The Power and the Glory Part 39

"You keep out o' range," he shouted close to Gray's ear. "They won't aim to hit Johnnie; but you they'll pick off as far as they can see ye. Bend low, honey," to the girl in the driver's seat. "But freeze to it.

Johnnie ain't no niece of mine if she goes back on a friend."

The girl in front heard neither of them. There was a bellowing detonation, and a spatter of shot fell about the flying car.

"That ain't goin' to hurt n.o.body," commented Pros philosophically. "It's no more than buck-shot anyhow."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAR WAS ALREADY LEAPING DOWN THE HILL AT A TREMENDOUS PACE]

But on the word followed a more ominous crack, and there was the whine of a bullet above them.

"My G.o.d, I can't let her do this," Gray protested. But Johnnie turned over her shoulder a s.h.i.+ning face from which all weariness had suddenly been erased, a glorified countenance that flung him the fleeting smile she had time to spare from the machine.

"You're in worse danger right now from my driving than you are from their guns," she panted.

As she spoke there sounded once more the ripping crack of a rifle, the singing of a bullet past them, and with it the flatter, louder noise of the shot-gun was repeated. Her eye in the act of turning to her task, caught the silhouette of old Gideon Himes's uncouth figure relieved against the noonday sky, as he sprang high, both arms flung up, the hands empty and clutching, and pitched headlong to his face. But her mind scarcely registered the impression, for a rifle ball struck the shaly edge of a bluff under which the road at this point ran, and tore loose a piece of the slate-like rock, which glanced whirling into the tonneau and grazed Gray Stoddard's temple. He fell forward, crumpling down into the bottom of the vehicle.

"On--go on, honey!" yelled Pros, motioning vehemently to the girl.

"Don't look back here--I'll tend to him"; and he stooped over the motionless form.

Then came the roaring impression of speed, of rus.h.i.+ng bushes that gathered themselves and ran back past the car while, working under full power, it stood stationary, as it seemed to Johnnie, in the middle of a long, dusty gray ribbon that was the road. The cries of the men behind them, all sounds of pursuit, were soon left so far in the distance that they were unheard.

"Ain't this rather fast?" shouted Uncle Pros, who had lifted Stoddard's bleeding head to his knee and, crouched on the bottom of the tonneau, was s.h.i.+elding the younger man from further injury as the motor lurched and pitched.

"Yes, it's too fast," Johnnie screamed back to him. "I'm trying to go slower, but the foot-brake won't hold. Uncle Pros, is he hurt? Is he hurt bad?"

"I don't think so, honey," roared the old man stoutly, guarding Gray's inert body with his arm. Then, stretching up as he kneeled, and leaning forward as close to her ear as he could get: "But you git him to Cottonville quick as you can. Don't you werry about goin' slow, unlessen you're scared yourself. Thar ain't no tellin' who might pop up from behind these here bushes and take a chance shot at us as we go by."

Johnnie worked over her machine wildly. Gray had told her of the foot-brake only; but her hand encountering the lever of the emergency brake, she grasped it at a hazard and shoved it forward, as the G.o.d of luck had ordered, just short of a zigzag in the steep mountain road which, at the speed they had been making, would have piled them, a ma.s.s of wreckage, beneath the cliff.

The sudden, violent check--shooting along at the speed they were, it amounted almost to a stoppage--gave the girl a sense of power. If she could do that, they were fairly safe. With the relief, her brain cleared; she was able to study the machine with some calmness. Gray could not help her--out of the side of her eye she could see where he lay inert and senseless in Pa.s.smore's hold. The lives of all three depended on her cool head at this moment. She remembered now all that Stoddard had said the morning he taught her to run the car. With one movement she threw off the switch, thus stopping the engine, entirely.

They must make it to Cottonville running by gravity wherever they could; since she had no means of knowing that there was sufficient gasoline in the tank, and it would not do to be overtaken or waylaid.

