The Law of Hemlock Mountain

by Hugh Lundsford

  CHAPTER VIII

  Spurrier was not frightened, but he was deeply mystified, and when hereached the cabin which he was preparing for occupancy he sat down onthe old millstone that served as a doorstep and sought enlightenmentfrom reflection and the companionship of an ancient pipe.

  In an hour or two "Uncle Jimmy" Litchfield, under whose smoky roof hewas being temporarily sheltered, would arrive with a jolt wagon andyoke of oxen, teaming over the household goods that Spurrier meant toinstall. Already the new tenant had swept and whitewashed his cabininterior and had let the clear winds rake away the mildew of its longvacancy. Now he sat smoking with a perplexity-drawn brow, while atuneful sky seemed to laugh mockingly at the absurd idea of riflemenin ambush.

  Every neighbor had manifested a spirit of cordiality toward him. Tomany of them he was indebted for small and voluntary kindnesses, andhe had maintained a diplomatic neutrality in all local affairs thatbore a controversial aspect.

  Certainly, he could not flatter himself that as yet any premonition ofdanger had percolated to those distant centers of industry againstwhich he was devising a campaign of surprise. One explanation onlypresented itself with any color of plausibility.

  That trickle of water might come to the gorge from a spot back in thelaurel where, under the shelter of a felled hemlock top, some onetended a small "blockade" distillery; some one who resented aninvasion of his privacy.

  Yet even that inference was not satisfactory. Only yesterday a man hadoffered him moonshine whisky, declaring quite unsuspiciously: "Efye're vouched fer by Uncle Jimmy, I ain't a'skeered of ye none. I madethet licker myself--drink hearty."

  Of the real truth no ghostly glimmer of suspicion came in even themost shadowy fashion to his mind.

  His efforts to trace to definite result some filament of fact thatmight prove the court-martial to have reached a conclusion at variancewith the truth, had all ended in failure. That the matter was hopelesswas an admission which he could not afford to make and which hedoggedly denied, but with waning confidence.

  This state of mind prevented him from suspecting any connectionbetween this present and mysterious enmity and those things which hadhappened across the Pacific.

  He had kept himself informed as to the movements of Private Severanceand when that time-expired man had stepped ashore at San Francisco,John Spurrier had been waiting to confront him, even though itinvolved facing men who had once been brother officers and who couldno longer speak to him as an equal.

  From the former soldier, who brought a flush to his cheeks by salutinghim and calling him "Lieutenant," he had learned nothing. There hadbeen no reason to hope for much. It was unlikely that he would beable to shake into a damaging admission of complicity--and anystatement of value must have amounted to that--the witness who hadcome unscathed out of the cross-examination of two courts-martial.

  Indeed Spurrier had expected to encounter unveiled hostility in theattitude of the mountaineer, who had been doing sentry duty at thedoor through which the prisoner, Grant, had escaped. It might havefollowed logically upon the officer's defense, which had sought toinvolve that sentinel as an accomplice in the fugitive's flight, andeven in the murder itself.

  But Severance had greeted him without rancor and with the disarmingguise of candid friendliness.

  "I'd be full willin' ter help ye, Lieutenant--ef so be I could," hehad protested. "I knows full well yore lawyers was plum obliged terseek ter hang ther blame wharsoever they was able, an' I ain'tharborin' no grudge because I happened ter be one they sought terhurt. But I don't know nothin' that kin aid ye."

  "Do you think Grant escaped alive?" demanded Spurrier, and the othershook his head.

  "I feels so plum, dead sartain he died," came the prompt response,"thet when I gits back home I'm goin' ter tell his folks he did. BudGrant was a friend of mine, but when he went out inter thet jungle hewas too weakly ter keer fer hisself an' ef he'd lived they would hevdone found him an' brought him back."

  Spurrier had come to embrace that belief himself. The one man whoseadmission, wrung from him by persuasion or compulsion, could give himback his clean name, must have perished there in the _bijuca_tangles. The hope of meeting the runaway in life had died in theex-officer's heart and consequently it did not now occur to him tothink of the deserter as a living menace.

