The Law of Hemlock Mountain

by Hugh Lundsford

  CHAPTER VII

  As John Spurrier followed his host between rhododendron thickets thatrose above their heads, he found himself wondering what had become ofthe girl, but when they drew near to an old house whose stamp oforderly neatness proclaimed its contrast to the scattering hovels ofwidely separated neighbors, he caught a flash of blue gingham by theopen door and realized that the Valkyrie had taken a short cut.

  The dog, too, had arrived there ahead of its master and wasfawning now on the girl, who leaned impulsively over to take thegentle-pointed muzzle between her palms.

  "I'm sorry I whopped ye," she declared in a silver-voiced contritionthat made the man think of thrush notes. "Hit wasn't _yore_ faultno-how. Hit was thet--thet stuck-up furriner. I _hates_ him!"

  The setter waved its plumed tail in forgiveness and contentment, andthe girl, discovering with an upward glance that she had beenoverheard, rose and stood for a moment defiantly facing the object ofher denunciation, then, as embarrassment flooded her cheeks withcolor, fled into the house.

  The sense of having stepped back into an older century had beengrowing on John Spurrier ever since he had turned away from the townof Waterfall, and now it possessed him with a singular fascination.

  Here was a different world, somber under its shadow of frugality, andbreathing out the heavy atmosphere of isolation. The spirit of thisstrange life looked out from the wearied eyes of Dyke Cappeze as hesat filling his pipe across the hearth, a little later, and it soundedin his voice when he announced slowly:

  "It's not for me to withhold hospitality in a land where a readywelcome is about all we have to offer, and yet you could hardly havepicked a worse house to come to between the Virginia border and theKaintuck ridges."

  Spurrier raised his brows interrogatively, and at the same moment henoticed matters hitherto overlooked. The windows were heavilyshuttered and his host sat beyond the line of vision from the opendoor--with a rifle leaning an arm's length away.

  "Coming as a stranger," continued Cappeze, "you start withoutenmities--with a clean page. You might spend your life here and find asincere welcome everywhere--so long as you avoided other men'scontroversies. But you come to me and that, sir, is a bad beginning--avery bad beginning."

  A contemplative cloud of smoke went up from the pipe, and the voicefinished in a tone of bitterness.

  "I'm the most hated man in this region where hatreds grow likeweeds."

  "You mean because you have stood out for the enforcement of law?"

  The other nodded, "It has taken me a lifetime," he observed, "to learnthat the mountains are stronger, if not more obstinate, than I."

  "Is that the only reason they hate you?" inquired the visitor, and thelawyer, removing the pipe stem from his teeth, regarded him for aspace in silence. Then he commented quietly:

  "If you knew this country better, you wouldn't have to ask thatquestion. In Athens, I believe, they ostracized Aristides because hewas 'too just a man.'"

  "Nonetheless, I'm glad I came to you."

  Cappeze smiled gravely. He had a rude sort of dignity which Spurrierfound beguiling; a politeness that sprang from a deeper rooting thanmere formula.

  "Merely coming to see me--once in a while--won't damn you, I reckon. Aman has a license to be interested in freaks. But take my advice, andI sha'n't be offended. Tell every one that you hold no brief for meand listen with an open mind when they blackguard me."

  Spurrier laughed. "In a place where assassination is said to comecheap, you have at least been able to take care of yourself, sir."

  "That," said the other slowly, "is as it happens. My partner was lesslucky. My own luck may break some day."

  "And yet you go on living here when you'd be safe enough anywhereelse."

  "Yes, I go on living here. It's a land where a man's mind starves andwhere the great marching song of the world's progress is silent--andyet----" Again he paused to draw in and exhale a cloud of pipe smoke."Yet there's something in the winds that blow here, in the air onebreathes, that 'is native to my blood.' Elsewhere I should bemiserable, sir, and my daughter----"

  He came to an abrupt stop and Spurrier took him up quickly. "Sheseems young and vital enough to crave all of life's variety."

  "But she is contented, sir." The elderly man spoke eagerly as thoughto convince himself and quiet troubling doubts. "She, too, wouldrather be here. We know this life and take it as we find it."

  Spurrier felt that the conversation was tending into channels toopersonal for the participation of a chance acquaintance, and he guidedit to a less intimate subject.

  "I understand, Mr. Cappeze, that in the campaign just ended, youstumped this district whole-heartedly in behalf of one of thecandidates for the circuit judgeship."

  Again the hawk-keen blaze flared in the eyes of his host.

