A Pagan of the Hills Part 29

The plotters who fired the elevator showed her only their backs.

How long would it be before the man inside recognized the acrid odor and realized his fate? What would he do then? Presumably he would dash for the door, and there both flame and rifle fire would be awaiting him.

The incendiaries had now pa.s.sed around the corner of the house and the moonlight fell upon the long chute which ran almost vertically down to the railway tracks below. Into Alexander's mind shot a desperate resolution. It offered a slender chance at best--yet the only one.

Still for a moment, she questioned it. There were so many ways that it might turn out--and of them all, one only could possibly end in success.

Then she slipped over to the great handle that controlled the flow of grain, locked into place with its chain and padlock. If she were seen she would, of course, be killed, but the murder crew seemed to have ma.s.sed at the front of the place now, watching the door, until the fire should take that task off their hands. The flames were crackling loud enough now to cover the noise which must attend her next move--and to afford her a light for her work.

A heavy iron bar lay on the ground and with it the girl forced the chain and bent all her strength to the great lever that should launch the stored wheat into its quicksand flow. She flung her good muscles and her substantial weight so fiercely into that effort that the shaft snapped at its fulcrum--but not until it had done its work.

Alexander rushed for the brow of the cliff, and this time she was not obstructed. The relaxed vigilance of a job well done had stolen upon the watchers.

The journey down the precipice was one that had its difficulties, and Alexander's brain was reeling with a score of terrors--yet somehow she reached the tracks.

O'Keefe would not be in the wheat bin itself, she reflected. It would be dark in there too--until the light became a glare of death. Unless he chanced to hear, through other and fiercer sounds the soft flow of the myriad kernels, he would have no means of knowing that one desperate way was being opened to him. Even then his single hope would lie in quickness of perception and a sureness of judgment that acted flawlessly and smoothly under a supreme strain.

If he did see that the wheat was running out and did not wait for it all to spill itself, he would be sucked into its tide only to emerge dead. For it flowed slowly, pressing in every direction, and it would inevitably strangle the breath out of his lungs.

Even if he were judging all these odds with a meticulous nicety, Alexander questioned herself breathlessly, would there be time to wait for the full store to flow through that narrow channel? It was a race between a slow tide which could not be hurried and another which rushed on with the devouring fury of mania.

The girl threw herself down beside an empty freight car and dug her cold finger nails into her hot temples. She could hear the steady stream of wheat flowing into the bin there, and the deadly slowness of its progress through the hopper was driving her mad. The elevator she could not see, but by lifting her head, she could see out all too clearly the crimson sky overhead.

CHAPTER XIX

When the first acrid warning of scorched timbers came to his nostrils, Jerry O'Keefe had recognized the desperation of his plight and he laid out his simple plans in accordance. He meant to stay where he was till the last endurable moment, hoping against hope for the coming of the rescuers. When it was no longer possible to remain, he would go out of the door and sell his life at a price--but he knew he would have to sell it, and perhaps cheaply, for they would do their killing from cover.

He struck a match for a survey of the place where he must make his last stand and his eye fell on the coil of rope. Then, for the first time, he remembered its use, and vainly wished that the chute could be opened from within. By the light of other matches, he looked over into the great bin and what he saw astonished him. There was a moving suction at the center of the pile--a slow motion and declivity--though this afternoon the stuff had been heaped into a well-rounded mound. Further scrutiny verified the amazing results of his first impression. The hopper was open!

Jerry O'Keefe smiled grimly. His enemies had an ironic sense of humor, he thought. They meant to give him a choice of deaths, death at the door by flame and lead or death in the sluice by suffocation. Then an incredulous exclamation burst from his lips. Was there not a wild and wholly improbable chance that this opening of an avenue might be Alexander's work? It seemed unlikely, almost inconceivable, but in resourcefulness and adroitness of thought nothing was quite inconceivable of Alexander.

She knew of the rope and its former use--and that meant that the flowing tide would not have to spell death for him if he waited long enough and acted wisely enough. Presumably these enemies were not neighbors, for if they had been they would not be burning their own grain. If that were granted it might follow that they would not know of the rope.

Jerry breathed deeply, and a desperate smile came for an instant to his tight lips.

He was watching the unhurried flow of out-running wheat and gauging, as was the girl below, the racing progress of the flames. Would there be time? The door was cut off now by sheets of fire and he had no longer any alternative. If the hot enemy reached him before the wheat was out, he must die by it or end matters with his own pistol.

