The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 24

CHAPTER XIII

The window through whose broken pane Glory had dispatched her feathered messenger could not be seen into from the exterior. That was a temporary handicap for the besiegers and one upon which, in all their forethought, they had not calculated. It happened that at this hour of the afternoon the slanting sun struck blindingly upon the gla.s.s that still remained unbroken and confused the ambushed eyes that raked the place from advantageous points along the upper slopes.

So when Glory had risen there for an instant, against the window itself, the vigilant a.s.sa.s.sins had been able to make out only the unidentified shadow of a figure moving there, and upon that figure, at point-blank range, they had loosed their volley. Whose figure it was they could not tell, and since they believed their intended victim to be alone they did not question. In the confusion of the instant, with the glare on windowpanes, they missed the spot of light that rose phoenixlike as the pigeon took flight. The frightened bird mounted skyward unnoted and fl.u.s.tered by the bellowing of so much gunnery.

But Spurrier's shout of horror was heard by the besiegers and misinterpreted as a cry wrung from him under a mortal wound.

The a.s.sailants had not seen nor suspected Glory's approach because she had come from the front, and had arrived before they, drawing in from the rear and sides, had reached their stations commanding a complete outlook. They had a.s.sumed their victim to be in solitary possession and now they also a.s.sumed him to be helpless--perhaps already dead.

Yet they waited, following long-revered precepts of wariness, before going onward across the open stretch of the dooryard for an ultimate investigation. He might die slowly--and hard. He might have left in him enough fight to take a vengeful toll of the oncoming attackers--and they could afford to make haste slowly.

So they settled down in their several hiding places and remained as inconspicuous as gra.s.s burrowing field mice. The forest cathedral which they defiled seemed lifeless in the hushed stillness of the afternoon as the sun rode down toward its setting.

John Spurrier, inside the house, living where he was supposed to be dead, at first made no sound that carried out to them across the little interval of s.p.a.ce.

He was kneeling on the floor with the girl's head cradled on his knees and in his throat sounded only smothering gasps of inarticulate despair. These low utterances were animal-like and wrung him with the agonies of heartbreak. He thought that she must have died just after the whisper and the smile with which she had announced her success in her effort to save him.

Kneeling there with the bright head inert on his corduroy-clad knee, he fancied that the smile still lingered on her lips even after she had laid down her life for him five minutes from the time he had forsworn her.

Now that she was gone and he about to go, he could recognize her as a serene and splendid star shining briefly above the lurid shoddiness of his own grasping life--and the star had set.

At first a profoundly stunned and torpid feeling held him numb; a blunt agony of loss and guilt, but slowly out of that wretched paralysis emerged another thought. He was helpless to bring her back and that futility would drive him mad unless out of it could come some motive of action.

She was not only dead, but dead by the hands of murderers who had come after him--and all that remained was the effort to avenge her. Like waters moving slowly at first but swelling into freshet power, wrath and insatiable thirst for vengeance swept him to a sort of madness.

Here he was kneeling over the unstirring woman he had loved while out there were the murder hirelings who had brought about the tragedy. Her closed and unaccusing eyes, exhorting him as pa.s.sionate utterances could not have done, incited him to a frenzy. At least some of these culprits must go unshriven, and by his own hand to the death that inevitably awaited himself.

And as Spurrier's flux of molten emotions seethed about that determination a solidifying transition came over him and his brain cleared of the blind spots of fury into the coherency of a plan.

Out there they would wait for a while to test the completeness of their success. If he gave way to his pa.s.sion and challenged them as inclination clamored to do, they would dispatch him at leisure.

Just now he was willing enough to die, but entirely unwilling to die alone. He craved company and a red journey for that final crossing. So once more he looked down into the face on which there was no stir of animation, then very gently bent and kissed the quiet lips.

"If you could come back to me," he chokingly whispered, "I'd unsay everything, except that I love you. But if there's a meeting place beyond, I'll join you soon--when I've made them pay for you."

He lifted her tenderly and, through his agitation, came a sudden realization of how light she was as he laid her gently on his army cot. After that he picked up his rifle and bulged out his pockets with cartridges.

The c.o.c.kloft above his room, which was reached by a ladder, had windows which were really only loopholes and from there he could better see into the tangle that sheltered his enemies.

He entertained no vain hope of rescue. He asked for no deliverance.

The story drew to its ending and he meant to cap it with the one climax to which the last half hour had left anything of significance.

Since small things become vastly portentous when written into the margin between life and death, he hoped that before he died he might recognize the face of at least one of the men whom he meant to take with him across the River of Eternity.

