A Pagan of the Hills Part 28

The elder's face fell a little.

"Thet's a far question," he acknowledged, "but we couldn't skeercely tutor hit no otherwise--an' we keeps thet lever fastened with a chain an' padlock."

"But how erbout ther rope," persisted O'Keefe, and the older man explained. "Sometimes we has ter nail up loose planks inside thet runway, an' when we does a feller lets hisself down on thet rope."

In a week, the midsummer term of the High-court would convene and the case of the man who had wounded his neighbor would be called for trial.

The activities of possible informers became again a pregnant danger to the erstwhile Ku-Klux operators and again a squad of men with rifles set out to cope with the situation.

Halloway had slipped away for the time being, but the movements of Jerry and Alexander had been duly watched and reported. It did not altogether please the men charged with this new duty to operate about Perry Center. They would have preferred the wilder territory adjacent either to Shoulder-blade creek or to Coal City, but the thing must be accomplished and all matters are relative. If Perry Center lay in a smoother country it was still mountain country and wild enough if one were careful.

On an evening gorgeously alight with a full moon, Jerry came to the McGivins' house as was his custom. These were times when he did not have to consider sharing the right of way with a rival, and he was availing himself of his undisputed respite.

Shadows of deep purple-blue lay everywhere like velvet islands in the silver flood of the moon's radiance. Through the timbered slopes came the soft cadences of the night's minstrels--the voices of frogs and katydids and the plaintive call of the whippoorwills.

Alexander had been deeply reflective as she sat with her lovely chin resting on one hand, listening to the low-pitched voice in which her lover was pleading his cause.

"I kain't be sure--not yit," was her uncertain response to all his argument.

They saw a shadow fall across the lighted doorway at their backs, and heard the somewhat disturbed voice of Warwick McGivins.

"I've got ter go over thar ter ther wheat elevator, I reckon. I kain't find ther key nowhars an' I mistrusts I left hit in ther door when I war weighin' up wheat this evening; I'll jest leave ther two of ye hyar fer a spell."

Jerry rose obligingly to his feet. "I reckon my legs is a few y'ars younger than yourn," he announced cheerfully. "I'll jest teck my foot in my hand and light out fer over thar. Hit hain't but a whoop an' a holler distant nohow."

"Hit's a right purty night," volunteered Alexander, in a voice of vague restlessness. "I don't kinderly feel like settin' still. I'll go along with ye, Jerry."

The young man's eyes brightened delightedly. It had been a strain on his innate courtesy to surrender so much of his moonlight evening with Alexander, and now he had his reward. There had been an unrest in her eyes to-night--yet somehow he had felt her nearer to him in thought, and his bruised feelings were stirring into fresh hope.

Together they started out, and under the spell of the night's graciousness one of those silences that seem a bond of sympathy fell between them.

The way led for a while along the high road, then turned off into the woods, where the rhododendron was ma.s.sed thick. Here there was more of the velvet shadow and less of the direct moonlight, but through the open s.p.a.ces that, too, fell in filtering patterns of platinum brightness.

Once Jerry halted abruptly and stood listening, then he went on again.

"I heered hit too," said Alexander understandingly, for in the hills one pauses to question unexplained sounds in the night time. "I reckon hit war some varmint stirring."

The route they had taken led along the margin of the bluff, and when they were close to the elevator, walking single file, with Alexander in the lead, the serenity broke with the malignant sharpness of a barking rifle.

Jerry heard the whining flight of the bullet that had missed his head by inches, and as though in obedience to a single nerve impulse, both the girl and the man fell flat to the better concealment of the ground, and edged back into the sootily shadowed laurel.

"We've got need ter separate," whispered Jerry, with his lips brushing her ear. "I aims ter git inside ther elevator--and hold 'em off. You hasten down over ther cliff an' work back ter ther house. I reckon hit's me they wants, but I'll endure 'twell ye brings help."

Without wasting a needless word or breath in argument, Alexander began noiselessly twisting her way towards the brow of the precipice.

Jerry's heart was pounding with terror lest she be discovered--and to divert from her an attention that might prove fatal, he recklessly rose and leaped across a spot of moonlight, making a fleeting target, which brought from two separate sources responses of riflery.