  At length he rose and stood against the shadowy background of hisdoor, which was an oblong of darkness behind the golden outerclarity.

  Off in the tangle of oak and poplar and pine a ruffed grouse drummedand a "cock of the woods" rapped its tattoo on a sycamore top.

  Once he fancied he heard a stirring in the rhododendron where itslarge waxen leaves banked themselves thickly a hundred yards distant,and his eyes turned that way seeking to pierce the impenetrablescreen--but unavailingly. Perhaps some small, wild thing had movedthere.

  Then, as had happened before that afternoon, the stillness broke to arifle shot--this time clean and sharp, unclogged by echoes.

  Spurrier stood for an instant while a surprised expression showed inhis out-staring eyes, then he swayed on his feet. His hands came upand clutched spasmodically at his left breast, and with a suddencollapse he dropped heavily backward, and lay full length, swallowedin the darkness that hung beyond the door.

  Over the rhododendron thicket quiet settled drowsily again, butthrough the toughness of interlaced branches stole upward and outwardan acrid powder smell and a barely perceptible trickle of smoke.

  Crouched there, his neutral-hued clothing merging into the earth tonesabout him, a man peered out, but he did not rise to go forward andinspect his work. Instead, he opened the breech block of his pieceand with unhurried care blew through the barrel--cleansing it of itsvapors.

  "I reckon thar ain't no needcessity to go over thar an' look at him,"he reflected. "When they draps down _thet_-away, they don't git up nomore--an' some person from afar mout spy me crossin' ther dooryard."

  So he edged backward into the tangle, moving like a crawfish andnoiselessly took up his homeward journey.

  When the slow plodding ox team came at last to the dooryard and UncleBilly stood shouting outside the house, Sim Colby, holding to tangleswhere he would meet no chance wayfarer, was already miles away andhurrying to establish his alibi against suspicion, in his ownneighborhood--where no one knew he had been absent.

  Though it be an evil thing and shameful to confess, ex-private BudGrant, alias Sim Colby, traveled light-heartedly, roweled by notortures of conscience, but blithe in the assurance of a ghost laid,and a peril averted.

  He would have been both amazed and chagrined had he remained peeringfrom his ambuscade, for when Uncle Billy's shadow fell through theopen door the man to whom he had come rose from a chair to meet him,and he presented no mangled or blood-stained breast to the eyes of hisvisitors.

  "Ye ain't jest a-quippin' with me, be ye?" demanded the oldmountaineer incredulously when he had heard the story in all itsdetail. "This hyar's a right serious-soundin' matter--an' ye ain'tgot no enemies amongst us thet I've heered tell of."

  Spurrier pointed out the spot in the newly whitewashed wall where thebullet lay imbedded with its glint of freshly flattened lead.

  "After the first experience," he explained, "I'd had some time tothink. I was standing in the door so I fell down--and played dead." Headded after a pause quietly: "I've seen men shot to death, and Ihappened to know how a man drops when it's a heart hit. I fell insidewhere I'd be out of sight, because I was unarmed, and all I could dowas to wait for you. I watched through the door, but the fellow nevershowed himself."

  "Come on, boys," commanded the old mountaineer in a determined voice."Let's beat thet la'rel while ther tracks is still fresh. Mebby wemout l'arn somethin' of this hyar monstrous matter."

  But they learned nothing. Sim Colby had spent painstaking thought uponhis effort and he had left no evidence written in the mold of theforest.

  "Hit beats all hell," declared the nonplussed Uncle Billy at last."I ain't got ther power ter fathom
hit. Ef I war you I wouldn'ttalk erbout this ter no man save only me an' old Dyke Cappeze.Still-huntin' lands more game then blowin' a fox horn." AndSpurrier nodded his head.

  Though Spurrier for a few days after that slipped through the gorgewith the stealth of a sharpshooter, covering himself behind rocks ashe went, he heard no sound there more alarming than the chatter ofsquirrels or the grunt of a strayed razor-back rooting among theacorns. Gradually he relaxed his vigilance as a man will if hisnature is bold and his dreams too sweeping to be forever hobbled bypetty precautions.

