The Law of Hemlock Mountain

by Hugh Lundsford

  CHAPTER XIII

  The window through whose broken pane Glory had dispatched herfeathered messenger could not be seen into from the exterior. That wasa temporary handicap for the besiegers and one upon which, in alltheir forethought, they had not calculated. It happened that at thishour of the afternoon the slanting sun struck blindingly upon theglass that still remained unbroken and confused the ambushed eyes thatraked the place from advantageous points along the upper slopes.

  So when Glory had risen there for an instant, against the windowitself, the vigilant assassins had been able to make out only theunidentified shadow of a figure moving there, and upon that figure, atpoint-blank range, they had loosed their volley. Whose figure it wasthey could not tell, and since they believed their intended victim tobe alone they did not question. In the confusion of the instant, withthe glare on windowpanes, they missed the spot of light that rosephoenixlike as the pigeon took flight. The frightened bird mountedskyward unnoted and flustered by the bellowing of so much gunnery.

  But Spurrier's shout of horror was heard by the besiegers andmisinterpreted as a cry wrung from him under a mortal wound.

  The assailants had not seen nor suspected Glory's approach because shehad come from the front, and had arrived before they, drawing in fromthe rear and sides, had reached their stations commanding a completeoutlook. They had assumed their victim to be in solitary possessionand now they also assumed him to be helpless--perhaps already dead.

  Yet they waited, following long-revered precepts of wariness,before going onward across the open stretch of the dooryard for anultimate investigation. He might die slowly--and hard. He mighthave left in him enough fight to take a vengeful toll of the oncomingattackers--and they could afford to make haste slowly.

  So they settled down in their several hiding places and remained asinconspicuous as grass burrowing field mice. The forest cathedralwhich they defiled seemed lifeless in the hushed stillness of theafternoon as the sun rode down toward its setting.

  John Spurrier, inside the house, living where he was supposed to bedead, at first made no sound that carried out to them across thelittle interval of space.

  He was kneeling on the floor with the girl's head cradled on his kneesand in his throat sounded only smothering gasps of inarticulatedespair. These low utterances were animal-like and wrung him with theagonies of heartbreak. He thought that she must have died just afterthe whisper and the smile with which she had announced her success inher effort to save him.

  Kneeling there with the bright head inert on his corduroy-clad knee,he fancied that the smile still lingered on her lips even after shehad laid down her life for him five minutes from the time he hadforsworn her.

  Now that she was gone and he about to go, he could recognize her as aserene and splendid star shining briefly above the lurid shoddiness ofhis own grasping life--and the star had set.

  At first a profoundly stunned and torpid feeling held him numb; ablunt agony of loss and guilt, but slowly out of that wretchedparalysis emerged another thought. He was helpless to bring her backand that futility would drive him mad unless out of it could come somemotive of action.

  She was not only dead, but dead by the hands of murderers who had comeafter him--and all that remained was the effort to avenge her. Likewaters moving slowly at first but swelling into freshet power, wrathand insatiable thirst for vengeance swept him to a sort of madness.

  Here he was kneeling over the unstirring woman he had loved while outthere were the murder hirelings who had brought about the tragedy. Herclosed and unaccusing eyes, exhorting him as passionate utterancescould not have done, incited him to a frenzy. At least some of theseculprits must go unshriven, and by his own hand to the death thatinevitably awaited himself.

  And as Spurrier's flux of molten emotions seethed about thatdetermination a solidifying transition came over him and his braincleared of the blind spots of fury into the coherency of a plan.

  Out there they would wait for a while to test the completeness oftheir success. If he gave way to his passion and challenged them asinclination clamored to do, they would dispatch him at leisure.

  Just now he was willing enough to die, but entirely unwilling to diealone. He craved company and a red journey for that final crossing. Soonce more he looked down into the face on which there was no stir ofanimation, then very gently bent and kissed the quiet lips.

  "If you could come back to me," he chokingly whispered, "I'd unsayeverything, except that I love you. But if there's a meeting placebeyond, I'll join you soon--when I've made them pay for you."

  He lifted her tenderly and, through his agitation, came a suddenrealization of how light she was as he laid her gently on his armycot. After that he picked up his rifle and bulged out his pockets withcartridges.

  The cockloft above his room, which was reached by a ladder, hadwindows which were really only loopholes and from there he couldbetter see into the tangle that sheltered his enemies.

  He entertained no vain hope of rescue. He asked for no deliverance.The story drew to its ending and he meant to cap it with the oneclimax to which the last half hour had left anything of significance.Since small things become vastly portentous when written into themargin between life and death, he hoped that before he died he mightrecognize the face of at least one of the men whom he meant to takewith him across the River of Eternity.

  So, dedicating himself to that motive, he climbed the ladder.

  Peering out through first one and then the other of the loopholes ofthe cockloft, he waited, and it seemed to him that he waitedeternally. He began to fear that his self-sure attackers would contentthemselves with an inactive vigil and that after all he was to becheated.

  The sun was westering. The shadows were elongating. The sounds throughthe woods were subtly changing from the voices of day to those ofapproaching night.

