Parish Thornton shook his head with gravity and answered with candour:

"Hump and old Jim an' me've been spendin' a heap of thought on this matter of ther riders," he told her. "Hit's got ter be broke up afore hit gits too strong a holt—an' hit hain't no facile matter ter trace down a secret thing like thet."

After a little he went on: "An' we hain't made no master progress yit to'rds diskiverin' who shot at old Jim, nuther. Thet's been frettin' me consid'rable, too."

"War thet why ye rid over ter Jim's house yestidday?" she inquired, and Parish nodded his head.

"Me an' Sim Squires an' old Jim hisself war a-seekin' ter figger hit out—but we didn't git no light on ther matter." He paused so long after that and sat with so sober a face that Dorothy pressed him for the inwardness of his thoughts and the man spoke with embarrassment and haltingly.

"I lowed when we was married, honey, that all ther world I keered fer war made up of you an' me an' what hopes we've got. I was right sensibly affronted when men sought ter fo'ce me inter other matters then my own private business, but now——"

"Yes," she prompted softly. "An' now what?"

"Hit hain't thet ye're any less dear ter me, Dorothy. Hit's ruther thet ye're dearer ... but I kain't stand aside no more.... I kain't think of myself no more es a man thet jist b'longs ter hisself." Again he fell silent then laughed self-deprecatingly. "I sometimes 'lows thet what ye read me outen ther old book kinderly kindled some fret inside me.... Hit's es ef ther blood of ther old-timers was callin' out an' warnin' me thet I kain't suffer myself ter shirk ... or mebby hit's ther way old Hump and old Aaron talked."

"What is hit ye feels?" she urged, still softly, and the man came to his feet on the hearth.

"Hit's like es ef I b'longs ter these people. Not jist ter ther Harpers an' Thorntons but ter them an' ther Doanes alike.... 'Pears like them of both lots thet wants right-livin' hes a call on me ... that when old Caleb giv me his consent ter wed with ye, he give me a duty, too—a duty ter try an' weld things tergither thet's kep' breakin' apart heretofore."

Yet one member of the party that had gone to old Jim's had gained enlightenment even if he had held his counsel concerning his discovery.

The investigators had encountered little difficulty in computing just about where the rifleman had lain to shoot, but that had told them nothing at all of his identity. Yet as the three had stood on the spot where Bas Rowlett had crouched that day Sim's keen eye had detected a small object half buried in the earth and quietly he had covered it with his foot. Later, when the other two turned away, he stooped and picked up a rusty jack-knife—and he knew that knife had belonged to Bas Rowlett. Given that clue and attaching to it such other things as he already knew of Bas, it was not hard for Sim to construct a theory that, to his own mind at least, stood on all fours with probability.

So, when the mercenary reported to Rowlett what had occurred on that afternoon he omitted any mention of the knife, but much later he carelessly turned it over to its owner—and confirmed his suspicions.

"I diskivered hit layin' in ther highway," he said, innocently and Bas had looked at the corroded thing and had answered without suspicion, "Hit used ter be mine but hit hain't much use ter me now; I reckon I must hev drapped hit some time or other."

* * * * *

Bas Rowlett disappeared from his own neighbourhood for the period of ten days about that time. He said that he was going to Clay City to discuss a contract for a shipment of timber that should be rafted out on the next "spring-tide"; and in that statement he told the truth, as was evidenced by postcards he wrote back bearing the Clay City postmark.

But the feature of the visit which went unmentioned was that at the same time, and by prearrangement, Will Turk came from over in Virginia and met at the town where the log booms lie in the river the man whom he had never known before, but whose letter had interested him enough to warrant the journey and the interview.

Will Turk was a tall and loose-jointed man with a melancholy and almost ministerial face, enhanced in gravity by the jet-black hair that grew low on his forehead and the droop of long moustaches. In his own country the influence which he wielded was in effect a balance of power, and the candidate who aspired to public office did well to obtain Will Turk's view before he announced his candidacy. The judge who sat upon the bench made his rulings boldly only after consulting this overlord, but the matter which gave cause to the present meeting was the circumstance that Will Turk was a brother to John Turk, whom Parish Thornton was accused of killing.

"I 'lowed hit mout profit us both ter talk tergether," explained Rowlett when they had opportunity for discussion in confidence. "I'm ther man thet sent word ter ther state lawyer whar Ken Thornton war a-hidin' at."

"I'm right obleeged ter ye," answered Turk, noncommittally. "I reckon they've got a right strong case ergin him."

Bas Rowlett lighted his pipe.

"Ye knows more erbout thet then what I does," he said, shortly. "I heers he aims ter claim thet he shot in deefence of ther woman's life."

"He hain't got no proof," mused Turk, "an' feelin' runs right high ergin him. I'd mighty nigh confidence ther jury thet'll set in ther case ter convict."

Bas Rowlett drew in and puffed out a cloud of smoke. His eyes were meditative.

Here was a situation which called for delicate handling. The man whom he had called to conference was, by every reasonable presumption, one who shared an interest with him. His was the dogged spirit and energy that had refused to allow the Virginia authorities to give up the cold trail when Kenneth Thornton had supposedly slain his brother and escaped. His was the unalterable determination to hang that defendant for that act. Bas was no less eager to see his enemy permanently disposed of, yet the two met as strangers and each was cautious, wily, and given to the holding of his own counsel.

Rowlett understood that the processes of nominal law over in that strip of the Virginia mountains were tools which William Turk used at his pleasure, and he felt assured that in this instance no half-measures would satisfy him—but Bas himself had another proposition of alliance to offer, and he dared not broach it until he and this stranger could lay aside mutual suspicions and meet on the common ground of conspiracy. If there were any chance at all, however slight, that Parish Thornton could emerge, alive and free, from his predicament in court Rowlett wished to waylay and kill him on the journey home.

Over there where Thornton was known to have enemies, and where his own presence would not be logically suspected Bas believed he could carry out such a design and escape the penalty of having his confession published. This man Will Turk might also prefer such an outcome to the need of straining his command over the forms of law. If Parish could be hanged, Bas would be satisfied—but if he escaped he must not escape far.

"I'm right glad ter talk with ye," said the Virginian, slowly, "because comin' from over thar whar he's been dwelling at, ye kin kinderly give me facts thet ther Commonwealth would love ter know," and that utterance sounded the keynote of the attitude Turk meant to assume and hold.

Bas was disconcerted. This man took his stand solidly on his lawful interests as the presser of the prosecution, but declined to intimate any such savagery of spirit as cried out for vengeance, legal or illegal.

"Suppose he comes cl'ar over thar, atter all?" hazarded the Kentuckian, sparring to throw upon his companion the burden of making advances.

"I've done told ye I'm confident he won't."

"Confident hain't plum sartain. Ef thar's any slip-up, what then?"

Will Turk shrugged his shoulders and shook a grave head. He was sitting with the deeply meditative expression of one who views life and its problems with a sober sense of human responsibility, and the long fingertips of one hand rested against the tips of the other.

"I'd hate ter see any deefault of jestice," he made response, "an' I don't believe any co'te could hardly err in a case like this one.... Ken Thornton war my brother-in-law an' him an' me loved one another—but ther man he kilt in cold blood war my own brother by blood—an' I loved him more. A crime like thet calls out louder fer punishment then one by a feller ye didn't hev no call ter trust—an' hit stirs a man's hate deeper down. I aims ter use all ther power I've got, an' spend every cent I've got, ef need be, ter see Ken Thornton hang." He paused and fixed the stranger with a searching interest. "I'm beholden ter ye fer givin' us ther facts thet led ter ketchin' him," he said. "War he an enemy of your'n, too?"

Rowlett frowned. The man was not only refusing to meet him halfway but was seeking to wring from him his own motives, yet the question was not one he could becomingly decline to answer, and if he answered at all, he must seem candid.

"Him an' me got ter be friends when he come thar," he said, deliberately. "Some enemy laywayed him an' I saved his life ... but he wedded ther gal I aimed ter marry ... an' then he tuck up false suspicions ergin me outen jealousy ... so long es he lives over thar, I kain't feel no true safety."

"Why hain't ye nuver dealt with him yoreself, then?" inquired Turk, and the other shook his head with an indulgent smile.

"Things hain't always as simple es they looks," he responded. "Matters air so shaped up, over thar in my neighbourhood, thet ef I had any fray with him, hit would bring on a feud war. I'm bounden in good conscience ter hold my hand, but I hain't got no sartainty he'll do ther like. Howsomever——" Bas rose and took up his hat, "I writ ter ye because I 'lowed a man ought ter aid ther law ef so be he could. Es fer my own perils, I hain't none terrified over 'em. I 'lowed I mout be able ter holp ye, thet's all."

"I'm obleeged ter ye," said Turk again, "ye've already holped me in givin' us ther word of his wh'arabouts. I reckon I don't need ter tax ye no further. I don't believe he'll ever come back ter pester nobody in Kaintuck ergin."

But both the Virginian and the Kentuckian had gathered more of meaning than had been put into words, and the impression was strong on Turk that the other wished to kill Parish in Virginia, if need be, because he dared not kill him in Kentucky. In that he had only an academic interest since he trusted his own agencies and plans, and some of them he had not divulged to Rowlett.

