The Roof Tree Part 47

"Thar's been treason amongst us," announced Rick Joyce, sharply, and every man seemed to find that wrathful glance resting accusingly upon himself. "Thar's been treason that's got ter be paid in full an' with int'rest hereatter. Thet thing thet tuck place last night was mighty d.a.m.nable an' erginst all orders. Ther fellers thet did hit affronted this hyar army of riders thet they stood sworn ter obey."

Whether among those followers gathered about him there were any who had partic.i.p.ated in last night's murder Rick Joyce did not know, but he knew that a minority had run to a violence which had been neither ordered nor countenanced. They had gotten out of hand, wreaked a premature vengeance, and precipitated the need of action before the majority was ready. But it was now too late to waste time in lamentation. The thing was done, and the organization saddled with that guilt must strike or be struck down.

The Ku Klux had meant to move at its own appointed time, with the irresistible sweep and force of an avalanche. Before the designated season a lighter snowslide had broken away and the avalanche had no choice but to follow.

To-morrow every aroused impulse of law and order would be battle-girt and the secret body would be on the defensive--perhaps even on the run.

If it were to hold the offensive it must strike and terrorize before another day had dawned--and that was not as it had planned its course.

"Hit's too late now ter cry over spilt milk," declared Joyce with a burr in his voice. "Later on we'll handle our own traitors--right now thar's another task thet won't suffer no delay."

He paused, scowling, then enlightened his hearers briefly:

"We warn't ready ter finish up this matter yit but now we hain't got no choice. Hit's ternight or never. We stands disgusted by all mankind, an'

in sheer self-defence we've got ter terrify mankind so they won't dast utter what disgust they feels. Old Jim's nigh ter death an' we don't need ter bother with him; Hump Doane kin wait--one blow's done fell on him already--but thar's yit another man thet won't never cease ter dog us whilst he lives, an' thet's Parish Thornton--so ternight we aims ter hang him."

Once more there was a pause, then as though pointing his moral the spokesman supplemented his remarks:

"Hit hes need ter be a thing," he said, solemnly, "thet's goin' ter terrify this whole country in sich dire fas.h.i.+on thet fer twenty y'ars ter come no grand juror won't dast vote fer no investigation."

There remained those exact details that should cause the elaborate operation to function together without hitch or miscarriage, and to these Rick Joyce addressed himself.

The mob was to partic.i.p.ate in force of full numbers and no absentees were to be tolerated.

"When ther game starts up hit's got ter go quick as a bat flyin' through h.e.l.l," enjoined the director. "Every man teks his slicker an' his false-face, an' goes one by one ter ther woods eround Thornton's house es soon es dusk sottles. Every man's got ter be nigh enough afore sun-down ter make sh.o.r.e of gettin' thar on time. Then they all draws in, holdin' ter ther thickets. Ther signal will be ther callin' of whippoorwills--a double call with a count of five betwixt 'em. When we're all drawed up eround ther house, so no way hain't left open thet a rabbit could break through, I'll sing out--an' when I does thet ye all closes in on ther run. Thar's a big walnuck tree right by ther door ter hang him on--an' termorrer mornin' folks'll hev a lesson thet they kin kinderly take ter heart."

On his way back from Hump Doane's house that morning Parish Thornton made a detour for a brief visit upon Jase Burrell, the man to whose discretion he had entrusted the keeping of Bas Rowlett's sealed confession. From the hands of that faithful custodian he took the envelope and thrust it into his breast pocket. Now that his own pledge of suspended vengeance had been exonerated he would no longer need that bond of amnesty. Moreover, he knew now that this compact had been a rope of sand to Bas Rowlett from the beginning, and would never be anything else. It only served to divert the plotter's activities and treacheries into subtler channels--and when the sun set to-day there would be either no Bas Rowlett to bind or no Parish Thornton to seek to bind him.

Then he rode home.

Thornton entered his own house silently, but with the face of an avenging spirit, and it was a face that told his story.

The rigid pose and the set jaw, the irreconcilable light in the eyes, were all things that Dorothy understood at once and without explanation.

As she looked at her husband she thought, somehow, of a falcon or eagle poised on a bare tree-top at a precipice edge. There was the same alert restiveness as might have marked a bird of prey, gauging the blue sky-reaches with predatory eye, and ready to strike with a winged bolt of death.

Quietly, because the baby had just fallen asleep, she rose and laid the child on the bright patterned coverlet of the fourposter, and she paused, too, to brace herself with a glance into the cool shadows and golden lights of the ample branches beyond the window.

Then she came back to the door and her voice was steady but low as she said, "Ye've done found out who did hit. I kin read thet in yore eyes, Ken."

He nodded, but until he had crossed the room and laid a hand on each of her shoulders, he did not speak.

"Since ther fust day I ever seed ye, honey," he declared with a sort of hushed fervour, "standin' up thar in ther winder, my heart hain't nuver struck a beat save ter love ye--an' thet war jest erbout a y'ar ago."

"Hit's been all my life, Ken," she protested. "Ther time thet went ahead of thet didn't skeercely count atall."

Her voice trembled, and the meeting of their gaze was a caress. Then he said: "When I wedded with ye out thar--under thet old tree--with ther sun s.h.i.+nin' down on us--I swore ter protect ye erginst all harm."

"Hain't ye always done thet, Ken?"

