A Pagan of the Hills Part 8

"I knows what ye aims ter say," interrupted Alexander. "Ye means ter name hit ter me thet them logs hain't all hyar because some of 'em busted loose comin' through ther gorge. What I wanted ter ask ye is thet you an' me should measure up thet raft now an' figger out what's gone, so thet I kin tell paw----" She halted as abruptly as though a blow on the mouth had broken off the utterance and a paroxysm of pain crossed her face. The ever present dread had struck back that there might be no father to whom she could report. With a swift recovery, though, she finished. "So thet I kin fotch tidin's back home es ter how much we gits."

When these reckonings had been made Brent inquired: "Do you understand the terms of this contract between your father and myself?"

Her reply was guarded. "We've done talked hit over."

"It was agreed," the buyer told her, "that I was to accept this stuff and pay for it at some point from which I could deliver it in the Bluegra.s.s either by rail or navigable water. If you like, I'm ready to pay now."

He had seen Alexander under some trying circ.u.mstances and never with any hint of breakdown, yet just now he wondered if unexpected good tidings were not about to accomplish what bad news could not--carry out the dam of her own hard-schooled repression on a flood of tears. Her eyes became suddenly misty and her lips trembled. She started to speak, then gulped and remained silent. But gradually the color flowed back into her cheeks, as pink as the laurel blossom's deep center, and once more she gave her head that characteristic toss as though in contempt for her moment of weakness.

"Mr. Brent, I hain't seekin' no favors an' I don't want nothin' but my dues. I didn't know ye stood obleeged ter pay us 'twell ther logs went down ter ther lowlands, but----" Though her words were slowly, even tediously enunciated they seemed to come with difficulty. "But ef I could take thet money back thar--an' tell him hit war all settled up----" The fullness of what that meant to her gained in force because she got no further with her explanation and Brent said with a brusqueness, affected to veil his own sympathy: "Come on, let's go to the bank."

The bank at Coal City is a small box of brick, with two rooms. At the front the cashier's grating stands. At the rear is a bare chamber furnished with a small stove, a deal table and a few hickory-withed chairs. It is here that directors meet and hinterland financiers negotiate. Into this sanctum Brent led Alexander Macedonia McGivins, and for no particular reason, save that no one had forbidden it, Halloway accompanied them.

The timber buyer scribbled his calculations on the back of an envelope and submitted the results to the girl, who gravely nodded her satisfaction.

"Then," said Brent with an air of relief, "there remain only two things more. I shall now draw you a check for four thousand and ninety-one dollars and fifty cents, and you will sign a receipt."

Halloway was sitting in the background where he could indulge in all the staring he liked, and since Alexander had swum into his ken, that had become a large order. As Brent finished, the girl who had been sitting at the table with a pen in her hand, suddenly pushed back her chair and into her eyes came an amazed disappointment--a keen anxiety.

For a moment she looked blankly at the man who was opening his check book. She suddenly felt that she had been confronted with a financial problem that lay beyond her experience and one which she deeply distrusted. It was as though affairs. .h.i.therto simple, except for physical dangers, had run into a channel of subtler and therefore more alarming complication.

None of this escaped Halloway's lynx-like gaze but to Brent who was smoothing out the folded check, it went un.o.bserved.

Suddenly Alexander bent forward, her cheeks coloring with embarra.s.sment and caught at the signer's wrist as spasmodically as though it were a death warrant to which he meant to set his signature.

"Don't write me no check!" she exclaimed somewhat desperately, then, covered with confusion she added, "I don't aim ter insult ye none--but I don't know much erbout fotched-on ways. I wants ter tote thet thar payment back home--in real money."

Except with Brent, Halloway had never thus far broken out of character.

Having a.s.sumed to be a mountain lumberman, he had consistently talked as one--acted as one.

Now he came out of his chair as though a mighty spring had uncurled under him, and slapped an outspread hand to his forehead.

"Great jumping Jehosaphat!" he exclaimed, and turning in her chair, the young woman studied him in perplexity. But Halloway's slip was brief and his recovery instant. Since Brent sat there staring in speechless bewilderment at Alexander, the giant launched himself into the breach.

"Tote four thousand dollars in silver an' paper an' gold across them trails in saddle bags!" His voice suddenly mounted into domineering vehemence. "Tote hit over wild an' la'relly mountings with this hyar country full of drunken scalawags thet would do murder for a ten dollar bill! Hev ye done gone plum bereft of reason?"

Alexander's first confusion of manner had come from the fear that her refusal of a check might seem tainted with the discourtesy of suspicion. Now in the face of actual opposition it stiffened instantly into hostility. The perplexity died from her face and her eyes blazed.

For a moment she met the excited gaze of the man who towered over her and then in a coldly scornful voice she spoke, not to him, but to Brent. "I reckon ye war right, Mr. Brent, when ye asked me whether I wanted this man sent way. Thar hain't no need of his tarryin' hyar."

"Just a moment, Alexander," smiled Brent, enjoying in spite of himself his friend's discomfiture. "We'll pack him off, if you say so, but first hear what we both have to say. He's right. With this gang of scoundrels in and about town it would be madness to carry that much money. The size of this deal will set tongues wagging. When you start out everyone will know it. You'd never get home alive."

