The Call of the Cumberlands Part 32

"You don't like it, Drennie?" he anxiously questioned. But she smiled in answer, and declared:

"I love it."

He went out a few minutes later to telephone for her to Mrs. Lescott, and gave Adrienne _carte blanche_ to browse among his portfolios and stacked canvases until his return. In a few minutes, she discovered one of those efforts which she called his "rebellious pictures."

These were such things as he painted, using no model except memory perhaps, not for the making of finished pictures, but merely to give outlet to his feelings; an outlet which some men might have found in talk.

This particular canvas was roughly blocked in, and it was elementally simple, but each brush stroke had been thrown against the surface with the concentrated fire and energy of a blow, except the strokes that had painted the face, and there the brush had seemed to kiss the canvas.

The picture showed a barefooted girl, standing, in barbaric simplicity of dress, in the glare of the arena, while a gaunt lion crouched eying her. Her head was lifted as though she were listening to faraway music.

In the eyes was indomitable courage. That canvas was at once a declaration of love, and a _miserere_. Adrienne set it up beside her own portrait, and, as she studied the two with her chin resting on her gloved hand, her eyes cleared of questioning. Now, she knew what she missed in her own more beautiful likeness. It had been painted with all the admiration of the mind. This other had been dashed off straight from the heart--and this other was Sally! She replaced the sketch where she had found it, and Samson, returning, found her busy with little sketches of the Seine.

"Drennie," pleaded Wilfred Horton, as the two leaned on the deck rail of the _Mauretania_, returning from Europe, "are you going to hold me off indefinitely? I've served my seven years for Rachel, and thrown in some extra time. Am I no nearer the goal?"

The girl looked at the oily heave of the leaden and cheerless Atlantic, and its somber tones found reflection in her eyes. She shook her head.

"I wish I knew," she said, wearily. Then, she added, vehemently: "I'm not worth it, Wilfred. Let me go. Chuck me out of your life as a little pig who can't read her own heart; who is too utterly selfish to decide upon her own life."

"Is it"--he put the question with foreboding--"that, after all, I was a prophet? Have you--and South--wiped your feet on the doormat marked 'Platonic friends.h.i.+p'? Have you done that, Drennie?"

She looked up into his eyes. Her own were wide and honest and very full of pain.

"No," she said; "we haven't done that, yet. I guess we won't.... I think he'd rather stay outside, Wilfred. If I was sure I loved him, and that he loved me, I'd feel like a cheat--there is the other girl to think of.... And, besides, I'm not sure what I want myself.... But I'm horribly afraid I'm going to end by losing you both."

Horton stood silent. It was tea-time, and from below came the strains of the s.h.i.+p's orchestra. A few ulster-m.u.f.fled pa.s.sengers gloomily paced the deck.

"You won't lose us both, Drennie," he said, steadily. "You may lose your choice--but, if you find yourself able to fall back on subst.i.tutes, I'll still be there, waiting."

For once, he did not meet her scrutiny, or know of it. His own eyes were fixed on the slow swing of heavy, gray-green waters. He was smiling, but it is as a man smiles when he confronts despair, and pretends that everything is quite all right. The girl looked at him with a choke in her throat.

"Wilfred," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "I'm not worth worrying over. Really, I'm not. If Samson South proposed to me to-day, I know that I should refuse him. I am not at all sure that I am the least little bit in love with him. Only, don't you see I can't be quite sure I'm not? It would be horrible if we all made a mistake. May I have till Christmas to make up my mind for all time? I'll tell you then, dear, if you care to wait."

Tamarack Spicer sat on the top of a box car, swinging his legs over the side. He was clad in overalls, and in the pockets of his breeches reposed a bulging flask of red liquor, and an unbulging pay envelope.

Tamarack had been "railroading" for several months this time. He had made a new record for sustained effort and industry, but now June was beckoning him to the mountains with vagabond yearnings for freedom and leisure. Many things invited his soul. Almost four years had pa.s.sed since Samson had left the mountains, and in four years a woman can change her mind. Sally might, when they met on the road, greet him once more as a kinsman, and agree to forget his faulty method of courts.h.i.+p.

