before heard him speak; "at times she gets childish."

The physician nodded.

Then it was that I, in an ignorance which had not learned the valuable art of general distrust, volunteered a remark for which my host, so soon as we were alone, rebuked me sternly.

"Mrs. Marcus is mistaken as to that," I said. "Just as the volley was fired, I recognized Curt Dawson."

The voice of Calloway Marcus again cut in with an interruption. "Oh, I reckon you're mistaken about that, Mr. Deprayne. I understand Dawson is across the Virginia line."

"I'm sure enough," I persisted, failing entirely to catch my host's effort to silence me, "to swear to it in court."

"Mr. Deprayne is a stranger here," deprecated the lawyer. "He isn't familiar enough with our people to be certain in these matters."

Again the doctor nodded and, taking up his saddle-bags, went out. As soon as he had bidden him farewell, Marcus returned. He walked over and stood before me with a face that was deeply troubled. Except for his mother, too deaf to hear his low-pitched voice, and Weighborne, whose initial unconsciousness had passed under medical administrations into a profound sleep, we were alone.

"Sir," he said patiently, "I can't be angry with you because you don't understand what you have done. Perhaps I should have warned you. I sent for Richardson because he was the only doctor within many hours' riding, but I don't confide in him. He will carry straight to Garvin your announcement that you have recognized his gun-man. You have given away a secret I might have used to great advantage. Sir, you have tremendously complicated matters."

He dropped his hands at his sides with a weary gesture, half-despair. "However, it's done now," he added, "it's no use to deplore it – but, for God's sake, be more careful in the future."

When Weighborne recovered consciousness he spoke to me once more of his wife. He was afraid that an exaggerated report of the affair would leak through to the Lexington papers, and he wished to allay her anxiety. The duty of this reassurance devolved on me, but the complicated system of telephoning spared me the torture of felicitating her. The message was relayed through disinterested voices before it reached her ears. As it eventuated Weighborne's precaution was a wise one since the news filtered that same night to a newspaper correspondent at the railroad town. This scribe so well utilized his information that the papers of the next morning carried scare-heads over a story of bloodshed and massacre which accorded to both of us desperate wounds and ludicrously lauded us as heroes.

It cannot be said for Weighborne that he proved a docile patient. He had all the energetic man's aversion to inactive days in bed, and he greatly preferred, if he must submit to such an exigency, that it be in his own bed and among more plentiful conveniences, than could be afforded here. But to move him over twenty semi-perpendicular miles was pronounced impossible and to that decree he had to submit.

I, who, despite my newspaper peril, was not even bedridden, continued the daily rides to tracts marked for inspection, and discussed the day's work with him in the evening.

One afternoon we met in the road a party of horsemen who halted us and expressed the desire for a peaceable parley. Marcus gave his assurance and a stout fellow with a ruddy, good-natured face and a benevolent smile rode out and accosted us.

"You're a lawyer, Calloway," he began, "an' I reckon you know I've got to do my duty. I hope you ain't holdin' hit ergainst me none." He paused and seemed relieved when the attorney nodded his understanding.

"I just want ter know ef you won't bring yer fellers ter county co'te any day this week that suits you an' answer fer the killin' of Rat-Ankle. I'm namin' it to yer like a friend, an' I'm askin' you ter set the day. Hit ain't nothin' but a matter of givin' bail noways."

"For whom have you warrants?" asked Marcus.

The sheriff read a list of a half-dozen names, all kinsmen and retainers of the attorney. Weighborne and myself were not included. Marcus accepted service and agreed to be present on the date named. It was not until the sheriff's men had waved their hands and ridden away that he turned to me.

"That shows Garvin's effrontery," he remarked with a laugh. "He summonses me to answer in his own court, for meeting with hostility the attack of his own assassins. I'll be there – but I hope to give him a surprise."

