Complete weird tales of.., p.1326
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1326
In the beginning it had been a mere lifting of his shooting cap as they passed each other in silence; then it became a grave good-morning on the narrow trail; and afterward it was the faintest of smiles from her, making her timid good-morning exquisite.
Recollections of her, now, always caused him to think of something white and fragrant and dewy — like blackberry vines in blossom, long, snowy sprays of them curving and crisscrossing the trail — perhaps associated with her in his mind because it was early summer when he first saw her in his district.
At the edge of the territory allotted him stood the log schoolhouse where she taught, haunted by the supple, quick-moving offspring of the shiftless forest derelicts — wild, shy, ragged little things, sun-browned, bright-eyed, darting under cover at the approach of a stranger, popping up like rabbits to look after him when he had passed.
But school ended, and the spawn of the forest returned to it and vanished in the undergrowth like partridge chicks; and now the schoolmistress, Kathleen Glade, came no more into Kent’s district.
He had, however, little leisure to sentimentalize over her absence or to haunt the closed schoolhouse where the wooden shutters remained closed and the flag no longer floated from its unpainted staff. For Burling, the new chief, was tremendously in earnest, and though the men he had sent out to watch and to collect evidence were trained foresters and woodsmen, they had their hands full the minute they entered the districts assigned them under a new policy and a new administration.
Here in this vast country of forests, mountains, lakes, and tumbling rivers there was but one formidable, treacherous, and destructive beast to watch, to follow, to circumvent — Man!
Even some of the game protectors had proven unfaithful — party henchmen appointed through sordid political considerations. The proportion of misdemeanor and crime to the scanty population interested the new Commissioner. And now in every county his men were out.
All summer long Kent haunted that part of Sagamore County in which his district lay, camping contentedly alone, scornful of wayside rumours or halfveiled hints from road house and tavern, never denying his identity nor ever admitting it, foraging for himself, aided by purchases from some lonely, crossroad store.
Every week he flagged a train on the U. A. R. R. and forwarded his report to Albany, then sauntered off across the track into the woods, an object of burning curiosity to crew and passengers.
Sometimes, sitting in some rough tavern, apparently dozing in his wet fishing garments, he heard very plainly the vague muttering and threats of the barroom oafs and loafers. But, as far as they could see, he dozed on, unconcerned.
So for a long while Sagamore County remained uncertain as to his name and business, and many finally accepted him as an ordinary city man, camping and fishing for his own pleasure. But rumours came from other counties of other men behaving in a similar manner, and not to be accounted for save as the first symptoms of a new Commissioner and a new policy.
Still, nothing unpleasant happened to Kent. Once, at the opening of the deer season, three signal shots from a confrère had brought him across the forest in haste, only to find that same confrère in sentimental juxtaposition with a pretty and preoccupied young girl whom he married next day.
But although Kent had learned that his comrade’s sudden wife was Kathleen Glade’s sister, he was obliged to postpone further inquiries and to return to his own district as soon as his duty ended along Lynx Brook. And, anyway, Kathleen Glade had a husband, despite her virginal allure and her eighteen years — one Hal Glade, local game protector, already under deep suspicion at Albany.
Kent came into contact with Glade a few days later, in company with a wall-eyed boon companion, notorious for crooked dealing in pelts and illegally taken game. They were squatting on a fallen tree, whispering together, and Kent’s silent appearance made them jump.
“Hey!” exclaimed Glade, plainly flustered, and jumping up from his log. “Hey you got a license for that there gun, Mister?”
“Are you a warden?” inquired Kent amiably.
“Pm Game Protector Glade,” blustered that rat-eyed individual, “and I’ll be much obliged if you’ll just show me that there license o’ your a, Mister.”
“Here it is,” said Kent, good-humouredly.
While Glade scanned it, Kent inspected the other man, whose only remarkable feature was a wall-eye, not seared and whitened, but of a bright golden colour, like the metallic and lustrous iris of a bird of prey. “Any luck?” inquired Kent affably.
