Chapter I––Sandford the Exemplary
Ordinarily Sandford is sane––undeniably so. Barring the seventh, upon any other day of the week, fifty-one weeks in the year, from nine o’clock in the morning until six at night––omitting again a scant half-hour at noon for lunch––he may be found in his tight little box of an office on the fifth floor of the Exchange Building, at the corner of Main Avenue and Thirteenth Street, where the elevated makes its loop.
No dog chained beside his kennel is more invariably present, no caged songster more incontestably anchored. If you need his services, you have but to seek his address between the hours mentioned. You may do so with the same assurance of finding him on duty that you would feel, if you left a jug of water out of 280 doors over night in a blizzard, that the jug, as a jug, would be no longer of value in the morning. He was, and is, routine impersonate, exponent of sound business personified; a living sermon against sloth and improvidence, and easy derelictions of the flesh.
That is to say, he is such fifty-one weeks out of the fifty-two. All through the frigid winter season, despite the lure of California limiteds or Havana liners, he holds hard in that den of his, with its floor and walls of sanitary tiling and its ceiling of white enamel, and hews––or grinds rather, for Sandford is a dental surgeon––close to the line.
All through the heat of summer, doggedly superior to the call of Colorado or the Adirondacks or the Thousand Islands, he comes and departs by the tick of the clock. Base-ball fans find him adamant; turf devotees, marble; golf enthusiasts, cold as the tiles beneath his feet.
Even in early June, when Dalton, whose suburban home is next door, returns, tanned and clear-eyed from a week-end at the lake––there is but one lake to Dalton––and calls 281 him mysteriously back to the rear of the house, where, with a flourish, the cover is removed from a box the expressman has just delivered, to disclose a shining five-pound bass reposing upon its bed of packed ice––even then, hands in pockets, Sandford merely surveys and expresses polite congratulation. Certainly it is a fine fish, a noble fish, even; but for the sake of one like it––or, yes, granted a dozen such––to leave the office, the sanitary-tiled office, deserted for four whole days (especially when Dr. Corliss on the floor below is watching like a hawk)––such a crazy proceeding is not to be thought of.
Certainly he will not go along the next week end––or the next, either. The suggestion simply is unthinkable. Such digressions may be all right for the leisure class or for invalids; but for adults, live ones, strong and playing the game? A shrug and a tolerant smile end the discussion, as, hands still in his pockets, an after-dinner cigar firm between his teeth, Sandford saunters back across the dozen feet of sod separating his own domicile from that of his fallen and misguided neighbor. 282
“Dalton’s got the fever again, bad,” he comments to the little woman upon his own domain, whom he calls “Polly,” or “Mrs. Sandford,” as occasion dictates. She has been watching the preceding incident with inscrutable eyes.
“Yes?” Polly acknowledges, with the air of harkening to a familiar harangue while casting ahead, in anticipation of what was to come next.
“Curious about Dalton; peculiar twist to his mental machinery somewhere.” Sandford blows a cloud of smoke and eyes it meditatively. “Leaving business that way, chopping it all to pieces in fact; and just for a fish! Curious!”
“Harry’s got something back there that’ll probably interest you,” he calls out to me as I chug by in my last year’s motor; “better stop and see.”
“Yes,” I acknowledge simply; and though Polly’s eyes and mine meet we never smile, or twitch an eyelid, or turn a hair; for Sandford is observing––and this is only June.
So much for Dr. Jekyll Sandford, the Sandford of fifty-one weeks in the year.
Then, as inevitably as time rolls by, comes 283 that final week; period of mania, of abandon; and in the mere sorcerous passage of a pair of whirring wings, Dr. Jekyll, the exemplary, is no more. In his place, wearing his shoes, audaciously signing his name even to checks, is that other being, Hyde: one absolutely the reverse of the reputable Jekyll; repudiating with scorn that gentleman’s engagements; with brazen effrontery denying him utterly, and all the sane conventionality for which the name has become a synonyme.
Worst of all, rank blasphemy, he not only refuses to set foot in that modern sanitary office of enamel and tiling, at the corner of Thirteenth and Main, below which, by day and by night, the “L” trains go thundering, but deliberately holds it up to ridicule and derision and insult. 284
Chapter II––The Presage of the Wings
And I, the observer––worse, the accessory––know, in advance, when the metamorphosis will transpire.
When, on my desk-pad calendar the month recorded is October, and the day begins with a twenty, there comes the first premonition of winter; not the reality, but a premonition; when, at noon the sun is burning hot, and, in the morning, frost glistens on the pavements; when the leaves are falling steadily in the parks, and not a bird save the ubiquitous sparrow is seen, I begin to suspect.
But when at last, of an afternoon, the wind switches with a great flurry from south to dead north, and on the flag-pole atop of the government building there goes up this signal: ; and when later, just before retiring, I surreptitiously slip out of doors, and, listening breathlessly, hear after a moment despite the clatter of the wind, high up in the darkness 285 overhead that muffled honk! honk! honk! of the Canada-goose winging on its southern journey in advance of the coming storm––then I know.
