The Call of the Cumberlands Part 29

"And," went on the New Yorker, flushing with suddenly augmenting pa.s.sion, "what I said I still believe to be true, and repeat in your presence. At another time and place, I shall be even more explicit. I shall ask you to explain--certain things."

"Mr. Horton," suggested Samson in an ominously quiet voice, "I reckon you're a little drunk. If I were you, I'd sit down."

Wilfred's face went from red to white, and his shoulders stiffened. He leaned forward, and for the instant no one moved. The tick of a hall clock was plainly audible.

"South," he said, his breath coming in labored excitement, "defend yourself!"

Samson still sat motionless.

"Against what?" he inquired.

"Against that!" Horton struck the mountain man across the face with his open hand. Instantly, there was a commotion of sc.r.a.ping chairs and shuffling feet, mingled with a chorus of inarticulate protest. Samson had risen, and, for a second, his face had become a thing of unspeakable pa.s.sion. His hand instinctively swept toward his pocket-- and stopped half-way. He stood by his overturned chair, gazing into the eyes of his a.s.sailant, with an effort at self-mastery which gave his chest and arms the appearance of a man writhing and stiffening under electrocution. Then, he forced both hands to his back and gripped them there. For a moment, the tableau was held, then the man from the mountains began speaking, slowly and in a tone of dead-level monotony.

Each syllable was portentously distinct and clear clipped.

"Maybe you know why I don't kill you.... Maybe you don't.... I don't give a d.a.m.n whether you do or not.... That's the first blow I've ever pa.s.sed.... I ain't going to hit back.... You need a friend pretty bad just now.... For certain reasons, I'm going to be that friend.... Don't you see that this thing is a d.a.m.ned frame-up? ... Don't you see that I was brought here to murder you?" He turned suddenly to Farbish.

"Why did you insist on my putting that in my pocket"--Samson took out the pistol, and threw it down on the table-cloth in front of Wilfred, where it struck and shivered a half-filled wine-gla.s.s--"and why did you warn me that this man meant to kill me, unless I killed him first? I was meant to be your catspaw to put Wilfred Horton out of your way. I may be a barbarian and a savage, but I can smell a rat--if it's dead enough!"

For an instant, there was absolute and hushed calm. Wilfred Horton picked up the discarded weapon and looked at it in bewildered stupefaction, then slowly his face flamed with distressing mortification.

"Any time you want to fight me"--Samson had turned again to face him, and was still talking in his deadly quiet voice--"except to-night, you can find me. I've never been hit before without hitting back. That blow has got to be paid for--but the man that's really responsible has got to pay first. When I fight you, I'll fight for myself, not for a bunch of d.a.m.ned murderers.... Just now, I've got other business. That man framed this up!" He pointed a lean finger across the table into the startled countenance of Mr. Farbish. "He knew! He has been working on this job for a month. I'm going to attend to his case now."

As Samson started toward Farbish, the conspirator rose, and, with an excellent counterfeit of insulted virtue, pushed back his chair.

"By G.o.d," he indignantly exclaimed, "you mustn't try to embroil me in your quarrels. You must apologize. You are talking wildly, South."

"Am I?" questioned the Kentuckian, quietly; "I'm going to act wildly in a minute."

He halted a short distance from Farbish, and drew from his pocket a crumpled sc.r.a.p of the offending magazine page: the item that had offended Horton.

"I may not have good manners, Mister Farbish, but where I come from we know how to handle varmints." He dropped his voice and added for the plotter's ear only: "Here's a little matter on the side that concerns only us. It wouldn't interest these other gentlemen." He opened his hand, and added: "Here, _eat_ that!"

Farbish, with a frightened glance at the set face of the man who was advancing upon him, leaped back, and drew from his pocket a pistol--it was an exact counterpart of the one with which he had supplied Samson.

With a panther-like swiftness, the Kentuckian leaped forward, and struck up the weapon, which spat one ineffective bullet into the rafters. There was a momentary scuffle of swaying bodies and a crash under which the table groaned amid the shattering of gla.s.s and china.

Then, slowly, the conspirator's body bent back at the waist, until its shoulders were stretched on the disarranged cloth, and the white face, with purple veins swelling on the forehead, stared up between two brown hands that gripped its throat.

"Swallow that!" ordered the mountaineer.

For just an instant, the company stood dumfounded, then a strained, unnatural voice broke the silence.

"Stop him, he's going to kill the man!"

The odds were four to two, and with a sudden rally to the support of their chief plotter, the other conspirators rushed the figure that stood throttling his victim. But Samson South was in his element. The dammed-up wrath that had been smoldering during these last days was having a tempestuous outlet. He had found men who, in a gentlemen's club to which he had come as a guest, sought to use him as a catspaw and murderer.

They had planned to utilize the characteristics upon which they relied in himself. They had thought that, if once angered, he would relapse into the feudist, and forget that his surroundings were those of gentility and civilization. Very well, he would oblige them, but not as a blind dupe. He would be as elementally primitive as they had pictured him, but the victims of his savagery should be of his own choosing.

Before his eyes swam a red mist of wrath. Once before, as a boy, he had seen things as through a fog of blood. It was the day when the factions met at Hixon, and he had carried the gun of his father for the first time into action. The only way his eyes could be cleared of that fiery haze was that they should first see men falling.