So, dedicating himself to that motive, he climbed the ladder.

Peering out through first one and then the other of the loopholes of the c.o.c.kloft, he waited, and it seemed to him that he waited eternally. He began to fear that his self-sure attackers would content themselves with an inactive vigil and that after all he was to be cheated.

The sun was westering. The shadows were elongating. The sounds through the woods were subtly changing from the voices of day to those of approaching night.

Still he waited.

Outside also they were waiting; waiting to make sure that it was safe to go in and confirm their presumption that he had fallen.

But when Spurrier had, in a little time as the watch recorded it, served out his purgatorial sentence, he sensed a stir in the ma.s.sed banks of the laurel and thrust his rifle barrel outward in preparation for welcome. A moment afterward he saw a hat with a downturned brim--a coat with an upturned collar--a pair of shoulders that hunched slowly forward with almost imperceptible movement. His mind had become a calculating machine now, functioning with deliberate surety.

The unrecognizable figure out there was a hundred yards away and the rifle he held would bore through the head under the hat crown at that range as a gimlet bores through a marked spot on soft pine.

But a single shot would end the show. No one else would appear and even the dead man would be hauled back by his heels--unidentified. He would wait until he could make his bag of game more worth dying for--more worth _her_ dying for!

Other ages seemed to elapse before the b.u.t.ternut figure showed stretched at length in the tall gra.s.s outside the thicket and a second hat appeared. Still Spurrier held his fire until three hats were visible and the first man, having crawled to a tree trunk, had half risen.

He realized that he could not much longer hold it. At any moment they might rush the place in force of numbers, and from more than one side, smothering his defense--and once in contact with the walls they would need only a lighted torch.

So he sighted with target-range precision and fired, following the initial effort with snap-shots at the second and third visible heads.

He had the brief satisfaction of seeing the first man plunge forward, clawing at the earth with hands that dropped their weapon. He saw the second stumble, recover himself, stumble again and then start crawling backward with a disabled, crablike locomotion, while the third figure turned, unharmed, and ran to cover. But at the same moment he heard shouts and shots from the other side which called him instantly to the opposite loophole and, once there, kept him pumping his rifle against what appeared to be a charge of confused figures that he had no leisure to inspect. They, too, fell back under the vigor of his punishment, and Spurrier found himself reloading in a silence that had come as suddenly as the noise of the onrush.

He had shot down two a.s.sailants, but both had been retrieved beyond sight by their confederates, and the besieged man groaned with a realization of defeated purpose. The sun was low now and soon it would be too dark to see. Then the trappers would close in and take the rat out of the trap. What he failed to do while daylight lasted, he would never do.

In only one respect did his judgment fail him as he sought to forecast the immediate future. It seemed to him that he had spent hours there in the c.o.c.kloft, whereas perhaps thirty minutes had elapsed.

He had been thinking of the pigeon, but had put aside hope as to succor from that agency. Old Cappeze was not interested in pigeons.

The bird would go to roost in its dovecote and sit all night with its head tucked placidly under its wing--and the plea for help unread on its leg--and the lawyer would never think of looking into the dovecote.

Now, since he had failed and must die unavenged--for the wounding of two unidentified enemies failed of satisfaction--he must utilize what was left of life intensively. Once more before he died, he wanted to see the face of the woman whom he had forsworn; the woman who was worth infinitely more than the tawdry regards for which he had given her up.

So he went down the ladder and knelt beside the cot.

He laid his ear close to the bosom and could have sworn that it fluttered to a half heartbeat.

Suddenly Spurrier closed his hands over his face and for the first time in years he prayed.

"Almighty Father," he pleaded, "give her back to me! Give me one other chance--and exact whatever price Thy wisdom designates."

To Toby Austin's meager farm, which ab.u.t.ted on that of d.y.k.e Cappeze, that afternoon had trudged Bud Hawkins. In all the mountain region thereabout his name was well known and any man of whom you had asked information would have told you that Bud was "the poorest and the righteousest man that ever rode circuit."

For Bud was among other things a preacher. To use his own words, "I farms some, I heals bodies some, an' I gospels some." And in each of his avocations he followed faithfully the lights of his conscience.

His own farm lay a long way off, and now he was here as a visitor.

This afternoon he fared over to the house of d.y.k.e Cappeze as was his custom when in that neighborhood. He regarded Cappeze as a righteous man and a "wrastler with all evil," and he came bearing the greetings of a brotherhood of effort.

The sun was low when he arrived, and the old lawyer confessed to a mild anxiety because of Glory's failure to return before the hour which her clean-cut regularity fixed as the time of starting the supper preparations.