The Law of Hemlock Mountain

by Hugh Lundsford

  CHAPTER X

  Across a tree-shaded public square from the courthouse and "jailhouse" at Carnettsville stood a building that wore the dejected guiseof uncomforted old age, and among the business signs nailed about itsentrance was the shingle bearing the name of "Creed Faggott, Atty. atLaw."

  The way to this oracle's sanctum lay up a creaking stairway, and on abrilliant summer day not long after Spurrier had entertained his blindguest it was climbed by that guest in person, led by the impish boywhose young mouth was stained with chewing-tobacco.

  This precocious child opened the door and led his charge in and, froma deal table, Creed Faggott removed his broganned feet and turned slyeyes upon the visitors, out of a cadaverous and furtive face.

  "You don't let no grass grow under your feet, do you, Joe?" inquiredthe lawyer shortly. "When the day rolls round, you show up withoutdefault or miscarriage." He paused as the boy led the blind man to achair and then facetiously capped his interrogation. "I reckon I don'terr in surmisin' that you've come to collect your pension?"

  The blind man gazed vacantly ahead. "Who, me?" he inquired withhalf-witted dullness.

  "Yes, you. Who else would I mean?"

  "Hit's due, ain't hit--my money?"

  "Due at noon to-day and noon is still ten minutes off. I'm not surethe company didn't make a mistake in allowing you such a generouscompensation for your accident." There was a pause, then Faggott addedargumentatively: "Your damage suit would have come to naught, mostlikely."

  "Thet ain't ther way ye talked when I lawed ther comp'ny," whined theblind man. "Ye 'peared to be right ambitious ter settle outen co'te inthem days, Mr. Faggott."

  "The company didn't want the thing hanging on. They got cold feet.Well, I'll give you your check."

  "I'd ruther have hit in cash money--silver money," stipulated therecipient of the compromise settlement. "I kin count _thet_ over byther feel of hit."

  Faggott snorted his disgust but he deposited in the outstretched palmthe amount that fell due on each quarterly pay day, and the visitorthumbed over every coin and tested the edges of all with his teeth.After that, instead of rising to go, he sat silently reflective.

  "That's all, ain't it," demanded the attorney, and something like apallid grin lifted the lip corners in the blind man's ugly face.

  "Not quite all," replied Joe Givins as he shook his head. "No, thar'sone other leetle matter yit. I'd love ter hev ye write me a letter terther comp'ny's boss-man in Looeyville. I kinderly aims ter go thar an'see him."

  This time it was the attorney who, with an incredulity-freightedvoice, demanded: "Who, you?"

  "Yes, sir. Me."

  "The Louisville manager," announced Faggott loftily, "is a man ofaffairs. The company conducts its business here through its localcounsel--that's me."

  "Nevertheless an' notwithstandin', I reckon hit'll kinderly pleasurether boss-man ter talk ter _me_--when he hears what I've got ter tellhim."

  A light of greed quickened in the shyster's narrow eyes. It waspossible that Blind Joe had come by some scrap of salable information.It had been stipulated when his damage suit was settled, that heshould, paradoxically speaking, keep his blind eyes open.

  "See here, Joe," the attorney, no longer condescending of bearing,spoke now with a wheedling insistence, "if you've got any tidings,tell 'em to me. I'm your friend and I can get the matter before theparties that hold the purse strings."

  Joe Givins stretched out a wavering hand and groped before him. "Leadme on outen hyar, boy," he gave laconic command to his youthfulvarlet. "I'm tarryin' overlong an' wastin' daylight."

  "What's daylight to you, Joe?" snapped Faggott brutally, butrecognizing his mistake he, at once, softened his manner to a mollifyingtone. "Set still a spell an' let's have speech tergether--an' a littledram of licker."

  Ten minutes of nimble-witted fencing ensued between the two sonsof avarice, and at their end the blind man stumped out, carryingin his breast pocket a note of introduction to a business manin Louisville--whose real business was lobbying and directingunderground investigations--but the lawyer was no wiser than hehad been.

  And when eventually from the murky lobby of the Farmers' Haven Hotel,which sits between distillery warehouses in Louisville, the shabbymountaineer was led to the office building he sought, he was receivedwhile more presentable beings waited in an anteroom.

  It chanced that on the same day John Spurrier spoke to Dyke Cappeze ofGlory.

  "When we went fishing," he said, "I asked her whether she never felt acuriosity for the things beyond the ridges--and her eagerness startledme."

  An abrupt seriousness overspread the older face and the answeringvoice was sternly pitched.

  "I should be profoundly distressed, sir," said Cappeze, "to havediscontent brought home to her. I should resent it as unfriendly anddisloyal."

  "And yet," Spurrier's own voice was quickened into a more argumentativetimber, "she has a splendid vitality that it's a pity to crush."

  "She has," came the swift retort, "a contented heart which it's a pityto unsettle."

