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THE TEMPERING

by

CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

Author of "The Call of the Cumberland," "The Battle Cry," etc., etc.

Frontispiece by Ralph Pallen Coleman







Garden City       New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1920

Copyright, 1920, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages
including the Scandinavian

Copyright, 1919, by The Ridgeway Company



[Illustration: "'_I've never seen the evening star rise up over the
Kaintuck Ridges that I haven't ... thought of it as your own star._'"]




THE TEMPERING




CHAPTER I


"Nothin' don't nuver come ter pass hyarabouts!"

The boy perched disconsolately on the rotting fence threw forth his
lament aloud to the laurelled silences of the mountain sides and the
emptiness of space.

"Every doggone day's jest identical with all ther balance--save only
thet hit's wuss!"

He sat with his back turned on the only signs of human life within the
circle of his vision; unless one called the twisting creek-bed at his
front, which served that pocket of the Kentucky Cumberlands as a
highway, a human manifestation.

There behind him a log-cabin breathed smokily through its mud-daubed
chimney; a pioneer habitation in every crude line and characteristic. On
the door hung, drying, the odorous pelt of a "varmint." Against the wall
leaned a rickety spinning wheel.

To all that, which he hated, he kept his stiff back turned, but his
ears had no defence against the cracked falsetto of an aged voice
crooning a ballad that the pioneers had brought across the ridges from
tide-water ... a ballad whose phrasing was quaintly redolent of antiquity.

The boy kicked his broganned heels and snorted. His clothes were
homespun and home sewed and his touselled shock of red-brown hair
cropped out from under a coon skin cap. His given name was Boone and his
life was as hobbled by pioneer restrictions as was that of the greater
Boone--but with a difference.

The overland argonauts who had set their feet and faces westward across
these same mountains bore on their memories the stimulating image of all
that they had left behind and carried before their eyes the alluring
hope of what they were to find.

This Boone, whose eyes, set in a freckled face, were as blue as overhead
skies and deep with a fathomless discontent, had neither past nor future
to contemplate--only a consuming hunger for a life less desolate. That
of his people was unaltered--save for a lapse into piteous human
lethargy--from the days when the other Boone had come on moccasined feet
to win the West--for they were the offspring of the stranded; the heirs
of the lost.

Over all the high, hunched steepness of the ranges, Autumn had wandered
with a palette of high colour and a brush of frost, splashing out the
summer's sun-burned green with champagne yellow, burgundy-red and
claret-crimson. To the nostrils, too, there floated with the
thistledown, hints of bursting ripe fox-grapes and apples ready for the
cider press.

Countless other times Boone had sat here on this top-rail in his
hodden-gray clothes and his slate-gray despair, making the same plaint,
and knowing that only a miracle would ever bring around the road's
turning anything less commonplace than a yoke of oxen or a native as
drab as the mule he straddled.

Yet as the boy capped his lamentation with a sigh that seemed to
struggle up from the depths of his being, a breeze whispered along the
mountain sides; the crisp leaves stirred to a tinkle like low laughter
and there materialized a horseman who was in no wise to be confused with
ordinary travellers in these parts. Boone Wellver caught his breath in a
gasp of surprise and interest, and a low whistle sounded between his
white teeth.

"Lord o' Mercy," breathed the urchin, "hit's a furriner! Now I wonder
who is he?"

The stranger was mounted on a mule whose long ears flapped dejectedly
and whose shamble had in it the flinch of galled withers, but the man
in the saddle sat as if he had a charger under him--and it was this
indefinable declaration of bearing that the boy saw and which, at first
glance, fired his imagination.

The traveller's face was bronzed and the moustache and imperial, trimmed
in the fashion of the Third Napoleon's court, were only beginning to
lose their sandy colour under a dominance of gray.

The eyes--though now they were weary with travel and something more
fundamental, too, than physical fatigue--were luminous of quality and a
singularly clear gray of colour. They were such eyes as could be dogged
and stern as flint or deep and bafflingly gentle like mossy waters.

Covering the bony flanks of the mule and bulging grotesquely to port and
starboard, hung capacious canvas saddle pockets--and as the stranger
drew rein the boy's eyes dwelt with candid inquisitiveness upon them.
Out of the cavernous maw of one of these receptacles protruded the
corner of a tin dispatch box and fastened to a cantle ring behind the
saddle was a long, slender object in a water-proof covering laced at the
top.

At sight of that, Boone's eyes livened yet more, for he recognized the
shrouded shape though it was a thing almost as foreign to his world as
starlight is to the floor of the sea. Once he had been to Marlin Town on
a troubled Court day when a detachment of militia had stood guard in the
square to overawe warring factions and avert bloodshed. Their failure to
do so is another story, but their commanding officer had worn a sabre,
and now with a stirring excitement the boy divined that, this "qu'ar
contraption" dangling at the newcomer's back was nothing less portentous
than a sword!

Straightway the drab curtain of life's unrelief was rent for Boone
Wellver, and shot through with gleaming filaments of wonderment and
imaginative speculation. Here, of a sudden, came Romance on horseback,
and what matter that the horse was a mule?

"Son," he said in a kindly manner, "I'm bound for Cyrus Spradling's
house, and I begin to suspect that I must have lost my way. How about
it?"

Boone did not immediately reply. He merely poured out of his wide and
innocent blue eyes a scrutiny as inquisitorial as though he had been
stationed here on picket duty and were vested with full authority to
halt whomsoever approached.

While the newcomer sat, waiting in his saddle, Boone Wellver vaulted
lightly down from fence rail to gravel roadway and, standing there as
slim yet as sturdy as a hickory sapling, raised one hand towards the
mule's flank, but arrested it midway as he inquired, "Thet critter o'
yourn--hit don't foller kickin', does hit?"

"Stand clear of its heels," cautioned the man hastily. "I've known this
beast only since morning--but as acquaintance ripens, admiration wanes.
What's your name?"

"Boone Wellver. What's yourn?"

"Mine is Victor McCalloway. Does your father live near here?"

"Hain't got no daddy."

"Your mother, then?"

"Hain't got no mammy nuther."

The stranger gazed down from his saddle with interested eyes, and under
the steadiness of his scrutiny Boone was smitten with an abrupt
self-consciousness.

"Don't you belong to any one at all?" The question was put slowly, but
the reply came with prompt and prideful certitude.

"I'm my own man. I dwells with a passel of old granny folks an'
gray-heads, though." Having so enlightened his questioner, he added with
a ring of pride, as though having confessed the unflattering truth about
his immediate household, he was entitled to boast a little of more
distant connections:

"Asa Gregory's my fust cousin by blood. I reckon ye've done heered tell
of him, hain't ye?"

Across the face of Victor McCalloway flitted the ghost of a satirical
smile, which he speedily repressed.

"Yes," he said briefly with non-committal gravity, "I've heard of him."

To the outer world from which McCalloway came few mountain names had
percolated, attended by notability. A hermit people they are and
unheralded beyond their own environment--yet now and then the reputation
of one of them will not be denied. So the newspaper columns had given
Asa Gregory space, headlines even, linking to his name such appositives
as "mountain desperado" and "feud-killer."

When he had shot old John Carr to death in the highway, such unstinted
publicity had been accorded to his acts--such shudder-provoking fulness
of detail--that Asa had found in it a very embarrassment of fame.

But the boy spoke the name of his kinsman in accents of unquestioning
admiration, and Victor McCalloway only nodded as he repeated,

"Yes, I've heard of him."

Then as the traveller gathered up his reins to start onward, a tall
young man came, with the swing of an elastic stride, around the next
turn and, nodding to the boy, halted at the mule's head. He was an
upstanding fellow, of commanding height, and the tapering staunchness of
a timber wedge. He carried a rifle upon his shoulder and his
clear-chiselled face bore the pleasant recommendation of straight-gazing
candour. His clothing was rough, yet escaped the seeming of roughness,
because it sat upon his splendid body and limbs as if a part of
them--like a hawk's plumage. But it was the eyes under a broad forehead
that were most notable. They were unusually fine and frank; dark and
full of an almost gentle meditativeness. Here was a native, thought the
man on the mule, whose gaze, unlike that of many of his fellows, was
neither sinister nor furtive. Here was one who seemed to have escaped
the baleful heritage of grudge-bearing.

Then McCalloway's thought was interrupted by the voice of the boy
declaring eagerly: "This hyar furriner 'lows ter ride over ter Cyrus
Spradlin's dwellin' house. We've jest been talkin' erbout ye--an' he's
already done heered of ye, Asa!"

The tall man on foot stiffened, at the announcement, into something like
hostile rigidity, and the velvet softness of eye which, a moment ago, a
woman might have envied, flashed into the hard agate of suspicion.

He stood measuring the stranger for an uncompromising matter of moments
before he spoke, and when words came they were couched in a steely
evenness of tone. "So ye've heerd of me--hev ye?"

He paused a moment after that, his face remaining mask-like, then he
went on:

"I reckon whatever ye heered tell of me war either right favourable or
right scandalous--dependin' on whether ye hed speech with my friends--or
my enemies. I've got a lavish of both sorts."

McCalloway also stiffened at the note of challenge.

"I never talked to any one about you," he rejoined crisply. "I read your
name in newspapers--as did many others, I dare say."

"Yes. I reckon ye read in them papers thet I kilt Old Man Carr. Wa'al,
thet war es true es text. I kilt him whilst he was aimin' ter lay-way
me. He'd done a'ready kilt my daddy an' I was ridin' inter Marlin Town
ter buy buryin' clothes--when we met up in ther highway. Thet's ther
whole hist'ry of hit."

"Mr. Gregory," the older man said slowly with an even courtesy that
carried a note of aloofness, "I've neither the right nor the disposition
to question you on personal matters. I reserve the privilege of
discussing my own affairs only so far as I choose, and I recognize the
same right in others. My final opinions, however, are not formed on
hearsay."

The brown eyes softened again and the features relaxed. "I reckon,"
commented Asa with a touch of shame-faced apology in his tone, "thar
warn't no proper call fer me ter start in straightway talkin' erbout
myself nohow--but when a man's enemies air a'seekin' ter git him hung,
hit's liable ter make him touchy an' mincy-like. Hit don't take no hard
bite ter hurt a sore tooth, no-ways."

Victor McCalloway inclined his head. "I stopped here," he explained, "to
ask directions of this lad. These infernal roads confuse me."

"I reckon they do be sort o' mystifyin' ter a furriner," assented the
mountaineer, who stood charged with murder, then he added with grave
courtesy: "I'll go back ter ther fork of ther highroad with ye an' sot
ye on yore way ef so be hit would convenience ye any."

As mounted traveller and unmounted guide went on toward the rounded cone
of Cinder Knob it seemed to loom as far away as ever, masking behind its
timbered distances the unseen trickle of Hominy Mill Creek, where Cyrus
Spradling dwelt.

But to right and left, ever the same, yet ever changing; sombre in
shadowed gorge and bright of sunlit crest, lay the broken, forested
hills. Their horizons gathered in tangled depths of timber--shadowed
hiding places of chasms--silences and a brooding spirit of mystery.

At length a sudden elbow in the twisting way brought them face to face
with two rifle-bearing men. They were gaunt fellows, tall but slouching
and loose of joint. Their thin faces, too, were saturnine and ugly with
the cast of vindictiveness.

"Howdy, Asa," accosted one and, with a casual nod, the guide responded,
"Howdy, Jett," but in the brief silence that followed, broken by the
wheezy panting of the mule, McCalloway fancied he could discern an
undernote of tension.

"This here man," went on Asa Gregory, jerking his head backward, as if
in answer to an unuttered query, "gives ther name of McCalloway. I
hain't never seed him afore this day, but he's farin' over ter
Spradling's an' I proffered ter kinderly sot him on his way. I couldn't
skeercely do no less fer him."

The two nodded and when some further exchange of civilities had
followed, passed on and out of sight. But for a while after their
departure Asa stood unmoving with his head intently bent in an attitude
of listening--and though his rifle still nestled unshifted in its
cradling elbow, the fingers of the trigger hand twitched a little and
the brown eyes were again agate-hard. Finally the guide's mouth line
relaxed from the straight tautness of whatever emotion had caused that
stiffening of posture, and the lips moved in low speech--almost
drawlingly soft of cadence.

"I reckon they've done gone on," he said, as if speaking to himself;
then lifting his eyes to his companion, he explained briefly. "Not
meanin' no offence, I 'lowed hit war kinderly charitable ter ye ter let
them fellers know ye jest fell in with me accidental like. They wouldn't
favour ye no great degree ef they figgered me an' you was close
friends."

"And yet," hazarded McCalloway, groping in the bewilderment of this
strange environment, "you greeted each other amicably enough."

Gregory's lips twisted at the corners into a satirical smile.

"When they comes face ter face with me in ther highroad," he answered
calmly, "we meets an' makes our manners ther same es anybody else--a
man's _got_ ter be civil. But we keeps a'watchin' one another outen ther
tails of our eyes, jest ther same. Them two fellers air Blairs an' them
an' ther Carrs is married in an' out an' back an' fo'th twell they're
all as thick tergether as pigs outen ther same litter."

The traveller's question came a little incredulously.

"You mean--that those men are your actual enemies?"

"_I'd_ call 'em enemies. I knows thet they aims ter git me some day--ef
so be they're able."

"And you--?"

The tall man in the road looked steadily into the face of his companion
for a moment, then said deliberately, "Me? Oh, of course, I aims ter
carcumvent 'em--ef so be _I'm_ able."

When the newcomer had reached a point from which he no longer needed
guidance Asa Gregory wheeled and began to back-track on his steps, but
before he had covered a half mile he turned abruptly from the road and
was swallowed in the thicket where the waxen confusion of rhododendron
and laurel, the tangle of holly and thorn seemed solid and impenetrable.
He went with head bent and noiseless footfall--though the sifting leaves
were crisp--but with eye, ear and nostril delicately alert and
receptive.

As Asa Gregory slipped, shadow like, among the shifting lights of the
late afternoon, his face wore a grim smile, and when he had come to a
point determined by some system of his own, he dropped to a
low-crouching posture and continued his journey a step or two at a time,
with a perfection of caution, and with eyes and ears strained in
expectancy.

Across a gray-green hummock of sandstone, so villainously matted with
blackberry briars that a pointer-dog would have balked at its edge, he
hitched himself forward on his belly. From there he could look down on
the road he had abandoned--and the thick bushes that fringed it, and
there he lay, silent and flat as a lizard, scanning the lower ground.

A less acute and instinctive eye would have made little of it all, save
the variegated colours of the foliage, but after a while he picked out a
scrap of grey-brown buried deep and motionless under the leafage, much
like the hue of the earth itself. His smile became more sardonically set
and his muscles tensed as his rifle barrel was thrust forward. But he
still sprawled there hugging the earth, and finally hushed voices stole
up to him.

"... He's got ter pass by hyar ef he holds ter ther highway.... I reckon
he don't hardly suspicion nothin'." Then a second voice spoke Asa's name
and linked it with foul expletives, yet save for the gray patches in the
brush almost as hard to see as a rabbit crouched in dry grass there was
no visible sign ... no warning.

Asa's face blackened. His thumb lay on the hammer of his rifle and his
thoughts ran to bitter turmoil.

"I _'lowed_ them Blairs hed hit in head ter lay-way me this evenin'," he
mused. "I jest _felt_ hit in my bones, somehow."

The hatred in his veins pulsed and simmered. Here he lay behind them and
above them, while they lurked in ambush waiting for him to pass in front
and below. One shot from his rifle and Jett Blair would never rise. His
face would sag forward--that was all--and as his companion scrambled up
in dismay, he too would fall back. Asa could picture the expression of
astonished panic that would gleam in his eyes for the one brief moment
before he too crumpled. Asa's finger tingled with an itch which only
trigger-pressure could cool and appease.

Yet slowly and resolutely he shook his head. "No," he told himself, "no,
hit won't hardly do. Thar's one murder charge a'hangin' over me now--an'
es fer _them_, thar's time a'plenty. I hain't no-ways liable ter
fergit!"




CHAPTER II


Backward he edged to the far side of the rock, and on he went by a
detour which, in due course, brought him out to the road once more at
that panel of fence where Boone Wellver still sat perched in the deep
preoccupation of his thoughts. These reflections focussed about the
stranger who had lately ridden by, and as Gregory paused, with no
revealing sign in his face of the events of the past half-hour, the boy
blurted out the fulness of his interest.

"Asa, did ye find out who _is_ he? Did ye see thet _sward_ he hed
hangin' ter his saddle, an' did ye note all them qu'ar contraptions he
was totin' along with him?"

"I didn't hev overly much speech with him," was the grave response. "But
he 'lowed he'd done come from acrost ther waters--from somewhars in
t'other world. I reckon he's done travelled wide."

"His looks hain't none common nuther!" Boone's eyes were sparkling; his
imagination galloping free and uncurbed. "I've done read stories about
kings an' sich-like, travellin' hither an' yon unbeknownst ter common
folks. What does ye reckon, Asa, mout _he_ be su'thin' like thet? A king
or su'thin?"

"Ef so be he's a king," opined Asa Gregory drily, "he's shore done
picked him out a God-fersaken place ter go a'travellin' in." The dark
eyes riffled for a moment into a hint of covert raillery. "Ye didn't
chanst ter discarn no crown, did ye, Booney, pokin' a gold prong or two
up outen them saddle pockets?"

Boone Wellver flushed brick-red and straightway his words fell into a
hot disclaimer of gullibility. "I hain't no plum, daft idjit. I didn't,
ter say, _really_ think he was a king--but his looks _wasn't_ none
common."

The older kinsman granted that contention and for a while they talked of
Victor McCalloway, but at length Asa shifted the subject.

"A week come Monday," he informed the boy, "thar's a'goin' ter be a
monstrous big speakin' at Marlin Town. Ther Democrat candi_date_ fer
Governor aims ter speechify an' I 'lowed mebby ye'd love ter go along
with me an' listen at him."

Whenever Asa yielded to the temptation of teasing his young cousin he
hastened to make amends for the indulgence and now the boy's face was
ashine with anticipation.

Customarily in Kentucky from the opening of the campaign to the day of
election the tide and sweep of political battle runs hot and high. But
in that autumn of 1899 all precedents of party feeling were engulfed in
a tidal wave of bitterness and endowed with a new ferocity ominously
akin to war. The gathering storm centred and beat about the head of one
man whose ambition for gubernatorial honours was the core and essence of
the strife. He was, in the confident estimate of his admirers, a giant
whose shoulders towered above the heads of his lesser compatriots. An
election law bore his name--and his adversaries gave insistent warning
that it surrendered the state, bound hand and foot, to a triumvirate of
his own choosing.

Into the wolf-like battle-royal of his party's convention he had gone
seemingly the weakest of three aspirants for the Democratic nomination.
Out of it, over disrupted party-elements, he had emerged--triumphant.

Whether one called him righteous crusader or self-seeking demagogue, the
fact stood baldly clear that his name with an "ism" attached had become
the single issue in that State, and that hero-worship and hatred
attended upon its mention.

Back to the people of the inaccessible hills, living apart, aloof and
neglected, came some of the murmurs of the tempest that shook the
lowlands. Here at the edge of a normally Democratic State which had in
earlier times held slaves and established an aristocracy, the hillsmen
living by the moil of their own sweat had hated alike slave and
slave-holder and had remained solidly Republican. For them it was enough
that William Goebel was not of their party. Basing their judgment on
that premise, they passed on with an uncomplicated directness to the
conclusion that the deleterious things said of him by envenomed orators
were assertions of gospel truth.

Now that man was carrying his campaign into the enemy's country.
Realizing without illusion the temper of the audience which would troop
in from creek-bed and cove and the branch-waters "back of beyond," he
was to speak in Marlin Town where the cardinal faith of the mountains
is, "hate thine enemy!"

In the court-house square of Marlin Town, under the shadow of high-flung
hills, had gathered close-packed battalions of listeners. Some there
were who carried with them their rifles and some who looked as foreign
to even these rude streets as nomads ridden in from the desert.

A brass band had come with the candidate's special train and blared out
its stirring message. There was a fluttering of flags and a brave
showing of transparencies, and to Boone Wellver, aged fifteen, as he
hung shadow-close at Asa Gregory's elbow, it all seemed the splendour of
panoply and the height of pageantry.

From the hotel door, as the man and boy passed it, emerged two gentlemen
who were clothed in the smoother raiment of "Down below," and Boone
pointed them out to his companion.

"Who _air_ they, Asa?" he whispered, and his kinsman carelessly
responded:

"One of 'em's named Masters. He's a coal-mine boss--but I hain't never
seed t'other one, afore now."

Strolling along the narrow plank runway that did service as a sidewalk,
the boy glimpsed also the mysterious stranger who had ridden in on a
mule, with a canvas-covered sword at his saddle ring.

Then the fanfare of the band fell silent and a thin figure in an ancient
frock coat stepped forward on the platform itself and raised its hands
to shout: "Fellow Citizens and Kentuckians of Marlin County!"

Ranged importantly behind the draped bunting stood the corporal's guard
of native Democratic leaders--leaders who were well-nigh without
followers--and who now stood as local sponsors for the Candidate
himself.

Boone caught his breath and listened, his eager eyes conspicuous among
the immobile and stolid faces of the unresponsive throng as the speaker
let flow his words of encomium.

Seeking to compensate by his own vehemence for the unreceptiveness of
his audience, the thin master of ceremonies heaped the Ossa of
fulsomeness upon the Pelion of praise. "And now, men of Marlin," he
shouted in his memorized peroration, "now I have the distinguished
honour of presenting to you the man whose loins are girt in the people's
fight--the--the--ahem,--unterrified champeen of the Commonwealth's
yeomanry--. Gentlemen, the next Governor of Kentucky!"

A peroration without applause is like a quick-step beat upon a loose
drum-head, and an the local sponsor stood back in the dispiriting
emptiness of dead silence--unbroken by a single hand-clap--his face
fell. For several moments that quiet hung like a paralyzing rebuff, then
from the outskirts of the crowd a liquor-thickened voice bellowed--"Next
gov'nor--of hell!"

To the front of the platform, with that derisive introduction,
calmly--even coldly, stepped a dark, smooth-shaven man, over whose
stocky shoulders and well-rounded chest a frock coat was tightly
buttoned.

For a while the Candidate stood looking out, gauging his audience, and
from him there seemed to emanate an assurance of power before his lips
parted. A heavy lock of coal-black hair fell over his forehead, across
almost disdainfully cold eyes went sooty lashes, and dark brows met
above the prominent nose. The whole face seemed drawn in bold charcoal
strokes, uncompromising of line and feature--a portrayal of force.

Then the resonant voice broke silence, and though it came calmly and
moderately pitched, it went out clarion-clear over the crowd like the
note of a fox horn.

"Some one out there shouted--'Next governor of hell!'" he began without
preamble. "I grant you that if any region needs improved government it
is hell, and if there is a state on this earth where a man might hope to
qualify himself for that task, it is this state. Let me try that first,
my friend. I believe in myself, but I am only human."

He launched forthright into arraignment of his enemies with sledge-blows
of denunciation untempered by any concession to time, place or
condition, and though scowls grew vindictively black about him, he knew
that he was holding his audience.

He was a Vulcan forging thunders with words and destructive batteries of
bolts with phrases, and Boone Wellver--trembling with excitement as a
pointer puppy trembles with the young eagerness of the covey-scent in
his nostrils--seemed to be in the presence of a miracle; the miracle of
eloquence.

"My God," breathed the less impressionable Asa Gregory under his breath,
"but thet feller hes a master gift fer lyin'!"

At the end, with one clenched fist raised high, the speaker thundered
out his final words of defiance: "The fight is on, and I believe in
fighting. I ask no quarter and I fear no foe!"

Again he paused, and again save for the valiant enthusiasm on the
platform at his back, he met with no response except a grim and negative
silence.

But this disconcerting stillness was abruptly ripped asunder by a pistol
shot and a commotion of confused voices, rising where figures began to
eddy and mill at the outskirts. The reception committee closed hastily
and protectingly about the candidate, whose challenge seemed to have
been accepted by some irresponsible gun-fighter, but he thrust them back
with a face of unaltered and stony calmness. Though he had finished, he
continued to stand at the front with hands idly resting on the platform
rail as if meaning to demonstrate his contempt for anything like
retreat.

While he still tarried there a tall figure elbowed its way through the
crowd until it stood near. It was the figure of Asa Gregory, and,
raising a hand for recognition, it called out in a full-chested voice:
"Thet shot war fired by a feller thet war full of white licker--an'
they're takin' him ter ther jail-house now. I reckon yore doctrine
hain't hardly converted nobody hyarabouts--but we don't aim ter insult
no visitor."

       *       *       *       *       *

Victor McCalloway had come to Cyrus Spradling's house to remain until he
could arrange a more permanent residence. The purpose that lay behind
his coming was one which he had not felt called upon to explain, and
though he had much to learn of this new place of abode, still he had
come forearmed with some of the cardinals of a necessary understanding.

They were an incurious people with whom he had cast his lot, content
with their remoteness, and it was something that here a man could lose
himself from questions touching the past, so long as he answered frankly
those of the present. It suited McCalloway to seal the back pages and
the bearded men evinced no wish to penetrate them.

Before the snow flew the newcomer was to be housed under his own
roof-tree, and today in answer to the verbal announcement that he was to
have a "working" on the land he had bought, the community was present,
armed with hammer and saw, with adze and plane, mobilized under the
auspices of Cyrus Spradling who moved, like a shaggy patron saint, among
them.

There were men, working shoulder to shoulder, whose enmities were deep
and ancient, but who today were restrained by the common spirit of
volunteer service to a neighbour. Cyrus had seen to it that the
gathering at McCalloway's "house-raising" should not bear the
prejudicial colour of partisanship, but that Carrs and Gregories alike
should have a hand in the activities which were going robustly forward
at the head of Snag Ridge.

Back of Cedar Mountain no architect was available and no builders' union
afforded or withheld labour, but every man was carpenter and artisan in
his own right, and some were "practiced corner-men" as well.

Through the sun-flooded day with its Indian summer dream along the
skyline their axes rang in accompaniment to their homely jests, and the
earnest whine of their saws went up with the minors of voices raised in
the plaintive strains of folk-lore ballads.

The only wage accepted was food and drink. They would have thought as
readily of asking payment for participation in the rough festivities of
the "infare" with which the mountain groom brings his bride from her
wedding to his own house on a pillion at the back of his saddle.

Tomorrow some of these same men, meeting in the roadway, would perhaps
eye each other with suspicion. Riding on, after greetings, they would go
with craned necks, neither trusting the other to depart unwatched, but
today the rude sanctuary of hospitality to the stranger rested over them
and the timbers that went up were raised by the hands of friends and
enemies alike.

But toward sunset the newcomer chanced upon a fight that the simple code
had not safeguarded and that had gained headway before his interference.

Down by the creek-bed, with no audience, he found two boys rolling in a
smother of dust and, until he remembered that the hill code of "fist and
skull" bars neither shod-toe nor bared tooth, he was shocked at the
unmitigated savagery of the combat.

The strenuous pair rolled in a mad embrace, and as he approached, one of
the boys--whose back alone he could see--came to the top of the writhing
heap. While this one gouged, left handed, at eyes which the other
attempted to cover, his right hand whipped out a jack-knife which he
sought to open with his teeth. Out of the commotion came an animal-like
incoherence of snarls and panting profanity, and Victor McCalloway
caught the top boy by his shoulder and dragged him forcibly away from
what threatened to be maiming or worse.

So pried from his victim, on the verge of victory, the boy with a bloody
and unrecognized face stood for an instant heaving of breast and
infuriated, then wrenching himself free from the detaining hand, he gave
a leap as sudden as that of a frightened buck and disappeared behind the
screen of the laurel.

The other figure, with an eye blackened and bleeding from the raw
scratches of finger-nails about the lids, came more slowly to his feet,
his breath rasping with passion and exhaustion. He stood there before
his would-be rescuer--and McCalloway recognized Boone Wellver.

"I'd hev licked him--so his own mammy wouldn't 'a' knowed him ef ye
hadn't 'a' bust in on me," he panted. "I'd done had him down oncet afore
an' I war jest erbout ter turn him under ergin."

A light of suppressed drollery glinted into the eyes of the man whose
ruddy face remained otherwise unsmiling.

"It looked to me as though you were in a situation where nothing could
save you but reinforcements--or surrender," he commented, and the
heaving body of the rescued boy grew rigid while his begrimed face
flamed with chagrin.

"Surrender--knock under--ter _him_!" He spat out the words with a
venomous disgust. "Thet feller war a _Blair_! Did ye ever heer of a
Gregory hollerin' 'enough!' ter a Blair, yit!"

McCalloway stood looking down with an amusement which he was considerate
enough to mask. He knew that Boone, though his surname was Wellver, was
still in all the meaning of feud parlance a Gregory and that in the
bitterness of his speech spoke not only individual animosity but
generations of vendetta. So he let the lad have his say uninterrupted,
and Boone's words ran freshet-like with the churn and tumble of his
anger. "Ye jest misjudged he war a'lickin' me, because ye seed him on
top an' a'gougin' at my eye. But I'd _done been_ on top o' him--an' I'd
a got thar ergin. Ef you'd noted whar I'd done chawed his ear at he
wouldn't 'a' looked so good ter ye, I reckon."

"Suppose he had gotten that knife open." The man still spoke with that
unpatronizing gravity which carries an untold weight of conviction to a
boy's mind. "What would he have done?"

"I reckon he'd a'gutted me--but I didn't nuver aim ter let him git hit
open."

"Are you a fighter by habit, Boone?"

Something in the intonation caused the lad to flush afresh, this time
with the feeling that he had been unduly bragging, and he responded in a
lowered voice. "I hain't nuver tuck part in no gun-battles yit--but when
hit comes ter fist an' skull, I'm accounted ter be a right practiced
knocker an' I kin rass'le right good. What made ye ask me thet
question?"

McCalloway held the angelic blue eyes, so paradoxically set in that
wrath-enflamed face, with his own steady gray ones, and spoke quietly:

"Because if you are going to be a fighting man, it's important that you
should fight properly, I thought perhaps you'd like to talk to me about
it sometime. You see, I've been fighting all my life. It's been my
profession."

Over the freckled face surged a wave of captivated interest. The Blair
boy was forgotten and the voice thrilled into earnest solicitation.
"Would ye l'arn me more about hit some time? What style of fightin' does
ye foller?"

"The fair kind, I trust. Civilized warfare. The trade of soldiering."

"I hain't nuver follered no unfa'r sort nuther," disclaimed Boone, and
his companion smiled enigmatically while he replied meditatively,

"What is fair or unfair--what is courageous or cowardly--is largely a
matter of viewpoint. Some day I dare say you'll go out into the world
beyond the hills and out there you'll find that gouging eyes and chewing
ears isn't called fair--that shooting an enemy from ambush isn't called
courageous."

That was a doctrine, Boone felt, which savoured of sacrilege. If it were
categorically true then his own people were cowards--and to his ardent
hero worship the Gregories and the Wellvers were exemplars of high
bravery, yet this man was no ordinary individual, and he spoke from a
wisdom and experience based on a lifetime of soldiering. A seed of
dilemma had fallen into the fallow soil of the lad's questioning mind,
and as he stood there in a swirl of perplexity he heard the other voice
explaining with a sort of comforting reassurance, "As I said, notions of
right and wrong vary with locality and custom--but it's good for a man
to know more than one standard--one set of ideas. If you ever go out in
the world you'll need that knowledge."

After a period of reflection the boy demanded bluntly,

"Whar-at war ye a'soldierin'?"

For the first time, McCalloway's glance hardened and his tone sharpened.
He had not meant to throw open the discussion to a wide review of his
own past.

"If you and I are going to be good friends, you mustn't ask too many
questions," he said curtly. "It doesn't make a boy popular."

"I axes yore pardon; I didn't aim at no offence." The apology was
prompt, yet puzzled, and carried with it a note of injured dignity. "I
'lowed ye proffered ter tell me things--an' even ef ye told me all ye
knowed, I wouldn't go 'round blabbin' no-whars. I knows how ter hold my
own counsel."

This time it was the seasoned man of experience who flushed. He felt
that he had first invited and then rebuffed a natural inquiry, and so
he, in turn, spoke apologetically: "I shall tell you things that may be
useful--but I sha'n't answer every question."

After a long silence Boone spoke again, with the altered voice of
diffidence:

"I reckon I hain't got nothin' more ter say," he contributed. "I reckon
I'll be farin' on."

"You looked as if you were spilling over with things to say."

"I had hit in head ter say some sev'ral things," admitted the youthful
clansman, "but they was all in ther manner of axin' more questions, so I
reckon I'll be farin' on."

Victor McCalloway caught the deep hunger for information that showed out
of those independent young eyes, and he caught too the untutored
instinct of politeness, as genuine and unaffected as that of a desert
Sheik, which forced repression. He laid a kindly hand on the boy's
shoulder.

"Go ahead and ask your questions, then," he directed, "and I'll answer
what I like and refuse to answer the rest. Is that a fair arrangement?"

The brown face glowed. "Thet's es fa'r es airy thing kin be," was the
eager response. "I hain't nuver seed nothin' but jest these hyar
hills--an' sometimes hit kinderly seems like ter me thet ef I kain't
light out an' see all ther balance, I'll jest plain swell up an' bust
with ther cravin'."

"You study history--and geography, don't you, Boone?"

"Huh-huh." The tousled head nodded. "But thar's a passel of thet book
stuff thet a man kain't believe nohow. Hit ain't _reasonable_."

"What books have you read?"

"Every single damn one thet I could git my hands on--but thet hain't
been no lavish plenty." With a manner of groping for some point of
contact with the outer world, he added, "I've got a cousin thet's in
ther army, though. He's in ther Philippines right now. Did you soldier
in ther Philippines?" Abruptly Boone broke off, and then hastily he
prompted as he raised a hand in a gesture of caution, "Don't answer thet
thar question ef ye hain't got a mind ter! I jest axed hit heedless-like
without studyin' what I war a'doin'."

McCalloway laughed aloud. "I'll answer it. No, I've never soldiered in
the Philippines nor anywhere under the American flag. My fighting has
all been with what you call the 'outlanders.'"




CHAPTER III


McCalloway's house had been chinked and sealed within a few weeks and
now he was living under its roof. Boone had been out there often, and
one day when he went on to Asa Gregory's cabin his mind was unsettled
with the ferment of conflicting standards. Heretofore Asa had been his
sole and sufficient hero. Now there were two, and it was dawning upon
him, with a travail of dilemma, that between the essentials of their
creeds lay an irreconcilable divergence.

As the boy reached his kinsman's doorstep in the lengthening shadows of
late afternoon, Asa's "woman" came out and hung a freshly scoured
dish-pan on a peg. In her cheeks bloomed a colour and maturity somewhat
too full-blown for her twenty years. Asa had married the "purtiest gal"
on five creeks, but the gipsy charm of her dark, provocative eyes would
die. Her lithe curves would flatten to angularity and the lustre fade
out of her hair's burnished masses with a few seasons of drudgery and
child-bearing.

"Howdy, Booney," she said in greeting, and, without removing his hat, he
demanded curtly, "Whar's Asa at?"

"He ain't come in yit." A suggestion of anxiety sounded through the
voice of Araminta Gregory. It was an apprehension which experience
failed to mitigate. She had married Asa while he stood charged with
homicide. The threat of lurking enemies had shadowed the celebration of
wedding and infare. She had borne his child while he sat in the
prisoner's dock. Now she was weaning it while he went abroad under bond.
One at least knew when the High Court sat, but one could neither gauge
nor calculate the less formal menace that lurked always in the
laurel--so one could only wait and endeavour to remain clear eyed.

It was twilight before the man himself came in, and he slipped so
quietly across the threshold into the uncertain light of the room that
Boone, who sat hunched before the unkindled hearth, did not hear his
entrance. But in the door-frame of the shed kitchen the wife's taut
sense of waiting relaxed in a sigh of relief. Until tomorrow at least
the silent fear was leashed.

An hour later, with the heavy doors protectingly barred, the man and the
boy who considered himself a man took their seats at the rough table in
the lean-to kitchen, but Araminta Gregory did not sit down to meat with
them. She would take her place at table when the lordlier sex had risen
from it, satisfied, since she was only a woman. She did not even know
that the custom whose decree she followed lacked universal sanction,
and, not knowing it, she suffered no discontent.

From the hearth where the woman bent over crane and frying-pan, her face
hot and crimson, the red and yellow light spilled out into the primitive
room, catching, here, the bright colour of drying pepper-pods strung
along the rafters--there the duller glint of the house-holder's rifle
leaning not far from his hand. With the flare, the shadows of the
corners played a wavering hide-and-seek.

Asa ate in abstracted silence, intent upon his side-meat and
"shucky-beans," but the boy, who was ordinarily ravenous, only dallied
with his food and his freckled face wore the set of a preternatural
solemnity.

"Don't ye love these hyar molasses no more, Booney?" inquired Araminta,
to whose mind such an unaccustomed abstinence required explanation, and
the boy started with the shock of a broken revery and shook his head.

"I don't crave no more of 'em," he replied shortly. Once again his
thoughts enveloped him in a silence which he finally broke with a
vehement interrogation.

"Asa, did ye ever heer anybody norrate thet hit's cowardly ter shoot an
enemy from ther bresh?"

Asa paused, his laden knife suspended midway twixt platter and mouth.
For an instant his clear-chiseled features pictured only surprise for
the unexpected question--then they hardened as Athenian faces hardened
when Plato "corrupted the youth with the raising up of new gods."

"Who's been a'talkin' blamed nonsense ter ye, Boone?" he demanded in a
terse manner tinctured with sharpness.

The boy felt his cheeks grow suddenly hot with a quandary of
embarrassment. To McCalloway he stood pledged to keep inviolate the
confidence of their conversations, and it was only after an awkward
pause that he replied with a halting lameness:

"Hit hain't jist p'intedly what nobody's been a'tellin' me. I ... I seed
in a book whar hit said somethin' ter thet amount." Suddenly with an
inspirational light of augmented authority, he added, "The Circuit-rider
hisself read outen ther Scriptures suthin' 'bout not doin' no murder."

Asa carried the knife up to his lips and emptied its blade. Having done
so, he spoke with a deliberate and humourless sincerity.

"Murder's a right ugly word, Boone, an' one a feller ought ter be
kinderly heedful erbout usin'. Barrin' ther Carrs an' Blairs an'
sich-like, I don't know nobody mean enough ter foller murderin'.
Sometimes a man's p'intedly fo'ced into a _killin'_, but thar's a heap
of differ betwixt them two things."

The grave face of the boy was still clouded with his new-born
misgivings, and reading that perplexity, his kinsman went on:

"Myself I've done been obleeged ter kill some sev'ral men. I plum
deplores hit. I wouldn't hold no high notion of anybody thet tuck ther
life of a feller-bein' without he _was_ plum obleeged ter do hit--ner of
no man thet _didn't_ ef hit war his cl'ar duty. Hit's done been ther
rise of fifty y'ars now since ther war first started up betwixt us an'
ther Carrs. Hit warn't none of my doin', but ever since then--off an'
on--my kinsfolk an' yourn hes done been shot down from ther la'rel--an'
we've done hit back an' sought ter hold ther score even--or a leetle
mite better. I've got my choice atween bein' run away from ther land
whar I was born at or else"--he let his hand drop back with a simple
gesture of rude eloquence until its fingers rested on the leaning
rifle--"or else I hev need ter give my enemies ther only style of
fightin' thet will avail. Seems like ter me hit'd be right cowardly ter
run away."

To the boy these principles had never before needed defence. They had
been axioms, yet now he parried with a faltering demurrer:

"Ther books says that, down below, when fellers fights, they does hit in
ther open."

"Alright. Thet's ther best way so long as _both_ of 'em air in ther
open. But ef one stands out in ther highway an' tother lays back in ther
timber, how long does ye reckon ther fight's a'goin' ter last? A man may
love ter be above-board--but he's _got_ ter be practical."

It was the man now who sat forgetful of his food, relapsing into a
meditative silence. The leaping fire threw dashes of orange high-lights
on his temple and jaw angle and in neither pattern of feature nor
quality of eye was there that degenerate vacuity which one associates
with barbarous cruelty.

His wife, turning just then from the hearth, saw his abstraction--and
understood. She knew what tides of anxious thought and bitter
reminiscence had been loosed by the boy's questioning, and her own face
too stiffened. Asa was thinking of the malign warp and woof which had
been woven into the destiny of his blood and of the uncertain tenure it
imposed upon his own life-span. He was meditating perhaps upon the
wrinkled crone who had been his mother; "fittified" and mumbling
inarticulate and unlovely vagaries over her widowed hearth.

But Araminta herself thought of Asa: of the dual menace of assassination
and the gallows, and a wave of nauseating terror assailed her. She shook
the hair resolutely out of her eyes and spoke casually:

"La! Asa, ye're lettin' yore vittles git plum cold whilst ye sets thar
in a brown study." Inwardly she added with a white-hot ferocity of
passion, "Ef they lay-ways him, or hangs him, thank God his baby's a
man-child--an' I'll know how ter raise hit up ter take a full
accountin'!"

But as the man's face relaxed and he reached toward the biscuit plate
his posture froze into an unmoving one--for just an instant. From the
darkness outside came a long-drawn halloo, and the poised hand swept
smoothly sidewise until it had grasped the rifle and swung it clear of
the floor. The eye could hardly have followed Asa's rise from his chair.
It seemed only that one moment found him seated and the next standing
with his body warily inclined and his eyes fixed on the door, while his
voice demanded:

"Who's out thar?"

"Hit's me--Saul Fulton. I wants ter have speech with ye."

As the householder stepped forward, Araminta blocked his way, and spoke
in hurried syllables, with her hands on his two shoulders. "Hit hain't
sca'cely heedful fer ye ter show yoreself in no lighted doorway in ther
night time, Asa. Thet's how yore uncle died! I'll open hit an' hev a
look, first, my own self."

The husband nodded and stood with the cocked rifle extended, while the
wife let down the bar and ushered in a visitor who entered with
something of a swagger and the air of one endowed with a worldly wisdom
beyond the ordinary.

In raw-boned wiriness and in feature, Saul Fulton was typically a
mountaineer, but in dress and affectation of manner he was a nondescript
aping the tawdrily and cheaply urban. His dusty hat sat with an impudent
tilt on crisp curls glossed with pomade and his stale cigar-butt tipped
upward, under a rakish moustache.

Fulton was the sort of mountaineer by whom the outer world misjudges
and condemns his race. He had left the backwoods to dwell among
"furriners" as a tobacco-raising tenant on a Bluegrass farm, and there
he had been mongrelized until he was neither wolf nor house-dog but a
thing characterized by the vices of each and the virtues of neither. In
him highland shrewdness had deteriorated into furtive cunning, and
mountain self-respect had tarnished into the dull discontent of class
hatred. But when he came to the hills, clad in shoddy finery to visit
men in honest homespun, he bore himself with a cocksure dare-deviltry
and malapert condescension. Saul was Asa Gregory's cousin, and since
Asa's family still held to the innate courtesies of the barbarian, they
received him unquestioningly, fed him, and bade him "Set ye a cheer in
front of the chimley-place."

"I heer tell," suggested Asa with casual interest, "thet politics is
waxin' middlin' hot down thar in ther settlemints."

After the mountain fashion the host and Boone had kicked off their heavy
shoes and spread their bare toes to the warmth of the blaze. Saul, as a
man of the world, refrained from this gaucherie.

"Hell's red fire an' Hell's black smoke--hit hain't only ter say
politics this time." The response came with oracular impressiveness
while the speaker twirled his black moustache. "Hit savours a damn sight
more of civil war!"

"I heered ther Democrat candidate speak at Marlin Town," contributed
Asa with tepid interest. "I 'lowed he hed a right hateful
countenance--cruel-like, thet is ter say."

Here spoke the estimate of partisanship, but Saul straightened in his
chair and his eyes took on a sinister glitter.

"Thet's ther identical thing thet brought me hyar ter ther hills. I come
ter bear tidin's ter upstandin' men like you. We're goin' ter need ye,
an' onlessen we all acts tergether our rights air goin' ter be
everlastin'ly trompled in ther dust."

Gregory crumpled a handful of "natural leaf" and filled his pipe-bowl.
His gesture was as lazy and easy as that of a purring cat. "Oh, pshaw,
Saul," he deprecated, "I don't take no master interest in politics
nohow. I always votes ther Republican ticket because I was raised up ter
do thet--like most everybody else in these mountings."

"But I'm a'tellin' ye this time thet hain't agoin' ter be enough ter
do!" The visitor leaned forward and spoke with impassioned tenseness.
"I've been dwellin' down thar amongst rich folks in ther flat Bluegrass
country an' I _knows_ what I'm sayin'. Ther Democrat air es smart es
Satan's circuit-rider. Y'ars back he jammed a crooked law through ther
legislater jest a'lookin' forward ter this time an' day. Now he's cocked
an' primed ter steal ther office, like he stole ther nomination, an'
human freedom will be dead an' buried for all time in ther State of old
Kaintuck."

Into Gregory's eyes as he listened stole an awakening light of interest
and indignation. Up here among the eyries of eagles the threat of
tyranny is hateful beyond words, and its invocation is a conjure spell
of incitement. But at once Asa's face cleared to an amused smile as he
inquired, "How does he aim ter compass all thet deviltry--ef ther people
votes in ther other feller?"

The momentum of his own philippics had brought Saul Fulton to his feet.
Down there where one party had been split in twain and the other had
slipped all leash of decorum's restraint, he had been virulently
inoculated with the virus of hate, and now, since his memory was
tenacious, he swept, without crediting quotations, into a freshet of
argument that echoed every accusation and exaggerated every warning of
that merciless campaign.

For a half hour he talked, with the fiery volubility of a prophet
inciting fanatics to a holy war, while his simple audience listened,
yielding by subconscious stages to his bitter text. At last he came to
the point toward which he had been progressing.

"Down thar ther purse-proud Demmycrats calls us folks blood-thirsty
barbarians. Ter th'ar high-falutin' fashion o' thinkin' we're meaner
than ther very dirt under th'ar feet. Even ther niggers scorns us an'
calls us 'pore white trash.' When this man once gits in power he aims
ter make us feel ther weight of his disgust an' ter rule us henceforth
with bayonets an' milishy muskets. Afore this matter ends up thar's
liable ter be some shovellin' of graveyard dirt."

"Looks right smart like hit mout be needful," acquiesced Gregory; and
Saul knew that he had won a convert to action.

The insidious force of the visitor's appeal to mountain passion had
stolen into the veins of his hearers until it was not strange that their
eyes narrowed and their lips compressed into lines of ominous
straightness.

"Now this air what I come hyar ter name ter ye, Asa." Saul reseated
himself and waved his cigar stub impressively. "Troublesome days air
a'comin' on an' us mountain men hev need ter lay by our own private
grievances an' stand tergether fer a spell."

Asa's face darkened, with the air of a man who has discovered the catch
in an outwardly fair proposition.

"What air ye a'drivin' at?" he demanded shortly, and his visitor
hastened to explain.

"I wants thet all ther good Republicans in this deestrict shell send a
telegram ter our candi_date_ thet we've done made a truce to our
enmities hyar at home, an' thet we all stands shoulder ter shoulder,
Gregories an' Carrs, Fultons an' Blairs alike, ter defend our rights es
freemen."

Asa Gregory rose slowly and stood on his hearth with his feet wide apart
and his head thrown back. From straight shoulders to straight legs he
was as unmoving, for a space, as bronze, but when he spoke his voice
came out of his deep chest with the resonance of low and far-reaching
thunder.

"Saul," he began, with a guarded deliberation, "I stands indicted before
ther High Co'te fer ther killin' of old man Carr. Ther full four seasons
of ther year hain't rolled round yit sence I buried my daddy out thar
with a Carr bullet drilled through his heart. Ther last time any man
preached a truce ter us Gregorys we agreed ter hit--an' my daddy was
lay-wayed an' shot ter death whilest we war still a'keepin' hit plum
faithful. Ther man thet seeks ter beguile me _now_ with thet same
fashion of talk comes askin' me ter trust my life an' ther welfare of my
woman an' child ter ther faithless word of liars!"

His voice leaped suddenly out of its difficult timbre of restraint and
rang echoing against the chinked timbers of the walls.

"I've done suffered grievously enough already by trustin' ter infamy.
From now on I'll watch them enemies thet's nighest me fust--an' them
thet's further off atterwards. My God A'mighty, ef ye warn't my own
blood kin, I couldn't hardly suffer ye ter tarry under my roof atter
ye'd give voice ter sich a proffer!"

Araminta Gregory had listened from the kitchen door but now she swept to
her husband's side and turned upon her visitor the wrath of blazing eyes
and a heaving bosom.

"We hain't askin' no odds of nobody," she flared in a panting transport
of fury. "Asa kin safeguard his own so long es he hain't misled with
lyin' an' false pledges."

"Don't fret yoreself none, Araminty," said the man, reassuring her with
a brusque but not ungentle hand on her trembling arm. Then he turned
with regained composure to Saul, as he inquired: "Does ther Carrs
proffer ter drap tha'r hell-bent detarmination ter penitenshery me or
hang met?"

Somewhat dubiously Fulton shook his head in negation.

"I reckon they 'low ye'd only mistrust 'em ef they proffered _thet_. All
they proposes is thet ontil this election's over an' sottled--not jest
at ther polls, but sottled fer good an' all--thar won't be no hand
raised erginst you ner yourn. I reckon ye kin bide yore time thet long,
an' when this racket's over ye'll be plum free ter settle yore own
scores." He paused, then added insinuatingly, "Every week a trial's put
off hit gits harder fer ther prosecution. Witnesses gits scattered like
an' men kinderly disremembers things."

Asa Gregory, confronted with a new and complicated problem, sank back
into his seat and his attitude became one of deep meditation. He glanced
at the bowl of his dead pipe, leaned forward and drew a burning fagot
from the fire for its relighting; then, at length, he spoke with a
judicial deliberation.

"This hyar's a solid Republican deestrick. We don't need no truce ter
make us vote ther ticket."

The messenger from the outer world shook a dubious head. "Votin' ther
ticket hain't enough. Thar's ergoin' ter be a heap of fancy mathematics
in tallyin' thet vote all over ther State. Up hyar we've got ter make up
fer any deefault down below. We kain't do thet without we all stands
solid. Ef thar's any bickerin' them crooks'll turn hit ter account, but
ef we elects our man he hain't ergoin' ter fergit us."

"So fur es thet goes," mused Asa, "I hain't a'seekin' no favours from
ther Governor."

"Why hain't ye?" Saul lowered his voice a little for added effect. "Ye
faces a murder trial, don't ye? I reckon a Republican Governor, next
time, mout be right willin' ter grant ye a pardon ef ye laid by yore own
grievances fer ther good of ther party--hit wouldn't be no more'n fa'r
jestice."

"What guaranty does these enemies of mine offer me?" inquired Asa
coolly. "Does they aim ter meet me half way?"

"Hit's like this," Saul spoke now with undisguised excitement: "Ther
boys air holdin' a rally ternight over at ther incline.... A big lawyer
from Loueyville is makin' a speech thar.... They wants thet I shell
fotch ye back along with me--an' thet ye shan't tote no rifle-gun ner no
weepin' of airy sort. Tom Carr'll be thar too--unarmed."

At the name Asa Gregory flinched as if he had been smitten in the face,
but the messenger went persuasively on:

"Thar'll be es many of our folks thar es his'n. They'll be consortin'
tergither plum peaceable--twell ye walks inter ther room. Them Gregories
an' them Carrs air all armed. Hit's jest you an' Tom thet hain't. When
we comes inter ther place, Tom'll start down ther aisle to'rds ye--an'
you'll start up to'rds Tom." The speaker paused, and Asa prompted in a
low, restrained voice, though his face was chalky pale with smothered
emotion:

"Go on! I'm hearkenin'."

Saul shrugged his shoulders. "Wa'al, thet's all. Ye knows ther rest es
well es I does. Them fellers on both sides air trustin' their lives ter
ther two of ye. Ef you an' Tom shakes hands they'll all ride home quiet
as turtle-doves--an' take off th'ar coats ter beat this man fer
Governor. Ef you an' Tom _don't_ shake hands--or ef one or t'other of ye
makes a single fightin' move, every gun under thet roof'll start poppin'
an ther place'll be a slaughter house. They all knows thet full well.
Ther lawyer knows hit, too--an' he's a'riskin' hit fer ther sake of his
party."

The indicted man took a step forward. "Stand up hyar an' look me in ther
eyes," he commanded shortly, and, when Fulton rose, they stood, face to
face, so close that each could feel the breath of the other's lips.

The steady brown eyes bored into the shiftier pupils of greenish-gray
with an implacable searching, and Asa's voice came in an uncompromising
hardness:

"Saul, ye're askin' me ter trust ye right far. I hain't got nothin' but
yore word fer hit thet thar'll be airy man over thar at thet meetin' but
them thet seeks my life. This may be what ye says hit is or hit may be a
trap--but ye're a kinsman of mine, an' I've got a license ter believe
ye--oncet. Ef ye're lyin' ter me, ye're mighty apt ter hev ter pay fer
hit."

"Ef I'm lyin' ter ye, Asa," came the prompt response, "I'm ready ter pay
fer hit."

Gregory drew on his coarse socks and heavy shoes. "Alright," he acceded
curtly, "I'm a'goin' along with ye now, an' I reckon we'd better
hasten."

"Don't go, Asa," pleaded Araminta. "Don't take no sich chanst." But as
her husband looked into her eyes she slowly nodded her head. "Ye're
right," she said falteringly. "I was jest skeered because I'm so
worrited. Of course ye've _got_ ter go. Hit's fer yore country."

When the door had closed the woman dropped limply into a chair. Her
pupils were distended and her fingers twisted in aimless gropings. After
a while she looked about a little wildly for Boone Wellver. It was
something to have his companionship during the hours of suspense--but
the boy's chair, too, was empty. His rifle was missing from its corner.

She know now what had happened. Boone had slipped uninvited and secretly
out into the night. He had said nothing, but he meant to follow the pair
unseen, and if he found his hero threatened, there would be one armed
follower at his back.

From the crib in one corner rose an uneasy whimper and Araminta went to
soothe her baby at her breast.




CHAPTER IV


When Boone surreptitiously slipped out of the house he had plunged
recklessly into the thorn-tangle for a shorter cut than the two men
would take: a road of precipitous peril but of moments saved.

If the possibility which Saul had admitted came to fruition and the guns
started popping, the peril lay not in the course of subsequent minutes
but at the pregnant instant when Asa Gregory's face was first seen in
the door. It would be in that breathing-space that the issue would find
settlement, and it would hang, hair-balanced, on the self-restraint of
two men whose hard-held hatred might break bounds and overwhelm them as
each thought of the father slain by violence. It would be a parlous
moment when their eyes, full of stored-up and long-curbed rancour, first
engaged and their hostile palms were required to meet and clasp.

Young as he was, Boone understood these matters. He knew how the resolve
which each had undertaken might collapse into swift destruction as the
hot tides rushed into their temples. If their mutual concession of
manner was not balanced to exact nicety--if either Tom or Asa seemed to
hold back and throw upon the other the brunt of the difficult
conciliation by so much as a faltering stride--there would be
chaos--and Boone meant to be there in time.

In this pocketed bit of wilderness, the incline had been built years
ago, and it had been a challenge to Nature's mandate of isolation.

As the crow flew, the railroad that might afford an outlet to market was
not so many miles away, but it might as well have been ten times as
distant. Between lay a wall of hills interposing its grim prohibition
with a timbered cornice lifted twenty-five hundred feet towards the sky
and more than a day's journey separated those gaps where wheels could
scale and cross. Long ago local and visionary enthusiasts had built a
huge warehouse on a towering pinnacle with an incline of track dropping
dizzily down from it to the creek far below. Its crazy little cars had
been hauled up by a cable wound on a drum with the motive force of a
straining donkey-engine. But so ambitious an enterprise had not survived
the vicissitudes of hard times. Its simple machinery had rusted; its
tracks ran askew with decay upon their warped underpinning of teetering
struts.

Now the warehouse stood dry-rotting and unkempt, its spaces regularly
tenanted only by the owl and bat. Through its unpatched roof one caught,
at night, the peep of stars and its hulking sides leaned under the
buffet of the winds which raced, screaming, around the shoulder of the
mountain.

Towards this goal Boone was hurrying, forgetful now of any divided
standards of thought, thinking only of the kinsman whom his boyhood had
exalted with ardent hero-worship--and of that kinsman's danger. A
rowelling pressure of haste drove him, while snares of trailing
creepers, pitfalls blotted into darkness and the thickness of
jungle-like undergrowth handicapped him with many stubborn difficulties.

Sometimes he fell and scrambled up again, bruised and growling but
undiscouraged. Sometimes he forsook even the steep grade of the foot
trail for shorter cut-offs where he pulled himself up semi-perpendicular
walls of cliff, trusting to a hand-grip on hanging root or branch and a
foothold on almost nothing.

But when he was still a long way off he saw a pale flare against the sky
which he knew was a bonfire outside the warehouse, and by the
brightening of that beacon from pallor to crimson glow he measured his
progress.

Inside the building itself another battle against time was being
fought: a battle to hold the attention of a crowd in the background of
whose minds lurked the distrait suspense of waiting for a graver climax
than that of oratorical peroration. About the interior blazed pine
torches and occasional lanterns with tin reflectors. Even this
unaccustomed effort at illumination failed to penetrate the obscurity of
the corners or to carry its ragged brightness aloft into the rafters.
Beyond the sooty formlessness of encroaching shadows one felt rather
than saw the walls, with their rifts through which gusty draught caused
the torches to flare and gutter, sending out the incense of their resin.

Between the Circuit Judge, before whom Asa must face trial and the
County Judge, sat Basil Prince, the principal speaker of the evening,
and his quiet eyes were missing nothing of the mediaevalism of the
picture.

Yet one might have inferred from his tranquillity of expression that he
had never addressed a gathering where the fitful glare of torches had
not shone upon repeating rifles and coon skin caps: where the faces had
not been set and grim as though keyed to an ordeal of fire and lead.

He was noting how every fresh arrival hesitated near the door and
glanced about him. In that brief pause and scrutiny he recognized the
purport of a division, for as each newcomer stepped to the left or the
right of the centre aisle he thereby proclaimed himself a Carr or a
Gregory--taking shrewd thought of clan-mobilization. Then as a low drone
of talk went up from the body of the house and a restless shuffling of
feet, the speaker and his reception committee could not escape the
realization of an ugly tension; of an undertow of anxiety moving deep
beneath the surface affectation of calm. A precarious spirit brooded
there.

The Circuit Judge leaned over toward Prince, whispering nervously
through a smile of courteous commonplace: "Maybe we've made a mistake to
attempt it, General. They seem dangerously restless and tight-strung,
and they've got to be so gripped that they'll forget everything but
your words for a spell!" The speaker, in his abstraction, relapsed
abruptly out of judicial dignity into mountain crudity of speech. "Hit's
ergoin' ter be like holdin' back a flood tide with a splash-dam. Thank
God ef any man kin do thet, I reckon hit's you."

The Louisville lawyer nodded, "I'll try, sir," was his brief response.

As the speaker of the moment dropped back, General Prince came to his
feet and with him rose the Circuit Judge who was to introduce him. That
prefatory address was brief, for the infection of restiveness was
spreading and loosely held interests were gravitating to mischief.

Yet as General Prince stood quietly waiting, with his slender and
elderly figure straight poised and his fine face, for all its
intellectuality, remaining the steel-jawed face of a fighter, the
shuffling feet quieted and straying glances came to focus. There was a
commanding light in the unquailing eyes and these men who knew few
celebrities from the world without, knew both his name and his record.
They gazed steadfastly at him because, though he came now as a friend he
had in another day come as a foe, and the weight of his inimical hand
had come down to them through the mists of the past as word-of-mouth. In
the days of the war between the States, the mountains had thrust their
wedge of rock and granite-loyal Unionism through the vitals of
Confederate territory. While the mobility of the gray forces were balked
there to a heavy congestion, one command, bitterly hated and grudgingly
admired, had seemed capable of defying mountain ranges and of laughing
at torrents. Like a scathe that admitted no gainsaying, it came from
nowhere, struck, without warning, and was gone again unpunished. Its
name had been a metaphor for terror.

Morgan's Men! That brilliant organization of partisan raiders who slept
in their saddles and smote Vulcan-like. The world knew of them and the
Cumberlands had felt their blows. General Basil Prince had been one of
their commanders. Now, a recognized authority on the use of cavalry, a
lawyer of distinction, a life-long Democrat, he stood before Republicans
pouring out the vials of his wrath upon the head of the man whom he
charged with having betrayed and disrupted his own party and with
attempting to yoke freedom into bondage.

Faces bent forward with eyes lighting into an altered mood, and the
grimness which spelled danger relaxed grudgingly into attention.

The speaker did not underestimate his task. It was not enough to play
the spell-binder for a definite period. He must unflaggingly hold them
vassals to his voice until the entrance of Asa Gregory gave him pause.

Never had Basil Prince spoken with a more compelling force or a fierier
power of invective, and his voice had rung like a bugle for perhaps
three-quarters of an hour when in the shadowed darkness beyond the walls
the figure of a boy halted, heavily panting.

Boone paused only for a little, testing the condition of his rifle's
breech and bolt, recovering his spent breath. Then he slipped nearer and
peered through the slit where a board had been broken away in the wall
itself. Within he saw figures bending forward and intent--and his brow
knit into furrows as he took in at a glance the division of the clans,
each to its separate side of the house. They had come, Saul said, to
bring peace out of dissension, but they had paradoxically arranged
themselves in readiness for conflict.

Through a gaping door at the rear, of which he knew, and which lay as
invisible as a rent in a black curtain, because the shadows held
undisputed sway back there, the boy made a noiseless entrance. Up a
ladder, for the rungs of which he had to feel blindly, he climbed to a
perch on the cross-beams, under the eaves, and still he was as blanketed
from view as a bat in an unlighted cavern. The only dim ghost of glow
that went with him were two faint phosphorescent points where he had
rubbed the sights of his rifle with the moistened heads of matches.

For the eloquence of the speaker, which would at another time have
enthralled him, he had now no thought, because lying flattened on a
great square-hewn timber, he was searching the crowd for the face of Tom
Carr.

Soon he made it out below him, to his right, and slowly he trained his
rifle upon the breast beneath the face.

That was all he had to do for the present--except to wait.

When Asa came in, if matters went badly and if Tom made a motion to his
holster or a gesture to his minions, there would be one thing more, but
it involved only the crooking of a finger which snuggled ready in the
trigger-guard.

The boy's muscles were badly cramped up there as the minutes lengthened
and multiplied. The timber was hard and the air chill, but he dared not
invite discovery by free movement.

Then suddenly with a short and incisive sentence following on longer and
more rounded phrases, the speaker fell silent. Boone could not properly
appreciate the ready adroitness with which General Prince had clipped
his oratory short without the seeming of a marred effect. He only knew
that the voice spoke crisply and halted and that the speaker was
reaching out his hand, with matter-of-fact gesture, toward the gourd in
the water bucket on the table.

Instantly the shuffling of feet grated its signal of an awakening
apprehension--an uneasiness which had been temporarily lulled. There was
an instant, after that, of dead hush, and then a twisting of necks as
all eyes went to the door.

The men on each side of the house drew a little closer and more
compactly together, widening and emphasizing the line of the aisle
between; becoming two distinct crowds where there had been one, loosely
joined. Hands gestured instinctively toward guns laid by, and halted in
cautious abeyance. Through the cobwebbed spaciousness and breathless
quiet of the place sounded the ill-omened quaver of a barn owl.

In the door stood Asa Gregory, his hands hanging at his sides with a
studied inertness as his eyes travelled slowly, appraisingly, about the
place. His attitude and expression alike were schooled into passiveness,
but as he saw another figure rise from just in front of the stage and
stand in momentary irresolution, the muscles of his jaw hardened and
into his eyes flashed a defiant gleam. His lids contracted to the
narrowness of slits, as though struggling to shut out some sudden and
insufferable glare. His chest heaved in a gasp-like breath and the hands
which he sought to keep hanging, slowly closed and clenched as muscles
tauten under an electric shock. Then, as if in obedience to impulses
beyond volition, the right hand came upward toward the left
armpit--where his pistol holster should have been.

At the sight of his enemy rising there before him, Asa Gregory had seen
red, and the length of the aisle away, Tom Carr stood struggling with an
identical transport of reeling self-control. Like a reflection in a
mirror his face too blackened in sinister hatred and his hand too moved
toward the empty holster.

The strained tableau held only for a breathing space, but it was long
enough for acceptance as a signal. It was long enough to afford the
orator of the evening a swift, photographic impression of flambeaux
giving back the glint of drawn pistols to right and left of the aisle;
of the ducking of timid heads; of a crowd holding a pose as tense and
ready as runners set on their marks--yet breathlessly awaiting the overt
signal.

It was long enough, too, for Boone Wellver, crouched in the rafters, to
close one eye and sight his rifle on the back of Tom Carr--and to draw a
shallow breath of nerve-tension and resolution as his finger balanced
the trigger--a finger which sheer strain was perilously contracting.

In that same instant Asa Gregory and Tom Carr were brought back to
themselves by the feel of emptiness where there should have been the
bulge of concealed weapons--and by all the resolution for which that
disarmament stood.

With a convulsive bracing of his shoulders, Gregory relaxed again,
throwing out his arms wide of his body, and Carr echoed the peace
gesture.

As his deep-held breath came with long exhalation from his chest, Asa
walked steadily down the aisle--while Tom Carr went to meet him half
way.

Standing face to face, the two enemies lifted stubbornly unwilling hands
for the consummation of the peace-pact. Their palms touched and fell
swiftly apart as though each had been scorched. Their faces were the
stoic faces of two men undergoing a necessary torture. But the thing was
done and the rafters rocked with an uproar of applause.

That clamour killed out a lesser sound, as the held breath in Boone
Wellver's chest hissed out between teeth that suddenly fell to
chattering. His body, for just a moment, shook so that he almost lost
his balance on his precarious perch, as the flexed emotions that had
keyed him to the point of homicide burst into relief like a released
spring ... and with shaken but careful fingers he let down the cocked
rifle hammer.

Then with a voice of smooth and quieting satisfaction the orator from
Louisville raised his hands.

"I've just seen a big thing done," he said, "and now I move that you
instruct your chairman to send a telegram of announcement to the next
Governor of Kentucky."

He had to pause there until order could be restored out of a bedlam of
yelling, laughing and handshaking. When there was a possibility of being
heard again he held up a message which he had scribbled during that
noisy interval. "I move you that you say this to our standard-bearer:
'Here in the hills of Marlin we have laid aside feudism to rescue our
State from an even more dangerous thing. Here old enmities have been
buried in an alliance against tyranny.'"

Boone had not recognized the face of Victor McCalloway in the audience,
because that gentleman had been sitting quietly back in the shadows with
the detachment of a looker-on among strangers, but now as the boy stood
outside the door, he saw the Scot shaking hands with the speaker of the
evening and heard him saying:

"General Prince, it has long been my ambition to meet you, Sir. I have
soldiered a bit myself and I know your record. The committee has paid me
the honour of permitting me to play your host for the night."

There was no moon and the heavens were like a high-hung curtain of
purple-black plush, spangled with the glitter of cold stars. A breeze
harping softly through the tree-tops carried a touch of frost, but Boone
Wellver sat on a rounded hump of rock, well back from the road, with
eyes that were wide and themselves starry under the spell of his
reflections.

Since the coming of McCalloway Boone had been living in a world of
fantasy. He had been seeing himself as no longer an ignorant lad,
sleeping on a husk-pallet, in the cock-loft of a cabin, but as a
personality of greater majesty and spaciousness of being. Tonight he had
heard General Prince speak and under the fanning of oratory his
dream-fires were hotly aglow. As he sat on the rock with the soft
minstrelsy of the wind crooning overhead, a score of hearth-stone
recitals came back to memory; all saga-like stories of the prowess of
Morgan's men. It seemed that he could almost hear the strain of stirrup
leathers and the creak of cavalry-gear; the drum-beat of many hoofs.

This great man who had ridden at the head of that command was even now
on his way to Victor McCalloway's house and there he would remain until
tomorrow morning. What marvellous stories those two veterans would
furnish forth from their own treasuries of reminiscence!

Suddenly Boone rose with an abrupt but fixed resolve. "By Godelmighty!"
he exclaimed. "I reckon I'll jest kinderly sa'anter over thar and stay
all night, too. I'd love ter listen at 'em talk."

Here in the hills where the very meagreness makes a law of hospitality
he had never heard of a traveller who asked a night's lodging being
turned away. Yet when he arrived and lifted his hand to knock he
hesitated for a space, gulping his heart out of his throat, suddenly
stricken with the enormity of intruding himself, unbidden, upon such
notable presences.

Then the door swung open, and the boy found himself stammering with a
tongue that had become painfully and ineptly stiff:

"I've done got belated on ther highway--an' I'm leg-weary," he
prevaricated. "I 'lowed mebby ye'd suffer me ter come in an' tarry till
mornin'."

Over the preoccupation of McCalloway's face broke an amused smile, and
he stepped aside, waving his hand inward with a gesture of welcome.

"General Prince, permit me to present my young friend, Boone Wellver,"
he announced, stifling the twinkle of his eyes, and speaking with
ceremonial gravity. "He is a neighbour of mine--who tells me he has
dropped in for the night."

The seated gentleman with the gray moustache and beard came to his feet,
extending his hand, and under the overwhelming innovation of such
courtesy, Boone was even more palpably and painfully abashed. But as
vaguely comprehended etiquette, he recognized its importance and
accordingly came forward with the stiffness of an automaton.

"Howdy," he said with a stupendous solemnity. "I've done heerd tell of
ye right often, an' hit pleasures me ter strike hands with ye. Folks
says ye used ter be one of ther greatest horse-thievin' raiders that
ever drawed breath."

When the roar of General Prince's laughter subsided--a laughter for
which Boone could see no reason, the boy drew a chair to the corner of
the hearth and sat as one may sit in the wings of a theatre, his breath
coming with the palpitation of simmering excitement. Soon the elders
seemed to have forgotten him in the heated absorption of their debate.
They were threshing over the campaigns of the war between the States and
measuring the calibre of commanders as a backwoods man might estimate
the girth and footage of timber.

Boone nursed contented knees between locked fingers while the debate
waxed warm.

Not only were battles refought there in retrospect, with such
illuminating vividness as seemed to dissolve the narrow walls into a
panoramic breadth of smoking, thunderous fields, but motive and intent
were developed back of the engagements.

Boone in the chimney corner sat mouse-quiet. He seemed to be rapturously
floating through untried spaces on a magic carpet.

McCalloway replenished the fire from time to time, and though midnight
came and passed, neither thought of sleep. It was as if men who had
dwelt long in civilian inertia, were wassailing deep again in the heady
wine of a martial past, and were not yet ready to set aside their
goblets of memory.

The forgotten boy, electrically wakeful, huddled back, almost stifling
his breath lest he should be remembered and sent to bed.

The speakers fell eventually into a silence which held long and was
complete save for the light hiss and crackle of the logs, until Basil
Prince's voice broke it with a low-pitched and musing interrogation. "I
sometimes wonder whether the chemistry of a great war today would bring
forth mightier or lesser reactions. Would the need call into evidence
men of giant stature? Have we, in our time, greater potential geniuses
than Grant and Lee?"

McCalloway shook his head. "I question it," he declared. "I question it
most gravely. I am myself a retired soldier. I have met most of the
European commanders of my day, I have campaigned with not a few. Several
have demonstrated this or that element of greatness, but not one the
sheer pre-eminence of genius."

"And yet--" General Prince rose abruptly from his chair, under the
impulse of his engrossed interest. "And yet, there was quite recently,
in the British Army, one figure that to my mind demonstrated true
genius, sir,--positive and undeniable genius. Tragedy claimed him before
his life rounded to fulfilment. Not the tragedy of the field--which is
rather gold than black--but the unholy and--I must believe--the
undeserved tragedy of unwarrantable slander. If General Hector Dinwiddie
had not died by his own hand in Paris, two years ago, he would have
compelled recognition--and history's grudging accolade. It is my belief,
sir, that he was of that mighty handful--the military masters."

For a while, McCalloway offered neither assent nor denial. His eyes
held, as if by some hypnotic influence in the coals, were like those of
the crystal gazer who sees shadowy and troubling pictures, and even in
the hearth-flare the usually high-colour of his Celtic cheeks appeared
faded into a sort of parchment dulness. Such a tide of enthusiasm was
sweeping the other along, though, that his host's detachment and
taciturnity went unobserved.

"Dinwiddie was not the man to have been guilty of those things, which
scandal whispered of him," persisted Prince, with such spirited
animation as might have characterized him had he been confronting a jury
box, summing up for the defence, "but he could not brook calumny." The
speaker paused to shake his head sadly, and added, "So he made the mad
mistake of self-destruction--and robbed Great Britain of her ablest and
most brilliant officer."

"Perhaps," McCalloway suggested in a speculative and far-away voice,
"perhaps he felt that his usefulness to his country was ended when his
name was dragged into the mire."

"And in that he erred. Such a man would have emerged, clean-shriven,
from the smirching of slander. His detractors would have stood damned by
their own infamous falsity--had he only faced them out and given them
the lie."

"Then you believe--in spite of the seemingly overpowering evidence which
they produced against him--that the charges _were_ false?"

McCalloway put the question slowly. "May I ask upon what you base your
opinion? You know all they said of him: personal dishonesty and even
ugly immorality?"




CHAPTER V


The one-time cavalry leader caught up the challenge of the question.

"Upon what do I base my opinion, sir? I base it upon all the experience
of my life and all my conceptions of personal honour. For such a man as
Dinwiddie had proven himself to be under a score of reliable tests, the
thing was a sheer impossibility. It was a contradiction in the terms of
nature. His was the soul of a Knight, sir! Such a man could not cheat
and steal and delight in low vices."

"Yet," came the somewhat dubious observation, "even Arthur's table had
its caitiff knights, if you remember."

