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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Law of Hemlock Mountain, by Hugh Lundsford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Law of Hemlock Mountain
+
+Author: Hugh Lundsford
+
+Illustrator: Douglas Duer
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2010 [EBook #34208]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW OF HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia, Katherine Ward, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LAW OF HEMLOCK MOUNTAIN
+
+BY HUGH LUNDSFORD
+
+Frontispiece by DOUGLAS DUER
+
+
+  New York
+  W. J. Watt & Company
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+  W. J. WATT & COMPANY
+
+  PRESS OF
+  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
+  BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+  BROOKLYN, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I am sorry," declared Spurrier, humbly. "I didn't know
+they were pets. They behaved very much like wild birds."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The officer whose collar ornaments were the winged staff and serpents
+of the medical branch, held what was left of the deck in his right
+hand and moistened the tip of his thumb against the tip of his
+tongue.
+
+"Reënforcements, major?" he inquired with a glance to the man at his
+left, and the poker face of the gentleman so addressed remained
+impervious to expression as the answer was given back:
+
+"No, I'll stand by what I've got here."
+
+If the utterance hung on a quarter second of indecision it was a
+circumstance that went unnoted, save possibly by a young man with the
+single bars of a lieutenant on his shoulder straps--and Spurrier gave
+no flicker of recognition of what had escaped the others.
+
+Between the whitewashed walls of the room where the little group of
+officers sat at cards the Philippine night breeze stirred faintly with
+a fevered breath that scarcely disturbed the jalousies.
+
+The pile of poker chips had grown to a bulkiness and value out of
+just proportion to the means of army officers below field rank--and
+except for the battalion, commander and the surgeon none there held
+higher grade than a captaincy. This jungle-hot weather made men
+irresponsible.
+
+One or two of the faces were excitedly flushed; several others were
+morosely dark. The lights guttered with a jaundiced yellow and sweat
+beaded the temples of the players. Sweat, too, made slippery the
+enameled surfaces of the pasteboards. Sweat seemed to ooze and simmer
+in their brains like the oil from overheated asphalt.
+
+These men had been forced into a companionship of monotony in a
+climate of unhealth until their studied politeness, even their forced
+jocularity was rather the effort of toleration than the easy play of
+comradeship. Their arduously wooed excitement of draw-poker, which had
+run improvidently out of bounds, was not a pleasure so much as an
+expedient against the boredom that had rubbed their tempers threadbare
+and put an edgy sharpness on their nerves.
+
+Captain Comyn, upon whose call for cards the dealer now waited, was
+thinking of Private Grant out there under guard in the improvised
+hospital. The islands had "gotten to" Private Grant and "locoed" him,
+and he had breathed sulphurous maledictions against Captain Comyn's
+life--but it was not those threats that now disturbed the company
+commander.
+
+Of late Captain Comyn had been lying awake at night and wondering if
+he, too, were not going the same way as the unfortunate file. Horribly
+quiet fears had been stealing poisonously into his mind--a mind not
+given to timidities--and the word "melancholia" had assumed for him a
+morbid and irresistible compulsion. No one save the captain's self
+knew of these secret hauntings, born of climate and smoldering fever,
+and he would not have revealed them on the torture rack. For them he
+entertained the same shame as that of a boy grown too large for such
+weakness, who shudders with an unconfessed fear of the dark. But he
+could no more shake them loose and be free of them than could the
+Ancient Mariner rid himself of the bird of ill-omen tied about his
+neck. Now he pulled himself together and tossed away a single card.
+
+"I'll take one in the place of that," he commented with studied
+carelessness, and Lieutenant John Spurrier, with that infectious smile
+which came readily to his lips, pointed a contrast with the captain's
+abstraction by the snappy quickness of his announcement:
+
+"If I'm going to trail along, I'll need three. Yes, three, please,
+major."
+
+"When Spurrier sits in the game," commented a player who, with a
+dolorous glance at the booty before him, threw down his hands, "we at
+least get action. Myself, I'm out of it."
+
+The battalion commander studied the ceiling with a troubled furrow
+between his brows which was not brought there by the hazards of luck.
+He was reflecting that whenever a game was organized it was Spurrier
+who quickened its tempo from innocuous amusement to reckless
+extravagance. Spurrier, fitted for his life with so many soldierly
+qualities, was still, above all else, a plunger. That spirit seemed a
+passion that filled and overflowed him. Temperate in other habits, he
+played like a nabob. The major remembered hearing that even at West
+Point Jack Spurrier had narrowly, escaped dismissal for gambling in
+quarters, though his class standing had been distinguished and his
+gridiron record had become a tradition.
+
+This sort of game with "the roof off and deuces wild," was not good
+for the _morale_ of his junior officers, mused the major. It was like
+spiking whisky with absinthe. Yes, to-morrow he would have Spurrier at
+his quarters and talk to him like a Dutch uncle.
+
+There were three left battling for the often sweetened pot now, with
+three more who had dropped out, looking on, and a tensity enveloped
+the long-drawn climax of the evening's session.
+
+Captain Comyn's cheek bones had reddened and his irascible frown lines
+deepened. For the moment his fears of melancholia had been swallowed
+up in a fitful fury against Spurrier and his smiling face.
+
+At last came the decisive moment of the final call and the show-down,
+and through the dead silence of the moment sounded the distant
+sing-song of a sentry:
+
+"Corporal of the guard, number one, relief!"
+
+Over the window sill a tiny green lizard slithered quietly and
+hesitated, pressing itself flat against the whitewash.
+
+Then the major's cards came down face upward--and showed a queen-high
+straight.
+
+"Not quite good enough, major," announced Comyn brusquely as his
+breath broke from him with a sort of gasp and he spread out a heart
+flush.
+
+But Spurrier, who had drawn three cards, echoed the captain's words:
+"Not quite good enough." He laid down two aces and two deuces, which
+under the cutthroat rule of "deuces wild" he was privileged to call
+four aces.
+
+Comyn came to his feet and pushed back his chair, but he stood
+unsteadily. The fever in his bones was playing queer pranks with his
+brain. He, whose courtesy had always been marked in its punctilio,
+blazed volcano-fashion into the eruption that had been gathering
+through these abnormal days and nights.
+
+Yet even now the long habit of decorum held waveringly for a little
+before its breaking, and he began with a queer strain in his voice:
+
+"You'll have to take my IOU. I've lost more than I can pay on the
+peg."
+
+"That's all right, Comyn," began the victor, "Pay when----" but before
+he could finish the other interrupted with a frenzy of anger:
+
+"No, by God, it's not all right! It's all wrong, and this is the last
+game I sit in where they deal a hand to you."
+
+Spurrier's smiling lips tightened instantly out of their infectious
+amiability into a forbidding straightness. He pushed aside the chips
+he had been stacking and rose stiffly.
+
+"That's a statement, Captain Comyn," he said with a warning note in
+his level voice, "which requires some explaining."
+
+The abrupt bursting of the tempest had left the others in a tableau of
+amazement, but now the authoritative voice of Major Withers broke in
+upon the dialogue.
+
+"Gentlemen, this is an army post, and I am in command here. I will
+tolerate no quarrels."
+
+Without shifting the gaze of eyes that held those of the captain,
+Spurrier answered insistently:
+
+"I have every respect, major, for the requirements of discipline--but
+Captain Comyn must finish telling why he will no longer play cards
+with me."
+
+"And I'll tell you _pronto_," came the truculent response. "I won't
+play with you because you are too damned lucky."
+
+"Oh!" Spurrier's tensity of expression relaxed into something like
+amusement for the anticlimax. "That accusation can be stomached, I
+suppose."
+
+"Too damned lucky," went on the other with a gathering momentum of
+rancor, "and too continuously lucky for a game that's not professional.
+When a man is so proficient--or lucky if you prefer--that the card table
+pays him more than the government thinks he's worth, it's time----"
+
+Spurrier stepped forward.
+
+"It's time for you to stop," he cautioned sharply. "I give you the
+fairest warning!"
+
+But Comyn, riding the flood tide of his passion--a passion of
+distempered nerves--was beyond the reach of warnings and his words
+came in a bitter outpouring:
+
+"I dare say it was only luck that let you bankrupt young Tillsdale,
+but it was as fatal to him as if it bore an uglier name."
+
+The sound in Spurrier's throat was incoherent and his bodily impulse
+swift beyond interference. His flat palm smote Captain Comyn's cheek,
+to come away leaving a red welt behind it, and as the others swept
+forward to intervene the two men grappled.
+
+They were torn apart, still struggling, as Major Withers, unaccustomed
+to the brooking of such mutinies, interposed between them the bulk of
+his body and the moral force of his indignantly blazing eyes.
+
+"I will have no more of this," he thundered. "I am not a prize-fight
+referee, that I must break my officers out of clinches! Go to your
+quarters, Comyn! You, too, Spurrier. You are under arrest. I shall
+prefer charges against you both. I mean to make an example of this
+matter."
+
+But with a strange abruptness the fury died out of Comyn's face. It
+left his passion-distorted features so instantly that the effect of
+transformation was uncanny. In a breathing space he seemed older and
+his eyes held the dark dejection of utter misery. His anger had flared
+and died before that grimmer emotion which secretly haunted him--the
+fear that he was going the way of climate-crazed Private Grant.
+
+When they released him he turned dispiritedly and left the room in
+docile silence. He was not thinking of the charges to be preferred.
+They belonged to to-morrow. To-night was nearer, and to-night he must
+face those hours of sleeplessness that he dreaded more than all the
+penalties enunciated by the Articles of War.
+
+Spurrier, too, bowed stiffly and left the room.
+
+Though it was late when Captain Comyn entered his own quarters, he did
+not at once throw himself on the army cot that stood against the
+whitewashed wall.
+
+For him the cot held no invitation--only the threat of insomnia and
+tossing. His taut nerves had lost the gracious art of relaxation, and
+before his thoughts paraded hideously grotesque memories of the few
+faces he had ever seen marred by the dethronement of reason.
+
+Already he had forgotten the violent and discreditable scene with
+Spurrier, and presently he dropped himself inertly into the camp chair
+beside the table at the room's center and opened its drawer.
+
+Slowly his hand came out clutching a service revolver, and his eyes
+smoldered unnaturally as they dwelt on it. But after a little he
+resolutely shook his head and thrust the thing aside.
+
+He sat in a cold sweat, surrounded by the silence of the Eastern
+night, a comprehensive silence which weighed upon him and oppressed
+him.
+
+In the thatching of the single-storied adobe building he heard the
+rustling of a house snake, and from without, where moonlight seemed to
+gush and spill against the cobalt shadows, shrilled the small voice
+from a lizard's inflated, crimson throat.
+
+It was all crazing him, and his nails bit into his palms as he sat
+there, silent and heavy-breathed. Then he heard footsteps nearer and
+louder than those of the pacing sentries, followed by a low rapping of
+knuckles on his own door. Perhaps it was Doctor James. He had the
+kindly habit of besetting men who looked fagged with the offer of some
+innocuous bromide. As if bromides could soothe a brain in which
+something had gone _malo_!
+
+"Come in," he growled, and into the room stepped not Major James, but
+Lieutenant Spurrier.
+
+Slowly and with an infinite weight of weariness, Comyn rose to his
+feet. He might be afraid of lunacy, but not of lieutenants, and his
+lips smiled sneeringly.
+
+"If you've come to ask a retraction," he declared ungraciously, "I've
+none to offer. I meant all I said."
+
+The visitor stood inside the door calmly eyeing the man who was his
+own company commander.
+
+"I didn't come to insist on apologies," he replied after a moment's
+silence with an off-hand easiness of tone. "That can wait till you've
+gotten over your tantrum. It was another thing that brought me."
+
+"I want to be left alone."
+
+"Aside from the uncomplimentary features of your tirade," went on
+Spurrier placidly and he strolled around the table and seated himself
+on the window sill, "there was a germ of truth in what you said. We've
+been playing too steep a game." He paused and the other man who
+remained standing by his table, as though he did not wish to encourage
+his visitor by seating himself, responded only with a short, ironic
+laugh.
+
+"See here, Comyn," Spurrier's voice labored now with evident
+embarrassment. "What I'm getting at is this: I don't want your IOU for
+that game. I simply want you to forget it."
+
+But the captain took an angry step forward.
+
+"Do you think I'm a charity patient?" he demanded, as his temper again
+mounted to storm pressure. "Why, damn your impertinence, I don't want
+to talk to you. I don't want you in my quarters!"
+
+Spurrier slipped from his seat and an angry flush spread to his cheek
+bones.
+
+"You're the hell of a--gentleman!" he exclaimed.
+
+The two stood for a few moments without words, facing each other,
+while the lieutenant could hear the captain's breath rising and
+falling in a panting thickness.
+
+Surgeon James returning from a visit to a colic sufferer was trudging
+sleepily along the empty _calle_ when he noted the light still burning
+in the captain's window, and with an exclamation of remembrance for
+the officer's dark-ringed and sleepless eyes, he wheeled toward the
+door. Just as he neared it, a staccato and heated interchange of
+voices was borne out to him, and he hurried his step, but at the same
+instant a pistol shot bellowed blatantly in the quiet air and into his
+nostrils stole the acrid savor of burned powder.
+
+The door, thrown open, gave him the startling picture of Comyn sagged
+across his own table and lying grotesque in the yellow light; and of
+Spurrier standing, wide-eyed by the window, with the green and cobalt
+background of the tropic night beyond his shoulders. While he gazed
+the lieutenant wheeled and thrust his head through the raised sash,
+under the jalousy.
+
+"Halt!" cried James excitedly, leaping forward to possess himself of
+the pistol which Comyn had taken from his drawer and thrust aside.
+"Halt, Spurrier, or I'll have to fire!"
+
+The other turned back and faced his captor with an expression which it
+was hard to read. Then he shook his shoulders as though to disentangle
+himself from an evil dream and in a cool voice demanded:
+
+"Do you mean to intimate, James, that you suspect me of killing
+Comyn?"
+
+"Do you mean to deny it?" countered the other incredulously.
+
+"Great God! I oughtn't to have to. That shot was fired through the
+window. The bullet whined past my ear while my back was turned. That
+was why I looked out just now. Moreover, I am, as you see, unarmed."
+
+"God grant that you can prove these things, Spurrier, but they will
+need proof." The doctor turned to bend over the prostrate figure, and
+as he did so voices rose from the _calle_ where already had sounded
+the alarm and response of running feet. "Or, perhaps," added the
+doctor with stubborn suggestiveness, "you acted in self-defense."
+
+Presently the door opened and the corporal of the guard entered and
+saluted. His eyes traveled rapidly about the room and he addressed
+Spurrier, since James was not a line officer.
+
+"I picked this revolver up, sir, just outside the window," he said,
+holding out a service pistol. "It was lying in the moonlight and one
+chamber is empty."
+
+Spurrier took the weapon, but when the man had gone James suggested in
+an even voice: "Don't you think you had better hand that gun to me?"
+
+"To you? Why?"
+
+"Because this looks like a case for G. C. M. It will have a better
+aspect if I can testify that, after the gun was brought in, it wasn't
+handled by you except while I saw you?"
+
+"It seems to me"--a belligerent flash darted in the lieutenant's
+eyes--"that you are singularly set on hanging this affair around my
+neck."
+
+"You were with him and no one else was. If I were you, I'd go direct
+to the major and make a statement of facts. He'll be getting reports
+from other sources by now."
+
+"Perhaps you are right. Is _he_ dead?"
+
+The surgeon nodded, and Spurrier turned and closed the door softly
+behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The situation of John Spurrier, who was Jack Spurrier to every man in
+that command, standing under the monstrous presumption of having
+murdered a brother officer, called for a reaccommodation of the
+battalion's whole habit of thought. It demanded a new and unwelcome
+word in their vocabulary of ideas, and against it argued, with the hot
+advocacy of tested acquaintance, every characteristic of the man
+himself, and every law of probability. For its acceptance spoke only
+one forceful plea--evidence which unpleasantly skirted the actuality
+of demonstration. Short of seeing Spurrier shoot his captain down and
+toss his pistol through the open window, Major James could hardly have
+witnessed a more damaging picture than the hurriedly opened door had
+framed to his vision.
+
+Within the close-drawn cordon of a post, held to military accountability,
+facts were as traceable as entries on a card index--and these facts
+began building to the lieutenant's undoing. They seemed to bring out
+like acid on sympathetic ink the miracle of a Mr. Hyde where his
+comrades had known only a Doctor Jekyll.
+
+The one man out of the two skeleton companies of infantry stationed
+in the interior town who remained seemingly impervious to the
+strangulating force of the tightening net was Spurrier himself.
+
+In another man that insulated and steady-eyed confidence might have
+served as a manifest of innocence and a proclamation of clean
+conscience. But Spurrier wore a nick-name, until now lightly
+considered, to which new conditions had added importance.
+
+They had called him "The Plunger," and now they could not forget the
+nickeled and chrome-hardened gambling nerve which had won for him the
+sobriquet. There had been the _coup_ at Oakland, for example, when a
+stretch finish had stood to ruin him or suddenly enrich him--an
+incident that had gone down in racing history and made café talk.
+
+Through a smother of concealing dust and a thunder of hoofs, the field
+had struggled into the stretch that afternoon, tight-bunched, with its
+snapping silks too closely tangled for easy distinguishing--but the
+cerise cap that proclaimed Spurrier's choice was nowhere in sight. The
+bookmakers pedestalled on their high stools with field glasses glued
+to their eyes had been more excited than the young officer on the
+club-house lawn, who put away his binoculars while the horses were
+still in the back stretch and turned to chat with a girl.
+
+Three lengths from the finish a pair of distended nostrils had thrust
+themselves ahead of the other muzzles to catch the judges' eyes, and
+bending over steaming withers had nodded a cerise cap.
+
+But the lieutenant who had escaped financial disaster and won a
+miniature fortune had gone on talking to the girl.
+
+Might it not be suspected in these circumstances that "Plunger"
+Spurrier's refusal to treat his accusation seriously was only an
+attitude? He was sitting in a game now with his neck at stake and the
+cards running against him. Perhaps he was only bluffing as he had
+never bluffed before. Possibly he was brazening it out.
+
+It was not until the battalion had hiked back through bosque and over
+mountains to Manila that the lieutenant faced his tribunal: a court
+whose simplified methods cut away the maze of technicalities at which
+a man may grasp before a civilian jury of his peers.
+
+If, when he actually sat in the room where the evidence was heard, his
+assurance that he was to emerge clean-shriven began to reel under
+blows more powerful than he had expected, at least his face continued
+to testify for him with an outward serenity of confidence.
+
+Doctor James told his story with an admirable restraint and an
+absolute absence of coloring. He had meant to go to Comyn, because he
+read in his eyes the signs of nerve waste and insomnia; the same
+things that had caused too many suicides among the men whose nervous
+constitutions failed to adapt themselves to the climate.
+
+Before he had carried his purpose to fulfillment--perhaps a half hour
+before--he had gone to look in on the case of Private Grant, who was
+suffering from just such a malady, though in a more serious degree.
+That private, a mountaineer from the Cumberland hills of Kentucky, had
+been to all appearances merely a lunatic, although it was a case which
+would yield to treatment or perhaps come to recovery even if left to
+itself. On this night he had gone to see if Grant needed an opiate,
+but had found the patient apparently sleeping without restlessness,
+and had not roused him. At the door of the place where Grant was
+under guard, he had paused for a word with Private Severance who
+stood there on sentry duty.
+
+It had been a sticky night following a hot day, and in the _calle_
+upon which lay the command in billets of nipa-thatched houses, no one
+but himself and the sentries were astir during the twenty minutes he
+had spent strolling in the moonlight. On rounding a corner he had seen
+a light in Comyn's window, and he had gone around the angle of the
+adobe house, since the door was on the farther side, to offer the
+captain a sleeping potion, too. That was how he chanced on the scene
+of the tragedy, just a moment too late for service.
+
+"You say," began Spurrier's counsel, on cross-examination, "that you
+visited Private Grant about half an hour before Captain Comyn was
+killed and found him apparently resting naturally, although on
+previous nights you had thought morphia necessary to quiet his
+delirium?"
+
+The major nodded, then qualified slowly:
+
+"Grant had not, of course, been continuously out of his head nor had
+he always slept brokenly. There had been lucid periods alternating
+with exhausting storm."
+
+"You are not prepared to swear, though, that this seeming sleep might
+not have been feigned?"
+
+"I am prepared to testify that it is most unlikely."
+
+"Yet that same night he did make his escape and deserted. That is
+true, is it not?"
+
+The major bowed. "He had sought to escape before. That was symptomatic
+of his condition."
+
+"And since then he has not been recaptured, though he was in your
+opinion too ill and deranged to have deceived you by feigning sleep?"
+
+"Quite true."
+
+"Have you ever heard Grant threaten Captain Comyn's life?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Whether he had made such threats to your knowledge or not, he did
+come from that hill county of the Kentucky mountains commonly called
+Bloody Brackton, did he not?"
+
+"I believe so. His enlistment record will answer that."
+
+"You do know, though, that the man on guard duty--the man with whom
+you spoke outside--was Private Severance, also from the so-called
+Kentucky feud belt and a friend of the sick man?"
+
+"I can testify of my own knowledge only that he was Private
+Severance and that he and Grant were of the same platoon--Lieutenant
+Spurrier's."
+
+The defense advocate paused and carefully framed a hypothetical
+question to be answered by the witness as a medical expert.
+
+"I will now ask you to speak from your knowledge of blood tendencies
+as affected or distorted by mental abnormalities. Suppose a man to
+have been born and raised under a code which still adheres to feudal
+violence and the private avenging of personal grievances both real and
+fancied. Suppose such a man to have conceived a bitter hatred against
+his commanding officer and to have brooded over that hatred until it
+had become a fixed idea--a monomania--a determination to kill; suppose
+such a man to have known only the fierce influences of his retarded
+hills until he came into the army and to have encountered there a
+discipline which seemed to him a tyranny. I will ask you whether such
+a man might not be apt to react to a homicidal mania under nervous
+derangement, and whether such a homicidal mania might not develop its
+own craftiness of method?"
+
+"Such," testified the medical officer, "is a conceivable but a highly
+imaginative possibility."
+
+Then Private Severance was called and came into the room, where he
+stood smartly at attention until instructed to take the witness chair.
+This dark-haired private from the Cumberlands looked the soldier from
+crown to sole leather, yet his features seemed to hold under their
+present repose an ancient stamp of sullenness. It was an intangible
+quality rather than an expression, as though it bore less relation to
+his present than to some unconquerable survival from generations that
+had passed on; generations that had been always peering into shadows
+and searching them for lurking perils.
+
+In his speech lingered quaintly remnants of dialect from the laureled
+hills that army life had failed to eradicate, and in his manner one
+could note a wariness of extreme caution. That was easy to understand,
+because Private Severance, too, stood under the charge of having
+permitted a prisoner to escape, and his evidence would confront him
+later when he in turn occupied the dock.
+
+"I didn't have no speech with Bud Grant that night," he testified,
+"but I'd looked in some several times through the window. It was a
+barred window, an' every time I peeked through it I could see Bud
+layin' there asleep. The moon fell acrost his cot so I could see him
+plain."
+
+"When did you see him last?"
+
+"After Major James had been in and come out--a full fifteen minutes
+later. I'm able to swear to that, because I noticed the moon just as
+the major went out, and, when I looked in through the window the last
+time, the moon was a full quarter hour lower down to'rds settin'."
+
+After a moment's pause the witness volunteered in amplification:
+"Where I come from we don't have many clocks or watches. We goes by
+the sun and moon."
+
+"Then you can swear that if Private Grant fired the shot that killed
+Captain Comyn, he must have escaped and eluded your sight; armed
+himself, crossed the plaza; turned the corner; accomplished the act
+and gotten clean away, all within the brief period of five minutes?"
+
+"I can swear to more than that. He didn't get past me till _after_ the
+pistol went off. There wasn't no way out but by the one door, and I
+was right at that door all the time until I left it."
+
+"When did you leave?"
+
+The witness gave response without hesitation, yet with the same
+serious weighing of his words.
+
+"I was standing there, sorter peerin' up at the stars an' beginning to
+feel right smart tired when I heard the shot. I heard the shout of the
+corporal of the guard, too, an' then it was that I made my mistake."
+He paused and went on evenly. "I hadn't ought to have stirred away
+from my post, but it seemed like a sort of a general alarm, an' I went
+runnin' to'rds it. That was the first chanst Bud had to get away.
+When I got back he was gone."
+
+"You are sure he was still there when the shot sounded?"
+
+"As God looks down, I can swear he was!"
+
+Then the defense took the witness.
+
+"When does your enlistment expire?"
+
+"Two months, come Sunday."
+
+"You know to the day, don't you? You are keenly anxious for that day
+to come, aren't you?"
+
+"Why wouldn't I be? I've got folks at home."
+
+"Haven't you and Grant both been malcontents throughout your entire
+period of service?"
+
+"It's news to me, if it's true."
+
+"Haven't you often heard Private Grant swear vengeance against Captain
+Comyn?"
+
+"Not no more than to belly-ache some little."
+
+"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 asserted 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," asserted 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 circumstantial.
+
+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 damnable thing upset our little world. My God,
+boy, you had life in your sling. You had every quality that makes the
+soldier; you had every social requisite except wealth. This besetting
+passion 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 passion 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 God," 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 passed 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 circumstantial
+evidence."
+
+He paused a moment and then went on with a trifle of embarrassment 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 assured 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 damned 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 passage 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 passage on the
+_Empress_. If I were you, I'd drop a formal note of gratitude 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 embarrassing 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
+Godspeed goes with the stirrup cup."
+
+For an instant Spurrier looked puzzled and the major, whose note of
+embarrassment 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! Damn 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 surreptitiously 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 shore-going visitors, the grind of anchor
+chain on winch and windlass.
+
+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 embarrassed
+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 phosphorescent 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 preëmpted 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.
+
+But with the realization he recognized a panama hat, from under whose
+brim escaped a breeze-stirred strand of dark hair, and promptly he
+stepped to the rail, his rubber-soled shoes making no sound.
+
+The girl did not hear him, nor did she, as he found himself
+reflecting, feel his presence as lovers do in romances, and turn to
+greet him before he announced himself. But as she stood there in the
+shadow, with moonlight and starlight around her, his pulses quickened
+with an insupportable commotion of mingled hope and fear.
+
+Her beauty was that of the aristocrat. It was this patrician quality
+which had first challenged his interest in her and answered to his own
+inordinate pride of self-confidence.
+
+He had liked the lightness with which her small feet trod the earth
+and the prideful tilt of her exquisitely modeled chin.
+
+After all, he had known her only a short time--and now he realized
+that he did not know her well: certainly not well enough to estimate
+with any surety how they would meet again, after an interval which had
+tarnished the name that had come to him from two generations of
+accrued distinction.
+
+He bent forward, and, in a low voice, spoke her name, and she turned
+without a start so that she stood looking into his eyes.
+
+"I suppose you know," he began, and for once he spoke without
+self-assurance, "that I didn't hunt you out sooner because I wanted to
+spare you embarrassment. I knew you were sailing by this boat--and so
+I took it, too."
+
+She nodded her head, but remained silent. Her eyes met his and
+lingered, but they were like curtained windows and told him nothing.
+It was as if she wished to let him pitch the plane of their meeting
+without interference, and he was grateful.
+
+"I don't suppose," he began, forcing himself to speak with forthright
+directness, "I need protest my innocence to you--and I don't suppose I
+need confess that the stigma will stick to me--that in--some
+quarters--it will mean ostracism. I wanted to meet you the first time
+alone as much for your sake as my own."
+
+"I know----" she agreed faintly, but there was no rush of confidence,
+of sympathy that thought only of the black situation in which he
+stood.
+
+"I know, too," he went on with the same steadiness, "that but for your
+father's efforts I should have had to spend the rest of my life in
+prison. Above all, I know that your father made those efforts because
+you ordained it."
+
+"It was too horrible," she whispered with a little shudder. "It was
+inconceivable."
+
+"It still is," he reminded her. "There is a question, then, to be
+asked--a question for you to answer."
+
+The girl's hands dropped on the rail and her fingers tightened as her
+eyes, deeply pained, went off across the wake. She seemed unable to
+help him, unable to do more than give back monosyllabic responses to
+the things he said.
+
+"Of course, I can't assume that the promise you gave me--before all
+this--still stands, unless you can ratify it. I'm the same man, yet
+quite a different man."
+
+At last she turned, and he saw that her lashes were wet with tears.
+
+"Some day," she suggested almost pleadingly, "some day surely you will
+be able to clear your name--now that you're free to give yourself to
+it."
+
+He shook his head, "That is going to be the purpose of my life," he
+answered. "But God only knows----"
+
+"When you have done that," she impetuously exclaimed, "come back to
+me. I'll wait."
+
+But Spurrier shook his head and stiffened a little, not indignantly,
+but painfully, and his face grew paler than it had yet been.
+
+"That is generous of you," he said slowly. "That is the best I had the
+right to hope for--but it's not enough. It would be a false position
+for you--with a mortgage of doubt on your future. I've got to face
+this thing nakedly. I've got to depend only on those people who don't
+need proof--who simply know that I must be innocent of--of _this_
+because it would be impossible for me to be guilty of it--people," he
+added, his voice rising with just a moment's betrayal of boyish
+passion, "who will take the seeming facts, just as they are, and still
+say, 'Damn the facts!'"
+
+"Can I do that?" She asked the question honestly, with eyes in which
+sincere tears glistened, and at last words came in freshet volume.
+"Can I ignore the fact that father is in public life, where his
+affairs and those of his family are public property? You know he is
+talked of as presidential timber. Can I ask him to move heaven and
+earth to give you back your liberty--and then have his critics say
+that it was all for a member of his own family--a private use of
+public power?"
+
+"Then you want your promise back?" he demanded quietly.
+
+Suddenly the girl carried her hands to her face, a face all the
+lovelier for its distress. "I don't--know what--I want," she gasped.
+
+Her lover stood looking down at her, and his temples grew coldly moist
+where the veins stood out.
+
+"If you don't know what you want, dear, I know one thing that you
+can't do," he said. "Under these circumstances, your only chance of
+happiness would lie in your wanting one thing so much that the rest
+wouldn't count." He paused, and then he, too, moved aside and stood
+with her, leaning on the rail while in the phosphorescent play of the
+water and the broken reflections of the low-hung stars he seemed to
+find a sort of anodyne.
+
+"I said that what you offered was the most I had the right to hope
+for. That was true. Your father's objections are legitimate. I owe you
+both more than I can ever pay--but I won't add to that debt."
+
+"I thought," said the girl miserably, "that I loved you--enough for
+anything. The shock of all this--has made my mind swirl so that
+now--I'm not sure of anything."
+
+"Yes," he said dully, "I understand."
+
+Yet perhaps what he understood, or thought he understood, just then
+was either more or less than implied in the deferential compliance of
+his voice. This girl had given her promise to an officer and a
+gentleman with two generations of gallant army record behind him and a
+promising future ahead. She was talking now to one who, in the words
+of the Articles of War was neither an officer nor a gentleman and who
+had been saved from life imprisonment only by influence of her own
+importuning.
+
+Her own distress of mind and incertitude were so palpable and pathetic
+that the man had spoken with apology in his voice, because through him
+she had been forced into her dilemma. Yet, until now, he had been
+young enough and naïve enough to believe in certain tenets of
+romance--and, in romance, a woman who really loved a man would not be
+weighing at such a time her father's aspirations toward the White
+House. In romance, even had he been as guilty as perdition, he would
+have stood in her eyes, incapable of crime. Palpably life and romance
+followed variant laws and, for a bitter moment, Spurrier wished that
+the senator had kept hands off, and left him to his fate.
+
+He had heard the senator himself characterized as a man cold-bloodedly
+ambitious and contemptuous of others and, having seen only the genial
+side of that prominent gentleman, he had resentfully denied such
+statements and made mental comment of the calumny that attaches to
+celebrity.
+
+Yet, Spurrier argued to himself, the girl was right. Quite probably if
+he had a sister similarly placed, he would be seeking to show her the
+need of curbing impulse with common sense.
+
+From a steamer chair off somewhere at their backs came a low peal of
+laughter, and the orchestra was busy with a fox trot. For perhaps five
+minutes neither of them spoke again, but at last the girl twisted the
+ring from her finger. At least her loyalty had kept it there until she
+could remove it in his presence. She handed it to him and he turned it
+this way and that. The moonlight teased from its setting a jet of cold
+radiance.
+
+Then Spurrier tossed it outward and watched the white arc of its
+bright vanishing. He heard a muffled sob and saw the girl turn and
+start toward the companionway door. Instinctively he took a step
+forward following, then halted and stood where he was.
+
+Later, Spurrier forced himself toward the smoke room where already
+under cigar and cigarette smoke, poker and bridge games were in
+progress, and where in little groups those men who were not playing
+discussed the topics of East and West. He was following no urge of
+personal fancy in entering that place, but rather obeying a resolution
+he had made out there on deck. Now that he had asked his question and
+had his answer there was nothing from which he could afford to hide.
+He knew that he came heralded by the advance agency of gossip and that
+it behooved him from the start to meet and give back glance for
+glance: to declare by his bearing that he had no intention of
+skulking, and no apologies to make.
+
+Yet, having reached the entrance from the deck, he hesitated, and
+while he still stood, with his back to the lighted door of the smoke
+room, he reeled under a sudden impact and was thrown against the rail.
+Recovering himself with an exclamation of anger, Spurrier found
+himself confronting a man rising from his knees, whose awkwardness had
+caused the collision.
+
+But the stumbling person having regained his feet, stood seemingly
+shaken by his fall, and after a moment, during which Spurrier eyed him
+with hostile silence, exclaimed:
+
+"Plunger Spurrier!"
+
+"That is not my name, sir," retorted the ex-officer hotly. "And it's
+not one that I care to have strangers employ."
+
+The man drew back a step, and the light from the doorway fell across a
+face a little beyond middle age; showing a broad forehead and strongly
+chiseled features upon which sat an expression of directness and
+force.
+
+"My apology is, at least, as ready as was my exclamation," declared
+the stranger in a pleasant voice that disarmed hostility. "The term
+was not meant offensively. I saw you at Oakland one day when a race
+was run, and I've heard certain qualities of yours yarned about at
+mess tables in the East. I ask your pardon."
+
+"It's granted," acceded Spurrier of necessity. "And since you've heard
+of me, you doubtless know enough to make allowances for my short
+temper and excuse it."
+
+"I _have_ heard your story," admitted the other man frankly. "My name
+is Snowdon. It's just possible you may have heard of me, too."
+
+"You're not Snowdon the engineer: the Panama Canal man, the Chinese
+railway builder, are you?"
+
+"I had a hand in those enterprises," was the answer, and with a slight
+bow the gentleman went his way.
+
+The spot where the two men had stood talking was far enough aft to
+look down on the space one deck lower and one degree farther astern,
+where, as through a well space, showed the meaner life of the
+steerage. There was a light third-class list on this voyage, and when
+Spurrier moved out of the obscurity which had been thrown over him by
+the life boat's shadow, he stood gazing idly down on an empty
+prospect. He gazed with an interest too moodily self-centered for easy
+inciting.
+
+He himself stood now clear shown under the frosted globe of an
+overhead light and, after a little, roused to a tepid curiosity, he
+fancied he could make out what seemed to be a human figure that clung
+to the blackest of the shadows below him.
+
+He even fancied that in that lower darkness he caught the momentary
+dull glint of metal reflecting some half light, and an impression of
+furtive movement struck in upon him. But after a moment's scrutiny,
+which failed to clarify the picture, he decided that his imagination
+had invented the vague shape out of nothing more tangible than shadow.
+If there had been a man there he seemed to have dissolved now.
+
+So Spurrier turned away.
+
+Had his eyes possessed a nearer kinship to those of the cat, which can
+read the dark, he would have altered his course of action from that
+instant forward. He would, first, have gone to the captain and
+demanded permission to search the steerage for an ex-private of the
+infantry company that had lately been his own; a private against whose
+name on the muster roll stood the entry: "Dead or deserted."
+
+Yet when he turned on his heel and passed from the lighted area he
+unconsciously walked out of range of a revolver aimed at his
+breast--thereby temporarily settling for the man who fingered the
+trigger his question, "to shoot or not to shoot."
+
+For Private Grant, a fleeing deserter, convalescent from fever and
+lunacy, had been casting up the chances of his own life just then and
+debating the dangers and advantages of letting Spurrier live.
+Recognizing his former officer as he himself looked out of his hiding,
+his first impulse had been one of panic terror and in Spurrier he had
+seen a pursuer.
+
+The finger had twitched nervously on the trigger--then while he
+wavered in decision the other had calmly walked out of range. Now, if
+he kept out of sight until they reached Frisco, the deserter told
+himself, a larger territory would spread itself for his escape than
+the confines of a steamer, and he belonged to a race that can bide its
+time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Spurrier entered the smoke room and stood for a moment in its
+threshold.
+
+There were uniforms there, and some men in them whom he had known,
+though now these other-time acquaintances avoided his eye and the
+necessity of an embarrassment which must have come from meeting it.
+
+But from an alcove seat near the door rose a stocky gentleman, well
+groomed and indubitably distinguished of guise, who had been tearing
+the covering from a bridge deck.
+
+"Spurrier, my boy," he exclaimed cordially, "I'm glad to see you. I
+read your name on the list. Won't you join us?"
+
+This was the man who had rolled away the mountains of official inertia
+and saved him from prison; who had stipulated with his daughter that
+she should not write to him in his cell; and who now embraced the
+first opportunity to greet him publicly with cordial words. Here,
+reflected the cashiered soldier, was poise more calculated than his
+own, and he smiled as he shook his head, giving the answer which he
+knew to be expected of him.
+
+"No, thank you, senator." Then he added a request: "But if these
+gentlemen can spare you for a few minutes I would appreciate a word
+with you."
+
+"Certainly, my boy." With a glance about the little company which
+made his excuses, Beverly rose and linked his arm through Spurrier's,
+but when they stood alone on deck that graciousness stiffened
+immediately into manner more austere.
+
+"I've seen Augusta," began the younger man briefly, "and told her I
+wouldn't seek to hold her to her promise. I suppose that meets with
+your approval?"
+
+The public man, whom rumor credited with presidential aspirations,
+nodded. "Under the circumstances it is necessary. I may as well be
+candid. I tried vainly to persuade her to throw you over entirely, but
+I had to end in a compromise. She agreed not to communicate with you
+in any manner until your trial came to its conclusion."
+
+The cashiered officer felt his temples hammering with the surge of
+indignant blood to his forehead. This man who had so studiedly and
+successfully feigned genuine pleasure at seeing him, when other eyes
+were looking on, was telling him now with salamander coolness that he
+had urged upon his daughter the policy of callous desertion. The
+impulse toward resentful retort was almost overpowering, but with it
+came the galling recognition that, except for Beverly's bull-dog
+pertinacity, Spurrier himself would have been a life-termer, and that
+now humility became him better than anger.
+
+"Did you seek to have Augusta throw me over, without even a
+farewell--because you believed me guilty, sir?" His inquiry came
+quietly and the older man shook a noncommittal head.
+
+"It's not so much what I think as what the world will think," he made
+even response. "To put it in the kindest words, Spurrier, you rest
+under a cloud."
+
+"Senator," said the other in measured syllables, "I rest, also, under
+a great weight of obligation to you, but, there were times, sir, when
+for a note from her I'd willingly have accepted the death penalty."
+
+"I won't pretend that I fail to understand--even to sympathize with
+you," came the answer. "You must see none the less that I had no
+alternative. Augusta's husband must be--well, like Cæsar's wife."
+
+"There is nothing more to be said, I think," admitted Spurrier, and
+the senator held out his hand.
+
+"In every other matter, I feel only as your friend. It will be better
+if to other eyes our relations remain cordial. Otherwise my efforts on
+your behalf would give the busy-bodies food for gossip. That's what we
+are both seeking to avoid."
+
+Spurrier bowed and watched the well-groomed figure disappear.
+
+The cloudless days and the brilliant nights of low-hung stars and
+phosphor waters were times of memorable opportunity and paradise for
+other lovers on that steamer. For Spurrier they were purgatorial and
+when he realized Augusta Beverly's clearly indicated wish that he
+should leave her free from the embarrassment of any tete-a-tete, he
+knew definitely that her silence was as final as words could have made
+it. The familiar panama hat seen at intervals and the curve of the
+cheek that he had once been privileged to kiss seemed now to belong to
+an orbit of life remote from his own with an utterness of distance no
+less actual because intangible.
+
+The young soldier's nature, which had been prodigally generous, began
+to harden into a new and unlovely bitterness. Once he passed her as
+she leaned on the rail with a young lieutenant who was going to the
+States on his first leave from Island duty, and when the girl met his
+eyes and nodded, the cub of an officer looked up--and cut him dead
+with needless ostentation.
+
+For the old general, who had pretended not to see him, Jack Spurrier
+had felt only the sympathy due to a man bound and embarrassed by a
+severe code of etiquette, but with this cocksure young martinet, his
+hands itched for chastisement.
+
+Throughout the trying voyage Spurrier felt that Snowdon, the engineer,
+was holding him under an interested sort of observation, and this
+surveillance he mildly resented, though the entire politeness of the
+other left him helpless to make his feeling outspoken. But when they
+had stood off from Honolulu and brought near to completion the last
+leg of the Pacific voyage, Snowdon invited him into his own stateroom
+and with candid directness spoke his mind.
+
+"Spurrier," he began, "I'd like to have a straight talk with you if
+you will accept my assurance of the most friendly motive."
+
+Spurrier was not immediately receptive. He sat eying the other for a
+little while with a slight frown between his eyes, but in the end he
+nodded.
+
+"I should dislike to seem churlish," he answered slowly. "But I've had
+my nerves rubbed raw of late, and they haven't yet grown callous."
+
+"You see, it's rather in my line," suggested Snowdon by way of
+preface, "to assay the minerals of character in men and to gauge the
+percentage of pay-dirt that lies in the lodes of their natures. So
+I've watched you, and if you care to have the results of my
+superficial research, I'm ready to report. No man knows himself until
+introduced to himself by another, because one can't see one's self at
+sufficient distance to gain perspective."
+
+Spurrier smiled. "So you're like the announcer at a boxing match," he
+suggested. "You're ready to say, 'Plunger Spurrier, shake hands with
+Jack Spurrier--both members of this club.'"
+
+"Precisely," assented Snowdon as naturally as though there had been no
+element of facetiousness in the suggestion. "And now in the first
+place, what do you mean to do with yourself?"
+
+"I have no idea."
+
+"I suppose you have thought of the possibilities open to a West Point
+man--as a soldier of fortune?"
+
+"Yes," the answer was unenthusiastic. "Thought of them and discarded
+them."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The voice laughed and then spoke contemptuously.
+
+"A man's sword belongs to his flag. It can no more be honorably hired
+out than a woman's love. I can see in either only a form of
+prostitution."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Snowdon heartily. "I couldn't have coached you to a
+better answer. Are you financially independent?"
+
+"On the contrary, I have nothing. Until now there was my pay and----"
+He paused there but went on again with a dogged self-forcing. "I might
+as well confess that the gaming table has always left a balance on my
+side of the ledger."
+
+"I haven't seen you playing since you came aboard."
+
+"No. I've cut that out----"
+
+"Good again--and that brings us to where I stop eliciting information
+about yourself and begin giving it. I had heard of your gambling
+exploits before I saw you. I found that you had that cold quality of
+nerve which a few gamblers have, fewer than are credited with it, by
+far! Incidentally, it's precisely the same quality that makes notable
+generals--and adroit diplomats--if they have the other qualities to
+support it. It's sublimated self-control and boldness. You were using
+it badly, but it was because you were seeking an outlet through the
+wrong channels. So I studied you, quite impersonally. Your situation
+on board wasn't easy or enviable. You knew that eyes followed you and
+tongues wagged about you with a morbid interest. You saw chatting
+groups fall abruptly silent when you approached them and officers you
+had once fraternized with look hurriedly elsewhere. In short, my young
+friend, you have faced an acid test of ordeal, and you have borne
+yourself with neither the defiance of braggadocio, nor the visible
+hint of flinching. If I were looking for a certain type of specialized
+ability, I should say you had qualified."
+
+A flush spread on the face of the listener.
+
+"You are indeed introducing me to some one I haven't known," he said.
+
+"I know, too," went on Snowdon, "that there has been a girl--and," he
+hastened to add as his companion stiffened, "I mention her only to
+show you that my observations have not been _too_ superficial. Those
+qualities which I have catalogued have engaged my attention, because
+they are rare--rare enough to be profitably capitalized."
+
+"All this is parable to me, sir."
+
+"Quite probably. I mean to construe it. There are men who originate or
+discover great opportunities of industry--and they need capital to
+bring their plans to fruition--but capital can be approached only
+through envoys and will receive only ambassadors who can compel
+recognition. The man who can hope to be successfully accredited to the
+court of Big Money must possess uncommon attributes. Pinch-beck
+promoters and plausible charlatans have made cynics of our lords of
+wealth."
+
+"What would such a man accomplish," inquired Spurrier, "aside from a
+sort of non-resident membership in the association of plutocrats?"
+
+"He would," declared Snowdon promptly, "help bridge the chasm between
+the world's unfinanced achievers, and its unachieving finances."
+
+"That," conceded the ex-soldier, "would be worth the doing."
+
+"John Law at twenty-one built a scheme of finance for Great Britain,"
+the engineer reminded him. "He could come into the presence of a king
+and in five minutes the king would urge him to stay. Force and
+presence can make such an ambassador, and those things are the veins
+of human ore I've assayed in you in paying quantities."
+
+Spurrier looked across at the strange companion whom chance had thrown
+across his path with a commotion of pulses which his face in no wise
+mirrored into outward expression. It had begun to occur to him that if
+a man is born for an adventurous life even the Articles of War cannot
+cancel his destiny.
