"There is undoubtedly a great deal between us, and there will be more before we reach the end."

d.i.c.k Claiborne was a perfectly frank, outspoken fellow, and this hint of mystery by a man whose character had just been boldly a.s.sailed angered him.

"Good G.o.d, man! I know as much about Chauvenet as I do about you. This thing is ugly, as you must see. I don't like it, I tell you! You've got to do more than deny a circ.u.mstantial story like that by a fellow whose standing here is as good as yours! If you don't offer some better explanation of this by to-morrow night I shall have to ask you to cut my acquaintance--and the acquaintance of my family!"

Armitage's face was grave, but he smiled as he took his hat and stick.

"I shall not be able to satisfy you of my respectability by to-morrow night, Captain Claiborne. My own affairs must wait on larger matters."

"Then you need never take the trouble!"

"In my own time you shall be quite fully satisfied," said Armitage quietly, and turned away.

He was not among the others of the Claiborne party when they got into their carriages to go to the ball. He went, in fact, to the telegraph office and sent a message to Oscar Breunig, Lamar, Virginia, giving notice of a shipment of steers.

Then he returned to the New American and packed his belongings.

CHAPTER XII

A CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS

--Who climbed the blue Virginia hills Against embattled foes; And planted there, in valleys fair, The lily and the rose; Whose fragrance lives in many lands, Whose beauty stars the earth, And lights the hearths of happy homes With loveliness and worth.

--Francis O. Ticknor.

The study of maps and time-tables is a far more profitable business than appears. John Armitage possessed a great store of geographical knowledge as interpreted in such literature. He could tell you, without leaving his room, and probably without opening his trunk, the quickest way out of Tokio, or St. Petersburg, or Calcutta, or Cinch Tight, Montana, if you suddenly received a cablegram calling you to Vienna or Paris or Washington from one of those places.

Such being the case, it was remarkable that he should have started for a point in the Virginia hills by way of Boston, thence to Norfolk by coastwise steamer, and on to Lamar by lines of railroad whose schedules would have been the despair of unhardened travelers. He had expressed his trunks direct, and traveled with two suitcases and an umbrella. His journey, since his boat swung out into Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, had been spent in gloomy speculations, and two young women booked for Baltimore wrongly attributed his reticence and aloofness to a grievous disappointment in love.

He had wanted time to think--to ponder his affairs--to devise some way out of his difficulties, and to contrive the defeat of Chauvenet.

Moreover, his relations to the Claibornes were in an ugly tangle: Chauvenet had dealt him a telling blow in a quarter where he particularly wished to appear to advantage.

He jumped out of the day coach in which he had accomplished the last stage of his journey to Lamar, just at dawn, and found Oscar with two horses waiting.

"Good morning," said Oscar, saluting.

"You are prompt, Sergeant," and Armitage shook hands with him.

As the train roared on through the valley, Armitage opened one of the suit-cases and took out a pair of leather leggings, which he strapped on.

Then Oscar tied the cases together with a rope and hung them across his saddle-bow.

"The place--what of it?" asked Armitage.

"There may be worse--I have not decided."

Armitage laughed aloud.

"Is it as bad as that?"

The man was busy tightening the saddle girths, and he answered Armitage's further questions with soldierlike brevity.

"You have been here--"

"Two weeks, sir."

"And nothing has happened? It is a good report."

"It is good for the soul to stand on mountains and look at the world. You will like that animal--yes? He is lighter than a cavalry horse. Mine, you will notice, is a trifle heavier. I bought them at a stock farm in another valley, and rode them up to the place."

The train sent back loud echoes. A girl in a pink sun-bonnet rode up on a mule and carried off the mail pouch. The station agent was busy inside at his telegraph instruments and paid no heed to the hors.e.m.e.n. Save for a few huts cl.u.s.tered on the hillside, there were no signs of human habitation in sight. The lights in a switch target showed yellow against the growing dawn.

"I am quite ready, sir," reported Oscar, touching his hat. "There is nothing here but the station; the settlement is farther on our way."

