The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 3

"Is it not a fact that since you and Grant ran amuck on the transport coming over, and Comyn put you both in irons, the two of you had sworn vengeance against him; that you had both taken the blood oath to get him?"

Severance looked blankly at his questioner and blankly shook his head.

"That's all new tidings ter me," he a.s.serted with entire calmness.

"Don't you know that you deliberately let Grant out immediately after the visit of Major James and slipped him the pistol with which he fired the shot? Didn't you do that, knowing that when the report sounded you could make it your excuse for leaving your post, and then perjure yourself as to the time?"

"I know full well," a.s.serted the witness with an unshaken composure, "that nothing like that didn't happen."

Fact built on fact until even the defendant's counsel found himself arguing against a growing and ugly conviction. The pistol had been identified as Spurrier's, and his explanation that he had left it hanging in his holster at his quarters, whence some unknown person might have abstracted it, lacked persuasiveness. The defense built a structure of hypothesis based upon the fact that the open door of Spurrier's room was visible from the house where Grant had been tossing on his cot. The claim was urgently advanced that a skulking lunatic might easily have seen the glint of blued steel, and have been spurred in his madness by the temptation of such an implement ready to his hand. But that, too, was held to be a fantastic claim. So the verdict was guilty and the sentence life imprisonment. It must have been death, had the case, for all its warp of presumption and woof of logic, been other than circ.u.mstantial.

The defendant felt that this mitigation of the extreme penalty was a misplaced mercy. The disgrace could be no blacker and death would at least have brought to its period the hideousness of the nightmare which must now stretch endlessly into the future.

It was to a prisoner, sentenced and branded, that Major Withers came one afternoon when the court-martial of Lieutenant Spurrier had run its course as topic-in-chief for the Officers' Club at Manila. Other matters were already crowding it out of the minds it had profoundly shocked.

"I want to talk to you, Jack," began the major bluntly. "I want to talk to you with a candor that grows out of the affection we all felt for you--before this d.a.m.nable thing upset our little world. My G.o.d, boy, you had life in your sling. You had every quality that makes the soldier; you had every social requisite except wealth. This besetting pa.s.sion for gambling has brought the whole train of disaster--as logically as if you had killed him at the card table itself."

"You are overlooking the fact, major," interrupted the prisoner dryly, "that I didn't kill him. Moreover, it's too late now for the warning to benefit me. I dare say in Leavenworth I shall have no trouble curbing my pa.s.sion for gaming." He paused and added with an irony of despairing bitterness: "But I suppose I should thank you and say, like the negro standing on the gallows, 'dis hyar is surely g'wine to be a great lesson ter me.'" Suddenly the voice broke and the young man wheeled to avert his face. "My G.o.d," he cried out, "why didn't you let them hang me or shoot me? Any man can stiffen his legs and his spine for five minutes of dying--even public dying--but back of those walls with a convict's number instead of a name----" There he broke off and the battalion commander laid a hand on his heaving shoulder.

"I didn't come to rub in preachments while you stood at the edge of the scaffold or the jail, Jack. My warning may not be too late, after all. We've pa.s.sed the matter up to the war department with a strong recommendation for clemency. We mean to pull every wire that can honorably be pulled. We're making the most of your good record heretofore and of the conviction being based on circ.u.mstantial evidence."

He paused a moment and then went on with a trifle of embarra.s.sment in his voice:

"You know that Senator Beverly is at the governor general's palace--and that his daughter is with him."

Spurrier wheeled at that and stood facing his visitor with eyes that had kindled, but in which the light at once faded as he commented shortly:

"Neither the senator nor Augusta has made any effort to see me since I was brought to Manila."

"Perhaps the senator thought that was best, Jack," argued Withers.

"For the daughter, of course, I'm not prepared to speak--but I know that Beverly has been keeping the cable hot in your behalf. Your name has become so familiar to the operators between here and Washington that they don't spell it out any more: they only need to rap out Sp.

now--and if I needed a voice to speak for me on Pennsylvania Avenue or on Capitol Hill, there's no man I'd pick before the senator."

When he had gone Spurrier sat alone and to his ears came the distant playing of a band in the plaza. Somewhere in that ancient town was the girl who had not been to see him, nor written to him, even though, just before his battalion had gone into the bosques across the mountains, she had let him slip a ring on her finger, and had answered "yes" to his question--the most personal question in the world.

CHAPTER III

There was a more a.s.sured light in Major Withers' eyes when he next came as a visitor into the prison quarters, and the heartiness of his hand clasp was in itself a congratulation.

"The thing was carried up to the president himself," he declared.

"Washington is sick of you, Spurrier. Because of you miles of red tape have been snarled up. Departments have worked overtime until the single hope of the United States government is that it may never hear of you again. You don't go to prison, after all, my boy."

"You mean I am pardoned?"

Then, remembering that the rose of his bringing carried a sharp thorn the senior proceeded with a note of concern sobering his voice.