+
+"It would seem," he suggested casually enough, "that this need of
+which you speak is for fellows, in finance, who can carry the message
+to Garcia, as it were. Isn't that it?"
+
+"That's it, and messengers to Garcia don't tramp on each other's
+heels. Yet I have spoken of only one phase of the career I'm
+outlining. It has another side to it as well, if one man is going to
+unite in himself the whole of the possibility."
+
+Snowdon broke off there a moment and seemed to be distracted by some
+thought of his own, but presently he began again.
+
+"My hypothetical man would act largely as a free lance, knocking about
+the world on a sort of constantly renewed exploration. He would be the
+prospector hunting gold and the explorer searching for new continents
+of industrial development, only instead of being just the one or the
+other he would be a sort of sublimation. His job would sometimes call
+him into the wildernesses, but more often, I think, his discoveries
+would lie under the noses of crowds, passed by every day by clever
+folk who never saw them--clever folk who are not quite clever
+enough."
+
+"It would seem to me that those discoveries," demurred Spurrier
+thoughtfully, "would come each time to some highly trained technician
+in some particular line."
+
+Snowdon shook his head again. "That's why they have come slowly
+heretofore," he declared with conviction. "That man I have in mind is
+one with a sure nose for the trail and a power of absorbing readily
+and rapidly what he requires of the other man's technical knowledge.
+It's the policy that Japan has followed as a nation. They let others
+work the problems out over there--then they appropriate the results.
+I'm not commending it as a national trait, but for this work it's the
+first essential. Having made his discovery, this new type of business
+man will enlist for it the needful financial support." He paused again
+and Spurrier, lighting a fresh cigarette, regarded him through eyes
+slit-narrowed against the flare of the match.
+
+"He must be a sort of opportunity hound," continued Snowdon smilingly.
+"He would go baying across the world in full cry and come back to the
+kennel at the end of each chase."
+
+Spurrier laughed. "If you'll pardon me, sir," he hazarded, "you make a
+very bad metaphor. I should fancy that the opportunity hound would do
+the stillest sort of still hunting."
+
+The older man smiled and bowed his head affirmatively.
+
+"I accept the amendment. The point is, do I give you the concept of
+the work?"
+
+"In a broad, extremely sketchy way, I think I get the picture,"
+replied Spurrier. "But could you give me some sort of illustration
+that would make it a shade more concrete?"
+
+His companion sat considering the question for a while and at last
+inquired: "Do you know anything about oil? I mean about its
+production?"
+
+"I've been on the Pennsylvania Railroad, coming west," testified the
+former lieutenant. "And I've run through ragged hills where on every
+side, stood clumsy, timber affairs like overgrown windmills from which
+some victorious Don Quizote had knocked off the whirligigs. Then I've
+read a little of Ida Tarbell."
+
+"Even that will serve for a sort of background. Now, people in general
+think of striking oil as they might think of finding money on the
+sidewalk or of lightning striking a particular spire--as a matter of
+purest chance. To some extent that idea is correct enough, but the
+brains of oil production are less haphazard. In the office of a few
+gentlemen who hold dominion over oil and gas hangs a map drawn by the
+intelligence department of their general staff. On that map are traced
+lines not unlike those showing ocean currents, but their arrows point
+instead to currents far under ground, where runs the crude petroleum,
+discovered--and undiscovered."
+
+"Undiscovered?" Spurrier's brows were lifted in polite incredulity,
+but his companion nodded decisively.
+
+"Discovered and undiscovered," he repeated. "Geological surveys told
+the mapmakers how certain lines and structures ran in tendency. Where
+went a particular formation of Nature's masonry, there in probability
+would go oil. The method was not absolute, I grant you, but neither
+was it haphazard. Sitting in an office in Pittsburgh a certain man
+drew on his chart what has since been recognized as the line of the
+forty-second degree, running definitely from the Pennsylvania fields
+down through Ohio and into the Appalachian hills of Kentucky--thence
+west and south. Study your fields in Oklahoma, in old Mexico, and you
+will find that, widely separated as they are, each of them is marked
+by a cross on that map, and that each of them lies along the current
+trend which the Pittsburgh man traced before many of them were touched
+by a drill."
+
+"That, surely," argued Spurrier, "testifies for the highly skilled
+technician, doesn't it?"
+
+"So far. I now come to the chance of the opportunity hound. The
+present fields are spots of production here and there. Between them
+lie others, virgin to pump or rig. Much of that ground is, of course,
+barren territory, for even on an acre of proven location dry holes may
+lie close to gushers; one man's farm may be a 'duster' while his
+neighbor's spouts black wealth. But along that charted line run the
+probabilities."
+
+Into Spurrier's eyes stole the gleam of the adventuring spirit that
+was strong in him.
+
+"It sounds like Robert Louis Stevenson and buried treasure," he
+declared with unconcealed enthusiasm, but Snowdon only smiled.
+
+"Remember," he cautioned, "I'm illustrating--nothing more. Now in the
+foothills of the Kentucky Cumberlands, for example, some years ago men
+began finding oil. It lay for the most part in a country where the
+roads were creek beds--remote from railway facilities. It was an
+expensive sort of proposition to develop, but the cry of 'Oil! Oil!'
+has never failed to set the pack a-running, and it ran."
+
+"I don't remember hearing of that rush," admitted Spurrier.
+
+"No, I dare say you didn't. It was a flare-up and a die-down. The men
+who rushed in, plodded dejectedly out again, poorer by the time they
+had spent."
+
+"Then the boom collapsed?"
+
+"It collapsed--but why? Because the gentlemen who hold dominion over
+oil and gas caucussed and so ordained. They gathered around their map
+and stuck pins here and there. They said, 'This oil can come out in
+two ways only: by pipe line or tank cars. We will stand aloof and
+develop where the cost is less and the profit greater--and without us,
+it cannot succeed.'"
+
+"Were there no independent concerns to bring the stuff to market?"
+
+Snowdon laughed. "The gentlemen who hold dominion have their own
+defenses against competition. You may have heard of a certain dog in
+the manger? Well, they said as they sat about their table on which the
+map was spread, 'Some day other fields may run out. Some day something
+may set oil soaring until even this yield may be well worth our
+attention. We will therefore hold this card in reserve against that
+day and that contingency.' So quietly, inconspicuously, yet with a
+power that strangled competition, lobbies operated in State
+legislatures. The independents failed to secure needful charters--the
+lines were never laid. Those particular fields starved, and now the
+ignorant mountaineers who woke for a while to dreams of wealth, laugh
+at the man who says 'oil' to them. Yet at some properly, or improperly
+designated day, those failure fields will flash on the astonished
+world as something risen from the dead, and fortunes will blossom for
+the lucky."
+
+"Yes?" prompted the listener.
+
+"Now let us suppose our opportunity hound as willing to go
+unostentatiously into that country; as willing to spend part of each
+year there for a term of years; nipping options here and there,
+waiting patiently and watching his chance to slip a charter through
+one of those bound and gagged legislatures in some moment of relaxed
+vigilance. Such a man might find himself ultimately standing with the
+key to the situation in his own hand. It's just a story, but perhaps
+it serves to give you my meaning."
+
+"Did I understand you to suggest," inquired Spurrier with a forced
+calmness, "that you fancy you see in me the qualities of your
+opportunity hound?"
+
+"Our own concern," said Snowdon quietly, "is fortunate enough to have
+passed through the period of cooling its heels in the anterooms of
+capital, but we can still use a man such as I have described. There's
+a place for you with us if you want it."
+
+"When do I go to work?" demanded the former lieutenant rising from his
+seat, and Snowdon countered:
+
+"When will you be ready to begin?"
+
+"When we dock at 'Frisco," came the immediate response, "provided I be
+allowed time for an affair of my own, two months from now. A certain
+private in my old company will be discharged from the service then. I
+fancy he'll land there, and I want to be waiting for him when he steps
+ashore."
+
+"A reprisal?" inquired Snowdon in a disappointed tone, but the other
+shook his head.
+
+"He is the one man through whom there's a chance of clearing my name,"
+Spurrier said slowly. "I hope it won't call for violence."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Private Grant had been bred of the blood of hatred and suckled in
+vindictiveness. He had come into being out of the heritage of feud
+fighting "foreparents," and he thought in the terms of his ancestry.
+
+When he had fled into the jungle beyond the island village, though he
+had been demented and enfeebled, the instinct of a race that had often
+"hidden out" guided him. That instinct and chance had led him to a
+native house where his disloyalty gave him a welcome, and there he had
+found sanctuary until his fever subsided and he emerged cadaverous,
+but free. Word had filtered through to him there of Spurrier's
+court-martial and its result.
+
+In the course of time, fever-wasted yet restored out of his
+semi-lunacy, he had made his way furtively but successfully toward
+Manila and there he had supplemented the sketchy fragments of
+information with which his disloyal native friends had been able to
+provide him.
+
+He knew now that the accused officer had pitched his defense upon an
+accusation of the deserter and the refugee's eyes smoldered as he
+learned that he himself had been charged with prefacing his flight
+with murder. He knew what that meant. The disgraced officer would move
+heaven and earth to clear his smirched name, and the condition
+precedent would be the capture of Private Grant and the placing of him
+in the prisoner's dock. To be wanted for desertion was grave enough.
+To be wanted both for desertion and the assassination of his company
+commander was infinitely worse, and to stand in that position and
+face, as he believed he would have to, a conspiracy of class feeling,
+was intolerable.
+
+Haunting the shadowy places about Manila, Grant had been almost crazed
+by his fears but with the lifting of the steamer's anchor, a great
+spirit of hope had brightened in him, feeding on the solace of the
+thought that, once more in the States, he could lose himself from
+pursuit and vigilance.
+
+Then he had seen, on the same ship, the face of the man whom, above
+all others, he had occasion to fear!
+
+For their joint lives the world was not large enough. One of them must
+die, and in the passion that swept over him with the dread of
+discovery. Grant had skirted a relapse into his recent mania.
+
+At that moment when Spurrier had looked down and he had looked up, the
+deserter had seen only one way out, and that was to kill. But when the
+other had moved away, seemingly without recognition, his thoughts had
+moved more lucidly again.
+
+Until he had tried soldiering he had known only the isolated life of
+forested mountains and here on a ship at sea he felt surrounded and
+helpless--almost timid. When he landed at San Francisco, if his luck
+held him undiscovered that long, he would have dry land under him and
+space into which to flee.
+
+The refugee had hated Comyn. Now Comyn was dead and Grant transferred
+his hatred from the dead captain to the living lieutenant, resolving
+that he also must die.
+
+The moment to which he looked forward with the most harrowing
+apprehension was that when the vessel docked and put her passengers
+ashore. Here at sea a comforting isolation lay between first and
+third cabin passengers and one could remain unseen from those deck
+levels that lay forward and above. But with the arrangements for
+disembarkation, he was unfamiliar, and for all he knew, the steerage
+people might be herded along under the eyes of those who traveled
+more luxuriously. He might have to march in such a procession,
+willy-nilly, over a gang-plank swept by a watchful eye.
+
+So Private Grant brooded deeply and his thoughts were not pretty. Also
+he kept his pistol near him and when the hour for debarkation arrived
+he was ripe for trouble.
+
+It happened that a group of steerage passengers, including himself,
+were gathered together much as he had feared they might be, and
+Grant's face paled and hardened as he saw, leaning with his elbows on
+a rail above him and a pipe in his mouth, the officer whom he
+dreaded.
+
+Grant's hand slipped unobtrusively under his coat and his eyes
+narrowed as his heart tightened and became resolved.
+
+Spurrier had not yet seen him but at any moment he might do so. There
+was nothing to prevent the wandering and casual glance from alighting
+on the spot where the deserter stood, and when it did so the
+mountaineer would draw and fire.
+
+But as the ex-officer's eyes went absently here and there a girl
+passed at his back and perhaps she spoke as she passed. At all events
+the officer straightened and stiffened. Across his face flashed
+swiftly such an expression as might have come from a sudden and
+stinging blow, and then, losing all interest in the bustle of the
+lower decks, the man turned on his heel and walked rapidly away.
+
+The deserter's hand stole away from the pistol grip and his breath ran
+out in a long, sibilant gasp of relief and reaction. When later he had
+landed safely and unmolested, he turned in flight toward the mountains
+that he knew over there across the continent--mountains where only
+bloodhounds could run him to earth.
+
+Beyond the rims of those forest-tangled peaks he had never looked out
+until he had joined the army, and once back in them, though he dare
+not go, for a while, to his own home county, he could shake off his
+palsy of fear.
+
+He traveled as a hobo, moneyless, ignorant, and unprepossessing of
+appearance, yet before the leaves began to fall he was at last
+tramping slopes where the air tasted sweeter to his nostrils, and the
+speech of mankind fell on his ear with the music of the accustomed.
+
+The name of Bud Grant no longer went with him. That, since it carried
+certain unfulfilled duties to an oath of allegiance, he generously
+ceded to the United States Army, and contented himself with the random
+substitute of Sim Colby.
+
+Now he tramped swingingly along a bowlder-broken creek bed which by
+local euphemism was called a road. When his way led him over the
+backbone of a ridge he could see, almost merged with the blue of the
+horizon, the smoky purple of a sugar loaf peak, which marked his
+objective.
+
+When he passed that he would be in territory where his journeying
+might end. To reach it he must transverse the present vicinity in
+which a collateral branch of his large family still dwelt, and where
+he himself preferred to walk softly, wary of possible recognition.
+
+To the man whose terror had seen in every casual eye that rested on
+him while he crossed a continent, a gleam of accusation, it was as
+though he had reached sanctuary. The shoulders that he had forced into
+a hang-dog slough to disguise the soldierly bearing which had become
+habitual in uniform, came back into a more buoyant and upright swing.
+The face that had been sullen with fear now looked out with something
+of the bravado of earlier days, and the whole experience of the
+immediate past; of months and even years, took on the unreality of a
+nightmare from which he was waking.
+
+The utmost of caution was still required, but the long flight was
+reaching a goal where substantial safety lay like a land of promise.
+It was a land of promise broken with ragged ranges and it was fiercely
+austere; the Cumberland mountains reared themselves like a colossal
+and inhospitable wall of isolation between the abundant richness of
+lowland Kentucky to the west, and Virginia's slope seaward to the
+east.
+
+But isolation spelled refuge and the taciturn silences of the men who
+dwelt there, asking few questions and answering fewer, gave promise of
+unmolested days.
+
+These hills were a world in themselves; a world that had stood,
+marking time for a hundred and fifty years, while to east and west
+life had changed and developed and marched with the march of the
+years. Sequestered by broken steeps of granite and sand stone, the
+human life that had come to the coves and valleys in days when the
+pioneers pushed westward, had stagnated and remained unaltered.
+
+Illiteracy and ignorance had sprung chokingly into weed-like
+prevalence. The blood-feud still survived among men who fiercely
+insisted upon being laws unto themselves. Speech fell in quaint
+uncouthness that belonged to another century, and the tides of progress
+that had risen on either hand, left untouched and uninfluenced the
+men and women of mountain blood, who called their lowland brethren
+"furriners" and who distrusted all that was "new-fangled" or
+"fotched-on."
+
+Habitations were widely separated cabins. Roads were creekbeds. Life
+was meager and stern, and in the labyrinths of honeycombed and
+forest-tangled wilds, men who were "hidin' out" from sheriffs, from
+revenuers, from personal enemies, had a sentimental claim on the
+sympathy of the native-born.
+
+This was the life from which the deserter had sprung. It was the life
+to which with eager impatience he was returning; a life of countless
+hiding places and of no undue disposition to goad a man with
+questioning.
+
+Through the billowing richness of the Bluegrass lowlands, he had
+hurried with a homing throb in his pulses. As the foothills began to
+break out of the fallow meadows and the brush to tangle at the fringe
+of the smoothness, his breath had come deeper and more satisfying.
+When the foothills rose in steepness until low, wet streamers of cloud
+trailed their slopes like shrapnel smoke, and the timber thickened and
+he saw an eagle on the wing, something like song broke into being in
+his heart.
+
+He was home. Home in the wild mountains where air and the water had
+zest and life instead of the staleness that had made him sick in the
+flat world from which he came. He was home in the mountains where
+others were like him and he was not a barbarian any longer among
+contemptuous strangers.
+
+He plodded along the shale-bottomed water course for a little way and
+halted. As his woodsman's eye took bearings he muttered to himself:
+"Hit's a right slavish way through them la'rel hills, but hit's a
+cut-off," and, suiting his course to his decision, he turned upward
+into the thickets and began to climb.
+
+An hour later he had covered the "hitherside" and "yon side" of a
+small mountain, and when he came to the highway again he found himself
+confronted by a half dozen armed horsemen whose appearance gave him
+apprehensive pause, because at once he recognized in them the
+officialdom of the law. The mounted travelers drew rein, and he halted
+at the roadside, nodding his greeting in affected unconcern.
+
+The man who had been riding at the fore held in his left hand the
+halter line of a led horse, and now he looked down at the pedestrian
+and spoke in the familiar phrase of wayside amenity.
+
+"Howdy, stranger, what mout yore name be?"
+
+"Sim Colby from acrost Hemlock Mountain ways, but I've done been west
+fer a year gone by, though, an' I'm jest broguein' along to'rds
+home."
+
+The questioner, a long, gaunt man with a face that had been scarred,
+but never altered out of its obstinate set, eyed him for a moment,
+then shot out the question:
+
+"Did ye ever hear tell of Sam Mosebury over thet-away?"
+
+It was lucky that the fugitive had given as his home a territory with
+which he had some familiarity. Now his reply came promptly.
+
+"Yes, I knows him when I sees him. Some folks used ter give him a
+right hard name over thar, but I reckon he's all right ef a man don't
+aim ter crowd him too fur."
+
+"I don't know how fur he mout of been crowded," brusquely replied the
+man with the extra horse, "but he kilt a man in Rattletown yestiddy
+noon an' tuck ter ther woods. I'm after him."
+
+The foot traveler expressed an appropriate interest, then added:
+
+"Howsomever, hit ain't none of my affair, an' seein' thet I've got a
+right far journey ahead of me, I'll hike along."
+
+But the leader of the mounted group shook his head.
+
+"One of my men got horse flung back thar an' broke a bone inside him.
+I'm ther high sheriff of this hyar county, an' I hereby summons ye ter
+go along with me an' ack as a member of my possy."
+
+Under his tan Private Grant paled a little. This mischance carried a
+triple menace to his safety. It involved riding back to the county
+seat where some man might remember his face, and recall that two
+years ago he had gone away on a three years' enlistment. But even if
+he escaped that contingency, it meant tarrying in this neighborhood
+through which he had meant to pass inconspicuously and rapidly. To be
+attached to a _posse comitatus_ riding the hills on a man hunt meant
+to challenge every passing eye with an interest beyond the casual.
+
+Finally, though he might well have forgotten him, the man whose trail
+he was now called to take in pursuit had once known him slightly, and
+if they met under such hostile auspices, might recognize and denounce
+him.
+
+But the sheriff sat enthroned in his saddle and robed in the color of
+authority. At his back sat five other men with rifles across their
+pommels, and with such a situation there was no argument. The law's
+officer threw the bridle rein of the empty-saddled mount to the man in
+the road.
+
+"Get up on this critter," he commanded tersely, "and don't let him git
+his head down too low. He follers buck-jumpin'."
+
+When Grant, alias Colby, found that the men riding with him were more
+disposed to somber silence than to inquisitiveness or loquacity, he
+breathed easier. He even made a shrewd guess that there were others in
+that small group who answered the call of the law as reluctantly as
+he.
+
+Sam Mosebury was accounted as dangerous as a rattlesnake, and Bud
+doubted whether even the high sheriff himself would make more than a
+perfunctory effort to come to grips with him in his present
+desperation.
+
+When the posse had ridden several hours, and had come to a spot in the
+forest where the trail forked diversely, a halt was called. They had
+traveled steep ways and floundered through many belly-deep fords. Dust
+lay gray upon them and spattered mud overlaid the dust.
+
+"We've done come ter a pass, now," declared the sheriff, "where hit
+ain't goin' ter profit us no longer ter go trailin' in one bunch. We
+hev need ter split up an' turkey tail out along different routes."
+
+The sun had long crossed the meridian and dyed the steep horizon with
+burning orange and violet when Bud Grant and Mose Biggerstaff, with
+whom he had been paired off, drew rein to let their horses blow in a
+gorge between beetling walls of cliff.
+
+"Me, I ain't got no master relish for this task, no-how," declared
+Mose morosely as he spat at the black loam of rotting leaves. "No man
+ain't jedgmatically proved ter me, yit, thet ther feller Sam kilt
+didn't need killin'."
+
+Bud nodded a solemn concurrence in the sentiment. Then abruptly the
+two of them started as though at the intrusion of a ghost and, of
+instinct, their hands swept holsterward, but stopped halfway.
+
+This sudden galvanizing of their apathy into life was effected by the
+sight of a figure which had materialized without warning and in
+uncanny silence in a fissure where the rocks dripped from reeking moss
+on either side.
+
+It stood with a cocked repeating rifle held easily at the ready, and
+it was a figure that required no heralding of its identity or menace.
+
+"Were ye lookin' fer me, boys?" drawled Sam Mosebury with a palpable
+enjoyment of the situation, not unlike that which brightens the eyes
+of a cat as it plays with a mouse already crippled.
+
+With swift apprehension the eyes of the two deputies met and effected
+an understanding. Mose Biggerstaff licked his bearded lips until their
+stiffness relaxed enough for speech.
+
+"Me an' Sim Colby hyar," he protested, "got summoned by ther high
+sheriff. We didn't hev no rather erbout hit one way ner t'other. All
+we've got ter go on air ther _dee_scription thet war give ter us--an'
+we don't see no resemblance atween ye an' ther feller we're atter."
+
+The murderer stood eying them with an amused contempt, and one could
+recognize the qualities of dominance which, despite his infamies, had
+won him both fear and admiration.
+
+"Ef ye thinks ye'd ought ter take me along an' show me ter yore high
+sheriff," he suggested, and the finger toyed with the trigger, "I'm
+right hyar."
+
+"Afore God, no!" It was Bud who spoke now contradicting his colleague.
+"I've seed Sam Mosebury often times--an' ye don't no fashion faver
+him."
+
+Sam laughed. "I've seed ye afore, too, I reckon," he commented dryly.
+"But ef ye don't know me, I reckon I don't need ter know _you_,
+nuther."
+
+The two sat atremble in their saddles until the apparition had
+disappeared in the laurel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gray-templed and seamed of face, Dyke Cappeze entered the courthouse
+at Carnettsville one day a few months later and paused for a moment,
+his battered law books under his threadbare elbow, to gaze around the
+murky hall of which his memory needed no refreshing.
+
+About the stained walls hung fly-specked notices of sheriff's sales,
+and between them stamped long-haired, lean-visaged men drawn in by
+litigation or jury service from branchwater and remote valley.
+
+Out where the sun lay mellow on the town square was the brick
+pavement, on which Cappeze's law partner had fallen dead ten
+years ago, because he dared to prosecute too vigorously. Across
+the way stood the general store upon which one could still see the
+pock-marking of bullets reminiscent of that day when the Heatons
+and the Blacks made war, and terrorized the county seat.
+
+Dyke Cappeze looked over it all with a deep melancholy in his eyes. He
+knew his mountains and loved his people whose virtues were more
+numerous, if less conspicuous, than their sins. In his heart burned a
+militant insurgency. These hills cried out for development, and
+development demanded a conception of law broader gauged and more
+serious than obtained. It needed fearless courts, unterrified juries,
+intrepid lawyers.
+
+He had been such a lawyer, and when he had applied for life insurance
+he had been adjudged a prohibitive risk. To-day the career of three
+decades was to end, and as the bell in the teetering cupola began to
+clang its summons he shook his head--and pressed tight the straight
+lips that slashed his rugged face.
+
+On the bench sat the circuit-riding judge of that district; a man to
+whom, save when he addressed him as "your honor," Dyke Cappeze had not
+spoken in three years. They were implacable enemies, because too
+often the lawyer had complained that justice waited here on
+expediency.
+
+Cappeze looked at the windows bleared with their residue of dust and
+out through them at the hills mantling to an autumnal glory. Then he
+heard that suave--to himself he said hypocritical--voice from the
+bench.
+
+"Gentlemen of the bar, any motions?"
+
+Wearily the thin, tall-framed lawyer came to his feet and stood erect
+and silent for a moment in his long, black coat, corroding into the
+green of dilapidation.
+
+"May it please your honor," he grimly declared. "I hardly know whether
+my statement may be properly called a motion or not. It's more a
+valedictory."
+
+He drew from his breast pocket a bit of coarse, lined writing paper
+and waved it in his talon-like hand.
+
+"I was retained by the widow Sales, whose husband was shot down by Sam
+Mosebury, to assist the prosecution in bringing the assassin to
+punishment. The grand jury has failed to indict this defendant. The
+sheriff has failed to arrest him. The court has failed to produce
+those witnesses whom I have subpoenaed. The machinery of the law which
+is created for the sole purpose of protecting the weak against the
+encroachments of the malevolent has failed."
+
+He paused, and through the crowded room the shuffling feet fell silent
+and heads bent excitedly forward. Then Cappeze lifted the paper in his
+hand and went on:
+
+"I hold here an unsigned letter that threatens me with death if I
+persist with this prosecution. It came to me two weeks ago, and since
+receiving it I have redoubled my energy. When this grand jury was
+impaneled and charged, such a note also reached each of its members. I
+know not what temper of soul actuates those men who have sworn to
+perform the duties of grand jurors. I know not whether these threats
+have affected their deliberations, but I know that they have failed to
+return a true bill against Sam Mosebury!"
+
+The judge fingering his gavel frowned gravely. "Does counsel mean to
+charge that the court has proven lax?"
+
+"I mean to say," declared the lawyer in a voice that suddenly mounted
+and rung like a trumpeted challenge, "that in these hills of Kentucky
+the militant spirit of the law seems paralyzed! I mean to say that
+terrorism towers higher than the people's safeguards! For a lifetime I
+have battled here to put the law above the feud--and I have failed. In
+this courthouse my partner fought for a recognition of justice and at
+its door he paid the penalty with his life. I wish to make no charges
+other than to state the facts. I am growing old, and I have lost heart
+in a vain fight. I wish to withdraw from this case as associate
+commonwealth counsel, because I can do nothing more than I have done,
+and that is enough. I wish to state publicly that to-day I shall take
+down my shingle and withdraw from the practice of law, because law
+among us seems to me a misnomer and a futile semblance."
+
+In a dead silence the elderly attorney came to his period and gathered
+up again under his threadbare elbow his two or three battered books.
+Turning, he walked down the center aisle toward the door, and as he
+went his head sagged dejectedly forward on his chest.
+
+He heard the instruction of his enemy on the bench, still suave:
+
+"Mr. Clerk, let the order be entered striking the name of Mr. Cappeze
+from the record as associate counsel for the commonwealth."
+
+It was early forenoon when the elderly attorney left the dingy law
+office which he was closing, and the sunset fires were dying when he
+swung himself down from the saddle at his own stile in the hills and
+walked between the bee-gums and bird boxes to his door. But before he
+reached it the stern pain in his eyes yielded to a brightening
+thought, and as if responsive to that thought the door swung open and
+in it stood a slim girl with eyes violet deep, and a beauty so
+alluring and so wildly natural that her father felt as if youth had
+met him again, when he had begun to think of all life as musty and
+decrepit with age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Except in that narrow circle of American life which follows the doings
+and interests of the army and navy, the world had forgotten, in the
+several years since its happening, the court-martial and disgrace of
+John Spurrier--but Spurrier himself had not been able to forget.
+
+His name had become forcefully identified with other things and, in
+the employ of Snowdon's company, he had been into those parts of the
+world which call to a man of energy and constructive ability of major
+calibre. But the joy of seeing mine fields open to the rush where
+there had been only desert before: of seeing chasms bridged into
+roadways had not been enough to banish the brooding which sprung from
+the old stigma. In remote places he had encountered occasional army
+men to remind him that he was no longer one of them and, though he was
+often doing worthier things than they, they were bound by regulations
+which branded him.
+
+So Spurrier had hardened, not into outward crustiness of admitted
+chagrin, but with an inner congealing of spirit which made him look on
+life as a somewhat merciless fight and what he could wrest from life
+as the booty of conquest.
+
+One day, in Snowdon's office after a more than usually difficult
+task had reached accomplishment, the chief candidly proclaimed
+justification for his first estimate of his aide, and Spurrier
+smiled.
+
+"It's generous of you to speak so, sir," he said slowly, "and I'm glad
+to leave you with that impression--because with many regrets I _am_
+leaving you."
+
+The older man raised his brows in surprise.
+
+"I had hoped our association would be permanent," he responded. "I
+suppose, though, you have an opening to a broader horizon. If so it
+comes as recognition well earned."
+
+"It's an offer from Martin Harrison, sir," came the reply in slowly
+weighed words. "There are objections, of course, but the man who gains
+Harrison's confidence stands in the temple of big money."
+
+"Yes. Of course Harrison's name needs no amplification." The man who
+had opened a door for Spurrier in what had seemed a blank wall, sat
+for a moment silent then broke out with more than his customary
+emphasis of expression. "Objection from me may seem self-interested
+because I am losing a valuable assistant. But--damn it all, Harrison
+is a pirate!"
+
+Spurrier's tanned cheeks flushed a shade darker but he nodded his
+head. His fine eyes took on that glint of hardness which, in former
+times, had never marred their engaging candor.
+
+"I'd like to have you understand me, sir. I owe you that much and a
+great deal more. I know that Harrison and his ilk of big money
+operators are none too scrupulous--but they have power and opportunity
+and those are things I must gain."
+
+"I had supposed," suggested Snowdon deliberately, "that you wanted two
+things above all else. First to establish your innocence to the
+world, and secondly, even if you failed in that, to make your name so
+substantially respected that you could bear--the other."
+
+"Until recently I had no other thought." The young man rose and stood
+with his fine body erect and as full of disciplined strength as that
+of a Praxiteles athlete. Then he took several restless turns across
+the floor and halted tensely before his benefactor.
+
+"I have let no grass grow under my feet. You know how I have run
+down every conceivable clue and how I stand as uncleared as the day
+the verdict was brought at Manila. I've begun to despair of
+vindication.... I am not by nature a beast of prey.... I prefer
+fair play and the courtesies of sportsmanlike conflict."
+
+He paused, then went forward again in a hardening voice: "But in this
+land of ours there are two aristocracies and only two--and I want to
+be an aristocrat of sorts."
+
+"I didn't realize we had even so much variety as that," observed
+Snowdon and the younger man continued.
+
+"The real aristocracy is that of gentle blood and ideals. Our little
+army is its true nucleus and there a man doesn't have to be rich. I
+was born to that and reared to it as to a deep religion--but I've been
+cast out, unfrocked, cashiered. I can't go back. One class is still
+open to me; the brazen, arrogant circles of wealth into which a
+double-fisted achiever can bruise his way. I don't love them. I don't
+revere them, but they offer power and I mean to take my place on their
+tawdry eminence. It's all that's left."
+
+"I'm not preaching humility," persisted Snowdon quietly. "I started
+you along the paths of financial combat and I see no fault in your
+continuing, but may I be candid to the point of bluntness?"
+
+He paused for permission and Spurrier prompted: "Yes, please go on."
+
+"Then," finished Snowdon, "since you've been with me I've watched you
+grow--and you _have_ grown. But I've also seen a fine chivalric sense
+gradually blunting; a generous predisposition hardening out of
+flexibility into something more implacable, less gracious. It's a
+pity--and Martin Harrison won't soften you."
+
+For a while Spurrier stood meditatively silent, then he smiled and
+once more nodded his head.
+
+"There isn't a thing you've said that isn't true, Mr. Snowdon,
+and you're the one man who could say it without any touch of
+offensiveness. I've counted the costs. God knows if I could go back
+to the army to-morrow with a shriven record, I'd rather have my
+lieutenant's pay than all the success that could ever come from
+moneyed buccaneers! But I can't do that. I can't think of myself
+as a fighting man under my own flag whose largest pay is his
+contentment and his honor. Very well, I have accepted Hobson's
+choice. I will join that group which fights with power, for power;
+the group that's strong enough to defy the approval they can't
+successfully court. I _have_ hardened but I've needed to. I hope I
+shan't become so flagrant, however, that you'll have to regret
+sponsoring me."
+
+Snowdon laughed.
+
+"I'm not afraid of that," he made hasty assurance. "And my friendliest
+wishes go with you."
+
+Since that day John Spurrier had come to a place of confidence in the
+counsels over which Harrison presided with despotic authority.
+
+The man in the street, deriving his information from news print, would
+have accorded Martin Harrison a place on the steering committee of the
+country's wealth and affairs, and in such a classification he would
+have been both right and wrong.
+
+There were exclusive coteries of money manipulation to which Harrison
+was denied an entree. These combinations were few but mighty, and
+until he won the sesame of admission to their supreme circle his
+ambition must chafe, unsatisfied: his power, greater than that of many
+kings, must seem to himself too weak.
+
+It must not be inferred that Harrison was embittered by the wormwood
+of failure. His trophies of success were numerous and tangible enough
+for every purpose except his own contentment.
+
+To-night he was smiling with baronial graciousness while he stood
+welcoming a group of dinner guests in his own house, and as his butler
+passed the tray of canapes and cocktail glasses the latest arrival
+presented himself.
+
+The host nodded. "Spurrier," he said, "I think you know every one
+here, don't you?"
+
+The young man who had just come was perfectly tailored and self-confident
+of bearing, and as vigorous of bodily strength as a wrestler in training.
+The time that had passed over him since he had left Snowdon's company for
+wider and more independent fields had wrought changes in him, and in so
+far as the observer could estimate values from the externals of life,
+every development had been upward toward improvement. Yet, between the
+man's impressive surface and his soul lay an acquired coat of cynicism and
+a shell of cultivated selfishness.
+
+John Spurrier, who had renounced the gaming table, was more
+passionately and coldly than ever the plunger, dedicated to the single
+religion of ambition. He had failed to remove the blot of the
+court-martial from his name, and, denied the soldier's ethical place,
+he had become a sort of moss-trooper of finance.
+
+Backed only by his personal qualifications, he had won his way into a
+circle of active wealth, and though he seemed no more a stranger there
+than a duckling in a pool, he himself knew that another simile would
+more truly describe his status.
+
+He was like an exhibition skater whose eye-filling feats are
+watched with admiration and bated breath. His evolutions and dizzy
+pirouettings were performed with an adroit ease and grace, but he
+could feel the swaying of the thin ice under him and could never
+forget that only the swift smoothness of his flight stood between
+himself and disaster.
+
+He must live on a lavish scale or lose step with the fast-moving
+procession. He must maintain appearances in keeping with his
+associations--or drop downscale to meaner opportunities and paltrier
+prizes. The wealth which would establish him firmly seemed always just
+a shade farther away than the reach of his outstretched grasp.
+
+"We were just talking about Trabue, Spurrier," his host enlightened
+him as he looked across the rim of his lifted glass, with eyes
+hardening at the mention of that name.
+
+Spurrier did not ask what had been said about Trabue, but he guessed
+that it savored of anathema. For Trabue, whose name rarely appeared in
+the public announcements of American Oil and Gas, was none the less
+the white-hot power and genius of that organization--its unheralded
+chief of staff. Just as A. O. and G. dominated the world of finance,
+so he dominated A. O. and G.
+
+Harrison laughed. "I'm not a vindictive man," he declared in humorous
+self-defense, "but I want his scalp as Salome wanted the head of John
+the Baptist."
+
+The newly arrived guest smiled quietly.
+
+"That's a large order, Mr. Harrison," he suggested, "and yet it's in
+line with a matter I want to take up with you. My conspiracy won't
+exactly separate O. H. Trabue from his scalp lock, but it may pull
+some pet feathers out of his war bonnet. I'm leaving to-morrow on a
+mission of reconnaissance--and when I come back----"
+
+The eyes of the elder and younger engaged with a quiet interchange of
+understanding, and Spurrier knew that into Martin's mind, as crowded
+with activities as a busy harbor, an idea had fallen which would grow
+into interest.
+
+When dinner was announced, the adventurer de luxe--for it was so that
+he recognized himself in the confessional of his own mind--took in the
+daughter of his host, and this mark of distinction did not escape the
+notice of several men.
+
+Spurrier himself was gravely listening to some low-voiced aside from
+the girl who nibbled at an olive, and who merited his attention.
+
+She was tall and undeniably handsome, and if her mentality sparkled
+with a cool and brilliant light rather than a warm and appealing glow,
+that was because she had inherited the pattern of her father's mind.
+
+If, notwithstanding her wealth and position, she was still unmarried
+three seasons after her coming-out, it was her own affair and
+possibly his good fortune. For when the Jack Spurrier of these days
+contemplated marriage at all, he thought of it as an aid to his career
+rather than a sentimental adventure.
+
+"I'm leaving in the morning," he was saying in a low voice, "for the
+Kentucky Cumberlands, where I'm told life hasn't changed much since
+the pioneers crossed over their divide. It's the Land of Do-Without."
+
+"The Land of Do-Without?" she repeated after him. "It's an expressive
+phrase, Jack. Is it your own or should there be quotation marks?"
+
+Spurrier laughed as he admitted: "I claim no credit; I merely quote,
+but the land down there in the steeps is one, from all I hear, to stir
+the imagination into terms more or less poetic."
+
+He leaned forward a little and his engaging face mirrored his own
+interest so that the girl found herself murmuring: "Tell me something
+about it, then."
+
+"It is," he assured her, "a stretch of unaltered mediævalism entirely
+surrounded by modernity--yet holding aloof. Though the country has
+spread to the Pacific and it lies within three hundred miles of
+Atlantic tidewater, it is still our one frontier where pioneers live
+under the conditions that obtained in the days of the Indian."
+
+"That seems difficult to grasp," she demurred, and he nodded his
+head, abstractedly sketching lines on the damask cloth with his oyster
+fork.
+
+"When the nation was born," he enlightened, "and the questing spirit
+of the overland voyagers asserted itself, the bulk of its human tide
+flowed west along the Wilderness Road. Through Cumberland Gap lay
+their one discovered gate in the wall that nature had built to the sky
+across their path. It was a wall more ancient than that of the Alps
+and between the ridges many of them were stranded."
+
+"How?" she demanded, arrested by the vibrant interest of his own
+voice, and he continued with a shrug of the shoulder.
+
+"Many reasons. A pack mule fallen lame--a broken wagon-wheel; small
+things were enough in such times of hardship to make a family settle
+where it found itself balked. The more fortunate won through to 'take
+the west with the axe and hold it with the rifle.' Then came railroads
+and steamboats, going other ways, and the ridges were swallowed again
+by the wilderness. The stranded brethren remained stranded and they
+did not alter or progress. They remained self-willed, fiercely
+independent and dedicated to the creed 'Leave us alone.' Their life
+to-day is the life of two centuries ago."
+
+The girl lifted the brows that were dark enough to require no
+penciling.
+
+"That was the speech of a dreamer and a poet, Jack, and I thought you
+the most practical of men. What calls you into a land of poverty? I
+didn't know you ever ran on cold trails." She spoke with a delicately
+shaded irony, as though for the materialism of his own viewpoint, yet
+he knew that her interest in him would survive no failure of worldly
+attainment.
+
+He did not repeat to her the story told him so long ago by Snowdon,
+the engineer, nor confide to her that ever since then his mind had
+harked back insistently to that topic and its possibilities. Now he
+only smiled with diplomatic suavity.
+
+"Pearls," he said, "don't feed oysters into robustness. They make
+'em most uncomfortable. The poverty-stricken illiterates in these
+hills, where I'm going, might starve for centuries over buried
+treasure--which some one else might find."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"In the stories," she answered, though she did not seem disturbed at
+the thought, "the stranger in the Cumberlands always arouses the ire
+of some whiskered moonshiner and falls in a creek bed pierced by a
+shot from the laurel."
+
+Spurrier grinned.
+
+"Or he falls in love with a barefoot Diana and teaches her to adore
+him in return."
+
+Miss Harrison made a satirical little grimace. "At least teach her to
+eat with a fork, too, Jack," she begged him. "It will contribute to
+your fastidious comfort when you come back here to sell your pearls at
+Tiffany's or in Maiden Lane, or wherever it is that one wholesales his
+treasure-trove."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If John Spurrier had presented the picture of a man to the manner born
+as he sat with Martin Harrison's daughter at Martin Harrison's table,
+he fitted into the ensemble, too, a week later, as he crossed the
+hard-tramped dirt of the street from the railway station at Waterfall
+and entered the shabby tavern over the way--for the opportunity hound
+must be adaptable.
+
+Here he would leave the end of the rails and travel by mule into a
+wilder country, for on the geological survey maps that he carried with
+him he had made tracings of underground currents which it had not been
+easy to procure.
+
+These red-inkings were exact miniatures of a huge wall chart in the
+headquarters of American Oil and Gas, and to others than a trusted few
+they were not readily accessible. How Spurrier had achieved his
+purpose is a separate story and one over which he smiled inwardly,
+though it may have involved features that were not nicely ethical.
+
+The tavern had been built in the days when Waterfall had attracted men
+answering the challenge of oil discovery. Now it had fallen wretchedly
+into decay, and over it brooded the depression of hopes and dreams
+long dead. Gladly Spurrier had left that town behind him.
+
+Now, on a crisp afternoon, when the hill slopes were all garbed in the
+rugged splendor of the autumn's high color, he was tramping with a
+shotgun on his elbow and a borrowed dog at his heels. He had crossed
+Hemlock Mountain and struck into the hinterland at its back.
+
+Until now he had thought of Hemlock Mountain as a single peak, but he
+had discovered it to be, instead, an unbroken range beginning at
+Hell's Door and ending at Praise the Lord, which zigzagged for a
+hundred miles and arched its bristling backbone two thousand feet into
+the sky. Along this entire length it offered only a few passes over
+which a traveler could cross except on foot or horseback.
+
+He had found entertainment overnight at a clay-chinked log-cabin,
+where he had shared the single room with six human beings and two
+dogs. This census takes no account of a razor-back pig which was
+segregated in a box under the dining table, where its feeding with
+scraps simplified the problem of stock raising.
+
+His present objective was the house of Dyke Cappeze, the retired
+lawyer, whose name had drifted into talk at every town in which he had
+stopped along the railroad.
+
+Cappeze was a "queer fellow," a recluse who had quit the villages and
+drawn far back into the hills themselves. He was one who could neither
+win nor stop fighting; who wanted to change the unalterable, and,
+having failed, sulked like Achilles in his tent. But whoever spoke of
+Cappeze credited him with being a positive and unique personality, and
+Spurrier meant to know him.
+
+So he pretended to hunt quail--in a country where a covey rose and
+scattered beyond gorges over which neither dog nor man could follow.
+One excuse served as well as another so long as he seemed sufficiently
+careless of the things which were really the core and center of his
+interest. And now Cappeze's place ought to be near by.
+
+Off to one side of the ragged way stretched a brown patch of stubble,
+and suddenly the dog stopped at its edge, lifted his muzzle with
+distended nostrils delicately aquiver, and then went streaking away
+into the rattling weed stalks, eagerly quartering the bare field.
+
+Spurrier followed, growling skeptically to himself: "He's made a stand
+on a rabbit. That dog's a liar and the truth is not in him!"
+
+But the setter had come to a halt and held motionless, his statuesque
+pose with one foreleg uplifted as rigid as a piece of bronze save for
+the black muzzle sensitively alert and tremulous.
+
+Then as the man walked in there came that startling little thunder of
+whirring wings with which quail break cover.
+
+The ground seemed to burst with a tiny drumming eruption of up-surging
+feathery shapes, and Spurrier's gun spoke rapidly from both barrels.
+Save for the two he had downed, the covey crossed a little rise beyond
+a thicket of blackberry brier where he marked them by the tips of a
+few gnarled trees, and the man nodded his head in satisfaction as the
+dog he had libeled neatly retrieved his dead birds and cast off again
+toward the hummock's ridge.
+
+Spurrier, following more slowly, lost sight of his setter and, before
+he had caught up, he heard a whimpering of fright and pain. Puzzled,
+he hastened forward until from a slight elevation, which commanded a
+burial ground, choked with a tangle of brambles and twisted fox
+grapes, he found himself looking on a picture for which he was
+entirely unprepared.
+
+His dog was crouching and crawling in supplication, while above him,
+with eyes that snapped lightning jets of fury, stood a slender girl
+with a hickory switch tightly clenched in a small but merciless hand.
+
+As the gunner came into sight she stood her ground, a little startled
+but obdurately determined, and her expression appeared to transfer
+her anger from the animal she had whipped to the master, until he
+almost wondered whether she might not likewise use the hickory upon
+him.
+
+He tried not to let the vivid and unexpected beauty of the apparition
+cloud his just indignation, and his voice was stern with offended
+dignity as he demanded:
+
+"Would you mind telling me why you're mistreating my dog? He's the
+gentlest beast I ever knew."
+
+The girl was straight and slim and as colorful as the landscape which
+the autumn had painted with crimson and violet, but in her eyes flamed
+a war fire.
+
+"What's that a-bulgin' out yore coat pocket, thar?" she demanded
+breathlessly. "You an' yore dog air both murderers! Ye've been
+shootin' into my gang of pet pa'tridges."
+
+"Pet--partridges?" He repeated the words in a mystified manner, as
+under the compulsion of her gaze he drew out the incriminating bodies
+of the lifeless victims.
+
+The girl snatched the dead birds from him and laid their soft breasts
+against her cheek, crooning sorrowfully over them.
+
+"They trusted me ter hold 'em safe," she declared in a grief-stricken
+tone. "I'd kept all the gunners from harmin' 'em--an' now they've done
+been betrayed--an' murdered."