So well do I know, that I do not retire––not just yet. Instead, on a pretext, any pretext, I knock out the ashes from my old pipe, fill it afresh, and wait. I wait patiently, because, inevitable as Fate, inevitable as that call from out the dark void of the sky, I know there will come a trill of the telephone on the desk at my elbow; my own Polly––whose name happens to be Mary––is watching as I take down the receiver to reply. 286
Chapter III––The Other Man
It is useless to dissimulate longer, then. I am discovered, and I know I am discovered. “Hello, Sandford,” I greet without preface.
“Sandford!” (I am repeating in whispers what he says for my Polly’s benefit.) “Sandford! How the deuce did you know?”
“Know?” With the Hyde-like change comes another, and I feel positively facetious. “Why I know your ring of course, the same as I know your handwriting on a telegram. What is it? I’m busy.”
“I’m busy, too. Don’t swell up.” (Imagine “swell up” from Sandford, the repressed and decorous!) “I just wanted to tell you that the honkers are coming.”
“No! You’re imagining, or you dreamed it!... Anyway, what of it? I tell you I’m busy.”
“Cut it out!” I’m almost scared myself, the voice is positively ferocious. “I heard them not five minutes ago, and besides, the storm 287 signal is up. I’m getting my traps together now. Our train goes at three-ten in the morning, you know.”
“Our-train-goes-at-three-ten––in-the-morning!”
“I said so.”
“Our train?”
“Our train: the one which is to take us out to Rush Lake. Am I clear? I’ll wire Johnson to meet us with the buckboard.”
“Clear, yes; but go in the morning––Why, man, you’re crazy! I have engagements for all day to-morrow.”
“So have I.”
“And the next day.”
“Yes.”
“And the next.”
“A whole week with me. What of it?”
“What of it! Why, business––”
“Confound business! I tell you they’re coming; I heard them. I haven’t any more time to waste talking, either. I’ve got to get ready. Meet you at three-ten, remember.”
“But––”
“Number, please,” requests Central, wearily. 288
Chapter IV––Capitulation
Thus it comes to pass that I go; as I know from the first I shall go, and Sandford knows that I will go; and, most of all, as Mary knows that I will go.
In fact, she is packing for me already; not saying a word, but simply packing; and I––I go out-doors again, sidling into a jog beside the bow-window, to diminish the din of the wind in my ears, listening open-mouthed until––
Yes, there it sounds again; faint, but distinct; mellow, sonorous, vibrant. Honk! honk! honk! and again honk! honk! honk! It wafts downward from some place, up above where the stars should be and are not; up above the artificial illumination of the city; up where there are freedom, and space infinite, and abandon absolute.
With an effort, I force myself back into the house. I take down and oil my old double-barrel, lovingly, and try the locks to see that all is in order. I lay out my wrinkled and 289 battered duck suit handy for the morning, after carefully storing away in an inner pocket, where they will keep dry, the bundle of postcards Mary brings me––first exacting a promise to report on one each day, when I know I shall be five miles from the nearest postoffice, and that I shall bring them all back unused.
And, last of all, I slip to bed, and to dreams of gigantic honkers serene in the blue above; of whirring, whistling wings that cut the air like myriad knife blades; until I wake up with a start at the rattle of the telephone beside my bed, and I know that, though dark as a pit of pitch, it is morning, and that Sandford is already astir. 290
Chapter V––Anticipation
In the smoking-car forward I find Sandford. He is a most disreputable-looking specimen. Garbed in weather-stained corduroys, and dried-grass sweater, and great calfskin boots, he sprawls among gun-cases and shell-carriers––no sportsman will entrust these essentials to the questionable ministrations of a baggage-man––and the air about him is blue from the big cigar he is puffing so ecstatically. He nods and proffers me its mate.
“Going to be a great day,” he announces succinctly, and despite a rigorous censorship there is a suggestion of excitement in the voice. “The wind’s dead north, and it’s cloudy and damp. Rain, maybe, about daylight.”
“Yes.” I am lighting up stolidly, although my nerves are atingle.
“We’re going to hit it right, just right. The flight’s on. I heard them going over all night. The lake will be black with the big fellows, the Canada boys.” 291
“Yes,” I repeat; then conscience gives a last dig. “I ought not to do it, though. I didn’t have time to break a single engagement”––I’m a dental surgeon, too, by the way, with likewise an office of tile and enamel––“or explain at all. And the muss there’ll be at the shop when––”
“Forget it, you confounded old dollar-grubber!” A fresh torrent of smoke belches forth, so that I see Sandford’s face but dimly through the haze. “If you mention teeth again, until we’re back––merely mention them––I’ll throttle you!”
