Lahoma

CHAPTER XXIV

MINE ENEMY

The general suspicion that Bill Atkins knew more about Brick Willock than he had revealed, was not without foundation; though the extent of his knowledge was more limited than the town supposed. Bill had carried to his friend—hidden in the crevice in the mountain-top—the news of Red Kimball's death; since then, they had not seen each other.

Skulking along wooded gullies by day, creeping down into the cove at night, Willock had unconsciously reverted to the habits of thought and action belonging to the time of his outlawry. He was again, in spirit, a highwayman, though his hostility was directed only against those seeking to bring him to justice. The softening influence of the years spent with Lahoma was no longer apparent in his shifting bloodshot eyes, his crouching shoulders, his furtive hand ever ready to snatch the weapon from concealment. This sinister aspect of wildness, intensified by straggling whiskers and uncombed locks, gave to his giant form a kinship to the huge grotesquely shaped rocks among which he had made his den.

He heard of Red Kimball's death with bitter disappointment. He had hoped to encounter his former chief, to grapple with him, to hurl him, perhaps, from the precipice overlooking Bill's former home. If in his fall, Kimball, with arms wound about his waist, had dragged him down to the same death, what matter? Though his enemy was now no more, the sheriff held the warrant for his arrest—as if the dead man could still strike a mortal blow. The sheriff might be overcome—he was but a man. That piece of paper calling for his arrest—an arrest that would mean, at best, years in the penitentiary—had behind it the whole state of Texas.

To Willock's feverish imagination, the warrant became personified; a mysterious force, not to be destroyed by material means; it was not only paper, but spirit. And it had come between him and Lahoma, it had shut him off from the possibility of a peaceful old age. The cove was no longer home but a hiding-place.

He did not question the justice of this sequel to his earlier life. No doubt deeds of long ago, never punished, demanded a sacrifice. He hated the agents of this justice not so much because they threatened his liberty, his life, as because they stepped in between himself and Lahoma. Always a man of expedients, he now sought some way of frustrating justice, and naturally his plans took the color of violence. Denied the savage joy of killing Red Kimball—and he would have killed him with as little compunction as if he had been a wolf—his thoughts turned toward Gledware.

Gledware was the only witness of the deed for which the warrant demanded his arrest. Willock wished many of his other deeds had been prompted by impulses as generous as those which had led to Kansas Kimball's death. Perhaps it was the irony of justice that he should be threatened by the one act of bloodshed which had saved Lahoma's life. If he must be hanged or imprisoned because he had not, like the rest of the band, given himself up for official pardon, it was as well to suffer from one deed as from another. But it would be better still, as in the past, to escape all consequences. Without Gledware, they could prove nothing.

Would Gledware testify, now that Red Kimball, who had bought his testimony with the death of the Indian, no longer lived to exact payment? Willock felt sure he would. In the first place, Gledware had placed himself on record as a witness, hence could hardly retreat; in the second place, he would doubtless be anxious to rid himself of the danger of ever meeting Willock, whom his conscience must have caused him to hate with the hatred of the man who wrongs his benefactor.

Willock transferred all his rage against the dead enemy to the living. He reminded himself how Gledware had caused the death of Red Feather, not in the heat of fury or in blind terror, but in coldblooded bargaining. He meditated on Gledware's attitude toward Lahoma; he thought nothing good of him, he magnified the evil. That scene at the grave of his wife—and Red Feather's account of how he had dug up the body for a mere pin of pearl and onyx.... Ought such a creature to live to condemn him, to bring sorrow on the stepdaughter he had basely refused to acknowledge?

To wait for the coming of the witness would be to lose an opportunity that might never recur. Willock would go to him. In doing so, he would not only take Gledware by surprise, but would leave the only neighborhood in which search would be made for himself. Thus it came about that while the environs of the cove were being minutely examined, Brick, riding his fastest pony, was on the way to Kansas City.

He reached Kansas City without unusual incident, where he was accepted naturally, as a product of the West. Had his appearance been twice as uncouth, twice as wild, it would have accorded all the better with western superstitions that prevailed in this city, fast forgetting that it had been a western outpost. At the hotel, whose situation he knew from Lahoma's letters, he learned that Gledware was neither there, nor at his home in the country. The country-house was closed up and, in fact, there was a rumor that it was sold, or was about to be sold. One of the porters happened to know that Gledware had gone for a week's diversion down in the Ozarks. There were a lake, a club-house, a dancing-hall, as yet unopened. The season was too early for the usual crowd at Ozark Lodge, but the warm wave that nearly always came at this time of year, had prompted a sudden outing party which might last no longer than the warm wave.

