House of Masques

by Fortune Kent

  “I’m not sure. I think at the place we hid while Captain Worthington went by.” She cringed away from him, afraid, but he did not strike her. He dropped his hand and without a word pulled his own hat low on his forehead and, lifting his saddle, walked toward the horses. Don’t go, she pleaded under her breath, don’t go. Her only protector, although an unlikely one, was leaving.

  After a few minutes Kathleen heard his horse scramble up the embankment. She was left with Floyd in the deepening twilight. The only noise was the chirruping of the cicadas.

  Floyd sat by the fire, whittling. Every so often the dying blaze flared and the light glinted on the blade of his knife. He seemed to have forgotten her presence, but she knew he had not, knew he was waiting, thinking, imagining. What would he do?

  Night came quickly. One moment the trees were etched against the sky with each branch distinct, the next they appeared as outlines a shade darker than the night itself. Kathleen saw Floyd stoop to light a cigarette from the embers. He withdrew into the darkness so his squat figure was visible only when he pulled on his smoke.

  She could not just lie and wait. She must act, try to get away. By pushing with her feet and at the same time hunching her body she found she could move. Foot by foot she slid her back deeper into the lean-to with her hands and arms scraping on the dirt beneath her. Her head struck cut branches which closed off the end of the lean-to. She turned, careful to make no noise to alert Floyd, shifted her body so her feet pressed on the obstruction. She drew her legs back and pushed. The branches shifted but held. She inched forward, pushed again. The limbs fell sideways with a clatter. Had Floyd heard?

  Kathleen squirmed into the opening. Halfway. A little more. There, she was outside. A hand gripped her hair and she screamed. Floyd had been waiting for her. He scooped her up with one arm under her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, and carried her to the campfire where he laid her on the ground.

  “I reckon the Sergeant’s about halfway down the mountain by now,” he said. He poked the fire with a stick, making it flare. She smelled smoke but could not be sure whether it was from the campfire or from the blaze threatening the Estate.

  Suddenly she was calm. She seemed to see and hear with a heightened awareness. She saw the glowing fire, heard the cicadas, felt the night air cool on her bare skin where her dress had torn, smelled the acrid odor of the fire.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “To who? The Captain? You? As for the Captain, we’re going to arrange a meeting with him, just him alone with the two of us, me and Jeb, and we’re going to kill him.”

  “Without warning? Without giving him a chance?”

  “Yes, like the Indian friends would do to one of us.”

  “Why? What do you have against him?”

  “What happened in Kansas—the killing, the phony court-martial, all the rest.”

  “The coffin on the porch of the Estate, the fire on the lawn before that…they were your doing.” The pieces were falling into place. The Committee, the letters about Michael’s death.

  “Not me and Jeb. The two who came from the Committee before us. Jeb and me, we don’t waste time with play-acting. We waited until after the big shindig, the ball, until they were all tired and not paying heed, then we set the fire.” He threw his cigarette onto the embers. “Enough talk. What you and me have to do don’t include passing the time of day. I think you can guess what I have in mind, Miss Clarissa, ma’am.”

  “Clarissa?” They thought she was Clarissa. They had found her in Clarissa’s room. Hope mingled with another emotion. Resentment? Once more someone had wanted Clarissa, not her.

  The knife gleamed and she felt the binding on her ankles being cut. Her legs, stiff and sore, were free. She heard Floyd lay something near the campfire. His belt and gun?

  “I’m not—” she began. His face touched hers and she twisted away from the scratching of his beard. “Stop,” she said, her voice hoarse and urgent, “I’m Kathleen, I’m—”

  His hands moved up her legs beneath her dress, rough, demanding. Went to her knees and above in an impatient caress. She squirmed under him, arms still tied, tried to kick him, but his short body was thick and hard and his weight pinned her to the ground. She fought while he pulled at her with his hands. He grunted, seeming to find pleasure in her struggle. She heard her stockings rip, felt his bands on her flesh. She sobbed, without hope, and her body slumped.

