The Red Debt Part 9

clearin'--yo'll see th' steers c.u.m jest in 'twix' yon two spruces an'

pull jest roun' thar, an' stop jest a frontin' th' do'r!"

At this moment the long, ominous blast of a cow-horn echoed across the ravine with startling import, and the utterance failed and died in the old man's throat.

Immediately the faint note of a bell reached their ears, followed by a second horn-call, strong and clear, farther up the gulch. The three rose to their feet simultaneously, and the old man felt instinctively about him for something that was not there. For the first time in his career his groping hands encountered neither stock nor steel. The rifle was absent!

A pallor overspread his face. With head reared like a bull elk he listened to the portentous sounds of mountain warfare that floated into his brain.

The pallor was not from fear. It was the mantle of chagrin--he had forgotten for the moment where he had rested the rifle. He stood befuddled, but alert.

His gun gone, he felt that a part of his big body had suddenly been dismembered. The thought that he had been such a fool seemed to lock his two feet to the ground.

Again the blare of the horn followed the notes of the bell.

"Sompin's sho' bust loose, boys!" growled the old man as the three listened through several tense seconds. In his extremity he wondered if he could coax the lost information out of the lad behind him.

"Han' hit heah, Lem! han' me hit!" Without turning his head he thrust both hands behind him, his working fingers begging for the gun.

The boy, as innocent of the whereabouts of the weapon as his father, only muttered and pointed toward the rim of the clearing. The next second came the crackling noise of dead brush, then the sound of a rush to the left.

The old man clenched his teeth as a horse mouths the bit, and his birdlike eyes snapped when he saw the disheveled figure of a girl burst through the wall of laurel that bordered the clearing. She halted for an instant, then dashed toward them.

"Hit's Belle-Ann!" cried the awe-stricken Bud.

The girl fairly leaped over the s.p.a.ce that intervened. Her black curls streamed in the wind. She was wild-eyed and panting. Her bare legs were bleeding from brush scratches, and the tatters of her torn skirt were weighted with burs.

"He's c.u.m! He's got through, he air! He's a c.u.min' now! Go! Go! Run, Lem! Run away!" she cried in a choking riot of fear, throwing her body against Lem and fairly pushing him before her.

"Whar's yo' gun, pap? Whar's yo' gun? Run, Lem! Fo' Gawd's sake, run away! He's follerin' right ahin' o' me--thah! thah! thah!" she screamed in her terror, pointing, heaving, gazing with charmed stare at the spot where she had emerged from the thicket.

Despairing, horrified at the stunned inactivity of the Lutts men, the frantic girl grabbed little Bud by one arm and half dragged, half carried him across the clearing. Together they disappeared into the undergrowth.

Then, rousing suddenly, stung to action, the old man remembered his gun and started for the church, while Lem fell prostrate and lay close behind the log on which they had been seated.

Old Lutts had no more than gained the threshold of the sanctuary when a giant figure, with heaving chest, sprang into the open behind the church and just to the right. It was Peter Burton, and the surprise was full and complete, for his rifle was leveled at the old man's blue shirt-front as he called:

"None of your d.a.m.ned nonsense now, Lutts! I've got you at last, and I want you alive! Stand where you are!"

His voice rang triumphantly as he hurried nearer, and he leered and cried:

"Maybe I'll take you down Blue Gra.s.s this time, eh? Well, I guess yes!"

Cap Lutts hesitated for just the fraction of a second.

In that fleeting time a horde of impossibilities raced through his brain. The downfall that had haunted him for years was at hand.

Fear of death was beyond his comprehension, but the sting of defeat was agonizing.

Then, glaring defiance and hatred, he whirled about and fled into the church, and there he leaped toward the altar. With a feline bound the big revenue detective was through the door and into the church after him.

And now the old man had gained the pulpit itself, and was reaching for the rifle he had left leaning against the wall.

Through the little church an ear-splitting crash rang out that fairly rocked the walls!

In the pulpit the war-scarred moonshiner drew gently, deliberately backward, leaving the rifle untouched. Straightening up with strange majesty, he turned half around, and the malevolence melted away and left his face empty of all hatred.

His eyes grew very soft, gazing upward at something beyond this world; his lips moved in soundless speech.

Then, abruptly, his legs crumpled beneath him. He sagged and swayed for an instant; there was a ghastly, ragged, spongy gap between his shoulders.

Then, with a crash, the mighty form sank to the altar, and lay there motionless upon its back, legs close together, the arms stretched straight outward from the body.

Burton mopped his wet features and eyed his awful work without emotion.

A little the hard-breathing man-hunter pondered. Then, having taken a fresh quid of tobacco, he levied upon his strength and lifted the body from the pulpit, and placed it upon a bench. He wiped the blood from his clothes and shoes and, rolling his handkerchief into a ball, tossed it away.

He stared at the pulpit for a time.

The red blood had crawled upward and touched the old man's h.o.a.ry crown.

It had traveled downward toward his heavy boots. It had followed the coat-sleeves of his two sprawling arms.

And now that the body had been taken away, the vermilion imprint of a ragged, dripping cross was clearly etched upon the smooth pine of the unpainted altar.

When the crash of the gun had died away, Lem raised his head and peered over the log toward the church, expecting to see his father emerge. He waited several seconds. He wondered why the old man did not call. He yearned for his own gun now, inside the church.

Then he lay down behind the log again with a sober fear creeping upon him. Then he remembered whose son he was, and almost snickered aloud at his fears. The boy could not conceive any odds that his father, Cap Lutts, could not vanquish. His thoughts flew backward to the valorous achievements of his parent.

Now he crawled to the end of the log and peered again toward the church door. He told himself that the old man would come out of that door where he had gone in. He knew that the old man would come out of the church dragging the revenuer after him--hauling the thing as he had seen him haul a half-dead, struggling bear.

Lem lay on his stomach and waited.

Presently he spied a yellowish-white vapor trailing out of the church door into the lifeless air. Instinct told him that it was not his father's gun that had spoken. He started to his feet.

A terrible, sickening apprehension filtered into his numbed senses.

Then, weaponless and forgetful of the prowess of the uncanny man-tiger within, the boy grabbed a huge wooden mallet near by and rushed inside.

As he ran toward the altar his fire-shot eyes swept the church for the old man. He saw only the towering hulk of the hated Burton standing erect, with hands in his trousers-pockets, calmly eyeing his approach.

When Lem reached the altar he halted short, dumb, fear-stricken, trembling. He stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y cross. He whirled around.

His eyes fell upon the still form on the bench, and he knew. With an inarticulate scream he fell one step backward and aimed a terrific, deadly blow at the unblinking, fishy eyes of the animal-headed thing before him.

Some minutes later Lem Lutts crouched upon a bench, hunched up, naked to the waist, broken, bleeding, panting, heaving, piteously weeping, his chin down till it touched his bare, lacerated breast.

Without, amidst the darkling shades of night, the she-panther crept from the gloomy haunting depths of the ravine, up to the very rim of the clearing. Up-reared, with her bowed fore-legs upon a scrub cedar stump, the big cat's spotted lips parted and she cried out a tremulous portentous wail across the dusk. Then came the sound of the pattering of padded jungle feet as she skulked back to her lair down in the bristling bowels of the shadow-peopled gulch.

The man of iron who stood scowling over the conquered, broken youth, felt a compelling loneliness picking upon his steely nerves.