“No,” said the wall-eyed one. But Kent knew he had drawn a deer within the hour, judging from his soiled sleeves and hands.
Glade handed back the license and his little, mean eyes seemed to bore into Kent’s:
“Had any luck?” he inquired.
There were a couple of grouse bulging Kent’s pocket; he touched them with a shrug.
“Hain’t seed no deer sign, hev ye?” demanded the wall-eyed one, in a thin, nasal voice.
“Plenty. Nothing very fresh.”
“You can believe me, young man,” said Glade, “there hain’t no deer around here. They’ve run ’em all off, hain’t they, Hank?”
“B’ gosh, they hev,” said the wall-eyed one.
“Lemme tell you what to do,” urged Glade, becoming loquaciously familiar; “you go over to the hotel behind Lynx Peak an’ hire a guide. That’s the only way to git a buck in Sagamore County — an’ he can bet on that, can’t he, Hank?”
“S’ help me, God,” admitted Hank, piously.
“I understand there is a man around here who guides hunters — a man called Jim Wildrick—”
“Wildrick? Naw! He don’t do no guidin’,” returned Glade hastily. “Say, who told you that, Mister?”
“Oh, I’ve heard it,” replied Kent, carelessly. Then, glancing at Hank: “Don’t you guide hunters?”
“Me? No! Say, what put that idee into you, Mister? Why, I ain’t never shot a deer in my hull life, hev I, Hal?”
“Naw,” said Glade. “If you seed a doe into these here woods you wouldn’t know her from a mewl.”
Kent shrugged and turned away. Then, as at an afterthought, he glanced back at Glade:
“By the way,” he remarked, “somebody very carelessly spilled a bag of salt down by the brook, yonder. I thought, since you are a warden, it might interest you.” A dead silence fell on the group; Kent leisurely lighted his pipe, extinguished the match with care, tossed his rifle to his shoulder, and strolled off without another glance behind him, perfectly aware that he was going to be trailed.
But rocky slopes and new ankle moccasins left him small need for mental alacrity or physical exertion. So contemptuous was he of the precious pair sneaking after him that, doubling without effort, he yawned in sheer ennui as they lumbered past, like two headlong and ferocious hogs on a truffled trail.
But that was neither the point nor the problem; to evade these two notorious men was easy enough; but to secure evidence against them and to destroy the fierce and corrupt alliance between them presented a case bristling with difficulties.
A flat stone, a trip-stick, and a bait of corn or winter grapes was evidence, truly enough, but to connect these phenomena with Glade and his crony, wall-eyed Hank, had so far been beyond Kent’s power, even when a dead hare or grouse or squirrel lay there in mute corroboration and appeal.
On Kent’s information, men were watching all express and parcel post packages, and had seized some; but so far all discoveries involved others, and not Glade and his wall-eyed chum.
Glade’s ice house had been entered and ransacked in vain; his truck garden probed without result, his movements watched by the forester in charge of the district — and nothing discovered to incriminate this Protector, who every honest man knew was probably faithless to his trust.
And finally Kent’s confrère concluded that Glade’s field of operations lay elsewhere, and notified Kent that his own district might possibly be the territory.
At first glance Kent’s district seemed unsuitable for such operations. Three-quarters of it was open country, patched with brush and the flimsy second growth incident to fire; and that portion was easily kept under surveillance.
But there was a hill — really a small mountain — called Lynx Peak, dominating it. Ancient apple orchards clung to its lower flanks — some of these clearings choked and almost obliterated by second growth, some still open under the gnarled and lichen-encrusted limbs of the abandoned fruit trees.
And, at the foot of Lynx Peak, Kent had discovered a sack of cattle salt.
To sit up over this was not his intention — which was why he deliberately spoke of it to Glade. But the matter of Lynx Peak caused him anxiety, as did the too frequent shots from the lower slopes at dusk. And twice he had seen a light shining up there for an instant; and half a dozen trees all splashed and filthy offered him the unpleasant information that some dead doe, buck, or fawn had hung on each, and had been drawn and quartered there.
