Sunlight Patch Part 49

She followed this thought with perfect understanding, for allegory was a part of her racial inheritance. She was touched, also, by the soft timbre of his voice--a quality which showed him to be deeply moved--and she leaned farther forward, peering out at him. There was something weird, and something fascinating, about these impressive words issuing from an unseen and unexpected source. The night was so still and ghostlike--the atmosphere about the cottage so charged with tragedy--the metonymy this invisible speaker employed so subtle!

"Whar's yoh gyard'ner?" she asked breathlessly.

"I don't know," he gave a short laugh.

"Well, he ain' so ve'y fur off, honey! Go an' seek 'im--you needs 'im, Gawd knows you does!--but mebbe he won' find sich a turr'ble lot of wu'k to do, arter all! Sometimes people's gyardens is cu'ious dat a-way!"

He left after this, and walked slowly beyond the house to the circle of cedars. As he was pushing aside the branches, his eyes detected something white, out near the gate, moving through the deep shadows of the trees. He stopped, puzzled. A faint radiance from the stars made the spot where he stood quite discernible and, now seeing him, this white thing, whatever it was, changed its course and approached. As it came he saw that it seemed to be stumbling, or staggering, and he thought that it was moaning. Then suddenly he recognized Jane.

In a bound he was across the intervening s.p.a.ce and, as she stumbled again, caught her in his arms, crying hoa.r.s.ely:

"For G.o.d's sake, what has happened?"

She clung to him, drooping, sobbing, and out of breath; and fiercely he held her closer, as though by the presence of his strength she might feel secure.

"Mac," she gasped, convulsively, "Mac--is dead!"

"How?" He asked it calmly; with a fearful, avenging calm; knowing that in the way Mac died would be revealed a tragedy.

She tried, but could not answer, and simply leaned against him sobbing great silent sobs which shook her body and tore his soul with anguish.

The love he had felt for her was slight to the pa.s.sion now demanding utterance; yet his lips set resolutely to suppress any word of endearment. He knew that she had come only to a friend, a big brother, someone to sustain her, and he knew too well how deadly the suggestion of anything more would be.

"Can't you tell me?" he asked gently.

"That fiendish man jumped out and caught my horse's bridle! Mac sprang at him, and he dropped the bridle, and I tried to ride him down, but he had a club and knocked my poor horse flat;--I jumped up, and Mac was fighting him terribly, but I knew he would kill Mac--and then--and then--I was so frightened I ran as fast as I could back here!"

"Thank G.o.d," he whispered, in a voice which must surely have told her how he, too, was suffering.

She gathered her strength and stood more firmly, while he let his arms quietly fall to his sides.

"Would you like Bob and Ann to come over?"

"You could take me home, couldn't you?" she wavered. "They thought I was going to stay here for dinner, and it's no use frightening them with such a telephone message."

Turning, they went slowly, silently, toward the house, but near the porch he hesitated, listening; then turned her about--for coming toward them across the lawn, limping, panting, with his nose to the ground but his stumpy tail belligerently up, was Mac.

She gave a low cry and knelt upon the gra.s.s, her arms out to receive him, and he dashed into them with a yelp of joy. The things she whispered then were exactly those which Brent would have given the riches of the earth to have heard her say to him; and Mac replied with all his doggy eloquence, furiously wiggling his body and making futile attempts to lick her face. Brent stood silently by, and for the first time in his life--at least the first time in his remembrance--something mysteriously hot and wet slipped down his cheek.

An hour later they drove into Flat Rock, leading her horse which was found grazing by the roadside. Back at Arden the Colonel and Dale, each with a high powered rifle, were mounting horses; and in town the sheriff was lifting a bloodhound to his buggy.

With a silent hand-clasp Jane pa.s.sed into the house, but Brent waited for a word with Bob.

"The fellow must be quite crazy," he told this young planter, "so you ought to stay here with the girls. I'll meet the others, and tell you about it later."

