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panther had missed his spring; he would not try again to-night. Ross
laughed a little softly to himself as he imagined Jabe skulking quietly
between the dripping trees to the horse that must be tied somewhere
near the timber’s edge, getting on the animal and riding down the
river road to his store. Yes, that’s what the old man would do. And,
after that, Ross Adene knew that the next move in the game was his.
“I reckon I’d better take you on home,” he said at length. “If we’re
a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night, I’ve got some sev-rul things to
do.”
Hand in hand they went through the drenched leafage, speaking
low, Vesta trying feebly to remonstrate. When they came to where
the lighted windows of the Minter cabin made squares of ruddy light
in the blue-black darkness, Ross said his farewells.
“You put on whatever frock it is you want to be married in to-
morrow night and go to meetin’,” he concluded. “For wedded we’ll
shorely be at Brush Arbor church. I’ll speak to the preacher, an’
mebby your daddy’ll come to the weddin’ hisself.”
Vesta wept. She kissed her lover farewell as we bid good-by to
the dead. In the dim radiance streaming out from the dwelling she
watched his rain-gemmed, yellow head as he walked away, hat in
hand, shoulders squared, moving proudly.
“O Lord,” she sighed to herself, “why can’t men persons take
things like women does—a few ill words and no harm done?”
The night sky refusing answer, she went silently in and to bed.
NEXT morning Ross Adene put his house in order, as might a man on
the eve of a duel. His day was busily spent. He notified the revivalist
who was conducting meetings at Brush Arbor church of an intention
to wed Vesta Turrentine directly after sermon that night, and, late in
the afternoon, took his dugout canoe and dropped thoughtfully down
the river toward Turrentine’s Landing. There was money in his
pocket, but no weapon on him. He had not traveled the road, for he
knew that even in daylight some wayside clump of trees might hide
an ambush. He put his canoe into the current, crossed the stream,
going down the farther bank, out of rifle-shot of the leaning willows
that dipped long, green tresses to the water, offering a veil for a
possible foe. When he was opposite the landing he came squarely
across, his eyes searching the prospect ahead.
There was nobody about as he beached his boat, pulling it well
up out of reach of the current, and walked deliberately toward the
store. The landing had no village, the only buildings being the store,
Turrentine’s dwelling, and barns. He approached the former by the
front way, and stopped in the door, offering a glorious target to any
hostile person who might be within; for he stood six feet tall and
broad-shouldered against the westering light. The interior of the
room was at first obscure to him, but almost immediately he made
out old Jabe behind the counter and Sam Beath sitting humped in a
chair at the back of the store.
For a moment no word was spoken. There was no exclamation,
though there was a mental shock of encounter, evinced by not so
much as the tremor of an eye upon the part of either of the
principals. Beath it was who glanced stealthily toward the corner
where Turrentine’s loaded rifle stood.
“Howdy,” said Ross in the even, musical monotone of his people.
“Howdy,” responded old Jabe’s deep bass.
Beath did not speak. Ross remained in the doorway until he
considered that he had given quite sufficient opportunity for any
gentleman who desired to pick a vital spot in his frame. When he felt
he had been amply generous in this way, he came stepping slowly
into the building, walked to the counter, and laid his empty hands
upon it.
“And what can I do for you to-day?” inquired old Jabe with a
sardonic exaggeration of the shopkeeper’s manner.
“I want to buy me a right good suit of clothes,” returned Ross,
mildly.
The man in the back of the store, staring at the two, began to
wonder when old Jabe would take advantage of the opening offered
him.
“Err-um,” grunted Turrentine. “Somethin’ to be buried in—eh?”
“Well—no,” demurred the customer, amiably. “Somethin’ to be
married in. A weddin’ suit is what I’m a-seekin’.”
Beath’s eyes went without any volition of his own to a bolt of fine
white muslin on the shelf. From that Vesta had chosen a dress
pattern the day her father bade him ask her in marriage. His
proposal had been bafflingly received, but she had chosen the dress
and taken it with her to her Aunt Miranda’s to finish.
Meantime, as though his customer had been any mountain man
of the district, the storekeeper calmly estimated Ross’s height and
breadth, turned to his shelves, and pulled down a suit. The two
immersed themselves in a discussion of fabric and cut. The
assistant, used to old Jabe’s browbeating, could scarcely believe his
eyes as he noted the glances of approval his employer gave to the
goodly proportions he was fitting. Beath’s ears seemed to him
equally unreliable when Turrentine, a big man himself, remarked with
apparent geniality on the chance of a wrestling-bout between them.
