THE FORCE OF ELOQUENCE.
Phoebe gazed at the newcomer as if she were seeing a visitor from heaven. All the women in the gallery experienced enormous sensations of relief and Alberdina smiled down at him broadly.
“Mein lieber Gott, helb has gome already yet,” she exclaimed.
They hardly seemed to comprehend in their relief that one man had to deal with a dozen or more.
“Who are you?” demanded Lupo, roughly, coming to the top of the stairs.
“My name is Hook, at your service. May I ask if you are giving a performance of private theatricals? The scene is a good deal like a band of highwaymen attacking a number of helpless women.”
“We’re in the rights of the law,” put in the innkeeper.
“Why wear masks then?” asked Richard Hook.
There was no answer to this pointed question and three of the maskers slunk toward the door.
“We’ve come here to git two criminals hiding illegally in this here camp,” burst out Lupo.
“Have you a warrant for their arrest?”
“We don’t need no warrants in these here mountains.”
“Oh, yes you do,” insisted Richard politely. “Law and order must be respected just as much on the mountains as in the valleys. People who don’t respect them soon find out what happens.”
Two more men slunk toward the door.
“I think,” went on Richard, “that you had better follow your friends out quietly and go to your homes. I am certain most of you have wives who would be glad to see you again after this dangerous little adventure. Jail isn’t a pleasant place, you know, especially to people who are in the habit of breathing mountain air.”
Only six men remained now of the original number. Even Lupo had been silenced, but at the mention of wives he flared up again.
“They have taken my wife away from me,” he cried, shaking his fist at the women in the gallery. “They have given her money to leave me. I ain’t so forgivin’.”
“Do you want to know the real reason why your wife left you?” said Richard in a tone of such conviction that Lupo was deceived into thinking this perfect stranger knew all about him. “She was afraid of you and your lawless ways. When you have been drinking, as you have to-night, you’re a dangerous man. You begin by breaking into private houses. You’re disorderly and violent. Men like you end in the penitentiary. You hide yourselves perhaps for a while, but these mountains are difficult to hide in nowadays. You would be caught sooner or later, and do you think you’ll get much sympathy with the court after one of these ladies, perhaps, has told the history of to-night’s work? Fifteen years would be a short sentence. Your wife is right, I think. You’re not a very safe companion.”
Lupo looked about him bewildered. Only one of the band remained: the watery-eyed innkeeper.
“I was in the rights of the law,” exclaimed Lupo, half-crying as he crept down the gallery steps.
“I am afraid not,” said Richard gently. “But you take a little trip to another county and get some good honest work, and you will soon find out how much happier and safer it is to be within the limits of the law. Decidedly more agreeable than being hunted through the mountains by a sheriff with his bloodhounds, sleeping out in the cold, going hungry, slinking around the edges of villages when everybody is asleep for a chance piece of bread. Earning honest money with your wife happy beside you is heaven in comparison, I assure you.”
Lupo hung his head until his eyes were hidden by the brim of his felt hat.
“I’m goin’,” he said sullenly. “I guess your argyments is too good for the likes of me to try an’ answer. I wants my wife back more’n I wants to git even with Frenchy and his gal. They done me a injury once, but I’m willin’ to call it square if you are.”
“Call it square,” said Richard, and the two mountaineers slunk out of the room and disappeared in the night.
And now the ladies of Sunrise Camp and Richard Hook found themselves quite alone in the vast living room. The danger was over and the last and most impious of the outlaws departed. Miss Campbell and her girls standing in a row in the gallery looked down into the whimsical face of their deliverer. Billie recalled that only a little while before she had wished for someone with a persuasive tongue to appear and address the outlaws. Phoebe, too, had believed that God would send a deliverer. Whose prayer had brought the young man to Sunrise Camp in the nick of time? Hers or Phoebe’s, Billie wondered. Perhaps it was their combined wishes. She understood little about the psychology of wishes. At any rate, here they all stood, safe and sound, and presently they found themselves laughing at the ludicrous thing that might have turned into a tragedy but for Richard Hook’s persuasive tongue.
Already Alberdina was removing the barriers.
“Whose idea was that? Yours, Miss Billie?” asked Richard.
“No, no. We really owe our temporary safety to Alberdina, there. She thought of it herself.”
The German girl was well pleased over the fame the one intelligent act of her life had brought her. She smiled broadly at Richard as she cleared the way for the ladies to descend.
“Before we settle down to talk,” remarked the young man, “suppose we open the doors and windows and light the lights. This room is fairly close and it would be a good idea to illuminate for the sake of your friends who might happen to be returning. By the way, where are the criminals?”
“Here is one of them,” answered Miss Campbell, smiling. “This is our friend, Miss Phoebe—” she hesitated, “Miss Phoebe French. Does she look like a criminal?”
Phoebe, who all this time had been watching Richard with a sort of rapt expression, was startled out of her dream. She blushed and looked down at the floor. The girls had never seen her so shy.
“This is Mr. Hook, Phoebe,” continued Miss Campbell. “I think we ought all to offer him our united thanks for his courage.”
