by Max Brand
Silence fell on the cabin.
“But if I was to learn something worth hearing about The Whisperer that”
He broke off again. The wave of silence returned.
“Jerry,” said Montague suddenly, “I can’t stand it! I got to talk. Besides, the chief is off on us. You know what I mean. He’s laying for us. I say — throw in with Morrison. By the heavens, we got to!”
A tremor of eagerness passed through the body of Morrison; he subdued it at once.
“Besides,” agreed Monson, “somebody else must have blowed already.”
He looked inquiringly at Morrison, and the latter merely grinned. “I’m waiting, boys,” he reminded them. “I can take you down with me, or else I can leave you here, free as birds, and nobody to know that I ever come near you. All I ask is a chance to leave you boys alone and then to turn loose on the right trail for The Whisperer. He’s my meat!”
“Heaven help you, then,” broke out Monson. “You’re chasing a devil.”
“That’s what they all seem like till they’re caught. But they tame down pretty well, I’d say! All that I’ve seen, do!”
Then came the flood of talk. It may be said to their credit that they were as close tongued as other men; but that dread of The Whisperer which had been inspired in them by the killing of Sam Champion whipped them on. It was at that point that they began their narrative, Monson carrying the burden, and Montague rushing in with bits of detail here and there. They told how with Champion and Tirrit the four had worked in unison for many years, and how finally they had joined the gang of The Whisperer in one unit. The deaths of the other two now left them in dread that The Whisperer had a deadly grudge against the old band of four; it was to protect themselves from slaughter that they talked now.
What they confessed then was the number of men in the gang, their addresses, the parts they had taken in different crimes, so far as the pair either knew or guessed, though they confessed that their information upon all the work except what they had undertaken with their own hands was extremely limited, on account of the adroit fashion in which The Whisperer handled his followers.
They were promised immunity by Morrison, now aglow with enthusiasm, as he saw himself fairly started, with exclusive information, upon the most important trail that he had ever undertaken.
“But how did you tumble to us?” asked Montague, tortured with curiosity.
“This way,” said Morrison. “I picked up some trails running over the shoulder of old Mount Mackerel. I followed along without thinking anything about it. I came to a shack; there was nothing queer. I looked around at the mountains. There’d been a little landslide in one of the crevices that had brought down some tons of rock, but otherwise, there was nothing changed from what it had used to be. I looked around a bit more just out of habit, and then I caught a trail made by a hoss wearing a bar shoe.”
“By the heavens!” cried Monson.
“Yep, it was your hoss. But I didn’t know that then. Mind you, that was an old trail and old sign that I was following. But I rode along, working up it, not because I had any hopes of finding anything worth while, but just because I had nothing else to do. I was working on The Whisperer case, but I didn’t have any idea where to start in. I worked up this trail just for the fun of it. It took me two days, boys. Two hard days, but at the end of that time I came on the end of the trail. I’d been following that trail mighty steady for a long time, working out where the bar had hit the rocks here and there, and so I came along, straining my eyes out till they ache right now.
“But I came up to your diggings, finally. I went into your shed a minute ago, and there, dog-goned if I didn’t find that hoss with the bar shoe on the near forefoot. So I came in here to talk to you.”
“But,” broke in Monson, “how’d you know that we’d hitched up with The Whisperer?”
“Boys,” said the man hunter, grinning, “I didn’t know anything. I just had a hope that I might stumble onto the right thing. There wasn’t anything else for me to beat up; I took a long chance. The bluff worked. That’s all there was to it.”
There followed a few half-stilled oaths; then came a long silence.
Presently Morrison continued; “Now, partners, you’ve started the music, and you got to keep playing for the dance. What I want to know is: how can I locate The Whisperer?”
They eyed one another, sullen, half desperate. Finally Montague shrugged his shoulders in surrender.
“Go find Lew Borgen and hound him a while,” he said. “That’ll land The Whisperer for you.”
“Borgen?”
“He’s in Cross City.”
“What’ll make Borgen talk?”
“Nothing. He’s more afraid of The Whisperer than he is of hanging. But he’s the only one who meets the big boss. Keep close to him and sooner or later he’ll bring you to The Whisperer without knowing what he’s doing.”
This advice the man hunter meditated upon for a considerable time. Finally he rose, waved to them, and abruptly walked out into the night. The moment he was gone, Montague glided to Monson and whispered in his ear: “We got to get Morrison, pal. In your stocking feet; there’ll be less noise. Now, out the back door!”
They scooped up their guns and skulked out the rear door of the shack; but it was only to hear the rattle of gravel as a horse near the shed where they kept their own animals, started hastily into full gallop under the touch of the spurs. They ran forward as fast as they could, but by the time they reached the farther side of the shed, Morrison was far away in the night. He had known them, after all, and had lost no precious time, relying on their good faith.
“Shall we send warning to Borgen?” said Monson at last.
“No,” replied Montague. “We’ve stepped into the mud, Jerry. We got to fight on Morrison’s side, now, and the sooner The Whisperer is bumped off the better for us.”