“I ain’t backin’ off,” responded Adene, “but I’d ruther stand up to
you when I didn’t have somethin’ else on hand.”
“Aw, I’m gittin’ old,” said Turrentine, deprecatingly. “Time was
when you might have said such of me; but I’m gittin’ old.”
The blue eyes of the younger man looked ingenuously into the
face so like Vesta’s.
“Well, we’re all gettin’ older day by day,” Ross allowed, “but yet
you don’t look as though you was losin’ your stren’th, an’ that’s a
fact.”
Turrentine folded the suit and laid it on the counter.
“I think them clothes’ll fit ye,” he said. “An’ I’ll th’ow in this hyer
necktie you looked at. I always th’ow in a necktie with a suit. That
all?”
“Well—no,” Ross repeated his phrase. “I want to buy the best
razor you’ve got in the shop.”
With a sudden movement that might have been excitement or
even rage, Sam Beath took off his hat and cast it on the floor beside
his chair. Turrentine bent down to get from under the counter a tray
of razors, setting it on the boards and inviting his customer’s
attention. Beath could scarcely bear to look at the two men facing
each other across these bits of duplicated and reduplicated death, so
tremendously did the juxtaposition excite him. He felt as he had
sometimes on the hunting trail when the kill was imminent—as
though he must cry out. Jabe and Ross were oblivious, trying,
choosing, drawing their thumbs lightly over edges.
“I believe I like that un,” Ross said finally. “What say?”
“You’ve got a good eye for a blade,” old Jabe agreed, taking the
razor in his fingers. “That thar’s by far the best un in the lot.” He
opened and held it up, so that a stray gleam of sun winked wickedly
upon the steel. “You could cut a man’s head off with that, slick an’
clean, ef ye had luck strikin’ a j’int—an’ I allers do have luck.”
“I wasn’t aimin’ to put it to no such use,” Ross commented gently.
“An’ yit, when you’re a-buyin’ a tool, hit’s but reasonable to know
what its cay-pacities may be. I’ll take that un.”
“Now—is that all?” Jabe put his query with the half-smile of a
man who might easily suggest something else. He laid the razor with
the other purchases.
“Is it honed, ready to use?” inquired Ross.
“Why, yes,” agreed old Jabe in a slightly puzzled tone. “A few
licks on a strop or your boot-laig’ll make it all right.”
Ross was rubbing a rough cheek with thoughtful fingers, looking
sidewise at the storekeeper.
“I’m a-goin’ to git married to-night,” he murmured. “Looks like I
need a clean shave. They tell me you’re a master hand at shavin’
folks. Will ye shave me?”
Beath’s chair dropped forward with a slam, but neither of the men
started or turned. The black eyes burned deep into the blue; the blue
were unfathomable. Behind a mask of primitive civility the two men
interrogated savagely each other’s motives. Jabe was the first to
speak.
“Why, shorely, shorely,” he said with what seemed to Beath
ominous relish. “Set down on that thar cheer that’s got a high back to
it, so’s you can lean yo’ head right. Sam,”—Beath leaped as though
he had been struck,—“bring me the wash-pan an’ soap an’ a towel.
I’ll git the lather-brush.”
Beath finally arrived with the required articles. His shaking hand
had spilled half the water from the basin; his eyes gloated. He put
the things down on a box and retired once more to his chair, seating
himself with the air of a man at a play.
Ross leaned back, found a comfortable rest for his head, and
closed his eyes. The strong, brown young throat exposed by the
turned-down collar of his shirt fascinated Beath so that he could not
look away from it.
Jabe took the towel and put it about his customer’s neck with
expert fingers. As he did so, Beath’s hand began to play about his
own throat, and there was a click as it nervously contracted.
Turrentine dipped his brush in the water and whirled it on the soap-
cake, lathering Ross’s face silently and with a preoccupied manner.
Beath’s glance flickered from the man in the chair to the man who
worked over him. When Jabe took up the razor, passed it once or
twice across the strop and approached it to Ross’s cheek, Beath
swallowed so noisily that the sound of it was loud in the silent room.
Suavely—the old man was grace itself—the operation of shaving
the bridegroom was begun. Placidly it progressed, with a murmured
word between the two men, the deft turning of the inert head by the
amateur barber, an occasional deep-toned request.
