The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 40

He ripped the padlock from the door and let himself in. He flung wide a shutter and let the afternoon sun flood the room, and once inside a score of little things worked the magic of memory upon him and tore afresh every wound that was festering.

There hung the landscapes that he and she had loved and as he looked at them her voice seemed to sound again in his ears like forgotten music. From somewhere came the heavy fragrance of honeysuckle and old nights with her in the moonlight rushed back upon him.

Then he saw an ap.r.o.n on a peg--hanging limp and empty, and again he saw her in it. He went and opened a drawer in which his own clothes had been kept--and there neatly folded by her hand were things of his.

John Spurrier, whose iron nerve had once been cafe talk in the Orient, sat down on a quilted bed and tearless sobs racked him.

"No," he said to himself at last. "No, if she wants her freedom I can't pursue her. I've hurt her enough--and G.o.d knows I'm punished enough."

Unless he were tamely to surrender to the despair that beset him, John Spurrier had one other thing to do before he left the hills. He must come to such an agreement with Bud Hawkins as would give him a right of way over that single tract and complete his chain of holdings. Thus fortified the field beyond the ridge would be safe against invasion by his enemies and even the other field would have readier outlet to market by that route. In the Hawkins property lay the keystone of the arch. With it the position was impregnable. Without it all the rest fell apart like an inarticulated skeleton.

It happened that Spurrier met Hawkins as he went away from his lonely house, and forcing his own miseries into the background, he sought to become the business man once more. He began with a frank statement of the facts and offered fair and substantial terms of trade.

Both because his affection for the old preacher would have tolerated nothing less and because it would have been folly now to play the cheaper game, he spoke in the terms of generosity.

But to his surprise and discomfiture, Brother Hawkins shook a stubborn head.

"Thar ain't skeercely no power on 'arth, Mr. Spurrier," he declared, "thet could fo'ce me inter doin' no business with ye."

"But, Brother Hawkins," argued the opportunity hound, "you are cutting your own throat. You and I standing together are invincible. Separate, we are lost. I'm almost willing to let you name the terms of agreement--to write the contract for yourself."

"I've done been pore a right long while already," the preacher reminded him as his eyes kindled with the zealot's fire. "Long afore my day Jesus Christ was pore an' ther Apostle Paul, an' other righteous men. I ain't skeered ter go on in likewise ter what I've always done." He paused and laid a kindly hand on the shoulder of the man who offered him wealth.

"I ain't seekin' ter fault ye unduly, John Spurrier. Mebby ye've done follered yore lights--but we don't see with no common eye, ner no mutual disc'arnment. Ye've done misled folk thet swore by ye, ef I sees. .h.i.t a'right. Now ye offers me wealth, much ther same as Satan offered hit ter Jesus on a high place, an' we kain't trade--no more then what they could trade."

The old preacher's att.i.tude held the trace of kindliness that sought to drape reproof in gentleness and to him, as had been impossible with Cappeze, Spurrier poured out his confidence. At the outset, he confessed, he had deliberately dedicated himself to the development of wealth for himself and his employers, with no thought of others.

Later, in a fight between wary capitalists where vigilance had to be met with vigilance, the seal of secrecy had been imperative. Frankness with the mountain men would have been a warning to his enemies. Now, however, his sense of responsibility was awake. Now he wanted to win back his status of confidence in this land where he had known his only home. Now what weight he had left to throw into the scales would be righteously thrown. Even yet he must move with strict, guarded secrecy.

But the old circuit rider shook his head.

"Hit's too late, now, ter rouse faith in me, John," he reiterated.

"Albeit I'd love ter credit ye, ef so-be I could. What's come ter pa.s.s kain't be washed out with words." He paused before he added the simple edict against which there was no arguing.

"Mebby I mout stand convinced even yit ef I didn't know thet ther devil was urgin' me on with prospects of riches."

One thing remained to him; the pride that should stiffen him in the presence of his accusers and judges. When he went into the eclipse of ruin, at least he would go with unflinching gallantry.

And it was in that mood that Spurrier reached his club in New York and prepared himself for the ordeal of the next day's interview.

He had wired Harrison of his coming, but not of his hopelessness, and when his telephone jangled and he heard the voice of the financier, he recognized in it an undercurrent of exasperation, which carried omen of a difficult interview.

"That you, Spurrier? This is Harrison. Be at my office at eleven to-morrow morning. Perhaps you can construe certain riddles."

"Of what nature, sir?"

