XII
Archibald ate his late supper absent-mindedly and spent his evening, as usual, with Pegeen and Wiggles and his pipe. Mrs. Benderby always dozed in the kitchen after her supper dishes were washed, and Spunky, like her big cousins of the jungle, always answered the call to good hunting when the night closed in; but Pegeen and Wiggles and the man they loved kept each other company in the living-room or on the doorstep and, whether they were merry or quiet, all three found content at the day’s end, in being together.
At their usual early bedtime, Pegeen rose and lighted the bedroom candles; but, instead of taking his candle, Archibald reached for his cap which hung beside the door. He had decided to see Ezra before he slept and send him away from the Valley, if any reasonable amount of persuasion or money would move him.
“I’m not sleepy, Peg,” he said. “No; nothing wrong. Never felt better. I’m just wide awake. Go to bed and don’t lie there listening for me. Wiggles and I are going to prowl.”
The drowsing dog whacked his tail sleepily against the floor, at the sound of his name, yawned elaborately, opened his eyes, and saw the cap in his master’s hand. Whereupon he forsook all idea of sleep and converted himself into a canine battering ram, until finally assured that he was invited to join in whatever the cap might mean.
The two went out into the warm, star-lit night; and Pegeen stood looking after them until the shadowy figures melted into the dark.
“I suppose it’s Her,” she said to herself, with a sigh, “but he didn’t seem so awfully, blue. I’m glad he took Wiggles.”
Wiggles was glad too, exuberantly glad. Night wandering was an unusual experience for him. In the early evening, he curled up close to his master or to the small girl who shared his allegiance and no temptation was strong enough to lure him beyond the sound of their voices or the touch of their hands. When they went off to bed, responsibility fell weightily upon him. A watch dog had no right to night roaming and Wiggles knew it. So, though sometimes his yellow body quivered with eagerness when distant night noises called him and his sharp nose sniffled excitedly at the scents that came to him on the night breeze, he kept faith with the sleepers in the shack and watched over them with unswerving fidelity as only a yellow mongrel dog knows.
But now he was out and away with a clear conscience and with his master for companion, and he made the most of the happy chance. Such frantic following of fresh smelly trails! Such wild yelping at stone walls where wood-chucks lurked! Such mad pursuit of little furry folk, going about their night business! Such excited returns to his master and futile efforts to tell him all about the things that, being only a man, he could not see or smell or hear!
“Larks, eh, Wiggles?” Archibald said laughingly, as the dog dashed back to him with the news of most prodigious occurrences further along the road.
Wiggles leaped up at him joyously, then, lighting on all four feet, stiffened and listened to something behind them. A moment later, the man’s duller ears caught the sound of galloping hoofs. He stepped out of the road, wondering idly that so many riders should be out; and, as a dozen men swept by him, he peered curiously through the gloom. The night veiled the men’s faces and they passed too quickly for recognition; but as they went, a laugh and an oath from one of them gave him a clue. Lem Tollerton’s voice! It had been loud enough and insistent enough at the smithy that afternoon to fix itself in Archibald’s memory; and as he heard it again a suspicion leaped into his brain. What had brought Lem Tollerton and his crew down the Valley? Ezra? Conviction came on the heels of the suspicion. Ezra, of course. Just what the night riders meant to do with the man, he did not know. Lem had talked of tar and feathers; but men did not carry tar and feathers on horseback. Whipping, probably. Archibald remembered Mr. Neal’s story of the Jew peddler and winced at the thought. Perhaps Ezra deserved a thrashing; but there was a slender chance that he was the wrong man.
With a sudden tightening of the jaw that meant action, Archibald turned from the road and swung himself over the wall.
“Come on, Wiggles,” he called. There was a little ring of excitement in his voice. “Maybe we can beat them to it, by the short cut.”
Wiggles was willing—delighted. He did not know just what the new game was and it interfered with his hunting; but, since his master wanted to run, run they would, and the meadow turf was softer than the road and altogether life had become gloriously eventful. He raced along beside the running man, with occasional side steps, when provocation proved too strong, and scurrying haste to catch up after each lapse. Together, the two came to the wall bordering the Back Road, climbed it and found themselves within sight of Ezra Watts’ cottage, but, just as they dropped from the wall, the same riders who had passed them ten minutes before clattered by them again.
Archibald stood still for a moment or two to regain the breath he had lost in his dash across fields. When he ran down the road, the horsemen had already stopped before the cottage and one of them was pounding on the door.