  The purpose which he privately served called for ranging the countrywith a trained eye, and with him went the contour maps upon which weretraced red lines.

  One day he came, somewhat winded from a stiff climb, to an eminencethat spread the earth below him and made of it a panorama. The brightcarnival of the autumn was spending itself to its end, but among treesalready naked stood others that clung to a gorgeousness of color themore brilliant in the face of death. Overhead was flawless blue, andthere was a dreamy violet where it merged mistily with the skylineridges.

  "All that it needs," mused the man whimsically and aloud, "is themusic of Pan's pipes--and perhaps a small chorus of dryads."

  Then he heard a laugh and, wheeling suddenly, discovered Glory Cappezeregarding him from the cap of a towering rock where, until he hadreached this level, she had been hidden from view. Now she flushedshyly as the man strode over and confronted her.

  "Do you still hate me?" he inquired.

  "I reckon thet don't make no master differ ter ye, does hit?" Themusical voice was painfully diffident, and he remembered that she hadalways been shy with him except on that first meeting when the leapinganger in her eyes had burned away self-consciousness.

  "You know," he gravely reminded her, "when I first saw you, you wereon the point of thrashing me. You had me cowed and timid. Since thenI've come to think of you as the shooting star."

  He paused, waiting for her to demand an elucidation of that somewhatobscure statement, but she said nothing. She only sat gazing over hishead toward the horizon, and her cheeks were excitedly flushed fromthe delicate pink of apple bloom to the warmer color of peachblossom.

  "Since you don't ask what I mean," he continued easily, "I shall tellyou. I've been to your house perhaps four or five times. From afar,each time, I've seen a scrap of color. Sometimes it has been blue,sometimes red, but always it has vanished with the swiftness of ashooting star. It is a flash and it is gone. Sometimes from beyond adoor I also hear a voice singing."

  He leaned his elbows on the rock at her feet and stood gazing into theeyes that would not meet his own, and still she favored him with noresponse. After a little silence the man altered his tone and spokeargumentatively:

  "You forgave the dog, you know--why not the man?"

  That question carried her thoughts back to the murdered quail and agusty back-flash of resentment conquered her diffidence. Her sternnessof tone and the thrushlike softness of her voice, mingled with thepiquancy of paradox.

  "A dawg don't know no better."

  "Some dogs are very wise," he assured her. "And some men veryfoolish."

  "The dawg," she went on still unplacated, "got right down on hisstomach and asked my pardon. I _hed_ ter fergive him, when he humbledhisself like that."

  "I'm willing," John Spurrier amiably assured her, "to get right downon my stomach, too."

  Then she laughed, and though she sought to retreat again into heraloofness, the spell was broken.

  "Am I forgiven?" he demanded, and she shook her head doubtfully thoughno longer with conviction.

  "No," she told him; then she added with a startlingly exact mimicry ofher father's most legalistic manner: "No. The co'te will take the caseunder advisement an' defer jedgment."

  "I forgot," he said, "that you are a lawyer's daughter. What were youlooking at across there--so fascinatedly?"

  "Them hills," she enlightened succinctly.

  Spurrier studied her. Her deep eyes had held a glow of almostprayerful enchantment for which her laconic words seemed inadequate.

  Watching her out of the tail of his eye he fell into borrowed phrases:"'Violet peaks uplifted through the crystal evening air.'"

  She shot a glance at him suddenly, eagerly; then at once the lidslowered, masking the eyes again as she inquired:

  "Thet thar's poetry, ain't hit?"

  "I'm prepared to go to the mat with any critic who holds thecontrary," he assured her.

  "Hit's comin' on ter be night. I've got ter start home," sheirrelevantly announced, as she slid from her rough throne, and the manfell boldly in step at her side.

  "When your honor rules on the matter under advisement," he saidhumbly before their paths separated, "please remember that thedefendant was a poor wretch who didn't know he was breaking the law."

  For the first time their glances engaged fully and without avoidance,and a twinkle flashed in the girl's pupils.

