"You"re on, and that"s enough; so don"t open your mouth even in here. If you do, I"ll back out. You get that, too, don"t you? Now listen: if Jess comes, just tell him you don"t know anything about anything; that you"ve never left the library. I"ll fix the Colonel and Zack."
But Dale was scarcely listening. He had begun to cavort about the room in a semi-barbarous dance, clapping his hands and making a purring sort of growl in his throat. A chair fell over; then another.
"Chop that crazy stuff," Brent commanded. "Want to wake the house?"
The big mountaineer looked rather sheepish as he picked up one of the chairs and sat down in it.
"I reckon I was so tickled to get off from the law," he mildly explained.
"I thought you might be mourning over the fate of whoever takes your place," the engineer murmured, with a sarcasm entirely lost on his listener. "h.e.l.l, Dale," he now let his feeling explode. "I"ve seen lots of fellows from the mountains, but any one of "em would lose a hand before letting another man take his medicine! You"ve got to let me do it, you understand!--but I do reserve this opportunity of saying you"re d.a.m.ned unappreciative."
"Do you reckon I"m lettin" you do it for me?" he turned savagely. "Do you think it"s me--jest me? Then you"re a-_way_ off!"
"Well, I supposed it had some little to do with you," Brent suggested, "and--and Miss Jane."
"It hain"t!" He was in a fury again, and dropped back into the old dialect "I hain"t thinkin" of Miss Jane, nor nuthin"--"cept jest the place Ruth said I"d git ter fill, the man I"ll make "mongst the big men of the world! I"m the only one on airth as kin be as big as that, hain"t I? Yeou hain"t amountin" ter nuthin", air ye? Why shouldn"t ye take my place afore the law? Hain"t hit Natur"s way fer the puny ter go down afore the strong?"
The engineer"s eyes opened at the curious sensation this gave him; at the utter astonishment of listening. Then he softly began to laugh.
"My friend," he said, "I have raised my hat to one or two colossal freaks in the past, but henceforth I shall come into your exalted presence with bare-headed humilitude. However, my boy, don"t think that I"m flirting with the penitentiary for the sake of your dazzling future, or for any of your pipe dreams. I"m doing it," he arose, and added softly, "I"m doing it for the fun of the d.a.m.n thing. Good night, Mr.
Genius!"
Long, long afterwards, Brent continued to sit in the back-tilted chair, gloomily staring through the window which framed his dim vision of the world. Later, somewhere on the other side of the house, the moon came up; and far out across the country a dog howled. Yet, by another hour, when that disk of lifeless white had floated higher in the sky, the trees framed by his window dropped their robe of mourning for a more soothing green and silver.
"I don"t reckon it"s such a somber old world, after all," he stood up, stretching;--then went to bed, and slept.
But, across the hall, Dale had not slept. Excited, boyishly happy to have escaped the consequences of his madness, he had tossed throughout the night; building up castles of greatness equal to those of his beloved Clay and Lincoln.
Now a robin piped its three first waking notes, and the mountaineer"s eyes opened wide. The interior of the room was beginning to be touched with gray, and he sprang up, throwing back the eastern shutters and gazing on that first faint flush of dawn which stirs within man"s breast a feeling of the Omnipotent. With lips apart, he watched the coming of delicate layers of salmon, and saw them merge to a soft and satiny rose.
Vermillion now touched the highlights, as though some unseen brush, wet from a palette below the horizon, had reached up and made a bold stroke across this varying canvas. More slowly followed blue--and then a bluer blue.
His thoughts, coloring with the sky, were whimsically curious. A day was coming! It would come and go, and never in all eternity come again--would this day! It was coming: to some, bringing ungrudging pleasure, sweet happiness; to others, unsparing misery, bitter despair!
Before days were, it had been arranged that this one should appear--it had been nicely calculated that this very dawn should glorify the sky at this precise moment; and that e"er the sun of this day set, thousands upon thousands of human beings should raise their smiling lips in rapture, or their bloodshot eyes in pain! How many now, out across this big, beautiful, blushingly awakening world, were undreaming of their approaching joy--or unconscious of their creeping doom? Over and over in his mind Dale weighed these thoughts. The universe was becoming a fascinating, tremendous force to him. This day, just now coming over the hill, so weighted with its black and white bounties--what was it bringing to him?
"I know!" he cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his clothes. "I get freedom, an" he,"
here his clenched fist shook toward Brent"s room, "gets jail!"
