The Prodigal Judge Part 9

"You've spent much of your time up North?" suggested Murrell.

"Four years. I've been at school, you know. That's where I met Judith."

"I hope you'll like West Tennessee. It's still a bit raw compared with what you've been accustomed to in the North. You haven't been back in all those four years?" Betty shook her head. "Nor seen Tom--nor any one from out yonder?" For some reason a little tinge of color had crept into Betty's cheeks. "Will you let me renew our acquaintance at Belle Plain?

I shall be in West Tennessee before the summer is over; probably I shall leave here within a week," he said, bending toward her. His glance dwelt on her face and the pliant lines of her figure, and his sense swam.

Since their first meeting the girl's beauty had haunted and allured him; with his pa.s.sionate sense of life he was disposed to these violent fancies, and he had a masterful way with women just as he had a masterful way with men. Now, however, he was aware that he was viewed with entire indifference. His vanity, which was his whole inner self, was hurt, and from the black depths of his nature his towering egotism flashed out lawless and perverted impulses. "I must tell you that I am not of your sort, Miss Malroy--" he continued hurriedly. "My people were plain folk out of the mountains. For what I am I have no one to thank but myself. You must be aware of the prejudices of the planter cla.s.s, for it is your cla.s.s. Perhaps I haven't been quite frank at the Barony--I felt it was asking too much when you were there. That was a door I didn't want closed to me!"

"I imagine you will be welcome at Belle Plain. You are Tom's friend."

Murrell bit his lip, and then laughed as his mind conjured up a picture of the cherished Tom. Suddenly he reached out and rested his hand on hers. He lived in the shadow of chance not always kind, his pleasures were intoxicating drafts s.n.a.t.c.hed in the midst of dangers, and here was youth, sweet and perfect, that only needed awakening.

"Betty--if I might think--" he began, but his tongue stumbled. His love-making was usually of a savage sort, but some quality in the girl held him in check. The words he had spoken many times before forsook him. Betty drew away from him, an angry color on her cheeks and an angry light in her eyes. "Forgive me, Betty!" muttered Murrell, but his heart beat against his ribs, and pa.s.sion sent its surges through him. "Don't you know what I'm trying to tell you?" he whispered. Betty gathered up her reins. "Not yet--" he cried, and again he rested a heavy hand on hers. "Don't you know what's kept me here? It was to be near you--only that--I've been waiting for this chance to speak. It was long in coming, but it's here now--and it's mine!" he exulted. His eyes burned with a luminous fire, he urged his horse nearer and they came to a halt. "Look here--I'll follow you North--I swear I love you--say I may!"

"Let me go--let me go!" cried Betty indignantly.

"No--not yet!" he urged his horse still nearer and gathered her close.

"You've got to hear me. I've loved you since the first moment I rested my eyes on you--and, by G.o.d, you shall love me in return!" He felt her struggle to free herself from his grasp with a sense of savage triumph.

It was the brute force within him that conquered with women just as it conquered with men.

Bruce Carrington, on his way back to Fayetteville from the Forks, came about a turn in the road. Betty saw a tall, handsome fellow in the first flush of manhood; Carrington, an angry girl, very beautiful and very indignant, struggling in a man's grasp.

At sight of the new-comer, Murrell, with an oath, released Betty, who, striking her horse with the whip galloped down the road toward the Barony. As she fled past Carrington she bent low in her saddle.

"Don't let him follow me!" she gasped, and Carrington, striding forward, caught Murrell's horse by the bit.

"Not so fast, you!" he said coolly. The two men glared at each other for a brief instant.

"Take your hand off my horse!" exclaimed Murrell hoa.r.s.ely, his mouth hot and dry with a sense of defeat.

"Can't you see she'd rather be alone?" said Carrington.

"Let go!" roared Murrell, and a murderous light shot from his eyes.

"I don't know but I should pull you out of that saddle and twist your neck!" said Carrington hotly. Murrell's face underwent a swift change.

"You're a bold fellow to force your way into a lover's quarrel," he said quietly. Carrington's arm dropped at his side. Perhaps, after all, it was that. Murrell thrust his hand into his pocket. "I always give something to the boy who holds my horse," he said, and tossed a coin in Carrington's direction. "There--take that for your pains!" he added. He pulled his horse about and rode back toward the cross-roads at an easy canter.

Carrington, with an angry flush on his sunburnt cheeks, stood staring down at the coin that glinted in the dusty road, but he was seeing the face of the girl, indignant, beautiful--then he glanced after Murrell.

"I reckon I ought to have twisted his neck," he said with a deep breath.

CHAPTER VI. BETTY SETS OUT FOR TENNESSEE

Bruce Carrington came of a westward-looking race. From the low coast where they had first settled, those of his name had followed the rivers to their headwaters. The headwaters had sent them forth toward the foot-hills, where they made their, clearings and built their cabins in the shadow of the blue wall that for a time marked the furthest goal of their desires. But only for a time. Crossing the mountains they found the headwaters once more, and following the streams out of the hills saw the roaring torrents become great placid rivers.

