CHAPTER XII
For a while they stood there together in the narrow road to whoseedges the dense greenery came down massed and dewy. Their breath wasquick with the excitement of that moment when the hills and the rocksthat upheld them seemed to them palpitant and gloriously shaken. Thenthey heard the lumbering of wheels, and with one impulse that neededno expression in words they turned through a gorge which ran at rightangles into the stillness of the woods--and away from interruption.
Spurrier had, it seemed to him, stepped through a curtain in life andfound beyond it a door of which he had not known. It seemed naturalthat he and Glory should be going hand in hand into that place ofdreams like children at play and hearing joyous voices that were muteand nonexistent in the world of commonplace and fact.
He did not even pause to reflect that this was a continuation of thesame ravine in which an assassin's bullet had once so narrowly missedhim. Yesterday, too, was forgotten.
Just now he was young in his heart again, and had love for histalisman. Actuality had been dethroned by some dream wizardry and lefthim free of obligation to reason. Then he heard Glory's voicelow-pitched and a little frightened.
"It kain't--can't--be true. It's just a dream!"
A flash of sanity, like the shock of a cold plunge, brought thethought that, from her lips, had sounded a warning. This was themoment, if ever, to draw back and take counsel of common sense. Now itwould be easier than later to abase himself and confess that in thismidsummer's madness was no substance or color of reality--that hestood unalterably pledged to her renunciation.
But the earthquake does not still itself at the height of its tremorand the cyclone does not stop dead with its momentum unspent. Years ofcalculated and nerve-trying self-command were exacting their toll inthe satisfaction of outbreak. Spurrier's emotional self was involcanic eruption, the more molten and lava-hot for the prolongeddormancy of a sealed crater.
He caught the girl again and pressed her so close that the commotionof her heart came throbbing against him through the yielding softnessof her breast; and the agitation of her breath on his face was alittle tempest of acquiescent sweetness.
"Doesn't it seem real, now?" he challenged as he released her enoughto let her breathe, yet held her imprisoned, and she nodded,radiant-eyed, and answered in a voice half bewildered and more thanhalf burdened with self-reproach.
"I didn't even hang back," she made confession. "I just walked rightinto your arms the minute you held them out. I didn't seem able tohelp myself."
Suddenly her eyes, impenitent once more, danced with mischief and hersmile broke like a sun flash over her face.
"If I'd had the power of witchcraft, I'd have put the spell on you,Jack," she declared. "I had to make you love me. I just _had_ to doit."
"I rather think you had--that power, dear."
He laughed contentedly as a man may who shifts all responsibility foran indiscretion to a force stronger than his own volition.
"You see," she went on as if seeking to make illogic seem logical."From the first--I couldn't think of you except with storm thoughts. Icouldn't keep my heart quiet, when I was with you."
"At first," he reminded her, "you wanted to kill me. I heard youconfiding to Rover."
Her eyes grew seriously deep and undefensive in their frankness. Itwas the candor of a woman's pride in conquest.
"I'm not sure yet," she said almost fiercely, "that I wouldn't almostrather kill you than--lose you to any other girl."
Vaguely and as yet remotely, Spurrier's consciousness was pricked witha forecast of reality's veto, but the present spoke in passion and thefuture whispered weakly in platitudes.
"You won't lose me," he protested. "I'm yours."
"And yet," went on Glory, "you seemed a long way off. You were the manwho did big things in the world outside. You were--always cooland--calculating."
"Glory," his words came with the rush of impetuosity for already thewhispers of warning were gaining in volume, and impulse was strugglingfor its new freedom, "the man you've seen to-day is one I haven'tknown myself before. Chilled calculation and self-repression have beenthe articles of my creed. I've been crusted with those obsessionslike a ship's hull with barnacles. Did you know that when vessels passthrough the Panama Canal, the barnacles drop off?"
She shook her head.
"No," she said, and her lips twisted into something like wistfulnessas she dropped unconsciously into vernacular. "There's a lavish ofthings I don't know. You've got to learn 'em all to me--I mean teachthem to me."
