A SOUL IN SHACKLES
The blue autumn night haze had almost the consistency of a cloud when Gordon leaped the wall and set his face toward the iron-works. Or rather it was like the depths of a translucent sea in which the distant electric lights of Mountain View Avenue shone as blurs of phosphorescent life on one hand, and the great dark bulk of Lebanon loomed as the massive foundations of a shadowy island on the other.
Farther on, the recurring flare from the tall vent of the blast-furnace lighted the haze depths weirdly, turning the mysterious sea bottom into fathomless abysses of dull-red incandescence for the few seconds of its duration—a slow lightning flash submerged and half extinguished.
Gordon was passing the country colony's church when one of the torch-like flares reddened on the night, and the glow picked out the gilt cross at the top of the sham Norman tower. He flung up a hand involuntarily, as if to put the emblem, and that for which it stood, out of his life. At the same instant a whiff of the acrid smoke from the distant furnace fires tingled in his nostrils, and he quickened his pace. The hour for which all other hours had been waiting had struck. Love had called, and religion had made its silent protest; but the smell in his nostrils was the smoky breath of Mammon, the breath which has maddened a world: he strode on doggedly, thinking only of his triumph and how he should presently compass it.
The two great poplar-trees, sentineling what had once been the gate of the old Gordon homestead, had been spared through all the industrial changes. When he would have opened the wicket to pass on to the log-house offices, an armed man stepped from behind one of the trees with an oath in his mouth and his gun-butt drawn up to strike. Before the blow could fall, the furnace flare blazed aloft like a mighty torch, and the man grounded his weapon.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gordon; I—I took ye for somebody else," he stammered; and Tom scanned his face sharply by the light of the burning gases.
"Whom?—for instance," he queried.
"Why-e-yeh—I reckon it don't make any diff'rence—my tellin' you; you'd ought to have it in for him, too. I was layin' for that houn'-dog 'at walks on his hind legs and calls hisself Vint Farley."
"Who are you?" Tom demanded.
"Kincaid's my name, and I'm s'posed to be one o' the strike guards; leastwise, that's what I hired out for a little spell ago. I couldn't think of nare' a better way o' gettin' at the damned—"
Gordon interrupted bruskly. "Cut out the curses and tell me what you owe Vint Farley. If your debt is bigger than mine, you shall have the first chance."
The gas-flash came again. There was black wrath in the man's eyes.
"You can tote it up for yourself, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Late yeste'day evening when me and Nan Bryerson drove to town for your Uncle Silas to marry us, she told me what I'd been mistrustin' for a month back—that Vint Farley was the daddy o' her chillern. He's done might' nigh ever'thing short o' killin' her to make her swear 'em on to you; and I allowed I'd jest put off goin' back West till I'd fixed his lyin' face so 'at no yuther woman'd ever look at it."
Gordon staggered and leaned against the fence palings, the red rage of murder boiling in his veins. Here, at last, was the key to all the mysteries; the source of all the cruel gossip; the foundation of the wall of separation that had been built up between his love and Ardea. When he could trust himself to speak he asked a question.
"Who knows this, besides yourself?"
"Your Uncle Silas, for one: he allowed he wouldn't marry us less'n she told him. I might' nigh b'lieve he had his suspicions, too. He let on like it was Farley that told him on you, years ago, when you was a boy."
"He did? Then Farley was one of the three men who saw us up yonder at the barrel-spring?"
"Yes; and I was another one of 'em. I was right hot at you that mornin'; I shore was."
"Well, who else knows about it?"
"Brother Bill Layne, and Aunt M'randy, and Japhe Pettigrass. They-all went in town to stan' up with me and Nan."
Then Tom remembered the figure coming swiftly across the lawns and the call of the voice he loved. Had Japheth told her, and was she hastening to make such reparation as she could? No matter, it was too late now. The fierce hatred of the wounded savage was astir in his heart and it would not be denied or silenced.
"Give me that gun, and you shall have your first chance," he conceded. "I make but one condition: if you kill him, I'll kill you."
Kincaid laughed and gave up his weapon.
"I was only allowin' to sp'ile his face some, and a rock'll do for that. You can have what's left o' him atter I get thoo—and it'll be enough to kill, I reckon."
At the moment of weapon-passing there came sounds audible above the sob and sigh of the blowing-engines—a clatter of horses' hoofs and the grinding of carriage wheels on the pike. Gordon signed quickly to Kincaid and drew back carefully behind the bole of the opposite poplar.
It was the Warwick Lodge surrey, and it stopped at the gate. Two men got out and went up the path, and an instant later, Kincaid followed stealthily.
Gordon waited for the next gas-flare, and by the light of it he threw the breech-block of the repeating rifle to make sure the cartridge was in place. Then he, too, passed through the wicket and went to stand in the shadow of the slab-floored porch, redolent of memories. He had forgotten the lesser vengeance in the thirst for the greater,—that he had come to fling their misfortunes into the faces of the father and the son, and to tell them that the work was his. He heard only the voice of the savage in his heart, and that was whispering "Kill! kill!"
It was close on midnight when the door giving on the porch opened and two men stood on the threshold. The younger of the two was speaking.
"It's quieter than usual to-night. That was a good move—getting Ludlow and the two Helgersons jailed. I was in hopes we could snaffle old Caleb with the others. He pretends to be peacemaking, but as long as he is loose, these fools will hang to the idea that they're fighting his battle against us."
"It is already fought," said the older man dejectedly. "My luck has gone. When Henniker puts us to the wall, we shall be beggars."
The young man's rejoinder was an exclamation of contempt.