To prowl around second growth and abandoned orchards at dusk, where sullen and lawless men might make “mistakes” with bullet and buckshot, was a ticklish matter. Twice, already, their heavy, low-power bullets had struck the tree behind which Kent lay flat, but no flanking skill of his could bring him nearer to the unseen riflemen, although their non-appearance in the bullet’s wake was sufficient to establish murderous intentions.
Pondering, perplexed, he lay on the mountain flank one frosty morning, curled up in the wild grass under the limbs of an aged apple tree. Autumn sunshine fell aslant the hoary bark and gilded the dead grass, warming him where he lay looking out and down at the woods and brush fields below. And there, for the first time since last summer, he saw the faded flag flying from its unpainted pole before the log school-house.
The heart of Kent gave a quick and unmistakable thump; and, perhaps it was the perfume from the sun-heated grasses amid which he lay — perhaps it was a lively imagination — but the still, pure air around him seemed to exhale a spring-like fragrance, and he thought of snowy sprays of bloom — and of her.
That afternoon he contrived to meet her on the forest trail, and her shyly startled greeting checked him in his valiant and carefully rehearsed resolve to speak to her. For where women were concerned Kent had little courage: the shyest of them possessed more than he.
Whether Kathleen Glade, with no experience in matters sentimental — unless the dreadful parody with Glade were included — perceived in this young man her inferior in that sort of courage, there is no knowing. But it happened that, passing him again on the trail the next afternoon, she let her grey eyes linger on his a moment — something she had never before done — which scared the last remnant of pluck out of him.
Maybe the girl saw it go — or perhaps the pale ghost of a smile that edged her lips was bora of some inward and pleasant memory.
Anyway, poltroon that he had become, Kent stood still in the trail, looking after her. She did not turn. All the young woods were exquisitely eloquent of her passing; the scented silence glowed in the red splendour of the setting sun. Then the mousy dusk crept through the woods. And in that grey enchantment Kent still stood there, motionless, looking back along a trail invisible, trodden by a vague sweet phantom, fragrant and blossom-white.
All night long the girl lay awake; but before sunrise she fell asleep, and was aroused only by Glade kicking in the door of her bedroom.
“Say! What the hell! What kind of a schoolmarm be you!” he demanded. “Asleep at sun-up, an’ five mile to the school ‘us! An’ no vittles cookin’, an’ me needin’ your pay! What with this damn Burling an’ his doin’s takin, the bread out of hones’ folks’ mouths—”
Fury stifled him, and his rage grew blacker as his young wife, scarlet with the shame of his intrusion, covered herself to her chin with the ragged bedclothes.
“Quit that!” he said. “Lemme tell you I’m gittin’ damn sick of this here modesty an’ funny business. An’ it’s got to stop, do you hear?”
She said nothing.
“Air you my wife or air you not?” he roared. “Air you mine to do with as I’ve a mind to — or hain’t you, b’ gosh!”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shiver.
“Oh! You don’t know, don’t you? Yes you do. You know damn well you belong to me! That’s what you know!”
“How do I know, Hal?”
“Bec’us I tell you!” he shouted. “That’s how you know!”
“Sometimes, when you are very angry, you tell me I am not married to you.”
“Can’t you take a little joke, you gol-dummed thing!” he yelled. “Ain’t you got no wit into you?”
“I have never seen any certificate,” she said dully.
“Quit that whinin’ about certificates. Don’t I tell you it’s all right? Ain’t I promised to give it to you just as soon as you make good—”
A hot scarlet flush mantled her from brow to throat.
“You’re mine to do with as I’ve a mind to!” he repeated. “Ain’t I proved it by the lickin’s I’ve give you? Hain’t you submitted to ’em like a dootiful wife? Hey? Ain’t that proof concloosive that you’re my wife?”
“You can never prove it by anything except blows,” she said.
“Ain’t it my right to cherish and love an’ philander—”
“No!”
“Hey! Not even if I give you your damn certificate — or hitch up with you legally?”
“I don’t want you now.”
“Then, by God—”
“Remember what I’ve told you,” she said, her grey eyes coldly brilliant.
