The Portal of Dreams Part 21

Perhaps the disappointment of my cursory reconnoiter showed itself in my expression. Curt Dawson, who stood with his arms folded and his loose length draped against the door-jamb, grinned at my dolorous face.

"Nice place, ain't hit--fer a murder?"

"That's about all," I responded affably enough. I had discovered that I was gaining nothing by a sullen att.i.tude and I am afraid that I was even yielding to a cheap desire to impress these desperadoes with my indifference.

"By the way," I added, "what's the delay about? Why don't you finish up your job and get to a more comfortable place?"

Again he grinned. "Say, stranger," he questioned, "ain't we treatin' yer pretty well? Was you ever in any other jail where yer got better handled? I've done laid myself out ter make yer visit memorable."

"It will be," I a.s.sured him, "provided I live long enough to remember it--and--" I reached out my manacled hand for some of his "natural leaf"

and loaded the cob pipe with which I had been presented, "whenever I pa.s.s through Frankfort in after years, Dawson, I promise to drop into the penitentiary and pay you a visit."

"No Dawson ain't never put up thar yit," came his quick retort, with a flash that showed I had touched his raw nerve of fear, but the smile came back as he added, "as fer me, I venerates the traditions of my family."

I had never succeeded in trapping this unique man-killer into any admission which he did not care to make, and I had begun to understand his ability to take the witness stand and run, unscathed, the gantlet of cross-examination. Still, I could not refrain now from putting a leading question.

"How did it occur to you to bring me here? Had the judge arranged in advance that I should be kidnaped?"

"The who?" he inquired.

"Judge Garvin."

"Aw!" his laugh was hearty and prolonged. "So that's the idee that's bitin' yer? The jedge thinks I'm in Virginny. In fact, stranger, I am in Virginny. I just seems ter be here, but I hain't. I brought yer here because yer'd done been firin' off yer face ter the effect that yer thought yer saw me shoot at yer from the laurel. I didn't low ter have yer testifyin' ter no sich false notion. Hit mout injer my rep'tation fer peace and quiet."

Still he later made me a proposal which I promptly rejected. "I done been studyin' right smart, an' we ain't doin' no good fer ourselves, stayin' round here," he ventured. "I done sort figgered that mebby if hits plum agreeable ter you, we mout take yer down ter the railroad cars, an' let yer promise to leave the mountings and keep yer face shet."

"What reason have you to suppose that I'd keep a promise made under duress?"

"I got two reasons ter spose hit. In the fust place the minnit yer busts yer contrack an' comes back inter this jurisdiction I gives yer my word I'm goin' ter kill yer thar same's I would er houn' dawg. In the second place, I'd have this here--" He fumbled awkwardly in his pocket and brought out a paper which he handed me to read. It was an affidavit legally drawn, with blank s.p.a.ces for my signature, and that of witnesses. It purported to have been written in an attorney's office in Virginia and to be duly attested. The doc.u.ment represented me as stating voluntarily that I had seen Curt Dawson (in Virginia) and had realized that he was not the man whom I had recognized among our a.s.sailants. I was leaving the mountain country, so I was asked to swear, because, being an Easterner, I did not find the environment congenial. The fantastic bit of perjury culminated in this highly colored peroration:

"I feel that, in intimating that the said Curt Dawson made said or any attempt upon the lives of my party, I have been guilty of an unpardonable injustice, which I deeply deplore and for which I feel sincere chagrin." As I read that pa.s.sage I laughed with an amus.e.m.e.nt that was not feigned, and then I tore the paper into fragments which I scattered among the ashes.

Dawson watched me and shrugged his shoulders.

"We don't hardly like ter kill furriners--" he said. "Them folks down below misunderstands. .h.i.t an' raises h.e.l.l--but I reckon ef they won't take nuthin' but killin' they kin git kilt."

So they had planned not only to keep me out of court, but to present my affidavit when it became convenient: an affidavit purporting to have been made by me across the Virginia line, while I was abjectly fleeing.

Weighborne and maybe his wife as well, whom I had already grossly insulted, would hear the reading of my Iscariot betrayal. If it were possible for them to think more contemptuously of me than they already did, this would be the precise climax to bring about such a result.

Most of that day I spent below stairs. In the afternoon Bud left the cabin and shortly after returned in great excitement.

"Git that d.a.m.ned feller upstairs quick," he cautioned. "A couple of them Marcus men is stragglin' round here, an' they mout come in."

Dawson leaped from his chair as though electrified, and his face showed a pa.s.sion of anxiety. He sprang toward me and seizing my shoulder pivoted me, pointing to the stairs.

"Hustle," he shouted as he pushed me toward the door. "Git movin'."

Naturally I did not obey. I scented the possibility of rescue, so I laughed at him and stolidly stood my ground.

"This place suits me," I said.

With the swiftest demonstration of the art of weapon-drawing I have ever seen he brought his magazine pistol from its holster and thrust it into my chest. His chin shot belligerently out and his eyes narrowed into blazing slits. His profanity came in a wild torrent.

My att.i.tude was still indifference as to whether or not I were killed.

