Newt Spooner suppressed a snarl of contempt.

"By G.o.d," he muttered to himself, "ef they didn't go an' plumb miss him!"

But, as he was still growling inwardly with disgust, the attorney started to step back, reeled and crumpled limply to the floor of the platform.

CHAPTER V

After the momentary shock of sudden panic the scattered auditors began shamefacedly drifting back for inquiry and a solution.

Newt Spooner saw General Braden and a companion carrying the limp figure of the mountain lawyer down the stairway of the platform and heard them cursing the lawlessness of the mountaineers who, "having made an excursion from their own shambles were waging their d.a.m.nable war on the streets of a civilized town."

He saw the crowd opening to let out several men who bore another prostrate figure, and, as they pa.s.sed, one glance at the face, which had fallen back, loose-jawed, between the supporting arms, told him that some one had "gotten" Jake Falerin. Then he saw the town marshal, supported by half-dozen volunteer deputies, fighting for a pa.s.sage through the throng with the prisoners, whose bodies they shielded with their own. This group made its way up the stairs, and flattened itself against the court-house wall.

Behind the drawn revolvers of the guard, the late convict recognized the faces of Red Newton and his accomplice. Already the crowd, which had a moment before been in panic-stricken flight, was pressing menacingly forward, and talk of lynching ran like wildfire from mouth to mouth. The officer was brandishing his pistol, and two of the volunteers were holding aloft, in show of force, the revolvers they had taken from the captives, whom they were waiting to slip through the court-house halls to the jail. Someone had gone around to unlock the doors.

The prisoners themselves stood stoically enough with mask-like faces, and if the roar of bluegra.s.s wrath intimidated them, their eyes and lips showed no trace.

The countenance of Red Newton even wore a satirical smile as he commented to the other Spooner, loudly enough to be heard around a wide radius:

"These-here furriners air sh.o.r.e h.e.l.l-bent on law an' order, hain't they?

They're bounden fer ter have hit, even if they has ter lynch folks ter git hit."

Then the door opened, and the officer with his prisoners backed swiftly through it and slammed it in the faces of the crowd. Newt calmly walked down the stairs, and strolled along the street. At a corner, he saw Black Pete leaning nonchalantly against the wall in conversation with a farmer, who was roundly berating the violence of the mountaineers. The Deacon was chewing a wooden toothpick and regarding his chance companion with grave and respectful attention, nodding his head in approval of the sentiments expressed, but, as Newt pa.s.sed him, he fell into step, and the two walked together toward Mr. Cawsler's restaurant.

"Son," suggested the quiet giant who had arranged the little tragedy of the afternoon, "this town's going to be a right-bad place for us mountain men for a time. If I was you, I'd dig out."

"Thet's my business," retorted the other sullenly. "I've got a matter ter settle up, fust--besides I reckon I kin prove I didn't have no hand in these doin's. I was havin' speech with the policeman when hit busted loose."

The Deacon came as near smiling as he ever came. One side of his long mustache tilted up, but his eyes remained sadly grave.

"I reckon I can prove that I didn't have no part in it, either," he said easily. "But some of these Falerins have seen me around town, and I reckon they'll try to get me implicated. That Falkins crowd suspects everybody. Come in here with me a minute, son."

The Deacon turned and led the way into a saloon, already noisy with excited men having recourse to drink and discussion.

They pa.s.sed through the place and into the yard at the rear, where, after a look around to a.s.sure himself that they were alone, the older man drew a heavy revolver from under his coat.

"If they try to get me into it," he said calmly, "I'm going to make them search me. Keep my gun for me a while, if you don't mind. You were with the policeman, and they won't suspicion you."

For a moment Newt hesitated, then came the thought of his own affairs. A weapon was what, above all other things, he needed. Accordingly, he took it silently, and slipped it inside his coat, and without a word or a nod turned and walked back through the saloon, to disappear beyond its swinging screens.

When night came a two-thirds moon rode high and paled the summer stars into pin-points. Newt Spooner knew from talk on the streets that the lawyer would recover to reap greater reputation from the affair in which, even after leaving the storm of his own country, he had fallen under a mountain hand. But Jake Falerin would reap nothing from the afternoon's doings beyond an obituary in the newspapers: an obituary which would recount a sanguinary career closed with a sanguinary climax.

These matters, however, gave Newt only minor concern. He was not to be shaken from a fixed resolve by other men's hopes or disappointments.

Nightfall found him trudging out the moon-bathed turnpike between the blue and silver mists of the fields; because, though uninvited, he was going to a party. He was not going as a guest, nor yet wholly as an onlooker. If one man was not among the guests, he would turn back from the fringe of the festivity, touching it no further. If that one man was there, Newt Spooner meant to break up the party, and add a sequel to the shocking transpirings of the afternoon.

