“So you know Blue Bob,” he remarked, overtaking the girl after some fifty yards.
“Know him! I reckon so! I’ve always known him, I think, and I’ve dreaded and hated that man all my life.”
The trail ended suddenly at a cut-over slash, growing up again with bushy small pines and scrub oak. Away to the left a strip of the Alabama showed greenish and reddish. Below them, down in the hammock land Lockwood saw a squalid wooden shanty in a small clearing. A woman was apparently cooking at a fire in the yard. Louise checked her horse and sat looking over the landscape, but evidently she was not thinking of it.
“How mamma and I dreaded it when Bob’s house boat came down the river, in the old days!” she exclaimed bitterly. “The boys were always going aboard it. There was always drinking and gambling and fighting; and one terrible night——”
She stopped, and turned her eyes on the dilapidated pine cabin with its acre of growing corn.
“That’s the sort of place we used to live in. Do you wonder that I don’t want to go back to it?” she said intensely.
Lockwood looked at the paintless pine shanty, roofed with small rough-split boards, curled up with the weather. It probably had three rooms; a wide open passage, or “dog-trot,” extended from front to rear. A crumbling chimney of stone and mud rose at one end. The clearing, with its corn and ragged garden was fenceless, and a wild jungle of mixed peach trees, rose bushes, and blackberry canes blocked the front of the yard.
He looked back at Louise’s flushed face. Her constraint had dropped suddenly away; the episode of the snake and the meeting with the river pirate had broken up the ice.
“There’s no danger of having to go back to that,” he said.
“I don’t know. I’m frightened,” she said somberly.
“Tell me,” he ventured, “did your brother repeat to Hanna what I said about the oil investment?”
“Yes. Tom told him,” she answered reluctantly.
“Hanna was furious, I suppose.”
“Not furious. He was—well, coldly indignant. He said that we could have our money back any time we wanted to draw out of the oil investment. He said nothing more before me. But I know he said something about you to papa and the boys. Well, you saw for yourself that there was a difference. Do you really think that oil speculation is dangerous?”
“I can’t judge. I certainly never heard of any oil wells around Pascagoula.”
“But it’s being kept quiet—not to let the public in, they say,” she pleaded anxiously.
“Oil borings can’t be kept secret. There has to be heaps of heavy machinery, a derrick built, gangs of men. It’s conspicuous a mile away. All I say is, that I do hope that before going any deeper your father will get a report from some good business firm in Mobile.”
Louise sighed.
“It was just like that!” she said, pointing again at the squatter’s cabin. “There were just three rooms, and only one fireplace. We cooked outdoors mostly, but it was often freezing cold in the winter. There was wood all around us, but we never had enough to burn. The boys always forgot to cut it. Papa and Tom worked sometimes on the river or in the turpentine camps, and they planted an acre or two of corn, but all they took any interest in was hunting and trapping and fishing. They used to go away down into the delta sometimes for weeks.
“We always had plenty of rabbits and sweet potatoes and squirrels, but that was all. I don’t think I ever tasted milk. There never was any money. I had hardly clothes enough for decency. But there was money for whisky. Not that the boys were ever cruel or even unkind. You can see how they are now. But we used to hear them come home down the river at night, drunk and shouting and firing their pistols——”
She stopped with a shudder, and then broke out again.
“There was one awful night, three years ago. It was a drinking and gambling carouse on Blue Bob’s boat, and a man was killed. Nobody ever knew who did it, but Bob left the Alabama River for nearly a year after that. I wish he had never come back. Jackson was on the boat that night, but he never told us anything about it. Men don’t tell women about such things. But the women know all the same, and have to carry the weight of them.”
She was flushed and shaking, and she winked to keep the tears back. Lockwood had never seen her so moved. It tortured him, but he was afraid to try to comfort her.
“Don’t think of those miseries. You’re safe from all that now,” he reminded her again.