Reaching the pike he drove hurriedly and was the first to arrive at their prearranged meeting-place. This was a hollow, where a little stream crossed--the place Tusk usually turned off after leaving Tom's house, and the scene of an earlier struggle. He got out of the buggy and carefully scanned the ground, flashing the same electric torch which had played a part here once before; smiling, despite his soberness, when he came to a patch of violently torn up sod ten feet from the spot where, evidently, Jane's horse had fallen. Here, he knew, Mac had made his gallant stand, desisting only after his instinct told him Jane had fled to safety.

There was little talking when the others came. The sheriff lifted his bloodhound to the ground, and the mild eyes of this heavy dewlapped creature looked confidently up at them, waiting to be told what human atom of the millions over the earth he must bring to justice. This was all he asked to know; so when Jess held out the handle of Tusk's discarded club, he sniffed it carefully and was satisfied. A low whine a.s.sured them that the man-hunter had now an imperishable record of the scent; that he was ready to follow it across the State, around the world--providing the pursued one used no pepper or other mean artifice, and traveled by foot on land.

The men tied their horses, for this chase must be followed warily--nor could horses go where a hunted man might venture. Jess led, holding the leash strained by the hound's impatience. Silently the others followed into the black wood, and all was quiet save for the occasional snapping of a dead branch;--this hound having been too well taught to allow himself the joy of baying, except in rare situations. He knew the chase, and he knew the value of keeping his quarry unwarned.

But in half an hour the old Colonel was breathing hard. He had not been accustomed to walking through wild places at night, and it was this increasing fatigue, this undertaking of a trial beyond his strength, which seriously handicapped the party. Had he more wisely remained at home, the others might have pressed Tusk before he reached a country offering limitless possibilities for eluding pursuit, or before he was given such ample time to employ them--for Tusk, deficient as he was, possessed a certain type of mentality capable of embarra.s.sing any bloodhound if given half a chance.

Yet even Tusk had been slow in getting started. He had caught Jane's bridle to ask her when Brent was going to give him that hundred dollars.

Then Mac had dashed at him, and Jane had ridden at him. He had knocked the horse down, then dropped his club to tear away the dog. Time after time he had torn him from his legs and slammed him violently to the ground, but each time Mac was back at him with greater fury; and at last, when the airedale, not whipped but wise, dashed off on the trail of his mistress to see that she met no other perils, Tusk sat down cursing savagely. His legs were smarting from their wounds, and one gash, deeper than the others, was bleeding freely; so he tore a strip from his shirt and rudely bound it up. It felt better now and he arose, knowing that both man and beast would soon be coming like a swift pursuing vengeance.

This country at night offered no mysteries for Tusk, who traveled it as confidently as he would have in the day. He even laughed as the thrill of the chase tingled through his powerful frame; then plunged into the wood and for an hour held a course due east.

His first halt was at the entrance of a tunnel-like formation in the rock which opened out to the bank of a rushing stream. Here, on this side, away from the noise of water, he must listen well. No sound, no bay; nothing but the hoot of an owl somewhere in the black forest reached his attentive ears. Yet an enemy would surely follow, and it must be baffled before he could lie down in peace to sleep.

So pa.s.sing through the natural tunnel he waded across the stream, openly, without artifice, and followed up the opposite sh.o.r.e; purposely leaving a trail so simple that dogs could not miss it, and men would believe him unsuspicious of pursuit. Half a mile on, where it seemed the obvious thing for one to do who might be making all speed to the nearest county line, he recrossed. Several times he did this in the same simple way, always heading east; but now the stream turned sharply north. He knew that it would, and he had planned to leave it here, continuing straight and boldly through the forest in order to emphasize the idea that he was taking the shortest route to safety; but after another half mile he stopped--then he laughed. Up to this point a puppy could have followed him to every crossing and picked his trail up readily on the other side. So he laughed, and now began the second phase of his cunning.

He doubled back upon that last half mile, entering the water where he had come out, then laid down and began to float with its swift current; touching the bottom with his hands or sometimes swimming the deeper places. Progress was restful and rapid now, and he felt thoroughly elated. Continuing past all his former fording places, past the natural tunnel where he first came in, he went on for another mile and then began watching for a branch that might be low enough for him to reach.

This was not difficult to find in a forest so thickly wooded, and soon he had climbed into a tree without once having put his foot to sh.o.r.e.