"Then let us be off," said Armitage, swinging into the saddle.

Oscar led the way in silence along a narrow road that clung close to the base of a great pine-covered hill. The morning was sharp and the horses stepped smartly, the breath of their nostrils showing white on the air.

The far roar and whistle of the train came back more and more faintly, and when it had quite ceased Armitage sighed, pushed his soft felt hat from his face, and settled himself more firmly in his saddle. The keen air was as stimulating as wine, and he put his horse to the gallop and rode ahead to shake up his blood.

"It is good," said the stolid cavalryman, as Armitage wheeled again into line with him.

"Yes, it is good," repeated Armitage.

A peace descended upon him that he had not known in many days. The light grew as the sun rose higher, blazing upon them like a brazen target through deep clefts in the mountains. The morning mists retreated before them to farther ridges and peaks, and the beautiful gray-blue of the Virginia hills delighted Armitage's eyes. The region was very wild. Here and there from some mountaineer's cabin a light penciling of smoke stole upward. They once pa.s.sed a boy driving a yoke of steers. After several miles the road, that had hung midway of the rough hill, dipped down sharply, and they came out into another and broader valley, where there were tilled farms, and a little settlement, with a blacksmith shop and a country store, post-office and inn combined. The storekeeper stood in the door, smoking a cob pipe. Seeing Oscar, he went inside and brought out some letters and newspapers, which he delivered in silence.

"This is Lamar post-office," announced Oscar.

"There must be some mail here for me," said Armitage.

Oscar handed him several long envelopes--they bore the name of the Bronx Loan and Trust Company, whose office in New York was his permanent address, and he opened and read a number of letters and cablegrams that had been forwarded. Their contents evidently gave him satisfaction, for he whistled cheerfully as he thrust them into his pocket.

"You keep in touch with the world, do you, Oscar? It is commendable."

"I take a Washington paper--it relieves the monotony, and I can see where the regiments are moving, and whether my old captain is yet out of the hospital, and what happened to my lieutenant in his court-martial about the pay accounts. One must observe the world--yes? At the post-office back there"--he jerked his head to indicate--"it is against the law to sell whisky in a post-office, so that storekeeper with the red nose and small yellow eyes keeps it in a brown jug in the back room."

"To be sure," laughed Armitage. "I hope it is a good article."

"It is vile," replied Oscar. "His brother makes it up in the hills, and it is as strong as wood lye."

"Moonshine! I have heard of it. We must have some for rainy days."

It was a new world to John Armitage, and his heart was as light as the morning air as he followed Oscar along the ruddy mountain road. He was in Virginia, and somewhere on this soil, perhaps in some valley like the one through which he rode, Shirley Claiborne had gazed upon blue distances, with ridge rising against ridge, and dark pine-covered slopes like these he saw for the first time. He had left his affairs in Washington in a sorry muddle; but he faced the new day with a buoyant spirit, and did not trouble himself to look very far ahead. He had a definite business before him; his cablegrams were rea.s.suring on that point. The fact that he was, in a sense, a fugitive did not trouble him in the least. He had no intention of allowing Jules Chauvenet's a.s.sa.s.sins to kill him, or of being locked up in a Washington jail as the false Baron von Kissel. If he admitted that he was not John Armitage, it would be difficult to prove that he was anybody else--a fact touching human testimony which Jules Chauvenet probably knew perfectly well.

On the whole he was satisfied that he had followed the wisest course thus far. The broad panorama of the morning hills communicated to his spirit a growing elation. He began singing in German a ballad that recited the sorrows of a pale maiden prisoner in a dark tower on the Rhine, whence her true knight rescued her, after many and fearsome adventures. On the last stave he ceased abruptly, and an exclamation of wonder broke from him.

They had been riding along a narrow trail that afforded, as Oscar said, a short cut across a long timbered ridge that lay between them and Armitage's property. The path was rough and steep, and the low-hanging pine boughs and heavy underbrush increased the difficulties of ascent.