On and on they flew, around quick turns, along narrow ways that skirted tall bluffs, over stretches of comparatively level road, where Johnnie again switched on the engine and speeded up. They were skimming down from the upper Unakas like a great bird whose powerful wings make nothing of distance. But Johnnie's heart was as lead when she glanced back at the motionless figure in the tonneau, the white, blood-streaked face that lay on her uncle's arm. She turned doggedly to her steering-wheel and levers, and took greater chances than ever with the going, for speed's sake. The boy they had talked with two hours before at the chip pile, met them afoot. He leaped into the bushes to let them pa.s.s, and stared after them with dilated eyes. Johnnie never knew what he shouted. They only saw his mouth open and working. Mercifully, so far, they had met no vehicles. But now the higher, wilder mountains were behind them, there was an occasional horseman. As they neared Cottonville, and teams were numerous on the road, Johnnie, jealously unwilling to slacken speed, kept the horn going almost continuously.

People in wagons and buggies, or on foot, drawn out along the roadside, cupped hands to lips and yelled startled inquiries. Johnnie bent above the steering-wheel and paid no attention. Uncle Pros tried to answer with gesticulation or a shouted word, and sometimes those he replied to turned and ran, calling to others. But it was black Jim, riding on Roan Sultan, out with the searchers, who saw and understood. He looked down across the great two-mile turn beyond the Gap, and sighted the climbing car. Where he stood it was less than an eighth of a mile below him; he could almost have thrown a stone into it. He bent in his saddle, shaded his eyes, and gazed intently.

"Fo' G.o.d!" he muttered under his breath. "That's Mr. Gray hisself!

Them's the clothes he was wearin'!"

Whirling his horse and digging in the spurs, he rattled pell-mell down the opposite steep toward Cottonville, shouting as he went.

"They've done got him--they've found him! Miss Johnnie Consadine's a-bringin' him down in his own cyar!"

At the Hardwick place, where the front lawn sloped down with its close-trimmed, green-velvet sward, stood two horses. Charlie Conroy had come out as soon as the alarm was raised to help with the search. He and Lydia had ridden together each day since. Moving slowly along a quiet ravine yesterday, out of sight and hearing of the other searchers, Conroy had found an intimate moment in which to urge his suit. She had begged a little time to consider, with so encouraging an aspect that, this morning, when he came out that they might join the party bound for the mountains, he brought the ring in his pocket. The bulge of the big diamond showed through her left-hand glove. She had taken him at last.

She told herself that it was the only thing to do. Harriet Hardwick, who had returned from Watauga, since her sister would not come to her, stood in the door of the big house regarding them with a countenance of distinctly chastened rejoicing. Conroy's own frame of mind was evident; deep satisfaction radiated from his commonplace countenance. He was to be Jerome Hardwick's brother-in-law, an intimate member of the mill crowd. He was as near being in love with Lydia Sessions at that moment as he ever would be. As for Lydia herself, the last week had brought that thin face of hers to look all of its thirty odd years; and the smile which she turned upon her affianced was the product of conscientious effort. She was safely in her saddle, and Conroy had just swung up to his own, when Jim came pelting down the Gap road toward the village. They could see him across the slope of the hill. Conroy cantered hastily up the street a bit to hear what the boy was vociferating. Lydia's nerves quivered at sight of him returning.

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted Conroy, waving his cap. "Lord, Lord; Did you hear that, Lydia? Hoo-ee, Mrs. Hardwick! Did you hear what Jim's saying?

They've got Gray! Johnnie Consadine's bringing him--in his own car."

Then turning once more to his companion: "Come on, dear; we'll ride right down to the hospital. Jim said he was hurt. That's where she would take him. That Johnnie Consadine of yours is the girl--isn't she a wonder, though?"

Lydia braced herself. It had come, and it was worse than she could have antic.i.p.ated. She cringed inwardly in remembrance; she wished she had not let Conroy make that pitying reference--unreproved, uncorrected--to Stoddard's being a rejected man. But perhaps they were bringing Gray in dead, after all--she tried not to hope so.

The auto became visible, a tiny dark speck, away up in the Gap. Then it was sweeping down the Gap road; and once more Conroy swung his cap and shouted, though it is to be questioned that any one marked him.

Below in the village the noisy clatter brought people to door and cas.e.m.e.nt. At the Himes boarding-house, a group had gathered by the gate.