As they a.s.saulted him, _en ma.s.se_, he seized a chair, and swung it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing of gla.s.s and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle.

At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of his a.s.sailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled aside his chair, and plunged for the sole remaining man. They closed in a clinch.

The last antagonist was a boxer, and when he saw the Kentuckian advance toward him empty-handed, he smiled and accepted the gauge of battle. In weight and reach and practice, he knew that he had the advantage, and, now that it was man to man, he realized that there was no danger of interference from Horton. But Samson knew nothing of boxing. He had learned his fighting tactics in the rough-and-tumble school of the mountains; the school of "fist and skull," of fighting with hands and head and teeth, and as the Easterner squared off he found himself caught in a flying tackle and went to the floor locked in an embrace that carried down with it chairs and furniture. As he struggled and rolled, pitting his gymnasium training against the unaccustomed a.s.sault of cyclonic fury, he felt the strong fingers of two hands close about his throat and lost consciousness.

Samson South rose, and stood for a moment panting in a scene of wreckage and disorder. The table was littered with shivered gla.s.ses and decanters and chinaware. The furniture was scattered and overturned.

Farbish was weakly leaning to one side in the seat to which he had made his way. The men who had gone down under the heavy blows of the chair lay quietly where they had fallen.

Wilfred Horton stood waiting. The whole affair had transpired with such celerity and speed that he had hardly understood it, and had taken no part. But, as he met the gaze of the disordered figure across the wreckage of a dinner-table, he realized that now, with the preliminaries settled, he who had struck Samson in the face must give satisfaction for the blow. Horton was sober, as cold sober as though he had jumped into ice-water, and though he was not in the least afraid, he was mortified, and, had apology at such a time been possible, would have made it. He knew that he had misjudged his man; he saw the outlines of the plot as plainly as Samson had seen them, though more tardily.

Samson's toe touched the pistol which had dropped from Farbish's hand and he contemptuously kicked it to one side. He came back to his place.

"Now, Mr. Horton," he said to the man who stood looking about with a dazed expression, "if you're still of the same mind, I can accommodate you. You lied when you said I was a savage--though just now it sort of looks like I was, and"--he paused, then added--"and I'm ready either to fight or shake hands. Either way suits me."

For the moment, Horton did not speak, and Samson slowly went on:

"But, whether we fight or not, you've got to shake hands with me when we're finished. You and me ain't going to start a feud. This is the first time I've ever refused to let a man be my enemy if he wanted to.

I've got my own reasons. I'm going to make you shake hands with me whether you like it or not, but if you want to fight first it's satisfactory. You said awhile ago you would be glad to be more explicit with me when we were alone--" He paused and looked about the room.

"Shall I throw these d.a.m.ned murderers out of here, or will you go into another room and talk?"

"Leave them where they are," said Horton, quietly. "We'll go into the reading-room. Have you killed any of them?"

"I don't know," said the other, curtly, "and I don't care."

When they were alone, Samson went on:

"I know what you want to ask me about, and I don't mean to answer you.

You want to question me about Miss Lescott. Whatever she and I have done doesn't concern you, I will say this much: if I've been ignorant of New York ways, and my ignorance has embarra.s.sed her, I'm sorry.

"I suppose you know that she's too d.a.m.ned good for you--just like she's too good for me. But she thinks more of you than she does of me--and she's yours. As for me, I have nothing to apologize to you for. Maybe, I have something to ask her pardon about, but she hasn't asked it.

"George Lescott brought me up here, and befriended me. Until a year ago, I had never known any life except that of the c.u.mberland Mountains. Until I met Miss Lescott, I had never known a woman of your world. She was good to me. She saw that in spite of my roughness and ignorance I wanted to learn, and she taught me. You chose to misunderstand, and dislike me. These men saw that, and believed that, if they could make you insult me, they could make me kill you. As to your part, they succeeded. I didn't see fit to oblige them, but, now that I've settled with them, I'm willing to give you satisfaction. Do we fight now, and shake hands afterward, or do we shake hands without fighting?"

Horton stood silently studying the mountaineer.

"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed at last. "And you are the man I undertook to criticize!"

"You ain't answered my question," suggested Samson South.

"South, if you are willing to shake hands with me, I shall be grateful. I may as well admit that, if you had thrashed me before that crowd, you could hardly have succeeded in making me feel smaller. I have played into their hands. I have been a d.a.m.ned fool. I have riddled my own self-respect--and, if you can afford to accept my apologies and my hand, I am offering you both."

"I'm right glad to hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to go to the telephone."

The booth was in the same room, and, as Horton waited, he recognized the number for which Samson was calling. Wilfred's face once more flushed with the old prejudice. Could it be that Samson meant to tell Adrienne Lescott what had transpired? Was he, after all, the braggart who boasted of his fights? And, if not, was it Samson's custom to call her up every evening for a good-night message? He turned and went into the hall, but, after a few minutes, returned.

"I'm glad you liked the show...." the mountaineer was saying. "No, nothing special is happening here--except that the ducks are plentiful.... Yes, I like it fine.... Mr. Horton's here. Wait a minute --I guess maybe he'd like to talk to you."

The Kentuckian beckoned to Horton, and, as he surrendered the receiver, left the room. He was thinking with a smile of the unconscious humor with which the girl's voice had just come across the wire:

"I knew that, if you two met each other, you would become friends."