  The elder eyes hardened and looked out over the wall of obstinacy thathad immured Dyke Cappeze's life, but his words quivered to a tremor ofdeep feeling.

  "I've given her an education of sorts. She knows more law than somejudges, and if she's ignorant of the world of to-day she's got abowing acquaintance with the classics. I'm not wholly selfish. Ifthere was some one--down below that I could send her to--some one whowould love her enough because she needs to be loved--I'd stay herealone, and willingly, despite the fact that it would well-nigh killme." He paused there and his eyes were broodingly somber, then almostfiercely he went on: "I would trust her in no society where she mightbe affronted or belittled. I would rather see her live and die here,talking the honest, old crudities of the pioneers, than have herventure into a life where she could not make her own terms."

  "Perhaps she could make her own terms," hazarded Spurrier, and theother snapped his head up indignantly.

  "Perhaps--yes--and perhaps not. You yourself are a man of the world,sir. What would--one of your own sort--have to offer her out there?"

  Under that challenging gaze the man from the East found himselfflushing. It was almost as though under the hypothetical form of thequestion, the father had bluntly warned him off from any interferenceunless he came as an avowed suitor. He had no answer and again thelawyer spoke with the compelling force of an ultimatum.

  "She must stay here with me, who would die for her, until she goes tosome man who offers her everything he has to offer; some man who woulddie for her, too." His voice had fallen into tenderness, but a sternring went with his final words. "Meanwhile, I stand guard over herlike a faithful dog. I may be old and scarred but, by God, sir, I amvigilant and devoted!" He waved his thin hand with a gesture ofdismissal for a closed subject, and in a changed tone added:

  "I've recently heard of two other travelers riding through--and theyhave taken up several land options."

  "What meaning do you read into it, Mr. Cappeze?"

  The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. If he had no explanation to offer,it was plain that he did not regard the coming of the strangers asmeaningless.

  "I'm going," said Spurrier casually, "to make a trip up Snake Fork tothe head of Little Quicksand. Is there any one up there I can call onfor lodging and information?"

  The lawyer shook his head. "It's a mighty rough country and sparselysettled. You'll find a lavish of rattlesnakes--and a few unletteredhumans. There's a fellow up there named Sim Colby who might shelteryou overnight. He lives by himself, and has a roof that sheds therain. It's about all you can ask."

  "It's enough," smiled Spurrier, and a few days later he found himselfclimbing a stiff ascent toward a point where over the tree-tops athread of smoke proclaimed a human habitation.

  He was coming unannounced to the house of Sim Colby, but if he hadexpected his visit to be an entire surprise he was mistaken, and if hehad known the agitation that went a little way ahead of him, he
wouldhave made a wide detour and passed the place by.

  Sim was hoeing in his steeply pitched field when he saw and recognizedthe figure which was yet a half-hour's walk distant, by themeanderings of the trail. The hoe fell from his hand and his posturestiffened so inimically that the hound at his feet rose and bristled,a low growl running half smothered in its throat.

  Doubtless, Colby reasoned, Spurrier was coming to his lonely housewith a purpose of venom and punishment, yet he walked boldly and tothe outward glance he seemed unarmed. Hence it must be that in theformer army officer's plan lay some intent more complex than mereopen-and-shut meeting and slaying: some carefully planned and guilefulclimax to be approached by indirection. Very well, he would also playthe game out, burying his suspicion under a guise of artlessness, butwatching every move--and when the moment came striking first.

  At a brook, as he hastened toward his house by a short cut, he kneltto drink, for his throat was damnably dry, and in the clear water thepasty pallor and terror of his face was given back to him, and warnedhim. But also the mirroring brought another thought and the thoughtfathered swift action. In the army he had been spare and clean-shavenand a scar had marked his chin. Now he was bearded. He carried abeefier bulk and an altered appearance.

  Could there be any possibility of Spurrier's failing to recognizehim--of his having been, after all, ignorant of his presence here?

  Yet his eyes would be recognizable. They were arrestingly distinctive,for one of them was pale-blue and the other noticeably grayish.

  By the path he was following, stalks of Jimson weed grew rank, andSim, rising from his knees, pulled off a handful of leaves and crushedthem between his palms. When he had reached the house his first actionwas to force from this bruised leafage a few drops of liquid into asaucer and this juice he carefully injected into his eyes.

  Then he went to the door and squinted up at the sun. It would befifteen minutes before Spurrier would arrive and fifteen minutes mightbe enough. He half closed his eyes, because they were stingingpainfully, and sat waiting, to all appearances indolent andthoughtless.

  Spurrier plodded on, measuring the distance to the smoke thread untilhe came in view of the cabin itself, then he approached slowly sincethe stiff climb had winded him.

  Now he could see the shingle roof and the log walls, trailed over withmorning-glory vines, and in the door the slouching figure of a man. Hecame on and the native rose lazily.