"Well," he went on slowly, "steamers that pass through the freshwater, from salt to salt, automatically cleanse their plates. You'vebeen fresh water to me, Glory."
"Jack," she declared with tempestuous anxiety, "you say I've changedyou. I'll try to change myself, too, all the ways I can--all the waysyou want."
"I don't want you changed," he objected. "If you were changed, itwouldn't be you."
"Maybe," she persisted, "you'd like me better if I were taller or hadblack eyes."
"I wonder now," he teased with the whimsey of the moment, "what youwould look like with black eyes? I can't imagine it. Will you do thatfor me?"
"Come to our house to-night," she irrelevantly commanded. "Won'tyou?"
"Yes," he said, "I'd come to-night if I had to swim the Hellespont."
But when he had left her an hour later at the crossroads and startedback, his eyes fell on the ugly shapes of the three rattlesnakes, overwhich he had forgotten to keep watch and which she had not even seen,and yesterday came back with the impact of undisguised realization.Yesterday and to-morrow stood out again in their own solidproportions and to-day stood like a slender wisp of heart's desireshouldered between uncompromising giants of fact.
Spurrier could no longer deny that his personal world centered aboutGlory; that away from her would be only the unspeakable bleakness oflonely heart hunger.
But it was equally certain that he could not abandon everything uponwhich he had underpinned his future, and in that structure was noniche which she could occupy.
Sitting alone in his house with a chill ache at his heart and facing adilemma that seemed without solution, he knew for once the tortures ofterror. For once he could not face the future intrepidly.
He had recognized when the army had stigmatized him and cast him out,that only by iron force and aggression could he break his way throughto success. He was enlisted in a warfare captained by financiers ofmajor caliber and committed to a struggle out of which victory wouldbring him not only wealth, but a place of his own among suchfinanciers--a place which Glory could not share.
He and his principals alike were fighting for the prizes of thelooting victor in a battle without chivalry, and whether he won or wascrushed by American Oil and Gas, the native landholder must be groundand bruised between the impact of clashing forces. In the trail of hisvictory, no less than theirs, would be human wreckage.
Sitting before his dead hearth while the afternoon shadows slanted andlengthened, Spurrier wondered what agonies had wracked the heart ofNapoleon when he was called upon to choose between Josephine and adynasty. For even in his travail the egoist thought of himself and hisambitions in Napoleonic terms.
As he sat there alone with silences about his lonely cabin that seemedspeaking in still voices of vastness, the poignant personality of histhoughts brought him, by the strange anomaly of life, to realizationsthat were not merely personal.
Glory had won his heart and it was as though in doing so she had alsomade his feelings quicken for her people: these people from whosepoverty, hospitality and kindness had been poured out to him: thesepeople who had taken him at first with reserve and then accepted himwith faith.
He had eaten their bread and salt. He had drunk their illicit whiskey,given to him with no fear that he would betray them even in thelawlessness which to them seemed honorable and fair.
And yet his purpose here, was the single one of enabling a certaingroup of money-grabbing financiers to triumph
over another group atthe cost of the mountaineer land-holders. It was not because, if hesucceeded, there would not be enough of legitimate profit to enrichall, but because in a campaign of secrecy he could make a confidant ofno one. If the enterprise were carried through at all he must havesecured, for principals who would abate nothing and give back nothing,the necessary property bought on the basis of barren farming land.Were it his own endeavor he could first plunder and develop and thenmake restitution, but acting as an agent he could no more do thatthan the soldier who has unconditionally surrendered, can subsequentlydemand terms.
The man who had been a plunger at gaming table and race track, who hadsucceeded as an imitator of schemes that attracted major capital, wasof necessity one of imagination. Perhaps had life dealt him differentcards, Spurrier would have been a novelist or even a poet, for thatimagination which he had put into heavy harness was also capable offlights into phantasy and endowed with something almost mystic.
Now under the stress of this conflict in his mind, as he sat beforehis hearth in shadows that were vague of light and shape, thatunaccustomed surrender to imagination possessed him, peopling thedimness with shapes that seemed actual.