He uncoiled the rope and threw its loose end into the bin, watching with a fascinated gaze the fas.h.i.+on in which it was dragged inward and downward.

In the increasing heat of the inferno he had thrown off his coat, and now his s.h.i.+rt went too. The sweat poured out of his naked chest and shoulders.

From rafters below him shot wicked tongues of widening flame-- His breath was labored and his life seemed to wither. There was only a little grain left now at the bottom of the receptacle but there was also little strength or endurance left in him. His eyes burned horribly and he knew that he could no longer support his weight on a rope by the strength of his arms. He had climbed to the edge of the bin, and clung there. Then he fainted, and fell inward.

But the moment had arrived when at last the way was clear. The chute, polished smooth by the flowing kernels, did not even leave a splinter in his bare flesh, and when he shot down and out he fell on the soft mound of wheat that had gone before him.

Alexander's straining eyes saw his body flash into sight, and saw that it seemed lifeless. With a cry that she tried to stifle and could not, she called upon her last strength, and climbed into the great pen where he lay insensible.

The murderers had gone away. Their task seemed complete, and they had no wish to tarry too long after the countryside had been aroused by that beacon of fire.

But it was much later that neighborhood searchers found Alexander sitting on a mound of salvaged wheat with the head of an unconscious man in her lap. It was a man stripped to the waist, sweat-covered and smoke blackened. The girl was mumbling incoherent things into his unresponsive ear.

"Ye saved ther wheat fer us anyhow--an' ther doctor says he hain't none hurted beyond being scorched up some," declared Warwick McGivins that same night at his own house, and Alexander, limp to collapse with her long vigil of terror, but with eyes that glowed with triumph--and with something else--replied, "I've saved somethin' better then a mighty heap of wheat."

Jerry spoke from the bed, where he lay conscious now, but still very weak.

"Things looked mighty unsartain--fer a spell."

And the girl answered in a silvery voice that held the thrill of invincible courage. "Nothin' hain't never goin' ter be unsartain fer us from now on. Hit teks fire, I reckon, ter weld iron--but----"

The enfeebled man tried to raise himself on his elbow, but she gently pressed him back.

"Does ye mean hit, Alexander?" he whispered tensely. "Hit hain't jest because I've been hurted a leetle--an' ye're compa.s.sionate fer me?"

"Jerry," she said and her voice became all at once softly tremulous, "jest es soon as ye're able I wants ye ter tek me in yore arms--an' I don't never want ye ter let me go ergin!"

"I'll git thet strong right soon," he declared with a fervor that brought the strength back to his voice--and the sparkle back into his blood-shot eyes.

Jack Halloway came into his rooms one day in early September and ran through some mail that lay piled on his table. He was not in a happy humor. The business here had dragged out to the annoying length of six weeks and his mind was busy with anxiety centering on the hills. But as his thoughts ran irritably along, the hand that had lifted an envelope out of the collection became rigid. It was a very plain envelope and quite unaccountably it was postmarked from the station near the mouth of Shoulder-blade creek.

Who, down there, could know his New York address? It could not be Brent, for this was not Brent's hand.

He ripped the thing open and from the unfolded sheet fell a tiny sc.r.a.p of some sort. It seemed to be a small strip of soiled cloth and he let it lie on the table while he read the note itself.

The first paragraph brought from his lips an exclamation of dismay and alarm--and he paused a moment to collect himself before finis.h.i.+ng.

"Dear Jack," said the letter. "You will wonder how I knew where to send this letter, but you see I did know.

"Jerry and I were married a week ago and all the neighbors came to our infare to wish us well. I saw to it that every man there took off his hat. I am sending you the tag that was on your coat pocket the day I mended it. It wasn't heedful for you to leave it there, and that's how I knew where you were apt to be now--instead of Virginia."

The man paused again and his great hand shook with disappointment and chagrin. Finally he turned the sheet and read the conclusion.

"Seeing that tag gave me warning just in time the night you bragged that you could make me come into your arms. Next time, Jack, I counsel you to be honest with the girls you make love to. They like it. Come and see us when you get back to the mountains. Alexander McGivins.

P.S. I promised my paw to keep my own name when I was wed, and Jerry doesn't mind."

The letter escaped from nerveless fingers and floated down to the floor. At last Halloway picked up the small tailor's label and turned it in his fingers absentmindedly, as though he were not yet quite sure what he was doing.