A Pagan of the Hills Part 23

"Fell in love with ye?" She repeated the words after him still in that even somewhat puzzled quiet which was, for her, almost toneless. "Jack Halloway, when ye went away from hyar yestiddy evenin' an' I'd sat thar fer a full measured hour an' thought, I 'lowed thar warn't a soul on earth ner in h.e.l.l thet I hated so much as you. I'd done med up my mind ter kill ye afore I laid down ter sleep."

There was an implacability about this new manner, that disquieted the man a little, but he said gravely:

"Them feelin's jest comes about because what ye felt yestiddy war all new ter ye. Hit's nat'ral enough, but hit won't endure."

She went on ignoring his protestations. "Ther only reason I _didn't_ kill ye, war thet I'd done _let_ ye . . . an' I hated myself next es bad es you. Folks tells me thet I hain't always goin' ter want ter turn men back. Mebby thet's true."

"Ye knows full well a'ready, thet hit's true," he declared vehemently.

"Be thet es. .h.i.t may, no man's ter wed me without he wooes me fust, an'

no man hain't never goin' ter lay a hand on me without I consents. Now I aims ter try an' fergit erbout yestiddy--an' you'd better fergit hit too."

The man's eyes broke into vehement challenge. "So long es thar's life in me I won't fergit hit!"

"I reckon ye'd better heer me out," she reminded him with an ominous note and he nodded his head, waiting, while she continued.

"Yestiddy I seemed crazed--but terday I hain't. Ye 'pears ter be right sartain thet I loves ye. I don't know, but I either loves ye or I hates ye like all h.e.l.l. Ef I loves ye I kain't kill ye--an' ef I hates ye thar's time enough."

"But Alexander, you do love me! I know----"

"Wa'al, I don't--an' thet's a right pithy point ter my manner of thinking! Ye're a right masterful sort of feller, an' ye likes ter plow yore way through life gloryin' in yore strength an' forcin' your will on weaker folks." She paused an instant then added significantly: "But I'm a right masterful sort of woman myself--an' I hain't ter be nowise driv. Ef you an' me kain't consort peaceable I reckon we'll jest erbout rake h.e.l.l afore we finishes up our warfare."

As he looked at her his admiration was flaming. Possibly it was best, just now, to advance slowly.

"I'm willin' ter wait," he conceded slowly. "Ye're wuth hit."

"Ye says I loves ye. If I finds thet out fer myself, in due course I'll wed with ye. Ef I don't, I won't, but----" Her voice broke so suddenly out of the quiet plane in which it had been pitched, that her climax of words came like a sharp thunder clap on still air. "But ef ye seeks ter fo'ce me, or ef ever ergin ye lays a hand on me or teches me, 'twell I tells ye ye kin, afore G.o.d in Heaven, one of us has got ter die! An' I won't never be with ye unarmed, nuther."

Halloway did not judge it a good time to mention that her allusion to marriage left a rather wide territory of debate open. One thing at a time seemed enough and more than enough.

Alexander had not asked him in, and he inquired calmly: "Now thet ye've stated yore terms an' I've done agreed ter 'em, hain't ye goin' ter invite me in?"

"No," she said shortly. "I makes ther laws in my own household. Ye air goin' away an' ye hain't comin' back hyar fer one week. I aims ter be left alone fer a spell now. Ef them terms don't suit ye, ye needn't come back at all."

And in that week of reprieved decision Alexander took her life to pieces and searchingly examined it, item by item. Some strange reactions were taking place in the laboratory of her life. She was no more seen in breeches and boots. She had self-contemptuously decided that if she could not hold undeviatingly to her strongest tenet, but became a palpitant woman when a man seized her in his arms, she would throw overboard the whole sorry pretense.

She would henceforth be frankly and avowedly a woman, but a woman different from those about her, giving up none of the leaders.h.i.+p that was in her blood or the self-pride that was her birthright.

One afternoon she met Jerry O'Keefe on the road, and with the old unabashed twinkle in his eye he accosted her.

"I heer tell ther big feller's back," he began and the girl flushed.

"Hev ye done run him offen yore place, too?"

"Thet's my business."

"Yes _thet_ is, but yore runnin' me off's right severely _mine_."

"Mebby I've got a rather who comes thar."

"So hev I." There was a lurking, somewhat engaging impertinence even in Jerry's quietest rejoinders, a humorous boldness and self-confidence.

"Howsomever, I reckon ye're kinderly skeered thet I'd mek ye think too towerin' much of me. I reckon ye dar'sn't trust yoreself."

Alexander looked at him, and for all her attempted severity she could not keep the twinkle out of her own pupils. If she had not succeeded in driving Halloway away, why should she stand out for the subterfuge of banis.h.i.+ng Jerry? It reminded her of Joe's picking an easy man to whip. There was even a faint challenge of coquetry in her manner as she disdainfully announced: "Ef thet's ther way I'm feedin' yore vanity, come over whenever ye feels like hit. I'll strive ter endure ye, ef ye don't tarry too long."

"I kain't come afore ternight. Hit's sun-down now," was the instant response.

Things had not gone well with Jase Mallows. The wound that Bud had inflicted had healed slowly and he had lain long bedridden. He had been the last of the gang to hear the sorry story of how the robbery had failed and the sequel recording the deaths of Lute and his lieutenant. Now Jase heard that Alexander's door was no longer barred to men who came courting and he returned home. But he came nursing a grudge against Bud who had wounded him and who had set awry all his plans. For only one thing was he thankful. Alexander had no suspicion of his complicity in the effort to rob her.