Weighborne had some temperature and was often restless on his mattress of corn shucks, though his amiability held steady. One evening several days after our ambuscade, I was sitting alone and morose before the open hearth while he slept. Since our apartment had been a sickroom, the evening gatherings had been suspended and I had companionship only from my pipe and thoughts. The thoughts were not cheery comrades to-night. They went back with a brutal sort of insistence to the island and the things which had there taken root, to grow with the rank and lawless swiftness of the tropics. I had had a long conversation with Marcus that evening in which he had outlined his plans for the examining trials. He meant to strike a bold and unexpected blow, using me as his star witness.

All that the county judge could do would be to fix a bond for answering to the grand jury, but the circuit court was also under the influence of the dictator, and later when the trials came up on that docket the prosecution would become persecution. Garvin would, however, fix a light bond, he thought, in the preliminary hearing and would expect Marcus to await the main issue later. Therefore, he meant to forestall the attack with an attack in the county court. His enemies would rely on his reputation as a supporter of law and order to make his warfare a warfare within the law, and that would also lull them into expecting only formal and preparatory fencing at the hearing of next Wednesday.

"When I take the course which I mean to take," the attorney had assured me, "it will be in the nature of exploding a bomb and may precipitate trouble. If I had the power to do so I should ask for a militia detachment to be present and preserve order, but unfortunately such a call can come only from some civil officer such as the circuit judge – and he is not disposed to act on my request. I shall have to satisfy myself with having in town every anti-Garvin man whom I can bring there. Garvin doesn't want a general battle just now. He doesn't want to attract outside clamor. He wants to move in the dark, so I think he will instruct against an outbreak in the streets or court-room. But there is one thing I can do, and that I am arranging. I am held in some respect by the papers of Louisville and Lexington, and I have written a rather full statement of conditions here and asked that reporters be present in the court-room on Wednesday. That will mean that whatever transpires cannot be hushed up. Then I shall move to swear Garvin off the bench, announcing openly that his jackal led this ambuscade in obedience to his own orders. That will be my surprise and my proof of it will be your testimony. If he suspected it he would find a way to silence you. Even as it is he knows you recognized Dawson and you must be cautious. He may seek to keep you out of court."

At length I slipped out and stood for a while leaning against a post of the porch, although the air was sharp with frost, and the stars pierced coldly through the hard steel of a winter sky. My other skies had been softer.

The mountains, under a young moon, stood out black and forbidding; frost mists hung like frozen smoke on the lowlands. From somewhere about the house came the nasal singing of a mountaineer to the plunking of a tuneless banjo. His voice rose and quavered and fell with more care that his words be distinct than that his notes be true. He had chosen a song composed by a local bard, and as I stood gazing off across the sea of moonlight and mist he alone broke and tortured the silence.

 
"Right down here in Adamson coun-tee
Where they have no church of our Lord,
Frank Smith sold Pate Art'b'ry some whis-key
And caused him to get shot in the for'd."
 

His fellows, in all solemnity, took up the ludicrous chorus and trumpeted in through their noses.

 
"Oh, whis-key's the root of all ev-il,
It fills up a drunkard's hell,
So why not vote out this old ev-il
And say farewell, whis-key, farewell!"
 

I smiled as I thought how little they were changed from rude retainers in an old, oak-raftered hall of feudal England. I felt as remote from civilization as though I were living behind the moat and draw-bridge of some embattled baron. In such a place anything might happen.

And then as the singers fell silent again, I became aware of a faint and distant sound of voices. The hound which lay curled upon the top step of the porch rose and sniffed the keen air, his bristles rising. In a moment he was off toward the road, barking blatantly.

The voices became more distinct and I moved from my position in the moonlight to the corner of the house where the shadow fell black enough to swallow me. As I did so a shuffling of feet in the loft told me that the men there had also caught the sound. The approaching party must be coming to this house, since we had no neighbor within three-quarters of a mile and the road ran out and ended at our gate.

Shortly a group of horsemen came into view, climbing the hill a quarter of a mile away. They seemed to be riding close together, knee to knee, and except when they crossed the intervals of the moon's spotlight one could see them only in a massed effect. They came to a halt in the shadow at a little distance from the gate.