As he rose to take leave of his new acquaintance he said abstractedly:

"I'll keep ye posted erbout ther trial when co'te sots so thet afore hit eends up ye'll hev knowledge of what's happenin'—an' ef he should chance ter come cla'r, ye'll know ahead of time when he's startin' back home. A man likes ter kinderly keep tabs on a feller he mistrusts."

And that was all Bas needed to be told.

One day during Rowlett's absence Parish met young Pete Doane tramping along the highway and drew him into conversation.

"Pete," he suggested, "I reckon ye appreciates ther fact thet yore pappy's a mouty oncommon sort of man, don't ye?"

The young mountaineer nodded his head, wondering a little at what the other was driving.

"Folks leans on him an' trusts him," went on Thornton, reflectively. "Hit ought ter be a matter of pride with ye, Pete, ter kinderly foller in his footsteps."

The son met the steady and searching gaze of his chance companion for only a moment before he shiftily looked away and, for no visible reason, flushed.

"He's a mighty good man—albeit a hard one," he made answer, "but some folk 'lows he's old-fashioned in his notions."

"Who 'lows thet, Pete—ther riders?"

Young Doane started violently, then recovered himself and laughed away his confusion.

"How'd I know what ther riders says?" he demanded. "We don't traffick with 'em none at our house."

But Parish Thornton continued to bore with his questioning eyes into the other face until Pete fidgeted. He drew a pipe from one pocket and tobacco crumbs from another, but the silent and inquisitorial scrutiny disconcerted him and he could feel a hot and tell-tale flush spreading on his face and neck.

Abruptly Parish Thornton admonished him in the quiet tone of decisiveness.

"Quit hit, Pete! Leave them riders alone an' don't mix up with 'em no more."

"I don't know what ye're talkin' erbout," disclaimed young Doane with peppery heat. "I hain't got no more ter do with them fellers then what ye hev yoreself. What license hev ye got ter make slurs like them erginst me, anyhow?"

"I didn't hev nothin' much ter go on, Pete," responded Thornton, mindful of his promise of secrecy to the unfortunate Jerry Black, "but ther way ye flushed up jest now an' twisted 'round when I named hit put ye in a kinderly bad light. Them men air right apt ter mislead young fellers thet hain't none too thoughted—an' hit's my business ter look inter affairs like thet. I'd hate ter hev yore pappy suspicion what I suspicions erbout ye."

"Honest ter God," protested the boy, now thoroughly frightened, "I hain't nuver consorted with 'em none. I don't know nothin' erbout 'em—no more'n what idle tattle I heers goin' round in common talk."

"I hain't askin' ye whether ye've rid with 'em heretofore or not, Pete," the other man significantly reminded him. "I'm only askin' ye ter give me yore hand ye won't nuver do hit ergin. We're goin' ter bust up thet crowd an' penitenshery them thet leads 'em. I hate ter hev ye mixed up, when thet comes ter pass. Will ye give me yore hand?"

Readily the young member of the secret brotherhood pledged himself, and Parish, ignorant of how deeply he had become involved in the service of Bas Rowlett, thought of him only as young and easily led, and hoped that an ugly complication had been averted.

When Joe Bratton, the Kentucky sheriff, came to the house in the bend of the river to take his prisoner to the Virginia line, he announced himself and then, with a rude consideration, drew off.

"I'll ride ter ther elbow of ther road an' wait fer ye, Parish," he said, awkwardly. "I reckon ye wants ter bid yore wife farewell afore ye starts out."

Already those two had said such things as it is possible to say. They had maintained a brave pretence of taking brief leave of each other; as for a separation looking to a speedy and certain reuniting. They had stressed the argument that, when this time of ordeal had been relegated to the past, no cloud of fear would remain to darken their skies as they looked eastward and remembered that behind those misty ranges lay Virginia.

They had sought to beguile themselves—each for the sake of the other—with all the tricks and chimeras of optimism, but that was only the masquerade of the clown who laughs while his heart is sick and under whose toy-bright paint is the gray pallor of despair.

That court and that jury over there would follow no doubtful course. Its verdict of guilty might as well have been signed in advance, and, while the girl smiled at her husband, it seemed to her that she could hear the voice of the condemning judge, inquiring whether the accused had "aught to say why sentence should not now be pronounced" upon him.

For, barring some miracle of fate, the end of that journey lay, and in their hearts they knew it with a sickness of certainty, at the steps of the gallows. The formalities that intervened were little more than the mummeries of an empty formula with which certain men cloaked the spirit of a mob violence they were strong enough to wreak.

Parish Thornton halted at the stile, and his eyes went back lingeringly to the weathered front of the house and to the great tree that made a wide and venerable roof above the other roof. The woman knew that her husband was printing a beloved image on his heart which he might recall and hold before him when he could never again look upon it. She knew that in that farewell gaze and in the later, more loving one which he turned upon her own face, he was storing up the vision he wanted to keep with him even when the hangman's cap had shut out every other earthly picture—when he stood during the seconds that must for him be ages, waiting.

Then the hills reeled and spun before Dorothy Thornton's eyes as giddily as did the fallen leaves which the morning air caught up in little whirlwinds. Their counterfeit of cheer and factitious courage stood nakedly exposed to both of them, and the man's smile faded as though it were too flippant for such a moment.

Dorothy caught his hand suddenly in hers and led him back into the yard where the roots of the tree spread like star points which had their ends under the soil and deep in the rock of which those mountains were built.

"Kneel down, Cal," she whispered, chokingly, and when they had dropped side by side to postures of prayer, her voice came back to her.

"Lord God of Heaven an' y'arth," trembled the words on her bloodless lips, "he hain't goin' so fur away but what Yore power still goes with him ... keep him safe. Good Lord ... an' send him back ter me ergin ... watch over him thar amongst his enemies ... Amen."

They rose after their prayer, and stood for a little while with their hearts beating close in a final embrace, then Dorothy took out of her apron pocket a small object and handed it to him.

"I nigh fergot ter give hit ter ye," she said, "mebby hit'll prove a lucky piece over thar, Cal."

It was the small basket which he had carved with such neat and cunning workmanship from the hard shell of a black walnut ... a trinket for a countryman's watch chain—and intrinsically worthless.

"Hit's almost like takin' ther old tree along with ye," she faltered with a forced note of cheer, "an' ther old tree hain't nuver failed us yit."

Joe Bratton and his prisoner rode with little speech between them until they came to those creek bottom roads that crossed at Jake Crabbott's store, and there they found awaiting them, like a squad of cavalry, some eight or ten men who sat with rifles across the bows of their saddles.

Aaron Capper and Hump Doane were there in the van, and they rode as an escort of friends.

When their long journey over ridge and forest, through gorge and defile, came to its end at the border, the waiting deputation from Virginia recognized what it was intended to recognize. East of the state line this man might travel under strict surveillance, but thus far he had come with a guard of honour—and that guard could, and would, come further if the need arose.



CHAPTER XXVII

Parish Thornton had used all his persuasion to prevent Dorothy's going with him to Virginia. He had argued that the solace of feeling her presence in the courtroom would hardly compensate for the unnerving effect of knowing that the batteries of the prosecution were raining direct fire on her as well as on himself.

Twice, while he had waited the summons that must call him to face his ordeal, the attorney who was to defend him had come over into Kentucky for conference, and it was to the professional advice of this lawyer, almost clairvoyant in his understanding of jury-box psychology, that Dorothy had at last yielded.

"We'll want to have you there later on," he had told the wife. "Juries are presumed to be all logic; in fact, they are two-thirds emotion—and if you appear for the first time in that courtroom at precisely the right moment with your youth and wholesomeness and loyalty, your arrival will do more for your husband than anything short of an alibi. I'll send for you in due season—but until I do, I don't want you seen there."

So Dorothy had stayed anxiously at home.

One crisp and frosty morning she went over to Jake Crabbott's store where she found the usual congregation of loungers, and among them was Bas Rowlett leaning idly on the counter.

Dorothy made her few purchases and started home, but as she left the store the man upon whom she had declared irreconcilable war strolled out and fell into step at her side. She had not dared to rebuff him before those witnesses who still accounted them friends, but she had no relish for his companionship and when they had turned the bend of the road she halted and faced the fellow with determined eyes.

About them the hills were taking on the slate grays and chocolate tones of late autumn and the woods were almost denuded of the flaunting gorgeousness which had so recently held carnival there, yet the sodden drabness of winter had in nowise settled to its monotony, for through the grays and browns ran violet and ultramarine reflexes like soft and creeping fires that burned blue, and those few tenacious leaves that clung valiantly to their stems were as rich of tone as the cherry-dark hues that come out on well-coloured meerschaum.

"I didn't give ye leave ter walk along with me, Bas," announced the girl with a spirited flash in her eyes, and her chin tilted high. "I've got a rather es ter ther company I keeps."

The man looked at her for a hesitant interval without answering, and in his dark face was a mingling of resentment, defiance, and that driving desire that he thought was love.

"Don't ye dast ter trust yoreself with me, Dorothy?" he demanded with a smile that was half pleading and half taunt, and he saw the delicate colour creep into her cheeks and make them vivid.