“I don’t know. We ought to be. We ought to be so happy, with all the money and comfort. Mamma died before she ever saw it. Safe? With all this reckless spending? Neither papa nor the boys will listen to anything I say. Women don’t know anything about money, of course. But I’m ten times as wise as they are. Ten thousand dollars seems something with no end to it to them. Do you know, I’ve let them give me diamonds, expensive jewelry, because I knew they could be turned back into cash again if the need came. I did hope that you could make friends with Tom and Jackson, so that they would take advice from you; but now Mr. Hanna seems to have turned them all against you.”
“I expect he has. Never mind,” said Lockwood. “I’ll bring pressure on Mr. Hanna soon.”
“What sort of pressure?”
“A sort he’ll understand. Don’t lose your nerve, Miss Louise. You won’t have to go back to the swamps.”
“Of course, for myself, I could always go back to the city again and earn my living.”
“You won’t have to do that either. Trust me. It’ll all come out right.”
She looked at him in a perplexed way, pathetic, like a puzzled child, and sighed deeply again.
“You’re encouraging. But I don’t see what you can do, really. Unless you kill Mr. Hanna,” she added, smiling.
“That would be one way,” Lockwood agreed gravely.
“I didn’t mean that, of course!” Louise cried, shocked. “You didn’t think that I really meant it?”
“Of course not. Neither did I. But Hanna will trip himself up sooner or later. Do what you can to check the spending, and I want to be kept posted as to how things are going. How can you let me know? I don’t suppose I’d be a welcome visitor at your house. You ride often, don’t you? Can’t I go with you again? I can always take an hour off, and if I could meet you any time, morning or evening——”
“Oh, I’m afraid—I’m afraid I couldn’t!” exclaimed Louise, obviously startled at the suggestion, and coloring hotly. She stooped over the reins, looked at her wrist watch.
“It’s almost noon,” she cried. “Goodness! I must go home this minute.”
She turned her horse and started back at a fast canter along the trail.
She kept well ahead and dropped only casual words over her shoulder till they reached the main road. The noon sun beat down fiercely. The yellow dust wavered up like flames around the horses’ hoofs. Here she pulled up, and turned back to him.
“Please don’t come any farther,” she said nervously. “You really have made me feel lots more encouraged. The worst of it was that I never could talk about these things to anybody. And—and I do ride sometimes. I think—I might have to go down the road over the bridge across the bayou—not to-morrow—perhaps the next evening—right after supper——”
“Watch for me on the bridge if you do,” said Lockwood, as she almost broke down in confusion.
She gave him a quick smile and rode off without a word of good-by. He watched her moving figure through the dust until she was out of sight beyond the creek swamp, and then he proceeded more slowly toward the turpentine camp. He was both elated and uneasy, with such a sense of tingling delight in his heart as he had never expected to feel again.
Directly after supper, on the second day afterwards, he was waiting in the saddle on the bayou bridge. He waited a quarter of an hour before he saw Louise riding slowly down the slope.
“What news? Anything?” he questioned.
“Nothing changed. Everything the same,” she answered. She did not seem to want to talk about it this evening. There was an hour and a half of daylight left, and they rode slowly down the soft road through the turpentine pines.
They saw nobody but a couple of negroes with mule teams. Louise did not appear depressed; on the contrary she was in nervously high spirits, ready to chatter lightly. The big issues were dropped. They talked of trifling matters, of their likes and dislikes, intimate and personal things. They exchanged reminiscences of the motor shop in New Orleans; Louise told amusing incidents of her childhood up the river. Those old days had not been all bad, it seemed. That ride brought them into closer personal touch than anything before, Lockwood felt; but it was too short. Dusk seemed to fall like an evil magic, and they turned back. Lockwood stopped on the bridge where they had met, and he watched Louise fading up the road through the twilight.
That was the first of four such rides—once more in the evening, once on the afternoon of a day when heavy sudden rain had driven the wood negroes in, and all the clay roadsides glittered red and vermilion and green as if freshly washed with rainbow paint; and once in the cool of an early Sunday morning.