  "You are mistaken, sir," he declared with heated emphasis. "It wasless _for_ a candidate than _against_ one that I worked. The man whomcircumstances compelled me to support was a poor thing, but he wasbetter than his adversary."

  "Was it party spirit that prompted you, then?" inquired the guest,feeling that politeness called for some show of interest.

  "Sometimes I think," said the lawyer with a grim smile, "that fromsome men God withholds the blessed power of riding life's waves. Allthey can do is to buffet and fight and wear themselves out. PerhapsI'm that sort. The man who won--who succeeded himself on the bench--isan expedientist. So long as he presides, timid juries will returntimid verdicts and the law will falter. I took the stump to brand himbefore the people as an apostate to his oath. I knew he would win,but I meant to make him wear his trade-mark of cowardice along withhis smirk of self-righteousness!"

  As Spurrier listened, not to a feudist but to a man who had wornhimself out fighting feudism, there came to him like a revelation anappreciation of the bitterness which runs in the grim undertow of thisblood.

  "I believe," he suggested, glancing sidewise at the door beyond whichhe heard the thrushlike voice of the girl, "that you made an issue ofa murder case which collapsed--a case in which you had been employedto prosecute."

  "Yes," Cappeze told him. "Because I believe it to be one in which theofficers of the court lay down and quit like dogs. The defendant was ared-handed bully, generally feared--and the law was in timid keeping.I am still trying to have the grand jury call before it theprosecutor, the sheriff, and every deputy who served on that posse. Iwant to make them tell, on oath, just how hard they sought toapprehend the assassin--who still walks boldly and freely amongus--unwhipped of justice."

  Spurrier rose, deeply impressed by the headstrong, willful courage ofthis old insurgent, whose daughter's eyes were so full of springgentleness.

  * * * * *

  Far up the dwindling thread of a small water course, where the forestwas jungle-thick, a log cabin hung perched to a rocky cornfield thattilted like a steep roof, and under its shingles Sim Colby dweltalone. Since his coming here he had been assimilated into thecommonplace life of the neighborhood and the question of hisorigin was no longer discussed. The time had gone by when even anacquaintance of other days would be apt to calculate that his term ofenlistment in the army had not run its full course. Moreover, therewere no such acquaintances here; none who had known him before hechanged his name from Grant to Colby. The shadow of dread which hadonce obsessed him had gradually and imperceptibly lightened untilfor weeks together he forgot how poignantly it had once haunted him.He had painstakingly established a reputation exemplary beyond thetendencies of his nature in this new habitat--since trouble mightcause closed pages to reopen.

  Now on a November afternoon a deputy sheriff, serving summonses inthat neighborhood dismounted at the door where Sim stood with his handresting on the jamb, and the two mulled over what sparse gossip theuneventful neighborhood afforded.

  "Old Cappeze, he's a-seekin' ter rake up hell afresh an' brew morepestilence fer everybody," announced the deputy glumly.

  "What's he projeckin' at now?" asked
Sim.

  "He's seekin' ter warm over thet ancient Sam Mosebury case afore thergrand jury. Come ter think of hit, Sim, ye rid with ther high sheriffyoreself thet time, didn't ye?"

  Moodily the other nodded. That was a matter he preferred to leaveburied.

  "Waal, Cappeze is claimin' now thet ther possy didn't make no mastereffort ter lay hands on Sam. He aims ter hev all ye boys tell thergrand jury what ye knows erbout ther matter."

  The deputy turned away, but in afterthought he paused, thrashing idlywith his switch at the weed stalks, as he retailed an almost forgottenitem of news.

  "A furriner come ter town yistidday, an' sot out straightway acrostHemlock Mountain fer old Cappeze's dwellin' house."

  "What manner of man war he, Joe?" Sim's interest was perfunctory. Hadhe been haled into the grand-jury room in those earlier days, theprospect would have bristled with apprehensions, but now he had behindhim the background of respectability and Mose Biggerstaff, who aloneknew of his craven behavior as a member of the posse, was dead. Simfelt secure in his mantle of virtue.

  "He war a right upstandin' sort of feller--ther furriner," enlightenedthe deputy. "He goes under ther name of Spurrier--John Spurrier."

  As though an electric wire of high tension had broken and brushed himin falling, Sim Colby's attitude stiffened and every muscle grew tautfrom neck to ankles as his jaw sagged.

