A Pagan of the Hills Part 4

It gave way with a rending such as must have been sounded in the days when a molten globe was cooling. From the base of the dam sucking tongues had licked out boulders that upheld the formation as a keystone holds an arch. It went into collapse with an explosive splintering and left fang-like reefs still standing. Through the breach fell the ponderous weight of a river left unsupported.

First, the inrush flung the rafts backwards against the banks, and then the churning whirlpool which was developed sent them spinning madly outward. The rafts jammed together and trembled with a groaning shudder. They wavered and undulated like cloth and that nearest the gorge lunged outward, dashed against one wall of precipice, caromed off and ground against the other. About the edges, it had gone to splinters but the core still held. The second raft, by some miracle, rode through without collision to ride tilting about the curve into the channel proper. Brent saw, through dazed and uncertain eyes, figures bending to long poles. He felt such a sickening sensation as a man in a barrel may experience at the moment of going over the crest of Niagra. Through it all he felt rather than saw the figure of a girl in man's clothing standing at the center of the raft, poised with bent knees against shock; and with a Valkyrie fire in her eyes.

A half hour later the man from town drew a freer breath. It was still a wild enough ride, but after the lurching dash out of the cauldron, it seemed a peaceful voyage. Now down the center of the river they swept at tide-speed. At either end of each raft men bent to the sweeps in the task of their crude piloting. Tree tops brushed under them as they went and far out on either side were wide-reaching lagoons that had been high ground three days ago.

Alexander herself was standing a little apart and Brent was of a mind to draw her into conversation but as he approached her he decided that this was not the time to improve acquaintances.h.i.+p. Her air of detachment amounted to aloofness and Brent remembered that she had, weighing upon her, the anxiety of her father's condition.

Jase Mallows, however, just then relieved from duty at the steering sweep, was less subtle of deduction. With his eye on Alexander, whose back was turned to him, he jauntily straightened his shoulders and gave his long mustache a twirl. Brent thought of the turkey-gobbler's strut as, with amused eyes, he watched the backwoods lady-killer. Jase had heard many of the old wives' tales of Alexander and thought of her as one, ambitious of amorous conquest, may think of a famous and much discussed beauty. Had she been another woman, Jase would before now have gone over to the house on a "sparking" expedition, but Old Man McGivins had discouraged such aspirations--and his daughter had been no less definite of att.i.tude. Here, however, he had the girl on neutral ground and meant to seize his opportunity.

So he strolled over to her with an ingratiating smile.

"Aleck," he began in the drawling voice which he himself rather fancied, "we hed a right norrer squeak of hit back thar didn't we?"

There should have been discouragement in the coolness of the glance that she turned upon him, but Jase had the blessing of self-confidence.

"Ye war thar yerself--ye ought ter know," said Alexander curtly. Then she added, "An' don't call me Aleck--my name's Alexander."

Jase Mallows reddened to his temples. There had been moments, even in the straining activity of these hours, for him to boast to his fellows that it would be interesting to watch the progress of his campaign for the affections of Alexander. Now they were watching.

So Jase laughed awkwardly. "Wa'al, thet's reasonable enough," he handsomely conceded. "A gal's got a rather es ter what name she's ter be called by an' ef she's es purty es you be she kin afford ter be high-headed too."

Alexander stood looking the man over from head to foot as though studying a new species--possibly a species of insect-life. Under that embarra.s.sing scrutiny Jase fidgeted his hands. Eventually he drew out a flask and having uncorked it he ceremoniously wiped the bottle's mouth with the palm of his hand. "Let's take a leetle dram ter better acquaintances," he suggested. "Thet thar's licker I wouldn't offer ter n.o.body but a reg'lar man. Hit's got a kick like a bob-tailed mule."

With features that had not altered their expression, the girl reached out her hand and accepted the bottle.

She held the thing before her, looking at it for a moment, then with a swift gesture tossed it sidewise into the river.

Jase Mallows bent forward and his face flamed, but his anger seemed a tame and little thing to the wrath that leaped from calm to blazing eruption in the woman's eyes.

"Whilst we're aboard this hyar raft," Alexander announced with an utterance that cut like a zero wind, "I'm boss an' I aims fer men ter stay sober. Ef thet don't suit you--go ash.o.r.e."

"How?" inquired Jase with a heavy irony and Alexander replied shortly, "Thet's yore business."

She turned on her heel and walked away leaving the discomfited Lothario staring after her with so malign an anger that the men within ear-shot stifled their twitters of amus.e.m.e.nt and pretended to have overheard nothing.

