From Lexington, where Spurrier had formed strong connections, a deputy sheriff was riding in a caboose behind a special engine as fast as the roadbeds would permit. The smokestack trailed a flat line of hurrying smoke and the whistle screamed startlingly through the night. At the officer's knees, gazing up at him out of gentle eyes that belied their profession, crouched two tawny dogs with long ears--the bloodhounds that were to start from the cabin and give voice in the laurel.

Waiting for them was a torn sc.r.a.p of blue denim such as rough overalls are made of. It had been found in a brier patch where some fleeing wearer had snarled himself.

Yet two days later the deputy returned from his quest in the timber, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," he reported. "I've done my best, but it's not been good enough."

"What's the trouble?" inquired Cappeze shortly, and the officer answered regretfully:

"This country is zigzagged and criss-crossed with watercourses--and water throws the dogs off. The fugitives probably made their way by wading wherever they could. The longest run we made was up toward Wolf Pen Branch."

That was the direction, Spurrier silently reflected, of Sim Colby's house, but he made no comment.

Brother Hawkins, who was leaving that afternoon, laid a kindly hand on Spurrier's shoulder.

"Thet's bad news," he said. "But I kin give ye better. I kin almost give ye my gorrantee thet ther gal's goin' ter come through. Hit's _wantin'_ ter live thet does. .h.i.t."

Spurrier's eyes brightened out of the misery that had dulled them, and as to the failure of the chase he rea.s.sured himself with the thought that the dogs had started toward Sim Colby's house, and that he himself could finish what they had begun.

Those tawny beasts had coursed at the behest of a master who was bound by the limitations of the law, but he, John Spurrier, was his own master and could deal less formally and more condignly with an enemy to whom suspicion pointed--and there was time enough.

CHAPTER XV

And yet on that day when the bobwhites had sounded and the blow had fallen, Sim Colby was nowhere near the opportunity hound's house. He sat tippling in a mining town two days' journey away, and he had no knowledge of what went on at home. His companion was ex-Private Severance--once his comrade in arms.

The town was one of those places which discredit the march of industry by the mongrelized character of its outposts. The wild aloofness of the hills and valleys was marred there by the shacks of the camp and its sky soiled by a black reek of c.o.ke furnaces.

Filth physical and moral brooded along the unkempt streets where the foul buzz of swarming flies sounded over refuse piles, and that spirit of degradation lay no less upon the unclean tavern, where the two men who had once worn the uniform sat with a bottle of cheap whisky between them.

Colby, who had need to maintain his reputation for probity at home, made an occasional pilgrimage hither to foregather with his former comrade and loosen the galling rein of restraint. Just about the time when the attack on Spurrier's house had begun, he had leaned forward with his elbows on the table, his face heavy and his eyes inflamed, pursuing some topic of conversation which had already gained headway.

"These hyar fellers that seeks ter git rid of Spurrier," he confided, "kinderly hinted 'round thet they'd like ter git me ter do ther job for 'em, but I pretended like I didn't onderstand what they war drivin' at, no fashion at all."

"Why didn't ye hearken ter 'em?" questioned Severance practically.

"Hit hain't every day a man kin git paid fer doin' what he seeks ter do on his own hook."

But Colby grinned with a crafty gleam in his eye and poured another drink.

"What fer would I risk ther penitenshery ter do a killin' fer them fellers when, ef I jest sets still on my hunkers they'll do _mine_ fer me," he countered.

For a time after that whatever enemies Spurrier had seemed to have lost their spirit of eagerness. One might have presumed that to the rule of amity which apparently surrounded him, there was no exception--and so the mystery remained unsolved. Even blind Joe Givins made a detour in a journey to stop at Spurrier's house and sing a ballad of his own composition anent the mysterious siege and to express his indignation at the "pizen meanness" of men who would father and carry forward such infamies.

And Glory, who had penetrated so deeply into the shadow that life had seemed ended for her, was recovering. Into her pale cheeks came a new blossoming and into the smile of her lips and eyes a new light that was serene and triumphant. She had been too happy to die.

While the summer waned and the beauties of autumn began to kindle, the young wife grew strong, and her husband, seemingly, had nothing to do except to wander about the hills with her and discover in her new charms. Neighborly saws and hammers were ringing now as his place was transformed from its simple condition to the "hugest log house on seven creeks."

In some respects he wished that his fact.i.tious indolence were real, for he felt no pride in the occult fashion in which he was directing the activities of his henchmen. And yet a few months ago this progress would have been food for satisfaction--almost triumph.

His plans, as outlined to Martin Harrison were by no means at a standstill. They were going forward with an adroit drawing in and knitting together of scattered strands, and the warp and woof of this weaving were coming into definite order and pattern.

The dual necessity was: first to slip through a legislature which was supposedly under the domination of American Oil and Gas, a charter which should wrest from that concern the sweet fruits of monopoly, and secondly, to secure at paltry prices the land options that would give the prospective pipe line its right of way.

As this campaign had been originally mapped and devised it had not been simple, but now it was complicated by a new and difficult element. In those first dreams of conquest the native had been no more considered than the red Indian was considered in the minds of the new world settlers. Spurrier himself had brushed lightly aside this aspect of the affair. Every game has and must have its "suckers." And their sorry destiny it is to be despoiled. Now the very term that he had used in his thoughts, brought with it an amendment. It is not every game that must have its suckers but every bunco game.