Carrington's father had put the mountains at his back thirty years before. The Watauga settlements had furnished him a wife, and some four years later Bruce was born on the banks of the Ohio. The senior Carrington had appeared on horseback as a wooer, but had walked on foot as a married man, each s.h.i.+ft of residence he made having represented a descent to a lower social level. On the death of his wife he had embarked in the river trade with all that enthusiasm and hope he had brought to half-a-dozen other occupations, for he was a gentleman of prodigious energy.

Bruce's first memories had to do with long nights when he perched beside his father on the cabin roof of their keel-boat and watched the stars, or the blurred line of the sh.o.r.e where it lay against the sky, or the lights on other barges and rafts drifting as they were drifting, with their wheat and corn and whisky to that common market at the river's mouth.

Sometimes they dragged their boat back up-stream, painfully, laboriously; three or four months of unremitting toil sufficed for this, when the crew sweated at the towing ropes from dawn until dark, that the rich planters in Kentucky and Tennessee might have tea and wine for their tables, and silks and laces for their womenfolk. More often they abandoned their boat and tramped north, armed and watchful, since cutthroats and robbers haunted the roads, and river-men, if they had not drunk away their last dollar in New Orleans, were worth spoiling. Or, if it offered, they took pa.s.sage on some fast sailing clipper bound for Baltimore or Philadelphia, and crossed the mountains to the Ohio and were within a week or two of home.

Bruce Carrington had seen the day of barge and raft reach its zenith, had heard the first steam packet's shrieking whistle which sounded the death-knell of the ancient order, though the s.h.i.+fting of the trade was a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pa.s.s over to the new at once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and in the Homeric carousals of some ten thousand of the half-horse, half-alligator breed that nightly gathered in New Orleans. Broad-horns and mud-sills they were called in derision. A strange race of aquatic pioneers, jeans and leather clad, the rifle and the setting-pole equally theirs, they came out of every stream down which a scow could be thrust at flood-time; from tiny settlements far back among the hills; from those bustling sinks of iniquity, the river towns. But now, surely, yet almost imperceptibly, their commerce was slipping from them. At all the landings they were being elbowed by the newcomers--men who wore bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and gold braid, and s.h.i.+ny leather shoes instead of moccasins; men with white hands and gold rings on their fingers and diamonds in their s.h.i.+rts--men whose hair and clothing kept the rancid smell of oil and smoke and machinery.

After the reading of the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown Carrington the road to the Forks, a.s.suring him when they separated that with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to fetch up there and not pa.s.s plumb through the settlement without knowing where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years before, and in the churchyard he had found the graves and read the inscriptions that recorded the virtues of certain dead and gone Carringtons. It had all seemed a very respectable link with the past.

He was on his way to Fayetteville, where he intended to spend the night, and perhaps a day or two in looking around, when the meeting with Betty and Murrell occurred. As Murrell disappeared in the direction of Balaam's, Carrington took a spiteful kick at the unoffending coin, and strode off down the Fayetteville pike. But the girl's face remained with him. It was a face he would like to see again. He wondered who she was, and if she lived in the big house on the other road, the house beyond the red gate which Charley Balaam had told him was called the Barony.

He was still thinking of the girl when he ate his supper that night at Cleggett's Tavern. Later, in the bar, he engaged his host in idle gossip. Mr. Cleggett knew all about the Barony and its owner, Nat Ferris. Ferris was a youngish man, just married. Carrington experienced a quick sinking of the heart. A fleeting sense of humor succeeded--had he interfered between man and wife? But surely if this had been the case the girl would not have spoken as she had.

He wound Mr. Cleggett up with sundry pegs of strong New England rum. He had met a gentleman and lady on the road that day; he wondered, as he toyed with his gla.s.s, if it could have been the Ferrises? Mounted? Yes, mounted. Then it was Ferris and his wife--or it might have been Captain Murrell and Miss Malroy the captain was a strapping, black-haired chap who rode a big bay horse. Miss Malroy did not live in that part of the country; she was a friend of Mrs. Ferris', belonged in Kentucky or Tennessee, or somewhere out yonder--at any rate she was bringing her visit to an end, for Ferris had instructed him to reserve a place for her in the north-bound stage on the morrow.

Carrington suddenly remembered that he had some thought of starting north in the morning himself, but he was still undecided. How about it if he deferred his decision until the stage was leaving? Mr. Cleggett consulted his bookings and was of the opinion that his chances would not be good; and Carrington hastily paid down his money. Later in the privacy of his own room he remarked meditatively, viewing his reflection in the mirror that hung above the chimneypiece, "I reckon you're plain crazy!" and seemed to free himself from all further responsibility for his own acts whatever they might be.