His eye fell upon the empty three-legged stool that stood on theopposite side of the hearth, and as though he were looking at one ofthose motion picture effects which show, in double negative onecharacter confronting his dual and separate self, he seemed to see afigure sitting there and regarding him out of contemptuous eyes.
It was the figure of a very young man clad in the tunic of agraduating West Point cadet and it was a figure that bore itself withthe prideful erectness of one who regards his right to wear hisuniform as a privilege of knighthood. For Spurrier was fancyinghimself confronted by the man he had been in those days of eagerforward-looking, and of almost religious resolve to make of himself asoldier in the best meaning of the word. Then as his eyes closed for amoment under the vividness of the fancy, the figure dissolved into itssurroundings of shadow and near the stool with folded arms and abitterer scorn stood a lieutenant in khaki.
"So this is what you have come to be," said the imaginary Spurrierblightingly to the actual Spurrier. "A looter and brigand no betterthan the false _amigos_ that I fought over there. I was a gentlemanand you are a cad!"
Had the man been dreaming in sleep instead of wakefulness, his visioncould hardly have worn habiliments of greater actuality, and he foundhimself retorting in hot defensiveness.
"Whatever I am you made me. It was you who was disgraced. It isbecause I was once you that I am now I. You left me no choice but tofight with the weapons that came to hand, and those weapons werepredatory.... If I have deliberately hardened myself it is only assoldiers of other days put on coats of mail--because soft flesh couldnot survive the mace and broadsword."
"And when you win your prizes, if you ever win them," the accusingvision appeared to retort, "you will have paid for them by spendingall that was honorable in yourself; all that was generous andsoldierly. When you were I, you led a charge across rice paddieswithout cover and under a withering fire. For that you were mentionedin dispatches and you had a paragraph in the Army and Navy Journal.Have you ever won a prize since then, that meant as much to you?"
John Spurrier came to his feet, with a groan in his throat. Histemples were moist and marked with a tracery of outstanding veins andhis hands were clenched.
"Good God!" he exclaimed aloud. "Give me back the name and the uniformI had then, and see how gladly I'll tell these new masters to go tohell!"
Startled at the sound of his own voice arguing with a fantasy as witha fact, the man sank back again into his chair and covered his facewith his spread hands. But shutting out sight did not serve to shutout the images of his fancy.
He saw himself hired out to "practical" overlords and sent to prey onfriends, then he rose and stood confronting the empty stool where thedream-accuser in uniform had stood and once more he spoke aloud. As hedid so it seemed that the figure returned and stood waiting, stern andnoncommittal, while he addressed it.
"Give me the success I need, and the independence it carries, and I'llspend my life exonerating my name. I'll go back to the islands andlive among the natives till I find a man who will tell the truth. I'llmove heaven and earth--but that takes money. I've always stood, inthis business, with wealth just beyond my grasp--always promised,never realized. Let me realize it and be equipped to fight forvindication. These men I serve have the prizes to dispense, but I ambound hand and foot to them. They take their pay in advance. Oncevictorious I can break with them."
"And these people who have befriended you," questioned the mentorvoice, "what of them?"
"I love them. They are her people. I shall seem to plunder them, butif my plans succeed I shall be in a position to make terms--and myterms shall be theirs. Until I succeed I must seem false to them. Godknows I'm paying for that too. I love Glory!"
Suddenly Spurrier wiped a hand across a clammy forehead and stoodlooking about his room, empty save for himself. He seemed a man whohad been through a delirium. But he reached no conclusion, and whentwilight found him tramping toward the Cappeze house it was with aheart that beat with anticipation--while it sought refuge in postponeddecision.
When Glory received him in the lamp-lighted room he halted inamazement, for the girl who stood there with a mischievous smile onher lips no longer looked at him out of eyes violet-blue, but black asliquid jet.
"How did you do that?" he demanded in a voice blank with astonishment."It's a sheer impossibility!"
"Maybe it's witchcraft, Jack," she mocked him.
"Can you change them back?" he asked a little anxiously, and she shookher head.
"No, but they'll change of themselves in a day or two."