  "_Ignorantia legis neminem excusat_," she serenely responded, andSpurrier gasped. Here was a girl who could not steer her Englisharound the shoals of illiteracy, giving him his retort in Latin:"Ignorance of the law excuses no one." Of course, it meant only thather quick memory had appropriated and was parroting legal phraseslearned from her father, but it struck the chord of contrasts, and tothe man's imagination it dramatized her so that when she had gone onwith the lissome grace of her light stride, he stood looking afterher.

  Rather abruptly after that the autumn fires of splendor burned out tothe ashes of coming winter, and then it was that Spurrier went north.As his train carried him seaward he had the feeling that it was alsotransporting him from an older to a younger century, and that whilehis mind dwelt on the stalwart and unsophisticated folk with whom hehad been brushing shoulders, the life resolved itself into an austerepicture against which the image of Glory stood out with the quickvividness of a red cardinal flitting among somber pine branches.

  Because she was so far removed from his own orbit he could think ofher impersonally and enjoy the thought as though it were of a new typeof flower or bird, recognizing her attractive qualities in a detachedfashion.

  As Spurrier gave himself up to the relaxation of reminiscence withthat abandon of train travel which admits of no sustained effort, hebegan comparing this life, left over from another era, with that hehad known against more cultivated and complex backgrounds.

  Then in analytical mood he reviewed his own past, looking with alengthening of perspective on the love affair that had been broken byhis court-martial. His adoration of the Beverly girl had been youthfulenough to surround itself with young illusions.

  That was why it had all hurt so bitterly, perhaps, with its rippingaway of his faith in romantic conceptions of love-loyalty.

  He wondered now if he had not borne himself with the Quixoticmartyrdom of callowness. He had sought to shield the girl from eventhe realization that her lack of confidence was ungenerous. He hadsought to take all the pain and spare her from sharing it. But she hadsolaced herself with a swift recovery and a new lover, and had he beenguilty she could not have abandoned him more cavalierly. Well, thatsoftness belonged to an out-grown stage of development.

  He had seen himself then as obeying the dictates of chivalry. Hethought of it now as inexperienced folly--perhaps, so far as she wasconcerned, as a lucky escape. His amours of the present were not sonaively conducted. To Vivian he had paid his attentions with an eyewatchful of material advantages. They belonged to a sophisticatedcircle which seasoned life's fare rather with the salt of cynicismthan with the sugar of romanticism. Yet the thought of Vivian causedno pulse to flutter excitedly.

  The glimpse of Glory had been refreshing because she was so honest andsincere that she disquieted one's acquired cynicism of viewpoint. Onemight as well spout world-wisdom to a lilac bush as to Glory! Yetthere was a sureness about her which argued for her creed ofwholesome, simple things and old half-forgotten faiths which one wouldlike to keep alive--if one could.

  Sn
ow drifted in the air and made a nimbus about each arc light asSpurrier's taxi, turning between the collonade pillars of thePennsylvania Station, gave him his first returning glimpse of NewYork. He had come East in obedience to a wired summons from MartinHarrison, brief to curtness as were all business messages from thatman of few and trenchant words. The telegram had been slow crossingthe mountain, but Spurrier had been prompt in his response.

  A tempered glare hung mistily above the Longacre Square districtthrough the snow flurries to the north, and the rumbled voice of thetown, after these months in quiet places, was to the returned pilgrimlike the heavy breathing of a monster sleeping out a fever.

  At the room that he kept at his club in Fifth Avenue--for that was apart of the pretentious display of affluence made necessary by hisambitious scheme of things--he called up a number from memory. It wasa number not included in the telephone directory, and, recognizing thevoice that answered him, he said briefly:

  "Manners, this is Mr. Spurrier. Will you tell Mr. Harrison I'm on thewire?"

  "Hello, Spurrier," boomed a deep voice after an interval. "We'redining out this evening and we go to the opera afterward, but I want aword with you to-night. In fact, I want you to start for Russia onWednesday. Drop into our box, and drive home with me for a few minutesafterward."