He remembered. For when, married as she supposed, she had demanded the proof from him, he had attempted violence. Then, within the very hour of the informal ceremony, pretended or otherwise — she did not know which — the girl’s eyes opened, appalled at what she had done to herself. And, dishevelled, bruised, bleeding, but mistress of the dreadful situation, shotgun in hand, she had warned Glade from her room and had told him that if ever again he attempted that kind of violence, sooner or later she would kill him.
And Glade believed her, and was afraid. Also he had a horror of bigamy, two brothers now serving terms for the overfond offense. Moreover, to complicate matters, a sick and abandoned wife of his in Hamilton County seemed to be too big a fool even to die. So what was an honest man to do — with a shotgun as an additional problem to worry him, and a young girl who submitted to blows but to nothing else — not even to a kiss.
“G’wan to school!” snapped Glade. “D’y’ hear?”
“Don’t touch me, Hal—”
“Hey!” — he slapped her face, where she crouched. “I’ll learn ye to talk to me—”
In a flash she had sprung from the bed, half naked, her grey eyes ablaze under her dishevelled hair.
Both reached for the shotgun in the corner; she got it, whipped it to her cheek.
“Jesus!” he shrieked. “Be you fixin’ fur to murder me?”
“If you touch me again TO kill you, Hal.”
“Put down that gun!”
“No, I shall take it with me.... I am going.”
“Well, go to hell then!” he snarled.
“I may.... I don’t know where I am going. But am not coming back, Hal.”
“Well, g’wan, then! Git out an’ stay out — you poor, sick-faced, whiny, gol-durned — thing! Pm done figurin’ what to do with you; I’m through; I’ve got enough o’ wimmen, by God! Git to hell out o’ here and stay!”
And he went out, cursing and slamming the door of her room behind him.
A letter summoning him to Albany reached Kent through the usual channels. Whether Burling merely desired to confer with him personally, or whether he was to be permanently detached from the district, he did not know.
Standing there on the valley trail, pack strapped on his back, rifle in hand, he read and reread the letter, striving to arrive at some conclusion, but, study it as hard as he might, the brief, formal wording disclosed to him nothing of the Commissioner’s intentions.
So he put the letter away inside his shooting coat once more, adjusted his pack and resumed the trend of thought, now, alas! sadly and desperately disordered by the summons from Burling. For the only thought that his youthful head now contained — and had contained for days — concerned Kathleen Glade and his own state of mind regarding her.
Having been carefully brought up by several maiden aunts, he knew that it was not proper for unmarried young men to fall in love with married women. Which knowledge, heretofore, had irked him not at all, he considering such an event impossible as far as it concerned himself.
Now, as he wandered along the trail, garbed and accoutered for his journey, his steps lagged. For he was asking himself to try to explain to himself exactly what had happened to himself on this same trail. And what was to become of the moral precepts inculcated by his maiden aunts?
The effect of Burling’s sudden summons, the dawning realization that he might never again see Kathleen Glade, and his own low state of mind, required explanation.
There seemed to be something really serious the matter with him, and he began to fear what might be the nature of it.
As he moved slowly along the base of Lynx Peak his absent glance encountered the spilled heap of cattle salt. Many deer had enjoyed it unmolested, so thorough and complete had been his success in arousing alarm and suspicion in the minds of Glade and the wall-eyed one. And he concluded that the salt might be left there with perfect safety for the present.
As he wandered along — not always keeping to the trail — for all his preoccupation, his quick eyes acted instinctively, faithful to their possessor’s business, noting imprints of deer and fox, the mark on a tree where a bear had rubbed head and shoulders, the cushioned progress of a wild cat across a swamp, dry powder from a rotten log where dusting grouse had left bits of down.
Twice, mechanically, his feet followed the half obliterated trail of some law-breaker; but the dangling twigs hanging by a shred, which “lined” it, were old and withered; and when at length he came upon the concealed trap, the flat stone had crushed the rotting trip-stick, and a cover of newly fallen leaves blotted out an infamy that had failed.