"I reckon," commented Dyke Cappeze, looking up from his book by thetable, "I oughtn't to give away feminine secrets, but it's a rightsimple matter, after all. She just put some Jimson-weed juice in hereyes and the trick was done."
"Jimson weed," echoed the visitor, and the elder nodded.
"If you happen to remember your botany, you'll recall that its longername is _Datura stramonium_--and it's a strong mydriatic. It swellsthe pupil and obliterates the iris."
It was walking homeward with a low moon overhead that evening thatSpurrier's thoughts found time to wrestle with other problems thanthose affecting himself and Glory. The incident of the black eyes hadat first interested him only because they were _her_ eyes, but now hethought also of the episode of the rattlesnakes and the letter fromMajor Withers.
In his first analysis of what that letter might mean to him he haddecided that his man would be recognizable by his mismated eyes. Hehad recalled Sim Colby's black ones while thinking of unusual eyes ingeneral and had, in passing, set him down as one who stood alibied.
Now, in the light of this Jimson-weed discovery, those black eyes tookon a new interest. Presumably it was a trick commonly known in thesehills. _If_ Colby's eyes had been so altered--and they had seemedunnatural in their tense blackness--it must have been with adeliberate and sufficient motive. Sim Colby was not making his pupilssmart and sting as a matter of vanity. A man resorting to disguisesseeks first to change the most salient notes of his appearance.
Spurrier recalled, with the force of added importance, the surprisedlook on Sam Mosebury's face when that genial murderer, upon hisarrival, had stifled some impulse of utterance.
Suspicion of Colby was perhaps far-fetched, but it took a powerfulhold on Spurrier, and one from which he could not free himself. At allevents, he must see this Sim Colby when Colby did not know he wascoming--and look at his eyes again.
So he made a second trip across the hills to the head of LittleQuicksand, and for the sake of safeguarding against any warning goingahead of him, he spoke to no one of his intention.
This time he went armed with an automatic pistol and a very grimpurpose. When they met--if the mountaineer's eyes were no longerblack--he would probably need both.
But once again the
opportunity hound encountered disappointment. Hefound a chimney with no smoke issuing from it and a door barred. Thehorse had been taken out of the stable and from many evidences aboutthe untenanted place he judged that the man who lived alone there hadbeen absent for several days.
To make inquiries would be to proclaim his interest and prejudice hisfuture chances of success, so he slipped back again as surreptitiouslyas he had come, and the determination which he had keyed to theconcert pitch of climax had to be laid by.
At home again he found that the love which he could neither accept norconquer was demoralizing his moral and mental equipoise. He could nolonger fix and hold his attention on the problems of his work. Hisspirit was in equinox.
The only solution was to go to Glory and tell her the truth, for if helet matters run uncontrolled their momentum would become unmanageable.It was the simple matter of choosing failure with her or successwithout her, and he had at last reached his decision. It remained onlyto tell her so.
It had pleased John Spurrier to find a house upon an isolated sitefrom which he could work unobserved, while he maintained his carefulsemblance of idleness. His nearest neighbor was a mile away as thecrow flew, and Dyke Cappeze almost two miles. Even the deep-ruttedhighroad, itself, lay beyond a gorge which native parlance called a"master shut-in."
Now that remoteness pleased his enemies as well. Former efforts towardhis undoing had been balked by accidents. One must be made that couldhave no chance to fail and an isolated setting made for success.Matters that required deft handling could be conducted by daylightinstead of under a tricky moon. It was a good spot for a "rat-killing"and Spurrier was to be the rat.
It was well before sunset on a Thursday afternoon that rifle-armedmen, holding to the concealment of the "laurel hells," beganapproaching the high place above and behind Spurrier's house. Theycame from varying directions and one by one. No one had seen anygathering, for the plans had been made elsewhere and the details ofliaison perfected in advance. Now they trickled noiselessly into theirdesignated posts and slowly drew inward toward the common center ofthe house itself.
Spurrier who rode in at mid-afternoon from some neighborhood missioncommented with pleasure upon the cheery "Bob Whites" of the quailwhistling back in the timber.