The train is in motion now, and the arc-lights at the corners, enshrouded each by a zone of mist, are flitting by.
“Yes,” he repeats, and again his voice has that minor strain of suppressed excitement, “we’re hitting it just right. There’ll be rain, or a flurry of snow, maybe, and the paddle feet will be down in the clouds.” 292
Chapter VI––“Mark the Right, Sandford!”
And they are. Almost before we have stumbled off at the deserted station into the surrounding darkness, Johnson’s familiar bass is heralding the fact.
“Millions of ’em, boys,” he assures us, “billions! Couldn’t sleep last night for the racket they made on the lake. Never saw anything like it in the twenty years I’ve lived on the bank. You sure have struck it this time. Right this way,” he is staggering under the load of our paraphernalia; “rig’s all ready and Molly’s got the kettle on at home, waiting breakfast for you.... Just as fat as you were last year, ain’t ye?” a time-proven joke, for I weigh one hundred and eight pounds. “Try to pull you out, though; try to.” And his great laugh drowns the roar of the retreating train.
At another time, that five-mile drive in the denser darkness, just preceding dawn, would 293 have been long perhaps, the springs of that antiquated buckboard inadequate, the chill of that damp October air piercing; but now––we notice nothing, feel nothing uncomfortable. My teeth chatter a bit now and then, when I am off guard, to be sure; but it is not from cold, and the vehicle might be a Pullman coach for aught I am conscious.
For we have reached the border of the marsh, now, and are skirting its edge, and––Yes, those are ducks, really; that black mass, packed into the cove at the lee of those clustering rushes, protected from the wind, the whole just distinguishable from the lighter shadow of the water: ducks and brant; dots of white, like the first scattered snowflakes on a sooty city roof!
“Mark the right, Sandford,” I whisper in oblivion. “Mark the right!”
And, breaking the spell, Johnson laughs. 294
Chapter VII––The Bacon What Am!
When is bacon bacon, and eggs eggs? When is coffee coffee, and the despised pickerel, fresh from the cold water of the shaded lake, a glorious brown food, fit for the gods?
Answer, while Molly (whose real name is Aunt Martha) serves them to us, forty-five minutes later.
Oh, if we only had time to eat, as that breakfast deserves to be eaten! If we only had time!
But we haven’t; no; Sandford says so, in a voice that leaves no room for argument. The sky is beginning to redden in the east; the surface of the water reflects the glow, like a mirror; and, seen through the tiny-paned windows, black specks, singly and in groups, appear and disappear, in shifting patterns, against the lightening background.
“No more now, Aunt Martha––no. Wait until noon; just wait––and then watch us! Ready, Ed?” 295
“Waiting for you, Sam.” It’s been a year since I called him by his Christian name; but I never notice, nor does he. “All ready.”
“Better try the point this morning; don’t you think, Johnson?”
“Yes, if you’ve your eye with ye. Won’t wait while y’ sprinkle salt on their tails, them red-heads and canvas boys. No, sir-ree.” 296
Chapter VIII––Feathered Bullets
The breath of us is whistling through our nostrils, like the muffled exhaust of a gasoline engine, and our hearts are thumping two-steps on our ribs from the exertion, when we reach the end of the rock-bestrewn point which, like a long index finger, is thrust out into the bosom of the lake. The wind, still dead north, and laden with tiny drops of moisture, like spray from a giant atomizer, buffets us steadily; but thereof we are sublimely unconscious.
For at last we are there, there; precisely where we were yesterday––no, a year ago––and the light is strong enough now, so that when our gun-barrels stand out against the sky, we can see the sights, and––
Down! Down, behind the nearest stunted willow tree; behind anything––quick!––for they’re coming: a great dim wedge, with the apex toward us, coming swiftly on wings that 297 propel two miles to the minute, when backed by a wind that makes a mile in one.
Coming––no; arrived. Fair overhead are the white of breasts, of plump bodies flashing through the mist, the swishing hiss of many wings cutting the air, the rhythmic pat, pat––“Bang! Bang!”
Was it Sandford’s gun, or was it mine? Who knows? The reports were simultaneous.
And then––splash! and a second later,––splash! as two dots leave the hurtling wedge and, with folded wings, pitch at an angle, following their own momentum, against the dull brown surface of the rippling water.
Through the intervening branches and dead sunflower stalks, I look at Sandford––to find that Sandford is looking at me.
“Good work, old man!” I say, and notice that my voice is a little higher than normal.
“Good work, yourself,”––generously. “I missed clean, both barrels. Do better next time, though, perhaps.... Down! Mark north! Take the leader, you.”
From out the mist, dead ahead, just skimming the surface of the water, and coming 298 straight at us, like a mathematically arranged triangle of cannon balls, taking definite form and magnitude oh, so swiftly, unbelievably swift; coming––yes––directly overhead, as before, the pulsing, echoing din in our ears.
“Ready!”
