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_ But, when he went out for his initiation, in the raw blackness before
daybreak, and lay in the blind, with only his guide for a companion, he
felt far away from artificial luxuries. The first pale streamers of
dawn soon streaked the east, and the wind charged cuttingly like drawn
sabers of galloping cavalry. The wooden decoys had been anchored with
the live ducks swimming among them, and the world began to awake. He
drew a long breath of contentment, and waited. Then came the trailing
of gray and blue and green mists, and, following the finger of the
silent boatman, he made out in the northern sky a slender wedge of
black dots, against the spreading rosiness of the horizon. Soon after,
he heard the clear clangor of throats high in the sky, answered by the
nearer honking of the live decoys, and he felt a throbbing of his
pulses as he huddled low against the damp bottom of the blind and waited.
The lines and wedges grew until the sky was stippled with them, and
their strong-throated cries were a strident music. For a time, they
passed in seeming thousands, growing from scarcely visible dots into
speeding shapes with slender outstretched necks and bills, pointed like
reversed compass needles to the south. As yet, they were all flying
high, ignoring with lordly indifference the clamor of their renegade
brothers, who shrieked to them through the morning mists to drop down,
and feed on death.
But, as the day grew older, Samson heard the popping of guns off to
the side, where other gunners lay in other blinds, and presently a
drake veered from his line of flight, far off to the right, harkened to
the voice of temptation, and led his flock circling toward the blind.
Then, with a whir and drumming of dark-tipped wings, they came down,
and struck the water, and the boy from Misery rose up, shooting as he
came. He heard the popping of his guide's gun at his side, and saw the
dead and crippled birds falling about him, amid the noisy clamor of
their started flight.
That day, while the mountaineer was out on the flats, the party of men
at the club had been swelled to a total of six, for in pursuance of the
carefully arranged plans of Mr. Farbish, Mr. Bradburn had succeeded in
inducing Wilfred Horton to run down for a day or two of the sport he
loved. To outward seeming, the trip which the two men had made together
had been quite casual, and the outgrowth of coincidence; yet, in point
of fact, not only the drive from Baltimore in Horton's car, but the
conversation by the way had been in pursuance of a plan, and the result
was that, when Horton arrived that afternoon, he found his usually even
temper ruffled by bits of maliciously broached gossip, until his
resentment against Samson South had been fanned into danger heat. He
did not know that South also was at the club, and he did not that
afternoon go out to the blinds, but so far departed from his usual
custom as to permit himself to sit for hours in the club grill.
And yet, as is often the case in carefully designed affairs, the one
element that made most powerfully for the success of Farbish's scheme
was pure accident. The carefully arranged meeting between the two men,
the adroitly incited passions of each, would still have brought no
clash, had not Wilfred Horton been affected by the flushing effect of
alcohol. Since his college days, he had been invariably abstemious.
To-night marked an exception.
He was rather surprised at the cordiality of the welcome accorded him,
for, as chance would have it, except for Samson South, whom he had not
yet seen, all the other sportsmen were men closely allied to the
political and financial elements upon which he had been making war.
Still, since they seemed willing to forget for the time that there had
been a breach, he was equally so. Just now, he was feeling such
bitterness for the Kentuckian that the foes of a less-personal sort
seemed unimportant.
In point of fact, Wilfred Horton had spent a very bad day. The final
straw had broken the back of his usually unruffled temper, when he had
found in his room on reaching the Kenmore a copy of a certain New York
weekly paper, and had read a page, which chanced to be lying face up (a
chance carefully prearranged). It was an item of which Farbish had
known, in advance of publication, but Wilfred would never have seen
that sheet, had it not been so carefully brought to his attention.