Many buggies pa.s.sed him, driving slowly, for the night was gracious with the sweet fragrance of the young summer, and the occupants of the vehicles were young, too, and no part of a summer dance is better than the going thither and the coming home. From this caravan came the music of much laughter, and now and then the lilting of a song: sounds as unaccustomed to Newt Spooner as grand opera. But the only impression made on him was the realization that he was too early; so, when he found a thick grove flanking the road, he climbed the fence and lay down under a hedge and rested. While he was stretched there in the dewy gra.s.s, he c.o.c.ked and unc.o.c.ked the revolver to make sure that, when he needed it, it would not fail him.

It was a night for lovers and lovers were availing themselves of it, but to Newt Spooner the seductive whispers through the upper branches of the oaks carried no message of peace or minstrelsy. Yet, even to him, there was a dumb sense that life here in the great "down below" was a different thing, and, as he lay there fingering the mechanism of his revolver, he could not escape a large and disturbing wonderment. The breadth of the sky made him feel small and alone in the center of vastness. At home, mountain walls rose confiningly on all sides and one looked up at a narrowed patch of stars as if from the depth of a great well. But here one could gaze away on the level of the eyes and watch the wonderful phenomenon of a heaven coming down with its stars to meet the edge of the flattened earth. At home, one would ride the dirt roads on muleback and in silence, save where the hoofs splashed along the creek-beds. But here the horses beat a sharp rat-tat with metal shoes on a metaled road, and the rubber-tired wheels ran noiselessly. These people, too, reversed the order of things even as their country reversed them. At home, almost every one was poor; here every one seemed rich, and the women, whom every mountaineer knows should be treated as inferiors, suited only to the tasks of housework and child-rearing, were treated by the men as equals. That he knew from the chatter and laughter of those who pa.s.sed in earshot, driving two and two. And what fools they all were, for surely no people who were not fools could chatter and laugh and sing!

After an hour, the buggies pa.s.sed less frequently, leaving the road free of travel, except for town-faring negroes on foot and singing. Then Newt Spooner came out from behind his hedge and made his way once more along the turnpike. What his eyes had once seen his memory retained with photographic distinctness, and as soon as he reached the beginning of the low stone fence, which he had noted that afternoon, he knew that he was drawing near the dance.

But Newt would have known that he was near his destination without the fence, for already, though blurred by the distance into an indistinct and formless spot of brightness and color, he could make out the illumination of the Chinese lanterns and there came to his ears across the softness of the night the merry strains of a band playing a two-step.

The mountain boy made a rapid survey. The house sat deeply back in the woodland, some five hundred yards from the road, but the platform, though almost directly at its front, lay nearer the farther side. The lateral fences of the woodland were lined with locust groves, giving a band of shadow along the edges. He might have crossed the fence at the nearest corner and worked his way back, but time was not an object, and so, before selecting his route, he went along the turnpike to the other side of the place for fuller reconnaissance, and found there even better and more continuous cover. Also, by taking that side, he was further from the driveway and would arrive closer to the platform without leaving the shadow. As Newt crossed into the woodland, he became invisible, thanks to the inky shade of the locusts, just now heavy with fragrance of bloom. The thickets of his own rhododendron and laurel could not have availed him more serviceably. At his left were acres of undulating bluegra.s.s, broken generously with forest trees, and between the trees lay a silver lake of open moonlight, dotted with islands of shadow. But, by following the fence line back, he could invisibly draw near to the platform, and creep still closer under the shelter of a heavy growth of lilac bushes.

Suddenly, the mountain boy's heart began to pound in a strange way. He had never been afraid of anything and he was not afraid now, but as he crept, like a woodland animal, close enough to take in details, he felt as a man might feel who finds himself pursuing an enemy on Mars. He was in a new world and one so strange to him that its very difference brought a sense of misgiving. He had been born and reared in a windowless mountain cabin of one room. His light at night had been that of crackling logs on a stone hearth and a single lamp without a chimney.

He had heard hatred of enemies preached before he could talk himself.

That his present purpose was righteous, he pa.s.sionately believed; that one should pay his blood-debt seemed axiomatic. Yet, as he looked out, he could not shake off that sense of strange uneasiness. Something was wrong. Perhaps it was simply the inarticulate realization that the scene was set for merry-making and not for tragedy. At home, it was different.

The mountains were sterner and bred sterner emotions. The darkness there seemed grimmer, too. This was not the night or place for a murder.

Criss crossed about the platform and between the trees swayed the vivid color splashes of the lanterns, like magnified and luminous confetti.

Sifting and eddying on the swaying floor went the rhythmic whirlpool of dancers. The soft colors of evening gowns, the ivory flashes of girlish shoulders and the floating of filmy scarfs dizzied the boy, who by the iron dictate of heredity and upbringing was a human rattle-snake. The strange sight of men in evening dress, their shirt-fronts gleaming like conspicuous targets, added to his bewilderment.