Feverishly dressing, he stamped down to the library--his paradise; regardless of whom he might be disturbing at this hour.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CALL THAT MEANS SURRENDER
Three days later an airedale terrier was driven to Flat Rock by Uncle Zack. When, with an air of mystery, he presented the leash to Jane, grinned and politely bowed himself away, she had stared at him in utter surprise; then down at the dog which seemed to be gazing up with greater understanding.
"Well, what is the answer?" she kneeled before him, fondly taking him by the ears. The honest, fearless brown eyes spoke, but she slowly shook her head: "I"m not civilized enough to understand!"
But her fingers, now turning his collar about, came upon a little note addressed in Brent"s writing. Untying it in some haste she sat upon the gra.s.s and read:
"I, and my life, are yours, Mistress Jane. Please take me, and let me guard you faithfully.
An unnamed dog."
"An unnamed dog!" she cried in delight, giving him a quick, impulsive hug. "Oh, you wonderful creature!" Then held him off at arms" length, his head between her palms in a way that wrinkled the tawny forehead into an expression of profound wisdom. "How would you like to be named--Mac?" she whispered.
He was wagging his stumpy tail, anyway; but one can always give a dog the benefit of a doubt, and she believed that it began to wag more happily. Thus it was settled between them. All the affection which his nature held, which his rearing in a large kennel of other dogs had not permitted him to bestow upon any one master, now sprang to its most perfect development and centered upon this girl. Wherever she was, he was; watchful, ready for a lark, or equally content to lie quietly at her feet.
That afternoon, in trim boots and riding habit, she crossed the porch to her horse which had just been brought around. Mac, in great pretended fury, was grasping the leash end of her crop and tugging at it with savage growls.
"Drop it," she gave his nose a tap. He licked her glove then, and looked up with his head tilted in roguish inquiry. "We must ride over and thank the other Mister Mac," she explained; and a few minutes later they were going at a spirited pace across the meadows to Arden.
With still no news of Tusk Potter, the Colonel had spent a restless day.
Earlier, the doughty son of Shadeland Wildon brought the little boy over to see him, followed by Aunt Timmie in her precarious buggy; but it was now afternoon and they had left. Shadows were lengthening, and the cows were mooing at the pasture gate.
Dale, as usual, had spent the day in study. His absorption had made him unconscious of intruders who came into the room. Timmie and the little boy had stopped to say good-bye, and she called his name; even emboldened by his silence to murmur: "Don" you know you"se gwine pop yoh brains a-wu"kin" "em so hard?"
Bip, who regarded Dale with mysterious interest, made farther advances.
He went up close, and looked wonderingly into his face; but at last both he and the old woman left unseen and unheard.
All unconscious of his surroundings, this student was living in other days with the dauntless Pompey. By the aid of the huge dictionary, now seldom opened, he laboriously followed this daring friend of the great Cicero. Since morning he had witnessed the capture of a thousand cities, the slaying or subjugation of a million human beings--and more of this was to come. Had lightning snapped about his head he would not have known it for the wilder sounds of battlefields, scattered between Rome and the Euphrates, possessing his brain.
When Jane arrived, Mac was properly introduced to the old gentleman, who made a great fuss over him and directed her attention to his points of unusual excellence. But Brent, he told her, was not about.
"Dale would like to see him," she said enthusiastically.
"Oh, yes," his face clouded, "I suppose so!"
"What"s the matter?" she quickly asked.
"Matter?" he looked up. "Why, nothing, my dear! Nothing, of course!"
But it did not satisfy, and she asked again:
"Has anything happened?--Dale, or anything?"
He must have found some difficulty in evading this direct question, and his hesitation, brief though it was, alarmed her.
"No, my dear. I cannot say that anything has happened. I may be growing a little uncertain of him--that is, I may be afraid--oh, bother! It is nothing but an old man"s fancy!"
Nevertheless, when later, calling the mountaineer"s name, she stepped through the library window, an element of uncertainty, quite a different sort from that which the Colonel was congratulating himself upon having so deftly hid, filled her heart with a vague foreboding.
Dale was mumbling aloud as he read, and did not hear her; but a slight pressure on his shoulder brought him slowly back from scenes of carnage, and he looked up into her face, smiling down at him.
"Stop awhile, and speak to Mac! Your eyes seem tired!"