There were hints of the strange infatuation which a certain young woman
seemed to entertain for a partially civilized stranger who had made his
entree to New York _via_ the Police Court, and who wore his hair
long in imitation of a Biblical character of the same name. The supper
at the Wigwam Inn was mentioned, and the character of the place
intimated. Horton felt this objectionable innuendo was directly
traceable to Adrienne's ill-judged friendship for the mountaineer, and
he bitterly blamed the mountaineer. And, while he had been brooding on
these matters, a man acting as Farbish's ambassador had dropped into
his room, since Farbish himself knew that Horton would not listen to
his confidences. The delegated spokesman warned Wilfred that Samson
South had spoken pointedly of him, and advised cautious conduct, in a
fashion calculated to inflame.
Samson, it was falsely alleged, had accused him of saying derogatory
things in his absence, which he would hardly venture to repeat in his
presence. In short, it was put up to Horton to announce his opinion
openly, or eat the crow of cowardice.
That evening, when Samson went to his room, Farbish joined him.
"I've been greatly annoyed to find," he said, seating himself on
Samson's bed, "that Horton arrived to-day."
"I reckon that's all right," said Samson. "He's a member, isn't he?"
Farbish appeared dubious.
"I don't want to appear in the guise of a prophet of trouble," he
said, "but you are my guest here, and I must warn you. Horton thinks of
you as a 'gun-fighter' and a dangerous man. He won't take chances with
you. If there is a clash, it will be serious. He doesn't often drink,
but to-day he's doing it, and may be ugly. Avoid an altercation if you
can, but if it comes--" He broke off and added seriously: "You will
have to get him, or he will get you. Are you armed?"
The Kentuckian laughed.
"I reckon I don't need to be armed amongst gentlemen."
Farbish drew from his pocket a magazine pistol.
"It won't hurt you to slip that into your clothes," he insisted.
For an instant, the mountaineer stood looking at his host and with
eyes that bored deep, but whatever was in his mind as he made that
scrutiny he kept to himself. At last, he took the magazine pistol,
turned it over in his hand, and put it into his pocket.
"Mr. Farbish," he said, "I've been in places before now where men were
drinking who had made threats against me. I think you are excited about
this thing. If anything starts, he will start it."
At the dinner table, Samson South and Wilfred Horton were introduced,
and acknowledged their introductions with the briefest and most formal
of nods. During the course of the meal, though seated side by side,
each ignored the presence of the other. Samson was, perhaps, no more
silent than usual. Always, he was the listener except when a question
was put to him direct, but the silence which sat upon Wilfred Horton
was a departure from his ordinary custom.
He had discovered in his college days that liquor, instead of
exhilarating him, was an influence under which he grew morose and
sullen, and that discovery had made him almost a total abstainer.
To-night, his glass was constantly filled and emptied, and, as he ate,
he gazed ahead, and thought resentfully of the man at his side.
When the coffee had been brought, and the cigars lighted, and the
servants had withdrawn, Horton, with the manner of one who had been
awaiting an opportunity, turned slightly in his chair, and gazed
insolently at the Kentuckian.
Samson South still seemed entirely unconscious of the other's
existence, though in reality no detail of the brewing storm had escaped
him. He was studying the other faces around the table, and what he saw
in them appeared to occupy him. Wilfred Horton's cheeks were burning
with a dull flush, and his eyes were narrowing with an unveiled
dislike. Suddenly, a silence fell on the party, and, as the men sat
puffing their cigars, Horton turned toward the Kentuckian. For a
moment, he glared in silence, then with an impetuous exclamation of
disgust he announced:
"See here, South, I want you to know that if I'd understood you were
to be here, I wouldn't have come. It has pleased me to express my
opinion of you to a number of people, and now I mean to express it to
you in person."
Samson looked around, and his features indicated neither surprise nor
interest. He caught Farbish's eye at the same instant, and, though the
plotter said nothing, the glance was subtle and expressive. It seemed
to prompt and goad him on, as though the man had said:
"You mustn't stand that. Go after him."
"I reckon"--Samson's voice was a pleasant drawl--"it doesn't make any
particular difference, Mr. Horton."
"Even if what I said didn't happen to be particularly commendatory?"
inquired Horton, his eyes narrowing.
"So long," replied the Kentuckian, "as what you said was your own
opinion, I don't reckon it would interest me much."