“Come out of that before we smoke you out.” It was Lem Tollerton’s voice again and the profanity with which he elaborated his command was more eloquent than decent. The riders were all yelling now, accusing, cursing, threatening. Drunk, every one of them—Archibald realized it with a sinking of the heart. Reasoning with drunken men was fruitless business and he was one man against twelve. Ezra did not count. Still he pelted on, with Wiggles at his heels. As he joined the group before the cottage, the door opened and Ezra appeared in the doorway. His face was livid with fear, and the picture he made in the light of the dark lantern which one of the riders carried was not one to rouse sympathy. If ever a criminal, face to face with retribution, looked the part, the cringing wretch in the doorway looked it.
“What d’ye want?” he snarled, his little ferret eyes searching this way and that for a chance of escape.
“You,” Lem Tollerton answered tersely. He seized the shrinking figure, jerked it down the steps, and handed it over to two men with ropes in their hands. Then, stepping back among the mounted men, he took a heavy horsewhip from one of them.
Archibald waited no longer.
“See here, men, this sort of thing doesn’t go in a civilized community,” he said. “You’d better stop feeling and do some thinking.”
The quiet voice was as cheerfully conversational as though the stage had not been set for melodrama; and the lean, nonchalant intruder to whom the night had suddenly given birth stood with his hands in his pockets and a half smile on his lips; but there was a look in his eyes that made the men nearest him glance apprehensively at the pockets and back away. Some of them pulled their hats low over their eyes. One or two wheeled their horses around, as though for flight; but Lem Tollerton was made of sterner stuff.
“You’ll get along better if you’ll take your own advice and do some thinking yourself,” he blustered. “We don’t want to do you any harm, Mr. Archibald, but this is our affair; and, if you don’t want to get hurt, you’d better not mix up in it. We’re out to give this d—d fire-bug a dressing down that he’ll remember and see him across the state line, and we’re going to do it.”
“What has he done?” Archibald asked, still cool, though his fighting blood was warming.
“Done? You know well enough what he’s done.”
“Where’s your proof?”
“Proof be damned. Get out of my way.”
Tollerton raised his whip as though to enforce his command and Archibald’s right hand came swiftly out of his pocket. There was no revolver in it; but as his clenched fist hit Lem Tollerton’s chin, that hulking worthy dropped as though he had been shot and lay still in the path. Archibald stooped, caught the whip from his hand, and backed against the cottage wall, while Wiggles, a ridge of upstanding hair along his back, his lips curled back angrily from his sharp white teeth, a low ominous growl sounding in his throat, crouched at his master’s feet. Archibald had forgotten Wiggles when he had figured that he would be one against twelve.
“Don’t be fools, boys,” the man against the wall pleaded. “I’ll promise to get Ezra out of the State for good, to-night. Maybe he’s guilty. Maybe he isn’t—but twelve to one isn’t a man’s game, any way you look at it. You’ll be glad you called it off, when morning comes.”
The men wavered uncertainly. Several of them made a threatening move forward. Archibald clutched the whip in the middle, with its heavy butt ready for action.
“I’m a friend of yours, boys,” he said grimly, “and I haven’t much use for Ezra; but I believe in fair play. I can’t lay you all out before you get me; but I’ll do all the damage I can; and if you don’t beat the life out of me, God’s my witness, I’ll drag every mother’s son of you into court and send him up, if it takes the rest of my life and my last penny to do it. You’d better think it over.”
For a moment, the men stood irresolute. Then one of them dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and galloped off down the road. The others followed promptly, only the two dismounted men lingering to look ruefully down at Lem Tollerton’s prostrate figure. As they hesitated, he groaned, put a hand to his head, opened his eyes—and closed them again.
“There’s a pump behind the house, Nick,” Archibald said. One of the men disappeared and came back with a gourd full of water which he dashed in Tollerton’s face. The treatment worked well. Lem sat up, looked around him, and staggered groggily to his feet.
“Well, what the—” he began; but his friends took him by the arms, led him to his horse and helped him to mount.
“Nothing doing, Lem,” Nick Bullard said soothingly. “Mr. Archibald’s going to take Watts out of the State to-night. That’s good enough. Let’s fade away.”
Limp, dazed, reeling in his saddle, but sober, Lem Tollerton looked at the man who still stood on the defensive, his back to the wall and his dog at his feet.
“That’s some little knockout of yours,” he said with a sheepish grin in which there was no malice. “Don’t tell me you was trained for a painter.”
