Part 6

"Oh, can I bear it? Oh, go on; do go on! O God, give me strength to wait."

Though she tore off her gloves in nervous impatience, still she left the rein upon the horse's neck, for she knew that the willing beast was doing his best.

He stopped again, and still once more, before they came to the foot of the bald, whose slippery, dead grass added another peril to the climb. The trail ended here, for it was not needed where a sled could go anywhere over the clearing.

"Come, dear boy. Come, dear old horse," she urged. "Five minutes more will take us there."

The watch's cruel face told the hour to be twelve minutes past twelve, but Sydney did not feel so keen a pang as when she looked last, although it was later than the fatal hour. The continued silence gave her confidence. Only the bay of a hound in some cove below, and the yelp of a puppy, reached her.

She was dully dogged. The horse stumbled and scrambled on.

"We can't do better than our best, Johnny. May God keep them! Oh, Johnny! My dear, faithful Johnny, don't fall! Get up--_get up_!" she cried.

As he settled on to his side to roll up on to his feet again,--a process that his labored breathing and the weight of his rider made difficult on the sharp incline,--she slipped from his back and struggled on on foot.

She was near the crest of the mountain,--the bunch of chestnut-trees on the summit showed their swelling buds against the sky just over her head,--yet how slow was her advance! The sedge-grass caught her feet; the blackberry-vines tore at her skirt; a rolling pebble threw her down upon her hands.

In an instant she was up and on again,--she was at the summit at last! And there, just below the crest on the other side, facing each other on their animals, like knights of old, were the two men she sought.

IX

"It Needed Only This!"

Trembling she stood, looking down upon the foes below her. Her hands were knotted against her breast, that heaved with nature's cry at her cruelty. The thumping of her heart shook her body mercilessly. The anguish of her soul dried her throat, and filled her eyes with dread, and made her an embodiment of horror. Yet a stir of gratitude fought with fear for a place in her.

"Thank God, I am not too late!" was her voiceless cry.

Through the clear air came the sound of a voice, sharply articulate.

"It is not enough that you eat my bread and go forth from my door to do your treacherous act. You come again to my house to scorn at me after my humiliation, and you have not the courage to own your falseness. And now, when I demand from you the satisfaction that most surely do you owe me, how do you make a mock at me? Is that a weapon with which gentlemen do fight? Is it a shot-gun that men do carry to a duel?"

The hitherto still figure on the Doctor's horse stirred uneasily.

"And see, I break it." The mule turned back his ears, as upon them fell the click of the opening gun, followed by the drop of a shell into an open palm. "_Ach_, yes, I thought so! It needed only this! This so small shot is for the birds!"

A thud vibrated on the air--the sound of the flung-down weapon.

"Now, if you-all were only an American, Ah could make you understand right quick that----"

The Doctor's slow drawl was broken by an exclamation from von Rittenheim. Morgan followed the German's eyes, and saw above them against the fleckless blue of the heavens the brilliant figure of the girl, her hands straining against her breast, her face a field where anxiety and grief flitted like clouds across the background of the sky.

She came down towards them when she saw herself observed, and the two men silently dismounted as she approached, and pulled off their caps, less in salutation than from instinctive respect for deep emotion.

It was a poor little appeal she made, as words went. Her voice was hardly whisper-high, so labored was her breathing. She held out her hands to them one after the other, in supplication.

"You won't do it! Oh, please don't! I came---- You mustn't----" Her breath came in gasps.

Von Rittenheim mutely took the pleading hands in his, and reverently kissed them. He faced the Doctor brokenly.

"I thought you had heaped upon me every humiliation. Until now this was lacking. You might have spared me this!"

Mounting his mule he broke into the thicket and disappeared.

The two left behind--the tawny, stooping Carolinian and the girl, gone white-lipped in spite of the beating of her heart--stared in silence at the copse as long as they could hear the crash of the breaking twigs and resisting branches.

Sydney still was intent on the lessening sounds when the old man's keen blue eyes withdrew themselves from the wood and scrutinized her face, pitiably drawn and colorless.

"H'm," he grunted, and added, mentally, "Hard lines for Bob."

The sound of his ejaculation reached the girl's dulled ears. She turned to him with a touch of distrust, and yet a look of question that seemed to implore her old friend for an explanation that might save him to her as an honest man. The Doctor was touched by it. He nodded in the direction in which the Baron had disappeared.

"Crazy, plumb crazy," he averred.

Sydney's dry lips formed a soundless "Why?"

"He's got some notion in his head that Ah've done him an injury--you heard him?"

She nodded.

"Ah swear to you, Sydney, Ah haven't any idea what he means, but he harps on it, and he sent me a challenge, as Ah suppose you know, or you wouldn't be here."

"Yes. Bob brought me."

