Part 24 (1/2)

For when Lute Brown's murderer, fleeing for his life, had opened his parcel and discovered the worthlessness of that for which he had turned Judas, something snapped in his befuddled brain. He became an Ishmael driven before the torture of a fixed idea--terror of capture, until one day his body was found, worn to a skeleton; matted of beard and hair, and lying with its head in a creek bed at the foot of a cliff over which the a.s.sa.s.sin had fallen.

So the Ku-Klux became again only a name.

If, however, the men who had followed Alexander were willing to let sleeping dogs lie, the other faction had not only the rancor of defeat remaining with them, but also the incurable itch of uneasy consciences.

At any time that drink loosened a careless tongue, dangerous hints might be dropped, and over at Coal City a newly elected Commonwealth's attorney was manifesting a zealous interest in the mystery of those two dead bodies and all the surrounding facts.

That Halloway knew at least two of their number by sight, if not by name, was a cloud of menace which hung over all. Since Jerry O'Keefe and Bud Sellers were in the big man's confidence they as well as Alexander herself fell into the gang's list of undesirable citizens.

But on the surface of life between Coal City and Shoulder-blade there was no outward ripple; no hint that fires still smouldered which might again leap to eruption. Men who had followed Lute and those who had been enlisted by Bud from time to time ”met and made their manners” on the highway--without evidence of animosity.

Then one day when the early freshness of summer had been sunburned and freckled into a warmer fullness, a thing happened which stirred the sleeping dogs.

One of the three men of whom Halloway had disposed at the station and who bore ugly scars on his face where the cuffs had marked him, became involved in a boundary dispute with a neighbor, and a shooting affray followed--in which the neighbor fell wounded.

The a.s.sailant was arrested and brought to the Coal City Jail, and as he was being led hither, Halloway and Jerry O'Keefe, who chanced to be in town that day, came out of the court-house together.

That coincidence was observed by a lounger in the public square who had, himself, been an alleged Ku-Klux man, on that memorable day and night. Out of his own anxieties he began weaving a pattern of fear.

He reasoned that if Halloway dropped a hint into the ear of the Commonwealth's Attorney that official might go lightly with the prosecution for shooting and wounding, provided, as an exchange of courtesies, this prisoner became fully and freely his tool in ferreting out the larger problem. He might be offered immunity on one indictment, if, as State's evidence, he made possible a number of true bills on graver charges.

The man kept Halloway and Jerry under observation until they left town and satisfied himself that so far they had not talked with the prosecutor--but that carried no a.s.surance for the future, and several consultations ensued, in which certain measures were considered which did not enhance the safety of either Halloway or O'Keefe.

Halloway was less confident as the weeks pa.s.sed. That first swift moment of apparent victory had not been followed by a satisfactory sequence of progressive steps.

He had sought to wake Alexander out of that s.e.x-lethargy which lay like a moat between the citadel of her heart and the advantage of suitors.

In that he had succeeded, too well for his liking. Always Alexander held surprises in store for him, which only maddened him the more, fanning his pa.s.sion into a hotter blaze. Now when he sought to press his initial advantage to a greater conclusiveness, she only told him to wait and, like Portia judging her lovers, allowed others to come pay court as well, while over all she reigned with a regal sort of despotism, encouraging no one more than another.

But she was splendidly, vitally awake.

She still did with joy the things men did, and did them better than most men, but she was no longer blind to the stronger a.s.set of her arresting beauty and the effect of its charm.

She realized these newly discovered attributes naively and without vanity, but now instead of insisting on the equality of a man, she demanded the homage of a queen.

And though she would have found her world desolate without that tallest and keenest of her cavaliers, she no longer thought of him as the only important figure in the world that he had opened to her.

In a somewhat formless and intuitive fas.h.i.+on she felt a slight undercurrent of distrust for Halloway, which she combated as ungenerous but could not wholly overcome.

But in constant conflict with these moments of misgiving there were other, rather wild moments, when the draw and pull of his fascination seemed invincible. At those times she realized that, should he open his arms and say, ”Come,” she would have to go as the iron filing goes to the magnet. To Alexander the whole world of love was in a nebulous and constructive state of flux and lava.

But she had by instinct a wary defensiveness, and she was on constant guard.

”Alexander,” said Halloway one day when they were walking together along the creek-bed between the dark, waxy ma.s.ses of the rhododendron, ”Hit strikes me right forceable, thet fer a gal thet didn't hev no time of day fer any man, ye've done swung round mighty suddent. They hangs 'round ye now like bees 'round locust blooms.”

”Did ye 'low thet ef I let any come, I'd refuse ter welcome ther balance?” she inquired and he retorted with more heat than he usually allowed himself. ”Most women contrives ter satisfy themselves with one man, I reckon.”

”Thet's atter they've done picked out ther one, fer dead sh.o.r.e,” was her calm retort. ”An' mebby even then hit hain't frum choice.”

A satirist might have derived pleasure from that situation of Alexander rejecting conventional pleas, urged by Jack Halloway.

The big man had halted and stood looking down at her. His hands gradually closed, then tautly clenched themselves. For a moment he contemplated throwing away caution and seeking once more to coerce her responsiveness in the imprisonment of his sudden embrace but he hesitated. Then while he still held his silence, Alexander spoke with that full and inevasive candor which was a cardinal of her nature.