The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 18

"When we went fis.h.i.+ng," he said, "I asked her whether she never felt a curiosity for the things beyond the ridges--and her eagerness startled me."

An abrupt seriousness overspread the older face and the answering voice was sternly pitched.

"I should be profoundly distressed, sir," said Cappeze, "to have discontent brought home to her. I should resent it as unfriendly and disloyal."

"And yet," Spurrier's own voice was quickened into a more argumentative timber, "she has a splendid vitality that it's a pity to crush."

"She has," came the swift retort, "a contented heart which it's a pity to unsettle."

The elder eyes hardened and looked out over the wall of obstinacy that had immured d.y.k.e Cappeze's life, but his words quivered to a tremor of deep feeling.

"I've given her an education of sorts. She knows more law than some judges, and if she's ignorant of the world of to-day she's got a bowing acquaintance with the cla.s.sics. I'm not wholly selfish. If there was some one--down below that I could send her to--some one who would love her enough because she needs to be loved--I'd stay here alone, and willingly, despite the fact that it would well-nigh kill me." He paused there and his eyes were broodingly somber, then almost fiercely he went on: "I would trust her in no society where she might be affronted or belittled. I would rather see her live and die here, talking the honest, old crudities of the pioneers, than have her venture into a life where she could not make her own terms."

"Perhaps she could make her own terms," hazarded Spurrier, and the other snapped his head up indignantly.

"Perhaps--yes--and perhaps not. You yourself are a man of the world, sir. What would--one of your own sort--have to offer her out there?"

Under that challenging gaze the man from the East found himself flus.h.i.+ng. It was almost as though under the hypothetical form of the question, the father had bluntly warned him off from any interference unless he came as an avowed suitor. He had no answer and again the lawyer spoke with the compelling force of an ultimatum.

"She must stay here with me, who would die for her, until she goes to some man who offers her everything he has to offer; some man who would die for her, too." His voice had fallen into tenderness, but a stern ring went with his final words. "Meanwhile, I stand guard over her like a faithful dog. I may be old and scarred but, by G.o.d, sir, I am vigilant and devoted!" He waved his thin hand with a gesture of dismissal for a closed subject, and in a changed tone added:

"I've recently heard of two other travelers riding through--and they have taken up several land options."

"What meaning do you read into it, Mr. Cappeze?"

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. If he had no explanation to offer, it was plain that he did not regard the coming of the strangers as meaningless.

"I'm going," said Spurrier casually, "to make a trip up Snake Fork to the head of Little Quicksand. Is there any one up there I can call on for lodging and information?"

The lawyer shook his head. "It's a mighty rough country and spa.r.s.ely settled. You'll find a lavish of rattlesnakes--and a few unlettered humans. There's a fellow up there named Sim Colby who might shelter you overnight. He lives by himself, and has a roof that sheds the rain. It's about all you can ask."

"It's enough," smiled Spurrier, and a few days later he found himself climbing a stiff ascent toward a point where over the tree-tops a thread of smoke proclaimed a human habitation.

He was coming unannounced to the house of Sim Colby, but if he had expected his visit to be an entire surprise he was mistaken, and if he had known the agitation that went a little way ahead of him, he would have made a wide detour and pa.s.sed the place by.

Sim was hoeing in his steeply pitched field when he saw and recognized the figure which was yet a half-hour's walk distant, by the meanderings of the trail. The hoe fell from his hand and his posture stiffened so inimically that the hound at his feet rose and bristled, a low growl running half smothered in its throat.

Doubtless, Colby reasoned, Spurrier was coming to his lonely house with a purpose of venom and punishment, yet he walked boldly and to the outward glance he seemed unarmed. Hence it must be that in the former army officer's plan lay some intent more complex than mere open-and-shut meeting and slaying: some carefully planned and guileful climax to be approached by indirection. Very well, he would also play the game out, burying his suspicion under a guise of artlessness, but watching every move--and when the moment came striking first.

At a brook, as he hastened toward his house by a short cut, he knelt to drink, for his throat was d.a.m.nably dry, and in the clear water the pasty pallor and terror of his face was given back to him, and warned him. But also the mirroring brought another thought and the thought fathered swift action. In the army he had been spare and clean-shaven and a scar had marked his chin. Now he was bearded. He carried a beefier bulk and an altered appearance.

Could there be any possibility of Spurrier's failing to recognize him--of his having been, after all, ignorant of his presence here?

Yet his eyes would be recognizable. They were arrestingly distinctive, for one of them was pale-blue and the other noticeably grayish.