The Kentuckian's exclamation was almost a snort. "Dinwiddie was no such
renegade," he protested. "At least I can't believe it. Glance at his
record, man! The son of an Edinburgh tradesman, who forced his way up
from the ranks to pre-eminence. He did it, too, in an army where caste
and birth defend their messes against invasion, and, as he came from the
ranks to a commission, so he went on to the head. There must have been a
greatness of soul there that could hardly care to wallow in
viciousness." As Prince paused, a spasm of emotion twitched the lips of
his host, and McCalloway's pipe died in fingers that clutched hard upon
its stem.

But because McCalloway sat unmoving, making no comment of any sort, the
Kentuckian continued. It was as though he must have his argument
acknowledged.

"I can see the tradesman's son, Sir Hector Dinwiddie, D.S.O., K.C.B.,
Major General, Aide de Camp to the Queen, promising Britain another
glorious name--but as God in heaven is my judge, I cannot see him
soiling his character, or degrading the uniform he wore!"

A moment of dead silence hung heavily between the walls of the room.
Boone Wellver saw Victor McCalloway pass an uncertain hand across his
eyes, and move his lips without speech, and then he heard Prince demand
almost impatiently,

"But you say you have served in the British Army. Surely you do not
believe that he was guilty?"

McCalloway, called out of his detached quiet by a direct question,
raised his head and nodded it in a fashion of heavy inertia.

"General Prince," he replied with an effort, "there are two reasons why
I should be the last man alive to add a syllable of corroboration to the
evil things that were said of Dinwiddie. I myself have been a soldier
and am a civilian. You may guess that a man whose career has been active
would not be living the petty life of a hermit if fortune had dealt
kindly with him. The officer who has suffered from a warrantless
disgrace--which he cannot disprove--is hardly the judge to condemn
another similarly charged.

"That, sir, is one reason why I should not contradict your view."

McCalloway rose slowly from his chair and, after standing for a moment
with shoulders that drooped from their military erectness, went with an
inelastic step to the corner of the room and came back, carrying a
sword.

"There is also another reason based on personal partiality," he added.
"I knew him so well that after the world heard of his suicide--and after
my own misfortunes forced me into retirement, I might often have hired
my sword because of my familiarity with his military thought."

Boone Wellver saw the throat work spasmodically, and wondered what it
all meant as the carefully schooled words went on again, with a gauged
steadiness.

"I have admired your own record, General Prince. I owe you frankness,
but I have chapters in my life which I cannot confide to you.
Nevertheless, I am glad we have met. Look at that blade." He held out
the sword. In the leap and flicker of the firelight Boone could catch
the glint of a hilt that sent out the sparkle of jewelry and inlaid
enamel. Slowly General Prince slid the sabre from the scabbard, and bent
forward, studying an inscription upon the damascened steel itself. For a
moment he held it reverently before him, then straightened up and his
voice trembled with a note of mystified wonderment.

"But this--" he said incredulously, "this is Dinwiddie's
sabre--presented by--"

McCalloway smiled stiffly, but he held up a hand as if entreating
silence.

"It _is_ his sword," he answered, but dully and without ardour, "and, if
it means anything to you--he knew the facts of my own life, both the
open and the hidden--and he trusted me enough to leave that blade in my
keeping."

"To me, you required no recommendation, sir," said Basil Prince slowly.
"If you _had_ needed it, this would be sufficient. You had the
confidence, even the love it seems, of the greatest military genius of
our age."

On the following morning, Boone made his farewells, reluctantly as one
who has glimpsed magic and who sets his face again to dull realities.

The Southerner, who had laid down his sword when its cause was lost and
the Celt who had sheathed his, when his name was tarnished, stood
together in the crystal-clear air of the heights, looking down from a
summit over crags and valleys that sparkled with the rime of frost.

Undulating like a succession of arrested waves, were the ramparts of the
ridges stretching into immeasurable distances. They were almost leafless
now, but they wrapped themselves in colour tones that touched them into
purple and blue. They wore atmospheric veils, mist-woven, and sun-dyed
into evanescent and delicate effects of colour, but the cardinal note
which lay upon them, as an expression rests upon a human face, was
their declaration of wildness; their primitive note of brooding
aloofness.

"They are unchanged," declared General Prince in a low voice. "The west
has gone under the plough. The prairies are fenced. Alaska even is
won--. These hills alone stand unamended. Here at the very heart of our
civilization is the last frontier, and the last home of the
trail-blazer." His eyes glistened as he pointed to a wisp of smoke that
rose in a cove far under them, straight and blue from its clay-daubed
chimney.

"There burns the hearth fire of our contemporary ancestors, the stranded
wagon voyagers who have changed no whit from the pioneers of two hundred
years ago."

Victor McCalloway nodded gravely, and his companion went on.

"With one exception this range was the first to which the earth, in the
travail of her youth, gave birth. Compared with the Appalachians, the
Himalayas and the Alps are young things, new to life. On either side of
where we stand a youthful civilization has grown up, but these ridges
have frowned on, unaltered. Their people still live two centuries behind
us."

McCalloway swept out his hands in a comprehensive gesture.

"When you leave this spot, sir, for your return, you travel not only
some two hundred miles, but also from the infancy of Americanism to its
present big-boyhood. Pardon me, if that term seems disrespectful," he
hastened to add. "But it is so that I always think of your nation, as
the big growing lad of the world family. Titanically strong,
astonishingly vigorous of resource, but, as yet, hardly adult."

The Kentuckian, standing spare and erect, typical of that old South
which has caught step with the present, yet which has not outgrown the
gracious touch of a more courtly past, smiled thoughtfully while his
younger companion, who had known the life of court and camp, in the
elder hemisphere, puffed at his blackened pipe: "Adult or adolescent, we
are altering fast, casting aside today the garments of yesterday,"
admitted Prince. "In my own youth a gentleman felt the call of honour to
meet his personal enemy on the duelling field. I have, myself, answered
that call. In my young manhood I donned the gray, with a crusader's
ardent sincerity, to fight for the institution of human slavery. Today
we think in different terms."

Upon them both had fallen a mood; the mood of gazing far backward and
perhaps also of adventuring as far forward in the forecasting of human
transition.

Such a spirit may come to men who have, in effect, stepped aside from
the march of their own day, into an elder régime--a pioneer setting.

To Basil Prince, in the fore-shortening of retrospect, all the gradual
amendments of life, as he had known them in their enactment, stood forth
at once in a gigantic composition of contrasts; heroically pictured on a
single canvas.

"Now," he reflected, "we hear the younger generation speak with a
pitying indulgence of the archaic stodginess of mid-Victorian
ideas--and, my God, sir, that was all only yesterday, and this
mid-Victorian thought was revolutionary in its newness and its
advancement! I can remember when it startled the world: when Tennyson
was accounted a wild radical, and Darwin a voice savouring strongly of
heresy."

McCalloway filled a fresh pipe. He sent out a cloud of tobacco smoke and
set back his shoulders.

"In my belief, your radical poet said one true thing at least," he
observed.

    "... I doubt not through the ages, one increasing purpose runs.

"That purpose lies towards the swallowing of the local, and the
individualistic, the national even into the international. It lies
toward the broadest federation of ideals that can exist in harmony." He
paused there, and in the voice of one expecting contradiction, added:
"And that end will not be attained in parliaments, but on the
battlefield."

"The creed of Americanism," Prince reminded him, "rests on the pillars
of non-interference with other states and of a minimum of meddling among
our own."

"So far, yes," admitted the Scot, but his eyes held a stubborn light of
argument. "Yet I predict that when the whole story of Americanism is
written, it will be cast to a broader plot."

On General Prince's lips flickered a quiet smile.

"Is there a broader thing than independence?" he inquired, and the
answer came back with a quick uptake.

"At least a bigger thing, sir. Breadth is only one dimension, after all.
A larger concept, perhaps, comes by adding one syllable to your word and
making it interdependence. Inexorably you must follow the human cycle
and some day, sir, your country must stand with its elder brethren,
grappled in the last crusade. Then only will the word Americanism be
completely spelled."

The Kentuckian's eyes kindled responsively to the animation of his
companion's words, his manner. It was a phase of this interesting man
that he had not before seen, but his own response was gravely calm,

"I am thinking," he said whimsically, "that this wine-like air has gone
to our heads. We are standing in a high place, dreaming large dreams."

The Scot nodded energetically.

"I dare say," he acceded. "After all a hermit is thrown back on dreaming
for want of action." He broke off and when he spoke again it was with a
trace of embarrassment, almost of shyness which brought a flush to his
cheeks.

"I've been living here close to the life that was the infancy of your
nation, and I've been imagining the wonder of a life that could start
as did that of these hardy settlers and pass, in a single generation,
along the stages that the country, itself, has marched to this day. It
would mean birth in pioneer strength and simplicity, and fulfilment in
the present and future. It would mean ten years lived in one!"

"It would have had to begin two centuries ago," Prince reminded him,
"and to run, who can say, how far forward?"

Half diffidently, half stubbornly, McCalloway shook his head.

"You saw that boy last night who called you a 'great horse-thievin'
raider'?" The gray eyes twinkled with reminiscence. "In every essential
respect he is a lad of two hundred years ago. He is a pioneer boy, crude
as pig-iron, unlettered and half barbaric. Yet his stuff is the raw
material of which your people is made. It needs only fire, water, oil
and work to convert pig-iron into tempered steel."

Prince looked into his companion's eyes and found them serious.

"You mean to try," he sceptically inquired, "to make the complete
American out of that lad in whose veins flows the blood of the
vendetta?"

"I told you that we hermits were dreamers," answered McCalloway. "I've
never had a son of my own. I think it would be a pretty experiment, sir,
to see how far this young back-woodsman could go."

       *       *       *       *       *

Strange indeed would have seemed to any prying eye the occurrences
within the walls of McCalloway's cabin on those many evenings which
Boone Wellver spent there. But of what took place the boy breathed no
word, despite the almost feverish eagerness that glowed constantly in
his blue eyes. His natural taciturnity would have sealed his lips had he
given the "furriner" no pledge of confidence, and even McCalloway never
guessed how strict was the censorship of that promise as Boone
construed its meaning. Inasmuch as he could not be sure just what
details, out of the summary of their conversations, fell under the
restrictive ban, he set upon the whole association a seal of Masonic
silence. And Victor McCalloway, recognizing that dependable discretion,
talked with a freedom which he would have permitted himself with few
other companions.

Sometimes he read aloud from books whose pages were, to the young
listener, gates swinging open upon gilded glimpses of chivalry, heroism
and those thoughts which are not groundling but winged and splendid.
Sometimes through the hills where the distances shimmered with an ashen
ghost of brilliance, they tramped together, a peripatetic philosopher
and his devoted disciple.

But strangest and most fantastical of all, were the hours they spent
before McCalloway's hearth when the man threw off his coat and rolled
his sleeves high over scarred forearms while the boy's eyes sparkled
with anticipation. And at outside mention of these sessions, McCalloway
himself might have reddened to the cheekbones, for then it was that the
man produced improvised wooden swords and placed himself, feet wide
apart and left hand elevated in the attitude of the fencer's salute.
Facing him was a solemn, burning-eyed pupil and adversary of fifteen in
a linsey-woolsey shirt and jeans overalls. The lad with his freckled
face and his red-brown shock of hair made an absurd contrast with the
gentleman whose sword play possessed the exquisite grace and deft
elegance of a Parisian fencing master--but Boone had the astonishing
swiftness of a panther cub, and a lightning play of wrist and agility of
limb. How rapidly he was gaining mastery over his foil he could not,
himself, realize because standing over against him was one of the best
swords of Europe, but this enthusiasm, which was a very passion to
learn, was also a thing of which he never spoke outside.




CHAPTER VI


With winter came desolation. The sumac no longer flared vermilion and
the flaming torches of the maples were quenched.

Roads were quagmires where travellers slipped and laboured through
viscid mud and over icy fords. The hills were scowling ranks of slate
gray. A tarnished sun paraded murky skies from its pallid dawn to its
setting in a bed of inflamed and angry clouds.

And as the sullen spirit of winter came to this isolation, another
spirit came with it--equally grim.

The campaign had progressed with torrential bitterness to its inevitable
culmination. Exhausted invective had, like a jaded thing, sought greater
lengths--when already the superlative was reached. Each side shrieked
loud and blatant warnings of an attempt at rape upon the ballot. There
was irresponsible talk of the freeman's final recourse to arms and of
blood-letting in the name of liberty. At last had come the day of
election itself with howls of fraud and claims of victory ringing from
both camps: then a lull, like that in which two bleeding and exhausted
dogs draw off from the clamp of locked jaws to pant at each other with
weltering fangs and blood-shot eyes.

As Saul Fulton had predicted, the gaze of the State turned anxiously to
the hills. There, remote and slow to give its election returns, lay the
Eleventh Congressional District with all its counties solidly
Republican. Already the margin was recognized as narrow enough, perhaps,
to hinge on the "Bloody Eleventh." While the State waited, the Democrats
asseverated that the "Bloody Eleventh" was marking time, awaiting a
response to the query it had wired to its state headquarters:

"How much do you need?"

Those were days of tension and rumblings in the craters, and one day the
rumour was born that the vote of Marlin County was to be counted out.

In an hour after that whisper mysteriously originated, thirty horsemen
were riding faster than road conditions warranted, by every crooked
creek-bed and trail that debouched from the county seat. They made light
of quicksand and flooded ford. They laughed at shelving precipice
brinks. Each of them shouted inflammatory words at every cabin and
dwelling house along his way; each of them kindled signal fires atop the
ridges, and when the first pallid light of dawn crept into the fog reek
of the hillsides an army was on the march to Marlin Town.

That evening, in a grimly beleaguered court house, the commissioners
certified the ballots as cast, and the cloud of black hats melted as
quietly as it had formed.

In the state courts, on points of legal technicality, with mandamus and
injunction, the fight went on bitterly and slowly. The narrow margin
fluctuated: the outcome wavered.

When Saul Fulton returned to his birthplace in December, his face was
sinister with forebodings. But his object in coming was not ostensibly
political. He meant to drive down, from the creeks and valleys of Marlin
County, a herd of cattle collected from scattered sources for marketing
in the bluegrass. It was an undertaking that a man could hardly manage
single handed, and since a boy would work for small wages he offered to
make Boone his assistant. To Boone, who had never seen a metalled road,
it meant adventuring forth into the world of his dreams.

He would see the theatre where this stupendous political war was being
waged--he would be only a few miles from the state capitol itself, where
these two men, each of whom called himself the Governor of Kentucky,
pulled the wires, directed the forces and shifted the pawns.

Victor McCalloway smiled when Boone told him, in a voice shaken with
emotion, that the day had come when he could go out and see the world.

Boone and Saul slept, that night, in a mining town with the glare of
coke furnaces biting red holes through the surrounding blackness of the
ridges.

To Boone Wellver, this journey was as full of mystifying and alluringly
colourful events as a mandarin's cloak is crusted with the richness of
embroidery. Save for his ingrained sense of a man's obligation to
maintain always an incurious dignity, he would have looked through
widened eyes of amazement from the first miles of his travelling. When
the broken raggedness of peaks began to flatten toward the billowing
bluegrass, his wonder grew. There at home the world stood erect and
lofty. Here it seemed to lie prone. The very air tasted flat in his
nostrils and, missing the screens of forested peaks, he felt a painful
want of privacy--like a turtle deprived of its shell, or a man suddenly
stripped naked.

Upon his ears a thousand sounds seemed to beat in tumult--and
dissonance. Men no longer walked with a soundless footfall, or spoke in
lowered voices.

In the county seat to which they brought their gaunt cattle, his
bewilderment mounted almost to vertigo, for about the court house square
were congregated men and beasts--all unfamiliar to the standards of his
experience.

The native beef here was fat, corn-fed stock, and the hogs were rounder
and squatter than the mast-nourished razor-backs he had known at home.
The men, too, who bought and sold them, were fuller nourished and fuller
voiced. It was as if they never whispered and had never had to talk in
soft caution. Upon himself from time to time he felt amused glances, as
though he, like his bony steers, stood branded to the eye with the
ineradicable mark of something strayed in from a land of poverty.

But when eventually the cattle had been sold, Saul took him on to the
capitol of the State, and there, on the twelfth of December, he stood,
with a heart that hammered his ribs, in a great crowd before the state
house and gazed up at the platform upon which the choice of his own
people was being inaugurated as Governor.

Boone was dazzled by the gold-laced uniforms of all the colonels on the
retiring executive's staff, and as he turned away, in the amber light of
the winter afternoon, his soul was all but satiated with the heady
intoxication of full living.

On a brilliantly frosted morning, when the weed stalks by the roadside
were crystal-rimmed, and the sky was an illimitable arch of blue
sparkle, he trudged at Saul's side along a white turnpike between smooth
stone walls and well-kept fences. Yet for all his enthusiasm of
admiration, a new sense of misgiving and vague trouble began to settle
heavily at his heart.

No one, along the way, halted to "meet an' make their manners."
Vehicles, drawn by horses that lifted their hocks and knees high, passed
swiftly and without greeting. The threadbare poorness of his clothes, a
thing of which he had never before been conscious, now uncomfortably
obtruded itself upon realization. At home, where every man was poor,
there had been no sense of inferiority, but here was a régime of
disquieting contrasts.

When they at last turned through a gate with stone pillars, he caught
sight of a long maple and oak-flanked avenue, and at its end a great
brick house. Against the age-tempered façade stood out the trim of white
paint and the dignity of tall, fluted columns. He marvelled that Saul
Fulton had been able in so short a time to buy himself such a palace.

But while he still mulled over his wonderment in silence, Saul led him
by a detour around the mansion and its ivory-white out-buildings, and
continued through back pastures and fields, disfigured by black and
sharp tobacco stubble. Boone followed past fodder-racks and pig-sties,
until they brought up at a square, two-roomed house with blank,
unpainted walls, set in a small yard as barren as those of the hills,
but unrelieved by any background of laurel or forest. About this
untempered starkness of habitation stretched empty fields, snow-patched
and desolate, and the boy's face dropped as he heard his kinsman's
announcement, "This hyar's whar I dwells at."

"Who--who dwells over yon at t'other house?" came Boone's rather timid
query. "Ther huge brick one, with them big white poles runnin' up in
front."

Saul laughed with a rasping note in his voice, "Hit b'longs ter Colonel
Tom Wallifarro, ther lawyer, but he don't dwell thar hisself, save only
now an' then."

Fulton paused, and his face took on the unpleasant churlishness of class
hatred. "Ther whole kit and kaboodle of 'em will be hyar soon, though.
They all comes back fer Christmas, an' holds dancin' parties, and
carousin's, damn 'em!"

A seriously puzzled expression clouded the boy's eyes, and he asked
simply, "Hain't ye friendly with 'em, Saul?"

"No," was the short rejoinder, "I hain't friendly with no rich lowlander
that holds scorn fer an honest man jest because he's poor."

On subsequent occasions when Boone passed the "great house" it seemed
almost as quiet as though it were totally untenanted, but with the
approach of Christmas it awoke from its sleep of inactivity.

The young mountaineer was trudging along one day through a gracious
woodland, which even, in the starkness of winter, hinted at the nobility
that summer leafage must give to its parklike spaces. His way carried
him close to the paddocks flanking the ample barns, and he could see
that the house windows were ruddy from inner hearth fires, and decked
with holly wreaths.

In the paddocks themselves were a dozen persons, all opulent of seeming,
and what interested the passer-by, even more than the people, were the
high-headed, gingerly stepping horses that were being led out by negro
boys for their inspection.

In the group Boone recognized the man whom Asa had identified that day
in Marlin as Mr. Masters, a "mine boss," and the gentleman who had come
with him out of the mountain hotel. The boy surmised that this latter
must be Colonel Tom Wallifarro himself, the owner of all these acres.

There was a small girl too, whom Masters called "daughter." Boone had
for girls the fine disdain of his age, and this one he guessed to be
some four or five years younger than himself. But she was unlike any
other he had ever seen, and it puzzled him that so much attention should
be squandered on a "gal-child," though he acknowledged to himself--"but
she's plum purty." He went by with a casual glance and a high chin, but
in his brain whirled many puzzling thoughts, springing from a first
glimpse of wealth.




CHAPTER VII


It was Christmas eve night, and General Basil Prince, who had hurriedly
changed to evening dress after his arrival by a late train, halted for a
moment at the stairhead to look down. On his distinguished face played a
quiet smile. In these rapidly changing times, pride of lineage and
deference for tradition were things less openly voiced than in other
days which he could remember.

Probably that was as it should be, he reflected, yet an elderly fellow
might enjoy the fragrance of old lavender or the bouquet of memory's
vintage.

When he came here to the country house of his friend Wallifarro, it
seemed to him that he stepped back into those days when gracious
ceremonies held and dancers trod the measured figures of the minuet.

He wondered if in many places one could find just such another coterie
of intimates as the little group of older men who gathered here: men who
had been boyhood comrades in the Orphan Brigade, or Morgan's Cavalry:
men who had, since the reconstruction, distinguished themselves in
civilian life, weaving into a new pattern the regathered threads of
fortune.

Gazing down upon the broad hall, with the parquetry of its floors
cleared for dancing, Basil Prince warmed to a glow of pride in these
people who were his people. Aristocracies had risen and tottered since
history had kept its score, but here, surviving all change, remained a
simple graciousness, and a stamina of great heartedness like that which
royal breeding had instilled into those satin-coated horses out there in
their barns; steadfastness of courage and a high spirit.

Holly and mistletoe festooned the doorways, logs roared on brass
andirons, and silver-sconced candles glowed against an ivory softness of
white wainscoting and the waxed darkness of mahogany. He loved it all;
the simple uncrowded elegance; the chaste designs of silver, upon which
the tempered lights found rebirth; the ripe age of the family portraits.
It stood for a worthy part of America--a culture that had ripened in the
early wilderness.

Morgan Wallifarro was home from Harvard for his first vacation, and as
General Prince eyed the boy his brows puckered in the momentary ghost of
a frown. This lad, alone of all the young folk in the laughing groups,
struck him as one to whom he could not accord an unreserved approval--as
one whose dress and manner grated ever so slightly with their marring
suspicion of pose. But this, he told himself, was only the conceit of
extreme youth. Morgan was named for his old chieftain of the partisan
cavalry. He was Tom Wallifarro's boy, and if there was anything in blood
he must ultimately develop into worthiness.

"He's the best stock in the world," mused the General. "He's like a
fractious colt just now--but when he's had a bit of gruelling, he'll run
true to form."

The fiddles swung into a Sousa march, and couples drifted out upon the
floor. General Prince stood against the wall, teasing and delighting a
small girl with short skirts and beribboned hair. It was Anne Masters,
that bewitching child who in a few years more would have little leisure
for gray-heads when the violins sang to waltz-time.

The music ran its course and stopped, as all music must, and the couples
stood encoring. Some one, flushed with dancing, threw open the front
door, and a chilly gust swept in from the night. Then quite suddenly
General Prince heard Morgan Wallifarro's laugh break out over the hum of
conversation.

"Well, in Heaven's name," satirically inquired that young gentleman,
"what have we here?"

It was a strange picture for such a framing, yet into the eyes of
General Prince flashed a quick indignant light and under his breath he
muttered, "That young cub, Morgan! He disappoints me."

Seen across the sparkling shoulders and the filmy party gowns of the
girls, beyond the black and white of the men's evening dress, was the
parallelogram of the wide entrance-door, and centred on its threshold,
against the night-curtain, bulked a figure which hesitated there in
momentary indecision and grotesque inappropriateness.

It was a boy, whose long mop of red-brown hair was untrimmed and whose
eyes were just now dazzled by the unaccustomed light and sparkle upon
which they looked. His shirt was of blue cotton, his clothes patched and
shoddy, but under a battery of amused glances he sensed a spirit of
ridicule and stiffened like a ramrod. A drifting peal of laughter from
somewhere brought his chin up, and a red tide flooded into his cheeks.
The soft and dusty hat which he clasped in his hand was crumpled under
the pressure of his tightening fingers.

Then Boone Wellver's voice carried audibly over the hall and into the
rooms at the side.

"I heered tell thet thar war a dancin' party goin' forward hyar," he
announced simply, "an' I 'lowed I'd jest as lieve as not fare over fer a
spell."

Boone had intended no comedy effect. He spoke in decorous gravity, and
he knew of no reason why an outburst of laughter should sweep the place
as he finished. Prince caught an unidentified voice from his back. It
was low pitched, but it fell on the silence that succeeded the laugh,
and he feared that the boy must have caught it too.

"One of the tobacco-yaps from the back of the place, I expect."

At once General Prince stepped forward and laid his hand on Boone's
shoulder. Under his palm he felt a tremor of anger and hurt pride, and
he spoke clearly.

"This young gentleman," he said--and though his eyes were twinkling with
a whimsical light, his voice carried entire and calculated gravity--"is
a friend of mine, Mr. Boone Wellver of Marlin County. I've enjoyed the
hospitality of his people." There was a puzzled pause, and the General,
whose standing here was as secure as that of Petronius at Nero's court,
continued.

"In the mountains when a party is given no invitations are issued. Word
simply goes out as to time and location, and whoever cares to
come--comes."

The explanation was meant for those inside, but the boy in the doorway
caught from it a clarifying of matters for his own understanding as
well. Obviously here one did _not_ come without being bidden, and that
left him in the mortifying attitude of a trespasser. It came with a
flash of realization and chagrin.

He yearned to blot himself into the kindly void of the night behind
him--yet that rude type of dignity which was bred in him forbade the
humiliation of unexplained flight. Such a course would indeed stamp him
as a "yap," and however shaggy and unkempt his appearance might be in
this ensemble of silk and broadcloth he was as proud as Lucifer.

Heretofore a "dancing-party" had meant to him, shuffling brogans where
shadows leaped with firelight and strings of fiddle and "dulcimore"
quavered out the strains of "Turkey-in-the-straw" or "I've got a gal at
the head of the hollow."

He had expected this to be different, but not _so_ different, and he had
need to blink back tears of shame.

But, all the more for that, he drew himself straight and stiff and spoke
resolutely, though his voice carried the suspicion of a tremor.

"I fear me I've done made a fool mistake an' I reckon I'll say farewell
ter you-all, now."

Even then he did not wheel precipitately, under the urge of his anxiety
to be gone, but paused with a forced deliberation, and, as he tarried,
little Anne Masters stepped impulsively forward.

Anne had reigned with a captivating absolutism from her cradle on. Swift
impulses and ready sympathies governed much of her conduct, and they
governed her now.

"This is _my_ party," she declared. "Uncle Tom told me so at dinner, and
I specially invite you to come in." She spoke with the haste of one
wishing to forestall the possible thwarting of elderly objection, and
ended with a dancing-school curtsey before the boy in hodden gray. Then
the music started up again, and she added, "If you like, I'll give you
this waltz."

But Boone Wellver only shifted from one uneasy foot to the other,
fingering his hat brim and blinking owlishly. "I'm obleeged ter ye," he
stammered with a sudden access of awkwardness, "but I hain't never run a
set in my life. My folks don't hold hit ter be godly. I jest came ter
kinderly look on."

"Anne, dear," translated Basil Prince, "in the mountains they know only
the square dances. Isn't that correct?" The boy nodded his head.

"Thet's what I aimed ter say," he corroborated. "An' I'm beholden ter
ye, little gal, none-the-less."

"And now, come with me, Boone," suggested the old soldier,
diplomatically steering the unbidden guest across the hall and into the
library where over their cigars and their politics sat the circle of
devoted veterans.

Colonel Tom Wallifarro was standing before the fire with his hands
clasped at his back. "I had hoped against hope," he was indignantly
asserting, "that when the man's own hand-made triumvirate denied him
endorsement, he would end his reign of terror and acknowledge defeat."

"A knowledge of the candidate should have sufficed to refute that idea,"
came the musical voice of a gentleman, whose snow-white hair was like a
shock of spun silver.

"I was in Frankfort some days ago when Mr. Goebel sat there in
conference with his favoured lieutenants. It was reported that he
declared himself indifferent as to the outcome, but that he would abide
by the decision of his party whips. The reporters were besieging those
closed doors, and at the end you all know what verdict went over the
wires: 'Being a loyal Democrat I shall obey the mandate of my party--and
make a contest before the legislature for the office of governor, to
which I was legally elected.'"

Just then Basil Prince came forward, leading his protégé. Possibly a
wink passed over Boone Wellver's head. At all events the circle of
gentlemen rose and shook hands as sedately as though they had been
awaiting him--and Boone, hearing the titles, colonel, senator, governor,
was enthralled beyond measure.

A half hour later, Morgan Wallifarro burst tempestuously in, carrying a
large package, and wearing an expression of excited enthusiasm.

"General," he exclaimed, "I have disobeyed orders and opened one
Christmas gift before tomorrow. I suspected what it was, sir--and I
couldn't wait."

Forgetful of the pretty girls in the rooms beyond, he ripped open the
parcel and laid on the centre table a pair of beautifully chased and
engraved fencing foils, and the masks that went with them.

"I simply had to come in and thank you at once, sir," he added
delightedly. "Father, bend that blade and feel the temper! Look at the
engraving too! My monogram is on the guard."

While his elders looked indulgently on, the lad made a pass or two at an
imagined adversary, and then he laughed again.

"By George, I wish I had one of the fencing-class fellows here now."

Boone bent forward in his chair, his eyes eagerly fixed on the
glittering beauty of the slender, rubber-tipped blades. His lips parted
to speak, but closed again without sound, while Morgan lunged and
parried at nothing on the hearth-rug. "'We're the cadets of Gascogny,'"
the son of the house quoted lightly. "'At the envoy's end I touch.'"
Then regretfully he added, "I wish there was some one to have a go with.
Are there any challengers, gentlemen?"

The boy in hodden-gray slipped from his chair.

"I reckon ef ye're honin' fer a little sward-fightin' I'll aim ter
convenience ye," he quietly invited.

For an instant Morgan gazed at him in silence. Without discourtesy, it
was difficult to reply to such an absurd invitation, and even the older
men felt their reserve of dignity taxed with the repression of mirth as
they contemplated the volunteer.

"I'm sorry," apologized Morgan, when the silence had become oppressive,
"but these foils are delicate things. For all their temper, they snap
like glass in hands that aren't accustomed to them. It takes a bit of
practice, you see."

The note of condescension stung Boone painfully and his eyes narrowed.
"All right. Hev hit yore own way," he replied curtly. "I thought ye
wanted some sward-practice."

With a sudden flash of memory there came back to Basil Prince's mind the
picture of Victor McCalloway's cabin and Dinwiddie's sword--and, with
the memory, an idea. "Morgan," he suavely suggested, "your challenge was
general, as I understood it, and I don't see how you can gracefully
decline. If a blade breaks, I'll see that it's replaced."

The young college man could hesitate no longer, though he felt that he
was being forced into a ludicrous position, as he bowed his unwilling
acquiescence.

But when the two adversaries took their places where the furniture had
been hastily cleared away, the men widened their eyes and bent forward
absorbed. The mountain lad had suddenly shed his grotesqueness. He
dropped his blade and lifted it in salute, not like a bumpkin but with
the finished grace of familiarity--the sweeping confidence of perfect
ease. As he stepped back, saying "On guard," his left hand came up at
balance and his poise was as light as though he had been reared in the
classroom of a fencing-school.

Morgan went into that contest with the disadvantage of utter
astonishment. He had received some expensive instruction and was on the
way toward becoming a skilled hand with the rapier, but the "tobacco
yap" had been schooled by one of the first swords of Europe.

At the first sharp ring of steel on steel one or two persons
materialized in the library door, and they were speedily augmented by
fresh arrivals, until the circle of bare-shouldered girls and attendant
cavaliers pressed close on the area of combat. Backward and forward,
warily circling with a delicate and musical clatter of engaging steel
between them, went the lad in broadcloth and the boy in homespun.

It was, at best, unequal, but Morgan gave the most that he had, and
against a lesser skill he would have acquitted himself with credit.

After a little there came a lunge, a hilt pressed to lower blade, a
swift twist of a wrist, and young Wallifarro's foil flew clear of his
hand and clattered to the floor. He had been cleanly disarmed.

Boone drew the mask from his tousled head and shuffled his feet. That
awkwardness which had been so absent from his moments of action
descended upon him afresh as he awoke to the many watching eyes. Morgan
held out a hand, which was diffidently received, and acknowledged
frankly, "You're much the better man--but where in Heaven's name did you
learn to fence like that?"

The mountain boy flushed, suddenly realizing that this too was a matter
included in his pledge of confidence to Victor McCalloway.

"Oh," he evasively responded, "I jest kinderly picked hit up--hyar an'
thar as I went along."

As soon as possible after that, Boone made his escape, and it was
characteristic of his close-mouthed self-containment that at Saul
Fulton's cabin he said nothing as to where he had spent his Christmas
eve.




CHAPTER VIII


On the afternoon of Christmas day, as Boone stood by the gate of Saul's
rented patch, looking off across the wet bareness of the fields to the
gray and shallow skyline, he was more than a little homesick for the
accustomed thickness of forest and peak. He at last saw two mounted
figures coming toward him, and recognized General Prince and Anne
Masters.

"We rode by to wish you a very merry Christmas," announced the girl, and
the General added his smile and greeting.

"I'm--I'm obleeged ter both of you-all," stammered Boone as Anne,
leaning over, handed him a package.

"I thought maybe you'd like that. It's a fruit-cake," she informed him,
"I brought it because we think our cook makes it just a little bit
better than anybody else."

Something told Boone Wellver that the girl, despite her fine clothes and
manners, was almost as shy with him as he felt toward her, and in the
thought was a sort of reassurance.

"Hit's right charitable-like of ye ter fotch hit ter me," he responded,
slowly, and the child hastened to make a denial.

"Oh, no, please don't think that. It wasn't charity at all. It was
just--" But as she paused, General Prince interrupted her with a hearty
laugh.

"Yes, it was, Anne," he announced. "The word is like the dances. It has
a different significance in the hills. For instance when you go to visit
your father in Marlin County, Boone will be charitable to you too--or,
as we would say, courteous."

"Be ye comin' ter ther mountains?" demanded Boone, and the sudden
interest which rang in his voice surprised himself.

Fearful lest he had displayed too much enthusiasm, he withdrew
cautiously into his almost stolid manner again. "I'm beholden ter ye fer
this hyar sweet cake," he said. "Hit's ther fust Christmas gift I ever
got."

The house party ended a few days after that, so the mansion became again
a building of shuttered windows and closed doors, and as the old year
died and the new one dawned, Saul himself was frequently absent on
mysterious journeys to Frankfort.

Sometimes he returned home with a smoulder in his eyes, and once or
twice he brought with him a companion, who sat broodingly across the
hearth from him and discussed politics, not after the fashion of frank
debate but in the sinister undertones of furtiveness. On one particular
night in the first week of January, while Saul was entertaining such a
visitor, a knock sounded on the door, and when it was opened a man
entered, whose dress and bearing were of the more prosperous strata and
who seemed to be expected.

Boone overheard the conversation which followed from the obscurity of
the chimney corner, where he appeared to be napping and was overlooked.

"I'm right sorry you was called on to journey all the way here from
Frankfort," began Saul apologetically, but the other cut him short with
a crisp response.

"Don't let that worry you. There are too many eyes and ears in
Frankfort. You know what the situation is now, don't you?"

"I knows right well thet ther Democrat aims ter hev ther legislater seat
him. He's been balked by ther people an' his own commission--an' now
thet's his only chanst."

"The Governor says that if he leaves the state house it will be on a
stretcher," announced the visitor defiantly. "But there are more
conspiracies against us on foot than I have leisure to explain. The time
has come for you mountain men to make good."

Saul rose and paced the floor for a minute, then halted and jerked his
head toward the companion whom he had brought home with him that
evening.

"Shake hands with Jim Hollins of Clay County," he said briefly. "We've
done talked it all over and he understands."

"All right. It's agreed then that you take Marlin and Mr. Hollins takes
Clay. I have representatives in the other counties arranged for. These
men who come will be fed and housed all right. There'll be special
trains to bring them, and ahead of each section will be a pilot engine,
in case the news leaks out and anybody tries to use dynamite."

"All right, then. We'll round ye up ther proper kind of men--upstandin'
boys thet ain't none timorous."

The man in good clothes dropped his voice to an impressive undernote.

"Have them understand clearly that if they are asked why they come, they
shall all make the same response: that in accordance with their
constitutional rights, they are in Frankfort to petition the
legislature--but above all have them well armed."

Saul scratched his chin with a new doubt. "Most mountain men hev guns,
but some of 'em air mighty ancient. I misdoubts ef I kin arm all ther
fellers I kin bring on."

"Then don't bring them." The man, issuing instructions, raspingly barked
out his mandate. "Unarmed men aren't worth a damn to us. If anybody
wants to hedge or back down, let him stay at home. After they get to
Frankfort, it will be too late."

"And when they does git thar," inquired the man from Clay County
incisively, "what then?"

"They will receive their instructions in due time--and don't bring any
quitters," was the sharply snapped response.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bev. Jett was the High Sheriff of Martin County, for in unaltered
Appalachia, with its quaint survivals of Elizabethan speech, where jails
are jail-houses and dolls are puppets, the sheriff is still the High
Sheriff.

Now on a bleak January day, when snow-freighted clouds obscured the
higher reaches of the hills, he was riding along sloppy ways, cut off
from outer life by the steep barrier of Cedar Mountain.

Eventually he swung himself down from his saddle before Asa Gregory's
door and tossed his bridle-rein over a picket of the fence, shouting,
according to custom, his name and the assurance that he came upon a
mission of friendliness.

Bev. Jett remembered that when last he had dismounted at this door there
had been in his mind some apprehension as to the spirit of his
reception. On that occasion he had been the bearer of an indictment
which, in the prolix phrases of the law, made allegation that the
householder had "with rifle or pistol or other deadly weapon loaded with
powder and leaden bullet or other hard and combustible substance,
wilfully, feloniously and against the peace and dignity of the
Commonwealth of Kentucky," accomplished a murder. Now his mission was
more diplomatic, and Asa promptly threw open the door and invited him to
"light down and enter in."

"Asa," said the officer, when he had paid his compliments to the wife
and admired the baby, "Jedge Beard sent me over hyar ter hev speech with
ye. Hit hes ter do with ther matter of yore askin' fer a pardon. Of
course, though, hit's a right mincy business an' must be undertook in
heedful fashion."

Judge Baird, whose name the Sheriff pronounced otherwise, had occupied
the bench when Asa had been less advantageously seated in the prisoner's
dock.

Reflecting now upon the devious methods and motives of mountain
intrigue, Gregory's eyes grew somewhat flinty as he bluntly inquired,
"How does ye mean hit's a mincy business?"

"Hit's like this. Jedge Beard figgers thet atter all this trouble in
Frankfort, with you an' ther Carr boys both interested in ther same
proposition, they mout be willin' ter drap yore prosecution of thar own
will."

Asa Gregory broke into a low laugh and a bitter one.

"So thet's how ther land lays, air hit? He 'lows they'll feel friendly
ter me, does he? Did ye ever see a rattlesnake thet could he gentled
inter a pet?"

"Ye've got ther wrong slant on ther question, Asa," the sheriff hastened
to explain. "The Jedge don't 'low thet ye ought ter _depend_ on no sich
an outcome--an' he hain't dodgin'. None-the-less while he's on ther
bench he's obleeged ter seem impartial. His idee is ter try ter git ye
thet pardon right now if so be hit's feasible--but he counsels thet if
ye does git hit ye'd better jest fold hit up an' stick hit in yore pants
pocket an' keep yore mouth tight. If ther Carrs draps ther prosecution,
then ye won't hev ter show hit at all, an' they won't be affronted
neither. Ef they does start doggin' ye afresh, ye kin jest flash hit
when ye comes ter co'te, an' thet'd be ther end of ther matter. Don't
thet strike ye as right sensible?"

"Thet suits me all right," acceded the indicted man slowly, "provided
I've got a pardon ter flash."

Once more the sheriff's head nodded in reflective acquiescence.

"Thet's why ye'd better hasten like es if ye war goin' down ter
Frankfort ter borry fire. They're liable ter throw our man out--an' then
hit'll be too late." After a pause for impressiveness, the Sheriff
continued,

"Hyar's a letter of introduction from ther Jedge ter ther Governor, an'
another one from ther Commonwealth's attorney. They both commends ye ter
his clemency."

"I'd heered tell thet Saul Fulton an' one or two other fellers aimed
ter take a passel of men ter Frankfort, ter petition ther legislater,"
suggested Asa thoughtfully. "I'd done studied some erbout goin' along
with 'em."

"Don't do hit," came the quick and positive reply. "Ef them fellers gits
inter any manner of trouble down thar ther Governor couldn't hardly
pardon ye without seemin' ter be rewardin' lawlessness. Go by
yoreself--an' keep away from them others."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the evening of the twenty-fifth of January Colonel Tom Wallifarro
stepped from the Louisville train at Frankfort and turned his steps
toward the stone-pillared front of the Capitol Hotel. Across the width
of Main Street, behind its iron fence, loomed the ancient pile of the
state house with its twilight frown of gray stone. The three-storied
executive building lay close at its side. Over the place, he fancied,
gloomed a heavy spirit of suspense. The hills that fringed the city were
ragged in their wintriness, and ash-dark with the thickening dusk.

Bearing a somewhat heavy heart, the Colonel registered and went direct
to his room. Like drift on a freshet, elements of irreconcilable
difference were dashing pell-mell toward catastrophe. Colonel
Wallifarro's mission here was a conference with several cool hands of
both political creeds, actuated by an earnest effort to forestall any
such overt act as might end in chaos.

But the spirit of foreboding lay onerously upon him, and he slept so
fitfully that the first gray of dawn found him up and abroad. River
mists still held the town, fog-wrapped and spectral of contour, and the
Colonel strolled aimlessly toward the station. As he drew near, he heard
the whistle of a locomotive beyond the tunnel, and knowing of no train
due of arrival at that hour, he paused in his walk in time to see an
engine thunder through the station without stopping. It carried neither
freight cars nor coaches, but it was followed after a five-minute
interval by a second locomotive, which panted and hissed to a grinding
stop, with the solid curve of a long train strung out behind it--a
special.

Vestibule doors began straightway to vomit a gushing, elbowing multitude
of dark figures to the station platform, where the red and green
lanterns still shone with feeble sickliness, catching the dull glint of
rifles, and the high lights on faces that were fixed and sinister of
expression.

The dark stream of figures flowed along with a grim monotony and an
almost spectral silence across the street and into the state house
grounds.

There was a steadiness in that detraining suggestive of a matter well
rehearsed and completely understood, and as the light grew clearer on
gaunt cheekbones and swinging guns an almost terrified voice exclaimed
from somewhere, "The mountaineers have come!"




CHAPTER IX

When the senate convened that day, strange and uncouth lookers-on stood
ranged about the state house corridors, and their unblinking eyes took
account of their chief adversary as he entered.

Upon his dark face, with its overhanging forelock, flickered no ghost of
misgiving; no hint of any weakening or excitement. His gaze betrayed no
interest beyond the casual for the men along the walls, whom report
credited with a murderous hatred of himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Boone was fretting his heart out at the cabin of Saul Fulton while he
knew that history was in the making at Frankfort, and on the evening of
the twenty-ninth an eagerness to be near the focus of activity mastered
him. The elements of right and wrong involved in this battle of
political giants were, to his untrained mind, academic, but the drama of
conflict was like a bugle-call--clear, direct and urgent.

He would not be immediately needed on the farm, and Frankfort was only
fifteen miles away. If he set out at once and walked most of the night,
he could reach the Mecca of his pilgrimage by tomorrow morning, and in
his pocket was the sum of "two-bits" to defray the expenses of "snacks
an' sich-like needcessities." For the avoidance of possible discussion,
he slipped quietly out of the back door with no announcement to Saul's
wife. With soft snowflakes drifting into his face and melting on his
eyelashes, he began his march, and for four hours swung along at a
steady three-and-a-half mile gait. At last he stole into a barn and
huddled down upon a straw pile, but before dawn he was on the way again,
and in the early light he turned into the main street of the state
capital. His purpose was to view one day of life in a city and then to
slip back to his uneventful duties.

       *       *       *       *       *

The town had outgrown its first indignant surprise over the invasion of
the "mountain army," and the senator from Kenton had passed boldly
through its unordered ranks, as need suggested. The hill men had fallen
sullenly back and made a path for his going.

This morning he walked with a close friend, who had constituted himself
a bodyguard of one. The upper house was to meet at ten, and it was five
minutes short of the hour when the man, with preoccupied and resolute
features, swung through the gate of the state house grounds. The way lay
from there around the fountain to the door set within the columned
portico.

In circling the fountain, the companion dropped a space to the rear and
glanced about him with a hasty scrutiny, and as he did so a sharp report
ripped the quietness of the place, speedily followed by the more muffled
sound of pistol shots.

The gentleman in the rear froze in his tracks, glancing this way and
that in a bewildered effort to locate the sound. The senator halted too,
but after a moment he wavered a little, lifted one hand with a gesture
rather of weariness than of pain, and, buckling at the knees, sagged
down slowly until he lay on the flag-stoned walk, with one hand pressed
to the bosom of his buttoned overcoat.

Figures were already running up from here and there. As the dismayed
friend locked his arms under the prone shoulders, he heard words faintly
enunciated--not dramatically declaimed, but in strangely matter-of-fact
tone and measure--"I guess they've--got me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Boone Wellver saw a throng of tight-wedged humanity pressing along with
eyes turned inward toward some core of excited interest, and heard the
words that ran everywhere, "Goebel has been shot!"

He felt a sudden nausea as he followed the crowd at whose centre was
borne a helpless body, until it jammed about the door of a doctor's
office, and after that, for a long while, he wandered absently over the
town.

Turning the corner of an empty side street in the late afternoon he came
face to face with Asa Gregory, and his perplexed unrest gave way to
comfort.

Asa was tranquilly studying a theatrical poster displayed on a wall. His
face was composed and lit with a smile of quiet amusement, but before
Boone reached his side, or accosted him, another figure rounded the
corner, walking with agitated haste, and the boy ducked hastily back,
recognizing Saul Fulton, who might tax him with truancy.

Yet when he saw Saul's almost insanely excited gaze meet Asa's quiet
eyes, curiosity overcame caution and he came boldly forward.

"Ye'd better not tarry in town over-long, Asa," Saul was advising in the
high voice of alarm. "I'm dismayed ter find ye hyar now."

"Why be ye?" demanded Asa, and his unruffled utterance was velvet
smooth. "Hain't I got a license ter go wharsoever hit pleasures me?"

"This hain't no safe time ner place fer us mountain fellers," came the
anxiety-freighted reply. "An' you've done been writ up too much in ther
newspapers a'ready. You've got a lawless repute, an' atter this mornin'
Frankfort-town hain't no safe place fer ye."

"I come down hyar," announced Asa, still with an imperturbable suavity,
"ter try an' git me a pardon. I hain't got hit yit an' tharfore I hain't
ready ter turn away."

Gregory began a deliberate ransacking of his pockets, in search of his
tobacco plug, and in doing so he hauled out miscellaneous odds and ends
before he found what he was seeking.

In his hands materialized a corn-cob pipe, some loose coins and
matches, and then--as Saul's voice broke into frightened
exclamation--several rifle and pistol cartridges.

"Good God, man," exploded the other mountaineer, "ain't ye got no more
common sense than ter be totin' them things 'round in this
town--terday?"

Asa raised his brows, and smiled indulgently upon his kinsman. "Why,
ginrally, I've got a few ca'tridges and pistol hulls in my pockets," he
drawled. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Well, git rid of 'em, an' be speedy about it! Don't ye know full well
thet every mountain man in town's goin' ter be suspicioned, an' thet
ther legislater'll vote more money than ye ever dreamed of to stretch
mountain necks? Give them things ter the boy, thar."

Fulton had not had time to feel surprise at seeing Boone, whom he had
left on the farm, confronting him here on the sidewalk of a Frankfort
street. Now as the boy reached up his hand and Asa carelessly dropped
the cartridges into it, Saul rushed vehemently on.

"Boone, don't make no mention of this hyar talk ter nobody. Take yore
foot in yore hand an' light out fer my house--an' ther fust
spring-branch ye comes ter, stop an' fling them damn things into ther
water."

       *       *       *       *       *

When the wires gave to the world the appalling climax of that savagely
acrimonious campaign, a breathlessness of shock settled upon the State
where passion had run its inflammatory course. The reiteration of
Cassandra's prediction had failed to discount the staggering reality,
and for a brief moment animosities were silenced.

But that was not for long. Yesterday the lieutenants of an iron-strong
leader had bowed to his dominant will. Today they stood dedicated to
reprisal behind a martyr--exalted by his mortal hurt.

It appeared certain that the rifle had barked from a window of the
executive building itself--and when police and posses hastily summoned
had hurried to its doors, a grimly unyielding cordon of mountaineers
had spelled, in human type, the words "no admission."

The Secretary of State, who was a mountain man, was among the first to
fall under accusation, and had the city's police officers been able to
seize the Governor, he too would doubtless have been thrown into a cell.
But the Governor still held the disputed credentials of office, and he
sat at his desk, haggard of feature, yet at bay and momentarily secure
behind a circle of bayonets.

Just wrath would not, and could not, long remain only righteous
indignation. Out of its inflammation would spring a hundred injustices,
and so in opposition to the mounting clamour for extreme penalties arose
thundering the counter-voice of protest against a swift and ruthless
sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats.

To the aid of those first caught in the drag-net of vengeful accusation,
came a handful of volunteer defence attorneys, and among them was
Colonel Wallifarro.

The leader with the bullet-pierced breast was dying, and in the
legislature the contest must be settled, if at all, while there was yet
strength enough in his ebbing life currents to take the oath of office.

His last fight was in keeping with his life--the persistence of sheer
resolution that held death in abeyance and refused surrender.

But when the Democratic majority of the assembly gathered at their
chambers, they encountered muskets; when, casting dignity to the snowy
winds, they raced toward an opera house, the soldiers raced with them,
and arrived first. When they doubled like pursued hares toward the Odd
Fellows' Hall, they found its door likewise barred by blade and muzzle.

Among the first men thrown into jail were Saul Fulton and his friend
Hollins of Clay County. Their connection with the arrival of the
mountaineers was not difficult to establish--and for the officers
charged with ferreting out the ugly responsibility, it made a plausible
beginning.

Meanwhile, the majority legislature, thwarted of open meeting, caucussed
in hotel bedrooms, and gave decision for the dying candidate. A hectic
and grotesque rumour even whispered that Mr. Goebel's gallant hold on
life had slipped before the credentials could be placed in his weakened
hand--and that the oath was solemnly administered to a dead body.

Boone had gone back to Saul's farm house, and on the way he had tossed
the cartridges into a brook that flowed along the road, but his brain
was in a swirl of perplexity and in his blood was an inoculation. He
would never know content again unless, in the theatre of public affairs,
he might be an onlooker or an actor.




CHAPTER X


A FEW days after that, he started back again to his mountains. With Saul
in jail and his wife returning to her people, there was nothing further
to hold him here. Indeed, he was anxious now to get home. Like one who
has been bewildered by a plethora of new experiences, he needed time to
digest them, and above all he wanted to talk with Victor McCalloway,
whose wisdom was, to his thinking, as that of a second Solomon. There,
too, was his other hero, Asa, who had returned to the hills as quietly
as he had left them. Boone was burning to know whether, in the whirlpool
of excitement there at Frankfort, his efforts to secure executive
clemency had met with success or failure.

When, immediately upon crossing Cedar Mountain, he presented himself at
McCalloway's house, he was somewhat nonplussed at the grave, almost
accusing, eyes which the hermit gentleman bent upon him.

"I've jest got back hyar from ther big world down below," announced the
boy, "an' I fared straight over hyar ter see ye fust thing." He paused,
a little crestfallen, to note that reserve of silence where he had
anticipated a warmth of welcome, and then he went on shyly: "Thar was
hell ter pay down thar at Frankfort town--an' I seed a good part of ther
b'ilin' with my own eyes."

Very slowly Victor McCalloway made response. "You have witnessed a
tragedy--a crime for which the guilty parties should pay with their
lives. Even then a scar will be left on the honour of your State."

Boone crowded his hands into his coat pockets and shivered in the wet
wind, for as yet he had not been invited across the threshold.

"I don't know nothin' about who done hit," he made calm assertion. "But
fellers like Saul Fulton 'peared ter 'low he plum needed killin."

"Fellows like Saul Fulton!"

The retired soldier drew a long breath, and his eyes narrowed. "You went
down there, Boone, with a kinsman who now stands accused of complicity.
The law presumes his innocence until it proves him guilty, but I'm not
thinking of him much, just now. I'm thinking of _you_." He paused as if
in deep anxiety, then added: "A boy may be led by reckless and wilful
men into--well--grave mistakes.... I believe in you, but you must answer
me one question, and you must answer it on your word of honour--as a
gentleman."

The boy's pupils widened interrogatively, and held those older eyes with
an unfaltering steadiness. In their frank and engaging depths of blue,
as open as the sky, Victor McCalloway read the answer to his question,
and something like a sigh of relief shook him; something spasmodic that
clutched at his throat and his well-seasoned reserve. He had dreaded
that Boone might, in that fanatically bitter association, have brushed
shoulders with some guilty knowledge. He had refused that fear lodgment
in his thoughts as an ungenerous suspicion, but a lurking realization
had persisted. It might need only a short lapse from a new concept to an
inherited and ancient code to make heroes of "killers" for this
stripling.

Slowly and candidly the boy spoke.

"On my word of honour as a gentleman--" His utterance hung hesitantly on
that final word. It was a new thought that it might be applicable to
himself, yet this man was a better and more exacting judge of its
meaning than he, and his heart leaped to the quickened tempo of a new
pride.

"I don't know nothin'--save thet I heered hit named aforehand thet men
war acomin' from ther mountings ter see justice done, an' didn't aim ter
be gainsaid ner thwarted, I 'lowed, though, hit would come about in
fa'r fight--ef so-be hit bred trouble."

That same afternoon Asa Gregory happened by, and because McCalloway had
come to recognize, in his influence, the most powerful feudal force
operating upon the boy's thought, he waited somewhat anxiously to hear
whether the man would express himself on the topic of the assassination.
Since it was no part of wisdom to assail deep-rooted ferocities of
thought in minds already matured beyond plasticity, he did not himself
broach the matter, but he was pleased when Asa spoke gravely, and of his
own volition.

"I done hed hit in head ter go along down thar ter Frankfort with them
boys thet Saul gathered tergether, but now I'm right glad I went by
myself. Thet war a mighty troublous matter thet came ter pass thar."

"Did ye git yore pardon, Asa?" asked Boone, and the older kinsman
hesitated, then made a frank reply.

"I hain't talkin' much erbout thet, son. Ther Governor war hevin' a
right stressful time, an' any favours he showed ter mountain men war
bein' held up ergainst him by his enemies. But I reckon I kin trust both
of ye.... Yes, I got ther pardon."

Late in February an item of news filtered in through the ravines of the
hills which elicited bitter comment. The legislature had voted a reward
fund of $100,000 for the apprehension and conviction of those guilty of
the assassination of Senator Goebel, and, heartened by this spurring,
the pack of detectives, professional and amateur, had cast off full-cry.

Saul Fulton lay in jail all that winter without trial. Upon the motion
of the Commonwealth, his day in court was postponed by continuance after
continuance.

"I reckon," suggested Asa bluntly, "they aims ter let him sulter in jail
long enough ter kinderly fo'ce him ter drag in a few more fellers
besides himself--but hit won't profit 'em none."

That winter spent its dreary monotony, and through its months Boone
Wellver was growing in mind and character, as well as in bone and
muscle. McCalloway began to see the blossoming of his Quixotically
fantastic idea into some hope and semblance of reality. The boy's brain
was acquisitive and flaming with ambition, and Victor McCalloway was no
routine schoolmaster but an experimenter in the laboratory of human
elements. He was working with a character which he sought to bring by
forced marches from the America of a quaint, broad-hearted past to the
America of the present--and future. Under his hand the pupil was
responding.

The slate-gray ramparts of the hills reeked with the wet of thawing
snows. Watercourses swelled into the freshet-volume of the
"spring-tide." Into the breezes crept a touch of softer promise, and in
sheltered spots buds began to redden and swell. Then came the pale
tenderness of greens, and the first shy music of bird-notes. The sodden
and threadbare neutrality of winter was flung aside for the white
blossoming of dogwood, and in its wake came the pink foam of laurel
blossom.

On one of those tuneful days, while Boone sat on the doorstep of Victor
McCalloway's house, listening to a story of a campaign far up the Nile,
Asa Gregory came along the road, with his long elastic stride, and
halted there. He smiled infectiously as he took the proffered chair and
crumbled leaf tobacco between his fingers for the filling of his cob
pipe.

For a while the talk ran in simple neighbourhood channels. They spoke of
"drappin' an' kiverin'" in the corn fields, and the uncomplicated
activities of farm life. But, after a time, Asa reached into his hip
pocket and drew out a rumpled newspaper, which he tendered to Victor
McCalloway.

"Mr. McCalloway," he said quietly, "ye're a friend of mine, an' right
now I have sore need of counsel with a man of wisdom. I'd be beholden
ter ye ef so be ye'd read thet thar printed piece out loud."

The retired soldier took the sheet, several days old, and with the first
glance at its headlines, his features stiffened and his eyes blazed into
indignation.

"This is a slander!" he exploded. "It's an infamous libel. Do you
actually want me to read it aloud?"

Asa nodded, and, in a voice of protest, McCalloway gave audible
repetition to a matter to which he refused the sanction of belief.

"New Murders for Old." That was the first headline, and the subheads and
the item itself followed in due order:

     "Commonwealth uncovers startling evidence.... Asa Gregory
     indicted for firing fatal shot at Goebel.... Alleged he
     received a pardon for prior offence as price of fresh infamy."

     "Perhaps the most astounding chapter in a long serial of the
     bizarre and melodramatic came to light today when the Franklin
     Grand Jury returned a true bill against Asa Gregory, a
     notorious mountain feudist, charging him with the assassination
     of Governor Goebel. In the general excitement of those days,
     the presence of Gregory in the state capitol escaped notice.
     Now it develops, from sources which the Commonwealth declines
     at this time to divulge, that on the day of the tragedy
     Gregory, who already stands charged with the murder from ambush
     of several enemies, came cold-bloodedly to town to seek a
     pardon for one of these offences, and that in payment for that
     favour he agreed to accept unholy appointment as executioner of
     Governor Goebel. Gregory is now in hiding in the thicketed
     country of his native hills, and it is foreseen that before he
     is taken he may invoke the aid of his clansmen, and precipitate
     further bloodshed."

McCalloway laid down the paper and stared at the blossom-burgeoning
slopes. It was strange, he reflected, that one could so swiftly yield to
the instincts of these high, wild places. For just now it was in his
heart to advise resistance. He thought that trial down there, before
partisan juries and biased judges, would be a farce which vitiated the
whole spirit of justice.

It might almost have been his own sentiments that he heard shrilled out
from the excited lips of the boy; a boy whose cheeks had gone pale and
whose eyes had turned from sky-blue to flame blue.

"They're jest a'seekin' ter git ye thar an' hang ye out of hand, Asa.
Tell 'em all ter go everlastin'ly ter hell! Ye kin hide out hyar in ther
mountains an' five hundred soldiers couldn't never run ye down. Ye kin
cross over inter Virginny an' go wharsoever ye likes--but ef ye suffers
yoreself ter be took, they'll hang ye outen pure disgust fer ther
hills!"

Yes, thought Victor McCalloway, that was just about what would happen.
The boy whom he had been educating to a new viewpoint had, at a stride,
gone back to all the primitive sources of his nature, yet he spoke the
truth. Then the voice of Asa Gregory sounded again with a measured
evenness.

"What does ye think, Mr. McCalloway? I was thar on thet day. I kin hide
out hyar an' resist arrest, like ther boy says, an' I misdoubts ef I
could git any lavish of justice down thar."

"I doubt it gravely, sir," snorted McCalloway. "By Gad, I doubt it most
gravely."

"An' yit," went on the other voice slowly, somewhat heavily, "ef I did
foller thet course hit mout mean a heap of bloodshed, I reckon. Hit'd be
mightily like admittin' them charges they're amakin' too." He paused a
moment, then rose abruptly from his chair. "I come ter ask counsel," he
said, "but afore I come my mind was already done made up. I'm agoin'
over ter Marlin Town termorrer mornin' an' I'm agoin' ter surrender ter
Bev. Jett, ther High Sheriff."

"Don't ye never do hit, Asa," shouted the boy. "Don't ye never do hit!"
but McCalloway had risen and in his eyes gleamed an enthusiastic light.

"It's a thing I couldn't have advised, Mr. Gregory," he said, in a
shaken voice. "It's a thing that may lead--God knows where--and yet it's
the only decent thing to do."




CHAPTER XI


At the edge of Marlin Town stood the bungalow of the coal company's
superintendent, and in its living-room, on either side of a
document-littered table, sat two men. One of them, silvered of temple
and somewhat portly of stature, leaned back with the tranquillity of
complete relaxation after his day's work. His face wore the urbanity of
well-being and prosperity, but the man across from him leaned forward
with an attitude of nervous tension.

To Larry Masters there was something nettling in the very repose with
which his visitor from Louisville crossed his stout and well-tailored
legs. This feeling manifested itself in the jerky quickness of hand with
which the mine superintendent poured whiskey into his glass and hissed
soda after it from the syphon.

"Won't you fill up, Tom," he invited shortly. "The entertainment I can
offer you is limited enough--but at least we have the peg at our
disposal."

"Thank you--no more." Colonel Wallifarro spoke with a pleasingly
modulated voice, trained into effectiveness by years of jury elocution.
"I've had my evening's allowance, except for a night-cap."

Masters rose abruptly from his chair. He tossed down half the contents
of his glass and paced the floor with a restless stride, gnawing at his
close-cropped and sandy moustache. His tall, well-knit figure moved with
a certain athletic vitality, and his florid face was tanned like a
pig-skin saddle-skirt. But his brow was corrugated in a frown of
discontent, and his pale blue eyes were almost truculent.

"By Gad, Tom," he flared out with choleric impetuosity, "you can put
more righteous rebuke into a polite refusal of liquor than most men
could crowd into a whole damned temperance lecture. I dare say, however,
you're quite right. Life spells something for you. It's worth
conserving. You've got assured position, an adoring family, money,
success, hosts of friends. You'd be a blithering fool, I grant you, to
waste yourself in indulgence, but I'm not so ideally situated. I 'take
the cash and let the credit go.'"

"Yet you have, ahead of you, some ten or twelve years more of life than
I can reasonably expect," was the quiet response. "You still have
youth--or youth's fulfilment--early middle-age."

"And a jolly lot that means to me," retorted Masters, with acerbity. "I
live here among illiterates, working for a corporation on a salary pared
to the bone. At the time of life when one ought to be at the top of
one's abilities, I'm the most pathetic human thing under God's arching
sky--a man who started out with big promise--and fell by the wayside.
Heaven help the man who fires and falls back--and if he can retrieve a
bit of temporary solace from that poor substitute"--he jerked a
forefinger toward the bottle--"then I say for Heaven's sake let him
poison himself comfortably and welcome."

Colonel Wallifarro studied the darkened scowl of his companion for a
moment before he replied, and when he spoke his own manner retained its
imperturbability.

"I didn't offer gratuitous criticism, Larry," he suggested. "I merely
declined another toddy."

"You know my case, Tom"--the younger of the two caught him up quickly;
"you know that no younger son ever came out from England with fairer
expectations of succeeding on his own. I've been neither the fool nor
the shirk--and yet--" A shrug of disgust finished the sentence.

Colonel Wallifarro studied his cigar ash without rejoinder, and when
Larry Masters failed to draw a return fire of argument, he sat for a
minute or two glumly silent. Then, as his thoughts coursed back into
other years, a slow light kindled in his eyes, as if for a dead dream.

"You were always sceptical about Middlesboro, even when others were full
of faith--but why?" he demanded. "To you, with your Bluegrass ideas of
fat acres, these hills must always be the ragged fringes of things, a
meagre land without a future. It was only that you lacked imagination."

The speaker swept torrentially on with as much of argumentative warmth
as though he had not just confessed himself ruined by reason of his own
former confidence.

"Where the Gap came through lay the natural gateway of the hills,
hewn out in readiness by the hand of the Almighty. There was
water-power--ore. There was coal, for smelter and market, timber
awaiting the axe and the saw-mill--the whole tremendous treasure house
of a natural Eldorado."

"Perhaps," observed the Colonel, "and yet, when all is said and done, it
was only a boom--and it collapsed. Whatever the causes, the results are
definite."

"Yes, it collapsed, and we went with it." Masters paused to take up and
empty the glass which had started the discussion, then with a heightened
excitement he swept on afresh:

"Yet how near we came! Gad, man, your own eyes saw our conception grow!
You saw lots along what had been creek-bed trails sell at a
footage-price that rivalled New York's best avenues, and you yourself
recognized in me, for all your scepticism, a man with a golden future.
Then--after all that--you saw me jolly well ruined--and yet you prate of
what life may hold for me in the vigour of my middle-age."

"All that happened ten years back, however," the elder man equably
reminded his companion. "It was the old story of a boom and a
collapse--and one misfortune--even one disaster--need not break a man's
spirit. You might have come back."

The eyes of the portly gentleman rested in a momentary glance on the
bottle and glass, but that may have been chance. At least he did not
mention them.

"You think I might have come back, do you?" The voice of the Englishman
had hardened. "I don't want to be nasty or say disagreeable things.
You've been a staunch friend to me--even when Anne found herself growing
bitter against me. Well, I don't blame her. Her people had been leaders
always. She had the divine right to an assured place in society, and I
had failed. I suppose it was natural enough for her to feel that she'd
been done in--but it happened to be the finish of me. I'd sweated blood
to make Middlesboro--and I didn't have the grit left to commence over."

For the first time Colonel Wallifarro's attitude stiffened, bringing up
his silver-crowned head defensively.

"Anne didn't leave you for financial reasons, Larry," he asserted
steadily. "She's my kinswoman, and you are my friend, but no purpose is
to be served by my listening to _ex parte_ grievances from either of
you."

Masters shrugged his shoulders. "I dare say you're quite right," he
admitted. "But be that as it may, she did leave me--left me flat. If she
didn't divorce me, it wasn't out of consideration for my feelings. It
would almost have been better if she had. All I ever succeeded in doing
for her was to make her the poor member of a rich family--and that's not
enviable by half. And yet if I'd been a sheer rotter, I could scarcely
have fared worse."

"If it wasn't consideration for you, at least it was for some one who
should be important to you. As it is, your little girl isn't growing up
under the shadow of a sensational divorce record."

The pale blue eyes of the Englishman softened abruptly, and the lips
under the short-clipped moustache changed from their stiffness to the
curvature of something like a smile. Into his expression came a lurking,
half-shy ghost of winsomeness. "Yes, yes," he muttered, "the kiddie.
God bless her little heart!"

After a moment, though, he drew back his shoulders with a jerk and spoke
again in a harsher timbre.

"Anne has been fair enough with me about the child, though I'm bound to
say I've been jolly well made to understand that it was only a
chivalrous and undeserved sort of generosity. Well, the kiddie's almost
twelve now, and before long she'll be a belle, too--poor, but related to
all the first families."

Masters paused, and when he went on again it was still with the air of a
repressed chafing of spirit.

"I dare say her mother will see to it that she doesn't repeat the
mistake of the previous generation--marrying a man with only a splendid
expectancy. Her heart will be schooled to demand the assured thing. That
pointing with pride--a gesture which you Kentuckians so enjoy--well,
with my little girl, it will all be done toward the distaff branch.
There won't be much said about the wastrel father."

"Perhaps," suggested the other, "you are a little less than just."

"I dare say. She'll be a heart-breaker before long now--and listen,
man"--Masters came a step nearer--"don't make any mistake about me
either. When she's here, the bottle goes under lock and key. I play the
game where she's concerned."

Colonel Wallifarro nodded slowly. "I know that, Larry," he hastily
answered. "I know that. If the breach hadn't widened too far, I'd go as
far as a man could to bring your family together again under one
roof-tree."

"That's no use, of course," admitted Masters with a dead intonation.
"Only remember that down here where I'm chained to my little job, life
ain't so damned gay and sunny at best--and don't begrudge me my
liquor."




CHAPTER XII


During those following months, when Asa Gregory lay in jail, first in
Frankfort, then in Louisville, as a prisoner of state, who had been
denied bail, the boy back in the laurel-mantled hills smouldered with
passionate resentment for what he believed to be a monstrous injustice.
In his quest of education he sought refuge from the bitter brooding that
had begun to mar his young features with its stamp of sullenness. Asa
had killed men before, but it had been in that feud warfare which was
sanctioned by his own conscience. Now he stood charged with a murder
done for hire, the mercenary taking off of a man for whom he had no
enmity save that of the abstract and political. Upon his kinsman's
innocence the boy would have staked his life, and yet he must look
helplessly on and see him thrown to the lions of public indignation.

Of Saul, he hardly thought at all. Saul was small-fry. The Commonwealth
would treat him as such, but upon Asa it would wreak a surcharged anger,
because to send Asa Gregory to the gallows would be to establish a
direct link between the Governor who had pardoned him and mountain
murder-lust.

Already the Secretary of State had been disposed of with a promptitude
which, his friends asserted, savoured rather of the wolf pack than the
courtroom. The verdict had been guilty, and his case was now pending on
a motion for rehearing.

Already, too, a stenographer, who had been in the employ of the fugitive
Governor, had been given a life sentence and had preferred accepting it
without appeal to risking the graver alternative of the gallows.

As he lay in jail waiting until the slow grind of the law-mill should
bring him into its hopper, Asa too recognized the extreme tenuousness of
his chances.

But it was not until the wheat had been harvested and threshed in the
rich bluegrass fields that the session of court was called to order,
whose docket held for Asa Gregory the question of life and death.

That trial was to be at Georgetown, a graciously lying town about whose
borders stretched estates, where a few acres were worth as much as a
whole farm in the ragged and meagre hills. It was a town of kindly
people, but just now of very indignant people, blinded by an unbalanced
anger. It was not a hopeful place for a mountaineer with a notched gun
who stood taxed with the murder from ambush of a governor.

Over the door of the brick court house stood an image of the blindfolded
goddess. She was a weather-worn deity, corroded out of all resemblance
to the spirit of eternal youthfulness which she should have exemplified,
and Boone pressed his lips tight, as he entered with McCalloway, and
noted that the scales which she held aloft were broken, but that the
sword in the other hand was intact--and unsheathed.

At the stair head, in precaution against the electrically charged
tension of the air, deputies passed outspread hands over the pockets and
hips of each man who entered, in search for concealed weapons. About the
semicircular table, fronting the bench and the prisoner's dock, sat the
men of the press, sharpening their pencils and--waiting.

Under the faded portrait of Chief Justice Marshall a battery of windows
let in the summer sun and the mellow voice of a distant negro, raised
somewhere in a camp-meeting song.

Across a narrow alleyway were other windows in another building, and
beyond them operators sat idling by newly installed telegraph keys.
These men had no interest in the routine of the "running story." That
was a matter to be handled by the regular telegraph offices. These
newly strung wires would be dedicated to a single "flash"--when the
climax came. Then the reporters would no longer be sitting at their
crescent-shaped table. A few of them would stand framed in those
courtroom windows under the portrait of Chief Justice Marshall, and as
the words fell from the lips that held doom, their hands would rise,
with one, two, three, or four fingers extended, as the case might
warrant. In response to that prearranged signal, the special operators
would open their keys and--if one finger had been shown--over their
lines would run the single but sufficient word "death." Two fingers
would mean "life imprisonment"; three, "acquittal"; four would indicate
a "hung-jury." That time was still presumably far off, but the
arrangement for it was complete.

In a matter of seconds after that grim pantomime occurred, foremen of
printing crews standing by triple-decked presses in Louisville, in
Cincinnati--in many other towns as well--would reach down and lift from
the floor one of the several type metal forms prepared in advance to
cover each possible exigency. A switch would be flipped. Back to the hot
slag of the melting pots would go the other half-cylinders, and within
three minutes papers, damp with ink and news, would be pouring from the
maws of the presses into the hands of waiting boys.

To Boone these preparations were not yet comprehensible, but as
McCalloway led him to a seat far forward he felt the tense atmosphere of
place and moment.

He recognized, in those lines of opposing counsel, an array of
notability. He picked out, with a glare of hatred, the bearded man whom
the prosecution had brought as co-counsel, from another State, because
of his great repute as a breaker-down of witnesses under
cross-examination. Then his eyes lighted, as down the aisle came the
full figure of Colonel Tom Wallifarro--to take its place among the
attorneys for the defence. There was reassurance in his calmness and
unexcited dignity.

And after interminable preliminaries, he heard the voice of the clerk
droning from his docket, "The Commonwealth of Kentucky, against Asa
Gregory; wilful murder," and after yet other delays the velvety
direction from the bench, "Mr. Sheriff, bring the prisoner into court."

Asa's face, as he was led through the side door, was less bronzed than
formerly, but his carriage was no less erect or confident. In a new suit
of dark colour, with fresh linen instead of his hickory shirt, clean
shaven and immaculately combed, the defendant was a transformed person,
and if there remained any semblance of the highland desperado, it was to
be found only in the catlike softness of his tread and the falcon
alertness of his fine eyes. Pencils at the press table began their light
scratching chorus--the reporters were writing their description of the
accused.

Asa Gregory's line of defence had been foreshadowed in the examining
court. He had sworn that he arrived on the day of the shooting to
petition a pardon, and he had known nothing of what was in the air
until, from street talk, he learned of the tragedy.

The chief issue of fact pivoted on his testimony that on that day he had
not been near the state house or executive building. The Commonwealth
would contradict that claim with the counter assertion that, straight as
a hiving bee, Asa had hastened from the train to the Governor's official
headquarters, where he had been cold-bloodedly rehearsed in his grim
duties. After firing the shot, the prosecution would contend he had
taken command of the other mountaineers who refused to the police the
privilege of entry and search.