Again the four reports that sounded as two; and they are past; no longer a regular formation, but scattered erratically by the alarm, individual vanishing and dissolving dots, speedily swallowed up by the gray of the mist.
But this time there was no echoing splash, as a hurtling body struck the water, nor tense spoken word of congratulation following––nothing. For ten seconds, which is long under the circumstances, not a word is spoken; only the metallic click of opened locks, as they spring home, breaks the steady purr of the wind; then:
“Safe from me when they come like that,” admits Sandford, “unless I have a ten-foot pole, and they happen to run into it.”
“And from me,” I echo.
“Lord, how they come! They just simply materialize before your eyes, like an impression by flash-light; and then––vanish.” 299
“Yes.”
“Seems as though they’d take fire, like meteorites, from the friction.”
“I’m looking for the smoke, myself––Down! Mark your left!”
Pat! pat! pat! Swifter than spoken words, swift as the strokes of an electric fan, the wings beat the air. Swish-h-h! long-drawn out, crescendo, yet crescendo as, razor-keen, irresistible, those same invisible wings cut it through and through; while, answering the primitive challenge, responding to the stimulus of the game, the hot tingle of excitement speeds up and down our spines. Nearer, nearer, mounting, perpendicular––
The third battalion of that seemingly inexhaustible army has come and gone; and, mechanically, we are thrusting fresh shells into the faintly smoking gun-barrels.
“Got mine that time, both of them.” No repression, nor polite self-abnegation from Sandford this time; just plain, frank exultation and pride of achievement. “Led ’em a yard––two, maybe; but I got ’em clean. Did you see?”
“Yes, good work,” I echo in the formula. 300
“Canvas-backs, every one; nothing but canvas-backs.” Again the old marvel, the old palliation that makes the seemingly unequal game fair. “But, Lord, how they do go; how anything alive can go so––and be stopped!”
“Mark to windward! Straight ahead! Down!” 301
Chapter IX––Oblivion
This, the morning. Then, almost before we mark the change, swift-passing time has moved on; the lowering mist has lifted; the occasional pattering rain-drops have ceased; the wind, in sympathy, is diminished. And of a sudden, arousing us to a consciousness of time and place, the sun peeps forth through a rift in the scattering clouds, and at a point a bit south of the zenith.
“Noon!” comments Sandford, intensely surprised. Somehow, we are always astonished that noon should follow so swiftly upon sunrise. “Well, who would have thought it!”
That instant I am conscious, for the first time, of a certain violent aching void making insistent demand.
“I wouldn’t have done so before, but now that you mention it, I do think it emphatically.” This is a pitiful effort at a jest, but it passes unpunished. “There comes Johnson to bring in the birds.” 302
After dinner––and oh, what a dinner! for, having adequate time to do it justice, we drag it on and on, until even Aunt Martha is satisfied––we curl up in the sunshine, undimmed and gloriously warm; we light our briers, and, too lazily, nervelessly content to even talk, lay looking out over the blue water that melts and merges in the distance with the bluer sky above. After a bit, our pipes burn dead and our eyelids drop, and with a last memory of sunlight dancing on a myriad tiny wavelets, and a blessed peace and abandon soaking into our very souls we doze, then sleep, sleep as we never sleep in the city; as we had fancied a short day before never to sleep again; dreamlessly, childishly, as Mother Nature intended her children to sleep.
Then, from without the pale of utter oblivion, a familiar voice breaks slowly upon our consciousness: the voice of Johnson, the vigilant.
“Got your blind all built, boys, and the decoys is out––four dozen of them,” he admonishes, sympathetically. “Days are getting short, now, so you’d better move lively, if you get your limit before dark.” 303
Chapter X––Upon “Wiping the Eye”
“To poets and epicures, perhaps, the lordly canvas-back––though brown from the oven, I challenge the supercilious gourmet to distinguish between his favorite, and a fat American coot. But for me the loud-voiced mallard, with his bottle-green head and audaciously curling tail; for he will decoy.”
I am quoting Sandford. Be that as it may, we are there, amid frost-browned rushes that rustle softly in the wind: a patch of shallow open water, perhaps an acre in extent, to the leeward of us, where the decoys, heading all to windward, bob gently with the slight swell.
“Now this is something like sport,” adds my companion, settling back comfortably in the slough-grass blind, built high to the north to cut out the wind, and low to the south to let in the sun. “On the point, there, this morning you scored on me, I admit it; but this is where I shine: real shooting; one, or a pair at most, at 304 a time; no scratches; no excuses. Lead on, MacDuff, and if you miss, all’s fair to the second gun.”
“All right, Sam.”
“No small birds, either, understand: no teal, or widgeon, or shovellers. This is a mallard hole. Nothing but mallards goes.”
“All right, Sam.”
“Now is your chance, then.... Now!”
He’s right. Now is my chance, indeed.