XVII. THE UNWANTED ESCORT
WHEN ROSE KENWORTHY reached her room, that night, she was in a wild turmoil indeed. She had told her father that she must have another day to consider the proposal of young Glenhollen, and not only that, but she had maintained a resolute silence in the face of his eloquent thunders. He pictured for her the glory of the united estates. But though his speech would have convinced any audience of voting citizens, it could not shake his daughter.
When she sat in her room, at last, she wondered what had made her so steadfast. It was not that she saw more faults in Glenhollen; he remained to her eye the same clean-minded, straight-thinking young fellow she had always known. But now she knew that a man could be something more, and it was the man of the forest who had taught her. She sat for a long time at her window, with her elbows on the sill and her eyes on the stars above the mountains, trying to call up not so much his face as the strange and new emotion which had filled her when he was close. It was a difficult feeling to analyze, but in part it was like the eery delight of a child in a new home surrounded with new toys.
Yet there was a melancholy sense of loss, too, as though in leaving her, he had carried away part of her very self with him in his wanderings. Her sadness was the loneliness of the solitary mountains among which he lived. If the thought of the wild and free life made her look up with a smile, the thought of a bleak death with no hand to tend him made her look down again with a sigh. For this would be his end — a broken leg from a fall, or the sweep of a snowslide as he ventured up some terrible steep — and he would perish unknown.
She sighed as the picture came up before her, and again that strong impulse to meet him once more and try the power of persuasion to bring him back to the ways of civilized men rose within her; for he admitted that she indeed had some influence upon him — an influence which he feared so much that he shrank from her. At this recollection, she smiled faintly to herself. The wind swooping across the garden blew a delicate commingling of perfumes to her, and the stars were blurred by tears that came suddenly into her eyes. She wondered dimly at their coming.
Of one th
ing at least she was convinced; she could not venture out into the night to meet him, as she had promised. What mad impulse could ever have induced her to suggest such a meeting? Thinking back to it, with a little shiver of wonder, she felt as though it had been a different person who sat there in the garden talking with the wild man. So, taking a firm hold upon herself, she closed the window — for the air was grown a little chilly — drew a chair beside the lamp, unfolded a book, and sat down to read until the impressions of that day should have grown dimmer than a dream.
She had read until her eyes grew heavy, and she only wondered how she could find the patience to undress before tumbling into bed, when the great old clock which stood on the first landing of the stairs began to strike, and she counted the peals slowly, one by one, yawning. They reached ten; she rose from her chair, thinking that this was about the hour, when the eleventh chime rang through the house, and she started with surprise, half waking from her drowsiness. Then came the twelfth! The night had slipped away so suddenly that it was midnight before she had known, and now it was too late to dress for the outdoors and meet the man of the forest, even if she wished it.
The instant she felt it was too late, it became absolutely essential for her to go. She kicked off her slippers and stepped into walking boots; she cast a heavy cloak over her shoulders, jammed a soft hat upon her hair, and gave one glance to the night beyond her window. There was no sleep in her now. She was trembling and joyously awake and alive. She left her room, stole down the hall, and down the stairs past the round white face of the great clock which had called her forth. It gave her a ghostly feeling of a face behind her as she went on to the hall and then to the front door. It was heavily barred and bolted, but dexterously she drew the bolts without making a sound, and now she stood under the wide arches of the heavens.
She threw up her arms to them with a sudden delight, for the wind brought the strong and pure smell of the evergreens about her and far away, blotting out the stars in the northern half of the heavens, rose the mountains. They looked far huger than by day, and nearer, also; just as waves seem greater by night.
The stars were fading in the east, as the false dawn of the moonrise approached. She noted that with pleasure. Then she swung away at a brisk pace, for she knew the art of walking, and was presently deep in the gloom of the forest. She did not have to wander on to the far-off clearing, for as she came to the verge of the first little snow stream which angled through the woods, something like a shade fell across her path, and she looked up to find the man of the forest on the other side. He came lightly across to her, picking his way upon the stones without even looking down to them, so it seemed; then he stood close to her, and his voice was deep with anger.
“I came to meet you,” he said, “but not an escort with you. If you did not trust me, why did you come at all?”
“An escort?” she murmured, astonished.
He shrugged his shoulders. “A sneaking fool,” he said contemptuously, “is following your trail. Perhaps your father sent him — to take care of you!”
He said it in such a way that she could not avoid feeling his suggestion that twenty such obstacles could not control him if he chose to work harm to her.
She told him on her honor that she was not followed to her knowledge, and at this he drew a deep breath of relief.
“Walk straight on, then,” he said, “and I’ll handle this fellow.”
“Not” she began.
“There’ll be no harm to him — if his nerves are strong,” said the man of the forest, and before she could speak again, he had disappeared, with his usual mysterious speed, among the trees.
