The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 31

"Why not?"

"I won't allow this party to separate until the work to which G.o.d has called me is done."

"I've done my share."

"No. It will not do for you to go yet."

"I'm going--"

"You're not!"

Brown faced the man and held him in a silent look of his blue-gray eyes.

Townsley quailed before it.

"Whatever happens, you brought me here. You are equally responsible with me."

Townsley surrendered.

The threat was unmistakable. He saw that he was trapped. Whether he liked it or not, he had packed his camp outfit, harnessed his horses and driven over the trail on a hunting expedition. He knew now that they were stalking human game. It sent the chills down his spine. But there was no help for it. He had to stick.

Brown spent the night alone reconnoitering the settlement of the Pottawattomie, marking the place of his game and making sure that no alarm could be given. All was still. There was nowhere the rustle of a leaf along a roadway that approached the unsuspecting quarry.

Sat.u.r.day dawned clear and serene. His plans required that he lie concealed the entire day. He could stalk his prey with sure success on the second night. The first he had to use in reconnoitering.

When breakfast had been eaten and Brown had finished his morning prayers, he ordered his men to lie low in the tall gra.s.s and give no sign of life until the shadows of night should again fall. They were not allowed to kindle another fire. The fires of the breakfast had been extinguished at daylight.

The wind rose with the sun and the tall wild flowers swayed gracefully over the dusty figures of the men. They lay in a close group with Brown in the center leading the low-pitched conversation which at times became a debate.

As the winds whispered through the moving ma.s.ses of flowers, the old man would sometimes stop his talk suddenly and an ominous silence held the group. He had the strange power of thus imposing his will on the men about him. They watched the queer light in his restless eyes as he listened to the voices within.

Suddenly he awaked from his reverie and began an endless denunciation of both parties in Kansas. Northern and Southern factions had become equally vile. The Southerners were always criminals. Their crime was now fully shared by the time servers, trimmers and liars in the Free State party.

His eyelids suddenly closed halfway and his eyes shone two points of light as his metallic voice rang without restraint:

"They're all crying peace, peace!"

He paused and hissed his words through the gra.s.s.

"There shall be no peace!"

CHAPTER XVIII

Brown lay flat on his belly the last hour of the day catching moments of fitful sleep. At sunset he lifted his small head above the gra.s.s and scanned the horizon. There might be the curling smoke of a camp in sight. A relief party might be on his trail.

He breathed a sigh of satisfaction. All was well. The sun was fast sinking beneath the hills, the prey was in sight and no hand could be lifted to help.

The moment the shadows closed over the ravine he rose, stretched his cramped body and turned to Thompson.

"Build your fire for supper."

Thompson nodded.

"And give our men all they can eat."

"Yes, sir."

"They'll need their strength to-night."

"I understand."

The supper ready, Brown gathered his band around the camp fire and offered thanks to his G.o.d. The meal was eaten in silence. The tension of an imperious mind had gripped the souls of his men. They moved as if stalking game at close quarters.

And they were doing this exactly.

The last pot and pan had been cleaned and packed. The fire was extinguished. Brown issued his first order of the deed.

"Lie down flat in the gra.s.s now."

The men dropped one by one. Brown was the last.

"When I give the word, see that your arms are in trim and march single file fifty yards apart and beat the brush as you go. If you come on a cabin in our path not marked in our survey, it is important. Do not pa.s.s it. Report to me immediately."

There was no response. He had expected none. The order was final.

The first move in the man hunt was carefully planned.

The instinct to kill is the elemental force, beneath our culture, which makes the hunter. The strongest personalities of our world-conquering race of Nordic freemen are always hunters. If they do not practice the chase the fact is due to an accident of position in life. The opportunity has not been given.

Beneath the skin of the man of the College, the Council Table, the Forum, the Sacred Altar, of Home, and the Church slumbers this elemental beast.

Culture at best is but a few hundred years old and it has probably skipped several generations in its growth. The Archaic instinct in man to kill reaches back millions of years into the past. The only power on earth to restrain that force is Law. The rules of life, embodied in law are the painful results of experience in killing and the dire effects which follow, both to the individual and the race. Law is a force only so long as reverence for law is made the first principle of man's social training. The moment he lifts his individual will against the embodied experience of humanity, he is once more the elemental beast of the prehistoric jungle--the Hunter.

And when the game is human and the hunter is a man of prayer, we have the supreme form of the beast, the ancient Witch Hunter. It is a fact that the pleasure of killing is universal in man. Our savage ancestors for millions of years had to kill to live. We have long ago outgrown this necessity in the development of civilization. But the instinct remains.

We are human as we restrain this instinct and bring it under the dominion of Law. We still hunt the most delicate and beautiful animals, stalk and kill them, driven by the pa.s.sionate secret pleasure of the act of murder. With bated breath and glittering eyes we press our advantage until the broken wing ceases to flutter and the splintered bone to crawl.

This imperious atavism the best of us cannot or will not control in the pursuit of animals. When man has lifted his arm in defiance of Tradition and Law, this impulse is the dominant force which sweeps all else as chaff before it.

John Brown was the apostle of the sternest faith ever developed in the agonies of our history. To him life had always been a horror.

There was no hesitation, no halting, no quiver of maudlin pity, when he slowly rose from his gra.s.s-covered lair in the darkness and called his men at ten o'clock:

"Ready!"

Single file, moving silently and swiftly they crept through the night, only the sharpened swords clanking occasionally broke the silence. Their tread was soft as the claws of panthers. The leader's spirit gripped mind and body of his followers.