"In point of fact"---Horton was gazing with steady hostility into
Samson's eyes--"I prefer to tell you. I have rather generally expressed
the belief that you are a damned savage, unfit for decent society."
Samson's face grew rigid and a trifle pale. His mouth set itself in a
straight line, but, as Wilfred Horton came to his feet with the last
words, the mountaineer remained seated.
"And," went on the New Yorker, flushing with suddenly augmenting
passion, "what I said I still believe to be true, and repeat in your
presence. At another time and place, I shall be even more explicit. I
shall ask you to explain--certain things."
"Mr. Horton," suggested Samson in an ominously quiet voice, "I reckon
you're a little drunk. If I were you, I'd sit down."
Wilfred's face went from red to white, and his shoulders stiffened. He
leaned forward, and for the instant no one moved. The tick of a hall
clock was plainly audible.
"South," he said, his breath coming in labored excitement, "defend
yourself!"
Samson still sat motionless.
"Against what?" he inquired.
"Against that!" Horton struck the mountain man across the face with
his open hand. Instantly, there was a commotion of scraping chairs and
shuffling feet, mingled with a chorus of inarticulate protest. Samson
had risen, and, for a second, his face had become a thing of
unspeakable passion. His hand instinctively swept toward his pocket--
and stopped half-way. He stood by his overturned chair, gazing into the
eyes of his assailant, with an effort at self-mastery which gave his
chest and arms the appearance of a man writhing and stiffening under
electrocution. Then, he forced both hands to his back and gripped them
there. For a moment, the tableau was held, then the man from the
mountains began speaking, slowly and in a tone of dead-level monotony.
Each syllable was portentously distinct and clear clipped.
"Maybe you know why I don't kill you.... Maybe you don't.... I don't
give a damn whether you do or not.... That's the first blow I've ever
passed.... I ain't going to hit back.... You need a friend pretty bad
just now.... For certain reasons, I'm going to be that friend.... Don't
you see that this thing is a damned frame-up? ... Don't you see that I
was brought here to murder you?" He turned suddenly to Farbish.
"Why did you insist on my putting that in my pocket"--Samson took out
the pistol, and threw it down on the table-cloth in front of Wilfred,
where it struck and shivered a half-filled wine-glass--"and why did you
warn me that this man meant to kill me, unless I killed him first? I
was meant to be your catspaw to put Wilfred Horton out of your way. I
may be a barbarian and a savage, but I can smell a rat--if it's dead
enough!"
For an instant, there was absolute and hushed calm. Wilfred Horton
picked up the discarded weapon and looked at it in bewildered
stupefaction, then slowly his face flamed with distressing mortification.
"Any time you want to fight me"--Samson had turned again to face him,
and was still talking in his deadly quiet voice--"except to-night, you
can find me. I've never been hit before without hitting back. That blow
has got to be paid for--but the man that's really responsible has got
to pay first. When I fight you, I'll fight for myself, not for a bunch
of damned murderers.... Just now, I've got other business. That man
framed this up!" He pointed a lean finger across the table into the
startled countenance of Mr. Farbish. "He knew! He has been working on
this job for a month. I'm going to attend to his case now."
As Samson started toward Farbish, the conspirator rose, and, with an
excellent counterfeit of insulted virtue, pushed back his chair.
"By God," he indignantly exclaimed, "you mustn't try to embroil me in
your quarrels. You must apologize. You are talking wildly, South."
"Am I?" questioned the Kentuckian, quietly; "I'm going to act wildly
in a minute."
He halted a short distance from Farbish, and drew from his pocket a
crumpled scrap of the offending magazine page: the item that had
offended Horton.
"I may not have good manners, Mister Farbish, but where I come from we
know how to handle varmints." He dropped his voice and added for the
plotter's ear only: "Here's a little matter on the side that concerns
only us. It wouldn't interest these other gentlemen." He opened his
hand, and added: "Here, _eat_ that!"
Farbish, with a frightened glance at the set face of the man who was
advancing upon him, leaped back, and drew from his pocket a pistol--it
was an exact counterpart of the one with which he had supplied Samson.
With a panther-like swiftness, the Kentuckian leaped forward, and
struck up the weapon, which spat one ineffective bullet into the
rafters. There was a momentary scuffle of swaying bodies and a crash
under which the table groaned amid the shattering of glass and china.
Then, slowly, the conspirator's body bent back at the waist, until its
shoulders were stretched on the disarranged cloth, and the white face,
with purple veins swelling on the forehead, stared up between two brown
hands that gripped its throat.
"Swallow that!" ordered the mountaineer.
For just an instant, the company stood dumfounded, then a strained,
unnatural voice broke the silence.
"Stop him, he's going to kill the man!"
The odds were four to two, and with a sudden rally to the support of
their chief plotter, the other conspirators rushed the figure that
stood throttling his victim. But Samson South was in his element. The
dammed-up wrath that had been smoldering during these last days was
having a tempestuous outlet. He had found men who, in a gentlemen's
club to which he had come as a guest, sought to use him as a catspaw
and murderer.
They had planned to utilize the characteristics upon which they relied
in himself. They had thought that, if once angered, he would relapse
into the feudist, and forget that his surroundings were those of
gentility and civilization. Very well, he would oblige them, but not as
a blind dupe. He would be as elementally primitive as they had pictured
him, but the victims of his savagery should be of his own choosing.
Before his eyes swam a red mist of wrath. Once before, as a boy, he had
seen things as through a fog of blood. It was the day when the factions
met at Hixon, and he had carried the gun of his father for the first
time into action. The only way his eyes could be cleared of that fiery
haze was that they should first see men falling.
As they assaulted him, _en masse_, he seized a chair, and swung
it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing
of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle.
At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of
his assailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood
weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath
which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled aside his
chair, and plunged for the sole remaining man. They closed in a clinch.
The last antagonist was a boxer, and when he saw the Kentuckian advance
toward him empty-handed, he smiled and accepted the gauge of battle. In
weight and reach and practice, he knew that he had the advantage, and,
now that it was man to man, he realized that there was no danger of
interference from Horton. But Samson knew nothing of boxing. He had
learned his fighting tactics in the rough-and-tumble school of the
mountains; the school of "fist and skull," of fighting with hands and
head and teeth, and as the Easterner squared off he found himself
caught in a flying tackle and went to the floor locked in an embrace
that carried down with it chairs and furniture. As he struggled and
rolled, pitting his gymnasium training against the unaccustomed assault
of cyclonic fury, he felt the strong fingers of two hands close about
his throat and lost consciousness.
Samson South rose, and stood for a moment panting in a scene of
wreckage and disorder. The table was littered with shivered glasses and
decanters and chinaware. The furniture was scattered and overturned.
Farbish was weakly leaning to one side in the seat to which he had made
his way. The men who had gone down under the heavy blows of the chair
lay quietly where they had fallen.
Wilfred Horton stood waiting. The whole affair had transpired with
such celerity and speed that he had hardly understood it, and had taken
no part. But, as he met the gaze of the disordered figure across the
wreckage of a dinner-table, he realized that now, with the
preliminaries settled, he who had struck Samson in the face must give
satisfaction for the blow. Horton was sober, as cold sober as though he
had jumped into ice-water, and though he was not in the least afraid,
he was mortified, and, had apology at such a time been possible, would
have made it. He knew that he had misjudged his man; he saw the
outlines of the plot as plainly as Samson had seen them, though more
tardily.
Samson's toe touched the pistol which had dropped from Farbish's hand
and he contemptuously kicked it to one side. He came back to his place.
"Now, Mr. Horton," he said to the man who stood looking about with a
dazed expression, "if you're still of the same mind, I can accommodate
you. You lied when you said I was a savage--though just now it sort of
looks like I was, and"--he paused, then added--"and I'm ready either to
fight or shake hands. Either way suits me."