Martin Harrison did not know it, but his lieutenant had redrawn his plans, and redrawn them in a fashion which the chief would have regarded as insubordinate, impractical and sentimental.

Spurrier intended that when the smoke cleared from the field upon which the forces of Harrison and those of Trabue had been embattled, the Harrison banners should be victoriously afloat and the Trabue standards dust trailed. But also he intended that the native land-holders, upon whom both combatants had looked as mere unfortunate onlookers raked by the cross fire of opposing artillery, should emerge as real and substantial gainers.

Of late the man had not escaped the penalty of one who faces responsibility and wields power. He had abandoned as puerile his first impulse, after his marriage, to throw up his whole stewardship to the Wall Street masters. That would have amounted only to an ostentation of virtue which would have surrendered the situation into the merciless hands of A. O. and G., and would have left the mountain folk unprotected.

Yet he could not escape the realization that he would stand with all the seeming of a traitor and a plunderer to any of his simple friends who learned of his activities--for as yet he could confide to no one the plans he was maturing.

It was when the refurnished and enlarged place had been completed that the neighbors came from valley, slope, and cove to give their blessing at the housewarming which was also, belatedly, the "infaring."

That homely, pioneer observance with which the groom brings home his bride, had not been possible after the wedding, but now Aunt Erie Toppitt had come over and prepared entertainment on a lavish if homely scale since Glory was not yet well.

To the husband as he stood greeting the guests who arrived in jeans and hodden-gray, in bright shawls and calicoes, came the feeling of contrast and unreality, as though this were all part of some play quaintly and exaggeratedly staged to reflect a medieval period. In the drawing rooms of Martin Harrison and his confreres he had moved through a social atmosphere, quiet, contained, and reflecting such a life as the dramatist uses for background in a comedy of manners.

Closing his eyes now he could see himself as he had been when, starting out for such an entertainment, he had paused before the cheval gla.s.s in his club bedroom, adding a straightening touch to his white tie, adjusting the set of his waistcoat and casting a critical eye over the impeccable black and white of his evening dress. Here, flannel shirted and booted, corduroy breeched and tanned brown, he stood by the door watching the arrival of guests who seemed to have stepped out of pioneer America or Elizabethan England. There were women riding mules or tramping long roads on foot and trailing processions of children who could not be left at home; men feeling overdressed and uncomfortable because they had donned coats and brushed their hats; even wagons plodding slowly behind yokes of oxen and one man riding a steer in lieu of a horse!

So they came to give G.o.dspeed to his marriage--and they were the only people on G.o.d's green earth who thought of him in any terms of regard save that regard which sprung from self-interest in his ability to serve beyond others!

Men who were blood enemies met here as friends, because his roof covered a zone of common friendship and under its protection their hatreds could no more intrude on such a day than could pursuit in the Middle Ages follow beyond the sanctuary gates of a cathedral. Inside sounded the minors of the native fiddlers and the sc.r.a.pe of feet "running the sets" of quaint square dances.

The labors of preparation had been onerous. Aunt Erie stood at the open door const.i.tuting, with Spurrier and his wife, a "receiving line"

of three, and her wrinkled old face bore an affectation of morose exhaustion as to each guest she made the same declaration:

"I hopes an' prays ye all enjoys this hyar party--Gawd knows _my_ back's broke."

But Spurrier had not in his letters to Harrison mentioned his marriage, and to Vivien he had not written at all. He thought they would hardly understand, and he preferred to make his announcement when he stood face to face with them, relying on the force of his own personality to challenge any criticism and proclaim his own independence of action. Just now there was no virtue in needlessly antagonizing his chief.

Among the guests who came to that housewarming was one chance visitor who was not expected. He came because the people under whose roof he was being sheltered, had "fetched him along," and he was Wharton, the man whose purpose hereabouts had set gossip winging aforetime.

It seemed to some of the local visitors that despite his entire courtesy, Spurrier did not evince any profound liking for this other "furriner," and since they had come to accept their host as a trustworthy oracle, they took the tip and were prepared to dislike Wharton, too.

That evening, while blind Joe Givins fiddled, and dancers "ran their sets" on the smooth, new floor, a group of men gathered on the porch outside and smoked. Among them for a time were both Spurrier and Wharton.

The latter raised something of a laugh when he confidently predicted that the oil prosperity, for all its former collapse and present paralysis, was not permanently dead.

"The world needs oil and there's oil here," he declared with unctuous conviction. "Men who are willing to gamble on that proposition will win out in the end."

"Stranger," responded Uncle Jimmy Litchfield, taking his pipestem from between his teeth and spitting contemptuously at the earth, "ye sees, settin' right hyar before ye a man that 'lowed he was a millionaire one time, 'count of this hyar same oil ye're discoursin' so hopeful about. Thet man's me. I'd been dirt-pore all my days, oftentimes hurtin' fer ther plum' needcessities of life. I'm mighty nigh thet pore still."

"Did you strike oil in the boom days?" demanded Wharton as he bent eagerly forward.

"I owned me a farm, them days, on t'other side ther mounting," went on the narrator, "an' them oil men came along an' wanted ter buy ther rights offen me."