+
+"I'm sorry," declared Spurrier humbly. "I didn't know they were pets.
+They behaved very much like wild birds."
+
+The dog rose from his cowering position and came over to shelter
+himself behind Spurrier, who just then heard the underbrush stir
+at his back and wheeled to find himself facing an elderly man with a
+ruggedly chiseled face and a mane of gray hair. It was a face that
+one could not see without feeling a spirit force behind it, and when
+the man spoke his sonorous voice, too, carried a quality of
+impressiveness.
+
+"He didn't have no way of knowin', Glory," he said placatingly to the
+girl. "Bob Whites are mostly wild, you know." Then turning back to the
+man again he courteously explained: "She fed this gang through last
+winter when the snows were heavy. They'd come up to the door yard an'
+peck 'round with the chickens. She's gifted with the knack of gentlin'
+wild things." He paused, then added with a grim touch of irony. "It's
+a lesson that it would have profited me to learn--but I never could
+master it. You're a furriner hereabouts, ain't you?"
+
+"My name is John Spurrier," said the stranger. "I was looking for Dyke
+Cappeze."
+
+"I'm Dyke Cappeze," said the elderly man, "an' this is my daughter,
+Glory. Come inside. Yore welcome needs some mendin', I reckon."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+As John Spurrier followed his host between rhododendron thickets that
+rose above their heads, he found himself wondering what had become of
+the girl, but when they drew near to an old house whose stamp of
+orderly neatness proclaimed its contrast to the scattering hovels of
+widely separated neighbors, he caught a flash of blue gingham by the
+open door and realized that the Valkyrie had taken a short cut.
+
+The dog, too, had arrived there ahead of its master and was
+fawning now on the girl, who leaned impulsively over to take the
+gentle-pointed muzzle between her palms.
+
+"I'm sorry I whopped ye," she declared in a silver-voiced contrition
+that made the man think of thrush notes. "Hit wasn't _yore_ fault
+no-how. Hit was thet--thet stuck-up furriner. I _hates_ him!"
+
+The setter waved its plumed tail in forgiveness and contentment, and
+the girl, discovering with an upward glance that she had been
+overheard, rose and stood for a moment defiantly facing the object of
+her denunciation, then, as embarrassment flooded her cheeks with
+color, fled into the house.
+
+The sense of having stepped back into an older century had been
+growing on John Spurrier ever since he had turned away from the town
+of Waterfall, and now it possessed him with a singular fascination.
+
+Here was a different world, somber under its shadow of frugality, and
+breathing out the heavy atmosphere of isolation. The spirit of this
+strange life looked out from the wearied eyes of Dyke Cappeze as he
+sat filling his pipe across the hearth, a little later, and it sounded
+in his voice when he announced slowly:
+
+"It's not for me to withhold hospitality in a land where a ready
+welcome is about all we have to offer, and yet you could hardly have
+picked a worse house to come to between the Virginia border and the
+Kaintuck ridges."
+
+Spurrier raised his brows interrogatively, and at the same moment he
+noticed matters hitherto overlooked. The windows were heavily
+shuttered and his host sat beyond the line of vision from the open
+door--with a rifle leaning an arm's length away.
+
+"Coming as a stranger," continued Cappeze, "you start without
+enmities--with a clean page. You might spend your life here and find a
+sincere welcome everywhere--so long as you avoided other men's
+controversies. But you come to me and that, sir, is a bad beginning--a
+very bad beginning."
+
+A contemplative cloud of smoke went up from the pipe, and the voice
+finished in a tone of bitterness.
+
+"I'm the most hated man in this region where hatreds grow like
+weeds."
+
+"You mean because you have stood out for the enforcement of law?"
+
+The other nodded, "It has taken me a lifetime," he observed, "to learn
+that the mountains are stronger, if not more obstinate, than I."
+
+"Is that the only reason they hate you?" inquired the visitor, and the
+lawyer, removing the pipe stem from his teeth, regarded him for a
+space in silence. Then he commented quietly:
+
+"If you knew this country better, you wouldn't have to ask that
+question. In Athens, I believe, they ostracized Aristides because he
+was 'too just a man.'"
+
+"Nonetheless, I'm glad I came to you."
+
+Cappeze smiled gravely. He had a rude sort of dignity which Spurrier
+found beguiling; a politeness that sprang from a deeper rooting than
+mere formula.
+
+"Merely coming to see me--once in a while--won't damn you, I reckon. A
+man has a license to be interested in freaks. But take my advice, and
+I sha'n't be offended. Tell every one that you hold no brief for me
+and listen with an open mind when they blackguard me."
+
+Spurrier laughed. "In a place where assassination is said to come
+cheap, you have at least been able to take care of yourself, sir."
+
+"That," said the other slowly, "is as it happens. My partner was less
+lucky. My own luck may break some day."
+
+"And yet you go on living here when you'd be safe enough anywhere
+else."
+
+"Yes, I go on living here. It's a land where a man's mind starves and
+where the great marching song of the world's progress is silent--and
+yet----" Again he paused to draw in and exhale a cloud of pipe smoke.
+"Yet there's something in the winds that blow here, in the air one
+breathes, that 'is native to my blood.' Elsewhere I should be
+miserable, sir, and my daughter----"
+
+He came to an abrupt stop and Spurrier took him up quickly. "She
+seems young and vital enough to crave all of life's variety."
+
+"But she is contented, sir." The elderly man spoke eagerly as though
+to convince himself and quiet troubling doubts. "She, too, would
+rather be here. We know this life and take it as we find it."
+
+Spurrier felt that the conversation was tending into channels too
+personal for the participation of a chance acquaintance, and he guided
+it to a less intimate subject.
+
+"I understand, Mr. Cappeze, that in the campaign just ended, you
+stumped this district whole-heartedly in behalf of one of the
+candidates for the circuit judgeship."
+
+Again the hawk-keen blaze flared in the eyes of his host.
+
+"You are mistaken, sir," he declared with heated emphasis. "It was
+less _for_ a candidate than _against_ one that I worked. The man whom
+circumstances compelled me to support was a poor thing, but he was
+better than his adversary."
+
+"Was it party spirit that prompted you, then?" inquired the guest,
+feeling that politeness called for some show of interest.
+
+"Sometimes I think," said the lawyer with a grim smile, "that from
+some men God withholds the blessed power of riding life's waves. All
+they can do is to buffet and fight and wear themselves out. Perhaps
+I'm that sort. The man who won--who succeeded himself on the bench--is
+an expedientist. So long as he presides, timid juries will return
+timid verdicts and the law will falter. I took the stump to brand him
+before the people as an apostate to his oath. I knew he would win,
+but I meant to make him wear his trade-mark of cowardice along with
+his smirk of self-righteousness!"
+
+As Spurrier listened, not to a feudist but to a man who had worn
+himself out fighting feudism, there came to him like a revelation an
+appreciation of the bitterness which runs in the grim undertow of this
+blood.
+
+"I believe," he suggested, glancing sidewise at the door beyond which
+he heard the thrushlike voice of the girl, "that you made an issue of
+a murder case which collapsed--a case in which you had been employed
+to prosecute."
+
+"Yes," Cappeze told him. "Because I believe it to be one in which the
+officers of the court lay down and quit like dogs. The defendant was a
+red-handed bully, generally feared--and the law was in timid keeping.
+I am still trying to have the grand jury call before it the
+prosecutor, the sheriff, and every deputy who served on that posse. I
+want to make them tell, on oath, just how hard they sought to
+apprehend the assassin--who still walks boldly and freely among
+us--unwhipped of justice."
+
+Spurrier rose, deeply impressed by the headstrong, willful courage of
+this old insurgent, whose daughter's eyes were so full of spring
+gentleness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far up the dwindling thread of a small water course, where the forest
+was jungle-thick, a log cabin hung perched to a rocky cornfield that
+tilted like a steep roof, and under its shingles Sim Colby dwelt
+alone. Since his coming here he had been assimilated into the
+commonplace life of the neighborhood and the question of his
+origin was no longer discussed. The time had gone by when even an
+acquaintance of other days would be apt to calculate that his term of
+enlistment in the army had not run its full course. Moreover, there
+were no such acquaintances here; none who had known him before he
+changed his name from Grant to Colby. The shadow of dread which had
+once obsessed him had gradually and imperceptibly lightened until
+for weeks together he forgot how poignantly it had once haunted him.
+He had painstakingly established a reputation exemplary beyond the
+tendencies of his nature in this new habitat--since trouble might
+cause closed pages to reopen.
+
+Now on a November afternoon a deputy sheriff, serving summonses in
+that neighborhood dismounted at the door where Sim stood with his hand
+resting on the jamb, and the two mulled over what sparse gossip the
+uneventful neighborhood afforded.
+
+"Old Cappeze, he's a-seekin' ter rake up hell afresh an' brew more
+pestilence fer everybody," announced the deputy glumly.
+
+"What's he projeckin' at now?" asked Sim.
+
+"He's seekin' ter warm over thet ancient Sam Mosebury case afore ther
+grand jury. Come ter think of hit, Sim, ye rid with ther high sheriff
+yoreself thet time, didn't ye?"
+
+Moodily the other nodded. That was a matter he preferred to leave
+buried.
+
+"Waal, Cappeze is claimin' now thet ther possy didn't make no master
+effort ter lay hands on Sam. He aims ter hev all ye boys tell ther
+grand jury what ye knows erbout ther matter."
+
+The deputy turned away, but in afterthought he paused, thrashing idly
+with his switch at the weed stalks, as he retailed an almost forgotten
+item of news.
+
+"A furriner come ter town yistidday, an' sot out straightway acrost
+Hemlock Mountain fer old Cappeze's dwellin' house."
+
+"What manner of man war he, Joe?" Sim's interest was perfunctory. Had
+he been haled into the grand-jury room in those earlier days, the
+prospect would have bristled with apprehensions, but now he had behind
+him the background of respectability and Mose Biggerstaff, who alone
+knew of his craven behavior as a member of the posse, was dead. Sim
+felt secure in his mantle of virtue.
+
+"He war a right upstandin' sort of feller--ther furriner," enlightened
+the deputy. "He goes under ther name of Spurrier--John Spurrier."
+
+As though an electric wire of high tension had broken and brushed him
+in falling, Sim Colby's attitude stiffened and every muscle grew taut
+from neck to ankles as his jaw sagged.
+
+The deputy, with his foot already in the stirrup, missed the terror
+spasms of the face gone suddenly putty gray. He missed the gasp that
+contracted the throat and caused its breath to wheeze, and when he
+glanced back again from his saddle, the other had, with an effort of
+sheer desperation, regained his outward semblance of composure. He
+still leaned indolently against the door frame, but now he needed its
+support, because all his nerves jumped and a confusion like the
+swarming of angry bees filled his brain.
+
+Afterward he groped his way inside and dropped down into a low chair
+by the hearth. For a long time he sat there breathing stertorously
+while the untended fire died away to ashen dreariness. The sun went
+down beyond the pine tops and still he sat dully with his hands
+hanging over his knees, their fingers twitching in panic aimlessness.
+
+Out of a past that he had cut away from the present had arisen a ghost
+of hideous menace. Here into the laurel which had promised sanctuary
+his Nemesis had pursued him.
+
+Two men with the guilt of a murder standing between them had come into
+a radius too small to contain them both. It was as if they had met on
+a narrow log spanning a chasm where only one could pass and the other
+must fall.
+
+If old Cappeze dragged him to the courthouse now, he would be
+delivered over to Spurrier, waiting there to identify him, as a fox in
+a trap is delivered to the skinning knife. That must be the meaning of
+the stranger's visit to the lawyer.
+
+Sim Colby went to an ancient and dilapidated bureau and from a
+creaking drawer took out a memento which, for some reason, he had
+preserved from times not treasured in memory. He carried it to the
+open door and stood looking at it as it lay on the palm of his hand
+with the light glinting upon it.
+
+It was a sharpshooter's medal, for, whatever his military shortcomings,
+Private Grant had been an efficient rifleman, and as he looked at it
+now his lips twisted into a grim smile. Then he took his rifle from its
+corner and, sitting on the doorstep, polished it with a fond
+particularity, oiling its mechanism and burnishing its bore.
+
+Already Spurrier had made arrangements to ensconce himself under the
+roof of a house he had rented. Already the faces that he met in the
+road were, for the most part, familiar, and without exception they
+were friendly. Quick on the heels of his first disgust for the squalor
+of this lapsed and retarded life, had succeeded an exhilaration born
+of the wine-like sparkle of the air and the majestic breadth of vistas
+across ridge and valley. As he watched mile-wide shadows creep between
+sky-high lines of peaks, his dreams borrowed something of their
+vastness.
+
+Through half-closed lids imagination looked out until the range-broken
+spaces altered to its vision. Spurrier saw white roads and the glitter
+of rails running off into gossamer webs of distance. Where now stood
+virgin forests of hard wood he visualized the shaftings of oil
+derricks, the red iron sheeting of tanks, the belching stacks of
+refineries, and in that defaced landscape he read the triumph of
+conquest; the guerdon of wealth; the satisfaction of power.
+
+One afternoon Spurrier started over to the house he had rented, but
+into which he had not yet moved. The way lay for a furlong or more
+through a gorge deeply and somberly shaded. Even now, at midday, the
+sunlight of the upper places left it cloistered and the bowlders
+trooped along in ferny dampness, where the little waters whispered.
+
+Beside a bulky hummock of green-corroded sandstone the man halted and
+stood musingly, with eyes downcast and thoughts uplifted--uplifted
+to the worship of his one god: Ambition. At his feet was an oily
+sediment along the water's edge and the gravel was thick with
+"sand blossom"--tiny fossil formations that are prima facie evidence
+of oil. Then, without warning, he felt a light sting along his
+cheek and the rock-walled fissure reverberated under what seemed a
+volley of musketry.
+
+But the magnified and crumbling effect of the echo struck him with a
+less poignant realization than a slighter sound and a sharper one. As
+if a taut piano wire had been sharply struck, came the clear whang
+that he recognized as the flight song of a rifle bullet, and, whatever
+its origin it called for a prompt taking of cover.
+
+Spurrier side-stepped as quickly as a boxer, and stood, for the moment
+at least, bulwarked behind the rock that was so providentially close.
+
+"I'm John Spurrier--a stranger in these parts," he sung out in a
+confident voice of forced boldness and cheerfulness. "I reckon you've
+made a mistake in your man."
+
+There was no answer and Spurrier cautiously raised his hat on the end
+of a stick with the same deliberation that might have marked his
+action had it been his own head emerging from cover.
+
+Instantly the hidden rifle spoke again and the hat came down pierced
+through its band, while the rocks once more reverberated to multiplied
+detonations.
+
+"It would seem," the man told himself grimly, "that after all there
+was no mistake."
+
+He was unarmed and in no position to pursue investigations of the
+mystery, but by crawling along on his belly he could keep his body
+shielded behind the litter of broken stone that edged the brook until
+he reached the end of the gorge itself and came to safer territory.
+
+Slowly, Spurrier traveled out of his precarious position, flattening
+himself when he paused to rest and listen, as he had made his men
+flatten themselves over there in the islands when they were going
+forward without cover under the fire of snipers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Spurrier was not frightened, but he was deeply mystified, and when he
+reached the cabin which he was preparing for occupancy he sat down on
+the old millstone that served as a doorstep and sought enlightenment
+from reflection and the companionship of an ancient pipe.
+
+In an hour or two "Uncle Jimmy" Litchfield, under whose smoky roof he
+was being temporarily sheltered, would arrive with a jolt wagon and
+yoke of oxen, teaming over the household goods that Spurrier meant to
+install. Already the new tenant had swept and whitewashed his cabin
+interior and had let the clear winds rake away the mildew of its long
+vacancy. Now he sat smoking with a perplexity-drawn brow, while a
+tuneful sky seemed to laugh mockingly at the absurd idea of riflemen
+in ambush.
+
+Every neighbor had manifested a spirit of cordiality toward him. To
+many of them he was indebted for small and voluntary kindnesses, and
+he had maintained a diplomatic neutrality in all local affairs that
+bore a controversial aspect.
+
+Certainly, he could not flatter himself that as yet any premonition of
+danger had percolated to those distant centers of industry against
+which he was devising a campaign of surprise. One explanation only
+presented itself with any color of plausibility.
+
+That trickle of water might come to the gorge from a spot back in the
+laurel where, under the shelter of a felled hemlock top, some one
+tended a small "blockade" distillery; some one who resented an
+invasion of his privacy.
+
+Yet even that inference was not satisfactory. Only yesterday a man had
+offered him moonshine whisky, declaring quite unsuspiciously: "Ef
+ye're vouched fer by Uncle Jimmy, I ain't a'skeered of ye none. I made
+thet licker myself--drink hearty."
+
+Of the real truth no ghostly glimmer of suspicion came in even the
+most shadowy fashion to his mind.
+
+His efforts to trace to definite result some filament of fact that
+might prove the court-martial to have reached a conclusion at variance
+with the truth, had all ended in failure. That the matter was hopeless
+was an admission which he could not afford to make and which he
+doggedly denied, but with waning confidence.
+
+This state of mind prevented him from suspecting any connection
+between this present and mysterious enmity and those things which had
+happened across the Pacific.
+
+He had kept himself informed as to the movements of Private Severance
+and when that time-expired man had stepped ashore at San Francisco,
+John Spurrier had been waiting to confront him, even though it
+involved facing men who had once been brother officers and who could
+no longer speak to him as an equal.
+
+From the former soldier, who brought a flush to his cheeks by saluting
+him and calling him "Lieutenant," he had learned nothing. There had
+been no reason to hope for much. It was unlikely that he would be
+able to shake into a damaging admission of complicity--and any
+statement of value must have amounted to that--the witness who had
+come unscathed out of the cross-examination of two courts-martial.
+
+Indeed Spurrier had expected to encounter unveiled hostility in the
+attitude of the mountaineer, who had been doing sentry duty at the
+door through which the prisoner, Grant, had escaped. It might have
+followed logically upon the officer's defense, which had sought to
+involve that sentinel as an accomplice in the fugitive's flight, and
+even in the murder itself.
+
+But Severance had greeted him without rancor and with the disarming
+guise of candid friendliness.
+
+"I'd be full willin' ter help ye, Lieutenant--ef so be I could," he
+had protested. "I knows full well yore lawyers was plum obliged ter
+seek ter hang ther blame wharsoever they was able, an' I ain't
+harborin' no grudge because I happened ter be one they sought ter
+hurt. But I don't know nothin' that kin aid ye."
+
+"Do you think Grant escaped alive?" demanded Spurrier, and the other
+shook his head.
+
+"I feels so plum, dead sartain he died," came the prompt response,
+"thet when I gits back home I'm goin' ter tell his folks he did. Bud
+Grant was a friend of mine, but when he went out inter thet jungle he
+was too weakly ter keer fer hisself an' ef he'd lived they would hev
+done found him an' brought him back."
+
+Spurrier had come to embrace that belief himself. The one man whose
+admission, wrung from him by persuasion or compulsion, could give him
+back his clean name, must have perished there in the _bijuca_
+tangles. The hope of meeting the runaway in life had died in the
+ex-officer's heart and consequently it did not now occur to him to
+think of the deserter as a living menace.
+
+At length he rose and stood against the shadowy background of his
+door, which was an oblong of darkness behind the golden outer
+clarity.
+
+Off in the tangle of oak and poplar and pine a ruffed grouse drummed
+and a "cock of the woods" rapped its tattoo on a sycamore top.
+
+Once he fancied he heard a stirring in the rhododendron where its
+large waxen leaves banked themselves thickly a hundred yards distant,
+and his eyes turned that way seeking to pierce the impenetrable
+screen--but unavailingly. Perhaps some small, wild thing had moved
+there.
+
+Then, as had happened before that afternoon, the stillness broke to a
+rifle shot--this time clean and sharp, unclogged by echoes.
+
+Spurrier stood for an instant while a surprised expression showed in
+his out-staring eyes, then he swayed on his feet. His hands came up
+and clutched spasmodically at his left breast, and with a sudden
+collapse he dropped heavily backward, and lay full length, swallowed
+in the darkness that hung beyond the door.
+
+Over the rhododendron thicket quiet settled drowsily again, but
+through the toughness of interlaced branches stole upward and outward
+an acrid powder smell and a barely perceptible trickle of smoke.
+
+Crouched there, his neutral-hued clothing merging into the earth tones
+about him, a man peered out, but he did not rise to go forward and
+inspect his work. Instead, he opened the breech block of his piece
+and with unhurried care blew through the barrel--cleansing it of its
+vapors.
+
+"I reckon thar ain't no needcessity to go over thar an' look at him,"
+he reflected. "When they draps down _thet_-away, they don't git up no
+more--an' some person from afar mout spy me crossin' ther dooryard."
+
+So he edged backward into the tangle, moving like a crawfish and
+noiselessly took up his homeward journey.
+
+When the slow plodding ox team came at last to the dooryard and Uncle
+Billy stood shouting outside the house, Sim Colby, holding to tangles
+where he would meet no chance wayfarer, was already miles away and
+hurrying to establish his alibi against suspicion, in his own
+neighborhood--where no one knew he had been absent.
+
+Though it be an evil thing and shameful to confess, ex-private Bud
+Grant, alias Sim Colby, traveled light-heartedly, roweled by no
+tortures of conscience, but blithe in the assurance of a ghost laid,
+and a peril averted.
+
+He would have been both amazed and chagrined had he remained peering
+from his ambuscade, for when Uncle Billy's shadow fell through the
+open door the man to whom he had come rose from a chair to meet him,
+and he presented no mangled or blood-stained breast to the eyes of his
+visitors.
+
+"Ye ain't jest a-quippin' with me, be ye?" demanded the old
+mountaineer incredulously when he had heard the story in all its
+detail. "This hyar's a right serious-soundin' matter--an' ye ain't
+got no enemies amongst us thet I've heered tell of."
+
+Spurrier pointed out the spot in the newly whitewashed wall where the
+bullet lay imbedded with its glint of freshly flattened lead.
+
+"After the first experience," he explained, "I'd had some time to
+think. I was standing in the door so I fell down--and played dead." He
+added after a pause quietly: "I've seen men shot to death, and I
+happened to know how a man drops when it's a heart hit. I fell inside
+where I'd be out of sight, because I was unarmed, and all I could do
+was to wait for you. I watched through the door, but the fellow never
+showed himself."
+
+"Come on, boys," commanded the old mountaineer in a determined voice.
+"Let's beat thet la'rel while ther tracks is still fresh. Mebby we
+mout l'arn somethin' of this hyar monstrous matter."
+
+But they learned nothing. Sim Colby had spent painstaking thought upon
+his effort and he had left no evidence written in the mold of the
+forest.
+
+"Hit beats all hell," declared the nonplussed Uncle Billy at last.
+"I ain't got ther power ter fathom hit. Ef I war you I wouldn't
+talk erbout this ter no man save only me an' old Dyke Cappeze.
+Still-huntin' lands more game then blowin' a fox horn." And
+Spurrier nodded his head.
+
+Though Spurrier for a few days after that slipped through the gorge
+with the stealth of a sharpshooter, covering himself behind rocks as
+he went, he heard no sound there more alarming than the chatter of
+squirrels or the grunt of a strayed razor-back rooting among the
+acorns. Gradually he relaxed his vigilance as a man will if his
+nature is bold and his dreams too sweeping to be forever hobbled by
+petty precautions.
+
+The purpose which he privately served called for ranging the country
+with a trained eye, and with him went the contour maps upon which were
+traced red lines.
+
+One day he came, somewhat winded from a stiff climb, to an eminence
+that spread the earth below him and made of it a panorama. The bright
+carnival of the autumn was spending itself to its end, but among trees
+already naked stood others that clung to a gorgeousness of color the
+more brilliant in the face of death. Overhead was flawless blue, and
+there was a dreamy violet where it merged mistily with the skyline
+ridges.
+
+"All that it needs," mused the man whimsically and aloud, "is the
+music of Pan's pipes--and perhaps a small chorus of dryads."
+
+Then he heard a laugh and, wheeling suddenly, discovered Glory Cappeze
+regarding him from the cap of a towering rock where, until he had
+reached this level, she had been hidden from view. Now she flushed
+shyly as the man strode over and confronted her.
+
+"Do you still hate me?" he inquired.
+
+"I reckon thet don't make no master differ ter ye, does hit?" The
+musical voice was painfully diffident, and he remembered that she had
+always been shy with him except on that first meeting when the leaping
+anger in her eyes had burned away self-consciousness.
+
+"You know," he gravely reminded her, "when I first saw you, you were
+on the point of thrashing me. You had me cowed and timid. Since then
+I've come to think of you as the shooting star."
+
+He paused, waiting for her to demand an elucidation of that somewhat
+obscure statement, but she said nothing. She only sat gazing over his
+head toward the horizon, and her cheeks were excitedly flushed from
+the delicate pink of apple bloom to the warmer color of peach
+blossom.
+
+"Since you don't ask what I mean," he continued easily, "I shall tell
+you. I've been to your house perhaps four or five times. From afar,
+each time, I've seen a scrap of color. Sometimes it has been blue,
+sometimes red, but always it has vanished with the swiftness of a
+shooting star. It is a flash and it is gone. Sometimes from beyond a
+door I also hear a voice singing."
+
+He leaned his elbows on the rock at her feet and stood gazing into the
+eyes that would not meet his own, and still she favored him with no
+response. After a little silence the man altered his tone and spoke
+argumentatively:
+
+"You forgave the dog, you know--why not the man?"
+
+That question carried her thoughts back to the murdered quail and a
+gusty back-flash of resentment conquered her diffidence. Her sternness
+of tone and the thrushlike softness of her voice, mingled with the
+piquancy of paradox.
+
+"A dawg don't know no better."
+
+"Some dogs are very wise," he assured her. "And some men very
+foolish."
+
+"The dawg," she went on still unplacated, "got right down on his
+stomach and asked my pardon. I _hed_ ter fergive him, when he humbled
+hisself like that."
+
+"I'm willing," John Spurrier amiably assured her, "to get right down
+on my stomach, too."
+
+Then she laughed, and though she sought to retreat again into her
+aloofness, the spell was broken.
+
+"Am I forgiven?" he demanded, and she shook her head doubtfully though
+no longer with conviction.
+
+"No," she told him; then she added with a startlingly exact mimicry of
+her father's most legalistic manner: "No. The co'te will take the case
+under advisement an' defer jedgment."
+
+"I forgot," he said, "that you are a lawyer's daughter. What were you
+looking at across there--so fascinatedly?"
+
+"Them hills," she enlightened succinctly.
+
+Spurrier studied her. Her deep eyes had held a glow of almost
+prayerful enchantment for which her laconic words seemed inadequate.
+
+Watching her out of the tail of his eye he fell into borrowed phrases:
+"'Violet peaks uplifted through the crystal evening air.'"
+
+She shot a glance at him suddenly, eagerly; then at once the lids
+lowered, masking the eyes again as she inquired:
+
+"Thet thar's poetry, ain't hit?"
+
+"I'm prepared to go to the mat with any critic who holds the
+contrary," he assured her.
+
+"Hit's comin' on ter be night. I've got ter start home," she
+irrelevantly announced, as she slid from her rough throne, and the man
+fell boldly in step at her side.
+
+"When your honor rules on the matter under advisement," he said
+humbly before their paths separated, "please remember that the
+defendant was a poor wretch who didn't know he was breaking the law."
+
+For the first time their glances engaged fully and without avoidance,
+and a twinkle flashed in the girl's pupils.
+
+"_Ignorantia legis neminem excusat_," she serenely responded, and
+Spurrier gasped. Here was a girl who could not steer her English
+around the shoals of illiteracy, giving him his retort in Latin:
+"Ignorance of the law excuses no one." Of course, it meant only that
+her quick memory had appropriated and was parroting legal phrases
+learned from her father, but it struck the chord of contrasts, and to
+the man's imagination it dramatized her so that when she had gone on
+with the lissome grace of her light stride, he stood looking after
+her.
+
+Rather abruptly after that the autumn fires of splendor burned out to
+the ashes of coming winter, and then it was that Spurrier went north.
+As his train carried him seaward he had the feeling that it was also
+transporting him from an older to a younger century, and that while
+his mind dwelt on the stalwart and unsophisticated folk with whom he
+had been brushing shoulders, the life resolved itself into an austere
+picture against which the image of Glory stood out with the quick
+vividness of a red cardinal flitting among somber pine branches.
+
+Because she was so far removed from his own orbit he could think of
+her impersonally and enjoy the thought as though it were of a new type
+of flower or bird, recognizing her attractive qualities in a detached
+fashion.
+
+As Spurrier gave himself up to the relaxation of reminiscence with
+that abandon of train travel which admits of no sustained effort, he
+began comparing this life, left over from another era, with that he
+had known against more cultivated and complex backgrounds.
+
+Then in analytical mood he reviewed his own past, looking with a
+lengthening of perspective on the love affair that had been broken by
+his court-martial. His adoration of the Beverly girl had been youthful
+enough to surround itself with young illusions.
+
+That was why it had all hurt so bitterly, perhaps, with its ripping
+away of his faith in romantic conceptions of love-loyalty.
+
+He wondered now if he had not borne himself with the Quixotic
+martyrdom of callowness. He had sought to shield the girl from even
+the realization that her lack of confidence was ungenerous. He had
+sought to take all the pain and spare her from sharing it. But she had
+solaced herself with a swift recovery and a new lover, and had he been
+guilty she could not have abandoned him more cavalierly. Well, that
+softness belonged to an out-grown stage of development.
+
+He had seen himself then as obeying the dictates of chivalry. He
+thought of it now as inexperienced folly--perhaps, so far as she was
+concerned, as a lucky escape. His amours of the present were not so
+naively conducted. To Vivian he had paid his attentions with an eye
+watchful of material advantages. They belonged to a sophisticated
+circle which seasoned life's fare rather with the salt of cynicism
+than with the sugar of romanticism. Yet the thought of Vivian caused
+no pulse to flutter excitedly.
+
+The glimpse of Glory had been refreshing because she was so honest and
+sincere that she disquieted one's acquired cynicism of viewpoint. One
+might as well spout world-wisdom to a lilac bush as to Glory! Yet
+there was a sureness about her which argued for her creed of
+wholesome, simple things and old half-forgotten faiths which one would
+like to keep alive--if one could.
+
+Snow drifted in the air and made a nimbus about each arc light as
+Spurrier's taxi, turning between the collonade pillars of the
+Pennsylvania Station, gave him his first returning glimpse of New
+York. He had come East in obedience to a wired summons from Martin
+Harrison, brief to curtness as were all business messages from that
+man of few and trenchant words. The telegram had been slow crossing
+the mountain, but Spurrier had been prompt in his response.
+
+A tempered glare hung mistily above the Longacre Square district
+through the snow flurries to the north, and the rumbled voice of the
+town, after these months in quiet places, was to the returned pilgrim
+like the heavy breathing of a monster sleeping out a fever.
+
+At the room that he kept at his club in Fifth Avenue--for that was a
+part of the pretentious display of affluence made necessary by his
+ambitious scheme of things--he called up a number from memory. It was
+a number not included in the telephone directory, and, recognizing the
+voice that answered him, he said briefly:
+
+"Manners, this is Mr. Spurrier. Will you tell Mr. Harrison I'm on the
+wire?"
+
+"Hello, Spurrier," boomed a deep voice after an interval. "We're
+dining out this evening and we go to the opera afterward, but I want a
+word with you to-night. In fact, I want you to start for Russia on
+Wednesday. Drop into our box, and drive home with me for a few minutes
+afterward."
+
+Russia on Wednesday! Spurrier's unoccupied hand clenched in
+irritation, but his voice was as unruffled as if he had been asked to
+make ready for a journey to Hoboken. He knew enough of Harrison's
+methods to ask no questions. If they could have been answered over the
+phone Harrison could have found many men to send to Russia. It was
+because they were for his ear alone that he had been called to New
+York.
+
+That evening he listened to "Otello" with thoughts that wandered from
+the voices of the singers. They refused even to be chained by the
+novelty of a slender tenor as a new Russian star held the spotlight.
+He was studying the almost too regular beauty of Vivian Harrison's
+profile as she sat serene and self-confident with the horseshoe of the
+Metropolitan beyond her.
+
+At midnight Spurrier sat with Harrison in his study and listened to a
+crisp summarizing of the Russian scheme. It proved to be a project
+boldly conceived on a broad scale and requiring an ambassador
+dependable enough and resourceful enough to decide large matters as
+they arose, without cabling for instructions.
+
+In turn Spurrier talked of his own past doings, and through their
+cigar smoke the seeming idleness of those weeks assayed a wealth of
+exact information and stood revealed as the incubation period of a
+large conception. Keenly formulated plans emerged from his recitals so
+simply and convincingly that the greater financier leaned forward and
+let his cigar die.
+
+Then Harrison rose and paced the room.
+
+"You know something about me, Spurrier," he began. "When I came East
+they laughed at me--if they deigned to notice me at all. They said:
+'Here comes a bushleaguer who thinks he's good enough for the big
+game. It's one more lamb to the shearing shed.' That's the East,
+Spurrier! That's cocksure New York! They sneer at a Western-bred
+horse--or a Western-trained prize fighter--and when the newcomer licks
+the best they've got they straightway let out a holler that they
+taught him all he knows. Why, New York would die of lassitude and
+anæmia if it wasn't for blood infusions from the provinces!"
+
+Spurrier gazed interestedly at the tall figure of the man with
+the sandy red mustache, and the snapping eyes, who for all his
+impeccability of evening dress, might have taken a shovel or
+pick from a section hand and taught him how to level a road bed.
+Harrison laughed shortly.
+
+"They haven't inhaled me so far. I brought only a million with me to
+this town, and I've got--well, I've got plenty, but I can't call it a
+day quite yet. There's one buccaneer to be settled with first! He's
+got to go to the mat with me and come up bloody enough to admit that
+he's been in a ruction. He chooses to pretend that I'm nonexistent,
+and I won't stand being ignored! I want to leave my mark on that man,
+and with God's help--and yours--I'm going to do it!"
+
+"You mean Trabue?" asked Spurrier, and Harrison's head gave a decisive
+jerk of affirmation while the hot glow of his eyes made his companion
+think of smelting furnaces.
+
+"That's why this thing of yours interests me. That's why I'm willing
+to get behind you and back you to the hilt," the big fellow of finance
+went on. "A. O. and G. are trying to hold others out of this Kentucky
+field. That proves that they think enough of it to be hurt by having
+it torn from their teeth. All I need to know is what will hurt them!
+If you can take some teeth along with the bone, so much the better."
+He paused, then in a voice that had altered to cold steadiness,
+commanded: "Now, give me your facts."
+
+"At present prices of oil," summarized Spurrier, "the development
+back of Hemlock Mountain wouldn't pay. With higher market values, it
+_would_ pay, but less handsomely than other fields A. O. and G. can
+work. Once the initial cost is laid out, the profit will be
+constant. The A. O. and G. idea is to hold it in reserve and await
+developments--meanwhile keeping up the 'no trespass' sign."
+
+"Doesn't the range practically prohibit railroading?"
+
+"Possibly--but it doesn't prohibit pipe lines."
+
+Spurrier opened the packet he had brought in his overcoat pocket and
+spread a map under the flooding light of a table lamp.
+
+"I have traced there what seems to me a practical piping route," he
+explained. "I call it the neck of the bottle. There is a sort of gap
+through the hills and a porous formation caused by a chain of
+caverns. Nature is willing to help with some ready-made tunnels."
+
+"Why haven't they discovered that?"
+
+"The oil development of fifteen years ago never crossed Hemlock
+Mountain. It came the other way."
+
+Harrison stood thinking for a time, then demanded tersely: "Have you
+secured any land or options?"
+
+"Not an acre, nor an inch," laughed Spurrier. "This is a waiting game.
+I don't mean to appear interested. If any man offered to give me a
+farm I should say it wasn't worth State taxes."
+
+"How do we get the property into our hands then?"
+
+"The buying must be gradual and through men with whom we appear to
+have no connection."
+
+"And the State charter--how about that?"
+
+"There lies the chief problem," admitted Spurrier. "The charter must
+come from a legislature that A. O. and G. can, at present, control."
+
+"What," Harrison shot the question out like a cross-examiner, "is the
+present attitude of the natives toward oil and oil men?"
+
+"Indifference and skepticism." The reply was prompt but the
+amplification more deliberate. "Once they saw wealth ahead--then the
+boom collapsed, and they have no longer any faith in the magic of the
+word 'oil.'"
+
+"I presume," suggested Harrison, "you are encouraging that disbelief?"
+
+Spurrier's face clouded, but only for a moment. "I am the most
+skeptical of all the skeptics," he assented, "and yet I'm sorry that
+they can't be gainers. They are an honest, upstanding folk and they
+have always felt the pinch of privation. After all they are the
+rightful owners and development of their country ought to benefit
+them. Of course, though, to forecast the possibilities would kill the
+game. We can't take them into our confidence without sounding a
+warning to the enemy."
+
+"Growing sentimental?" queried Harrison dryly, and the younger man
+shook his head.
+
+"No," he responded slowly, "I can't afford that--yet."
+
+"And see that you don't," admonished the chief sharply. "Bear in mind,
+as you have in the past, that we don't want to depend on men of
+brittle resolution and temperamental squeamishness. We are in this
+thing toward a definite end and not as humanitarian dreamers.
+However----" He broke off abruptly and added in a milder voice, "I
+don't have to caution you. You understand the proposition."
+
+For some minutes the cigar smoke floated in a silent room, while
+Martin Harrison sat with the knitted brows of concentrated thought.
+Spurrier did not interrupt the mental process which he knew had the
+heat and power of an ore smelter, reducing to fluid amenability the
+hard metal of a stubborn proposition. He knew, too, that the fuel
+which fed the fire was his principal's animosity against Trabue,
+rather than the possibilities or extent of the loot. This, no less
+than the mountain vendetta, was, in last analysis, a personal feud and
+in the parlance of the Cumberlands a "war was in ther b'ilin'."
+
+At last Harrison straightened up and tossed away his cigar.
+
+"You are ambitious, Spurrier," he said. "Put this thing over and I
+should say that all your ambitions can come to realization."
+
+While he sat waiting Spurrier had lifted from the table a photograph
+of Vivien, appropriately framed in silver. He had taken it up idly
+because it was a new portrait and one that he had not before seen, but
+into the gesture the father read a deeper significance. It was as if
+Spurrier had asked "All my ambitions?" and had emphasized his question
+by laying his hands on the picture of the girl. That, thought
+Harrison, was an audacious suggestion, but it was Spurrier's audacity
+that recommended him.
+
+Slowly the capitalist's eyes lighted into an amused smile as their
+glance traveled from the younger face to the framed photograph, and
+slowly he nodded his head.
+
+"_All_ your ambitions," he repeated meaningly, then with the electric
+snap of warning in his voice he added an admonition: "But don't
+underestimate the difficulties of your undertaking. You are bucking
+the strongest and most relentless piracy in finance. You will incur
+enmities that will stop nowhere, and you must operate in a country
+where murderers are for 'hire.'"
+
+The threat of personal danger just at that moment disquieted John
+Spurrier less than the other curtailment of freedom implied in
+Harrison's words; the tacit acceptance of him as Vivien's suitor. It
+came to him abruptly that he did not love Vivien; that he wished to
+remain untrammeled. Heretofore, he had always postponed matrimonial
+thoughts for the misty future. Now they became embarrassingly near and
+tangible.
+
+But quick on this realization followed another. Here was an offered
+alliance of tremendous advantage and one not to be ignored. To be
+Vivien's husband might fail of rapture, but to be Martin Harrison's
+son-in-law meant triumph. It meant his own nomination as heir apparent
+and successor in that position of cardinal importance to which he had
+looked upward as to a throne.
+
+There was no trace of dubiety in his voice as he answered:
+
+"I have counted the handicaps, sir. I'm taking my chance with open
+eyes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Sim Colby, after that day when he had slipped through the laurel, had
+gone back to his own house and waited for the talk of John Spurrier's
+mysterious death to drift along the waterways where news is the only
+speedy traveler.
+
+There had been no such gossip and he had dared betray his interest by
+no inquiry, but he knew it could have only one meaning; that he had
+failed.
+
+Spurrier was alive, and obviously he was holding his counsel
+concerning his narrow escape. This silence seemed to Sim Colby an
+ominous thing indicative of some crafty purpose--as if the intended
+victim were stalking grimly as well as being stalked. Sim came of a
+race that knows how to bide its time and that can keep bright the edge
+of hatred against long-delayed reprisals. It was certainly to be
+presumed that Spurrier had taken some of his friends into his
+confidence and that under the mantle of silence over on Little Turkey
+Tail, these friends were now watchfully alert. The enterprise that had
+once failed could not be reundertaken at once. Sim must wait for the
+vigilance to "blow over," and while he waited the rancor of his hatred
+must fester with the thorn-prickings of a thousand doubts and
+apprehensions.
+
+Then he heard one day that Spurrier had left the mountains, and on
+another day the news was brought that the grand jury had declined to
+reopen the old issues of the murder case in which Mosebury had
+escaped justice. Both these things were comforting in themselves, but
+they failed of complete reassurance for the deserter.
+
+Men said that Spurrier was coming back again, so the day of reckoning
+was only deferred--not escaped.
+
+The determination with which Sim had set out on his mission of death
+had largely preëmpted his field of thought. Now, after weeks and
+months of brooding reflection, he himself had become only a sort of
+human garment worn by the sinister spirit of resolve.
+
+So all that winter while John Spurrier was away as the ambassador,
+practicing in Moscow and Odessa the adroit arts of financial
+diplomacy, the fixed idea of his assassination was festering in the
+mind of the man who lived, under an assumed name, at the head of
+Little Quicksand.
+
+That obsession took fantastic shapes and wove webs of grotesque
+patterns of hate as Colby, who had been Grant, sat brooding before his
+untidy hearth while the winter winds wailed about the eaves and lashed
+the mountain world into forlorn bleakness.
+
+And while Colby meditated unendingly on the absentee and built ugly
+plans against his return, so in another house and in another spirit,
+the ex-officer was also remembered.
+
+Winter in these well-nigh roadless hills meant a blockade and a siege
+with loneliness and stagnation as the impregnably intrenched
+attackers. The victims could only wait and endure until the rescue
+forces of spring should come to raise the chill and sodden barricade,
+with a flaunting of blossom-banners and the whispered song of warm
+victory.
+
+Glory Cappeze, for the first time in her life, suffered from
+loneliness. She had thought herself too used to it to mind it much,
+but John Spurrier had brought a new element to her existence and left
+behind him a void. She had been hardly more than an onlooker to his
+occasional visits with her father, but she had been a very interested
+onlooker. When he talked a vigorous mind had spoken and had brought
+the greater, unknown, outer world to her door. The striking face with
+its square jaw; the ingrained graces and courtesies of his bearing;
+the quickness of his understanding--all these things had been a light
+in the gray mediocrity of uneventful days and a flame that had fired
+her imagination to a splendid disquiet.
+
+The infectious smile and force of personality that had been a
+challenge to more critical women, had been almost dazzling qualities
+to the mountain girl of strangled opportunities.
+
+But it was that last meeting in which he had thawed her shyness into
+friendliness that Glory remembered most eagerly. That had seemed to
+make of Spurrier not only a hero admired from a distance but a hero
+who was also a friend, and she was hungry for friends.
+
+So it came to pass that to these two widely variant welcomes, neither
+of which he suspected, John Spurrier was returning from Russia when
+spring had lightly brushed the Cumberland slopes with delicate
+fragrance and the color of blossoming.
+
+In Louisville, in Frankfort, and in other Kentucky towns along his way
+the returning man had made stops and investigations, to the end that
+he came primed with certain information of an ex-cathedra sort.
+
+The fruits of this research included an abstract of the personnel of
+the legislature and the trend of oil influences in State politics, and
+he studied his notebook as he traveled from the rolling, almost
+voluptuous fertility of the bluegrass section to the piedmont where
+the foothills began to break the sky.
+
+On the porch of the dilapidated hotel at Waterfall a sparse crowd
+centered about a seated figure, and when he had reached the spot
+Spurrier paused, challenged by a sense of the medieval, that gripped
+him as tangibly as a hand clapped upon his shoulder.
+
+The seated man was blind and shabby, with a beggar's cup strapped to
+his knee, and a "fiddle" nestling close to the stubbled chin of a
+disfigured face. He sang in a weird falsetto, with minors that rose
+thin and dolorous, but he was in every essential the ballad singer who
+improvised his lays upon topical themes, as did Scott's last
+minstrel--a survival of antiquity.
+
+Now he was whining out a personal plaint in the words of his "song
+ballet."
+
+  "I used ter hev ther sight ter see ther hills so high an' green,
+  I used ter work a standard rig an' drill fer kero_sene_."
+
+The singer's lugubrious pathos appeared to be received with attentive
+and uncritical interest. Beyond doubt he took himself seriously and
+sadly.
+
+  "I used ter know a woman's love, an' read a woman's eyes,
+  An' look into my baby's face an' dwell in paradise,
+  Until a comp'ny foreman, plum' heedless in his mind
+  Let nitroglycer_een_ explode an' made me go stone blind."
+
+Spurrier, half-turning, saw a traveling salesman standing at his elbow
+with a repressed grin of amusement struggling in his glance.
+
+"Queer card, that," whispered the drummer. "I've seen him before; one
+of the wrecks left over from the oil-boom days. A 'go-devil' let loose
+too soon and blinded him." He paused, then added as though by way of
+apology for his seeming callousness: "Some people say the old boy is a
+sort of a miser and has a snug pile salted away."
+
+Spurrier nodded and went on into the office, but later in the day he
+sought out the blind fiddler and engaged him in conversation. The
+man's blinding had left him a legacy of hate for all oil operators,
+and from such relics as this of the active days Spurrier knew how to
+evoke scraps of available information. It was not until later that it
+occurred to him that he had answered questions as well as asked
+them--but, of course, he had not been indiscreet.