Yet always the onlooker shook with anticipation of the sweep of
old Jabe’s arm which must come. Continually Beath figured to
himself the sudden jetting out of crimson from that artery in the neck
that was beating evenly and calmly under old Jabe’s touch. Perhaps
the end might have arrived then and there, and swiftly, had those
fingers felt the swell of excitement in the blood of a possible victim.
But Ross had closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. Jabe made
an excellent job of it.
“Thar—I believe that’s about all you need,” he remarked at
length.
The low sun came through the door between piles of calico,
heaps of ax-handles, and glinted on Adene’s yellow head. Suddenly
Beath felt the light for a moment obscured. He glanced up to see a
woman’s figure, black against the glow, yet unmistakable in its slim
alertness, and clothed, as his eye accustomed to fabrics told him, in
the white muslin he had believed to be selected for a wedding-dress.
Neither old Jabe nor his customer appeared to mark as Vesta
Turrentine slipped like a shadow through the doorway and stole to
the corner where her father’s rifle stood. Sam watched as she lifted
the weapon in practised fingers. His mouth was open, but he did not
cry out.
Ross unclosed his eyes lazily, raised his thumb to his cheek,
close by the ear, very near indeed to the great veins and arteries
Beath had looked to see the razor sever.
“Ain’t they a rough place right thar?” he inquired with a half-smile.
The ultimate spark of daring was in the eyes that gazed up into
those of the man Ross had chosen for a father-in-law. Old Jabe, with
a portentously solemn face, muttered an assent, dabbed the lather
on, and made a pass with his razor.
“U-m-m—looks like they was a little more to do in that direction.
Maybe I ain’t quite finished ye up yit,” the old man’s voice had a lilt of
laughter in it, and it seemed that the end had surely arrived.
Turrentine’s devil was always a laughing fiend. He worked with the
air of a man who has come at last to some decision, turned to reach
for the towel—and looked into the muzzle of his own gun, with his
daughter’s resolute eyes behind it.
There was no start, no outcry; the old fellow only stood, scowling,
formidable, checked midway in some spectacular vengeance, Beath
was sure. The clerk crept, stooping behind the piles of merchandise,
toward Vesta.
“Put down that thar razor.”
The girl’s tone had a ring of old Jabe’s own power.
“Ye say,” drawled Jabe, making a jest of a necessity, as he laid
the blade on the counter. “What else?”
“You let him walk out o’ that door with me, same as he walked in,”
Vesta’s air was resolute, her aim steady.
At the first word Adene had turned his head merely, showing no
disposition to get beyond Jabe’s reach. But in the instant of her
demand Beath rose up from behind some boxes, grasped the gun,
twisting its barrel upward, and disarming Vesta. Ross sprang toward
his sweetheart, hit out at the clerk’s unguarded side, and sent him
staggering across the room, to fall sprawling at his employer’s feet.
For a long moment while Beath was scrambling to hands and knees,
life and death seemed to hang in the balance as old Jabe studied the
two opposite; mechanically he had taken the gun Beath thrust into
his hand. When Vesta saw it in his grasp, she flung herself upon her
lover’s breast, clasping her arms about him, protecting his life with
hers.
“Me first,” she screamed. “You’ll have to kill me first.” She waited
for the bullet.
Jabe interrogated the pair with remorseless eye; he moved
forward a pace, though Sam Beath on all fours thought it was plenty
close to shoot. His gun was not raised. Instead, the old man and the
young were studying each other once more, speeding messages
from eye to eye above Vesta’s bent head. At last Jabe seemed to
find that for which he sought. He looked long at the daughter who
defied him in words, and her lover who braved him in action. Adene
read the look aright.
“You’re bid to the weddin’ at Brush Arbor church, father-in-law,”
he said in the tone of one who finds a satisfactory answer to a riddle.
The gun-butt rattled on the puncheon floor.
“Will your dugout hold three?” asked Jabe.
Vesta stirred, but still feared to look up.
“Shore; five, by crowdin’,” came the answer.
The girl raised her head, glanced incredulously from father to
lover, and a light of comprehension dawned in her eyes.
“An’ me,” yammered Sam Beath. “What about me?”
“You can keep sto’ or come along to the weddin’, accordin’ to yo’
ruthers,” allowed old Jabe, generously; “ye hearn my son-in-law say
his boat would hold five.”