Willock took the first train south and rode with the car window up—the outside breath was the breath of balmy summer though the trees stood bleak and leafless against the sky. Two days ago, snow had fallen—but the birds did not remember it. Seven hours brought him to a lonely wagon-trail called Ozark Lodge because after winding among hills several miles it at last reached the clubhouse of that name overlooking the lake. He left the train in the dusk of evening, and walked briskly away, the only moving figure in the wilderness.

His pace did not slacken till a gleam as of fallen sky cupped in night-fringe warned him that the club-house must be near. A turn of a hill brought it into view, the windows not yet aglow. Nearer at hand was the boat-house, seemingly deserted. But as Willock, now grown wary, crept forward among the post-oaks and blackjacks, well screened from observation by chinkapin masses of gray interlocked network, he discovered two figures near the platform edging the lake. Neither was the one he sought; but from their being there—they were Edgerton Compton and Annabel,—he knew Gledware could not be far away.

"No," Annabel was saying decisively, and yet with an accent of regret, "No, Edgerton, I can't."

"But our last boat-ride," he urged. "Don't refuse me the last ride—a ride to think about all my life. I'm going away tomorrow at noon, as I promised. But early in the morning—"

"I have promised HIM," she said with lingering sadness in her voice. "So I must go with him. He has already engaged the boatman. He'll be here at seven, waiting for me. So you see—"

"Annabel, I shall be here at seven, also!" he exclaimed impetuously.

"But why? I must go with him, Edgerton. You see that."

"Then I shall row alone."

"Why would you add to my unhappiness?" she pleaded.

"I shall be here at seven," he returned grimly; "while you and he take your morning boat-ride, I shall row alone."

She turned from him with a sigh, and he followed her dejectedly up the path toward the club-house.

She had lost some of the fresh beauty which she had brought to the cove, and her step was no longer elastic; but this Willock did not notice. He gave little heed to their tones, their gestures, their looks in which love sought a thin disguise wherein it might show itself unnamed. He had seized on the vital fact that in the morning, Annabel and Gledware would push off from the boat-house steps, presumably alone; and it would be early morning. Perhaps Gledware would come first to the boat-house, there to wait for Annabel. In that case, he would not ride with Annabel. The lake was deep—deep as Willock's hate.

Willock passed the night in the woods, sometimes walking against time among the hills, sometimes seated on the ground, brooding. The night was without breath, without coolness. Occasionally he climbed a rounded elevation from which the clubhouse was discernible. No lights twinkled among the barren trees. All in that wilderness seemed asleep save himself. The myriad insects that sing through the spring and summer months had not yet found their voices; there was no trill of frogs, not even the hooting of an owl,—no sound but his own breathing.

At break of dawn he crept into the boat-house like a shadow, barefooted, bareheaded—the club-house was not yet awake. He looked about the barnlike room for a hiding-place. Walls, floor, ceiling were bare. Near the door opening on the lake was a rustic bench, impossible as a refuge. Only in one corner, where empty boxes and a disused skiff formed a barricade, could he hope for concealment. He glided thither, and on the floor between the dusty wall of broad boards and the jumbled partition, he found a man stretched on his back.

At first, he thought he had surprised a sleeper, but as the figure did not move, he decided it must be a corpse. He would have fled but for his need of this corner. He bent down—the man was bound hand and foot. In the mouth, a gag was fastened. Neck and ankles were tied to spikes in the wall.

Willock swiftly surveyed the lake and the sloping hill leading down from the club-house. Nobody was near. As he stared at the landscape, the front door of the club-house opened. He darted hack to the corner. "Pardner," he said, "I got to ask your hospitality for a spell, and if you move so as to attract attention, I got to fix you better. I didn't do this here, pardner, but you shore look like some of my handiwork in days past and gone. I'll share this corner with you for a while, and if you don't give me away to them that's coming, I promise to set you free. That's fair, I guess. 'A man ain't all bad,' says Brick, 'as unties the knots that other men has tied,' says he. Just lay still and comfortable, and we'll see what's coming."

Presently there were footsteps in the path, and to Willock's intense disappointment, Gledware and Annabel came in together. They were in the midst of a conversation and at the first few words, he found it related to Lahoma. The boatman who had promised to bring the skiff for them at seven—it developed that Gledware had no intention of doing the rowing—had not yet come. They sat down on the rustic bench, their voices distinctly audible in all parts of the small building.

"Her closest living relative," Gledware said, "is a great-aunt, living in Boston. As soon as I found out who she was—I'd always supposed her living among Indians, and that it would be impossible to find her—but as soon as I learned the truth, without saying anything to HER, I wrote to her great-aunt. I've never been in a position to take care of Lahoma—I felt that I ought to place her with her own family. I got an answer—about what you would expect. They'd give her a home—I told them what a respectable girl she is—fairly creditable appearance—intelligent enough... But they couldn't stand those people she lives with—criminals, you know, Annabel, highwaymen—murderers! Imagine Brick Willock in a Boston drawing-room... But you couldn't."

