The Roof Tree
"Ther mornin' ye fust come by … an' stopped thar in ther high road … I'd jest been readin' somethin' thet … was writ by one of my foreparents … way back, upwards of a hundred y'ars ago, I reckon." She paused but he nodded his interest so sympathetically that she went on, reassured; "She told how come she planted this hyar tree … in them days when ther Injins still scalped folks … an' she writ down jest what her husband looked like."
"What did he look like?" inquired the man, gravely, and the girl found herself no longer bashful with him but at ease, as with an old friend.
"Hit war right then I looked out an' seed ye," she said, simply, "an' 'peared like ye'd plum bodily walked outen them pages of handwrite. Thet's why I asked whether yore folks didn't dwell hyar onc't. Mebby we mout be kin."
Cal Maggard shook his head.
"My folks moved away to Virginny so fur back," he informed her, "thet hit's apt ter be right distant kinship."
"This was all fur back," she reminded him, and in order that the sound of her voice might continue, he begged:
"Tell me somethin' else erbout this tree … an' what ye read in ther book."
She was standing close to him, and as she talked it seemed to him that the combined fragrances of the freshly washed night all came from her. He was conscious of the whippoorwill calls and the soft crooning of the river, but only as far-away voices of accompaniment, and she, answering to dreamy influences, too, went on with her recitals from the journal of the woman who had been a lady in Virginia and who probably lay buried under the spot on which they stood.
"Hit's right amazin' ter listen at ye," he said at length. "But plentiful amazin' things comes ter pass."
An amazing thing was coming to pass with him at that moment, for his arms were twitching with an eagerness to close about her, and he seemed struggling against forces of impulse stronger than himself.
It was amazing because he had sworn to avoid the folly of chancing everything on too hasty a love declaration, and because the discipline of patient self-control was strong in him. It was amazing, too, because, with a warning recently received and appreciated, his ears had become deaf to all sounds save her voice, and when the thicket stirred some fifty yards away he heard nothing.
Even the girl herself would ordinarily have paused to bend her head and listen to an unaccustomed sound, but in her as well as in him the close-centred magic was working absorption.
Each of them felt the tense, new something that neither fully understood, but which set them vibrating to a single impulse as the two prongs of a tuning fork answer to one note. Neither of them thought of the figure that hitched its way toward them – more cautious after that first warning rustle – to watch and listen – the figure of an armed man.
For the girl reality seemed to recede into the gossamer of dreams. She could fancy herself the other woman who had lived and died before her – and the face of the man in the moonlight might have been that of the pioneer Thornton. Fancy was stronger than actuality.
"Hit almost seems like," she whispered, "that ther old tree's got a spell in hit – ter bewitch folks with."
"Ef hit has … hit's a spell I loves right good," he fervently protested.
He heard her breath come quick and sudden, as if under a hypnotic force, and following the prompting of some instinctive mentor, he held out his arms toward her.
Still she stood with the wide-eyed raptness of a sleepwalker, and when Cal Maggard moved slowly forward, she, who had been so shy an hour ago, made no retreat.
It was all as though each of them reacted to the command of some controlling volition beyond themselves. The man's arms closed about her slender body and pressed it close to his breast. His lips met her upturned ones, and held them in a long kiss that was returned. Each felt the stir of the other's breath. To each came the fluttering tumult of the other's heart. Then after a long while they drew apart, and the girl's hands went spasmodically to her face.
"What hev we been doin', Cal?" she demanded in the bewildered tone of returning realization. "I don't skeercely know ye yit, nuther."
"Mebby hit war ther spell," he answered in a low but triumphant voice. "Ef hit war, I reckon God Hisself worked hit."
The figure in the tangle had drawn noiselessly back now and slipped off into the woods a few hundred yards away where it joined another that stood waiting there.
"I hain't mad with ye, Cal," said Dorothy, slowly. "I hain't even mortified, albeit I reckon I ought ter be sick with shame … but I wants ye ter go home now. I've got need ter think."
As they stood together at the fence they heard Bas Rowlett's voice singing down the road, and soon his figure came striding along and stopped by the stile.
"Howdy, Dorothy," he called, then recognizing that this was a leave-taking he added, "Cal, ef ye're startin' home, I'll go long with ye, fer comp'ny."
The moon was westering when the two men reached the turn of the road and there Rowlett paused and began speaking in a cautious undertone.