They were Glory's birds, and this winter he would know better than toshoot them!
But they were not Glory's birds. They were not birds at all, and thosepipings came from human throats, establishing touch as the murdersquad advanced upon him to kill him.
The man opened a package which had come by mail and drew from itswrappings the portrait of a girl in evening dress with a rope ofpearls at her throat. Its silver frame was a counterpart of the onewhich had stood on Martin Harrison's desk that night when Spurrier hadlifted it and Vivien's father had so meaningly said: "Make good inthis and _all_ your ambitions can be fulfilled."
Now Spurrier set the framed picture on the table at the center of theroom and it seemed to look out from that point of vantage with theamused indulgence of well-bred condescension upon the Spartansimplicity of his house--the rough table and hickory-withed chairs,the cot spread with its gray army blanket.
The man gave back to the pictured glance as little fire of eagernessas was given out from it.
Just now Vivien seemed to him the deity and personification of a creedthat was growing hateful, yet one to which he stood still bound. Hewas like the priest whose vows are irrevocable but whose faith in hisdogma has died, and to himself he murmured ironically, "'The idols arebroke in the temple of Baal'--and yet I've got to go on bending theknee to the debris!"
But when he turned on his heel and looked through the door his facebrightened, for there, coming over the short-cut between Aunt ErieToppit's and her own home, was Glory, carrying a basket over which wastied a bit of jute sacking.
She came on lightly and halted outside his threshold.
"I'm not comin' visitin' you, Mr. John Spurrier," she announcedgravely despite the twinkle in her eyes. "I'm bent on a more seemlymatter, but I'm crossin' your property an' I hope you'll forgive thetrespass."
"Since it's you," he acceded in the same mock seriousness, "I'll grantyou the right of way. You paid the toll when you let me have a glimpseof you."
"And this is your house," she went on musingly. "And I've never seeninside its door. It seems strange, somehow, doesn't it?"
Spurrier laughed. "Now that you're here," he suggested, "you might aswell hold an inspection. It's daylight and we can dispense with achaperon for ten minutes."
She nodded and laughed too. "I guess the granny-folk would go tonguewagging if they found it out. Anyhow, I'm going to peek in for just aminute."
She stepped lightly up to the threshold and looked inside, and theslanting shaft from the window fell full on the new photograph ofVivien Martin, so that it stood out in the dim interior emphasized bythe flash of its silver frame.
Glory went over and studied the face with a somewhat crypticexpression, but she made no comment and at the door she announced:
"I'll be goin' on. You can have three guesses what I've got in thisbasket."
But Spurrier, catching sight of a bronze tail-quill glinting betweenthe bars of the container, spoke with prompt certainty.
"One guess will be enough. It's one of those carrier pigeons thatUncle Jimmy Litchfield gave you."
"You peeped before you guessed," she accused. "I'm going to leave itwith Aunt Erie and let her take it to Carnettsville with her to-morrowand set it free."
"Compare your watches," advised the man, "and get her to note the timewhen she opens the basket. Then you can time the flight."
Glory shook her head and laughed. "I don't own any watch," shereminded him. "And even if I did I misdoubt if Aunt Erie would haveanything to compare it with--unless she carried her alarm clock alongwith her."
"Wait a minute," admonished the man, as he loosened the strap of hiswrist watch, "I've two as it happens--and a clock besides. You keepthis one and give Aunt Erie my other. I'll get it for you and set itso that they'll be together to the second."
He wheeled then and went into the room at the back and for a fewminutes, bachelor-like he rummaged and searched for the time-pieceupon which he had supposed he could lay his fingers in the dark.
Yet Spurrier's thought was not wholly and singly upon the adventure oftiming the flight of a carrier pigeon. In it there lurked a sense ofhalf-guilty uneasiness, which would have been lighter had Glory askedsome question when she gazed on the picture which sat in a seemingplace of honor at the center of his room. Her silence on the subjecthad seemed casual and unimportant, yet his intuition told him that hadit been genuinely so, she would have demanded with child-like interestto be told who the woman might be with the high tilted chin and therope of pearls on her throat. The taciturnity had sprung, he fancied,less from indifference than from a fear of questioning, and when hecame quietly to the door, he stood there for a moment, then drew backwhere he would not be so plainly visible.