From branch to branch, from tree to tree, he went, feeling his way warily like a 'c.o.o.n, reaching, swinging, risking much but never slipping, till at last he let himself off on a cliff several hundred feet back from the swirling water. He could indeed laugh now. At no place between the point where he began doubling back upon his trail three miles away, and this very spot on the cliff where he now stood, had he so much as touched dry land. That the sheriff's hound would be hopelessly baffled was indisputable. The men, of course, might wait for daylight, and by examining each low hanging branch, from the stream's source to the point where it disappeared into the cave, discover the one by which he had climbed out. But this would require time; moreover they would have to possess a knowledge of his trick--and Tusk flattered himself that no one knew his trick. He was immeasurably pleased, and would have tarried here in an enjoyable contemplation of his triumph, but there was another link of safety to be added: a stiff, heartbreaking climb still higher to a spur of rock where he had often before "laid out." Here, too, was his stock of food, whiskey and tobacco.

When he finally dragged himself up and rolled over on its flat surface, he did not think of these refreshments. He was exhausted and very sleepy. The long contact with cold water had numbed and soothed the wounds in his legs, and, since they had stopped smarting, his sluggish sensibilities caught no message of their existence--gave him no warning that the deeper gash had been partially opened by his climbing in the trees, and that now the red stain upon his ragged trousers was slowly spreading. He knew only that he was sleepy; so he yawned, then slept.

As an ox which snags his hock upon a point of flint and placidly grazes while he bleeds to death, so might Tusk have slept into eternity, were it not for that mysterious spark of something which the most cra.s.s of men possess to mark them human. Thus it was that later in the night he awoke with a feeling of terrible fear, of the presence of some awful catastrophe; and sat up, looking about him through the dark, shivering.

He did not comprehend that an alert subconscious mind might be giving the alarm, touching him upon the shoulder and guiding his hand to the bleeding wound; but, once he knew there was a bleeding wound, he acted with promptness and a fair degree of skill.

When the sky was growing light four weary men and a dejected dog pa.s.sed down the bank of the disappearing stream, three hundred feet below this spur, trudging homeward. But Tusk, though weakened and breathing rapidly, was again asleep.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

A GIRL'S n.o.bILITY

At half past eight o'clock in the morning Aunt Timmie was tidying up the room, Doctor Stone was removing his white jacket, and, on an adjoining cot to Mesmie, Nancy lay dozing from the effect of an anaesthetic. Her face held a frown, as though even in slumber the memory of the ordeal was following her.

"I'll go now," he whispered, "and be back at twelve. You know what to do."

The old woman nodded, but did not stop the palm-leaf fan being impartially waved over her charges. She sat like a brooding hen with two chicks; very alert, keeping an eye on each.

It was about this time that the hunting party reached the stables at Arden and grimly separated--the sheriff being driven to his waiting buggy by one of the Colonel's men, who would bring home the tethered horses.

Dale looked at the sun, now high above the mountains, and, without a word, left for the library. His all night tramp seemed to have brought no fatigue; but the old gentleman and Brent, turning toward Bradford's cottage, moved slowly.

Timmie saw them coming up the path and, glancing once more at her charges, went to the door. She did not at once notice that their trousers were frayed and muddy, and their faces scratched. News of Jane's adventure had not reached her. But her countenance was severe.

During the night she had done a deal of thinking and her indictment spread over the entire male species--even now including Brent. In a hazy sort of way it was borne in on her that if gentlemen were unable to drink and at the same time keep their skins decent, they were becoming inexcusably degraded. In the circ.u.mstances, they could have no pretty gardens--ever! Above all, perhaps, was her intuitive knowledge that Brent had tried to harm this girl who, at the bidding of an old negress, came offering her flesh to help one in whom she felt no particular interest--though Dale, too, had immeasurably shocked her with his selfishness. The sum total of these things went into the long night's vigil, and left her at high tension. So now, when the men arrived, she was facing them, frowning as an indignant, inexpugnable black executioner.

"Good morning, Timmie," said the Colonel, starting to enter, but she blocked the doorway, announcing:

"You-alls cyarn' come in! Dar's a lady 'sleep in heah!"

"How is Mesmie?" he asked.