Through days, weeks even, after that, Boone sat, always in the same
place, with steadfast confidence in the eyes which he bent upon his
kinsman.

Into the press dispatches began to steal mention of a boy in a cheap but
new suit of store clothes, whose eyes held those of the prisoner with a
rapt and unwavering constancy. It was even said that the amazingly
steady courage of the defendant seemed at times of unusual stress to
lean on that supporting confidence, and that whenever they brought him
from jail to courtroom, he looked first of all for the boy, as a pilot
might look for a reef-light.

Shortly before the Commonwealth was ready to close, rumours went abroad.
It was hinted that new and sensational witnesses would take the stand,
with revelations as spectacular as the climax of a melodrama.

Boone had followed the evidence with a tense absorption. He had marked
the effect of each point; the success or failure of every blow, and he
realized what a powerful web was being woven about the man in whom he
fully believed. There was no escaping the cumulative and strengthening
effect of circumstance built upon circumstance.

He recognized, too, how like a keystone in an arch was the dependence of
the State upon proving one thing: that Asa had been present, just after
the shooting, and in command of those who barred the doors of the
executive building against legitimate search. He took comfort in the
fact that so far it had not been established by one sure piece of
evidence. Then came the last of the Commonwealth's announced witnesses.

Upon the faces of the attorneys for the prisoner quivered a dubious
expression of apprehension--as they waited the promised assault of the
masked batteries. The son of the man who had walked at Senator Goebel's
side, when he fell, took the stand and told with straightforward
directness the story of the five minutes after the shot had sounded. He
and a policeman had sought entrance to the building, which presumably
harboured the assassin--and mountain men had halted him at the door,
under the leadership of one to whom the rest deferred. He described that
commander with fulness of detail, and it was as if he were painting in
words a portrait of the man in the prisoner's dock.

"I was there as a volunteer--to see that no one who might be guilty
escaped from the building," testified the witness with convincing
candour. "I noticed one man in particular--because he seemed to be the
unofficial leader of the rest. Some one called him Asa."

The man's voice was responsibly, almost hesitantly, grave, and on the
faces in the jury box one could read the telling impression of his
words.

Then the bearded attorney, whose fame was secure as a heckler of
witnesses, rose dramatically from his chair.

"Do you see that man in the courtroom now?"

For a matter of seconds testifier and prisoner gazed with level
directness into each other's eyes, while over the crowded courtroom hung
a tense pall of stillness.

Then the witness spoke in a tone of bewilderment--his words coming
slowly--as though they surprised himself.

"No. I don't think I see him here."

The poised figure of the lawyer, drawn statuesquely upright, winced as
painfully as though a trusted hand had smitten him, and in his abrupt
change of expression was betrayal of dismay and chagrin.

"You say--you can't--identify him!" he echoed incredulously.

Stubbornly the man who was testifying shook his head.

"May I explain in my own way?" he inquired, and as the lawyer barked
raspingly back at him, the Court intervened:

"This is your own witness--You must understand the impropriety of
attempting to force him."

"While I was looking at the defendant there, just now," went on the man
in the chair, "I was seeing only his side face, and I was positive that
he was the person I was describing. Feature for feature and line for
line ... the likeness seemed exact. I was willing to swear to it.... But
when he turned and faced me ... I saw something else ... and now I don't
think he _is_ the man."

The words came in a puzzled and dumfounded confession, and the witness
paused, then went resolutely on again: "This man has a fine pair of
clear and well-matched eyes, when one sees them both at once.... That
one at the door had something ... I can't say just what it was ... that
marred one eye. I shouldn't call it a cast exactly ... but they didn't
match."

Abruptly the State dismissed that witness, and about the defence tables
went quiet but triumphant smiles--which the jury did not miss, as the
pencils of the press writers raced. But over Boone Wellver's face passed
a shadow, and Asa, catching his eye across the heads of the crowd, read
the motion of the boy's moving lips, as, without sound, they shaped the
words, "Keep cool now, Asa! Keep cool."




CHAPTER XIII


The prosecution had other trumps yet to play. It called a name, which
brought into the courtroom, with shambling and uncertain step, a man
whose face was pasty with prison pallour. His thin body was garbed in
the zebra-stripes of the penitentiary's livery, and the hand that he
raised to take oath trembled. His voice, too, carried a quaver of
weakness in its first syllable.

Here at length was the promised sensation. The stenographer who had
accepted his life-term had become star witness for the State. Now,
enlisted from the ranks of the accused, he had undertaken to tell what
purported to be the inside story of the plot.

To hear his words, one had to bend attentively, yet, when he had talked
for an hour, the scratching of pencils at the press table sounded,
through his pauses, almost clamorous, and there was no other sound.

Boone sat, tight of muscle, with his eyes steadfastly fixed on Asa. He
thought that just now he was needed, but at the pit of his stomach
gnawed a sickness of dread, and it seemed to him that already he could
see the gallows rising from its ugly platform.

The bearded lawyer who had once battered down this man's own defence now
stood before him, shepherding his words on toward their climax. Faint
response followed sharp interrogation with a deadly effectiveness.

"When did you first meet the defendant--Asa Gregory?"

"On the thirtieth of January--in the forenoon."

"Where?"

"At my office in the state house."

"Did your office adjoin that of the Secretary of State?"

"It did."

"What occurred at that time and place?"

"Mr. Gregory rapped.... I let him in.... He handed me a letter from the
Governor, and we went into the Secretary's room.... Then he went over to
the window and looked out--and drew the blind part of the way down. For
a while he just studied the room ... taking in its details."

The man in convict garb paused and fell into a fit of broken coughing.

"Did you have any conversation with him?"

"I did, sir."

"What was it, in substance?"

"I explained to him that the plan was to kill Senator Goebel, when he
came to the senate that morning. I showed him two rifles in the
corner.... They were of different makes."

"What did he do then?"

"He had me explain the way to get to the basement. He kneeled down by
the window and sighted one of the guns.... He piled up several law books
to rest it on ... and then he said that he was ready...."

McCalloway's teeth were tight-clamped as he listened.

"Yes, go on."

"He said he had come to get a pardon for 'blowing down old man
Carr'--and was ready to give back favour for favour. Presently I saw
Senator Goebel turning in at the gate, and I said, 'That's him,' and he
said, 'I see him,' and I turned and slipped out of the room. As I was on
the stairs, I heard a rifle shot--and then several pistol shots."

Boone Wellver groaned, and the current of his arteries seemed to run in
icy trickles through his body, but he kept his eyes steadfastly fixed on
Asa, whose life, he felt sure, this man was swearing away in perjury.
Asa gazed back. He even inclined his head with just the ghost of a nod,
and the boy knew that he meant that for encouragement.

Through hours of that day the ghastly story unwound itself, and its
tremendous impact, gaining rather than losing impressiveness from the
faltering style of its telling, left the defence staggered and numbed.
McCalloway, glancing down at the boy's drawn face, felt his own heart
sicken.

But when at last the man with the gray face and the gray, striped livery
had gone, the Commonwealth's attorney rose and said in the full-throated
voice of master of the show, "Now, we will call Saul Fulton."

Saul, who had been indicted but never tried! Saul, too, had taken the
enemy's pay! Neither McCalloway nor Boone doubted that all this drama of
alleged revelation was fathered in falsity out of the reward fund and
its workings, yet one realized out of mature experience, and the other
out of instinct, that to the jury it must all seem irrefutable
demonstration.

In marked contrast with the sorry drabness of that last witness was the
swagger of the next, who came twirling his moustache with the gusto of
pure bravado.

Saul went back of the other's story and ramified its details. He told of
the mountain army which he had helped to recruit, and swore that that
force had come with a full understanding of its mission.

"We went to ther legislature every day, expectin' trouble," he declared,
with a full-voiced boastfulness. "And we were ready to weed out the
Democratic leaders when it started."

"To what purpose was all that planned?" purred the examining lawyer, and
the response capped it with prompt assurance:

"The object was to have a Republican majority before we got through
shooting."

"And you were willing to do your part?"

Virtuously boomed the reply: "If it was in fair battle, I was willin',
yes, sir."

Saul particularized. He recounted that he had himself nominated Asa as a
dependable gun-fighter, and that on the day of the tragedy he had met
Asa on the streets of Frankfort. Asa, he asserted, had brazenly
displayed a pocketful of cartridges.

"He said to me," proceeded the witness; "'Them ca'tridges comes out of a
lot thet's done made hist'ry. Whenever I looks over ther sights of a
rifle-gun, I gits me either money or meat, an' this time I've done got
me both.'"

Boone Wellver had been leaning tensely forward in his seat as he
listened. Here at last, to his own knowledge, the words that were
cementing his kinsman's doom were utterly and viciously false. He had
been a witness to that meeting, and it had been Saul and not Asa who had
seen danger in the possession of cartridges. It had been Saul, too, who
had excitedly instructed him to destroy the evidence.

But Saul continued glibly: "Asa had done named ter me, back thar in ther
mountains, thet he reckoned him an' ther Governor could swap favours. So
when we met up that day in Frankfort, he said, 'Me an' ther Big Man, we
got tergether an' done a leetle business.'"

The courtroom was tensely, electrically silent, when a boy rose out of
his chair, and with the suddenness of a bursting shell shrilled out in
defiance:

"Thet's a damn lie, Saul, an' ye knows hit! I was right thar an--!" The
instant clatter of the Judge's gavel and the staccato outbreak of the
Judge's voice interrupted the interruption. "Silence! Mr. Sheriff, bring
that disturber before the Court."

Still trembling with white-hot indignation, Boone was led forward with
the sheriff's hand on his shoulder, until he stood under the stern
questioning of eyes looking down from the bench.

But instantly, too, Colonel Wallifarro's smoothly controlled voice was
addressing the Court: "May it please your Honour, before you punish this
boy I should like to offer a word or two of explanation."

So Boone did not go to jail, but, after a sharp reprimand, he was sworn
as a witness for the defence, and excluded from the courtroom.

When he took the witness-stand later, it was with a recovered
composure--and his straightforward story went far toward shaking the
impression Saul had left behind him--yet not far enough.

He realized, with black chagrin, that as long as he had sat there
steadfastly calm, he had been to Asa a tower of strength--but that when
he had broken out he had forfeited that privilege--and left his kinsman
unsuccoured.

At last the Commonwealth closed, and Asa himself came to the stand. Had
he been possessed of a lawyer's experience he could hardly have evaded
more skilfully the snares set in his path, as with imperturbable
gallantry he met his skilled hecklers. The even calmness of his velvety
eyes became a matter of newspaper report, and when he had finished his
direct testimony and had been turned over to the enemy, the fashion in
which he cared for himself also found its way into the news columns.

Asa kept before him the realization that he had been advertised as a
"bad man" and an assassin. Just now he was intent upon impressing the
jury with his urbane proof against exasperation, even when the invective
of insinuation mounted to ferocity,

"You have known the witness, Saul Fulton, for years, have you not?"
demanded the cross-examiner.

"I've known him all my life."

"Can you state any motive he should have for offering malicious and
false evidence against you?"

"Any reason for his lyin'?"

The prisoner gazed at the barking attorney with a calm seriousness and
replied suavely:

"No, sir, only that he's swearin' to save his own neck from the
rope--an' thet's a right pithy reason, I reckon."

Yet all the while that he was making his steep, uphill fight, Asa was
feeling a secret disquiet growing to an obsession within him. He could
not forget that some one upon whose reassurance he had leaned had been
banished from that place where his enemies were bent upon his undoing.
He felt as if the red lantern had been quenched on a dangerous
crossing--and the psychology of the thing gnawed at his overtried
nerves.

Boone's freckled face and wide blue eyes had seemed to stand for
serenity, where all else was hectic and fevered.

To Asa, that intangible yet tranquillizing support had meant what the
spider meant to Bruce, and now it had been taken from him.

The bearded attorney who had destroyed defendant after defendant was
battering at him, with the massed artillery of vindictive and
unremitting aggressiveness.

For a long while Asa fenced warily--coolly, remembering that to slip the
curb upon his temper meant ruin, but as assault followed assault,
through hours, his senses began to reel, his surety began to weaken, and
his eyes began to see red.

The attorney who was scourging him with the whips of law saw the first
break in his armour and bored into it, with ever-increasing
vindictiveness.

Into Asa's mind flashed a picture of the cabin back home, of the wife
suffering an agony of anxiety; of the baby whom he might never again
see. He seemed groping with his gaze for the steadying eyes of the boy,
who was no longer there--whom he desperately needed.

"Asa's gittin' right mad," whispered one mountaineer to another. "I'd
hate ter encounter him, right now, in a highway--an' be an enemy of
his'n."

But the bearded attorney, who was not in the highway, only badgered and
heckled him with a more calculating precision and, as he slowly shook
the witness out of self-restraint into madness, he was himself
deliberately circling from his place at the Commonwealth's table to a
position directly back of the jury box.

Now, having achieved that vantage point, he watched the prisoner's face
grow sombre and furious as the prisoner's head lowered like that of a
charging bull.

One more question he put--a question of deliberate insult, which brought
an admonitory rap of the Judge's gavel; then he thrust out an accusing
finger which pointed straight into the defendant's face.

"Look at him now, gentlemen of the jury," he dramatically thundered.
"Look at those mismated eyes and determine whether or not this is the
man who blocked the state-house doorway--the assassin who laid low a
governor!"

Gazing from their seats in the jury-box, the men of the venire saw
before them and facing them a prisoner whose two fine, calm eyes had
been transfigured and mismated by passion--whose pupils were marked by
some puzzling phenomenon of rabid anger that seemed to leave them no
longer twins.

It was much later that the panel came in from the room where it had
wrangled all night, but that had been the decisive moment. Three or four
reporters detached themselves from their places at the press table and
stood close to the windows.

Then the foreman spoke, for in Kentucky the jury not only decides guilt
but fixes the penalty, and the reporters raised one finger each--It
meant that the verdict was death.




CHAPTER XIV


As Victor McCalloway and Boone went to the railroad station on the
afternoon of the day that brought the trial to its end, they found the
platform crowded with others who, like themselves, were turning away
from a finished chapter.

The boy stared ahead now with a glassy misery, and the eyes and ears,
usually so keenly awake to new sights and sounds, seemed too stunned for
service.

Had it been the boy himself, instead of his kinsman, who stood condemned
to die, he could hardly have suffered more. Indeed, had it been his own
tragedy, Boone would not have allowed himself this surrender of bearing
under the common gaze, but would have held his chin more defiantly high.

Back in the hills for the first time he was listless over his studies,
and even when he stood, sword in hand, before McCalloway, the spirit of
swift enthusiasm seemed departed from him. He had moved away from the
cabin where the "granny folks" dwelt to help Araminta Gregory run the
farm which had been bereft of its man, and his eyes followed her
grief-stricken movements with a wordless sympathy.

McCalloway realized that now, even more than formerly, the flame of the
convicted man's influence was operating on the raw materials of this
impressionable mind, welding to vindictiveness the feudal elements of
its metal. But McCalloway had learned patience in a hard school, and now
he was applying the results of his experience. Slowly under his
sagacious guidance the stamp of hatred which had latterly marred the
face of his youthful protégé began to lighten. Boone was as yet too
young to go under the yoke of unbroken pessimism. The very buoyancy of
his years and splendid health argued that somehow the clouds must
break. Meanwhile his task was clean cut--and dual. Asa's "woman" must
have, from the stony farm, every stalk and ear of corn that could be
wrung from its stinted productivity--and he must put behind him that
ignorance which had so long victimized his kind. So once more he turned
to his books when he was not busy with hoe or plough.

One day, while the boy and the man sat together in McCalloway's house,
knuckles rapped sharply on the door. It is contrary to the custom of
frontier caution for one to come so far as the threshold without first
raising his voice in announcement from a greater distance.

But the door opened upon a grizzled man at the sight of whose face
McCalloway bent forward as though confronted by a spectre--and indeed
the newcomer belonged to a world which he had renounced as finally as
though it had been of another incarnation.

This visitor was lean and weather-beaten. His face was long and somewhat
dour, but tanned brown, and instead of speaking he brought his hand to
his temple with a smart salute. It was such a salute as bespoke a long
life of soldiering and the second nature of military habit. The voice in
which McCalloway greeted him was almost unrecognizable as his own,
because it was both far away and strained.

"Sergeant!" he exclaimed; "what has brought you here?"

"The lad, sor'r," the other gravely reminded him. "I must speak with ye
alone. 'Tis a verra private and a verra serious matter that brings me."

Boone had never heard so hard a note in his benefactor's voice as that
which crept into his curt reply:

"It must needs be--to warrant your coming without permission,
MacTavish."

They were just finishing their daylight supper, and the boy rose,
pushing back his chair. Faithfully he regarded his pledge of respecting
the other's privacy whenever he was not invited to share it, and
instinctively he felt that this was no moment for his intrusion.

"I reckon I'll hev ter be farin' over thar ter see how Asa's woman's
comin' on," he remarked casually, as he reached for the hat that lay at
his feet. "Like es not she needs a gittin' of firewood erginst
nightfall."

But the matter-of-fact tone and manner were on the surface. Boone
secretly distrusted the few messages that came to his preceptor from the
outside world. By such voices he might be called back again and hearken
to the summons. Boone could not contemplate existence with both his
idols ravished from his temple.

Now he closed the door behind him in so preoccupied a mood that he left
his rifle standing against the wall forgotten and McCalloway remained
standing by the table rather inflexible of posture and sternly
inquisitorial of countenance.

"MacTavish," he said in sharply clipped syllables, "you are one of
few--a very few--who know of my incognito and address. I have relied
upon you implicitly to guard those secrets. I trust you can explain
following me into what you must know was a retirement not to be
trespassed upon without incurring my anger--my very serious anger."

Respectfully, but with a face full of eager resoluteness, the other
saluted again.

"General," he said, "it's China--they need you there."

"Sergeant"--an angry light leaped in the steel-gray eyes--"if they want
me in China some one whom I have trusted has betrayed my identity. No
living soul there ever heard of Victor McCalloway, _Mister_ McCalloway,
not General Anything, mind you!"

The newcomer crossed to the centre of the room, and his movements were
quick and precise, as are those of the drill-ground.

"To every other man on earth ye may be _Mister_ McCalloway--but to me ye
are my general. Before I'd betray any trust ye might place in me, sor'r,
I'd cut off that hand at the wrist, as ye ken, sor'r, full well. I've
told nae soul where ye wor'r. I've only said that I'd seek for ye."

"But in God's name how--?"

"If I may interrupt ye, sor'r, I am no longer Sergeant Major MacTavish;
I'm a time-retired man at home, but when I wear a uniform now it's that
of the army of the Manchu Emperor. They seek to reorganize their army
along western lines. They want genius. They ken nothin' of ye save that
one Victor McCalloway was once a British officer of high rank who served
so close to Dinwiddie, that Dinwiddie's strategy is known to him.--Read
this, sor'r, and ye'll understand more of the matter."

The General took the large, official-looking missive and stood for a
moment with a drawn and concentrated brow before he slit its linen-lined
covering.

The feel of the thing in his fingers brought to him a certain stirring
and quickening of the pulses: such a restiveness as may come to the
retired thoroughbred at the far-off sound of the paddock bugle, or to
the spent war horse at the rolling of drums.

The heavy blue paper and the thick seal set into disquieting momentum an
avalanche of memories. Active days which he had resolved to forget were
conjured into rebirth as he handled this bulky envelope which proclaimed
its officialdom. Even the daily papers came to him here with desultory
lack of sequence. He knew in disjointed fashion how that same summer an
anti-foreign revolt had broken out in Shantung and spread to Pechili. He
had read that the Japanese Government had dispatched twenty thousand men
to China. Later he had followed the all too meagre accounts of how the
Allies had raced for Peking to relieve the besieged legations. The young
Emperor's ambition to impress upon his realm the stamp of western
civilization had made him, for two years, a virtual prisoner to the
Empress Dowager and her reactionaries. Now in turn the Empress Dowager
was in flight and, presumably, the Japanese, working in concert with
agents of the captive Emperor and Prince Ching, were looking toward the
future.--It would seem that they divined once more the opportunity to
Occidentalize army and government. If so, it was the rising of a world
tide which might well run to flood, and it offered him a man's work. At
all events, this letter which caused his fingers to itch and tremble as
they held it, came from high Japanese sources and it was addressed only
"Excellency," without a name. The envelope itself was directed to "The
Honourable Victor McCalloway."

For a long time he stood there immovable, looking at the paper, as great
dreams marched before him. Organization, upbuilding--that was his
_metier_!

Seeing the rapt concentration of his brow and the hunger of his eyes,
the former British sergeant spoke again with persuasive fervour:

"Go under any name ye like, sor'r; ye'll be prompt to give it glory! For
many years I served under ye, General. For God's sake, let me take my
commands from ye once again! Come out to China, sor'r, where they need a
great soldier--and can keep silent!"

The hermit strode over and laid a hand on the shoulder of his visitor.
Their eyes met and held. "Old comrade," said McCalloway, as the rust of
huskiness creaked in his voice, "I know you for the truest steel that
ever God put into the blade of a man's soul--but I must have time to
think."

He crossed the room slowly and took up Dinwiddie's sword. Tenderly he
drew the blade from the scabbard, and as he looked at it his eyes first
glowed with fires of longing, then grew misty with the sadness of
remembrance.

After that he laid the scabbard down and handled once more the sheets
that had been in the envelope. He did not re-read the written sentences,
but let his fingers move slowly along the smooth surface of the paper,
while his pupils held as far-away a look as though they were seeing the
land from which the communication had come.

But, after a little, McCalloway came out of that half-hypnotized
absorption, and his eyes wandered about the room until finally they
fell on the rifle that the mountain boy had forgotten to take away with
him.

He knew Boone well enough to feel sure that he had not gone far without
remembering. He was certain, too, that his young protégé would have
returned for it before now had he not been inhibited by his deference
for the elder's privacy.

Over there across the world was an army to be shaped, disciplined--but
an army of alien blood, of yellow skins. Here was the less conspicuous
task to which he had set his hand; the shaping of a single life, beset
with hereditary dangers, into a worthy edifice of which the timbers and
masonry were Anglo-Saxon and the pattern Americanism. He had too far
committed himself to that architecture to turn back.

Slowly he shook his head. The struggle had been sharp, but the decision
was final.

"No, MacTavish, old comrade and old friend," he said very seriously;
"no; I've withdrawn from all that. I'll not deny that my hand sometimes
aches for a grip on a sabre-hilt, and my ears are hungry for a
bugle--but that's all past. Go out and make an army there, if you can,
but I stay here. I needs must stay."




CHAPTER XV


One day McCalloway received a paper, several days old, that contained a
piece of news which he was anxious for Boone to see at once, and he
straightway set out to find the boy.

Araminta greeted him at the door of the Gregory cabin with apathetic
eyes. "Booney's done gone out with his rifle-gun atter squirrels," she
said. "I heered him shoot up on ther mountainside thar, not five minutes
back."

Before he followed the boy, McCalloway read to her and construed the
item in the paper, and for the first time in many weeks the hard
wretchedness of her heart softened to tears and a faint ray of hope
stole through her misery.

McCalloway began climbing the hillside, searching the thickets for the
boy, and at last he saw him while he himself remained unseen. Boone was
standing with his gaze turned toward Louisville--and its jail--two
hundred and more miles distant. His face was like that of a fanatic in a
religious trance, and his right hand gripped his rifle so tightly that
the knuckles showed out white splotched against the tanned flesh.

"I failed ye, Asa," came the self-accusing voice in a tight-throated
strain. "I bust out and got sent outen ther co'te room, when ye needed
me in thar ter give ye countenance, but God knows I hain't fergot ye."
He paused there, and his chest heaved convulsively. "An' God, He knows,
too, I aims ter avenge ye," he ended up, with a dedication of savage
sincerity, while his gaze still seemed to be piercing the hills toward
the city where his kinsman lay condemned.

McCalloway came forward then, and while he talked, Boone listened with
attentive patience, but an obdurate face.

The man sought to exact a promise that until he was twenty-one, Boone
should "hold his hand" so far as Saul Fulton was concerned. Given those
plastic years, he could hope to wean the lad gradually away from the
tigerish and unforgiving ferocity of his blood, but Boone could only
shake his head, unable either to argue or to yield.

Then McCalloway sketched the seemingly irrelevant narrative of what had
occurred in China; of the peril of the legations. He talked of an
emperor, captive to court intrigue, and slowly the lad's eyes, which had
been until now too preoccupied with his own wormwood to think of other
matters, began to liven into interest.

"But thet's all plumb acrost ther world from hyar, though," he asserted
in a pause, as though he begrudged the arresting of his attention.
"What's hit got ter do with me--an' Asa?"

General McCalloway cleared his throat. It came hard for him to talk of
himself and of a sacrifice made for another.

"It has this to do with you, my boy," he announced bluntly: "I have been
offered a soldier's job over there. I have been invited to aid in work
that would help to stabilize China--and I have refused."

Boone Wellver's lips parted in amazement.

"Refused," he gasped. "Fer God's sake, what made ye do hit!"

"Because of you," was the sober response. "I thought you needed me, and
I thought you were worth standing by."

"Fer me!" The lad was trembling again, but this time not with anger. "I
reckon I'll be powerful beholden ter ye, all my life, fer thet--but ye
hedn't ought ter hev done hit. They needs ye over thar, too--an' thar's
monstrous numbers of 'em, from what ye narrates."

"I know it, Boone," McCalloway spoke earnestly. "I've centred some very
ambitious dreams about your future. The time is hardly ripe to explain
them--but you have a great opportunity--unless you throw it away in
vengeful fury. If you won't trust me to guide you--until you come of
age, at least--I had much better have gone to China."

The boy turned away, and in his set face McCalloway could read that for
him this was an actual moment of Gethsemane. Through his nature as over
a hotly embattled field surged contrary and warring emotions--and
between them he was cruelly buffeted.

"God knows I'm wishful," he broke out at length. "An' God knows, atter
what ye've jest told me, I hain't got no license ter deny ye nothin' ye
asks--but--" The end of his sentence came like a sob. "But ye wouldn't
ask me ter be disloyal ter my own kith an' kin, would ye?"

"No--but I would ask you to have a higher loyalty."

Boone stood trembling like an ague victim. It was no light matter for
him to give so binding a pledge.

"No Gregory ner no Wellver hain't nuver died on ther gallows tree yit,"
he faltered. "Thar's two things I'd done swore ter do. One of 'em was
ter git Saul. I reckon, though, thet could wait."

"What is the other thing?"

"Thet afore they hangs him--some fashion or other--I've got ter git a
gun in thar ter Asa ... so he kin kill hisself. Hit hain't fitten thet
he should die by a rope like a common feller!"

The emotion-laden voice became almost shrill. "Even ther Carrs an'
Blairs don't _hang_. They come nigh ter hangin' one oncet, but a kinsman
saved him."

"How?" inquired McCalloway, and the boy responded gravely:

"He lay up on ther hillside an' shot his uncle ter death as they was
takin' him from the jail-house ter ther gallows."

Truly, reflected the soldier, he was modelling with grim and stiff clay,
but he only said:

"Promise me that, as to Saul, you will wait--until you are twenty-one."

Boone did not reply for five full minutes, but at the end of that time
he nodded his head. "I kain't deny ye nothin', atter what ye've done fer
me," he assented briefly.

Then McCalloway read from the paper his scrap of encouragement. The
Court of Appeals had granted the Secretary of State a rehearing.

"But thet hain't Asa," objected the boy. "I don't keer nothin' erbout
thet feller."

McCalloway smiled.

"It's a similar case, tried by the same court, and involving the same
principles. It indicates that Asa will have a new trial, too."

"Ef he comes cl'ar," announced Boone, with the suddenly rocketing
spirits of boyhood, "I reckon Asa kin handle his own affairs."

McCalloway had set himself to preparing Boone within a year from that
fall for entrance into the state university. There was but a faint
background of prior attainment against which to paint many things, but
there was an avidly acquisitive pupil, a tireless teacher, and an
intensive plan of education.

Gregory was still in the Louisville jail--where, indeed, a half dozen
other years were yet to find him. The Secretary of State had come
through his second trial with a second conviction, and had once more
been granted a rehearing.

Saul Fulton, the star witness in Asa's trial, had disappeared, and
report had it that he had gone to South America--but the record of his
former testimony remained fixed in the stenographer's notes and was
fully available for later use--so that his going lifted no shadow from
Asa's future.

"I reckon they squshed ther indictment ergin him," Boone commented
bitterly to McCalloway, "an' paid him off with some of thet thar blood
money."

He paused and then went on, holding his finger between the pages of the
book he was studying. "He's done fared a long way off--but, some day
he'll fare back again. I stands full pledged--twell I comes of age, an'
I aims ter keep my word. Atter thet, I hain't makin' no brash promises.
Ther hate in my heart, hit don't seem ter slacken none. I mistrusts hit
won't--never."

But if the festering grievance did not "slacken," at least it seemed
just now partly submerged in the great adventure of going down to the
world below and becoming a collegian.

He went early in the autumn when he was seventeen, and McCalloway, who
accompanied and matriculated him, came away smiling. He had felt as
though he were leading a wolf-cub into a kennel of blooded hounds. But
when he had watched the self-poise with which his registrant bore
himself and how quickly amused smiles faded away under his level gaze,
he left with a reassured confidence.

When the days began to grow crisp the uncouth scholar saw for the first
time the lads in leather and moleskin tackling and punting out on the
campus--in the early try-outs of the season's football practice. He
looked on at first with a somewhat satirical detachment, but when the
scrimmages took on the guise of actual ferocity his interest altered
from tepid disapproval for "sich foolery" to a realization that it was
"no gal's play-party."

Several afternoons later Boone shyly intercepted the coach as he led out
the practice squads.

"Does thet thar football business belong ter a club--er somethin'," he
inquired, "er kin any feller git inter hit?"

The coach looked at the roughly dressed lad with the unruly hair, who
talked in barbaric phrases--and his practised eye took in the sinewy
strength of the well-muscled body. He appraised the power of the broad
shoulders, and the slim, agile lines of waist and legs, and gave him a
chance.

From the beginning it was evident that Boone Wellver would make the
scrub team. He was a tornado from the instant the ball was snapped--"an
injia rubber idjit on a spree," and yet this mystifying wolf-cub from
the hills came back to the coach in less than a week with an almost
sullen face and announced shortly:

"I hain't goin' ter play no more football, I aims ter quit hit."

"Quit it! Why?"

"I've been studyin' hit over," the retiring candidate explained
gloomily. "A man thet hain't no blood kin ter me is payin' what hit
costs ter send me hyar. I hain't hardly nothin' but a charity feller,
nohow--an' until he says hit's all right, I don't aim ter spend ther
time he's payin' fer out hyar playin' fool games--albeit I likes hit."

At the solemness and the unconscious self-righteousness of the tone, a
laugh went up, and Boone turned with a straight-lined mouth to meet the
derisive outburst.

"But I'm out here now, though," he added pointedly, lowering his head as
does a bull about to charge, "an' I kin stay a leetle longer. If any of
you fellers, or ther whole damn passel of ye, thinks I'm quittin'
because I'm timorous, I'd be right glad ter take ye on hyar an'
now--fist an' skull."

There was no acceptance of the invitation, and Boone, turning, with his
shoulders straight, marched away.

But when McCalloway read his letter, he promptly responded:

"A razor is made to shave with--. Its purpose is work and only work.
Still, if it isn't honed and stropped it loses its edge. It's hardly
fair to regard as wasted the time spent on keeping that edge keen. I
want you to get the most out of college, and that doesn't mean only what
you get out of the books. If I were you, I'd play football and play it
hard."

Boone went down the stairs, four steps at a time. He could hear the
coach's whistle out on the campus and he came like a hound to the chase.
"Hi, thar!" he yelled, "kin I git back in thet outfit? _He_ 'lows hit's
all right fer me ter play."

       *       *       *       *       *

Back in the hills Victor McCalloway was more than a little lonely. He
began to realize how deeply this boy--at first almost a waif--had stolen
into the affections of his detached life. Once or twice he went to
Lexington to see how his protégé progressed, and he had several brief
visits from General Prince and more than several from Larry Masters.
After what seemed a very long while indeed, Boone came home for his
first summer vacation.

Araminta Gregory had a brother at her farm now, so the boy went direct
to the house of Victor McCalloway, which was henceforth to be his home.




CHAPTER XVI


Happy Spradling, whose father had overseen the raising of Victor
McCalloway's house, was only two years younger than Boone. When he had
gone away, a lad of seventeen, he had been untroubled by thoughts of
girls, and she had certainly wasted no meditation upon him.

But the Boone who came back was not quite the same boy who had gone
away. He was still roughly dressed, judged by exacting standards, but
corduroy had supplanted his old jeans, and he returned with a much
developed figure and an improved bearing.

Now one afternoon Happy Spradling stood with a pail, by a
"spring-branch" of crystal water, as Boone came by and halted. She, too,
had been to one of those settlement schools that were just beginning to
introduce new standards in the hills, and her homecoming to unrelieved
crudities was not an unmixed pleasure. Certain it is that the slim girl
in her calico gown was blessed with a fresh and vigorous beauty. Her
sloe-brown eyes were heavy lashed, and her skin was blossom clear. Dark
hair crowned her well-poised head in heavy masses--and the boy was
surprised because he had not remembered her as so lovely.

"Ye look right sensibly like a picture outen ther Bible of Rebekkah at
the well," he banteringly announced, and the girl flushed.

"Ye ain't quite so uncurried of guise as ye used to be your own self,
Boone," she generously acceded, and they both laughed.

They talked on for a while, and before Boone started away the girl
invited shyly, with lids that drooped, "Come over sometime, Boone, an'
tell me all about the college."

But it happened that the next day he went, with a note from McCalloway,
to the home of Larry Masters, the "mine boss," at the edge of Marlin
Town, and there fate ambushed him in the person of the girl who had
asked him to dance at the Christmas party.

Anne Masters came to the door in response to the boy's knock, and when
he had seen her he stood hesitant with his eyes fixed upon her until her
cheeks flushed, while he forgot the note he had brought for her father.

Anne herself did not recognize him at first, for Boone stood close to
six feet now, and although he would always be, in a fashion, careless of
dress, he would never again be the sloven, as were the kinsmen about
him. His corduroy breeches, flannel shirt and boots that laced halfway
up the calf, all seemed a part of himself, like a falcon's plumage. But
what the girl noticed first, since she was both young and
impressionable, was the crisp curl of his red brown hair and the direct
fearlessness of his sky-blue eyes.

"I reckon ye don't remember me," he hazarded, by way of introduction;
and she shook her head.

"Have I seen you before?" she inquired, and Boone found it difficult to
talk to her because he was so busy looking at her. There had been girls
as well as boys at the state university, but among them had been none
like Anne Masters. Boone was to learn from a broader experience that
there were few like her--anywhere. Even now when she was a bud not yet
blossomed, she had that indescribable fairy god-mother's gift to which
no analyst can fit a formula--the charm which lays its spell upon others
and the gift of individuality.

"You've seed me--seen me, I mean--before. But it's right natcher'l fer
ye to fergit it, because it was a long spell back. You gave me the first
Christmas gift I ever got in my life--a piece of plum cake. Do you
remember me now?"

The light of recollection broke over her face, illuminating it--and Anne
Masters had those eyes that actually sparkle within--the dancing eyes
that are much rarer than the phrase.

"Of course I remember you! I've thought about you--lots. I've always
called you the 'fruit-cake boy.'" Suddenly her laugh rippled out in a
lilting merriment. "Don't you remember when you challenged Morgan with
the fencing foils?"

"Oh," exclaimed Boone, flushing, "I'd plumb disremembered that."

It was June, with days of diamond weather and the bloom still upon wild
rose and rhododendron. Anne looked away beyond the boy's head to the
tallest crest of the many that ringed the town. Suddenly she demanded:
"Have you ever been up there--at the tip-top of that mountain?"

He nodded his head, and she at once commanded: "I want you to show me
the way up there--I want to go up and climb to the top of that tree that
you can see from here, the one that stands up higher than all the
others."

Boone shook his head soberly. "It's a right hazardous undertakin' fer
anybody thet isn't used to scalin' clifts," he objected. "Why do you
want to go up there to the top of old Slag-face?"

Her expression had clouded to autocratic displeasure at his failure of
immediate assent, but only for an instant; then her eyes altered again
from coercive frown to irresistible smile.

"Why?" she exclaimed. "Why does a bird want to fly? Up there at the top
of that tree you'd be almost in the sky. You'd be looking down on
everything but the clouds themselves. When I was a little girl--" she
announced suddenly, "they had a hard time persuading me that I
_couldn't_ fly. They had to keep watching me, because I'd climb up on
things and try to fly down."

"Have you plumb outgrown that idee?" he inquired, somewhat drily.
"Because I'm not cravin' to help you fly offen that mountain top."

Her laugh rippled out like bird notes as she replied with large scorn of
fourteen years: "_That_ was when I was a child."

After a moment she added appealingly: "The last time I saw you, General
Prince said that when I came to these hills, you'd be 'charitable' to
me."

"I aims to be," he asserted stoutly, "but it wouldn't skeercely be
charitable to be the cause of your breakin' an arm or"--he paused an
instant before adding with sedateness--"or a limb."

       *       *       *       *       *

But Anne had her way. She always had her way, and some days later they
looked down on an outspread world from the crest of Slag-face. Boone had
not been long in discovering that this slender girl was driven by a
dauntless spirit that made of physical courage a positive fetish, so he
had pretended weariness himself from time to time and demanded a
breathing spell.

The sky overhead was splendidly soft and blue, broken by tumbling cloud
masses, which, it seemed, one could almost reach out and touch.

From the foreground where they sat flushed and resting, with moss and
rock and woodland about them, the prospect went off into distances where
mountain shadows fell across valleys, and other ridges were ranked row
on row. Still more remote was the vagueness of the horizon whose misty
violet merged with the robin's-egg blue of the sky.

The girl stood, leaning against the tree, and her violet eyes were full
of imaginative light.

Through lids half closed the boy looked at her. She was an exponent of
that world of which he had dreamed. He thought of the hall where he had
first seen her; of the silk and broadcloth, of the mahogany and silver;
of the whole setting which was home to her, and to him a place into
which he had come as a trespasser in homespun.

Into the tempering of the crude ore came a new element. Asa Gregory had
been the fire, and so far Victor McCalloway had been the water. Now,
came the third factor of life's process--the oil; for there and then on
the hilltop he had fallen in love, and it was not until he was riding
home in the starlight that he stopped to consider the chances of
disaster.

It had been a wonderful day, accepted without questioning; but now he
drew his horse suddenly to a stop and took his hat from his head. For a
time he sat there in his saddle, as unmoving as though he and the beast
he rode were inanimate parts of an equestrian group; the statue of a
pioneer lad rough-mounted.

His face stiffened painfully, and he licked his lips. Finally he said to
the dark woods where the whippoorwills were calling and the fireflies
flickering:

"Great God! I mout jest as well fall in love with a star up thar in
heaven." Something like a groan escaped him, and after a while he
gathered up his reins. Again he spoke, but in a dull voice:

"I'll quit afore I get in too far. Tomorrow night I'll go over thar and
'set up' with Happy Spradling."

He remembered how they had laughed at him at college when, quite
naturally, he had used that term, "settin' up with a gal," to express
the idea of courtship. Now he laughed himself, but bitterly. That was
what his own people called it, and, after all, it was better to remember
that he was of his own people.

The next night Boone kept his word. He brushed his clothes and did what
he could with the unruly crispness of his hair, and then he set out for
the log house of Cyrus Spradling on the headwaters of Snag Ridge.

He was not going on this, his first formal visit to a girl, with such
leaping pulses as might have been expected. He was following out an
almost grim determination quite devoid of eagerness. Having lost his
heart to royalty, he was now bent on forcing himself back into a society
where he had a right to be.

He had not slept much that night after the excursion to Slag-face, and
what sleep he had had, had been troubled by dreams in which Anne had
stood smiling down on him from the mountain top, while he looked up from
a deep gorge where the shadows lay black. He was driven by a mad sense
of necessity to climb up and stand beside her--but always he slid back,
or fell from narrow ledges, until he was bruised, bleeding--and
unsuccessful. He woke up panting, and afterward dreamed the same thing
over. And every time he fell he found Happy waiting in the gorge and
saying, "Why don't ye stay here with me? You don't have to climb after
me--and I'm a right pretty gal." Always too he answered, in the words
that Anne had used, "Why do I want to go up there? Up there you'd be
looking down on everything but the clouds themselves"--and he would
begin climbing once more, clutching with raw fingers upon frail and
slippery supports.

All day he had argued with himself, and being young and unversed in such
problems he told himself that the only way to halt this runaway thing
within himself that led to no hope was to set his heart upon something
which lay in reach. His inexperience told him that Happy liked him; that
she was a nice girl trying to better her condition in life as he was
himself trying, and he meant to commandeer his own heart and lay it at
her feet. It was, of course, an absurd and impossible thing to
undertake, but this he must learn for himself.

As Boone reached the house, old man Spradling sat on his porch in the
twilight with his cob pipe between his teeth. Cyrus remained what his
"fore-parents" had been before him, a rough-hewn man of undeviating
honesty and of an innate kindliness that showed out only in deeds and
not at all in demonstrativeness.

Just now he wore an expression of countenance that was somewhat glum as
he watched the lingering afterglow which edged the western crests of the
"Kaintuck' Ridges" with pale amber.

"Set ye a cheer, Booney," he invited, with a brief nod. "I reckon ye
didn't skeercely fare over hyar ter set an' talk with me, but ther gal
hain't quite through holpin' her mammy with the dish-washin' yit--an' I
wants ter put some questions ter ye afore she comes out."

The lad drew a hickory-withed chair forward and sat down, laying his hat
on the floor at his feet.

"Ye've done been off ter college, son," began old Cyrus reflectively, as
he bit on his pipe stem and judicially nodded his head.

"I've always countenanced book-lore myself, even when folks hes faulted
me fer hit. I've contended thet ther times change an' what was good
enough fer ther parents hain't, of needcessity, good enough fer ther
young ones. 'Peared like, ter me, a body kinderly hes a better chanst
ter be godly ef he hain't benighted."

"I reckon there ain't no two ways about that proposition," agreed the
boy eagerly. "Hit just stands ter reason."

"An yit, hyar latterly," suggested the mountaineer dubiously, "I've done
commenced ter misdoubt ef I've been right, atter all. Thet's what I
wanted ter question ye about. My woman an' me, we sent Happy off ter
thet new school in Leslie--an' since she's come home I misdoubts ef her
name fits her es well es hit did afore she went over thar. She used ter
sing like a bird all day--an' now she don't."

"I don't see how knowin' something can make a body unhappy," protested
Boone.

Cyrus Spradling studied him with a keen, but not unkindly, fixedness of
gaze.

"Ye don't, don't ye? Wa'al, let me norrate ye a leetle parable. Suppose
you an' me hes done been pore folks livin' in a small dwellin'-house.
We've done been plum content, because we hain't never knowed nothing
better. But suppose one of us goes a'visitin' ter rich kin-folks--an'
t'other one stays home." He paused there to rekindle his pipe, and the
voice of his resumed "parable" was troubled.

"Ther one thet's been away hes done took up notions of wealth that he
kain't nuver hope ter satisfy. The mean cabin seems a heap meaner when
he comes back ter hit--but ther other pore damn fool--he's still happy
an' contented because he don't know no better."

"I reckon," laughed the young visitor, "if the feller that had gone away
was anything but the disablest body in the world, he'd set about
improving the house he had to dwell in."

"I hope ter God ye're right, Booney. Hit's been a mighty sober thing fer
me ter ponder over, though--whether I was helpin' my gal or hurtin'
her."

Boone was smitten with a sense of guilt. He felt that he ought to make
confession that he had come here tonight because he had already
recognized a new flame in his heart, and a flame which the voice of
sanity and wisdom told him he must quench: that he was here because
discontent had driven him. But his voice was firm as he made some
commonplace reply, and Cyrus nodded his satisfaction. "Mebby if thar's a
few boys like thet, growin' up hyarabouts, ther few gals thet gits
larnin' won't be foredoomed ter lead lonesome lives, atter all."

The moonlight was beginning to convert the dulness of twilight into a
nocturne of soft and tempered beauty.

Boone felt suddenly appalled, as if the father had given him parental
recognition and approval, and laid upon him an obligation. He wanted to
rise and frame some excuse for immediate flight, but it was of course
too late for that.

The evening star came up over the dark contours of the ridge. It shone
soft and lustrous in the sky, where other stars would soon add their
myriad points of light, but however many others might fill the heavens
there would still be only one evening star--and Boone, as he waited for
one girl, fell to thinking of the other with whom he had climbed
Slag-face yesterday; the girl who had set fire to his young imagination.

Then Happy came out of the door and soon after the father went in.
"Thar hain't no place fer an ign'rant old feller like me, out hyar
amongst ther young an' wise," he chuckled as he left them. "I reckon ye
aims ter talk algebry an' sich-like."

The mountains were great upward sweeps of velvet darkness. Down in the
slopes, where the moonlight fell, was a bath of silver and shadows, not
dead and inky but blue and living, but Happy Spradling, keyed to the
emotional influences of that June evening, found herself labouring with
a distrait and unresponsive visitor, who made an early excuse for
departure.




CHAPTER XVII


Beyond the goal of getting through college in three years, Boone had
planned his future but vaguely. He might seek election to the
Legislature, when he came of qualifying age, and strive upwards from
that beginning toward Congress and the larger rewards of a political
life. For such a career the law was a necessary preparation, so while he
was still in college he began its reading.

Whenever he went home from the university he saw Happy, and in the tacit
fashion of simple souls their neighbourhood fell to speaking of "Boone
and Happy," as though the linking of their names was natural and
logical, and in local gossip it was almost as though they were
betrothed.

Happy had other suitors, more than a few of them indeed, drawn to the
Spradling house by her beauty. Along those neighbourhood creeks, from
the trickles where they "headed up" to the mouths where they emptied,
there were few girls who could hope to compete with her loveliness of
sloe-eyes, dusky hair and slender grace of body. But the old wives shook
their heads, saying, "Happy Spradling wouldn't hurt a fly--but jest ther
same she's breakin' hearts right an' left because she's mortgaged ter
Boone Wellver--an' she's jest a'waitin' fer him."

Old Cyrus already looked on him as a son--and Boone spoke as little of
Anne Masters as he would have spoken of the things sealed in Masonic
secrecy.

Happy's school was one which arranged its terms and vacations in
accordance with local exigencies. Crop planting and gathering had the
right of way over text-books, and so it happened that when Anne was at
Marlin Town, Happy was usually at school--and their ways did not cross.

Yet each summer, too, as a man may go from the provinces to court and
yet not delude himself with the hallucination that he is a courtier,
Boone went over to Marlin Town. For every summer Anne Masters came for a
few weeks to visit the father, who held his position there, remote from
the things that, to his thinking, made up the values of life.

During these periods Boone found life a strange and paradoxical pattern,
woven of a web of ecstasy and a woof of torture. Since that night when
he had dragged suddenly at his bridle curb and had told himself, "I
might as well fall in love with a star up there in heaven," he had never
departed from his resolute conviction that it would be sheer insanity
for him to entertain any thought of Anne, save that of the willing and
faithful slave who would joyously have laid his life down for her.

She dominated his world of boyhood dreams, and since he was not deaf to
the talk about himself and "Cyrus Spradling's gal," he wondered if he
ought not to tell Happy the whole truth. But after long reflection he
shook his head.

"It would only hurt Happy, like telling her about dreams that come at
night--of some sort of heaven where I don't see her, herself." And so he
did not tell her.

       *       *       *       *       *

One day in the spring of the year when Anne was sixteen, Mrs. Larry
Masters dropped into the office of her kinsman, Tom Wallifarro, to talk
over some small matter of business. It was one of the regrets of the
lady's life--a life somewhat touched and frost-bitten by
bitterness--that all of her business was small. It was, however, one of
her compensations that this gentleman gave to her petty affairs as much
care and consideration as to the major features of his large practice.

"My dear," observed the Colonel irrelevantly as he looked at the weary
eyes of the woman who had in her day been an almost famous beauty, "you
seem worried. You are altogether too young to let lines creep into your
face."

Mrs. Masters laughed mirthlessly.

"I have a daughter growing up. I am ambitious for her. She has charm,
grace, breeding--and she's the poor member of a rich family. Such things
bring wrinkles around maternal eyes, Cousin Tom."

"Happily she lives in Kentucky," the lawyer reminded his visitor. "We
are yet provincial enough to think something of blood, even when it's
not gilded with money."

"Yes, thank God--and thanks to you, she has had educational advantages.
If Larry had only had business sense--but I can't talk patiently about
Larry."

"No--I wish you could bring yourself to think of him more indulgently,
but--" Colonel Tom knew the fruitlessness of that line of counsel, so he
brushed lightly by to other topics. "But that isn't what I wanted to
talk about. I think Morgan ought to travel abroad for several months,
don't you?"

Mrs. Masters sighed. There was a thought in her mind which had long been
there. If Morgan and Anne could be brought to a fancy for each other,
her problem in life would be settled. The girl would no longer be a
charity child. But what she said was an amendment to the original
thought. "Isn't he a bit inexperienced--and headstrong yet, to be turned
loose alone in Europe?"

The Colonel's eyes twinkled. "I mean to have a check-rein on him."

"What fashion of check-rein, Cousin Tom?"

"I thought," said the lawyer off-handedly, since he always surrounded
his beneficences with a show of the casual, "that it would be a good
thing for Anne too. Now if you and she and Morgan made a European trip
together, the responsibility of two ladies on his hands would steady the
young scapegrace."

Mrs. Masters almost gasped in her effort to control her delighted
astonishment. Morgan had always thought of Anne as a "kid" to be teased
and badgered, and of himself as a very finished and mature young
gentleman. Now they would see each other in a new guise. Their eyes
might be opened. In short, the possibilities were immense.

"Your goodness to us--" she began feelingly, but the Colonel cleared his
throat and raised a hand in defence against the embarrassment of verbal
gratitude.

A month later the three sat in the _salle-a-manger_ of the Elysée Palace
Hotel, by a window that commanded a view of the Arc de Triomphe, and
many things had happened. Among them was the surprising discovery by the
young man, that while few eyes seemed concerned with him, many turned
toward Anne, and having turned, lingered.

Only last night they had been to a dance, and Anne had been so occupied
with uniforms that she had found no time to waltz with him--though he
was sure that he danced circles about these stiff-kneed gentry with
petty titles.

Now over the _petit déjeuner_ he took his young and inconsiderate cousin
to task.

"Last night, Anne, I camped on your trail all evening, and you couldn't
manage to slip me in one dance. Nothing would do but goggling Britishers
and smirking frog-eaters. I'm getting jolly well fed up with these
foreigners."

Anne lifted her brows, but her eyes sparkled mischief.

"Oh, Morgan, I can dance with you any time," she assured him. "You're
just kin-folks. Is it because you're 'jolly well fed up' with foreigners
that you like to ape English slang?"

The young man blushed hotly, but he chose to ignore the question with
which she had capped her response. Inasmuch as it was a fair hit, he had
need to ignore it, but his eyes snapped with furious indignation. "Anne,
I don't understand you," he announced in a carefully schooled voice.
"You can play with absurd little dignitaries, or with mountain
illiterates--anything abnormal--but for your own blood--" He paused
there a moment, searching his abundant and sophomoric vocabulary for the
exact combination of withering words; and, while he hesitated, she
interrupted in a tone which was both quiet and ominous:

"Let's take up one thing at a time, Morgan. Just who is the illiterate
in the mountains?"

"You know as well as I do--Boone Wellver."

"Boone Wellver. I thought so. At all events, he's a man, even if he's
not quite twenty-one yet."

"A man: that is to say, a specimen of the _genus homo_. So is the fellow
that brought in the eggs just now. So is the chap that drives the taxi."
The young aristocrat shrugged his shoulders and snapped his fingers in
excellent imitation of Gallic expressiveness; then as Anne's twinkle
reminded him of his being "jolly well fed up with foreigners," the
change in his tone became as abrupt as the break in a boy's altering
voice, and he added: "The point is that he's hardly a gentleman. I
commend his ambition--but there's something in birth as well. Unless you
attach some importance to the elegances and nuances of life, you are
only a member of the mob."

"The elegances of life--as, for instance"--the dancing sparkle stole
mischievously back into the blue eyes and the voice took on a purring
softness--"as, for instance, the handling of the small sword--or fencing
foil?"

Morgan rose petulantly from the table and pushed back his chair. "If you
ladies will excuse me," he announced with superdignity, "I will leave
you for a while to your own devices."

Anne's laughter pursued him in exit with an echo of musical mockery.

But that evening Mrs. Larry Masters posted a letter to Colonel Tom
Wallifarro.

"Morgan has discovered Anne!" she said in part. "He has been too close
to her until now to realize her attractiveness; but she has been noticed
by other men, and at last Morgan is awake. They have quarrelled, and
next to making love that's the most significant of developments. My dear
kinsman and benefactor, you know what our mutual hope has been, and I
think its fulfilment is not so far away! Tonight when I sipped my
claret at dinner I drank a silent toast, 'To my girl and your boy.'"

While Mrs. Masters was writing that note, her daughter was sitting at
another desk in the same room, and her letter was addressed to a
post-office back of Cedar Mountain.

When Boone received that second missive, he turned the envelope over in
his hand and gazed at it for a long while. Even then he did not open it
until he sat alone in a place where the forests were silent, save for
the call of a blue-jay and the diligent rapping of a "cock of the woods"
who was sapping and mining for grubs.

The boy held between thumb and forefinger an envelope of a sort he had
never seen before, of thin outer paper over a dark coloured lining. In
one corner was a stamp of the French Republic, and there in writing that
had crossed the sea was his name and address.

"She found time to write to me," he said rapturously to himself, and
then dropping intentionally and whimsically into his old, childhood
speech he added, nodding his head sagely to a pert squirrel that frisked
its tail near by, "She's done writ me a letter cl'ar from t'other
world."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was that same summer, when Anne had gone to Europe, that Boone came
back from college, very serious and taciturn, and McCalloway was prompt
to guess the reason.

"You went down to Louisville, didn't you?" he inquired, as the two sat
by the doorstep on the day of the boy's return, and Boone nodded.

The man did not nag him with questions. His seasoned wisdom contented
itself with smoking on in silence, and after a little the lad jerked his
head.

"I reckon you know what took me there--sir."

The final word came in afterthought. No mountaineer says "sir," by
habit.

A part of that stubborn independence which is at once the virtue and the
fault of the race balks at even such small measure of implied
deference, but Boone had noticed that "down below," where courtesy
flowers into graciousness, the form of address was general.

McCalloway responded slowly.

"Yes, I can guess your errand there. How is he?"

The boy's eyes gazed off across the slopes through contracted lids, and
his voice came in deliberate but repressed tenseness.

"I hunted up Colonel Wallifarro's office and he went over there with
me.... I reckon, except for that, they wouldn't have let me see him."

He paused, and the man thoughtfully observed, "No, I fancy not."

"You go into that jail-house through a stone door, and there's a
rough-lookin' feller settin'--I mean sitting--there in front of another
door made of iron gratin's as thick as crowbars.... The place don't
smell good."

"Isn't it well kept?" inquired McCalloway in some surprise, and the boy
hastily explained.

"I don't mean that it plum stinks. I reckon it's as clean as a jail can
be, but the air is stale--even out on the street that lowland air is
flat.... It don't taste right in a man's throat.... Asa was reared up
here in these free hills. He's like a caged hawk down there."

The soldier nodded sympathetically.

"Did he--seem well?"

"He hasn't sickened none ... but his face used to be right colourful....
Now it's pale ... and sort of gray-like.... Of course a turnkey went
along with us, and we didn't talk with him by himself.... I reckon he
didn't say none of the things he craved most to say.... He was right
silent-like."

The boy broke off, and for a while the two sat in silence. When Boone
took up the thread of his narrative again, there was something like a
catch in his throat.

"They were pretty polite to us there.... They showed us all over the
place ... they even took us to the death row.... There was a nigger in
there that was goin' ter be hung next morning at daybreak.... I reckon
he's dead now.... A feller kept walkin' back and forth in front of that
cell ... and an electric light was burnin' there full bright.... That
nigger, neither night ner day ... could ever git away from that
light.... They were afraid he might seek ter kill hisself.... He come
ter the bars an' said, 'Howdy, white folks,' ... an' then he went back
an' sat down on the ledge that he sleeps on."

The recital, painfully punctuated with its frequent pauses, halted
there. It was a matter of several minutes before it began again. Now the
voice was laboured, as if the speaker were panting for breath, and the
careful pronunciation relapsed wildly into the older and ruder forms of
solecism.

"They tuck us out an' ... showed us the cement yard ... whar the gallows
stood.... It was painted a sort of brownish red.... It put me in mind of
dried blood. The nigger could hear the hammers whilest they set the
thing up.... Asa could hear 'em too.... Asa hed done seed ther scaffold
hisself ... through the winder-bars when ... he exercised ... in the
corrider.... But when I looked at the nigger thet's dead by now ...
seemed like it was Asa I saw ... with thet lamp glarin' in on him,
daylight and night time alike...." The voice leaped into a soblike
vehemence. "Thet's what Judas money dogged him to! Seemed like ... I
couldn't endure it!"




CHAPTER XVIII


So if the time ever came when Boone stood face to face with Saul Fulton,
it would, for all the amendment of his new life, be a moment of
desperate crisis. The pig iron of his half-savage beginning had been
made malleable and held promise of tempered and flexible steel--but the
metal was still feudist ore. McCalloway comforted himself with the
reflection that Saul was not likely to return, but did not delude
himself into forgetting that strange perversity which seems to draw the
mountaineer inevitably back to his crags and woods, even in the face of
innumerable perils. Some day Saul might attempt to slip back, and Boone
would almost inevitably hear of his coming. Then for a day or an hour,
the lad might relapse into his old self, even to the forgetting of his
pledge. Such an inconsidered day or an hour would be enough to wreck his
life.

Carefully and adroitly, therefore, McCalloway played upon the softer
strings of life, and sometimes, to that end, he opened a hitherto closed
door upon the events of his own life, and let his protégé look in on
glimpses that were sacredly guarded from other eyes.

One summer night, for example, Boone laid down a book and said suddenly,
"It tells here about a fellow winning the Star of India and the Victoria
Cross. I'd love to see one of those medals."

Silently McCalloway rose and went over to the folding desk, to come back
with his battered dispatch box. He unlocked it and laid out before the
boy not one decoration, but several. The ribbons were somewhat faded
now, and the metal tarnished; but Boone bent forward, and his face
glowed with the exaltation of one admitted to precincts that are
sacrosanct. For a long while he studied the maltese cross with its
lion-surmounted crown and its supporting bar chased with rose leaves;
the cross that bears the Queen's name, for which men brave death. Beside
it lay the oval, showing Victoria's profile, and the gilt inscription on
a blue enamelled margin: "Heaven's Light Our Guide." A star caught it to
its white-edged blue riband--and that was the coveted Star of India.

Here before his eyes--eyes that burned eagerly--were the priceless
trifles that he had never hoped to see. The modest gentleman who had,
for his sake, relinquished fresh honours in China, had won them, and
until now had never spoken of them, but Boone knew that they are not
lightly gained--and that in no way can they be bought.

A sudden and unaccountable mistiness blurred his sight.

"I'm obliged to you, sir," he said seriously. "I know you don't often
show them."

He had meant to say nothing more than that, but youth's questioning urge
mastered his resolution, so that he put an interrogation very slowly,
half fearing it might seem an impertinence.

"You told me once, sir, that I might ask whatever questions I liked--and
that you would refuse to answer when _you_ felt like it. I'm going to
ask one now--but I reckon I oughtn't to." Again there was a diffident
pause, but the sincere blue eyes were unwaveringly steady as they met
the gray ones.

"Do you reckon, sir, the day will ever come--when I can know the real
name--of the man I owe--pretty nigh everything to?"

McCalloway blinked his eyes, which this cub of a boy had a way of
tricking into unsoldierly emotion, and resolutely set his features into
immobility.

"No, sir; I'm afraid not," he answered with a gruffness that in no way
deceived his questioner. "McCalloway is as good a name as any--I'm
afraid, at all events, it will have to serve to the end."

Slowly and gravely the lad nodded his head. "All right, sir," he
declared. "It was just curiosity, anyhow. The name I know you by is good
enough for me."

But McCalloway was disquietingly moved. He rose and replaced the
dispatch box on its shelf, and after that paced the room for a few
moments with quick, restive strides. Then his voice came with an
impulsive suddenness. "There's a paper in that dispatch box ... that
would answer your question, Boone," he said. "I tell you because I want
you to realize how entirely I trust you. It's the secret chamber of my
Bluebeard establishment. While I live it must remain locked."

After a moment he added, "If I should die ... and you still want to
know--then you may open the box ... but even then what you learn is for
yourself alone, and I want that you shall destroy all those documents
and whisper no word whatever of their contents to any living soul."

"I promise, sir," declared the boy, "on my honour."

       *       *       *       *       *

When August had brought the yellow masses of the golden-rod and the
rusty purple of the ironweed; when the thistles were no longer a sting
to the touch but down drifting along the lightest breeze, two horses
stopped at McCalloway's fence, and a girl's voice called out, "Can we
come in?"

Boone had not known that Anne Masters was back on this side of the
Atlantic, nor had he ventured to hope that she would find time to come
up here into the hills before the summer ended, but the voice had
brought him out to the stile, as swiftly as a cry for help could have
done. Now he stood, looking up at her as she sat in her saddle, with a
blaze of worship in his blue eyes that went far to undo all the
self-restraint with which he had so studiously hedged about his speech
and manner. Surprise has undone many wary generals. So his eyes made
love to her, even while his lips remained guarded of utterance.

"I didn't have any idea that you were on this side of the world," he
declared. "It's just plum taken my breath away from me to see you
sitting right there on that horse."

Larry Masters had dismounted and was hitching his mule. Now he turned to
inquire, "Where's Mr. McCalloway?"

The boy had momentarily forgotten the existence of his patron. He had
forgotten all things but one, and now he laughed with guilty
realization.

"I reckon I'll have to ask your pardon, sir. I was so astonished that I
forgot to tell you he wasn't here. He's gone fishing--and I'm afraid he
won't be back before sundown."

"Well, we've ridden across the mountain and we're tired. If you don't
mind we'll wait for him."

Anne reached down into her saddle bags and produced a small, neatly
wrapped package.

"I brought you a present," she announced with a sudden diffidence, and
Boone remembered how once before, as he stood by a fence, she had spoken
almost the same words. Then, too, she had been looking down on him from
the superior position of one mounted. He wondered if she remembered, and
in excellent mimicry of his old boyish awkwardness he said, "Thet war
right charitable of ye.... Hit's ther fust present I ever got--from
acrost ther ocean-sea."

Anne's laugh rippled out, and she followed suit--quoting herself from
the memory of other years:

"Oh, no, it isn't that at all. Please don't think it's charity." Then
she slid down and watched him as he unwrapped and investigated his gift;
a miniature bust of Bonaparte, the Conqueror, in Parian marble. The
light August breeze stirred the curls against her cheeks with a delicate
play--but they stirred against the boy's heart with the power of
lightning and tornado.

Anne was at her father's house for several weeks, and scarcely a day of
that time did her vassal fail to ride across the mountain, but those
hours squandered together were fleet of wing. McCalloway smiled
observantly and held his counsel. The charm and gaiety of Anne's bright
personality would do more to dispel the menace of gloom from the dark
corners of the boy's nature, where tendencies of melancholy lurked, than
all his own efforts and wisdom. Later there would come an aftermath of
bitter heartache, for between them lay the fortified frontier which
separates red blood and blue; the demarcation of the contrary codes of
Jubal and Tubal Cain, but at that thought the soldier shrugged his
shoulders with a ripe philosophy. Just now the girl's influence was
precisely what the lad needed. Later, when perhaps he needed something
else, he would take his punishment with decent courage, and even the
punishment would do him good. A blade is not forged and tempered without
being pounded between anvil and sledge--and if Boone could not stand
it--then Boone could not realize the dreams which McCalloway built for
his future.

The wisdom of middle-age can treat, as ephemeral, disasters in which
first love can contemplate only incurable scars. Boone himself regarded
the golden present as an era for which the whole future must pay with
unrelieved levies of black despair.

It was chiefly as he rode home at night that he faced this death's-head
future with young lips stiffening and eyes narrowed. In the morning
sunlight, or through woods that sobbed with rain, he went buoyant,
because then he was going toward her, and whatever the indefinite future
held in store, he had that day assured with all its richness.

None-the-less, Boone played the game as he saw it, with the guiding
instincts of a gentleman. Because it was all a wonderful dream, doomed
to an eventual awakening, he sealed his lips against love-making.

Anne was taking him for granted, he reasoned. He had simply become a
local necessity to a bright nature, overflowing with vital and
companionable impulses.

As vassal he gladly and proudly offered himself, and as vassal she
frankly and without analysis accepted him. Should he let slip the check
upon his control, and go to mooning about love, instead of meeting her
laughter with his laughter and her jest with his jest, she would send
him away into a deserved exile.

On the day before Anne was to leave they were on the great pinnacle rock
above Slag-face, and by now Boone had come to regard that as the lofty
shrine where he had discovered love. Afterwards it would stand through
the years as a spot of hallowed memories.

Anne had been talking with vivacious enthusiasm of the things she had
seen abroad, and Boone had followed her with rapt attentiveness. She had
a natural gift for vivid description, and he had seemed to stand with
her, by moonlight in the ruins of the Coliseum, and to look out with her
from the top of Cheops' pyramid over the sands of Ghizeh and the ribbon
of the Nile.

But at last they had fallen silent, and with something like a sigh the
girl said, "Tomorrow I go back to Louisville."

He had forgotten that for the moment, and he flinched at the reminder,
but his only reply was, "And in a few days I've got to go back to
Lexington. I always miss the hills down there."

Her violet eyes challenged him with full directness, "Won't you
miss--anything else?"

Boone, who was looking at her, closed his eyes. He was sure that they
would betray him, and when he ventured to open them again he had
prudently averted his gaze. But though he looked elsewhere, he still saw
her. He saw the hair that had enmeshed his heart like a snare, saw the
eyes that held an inner sparkle--which was for him an altar fire.

"I'm not the sort of feller that can help missing his friends," he
guardedly said, but his tongue felt dry and unwieldy.

Usually people were not so niggardly as that with their compliments to
Anne, and as she held a half-piqued silence Boone knew that she was
offended, so his next question came with a stammering incertitude.

"You _are_ a friend of mine, aren't you?"

She rose then from the rock where she had been sitting and stood there
lance-like, with her chin high and her glance averted. To his question
she offered no response save a short laugh, until the pulses in his
temples began to throb, and once more he closed his eyes as one
instinctively closes them under a wave of physical pain.

Boone had made valiant and chivalrous resolves of silence, but he had
heard a laugh touched with bitterness from lips upon which bitterness
was by nature alien.

"Anne!" he exclaimed in a frightened tone, "what made you laugh like
that?"

Then she wheeled, and her words came torrentially. There was anger and
perplexity and a little scorn in her voice but also a dominant
disappointment.

"I mean, Boone Wellver, that I don't know how to take you. Sometimes I
think you really like me--lots. Not just lumped in with everybody that
you can manage to call a friend. I have no use for lukewarm
friendships--I'd rather have none at all. You seem to be in deadly fear
of spoiling me with your lordly favour."

The boy stood before her with a face that had grown ashen. It seemed
incredible to him that she could so misconstrue his attitude; an
attitude based on hard and studied self-control.

"You think that, do you?" he inquired in a low voice, almost fierce in
its intensity. "Do you think I'm fool enough not to take thankfully what
I can get, without crying for the moon?"

"What has the moon to do with it?" she demanded.

But the vow of silence which Boone had taken with the grave solemnity of
a Trappist monk was no longer a dependable bulwark. The dam had broken.

"Just this," he said soberly. "You're as far out of my reach as the moon
itself. You say I seem afraid to tell you that I really like you. I _am_
afraid. I'm so mortally afraid that I'd sworn I'd never tell you.... God
knows that I couldn't start talking about that without saying the whole
of it. I can't say I like you because I don't like you--I love you--I
love you like--" The rapid flood of words broke off in abrupt silence.
Then the boy raised his hands and let them fall again in a gesture of
despair. "There isn't anything in the world to liken it to," he
declared.

Anne's eyes had widened in astonishment. She said nothing at all, and
Boone waited, steeling himself against the expected sentence of exile.
Nothing less than banishment, he had always told himself, could be the
penalty of such an outburst.

"Now," he continued in a bitter desperation, "I've done what I said I'd
never do. I've foresworn myself and told you that I love you. I might as
well finish ... because I reckon I can guess what _you'll_ say
presently. From the first day when you came here, I've been in love with
you.... I've never seen the evening star rise up over the Kaintuck'
Ridges that I haven't looked at it ... and thought of it as your own
star.... I've never seen it either that I haven't said to myself, 'You
might as well love that star,' and I've tried just to live from hour to
hour when I was with you and not think about the day when you'd be gone
away."

Anne still stood with wide and questioning eyes, but no anger had come
into them yet. Her voice shook a little as she asked, "Just why do you
think of me that way, Boone? Why am I--so far--out of reach?"

"Why!"--his question was an exclamation of amazement. "You've seen that
cabin where I was born, haven't you? You know what your people call my
people, don't you?... 'Poor white trash!' Between you and me there's a
gorge two hundred years wide. Your folks are those that won the West,
and mine are those that fell by the roadside and petered out and dry
rotted."

As he finished the speech which had been such a long one for him, he
stood waiting. Into the unsteady voice with which she put her last
question he had read the reserve of controlled anger--such as a just
judge would seek to hold in abeyance until everything was said. So he
braced himself and tried not to look at her--but he felt that the length
of time she held him in that tight-drawn suspense was a shade
cruel--unintentionally so, of course.

The girl's face told him nothing either, at first, but slowly into the
eyes came that scornful gleam that he had sometimes seen there when he
sought to modify the risk involved in some reckless caprice of her own
suggesting: a disdain for all things calculatedly cautious.

At last she spoke.

"You could say every one of those things about Lincoln," was her
surprising pronunciamento. "You could say most of them about Napoleon or
any big man that won out on his own. When I brought you that little
bust, I thought you'd like it. I thought you had that same kind of a
spirit--and courage."

"But, Anne--"

"I didn't interrupt you," she reminded him. "My idea of a real man is
one who doesn't talk timidly about gorges--whether they're two hundred
years wide, as you call it, or not. Napoleon wouldn't have been let into
a kitchen door at court--so he came in through the front way with a
triumphal arch built over it. _He_ knocked down barriers, and got what
he wanted."

"Then--" his voice rang out suddenly--"then if I can ever get up to
where you stand I won't be 'poor white trash' to you?"

She shook her head and her eyes glowed with invincible spirit. "You'll
be a man--that wasn't fainthearted," she told him honestly. "One that
was brave enough to live his own life as I mean to live my own."

"Anne," he said fervently, "you asked me if I'd miss anything but the
hills. I'll miss _you_--like--all hell--because I love you like that."

They were on a mountain top, with no one to see them. They were almost
children and inexperienced. They thought that they could lay down their
plans and build their lives in accordance, with no deflection of time or
circumstance. A few moments later they stood flushed with the
intoxication of that miracle that makes other miracles pallid. The
girl's breath came fast and her cheeks were pinkly flushed. The boy's
heart hammered, and the leagues of outspread landscape seemed a reeling,
whirling but ecstatically beautiful confusion. Their eyes held in a
silent caress, and for them both all subsequent things were to be dated
from that moment when he had impulsively taken her in his arms and she
had returned his first kiss.




CHAPTER XIX


General Basil Prince sat in his law office one murky December morning of
the year 1903. It was an office which bespoke the attorney of the older
generation, and about it hung the air of an unadorned workship. If one
compared it with the room in the same building where young Morgan
Wallifarro worked at a flat-topped mahogany table, one found the
difference between Spartan simplicity and sybarite elegance. But over
one book case hung an ancient and battered cavalry sword, a relic of the
days when the General had ridden with the "wizards of the saddle and the
sabre."

Just now he was, for the second time, reading a letter which seemed to
hold for him a peculiar interest.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Dear General," it ran:

"Your invitation to come to Louisville and meet at your table that
coterie of intimates of whom you have so often spoken is one that tempts
me strongly--and yet I must decline.

"You know that my name is not McCalloway--and you do not know what it
is. I think I made myself clear on that subject when you waived the
circumstance that I am a person living in hermitage, because my life has
not escaped clouding. You generously accepted my unsupported statement
that no actual guilt tarnishes the name which I no longer use--yet
despite my eagerness to know those friends of yours, those gentlemen who
appeal so strongly to my imagination and admiration, I could not, in
justice to you or to myself, permit you to foist me on them under an
assumed name. I have resolved upon retirement and must stand to my
resolution. The discovery of my actual identity would be painful to me
and social life might endanger that.

"I'll not deny that in the loneliness here, particularly when the boy is
absent, there are times when, for the dinner conversation of gentlemen
and ladies, I would almost pawn my hope of salvation. There are other
times, and many, when for the feel of a sabre hilt in my hand, for the
command of a brigade, or even a regiment, I would almost offer my blade
for hire--almost but not quite.

"I must, however, content myself with my experiment; my wolf-cub.

"You write of my kindness to him, but my dear General, it is the other
way about. It is he who has made my hermitage endurable, and filled in
the empty spaces of my life. My fantastic idea of making him the
American who starts the pioneer and ends the modern, begins to assume
the colour of plausibility.

"I now look forward with something like dread to the time when he must
go out into a wider world. For then I cannot follow him. I shall have
reached the end of my tutorship. I do not think I can then endure this
place without him--but there are others as secluded.

"But my dear General, the very cordial tone of your letters emboldens me
to ask a favour (and it is a large one), in this connection. When he has
finished his course at college I should like to have him read law in
Louisville. That will take him into a new phase of the development I
have planned. He will need strong counsel and true friends there, for he
will still be the pioneer with the rough bark on him, coming into a land
of culture, and, though he will never confess it, he will feel the sting
of class distinctions and financial contrasts.

