Truxton King: A Story of Graustark Part 20

"Who are they?" demanded King, as they rode past a particularly sullen, forbidding crowd at the corner below the city hail.

"There's a strike on among the men who are building the railroad," said Hobbs. "Ugly looking crowd, eh?"

"A strike? 'Gad, it's positively homelike."

"I heard a bit ago that the matter has been adjusted. They go back to work to-morrow, slight increase in pay and a big decrease in work. They were to have had their answer to-day. Mr. Tullis, I hear, was instrumental in having the business settled without a row."

"They'd better look out for these fellows," said King, very soberly. "I don't like the appearance of 'em. They look like cut-throats."

"Take my word for it, sir, they are. They're the riff-raff of all Europe. You should have seen them of a Sunday, sir, before the order went out closing the drinking places on that day. My word, they took the town. There was no living here for the decent people. Women couldn't go out of their houses."

"I hope Baron Dangloss knows how to handle them?" in some anxiety. "By the way, remind me to look up the Baron just as soon as we get back to town this evening."

"If we ever get back!" muttered the unhappy Mr. Hobbs. Prophetic lamentation!

In due time they rode into the sombre solitudes of Ganlook Gap and up to the Witch's glen. Here Mr. Hobbs balked. He refused to adventure farther than the mouth of the stony ravine. Truxton approached the hovel alone, without the slightest trepidation. The goose-herd grandson was driving a flock of geese across the green bowl below the cabin. The American called out to him and a moment later the youth, considerably excited, drove his geese up to the door. He could understand no English, nor could Truxton make out what he was saying in the native tongue. While they were vainly haranguing each other the old woman appeared at the edge of the thicket above the hut. Uttering shrill exclamations, she hurried down to confront King with blazing eyes. He fell back, momentarily dismayed. Her horrid grin of derision brought a flush to his cheek; he faced her quite coolly.

"I'll lay you a hundred gavvos that the kettle and smoke experiment is a fake of the worst sort," he announced, after a somewhat lengthy appeal to be allowed to enter the hut as a simple seeker after knowledge.

"Have it your own way! Have it your own way!" she cackled.

"Tell you what I'll do; if I can't expose that trick in ten minutes, I'll make you a present of a hundred gavvos."

She took him up like a flash, a fact which startled and disconcerted him not a little. Her very eagerness augured ill for his proposition. Still, he was in for it; he was determined to get inside the hut and solve the mystery, if it were possible. Exposure of the Witch would at least attract the interest if not the approval of a certain young lady in purple and fine linen. That was surely worth while.

With a low, mocking bow, the shrivelled hag stood aside and motioned for him to precede her into the hovel. He looked back at Mr. Hobbs. That gentleman's eyes seemed to be starting from his head.

"A hundred gavvos is a fortune not easily to be won," said the old dame.

"How can I be sure that you will pay me if you lose?"

"It is in my pocket, madam. If I don't pay, you may instruct your excellent grandson to crack me over the head. He looks as though he'd do it for a good deal less money, I'll say that for him."

"He is honest--as honest as his grandmother," cried the old woman. She bestowed a toothless grin upon him. "Now what is it you want to do?"

They were standing in the centre of the wretched living-room. The goose-boy was in the door, looking on with strangely alert, questioning eyes, ever and anon peering over his shoulder toward the spot where Hobbs stood with the horses. He seldom took his gaze from the face of the old woman, a rat-like smile touching the corners of his fuzz-lined lips.

"I want to go through that kitchen, just to satisfy myself of one or two things." King was looking hard at the crack in the kitchen door.

Suddenly he started as if shot.

The staring, burning eye was again looking straight at him from the jagged crack in the door!

"I'll get you this time," he shouted, crossing the room in two eager leaps. The door responded instantly to his violent clutch, swung open with a bang, and disclosed the interior of the queer little kitchen.

The owner of that mocking, phantom eye was gone!

Like a frantic dog, Truxton dashed about the little kitchen, looking in every corner, every crack for signs of the thing he chased. At last he paused, baffled, mystified. The old woman was standing in the middle of the outer room, grinning at him with what was meant for complacency, but which struck him at once as genuine malevolence.

"Ha, ha!" she croaked. "You fool! You fool! Search! Smell him out! All the good it will do you! Ha, ha!"

"By gad, I _will_ get at the bottom of this!" shouted Truxton, stubborn rage possessing him. "There's some one here, and I know it. I'm not such a fool as to believe--Say! What's that? The ceiling! By the eternal, that sc.r.a.ping noise explains it! There's where the secret trap-door is--in the ceiling! Within arm's reach, at that! Watch me, old woman!