The stage left at six, and as Carrington climbed to his seat the next morning Mr. Cleggett was advising the driver to look sharp when he came to the Barony road, as he was to pick up a party there. It was Carrington who looked sharp, and almost at the spot where he had seen Betty Malroy the day before he saw her again, with Ferris and Judith and a pile of luggage bestowed by the wayside. Betty did not observe him as the coach stopped, for she was intent on her farewells with her friends.

There were hasty words of advice from Ferris, prolonged good-byes to Judith, tears--kisses--while a place was being made for her many boxes and trunks. Carrington viewed the luggage with awe, and listened without shame. He gathered that she was going north to Was.h.i.+ngton; that her final destination was some point either on the Ohio or Mississippi, and that her name was Betty. Then the door slammed and the stage was in motion again.

Carrington felt sensibly enriched by the meager facts now in his possession. He was especially interested in her name. Be liked the sound of it. It suited her. He even tried it under his breath softly.

Betty--Betty Malroy--next he fell to wondering if those few hurried words she had addressed to him could possibly be construed as forming a basis for a further acquaintance. Or wasn't it far more likely she would prefer to forget the episode of the previous day, which had clearly been anything but agreeable?

All through the morning they swung forward in the heat and dust and glare, with now and then a brief pause when they changed horses, and at midday rattled into the shaded main street of a sleepy village and drew up before the tavern where dinner was waiting them--a fact that was announced by a bare-legged colored boy armed with a club, who beat upon a suspended wagon tire.

Betty saw Carrington when she took her seat, and gave a scarcely perceptible start of surprise. Then her face was flooded with a rich color. This was the man who saw her with Captain Murrell yesterday I What must he think of her! There was a brief moment of irresolution and then she bowed coldly.

"You just barely managed it. I reckon n.o.body could misunderstand that.

By no means cordial--but of course not!" Carrington reflected. His own handsome face had been expressionless when he returned her bow, and Betty could not have guessed how consoled and comforted he was by it.

With great fort.i.tude and self-denial he forbore to look in her direction again, but he lingered at the table until the last moment that he might watch her when she returned to the coach. Mr. Carrington entertained ideals where women were concerned, and even though he had been the one to profit by it he would not have had Betty depart in the minutest particular from those stringent rules he laid down for her s.e.x.

Consequently that distant air she bore toward him filled him with satisfaction. It was quite enough for the present--for the present--that three times each day his perseverance and determination were rewarded by that curt little acknowledgment of her indebtedness to him.

It was four days to Richmond. Four days of hot, dusty travel, four nights of uncomfortable cross-road stations, where Betty suffered sleepless nights and the unaccustomed pangs of early rising. She occasionally found herself wondering who Carrington was. She approved of the manner in which he conducted himself. She liked a man who could be un.o.btrusive. Traveling like that day after day it would have been so easy for him to be officious. But he never addressed her and refused to see any opportunity to a.s.sist her in entering or quitting the stage, leaving that to some one else. Presently she was sorry she had bowed to him that first day--so self-contained and unpresuming a person as he would evidently have been quite satisfied to overlook the omission.

Then she began to be haunted by doubts. Perhaps, after all, he had not recognized her as the girl he had met in the road! This gave her a very queer feeling indeed--for what must he think of her? And the next time she bowed to this perfect stranger she threw a chilling austerity into the salutation quite at variance with her appearance, for the windy drive had tangled her hair and blown it in curling wisps about her face.

This served to trouble Carrington excessively, and furnished him with food for reflection through all his waking moments for the succeeding eight and forty hours.

The next morning he found himself seated opposite her at breakfast. He received another curt little nod, cool and distant, as he took his seat, but he felt strongly that a mere bowing acquaintance would no longer suffice; so he pa.s.sed her a number of things she didn't want, and presently ventured the opinion that she must find traveling as they were, day after day, very fatiguing. Surprised at the sound of his voice, before she knew what she was doing, Betty said, "Not at all,"

closed her red lips, and was immediately dumb.

Carrington at once relapsed into silence and ventured no further opinion on any topic. Betty was left wondering whether she had been rude, and when they met again asked if the stage would reach Was.h.i.+ngton at the advertised hour. She had been consulting the copy of Badger's and Porter's Register which Ferris had thrust into her satchel the morning she left the Barony, and which, among a multiplicity of detail as to hotels and taverns, gave the runnings of all the regular stage lines, packets, ca.n.a.l-boats and steamers, by which one could travel over the length and breadth of the land. "You stop in Was.h.i.+ngton?" said Carrington.

Betty shook her head. "No, I am going on to Wheeling."

"You're fortunate in being so nearly home," he observed. "I am going on to Memphis." He felt it was time she knew this, or else she might think his movements were dictated by her own.

Betty exclaimed: "Why, I am going to Memphis, too!"

"Are you? By ca.n.a.l to c.u.mberland, and then by stage over the National Road to Wheeling?"

Betty nodded. "It makes one wish they'd finish their railroads, doesn't it? Do you suppose they'll ever get as far west as Memphis?" she said.