  As if from a great distance, she heard his triumphant laugh.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A light shone in her eyes. Floyd raised his face from hers and she felt his body tense.

  “Get up.”

  She saw Floyd look over his shoulder. A man stood a few paces behind him with a pistol in his hand.

  “If you aren’t on your feet by the time I count three, I’ll blow a hole in the back of your head.” She recognized Edward’s voice.

  Floyd’s hands dropped from her body. He pushed himself to his knees, then stood with his hands raised. Kathleen struggled to her feet, her hands still tied, being careful to keep out of Floyd’s reach. The light, she saw, came from a lantern sitting on a rock near Edward’s feet.

  “Come here,” Edward told her. He cut the bindings on her hands and she rubbed her wrists. She was stunned, without will power. “Pick up his belt and gun.” Keeping her eyes on Floyd, she walked warily past the campfire and lifted the belt from the ground. As she backed away she could feel Floyd’s eyes follow her every step.

  “Oh.” Kathleen’s heel struck a rock and she stumbled. Edward half turned to her, and in that instant Floyd leaped forward to grasp and twist his wrist. The pistol clattered among the rocks. Floyd’s left arm locked around Edward’s neck as his right fist pounded his body. Edward tried to ward off the blows with his hands and arms. He struck wildly and made Floyd grunt as he landed a glancing blow on his jaw.

  Kathleen pulled the gun from the holster. She aimed at Floyd, only to have the men turn so she found herself looking along the gun barrel at Edward. What if she shot him by mistake? Afraid to pull the trigger, she looked desperately about. The fire. One stick, thicker than a man’s wrist, had burned only at one end. She placed the revolver on the ground and seized the stick. When she held the weapon aloft smoke furled from it like a banner.

  With one hand Floyd was holding Edward with his back pinned to a boulder while he punched at his body. Edward groaned. Kathleen struck with all her might, heard the wood shatter on Floyd’s head. Sparks showered over the two men. Floyd staggered and fell moaning into the shadows. She hurled the smoldering stick after him.

  She ran to Edward. He gasped for air as breath rasped in his bloodied nose and mouth. She placed her arm around his shoulders.

  “I’ll be all right,” he said in a weak voice. “Bring me his gun.” She retrieved the revolver and handed it to Edward. He held the gun in a trembling hand as his eyes swept the darkness in search of Floyd.

  “Listen,” she said. They heard a horse’s hooves crunching on loose stone. Floyd had escaped. Kathleen, her heart thudding, leaned on the trunk of a pine. A shudder passed through her body. Now, with the danger gone, she was suddenly afraid.

  She held Edward’s canteen while he drank, then bathed his face. She wanted to comfort and care for him but knew he would object. He pushed himself to his feet and limped back and forth, holding his side. He must have seen her looking at him strangely.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Your beard,” she told him. “It’s coming off.”

  He put both hands to his face, and when he removed them the beard came too.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Much.”

  He stepped in front of her and looked into her eyes. “Are you all right?” She understood his meaning.

  “Yes,” she said. “A few minutes more and Floyd would have…” She shuddered. �
�And you?”

  “I’ll make it.” He brushed himself off. “Was Floyd alone?”

  “No, there was one other, Jeb. He left, started down the mountain almost an hour before you got here.”

  “I must have missed him while I was looking for you. I’ve been wandering on this mountain since I left the Estate hours ago.”

  The Estate. She had forgotten. “The fire. Did the Estate burn?”

  “No, the house is deserted but safe. The servants cut a fire line a hundred yards from the main building. By the stables. Then Charles and the cadets arrived and they started a backfire. The main fire jumped over the line and it was touch and go whether the crews could keep the Estate from burning. Do you know who came at the last minute and saved the house?”

  “Who?”

  “The gypsies.” He shook his head. “I never would have believed it. Can you imagine gypsies helping anyone other than themselves? Seems Charles had sent food to their camp only a few hours before the fire started. Lucky he did.” So Alice Lewis had told Mr. Blasingame. Kathleen remained silent, relishing her unrevealed role in saving the Estate.