"I didn't come along accidental, Cal. I done hit a-purpose. I got ter studyin' 'bout that cracklin' twig we heered in ther bresh an' hit worrited me ter think of yore goin' home by yoreself. I concluded ter tarry fer ye an' guide ye over a trace thet circles round thet gorge without techin' hit."
"I'm right sensibly beholden ter ye," answered Maggard, the more embarrassed because he now knew this generous fellow to be a vanquished rival. "But 'atter ternight ye've got ter suffer me ter take my own chances."
Together they climbed the mountainside until they reached the edge of a thicket that seemed impassable but through which the guide discovered a narrow way. Before they had come far they halted, breathing deep from the steep ascent, and found themselves on a shelf of open rock that commanded a view of the valley and the roof of the Harper house, on which the moonlight slept.
"Thar's ther last glimpse we gits ternight of ther house an' ther old tree," said Rowlett who stood a few feet away and, as Maggard turned to look, the night stillness broke into a bellowing that echoed against the precipice and the newcomer lurched forward like an ox struck with a sledge.
As he fell Maggard's hand gripped convulsively at his breast and at the corners of his mouth a thin trickle of blood began to ooze.
But before his senses went under the closing tide of darkness and insensibility the victim heard Rowlett's pistol barking ferociously back into the timber from which the ambushed rifle had spoken. He heard Rowlett's reckless and noisy haste as he plowed into the laurel where he, too, might encounter death, and raising his voice in a feeble effort of warning he tried to shout out: "Heed yoreself, Bas … hit's too late ter save me."
CHAPTER VIII
To the man lying in the soaked grass and moss of the sandstone ledge came flashes of realization that were without definite beginning or end, separated by gaps of insensibility. Out of his limbs all power and volition seemed to have evaporated, and his breath was an obstructed struggle as though the mountain upon which he lay were lying instead upon his breast. Through him went hot waves of pain under which he clenched his teeth until he swooned again into a merciful numbness.
He heard in an interval of consciousness the thrashing of his companion's boots through the tangle and the curses with which his companion was vainly challenging his assailant to stand out and fight in the open.
Then, for a little while, he dropped endlessly down through pits of darkness and after that opened his eyes to recognize that he was being held with his head on Rowlett's knee. Rowlett saw the fluttering of the lids and whispered:
"I'm goin' ter tote ye back thar – ter Harper's house. Hit's ther only chanst – an' I reckon I've got ter hurt ye right sensibly."
Bas rose and hefted him slowly and laboriously, straightening up with a muscle-straining effort, until he stood with one arm under the limp knees and one under the blood-wet shoulders of his charge.
For a moment he stood balancing himself with his feet wide apart, and then he started staggering doggedly down the stony grade, groping, at each step, for a foothold. In the light of the sinking moon the slowly plodding rescuer offered an inviting target, with both hands engaged beyond the possibility of drawing or using a weapon, but no shot was fired.
The distance was not great, but the pace was slow, and the low moon would shortly drop behind the spruce fringe of the ridges. Then the burden-bearer would have to stumble forward through confused blackness – so he hastened his steps until his own breath rattled into an exhausted rasp and his own heart hammered with the bursting ache of effort.
When he had reached the half-way point he put his load down and shouted clamorously for help, until the black wall of the Harper house showed an oblong of red light and the girl's voice came back in answer.
"I've got a dyin' man hyar," he called, briefly, "an' I needs aid."
Then as Maggard lay insensible in the mud, Bas squatted on his heels beside him and wiped the sweat drench from his face with his shirt-sleeve.
It was with unsteady eyes that he watched a lantern crawling toward him: eyes to which it seemed to weave the tortuous course of a purposeless glow-worm.
Then the moon dipped suddenly and the hills, ceasing to be visible shapes, were felt like masses of close crowded walls, but at length the lantern approached and, in its shallow circle of sickly yellow, it showed two figures – that of the old man and the girl.
Dorothy carried the light, and when she held it high and let its rays fall on the two figures, one sitting stooped with weariness and the other stretched unconscious, her eyes dilated in a terror that choked her, and her face went white.
But she said nothing. She only put down the lantern and slipped her arms under the shoulders that lay in the wet grass, shuddering as her hands closed on the warm moisture of blood, and Rowlett rose with an effort and rallied his spent strength to lift the inert knees. While the old man lighted their footsteps the little procession made its painful way down what was left of the mountainside, across the road, and up into the house.