The noiseless opening of a door and a momentary glimpse of a stealthy, rifle-armed figure slipping out into the shadow of the kitchen assured me of the preparedness of the impecunious clansmen who played watchdogs for their keep.

Then a loud and affable voice from the road gave greeting, "Hello, Cal Marcus!"

There was no immediate reply. Those inside were awaiting a more conclusive guarantee of pacific intent. Seemingly amicable salutations shouted from the night had before now brought householders into the excellent target of a lighted door, where they had lain down and died.

"Hello, Cal Marcus!" called the voice again, "we're a-comin' in."

"Who be ye?" challenged a voice from the interior. "Don't come till we know who ye be."

In the next moment I started violently and found myself in a tremor from head to foot, for the voice which answered the question was a woman's voice, and it was the voice of rich contralto which I had once heard and often imagined.

"It's I, Frances Weighborne," was the response, "and some gentlemen who rode over with me from the train." In corroboration came other voices, deep and masculine, and evidently recognized within as the voices of friends. The man in the shadow of the kitchen came out from his concealment and started down to the gate swinging his rifle at his side. A door opened and framed the emaciated, half-clad figure of Calloway Marcus. "Come right in, Ma'm," he shouted. The group rode up into the light and dismounted.

I saw her come in at the gate. The moonlight was full upon her, and I stood skulking in my concealment of shadow like a thief, held fast in a paralysis of jealousy and worship.

This was no place for me. I, of all men in the world, could least endure or be endured at that greeting between Weighborne and his wife who had ridden these mountains to be with him.

CHAPTER XXI
I GO WALKING AND MEET ENEMIES

He and I had labored across those twenty miles in a wagon by daylight. I could guess what it meant at night and in the saddle – and she had done it! She had come alone, except for such chance escort as she could recruit at the mining town, and now as she walked in the moon-bath of the clearing, there was not a man of them all who carried himself with so free and unwearied a stride. She was dressed in a short riding-skirt and a heavy sweater. Her shoulders swung back as free as an Indian's, and I knew at that moment, and without doubt, that this was the elusive lady of Europe who had walked out of Shepheard's Hotel the night when I sat on the terrace. She was no fragile ornament of drawing-rooms; she was the woman who strode like a goddess and for whom timidities had no existence. She was not then, after all, I exultantly reflected, the hot-house orchid; a mere whisper and fragrance on waxy petals. She was the splendid flower I had conceived, fit for God's good open skies. And that thought sent a rich bugle note of triumph ringing through the chaos of my misery.

Of a surety it was no place for me. In what was to be said behind that door I had no part. She had come splendidly, but she had not come to me. These thoughts raced tumultuously through my mind, and when she reached the steps of the porch, and the light showed the mud and dust on her corduroy skirt, and caught the gold of her hair under an upturned hat brim, I bit savagely at my lips and turned away.

I sat for an hour or more in the shadow of a fence line, with the night mists rising and congealing under the pale moonlight like the tracery of frost on a julep mug. I had left my coat inside and at last I was conscious of being deeply chilled. As often as I turned my eyes out upon the mountain and forest they came back to dwell on the rough log wall that separated her from me. I felt the drawing of the magnet. Inside at least I could look at her, devour her with my eyes though I might not open my arms to her or even my lips except to utter commonplaces. But then the thought would come of the tenderness of the reunion which was perhaps at that moment being enacted so near me, yet so far from me, and at the picture I ground my teeth. Why had I at last discovered her to be the sum of all my dreams, and more, only to sit outside a wall of logs and know that inside she was pouring out on another man the miracle of her tenderness?

To-morrow I would deliver her husband over to her and go back. Finally, however, I realized that for to-night the Marcus house was my only available abode, and that by this time the first affections of greeting would be over. I could safely return.

Decency and civility demanded that I shake her hand and give an account of my rough nursing. The cabin was already crowded. What shifting and rearranging her arrival might necessitate was a thing to which I should accommodate myself before the household settled down to sleep. Already I might have caused inconvenience by my disappearance.