  Russia on Wednesday! Spurrier's unoccupied hand clenched inirritation, but his voice was as unruffled as if he had been asked tomake ready for a journey to Hoboken. He knew enough of Harrison'smethods to ask no questions. If they could have been answered over thephone Harrison could have found many men to send to Russia. It wasbecause they were for his ear alone that he had been called to NewYork.

  That evening he listened to "Otello" with thoughts that wandered fromthe voices of the singers. They refused even to be chained by thenovelty of a slender tenor as a new Russian star held the spotlight.He was studying the almost too regular beauty of Vivian Harrison'sprofile as she sat serene and self-confident with the horseshoe of theMetropolitan beyond her.

  At midnight Spurrier sat with Harrison in his study and listened to acrisp summarizing of the Russian scheme. It proved to be a projectboldly conceived on a broad scale and requiring an ambassadordependable enough and resourceful enough to decide large matters asthey arose, without cabling for instructions.

  In turn Spurrier talked of his own past doings, and through theircigar smoke the seeming idleness of those weeks assayed a wealth ofexact information and stood revealed as the incubation period of alarge conception. Keenly formulated plans emerged from his recitals sosimply and convincingly that the greater financier leaned forward andlet his cigar die.

  Then Harrison rose and paced the room.

  "You know something about me, Spurrier," he began. "When I came Eastthey laughed at me--if they deigned to notice me at all. They said:'Here comes a bushleaguer who thinks he's good enough for the biggame. It's one more lamb to the shearing shed.' That's the East,Spurrier! That's cocksure New York! They sneer at a Western-bredhorse--or a Western-trained prize fighter--and when the newcomer licksthe best they've got they straightway let out a holler that theytaught him all he knows. Why, New York would die of lassitude andanaemia if it wasn't for blood infusions from the provinces!"

  Spurrier gazed interestedly at the tall figure of the man withthe sandy red mustache, and the snapping eyes, who for all hisimpeccability of evening dress, might have taken a shovel orpick from a section hand and taught him how to level a road bed.Harrison laughed shortly.

  "They haven't inhaled me so far. I brought only a million with me tothis town, and I've got--well, I've got plenty, but I can't call it aday quite yet. There's one buccaneer to be settled with first! He'sgot to go to the mat with me and come up bloody enough to admit thathe's been in a ruction. He chooses to pretend that I'm nonexistent,and I won't stand being ignored! I want to leave my mark on that man,and with God's help--and yours--I'm going to do it!"

  "You mean Trabue?" asked Spurrier, and Harrison's head gave a decisivejerk of affirmation while the hot glow of his eyes made his companionthink of smelting furnaces.

  "That's why this thing of yours interests me. That's why I'm willingto get behind you and back you to the hilt," the big fellow of financewent on. "A. O. and G. are trying to hold others out of this Kentuckyfield. That proves that they think enough of it to be hurt by havingit torn from their teeth. All I need to know is what will hurt them!If you can take some teeth along with the bone, so much the better."He paused, then in a voice that had altered to cold steadiness,commanded: "Now, give me your facts."

  "At present prices of oil," summarized Spurrier, "the developmentback of Hemlock Mountain wouldn't pay. With higher market values, it_would_ pay, but less handsomely than other fields A. O. and G. canwork. Once the initial cost is laid out, the profit will beconstant. The A. O. and G. idea is to hold it in reserve and awaitdevelopments--meanwhile keeping up the 'no trespass' sign."

  "Doesn't the range practically prohibit railroading?"

  "Possibly--but it doesn't prohibit pipe lines."

  Spurrier opened the packet he had brought in his overcoat pocket andspread a map under the flooding light of a table lamp.

  "I have traced there what seems to me a practical piping route," heexplained. "I call it the neck of the bottle. There is a sort of gapthrough the hills and a porous formation caused by a chain ofcaverns. Nature is willing to help with some ready-made tunnels."

  "Why haven't they discovered that?"

  "The oil development of fifteen years ago never crossed HemlockMountain. It came the other way."

  Harrison stood thinking for a time, then demanded tersely: "Have yousecured any land or options?"