At the window above, in an arm-chair, sat a thin little woman with great dark eyes, holding a sick child in her lap. The sash was up, and both were carefully wrapped in a big shawl that was drawn over the two of them.

"Sis' Johnnie is comin' back; she sure is comin' back soon," Laurella was crooning to her baby. "And we ain't goin' to work in no cotton mill, an' we ain't goin' to live in this ol' house any more. Next thing we're a-goin' away with Sis' Johnnie and have a fi-ine house, where Pap Himes can't come about to be cross to Deanie."

High up on Unaka Mountain, where a cluttered ma.s.s of rock reared itself to front the noonday sun, an old man's figure, p.r.o.ne, the hands clutched full of leaf-mould, the gray face down amid the fern, Gideon Himes would never offer denial to those plans, nor seek to follow to that fine house.

The next moment an automobile flashed into sight coming down the long lower slope from the Gap, the horn blowing continuously, hors.e.m.e.n, pedestrians, buggies and wagons fleeing to the roadside bushes as it roared past in its cloud of dust.

"Look, honey, look--yon's Sis' Johnnie now!" cried Laurella. "She's a-runnin' Mr. Stoddard's car. An' thar's Unc' Pros ... Is--my Lord! Is that Mr. Stoddard hisself, with blood all over him?"

Lydia and Conroy, hurrying down the street, drew up on the fringes of the little crowd that had gathered and was augmenting every moment, and Johnnie's face was turned to Stoddard in piteous questioning. His eyes were open now. He raised himself a bit on her uncle's arm, and declared in a fairly audible voice:

"I'm all right. I'm not hurt."

"Somebody git me a gla.s.s of water," called Uncle Pros.

Mavity Bence ran out with one, but when she got close enough to see plainly the shackled figure Pa.s.smore supported, she thrust the gla.s.s into Mandy Meacham's hand and flung her ap.r.o.n over her head.

"Good Lord!" she moaned. "I reckon they've killed him. They done one of my brothers that-a-way in feud times, and throwed him over a bluff. Oh, my Lord; Why will men be so mean?"

Pros had taken the gla.s.s from Mandy and held it to Gray's lips. Then he dashed part of the remaining water on Stoddard's handkerchief and with Mandy's help, got the blood cleared away.

From every shanty, women and children came hastening--men hurried up from every direction.

"Look at her--look at Johnnie!" cried Beulah Catlett. "Pony! Milo!"

turning back into the house, where the boys lay sleeping. "Come out here and look at your sister!"

"Did ye run it all by yourself, Sis' Johnnie?" piped Lissy from the porch.

The girl in the driver's seat smiled and nodded to the child.

"Are you through there, Uncle Pros?" asked Johnnie. "We must get Mr.

Stoddard on to his house."

The women and children drew back, the crowd ahead parted, and the car got under way once more. The entire press of people followed in its wake, surged about it, augmenting at every corner.

"I'm afraid my horse won't stand this sort of thing," Lydia objected, desperately, reining in. Conroy glanced at her in surprise. Bay d.i.c.k was the soberest of mounts. Then he looked wistfully after the crowd.

"Would you mind if I--" he began, and broke off to say contritely, "I'll go back with you if you'd rather." It was evident that Lydia would make of him a thoroughly disciplined husband.

"Never mind," she said, locking her teeth. "I'll go with you." One might as well have it done and over with. And they hurried on to make up for lost time.

They saw the car turn in to the street which led to the Hardwick factory. Somebody had hurried ahead and told MacPherson and Jerome Hardwick; and just as they came in sight, the office doors burst open and the two men came running hatless down the steps. Suddenly the factory whistles roared out the signal that had been agreed upon, which bellowed to the hills the tidings that Gray Stoddard was found. Three long calls and a short one--that meant that he was found alive. As the din of it died down, Hexter's mills across the creek took up the message, and when they were silent, the old Victory came in on their heels, bawling it again. Every whistle in Cottonville gave tongue, clamouring hoa.r.s.ely above the valley, and out across the ranges, to the hundreds at their futile search, "Gray Stoddard is found. Stoddard is found. Alive. He is brought in alive."

MacPherson ran up to one side of the car and Hardwick to the other.