Over the sea of rushes, straight toward us, is coming a pair, a single pair; and, yes, they are unmistakably mallards. It is feeding time, or resting time, and they are flying lazily, long necks extended, searching here and there for the promised lands. Our guns indubitably cover it; and though I freeze still and motionless, my nerves stretch tight in anticipation, until they tingle all but painfully.
On the great birds come; on and still on, until in another second––
That instant they see the decoys, and, warned simultaneously by an ancestral suspicion, they swing outward in a great circle, without apparent effort on their part, to reconnoitre. 305
Though I do not stir, I hear the pat! pat! of their wings, as they pass by at the side, just out of gunshot. Then, pat! pat! back of me, then, pat! pat! on the other side, until once again I see them, from the tail of my eye, merge into view ahead.
All is well––very well––and, suspicions wholly allayed at last, they whirl for the second oncoming; just above the rushes, now; wings spread wide and motionless; sailing nearer, nearer––
“Now!” whispers Sandford, “now!”
Out of our nest suddenly peeps my gun barrel; and, simultaneously, the wings, a second before motionless, begin to beat the air in frantic retreat.
But it is too late.
Bang! What! not a feather drops?... Bang! Quack! Quack! Bang! Bang!... Splash!... Quack! Quack! Quack!
That is the story––all except for Sandford’s derisive laugh.
“What’d I tell you?” he exults. “Wiped your eye for you that time, didn’t I?” 306
“How in the world I missed––” It is all that I can say. “They looked as big as––as suspended tubs.”
“Buck-fever,” explains Sandford, laconically.
“That’s all right.” I feel my fighting-blood rising, and I swear with a mighty wordless oath that I’ll be avenged for that laugh. “The day is young yet. If, before night, I don’t wipe both your eyes, and wipe them good––”
“I know you will, old man.” Sandford is smiling understandingly, and in a flash I return the smile with equal understanding. “And when you do, laugh at me, laugh long and loud.” 307
Chapter XI––The Cold Gray Dawn
At a quarter of twelve o’clock a week later, I slip out of my office sheepishly, and, walking a half-block, take the elevator to the fifth floor of the Exchange Building, on the corner. The white enamel of Sandford’s tiny box of an office glistens, as I enter the door, and the tiling looks fresh and clean, as though scrubbed an hour before.
“Doctor’s back in the laboratory,” smiles the white-uniformed attendant, as she grasps my identity.
On a tall stool, beside the laboratory lathe, sits Sandford, hard at work. He acknowledges my presence with a nod––and that is all.
“Noon, Sandford,” I announce.
“Is it?” laconically.
“Thought I’d drop over to the club for lunch, and a little smoke afterward. Want to go along?”
“Can’t.” The whirr of the electric lathe 308 never ceases. “Got to finish this bridge before one o’clock. Sorry, old man.”
“Harry just ’phoned and asked me to come and bring you.” I throw the bait with studied nicety. “He’s getting up a party to go out to Johnson’s, and wants to talk things over a bit in advance.”
“Harry!” Irony fairly drips from the voice. “He’s always going somewhere. Mustn’t have much else to do. Anyway, can’t possibly meet him this noon.”
“To-night, then.” I suggest tentatively. “He can wait until then, I’m sure.”
“Got to work to-night, too. Things are all piled up on me.” Sandford applies a fresh layer of pumice to the swiftly moving polishing wheel, with practised accuracy. “Tell Harry I’m sorry; but business is business, you know.”
“Purr-r-r!” drones on the lathe, “purr-r-r!” I hear it as I silently slip away.
Yes, Sandford is sane; and will be for fifty-one weeks.
I
A new settlement in a new country: no contemporary mind can conceive the possibilities of future greatness that lie in the fulfilment of its prophecy.
A long, irregular quadrangle has been hewn from the woods bordering the north bank of the Ohio River. Scattered through the clearing are rude houses, built of the forest logs. Bounding the space upon three sides, and so close that its storm music sounds plain in every ear, is the forest itself. On the fourth side flows the wide river, covered now, firm and silent, with a thick ice blanket. Across the river on the Kentucky shore, softened by the blue haze of distance, another forest crowds down to the very water’s edge.
It is night, and of the cabins in the clearing each reflects, in one way or another, the 310 character of its builder. Here a broad pencil of light writes “Careless!” on the black sheet of the forest; there a mere thread escaping tells of patient carpentry.
At one end of the clearing, so near the forest that the top of a falling tree would have touched it, stood a cabin, individual in its complete darkness except for a dull ruddy glow at one end, where a window extended as high as the eaves. An open fire within gnawed at the half-green logs, sending smoke and steam up the cavernous chimney, and casting about the room an uncertain, fitful light––now bright, again shadowy.
