A Pagan of the Hills Part 6

With quiet amus.e.m.e.nt in the eyes that still gazed upward, Halloway received this gratuitous counsel.

"I begin to think that, as an adventure, she'd be worth fatality," he said.

With the license of old acquaintance, Brent went on with his berating.

"I happen to know you in real life as well as in masquerade. Whether your whim calls for this fantastic and s.h.a.ggy disguise or for the impeccability of evening dress, you are still only a handsome beast of prey. You are so incorrigible and so devoid of conventional morality that, in being fond of you, I wonder at myself."

"Conventional morality be d.a.m.ned! I repudiate it utterly," declared the giant calmly. "But tell me about this girl."

"I never saw her until a few days back," Brent enlightened his inquisitor. "Her beauty and her dauntlessness have laid a sort of spell on me and I'm a fairly conservative man. You are not--you're a plunger--a gambler in emotions. That's why I'm hanging out a warning signal."

The big man laughed with the full-chested mirth of a Viking.

"Why, my dear fellow, you would like me less if I were changed from what you call the beast of prey to such a house-dog as are most of your acquaintances. I refresh you in a life of drab monotony, because of my outspoken repudiation of things that life's copy-cats accept without thought or demurrer. I interest you because, though I am educated and disreputably rich, I remain at heart a savage--because I like to break away from the tawdry glitter of social pretense and run baying joyously at the head of the wild pack. And, in fairness, you must admit that when I revert to feral instincts I don't have to ask odds as an amateur."

The great fellow came abruptly to his feet, not with the ponderousness of most giants, but with a panther-like agility and smoothness.

"I am idle--yes--so far as it is idle for a man to refuse to go on despoiling weaker men for gain--but why not? I can spend a fortune every year for a long life-span, and still leave loot a-plenty behind my taking off. Yet, my idling is not mere slothfulness. I know the Orient, not as the ordinary white man knows it, but as one who has become a brother to the yellow and brown. I know these hills. No man in this town to-night, save yourself, suspects that I am not native--or even that I have ever partic.i.p.ated in any other life."

"All of which I admit. The wolf may be more interesting than the collie--but for the sheepfold the collie is safer. I'm thinking of Alexander."

Halloway reflectively knocked the nub of ash from his pipe, and went on more slowly. "Civilization stifles me," he said seriously. "But when I turn my back on its dusty theologues and dogmatists, I still hold tight to the poets. To me feeling means much, but cold thought is like a fireless hearth."

The speaker was standing before the frame of the dark window. The wild capriciousness of the weather had brought rain and flashes of untimely lightning flared now and again into momentary whiteness. Brent looked at the mighty proportion of his companion and thought of the girl who slept in another tawdry room opening on the same narrow hallway. Each of them was unusual; each of them insurgent; each without fear. If their two natures should strike the spark of attraction, he trembled to think of what a conflagration might blaze from the kindling.

"I'm not discussing theories," he said a bit shortly. "I'm talking about a mountain girl whom I take it you would never marry--and if not----" He spread his hands and left the sentence unfinished.

"And if not?" Halloway caught him up. "What has marriage necessarily to do with love? There is more honesty and stimulation in the life-story of any _grande amoureuse_ than a dozen of your stodgy fraus."

"I'm going to bed," declared Will Brent. "But--leave Alexander alone.

I don't think she'd see eye to eye with you on the subject of the _grande amoureuse_."

"That only foreshadows a duel of wills--conflict--drama."

Halloway paused and laughed, and after that he went on with eyes that glowed admiringly.

"I dare say she never heard of an Amazon--and she's a splendid one.

She dares to live a man's life in a country where other women tamely accept thraldom! Perhaps it is a great adventure. I have seen a meteor and I shall stay."

"Of course you know," Brent reminded him evenly, "the first hint that you are a millionaire masquerading as a native will engulf you in local suspicion."

"I don't mean that they shall learn that." Suddenly Halloway's head bent forward a little and his brows contracted. "They _can't_ learn it except through you."

"Precisely," said the smaller man, with dry brevity. If the short answer brought a cloud to Halloway's face it was one that cleared immediately into laughter.

"We haven't reached that bridge yet," he announced, "and we needn't open up a Brent-Halloway feud until we get there."

There was a moment's pause, after which the big fellow continued.

"Since seeing the helpless maid, whom you seek to protect, holding back that bunch of desperadoes, it occurs to me that she can give a fairly good account of herself. Gad, it was epic!"

"Then why did you intervene?"

Halloway slowly turned his head and lifted his brows in frank amazement.

"Do you seriously ask? Did you suppose it was because I feared for her? Why, man, the blue flame in her eyes would have licked that crew without the aid of the gun. I intervened because when opportunity knocks, I open. I had enough dramatic sense to recognise my cue for a telling entrance; and I entered."