I'll have your spry friend out of his nest in the shake of a lamb's tail."

The hag was standing in the kitchen door now, still grinning evilly. She watched the eager young man pound upon the low ceiling with a three-legged stool that he had seized from the floor.

"I don't see how he got up there so quickly, though. He must be like greased lightning."

He was pounding vigorously on the roughly boarded ceiling when the sharp voice of the old woman, raised in command, caused him to lower the stool and turn upon her with gleaming, triumphant eyes. The look he saw in her face was sufficient to check his enterprise for the moment. He dropped the stool and started toward her, his arms extended to catch her swaying form. The look of the dying was in her eyes; she seemed to be crumpling before him.

He reached her in time, his strong arms grasping the frail, bent figure as it sank to the floor. As he lifted her bodily from her feet, intent upon carrying her to the open air, her bony fingers sank into his arm with the grip of death, and--could he believe his ears!--a low, mocking laugh came from her lips.

Down where the pebbly house-yard merged into the mossy banks, Mr. Hobbs sat tight, still staring with gloomy eyes at the dark little hut up the glen. His st.u.r.dy knees were pressing the skirts of the saddle with a firmness that left no room for doubt as to the tension his nerves were under. Now and then he murmured "My word!" but in what connection it is doubtful if even he could tell. A quarter of an hour had pa.s.sed since King disappeared through the doorway: Mr. Hobbs was getting nervous.

The s.h.i.+ftless, lanky goose-herd came forth in time, and lazily drove his scattered flock off into the lower glen.

The horses were becoming impatient. To his extreme discomfort, not to say apprehension, they were constantly p.r.i.c.king their ears forward and snorting in the direction of the hovel; a very puzzling circ.u.mstance, thought Mr. Hobbs. At this point he began to say "dammit," and with some sense of appreciation, too.

Presently his eye caught sight of a thin stream of smoke, rather black than blue, arising from the little chimney at the rear of the cabin.

His eyes flew very wide open; his heart experienced a sudden throbless moment; his mind leaped backward to the unexplained smoke mystery of the day before. It was on the end of his tongue to cry out to his unseen patron, to urge him to leave the Witch to her deviltry and come along home, when the old woman herself appeared in the doorway--alone.

She sat down upon the doorstep, pulling away at a long pipe, her hooded face almost invisible from the distance which he resolutely held. He felt that she was eyeing him with grim interest. For a few minutes he waited, a sickening doubt growing up in his soul. A single glance showed him that the chimney was no longer emitting smoke. It seemed to him that the old woman was losing all semblance of life. She was no more than a black, inanimate heap of rags piled against the door-jamb.

Hobbs let out a shout. The horses plunged viciously. Slowly the bundle of rags took shape. The old woman arose and hobbled toward him, leaning upon a great cane.

"Whe--where's Mr. King?" called out Hobbs.

She stopped above him and he could see her face. Mr. Hobbs was chilled to the bone. Her arm was raised, a bony finger pointing to the treetops above her hovel.

"He's gone. Didn't you see him? He went off among the treetops. You won't see him again." She waited a moment, and then went on, in most ingratiating tones: "Would you care to come into my house? I can show you the road he took. You--"

But Mr. Hobbs, his hair on end, had dropped the rein of King's horse and was putting boot to his own beast, whirling frantically into the path that led away from the hated, d.a.m.ned spot! Down the road he crashed, pursued by witches whose persistence put to shame the efforts of those famed ladies of Tam O'Shanter in the long ago; if he had looked over his shoulder, he might have discovered that he was followed by a riderless horse, nothing more.

But a riderless horse is a gruesome thing--sometimes.

CHAPTER IX

STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES

The further adventures of Mr. Hobbs on this memorable afternoon are quickly chronicled, notwithstanding the fact that he lived an age while they were transpiring, and experienced sensations that would still be fresh in his memory if he lived to be a hundred.

He was scarcely well out of sight of the cabin when his conscience began to smite him: after all, his patron might be in dire need of his services, and here he was, fleeing from an old woman and a whiff of smoke! Hobbs was not a physical coward, but it took more than a mile of hard-ridden conscience to bring his horse to a standstill. Then, with his heart in his mouth, he slowly began to retrace his steps, walking where he had galloped a moment before. A turn in the road brought him in view of something that caused him to draw rein sharply. A hundred yards ahead, five or six men were struggling with a riderless bay horse.

"My Gawd!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hobbs. "It's _his_ horse! I might have known!"

He looked eagerly for his patron. There was no sign of him, so Hobbs rode slowly forward, intent upon asking the woodmen--for such they appeared to be--to accompany him to the glen, now but a short distance ahead.