"Ah bluffed him off fo' three days. Ah hoped Ah might think of something that would get him out of that vein without hurting his foreign feelings, but Ah couldn't think of anything, so Ah 'lowed to pretend to play up to his game, and in some way turn it into a joke."

"The bird-shot was the joke?"

The Doctor colored dimly under his tan.

"Well, Ah must confess that it seemed to me mo' humorous when Ah was loading up the guns at home than when the Baron was discoursing about it."

"I should think so. I should think----"

Sydney bit her sentence in two. She felt too uncontrolled to allow herself to comment upon the Doctor's conduct.

"Ah certainly believe he's crazy or going to have a fever, and Ah'll find some way of watching him. Ah suppose he won't let me on his place now; Ah'll have to see Bud. Where's yo' horse?" he asked, suddenly.

Sydney pressed her hand to her head confusedly.

"I don't know. Back there somewhere."

"Come, we must hunt him. You seem tired to death, child. Did you ride hard?"

"It was about an hour and ten minutes to the foot of the bald."

She was dragging herself wearily up to the chestnut-trees.

"An hour and ten minutes to the foot of the bald? From where?"

"From home."

"From Oakwood? Holy Smoke! What did Bob let you do such a fool thing fo'?" he ejaculated, angrily. "Where is Bob, anyway?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since--I think it was--I don't know where it was," she ended, weakly, and with distress.

The Doctor looked at her keenly.

"Here, never mind him; he can take care of himself well enough; better than he can of you, by the looks of it. Sit down, now; yes, right here on the grass, and drink this."

He gave her a draught from his flask, standing over her threateningly when she hesitated at the entire contents of the cup cover.

"Take it all," he insisted, "every drop. It's the only thing on earth that's health to its enemies and death to its friends."

Sydney leaned back wearily against a jutting rock and closed her eyes. Her head swam, and she resigned herself to the Doctor's commands with the blessed feeling of relief that a woman has when responsibility falls from her own upon some man's shoulders.

A whoop from the chestnuts made her open her eyes.

"Is it Bob?"

"Yes, leading Johnny." Doctor Morgan raised his voice. "Come down here. You're a pretty feller to carry a girl to ride," he continued, as Bob tied the horse to one of the chestnuts and sprang down the slope. "No girl in my time ever shook me like that. Where did she lose you?"

Bob answered nothing to his father's gibes, but bent anxiously over Sydney.

"You are not hurt, de--Sydney? Just awfully done up? I ought not to have let you come. It's been too hard a ride. It's all my fault," he went on, accusingly, while the Doctor nodded his head in agreement, and Sydney tried in vain to interrupt.

"No, indeed, Bob, you were not to blame at all. I made you promise, and I couldn't have forgiven you or myself if I hadn't been here when----"

She fell back against the rock, and the Doctor broke in, by way of diversion,--

"Where's Gray Eagle?"

"Down at the tobacco barn. He got wild and balked the steep part of the trail, so I tied him to a tree and left him to kick it out."

"You walked up, then?"

"Yes, and found Johnny gluttonously eating blackberry-vines on the other side of the bald. That scared me to death, for I thought he'd made way with Sydney in some mysterious fashion,--perhaps eaten her,--and was indulging in dessert! Where's your enemy?"

The Doctor glanced quickly at Sydney, and frowned at Bob.

"Gone home," was all he would say.

They lifted the girl on to her horse, and Bob guided him down to the very foot of the mountain. At the tobacco barn the Doctor untied Gray Eagle, subdued by his enforced loneliness, and led him behind them.

"Bob will stay to luncheon at Oakwood, it's so late," said Sydney to him as they parted at his gate. "You'll not forget to find out in some way if the Baron is ill, will you?"

"No, my dear, I'll watch him like the Pinkertons' eye that never sleeps," returned the old man, genially.

"Mrs. Carroll has gone into the dining-room," the servant told them at the door, and Sydney assumed much cheerfulness as she made her apologies.

"I've brought Bob, grandmother. He's been all over everywhere with me this morning. You'll forgive me, Katrina, for leaving you, won't you? Where's Mr. Wendell?"

"Not back from Asheville yet."

"He went in yesterday," explained Mrs. Carroll to Bob. "I suppose the train is late. It does seem as if they grow more and more uncertain, and when there are only two a day each way, it certainly is annoying, very. You wouldn't know what to make of so meagre an arrangement, would you, Katrina dear?"

"There's the carriage now," said Bob. "The train couldn't have been much over an hour behind time; surely you wouldn't complain of that."

"I feel as if I had been journeying for days," said John, sitting down, "and had seen the sights of far-distant worlds."

"It's the obelisk in Court Square that makes you think that," suggested Sydney.

"Or the battlements on the library building," added Bob.

"Are there street-cars?" asked Katrina.

"Street-cars? Why, child, there are street-cars to burn--electric ones, too. I felt grievously defrauded. I wanted a mule tram."

