CHAPTER IV

THE WHIPPING

Scarce had the words fallen from his lips when there sounded a slow, heavy step on the stair outside. The young girl s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand free and caught Nathaniel by the wrist.

"It is the king!" she whispered excitedly. "It is the king! Quick--you still have time! You must go--you must go--"

She strove to pull him across the room.

"There--through that door!" she urged.

The slowly ascending steps were half way up the stairs. Nathaniel hesitated. He knew that a moment before there had pa.s.sed through that door one who carried with her the odor of lilac and his heart leaped to its own conclusion who that person was. He had heard the rustle of the girl's skirt. He had seen the last inch of the door close as Strang's wife pulled it after her. And now he was implored to follow! He sprang forward as the heavy steps neared the landing. His hand was upon the latch--when he paused. Then he turned and bent his head close down to the girl.

"No, I won't do it, my dear," he whispered. "Just now it might make trouble for--her."

He lifted his eyes and saw a man looking at him from the doorway. He needed no further proof to a.s.sure him that this was Strang the king of the Mormons, for the Beaver Island prophet was painted well in that region which knew the grip and terror of his power. He was a ma.s.sive man, with the slow slumbering strength of a beast. He was not much under fifty; but his thick beard, reddish and crinkling, his s.h.a.ggy hair, and the full-fed ruddiness of his face, with its foundation of heavy jaw, gave him a more youthful appearance. There was in his eyes, set deep and so light that they shone like pale blue gla.s.s, the staring a.s.surance that is frequently born of power. In his hand he carried a huge metal-k.n.o.bbed stick.

In an instant Nathaniel had recovered himself. He advanced a step, bowing coolly.

"I am Captain Plum, of the sloop _Typhoon_," he said. "I called at your home a short time ago and was directed to your office. As a stranger on the island I did not know that you had an office or I would have come here first."

"Ah!"

The king drew his right foot back half a pace and bowed so low that Nathaniel saw only the crown of his hat. When he raised his head the aggressive stare had gone out of his eyes and a welcoming smile lighted up his face as he advanced with extended hand.

"I am glad to see you, Captain Plum."

His voice was deep and rich, filled with that wonderful vibratory power which seems to strike and attune the hidden chords of one's soul. The man's appearance had not prepossessed Nathaniel, but at the sound of his voice he recognized that which had made him the prophet of men. As the warm hand of the king clasped his own Captain Plum knew that he was in the presence of a master of human destinies, a man whose ponderous red-visaged body was simply the crude instrument through which spoke the marvelous spirit that had enslaved thousands to him, that had enthralled a state legislature and that had hypnotized a federal jury into giving him back his freedom when evidence smothered him in crime. He felt himself sinking in the presence of this man and struggled fiercely to regain himself. He withdrew his hand and straightened himself like a soldier.

"I have come to you with a grievance, Mr. Strang," he began. "A grievance which I feel sure you will do your best to right. Perhaps you are aware that some little time ago--about two weeks back--your people boarded my ship in force and robbed me of several thousand dollars'

worth of merchandise."

Strang had drawn a step back.

"Aware of it!" he exclaimed in a voice that shook the room. "Aware of it!" The red of his face turned purple and he clenched his free hand in sudden pa.s.sion. "Aware of it!" He repeated the words, this time so gently that Nathaniel could scarcely hear them, and tapped his heavy stick upon the floor. "No, Captain Plum, I was not aware of it. If I _had_ been--" He shrugged his thick shoulders. The movement, and a sudden gleam of his teeth through his beard, were expressive enough for Nathaniel to understand.

Then the king smiled.

"Are you sure--are you _quite_ sure, Captain Plum, that it was my people who attacked your ship? If so, of course you must have some proof?"

"We were very near to Beaver Island and many miles from the mainland,"

said Nathaniel. "It could only have been your people."

"Ah!"

Strang led the way to a table at the farther end of the room and motioned Nathaniel to a seat opposite him.