  The deputy, with his foot already in the stirrup, missed the terrorspasms of the face gone suddenly putty gray. He missed the gasp thatcontracted the throat and caused its breath to wheeze, and when heglanced back again from his saddle, the other had, with an effort ofsheer desperation, regained his outward semblance of composure. Hestill leaned indolently against the door frame, but now he needed itssupport, because all his nerves jumped and a confusion like theswarming of angry bees filled his brain.

  Afterward he groped his way inside and dropped down into a low chairby the hearth. For a long time he sat there breathing stertorouslywhile the untended fire died away to ashen dreariness. The sun wentdown beyond the pine tops and still he sat dully with his handshanging over his knees, their fingers twitching in panic aimlessness.

  Out of a past that he had cut away from the present had arisen a ghostof hideous menace. Here into the laurel which had promised sanctuaryhis Nemesis had pursued him.

  Two men with the guilt of a murder standing between them had come intoa radius too small to contain them both. It was as if they had met ona narrow log spanning a chasm where only one could pass and the othermust fall.

  If old Cappeze dragged him to the courthouse now, he would bedelivered over to Spurrier, waiting there to identify him, as a fox ina trap is delivered to the skinning knife. That must be the meaning ofthe stranger's visit to the lawyer.

  Sim Colby went to an ancient and dilapidated bureau and from acreaking drawer took out a memento which, for some reason, he hadpreserved from times not treasured in memory. He carried it to theopen door and stood looking at it as it lay on the palm of his handwith the light glinting upon it.

  It was a sharpshooter's medal, for, whatever his military shortcomings,Private Grant had been an efficient rifleman, and as he looked at itnow his lips twisted into a grim smile. Then he took his rifle from itscorner and, sitting on the doorstep, polished it with a fondparticularity, oiling its mechanism and burnishing its bore.

  Already Spurrier had made arrangements to ensconce himself under theroof of a house he had rented. Already the faces that he met in theroad were, for the most part, familiar, and without exception theywere friendly. Quick on the heels of his first disgust for the squalorof this lapsed and retarded life, had succeeded an exhilaration bornof the wine-like sparkle of the air and the majestic breadth of vistasacross ridge and valley. As he watched mile-wide shadows creep betweensky-high lines of peaks, his dreams borrowed something of theirvastness.

  Through half-closed lids imagination looked out until the range-brokenspaces altered to its vision. Spurrier saw white roads and the glitterof rails running off into gossamer webs of distance. Where now stoodvirgin forests of hard wood he visualized the shaftings of oilderricks, the red iron sheeting of tanks, the belching stacks ofrefineries, and in that defaced landscape he read the triumph ofconquest; the guerdon of wealth; the satisfaction of power.

  One afternoon Spurrier started over to the house he had rented, butinto which he had not yet moved. The way lay for a furlong or morethrough a gorge deeply and somberly shaded. Even now, at midday, thesunlight of the upper places left it cloistered and the bowlderstrooped along in ferny dampness, where the little waters whispered.

  Beside a bulky hummock of green-corroded sandstone the man halted andstood musingly, with eyes downcast and thoughts uplifted--upliftedto the worship of his one god: Ambition. At his feet was an oilysediment along the water's edge and the gravel was thick with"sand blossom"--tiny fossil formations that are prima facie evidenceof oil. Then, without warning, he felt a light sting along hischeek and the rock-walled fissure reverberated under what seemed avolley of musketry.

  But the magnified and crumbling effect of the echo struck him with aless poignant realization than a slighter sound and a sharper one. Asif a taut piano wire had been sharply struck, came the clear whangthat he recognized as the flight song of a rifle bullet, and, whateverits origin it called for a prompt taking of cover.

  Spurrier side-stepped as quickly as a boxer, and stood, for the momentat least, bulwarked behind the rock that was so providentially close.

  "I'm John Spurrier--a stranger in these parts," he sung out in aconfident voice of forced boldness and cheerfulness. "I reckon you'vemade a mistake in your man."

  There was no answer and Spurrier cautiously raised his hat on the endof a stick with the same deliberation that might have marked hisaction had it been his own head emerging from cover.

  Instantly the hidden rifle spoke again and the hat came down piercedthrough its band, while the rocks once more reverberated to multiplieddetonations.

  "It would seem," the man told himself grimly, "that after all therewas no mistake."

  He was unarmed and in no position to pursue investigations of themystery, but by crawling along on his belly he could keep his bodyshielded behind the litter of broken stone that edged the brook untilhe reached the end of the gorge itself and came to safer territory.

  Slowly, Spurrier traveled out of his precarious position, flatteninghimself when he paused to rest and listen, as he had made his menflatten themselves over there in the islands when they were goingforward without cover under the fire of snipers.