"Erginst all ther perils I knowed erbout--yes," he answered, slowly, then his tone leaped into vehemence. "But I didn't suspicion--until terday--thet whilst I was away from ye--ye hed ter protect yoreself erginst Bas Rowlett."

"Bas Rowlett!" the name broke from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted, that reckoning belonged to to-day and would be neither diverted nor postponed.

Her old fear of what the consequence would be if this revelation came to his knowledge rose chokingly and overpoweringly.

Why had she not killed Bas herself before Sim Squires came in to interfere that day? Why had she allowed the moment to pa.s.s when a stroke of the blade might have ended the peril?

Atavistic impulses and contradictions of her blood welled confusedly up within her. This was her own battle and she wanted to fight it out for herself. If Rowlett were to be executed it should be she herself who sent him to his accounting. She was torn, as she stood there, between her terror for the man she loved and her hatred for the other--a hatred which clamoured for blood appeas.e.m.e.nt.

But she shook her head and sought to resolve the conflicting emotions.

"I hid ther truth from ye, Ken," she said, "because I feared fer what mout happen ef ye found out. I wasn't affrighted of Bas fer myself--but I war fer _you_. I knowed ye trusted him an' ef ye diskivered he war a traitor----"

"Traitor!" the man interrupted her, pa.s.sionately, "he hain't never deluded me es ter thet since ther fust night I laid in thet thar bed atter I'd been shot. Him an' me come ter an' understandin' then an'

thar--but he swore ter hold his hand twell we could meet man ter man, jest ther two of us."

A bitter laugh came with his pause, then he went on: "I 'lowed you trusted him an' I didn't seek ter rouse up no needless fears in yore heart--but now we both knows ther truth, an' I'm startin' out d'reckly ter sottle ther score fer all time."

Dorothy Thornton caught his shoulders and her eyes were full of pleading.

"Ye've done built up a name fer yoreself, Ken," she urged with burning fervour. "Hit war me thet told ye, thet day when Aaron Capper an' them others come, thet ye couldn't refuse ter lead men--but I told ye, too, ye war bounden ter lead 'em to'rds peace an' law. Ye've done led 'em thetaway, Ken, an' folks trusts ye, Harpers an' Doanes alike. Now ye kain't afford ter start in leadin' 'em wrong--ye kain't afford ter dirty yore hands with bloodshed, Ken. Ye kain't afford ter do hit!"

The man stood off looking at her with a love that was almost awe, with an admiration that was almost idolatry, but the obduracy persisted in his eyes.

"Partly ye're talkin' from conscience thet don't traffic ner barter with no evil, Dorothy," he made sober response, "an' partly, too, ye're talkin', woman-fas.h.i.+on, outen a fear thet seeks ter s.h.i.+eld yore man. I honours both them things, but this time I hain't follerin' no fox-fire an' I kain't be stayed." He paused, and the hand that closed over hers was firm and resolute for all the tenderness of its pressure.

"Hit's warfare now ter ther hilt of ther knife, honey, but hit's ther warfare of them that strives fer decency an' law erginst them thet murders in ther night-time. An' yit ther riders has good men amongst 'em, too--men thet's jest sorely misguided. I reckon ye don't know thet, either, but Bas Rowlett's ther one body thet brought 'em ter life an'

eggs 'em on. When he dies ther riders'll fall apart like a string of beads thet's been cut in two. Terday I aims ter cut ther thread."

The woman stood trembling with the fervour of outraged indignation as he told her all he knew, but when he finished she nodded her head, in a finale of exhortation, toward the bedroom. Possibly she was not unlike the lawyer whose duty is to argue for legal observances even though his heart cries out mutinously for a hotter course.

"Air hit wuth while--orphanin' him--an' widderin' me fer--Ken?"

"Hit's wuth while his growin' up ter know thet he wasn't fathered by no craven, ner yit borne by a woman thet faltered," answered Parish Thornton; then he set Hump Doane's rifle in the corner and took out his own with the particularity of a man who, for a vital task, dares trust no tool save that with which he is most familiar.

When he had gone Dorothy sat down in her chair again. She remembered that other time when her mind had reeled under anxieties almost too poignant for endurance. Now she was nursing a baby, and she must hold herself in hand. Her eyes wandered about the place, seeking something upon which her mind might seize for support, and at length she rose and ran up the boxed-in stairway to the attic.

When she came back again to the bedroom she carried the journal that had been so mysteriously lost and recovered, and then she drew a chair to the window and opened the doc.u.ment where she had left off in her reading. But often she laid the book absent-mindedly in her lap to listen with an ear turned toward the bed, and often, too, she looked out into the spreading softness of golden-green laced through by dove-gray and sepia-brown branches on which played baffling reflexes of soft and mossy colours.

Parish Thornton did not approach the house of his enemy from the front.

He came upon it from behind and held to the shelter of the laurel as long as that was possible, but he found a padlock on the door and all the windows closed.

For an hour or more he waited, but there was no return of the owner and Parish carried his search elsewhere.

Bas, he reflected, was busy to-day conferring with those leaders of the riders from whom he ostensibly stood aloof, and the man who was hunting him down followed trail after trail along roads that could be ridden and "traces" that must be tramped. Casual inquiries along the highway served only to send him hither and yon on a series of wild goose chases.