"There he will see what rapid transitions have left of the old South,
and despite the many changes, there still survives much of its spirit.
Its fragrant bouquet, its fine traditions, are not yet gone. God
willing, I hope he will even go further than that, and later know the
national phases as well as the sectional--but that, of course, lies on
the knees of the gods."

       *       *       *       *       *

General Prince laid down the letter and sat gazing thoughtfully at the
scabbarded sabre on the wall. Then he rose from his chair and went
along the corridors to a suite legended, "Wallifarro, Banks and
Wallifarro." The General paused to smile, for the last name had been
freshly lettered there, and he knew that it meant a hope fulfilled to
his old friend the Colonel. His son's name was on the door, and his son
was in the firm. But it was to the private office of Colonel Tom that he
went, and the Colonel shoved back a volume of decisions to smile his
welcome.

"Tom," began the General, "I have a letter here that I want you to read.
I may be violating a confidence--but I think the writer would trust my
judgment in such a matter."

Tom Wallifarro read the sheets of evenly penned chirography, and as he
handed them back he said musingly:

"Under the circumstances, of course, it would not be fair to ask if you
have any guess as to who McCalloway is--or was. He struck me as a
gentleman of extraordinary interest--He is a man who has known
distinction."

"That's why I came in this morning, Tom. I want you to know him
better--and to co-operate with me, if you will, about the boy. Since the
mountain can't come to Mahomet--"

"We are to go there?" came the understanding response, and Basil Prince
nodded.

"Precisely. I wanted you and one or two others of our friends to go down
there. I had in mind an idea that may be foolish--fantastic, even, for a
lot of old fellows like ourselves--but none the less interesting. I want
to give the chap a dinner in his own house."

Colonel Wallifarro smiled delightedly as he gave his ready sanction to
the plan. "Count me in, General, and call on me whenever you need me."

It was not until January that the surprise party came to pass, and Basil
Prince and Tom Wallifarro had entered into their arrangements with all
the zest of college boys sharing a secret. Out of an idea of simple
beginnings grew elaborations as the matter developed, until there was
indeed a dash of the fantastic in the whole matter, and a touch, too, of
pathos. Because of McCalloway's admission that at times his hunger for
the refinements of life became a positive nostalgia, the plotters
resolved to stage, for that one evening, within the walls of hewn logs,
an environment full of paradox.

Results followed fast. A hamper was filled from the cellars of the
Pendennis Club. Old hams appeared, cured by private recipes that had
become traditions. Napery and silver--even glass--came out of sideboards
to be packed for a strange journey. All these things were consigned long
in advance to Larry Masters at Marlin Town, where railway traffic ended
and "jolt wagon" transportation began. Aunt Judy Fugate, celebrated in
her day and generation as a cook, became an accessory before the fact.
In her house only a "whoop and a holler" distant from that of
McCalloway's, she received, with a bursting importance and a vast
secrecy, a store of supplies smuggled hither far more cautiously than it
had ever been needful to smuggle "blockade licker."

Upon one pivotal point hinged the success of the entire conspiracy.

Larry Masters must persuade McCalloway to visit him for a full day
before the date set, and must go back with him at the proper time. The
transformation of a log house into a banquet hall demands time and
non-interference. But there was no default in Masters's co-operation,
and on the appointed evening McCalloway and Larry rode up to the door of
the house and dismounted. Then the soldier halted by his fence-line and
spoke in a puzzled tone:

"Strange--very strange--that there should be lights burning inside. I've
been away forty-eight hours and more. I dare say Aunt Judy has happened
in. She has a key to the place."

Larry Masters hazarded no explanatory suggestion. The vacuous
expression upon his countenance was, perhaps, a shade overdone, but he
followed his host across the small yard to his door.

On the threshold McCalloway halted again in a paralysed bewilderment.
Perhaps he doubted his own sanity for a moment, because of what he saw
within.

The centre of the room was filled with a table, not rough, as was his
own, but snowy with damask, and asparkle with glass and silver, under
the softened light of many candles. So the householder stood bewildered,
pressing a hand against his forehead, and as he did so several gentlemen
rose from chairs before his own blazing hearth. When they turned to
greet him, he noticed, with bewilderment, that they were all in evening
dress.

Basil Prince came smilingly around the table with an outstretched hand,
and an enlightening voice. "Since I am the original conspirator, sir, I
think I ought to explain. We are a few Mahomets who have come to the
mountain. Our designs upon you embrace nothing more hostile than a
dinner party."

For a moment Victor McCalloway, for years now a recluse with itching
memories of a life that had been athrob with action and vivid with
colour, stood seeking to command his voice. His throat worked
spasmodically, and into the eyes that had on occasion been flint-hard
with sternness came a mist that he could not deny. He sought to welcome
them--and failed. Rarely had he been so profoundly touched, and all he
succeeded in putting into words, and that in an unnatural voice, was:
"Gentlemen--you must pardon me--if I fail to receive you properly--I
have no evening clothes."

But their laughter broke the tension, and while he shook hands around,
thinking what difficulties must of necessity have been met in this
gracious display of cordiality, Moses, the negro butler from the
Wallifarro household, appeared from the kitchen door, bearing a tray of
cocktails.

It was not until after two keenly effervescent hours of talk, laughter
and dining, when the cigars had been lighted, that Prince came to his
feet.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am not going to pledge the man who is both our
host and guest of honour, because I prefer to propose a sentiment we can
all drink, standing, including himself--I give you the success of his
gallant experiment--the Boy--Boone Wellver--'A toast to the
native-born!'"

They rose amid the sound of chairs scraping back, and once more
McCalloway felt the contraction of his throat and the dimness in his
eyes.

"Gentlemen," he stammered, "I am grateful.... I think the boy is going
to be an American--not only a hillsman--not even only a Kentuckian or a
Southerner--though God knows either would be a proud enough title--but
an American who blends and fuses these fine elements. That, at all
events, is my hope and effort."

He sat down hurriedly--and yet in other days he had spoken with polished
ease at tables where distinguished men and women were his fellow
diners--and it was then that Tom Wallifarro rose.

"This was not to be a formal affair of set speeches," he announced in a
conversational tone, "but there is one more sentiment without which we
would rise leaving the essential thing unsaid. Some one has called these
mountain folk our 'contemporary ancestors'--men of the past living in
our day. This lad is, in that sense, of an older age. When he goes into
the world, he will need such advisors of the newer age as he has had
here in Mr. McCalloway--or at least pale imitations of Mr. McCalloway,
whose place no one can fill. We are here this evening for two pleasant
purposes. To dine with our friend, who could not come to us, and to
found an informal order. The Boone who actually lived two centuries ago
was the godfather of Kentucky.

"Gentlemen, I give you the order of our own founding tonight: The
Godfathers of Boone."

It was of course by coincidence, only, that the climax of that evening's
gathering should have been capped as it was. Probability would have
brought the last guests, whom no one there had expected, at any other
time, but perhaps the threads of destiny do not after all run haphazard.
Possibly it could only be into such a fantastic pattern that they could
ever have been woven.

At all events it was that night they came: the two short men, with
narrow eyes, set in swarthy Oriental faces--such as those hills had not
before seen.

There was a shout from the night; the customary mountain voice raised
from afar as the guide who had brought these visitors halloed from the
roadway: "I'm Omer Maggard ... an' I'm guidin' a couple of outlanders,
thet wants ter see ye."

McCalloway went to the door and opened it, and because it was late the
guide turned back without crossing the threshold.

But the two men who had employed his services to conduct them through
the night and along the thicketed roads entered gravely, and though they
too must have felt the irrational contrasts of the picture there, their
inscrutable almond eyes manifested no surprise.

They were Japanese, and, as both bowed from the hips, one inquired in
unimpeachable English, "You are the Honourable Victor McCalloway?"

If the former soldier had found it impossible to keep the mists of
emotion out of his pupils a little while ago, such was no longer the
case. His glance was now as stern in its inquisitorial questioning as
steel. It was not necessary that these gentlemen should state their
mission, to inform him that their coming carried a threat for his
incognito, but he answered evenly:

"I am so called."

"I have the honour to present the Count Oku ... and myself Itokai."




CHAPTER XX


When general introductions had followed, the Count Itokai smiled, with a
flash of white and strong teeth.

"We have come to present a certain matter to you--but we find you
entertaining guests--so the business can wait."

The courtesy of manner and the precision of inflection had the
perfection of Japanese officialdom, but McCalloway's response succeeded
in blending with an equal politeness a note of unmistakable aloofness.

"As you wish, gentlemen, though there is no matter concerning myself
which might not be discussed in the presence of these friends."

"Assuredly!" This time it was Oku who spoke. "It is unfortunate that
we are not at liberty to be more outspoken. The matter is one of
certain ... information ... which we hope you can give us ... and
which is official: not personal with ourselves."

Masters made the move. "I'll pop out and see that your horses are
stabled. Gentlemen--" he turned to the others--"it's a fine frosty
night ... shall we finish our cigars in the open air?"

With deprecating apology the two newcomers watched them go, and when the
place had been vacated save for the three, McCalloway turned and bowed
his guests to chairs before the hearth.

It had been a strange picture before. It was stranger now, augmented by
these two squat figures with dark faces, high cheek bones, and wiry
black hair: Japanese diplomats sitting before a Cumberland mountain
hearth-stone.

"Excellency," began the Count Oku promptly, "I am authorized by my
government to proffer you a commission upon the staff of the army of
Nippon."

McCalloway's eyes narrowed. He had not seated himself but had preferred
to remain non-committally standing, and now his figure stiffened and his
lips set themselves.

"Count," he said almost curtly, "before we talk at all, you must be
candid with me. If I choose to live in solitude, any intrusion upon that
privacy should be with my consent. May I inquire how the name of Victor
McCalloway has chanced to become known and of interest to the Government
of Japan?"

The diplomatic agent bowed.

"The question is in point, Excellency. Unhappily I am unable to answer
it. What is known to my government I cannot say. I can only relate what
has been delegated to me."

"I take it you can, at least, do that."

"We have been told that a gentleman who for reasons of his own prefers
to use the name of Victor McCalloway, had formerly a title more widely
known."

This time McCalloway's voice was sharply edged.

"However that may be, I have now only one name, Victor McCalloway."

"That we entirely understand. Some few years back my government, in an
effort to encourage Europeanizing the Chinese army, attempted to enlist
your honourable services. Is that not true?"

McCalloway nodded but, as he did so, anger blazed hotly in his eyes.

"To know more about a gentleman, in private life, than he cares to
state, constitutes a grave discourtesy, sirs. Whatever activities my
soldiering has included, I have never been a mercenary. I have fought
only under my own flag and my sword is not for hire!"

The Orientals rose and again they bowed, but this time the voice of the
Count Oku dropped away its soft sheath of diplomatic suavity and, though
it remained low of pitch, it carried now a ring of purpose and
positiveness.

"The officer who fights for a cause is not a soldier of fortune,
Excellency. The flag of the Rising Sun has a cause."

"Japan is at peace with the world. Military service can be for a cause
only when it is active."

"Yes, Japan is at peace with the world--now!" The voice came sharply,
almost sibilantly, with the aspirates of the race. "I am authorized to
state to you that service with our high command will none the less be
active--and before many months have passed. I am further authorized to
state to you that the foe will be a traditional enemy of Great Britain:
that our interests will run parallel with those of the British
Empire--If you take service under the Sun flag, Excellency, it will be
against foes of the Cross of St. George."

The two Japanese stood very erect, their beady eyes keenly agleam.
Slowly, and subconsciously, Victor McCalloway too drew his shoulders
back, as though he were reviewing a division. He was hearing the
Russo-Japanese War forecast weeks before it burst like shrapnel on an
astonished world.

"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "you must grant me leisure for thought.
This is a most serious matter."

A half hour later, with cigars glowing, the guests from Japan and the
guests from Louisville sat about the hearth, but on none of the faces
was there any trace of the unusual or of a knowledge of great secrets.

In all truth, Mahomet had come to the mountain.

       *       *       *       *       *

Boone had not long returned from his Christmas vacation. So when he came
into his dormitory room from his classes one afternoon and found his
patron awaiting him there with a grave face, he was somewhat mystified,
until with a soldier's precision McCalloway came to his point.

"My boy," he said, "I have come here to have a very serious talk with
you."

Boone's face, which had flushed into pleasurable surprise at the sight
of his visitor, fell at the gravity of the voice. He guessed at once
that this was the preface to such an announcement as he always dreaded
in secret, and his own words came heavily.

"I reckon you mean--that you aim to--go away."

"I aim to talk to you about going away."

Boone rallied his sinking spirits as he announced with a creditable
counterfeit of cheerfulness, "All right, sir; I'm listening."

For a while the older man talked on. He was sitting in the plain room of
the dormitory--and his gaze was fixed off across the snow-patched
grounds, and the scattered buildings of the university.

He did not often look at the boy, who had grown into his heart so deeply
that the idea of a parting carried a barb for both. He thought that
Boone could discuss this matter with greater ease if the eyes of another
did not lay upon him the necessity of maintaining a stoical
self-repression.

McCalloway for the first time traced out in full detail the plan that he
had conceived for Boone: the fantastic dream of his pilgrimage in one
generation along the transitional road his youthful nation had travelled
since its birth. As he listened, the young man's eyes kindled with
imagination and gratitude difficult to express. He had been, he thought,
ambitious to a fault, but for him his preceptor had been far more
ambitious. The horizons of his aspiration widened under such confidence,
but he could only say brokenly, "You're setting me a mighty big task,
sir. If I can do any part of it, I'll owe it all to you."

"We aren't here to compliment each other, my boy," replied McCalloway
bluntly. "But if I've made a mistake in my judgment, I am not yet
prepared to admit it. You owe me nothing. I was alone, without family,
without ties. I was here with a broken life--and you gave me renewed
interest. But that couldn't have gone on, I think, if you hadn't been in
the main what I thought you--if you hadn't had in you the makings of a
man and a gentleman."

He broke off and cleared his throat loudly.

Boone, too, found the moment a trying one, and he thrust his hands deep
in his trousers pockets and said nothing. The uprights that supported
his life's structure seemed, just then, withdrawn without warning.

"You know, when I was offered service in China, I declined--and you know
why," McCalloway reminded him. "I should do the same thing today, except
that now I think you can stand on your own legs. I take it you no longer
need me in the same sense that you did then--and the call that comes to
me is not an unworthy one."

"I reckon, sir--it's military?"

"It's at least advisory, in the military sense. My boy, it pains me not
to be able to take you into my full confidence--but I can't. I can't
even tell you where I am going."

"You--" the question hung a moment on the next words--"you aim to come
back--sometime?"

"God granting me a safe conclusion, I shall come back ... and the
thought of you will be with me in my absence ... the confidence in
you ... the hope for you."

There was again a long silence, then McCalloway said:

"I came here to discuss it with you. I have declined to give a positive
answer until we could do that."

Boone wheeled, and his head came up. He felt suddenly promoted to the
responsible status of a counsellor. There was now no tremor in his
voice, except the thrill of his young and straightforward courage.

"You say it's not unworthy work, sir. There can't be any question.
You've _got_ to go. If you hesitated, I'd know full well I was spoiling
your life."

Later, side by side, they tramped the muddy turnpikes between the rich
acres of farms where thoroughbreds were foaled and trained.

"I have talked with Colonel Wallifarro," announced the soldier at
length. "Next fall he wants you to come to Louisville and finish reading
law in his office."

But the boy shook his head. Here, confronting a great loneliness, he was
feeling the contrast between the land, whose children called it God's
country, and his own meagre hills, where the creeks bore such names as
Pestilence and Hell-fer-sartain.

"I _couldn't_ go to Louisville, sir. I couldn't pay my board or buy
decent clothes there. I've got that little patch of ground up there and
the cabin on it, though. I'd aimed to go back there--I'll soon be of
age, now--and seek to get elected clerk of the court."

"Why clerk of the court? Why not the legislature?"

The boy grinned.

"The legislature was what I aimed at--until I read the constitution.
About the only job I'm not too young for is the clerkship."

McCalloway nodded.

"I see no reason why you shouldn't make that race, but you'll be a
fitter servant of your people for knowing a bit more of the world. As to
the money, I've arranged that--though you'll have to live frugally.
There will be to your credit, in bank, enough to keep you for a year or
two--and if I shouldn't get back--Colonel Wallifarro has my will. I
want you to live at my house when you're in the mountains--and look
after things--my small personal effects."

But for that plan of financing his future, Boone had a stout refusal,
until the soldier stopped in the road and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"I have never had a son," he said simply. "I have always wanted one.
Will you refuse me?"

It was a very painful day for both of them, but when at last Boone stood
under the railroad shed and saw the man who was his idol wave his hat
from the rear platform, he waved his own in return, and smiled the
twisted smile of stiff lips.

On the ninth of February, as the boy glanced at the morning paper before
he started for his first class, he saw headlines that brought a creep to
his scalp, and the hand that held the paper trembled.

Admiral Togo's fleet was steaming, with decks cleared for action, off
Port Arthur--already a Japanese torpedo-boat flotilla had attacked and
battered the Russian cruisers that crouched like grim watchdogs at the
harbour's entrance--already the gray sea-monsters flying the sun-flag
had ripped out their cannonading challenge to the guns of the coast
batteries!

There had yet been no declaration of war--and the world, which had
wearied of the old story of unsuccessful treaty negotiations, rubbed
astonished eyes to learn that overnight a volcano of war had burst into
eruption--that lava-spilling for which the Empire of Nippon had been
building for a silent but determined decade.

Boone was late for his classes that day--and so distrait and inattentive
that his instructors thought he must be ill. To himself he was saying,
with that ardour that martial tidings bring to young pulses, "Why
couldn't he have taken me along with him?"




CHAPTER XXI


For Boone the approaching summer was no longer a period of zestful
anticipation. During that whole term he had looked eagerly ahead to
those coming months back in the hills, when with the guidance of his
wise friend he should plunge into the wholesome excitement of canvassing
his district.

Now McCalloway was gone. And just before commencement a letter from Anne
brought news that made his heart sink.

     "Father is going home to England for the summer," she said,
     "and that means that I won't get to the hills. I'm heartbroken
     over it, and it isn't just that 'I always miss the hills,'
     either. I do miss them. Every dogwood that I see blooming alone
     in somebody's front yard, every violet in the grass, makes me
     homesick for the places where beauty isn't only sampled but
     runs riot--but there's a more personal note than that."

     "You must climb old Slag-face for me, Boone, and write me all
     about it. If a single tree has blown down, don't fail to tell
     me, dear."

There was also another thing which would cloud his return to Marlin
County. He could, in decency, no longer defer a painful confession to
Happy. So far, chance had fended it off, but now she was back from the
settlement school for good, and he was through college. In justice to
her further silence could not be maintained.

Then May brought the Battle of the Yalu.

First there were only meagre newspaper reports--all that Boone saw
before commencement--and later when the filtration of time brought the
fuller discussions in the magazines, and the world had discovered
General Kuroki, he was in the hills where magazines rarely came.

Upon the wall of General Prince's law office hung a map of the
Manchurian terrain, and each day that devotee of military affairs took
it down, and, with black ink and red ink, marked and remarked its
surface.

On one occasion, when Colonel Wallifarro found him so employed, the two
leaned over, with their heads close, in study of the situation.

"This Kuroki seems to be a man of mystery, General," began Wallifarro.
"And it has set me to speculating. The correspondents hint that he's not
a native Japanese. They tell us that he towers in physical as well as
mental stature above his colleagues."

"I can guess your thought, Tom," smiled General Prince. "And the same
idea occurred to me. You are thinking of the two Japanese agents who
came to the hills--and of McCalloway's sudden departure on a secret
journey. But it's only a romantic assumption. I followed the
Chinese-Japanese War with a close fidelity of detail--and Kuroki, though
less conspicuous than nowadays, was even then prominent."

Tom Wallifarro bit the end from a cigar and lighted it.

"It is none the less to be assumed that McCalloway is over there," he
observed. "Emperors don't send personal messengers half way round the
world to call unimportant men to the colours."

"My own guess is this, Tom," admitted the cavalryman. "McCalloway is on
Kuroki's staff. Presumably he learned all he knew under Dinwiddie--and
this campaign shows the earmarks of a similar scheme of generalship.
Kuropatkin sought to delay the issue of combat, until over the
restricted artery of the Siberian Railway he could augment his numbers
and assume the offensive with a superior force."

"And at the Yalu, Kuroki struck and forced the fight."

"Precisely. He had three divisions lying about Wiju. It was necessary
to cross the Yalu under the guns of Makau, and there we see the first
manifestation of such an audacious stroke as Dinwiddie himself might
have attempted."

Prince was pacing the floor now, talking rapidly, as he had done that
night when, with McCalloway, he discussed Dinwiddie, his military idol.

"Kuroki--I say Kuroki, whether he was the actual impulse or the
figurehead using the genius of a subordinate--threw the Twelfth Division
forward a day in advance of his full force. The feint of a mock attack
was aimed at Antung--and the enemy rose to the bait. One week in advance
the command was given that at daybreak on the first of May the attack
should develop. At many points, shifting currents had altered the
channel and wiped out former possible fords. Pontoons and bridges had to
be built on the spot--anchors even must be forged from scrap-iron--yet
at the precise moment designated in the orders, the Mikado's forces
struck their blow. But wait just a moment, Tom."

General Prince opened a drawer and took out a magazine.

"Let me read you what one correspondent writes: 'At ten-thirty on the
morning of April thirtieth, the duel of the opposing heights began, with
roaring skies and smoking hills. The slopes north of Chinlien-Cheng were
generously timbered that morning. Night found them shrapnel-torn and
naked of verdure.

"'To visualize the field, one must picture a tawny river, island-dotted
and sweeping through a broken country which lifts gradually to the
Manchurian ridges. Behind Tiger Hill and Conical Hill, quiet and chill
in the morning mists, lay the Czar's Third Army.

"'Then were the judgments loosened.' The attack is on now, and the thin
brown lines are moving forward--slowly at first, as they approach the
shallows of the river beyond the bridges and the islands. Those wreaths
of smoke are Zassolich's welcome--from studiously emplaced pieces
raking the challengers--but the challengers are closing their gaps and
gaining momentum--carrying their wounded with them, as they wade
forward. There are those, of course, whom it is impossible to
assist--those who stumble in the shallow water to be snuffed out,
candle-fashion.'"

The General paused to readjust his glasses, and Colonel Wallifarro mused
with eyes fixed on the violet spirals of smoke twisting up from his
cigar end. "Our friend would seem to be playing a man's game, after his
long hermitage."

Prince took up the magazine again.

"'The farther shore is reached under a withering fire. Annihilation
threatens the yellow men--they waver--then comes the order to charge.
For an instant the brown lines shiver and hang hesitant under the sting
of the death-hail--but after that moment they leap forward and sweep
upward. Their momentum gathers to an irresistible onrush, and under it
the defence breaks down. The noises that have raved from earth to
heaven, from horizon to horizon, are dropping from crescendo to
diminuendo. The field pieces of the Czar are being choked into the
muffled growl of despair. Doggedly the Russian is giving back.'"

"Do you suppose, General," inquired Colonel Wallifarro suddenly, "that
McCalloway confided the purpose of his journey to the boy?"

Prince shook his head positively. "I am quite sure that he has confided
it to no one--but I am equally sure that Boone has guessed it by now."

"In that event I think it would tremendously interest him to read that
article."

In the log house, where he had now no companionship, Boone received the
narrative.

The place was very empty. Twilight had come on with its dispiriting
shadows, and Boone lighted a lamp, and since the night was cool he had
also kindled a few logs on the hearth.

For a long while he sat there after reading and rereading the
description of the fight along the Manchurian River. His hands rested on
his knees, and his fingers held the clipping.

On the table a forgotten law book lay open at a chapter on torts, but
the young man's eyes were fixed on the blaze, in whose fitful leapings
he was picturing, "the thunders through the foothills; tufts of fleecy
shrapnel spread along the empty plain"--and in the picture he always saw
one face, dominated by a pair of eyes that could be granite-stern or
soft as mossy waters.

Finally he rose and unlocked a closet from which he reverently took out
a scabbarded sword. Dinwiddie had entrusted that blade to McCalloway,
and McCalloway had in turn entrusted it to him. Out there he was using a
less ornate sabre!

The young mountaineer slipped the blade out of the sheath and once more
read the engraved inscription.

Something rose in his throat, and he gulped it down. He spoke aloud, and
his words sounded unnatural in the empty room.

"The Emperor of China sent for him--and he wouldn't go," said the boy.
"The Emperor of Japan sent for him--and he couldn't refuse. That's the
character of gentleman that's spent years trying to make a man of me."

Suddenly Boone laid the sword on the table and dropped on his knees
beside it, with his hands clasped over the hilt.

"Almighty God," he prayed, "give me the strength to make good--and not
disappoint him."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a heavy hearted young man who presented himself the next night at
the house of Cyrus Spradling, and one who went as a penitent to the
confessional.

Once more the father sat on the porch alone with his twilight pipe, and
once more the skies behind the ridges were high curtains of pale amber.

"Ye're a sight fer sore eyes, boy," declared the old mountaineer
heartily. "An' folks 'lows thet ye aims ter run fer office, too. Wa'al,
I reckon betwixt me an' you, we kin contrive ter make shore of yore
gettin' two votes anyhow. I pledges ye mine fer sartain."

Boone laughed though tears would better have fitted his mood, and the
old fellow chuckled at his own pleasantry.

"I reckon my gal will be out presently," Cyrus went on. "I've done
concluded thet ye war p'int-blank right in arguing that schoolin'
wouldn't harm her none."

But when the girl came out, the man went in and left them, as he always
did, and though the plucking of banjos within told of the family full
gathered, none of the other members interrupted the presumed courtship
which was so cordially approved.

Happy stood for a moment in the doorway against a lamplit background,
and Boone acknowledged to himself that she had an undeniable beauty and
that she carried herself with the simple grace of a slender poplar. She
was, he told himself with unsparing self-accusation, in every way
worthier than he, for she had fought her battles without aid, and now
she stood there smiling on him confidently out of dark eyes that made no
effort to render their welcome coy with provocative concealment.

"Howdy, Boone," she said in a voice of soft and musical cadences. "It's
been a long time since I've seen you."

"Yes," he answered with a painful sort of slowness, "but now that we're
both through school and back home to stay, I reckon we'll see each other
oftener. Are you glad to come back, Happy?"

For a few moments the girl looked at him in the faint glow that came
through the door, without response. It was as though her answer must
depend on what she read in his face, and there was not light enough for
its reading.

"I don't quite know, myself, Boone," she said hesitantly at last. "I've
sort of been studying over it. How about you?"

When she had settled into a chair, he took a seat at her feet with his
back against one of the posts of the porch, and replied with an
assumption of certainty that he did not feel, "A feller's bound to be
glad to get back to his own folks."

"After I'd been down there the first time and came back here again, _I_
wasn't glad," was her candid rejoinder. "I felt like I just couldn't
bear it. Over there things were all clean, and folks paid some attention
to qualities--only they didn't call 'em that. They say 'manners' at the
school. Here it seemed like I'd come home to a human pig-sty--and I was
plumb ashamed of my own folks. When I looked ahead and saw a lifetime of
that--it seemed to me that I'd rather kill myself than go on with it."

"You say"--Boone made the inquiry gravely--"that you felt like that at
first. How do you feel now?"

"Later on I got to feelin' ashamed of myself, instead of my people," she
replied. "I got to seein' that I was faultin' them for not having had
the chance they were slavin' to give me."

Boone bent attentively forward but he said nothing, and she went on.

"You know as well as I do that, so far, there aren't many people here
that have much use for changes, but there are some few. The ground that
the school sets on was given by an old man that didn't have much else to
give. I remember right well what he said in the letter he wrote. It's
printed in their catalogue: 'I don't look after wealth for them, but I
want all young-uns taught to live right. I have heart and cravin' that
our people may grow better, and I deed my land to a school as long as
the Constitution of the United States stands.' I reckon that's the right
spirit, Boone."




CHAPTER XXII


Still the boy sat silent, with his chin in his hand, as sits the
self-torturing figure of Rodin's bronze "Penseur"--the attitude of
thought which kills peace. Boone understood that unless Happy found a
man who shared with her that idea of keeping the torch lit in the midst
of darkness, her life might benefit others, but for herself it would be
a distressing failure.

Happy had fancied him, that he realized, but he had thought of it as a
phase through which she would pass with only such a scar as ephemeral
affairs leave--one of quick healing.

Now the fuller significance was clear. He knew that she faced a life
which her very efforts at betterment would make unspeakably bleak,
unless she found companionship. He saw that to him she looked for
release from that wretched alternative--and he had come to tell her
that, beyond a deep and sincere friendship, he had nothing to offer her.
Such an announcement, though truthfulness requires it, is harder for
being deferred.

Words seemed elusive and unmanageable as he made his beginning. "I'm
right glad that we are neighbours again, Happy," he told her. "I'm not
much to brag on--but I set a value on the same things you do--and I
reckon that means a good deal to--" He paused a moment, and added
clumsily, "to friendships."

Perhaps it was the word itself, or perhaps, and that is likelier, it was
the light and unconscious stress with which Boone spoke it that told her
without fuller explanation what he had come to confess. Two syllables
brought her face to face with revelation, and all else he might say
would be only redundancy. Already she had feared it at times when she
lay wakeful in her bed.

From that day when he had called her "Rebekkah at the Well," she had
been in love with him. She had not awakened to any hot ambition until
she had been fired with the incentive of paralleling his own educational
course. Now if he were not to be in her life she had only developed
herself out of her natural setting into a doom of miserable discontent.

It had always seemed as rational an assumption that their futures should
merge as that the only pair of falcons in a forest full of jack-daws
should mate.

Now he spoke of friendships!

Yet the girl, though stunned with bitter disappointment, was not wholly
astonished.

Topics of gossip are rare enough to be made much of in the hills, and
the neighbours had not failed to intimate in her hearing that when she
was away her "beau" had been sitting devotedly at other feet; but Happy
had smiled tranquilly upon her informants. "Boone would be right apt to
be charitable to a stranger," she had said, giving them none of the
satisfaction of seeing the thorn rankle, which is not to say that she
did not feel the sting. She had found false security in the thought that
Boone, even if he felt Anne's allurement, would be too sensible to raise
his eyes to her as a possibility since their worlds were not only
different but veritable antipodes of circumstance. What she had failed
to consider was that the Romeos and Juliets of the world have never
taken thought of what the houses of Montague and Capulet might say.

For a while now she sat very silent, her hands in her lap tightly
clasped and unmoving, but when she spoke her voice was even and soft.

"Thank you, Boone," she said; then after a moment, "Boone, is there
anything you'd like to tell me?"

The young man looked suddenly up at her, and his reply was a question,
too--an awkward and startled one: "What about, Happy--what do you mean?"

"The best thing friends can do--is to listen to what interests--each
other. Sometimes there are things we keep right silent about--in
general, I mean--and yet we get lonesome--for somebody to talk to--about
those things."

There was a pause, and then as Happy explained, the seeming serenity of
her manner was a supreme test of self-effacement which deserved an
accolade for bravery.

"I'd heard it hinted--that you thought a heap of a girl--down below--I
thought maybe you'd like to tell me about her."

How should he know that words so simply spoken in the timbre of calm
naturalness came from a heart that was agonized?

How could he guess that the quiet figure sitting in the low chair was
suffering inexpressible pain, or that the eyes that looked out through
half-closed lids seemed to see a world of rocking hills, black under
clouds of an unrelieved hopelessness?

One who has come braced for an ordeal and finds that he has reared for
himself a fictitious trouble, can realize in the moment of reaction only
the vast elation of relief.

Had her acting been less perfect, he might have caught a shadowing forth
of the truth--but, as it was, he only felt that shackles had been
knocked from him, and that he stood a free man.

So he made a clean breast of how Anne had become his ideal; how he had
fought that discovery as an absurdly impossible love, and how for that
reason he had never before spoken of his feelings. But he did not, of
course, intimate that it had been Anne herself who had finally given him
a right to hope.

Happy listened in sympathetic silence, and when he was through she said,
still softly:

"Boone, I reckon you've got a right hopeful life-span stretching out
ahead of you--but are you sure you aren't fixing to break your heart,
boy? Don't those folks down there--hold themselves mighty high? Don't
they--sort of--look down on us mountain people?"

It was a fair question, yet one which he could not answer without
betraying Anne's stout assertion of reciprocated feeling. He could only
nod his head and declare, "A feller must take his chances, I reckon."

From the dark forests the whippoorwills called in those plaintive notes
that reach the heart. Down by the creek the frogs boomed out, and
platinum mists lay dreamily between their soft emphases of shadow. Boone
was thinking of the girl whose star hung there in the sky. His heart was
singing in elation, "She loves me and, thank God, Happy understands,
too. My way lies clear!" He was not reflecting just then that princesses
have often spoken as boldly as Anne had done, at sixteen, and have been
forced to submit to other destinies at twenty. The girl was
thinking--but that was her secret, and if she was bravely masking a
tortured heart it should be left inviolate in its secrecy.

The young man in his abstraction did not mark how long the silence held,
and when at last Happy rose he came out of his revery with a start.

"Boone, I'm mighty glad you felt that you could talk to me this way,"
she said. "I want to be a _real_ friend. But I've been working hard
today--and if it won't hurt your feelings, I wish you'd go home now. I'm
dog-tired, and I'd like to go to bed."

He had started away, but the evening had brought such surprises--and
such a lifting of heavy anxiety--that he wanted to mull matters over out
there in the soothing moonlight and the clean sweetness of the air.

So he sat down on a boulder where the shadow blotted him into the night,
and when he had been there for a while he looked up in a fresh
astonishment. Happy had not gone to bed. She was coming now across the
stile, with movements like those of a sleep-walker. Outside on the road
she stood for a while, pallid and wraith-like in the moonlight, looking
in the direction she supposed he had taken, while her fingers plucked at
her dress with distressed little gestures. Then with unsteady steps she
went on to the edge of the highway and leaned against the boll of a tall
poplar. He could see that her eyes were wide and her lips moving. Then
she wheeled and threw her hands, with outspread fingers, against the
cool bark above her head, leaning there as a child might lean on a
mother's bosom, and the sobs that shook her slender body came to him
across the short interval of distance.

Boone went over to her with hurried strides, and when she felt his hands
on her shoulders she wheeled. Then only did her brave disguise fail her,
and she demanded almost angrily, forgetting her school-taught diction,
"Why didn't ye go home like I told ye? Why does ye hev ter dog me this
fashion, atter I'd done sent ye away?"

"What's the matter, Happy?" he demanded; but he knew now, well enough,
and he was too honest to dissimulate. "I didn't know, Happy," he
pleaded. "I thought you meant it all."

"I did mean hit all--I means thet I wants thet ye should be
happy--only--" Her voice broke there as she added, "--only I've done
always thought of myself as yore gal."

She broke away from him with those words and fled back into the house,
and most of that night Boone tramped the woods.

On the morning after Happy had fled from him, under the spurring of her
discovered secret, she had not been able with all her bravery of effort
to hide from the family about the daybreak breakfast table the traces of
a sleepless and tearful night. To Happy, this morning the murky room
which was both kitchen and dining hall seemed the epitome of sordidness,
with its newspaper-plastered walls and creaking puncheon floor.
Yesterday each depressing detail had been alleviated by the thought that
the future held a promise of release. Contemplating delivery, one can
laugh gaily in a cell, but now the dungeon doors seemed to have been
permanently closed and the key thrown away.

"Happy's done been cryin'," shrilled one of the youngest of the brother
and sister brood--for that was a typical mountain family to which, for
years, each spring had brought its fresh item of humanity. As Cyrus
pithily expressed it, "Thar hain't but only fo'teen of us settin' down
ter eat when everybody's home."

Old Cyrus put a stern quietus on the chorus of questioning elicited by
the proclaiming of his daughter's grief.

"Ef she's been cryin', thet's her own business," he announced. "I reckon
she don't need ter name what hit's erbout every time she laughs or
weeps."

And, such is the value of the patriarchal edict, the tumult was promptly
stilled.

Yet the head of the house, himself, could not so readily dismiss a
realization of the unwonted pallor on cheeks normally soft and rosily
colourful. The eyes were undeniably wretched and deeply ringed. To
himself Cyrus said, "They've jest only done had a lovers' quarrel. Young
folks is bound ter foller fallin' out as well as fallin' in, I reckon."

Neither that day nor the next, however, did the girl "live right up to
her name," and on the following night Boone did not come over to sue for
peace, as a lover should, under such April conditions of sun and storm.

"What does ye reckon's done come over 'em, Maw?" the father eventually
inquired, and the mother shook her perplexed head.

The two of them were alone on the porch just then, save for one of the
youngest children, who was deeply absorbed with the feeding of a small
and crippled lamb from a nursing bottle improvised out of a whiskey
flask.

Slowly the old man's face clouded, until it wore so forebodingly sombre
a look as the wife had not seen upon it since years before when life had
run black. Then, despite all his efforts to "consort peaceful with
mankind," he had been drawn into an enmity with a fatal termination.
Cyrus had on that occasion been warned that he was to be "lay-wayed"
and, as he had taken down his rifle from the wall, his eyes had held
just the same hard and obdurate glint that lingered in them now. The
woman, remembering that time long gone, when her husband had refused to
turn a step aside from his contemplated journey, shuddered a little. She
could not forget how he had been shot out of his saddle and how he had,
while lying wounded in the creek-bed road, punished his assailant with
death. He was wounded now, though not with a bullet this time, and his
scowl said that he would hit back.

"What air hit, Paw?" she demanded, and his reply came in slow but
implacable evenness:

"I've done set a heap of store by Boone Wellver. I've done thought of
him like a son of my own--but ef he's broke my gal's heart--an's she's
got ther look of hit in her eyes--him an' me kain't both go on dwellin'
along ther same creek." He paused a moment there, and in his final words
sounded an even more inflexible ring: "We kain't both go on livin'
hyar--an' I don't aim ter move."

"Paw"--the plea came solicitously from a fear-burdened heart--"we've
just got ter wait an' see."

"I don't aim ter be over-hasty," he reassured her, with a rude sort of
gentleness, "but nuther does I aim ter endure hit--ef so be hit's true."

But that evening at twilight when Boone crossed the stile, if the nod
which greeted him was less cordial than custom had led him to expect, at
least Cyrus spoke no hostile word. The old man was "biding his time,"
and as he rose and knocked the nub of ash out of his pipe-bowl, he
announced curtly, "I'll tell Happy ye're hyar."




CHAPTER XXIII


Boone had stood for a moment in the lighted door, and in that interval
the shrewd old eyes of Cyrus Spradling had told him that the boy too had
known sleeplessness and that the clear-chiselled features bore
unaccustomed lines of misery.

If they had both suffered equally, reasoned the rude philosopher, it
augured a quarrel not wholly or guiltily one-sided.

So a few minutes later he watched them walking away together toward the
creek bed, where the voice of the water trickled and the moonlight lay
in a dreamy lake of silver.

"I reckon," he reassured himself, "they'll fix matters up ternight.
Hit's a right happy moon for lovers ter mend th'ar quarrels by."

"Happy," began Boone, with moisture-beaded temples, when they had
reached a spot remote enough to assure their being undisturbed, "I
reckon I don't need to tell you that I haven't slept much since I saw
you. I haven't been able to do anything at all except--just think about
it."

"I've thought about it--a good deal--too," was her simple response, and
Boone forced himself on, rowelling his lagging speech with a determined
will power.

"I see now--that I didn't act like a man. I ought to have told you long
ago--that I--that my heart was just burning up--about Anne."

"I reckon I ought to have guessed it.... I'd heard hints."

"It seemed a slavish hard thing to write," he confessed heavily. "I
tried it--more than once--but when I read it over it sounded so
different from what I meant to say that--" There he paused, and even had
she been inclined to visit upon him the maximum instead of the minimum
of blame, there was no escaping his sincerity or the depth of his
contrition. "That, until I saw you--night before last--I didn't have any
true idea--how much you cared."

"I didn't aim that you ever should--have any idea."

"Happy," he rose and with the blood receding from his skin looked down
at her, as she sat there in the moonlight, "Happy, it seems like I never
knew you--really--until now."

She was, in her quietly borne distress, an appealing picture, and the
hands that lay in her lap had the unmoving stillness of wax--or death.

It had to be said, so he went on. "I never realized before now how fine
you are--or how much too good you are for me. I've come over here
tonight to ask you to marry me--if it ain't too late."

The girl flinched as if she had been struck. Not even for a moment did
her eagerness betray her into the delusion that this proposal was
anything other than a merciful effort to soothe a hurt for which he felt
himself blamable.

Just as she had meant to keep from him the extent of her heart's
bruising, so he was seeking now to make amends at the cost of all his
future happiness. Having blundered, he was tendering what payment lay in
possibility.

"No, Boone," she said firmly. "We'd both live in hell for always--unless
we loved each other--so much that nothin' else counted."

"I've got to be honest," he miserably admitted. "It wouldn't be fair to
you not to be. I've got to go on loving her--while there's life in me, I
reckon--loving her above all the world. But she's young--and there'll be
lots of men of her own kind courtin' her. I reckon"--those were hard
words to say, but he said them--"I reckon you had the right of it when
you said I was fixin' to break my heart anyhow. They won't ever let her
marry me."

It did not seem to him that it would help matters to explain that even
now he felt disloyal to his whole religion of love, and that he had
asked her only because he realized that no other man here could bring
Happy's life to fulfilment, while Anne could only step down to him in
condescension.

The decision which he had reached after tossing in a fevered delirium of
spirit lacked sanity. From no point of view would it conform to the
gauge of soundness. In giving up Anne, when Anne had told him he might
hope, he had construed all the sacrifice as his own. As to Anne's rights
in the matter, he was blinded by the over-modest conviction that she was
giving all and he taking all and that she could never _need_ him.

He would in later years have reasoned differently--but he had been
absorbing too fast to digest thoroughly, and the concepts of his
new-found chivalry had become a distorted quixoticism. He meant it only
for self-effacing fairness--and it was of course unfairness to himself,
to Anne, and even to Happy. But she divined his unconfessed thought with
the certitude of intuition.

"Boone," she told him, as she rose and laid a tremulous hand on his arm,
"you've done tried as hard as a man can to make the best of a bad
business. It wasn't anybody's fault that things fell out this way. It
just came to pass. I'm going to try to teach some of the right young
children over at the school next autumn--so what little I've learned
won't be wasted, after all. I want that we shall go on being good
friends--but just for a little while we'd better not see very much of
each other. It hurts too bad."

That was an unshakeable determination, and when, in obedience to the
edict, Boone had not come back for a week, Cyrus asked his daughter
briefly:

"When do you an' Boone aim ter be wedded?"

The girl flinched again, but her voice was steady as she replied:

"We--don't--never aim to be."

The old fellow's features stiffened into the stern indignation of an
affronted Indian chief. He took the pipe from between his teeth as he
set his shoulders, and that baleful light, that had come rarely in a
life-span, returned to his eyes.

"Ef he don't aim ter wed with ye," came the slow pronouncement, "thar
hain't no fashion he kin escape an accountin' with me."

For a moment Happy did not speak. It seemed to her that the raising of
such an issue was the one thing which she lacked present strength to
face; but after a little she replied, with a resolution no less
iron-strong because the voice was gentle:

"Unless ye wants ter break my heart fer all time--ye must give me your
pledge to--keep hands off."

After a moment she added, almost in a whisper:

"He's asked me--and I've refused to marry him."

"You--refused him?" The voice was incredulous. "Why, gal, everybody
knows ye've always thought he was a piece of the moon."

"I still think so," she made gallant response. "But I wants ye to--jest
trust me--an' not ask any more questions."

The father sat there stiffly gazing off to the far ridges, and his eyes
were those of a man grief-stricken. Once or twice his raggedly bearded
lips stirred in inarticulate movements, but finally he rose and laid a
hand on her shoulder.

"Little gal," he said in a broken voice, "I reckon I've got ter suffer
ye ter decide fer yoreself--hit's yore business most of all--but I don't
never want him ter speak ter me ergin."

So Boone went out upon the hustings with none of the eager zest of his
anticipations. That district was so solidly one-sided in political
complexion that the November elections were nothing more than
formalities, and the real conflict came to issue in the August
primaries.

But with Boone's announcement as candidate for circuit clerk, old
animosities that had lain long dormant stirred into restive mutterings.
The personnel of the "high court" had been to a considerable extent
dominated by the power of the Carrs and Blairs.

Now with the news that Boone Wellver, a young and "wishful" member of
the Gregory house, meant to seek a place under the teetering clock tower
of the court house, anxieties began to simmer. Into his candidacy the
Carrs read an effort to enhance Gregory power--and they rose in
resistance. Jim Blair, a cousin of Tom Carr, threw down his gauntlet of
challenge and announced himself as a contestant, so that the race began
to assume the old-time cleavage of the feud.

On muleback and on foot, Boone followed up many a narrowing creek bed to
sources where dwelt the "branch-water folk." Here, in animal-like want
and squalor, the crudest of all the uncouth race lived and begot
offspring and died. Here where vacuous-eyed children of an inbred strain
stared out from the doors of crumbling and windowless shacks, or fled
from a strange face, he campaigned among the illiterate elders and
oftentimes he sickened at what he saw.

Yet these people of yesterday were his people--and they offered him of
their pitiful best even when their ignorance was so incredible that the
name of the divinity was to them only "somethin' a feller cusses
with"--and he felt that his campaign was prospering.

One day, however, when he returned to his own neighbourhood after an
absence across the mountain, he seemed to discover an insidious and
discouraging change in the tide--a shifting of sentiment to an almost
sullen reserve. An intangible resentment against him was in the air.

It was Araminta Gregory who construed the mystery for him. She had heard
all the gossip of the "grannies," which naturally did not come to his
own ears.

"I'm atellin' ye this, Boone, because _somebody_ ought ter forewarn ye,"
she explained. "Thar's a story goin' round about, an' I reckon hit's
hurtin' ye. Somebody hes done spread ther norration thet ye hain't
loyal ter yore own blood no more.--They're tellin' hit abroad thet ye've
done turned yore back on a mountain gal--atter lettin' her 'low ye aimed
ter wed with her." She paused there, but added a moment later: "I reckon
ye wouldn't thank me ter name no names--an', anyhow, ye knows who I
means."

"I know," he said, in a very quiet and deliberate voice. "Please go
on--and, as you say, it ain't needful to call no names."

"These witch-tongued busybodies," concluded the woman, her eyes flaring
into indignation, "is spreadin' hit broadcast thet ye plumb abandoned
thet gal fer a furrin' woman--thet wouldn't skeercely wipe her feet on
ye--ef ye laid down in ther road in front of her!"

Boone's posture grew taut as he listened, and it remained so during the
long-ensuing silence. He could feel a furious hammering in his temples,
and for a little time blood-red spots swam before his eyes. But when at
length he spoke, it was to say only, "I'm beholden to you, Araminty. A
man has need to know what his enemies are sayin'."

It was one of those sub-surface attacks, which Boone could not
discuss--or even seem to recognize without bringing into his political
forensics the names of two women--so he must face the ambushed
accusation of disloyalty without striking back.

In Marlin Town, one court day, Jim Blair was addressing a crowd from the
steps of the court house, and at his side stood Tom Carr, his kinsman.
Boone was there, too, and when that speech ended he meant to take his
place where his rival now stood, and to give back blow for blow. At
first Jim Blair addressed himself to the merits of his own candidacy,
but gradually he swung into criticism of his opponent, while the
opponent himself listened with an amused smile.

"Ther feller that's runnin' erginst me," confessed the orator, "kin talk
ter ye in finer phrases then I kin ever contrive ter git my tongue
around. I reckon when he steps up hyar he'll kinderly dazzle ye with
his almighty gift of speech. I've spent my days right hyar amongst ye in
slavish toil--like ther balance of you boys--hev done. My breeches air
patched--like some o' yourn be. He's done been off ter college, l'arnin'
all manner of fotched-on lore. He's done been consortin' with ther kind
of folks thet don't think no lavish good of us. He's done been gettin'
every sort of notion savin' them notions thet's come down in our blood
from our fore-parents--but when he gits through spell-bindin' I wants ye
all ter remember jest one thing: I'll be plumb satisfied if I gits ther
vote of every man thet w'ars a raggedy shirt tail and hes a patch on the
seat of his pants. _He's_ right welcome ter ther balance."

Boone joined in the salvo of laughter that went up at that sally, but
the mirth died suddenly from his face the next moment, for the applause
had gone to Blair's head like liquor and fired him to a more philippic
vein of oratory.

"I reckon I might counsel this young feller ter heed ther words of
Scripture an' 'tarry a while in Jericho fer his beard ter grow.' Mebby
by thet day an' time he mout l'arn more loyalty fer ther men--yea, an'
fer ther _women_, too--of his own blood and breed!"

Once more the red spots swam before Boone Wellver's eyes, but for a
hard-held moment he kept his lips tight drawn. There was a tense silence
as men held their breath, waiting to see if the old Gregory spirit had
become so tamed as to endure in silence that damning implication; but
before Blair had begun again Boone was confronting him with dangerously
narrow eyes, and their faces inches apart.

Blair was a short, powerfully built man with sandy hair and a red jowl
swelling from a bull-like neck. Standing on the step below, Boone's eyes
were level with his own.

"Either tell these men what you mean," commanded the younger candidate
in a voice that carried its ominous level to the farthest fringe of the
small crowd, "or else tell 'em you lied! Wherein have I been disloyal to
my blood?"

"You'll hav yore chancet ter talk when I gits through here," bellowed
Blair. "Meanwhile, don't break in on me."

"Tell 'em what you mean--or take it back--or fight," repeated Boone,
with the same fierce quietness.

It was no longer possible to ignore the peremptory challenge, and the
speaker was forced into the open. But he was also enraged beyond sanity
and he shouted out to the crowd over the shoulders of the figure that
confronted him, "Ef he fo'ces me ter name ther woman I'll do hit.
Hit's--"

But the name was never uttered. With a lashing out that employed every
ounce of his weight and strength, Boone literally mashed the voice to
silence, and sent the speaker bloody-mouthed down the several steps into
the dust of the square.

Despite his middle-aged bulk, Jim Blair had lost none of his catlike
activity, and while the more timid members of the crowd, in anticipation
of gunplay, hastily sought cover or threw themselves prone to the
ground, he came to his feet with a revolver ready-drawn and fired
point-blank. But, just as of two lightning bolts, one may have a shade
more speed than the other, so Boone was quicker than Jim. He struck up
the murderous hand, and the two candidates grappled. An instant later,
Boone stood once more over a prostrate figure, that was this time slower
in recovering its feet. Wellver broke the pistol and emptied it of its
cartridges, then contemptuously he threw it down beside its owner in the
dust of the court house yard.

But as he turned, Tom Carr was standing motionless at arm's length away,
and Boone was looking into Tom's levelled revolver.

"Ye hain't quite done with this matter yet," snarled that partisan, as
his eyes snapped malignantly. "Ye've still got me ter reckon with. Throw
up them hands, afore I kills ye!"

Boone did not throw them up. Instead, he crossed them on his breast and
remained looking steadily into the passionate face of the black-haired
leader of Asa's enemies.

"Shoot when you get ready, Tom; I haven't got a gun on me," he said
calmly. "But if you shoot--you'll be breaking the truce--that you
pledged your men to, when you and Asa shook hands. If the war breaks out
afresh, today, it will be your doing." Other hands now were fondling
weapons out there in front of the two; men who were mixed between
Gregory and Carr sympathies and who were rapidly filtering themselves
out of a conglomerate mass into two sharply defined groups.

"Hain't ye a'ready done bust thet truce--jest now?" demanded Tom, and
Boone shook his head.

Again there was a purposeful ring in his voice.

"No, by God--I handled a liar--like he ought to be handled--and if there
are any Gregories out there that wouldn't do the same--I hope they'll
line up with _you_!"




CHAPTER XXIV


Slowly and grudgingly Tom sheathed his weapon. He knew that to fire on
an unarmed man in the tensely overwrought gathering would mean wholesale
blood-letting. Black looks told of a tempest brewing; so, with a surly
nod, he stepped back and helped Jim Blair to his place again. Blair,
dust covered and bruised, with a dribble of blood still trickling from
his mashed lip, made an effort to complete his speech which ended in
anticlimax. To Boone he said nothing more, and to the interrupted
subject he gave no further mention.

That episode had rather strengthened than hurt Wellver's prospects, and
he would have gone away somewhat appeased of temper had he not met Cyrus
Spradling face-to-face in the court house yard, and halted, with a
mistaken impulse of courtesy, to speak to him.

But the old friend, who had become the new enemy, looked him balefully
in the eye and to the words of civil greeting gave back a bitter
response: "I don't want ye ter speak ter me--never ergin," he declared.
"But I'm glad I met up with ye this oncet, though. I promised ye my vote
one day--an' I'm not a man thet breaks a pledge. I kain't vote fer ye,
now, with a clean conscience, though, and I wants ye ter give me back
thet promise."

Boone knew without delusion that this public repudiation of him by the
neighbour who had expected to be his father-in-law had sealed his doom.
He knew that all men would reason, as he had done, that Cyrus would give
no corroboration to belittling gossip concerning his daughter, unless
the wound were deep beyond healing and the resentment righteous beyond
concealment.

"Of course," responded the young candidate gravely, "I give back your
promise. I don't want any vote that isn't a willing one." But he mounted
his horse with a sickened heart, and it was no surprise to him, when the
results of the primaries were tallied, to find that he was not only a
beaten man but so badly beaten that, as one commiserating friend
mournfully observed to him, "Ye mout jest as well hev run on ther
demmycrat ticket."

Boone went back to McCalloway's house that afternoon and sat uncomforted
for hours before the dead hearth.

His eyes went to the closet wherein was locked the sword which Victor
McCalloway had entrusted to his keeping, but he did not take it out. In
the black dejection of his mood he seemed to himself to have no business
with a blade that gallant hands had wielded. He could see only that he
had messed things and proven recreant to the strong faith of a
chivalrous gentleman and the love of two girls.

On the mantle-shelf was a small bust of Napoleon Bonaparte in
marble--the trifle that Anne had brought across the "ocean-sea" to be an
altar-effigy in his conquest of life! Boone looked at it, and laughed
bitterly.

"That's my pattern--Napoleon!" he said, under his breath. "I'm a right
fine and handsome imitation of _him_. The first fight I get into is my
Waterloo!"

He met Happy in the road a few days later, and she stopped to say that
she was sorry. She had heard, of course, of how decisively he had been
beaten, but he drew a tepid solace from reading in her eyes that she did
not know the part her father had played in his undoing. He hoped that
she would never learn of it.

It was early in September when Boone set the log house in order, nailed
up its windows and put a padlock on the door. He carried the key over to
Aunt Judy's, and then on his return he sat silently on the fence gazing
at its square front for a long while in the twilight.

Before him lay new battles in the first large city he had yet seen--a
city which until now he had seen only once when he went there to visit
its jail. But his preternaturally solemn face at length brightened.
Anne was there, and Colonel Wallifarro had said, "A warm welcome awaits
you."

In due course Boone presented himself at the office door in Louisville
with the three names etched upon its frosted glass, and was conducted by
a somewhat supercilious attendant to the Colonel's sanctum.

The Colonel came promptly from his chair with an outstretched hand.

"Well, my boy," he exclaimed heartily, "I'm right glad to see you."

Morgan sat across the desk from his father. Some matter of consultation
had brought him there, and the fact that the Colonel had permitted young
Wellver's arrival to interrupt it annoyed him.

"So you lost your race up there, didn't you?" Colonel Wallifarro
laughed. "I wouldn't take it too seriously if I were you. After all,
it's not the only campaign you'll ever make."

But the eyes of the young mountaineer held the sombreness of his
humourless race. "Mr. McCalloway was right ambitious for me, sir," he
said. "I hate to have to tell him--that the first fight I ever went into
was a--Waterloo."

"Still, my boy, it's better to have your Waterloo first and your
Austerlitz later--but I know General Prince will want to see you." The
lawyer rang a bell and said to the answering boy: "Tell General Prince
that Mr. Boone Wellver is in my office."

As they sat waiting, Boone inquired: "How is Anne--Miss Masters?"

At the mention of the name, Morgan bridled a little, and cast upon him a
glance of disapproving scrutiny, but the Colonel, still glancing at the
memorandum which he held, replied with no such taint of manner, "Anne's
taking a year at college by way of finishing up. I guess you'll miss her
after being her guide, counsellor and friend down there in Marlin."

"Yes, sir, I'll miss her."

So he wouldn't even see Anne! Suddenly the city seemed to Boone Wellver
a very stifling, unfriendly and inhuman sort of place in which to live.

       *       *       *       *       *

The new law student could have found no more gracious sponsor or learned
savant than was Colonel Tom Wallifarro. He could have found no finer
example of the Old South--which was now the New South as well; but one
friend, though he be a peerless one, does not rob a new and strange
world of its loneliness.

At college, if a boy had sneered, Boone could resent the slur and offer
battle; but here there was no discourtesy upon which to seize--only the
bleaker and more intangible thing of difference between himself and
others--that he himself felt and which he knew others were seeking to
conceal--until politeness became a more trying punishment than affront.

He began to feel with a secret sensitiveness contrasts of clothes and
manners.

Morgan was consistently polite--but it was a detached politeness which
often made Boone's blood quicken to the impulse of belligerent heat.
Morgan palpably meant to ignore him with a disdain masked in the
habiliments of courtesy. When Boone went reluctantly to dine at Colonel
Wallifarro's home he felt himself a barbarian among cultivated
people--though that feeling sprang entirely from the new sensitiveness.
As a matter of fact, he bore himself with a self-possessed dignity which
Colonel Wallifarro later characterized as "the conduct of a gentleman
reduced to its simplest and most natural terms."

But for the most part of that first winter in town his life, outside the
office, was the life of the boarding house in downtown Third Street; the
life of slovenly but highly respectable women with a penchant for cheap
gossip; of bickerings overheard through division walls; of disappointed
men who should, they were assured, if life stood on all fours with
justice, be dwelling in their own houses. In short, it was the dreary
existence of unalleviated obscurity.

But to Boone it was something else. In his third-floor room was a window
and a gas jet.

The window looked across to another world where, behind a fine old
sycamore that took on alluring colour of bole and bark and leaf, stood a
club through whose colonial doors men like Morgan Wallifarro went in and
out.

At night too that mean room was to him sanctuary, for then there was the
gas jet, and the gas jet stood, to a cabin-bred boy, for adventuring
into all the world of literature of which McCalloway had talked.

Boone had the list written down, and the public library had the books.

So while the couple in the next room debated the question of separation
and divorce, their voices carrying stridently through lath and plaster,
Boone was ranging the world with Darwin, with Suetonius and his "Lives
of the Caesars," with the whole bright-panoplied crew: Plutarch,
Thackeray, Dumas, Stevenson, Macaulay, and Kipling.

Then, too, there were visits to the jail where a kinsman lay in durance.
But when summer came he heaved a sigh of vast relief.

As the train took him back through flat beargrass and swelling
bluegrass, through the beginnings of the hills, where he saw the first
log booms in the rivers--his heart seemed to expand and his lungs to
broaden out and drink deep where they had been only sipping before.

Dutifully and promptly upon his arrival at the McCalloway cabin, Boone
went over to see Happy, and as he drew near, for all the assurance of a
courage, by no means brittle, he halted in the road and braced himself
before he crossed the stile.

To go there was something of an ordeal. To stay away, without making the
effort, would leave him guiltily recreant to an old friendship which, on
one side, had been love.

"It's Boone Wellver. Can I come in?" he shouted from the road, and
Cyrus, who looked aged and hunched his shoulders more dejectedly than of
old, rose slowly from his hickory-withed chair on the porch and stood
upright.

At first he did not speak. Indeed, he did not speak at all until he had
come with deliberate steps down to the stile, where he faced the visitor
across the boundary fence, as a defending force might parley over a
frontier. Then raising a long arm and a pointed finger down the road, he
spoke the one word, "Begone!"

"I came to see Happy," said the visitor steadily. "I don't think she is
nursing any grudge."

"No," the old fellow's eyes flashed dangerously; "women folks kin be too
damn fergivin', I reckon. Hit war because she exacted a pledge from me
to keep hands off thet I ever let matters slide in ther first place. I
don't know what come ter pass. She hain't nuver told me--but I knows you
broke her heart some fashion. Many a mountain war has done been started
fer less."

Boone straightened a little and his chin came up, but still there was no
resentment in his voice:

"Then I can't see your daughter--at your house? Will you tell her that I
sought to?"

In a hard voice Cyrus answered: "No--ef she war hyar I wouldn't give her
no message from ye whatsoever--but since she ain't hyar thet don't make
no great differ."

"Where is she?"

"Thet's her business--and mine. Hit hain't none o' yourn--. An' now,
begone!"

Boone turned on his heel and strode away, but it was only from other
neighbours that he learned that a second school, similar to the one
which the girl herself had attended, was being started some forty miles
away in a district that had heard of the first, and had sent out the
cry, "Come over into Macedonia and help us!"

To that school Happy had gone--this time as a teacher of the younger
children.

But before the summer ended Anne came to Marlin Town, and though she
had been at an Eastern college Boone found no change in her save that
her beauty seemed more radiant and her graciousness more winning. He had
been a trifle afraid of meeting her, this time, because he felt more
keenly than in the past how many allowances her indulgence must make for
his crudities.

But Anne knew many men who had the superficial qualities that Boone
coveted--and little else. What she did see in her old playmate was a
fellow superbly fitted for companionship out under the broad skies, and,
above all, she loved the open places and the freedom of the hills where
the eagles nested in their high eyries.

"I love it all," she exclaimed one day, with an outsweep of her arms. "I
believe that somewhere back in my family tree there must have been an
unaccounted-for gipsy. I've not been here so very much, and yet I always
think of coming here as of going home."

"God never made any other country just like it, I reckon," Boone
answered gravely. "It's fierce and lawless, but it's honest and
generous, too. Men kill here, but they don't steal. They are poor, but
they never turn the stranger away. It's strange, though, that you should
love it so. It's very different from all you've known down there."

"I guess there's a wild streak in me, too," she laughed. "Those virtues
you speak of are the ones I like best. When I go home I feel like a
canary hopping back into its cage, after a little freedom."




CHAPTER XXV


When he went back to Louisville, early in September, Boone found the
office of Colonel Wallifarro humming with a suppressed excitement,
tinctured with indignation. A municipal campaign was on, and on the day
of his arrival General Prince and Colonel Wallifarro were deep in its
discussion. Seeing the earnest gleam in their eyes, Boone wondered a
little at the contrasting indifference in Morgan's manner whenever the
political topic was broached. He fancied that the Colonel himself was
disappointed, and one morning that gentleman said with a tone as nearly
bordering on rebuke as Boone had ever heard him employ with his son,
"Morgan, I don't understand how you can remain so unmoved by a situation
which makes an imperative demand upon a man's sense of citizenship."

Morgan laughed. "Father," he said easily, "it is law that interests
me--not politics. Take it all in all, I don't think it's a very clean
business."

The elder man studied his son thoughtfully for a space, and then he said
quietly, "General Prince and myself take a different view. We think that
at certain times--like the present--citizenship may mean a call to the
colours.... A failure to respond to such a summons seems to me a
surrender of civil affairs into the hands of avowed despoilers--it seems
almost desertion."

"And yet, sir," smiled the unruffled Morgan, "we rarely see permanent
reforms result from crusading patriots. The ward heelers are usually the
victors, because professionals have the advantage of amateurs."

That same evening Boone stood in a small downtown hall, crowded to the
doors, and heard Colonel Wallifarro lay the stinging lash of
denunciation across the shoulders of the city hall oligarchy. He heard
him charge the police and the fire departments with fostering a
perpetuation of machine abuses in the hands of machine hirelings--of
maintaining a government by intimidation and force, and he too wondered
how, if these charges were tinctured with any colour of truth, a
free-hearted man could stand aside from the combat. He knew too that
Colonel Wallifarro did not indulge in unconsidered libels.

At the door, when the sweltering meeting ended, he noticed close behind
him a man talking to a policeman.

"These here silk-stocking guys buttin' in gives me a pain," announced
that heated critic. "They spill out an earful of this Sunday-school guff
before election day, but when the strong-arm boys get busy they fade
away--believe me, the poor boobs fade out!"

"They ain't practical," agreed the patrolman judicially, and Boone made
a mental note of his badge number. "They think one and one make two--but
we know that if you fix a couple of ones right it's just as easy to make
an eleven with 'em."

Boone and Anne had gone horseback riding one afternoon that September,
and it was a different sort of excursion from those that they had taken
together in the mountains.

The boy was mounted on Colonel Wallifarro's saddle mare, and the girl on
a high-headed four-year-old from the same stable. They were not picking
their way now through tangled trails that led upward, but were cantering
along the level speedway toward the park set on a hill five miles south
of the city. There, at the fringe of a line of knobs, was the only
approach to be found in this table-flat land to the heights which they
both loved.

These hills were only little brothers to the loftier peaks of the
Cumberlands--but the air was full of Indian summer softness, and the
horses under them were full of mettle--and they themselves were in love.

"Boone," demanded the girl, drawing down to a sedate pace, after a
brisk gallop that had lathered the flanks and withers of their mounts,
"what is it that interests you so in this campaign? You can't even vote
here, can you?"

The young man shook his head, and now the smile of humour which had once
been rare upon his face flashed there--because he had reached a point
where his development was beginning to take some account of perspectives
and balances.

"No, I can't vote here--but I can get as bitter over their fights as if
they were my own. I couldn't explain why I'm interested any more than a
hound could tell why he wants to run with the pack. It's just that the
game calls a man."

"Morgan calls politics the sport of the great unwashed," observed Anne.
"He says it gives the lower class a substitute for mental activity and
demagogues a chance to exploit them."

"Does he?" inquired Boone drily.

"Boone"--Anne's eyes filled suddenly with a grave anxiety--"aren't you
really working so hard about all this business--because Uncle Tom is so
deeply involved in it and because you think he's in some danger?"

Boone leaned forward to right a twisted martingale, and when he
straightened up he answered slowly: "I suppose any prominent man in a
hard fight may be in--some danger, but he doesn't seem to take it very
seriously."

"Why," she demanded, "can't men oppose each other in politics without
getting rabid about it?"

"They can--when it's just politics. This is more than that, according to
the way we feel about it."

"Why?"

"Because we charge that the city hall is in the hands of plunderers and
that for tribute they give criminals a free hand in preying on the
citizens."

"And yet," demurred the girl, with puzzled brow, "men like Judge McCabe
laugh at all this 'reform hysteria,' as they call it. They aren't
criminals."

Boone nodded. "There are good men in the city hall, too, but they
belong to the old system that puts the party label above everything
else."

They reached the brow of the hill and stood, their horses breathing
heavily from the climb, looking off across the country where on the far
side other knobs went trooping away to meet the sky.

The bridles hung loose, and the girl sat looking off over leagues of
landscape with grave eyes, while Boone of course looked at her. The
beauty of the green earth and blue sky was to his adoration only a
background for her nearer beauty.

The boy, as he gazed at the delicate modelling of her brow and chin,
wondered what was going on in her thoughts, for there was a wistful
droop at the corner of her lips; yet presently, even while it lingered
there, a twinkle riffled in her eyes.

"I ought to be all wrought up, I suppose, over this crusade on
wickedness," she announced, though with no sense of guilt in her voice,
"and yet if it weren't for my friends being in it, I doubt whether it
would mean much to me--. I've got too much politics of my own to worry
about."

"Politics of your own?" he questioned. "Why, Anne, your monarchy is
absolute; there isn't a voice of anarchy or rebellion anywhere in your
gracious majesty's realm--and your realm is your whole world."

Boone, the bluntly direct of speech, was coming on in the less
straitened domain of the figurative. Anne was teaching him the bright
lessons of gaiety.

She laughed and drew back her shoulders with a mock hauteur. "Our
Viceroy from the Mountain Dominions flatters us. We have, however, the
Mother Dowager--and we approach the age for a suitable alliance."

The two horses were standing so close together that the riders were
almost knee to knee, and just then they had the hilltop to themselves.
The humorous smile that had been on the lips of the young mountaineer
vanished as characters on a slate are obliterated under a sponge. His
cheeks, still bronzed from a mountain summer, went suddenly pale--and
he found nothing to say. What was there to say, he reflected? When the
mentor of a man's common sense has forewarned him that he is being
shadowed by an inevitable spectre, and when that spectre steps suddenly
out into his path, he should not be astonished. Boone only sat there
with features branded under the shock of suffering. His fine young
shoulders, all at once, seemed to lose something of their straight
vigour and to grow tired. His palms rested inertly on his saddle pommel.

But the girl leaned impulsively forward and laid one of her gloved hands
over his. Her voice was a caress--touched with only a pardonable trace
of reproach.

"Do you doubt me, dear?" she asked. "In those politics that you are
playing, I don't see anybody giving up--because there is opposition
ahead."

Then the momentary despair altered in his manner to a grim expression of
determination.

"Forgive me, Anne," he begged. "It's not that I doubt you--or ever could
doubt you; but I know right well what a big word 'suitable' is in your
mother's whole plan of life."

"I know it, too," was her grave response. "Mother's life has been an
unhappy one, and she has given it all to me. That's why I say I have
enough politics of my own. I couldn't bear to break her heart--and her
heart is set on Morgan. So you see it's going to take some doing."

"Anne," he spoke firmly, but a tremour of feeling crept into his voice,
"Mrs. Masters loves you with such a big and single love that it can't
reason. Her own sufferings have come from knowing poverty, after she'd
taken wealth for granted--so that is the one danger she'll guard against
for you. It's an obsession with her. All the other things that might
wreck your life--such as marrying a man you didn't love, for
instance--she merely waves aside. If a man's been scarred with a knife,
he's apt to forget that others have not only been hurt but killed by
bullets. My God, dearest, she'll mean to be kind--but she'll put you on
the rack--she'll take you straight through the torture-chamber, in her
well-meant and cocksure certainty that she can choose for you better
than you can choose for yourself."

"I think, Boone," said Anne, with more than a little pride in the
rich softness of her voice, "you wouldn't hang back, because you had
to come to me through things like that. I'm not afraid of the
torture-chamber--it's just that I want to make it as easy for mother as
I can."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the night before the first day of registration Boone was dining at
Colonel Wallifarro's house. Mrs. Masters found it difficult to maintain
a total concealment of her distrust of the mountain boy. In her own
heart she always thought of him as "that young upstart," but her worldly
wisdom safeguarded her against the mistaken attitude of open hostility
or even of too patronizing a tolerance. That course, she knew, had
driven many high-spirited daughters into open revolt. "Make a martyr of
him," she told herself with philosophically shrugged shoulders, "and you
can convert an ape into a hero."

So after dinner Boone and the girl sat uninterrupted in the fine old
drawing-room where the age-ripened Jouett portraits hung, while Morgan
and his father went over some papers in the Colonel's study on the
second floor.

"Boone," demanded the girl, "what is all this talk about camera squads
and inspection parties? I'm afraid Uncle Tom--and you, too--are going to
be running greater risks tomorrow than you admit."

He had risen to say good night, but it is not on record that lovers
resent delays in their leave-takings.

"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told
her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts
and take certain pictures."

"Why?"

"Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be
overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters--and that the police
who should lock them up mean to protect them."

"What are repeaters?" she naïvely inquired, and he enlightened her out
of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom.

"We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been
brought in from other towns and will be registered here as voters. After
registering they will disappear as unostentatiously as they came. But
meanwhile they will not satisfy themselves with being enrolled once, as
the decent citizens must do. They will go from precinct to precinct,
using fake addresses and changing names."

He smiled grimly, and then added with inelegant directness:

"We aim to get pictures of some of those birds--for use in court later."

"And the police will hamper you?"

"We don't expect much help from them."

Anne's eyes clouded with apprehension. She laid her hands on the boy's
arms. "Boone," she exclaimed, "you know Uncle Tom. In spite of his
gentleness, indignation makes him reckless. Will he be armed tomorrow?"

Boone shook his head. His eyes narrowed a little, and his tone indicated
personal disagreement with the decision which he repeated:

"No. They've decided that since they're seeking reform they must keep
inside both the letter and the spirit of the law. They've advised every
one to go unarmed except for heavy walking sticks. Even that has brought
a howl of 'attempted intimidation' from the city hall crowd--but I
reckon their gangs won't be unheeled."

"Are you going to be armed?"

Boone hesitated, but finally he answered with a trace of the ironic: "I
haven't quite made up my mind yet. You see, I learned my politics in the
bloody hills--though I never carried a gun when I was campaigning
there. Here, where it's civilized--I'm not so sure."

"Will you be with Uncle Tom, all the time tomorrow? Will you go
everywhere that he goes?" The question was put as an interrogation, but
it was an earnest plea as well, and Boone took both her hands in his.
They stood framed in the hall door, he holding her hands close pressed,
and her eyes giving him back look for look.

"I'll be with him every minute he'll let me," he declared. "Of course a
soldier must obey orders, and he can't choose his station."

It was standing like that with Boone holding Anne's hands, and their
faces close together, that Morgan, whose footsteps were soundless on the
carpeted stairway, saw them, and it was not a picture to reassure a
rival or to assuage the disdainful anger of a man of Morgan's
temperament for one whom he considered an ingrate and a presumptuous
upstart.




CHAPTER XXVI


Morgan's teeth closed with a slight click. The sinews of his chest and
arms tightened. Such insolence rightfully called for the chastisement of
cane or dog-whip, he thought, but that was impossible. He might
undertake to rebuke Boone openly but could hardly assume so high-handed
a course with Anne--or in her presence. He would nevertheless conduct
his own affairs in his own way; so, quietly and with no intimation that
he had been a witness to what he construed as an actual embrace, he
turned and went back to the stairhead.

From there his voice, raised in a conversational tone to reach his
father in the study, carried with equal clarity to the room below.

"Father," he called, "I'll see you in the morning. I have to run down to
the office for an hour or so now. I didn't quite finish looking over
those latest depositions in the Sweeney case."

