The car was fearfully incrusted with red, yellow, and white mud, but Lockwood recognized it at once as the light car that Craig used for sending out to the railroad. A moment later he espied, sitting stiffly upon a box in a corner, not Craig, indeed, but Williams, the camp foreman.
“Hello!” he exclaimed joyfully. “Just what I wanted. What are you out for, Williams? I’ll ride back with you.”
“Howdy, Lockwood!” responded the foreman, looking almost equally pleased. “Where you been? Where’d you get them clothes? Craig’s been gettin’ right anxious about you. This is Friday, you know. I come out to the bank.”
Lockwood had lost count of the days. On Fridays the car went out to the bank at Bay Minette to bring back the thousand dollars or so for the weekly pay roll.
“I oughter been back two hours ago,” the turpentine man went on, “but the roads—O Lawd! I skidded every way—hadn’t no chains on—and last thing, I skidded right inter a tree, and shook something outer gear.”
“But what’s the matter with you? You didn’t get hurt?” asked Lockwood, observing Williams’ constrained attitude.
“Kink in my back—strained it someways. Oh, I can drive all right, but I was wonderin’ what I’d do if I had to get out to crank her. But you can go back with me, and it’ll be all right.”
It was after five o’clock when they started, with a little rain falling once more. They both sat in the front seat; the curtains were all closed, and the satchel containing the bank roll was wedged tightly between them on the seat.
Williams drove cautiously, squirming occasionally as he wrenched his lame back. Lockwood offered to take the wheel, but the foreman refused; he said he was used to this kind of road. But they had to proceed at the slowest pace to get any sort of security; at every turning the car skated sideways, and once almost turned end for end.
Even more dangerous were the hollows, where the mud was deep, almost bottomless, it seemed. There was a chance of being “bogged down,” so that it would take a team of mules to free the car. The creeks were up, too, spreading widely out of their channels, and occasionally an overflow crossed the road, so that they splashed through it half-hub deep for a hundred yards.
The rain increased a little. It was plainly going to get dark early.
“Got to get on faster than this,” said Williams. “I wouldn’t like to get caught in the dark, with the roads this way.”
He increased the pace, taking chances, escaping accidents by a continually narrow margin. It was not more than five or six miles to the camp now; he began to recognize familiar landmarks. But it was one of the very worst bits of road, and they were driving slowly through a sea of liquid-yellow slime, when a man came out from the trees, a little ahead, with the evident intention of speaking to them.
Lockwood thought he wanted a lift, a thing usual enough. He wore a long, waterproof coat to his ankles, the high collar turned up to his nose, and a dripping, black hat pulled down to his eyes. Hardly an inch of his face could be seen. Williams slowed the car almost to a stop, to let him aboard. The man stepped on the running board, and pushed his head and shoulders through the curtains, with his hand thrust forward.
“Hand out that money you’re carryin’!” he said in a hoarse, obviously disguised voice.
Lockwood put his hands up. Williams sat as if petrified, still holding the wheel, and the car came to a dead stop in the mud. The bandit reached far in and grasped the black satchel from the seat between his victims.
“Set right still ez you are. I’m keepin’ you-all covered!” he growled and stepped backward into the road. He backed away a few steps, still holding the muzzle trained on the car, then wheeled and dived into the woods where he had emerged.
Williams was tugging at his revolver and swearing fervently, but Lockwood plunged out of the car. Bursting through a screen of drenching gallberry bushes he saw the robber at full run, twenty yards ahead up a narrow trail. Still farther he saw the head and shoulders of a tied horse.
“Stop! Drop that bag!” he roared. The man glanced once over his shoulder, but ran on, running awkwardly, hampered by his long slicker. Lockwood was only ten feet behind when he reached the horse and attempted to mount. The horse, restless at the commotion, sidled off, capered, the bandit lost his hold, and Lockwood, charging up, seized him by the arm.
“Drop it, you damn fool!” he ejaculated. “Are you crazy? Don’t you know you can’t get away with this?”
The man’s eyes met his under the wet hat-brim, and the satchel dropped to the ground. Lockwood picked it up.
“Now beat it—quick!” he half whispered. “Here comes Williams.”
As the horse thundered away, smashing through the dripping undergrowth, he fired two shots far aside into the woods.
Williams was coming at a lame hobble, waving his gun.
“You didn’t let him get away?” he called furiously.
Lockwood turned, wet from head to foot.
“Couldn’t help it,” he said. “He had his gun on me. I wouldn’t get shot just for Craig’s pay roll.”
“Well, I reckon you saved the pay roll, anyway,” said Williams. “He had me plumb paralyzed just for a minute. Did you get a look at him?”
“Not so that I’d know him again. Hadn’t we better move on? He might take a crack at us from the woods.”
“Wish I could get a crack at him!” the foreman grumbled, peering at the dismal swamp edge. “Well, let’s go. This’ll scare Craig some. First time anybody got held up here that I can remember. This here’s a rough country, but there ain’t no crime in it.”