"I hain't afeared of ye," she quickly disavowed. "Ever sence thet other time when ye sought ter insult me, I've done wore my waist bloused—a-purpose ter tote a dirk-knife. I've got hit right now," and her hand went toward her bosom as she took a backward step into the brittle weed-stalks that grew by the roadside.

But Bas shook his head, and hastened to expound his subtler meaning.

"I didn't mean ye war skeered of no bodily vi'lence, Dorothy. I means ye don't das't trust yoreself with me because ye're affrighted lest ye comes ter love me more'n ye does ther man ye married in sich unthoughted haste. I don't blame ye fer bein' heedful."

"Love ye!" she exclaimed, as the colour deepened in her cheeks and neck, then went sweeping out again in the white and still passion of outraged indignation. "I hain't got no feelin' fer ye save only ter despise ye beyond all measure. A woman kain't love no craven an' liar thet does his fightin' by deceit."

Bas Rowlett looked off to the east and when he spoke it was with no reference to the insults that cut most deeply and sorely into mountain sensibilities.

"A woman don't always know what she loves ner hates—all at onc't. Betwixt them two things thar hain't no sich great differ noways. I'd ruther hev ye hate me then not ter give me no thought one way ner t'other.... Ye're liable ter wake up some day an' diskiver thet ye've jest been gittin' ther names of yore feelin's mixed up." He paused in his exposition upon human nature long enough to smile indulgently, then continued: "So long es ye won't abide ter let me even talk te yer, I knows ye're afear'd of me in yore heart—an' thet's because ye're afeared of what yore heart hitself mout come ter feel."

"Thet's a right elevatin' s'armon ye preaches," she made scornful answer, "but a body doesn't gentle a mad dog jest ter show they hain't skeered of hit."

"Es fer Parish Thornton," he went on as though his musings were by way of soliloquy, "ye kain't handily foller him whar he's goin' ter, nohow. He's done run his course already."

A hurricane gust of dizzy wrath swept the woman and her voice came explosively: "Thet's a lie, Bas Rowlett! Hit'll be you thet dies with a rope on yore neck afore ye gits through—not him!"

"Ef I does," declared the man with equanimity, "hit won't be jest yit. I grants him full an' free right of way ter go ahead of me."

But abruptly that cool and disconcerting vein of ironic calm left him and he bent his head with the sullen and smouldering eyes of a vicious bull.

"But be thet es hit may. I claims thet ye kain't stand out erginst my sweetheartin' ef ye trusts yoreself ter see me. You claims contrariwise, but ye don't dast test yore theory. I loves ye an' wants ye enough ter go on eatin' insults fer a spell.... Mebby ther Widder Thornton'll listen ter reason—when ther jury an' ther hangman gits done."

The girl made no answer. She could not speak because of the fury that choked her, but she turned on her heel and he made no effort to follow her.

The steeply humped mountains on either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as to one who smothers.

That evening, when Sim Squires came in to supper, he made casual announcement that he understood Bas had gone away somewhere. His vapid grin turned to a sneer as he mentioned Rowlett's name after the never-failing habit of his dissembling, but Dorothy set down his plate as though it had become suddenly too hot to hold.

"Whar did he go?" she demanded with a gasp in her voice, and the hired man, drawing his platter over, drawled out his answer in a tone of commonplace:

"Nobody didn't seem ter know much erbout hit. Some 'lowed he'd fared over ter Virginny ter seek ter aid Parish in his trial." He paused, then with well-feigned maliciousness he added, "but ef I war inter any trouble myself, I'd thank Bas Rowlett ter keep his long fingers outen my affairs."

Gone to help Parish! Dorothy drew back and leaned against the wall with knees grown suddenly weak. She thought she knew what that gratuitous aid meant!

Parish fighting for his life over there in the adjoining state faced enemies enough at his front without having assassins lurking in the shadows at his back!

Perhaps Bas had not actually gone yet. Perhaps he could be stopped. Perhaps her rebuff that morning had goaded him to his decision. If he had not gone he must not go! The one thought that seemed the crux of her vital problem was that so long as he remained here he could not be there.

And if he had not actually set out she could hold him here! His amazing egotism was his one vulnerable point, the single blind spot on his crafty powers of reasoning—and that egotism would sway and bend to any seeming of relenting in her.

She was ready to fight for Parish's life in whatever form the need came—and she had read in the old Bible how once Judith went to the tent of Holifernes.

Dorothy shuddered as she recalled the apocryphal picture of the woman who gave herself to the enemy, and she lay wide-eyed most of that night as she pondered it.

She would not give herself, of course. The beast's vanity was strong enough to be content with marking, as he believed, the signs of her gradual conversion. She would fence with him and provoke him with a seeming disintegration of purpose. She would dissemble her abhorrence and aversion, refashioning them first into indulgent toleration, then into the grudging admission that she had misjudged him. She would measure her wit against his wit—but she would make Kentucky seem to him too alluring a place to abandon for Virginia!

When she rose at dawn her hands clenched themselves at her sides. Her bosom heaved and her face was set to a stern dedication of purpose.

"I'll lead him on an' keep him hyar," she whispered in a voice that she would hardly have recognized as her own had she been thinking at all of the sound of voices. "But afore God in Heaven, I'll kill him fer hit atter-ward!"

So when Rowlett, who had really gone only on a neighbourhood journey, sauntered idly by the house the next afternoon near sunset, Dorothy was standing by the stile and he paused tentatively in the road. As though the conversation of yesterday had not occurred, the man said:

"Howdy, Dorothy," and the girl nodded.

She was not fool enough to overplay her hand, so her greeting was still disdainful, but when he tarried she did not send him away. It was, indeed, she who first referred to their previous encounter.

"When I come home yistidday, Bas," she said, "I sot down an' thought of what ye said ter me an' I couldn't holp laughing."

"Is thet so?" he responded. "Wa'al what seems ridic'lous to one body sometimes seems right sensible ter another."

"Hit sounded mighty foolish-like ter me," she insisted, then, as if in after thought, she added, "but I'd hate mightily ter hev ye think I wasn't willin' ter give ye all ther rope ye wants ter hang yoreself with. Come on over, Bas, whenever ye've a mind ter. Ef ye kin convert me, do hit—an' welcome."

There was a shade of challenge in the voice such as might have come from the lips of a Carmen, and the man's pulses quickened.

Almost every day after that found Bas Rowlett at the house and the evenings found him pondering his fancied progress with a razor-edged zest of self-complacency.

"She'll hold out fer a spell," he told himself with large optimism. "But ther time'll come. When an apple gits ripe enough hit draps offen ther limb."

* * * * *

Over at the small county seat to the east the squat brick "jail-house" sat in the shadow of the larger building. There was a public square at the front where noble shade trees stood naked now, and the hitching racks were empty. Night was falling over the sordid place, and the mountains went abruptly up as though this village itself were walled into a prison shutting it off from outer contacts.

The mired streets were already shadowy and silent save for the whoop of a solitary carouser, and the evening star had come out cold and distant over the west, where an amber stretch of sky still sought feebly to hold night apart from day.

Through the small, grated window of one of the two cells which that prison boasted, Parish Thornton stood looking out—and he saw the evening star. It must be hanging, he thought, just over the highest branches of the black walnut tree at home, and he closed his eyes that he might better conjure up the picture of that place.

With day-to-day continuances the Commonwealth had strung out the launching of his trial until the patience of the accused was worn threadbare. How much longer this suspense would stretch itself he could not guess.

"I wonder what Dorothy's doin' right now," he murmured, and just then Dorothy was listening to Bas Rowlett's most excellent opinion of himself.

It would not be long, the young woman was telling herself, before she would go over there to the town east of the ridges—if only she could suppress until that time came the furies that raged under her masquerade and the aversion that wanted to cry out denunciation of her tormentor!

But the summons from the attorney had never come, and Bas never failed to come as regularly as sunrise or sunset. His face was growing more and more hateful to her with an unearthly and obsessing antipathy.

One afternoon, when the last leaves had drifted down leaving the forests stark and unfriendly, her heart ached with premonitions that she could not soften with any philosophy at her command.

Elviry Prooner had gone away when Bas arrived, and the strokes of Sim Squires' axe sounded from a distant patch of woods, so she was alone with her visitor.

Bas planted his feet wide apart and stood with an offensive manner of proprietorship on the hearth, toasting himself in the grateful warmth.

"We've done got along right well tergether, little gal," he deigned to announce. "An hit all only goes ter show how good things mout hev been ef we hedn't nuver been hindered from weddin' at ther start."

The insolent presumption of the creature sent the blood pounding through Dorothy's temples and the room swum about her: a room sacred to clean memories that were being defiled by his presence.

"Ther time hain't ripe," she found herself making impetuous declaration, "fer ye ter take no sich masterful tone, Bas. Matters hain't ended yet." But here she caught herself up. Her anger had flashed into her tone and it was not yet time to let it leap—so she laughed disarmingly as she read the kindling of sullen anger in his eyes and added, "I don't allow no man ter brag thet he overcome my will without no fight."

Bas Rowlett roared out a laugh that dissipated his dangerously swelling temper and nodded his head.

"Thet's ther fashion ter talk, gal. I likes ter see a woman thet kin toss her head like a fractious filly. I hain't got no manner of use fer tame folks."

He came close and stood devouring her with the passion of his lecherous eyes, and Dorothy knew that her long effort to play a part had reached its climax.