"Jack," inquired Brent, "how did you ever happen to know this remote life well enough to pa.s.s as a native?"

"Born here," was the laconic reply. But the other pressed him for fuller detail and he proceeded cheerfully. "The Halloway millions didn't come to us on a tray borne by angels. My father made his pile, and much of it he made in coal and iron--here and there in the Appalachians. He trained me up in that business. Why, I even worked during school vacations as a telegraph operator in the office of the local railroad station." He smiled again as he added, "Add that item to my versatile summary. I'm as good a key tickler as you would be apt to find in a day's journey."

"At all events you are a surprising reprobate," admitted the lumberman with a yawn. "Someday, though, I'll challenge you to a sending and receiving tourney. I began in a broker's office, and I'm fairly good myself."

But after Halloway had thrown himself down on his bed and his regular breathing attested his sound sleep, Brent slipped noiselessly out into the corridor. Halloway might feel certain of the girl's ability to fend for herself but with this crowd here to-night, running its wild gamut of dissipation, the less primitive man thought it as well to keep an eye on her safety.

Down the hall, dimly lighted by a single smoking lamp, he saw a figure which had been standing before Alexander's door, draw furtively back around the angle of a wall. From below stairs still came the din of wa.s.sailing.

Yet instead of alarm, a smile came to Brent's eyes, for he had recognized Bud Sellers and he no longer distrusted the boy's purposes.

In Alexander's room the lamp had long been blown out but to the eyes of the girl sleep did not come at once. She gazed at the window where occasional flashes of lightning woke and died. She was wondering what had happened back there at the house where her father lay wounded. Of Bud Sellers she thought only as of a man she had promised not to kill, though against him, as an instrumentality of her grief, resentment burned hot. She could not guess that he stood at that moment in the hallway, guarding her door and nursing in his contrite heart an unexpressed and hopeless worship of her.

For Bud, save when the liquor conquered him, was a kindly soul; even lovable as a faithful dog might be, though of that canine virtue people thought less than of his occasional rabies.

He had talked with Alexander--always impersonally--a scant half dozen times in his life--but since boyhood he had dreamed of her as a peasant may dream of exalted n.o.bility--and his life had never known any other dream.

But if Alexander thought of Bud only as the author of her present anxiety, her thoughts strayed before she fell asleep, to another man.

The face and figure of that Colossus who had swung men right and left, rose before her and her worship of masculine strength and courage paid smiling tribute.

"I reckon he don't never hev ter use more'n half ther strength he's got in them arms an' shoulders of his'n," she told herself. It did not enter troublesomely into her reflections that she had marked also the infectious quality of his smile and the clear brightness of his eye with an interest that was purely feminine.

As her lids finally grew heavy she murmured to herself: "Ef I was like other gals I reckon I'd git sort of crazy erbout thet big feller. He's like a pine tree standin' up amongst saplin's--but I don't reckon a body could hardly ever git him clean, even ef they soaked him in hot suds fer a week of Sundays."

With that reflection--also fastidiously feminine--she turned on her side and slept.

It was into a room below that Lute Johnson stumbled long after midnight on most unsteady legs. Lute was not satisfied with his evening. He had been actuated in his attempted hazing of Alexander by Jase Mallows, who thought her pride should be humbled, yet sought to accomplish that end vicariously in order that the doors of future conquest might not be closed against himself. Lute's undertaking had not been a success and he sought his bed, sodden and bloodshot of eye. He was nursing grudges of varying degrees against Jase Mallows, Alexander, Halloway and finally against Bud Sellers.

He kicked off his brogans and as he leaned to blow out the light, he stumbled, sprawling headlong and carrying the lamp down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like--mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even his clothing was afire.

Beating out the flame that licked his shirt, he abandoned the rest and fled, howling like a madman. The thing which D. W. Kelly had feared had come to pa.s.s and the frame building was doomed to its gutting.

So frequently of late had unG.o.dly bellowings and outcries broken the fitful rest of this house, that for a brief s.p.a.ce, Lute's howls of alarm failed to carry their true significance. Some guests, startled out of their sleep, had the impulse rather to keep their doors tight shut than to open them, and through the tinder-like dryness of the place the flames roared up the boxed-in stairway as through a flue.

Bud Sellers heard the yells of the fugitive Lute, and before he had time to investigate, saw the stairhead vomiting smoke and fire. As he dashed for Alexander's room, another door opened through which Halloway and Brent ran out, carrying their shoes and coats.

"Let me in," shouted Bud, hammering on the panels. "Ther house is burnin' down an' ther steps is cut off."

At first there was no response, but at last the door swung in. It framed Alexander, clothed in shirt and trousers--but barefooted, and holding a pistol in her hand.