"I can"t tell you!" wailed Lida Kennard, turning her back fearsomely on the big house on the ledges.
"You"ve got a mouthful of truth out of me. Can"t you see how it is?"
growled Crowley.
"So that"s what you are, is it?" Latisan dwelt on the subject, twisting the handle that Crowley had given him.
"Mr. Latisan, listen to me! I implore you to forget me--what I am! Go to your work."
"My work has nothing to do with this matter between you and me. So that"s what you are!" he repeated, insistent on his one idea, looking her up and down. "A detective sneak!"
"I am done with the work. I am a human being, at any rate, and you promised me----"
He sliced his hand through the air. "That"s all off! You lied to me. It must have been a lie, seeing what you are. But I believed, and I stood up and took you for mine. The word has gone out. Every man on the Noda will know about it. I had no rights over your life till you met me. But when a woman lies to a man to make him do this or that she is laughing at him behind his back. You have played me for a poor fool in the tall timber. That"s the word that"s starting now."
"If you have found out how worthless I am," she sobbed, "you can go on with your work and be a real man."
He loosed the leash on himself. He mocked her with bitter irony, his face working hideously. ""Go on with your work!" Don"t you have any idea what men are up these woods? Who"ll take orders from me after this?
They"ll hoot me off the river! I"m done. You have put me down and under!"
More than the spirit of sacrifice was actuating her then. Her impulses were inextricably mingled, but they all tended to one end, to save him from error. His scorn had touched her heart; meeting him on his own plane--on the level of honesty--woman with man, she was conscious of bitter despair because he was leaving her life. She was fighting for her own--for the old man in the big house, for the new love that was springing up out of her sympathy for this champion from whom, without realizing the peril of her procedure, she had filched the weapons of his manhood at the moment when he needed them most.
"The heart has gone out of me! You have taken it out!" he cried.
"I swear before our G.o.d that I"ll be straight with you from now on.
Won"t it put heart in you if I"m your wife, standing by you through everything?" She took a long breath. Her desperation drove her to the limits of appeal. "I love you! I know it. I must have known it when I urged you on to your duty. I"m willing to say it here before all. Take me, and let"s fight together."
In her hysterical fear lest she was losing all, she took no thought of her pride; she was making pa.s.sionate, primitive appeal to the chosen mate.
But she did not understand how absolutely hopeless was the wreck of this man"s fortunes, as Latisan viewed the situation. Ridicule, the taunt that he had been fooled by a girl from the city, was waiting for him all along the river. Echford Flagg would be the first to deny the worth of a man who had received the Big Laugh. No man on the Noda had ever incurred mock to such a degree. And he had vaunted his engagement to her!
She went toward him, her hands outstretched; he had been backing away from her.
"Look out!" he warned. "I never struck a woman!" He spread his big hand.
All the fury of his forebears was rioting in him.
He was not swayed by rage, merely; there would have been something petty in ordinary human resentment at that moment. There was another quality that was devilishly and subtly complex in the sudden mania which obsessed him. He had seen woodsmen leaping and shouting in the ecstasy of drunkenness; liquor seemed to affect the men of the woods in that way--to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged to pitch in and quell riots where woodsmen had heaped their clothes and were making a bonfire of the garments they needed for decency"s sake.
And a mere liquid had been able to put them into that temper!
But this that was sweeping through all his being was liquid fire!
He had never been else than a spectator of what alcohol would do to a man; he had never tasted the stuff.
Here he was, all of a sudden, drunk with something else--he knew that he was drunk--and he let himself go! He leaped up and tossed his arms above his head. By action alone a woodsman expressed his feelings, he told himself, and he was only a woodsman; the h.e.l.lions of the world were not allowing him to make anything else of himself! The north country was closed to him; his power as a boss was gone. Look at those grinning faces around him!