Lockwood had his own opinion about that. Crime seemed to be the only thing he had met since coming into the swamp country. This unexpected encounter had suddenly changed all his attitude. He no longer dared to confide anything in Craig—not, at least, until he had seen Jackson Power again, and learned why the heir to a fortune came to be holding up the turpentine pay car. Very likely it was sheer criminal instinct, he thought. He did not see how it could be anything else; and he sickened of the whole loathsome tangle.
He was sick of it. He wanted to get out of it all, but he wanted to take Louise with him. She ought to be glad to go, too, he thought—almost as glad as she had been when she fled in girlhood from a home that was perhaps more squalid, but surely not more criminal.
They could go to New Orleans. As the car jolted and splashed, his weary mind hazily dissolved itself into dreams. He could always earn a living. Or they might settle on the Gulf coast. He liked the South; there was an ease and balm about it that was medicine to the soul—only not here, not at Rainbow Landing. He could plant a grove of Satsuma oranges or figs or pecans. He might get a partner and go into turpentine; he knew the business now and liked it. He would forget his past life. He would forget everything, even his revenge. If Louise would go with him he would leave Hanna and the rest of the Powers to swindle one another as they pleased, a nest of criminals together.
The glare of the lamps through the mist showed a pine tree by the road with a great livid blaze on its trunk. They were getting into the turpentine region. They turned down the woods trail to the camp. There was a great uproar at the news of the attempted holdup, when the car stopped at the commissary store.
Lockwood got praise and welcome, but he could not talk. He was deadly tired, and every nerve and muscle seemed to ache. He got away to his old room as soon as he could, took a heavy dose of quinine and went to bed, where he fell as instantly asleep as if the medicine had been a knock-out drop.
He slept all night, and awoke feeling rested and considerably more optimistic. To his astonishment, it was past eight o’clock; to his joy, he had no fever symptoms. The sun was ablaze on the fresh-washed pines, and the hard sand had already dried. The camp was quiet; most of the men were away, but when he went downstairs to breakfast Mrs. Williams told him that Craig was waiting at the commissary to see him.
The turpentine operator gave Lockwood a hearty greeting.
“Feeling all right this morning? You looked plumb played out last night. I am shorely indebted to you, Lockwood. I reckon you couldn’t identify that fellow that held you-all up?”
“Well, I saw that it was a white man—that’s about all,” said Lockwood carefully. “Between his hat and his coat collar you could hardly see his face. Do you suppose it might be one of Blue Bob’s gang?”
“Them? Naw! None of them water rats has got sand enough for a real desperate job. I can’t think of nobody round here that could have done it. Anyway, I’d be out about twelve hundred dollars only for you, and I’d like to do something——”
“So you can. You can do something right now,” returned Lockwood promptly. “I want you to ride over with me to Power’s place, and back me up in what I say to old Henry.”
“Hey? What for?” exclaimed the turpentine man, looking surprised and uneasy. “I wouldn’t, if I was you, Lockwood. Lemme tell you, Tom Power came down here, a-rearin’ and a-tearin’ yesterday, and swearing he’d put a bullet into you if you ever showed up here again. ’Course, he was some drunk, but I dunno what had got at him.”
“That wasn’t Tom Powers speaking, not whisky either,” said Lockwood dryly. “They were his words, but it was the voice of his friend Mr. Hanna. Hanna is trying to put across a high-class swindle on the Powers. When I found it out and blocked him he tried to put me away. He nearly did, too, but I’ll tell you about that later. Just now I want the facts put straight before Henry Power, if it isn’t too late.”
He rapidly detailed the history of the oil stock. Craig listened intently, frowning.
“I never did think much of that cuss Hanna,” he commented. “If it’s all as you say——”
“Don’t take what I say!” Lockwood cried. “Just get Power to get a report from some reliable business man in Mobile or Pascagoula before he does anything. That’s all I want.”
“Well, I’ve known old Henry pretty near all my life, and I guess he’ll listen to me,” said Craig. “I know for a fact that there ain’t any oil wells at Pascagoula. I’ll just ring them up and see if Henry’s there.”
He went to the telephone, and got the Power house after the usual long delay. Lockwood listened to the passing of a few words.
“The men are all out,” said Craig, turning aside. “Nobody there but Miss Louise. She says——”
“What? Here, let me speak to her. She knows more about it than anybody!” Lockwood exclaimed, and seized the receiver from Craig’s rather reluctant hand. He hesitated; he hardly knew what to say; he could hear his tone forced and artificial.
“That you, Miss Power? This is Lockwood, just got back. I’m at the camp. I’ve found out things. I hope nothing has been done yet about the oil stock?”
“Not yet.” Her voice sounded startled and tremulous. “But I thought you had gone away—left Alabama.”
“Did Hanna say that? Has he been saying things about me?”
“Yes.”
“I expected it. Would it be safe for me to come to see you?”
“I—I don’t know. I’m afraid not.”