* * *When Haggard opened his eyes again he was lying with his wounds already bathed and roughly bandaged. Plainly he was in a woman's room, for its clean particularity and its huge old four-poster bed spread with a craftily wrought "coverlet" proclaimed a feminine proprietorship. A freshly built fire roared on a generous hearth, giving a sense of space broadening and narrowing with fickle boundaries of shadow.
The orange brightness fell, too, on a figure that stood at the foot-board looking down at him with anxiety-tortured eyes; a figure whose heavy hair caught a bronze glimmering like a nimbus, and whose hands were held to her breast with a clutching little suspended gesture of dread.
Voices vaguely heard in disjointed fragments of talk called him back to actuality.
The old man was speaking:
"… I fears me he kain't live long… 'Pears like ther shot war a shore deadener…" and from Rowlett came an indignant response "… I heered ther crack from right spang behind us … I wheeled 'round an' shot three shoots back at ther flash."
Then Maggard heard, so low that it seemed a joyous and musical whisper, the announcement from the foot of his bed:
"I'm goin' ter fetch Uncle Jase Burrell now, ter tend yore hurts, Cal," she said, softly. "I jest couldn't endure ter start away twell I seed ye open yore eyes, though."
Maggard glanced toward Bas Rowlett who stood looking solicitously down at him and licked his lips. There was an acknowledgment which decency required his making in their presence, and he keyed himself for a feeble effort to speak.
"Rowlett thar…" he began, faintly, and a cough seemed to start fresh agonies in his chest so that he had to wait awhile before he went on.
"Mighty few men would hev stood by me … like he done… Ef I'd been his own blood-brother…" there he gulped, choked, and drifted off again.
Cal Maggard next awoke with a strangely refreshed sense of recovery and a blessed absence of pain. He seemed still unable to move, and he said nothing, for in that strange realization of a brain brought back to focus came a shock of new amazement.
Bas Rowlett bent above his pillow, but with a transformed face. The eyes that were for the moment turned toward the door burned with a baleful hatred and the lips were drawn into a vicious snarl.
This, too, must be part of the light-headedness, thought Maggard, but instinctively he continued to simulate unconsciousness. This man had been his steadfast and self-forgetful friend. So the wounded man fought back the sense of clear and persistent reality, which had altered kindly features into a gargoyle of vindictiveness, and lay unmoving until Rowlett rose and turned his back.
Then, through the slits of warily screened eyes, he swept a hasty glance about the room and found that except for the man who had carried him in and himself it was empty. Probably that hate-blackness on the other face was for the would-be assassin and not for himself, argued Maggard.
Rowlett went over and stood by the hearth, staring into the fire, his hands clenching and unclenching in spasmodic violence.
This was a queer dream, mused Maggard, and more and more insistently it refused to seem a dream.
More surely as he watched the face which the other turned to glare at him did the instinct grow that he himself was the object of that bitter animosity of expression.
He lay still and watched Rowlett thrust a hand into his overalls pocket and scatter peanut shells upon the fire – objects which he evidently wished to destroy. As he did this the standing figure laughed shortly under his breath – and full realization came to the wounded man.
The revelation was as complete as it was ugly. As long as he lay unmoving the pain seemed quiescent, and his head felt crystal clear – his thought efficient. Perhaps he was dying – most probably he was. If so this was a lucid interval before death, and in it his mind was playing him no tricks. The supposed friend loomed in an unmasked and traitorous light which even the preconceived idea could not confuse or mitigate. Maggard did not want to give credence to the certainty that was shaping itself – and yet the conviction had been born and could not be thrust back into the womb of the unborn. All of Rowlett's friendliness and loyalty had been only an alibi! It had been Rowlett who had led him, unsuspecting, into ambush!
Maggard's coat and pistol-holster hung at the headboard of his bed. Now with a cat-soft tread upon the creaking puncheons of the floor Rowlett approached them. He paused first, bending to look searchingly down at the white face on the pillow, and the eyes in that face remained almost but not quite closed. The hand that rested outside the coverlet, too, lay still and limp like a dead hand.
Reassured by these evidences of unconsciousness, Bas Rowlett drew a deep breath of satisfaction. The diabolical thought had come to him that by shaking the prone figure he could cause a hemorrhage that would assure death – and the evil fire in his eyes as his hands stole out toward his intended victim betrayed his reflection.