"You've lost your nerve. What you need most is to go to bed and sleep. Wait for me till I've made a round of the guards, and we'll go home. Better ring up the surrey right now."
He left the porch on the side nearest the furnace, and Gordon saw an active figure glide from the shelter of a flask-shed and go in pursuit. He followed at a distance. It was needful only that he should know where to find Farley when Kincaid should have squared his account.
The leisurely chase led the round of the great gates first, and thence through the deserted and ruined coke yard to the foot of the huge slag dump, cold now from the long shut-down.
Tom looked to see Farley turn back from the toe of the dump. There were no gates on that side of the yard, and consequently no guards.
But the short cut to the office was up the slope of the dump and along the railway track over which the drawings of molten slag were run out to be spilled down the face of the declivity. There had been no slag-drawing since the new "blow-in" earlier in the day; but while he was watching to keep Farley in sight in the intervals between the gas-flares, Gordon was conscious of the note of preparation behind him: the slackening of the blast, the rattle and clank of the dinkey locomotive pushing the dumping ladle into place under the furnace lip.
Farley had taken two or three scrambling steps up the rough-seamed declivity when the workmen tapped the furnace. There was a sputtering roar and the air was filled with coruscating sparks.
Then the stream of molten matter began to pour into the great ladle, a huge eight-foot pot swung on tilting trunnions and mounted on a skeleton flat-car; and for Gordon, standing at the corner of the ore shed with his back to the slag drawers, the red glow picked out the man scrambling up the miniature mountain of cooled scoria,—this man and another man running swiftly to overtake him.
He looked on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face his adversary. Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in Farley's right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the roar from the furnace lip. Then the two men closed and rolled together to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned his back.
When he looked again the trampling note of the big blast-engines had quickened to its normal beat, the blow-hole was plugged with its stopper of damp clay, and a red twilight born of the reflection from the surface of the great pot of seething slag had succeeded to the blinding glare. Where there had been two men locked in struggle there was now only one, and he was lying quietly with one leg doubled under him. Gordon set his teeth on an angry oath of disappointment. Had Kincaid broken his compact?
The first long-drawn exhaust of the dinkey engine moving the slag kettle out to its spilling place ripped the silence. Gordon heard—and he did not hear: he was watching the prone figure at the dump's toe. When it should rise, he meant to fire from where he stood under the eaves of the ore-shed. The murder-thought contemplated nothing picturesque or dramatic. It was merely the dry thirst for the blood of a mortal enemy, as it is wont to be off the stage or out of the pages of the romancers.
The puffing locomotive had pushed the slag-pot car half-way to the track-end before Farley sat up as one dazed and seemed to be trying to get on his feet. Twice and once again he essayed it, falling back each time upon the bent and doubled leg. Then he looked up and saw the slag-car coming; saw and cried out as men scream in the death agony. The end rails of the dumping track were fairly above him.
Gordon heard the yell of terror and witnessed the frenzied efforts of the doomed man to rise and get out of the path of the impending torrent. Whereupon the murder devil whispered in his ear again. Farley's foot was caught in one of the many scars or seams in the lava bed. It was only necessary to wait, to withhold the merciful bullet, to go away and leave the wretched man to his fate.
That fate was certain, lacking a miracle to avert it. There were no workmen in that part of the yard; and the two men in charge of the slag kettle were on the opposite side of the engine where the dumping mechanism was connected. Farley was screaming again, but now the safety-valve of the locomotive was blowing off steam with a din to drown all.
Gordon tossed the gun aside and turned away. It was better so. Possibly at the climaxing instant he might have lacked the firmness to aim and press the trigger. This was simpler, easier, more in keeping with Vincent Farley's deserts; more satisfying to the thirst for vengeance.
Was it? Like a bolt from the heavens, into the very midst of the cold-blooded, murderous triumph, came a long-neglected form of words, writing itself in flaming letters in his brain: Thou shall do no murder. And after it another: But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.
He put his hands before his eyes, stumbled blindly and fell down, groveling in the yellow sand of the ore floor, as that one of old whom the possessing devils tore and rended. Hell and the furies!—was this to be the end of it? Did the old, time-worn fables planted in the lush and mellow soil of childhood wait only for the moment of superhuman trial to assert themselves truth of the very truth? God in Heaven! must he be flogged back into the ranks he had deserted when every drop of blood in his veins was crying out for shame?
Something gripped him and stood him on his feet, and before he realized what he was doing he was running, gasping, tripping and falling headlong, only to spring up and run again, with all thoughts trampled out and beaten down by one: would he still be in time?
There was something wrong with the dumping machinery of the slag-car, and two men were working with it on the side away from the spilling slope. Gordon had not breath wherewith to shout; moreover the safety-valve was still screeching to gulf all human cries. Farley was lying face down and motionless, with the twisted foot still held fast in a wedge-shaped crack in the cooled slag. Tom bent and lifted him; yelled, swore, tugged, strained, kicked fiercely at the imprisoned shoe-heel. Still the vise-grip held, and the great kettle on the height above was creaking and slowly careening under the winching of the engine crew. If the molten torrent should plunge down the slope now, there would be two human cinders instead of one.
Suddenly the frenzy, so alien to the Gordon blood, spent itself, leaving him cool and determined. Quite methodically he found his pocket-knife, and he remembered afterward that he had been collected enough to choose and open the sharper of the two blades. There was a quick, sure slash at the shoe-lacing and the crippled foot was freed. With another yell, this time of glad triumph, he snatched up his burden and backed away with it in the tilting half-second when the deluge of slag, firing the very air with shriveling heat, was pouring down the slope.
Then he fell in a heap, with Farley under him, and fainted as a woman might—when the thing was done.