Between the trees pa.s.sed strolling couples whose laughter lilted musically, and, as he crept nearer in the shadow of the lilac bushes, he saw a queer little affair which was also new to him, only a few yards away. It was a rustic summer-house, over the timbers of which trailed ma.s.ses of honey-suckle, and into it, as he lay there peering sharply ahead, went a man and a girl. The man was dutifully wielding a fan after the flush of the dance and talking earnestly in a low tone, and the girl was laughing up into his face with a silvery softness so unlike the nasal voices of his own kind that Newt could make nothing of it. Nowhere was the hint of hardship: the hardship which was in his country life's dominant note. Back at the rear in the moonlight, the whitewashed barns and fences gleamed like structures of ivory.

He lay there on his stomach, his elbows on the ground and his chin in his hands, trying to search the faces of the dancers. But the dancers shifted and sifted in so bewildering a maze that even had they been nearer at hand he could hardly have identified familiar features. Then the music stopped, and he drew a breath of relief, for the platform partly emptied itself, and, as the couples came down and strolled under the lanterns, it was easier to search for the face he wanted to see.

Newt Spooner had been there perhaps an hour while waltz and two-step alternated to set the human ma.s.s he was trying to sift into fresh and maddening puzzles of rapid movement and vagueness. At the distance he had decided it was hopeless, and though the summer-house under the honey-suckle seemed a favorite retreat to which couple after couple came for a moment of rest and innocent flirtation, it had not proved a Mecca for his victim, if indeed his victim were there at all. Of this possibility he now felt a diminishing credulity. He would, nevertheless, try to slip closer for a final scrutiny and then go back to town, admitting temporary defeat. Then, as with snake-like movements he was. .h.i.tching himself forward, he suddenly stopped and crouched closer to the ground and held his intaken breath in his throbbing throat.

A new couple came out of the shadow and strolled across the patch of open moonlight toward the summer-house. The girl was she who had picked him up on the road, and the man was Henry Falkins. Even in evening dress, there was no mistaking the features, and that shirt-front was a target to even an amateur's taste.

The girl wore a filmy gown and about her bare shoulders was thrown some silky thing as iridescent as gossamer. But, unlike those others who had come there, she was not laughing.

Instead, she was looking up with a very direct gaze into the man's face, and her eyes and lips bore a somewhat wistful seriousness.

At the front of the summer-house, her companion stopped and broke a spray of bloom from the vine.

"It always reminds me of you," he told her in a soft voice. "There may be sweeter fragrances, but I doubt it. I guess that's why."

He lifted a drooping branch of leaf and bloom, and she pa.s.sed under his arm.

Newt Spooner was lying only a few yards away, but he must be closer. The ma.s.s of vine obscured his line of vision, and he had no wish to kill the girl. Behind his ambuscade of trellised supports, he could come near enough to reach his hand through and touch his victim if he chose. It was almost too simple--too easy. Yet, after all, it was a bad arrangement, though that he could not remedy. He must announce himself to the man he meant to kill, or defeat the satisfaction of revenge. To let him die without realizing why would rob the punishment of its sting.

Then the woman would doubtless make an outcry, and his chance of escape would end. Besides that there was a second objection: the girl had befriended him. He was to some extent "beholden to her." He wished now that he had refused to drive with her; but, when he had accepted her invitation, he had had no idea that his purpose could concern her, and his purpose came first.

Newt Spooner drew very near. He cautiously pulled back a branch of the honey-suckle, and looked through. The girl was sitting with her eyes downcast, and the man standing with one knee on the rough bench. He was leaning forward and his voice, though tense with earnestness, was almost a whisper. Newt might at that moment have been noisy instead of noiseless without danger of distracting the attention of that man and woman.

At home in the mountains, Henry Falkins would have been more wary, but here in the bluegra.s.s he had laid aside all thoughts of danger, as he had laid aside his high-laced boots and corduroys. He was standing at the other side of life's gamut. Enmity, for him, did not exist. The universe was filled, he believed at that moment, to the boundary of the last sentinel star with love. The night breathed it. He was breathing it, the girl's eyes were just then raised to meet his, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a light that set his pulses bounding.

"Back there in the hills," he said, "there is a place high up the mountainside that looks down on such a night as this over an ocean of silver mists in the valley. I have often gone there alone and listened to the nightingale talking about you. After this," he added joyously, "all nights will be moonlight and starlight for me, dear, if--" But there he broke off and became silent.

Newt Spooner advanced one knee a few inches, and steadied his position.

He drew the vine back a little further with his left hand, and slowly thrust his right into his coat pocket. When it came back, it held the pistol, and this Newt placed at his back, that the soft click of its c.o.c.king might be m.u.f.fled by his intervening body.