After having served that notice of his coming, he strolled casually down
the stairs--to overhear nothing more incriminating than Anne's earnest
exhortation: "Promise me not to take any foolish chances tomorrow," and
Boone's laugh, deprecating the apprehension. Boone held only one hand
now.

But Morgan ground his teeth. The young cub had doubtless been trying to
capitalize his petty part in the petty political game, he reflected.
That was about the thing one might expect from a youth pitchforked into
polite society out of a vermin-infested log cabin, where the women
smoked pipes and dipped snuff! But his own bearing was outwardly
unruffled as he took down his hat from the old mahogany hall stand.

"Mr. Wellver," he suggested--(he always called Boone Mr. Wellver,
because that was his way of indicating his line of aloofness against
distasteful intimacy)--"could you come to the office this evening for a
while? There's a matter I'd like to talk about."

Boone repressed the flash of surprise which the request brought into his
eyes. He knew of no business at the office in which he and Morgan had
shared responsibility, and heretofore Morgan had rather resented his
participation in any work more responsible or dignified than that of an
office boy or clerk.

"Why, yes," he answered. "I was going home, but of course if it's
important, I'll be there."

"I regard it as important."

Boone caught the intimation of threat, but Anne, knowing little of
law-office procedure, recognized only what she resentfully considered a
peremptory and supercilious note.

Morgan nodded to Anne, and let himself out of the door, and less than an
hour later Boone entered the office building, deserted now save for the
night watchman, and for scattered suites, here and there, where window
lights told of belated clerks toiling over ledgers, or lawyers over
briefs.

As the young man from the mountains let himself in through the door that
bore the name of his employer's firm, the other man was standing with
his back turned and his eyes fixed on some trifle on his desk. The back
of a standing figure, no less than its front, may be eloquent of its
feelings, and had the shoulder blades of Colonel Wallifarro's gifted son
been those of a hairy caveman, instead of an impeccably tailored modern,
there would perhaps have been bristles standing erect along his spine.
Wellver saw that warning of ugly mood in the instant before Morgan
wheeled, and he wheeled with a military quickness and precision.

"I was a little bit puzzled," said the younger man, meeting the glaring
eyes with a coldly steady glance, "at your asking me to come here
tonight. I couldn't think of any work we'd been doing together."

"I won't leave you in perplexity long," the wrathful voice of the other
assured him. "I asked you to come because I couldn't well say what
needed to be said under my father's roof--while you were a guest there."

"I take it, then, that it's something uncomplimentary?"

"I mean to go further than that."

Boone nodded, but he came a step nearer, and the lids narrowed over his
eyes. "Whatever you might feel like saying to me, Mr. Wallifarro," he
announced evenly, "would be a thing I reckon I could answer in a like
spirit. But because I owe your father so much--that I've got to be
mighty guarded--I hope you won't push me too far."

"I haven't the right to say whom my father shall permit in his house,"
declared Morgan with, as yet, a certain remnant of restraint upon his
anger, "but I do assert plainly and categorically that I shan't remain
silent under the abuse of that hospitality."

"I'm afraid you're still leaving me in considerable perplexity. I
believe you promised not to do that long."

"I'd rather not go into details--and I think you know what I mean. I
came down the stairs there a short while ago. You were with Anne--and I
didn't like the picture I saw."

"What picture?"

"For God's sake, at least be honest!" retorted Morgan passionately.
"Whatever barbarities mountain men have, they are presumed to be
outspoken and direct of speech."

"We generally aim to be. I'm asking _you_ to be the same."

"Very well. I mean to marry Anne, who is my cousin--and whose social
equal I am. It doesn't please me to have you confuse my father's welcome
with the idea of free and easy liberty. Is that clear?"

Morgan was glaring up into Boone's eyes, since Boone stood several
inches the taller, and Boone's fingers ached to take him by the neck and
shake him as a terrier does a rat. The need of remembering whose son he
was became a trying obligation.

"Does Anne--whose social equal you are--know--that you're going to marry
her?" he inquired, with a quiet which should have warned Morgan had he
just then been able to recognize warnings.

"Perhaps," was the curt rejoinder, and Boone laughed.

"No, Mr. Wallifarro," he said. "No--even that 'perhaps' is a lie. She
doesn't so much as suspect it. As for me, I know you are _not_ going to
marry her."

Morgan had turned and walked around behind his desk, and as Boone added
his paralyzing announcement, he threw open the drawer. "I aim to marry
her myself--when I've made good--if she'll have me."

Morgan halted, half bent over, and his eyes burned madly.

"You!" he exclaimed, with a boiling over of contemptuous rage. "You
damned baboon!"

The words had sent Wellver, like the force of uncoiled springs, vaulting
over the table, and his face had gone paste-white. Yet as he landed on
the far side he halted and drew himself rigidly straight, though to keep
his arms inactive at his sides he had to tense every sinew from wrist to
shoulder, until each fibre ached with the cramp of repression. He had
caught himself on the brink of murder lust, with the murder fog in his
eyes. He had caught himself and now he held himself with a desperate
sense of need, though he saw Morgan's fingers close over the stock of a
heavy revolver. He even smiled briefly as he noted that it was a gun
with an elegant pearl grip.

"If any other man of God's earth had fathered you," he said, each word
coming separately like the drippings from an icicle, "I'd prove that I
wasn't only a baboon but a gorilla--and I'd prove it by pulling the
snobbish head off of your damned, tailor-made shoulders. People don't
generally say things like that to me and go free."

Morgan too was pallid with anger, and in neither of them was any
tragedy-averting possibility of faltering courage. Wallifarro held the
pistol before him, and gave back a step--only one, and that one not in
retreat but in order that he might have a chance to speak before he was
forced to fire.

"I realize perfectly," he said, "that physically I'd be helpless in your
hands. I'm as much your inferior in brute strength as--as mentally and
socially--you are--mine. I don't want to take any advantage of you--it
seems that we have to fight.--I'm waiting for you to draw."

He paused there, breathing heavily, and Boone stood unmoving, his hands
still at his sides.

"I'm not armed," he said, and now he had recovered a less strained
composure. "Why should I come with a gun on me when a gentleman of high
social standing invites me to his office?"

"You're quibbling," Morgan burst out with a fresh access of fury.
"You've given me the right to demand satisfaction. You've got a pistol
in your desk there, haven't you?"

"Maybe so. Why do you ask? Isn't one gun enough for you when your man's
unarmed?"

"Great God," shouted the Colonel's son, "are you trying to goad me into
insanity? _You_ are going to need one sorely in a moment. I give you
fair warning. I'm tired of waiting. Will you arm yourself?"

Boone shook his head.

"I told you when I came in here why I wouldn't fight you. I can't fight
your father's son. You know as damned well as you know you're living
that no other man on earth could say the things you've said and go
unpunished--and you know just that damned well, too, why I'm holding my
hand."

As he paused, both were breathing as heavily as though their battle had
been violently physical instead of only verbal, and it was Boone who
spoke next.

"Put away that gun," he ordered curtly. "Unless you're still bent on
doing murder."

He stepped forward until his chest came in contact with the muzzle, his
own hands still unlifted.

"Get back!" barked Morgan, who stood with his back against the desk. "If
you crowd me I _will_ shoot."

There was a swift panther-like sweep of Boone's right arm and Morgan
felt fingers closing about his wrist. Then reason left him and he
pressed the trigger.

But no report started echoes in the empty building. Morgan felt only the
bone-crushing pressure that made his wrist ache as it was forced up, and
then he saw that the hand which had closed vice-like on it had one
finger thrust between the hammer and firing pin of his weapon.

The reaction left him dizzy, as he reflected that he had done all that
man could do toward homicide and had been halted only by his unarmed
adversary's quicker thought and action. Boone uncocked the firearm and
laid it on the table, under the other's hand.

"I guess you see now," said Morgan in a low voice, "that after this the
two of us can't stay in this office."

Boone nodded. "I know, too, that I've got to get out. You're his son,
but"--his voice leaped--"but I know that having held myself in this long
I can last a little longer. You're too sanctified for politics and dirty
work like that. But your father's in it--and until this election is over
I'm going to stay right with him--I'm going to do it because he's in
actual danger. After that I'll quit--I'm not afraid of cooling off too
much in the meantime, are you?"

"By God, NO!"




CHAPTER XXVII


Boone rose by gas-light the next morning and from the bureau of his hall
bedroom, after removing a slender pile of shirts and underwear, he
extracted a heavy-calibred revolver in a battered holster of the
mountain type--the kind that fits under the left armpit, supported by a
shoulder strap.

He took the thing out of its case and scrupulously examined into the
smoothness of its working after long disuse, debating the while whether
to take it or leave it. He knew that though the "pure in heart"--as an
administration speaker had humorously characterized the myrmidons of the
city hall--might, with impunity, carry--and even use--concealed weapons,
he and his like need expect no leniency in the courts for similar
conduct. The advice at headquarters had been emphatic on that point:
"Keep well within the law. There may be court sequels."

But Boone meant to be Colonel Wallifarro's bodyguard that day. He felt
designated and made responsible for the Colonel's safety by Anne, and he
knew that before nightfall contingencies might arise which would
overshadow lesser and technical considerations. So he strapped the
holster under his waistcoat, and went out into the autumn morning, which
was gray and still save for the rumbling of occasional milk wagons.

At Fusion headquarters few others had yet arrived, but shortly he was
joined by Colonel Wallifarro and General Prince, and within the hour the
barren suite of rooms was close thronged and thick with the smoke of
many cigars. Telephones were ajingle, and outside in the street a dozen
motors were parked.

Nor was there any suspense of long waiting before events broke into
racing stride, as a field of horses breaks from the upflung barrier.

From a half dozen sources came hurried complaints of flagrant violations
and of police violence or police blindness.

When the polling places had been open an hour the wires grew feverish.
"A crowd of fifteen men came here and registered at opening time,"
announced one herald. "Forty-five minutes later the same gang came back
and registered again. The protest of our challenger was ignored."

There were not enough telephones to carry the traffic of lamentation and
complaint. "Our camera men are being assaulted and their instruments
smashed...." "The Chief of Police has just been here and left
instructions that snapshotting is an invasion of private rights. He has
ordered his men to lock up all photographers...." "Our judge in this
precinct challenged a man when he tried to register, the second time,
and a crowd of thugs with blackjacks rushed the place and beat him
unconscious. The police said they saw no difficulty."

So came the burden of chorused indignation, and the automobiles began
cruising outward on tours of investigation and protest. The "boys" had
been assured that they were to have "all the protection in the world,"
and they were "going to it."

From this and that section of the city arrived news of men who had been
blackjacked, crowd-handled and arrested, but out of the whole rapidly
developing reign of terror certain precincts stood forth conspicuous.
Seated beside Colonel Wallifarro in the dust-covered car that raced from
ward to ward, while the Colonel's face streamed sweat from the hurried
tempo of his exertions, Boone marvelled at the fashion in which these
men combined indomitable perseverance with self-contained patience.
Often he himself burned with an angry impulse to jump down from his seat
and punish the insolent effrontery of some ruffian in uniform.

"I reckon you don't know who these gentlemen are," he protested at one
time to a police sergeant, whose manner had passed beyond impertinence
and become abuse.

"No and I don't give a damn who they are," retorted the guardian of
peace. "I know what this business means to me. It's four years with a
job or four years without one."

Twice during the morning they were called to a building that had once
been a shoemaker's shop. The erstwhile showcase was dimmed by the dust
of a dry summer and the grimy smears of a rainy autumn. There the tide
of bulldozing had run to flood, and the Fusion judge of registration, an
undersized chap with an oversized courage, had wrangled and fought
against overweening odds until they took him away with both eyes closed
beyond usefulness. A challenger with less stomach for punishment had
borne the brunt as long as he could--and weakened. Colonel Wallifarro's
car stood before the place and, with a weary gesture, he turned to
Boone.

"My boy," he said shortly, "we've got to put a man in there. I don't
like to ask it--but you'll have to take that challenger's place."

Boone had seen enough that morning to make him extremely reluctant to
leave the Colonel's side, and he answered evasively, "I'm not a citizen
of this town, Colonel."

"You don't have to be to challenge." So Boone went in. The place was
foul with the stench of bad tobacco. The registration officers, who had
so far had their way, were openly truculent.

"Here comes a new Sunday-school guy," sneered a clerk with a debauched
face, looking up from the broad page of the enrolment book. "I wonder
how long _he'll_ last."

For a time it seemed that Boone was to enjoy immunity from the heckling
under which his predecessors had fallen, but the word had gone out that
a "bad guy" had come in for the Fusionists who needed handling, and his
apparent acceptance was nothing more than the quiet that goes before the
bursting of a thunder head.

His place was inside, so he could make no move when news drifted in that
one of the outside watchers had been assaulted and perhaps seriously
hurt, though he guessed that the car, in which he had been riding that
day, would again roll up, and that perhaps Colonel Wallifarro would once
more be the target of gutter insult. Indeed, he fancied he recognized
the toot of that particular horn a few minutes later, but as he strained
his ears to make something of the confusion outside the door burst open
and a group of a dozen or so ruffians forced their way into the cramped
space, brandishing sticks and pistols.

"Where's this here fly guy at?" demanded the truculent leader of the
invasion, and others used fouler expletives. Boone should perhaps have
felt complimented that such a handsome number should have been told off
to deal with his case, but as he rose to his feet he caught a glimpse
over their heads of Colonel Wallifarro standing in his car outside and
of confused disorder eddying about it.

Boone drew so quickly that there was no opportunity to halt him, and he
fired as unhesitantly as he had drawn. With a threat unfinished on his
lips the leader of the "flying squadron" crumpled to the floor, and with
swift transition from bravos to fugitives his tatterdemalion gang left
on the run.

Boone, with the pistol still in his hand, hurried out to the sidewalk,
and at the picture which met his eyes halted on the dirty threshold.

Colonel Wallifarro still stood in the car, but on the sidewalk was
General Prince, and the chivalric old gentleman was wiping blood from
his face, while the dust on his clothes told clearly enough that he had
been knocked down. Boone's veins were channels of liquid fire.

But that was not all. Morgan Wallifarro, still as immaculate as usual,
was standing two paces away, and a burly policeman with a club raised
over his head was abusing him with vicious obscenities.

So Morgan was no longer sulking in his tent! Morgan had belatedly taken
his place at the Colonel's side, and as he stood there, threatened with
a night-stick, Boone heard his declaration of war.

"I've never been in politics before," he declared in a voice of
white-hot fury, "but I'm in now to stay until every damned jackal of you
is whipped out of office--and whipped into the penitentiary. Now hit me
with that stick--I dare you--hit me!"

Still brandishing the club above the young lawyer's head with his right
hand, the patrolman shoved him roughly in the chest with his left. He
was obviously seeking to force Morgan into striking at him so that,
given a specious plea of self-defence, he might crack his skull.

It was then the voice of Boone sounded from the rear:

"Yes, hit him--I dare you, too!"

The officer wheeled, to see the tall and physically impressive figure of
the mountain man standing the width of the sidewalk away. He held a
pistol, not levelled but swinging at his side, and as if in silent
testimony that it was not a mere plaything a thin wisp of smoke still
eddied about its mouth and the acrid smell of burnt powder came
insidiously out through the door.

Boone strolled forward.

"Mr. Wallifarro, get back in that car," he directed. "This blue-belly
isn't going to trouble you."

"What the hell have you got to do with this?" bellowed the officer, but
the club came down. "You are under arrest."

"Show me your warrant."

"I don't need no warrant."

The crowd, including those who had fled from the registration room, hung
back in a yapping but hesitant circle. Blackjacking non-combatants had
proven keen sport, but this fellow with the revolver in a hand that
seemed used to revolvers, and a gleam in the eye that seemed to relish
the situation, gave them pause.

Somewhat blankly the officer reiterated his pronunciamento. "I don't
need no warrant."

"This gun says you need one," came the calm rejoinder. "You've got one
yourself, and you can whistle up plenty of other harness bulls--all
armed, but if you do I'll get you first. My name is Boone Wellver. Now,
are you going to get that warrant or not?"

For an instant the policeman hesitated; then he conceded as though he
had never contested the point.

"I ain't got no objection in the world to swearing out a warrant for
you--since you've told me what your name is. But don't try to make no
get-away till I come back."

"I'll be right here--when you come back."

The patrolman turned and walked away, and Boone wheeled briskly to the
car.

"Now you gentlemen get out of this--and do a little warrant-swearing
yourselves. Be over at Central Station in about forty-five minutes fixed
to give bond for me. I reckon I'll be needing it."

Ten minutes later, with a spectacular clanging of gongs, a police patrol
clattered up, scattering the crowd and disgorging a wagonload of
officers headed by a lieutenant with a drawn pistol.

They handled Boone with unnecessary roughness as they nipped the
handcuffs on his wrists and bundled him into the wagon, but he had
expected that. It was their cheap revenge, and he gave them no
satisfaction of complaint.

In the cage at Central Station into which they thrust him, with more
violence, his companions were a drunken negro and one or two other
"election offenders" like himself.

It was through the grating that he looked out a half hour later, to see
Morgan Wallifarro standing outside.

"Father and the General are arranging bond," announced the visitor. "I
wanted a word with you alone."

Boone's only response was an acquiescent nod.

"I lost my head last night, Wellver," Morgan went on shamefacedly. "I
was a damned fool, of course, to imagine that I could bully you, and a
cad as well. I lied when I intimated that you were--not anybody's equal.
If I were you, I'd refuse to accept an apology, but at all events I've
got to offer it--abjectly and humbly."

There was no place in the close-netted grating of that door through
which a hand could be thrust, and Boone grinned boyishly as he said, "I
accept your advice and refuse to shake hands with you--Wallifarro--until
the door's opened."

Boone's pistol was held, of course, as evidence, but without it he went
back to the registration booth, and as he took his seat the man of the
debauched face looked up, with surprised eyes, from his book; but this
time he volunteered no comment.

In the police court on the following morning both Boone and his
arresting officer were presented, as defendants, and the officer's case
was called first on the docket. Taking the stand in his own defence, the
officer glibly testified that he had struck General Prince, of whose
identity he had been unfortunately ignorant, because that gentleman had
seemed to make a motion toward his hip pocket, but that he had, under
much goading, refrained from striking Morgan Wallifarro.

"Why," purred the shyster who defended him, "did you so govern your
temper under serious provocation?" And the unctuous reply was promptly
and virtuously forthcoming: "Because police officers are ordered not to
use no more force than what they have to."

General Prince smiled quietly, but Morgan fidgeted in his chair.

The police judge cleared his throat. "It appears obvious to the Court,"
he ruled, "that a man of General Prince's high character did not intend
to threaten or hamper an officer in the proper performance of his sworn
duty. But these gentlemen in the heat and passion of political fervour
seem to have assumed--unintentionally, perhaps--a somewhat high-handed
and domineering attitude. It would be manifestly unjust to exact of a
mere patrolman a superior temperateness of judgment. Let the case be
dismissed."

But when Boone was called to the dock, the magistrate eyed him severely
not through, but over, his glasses, putting into that silent scrutiny
the stern disapproval of a man looking down his nose.

"I find three charges against this defendant," he announced. "The first
is shooting and wounding; the second, carrying concealed a deadly
weapon, and the third, interference with an officer in the discharge of
his duty."

The wounding of the flying squadron's leader was a matter for the
future, since the victim of the bullet lay in a hospital, and that case
had already been continued under a heavy bond. After hearing the
evidence on the other accusations, the judge again cleared his throat.

"The 'pistol-toter' is a constant menace to the peace of the community,
and there seems to be no doubt of guilt in the present case--but since
the defendant has recently come from a section of the State which
condones that offence, the Court is inclined to be lenient. The
resistance to the officer was also a grave and inexcusable matter, but
because of the character testimony given by General Prince and Colonel
Wallifarro, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I will, on
my own motion, amend these charges to disorderly conduct. Mr. Clerk,
enter a fine of $19 and a bond of $1,000 for a year."

Morgan Wallifarro was, at once, on his feet.

"May it please your Honour, such a punishment is either much too severe
or much too lenient. I move, your Honour, to increase the fine."

"Motion overruled," came the laconic judgment. "Mr. Clerk, call the next
case."

"Your Honour has fixed a punishment," protested Colonel Wallifarro's son
with a deliberately challenging note in his voice, "which is the highest
fine in your power to inflict without opening to us the door of appeal.
Had you added one dollar, we could have carried it to the Circuit
Court--and we believe that it was only for the purpose of denying us
that right that you amended the charges. In the court of public opinion,
before which even judges must stand judgment, I shall endeavour to make
that unequivocally clear."

"Fine Mr. Wallifarro twenty dollars for contempt of Court!" This time
the voice from the bench rasped truculently, forgetting its suavity.
"And commit him to jail for twenty-four hours."

That evening Boone Wellver paid two calls behind the barred doors of the
city prison. One was to Asa Gregory, who still languished there, and the
other to the lawyer who had been willing to pay for his last word.

"I'm sorry you lashed out, Wallifarro," said Boone. "But I'd be willing
to change places with you, for the satisfaction of having said it."

Morgan grinned with a strong show of white teeth.

"It's cheap at the price," he declared, "and as for lashing out, I
haven't begun yet. From now on I'm going to work regularly at this
contempt of court job, unless I can put some of these gentry behind bars
or make them swim the river. I've hung back for a long while but now
I've enlisted for the war."

As Judge McCabe had said, Morgan lacked the diplomatic touch.




CHAPTER XXVIII


One morning of frosty tang, that touched the pulses with its livening,
found Boone's eyes and thoughts wandering discursively from the papers
massed on his desk. His customary concentration had become a slack
force, though these were days of pressing hours and insistent minutes in
the Wallifarro offices. The reception room was crowded with waiting
figures that savoured of the motley, and this was one of the new things
brought to pass by the strange bedfellowship of politics. Yonder in a
corner sat with fidgeting restiveness a young man whose eyes, despite
his obvious youth, were mature in guile and pouched with that pasty
ugliness with which unwholesome night life trade-marks its own.

He was one of that crew imported from elsewhere to register, re-register
and vanish, but he had lingered, and now a grievance had sent him
skulking to the enemy's camp with vengeance in his heart. In an interval
of political inaction he had picked a pocket and had been locked up by a
"harness bull" who had never liked him and who chose to disregard his
present and special prerogative. In court he had been dismissed with an
admonition, it is true, but his dignity was affronted. This morning he
sat in the anteroom of Morgan Wallifarro, ready, in the inelegant but
candid parlance of his ilk, to "spit up his guts."

Not far from him sat a woman whose profession was one of the most
ancient and least revered. The vivid colouring of her lips and cheeks
shone out through thickly laid powder in ghastly simulation of a coarse
beauty long fled. "I lodged a good half-dozen of those beer-drinking
loafers, though they roistered and drove away my respectable trade--and
then the cops had the nerve to raid me," she inwardly lamented. Now she,
too, sat among the informers.

Morgan had complained that reformers always failed through their dreamy
impracticability. Now he was being as practical as the foes he sought to
overthrow. From the dribble of small leaks come the breaks that wreck
dams, and Morgan was neglecting none of them.

To Boone, whom he no longer quarantined behind a manner of aloofness, he
had confided, "We have no illusions about the courts. Their judgments
will bear the label of party, not justice; but when they turn us down I
mean to make them do it in the face of a record that will damn them
before the public."

So, together with gentlemen like General Prince and ministers of the
Gospel bearing sworn narratives of police browbeating, came the backwash
of the discontented riffraff: deserters who were willing to disclose
their secrets to appease their various resentments.

Boone, who had played simple and direct politics in the backwoods, found
himself in the midst of a more intricate version of the game--and into
it he had thrown all the weight of his energies--until this morning.

Now, as he sat gazing out over roofs and chimney-pots, a messenger boy,
impatient of anteroom delays, burst officiously into his office.

"Are you Mr. Morgan Wallifarro?" he demanded, scanning a label on the
package he bore, and, as Boone shook his head, he heard Morgan's voice
behind him: "I'm the man you're looking for."

Then as the younger Wallifarro took the package from the snub-nosed
Mercury, he opened it, revealing a gold-knobbed riding crop. Once before
that morning the young attorney had halted the all-but-congested tide of
business to telephone to a florist, and through the open door Boone had
heard the order given. Then Morgan had directed that violets and orchids
be sent that evening to Miss Anne Masters. Presumably the riding crop
was bound for the same destination.

"Anne's riding some of those Canadian hunters tonight at the Horse
Show," was Morgan's casually put remark as he felt Boone's eyes upon
him. "I thought she might like this."

It was the first time that Anne's name had passed conversationally
between them since the evening when, in that same office, Morgan's
pistol had clicked harmlessly, and upon each face fell a faint shadow of
embarrassment. Then Wellver admitted, "It's a very handsome one," and
the other passed on into his own office.

Already Boone had been thinking of those Canadian hunters. It was that
which had lured his mind away from his littered desk and filled him with
the spirit of truancy.

Tonight would see the opening of the Horse Show with the fanfare of its
brass bands and the spreading of its peacock plumes of finery.

Following upon it, as musical numbers follow an overture, would come the
dances for the débutantes, and Anne would be a débutante. In that far,
tonight would be a sort of door closing against himself as one holding
no membership in that circle whose edicts were written by Fashion. It
was, however, of another phase of the matter that his present
restiveness was born. Yesterday afternoon he had slipped into the
emptiness of the Horse Show building for an inquisitive half hour, and
had seen a hard bitten stable boy trying to rehearse a stubborn roan
over the jumps.

The heavy white bars stretching between the wings of the hurdle had
looked to him--thinking then, as now, of Anne--disquietingly formidable
and full of bone-breaking possibilities. This morning she was to
acquaint herself with her mounts. She might even now be at the hazardous
business. Suddenly Boone pushed back his papers, locked the drawer of
his desk, and took down his hat and overcoat. He was playing hookey.

Steps hurried by anxiety carried him to the building, where the great
roof was festively draped with bunting and where the smell of tanbark
came up fresh to the nostrils. A stretch of empty galleries and vacant
tiers of boxes gave an impression of roofed vastness, and he searched
the spacious arena, dotted here and there with knots of stable boys and
blanketed horses, until he caught sight of Anne.

The mount to whose saddle she was at the moment being lifted was not
reassuring to his mood. To its bit rings hung a stable boy by both
hands, and the boy's dogged set of countenance bespoke hostile distrust
for his charge, whose nostrils were distended and ember red. Boone
noted, too, as he hurried across the tanbark, that one of the animal's
eyes showed that wicked patch of white which bespeaks, for a horse, a
lawless predilection. As the girl settled herself, the beast flinched
and shivered, and the stable boy seemed about to be lifted clear of the
earth where he hung, anchoring the splendidly shaped but vicious head.

Just then Boone came up and heard a fellow, whom he took to be a
trainer, speaking near his elbow.

"There ain't no jump that will stop him. He can skim six foot like a
swallow and cop every ribbon at the show--if he's a mind to. And if he
_ain't_ got a mind to, he'll just raise merry hell and tear up the
place."

Then the groom cast loose, and the horse launched himself upward,
plunging violently and lashing out with his fore-feet.

Boone halted and caught his breath with a nervous intake. He knew that
Anne rarely and most reluctantly used a whip on a horse, and as he saw
her lash fall twice, three times, with resolute sweeps that brought out
welts upon the satin flanks, he realized that she had been warned upon
what manner of horse she was to mount. It was a brief conflict of wills,
then the red-nostrilled gelding came down to all fours and answered
amenably to rein and bit. Round the arena he swept with the rhythm of
his rapid gallop, breaking to a speedy dash as he neared the obstacles,
rising upon a flawless and seemingly winged arc that skimmed the fences
with swallow-like ease. Anne rode back flushed and triumphant, and as
Boone came up, with breathing that was still quick, he heard the trainer
voicing his commendation:

"You handled him like a professional, Miss Masters, and he takes a bit
of handling, too. There ain't many ladies I'd be willin' to put up on
him." Then the practical Canadian added, as Anne slid down and laid her
gloved hand on the steaming neck: "He's a classy-looking individual,
ain't he now? You'd never guess that I took him out of a plough, would
you?"

"Out of a plough!" echoed the girl. "Why, he's a picture horse! His
lines are almost perfect!"

The horseman nodded and grinned. "He's all of that, ma'am, but just the
same when I first saw him he was pulling a plough--or, rather, he was
trying to run away with one. Of course he must of had the breeding
somewhere way off. I reckon he's a throw-back, but if I hadn't come
along and seen him he'd still be drudging away on a rocky farm in the
hills. As it is, he's took blues and reds all through Canada and the
East--and I've a notion you're going to ride him out the gate with a
championship tie on his brow-band tonight."

As Boone turned away with Anne, the words seemed to ring in his ears:
"If I hadn't come along and seen him, he'd still be drudging away on a
rocky farm in the hills." It fitted his own case precisely, but it made
him think, too. He wondered if the time would ever come when people
would look at him in public places and find it hard to realize that his
youth had been like that magnificent show horse's colthood--a life close
to the clods.

Nothing could have kept Boone Wellver away from the Horse Show that
evening, but he went with a self-confessed trepidation hard to conceal.
In the wide, barnlike foyer of the building, a vertigo of stage fright
obsessed him. Never had he seen such a massed and bewilderingly
colourful display of evening dress, nor heard such a confused chorus of
bright laughter, light talk and blaring orchestration. In the first
dizziness of the impression he had the sense of intruding on Fashion
vaunting itself unabashed to the trumpetings of heralds, and there swept
back over him the positive pain of diffidence which he had felt that
other time, when he stood in the open doorway of Colonel Wallifarro's
house and announced that he had come to the party.

Inside, as he forced himself onward, his disquiet increased as the blaze
of colour heightened and bloomed in the flower-like tiers of the boxes.
The glistening shoulders of women in filmy gowns, the sparkle of
jewellery, the flash of silk hats and the nodding of pretty faces, all
confused him as dry land things might confuse a fish, and he felt
unintentionally impertinent when his sleeve of decent black brushed a
soft arm white gloved to the shoulder.

Boone Wellver would have fled incontinently from that place had he not
been held there by his anxiety for Anne, which would not be allayed
until the ladies' hunters had been judged, the ribbons pinned on the
fortunate head-stalls and the exit gates swung open and closed. And the
jumping class, with its spectacular dash of danger, was held for the
last, as the climax is held for the curtain of the act.




CHAPTER XXIX


But while Boone waited for Anne to come into the ring he made no
assiduous search for her in the boxes, because, like many other men
whose outward seeming is one of boldness, he was fettered by an
inordinate shyness in this heavy atmosphere of the unaccustomed. Later
Anne accused him of snubbing her. "You passed right by me a half dozen
times," she teased with violet mischief shimmering in her eyes. "You
wouldn't even look at me."

"I was plain scared," he made candid admission; "but when you went into
the ring I looked at you every minute."

"You're jolly well right you did," she laughed. "You were glued to the
rail, tramping down women and small children. Every time I came round I
saw you there and your face haunted me like a spirit in purgatory. Your
eyes were positively bulging with terror."

"That's what you get," Boone retorted calmly, "for making a
chicken-hearted fellow fall in love with you. I had to hang 'round and
wait. I could no more pursue you through the roses and diamonds than a
cat could follow you into water."

The girl shook her head with a bewildered indulgence. "I can't
understand it," she protested. "There is nothing to be frightened
about."

The young mountaineer grinned sheepishly. "I reckon a lion-tamer would
say the same thing," he asserted, "about going into the cage. He's used
to it."

Anne sat silent for a few moments, and between her eyes came a tiny
pucker, as if a thought tinged with pain had pricked, thornlike, into
her reflections.

At last she spoke slowly: "Suppose you couldn't swim, and I had to
spend a lot of time in deep water. Wouldn't you learn?"

"That's different," he assured her. "You might need me in that event."

"You say society frightens you, and it's a thing I can't understand. I
could understand its boring you. It bores me. I love informal things. I
love my friends and the door that stands open as it always does here,
but I hate the dress parades. There's some sense in the Horse Show. It
makes a market for expensively bred and trained animals, and it's a sort
of fancy advertising; but I don't care for a human application of the
same idea."

"I feel that way, too," he responded quickly, "and not being expensively
bred or trained, I can't escape feeling like a cart horse would feel in
that ring."

"I'm going to make my début, Boone," she said quietly. "I'm going to do
it because both mother and Uncle Tom have their hearts set on it and
there's no graciousness in stubborn resistance. There are times coming
when I've got to stand out against them, and I don't want to multiply
them needlessly. But there's something more than just ordinary dislike
back of my feeling as I do about it all, and I think it's a thing you'd
be the first to understand."

"I guess I ought to understand, Anne, but I've got so much to learn.
Please make allowances for me and explain." His tone was humble and
self-accusing.

"This début ball is just their way of putting me on the marriage
market--duly labelled and proclaimed. I don't fancy being put up at
auction, and it doesn't even seem quite honest. It's not a genuine offer
of sale, because it's all fixed in their own minds. Morgan is to bid me
in when the time comes."

Boone's face grew sombre, and his strong mouth line stiffened over his
resolute chin.

"God knows that arrangement is going to come to grief," he said in a low
voice that shook with feeling.

"Not if Lochinvar doesn't come to the party," she retorted with a swift
change to the riffle of laughing eyes. "I'm letting sleeping dogs lie
for the present, Boone, because it's the best way. There isn't any doubt
of you in my heart. You know that, but it will be a long time before you
can marry me. Meantime,--" the battle light shone for a flashing instant
in her pupils--"I'm standing out for one thing. They've got to give you
full acknowledgment. Everybody that accepts me must accept you--and
unless you claim recognition, they won't do it."

Boone rose and came over. He took her hands in his own and looked down
at her, and, though he smiled, his voice was full of worship.

"Lochinvar will come, dearest," he declared. "He'll come in full
war-paint, and nobody but himself will know how stiff he's scared."

It was the morning after that that Boone sat again as a defendant in the
police court, flanked by Morgan and the Colonel. He was on trial for
shooting and wounding, and there had been broadly circulated hints that
his prosecution would be gruelling enough to dissuade bold and adverse
spirits on election day. Yet when the case was reached on the docket,
Henry Simpson, whose finger was in every pie as a master pastry cook for
the intrenched element, arose from his place at the right hand of the
court's prosecutor and sonorously cleared his throat.

"May it please your Honour," he announced, with the rhetorical dignity
of a Roman senator--or a criminal lawyer's idea of a Roman senator--"the
prosecuting witness harbours no feeling of rancour in this affair,
despite the injuries which he sustained. The defendant seems to have
been led astray in the hot enthusiasm of his youth by older heads.
Having no wish to punish a cat's-paw for the responsibility of his
mentors, we move the dismissal of the accused."

"And we, your Honour," came the uptake of Morgan Wallifarro so swiftly
as to leave no margin of pause between statement and retort, "insist
upon a trial and a full vindication. This prosecuting witness who would
now spread the benign mantle of charity over the conduct of his
assailant, fell face foremost while leading an armed raid on a
registration booth. I am prepared to prove that the wounded man who now
sits there, an exemplar of Christian forgiveness, was spirited away,
after his gang fled, and cared for in a private room at the City
Hospital under the tender auspices of certain officials. I am further
prepared to prove that the name which this municipal favourite now wears
is, for him, a new one and that until recently he was known as Kid
Repetto whose likeness and Bertillon measurements are preserved in the
local rogues' gallery. The profession which he ornamented until the city
hall cried out for his skilled aid was burglary and second-story work--"

The judicial gavel fell with an admonitory slam, and the magisterial
jaws came warningly together.

"Mr. Wallifarro," declared the judge, "the court sustains the
prosecution's motion of dismissal. Your unproven statements are highly
improper in their innuendo of collusion by an officer of this court. You
are seeking to try this case in the newspapers, sir," and Morgan,
closing his portfolio, smiled his mocking admission of the charge. He
had watched the busy pencils at the press table, and knew that some of
them would blossom in flaring headlines. He had seen the cartoonist who
had come to make a pencil sketch of Boone himself finish his task, and
he enjoyed the judge's resentment. Now he turned away with the
irritating jauntiness of one who has scored.

But that evening, at the Horse Show, Boone suffered the embarrassment of
that flare-up of publicity which he felt was purely adventitious. Chance
had made him a scrap in a pattern of ephemeral interest, and to him it
seemed that one man in three carried an afternoon paper in his pocket
with his own hasty albeit recognizable portrait starkly displayed to the
public gaze. On faces which he did not know he caught smiles of amused
recognition, and on one which he did know a glower of hate. That was
the face of the policeman who had arrested him.

Some of the women in the boxes had him dragged before them for
introduction, and he responded with a shyness that was cloaked under the
reserve of his half-barbaric dignity.

Anne smiled, and a proprietary pride lurked in her expression.

"Anne looks as docile and amiable as a sweet child," sighed Mrs. Masters
to Colonel Wallifarro, as he bade her good night that same evening, "but
she's got Larry's British stubbornness in every fibre."

"Added," suggested the Colonel with a truant twinkle, "to the admirable
resoluteness of our own family."

"She's absolutely set on having this young protégé of yours at her début
ball, and I suppose you know what that signifies. It means that through
her whole social career he'll be dangling along frightening off really
eligible men!" The lady gave a well-bred little snort of disdain. "He's
about as possible as a pet toad!"

The Colonel laughed.

"I'm afraid, my dear, that I like Anne the better for it. We've agreed
that Morgan is your choice, and mine--and I don't think Morgan is going
to be scared off. Besides, this young man is in my office."

"So is your office cat--if you have one," sniffed the anxious mother.
"We're not sending the cat an invitation, you know."

"I have no cat," observed the lawyer with perfect gravity, and Mrs.
Masters shrugged her shoulders with unconvinced resignation.

When the telephone on Boone's desk rang one afternoon he was quite alone
there, and he took up the receiver, to hear Anne's voice. The
conversation at first indicated no definite objective, but after a
little the girl demanded:

"Boone, you _are_ coming to my party--aren't you?"

For a moment the young man hung hesitantly on the question; then he
said: "Anne, I'd go anywhere for the chance of seeing you, but you know
'I hain't nuver run a set in my life. My folks they don't hold hit ter
be godly.'"

Her laughter tinkled back to him, but he had caught the underlying
insistence of her tone, and he remembered what she had said about this
ball: what it meant to her, and what his being there meant too.

"Take young Lochinvar for instance," he went on banteringly yet with a
dubious touch in his voice. "It wasn't the first party of the season
that he came to, was it? And even at the finish he was a little late.
Maybe there was some delay in getting his coat of mail ready."

"Oh," the girl's exclamation was one of quick understanding. She knew
something of Boone's financial pinch, and how he felt it a point of
honour to stretch as far as possible the fund his patron had left him.
"You mean--" she broke off, and the young mountaineer spoke bluntly,

"I mean I haven't a dress suit, and short of stealing one--"

"I understand," she declared, and began talking animatedly of other
things, but when she had rung off Boone sat staring at an open law book
and making nothing of its text. Then he heard a movement at his back and
swung around in his swivel chair, but the next instant he was on his
feet with an exclamation that was an outburst of joy.

There, standing just inside the door, tanned like saddle leather,
somewhat grayer about the temples and sparer of figure than of old, but
with the strong vigour of active months, stood Victor McCalloway.

"I think, my boy," he said, as though he had never been away at all, "we
can run to a dress suit."




CHAPTER XXX


A moment later the two men stood with their hands clasped, and the face
of the younger was aglow with such delight as can come only from a happy
windfall out of the unexpected.

Never had that other face and figure been far from his thoughts. Never
had his ardent hero-worship waned or tarnished. His speculations and
dreams had been haunted by misgivings bred of the fierce chances of war,
chances which might make of the features, into which he now looked
again, only a memory.

New and varied activities in his life had bulwarked him against actual
brooding, and youth is too brightly hopeful to accept grim
possibilities, unproven; but the mists of denied fear had hung
undissolved, and there had been moments when they had thickened and
congealed on the crystal of his thoughts to dark foreboding.

He had not known with what name or rank his beloved preceptor had been
serving over there beyond the Pacific. Many officers had fallen, and
McCalloway was not one to turn half aside from any danger. If he had
been among the lost, Boone might never have known. Even his torture of
mind over Asa had been free of this intolerable character of suspense.
Now it was lifted, and without a forerunner of hint the man stood there
before him in the flesh, smiling and talking of a dress suit!

"I can't believe it, sir," Boone stammered, and McCalloway's ruddy face
became quizzical.

"Had you made up your mind to lose me, then?" he inquired.

Much they had in common at that moment of reunion, and one thing in
antithesis. Boone thought of his lost race and was smitten with a pang
of failure to report, but McCalloway was reading the clarity of bold and
honest eyes: of a face to which it was given to wear the karat-mark of
dauntlessness and integrity, and at the end of his gaze he gave an
unuttered summary of what he had read: "Clean as a hound's tooth--and as
strong."

"They beat me to a pulp down there, sir," Boone made prompt and rueful
confession, "but there's time to tell about that later. I guess for a
while I'm going to keep you busy declining to answer questions about
yourself."

"There may be some uncensored passages," smiled the Scot. "I sha'n't
have to walk in total darkness."

"The important question is already answered, sir. You are safely back.
You were with Kuroki, weren't you?" There Boone halted and grinned as he
added: "'Don't answer that thar question onlessen ye've a mind ter.'"

"I was with him for a time. Why do you ask?"

"Because," came the instant and confident response, "where he went there
were the signs of genius."

"Genius went with Kuroki quite independently of his subordinates,"
McCalloway assured him gravely, "but a few moments back I heard you tell
some one over the telephone that you couldn't come to her party because
you had no evening clothes. The Russian war is over, but the matter of
that dress suit retains the force of present crisis."

A half hour later, while the elder man displayed a sartorial knowledge
which surprised him, Boone was being measured for his first evening
clothes.

"For the Lord's sake, sir," he besought with sudden realization as they
left the tailor's shop, "don't ever breathe a word about that spade-tail
coat back there in Marlin. I'm going to run for the legislature next
time, you know. The man that licked me before had patches on his pants."

McCalloway nodded his head. "I'll tell it not in Gath, speak it not in
Ascalon," he promised. "That suit of clothes might prove your political
shroud."

Boone saw Anne that evening and with a thrilling voice told her of
McCalloway's return--but of the visit to the tailor he said nothing, and
she refrained from reverting to the topic of the party.

Anne was sensitive on the point of an invitation urgently given and not
eagerly accepted. That is what her consciousness registered, and she
told herself that it was petulant and unworthy to attach so much
importance to a minor disappointment. But without full realization,
other and graver thought elements hung with ponderous weight from the
peg of that lesser circumstance. Boone's inability to buy a dress suit
was a measure of his poverty and of the great undertaking which lay
ahead of him; of the length and steepness of the road he must travel
before he could come to her and say, "I have made a home for you."

She herself was to be presented to society with expensive display, and
her pride shivered fastidiously at the realization that all this outlay
came from a purse not their own, and entailed an undeclared obligation.
She had never been told just how far she and her mother depended on the
Colonel's bounty. That had been carefully left enveloped in a hazy
indefiniteness that revealed no sharp or embarrassing angle of detail.
Had she known it all, her shiver of distaste would have been a shudder
of chagrin. But Anne was enough in love with Boone to feel that by his
absence from her social launching the sparkle of her little personal
triumph would be dulled.

But when at last she stood in her receiving line, radiant in her young
loveliness, she glanced up and her violet eyes took on a sudden sparkle,
while her cheeks flushed with surprised pleasure, for there, making his
way through the door, came Boone.

He came with his stage fright as invisible as the secrets of Bluebeard's
closet, so that even Mrs. Masters, looking up with equal surprise though
not an equal delight, admitted that in appearance, at least, he was no
liability to her company of guests.

The clothes that Victor McCalloway had supervised were tailored as they
should have been, with every requisite of conservative elegance, and
they set off a figure of a man well sculptured of line and proportion.

As he took Anne's hand he said in a lowered voice and with a twinkle in
his eyes, "I came in through the front door--but there wasn't any arch.
My legs are shaking."

Anne glanced down. "They are doing it very quietly," she reassured. "No
fuss at all."

Because of a straight-eyed sincerity and a candid vigour which endowed
him with a forcefulness beyond his years, and because a certain
deliberate humour played in his eyes and flashed occasionally into his
ungarrulous speech, he found himself smiled upon with the tolerant
approval of the older ladies and the point-blank delight of the younger.

Back at his desk the next morning he was again the grave-eyed and
industrious young utility man, but in his breast pocket was a crumpled
rosebud which to him still had fragrant life. In his mind were certain
rich memories and in his veins raced hot currents of love--pitched to a
new exhilaration.

Victor McCalloway had become again the lone man of the mountains, and
Boone burned with anxiety to go to him there, but the soldier had
prohibited that just now. The boy had put his hand to the plough of a
virulent city campaign, and until the furrow was turned he must stay
there with the men who were making the fight.

"For you, my boy," he had declared, with a live interest that ran to
emphasis, "this is an opportunity not to be missed. It is a phase of
transition, not only in your own development but in that of your State
and your country. Through all of it sounds the insistent message of the
future: whoever takes into his hands public affairs must give to the
public a conscientious accounting. This is a declaration of war on the
old, slothfully accepted dogma that to the victor belongs the spoils.
It is Humanity's plea for a place in government."

When McCalloway had gone, Boone carried into the steps and developments
of that autumn's activities a freshly galvanized sense of romance and of
high adventure. Through the labour of each day thrilled the thought of
Anne, and the quiet triumph of being no longer "poor white trash."

In the forces of the political enemy clinging doggedly to the spoils of
long possession and sticking at no desperate effort, the boy discovered
much that was not mean--rather was it picturesque with a sort of Robin
Hood flavour and the drama of a passing order. Here were the
twentieth-century counterparts of the gentlemen-gamblers of the old
Mississippi steamboat days, a gentry bold and mendacious, unable to
perceive that what had been must not for that reason continue to be.

Often Boone went to hear Morgan delivering his philippics to street
corner audiences, and often too he dropped around inconspicuously to
listen as that administration orator popularly called "The Bull"
exhorted "the pure in heart." He liked the extremes between the edged
satire and nervous force of the young lawyer whose dress and appearance
was always point-device, and whose message was always "_Carthago delenda
est_," and the great sonorous voice of the rougher man who knew the
hearts of the mob and how to reach them.

At the end of a white-hot campaign came an election day that eclipsed in
violence the period of registration, and out of its confusion emerged,
as bruised victors, the forces of the city hall.

But the town was aflame, and the call ran to clamour for a contest in
court. Lawyers volunteered their services without charge, citizens
attended mass meetings to pledge financial support, and the lines drew
for fresh battles. In the interval between events Boone doffed his city
clothing and donned again the corduroys and flannel shirt of the hills
that were now viscid with winter mud and patched with snow between the
gray starkness of the timber. He had gone back to the house of Victor
McCalloway. There, while the hearth roared, they sat long of evenings,
the young man delighting in the narratives of his elder and glowing with
the confidence reposed in him--and the older with a quiet light of
satisfaction in his eyes, born of seeing the rugged cub that he had
taken to his heart developing into a man of whom he was not ashamed.

"How far, my boy," inquired McCalloway on one of these occasions, when
the pipe-smoke wreathed up like altar fires of comradeship, "do you feel
you've progressed along the trend of development that your young country
has followed?"

Boone shook a self-deprecating head. "I should say, sir, that I've about
caught up with the Mexican War."

After a long study of the pictures which fantastically shaped and
refashioned themselves in the glowing embers, the veteran went
reflectively on again:

"Since coming back this time, I've felt it more than ever like a
prophet's dream. Great transitions lie ahead of us--in your own time.
You will live to see the day when men in this country will no longer
talk of this as a land separated by oceans from the eastern hemisphere;
as a land that can continue to live its own untrammelled life. A man,
like myself for instance, may be a hermit, but a great nation
cannot--and I still feel that when that message of merging and common
cause comes, it will come not on the wings of the peace dove but belched
from the mouths of guns--riding the gales of war."




CHAPTER XXXI


Boone Wellver walked into the office of the police chief one spring
morning when the trees along the streets were youthfully green.
Somewhere outside a band, parading with transparencies, was summoning
all horse-lovers and devotees of chance to the track and paddocks of
Churchill Downs.

Inside the office of the chief sat Morgan Wallifarro, point-device as
ever, and over his desk the chief bent, listening with an attitude of
deference to what he said. It was a new department head who occupied
that swivel chair. New officials occupied every office under that
clock-towered roof, and behind each placarded door the suggestions of
Morgan Wallifarro held some degree of authoritative force and sanction.

For almost two years the courts had laboured to the grind of the contest
cases. Again, shoulder to shoulder with the Nestors of the bar and their
younger assistants, Boone had played his minor but far from trivial
part. Almost a year before he had listened in the joint sessions room as
the decisive utterances of the two chancellors fell upon a taut and
expectant stillness. Those arbiters had read long and learned
disquisitions as befitted the final chapter to months of hearings. That
day had been a Waterloo for attempted Reform. With dignity of manner and
legalistic verbiage Boone had heard it adjudged that behind the physical
results of the elections the interference of the courts might not
penetrate, and he had turned away disheartened but not surprised.

Then had come a new beginning; the final issue in the Court of Appeals,
and finally out of that ultimate mill had been ground a reversal and a
decision that upon a government seated by such devious and fraudulent
methods the cloak of responsibility rested "like the mantle of a giant
upon the withered shoulders of a pigmy."

Now as Boone shook hands with the new chief, a patrolman entered the
place and stood silently on the threshold. In his eyes was the sullen
but unaggressive resentment of the whipped bully. This was the officer
who had brandished a club over Morgan Wallifarro's head and who had
dragged Boone out of the registration booth under arrest. Gone now was
his domineering truculence, gone all but the smouldering of his old,
self-confident ferocity. Morgan glanced up without comment, and the
chief recognized the new arrival with a curt nod.

"Keefe," he said shortly, "you were under grave charges and failed to
appear before the Board of Safety at the designated time."

The uniformed man glowered around the room. One vestige of satisfaction
remained to him; that of a truculent exit and of it he meant to avail
himself.

"What the hell was the use, Chief. I knew they'd railroad me. I quit
right now."

"It's too late. You can't quit!" The words were sharp and incisive, and
under the chief's forefinger an electric buzzer rasped. As an orderly
appeared, his direction was snapped out: "Call in the lieutenants and
captains from the officers' room."

Keefe took a step forward as if in protest, then realizing his
helplessness, he halted and stood on braced legs, breathing heavily.

He foresaw what was coming, yet there was no escape, for the hour had
struck. He listened stolidly to the ticking clock until several officers
in shoulder straps trooped in and lined up, also waiting, then his
superior's voice again sounded:

"Keefe, your club!"

The officer laid it on the desk.

"Your revolver." The weapon followed the night-stick. Then the chief
rose from his seat.

"You have failed to meet the charges preferred against you. You have
used the city's uniform as a protection for law-breaking and violence.
Now in the presence of these officers I publicly break you." He ripped
the shield from the patrolman's breast and the disgraced man stood a
moment unsteadily--almost rocking on his feet as his lips stirred
without articulate sound. Then he turned away. His lowering eyes fell
upon Morgan Wallifarro, who sat without a word or a change of expression
in his chair against the wainscoted wall. For an instant the patrolman
seemed on the point of bursting into a valedictory of abuse--even of
attack--but he thought better of it, and as he went out there was a
shamble in the step that had swaggered.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colonel Wallifarro's country place had been opened for the summer, and a
series of house parties were to follow in Anne's honour, but as yet the
season was young and, except for Boone, Victor McCalloway was the
family's only guest.

One evening near to sunset the soldier was sitting alone with Anne under
the spread of tall pines that swayed and whispered in the light breeze.
Before them, graciously undulating to the white turnpike a quarter of a
mile distant, went the woodland pasture where the bluegrass lay dappled
with the shadows of oak and walnut. It was a land of richness and
tranquil charm: the first reward of the pioneers in their great
nation-building adventure beyond the unknown ranges. McCalloway's eyes
were full of appreciation. They dwelt lingeringly on blooded mares
nibbling at rich pasturage, with royally sired foals nuzzling at their
sleek flanks. Filling in the distance of a picture that seemed to sing
under a singing sky, were acres of wheat waving greenly and of the young
hemp's plumed billowing: of woodland stretches free of rock or
underbrush. In the branches of the pines a red cardinal flitted, and
from a maple flashed the orange and black gorgeousness of a Baltimore
oriole. Then the man's eyes came back to the girl.

The figure in its simple summer dress was gracefully lissome. The
features, chiseled to a pattern of high-bred delicacy, were yet instinct
with strength. As Boone was the exponent of the hills of hardship, which
had been the barriers the pioneers had to conquer, so, he thought, was
she the flower of that nurture that had bloomed in the places of their
victory.

Just now the violet eyes were brimming with grave thoughtfulness, like
the shadow of a cloud upon living colour. When McCalloway looked at
those eyes he recalled the water in the Blue Grotto, whose scrap of
vividness transcends all the other high-keyed colour of Naples
Bay--Naples Bay, which is itself a saturnalia of colour!

Without doubt his protégé had set his heart on a patrician--but at the
moment there was more wistfulness than joyousness in her face, causing
the subtle curvature of her lips to droop where so often a smile flashed
its brightness.

"Anne," he slowly asked, "would it be impertinence for an old fellow to
question that look of dream--almost of anxiety--that seems an alien
expression on your face?"

The preoccupation vanished, and she turned her smile upon him.

"Was I looking as dismal as all that?" she demanded. "I guess it was the
unaccustomed strain of thinking."

"You remind me," he went on thoughtfully, "of a woman I once
thought--and I have never changed my mind--the most charming in Europe.
Of course that means no more nor less than that I loved her."

Anne flushed at the compliment and, quickly searching the gray eyes for
a quizzical twinkle, found them entirely grave.

"How do I remind you of her, Mr. McCalloway?" The question was put
gently.

"I've been asking myself that question, and an exact answer eludes me."
He paused a moment, then went soberly on: "Your hair is a disputed
frontier, where brown and gold contend for dominion, and hers is
midnight black. Your eyes are violet and hers are dark, flecked, in
certain lights, with amber. Your colour is that of an old-fashioned rose
garden--and hers that of a poppy field."

"It must be only by contrast, then, that I make you think of her," mused
the girl. "We are absolute opposites."

"In detail, yes; in essentials, no," protested the man who was old
enough to compliment boldly and directly. "You share the quality of
goodness, but in itself that's as requisite to character and as
externally uninteresting as bones in a body. You share a rarer gift,
too. It's not so essential, but it crowns and enthrones its possessor
and is life's rarest gift: pure charm. Relative charm we find now and
again, but sheer, unalloyed charm is a flower that blooms only under the
blue moon of magic."

The pinkness of Anne's cheeks grew deeper.

"Where is she now, sir?"

"For many years she has been where magic is the common law: in
Paradise."

"Oh, forgive me. You spoke of her--"

"In the present tense," interrupted the soldier. "Yes, I always do. It
is so that I think of her." He broke off, then went on in a changed
voice, "But the gravity in eyes that laugh by divine right calls for
explanation."

For an instant a tiny line of trouble showed between her brows, and the
seriousness returned.

"I think perhaps, Mr. McCalloway, you are the one person I can tell."
She paused as though trying to marshal the sequences of a difficult
subject, then spoke impulsively:

"Boone doesn't realize it," she said slowly. "I don't want him to know,
because there's nothing he can do about it--yet. Since I made my
début--and that was almost three years ago--I've been under a pressure
that's never relaxed. It hasn't been the sort of coercion one can
openly fight, but the harder, more insidious thing. It's in mother's
eyes--in everything--the unspoken accusation that I'm an ingrate: that
I'm selfishly thinking only of myself and not at all of my family."

"You mean in not marrying Morgan?"

The girl nodded. "And in refusing to give Boone up. When he was in
Louisville all the time, it was easier. I had his courage to lean
on--but since he went back to plan his race for the legislature, I've
felt very much alone and outnumbered. They are all so gently immovable.
It's terrible to feel that your family are your enemies."

"And your heart refuses the thought of surrender?"

Anne looked at him quickly, and for her eyes he could no longer employ
the Blue Grotto as a simile. The waters there are shallow, and in that
moment of soul-unmasking he looked through her irises into deeps of
feeling, sincere and unalterable, and far down under fathoms of slighter
things into the basic pools of passion.

"You can hardly call it refusal," she said in a low voice, shaded with a
ghost-touch of indignation. "I have never considered it."

"So I had hoped," he responded gravely, "but I owe you the frankness of
admitting that I wasn't sure. On such subjects the boy has naturally
been reticent. I could be sure only of how _he_ felt. I wanted to see
him get on, and I knew what your influence would mean to him. It has
been what sunlight is to a place where the shadows lie too thick. In the
mountains, my dear, cows that browse where the sun doesn't penetrate get
'dew poisoning.' Human beings get it from the milk. To both it is often
fatal. There's dew poisoning in Boone's blood, too, from generations of
brooding shadows. He needed you."

He paused, and she bent forward. "Yes," she prompted softly.

"So I was glad for every moment he had with you--glad enough, even, to
endure the thought of what it might ultimately cost him in the usury of
heartache."

"And you were willing to let him undergo the heartache?" Her voice
perceptibly hardened. "I'm afraid that's a loyalty I can't understand."

"It's the loyalty of a soldier's faith in him," he responded briefly. "I
believed that if he must go through the fire he would come out of it not
slag, but good metal."

"If his heart has to ache,"--the girl's eyes were tender again--"it
won't be because I fail him."

"And, for the present, it is you who are paying the assessments of
heartache?"

"I guess it's not quite that bad,"--but her smile was forced. "I'm
merely being gloomed on by melancholy in the family circle as a
life-hope going to wreck. By a nod of my head--an acquiescent one to
Morgan--I could set the broken family fortunes up again beyond danger
and make everybody happy--except myself and Boone. They can't see
anything but sheer perversity in my refusal. They see me, as they think,
drifting on a sea of poverty and spinsterhood when the port lies open;
they see me as a bridesmaid to my friends getting married--even as a
godmother to their children--and they shake gloomy heads because the
water is all running by the mill!"

"And you are--how old?"--McCalloway's eyes were twinkling with the
question, "--in your hopeless celibacy?"

"Twenty-one," came the exact answer. "But it's not just that. Boone
still has his way to make. This fall the legislature--two years hence a
race for Congress. It's all a very long road."

The soldier nodded his head in understanding. "Yes, it's the waiting
game that strains the staunchest morale," he admitted. "And you realize
that it won't grow easier. But what of Morgan himself?"

"I guess if there were no Boone," she made candid admission, "Morgan
would have won. He has force and power--and I am a worshipper of those
things in a man. I thought at first he was a prig, but he's developed.
It may be generosity or it may be calculation, but he will neither
consent to give me up--nor try to hurry me. He plays the game hard, but
he plays it fair."

McCalloway rekindled the pipe that had died, and his next words followed
a meditative cloud of smoke from his lips. "It's not hard to understand
any man's loving you. I happen to know that more than a few have. Yet if
any one might escape, I'd pick Morgan. For him social values and
externals are ruling passions. For you they are incidental only."

Anne nodded, but her answer went arrow-straight to the core of the
truth. "Morgan fancies me because he thinks I'm popular and well-born.
It would make no difference to Boone if I were friendless."

Her confidant laughed. "Here comes Boone himself," he said, rising. "Of
late he's been building his political fences and hasn't seen enough of
you. I am going to leave you, but at any time that the counsel of an old
fellow can help you, call on me, my dear. I'm always at your
command--yours and his."

As he turned his steps toward the house, McCalloway saw the Colonel
rouse himself from his afternoon nap in his verandah chair. That
morning's _Courier-Journal_ slipped down from the forehead it had been
screening against the sun, and the Colonel became aware of a presence at
his side. Moses, his butler, stood there with juleps on a tray.

As McCalloway arrived on the verandah and took his glass from the negro,
his host rose with a yawning and apologetic smile. "If you'll pardon me,
sir," he said, "I'll leave you long enough to dip my sleepy face into a
basin of cold water." But when the master had gone the servant lingered
until, with an inquisitive impulse, McCalloway put a question.

"Moses, what is your other name? I've never heard it, have I?"

The darkey smiled. "I reckon not, sir. 'Most everybody calls me Colonel
Wallifarro's Mose."

The guest reflectively sipped his julep. Moses had always interested him
by virtue of his decorous address, which escaped the usual negro
pomposity as entirely as his speech escaped the negro dialect. Moses was
endowed, not with manners but with a manner--to himself, McCalloway had
almost said "the grand manner." It was as if his life, close to fine and
sincere things, had made him, despite his blackness of skin, also a
gentleman.

"But you have a surname, I dare say."

"Yes, sir. Wallver."

"The same as the Colonel's?"

The butler smiled with an infectious good humour and bowed his head.

"Yes, sir. In slave times we servants took our names from our masters. I
reckon my parents did like the rest. But the coloured people spell it
the shortest way."

"I see. And you have always been in his service?"

"Whenever he kept house, sir. When Mrs. Wallifarro died and Mr. Morgan
was at boarding school, the Colonel lived at the Club. I was assistant
steward there during that time, sir."

"Ah, that accounts for a number of things," hazarded the guest with a
smile. "For your _ex cathedra_ knowledge of serving wines, for example."

"No, sir, I hardly think so." There was a respectful trace of negation
and hauteur in the disclaimer. "I learned in the Colonel's house. That
was why they wanted me at the Club."

"Of course; I beg your pardon."

When the coloured man had withdrawn, the smile lingered on the weathered
face of the soldier, drawing pleasing little wrinkles about his eyes.
Here indeed was that traditional and charming flavour of ingredients
which the South has given to the diverse table of the nation.

Colonel Wallifarro was a gentleman in whom the definition of aristocracy
found justification; the negro, a survivor of that form of slavery in
which the master held his chattel, was a human soul in trust--they were
Wallifarros white and black!

Then McCalloway's eyes fell on Boone as he greeted Anne, and a new
thought flashed into his mind.

"Wallifarro--Wallver--Wellver," he exclaimed to himself under his
breath. "Boone said his old grandfather spoke of his people being lords
and ladies once!"

His mind, tempted into a speculative train of ideas, began weaving a
pattern of genealogical surmise--a pattern involving not only the
blood-lines of a single family, but also the warp and woof of national
beginnings. In his imagination he completed the trinity. The Colonel and
his servant were exponents of the Old South and its gracious oligarchy.
Boone sprang from the hills that bred a race which some one had called
"The Roundheads of the South." Yet at the start Boone's blood and that
of the Colonel's had perhaps been one blood: the sap of a single and
identical tap-root. Two brothers, setting out together in that hegira of
empire seekers that turned their faces west, had perhaps been separated
by the chances of the wilderness trail. One had won through, and his
sons and daughters had dwelt in ease. One had fallen by the hard road,
and the mould of decay had taken him root and branch. The name of the
stranded one had lapsed into its phonetic equivalent--as had the
negro's--and yet--

"No matter. He does not seem to have guessed it," murmured McCalloway.
"Perhaps after all it's as well so. He'll make the name as he wears it
one that men will come to know."




CHAPTER XXXII


Summer, before it has freckled into hot fulness and forgotten the fresh
scent and colour of blossoms! June heralding blitheness from the golden
throats of troubadour field larks, rustling and crooning her message in
green branches under a sky whose blue is proclamation of her love motif!

Certainly to Boone Wellver and Anne Masters picking strawberries
together in a little arbour-walled, orchard-bounded world of garden, the
centre of life lay within themselves, and the letters of life spelled
"You and I."

On the girl's uncovered hair the stir of a light breeze and the sparkle
of a clear sun awoke that dispute of dominion of which McCalloway had
spoken; contention along the borderland between brown and gold. On her
cheek the crystal brightness threw its searching question and revealed
no flaw.

Boone, looking up from the place where he knelt among the vines, found
in his own heart the echo to all the day's minstrelsy. He rose to his
feet with his bronzed face paled under a sudden wave of emotion, which
broke out of his surcharged feeling as a whitecap breaks on the crest of
a high running swell. His eyes, devouringly fixed on the girl, blazed
into a wordless adoration, and he felt, at once, giant-strong and
water-weak in the surge of the great paradox. It would just then have
been as easy for him to construe the fourth dimension as to put his
lover's thoughts into a lover's words, but her woman's eyes read what he
could not say and became bafflingly deep as she turned them away across
the gold and blue and green of the morning.

Boone's arms twitched at his sides under the fret of his inarticulate
fulness of spirit. The only language left in him was that primitive
language of action. His, under the superimposed structure of acquired
things, was a heritage which could know no love that was not a
soul-stirring passion; no hate that was not a withering fire.

Now it seemed to him that under the hurricane power of his love for Anne
Masters the pillars of the world shook. He caught her in his arms and
pressed her to him until her hair brushed his cheek and her heart-beat
could be felt against his breast.

His voice, at last regained, was broken like that of a man sobbing.

"I can't say it--there aren't any words--for it!"

All his previous love-making had made Anne remember that first agitated
confession, "I think of you like the evening star--you're as far out of
reach as if you were up there in heaven." Always there had been
something almost humble in his deference, as if he had admitted himself
a vassal lifting eyes to royalty. Now he was seizing her with the fierce
proprietary embrace of one who claims his own and who will not be
denied. The arms that held her pressed her till they hurt in the embrace
of the untamed man for his own woman, and, since for her too, love was
the great paradox, the fierce and ardent flood that had swept him lifted
her on its tide and rang through her with a sort of wild triumph.

"You--you don't have to say anything--now," she told him somewhat
faintly. If it had been up yonder, with the jutting escarpments of the
hills about them, this wild moment would have shaped itself in more
orthodox fashion with the eternal fitnesses. But the moment left them
with something of tumultuous exaltation, as though they had burst
together through the shell of a superficial world and touched the
essentials.

After a little, when again they could realize the more tranquil voices
of the birds and the little winds, Anne, with a hand on each of his
shoulders, spoke slowly and very thoughtfully:

"I don't need to be told, Boone. If I didn't know, life wouldn't be
worth much to me."

"When I'm away from you," he answered still in a shaken voice, "I always
hear your voice. I always see you, yet when I come back to you, you're
always a surprise to me--I find that my memory hasn't been able to do
you justice."

She was silent for a little, and then into the serene contentment of her
eyes crept a tiny shadow of trouble.

"Boone, dear," she said soberly, "we have a long time to wait--and we
can't afford to--let ourselves--be tempest-tossed this way--until we can
see the end. We can't be patient and--like this--at the same time."

"How can I be patient?" he demanded.

"You know," she reminded him. "I'm not wearing an engagement ring yet
and--"

His face shadowed ruefully, but he forced a confident smile and pitched
his tone to the manner of jest.

"The ring that's fit for you to wear ought to cost a king's ransom,
Anne," he declared, "and I haven't any monarchs in the 'jail-house' just
yet."

"It isn't that, dear, and you know it. If I were to wear your ring
now--with years perhaps of waiting--it would only mean endless war at
home. There'll be unavoidable battles enough when the time comes. It
hardly seems worth while to court them in advance."

"I knew,"--he spoke with a heavy heart--"that they'd take you through
the torture chamber before they let you marry me. Are you sure, dearest,
that I'm worth it to you?"

The girl's head came up with the tilt of pride which he loved, and with
the violet blaze in its eyes.

"Have I complained?" she asked.

"Anne,"--the man bent forward and spoke with the fervent earnestness of
invincible resolve--"I have a long way to go. I'm still down on the
ground level and you are still the evening star! Stars and groundlings,
dear heart! They're very far apart, but there's a beacon burning before
me and there's a magic in your love!" His expression had grown as tender
as it had a little while before been elemental, yet it was not less
purposeful. "In time, by God's grace I shall climb up to you, but it's a
steep journey, and it's asking a good deal of you to mark time while I
travel it."

"It's asking so much," declared the girl, "that I wouldn't do it if it
wasn't the one thing in the world I want to do--if my heart wasn't set
on that and nothing else."

"Thank God!" he breathed, "and thank _you_!"

After a little Anne spoke speculatively:

"I've missed you rather terribly this time. You've seemed to be away so
long."

"I've been building political fences, but to me it's been exile," he
told her. "This race for the legislature seems a trivial thing to keep
me away from you. If I win it--and God knows I've _got_ to win--it's
still a petty victory. But it's the first stage of the journey, and
after the legislature comes Congress. You see, small as it is, it's
vital."

Anne studied the gossamer building about which a spider was busying
itself, and Boone knew that in her mind some matter was demanding
discussion. He waited for her to broach it and soon she began.

"Morgan held politics in contempt until he went too far into the game to
abandon it, but even now he's seeking to make it lead to something
else."

"What?" inquired Boone, wondering what topic Anne was approaching by
this path of indirection.

"I can tell you without abusing a confidence," she laughed, "because
he's never told me. I've only guessed it, but I'm sure I'm right. His
goal is a European embassy with a life near the trappings of a throne.
And since Morgan is Morgan, he'll get it. He never fails."

"In one thing," announced Boone shortly, "he's going to fail."

Anne nodded, "In one thing he is," she agreed. "But if he goes into the
diplomatic service, Boone, there'll be a place left vacant in the firm.
Have you thought of that? Wouldn't your own future lie smoother that
way? You could take your place here at the bar instead of struggling to
herd wild sheep, and in the end you'd be Uncle Tom's logical successor."

Boone's face became sober, almost, Anne thought, distressed. The easy
swing of his shoulders stiffened, and Anne intuitively knew that instead
of suggesting a new thought she had broached a subject of painful
deliberation, already mulled over with a heavy heart.

Into the young lover's mind flashed the picture of a rough hill
evangelist exhorting rougher hearers, and of scriptural words: ...
"taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them."

Finally he spoke: "I _have_ thought of it, Anne.... The Colonel has even
suggested it.... Of course he hasn't said anything about Morgan's going
away; he only intimated that there might be a place for me in the
practice."

"You didn't refuse? It's a good law firm, you know--old and honoured."

Suddenly he spread his hands in a gesture almost of appeal, as though he
hoped she might understand and yet hardly dared to expect it.

"Anne, those wild sheep you just spoke of are my people. Perhaps with
all their faults they have a few virtues too, and, if they have, loyalty
to their own blood is chief of them. The world knows most about their
murders, their moonshining and their abysmal ignorance, but you know
that their blood is the most undiluted and purest American blood in
America. You know that their children grow up illiterate only because
they have no alternative. You know that those people are wild, lawless,
but, thank God, generous to a fault, and as honest as the sun is
bright. You know that even in their law-breaking they don't follow a
base criminality so much as a perverted code of ethics. I was one of
them. I inherited their blood-hatreds and their squalor, and because of
generous friends I was rescued. If I am worth the effort spent on me at
all, I owe it to those men, who saved me from what I might have been, to
do my utmost for my 'wild sheep.'"

The girl was counting the iridescent threads of the spider's web, but
her eyes caught the fixity with which his hand had unconsciously
clenched itself. All that he said was undoubtedly true and creditable.
She would not, in theory, have had him feel or speak otherwise, yet,
since it is as impossible to eliminate one's ego from thought as to see
through one's reflection in a mirror, she felt suddenly sick at heart.

If the effect of his liberation from the squalid things of his origin
meant, after all, only to bind him the more strongly to them; if a
quixotic sense of obligation barred him from the broader world he had
won to, wherein lay the virtue of salvation? She loved the majestic
wildness of the hills and the sweep of their free winds, but of the
people in general she had thought as one gently bred and nurtured might
naturally think of the less fortunate and more vulgar of the world.

Then she heard his words going on again but seeming to sound from a
distance:

"Except for what generous friends did for me, I might--I would in all
probability have grown as rank and wild as many other boys up there. The
feud would perhaps have claimed me. For human life and human rights, I
might have had the same contempt, and instead of standing here free and
fortunate I might even now be wearing stripes in the penitentiary. If
I've escaped, I think my people are entitled to what little I can offer
them."

Anne felt a weight of foreboding on her heart, but she laid her hands on
his shoulders. "Of course, dear," she said softly, "it's not just
getting to the place, after all, is it? One must travel the right road,
too."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the deck-rail of a coast-wise fruit steamer beating down from
equatorial waters leaned two men, whose ages were seemingly about forty.
Off the starboard bow lay the island of San Lorenzo, yellow in the sun,
with its battered crown of broken fortress. Ahead lay Callao, yellow,
too, with its adobe walls, and rust-red where its corrugated iron roofs
caught and husbanded the heat which needed no husbanding. Far off,
between terraces of sand and the slopes of San Cristobal, one could make
out the church towers of Lima.

The two travellers looked idly, somewhat contemptuously, on a shore line
that had fired the imagination of Pizarro and his conquistadores. They
were not of those to whom historic associations lend glamour, neither
were they themselves precisely objects of romantic interest. One was
dark of hair and skin and saturnine of expression. The other was blond,
floridly blond, and unmistakably Teutonic.

"Know anything about oil, mein friendt?" inquired the fair-haired
traveller, and the other laughed.

"Oil? My middle name's oil. I've drilled it in Mexico and--" abruptly
the speaker became less expansive as he added, "and elsewhere."

The German smiled. "Elsewhere?" he observed. "It is a large place--nein?
Has oil been always your business?"

From Guayaquil they had been travelling companions, but they had shared
no personal confidences. The reply came non-committally.

"I've followed some several things."

The Teuton did not press his interrogations, and a silence fell between
the two. While it lasted, the face of Saul Fulton settled into a frown
of discontent.

At Lima there would perhaps be mail, and upon the answer to a letter
written long ago his future plans depended.

"Shall we dine together in Lima?" The suggestion came at last from the
German. "So perhaps we shall be less bored."

Saul Fulton nodded. "Why not? I'll meet you at the American café at six,
but the dinner'll be on me."

Fulton could afford to entertain if the spirit moved him, and if his
news was good he would have the wish to celebrate. These years of his
wanderings since he had left home with an indictment hanging above his
head had not all been lean, but prosperity in exile had of late become
bitter on his tongue with the ashiness of dead-sea fruit. Saul was
homesick. He wanted to shake from his feet for ever this dry dust of the
rainless west coast. He wanted to see the stars come up out of a paling
lemon afterglow, across peaks ragged with hardwood and fringed with
pine.

He had tasted the bread and wine of many latitudes, and perhaps in all
of them life had been more kindly than in the mountains of his birth,
yet no child could be more homesick. He wanted to parade before the
pinch of his neighbour's poverty the little prizes of his ignoble
success--and, more than that, he wanted something else.

