The Tempering Part 42

"But, Tom"--Masters broke chokingly off.

"Please don't try to thank me."

"Not perhaps for myself, but I happen to know that your means have supported not only your own family but my family as well."

"Larry,"--Colonel Wallifarro spoke in a harder tone than was customary with him--"your folly has been almost criminal ... but if it meant stripping myself to beggary I couldn't see Anne's father accused of a breach of trust. Even if I cared nothing for you, my boy, it would come to the same thing. I fancy I shall sell the farm."

"My G.o.d!" groaned Masters. "It's the apple of your eye, Tom."

Colonel Wallifarro fumbled for a cigar and lighted it, saying nothing for a time. When he spoke it was with an irrelevant change of topic.

"Not quite, Larry. The apple of my eye is a dream. If, before I die, I can trot a grandchild on my knee--a child with Morgan's will and Anne's fine-fibred sweetness--" he paused a moment and then gave a short laugh--"then I could contentedly strike my tent for the beyond."

"I'm afraid her heart--"

Colonel Wallifarro raised a hand in interruption.

"I know, Larry. Don't misunderstand me. It would have to be along the way of her happiness or not at all. I feel almost a paternal interest in Boone Wellver. But I've always believed that they'd grow apart with the years and she and Morgan would grow together. Anyhow it's my dream, and for a time yet I sha'n't let go my hold upon it." His tone changed and again he spoke as a lawyer weighing the inelastic force of facts. "But time is vital to you. These options must be taken up. There must be no suspicious delay. I'll catch the next train back to town and arrange to get money in your hands at once."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Boone had written to Anne after the election in a vein of satisfaction for a race won. "It is a small thing," he candidly confessed; "nothing more than a corporal's stripe to the man who covets the baton of a field marshal, but you know the light that leads me, dear Evening Star. You'll find me scrambling up the hillside toward you at least, even if, as they would say hereabouts, 'hit's a right-smart slavish upgoin'.'"

But with McCalloway, to whom he need not soften the edges of disclosure, he spoke of something else. His victory in primary and election seemed to demonstrate an augmented popularity, and yet he had become instinctively cognizant of a covert but bitter undertow of hatred against him: something unspoken and indefinable but existent and malign.

McCalloway paused with his supper coffee cup half way to his lips when Boone announced that conviction one evening, and eyed the other intently before he made an answer.

"I dare say," he hazarded at length, "that the old scars of the Carr-Gregory war have never entirely healed. The rancour may begin to smart afresh as your former enemies see your influence mounting."

But Boone shook his head.

"Of course, I've thought of that--but this is something else."

"Then, my boy, what is your conjecture?"

Boone's reply came slowly and thoughtfully.

"To you, sir, I can speak bluntly and without fear of being charged with timidity. Frankly, sir, I'm more than half expecting to be 'lay-wayed'

some fine day as I ride along a tangled trail."

"I've had to take some chances in my time," a.s.serted the soldier modestly, while his brows gathered in a frown, "but that is one form of danger that always sends a s.h.i.+ver down my spine; the attack that comes without warning." He broke off, then energetically added: "If _you_ give credence to such a possibility, it's not to be lightly dismissed. You must not ride alone, hereafter."

Boone laughed. "For five years old Parson Fletcher never went abroad without the escort of an armed bodyguard. He even built a stockade around his house, but they got him. Jim Garrard was shot to death while militiamen stood in a hollow square about him. Precautions of that sort don't succeed. They are only a public confession of fear, and in politics a man can't afford such an admission. All I can do is to be watchful."

"Have you a guess as to who the man is behind this enmity?"

Boone nodded as he rose and went to the mantel where the pipes and tobacco lay.

"Here and there of late I've heard a name mentioned that hasn't been much discussed for years--the name of a man who has been away."

McCalloway shot a keenly searching glance at his companion as he interrogatively prompted,

"You mean--?"

"I mean Saul Fulton. Yes."

Victor McCalloway went to the hearth and kicked a smoking log into the flame. He turned then with the sternly knit brows of deep abstraction and weighed his words before giving them utterance.

"You have need to remember, my boy," he began gravely at last, "how deep the tap-root of heredity strikes down even when the tree top stretches far up into the sky."

"Meaning--?"

"Meaning, my dear boy, that I can't forget the black hatred in your eyes one day in the woods when I wrestled with that vengeance fire smouldering deep in your nature. You haven't forgotten that afternoon, have you? The day when you promised that until you came of age you would put aside the conviction that Saul Fulton was your man to kill?"

"I haven't forgotten it, sir."

As Boone answered, the older man thought that, if something in the blue pupils stood for any meaning, he might also have added that neither had he entirely conquered the bitterness of that earlier time. Then Boone went on slowly:

"I kept my word, but you wouldn't have me go so far in turning the other cheek as to let him kill me--by his own hand or that of a hireling--would you?"

The gray eyes of the tall soldier held both sternness and reminiscence, but the reminiscence was all for something that brought a painful train of thought. Those were eyes that seemed looking back on smoking ruin, and that sought out of disastrous experience, to sound a warning. Into Boone's mind flashed a couplet:

"The Emperor there in his box of state, looked grave as though he had just then seen The red flags fly from the city gates--where his eagles of bronze had been."

At times, when McCalloway wore that cryptic expression, Boone burned with an eager curiosity to have the curtain lifted for him, and to be able to see just what life had once spelled for this extraordinary man.

Now the veteran was speaking again with a carefully intoned voice:

"I would have you defend your life, aggressively and fully, but your honour no less jealously. I am no psychologist, but I have read that almost every man has some spot on his sanity that is like a blind spot on his eye. Into your blood, distilled through generations, came a spirit that made a veritable religion of vengeance. You have sought to modify that and to become an apostle of progress. Apparently you have succeeded."

He paused and cleared his throat, and Boone once more prompted him with an interrogative repet.i.tion:

"Apparently, sir?"

"Yes, apparently--because one hour of pa.s.sion might blacken your future into ruin; char it into destruction. In G.o.d's name make no such mistake.

If Saul Fulton seeks your life, as you suggest, he should pay for his plotting, and pay in full. But if, by the subconscious workings of that old hatred, you are placing the blame on Saul because Saul is the man that instinct seeks a pretext to kill, then let me implore you to search your soul before you act."

Boone made no response, but over the clear intelligence of his pleasing features went the cloud of that unforgettable thing that had been with him from childhood. It was the same cloud that had settled there when he had made shrill interruption in the courtroom where Asa Gregory's life was being sworn away.

Into McCalloway's voice leaped a fiery quality.

"You have come too far to fail, Boone," he declared. "I need make no protestations of loyalty to you. You know what your success means to me, but I know the price a man pays who has tasted ruin. I would save you from that if my counsel can avert it."

The young man came close and looked into the eyes that had guided him.

"If I ever make a mistake like that," he said, "it will not be because I have lacked warnings."