This time, he would be more diplomatic. Yesterday, he had gone to the boss, and "called for his time." To-day, he was paid off, and a free lance.

As he reflected on these matters, a fellow trainman came along the top of the car, and sat down at Tamarack's side. This brakeman had also been recruited from the mountains, though from another section--over toward the Virginia line.

"So yer quittin'?" observed the new-comer.

Spicer nodded.

"Goin' back thar on Misery?"

Again, Tamarack answered with a jerk of his head.

"I've been layin' off ter tell ye somethin', Tam'rack."

"Cut her loose."

"I laid over in Hixon last week, an' some fellers that used ter know my mother's folks took me down in the cellar of Hollman's store, an'

give me some licker."

"What of hit?"

"They was talkin' 'bout you."

"What did they say?"

"I seen that they was enemies of yours, an' they wasn't in no good humor, so, when they axed me ef I knowed ye, I 'lowed I didn't know nothin' good about ye. I had ter cuss ye out, or git in trouble myself."

Tamarack cursed the whole Hollman tribe, and his companion went on:

"Jim Asberry was thar. He 'lowed they'd found out thet you'd done shot Purvy thet time, an' he said"--the brakeman paused to add emphasis to his conclusion--"thet the next time ye come home, he 'lowed ter git ye plumb sh.o.r.e."

Tamarack scowled.

"Much obleeged," he replied.

At Hixon, Tamarack Spicer strolled along the street toward the court- house. He wished to be seen. So long as it was broad daylight, and he displayed no hostility, he knew he was safe--and he had plans.

Standing before the Hollman store were Jim Asberry and several companions. They greeted Tamarack affably, and he paused to talk.

"Ridin' over ter Misery?" inquired Asberry.

"'Lowed I mout as well."

"Mind ef I rides with ye es fur es Jesse's place?"

"Plumb glad ter have company," drawled Tamarack,

They chatted of many things, and traveled slowly, but, when they came to those narrows where they could not ride stirrup to stirrup, each jockeyed for the rear position, and the man who found himself forced into the lead turned in his saddle and talked back over his shoulder, with wary, though seemingly careless, eyes. Each knew the other was bent on his murder.

At Purvy's gate, Asberry waved farewell, and turned in. Tamarack rode on, but shortly he hitched his horse in the concealment of a hollow, walled with huge rocks, and disappeared into the laurel.

He began climbing, in a crouched position, bringing each foot down noiselessly, and pausing often to listen. Jim Asberry had not been outwardly armed when he left Spicer. But, soon, the brakeman's delicately attuned ears caught a sound that made him lie flat in the lee of a great log, where he was masked in clumps of flowering rhododendron. Presently, Asberry pa.s.sed him, also walking cautiously, but hurriedly, and cradling a Winchester rifle in the hollow of his arm. Then, Tamarack knew that Asberry was taking this cut to head him off, and waylay him in the gorge a mile away by road but a short distance only over the hill. Spicer held his heavy revolver c.o.c.ked in his hand, but it was too near the Purvy house to risk a shot. He waited a moment, and then, rising, went on noiselessly with a snarling grin, stalking the man who was stalking him.

Asberry found a place at the foot of a huge pine where the undergrowth would cloak him. Twenty yards below ran the creek-bed road, returning from its long horseshoe deviation. When he had taken his position, his faded b.u.t.ternut clothing matched the earth as inconspicuously as a quail matches dead leaves, and he settled himself to wait. Slowly and with infinite caution, his intended victim stole down, guarding each step, until he was in short and certain range, but, instead of being at the front, he came from the back. He, also, lay flat on his stomach, and raised the already c.o.c.ked pistol. He steadied it in a two-handed grip against a tree trunk, and trained it with deliberate care on a point to the left of the other man's spine just below the shoulder blades.

Then, he pulled the trigger! He did not go down to inspect his work.

It was not necessary. The instantaneous fas.h.i.+on with which the head of the ambuscader settled forward on its face told him all he wanted to know. He slipped back to his horse, mounted and rode fast to the house of Spicer South, demanding asylum.

The next day came word that, if Tamarack Spicer would surrender and stand trial, in a court dominated by the Hollmans, the truce would continue. Otherwise, the "war was on."

The Souths flung back this message: