Chapter 6

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_ CHAPTER VI

In a squalid room above stairs, Halloway sat, coatless, with his flannel shirt open on a throat that rose from the swell of his chest as a tower rises from a hill. His hair was rumpled; his whole aspect disheveled; but when he grinned there was the flash of strong teeth as white as a hound's and as even as a professional beauty's.

"Now tell me," he demanded with prompt interest, "who is this barbaric and regal creature in whose train I find you? Do you assert any claim of copyright--or prior discovery, or is it a clear field and no favor?"

When Brent answered, it was with challenging decisiveness. "A clear field, yes--but certainly no favor for either of us. She is primitive enough to hold fast to a wholesome code. I wouldn't advise any philandering."

Halloway bent his head backward and gazed meditatively at the cloud of smoke which he sent ceiling-ward.

"So the faithful and chivalrous friend is giving me the benefit of his experience touching the stern virtue of an almost Druid life," he commented. "Yet I know these people as few outsiders do."

"Nevertheless, you _are_ an outsider, Jack. When we last sat quarreling in your rooms, your windows gave off over the rhododendron of Central Park--and the bronze horseman in the Plaza. Here the rhododendron has other uses than the decorative. She could be only a reckless adventure in your life--and in all likelihood, a fatal one."

With quiet amusement in the eyes that still gazed upward, Halloway received this gratuitous counsel.

"I begin to think that, as an adventure, she'd be worth fatality," he said.

With the license of old acquaintance, Brent went on with his berating.

"I happen to know you in real life as well as in masquerade. Whether your whim calls for this fantastic and shaggy disguise or for the impeccability of evening dress, you are still only a handsome beast of prey. You are so incorrigible and so devoid of conventional morality that, in being fond of you, I wonder at myself."

"Conventional morality be damned! I repudiate it utterly," declared the giant calmly. "But tell me about this girl."

"I never saw her until a few days back," Brent enlightened his inquisitor. "Her beauty and her dauntlessness have laid a sort of spell on me and I'm a fairly conservative man. You are not--you're a plunger--a gambler in emotions. That's why I'm hanging out a warning signal."

The big man laughed with the full-chested mirth of a Viking.

"Why, my dear fellow, you would like me less if I were changed from what you call the beast of prey to such a house-dog as are most of your acquaintances. I refresh you in a life of drab monotony, because of my outspoken repudiation of things that life's copy-cats accept without thought or demurrer. I interest you because, though I am educated and disreputably rich, I remain at heart a savage--because I like to break away from the tawdry glitter of social pretense and run baying joyously at the head of the wild pack. And, in fairness, you must admit that when I revert to feral instincts I don't have to ask odds as an amateur."

The great fellow came abruptly to his feet, not with the ponderousness of most giants, but with a panther-like agility and smoothness.

"I am idle--yes--so far as it is idle for a man to refuse to go on despoiling weaker men for gain--but why not? I can spend a fortune every year for a long life-span, and still leave loot a-plenty behind my taking off. Yet, my idling is not mere slothfulness. I know the Orient, not as the ordinary white man knows it, but as one who has become a brother to the yellow and brown. I know these hills. No man in this town to-night, save yourself, suspects that I am not native--or even that I have ever participated in any other life."

"All of which I admit. The wolf may be more interesting than the collie--but for the sheepfold the collie is safer. I'm thinking of Alexander."

Halloway reflectively knocked the nub of ash from his pipe, and went on more slowly. "Civilization stifles me," he said seriously. "But when I turn my back on its dusty theologues and dogmatists, I still hold tight to the poets. To me feeling means much, but cold thought is like a fireless hearth."

The speaker was standing before the frame of the dark window. The wild capriciousness of the weather had brought rain and flashes of untimely lightning flared now and again into momentary whiteness. Brent looked at the mighty proportion of his companion and thought of the girl who slept in another tawdry room opening on the same narrow hallway. Each of them was unusual; each of them insurgent; each without fear. If their two natures should strike the spark of attraction, he trembled to think of what a conflagration might blaze from the kindling.

"I'm not discussing theories," he said a bit shortly. "I'm talking about a mountain girl whom I take it you would never marry--and if not----" He spread his hands and left the sentence unfinished.

"And if not?" Halloway caught him up. "What has marriage necessarily to do with love? There is more honesty and stimulation in the life-story of any _grande amoureuse_ than a dozen of your stodgy fraus."

"I'm going to bed," declared Will Brent. "But--leave Alexander alone. I don't think she'd see eye to eye with you on the subject of the _grande amoureuse_."

"That only foreshadows a duel of wills--conflict--drama."

Halloway paused and laughed, and after that he went on with eyes that glowed admiringly.

"I dare say she never heard of an Amazon--and she's a splendid one. She dares to live a man's life in a country where other women tamely accept thraldom! Perhaps it is a great adventure. I have seen a meteor and I shall stay."

"Of course you know," Brent reminded him evenly, "the first hint that you are a millionaire masquerading as a native will engulf you in local suspicion."

"I don't mean that they shall learn that." Suddenly Halloway's head bent forward a little and his brows contracted. "They _can't_ learn it except through you."

"Precisely," said the smaller man, with dry brevity. If the short answer brought a cloud to Halloway's face it was one that cleared immediately into laughter.

"We haven't reached that bridge yet," he announced, "and we needn't open up a Brent-Halloway feud until we get there."

There was a moment's pause, after which the big fellow continued.

"Since seeing the helpless maid, whom you seek to protect, holding back that bunch of desperadoes, it occurs to me that she can give a fairly good account of herself. Gad, it was epic!"

"Then why did you intervene?"

Halloway slowly turned his head and lifted his brows in frank amazement.

"Do you seriously ask? Did you suppose it was because I feared for her? Why, man, the blue flame in her eyes would have licked that crew without the aid of the gun. I intervened because when opportunity knocks, I open. I had enough dramatic sense to recognise my cue for a telling entrance; and I entered."

"Jack," inquired Brent, "how did you ever happen to know this remote life well enough to pass as a native?"

"Born here," was the laconic reply. But the other pressed him for fuller detail and he proceeded cheerfully. "The Halloway millions didn't come to us on a tray borne by angels. My father made his pile, and much of it he made in coal and iron--here and there in the Appalachians. He trained me up in that business. Why, I even worked during school vacations as a telegraph operator in the office of the local railroad station." He smiled again as he added, "Add that item to my versatile summary. I'm as good a key tickler as you would be apt to find in a day's journey."

"At all events you are a surprising reprobate," admitted the lumberman with a yawn. "Someday, though, I'll challenge you to a sending and receiving tourney. I began in a broker's office, and I'm fairly good myself."

But after Halloway had thrown himself down on his bed and his regular breathing attested his sound sleep, Brent slipped noiselessly out into the corridor. Halloway might feel certain of the girl's ability to fend for herself but with this crowd here to-night, running its wild gamut of dissipation, the less primitive man thought it as well to keep an eye on her safety.

Down the hall, dimly lighted by a single smoking lamp, he saw a figure which had been standing before Alexander's door, draw furtively back around the angle of a wall. From below stairs still came the din of wassailing.

Yet instead of alarm, a smile came to Brent's eyes, for he had recognized Bud Sellers and he no longer distrusted the boy's purposes.

In Alexander's room the lamp had long been blown out but to the eyes of the girl sleep did not come at once. She gazed at the window where occasional flashes of lightning woke and died. She was wondering what had happened back there at the house where her father lay wounded. Of Bud Sellers she thought only as of a man she had promised not to kill, though against him, as an instrumentality of her grief, resentment burned hot. She could not guess that he stood at that moment in the hallway, guarding her door and nursing in his contrite heart an unexpressed and hopeless worship of her.

For Bud, save when the liquor conquered him, was a kindly soul; even lovable as a faithful dog might be, though of that canine virtue people thought less than of his occasional rabies.

He had talked with Alexander--always impersonally--a scant half dozen times in his life--but since boyhood he had dreamed of her as a peasant may dream of exalted nobility--and his life had never known any other dream.

But if Alexander thought of Bud only as the author of her present anxiety, her thoughts strayed before she fell asleep, to another man.

The face and figure of that Colossus who had swung men right and left, rose before her and her worship of masculine strength and courage paid smiling tribute.

"I reckon he don't never hev ter use more'n half ther strength he's got in them arms an' shoulders of his'n," she told herself. It did not enter troublesomely into her reflections that she had marked also the infectious quality of his smile and the clear brightness of his eye with an interest that was purely feminine.

As her lids finally grew heavy she murmured to herself: "Ef I was like other gals I reckon I'd git sort of crazy erbout thet big feller. He's like a pine tree standin' up amongst saplin's--but I don't reckon a body could hardly ever git him clean, even ef they soaked him in hot suds fer a week of Sundays."

With that reflection--also fastidiously feminine--she turned on her side and slept.

It was into a room below that Lute Johnson stumbled long after midnight on most unsteady legs. Lute was not satisfied with his evening. He had been actuated in his attempted hazing of Alexander by Jase Mallows, who thought her pride should be humbled, yet sought to accomplish that end vicariously in order that the doors of future conquest might not be closed against himself. Lute's undertaking had not been a success and he sought his bed, sodden and bloodshot of eye. He was nursing grudges of varying degrees against Jase Mallows, Alexander, Halloway and finally against Bud Sellers.

He kicked off his brogans and as he leaned to blow out the light, he stumbled, sprawling headlong and carrying the lamp down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like--mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even his clothing was afire.

Beating out the flame that licked his shirt, he abandoned the rest and fled, howling like a madman. The thing which D. W. Kelly had feared had come to pass and the frame building was doomed to its gutting.

So frequently of late had ungodly bellowings and outcries broken the fitful rest of this house, that for a brief space, Lute's howls of alarm failed to carry their true significance. Some guests, startled out of their sleep, had the impulse rather to keep their doors tight shut than to open them, and through the tinder-like dryness of the place the flames roared up the boxed-in stairway as through a flue.

Bud Sellers heard the yells of the fugitive Lute, and before he had time to investigate, saw the stairhead vomiting smoke and fire. As he dashed for Alexander's room, another door opened through which Halloway and Brent ran out, carrying their shoes and coats.

"Let me in," shouted Bud, hammering on the panels. "Ther house is burnin' down an' ther steps is cut off."

At first there was no response, but at last the door swung in. It framed Alexander, clothed in shirt and trousers--but barefooted, and holding a pistol in her hand.

At the sight of Bud Sellers her face grew pallid.

"You!" she exclaimed with white-hot anger. "My paw lays over thar with yore bullet in his breast--an' ye comes runnin' hyar ter me fer a way ter git outen danger!"

The three men were crowding to the door but she stood barring it and she did not give back an inch. In deliberation she went on. "He laid a pledge on me not ter avenge him. Ef hit warn't fer thet, I'd kill ye whar ye stands."

"Fer God's sake, Alexander!" The mountaineer's voice was shrill with excitement. "Kill me if ye likes--but don't tarry. I come ter warn ye. Ther winder's ther only way out--an' thar hain't no time ter lose."

As if in corroboration, the first puff of brown smoke eddied through the open door. At first it came idly, driftingly, as if it had nothing to do with haste. Halloway pushed both Sellers and Brent ahead of him, and followed them in, slamming the door behind him.

"Talk outside," he commanded sharply. "Don't waste life-and-death minutes in this hell-trap!"

Alexander gazed absently as though unable to readjust her trend of thought so swiftly, then she said, quietly enough: "Thar's ther winder. Go through hit ef ye likes."

As for herself she turned to the task of tying up her pack of belongings with what seemed to the frenzied men insufferable deliberation.

"This is the third floor," snapped Halloway whose head was already thrust out of the window gauging possibilities of escape. "We'll have to tear up sheets and make a rope of them."

Brent leaped promptly to the task but Alexander looked at the huge body which blocked the window frame and a smile curled her lips. "You on a rope o' sheets!" She even laughed. "Ye mout es well entrust yourself ter a strand of flax thread!"

Through the floor licked a tongue of flame.

"Kain't you men jump--an' catch ther limb of thet thar sycamore," she added. "Hit hain't fur away--an' thet's how I'm aimin' ter leave myself."

Halloway turned an eager gaze upon the girl and even in the press of moments he remembered the role he was playing. "I reckon," he suggested, "I'd better lead off--ef thet flyin' limb holds me, it'll hold ther balance of ye."

What was genuinely in his mind was to be there to catch her if she missed her grip, but to forestall objection he thrust his body through the opening, measured the distance with a brief glance and launched himself outward. To use that fire escape one must catch the branch, and hold it without slipping, while he swung and groped with his feet for another limb below.

For Halloway the matter was done without doubt or wavering. It must be so done or result in a three-storied drop, but when he turned and looked back, bracing himself to catch Alexander, he saw her turn again into the room, out of his range of vision. He could see Brent and Bud vociferously arguing with her and then she reappeared and lifted her pack and rifle over the sill. As she played out the improvised line of bedding her eyes were angry and Halloway guessed that it was because the two men had refused to leave without waiting for her. Eventually when the room showed red beyond the frame she slipped through, poised herself as the man had done, and came outward as smoothly as an exhibition diver. She landed so close to Halloway that her hands clasped over his own and her breath fluttered against his cheek. For a fraction of an instant, he thought she might fail to hold her grip and one arm swept around her pressing her close to him. Even when he knew that she was safe he did not release her and his veins were pounding with the wild exaltation of contact.

Somewhat pantingly but coolly she commanded: "Move back. Give me room ter stand on--them others kain't foller whilst we're blockin' ther way."

Halloway had forgotten the others, and when Bud Sellers jumped, the last of all, it was only just in time. A shower of sparks puffed out of the window and inside sounded a crash of collapsing timbers.

"Well, where do we go now?" inquired Brent a quarter of an hour later and the girl turned on her heel. "As fer me," she replied, "I'm goin' back ter my rafts of timber. I've done had a lavish of this town."

"May we go too?" inquired Halloway. "We hain't got no roof over us neither--now."

"I reckon ye kin all come save only----" she paused a moment and added in hardened voice, "save only ther man thet sought ter slay my paw."

Bud's head drooped. He was still sweating, for when he left the sill, the place had been a furnace, but he said nothing, and instantly Alexander wheeled again and spoke impulsively.

"I've got ter crave yore pardon, Bud," she exclaimed. "Paw said he didn't hold no grudge ergin you nohow. An' I reckon ye've done sought right slavish ter make amends ternight." _

Read next: Chapter 7

Read previous: Chapter 5

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