It was a bare room that the flickering firelight revealed, bare alike as to its furnishings and the freshness of its peeled logs, the spaces between which had been “chinked” with clay from the river-bank. Scarcely a thing built of man was in sight which had not been designed to kill; scarcely a product of Nature which had not been gathered at cost of animal life. Guns of English make, stretched horizontally along the walls upon pegs driven into the logs; in the end opposite the wide fireplace, home-made 311 cooking utensils dangled from the end of a rough table, itself a product of the same factory. In front of the fire, just beyond the blaze and the coals and ashes, were heaped the pelts of various animals; black bear and cinnamon rested side by side with the rough, shaggy fur of the buffalo, brought by Indians from the far western land of the Dakotas.
Upon the heap, dressed in the picturesque utility garb of buckskin, homespun, and “hickory” which stamped the pioneer of his day, a big man lay at full length: a large man even here, where the law of the fittest reigned supreme. A stubbly growth of beard covered his face, giving it the heavy expression common to those accustomed to silent places, and dim forest trails.
Aside from his size, there was nothing striking or handsome about this backwoods giant, neither of face nor of form; yet, sleeping or waking, working or at leisure, he would be noticed––and remembered. In his every feature, every action, was the absolute unconsciousness of self, which cannot be mistaken; whether active or passive, there was about him 312 an insinuation of reserve force, subtly felt, of a strong, determined character, impossible to sway or bend. He lay, now, motionless, staring with wide-open eyes into the fire and breathing slowly, deeply, like one in sleep.
There was a hammering upon the door; another, louder; then a rattling that made the walls vibrate.
“Come!” called the man, rousing and rolling away from the fire.
A heavy shoulder struck the door hard, and the screaming wooden hinges covered the sound of the entering footfall.
He who came was also of the type: homespun and buckskin, hair long and face unshaven. He straightened from a passage which was not low, then turning pushed the unwieldy door shut. It closed reluctantly, with a loud shrilling of its frost-bound hinges and frame. In a moment he dropped his hands and impatiently kicked the stubborn offender home, the suction drawing a puff of smoke from the fireplace into the room, and sending the ashes spinning in miniature whirlwinds upon the hearth.
The man on the floor contemplated the entry 313 with indifference; but a new light entered his eyes as he recognized his visitor, though his face held like wood.
“Evenin’, Clayton,” he greeted, nodding toward a stool by the hearth. “Come over ’n sit down to the entertainment.” A whimsical smile struggled through the heavy whiskers. “I’ve been seeing all sorts of things in there”––a thoughtful nod toward the fire. “Guess, though, a fellow generally does see what he’s looking for in this world.”
“See here, Bud,” the visitor bluntly broke in, coming into the light and slurring a dialect of no nationality pure, “y’ can’t stop me thataway. There ain’t no use talkin’ about the weather, neither.” A motion of impatience; then swifter, with a shade of menace:
“You know what I came over fer. It’s actin’ the fool, I know, we few families out here weeks away from ev’rybody, but this clearin’ can’t hold us both.”
The menace suddenly left the voice, unconsciously giving place to a note of tenderness and of vague self-fear.
“I love that girl better ’n you er life er anything 314 else, Bud; I tell ye this square to yer face. I can’t stand it. I followed ye last night clean home from the party––an’ I had a knife. I jest couldn’t help it. Every time I know nex’ time it’ll happen. I don’t ask ye to give her up, Bud, but to settle it with me now, fair an’ open, ’fore I do something I can’t help.”
He strode swiftly to and fro across the room as he spoke, his skin-shod feet tapping muffled upon the bare floor, like the pads of an animal. The fur of his leggings, rubbing together as he walked, generated static sparks which snapped audibly. He halted presently by the fireplace, and looked down at the man lying there.
“It’s ’tween us, Bud,” he said, passion quivering in his voice.
Minutes passed before Bud Ellis spoke, then he shifted his head, quickly, and for the first time squarely met Clayton’s eyes.
“You say it’s between you and me,” he initiated slowly: “how do you propose to settle it?”
The other man hesitated, then his face grew red.
“Ye make it hard for me, Bud, ’s though I 315 was a boy talkin’ to ye big here; but it’s true, as I told ye: I ain’t myself when I see ye settin’ close to ’Liz’beth, er dancin’ with your arm touchin’ hern. I ain’t no coward, Bud; an’ I can’t give her up––to you ner nobody else.
“I hate it. We’ve always been like brothers afore, an’ it ’pears kinder dreamy ’n foolish ’n unnatural us settin’ here talkin’ ’bout it; but there ain’t no other way I can see. I give ye yer choice, Bud: I’ll fight ye fair any way y’ want.”
Ellis’s attitude remained unchanged: one big hand supported his chin while he gazed silently into the fire. Clayton stood contemplating him a moment, then sat down.
By and by Ellis’s head moved a little, a very little, and their eyes again met. A minute passed, and in those seconds the civilization of each man moved back generations.
The strain was beyond Clayton; he bounded to his feet with a motion that sent the stool spinning.
