Once to Every Man Part 27

Her fingers touched his chin--the barest ghost of a caressing contact.

"Denny--Denny," she murmured, "I told you that night that you didn't understand. And yet--and yet I'm glad that you couldn't. It was for me--you went. Don't you--didn't you know it was--just because of you--that I wanted them--at--all?"

The circle in the Boltonwood tavern convened early that night, and long after hope had all but died a death of stagnation the regulars stuck stubbornly to their places about the cheerlessly cold, fat-bellied stove.

It was a session extraordinary, for even Dave Shepard, the patriarch of the circle itself, could not recall an occasion when they had foregathered there in such fashion so long after the last spring snow had surrendered to summer. Yet it was largely mild-voiced Dave's doing--this silent, sober gathering.

For he alone of all of them had heeded Old Jerry's parting admonition that night, weeks before, when the servant of the Gov'mint had turned from his shrill defiance of the Judge to whip their whole ranks with scorn. Since then Dave had been following the papers with faithful and painstaking care--not merely the political news of the day which invariably furnished the key for each night's debate--but searching every inch of type, down to the last inconsequential advertis.e.m.e.nt.

And he had been rewarded; he had penetrated, with the aid of that small picture inset at the column-head, the disguise of the colorful sobriquet which Morehouse had fastened upon Young Denny Bolton. More than that, he had been reading for weeks each step in that campaign of publicity which had so harrowed Old Jerry's peace of mind--and somehow he had kept it religiously to himself.

Not until two days before, when Old Jerry's desertion from duty had become a town-wide sensation had he opened his mouth. The route back in the hills went mailless that day, and for that reason there were more than enough papers to go around when he finally gave the old guard which was waiting in vain for Old Jerry's appearance upon the top step of the post-office, the benefits of his wider reading.

There had been a fierce factional debate raging when he came up late to take his un.o.btrusive place upon the sidewalk, but even before he added his voice to the din those who argued that the old mail-carrier's disappearance could be in no way connected with that of Young Denny Bolton, who had gone the way of all the others of his line, were in a hopeless minority.

Their timidest member's announcement stunned them all to silence--left them hushed and speechless--not for an hour or two, but for the days that followed as well. Even the red-headlined account which had come with that morning's batch of news of Young Denny's victory and the fall of Jed The Red, whom they had championed under the Judge's able leadership, failed to stir up any really bitter wrangle.

They sat in an apathetic circle, waiting for Old Jerry to come.

But no one, not even Morehouse, knew when Old Jerry disappeared that night after Jed Conway had come hurtling from his corner, only to lift and whirl and go crashing back before the impact of The Pilgrim's leaping gloves. At first the plump newspaper man believed that the surging, shouting wave of humanity which had broken comber-like over the ropes to hail a newer favorite had separated the little, bird-faced man from him. Only a recollection of those vice-like fingers clinging to his arm a moment before made that probability seem unbelievable.

It was a long time before The Pilgrim's brain had again become clear enough to grasp the meaning of the questions which Morehouse put to him, but Denny did not know even as much as did the round-faced reporter himself. He only recognized the description of the shrill voiced, beady-eyed mail carrier.

To Old Jerry belonged the only comprehensive explanation for his sudden withdrawal from the scene, just at that moment when his own share in it might have been not inconsequential. And more than that, his resolution to keep it strictly and privately his own grew firmer and firmer, the more thought he gave to it.

In those hours which intervened between the impulse which had resulted in his modest retreat from Morehouse's side, under cover of the crowd's wild demonstration, and the next morning when he boarded the train which was to carry him back to the hills, after a cautious reconnaissance that finally located Denny in the coach ahead of him, he once or twice sought to a.n.a.lyze his actions for an explanation less derogatory to his own self-respect.

"They wan't no real sense ner reason in my hangin' around, jest gittin' under foot," he stated thoughtfully. "I done about all I was called on to do, didn't I? Why, I reckon when all's said and done, I jest about won that fight myself! For if I hadn't a-come he wouldn't never a-got that ribbon. And G.o.dfrey, but didn't that wake him!"

There was more than a little satisfaction to be gained in viewing himself in that light. With less to occupy his mind and unlimited leisure for elaboration it could have served as the entire day's theme for thought. But so far as explaining his almost panic haste to get away the reasoning was palpably unsatisfactory--so unsatisfactory that he cringed guiltily behind the back of the seat in front of him whenever anyone entered the front door of the car.