“Well, I’ve got important things that I simply must tell you. That oil proposition was a fake, just as I thought—and other things, too. I must talk to you for ten minutes. I wonder if you’d mind meeting me somewhere—say down on the bayou, by the motor boat shed?”
There was a silence. The telephone buzzed and whirred emptily.
“Yes,” she said at last, in a somewhat cold voice. “If you have anything really important to tell me, I can see you. When will you be there?”
“Any time you like. Say in an hour.”
“Very well.” A pause. “In an hour, then. Good-by.”
Lockwood changed his clothes and had his horse saddled and brought around. In half an hour he started for the rendezvous, fording the bayou, and riding down the opposite shore. No one was in sight about the little wharf where the motor boat was laid up. Over the treetops he could see the roof of Power’s house, but it was nearly ten minutes before Louise appeared, coming down the path among the pines. He thought she greeted him with an air of distance, but he was not unprepared for this sort of reception.
“I’m sorry I had to ask you to come here——” he began, but she stopped him with a little impatient gesture.
“It doesn’t matter. You had something important to say. What is it?”
“Hadn’t you better tell me first what story Hanna has told you?” he suggested.
“No. How can I know——Oh, please say what you were going to.”
“Very well.” Lockwood went on in brief and businesslike phrases to tell her of his investigations in Mobile, of his discoveries, and of Hanna’s proposal.
She searched his face as he talked. Her brown eyes penetrated as if they would read his soul, but he could read nothing in those eyes, except that she was judging him and weighing every word.
“Hanna told us,” she said slowly at last, “that you had tried to blackmail him, and threatened to ruin him unless he paid you a large sum of money. He declared that he had forced you to leave the South, under a threat of arrest. I never expected to see you again. Still, I didn’t think you were that sort of man. I thought there must be some mistake. But the boys believed it. They were furious.”
Lockwood was irritated at her cool and almost indifferent tone. It was for this that he had risked his life, and built his castles in the air!
“Well, I came back three nights ago on the boat, with all this information,” he went on, in a recklessly casual tone himself. “Hanna had his friends to meet me—Blue Bob and his gang. They sandbagged me and took me down the river in their house boat. Hanna came down to see me, and made me some more proposals. My finish was fixed for yesterday, I think. But I made a get-away.”
Louise was looking at him now with a different expression.
“You mean they nearly killed you?” she exclaimed. “You went through all that to help—us?”
“I didn’t go through any more than I could help. It was my own feud, anyway. But now you’ve got Hanna where you want him. Tell your father what I’ve said; he’s full of good sense. Tell him to telephone the Mobile board of trade about Pascagoula Oil—or maybe the chief of police would be better. Or, if you don’t want to believe me so far,” he went on recklessly, “I’ll meet Hanna myself. We’ll settle it as I meant to at first—a bullet in him or one in me.”
Louise half turned away, putting one hand blindly to her throat.
“Oh, don’t torture me!” she murmured. “You make it so hard——”
“What—to believe me?” Lockwood demanded pitilessly.
“To disbelieve you. Yes, I do believe everything you’ve told me!” she exclaimed impulsively. “In spite of what anybody says.”
“Remember, mine is not an impartial verdict,” he warned her. “It’s an enemy’s word against Hanna. I’ve been trying to get him for years. Perhaps you’ll think I’m little better than he is. I’m traveling under a false name, like him. Yes, my real name isn’t Lockwood. I’ve thought of nothing but murder for years. And—you’ll have to know—I’ve been in prison.”
He did not know whether her wide eyes were full of horror or pity.
“It was a bank fraud. McGibbon—that is, Hanna—was my partner. He cooked the books and statements, drew money that I never knew about. It was my carelessness. I was no accountant, and I trusted him. I knew nothing about it, but I was legally responsible, and I was arrested. Hanna’s testimony helped convict me, and he and his confederate got away with everything I owned in the world, while I went to jail.
“Listen, now. I’ve said too much not to say more. I’ll have to tell you the whole wretched story, whether you want to hear it or not.”
He told it rapidly, briefly, almost fiercely.
“I came here like a wolf,” he said. “I was savage. I saw everything red and black. And then——”
“You came here like a powerful friend,” said Louise. Through his excitement and doubt he felt a quality in her look that made him tingle. “I always believed in you. I think I’d believe in you through anything. You’ve passed through years of horror. They’re over now. And now——”
She halted inarticulately, and seemed to sketch a little gesture of consolation.
“You’d believe me through anything, Louise?” he stammered. “You can’t mean all that—all that——”
He found himself inarticulate, too. Groping for words, he took both hands of Louise. She let him have them; she was close to him, with her head thrown back. There was no resistance left in her—almost no life, it seemed, except that her eyes lighted with a wonderful glow, and when he kissed her he felt her lips cling passionately to his.
While that minute lasted the whole world spun round him. Then Louise stepped away from him, with an intense, quick exclamation of fright. Jackson Power was coming down the path among the pines. He had certainly seen them.