The seemingly insensible listener, with a Spartan effort, held his pale face empty of betrayal as the two impulsive hands came closer.
But as quickly the arms drew back, and the expression clouded with doubt.
"No…" reflected Bas without words. "No, hit ain't needful nohow … an' Jase Burrell mout detect I'd done hit."
The bending figure straightened again and its hands began calmly rifling the pockets of the wounded man's coat.
Through the narrow slits of eyes that dissembled sleep Maggard watched, while Rowlett opened and recognized the threatening letter that had been nailed to the door. The purloiner nodded, and his lips twisted into a smile of triumph, as he thrust the sheet of paper into his own pocket.
No longer now could there remain any vestige of doubt in Maggard's mind – no illusion of mistaking the true for the untrue, and in the vengeful fury that blazed eruptively through him he forgot the hurt of his wounding.
He could not rise from his bed and give battle. Had the other not reconsidered his diabolical impulse to shake him into a fatal hemorrhage he could not even have defended himself. His voice, in all likelihood, would not carry to the door of the next room – if indeed any one were there.
Physically, he was defenseless and inert, but all of him beyond the flesh was galvanized into quicksilver acuteness and determination. He was praying for a reprieve of life sufficient to call this Judas friend to an accounting – and if that failed, for strength enough to die with his denunciation spoken. Yet he realized the need of conserving his tenuous powers and so, gauging his abilities, he lay motionless and to all seeming unconscious, while the tall figure continued to tower over him.
Cal Maggard had some things to say and if his power of speech forsook him before he finished it was better not to make the start. These chances he was calculating, and after Rowlett had turned his back, the man in the bed opened his eyes and experimented with the one word, "Bas!"
He found that the monosyllable not only sounded clear, but had the quiet and determined quality of tone at which he had striven, and as it sounded the other wheeled, flinching as if the word had been a bullet.
But at once he was back by the bed, and Maggard's estimate of him as a master of perfidy mounted to admiration, for the passion clouds had in that flash of time been swept from his eyes and left them disguised again with solicitude and friendliness.
"By God, Cal!" The exclamation bore a counterfeited heartiness. "I didn't skeercely suffer myself ter hope y'd ever speak out ergin!"
"I'm obleeged, Bas." Maggard's voice was faint but steady now. "Thar's a thing I've got ter tell ye afore my stren'th gives out."
Beguiled by a seeming absence of suspicion into the belief that Maggard had just then awakened to consciousness, Rowlett ensconced himself on the bedside and nodded an unctuous sympathy. The other closed his eyes and spoke calmly and without raising his lids.
"Ye forewarned me, Bas… We both of us spoke out p'int blank … erbout ther gal … an' we both went on bein' … plum friendly."
"Thet war ther best way, Cal."
"Yes… Then ye proffered ter safeguard me… Ye didn't hev no need ter imperil yoreself … but ye would hev hit so."
"I reckon ye'd hev done likewise."
"No. I misdoubts I wouldn't … anyhow … right from ther outset on you didn't hev ter be friendly ter me … but ye was."
"I loves fa'r mindedness," came the sanctimonious response.
A brief pause ensued while Maggard rested. He had yet some way to go, and the last part of the conversation would be the hardest.
"Most like," he continued at last, "I'll die … but I've got a little bitty, slim chanst ter come through."
"I hopes so, Cal."
"An' ef I does, I calls on God in heaven ter witness thet afore ther moon fulls ergin … I'm a-goin' ter kill– somebody."
"Who, Cal?"
The white face on the pillow turned a little and the eyes opened.
"I hain't keerin' none much erbout ther feller thet fired ther shot…" went on the voice. "Ther man I aims ter git … air ther one thet hired him… He's goin' ter die … hard!"
"What makes ye think" – the listener licked his lips furtively – "thar war more'n one?"
"Because I knows who … t'other one is."
Rowlett rose from his seat, and lifted a clenched fist. The miscreant's thoughts were in a vortex of doubt, fear, and perplexity – but perhaps Maggard suspected "Peanuts" Causey, and Rowlett went on with an admirable bit of acting.
"Name him ter me, Cal," he tensely demanded. "He shot at both of us. He's my man ter kill!"