He reached out his hands and for the second time he laid them upon her, but now he did not seek to sweep her into an embrace. He merely let his fingers rest, unsteady with hot feeling, on her shoulders as he said, "Why kain't we quit foolin' along with each other, gal? He hain't nuver comin' back ter ye no more."

But at that Dorothy jerked herself away and her over-wrought control snapped.

"What does ye mean?" she demanded, breathlessly. A sudden fear possessed her that fatal news had reached him before it had come to her. "Hes anything happened ter him?"

Instantly she realized what she had done, but it was useless to go on acting after the self-betrayal of that moment's agitation, and even Rowlett's self-complacent egotism read the whole truth of its meaning. He read it and knew with a fullness of conviction that through the whole episode she had been leading him on as a hunter decoys game and that her slow and grudging conversion was no conversion at all.

"Nothin' hain't happened ter him yit, so fur's I knows," he said, slowly. "But ye doomed him ter death when ye flared up like thet, an' proved ter me thet ye'd jest been lyin'."

Dorothy gave back to the wall and one hand groped with outstretched fingers against the smoothly squared logs, while the other ripped open the buttons of her waist and closed on the knife hilt that was always concealed there.

Her voice came low and in a dead and monotonous level and her face was ghost pale.

"Yes, I lied ter ye ter keep ye from goin' over thar an' murderin' him. I knowed ther way ye fights—I hain't nuver feared ye on my own account but I did fear ye fer him ther same es a rattlesnake thet lays cyled in ther grass."

She paused and drew a resolute breath and her words were hardly louder than a whisper.

"Thar hain't no way on y'arth I wouldn't fight ter save him—even ef I hed ter fight a Judas in Judas fashion. So I aimed ter keep ye hyar—an' I kep' ye."

"Ye've kep' me thus fur," he corrected her with his swarthy face as malevolent as had ever been that of his red-skinned ancestors. "But ye told ther truth awhile ago—an' ye told hit a mite too previous. Ther matter hain't ended yit."

"Yes, hit's es good es ended," she assured him with the death-like quiet of a final resolve. "I made up my mind sometime back thet ye hed ter die, Bas."

Slowly the right hand came out of her loosened blouse and the firelight flashed on the blade of the dirk so tightly held that the woman's knuckles stood out white.

"I'm goin' ter kill ye now, Bas," she said.

For a few long moments they stood without other words, the woman holding the dirk close to her side, and neither of them noted that for the past ten minutes the sound of the axe had been silent off there in the woods.

Then abruptly the door from the kitchen opened and Sim Squires stood awkwardly on the threshold, with a face of wooden and vapid stupidity. Apparently he had noted nothing unusual, yet he had looked through the window before entering the house, and back of his unobservant seeming lay the purpose of averting bloodshed.

"I war jest lookin' fer ye, Bas," he said with the artlessness of perfect art. "I hollered but ye didn't answer. I wisht ye'd come out an holp me manpower a chunk up on ther choppin' block. I kain't heft hit by myself."

Bas scowled at the man whom he was supposed to dislike, but he followed him readily enough out of the room, and when he had lifted the log, he left the place without returning to the house.

A half-hour later old Jase Burrell drew rein by the stile and handed Dorothy a letter.

"I reckon thet's ther one ye've been waitin' fer," he said, "so I fetched hit over from ther post-office. What's ther matter, gal? Ye looks like ye'd been seein' hants."

"I hain't seed nothin' else fer days past," she declared, almost hysterically. "I've done sickened with waitin', Uncle Jase, an' I aimed ter start out soon termorrer mornin', letter or no letter."



CHAPTER XXVIII

Across in Virginia, Sally Turk, the wife of the dead man and the sister of the accused, had rocked her anaemic baby to sleep after a long period of twilight fretfulness and stood looking down into its crib awhile with a distrait and numbed face of distress. She was leaving it to the care of another and did not know when she would come back.

"I'm right glad leetle Ken's done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n." Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and caught up her shawl and bonnet.

Out at the tumble-down stable she saddled and mounted a mule that plodded with a limp through a blackness like a sea of freezing ink, and she shivered as she sat in the old carpet-cushioned side-saddle and flapped a long switch monotonously upon the flanks of her "ridin'-critter."

The journey she was undertaking lay toward the town where her brother was "hampered" in jail, but she turned at a cross-road two miles short of that objective and kept to the right until she came to a two-storied house set in an orchard: a place of substantial and commodious size. Its windows were shuttered now and it loomed only as a squarish block of denser shadow against the formless background of night. All shapes were neutralized under a clouded and gusty sky.

Dogs rushed out barking blatantly as the woman slid from her saddle, but at the sound of her voice they stilled their clamour—for dogs are not informed when old friendships turn to enmity.

The front door opened upon her somewhat timid knock, but it opened only to a slit and the face that peered out was that of a woman who, when she recognized the outer voice, seemed half minded to slam it again in refusal of welcome. Curiosity won a minor victory, though, over hostility, and the mistress of the house slipped out, holding the door inhospitably closed at her back.

"Fer ther land's sakes, what brings ye hyar, Sally Turk?" she challenged in the rasp of hard unreceptiveness, and the visitor replied in a note of pleading, "I come ter see Will ... I've jest got ter see Will."

The other woman still held the door as she retorted harshly: "All thet you an' Will hev got ter do kin be done in co'te termorrer, I reckon."

But Sally Turk clutched the arm of Will Turk's wife in fingers that were tight with the obduracy of despair.

"I've got ter see Will," she pleaded. "Fer God's sake, don't deny me. Hit's ther only thing I asks of ye now—an' hit's a matter of master int'rest ter Will es well es me. I'll go down on my knees ef hit'll pleasure him—but I've got ter see him."

There was something in the colourless monotony of that reiteration which Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny. With a graceless concession she opened the door.

"Come inside, then," she ordered, brusquely. "I'll find out will he see ye—but I misdoubts hit."

Inside the room the woman who had ridden across the hills sank into a low, hickory-withed chair by the simmering hearth and hunched there, faint and wordless. Now that she had arrived, the ordeal before her loomed big with threat and fright, and Lindy, instead of calling her husband, stood stolidly with arms akimbo and a merciless glitter of animosity in her eyes.

"Hit's a right qu'ar an' insolent thing fer ye ter do," she finally observed, "comin' over hyar thisaway, on ther very eve of Ken Thornton's trial."

"I've got ter see Will," echoed the strained voice by the hearth, as though those words were the only ones she knew. "I've got ter see Will."

"When John war murdered over thar—afore yore baby was borned," went on Lindy as though she were reading from a memorized indictment, "Will stud ready ter succour an' holp ye every fashion he could. Then hit come ter light thet 'stid of defendin' ther fame of yore dead husband ye aimed ter stand by ther man thet slew him. Ye even named yore brat atter his coldblooded murderer."

The huddled supplicant in the chair straightened painfully out of her dejection of attitude and her words seemed to come from far away.

"He war my brother," she said, simply.

"Yes, an' John Turk wasn't nothin' but yore husband," flashed back the scathing retort. "Ye give hit out ter each an' every thet all yore sympathy war with ther man thet kilt him—an' from thet day on Will an' me war done with ye. Now we aims ter see thet brother of yourn hanged—and hit's too tardy ter come a beggin' an' pleadin'."

Kenneth Thornton's sister rose and stood swaying on her feet, holding herself upright by the back of the chair. Her eyes were piteous in their suffering.

"Fer God's sake, Lindy," she begged, "don't go on denyin' me no more. We used ter love one another ... when I was married ye stud up with me ... when yore fust baby war born I set by yore bedside ... now I'm nigh heart-broke!"

Her voice, hysterically uncontrolled, shrilled almost to a scream, and the door of the other room opened to show Will Turk, shirt-sleeved and sombre of visage, standing on its threshold.

"What's all this ter-do in hyar?" he demanded gruffly, then seeing the wife of his dead brother he stiffened and his chin thrust itself outward into bulldog obduracy.

"I kain't no fashion git shet of her," explained the wife as though she felt called upon to explain her ineffectiveness as a sentinel.

Will Turk's voice came in the crispness of clipped syllables. "Lindy, I don't need ye no more, right now. I reckon I kin contrive ter git rid of this woman by myself."

Then as the door closed upon the wife, the sister-in-law moved slowly forward and she and the man stood gazing at each other, while between them lay six feet of floor and mountains of amassed animosities.

"Ef ye've come hyar ter plead fer Ken," he warned her at last, "ye comes too late. Ef John's bein' yore husband didn't mean nuthin' ter ye, his bein' my brother does mean a master lot ter me—an' ther man thet kilt him's goin' ter die."

"Will," she began, brokenly, "ye was always like a real brother ter me in ther old days ... hain't ye got no pity left in yore heart fer me...? Don't ye remember nothin' but ther day thet John died...?"

The drooping moustaches seemed to droop lower and the black brows contracted more closely.

"I hain't fergot nothin'.... I wanted ter befriend ye so long es I could ... outside my own fam'ly I didn't love no person better, but thet only made me hate ye wusser when ye turned traitor ter our blood."

She stepped unsteadily forward and caught at his hand, but the man jerked it away as from an infection.