For her part, she obeyed his orders, but listening with keen attention to sounds which might rise behind her. She heard nothing. The man of the forest had slipped back as noiselessly as a snake through the grass, until, reaching a great tree whose roots thrust out above the surface of the ground, he cowered close to the trunk, dropping into a formless shape in which even close study could hardly have revealed the form of a man. There he waited while a hurrying figure came out of the gloom, stealing rapidly ahead, drawn gun in hand, ready to kill at the first alarm. He stepped within six inches of the squatted form, strode on, and then halted in midstep and whirled. But the man of the forest was now in the air. The famous Stephen Rankin, for it was he, saw a flying shadow. Hard knuckles struck his right wrist, so that the revolver slipped from his numbed finger tips and dropped to the ground. Then the weight of the flying assailant’s body smote him, and he went down without a sound.
The back of his head struck a projecting knot of a root, and the light of consciousness left him. When he recovered, and the dim understanding began to dawn on him once more, he was firmly bound, though the bonds were not drawn cruelly tight. He lay softly among delicate ferns; he was not gagged; and his assailant was gone. He could cry out for help if he chose. But he did not choose. For he was new to forest ways. In short, he was more formidable in the city than in the open, and to Rankin the dark began to fill with green-glowing eyes of beasts of prey, stalking close to spring at him. No, he dared not cry out for fear of guiding still other enemies to him with his voice. So he lay still, thinking, wondering.
What was the dark figure which had stolen out from the house of the sheriff sharp on the stroke of midnight and had then turned and waylaid him as he traced it and trailed it? It had seemed to the detective like the outline of a woman hurrying through the night; and yet it was certainly the steel hand of a man that had struck him down. Full of these gloomy reflections, the detective waited for an inspiration to release him from his difficulty; perhaps it would not come until the light of day put an end to his nightmare.
In the meantime, the man of the forest went back to the girl with his long and gliding stride, like an Indian runner. Most like an Indian he seemed to her on this night, with his long hair flying above his shoulders.
“What have you done?” she asked him.
“Tied him up,” said he calmly. “He’ll rest quietly there. Do you know him? A stocky man with a thick neck and a broad, thick hand.”
“That’s Stephen Rankin. He’s working on the trail of The Whisperer.”
“The — Whisperer?” gasped out the other. Then she knew that he was laughing by the way his head went back, though, as usual, his laughter made no sound.
XVIII. THE ENCHANTED SPOT
THE MOON WENT up through the eastern trees on top of the mountain, and then it floated on into the heart of the sky, surrounding itself with a delicate mist of light and turning the sky from the deepest midnight blue to a colder darkness with a hint of steel in it. The stars went out one by one; first the smaller host of twinklers in one great brush of the moonshine, and then the huge yellow planets were drowned, until at last the moon was left without a rival. She was nearing the full, only one side of her broad circle being a little blunted, and she cast a light of wonderful brilliance down on the mountains. For the air was clear and thin and dry; there had been no rain for some time; and there was no trace of moisture for the sun to suck up during the day, saving in the snows themselves, and in the snow-fed streams which trickled down the mountainsides. The silver moon was hanging well up in the sky when the two came into a little meadow — a space as level as though made so by man with the greatest of care, while the trees came down around it and paused in even ranks, all planting their feet on the outskirts of the ellipse of the opening and then daring to step no farther.
It seemed to Rose Kenworthy an enchanted spot, and she paused, leaning one hand against the trunk of a tree and panting; for it had been a hard climb to come to this place. Her heart was thundering; her face was hot, and for the last half hour neither she nor her strange guide had spoken a word. She half suspected that she was the victim of a practical joke, and that having promised to show her a specimen of his night life and of his hunting in particular, he would simply walk her to the point of exhaustion, and then let her find the best of her way home. But the arrival at this charmin
g spot awakened new expectations in her. She looked again to the man of the forest, waiting.
He had stepped into the knee-deep grasses of the meadow and turned his face to the moon. The strong labor of that climb which had almost worn her out, tough and long-hardened little mountaineer though she was, had been as nothing to him. He had gone smoothly along ahead of her, and the light and springing step with which he moved had been the more maddening to her in her own weakness. Now he was scarcely breathing from those exertions, and gave himself over to the profound enjoyment which he seemed to find in the place.
“From here?” she asked. “Where does the trail go from here?”
“This is the end,” said he.
“But your hunting”
“I do it here, to-night.”
She laughed, brokenly with her heavy breathing. “You are joking now, I suppose.”
“If you want to see a slaughter, that may come later. I told you that I’d show you one of the trails that I live by, and here I’ve led you up to it.”
She mused on him, ready to smile, still, and hardly knowing what to make of him.
“What is it you hunt here?” she asked at last.
“All manner of things — enough to keep me busy for a month, at least. You only see part of them at night, but there is enough if you know where to look and what to find.”
He leaned and plucked several flowers from among the tall and feathery grass. “Here is wild carrot and goldenrod,” he said, and he passed the flowers to her.
She took them in a wondering hand, still half ready to find a jest in it all; but as she looked at the flowers it seemed as if they were as truly enchanted as all of this pleasant meadow around which the loftier peaks went up into the heavens. Their colors, misted over with moonlight, were unlike any colors her eye had ever dwelt on before.
He began to walk on before her. Now and then he paused and added to the collection in her hands.