  Still he waited.

  Outside also they were waiting; waiting to make sure that it was safeto go in and confirm their presumption that he had fallen.

  But when Spurrier had, in a little time as the watch recorded it,served out his purgatorial sentence, he sensed a stir in the massedbanks of the laurel and thrust his rifle barrel outward in preparationfor welcome. A moment afterward he saw a hat with a downturned brim--acoat with an upturned collar--a pair of shoulders that hunched slowlyforward with almost imperceptible movement. His mind had become acalculating machine now, functioning with deliberate surety.

  The unrecognizable figure out there was a hundred yards away and therifle he held would bore through the head under the hat crown at thatrange as a gimlet bores through a marked spot on soft pine.

  But a single shot would end the show. No one else would appear andeven the dead man would be hauled back by his heels--unidentified. Hewould wait until he could make his bag of game more worth dyingfor--more worth _her_ dying for!

  Other ages seemed to elapse before the butternut figure showedstretched at length in the tall grass outside the thicket and a secondhat appeared. Still Spurrier held his fire until three hats werevisible and the first man, having crawled to a tree trunk, had halfrisen.

  He realized that he could not much longer hold it. At any moment theymight rush the place in force of numbers, and from more than one side,smothering his defense--and once in contact with the walls they wouldneed only a lighted torch.

  So he sighted with target-range precision and fired, following theinitial effort with snap-shots at the second and third visible heads.

  He had the brief satisfaction of seeing the first man plunge forward,clawing at the earth with hands that dropped their weapon. He saw thesecond stumble, recover himself, stumble again and then start crawlingbackward with a disabled, crablike locomotion, while the third figureturned, unharmed, and ran to cover. But at the same moment he heardshouts and shots from the other side which called him instantly to theopposite loophole and, once there, kept him pumping his rifle againstwhat appeared to be a charge of confused figures that he had noleisure to inspect. They, too, f
ell back under the vigor of hispunishment, and Spurrier found himself reloading in a silence that hadcome as suddenly as the noise of the onrush.

  He had shot down two assailants, but both had been retrieved beyondsight by their confederates, and the besieged man groaned with arealization of defeated purpose. The sun was low now and soon it wouldbe too dark to see. Then the trappers would close in and take the ratout of the trap. What he failed to do while daylight lasted, he wouldnever do.

  In only one respect did his judgment fail him as he sought to forecastthe immediate future. It seemed to him that he had spent hours therein the cockloft, whereas perhaps thirty minutes had elapsed.

  He had been thinking of the pigeon, but had put aside hope as tosuccor from that agency. Old Cappeze was not interested in pigeons.The bird would go to roost in its dovecote and sit all night with itshead tucked placidly under its wing--and the plea for help unread onits leg--and the lawyer would never think of looking into thedovecote.

  Now, since he had failed and must die unavenged--for the wounding oftwo unidentified enemies failed of satisfaction--he must utilize whatwas left of life intensively. Once more before he died, he wanted tosee the face of the woman whom he had forsworn; the woman who wasworth infinitely more than the tawdry regards for which he had givenher up.

  So he went down the ladder and knelt beside the cot.

  He laid his ear close to the bosom and could have sworn that itfluttered to a half heartbeat.

  Suddenly Spurrier closed his hands over his face and for the firsttime in years he prayed.

  "Almighty Father," he pleaded, "give her back to me! Give me one otherchance--and exact whatever price Thy wisdom designates."

  * * * * *

  To Toby Austin's meager farm, which abutted on that of Dyke Cappeze,that afternoon had trudged Bud Hawkins. In all the mountain regionthereabout his name was well known and any man of whom you had askedinformation would have told you that Bud was "the poorest and therighteousest man that ever rode circuit."

  For Bud was among other things a preacher. To use his own words, "Ifarms some, I heals bodies some, an' I gospels some." And in each ofhis avocations he followed faithfully the lights of his conscience.

  His own farm lay a long way off, and now he was here as a visitor.This afternoon he fared over to the house of Dyke Cappeze as was hiscustom when in that neighborhood. He regarded Cappeze as a righteousman and a "wrastler with all evil," and he came bearing the greetingsof a brotherhood of effort.

  The sun was low when he arrived, and the old lawyer confessed to amild anxiety because of Glory's failure to return before the hourwhich her clean-cut regularity fixed as the time of starting thesupper preparations.

  "She took a carrier pigeon over to Aunt Erie Toppit's," explainedDyke, "and I looked for her back before now."

  "I sometimes 'lows, Brother Cappeze," asserted the visitor with anenthusiasm of interest, "thet in these hyar days of sin when God don'tshow Hisself in signs an' miracles no more, erbout ther clostest thingter a miracle we've got left, air ther fashion one of them birds kingo up in ther air from any place ye sots hit free at an' foller therAlmighty's finger pointin' home."

  Cappeze told him that there was just now only one pigeon in thedovecote, where the pair belonged, but that one he offered to show,and idly be led the way to the place back above the henroosts.

  It is, however, difficult for any man to sink his own absorptions inthose of another, and so it fell about that on the way Cappeze stoppedat the barn he was building and which was not yet quite complete.

