The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 19

"Waal," Sam Mosebury waved his hand, and even his gestures had a s.p.a.cious bigness about them, "ef G.o.d Almighty didn't see fit fer thet thar bird an' thet thar cat ter love one another--I don't seek ter alter His plan. Nonetheless I sets a pa.s.sel of store by both of 'em." He filled his pipe, then his words became musing, possibly allegorical. "Mebby some day I'll _ree_lax a leetle mite too much in watchin' an' then I reckon ther cat'll kill ther bird--but thet's accordin' ter nature, too, an' deespite I'll grieve some, I won't disgust ther cat none."

That night Spurrier lay on the same shuck-filled mattress with the man whom the law had not been strong enough to hang, and for a while he remained wakeful, reflecting on the strangeness of his bed-fellowship.

But, had he known it, his life was saved that night because the murderer had arrived and provided an interfering presence when the plans on foot required solitude.

CHAPTER XI

Perhaps old Cappeze had spoken too late when he sounded his sharp warning to the newcomer against unsettling the simple contentment of his daughter's mind. Always realizing his transient status in the aloofness of this life, Spurrier had scrupulously guarded his contact with the girl who belonged to it and who had no prospect of escaping it. He had sought to behave to her as he might have behaved to a child, with grave or gay friendliness untouched by those gallantries that might have been misunderstood, yet treating her intelligence with full and adult equality.

But his inclination to see more of her than formerly was one that he indulged because it gave him pleasure and because a failure to do so would have had the aspect of churlishness.

Those self-confessed traces of sn.o.bbery that adhered to this courtier at the throne of wealth, were attributes of which the girl saw nothing. Neither did she see the sh.e.l.l of cynicism which Spurrier had cultivated and this was not because her insight failed of keenness, but because in these surroundings they were dormant qualities.

The self that he displayed here was the self of the infectious smile, of the frank boldness and good humor that had made him beloved among his army mess-mates before these more gracious qualities had been winter-killed by misfortune.

So he was the picturesque and charming version of himself, and he became to Glory an object of hero worship, whose presence made the day eventful and whose intervals of absence were filled with dreams of his next coming.

It was about this time that John Spurrier, the "opportunity hound,"

made a disquieting discovery. It came upon him one night as he sat on the porch of d.y.k.e Cappeze's log house at twilight, with pipes glowing and seductive influences stealing into the senses. Daylight color had faded to the mistiness of tarnished silver except for a lemon afterglow above western ridges that were violet-gray, and the evening star was a single lantern hanging softly luminous, where soon there would be many others.

Cadenced and melodious as a lullaby fraught with the magic of the solitudes, the night song of frog and whippoorwill rose stealingly out of silence, and the materialist who had been city bound so much since conviction of crime had shadowed his life discovered the thing which threatened danger.

It came to him as his eyes met those of Glory, who sat in the doorway itself--since she, at least, need not fear to show her face to any lurking rifleman.

The yellow lamplight from within outlined the lovely contour of her rounded cheek and throat and livened her hair, but it was not only her undeniable beauty that caused Spurrier sudden anxiety. It was the eyes and what he read in them. Instantly as their gazes engaged she dropped her glance but, in the moment before she had masked her expression, Spurrier knew that she had fallen in love with him. The eyes had said it in that instant when he had surprised them. They had immediately seized back their secret and hidden it away, but not in time.

The opportunity hound rose and knocked the ash from his pipe. He wondered whether old d.y.k.e Cappeze, sitting there inscrutable and dimly shaped in the shadows, had shared his discovery--that grizzled old watchdog who was not too far gone to fight for his own with the strength of his yellowed fangs.

The visitor shook hands and walked moodily home, and as he went he sought to dismiss the matter from his mind. It was all a delusion, he a.s.sured himself; some weird psychological quirk born of a man's innate vanity; incited by a girl's physical allurement. He would go to sleep and to-morrow he would laugh at the moonshine problem. But he did not find it so easy to sleep. He remembered one of those men in the islands who had become a melancholiac. The fellow had been normal at one moment; then without warning something like an impenetrable shadow had struck across him. He had never come out of the shadow. So this disquiet--though it was abnormal elation rather than melancholy, had suddenly become a fact with himself, and instead of dismissing it Spurrier found himself reacting to it. Not only was Glory Cappeze in love with him but--absurdity of absurdities--he was in love with Glory!

It was as irreconcilable with all the logic of his own nature as any conceivable thing could be, yet it was undeniably true.

But Spurrier had been there in the hills when summer had overcome winter. He had seen trickles of water grow into freshets and feed rivers. He had seen clouds as large as one's hand swell abruptly into tempests that cannonaded mightily through the peaks, with the lashing of torrents, the sting of lightnings, and the onsweep of hurricanes.

He had seen the pink flower of laurel and rhododendron make fragrant magic over wastes of chocolate and slag-gray mountain sides, and in himself something akin to these elemental forces had declared itself.

He found himself two men, and though he swore resolutely that his brain should dominate and govern, he also recognized in himself the man of new-born impulses who drew the high air into his chest with a keen elation, and who wanted to laugh at the artificial things that life has wrought into its structure of accepted civilization.

That insurgent part of himself found a truer congeniality in the company of grizzled old d.y.k.e Cappeze than that of Martin Harrison; a stronger comradeship in the frank laugh of Glory than in the cool intelligence of Vivien's smile.

Glory's brain was as alert as quicksilver, and her heart as high and clean as the hills. Yet in his own world these two would be as unplaced as gypsies strayed from their dilapidated caravan. Moreover, it was ordained that he was to win his game and upon him was to be conferred an accolade--the hand, in marriage, of his princ.i.p.al's daughter.