The man knew now that whoever his a.s.sailants might be they were out in force and in earnest. Cautiously he worked his way along the shadows, his luck still holding until finally he had reached his point of vantage within a few yards of the open gate that led to the elevator itself. To gain that haven he must dash for it across a band of unmasked moonlight. Once inside, he had only to wait for the relief of reinforcements.

To the right and left of him, and from several spots at once, O'Keefe heard stirrings in the thicket. There must be a sizable pack out on the hunt and he surmised that they were making those unnecessary noises with the purpose of drawing his fire and bringing him into revealment by the spurt of his pistol.

The door of the elevator itself stood partly in the moonlight. Jerry O'Keefe could see the dull glitter that he knew to be the key--and could even make out--or so he thought--that the door stood an inch or two ajar.

Of that he was not quite certain--and it was a vitally important point.

If the lock was not caught, he might get in before he could be killed.

If he had to fumble with a key, his end was certain.

Jerry drew himself together and made the dive. Four rifles spoke in unison and four bullets imbedded themselves in the heavy timbers of the great building as he hurled himself against the door, and felt it give laxly under his weight.

He had not fired a shot and between himself and his enemies stood the staunchness of walls against which their rifle bullets would pelt as harmlessly as hailstones. Except for his anxiety about Alexander he might have lighted his pipe and waited with a contented spirit.

Indeed, a slow smile did shape itself on his face, but a startled thought wiped it away as swiftly and completely as a wet sponge obliterates writing on a slate. That thought left his expression as black as a slate too.

Jerry drew his pistol, and for a moment it was in his mind to open the door and go out again.

When he had sent the girl away for reinforcements it had not occurred to him that this ambuscade might be intended to include her as well as himself. He had thought that, once apart from him, unless mistaken for him in the dark, she could walk safely. Indeed he had been at a total loss to explain, in any way, the motive of the attack.

Now it had flashed upon him that it was somehow an outgrowth of the old robbery attempt--and if that were true as high a price lay on the girl's head as upon his own. She was out there alone and in all likelihood unarmed.

Jerry O'Keefe broke into a cold sweat of panic--and he sat with his ears strained for a pistol shot--a shout--any indication that might call him across the moonlight zone beyond the door to her defense.

But the stillness of the midsummer night had settled again, except for the voices of the whippoorwill and the katydid.

By this time, he tried to rea.s.sure himself, Alexander had made her way down into the gorge and was beyond the touch of danger.

But that was not true. The girl had need to move with such silence as should break no twig and rustle no shrub. She must twist along a course that avoided the patches of moonlight, weaving her slow way in and out. Deliberation now was hard, but it would mean greater and more effective haste later on. She had even paused, crouching, with inheld breath, at a spot from which she could watch the door of the elevator, until Jerry had made his dash. With a heart swollen and strained by dread almost to bursting, she had seen him shoot across the exposed area and burst through the door--and she had heard the fusilade that resented his escape.

Or was it escape? He had plunged through the dark opening much as a falling man might go. But now safe, wounded or dead, he was inside and they could not reach him, so it behooved her to use wary care to the end that she might bring him help.

But as Alexander came to the two large boulders between which she meant to start down into the gorge she was arrested by a flicker of light there. The rock shielded from view the man who seemed to be kindling a pine torch, but the flare had warned her in time to make her crouch low and consider her course. That path which she had chosen was cut off.

Then, low and guarded voices stole across to her with the light.

"War's ther gal? She didn't git inside too, did she?"

"No, 'pears like she's done hid away--but I reckon they'll diskiver her afore she gits far."

"Don't let's waste no time, then. Ye've done splashed coal-oil on ther corner of ther warehouse, hain't ye?"

"Yes."

"Wa'al, come on. Ye've got yore torch ready. Let's tech her off. He thinks he's safe enough inside thar, but right shortly he'll sing another tune."

Alexander fell, for a moment, into a tremor and chill of wild panic.

Suddenly as a revelation, yet beyond all shadow of doubt, she knew that the man who was doomed to a certain and most horrible death was, to her, the person of supreme consequence in all the world. The dynamic qualities of Halloway were nothing and less than nothing, now. She wanted for always that gentle strength and whimsical smile that were soon to be licked up in flame and torture. If this man were not saved she could, herself, no longer endure to live--and there was no way of saving him!

While Alexander crouched there with her blood congealed she saw the torch applied, saw its flame leap ravenously to the welcome of the kerosene and secure a hold upon the building itself as sure and tenacious as the grip of a bulldog's clamped jaws.