  "Brother Hawkins," he said, "as we go along I want to show you thebarn I've been planning for years--and at last have nearly realized."

  In the crude, unfinished life of the hills, lean-tos and even rockledges are pressed into service as barns, but the man who has erectedan ample and sound structure for such a purpose, stamps himself as onewho "has things hung up," which is the mountain equivalent forwealth.

  "That barn," explained Cappeze, pausing before it in expansiveness ofmood, "is a thing I've wanted ever since I moved over here. A goodbarn stands for a farm run without sloven make-shift--and that onecost me well-nigh as much money as my dwelling house. I reckon itsounds foolish, but to me that building means a dream come true afterlong waiting. I've skimped myself saving to build it, and it's theapple of my eye. If I saw harm come to it, I almost think it wouldhurt me more than to lose the house I live in."

  "I reckon no harm won't come ter hit, Brother Cappeze," reassured theother. "Yit hit mout be right foresighted to insure hit erginst firean' tempest."

  "Of course I will--when it's finished," said the other as he led theway inside, and then as he played guide, he forgot the pigeons andswelled with the pride of the builder, while time that meant life anddeath went by, so that it was quite a space later that they emergedagain and went on to the destination which had first called them.

  But having arrived there, the elder man halted and his face shadowedto a disturbed perplexity.

  "That's strange," he murmured. "One pigeon's inside--the hen--andthere's the cock _trying_ to get in. It's the bird Glory took withher. It must have gotten away from her."

  "'Pears like ter me," volunteered the preacher, "hit's got somefashion of paper hitched on ter one leg. Don't ye dis'arn hit, BrotherCappeze?"

  Cappeze started as his eyes confirmed the suggestion. Hurriedly he ranup the ladder to the resting plank where the bird crooned and preeneditself, plainly asking for admittance to its closed place ofhabitation. Perhaps his excited manner alarmed the pigeon, which wouldalight on Glory's shoulder without a qualm, for as the man reached outhis hand for it, it flutteringly eluded him and took again to theair.

  But now his curiosity was aroused. Possibly Glory meant to stay thenight at Aunt Erie's and had sent him her announcement in this form.He went for grain and scattered it, and after repeated effortssucceeded in capturing the messenger.

  But when he loosened the paper and read it his face went abruptlywhite and from his lips escaped an excited "Great God!"

  He thrust the note into the preacher's hand and rushed indoors,emerging after a few minutes with eyes wildly lit and a rifle in hishands. Bud Hawkins understood, for he had read in the interval thescribbled words:

  Stopped at Jack Spurrier's house. It's surrounded. Men are shooting at us on all sides.

  Dyke Cappeze was the one man to whom Spurrier had confided both thecircumstances of his mysterious waylaying and the matter of therattlesnakes and now the father was not discounting the peril intowhich his daughter had strayed.

  "I'm going on ahead, Brother Hawkins," he announced. "I want you tosend out a general alarm and to follow me with all the armed men youcan round up." There he halted in momentary bewilderment. In thatsparsely peopled territory the hurried mustering of an adequate forceon such short order was in itself almost an impossibility. There wereno means of communication. Abruptly, the old lawyer wheeled andpointed a thin and quivering index finger toward his beloved barn.

  "There's just one way," he declared with stoical directness. "All myneighbors will come to fight a fire. I've got to set my own barn toget them here!"

  Five minutes later the structure sent up its black massed summons ofsmoke, shot with vermilion, as the shingles snapped and showedglowingly against the black background of vapor, even in thebrightness of the afternoon.

  Dyke Cappeze himself was on his way, and the preacher remaining behindwas meeting and dispatching each hurried arrival. As he did so hisvoice leaped as it sometimes leaped in the zealot's fervor ofexhortation, and he sent the men out into the fight with rifle andshotgun as trenchantly as he expounded peace from the pulpit.

  When a dozen men had ridden away, scattering gravel from gallopinghoofs, he rode behind the saddle cantle of the last, for it was nothis doctrine to hold his hand when he sent others into battle. Also hemight be needed there as a minister, a doctor, or both.

  As sunset began to wane to twilight the attackers who lay
circledabout Spurrier's cabin found themselves growing restive.

  And inside John Spurrier was a man reanimated by the faint signs oflife which he had discovered in Glory.

  A pulse still fluttered in her heart, but it throbbed flickeringly andits life spark was pallid. Every moment this malevolent pack held itscordon close was as surely a moment of strangling her faint chance asif their fingers had been physically gripping her soft throat. And hecould only kneel futilely beside her and wait!

  From his loopholes upstairs he saw once more two hats and gave theirwearers shot for shot, but when they kept their rifles popping hesuspected their purpose and dashed across the floor in time to sendthree rapidly successive bullets into a little group that had detacheditself from the timber on that side and was creeping toward the house.One crawling body collapsed and lay sprawling without motion. Twoothers ran back crouching low and were lost to sight.

  So he swung pendulumlike from side to side, firing and changing base,and when his second turn brought him to the window through which hehad shot his man, he saw that the body had already been removed fromsight.