For the moment, Horton did not speak, and Samson slowly went on:
"But, whether we fight or not, you've got to shake hands with me when
we're finished. You and me ain't going to start a feud. This is the
first time I've ever refused to let a man be my enemy if he wanted to.
I've got my own reasons. I'm going to make you shake hands with me
whether you like it or not, but if you want to fight first it's
satisfactory. You said awhile ago you would be glad to be more explicit
with me when we were alone--" He paused and looked about the room.
"Shall I throw these damned murderers out of here, or will you go into
another room and talk?"
"Leave them where they are," said Horton, quietly. "We'll go into the
reading-room. Have you killed any of them?"
"I don't know," said the other, curtly, "and I don't care."
When they were alone, Samson went on:
"I know what you want to ask me about, and I don't mean to answer you.
You want to question me about Miss Lescott. Whatever she and I have
done doesn't concern you, I will say this much: if I've been ignorant
of New York ways, and my ignorance has embarrassed her, I'm sorry.
"I suppose you know that she's too damned good for you--just like she's
too good for me. But she thinks more of you than she does of me--and
she's yours. As for me, I have nothing to apologize to you for. Maybe, I
have something to ask her pardon about, but she hasn't asked it.
"George Lescott brought me up here, and befriended me. Until a year
ago, I had never known any life except that of the Cumberland
Mountains. Until I met Miss Lescott, I had never known a woman of your
world. She was good to me. She saw that in spite of my roughness and
ignorance I wanted to learn, and she taught me. You chose to
misunderstand, and dislike me. These men saw that, and believed that,
if they could make you insult me, they could make me kill you. As to
your part, they succeeded. I didn't see fit to oblige them, but, now
that I've settled with them, I'm willing to give you satisfaction. Do
we fight now, and shake hands afterward, or do we shake hands without
fighting?"
Horton stood silently studying the mountaineer.
"Good God!" he exclaimed at last. "And you are the man I undertook to
criticize!"
"You ain't answered my question," suggested Samson South.
"South, if you are willing to shake hands with me, I shall be
grateful. I may as well admit that, if you had thrashed me before that
crowd, you could hardly have succeeded in making me feel smaller. I
have played into their hands. I have been a damned fool. I have riddled
my own self-respect--and, if you can afford to accept my apologies and
my hand, I am offering you both."
"I'm right glad to hear that," said the mountain boy, gravely. "I told
you I'd just as lief shake hand as fight.... But just now I've got to
go to the telephone."
The booth was in the same room, and, as Horton waited, he recognized
the number for which Samson was calling. Wilfred's face once more
flushed with the old prejudice. Could it be that Samson meant to tell
Adrienne Lescott what had transpired? Was he, after all, the braggart
who boasted of his fights? And, if not, was it Samson's custom to call
her up every evening for a good-night message? He turned and went into
the hall, but, after a few minutes, returned.
"I'm glad you liked the show...." the mountaineer was saying. "No,
nothing special is happening here--except that the ducks are
plentiful.... Yes, I like it fine.... Mr. Horton's here. Wait a minute
--I guess maybe he'd like to talk to you."
The Kentuckian beckoned to Horton, and, as he surrendered the
receiver, left the room. He was thinking with a smile of the
unconscious humor with which the girl's voice had just come across the
wire:
"I knew that, if you two met each other, you would become friends."
"I reckon," said Samson, ruefully, when Horton joined him, "we'd
better look around, and see how bad those fellows are hurt in there.
They may need a doctor." And the two went back to find several startled
servants assisting to their beds the disabled combatants, and the next
morning their inquiries elicited the information that the gentlemen
were all "able to be about, but were breakfasting in their rooms."
Such as looked from their windows that morning saw an unexpected
climax, when the car of Mr. Wilfred Horton drove away from the club
carrying the man whom they had hoped to see killed, and the man they
had hoped to see kill him. The two appeared to be in excellent spirits
and thoroughly congenial, as the car rolled out of sight, and the
gentlemen who were left behind decided that, in view of the
circumstances, the "extraordinary spree" of last night had best go
unadvertised into ancient history. _
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