“I do thank you, sir, with all my heart,” said Phoebe fervently, timidly offering her hand.
Richard stretched out his left hand.
“I—I ask your pardon for giving you my left hand,” he said, and for the first time they noticed that his right arm was hanging limply at his side.
“Oh, Rich—Oh, Mr. Hook,” cried Billie, as red as a beet. “What have I done—I shot you—Oh, dear, I am so sorry!”
“Don’t you worry, Miss Billie. It’s just a coat sleeve wound. The bullet cut through the cloth and scratched my arm. It’s lodged there in the wall now, I suppose, as a memento of your nerve.”
“Why, boy, your sleeve is soaked in blood,” exclaimed Miss Campbell. “And you’re as white as a ghost. Sit down here quick. Alberdina, a basin of water. Billie, some bandages. Hurry, all of you. Why are you standing around like a lot of wooden images?”
Phoebe was too inexperienced to join in the general rush for bandages, peroxide of hydrogen, absorbent cotton and witch hazel: all the first-aid-to-the-injured the camp afforded. She stood at the foot of the couch and watched Richard Hook with large innocent eyes. His own eyes, very dark gray, wide apart and extremely intelligent, returned her gaze with a kind of amused admiration.
In the meanwhile, Miss Helen Campbell snipped up his shirt sleeve with a pair of small scissors and Billie, overwhelmed with contrition, stood ready to bathe the wound, which was more bloody than serious.
“I call this pretty nice,” remarked Richard, glancing at the circle of anxious faces leaning over him. “It’s worth being shot to have so many ministering angels about one; and a Seraph with a flaming sword at the foot of my couch to guard me,” he added, glancing again at Phoebe, now holding a lamp high with a perfectly steady arm, so that the others could see to work.
Having washed and bound the wound, they propped his head on two pillows and drew their chairs about the couch. Never was a young man so coddled before.
“You haven’t explained to us yet, Mr. Hook, how you happened to drop down from the skies,” said Miss Campbell.
“I dropped up and not down, on the contrary, Miss Campbell. The van isn’t so very far away. The girls wanted to put up for the night at the foot of the mountain, but I was stubborn for once and we worked old Dobbin until his limbs refused to go any farther. After they had got settled for the night, I thought I’d take a stroll. I supposed you would all have gone to bed but I had a feeling I’d like to see Sunrise Camp by starlight. I wouldn’t have found it, however, if I had not heard the calls for help on the bugle. There wasn’t a light to be seen from the road.”
Elinor felt a secret pride at this statement. It was she, then, who had brought the rescuer! Billie felt sure it was her own strong wish that had drawn Richard to them in their great need, while Phoebe, filled with the conviction of her faith, believed he had been sent in answer to her fervent prayers.
If Richard had been consulted about this and had spoken the truth from his heart, could he have explained the irresistible impulse that had urged him to climb the steep road up the mountain on that dark night?
At this juncture, Ben and Percy, more dead than alive from running, almost fell into the room.
“Great Caesar’s ghost,” Percy ejaculated in a weak voice, “but we have had a fright about you, and here you are giving an evening reception!”
“Nothing has happened, then?” Ben managed to gasp.
“That little arch fiend led us into a jungle and lost us,” went on Percy. “We heard the bugle calls for help. Gee! But we have had a run.”
“And you’re all right? You’re safe?” cried Ben, counting them over. “And Mr. Hook has been protecting you? Thank heavens for that.”
“My dear young man,” observed Miss Campbell with some irritation, “will you please to turn around and look at that front door or slide or whatever you call the thing? I wish you to know that we have had one of the most exciting evenings of our lives. This house was attacked and broken into by a dozen ruffians and if it hadn’t been for Alberdina, there, who has the mind of a general and knew exactly how to build a barricade with trunks, Phoebe would certainly have been tarred and feathered, even before Mr. Hook came to our rescue——”
“He heard my bugle,” announced Elinor.
“I wished for him,” thought Billie.
“I prayed for him,” said Phoebe in a low voice.
“If Richard Hook had not appeared and permitted himself to be shot by Billie without uttering a sound——”
“Oh, I let out a yell,” broke in Richard.
“We would have all been murdered, like enough.”
“But where are your sister and Miss Swinnerton?” asked Ben.
“I suppose I had better be getting back to them,” said Richard, who had quite forgotten that he had left two unprotected maidens asleep in a traveling van on a ledge half a mile below.
Percy and Ben offered to go back for him, but he would not consent, and Billie, solicitous and full of contrition for her reckless shooting, had the “Comet” out in a jiffy although Richard had asked to be allowed to walk. They found the van dark and quiet. Evidently the girls had heard nothing of the rumpus on the mountain and had felt no uneasiness about Richard, who was accustomed to taking strolls at untimely hours.
It did not take long to bring the motor car back to camp and before midnight a peaceful calm had settled over the log hut.
Phoebe, stretched on her cot in the living room, lay staring up into the darkness of the unceiled roof. She tried to think of her father somewhere out on the mountain, but always her thoughts reverted to the new young man with the kind, smiling eyes. Once she chanted in a low voice:
“‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!’”