By the path he was following, stalks of Jimson weed grew rank, and Sim, rising from his knees, pulled off a handful of leaves and crushed them between his palms. When he had reached the house his first action was to force from this bruised leaf.a.ge a few drops of liquid into a saucer and this juice he carefully injected into his eyes.

Then he went to the door and squinted up at the sun. It would be fifteen minutes before Spurrier would arrive and fifteen minutes might be enough. He half closed his eyes, because they were stinging painfully, and sat waiting, to all appearances indolent and thoughtless.

Spurrier plodded on, measuring the distance to the smoke thread until he came in view of the cabin itself, then he approached slowly since the stiff climb had winded him.

Now he could see the s.h.i.+ngle roof and the log walls, trailed over with morning-glory vines, and in the door the slouching figure of a man. He came on and the native rose lazily.

"My name's John Spurrier," called out the traveler, "and Lawyer Cappeze cited you to me as a man who might shelter me overnight."

The man who had deserted chewed nonchalantly on a gra.s.s straw and regarded the other incuriously--which was a master bit of dissembling.

Between them, it seemed to Sim Colby who had once been Private Grant, lay the body of a murdered captain. Between them, too, lay the guilt of his a.s.sa.s.sination. To the Easterner's appraisal this heavy-set mountaineer with unkempt hair and ragged beard was merely a local type and yet in one respect he was unforgettable.

It was his eyes. They were arrestingly uncommon eyes and, once seen, they must be remembered. What was the quality that made one notice them so instantly, Spurrier questioned himself. Then he realized.

They were inkily black eyes, but that was not all. There seemed to be in them no line of demarcation between iris and pupil--only liquid pools of jet.

The two men sat there as the shadows lengthened and talked "plumb friendly" as Colby later admitted to himself. They smoked Spurrier's "fotched-on" tobacco and drank native distillation from the demijohn that Colby took down from its place on a rafter. Yet the host was filling each tranquilly flowing minute with the intensive planning of a hospitality that was, like Macbeth's, to end in murder.

Spurrier would sleep in an alcovelike room which could be locked from the outside. Back through the brush was a spot of quicksand where a body would leave no trace. One thing only troubled the planning brain.

He wished he could learn just who knew of his guest's coming here; just what precautions that guest had taken before embarking on such a venture.

From outside came a shout, interrupting these reflections, and Sim was at once on his feet facing the front door, with a surrept.i.tious hand inside his s.h.i.+rt, and one eye covertly watching Spurrier, even as he looked out. A snarl, too, drew his lips into an unpleasant twist.

The Easterner put down to mountain caution the amazing swiftness with which the other had come from his hulking p.r.o.neness to upstanding alertness. But with equal rapidity, Sim's pose relaxed into ease and he shouted a welcome as the door darkened with a figure physically splendid in its spare strength and commanding height.

Spurrier rose and found himself looking into a face with most engaging eyes and teeth that flashed white in smiling.

For a moment as the newcomer gazed at Sim Colby his expression mirrored some sort of surprise and his lips moved as if to speak, but Spurrier could not see, because Colby's back was turned, the warning glance that shot between the two, and the big fellow's lips closed again without giving utterance to whatever he had been on the point of saying--something to do with eyes that had mystifyingly changed their color.

"Mister Spurrier, this hyar's Sam Mosebury," announced the host.

"Mebby ye mout of heered tell of him."

Spurrier nodded. So this was the outlaw against whose terrorism old Cappeze had broken his Quixote lances, the windmill that had unhorsed him; the man with a criminal record at which a wild region trembled.

"I've heered tell of Mr. Spurrier, too," vouchsafed the murderer equably. "He's a friend of old d.y.k.e Cappeze's."

The "furriner" made no denial. Though he had been sitting with his head in the jaws of death ever since he entered this door, it had been without any presentiment of danger. Now he felt the menace of this terrorist's presence, and that menace was totally fict.i.tious.

"Mr. Cappeze has befriended me," he answered stiffly. "I reckon that's not a recommendation to you, is it?"

The man who had newly entered laughed. He drew a chair forward and seated himself.

"I reckon, Mr. Spurrier, hit ain't none of my business one way ner t'other," he said. "Anyhow, hit ain't no reason why you an' me kain't be friends, is. .h.i.t?"

"It doesn't make any difficulty with me," laughed Spurrier in relief, "if it doesn't with you."

Sam Mosebury looked at him, then his voice came with a dry chuckle of humor.

"Over at my dwellin' house," he announced with a pleasant drawl, "I've got me a pet mockin'-bird--an' I've got me a pet cat, too. Ther three of us meks up ther fam'ly over thar."

Spurrier looked at the strong-featured face as he prompted, "Yes?"