As I drew near the house, the cracks of the shutters still held threads of light. At the threshold of the room where I had left Weighborne I hesitantly knocked.

"Come in," said a low voice – her voice.

I opened the door and halted in astonishment.

She was sitting before the fire in the rough chair which was usually occupied by the old woman and her eyes were fixed on the flaring logs and the white ashes below them. She was leaning forward with her brows slightly drawn in a troubled and pained expression. The blaze threw shifting dashes of carmine on her cheeks and heightened the rose-madder of her lips. Her slender fingers were intertwined across her knees and one foot, cased in a riding-boot, was tapping the floor in evident annoyance.

Her discarded sweater hung over the chair back and against its white background her graceful slenderness was clear drawn despite the loose folds of a blue flannel shirt. The open collar revealed the arch of her throat, and though it was now circled by rough fabric instead of pearls, it was the same throat and neck that had so imperiously supported the head of the island goddess. But the deep wistfulness of her face and the troubled rise and fall of her bosom with breathing that was akin to a sigh filled me with wonder. Then the complete loveliness of her, the yearning for her swept me, and I had to grip myself resolutely for control.

I must have let myself in very quietly, for she did not turn her head. But what held me in pause and anger was the discovery that Weighborne lay asleep and breathing heavily, as though the last hours had brought no exciting incident. Could it be possible that he had slept uninterruptedly? At the thought a wave of savage resentment swept me. Had she come to me I should have arisen to meet her, though I had to shake off the sleep of death itself and push my way through the heavy weight of the grave.

I went very quietly over to her, without speaking, and still she did not raise her eyes. I looked down, cursing myself that I had dared to suspect she could burgeon only in the affluence of satins.

Slowly her gaze came up and on seeing me she gave a little start. Then she spoke in a low voice which was a trifle cool.

"Do you think your welcome is very prompt?"

I stiffened and flushed. Could she be so blindly indifferent as not to know that I had taken myself off in misery and loneliness only because I was not cad enough to intrude on that meeting? And now she permitted herself to grow piqued over the only evidence of consideration it lay in my power to show her.

"Do you think I could have done otherwise?" I inquired.

"I think if I were a man, and a woman had come across the mountains – " she halted suddenly and colored. Then she added in an altered tone of flat indifference, "It doesn't matter."

For a moment I stood there with no answer to frame. Her words bewildered me. So she might have spoken had she been free or affianced to me. I was standing above her looking down and her eyes, with the same pained wideness, were looking at some picture which the flickering flames and white embers held for her imagination. Then I understood. Her words were not after all really addressed to me. She, too, was thinking of the man asleep in the huge four-post bed who had not awakened to receive her, and upon me was falling the expression of what was in her heart because I was the only person with whom she could speak. Since he had not aroused himself she had noticed my absence. Had it been otherwise I should have been forgotten. It was the final note of my quaint and unprecedented torture that I should come in as her husband's proxy for a chiding that should have been his.

For the next few moments I stood helplessly silent. Outside I heard the distant baying of hounds off on some ungoverned chase. She sat there while the longings in my heart welled and the reason in my brain reeled, until I could feel only one thing – that she should belong to me; that my arms should enfold her – that everything which balked that end was a monstrous and hideous injustice. Then as a drunken man may suddenly sink into the irresponsible vagueness that carries him into total irresponsibility, the tidal wave mastered me. There was an inarticulate sound in my throat; something between a groan and a sob, which must have startled her, for she looked suddenly up, and as she did so I dropped to my knees beside her and carried both her hands to my lips. She flinched back with a sudden little start of astonishment, but I was now the primitive creature bereft of sanity and I gathered her to me and crushed her in my arms and covered the cool softness of her cheeks and eyes and lips with my kisses until they flushed hot and crimson. In an instant the thing was over. A wave of returning reason swept me like a sluicing from a bucket of ice-water, and I came to my feet sane and unspeakably mortified. She was still sitting very silent and her flushed color had at once died to pallor. Her eyes were wide with mystified incomprehension. Her lips moved, but shaped no words. I tried to speak, but the sense of my outrageous conduct stifled me.