+
+With John Spurrier, riding across hills afoam with dogwood blossom and
+tenderly vivid with young green, went persistently the thought of the
+blind beggar who seemed almost epic in his symbolism of human wreckage
+adrift in the wake of the boom. Yet he was honest enough to admit
+inwardly that should victory fall to his banners there would be
+flotsam in the wake of his triumph, too; simple folk despoiled of
+their birthright. He came as no altruist to fight for the native
+born. He, no less than A. O. and G., sought to exploit them.
+
+When he went to the house of Dyke Cappeze he did not admit the
+curiosity, amounting to positive anxiety, to see again the little
+barbarian, who slurred consonants, doubled her negatives, split her
+infinitives and retorted in the Latin of Blackstone. Yet when Glory
+did not at once appear, he found himself unaccountably disappointed.
+
+"There's been another stranger in here since you went away," the old
+man smilingly told him. "What is he doing here? That's the one burning
+question debated along the highways when men 'meet and make their
+manners.'"
+
+"Well," laughed Spurrier, "what _is_ he doing here?"
+
+Cappeze shrugged his bent shoulders as he knocked the rubble from his
+pipe and a quizzical twinkle came into his eyes.
+
+"So far as I can make out, sir, he's as much a gentleman of leisure as
+you are yourself."
+
+Spurrier knew what an excellent subterfuge may sometimes lie in
+frankness, and now he had recourse to its concealment.
+
+"Good heavens, Mr. Cappeze, I'm no idler!" he declared. "I'm
+associated with capitalists who work me like a mule. Since I saw you,
+for example, I've been in Russia and I've been hard-driven. That's why
+I come here. If I couldn't get absolutely away from it all now and
+then, I'd soon be ready for a madhouse. Here I can forget all that and
+keep fit."
+
+Cappeze nodded. "That's just about the way I sized you up. At first,
+folks pondered about you, too, but now they take you on faith."
+
+"I hope so--and this new man? Has he stepped on anybody's toes?"
+
+"Not yet. He hasn't even bought any land, but there have been some
+several transfers of property, in other names, since he came. He _may_
+be some man's silent partner."
+
+"What sort of partnership would it be?"
+
+"God knows." For an instant the shrewd eyes leaped into a glint of
+feeling. "These poor benighted devils suspect the Greeks bearing
+gifts. Civilization has always come here only to leave its scar. They
+have been stung once--over oil. God pity the man who seeks to sting
+them again."
+
+"You think," Spurrier responded lightly, as one without personal
+interest, "they wouldn't take it kindly?"
+
+Once again the sonorous and kindly voice mounted abruptly to
+vehemence.
+
+"As kindly, sir, as a wolf bitch robbed, the second time, of her
+whelps. It's all a wolf bitch has."
+
+That evening as he walked slowly homeward with a neighbor whom he had
+met by the way, Spurrier came face to face with Wharton, the other
+stranger, and the mountaineer performed the offices of introduction.
+
+The two men from the outer world eyed each other incuriously and
+parted after an exchange of commonplaces.
+
+When Spurrier separated from his chance companion, the hillsman
+drawled: "Folks _says_ thet feller's buyin' land. God knows what fer
+he wants hit, but ef he _does_ hone fer hit, hit's kinderly probable
+thet hit's wuth holdin' on to."
+
+When the brook trout began to leap and flash Cappeze delegated Glory
+to act for him as Spurrier's guide, and as the girl led the way to the
+likeliest pools, the young, straight-growing trees were not more
+gracefully slender.
+
+The fragrance from the pink-hearted laurel and the locust bloom had no
+delicacy more subtle or provocative than that of her cheeks and hair.
+The breeze in the nodding poplar tops seemed scarcely freer or lighter
+than her movements. Like the season she was young and in blossom and
+like the hills she was wild of beauty.
+
+Spurrier admitted to himself that, were he free to respond to the
+pagan and vital promptings of impulse, instead of standing pledged to
+rigid and austere purposes, this girl would have made something ring
+within him as a tuning fork rings to its note.
+
+Since the days of Augusta Beverly's ascendency, he had never felt the
+need of raising any sort of defense between himself and a woman. At
+first he had believed himself, with youthful resentment, a woman-hater
+and more latterly he had become in this, as in other affairs, an
+expedientist. Augusta had proven weak in loyalty, under stress, and
+Vivian had been indifferent to the ostracism of his former comrades so
+long as her own aristocracy of money accepted him. Both had been snobs
+in a sense, and in a sense he too was a snob.
+
+But because this girl was of a simplicity that regarded all things in
+their primary colors and nothing in the shaded half-tones of politer
+usage, it was needful to guard against her mistaking his proffered
+comradeship for the attitude of the lover--and that would have been
+most disastrous. It would have made necessary awkward explanations
+that would wound her, embarrass him and arouse the old man's just ire.
+For people, he was learning, may be elementally uncouth and yet
+prouder than Lucifer, and except when he was here on their own ground
+there was no common meeting place between their standards of living.
+
+Yet Glory's presence was like a gypsy-song to his senses; rich and
+lyrical with a touch of the plaintive. Glory, he knew, would have
+believed in him when Augusta Beverly had doubted, and would have stood
+fast when Augusta had cut loose.
+
+This was the sort of thought with which it was dangerous to dally--and
+perhaps that was precisely why, under this tuneful sky, it pleased him
+to humor it. Certainly, whatever the cause, the sight of her made him
+step more elastically as she went on ahead.
+
+When they had whipped the streams for trout until hunger clamored,
+Spurrier sat, with a sandwich in his hand in grass that waved
+knee-high, and through half closed lids watched Glory as she moved
+about crooning an old ballad, and seemingly unconscious of himself,
+herself and all but the sunlit spirit of the early summer day.
+
+"Glory," he said suddenly, calling her by her given name for the first
+time and in a mood of experiment.
+
+As naturally as though she had not noted his lapsed formality, she
+turned toward him and answered in kind.
+
+"What air hit, Jack?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"What fer?"
+
+"For calling me Jack."
+
+Then her cheeks colored deeply and she wheeled to her work again. But
+after a little she faced him once more to say half angrily:
+
+"I called ye Jack because ye called me Glory. You've always put a Miss
+afore hit till now, an' I 'lowed ye'd done made up yore mind ter be
+friendly at last."
+
+"I've always wanted to be friendly," he assured her. "It was you who
+began with a hickory switch and went on with hard words in Latin."
+
+The girl laughed, and the peal of her mirth transmuted their status
+and dispelled her self-consciousness. She came over and stood looking
+down at him with violet eyes mischievously a-sparkle.
+
+"The co'te," she announced, "hes carefully weighed there evidence in
+ther case of Jack Spurrier, charged with ther willful murder of Bob
+White, and is ready to enter jedgment. Jack Spurrier, stand up ter be
+sentenced!"
+
+The man rose to his feet and stood with such well-feigned abjectness
+of suspense that she had to fight back the laughter from her eyes to
+preserve her own pose of judicial gravity.
+
+"It is well established by the evidence befo' ther co'te," she went
+solemnly on, "thet ther defendant is guilty on every count contained
+in the indictment." She checked off upon the fingers of the left hand
+the roster of his crime as she summarized it.
+
+"He entered inter an unlawful conspiracy with the codefendant Rover, a
+setter dawg. He made a felonious assault without provocation. He
+committed murder in the first degree with malice prepense."
+
+Spurrier's head sank low in mock despair, until Glory came to her
+peroration and sentence.
+
+"Yet since the defendant is amply proved to be a poor, ignorant
+wanderer upon the face of the earth, unpossessed of ordinary
+knowledge, the court is constrained to hold him incapable of
+discrimination between right an' wrong. Hence he is not fully
+responsible for his acts of violence. Mercy as well as justice lies in
+the province of the law, twins of a sacred parentage and equal before
+the throne."
+
+She broke off in a laugh, and so sudden was the transition from
+absolute mimicry that the man forgot to laugh with her.
+
+"Glory," he demanded somewhat breathlessly, "have you ever been to a
+theater in your life? Have you ever seen a real actress?"
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"Because you _are_ one. Does this life satisfy you? Isn't there
+anything off there beyond the hills that ever calls you?"
+
+The dancing eyes grew abruptly grave, almost pained, and the response
+came slowly.
+
+"_Everything_ down thar calls ter me. I craves hit all!"
+
+Spurrier suddenly recalled old Cappeze's half-frightened vehemence
+when the recluse had inveighed against the awakening of vain longings
+in his daughter. Now he changed his manner as he asked:
+
+"I wonder if I'd offend you if I put a question. I don't want to."
+
+"Ye mout try an' see. I ain't got no power ter answer twell I hears
+hit."
+
+"All right. I'll risk it. Your father doesn't talk mountain dialect.
+His English is pure--and you were raised close to him. Why do _you_
+use--the other kind?"
+
+She did not at once reply and, when she did, the astonishingly
+adaptable creature no longer employed vernacular, though she spoke
+slowly and guardedly as one might who ventured into a foreign tongue.
+
+"My father has lived down below as well as here. He's a gentleman, but
+he aims--I mean he intends--to live here now till he dies."
+
+As she paused Spurrier prompted her.
+
+"Yes--and you?"
+
+"My father thinks that while I _do_ live here, I'd better fit into the
+life and talk in the phrases that don't seem high-falutin' to my
+neighbors."
+
+"I dare say," he assured her with forced conviction, "that your father
+is right."
+
+There was a brief silence between them while the warm stillness of the
+woods breathed its incense and its langour, then the girl broke out
+impulsively:
+
+"I want to see and hear and taste everything, out there!"
+
+Her hands swept outward with an all-embracing gesture toward the whole
+of the unknown. "There aren't any words to tell how I want it! What do
+you want more than anything else, Jack?"
+
+The man remained silent for a little, studying her under half-lowered
+lids while a smile hovered at the corners of his lips. But the smile
+died abruptly and it was with deep seriousness that he answered.
+
+"I think, more than anything else, I want a clean name and a
+vindicated reputation."
+
+Glory's eyes widened so that their violet depths became pools of
+wondering color and her lips parted in surprise.
+
+"A clean name!" she echoed incredulously. "What blight have you got on
+it, Jack?" Then catching herself up abruptly she flushed crimson and
+said apologetically: "That's a question I haven't any license to put
+to you, though. Only you broached the subject yourself."
+
+"And having broached it, I am willing to pursue it," he assured her
+evenly. "I was an army officer until I was charged with unprovoked
+murder--and court-martialed; dishonorably discharged from the service
+in which my father and grandfather had lived and died."
+
+For a moment or two she made no answer but her quick expressiveness of
+lip and eye did not, even for a startled interval, betray any shock of
+horror. When she did speak it was in a voice so soft and compassionate
+that the man thought of its quality before he realized its words.
+
+"Did the man that--that was _really_ guilty go scot free, whilst you
+had to shoulder his blame?"
+
+There had been no question of evidence; no waiting for any denial of
+guilt. She had assumed his innocence with the same certainty that her
+eye assumed the flawlessness of the overheard blue. Her interest was
+all for his wronging and not at all for his alleged wrong.
+
+The man started with surprise; the surprise of one who had trained
+himself into an unnatural callousness as a defense against what had
+seemed a universal proneness to convict. He had told himself that
+Glory would see with a straighter and more intuitive eye. He had told
+her baldly of the thing which he seldom mentioned out of an
+inquisitiveness to test her reaction to the revelation, but he was
+unprepared for such unhesitant belief.
+
+"I think you are the first human being, Glory," he said quietly but
+with unaccustomed feeling in his voice, "who ever heard that much and
+gave me a clean bill of health without hearing a good bit more. Why
+didn't you ask whether or not I was guilty?"
+
+"I didn't have to," she said slowly. "Some men could be murderers and
+some couldn't. You couldn't. You might have to _kill_ a man--but not
+murder him. You might do lots of things that wouldn't be right. I
+don't know about that--but those people that convicted you were
+fools!"
+
+"Thank you," he said soberly. "You're right, Glory. I was as innocent
+of that assassination as you are, yet they proved me guilty. It was
+only through influence that I escaped ending my days in prison."
+
+Then he gave her the story, which he had already told her father and
+no one else in the mountains. She listened, thinking not at all of the
+damaging circumstances, but secretly triumphant that she had been
+chosen as a confidant.
+
+But that night Spurrier looked up from a letter he was reading and let
+his eyes wander to the rafters and his thoughts to the trout stream.
+
+It was a letter, too, which should have held his attention. It
+contained, on a separate sheet of paper, a list of names which was
+typed and headed: "Confidential Memorandum." Below that appeared the
+notation: "Members of the general assembly, under American Oil and Gas
+influence. Also names of candidates who oppose them at the next
+election, and who may be reached by us."
+
+Spurrier lighted his pipe and his face became studious, but presently
+he looked up frowning.
+
+"I must speak to old Cappeze," he said aloud and musingly. "He's being
+unfair to her." And that did not seem a relevant comment upon the
+paper he held in his hand.
+
+Then Spurrier started a little as from outside a human voice sounded
+above the chorus of the frogs and whippoorwills.
+
+"Hallo," it sung out. "Hit's Blind Joe Givins. Kin I come in?"
+
+A few minutes later into the lamplight of the room shambled the beggar
+of the disfigured face, whom Spurrier had last seen at the town of
+Waterfall, led by a small, brattish boy. His violin case was tightly
+grasped under his arm, and his free hand was groping.
+
+"I'd done sot out ter visit a kinsman over at ther head of Big Wolfpen
+branch," explained the blind man, "but ther boy hyar's got a stone
+bruise on his heel an' he kain't handily go on, ter-night. We wonder
+could we sleep hyar?"
+
+Spurrier bowed to the law of the mountains, which does not deny
+shelter to the wayfarer, but he shivered fastidiously at the unkempt
+raggedness of his tramp-like visitor, and he slipped into his pocket
+the papers in his hand.
+
+That night before Spurrier's hearth, as in elder times before the
+roaring logs of some feudal castle, the wandering minstrel paid his
+board with song and music; his voice rising high and tremulous in
+quaint tales set to measure.
+
+But on the next morning the boy set out on some mission in the
+neighborhood and left his charge to await his return, seated in a low
+chair, and gazing emptily ahead.
+
+Spurrier went out to the road in response to the shout of a passing
+neighbor, and left his papers lying on the table top, forgetful of the
+presence of the sightless guest, who sat so negligibly quiet in the
+chimney corner.
+
+When he entered the room again the blind man had risen from his seat
+and moved across to the hearth. On the threshold the householder
+halted and stood keenly eyeing him while he groped along the mantel
+shelf as if searching with wavering fingers for something that his
+eyes could not discover--and the thought of the papers which he had
+left exposed caused an uneasy suspicion to dart into Spurrier's mind.
+Any eye that fell on that list would have gained the key to his whole
+strategy and intent, but, of course, this man could not see. Still
+Spurrier cursed himself for a careless fool.
+
+"I was jest seekin' fer a match," said Joe Givins as a slight sound
+from the other attracted his attention. "I aimed ter smoke for a
+leetle spell."
+
+The host struck a match and held it while the broken guest kindled his
+pipe, then he hurriedly glanced through his papers to assure himself
+that nothing had been disturbed--and though each sheet seemed as he
+had left it, the uneasiness in Spurrier's mind refused to be stilled.
+
+Presumably this bat-blind ragamuffin was no greater menace to the
+secrecy of his plans than a bat itself would have been, yet a glimpse
+of this letter would have been so fatal that he asked himself
+anxiously, "How do I know he's not faking?" The far-fetched
+apprehension gathered weight like a snowslide until suddenly out of it
+was born a grim determination.
+
+He would make a test.
+
+Noiselessly, while the ugly face that had been mutilated by a blasting
+charge gazed straight and sightlessly at him, Spurrier opened the
+table drawer and took from it a heavy calibered automatic pistol. It
+was a deadly looking thing and it needed no cocking; only the silent
+slipping forward of a safety catch. In this experiment Spurrier must
+not startle his guest by any ominous sound, but he must satisfy
+himself that his sight was genuinely dead.
+
+"I thought," said the host in a matter-of-fact voice as he searchingly
+studied the other face through narrowed lids, "that when sight went,
+the enjoyment of tobacco went with it." As he spoke he raised and
+leveled the cocked pistol until its muzzle was pointed full into the
+staring face. Deliberately he set his own features into the baleful
+stamp of deadly threat, until his expression was as wicked and ugly as
+a gargoyle of hatred.
+
+If the man were by any possibility shamming it would take cold nerve
+to sit there without any hint of confession as this unwarned
+demonstration was made against him--a demonstration that seemed
+genuine and murderous. For an instant Spurrier fancied that he heard
+the breath rasp in the other's throat, but that, he realized, must
+have been fancy. The face itself altered no line of expression,
+flickered no eyelid. It remained as it had been, stolid and blank, so
+that the man with the pistol felt ashamed of his suspicion.
+
+But Spurrier rose and leaned across the table slowly advancing the
+muzzle until it almost touched the bridge of the nose, just between
+the eyes he was so severely testing. Still no hint of realization came
+from the threatened guest. Then the voice of the blind man sounded
+phlegmatically:
+
+"That's what folks say erbout terbaccy an' blind men--but, by
+crickety, hit _ain't so_."
+
+John Spurrier withdrew his pistol and put it back in the drawer.
+
+"I guess," he said to himself, "he didn't read my letters."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Across a tree-shaded public square from the courthouse and "jail
+house" at Carnettsville stood a building that wore the dejected guise
+of uncomforted old age, and among the business signs nailed about its
+entrance was the shingle bearing the name of "Creed Faggott, Atty. at
+Law."
+
+The way to this oracle's sanctum lay up a creaking stairway, and on a
+brilliant summer day not long after Spurrier had entertained his blind
+guest it was climbed by that guest in person, led by the impish boy
+whose young mouth was stained with chewing-tobacco.
+
+This precocious child opened the door and led his charge in and, from
+a deal table, Creed Faggott removed his broganned feet and turned sly
+eyes upon the visitors, out of a cadaverous and furtive face.
+
+"You don't let no grass grow under your feet, do you, Joe?" inquired
+the lawyer shortly. "When the day rolls round, you show up without
+default or miscarriage." He paused as the boy led the blind man to a
+chair and then facetiously capped his interrogation. "I reckon I don't
+err in surmisin' that you've come to collect your pension?"
+
+The blind man gazed vacantly ahead. "Who, me?" he inquired with
+half-witted dullness.
+
+"Yes, you. Who else would I mean?"
+
+"Hit's due, ain't hit--my money?"
+
+"Due at noon to-day and noon is still ten minutes off. I'm not sure
+the company didn't make a mistake in allowing you such a generous
+compensation for your accident." There was a pause, then Faggott added
+argumentatively: "Your damage suit would have come to naught, most
+likely."
+
+"Thet ain't ther way ye talked when I lawed ther comp'ny," whined the
+blind man. "Ye 'peared to be right ambitious ter settle outen co'te in
+them days, Mr. Faggott."
+
+"The company didn't want the thing hanging on. They got cold feet.
+Well, I'll give you your check."
+
+"I'd ruther have hit in cash money--silver money," stipulated the
+recipient of the compromise settlement. "I kin count _thet_ over by
+ther feel of hit."
+
+Faggott snorted his disgust but he deposited in the outstretched palm
+the amount that fell due on each quarterly pay day, and the visitor
+thumbed over every coin and tested the edges of all with his teeth.
+After that, instead of rising to go, he sat silently reflective.
+
+"That's all, ain't it," demanded the attorney, and something like a
+pallid grin lifted the lip corners in the blind man's ugly face.
+
+"Not quite all," replied Joe Givins as he shook his head. "No, thar's
+one other leetle matter yit. I'd love ter hev ye write me a letter ter
+ther comp'ny's boss-man in Looeyville. I kinderly aims ter go thar an'
+see him."
+
+This time it was the attorney who, with an incredulity-freighted
+voice, demanded: "Who, you?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Me."
+
+"The Louisville manager," announced Faggott loftily, "is a man of
+affairs. The company conducts its business here through its local
+counsel--that's me."
+
+"Nevertheless an' notwithstandin', I reckon hit'll kinderly pleasure
+ther boss-man ter talk ter _me_--when he hears what I've got ter tell
+him."
+
+A light of greed quickened in the shyster's narrow eyes. It was
+possible that Blind Joe had come by some scrap of salable information.
+It had been stipulated when his damage suit was settled, that he
+should, paradoxically speaking, keep his blind eyes open.
+
+"See here, Joe," the attorney, no longer condescending of bearing,
+spoke now with a wheedling insistence, "if you've got any tidings,
+tell 'em to me. I'm your friend and I can get the matter before the
+parties that hold the purse strings."
+
+Joe Givins stretched out a wavering hand and groped before him. "Lead
+me on outen hyar, boy," he gave laconic command to his youthful
+varlet. "I'm tarryin' overlong an' wastin' daylight."
+
+"What's daylight to you, Joe?" snapped Faggott brutally, but
+recognizing his mistake he, at once, softened his manner to a mollifying
+tone. "Set still a spell an' let's have speech tergether--an' a little
+dram of licker."
+
+Ten minutes of nimble-witted fencing ensued between the two sons
+of avarice, and at their end the blind man stumped out, carrying
+in his breast pocket a note of introduction to a business man
+in Louisville--whose real business was lobbying and directing
+underground investigations--but the lawyer was no wiser than he
+had been.
+
+And when eventually from the murky lobby of the Farmers' Haven Hotel,
+which sits between distillery warehouses in Louisville, the shabby
+mountaineer was led to the office building he sought, he was received
+while more presentable beings waited in an anteroom.
+
+It chanced that on the same day John Spurrier spoke to Dyke Cappeze of
+Glory.
+
+"When we went fishing," he said, "I asked her whether she never felt a
+curiosity for the things beyond the ridges--and her eagerness startled
+me."
+
+An abrupt seriousness overspread the older face and the answering
+voice was sternly pitched.
+
+"I should be profoundly distressed, sir," said Cappeze, "to have
+discontent brought home to her. I should resent it as unfriendly and
+disloyal."
+
+"And yet," Spurrier's own voice was quickened into a more argumentative
+timber, "she has a splendid vitality that it's a pity to crush."
+
+"She has," came the swift retort, "a contented heart which it's a pity
+to unsettle."
+
+The elder eyes hardened and looked out over the wall of obstinacy that
+had immured Dyke Cappeze's life, but his words quivered to a tremor of
+deep feeling.
+
+"I've given her an education of sorts. She knows more law than some
+judges, and if she's ignorant of the world of to-day she's got a
+bowing acquaintance with the classics. I'm not wholly selfish. If
+there was some one--down below that I could send her to--some one who
+would love her enough because she needs to be loved--I'd stay here
+alone, and willingly, despite the fact that it would well-nigh kill
+me." He paused there and his eyes were broodingly somber, then almost
+fiercely he went on: "I would trust her in no society where she might
+be affronted or belittled. I would rather see her live and die here,
+talking the honest, old crudities of the pioneers, than have her
+venture into a life where she could not make her own terms."
+
+"Perhaps she could make her own terms," hazarded Spurrier, and the
+other snapped his head up indignantly.
+
+"Perhaps--yes--and perhaps not. You yourself are a man of the world,
+sir. What would--one of your own sort--have to offer her out there?"
+
+Under that challenging gaze the man from the East found himself
+flushing. It was almost as though under the hypothetical form of the
+question, the father had bluntly warned him off from any interference
+unless he came as an avowed suitor. He had no answer and again the
+lawyer spoke with the compelling force of an ultimatum.
+
+"She must stay here with me, who would die for her, until she goes to
+some man who offers her everything he has to offer; some man who would
+die for her, too." His voice had fallen into tenderness, but a stern
+ring went with his final words. "Meanwhile, I stand guard over her
+like a faithful dog. I may be old and scarred but, by God, sir, I am
+vigilant and devoted!" He waved his thin hand with a gesture of
+dismissal for a closed subject, and in a changed tone added:
+
+"I've recently heard of two other travelers riding through--and they
+have taken up several land options."
+
+"What meaning do you read into it, Mr. Cappeze?"
+
+The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. If he had no explanation to offer,
+it was plain that he did not regard the coming of the strangers as
+meaningless.
+
+"I'm going," said Spurrier casually, "to make a trip up Snake Fork to
+the head of Little Quicksand. Is there any one up there I can call on
+for lodging and information?"
+
+The lawyer shook his head. "It's a mighty rough country and sparsely
+settled. You'll find a lavish of rattlesnakes--and a few unlettered
+humans. There's a fellow up there named Sim Colby who might shelter
+you overnight. He lives by himself, and has a roof that sheds the
+rain. It's about all you can ask."
+
+"It's enough," smiled Spurrier, and a few days later he found himself
+climbing a stiff ascent toward a point where over the tree-tops a
+thread of smoke proclaimed a human habitation.
+
+He was coming unannounced to the house of Sim Colby, but if he had
+expected his visit to be an entire surprise he was mistaken, and if he
+had known the agitation that went a little way ahead of him, he would
+have made a wide detour and passed the place by.
+
+Sim was hoeing in his steeply pitched field when he saw and recognized
+the figure which was yet a half-hour's walk distant, by the
+meanderings of the trail. The hoe fell from his hand and his posture
+stiffened so inimically that the hound at his feet rose and bristled,
+a low growl running half smothered in its throat.
+
+Doubtless, Colby reasoned, Spurrier was coming to his lonely house
+with a purpose of venom and punishment, yet he walked boldly and to
+the outward glance he seemed unarmed. Hence it must be that in the
+former army officer's plan lay some intent more complex than mere
+open-and-shut meeting and slaying: some carefully planned and guileful
+climax to be approached by indirection. Very well, he would also play
+the game out, burying his suspicion under a guise of artlessness, but
+watching every move--and when the moment came striking first.
+
+At a brook, as he hastened toward his house by a short cut, he knelt
+to drink, for his throat was damnably dry, and in the clear water the
+pasty pallor and terror of his face was given back to him, and warned
+him. But also the mirroring brought another thought and the thought
+fathered swift action. In the army he had been spare and clean-shaven
+and a scar had marked his chin. Now he was bearded. He carried a
+beefier bulk and an altered appearance.
+
+Could there be any possibility of Spurrier's failing to recognize
+him--of his having been, after all, ignorant of his presence here?
+
+Yet his eyes would be recognizable. They were arrestingly distinctive,
+for one of them was pale-blue and the other noticeably grayish.
+
+By the path he was following, stalks of Jimson weed grew rank, and
+Sim, rising from his knees, pulled off a handful of leaves and crushed
+them between his palms. When he had reached the house his first action
+was to force from this bruised leafage a few drops of liquid into a
+saucer and this juice he carefully injected into his eyes.
+
+Then he went to the door and squinted up at the sun. It would be
+fifteen minutes before Spurrier would arrive and fifteen minutes might
+be enough. He half closed his eyes, because they were stinging
+painfully, and sat waiting, to all appearances indolent and
+thoughtless.
+
+Spurrier plodded on, measuring the distance to the smoke thread until
+he came in view of the cabin itself, then he approached slowly since
+the stiff climb had winded him.
+
+Now he could see the shingle roof and the log walls, trailed over with
+morning-glory vines, and in the door the slouching figure of a man. He
+came on and the native rose lazily.
+
+"My name's John Spurrier," called out the traveler, "and Lawyer
+Cappeze cited you to me as a man who might shelter me overnight."
+
+The man who had deserted chewed nonchalantly on a grass straw and
+regarded the other incuriously--which was a master bit of dissembling.
+Between them, it seemed to Sim Colby who had once been Private Grant,
+lay the body of a murdered captain. Between them, too, lay the guilt
+of his assassination. To the Easterner's appraisal this heavy-set
+mountaineer with unkempt hair and ragged beard was merely a local type
+and yet in one respect he was unforgettable.
+
+It was his eyes. They were arrestingly uncommon eyes and, once seen,
+they must be remembered. What was the quality that made one notice
+them so instantly, Spurrier questioned himself. Then he realized.
+
+They were inkily black eyes, but that was not all. There seemed to be
+in them no line of demarcation between iris and pupil--only liquid
+pools of jet.
+
+The two men sat there as the shadows lengthened and talked "plumb
+friendly" as Colby later admitted to himself. They smoked Spurrier's
+"fotched-on" tobacco and drank native distillation from the demijohn
+that Colby took down from its place on a rafter. Yet the host was
+filling each tranquilly flowing minute with the intensive planning of
+a hospitality that was, like Macbeth's, to end in murder.
+
+Spurrier would sleep in an alcovelike room which could be locked from
+the outside. Back through the brush was a spot of quicksand where a
+body would leave no trace. One thing only troubled the planning brain.
+He wished he could learn just who knew of his guest's coming here;
+just what precautions that guest had taken before embarking on such a
+venture.
+
+From outside came a shout, interrupting these reflections, and Sim was
+at once on his feet facing the front door, with a surreptitious hand
+inside his shirt, and one eye covertly watching Spurrier, even as he
+looked out. A snarl, too, drew his lips into an unpleasant twist.
+
+The Easterner put down to mountain caution the amazing swiftness with
+which the other had come from his hulking proneness to upstanding
+alertness. But with equal rapidity, Sim's pose relaxed into ease and
+he shouted a welcome as the door darkened with a figure physically
+splendid in its spare strength and commanding height.
+
+Spurrier rose and found himself looking into a face with most engaging
+eyes and teeth that flashed white in smiling.
+
+For a moment as the newcomer gazed at Sim Colby his expression
+mirrored some sort of surprise and his lips moved as if to speak, but
+Spurrier could not see, because Colby's back was turned, the warning
+glance that shot between the two, and the big fellow's lips closed
+again without giving utterance to whatever he had been on the point of
+saying--something to do with eyes that had mystifyingly changed their
+color.
+
+"Mister Spurrier, this hyar's Sam Mosebury," announced the host.
+"Mebby ye mout of heered tell of him."
+
+Spurrier nodded. So this was the outlaw against whose terrorism old
+Cappeze had broken his Quixote lances, the windmill that had unhorsed
+him; the man with a criminal record at which a wild region trembled.
+
+"I've heered tell of Mr. Spurrier, too," vouchsafed the murderer
+equably. "He's a friend of old Dyke Cappeze's."
+
+The "furriner" made no denial. Though he had been sitting with his
+head in the jaws of death ever since he entered this door, it had been
+without any presentiment of danger. Now he felt the menace of this
+terrorist's presence, and that menace was totally fictitious.
+
+"Mr. Cappeze has befriended me," he answered stiffly. "I reckon that's
+not a recommendation to you, is it?"
+
+The man who had newly entered laughed. He drew a chair forward and
+seated himself.
+
+"I reckon, Mr. Spurrier, hit ain't none of my business one way ner
+t'other," he said. "Anyhow, hit ain't no reason why you an' me kain't
+be friends, is hit?"
+
+"It doesn't make any difficulty with me," laughed Spurrier in relief,
+"if it doesn't with you."
+
+Sam Mosebury looked at him, then his voice came with a dry chuckle of
+humor.
+
+"Over at my dwellin' house," he announced with a pleasant drawl, "I've
+got me a pet mockin'-bird--an' I've got me a pet cat, too. Ther three
+of us meks up ther fam'ly over thar."
+
+Spurrier looked at the strong-featured face as he prompted, "Yes?"
+
+"Waal," Sam Mosebury waved his hand, and even his gestures had a
+spacious bigness about them, "ef God 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 passel 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 snobbery that adhered to this courtier
+at the throne of wealth, were attributes of which the girl saw
+nothing. Neither did she see the shell 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 Dyke 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 Dyke 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
+assured 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 Dyke 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 principal's
+daughter.
+
+Spurrier laughed a little grimly to himself. Of the woman whose hand
+had been half-promised him he could think dispassionately 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 assassin'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 factitious things that
+gives them force. Life presents a Janus 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
+"cucumber 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 pass 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 God 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.
+
+The interior was dusky in contrast with the outer light, but from one
+window a shaft of golden radiance slanted inward and in it the dust
+motes danced.
+
+Spurrier paused and glanced about him, but before he had thrown down
+the hat he had taken from his perspiring forehead, a sound hideously
+unmistakable caused his heartbeat to miss its rhythm and pound in
+commotion.
+
+Every man has his one terror, or, at least, one antipathy which he is
+unable to treat with customary calmness. With Spurrier it was
+everything reptilian. In the islands he had dreaded the snake menace
+more than fever or head hunters. Now, from the darkened floor near his
+feet came the vicious whir of rattles, and as his eyes flashed toward
+the sound he saw coiled there a huge snake with its flat, arrow-shaped
+head sinuously waving from side to side.
+
+With an agility made lightning-quick by necessity, he leaped aside
+and, at the same instant, the snake launched itself with such venomous
+force that the sound of its striking and falling on the puncheon floor
+was like the lashing of a mule whip. The man had felt the disturbed
+air of its passing as of a sword stroke that had narrowly missed him.
+
+But he had no leisure to regain the breath that had caught startled
+in his throat, before, from his left, he heard again the ominous note
+of warning, and felt his scalp creep with horror. The place which he
+had left locked and believed to be mosquito proof, now seemed alive
+with the loathsome trespassers.
+
+As Spurrier leaped for his couch he heard again the sound of a living
+coil released and its hawserlike lashing of the floor. Now he could
+see more plainly and, calculating his distance, he jumped for the
+table from which he could reach the loaded shotgun that hung on his
+wall. If he fell short, he would come down at their mercy--but he
+landed securely and without capsizing his support. His elevation gave
+him a precarious sort of safety, but on the floor below him he counted
+three rattlesnakes, crawling and recoiling; their cold-blooded eyes
+following his movements with baleful intentness.
+
+Spurrier was conscious of his trembling hands as he leveled the
+weapon, and of a crawling sensation of loathing along his spine.
+
+Twice the gun roared, splintering the flooring and spattering its
+ricochetting pellets, and two of the rattlers twisted in convulsive
+but harmless writhings. But the third head--and it seemed the largest
+of the three--had withdrawn under the cot. He was not even sure that
+these three made up the total. There might be others.
+
+With painstaking care Spurrier came down and armed himself with a
+stout hickory flail which had been used in other days by some
+housewife in her primitive laundry work as a "battling stick."
+
+Then he advanced to the battle, swinging one end of the cot wide and
+shiftily sidestepping. The rattler which lay in piled circles of
+coppery length regarded him with steely venom, turning its swaying
+head deliberately as its enemy circled. With the startling abruptness
+of an electric buzzer it warned and sprang. He escaped by an
+uncomfortable margin and attacked it with the flail before it could
+rearrange its coils. Finally he stood panting with exertion over the
+scene of slaughter.
+
+As he searched the place with profoundest particularity his mind was
+analyzing the strange invasion. His house was as tight as he had
+thought it. There was no cranny that would have let in three large
+rattlers. How had they come there?
+
+Spurrier went out and studied his door. The hasps that held his
+padlock were in place, but the woodwork about them had been recently
+scarred. The lock fastenings had been pulled out and replaced.
+
+With a nervous moisture on his brow the man recognized the fiendish
+ingenuity of his mysterious enemy. These slithering creatures had come
+here by human agency as brute accomplices in the murder that had
+failed from the rifle muzzle. The pertinacity and cunning of the
+scheme's anonymous author gave promise of eventfulness hereafter.
+
+Had he been struck, according to the evident intention, as he entered
+his house, he would probably have died there, unsuccored, leaving the
+door open. The rattlers would either have found their way out after
+that, or, when his body was discovered, the open door would have
+explained their presence inside, and no suspicion of a man's
+conspiracy would have remained.
+
+One thing stood out clear in Spurrier's summing-up. Whatever the
+source of the enmity which pursued him, it had its nerve center in an
+ingenious brain and it threw about itself that element of mystery
+which a timid man would have found terrifying and unendurable. Also it
+operated with a patience which was a manifest of its unswerving
+determination. Effort might be expected to follow effort until success
+came--or the unknown plotter were discovered and disposed of.
+
+Yet the author of these malignant attempts worked with an unflurried
+deliberation, allowing passive intervals to elapse between activities,
+like the volcano that rests in the quiet of false security between
+fatal eruptions.
+
+Of course, the letter with the mention of Private Grant might be a
+clew of identity, yet calm reflection discounted that assumption as a
+wild and unconfirmed grasping out after something tangible.
+
+Perhaps Spurrier as nearly approached the absolute in physical
+fearlessness as it is given to man to come--but the mystery of a
+pursuing hatred which could not be openly faced, filled him with a
+sense of futility, and the futility inspired rage which was unsettling
+and must be combated.
+
+That night he lay long awake, and after he had fallen asleep he came
+often to a sudden and wide-eyed wakefulness again at the sound of an
+owl's call or the creaking of a tree limb.
+
+The next morning found him restless of spirit, and it occurred to him
+that his secret enemy might be lurking near to inspect the results of
+his handiwork, so he went down to the road and hung the three dead
+rattlesnakes along the fence where no passer-by could miss seeing
+their twisted and mutilated lengths. That should be his retort to any
+inquiring and hostile eye, that he was alive and the creatures put
+there to destroy him had paid with their lives.
+
+From a place screened from view he meant to watch that gruesome
+exhibit and mark its effect upon any one who paused to inspect it.
+Possibly in that way a clew might be vouchsafed--but he did not at
+once take cover in the thickets.
+
+It was a glorious morning. The sun had ripped away the mists that, in
+the mountains, always hang damp and veillike between gray dawning and
+colorful day. The cool forest recesses were vocal with the twitterings
+and song from feathered throats.
+
+Spurrier sat down by the road and gave himself up to thoughts that it
+was safer to banish: thoughts that came with those sights and sounds
+and that made long-stilled pulses awaken and throb in him.
+
+This morning made him feel Glory's presence and gave him a fine
+recklessness as to responsibility and consequence. Suddenly he came to
+himself and seemed to hear the cool cynicism of Martin Harrison's
+voice inquiring, as it had once actually inquired: "Growing
+sentimental?"
+
+He pulled himself together and stiffened his expression into one more
+suitable upon the face of a man who has taken the severe vows of
+service to a cold ambition.
+
+But a little later he heard a sound and looked up sidewise to see
+Glory herself standing near him in the road; a materialization of the
+truant dreams he had been entertaining.
+
+She wore a dress whose simplicity accentuated the slender erectness
+of her young body and the litheness of her carriage. Her hair hung in
+braids and the sunbonnet had fallen back from the brightness of her
+hair. In her eyes played the violet lights of a merriment that lifted
+and curved her lips beguilingly.
+
+Spurrier came to his feet, and perhaps Glory, who had succumbed to her
+moment of self-revelation there on the twilight porch, had her revenge
+now. For that first startled moment as their glances met, the eyes
+that looked into hers were lover's eyes, and their unspoken message
+was courtship. If he maintained the stoic's silence forever, as to
+words, at least his heart had spoken.
+
+"Before Heaven," said the man slowly, and the tremor of his voice was
+out of keeping with the ingrained poise of his usual self-command,
+"when they called you Glory, they didn't misname you!"
+
+The girl flushed pink, and he took a step toward her with the absorbed
+intensity of a sleep-walker.
+
+Glory stood there--watched him coming and did not move. To her, though
+she had sought to hide it, he had become the One Man. Her unconfessed
+love had magnified and deified him--and now his own eyes were blazing
+responsively with love for her!
+
+Suddenly she was shaken by a rapturous tremor that seemed almost like
+swooning or being lifted on some powerful wave that swept her clear of
+the earth, so that she made no effort at disguise, but let the
+laughing light in her eyes become softer, yet more glowingly intense.
+
+It was as if they had met in the free realm of dreams where there are
+no hamperings of impossibility. As he drew near her, his arms came
+out, and he halted so that, under that same delightful sense of
+irresponsibility, it seemed to her quite natural to step into their
+welcome.
+
+Possibly the happenings of yesterday and the sleepless hours of last
+night had left Spurrier momentarily light-headed. Certainly had one of
+the rattlers stung him and poisoned his reason, he could not be doing
+a thing more foreign to his program of intention.
+
+He felt his arms close about her; felt the fragrance of her breath,
+found himself pressing his kisses on lips that welcomed them, and
+forgot everything except that this was a moment of ecstasy and
+passion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+For a while they stood there together in the narrow road to whose
+edges the dense greenery came down massed and dewy. Their breath was
+quick with the excitement of that moment when the hills and the rocks
+that upheld them seemed to them palpitant and gloriously shaken. Then
+they heard the lumbering of wheels, and with one impulse that needed
+no expression in words they turned through a gorge which ran at right
+angles into the stillness of the woods--and away from interruption.
+
+Spurrier had, it seemed to him, stepped through a curtain in life and
+found beyond it a door of which he had not known. It seemed natural
+that he and Glory should be going hand in hand into that place of
+dreams like children at play and hearing joyous voices that were mute
+and nonexistent in the world of commonplace and fact.
+
+He did not even pause to reflect that this was a continuation of the
+same ravine in which an assassin's bullet had once so narrowly missed
+him. Yesterday, too, was forgotten.
+
+Just now he was young in his heart again, and had love for his
+talisman. Actuality had been dethroned by some dream wizardry and left
+him free of obligation to reason. Then he heard Glory's voice
+low-pitched and a little frightened.
+
+"It kain't--can't--be true. It's just a dream!"
+
+A flash of sanity, like the shock of a cold plunge, brought the
+thought that, from her lips, had sounded a warning. This was the
+moment, if ever, to draw back and take counsel of common sense. Now it
+would be easier than later to abase himself and confess that in this
+midsummer's madness was no substance or color of reality--that he
+stood unalterably pledged to her renunciation.
+
+But the earthquake does not still itself at the height of its tremor
+and the cyclone does not stop dead with its momentum unspent. Years of
+calculated and nerve-trying self-command were exacting their toll in
+the satisfaction of outbreak. Spurrier's emotional self was in
+volcanic eruption, the more molten and lava-hot for the prolonged
+dormancy of a sealed crater.
+
+He caught the girl again and pressed her so close that the commotion
+of her heart came throbbing against him through the yielding softness
+of her breast; and the agitation of her breath on his face was a
+little tempest of acquiescent sweetness.
+
+"Doesn't it seem real, now?" he challenged as he released her enough
+to let her breathe, yet held her imprisoned, and she nodded,
+radiant-eyed, and answered in a voice half bewildered and more than
+half burdened with self-reproach.
+
+"I didn't even hang back," she made confession. "I just walked right
+into your arms the minute you held them out. I didn't seem able to
+help myself."
+
+Suddenly her eyes, impenitent once more, danced with mischief and her
+smile broke like a sun flash over her face.
+
+"If I'd had the power of witchcraft, I'd have put the spell on you,
+Jack," she declared. "I had to make you love me. I just _had_ to do
+it."
+
+"I rather think you had--that power, dear."
+
+He laughed contentedly as a man may who shifts all responsibility for
+an indiscretion to a force stronger than his own volition.
+
+"You see," she went on as if seeking to make illogic seem logical.
+"From the first--I couldn't think of you except with storm thoughts. I
+couldn't keep my heart quiet, when I was with you."
+
+"At first," he reminded her, "you wanted to kill me. I heard you
+confiding to Rover."
+
+Her eyes grew seriously deep and undefensive in their frankness. It
+was the candor of a woman's pride in conquest.
+
+"I'm not sure yet," she said almost fiercely, "that I wouldn't almost
+rather kill you than--lose you to any other girl."
+
+Vaguely and as yet remotely, Spurrier's consciousness was pricked with
+a forecast of reality's veto, but the present spoke in passion and the
+future whispered weakly in platitudes.
+
+"You won't lose me," he protested. "I'm yours."
+
+"And yet," went on Glory, "you seemed a long way off. You were the man
+who did big things in the world outside. You were--always cool
+and--calculating."
+
+"Glory," his words came with the rush of impetuosity for already the
+whispers of warning were gaining in volume, and impulse was struggling
+for its new freedom, "the man you've seen to-day is one I haven't
+known myself before. Chilled calculation and self-repression have been
+the articles of my creed. I've been crusted with those obsessions
+like a ship's hull with barnacles. Did you know that when vessels pass
+through the Panama Canal, the barnacles drop off?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, and her lips twisted into something like wistfulness
+as she dropped unconsciously into vernacular. "There's a lavish of
+things I don't know. You've got to learn 'em all to me--I mean teach
+them to me."
+
+"Well," he went on slowly, "steamers that pass through the fresh
+water, from salt to salt, automatically cleanse their plates. You've
+been fresh water to me, Glory."
+
+"Jack," she declared with tempestuous anxiety, "you say I've changed
+you. I'll try to change myself, too, all the ways I can--all the ways
+you want."
+
+"I don't want you changed," he objected. "If you were changed, it
+wouldn't be you."
+
+"Maybe," she persisted, "you'd like me better if I were taller or had
+black eyes."
+
+"I wonder now," he teased with the whimsey of the moment, "what you
+would look like with black eyes? I can't imagine it. Will you do that
+for me?"
+
+"Come to our house to-night," she irrelevantly commanded. "Won't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I'd come to-night if I had to swim the Hellespont."
+
+But when he had left her an hour later at the crossroads and started
+back, his eyes fell on the ugly shapes of the three rattlesnakes, over
+which he had forgotten to keep watch and which she had not even seen,
+and yesterday came back with the impact of undisguised realization.
+Yesterday and to-morrow stood out again in their own solid
+proportions and to-day stood like a slender wisp of heart's desire
+shouldered between uncompromising giants of fact.
+
+Spurrier could no longer deny that his personal world centered about
+Glory; that away from her would be only the unspeakable bleakness of
+lonely heart hunger.
+
+But it was equally certain that he could not abandon everything upon
+which he had underpinned his future, and in that structure was no
+niche which she could occupy.
+
+Sitting alone in his house with a chill ache at his heart and facing a
+dilemma that seemed without solution, he knew for once the tortures of
+terror. For once he could not face the future intrepidly.
