The Call of the Cumberlands Part 28

While he was packing, the telephone rang, and Samson heard Adrienne's voice at the other end of the wire.

"Where have you been hiding?" she demanded. "I'll have to send a truant officer after you."

"I've been very busy," said the man, "and I reckon, after all, you can't civilize a wolf. I'm afraid I've been wasting your time."

Possibly, the miserable tone of the voice told the girl more than the words.

"You are having a season with the blue devils," she announced. "You've been cooped up too much. This wind ought to bring the ducks, and----"

"I'm leaving to-night," Samson told her.

"It would have been very nice of you to have run up to say good-bye,"

she reproved. "But I'll forgive you, if you call me up by long distance. You will get there early in the morning. To-morrow, I'm going to Philadelphia over night. The next night, I shall be at the theater.

Call me up after the theater, and tell me how you like it."

It was the same old frankness and friendliness of voice, and the same old note like the music of a reed instrument. Samson felt so comforted and rea.s.sured that he laughed through the telephone.

"I've been keeping away from you," he volunteered, "because I've had a relapse into savagery, and haven't been fit to talk to you. When I get back, I'm coming up to explain. And, in the meantime, I'll telephone."

On the train Samson was surprised to discover that, after all, he had Mr. William Farbish for a traveling companion. That gentleman explained that he had found an opportunity to play truant from business for a day or two, and wished to see Samson comfortably ensconced and introduced.

The first day Farbish and Samson had the place to themselves, but the next morning would bring others. Samson's ideas of a millionaires'

shooting-box had been vague, but he had looked forward to getting into the wilds. The marshes were certainly desolate enough, and the pine woods through which the buckboard brought them. But, inside the club itself, the Kentuckian found himself in such luxurious comfort as he could not, in his own mind, reconcile with the idea of "going hunting."

He would be glad when the cushioned chairs of the raftered lounging- room and the tinkle of high-ball ice and gossip were exchanged for the salt air and the blinds.

CHAPTER XXI

But, when he went out for his initiation, in the raw blackness before daybreak, and lay in the blind, with only his guide for a companion, he felt far away from artificial luxuries. The first pale streamers of dawn soon streaked the east, and the wind charged cuttingly like drawn sabers of galloping cavalry. The wooden decoys had been anch.o.r.ed with the live ducks swimming among them, and the world began to awake. He drew a long breath of contentment, and waited. Then came the trailing of gray and blue and green mists, and, following the finger of the silent boatman, he made out in the northern sky a slender wedge of black dots, against the spreading rosiness of the horizon. Soon after, he heard the clear clangor of throats high in the sky, answered by the nearer honking of the live decoys, and he felt a throbbing of his pulses as he huddled low against the damp bottom of the blind and waited.

The lines and wedges grew until the sky was stippled with them, and their strong-throated cries were a strident music. For a time, they pa.s.sed in seeming thousands, growing from scarcely visible dots into speeding shapes with slender outstretched necks and bills, pointed like reversed compa.s.s needles to the south. As yet, they were all flying high, ignoring with lordly indifference the clamor of their renegade brothers, who shrieked to them through the morning mists to drop down, and feed on death.

But, as the day grew older, Samson heard the popping of guns off to the side, where other gunners lay in other blinds, and presently a drake veered from his line of flight, far off to the right, harkened to the voice of temptation, and led his flock circling toward the blind.

Then, with a whir and drumming of dark-tipped wings, they came down, and struck the water, and the boy from Misery rose up, shooting as he came. He heard the popping of his guide's gun at his side, and saw the dead and crippled birds falling about him, amid the noisy clamor of their started flight.

That day, while the mountaineer was out on the flats, the party of men at the club had been swelled to a total of six, for in pursuance of the carefully arranged plans of Mr. Farbish, Mr. Bradburn had succeeded in inducing Wilfred Horton to run down for a day or two of the sport he loved. To outward seeming, the trip which the two men had made together had been quite casual, and the outgrowth of coincidence; yet, in point of fact, not only the drive from Baltimore in Horton's car, but the conversation by the way had been in pursuance of a plan, and the result was that, when Horton arrived that afternoon, he found his usually even temper ruffled by bits of maliciously broached gossip, until his resentment against Samson South had been fanned into danger heat. He did not know that South also was at the club, and he did not that afternoon go out to the blinds, but so far departed from his usual custom as to permit himself to sit for hours in the club grill.

And yet, as is often the case in carefully designed affairs, the one element that made most powerfully for the success of Farbish's scheme was pure accident. The carefully arranged meeting between the two men, the adroitly incited pa.s.sions of each, would still have brought no clash, had not Wilfred Horton been affected by the flushing effect of alcohol. Since his college days, he had been invariably abstemious.

To-night marked an exception.

He was rather surprised at the cordiality of the welcome accorded him, for, as chance would have it, except for Samson South, whom he had not yet seen, all the other sportsmen were men closely allied to the political and financial elements upon which he had been making war.

Still, since they seemed willing to forget for the time that there had been a breach, he was equally so. Just now, he was feeling such bitterness for the Kentuckian that the foes of a less-personal sort seemed unimportant.