“God A’mighty! Are y’ wood er are y’ a coward? Y’ seem to think I’m practisin’ speech-makin’. D’ye know what it means fer 316 me to come up here like this to you?” He waited, but there was no response.
“I tell ye fer the last time, I love that girl, an’ if it warn’t fer you––fer you, Bud Ellis––she’d marry me. Can ye understand that? Now will ye fight?––or won’t ye?”
A movement, swift and easy, like a released spring, the unconscious trick of a born athlete, and Ellis was upon his feet. Involuntarily, Clayton squared himself, as if an attack were imminent.
“No, I won’t fight you,” said the big man, slowly. Without the least hesitation, he advanced and laid a hand upon the other man’s shoulder, facing him at arm’s length and speaking deliberately.
“It isn’t that I’m afraid of you, either, Bert Clayton; you know it. You say you love her; I believe you. I love her, too. And Elizabeth––you have tried, and I have tried––and she told us both the same.
“God, man! I know how you feel. I’ve expected something like this a long time.” He drew his hand across his eyes, and turned away. “I’ve had murder in my heart when I saw 317 you, and hated myself. It’s only in such places as this, where nothing happens to divert one’s mind, that people get like you and me, Bert. We brood and brood, and it’s love and insanity and a good deal of the animal mixed. Yes, you’re right. It’s between you and me, Bert,––but not to fight. One of us has got to leave––”
“It won’t be me,” Clayton quickly broke in. “I tell ye, I’d rather die, than leave.”
For a full minute Ellis steadily returned the other man’s fiery look, then went on as though there had been no interruption:
“––and the sooner we go the better. How do you want to settle it––shall we draw straws?”
“No, we’ll not draw straws. Go ef you’re afraid; but I won’t stir a step. I came to warn ye, or to fight ye if y’ wanted. Seein’ y’ won’t––good-night.”
Ellis stepped quickly in front of the door, and with the motion Clayton’s hand went to his knife.
“Sit down, man,” demanded Ellis, sternly. “We’re not savages. Let’s settle this matter in civilized fashion.” 318
They confronted each other for a moment, the muscles of Clayton’s face twitching an accompaniment to the nervous fingering of the buckhorn hilt; then he stepped up until they could have touched.
“What d’ y’ mean anyway?” he blazed. “Get out o’ my road.”
Ellis leaned against the door-bar without a word. The fire had burned down, and in the shadow his face had again the same expression of heaviness. The breathing of Clayton, swift and short, like one who struggles physically, painfully intensified the silence of that dimly lighted, log-bound room.
With his right hand Clayton drew his knife; he laid his left on the broad half-circle of wood that answered as a door handle.
“Open that door,” he demanded huskily, “or by God, I’ll stab ye!”
In the half-light the men faced each other, so near their breaths mingled. Twice Clayton tried to strike. The eyes of the other man held him powerless, and to save his life––even to satisfy a new, fierce hate––he could not stir. He stood a moment thus, then an animal-like 319 frenzy, irresistible but impotent, seized him. He darted his head forward and spat in the heavy face so close to his own.
The unspeakable contempt of the insult shattered Bud Ellis’s self-control. Prompted by blind fury, the great fist of the man shot out, hammer-like, and Clayton crumpled at his feet. It was a blow that would have felled the proverbial ox; it was the counterpart of many other blows, plus berserker rage, that had split pine boards for sheer joy in the ability to do so. These thoughts came sluggishly to the inflamed brain, and Ellis all at once dropped to his knees beside the limp, prostrate figure.
He bent over Clayton, he who had once been his friend. He was scarcely apprehensive at first, and he called his name brusquely; then, as grim conviction grew, his appeals became frantic.
At last Ellis shrank away from the Thing upon the floor. He stared until his eyeballs burnt like fire. It would never, while time lasted, move again.
Horror unutterable fell upon him. 320
II
In the year 1807 there were confined in a common Western jail, amid a swarm of wretches of every degree of baseness, two men as unlike as storm and sunshine. One was charged with treason, the other with murder; conviction, in either case, meant death.
One was a man of middle age, an aristocrat born; a college graduate and a son of a college graduate; a man handsome of appearance, passionate and ambitious, who knew men’s natures as he knew their names. He had fought bravely for his country, and his counsels had helped mould the foundations of the new republic. Honored by his fellow-men, he had served brilliantly in such exalted positions as that of United States Senator, and Attorney General for the State of New York. On one occasion, only a single vote stood between him and the presidency.
His name was Aaron Burr.
The other was a big backwoodsman of twenty, whose life had been as obscure as that of a domestic animal. He was rough of 321 manner and slow of speech, and just now, owing to a combination of physical confinement and mental torture altogether unlovely in disposition.
This man was Bud Ellis.