"We are a much persecuted people, Captain Plum, very much persecuted indeed." His wonderful voice trembled with a subdued pathos. "We have answered for many sins that have never been ours, Captain Plum, and among them are robbery, piracy and even murder. The people along the coasts are deadly enemies to us--who would be their friends; they commit crimes in our name and we do not retaliate. It was not my people who waylaid your vessel. They were fishermen, probably, who came from the Michigan sh.o.r.e and awaited their opportunity off Beaver Island. But I shall investigate this; believe me, I shall investigate this fully, Captain Plum!"

Nathaniel felt something like a great choking fist shoot up into his throat. It was not a sensation of fear but of humiliation--the humiliation of defeat, the knowledge of his own weakness in the hands of this man who had so quickly and so surely blocked his claim. His quick brain saw the futility of argument. He possessed no absolute proof and he had thought that he needed none. Strang saw the flash of doubt in his face, the hesitancy in his answer; he divined the working of the other's brain and in his soft voice, purring with friendship, he followed up his triumph.

"I sympathize with you," he spoke gently, "and my sympathy and word shall help you. We do not welcome strangers among us, for strangers have usually proved themselves our enemies and have done us wrong. But to you I give the freedom of our kingdom. Search where you will, at what hours you will, and when you have found a single proof that your stolen property is among my people--when you have seen a face that you recognize as one of the robbers, return to me and I shall make rest.i.tution and punish the evil-doers."

So intensely he spoke, so filled with reason and truth were his words, that Nathaniel thrust out his hand in token of acceptance of the king's terms. And as Strang gripped that hand Captain Plum saw the young girl's face over the prophet's shoulder--a face, white as death in its terror, that told him all he had heard was a lie.

"And when you have done with my people," continued the king, "you will go among that other race, along the mainland, where men have thrown off the restraints of society to give loose reign to l.u.s.t and avarice; where the Indian is brutified that his wife may be intoxicated by compulsion and prost.i.tuted by violence before his eyes; where the forest cabins and the streets of towns are filled with half-breeds; where there stalk wretches with withered and tearless eyes, who are in nowise troubled by recollection of robbery, rape and murder. And _there_ you will find whom you are looking for!"

Strang had risen to his feet. His eyes blazed with the fire of smothered hatred and pa.s.sion and his great voice rolled through his beard, tremulous with excitement, but still deep and rich, like the booming of some melodious instrument. He flung aside his hat as he paced back and forth; his s.h.a.ggy hair fell upon his shoulders; huge veins stood out upon his forehead--and Nathaniel sat mute as he watched this lion of a man whose great throat quivered with the power that might have stirred a nation--that might have made him president instead of king. He waited for the thunder of that throat and his nerves keyed themselves to meet its bursting pa.s.sion. But when Strang spoke again it was in a voice as soft and as gentle as a woman's.

"Those are the men who have vilified us, Captain Plum; who have covered us with crimes that we have never committed; who have driven our people into groups that they may be free from depredation; who watch like vultures to despoil our women; wild wifeless men, Captain Plum, who have left families and character behind them and who have sought the wilderness to escape the penalties of law and order. It is they who would destroy us. Go among my own people first, Captain Plum, and find your lost property if you can; and if you can not discover it where in seven years not one child has been born out of wedlock, seek among the Lamanites--and my sheriffs shall follow where you place the crime!"

He had stretched out his arms like one whose plea was of life and death; his face shone with earnestness; his low words throbbed as if his heart were borne upon them for the inspection of its truth and honor. He was Strang the tragedian, the orator, the conqueror of a legislature, a governor, a dozen juries--and of human souls. And as he stood silent for a moment in this att.i.tude Nathaniel rose to his feet, subservient, and believing as others had believed in the fitness of this man. But as his eyes traveled a dozen paces beyond, he saw the young girl gesturing to him in that same terror, and holding up for him to see a slip of paper upon which she had written. And when she had caught his eyes she crumpled the paper into a shapeless ball and tossed it just over the landing to the ground below the stair.

"I thank you for the privileges of the island which you have offered me," said Nathaniel, putting on his hat, "and I shall certainly take advantage of your kindness for a few hours, as I want very much to witness one of your ceremonies which I understand is to take place to-day. Then, if I have discovered nothing, I shall return to my ship."