Few and brief as they were, these hours were the most delicious and exciting that Lockwood had ever known. He was supposed to be gathering information and planning tactics, but they hardly ever talked of the problematic situation. Behind each of them was an unhappy past which they put out of sight, and a threatening future which they ignored for the moment. Things were at a standstill at the Power house; nothing was to be done at the moment. They talked mostly of trivial things, but these all seemed momentous. They were on terms of the frankest comradeship, and not a word was interchanged that might not have been pronounced in public; yet Lockwood had a heavily increasing sense of guilt.
These half surreptitious rides were not the thing. Social customs are rigid in the rural South. Under no circumstances would Louise’s family have permitted them. Plenty of people had seen them, and the affair would not be long in being talked of. Old Henry was sure to hear of it. Trouble would come of it; Hanna would take advantage of it; for he was certain that Hanna had already sensed Lockwood’s hostility. Yet he could not give up this sole means of remaining in touch with Louise.
He had not set eyes on Henry Power since the day of his visit. Once the boys had motored past him on the road, but at such speed that he could not tell whether they had returned his salutation or not. But he felt a coolness in the whole district, that must have proceeded from that house. Mr. Ferrell was no longer so genial when he handed out the mail; and the usual hearty greetings of the farmers about the store had diminished to perfunctory nods, and side glances of suspicion. Slander was going about him, but he could not guess what form it was taking.
A few days later Charley Craig called him aside to the office.
“What’s this I hear about you being one of these here prohibition spotters?” he demanded, fixing a penetrating eye on his woods rider.
“Why, nothing at all about it!” returned Lockwood, staggered. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. Who’s been saying that?”
“Well—a good many fellows are saying it,” said Craig. “I didn’t know what to think. I’ll say you’re doing well here, but you ain’t no turpentine man, I can see you’ve got something else on your mind. I don’t want no government men round here. I can do all the prohibition enforcement myself that I need in this here camp. If I find any man bringing in a bottle of liquor I’ll take the hide off’n him. I’ve run Blue Bob out of the bayou. I ain’t got no use for bootleggers, but I ain’t got none for spotters either.”
“Well, I’m no spotter, I do assure you,” said Lockwood. “But I will say that a spotter would find a mighty rich field here at Rainbow Landing. I’ve no interest in bootleggers, one way or the other. Did that story come from the Power place?”
“I dunno as I’d just say that it did,” returned Craig carefully. He began to fill his pipe and spoke with elaborate casualness. “I’d hate to get the Power boys worked up against me, if I was you. They’re good boys, but they growed up rough and reckless. I’d look out right sharp for ’em.”
It was meant for a warning, and Lockwood grasped that there might be more danger in the air than he had imagined.
He met Louise the next Sunday morning. She was less cheerful than usual. She looked tired, as if she had slept badly. She said she felt exhausted with the heat, and did not want to ride far. They made a mile circuit through the woods, and were coming back to the road before Lockwood ventured to question her as to the movement of affairs.
“Not so badly. The boys have decided not to buy the light car. Hanna even advised against it. I wonder why. There was a card game at the house last night. Jackson won nearly seven hundred dollars from the Fenways. It lasted till nearly morning and I couldn’t sleep. That’s why I feel worn out to-day. I wonder how long this is going to last.”
“Not long now. As I said before—just trust me.”
“I do trust you.” She laughed rather wearily. “You can see that I do, or I wouldn’t be riding with you now, since Tom told me”—she glanced up at him laughingly and grotesquely exaggerated the Alabama drawl—“that I wasn’t ter have nothin’ more to do with you, nohow—at all!”
If she laughed it was to cover the perturbation that her eyes betrayed. Lockwood had half expected it, but he was appalled.
“So I’m afraid this will have to be our last ride,” she added soberly.