CHAPTER V

As Alexander pa.s.sed him, Brent did not miss the suppressed fury in her eyes or the disdainful tilt of her chin. Her bearing was that of a barbaric princess, and a princess of meteorically vivid beauty. There had been a deliberate purpose in the clear carrying tones with which she had repulsed Jase Mallows. He had been the first man to make advances, because he was the boldest, but for all her guise of unconsciousness she had seen the pa.s.sion smoulder in the eyes about her and later others might become emboldened unless they were discouraged by a clear precedent. Heretofore her father's stern repute had safeguarded her. Now she was dependent upon herself alone.

Down the yellow river swept the two uninjured rafts and the one that carried a fringe of raggedness. For the most part the men were busy with sweep and pike-pole fending off the c.u.mbering drift and clearing the whirlpools where hidden reefs threatened destruction. There were sharp turns and angles too, where the yellow water roared into fretful and vehement menace. With night-fall the heights seemed to draw in and huddle close and the dirge of flood and wind mounted into a heavier timbre.

Fires leaped into fitful radiance. Banjos and "dulcimores" came out of hiding and sounded plaintively over the waste of waters. Sc.r.a.ps of almost mediaeval life showed out in thumb-nail sketches between the sooty shadow world and the red flare of the bonfires. Voices were lifted into weird minors and lugubrious tunes, recitative, of sad love themes--and these were, of course, addressed to Alexander. She joined no group, but sat with her hands clasped about her updrawn knees and her gaze ranging off into distance. The carmine and orange illumination played upon her color of cheek and hair and eyes and when, unconsciously her face fell into a reflective quiet and her lips drooped with a touch of wistfulness, the allurement of her beauty was arresting and undeniable. Brent fell to wondering what life could hold for her.

The time must come, he thought, when a beauty like that in a land of plain and drudgery-enslaved women, must bring for her something like a crisis. She was twenty-one and unawakened, but that the men about her should long allow her to remain so was as unlikely as that a pirate-crew would leave treasure unfought for. A rising tide of human pa.s.sion about her seemed as inevitable as this actual flood had been--and perhaps as swift of coming.

But if the amorous selections of that crude minstrelsy made any impression upon her, she gave no indication. Before the songs ended she withdrew to the rude shelter that had been fas.h.i.+oned for her and wrapped herself in her blanket. But the pistol holster lay close to her hand. When she rose at day-break they had turned out of the stream upon which they had embarked into the broader river that it fed and about them floated a wavering ma.s.s of ice from broken gorges above.

Brent s.h.i.+vered and dabbed grudgingly with cold water at the face upon which a stubble of beard had begun to bristle. But the girl carried an icy bucket into her shack and reinforced its forward wall with blanket and rubber coat, not as a protection against the knife-edged sharpness of the air but against prying eyes. Then she bathed unhurriedly and fastidiously.

When she emerged the bloom of her cheeks and the l.u.s.ter of her thick hair would have been the envy of a boudoir where beauty-doctors have done their utmost. And that day too, save for the smouldering eyes of the discomfited Jase Mallows, the wolf-like pack treated her with a cautious deference of bearing.

When at the end of two days the water was dropping as rapidly as it had risen, Alexander announced, "I reckon we've got a right gay chanst now ter put in at ther Coal City boom, hain't we?" And several heads nodded a.s.sent. Brent noticed that Jase Mallows' face wore a smile which did not altogether escape malignity, and at the first opportunity he inquired: "What were you smiling about, Mr. Mallows, when they spoke of Coal City?"

The backwoods dandy scowled and gave back the churl's response, "Thet's my business."

"Certainly," Brent acceded coolly. "You don't have to answer me. I didn't suppose it was a matter you were ashamed to talk about."

Mallows bent with a truculent narrowing of his lids and an outthrust chin, but observing that the city man was in no wise cowed by his scowls he amended his att.i.tude. Two days before Brent would have been more cautious of offending this man, whose exploits had run, sometimes, to violence, but a subtle transformation had begun in him. A new disdain for personal risks had caught fire from that flaming quality in the woman.

"Hev ye ever seed Coal City?" inquired Mallows, and when the other shook his head, he continued in a lowered voice. "Wa'al hit's a right rough sort of place. Hit's a coal minin' town with only one tavern--an' things goes forward thar right sensibly similar ter h.e.l.l on a hot night. With ther flood holdin' up ther mines. .h.i.t's apt ter kinderly out-do hitself jest now." He paused a moment then capped his prediction with an added detail.

"Thar'll be plentiful drunkenness an' harlotry thar. Alexander couldn't speak civil ter me, but I war jest a studyin' erbout how well she's goin' ter like Coal City."