+
+He had recognized when the army had stigmatized him and cast him out,
+that only by iron force and aggression could he break his way through
+to success. He was enlisted in a warfare captained by financiers of
+major caliber and committed to a struggle out of which victory would
+bring him not only wealth, but a place of his own among such
+financiers--a place which Glory could not share.
+
+He and his principals alike were fighting for the prizes of the
+looting victor in a battle without chivalry, and whether he won or was
+crushed by American Oil and Gas, the native landholder must be ground
+and bruised between the impact of clashing forces. In the trail of his
+victory, no less than theirs, would be human wreckage.
+
+Sitting before his dead hearth while the afternoon shadows slanted and
+lengthened, Spurrier wondered what agonies had wracked the heart of
+Napoleon when he was called upon to choose between Josephine and a
+dynasty. For even in his travail the egoist thought of himself and his
+ambitions in Napoleonic terms.
+
+As he sat there alone with silences about his lonely cabin that seemed
+speaking in still voices of vastness, the poignant personality of his
+thoughts brought him, by the strange anomaly of life, to realizations
+that were not merely personal.
+
+Glory had won his heart and it was as though in doing so she had also
+made his feelings quicken for her people: these people from whose
+poverty, hospitality and kindness had been poured out to him: these
+people who had taken him at first with reserve and then accepted him
+with faith.
+
+He had eaten their bread and salt. He had drunk their illicit whiskey,
+given to him with no fear that he would betray them even in the
+lawlessness which to them seemed honorable and fair.
+
+And yet his purpose here, was the single one of enabling a certain
+group of money-grabbing financiers to triumph over another group at
+the cost of the mountaineer land-holders. It was not because, if he
+succeeded, there would not be enough of legitimate profit to enrich
+all, but because in a campaign of secrecy he could make a confidant of
+no one. If the enterprise were carried through at all he must have
+secured, for principals who would abate nothing and give back nothing,
+the necessary property bought on the basis of barren farming land.
+Were it his own endeavor he could first plunder and develop and then
+make restitution, but acting as an agent he could no more do that
+than the soldier who has unconditionally surrendered, can subsequently
+demand terms.
+
+The man who had been a plunger at gaming table and race track, who had
+succeeded as an imitator of schemes that attracted major capital, was
+of necessity one of imagination. Perhaps had life dealt him different
+cards, Spurrier would have been a novelist or even a poet, for that
+imagination which he had put into heavy harness was also capable of
+flights into phantasy and endowed with something almost mystic.
+
+Now under the stress of this conflict in his mind, as he sat before
+his hearth in shadows that were vague of light and shape, that
+unaccustomed surrender to imagination possessed him, peopling the
+dimness with shapes that seemed actual.
+
+His eye fell upon the empty three-legged stool that stood on the
+opposite side of the hearth, and as though he were looking at one of
+those motion picture effects which show, in double negative one
+character confronting his dual and separate self, he seemed to see a
+figure sitting there and regarding him out of contemptuous eyes.
+
+It was the figure of a very young man clad in the tunic of a
+graduating West Point cadet and it was a figure that bore itself with
+the prideful erectness of one who regards his right to wear his
+uniform as a privilege of knighthood. For Spurrier was fancying
+himself confronted by the man he had been in those days of eager
+forward-looking, and of almost religious resolve to make of himself a
+soldier in the best meaning of the word. Then as his eyes closed for a
+moment under the vividness of the fancy, the figure dissolved into its
+surroundings of shadow and near the stool with folded arms and a
+bitterer scorn stood a lieutenant in khaki.
+
+"So this is what you have come to be," said the imaginary Spurrier
+blightingly to the actual Spurrier. "A looter and brigand no better
+than the false _amigos_ that I fought over there. I was a gentleman
+and you are a cad!"
+
+Had the man been dreaming in sleep instead of wakefulness, his vision
+could hardly have worn habiliments of greater actuality, and he found
+himself retorting in hot defensiveness.
+
+"Whatever I am you made me. It was you who was disgraced. It is
+because I was once you that I am now I. You left me no choice but to
+fight with the weapons that came to hand, and those weapons were
+predatory.... If I have deliberately hardened myself it is only as
+soldiers of other days put on coats of mail--because soft flesh could
+not survive the mace and broadsword."
+
+"And when you win your prizes, if you ever win them," the accusing
+vision appeared to retort, "you will have paid for them by spending
+all that was honorable in yourself; all that was generous and
+soldierly. When you were I, you led a charge across rice paddies
+without cover and under a withering fire. For that you were mentioned
+in dispatches and you had a paragraph in the Army and Navy Journal.
+Have you ever won a prize since then, that meant as much to you?"
+
+John Spurrier came to his feet, with a groan in his throat. His
+temples were moist and marked with a tracery of outstanding veins and
+his hands were clenched.
+
+"Good God!" he exclaimed aloud. "Give me back the name and the uniform
+I had then, and see how gladly I'll tell these new masters to go to
+hell!"
+
+Startled at the sound of his own voice arguing with a fantasy as with
+a fact, the man sank back again into his chair and covered his face
+with his spread hands. But shutting out sight did not serve to shut
+out the images of his fancy.
+
+He saw himself hired out to "practical" overlords and sent to prey on
+friends, then he rose and stood confronting the empty stool where the
+dream-accuser in uniform had stood and once more he spoke aloud. As he
+did so it seemed that the figure returned and stood waiting, stern and
+noncommittal, while he addressed it.
+
+"Give me the success I need, and the independence it carries, and I'll
+spend my life exonerating my name. I'll go back to the islands and
+live among the natives till I find a man who will tell the truth. I'll
+move heaven and earth--but that takes money. I've always stood, in
+this business, with wealth just beyond my grasp--always promised,
+never realized. Let me realize it and be equipped to fight for
+vindication. These men I serve have the prizes to dispense, but I am
+bound hand and foot to them. They take their pay in advance. Once
+victorious I can break with them."
+
+"And these people who have befriended you," questioned the mentor
+voice, "what of them?"
+
+"I love them. They are her people. I shall seem to plunder them, but
+if my plans succeed I shall be in a position to make terms--and my
+terms shall be theirs. Until I succeed I must seem false to them. God
+knows I'm paying for that too. I love Glory!"
+
+Suddenly Spurrier wiped a hand across a clammy forehead and stood
+looking about his room, empty save for himself. He seemed a man who
+had been through a delirium. But he reached no conclusion, and when
+twilight found him tramping toward the Cappeze house it was with a
+heart that beat with anticipation--while it sought refuge in postponed
+decision.
+
+When Glory received him in the lamp-lighted room he halted in
+amazement, for the girl who stood there with a mischievous smile on
+her lips no longer looked at him out of eyes violet-blue, but black as
+liquid jet.
+
+"How did you do that?" he demanded in a voice blank with astonishment.
+"It's a sheer impossibility!"
+
+"Maybe it's witchcraft, Jack," she mocked him.
+
+"Can you change them back?" he asked a little anxiously, and she shook
+her head.
+
+"No, but they'll change of themselves in a day or two."
+
+"I reckon," commented Dyke Cappeze, looking up from his book by the
+table, "I oughtn't to give away feminine secrets, but it's a right
+simple matter, after all. She just put some Jimson-weed juice in her
+eyes and the trick was done."
+
+"Jimson weed," echoed the visitor, and the elder nodded.
+
+"If you happen to remember your botany, you'll recall that its longer
+name is _Datura stramonium_--and it's a strong mydriatic. It swells
+the pupil and obliterates the iris."
+
+It was walking homeward with a low moon overhead that evening that
+Spurrier's thoughts found time to wrestle with other problems than
+those affecting himself and Glory. The incident of the black eyes had
+at first interested him only because they were _her_ eyes, but now he
+thought also of the episode of the rattlesnakes and the letter from
+Major Withers.
+
+In his first analysis of what that letter might mean to him he had
+decided that his man would be recognizable by his mismated eyes. He
+had recalled Sim Colby's black ones while thinking of unusual eyes in
+general and had, in passing, set him down as one who stood alibied.
+
+Now, in the light of this Jimson-weed discovery, those black eyes took
+on a new interest. Presumably it was a trick commonly known in these
+hills. _If_ Colby's eyes had been so altered--and they had seemed
+unnatural in their tense blackness--it must have been with a
+deliberate and sufficient motive. Sim Colby was not making his pupils
+smart and sting as a matter of vanity. A man resorting to disguises
+seeks first to change the most salient notes of his appearance.
+
+Spurrier recalled, with the force of added importance, the surprised
+look on Sam Mosebury's face when that genial murderer, upon his
+arrival, had stifled some impulse of utterance.
+
+Suspicion of Colby was perhaps far-fetched, but it took a powerful
+hold on Spurrier, and one from which he could not free himself. At all
+events, he must see this Sim Colby when Colby did not know he was
+coming--and look at his eyes again.
+
+So he made a second trip across the hills to the head of Little
+Quicksand, and for the sake of safeguarding against any warning going
+ahead of him, he spoke to no one of his intention.
+
+This time he went armed with an automatic pistol and a very grim
+purpose. When they met--if the mountaineer's eyes were no longer
+black--he would probably need both.
+
+But once again the opportunity hound encountered disappointment. He
+found a chimney with no smoke issuing from it and a door barred. The
+horse had been taken out of the stable and from many evidences about
+the untenanted place he judged that the man who lived alone there had
+been absent for several days.
+
+To make inquiries would be to proclaim his interest and prejudice his
+future chances of success, so he slipped back again as surreptitiously
+as he had come, and the determination which he had keyed to the
+concert pitch of climax had to be laid by.
+
+At home again he found that the love which he could neither accept nor
+conquer was demoralizing his moral and mental equipoise. He could no
+longer fix and hold his attention on the problems of his work. His
+spirit was in equinox.
+
+The only solution was to go to Glory and tell her the truth, for if he
+let matters run uncontrolled their momentum would become unmanageable.
+It was the simple matter of choosing failure with her or success
+without her, and he had at last reached his decision. It remained only
+to tell her so.
+
+It had pleased John Spurrier to find a house upon an isolated site
+from which he could work unobserved, while he maintained his careful
+semblance of idleness. His nearest neighbor was a mile away as the
+crow flew, and Dyke Cappeze almost two miles. Even the deep-rutted
+highroad, itself, lay beyond a gorge which native parlance called a
+"master shut-in."
+
+Now that remoteness pleased his enemies as well. Former efforts toward
+his undoing had been balked by accidents. One must be made that could
+have no chance to fail and an isolated setting made for success.
+Matters that required deft handling could be conducted by daylight
+instead of under a tricky moon. It was a good spot for a "rat-killing"
+and Spurrier was to be the rat.
+
+It was well before sunset on a Thursday afternoon that rifle-armed
+men, holding to the concealment of the "laurel hells," began
+approaching the high place above and behind Spurrier's house. They
+came from varying directions and one by one. No one had seen any
+gathering, for the plans had been made elsewhere and the details of
+liaison perfected in advance. Now they trickled noiselessly into their
+designated posts and slowly drew inward toward the common center of
+the house itself.
+
+Spurrier who rode in at mid-afternoon from some neighborhood mission
+commented with pleasure upon the cheery "Bob Whites" of the quail
+whistling back in the timber.
+
+They were Glory's birds, and this winter he would know better than to
+shoot them!
+
+But they were not Glory's birds. They were not birds at all, and those
+pipings came from human throats, establishing touch as the murder
+squad advanced upon him to kill him.
+
+The man opened a package which had come by mail and drew from its
+wrappings the portrait of a girl in evening dress with a rope of
+pearls at her throat. Its silver frame was a counterpart of the one
+which had stood on Martin Harrison's desk that night when Spurrier had
+lifted it and Vivien's father had so meaningly said: "Make good in
+this and _all_ your ambitions can be fulfilled."
+
+Now Spurrier set the framed picture on the table at the center of the
+room and it seemed to look out from that point of vantage with the
+amused indulgence of well-bred condescension upon the Spartan
+simplicity of his house--the rough table and hickory-withed chairs,
+the cot spread with its gray army blanket.
+
+The man gave back to the pictured glance as little fire of eagerness
+as was given out from it.
+
+Just now Vivien seemed to him the deity and personification of a creed
+that was growing hateful, yet one to which he stood still bound. He
+was like the priest whose vows are irrevocable but whose faith in his
+dogma has died, and to himself he murmured ironically, "'The idols are
+broke in the temple of Baal'--and yet I've got to go on bending the
+knee to the debris!"
+
+But when he turned on his heel and looked through the door his face
+brightened, for there, coming over the short-cut between Aunt Erie
+Toppit's and her own home, was Glory, carrying a basket over which was
+tied a bit of jute sacking.
+
+She came on lightly and halted outside his threshold.
+
+"I'm not comin' visitin' you, Mr. John Spurrier," she announced
+gravely despite the twinkle in her eyes. "I'm bent on a more seemly
+matter, but I'm crossin' your property an' I hope you'll forgive the
+trespass."
+
+"Since it's you," he acceded in the same mock seriousness, "I'll grant
+you the right of way. You paid the toll when you let me have a glimpse
+of you."
+
+"And this is your house," she went on musingly. "And I've never seen
+inside its door. It seems strange, somehow, doesn't it?"
+
+Spurrier laughed. "Now that you're here," he suggested, "you might as
+well hold an inspection. It's daylight and we can dispense with a
+chaperon for ten minutes."
+
+She nodded and laughed too. "I guess the granny-folk would go tongue
+wagging if they found it out. Anyhow, I'm going to peek in for just a
+minute."
+
+She stepped lightly up to the threshold and looked inside, and the
+slanting shaft from the window fell full on the new photograph of
+Vivien Martin, so that it stood out in the dim interior emphasized by
+the flash of its silver frame.
+
+Glory went over and studied the face with a somewhat cryptic
+expression, but she made no comment and at the door she announced:
+
+"I'll be goin' on. You can have three guesses what I've got in this
+basket."
+
+But Spurrier, catching sight of a bronze tail-quill glinting between
+the bars of the container, spoke with prompt certainty.
+
+"One guess will be enough. It's one of those carrier pigeons that
+Uncle Jimmy Litchfield gave you."
+
+"You peeped before you guessed," she accused. "I'm going to leave it
+with Aunt Erie and let her take it to Carnettsville with her to-morrow
+and set it free."
+
+"Compare your watches," advised the man, "and get her to note the time
+when she opens the basket. Then you can time the flight."
+
+Glory shook her head and laughed. "I don't own any watch," she
+reminded him. "And even if I did I misdoubt if Aunt Erie would have
+anything to compare it with--unless she carried her alarm clock along
+with her."
+
+"Wait a minute," admonished the man, as he loosened the strap of his
+wrist watch, "I've two as it happens--and a clock besides. You keep
+this one and give Aunt Erie my other. I'll get it for you and set it
+so that they'll be together to the second."
+
+He wheeled then and went into the room at the back and for a few
+minutes, bachelor-like he rummaged and searched for the time-piece
+upon which he had supposed he could lay his fingers in the dark.
+
+Yet Spurrier's thought was not wholly and singly upon the adventure of
+timing the flight of a carrier pigeon. In it there lurked a sense of
+half-guilty uneasiness, which would have been lighter had Glory asked
+some question when she gazed on the picture which sat in a seeming
+place of honor at the center of his room. Her silence on the subject
+had seemed casual and unimportant, yet his intuition told him that had
+it been genuinely so, she would have demanded with child-like interest
+to be told who the woman might be with the high tilted chin and the
+rope of pearls on her throat. The taciturnity had sprung, he fancied,
+less from indifference than from a fear of questioning, and when he
+came quietly to the door, he stood there for a moment, then drew back
+where he would not be so plainly visible.
+
+For Glory had returned to the table and stood with her eyes riveted on
+the framed portrait. Unconscious of being observed her face was no
+longer guarded of betrayal, and in the swift expressiveness of her
+delicate features the man read a gamut and vortex of emotion as
+eloquent as words. The jealousy which her pride sought to veto, the
+doubt which her faith strove to deny, the realization of her own
+self-confessed inferiority in parallel with this woman's aristocratic
+poise and cynical smile, flitted in succession across the face of the
+mountain girl and declared themselves in her eyes.
+
+For an instant the small hands clenched and the lips stirred and the
+pupils blazed with hot fires, so that the man could almost read the
+words that she shaped without sound: "He's mine--he ain't your'n--an'
+I ain't goin' ter give him up ter ye!"
+
+Spurrier remembered how she had declared she would almost rather see
+him die than surrender him to another girl.
+
+Then out of the face the passion faded and the deep eyes widened to a
+suffering like that of despair. The sweetly curved lips drooped in an
+ineffable wistfulness and the smooth throat worked spasmodically,
+while the hands went up and covered the face.
+
+Spurrier drew back into the room into which Glory could not see, and
+then in warning of his coming spoke aloud in a matter-of-fact voice.
+"I've found it," he declared. "It was hiding out from me--that
+watch."
+
+When, after that preface, he came back, Glory was standing again in
+the doorway and as she turned, she presented a face from which had
+been banished the storm of her recent agitation.
+
+He handed her the watch which she took with a steady hand, and a brief
+but cheery, "Farewell."
+
+As she started away Spurrier braced himself with a strong effort and
+inquired: "Glory, didn't you have any question to ask me--about the
+girl--in the frame?"
+
+She halted in the path and stood looking down. Her lowered lids hid
+her eyes, but he thought her cheeks paled a shade. Then she shook her
+head.
+
+"Not unless it's something--you want to tell--without my asking," she
+announced steadfastly.
+
+For over a week he had struggled to bring himself to his confession
+and had failed. Now a sudden impulse assured him that it would never
+be easier; that every delay would make it harder and blacken him with
+a heavier seeming of treason. Vivien's portrait served as a fortuitous
+cue, and he must avail himself of it.
+
+This was the logical time and place, when silence would be only an
+unuttered lie and when procrastination would strip him of even his
+residue of self-respect. To wait for an easy occasion was to hope for
+the impossible and to act with as craven a spirit as to falter when
+the bugle sounded a charge.
+
+Yet he remained so long silent that Glory, looking up and reading the
+hard-wrung misery on his face and the stiff movement of the lips that
+made nothing of their efforts, knew, in advance, the tenor of the
+unspoken message.
+
+She closed her eyes as if to shut out some sudden glare too painful
+to be borne, and then in a quietly courageous voice she helped him
+out.
+
+"You _do_ want to tell me, Jack. You want to take back--what you
+said--over there--don't you?"
+
+Spurrier moistened his lips, with his tongue. "God knows," he burst
+out vehemently, "I don't want to take back one syllable of what I
+said--about loving you."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Come inside, please," he pleaded. "I'll try to explain."
+
+He went stumblingly ahead of her and set a chair beside the table and
+then he leaned toward her and sought for words.
+
+"I love you, Glory," he fervently declared. "I love you as I didn't
+suppose I could love any one. To me you are music and starlight--but I
+guess I'm almost engaged to her." He jerked his head rebelliously
+toward the portrait.
+
+Glory was numb except for a dull, very present ache that started in
+her heart and filled her to her finger tips, and she made no answer.
+
+"Her father," Spurrier forced himself on, "is a great financier. I'm
+his man. I'm a little cog in a big machine. It's been practically
+understood that I was to become his son-in-law--his successor. I'm too
+deep in, to pull out. It's like a soldier in the thick of a campaign.
+I've got to go through."
+
+That seemed an easier and kinder thing to say than that she herself
+was not qualified for full admittance into the world of his larger
+life.
+
+"You knew this--the other day--as well as now," she reminded him,
+speaking in a stunned voice, yet without anger.
+
+"So help me God, Glory--I had forgotten--everything but--you."
+
+"And now," she half whispered in a dulled monotone, "you remember all
+the rest."
+
+She sat there with the basket on the puncheon floor at her feet, and
+her fingers twisted themselves tautly together. Her lips, parted and
+drooping, gave her delicate face a stamp of dumb suffering, and
+Spurrier's arms ached to go comfortingly around her, but he held
+himself rigid while the silence lengthened. The old clock on the
+mantel ticked clamorously and outside the calls of the bobwhites
+seemed to grow louder and nearer until, half-consciously, Spurrier
+noted their insistence.
+
+Then faintly, Glory said: "You didn't make me any promise. If you
+had--I'd give it back to you."
+
+She rose unsteadily and stood gathering her strength, and Spurrier,
+struggling against the impulse which assailed him like a madness to
+throw down the whole structure of his past and designed future and
+sweep her into his arms, stood with a metal-like rigidity of posture.
+
+Whatever his ultimate decision might be, he kept telling himself, no
+decision reached by surrender to such tidal emotion at a moment of
+equinox could be trusted. Glory herself would not trust it long.
+
+So while the room remained voiceless and the minds of the man and the
+girl were rocking in the swirl of their feelings, the physical senses
+themselves seemed, instead of inert, preternaturally keen--and
+something came to Spurrier's ears which forced its way to his
+attention through the barrier of his abstraction.
+
+Never had the calls of the quail been so frequent and incessant
+before, but this sound was different, as though some one in the nearby
+tangle had stumbled and in the effort to catch himself had caught and
+shaken the leafage.
+
+So the man went to the door and stood looking out.
+
+For a moment he remained there framed and exposed as if painted upon a
+target, and--so close that they seemed to come together--two rifles
+spoke, and two bullets came whining into the house. One imbedded
+itself with a soggy thud in the squared logs of the rear wall but one,
+more viciously directed by the chances of its course, struck full in
+the center of the glass that covered the pictured face of Vivien
+Harrison and sent the portrait clattering and shattered to the floor.
+
+In an instant Spurrier had leaped back, once more miraculously saved,
+and slammed the door, but while he was dropping the stanch bar into
+its sockets, a crash of glass and fresh roars from another direction
+told him that he was also being fired upon through the window. That
+meant that the house was surrounded.
+
+"Who are they, Jack?" gasped the girl, shocked by that unwarned
+fusillade into momentary forgetfulness of everything, except that her
+lover was beset by enemies, and the man who was reaching for his
+rifle, and whose eyes had hardened into points of flint, shook his
+head.
+
+"Whoever they are," he answered, "they want me--only me--but it would
+be death for you to go out through the door."
+
+He drew her to a shadowed corner out of line with both door and
+window, and seized her passionately in his arms.
+
+"If we--can't have each other----" he declared tensely, "I don't want
+life. You said you'd almost rather see me killed than lose me to
+another woman. Now, listen!"
+
+Holding her close to his breast, he drew a deep breath and his
+narrowed eyes softened into something like contentment.
+
+"If you tried to go out first, you'd die before they recognized you.
+They think I'm alone here and they'll shoot at the first movement. But
+if _I_ go out first and fight as long as I can then they'll be
+satisfied and the way will be clear for you."
+
+She threw back her head and her hysterical laugh was scornful.
+
+"Clear for me after _you're_ dead!" she exclaimed. "Hev ye got two
+guns? We'll both go out alive or else neither one of us."
+
+Then suddenly she drew away from him, and he saw her hurriedly
+scribbling on a scrap of paper. Outside it was quiet again.
+
+Glory folded the small sheet and took the pigeon from its basket and
+then, for the first time, Spurrier, who had forgotten the bird,
+divined her intent.
+
+He was busying himself with laying out cartridges, and preparing for a
+siege, and when he looked up again she stood with the bird against her
+cheek, just as she had held the dead quail on that first day.
+
+But before he could interfere she had drawn near the window and he saw
+that to reach the broken pane and liberate the pigeon she must, for a
+moment, stand exposed.
+
+He leaped for her with a shout of warning, but she had straightened
+and thrust the bird out, and then to the accompaniment of a horrible
+uproar of musketry that drowned his own outcry he saw her fall back.
+
+Spurrier was instantly on his knees lifting the drooping head, and as
+her lids flickered down she whispered with a pallid smile:
+
+"The bird's free. He'll carry word home--if ye kin jest hold 'em back
+fer a spell and----"
+
+
+
+
+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
+glass 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 assassins 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 flustered 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 assailants 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 assumed their victim to be in solitary possession
+and now they also assumed 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 grass 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 space.
+
+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 passionate 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 passion 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 cockloft 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 cockloft, 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 massed
+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 butternut figure showed
+stretched at length in the tall grass 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 assailants, 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 cockloft, 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 abutted on that of Dyke 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 Dyke 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.
+
+"She took a carrier pigeon over to Aunt Erie Toppit's," explained
+Dyke, "and I looked for her back before now."
+
+"I sometimes 'lows, Brother Cappeze," asserted the visitor with an
+enthusiasm of interest, "thet in these hyar days of sin when God don't
+show Hisself in signs an' miracles no more, erbout ther clostest thing
+ter a miracle we've got left, air ther fashion one of them birds kin
+go up in ther air from any place ye sots hit free at an' foller ther
+Almighty's finger pointin' home."
+
+Cappeze told him that there was just now only one pigeon in the
+dovecote, where the pair belonged, but that one he offered to show,
+and idly be led the way to the place back above the henroosts.
+
+It is, however, difficult for any man to sink his own absorptions in
+those of another, and so it fell about that on the way Cappeze stopped
+at the barn he was building and which was not yet quite complete.
+
+"Brother Hawkins," he said, "as we go along I want to show you the
+barn I've been planning for years--and at last have nearly realized."
+
+In the crude, unfinished life of the hills, lean-tos and even rock
+ledges are pressed into service as barns, but the man who has erected
+an ample and sound structure for such a purpose, stamps himself as one
+who "has things hung up," which is the mountain equivalent for
+wealth.
+
+"That barn," explained Cappeze, pausing before it in expansiveness of
+mood, "is a thing I've wanted ever since I moved over here. A good
+barn stands for a farm run without sloven make-shift--and that one
+cost me well-nigh as much money as my dwelling house. I reckon it
+sounds foolish, but to me that building means a dream come true after
+long waiting. I've skimped myself saving to build it, and it's the
+apple of my eye. If I saw harm come to it, I almost think it would
+hurt me more than to lose the house I live in."
+
+"I reckon no harm won't come ter hit, Brother Cappeze," reassured the
+other. "Yit hit mout be right foresighted to insure hit erginst fire
+an' tempest."
+
+"Of course I will--when it's finished," said the other as he led the
+way inside, and then as he played guide, he forgot the pigeons and
+swelled with the pride of the builder, while time that meant life and
+death went by, so that it was quite a space later that they emerged
+again and went on to the destination which had first called them.
+
+But having arrived there, the elder man halted and his face shadowed
+to a disturbed perplexity.
+
+"That's strange," he murmured. "One pigeon's inside--the hen--and
+there's the cock _trying_ to get in. It's the bird Glory took with
+her. It must have gotten away from her."
+
+"'Pears like ter me," volunteered the preacher, "hit's got some
+fashion of paper hitched on ter one leg. Don't ye dis'arn hit, Brother
+Cappeze?"
+
+Cappeze started as his eyes confirmed the suggestion. Hurriedly he ran
+up the ladder to the resting plank where the bird crooned and preened
+itself, plainly asking for admittance to its closed place of
+habitation. Perhaps his excited manner alarmed the pigeon, which would
+alight on Glory's shoulder without a qualm, for as the man reached out
+his hand for it, it flutteringly eluded him and took again to the
+air.
+
+But now his curiosity was aroused. Possibly Glory meant to stay the
+night at Aunt Erie's and had sent him her announcement in this form.
+He went for grain and scattered it, and after repeated efforts
+succeeded in capturing the messenger.
+
+But when he loosened the paper and read it his face went abruptly
+white and from his lips escaped an excited "Great God!"
+
+He thrust the note into the preacher's hand and rushed indoors,
+emerging after a few minutes with eyes wildly lit and a rifle in his
+hands. Bud Hawkins understood, for he had read in the interval the
+scribbled words:
+
+  Stopped at Jack Spurrier's house. It's surrounded. Men are
+  shooting at us on all sides.
+
+Dyke Cappeze was the one man to whom Spurrier had confided both the
+circumstances of his mysterious waylaying and the matter of the
+rattlesnakes and now the father was not discounting the peril into
+which his daughter had strayed.
+
+"I'm going on ahead, Brother Hawkins," he announced. "I want you to
+send out a general alarm and to follow me with all the armed men you
+can round up." There he halted in momentary bewilderment. In that
+sparsely peopled territory the hurried mustering of an adequate force
+on such short order was in itself almost an impossibility. There were
+no means of communication. Abruptly, the old lawyer wheeled and
+pointed a thin and quivering index finger toward his beloved barn.
+
+"There's just one way," he declared with stoical directness. "All my
+neighbors will come to fight a fire. I've got to set my own barn to
+get them here!"
+
+Five minutes later the structure sent up its black massed summons of
+smoke, shot with vermilion, as the shingles snapped and showed
+glowingly against the black background of vapor, even in the
+brightness of the afternoon.
+
+Dyke Cappeze himself was on his way, and the preacher remaining behind
+was meeting and dispatching each hurried arrival. As he did so his
+voice leaped as it sometimes leaped in the zealot's fervor of
+exhortation, and he sent the men out into the fight with rifle and
+shotgun as trenchantly as he expounded peace from the pulpit.
+
+When a dozen men had ridden away, scattering gravel from galloping
+hoofs, he rode behind the saddle cantle of the last, for it was not
+his doctrine to hold his hand when he sent others into battle. Also he
+might be needed there as a minister, a doctor, or both.
+
+As sunset began to wane to twilight the attackers who lay circled
+about Spurrier's cabin found themselves growing restive.
+
+And inside John Spurrier was a man reanimated by the faint signs of
+life which he had discovered in Glory.
+
+A pulse still fluttered in her heart, but it throbbed flickeringly and
+its life spark was pallid. Every moment this malevolent pack held its
+cordon close was as surely a moment of strangling her faint chance as
+if their fingers had been physically gripping her soft throat. And he
+could only kneel futilely beside her and wait!
+
+From his loopholes upstairs he saw once more two hats and gave their
+wearers shot for shot, but when they kept their rifles popping he
+suspected their purpose and dashed across the floor in time to send
+three rapidly successive bullets into a little group that had detached
+itself from the timber on that side and was creeping toward the house.
+One crawling body collapsed and lay sprawling without motion. Two
+others ran back crouching low and were lost to sight.
+
+So he swung pendulumlike from side to side, firing and changing base,
+and when his second turn brought him to the window through which he
+had shot his man, he saw that the body had already been removed from
+sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It was a hopeless game and a grim one. He could not cover all the
+defenses long in single-handed effort, and the best he could hope for
+was to die in ample companionship. Now, two men had reached
+broad-girthed oaks, halfway between thicket and house. There they were
+safe for the next rush.
+
+So this was the end of the matter! Spurrier reloaded his rifle and
+went down the ladder. Hastily he carried Glory into the room at the
+back and overturned his heavy table to serve as a final barricade. He
+elected to die here when they swarmed the door from which he could no
+longer keep them, crowning the battle with a finale of punishment as
+they crowded through the breach.
+
+But the minutes dragged with irksome tension. He was keyed up now,
+wire-tight, for the finish, and yet silence fell again and denied him
+the relief of action. To Spurrier it was like a long and cruel delay
+imposed upon a man standing blindfolded and noosed on the scaffold
+trap. Then the quiet was ripped with a totally wasteful fusillade, as
+though every attacker outside were pumping his gun in a contest of
+speed rather than effect.
+
+Spurrier smiled grimly. Let them burn their powder--he would have his
+till they massed in front of his muzzle and the barrier fell.
+
+"When the barrier fell!" Crouched there behind the table where he
+meant to sell his life in that brief space that seemed long, the words
+brought with them the memory of one of the few poems that had ever
+meant much to him--and while he awaited death his mind seized upon the
+lines--a funeral address in soliloquy!
+
+  "For the journey is done and the summit attained,
+    And the barriers fall----"
+
+He strained his ears to his listening and then through his head ran
+other verses:
+
+  "I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+    The best and the last!
+  I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore
+    And bade me creep past----"
+
+Was that a battering-ram against timber that he heard? He fingered the
+trigger.
+
+  "Then a light, then thy breast,
+    O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
+  And with God be the rest!"
+
+But the door did not fall. The rifle cracking became interspersed with
+alarmed outcries of warning and confusion. He could even hear the
+brush torn with the hurried tramping of running feet, and then the
+pandemonium abruptly stopped dead, and after a long period of inheld
+breath there followed a loud rapping on the door and a voice of
+agonized anxiety shouted:
+
+"In God's name open if ye're still alive. It's Cappeze--and friends!"
+
+The psychological effect of that recognized voice upon John
+Spurrier, and of its incredible meaning, was strange to the point
+of grotesquerie. Its sound carried a complete reversal of everything
+to which his mind had been focussed with a tensity which had keyed
+itself to the acceptance of a violent death, and with the reversal
+came reaction. There was no interim of preparation for the altered
+aspect of affairs. It was precisely as though a runaway train
+furiously speeding to the overhang of an unbridged chasm had
+suddenly begun dashing in the contrary direction with no shade of
+lessening velocity, and no grinding of breaks to a halt between time.
+
+Spurrier had taken no thought of physical strain. He had not known
+that he was wearied with nerve wrack and pell-mell dashing from firing
+point to firing point. He knew nothing of the picture he made with
+clothing torn from his scrambling rushes up-ladder and down-ladder and
+his crouching and shifting among the rough nail-studded spaces of the
+cockloft. Of the face, sweat-reeking and dust-smeared, he had no
+realization, but when that voice called out and he knew that rescuers
+were clamoring where assassins had laid siege, the stout knees under
+him buckled weakly, and the fingers that had fitted his rifle as
+steadily as part of its own metallic mechanism became so inert that
+they could scarcely maintain their grip upon the weapon.
+
+John Spurrier, emotionally stirred and agitated as he had never been
+in battle, because of the limp figure that lay under that roof, stood
+gulping and struggling for a lost voice with which to give back a
+reply. He rocked on his feet and then, like a drunken man went slowly
+and unsteadily forward to lift the bar of the door.
+
+When he had thrown it wide the rush of anxious men halted, backing up
+instinctively, as their eyes were confused by the inner murk and their
+nostrils assailed by the acrid stench of nitrate, from the vapors of
+burnt powder that hung stiflingly between the walls and ceiling
+rafters. Old Cappeze was at their front and when he saw before him the
+battle begrimed and drawn visage of the man, he looked wildly beyond
+it for the other face that he did not see, and his voice broke and
+rose in a high, thin note that was almost falsetto as he demanded:
+"Where is she? Where's Glory?"
+
+John Spurrier sought to speak but the best he could do was to indicate
+with a gesture half appealing and half despairing to the door of the
+other room, where she lay on his army cot. The father crossed its
+threshold ahead of him and dropped to his knees there with agonized
+eyes, and Bud Hawkins, the preacher and physician, not sure yet in
+which capacity he must act, was bent at his shoulder, while Spurrier
+exhorted him with a recovered but tortured voice, "In God's name, make
+haste. There's only a spark of life left."
+
+From the crowd which had followed and stood massed about the door came
+a low but unmistakable smother of fury, as they saw the unmoving
+figure of the girl, and those at the edge wheeled and ran outward
+again with the summary resoluteness that one sees in hounds cast off
+at the start of the chase.
+
+Upon those who remained Brother Hawkins wheeled and swept out his
+hands in a gesture of imperative dismissal.
+
+"Leave us alone, men," he commanded. "I needs ter work alone
+hyar--with ther holp of Almighty God."
+
+But he worked kneeling, tearing away the clothing over the wounded
+breast, and while he did so he prayed with a fervor that was fiercely
+elemental, yet abating no whit of his doctor's efficiency with his
+surprisingly deft hands, while his lips and heart were those of the
+religionist.
+
+"Almighty Father in Heaven," he pleaded, "spare this hyar child of
+Thine ef so be Thy wisdom suffers hit."
+
+There he broke off and as though a different man were speaking, shot
+over his shoulder the curt command: "Fotch me water speedily--Because
+Almighty Father, she's done fell a victim of evil men thet fears Thee
+not in th'ar hearts!"
+
+After a little Brother Hawkins dismissed even the father and Spurrier
+from the room and worked on alone, the voice of his praying sounding
+over his activity.
+
+Ten minutes later, in a crowded room, Bud Hawkins, preacher and
+physician, laid one hand on Spurrier's shoulder and the other on
+Cappeze's.
+
+"Men," he said in a hushed voice, "I fears me ther shot thet hit her
+was a deadener. Yit I kain't quite fathom hit nuther. She's back in
+her rightful senses ergin--but she don't seem ter _want_ to live,
+somehow. She won't put for'ard no effort."
+
+Spurrier wheeled to face them both and his voice came with tense,
+gasping earnestness.
+
+"Before she dies, Brother Hawkins," he pleaded, "you're a minister of
+the gospel--I want you to marry us." He wheeled then on the rescuers,
+who stood breathing heavily from exertion and fight.
+
+"Two of you men stay here as wedding witnesses," he commanded. "One of
+you ride hell-for-leather to the nearest telephone and call up
+Lexington. Have a man start with bloodhounds on a special train. The
+rest of you get into the timber and finecomb it for some scrap of
+cloth--or anything that will give the dogs a chance when they get
+here."
+
+Once more Spurrier was the officer in command, and snappily his
+hearers sprang to obedience, but when the place had almost emptied,
+the three turned and went into the back room, and, kneeling there
+beside the wounded girl, Spurrier whispered:
+
+"Dearest, the preacher has come--to wed us."
+
+Glory's eyes with their deeps of color were startlingly vivid as they
+looked out of the pallid face upon which a little while ago John
+Spurrier had believed the white stamp of death to be fixed.
+
+The features themselves, except the eyes, seemed to have shrunken from
+weakness into wistful smallness, and if the girl had returned, in the
+phrases of the preacher, "to her rightful senses" it had been as one
+coming out of a dream who realizes that she wakes to heartburnings
+which death had promised to smooth away.
+
+Now, as the man stretched out his hand to take hers and drew a ring
+from his own little finger, the violet eyes on the rough pillow became
+transfigured with a luminous and incredulous happiness. But at once
+they clouded again with gravity and pain.
+
+Spurrier was offering to marry her out of pity and gratitude. He was
+seeking to pay a debt, and his authoritative words were spoken from
+his conscience and not from his heart.
+
+So the lips stirred in an effort to speak, failed in that and drooped,
+and weakly but with determination Glory shook her head. She had been
+willing to die for him. She could not argue with him, but neither
+would she accept the perfunctory amends that he now came proffering.
+
+Spurrier rose, pale, and with a tremor of voice as he said to the
+others: "Please leave us alone--for a few moments." Then when no one
+was left in the room but the girl on the bed and the man on his knees
+beside it, he bent forward until his eyes were close to hers and his
+words came with a still intensity.
+
+"Glory, dearest, though I don't deserve it, you've confessed that you
+love me. Now I claim the life you were willing to lay down for me--and
+you can't refuse."
+
+There was wistfulness in her smile, but through her feebleness her
+resolution stood fast and the movement of her head was meant for a
+shake of refusal.
+
+"But why, dear," he argued desperately, "why do you deny me when we
+know there's only one wish in both our hearts?"
+
+His hands had stolen over one of hers and her weak fingers stirred
+caressingly against his own. Her lips stirred too, without sound, then
+she lay in a deathlike quiet for a moment or two summoning strength
+for an effort at speech, and he, bending close, caught the ghost of a
+whisper.
+
+"I don't seek payment ... fer what I done." A gasp caught her breath
+and silenced her for a little but she overcame it and finished almost
+inaudibly. "It was ... a free-will gift."
+
+John Spurrier rose and sat on the side of the bed. His voice was
+electrified by the thrill of his feeling; a feeling purged of all
+artificiality by the rough shoulder touch of death.
+
+"I'm asking another gift, now, Glory; the greatest gift of all. I'm
+asking yourself. Don't try to talk--only listen to me because I need
+you desperately. Except for you they would have killed me to-day--but
+my life's not worth saving if I lose you after all. I'm two men,
+dearest, rolled into one--and one of those men perhaps doesn't deserve
+much consideration, but there's some good in the other and that good
+can't prevail without you any more than a plant can grow without
+sun."
+
+With full realization, he was pitching his whole argument to the note
+of his own selfish needs and wishes, and yet he was guided by a sure
+insight into her heart. Brother Hawkins had said she had no wish to
+live and would make no fight, and he knew that he might plead
+endlessly and in vain unless he overcame her belief that he was
+actuated merely by pity for her. If she could be convinced that it was
+genuinely he who needed her more than she needed him, her woman
+quality of enveloping in supporting love the man who leaned on her,
+would bring consent.
+
+"I sought to strengthen myself for success in life," he went on, "by
+strangling out every human emotion that stood in the way of material
+results. I serve men who sneer at everything on God's earth except
+the practical, and I had come to the point where I let those men
+shape me and govern even my character."
+
+She had been listening with lowered lids and as he paused, she raised
+them and smiled wanly, yet without any sign of yielding to his
+supplications.
+
+"The picture that you saw," he swept on torrentially, "was that of a
+girl whose father employs me. He's a leader in big affairs and to be
+his son-in-law meant, in a business sense, to be raised to royalty.
+Vivien is a splendid woman and yet I doubt if either of us has----" he
+fumbled a bit for his next words and then floundered on with
+self-conscious awkwardness, "has thought of the other with real
+sentiment. Until now, I haven't known what real sentiment meant. Until
+now I haven't appreciated the true values. I discovered them out there
+in the road when you came into my arms--and into my heart. From now on
+my arms will always ache for you--and my heart will be empty without
+you.'"
+
+"But--," Glory's eyes were deeper than ever as she whispered
+laboriously, "but if you're plighted to her----"
+
+"I'm not," he protested hotly. "There is no engagement except a sort
+of understanding with her father: a sort of condescending and tacit
+willingness on his part to let his successor be his son-in-law as
+well."
+
+She lay for a space with the heavy masses of her hair on the rough
+pillow framing the pale and exquisite oval of her face, and her vivid
+eyes troubled with the longing to be convinced. Then her lips shaped
+themselves in a rather pitiful smile that lifted them only at one
+corner.
+
+"Maybe ye don't ... know it Jack," she murmured, "but ye're jest
+seekin' ... ter let me ... die ... easy in my mind ... and happy."
+
+"Before God I am _not_," he vehemently contradicted her. "I'm not
+trying to give but to take. Whether you get well or not, Glory, I want
+to fight for your life and your love. We've faced death, together.
+We've seen things nakedly--together. For neither of us can there ever
+be any true life--except together."
+
+His breath was coming with the swift intensity that was almost a sob
+and, in the eyes that bent over her, Glory read the hunger that could
+not be counterfeited.
+
+"Anyhow," she faltered, "we've had--this minute."
+
+Spurrier rose at last and called the others back. He himself did not
+know when once more he took her hand and the preacher stood over them,
+whether her responses to the services would be affirmative or
+negative.
+
+To Spurrier marriage had always seemed an opportunity. It was a
+thing in which an ambitious man could no more afford yielding to
+uncalculating impulses than in the forming of a major business
+connection. Marriage must carry a man upward toward the peak of his
+destiny, and his wife must bring as her dowry, social reënforcements
+and distinction.
+
+Now, in the darkening room of a log house, with figures clad in
+patches and hodden-gray, he held the hand that was too weak to
+close responsively upon his own, and listened to the words of a
+shaggy-headed preacher, whose beard was a stubble and whose lips moved
+over yellow and fanglike teeth.
+
+Confusedly he heard the questions and his own firm responses to the
+simple service of marriage as rendered by the backwoods preacher, then
+his heart seemed to stop and stand as the words were uttered to which
+Glory must make her answer.
+
+"Will you, Glory, have this man, John Spurrier----"
+
+What would her answer be--assent or negation?
+
+The pause seemed to last interminably as he bent with supplication in
+his glance over her, and the breath came from his lips with an
+unconscious sibilance, like escaping steam from a strained boiler,
+when at last the head on the pillow gave the ghost of a nod.
+
+Even at that moment there lurked in the back of his mind, though not
+admitted as important, the ghost of realization that he was doing
+precisely the sort of thing which, in his own world, would not only
+unclass him but make him appear ludicrous as well.
+
+As for that world of lifted eye-brows he felt just now only a
+withering contempt and a scalding hatred.
+
+Almost as soon as the simple ceremony ended, Glory sank again into
+unconsciousness, and the father and preacher, sitting silent in the
+next room, were unable to forget that though there had been a wedding,
+they were also awaiting the coming of death.
+
+The night fell with the soft brightness of moon and stars, and through
+the tangled woods the searchers were following hard on the flight of
+the assailants--doggedly and grimly, with the burning indignation of
+men bent on vindicating the good name of their people and community.
+Yet, so far, the fugitive squad had succeeded not only in eluding
+capture or recognition, but also in carrying with them their wounded.
+
+From Lexington, where Spurrier had formed strong connections, a deputy
+sheriff was riding in a caboose behind a special engine as fast as the
+roadbeds would permit. The smokestack trailed a flat line of hurrying
+smoke and the whistle screamed startlingly through the night. At the
+officer's knees, gazing up at him out of gentle eyes that belied their
+profession, crouched two tawny dogs with long ears--the bloodhounds
+that were to start from the cabin and give voice in the laurel.
+
+Waiting for them was a torn scrap of blue denim such as rough overalls
+are made of. It had been found in a brier patch where some fleeing
+wearer had snarled himself.
+
+Yet two days later the deputy returned from his quest in the timber,
+shaking his head.
+
+"I'm sorry," he reported. "I've done my best, but it's not been good
+enough."
+
+"What's the trouble?" inquired Cappeze shortly, and the officer
+answered regretfully:
+
+"This country is zigzagged and criss-crossed with watercourses--and
+water throws the dogs off. The fugitives probably made their way by
+wading wherever they could. The longest run we made was up toward Wolf
+Pen Branch."
+
+That was the direction, Spurrier silently reflected, of Sim Colby's
+house, but he made no comment.
+
+Brother Hawkins, who was leaving that afternoon, laid a kindly hand on
+Spurrier's shoulder.
