Part 17 (1/2)

We had left our bags outside and I took up a position near the door where I could watch the twisting ruts of the drab road. We talked, as we waited, of the outside world and Garvin astonished me by his grasp on general affairs.

At last Marcus arrived and his coming made a strange picture which dwells still in my mind. The western sky was all ash of rose and the higher clouds were dark ma.s.ses edged with gold. The hills were gray and frowning ramparts with bristling crests. Against this setting, around the shoulder of the mountain, appeared a grotesque cortege.

A half-score of rough men mounted on unkempt horses came slowly and gloomily into view. They maintained, as they rode, the slovenly formation of a hollow square and across their pommels lay repeating rifles. The battered rims of their felt hats drooped over sharp-featured faces.

The only unarmed member of the group rode at the center of the square.

He was tall and unspeakably gaunt. One looked at his worn and rugged face and thought of the earlier portraits of Abraham Lincoln; the portraits of lean and battling days. The collar of his threadbare overcoat was upturned, but at the opening one had the glimpse of a narrow black necktie slipped askew. The clean-shaven line of his mouth was set in relentless determination.

The bodyguard rode with hanging reins, and each right hand lay in counterfeited carelessness on the lock of its rifle.

”Thar he comes now,” commented Garvin. ”You must excuse me if I don't go out to introduce you. He's a bitter kind of feller. You understand how it is.”

At Weighborne's signal his attorney halted and the men of the bodyguard drew rein, keeping their places about him. We walked out to the middle of the road, and while we talked to the rawboned, life-battered man in the center of the hollow square, his attendants shouted greetings to the loungers on the porch of the store. These greetings partook of the nature of pleasantries and the only note of frank hostility came from the throats of the hounds. They bristled and growled with an instinct which was softened by no artificial code of hypocrisy. Still, so long as the halt lasted, the two parties kept their eyes alertly fixed on each other. It needed little penetration to discover that the geniality was shallow and temporary, like that between the outposts of hostile armies lying close-camped, across an interval soon to be closed in battle.

”You made a very unfortunate mistake in stopping here,” said Marcus to Weighborne, in a low voice. He nodded to two mountaineers who rode on the far side of the cavalcade. They slipped from their saddles and allowed us to mount in their stead while they trudged alongside, carrying our bags.

As we started forward, Weighborne answered.

”I didn't halt at Garvin's place from choice. The wagon could go no further. I don't suppose there was any actual danger, and after all I wanted to see how he would talk.”

Marcus nodded and drew his mouth tighter.

”It turns out all right,” he said, ”but don't do it again.”

After a moment's silence he burst out bitterly.

”No danger! My G.o.d, man, do you suppose I ride like this--surrounded by armed men, because it pleases my pride?” He swept his talon-like hand around him in a circle. ”Look at them! Do you reckon I do that for pomp and display? Do you suppose any man likes to say good-bye to his children when he leaves home with the thought in his mind that it may be a last good-bye?”

”Is it as bad as that?” I questioned with the stranger's incredulity.

He turned his hunted eyes on me. ”Worse,” he said briefly. ”I dare not go unguarded from my house to my barn, sir. Keithley used to carry his two-year-old child into court in his arms. Even they would not shoot a baby. One day he went without the child. That day he died.”

I looked at the face which was turned toward me. It was a face from which had been whipped the knowledge of how to smile. We rode for a half-mile in silence with only the cuppy thud of hoofs on the soft earth, the creaking of stirrup leather and the clink of bit rings.

”Why,” I asked at last, ”don't you leave such a country and establish yourself where you can have security?”

His angular chin came up with a jerk. His eyes flashed.

”Go away?” he repeated. ”Do you think a man wants to be driven from the country where he and his parents and his children were born? Besides, sir, my mother belongs to the old order. I was the first to be educated.

She still smokes her pipe in the chimney-corner. She is of the mountains. She must stay here.” He paused, then his words began again dispa.s.sionately, and gathered, as he talked, the fiery resonance of the instinctive orator.

”If the men who love war, leave lawless countries, who in G.o.d's name is to do the work? The order is changing. What does Kipling say about the men who blaze trails?

”'On the sand-drift, on the veldt-side, in the fern-scrub we lay, That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.'

”These men have made a mockery of the law. It is my desire to punish them with the law. It is my purpose to do so unless they kill me first.

Why am I representing your company? For the fee? No, sir!... G.o.d knows I need the fee, but I shall also have a bigger compensation. When the new order comes I shall see Garvin's power crumple. I shall send him to the gallows or to the penitentiary. That will be my reward.” His voice was again pa.s.sionate. ”The filthy a.s.sa.s.sin realizes my motive and he sees in you my allies. Watch him, and safeguard your steps.”