"The red tape has not only been tangled because of you--but it has tangled you in its meshes, too, Spurrier. Yes, you are pardoned. You are as free as I am--but 'in view of the gravely convincing evidence, et cetera, et cetera'--it seems that some sort of compromise was deemed necessary."

Spurrier stood where he had risen from his seat and his eyes held those of his informant with a blending of inquiry and suspense.

"What sort of compromise, major?"

"You leave the army with a dishonorable discharge. The world is open to you and you've got an equipment for success--but you might as well recognize from the start that you're riding with a heavy impost in your saddle clothes, my boy." He paused a moment and then, dropping his race-track metaphor, went hurriedly on: "For myself, I think you're guilty or innocent and you ought to be hanged or clean-shriven. I don't get this dubious middle ground of freedom with a tarnished name. It's going to crop up to crab things for you just when they hang in the balance, and I'm d.a.m.ned if I can see its fairness! It will cause men to look askance and to say 'he was saved from rope-stretching only by wire-pulling.'"

The major ended somewhat savagely and Spurrier made no answer. He was gazing out at the patch of blue that blazed hotly through the high, barred window and, seeing there reminders of the bars sinister that would henceforth stand between himself and the sky.

The battalion chief interrupted the long pause to suggest:

"The _Empress_ sails on Tuesday. If I were you I'd take pa.s.sage on her. I suppose you will, won't you?"

"That depends," answered the liberated man hesitantly. "I've got to thank the senator--and, though she hasn't sent me any message, there's a question to ask a girl."

"It's none of my business, of course, Spurrier," came the advising voice quietly. "But the Beverlys have engaged pa.s.sage on the _Empress_. If I were you, I'd drop a formal note of grat.i.tude and leave the rest until you meet them aboard."

After a moment's thought the other nodded. "I'll follow that suggestion. It may be less embarra.s.sing for--them."

"The other fellows are going to send a sort of a hamper down to the boat. There won't be any cards, but you'll know that a spirit of G.o.dspeed goes with the stirrup cup."

For an instant Spurrier looked puzzled and the major, whose note of embarra.s.sment had been growing until it seemed to choke him, now spluttered and sought to bury his confusion under a forced paroxysm of coughing.

Then impulsively he thrust out his hand and gripped that of the man of whom just now he could remember only gallant things; soldierly qualities and gently bred charm.

"In a fashion, Jack, you must shake hands with all of them through me.

I come as their proxy. They can't give you a blowout, you know. They can't even come to see you off. I can say what I like now. The papers aren't signed up yet, but afterward--well, you know! d.a.m.n it, I forget the exact words that the Articles of War employ--about an officer who goes out--this way."

"Don't bother, major. I get your meaning." Spurrier took the proffered hand in both his own. "No officer can give me social recognition. I believe the official words are that I shall be 'deemed ignominious.'

Tell the boys I understand."

On the sailing day John Spurrier, whose engagingly bold eyes had not yet learned to evade the challenge of any glance, timed his arrival on board almost as surrept.i.tiously as a stowaway. It was from behind the closed door of his own stateroom that he listened to the deck commotion of laughter and leave-taking and heard, when the whistle had shrieked its warning to sh.o.r.e-going visitors, the grind of anchor chain on winch and windla.s.s.

That evening he dined in an inconspicuous corner by arrangement with the dining-saloon steward, and bolted his meal with nervous haste.

From afar, as he had stood in a companionway, he had glimpsed a panama-hatted girl--a girl who did not see him, and who had shown only between the shifting heads and shoulders of the crowd. He could not have told even had he been closer whether her gloved left hand still wore upon its third finger the ring that he had put there--before things had happened.

He must face the issue of questioning her and being questioned, and he hoped that he might have his first meeting with her alone--free from the gaze of other eyes that would torture him, and perhaps mortify her.

So when the moon had risen and the band had begun its evening concert he slipped out on deck and took up his station alone at the stern rail. It was not entirely dark even here, but the light was mercifully tempered, and upon the promenaders he turned his back, remaining in a seclusion from which, with sidewise glances, he appraised each figure that drifted by.

Once his eyes encountered those of a tall and elderly gentleman in uniform upon whose shoulder straps glittered the brigadier's single star.

For an instant Spurrier forgot the sadly altered color of his status and his hand, answering to instinct, rose in salute, while his lips parted in a smile.

But the older man, who fortunately was alone, after an embarra.s.sed instant went on, pretending an absent-mindedness that ignored the salutation. Spurrier could feel that the general was scarcely more comfortable than himself.

Slowly, at length, he left his outlook over the phosph.o.r.escent wake and drifted isolatedly about the decks, giving preference to the spots where the shadows lay heaviest. But when his wandering brought him again to the place he had abandoned at the stern, he found that it had been preempted by another. A figure stood there alone and so quiet that at first he hardly distinguished it as separate from the black contour of a capstan.