For Glory had returned to the table and stood with her eyes riveted onthe framed portrait. Unconscious of being observed her face was nolonger guarded of betrayal, and in the swift expressiveness of herdelicate features the man read a gamut and vortex of emotion aseloquent as words. The jealousy which her pride sought to veto, thedoubt which her faith strove to deny, the realization of her ownself-confessed inferiority in parallel with this woman's aristocraticpoise and cynical smile, flitted in succession across the face of themountain girl and declared themselves in her eyes.
For an instant the small hands clenched and the lips stirred and thepupils blazed with hot fires, so that the man could almost read thewords that she shaped without sound: "He's mine--he ain't your'n--an'I ain't goin' ter give him up ter ye!"
Spurrier remembered how she had declared she would almost rather seehim die than surrender him to another girl.
Then out of the face the passion faded and the deep eyes widened to asuffering like that of despair. The sweetly curved lips dr
ooped in anineffable wistfulness and the smooth throat worked spasmodically,while the hands went up and covered the face.
Spurrier drew back into the room into which Glory could not see, andthen in warning of his coming spoke aloud in a matter-of-fact voice."I've found it," he declared. "It was hiding out from me--thatwatch."
When, after that preface, he came back, Glory was standing again inthe doorway and as she turned, she presented a face from which hadbeen banished the storm of her recent agitation.
He handed her the watch which she took with a steady hand, and a briefbut cheery, "Farewell."
As she started away Spurrier braced himself with a strong effort andinquired: "Glory, didn't you have any question to ask me--about thegirl--in the frame?"
She halted in the path and stood looking down. Her lowered lids hidher eyes, but he thought her cheeks paled a shade. Then she shook herhead.
"Not unless it's something--you want to tell--without my asking," sheannounced steadfastly.
For over a week he had struggled to bring himself to his confessionand had failed. Now a sudden impulse assured him that it would neverbe easier; that every delay would make it harder and blacken him witha heavier seeming of treason. Vivien's portrait served as a fortuitouscue, and he must avail himself of it.
This was the logical time and place, when silence would be only anunuttered lie and when procrastination would strip him of even hisresidue of self-respect. To wait for an easy occasion was to hope forthe impossible and to act with as craven a spirit as to falter whenthe bugle sounded a charge.
Yet he remained so long silent that Glory, looking up and reading thehard-wrung misery on his face and the stiff movement of the lips thatmade nothing of their efforts, knew, in advance, the tenor of theunspoken message.
She closed her eyes as if to shut out some sudden glare too painfulto be borne, and then in a quietly courageous voice she helped himout.
"You _do_ want to tell me, Jack. You want to take back--what yousaid--over there--don't you?"
Spurrier moistened his lips, with his tongue. "God knows," he burstout vehemently, "I don't want to take back one syllable of what Isaid--about loving you."
"What is it, then?"
"Come inside, please," he pleaded. "I'll try to explain."
He went stumblingly ahead of her and set a chair beside the table andthen he leaned toward her and sought for words.
"I love you, Glory," he fervently declared. "I love you as I didn'tsuppose I could love any one. To me you are music and starlight--but Iguess I'm almost engaged to her." He jerked his head rebelliouslytoward the portrait.
Glory was numb except for a dull, very present ache that started inher heart and filled her to her finger tips, and she made no answer.
"Her father," Spurrier forced himself on, "is a great financier. I'mhis man. I'm a little cog in a big machine. It's been practicallyunderstood that I was to become his son-in-law--his successor. I'm toodeep in, to pull out. It's like a soldier in the thick of a campaign.I've got to go through."
That seemed an easier and kinder thing to say than that she herselfwas not qualified for full admittance into the world of his largerlife.
"You knew this--the other day--as well as now," she reminded him,speaking in a stunned voice, yet without anger.
"So help me God, Glory--I had forgotten--everything but--you."
