The Tempering Part 63

"My dear boy," ran the message, "McTavish writes this for me. I have fallen at last in what I believe to be a fight for G.o.d's cause on earth. That is well. I go now to report to the Great Commander-in-Chief, before whom mere appearances do not d.a.m.n a man if he go clean-hearted. Russia will collapse and the cause will depend upon your own country--a country no longer aloof, thank G.o.d.

"But, my dear boy, my thoughts that have been with you so long, turn to you at the end. You filled with affection and pride an emptiness that would have starved my soul. When I think of your country, I think of you as an embodiment of its intrepid youth and strength. Can I say more? G.o.d keep you. I--"

It broke off there, and Boone raised his eyes to the Major, who, divining that the glance was an inquiry, said shortly, "He gave out there, sor'r. The fever took him. What you have read required half an hour to give me--between breaths, as it were."

"You say he was delirious--after that?"

The other nodded.

"He spoke your name--and another."

"Whose?" Boone whispered the question.

"A man named Prince. Some General Prince, of whom I never heard. He fancied that this man came from G.o.d to fetch him, sor'r. It was part of the lightheadedness."

"Can you recall his words?"

"I was holding his hand. He pressed mine a bit and said very faintly, 'Good-bye, Sergeant.'--'Twas so he remembered me from other times.--'Tell Boone good-bye. General Prince has come for me.'"

The narrator broke off, and Boone refrained from hastening him. Finally McTavish resumed:

"He said, 'General Prince has come. Don't ye hear him, McTavish? He says, "The Commander-in-Chief sends His compliments, and you will report to Him, in person."'--That was all, sor'r. I thought at the time he meant Brussilov, but I comprehend now that it was of G.o.d he spoke."

"I see," responded Boone huskily. "I thank you."

In Cincinnati, loyal to the core, yet Germanic enough of feature and accent to render him inconspicuous, a fair-haired Bavarian with borrowed naturalization papers pursued an avocation which merited the attention of a firing squad. One day in a boarding house of excellent repute, not far from Eden Park, a stranger called to see him, whose dark hair fell in a forelock over a face of sardonic cast.

This pair strolled out through the wooded acclivities of the park which looks down over the city and, between blossoming redbud trees, found a spot favourably secluded for their interview.

"I still don't see," admitted the sallow stranger in a dubious voice, "what it's going to profit your Kaiser to preach draft resistance down there in the hills. I'm not contending that they don't hate to have the Government say, 'You must,' yet on the other hand, they don't hang back on soldiering. What's the bright idea?"

The German lifted his straw-coloured brows indulgently.

"You Americans have no thoroughness. You cannot grasp the detail because you are too impatient of small matters. One does not seek to administer a c.u.mulative poison with a single dosage. The German mind considers each contributing element--and of the small things are born the large. I sketch for you a picture: your mountaineer in resistance; the southern negro stirred to sullenness; the reservation Indian made restive--all small problems in themselves, perhaps, but taken together making a sabotage of human machinery that destroys your unity. At all events, we are paying those whom we employ. We can afford to be liberal since in the end the foe will foot the bill."

Saul Fulton shrugged his shoulders. "All right, Gehr--"

"Not Gehr," the other irritably interrupted him. "That was my name when we met in South America. It is not the name on my papers. Schultz, it is. Please do not forget again."

"Schultz, then.... I'm willing to take my share of this wasted coin, but I can't work in my home county. I tried going back there once and it was enough."

"You know other mountain sections, though--and in your native county you can influence lieutenants?"

"Yes, I reckon maybe I can do that, all right."

Saul Fulton, to whom intrigue was as the breath of life, had again undertaken to earn the Iscariot wage, and he worked as covertly as if he had lain hidden in the laurel thickets.

The result of his efforts was that in one county, not his own, a handful of desperadoes listened greedily to his teachings, and in his own a single man--or boy--of whom it was said that he "was pizen mean an' held a grudge ergin all creation."

Save for that, he gained no disciples, and if, when the registration day came, only one quarter of the men of military age went to enroll themselves, it was because already, through the channels of recruiting offices, the other three-fourths had flowed into the khaki-brown reservoirs of the army. It is history now how the "feud counties"

responded; how in two of them not a single man claimed exemption; how in one only two souls waited for the draft.

But Marlin County had her shameful exception in young "Dog" Burtree, who lived alone in a log shack at the head of Pigeonroost Creek.

One Sat.u.r.day night young Dog drank white whiskey at a blind tiger, and it was reported of him that, in the Holly Hill barber shop, he "made the brag thet he hedn't registered, an' didn't aim ter register." Those who were present reported his manifesto with admirable promptness to the local draft board, and the scandal winged its way along the creek-beds.