  Edward tucked the revolver in his waistband. “Let’s get away from here,” he said.

  “I’ll take the lantern,” she offered after he refilled his canteen with water from the lean-to. “Where did you leave your horse?”

  “He got away. I tied him while I searched for you and when I came back he’d broken loose. Maybe the smoke frightened him.”

  “We can walk. I think I can find the trail. When they brought me here I tried to remember the way.”

  “We could camp on the mountain until dawn,” he suggested.

  She knew a tingle of excitement, for she wanted to say yes but realized she must not. “No,” she told him, “we must warn the Captain. Floyd and Jeb mean to kill him.” She told him of Floyd’s plan and about the letters from the Committee, relating the details of Michael’s death. “I think these men are from Captain Worthington’s old cavalry company,” she concluded.

  “They’re fanatics,” he said, “and fanatics only understand force. I should know.”

  Kathleen helped Edward look for his gun, failed to find it, gave up the search. Could Floyd have taken Edward’s gun? Unlikely, she thought. The embankment leading out of the canyon was steep, and they climbed to the top in silence. The night was without moon or stars. The smoke became thicker so they stopped often to drink from the canteen.

  In the glow from the lantern the route seemed strange to Kathleen, altogether different than in the daylight. Several times she discovered she had taken a wrong turning and they retraced their steps. When at last she came to the trail they sat on a deadfall to rest.

  “How did you find me?” she asked when she had caught her breath.

  “After I talked to Clarissa and sent her to the village in the rig, I came to look in the house for you. Of course, you were nowhere to be found. I didn’t know what to do until one of the men clearing the fire line said he’d seen you leaving the house with two strangers.”

  “I thought someone saw me,” she said.

  “With so much else going on no one thought much of it at the time. When the Captain arrived with the cadets he told me that while he’d been riding alone on the mountain, before the fire, he’d seen signs making him think somebody was camping near the summit. I guessed what might have happened. So, once the backfire worked, I came looking for you. The Captain knows I’m here, he’ll send help as soon as he can. We may meet them riding up the trail.”

  Edward had come, alone, looking for her. He could have waited, sought help—he had a hundred ready-made excuses for staying at the Estate. Yet he had searched and he had found her. I’m becoming more and more beholden to him, she thought.

  “What of the fire?” she asked. “The smoke’s thicker.”

  “It’s burning along the side of the mountain in this direction. And toward the summit. We stopped the fire in front of the Estate, the river is a barrier to the east, and the village firemen contained it at the base of the mountain. There’s only one way left to burn. This way.”

  “And Josiah. When will he return? I’ve lost all track of time.”

  “In three days. The sooner the better—we need him.”

  So Edward relied on Josiah also. He’d know what to do, Kathleen thought. More than anyone, Josiah combined a clear purpose with the strength of will needed to reach his goal.

  “We’d better go on,” she said. “I’m rested now.”

  Edward was slow getting to his feet. When they set out along the downhill path she noticed he limped even more than before. She began to reach to him but withdrew her hand for she knew he would refuse her aid.

  “Jeb and Floyd might both be on the mountain,” Edward said. “But they’re riding, so we should be able to hear them before they hear us.”

  “Unless they see our lantern.”

  “We have to take the chance. We need the light.” As she walked on Kathleen imagined Floyd lurking in some dark crevice along the way. She noticed Edward’s hand rested on the butt of his revolver.

  When they reached the last of the switchbacks she could see flames both below and ahead. The cutting taste of smoke in her mouth and lungs made her cough until her throat ached. She stopped to wait for Edward, who had fallen behind.

  “We don’t have far to go,” she said when he reached her. She took a deep drink of water. She tried to put the threat of flames from her mind but could not.

  As they approached the fire they could hear the crackling. “We can turn back,” she said tentatively. “Doesn’t this trail lead all the way to West Point?”