Spurrier laughed a little grimly to himself. Of the woman whose hand had been half-promised him he could think dispa.s.sionately and of this other, whom he could not take with him into his world of artificial values, he could not think at all without a pounding of pulses and a tumult which he thought he had left behind him with his early youth.

In character and genuine metal of mind, Glory was the superior of most of those women he knew, yet because she was country bred and trained to a code that did not obtain elsewhere, she could no more be removed from her setting than a blooming eidelweiss could be successfully transplanted in a conservatory. He himself was fixed into a certain place which he had attained by fighting his way, in the figurative sense at least, over the bodies of the less successful and the less enduring. It was too late for him to transplant himself, and he and she were plants of differing soil, as though one were a snow flower and one a tropic growth.

Also there were immediate things of which to think, such as an unexpired threat upon his life.

Already he had escaped the a.s.sa.s.sin's first effort, and he had no guess where the enmity lay which had actuated that attack. That it still existed and would strike again he had a full realization. He was not walking in the shadow of dread but, because he knew of the menace lurking where all the faces were friendly, he had begun to feel that companionship of suspense: that nearness of something in hiding under which men lived here; and under which women grew old in their twenties.

And it is not given to a man to live under such conditions, and remain the man who fights only across mahogany tabletops in offices. Yet John Spurrier scornfully reasoned that if he could not remain himself even in a new and altered habitat, he was a weakling, and he had no intention of proving a weakling.

His hand had grasped the plow-haft and, for the present, at least, his loyalty belonged to his undertaking.

This inward conflict went with him as he rode across the singing hills to gather up his mail at the nearest post office and he told himself, "I am a fool to ponder it."

Then his thoughts ran on: "It is dwelling on fact.i.tious things that gives them force. Life presents a Ja.n.u.s aspect of the double-faced at times, but a man must choose his way and ignore the turnings. Glory has pure charm. She has a quick mind and a captivating beauty, but so far as I'm concerned, she is simply out of the picture. I could be mad about her, if I let myself--but presumably I am not adrift on a gulf stream of emotionalism."

When he had spent an hour in the dusty little town and turned again into the coolness of the hills, he dismounted under the shade of a "cuc.u.mber tree" and glanced through those letters that were still unopened. One envelope was addressed in a hand that tantalized memory with a half sense of the familiar, and Spurrier's brow contracted in perplexity.

Then his face grew abruptly grave. "By heavens!" he exclaimed. "It's Withers--Major Withers! What can he be writing about?"

He opened it and drew out the sheet of paper, and, as he read, his expression went through the gamut of surprise and incredulity to a settled sternness of purpose that made his face stony.

"If it's true," he exclaimed, "the man is mine to kill! No, not to kill, either, but to take alive at all costs."

He stood for a moment, his sinewy body answering to a tremor of deeply shaken emotion. Had he been mountain-bred and feud-nurtured, the sinister glitter of his eyes could have been no more relentless. He was for that moment a man dedicating himself to the blood oath of vengeance.

Then he composed his features and smoothed out the letter that his clenched fingers had unconsciously crumpled. Again he read what Major Withers had to say:

I am writing because though I infer that you have succeeded in material ways, I have heard nothing of your progress in clearing your name and I know that until that is accomplished, no success will be complete for you.

Quite recently I have had as my striker a fellow named Wiley, who used to be in your platoon--and I have talked with him a good bit.

Not long ago he declared to me his belief that Private Grant who is listed as officially dead, did _not_ die in the Islands.

He seems to think that Grant made a clean getaway and went back to the Kentucky mountains from which he came. He confesses that he gets this idea from nothing more tangible than casual hints dropped by Private Severance, whose discharge came shortly after you left us, yet his impression is so strong as to amount to conviction. Possibly if you could trace Severance you might learn something. It's a vague clew, I admit, but I pa.s.s it along to you for whatever it may be worth.

Slowly, as though his tireless limbs had grown suddenly old, Spurrier mounted and rode on with reins hanging. He was so deep in thought that he forgot the other unopened letters in his pocket.

Grant might be in these same hills with himself; Grant upon whom his counsel had sought to place the blame for the murder of Captain Comyn. If they could meet alone for the period of a brief interview, either that question would be finally answered or in the reckoning one of them would have to die.

But how to trace him in this ragged territory covering a great and broken area--a territory which G.o.d had seemed to build, as a haven and a hiding place for men who sought concealment? Grant would in all likelihood see him first and--he entertained no illusions as to the result--the deserter would kill him on sight. On the other hand, it would do Spurrier no good to kill Grant. If Grant were to serve him it must be with a confession wrung from living lips, and on oath.

Of course, too, the years would have changed Grant so that if they came face to face he would probably fail to recognize the man he had known only in khaki.

The scarred chin? A beard would obliterate that. The stature? Added weight or lost weight would make it seem another man's.

By processes of elimination Spurrier culled over the possibilities until at length his glance brightened.

In one particular Private Grant could scarcely disguise himself. His eyes were in a fashion mismated. One was light gray and one pale blue.

Yes, if ever they met he would have his clew in that.

And that memory reminded him that he had recently been impressed to an unusual degree by a pair of eyes. Whose were they? Oh, yes, he remembered now. It was the man at whose house he had met Sam Mosebury--Sim Colby who dwelt over beyond Clubfoot Branch.

But Colby's eyes had been noticeable by reason of their extraordinary blackness. So that only helped him in so far as it enabled him to eliminate from all the thousands of possible men the one man, Sim Colby.

The afternoon had spent itself toward sunset as he dismounted and stabled his horse, and it was with a face still somberly thoughtful that he fitted his key into the padlock which held his door and entered.