He held out a hand as he spoke and Archibald, laughing, met the hand half way.
“It’s a useful thing to have a knockout in one’s fist,” he said genially. “Come over to the shack some evening and I’ll teach it to you.”
When the last of the riders had disappeared in the darkness, he turned to Ezra who cowered beside him, still shaking with fear.
“Well, Ezra, the whipping didn’t come off.”
In spite of himself there was contempt mixed with the kindness in his voice. “But you heard what I said about your leaving the State?”
“Uh,” grunted Ezra. Neither relief nor gratitude could move him to civility.
“That goes; but I’m willing to give you what money you’ll need for a month or two. Fifty dollars ought to see you through; and I’m ready to hand it over when I’ve put you on a train at Pittsfield; but if ever you show your face here again, the boys may do as they please with you.”
He stopped in astonishment; for the mention of the money had evidently wakened no interest and Ezra appeared to be listening not to him but to some sound from within the house. As Archibald leaned forward to see him more closely, he moved hurriedly toward the door.
“Come in here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
Archibald stepped into the house and waited while Ezra scratched a match on the wall and lighted a candle. The flickering tongue of flame left most of the room in darkness; but it threw its light upon a man who lay upon the bed—a man in even worse case than Ezra’s when Archibald had first found his way into the squalid little house—a bleared, bloated, dirty, unkempt hulk of a man who lay with closed eyes and breathed in short strangling gasps.
“He’s been like that ever since I found him last night,” Ezra said. “I was going for you anyway in the morning. Seemed as if something had orter be done and I didn’t know what.”
“Why didn’t you call Dr. Fullerton?” Archibald asked wonderingly.
“Well, you know how folks feel about the barn burnings and I didn’t know how Doc’d see his duty; but I thought you—”
“Who is he?”
Ezra looked back at the doors and windows and moved nearer to Archibald.
“It’s Mike O’Neill,” he whispered.
The name meant nothing to Archibald and his face showed it.
“The kid’s father,” Ezra explained.
“Pegeen’s father?” The man’s tone was amazed, unbelieving, protesting; but Ezra nodded his head.
“Uh huh. He’s been hanging around ever since spring. Crazy as a loon. Stayed in that old woodchopper’s hut on Bald Pate, daytimes, and went skulking around nights, stealing enough to live on and burning a barn now and then just for fun.”
“You’re sure?” Archibald’s heart cried out against the hideous thing. Peg’s father the barn burner, the petty thief, the miserable, sodden wreck that lay there on the dirty bed! It was unthinkable and yet Ezra’s voice and manner carried conviction.
“Oh, yes. I’m sure,” he was saying. “I’ve known ever since the Shaker fire. I’d suspicioned there was somebody around that nobody knew about; and one night I’d run into a man when I happened to be coming out of Miss Moran’s chicken house; but I didn’t see him rightly. I was sort of busy not being seen myself. Then, the night the Shaker barn burned, I caught him running away down the road just after the fire broke out. I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him. ’Twus bright moonlight, you know. He ducked into the woods; but I trailed him up Bald Pate and then I come home and figgered things out. ’Twus plain as the nose on yer face that he’d been doing the barn burning; and, first off, I thought I’d tell folks and sort of clear things up for myself. But then I got to thinking about the kid and how bad she’d feel and there wuzn’t anybody to be upset be-cuz I was a fire-bug and I didn’t give a damn what folks believed about me; so I just decided to keep things to myself. I went up and called turkey to O’Neill, though—told the crazy fool that I knew all about what he’d been doing and that I could have him hanged but that I wouldn’t if he’d let up on the barn business. I didn’t care how much he stole. He seemed to sense what I meant and blubbered around and said he wouldn’t light any more fires, only they looked so pretty when they burned and St. Michael had told him to come back here and burn all the barns, and Michael was his special saint so he didn’t want to contrary him. I told him I’d fix it up with Michael and then he quieted down and I come away. Looked as if he wasn’t too batty to keep a promise, until last night. Then Tibbits’ barn went up; and, as I wuz sneaking along through the woods so as nobody’d see me and think I’d been out doing the burning, I stumbled over this here bundle of rags. Just the way he is now, he wuz. I had a time getting him down here and then I didn’t know what to do next; but I figgered I’d better go and git you, in the morning.”
It was a long speech for Ezra. Never, to his own knowledge, had he strung so many words together at one time; and he stumbled through the story with a hang-dog air as though mortally ashamed to shift his vicious reputation to other shoulders.