"I don't know nothin' about checks an' sometimes banks bust," she obdurately insisted. "I wants ter show my paw cash money. Ef he 'lows I'm man enough ter do his business thet's enough, hain't it?"

"A rifle-gun in ther la'rel hes done overcome plenty of men afore ye,"

a.s.serted Halloway with the deep boom of sullenness in his voice. "Ye hain't no army of men, I reckon."

They wrestled with her in argument for the better part of an hour but she was as immovable as the bed-rock of her mountains.

Brent even raised the point, despite the withering contempt with which he knew she would greet it, that he might decline to recognize her authority to act for her father but from a hip pocket of her trousers she produced a worn wallet and from the wallet she extracted a general and properly attested power of attorney to transact all business.

"I hed ter hev thet," she announced coolly, "because so many d.a.m.n fool men 'lowed thet a woman couldn't do business."

The end of it was that Brent himself cashed his check, and counted out in specie and currency a sum large enough to become in effect a price on her head. When the money had been done up in heavy paper, sealed by the cashier with wax, and identified with her own signature, she consented to permit it to lie in the safe overnight since the roads were not yet pa.s.sable, though even then she cannily inquired of the bank employe: "I reckon ye hain't got no objection ter my countin' hit up afresh afore I sets out, hev ye?"

Later that day Lute Brown, who it may be said in pa.s.sing, had served a term in state prison for house-breaking, dropped casually into the bank and asked the cashier to "back a letter" for him, since writing was not one of his own strong points. The cashier was obliging, and in as much as gossip was usually spa.r.s.e in that community went on the while chatting with the president of the inst.i.tution, who had just come in.

"True as text," said the cashier, while Lute Brown waited. "She wouldn't take no check. She was plum resolved to have her money in cash--and she aims to hire a mule and start out soon to-morrow morning toting it along with her."

"I'd hate to undertake it," said the president briefly and the cashier agreed: "Me an' you both. Why she wouldn't even hear of takin' no bodyguard along with her."

Later in the day Lute Brown addressed a caucus attended by a half dozen men, including Jase Mallows.

That meeting took place behind closed doors and though a general accord of purpose prevailed there was some dissension as to detail.

"We kain't skeercely shoot her outen hand es she rides along," demurred a conscientious objector, who, however, fully endorsed the plan of lightening her financial burden. "She's a woman, fer all her brashness in her callin' herself a man."

The virtuous sentiment was not popularly received. It might even have been scoffed into limbo had not Jase Mallows leaned forward, twirling his mustache, and made himself heard.

"Ye're d.a.m.n right hit won't do ter kill her. I aims ter wed that gal some day, an' afore I'd see her lay-wayed an' kilt, I'd tell this hull story ter ther town marshall."

An ominous growl went up at that but Jase continued staunchly.

"Howsomever we needn't hev no fallin' out over that. I've got a plan wharby she kin be robbed without hurtin' her an' wharby atter ye've done got ther money, I kin 'pear ter rescue her an' tek her offen yore hands."

As he outlined his guileful proposition the scowls of his listeners gave way to grins of full approval and admiration.

"Who's goin' ter diskiver what route she rides?" demanded one of those annoyingly exact persons who mar all great dreams by the injection of practicalities.

Again Jase laughed. "Thar hain't but one way she kin go--hit'll be days afore any other route's fordable. She's got ter fare past Crabapple post office an' through Wolf-pen gap."

That afternoon Brent went to the telegraph office. He wanted to wire his concern that the timber was safe and the deal closed, but while still a short distance from the railroad station, which was also the telegrapher's office, he saw Lute Brown go into the place and fell to wondering what business carried him hither. So he timed his entrance and sauntered in just as the fellow was turning away from the operator's chair.

Brent himself lounged about idly, because the man at the table had opened his key and begun sending. Neither Brown nor the operator gave any indication of interest in the arrival of a third person.

To neither of them did it occur that Brent was versed in the Morse code, and Brent volunteered no information on the subject.

None the less he was listening and as the dots and dashes fell into letters and the letters into words, he read, as if from a book, this message:

"Woman starts out in morning with bundle by way of Crabapple post office. Lute."

Brent filed his own message and pa.s.sed the time of day with the operator, but when he was outside he cursed the need of slow walking as he made his way to the rafts. Alexander was not there. No one had seen her for two hours and, from her shack, both pack and rifle had been removed.

Halloway's face when Brent found him and told him his story, first blackened into the thunder cloud darkness, then as suddenly paled into dread.

"By G.o.d, Brent," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, catching the other's arm in a grip that almost broke it, "what if she suspects us too--and has already set out to give us the slip? She hasn't a chance to get through before these outlaws intercept her. She'd have to stop--somewhere this side the gap--and go on in the morning."

"Come on," snorted Brent, "we've got to go to the livery stable and see if she's hired a mule."

"If she's seeking to give us the slip, she's probably changed that plan too--and set out on foot. It's a safe bet, though, that she didn't go without her precious money. Let's try the bank."