He gave quite the entire day to the problem and long before night hid the flying fences outside his window he decided that eventually there could be only one way out of it. Sooner or later he had to face the issue: he had to tell Young Denny that he had betrayed his trust. Even that damp wad of bills which the boy had pressed into his hand, that night before he left, still burned within his coat.

Once or twice he rose, during the return journey and advanced with forced jauntiness as far as the door of the car ahead. But he always stopped there, after a moment's uneasy contemplation of Denny's back, turned a little sadly to the water-cooler, and returned slowly and unenthusiastically to his seat. Twice when it was necessary to change trains he made the transfer with a lightning precision that would have done honor to any prestidigitator. And when, hours after nightfall, the train came to a groaning standstill before Boltonwood's deserted station shed he waited his opportunity and dropped off in the dark--on the wrong side of the track!

Denny had already become a dark blur ahead of him when he, too, turned in and took the long road toward town.

Old Jerry followed the big-shouldered figure that night with heavily lagging feet--he followed heavy in spirit and bereft of hope. He was still behind him when Denny finally paused before the sagging gate of John Anderson's half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumb lack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complication dawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson's going--forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer the property of the man who had entrusted it to him.

When the light behind that half-drawn shade flared up, far across on the crest of the opposite hill, and Young Denny wheeled to plunge into the black mouth of the path that led deeper into the valley, he too started swiftly forward. He swept off in desperate haste up the long hill road that led to the Bolton homestead.

The light was still there in that front room when he poked a tentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in a dull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table top in the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house.

But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then.

Outside, buried in the shadow of Young Denny's squat, unpainted barn, he still waited doggedly--he waited ages and ages, a lifetime of apprehension. And then he saw them coming toward him, up out of the shadow of the valley into the moonlight that bathed the hill in silver.

They paused and stood there--stood and stared out across the valley at Judge Maynard's great box of a house on the hill and that bit of a wedge-shaped acre of ruin that clung like an unsightly burr to the hem of his immaculate pastures.

Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt the girl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watching with his head c.o.c.ked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man's eyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny's right hand; once while he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face--saw the big, shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch the glory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before she turned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door.

Then he started. He shrank farther back into the shadow and edged a noiseless way around the building. But with the tavern lights beckoning to him he waited an introspective moment or two.

"G.o.dfrey 'Lisha," he sighed thunderously, "but that takes a load offen my mind!"

And he ruminated.

"But what's the use of my tryin' to explain now? What's the use--when they ain't nothing to explain! It's all come out all right, ain't it?

Well, then, hedn't I jest as well save my breath?"

He straightened his thin shoulders and stretched his arms.

"It couldn't a-been handled much neater, either," that one-sided conversation went on, "not anyway you look at it. I always did think that the best thing to do in them matters was to kinda let 'em take their own course. And now--now I guess I'll be gittin' along down!"

Before he opened the door of the Tavern office a scant half hour later, Denny Bolton stopped there on the steps a moment and, his hand on the latch, listened to the thin, falsetto voice that came from within. A slow smile crept up and wrinkled the corners of the boy's eyes after a while when he had caught the drift of those strident words.

They had been waiting for him--the regulars. They had been waiting for him longer than Old Jerry knew. In the chair that had been the throne-seat of the town's great man the servant of the Gov'mint sat and faced his loyal circle.

He had reached his climax--had hammered it home. Now he was rounding out his conclusion for those who hung, hungry-eyed, upon his eloquence.

"I ain't begun to do it jestice yet," he apologized. "I ain't more'n jest teched on a good many things that needs to be gone into a trifle. Jest a trifle! It'll take weeks and weeks to do that. But as I was a-sayin'--I got there! I got there just when I was needed almighty bad. I ain't done that part of it jestice--but you'll see it all in the papers in a day or two--Sunday supplement, maybe--and pictures--and colors, too, I reckon!"

THE END

GROSSET & DUNLAP'S

DRAMATIZED NOVELS

THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana.

Ill.u.s.trated by Wm. Charles Cooke.

This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for two years in New York and Chicago.

The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directed against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three years on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent.

WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown.

Ill.u.s.trated with scenes from the play.