+
+"Thet's bad news," he said. "But I kin give ye better. I kin almost
+give ye my gorrantee thet ther gal's goin' ter come through. Hit's
+_wantin'_ ter live thet does hit."
+
+Spurrier's eyes brightened out of the misery that had dulled them, and
+as to the failure of the chase he reassured himself with the thought
+that the dogs had started toward Sim Colby's house, and that he
+himself could finish what they had begun.
+
+Those tawny beasts had coursed at the behest of a master who was bound
+by the limitations of the law, but he, John Spurrier, was his own
+master and could deal less formally and more condignly with an enemy
+to whom suspicion pointed--and there was time enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+And yet on that day when the bobwhites had sounded and the blow had
+fallen, Sim Colby was nowhere near the opportunity hound's house. He
+sat tippling in a mining town two days' journey away, and he had no
+knowledge of what went on at home. His companion was ex-Private
+Severance--once his comrade in arms.
+
+The town was one of those places which discredit the march of industry
+by the mongrelized character of its outposts. The wild aloofness of
+the hills and valleys was marred there by the shacks of the camp and
+its sky soiled by a black reek of coke furnaces.
+
+Filth physical and moral brooded along the unkempt streets where the
+foul buzz of swarming flies sounded over refuse piles, and that spirit
+of degradation lay no less upon the unclean tavern, where the two men
+who had once worn the uniform sat with a bottle of cheap whisky
+between them.
+
+Colby, who had need to maintain his reputation for probity at home,
+made an occasional pilgrimage hither to foregather with his former
+comrade and loosen the galling rein of restraint. Just about the time
+when the attack on Spurrier's house had begun, he had leaned forward
+with his elbows on the table, his face heavy and his eyes inflamed,
+pursuing some topic of conversation which had already gained headway.
+
+"These hyar fellers that seeks ter git rid of Spurrier," he confided,
+"kinderly hinted 'round thet they'd like ter git me ter do ther job
+for 'em, but I pretended like I didn't onderstand what they war
+drivin' at, no fashion at all."
+
+"Why didn't ye hearken ter 'em?" questioned Severance practically.
+"Hit hain't every day a man kin git paid fer doin' what he seeks ter
+do on his own hook."
+
+But Colby grinned with a crafty gleam in his eye and poured another
+drink.
+
+"What fer would I risk ther penitenshery ter do a killin' fer them
+fellers when, ef I jest sets still on my hunkers they'll do _mine_ fer
+me," he countered.
+
+For a time after that whatever enemies Spurrier had seemed to have
+lost their spirit of eagerness. One might have presumed that to the
+rule of amity which apparently surrounded him, there was no
+exception--and so the mystery remained unsolved. Even blind Joe Givins
+made a detour in a journey to stop at Spurrier's house and sing a
+ballad of his own composition anent the mysterious siege and to
+express his indignation at the "pizen meanness" of men who would
+father and carry forward such infamies.
+
+And Glory, who had penetrated so deeply into the shadow that life had
+seemed ended for her, was recovering. Into her pale cheeks came a new
+blossoming and into the smile of her lips and eyes a new light that
+was serene and triumphant. She had been too happy to die.
+
+While the summer waned and the beauties of autumn began to kindle, the
+young wife grew strong, and her husband, seemingly, had nothing to do
+except to wander about the hills with her and discover in her new
+charms. Neighborly saws and hammers were ringing now as his place was
+transformed from its simple condition to the "hugest log house on
+seven creeks."
+
+In some respects he wished that his factitious indolence were real,
+for he felt no pride in the occult fashion in which he was directing
+the activities of his henchmen. And yet a few months ago this progress
+would have been food for satisfaction--almost triumph.
+
+His plans, as outlined to Martin Harrison were by no means at a
+standstill. They were going forward with an adroit drawing in and
+knitting together of scattered strands, and the warp and woof of this
+weaving were coming into definite order and pattern.
+
+The dual necessity was: first to slip through a legislature which was
+supposedly under the domination of American Oil and Gas, a charter
+which should wrest from that concern the sweet fruits of monopoly, and
+secondly, to secure at paltry prices the land options that would give
+the prospective pipe line its right of way.
+
+As this campaign had been originally mapped and devised it had not
+been simple, but now it was complicated by a new and difficult
+element. In those first dreams of conquest the native had been no more
+considered than the red Indian was considered in the minds of the new
+world settlers. Spurrier himself had brushed lightly aside this aspect
+of the affair. Every game has and must have its "suckers." And their
+sorry destiny it is to be despoiled. Now the very term that he had
+used in his thoughts, brought with it an amendment. It is not every
+game that must have its suckers but every bunco game.
+
+Martin Harrison did not know it, but his lieutenant had redrawn his
+plans, and redrawn them in a fashion which the chief would have
+regarded as insubordinate, impractical and sentimental.
+
+Spurrier intended that when the smoke cleared from the field upon
+which the forces of Harrison and those of Trabue had been embattled,
+the Harrison banners should be victoriously afloat and the Trabue
+standards dust trailed. But also he intended that the native
+land-holders, upon whom both combatants had looked as mere unfortunate
+onlookers raked by the cross fire of opposing artillery, should emerge
+as real and substantial gainers.
+
+Of late the man had not escaped the penalty of one who faces
+responsibility and wields power. He had abandoned as puerile his first
+impulse, after his marriage, to throw up his whole stewardship to the
+Wall Street masters. That would have amounted only to an ostentation
+of virtue which would have surrendered the situation into the
+merciless hands of A. O. and G., and would have left the mountain folk
+unprotected.
+
+Yet he could not escape the realization that he would stand with all
+the seeming of a traitor and a plunderer to any of his simple friends
+who learned of his activities--for as yet he could confide to no one
+the plans he was maturing.
+
+It was when the refurnished and enlarged place had been completed that
+the neighbors came from valley, slope, and cove to give their blessing
+at the housewarming which was also, belatedly, the "infaring."
+
+That homely, pioneer observance with which the groom brings home his
+bride, had not been possible after the wedding, but now Aunt Erie
+Toppitt had come over and prepared entertainment on a lavish if homely
+scale since Glory was not yet well.
+
+To the husband as he stood greeting the guests who arrived in jeans
+and hodden-gray, in bright shawls and calicoes, came the feeling of
+contrast and unreality, as though this were all part of some play
+quaintly and exaggeratedly staged to reflect a medieval period. In the
+drawing rooms of Martin Harrison and his confreres he had moved
+through a social atmosphere, quiet, contained, and reflecting such a
+life as the dramatist uses for background in a comedy of manners.
+Closing his eyes now he could see himself as he had been when,
+starting out for such an entertainment, he had paused before the
+cheval glass in his club bedroom, adding a straightening touch to his
+white tie, adjusting the set of his waistcoat and casting a critical
+eye over the impeccable black and white of his evening dress. Here,
+flannel shirted and booted, corduroy breeched and tanned brown, he
+stood by the door watching the arrival of guests who seemed to have
+stepped out of pioneer America or Elizabethan England. There were
+women riding mules or tramping long roads on foot and trailing
+processions of children who could not be left at home; men feeling
+overdressed and uncomfortable because they had donned coats and
+brushed their hats; even wagons plodding slowly behind yokes of oxen
+and one man riding a steer in lieu of a horse!
+
+So they came to give Godspeed to his marriage--and they were the only
+people on God's green earth who thought of him in any terms of regard
+save that regard which sprung from self-interest in his ability to
+serve beyond others!
+
+Men who were blood enemies met here as friends, because his roof
+covered a zone of common friendship and under its protection their
+hatreds could no more intrude on such a day than could pursuit in the
+Middle Ages follow beyond the sanctuary gates of a cathedral. Inside
+sounded the minors of the native fiddlers and the scrape of feet
+"running the sets" of quaint square dances.
+
+The labors of preparation had been onerous. Aunt Erie stood at the
+open door constituting, with Spurrier and his wife, a "receiving line"
+of three, and her wrinkled old face bore an affectation of morose
+exhaustion as to each guest she made the same declaration:
+
+"I hopes an' prays ye all enjoys this hyar party--Gawd knows _my_
+back's broke."
+
+But Spurrier had not in his letters to Harrison mentioned his
+marriage, and to Vivien he had not written at all. He thought they
+would hardly understand, and he preferred to make his announcement
+when he stood face to face with them, relying on the force of his own
+personality to challenge any criticism and proclaim his own
+independence of action. Just now there was no virtue in needlessly
+antagonizing his chief.
+
+Among the guests who came to that housewarming was one chance visitor
+who was not expected. He came because the people under whose roof he
+was being sheltered, had "fetched him along," and he was Wharton, the
+man whose purpose hereabouts had set gossip winging aforetime.
+
+It seemed to some of the local visitors that despite his entire
+courtesy, Spurrier did not evince any profound liking for this other
+"furriner," and since they had come to accept their host as a
+trustworthy oracle, they took the tip and were prepared to dislike
+Wharton, too.
+
+That evening, while blind Joe Givins fiddled, and dancers "ran their
+sets" on the smooth, new floor, a group of men gathered on the porch
+outside and smoked. Among them for a time were both Spurrier and
+Wharton.
+
+The latter raised something of a laugh when he confidently predicted
+that the oil prosperity, for all its former collapse and present
+paralysis, was not permanently dead.
+
+"The world needs oil and there's oil here," he declared with unctuous
+conviction. "Men who are willing to gamble on that proposition will
+win out in the end."
+
+"Stranger," responded Uncle Jimmy Litchfield, taking his pipestem from
+between his teeth and spitting contemptuously at the earth, "ye sees,
+settin' right hyar before ye a man that 'lowed he was a millionaire
+one time, 'count of this hyar same oil ye're discoursin' so hopeful
+about. Thet man's me. I'd been dirt-pore all my days, oftentimes
+hurtin' fer ther plum' needcessities of life. I'm mighty nigh thet
+pore still."
+
+"Did you strike oil in the boom days?" demanded Wharton as he bent
+eagerly forward.
+
+"I owned me a farm, them days, on t'other side ther mounting," went on
+the narrator, "an' them oil men came along an' wanted ter buy ther
+rights offen me."
+
+"Did you sell?"
+
+Uncle Billy chuckled. "They up an' offered me a royalty of one-eighth
+of ther whole production. They proved hit up ter me by 'rithmetic an'
+algebry how hit would make me rich over an' above all avarice--but I
+said no, I wouldn't take no eighth. I stud out fer a _sixteenth_ by
+crickety!"
+
+Both Spurrier and Wharton smothered their laughter as the latter
+inquired gravely: "Did they play one of them royalty games."
+
+"They done better'n thet. They said, 'We'll give ye two sixteenths,'
+an' thet's when I 'lowed I was es good es a Pierpont Morgan. I
+wouldn't nuver hurt fer no needcessity no more."
+
+"And what was the outcome of it all?" asked Wharton.
+
+Uncle Jimmy's face darkened. "The come-uppance of ther whole blame
+business war thet a lot of pore devils what hed done been content with
+poverty found hit twice as hard ter go on bein' pore because they'd
+got to entertainin' crazy dreams ther same as me. Any man thet talks
+oil ter me now's got ter buy outright an' pay me spot cash. I ain't
+playin' no more of them royalty games."
+
+"That's fair enough," said Wharton. "But it seems to me that you
+people are taking the wrong tack. Because the boom collapsed once, you
+are shutting the door against the possibility of its coming again--and
+it's going to come again."
+
+"A man kin git stung once," volunteered another native, "an' hit's
+jest tough luck or bewitchment. Ef he gits stung twicet on ther same
+trumpery, he ain't no more then a plum', daft fool."
+
+Wharton lighted a fresh cigar and turned toward Spurrier.
+
+"Mr. Spurrier here, is a man you all know and trust----" he hazarded.
+"I understand that he's seen oil fields in the West and Mexico. I
+wonder what he thinks about it all."
+
+On the dark porch Spurrier looked at his visitor for a few minutes in
+silence and his first reply was a quiet question.
+
+"Did I tell you I'd seen oil fields in operation?" he inquired, and
+Wharton stammered a little.
+
+"I was under that impression," he said. "Possibly I am wrong."
+
+"No--you are right enough," answered the other evenly. "I just didn't
+remember mentioning it. What is your question exactly?"
+
+"If I have a hunch that oil holds a future here and am willing to back
+that hunch, don't you think I am acting wisely to do it?"
+
+The host sat silent while he seemed to weigh the question with
+judicial deliberation, and during the pause he realized that the
+little group of men were waiting intently for his utterance as for the
+voice of the Delphic oracle.
+
+"I have seen oil operation and oil development," he said at last. "I
+have lived here for some time and know the history of the former boom,
+but I have not bought a foot of ground. That ought to make my opinion
+clear."
+
+"Then you don't believe in the future?"
+
+"Don't you think, Mr. Wharton," inquired Spurrier coolly and, his
+listeners thought, with a shaded note of contempt, "that what I've
+already said, answers your question? If I _did_ believe in it,
+wouldn't I be likely to seek investment at the present stage of land
+prices?"
+
+John Spurrier was glad that it was dark out there. He knew that the
+mountain men awaited his judgment as something carrying the sanction
+of finality and he felt like a Judas. He himself knew that back of his
+seeming betrayal was a determination to safeguard their rights, but
+the whole game of maneuvering and dissembling was as impossible to
+play proudly as it would have been to undertake the duties of a spy.
+
+"I'll admit," observed Wharton modestly, "that if I lost some money,
+it wouldn't break me--and I'm a stubborn man when I get a hunch. Well,
+I'm going in to watch them dance."
+
+He rose and went indoors and Uncle Jimmy, when he put a question
+acted, in effect, as spokesman for them all.
+
+"What does ye think of thet feller, Mr. Spurrier?"
+
+"I think," said the opportunity hound crisply, "that he's a fool, and
+Scripture says, 'a fool and his money are soon parted.'"
+
+"An' ef he seeks ter buy?"
+
+"Sell--by all means--if the price is right!"
+
+The next day when they were alone Glory said:
+
+"I don't like that man Wharton. He's got sneaky eyes."
+
+Her husband laughed. "I can't say that he struck me pleasantly," he
+admitted. "We talked oil out on the porch. He was the optimist and I
+the pessimist."
+
+And it was to happen that the first rift in Glory's lute of happiness
+was to come out of Wharton's agency, though she did not recognize it
+as his.
+
+For in these times, despite a happiness that made her sing through the
+days, something like the panic of stage fright was settling over her:
+a thing yet of the future, but some day to be faced.
+
+So long as life ran quietly, like the shaded streams that went down
+until they made the rivers of the greater and outer world, she was
+confident mistress of her life and had no forebodings. Spurrier
+loved her and she worshiped him--but out there beyond the ridges,
+the activities of his larger life were calling--or would call. Then
+they must leave here and she began to dread the thousand little
+mistakes and the humiliations that might come to him because of her
+unfamiliarity with that life. Since the bearings of achievement are
+delicate, she even feared that she might throw out of gear and
+poise the whole machinery of his success, and in secret Glory was
+poring over absurd books on etiquette and deportment. That these
+stereotyped instructions would only hamper her own naturally plastic
+spirit, she did not know when she read and reread chapters headed,
+"How to Enter a Drawing-room" and "Hints upon Refined Conversation."
+
+That Spurrier would suggest going without her to any field into which
+his work called him, she did not dream. That he would leave her to
+wait for him here, as the companion only of his backwoods hours, her
+pride never contemplated.
+
+Yet in the fall Spurrier did just that thing, and to the letter which
+induced its doing was signed the name of George Wharton. The latter
+wrote:
+
+  "We must begin to lay out lines for work with the next legislature.
+  There are people in Louisville and Lexington whom you should meet
+  and talk with. I think you had better make your headquarters at
+  one of the Louisville clubs, and when you get here I will put you
+  in touch with the proper bearings."
+
+That much might have puzzled any of the mountaineers who had taken
+their own cues from Spurrier's thinly concealed manner of hostility to
+Wharton, but the last part of the letter would have explained that,
+too:
+
+  "The little game down at your house was nothing short of masterly.
+  Your acting was superb, and though you were the star, I think I
+  may claim to have played up to you well. The device of gaining
+  their confidence so that, of their own accord, they turned to you
+  for counsel--and then seeming to gloom on me when I talked oil,
+  was pretty subtle. I could openly preach buying and instead of
+  turning away from me in suspicion, they fell on me for a sucker.
+  I--and others acting for me--have, as the result, secured a good
+  part of the options we need--and you appear to be of all men, the
+  least interested."
+
+Spurrier read the thing twice, then crushed it savagely in his
+clenched hand and cursed under his breath. "The damned jackals," he
+muttered. "That's the pack I'm running with--or rather I'm running
+with them and against them at once."
+
+But when Spurrier had kissed Glory good-by and she had waved a smiling
+farewell, she turned back into her house and covered her face with her
+hands.
+
+"I don't want to believe it," she declared. "I won't believe it--but
+it looks like he's ashamed to take me with him. Not that I blame
+him--only--only I've got to make myself over. He's _got_ to be proud
+of me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+When he came back for a short stay in the hills between periods of
+quiet but strenuous affairs in Louisville, he brought gifts that
+delighted Glory and a devotion that made her forget her misgivings.
+She had him back, and he found the house expressing in many small ways
+a taste and discrimination which brought to him a flush of pleasurable
+surprise. Glory knew the menace that hung over Spurrier. She knew of
+the malevolent and elusive enmities to which her own life had so
+nearly become forfeit, and the old terror of the mountain woman for
+her man became the cross that she must carry with her. Because of her
+militant father's antagonisms she had been inured from childhood to
+the taut moment of suspense that came with every voice raised at the
+gate and every knock sounding on the door.
+
+There was an element of possible threat in each arrival. She had
+become, as one has need to be, under such circumstances, somewhat
+fatalistic as to the old dangers. Now that the fear embraced her
+husband as well as her father, the philosophy which she had cultivated
+failed her. Yet their happiness was so strong that it threw off these
+things and drew upon the treasury of the present.
+
+Spurrier, who talked little of his own dangers, was far from
+forgetting. His suspicion of Colby strengthened, and he looked forward
+to the day as inevitable when there must be a reckoning between them,
+which would not be a final reckoning unless one of them died, and for
+that encounter he went grimly prepared.
+
+One thing puzzled him. Of Sim Colby he had thought as a somewhat
+solitary character, whose relations with his neighbors, though
+amicable, were yet rather detached. He had seemed to have few
+intimates, yet if he had led this attack, he was palpably able to
+muster at his back a considerable force of men for a desperate
+project. That meant that the infection of hatred against himself had
+spread from a single enmity to the number, at least, of the men who
+had joined in the battle, and it had been a battle in which more than
+one had fallen. Before, he had recognized a single enemy. Henceforth
+he must acknowledge plural enmities.
+
+And along that line of reasoning the next step followed logically.
+
+Who would suggest himself as so natural a leader for a murder
+enterprise as Sam Mosebury, whose record was established in such
+matters? Certainly if this suspicion were well-founded it would be
+safest to know.
+
+Spurrier, despite all he had heard of Sam Mosebury, was reluctant to
+entertain the thought. The man might be, as Cappeze painted him, the
+head and front of an infamously vicious system, yet there was
+something engaging and likable about him, which made it hard to
+believe that for hire or any motive not nearly personal he would have
+conspired to do murder.
+
+So among the many claims upon Spurrier's attention was the effort to
+find out where Sam Mosebury stood, and it was while he was thinking
+of that problem that he encountered the object of his thoughts in
+person. The spot was one distant from his own house. Indeed it was
+near Colby's cabin--still apparently empty--that the meeting took
+place.
+
+The opportunity hound had made several trips over there of late,
+because he required to know something of Colby's activities, and, of
+course, when he came he observed a surreptitious caution which sought
+to guard against any hint leaking through to Colby of his own
+surveillance. He firmly believed that Sim was "hiding out," and that
+despite the seeming emptiness of his habitation he was not far away.
+
+So it was Spurrier, the law-abiding man, who was skulking in the
+laurel while the notorious Mosebury walked the highway "upstanding"
+and openly--and the man in the thicket stooped low to escape
+discovery. But his foot slipped in the tangle and a rotting branch
+cracked under it, giving out a sound which brought Mosebury to an
+abrupt halt with his head warily raised and his rifle poised. He, too,
+had enemies and must walk in caution.
+
+There had been times when Sam's life had hinged on just such trivial
+things as the snapping of a twig, and now, peering through the
+thickets Spurrier saw a flinty hardness come into his eyes.
+
+Sam stepped quietly but swiftly to the roadside and sheltered himself
+behind a rock. He said no word, but he waited, and Spurrier could feel
+that his eyes were boring into his own place of concealment with a
+scrutiny that went over it studiously and keenly, foot by foot.
+
+He hurriedly considered what plan to pursue. If Mosebury was in
+league with Colby, to show himself would be almost as undesirable a
+thing as to show himself to Colby direct. Yet if he stayed there with
+the guilty seeming of one in hiding, Mosebury would end by locating
+him--and might assume that the hiding was itself a proof of enmity. He
+decided to declare himself so he shouted boldly: "It's John Spurrier,"
+and rose a moment later into view.
+
+Then he came forward, thinking fast, and when the two met in the road,
+mendaciously said:
+
+"I guess it looks queer for a man with a clear conscience to take to
+the timber that way, Mr. Mosebury--but you may remember that I was
+recently attacked, and I don't know who did it."
+
+Mosebury nodded. "I'd be ther last man ter fault ye fer thet," he
+concurred. "I was doin' nigh erbout ther same thing myself, but I
+didn't know ye often fared over this way, Mr. Spurrier."
+
+"No, it's off my beat." Spurrier was now lying fluently in what he
+fancied was to be a game of wits with a man who might have led the
+siege upon his house. "I was just going over to Stamp Carter's place.
+He wanted me to advise him about a property deal."
+
+For a space Sam stood gravely thoughtful, and when he spoke his words
+astonished the other.
+
+"Seein' we _hev_ met up, accidental-like, I've got hit in head ter
+tell ye somethin' deespite hit ain't rightly none of my business."
+Again he paused, and it was plain that he was laboring under
+embarrassment, so Spurrier inquired:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Of course, I've done heered ther talk erbout yore bein' attacked.
+Don't ye really suspicion no special man?"
+
+"Suspicion is one thing, Mr. Mosebury, and knowledge is another."
+
+"Yes, thet's Bible truth, an' yit I wouldn't marvel none yore
+suspicions went over thet-away--an' came up not fur off from hyar." He
+nodded his head toward Sim Colby's house, and Spurrier, who was
+steeled to fence, gave no indication of astonishment. He only
+inquired:
+
+"Why should Mr. Colby hold a grudge against me?"
+
+"I ain't got no power of knowin' thet." Mosebury spoke dryly. "An' es
+I said afore, hit ain't none of my business nohow--still I does know
+thet ye've been over hyar some sev'ral times, an' every time ye came,
+ye came quietlike es ef ye sought ter see Sim afore Sim seed _you_."
+
+"You think I've been here before?"
+
+"No, sir, I don't think hit. I knows hit. I seed ye."
+
+"Saw me!"
+
+"Yes, sir, seed ye. Hit's my business to keep a peeled eye in my
+face."
+
+So Spurrier's careful secrecy had been transparent after all, and if
+this man was an ally of Colby's, Colby already shared his knowledge.
+More than ever Spurrier felt sure that his suspicions of the man whose
+eyes had changed color, were grounded in truth.
+
+"Howsomever," went on Mosebury quietly, "I ain't nuver drapped no hint
+ter Sim erbout hit. I ain't, gin'rally speakin', no meddler, but ef so
+be I kin forewarn ye ergainst harm, hit would pleasure me ter do
+hit."
+
+There was a cordial ring of sincerity in the manner and voice, which
+it was hard to doubt, so the other said gravely:
+
+"Thank you. I did suspect Colby, but I have no proof."
+
+"I don't know whether Sim grudges ye or not," continued Mosebury. "He
+ain't nuver named ther matter ter me nowise, guise, ner fashion--but
+Sim _wasn't with ther crowd thet went atter ye_. He didn't even know
+nothin' erbout hit. Sometimes a man comes to grief by barkin' up ther
+wrong tree."
+
+Again suspicion came to the front. This savored strongly of an attempt
+to alibi a confederate, and Spurrier inquired bluntly:
+
+"Since you broached this subject, I think it's fair to ask you another
+question. You tell me who _didn't_ come. Do you know who _did_?"
+
+For a moment Mosebury's face remained blank, then he spoke stiffly.
+
+"I said I'd be glad ter warn ye--but I didn't say I war willin' ter
+name no names. Thet would be mighty nigh ther same thing es takin'
+yore quarrel onto myself."
+
+"Then that's all you can tell me--that it wasn't Colby?"
+
+"Mr. Spurrier," rejoined the mountaineer seriously, "ye _knows_
+jedgmatically an' p'intedly thet ye've got enemies that means
+business. I ain't nuver seed a man yet in these hills what belittled a
+peril sich as yourn thet didn't pay fer hit--with his life."
+
+"I don't belittle it, but what can I do?"
+
+Sam Mosebury stood with a gaze that wandered off over the broken sky
+line. So grave was his demeanor that when his words came they carried
+the shock of inconsistent absurdity.
+
+"Thar's a witch woman, thet dwells nigh hyar. Ef I war in youre stid,
+I'd git her ter read ther signs fer me an' tell me what I had need
+guard ergainst most."
+
+"I'm afraid," answered Spurrier, repressing his contempt with
+difficulty, "I'm too skeptical to pin my faith to signs and omens."
+
+Again the mountain man was looking gravely across the hills, but for a
+moment the eyes had flashed humorously.
+
+"I reckon we don't need ter cavil over thet, Mr. Spurrier. I don't sot
+no master store by witchcraft foolery my ownself. Mebby ye recalls
+thet oncet I told ye a leetle story erbout my cat an' my mockin'
+bird."
+
+"Yes," Spurrier began to understand now. "You sometimes speak in
+allegory. But this time I don't get the meaning."
+
+"Waal, hit's this fashion. I _don't_ know who ther men war thet tried
+ter kill ye. Thet's God's truth, but I've got my own notions an' mebby
+they ain't fur wrong. I ain't goin' ter name no names--but ef so be ye
+wants ter talk ter ther witch woman, _I'll_ hev speech with her fust.
+What comes outen magic kain't hardly make me no enemies--but mebby hit
+_mout_ enable ye ter discern somethin' thet would profit ye to a
+master degree."
+
+Spurrier stood looking into the face of the other and then impulsively
+he thrust out his hand.
+
+"Mr. Mosebury," he said, "I'll be honest with you. I half suspected
+you--because I'd met you at Colby's and I knew you hated Cappeze. I
+owe you an apology, and I'm glad to know I was wrong."
+
+"Mr. Spurrier," replied the other, "ef I _hed_ attempted yore life I
+wouldn't hev failed, an', moreover, I don't hate old Cappeze. Ther man
+thet wins out don't hev no need ter harbor hatreds. He hates me
+because he sought ter penitentiary me--an' failed."
+
+"When shall we go to consult the oracle?" asked Spurrier, and Mosebury
+shook his head.
+
+"I reckon mebby I mout seem over cautious--even timorouslike ter ye,
+in bein' so heedful erbout keepin' outen sight in this matter," he
+said. "But them thet knows my record, knows I _ain't_, jest ter say
+easy skeered. You go home an' wait an' afore long I'll write ye a
+letter, tellin' ye when ter go an' how ter go. Then ye kin make ther
+journey by yoreself."
+
+"That looks like common sense to me," declared the other, and he went
+home, forgetting the witch woman on the way, because of the other and
+lovelier witchcraft that he knew awaited him in his own house.
+
+Spurrier, despite his dangers, responsibilities, and conflict of
+purposes, was happy. He was happy in a simpler and less complicated
+way than he had ever been before, because his heart was in the
+ascendancy, and Glory, he thought, was "livin' up to her name."
+
+If he could have thrust some other things into the same dark cupboard
+of half-contemptuous philosophy to which he relegated his own dangers,
+he might have been even happier. But a mentor who had rarely troubled
+him in past years became insistent and audible through the
+silences--speaking with the voice of conscience.
+
+He remembered telling Vivian Harrison, over the consommé, that pearls
+did not make oysters happy and that these illiterates of the hills
+might have hidden wealth in the shells of their isolation and gain
+nothing more than the oyster. Indeed, he had thought of them no more
+than the pearl fisherman thinks of the low form of life whose diseased
+state gives birth to treasure. They inhabited a terrain over which he
+and the forces of American Oil and Gas were to do battle, and like
+birds nesting on a battlefield, they must take their chances.
+
+It was no longer possible to maintain that callous indifference. These
+men, to whom he could not, without disclosing his strategy and
+defeating his purpose, tell the truth, had befriended him.
+
+They were human and in many ways lovable. If he succeeded, they would,
+upon his own advice, have sold their birthrights.
+
+However, he gave an anodyne to his conscience with the thought that if
+victory came to him there would be wealth enough for all to share.
+Having won his conquest, he could be generous, rendering back as a
+gift a part of what should have been theirs by right. The means of
+doing this he had worked out but he could confide to no one. He had
+embarked as cold bloodedly as Martin Harrison had ever started on any
+of the enterprises that had made him a money baron. Indeed it had been
+Spurrier who had fired the chief with interest in the scheme, and if
+the thing were culpable the culpability had been his own. Then he had
+come to realize that in the human equation was a factor that he had
+ignored: the rights of the ignorant native. He had fought down that
+recognition as the voice of sentimentality until at last he had no
+longer been able to fight it down. Between those two states of mind
+had been a war of mental agony and conflict, of doubt, of vacillation.
+The conclusion had not been easily reached. Now he meant to carry on
+the war he had undertaken unaltered as to its objective of winning a
+victory for Harrison over Trabue and the myrmidons of A. O. and G.,
+but he meant to bring in that victory in such a guise that the native
+would share in the division of the spoils. He knew that Harrison, if
+he had an intimation of such an amendment of plan, would sharply veto
+it, but when the thing was done it would be too late to object--and
+meanwhile Spurrier regarded himself no less the trustee of the
+mountain-land holder than the servant of Martin Harrison. He was
+willing to shoulder, out of his own stipulated profits, the chief
+burden of this division, and in the end he would have driven a better
+bargain for his simple friends than they could have hoped to attain
+for themselves.
+
+Yet in him was being reborn an element of character, which had long
+been repressed.
+
+And there in the other section of the State where political
+connections had to be established and the skids of intrigue greased,
+much stood waiting to be done. Already most of what could be
+accomplished here on the ground had progressed to a point from which
+the end could be seen.
+
+John Spurrier, the seeming idler, could control almost all the
+territory needful for his right of way--all except a tract belonging
+to Brother Bud Hawkins, cautiously left for the last because he
+wished to handle that himself and did not yet wish to appear in the
+negotiations.
+
+In the intricate workings of such a project by a campaign of secrecy,
+the matter was not only one of acquiring a certain expanse of a
+definite sort of property in a given region, but of acquiring holdings
+that commanded the only practicable route through passable gaps. This
+special lie and trend of ground he thought of and spoke of, in his
+business correspondence, as "the neck of the bottle." When he held it,
+it mattered little who else had liquid in the bottle. It could come
+out only through his neck and, therefore, under his terms. Yet even
+when that was achieved, there remained the need of the corkscrew
+without which he himself could make no use of his range-wide jug of
+crude petroleum. That corkscrew was the charter to be had from a
+legislature where American Oil and Gas was supposed to have sentinels
+at the door.
+
+He could not take Glory with him on these trips, because Glory was of
+the hills, and loyal to the hills--and he could not yet take the
+natives into his confidence. For the same reason he could give her
+only business reasons of the most general and evasive character for
+leaving her behind.
+
+But the work that Spurrier had done so far was only the primary
+section of a broader design. What he had accomplished affected the oil
+field on the remote side of Hemlock Mountain, the part of the field
+that the earlier boom had never touched, and his entire project looked
+to a totality embracing also the "nigh" side, where his operations
+still existed only in projection.
+
+It was while this situation stood that there came to him one day two
+letters calling upon him for two irreconcilable courses of action. One
+was from Louisville, urging him to return there at once to busy
+himself with political plannings; the other was a rude scrawl from Sam
+Mosebury setting an appointment with the "witch woman."
+
+Spurrier was reluctant to go to Louisville. It meant laying aside the
+little paradise of the present for the putting on of heavy harness. It
+necessitated another excuse to Glory, and more than that, being away
+from Glory. Yet that was the bugle call of his mission, and he fancied
+that whatever threatened him here in the hills was a menace of local
+effect. If that were true he would not need the warning which the
+unaccountable desperado, Sam Mosebury, meant to relay to him through
+channels of alleged magic, until he came back.
+
+Therefore, the witch could wait. But in that detail Spurrier erred,
+and when he answered the summons that called him to town without his
+occult consultation, he unwittingly discarded a warning which he
+needed there no less than in the hills.
+
+He was called upon to choose a turning without pause, and he followed
+his business instincts. It happened that instinct misled him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+One afternoon Trabue, the unadvertised dictator of American Oil and
+Gas, sat with several of his close subordinates in a conference that
+had to do with Martin Harrison, the man he assumed to ignore.
+
+"Unless some unforeseen thing sends oil soaring," ventured Oliver
+Morris, "this fellow Spurrier is having his trouble for his pains. My
+idea is that he's seeking to tease us into counter activity--and trail
+after us in the profits."
+
+"And if something _should_ send oil soaring," crisply countered
+Cosgrove, "he'd have us distanced with a runaway start."
+
+"Who is this man Spurrier?" demanded Trabue himself. "What does our
+research department report?"
+
+"He's a protégé of Martin Harrison's."
+
+Trabue appeared to find the words illuminating, and a shrewd irony
+glinted in his brief smile.
+
+"If he's Harrison's man, he's out to knife me--and he has resources at
+his back. Tell me more about him."
+
+Cosgrove took from his portfolio a neatly typed memorandum, and read
+from it aloud:
+
+  Former army officer who gained the sobriquet of "Plunger"
+  Spurrier: Court-martialed and convicted upon charge of murder,
+  and pardoned through efforts of Senator Beverly. Associated with
+  various enterprises as a general investigator and initiative
+  expert. Rumor has it that Harrison is grooming him as his own
+  successor.
+
+"If his reputation is that of a plunger," argued Morris, "my guess is
+that he's playing a long-shot bet for a killing."
+
+"And you guess wrong. If Harrison has picked this fellow to wear his
+own mantle, the man is more than a gambling tout. It is only lunacy to
+underestimate him or dismiss him with contempt."
+
+Cosgrove nodded his concurrence and amplified it. "In my judgment he's
+something of a genius with a chrome-nickeled nerve, but he's adroit as
+well as bold. He has operated only through others and has kept himself
+inconspicuous. Except for an accident, we should have had no warning
+of his activities."
+
+"If he were to get bitten by a rattlesnake," growled Morris savagely,
+"it would be a lucky thing for us. Of course, we might beguile him
+into our own camp."
+
+Trabue shook his head in a decisive negation.
+
+"That would only notify him that we recognize his effort and fear it.
+If the game's big enough, we don't want him." He paused, then added
+with a grim facetiousness: "As for your other suggestion, we have no
+rattlesnakes in our equipment."
+
+The dynamic-minded master of strategy sat balancing a pen-holder on
+his extended forefinger for a few moments, then he inquired as if in
+afterthought: "By the way, I feel curious as to how the tip came to us
+that this conspiracy was on foot. You say that except for an accident
+we should not have known it."
+
+Cosgrove smiled. "It came to this office through the regular channels
+of our local agencies--and I didn't inquire searchingly into the
+details. I gathered, though, that the trail was picked up by a sort of
+information tout--a fellow who was hurt and compromised a damage suit
+against us. It seems that he is supposed to be blind--but he could
+nonetheless see well enough to read some memoranda that chanced to
+come his way." The gentleman cleared his throat almost apologetically
+as he added: "As I remarked I didn't learn the particulars. I merely
+took the information for what it might be worth, and set our men to
+watching."
+
+"I see," Trabue made dry acknowledgment. "And what is being done
+toward watching him?"
+
+"I understand we have a man there who is assuming an enmity toward us
+and who is ostensibly helping Spurrier to build up political
+influence."
+
+"I see," said Trabue once more, with even a shade more dryness in his
+voice.
+
+That conversation had taken place quite a long while before the
+present, but it set into quiet motion the wheels of a large and
+powerful organization.
+
+The knowledge that John Spurrier was objectionable to A. O. and G. had
+filtered through to more local, yet confidential, officials, and
+through them to "men in the field," and it is characteristic of such
+delegations of authority, that each department suits the case referred
+to it to the practical workings of its own environment.
+
+Gentlemen of high business standing in lower Broadway could permit
+themselves no violence of language, beyond the intimation that this
+upstart was a nuisance. Translated into the more candid brutality of
+camp-following parasites in the wildness of the hills, that mild
+declaration became: "The man needs killin'. Let's git him!"
+
+Now, Spurrier found that the visit to Louisville and Lexington, which
+had promised to be the matter of weeks, must stretch itself into
+months, and that until the convening and adjournment of the assembly
+itself, his presence would be as requisite as that of a ship's officer
+on the bridge. In one respect he was gratified. American Oil and Gas
+seemed serenely unsuspicious of any danger. Vigilance seemed lapsed.
+Those men whose duty it was to watch the corporation's interest and to
+hold in line the needed lawmakers, appeared to regard legislative
+protection as a thing bought and paid for and safe from trespass.
+
+And Spurrier, knowing better, was secretly triumphant, but without
+Glory he was far from happy.
+
+Had he known what influences were at work with cancerlike corrosions
+upon her loyalty, what food was nourishing her anxiety, he would have
+stolen the time to go to her. Hers was an anxiety which she did not
+acknowledge. Even to herself she denied its existence and against any
+outside suggestion of inner hurt pride would have risen in valiant
+resentment.
+
+But in her heart it talked on in whispers that she could not hush. At
+night she would waken suddenly, wide-eyed with apprehension and seek
+to reassure herself by the emphasis of her avowals: "He's _not_
+ashamed of me. He's not leaving me because of that! He's a big man
+with big business, and some day he'll take me with him, everywhere!"
+
+When old Cappeze, a man not given to unreflecting or careless speech,
+flatly questioned: "Glory--why doesn't John ever take you with him?"
+she flinched and fell into exculpations that limped.
+
+The old man was quick to note the pained rawness of the nerve he had
+touched, and he began talking of something else, but when he was alone
+once more his old eyes took on that fanatic absorption that came of
+his deep love for his daughter, and he shook his head dubiously over
+her future.
+
+One day a neighborhood woman came by Glory's house and found her
+standing at the door. Tassie Plumford neither claimed nor was credited
+with powers of magic, but she, too, might have been called a "witch
+woman." In curdled disposition and shrewishness of tongue, she merited
+the title.
+
+"Waal, waal, Glory Cappeze," she drawled in her rasping, nasal voice.
+"Yore man hes done built ye a right monstrous fine house, hyar, ain't
+he?"
+
+"Come in and see it, Mrs. Plumford," invited the young wife. "But my
+name's Glory Spurrier now--not Cappeze."
+
+In the gesture with which the woman drew her shawl tighter about her
+lean shoulders, she contrived to convey the affront of suspicion and
+disbelief.
+
+"No, I reckon I ain't got ther power ter tarry now," she declined. "I
+don't git much time fer gaddin', an' be yore name whatsoever hit may,
+there's them hyar-abouts es 'lows yore man lavishes everything on ye
+but his own self. He's away from ye most of his time, albeit I reckon
+he's got car fare aplenty fer two."
+
+Glory stiffened, and without a word turned her back on her ungracious
+visitor. She went into the house with the tilted chin of one who
+disdains to answer insolent slanders, but in the tenderness of her
+heart the barb had nonetheless sunk deep. So people were saying that!
+
+Over at Aunt Erie Toppitt's the shrew again halted--and there it
+seemed that she did have time to "tarry," and roll the morsel of
+gossip under tongue.
+
+"Mebby she's ther furriner's lawful wife an' then ergin mebby she
+ain't nuthin' but his woman," opined Tassie Plumford. "Hit ain't none
+of my business nohow, but a godly woman hes call ter be heedful whar
+she visits at."
+
+"A godly woman!" Aunt Erie's tone stung like a hornet attack. "What
+has godliness got ter do with _you_, anyhow, Tassie Plumford? The
+records of ther high cote over at Carnettsville hes got _yore_ record
+fer a witness thet swears ter perjury."
+
+Mrs. Plumford trembled with rage but, prudently, she elected to ignore
+the reference to her legal status.
+
+"Ef they was rightfully married," she retorted, "hit didn't come ter
+pass twell old man Cappeze diskivered her alone with him--in his
+house--jest ther two of 'em--an' they wouldn't nuver hev _been_
+diskivered savin' an' exceptin' fer ther attack on ther furriner." In
+the self-satisfaction of one who has scored, she added: "I'll be
+farin' on now, I reckon."
+
+"An' don't nuver come back," stormed Aunt Erie, whose occasional
+tantrums were as famous as her usual good humor. "Unless ye seeks ter
+hev ther dawgs sot on ye."
+
+While the spiteful and forked little tongues of gossip were doing
+their serpent best to poison what had promised to be an Eden for Glory
+at home in the hills, the husband who was charged with neglecting her
+was miserable in town.
+
+His work had been the breath of life to him until now, bringing the
+zestful delight of prevailing over stubborn difficulties, and building
+bridges that should carry him across to his goal of financial power.
+Now he found it a necessity that exiled him from a place to which he
+had come half-contemptuously and to which his converted thoughts
+turned as the prayers of the true believer turn toward Mecca.
+
+He who had been urban in habit and taste found nothing in the city to
+satisfy him. The smoke-filled air seemed to stifle him and fill him
+with a yearning for the clean, spirited sweep of the winds across the
+slopes. He knew that these physical aspects were trivial things he
+would have swept aside had they not stood as emblems for a longing of
+the heart itself--a nostalgia born of his new life and love.
+
+But all the plans that had built one on the other toward a definite
+end of making an oil field of the barren hills were drawing to a focus
+that could not be neglected. He could no more leave these things
+undone than could his idol Napoleon have abandoned his headquarters
+before Austerlitz, and the sitting of the legislature could not be
+changed to suit his wishes. Neither could the lining up of forces that
+were to guide his legislation to its passage be left unwatched.
+
+So the absence that he had thought would be brief, or at worst a
+series of short trips away from home, was prolonging itself into a
+winter in Louisville and Frankfort. He found himself as warily busy as
+a collie herding a panicky flock, and as soon as one danger was met
+and averted, a new one called upon him from a new and unsuspected
+quarter.
+
+Much of the deviousness of playing underground politics disgusted him,
+and yet he knew he would have regarded it only as an amusing game for
+high stakes before his change of heart. But now that it was to be a
+battle for the mountain men as well as for Martin Harrison and for
+himself, it could be better stomached.
+
+The effort to pick out men who could be trusted in an enterprise where
+they had to be bought, was one which taxed both his insight into human
+nature and his self-esteem.
+
+Senator Chew, himself a mountaineer, who had come from a ragged
+district to the state assembly and who seemed to harbor a hatred
+against A. O. and G. of utter malevolence, was almost as his other
+self, furnishing him with eyes with which to see and ears with which
+to hear, and familiarity with all the devious, unlovely tricks of
+lobby processes.
+
+But Senator Chew, a countryman, who had capitalized his shifty wits
+and hard-won education, bent his knee to the brazen gods of cupidity
+and ambition.
+
+"I don't just see," he demurred petulantly to Spurrier, "why you go
+about this thing the way you do. You've got unlimited capital behind
+you and yet in going after these options you ain't hardly got hold of
+any more land than just enough to let your pipe line through. You
+could get all a man's property just as cheap per acre as part of
+it--and when I've sweated blood to give you your charter and you've
+sweated blood to grab your right-of-way, that God-forsaken land will
+be a Klondike."
+
+"I hope so," smiled Spurrier, and his ally went on.
+
+"All right, but why have nothing out of it except a pipe-line? Why not
+have the whole damn business to split three ways, among Harrison's
+crowd, yourself--and the crowd I've got to handle?"
+
+"You're a mountain man, Senator," the opportunity hound reminded him.
+"You know that in every other section of the hills to which
+development has come, the native has reaped only a heart-ache and an
+empty belly. I am purposely taking only a part of each man's holding,
+so that when the oil flows there what he has left will be worth more
+to him than all of it was before."
+
+"Hell," growled the politician. "The men you ought to think about
+making money for, are the men you need--like me, and the men who back
+you, like Harrison. These local fellows won't thank you, and in my
+opinion you're a fool, if you'll permit me to talk plain."
+
+"Talk as plain as you like, Senator," smiled the other. "But I think
+I'm acting with right sound sense. Our field can be more profitably
+developed among friends than among enemies--even if no consideration
+other than the practical enters into the problem."
+
+It was not until Christmas time that Spurrier broke away from his
+activities in Louisville, and then he came bearing gifts and with a
+heart full of eagerness. He came elated, too, at the fair promise of
+his prospects, and confident of victory.
+
+So Glory hid the fears that had been growing in her heart and, because
+of the tidal power of personal fascination and contact, she found it
+an easy task. While Spurrier was with her, those fears seemed to lose
+their substance and to stand out as absurdities. They were delirious
+miasmas dissipated by the sun and daylight of companionship.
+
+Spurrier kept most of his valuable papers in a safety vault in
+Louisville, but for purposes of reference here, he maintained a
+complete system of carbon copies, and these must be stored in some
+place where he could feel sure they were immune from any prying eye.
+The entire record of his proceedings would be clear to any reader of
+those memoranda.
+
+While Glory was away one day, he removed a section of the living-room
+wall and fashioned something in the nature of a secret cabinet, upon
+which he could rely for these purposes. Before he went away again he
+shared that secret with her, since in certain exigencies it might be
+needful that some one should be able to act on wired instructions. He
+showed her the bit of molding that was removable and which gave
+entrance to the hidden recess.
