At the Crossroads Part 33

"Sometimes"--Larry grew moody--"I've thought I'd like to tumble into that mess and either----"

"What?" Abruptly Maclin caught Rivers up.

"Oh! go under or--come to the top." This was to laugh--so both men laughed.

Laughing and talking in undertones, they came to the dark shack and Larry, irritated at his inability to drop Maclin, unlocked the door and went in, followed by his unwelcome guest.

"What in thunder do you lock this old rookery up for?" Maclin asked, stumbling over a chair.

"I've got a notion lately that folks peep and pry. I've seen footprints around the house."

"Well, why shouldn't they pry and tramp about? The Point's getting dippy. And that blasted gun of Twombley's! See here, Rivers!"

By this time Larry had lighted the smelly lamp and closed the door and locked it.

"You're getting nervous and twisted, Rivers."

The two sat down by the paper-strewn table.

"Well, who wouldn't?" snapped Rivers. "Hiding in this junk, knowing that your wife----" he paused abruptly, but Maclin nodded sympathetically. "It's h.e.l.l, Maclin."

"Sure! Got anything to drink?"

Larry went to the closet and brought out a bottle and gla.s.ses.

"This helps!" Maclin said, pouring out the best brand from the Cosey.

The men drained their gla.s.ses and became, after a few minutes, more cheerful. Maclin stretched out his legs--he had to do this in order to adjust his fat and put his hands in his pockets.

"Larry, I want to tell you that you won't have to hide in your hole much longer. I'm one too many for that fellow Northrup. I hold the cards now."

"The devil you do!" Rivers's eyes brightened.

"Yes, sir. He wants the Point, old man, and the Heathcotes gave him the knowledge that your wife owns it. He's getting her where he can handle her. d.a.m.n shame, I say--using a woman and taking advantage of her weak side. If we don't act spry he'll get what he wants."

Larry's face flushed a purple-red.

"What do you mean, Maclin? Talk out straight and clear."

"Well, I weigh it this way and that. Northrup might--I hate to use brutal terms--he might compromise your wife and get her to sell and shut him up, or he might get her so bedazzled that she'd feel real set up to negotiate with him. A man like Northrup is pretty flattering to a woman like your wife, Rivers. You see, she's carrying such a big cargo of learning and fancy rot that she can't properly sail. That kind gets stranded _always_, Larry. They just naturally _make_ for rocks."

Larry had a sensation of choking and loosened his collar, then he surprised Maclin by turning and lighting a fire in the stove before he further surprised him by asking, with dangerous calmness:

"What in all that's holy do you--this Northrup--any one, want this d.a.m.ned Point for?"

Maclin was rarely in a position to fence with Rivers, but he was now.

"Larry, old man, did you ever have in your life an ideal, or what stands for it, that you would work for, and suffer for?"

"No!" Rivers could not stand delay.

"Well, I have, Larry. I'm an old sentimentalist, when you know me proper. I took a fancy to you, and while I can't show my feelings as many can, I have stood by you and you've been a proposition, off and on. I bought those mines because I saw the chance they offered, and I shared with you. I've got big men interested. I've let you carry results to them--but the results are slow, Rivers, and they're getting restive. I'm afraid some one of them has blabbed and this Northrup is the result. Why, man, I've got inventions over at the mines that will revolutionize this rotten, lazy Forest. I wanted to win the folks--but they wouldn't be won. I wanted to save them in spite of themselves, but d.a.m.n 'em, they won't be saved. In a year I could make Heathcote a rich man, if he'd wake up and _keep_ an inn instead of a kennel. But I've got to have this Point. I want to build a bridge from here to the railroad property on the other sh.o.r.e--this is the narrowest part of the lake; I want to build cottages here, instead of--of rat holes.

I've got to get this Point by hook or crook--and I can't shilly-shally with this Northrup on to the game."

Suddenly, while he was talking, Maclin's eyes fell upon the untidy ma.s.s of papers on the table. He pulled his fat hands out of his tight pockets and let them fall like paperweights on the envelopes and sheets.

"What are these?" he asked.

Larry started guiltily.

"Old letters," he said.

"What you doing with them?" As he spoke Maclin was sorting and arranging the papers--the old he put to one side; the newer ones on the other. Some of the new ones were astonishingly good copies of the old!

"Playing the old game, eh?" Maclin scowled. "I thought you'd had enough of that, after----"

"For G.o.d's sake, Maclin, shut up."

"Been carrying these mementos around with you all these years?"

Maclin was reading a letter of Larry's father--an old one.

"No, I brought them with me from the old house. Mary-Clare had them, but they were mine." Larry's face was white and set into hard lines.

"Sure, so I see." And Maclin was seeing a great deal.

He saw that Rivers had torn off, where it was possible, half pages from the old and yellowed letters; these were carefully banded together, while on fresh sheets of paper, the old letters in part, or in whole, were cleverly copied.

There was one yellowed half sheet in the old doctor's handwriting bearing a new form of expression--there was no original of this.

Maclin made sure of that. He read this new form once, twice, three times.

"If the time should ever come, my girl, when you and Larry could not agree, he'll give you this letter. It is all I could do for him; it will prove that I trust you, at every turn, to do the right and just thing. Stand by Larry, as I have done."

Maclin puffed out his cheeks. They looked like a child's red balloon.

"What in h.e.l.l!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Larry's face was gray. Guilt is always quick to hold up its hands when it thinks the enemy has the drop on it.

"Can't you understand?" he whispered through dry lips. "I want to outwit them. I'm as keen as you, Maclin, and I'm working for you, old man, working for you! I was going to take this to her--she'll do anything when she reads that--and I was going to tell her why the old man stood by me. That would shut her mouth and make her pay."

There is in the shield of every man a weak spot. There was one in the shield of Maclin's brutal villainy. For a moment he felt positively virtuous; perhaps the sensation proved the embryo virtue in all.

"Are any of these things real?" he asked with a rough catch in his voice; "and don't lie to me--it wouldn't be healthy."

"No."

"You got your wife by letting her think your old father wanted it, wrote about it?"

"Yes. I had to outwit them some way. I was just free and couldn't choose. They had no right to cut me out."