"The mule is an unfashionable animal," said Mrs. Carroll. "Time was when a handsome pair of mules was considered not unsuitable to draw a gentleman's carriage."

"The farmers aren't using them so much, either," said Bob. "They're too unreliable. Horses are cheaper, too."

"I saw some very decent saddle-horses in town--of their kind."

"What's their kind?"

"Long-tailed single-footers, Katrina."

"The easiest gait in the world," put in Bob, combatively, disregarding the tails.

"It looks so. And not a Derby hat in the whole place except mine."

"And not a silk one, except on colored coachmen," added Sydney, maliciously.

"Did you drive about?"

"I saw all the sights, dear Mrs. Carroll. I have done to a brown the Vanderbilt place, the Sunset Drive, and the junction of the Swannanoa and the French Broad. I flogged a rebellious horse to Gold View, and I scaled Beaumont and looked down into Chunn's Cove. I gazed at the--you will excuse me, I hope--faded exterior of a tobacco warehouse----"

"The farmers don't grow much now," interpolated Bob.

"So I was told. And I beheld with rapture the architecture of the Federal Building. That's the fullest beehive for its size, isn't it? Post-office, revenue office,--goodness knows what's in it!"

"Is the United States Court on yet?" asked Bob.

"Not being a victim, I don't know."

"You don't have to be a victim to find that out. The whole town is filled with the rural population who are interested in the liquor cases,--and our rural population is unmistakable."

"If that's the sign, then it isn't on, for only about half the town looked egregiously rural. Now I think of it, though, the court is going to sit day after to-morrow."

"Of course. It's the first Monday in May, isn't it?"

"Please ask me how I knew it. Thank you, Mrs. Carroll. I see that you are about to oblige me. Know then, good people, that this humble worm that you see before you has had the honor of occupying the same seat in the train with a minion of the law,--in fact, a revenue officer."

"Coming out to-day?"

"Yes. And, furthermore, he paid the flag-station of Flora the distinguished attention of getting out there."

"Was he after somebody?"

"He was about to jog the memories of several people, and I think you'll be surprised to know who one of them is. Mrs. Carroll, how can you expect the less fortunate part of your community to keep in the straight and narrow way, when the aristocracy--yea, verily, the nobility--sets it so bad an example?"

"What do you mean, John?"

"I'm going to write a tale to be called 'The Titled Moonshiner; or, The Baron's Quart of Corn.'"

Sydney and Bob looked at each other with dawning comprehension, yet without the ability entirely to clear away the fog.

"John, are you hinting any slur against Baron von Rittenheim, our neighbor and good friend?" The old lady was radiating dignity and indignation.

"I'm not hinting a thing, my dear Mrs. Carroll. I'm telling you what the affable revenue man told me. About a month ago, it seems, your friend and neighbor entertained a guest who proved to be, not an angel in disguise, but a deputy-marshal on his way to Asheville. Not knowing the official position of his visitor, von Rittenheim sold him a quart of whisky of his own vintage. Whereupon, like all other chilled vipers that have been warmed by this or other means, even from the far days of fable, the beast retaliated. He returned the next day and arrested him."

Mrs. Carroll and Katrina cried out in surprise and indignation. Bob's eyes were fixed upon Sydney, and she, ghastly white, was crumbling her bread into bits.

"The next day? Why, that is why he didn't come here for so long, Sydney!"

"He's under bond to appear at the next sitting of the United States Court, and, as that comes in on Monday, you understand the appearance of my friend the enemy on the train."

"Poor fellow!" murmured Katrina.

"Why in the world should the Baron sell any whisky, I should like to have some one tell me," demanded Mrs. Carroll. "And why didn't we see it in the paper?"

"Probably the name was put in incorrectly," Bob suggested. "The Asheville reporters aren't accustomed to German."

Sydney was silent. But upon Bob, for his father's sake, she laid accusing eyes, for she thought she had a clue to the words that had come to her ears through the clear air as she stood upon the top of Buck Mountain.

X

Through the Mist

One day in the autumn, a few weeks after he had bought Ben Frady's farm, von Rittenheim had taken his gun, and had whistled to heel one of the hounds that had preferred to stay in his old home with an unknown master rather than endure the precarious temper of the known quantity, and had climbed Buzzard, the mountain behind his cabin, in search of squirrel or quail.

As the day advanced, fleecy clouds gathered over the sky and obscured the sun, and then thickened and turned leaden. Suddenly, as the huntsman tramped across a clearing, a one-time cornfield high on the side of the mountain, he saw a mass of fog rolling towards him, and before he could descend below its level he found himself enveloped in the mist of a passing cloud. Heavy as a palpable thing it closed around him, impenetrable to the eye, chilling to the whole physical being, fraught with discouragement and depression to the mind.