New developments had come fast since I turned from the door of the room where Weighborne's wife still sat before the fire with my stolen kisses fresh upon her lips and temples, but there had not been a moment of forgetfulness. I saw nothing ahead of me worth surrendering for, and now I felt that parlous as the situation was, it was Dawson rather than I who was frightened.

"Why don't you shoot?" I asked.

With a foul paroxysm of oaths and obscenity he threw the pistol aside, and crossing the room caught up the broken broomstick which served in lieu of a poker. I had never before been beaten. It was not pleasant, quite aside from the physical pain. And as to that phase of it, one who has not been bludgeoned with bracelets on his wrists may underestimate the actual bodily torture of the experience. At all events, I must confess that even now I sometimes awake from a nightmare in which I am being thrashed with a broomstick. I tried resistance, but one of them dragged at my chain while the other belabored me, until in a few moments I sank down in the wormwood bitterness of humiliation and defeat and was half-dragged, half-kicked up the stairs, and thrown into my room, where they gagged me against the possibility of outcry, and tied me so that I could not move from my mattress or kick upon the floor. Dawson himself remained with me. They had none too much time. Within a few minutes I heard the long-drawn halloo of persons without. The voices were friendly and the response from Bud was equally cordial. The all-pervading hypocrisy of these mountain hatreds lay over and whitewashed the att.i.tudes of both parties. As they came they shouted their request for permission to enter, and the man inside responded with a.s.surances of welcome. Those who were arriving were coming as spies. Those inside were bent on deceit.

We heard them calling, still from afar, that they wanted a drink of liquor, and we heard Bud shout back that his jug was at their command.

Then feet tramped about the lower floor. Curt Dawson stood back in the shadow of the eaves while this interview lasted with his weapon drawn, and never once until the visitors rode away from the house did his eyes leave the door at the head of the stairs.

When Bud came up after they had gone he was a little pale under the reaction and the strain of anxiety showed in his eyes.

"My G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "I 'lowed them fellers never was ergoin' ter leave hyar."

"What did you tell 'em?" demanded Dawson curtly.

"I told 'em I'd had a little business round hyar--let 'em think it was somethin' ter do with er still, an' said I'd jest spent the night hyar ruther then hoof hit back home."

Dawson jerked his head toward the stairway. "Did they say anythin' 'bout comin' up here?"

"No. They kinder eyed them steps, but they didn't say nothin'."

For a moment Garvin's chief henchman walked the floor, then he snarled out, "Did they ask anything erbout me?"

"Jim Calloway 'lowed that somebody'd done seed you in this country, an'

I said no, that you was over thar in Virginny."

Again there was a moment's silence after which Dawson's orders came in quick staccato violence.

"Bud, you've got ter go ter town, so's they'll believe thet story. Don't come back hyar no more. Them fellers'll ride back before sundown. They suspicions somethin' an' they'll jest about slip back ter make sh.o.r.e.

I'll take this feller an' lay out in the timber tell night. Here, give me a lift."

The two of them raised me, still gagged, and carried me down the stairs.

Keeping the house between themselves and the general direction of the road, they bore me by a path that ran along a cliff to a dense clump of timber. Then the lesser villain started on with his ambling step, pausing at the cabin to pick up the jug which was to corroborate his claim that his business had to do with illicit distilling. He also stopped indoors to obliterate all traces of human occupancy.

It was perhaps a mark of respect to my belligerency which led Dawson to leave me gagged, but it was a painful compliment. He propped me up so that I might have my back against a tree, and from our place of concealment we could look down unseen on the house. This time my captor did not favor me with conversation. He sat silent with his visage black and snarling, and his hand from time to time crept involuntarily toward his holster. As for myself, I was distinctly uncomfortable. The gag cramped my jaws and the rope about my ankles was unnecessarily tight.

But during the three hours that I had to sustain this position, events were transpiring which gave a certain interest to the situation. The men who had come earlier returned, as Dawson's suspicion had prophesied.

They shouted as before and when they received no answer they approached with a caution that carried me back to childhood stories of Indian attacks on block houses. Finally they entered the place, and Dawson sat there looking on, his hands wrapped about his knees and his shoulders shaking with silent laughter, as he surveyed their elaborate caution.

They remained in the house for more than an hour and then reconnoitered the premises, at one time pa.s.sing very near our place of hiding. Once more my custodian's lean hand caressed the grip of his pistol, and his thumb slipped down the safety catch. But in the end they rode away and I sorrowfully recognized their conviction that they had been running down a false clue.

It was cold and quite dark when Dawson removed the ropes from my feet and ordered me to walk back to the house.

That night I slept the sleep of exhaustion, and it was not until my breakfast arrived the next morning that I awoke.

My captor should have left me in my loft that day and should himself have remained below where he could watch for possible intrusion. But he was overcome with a desire to talk and this impulse led to a strategic error. He wanted to point out (now that he felt certain that I could not be present when Marcus called his witnesses) how near I had been all along to the town. He described to me in elaborate detail how, were I at that moment free, I could walk in twenty-five or thirty minutes to the court-house door and proceeded to give me satirical and exact directions. He felt that he had achieved a Machiavellian victory, and it pleased him to watch me squirm with a sense of frustrated possibilities.