+
+"In that strong box," he told her, "are papers of vital importance. If
+I haven't taken you entirely into my confidence about them all, dear,
+it's because they concern other people more closely than myself. All
+my own affairs are yours--but in the service of others, I must obey
+instructions and those instructions are rigid."
+
+He took out one envelope, though, plainly marked.
+
+"This," he said, "is a paper to be used only in case of extreme
+emergency. It is an order on the safety-deposit people in Louisville
+to open my vault to the bearer. In the event of my death, or if I
+should wire you from a distance, I would want you to use it."
+
+Even that admittance into the veiled sanctum of his business life
+pleased Glory, and she nodded her head gravely.
+
+She did not tell him, and he did not guess, that tongues were wagging
+in his absence, and that people said she was good enough only for that
+part of his life in which he shed his white collar and his "fine
+manners" and donned the rougher habiliments of the backwoods.
+
+Even when she learned that his coming back had been only to spend the
+holidays with her and that he must leave again to be gone for weeks,
+at least, she let none of the disquiet that smouldered in her find an
+utterance in words.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a fine old Blue Grass estate, which exhaled the elegance and ease
+of the Old South, lived Colonel Merriwell, a life-long friend of Dyke
+Cappeze. In years long gone he had more than once sought to have
+Cappeze transfer his activities to a wider field. Now, timber
+interests called him to the mountains, and though the cold weather had
+set in, his daughter chose to come with him. She had heard much of the
+strange and retarded life of the mountains, and because it was so
+different from the refinements with which she had always been
+surrounded, she wanted to see it.
+
+When they arrived after traveling conditions that warranted every
+conception of quaintness, but violated every demand of comfort, the
+girl from the Bluegrass found Glory a discovery.
+
+At once she recognized that into any drawing-room this wilderness-bred
+girl could be safely dropped, and that even though she stood in a
+corner, she would soon become its center.
+
+Helen Merriwell was fascinated by the anomaly of an inherent
+aristocracy in an encompassing life which was almost squalid, and a
+bond of sympathy sprang into instant being. The Bluegrass woman knew
+by instinct, though through no utterance from the loyal lips, that the
+other was lonely, and when Colonel Merriwell announced his intention
+of returning home, the daughter decided to continue her visit and its
+companionship.
+
+To Spurrier's house, too, during the crisp, clear weather of late
+winter came, without announcement or expectation another visitor. They
+were two other visitors to be exact, but one so overshadowed his
+companion in importance that the second became negligible.
+
+At the Carnettsville station the daily train drew up one morning and
+uncoupled, on a siding, the first private car that had ever run over
+that piece of roadbed. Its chef and valet gazed superciliously down
+upon the assembled loungers, but the two gentlemen who alighted and
+gave their names as Martin Harrison and his secretary, Mr. Spooner,
+were to all appearances "jest ordinary folks."
+
+Glory was housecleaning on the day of Harrison's coming, and, in
+neatly patched gingham and dust-protected crown, she came nearer
+seeming the typical mountain woman than she had for many days before.
+Her fresh beauty was hard to eclipse, but she was less presentable
+than she wished to be when her husband's great patron saw her for the
+first time and contrasted her with such women as his own daughter.
+
+When she heard the name, without previous warning, a sort of panic
+possessed her and for once she became tongue-tied and awkward, so that
+after the first, Helen Merriwell stepped into the breach and did the
+talking.
+
+"My name is Martin Harrison," said the great man with simple
+cordiality. "I thought John Spurrier lived here--but I seem to be
+mistaken."
+
+"He--he does live here," stammered Glory, catching the swiftly stifled
+amazement of the magnate's disapproving eyes.
+
+"Here?" He put the question blankly as if only politeness prevented a
+greater vehemence of surprise. "But I expected to find a bachelor
+establishment. There are ladies here."
+
+Glory fell back a step as if in retreat under attack. If this
+statement were true, Spurrier had never acknowledged her to the
+employer with whom his relations were intimately close. In her own
+eyes, she stood as one who had lost caste and been repudiated--and all
+self-confidence abandoned her, giving way to trepidation.
+
+Harrison stood bewilderedly looking at this country girl who had
+turned tremulous and pale, and Helen Merriwell stepped forward.
+
+"Then you didn't know that Mr. Spurrier was married?" she smilingly
+inquired.
+
+The money baron transferred his glance to her as his shadowed face
+lightened into relief. This young woman had the poise and ease of his
+own world, which made communication facile. If Spurrier had not been
+candid with him, at all events he had, perhaps, not unclassed himself.
+The other was presumably a local servant of whom he need think no
+more.
+
+"Mr. Spurrier," he answered easily, "had not mentioned his marriage,
+probably because our recent correspondence has all related to
+business. However, I hold it unhandsome of him not to have done so."
+He paused, then added deferentially: "Of course, I am better prepared
+now to felicitate him--since I have seen you."
+
+But Helen Merriwell laughed and laid a hand on Glory's shoulder.
+
+"You do me too much honor, Mr. Harrison," she assured him. "_This_ is
+Mrs. Spurrier."
+
+The financier's ingrained politeness for once failed him. It was not
+for long, but in the breached instant he stiffened arrogantly as his
+eyes went back to Glory, and betrayed themselves in half-contemptuous
+hostility. The lieutenant whom he had chosen as his own successor in
+the world of lofty affairs had not only deceived him but had thrown
+himself wantonly away upon a stammering daughter of illiterates!
+
+Martin Harrison bowed again, but this time with a precise formality.
+
+"I didn't notify Mr. Spurrier of my coming, since I felt sure I would
+find him here," he explained briefly, directing himself pointedly to
+Helen Merriwell. "I am on my way south, so now I'll defer seeing him
+until another time--unless you expect him back shortly?"
+
+Helen turned inquiringly to Glory and Glory shook her head. The
+episode, confirming her own anxieties, had unnerved her steadfast
+courage into collapse.
+
+Had any warning come to her in advance of the event her bearing toward
+this stranger would have been a different one. The pride that bowed
+submissively to no one except in love, would have sustained her. The
+natural dignity which was the gift of her blood would have been the
+thing that any observer must have first and last recognized. With a
+chance to have shaped her attitude, Glory would have received Harrison
+as a Barbarian princess might have met an ambassador from Rome, but no
+such chance had been afforded her and she stood as distraught and as
+panicky as a stage-struck child whose speech fails.
+
+She even slid back into the rough-hewn vernacular that had been so
+completely banished from her lips and custom.
+
+"I ain't got ther power ter say," she faltered, "when he'll git back.
+He's goin' ter Frankfort first."
+
+"I'll write to him there," said the capitalist.
+
+Harrison departed with the stiff dignity of an affronted sachem, and
+Helen Merriwell, looking after him, smiled with amusement for the
+incident which she so well understood, until she turned and saw
+Glory.
+
+The girl had wilted back against the wall and stood there as if she
+had been stricken. Her great, violet eyes were brimming with the
+spirit of tragedy and held the despair of one who has blithely
+returned home--to find his house in ruin and ashes.
+
+Glory stole away to her own room, escaping the embrace of sympathetic
+arms, as soon as she could. "He's done denied me ter his friends," she
+told herself wildly. "He dast'n't acknowledge me ter fine folks!"
+
+Then through the first, torpid misery of hurt pride, crept a more
+terrifying thought. Spurrier had been practically engaged to this
+man's daughter. He had been diverted from his purpose by motives of
+pity, and now that Harrison knew, he might be ruined--probably would
+be ruined. If so disaster would come to him because of her--and at
+last she rose from the chair where she had dropped down, collapsed,
+with a light of new resolution in her eyes.
+
+"If that's all I'm good for," she declared tempestuously, "he's got to
+be rid of me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+During the sitting of the legislature John Spurrier was a sporadic
+onlooker, and his agents were as vigilant as sentinels in a danger
+zone. The last day of the term drew to a wintry sunset, and when the
+clock registered midnight the body would stand automatically adjourned
+until gavel fall two years hence.
+
+Spurrier, outwardly a picture of serenity, but inwardly tensed for the
+final issue, sat in the visitors' gallery of the Senate chamber. The
+charter upon which all his hopes hung as upon a fulcrum was all but in
+his grasp. Seemingly the enemy slept on. Presumably in those last
+tired hours the authorizing bill would slip through to passage with
+the frictionless ease of well-oiled bearings.
+
+The needed men had been won over. Carping critics might prate, here
+and there, of ugly means that savored of bribery, but that was
+academic. The promise of forth-coming victory remained. Methods may be
+questionable. Results are not, and Spurrier was interested in
+results.
+
+A. O. and G. had corrupted and suborned certain public servants. He
+had discovered their practice and played their own cards to their
+undoing. His ostensible clients were perhaps little cleaner-handed
+than their adversaries, but certainly, those other clients who did
+not even know themselves to be represented stood with no stain on
+their claims.
+
+Those native men and women had not asked him to safeguard them, and
+had they been able to see what he was doing they would have guessed
+only that, after winning their faith, he was bent on swindling them.
+But Spurrier knew not only the seeming facts but those which lay
+beneath and he fought with a definite sense of stewardship.
+
+First the _coup_ must succeed, since that success was the foundation
+of all the rest, and the moment was at hand.
+
+For this he had slaved, faced dangers and deprived himself of the
+contentment of home and the society of his wife. Now it was about to
+end in victory.
+
+The enemy had been caught napping, and the victory would be his.
+Certainly he had been as fair as the foe. What now remained was a
+perfunctory confirmation by the Senate, and in these final wearied
+hours it would slip through easily in the general wind-up of
+uncontested affairs.
+
+Spurrier had not slept for two days--or had slept little. When
+this ended he would go to his bed and lie there in sunken hours of
+restoration the clock around--and after that back to Glory. Already
+he carried in his pocket the brief message which he meant to put
+upon the wires to Harrison, at the moment of midnight and success.
+Characteristically it read: "Complete victory. Spurrier."
+
+Now as the clerk droned through the mass of unfinished matters that
+burdened the schedule, the clock stood at ten in the evening, and a
+spirit of disordered peevishness proclaimed itself in the chamber.
+Seats were vacated. Voices rose in unparliamentary clamor.
+
+From the desk where a mountain senator sat in touseled disarray, a
+flask was drawn and tipped with scant regard to senatorial dignity.
+Then the chairman of the committee which had the steering of
+Spurrier's affairs arose and handed a paper to the clerk.
+
+Spurrier himself maintained the same unemotional cast of countenance
+with which, years before, he had watched a horse in the stretch
+battling for more than he could afford to lose, but Wharton, who sat
+at his side, chewed nervously on an unlighted cigar. Sleepy reporters
+yawned at the press tables as the clerk droned out his sing-song, "An
+act entitled an act conferring charter rights upon the Hemlock Pipe
+Line Company of Kentucky."
+
+The reading of the measure seemed devoid of interest or attention. It
+went forward in confusion, yet when it was ended the mountain man who
+had taken the swig out of his flask, came slowly to his feet.
+
+"Mr. President of the Senate," he drawled, "I want to address a few
+incongruvial remarks to the senators in regards to this here proposed
+measure."
+
+With a sudden sense of premonition Spurrier found himself sitting
+electrically upright.
+
+That man was Senator Chew who had sat in council with him and advised
+him; his right hand in action and his fox-brain in planning, yet now,
+with every moment invaluable he was burning up time!
+
+He was a pygmy among small men, and as he drooled on he seemed to urge
+no pertinent objection. Yet before he had been five minutes on his
+feet his intent was clear and his success assured.
+
+Out of the hands of their recognized lieutenants A. O. and G. had
+taken the matter of serving them. Into the hands of this obscure and
+loutish Solon who was ostensibly pledged to their enemies, they had
+thrust their commission, and now with the clock creeping forward
+toward adjournment, he meant to talk the charter measure to death by
+holding the floor until the opportunity for a vote had elapsed.
+
+Tediously and inanely he meandered along, and no one knew what he was
+talking about. In extravagant metaphor and florid simile he indulged
+himself--and the clock worked industriously, an ally not to be unduly
+hurried.
+
+"Gentlemen of the Senate--" he drooled, "most of us have been raised
+in a land that knows little of the primitive features that make up
+life with us, and though it may not at first seem germane or
+pertinent, I want you to go with me as your guide, while I try to make
+you see the life of those steep counties that are affected by the
+measure before you; counties that lie behind the barriers and sleep
+the ancient sleep of the forgotten."
+
+Men yawned while his tediousness spun itself into a tawdry flow of
+slow words, but the Honorable Mr. Chew talked on.
+
+"Many the day, as a lad, have I lain by a rushing brook," he
+declaimed, "where the water gushes with the sparkle of sunlit crystal
+and watched the deer come down on gingerly lifted feet to drink his
+fill. Now I reckon mighty few of you gentlemen have seen a deer come
+down to drink----"
+
+The minute hand of the clock, in comparison with this windy
+deliberation seemed to be racing between the dial characters.
+
+"In God's name," exclaimed Spurrier, "isn't there any way to shut that
+fool up? He's ruining us. Get some of our leaders up here, Wharton.
+We've got to stop him."
+
+"How?" demanded Wharton with a fallen jaw.
+
+"I don't give a damn how! Kill him--buy him. Anything!"
+
+"It's too late," responded Wharton grimly. "He's already bought. We've
+walked into their trap. We might as well go home."
+
+Spurrier sent for his whip, but he had come to the end of his
+resourcefulness and shook a dejected head.
+
+"If you want to shoot him down as he stands there," said the gentleman
+testily, "I dare say it would stop him short. I know no other way. He
+is having resort to the senatorial privilege of filibuster. We have
+let them slip up on us. A. O. and G. has outbid you, that's all."
+
+"But how in God's name did they get wise?"
+
+The other laughed grimly. "Wise?" he snorted. "My guess is that
+they've been wise all the time and that hayseed Iscariot has been
+playing us along for suckers."
+
+Held by a deadly fascination, Spurrier sank back into his seat. The
+clock over the speaker's desk traveled once, almost twice around
+the dial, and yet that nasal voice wandered on in an endless
+stream of grotesque bombast--talking the charter to a slow death by
+strangulation.
+
+Now, reflected Spurrier bitterly, his connection with the enterprise
+must seem to any eye that viewed it that only of Harrison's jackal and
+lobbyist, who had signally failed in his attempt to raid A. O. and G.
+
+To the mountain folk themselves, if the facts ever percolated into the
+hills, his seeming would be far from heroic and with nothing tangible
+accomplished, it would do no good to tell them that he had made his
+fight with their interests at heart. Such a claim would only stamp him
+in the face of contrary evidence as taking a coward's refuge in lies.
+
+Then when it seemed to him that he could no longer restrain himself,
+Spurrier heard the gavel fall. It was a light sound, but it crashed on
+his brain with thunders of destruction.
+
+"Gentlemen," declared the presiding officer, "The Senate stands
+adjourned, _sine die_."
+
+Had John Spurrier gone to see the "witch woman" when Mosebury advised
+it, his course from that point on would have brought him to a
+different ending.
+
+In looking back on that night, he could never quite remember it with
+consecutive distinctness. Gaps of forgetfulness were fitfully shot
+through with disconnected scraps of recollection. When events began to
+marshal themselves into orderly sequence, the windowpanes of his hotel
+room were turning a dirty gray with the coming of dawn, and he was
+sitting in a straight-backed chair. His bed had not been touched. Back
+of that lay a chaotic sense of irremediable disaster and despair.
+
+At last he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and that picture
+of disheveled wildness startled him and brought him back to
+realization.
+
+Then self-contempt swept in on him. He had been called a man of iron
+nerve; a plunger who never turned a hair under reversals of
+fortune--and now he stood looking through the glass at a broken
+gambler with frenzied eyes. It was such a face as one might see in the
+circle before the Casino at Monte Carlo--the place of suicides.
+
+The man who had seemed to come from nowhere and who had talked last
+night with such destructive volubility, had been a pure shyster. To be
+outwitted by such a clown carried the sting of chagrin, quite apart
+from the material disaster. Yet into his disordered thoughts came the
+realization that the senator had been only a puppet. His actuating
+wires had been pulled by the fingers of A. O. and G. and the men who
+sat as overlords of A. O. and G. were only shysters of a greater
+caliber. The men whom he, himself, served were no better. Compared to
+this backwoods statesman he, John Spurrier, was as a smooth and
+sophisticated confidence man paralleled with a pickpocket. Ethically,
+they were cut from the same cloth, though to differing patterns--one
+rustic and the other urban.
+
+He had been engaged in a tawdry game, for all its gilding of rich
+prospects, but in the face of defeat a man cannot change his colors.
+
+Had he been able to undertake this fight as his own man and choose his
+own methods--changing them as he grew in stature--there might have
+been a man's zest in the game.
+
+Now, less than ever, could he speak open truth to these simple friends
+who had trusted him. Now he must fight out a damaged campaign to the
+end along the lines to which he stood committed, and until the end
+there was nothing to say.
+
+Perhaps if he could avert total ruin, he might yet have opportunity to
+reclaim the confidence of these Esaus who had traded for a mess of
+pottage. Certainly they had nothing to hope for from the myrmidons of
+Trabue.
+
+John Spurrier forced his shoulders back into military erectness. He
+compelled his lips into the stiff and counterfeited curvature of a
+smile.
+
+Not only had every resource he could muster gone into the scrapped
+enterprise, leaving him worse than bankrupt, but through him Martin
+Harrison had been led into the sinking of a fortune.
+
+Harrison would, in all likelihood, be less bitter about the money
+loss, than the thought of the triumphant smile on Trabue's thin lips,
+but it was quite in the cards that, with his contempt for failure, he
+would wash his hands of Spurrier.
+
+That, of course, spelled ruin. The exhibition skater had gone through
+the thin ice.
+
+Harrison could, if he chose, do more than dismiss John Spurrier. He
+had seen to it that his lieutenant was bound to his standards by debts
+he could not pay, save out of some future enrichment contingent on
+success. If he chose to call those loans he would leave his employee
+shattered beyond hope of recovery.
+
+But when Spurrier went down to the hotel dining room at breakfast
+time, a cold bath and a superhuman exertion of will power had
+transformed him. His bearing was a nice blending of the debonair and
+the dignified.
+
+To no eye of observation was there any trace of collapse or reversal.
+He seemed the man who demanded the best from life and who got it.
+
+At a table not far from his own sat Senator Chew with a companion whom
+Spurrier did not know. The traitor glanced up and his eye met that of
+the man he had betrayed, then fell flinching.
+
+Perhaps the mountaineer expected the dining room to stage such a scene
+of recrimination and violence as it had in the past on more than one
+occasion, for his crafty face went brick red, then darkened into
+truculence as he half pushed back his chair and his hand swept
+tentatively toward his hip.
+
+But the plunger had still his pride left, or its remnant, and it was
+no part of his plan to stand the self-confessed and vanquished victim,
+by any patent demonstration of wrath. He met the eyes of the
+politician who had played on both sides of the same game, and smiled,
+and if there was contempt in the expression, it was recognized only by
+the man who knew its cause.
+
+Later he wrote a telegram to Harrison. It was not the thing he had
+expected to say, yet in it went no whine of despair:
+
+  Have suffered a temporary reversal.
+
+Those were the words that the capitalist read when the message, after
+being decoded from its cipher, was laid on his desk.
+
+Harrison, recently returned from his Southern trip, thought
+truculently of that nearby office in which Trabue was also receiving
+telegraphic information, and he writhed in the wormwood of chagrin.
+
+The curtness of his response scorched the wires:
+
+  Explain in person if you can. Otherwise we separate.
+
+So John Spurrier packed his bag and caught the first train for the
+mountains. He must say good-by to Glory, before facing this final
+ordeal, and he believed that in that clarifying air he could brace
+himself for the encounter that awaited him in New York.
+
+As he turned into the yard of his own house he paused, and something
+about his heart tightened until it unsteadied him. Here alone, in all
+the world, he had known what home meant, and in his heart and veins
+rose an intoxicating tumult like that of wine.
+
+Back of that emotional wave though lurked a misery of self-reproach.
+Glory had made the magic of his brief happiness, but there was a
+background, too, of kindly souls and a ruggedly genuine welcome. He
+had learned to know these people and to revise his first, false views
+of them. In them dwelt the stout honesty and real strength of oak and
+hickory.
+
+First he had striven to plunder them, then sought to lift the yoke of
+poverty from their long-bowed shoulders. In both efforts he had
+failed.
+
+But had he failed, after all? Certainly he stood under the black
+shadow of a major disaster, but had not others retrieved disasters and
+made final victory only the brighter for its contrast with lurid
+misfortune?
+
+He had been the plunger who seemed strongest when he was weakest, and
+these enduring hills spoke their message of steadfastness to him as he
+stood surrounded by their lofty crests of spruce and pine.
+
+Then he had reached the door and flung it open and Glory was in his
+arms, but unaccountably she had burst into a tempest of tears.
+
+Before he had had time to speak of the necessity that called him East
+she was telling of the visit of Martin Harrison and his indignant
+departure.
+
+Despite his all-consuming absorption of a moment before, Spurrier drew
+away, chilled by that announcement, and Glory read in his eyes a
+momentary agony of apprehension.
+
+"In God's name," he demanded in a numbed voice, "why didn't you write
+me about that?"
+
+"He said," responded the wife simply, "that _he_ would write to you at
+Frankfort. I thought you knew."
+
+"But I should have thought you'd have spoken of his coming and
+going--like that."
+
+Her head came up with a brief little flash of hurt pride.
+
+"You hadn't ever told him--about me," she said, though without
+accusation. "I didn't want to talk to you about it until you were
+ready to suggest it. It might have seemed--disloyal."
+
+Spurrier again braced his shoulders. After a moment he took her in his
+arms.
+
+"Glory, my sweetheart, I've been playing a game for big stakes. I've
+had to do some things I didn't relish. I've got to do another now. I'm
+summoned to Harrison's office in New York, at once--and I have no
+choice."
+
+Glory drew away and looked with challenging directness into his eyes.
+
+"I suppose--you'll go alone?"
+
+"I must. Business affairs are at a crisis, and I need a free hand.
+But, God granting me a safe return, it's to be our last separation. I
+swear that. I am always wretched without you."
+
+Always before when disappointment or disquiet had riffled the deeps of
+her eyes, it had taken only a word and a smile from this man to dispel
+them and bring back the serenity of content. Her moments of panic when
+she had seemed to drop down, down into pits of foreboding until she
+had plumbed the depth of despair, had been moments to which she had
+surrendered in his absence and of which he had been given no hint.
+
+Now with a gravity that was bafflingly unreadable she stood silent and
+looked about the room, and the man's eyes followed hers.
+
+Why was it, he almost fiercely demanded of himself, that this cottage
+set in remote hills shed about him a feeling of soul-satisfaction that
+he had never encountered in more luxurious places?
+
+Now as he looked at it the thought of leaving it cramped his heart
+with a sort of breathless agony.
+
+Yet, of course, there was no question after all. It was because in
+everything it was reflection of Glory's own spirit and to him Glory
+stood for the only love that had ever been bigger to him than
+himself.
+
+The simplicity and good taste of the small house, standing in a land
+of squalid cabins like a disciple of quiet elegance among beggars, had
+been the result of their collaboration. Glory had had the instinct of
+artistic perception and true values and he had been able to guide her
+from his sybarite experience.
+
+The stone fireplace with its ingle-nook, built by their own hands from
+rocks they had selected and gathered together, seemed to him a
+beautiful thing. The natural wood of the paneling, picked out at the
+saw-mill with a critical eye for graining and figuration, satisfied
+the eye, and the few pictures that he had brought from the East were
+all landscapes that meant something to each of them--lyric bits of
+canvas with singing skies. To every object a memory had attached
+itself; a memory that had also a tendril in their hearts.
+
+But now Glory, too, was looking at all these things as though she as
+well as himself were leaving them. There was something of farewell in
+the glance that lingered on them and caressed them, as if of
+leave-taking and into Spurrier's heart crept the intuition that
+despite his declaration just made that this should be their last
+separation, she was seeing in it a threat of permanence.
+
+And that was the thought that was chilling Glory's heart and muting
+the song of happiness which his coming had awakened. This place which
+had been founded with all the promise of home and companionship was
+beginning to hold for her the foreboding of loneliness and something
+like abandonment. He knew it only when they were together here, but
+she had been in it alone and frightened more than in times of shared
+happiness.
+
+And why was this true? Why could it be either true or necessary
+unless, as she had told herself in panic moments and denied so
+persistently, she was a misfit in his broader life and a woman whom he
+could enjoy in solitude but dared not trust to comparison with
+others?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+At last she turned abruptly away, in order that the misery which would
+no longer submit to concealment might not show itself in her eyes, and
+stood looking out of the window.
+
+Spurrier crossed with anxious swiftness and took her again into his
+arms.
+
+"When I have finished this business trip," he declared fervently, "our
+separations shall end. They have been too many and too long--but I've
+paid for them in loneliness, dear. This call, that I'm answering now,
+is unexpected but it's imperative and I can't disobey it."
+
+She turned then, slowly and gravely, but with no lightening of the
+burdened anxiety in her eyes.
+
+"It's not just that you have to go away, Jack," she told him. "It's a
+great deal more than that."
+
+"What else is there, dearest?" His question was intoned with surprise.
+"When we are together, I have nothing else to ask of life. Have you?"
+
+"The place has been changed--mightily changed," she went on musingly
+as though talking to herself rather than to him. "And yet the walls
+are the same as they were that day--when we both thought we had to die
+here together."
+
+"They are the dearer for that," he exclaimed fervently. "That was what
+made us see things truly."
+
+"I wonder," she questioned, then meeting his eyes steadily she went on
+as though determined to say what must be said.
+
+"When you called Brother Hawkins in to marry us, I was afraid. I was
+afraid because I thought you were only doing it out of kindness, and
+that afterward you'd be ashamed of me."
+
+"Ashamed of you," he echoed with indignant incredulity. "In God's name
+how could I be?"
+
+"Or if not ashamed of me that you couldn't help knowing that I
+was--what I am--all right here in the hills but that outside--I
+wouldn't do."
+
+"If you were ever afraid of that, it was only because you were
+undervaluing yourself. You surely haven't any ghost of such a fear
+left now."
+
+For a little she stood silent again torn between the loyalty that
+hesitated to question him and the pride that was hurt.
+
+Finally she said simply: "It's a bigger fear now. Unless I'm
+unpresentable, why do you--never take me anywhere with you?"
+
+John Spurrier laughed, vastly relieved that the mountain of her
+anxiety had resolved itself, as he thought, into a mole-hill. He could
+laugh because he had no suspicion of the chronic soreness of her heart
+and his answer was lightly made.
+
+"These trips have all been in connection with the sort of business,
+Glory, that would have meant keeping me away from you whether you had
+gone to town or not. When we travel together--and I want that we shall
+travel a great deal--I must be free to devote myself to you. I want to
+show the world to you and I want to show you to the world."
+
+That declaration he fancied ought to resolve her fears of his being
+ashamed of her.
+
+"If you were afraid I'd seem out of place," she assured him, "I might
+be right sorry--and yet I think I'd understand. I'm not a fool and I
+know I'd make mistakes, but I was raised a lawyer's daughter and I've
+got a pretty good business head--yet you've never told me anything of
+what this business is that calls you away. You always treat me as if
+there were no use in even trying to make me understand it."
+
+The man no longer laughed. He could not explain that it was rather
+because she might understand too well than not well enough. Even to
+her, until he was ready to prove his intent by his actual deeds, it
+seemed impossible to give that story without the seeming of the
+plunderer of her people.
+
+"When the time comes that releases me from my pledge of absolute
+secrecy, dear," he told her earnestly, "I mean to tell you all about
+my business--and I think you'll approve, then. Now I don't talk
+because I have no right to."
+
+Again there was silence, after which Glory said in a voice of still
+resolution which he had never heard from her before:
+
+"I'm ignorant and uncultivated, Jack, but to me marriage is a full
+partnership--or it isn't anything. When Mr. Harrison came, I saw for
+the first time just how I looked to men like him. I was just 'pore
+white trash.'"
+
+"Did he----" Spurrier broke off and his face went abruptly white with
+passion. Had Harrison been there at that moment he would have stood
+in danger at the hands of his employee, but Glory shook her head and
+hastened to quiet him.
+
+"He wasn't impolite, Jack. It wasn't that--only I read in his eyes
+what he tried to hide. I only told you that because I wanted you to
+understand me. People here say that you give me everything but
+yourself; that I'm not good enough for you except right here where
+there's nothing better."
+
+"That is a damned lie," he expostulated. "Who says it?"
+
+"Only women-folks and gossipy grannies that you can't fight with,
+Jack," she answered steadily. "But I've thought about it lots. I've
+come to think, dear, that maybe you ought to be free--and if you
+ought," she paused, then the final assertion broke from her with an
+agonized voice, "then, I love you enough to set you free."
+
+Spurrier seized her in his arms and his words came choked with
+vehement feeling.
+
+"I want you, Glory. I want you always and I couldn't live without you.
+When I have to go away I endure it only by thinking of coming back to
+you. If you ever set me free as you call it, it will be only because
+_you_ don't want _me_. I suppose in that case I'd try to take my
+medicine--but I think it would about kill me."
+
+"There's no danger of that, dear," she declared.
+
+The man drew away for a moment and fumbled for words. His aptness of
+speech had deserted him and at last he spoke clumsily:
+
+"It's hard to explain just now, when you've accused me of not taking
+you into my confidence, but I stand at a point, Glory, where I've got
+the hardest fight ahead of me I ever made. I stand to be ruined or to
+make good. I've got to use every minute and every thought in
+competition with quick brains and enormous power. Until its over I
+must be a machine with one idea ... and I'll fail, dear, unless I can
+take with me the knowledge that you trust me."
+
+She looked up into his face and the misery in her eyes gave place to
+confidence.
+
+"Go ahead, Jack," she said. "I believe in you and I'm not even afraid
+of your failing." After a moment she clasped her arms tightly about
+him and added vehemently: "But whether you succeed or fail, come back
+to me, dear, because, except for your sake, it won't make any
+difference to me."
+
+That same afternoon Spurrier found time to visit the "witch woman." It
+had dawned upon him since that night in the Senate chamber that, after
+all, Sim Colby might have been the least dangerous of his enemies, and
+the thought made him inquisitive.
+
+The old crone made her magic with abundant grotesquerie, but at its
+end she peered shrewdly into his eyes, and said:
+
+"I reads hyar in the omends thet mebby ye comes too late."
+
+Spurrier smiled grimly. He thought that himself.
+
+"I dis'arns," went on the hag portentously, "thet a blind man
+impereled ye mightily--a blind man thet plays a fiddle--but thars
+others beside him thet dwells fur away an' holds a mighty power of
+wealth."
+
+A blind man! Spurrier's remembrance flashed back to the visit of blind
+Joe Givins and the papers incautiously left on his table. Yet if he
+was genuinely blind they could have meant nothing to him--and if he
+was not genuinely blind it was hard to conceive of human nerves
+enduring without wincing that test of the gun thrust against the
+temple.
+
+Spurrier rose and paid his fee. Had he seen her in time, this warning
+would have averted disaster. Now it was something of a post-mortem.
+
+At the door of Martin Harrison's office several days later Spurrier
+drew back his shoulders and braced himself. It was impossible to
+ignore the fact that he stood on the brink of total ruin; that his
+sole hope lay in persuading his principal that with more time and more
+money he would yet be able to succeed--and Harrison was as plastic to
+persuasion as a brass Buddha.
+
+But he had steeled himself for the interview--and now he turned the
+knob and swung back the mahogany door.
+
+Spurrier was familiar enough with the atmosphere of that office to
+read the signs correctly. The hushed air of nervousness that hung over
+it now betokened a chief in a mood which no one sought to stir to
+further irritation.
+
+Always in the past Spurrier had been deferentially ushered into a
+private office and treated as the future chief. Now, as though he were
+already a disinherited heir, he was left in the general waiting room,
+and he was left there for an hour. That cooling of the heel, he
+recognized as a warning of the cold reception to come--and an augury
+of ruin.
+
+At last he was called in, but he went with an unruffled demeanor which
+hid from the principal's eye how near to breaking his inward
+confidence was strained.
+
+"I wired you to come at once," began Harrison curtly, and Spurrier
+smiled as he nodded.
+
+"I came at once, sir, except that I hadn't been home for some time,
+and it was necessary to make a stop there."
+
+"Home," Martin's brows lifted a trifle. "You mean the mountains."
+
+"Certainly--for the time being, I'm located there."
+
+"We may as well be honest with each other," asserted the magnate. "I
+consider that under the circumstances you behaved with serious
+discourtesy and without candor." For a casual moment his glance dwelt
+on the portrait of Vivien which stood on his table.
+
+"I disagree with you, sir. I preferred relating the full circumstances,
+which were unusual, when there was an opportunity to do so in person.
+I was kept there by your interests as well as my own."
+
+"That recital," said the older man dryly, "is your concern. Now that I
+know the facts I find myself uninterested in the details. You have
+chosen your way. The question is whether we can travel it together."
+
+"And I presume that the first point of that question demands a full
+report upon the business operations."
+
+"So far as I can see, they have collapsed."
+
+"They have by no means collapsed."
+
+Suddenly the wrath that had been smoldering in Harrison's eyes burst
+into tempest. He brought his clenched fist down upon his desk until
+inkwells and accessories rattled.
+
+This man's moments of equinox were terrifying to those who must bow
+to his will--and his will held sway over broad horizons. If John
+Spurrier had not been intrepid he must have collapsed under the
+withering violence of the passion that rained on him.
+
+"Before God," cried Harrison, pacing his floor like a lion that lashes
+itself to frenzy, "you undertook to avenge me on Trabue. You have
+drawn on me with carte-blanche liberties and spent fortunes like a
+prodigal! You have assured me that you had, at all times, the
+situation well in hand. Then, through some damned blunder, you failed.
+Let the money loss slide. Damn the money! I'm the laughingstock of the
+business world. I'm delivered over to Trabue's enjoyment as a boob who
+failed. I'm an absurdity, and you're responsible!"
+
+"When you've finished, sir," said Spurrier quietly, "I shall endeavor
+to show you that none of those things have happened--that our failure
+is temporary and that when you undertook this enterprise you were in
+no impetuous haste as to the time of its accomplishment."
+
+"The legislature doesn't meet for two years," Harrison barked back at
+him. "That will be two years of preparation for Trabue. Now he's fully
+warned, where do we get off?"
+
+"At our original point of destination, sir."
+
+The opportunity hound began his argument. His demeanor of unruffled
+calm and entire confidence began to exercise its persuasive force.
+Harrison cooled somewhat, but Spurrier was fighting, beneath his pose,
+as a man who has cramps in deep water fights for his life. These few
+minutes would determine his fate, and he was totally at the mercy of
+this single arbiter.
+
+"I have now all the options we need on the far side of Hemlock
+Mountain," Spurrier summarized at last. "All except one tract which
+belongs to Bud Hawkins, who is a preacher and a friend of mine. He
+must have more generous terms, but I will be able to do business with
+him."
+
+"You talk of the options on the far side of the ridge," Harrison broke
+in belligerently. "That is the minor field."
+
+"I'll be able to repeat that performance on the near side."
+
+"You will not! A repetition of your performance is the last thing we
+crave. Any movement now would be only a piling up of warnings. For the
+present you will give every indication of having abandoned the
+project."
+
+"That is my idea, sir. I was not speaking of immediate but future
+activities. Also----" In spite of his desperation of plight the
+younger man's bearing flashed into a challenging undernote of its old
+audacity, "when I used the word 'repeat' I referred to the successful
+portion of my effort. There was no failure on the land end. It was the
+charter that went wrong--through the deceit of a man we had to
+trust."
+
+"A man whom you selected," Harrison caught him up. "You understood, in
+advance, the chances of your game. It was agreed upon your own
+insistence that your hand should be absolutely free--and freedom of
+method carries exclusiveness of responsibility. Traitors exist. They
+don't furnish excuses."
+
+"Nor am I making them. I am merely stating facts which you seem
+inclined to confuse. I grant the failure but I also claim the partial
+success."
+
+Harrison seated himself, and as the interview stretched Spurrier's
+nerves stretched with it under the placid surface of his plunger's
+camouflage. He had, as yet, no way of guessing how the verdict would
+go, and now the capitalist's face was hardened in discouragement. It
+was a face of merciless inflexibility. The sentence had been prepared
+in the judge's mind. There remained only its enunciation.
+
+"Nothing is to be gained by mincing my words, Spurrier," declared
+Spurrier's chief. "We know precisely where you stand."
+
+Harrison extended his hand with its fingers spread and closed it
+slowly into a clenched fist. "I hold you--there! I can crush you to a
+pulp of absolute ruin. You know that. The only question is whether I
+want, or not, to do it."
+
+"And whether, or not, you can afford to do it," amended the other with
+an audacity that he by no means felt. "You must decide whether you can
+afford to accept tamely and as a final defeat, a mere reversal, which
+I--and no one else--can turn into eventual victory."
+
+"I have duly considered that. I had implicit confidence in your
+abilities. You have struck at my personal feeling for you by a silence
+that was not frank. You have allied yourself with the mountain people
+by marriage, and we stand on opposite sides of the line of interest.
+You have all the while been watched by our enemies, and I regard you
+as a defeated man. If I choose to cast you aside, you go to the scrap
+heap. You will never recover."
+
+That was an assertion which there was neither health nor wisdom in
+contradicting and Spurrier waited. His last card was played.
+
+"And I am going to cast you aside--bankrupt you--ruin you!" blazed out
+Harrison, "unless you absolutely meet my requirements during a period
+of probation. That period will engage you in a very different matter.
+For the present you are through with the Kentucky mountains. The new
+task will be a difficult one, and it should put you on your mettle. It
+is one that can't be accomplished at all unless you can do it. You
+have that one chance to retrieve yourself. Take it or leave it."
+
+"What are your terms?"
+
+"You will sail to-morrow for Liverpool. I will give you explicit
+instructions to-night. Go prepared for an extended stay abroad."
+
+For the first time Spurrier's face paled and insurrection flared in
+his pupils.
+
+"Sail for Europe to-morrow!" he exclaimed vehemently. "I'll see you
+damned first! Doesn't it occur to you that a man has his human side? I
+have a wife and a home and when I am ordered to leave them for an
+indefinite time I'm entitled to a breathing space in which to set my
+own affairs in shape. I am willing enough to undertake your
+bidding--but not to-morrow."
+
+Spurrier paused at the end of his outbreak and stood looking down at
+the seated figure, which to all intents and purposes might have been
+the god that held, for him, life and death in his hand.
+
+And as he looked Spurrier thought he had never seen such glacial
+coldness and merciless indifference in any human face. He had known
+this man in the thundering of passion before which the walls about him
+seemed to tremble, but this manifestation of adamant implacability was
+new, and he realized that he had invited destruction in defying it.
+
+"As you please," replied Harrison crisply, "but it's to-morrow or not
+at all. I've already outlined the alternative and since you refuse,
+our business seems concluded. Next time you feel disposed to talk or
+think of what you're entitled to, remember that my view is different.
+All your claims stand forfeit in my judgment. You are entitled to just
+what I choose to offer--and no more."
+
+The chief glanced toward the door with a glance of dismissal, and the
+door became to Spurrier the emblem of finality. Yet he did not at once
+move toward it.
+
+"I appreciate the need of prompt obedience, where there is an urge of
+haste," he persisted, "but if a few days wouldn't imperil results, I
+want those days to make a flying trip to Kentucky and to my wife."
+
+The face of the seated man remained obdurately set but his eyes blazed
+again with a note of personal anger.
+
+"At a time when I was reasonably interested, you chose to leave me
+unenlightened about your domestic arrangements. Now I can claim no
+concern in them. Most wives, however, permit their husbands such
+latitude of movement as business requires. If yours does not it is
+your own misfortune. I think that's all."
+
+Spurrier knew that the jaws of the trap were closing on him. He had
+been too hasty in his outburst and he turned toward the door, but as
+his hand fell on the bronze knob Harrison spoke again.
+
+"Think it over, Spurrier. I can--and will ruin you--unless you yield.
+It is no time for maudlin sentiment, but until five-thirty this
+afternoon, I shall not consider your answer final. Up to that hour you
+may reconsider it, if you wish."
+
+"I will notify you at five," responded the lieutenant as he let
+himself out and closed the door behind him.
+
+That day the opportunity hound spent in an agony of conflicting
+emotions. That the other held a bolt of destruction and was in the
+mood to launch it he did not pretend to doubt. If it were launched
+even the land upon which his cottage stood would no longer be his own.
+He must either return to Glory empty-handed and bankrupt, or strain
+with a new tax, the confidence he had asked of her, with the pledge
+that he would return soon and for good.
+
+But if, even at the cost of humbled pride and Glory's hurt, he
+maintained his business relations, the path to eventual success
+remained open.
+
+As long as the cards were being shuffled chance beckoned and at five
+o'clock Spurrier went into a cigar-store booth and called a downtown
+telephone number.
+
+"You hold the whip hand, sir," he announced curtly when a secretary had
+put Harrison on the wire. "When do I report for final instructions?"
+
+"Come to my house this evening," ordered the master.
+
+Most of the hours of that evening, except the two in Harrison's study,
+Spurrier spent in writing to Glory, tearing up letter after letter
+while the nervous moisture bedewed his brow. It was so impossible to
+give her any true or comprehensive explanation of the pressing weight
+of compulsion. His messages must have the limp of unreason. He was
+crossing the ocean without her and she would read into it a sort of
+abandonment that would hurt and wound her. He had taxed everything
+else in life, and now he was overtaxing her loyalty.
+
+Yet he believed that if in his depleted treasury of life there was one
+thing left upon which he could draw prodigally and with faith, it was
+that love; a love that would stand staunch though he were forced to
+hurt it once again.
+
+So Spurrier sailed and, having arrived on European soil, took up the
+work that threw him into relations with men of large caliber in Capel
+Court and Threadneedle Street. His mission carried him to the
+continent as well; from Paris to Brussels and from Brussels to Hamburg
+and Berlin, where the quaint customs of the Kentucky Cumberlands
+seemed as remote as the life of Mars--remote but, to Spurrier, as
+alluring as the thought of salvation to a recluse who has foresworn
+the things of earth.
+
+In terms of dead reckoning, Berlin is as far from Hemlock Mountain as
+Hemlock Mountain is from Berlin, but in terms of human relations Glory
+felt the distance as infinitely greater than did her husband. To him
+the Atlantic was only an ocean three thousand miles wide; often
+crossed and discounted by familiarity. To her it was a measureless
+waste separating all she knew from another world. To him continental
+dimensions were reckoned in hours of commonplace railway journeying,
+but to her the "measured mile" was both lengthwise and perpendicular,
+and when she passed old friends she fancied that she detected in their
+glances either pity for her desertion or the smirk of "I-told-you-so"
+malevolence.
+
+It even crept to her ears that "some folks" spoke of her as "the
+widder Spurrier" and that Tassie Plumford had chuckled, "I reckon he's
+done gone off an' left her fer good an' all this time. Folks says he's
+fled away cl'ar acrost ther ocean-sea."
+
+Glory told herself that she had promised faith and that she was in no
+danger of faltering, but as the weeks lengthened into months and the
+months followed each other, her waiting became bitter.
+
+In Berlin John Spurrier passed as a British subject, bearing British
+passports. That had been part of the careful plan to prevent discovery
+of what American interests he represented and it had proven effective.
+He had almost accomplished the difficult task of self-redemption, set
+him by the man whose confidence he had strained.
+
+Then came the bolt out of heaven. The inconceivable suddenness of the
+war cloud belched and broke, but he remained confident that he would
+have a chance to finish up before the paralysis cramped bourse and
+exchange.
+
+England would not come in, and he, the seeming British subject, would
+have safe conduct out of Germany.
+
+Now he must get back. This would mean the soaring of oil prices, and
+along new lines the battle must be pitched back there at home, before
+it was too late.
+
+So Spurrier finished his packing. He was going out onto the
+streets to watch the upflame of the war spirit and to make railway
+reservations.
+
+There was a knock at the door and the man opened it. Stiffly erect,
+stood a squad of military police and stiffly their lieutenant
+saluted.
+
+"You are Herr John Spurrier?" he inquired.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+"It is, perhaps, in the nature of a formality, which you will be able
+to arrange," said the officer. "But I am directed to place you under
+arrest. England is in the war. You are said to be a former soldier."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Over the ragged lands that lay on the "nigh side" of Hemlock Mountain
+breathed a spirit of excitement and mighty hope. It had been two years
+since John Spurrier had left the field he had planned to develop, and
+in those years had come the transition of rebirth.
+
+Along muddy streets the hogs still wallowed, but now they were deeply
+rutted by the teaming of ponderous oil gear, and one saw young men in
+pith helmets and pig-skin puttees; keen-faced engineers and oil
+prospectors drawn in by the challenge of wealth from the far trails of
+Mexico and the West. One heard the jargon of that single business and
+the new vocabulary of its devotees. "Wild-catters" following surface
+indications or hunches were testing and well-driving. Gushers rewarded
+some and "dry holes" and "dusters" disappointed others. Into the
+mediæval life of hills that had stood age-long unaltered and aloof
+came the infusion of hot-blooded enterprise, the eager questing after
+quick and miraculous wealth.
+
+In Lexington and Winchester oil exchanges carried the activity of
+small bourses. In newspapers a new form of advertisement proclaimed
+itself.
+
+Oil was king. Oil and its by-product, gasoline, that the armies needed
+and that the thousands of engines on the earth and in the air so
+greedily devoured.
+
+But over on the far side of the ridge men only fretted and chafed as
+yet. They had the oil under their feet, but for it there was no
+outlet. Like a land without a seaport, they looked over at neighbors
+growing rich while they themselves still "hurted fer needcessities."
+
+American Oil and Gas had locked them in while it milked the other cow.
+It had its needed charters for piping both fields, but a man who was
+either dead or somewhere across the world held the way barred in a
+stalemate of controlled rights of way.