"But don't ye know thet John misused me, Will? Don't ye know thet he war a-killin' me right then?"

"I takes notice ye didn't nuver make no complaint till ye tuck thought of Ken's deefence, albeit men knowed thar was bad blood betwixt him an' John. Now I aims ter let Ken pay what he owes in lawful fashion.... I aims ter hang him."

Sally retreated to the hearth and stood leaning there weakly. With fumbling fingers she brought from inside her dress a soiled sheet of folded paper and drew a long breath of resolution, passing one hand over her face where the hair fell wispy and straggling. Then she braced herself with all the strength and self-will that was left her.

"Ken didn't nuver kill John," she said, slowly, forcing a voice that seemed to have hardly breath enough to carry it to audibility. "I kilt him."

For an instant the room was as still as a tomb with only lifeless tenants, then Will Turk took one quick step forward, to halt again, and his voice broke into an amazed and incredulous interjection:

"You kilt him?"

"Yes, I kilt him.... He hed done beat me an' he war chokin' me.... His misuse of me war what him an' Ken fell out erbout.... I war too proud ter tell anybody else ... but Ken knowed.... I was faintin' away with John's fingers on my throat.... We was right by ther table whar his own pistol lay.... I grabbed hit up an' shot. Ken come ter ther door jest es hit went off."

Facing this new statement of alleged fact the brother of the dead man remained in his unmoving posture of amazed silence for a space, then he responded with a scornfully disbelieving laugh. In a woman one would have called it hysterical, but his words, when he spoke, were steady enough.

"Thet's a right slick story, Sally, but hit don't pull no wool over my eyes. Hit's too tardy fer right-minded folks ter believe hit."

The woman sought to answer, but her moving lips gave no sound. She had thought the world stood always ready to accept self-confessed guilt, and now her throat worked spasmodically until at last her dumbness was conquered.

"Does ye think ... hit's ther sort of lie I'd tell willin'ly?" she asked. "Don't hit put me right whar Ken's at now ... with ther gallows ahead of me?" She broke off, then her words rose to a shrill pitch of excitement.

"Fer God's sake, heed me in time! Ye seeks ter hang somebody fer killin' John. I'm ther right one. Hang me!"

Will Turk paced the room for several meditative turns with his head low on his breast and his hands gripped at his back. Then he halted and stood facing her.

"What does ye aim ter do with thet thar paper?" he demanded.

"Hit's my confession—all wrote out ... an' ready ter be swore ter," she told him. "Ef ye won't heed me, I've got ter give hit ter ther jedge—in open co'te."

But the man who gave orders to judges shook his head.

"Hit won't avail ye," he assured her with a voice into which the flinty quality had returned. "Hit's jest evidence in Ken's favour.... Hit don't jedgmatically sottle nothin'. I reckon bein' a woman ye figgers ye kin come cl'ar whilst Ken would be shore ter hang—but I'll see thet nothin' don't come of thet."

"Does ye mean"—Sally was already so ghost pale that she could not turn paler—"Does ye mean they'll go on an' hang him anyhow?"

Will Turk's head came back and his shoulders straightened.

"Mayhap they will—ef I bids 'em to," he retorted.

"Listen at me, Will," the woman cried out in such an anguish of beseeching that even her present auditor could not escape the need of obeying. "Listen at me because ye knows in yore heart I hain't lyin'. I'm tellin' ther whole truth thet I was afeared ter tell afore. I let him take ther blame because I was skeered—an' because ther baby was goin' ter be borned. I hain't nuver been no liar, Will, an' I hain't one now!"

The man had half turned his back as if in final denial of her plea, yet now, after a momentary pause, he turned back again and she thought that there was something like a glimmer of relenting back of his gruffness as he gave curt permission: "Go on, then, I'm hearkenin'."

Late into that night they talked, but it was the woman who said most while the man listened in non-committal taciturnity. His memory flashed disturbingly back to the boyhood days and testified for the supplicant with reminders of occasional outcroppings of cruelty in his brother as a child. That outward guise of suavity which men had known in John Turk he knew for a coat under which had been worn another and harsher garment of self-will.

But against these admissions the countryside dictator doggedly stiffened his resistance. His brother had been killed and the stage was set for reprisal. His moment was at hand and it was not to be lightly forfeited.

Yet to take vengeance on an innocent scapegoat would bring no true appeasement to the deep bruise of outraged loyalty. If Ken Thornton had assumed a guilt, not his own, to protect a woman, he had no quarrel with Ken Thornton, and he could not forget that until that day of the shooting this man had been his friend.

He must make no mistake by erring on the side of passion nor must he, with just vengeance in his grasp, let it slip because a woman had beguiled him with lies and tears.

Finally the brother-in-law went over to where Sally was still sitting with her eyes fixed on him in a dumb tensity of waiting.

"Ye compelled me ter harken ter ye," he said, "but I hain't got no answer ready fer ye yit. Hit all depends on whether ye're tellin' me ther truth or jest lyin' ter save Ken's neck, and thet needs ter lie studied. Ye kin sleep hyar ternight anyhow, an' termorrer when I've talked with ther state lawyer I'll give ye my answer—but not afore then."

Will Turk did not sleep that night. His thoughts were embattled with the conflict of many emotions, and morning found him hollow-eyed.

In its sum total, this man's use of his power had been unquestionable abuse. Terrorization and the prostitution of law had been its keystone and arch, but he had not yet surrendered his self-respect, because he thought of himself as a strong man charged with responsibility and accountable to his own conscience. Now he remembered the Ken Thornton who had once been almost a brother. Old affections had curdled into wormwood bitterness, but if the woman told the truth, her narration altered all that. Somehow he could feel no resentment at all against her. If she had killed John, she had acted only at the spur of desperation, and she had been feminine weakness revolting against brutal strength. As he pondered his determination wavered and swung to and fro, pendulum fashion. If she were lying—and he would hardly blame her for that, either—he would be her dupe to show mercy and likewise, if she were lying, mercy would be weakness.

Sally Turk rested no more peacefully than he that night, and when in the gray of dawn she looked searchingly into his face across the kitchen table, she could read nothing from the stony emptiness that kept guard over his emotions.

A little later she rode at his saddle skirt in a crucial suffering of suspense, and whenever she cast an agonized glance at him she saw her companion's face staring stiffly ahead, flintily devoid of any self-revelation.

Once she ventured to demand, "Whatever ye decides, Will, will them co'te-house fellers heed ye, does ye reckon?"

For a moment Turk glanced sidewise with narrowed eyes.

"I don't seek ter persuade them fellers," he made brief and pointed reply, "I orders 'em."

At the court house door Will Turk left her with a nod and went direct into the judge's chamber and the Commonwealth's attorney followed him—but of what law was being laid down there, she remained in heart-wracking ignorance.

Beyond the court house doors, plastered with notices of sheriff's sales and tax posters, the county seat simmered with an air of excitement that morning.

Street loungers, waiting for the trial to begin, knew the faces of those who had been neighbours, friendly or hostile, for many years; but to-day there were strangers in town as well.

Soon after daylight these unknown men had arrived, and one could see that they came from a place where life was primitive; for even here, where the breadth of a street was at their disposal, they did not ride abreast but in single file, as men do who are accustomed to threading narrow trails. They were led by a patriarchal fellow with a snowy beard and a face of simple dignity, and behind him came a squat and twisted hunchback who met every inquisitive gaze with a sharp challenge that discouraged staring. Back of these two were more than a dozen others, and though their faces were all quiet and their bearing courteous, rifles lay balanced across their saddle-bows.

But most challenging in interest of all the newcomers was a young woman whose bronzed hair caught the glint of morning sunlight and whose dark eyes were deep and soft like forest pools.

"Ther Kaintuckians," murmured onlookers along the broken sidewalks as that cavalcade dismounted in the court house square to file quietly through the entrance doors, and eyes narrowed in a sinister augury of hostile welcome.

These visitors seated themselves together in a body on one side of the aisle and when the old bell had clanged its summons and Sheriff Beaver sang out his "Oyez, Oyez," the judge looked down upon them with more than passing interest.

From the door at one side of the bench Ken Thornton was brought in and as a gratuitous mark of indignity he came with his wrists manacled.

But from the Kentucky group, even from Dorothy herself, that circumstance wrung no murmur of resentment and the accused stood for a moment before he took his seat with eyes ranging over the place until they came to the section of the dingy room where he encountered the unscowling faces of friends.

There were his supporters who had come so far to raise their voices in his behalf, and perhaps to share the brunt of hatred that had been fired into blazing against him, and there—he felt a surge of emotion under which his face burned—was Dorothy herself!

They had not brought her to the jail to see him, and on the advice of Jim Rowlett she had not signalized her coming by insistence—so their eyes met without prior warning to the man.

It was to Kenneth Thornton as if there were sunlight in one corner of that cobwebbed room with its unwashed windows and its stale smells, and elsewhere hung the murk of little hope. A few staunch friends, at least, he had, but they were friends among enemies, and he steeled himself for facing the stronger forces.

Back of the rostrum where the judge sat squalidly enthroned a line of dusty and cobwebbed volumes tilted tipsily in ironical reminder of the fact that this law-giver took his cue less from their ancient principles than from whispers alien to their spirit.