  "My name's John Spurrier," called out the traveler, "and LawyerCappeze cited you to me as a man who might shelter me overnight."

  The man who had deserted chewed nonchalantly on a grass straw andregarded the other incuriously--which was a master bit of dissembling.Between them, it seemed to Sim Colby who had once been Private Grant,lay the body of a murdered captain. Between them, too, lay the guiltof his assassination. To the Easterner's appraisal this heavy-setmountaineer with unkempt hair and ragged beard was merely a local typeand yet in one respect he was unforgettable.

  It was his eyes. They were arrestingly uncommon eyes and, once seen,they must be remembered. What was the quality that made one noticethem so instantly, Spurrier questioned himself. Then he realized.

  They were inkily black eyes, but that was not all. There seemed to bein them no line of demarcation between iris and pupil--only liquidpools of jet.

  The two men sat there as the shadows lengthened and talked "plumbfriendly" as Colby later admitted to himself. They smoked Spurrier's"fotched-on" tobacco and drank native distillation from the demijohnthat Colby took down from its place on a rafter. Yet the host wasfilling each tranquilly flowing minute with the intensive planning ofa hospitality that was, like Macbeth's, to end in murder.

  Spurrier would sleep in an alcovelike room which could be locked fromthe outside. Back through the brush was a spot of quicksand where abody would leave no trace. One thing only troubled the planning brain.He wished he could learn just who knew of his guest's coming here;just what precautions that guest had taken before embarking on such aventure.

  From outside came a shout, interrupting these reflections, and Sim wasat once on his feet facing the front door, with a surreptitious handinside his shirt, and one eye covertly watching Spurrier, even as helooked out. A snarl, too, drew his lips into an unpleasant twist.

  The Easterner put down to mountain caution the amazing swiftness withwhich the other had come from his hulking proneness to upstandingalertness. But with equal rapidity, Sim's pose relaxed into ease andhe shouted a welcome as the door darkened with a figure physicallysplendid in its spare strength and commanding height.

  Spurrier rose and found himself looking into a face with most engagingeyes and teeth that flashed white in smiling.

  For a moment as the newcomer gazed at Sim Colby his expressionmirrored some sort of surprise and his lips moved as if to speak, butSpurrier could not see, because Colby's back was turned, the warningglance that shot between the two, and the big fellow's lips closedagain without giving utterance to whatever he had been on the point ofsaying--something to do with eyes that had mystifyingly changed theircolor.

  "Mister Spurrier, this hyar's Sam Mosebury," announced the host."Mebby ye mout of heered tell of him."

  Spurrier nodded. So this was the outlaw against whose terrorism oldCappeze had broken his Quixote lances, the windmill that had unhorsedhim; the man with a criminal record at which a wild region trembled.

  "I've heered tell of Mr. Spurrier, too," vouchsafed the murdererequably. "He's a friend of old Dyke Cappeze's."

  The "furriner" made no denial. Though he had been sitting with hishead in the jaws of death ever since he entered this door, it had beenwithout any presentiment of danger. Now he felt the menace of thisterrorist's presence, and that menace was totally fictitious.

  "Mr. Cappeze has befriended me," he answered stiffly. "I reckon that'snot a recommendation to you, is it?"

  The man who had newly entered laughed. He drew a chair forward andseated himself.

  "I reckon, Mr. Spurrier, hit ain't none of my business one way nert'other," he said. "Anyhow, hit ain't no reason why you an' me kain'tbe friends, is hit?"

  "It doesn't make any difficulty with me," laughed Spurrier in relief,"if it doesn't with you."

  Sam Mosebury looked at him, then his voice came with a dry chuckle ofhumor.

  "Over at my dwellin' house," he announced with a pleasant drawl, "I'vegot me a pet mockin'-bird--an' I've got me a pet cat, too. Ther threeof us meks up ther fam'ly over thar."

  Spurrier looked at the strong-featured face as he prompted, "Yes?"

  "Waal," Sam Mosebury waved his hand, and even his gestures had aspacious bigness about them, "ef God Almighty didn't see fit ferthet thar bird an' thet thar cat ter love one another--I don't seekter alter His plan. Nonetheless I sets a passel of store by both of'em." He filled his pipe, then his words became musing, possiblyallegorical. "Mebby some day I'll _ree_lax a leetle mite too much inwatchin' an' then I reckon ther cat'll kill ther bird--but thet'saccordin' ter nature, too, an' deespite I'll grieve some, I won'tdisgust ther cat none."

  That night Spurrier lay on the same shuck-filled mattress with theman whom the law had not been strong enough to hang, and for awhile he remained wakeful, reflecting on the strangeness of hisbed-fellowship.

  But, had he known it, his life was saved that night because themurderer had arrived and provided an interfering presence when theplans on foot required solitude.