+
+Glory thought less about the wonderful things that were going forward
+than did others about her, because she had a broken heart. No letters
+came from Spurrier, and the faith that she struggled to hold high like
+a banner nailed to the masthead of her life, hung drooping. In the end
+her colors had been struck.
+
+If John Spurrier returned in search of her now she would go into
+hiding from him, but it was most unlikely that he would return. He had
+married her on impulse and under a pressure of excitement. He had
+loved her passionately--but not with a strong enough fidelity to hold
+him true--and now she believed he had turned back again to his old
+idols. She was repudiated, and she ought to hate him with the
+bitterness of her mountain blood, yet in her heart's core, though she
+would never forgive him and never return to him, she knew that she
+still loved him and would always love him.
+
+She no longer feared that she would have hampered him in the society
+of his more finished world. She had visited Helen Merriwell and had
+come to know that other world for herself. She found that the gentle
+blood in her veins could claim its own rights and respond graciously.
+Hers had been a submerged aristocracy, but it had come out of its
+chrysalis, bright-winged.
+
+Then one day something happened that turned Glory's little personal
+world upside down and brought a readjustment of all its ideas.
+
+Sim Colby owned a little patch of land beside his homestead place,
+over cross the mountain, and he was among those who became rich. He
+was not so rich as local repute declared him, but rich enough to set
+stirring the avarice of an erstwhile friend, who owned no land at
+all.
+
+So ex-Private Severance came over to the deserter's house with a
+scheme conceived in envy and born of greed. He was bent on blackmail.
+
+When he first arrived, the talk ran along general lines, because
+"Blind Joe," the fiddler, was at the house, and the real object of the
+visit was confidential. Blind Joe had also been an oil beneficiary,
+and he and Sim Colby had become partners in a fashion. During that
+relationship Blind Joe had told Sim some things that he told few
+others.
+
+But when Joe left and the pipes were lighted Severance settled himself
+in a back-tilted chair and gazed reflectively at the crest of the
+timber line.
+
+"You an' me's been partners for a right long spell, Bud Grant, ain't
+we?"
+
+Colby started. The use of that discarded name brought back the past
+with its ghosts of fear. He had almost forgotten that once he had been
+Bud Grant, and a deserter from the army. It was all part of a bygone
+and walled-in long ago. Though they were quite alone he looked
+furtively about him and spoke in a lowered voice:
+
+"Don't call me by thet name. Thar ain't no man but you knows
+erbout--what I used to be."
+
+"Thet's what I've been studyin' erbout. Nobody else but me."
+
+Severance sat silent for a while after that announcement, but there
+was a meaning smile on his lips, and Colby paled a shade whiter.
+
+"_I_ reckon I kin trust ye; I always hev," he declared with a specious
+confidence.
+
+Severance nodded. "I was on guard duty an' I suffered ye ter escape,"
+he went reminiscently on. "I knows thet ye kilt Captain Comyn, an'
+I've done kept a close mouth all these years. Now ye're a rich man an'
+I'm a pore one. Hit looks like ter me ye owes me a debt an' ye'd ought
+ter do a leetle something for me."
+
+So that was it! Colby knew that if he yielded at all, this man's
+avarice and his importunities would feed on themselves increasingly
+and endlessly. Yet he dared not refuse, so he sought to temporize.
+
+"I reckon thar's right smart jestice in what ye says," he conceded,
+"but I don't know jest yit how I stands or how much money I'm wuth.
+Ye'll have ter give me a leetle time ter find out."
+
+But when Severance mounted his mule and rode away, Sim Colby gave him
+only a short start and then hurried on foot through the hill tangles
+by a short cut that would intercept his visitor's course.
+
+He knew that Severance would have to ride through the same gorge in
+which Sim had waylaid Spurrier, and he meant to get there first,
+rifle-armed.
+
+It was sunset when, quite unsuspecting of danger, at least for the
+moment, Severance turned his mule into the gorge. He was felicitating
+himself, since without an acre of land or a drop of oil he had
+"declared himself in" on another's wealth. His mule was a laggard in
+pace, and the rider did not urge him. He was content to amble.
+
+Back of the rock walls of the great cleft, the woods lay hushed and
+dense in the closing shadows. An owl quavered softly, and the water
+among the ferns whispered. All else was quiet.
+
+But from just a little way back, a figure hitched forward as it lay
+belly-down in the "laurel hell." It sighted a rifle and pressed a
+finger.
+
+The mule snorted and stopped dead with a flirt of ears and tail and
+with no word, without even a groan, the rider toppled sidewise and
+slid from the saddle.
+
+The man back in the brush peered out. He noted how still the crumpled
+figure lay between the feet of the patient, mouse-colored beast, that
+switched at flies with its tail. It lay twisted almost double with one
+arm bent beneath its chest.
+
+So Colby crept closer. It would be as well to haul the body back into
+the tangle where it would not be so soon discovered, and to start the
+beast along its way with a slap on the flank.
+
+But just as the assassin stooped, Severance's right hand darted out
+and, as it did so, there was a quick glint of blue steel, and three
+instantly successive reports.
+
+Colby staggered backward with a sense of betrayal and a horrible
+realization of physical pain. His rifle dropped from a shattered hand
+and jets of blood broke out through his rent clothing. Each of those
+three pistol balls had taken effect at a range so close that he had
+been powder-burned. He knew he was mortally hurt, and that the other
+would soon be dead if he was not so already.
+
+Colby began crawling. He was mangled as if by an explosion, but
+instinct drove him. Twice he fainted and recovered dim consciousness
+and still dragged himself tediously along.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Glory was alone in her house. Her father, who had been living with her
+of late, had gone to the county seat overnight.
+
+The young woman sat in silence, and the sewing upon which she had been
+busied lay in her lap forgotten. In her eyes was the far-away look of
+one who eats out one's heart in thoughts that can neither be solved
+nor banished.
+
+Then she heard a faint call. It was hardly more than a gasped whisper,
+and as she rose, startled, and went to the door she saw striving to
+reach it a shape of terrible human wreckage.
+
+Sim Colby's clothes were almost torn from him and blood, dried brown,
+and blood freshly flowing, mingled their ugly smears upon him. His
+lips were livid and his face gray.
+
+Glory ran to him with a horrified scream. She did not yet recognize
+him, and he gasped out a plea for whisky.
+
+With the utmost effort of her young strength she got him in, and
+managed to straighten out the mutilated body with pillows under its
+head.
+
+But after a little the stimulant brought a slight reviving, and he
+talked in broken and disjointed phrases.
+
+"Hit war Severance," he mumbled. "I fought back--I reckon I kilt him,
+too."
+
+Glory gazed in bewildered alarm about the house. Brother Bud Hawkins
+was at Uncle Jimmy Litchfield's place, and she must get medical help,
+though she feared that the wounded man would be dead before her
+return.
+
+When she came back with the preacher, who also "healed human bodies
+some," Colby was still alive but near his passing.
+
+"Ef thar's aught on your conscience, Sim," said the old preacher
+gently, "hit's time ter make yore peace with Almighty God, fer ye're
+goin' ter stand afore him in an hour more. Air ye ready ter face
+Him?"
+
+The dying man looked up, and above the weakness and the suffering that
+filled his eyes, showed a dominating expression of terror. If ever a
+human being needed to be shriven he thought it was himself.
+
+They had to bend close to catch his feeble syllables, as he said: "Git
+paper--write this down."
+
+The preacher obeyed, kneeling on the floor, and though the words were
+few, their utterance required dragging minutes, punctuated with breaks
+of silence and gasping.
+
+"Hit warn't John Spurrier--thet kilt Captain Comyn back tha'r in the
+Philippines.... I knows who done hit----" He broke off there, and the
+girl closed her hands over her face. "I sought ter kill Spurrier--but
+I warn't with them--thet attackted him hyar--an' wounded ther woman."
+
+Once more a long hiatus interrupted the recital and then the mangled
+creature went on: "Hit was ther oil folks thet deevised thet murder
+scheme."
+
+The preacher was busily writing the record of this death-bed statement
+and Glory stood pale and distraught.
+
+The words "oil people" were ringing in her ears. What connection could
+Spurrier have had with them: what enmity could they have had for him?
+
+But out of the confusion of her thoughts another thing stood forth
+with the sudden glare of revelation. This man might die before he
+finished and if he could not tell all he knew, he must first tell that
+which would clear her husband's name. Though that husband had turned
+his back on her, her duty to him in this matter must take precedence
+over the rest.
+
+"Joe Givins--" began Colby once more in laborious syllables, but
+peremptorily the girl halted him.
+
+"Never mind Joe Givins just now," she commanded with as sharp a
+finality as though to her had been delegated the responsibility of his
+judgment. "You said you knew who killed Captain Comyn. Who was it?"
+
+The eyes in the wounded and stricken face gazed up at her in mute
+appeal as a sinner might look at a father confessor, pleading that he
+be spared the bitterest dregs of his admission.
+
+Glory read that glance and her own delicate features hardened. She
+leaned forward.
+
+"I brought you in here and succored you," she asserted with a
+sternness which she could not have commanded in her own behalf.
+"You're going before Almighty God--and unless you answer that
+question honestly--no prayers shall go with you for forgiveness."
+
+"Glory!" The name broke in shocked horror from the bearded lips of the
+preacher. "Glory, the mercy of God hain't ter be interfered with by
+mortals. Ther man's dying!"
+
+Upon him the young woman wheeled with blazing eyes.
+
+"God calls on his servants for justice to the living as well as mercy
+to the dying," she declared. "Sim Colby, who killed Captain Comyn?"
+
+"I done hit," came the unwillingly wrung confession. "My real name's
+Grant.... Severance aided me.... Thet's why I sought to kill Spurrier.
+I deemed he war a huntin' me down."
+
+"Now," ordered the young woman, "what about Joe Givins?"
+
+Again a long pause, then: "Blind Joe Givins--only he ain't no blinder
+than me--read papers hyar--he diskivered thet Spurrier was atter oil
+rights--he tipped off ther oil folks--he war their spy all ther
+time--shammin' ter be blind----" There the speaker struggled to
+breathe and let his head fall back with the utterance incomplete. Five
+minutes later he was dead.
+
+"Hit don't seem ter me," said Brother Hawkins a short time later,
+while Glory still stood in dazed and trance-like wonderment, "es ef
+what he said kin be true. Why ef hit be, John Spurrier was aimin' ter
+plunder us hyar all ther time! He was counselin' us ter sell out--an'
+he was buyin'. I kain't believe that."
+
+But Glory had drawn back to the wall of the room and into her eyes had
+come a new expression. The expression of one who must tear aside a
+veil and know the truth, and who dreads what that truth may be.
+
+She had said that justice, no less than mercy, was God's command laid
+upon mortals. She had, almost by the extremity of withholding from
+Colby his hope of salvation until he spoke, won from him the
+declaration which would give back to John Spurrier an unsmirched name.
+Once Spurrier had said that was his strongest wish in life. But now
+justice called again: this time justice to her own people and perhaps
+it meant the unveiling of duplicity in the man she had married.
+
+"Brother Hawkins," she declared in a low but fervent voice, "if it's
+not true, it's a slander that I can't let stand. If it _is_ true, I
+must undo the wrong he's sought to do--if I can. Please wait."
+
+Then she was tearing at the bit of paneling that gave access to the
+secret cabinet, and poring over papers from a broken and rifled strong
+box.
+
+There was the uncontrovertible record, clear writ, and at length her
+pale face came up resolutely.
+
+"I don't understand it all yet," she told the preacher. "But he was
+buying. He bought everything that's been sold this side the ridge. He
+was seeking to influence the legislature, too. I've got to talk to my
+father."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the next night, when old Dyke Cappeze had ridden back from the
+county seat, that he sat under the lamp in the room where Sim Colby
+had died, and on the table before him were spread the papers that had
+lain unread so long in John Spurrier's secret cabinet.
+
+Across from him sat Glory with her fingers spasmodically clutched and
+her eyes riveted on his face as he read and studied the documents,
+which at first he had been loath to inspect without the permission of
+their owner. He had been convinced, however, when Glory had told the
+story of the dying confession and had appealed to him for counsel.
+
+"By what you tell me," the old lawyer had summarized at the end of her
+recital, "you forced from this man his admission which cleared John
+Spurrier of the charge that's been hanging over him. You set out to
+serve him and refused to be turned aside when Colby balked.... But
+that confession didn't end there. It went on and besides clearing Jack
+in that respect it seems to have involved him in another way. You
+can't use a part of a confession and discard the balance. Perhaps we
+can serve him as well as others best by going into the whole of the
+affair."
+
+So now Glory interrupted by no word or question, despite her anxiety
+to understand and her hoping against hope for a verdict which should
+leave John Spurrier clean of record.
+
+But if she refrained from breaking in on the study that engrossed her
+father and wrinkled his parchment-like forehead, she could not help
+reading the expression of his eyes, the growing sternness and
+indignation of his stiffening lips--and of drawing the moral that when
+he spoke his words must be those of condemnation.
+
+The strident song of the katydids came in through the windows and the
+moon dropped behind the hill crests before Dyke Cappeze spoke, and
+Brother Hawkins, who was spending the night at that house, smoked
+alone on the porch, unwilling to intrude on the confidences that these
+two might wish to exchange.
+
+Finally the lawyer folded the last paper and looked up.
+
+"Do you want the whole truth, little gal?" he inquired bluntly. "How
+much do you still love this man?"
+
+Glory flushed then paled.
+
+"I guess," she said and her words were very low and soft, "I'll love
+him so long as I live--though I hate myself for doing it. He wearied
+of me and forgot me--but I can't do likewise."
+
+Then her chin came up and her voice rang with a quiet finality.
+
+"But I want the truth ... the whole truth without any softening."
+
+"Then as I see it, it's simply this. A war was on between two groups
+of financiers. American Oil and Gas had held a monopoly and maintained
+a corrupt control in the legislature that stifled competition. That's
+why the other oil boom failed. The second group was trying to slip up
+on these corruptionists and gain the control by a campaign of
+surprise. Jack Spurrier appears to have been the ambassador of that
+second group--and he seems to have failed."
+
+The wife nodded. Even yet she unconsciously held a brief for his
+defense.
+
+"So far as you've gone," she reminded her father, "you show him to
+have been what is commonly called a 'practical business man'--but no
+worse than the men he fought."
+
+Cappeze bowed his head gravely and his next words came reluctantly.
+"So far, yes. Of course he could have done none of the things he did
+had he not first won the confidence of those poor ignorant folk that
+are our neighbors and our friends. Of course it was because they
+believed in him and followed his counsel that they sold their
+birthrights to men with whom he pretended to have no connection--and
+yet who took their orders from him."
+
+"Then," Glory started, halted and leaned forward with her hands
+against her breast and her utterance was the monotone of a voice
+forced to a hard question: "Then what I feared was true? He lived
+among us and made friends of us--only to rob us?"
+
+"If by 'us' you mean the mountain people, I fear me that's precisely
+what he did. I can see no other explanation. Which ever of these two
+groups won meant to exploit and plunder us."
+
+For a little she made no answer, but the delicate color of her cheeks
+was gone to an ivory whiteness and the violet eyes were hardening.
+
+"Perhaps we oughtn't to judge him too harshly for these things,"
+said the father comfortingly. "The scroll of my bitterness against
+him is already heavy enough and to spare. He has broken your heart
+and that's enough for me. As to the rest there are many so-called
+honorable gentlemen who are no more scrupulous. We demand clean
+conduct here in these hills," a fierce bitterness came into his
+words, "but then we are ignorant, backwoods folk! There are many
+intricate ins and outs to this business and I don't presume to speak
+with absolute conclusiveness yet."
+
+Outside the katydids sang their prophecies of frost to come and an
+owl hooted. Glory Spurrier sat staring ahead of her and at last she
+said aloud, in that tone which one uses when a thought finds
+expression, unconscious that it has been vocal: "So he won our
+faith--with his clear eyes and his honest smile--only to swindle and
+rob us!"
+
+"My God, if I were a younger man," broke out the father passionately,
+rising from his chair and clenching the damaging papers in his
+talon-like fingers, "I'd learn the oil game. I'd take this information
+and use it against both their gangs--and I believe I could force them
+both to their knees."
+
+He paused and the momentary fire died out of his eyes.
+
+"I'm too old a dog for new tricks though," he added dejectedly, "and
+there's no one else to do it."
+
+"How could it be done?" demanded Glory rousing herself from her
+trance. "Between them they hold all the power, don't they?"
+
+"As far as I can make out," Cappeze explained with the interest of the
+legalistic mind for tackling an abstruse problem, "Spurrier had
+completed his arch as to one of his two purposes--all except its
+keystone. He had yet to gain a passage way through Brother Hawkins'
+land. With that he would have held the completed right-of-way--and
+it's the only one. The other gang of pirates hold the ability to get a
+charter but no right of way over which to use it. Now the man who
+could deliver Brother Hawkins' concession would have a key. He could
+force Spurrier's crowd to agree to almost anything, and with
+Spurrier's crowd he could wring a compromise from the others. Bud
+Hawkins is like the delegate at a convention who can break a
+deadlock. God knows I'd love to tackle it--but it's too late for me."
+
+Glory had come to her feet, and stood an incarnation of combat.
+
+"It's not too late for me," she said quietly. "Perhaps I'm too crude
+to go into John Spurrier's world of cultivated people but I'm shrewd
+enough to go into his world of business!"
+
+"You!" exclaimed the father in astonishment, then after a moment an
+eager light slowly dawned in his eyes and he broke out vehemently: "By
+God in Heaven, girl, I believe you're the man for the job!"
+
+"Call Brother Hawkins in," commanded Glory. "We need his help."
+
+Before he reached the door old Cappeze turned on his heel.
+
+"Glory," he said, "we've need to move out of this house and go back to
+my place. Here we're dwelling under a dishonest roof."
+
+"I'm going to leave it," she responded quickly, "but I'm going farther
+away than that. I'm going to study oil and I'm going to do it in the
+Bluegrass lowlands."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+John Spurrier stepped from the train at Carnettsville into a life that
+had been revolutionized. At last he had succeeded in leaving his
+German exile. His own country was in the war but he, with the
+equipment of a soldier, bore a dishonored name, which would bar him
+from a commission. Here he found the development of his dreams
+realized, but by other hands than his own.
+
+Above all, he must see Glory. He had cabled her and written her, so
+she would be expecting him. Now he gazed about streets through which
+teemed the new activity.
+
+Here was the thing he had seen in his dreams when he stood on wooded
+hills and thought in the terms of the future. Here it stood vivid and
+actual before the eyes that had visioned it.
+
+With a groan he turned into the road homeward on a hired horse. He
+still meant to fight, and unless the Bud Hawkins property had escaped
+him, he would still have to be accounted with--but great prizes had
+slipped away.
+
+At the gate of his house, his heart rose into his throat. The power of
+his emotion almost stifled him. Never had his love for Glory
+flickered. Never had he thought or dreamed of anything else or any one
+else so dearly and so constantly as of her.
+
+He stood at the fence with half-closed eyes for a moment, steadying
+himself against the surges of up-welling emotion, then, raising his
+eyes, he saw that the windows and the door were nailed up. The chimney
+stood dead and smokeless.
+
+Panic clutched at his throat as with a physical grasp. Before him
+trooped a hundred associations unaccountably dear. They were all
+memories of little things, mostly foolish little things that went into
+the sacred intimacy of his life with Glory.
+
+Now there was no Glory there.
+
+He rode at the best speed left in his tired horse over to old
+Cappeze's house, and, as he dismounted, saw the lawyer, greatly aged
+and broken, standing in the door.
+
+One glance at that face confirmed all the fears with which he had been
+battling. It was a face as stern as those on the frieze of the
+prophets. In it there was no ghost of the old welcome, no hope of any
+relenting. This old man saw in him an enemy.
+
+"Where is Glory?" demanded Spurrier as he hurried up to the doorstep,
+and the other looked accusingly back into his eyes and answered in
+cold and bitterly clipped syllables.
+
+"Wherever she is, sir, it's her wish to be there alone." Suddenly the
+old eyes flamed and the old voice rose thin and passionate. "If I
+burned in hell for it to the end of eternity, I would give you no
+other word of her."
+
+"She--she is not dead, then?"
+
+"No--but dead to you."
+
+"Mr. Cappeze," said Spurrier steadily, "are you sure that I may not
+have explanations that may change her view of me?"
+
+"We know," said the lawyer in a voice out of which the passion had
+passed, but which had the dead quality of an opinion inflexibly
+solidified, "that since your marriage, you never made her the
+companion of any hour that was not a backwoods hour. We know that you
+never told us the truth about yourself or your enterprises--that you
+came to us as a friend, won our confidence, and sought to exploit us.
+Your record is one of lies and unfaithfulness, and we have cast you
+out. That is her decision and with me her wish is sacred."
+
+The returned exile stood meeting the relentless eyes of the old man
+who had been his first friend in these hills and for a few moments he
+did not trust himself to speak.
+
+The shock of those shuttered windows and that blankly staring front at
+the house where he had looked for welcome; the collapse of all the
+dreams that had sustained him while a prisoner in an internment camp
+and a refugee hounded across the German border were visiting upon him
+a prostration that left him trembling and shaken.
+
+Finally he commanded his voice.
+
+"To me, too, her wish is sacred--but not until I hear it from her own
+lips. She alone has the right to condemn me and not even she until I
+have made my plea to her. Great God, man, my silence hasn't been
+voluntary. I've been cut off in a Hun prison-camp. I've kept life in
+me only because I could dream of her and because though it was easier
+to die, I couldn't die without seeing her and explaining."
+
+"It was from her own lips that I took my orders," came the unmoved
+response. "Those orders were that through me you should learn
+nothing. You had the friendship of every man here until you abused
+it--now I think you'll encounter no sympathy. I told you once how the
+wolf-bitch would feel toward the man who robbed her of her young. You
+chose to disregard my warning--and I'll ask you to leave my house."
+
+John Spurrier bowed his head. He had lost her! If that were her final
+conclusion, he could hardly seek to dissuade her. At least he could
+lose the final happiness out of his life--from which so much else had
+already been lost--as a gentleman should lose.
+
+And he knew that however old Cappeze might feel, he would not lie. If
+he said that was Glory's deliberately formed decision, that statement
+must be accepted as true.
+
+"I have never loved any one else," said Spurrier slowly. "I shall
+never love any one else. I have been faithful despite appearances. The
+rest of your charges are true, and I make no denial. I gambled about
+as fairly as most men gamble. That is all."
+
+A stiffening pride, made flinty by the old man's hostility, shut
+into silence some things that Spurrier might have said. He scorned
+the seeming of whine that might have lain in explanations, even
+though the explanations should lighten the shadow of his old friend's
+disapproval. He offered no extenuation and breathed nothing of the
+changes that had been wrought in himself by the tedious alchemy of
+time and reflection.
+
+He had begun under the spur of greedy ambition, but changes had been
+wrought in him by Glory's love.
+
+He was still ambitious, but in a different way. He wanted to salvage
+something for the equitable beneficiaries. He wanted to stand, not
+among the predatory millionaires, but to be his own man, with a clean
+name and solvent.
+
+Before he could attain that condition he must render unto Harrison the
+things that were Harrison's and wipe out his own tremendous
+liabilities--but his heart was in the hills.
+
+John Spurrier went slowly and heavy heartedly back to the house which
+he had refashioned for his bride; the house that had become to him a
+shrine to all the dear, lost things of life.
+
+The sun fell in mottled luminousness across its face of tempered gray
+and from the orchard where the lush grass grew knee-high came the
+cheery whistle of a Bob-white.
+
+At the sound the man groaned with a wrench of his heart and throat,
+and his thoughts raced back to that day when the same note had come
+from the voices of hidden assassins and when Glory had exposed her
+breast to rifle-fire to send out the pigeon with its call for help.
+
+The splendid oak that had shaded their stile had grown broader of
+girth and more majestic in the spread of its head-growth since he had
+stood here before, and in the flower beds, in which Glory had
+delighted, a few forlorn survivors, sprung up as volunteers from
+neglected roots, struggled through a choke of dusty weeds.
+
+The man looked about the empty yard and his breath came like that of a
+torture victim on the rack. The desolation and ache of a life deprived
+of all that made it sweet struck in upon him with a blight beside
+which his prison loneliness had been nothing.
+
+"If she knew the whole truth--instead of only half the truth," he
+groaned, "she might forgive me."
+
+He ripped the padlock from the door and let himself in. He flung wide
+a shutter and let the afternoon sun flood the room, and once inside a
+score of little things worked the magic of memory upon him and tore
+afresh every wound that was festering.
+
+There hung the landscapes that he and she had loved and as he looked
+at them her voice seemed to sound again in his ears like forgotten
+music. From somewhere came the heavy fragrance of honeysuckle and old
+nights with her in the moonlight rushed back upon him.
+
+Then he saw an apron on a peg--hanging limp and empty, and again he
+saw her in it. He went and opened a drawer in which his own clothes
+had been kept--and there neatly folded by her hand were things of
+his.
+
+John Spurrier, whose iron nerve had once been café talk in the Orient,
+sat down on a quilted bed and tearless sobs racked him.
+
+"No," he said to himself at last. "No, if she wants her freedom I
+can't pursue her. I've hurt her enough--and God knows I'm punished
+enough."
+
+Unless he were tamely to surrender to the despair that beset him, John
+Spurrier had one other thing to do before he left the hills. He must
+come to such an agreement with Bud Hawkins as would give him a right
+of way over that single tract and complete his chain of holdings. Thus
+fortified the field beyond the ridge would be safe against invasion by
+his enemies and even the other field would have readier outlet to
+market by that route. In the Hawkins property lay the keystone of the
+arch. With it the position was impregnable. Without it all the rest
+fell apart like an inarticulated skeleton.
+
+It happened that Spurrier met Hawkins as he went away from his lonely
+house, and forcing his own miseries into the background, he sought to
+become the business man once more. He began with a frank statement of
+the facts and offered fair and substantial terms of trade.
+
+Both because his affection for the old preacher would have tolerated
+nothing less and because it would have been folly now to play the
+cheaper game, he spoke in the terms of generosity.
+
+But to his surprise and discomfiture, Brother Hawkins shook a stubborn
+head.
+
+"Thar ain't skeercely no power on 'arth, Mr. Spurrier," he declared,
+"thet could fo'ce me inter doin' no business with ye."
+
+"But, Brother Hawkins," argued the opportunity hound, "you are cutting
+your own throat. You and I standing together are invincible. Separate,
+we are lost. I'm almost willing to let you name the terms of
+agreement--to write the contract for yourself."
+
+"I've done been pore a right long while already," the preacher
+reminded him as his eyes kindled with the zealot's fire. "Long afore
+my day Jesus Christ was pore an' ther Apostle Paul, an' other
+righteous men. I ain't skeered ter go on in likewise ter what I've
+always done." He paused and laid a kindly hand on the shoulder of the
+man who offered him wealth.
+
+"I ain't seekin' ter fault ye unduly, John Spurrier. Mebby ye've done
+follered yore lights--but we don't see with no common eye, ner no
+mutual disc'arnment. Ye've done misled folk thet swore by ye, ef I
+sees hit a'right. Now ye offers me wealth, much ther same as Satan
+offered hit ter Jesus on a high place, an' we kain't trade--no more
+then what they could trade."
+
+The old preacher's attitude held the trace of kindliness that sought
+to drape reproof in gentleness and to him, as had been impossible with
+Cappeze, Spurrier poured out his confidence. At the outset, he
+confessed, he had deliberately dedicated himself to the development of
+wealth for himself and his employers, with no thought of others.
+Later, in a fight between wary capitalists where vigilance had to be
+met with vigilance, the seal of secrecy had been imperative. Frankness
+with the mountain men would have been a warning to his enemies. Now,
+however, his sense of responsibility was awake. Now he wanted to win
+back his status of confidence in this land where he had known his only
+home. Now what weight he had left to throw into the scales would be
+righteously thrown. Even yet he must move with strict, guarded
+secrecy.
+
+But the old circuit rider shook his head.
+
+"Hit's too late, now, ter rouse faith in me, John," he reiterated.
+"Albeit I'd love ter credit ye, ef so-be I could. What's come ter pass
+kain't be washed out with words." He paused before he added the simple
+edict against which there was no arguing.
+
+"Mebby I mout stand convinced even yit ef I didn't know thet ther
+devil was urgin' me on with prospects of riches."
+
+One thing remained to him; the pride that should stiffen him in the
+presence of his accusers and judges. When he went into the eclipse of
+ruin, at least he would go with unflinching gallantry.
+
+And it was in that mood that Spurrier reached his club in New York and
+prepared himself for the ordeal of the next day's interview.
+
+He had wired Harrison of his coming, but not of his hopelessness, and
+when his telephone jangled and he heard the voice of the financier, he
+recognized in it an undercurrent of exasperation, which carried omen
+of a difficult interview.
+
+"That you, Spurrier? This is Harrison. Be at my office at eleven
+to-morrow morning. Perhaps you can construe certain riddles."
+
+"Of what nature, sir?"
+
+"Of a nature that won't bear full discussion over the wire. We have
+had an anonymous letter from some mysterious person who claims to come
+with the situation in a sling. It may be a crank whom we'll have to
+throw out--or some one we dare not ignore. At all events, it's up to
+you to dispose of him. He's in your province. If you fail, we lose out
+and, as I said once before, you go to the scrap heap."
+
+Spurrier hung up the phone and sat in a nerveless trepidation which
+was new and foreign to his nature. This interview of to-morrow morning
+would call for the tallest bluffing he had ever attempted, and the
+chances would, perhaps, turn on hair-trigger elements of personal
+force.
+
+He must depend on his coolness, audacity, and adroitness to win a
+decision, and, except by guesswork, he could not hope to formulate in
+advance the terrain of battle or the nature of counter-attack with
+which he must meet his adversary.
+
+That evening he strolled along Broadway and found himself yielding to
+a dangerous and whimsical mood. He wondered how many other men
+outwardly as self-assured and prosperous as himself were covertly
+confessing suicide as one of to-morrow's probabilities.
+
+Over Longacre Square the incandescent billboards flamed and flared.
+The darning-wool kitten disported itself with mechanical abandon. The
+woman who advertised a well-known corset and the man who exploited a
+brand of underwear brilliantly made and unmade their toilets far above
+the sidewalk level. Motors shrieked and droned and crowds drifted.
+
+Before a moving-picture theater, his introspective eye was momentarily
+challenged by a gaudy three-sheet. The poster proclaimed a popular
+screen star in a "fight fuller of punch than that of 'The Wreckers.'"
+
+What caused Spurrier to pause was the composition of the picture--and
+the mental comparison which it evoked. A man crouched behind a heavy
+table, overthrown for a barricade--as he had once done.
+
+Fallen enemies lay on the floor of a crude Western cabin. Others still
+stood, and fought with flashing guns and faces "registering"
+desperation, frenzy, and maniac fury. The hero only, though alone and
+outnumbered, was grimly calm. The stress of that inferno had not
+interfered with the theatric pose of head and shoulders--the grace and
+effect of gesture that was conveyed in the two hands wielding two
+smoking pistols.
+
+Spurrier smiled. It occurred to him that had a director stood by
+while he himself had knelt behind a table he would have bawled out
+many amendments which fact had overlooked. Apparently he and his
+attackers had, by these exacting standards of art, missed the drama of
+the situation.
+
+Over him swept a fresh flood of memory, and it brought a cold and
+nervous dampness to his temples. Again he saw Glory rising at the
+broken window with a pigeon to release--and a life to sacrifice, if
+need be. On her face had been no theatric expression which would have
+warranted a close-up.
+
+Spurrier hastened on, turning into a side street where he could put
+the glare at his back and find a more mercifully dark way.
+
+He was seeing, instead of dark house fronts, the tops of pine trees
+etched against an afterglow, and Glory standing silhouetted against a
+hilltop. Above the grind of the elevated and the traffic, he was
+hearing her voice in thrushlike song, happy because he loved her.
+
+The agony of loss overwhelmed him, and he actually longed, as for a
+better thing, for that moment to come back when behind an overturned
+table he had endured the suspense which death had promised to end in
+an instant filled and paid for with revenge.
+
+Then through his disturbed brain once more flashed lines of verse:
+
+  "I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+    The best and the last!
+  I should hate that Death bandaged my eyes and forebore,
+    And bade me creep past."
+
+At all events he would, in the figurative sense, die fighting
+to-morrow. He knew his mistakes now. If he lived on he hoped to atone
+for them, but if he died he would go out without a whine.
+
+And if he must die, there was one way that seemed preferable to
+others. The army would have none of him, as an officer, because he
+stood besmirched of honor. But he knew the stern temper of the
+mountaineers. They would rise in unanimous response to the call of
+arms. He could go with them, not with any insignia on his collar, but
+marching shoulder against shoulder into that red hell of Flanders and
+France, where a man might baptize himself, shrive himself, and die.
+And in dying they would leave a record behind them!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Down along the creekbeds back of Hemlock Mountain young Jimmy
+Litchfield, a son of old Uncle Jimmy, had been teaming with a
+well-boring outfit and his wagon had bogged down in deep mud. He had
+failed to extricate himself so he tramped three hard, steep miles and
+telephoned for an extra team. While he awaited deliverance he found
+himself irked and, to while away the time, set his drill down
+haphazard and began to bore.
+
+It would be some hours before help arrived, and when he had worked a
+while he had forgotten all about help.
+
+His drill had struck through soft gravel to an oil pool lying close to
+the surface, and the black tide gushed crazily.
+
+Young Jimmy sat back watching the dark jet that he had no means of
+stemming or containing, and through his simple soul flowed all the
+intoxication of triumph.
+
+He was the discoverer of a new--and palpably a rich field!
+
+Hereafter oil men would speak of the Snake Creek field as copper men
+spoke of Anaconda or gold men of the Yukon.
+
+And that night word went by wire to the opportunity hound who had
+just gone east, that the "fur" side was to the "nigh" side as gold is
+to silver.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What do you make of it?" demanded Harrison, when Spurrier, secure in
+his seeming of undaunted assurance, arrived at his office and the
+response came smilingly: "I think it means a bluff."
+
+"Read that," snapped the financier as he flung a letter across his
+desk.
+
+Spurrier took the sheet of paper and read in a hand, evidently
+disguised!
+
+  You find yourself in a cul-de-sac. I hold the key to a way out. My
+  terms are definite and determined in advance. I shall be at your
+  office at noon, Tuesday. We will do business at that time, or not
+  at all.
+
+"I repeat," said Spurrier, "that this seems to me a brass-bound bluff.
+I make only the request that I be permitted to talk with this brigand
+alone; to sound him out with no interference and to shape my policy by
+the circumstances. I'm not at all frightened."
+
+Harrison answered snappily:
+
+"I agree to that--but if you fail you fail finally."
+
+So on Tuesday forenoon Spurrier sat cross-legged in Harrison's office
+and their discussion had come to its end. Now, he had only to await
+the unknown person who was to arrive at noon bearing alleged terms, a
+person who claimed to be armed for battle if battle were needed.
+
+At Harrison's left and right sat his favored lieutenants, but Spurrier
+himself occupied a chair a little bit apart, relegated to a zone of
+probation.
+
+Then a rap sounded on the door, and Spurrier smiled with a ghost of
+triumph as he noted that he alone of the small group did not start at
+the signal. For all their great caliber and standing, these men were
+keyed to expectancy and exasperated nervousness.
+
+The clerk who appeared made his announcement with the calculated
+evenness of routine: "A lady is waiting. She says her name doesn't
+matter. She has an appointment for twelve."
+
+"A lady!" exclaimed Harrison in amazement. "My God, do we have to
+fight this thing out with a woman?"
+
+The tableau of astonishment held, until Spurrier broke it:
+
+"What matter personalities to us?" he blandly inquired. "We are
+interested in facts."
+
+The chief lifted his hand and gave curt direction. "Show her in."
+
+Then through the door came a woman whose beauty would have arrested
+attention in any gathering. Just now what these men, rising grudgingly
+from their chairs, noted first, was the self-possession, the poise,
+and the convincing evidence of good breeding and competency which
+characterized her.
+
+She was elegantly but plainly dressed, and her manner conveyed a
+self-assurance in nowise flustered by the prospect of impending
+storm.
+
+No one there, save Spurrier, recognized her, for to Martin Harrison
+carrying the one disapproving impression of a mountain girl in patched
+gingham, the transformation was complete.
+
+And as for Spurrier himself, after coming to his feet, he stood as a
+man might be expected to stand if a specter of death had suddenly
+materialized before him.
+
+For the one time in his life all the assumption of boldness, worn for
+other eyes, broke and fell away from him, leaving him nakedly and
+starkly dumbfounded. He presented the pale and distressed aspect of a
+whipped prize fighter, reeling groggily against the ropes, and
+defenseless against attack.
+
+It was a swift transformation from audacious boldness to something
+which seemed abject, or that at least was the aspect which presented
+itself to Martin Harrison and his aides, but back of it all lay
+reasons into which they could not see.
+
+It was no crumbling and softening of battle metal that had wrought
+this astonishing metamorphosis but a thing much nearer to the man's
+heart. At that moment there departed from his mind the whole urgent
+call of the duel between business enemies--and he saw only the woman
+for whom he had sought and whom he had not found.
+
+In the cumulative force and impact of their heart-breaking sequence
+there rushed back on him all the memories that had been haunting him,
+intensified to unspeakable degree at the sight of her face--and if he
+thought of the business awaiting them at all, it was only with a
+stabbing pain of realization that he had met Glory again only in the
+guise of an enemy.
+
+Harrison gave him one contemptuous glance and remarked brutally:
+
+"Madam, this gentleman was to talk with you, but he seems scarcely
+able to conduct any affair of moment."
+
+Glory was looking at the broken man, too, and into her splendid eyes
+stole a pity that had tenderness back of it.
+
+Old memories came in potent waves, and she closed her lids for a
+moment as though against a painful glare, but with quick recovery she
+spoke.
+
+"It is imperative, gentlemen, that I have a few words first--and
+alone--with Mr. Spurrier."
+
+"If you insist, but----" Harrison's shoulders stiffened. "But we do
+not guarantee that we shall abide by his declarations."
+
+"I do insist--and I think you will find that it is I who am in the
+position to dictate terms."
+
+Harrison gave a sharply imperative gesture toward the door through
+which the others filed out, followed by the chief himself, leaving the
+two alone.
+
+Then John Spurrier rose, and supported himself by hands pressed upon
+the table top. He stood unsteadily at first and failed in his effort
+to speak. Then, with difficulty, he straightened and swept his two
+hands out in a gesture of surrender.
+
+"I'm through," he said. "I thought there was still one fight left in
+me--but I can't fight you."
+
+She did not answer and, after a little, with a slight regaining of his
+self-command, he went on again:
+
+"Glory! What a name and what a fulfillment! You have always been Glory
+to me."
+
+Out of his eyes slowly went the apathy of despair and another look of
+even stronger feeling preëmpted its place: a look of worship and
+adoration.
+
+"I didn't know," admitted Glory softly, "that I was to meet you here.
+I didn't know that the fight was to be between us."
+
+"You have ruined me," he answered. "I'm a sinking ship now, and those
+rats out there will leave me--but it's worth ruin to see you again. I
+want you to take this message with you and remember it. All my life
+I've gambled hard and fought hard. Now I fail hard. I lost you and
+deserved to lose you, but I've always loved you and always shall."
+
+Her eyes grew stern, repressing the tenderness and pity that sought to
+hold them soft.
+
+"You abandoned me," she said. "You sought to plunder my people. I took
+up their fight, and I shall win it."
+
+Spurrier came a step toward her and spread his hands in a gesture of
+surrender, but he had recovered from the shock that had so unnerved
+him a few minutes ago and there was now a certain dignity in his
+acceptance of defeat.
+
+"I break my sword across my knee," he declared, "and since I must do
+it, I'm glad you are the victor. I won't ask for mercy even from
+you--but when you say I abandoned you, you are grievously wrong.
+
+"When you say I sought to plunder your people, you speak the truth
+about me--as I was before I came to love you. From that time on I
+sought to serve your people."
+
+"Sought to serve them?" she repeated in perplexity, "The record shows
+nothing of that."
+
+"And since the record doesn't," he answered steadily, "any assertions
+and protestations would be without proof. I've told you, because my
+heart compelled me. I won't try to convince you. At all events, since
+I failed, my motives don't matter."
+
+"Your motives are everything. I took up the fight," she said, "because
+I thought a Spurrier had wronged them. I wanted a Spurrier to make
+restitution."
+
+"At first I saw only the game, dear heart," he confessed, "never the
+unfairness. I'm ready to pay the price. Ruin me--but in God's name,
+believe that I love you."
+
+Her hand came out waveringly at that, and for a moment rested on his
+shoulder with a little gesture of tenderness.
+
+"I thought I hated you," she said. "I tried to hate you. I've
+dedicated myself to my people and their rights--but if you trust me
+enough, call them in and let me talk with them."
+
+"Trust you enough!" he exclaimed passionately, then he caught her to
+him, and, when he let her go, he stood again transformed and
+revivified into the man he had seemed before she appeared in the
+doorway. It was as though the touch of her lips had given him the fire
+from which he rose phoenixlike.
+
+With an unhesitant step he went to the door and opened it, and the men
+who had gone out trooped back and ranged themselves again about the
+table.
+
+"Mr. Spurrier did all in your interests that a man could do," said
+Glory. "He failed to secure your charter and he failed to secure the
+one tract that serves as the key. I am a mountain woman seeking only
+to protect my people. I hold that tract as trustee for Bud Hawkins. I
+mean to do business, but only at a fair price. It's for you to
+determine whether I deal with you or your competitors."
+
+A look of consternation spread over the faces of the lesser men, but
+Harrison inquired with a grim smile:
+
+"Madam, haven't I seen you somewhere before to-day?"
+
+"Once before--down in the hills."
+
+"Then you are this man's wife! Was this dramatic incident prearranged
+between you?"
+
+She raised an imperative hand, and her voice admitted no question of
+sincerity.
+
+"Make no such mistake. Mr. Spurrier knew nothing of this. He was loyal
+enough--to you. From him I never even learned the nature of his
+business. Without his knowledge _I_ was loyal to my people."
+
+Then for ten minutes she talked clearly, forcefully, and with the ring
+of indubitable sincerity giving fire to voice and manner. She told of
+the fight she and her father had made to keep heart in mountain folk,
+enraged by what they believed to be the betrayal by a man they had
+trusted and attacked by every means of coercion at the disposal of
+American Oil and Gas.
+
+She told of small local reservoirs, mysteriously burned by unknown
+incendiaries; of neighborhood pipe lines cut until they spilled out
+their wealth again into the earth; of how she herself had walked these
+lines at night, watching against sabotage.
+
+As she talked with simple directness and without self-vaunting, they
+saw her growing in the trust of these men whose wrath had been, in the
+words of old Cappeze, "Like that of the wolf-bitch robbed a second
+time of her whelps." They recognized the faith that had commissioned
+her to speak as trustee, and to act with carte-blanche powers.
+
+Harrison and his subordinates were not susceptible men, easily swayed
+by a dramatic circumstance, so they cross-examined and heckled her
+with shrewd and tripping inquiries, until she reminded them that she
+had not come as a supplicant, but to lay before them terms, which they
+would, at their peril, decline to accept.
+
+The realization was strong in them that she had spoken only the truth
+when she declared that she held the key. When they were convinced that
+she realized, in full, the strength of her position, they had no wish
+to antagonize longer.
+
+The group of financiers drew apart, but after a brief consultation
+Harrison came forward and offered his hand.
+
+"Mrs. Spurrier," he announced crisply, "we have gone too far to draw
+back. After all, I think you come rather as a rescue party than an
+attacker. Spurrier, you have married a damned brilliant woman."
+
+Glory accepted the extended hand of peace, and Harrison, with a jerk
+of his head to the door, led his followers out, leaving them alone
+again.
+
+Then Glory held out her arms, and into the bright depths of her eyes
+flashed the old bewitching merriment.
+
+"Thar's a lavish of things I needs ter know, Jack," she said. "You've
+got to l'arn 'em all ter me."
+
+"I come now, not as teacher but as pupil, dear heart," he declared,
+"and I come humbly."
+
+Then her face grew serious and her voice vibrant with tenderness.
+
+"I have another gift for you, Jack, besides myself, I can give you
+back an untarnished name."
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcribers Note
+
+Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.
+
+Hyphenation standardized.
+
+Other archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is preserved,
+including the author's use of eying and eyeing, Quizote, Otello, and
+langour.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+
+Transcriber Changes
+
+The following changes were made to the original text:
+
+  Page 86: Was sterterously (he sat there breathing =stertorously=
+           while the untended fire died away)
+
+  Page 90: Was plausiblity (One explanation only presented itself with
+           any color of =plausibility=)
+
+  Page 96: Was mistly (there was a dreamy violet where it merged
+           =mistily= with the skyline ridges)
+
+  Page 118: Was there ("It is well established by the evidence befo'
+            =ther= co'te")
+
+  Page 120: Was impusively (the girl broke out =impulsively=)
+
+  Page 124: Removed extra quote (Still Spurrier cursed himself for a
+            careless =fool=)
+
+  Page 162: Was it's (you'll recall that =its= longer name is _Datura
+            stramonium_)
+
+  Page 180: Was inperceptible (pair of shoulders that hunched slowly
+            forward with almost =imperceptible= movement)
+
+  Page 208: Guessed at missing text (the latter inquired gravely:
+            ="Did they play one= of them royalty games")
+
+  Page 208: Was single quote (I ain't playin' no more of them royalty
+            =games"=)
+
+  Page 263: Was pacink ("Before God," cried Harrison, =pacing= his
+            floor like a lion)
+
+  Page 301: Was personalties ("What matter =personalities= to us?")
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Law of Hemlock Mountain, by Hugh Lundsford
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