"Of a nature that won't bear full discussion over the wire. We have had an anonymous letter from some mysterious person who claims to come with the situation in a sling. It may be a crank whom we'll have to throw out--or some one we dare not ignore. At all events, it's up to you to dispose of him. He's in your province. If you fail, we lose out and, as I said once before, you go to the sc.r.a.p heap."

Spurrier hung up the phone and sat in a nerveless trepidation which was new and foreign to his nature. This interview of to-morrow morning would call for the tallest bluffing he had ever attempted, and the chances would, perhaps, turn on hair-trigger elements of personal force.

He must depend on his coolness, audacity, and adroitness to win a decision, and, except by guesswork, he could not hope to formulate in advance the terrain of battle or the nature of counter-attack with which he must meet his adversary.

That evening he strolled along Broadway and found himself yielding to a dangerous and whimsical mood. He wondered how many other men outwardly as self-a.s.sured and prosperous as himself were covertly confessing suicide as one of to-morrow's probabilities.

Over Longacre Square the incandescent billboards flamed and flared.

The darning-wool kitten disported itself with mechanical abandon. The woman who advertised a well-known corset and the man who exploited a brand of underwear brilliantly made and unmade their toilets far above the sidewalk level. Motors shrieked and droned and crowds drifted.

Before a moving-picture theater, his introspective eye was momentarily challenged by a gaudy three-sheet. The poster proclaimed a popular screen star in a "fight fuller of punch than that of 'The Wreckers.'"

What caused Spurrier to pause was the composition of the picture--and the mental comparison which it evoked. A man crouched behind a heavy table, overthrown for a barricade--as he had once done.

Fallen enemies lay on the floor of a crude Western cabin. Others still stood, and fought with flas.h.i.+ng guns and faces "registering"

desperation, frenzy, and maniac fury. The hero only, though alone and outnumbered, was grimly calm. The stress of that inferno had not interfered with the theatric pose of head and shoulders--the grace and effect of gesture that was conveyed in the two hands wielding two smoking pistols.

Spurrier smiled. It occurred to him that had a director stood by while he himself had knelt behind a table he would have bawled out many amendments which fact had overlooked. Apparently he and his attackers had, by these exacting standards of art, missed the drama of the situation.

Over him swept a fresh flood of memory, and it brought a cold and nervous dampness to his temples. Again he saw Glory rising at the broken window with a pigeon to release--and a life to sacrifice, if need be. On her face had been no theatric expression which would have warranted a close-up.

Spurrier hastened on, turning into a side street where he could put the glare at his back and find a more mercifully dark way.

He was seeing, instead of dark house fronts, the tops of pine trees etched against an afterglow, and Glory standing silhouetted against a hilltop. Above the grind of the elevated and the traffic, he was hearing her voice in thrushlike song, happy because he loved her.

The agony of loss overwhelmed him, and he actually longed, as for a better thing, for that moment to come back when behind an overturned table he had endured the suspense which death had promised to end in an instant filled and paid for with revenge.

Then through his disturbed brain once more flashed lines of verse:

"I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more, The best and the last!

I should hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore, And bade me creep past."

At all events he would, in the figurative sense, die fighting to-morrow. He knew his mistakes now. If he lived on he hoped to atone for them, but if he died he would go out without a whine.

And if he must die, there was one way that seemed preferable to others. The army would have none of him, as an officer, because he stood besmirched of honor. But he knew the stern temper of the mountaineers. They would rise in unanimous response to the call of arms. He could go with them, not with any insignia on his collar, but marching shoulder against shoulder into that red h.e.l.l of Flanders and France, where a man might baptize himself, shrive himself, and die.

And in dying they would leave a record behind them!

CHAPTER XXII

Down along the creekbeds back of Hemlock Mountain young Jimmy Litchfield, a son of old Uncle Jimmy, had been teaming with a well-boring outfit and his wagon had bogged down in deep mud. He had failed to extricate himself so he tramped three hard, steep miles and telephoned for an extra team. While he awaited deliverance he found himself irked and, to while away the time, set his drill down haphazard and began to bore.

It would be some hours before help arrived, and when he had worked a while he had forgotten all about help.

His drill had struck through soft gravel to an oil pool lying close to the surface, and the black tide gushed crazily.

Young Jimmy sat back watching the dark jet that he had no means of stemming or containing, and through his simple soul flowed all the intoxication of triumph.

He was the discoverer of a new--and palpably a rich field!