A shuffling of muddy feet ensued; then a lesser sound that came with the giving out of many breaths; a sound that has no name but which has been known since days when men and women settled back in the circus of the Caesars and waited for the lions to be turned into the arena where the victims waited.

From the bench was drawled the routine query, "Has the Commonwealth any motions?" and the Commonwealth's attorney rose to his feet and straightened the papers on his desk.

"May it please your Honour," he said, slowly, "in the case of the Commonwealth against Kenneth Thornton, charged with murder, now pending on this docket, I wish to enter a motion of dismissal and to ask that your Honour exonerate the bond of the defendant."

The man in the prisoner's dock had come braced against nerve-trying, but now he bent forward in an amazement that he could not conceal, and from the back of the courtroom forward ran an inarticulate sound from human throats that needed no words to voice its incredulity—its disappointment.

There was a light rapping of the gavel and the state's representative went evenly on:

"The trial of this defendant would only entail a fruitless cost upon the state. I hold here, duly attested, the confession of Sally Turk, sister of the accused and widow of the deceased, that it was she and not Kenneth Thornton who shot John Turk to death. I have sworn out a warrant for this woman's arrest, and will ask the sheriff to execute it forthwith and take her into custody."

Kenneth Thornton was on his feet with a short protest shaping itself on his lips, but his eyes met those of his sister who rose from her place against the wall as her name was spoken and he read in them a contentment that gave him pause and an unspoken plea for silence.

Answering to the restraining hand of his own lawyer on his elbow he sank back into his seat with a swimming head and heard the calm, almost purring voice from the bench directing, "Mr. Clerk, let the order be entered." After that, astonishment mounted to complete dumfounding as he saw standing in the aisle Will Turk, the backbone and energy of the entire prosecution—and heard his voice addressing the judge:

"May it please your Honour, I'd love ter be tuck on Sally Turk's bond when ther time comes. I've done satisfied myself thet she kilt my brother in self deefence."



CHAPTER XXIX

Outside on the straggling streets clumps of perplexed men gathered to mull over the seven days' wonder which had been enacted before their eyes.

Slowly they watched the Kentuckians troop out of the court house, the late prisoner in their midst, and marvelled to see Will Turk join them with the handshaking of complete amity. Many of these onlookers remembered the dark and glowing face with which Turk had said yesterday of the man upon whom he was now smiling, "Penitenshery, hell! Hit's got ter be ther gallows!"

Public amazement was augmented when Kenneth Thornton and his wife went home with Will Turk and slept as guests under his roof.

"Ye needn't hev no fear erbout goin' on home, Ken, an' leavin' Sally hyar," said Turk when he and Thornton sat over their pipes that night. "I gives ye my hand thet she's goin' ter go free on bond an' when her case is tried she'll come cl'ar."

Kenneth Thornton knew that he was listening to the truth, and as his fingers, groping in his pocket for a match, touched the small walnut-shell basket, he drew it out and looked at it. Then turning to Dorothy, who sat across the hearth, he said seriously: "Ther luck piece held hits charm, honey."

But an hour later, when Kenneth had gone out to see to his horse in the barn and when Lindy was busied about some kitchen task, Will Turk rose from his seat and standing before Dorothy began to speak in a low-pitched and sober voice:

"Ye seems ter me like a woman a man kin talk sense ter," he said, "an' I'm goin' ter tell ye somethin' either you or yore man ought ter know. Ken hain't plum outen danger yit. He's got an enemy over thar in Kaintuck: an' when he starts back thet enemy's right like ter be watchin' ther trail thet leads home."

Dorothy held his eyes steadily when she questioned him with a name, "Bas Rowlett?"

Will Turk shook his head as he responded deliberately: "Whatever I knows come ter me in secrecy—but hit was at a time when I miscomprehended things, an' I sees 'em different now. I didn't say hit was Bas Rowlett ner I didn't say hit wasn't nuther, but this much I kin say. Whoever this feller is thet aims ter layway Ken, he aims ter do hit in Virginny. Seems like he dastn't ondertake hit in Kaintuck."

Dorothy drew a breath of relief for even that assurance, and for the duration of a short silence Turk again paced the floor with his head bent and his hands at his back, then he halted.

"You go on home termorrer an' leave Ken hyar," he enjoined, "he wants ter see his sister free on bail afore he leaves, anyhow. When he gits ready ter start back I'll guide him by a way I knows, but one a woman couldn't handily travel, an' I'll pledge ye he'll crost over ter Kaintuck es safe as he come."

So on the morrow Dorothy rode with the same cavalcade that had escorted her to Virginia, and near sunset a few days later, when low-hanging clouds were sifting down a thick veil of snow and the bare woods stood ghostly and white, Bas Rowlett lay numb with cold but warm with anticipation by the trail that led from the county seat in Virginia to the gap that gave a gateway into Kentucky.

He huddled under a tangle of briars, masking an ambuscade from which his rifle could rake the road and his eyes command it for a hundred yards to its eastern bend, and he had lain there all day. Kenneth Thornton would ride that trail, he felt assured, before dark, and ride it alone, and here, far from his own neighbourhood, he would himself be suspected of no murderous activity.

But as Bas lay there, for once prepared to act as executioner in person instead of through a hireling, Kenneth Thornton and Will Turk were nearing the state border, having travelled furtively and unseen by a "trace" that had put the bulk of a mountain between them and ambuscade.

The winter settled after that with a beleaguering of steeps and broken levels under a blockade of stark hardship. Peaks stood naked save for their evergreens, alternately wrapped in snow and viscid with mud. Morning disclosed the highways "all spewed up with frost" and noon found them impassably mired. Night brought from the forests the sharp frost-cracking of the beeches like the pop of small guns, and in wayside stores the backwoods merchants leaned over their counters and shook dismal heads, when housewives plodded in over long and slavish trails to buy salt and lard, and went home again with their sacks empty.

Those who did not "have things hung up" felt the pinch of actual suffering, and faces in ill-lighted and more illy ventilated cabins became morose and pessimistic.

Such human soil was fallow for the agitator, and the doctrine which the winter did not halt from travelling was that incitement preached by the "riders."

Every wolf pack that runs on its food-trail is made up of strong-fanged and tireless-thewed beasts, but at its head runs a leader who has neither been balloted upon nor born to his place. He has taken it and holds it against encroachment by title of a strength and boldness above that of any other. He loses it if a superior arises. The men who are of the vendetta acknowledge only the chieftainship which has risen and stands by that same gauge and proving.

Parish Thornton, the recent stranger, had come to such a position. He had not sought it, but neither, when he realized the conditions, had he evaded it. Now he had made a name of marvellous prowess, which local minstrels wove into their "ballets." He was accounted to be possessed of an almost supernatural courage and invulnerability; of a physical strength and quickness that partook of magic. Men pointed to his record as to that of a sort of superman, and they embellished fact with fable.

He had been the unchallenged leader of the Harpers since that interview with old Aaron Capper, and the ally of Jim Rowlett since his bold ride to Hump Doane's cabin, but now it was plain that this leadership was merging rapidly into one embracing both clans.

Old Jim had not long to live, and since the peace had been reestablished, the Doanes no less than the Harpers began to look to, and to claim as their own, this young man whose personal appeal had laid hold upon their imaginations.

But that is stating one side of the situation that the winter saw solidifying into permanence. There was another.

Every jealousy stirred by this new regime, every element that found itself galled by the rearrangement, was driven to that other influence which had sprung up in the community—and it was an influence which was growing like a young Goliath.

So far that growth was hidden and furtive, but for that reason only the more dangerous. The riders had failed to free Sam Opdyke, and Sam was in prison—but the riders were not through. It pleased them to remain deceptively quiet just now but their meetings, held in secret places, brought a multiplied response to the roll call. Plans were building toward the bursting of a storm which should wreck the new dykes and dams—and the leaders preached unendingly, under the vicarious urging of Bas Rowlett, that the death of Parish Thornton was the aim and end beyond other aims and ends.

The riders were not striking sporadic blows now, as they had done at first, in petty "regulatings." They were looking to a time when there was to be one ride such as the mountains had never seen; a ride at whose end a leader living by the river bend, a judge, a Commonwealth's attorney living in town and the foreman of a certain jury, should have paid condignly for their offences.

Christmas came to the house in the bend of the river with a crystal sheeting of ice.

The native-born in the land of "Do Without" have for the most part never heard of Christmas trees or the giving of gifts, but they know the old legend which says that at the hour when the Saviour was born in a manger the bare and frozen elder bushes come to momentary bloom again in the thickets and the "critters and beasties" kneel down in their stalls, answering to some dumb mandate of reverence. This, however, is myth, and the fact is more substantially recognized that at this period the roisterous ride the highways, shooting and yelling, and the whiskey jug is tilted and tragedy often bares her fangs.

But Dorothy and Parish Thornton had each other, and the cloud that their imaginations had always pictured as hanging over the state border had been dispelled. Their hearts were high, too, with the reflection that when spring came again with its fragrances and whispers from the south there would be the blossoming of a new life in that house, as well as along the slopes of the inanimate hills.

But now on Christmas morning, as Dorothy looked out of a window, whose panes were laced with most delicate traceries of frost rime, there was a thorn-prickle of fear in her heart.