But when the sun was dropping back of San Cristobal's cone he stood on a
cobble-stoned street on the outskirts of Lima, cursing under his breath
with a torn envelope in his hand. His letter had not brought him good
news.

The communication, in the first place, had not come from the man to whom
he had written, though he grudgingly admitted that perhaps this
vicarious reply was essential to caution.

"To come back here now would be the most heedless thing in the world, he
says." That had been the hateful gist culled from the detail. The "he
says" must refer to the unnamed attorney, to whom Saul had made the
confession which gave value to his evidence against Asa Gregory.

If Asa were free, of course he knew that to return to Marlin County
would be to ask insistently for death--and not to ask in vain. But Asa
lay securely immured behind jail walls which would not be apt to open
for him unless to let him pass into the still safer walls of the
penitentiary or out into the cemented yard where the gallows stood.

The forces of the prosecution owed him something. They owed him so much
that he had walked in no terror of extradition, or even, after a prudent
absence, molestation at home. Technically of course he still stood
charged as an accomplice to murder who had forfeited his bond, but there
may be divergences between a technical and an actual status. The
attorney who preferred now not to be quoted had doubtless discussed the
matter with the Commonwealth, and that the Commonwealth had no wish to
hound him was indicated by this passing on of the advice "ride wide."

Who then stood between him and a safe return to the State he had served
with vital testimony? This letter told him in the none too elegant
phrasing of a friend from the hills.

     "Asa himself won't bother you unless the Governor pardons him
     out--and the Governor ain't likely to do that. He's the man
     that went in when Goebel died. I say he ain't likely to pardon
     Asa--but still there has been some changes here. The Democrat
     party has had some quarrels inside itself. The Louisville crowd
     has been kicked out by this same governor, and the lawyers that
     helped get it done were the Wallifarro crowd. You may not
     remember much about Boone Wellver, because he was a kid when
     you left, but he thinks Asa's a piece of the moon, and he's a
     lawyer now hisself in Wallifarro's offices. Those men stand
     close to the Governor, and this Boone Wellver has wore out the
     carpet at Frankfort, tramping in to argue for Asa's pardon. But
     that ain't all. He's talked hisself blue in the face trying to
     have you brought back and hung. Back in Marlin he's aimin' to
     go to the legislature and he's buildin' up influence. If he
     wins out he's goin' to be a power there, and, if he gets to be,
     you can't never come home."

At that point Saul lowered the pages of the letter and cursed again
under his breath. Then he read on again though by now he knew the
contents by heart.

     "It was heedless for you to write to Jim Beverly. Wellver heard
     of that through some tattle-talk and went to the Commonwealth
     attorney and told where you was at. He'll hound you as long as
     he lives, and if you come back here you'll walk into his
     trap--unless you can contrive to get him out of the way. He
     stands across your path, and you've got either to lay low or
     get rid of him. If you came back here, one of you would have to
     die as sure as God sits on high."

Saul thrust the letter back into his pocket. A string of pack llamas
swung grunting by under their loads, driven by ponchoed cholos. Overhead
a vulture lumbered by. From the stand of a street vendor drifted the
odours of skewered fowl-livers and black olives. Over the whole
Spanish-American panorama brooded the treeless foothills of the
Cordilleras that went back to the Andes. Everything that came to eye and
nostril of Saul Fulton carried the hateful aspect and savour of the
alien.

"I disgust the whole damn land," he declared as he rose, for though he
no longer felt in a mood of celebration it was time to meet the
"Dutchman" for dinner.

Reticence was second nature to the plotter who had just heard of the
growing power of a new enemy, but there was wine for dinner and a
sympathetic listener, and under the ache of nostalgia and the need of
outpouring, his discretion for once weakened.

It was late when over their coffee cups and cigarettes Saul realized
that he had been talking too freely, but the German leaned forward and
nodded a sympathetic head.

"I am discreet," he reassured. "I understand."

After a moment he added, "It may surprise you, mein friendt, to learn
that I, too, have been in your Kentucky mountains. It was when they
first talked of oil there some years back.... I did not remain long....
Oil there was but not in gushers ... at the price of the markets it did
not pay. It only tantalized with false hope."

Saul looked up. A crafty gleam shot into his eyes as he started to
speak, then he repressed the words on his lips and remained silent.

After a long while, however, he began hesitantly:

"There's oil there still--and there's places where it would pay. That's
why I'm itchin' to go back. With what I know now and those fools there
don't know, I could get rich; big rich, and this damned young Wellver
stands barrin' my way."

"Perhaps,"--the German spoke tentatively--"we could do business
together. I go to the States shortly mein-self."

"Business, hell!" Saul Fulton's hand smote the table. "A stranger
couldn't swing things. Folks would jump prices on you. They suspicion
strangers, there."

He sat silent for a time, and the German puffed contemplatively at his
cigarette. Outside somewhere a band was playing. Above the patio where
they sat at table the stars were large and tranquil. A fountain plashed
in silvery tinkles.

Saul Fulton's face grew sinister with its thoughts, and when at last he
spoke again it was with the air of a man who has debated to a conclusion
the problem that besets him and who, having decided, sets his foot into
the Rubicon of action.

"I'm goin' back there, myself. There's ways an' means of gettin' rid of
brash trouble-makers, an' if any man knows 'em in an' out, an' back an'
forth, it's me."

Otto Gehr shrugged his white-coated shoulders.

"The fit should survive," he made answer.

Saul raised his almost empty glass. "Here's Luck," he said. "This
Wellver lad is marked down for what's comin' to him."




CHAPTER XXXIII


Morgan's car was making the most rapid progress through the downtown
traffic that the law allowed, and his electric energies were fretting
for greater speed. The days were all too short for him with their
present demands, and he forced himself with the merciless rigour of a
man who is both overseer and slave. Now he was allowing himself just
forty-five minutes for luncheon at the club, and back at the office men
and matters were waiting.

He found gratification in the deference with which policemen saluted,
and in the glances that turned toward him as his chauffeur slowed down
at the corners. He knew that his fellow townsmen were saying, "That's
Morgan Wallifarro!" It was enough to say that, for the name bore its own
significance. It meant, "That is the man who has just carried a
Democratic town for a Republican mayor, and who had much to do with
carrying a Democratic State for a Republican governor. Even in national
councils his voice begins to bear weight."

These things were incense in the nostrils of the hurrying young lawyer,
but suddenly his attention was arrested from them, and he rapped on the
glass front of the closed car. He had seen Anne on the sidewalk, and at
his signal the machine swung in to the curb and halted.

"I'm on my way home," she told him, "and you're far too rushed to
cavalier me during business hours," but he waved aside her remonstrances
and helped her in.

"I'm so busy," he declared, "that I can't waste a moment--and every
possible moment lost from you is wasted."

The November sun was clear and sparkling, and the girl settled back with
an amused smile as she looked into the self-confident, audacious eyes
of the man at her side.

"It gives me a feeling of exaggerated importance to ride in your
machine, Morgan," she teased. "It's a triumphal progress through the
bowing multitude."

Her companion grinned. "When are you going to make my car your car and
my homage your homage, Anne?" he brazenly demanded.

The girl's laugh rippled out, and in her violet eyes the twinkle
sparkled. She liked him best when he was content to clothe his words in
the easy garb of jest, so she countered in paraphrase.

"When are you going to let my answer be your answer, and my decision
your decision?"

"It's no trouble to ask," he impudently assured her. "You remember the
man who

    "Proposed forty thousand and ninety-six times,
      --And each time, but the last, she said, 'No.'

You see the whole virtue of that man lay in his pertinacity."

After a moment's silence he added, in a voice out of which had gone all
facetiousness even while it lingered in the words themselves, "There are
a thousand reasons, Anne, why I can't give you up. I've forgotten nine
hundred and ninety-nine of them but I remember one. I love you utterly."

Her eyes met his with direct gravity.

"But why, Morgan?" she demanded with a candid directness. "I'm the
opposite in type of every one else you cultivate or care for. I'm really
not your sort of person at all, you know."

"Perhaps," he said, "it's because you are the most thoroughbred woman I
know, and I want to be proud of my wife. Perhaps it's merely that you're
you."

"Thank you," she said simply. "It's a pity, Morgan dear, that I can love
you in every way except the one way. I wish you'd pick out a girl really
suited to you."

"By the 'every way except the one way,'" he interposed, "you mean
platonically?"

Anne nodded, and the man said, "Of course I know the reason. It's
Boone."

"Yes." The admission was disarmingly frank. "It's Boone. I've just had a
letter from him. He won his race for the legislature and now he's laying
down his lines of campaign for the bigger prize of the congressional
race next time."

Morgan's smile was innocent of grudge-bearing. "I know. I wired
congratulations this morning. Of course his race was really won when he
came out of the primaries victorious."

Anne reflected that in the old days Morgan would have spoken
differently, and in a less generous spirit. To him a contest for a
legislative seat from a rough hill district must appear almost trivial,
and for the victor his personal rancour might have left no room for
congratulation. He himself had, in a larger battle, just won more
conspicuous prizes of reputation and power, and yet the heartiness of
his tone as he spoke of Boone's little success was sincere and in no
sense marred by any taint of the perfunctory.

"It was rather handsome of Boone to go back there and throw his hat into
the ring," he continued gravely. "He might have harvested quicker and
showier results here, but he wanted to be identified with his own
people. God knows they need a Progressive, in that benighted
hinterland."

Anne's eyes mirrored her gratification, but before she could give it
expression the car stopped.

"What!" exclaimed Morgan; "are we here already?" He opened the door and
helped her out, but as he stood on the sidewalk with his hat raised he
added in a note of unalterable resolve:

"I don't want to persecute and pursue you, Anne, but the day will
come--perhaps the forty thousand and ninety-sixth time of asking--when
you'll say 'Yes.' Meanwhile I can wait--since I must. One thing I
cannot and will not do; give you up."

"Good-bye," she smiled. "And thank you for the lift."

Morgan turned to the car again and said crisply to the driver: "Straight
to the office. I sha'n't stop for lunch now."

       *       *       *       *       *

Colonel Wallifarro stepped from the train at Marlin Town and turned up
the collar of his heavy coat, while an edged and searching wind carried
its chill through clothing and flesh and seemed to strike at the marrow
of a man's bones.

The Colonel felt the dismal and bleak oppressiveness of a picture
blotted from visual record by the reeking blackness of a winter dawn. A
railway schedule apparently devised for purposes of human torture had
deposited him in a sleeping town gloomed down on by sleeping mountains
at the hour when mortal spirits are at their zero of vitality, and the
train that had marooned him there wailed on its way like a strident
banshee.

In his pocket was the telegram that had brought him. It had come from
Larry Masters and had succeeded only in bewildering and alarming its
recipient with words that explained nothing except that the sender stood
in some desperate need of instant help. The words had startled Tom
Wallifarro like a scream heard in a dark street.

He had responded in person and at once. Now Larry was not even at the
station to meet him, so the Colonel turned and trudged forebodingly
through the viscid slop of unpaved streets, churned by yesterday's feet
of men and mules and oxen, toward that edge of the town where the mine
superintendent had his bungalow.

Through the windows of the house when he drew near he caught the pallid
glimmer of lamplight, but to his first rapping on the door there was no
response. A vigorous repetition, which started echoes up and down the
empty dark, brought at length a dull voice of summons, "Come in," and
on turning the knob the visitor looked upon a man who sat at the centre
of his room in apathetic collapse.

A kerosene lamp, guttering now to the inanition of spent fuel and wick,
revealed a face of pasty pallor and eyes deep sunk in dark sockets. It
was cold in the room, for on the hearth, where the fire had been long
unmended, only a few expiring embers glinted in the gray of the ash bed.

Colonel Wallifarro's first impression was that the man who had called on
him for help had turned meantime to the more immediate solace of
alcohol, and that now he was whiskey sodden, but a second glance
dispelled that conjecture. This torpidity was not born of drunkenness
but despair.

"I'm here, Larry," said Colonel Wallifarro, as he fumbled with chilled
fingers into a breast pocket and fished out a telegraph envelope. "I
took it the case was urgent."

Aroused a little out of his stupefaction by the matter-of-fact
steadiness of the voice, Masters came wearily to his feet. Through an
open door which gave upon the sleeping-room, Colonel Wallifarro caught a
glimpse of an untouched bed and knew that the other must have spent the
night sitting here, wakeful yet forgetful of the hearth-fire that had
sputtered to its death.

"I'm ruined, Tom," announced Larry Masters in an intonation which ran
level and unmodulated, as though even the voice of the man had lost all
flexibility, and having made that startling assertion the speaker sank
again into his chair and his former inertness of posture.

To press with questions at the moment seemed useless, so the lawyer
threw off his overcoat and knelt down to rekindle and replenish the
fire.

When at last it was again blazing he found and poured whiskey, and at
the end of ten minutes he prompted again, "I've come in answer to your
summons, Larry. Hadn't you better try to tell me about it?"

The man nodded, and with an effort pulled himself somewhat together.
"This time it's not only ruin but disgrace--prison, I expect."

"What have you done?"

"The fund. All of it. It's gone."

"The fund--gone? I don't understand." Colonel Wallifarro spoke with a
forehead corrugated in bewilderment. "Begin at the start of the story.
You forget that I haven't the remotest idea of what this is all about."

"The fund, I tell you," reiterated Masters stupidly. "Gone!"

"Gather yourself together, man. Drink that whiskey."

For once the glass had stood unregarded at the Englishman's elbow. Now
he lifted it abstractedly to his lips, but this time he only sipped it
and set it down. Then with an effort he rose and went to the hearth,
where he stood with trembling hands outspread and limbs shivering before
the rekindled blaze.

"I met Cantwell in Lexington.... We talked the matter over as to the
final details.... The rest had been arranged, you see.... Finally he
gave me the money ... in cash ... $20,000 it was."

"Twenty thousand--gone? Whose money?"

"The company's."

Colonel Wallifarro braced himself as he had braced himself against many
other shocks. Patiently his legal capacity for bringing coherence out of
obscurity led his dazed companion through the mazes of his torpor.
Direct questioning found a trail of broken narrative and followed it
with a hound's pertinacity, until the story rounded into some sort of
shape.

Larry the visionary, with the plunger's mirage always teasing him
through the arid conditions of a low salaried exile, had, it seemed,
caught at the fringes of success--and slipped into disaster. Through
years he had hoarded small savings out of his frugal income with the
gambler's eagerness to have a "stake" against the swift passing of the
golden opportunity. Finally he had thought that it had not all been in
vain. His eye had appraised other fields where the coal ran out in
sparse and attenuated veins but where the "sand blossom" spoke of oil.
His hoardings had gone straightway into options, at prices based on
farming valuations where farms were cheap.

It had remained then to enlist the interest of capital in taking up
these many options and securing others, and that required a large sort
of sum. Larry had gone to the directors of the company that employed
him. He had haunted their offices and they had endured his obdurate
besieging only because he was an efficient man cheaply employed, and, as
such, entitled to one hare-brained eccentricity.

Columbus striving to raise money from a world convinced of the earth's
flatness, with which to sail round a sphere, encountered a scepticism no
more stolid, and yet in the end Masters had convinced them. The
persuasion was accomplished only when other adventurers were beginning
to clip coupons from just such enterprises in adjacent fields. When, to
the monied men, "Masters' folly" became "Masters' discovery," the native
landowners were growing as wary as ducks that have been decoyed, and
dealing with them at a tempting profit required subterfuge. Besides the
options already held there were more to be secured before the
proposition was rounded into unity. Masters had therefore lined up, as
his purchasing agents, men of native blood and apparently of no
organized unity. Employing cash instead of checks bearing tell-tale
signatures, they could still acquire at a song, and a poor song, too,
large oil-bearing tracts virgin to the drill.

So, with his plan patiently built, like a house of cards that had often
tumbled but which at last seemed steady, Masters had turned away from
the Lexington interview with a black bag containing treasure enough to
awaken all the old, long-prostrate dreams. A life tarnished with
futility seemed on the bright verge of redemption. A share in the
Eldorado would be his own, and after years of eating the bread of
discontent his crushed pride could rise and stand erect, fuller
nourished.

These grandiose prospects of the altered future called for celebration,
very moderate, of course, because now above all other times he needed a
dependable and clear brain. With the tingling of the alcohol in his
arteries his dreams expanded--and he drank more.

Then he had been robbed.

"But how in God's name could it happen?" demanded the Colonel. "You were
stopping overnight at the Phoenix. Didn't you put your money in the
safe?"

Masters raised a pair of nerveless hands in a deprecatory gesture.

"I was drinking. I had certain memoranda in the same bag and I took it
up to my room to run over some details--then he came and knocked at the
door."

"Who came?"

"I don't know. He called me by name and seemed to be a man of means and
cultivation. We drank and chatted together. It was in my bedroom in a
city hotel, mind you. I didn't drink much.... The bag was locked ... the
key was on the table by my hand.... Of course in some fashion he had
learned of the money being turned over to me. How?"

The response was dry.

"I don't know. What happened?"

"God knows. I suppose it was some variation of the old device of
knock-out drops or some sort of drug. I awoke sitting in my chair--very
sick at my stomach--and had just time to make my train by rushing off
without breakfast. I had been there all night. I glanced in the bag and
seeing the packet there with the rubber bands around it right as rain, I
failed to suspect. It was when I got here that I found it had been
rifled."

"And the man?"

"I talked with the hotel by long distance. No one by the name he gave
me had been registered there. The description meant nothing to them."

"Why," inquired the Colonel presently, "didn't you tell me of this plan
of yours in advance--this enterprise?"

Masters shook his head. "You'd only have laughed at me like the rest. I
was getting fed up on being laughed at. It gets on a man's nerves in
time. For just once in my life I wanted to be the one who could say 'I
told you so!'"

"What steps have you taken--toward catching the thief?"

The victim groaned. "Don't you see that I couldn't take any? To report
to the police would be an admission to the company. The whole thing was
trusted to my hands after much reluctance. Can't you see that my story
would seem a bit thin?"

Masters' words ended with a gulp, and in his eyes was the stark terror
of panic reacting after the comatose silence of lethargy.

Colonel Wallifarro's face, too, had become drawn and distrait. For a
time he paced the floor up and down without a word, his hands tight held
at his back and his head bowed low on his breast. As he walked, Masters,
from his chair by the table, followed his movements with eyes that held
no light except that of fear and wretchedness.

Finally the lawyer halted before the chair. His brow was drawn, but in
face and attitude was the pronouncement of a decision reached. Tom
Wallifarro had been wrestling with complex and intermingled elements of
the problem as he walked. When he halted, the shifting perplexities had
resolved and settled into determination.

"I've got to see you through this, Larry, and it's going to be a hard
scratch. I suppose you think of me as wealthy. Most people do, but it's
necessary to be frank with you. I have a very handsome practice, and I
have for many years lived well up to that income--at times I've
overstepped the boundary. I have my farm in Woodford and my house in
town. I have a considerable insurance, and that about sums up my
resources. I draw from the running channel of my law fees and it's a
generous flow, but one I've never dammed providently into a reservoir of
surplus. If I have to raise twenty thousand dollars off-hand, I shall
have to borrow. Thank God my credit will stand it."

"But, Tom"--Masters broke chokingly off.

"Please don't try to thank me."

"Not perhaps for myself, but I happen to know that your means have
supported not only your own family but my family as well."

"Larry,"--Colonel Wallifarro spoke in a harder tone than was customary
with him--"your folly has been almost criminal ... but if it meant
stripping myself to beggary I couldn't see Anne's father accused of a
breach of trust. Even if I cared nothing for you, my boy, it would come
to the same thing. I fancy I shall sell the farm."

"My God!" groaned Masters. "It's the apple of your eye, Tom."

Colonel Wallifarro fumbled for a cigar and lighted it, saying nothing
for a time. When he spoke it was with an irrelevant change of topic.

"Not quite, Larry. The apple of my eye is a dream. If, before I die, I
can trot a grandchild on my knee--a child with Morgan's will and Anne's
fine-fibred sweetness--" he paused a moment and then gave a short
laugh--"then I could contentedly strike my tent for the beyond."

"I'm afraid her heart--"

Colonel Wallifarro raised a hand in interruption.

"I know, Larry. Don't misunderstand me. It would have to be along the
way of her happiness or not at all. I feel almost a paternal interest in
Boone Wellver. But I've always believed that they'd grow apart with the
years and she and Morgan would grow together. Anyhow it's my dream, and
for a time yet I sha'n't let go my hold upon it." His tone changed and
again he spoke as a lawyer weighing the inelastic force of facts. "But
time is vital to you. These options must be taken up. There must be no
suspicious delay. I'll catch the next train back to town and arrange to
get money in your hands at once."




CHAPTER XXXIV


Boone had written to Anne after the election in a vein of satisfaction
for a race won. "It is a small thing," he candidly confessed; "nothing
more than a corporal's stripe to the man who covets the baton of a field
marshal, but you know the light that leads me, dear Evening Star. You'll
find me scrambling up the hillside toward you at least, even if, as they
would say hereabouts, 'hit's a right-smart slavish upgoin'.'"

But with McCalloway, to whom he need not soften the edges of disclosure,
he spoke of something else. His victory in primary and election seemed
to demonstrate an augmented popularity, and yet he had become
instinctively cognizant of a covert but bitter undertow of hatred
against him: something unspoken and indefinable but existent and malign.

McCalloway paused with his supper coffee cup half way to his lips when
Boone announced that conviction one evening, and eyed the other intently
before he made an answer.

"I dare say," he hazarded at length, "that the old scars of the
Carr-Gregory war have never entirely healed. The rancour may begin to
smart afresh as your former enemies see your influence mounting."

But Boone shook his head.

"Of course, I've thought of that--but this is something else."

"Then, my boy, what is your conjecture?"

Boone's reply came slowly and thoughtfully.

"To you, sir, I can speak bluntly and without fear of being charged with
timidity. Frankly, sir, I'm more than half expecting to be 'lay-wayed'
some fine day as I ride along a tangled trail."

"I've had to take some chances in my time," asserted the soldier
modestly, while his brows gathered in a frown, "but that is one form of
danger that always sends a shiver down my spine; the attack that comes
without warning." He broke off, then energetically added: "If _you_ give
credence to such a possibility, it's not to be lightly dismissed. You
must not ride alone, hereafter."

Boone laughed. "For five years old Parson Fletcher never went abroad
without the escort of an armed bodyguard. He even built a stockade
around his house, but they got him. Jim Garrard was shot to death while
militiamen stood in a hollow square about him. Precautions of that sort
don't succeed. They are only a public confession of fear, and in
politics a man can't afford such an admission. All I can do is to be
watchful."

"Have you a guess as to who the man is behind this enmity?"

Boone nodded as he rose and went to the mantel where the pipes and
tobacco lay.

"Here and there of late I've heard a name mentioned that hasn't been
much discussed for years--the name of a man who has been away."

McCalloway shot a keenly searching glance at his companion as he
interrogatively prompted,

"You mean--?"

"I mean Saul Fulton. Yes."

Victor McCalloway went to the hearth and kicked a smoking log into the
flame. He turned then with the sternly knit brows of deep abstraction
and weighed his words before giving them utterance.

"You have need to remember, my boy," he began gravely at last, "how deep
the tap-root of heredity strikes down even when the tree top stretches
far up into the sky."

"Meaning--?"

"Meaning, my dear boy, that I can't forget the black hatred in your eyes
one day in the woods when I wrestled with that vengeance fire
smouldering deep in your nature. You haven't forgotten that afternoon,
have you? The day when you promised that until you came of age you would
put aside the conviction that Saul Fulton was your man to kill?"

"I haven't forgotten it, sir."

As Boone answered, the older man thought that, if something in the blue
pupils stood for any meaning, he might also have added that neither had
he entirely conquered the bitterness of that earlier time. Then Boone
went on slowly:

"I kept my word, but you wouldn't have me go so far in turning the other
cheek as to let him kill me--by his own hand or that of a
hireling--would you?"

The gray eyes of the tall soldier held both sternness and reminiscence,
but the reminiscence was all for something that brought a painful train
of thought. Those were eyes that seemed looking back on smoking ruin,
and that sought out of disastrous experience, to sound a warning. Into
Boone's mind flashed a couplet:

    "The Emperor there in his box of state, looked grave as though he had
       just then seen
    The red flags fly from the city gates--where his eagles of bronze had
       been."

At times, when McCalloway wore that cryptic expression, Boone burned
with an eager curiosity to have the curtain lifted for him, and to be
able to see just what life had once spelled for this extraordinary man.
Now the veteran was speaking again with a carefully intoned voice:

"I would have you defend your life, aggressively and fully, but your
honour no less jealously. I am no psychologist, but I have read that
almost every man has some spot on his sanity that is like a blind spot
on his eye. Into your blood, distilled through generations, came a
spirit that made a veritable religion of vengeance. You have sought to
modify that and to become an apostle of progress. Apparently you have
succeeded."

He paused and cleared his throat, and Boone once more prompted him with
an interrogative repetition:

"Apparently, sir?"

"Yes, apparently--because one hour of passion might blacken your future
into ruin; char it into destruction. In God's name make no such mistake.
If Saul Fulton seeks your life, as you suggest, he should pay for his
plotting, and pay in full. But if, by the subconscious workings of that
old hatred, you are placing the blame on Saul because Saul is the man
that instinct seeks a pretext to kill, then let me implore you to search
your soul before you act."

Boone made no response, but over the clear intelligence of his pleasing
features went the cloud of that unforgettable thing that had been with
him from childhood. It was the same cloud that had settled there when he
had made shrill interruption in the courtroom where Asa Gregory's life
was being sworn away.

Into McCalloway's voice leaped a fiery quality.

"You have come too far to fail, Boone," he declared. "I need make no
protestations of loyalty to you. You know what your success means to me,
but I know the price a man pays who has tasted ruin. I would save you
from that if my counsel can avert it."

The young man came close and looked into the eyes that had guided him.

"If I ever make a mistake like that," he said, "it will not be because I
have lacked warnings."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the night when Larry Masters had sat until dawn by an unreplenished
fire, the physical resistance of his body had ebbed to feebleness. Under
the quenching chill of despair his pulse-beat had become as sluggish as
the unfed blaze, and the days that followed had called for exertions
which would have taxed greater reserves of vitality. They had been days
of alternating blizzard and soggy thawing, and Larry Masters had been
constantly in the saddle like a commander who seeks to remedy a break
in his lines and must not pause to consider personal exposure. A cough
wracked him, and shifting pains gnawed at his joints and chest as he
rode the slippery roads. He shivered, and his teeth chattered when the
sleet lashed his face, and when at last he turned away from the
Lexington office where he had reported the matter in hand accomplished,
he had need to keep himself studiously in hand because a tide of fever
crept hotly along his arteries and blurred his senses into confusion.

When he could not rise from his bed in the bungalow to which he had
returned, a message went to Louisville, and his wife, somewhat
tight-lipped and silently resentful, yet with a stern sense of duty,
made the uncomfortable journey to Marlin Town, accompanied by a trained
nurse who would be very expensive. She tarried only until the doctor
said that the crisis was over, and then leaving the nurse behind came
back to Louisville, feeling that she had virtuously met a most annoying
obligation.

To Masters, with a sorry company of memories, which, in delirium, took
human shape and gibed at his self-esteem, the bedridden days were
irksome. But one morning the sick man awoke from a restive and
nightmarish sleep to a grateful impression of sunlight on window panes
which had been gray and dripping. Then he realized that it was not,
after all, only the sun, but that there was a presence in his room.

There sitting at his bedside, with eyes not austere but smiling and
sympathy-brimming, was Anne, and when he sought to question her she laid
a smooth hand on his lips and admonished: "Don't ask any questions now,
Daddy. There's lots and lots of time for that. I've come to stay with
you until you are well."

There would be some lonely weeks for the girl coming fresh from town,
but they would not trouble her until the time arrived when Boone would
have to go to Frankfort for the opening of the legislature, and there
were ten days yet before that. Now he rode over every evening, and
their voices and laughter drifted into the sick room where Larry Masters
lay.

Anne had no suspicion that every night Victor McCalloway sat up waiting
for Boone's return, for the most part forgetful of the book which lay on
his knee, with a crooked finger marking the place. She did not guess the
anxiety which kept his brows knit until the reassurance of footsteps at
the door relaxed them, or that on more than one occasion the soldier
even saddled his own horse and surreptitiously followed the lover with a
cocked rifle balanced protectingly on his saddle pommel. Once though,
when Boone had returned and was unsaddling, his lantern betrayed fresh
sweat and saddle marks on McCalloway's horse. McCalloway lay on his cot
but was not asleep, and the young man spoke sternly:

"If you're going to follow me as a bodyguard, sir, I sha'n't feel that I
can ride over there any more--and while she's there--"

McCalloway had nodded his head.

"I understand," he responded. "You have my promise. I won't do it again.
I grew a bit anxious about you, tonight."

Looking into the fine eyes that, for himself, knew no fear, the young
man felt a sudden choke in his throat. He could only mutter, "God bless
you, sir," and take himself off to bed.

One night, though, as Boone was leaving her house, Anne stood with him
outside the door. He had taken her in his arms, and they ignored the
sweep and snarl of the night wind in their lovers' preoccupation.
Suddenly, as he held her, he bent his head, and her intuition recognized
that he was listening with strained intentness to something more remote
and faint than her own whispered words. In the abrupt tightening of his
arm muscles there was the warning of one abruptly thrown on guard, and
she whispered tensely, "What is it, Boone?"

After another moment of silence, he laughed.

"It's nothing at all, dear. I thought I heard a sound."

"What?"

He had not meant to give her any alarming hint of the caution which he
must so vigilantly maintain, and now he had to dissemble. It came hard
to him to lie, but she must be reassured.

"That colt I'm riding tonight doesn't always stand hitched. I thought I
heard him pulling loose--and it's a long walk home."

"Go and look," she commanded. "If he's broken away, come back and spend
the night here."

But a few minutes later he returned and said: "It's all right. I must
have been mistaken."

When she had watched him start away and melt almost at once into the
sooty darkness, it suddenly struck her as strange that he had come back
and spoken in so guarded an undertone instead of calling from the
hitching post. It might have been the lover's ready excuse for another
good night, but Anne was vaguely troubled and remained standing on the
doorstep shivering and listening.

The road itself was so dark that she could rather feel than see the
closing in of the laurelled mountainsides, and as for the time of her
waiting, it might have been two minutes or five. She could not tell. The
wind was like a whispered growl, mounting now and again into a shrieking
dissonance, and there was no other sound until, as if in violent answer
to her fears, came the single report of a rifle immediately followed by
the hoarser barking of a pistol.

Anne, acting with a speed that sacrificed nothing to the fluster of
panic, turned back into the house, caught up the rifle that leaned near
the door and an electric flash-torch from the table. Outside again, she
found the road wet and rutty, and through the gust-driven clouds
filtered no help from the stars, but remnants of snow along the edges of
the way gave a low hint of visibility.

Several hundred yards brought her to an abrupt turning, and to her ears
there came an uncertain sound as of something heavy being thrashed about
in the mud. The girl's pupils, dilated now until the darkness was no
longer so all-concealing, could make out a shapeless mass, and it seemed
to her that the bulk--too large for a human body--stirred. Her finger
was on the button of the torch, but an impulse of caution deterred her,
and she left it unlighted. If Boone lay there wounded, her flash would
make of him a clear target for any lurking assassin.

As she stood nerve-taut and with straining eyes, a furious indignation
mounted in her. The vague shape that lay prone had become still now, and
when she had almost stepped on it, she knew it for a fallen and
riderless horse. It must be Boone's, because she would have heard the
approach of another, but the man himself was nowhere in sight. So far as
outward indications went, she was herself the only human thing within
the range of her vision or the sound of her voice.

Her suspense stretched until her knees grew weak, and the wind,
momentarily subsiding, left her in a stillness that was like bated
breath. Then she felt a touch on her elbow, and a voice barely audible
commanded, "Come back along the edge."

Under the reflex of that relief-wave her tight-keyed nerves threatened
to collapse, but for a little longer she commanded them, and when the
two stood again in her own yard, she wilted and lay limp in her lover's
arms.

"Thank God, you are safe," she whispered. "What was it?"

He pressed her close and spoke reassuringly:

"It may have been that I was mistaken for another man," he said. "The
most serious thing is that I'll have to walk home. My colt has been
killed."

"And be assassinated on the way! No, you'll stay here!"

Boone thought of the veteran sitting by the hearth waiting for his
return. He laughed.

"If I go through the woods all the way, I'll be safe enough. In the
laurel it would take bloodhounds to find me, and Mr. McCalloway," he
added somewhat lamely, "wasn't very well when I left."

Finally he succeeded in reassuring her. He was not apt, twice in one
night, to get another fellow's medicine, and he would avoid the highway,
but while he was fluent and persuasive for her comforting he could not
deceive himself. He could not take false solace in the thought that his
anonymous enemy's resolve, once registered, would die abornin' because
of its initial thwarting. The night had confirmed his ugly suspicion
that he was marked for death, and though he had escaped the first attack
it was not likely to be the end of the story.




CHAPTER XXXV


It was almost a relief to Anne when she stood on the platform of the
dingy little station and waved her farewell to Boone, leaving for the
state capitol and his new duties. Of course, as she turned back to the
squalid vistas of the coal-mining town, a sinking loneliness assailed
her heart, but for Boone's safety she felt a blessed and compensating
security.

Her father's recovery was slow and his convalescence tedious, and Anne's
diversion came in tramping the frost-sparkling hills and planning the
future that seemed as far away and dream-vague as the smoky mists on the
horizon rim.

One morning as she walked briskly beyond the town she encountered an old
man who, after the simple and kindly custom of the hills, "stopped and
made his manners."

"Howdy, ma'am," he began. "Hit's a tol'able keen an' nippy mornin',
hain't hit?"

"Keen but fine," she smilingly replied, as her eyes lit with interest
for so pronounced a type. Had she seen him on the stage as representing
his people, she would have called the make-up a gross exaggeration. He
was tall and loose-jointed, and his long hair and beard fell in barbaric
raggedness about a face seamed with deep lines. But his eyes were shrewd
and bold, and he carried himself with a sort of innate dignity despite
the threadbare poorness of patched trousers and hickory shirt, and he
tramped the snowy hills coatless with ankles innocent of socks. The long
hickory with which he tapped the ground as he walked might have been the
staff of a biblical pilgrim, and they chatted affably until he reached
the question inevitable in all wayside meetings among hillmen.

"My name's Cyrus Spradling, ma'am. What mout your'n be?"

"Anne Masters," she told him. "My father is the superintendent of the
coal mine here."

She was unprepared for the sudden and baleful transformation of face and
manner that swept over him with the announcement. A moment before he had
been affable, and her own eyes had sparkled delightedly at the
mother-wit of his observations and the quaint idiom and metaphor of his
speech. Now, in an instant, he stiffened into affronted rigidity, and
made no effort to conceal the black, almost malignant, wave of hostility
that usurped the recent mildness of his eyes.

"Ye're ther same one that used ter be Boone Wellver's gal," he declared
scornfully; and the girl, accustomed to local idiosyncrasies, flushed
less at the direct personality of the statement than at the accusing
note of its delivery.

"Used to be?" The question was the only response that for the instant of
surprise came to her mind.

Cyrus Spradling spat on the ground as his staff beat a tattoo.

"Wa'al, thet war y'ars back, an' ye hain't nuver wedded with him yit."
The old man stood there actually trembling with a rage induced by
something at which she had no means of guessing.

She, too, drew herself up with a sudden stiffness and would have turned
away, but he was prompter.

"Hit 'pears like no woman won't hev him! I reckon I don't blame 'em
none, nuther. I disgusts ther feller my own self," and before she could
gather any key to the extraordinary incident, he had gone trudging on,
mumbling the while into his unshaven beard.

Anne walked perplexedly homeward, and out of it all she could winnow
only one kernel of comprehensible detail. Obviously she had met an enemy
of Boone's, and yet she had heard Mr. McCalloway speak with warmth of
the neighbourly kindness of Cyrus Spradling.

When she entered the house her father was sitting before the hearth,
somewhat emaciated after his tedious convalescence, and his eyes
followed her with a wistful dependence as she measured his medicine and
rearranged the pillows at his back.

When, finally, she, too, drew a chair close to the blaze, the man said
seriously:

"When your mother was your age, Anne, you had been born."

To this statistical announcement, the obvious response being denied by
kindness, she made no answer. Perhaps she could not help reflecting had
her mother been more deliberate, many years of discontent might have
been escaped.

"My family has little to thank me for," observed Masters at last, with a
candour that the daughter found embarrassing. "Conversely, I dare say, I
have little claim to expect much--and yet even life's derelicts are
subject to human emotions."

"For instance, Daddy?"

"Tom Wallifarro stands pretty close to his allotment of three score and
ten," came the thoughtful answer. "Neither your mother nor I is exactly
young. It would be a comfort to think of you as settled, with your own
life plans drawn and arranged."

The girl smiled up at him from her low chair. "Daddy," she said softly,
"you know what I'm waiting for. You're the one person of my own blood
that I can take into full confidence, because you're the only one who
doesn't think of my life as a piece of cloth to be cut and fitted to
Morgan's measure, whether it suits me or not. You've never said much,
but I've known you were on my side."

For the first time in her memory her father was not immediately
responsive. His hand falling on her bright head rested there with a
dubious touch, and his eyes were irresolutely clouded.

"I wonder, dear," he said slowly, "whether, after all, I don't agree
with the others--in part, at least. All my life I've been an insurgent,
scorning the caution of the provident, and paying a beastly stiff price
for my mutiny against smugly accepted rules of the game."

"A woman has only one life to share," she answered firmly. "It's not
exactly insurgency to insist on loving the man."

After a little he inquired, "You _are_ fond of Morgan, though, aren't
you? If there were no Boone Wellver, for instance, you might even love
him, mightn't you?"

"There is a Boone, though." She spoke quietly but with a finality that
seemed to close the doors upon discussion, and a silence followed.

Finally, however, Larry Masters cleared his throat in an embarrassed
fashion. "I spoke a while back of wanting to see you protected in the
shelter of a home. Since we've embarked on the subject, I'm going to
tell you something more. A certain truth has been carefully withheld
from you, and I believe you ought to know it."

"What truth?" Her eyes widened a little, and the man shifted his
position uneasily.

"The true realization of how deeply we all stand in Tom Wallifarro's
debt," he made blunt response.

"I've always known," she hastily declared, "that he's been a fairy
godfather, and given me things--luxurious things--that mother's income
couldn't run to."

Larry Masters laughed with a shade of bitterness.

"Your mother has never had any income, Anne. As for myself, there's
never been a time since you were a baby when I could make buckle and
tongue meet. That's the whole ugly truth. House-rent, clothes, food,
education, everything, necessities as well as comforts, livelihood as
well as luxuries--the whole lot and parcel have come to my wife and my
daughter from the generous hand of Tom Wallifarro. But for that, God
knows what their lives would have been."

Anne Masters rose and stood unsteadily on the rag rug before the stone
flaggings of the hearth.

"You mean ... that we ... have ... been actual dependents on his
kindness--that we've just been ... charity ... parasites?"

The girl's hands came to her bosom and a shiver ran through her. The
warm flood of colour left her cheeks, and her eyes were deep with
chagrined amazement.

The man did not answer the questions, and she went on with another:

"Do you mean ... for I must know ... that we've lived as we have on
nothing but ... generous charity?... That he's been paying all these
years what it cost ... to raise me properly ... for his son?"

"Hold on, Anne--" The convalescent raised an admonitory hand. "There's
danger of doing people who love you a grave injustice. Tom Wallifarro
would go to his grave with his lips sealed, though torture were used to
open them, before he would seek to coerce you or make you unhappy. If
you've never been told the facts, it was because he preferred that there
should be no burdensome sense of obligation."

"But always," Anne insisted faintly, as though oppressed by poignant
physical pain, "he has done these things ... with the one ... idea ...
that I was to be ... his son's wife."

"I should rather say," quietly amended Larry Masters, "with that dream
and hope."

"And, Mother," she asked, in a strangely strained voice, "Mother has
assured him that ... when the time comes ... she could ... deliver the
goods?"

Larry had seen Anne in childhood transports of passion, but never before
cold and white in such a stillness of wrath as that which transformed
her now. Her eyes made him feel the accomplice in some monstrous traffic
upon his daughter's womanhood, and it was difficult to remain complacent
under her cross-examining.

"Your mother has had the same dream and hope. If the marriage was not
repugnant to you, I dare say it would take cavilling to criticize it."

"You don't see, then ..."--the girl felt suddenly faint and dizzy as she
moved a little to the side and leaned inertly against the wall--"you
don't see that the very chivalry of Uncle Tom's conduct ... enslaves me
a ... hundred times ... more strongly ... than a cruder effort to force
me? You don't see that ... he's paid for me ... and that if Boone came
today ... with a marriage license ... I couldn't marry him ... without
feeling that I must buy ... myself back first?"

"That, of course, my dear, is a morbid and distorted view."

"Is it? Haven't I eaten the food and worn out the clothes and acquired
the education that were all only items of an investment for Morgan's
future? Haven't I used these payments made on that investment only to
take them away from him and give them to some one else? I haven't even
been given the chance of protest against these chains of damnable
kindness."

"You seem, my dear, to have given your heart to Boone, and that settles
it, I suppose. I might wish it otherwise--Tom and your mother may still
cling to the other hope, but--"

"You say I've given my heart to Boone," she interrupted fiercely, "but I
find that it wasn't mine to give. I find that I wasn't a free agent. I
had already been mortgaged and remortgaged for things not only used by
me but by my mother, and--" She paused, and Masters added with a twisted
smile of chagrin,

"Yes--and your father."

"But how about Boone?" she demanded. "What of the debt owed to him? Did
they have the right to barter off his happiness as well as mine?"

"Tom Wallifarro," her father gravely reminded her, "has been a
benefactor to Boone. Tom Wallifarro has not complained. Moreover, the
wounds of youth are not quite so fatal as they seem when one suffers
them. If they were, few men would live to middle-age. I dare say Boone
would survive even if he lost you."

Anne's brain was dizzy and stunned. Mortification and wretchedness were
blurring the focus of her vision, and this suggestion that after all she
was exaggerating her importance in Boone Wellver's life seemed the
dictum she could not allow to pass unchallenged. With an instinctive
lashing out of her hot emotions she pitched the battle on that single
issue, an issue which seemed to determine whether after all she was
fighting in fairness and clean conscience for independence, or only
clinging to a selfishness that trod toward its gratification on the
happiness of others.

"Prove that to me," she retorted in the same cold fury. "Prove that he
doesn't need me and that I'm thinking only of myself, and I'll marry
anybody you say. I'll obediently deliver myself over and say, 'Here's
your marriageable asset. Do what you like with it.'"

Her words had not been torrential, but glacially cold and hard under the
congealing pressure of indignation, but now the tone broke into
something like a sob, as she declared:

"Boone has had only one girl in his life. His whole scheme has been
built about me. Show me that a love like that is only a whim, and I'll
agree that this chattel idea of marriage is as good as any other, and
I'll submit to it."

Swiftly Larry Masters repressed a smile. Anne, he reflected, did not
realize how often that refurbished fiction has been retailed as an axiom
by young hearts in equinox.

"Why did you smile, Father?" she demanded militantly, and he shook his
heed.

"I was only reflecting," he assured her, "that every girl thinks that of
every man she loves."

"Do you know of anything to disprove it in the present case?"

"Since you ask," he made hesitant reply, "I did hear some
unsubstantiated rumours hereabouts that he had proposed and been
rejected by a mountain girl--Cyrus Spradling's daughter."

Cyrus Spradling's daughter! At the name, Anne saw again the lank
mountaineer of the loose joints and the uncombed hair, who this morning
had parted from her mumbling maledictions against Boone.

He had been a mystery then. Now his name falling into the conversation
like a shell that has found its range, had the demoralizing force of an
explosion. Her belief was no weathervane to veer lightly, but the bruise
on her heart was sensitive even to the touch of a breeze, and it was
freshly sore.

"Who--ever told you that," she asseverated in slow syllables, "was a
liar. I'd gamble my life on it." Then having made her confession of
faith in those staunch terms, she illogically demanded, "When was this
alleged affair?"

"Just after he finished college, I believe. I can't be quite sure."

"At that time," said Anne Masters, "and before that, and after that,
Boone loved me. It was no divided or vacillating love. I'm so sure of
him that I'm perfectly willing to stake everything on it. I'm willing,
if I'm wrong, even to pay off my mortgage!"

"Since you take that view," said her father, "I'm sorry to have repeated
the story. I hadn't regarded it as so damning, myself. Young men
sometimes love more than once without forfeiting all human respect. You
might ask Boone about it? I don't fancy he'd lie to you."

"I will ask him," she vehemently declared, "and if there's any atom of
truth in it--and I know there isn't--I don't care whom I marry or what
happens afterwards! As to Uncle Tom, I don't think I can go on another
day being his charity child."

"If you don't, you'll break his heart," her father told her, in a voice
of urgent persuasiveness. "For the present, at least, you must regard
what I've told you as Masonically confidential."

"Why?"

"Because he would see himself as having hurt you where he sought only to
be a loving magician with a wand of kindness, and I'm not the man to
injure him like that." He hesitated, and the climax of his statement
came with explosive suddenness. "Good God, Anne, he's just saved me from
disgrace."

Then came the story of Colonel Wallifarro's latest benefaction, and at
the end of it the girl pressed her hands to temples that were hot.

"I think," she said falteringly, "I'll go out for a while where the air
is fresher. It's very close in here."

The door closed silently, almost stealthily, behind her, and Masters
thought she walked with the noiseless care of one moving in a chamber of
death.




CHAPTER XXXVI


Anne Masters looked out of the car windows with shadowed and preoccupied
eyes on that journey from the mountains back to Louisville. The old
conductor who always stopped and chatted with her, after a glance at her
expression, punched her ticket and passed on. Something was not well
with her, he reflected.

To this girl, the joyous sense of freedom had been the essence of life,
and now she was going home with the feeling of one who has passed under
a yoke. It was as if henceforth she were to know the sea which she had
adventurously sailed in liberty only from the chained oar bench of the
galley slave. She felt humiliated and utterly miserable, and perhaps,
worst of all, she was oppressed by an unrelieved realization of her own
futility. Beside the competence of the young woman who took dictation at
Morgan's desk, her own social accomplishments appeared for the first
time summoned for comparison, and the parallel left her branded in her
own mind as an economic parasite. Marriage was the one way in which a
woman of her sort could finance her life, and the only marriage which
for her would be a fulfilment and not a travesty--itself requiring
financing--lay remote.

Anne repressed the first indignant impulse to write to Boone of the
unjustifiable charge against him to which she had been forced to listen.
There at the capital he was adjusting himself to new duties and settling
his shoulders into an unaccustomed harness. She knew that he took these
things seriously since he meant to use their opportunities as
stepping-stones to broader achievement, and a letter on such a subject
would seem hysterical and wanting in faith, when perhaps he was most
depending on that faith. Now she told herself that except for having
unalterably committed herself to that course with foolish emphasis, she
would not even speak incidentally to Boone of the matter. She assured
herself that already she knew the answer and needed no further
evidence--but a pledge was a pledge, and she must have the reply to take
from his lips to her father.

Yet in the weeks which intervened before that opportunity arrived, the
repudiated matter rankled like a poison, which abates none of its
malignity because its victim has pasted an innocuous label on the
bottle.

So one day, while Anne was being tortured in spirit and was telling
herself that she was serenely untroubled, Boone was at the school where
Happy Spradling had for some years been a member of the teaching staff.

His eyes were glowing with appreciation as he went about the place,
recognizing the magic that had grown there. It had woven its spell out
of the dauntless resolution of a little coterie of women who, like
unostentatious vestals, had kindled and fed here, where it meant
everything, the fire of education and wholesomeness. Surrounded by a
hinterland where sloven illiteracy fostered lawlessness, that fire
burned in houses that stood up as monuments both of practical utility
and surprising beauty. Its light was reflected in keen young faces
hungry for education and smiling young eyes in which Boone read the
presage of a new future for his people.

Women had done this thing: women for the most part from the Bluegrass
who had surrendered ease and chosen effort: women who, out of a
volunteer greatness of spirit, elected to "wait in heavy harness on
fluttered folk and wild."

Boone drew a long breath of silent tribute and homage. It pleased him to
think, too, that not all of the magic-makers came from beyond the hills.
Happy was one of them. In these years she had developed until one might
not have guessed that she, too, had not come from the source of a
gentler rearing. She had met the representative of her district as an
old friend, but in no glance or inflection was there a hint that between
them lay any buried memory.

"They sent for you to come here," the girl told him, as she showed him
over the redeemed grounds, "because we want your help. They didn't know
that we were old friends, and I didn't mention it. You see what we are
trying to do here, but we need roads. A country without highways is a
house without windows. That is where you can help us. We're very poor,
you know."

"You're making the country very rich," he answered gravely, and he
returned to Frankfort with the affairs of that school near his heart.

That week-end he went to Louisville, and as he sat at Anne's right at a
dinner party a mood of romanticism laid its glamour upon his thoughts.
Tonight he could seem to step back across the years and stand looking
into the hungry, discontented eyes of a boy in hodden-gray perched on
the topmost rail of a rotting fence. It seemed incredible that that boy
had been himself. To that boy, all life except the hard realities of a
pioneer people had been an untried thing of formless dream tissue.

And tonight he sat here! In many respects it was just such a table and
just such a company as everywhere reflected the niceties of civilized
society, yet in the little intimate things it was distinctive.

In the voices, the colloquialisms--the very colour of thought--spoke the
spirit of the South--not the Old South, perhaps, yet the offspring of a
mother who had passed on much of herself.

From the log cabin to this dinner seemed to him the measure of his
progress thus far. It was as though with seven-league boots he had
crossed the centuries!

Behind him lay a boyhood that belonged to the little sectionalism of the
backwoods settlement. Here was the widening circle of the life evolved
out of it, yet still a circle of sectionalism. What lay beyond?

In his imagination the young Kentuckian saw the dome of the capitol at
Washington, the nerve centre of the nation, where functioned the broad
affairs of statecraft. Above the dome an afterglow hung in the sky, and
in it shone a single star--the evening star. That, of course, was a long
way off, yet from Louisville to Washington seemed a shorter and smoother
road than from the laurel thickets to Louisville. Youth was his, and a
resolution forged and tempered. Ambition was his, and the incentive of a
beacon whose light he renewed whenever he looked into the violet eyes
that were not far from his own.

The race would not, of course, be easy. There would be the heart-testing
smother of effort before the prize was won, but the future lay open, and
he coveted no victory of unwrung withers and unwearied lungs.

Thank God, the one thing without which he must fail was surely his: the
loyalty of the woman he loved.

Anne had been unusually quiet and grave this evening, but he had arrived
on a late train and had as yet had no opportunity for talk with her
alone. That would come later.

When he had driven home with her, he followed her into the old parlour,
with its ripe portraits from the brush of Jouett, and the cheery blaze
of its open fire. With her opera cloak thrown across his arm, he watched
her go over and stand on the hearth, while the firelight played on the
ivory whiteness and the satin softness of her neck and shoulders, and
made a nimbus about her bright hair.

"You're not wearing your string of pearls tonight," he smiled; and she
smiled, too, but not happily.

"No," she said. "I thought I wouldn't."

She did not add that she had not worn them because they were the gift of
Colonel Wallifarro and seemed to her an emblem of bondage.

All that she would tell him in a few minutes, but first she had an
awkward question to ask which had hung over her all evening as the
threat of bedtime punishment hangs over a child. Now she meant to
dispose of that quickly and categorically and have it done with. She
felt shamed, as his frank eyes met hers, to broach an inquiry that
seemed so nearly an insult to his allegiance. But she stood pledged and
she had planned the matter in just one fashion. There would be the
question and the negative reply, then the ghost would be laid.

That there could be any other answer than "No," however modified or
justified by circumstance, had not entered into her premises of thought
as conceivable. The general who, no matter how flawless his
plan-in-chief, has arranged no alternative strategy, is a commander
doomed. Anne had admitted in advance no substitute for absolute denial.

Now she turned and spoke gently:

"Before we talk of anything else, dear, there's a question I must ask
you, and you must answer it in one word--yes, or no. You'll want to say
more, and afterwards you may--but not at first." She paused, and a note
of apology crept into the voice that went on again: "I feel disloyal
even to ask it, but it's a thing I'm pledged to do, and I'll explain the
reason afterwards."

Boone smiled with the confidence of a man for whom the witness stand
holds no terror.

"Ask it, dearest."

"Did you ... ever"--she faltered a moment, then went hurriedly on, as if
racing against a failure of resolve--"ask ... any other girl ... to
marry you?"

The smile was struck from his face in an instant, leaving his eyes
pained and his lips straight and tight, and her gaze, fixed on his, read
the swift change of expression and responded with a sudden terror in her
own pupils.

"I was never ... in love with any one...!"

"One word!" Her interruption came in a tone he had never heard her use
before. It was so quiet that it carried with it a chill like that of
death. "Yes or no."

Boone felt a cold moisture on his hands and temples. A matter easy to
explain had, of a sudden, become inexplicable. Looking back over lapsed
years, all the quixotic urging of a false sense of justice had gone out
of conduct which had then seemed so mandatory. The inescapable
obligation to which he had responded seemed empty and twisted now. He
could see only that he had insulted Happy with a half offer and been
false to his avowed love of Anne and to his duty to himself.

That, at the time, he had been groping toward a callow and half-baked
conception of honour failed now to extenuate his blunder, and if he
himself could no longer understand it, how could he hope to make her do
so?

His voice came in a dull monotone.

"Yes," he said, "I did. May I explain?"

In the credo of this girl's life fairness and generosity were twin
cornerstones, and condemnation without hearing was an abhorrent and mean
injustice. But the unadmitted poison of an accusation fought in secret
had been insidiously undermining her sanity on the one central theme of
her life, and Boone's affirmative had seemed to sever with a shock of
complete surprise the anchor cable of her faith.

"No," she said, and for once it might have been the acid-marred voice of
her mother, "that's all I need to know."

"But, Anne"--Boone took an impulsive step toward her and sought to speak
sanely, while he held off the sense of chaos under which his brain
staggered--"but, Anne, after all these years, you can't throw overboard
your faith in me without giving me a chance to be heard."

She laughed bitterly, and of course that was hysteria, but to the man it
seemed only derision.

"Until three minutes ago," she said, "I would have staked my life on my
faith in you ... I did just about do it.... Now, I'm afraid ... there
isn't any left ... to throw away."

"If you ever had any," he declared--and he, too, spoke under a stress
that gave an unaccustomed hardness to his voice, "there should be some
still. The answer you held me to answers nothing. It gives no
reason--no explanation."

"The reasons ... don't count for much. Yes means yes. It means years of
deceit and lies to me.... Good-bye."

Boone Wellver turned and walked to the door. His eyes, fixed ahead, saw
nothing. As he went, he collided with a table and paused, looking at it
with a dazed sense of injury. On the threshold he halted to speak in a
voice which was queer and uncommanded.

"You are sending me away," he said, "without a chance. I still have
faith in you ... unless it's a false faith, you'll send for me to come
back ... and give me that chance.... Until you do, I won't ask it ... or
try to see you."

The girl stood looking past him in a sort of trance. "Good-bye," she
repeated, and he took up his coat and hat and went out.

For a little while after he had gone Anne Masters remained staring with
a stunned and transfixed immobility at the empty frame of the door
through which he had gone; a frame it seemed to her out of which had
suddenly been torn the picture of her life, leaving a tattered canvas.
She shivered violently; then she, too, started toward the door, swayed
unsteadily, and fell insensible.

       *       *       *       *       *

A measure before the lower house of the General Assembly had split it so
evenly that when the roll call came on the vote, a deadlock was
predicted and one absentee might bring defeat to his cause. After each
adjournment noses were jealously counted, and the falling gavel, calling
each session to order, found Boone in his seat with a face that sought
to mask its misery behind a stony expressionlessness. It was a deadly
sober face with eyes that wandered often into abstraction, so that men
who had seen it heretofore ready of smile commented on the change, yet
hesitated to question one so palpably aloof.

In these days it was hard for Boone to see, with his single purpose
shattered, the reason or value of any purpose, yet habit held him to his
routine duties with an overserious and humourless inflexibility.

After the first dull wretchedness of the night when he and Anne had
parted, he had laid hold upon a hope which had not endured. He had told
himself with the persistence of a refrain that the girl who had that
night condemned him out of hand was a girl temporarily bereft of
reasoning balance by a tide of heartache and a tempest of anger. The
mail would soon bring him a note announcing the restoration of the woman
he loved to her own gracious fairness and serene self-recovery. He could
not, without losing his whole grip on life, bring himself to the
admission that the passion of a wild, ungenerous moment would endure.
Indeed, the thought of what she must have suffered--what she must still
be suffering--so to carry her and hold her outside her whole orbit of
being, tortured him as much as his own personal loss and grief.

But no word had come. That wild, hurried interview had moved with such
torrential haste and violence to its culmination of breached
understanding that there had been no time for stemming it with
moderation or explained circumstances.

She had not had the chance to tell him of the disclosures her father had
made, or of the sense of bondage that had weighed upon her until the
colour of her thought had lost its clarity and become bewilderingly
turgid. She had not been able to let the light into the festering
brooding that had subconsciously poisoned her mind. A single idea had
carried all else with it as a flood carries wreckage. For years she had
stood out for Boone. A time had come when he had been charged with
absolute duplicity toward her, and she had scornfully wagered her life
on his fealty and submitted the whole vital matter to one question. His
answer had been a confession.

There had been no years of intermittent association when he could
logically or decently have entertained another love affair. From the
first day of his avowed allegiance until now there had been no break in
his protestations. Therefore, the word "yes" or "no" contained all the
answer there could be to the question of his loyalty, and the word which
shattered the whole dream came from his own lips.

One day, as Boone was leaving his hotel room for the state house, two
letters were handed him, and his heart leaped into drum-beat. One was
addressed in her hand, and that one he thrust into his pocket, as one
saves the best to read last.

The other was an invitation from Colonel Wallifarro: an engraved blank
filled in with a name and date. In a secluded corner of the hard-frozen,
state house grounds he sat on a bench to read the note from Anne, but
when he had torn the envelope and glanced at the sheet the light went
out of his eyes and his bronzed cheeks became suddenly drawn.

"I thought you might like to know," she said. "The invitation from Uncle
Tom looks innocent enough, but I don't think you'd enjoy the party. It's
given to announce my engagement to Morgan."

Boone sat there dazed, while in the icy air his breath floated cloudlike
before his lips.

Eventually he awoke to some realization of the passage of time, and
looked at his watch. It was past the hour for the roll-call on the bill
which his absence might deliver into the hands of the enemy, the cause
for which he and his colleagues had been fighting.

He came with an effort to his feet and went heavily through the corridor
and into the chamber. At the door, where he leaned against the casing,
he heard the clerk of the house calling the roll, and the staccato
"Ayes" and "Noes" of the responses. Already the alphabetical sequence
had progressed to the U's, and soon his own name would follow. Then it
came, and at first his stiff tongue could not answer. He was licking his
lips and his throat worked with some spasmodic reflex. Finally he heard
a strained and unnatural voice, which he could hardly recognize as his
own, answering "No."

Heads turned toward him at the queer sound, and from somewhere rose a
twittering of laughter. That was perhaps natural enough, for to the
casual and uncomprehending eye he made a spectacle both sorry and
ludicrous--this usually self-contained young man who now stood
stammering and disordered of guise, like a fellow not wholly recovered
from a night-long debauch.




CHAPTER XXXVII


The transforming touch of a razor, a studied amendment of manner and
apparel, and the passing of ten years: these are things which can work
an effective disguise for an Enoch Arden returned to village streets
that knew him long ago. Quietly dressed in clothes that were neither
good enough nor mean enough to arrest the passing eye, a middle-aged man
dropped from the evening train onto the cinder platform at Marlin Town.

Shrewd winds whipped in through icicled ravines, and the new arrival
fresh from equatorial latitudes shivered under their sting.

He thrust his hands into his pockets and scowled about him. For so long
his memory had softened the uneven contours and colours of this town
with the illusory qualities of homesickness that now its tawdry
actuality brought something of a shock. It was all raw and comfortless,
and as the newcomer looked up at the forbidding summits he snarled to
himself, "They ain't a patch on the Andes."

Across from the old brick court house, with its dilapidated cupola and
its indefinable air of the mediaeval, sat the general store, proclaimed
in a sign of crippled lettering, "The Big Emporium." Tom Carr's nephews
directed this centre of industry and, from a grimy "office" above
stairs, Tom Carr directed his nephews. Until recent days he had also
directed, with a dictator's fiat power, most of the affairs of the
countryside. From that second-story room, the Gregories would have
declared with conviction Tom's father had "hired" Asa's father killed.
It was in its unadorned fashion a place of crumbling traditions.

Sitting there of late, Tom had done some unvarnished thinking anent the
expanding influence of young Boone Wellver.

He was sitting there now in the light and reek of a smoky lamp, by a
stove that was red-hot with no window open, and he was alone. He heard
the wooden stairs creaking under the ascending tread of stranger feet,
for to his acute ears footsteps were as individual as voices, and his
head inclined expectantly. Tom was waiting there for a man who had
written him a letter.

There followed a rap on the panels, and in response to his growled
permission the door opened and closed almost without sound, showing
inside the threshold a man clean shaven and inconspicuously dressed.

"Howdy, Saul," welcomed the seated baron of diminished powers. "I'd call
hit a right boldacious thing ter do--comin' back hyar--if I stood in
yore shoes."

Into the furtive eyes of the visitor came a shallow flash of bravado.

"Who's to hinder me, Tom?"

"Young Boone Wellver's got ter be a right huge power in these parts here
of late. He don't love ye none lavish, ef what folks norrates be true."

Saul seated himself, with a shrug of the shoulders. "I've had run-ins
with worse men than him," he declared, "and I'm still on the hoof."

"On the hoof an' fattenin', I should say," graciously acceded the leader
of the Carrs. "Ye've got a corn-fed look about ye, Saul."

"I stayed away from home," continued Fulton, "so long as it was to my
profit to be elsewheres. Now it suits me to come back, and there isn't
room enough here for both me an' him."

The elderly feudist surveyed his visitor with a cool shrewdness, and
after a long pause he remarked drily: "Ef so be, Boone Wellver was
called ter his reward, Saul, I wouldn't hardly buy me no mournin'
clothes, but for my own self I don't dast break ther truce. Howsomever,
when a feller hits at a snake he had ought ter _git_ hit. Thet feller
thet ye hired ter lay-way him hyar of late didn't seem ter enjoy no
master luck."

"All he needed was a little overseein'," retorted Saul blandly. "That's
why I'm here now. I've got to lay low for a while because there's still
the little matter of an indictment outstandin' but the same man stands
in your light and mine--we ought to be able to do some business
together."

"Things have changed a mighty heap," demurred Tom uneasily, but Saul
laughed.

"Let's change them back, then," he responded.

The plotting of a murder is erroneously presumed by the unpracticed to
be an affair of hushed voices and deeply closeted conspirators. Between
these two craftsmen it was discussed in the calm hard-headedness of
severe practicality. To Saul, who had been long an absentee, Tom Carr's
intimate familiarity with current conditions proved a bureau of vital
statistics. To Tom, who saw in Boone a dangerous trouble-maker and who
yet hesitated to make a feud-killing of the matter, the hand of a
volunteer was welcome, and so, as they talked, a community of interests
developed. Tom was to provide Saul with an inconspicuous refuge, and
Saul was to do the rest. A few others whose active participation was
needed were to be taken into confidence, but the secret was to be held
in close-guarded circle.

It is said that no other bitterness can be so saturated as that of the
apostate, and Saul brought into Tom's presence one day a boyish fellow
whose blood was Gregory blood but whose one strong emotion seemed to be
hatred of his own breed. He had been selected by the intriguer as the
man to take in hand and carry to success the assassination of Boone
Wellver.

Into Tom's office slouched "Little" Jim Bartleton by the front way, and
into it, by back stairs, came Saul at the same time.

Until a short time back no one had thought much about Little Jim. He had
not been a positive personality until recently, when he had taken to
drink and developed a mean streak. Always he had been fearless, but that
elicited no comment in a land where cowards are few. His most recent
friendships had all been among the Carrs, and no insult to his own
people had been uttered in his hearing which he had not capped with one
more scathing.

Just where his grievance lay had been his own secret. For Saul's
purpose, it sufficed that it existed and was dominant.

"Son," questioned Tom Carr in his suave voice, "I see plenty of reasons
why a feller should disgust Boone Wellver, but he's yore kin. Why does
ye hate him so?"

The answer came, prefaced with a string of oaths:

"I hain't nuver named this hyar ter nairy man afore now, but I aimed ter
wed an', ter git me money enough, I sot me up a small still-house nigh
ter whar he dwells at."

Spurts of hatred shot out of the speaker's dark eyes; eyes which in
kindlier moods were lighted by intelligence.

"Ef I'd been left alone I could of got me enough money ter do what I
wanted ter do ... ther gal was ready ter hev me. But, damn his
law-an'-order, hypocritical piety! he hed ter nose out my still an' warn
me thet without I quit he'd tip me off ter ther revenuer."

"Some folks," put in Tom, "moutn't even hev warned ye."

"Thet's jest ther p'int," panted the boy. "He told ther revenuer
fust-off an' then warned me atterwards. Ef hit hedn't of been fer a
right gay piece of luck, ther raiders would of come afore I got ther
still hid away--an' I'd be sulterin' in jail right now. I've done swore
ter kill him."

"An' ther gal, son," prompted Tom gently.

The black face went even blacker.

"I reckon," he said savagely, "she don't aim ter wait fer me no longer.
I owes thet ter Boone Wellver, too."

"An' so ye're willin'--?"

"Plumb willin' an' anxious! I've done held my counsel. He don't
suspicion how I feels.... I knows every path an' by-way over thar. I
knows every step he takes when he's at home. Thar hain't no fashion I
could fail."

"An' ye knows, too, how ter keep yore mouth shut?"

"I hain't nuver told nuthin' yit."

The two conspirators looked at each other and nodded. Here was an agent
who could move without suspicion and act out of his own ardour of
hatred. Decidedly he was a discovery.

So the hireling was instructed and given a leave of absence to go and
"set up with ther gal in Leslie County." But he did not go to Leslie
County. He went, instead, by a roundabout road to the state capital, and
one evening knocked on the door of Boone Wellver's hotel room.

When the messenger arrived, Boone was sitting alone with a brooding
face, while in his hand he held a telegram which had fallen like an
unwarned bolt on his lascerated soreness of spirit.

Two hours ago he had received and read it. In it Victor McCalloway had
said: "Deeply regret not seeing you for farewell. Called suddenly for
indefinite absence. Luck and prosperity to you always."

Luck and prosperity! Boone just now was hoping at best to fend off
despair and a total disintegration of a hard-built structure of ideals.
To McCalloway his thoughts had turned for the succour of a steadying
calm--and that one ally was no longer in reach. Boone had read the words
with a numbed heart, for now out of the confusion of tempest-smother
that beat about him he had lost even the solace of the bell-buoy's
strong note.

This misfortune, be assured himself, at least exhausted the
possibilities of perverse circumstance to hurt him. Misfortune's box of
tricks were empty now!

Tonight Colonel Wallifarro was entertaining at dinner. Anne would be
smiling as they congratulated her. A little while ago he had been at
just such a dinner, marvelling greatly at the good fortune that had
brought to him such progress. Now it stood for the emptiness of effort.

Tonight he wanted the hills--not calm and star-lit, but rocking to
hurricane fury and thundering with flood. No voice of all their voices
could be too wild or ruthless for his temper.

Boone was in a dangerous mood. He sat there with no eye to censor him,
and more than once he winced, biting back an outcry. His strongly thewed
shoulders heaved and flinched with thoughts that fell on quivering
brain-nerves like the merciless lashing of an invisible scourge. He
tried to analyze himself and his relation to affairs outside himself,
but his psychological attuning was pitched only to such an agony as
cries for outlet. Everything that he was, he bitterly reflected, was a
summary of acquired ethics designed to bury and hide his natural
heritages. He was a tamed and performing wild animal, and just now the
only assuagement that tempted him was the instinct to be wild again--to
lash out and punish some one for his hurting.

The star that had led him had gone out, but one could not punish a star.
Even in his frenzied wretchedness he could not even want to punish his
star.

But her world--to which he had climbed with a dominant ambition--that
was different. That smugly superior world had betrayed him.

The young features hardened, and the eyes kindled into the
lightning-play that leads men, but it was such a leadership as animates
the chief who dances around the war fires and no longer of him who
smokes the pipe of sane counsel.

Just now it would take little to send the pedestal of acquired thought
down in ruin. Just now an enemy would not have been safe within the
reach of his blow.

Yet with a pale, expiring flicker, struggling through darkness, there
remained a half realization that this was all a delirium which he must
combat and overcome.

"I reckon," he said aloud, with that self-pity which is not good for a
man, "I've been as deep down in hell today as a man can go." Then he
started as a knock came on his door, and into the room stepped Jim
Bartleton of Marlin Town.

"Saul Fulton's done come back," he announced curtly, "an' Tom Carr's
done tuck him in. I'm one of the men thet's been hired ter kill ye."

Of course, the tale of the still and the threatened raid was of a piece
with all of Jim Bartleton's hatred; of a piece, too, with his seeming
degeneration. Boone Wellver, facing the animosities of enemies who
fought with ancient guile, had sought to meet that condition. "Little"
Jim was one of several, wholly faithful to him, who had undertaken to
insinuate themselves into the confidence of the conspirators.

       *       *       *       *       *

The same Commonwealth's attorney who had prosecuted Asa Gregory had gone
to his own house for dinner, and now he sat before his library fire in
slippers and faded smoking jacket. On the floor near him lay an
afternoon paper, but the day's chief news he had garnered more directly
by personal contact. Over there in the Assembly was being waged a battle
which interested him deeply. So inured had he become to high tides of
political struggle that it did not occur to him to reflect upon the
frequency with which, in his native State, bitter campaign followed upon
bitter campaign. A Democrat and a Republican were at grips for the
United States senatorship. Each of them had been a governor of Kentucky
and the legislature, where senators were still made, hung in grimly
unyielding deadlock. All that afternoon until its adjournment the lawyer
had sat in the visitors' gallery of the house or laboured in the lobby.
Now he sought brief relaxation after his own fashion. He sat upright in
his armchair with a clarionet pressed to his lips and his cheeks
ballooned, playing "Trouble in the Land."

The soloist at length took the instrument from his pursed lips and wiped
the mouthpiece with his handkerchief, and as he did so the negro man who
was both bodyservant and butler opened the door of the room.

"Thar's a gentleman done come ter see you, sah. He 'pears mighty urgent
in his mind an' he wouldn't give me no name."

The officer, bethinking himself of political satellites who sometimes
make a virtue of mystery, smiled as he directed: "Bring him in here,
Tom. It's cold in the parlour."

Into the library came Boone, and stood silent until the negro had closed
the door upon his exit; then he nodded curtly. There was an air of
suppressed wildness in his eyes and a pallour under the bronze of his
cheeks, upon which the attorney, as he offered a chair, made no comment.

"I'm here," announced the visitor with a brusque pointedness, "to give
you information upon which it is your duty to act."

There was an unintended rasp of challenge in the manner, and under it
the official's lips compressed themselves. Boone in his overwrought
state felt that he must make haste, while he yet held himself in hand,
and the attorney, believing his visitor to be ill, curbed his own
temper.

"Let's have the information," he suggested. "Then I'll be in a better
position to construe my own duty."

"Presumably you wish to punish all those guilty of the conspiracy that
ended in Senator Goebel's death," went on the mountain man in a hard
voice. "I say presumably, because the Commonwealth has heretofore
appeared to discriminate among the accused."

The attorney bridled. "As to Governor Goebel's death," he asserted
heatedly, and in the very employment of the widely different titles the
two men proclaimed their antithesis of political creed and opinion, "my
record speaks for itself. My sincerity needs no defence."

"That you can prove. Saul Fulton is under indictment in your court. He
forfeited his bond and went to South America with or without your
knowledge. He has come back, and I am prepared to direct your deputy
sheriff to his hiding place. If he got away without your knowledge you
ought to be glad to have this news. If you winked at his going, I mean
to put you on record."

Boone Wellver had not seated himself. He still stood, with a stony face
out of which the eyes burned unnaturally, and the Commonwealth's
attorney took a step forward, his own cheeks grown livid with anger, so
that the two men stood close and eye-to-eye.

"In this fashion I permit no man to address me," said the prosecutor,
with his voice hard-schooled to evenness. "You have come to my house to
insult me, and I order you to leave it."

For a moment Boone remained motionless. Between him and the man across
from him swam spots of red; then words came with a coldly affronting yet
quiet ferocity:

"I am not surprised, but I've done what decency demanded. I ... gave you
your chance ... and you repudiated it ... like the charlatan you are.
This man shall die ... but it was your duty and your right ... to know
first."

He turned on his heel and opened the door, and the man in the smoking
jacket gazed after him in amazement. Evidently, the truculent visitor
was not himself, and there was no virtue in quarrelling with a temporary
madman. Boone knew only that he had invoked the law and the law had
rebuffed him. He could not see that his reception, however just his
mission, was inevitable since he had invited it with insult.

Back at his room he found another guest awaiting him. It was Joe
Gregory, who had also come from the hills. Boone had reached that point
at which surprise ends, and to this man, who was a kinsman and a deputy
sheriff in Marlin County, he gave as cursory a greeting as though he had
come only from the next street.

But Joe's grave face, in which character and sense spoke from every
strongly drawn lineament, was disturbed, and he went without preamble to
his point. Down there in the hills trouble was brewing, and among both
Gregories and Carrs a restive feeling stirred. Fellows walked with chips
on their shoulders as though each side were seeking to invite from the
other some overt act of truce-breaking. Joe had sought to analyze the
causes of this seemingly chance rebirth of long-quiet animosities. He
had learned of Saul's return, but Saul was lying low and most men did
not know of his presence. It must be, then, that from his hiding place
that intriguer was inciting a spirit of truculence in the Carrs to which
the Gregories were automatically responding. If that went on it meant
the breaking out of the "war" afresh--and a renewal of bloodshed. The
bearer of tidings ended his narrative with an appeal based on strong
trust.

