David Malcolm Part 5

This excellent suggestion was met by a frown so fierce that I pushed back from the table in alarm.

"Run away?" he exclaimed. "Why, that's just what they want me to do.

What have I done that I should run away? And if I did, what would become of Penelope?"

He drew his little daughter close to his side, while he looked out of the door into the patch of blue sky, seeking there some inspiration.

His lips moved, and I knew that he was asking again and again of that little patch of sky what he should do. Then suddenly he rose, as though the answer had been given, for he clapped on his hat, stood erect with shoulders squared and hands clasped behind him, facing the open door with the demeanor of a man whose mind was made up, who was ready to meet the world and defy it. This, to me, was the hero who had knocked down the constable, and I imagined him confronting a dozen like Byron Lukens and piling them one on top of the other, for surely things had come to pa.s.s that the man would have to hold the clearing against an army. But as suddenly the shoulders drooped, the back bowed, the head sank, and he turned to me.

"Davy, Davy, what shall I do?" he asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

As I was silent, he addressed the same appeal to Penelope, and she, in answer, ran to the door and pointed across the clearing.

"Look, father," she shouted; "he has come back."

Byron Lukens had indeed returned and with a heavy reinforcement. Five men climbed out of the wagon which had appeared from the road, and now they began a careful reconnoissance of the house. As they stood on the edge of the woods looking toward us I marked each one of them, and the problem uppermost in my mind concerned what I should do myself, for I was fairly cornered. I could not run away, for they were watching every exit from the cabin, and there was not one of them who would not recognize me did I flee over the open. The presence of James alone meant my undoing, and there he was, standing by the constable, eying the place with a lowering glare which threatened a storm, for here he had fallen and here he would redeem himself by some act of exceptional daring. Caught in this net, I hid behind the door-post and peered around it through a protecting shield made by the Professor's coat-tails. In the silence I could hear my heart beat.

There was one thing for the Professor to do now, and he did that well.

He gathered his scattered senses and stood quietly in the doorway, smoking, leaving to the invaders the burden of action. Their indecision gave him strength.

"The idea of my giving in to a crew like that," he said to me in a steady voice. "It's a pity Mr. Pound didn't come, and your father too, David, that they might see how little I cared for their warrants."

Then, to show how undisturbed he was by their presence, he called to them pleasantly: "Good morning, gentlemen."

This mild greeting gave courage to our foes and Stacy Shunk advanced.

His coming was a sign that reason was to be used before force, and with his first step he began to gesticulate and to protest his friendly purpose. But he could not argue with any ac.u.men while his bare feet were traversing a carpet of briers, and a silence followed, broken by exclamations as he came on slowly but resolutely as though he walked on eggs. Half-way over the clearing he stopped with a cry of pain, and the herald's mission was forgotten in the search for a thorn. The picture of Stacy Shunk balancing on one foot while he nursed the other in his hands made the Professor laugh hilariously and he called to him to hurry.

But Stacy would come no farther. He planted himself firmly on his bleeding feet; his great black hat-brim hid his face, but the voice which came from under it was soft, and he held out his hands as though he offered his dear friend the protection of his arms.

"You know what these other fellows want, Professor, and you know I'd only come along to help you. The whole thing was only a joke first off, but you've gone and a.s.saulted the constable, and there'll be trouble if you don't settle it and be reasonable. Now, my advice is----"

"Thank you for your advice, Stacy Shunk," exclaimed the Professor.

"But you know as well as I do that I have done nothing that I can be arrested for."

"Of course I do," returned the herald. "But you hadn't otter upset the preacher so. You'd otter believe what he says, and when he preaches about Noah and the like you hadn't otter produce figures in public to show that Noah and his boys couldn't have matched up all the animals and insects in the time they was allowed, let alone stabling 'em in a building three hundred cupids long and thirty cupids wide and three stories high. Now I allus held----"

"I don't care what you held," said the Professor sharply. "You can't get me into an argument now. I suppose it was unwise of me to try to make you people think, but you can't arrest a man for simply being unpopular. This is my home, and no law of your twopenny village can make me leave it."

"I'm not going to argue about Noah," protested Stacy Shunk. "As your friend, I'm trying----"

"As my friend, you had best go home and take your other friends with you." The Professor's voice was dry and crackling.

He reached behind the door and took up the long rifle which leaned against the wall. There was no threat in his action, for he held it under his arm and looked off to the mountain-top as though he were trying to make up his mind whether or not it was a good day for hunting. Stacy Shunk saw another purpose beneath this careless air, and he abandoned argument. Without heeding the briers, he fled to his friends; he did not even stop there, but plunged into the bushes, and above them I saw his head and hands moving together in an excited colloquy. The ludicrous figure which he cut in his retreat excited the Professor to laughter, in which Penelope joined, clapping her hands with mirth. I, wiser than she as to the danger of firearms, and trusting less to her father's mild intentions, broke into tearful pleading.

"Please don't shoot, Professor," I whimpered, tugging at his coat-tails to drag him back. "They won't hurt you, I know they won't."

"Don't worry, Davy," the Professor said with a rea.s.suring smile. "They wouldn't hurt any one, nor would I. Didn't Shunk run at the mere sight of a gun? Why, if I pointed it at the rest of them they would fly like birds."