But when Jase presented himself at Alexander's house, wearing a fancy waistcoat and a bright colored tie, he learned to his discomfiture that the bars which had been lowered to others were still up and fixed against himself.

Bud, too, was far from happy, as from a distance he watched Alexander's apotheosis. Bud knew that he was like a gray and inconspicuous moth enamored of a splendidly winged b.u.t.terfly. She could never be thrilled by the colorless fidelity of a man who was simple almost to stupidity, even though he lived with no thought above his loyalty. One day almost unconquerable thirst came upon Bud. It attacked him suddenly as he pa.s.sed the house and saw Halloway sitting on the porch talking with Alexander, and heard the peal of her responsive laughter.

That appet.i.te rode him like a witch, making capital of his nervous dejection and he tramped the woods vainly struggling to submerge it in physical fatigue. Unfortunately it took a great deal of exertion to wear Bud down, and the mania of craving was as strong as his untiring muscles. By the purest of evil chance too, he stumbled upon an illicit still, where an acquaintance was brewing whiskey. He had not known that it was being operated there and had he sought to find it he could not have done so, for it was well hidden behind browse and thicket and a man watched furtively with a ready rifle. But the "blockader"

recognized Bud and had no fears of his playing informer, so with an amused smile on his bearded face he stepped into sight with a tin cup invitingly out-held.

To Bud Sellers its sickening odor was the bouquet of ambrosia. It stole into his nostrils and set up in his brain insidious sensations of imagined delight. He pushed it back at first then seized it and gulped it greedily down.

Hurriedly he went away. He told himself that if he stopped there all would still be well, but it was as feasible to tell the tiger that has tasted blood to lie down and be good. He must have more. For a time Bud struggled, then he saddled a mule and went as fast as he could ride toward town. It was a race of endurance against a collapsing resolve.

When he reached the village he sought out the town marshal and excitedly begged, "Fer G.o.d's sake lock me up in ther jail-house. Ther cravin's done come on me afresh. I'm goin' mad ergin."

The town marshal knew the history of Bud's alcoholic periodicity, yet he had no authority to jail a man on request in advance of any offense.

"Ye don't look drunk yit, Bud, albeit I'm afeared ye soon will be," he said. "I reckon I hain't hardly got ther power ter jail ye, without ye commits some misdeed."

But Bud was at the end of his struggle. In a minute more instead of pleading to be confined, he would be hunting for liquor. It was now or never. He seized up a brick that lay at his feet and hurled it through the gla.s.s window of a store, before which they stood talking.

"Kin ye do hit now?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely, and the town marshal said: "Yes, I reckon I kin--now."

Men have varied fas.h.i.+ons for expressing their love of women. That night Jack Halloway sat on the moonlit porch of Alexander's house and Bud sat in the vermin-infested cell of the village lockup. But as the hours went on he found a certain recompense in the thought that he was keeping a pledge.

As for Jerry O'Keefe that night, he was doing nothing at all except thinking certain things about the great fellow who was with the girl, but those thoughts were putting out roots of future conflict.

CHAPTER XVI

Nothing had been heard of any Ku-Klux operations since Alexander's adventure, and even of that episode no unclean circulated story had gone abroad. Those who had worn the black masks were not apt to talk overmuch, and those who had made up Bud's force were for quite different reasons equally discreet. Since Alexander had won through safe and unrobbed, those who had been, in a fas.h.i.+on, her clansman, had few outstanding grudges to repay. Jack Halloway, for example, had come with a satisfied heart out of the baggage-room, by way of the wrecked telegraph office. For him the matter was concluded, save that he had made three enemies who would nurse a malignant grievance and seek, some day, to requite it with the ambushed rifle. The telegraph operator had altogether disappeared from the country, and his two immediate confederates, who were "branch-water men" dwelling in some remote pocket of the hills, had withdrawn to their thicketed abodes.

Bud Sellers had pieced two and two together, and though he kept a Masonic silence on the point, he had reached a conclusion. The house where Jase Mallows had been nursed back to health after his mysterious wounding, was not far from the place where he and Brent had been ambushed. The wound might have been the result of the volley he had himself fired at the rifle-flash, and if that were true the balance of that encounter lay in his favor. If it were not true, he had no means of knowing to whom he owed an unpaid score for his "lay-wayin'."

Only, he must keep an eye on Jase--because if his inference were correct, Jase would never forget.

Besides the telegraph man, the only other princ.i.p.al, actually or definitely known to any of Alexander's friends had been Lute Brown, and upon him they need spend no further thought. A long while after the tragedy had been played out there by yellow lantern-light, a woodsman pa.s.sed the rotting cabin where Lute and his faithful partisan had died.

It was indeed so long after, that there was some difficulty in identifying the bodies, and an inconclusive coroner's verdict left the matter stranded in mystery--and so it promised to remain. Privately, those conspirators, whose lips were sealed as to legal testimony, had hunted the a.s.sa.s.sin for several weeks, but without success.

Occasionally, in widely separated places, a haggard and emaciated man was glimpsed who always escaped unidentified and with ghost-like speed.

Children were frightened with tales of his burning eyes, and in neighborhood gossip he was spoken of as the "wild man of the woods."