"And now," she half whispered in a dulled monotone, "you remember allthe rest."
She sat there with the basket on the puncheon floor at her feet, andher fingers twisted themselves tautly together. Her lips, parted anddrooping, gave her delicate face a stamp of dumb suffering, andSpurrier's arms ached to go comfortingly around her, but he heldhimself rigid while the silence lengthened. The old clock on themantel ticked clamorously and outside the calls of the bobwhitesseemed to grow louder and nearer until, half-consciously, Spurriernoted their insistence.
Then faintly, Glory said: "You didn't make me any promise. If youhad--I'd give it back to you."
She rose unsteadily and stood gathering her strength, and Spurrier,struggling against the impulse which assailed him like a madness tothrow down the whole structure of his past and designed future andsweep her into his arms, stood with a metal-like rigidity of posture.
Whatever his ultimate decision might be, he kept telling himself, nodecision reached by surrender to such tidal emotion at a moment ofequinox could be trusted. Glory herself would not trust it long.
So while the room remained voiceless and the minds of the man and thegirl were rocking in the swirl of their feelings, the physical sensesthemselves seemed, instead of inert, preternaturally keen--andsomething came to Spurrier's ears which forced its way to hisattention through the barrier of his abstraction.
Never had the calls of the quail been so frequent and incessantbefore, but this sound was different, as though some one in the nearbytangle had stumbled and in the effort to catch himself had caught andshaken the leafage.
So the man went to the door and stood looking out.
For a moment he remained there framed and exposed as if painted upon atarget, and--so close that they seemed to come together--two riflesspoke, and two bullets came whining into the house. One imbeddeditself with a soggy thud in the squared logs of the rear wall but one,more viciously directed by the chances of its course, struck full inthe center of the glass that covered the pictured face of VivienHarrison and sent the portrait clattering and shattered to the floor.
In an instant Spurrier had leaped back, once more miraculously saved,and slammed the door, but while he was dropping the stanch bar intoits sockets, a crash of glass and fresh roars from another directiontold him that he was also being fired upon through the window. Thatmeant that the house was surrounded.
"Who are they, Jack?" gasped the girl, shocked by that unwarnedfusillade into momentary forgetfulness of everything, except that herlover was beset by enemies, and the man who was reaching for hisrifle, and whose eyes had hardened into points of flint, shook hishead.
"Whoever they are," he answered, "they want me--only me--but it wouldbe death for you to go out through the door."
He drew her to a shadowed corner out of line with both door andwindow, and seized her passionately in his arms.
"If we--can't have each other----" he declared tensely, "I don't wantlife. You said you'd almost rather see me killed than lose me toanother woman. Now, listen!"
Holding her close to his breast, he drew a deep breath and hisnarrowed eyes softened into something like contentment.
"If you tried to go out first, you'd die before they recognized you.They think I'm alone here and they'll shoot at the first movement. Butif _I_ go out first and fight as long as I can then they'll besatisfied and the way will be clear for you."
She threw back her head and her hysterical laugh was scornful.
"Clear for me after _you're_ dead!" she exclaimed. "Hev ye got twoguns? We'll both go out alive or else neither one of us."
Then suddenly she drew away from him, and he saw her hurriedlyscribbling on a scrap of paper. Outside it was quiet again.
Glory folded the small sheet and took the pigeon from its basket andthen, for the first time, Spurrier, who had forgotten the bird,divined her intent.
He was busying himself with laying out cartridges, and preparing for asiege, and when he looked up again she stood with the bird against hercheek, just as she had held the dead quail on that first day.
But before he could interfere she had drawn near the window and he sawthat to reach the broken pane and liberate the pigeon she must, for amoment, stand exposed.
He leaped for her with a shout of warning, but she had straightenedand thrust the bird out, and then to the accompaniment of a horribleuproar of musketry that drowned his own outcry he saw her fall back.
Spurrier was instantly on his knees lifting the drooping head, and asher lids flickered down she whispered with a pallid smile:
"The bird's free. He'll carry word home--if ye kin jest hold 'em backfer a spell
and----"