When the rafts were safe in the boom. Brent looked about for Mallows, but Mallows was already gone. Alexander herself was among the last to start along the ill-lighted and twisting street that climbed along, the broken levels of the town toward the tavern. It was, at best, a squalid village and a tawdry one. Now it was to boot a wholly demoralized town, cut off from the other world by inundated highways and the was.h.i.+ng out of its railroad bridge. The kerosene street lamps burned dully and at long intervals and high up the black slopes a few c.o.ke furnaces still burned in red patches of inflamed and sullen glare.

Brent had dropped out of sight, meaning to follow the girl as an unofficial body guard. Knowing her impatience at gratuitous services of protection he made no announcement of his purpose, but fell in behind the light of the lantern she carried and followed her in the shadows. When he had gone only a little way, he had the vague feeling that someone else was following him so he halted and wheeled suddenly.

After peering vainly through the murk, he told himself that he was letting his imagination play him tricks but the disquieting impression of soft footsteps padding along behind him he could not dispel.

Before they had readied the main street and the disreputable pile which was the tavern, sounds of lewd and raucous voices floated out--a chorus of profane and blatant roistering.

The houses along the way presented faces utterly blank and devoid of life. Brent would have wondered at that, had he not had his brief talk with Mallows. Now he understood. Respectable folks had withdrawn to shelter behind barred doors and tightly shuttered windows until such time as the unleashed element of outlawry should evacuate the town.

The law-abiding were, in effect, undergoing a siege and avoiding the ill-lighted streets.

But the light at the court-house square was relatively bright and as Brent crossed in front of the squat and shadowy bulk of the old jail-house--empty now, though it should have been full--he made out a figure hastening about him in a circuitous fas.h.i.+on at a dog trot as though bent on arriving at the hostelry first. That, then, must have been the presence he had felt at his back, and a fresh alarm a.s.sailed him. It was the figure of Bud Sellers.

When at last Alexander had gone up the several steps that led to the closed door of the tavern, and stood for a moment, evidently hesitating with disgust for the babel within, Brent drew back into a convenient shadow and looked anxiously about for the other figure. It had disappeared.

That hostelry was the property of one D. W. Kelly, a huge and unclean lout of a man and the establishment was as wholesome a place as a bear pit, and no more so.

It was not with complacency that the landlord saw his house given over to the destructive caprices of a drunken and uncontrollable mob. He had no means of freeing himself of his guests. When his slatternly wife had complained: "Them miners an' loggers jest louzes up a body's house," he had wagged his head dejectedly and spread his great black-nailed hands. "If that's ther wu'st thing they does. .h.i.t'll be a plum G.o.d's blessin'," he replied. "Ther law p'intedly fo'ces a tavern-keeper ter sleep an' eat man an' beast--ef so be they kin pay."

Now the motley crew was in unchallenged possession--and would remain in possession until the river went down and fords were once more pa.s.sable.

That a reign of terror would prevail so long as they tarried in town, in no wise dampened their own exuberance of spirit.

Two or three traveling salesmen had been marooned here, but since the beginning of this saturnalia they had not been in evidence beyond the thresholds of their own rooms.

There was no bar at D. W. Kelly's tavern and none was needed, since every man was duly and individually provisioned and since even in these flood times a dollar left unwatched on a certain stump up the mountain side would cause a jug to appear mysteriously in its place.

But since there was no bar, the great room whose door opened directly upon the porch had been commandeered as a wa.s.sailing hall. Here the entering guest must run the gantlet of the rollicking horde before he could attain the more peaceful harbor of his own quarters.

About a red hot stove hung a crew of as dirty and disorderly men as ever came out of coal mine or lumber camp. Those who remained sober remained also somewhat aloof against the walls and kept their mouths shut. From the ceiling downward hung the thick, stale cloud of smoke from many strong pipes and the rancid poison of air discharged from many lungs had become a stench in the nostrils. Occasional figures walked with an unsteady lurch, while through the whole chaotic pandemonium others slept heavily in their chairs--or even on the floor.

But just before Alexander reached the porch and hesitated on the threshold Jase Mallows had been there. Now he was gone but he had first imparted the information that the "'he-woman' from ther head of Shoulderblade branch" was coming hither. So it was likely that she would have a noisy welcome. On the outskirts of the crowd sat a giant who seemed a shade rougher of guise than those about him. When he stood, this man topped six feet by as many inches. His shoulders had such a spread that one thought of them as of an eagle's wings--from tip to tip. His face, now bristling with dark stubble, was none the less clear-chiseled and arrestingly featured. At first sight a stranger would be apt to exclaim, "What a magnificent figure of a man he would make, if he were only clean-shaven and well dressed." This fellow was not drinking but looking on from a table at which no one ventured to challenge his sole occupancy or his evident preference for his own society.