"No," Annabel agreed. "Poor Lahoma! And I know she'd never give him up."

"That's it—she's immovable. She'd insist on taking him along. But he belongs to another age—a different country. He couldn't understand. He thinks when you've anything against a man, the proper move is to kill 'im. He's just like an Indian—a wild beast. Wouldn't know what we meant if we talked about civilization. His religion is the knife. Well—you see; if he were out of the way, Lahoma would have her chance."

"But couldn't he be arrested?"

"That's my only hope. If he were hanged, or locked up for a certain number of years, Lahoma'd go East. But as long as he's at large, she'll wait for him to turn up. She'll stay right there in the cove till she dies of old age, if he's free to visit her at odd moments. It's her idea of fidelity, and it's true that he did take her in when she needed somebody. There's a move on foot now, to arrest him for an old crime—a murder. I witnessed the deed—I'll testify, if called on. Lahoma will hate me for that—but it'll be the greatest favor I could possibly do her. She knows I mean to appear against him, and she thinks me a brute. But if I can convict Willock, it'll place Lahoma in a family of wealth and refinement—"

He broke off with, "Wonder why that old deaf boatman doesn't come?" He walked impatiently to the head of the steps and stared out over the lake. "Somebody out there now," he exclaimed. "Oh,—it's Edgerton, rowing about!"

He returned to the bench, but did not sit down. "Annabel," he said abruptly, "you promised me to name the day, this morning."

"Yes," she responded very faintly.

"And I am sure, dear," he added in a deep resonant voice, "that in time you will come to care for me as I care for you now—you, the only woman I have ever loved. I understand about Edgerton, but you see, you couldn't marry him—in fact, he couldn't marry anybody for years; he has nothing.... And these earlier attachments that we think the biggest things in our lives—well, they just dwindle, Annabel, they dwindle as we get the true perspective. I know your happiness depends upon me, and it rejoices me to know it. I can give you all you want—all you can dream of—and I'm man-of-the-world enough to understand that happiness depends just on that—getting what you want."

Annabel started up abruptly. "I think I heard the boat scraping outside."

"Yes, he's there. Come, dear, and before the ride is ended you must name the day—"

"DON'T!" she exclaimed sharply. "He—"

"He's as deaf as a post, my dear," Gledware murmured gently. "That's why I selected him. I knew we'd want to talk—I knew you'd name the day."

He helped her down the rattling boards.

Brick Willock rose softly and stole toward the opening, his eyes filled with a strange light. They no longer glared with the blood-lust of a wild beast, but showed gloomy and perplexed; the words spoken concerning himself had sunk deep.

The boatman sat with his back to Gledware and Annabel. He wore a long dingy coat of light gray and a huge battered straw hat, whose wide brim hid his hair and almost eclipsed his face. Willock, careful not to show himself, stared at the skiff as it shot out from the landing, his brow wrinkled in anxious thought. He felt strange and dizzy, and at first fancied it was because of the resolution that had taken possession of him—the resolution to return to Greer County and give himself up. This purpose, as unreasoning as his plan to kill Gledware, grew as fixed in his mind as half an hour before his other plan had been.

To go voluntarily to the sheriff, unresistingly to hold out his wrists for the handcuffs—that would indeed mark a new era in his life. "A wild Indian wouldn't do that," he mused, "nor a wild beast. I guess I understand, after all. And if that's the way to make Lahoma happy...."

No wonder he felt queer; but his light-headedness did not rise, as a matter of fact, entirely from subjective storm-threatenings. There was something about that boatman—now, when he tilted up his head slightly, and the hat failed to conceal—was it possible?...

"My God!" whispered Willock; "it's Red Feather!"

And Gledware, with eyes only for Annabel, finding nothing beyond her but a long gray coat, a big straw hat and two rowing arms—did not suspect the truth!

In a flash, Willock comprehended all. The Indian had dropped the pin in Kimball's path, and Kimball, finding it, had carried it to Gledware as if Red Feather were dead. The Indian had led his braves against the stage-coach—Kimball had fallen under his knife. Yonder man in the corner, bound and gagged, was doubtless the old deaf boatman engaged by Gledware. Red Feather had taken his place that he might row Gledware far out on the lake....

But Annabel was in the boat. If the Indian...

Far away toward the east, Edgerton Compton was rowing, not near enough to intervene in case the Indian attempted violence, but better able than himself to lend assistance if the boat were overturned. Willock could, in truth, do nothing, except shout a warning, and this he forebore lest it hasten the impending catastrophe. He remained, therefore, half-hidden, crouching at the doorway, his eyes glued to the rapidly gliding boat, with its three figures clear-cut against the first faint sun-glow.