"When ye lay thar … by my house … watchin' with me…" went on the ambushed victim in a summarizing of ostensible services, "what made ye discomfort yoreself, fer me, save only friendliness?"
"Thet war all, Cal."
"An' hit war ther same reason thet made ye proffer ter take away thet letter an' seek ter diskiver who writ hit, warn't hit … an' ter sa'rch about an' find thet peanut hull … an' ter come by hyar an' show me a safe way home… All jest friendliness, warn't hit?"
"Hain't thet es good a reason es any?"
The voice on the bed did not rise but it took on a new note.
"Thar couldn't handily be but jest … one better one … Bas."
"What mout thet be?"
"Ther right one. Ther reason of a sorry craven thet aimed at a killin' … an' sought ter alibi hisself."
Rowlett stood purple-faced and trembling in a transport of maniac fury with which an inexplicable fear ran cross-odds as warp and woof. The other had totally deluded him until the climax brought its accusation, and now the unmasked plotter took refuge in bluster, fencing for time to think.
"Thet's a damn lie an' a damn slander!" he stormed. "Ye've done already bore witness afore these folks hyar thet I sought ter save ye."
"An' I plum believed hit … then. Now I knows better. I sees thet ye led me inter ambush … thet ye planted them peanut hulls… Thet ye writ thet letter … an' jest now ye stole hit outen my pocket."
"Thet's a lie, too. I reckon yore head's done been crazed. I toted ye in hyar an' keered fer ye."
"Ye aimed ter finish out yore alibi," persisted Maggard, disdainfully. "Ye didn't low I seed ye steal ther letter … but I gives ye leave ter tek hit over thar an' and burn hit up, Rowlett – same es them peanut hulls… I hain't got no need of nuther them … nur hit."
Rowlett's hand, under the sting of accusation, had instinctively pressed itself against his pocket. Now guiltily and self-consciously it came away and he found himself idiotically echoing his accuser's words:
"No need of hit?"
"No, I don't want nuther law-co'tes ner juries ter help me punish a man thet hires his killin' done second-handed… All I craves air one day of stren'th ter stand on my feet."
With a brief spasm of hope Rowlett bent forward and quickly decided on a course of temporizing. If he could encourage that idea the man would probably die – with sealed lips.
"I'm willin' ter look over all this slander, Cal," he generously acceded; "ye've done tuck up a false notion in yore light-headedness."
"This thing lays betwixt me an' you," went on the low-pitched but implacable voice from the bed, "but ef I ever gits up again – you're goin' ter wisht ter God in Heaven … hit war jest only ther penitenshery threatenin' ye."
Again Rowlett's anger blazed, and his self-control slipped its leash.
"Afore God, ef ye warn't so plum puny an' tuckered out, I wouldn't stand hyar an' suffer ye ter fault me with them damn lies."
"Is thet why ye was ponderin' jest now over shakin' me till I bled inside myself?.. I seed thet thought in yore eyes."
The breath hissed out of Rowlett's great chest like steam from an over-stressed boiler, and a low bellow broke from his lips.
"I kin still do thet," he declared in a rage-choked voice. "I did hire a feller ter kill ye, but he failed me. Now I'm goin' ter finish ther job myself."
Then the door opened and old Caleb Harper called from the threshold:
"Did I hear somebody shout out in hyar? What's ther matter, Bas?"
As the menacing face hung over him, Maggard saw it school itself slowly into a hard composure and read a peremptory warning for silence in the eyes. The outstretched hands had already touched him, and now they remained holding his shoulders as the voice answered:
"Cal jest woke up. I reckon he war outen his head, an' I'm heftin' him up so's he kin breath freer."
Old Man Harper came over to the bed and Rowlett released his hold and moved away.
"I've done been studyin' whether Dorothy's goin' ter make hit acrost ter Jase Burrell's or not," said Caleb, quaveringly. "I fears me ther storm hes done washed out the ford."
Then he crossed to the hearth and sat down in a chair to light his pipe.
CHAPTER IX
Cal Maggard lay unmoving as the old man's chair creaked. Over there with his back turned toward the fire stood Bas Rowlett, his barrel-like chest swelling heavily with that excitement which he sought to conceal. To Caleb Harper, serenely unsuspicious, the churlish sullenness of the eyes that resented his intrusion, went unmarked. It was an intervention that had come between the wounded man and immediate death, and now Rowlett cursed himself for a temporizing fool who had lost his chance.