Then he yelled shrilly. Many who stood around understood what that whoop meant, though it had not been heard for a long time on the Noda. It was "the Latisan lallyloo"! It had echoed among the hills in the old days when John Latisan was down from the river and had grabbed a bottle from the hand of the first bootlegger who offered his wares.
The grandson, then and there, was veritably drunk with the frenzy of despair!
Yanking his arms free, he dragged off his belted jacket and flung it on the ground; on the jacket, with a pile-driver sweep of his arm, he drove down his cap.
"Lie there, drive master!" he shouted.
The down train of the narrow-gauge was dragging out of the station; a succession of shrill whistle toots, several minutes before, had warned prospective pa.s.sengers.
Latisan ran down the middle of the road and leaped aboard the slowly moving train when it crossed the highway. Standing on the platform of the pa.s.senger car, he shook his fists at a.s.sembled Adonia and yelled again.
Brophy, from the tavern porch, looked hard at the girl and started down the steps, making his way toward the jacket and cap which Latisan had thrown away.
She ran and picked them up and hugged them in her arms with defiant proprietorship.
"How come?" sneered Brophy. "Latest bulletin seemed to be that the engagement was broke!" He was suddenly hostile.
She turned from the landlord and faced Crowley. The operative was triumphant. "It"s understood that I get the credit for this job," he informed her, _sotto voce_. His air suggested that he was convinced that the destiny of the Flagg drive had been settled.
All about her were implacable faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her pa.s.sionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of Latisan--the breaking of her grandfather"s last prop. She had intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compa.s.sed the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were barred by the iron of unforgiveness and by these new fires of her fault, involuntary though that fault was.
Brophy stood before her. "I reckon you ain"t going to be very popular hereabout as a hash-slinger, Miss Whatever-your-name is." He snapped his fingers and stretched his hand to command the transfer of the jacket and cap. "I"ll take "em and put "em in Ward"s room."
But she clung to what she had retrieved as if she felt that she held a hostage of fortune. Brophy refrained from laying violent hands on the articles, and to save his face and create a diversion he turned on Crowley.
"Let"s see! You have bragged about being a detective! We don"t stand for your kind or tricks in this neck o" woods."
There was the menace of growls in the crowd. The mob spirit was stirring. A man said something about a rail and tar and feathers.
"I"ll argue with the boys and try to give you a fair start," stated the landlord. "But you"d better pack up in a hurry. You can"t wait for to-morrow"s train under my roof. I"ll furnish you a livery hitch to the junction. Take the woman with you."
It was an ugly crowd; the landlord was obliged to push back men when Crowley followed Lida into the tavern.
Miss Elsham was just inside the door, where she had posted herself as a spectator and listener. "There"s no telling what they"ll do; they"re bound to find out that I"m an operative," she quavered. "You must take me with you, Buck."
He had been appointed her guardian and he could not refuse. But he glowered at Lida, white and trembling.
Brophy came in after a struggle at the door; he slammed the portal and bolted it.
"They"re usually pretty genteel up here where wimmen are concerned," he told Lida, "but they"re laying it all to you. They"ll let you go, Crowley, if you"ll go in a hurry. Are you one of "em, too?" he bluntly asked Miss Elsham, ready to suspect all strangers.
She nodded. "I"m going with Crowley."
"Understanding that you give me full credit," her a.s.sociate told her, his lips close to her ear.
"I ain"t sure but what I"d better hide you till night," the landlord informed Lida. "As I said, they"re naturally genteel, but----" He hesitated when he heard the growing grumble of voices.
"I"ve got trouble enough in getting away without taking you on for an extra load," was Crowley"s rough repudiation of Lida. "You have double-crossed----"
"I"ll accept your opinion as an expert in that line," she said, lashing her courage back to meet the situation. "I am not asking any favors from Vose-Mern or their operatives. Nor from you," she informed the landlord.
She settled Ward"s cap and jacket more securely in the clutch of her arms. "Unbar and open the door, if you please, Mr. Brophy."