  “Yes, but the Point is at least five miles from here and we’re getting farther away all the time.”

  “Wait.” She held him back with her hand. A black chasm yawned in front of them. She remembered Floyd and Jeb dismounting to walk the horses across a timber bridge over this canyon.

  “The bridge,” she said. “It’s gone.” He came to her side and they gazed down at the rocks far below. The fire leaped through the brush on both sides of the canyon to create a writhing, shifting world of light and shadow. The height made her dizzy, so she stepped back from the edge.

  “Not the whole bridge,” he said, “Just the near section. Look.” She found he was right. Except for the gap of some nine or ten feet in front of them the timbers remained in place.

  He measured the distance with his eyes. “I can’t jump that far,” he said.

  “We’ll have to go back.” Kathleen turned to walk from the chasm when a shout stopped her. Two men stood on the far bank. Could it be? Yes! she thought, her heart leaping. Charles, a lantern in one hand, a rifle in the other. Who was with him? The man looked familiar, but shadows bid his face.

  She saw Charles test the timbers with his foot and turn to his companion. They appeared to argue.

  “Stay there,” Charles shouted to them. “We’ll come over and bring you across.” The second man, who had run back into the darkness, returned with a rope which Charles tied about his partner’s waist. He looped the other end around a tree stump.

  The fire blazed higher. The canyon, funnel-like, seemed to scoop up the wind and push the roaring fire ahead of it. Flames rose white-hot from the thick brush, licked along dead tree trunks, burst from pines and cedars, smoke and flame streaming off into the air. When the fire reached a dead tree it ran up its side, the wind dislodging burning bark and wood, the blazing fragments sailing forward to start new fires farther on.

  The man moved confidently onto the bridge. He was stocky and blond. All at once Kathleen knew him—the cadet who saluted her while she watched the Fourth of July parade, the cadet who had come to the masquerade without a costume.

  He was halfway across now, the flames crackling only ten feet beneath him. Kathleen, tense, reached for Edward, found and pressed his hand tightly wit
h her own. As the cadet approached the missing section of the bridge he slowed, proceeded step by step. The timbers creaked, the fire licked higher. He reached the spot where he must leap across the gap. Behind him the rope lay along the bridge to where Charles knelt on the far bank.

  It happened so quickly. One moment she saw the cadet poised to run and jump, the next the timbers, rotted, weakened by the passage of men and mules, gave way and he fell. Kathleen’s mouth opened in a silent scream. The rope jerked the cadet to a stop and he hung below a rock ledge, swinging in midair a hundred feet above the canyon floor. Charles ran to the edge and began pulling the rope up hand over hand. The cadet waved to him, nodded his head.

  “The rope,” Kathleen gasped. Just above the ledge, where the rope ran in the midst of brush, the fire burned over it and a snake of flame ran up along its top. The rope began to unravel. Edward tightened his grip on her hand. For an instant she saw the rope, taut, seem to hang by a single strand, then the strand parted and the rope whipped over the ledge and the cadet plummeted down.

  Kathleen buried her face on Edward’s chest. Tears filled her eyes. Edward, murmuring to her, ran his hands over her shoulders as she cried. She felt the fire hot on her back and she turned from his arms. Across the canyon Charles waved them back.

  “Is there, is there a chance he’s alive?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

  “No,” Edward said. “Not a chance in the world.”

  She picked up the lantern. “We must go back,” she said. The lantern in her hand, face streaked with soot and tears, dress torn, she led the way along the trail.

  Kathleen had thought when she first saw him that someday, somehow, the blond cadet would play a part in her life. It was a fantasy, she knew, but she had believed its truth with all her heart. She had no idea what might happen when they met, yet she accepted the meeting as a certainty.

  Now he was dead. She would never meet him or speak to him or come to know him. Why did he die? she asked herself. His death was so meaningless. As she climbed wearily back up the mountain the question echoed in her mind—Why? Why? Why?