The Red Debt Part 14

As Lem scrambled to his feet, Burton launched forth as he deftly cut the leather thong and relieved Lem of his cow-horn.

"Lutts--your family owes the government a million dollars and then some.

And you're going to pay in some shape or form--you're in the hands of the law now. You ain't monkeyin' with these county people. You're on your way to Frankfort now--and I think I'll be able to send you to Atlanta for a while. Eh, Tom?"

Burton turned to his perspiring companion.

"Sure--they say the punk tastes like cake down there, too."

"Now, Lutts," resumed the revenuer with his bullying insolence, "you've got one chance, and if you could see what's ahead of you, you'd take it quick! You lead us to that layout of yours and you're free. Otherwise, you're going to jail for a year anyway. I got the evidence all right.

What you going to do about it?"

Lem's brain was busy.

If he had been sure that there were only the two of them he would have been only too eager to comply with Burton's proposition--because he knew that these two men would never again report for duty. But how was he to know how many men Burton had hiding to trail them.

Upon second thought Lem declined to put his own people in jeopardy.

"Well," growled Burton, "don't be afraid to talk. Are you going to lead me to that liquor hole?"

"Yo' kin blow my brains out first," replied Lem scornfully and emphatically.

"Well, fool, you're on your way. Tom, let's get busy. Bring his gun."

The revenuer produced a length of strap and, tying one end to the short chain connecting the iron cuffs, he motioned Tom ahead.

The iron cut into Lem's flesh at the slightest pressure, and acted like a bull-ring. In their desire to get the prisoner away with as much secrecy as possible they avoided the trails, traveling cautiously under cover.

A few minutes after the revenuer and their captive had departed, Orlick crept out from the rocks like a reptile, and warily dodged along in their wake.

CHAPTER X

IN PRISON

At high-noon the next day Lem Lutts was landed at Frankfort, a United States prisoner. This dismal trip represented the first ride Lem had ever made on a railroad. The terrible chagrin and consternation that obsessed him, and the bullying presence of his furiously hated arch enemy made it one that lingered long in his memory.

In the early hours of the trip the revenue officer and his deputy had plied the boy with a torrent of questions in their vain attempt to break him down. This cross-fire finally wearied Burton, as Lem acted like a man deaf, dumb, and blind; and the surly officer desisted with a series of dire predictions, mingled with some exquisite punctuations of choice profanity.

A pall of far-stretching clouds obscured the sky and a film of drizzling rain veiled the atmosphere. Through this thin downpour Burton walked his shackled prisoner to the Federal Building.

After a wait of almost an hour--which added nervous agony to Lem's grim speculations--he was led into the austere presence of the commissioner.

A row of ornate heavy chairs was lined up against the east wall of the high-ceilinged room. Across the room on the west side, the commissioner sat at a long claw-footed table, hemmed about with various other pieces of ma.s.sive office furniture, while to the left of him a pale, icy blonde woman hammered a typewriter.

On the walls were the portraits of five men, presumably former commissioners.

The whole atmosphere of the chamber was charged with a chill that went to the heart of the prisoner. When they first entered the room the two officers escorted Lem to one of the chairs against the wall. While the deputy remained seated here with Lem, Burton swaggered his damp hulk across the room and halted before the commissioner, his big shoulders slumping awkwardly. Here he stood mopping his sweaty, heavy features.

Lem's eyes were fastened upon his blunt profile. When the commissioner threw his pen down and looked up, Burton met his gaze with a leering grin, the while wetting his thick lips with his tongue and jerking his thumb toward Lem and the deputy with some words that were inaudible.

As Burton grinned now, Lem had seen his own dog grin, and, at this tense moment, the a.n.a.logy almost coaxed a smile to Lem's tight lips. Lem had seen his own hound lay a limp, dead rabbit at his feet and look up, and lick his lips with his tongue, and grin just as Burton grinned now.

A subdued and lengthy conversation followed between the commissioner and Burton. From their expressions and gestures it was apparent that Burton was describing the killing of old Cap Lutts. Finally Burton beckoned the deputy, who led Lem across the great room and stood him before the commissioner.

The latter leaned backward and slightly to one side, while with curiously wrinkled brow he started at Lem's boots and glanced slowly and critically up Lem's corduroy trousers, past his heavy belt, across his gray flannel s.h.i.+rt front, and finally rested his keen eyes upon Lem's face.

He did not see a hang-dog criminal.

He saw before him a young mountaineer, in height a good six feet; spare of flesh, but with back-flung shoulders that promised to develop at maturity into the frame of a mighty man. He saw a candid, open countenance, though now a trifle pale, little short of handsome, and absolutely free from any indications of dissipation.

He noted a well-shaped, firm mouth above a square chin; a thin, hawklike nose leading to a wide vertical forehead.

Throughout this acute examination Lem's steady gray eyes never wandered from the commissioner's face. He focused his own gaze upon the commissioner's eye as intently as he would have watched a groundhog hole in the hills. Then the commissioner leaned forward and, taking up his pen, spoke softly:

"So you are old Lutts's boy?"

"He's a dangerous man, Cap'n," interposed Burton. "He ain't no boozer.

He makes the stuff, but he don't drink it himself so you can notice it; and that makes him more dangerous. I can hook seventeen rummy-s.h.i.+ners before I can get half-way to a sober one. Then again, he's got the nerve of the old man, and that helps some, I reckon. He's the old man over and over--he's fixin' to lead us a dog's life, Captain."

The commissioner studied Lem again.

"I knew your father, Lutts," he said. "In fact, I have a small piece of lead inside me yet that your father put there." He paused again and, oddly enough, the severe frown with which he had raked the prisoner at first now vanished. He continued evenly:

"Do you see those portraits along the wall? They are men who worked themselves up in the service during the thirty-five years that I can remember. They all looked for your father; they all found him. But none of them ever brought him in."

The commissioner s.h.i.+fted his eyes to Burton.

"So it was left to you, eh? Well--well, of course, I rather expected--that is, I hoped to get old Lutts alive, but----"

He broke off abruptly and added his signature to the blue printed blank he had filled in, then handed the slip to Burton with:

"I'll continue the hearing for further evidence--take him over to the jail, Burton."

He now looked at Lem.

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

Throughout all this the boy had stood straight and unflinching. His features were pale but his jaws were hard set. Friendless and moneyless, he knew his chances were small. He knew that he stood on the perilous brink of some dire happening. He understood the import of the commissioner's order to hold him for additional evidence, and while he was not wholly unafraid, he stood tense and determined, boding no retreat, like a brave horse taking a deep, wide ditch in the dark, with yawning depths beneath him, and the gush of waters in his ears.

"I said, have you got anything to say?" repeated the impatient commissioner.

"I hain't got nothin' t' say--only--only----" he began, in a voice that split and ruptured in crowding past the lump that choked him. He turned his gray eyes and fixed them upon the bloated, triumphant visage of Burton.

"Only," he struggled on, quaveringly, as he lifted his two cuffed hands and leveled them at the revenuer, "he kilt my Maw--he ded--an' he kilt my pap, he ded--an'--an'----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He kilt my maw--he ded--an' he kilt my pap."]