"Boone, thar's jest one man kin quiet our boys down and stop 'em short
of mortal mischief, I reckon. They all trusts _you_."

"Will they all follow me?"

"Straight inter hell, they will!"

"And yet you think"--Boone looked full into the direct eyes of the other
with a glint of challenge in his own--"yet you think I ought to quiet
them instead of leading them?"

"Leading them which way, Boone? Whatever ther rest aims at, you an' me,
we stan's fer law and peace, don't we? That's what you've always drilled
into me, like gospel."

To his astonishment Joe had, for answer, a mirthless, almost derisive,
laugh--a laugh that was barked.

"So far we've stood for that, and what have we gained?" Boone's mood,
which had been all day seething like the imprisoned fire-flood of a
volcano, burst now in lava-flow through the ruptured crater of
repression. "Asa abided by the law seven years and more ago--didn't he?
Well, he's rotted in a cell ever since! Saul Fulton played with the law
and the law played with him and paid him Judas money and made him rich!
You say they'll follow me. Then, before God in heaven, I'll lead them to
a cleansing by fire! When we finish the job, those murderers and
perjurers will be done for once and for all!"

"And you," the deputy sheriff reminded him soberly, "you'll be plumb
ruint."

"I'm ruined now."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not a handsome room in which the two men stood, and Boone had
taken it with a provident eye to its cheapness, but it was in a hotel
stone-built in the times of long ago, and from the days of Henry Clay
and John C. Breckinridge to the time when Goebel died there history had
had birth between those heavy walls.

In the cheaply furnished bedroom whose paper was faded, the observant
eyes of Joe Gregory had caught one detail that struck his simple
interest, even in the surge of weightier tides.

A massive silver photograph frame lay face downward on the table as
though it had been inadvertently over-turned.

Now with a sudden gesture Boone picked it up and held it in his hand a
moment. His eyes centred their blazing scrutiny on it with a fixity
which the ruder mountaineer did not miss. For a moment only Boone held
the frame, out of which looked Anne Masters' face before his gaze; then
he replaced it on the table. He did not stand it up but laid it face
down, and in the moment of that little pantomime and the quality of the
gesture the visitor read something illuminating. He felt with an
instinctive surety that he had seen an idol dethroned, and the
mysterious words, "I'm ruined now," filled out with meaning as a sagging
and formless sail rounds into shape under the livening breath of wind.

He, too, had in those few moments seen an idol at least totter on its
pedestal. He had been a hill boy famishing for advancement, and before
his eyes Boone Wellver, distantly his relative, had been an exemplar.
Now Boone was in some unaccountable vortex and talking wildly of
inciting men who needed to be calmed. Into Joe Gregory's mind flashed an
instinct of resentment against Anne Masters, whom he had often seen
there in the hills. In some fashion, he divined, she was to blame for
this situation.

The representative wheeled and left his bewildered visitor standing in
the room alone. Below in the basement bar of the hotel a noisily
laughing crowd jostled at the counter, and the white-aproned Ganymedes
were busy. From the door Boone Wellver cast smouldering eyes about the
place, searching for a certain partisan Democrat.

Yonder, talking in loud voice, stood a colleague from a neighbouring
mountain district. He was nursing, in fingers more used to the
gourd-dipper, the stem of a cocktail glass, and his cheap wit, couched
in an affected drawl and garbed with exaggerated colloquialisms, was
being acclaimed with encouraging mirth. The fellow fancied himself a
_raconteur_, appreciated. In reality he was a sorry clown being baited.

At another time that sight, trivial in itself, would have steadied Boone
with a realization of his own self-duty to represent another type of
mountain man. Now he was past such realization.

He found the man of whom he had come in search and drew him hastily
aside.

"You said this afternoon you wanted to get away from Frankfort for a
week."

"Why, yes, Wellver, I've got a sick child at home; but this deadlock's
got me tied up. A man must stick to his colours."

Boone nodded. "You can go," he said briefly. "I've come to pair with
you. I've got to go home, too. Do you agree not to vote in the house for
one week's time?"

The opponent extended his hand. "It's a go, and thank you. Let's have a
drink on it." But Boone had already turned. He was hastening up the
stairs, and five minutes later found him throwing things into a bag.

"Now," he said in a savage voice to Joe Gregory who still waited, "let's
get away from here. There's going to be a snake killing in Marlin."




CHAPTER XXXVIII


Left alone in Wellver's bedroom, Joe Gregory had been thrown back on the
companionship of his own thoughts, and they told him that a tide and a
wind were mounting which, unless they could he swiftly stemmed, would
leave a trail of wreckage along the heights and valleys of Marlin, like
drift in the wake of a spring flood-tide; but this would be human
wreckage.

None of Boone's adherents at home had supported his program of progress
more whole-heartedly than young Joe Gregory, and the infamous perfidy of
Saul Fulton was a hateful thing to him, burning in his heart with need
of reprisal, for Asa was his "blood-relation."

But as things had shaped themselves, Saul Fulton no longer stood alone,
and so long as he was sheltered under the wing of Tom Carr, no blow
could be struck him without reopening the "war." Joe knew what that
meant. The hills again would redden; again men would ride in fear of
death, and that fear would verify itself in murders; as Joe had put it,
in "mortal mischief." The whole archaic damnation would rear its head
over the new-taught security of peace. The sum of effort toward a
stabilized order which men like Boone and himself had built tediously
upon patience, would go the collapsing way of land behind a broken dyke.

If a human being lived who could stay that catastrophe it was Boone, so
to Boone he had come and found the single available mediator hot-blooded
for violence.

Now he shuddered. If Boone Wellver had the power to dissuade those
tempestuous clansmen and hold them in abeyance, how much more easily and
mightily could he spur them forward! If he, the apostle of peace,
breathed the one word, "war," they would be the wild-eyed followers of
a Geronimo cast loose on the blood trail.

And Boone's own future, the deputy sheriff mournfully reflected, when
this storm was past would be a bright bubble pin-pricked and ended. The
man whom local pride proclaimed a statesman to be reckoned with would
stand a relapsed son of the vendetta with blood-soiled hands and an
inconsistency-smirched record. Even the men whom he could so easily
inflame now would, in the end, turn on him, and his career would be as
brief as it was floridly picturesque.

They followed feud leaders--but they did not send them to Washington!

Yet Joe was of that blood, too, and could understand Boone's
reversion--a reversion willing in a moment to cast aside the armour
which he had served his term of years for the right to wear. The thing
now was to bring him back in time out of the crimson fog that blinded
him. Joe's eyes dwelt absently on the over-turned frame as he stood
there thinking, and the articles on the table were photographed on his
gaze with a pictorial accuracy of detail, yet because of his
abstraction, without meaning of their own.

So mechanically and without at first realizing what he was doing, he
read two outspread sheets of paper: Anne's note and McCalloway's
telegram. Then abruptly the messages became an integral part of his
thought.

Anne Masters, whom Boone loved, was going to marry another man--there
was the key to Boone's wild mood, and Victor McCalloway, his friend, had
gone away!

If it was Anne who had led Boone to the brink of this peril, it was her
duty to lead him back. So ran his elementally simple logic.

"Ef she's decent," declared Joe Gregory tensely to himself, "she kain't
skeercely do no less."

So after Boone had returned and begun packing his bag, Joe made a
plausible excuse and went out to seek a telephone pay-station. Over the
long distance he got Colonel Wallifarro's house, with the amused
assistance of an operator who saw only his rustic gaucherie, and who
missed entirely the simple, almost biblical, dignity of his bearing.

"Miss Anne? No, sir, she isn't here," replied Moses, the negro butler,
and, while Joe's heart sank, that admirable majordomo, recognizing the
long-distance call, secured a connection for the speaker with the
Country Club.

While the wire buzzed distractingly, Joe Gregory stood in the closed
booth and perspired. Outside he watched a travelling salesman who, with
a chewed cigar between stout fingers, bent over the switchboard and
chatted with the blonde operator. Then finally he heard a voice at the
far end. It was a somewhat frightened and faint voice, but even in his
anger he admitted that it held a sweet and gentle cadence.

Perhaps the girl half hoped that this ring which called her from guests
to whom her engagement was being announced carried a twentieth-century
equivalent for the appearance of Lochinvar. Perhaps she only feared bad
news. At all events, she spoke low.

"Miss Masters, I'm Joe Gregory," announced an unfamiliar voice which
held across the wire a straightforward and determined significance. The
name, too, carried its effect, for Anne knew of this man as Boone's most
stalwart disciple. "The thing I've got ter tell ye hain't skeercely
suited ter speech over a telephone, an' yet thar hain't no other way.
Hit's about him, an' he's in ther direst peril a man kin stand in.
Thar's just one human soul thet hes a chanst ter save him--an' thet's
you."

Sometimes the long-distance wire hums with confusion. Sometimes it
enhances and clarifies the ghost of a whisper. Now Joe Gregory heard a
choking breath, and for an instant there was no other sound; the man,
catching the import of the gasping agitation, went on talking to its
speechlessness. It was if between them "he" could mean only one man.

"He hain't skeercely in his rightful senses, or I wouldn't hev no need
ter call on ye. He's goin' back ter--well, back home tonight. I kain't
handily tell ye what ther peril is, but ef I was ter say thet two days
hence he'll be past savin'--an' others along with him--I'd only be
talkin' text ter ye."

"But how"--there was desperation of panic in the question--"how could
I--save him?"

"He needs savin' from hisself, ma'am. Thar's a train of cars leavin'
Looeyville nigh on midnight. Ef ye teks hit I'll meet ye at ther station
when ye gets _thar_ in ther mornin'. Him an' me is leavin' on one thet
starts from hyar an hour from now. Thet's all I kin say afore I sees
ye--save thet matters are plumb desperate."

"But I can't--I don't see how--"

Anne had never quite realized such a quietly unbending sternness as that
of the voice which interrupted her:

"Ef ye don't aim ter stand by an' see his ruin, ye needs must _find_ a
way. Jest _come_, thet's all--an' come alone. No other way won't do.
I'll be at ther deppo."

And the receiver clicked with a finality that brooked no argument,
leaving the girl leaning unsteadily against the wall of the booth. She
opened the heavy door a little but did not go out. From the dining-room
came a sally of laughing voices, and from the dancing floor haunting
scraps of the "Merry Widow" waltz. A clock across the passage ticked
above these sounds, and on its dial the hands stood at eight forty-five.

Upon her ears these impressions fell with a sense of remoteness and
lightness as if they could be thrust away, but more oppressive and close
was the unnamed something brooding in the hills two hundred miles--yes,
and two centuries--away.

She knew that she stood at one of those unequivocal moments that cannot
be met with life's ordered deliberation. By tomorrow things might be
done which could never be undone. An hour hence, decision would be the
harder for newly recognized difficulties. The penalty of faltering
might be a life of self-accusation for herself--for Boone a tragedy.

She had assured herself with passionate reiteration that Boone was a
character in a chapter torn out of her life, but the heartache remained
in stubborn mutiny against that ordaining. It had been first gnawingly,
then fiercely, present while she laughed and talked at the table with an
effervescence no more natural than that pumped into artificially charged
wine, and she had needed no death's-head to sober her against too
abandoned a gaiety at that feast. Joe Gregory's words had, for all their
want of explicitness, been inescapably definite. They meant ruin--no
less--unless she intervened and came at once.

To go meant to stir tempests in teapots--to defy conventions, and
perhaps by a vapidly rigid interpretation, to compromise herself. To
refuse to go meant to abandon Boone to some undescribed, and therefore
doubly terrifying, disaster.

Anne Masters was not the woman to shrink from crises or from the
determined action for which crises called. Almost at once she knew that
she was going by the midnight train to the hills, and let the problems
that sprung from her going await a later solution. But how?

Going unaccompanied from a country-club dinner party to desperate
affairs brewing in the Cumberlands presented difficulties too tangible
to be dismissed. To confide in Colonel Tom or Morgan would mean only
that they would insist upon accompanying her. To confide in her mother
would mean burning up precious moments in hysteria. The one unobstructed
alternative appeared to be the unwelcome one of flight without
announcement.

But back to the table she carried little outward agitation. If her heart
pounded it was with a sort of exaltation born of impending moments of
action. If her face had paled it gave a logical basis for the plea of
violent headache upon which she persuaded Morgan to drive her home as
soon as the guests rose, and to make the necessary explanations only
after she had gone.

When Mrs. Masters returned she found a note entreating her not to give
way to undue anxiety. Anne was gone, and the hurriedly written lines
said she would telegraph tomorrow from her father's house, but that it
was not illness which had called her there.

       *       *       *       *       *

In such a situation, provided one approach it in the mood of Alexander
toward the Gordian knot, the greater complexities appear in retrospect.

It was looking back on those pregnant hours that their various
enormities were made plain to her, chiefly through the expounding of
_ex-post-facto_ wisdom operating cold-bloodedly and without the urge of
a peril to be met.

With much the same acceptance of the bizarre as that which marks the
fantasy of dreams, she endured the discomforts of that night's journey
and found herself at daybreak looking into gravely welcoming eyes on the
station at Marlin Town.

Her own eyes felt sunken and hot with fatigue, but to Joe Gregory, who
had also spent a sleepless night, she seemed a picture of the fresh and
dauntless.

They went first to her father's bungalow, and there a new difficulty
presented itself. Larry Masters had gone away to some adjacent town and
had left his house tight locked.

"Boone's on the move today," Joe Gregory informed her, "but matters'll
come to a head ternight. Twell then things won't hardly bust, but when
ther time comes, whatever ye kin do hes need ter be done swiftly. When I
talked with ye last night I misdoubted we'd hev even this much time ter
go on."

Then as they sat on the doorstep of the closed house, which no longer
afforded her the conventional sanction of paternal presence, the deputy
sheriff outlined for her with admirable directness and vigour the
situation which had driven him to her for help. To clear away all
mystification he sketched baldly the little episode of the down-turned
photograph and the bitterness of the three words, "I'm ruined now."

"Thet's how come me ter know," he enlightened simply, "thet Boone war
sort of crazed-like--an' thet _you_ mout cure him, ef so be ye _would_."
Then with a sterner note he added: "Whatever took place betwixt ther two
of ye air yore own business, but thar's some of us thet would go down
inter hell ter save Boone Wellver. I needed ye, an', despite yer bein' a
woman, ef ye're a man in any sense at all, ye'll stand by me right now."

Anne rose from the doorstep where she had been dejectedly sitting and
held out a hand.

"You see, I came," she said briefly; "and I aim to be man enough to do
my best."

From the door of the wretched hotel as the morning grew to noon, she
watched the streets, and it seemed to her that, quite aside from the
usual gloom of the winter's day and the scowl of the heavy sky, there
was a new and intangible spirit of foreboding upon the town. That, she
argued, could be only the creative force of imagination.

She wished for Joe Gregory, but among many busy people that day he was
the busiest, and it was not until near sunset that he came for her,
leading a saddled horse. Riding along the steep and twisting ways, a
sense of sinister forces oppressed her.

It seemed to her that the dirge through the brown-gray forests and the
shriek of blasts along the gorges were blended into an untamable litany.
"We are the ancient hills that stand unaltered! We and our sons refuse
to pass under the rod. Wild is our breath and fierce our heritage. Let
the plains be tamed and the valleys serve! Here we uphold the law of the
lawless, the nihilism of ragged freedom!"

Once Joe halted her with a raised band. "Stay hyar," he ordered, "twell
I ride on ahead. Folks hain't licensed ter pass hyar terday ontil they
gives ther right signal."

He went forward a few rods, and had Anne not been watching his lips she
would have sworn that it was only the caw of a crow she heard; but soon
from a cliff overhead and then from a thicket at the left came the
response of other cawing. Then with a nod to her to follow, her guide
flapped his reins on the neck of his mule, and again they moved forward.

It was dark when they came to the road that passed in front of Victor
McCalloway's house, and there Joe drew rein.

"I've still got some sev'ral things ter see to," he informed the girl,
"so I won't stop hyar now. Boone's inside thar, an' like as not hit'll
be better fer ther two of ye ter talk by yoreselves. I'll give ther call
afore I rides on, so thet ther door'll open for ye. Hit hain't openin'
ter everybody ternight."

Then for the first time Anne faltered.

"Must I go in there--alone?" she demanded, and Gregory looked swiftly
up.

"Ye hain't affrighted of him, be ye? Thar hain't no need ter be."

Anne stiffened, then laughed nervously. "No," she said, "I'll go in."

The deputy sitting sidewise in his saddle, watched her dismount, and
when she reached the doorstep he sung out: "Boone, hit's Joe Gregory
talkin'. Open up!"

Anne's knees were none too steady, nor was her breath quite even as the
door swung outward and Boone stood against its rectangle of light
peering out with eyes unaccommodated to the dark. He was flannel shirted
and corduroy breeched, and since yesterday he had not shaved. But his
face, drawn and strained as he looked out, not seeing her because he was
studying the stile from which the voice had come, was the face of one
who has been in purgatory and who has not yet seen the light of release.

"Boone," said the girl softly, and he started back with astonishment for
the unaccountable. Then as his gaze swung incredulously upon her, still
wraith-like beyond the shaft of the door's outpouring, he moved to the
side, and she stepped into the room.

"But you're in Louisville," he declared in the low voice of one whose
reason resents the trickery of apparitions, and his pupils burned with
an abnormal brightness. "You're announcing your engagement."

"Not tonight," she reminded him; and then his brain, like his eyes,
having readapted its perception to reality, he slowly nodded his head.

"No. That was--_last_ night," he answered, with a bitter change of tone.
"I'd forgotten.... Things are moving so rapidly, you see."

"I came," she said, with direct gravity, "because some one told me that
you were in danger--of wrecking your life. I came to speak ... for the
thought in time."

While her eyes held his, he returned her gaze with a steady
inscrutability, and the two stood there with a long silence between
them.

Then the man announced in a dead tone:

"It's too late. Come here!"

He led the way to the bedroom door and threw it open with an emotionless
gesture. The girl flinched as she looked in and succeeded in stifling a
scream only by bringing both her hands swiftly to her lips. But Boone
took a step over to the cot where Victor McCalloway had slept and lifted
the sheet from something that lay there.

"That's 'Little' Jim Bartleton--or was," he added slowly. "I folded his
hands there on his breast such a little while ago that they're hardly
cold yet." He paused a moment; then the flat quality went out of his
bearing and his voice, though no louder than before, became transformed.
It held the throbbing intensity of distant drums beating for action and
battle.

"He was trying to serve me by watching the enemies that plotted my
murder. He was riding my horse--and was mistaken for me. You see, you
come too late."

"But, Boone--when--did this--?"

"About an hour ago," the man interrupted her. "He fell just about where
you dismounted, drilled through by a bullet hired by Saul Fulton and Tom
Carr. I found him there--and brought him in."

"Do--do his people know?"

"Not yet. Only you and I know it--yet." Again the voice leaped
tumultuously: "But soon his people are coming here--his people and mine.
They are coming for my counsel, and, by God, it's ready for them!"

"And you'll tell them?"

"I'll tell them that I've come back from following after new gods. I'll
tell them that the blood of my forefathers hasn't grown cold in me, and
that if they follow me, tonight they will see 'Little' Jim avenged." He
paused an instant before adding passionately, "Not by a single man or a
couple, but with as many filthy lives as it takes to balance one decent
life."




CHAPTER XXXIX


As Anne Masters stood in the narrow doorway of the room where lay the
dead body of "Little" Jim Bartleton, she seemed to lose her hold on
modernity and to stand a hostage to the forces and emotions of the
mediaeval.

The fire rose and fell and flickered. It snapped and sighed, roared and
whispered, and with it the shadow of the sheeted figure and silhouette
of the uncovered face grew and lessened in grotesque fluctuation.

Before she could begin her struggle with the man whose face wore little
promise of conversion, she must conquer the struggle in herself, for
suddenly she had need to defend her own feelings against the currents of
thought that swayed him, and the rôle of righteous avenger no longer
seemed so indefensible.

"Boone," she said, with an effort at convincing steadiness, yet feeling
weak of will beside the set determination of his bearing, "I've come a
long way to talk with you. Will you listen?"

His bow was that of compulsory assent, but his eyes showed defiant
through their enforced courtesy.

"I'm listening," he said, "though when I asked you to listen, and
everything we'd planned our lives for depended on your hearing me, you
refused. Yet that was different, I suppose. After all, I'm only partly
educated in the ways of polite society. I haven't learned to be casual
in such things."

"If you're a barbarian now," she told him quietly, "it's from pure
choice. Gentlemen have taught you their code. You've been a gentleman
yourself."

Boone laughed.

"Cleopatra, I believe, had pet leopards that were allowed to purr on the
steps of her throne. But they were only a part of the picture and they
didn't quite become gentlemen. You let me be a pet leopard, too--for a
while. Now I've gone back to the jungle."

She ignored the reference to herself. That way lay endless dispute, and
this battle to avert feudal tragedies, she thought, was not a thing to
be fought on a field of personalities. She spoke slowly and with a
dignity that made his cheeks redden to the realization of his own bitter
facetiousness. "I came," she said, "only to bring a warning--while there
was time."

"Warning of what?" The question was ominously quiet.

"Against confusing black hallucinations with all the saner, bigger
things that you know. Warning against betraying a confidence you have
won by stampeding people who believe in you and follow you blindly."

The eyes of Boone Wellver narrowed and hardened defensively under this
arraignment from lips that had once shaped for him softer responses.
Then as they fell again upon the man who had died in his cause, a
baleful light reawoke in them. From that spokesman came a silent
argument which needed no voice: "Here I am, not a theory but a fact. I
died for you!"

He spoke to her as one who makes an explanation, not of obligation but
as a concession to the motives which had brought her.

"Before I usurped the functions of the law I appealed to the law.
Blackstone says that before a man takes human life--even in defence of
his own--he must 'retreat to the ditch or wall'! I obeyed that mandate,
and the law refused me. Saul Fulton came back ten thousand miles to have
me murdered, and by accident an innocent man died in my stead. Then, and
then only, I assumed a man's prerogative to do for himself and his
people what courts of injustice decline to do for him." He paused then,
and the ferocity of his thoughts brought an ironical smile to his tight
lips.

"You _have_ come a long way. One can only appreciate what rampant
difficulties stood in your path by considering how sacred and unbending
are the artificial little laws of your world. It was a bold thing and a
kindly thing for you to do, but the text that you preach is--you must
pardon the candour of saying it--a sermon of platitudes. They have lost
their virtue with me--because, tonight, I'm looking straight into facts
and thinking naked thoughts."

"Just what are you going to do?"

"Do?" He echoed the word tempestuously. "I'm going to call on Tom Carr
to deliver Saul Fulton over to me and my mob. I suppose you'd call them
that. Saul is going to die, and Tom is going into exile. I reckon first,
though, there'll be a sort of a battle. The Carrs are a headstrong
crew."

He turned on his heel with the air of a man who has surrendered to the
demands of politeness moments that can be ill spared from a more
pressing urgency, and walked around the cot to lift from the floor
behind it a heavy box of rifle cartridges. But when he had straightened
up and his eyes again met hers, the sight of her and the sound of her
voice brought overpoweringly upon him a surge of that feeling which he
had been trying to repress.

They had met thus far as two duellists may meet, each testing the blade
of his will and studying the eye of the adversary where may be read the
coming thrust in advance of its attempted delivery.

Consciously Anne had admitted that wariness and determination. Boone had
chosen to regard her merely as the woman he had once worshipped, who,
after failing of loyalty, was making a theatric effort in his behalf,
inspired by a sentimental memory of a dead love.

Now he recognized with a disturbing certainty that to try to think of
her in any past tense of love was worse than hypocritical. He knew that
to him she had never seemed more incredibly beautiful than at this
moment when she stood there in the rough corduroy riding clothes in
which she had crossed the hills. Those eyes, with the amazing inner
lights, were to him dazzling and unsteadying.

"What you have just told me is what you meant to do," she declared, with
the sort of calm assurance that can speak without faltering or misgiving
against the howl of the furies, "but you aren't going to do it. You
_couldn't_ do it, except in a moment of delirium--"

Boone's chest heaved with a spasm of agitation that made his breath a
struggle. Until tonight he had not seen her since they had separated in
Colonel Wallifarro's library in Louisville. The world had been desolate.
Now she seemed to fill it with Tantalus allurement, and they stood in a
battle of wills with a dead man lying between them--and the dead man had
been murdered for him.

"Why do you care," he demanded, with a fierce outburst of hungry
emotion, "what I do? What are the lives of these human snakes to you?"

Anne's chin came up a little.

"Nothing," she declared crisply. "Perhaps death is too good for them;
but murder's not good enough for you!"

He leaned forward toward her with an avid eagerness in his eyes, and
abruptly his voice shook as he stubbornly repeated his question:

"I was asking you why--so far as I'm concerned--you care?"

The curt interrogation, with the throb of the restraint in the voice
that put it, brought to Anne that same feeling of exaltation that had
come when he had seized her so vehemently in his arms in the bluegrass
garden on a June morning. Even now she could sway him if only she let a
touch of the responsiveness that clamoured in her find expression, but
she had come in answer to a more austere summons. Between them as lovers
who had irreparably quarrelled matters stood unchanged, and she was not
here to fight emotion with emotion. She had come to draw him back, if
she could, from the edge of disaster. Incidentally--for to her just then
it seemed quite incidental--she was engaged to marry Morgan Wallifarro.

"I care," she said, rather weakly and conscious of the ring of platitude
in her words, "because of the past--because we are--old friends."

Boone's face darkened again into clouded disappointment; then he looked
down, jerking his head toward the cot, and demanded shortly:

"All right. I was a fool, of course, but how about him?"

"Will he sleep easier because you prove a deserter to the cause to which
you swore allegiance?" There was a touch of scorn in her voice now.
"Does his rest depend on your punishing one murder with another?"

"We're talking two languages," he retorted, and the upflaring of his
lover's hope had left him, in its quenching, inflexible. "Our standards
are as far apart as the Koran and the Bible."

"Neither of them exalts the coward," came her swift response. "Any
agitator could lash the Gregories into mob-violence tonight. Only one
man might have the courage--and the strength--to hold them in leash."

Boone set down the heavy box and came out into the room where the fire
burned. He seemed, in his white-hot anger, too distrustful of himself
for speech, and, perhaps because he loved her so unconquerably and
despairingly, his fury against her was the greater.

"Before Almighty God," he declared, in a voice low and quaking with
passion, "I think I can understand how some men kill the women they
love! Call me a barbarian if you like. I am one. Call me a renegade from
your self-complacent culture. I welcome the impeachment, but don't call
me a coward, because that's a lie."

He broke off; then burst out again in a mounting voice:

"Until a little while ago I might have yielded to everything you asked,
because the fear of offending you was a mightier thing to me than
everything else combined. But that was the infirmity of a man weakened
by love--not strengthened. I've regained my strength now, and I mean to
keep it. Hate is a stronger god than love!"

Remaining stiff-postured on the hearth, Boone rained upon her the wrath
that cumulative incitements had kindled and fed to something like mania,
and she met it with challenge for challenge and with eyes whose fires
were clearer than those of his own.

"You say you've regained your strength. Is that why you're afraid to
listen to me? Is that why you don't dare undergo my test?"

"Afraid to listen?" In spite of his fury he put his question with a
courteous gravity that was disconcerting. "Haven't I been listening? Am
I not still listening?"

But Anne was not to be deflected, and her clear-noted voice still rang
with the authority of conviction:

"You talk of holding your hand until you had 'retreated to the ditch or
wall,' or whatever your legal phrase was, yet you know that you don't
dare give your anger time to cool. You don't dare hold these men, who
are crying out for blood, quiet for twenty-four hours and spend that
time alone with your own conscience."

"And yet," he ventured to remind her, "I left Frankfort last night.
Before I started I reached my decision. There have been already more
than twenty-four hours, but they haven't cooled me except to make my
certainty greater."

"This boy whose face you just showed me brought word to Frankfort that
Saul Fulton was back to have you murdered," went on the girl with
unshaken steadiness. "The old instinct for vengeance swept you into
passion, but you didn't surrender to it then. You went to the
prosecutor. Why?"

"I've already told you. I tried the law first."

"Because yesterday you realized that this lawless way was the wrong way.
Your rebuff there maddened you still more. You came back, and when you
got here you were in doubt again. Isn't that true?"

"Not for long," he replied shortly.

"Yet you _were_ in doubt. Then you listened to the hot heads, and the
fever rose again in your veins. Tonight this boy was killed. One after
the other these things happened to work you up to a sort of frenzy and
keep you there. I've heard you tell how murder lords here used to hire
assassins and how they had to keep them keyed up with whiskey till the
work was done. Don't you see that you've been drinking a more dangerous
whiskey, and that you don't dare to let this vengeance wait, because you
know if you did, you couldn't face your own self-contempt?"

At first there had been despair in her heart because the face of the man
she thought she knew had been the face of a stranger, as unamenable to
change as that of the sphinx. But now she knew that if she could only
make him see in time what she had seen, she might succeed. He was a
sleep-walker, and to the sleep-walker only the dream is real--yet he had
only to be waked to step again into sanity. The steel had been too
gradually forged, tempered and tested to become pig iron again in a
breath, simply because it dreamed itself pig iron.

"You talk of your strength, and I call on you to test it. I call on you
to do not what any persuasive agitator could do, but what only you can
do--to keep the wild-beast impulses in your own men caged for one more
day--and to spend that day with your own conscience."

"You ask me first to forget that you are anything more to me than an old
friend. Then you ask me to obey your whim in doing what is next to
impossible," he summarized in a coldly ironical voice. "You are setting
me very easy tasks tonight!"

"Any one can do the easy things." The contempt in her clear tone was not
for him. It was not accusing, but it seemed to wither the men of lesser
strength and subtly to pay him tribute by its indirection, and then
abruptly she played her strongest card: "Victor McCalloway, your
teacher, didn't school you to seek the easy way."

Once more the anger darted in his eyes, but he flinched at the name as
though under a lash.

"Why need we bring Mr. McCalloway into this discussion?" he indignantly
demanded. "Perhaps I understand him better than you. Mr. McCalloway is
no apostle of tame submission."

Anne caught the tempestuous note of protest, and she caught, as well,
the meaning that actuated it; Boone's self-denied unwillingness to
confront the accusing thought of his hero. That name she had studiously
refrained from mentioning until now.

"And yet you know that what I am saying might come from his own lips.
You know that if he were here and you left this house tonight to lead a
mob of incendiaries and gunmen over the ridge you couldn't go with his
blessing or his handshake. You know that you'd have to leave behind you
a man whose respect you'd forfeited and whose heart you'd broken."

She stopped, and the voice that came to her was strained as it
questioned: "Is that all you've got to say?"

Anne shook her head. "No," she told him, "there's one thing more--a
request. Please don't answer me for five minutes."

Boone Wellver jerked his head with a gesture that might have been either
acquiescence or refusal. But from his pocket he drew a watch and stood
holding it in his hand. The tight-drawn muscles of his face made it a
painful thing to watch, and after a little while he turned from her and
she could see only his back--with shoulders that twitched a little from
time to time under the spasmodic assault of some torturing thought. She
was glad that she could not see his eyes. Had there been any place of
retreat, save that room where death lay, she would have fled, because
when a man stands in his place of Gethsemane he should be alone.

But before Boone's mental vision, a vision from which a bloody and
darkening veil seemed to be drawing slowly aside, were passing pictures
out of his memory. He saw grave eyes, clouded with the embarrassment of
talking self, as the tall figure of Victor McCalloway stood in the woods
admitting that he had refused a commission in China, because a mountain
boy might need him in his fight against an inherited wormwood of
bitterness. He saw himself now an apostate to a faith he had embraced; a
doctrine he had both learned and taught. Boone Wellver was waking out of
an ugly trance, but he was not waking without struggle, not without
counter waves that threatened to engulf him again, not without the sweat
of agony.

The crystal into which he gazed cleared and clouded; clouded and
cleared. He could not yet be sure of himself. While he stood with that
stress upon him still in molten indecision, he was not quite sure
whether he heard the girl's voice, or whether it came to him from memory
of other days, as it had sounded under dogwood blossoming on the crest
of Slag-face:

    "Comes now to search your manhood
      Through all the thankless years,
    Cold, edged with dear bought wisdom,
      The judgment of your peers!"

It was, however, a real voice though a faint one, that came next to his
ears.

"You said these wild sheep were your people--that you owed them what you
could give them--of leadership."

Boone wheeled, and his voice broke from him like a sob, as the watch
slipped from his fingers and fell, shattered.

"Do you mean to go through with it--you and Morgan?"

But before she could shape a response, his hand came up and he went on
in excited haste: "No, don't answer. You didn't come to answer
questions." Then, with a long intake of breath and an abrupt change to
flint hardness again, he added: "It was I who was to answer you. You are
right. I was a damned quitter. These _are_ my people, and I belong to
them--but not to the feud-war, to myself--nor to you."

"Boone," began Anne Masters, but she got no further than that, for the
man again raised a warning hand and spoke in a crisp whisper:

"Hush!" he commanded, and bent, listening.

In the distance a long whoop was dying away, and then after a moment of
tense silence a cautious whistle sounded from the night outside. Boone
took a step toward the door, and halted.

"They're coming! It won't do for you to be found here with me alone." He
cast a hurried glance toward the other room, then added; "No--_he's_ in
there. They'll have to see him. Can you wait upstairs?"

Anne Masters nodded, and as, with a lamp which he handed her, she put
her foot upon the lowest step of the boxed-in stairway, he went on:

"You've paid me one compliment tonight. You said that I could control
men. As for myself, I doubt that, and if I fail--well, that comes
later."

From the stairhead she looked down. Boone had gone to the door and stood
with his hand on the latch, yet for the moment he did not lift it. To
her he seemed bracing himself against a fresh assault of heavy forces.




CHAPTER XL


With Joe Gregory entered three others, and to Anne, who was walled off
from any sight of what went on, every word and intonation came up the
enclosed stair well as if from a sounding board. She felt like a blind
theatregoer whose ears strain to make amends for the want of eyes while
a tense melodrama is building toward its climax.

Her imagination filled in the intervals of silence with heart-straining
anxiety, and she felt that she must see the movements, the gestures, the
light and shadow in the sombre eyes, when the wrath of the voices broke
off in ominous quiet. At the thought of the closed door which must soon
be opened to them she shuddered, and she wanted to see Boone; to be able
to assure herself that he was dominating the situation, which, as she
listened, seemed blazing beyond control like a fire that outgrows the
power of its fighters.

It was difficult to gauge the flow and counterflow of influences in the
scene below stairs. Boone's voice came infrequently as though he, too,
were only a listener, and in the other voices was a unanimity of
violence and hatred. It was a clamour for prompt vengeance unfolding an
iliad of long-fostered animosities.

To the girl it seemed an intolerable babel--a dissonance of profane fury
and menace--and she could feel her heart pounding like a muffled drum.

"We've passed out word to the boys and we won't hev need ter delay now
ter git 'em gathered together," came a deep-chested voice at whose
raising the others fell silent. "They're gathered right now in leetle
clumps an' hovers hyar an' thar, whar they kin rally straightway when ye
gives ther signal." The bass fell silent, then supplemented in
reassurance to the leader: "Thar hain't a timorous ner a disable feller
in ther lot."

"I'm obliged to you, Luther," Boone spoke as one in deep contemplation.
"Then I reckon we're fixed to go over there and take Saul away from the
Carrs, aren't we?"

Anne Masters pressed her hands agitatedly to her breast as a chorus of
yapping assent gave answer. Had he so soon, under the pressure of their
crowd influence, repudiated his decision to play the hard rôle of
restraint?

"Maybe, though, boys," the representative's voice continued reflectively
when he had succeeded in quieting them, "we'd better wait for the other
men before we start on any grave errand. I hear some of them out there
now."

For an hour the talk ran in a hot freshet, while newcomers augmented the
handful, and with the increase of numbers came a fuller-throated
mounting of passion. Would Boone be able to curb their ferocities? Could
any man do it? Did he even mean to try?

As she listened to the feud disciples coming in from creek beds and cove
pockets, it appeared to her entirely possible that they were capable of
turning on and rending the leader who ventured to cross their strongly
fixed purposes.

Saul Fulton's treachery to Asa, Tom Carr's giving sanctuary to the
Judas, the affront to the clan; these things made up the inflamed burden
of their growing and deepening wrath, and as yet they had not been told
of the man who lay dead, a victim freshly justifying their hunger for
reprisal!

Anne missed the voice of Joe Gregory who, after a brief consultation
with Boone, had gone out again. In Joe's presence she would have felt
strong reassurance, but Joe was carrying sorry tidings to the house of
the boy who lay dead.

Boone knew his people, and he was adroitly playing a most difficult
rôle, but to her ears came no proof of that. Until the clansmen had
opened and aired the festering sores of their grievances there lay in
them no hope of amenability. After that--perhaps--but the issue must
await its moment, neither anticipating nor procrastinating by the part
of a minute.

At last Boone's glance measured the crowd and recognized that there was
no longer any one for whom to wait. Ahead lay a disclosure, but before
its making he must throw his dice and let circumstances ordain with what
faces upward they would roll.

He stood before Victor McCalloway's fireplace and raised his hands.

"Men," he began without haste or excitement, "I've listened to all of
you and I've had little to say. I sat with Asa in the court that tried
him. I've visited him not once but often in the jail where Saul Fulton's
perjury has put him and kept him. I've besieged the Governor to plead
for him, and I yield to no man in loyalty to Asa Gregory. Now I claim
the right to be heard."

Anne crouched, listening with inheld breath, while the voices below
stairs dwindled from clamour to attention. She tried to visualize the
speaker, but because the whole world had receded from familiarity he,
too, became vague and hard to picture.

But as Boone talked, she knew that his voice and words and the heart
which was meeting, full-front, an issue he had been in danger of
deserting, were making magic, and along her own scalp went the creep
that is the ultimate test of drama. Inconsequentially she fretted
because she could not see his eyes. His auditors, though, could see the
eyes and respond to their hypnotic fires--respond though the text he
taught was hard to stomach.

He was winning them against their prejudices, and so skilfully had he
carried them step by step that they were saved from anything like full
realization of self-reversal, which means loss of self-esteem. If for
the hireling shot from the laurel they had no other response than
retaliation in kind, they were only rising to the bait of a lawless and
unimaginative enemy. It was better, he asserted, that the efforts to
murder him succeed than that they should draw the life essence out of
every principle in which his adherents had supported him.

Anne said to herself that Boone had carried the night, but Boone knew
otherwise.

A handful of men keyed for violence now accorded him calm attentiveness.
They could even laugh, on occasion, but he was thinking of the closed
door of McCalloway's room. He had need to grapple them to his leadership
more strongly yet, for when he opened that door they would no longer
laugh.

Now he drew a deep breath.

"These things that I am saying to you, I say not only with a full
knowledge of all that you men have told me but with a knowledge of a
harder thing to bear." He paused, and then he told them bluntly:

"'Little' Jim Bartleton lies dead behind that door. He was killed
tonight when he rode my horse on an errand for me, and was taken for
me."

After an interval of hushed amazement, the commotion broke afresh, and
Boone again raised his hands and awaited its subsiding.

"When a man asks his friends to hold their hands, though their hearts
are justly hot, he has need to prove his own steadfastness. Here is my
promise. Tomorrow Joe Gregory as deputy sheriff, and myself are going to
Tom Carr's house. We are going alone in the full light of day and
without any force of armed men to bolster up our demands. If any enemy
seeks our injury he must do that too in the full light of day. In the
name of the law and not of the mob, we will demand that Saul be turned
over to us. We will accept no lies and no evasions. We will take Saul to
Frankfort and present him to the court that refused to send for him. If
they fail, then, it will be time for _you_ to act. Meanwhile you must
wait. I have never before asked any test of your trust in me. Now those
that believe in me must stand with me, and--" his last words were like
the crack of a cattle whip--"and those that don't must fight me."

With eyes that burned and a breast that pounded, Anne awaited the
reception of that peroration, and for what seemed an endless time there
was no reception at all, except tense silence. The girl closed her eyes
and fancied a pendulum swinging in the dark, and as it registered
seconds her nerves tautened until the impulse to scream became poignant.
Yet she told herself this long silence meant assent--must mean assent.

Then, with an abruptness that made her start, came a voice, not from the
room below, but raised from the roadside in a long halloo, and from
within sounded the staccato challenge, "Who's thar?"

Once more a silence momentary and taut, a silence that hurt, came like a
margin about sound, then the outer voice spoke again:

"Hit's me--Mark Bartleton." That much was steady, but there the
intonation altered and mingled challenge with heartbreak. "I've done
come with my jolt wagon--ter fotch my dead boy home."

Anne covered her face with her hands and shivered behind the door. She
did not need to have her fears confirmed in the growing whisper that
raised itself slowly from the sunken levels of silence. Those words with
the weighty force of their simplicity had crashed upon trembling scales
of indecision, and they trembled no longer. Labour and courage and
effort had gone into Boone's upbuilding dam of persuasion. It took a
single blow to shatter it.

Now the night belonged to the torch and rifle, unless a miracle
intervened, and though Boone would struggle like a shepherd whose flock
has been scattered, he would persevere in the face of foredoomed
failure. Yet until the death-freighted and ox-drawn wagon had strained
and jolted slowly away, and even a little longer, the specious calm
held.

The swinging lantern had disappeared around a turn; the sounds of
creaking axle and hub had died into the night and the door of the house
had been closed, before the hum of low talk gave her any coherent sign.
Below there was only the confused blurring of words such as may come
from a locked jury room, until over it sounded the deep basso that she
had heard first that evening.

Its words were not pitched in oratorical effect, but they were
contemptuous and final. "Come on along, men," said the voice. "We're
wastin' time hyar foolin' with a man thet kain't do nothin' but talk.
What we wants now is a man with guts inside him."

The sentiment of accord declared itself loudly, profanely and
indubitably. But as the fickle gathering grew turbulent, Anne heard once
again a shout followed by the opening of a door, and after that an
outcry of amazement which she could in no wise translate, beyond a
realization that something was happening which was both unforeseen and
incredible.

Anne's posture, as she listened to the fluttering of her own heart, was
one of terror in its most abject and helpless form. She had persuaded
him, not only with argument but the taunt of cowardice, to interpose
himself between this tidal wave of human savagery and its object. Now
the wave had seized him up and tossed him from his precarious foothold.
His career had ended: his influence, crumbled under too severe a strain,
and his life itself probably hung on a hair balance while he stood among
wolves. She told herself that the responsibility lay with her, and her
reason grew palpitant and dizzy. Only a miracle could quench the
conflagration now, and a miracle five minutes hence would be too late.

This deadly pause was unendurable. A door had opened and clamour had
been breathlessly stilled. What did it mean? Some one had entered--Who
was it?

The man who had just made his entrance had boldly pushed his way to the
threshold before he called out, and had as boldly thrown wide the door
without awaiting a reply. Faces turning with a single impulse toward the
invader remained staringly intent as they saw standing there the
broad-shouldered figure of Asa Gregory, who should be in jail, who for
seven years had not been free to ride or walk the highways.

"I was pardoned out, this morning," he said briefly, "and I met up with
some of our boys while'st I was ridin' home. I was right interested in
what them boys told me."

"Ye've done come in good season, Asa," shouted an impulsive spokesman.
"We're settin' out ter settle old scores, an' Boone Wellver's done laid
down on us."

But Asa turned a cool eye on the informant, and into the sonorous
quality of his voice came an acid bite.

"Who's got the best license here to talk about score-settling? Who's
been sulterin' in jail for seven years?"

"You have, Asa," came the chorused response. "We're hearkenin' ter ye,
Asa."

"All right," snapped back the new arrival. "What I have need to say I
kin say right speedily. Quit it! Go home and leave me to pay off my own
scores!" He crossed to Boone and laid a hand on his shoulder, and
standing that way, he added: "The man that says this boy lays down is a
liar. As for me, I stands by what _he_ says! Ef our own folks don't know
who their strong men are, our enemies know--an' seek to hire 'em kilt.
Go home an' wait till we calls on ye!"

An hour later Boone stood alone with Anne in the room where he had been
overthrown and rehabilitated.

"I ought to take you across to Aunt Judy's house," he told her in a
weary voice. "I don't suppose you should be left here--with me--like
this--for what's left of the night. Until now there's been company
enough."

The girl shook her head wearily. "I'd fall off of a horse," she said.
"I'm too tired to ride. I'm going back up those stairs--"

The man moved a step forward.

"Joe Gregory is coming back," he explained, "but it will probably be
near to dawn before he gets here."

As she reached the stairway she halted impulsively with her hand on the
latch, and stood poised there with an expression of baffling, half-eager
expectancy. The sensitive beauty of her face and the slender grace of
her body seemed for a moment to cast aside their fatigue and to invite
him, but Boone stood resolutely the width of the room away.

Had he known it, that was a moment in which he might have grasped a more
vital rehabilitation. Had he then offered again the explanation for
which he had once been denied opportunity, her readiness to hear him
would have been eager. At that moment she was once more his for the
taking. He need only have extended his arms and said, "Come!" and she
would have responded instantly and gladly. She was receptive, stirred,
but one thing her pride still inhibited. She could not make the
advances.

Boone let his moment pass; let it pass unrecognized with the blindness
of life's perverse coincidence. At that precise instant, a mood was upon
him which was no intrinsic reflection of his own spirit, but rather the
reflection of all the stormy transitions of the night.

She had seen him at a crisis when he had been on the verge of collapse
like a bridge whose centre rests upon a span of flawed steel. True, he
had not actually collapsed, but, save for her intervention, he would
have done so. Now his mortification withered him and perversely
expressed itself in resentment against her--for having witnessed his
shame.

He owed her everything--so much that his self-respect was
bankrupted--and if he could have hated her, he would have hated her just
then. He even fancied that he did. He saw in her a cold, impersonal
deity, consciously superior to himself and secretly triumphant over his
weakness. So he not only let the moment pass, but he rebuffed its
unspoken invitation.

"I owe you everything," he said with the cold ungraciousness of a
grudging confession. "If you hadn't come, I'd have had a hell in my
conscience tomorrow. I'd have been a murderer. I even tried to force you
to admit that it was for me, myself, that you cared enough to do it. I'm
ashamed of that.... It won't happen again." He paused and his voice was
bitterly edged when he went on. "I begged for the chance to explain
things--when there was still time. You refused to hear me. Now I
wouldn't explain if _you_ begged _me_ to--That's over, but I acknowledge
the debt I owe you--for tonight. It's a heavier debt than any man can
stand in and keep his self-respect."

       *       *       *       *       *

Morgan and Anne had been to the theatre, and when they came back to the
house the lawyer had drawn from his pocket a small package, and while
Anne opened it he looked on. It was an engagement ring, and quite worthy
of his connoisseur's selection. But when he put out his hand to take
hers, she drew it back and spoke impulsively:

"Before you put that on--Morgan--there's something I must tell you."

He smiled his acquiescence and waited with the emerald set emblem in his
fingers, while, in the manner of one who has determined upon a recital
that does not flow easily, she began. She filled in for him the events
of the two days of her recent and somewhat mysterious absence, and its
cause.

Morgan had learned to accept with a certain philosophy the
impulse-governed life of the girl who had promised to marry him. If Anne
had been less uniquely her own unstereotyped self, she would not have
been the fascinating person who had captured his fastidious admiration.

While she talked, his face grew sober, but he refrained from any
interruption, and at last she looked up and said simply: "I thought it
was best to tell you all about it now. I went--and that's where I
was--and for hours of that ghastly night--there was no one else
there--but just the two of us."

"I see," said Morgan slowly. She waited for him to supplement the two
words, and when he failed to do so, she went on:

"I thought maybe that--knowing about that--you might not want to--" She
broke off, and her eyes falling on the ring, finished the sentence.

Morgan shook his head. His usual self-possession was a shade shaken, but
he responded definitely, "I do."

"Of course," she conscientiously explained, "when I went, I didn't know
what lay ahead, but I took the chances and--that's what it's important
for you to understand, Morgan--even if it were to do over--and I knew it
all, I'd go again."

"Yes," said her fiancé slowly, "I suppose so." He paused a moment before
he finished. "Naturally, it's not a thing that I'd have chosen to have
occur, but it was the only thing you could do--and be yourself."

"And you have no--questions to ask me?"

Once more he shook his head. He even smiled faintly.

"No," he said without hesitancy, "I have no questions to ask you."

Anne rose from her chair and laid a hand on his arm.

"Morgan," she exclaimed, "you know how to be generous. I've got to be
honest with you. I'll stand by my agreement--but I guess I'll always
love him. If you marry me, you're taking that chance. I can't give you
my heart because it's not mine."

He slipped the ring on her finger, and across his serious features came
a slow smile.

"I suppose it's what a thousand fools have said before, Anne, and a
thousand more may say it again, but all I ask is the chance to make you
love me. I'll succeed because I can't afford to fail."




CHAPTER XLI


Had Tom Carr chosen to sit in a penitential spirit, reviewing his life,
he might, perhaps, have been forced to acknowledge a record tarnished
with misdeeds, but his conscience would have remained clear of that most
depressing sin--bungling the undertaking to which he had set his hand.
Even his delegated murders had been accomplished with tidy and
praiseworthy dispatch. Now he had collaborated with a bungler and
harvested a dilemma. Saul Fulton had selected an executioner whose rifle
ball had targeted itself in a breast not marked for death--yet one which
would none the less cry out for vengeance. Above all, the _contretemps_
had proven most ill-timed, since it coincided with Asa's pardon and
return.

Word of his coming had reached the house of Tom Carr before Asa himself
had ridden away from the livery stable, and that same hour found Saul,
like the general discredited by a _débâcle_, an outcast from the support
of his late allies and a refugee in full flight.

Tom conceived that he was doing enough by way of generosity when he
supplied Saul with a horse and a lantern and set him on his way toward
the Virginia boundary. Asa's recrudescence from the burial of prison
walls to the glamour of a delivered martyr brought him to a choice
between standing siege or throwing his Jonah to the whales, and Tom had
not hesitated.

So when the party that rode with the deputy sheriff dismounted at the
door of the Carr house, they found it unreservedly open to them. Tom did
not even waste a lie when he met eyes as uncompromising as though they
were looking across rifle-sights.

"You boys hev come jest a leetle too late," he tranquilly informed them.
"Yore man spent some sev'ral days an' nights with me--but he hain't hyar
now."

"Then,"--it was Boone who put the question, while Asa maintained the
stony-faced silence of a graven image--"then you admit that you took him
in and sheltered him?"

The eyes of the Carr leader had held the open light of candour. Now they
mirrored that of guileless surprise, and both expressions were master
achievements of deceit.

"Why wouldn't I take him in, Boone," he inquired with admirable gravity.
"He 'peared ter be mighty contrite erbout ther way he'd done acted at
Asa's trial. He 'lowed he'd come back home a' purpose ter put sartain
matters before ther new governor thet mout holp Asa git his pardon. Thet
was p'intedly what he said--or words ter thet amount."

Boone smiled his open and ironic disbelief. "And you swallowed that lie,
Tom? It doesn't stand on all fours with your repute for keen wits."

The face of the intriguer remained steadfast save that the unblinking
eyes became a little pained. He fumbled in his breast pocket, and from
among the few dirty envelopes that came out sheafed in his hands,
selected a crumpled page of letter paper.

"Thet's whut I went on," he said simply. "I've done lost ther envellup
hit come in, but thar hit is in Saul's own hand-write."

Boone took the missive which bore a South American date line and, after
reading it, handed it without comment to Asa.

     "Dear Tom," it ran. "I swore to a volume of lies at Asa
     Gregory's trial to save my own neck. It's been haunting me
     until I've got to come back and help to get him a pardon. I'm
     indicted myself, and I've got to come in secret or go to jail
     without getting results. I'm coming to your house, and until
     the time is ripe it mustn't be known that I'm there. You don't
     love Asa, but we're all mountain men together, and that trial
     was a trial of the mountains. Resp. Saul Fulton."

Saul had ridden away the night before in the haste of a man whose life
is forfeit to delay, yet before he mounted he had penned that letter at
Tom Carr's dictation, and the ink of the South American date line was
scarce twelve hours dry.

"I'll send it back to you, Tom," he had demurred. "There isn't time now.
They may come any minute to get me!"

"If ye don't write hit--an' thet speedily--they'll find a ready-made
corpse when they gits hyar," had been Tom's succinct reply with an
eloquent gesture toward his armpit holster. "Ye got me inter this
fix--now ye've got ter alibi me outen hit."

Without waste of words, the posse turned and left the house. They were
starting on a pursuit which they knew would end in nothing, but Tom,
following them to the gate, called out cheerfully: "I hope ye gits him,
boys. He left my house without no farewell betwixt sundown an'
sun-up--an' he took ther best nag outen my stable ter go with."

       *       *       *       *       *

One who would sound the depths of ingenious depravity should lend ear to
the tale of the householder whose life has been ravished of tranquillity
by that small boy of the neighbourhood who leads and incites the local
gang of youthful hooligans.

To such a tale the judge of the Louisville Juvenile Court was listening
now, and the defendant, who sat sullen eyed in the essential wickedness
of his eleven years, heard witness after witness unfold his record of
misdoing. He and his vassal desperadoes, it was averred, broke windows
and street light globes, preyed upon the apple barrels of the corner
grocery, and used language that scalded and sullied the virginal ears of
passing wash-ladies and plumber-gentlemen.

"There can't nobody live in peace in them two blocks, Judge, your
Honour," came the heated asseveration of the man in the witness chair.
"He's got more influence over my boys than what I've got myself--and the
Reform School's the only place for the likes of him."

"Where do you spend your Saturday nights?" inquired the personage on the
bench irrelevantly, and the furtive eyes of the witness shifted and lost
their self-assurance.

"Here and there, Judge, your Honour. Sometimes I drop in at Mike's place
for a glass of common beer."

"Do you occasionally send your boys--the followers of this dangerous
bandit--to Mike's place with a bucket?"

The man hesitated, and his glance savoured of repressed truculence.
"Maybe I do, once in a while," he replied doggedly. "I ain't on trial
here, am I?"

"No--not just now." The judge spoke almost gently. "Stand down and let
the fellow who _is_ on trial take that chair."

The child with the sullen face slouched forward, and the Judge's eyes
engaged his smouldering young pupil's with less austerity perhaps than
the description of his turpitude warranted. This man, who sat one day a
week to try the cases of delinquent and incorrigible children, presided
five days over more mature hearings. From Monday through Thursday he
mantled himself in judicial dignity and his language was the decorous
speech of the bench. One who observed him only on Friday would hardly
have gathered that. Just now he leaned forward and addressed the boy in
a conversational tone and an argot that savoured of the
alley-playground.

"Willie, haven't you got any other name--I mean amongst those kids that
belong to your gang?"

Willie swallowed hard, but inasmuch as he failed to reply, his
inquisitor went on:

"Surely those other kids don't call a rough-neck like you just Willie.
You wouldn't stand for that, would you? Haven't you got some
professional name like Bulldog Bill--or something?"

A fugitive glint of pride flashed in the boy's eyes under their
cultivated toughness and their present alarm, and with a sheepish grin
he enlightened this embodiment of the law.

"The other kids calls me 'Apache Bill.'"

The Judge did not smile, but accepted the information with full gravity,
and spoke reflectively:

"Officer McGuire tells me that there are about a dozen members in your
gang. It looks like a feller that can boss a crew of that size ought to
have something in him. Look here, kid, let's talk this over."

After five minutes of low-toned confidences the man on the bench found
himself looking into eyes of abated sullenness and listening to a voice
that was simply small boy.

"You see it's a sucker play for you to travel the route that ends in the
pen."

The Judge made it seem that Apache Bill himself had arrived at this sane
conclusion in which his Honour merely concurred.

"And since you realize that yourself, I'm not going to send you to the
Reform School this trip. You are going to give me your promise to run
that gang differently." He looked up, and his glance fell on a young
woman sitting among several others at the back of the room. There was
much in her appearance to arrest the attention and challenge interest,
but what one noticed most were eyes that held an inner light and a
starry brightness. "I'm going to have you report to one of our probation
officers every week," continued the Judge to Willie alias "Apache Bill,"
"and come to see me myself occasionally."

Usually for a case of this sort he would have selected a man from that
group of volunteers who made effective the machinery of the children's
court but this young terrorist would take a bit of understanding in his
reclamation, and among the men and women who aided and abetted his
efforts no other seemed to see into the intricacies of the boy mind
quite so unerringly as that young woman with the starry eyes, who had
been a famous belle and before that a tom-boy.

So the Judge nodded to her and said, "Miss Masters, I'm going to have
'Apache Bill' report to you. You two might talk over a boy-scout
organization down there in his district."

As the girl rose from her chair, the Judge's face suddenly developed
stern lines and his brows knit closely as he turned his attention to the
principal complainant.

"John Vaster," he announced, this time with no softening of tone, "a
probation officer is coming to your house, too. If those boys of yours
go to Mike's place after this with a bucket, or if you don't find a way
to keep them off the streets at night, you're coming back here, not as a
prosecuting witness but as a defendant."

Anne Masters had turned to this work of volunteer probation officer as
to a refuge from herself. Perhaps in her own mind it stood also for a
sort of penance for sins with which she stood self-charged.

Her marriage with Morgan had been set for June, and somehow it seemed to
her that when the ceremony had been gone through with her besetting
doubts and struggles would end, if not in happiness, at least in
resignation. Then she would acknowledge the abdication of Romance and
accept her allegiance to Duty.

But meanwhile, until the solemn seal of the Church's ritual had been set
upon that resolve, bringing, as she sought to convince herself it would,
a steadied feeling of solace and of perplexities resolved, she seemed to
hang like a Mahomet's coffin in suspended disquiet and misery.

Boone had said he would never explain--and she accepted his assertion as
final. But for that explanation which she had once silenced, and which,
when she was receptive, he had refused, she now burned with anxiety.
Unless she had work to do while she fought back the insurgency and
revolt of her heart, she would not be able to endure the pictures with
which her imagination filled the future. Through this period of
heartache she missed the essential, in that she did not discern the
artificiality of the whole situation or the cure that would have lain in
a repudiation of false pride.

Whatever mistakes she had made, she was now bound by her promise to
Morgan, and doubly bound by the tyranny of her mother's dependence
which, having been once accepted, could no longer be repudiated.

Colonel Wallifarro, bending over his desk one forenoon some two months
after he had given the dinner to announce his son's engagement, had
chokingly fallen forward with his face on his elbows.

When the physicians arrived, he was lying on his office lounge under the
age-yellowed engraving of President Jefferson Davis and the grouped
cabinet of the erstwhile Confederate States of America, and it was there
that he died within the half hour.

"Acute indigestion," said the doctors, "His blood pressure was high and
he refused to ease up on the work. He had often been warned that this
might occur."

His will showed that in one respect at least he had heeded the warning,
for its date was recent. The estate, much shrunken below the estimate of
public supposition, was devised entirely to his son except for a bequest
of a few thousand dollars to Anne's mother. There was mention, too, of a
note, as yet unpaid, for twenty thousand dollars "loaned and hereby
released, to my friend Lawrence Masters, Esq."

"In leaving my whole estate to my beloved son Morgan," read an
explanatory clause of the document, "I do so happy in the knowledge that
I likewise provide for my niece, Anne Masters, to whom he is engaged to
be married, and for whom my love and affection is that of a father."

And Boone Wellver, who had still hoped against hope to receive from Anne
the word that would restore to him at least a fighting chance, heard
nothing. It all seemed to his gloomy analysis relentlessly logical that
the girl, who for a long while had fought for her choice of an alien in
her own world, should go back to her kind. After all she was not for
him, and his dream had only been a fantasy long indulged but no longer
possible of indulgence. So Boone plodded on, and in the more obvious
manifestations of life was not greatly changed. The zest of the game was
gone, but its realities remained to be met, and for him there was a
coward memory to be lived down--the memory of a relapse from which a
woman had saved him.

The ordeal of waiting was almost over for Anne, and the wedding
preparations were under way. From the bed which she had not been able to
leave since the day of Colonel Wallifarro's burial, Mrs. Masters
injected a more fervent enthusiasm into these preliminaries than did the
bride to be.

After the fashion of one who has been embittered and enjoys a belated
triumph, the mother lived in a sort of fantasy which could see no clouds
in the sky of her daughter's future. A factitious gaiety animated her,
even though the death of her mainstay had crushed her into invalidism.

The haunted misery in Anne's face, and the lids that closed as if
against a painful glare when Mrs. Masters forecast the happiness to be,
were things that had no recognition or acknowledgment from the lady in
the sick bed. It was as if her own joy in a dream achieved were
comprehensive enough to embrace and assure the life-long happiness of
her daughter, as the whole includes the part.

But when Anne sat down at her desk one afternoon to address some of the
wedding invitations, she was out of sight of the maternal eye and her
sensitive lips dropped piteously.

On the list before her, made out by herself and augmented by Morgan and
her mother, she had come upon the name of Boone Wellver, and suddenly
the things on her desk swam through a mist of tears.

Anne Masters sat there for a long while, then with a white face she drew
a line through the name on the list. At least he should be spared that
heartlessness of reminder.

She and Morgan were going abroad. Morgan had foreign business which made
the journey imperative, and it was only when the courts adjourned and
political matters fell quiet with the coming of summer that he could so
long be away from his practice and his public affairs, but Anne could
not think of Europe now. Her thoughts turned mutinously to imagined
vistas seen from a rock at the lop of Slag-face across valleys where
sunset cast the shadows of mountains: where just now the dogwood was in
a foam of blossom and the laurel would soon be in pink flowering.




CHAPTER XLII


When Victor McCalloway came home in June he read in the face of the
young man he met there that chapters deeply shadowed had been written
into his life, and Boone was prompt enough in his confessions, though
when he alluded to Anne's approaching marriage his words became meagre
and his utterance flat with a hampering distrust of emotion and
self-betrayal.

McCalloway gazed off grave-eyed across the small door-yard and
mercifully refrained from any hurtful attempt at verbal solace.

Finally when the hum of bees in the honeysuckle had been the only
disturbers of their long silence, the Scotchman spoke--and the younger
features relaxed into relief because the words did not, even in
kindness, touch upon the soreness of his mood. "The old spruce over
there--the one that used to be the tallest thing we saw--it's gone,
isn't it?"

Boone nodded. "The sleet took it down last winter."

Victor McCalloway was sage enough in human diagnosis to divine that,
however much Boone had suffered through a period of months, the
expression of quiet but well nigh unendurable suffering that just now
haunted his eyes had not been constant in them. A man subjected long to
that soul-cramping stress, with no outlet or abatement, would have
become a melancholiac. In one sense it might be a chronic wretchedness,
but today some particular incitement had rendered it acute--acute beyond
the power of stoic blood to hold in concealment.

Repression only made the gnawing ache more burdensome. McCalloway wished
that Boone might have gone, like the less inhibited folk of an elder
generation, to some wailing wall and beat his breast with clenched
fists--and come away less pent with hard control.

"I'll just go in and have a look over my scant accumulation of mail," he
said with the same Anglo-Saxon pretence of armour-plated emotion. "In
these days even the hermit doesn't altogether escape letters."

But when, inside the house, he found among the few and dusty envelopes
one containing a wedding invitation, and when his eyes went,
quick-glancing, to the wall calendar in a comparison of dates, his brain
cleared of its mystification.

Tomorrow was the day of Anne's marriage.

If the number twelve on the calendar's June page bore a black penciling,
like a mourning band, it was palpably a thing that Boone had not meant
other eyes to see or understand.

McCalloway, himself in the shadowed interior, turned his head and could
see through the door a sweep of sun-flooded hills and flawless sky.
Against a background of blossoming laurel and crystal brightness Boone
sat, stiff-postured, with eyes fixed and unseeing. McCalloway carried
the card and its covering to the empty fireplace and touched a match to
its edge. When it had been consumed, he went out again, and the younger
man looked up, slowly, as though bringing himself out of a lethargy, and
spoke with a dull intonation.

"You have said nothing, sir, of what I told you of myself. Saul came
back and I reverted. That night I was a feud killer pure and simple. If
blood didn't flow it was only because--" He broke off and began over,
speaking with the rapidity of one rushing at an obstacle which has
balked him, "it was only because--_she_ stopped me."

"The point is," responded McCalloway soberly, "that blood didn't flow.
You threw your weight into the right pan of the scales."

Boone shrugged his shoulders, disdaining a specious justification. "The
rescue came from outside myself. One must he judged by his motive--and
by that standard I failed."

"Not at all, sir! Damn it, not at all!"

At the sudden tempestuousness of the soldier's outburst, Boone looked
up, surprised. McCalloway, too, had felt and reacted to the tension of
their interview, and now he cleared his throat self-consciously and
proceeded in a manner of recovered calmness.

"You were in the position of infantry just then, my boy, under the fire
of field pieces. You needed artillery support--and, thanks to her, it
came. There are times when no infantry can endure without a curtain of
fire."

       *       *       *       *       *

"She looked as if she'd been seeing ghosts," announced Anne's
maid-of-honour, with a little shudder of emphasis, as she stood in a
chatting group of wedding attendants just outside the door of Christ
Church.

"I think she's the loveliest thing I've ever seen," declared another
girl. "Anne has a distinction that's positively royal. Don't you think
so, Reed?"

The young man addressed, after a half hour's deprivation inside the
church, was hastening to avail himself of a cigarette. With a match
close to his lips he grunted, and then having inhaled and exhaled, he
supplemented the incoherent affirmative. "You're both right. As for
myself, I'd rather have my bride's royalty less suggestive of Marie
Antoinette riding in a tumbril. I don't like to have it brought home to
me that marriage is life's supreme sacrifice."

Anne herself, sitting beside Morgan Wallifarro as they drove home, was
rather breathless in her silence. Today it had been the rehearsal, but
tomorrow it would be the ceremony itself, and from that there would be
no turning back. An intolerable sense of inevitability seemed to close
and darken in a stifling oppression that left her faint.

Until now she had been telling herself, as one will tell oneself
specious things to prop a tottering resolution, that the ghosts of
incertitude and panic would hold dominion only over the days and weeks
of waiting. If she could keep her courage steadfast until she had
actually become Morgan's wife, the forces that support one in one's duty
would rally in closer order to uphold her.

But there in the church, going through the formula of the rehearsal,
that fallacious self-bolstering had collapsed, and the misgivings of
these days stood revealed as prefatory only to a more permanent and
chafing thraldom.

If Boone had been there she felt that there was no law within herself
strong enough to have prevented her from fleeing to him--and terror had
seized upon her.

Then it was that the something came into her eyes which the
maid-of-honour had described as the appearance of one seeing ghosts.

Morgan owed every success in life, or at least attributed every success,
to his refusal to admit the possibility of failure. Like the Nervii, "he
was strong because he seemed strong." Anne had brought him, at times,
close to an acknowledgment of defeat in his paramount resolve--but his
perseverance, he believed, had conquered, and his fears were over.

Now he looked into a face from which the colour had ebbed and in which
the eyes were far from radiant--but Morgan told himself that it should
be his privilege to bring the bloom of happiness back, and his colossal
self-confidence was not daunted by any serious misgiving.

It was not until they had entered the house and stood alone in the same
room where Boone had listened to his edict of banishment, that she
turned slowly and said in a voice both terrified and defiant:

"Morgan--I can't do it.... For God's sake release me from my promise!"

She stood facing him and braced for the recoil of that indignant
protestation which she had every right to expect from him. She was not
only withdrawing the promise upon which she had let him plan the entire
edifice of his future, but doing so with a tardiness that made it, for
him, inescapably conspicuous and mortifying.

But Morgan was a master of the strategy of surprise. His jaw did not
drop in stricken amazement. His left hand, holding the glove just drawn
from the right, did not clench in dramatic tensity. His eyes did not
even smoulder into that suppressed rage which mischievously she used to
tease into them for the pleasure of seeing them snap.

If anything, the prominent out-thrust of the clean-cut jaw was less
emphatic than usual, and the girl felt the sinking helplessness of one
who, keyed to a hard battle, launches the attack and encounters no
opposition.

Morgan had seen the wild, almost irrational, terror of her eyes, and
they had silenced argument. For once he recognized a defeat that he
could avoid only by an ungenerous victory to which he could not bring
himself, and he had no reproach because he could see that, in her effort
to perform her promise, she had goaded herself to the breaking point.

His face showed every thoroughbred and manly quality of its blood as he
inquired, with as great a deference as though her sudden announcement
came with entire reasonableness: "Are you sure--you can't?"

When she had nodded her head miserably, Morgan argued his cause. He
talked with a quiet and earnest eagerness but without reproach, as if he
were for the first time pleading his love.

But the arguments held nothing new. She herself had lain awake at night
repeating them until they were like parrot reiterations. They interposed
no answer to the monstrous fact that a marriage which she faced in such
unwillingness would be a thing that divorced the heart from the body.
That she had so long beguiled herself into believing it possible, filled
her now with self-scorn, but to the untimeliness of her decision he
offered no protest.

They talked, all things considered, with surprising calmness, and at
length Morgan glanced down and, seeing on the table near his hand the
plans for the house they had meant to build, picked them up absently,
glanced at them and tossed them back. It was the gesture of accepting a
finality.

"I suppose, Anne," he said, with a rather more than merely decent
assumption of whatever fault existed, "I've refused to see the truth
because I was blindly selfish, but I couldn't seek to hold you--if it
costs you both happiness and self-respect." He paused and then added. "I
ask only one thing, now. Don't make this decision final. Think it over
for three months--"

"Morgan dear," she interrupted in a gasping voice, "for more than three
months, I've thought of nothing else."

"I know." The gentleness of his speech was the more telling by its
contrast with his aggressive habit of self-assertion. "But you were
thinking then with a sense of being bound. Complete freedom may make a
difference. At least leave me that hope."

"I'm afraid," she faltered, "I'm very certain."

"Anyway," he reminded her, as he forced a rueful smile, "it will be
easier to tell your mother in that fashion. She is on my side, you
know."

Possibly Morgan had long ago counted this over-ardent advocacy on the
part of Mrs. Masters as a hurtful partisanship. He knew that Anne's
spirit had been fretted, ragged under the maternal insistence, even when
it was tempered with finesse. He knew too that in this final declaration
of freedom, the girl could not escape the knowledge that for her mother
as well as herself she was wrecking every provident prospect and raising
the ghosts of shabby, genteel poverty.

"I think," said Morgan, with a delicacy of tact which one would hardly
have expected from him, "you'd better let me tell her--that we've
decided to wait until I come back from abroad."

Anne sickened at the thought of her mother's disappointment and at the
thought too of how, for her, the future was to be met. Then as if that
were too gigantic a problem, her mind veered to lesser, yet disturbing,
complications.

Today's papers had printed advance details of the wedding. The type of
one heading seemed to stand at the moment before her eyes, "Happy Event
of Interest to Society," but when she spoke somewhat timidly of these
things to Morgan he contemptuously waved them aside.

"Damn the invitations and the wedding guests," he exclaimed. "We weren't
getting married for their benefit. Leave that to me. The papers will
announce that I've got to go to Europe--and that because of a turn in
your mother's condition you've decided to defer the wedding until I come
back. That's all they need to know."

He turned to the window and after a minute wheeled suddenly back.

"I have one thing still to ask. I have no longer any claim, of course.
But until three months have passed--you won't send for Boone Wellver,
will you?"

The girl's head came up with a tilted chin.

"I shall never send for him," she vehemently declared. "He's done with
me and that's all there is to it!"

It was not undiluted fiction which Morgan gave to the morning papers
that night, as he regretfully reported the sudden heart attack of Mrs.
Masters, which necessitated an eleventh hour postponement of his
wedding. There had been a heart attack which might have been averted had
the good lady been able to receive his tidings with a less flurried
spirit, but that he did not regard it necessary to explain, and a flinty
something in his eye discouraged unnecessary questions.

So Morgan set out alone on the trip which was to have been a honeymoon,
and the lady whose dreams of a rehabilitated place in society had been
dashed afforded her daughter a fulness of anxiety by hanging
precariously between life and death.

It is doubtful whether those circles in which Anne and Morgan moved were
wholly beguiled, and it is certain that sympathy followed the traveller.

"The engagement will never be renewed," mused an elderly lady who had
been fond of Anne from childhood. "She won't take up again with her wild
man of the mountains either, you may rest assured of that."

"But why?" challenged the gentleman to whom these sage observations were
addressed. "Presumably a persistent interest in young Wellver caused
this break with--"

A quiet laugh interrupted him, and the gentleman's eyes for some reason
grew grave. He and the woman with whom he talked had been lovers once,
engaged years upon years ago, and society had always wondered that
neither of them had ever married. Now with snow upon both their heads he
still sedately marched where he had once danced attendance upon her.

"Because," she soberly replied, "there is such a thing as letting the
psychological moment go by. Life isn't all mating season."

"As to that," he entered dignified demurrer, "we have always disagreed."

The lady, ignoring the observation, went on, holding intact the thread
of her reflections. "If the break with Boone had been remediable it
would never have widened till so many months ran between them. No, she
has given each his _congé_, and she hasn't a penny of her own in the
world and--" She paused dramatically, and the man finished the sentiment
for her in a less alarmed tone.

"It would seem to leave her flat; still she has a good mind and
wonderful charm."

"Yes,"--the retort was dry. "The mind is untrained, and the charm is a
menace."

Mrs. Masters died early that summer, though the physicians assured her
self-accusing daughter that no possible connection of cause and effect
could be traced between her death and the heart attack provoked by the
doldrums of disappointment. But the girl's eyes were haunted when she
came back from the funeral to the empty house, which was not her own
house, and sat down, ghost-pale, against the black of her mourning. The
world which she must now face was an absolutely changed world from
which, as from dismantled furniture, all the easy cushioning and
draperies had been ripped away, leaving sharp and uncovered angles of
contact.

In it there was no place for her, save such a place as she could gain by
invoking some miracle, for which she had no formula, to exchange
butterfly beauty for the provident effectiveness of the ant hill.