Archibald listened with knitted brows.
“Poor Peg!” he said softly, under his breath. “Poor little Peg!”
Ezra shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and back again.
“What’s the good of her knowing?” he asked gruffly. Archibald looked at him in blank surprise.
“Why, she’ll have to know.”
“No, she won’t,” Ezra snapped it out in his most disagreeable manner. “He’s going to die. If he don’t, he’s too crazy to be left running around free. If he dies, you and Doc can bury him on the quiet; and, if he lives, you can chuck him into the asylum. She couldn’t do anything for him, if she knew. What’s the use bothering her?”
“But you—” Archibald began in bewilderment.
“Oh, I’d be moving along sometime, anyway. What’d I stay for? And what’d I care if they think they run me out? Kind of tickles me to have ’em think I burned their barns and stole ’em blind. No use white-washing me. It wouldn’t stick. I’ll light out; and then you can tell the kid some sort of fairy story that’ll let her down easy.”
He cleared his throat, sniffed unpleasantly, and drew his sleeve across his nose.
“She’s better than most,” he said.
Archibald looked into the dirty, repulsive face and humbled himself before the thing he saw in it.
There was a scrap of decent soul hidden deep down in Ezra Watts, as the Smiling Lady had said, and Peg had brought it to the surface. Here was a man capable of love and sacrifice.
“You’re a very good sort, Ezra,” Archibald said slowly. “I’d like to shake hands with you.”
He held out a friendly hand and Ezra clasped it in a furtive, embarrassed fashion, but with a look of satisfaction on his ugly face.
“You stood up to ’em fine.” It was his first word of appreciation, and it came haltingly. “I went out becuz I didn’t want ’em to come in here and find him; but things looked sort of bad for me until you come along.”
“You stood up to them better than I did, man.” Archibald’s voice was husky. Souls were surprising things. “It took more courage to face another man’s punishment than to fight another man’s battle. Now I’ll go for Dr. Fullerton. When he comes, we’ll decide what to do about Pegeen.”
“O’Neill’s dying,” the doctor said, as he stood by Michael’s bed, an hour later. “You must bring Peg. It will be better for her to know that he is dead than to be always imagining he’s alone and in trouble. And, in fairness to Ezra, we ought to tell the whole truth!”
He stopped and stood thinking for a moment, then shook his head decisively.
“No; that’s wrong. It’s fairer to Ezra to let him do the generous thing for love of Peg. It’d be a pity to let his first fine sentiment be still-born. Yes; on the whole, I believe we’d better let him go with his bad reputation intact. God bless him for a thieving, big-hearted, low-down scallawag!”
And so it was arranged. The doctor drove to Pittsfield with Ezra and put him on the midnight train.
“Get off when you feel like it,” he said, “and let Archibald or me hear from you if you’re in a hole so tight that you can’t squirm out of it. Hang it all, I’m actually glad I saved your life, Ezra.”
Ezra made no reply. His hour of expansiveness had passed and he had sunk back into his sullen quiet; but there were fifty dollars in cash and a check for five hundred more in his pocket; and somewhere back in his mind was an idea of raising chickens instead of stealing them. He had always liked chickens and now that he was a capitalist, he could indulge his fancies.
When the doctor reached the cottage on the Back Road once more, Archibald borrowed the car and went for Pegeen.
“You’ll have to hurry,” Doctor Fullerton said, after a moment’s examination of the man on the bed who had been given some semblance of cleanliness and order, and Archibald hurried. A half hour later he was back again, with a white-faced, great-eyed child who ran past the doctor and dropped on her knees beside the bed.
“Daddy!” she cried; and the love and yearning in her voice made the two men behind her bite their lips and look angry as men will when their hearts are touched.
“Daddy!”
The pleading voice found its way, somehow, to the fog-bound brain and Michael O’Neill’s soul turned back from its long journey, to look through sane eyes, into the tender child face, framed in wind-blown, black curls.
“Why, Pegeen,” he whispered feebly. “My little Peggy, of the curls!— But ’twas your mother I made the name for, Mary of the Curls! You’ve a look of her.”
The eyes that had been blue as Pegeen’s own, before the drink blurred them, closed and the lips that had, on some far-off day, wooed Mary of the Curls, settled into strange stillness, and Archibald, kneeling beside Peg, put his arm around her, drew her close and let her cry; while, stealing in from the outer dark, a lonely and forgotten yellow pup snuggled up to the sobbing child and nuzzled a cold wet nose into her hand.