  "Not an acre, nor an inch," laughed Spurrier. "This is a waiting game.I don't mean to appear interested. If any man offered to give me afarm I should say it wasn't worth State taxes."

  "How do we get the property into our hands then?"

  "The buying must be gradual and through men with whom we appear tohave no connection."

  "And the State charter--how about that?"

  "There lies the chief problem," admitted Spurrier. "The charter mustcome from a legislature that A. O. and G. can, at present, control."

  "What," Harrison shot the question out like a cross-examiner, "is thepresent attitude of the natives toward oil and oil men?"

  "Indifference and skepticism." The reply was prompt but theamplification more deliberate. "Once they saw wealth ahead--then theboom collapsed, and they have no longer any faith in the magic of theword 'oil.'"

  "I presume," suggested Harrison, "you are encouraging that disbelief?"

  Spurrier's face clouded, but only for a moment. "I am the mostskeptical of all the skeptics," he assented, "and yet I'm sorry thatthey can't be gainers. They are an honest, upstanding folk and theyhave always felt the pinch of privation. After all they are therightful owners and development of their country ought to benefitthem. Of course, though, to forecast the possibilities would kill thegame. We can't take them into our confidence without sounding awarning to the enemy."

  "Growing sentimental?" queried Harrison dryly, and the younger manshook his head.

  "No," he responded slowly, "I can't afford that--yet."

  "And see that you don't," admonished the chief sharply. "Bear in mind,as you have in the past, that we don't want to depend on men ofbrittle resolution and temperamental squeamishness. We are in thisthing toward a definite end and not as humanitarian dreamers.However----" He broke off abruptly and added in a milder voice, "Idon't have to caution you. You understand the proposition."

  For some minutes the cigar smoke floated in a silent room, whileMartin Harrison sat with the knitted brows of concentrated thought.Spurrier did not interrupt the mental process which he knew had theheat and power of an ore smelter, reducing to fluid amenability thehard metal of a stubborn proposition. He knew, too, that the fuelwhich fed the fire was his principal's animosity against Trabue,rather than the possibilities or extent of the loot. This, no lessthan the m
ountain vendetta, was, in last analysis, a personal feud andin the parlance of the Cumberlands a "war was in ther b'ilin'."

  At last Harrison straightened up and tossed away his cigar.

  "You are ambitious, Spurrier," he said. "Put this thing over and Ishould say that all your ambitions can come to realization."

  While he sat waiting Spurrier had lifted from the table a photographof Vivien, appropriately framed in silver. He had taken it up idlybecause it was a new portrait and one that he had not before seen, butinto the gesture the father read a deeper significance. It was as ifSpurrier had asked "All my ambitions?" and had emphasized his questionby laying his hands on the picture of the girl. That, thoughtHarrison, was an audacious suggestion, but it was Spurrier's audacitythat recommended him.

  Slowly the capitalist's eyes lighted into an amused smile as theirglance traveled from the younger face to the framed photograph, andslowly he nodded his head.

  "_All_ your ambitions," he repeated meaningly, then with the electricsnap of warning in his voice he added an admonition: "But don'tunderestimate the difficulties of your undertaking. You are buckingthe strongest and most relentless piracy in finance. You will incurenmities that will stop nowhere, and you must operate in a countrywhere murderers are for 'hire.'"

  The threat of personal danger just at that moment disquieted JohnSpurrier less than the other curtailment of freedom implied inHarrison's words; the tacit acceptance of him as Vivien's suitor. Itcame to him abruptly that he did not love Vivien; that he wished toremain untrammeled. Heretofore, he had always postponed matrimonialthoughts for the misty future. Now they became embarrassingly near andtangible.

  But quick on this realization followed another. Here was an offeredalliance of tremendous advantage and one not to be ignored. To beVivien's husband might fail of rapture, but to be Martin Harrison'sson-in-law meant triumph. It meant his own nomination as heir apparentand successor in that position of cardinal importance to which he hadlooked upward as to a throne.

  There was no trace of dubiety in his voice as he answered:

  "I have counted the handicaps, sir. I'm taking my chance with openeyes."