Dog may have been drunk beyond remembrance that evening, for when neighbours with faces set in lines of patriarchal sternness rode to his door demanding the truth, he turned putty pale and swore that he had been libelled, and would make his detractors eat their calumnies.

It was on the next Sat.u.r.day night and in the same barber shop, with much the same group of loiterers present, that the ensuing act was staged.

The shabby little place, lighted by lamps with tin reflectors, was full of pipe smoke and talk that evening, when some one, looking up from a tilted chair, saw a figure in the door.

A startled silence fell and lasted, though not for long--because the eyes of the face that looked in were blood-shot and the lips twisted to an ugly snarl.

Except for its malevolence of expression it was not a repulsive face, though its lower jaw was overly prominent. Its eyes were amber spots beneath heavy brows, and under the back-thrust, felt hat a heavy ma.s.s of chestnut hair bushed in curls about the temples. The lips were brightly red like a girl's, but over the whole countenance now lay a spirit both desperate and wicked.

Dog appreciated that what he did must be speedily done, and before the pause broke; before the startled accusers had realised the mission that had brought him his pistol had leaped from its holster; had, several times, risen and fallen in the grasp of a hand hinged on a steady wrist, and had barked each time its muzzle fell level.

Wreaths of smoke and the acrid smell of burnt powder drifted through the barber shop, and four bodies lay on the puncheon floor--of whom two were already dead.

Swiftly the night took Dog Burtree to itself, and almost as swiftly a posse was on the trail, with Joe Gregory, now high sheriff of Marlin County, riding a blood-sweat out of his black colt to a.s.sume command of the man-hunt.

The quarry circled over a wide arc of broken fastnesses and went to earth in an abandoned cabin thickly timbered about, and shielded back of huge boulders. There he barred the door and barked out his defiant challenge, "Come in an' git me!"

The cordon closed about the house and awaited the light of day. Until hunger and thirst conquered him, the few casualties were all of the refugee's making, but after two nights and a day of siege, a white rag appeared through a c.h.i.n.k on the end of a ramrod.

"Tell Joe Gregory he kin come in," shouted the voice of the besieged man. "I'm ready ter surrender ter _him_--but not ter n.o.body else!"

"No," shouted back Gregory, who already wore a bandage about a grazed arm; "you come out, and come with your hands high."

So it was that Saul's single convert came, and it was three weeks afterwards that, the jury having spoken and the higher court having denied an appeal, Joe sat in a day-coach leaving Marlin Town, while in the seat facing him sat Dog Burtree, with irons on his wrists, and a journey before him which should have no return. He was going to the electric chair at Eddyville.

Word ran mysteriously through the length of the train that the slight, youthful prisoner in charge of the tall, grave-faced sheriff was the Holly Hill murderer, and pa.s.sengers sauntered, with specious carelessness and inquisitive side glances, past the section where he sat.

The condemned man gave them back stare for stare, seeking the sorry refuge of a bravado which, when he forgot his pose and gazed out of the window, sagged into a spiritless and haunted misery. The face of his captor was harder to read, yet the young woman who had also boarded the train at Marlin Town with a group of settlement school children bound for trachoma treatment in Lexington thought that it held an unusual magnetism.

Simplicity and courage were written in the sober eyes; responsibility and self-knowledge were stamped on the firm mouth-line and jaw-angle.

Joe, who had once come to Frankfort to seek Boone's aid in curbing the violence of Gregory wrath, was going through the capital now on another mission, and he made no effort to conceal his heaviness of heart. He was taking a fellow-man to die, and though the duty lay as clear-writ as when it had called him into rifle fire from the fugitive's barricade, it was no longer so easy to obey.

From time to time the condemned man leaned forward and talked, and Joe bent with as considerate an attention as though he were listening to a dignitary. Sometimes he smiled in answer to a forced jest; sometimes to a more sincere and less brazen effort he nodded grave response. One would have said that the two were friends, and against the approaches of the morbidly curious Joe interposed an aloofness as repellent as bayonets. What were they, he thought, but men anxious to see the wheels turn in a head that was soon to wear a cap with electrodes fitting against shaven temples?

From across the car Happy Spradling watched the mingled strength and gentleness of the law's servant, and felt that she would like to know this neighbour, whom, as it happened, she had never met.

The girl was going home, a few days after that, on the same train that carried the returning sheriff--this time travelling alone--and coming to her seat somewhat diffidently, he held out a book.