Friedrich tried to regain a path that he remembered to have crossed a few minutes before, but under the trees the gloom was too dense for profitable search. Moisture began to collect upon the leaf tips and to drip upon him. The dog did not answer to his whistle. There were no points of the compass; there was no view of the valley below. He was like a ship rudderless. He only knew of a surety that the earth was beneath his feet, and as night drew on, and he could no longer see the soil his boot-soles pressed, he only knew that he was descending.

And then of a sudden came the barking of a dog in greeting, and the bray of a hungry mule, and he found himself close upon a cabin, and by a freak of fortune it proved to be his own, and he was at home.

Vaguely enough, yet insistently, the experience kept recurring to him during the days in Asheville, when he was awaiting his trial.

He went into the court-room in the Federal Building and watched, with a languid curiosity born of its foreignness, the easy-going ceremony of the opening of court. A group of lawyers laughed and gossiped at the front. A larger number of men, who proved to be potential jurors, gathered on one side and talked together more quietly, impressed by the novelty of their experience; while the men who had served on the jury before explained the furnishing of the room to them.

Some ladies were ushered into seats near the bench by a dapper young lawyer. Behind a railing, all about von Rittenheim, in front of him, beside him, and back of him, were the lean forms and bent shoulders of the mountaineers who were witnesses or principals in the whisky cases that fill so fully the docket of this court. From their appearance it was impossible to tell which were the law-breakers and which the bearers of testimony against them. There were old men and boys. Children were clinging to the skirts of their mothers, who had come to town either as witnesses or for the holiday. One woman was quieting a crying baby with the gag that a baby never refuses. She herself was soothed by the snuff-stick that protruded from the space left vacant by the early decay of her two front teeth.

The air rapidly grew heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies and of moist tobacco, and with the peculiar oily odor of corn whisky.

A short man of important bearing stepped in front of the rail and scanned the mass behind it. He easily singled out von Rittenheim, whose cropped head shone fair from among the towsled pows around him.

"Oh, von Rittenheim," he called, "step out here a minute."

"My so good friend, Mr. Weaver?" acknowledged Friedrich, looking at him through the squinting eyes that a sharp headache gave him.

"You'll be held by the grand jury, of course, von Rittenheim, but you needn't stay here all the time. Just drop in once or twice a day and see how the list stands. Some of these are old cases crowded out of the last term, and we may not get to you until Wednesday or Thursday. It ain't a right enjoyable place to stay in, and you'd better go out in the fresh air--you look sick."

"My head does give me pain," Friedrich admitted.

"Your case can't possibly be called to-day, anyway. You'd better go off until to-morrow."

"I thank you. I will when I have seen the honorable judge come in. It is most new to me, these customs of yours."

"I reckon they must be," returned Weaver, with something like pity in his upward glance at the drawn face above him. He scuttled off as a voice cried,--

"The court! the court!"

The lawyers scampered to their places behind the bar, and stood to acknowledge the entrance of the judge.

Beyond thinking him strangely unjudicial in appearance, Friedrich took no interest in him, for he did not regard him as the arbiter of his fate, since he had learned the customary sentence for cases like his, which was pronounced with the regularity of machinery and knew no variety.

He waited until another half-hour's observation had made clear to him the method of drawing the jurors. He left this task still in process of being fulfilled, and urged his way out of the press that held him fast.

The fresh, cool air was as wine to him, for wine invigorates the body while it clouds the mind. His lungs greedily took in great draughts of its light purity, and his blood raced so merrily that he grew confused. Always the pain bit into his eyes, and through his half-closed lids he saw but dimly the people around him and the pavement beneath his feet.

He went back to the little room that he had hired, and slept heavily into the afternoon. When he went out to get his supper at a restaurant, the gaunt figures of his fellow-criminals were at every step. They gazed curiously into the lighted shop-windows; they talked in groups that overflowed the curbstone into the gutter. In a vacant lot back of the Methodist church the glare of a camp-fire showed the covered wagon that was to give a night's shelter to the family whose shadows were cast large against its canvas side.

As he passed each group of them the odor that he had breathed for an hour in the morning assailed his nostrils and seemed to force itself into his lungs. He could not eat his supper, and he spent a restless night, filled with horrid dreams. Sydney was selling whisky to Mr. Weaver. The Judge turned into Dr. Morgan, who grinned triumphantly at his victim as he stood in the crowd behind the rail. He bent to kiss the hand of Mrs. Carroll, and she held in it a shell filled with bird-shot.

Always the sickening odor of the overheated court-room choked him, and his head throbbed unceasingly, and the balls of his eyes beat in anguished unison.

The first electric-car passing the house in the early dawn crashed into his dream as the bullet that was speeding from his revolver to Dr. Morgan's heart, and found its resting-place in Sydney's breast instead. He woke to find himself soaked with the sweat of exhaustion.