The other prisoners––a motley lot of frontier reprobates––ate together, slept together, and quarrelled together. Looking constantly for trouble, and thrown into actual contact with an object as convenient as Aaron Burr, it was inevitable that he should be made the butt of their coarse gibes and foul witticisms; and when these could not penetrate his calm, superior self-possession, it was just as inevitable that taunts should extend even to worse indignities.
Burr was not the man to be stirred against his calm judgment; but one day his passionate nature broke loose, and he and the offender came to blows.
There were a dozen prisoners in the single ill-lighted, log-bound room, and almost to a man they attacked him. The fight would not have lasted long had not the inequality appealed to Ellis on the second. 322
Moreover, with him, the incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman.
For minutes they fought. Elbows and knees, fists and feet, teeth and tough-skulled heads; every hard spot and every sharp angle bored and jabbed at the crushing mass which swiftly closed them in. They struggled like cats against numbers, and held the wall until the sound of battle brought the negligent guard running, and the muzzle of a carbine peeped through the grating. Burr and Ellis came out with scarce a rag and with many bruises, but with the new-born lust of battle hot within them. Ellis glowered at the enemy, and having of the two the more breath, fired the parting shot.
“How I’d like to take you fellows out, one at a time,” he said.
From that day the two men were kept apart from the others, and the friendship grew. When 323 Burr chose, neither man nor woman could resist him. He chose now and Ellis, by habit and by nature silent, told of his life and of his thoughts. It was a new tale to Burr, these dream products of a strong man, and of solitude; and so, listening, he forgot his own trouble. The hard look that had formed over his face in the three years past vanished, leaving him again the natural, fascinating man who had first taken the drawing-room of the rare old Jumel mansion by storm. It was genuine, this tale that Ellis told; it was strong, with the savor of Mother Nature and of wild things, and fascinating with the beauty of unconscious telling.
“And the girl?” asked Burr after Ellis finished a passionate account of the last year. Unintentionally, he touched flame to tinder.
“Don’t ask me about her. I’m not fit. She was coming to see me, but I wouldn’t let her. She’s good and innocent; she never imagined we were not as strong as she, and it’s killing her. There’s no question what will happen to me; everything is against me, and I’ll be convicted.
“No one understands––she can’t herself; 324 but she feels responsible for one of us, already, and will feel the same for me when it’s over. Anyway, I’d never see her again. I feel different toward her now, and always would. I’d never live over again days like I have in the past year: days I hated a friend I’d known all my life––because we both loved the same woman. If the Almighty sent love of woman into the world to be bought at the price I paid, it’s wrong, and He’s made a mistake. It’s contrary to Nature, because Nature is kind.
“Last summer I’d sit out of doors at night and watch the stars come out thick, like old friends, till I’d catch the mood and be content. The wind would blow up from the south, softly, like some one fanning me, and the frogs and crickets would sing even and sleepy, and I’d think of her and be as nearly happy as it was possible for me to be.
“Then, somehow, he’d drift into the picture, and it grated. I’d wonder why this love of woman, which ought to make one feel the best of everything there is in life; which ought to make one kinder and tenderer to every one, should make me hate him, my best friend. The 325 night would be spoiled, and from then on the crickets would sing out of tune. I’d go to bed, where, instead of sleeping, I would try to find out, and couldn’t.
“And at last, that night––and the end! Oh, it’s horrible, horrible! I wish to God they’d try me quick, and end it. It makes me hate that girl to think she’s the cause. And that makes me hate myself, for I know she’s innocent. Oh, it’s tangled––tangled––”
Of the trial which followed, the world knows. How Burr pleaded his own case, and of the brilliancy of the pleading, history makes record at length. ’T was said long before, when the name of Burr was proud on the Nation’s tongue––years before that fatal morning on Weekawken Heights––that no judge could decide against him. Though reviled by half the nation, it would seem it were yet true.
Another trial followed; but of this history is silent, though Aaron Burr pleaded this case as well. It was a trial for manslaughter, and every circumstance, even the prisoner’s word, declared guilt. To show that a person may be 326 guilty in act, and at the same time, in reality, innocent, calls for a master mind––the mind of a Burr. To tell of passion, one must have felt passion, and of such Burr had known his full share. No lawyer for the defence was ever better prepared than Burr, and he did his best. In court he told the jury a tale of motive, of circumstance, and of primitive love, such as had never been heard in that county before; such that the twelve men, without leaving their seats, brought a verdict of “Not guilty.”
“I can’t thank you right,” said the big man, with a catch in his voice, wringing Burr’s hand.
“Don’t try,” interrupted Burr, quickly. “You did as much for me.” And even Burr did not attempt to say any more just then.
III
The two men went East together, travelling days where now hours would suffice. Why Burr took the countryman home with him, knowing, as he did, the incongruity of such a step, he himself could not have told. It puzzled Ellis still more. He had intended going far away to some indefinite place; but this opportunity of being virtually thrust into the position where he most wished to be, was unusual; it was a reversal of all precedent; and so why demur?