Parish came in and stood looking outward over her shoulder, and his smile flashed as it had done that first day when it startled her, because, before she had seen it, she had read of just such a smile in a journal written almost a century and a half ago.

"Hit's plum beautiful—out thar," she murmured, and the man's arm slipped around her. It might almost have been the Kenneth Thornton who had seen Court life in England who gallantly responded, "Hit's still more beautiful—in hyar."

There had been an ice storm the night before, following on a day of snowfall, and the mountain world stood dazzling in its whiteness with every twig and branch glaced and resplendent under the sun.

On the ice-bound slopes slept shadows of ultramarine, and near the window the walnut tree stood, no more a high-priest garbed in a green mantle or a wind-tossed cloak of orange-brown, but a warrior starkly stripped of his draperies and glitteringly mailed in ice.

He stood with his bold head high lifted toward the sky, but bearing the weight of winter, and when it passed he would not be found unscarred.

Already one great branch dropped under its freighting, and as the man and woman looked out they could hear from time to time the crash of weaker brethren out there in the forests; victims and sacrifices to the crushing of a beauty that was also fatal.

Until spring answered her question, Dorothy reflected, she could only guess how deep the blight, which she had discovered in the fall, had struck at the robustness of the old tree's life. For all its stalwartness its life had already been long, and if it should die—she closed her eyes as though to shut out a horror, and a shudder ran through her body.

"What is it, honey," demanded the man, anxiously, as he felt her tremor against his arm, "air ye cold?"

Dorothy opened her eyes and laughed, but with a tremulousness in her mirth.

"I reckon I hain't plum rekivered from ther fright hit give me when ye went over thar ter Virginny," she answered, "sometimes I feels plum timorous."

"But ther peril's done past now," he reassured her, "an' all ther enemies we had, thet's wuth winnin' over, hev done come ter be friends."

"All thet's wuth winnin' over, yes," she admitted without conviction, "but hit's ther other kind thet a body hes most cause ter fear."

Into the man's thought flashed the picture of Bas Rowlett, and a grim stiffness came to his lips, but she could hardly know of that remaining danger, he reflected, and he asked seriously, "What enemies does ye mean, honey?"

She, too, had been thinking of Bas, and she, too, believed that fear to be her own exclusive secret, so she answered in a low voice:

"I was studyin' erbout ther riders. I reckon they've done tuck thought thet you an' Hump hev been seekin' evidence erginst 'em."

The man laughed.

"Don't disquiet yoreself erbout them fellers, honey. We hev been seekin' evidence—an' gittin' hit, too, in some measure. Ef ther riders air strong enough ter best us we hain't fit ter succeed."

The smile gave slowly way to a sterner and more militant expression, the look which his wife had come to know of late. It had brought a gravity to his eyes and a new dimension to his character, for it had not been there before he had dedicated himself to a cause and taken up the leadership which he had at first sought to refuse. Dorothy knew that he was thinking of the fight which lay ahead, before the scattered enmities of that community were resolved and the disrupted life welded and cemented into a solidarity of law.



CHAPTER XXX

Sim Squires was finding himself in a most intricate and perplexing maze of circumstance; the situation of the man who wears another man's collar and whose vassalage galls almost beyond endurance.

It was dawning on Squires that he was involved in a web of such criss-cross meshes that before long he might find no way out. He had been induced to waylay Parish Thornton at the demand of one whom he dared not incense on pain of exposures that would send him to the penitentiary.

His intended victim had not only failed to die but had grown to an influence in the neighbourhood that made him a most dangerous enemy; and to become, in fact, such an enemy to Sim he needed only to learn the truth as to who had fired that shot.

Squires had come as Rowlett's spy into that house, hating Thornton with a sincerity bred of fear, but now he had grown to hate Rowlett the more bitterly of the two. Indeed, save for that sword of Damocles which hung over him in the memory of his murderous employment and its possible consequences, he would have liked Parish, and Dorothy's kindness had awakened in the jackal's heart a bewildering sense of gratitude such as he had never known before.

So while compulsion still bound him to Bas Rowlett, his own sympathies were beginning to lean toward the fortunes of that household from which he drew his legitimate wage.

But complications stood irrevocably between Sim and his inclinations. His feeling against Bas Rowlett was becoming an obsession of venom fed by the overweening arrogance of the man, but Bas still held him in the hollow of his hand, and besides these reefs of menace were yet other shoals to be navigated.

Squires had been compelled by Rowlett not only to join the "riders" who were growing in numbers and covert power, but to take such an active part in their proceedings as would draw down upon his head the bolts of wrath should the organization ever be brought to an accounting.

There was terrible danger there and Sim recognized it. Sim knew that when Rowlett had quietly stirred into life the forces from which the secret body was born he had been building for one purpose—and one purpose only. To its own membership, the riders might be a body of vigilantes with divers intentions, but to Bas they were never anything but a mob which should some day lynch Parish Thornton—and then be themselves destroyed like the bee that dies when it stings. Through Squires as the unwilling instrument Rowlett was possessing himself of such evidence as would undo the leaders when the organization had served that one purpose.

Yet Sim dared reveal none of these secrets. The active personality who was the head and front of the riders was Sam Opdyke's friend Rick Joyce—and Rick Joyce was the man to whom Bas could whisper the facts that had first given him power over Sim.

For Sim had shot to death Rick's nephew, and though he had done it while drunk and half responsible; though he had been incited to the deed by Bas himself, no man save the two of them knew that, and so far the murderer had never been discovered.

It seemed to Sim that any way he turned his face he encountered a cul-de-sac of mortal danger—and it left him in a perplexity that fretted him and edged his nerves to rawness.

Part of Christmas day was spent by the henchman in the cabin where he had been accustomed to holding his secret councils with his master, Bas Rowlett, and his venom for the man who had used him as a shameless pawn was eclipsing his hatred for Parish Thornton, the intended victim whom he was paid to shadow and spy upon. For Dorothy he had come to acknowledge a dumb worship, and this sentiment was not the adoration of a lover but that dog-like affection which reacts to kindness where there has been no other kindness in life.

It was not in keeping with such a character that he should attempt any candid repudiation of his long-worn yoke, or declare any spirit of conversion, but in him was a ferment of panic.

"I'm growin' right restive, Bas," whined Sim as the two shivered and drank whiskey to keep themselves warm in that abandoned shack where they were never so incautious as to light a fire. "Any time this feller Parish finds out I shot him, he'll turn on me an' kill me. Thar hain't but jest one safe way out. Let me finish up ther job an' rest easy."

Bas Rowlett shook his head decisively.

"When I gits ready ter hev ye do thet," he ruled, imperiously, "I'll let ye know. Right now hit's ther last thing I'd countenance."

"I kain't no fashion make ye out," complained Sim. "Ye hired me ter do ther job an' blackguarded me fer failin'. Now ye acks like ye war paid ter pertect ther feller from peril."

Rowlett scowled. It was not his policy to confide in his Myrmidons, yet with an adherent who knew as much as Squires it was well to have the confidential seeming.

"Things hev changed, Sim," he explained. "Any heedless killin's right now would bring on a heap of trouble afore I'm ready fer hit—but ye hain't no more fretful ter hev him die then what I be—an' thet's what we're buildin' up this hyar night-rider outfit ter do."

"Thet's another thing thet disquiets me, though," objected Squires. "I'm es deep inter thet es anybody else, an' them fellers, Thornton and Old Hump, hain't nuver goin' ter rest twell they penitensheries some of ther head men."

Bas Rowlett laughed, then with such a confidential manner as he rarely bestowed upon a subordinate, he laid a hand on his hireling's arm. "Thet's all right, Sim. Ther penitenshery's a right fit an' becomin' place fer them men, when ye comes ter study hit out. We hain't objectin' ter thet ourselves—in due time."

Sim Squires drew back and his face became for the moment terror-stricken. "What does ye mean?" he demanded, tensely, "does ye aim ter let me sulter out my days in convict-stripes because I've done s'arved yore eends?"

But Bas Rowlett shook his head.

"Not you, Sim," he gave assurance. "I'm goin' ter tek keer of you all right—but when ther rest of 'em hev done what we wants, we hain't got no further use fer them riders. Atter thet they'll jest be a pest an' burden ter us ef they goes on terrifyin' everybody."

"I don't no fashion comprehend ye, but I've got ter know whar I stands at." There was a momentary stiffening of the creature's moral backbone and the employer hastened to smooth away his anxiety.

"I hain't nuver drapped no hint of this ter no man afore," he confided, "but me an' you air actin' tergither es pardners, an' ye've got a license ter know. These hyar riders air ergoin' ter handle ther men that stands in my light—then I'm goin' ter everlastin'ly bust up ther riders. I wouldn't love ter see 'em git too strong. Ye fights a forest fire by buildin' back-fires, Sim, but ef ye lets ther back-fires burn too long ye're es bad off es ye war when ye started out."

"How does ye aim ter take keer of me?" inquired the listener and Bas replied promptly: "When ther time comes ter bust 'em up, we'll hev strength enough ter handle ther matter. Leave thet ter me. You'll be state's evidence then an' we'll prove thet ye ji'ned up ter keep watch fer me."

Over Sim Squires' face spread the vapid grin that he used to conceal his emotions.