She could not understand and I could not tell her, of all the torture which had so culminated. After this, even should the powers of miracle clear away every other obstacle between us, she would never listen. I heard my voice groan miserably, and with no further effort at explanation or apology, I walked, or rather stumbled, to the peg where my coat hung beside the door and let myself out into the night.

Where I went I could not say. I was tramping along with the aimlessness of the man whose steps are unguided. My one conscious intention was to keep going, to kill the rest of the night and to try, as best I might to bring myself to such a point of sanity that with to-morrow morning I could return and take my medicine with at least the dignity of the condemned criminal. Vaguely I planned self-destruction – after I had faced whatever ordeal awaited me first and I had met the obligation of supporting Marcus in court. I should tell the two of them my story and let them at least realize that before I had become the madman and the brute I had been through such things as might craze a man. Weighborne was not the sort of husband who would tamely pass without punishment such an affront to his wife and himself. I hoped that his method of reprisal would be summary. That would bring a sort of relief, yet for her sake he must let me be my own executioner, that it might end there.

The night was all a-sparkle under the moonlight, and the air, spiced with frost, went into the lungs with the tingling stimulation of needles. I tramped endlessly along the road, and all the heat of my paroxysm cooled into a chill of self-contempt. Still I had no definite idea of where I was going – I was simply plunging ahead in an effort to burn up with physical exertion the restlessness and misery that possessed me.

It was only when I had walked and run alternately for hours, frequently halting to sit by the roadside and curse myself, that I realized I must have come a long way from the house of Cal Marcus, and that the night must be well spent. I might not have even then returned to a realization of outward things had I not heard the sound of voices and the patter of unshod hoofs on the roadbed. Some roistering riders of the night were making their late way home, and had I been in a less heedless mood, Marcus' frequent injunction and the things I myself had seen would have prompted me to avail myself of the concealment offered by the fence row's tangle. But these matters were all far from my thoughts, and I merely turned back to the side to let the horsemen pass. I was walking with my head downcast at a point where the moon bathed the road, when the horses behind broke into a canter. As they passed me one of the riders, with a surprised shout to his companions, wheeled his mount to a halt just before me.

"Hold on thar!" sang out a voice. "Let's take this feller along with us."

I looked resentfully up and as I did so recognized the figure above me as that of Curt Dawson. When I met his eyes I met also the glitter of a leveled pistol.

I was in no mood to be trifled with and I knew that surrender to such a capture meant disaster to Marcus's plan of attack. Their purpose was to dispose of a dangerous witness, and since my testimony was to be damning to Curt Dawson, he above all others had a motive to serve which would make him recklessly desperate. I was unarmed, but I sprang forward meaning to strike up the weapon or force him to shoot without parley. I did not greatly care which alternative he chose, but I had no mind to be taken alive. Even if I succeeded in overpowering Garvin's gun-man, there was still his ally to reckon with. However, neither thing happened. Curt Dawson, merely laughed in his indolent fashion and jerked his horse back in its haunches, sliding from the saddle as he did so.

His fellow-traveler had now reinforced him and the two of them came over and faced me.

"Bud," said the gun-man with a slow, contemptuous drawl, "we hain't ergoin' ter kill this feller – leastways not yit. Them's the orders. He hain't ergoin' ter pester us inter hit, but we're goin' ter take him along with us. He hain't got no gun. I reckon you kin put up yours." Then he turned calmly to me and added, "Now, stranger, I low yer gwine ter come along – or get the hell of a lickin' – and then come along anyhow."

The second mountaineer slipped his revolver back into the case which, mountain fashion, he wore strapped to his side beneath his left armpit. Both men carefully buttoned their leather holsters. Meantime, I looked from one to the other, gauging their distances, and made up my mind to attack Dawson first. Then I heard the assassin calmly direct, "Now, Bud, take hold of him."