In point of fact, Wilfred Horton had spent a very bad day. The final straw had broken the back of his usually unruffled temper, when he had found in his room on reaching the Kenmore a copy of a certain New York weekly paper, and had read a page, which chanced to be lying face up (a chance carefully prearranged). It was an item of which Farbish had known, in advance of publication, but Wilfred would never have seen that sheet, had it not been so carefully brought to his attention.

There were hints of the strange infatuation which a certain young woman seemed to entertain for a partially civilized stranger who had made his entree to New York _via_ the Police Court, and who wore his hair long in imitation of a Biblical character of the same name. The supper at the Wigwam Inn was mentioned, and the character of the place intimated. Horton felt this objectionable innuendo was directly traceable to Adrienne's ill-judged friendship for the mountaineer, and he bitterly blamed the mountaineer. And, while he had been brooding on these matters, a man acting as Farbish's amba.s.sador had dropped into his room, since Farbish himself knew that Horton would not listen to his confidences. The delegated spokesman warned Wilfred that Samson South had spoken pointedly of him, and advised cautious conduct, in a fashion calculated to inflame.

Samson, it was falsely alleged, had accused him of saying derogatory things in his absence, which he would hardly venture to repeat in his presence. In short, it was put up to Horton to announce his opinion openly, or eat the crow of cowardice.

That evening, when Samson went to his room, Farbish joined him.

"I've been greatly annoyed to find," he said, seating himself on Samson's bed, "that Horton arrived to-day."

"I reckon that's all right," said Samson. "He's a member, isn't he?"

Farbish appeared dubious.

"I don't want to appear in the guise of a prophet of trouble," he said, "but you are my guest here, and I must warn you. Horton thinks of you as a 'gun-fighter' and a dangerous man. He won't take chances with you. If there is a clash, it will be serious. He doesn't often drink, but to-day he's doing it, and may be ugly. Avoid an altercation if you can, but if it comes--" He broke off and added seriously: "You will have to get him, or he will get you. Are you armed?"

The Kentuckian laughed.

"I reckon I don't need to be armed amongst gentlemen."

Farbish drew from his pocket a magazine pistol.

"It won't hurt you to slip that into your clothes," he insisted.

For an instant, the mountaineer stood looking at his host and with eyes that bored deep, but whatever was in his mind as he made that scrutiny he kept to himself. At last, he took the magazine pistol, turned it over in his hand, and put it into his pocket.

"Mr. Farbish," he said, "I've been in places before now where men were drinking who had made threats against me. I think you are excited about this thing. If anything starts, he will start it."

At the dinner table, Samson South and Wilfred Horton were introduced, and acknowledged their introductions with the briefest and most formal of nods. During the course of the meal, though seated side by side, each ignored the presence of the other. Samson was, perhaps, no more silent than usual. Always, he was the listener except when a question was put to him direct, but the silence which sat upon Wilfred Horton was a departure from his ordinary custom.

He had discovered in his college days that liquor, instead of exhilarating him, was an influence under which he grew morose and sullen, and that discovery had made him almost a total abstainer.

To-night, his gla.s.s was constantly filled and emptied, and, as he ate, he gazed ahead, and thought resentfully of the man at his side.

When the coffee had been brought, and the cigars lighted, and the servants had withdrawn, Horton, with the manner of one who had been awaiting an opportunity, turned slightly in his chair, and gazed insolently at the Kentuckian.

Samson South still seemed entirely unconscious of the other's existence, though in reality no detail of the brewing storm had escaped him. He was studying the other faces around the table, and what he saw in them appeared to occupy him. Wilfred Horton's cheeks were burning with a dull flush, and his eyes were narrowing with an unveiled dislike. Suddenly, a silence fell on the party, and, as the men sat puffing their cigars, Horton turned toward the Kentuckian. For a moment, he glared in silence, then with an impetuous exclamation of disgust he announced:

"See here, South, I want you to know that if I'd understood you were to be here, I wouldn't have come. It has pleased me to express my opinion of you to a number of people, and now I mean to express it to you in person."

Samson looked around, and his features indicated neither surprise nor interest. He caught Farbish's eye at the same instant, and, though the plotter said nothing, the glance was subtle and expressive. It seemed to prompt and goad him on, as though the man had said:

"You mustn't stand that. Go after him."

"I reckon"--Samson's voice was a pleasant drawl--"it doesn't make any particular difference, Mr. Horton."

"Even if what I said didn't happen to be particularly commendatory?"

inquired Horton, his eyes narrowing.

"So long," replied the Kentuckian, "as what you said was your own opinion, I don't reckon it would interest me much."

"In point of fact"---Horton was gazing with steady hostility into Samson's eyes--"I prefer to tell you. I have rather generally expressed the belief that you are a d.a.m.ned savage, unfit for decent society."

Samson's face grew rigid and a trifle pale. His mouth set itself in a straight line, but, as Wilfred Horton came to his feet with the last words, the mountaineer remained seated.