Morgan, whose frequent letters had gone unanswered, became obsessed with
an anxiety which drove him homeward by a fast steamer that had seemed to
him intolerably slow.

When its voyage had ended, a fog had held it in the harbour for half a
day, and during that half day Morgan paced the decks, fuming over a
dozen apprehensions.

It was to a Morgan Wallifarro unaccustomedly pale and agitated that the
same lady, who had pessimistically forecast Anne's future, gave him, on
his arrival at home, what information she could.

"No one seems to have her address, Morgan," she said. "I suppose she
wanted, for a while, to be in new surroundings. As for myself, I had a
brief note sent back with a book I'd lent her. She said that she was
going to New York--but that was all, and when I telephoned she had
gone."

"But her affairs must be arranged for her. She has nothing," protested
the man desperately. "In God's name what is she going to do? How did she
suppose I was going to find her?"

The lady laid a hand on the young man's elbow, and tears came into her
own eyes,

"She didn't confide in me, Morgan. What I think is only guess-work--but
I don't believe she wanted you to find her."




CHAPTER XLIII


To Boone Wellver, Louisville had become a city lying without the zone of
personal experience. Like a steamer which has altered its sailings, he
made it no longer a port of call.

That mad hiatus of apostacy, in which he had been willing to throw down
all the shrines of his acquired faith, had become to him an evil dream
of the past--yet out of it something had remained. The fog which had
bemused him then had left uncleared certain minors of realization. Just
as he had not yet recognized that the Commonwealth's attorney had sent
him away unsatisfied because he had come making his demands to the
arrogant tune of insult, so he failed, too, to appreciate that Anne had
held the silence, which, without her permission, he was resolved not to
break, because he had violently rebuffed her.

He had refused to read the papers on the day set for her wedding,
because he could not bear the torture of what he had expected to find
there, and McCalloway had not spoken of the postponement because it fell
within the boundaries of a topic upon which he had set a ban of silence,
unless the younger man broached it. So with what would have seemed an
impossible coincidence, it was weeks later that Boone ceased to
flagellate himself with the thought of a honeymoon that had never begun.
Even then he, unlike the more sophisticated of the circle to which he
had once been admitted, accepted without question the reason given for
the deferred marriage, and saw for himself no brightening of
possibility.

With the curtain rung down on the thrilling drama whose theme had been
dominated by love, work seemed to Boone increasingly the motif of
things. Service appeared more and more the purpose meant in the blind
gropings of existence toward some end. Otherwise there was nothing.

But one day long after all this, when the months had run to seasons,
Boone broke his law of self-appointed exile and went to Louisville. He
did not go from Marlin Town but came the other way--from Washington.

For now the mountain man had his place on Capitol Hill and no longer
felt the uncertainty of diffidence in answering when he heard himself
recognized from the speaker's chair as "the gentleman from Kentucky."

It was not at all the Washington he had pictured. In many ways it was a
more wonderful, and in many a less wonderful, place than that known from
photographs and print and fancy.

Life had caught him out of meagre and primitive beginnings and led him,
for a while, through corridors of romanticism. Before his eyes,
imagination-kindled, had been the colours of dreams and the beckoning of
an evening star. The colours had been evanescent, and the star had set.
The corridor of visionary promise had come to an end, and its door had
opened on Commonplace.

He told himself that he was done with romance. In his life it had been,
perhaps, necessary as a stage through which experience must lead him.
Henceforth his deity was to be Reason, a cold and austere goddess but a
constant one.

But Boone did not quite know himself. Sentiment still lay as strong in
him as the spring life that sleeps under the winter sleet. The man in
whom it does not survive is one whose spiritual arteries have hardened.

One lesson he modestly believed he had learned out of his journeying
from his log-cabin down to the Bluegrass and up to Capitol Hill. He had
become an apostle of Life's mutability, chained to no fixed post of
unplastic thought.

Upon these things his reflections had been running as he made the
journey back to Kentucky, and of them he was thinking now, as, having
arrived, he stood with bared head in the billowing stretches of Cave
Hill Cemetery.

Victor McCalloway had been in Marlin County hardly at all during these
last two years and he was not there now. As usual, when the veteran was
absent, Boone had no idea to what quarter of the globe, or in response
to what mysterious call, his steps had turned. He thought, though, that
it would be his preceptor's wish to be represented as the body of
General Prince was lowered to its last rest.

He saw again in memory two figures before a cabin hearth, debating with
the heat of devotees, the calibre and qualities of today's and
yesterday's military leaders in general, of Hector Dinwiddie in
particular. He saw himself again sitting huddled in the chimney corner,
nursing the patched knees of an illiterate boy.

Now one was dead--he could not even be sure that both were not dead--and
Boone, no longer in homespun, had come from Washington to uncover his
head under the winter sky as the words of the last rites were spoken
over the body of General Prince.

Into that grave, it seemed to him, was going something unreplaceable.
This man was the embodiment of a passing tradition, almost of a dead
era, in the altering life of the nation itself.

The ideas and beliefs for which his early life had stood were already
buried, and now he lay himself at rest, a link between present and
past--as much an exemplification of chivalry as though his feet had been
crossed and his sword laid in the crusader's posture of repose.

Boone heard the austere beauty of the service--but he felt more
poignantly the picture that his eyes looked on: the coffin draped with
two flags that overlapped their folds--though once a tide of
cannon-smother ran between them--the Stars and Stripes of the Nation and
the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy.

On one hand, in a grizzled honour-guard, stood old men in the same mist
grey that he had worn with a general's stars until Lee surrendered, and
on the other hand was ranged an equally frosted and withered squad in
Grand Army blue. Then at last a clear and flawless sweetness floated
away from the lips of the militia bugler, who, in accordance with the
General's wish, was sounding taps across his closing grave.

Something rose in Boone Wellver's throat, and a strange idea stole, not
facetiously but with reverent sincerity, into his thoughts. He wished it
might have been possible for him to stand there as the clods fell, not
as he stood now in the dress of a gentleman, but in homespun and
butternut, clasping in his tight hands the coon-skin cap that his
boyhood had known. For in this gathering, that was like a quiet pageant
of passing eras, he stood for an elder thing than any other here. He
was, in effect, by birth and by beginning, the ancestor of them all, for
he had been born a pioneer!

       *       *       *       *       *

The school, which had become a home to Happy Spradling, had grown
marvellously since that day when the old mountaineer wrote with his
donation of rocky acres: "I have heart and cravin' that our young people
may grow better, and I deed my land to a school as long as the
Constitution of the United States stands."

It was a precarious undertaking with no endowment except its spirit, but
it is not recorded that Elijah went hungry when his commissary was in
the keeping of ravens--for back of the ravens was the Promise.

From year to year, dependent upon the generosity of those whom its
accomplishments convinced, the school not only existed but grew, and in
order that the springs which fed it might not run dry there were,
several times each year, the "begging trips" of the women who "went
out."

For that was the phrase they used, just as in all wilderness life it is
the phrase with which men speak of journeys from the solitudes.

When Miss Shorte went east or west, she carried to the outer world a
living and vivid portraiture of that folk immured behind the ridge and
its elder life. Then somehow the undertakings, absurdly impractical from
a material viewpoint, realized themselves, and a new school building, a
tiny hospital or a needed dormitory rose among the hardwood and the
pines of Marlin County.

In the fall of 1913 Miss Shorte brought east with her a younger woman
also from the school, to sing for her audiences those quaint
"song-ballets" that sound around smoky mountain hearths to the
accompaniment of banjo and "dulcimore."

Because no dollar could go out from the school's closely guarded
treasury without assurance that it would bring other dollars back, the
experiment of increasing the traveling expenses by including this girl
in the journey to New York had been discussed back of Cedar Mountain
with prayerful earnestness, and the girl herself had greeted the final
decision as one of the great moments of her life.

Now that girl stood beside the piano a little tremulous with stage
fright as she looked out over an audience more sophisticated than any to
which she had ever sung before. It was in one of the women's university
clubs in the Forties and to her uninitiated eye the light fell on a
confusing display of evening dress and worldly-wise faces full of
self-containment.

They would listen with politeness but how could her offering interest
these men and women to whom great voices were familiar? Hers was
untrained and the songs were crude vehicles for folk-lore compositions,
plaintive with uncultivated minors.

That elderly gentleman, sitting far back near the door, had been
identified to her in a whisper. He was a music critic whose word carried
the force of authority--and she wondered if he sat near the exit with
thought of escape from her inflictions. Just now he was writing a series
of magazine articles on folk-lore music in America, and the girl felt
herself the subject of a cold experiment in mental vivisection.

The lady with the white pompadour was one whose name she had known with
awe on the school's list of patronesses and even here in New York it was
a great name.

The mountain singer's knees trembled a little as the accompanist struck
the keys, and her first note stole out, sweetly clear and naturally
fresh.

She finished her first song and retreated to her chair on the platform,
wishing that there had been a trap-door through which she might have
escaped that barrage of human sight.

Then her glance caught the elderly man with the great reputation in the
music world. He had not yet fled. He was making notes on a scrap of
paper and his keenly alert, finely chiselled face wore the expression of
unmistakable interest. The singer glanced at the white-haired lady--the
great Mrs. Ariton--and she read "well-done, my child," in a smile of
moist eyes.

She could not know that there was a direct simplicity of pathos and
artless humour in her ballads, borne on a bird-like sweetness of voice,
to the hearts of these people. She could not know that she was bringing
to the touch of their sympathy phrases and forms that had seemed as
remote and unreal as lines from Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Yet, because it was all so new and strange, the air seemed heavy to her
with a terrifying formality, as the incense laden atmosphere of a
cathedral might have been. So she looked, as she rose to sing again, for
the comforting presence of some face that might reassure her with a
kin-ship of human simplicity.

Then she saw slip quietly through the entrance door, and drop into a
seat near the critic, a young woman who was unaccompanied and who, at
first glance, seemed to carry in her fine eyes the burthen of habitual
weariness.

These eyes were deeply violet and though sadness haunted them and
bespoke ghosts that stirred uneasily and often back in their depths they
still held the hint of fires that had flashed, once, into gay and
spontaneous whimseys. The singer had a momentary sense of looking at a
face made for gracious and merry expressions, but drawn into the short
and desperate outlook of one who has fallen into deep and angry waters,
and who can see nothing ahead beyond the struggle to keep afloat.

The newcomer was tall and slender, even thin, but there was still an
intrinsic gallantry about the swing of her shoulders that made one think
of invincible qualities, though the plain severity of her clothing
brought into that contrasting company the undeniable assertion of
poverty.

The singer finished her ballad and once again went back to her chair.
This time with a diminished diffidence. She was thinking about the other
young woman at the back who looked poor and sick and who, in spite of
these things, gave her an indescribable impression of distinction. The
two of them, thought the mountain girl, had a bond of sympathy in that
they were each set quite apart from all these others unified by the
stamp of affluence.

Miss Shorte was talking now; telling the story of the school and its
work; flashing before her hearers as if her words were pictures imbued
with colour and form, the patriarchal conditions with which this work
was surrounded. Laughter interrupted her lighter recitals, and when she
spoke of graver phases there was that light clearing of throats that
carries from an audience to a stage the proclamation of stirred emotion,
and of tears not far from the surface.

The speaker gave a few illustrations of the sort of manhood and
womanhood that is sometimes wrought out of that crude ore when the
tempering of help and education is available to refine it.

Lincoln had sprung from such stock. Even now the member in Congress from
that district was a man born in a log shack of illiterate parents. He
had fought feudal animosities and gone upward by a rugged ascent. Now
he was recognized by his colleagues as a man of ability and breadth. So
far had he outgrown the strictures of provincialism, that he was a
member of the Foreign Relations Committee. But better than that his own
people swore by him because they knew "their lives and deaths were his
to him"--because in a land where men had been afraid to serve on juries
and to enforce the law, they were no longer afraid.

The school sought to develop other Boone Wellvers from the same
beginnings ... to help others toward a similar fulfilment.

The musical critic heard a faint gasping breath from the chair at his
side. He turned quickly and was startled by the pale, emotion-drawn face
of the young woman who sat there without escort. For an instant he
thought that some poor creature actually pinched by want had crept in,
attracted by the light and warmth for a brief interval of rest, then he
looked with a more piercing appraisement at the features and discarded
that idea.

"Are you ill?" he demanded in a low voice. "Can I serve you?"

The young woman shook her head and forced a smile whose graciousness
must have come less from conscious effort than from life habit.

"No, thank you," she answered in a low voice that had meaning to one who
knew music wherever he found it. "It was nothing ... I came late ... who
is the girl who sang?"

"She was introduced as Miss Happy Spradling," said the critic.

His questioner's hands were at her sides where he did not see them
tighten convulsively, but he saw the pale cheeks go a shade whiter and
wondered if she was going to faint.

She did not faint, and though through the course of the evening the
elderly man found time, more than once, to turn his friendly glance of
solicitude her way he did not again intervene with questions. Clearly
this young woman, whatever the cause, was in a condition of nerves that
might mean skirting the precipitous edge of collapse. Clearly too she
had that fortitude which can resist and after a shock bring itself back
to the poise of equilibrium. What had shocked her? He could not guess,
but he knew that in the depleted condition that her pale cheeks and
thinness argued, unaccountable trifles may assume the gravity of a
crisis. And besides the critic found his attention and interest
elsewhere engaged. That other girl who was singing claimed them both.
She was having a little triumph there on the platform beside the piano.
On her smooth, dark face was a pink flush and her deep eyes glowed with
pleasure for the enthusiasm that had capped the cordiality of her
reception.

When the program came to its end the audience in large part gathered
about the platform and the meeting resolved itself into an informal
reception. Among the first to go forward was the critic and as he rose,
noticing a struggle between eagerness and hesitation in the violet eyes
of his chance neighbour, he yielded to an impulse of the moment.

"Shall we go up together," he smiled, "and introduce each other? I have
a question or two to ask her?"

But the girl shook her head. She had started nervously at the question
as though in realization that he had read her thoughts and as if she had
not wished them to be readable.

Still when he had left her she lingered in the door before she turned
out to the street as if some strong magnetism sought to draw her into
the group about the speaker and singer--a group in which her clothes
would have been conspicuous. Finally she turned and left and went
outside, where the obscurity was more merciful.

Her course took her southward and eastward and brought her at last to a
building that loomed large and dark now, but which in daylight sounded
to the shouts of immigrant children whose voices might have rung in the
sun-yellowed bazaars of Levantine towns or about the moujik habitations
of Russia. It was one of the settlement schools of the East Side where
the strident grind of the elevated was never silent, and in a small and
very bare room the girl took off her hat and coat. She was one of the
least important of the women who conducted the affairs of this mission
school. Its assembly rooms, _crêches_ and diet kitchens constituted her
present world.

They had said that there was nothing she could do--a society girl with a
drawing room and hunting field equipment--and only the All-seeing and
herself knew how near true it had proven.

All these years, she reflected with a smile of self-derision, she had
harboured the thought of this mountain girl, caricatured by imagination
into a bare-foot sloven, before whose vulgar charms Boone's loyalty had
discreditably wavered. Now she had seen that girl and the dimensions of
her own injustice loomed in exaggeration before her self-accusation.

For a long while Anne Masters sat there in her bare room. Often she had
wondered whether she could go on enduring the strain of a life that had
emptied out all its fulness and become pinched and aching. It seemed to
her that now she stood as one having touched the depths and the fine
quality of her courage was not far from disintegration.

A great and hungry impulse filled her. She wanted to talk to Happy
Spradling--to talk to her under an assumed name--and to lay to the
bruises about her heart the solace of hearing something of those hills
she had once loved so intensely--something of the man who was now a
member of the Foreign Relations Committee of Congress! The wish grew
into an obsession and when, toward daylight, sleep came fitfully, it
wove itself into the troubled pattern of her dreams.

There were many reasons why she should repress that desire. If Happy
learned who she was, the secret of her hiding would be penetrated, and
she would show herself as conquered.

Yet the next day when the time came that gave her leisure from her
duties she went again, invincibly drawn, to the University Club in the
Forties.

Opposite the door, and across the street, she paused, holding herself
hard in hand against a tidal sweeping of emotions, and as she stood
there she saw the door open and Mrs. Ariton come out, followed by Happy.
The two crossed the sidewalk to the curb and stepped into the great
lady's limousine.

Anne still hesitated, then she shook her head and turned resolutely
away. The car rolled forward and rounded a corner, and the one possible
association with a part of Anne's old world was lost.

Anne herself went over to the avenue and climbed to the roof of a bus.

On the way downtown as the traffic crowded, the limousine and the
omnibus passed and repassed each other. It was a frostily clear forenoon
with Fifth Avenue sparkling like a string of jewel beads, and sometimes
Anne could see Happy's face thrust out with wonderment written large
upon its features. To her it was all new: this miracle of a city of
millions. Her heart was fluttering to the first sight of that tide of
men and motors; that crest-pluming of wealth and undertow of misery;
that gaiety and tragedy that rolls in vigour and in poison along a
mighty urban artery.

But Anne felt like a fragment of flotsam carried hopelessly on the
current.

When the limousine had turned into a side street of dignified old
houses, Anne rode on, and leaving the bus made her way on foot through
meaner streets where the smell of garlic hung pervasive and the
gutturals of Slavic speech came from bearded and beady eyed faces. She
went through the East Side's warrens of congestion and poverty,
slipping through crowds of shawled and haggling women who elbowed about
push-carts.

Yet when she had time to retreat again to the sanctuary of her own small
room, Anne felt that an element of augmented strength had come to her,
as if she had caught a breath of the laurel bloom from Slag-face through
the stenches and the jargons.

"If I can hold out," she told herself, "if I can only hold out, I'll
have my self-respect!" After a moment she added, "She will probably see
him soon, but she can't tell him she saw me--because she doesn't know
it."




CHAPTER XLIV


Uncle Billy Taulbee's store had stood for a half century in the shade of
mighty sycamores, where a trickle of water glinted over pebble and
shale, worn hub-deep into wheel-ruts. Except when the spring thaws
carried a tawny flood up almost to the edge of his doorstep and the
"tide" had right of way, that creek bed and the sandy lane angling
across it constituted the junction of the Smoky Hollow Road and that
debouching over to "The left hand fork of Nighway Creek." Roundabout it
were streamlets with pools where, in season, the mountain trout leaped
and darted in shimmering flashes, and to the store one summer noon came
two hungry fishermen from the lowlands. They sat on cracker boxes,
eating canned peaches and "Vienny" sausages, encouraging the keen-eyed
old storekeeper to talk and plying him with questions as to what his
coal royalties had run to on this tract and what on that, in the space
of the past few years. With neither boast nor evasion, the old man
answered them.

"But, heavens above, Uncle Billy," exclaimed one of the visitors--(for
every man and child called him Uncle Billy--"An' I reckon," he said,
"ther houn-dawgs would too, if so be they had ther gift of speech").
"Heavens above, if you go on making money like that you'll be able to
sign a check for a million dollars before you end up!"

The storekeeper fished from the pocket of cotton overalls some crumbs of
"natural leaf" to rub between his leathery palms, and thrust them
greedily between his white-stubbled lips.

"I reckon, son," he answered drily as he once more shoved forward along
the counter the tin of crackers, "ef so be thar was any sich-like need,
I could back a bank-check fer thet much money terday."

His visitors sat up agaze, with "Vienny" sausages poised between tin-can
and lip, dripping grease on their khaki-clad knees.

At last one of them inquired in a dazed voice, "But why don't you live
like a rich man, Uncle Billy? Aren't you sick of this God-forsaken
desolation?"

Uncle Billy leaned with his elbows on his counter and seemed to be
giving the question judicial reflection. Finally he shook his head.

"A man's right apt ter weary of anything in due time, but I've always
lived hyar. I wouldn't hardly hev no ease in my mind no-whars else, I
reckon. I leaves all thet newfangled business ter my children an'
gran'children and I follers in the track of my fore-parents my own
self." He paused, then added with a note of defensive pride:

"Not thet I denies myself nothin' though. My old woman's got a brussels
cyarpet on ther floor upsta'rs right now an' a pianner thet hit tuck
four yoke of oxen ter team acrost ther mountings from ther railroad
cars."

"Would she play it for us, Uncle Billy?"

"Wa'al she kain't jest ter say play hit, yit, but she aims ter git
somebody ter l'arn her how some day--She l'arnt readin' an' writin' when
she war past three score."

Back in Marlin Town--a town now boasting sidewalks of concrete and a new
brick station, the fishermen saw the columned and porticoed mansions of
the old man's sons--and their thoughts went back to the store with its
bolts of calico, its harness, and above it the living quarters where
these children had been born.

For the wealth of that county in coal had brought spurs of railroads
bristling into pockets of the wilderness where there had hardly been
"critter trails," and overnight fortunes had sprung into being. Moneyed
interests that centered there would have made the young attorney, who
was also the district's member in Congress, something more than a local
representative, had he not chosen to represent the native holders and to
stand as a buffer between their unsophistication and their would-be
exploiters. But if Boone could set his name to no million-dollar checks
or build himself no colonial mansions, more practice came to the office
where his shingle hung than he and his two new associates could handle.

In other newly developed sections, Boone had seen the native exploited
and embittered. It had been his care that when prosperity came into
Marlin it should come as a blessing to the hill dwellers and not as a
curse. To that end he had locked horns with some adroit and powerful
adversaries, outriders of capital who would have been bandits had the
way lain open. They had first laughed at him, then resolved to crush him
and in the end sought to propitiate him. Finally they gave him his half
of the road and shook their heads in wonderment because he chose the way
of folly and refused to be made deviously rich.

To each new advance he had had one answer: "I belong to these people,
gentlemen. They must be fairly dealt with."

And yet while these mighty transitions worked themselves into being, the
alchemy of the Midas touch left life unchanged back of Cedar Mountain
itself. The brooding range threw its cordon of peaks across the tide of
development and turned it right and left. Not until the many fields
lying virgin and accessible had been worked out, would capital need to
wrestle with engineering assaults upon those sky-high barriers of flint.

And with fidelity to history's ironic precedent, the man whose dream had
been strong in a world of doubters stood by unbenefited, while others
who had not known the nature of a vision reaped wealth. For Larry
Masters had thrown his initial winnings into other speculative
properties. He was the gambler who had won a large bet, and whose
ambition straightway burns to "break the bank." He had bought land in
his own right on a rising tide of values, and he had seen his own veins
of coal narrow to nothing, until his engineers had "pulled the pillars"
and abandoned the lodes. Finding himself ill omened and fallen on desert
spots in a land of oases, he had closed his bungalow in disgust and
taken a salaried position with an oil concern operating in Mexico.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sometimes there comes into a Kentucky midsummer a strayed touch of
autumn. Then while the woods stand freckled and the ironweed waves its
sprays of dusty purple, a touch of languor steals into the sky, and the
horizon veils itself with a mist that is sweetly melancholy.

On such a period, when the sun should have held its dog-day heat, yet
fell in mellow mildness, Boone Wellver sat on a low, hickory-withed
chair outside the door of McCalloway's house.

He did not require the spell of that indefinable melancholy which lay
along the hilltops to bring home to him a mood of sadness, because for
two weeks he had been here alone with his thoughts. It had been his whim
during that time to isolate himself completely, and to wear, as a man
may wear old clothes or old shoes, the ease of solitude that makes no
demands upon one's conventional self.

In Washington there was always the need of living before other eyes.
Here he had not even ridden across the ridge for letters or papers.

At the moment, while the bees droned loudly about him and the mountains
slept in their ancient impassivity, he held on his knees Victor
McCalloway's tin dispatch box, and his eyes were deep with thoughts of
bereavement.

The veteran had said that, on his death, Boone might turn the key of
that battered receptacle and read the papers which would give him a full
knowledge of the identity of his benefactor.

Once he had declared, half smilingly and half in earnest:

"I suppose that at any time you hear nothing of me for five years you
may assume my death." It had been five years now, and more, since he had
left the little world of his hermitage, and no word had come back to
Boone.

The young man's heart was heavy with loneliness, and as he sat there
alone, he ached to know the secret that had shadowed the life of the man
to whom his devotion was almost an idolatry; the secret that had robbed
of a name one whose past must have been both colourful and tragic.

In those five years since they had met, Boone had passed the milestones
from the local to the national, and if he held the respect of his
colleagues he owed it all to Victor McCalloway. They said that he was a
man with a broad and national vision. That, too, if it were true, was a
reflection of the soldier's teaching.

But if McCalloway were to be only a memory, Boone looked forward to a
life almost beggared. There was that solitary strain in his nature which
came perhaps of having attached himself too strongly to a few,
all-important friends. Of these McCalloway had been the chief. A
facetious fellow-member had given Boone a nickname out of Kipling in
coatroom small-talk, and the title had stuck. "Wellver," said the
representative, "is 'the cat that walks by himself, and all places are
alike to him.'"

Now, if he were not to see his old preceptor again, he must indeed walk
by himself.

With a drawn brow he thought what eventful years those five had been,
and, looking up at the unchanging hills, laughed aloud.

The North and South poles had been discovered. Portugal and China had
set up republics on the ashes of monarchy and empire. Diaz, the old
feudist lord of Mexico, had relinquished his powers and dropped out. The
Italian had fought the Ottoman; Europe's cry of "Wolf! wolf!" in the
Balkans had ceased to be an empty alarm and, burning fiercely up and
burning out, had broken again into secondary blazing. Our own armies
were on Mexican soil. In which of these abstract and epochal affairs had
his friend played a part?

Boone felt, in his heart, a newly comprehended ache for the pathos of
the veteran's life. He could realize, as he had not before realized, the
unsatisfied hungers that must have been always with that solitary
exile--a hunger appeased in part only when under some name not his own
he heard again the call of the bugles and followed the flight of the
war-eagles.

Manifestly, for all their closeness of thought and companionship, he had
only seen a part of the man McCalloway. There must be facets in the
stone even finer than those he knew, which had never been revealed to
him. He had seen--often--the warmth of affection like the softened glow
of a diamond lying on a jeweller's velvet, and--on occasion--the keen,
cold brightness of unyielding strength, but there must have been, too,
white spurts of blaze almost dazzling in their fierce lustre which it
had taken the battlefield to bring out.

And these he did not know.

He had just been reading a paper with which the gentleman had beguiled
many a lonely winter night and which he had left unfinished. It was a
critical analysis of Hector Dinwiddie's career and military thought,
undertaken at the request of Basil Prince.

Prince himself had been a historian, and yet Boone doubted whether he
could in style or vigour of thought have bettered this casual writing.
As Boone read it, the portrait of a great soldier stood before his eyes.
He had never guessed until then how great a soldier had been cut off by
Dinwiddie's suicide. Now he could perceive why other governments,
governments which might some day meet Britain in the field, had drawn
sighs of relief at his death. So in a greater degree the world had
breathed easier when Bonaparte went to St. Helena.

Yet of Dinwiddie, McCalloway had not written flatteries. Rather his
portraiture was strong because his brush stroke was so strict and severe
that often it became adverse criticism.

Boone leaned back and drew from his pocket the key that would unlock an
answer to his questionings. He thrust it into the keyhole and then, as a
spasm of pain crossed his face, hesitated.

Once he had done that, he should have admitted to himself that he had
abandoned hope, and he realized that he could not bring himself, even
after five years, to that admission.

For a long while he sat hesitant. A squirrel chattered; a woodpecker
rapped high overhead on a dead limb, and at last the young man thrust
the key back into his pocket and carried the metal strong box into the
house again, unopened.

Boone had ordained it as his law that when thoughts of Anne came into
his mind, he would not entertain them; that a seal had been placed on
those closed pages of his experience; but it was a law which he had no
power of enforcing on his heart, and as he came out again into the
sunlight he was thinking of her.

He had never known in its true baldness the dependence of mother and
daughter upon the bounteous generosity of their kinsman, and without
that knowledge he had not guessed that Anne's departure from Louisville
had been an adventure, daring everything.

All that he knew, or fancied he knew, was that even when she had broken
with Morgan she had felt no need of him, and it had been her callous
wish to live as if she had never known him. Since love is set in the
most delicate and intricate bearings of life, and holds in its own core
the possibilities of hate, he fancied that he felt for the Anne Masters
of his past adoration the present contempt due a woman who had been able
only to trifle with a life she had shaped. Because, too, she had once
saved that life from its threatened smirching, the gratitude which
might have been his most treasured sentiment became to him an
intolerable obligation.

Standing there by the door, the man's face darkened, until for the
moment it wore again the sombre and sullen hate that had marred its
boyhood. The hands at his side closed into fists, and looking off across
the hills, he said aloud:

"It was a dream that well-nigh wrecked me. I never want to see her or
hear of her again!"

But after a moment the bitterness turned to longing, and with an
indignant voice, as though denouncing an enemy who stood before him, he
broke out tempestuously: "That's a lie! You love her.... You always
will!"

Then around the abrupt turn of the road came a horseman, and Boone
recognized him, with astonishment, as Morgan Wallifarro, dust-covered
and mounted on a livery beast.

But the Morgan who dismounted by the rail fence wore a face aged in a
fashion that startled Boone. He was not the kidney that burns out in a
few years of strenuosity, but a man with a mind of steel and a body of
whipcord, and now his eyes were lined and ringed as they should not have
been until his hair had turned white.

Boone supposed that some matter of party consultation had brought his
unannounced guest, since they were both now men of leadership, so he
inquired, after they had shaken hands:

"Is it politics, Morgan?"

Wallifarro nodded.

"In part that," he answered slowly, "but it's hard to pin one's mind
down to party details today, Boone. It's like whistling a petty tune
into the teeth of a hurricane."

"Hurricane?" Boone repeated the final word in a puzzled tone. "I don't
follow you."

"My God, man," exclaimed the other, in sheer and undisguised amazement,
"don't you know?"

"Know what? Remember that I've been in the backwoods for three weeks,"
smiled the hillsman, "and I haven't seen a paper for ten days."

Again for a moment the Louisville lawyer stood incredulously silent;
then he said sharply:

"The war.... It's four days old and more.... Austria, Servia, Germany,
Russia, France! They are all in it--and yesterday England came in."

The face of the member of the Foreign Affairs Committee wore a stunned
blankness, and the blood went out of it. From the tree across the road
the woodpecker began once more his hammering, and about the hoofs of the
hitched horse drifted a cloud of pale-yellow butterflies.

Finally Boone asked in a husky voice: "What of us?"

Morgan shook his head. "Two weeks ago," he said, "the whole thing was a
sheer impossibility.... Now anything is possible."

Boone's mind had flashed back to McCalloway's prophecy.... "When that
message of merging and common cause comes, it will come not on the wings
of peace but belched from the mouths of guns--riding the gales of war."

"You are tired and hot," he found himself saying. "Let's go inside."

Later the mountain man reminded his guest: "But you came on another
errand. What was it?"

Morgan, who had been seated, rose and paced the floor with his mouth
tight drawn, and then stopping before his host, he broke out bluntly:
"Once before, Boone, we talked about _her_. Now we must do it again."

Boone's shoulders stiffened, and his face froze into an unresponsive
reserve. Even with McCalloway he had not been able to discuss Anne, and
with Morgan it was impossible.

"Morgan," he answered very deliberately and guardedly, "it was Anne's
wish to eliminate me from her scheme of things. To that wish I bowed,
and what is sealed must remain sealed. In all candour--I can't talk of
her."

"Can't talk of her!" Through the strained composure of Morgan's manner
darted a flash of the old electric force. "When she may be suffering
actual hunger, and you might help! Can you afford to say you can't talk
of her?"

"Hunger? Help?" Boone's voice was one of deadly tenseness. "My God, man,
don't bait me with words like that unless you mean them--and, if you do,
don't waste time!"

For the first time the mountain man learned how Anne had burned her
bridges behind her and disappeared from her own world; how so
resourceful a lawyer as Morgan, employing every agency at his command,
had failed to learn anything of her or her circumstances.

"It is as if," went on the lawyer desperately, "she had gone out of some
cabin in a frozen wilderness--without provisions, without even matches
or an axe, and God knows what she found there!"

The two Kentuckians stood gazing into each other's eyes across the table
that lay between them. Upon the temples of each glistened beads of
terror sweat. With the suddenness of revelation, Boone Wellver saw the
falsity of all his bitter and fallacious judgments, and the love that he
had denied swept over him with the onrush of an avalanche. Then he heard
Morgan again:

"Between us--somehow we managed to do this for her. From babyhood she
was under a coercion that neither of us appreciated. I don't know what
parted you--but I know that I love her enough to be happy if I could see
her married to you--and safe. I've hunted her and I haven't found her.
Perhaps she has hidden purposely from me. Perhaps she _wouldn't_ hide
from you--"

Boone raised a hand, and it fell limply at his side. He dropped abruptly
into a chair and cradled his face on his bent forearms. But after a
short while he rose, lividly colourless of check, and said:

"I'll ride back with you. I'm going to New York to find her."

But when he had been a month in New York he knew as little as when he
had come.

One morning he read a brief item hidden away on an inside page of his
newspaper. A young woman had taken gas in a boarding house in the
Forties. She had been there only a few days and, save by the name she
had given, was unknown. A few dollars in change had been found in her
bedroom, but no letters or identifying data. She was tall, well dressed,
and had been beautiful. Her body lay, awaiting claim, in an undertaker's
shop of given address. In default of identification, it would be turned
over for burial among the pauper dead.

Boone Wellver dropped the paper and went stumblingly across his room for
his hat. At his door he paused to steady the palsy that had seized him.
In his mind he was seeing a little girl at a Christmas dance, in a hall
where the tempered glow of mahogany and silver awoke to the tiny fires
of candle-light.




CHAPTER XLV


As Boone's taxi wrenched its way uptown, threading jerkily in and out
between the pillars of the Sixth Avenue Elevated, he sought vainly to
close the sluice gates of fear and hold his equilibrium by a
self-hypnosis of arrested thought.

But words of newsprint broke through this factitious barrier. The "brown
hair" of the reportorial description might be the same that McCalloway
had called a disputed dominion along the border land of gold and brown.
The "evidences of former beauty" might be an unappreciative appraisement
of _her_, badgered by misfortunes to her death.

Standing at last on the curb before the undertaker's establishment,
Boone had to be reminded to pay his fare, because his attention dwelt
with a morbid fascination on the gilt words, "Funeral Directors and
Embalmers," etched on the black plate glass of the windows.

After an appreciable interval of struggle with panic, he drew himself
together and went in through the open door, becoming instantly conscious
of a subtle, chemical odour.

From his newspaper a man in broadly patterned green and lavender
shirt-sleeves lifted his eyes without rising. On the desk beside him,
however, ready at notice to convert him from the liveliness of colour
which in private life he fancied to the sable formality of his art,
stood celluloid cuffs and a made-up tie as black and sober as his
caskets.

"I am an attorney," said Boone curtly. "I came to see if--" He broke off
and, proffering the newspaper clipping, made a fresh beginning: "To see
if I could identify her."

Then the proprietor rose and, not deeming it essential, for that
occasion, to cover the fitful pattern of his shirt, led the way to the
back of the place, nursing a cigar stump between his fingers. The
heightened beating of Boone's temples was as though with small,
insistent knuckles all his imprisoned emotions were rapping against his
skull for liberation, and when the undertaker swung open one of several
doors along a narrow and darkened hallway, he found himself halting like
a frightened child. The motor centres of his nerves mutinied, so that it
seemed a labour of Hercules to force his balking foot across the
threshold, and when he saw that the room was too dark for recognition a
gasp of relief broke from his tight-pressed lips as if in gratitude for
even so momentary a reprieve.

"Stand right there," directed the matter-of-fact voice of his conductor;
"I'll switch on the light."

Boone Wellver was trembling, with a chill dampness on his forehead and
hair. He struggled against the powerful impulse to beg another minute of
unconfirmed fear. Then the light flashed, and Boone started as an
incoherent sound came from him which might have meant anything--the
muscular expulsion of breath deep held and the relaxation of a cramped
throat.

The girl, who lay there, was very slender, and the still features were
delicately chiselled. She had been, as the clipping stated, in a fashion
beautiful, but it was not Anne's beauty.

Perhaps the ivory whiteness and the wan thinness of the crossed hands
were the attributes of death rather than of the living girl. Most of all
he felt, with an awed appreciation, the serene and calm courage written
on the lifeless features. He had tried to reassure himself in advance
that it could not be Anne, because Anne's courage would not seek the
coward's escape of self-destruction. Now he could no longer reconcile
any idea of cowardice with that sweet tranquillity.

"She must of caught her lip in her teeth," the undertaker interrupted
his reflections to inform him. "She took gas, you know, and sometimes
just at the last there's a little struggle against it."

The Kentuckian nodded silently, and the proprietor went on: "I take it
she's not the party you were looking for, then?"

"No." The response was brusque, and with a sudden craving for the outer
air, Boone turned on his heel to go--but stopped again inside the
threshold. "If relatives don't claim her," he said, "I want her to have
a private burial. Arrange the details--and look to me for settlement."

In the office stood a little man, gray and poorly dressed, yet with that
attempt at fashion that strives through shabbiness after at least an
echo of smart effect.

"I have come to learn when this poor child is to be buried, gentlemen,"
he began, with that ready emotion which is easily stirred and runs to
volubility. "I didn't know her until a few days ago, when she took a
small room in the house where I board. She kept to herself, but her
manner was sunny and gracious, and her refinement was a matter of
comment among us. None of us suspected that she was contemplating--this!
I passed her in the hallway the night before it happened, and she smiled
at me."

Boone sat afterward in the dreary little mortuary chapel while a
clergyman whom, the undertaker said, "came in in these cases,"
performed, with the perfunctoriness of routine, the services for the
dead. Later, still with the gray little man at his side, the Kentuckian
drove in the one cab that followed the hearse to a Brooklyn cemetery
where Boone had paid for a grave. The little man, it seemed, had been a
character actor and, from his own testimony, one of ability beyond the
appreciation of a flippant present.

Their mission today recalled to his mind others of like nature, and as
he talked of them, enlarging upon the piteous helplessness of young
women whose gentle natures are unequipped for the predatory struggles of
a city where one does not know one's next-door neighbour, Boone's
anxieties grew heavier.

Those months of unavailing search stood always out luridly in his
memory, and because his search was a thing that could accommodate
itself to no rule except to follow faint trails into all sorts of
places, he grew to an astonishing familiarity with parts at least of the
town whose boast it is that no man knows it.

It was natural that he should take up his own quarters near Greenwich
Village, where the fringes of the town's self-styled bohemia trail off
from Washington Square. There, with all its eccentricities and
absurdities, effort dwelt side by side with dilettante anarchy, and
strugglers with definite goals brushed shoulders with the "brittle
intellectuals that crack beneath a strain."

He grew to know some of the sincere workers of this American _Quartier
Latin_ and some exponents of affectation-ridden cults who travesty life
and the arts under creeds of pathetically shallow pretence.

But these things, though absorbed into observation were small,
foreground details of Boone's life at that time. The motif of the
picture was the vain search for Anne Masters, and the whole was drawn
against the sombre and colossal background of the war itself. For in
those epic months was fought the First Battle of the Marne. In them
Hindenburg emerged from the obscurity of retirement to drive the Russian
hordes back from East Prussia, and, most tragic of all, the flood was
sweeping across Belgium.

If he could think little of other matters than the girl he loved and had
come to seek, neither could the spirit that McCalloway had shaped ever
quite escape a deep feeling of the war, like an incessant rolling of
distant and sinister drums.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the spring of 1916 the legations and embassies at Washington had
their birds of passage. They were neither secretaries nor attachés in
precise definition, yet men vouched for by their chiefs. Uniforms
bloomed, and among the visitors were those who wore scars and
decorations. To this category belonged the Russian Ivangoroff, and
between him and Boone Wellver sprang up a friendship which, if not
intimate, was certainly more than casual.

Ivangoroff was young, tall and electric with energy. Animation snapped
and sparkled in his dark eyes; it broke into a score of expressive
gestures that enlivened his words: it manifested itself in quick
movements and a freshet flow of unflagging conversation.

It puzzled Boone that, though he was some sort of adjunct to the Russian
Embassy, his gossip of intrigue at the Court of Petrograd should, on
occasion, permit itself a seemingly unguarded candour.

One evening, as the two sat together at dinner, the Kentuckian made bold
to suggest something of the sort, and his companion laughed with an
infectious spontaneity that bared the flash of his white teeth.

"Even at the court itself talk is quite frank," he declared. "Every
dinner party is a small cabal. What would you, with a German army
hammering at our front and a German influence infecting those about the
Tzarina?"

"But surely," expostulated the congressman, "you can't be serious. How
can an enemy influence survive at a belligerent capital?"

Ivangoroff shrugged his shoulders.

"You call it incredible, yet because of that influence the greatest
soldier in Europe was stripped of his powers as commander-in-chief and
exiled to a nominal viceregency in the Caucasus."

Boone leaned forward, his attention challenged.

"You mean the Grand Duke Nicholas?"

"Yes. You ask how such things can be. I can reply only that they are."

The Russian raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of one who
expresses disgust for the unalterable.

"And yet what would you?" he demanded. "If a weak monarch is torn
between a genuine love, almost an idolatry, for a stronger man, and a
carefully fostered fear of him? If, while the soldier is in the field,
there are those at home who every day are whispering into the anxious,
imperial ear that his great kinsman will presently overshadow and
replace him, what are the probabilities? With the Empress ruling her
consort, and herself being ruled by a closet cabinet of women and monks,
what else was possible than that the captain who was busy stemming the
outer enemy should fall before the inner enemy?"

"And," mused Boone thoughtfully, "there were few who could not have been
better spared."

"My friend," asserted the Russian, "the world does not yet appreciate
the Grand Duke's measure. In retrospect history will devote some pages
to his achievements. She will canonize the magnificent ability and the
grim courage with which he fought on without support, without munitions,
crying out for the metal which did not come, and vainly demanding the
death of traitors at home whose failure to supply him was eating up his
armies. She will celebrate an orderly retirement which under other
leadership would have been a rout: the reluctant giving back of hosts
that were interposing bare breasts to artillery. As for the Tzar's
jealous fears--bah!"

The speaker paused to light a cigarette, and from it puffed nervous
clouds of brown smoke through his nostrils.

"I was at the Moghileff headquarters," he resumed, "when the Tzar
arrived to take into his own hands the duties that those stronger hands
had held. What took place between the two Romanoffs, I cannot tell you.
My place was not inside those doors ... but at the end I saw them both."

Again the narrative broke in a pause, and the bright, dark eyes of the
Russian sobered into reflectiveness and pain.

"You have seen his pictures? Nicholas Nicholaivitch, I mean? Yes, of
course; but they fail to give the adequate impression: the tall, gaunt
power of the figure; the dauntless eagle pride of the eye and stern
sadness of the mouth; the noble dignity of bearing! When the Tzar stood
with him at the railway station bidding him farewell, it was the eyes
of the monarch that held incertitude and tears. It was the Tzar who was
shaken with the wish to undo what he had done, yet who lacked the
resolution."

For a little while the two men sat over their coffee, and even the
voluble animation of the Russian was stilled; then, as the talk drifted,
chance guided it to the topic of army caste.

"Generally speaking, we are officers or men by heredity--yet anything
can happen in Russia," declared Ivangoroff, "when a peasant monk can
gain a hold like Rasputin's at court!" He paused, then laughed. "I even
know of one man who came to the Grand Duke's headquarters in civilian
garb--who was not a Russian--who was unknown. He secured an audience,
and ten days later found him a member of the leader's personal staff--a
confidant of the Commander-in-Chief!"

Boone raised his brows. It occurred to him that this highly entertaining
companion might be more vivacious than authentic, and he murmured some
expression of interest.

"Read your dispatches," said the Russian. "Occasionally you will find
there the name of one General Makailoff. It is not a name you will have
seen in our army matters before this war. True, one could look at this
man and know that he was a soldier, yet he was a foreigner, and it was
at a time when spy-ridden Russia distrusted every one. He went into the
Commander-in-Chief's presence. He said something to the
Commander-in-Chief, which no one else heard. He came out an officer on
the staff."

With a sudden flash of deeper interest that made his words eager, Boone
bent across the table. "Tell me," he demanded, "what was his
appearance?"

"It interests you?" laughed Ivangoroff. "Naturally, because it has the
essence of drama, has it not? He is tall and spare, with a florid face
and gray temples. He is hard-bitten and leather-tanned, as a soldier
should be, and in his eye, a gray-blue eye, dwells a quality which one
does not find in common eyes."

"And when the Grand Duke went into his retirement in the Caucasus--what
became of this other soldier?"

"That I cannot say. I fancy, judging from what I know of Nicholas
Nicholaivitch, that he did not waste this man. I should hazard the guess
that he passed him on to another commander--perhaps to Alexieff--perhaps
to Brussilov."

"Do you know anything more about General Makailoff?" The Kentuckian
sought to clothe his question in the casual tone of ordinary interest,
but as he lighted a cigar his fingers held a tremour.

Ivangoroff shook his head.

"Of course there was mess-table talk--but that is always the gauziest
myth. Perhaps you know the fable that is told in all European armies of
the ghost general?"

"No, I've never heard it."

"The story runs that there is a certain man of extraordinary military
genius--genius of the first class--who is not so much a soldier of
fortune as a super-soldier. In peace times no army knows him. No
government owns him. He disappears as does the storm petrel when the sea
is quiet. But when the tempest breaks and the need arises for a leader
beyond small leaders--then, under a new name each time, this
ghost-commander reappears. You see, they make the story a good one. Mess
tables have embellished and elaborated it with much retelling over their
wine glasses. It is even said that the mystery man fights on the
righteous side and brings victory." The Russian lighted a fresh
cigarette and naïvely observed, "When we fought Japan, however, he was
reported to be against us, guiding the hand of Kuroki. When Savoff
defeated the Turks, it was rumoured that he sat in the Bulgar's
councils. Now"--Ivangoroff laughed--"now it is whispered in Petrograd
and Moscow that he laid his sword at the service of the Grand Duke
Nicholas and stands shoulder to shoulder with the men he fought in
Manchuria."

The _raconteur_ glanced at his wrist watch and rose hastily.

"I have overstayed my time," he declared. "It is hard for me to leave
one who suffers me to talk--even when I talk of moonshine gossip like
this."

But when he had gone, Boone sat for a long while unmoving, and before he
went to his bed that night he had resolved, so soon as his duties freed
him long enough, to undertake a journey to Russia.




CHAPTER XLVI


The snow that had lain along the Appalachian slopes had felt the first
breath of thawing breezes in March, 1917. Here and there, in a
sun-touched hollow, dry twigs grew less brittle and the hint of buds
gave timid forecasting of spring. The roads were deep in red mud and
black mud, and men in ill-lighted cabins looked to crowbar and pike-pole
and made ready for the swelling of the "spring tide" that should heft
their rafted logs on its shoulders of water to the markets of a
flattened world.

In the log house which Victor McCalloway had built, Boone Wellver was
making his final preparations to go to Washington again--and, after
that, if God willed, to Russia. Upon his wall calendar once more a date
was marked; the date of a call, come at last, for which through two
years his spirit had fretted.

The President had sent his summons for Congress to gather in
extraordinary session, and that order, given first for April the
sixteenth, had been advanced to April the second. That could carry one
meaning only--that at last the fiction of a national aloofness was to be
cast aside as a garment unworthy of its wearer; that at last the nation
was to take her place at Armageddon!

Ahead lay action; the only medicine for a deep-rooted sorrow which,
after a grim clinging to the fringe of hope, had begun to admit despair.

For almost three years Boone had divided himself between his work and
his search for Anne, and his mission had come to seem as far from
attainment as that of the seekers of the Holy Grail. Now he was to be
one of those whose voices should speak for the nation in its declaration
of war.

That would not be enough. It would be only a beginning of his
self-required service, but since the well-springs of sentiment were
deeper in his nature than he realized, it was important to him that he,
the pioneer type of American, should join with his modern brethren in
committing his country to her forward stride across the Atlantic.

The sun was setting over the "Kaintuck' Ridges" in a blazing glory of
wine red and violet, and his imagination flamed responsively until it
saw in the bristle of crest pine and spruce, the silhouette of
lance-bearing legions marching eastward.

Already his trunk had gone in a neighbour's "jolt wagon," and the horse
that he was to ride across Cedar Mountain was saddled. Other respondents
to that call might motor to their trains. He must make the beginning of
his journey on horseback, with his most immediate needs packed in saddle
bags--as Jefferson had done before him.

Boone paused at the door of the house, where already the fire had been
quenched and the windows barred. Now he turned the key in the lock and
went slowly to the barn, but even when he had led out his mare and stood
at the stirrup, something held him there with the spell of memory.

He was not coming back here until he had fulfilled the resolve long ago
made--and since in these days overseas journeys were less simple than in
other times, he could not be sure of coming back at all. So with his
bridle rein over his forearm, he stood for a while with the picture of
the log cabin and the sunset in his eyes.

Then he mounted and rode slowly away.

In a few days he was to hear the earnest voice of the President sounding
over the sober faces of his gathered colleagues: "Gentlemen of the
Congress:--I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because
there are serious, very serious, choices to be made, and made
immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible
that I should assume the responsibility of making."

       *       *       *       *       *

Though he came bearing no official mission, because he was a member of
the American Congress and because the United States Ambassador had
exerted himself to that end, Boone Wellver found it possible to leave
revolutionary Petrograd and make his way to the front where, after a
year of successful offensive, the armies of Brussilov lay drugged with
the insidious poison of anarchy.

Already, "Order Number One to Army" had with a pen-stroke abolished all
the requirements of discipline and all the striking power of unity.

The marvel was that the heart of the organization had not at once
stopped beating--but old traditions still held the fragments loosely
cemented, and the resolute hand of Brussilov still grasped and steadied
the brittle material left to him in the face of the enemy and disaster.

If guns still thundered on the eastern front, the men who had for a year
been launching successful assaults knew that their voices were hollow.
If his army groups still maintained a zone of activity between
themselves and the foe, he knew that it was only a screen behind which
he sought to shield the evaporating powers of his forces.

Yet even in these days the commander adhered to his custom and received
the correspondents, and when Boone came to his headquarters with the
credentials that had passed him that far, he was turned over to an
intelligence officer, whose instructions were to serve him in every way
compatible with military expediency until the general could grant him an
audience.

He had been motored through a timber-patched country of waving wheat
fields and had listened to the deep voices of the guns. He had been
taken into the trenches where he read the spirit of decay in sullen eyes
that had once been stolidly impassive or cheerfully childlike. He had
seen the "little and terrible keyholes of heaven and hell" through which
one looks, both sickened and exalted, upon modern warfare.

In his mind, still unassimilated, were countless impressions, gruesome
and inspiring, petty and magnificent, appalling and ennobling;
impressions of broken men and broken villages, of pock-marked country
and unbruised valour. As the battered military car, mud-brown over its
gray, wallowed back from the front lines, he seemed to be leaving the
war behind him, though he knew that he was approaching the nerve centre
from which emanated the impulses which forged and wrought the purposes
of the Inferno.

Finally in a village less hideously war-spoiled than its fellows, and in
a small but tidy room of what had been the inn, he awaited the pleasure
of the Commander.

Of his conductor along the front he had put questions as to General
Makailoff. Yes, the officer, of course, knew of the General, but where
he was now he could not say.

The General was a wheel in the mechanism of Brussilov's staff--and that
directing force was remote from the lives of lower grade officers. It
belonged to the part of the temple which lay behind the veil. Even in
attempted description of the man, the intelligence officer grew vague,
and Boone did not press him for a greater explicitness. That military
reticence that no civilian could justly appraise might be parent to the
officer's indefinite responses, and, if so, its covertness must be
respected.

So in the room of the Russian inn the man from the Cumberlands waited,
and at length, when he opened his door in response to a light rap, he
saw an officer in a major's uniform, who saluted smartly and announced
in excellent English,

"General Brussilov will receive you now, sir."

Again a battered military car lurched through village streets darkening
to twilight, and brought up before a plain two-storied house, whose
walls, though shell marked, stood upright.

Into a whitewashed room, littered with map-strewn tables, and empty
until they entered it, Boone was ushered and left alone.

A lamp upon a crude table stood as yet unkindled, and only candles in
two tall sticks on a wall-shelf gave a yellow effect against which the
shadows stirred cloudily.

Even the whitewashed walls were the gray yellow of putty in that feeble
light, and Boone turned his eyes toward the brighter spot of the door,
giving upon another room, where operators sat at switchboards and where
were mingled the buzz of voices, the tramp of booted feet, the clink of
spurs and accoutrements, into a tempered babel as restlessly constant as
surf on rocks.

That door was a kaleidoscopic patch of changing colour, and Boone
watched it with a sense of confused unreality until a second opened,
letting in a draught under which the candles wavered and grew more dim,
and a spare figure entered through it, clad in a field uniform which had
seen heavy wear, and holding between the tapering fingers of the left
hand a freshly lighted cigarette.

Boone had a realization in that first moment of a shadowy shape in a
semi-obscurity, yet out of the dimness, as though they were brightly
painted on a dark canvas, stood clear--or so it seemed to him--the
features of the man and the cross of St. George on his breast.

Alexieff Brussilov closed the door behind him and inclined his head in
something less casual than a nod and less formal than a bow, and the
flames of the candles rose and steadied as if standing at attention. In
all of Boone's subsequent remembrance of that meeting, it was difficult
for him to unravel the fact from the play of an imagination, more fitful
just then than the candle glimmer, or to dissociate from the impressions
of that moment all that he had known before or learned afterwards of
this man, whose feats of arms he had heard so widely acclaimed.

Even when the General's voice had broken the silence and they had
exchanged commonplaces, a surge of influences quite apart from his words
seemed to emanate from the erect figure and the stern eyes, as electric
waves flow out from an induction coil.

Boone questioned himself sternly afterwards and could never answer his
own questioning as to whether he actually felt at that time or only
realized in retrospect the strong impression of doom and heartbreak in
Brussilov's eyes. His story was not yet ended, but he must have known
its end. He was yet to be commander-in-chief for two months of futile
struggle with crumbling armies, succeeding Alexieff, and being himself
supplanted by Korniloff. He was even to essay one more offensive--yet
his inner vision must already recognize the writing on the wall. He must
have seen the black smudge-smoke of disaster stifling the clean fire of
his achievement.

But Boone knew that the time granted him out of those hours of stress
must not be abused, and as shortly as possible he told the General with
full candour why he had come, and ended by asking that he be presented
to General Makailoff and be allowed to see his face. If in Ivangoroff's
story there had been even a germ of truth, this man of mysterious advent
into the Russian army might well look to his superiors to protect his
secret.

So Boone made it unmistakably clear that his eagerness was that of a
foster son, and he felt that his testimony needed no corroboration,
because under the searching severity of the eyes which held his own, as
he talked, any falsity must break into betrayal as manifest as a flaw in
crystal.

When he had finished, Brussilov did not at once reply, and Boone thought
that back of the mask of reserve stirred a shadowing of strong emotion.
At last the General spoke evenly, almost stiffly:

"As to General Makailoff's former record, I have practically no
knowledge. He came to me from the Grand Duke Nicholas. Naturally I
required nothing more. Of my own knowledge I can declare him a soldier
with few peers in Europe."

"Then I may have the honour of being presented, sir? I may see his face?
If he is the man I have come to learn of, he will welcome me, I think.
If not, I shall pay my respects and rest under a deep obligation to
you."

The eager thrill of the civilian's voice was unmistakable, and for a
moment the soldier stood looking into the face of his visitor, seeming
himself uncertain of his answer. But it was only the words of its
couching that troubled him, and presently Brussilov raised a hand and
let it fall while his reply came in few syllables and blunt directness:

"Makailoff is dead."

"Dead!" Boone echoed the word with a gasp. Only now did he realize how
strongly the hopes stirred to rebirth by Ivangoroff's fantastic
narrative had laid hold upon him and what power of shock lay in this
_dénouement_. Then he heard again the voice of Russia's second in
command:

"It is incredibly strange that you should have come just now--if indeed
he is the man you seek. Thirty-six hours since you might have talked
with him." The General broke off and began afresh with an undertone of
savage protest in his voice: "In these late days when troops may ballot
and wrangle as to whether they will advance or retire, we must squander
our most indispensable. It is only by precept and example that we can
hope to hold them. Makailoff was such a sacrifice. He fell yesterday in
a position as far forward as that of any colonel or major of the line.
Had I been left a free hand, I could have enforced obedience more
cheaply--with machine guns!"

He broke off and raised the forgotten cigarette to his lips, with an
ironic shrug of his shoulders, while Boone Wellver steadied himself with
an effort.

"You must make allowances for my impatience, sir," he implored. "The
suspense of uncertainty is hard. May I know at once?"

Brussilov bowed, and the falcon eyes moderated with the abruptness of a
transformation. "He lies only a few versts from this spot. Tonight we
bury him and fire his last salute.... You shall go with me.... I am
waiting now for--a gentleman, who knew him even better than I. I cannot
say who was more devoted to him, for that, I think, would be
impossible."

An aide entered, saluted, handed his chief a paper, and went out again.
To Boone it seemed the irritating interruption of an automaton, in boots
of clicking heels that moved on hinges and pivots, but it served to
bring back to the General's attitude and bearing that impersonal and
aloof concentration which for the moment had been lost. Again his eyes
were windows of drawn shades, and as he studied the communication in his
hand, the civilian remembered that, though comrades fell, the task went
on, and its director could not be deflected.

Beyond the door the noise of the switchboard operators and the tramp of
heavy feet coming and going sounded monotonously through the silence,
and then a second officer entered, saluted, as though he were twin
automaton to the first, and spoke in Russian.

"You will excuse me for a moment," said the General. "The gentleman of
whom I spoke has arrived."

He left the room, and Boone remained standing, his gaze wandering, but
his brain singularly numb and inoperative, like stiff machinery, until
he heard footsteps again, and with a conscious effort shook off his
heaviness of torpor. Then quite instinctively his civilian attitude
altered into something like the soldier's attention, as General
Brussilov re-entered with another figure, wrapped to the chin in a heavy
motor coat. The newcomer was not in uniform, yet Boone felt the creep
along his scalp of an electric and dramatic thrill because the giant
height of lean stature, the calmly indomitable bearing and the
indescribable stamp of greatness proclaimed the Grand Duke Nicholas
Nicholaivitch; the man from whose sure grasp the supreme command had
been filched by a jealous weakling; the man who might have saved Russia.

He was a gray old eagle, whose mighty talons had been clipped and whose
strong pinions had been broken, but the eagle light was in the iris
still and the eagle power in its glance.

The Kentuckian's thoughts flashed back to the night when life had first
begun to take on colour before his visioning. Then McCalloway and Prince
had named the pitifully few great soldiers of the present, peers of
those who had passed to Valhalla. Were it tonight instead of almost two
decades ago, they must have named this man among the mighty few.

Boone found himself bowing, then he heard the deep voice of the tall
gentleman saying, "General Brussilov has told me. Let us go at once."

Under a sky banked with clouds the car which they entered felt its way
along a broken road. Its lights glared on dark masses that leaped out of
the blackness and became lines of exhausted men stumbling rearward, or
carts of wounded bumping toward relief. The throats of the guns bellowed
with a nearer roar, and eventually they halted at another headquarters
and silently passed between saluting officers into a bare room where
candles burned dimly at the head of a coffin and Cossacks stood at
attention, guarding the dead.

At a low-voiced word from Brussilov the place emptied, save for the
three who looked down on the casket, closed but not yet fastened. Then,
as Boone drank in his breath deeply with a steadying inhalation, the
General lifted the covering and raised his eyes interrogatively toward
the American.

Boone's lips stirred at first, without sound, then moved again as he
said quietly: "It is he."

With the last monosyllable, answering to a command of reverence and awe
and stricken grief, he dropped to his knees and knelt beside the casket,
and when at length he looked up--and rose gropingly--the picture of two
elderly soldiers, standing stiff and tight-lipped, stamped itself
ineradicably on his brain. He found himself a minute later fumbling in a
pocket and bringing out a small object from which with slow and
tremulous fingers he removed the tissue paper wrapping.

His eyes turned first toward the Grand Duke, then toward the General, in
a mute appeal for counsel in a matter of fitness.

"This is his," he said, with awkward pauses between his word groups; "he
won it in Manchuria.... May I pin it on his breast?"

"The Japanese decoration of the Rising Sun," said the Grand Duke,
gravely and acquiescently bowing his head. "Why not?"

Then, turning back his heavy civilian coat, his fingers sought the spot
where should have been the Cross of St. George, and came away empty.

"I had forgotten," he observed drily, "I no longer wear a uniform--nor
have I any longer the authority. You, Brussilov--with you it is
different."

So the man who still held precarious reins over a runaway army detached
the clasp of his ornament and pinned the two side by side on the
unstirring breast of the dead man; the emblem of honour he had gained in
war on Russia and that which rewarded the giving of his life to Russia.

The Grand Duke turned his gaze on Boone Wellver. "Brussilov tells me
that this man was as a father to you ... that you had his permission,
when he was dead, to inspect papers revealing his true identity.... Is
that true?"

"It is true, sir," came the low reply.

"Then on my own responsibility I am going to share that secret with
General Brussilov--implicitly trusting his discretion. He"--the tall
Romanoff indicated with a gesture the body of the man who lay dead--"he
told me, when he came to me. He was one of the world's greatest
soldiers. Once before a casket, draped with flags and supposedly
containing his body, was borne to the grave on a gun caisson--and a
court paid tribute." The Grand Duke paused and spoke again in the
manner of one challenging contradiction. "But he was not buried. He had
not died except to the eyes of the world which was his right. His name
was Hector Dinwiddie."

For a little while no one spoke, and at last Brussilov, with a reverent
hand, lowered the plate over the white face. "Come, gentlemen," he said,
with a brusque masking of agitation, "the burial detachment is ready."




CHAPTER XLVII


With the half-realized familiarity of unplaced features, one face
besides that of his two distinguished companions, declared its existence
to Boone Wellver out of all the faces that set the stage that night.
When they had entered the room where the body lay and the soldiers had
turned and clanked out, they had been as devoid of personal entities as
links in a chain--except one.

An officer, though seen only through half shadow, had worn a stamp of
grief on eyes and a mouth which the Kentuckian did not seem to be seeing
for the first time.

Again under the night skies by the open grave, when the lanterns burned
yellow and the white shaft of an automobile lamp bit out a hard band of
glare, the figures of the burial party might have been effigies, but
once more the tight-drawn figure of that spare officer declared itself
human because only something human could, without word or motion, convey
such a declaration of suffering.

It was he who gave the orders, and as Boone watched the firing squad
step forward--gaunt, shadow shapes in silhouette--to fire the last
salute, he saw the details with a dazed and blunted gaze.

The sharp order which brought the pieces to shoulder; the other sharp
order, and the clean-tongued reports, single in unison but multiple in
their crimson jets--somehow these took a less biting hold on his memory
than the hint of the break in the officer's voice or the empty click of
the back-thrown breech-blocks and the light clatter of empty and falling
cartridge shells from the chambers.

It was over, and back in his bare inn room Boone sat in a heavy dulness,
alone once more, when a rap sounded on the door.

"You are Mr. Boone Wellver, sor'r, are ye not? I heard them call ye so."

With the Scotch rolling of the r's, a flood of memory came back to the
Kentuckian. This was the messenger who so long ago had come to the
mountain cabin, seeking to lure his preceptor out of his hermitage, to
China. The years had drawn him leaner and battered him, and his insignia
proclaimed him a major, but his beard and uniform had not Russianized
him.

"Major McTavish!" exclaimed the younger man, and across the older face
passed a momentary surprise, too trivial to endure long against the head
currents of graver emotion. "Yes, I am Boone Wellver. I was his
foster-son."

The veteran of forty years of soldiering stood stiff for a little while
and embarrassed. His undemonstrative nature was, just now, an ice-flow
racked by a warm and unaccustomed freshet, and his straight lip-line
twisted up, down, and up again under his effort.

"I have a message for ye, sor'r. He did not die at once--and I was with
him from the moment he was struck."

Boone closed the door and turned eagerly. He had been hungry for a
word--for a reassurance that in these last busy years this gallant
gentleman had remembered him; yet now he put another matter ahead of
that.

"But tell me first, sir, of his death," he begged. "I have heard little
of that."

"It was as he would have had it." The soldier spoke brusquely, as if
jealous of his superior's military devotion and in a monotone because
his voice needed guarding. "He fell under fire, holding steady a shaken
command."

"Was there--much suffering?"

"There was fever, sor'r, and he was out of his head at the end." The
officer reached into his tunic and brought out a pencil-scribbled paper.
"He had me write this for him. 'Tis to you."

Boone took the note in tremulous fingers and spread it close to the
lamp. While he read, the other stood stiff, but his breathing, with a
catch like the ghost of an inhibited sob, was audible.

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

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

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

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

The other nodded.

"He spoke your name--and another."

"Whose?" Boone whispered the question.

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

"Can you recall his words?"

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

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

The German lifted his straw-coloured brows indulgently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

       *       *       *       *       *

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

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

Save for that, he gained no disciples, and if, when the registration day
came, only one quarter of the men of military age went to enroll
themselves, it was because already, through the channels of recruiting
offices, the other three-fourths had flowed into the khaki-brown
reservoirs of the army. It is history now how the "feud counties"
responded; how in two of them not a single man claimed exemption; how in
one only two souls waited for the draft.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell Joe Gregory he kin come in," shouted the voice of the besieged
man. "I'm ready ter surrender ter _him_--but not ter nobody else!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If you'll excuse me for introducing myself," he said, "I'll give you
this. You left it in your seat when you got off the train coming down."

Happy smiled, and, since they were, after all, neighbours, talked with
him for the rest of the journey. Though it had been a long while since
her heart had admitted a flutter at the glances or speeches of a man,
the young woman found herself awakening to the discovery that she was
still young. He asked if he might come to see her, and often after that
his horse stood hitched at the settlement school. When one night a few
months later he smiled his grave smile and said, "I've come to bid you
farewell; I'm going away tomorrow," she acknowledged a sudden sharpness
of pang.

"Where?" she demanded. And he answered:

"Over there."

They were standing on the squared log that made a foot bridge between
the thicketed banks of Little Laurel, and through a heavy mass of clouds
the moon was just emerging into a narrow field of pearl and opal.

Because it was rising and still hung low, its face was not pallid but
rosy, and the top plumes of a single hemlock-clump showed outlined, and
swaying. Elsewhere the sky was still cloud-dark.

"I haven't known you long," Joe Gregory was saying, "and I've always
been a mighty plain, uninteresting sort of man, but if I come back,
there'll be things I've got to say to you." He paused, and there was a
touch of eager hope in his voice as he finished. "The war'll change lots
of things. Maybe it'll change me some, too."

"Don't let it change you too much, Joe," the girl cautioned him, and he
bent forward to assure himself that the light which he thought he saw in
her eyes was real.




CHAPTER XLVIII


Paris by night was a dancer who has taken the veil. Paris by day, when
the siren screamed its air-raid warning, was a bold spirit not cowed but
sobered with a realization of death. Yet today Paris was vibrantly alive
along her boulevards where, despite the shadow, bright currents flowed
and sparkled.

For was not this the Fourth of July, the national day of the sister
republic across the sea? And this afternoon would not the avenues echo
to the tramp of the first marching feet, as columns in khaki swung along
under the flag of the new ally?

Paris had bled as she waited; France had given life and treasure and
made no lament, but now the vanguard of mighty reinforcements had
arrived, and this afternoon, in the welcome poured out upon them, Paris
would voice her quickened spirit of confidence restored and doubt
dispelled.

Along sidewalks, where once the world had come to behold the gaiety and
taste the enchantment, trooped civilian crowds, linking elbows with the
uniformed sleeves of France, of Italy, of Britain, of Belgium and of
Portugal. Everywhere flashed and rang the cheer of a great day, and
everywhere showed the sobering of black with the tunics of horizon blue.
With the fluttering flags went the white of bandages, and with tramp of
feet mingled the stumping of the _blessé's_ crutch.

Boone Wellver had been in Paris a short time only, and tomorrow he was
leaving for England--and then home. He felt that Congress was no longer
his place of first duty--and he meant to resign. Pitched to a tone as
much deeper than feud hatreds as the bay of artillery is deeper than
rifle-fire, the voice which called for vengeance rang in his ears, and
his hands ached for the feel of the musket.

He would have preferred that today, his last in Paris, should have been
left untrammelled. He wanted to drift with the laughing crowds between
the chestnut trees and to return the gay salutation of eyes that gleamed
the more brightly because they had been washed with tears. He wanted to
lose himself in that general picture which portrayed the spirit of
France so simply and gloriously valiant that, as one laughed, one felt a
catch in the throat for the background of tragedy against which all the
brightness was painted.

But a requirement of civility had robbed him of that full liberty and
left him no choice but to follow the instructions which had been
contained in a letter from a New York member of the House of
Representatives.

"If you have the opportunity in Paris," his colleague had written, "my
wife and I wish very much that you would look up some close friends of
ours.

"They are a little group of New York women who, with some reconstruction
unit, have been doing worth-while work in stricken territories of France
and Belgium. Our particular friend is Mrs. L. N. Steele, and while I
can't direct you to her, at the enclosed address they can give you
greater particulars. I understand they are occasionally in Paris, and,
if so--" Boone had groaned impatiently, then had dutifully made
inquiries, with the result that at noon today he was to meet and lunch
with a party including his friend's friend.

Now he reluctantly made his way along the thronged streets to the
designated restaurant in the Rue de Rivoli.

Even of her grim necessity, Paris had made a decorative virtue. The
pasted-paper designs on the shop windows--put there to prevent
bomb-shattered panes from flying dangerously--seemed to have had no
other purpose than the expression of their designers' originality and
temperament. The piled sand-sacks that buttressed monuments and arches
had a certain deftness of arrangement that escaped the unsightly.

Boone crossed the Place de la Concorde--where once the guillotine had
stood--and turned under the arches, looking at the signs.

He entered a restaurant that was, today, crowded, looking vaguely about
him, and with a shepherding urbanity of deportment the head waiter came
forward to his assistance.

Boone paused, still searching the tables across the colour scraps which
two colours always dominated--horizon-blue and mourning black.

Then he saw a gloved hand raised in a signalling gesture, and recognized
the lady of whom he had made his inquiries for Mrs. Steele.

He had seen only the one face, for that particular group sat partly
screened behind the inevitable centre stand crowned with its masterpiece
of decoration, where a huge lobster lay in state on an ice-cake,
surrounded by a variegated cordon of _hors d'oeuvres_.

Then Boone made his way between the tables and found himself being
presented to several other women, to a pair of liaison officers on leave
and, because it all took place in a moment, suddenly felt the floor grow
unsteady under his feet, and saw, as the one clear vision in a blur of
indistinctness, the slender figure of a woman whose hair was a disputed
dominion along the borderland of gold and brown.

As Anne rose to meet him--for she did rise--the man looked into the face
for which he had so long been seeking, and found it paler and thinner
than he had known it, yet paradoxically older only in the sense of being
perfected and tempered.

The violet eyes held undimmed the light that he had worshipped, and if
one could see that sometimes they had looked on ghosts one could see too
that they had prevailed over their haunting.

Boone forgot the others about him.

"I have been searching for you," he said.

It was not until late that day that they found themselves alone, sitting
in the gardens of the Luxembourg on the south side of the Seine.
Convalescent veterans, some of them pitifully young, were taking the air
there as the day cooled toward evening, and Boone and Anne Masters sat
on a bench, contented for a while to let the silence rest upon them.

Much had been said and much remained to be said. Finally Boone declared
fervently; "At all events, I've found you!"

"Somehow," her voice was low and a little tremulous, "I always felt that
if--we ever found ourselves--we would find each other."

"And I think," he responded gravely, "we've done that."

"It wasn't an easy road," she told him, and then as suddenly as an April
sun may break dartingly through rainclouds she laughed, and in her
violet eyes flashed the old merriment and whimsical humour. "I can laugh
now, Boone, but I couldn't then.... Once I could have reached out my
hand and touched you."

His eyes widened, and his vanity suffered a sharp sting. He would have
sworn that his heart-hunger would have declared her nearness at any hour
of that long period of search, and he told her so, but she laughed
again.

"That's in romance, Boone dear. We were in life."

"When was it?"

"It was on Fifth Avenue--just off of Washington Square, one night when
sleet was falling. I remember the wet pavements, because I had a hole in
one shoe. I was wrestling with an umbrella that the wind tried to turn
inside out--and we all but collided..."

"And you didn't speak to me!"

"No. I hurried away as fast as my feet could carry me--including the one
with the leaky shoe."

"But, Anne!" The reproach in his voice was almost an outcry, and the
girl laid a hand gently, for a moment, over his.

"If I'd let you find me, Boone--just then--I'd never have found myself.
It would have been surrender."

"But why!"

"Because--just then, I wasn't far from being hungry, and I was
very--very close to despair."

The man shuddered, and after a long silence he asked:

"But how did you come into this work?"

"It was logical enough. I graduated into it out of an East Side
settlement, but I went into _that_ because it was all I could get to do.
I don't deserve any credit."

She sketched for him what her life had been here in ruined and desolate
towns, and made him see vividly the picture of the reclamation work. She
had been in places where the war tide had flowed near and spoke
shudderingly of the stark things which a generous world had been slow to
believe, and at the end he told her of McCalloway's death, but not of
his true identity, for that one secret he might not share with her.

"And now," he questioned, "now that I have found you--after these years
of search?"

Her violet eyes met his, and he read in them an answer that sent
turbulent and rejoicing currents, like wine, through his veins.

"There is no one else, Boone--but I've enlisted for the war."

He nodded. "I shall soon be in uniform, too," he said. "I'm going to
come back here with some of those barbarians that I was born among--I
think it's with them I'd rather visit the German trenches. But when the
war is over, dearest--"

"_Après la guerre_," she murmured. "How often have I heard that here!
After the war we shall have our lives."

A blind _poilu_ went by on the arm of a girl and, though his eyes were
covered with a bandage and his free hand moved gropingly, his laugh was
that of a lover, and not a hopeless one. Boone's fingers closed over
those of the girl.

"After the war!" he breathed, in a low and vibrant voice.