"But thet all comes later on," enjoined Bas. "Meanwhile, keep preachin' ter them fellers thet Thornton's buildin' up a case erginst 'em. Keep 'em skeered an' wrought up."

"I reckon we'd better not start away tergither," suggested Sim when they had brought their business to its conclusion, "you go on, Bas, an' I'll foller d'reckly."

When he stood alone in the house Sim spent a half-hour seeking to study the ramifications of the whole web of intrigue from various angles of consideration, but before he left the place he acted on a sudden thought and, groping in the recess between plate-girder and overhang, he drew out the dust-coated diary that Bas had thrust there and forgotten, long ago. This Sim put into his pocket and took with him.

* * * * *

The winter dragged out its course and broke that year like a glacier suddenly loosened from its moorings of ice. A warm breath came out of the south and icicled gorges sounded to the sodden drip of melting waters. Snowslides moved on hundreds of steeply pitched slopes, and fed sudden rivulets into freshet roarings.

The river itself was no longer a clear ribbon but a turgid flood-tide that swept along uprooted trees and snags of foam-lathered drift.

There was as yet neither bud nor leaf, and the air was raw and bone-chilling, but everywhere was the restless stirring of dormant life impulses and uneasy hints of labour-pains.

While the river sucked at its mud bank and lapped its inundated lowlands, the walnut tree in the yard above the high-water mark sang sagas of rebirth through the night as the wind gave tongue in its naked branches.

But in the breast of Sim Squires this spirit of restlessness was more than an uneasy stirring. It was an obsession.

He knew that when spring, or at the latest early summer, brought firmness to the mired highways and deeper cover to the woods, the organization of which he was a prominent member would strike, and stake its success or failure upon decisive issue. Then Parish Thornton, and a handful of lesser designates, would die—or else the "riders" would encounter defeat and see their leaders go to the penitentiary.

Bas Rowlett, himself a traitor to the Ku Klux, had promised Sim safety, but Sim had never known Bas to keep faith, and he did not trust him now.

Yet, should he break with the evil forces to which he stood allied, Sim's peril became only the greater. So he lay awake through these gusty nights cudgelling his brain for a solution, and at the end, when spring had come with her first gracious touches of Judas-tree and wild plum blossoming, he made up his mind.

Sim Squires came to his decision one balmy afternoon and went, with a caution that could not have been greater had he contemplated murder, to the house of Hump Doane, when he knew the old man to be alone.

His design, after all, was a simple one for a man versed in the art of double-crossing and triple-crossing.

If the riders prevailed he was safe enough, by reason of his charter membership, and none of his brother vigilantes suspected that his participation had been unwilling. But they might not prevail, and, in that event, it was well to have a friend among the victors.

He meant, therefore, to tell Hump Doane some things that Hump Doane wished very much to know, but he would go to the confessional under such oath of secrecy as could not recoil upon him. Then whoever triumphed, be it Bas, the white-caps, or the forces of law and order, he would have a protector on the winning side.

The hunchback met his furtive visitor at the stile and walked with him back into the chill woods where they were safe from observation. The drawn face and the frightened eyes told him in advance that this would be no ordinary interview, yet he was unprepared for what he heard.

When Squires had hinted that he came heavy with tidings of gravest import, but must be given guarantees of protection before he spoke, Hump Doane sat reflecting dubiously upon the matter, then he shook his head. "I don't jest see whar hit profits me ter know things thet I kain't make no use of," he demurred, and Sim Squires bent forward with haunted eyes.

"They're facts," he protested. "Ye kin use them facts, only ye mustn't tell no man whar ye got 'em from."

"Go ahead, then," decided Hump Doane after weighing the proposition even further. "I'm hearkenin', an' I stands pledged ter hold my counsel es ter yore part in tellin' me."

The sun was sinking toward the horizon and the woods were cold. The informer rose and walked back and forth on the soggy carpet of rotted leaves with hands that clasped and unclasped themselves at his back. He was under a stress of feeling that bordered on collapse.

The dog that has been kicked and knocked about from puppyhood has in it the accumulated viciousness of his long injuries. Such a beast is ready to run amuck, frothing at the mouth, and Sim Squires was not unlike that dog. He had debated this step through days and nights of hate and terror. He had faltered and vacillated. Now he had come, and the long-repressed passions had broken all his dams of reserve, transforming him, as if with an epilepsy. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks were putty-yellow and, had he been a dog instead of a man, his fangs would have been slathered with foam.

Heretofore he had spoken hesitantly and cautiously. Now like the epileptic or the mad dog, he burst into a volcanic outpouring in which wild words tumbled upon themselves in a cataract of boiling abandon. His fists were clenched and veins stood out on his face.

"I'm ther man thet shot Parish Thornton when he fust come hyar," was his sensational beginning, "but albeit my hand sighted ther gun an' pulled ther trigger hit was another man's damn dirty heart that contrived ther act an' another man's dollars thet paid fer hit. I was plum fo'ced ter do hit by a low-lived feller thet hed done got me whar he wanted me—a feller thet bull-dozed an' dogged me an' didn't suffer me ter call my soul my own—a feller thet I hates an' dreads like I don't nuver expect ter hate Satan in hell!"

The informer broke off there and stood a pitiable picture of rage and cowardice, shaken with tearless sobs of unwonted emotion.

"Some men ruins women," he rushed on, "an' some ruins other men. He done thet ter me—an' whenever I boggled or balked he cracked his whip anew—an' I wasn't nuthin' but his pore white nigger thet obeyed him. I ached ter kill him an' I didn't even dast ter contrary him. His name's Bas Rowlett!"

The recital broke off and the speaker stood trembling from head to foot. Then the hearer who had listened paled to the roots of his shaggy hair and his gargoyle face became a mask of tragic fury.

At first Hump Doane did not trust himself to speak and when he did, there was a moment in which the other feared him almost more than he feared Bas Rowlett.

For the words of the hunchback came like a roar of thunder and he seemed on the verge of leaping at his visitor's throat.

"Afore God, ye self-confessed, murderin' liar," he bellowed, "don't seek ter accuse Bas Rowlett ter me in no sich perjury! He's my kinsman an' my friend—an' I knows ye lies. Ef ye ever lets words like them cross yore lips ergin in my hearin' I'll t'ar ther tongue outen yore mouth with these two hands of mine!"

For a space they stood there in silence, the old man glaring, the younger slowly coming back from his mania of emotion as from a trance.

Perhaps had Sim sought to insist on his story he would never have been allowed to finish it, but in that little interval of pause Hump Doane's passion also passed, as passions too violent to endure must pass.

After the first unsuspected shock, it was borne in on him that there are confessions which may not be doubted, and that of them this was one. His mind began to reaccommodate itself, and after a little he said in a voice of deadly coldness:

"Howsoever, now thet ye've started, go on. I'll hear ye out."

"I'm tellin' ye gospel truth, an' sometimes ther truth hurts," insisted Sim. "Bas war jealous of Dorothy Harper—an' I didn't dast ter deny him. He paid me a patch of river-bottom land fer ther job, albeit I failed."

Hump Doane stood, his ugly face seamed with a scowl of incredulous sternness, his hand twitching at the ends of his long and gorilla-like arms. "Go on," he reiterated, "don't keep me waitin'."

Under the evening sky, standing rigid with emotion, Squires doggedly went on. He told, abating nothing, the whole wretched story from his own knowledge: how Bas had sought to bring on the war afresh in order that his enemy Parish Thornton might perish in its flaming; how with the same end in view Bas had shot at Old Jim; how he himself had been sent to trail Thornton to Virginia that his master might inform upon him, and how while the Virginian was away, in jeopardy of his life, the arch-conspirator had pursued his wife, until she, being afraid to tell her husband, had come near killing the tormentor herself.

"Hit war Bas thet stirred up ther riders into formin'," declared the spy in conclusion. "He didn't nuver take no part hisself, but he used two men thet didn't dast disobey him—two men thet he rules over like nigger slaves—an' ther riders hev got one object over an' above everything else, thet he aims ter hev 'em carry through. Thet is ter kill Parish Thornton."

Hump Doane walked over and stood looking up from his squat, toad-like deformity into the face of the man who towered above him, yet in his eyes was the blaze with which a giant might look down on a pigmy.

"Ye says he used two men, Sim," the falsetto of the hunchback's voice was as sharp as a dagger's point. "Ef ye came hyar fer any honest purpose, I calls on ye, now, ter give me them two names."

Squires' face turned even paler than it had been. The veins along his temple were pulsing, and his words caught and hung in hesitancy; but he gulped and said in a forced voice: "I was one of 'em, Hump."

"An' t'other one? Who war he?"

Again the informer hesitated, this time longer than before, but in the end he said dully:

"Hump, t'other one war—yore own boy, Pete."



CHAPTER XXXI

Strangely enough it was as though the old man's capacity for being shocked or infuriated had been exhausted. There was no roar of maddened wrath or denunciation of denial now. Never had Sim seen on a human face such a despair of stricken grief. Hump Doane only passed an open palm across his forehead. Somehow this hideous recital, which had made him an old man in the space of a few minutes, blasting him like a thunder bolt, could not be seriously doubted. It was not allegation but revelation.

Pete was young and impressionable. He was clay upon the wheel of Bas Rowlett's domination, and of late he had been much away from home.