It was not fair to judge the courage of the others by the cowardice of Stacy Shunk. The constable's boasts came out of the past to goad him into action, and while Joe Holmes, the blacksmith, might have been very weak in the knees, he was not ready to retreat so early in the action when his helper, Thaddeus Miller, was watching him. As for James, despite the fall his moral qualities had taken in my estimation, I believed him to be a man of unflinching bravery, and he it was that I feared most when at last the advance began across the clearing, the four moving abreast with military precision, while Stacy Shunk hurled at them many admonitions to be cautious. I knew that nothing would stop James; that while his comrades might scatter like birds, he would come on to a deadly hand-to-hand conflict, and I pictured the Professor and him swallowing each other like the two snakes of tradition. I forgot my own safety, and threw both arms about one of the Professor's legs and tried to pull him into the house. Penelope, too, lost her courage when she saw the numbers of the enemy and their bold advance, and she clung, wailing, to her father's waist. He shook us off, and for the first time spoke to us sharply, and so sharply that the child reached her hand to mine and together we slunk into a dark corner.

Of what followed we saw nothing. We heard the voices, nearer and nearer. Then the men seemed to halt and to address the Professor in tones of argument. We are a peaceable folk in our valley and little given to the use of firearms, and I suspect that the constable and his aids really knew the Professor to be a peaceable man or they would not have come thus far with such boldness. To come farther they hesitated until they had made it perfectly clear that they acted in his best interests. Even Byron Lukens was willing to let "bygones be bygones."

"I'm just doing of my duty, Mr. Blight," he said in a wheedling tone, "and if you'll come along quiet-like I'll say nothing about it to the squire."

"You can fix it all up with the squire," I heard Joe Holmes say.

"There's really nothing again you, only you must comply with the law."

Then James spoke--to my astonishment not in a bold demand that the Professor surrender, but softly, asking him to be careful with the gun.

"n.o.body has nothing again you, Professor," he said as gently as he would have spoken to me, and hearing this I took heart, for with James in such a temper there seemed no danger of a serious clash.

"No one has nothing against me," the Professor repeated in a tone of irony. "You only want to drag me through the village before the squire. Tell the squire to come here to me and explain."

There was a moment of silence. It was so quiet outside that even the birds seemed to be listening and watching; then came the swish of weeds trampled under foot.

"Be off, the whole crew of you," cried the man in the doorway, and I saw the b.u.t.t of the gun rise to his shoulder.

I wanted to cry out, but my throat was parched with fright, and Penelope was clinging to my neck in silent terror.

There was another moment of silence. Then James began to laugh in that vast ebullient way of his, and a bit of dry brush snapped sharply under some foot. The report of the rifle shook the cabin. It must have shaken the mountains too, it seemed to me, for the floor beneath me rocked in time to the echoes of it rattling among the hills, and I heard a wild scream, the cry of a man hurt to death, and the shrill cries of startled birds fleeing to the hiding of the trees. A puff of wind swept a thin veil of smoke into the room, but for me the air was filled with sickening fumes, and I sank to my knees and closed my eyes as a child does at night to shut out the perils of the darkness. I felt Penelope's arms gripped tightly about my neck, her dead weight dragging me down. I heard the last echoes of the shot, faintly, down the narrow valley, and outside the incoherent shouts of men. Then there was a silence, broken only by Penelope's sobs. It seemed to me long hours I was there on my knees before I dared to open my eyes and bring myself into the world again. And when I did it was to see the room darkened and the Professor leaning against the closed door with his hands wide-spread, as though with every muscle braced to hold it against an onslaught. Yet he trembled so that a child might have brushed him aside.

There was no onslaught. I waited the moment when the door would be crashed in. I heard the clock ticking monotonously on the cupboard and the wood crackling in the stove. The birds were singing again, and outside in the clearing it was as peaceful as on that day when I first came upon it, wet and shivering, to find joy in its cheerful sunniness.

I broke from Penelope's embrace and got to my feet. The Professor, hearing me, raised his head from the door and turned to me a face chalky-white, whiter for the dishevelled hair that hung about it.

"Davy," he whispered, "look out of the window and tell me what you see."

I had no care for any trouble that might lie ahead for me. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be taken from this stifling cabin with its deafening noises and sickening fumes and above all from this mad fellow who looked as I had seen a rat look when cornered in a garner. I ran to the window and peered through the s.m.u.tted panes, but there was no one outside to see or to help me. The clearing was as quiet as in the earlier morning when I had looked over it at the Professor studying the distant tree-top.

"What do you see, Davy?" he asked in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"Nothing," I answered. "They've gone away."

"And isn't Lukens there--out there in the weeds?"

I rubbed the s.m.u.tted gla.s.s and peered through it again into every corner of the clearing. "No," I said, "there's nothing there."

The Professor drew back from the door and stood before me brushing his matted hair from his face.

"I didn't mean it, Davy," he said. "It was all a mistake. They were going away and I was dropping the gun, and somehow I touched the trigger and Lukens fell. They've taken him home, but they'll come back--a hundred of them this time. Oh, Davy, Davy, help me!"

I knew that I could not help him. My thought then was for myself, and I did not answer, but measured the distance to the door and waited my chance to dart to it and get away, for in him before me, driving his long fingers through his hair and staring at me with frightened eyes, I saw the man whom I had pictured in fear that first morning when I came to the mountains. This was the real Professor and I was caught.

"Oh, let me go!" I cried.

"Why, Davy!" He gave a start of surprise. The frightened look pa.s.sed and he reached out his hands to my shoulders. I shrank back. The scream of Byron Lukens still rang in my ears, and to me there was something very terrible in this man who had dared to kill, this man for whom all the valley would soon be hunting, this man who even now might be standing in the shadow of the gallows. He saw the terror in my face; to his eyes came that same look my dog would give me when I struck him.

"Why, Davy," he said, holding out two trembling hands. "Boy, I thought you were my only friend."

This was the cry of a man worse hurt than Byron Lukens, and in a rush of boyish pity for him I forgot my dread and running to him threw my arms about him, hugged him as I should have hugged my dog in a mute appeal for pardon. So we three stood there in silence, the Professor, Penelope, and I, with arms intertwined and our heads close together.

Then after a moment he raised himself and shook us off gently.