"Ah, you wish to see the whipping?" The king smiled his approval. "That is one way we have of punishing slight misdemeanors in our kingdom, Captain Plum. It is an ill.u.s.tration of our intolerance of evil-doers."

He turned suddenly toward the girl. "Winnsome, my dear, have you copied the paper I was at work on? I wish to show it to Captain Plum."

He walked slowly toward her and for the first time since her warning Nathaniel had an opportunity of observing the girl without fear of being perceived by the prophet. She was very young, hardly more than a child he would have guessed at first; and yet at a second and more careful glance he knew that she could not be under fifteen--perhaps sixteen. Her whole attire was one to add to her childish appearance. Her hair, which was rather short, fell in l.u.s.trous dark curls about her face and upon her neck. She wore a fitted coat-like blouse, and knee skirts which disclosed a pretty pair of legs and ankles. As Strang was returning with the paper which she handed to him the girl turned her face to Captain Plum. Her mouth was formed into a round red O and she pointed anxiously to where she had thrown the note. The king's eyes were on his paper and Nathaniel nodded to a.s.sure her that he understood.

"I am like a gardener who compels every pa.s.sing neighbor to go into his back yard and admire his first sprouts," laughed the prophet jovially.

"In other words, I do a little writing, and I take a kind of childish joy in making other people read it. But I see this is not in proper shape, so you have escaped. It is a brief history of Beaver Island written at the request of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute, which has already published an article of mine. If you happen to be on the island to-morrow and should you return to this office I shall certainly have you read it if I have to call all of my sheriffs into service!"

He laughed with such open good-humor that Nathaniel found himself smiling despite the varied unpleasant sensations within him. "Do you write much?" he asked.

"I get out a daily paper," said the king rather proudly, "and of course, as prophet, I am the translator of what word may be handed down to us from Heaven for the direction and commandment of my people. I hold the secret of the Urim and Thummin, which was first delivered by angels into the hands of Joseph, and with it have revealed the word of G.o.d as it appears in a book which I have written. Ah--I had forgotten this!" From among a ma.s.s of papers and books on the table he drew forth a blue-covered pamphlet and pa.s.sed it to his companion. "I have only a few copies left but you may have this one, Captain Plum. It will surely interest you. In it I have set forth the troubles existing between my own people and the cyprian-rotted criminals that infest Mackinac and the mainland and have described our struggle for chast.i.ty and honor against these human vultures. It was published two years ago. But conditions are different to-day. Now--now I am king, and the oppressors in the filth of their crime have become the oppressed!"

The last words boomed from him in a slogan of triumph and as if in echoing mockery there came from the open door the chuckling, mirthless laugh of Obadiah Price.

"Yea--yea--even into the land of the Lamanites are you king!"

At the sound of his voice Strang turned toward him and the sonorous triumph that rumbled in his throat faded to a low greeting. And Nathaniel saw that the little old councilor's eyes glittered boldly as they met the prophet's and that in their glance was neither fear nor servitude but rather a light as of master meeting master. The two advanced and clasped hands and a few low words pa.s.sed between them while Nathaniel went to the door.

"I will go with you, Captain Nathaniel Plum," called Obadiah. "I will go with you and show you the town."

"The councilor will be your friend," added Strang. "To-day he carries with him that authority from the king."

He bowed and Nathaniel pa.s.sed through the door. Looking back he caught a last warning flash from the girl's eyes. As he hurried down the stair he heard the councilor pause for an instant upon the landing and taking advantage of this opportunity he picked up the bit of crumpled paper, and read these lines:

"Hurry to your ship. In another hour men will be watching for an opportunity to kill you. You will never leave the island alive--_unless you go now_. The girl you saw through the window sends you this warning."

He thrust the paper into his coat pocket as Obadiah came up behind him.

"Ho, ho, Nat, my boy, I have come fast to catch you--I have come fast!"

he whispered. He caught his companion by the arm and Nathaniel felt his hand trembling violently. "Come this way, Nat--beyond the temple. I have things to say to you." His voice was strangely unnatural and when Captain Plum looked down into his face the look in the bead-like eyes startled him. "Nat, you must hurry away with the package!"