“Our last? Never!” he ejaculated. “It mustn’t be. I’ve a thousand things to say to you—things I haven’t told you yet—important things!”
It seemed to him suddenly that he had wasted all these hours of golden opportunity. He should have told her his story. Some time she would have to know it. It would be better to tell her himself, before the catastrophe broke.
“Let’s turn back. Make it another hour, if this is to be the last,” he pleaded, drawing up close beside her and extending his hand.
She put his hand aside and motioned silently ahead. They had come back near the road. Through a screen of tall gallberry he saw something that stood still and glittered in the sun. The trail turned, and he saw the Powers’ car drawn up almost to block the opening of the way, and Tom was leaning with both arms on the wheel and staring toward them.
They were too close to turn back. He had seen them.
“Try to come up the bayou—in the motor boat—early any forenoon!” Lockwood tossed to Louise under his breath. He did not know whether she had heard him. She had turned very pale, sitting stiffly in the saddle and gazing straight ahead at her brother. Lockwood thought they must both have looked extremely guilty as they rode up to the standing car.
Tom gave them a sullen grim look.
“You ride straight on home, sis!” he commanded. “I’ve got to have a talk with Mr. Lockwood here.”
“What are you going to say?” Louise cried. “I won’t go. Tom! I won’t have you quarrel.”
“Better go, as your brother says. We’re not going to quarrel,” Lockwood advised cheerfully.
She hesitated, looking wildly from one to the other, then she pushed her horse past the car and fled up the road. Several times she glanced fearfully back, and then vanished over the bridge.
“What is it, Tom?” Lockwood asked amicably.
“I’ve got just this to say,” Power growled. “You ain’t no gentleman, and ef I ketch you comin’ round my sister again I’ll kill you.”
“What’s the matter? What has Hanna been saying about me?” Lockwood questioned, still pleasantly.
“What makes you think he’s been sayin’ anythin’? Well, he has. I reckon you know what it is. Hanna says he knowed you the first time he seen you here, but he didn’t want to make no trouble, and he didn’t say nothing. He says you was arrested over in Mississippi for swindlin’, and you’d have been jailed ef you hadn’t got away.”
“That’s a damned lie,” Lockwood returned.
“’Course you’d say that. I dunno whether you’re lyin’ or not yourself.”
Tom suddenly produced a pearl-handled revolver and rested it across the steering wheel. It was not exactly a threat, but the lie had been as good as passed.
Lockwood dropped the reins and spread his hands wide to show them empty, then folded his arms over his chest. Under his fingers he felt the cold iron of his own pistol under his shoulder. He was not in the least afraid. He was confident that he could draw and fire first, if he needed. But he had no idea of being provoked into a shooting affray and ruining his whole cause. He would almost rather take a bullet himself then than put one into Tom Power.
“And you’re goin’ under a false name now, Hanna says,” Tom continued. “What about that? Is your right name Lockwood, or not?”
Strangely, the necessary lie stuck in Lockwood’s throat. He stammered; he jerked out a belated “of course!” that sounded strangely.
“Ain’t no ‘of course’ about it!” said Tom staring sharply. “Now I reckon you know as well as I do ef you’re a fit man to be ridin’ with my sister—agin’ her father’s orders, too.”
“God knows I’m not, Tom,” Lockwood assented.
Power gazed at him, perplexed. Lockwood felt a warm flash of sympathy and liking for him, he looked so puzzled and honest and bewildered, devoid of malice, anxious really to defend his sister, and perfectly ready to commit murder.
“Don’t worry, Tom. I’m not as bad as you think,” he said, smiling.
“I dunno about that. Well, I’ve done warned you. I don’t want to start no trouble, but I reckon you’d better leave this here district for your own good. Don’t make no mistake now. You know what you’ve got comin’ to you.”
He put his foot on the starter, and the engine murmured and hummed. Laying down the pistol, he put in the clutch and moved off. He gave Lockwood one more glance, half menacing, half perplexed, and did not look back again.