III
"I never saw a tramp yet that was worth his breakfast," snarled Grubbs, the foreman of Eliphalet Congdon's farm. "But don't you bums think y' can loaf round here. It's goin' t' be work from now right through till the wheat's cut. Jail birds, both on y', I bet. Well, there ain't nothin' round here to steal. Y' can both sleep in the hands' house back yonder and hop to meals when the bell rings. There's some old hats in the barn; shed them pies y' got on yer heads and try t' look like honest men anyhow."
They partook of the generous midday meal provided in a big screened porch adjoining the kitchen. Half a dozen other laborers, regularly attached to Eliphalet's section of rich land, eyed the newcomers with the disdain born of their long tenure. Perky was a capital actor; no one would have imagined that he had ever seen either of the new hands before. In the near-by fields the wheat shimmered goldenly in the sun, quivering into the perfection that would bring it under the knife a few days later. Help was scarce and the scorn of the foreman was assumed. He had every intention of clinging to the latest comers, inexperienced vagabonds though they might prove, until the pressing need was passed.
The Governor was set to work with two other men ripping out an old rail fence and replacing it with wire. Archie's task was the rather more disagreeable one of trundling gravel in a wheelbarrow and distributing it in holes staked for his guidance in the road that ran from the highway gate to the barn. The holes were small; it seemed to Archie absurd to spend time filling such small cavities; and a wheelbarrow filled with gravel is heavy. The foreman explained the job and departed, reappearing from time to time for the pleasure of criticizing Archie's work. When Archie suggested that there would be an economy of time in loading the gravel into a wagon and effecting the distribution by that means the foreman stared at him open-mouthed for a moment, then burst into ironical laughter.
"Give you a team to handle—you!"
The thought of trusting Archie with a team when teams were needed for much more important matters struck the cynical foreman as a gross impiety. The humor of the thing was too tremendous to be enjoyed alone; he yelled to a man who was driving by in a motor truck filled with milk cans to stop and hear the joke. Archie's soul burned within him. That a man of education who belonged to the best clubs on the continent should be proclaimed a fool by a hatchet-faced farmer in overalls, before a fat person on a milk truck was the most crushing of all humiliations. The foreman jumped on the truck and rode away, and Archie bent his back to the barrow, resolving that never again would he complain of bumps in a road now that he knew the heart-breaking and back-breaking labor of road-mending.
On the whole he did a good job; it was remarkable how interested one could become in so contemptible a task. He tamped the gravel into the holes with the loving care of a dentist filling a tooth, and struck work with reluctance when the bell sounded for supper.
The Governor was already on terms of comradeship with his fellow toilers, and as they splashed in the basins set out on a long plank near the kitchen, his quips kept them laughing. Two college boys had just arrived to aid in the harvesting. Farmers are not much given to humor and the young fellows were clearly pleased to find a jester on the premises. At the supper table the Governor gave his conversational powers free rein. This was the only life; he had rested all winter so that he might enjoy farm life the more. He subjected the collegians to a rigid examination in Latin, quizzed them in physics and promised the whole company a course of lectures on astronomy.
Perky strolled away in one direction; the Governor in another and Archie, left to his own devices, fumed at this desertion. The two would meet somewhere and plan the next strategic move, Archie surmised, and he was irritated to find himself denied a place in their councils. He refused an invitation to sit in at a poker game that was being organized in the farm hands' house and wandered idly about the premises. The residence was a two-story farmhouse, with a broad veranda evidently quite recently added. As Archie passed the windows he noted that the rooms were handsomely furnished. This was not an establishment where the employees were admitted to social intercourse with the family of the owner. As Archie stole by, the voices from the veranda sounded remote as from another world. An aristocrat by birth and training, he found here a concrete lesson in democracy that disturbed him. The world was not all club corners and week-end parties. For a few hours at least he was earning his bread by the sweat of his face—a marvelous experience—and feeling very lonesome indeed at the end of his day's labor.
"I don't want to stay with papa; I want to see mama!"
A child's voice plaintively uttering this as he slunk round the house reminded him of the real nature of his sojourn on Eliphalet Congdon's acres.
"Papa's sick; you must be nice to your papa. You must help him to get well, and then you can see your mama!"
Through the parlor windows he saw the stolen Edith rebelliously confronting the tall woman who had been a party to the kidnaping in Central Park.
Eliphalet Congdon entered the room clutching a newspaper and Archie heard him exclaim angrily:
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Edith. Your papa's just come and is sick and tired and your fretting's keeping him awake. Take her upstairs, Sarah, and put her to bed."
As he surveyed the upper windows he caught a glimpse of a woman in a trained nurse's uniform. Putney Congdon was established on the farm and though it was nearly three weeks since the fateful night at Bailey Harbor, he was still feeling the effects of his injury. Afraid of being caught loitering Archie hurried down to the meadow that stretched away from the house and stumbled into a flock of sheep.
He left the sheep, rather envying their placid existence, and was on his way to the laborers' shack when the Governor stepped into his path.
"Mooning? Perky and I have been smoking our pipes off yonder in the woods. He's as sore as a boil because Putney's blown in and he's got to make a feint at honest labor. Perky has a very delicate touch with the tools of his trade and he'd just got his laboratory fixed up in the garret where he's been doctoring gold pieces to beat the band. He says old Eliphalet is more and more delighted with his work. The more he's delighted the better the sport for us."
"I don't see where the sport comes in!" said Archie testily, pausing at the fence of the chicken yard. "It's a long way to that camp in Michigan where we've got to take the child; and you needn't think it's going to be so easy. The old man will be hot after us. Putney's still got a nurse looking after him, but if he's traveled this far he's not going to let go of the little girl without a fight. You've got to take this thing seriously; a mistake will be fatal and after all I've gone through I don't just relish making a mess of it."
"Make a wish!" cried the Governor. "There goes a star sliding merrily toward the Pacific."
But a shower of meteors would not have stopped Archie's questions as to the manner in which Edith Congdon was to be snatched from her grandfather's farm in Ohio and transferred to the inland seas. He resented his exclusion from the conference with Perky and said so.
"My dear boy, suspense is good for the soul; I'm merely cultivating in you the joy of surprise. The discipline of waiting will sharpen your wits, which is important, as I mean to honor you with considerable responsibility and leave you here when I depart, which will be tonight as dewy eve spreads her sparkling robe—"
"Leave me here! My God, man, I'm not going to be stranded in this wilderness! You've lost your senses if you think you can shake me now and leave me to get pinched and do time for your foolishness!"
"Patience, little brother, and not quite so vociferous! You have a good natural voice with strong carrying powers but it shows a sad lack of cultivation. This much will I impart: tomorrow morning Perky will whisper to Eliphalet that the Government is wise to the gold piece trick and that they are watched. The old boy will be scared to death—his son on the place and all that sort of thing, besides the chance of facing a hard-hearted Federal judge for tampering with the Republic's coin. Perky will throw a scare into him that will stand him on his head and then he'll advise him to beat it and the old chap will throw his arms around Perky's neck and beg for protection. And Perky, with a reputation for never deserting a pal, will seize him firmly by the hand and away they'll go."
"Where will they go?" Archie demanded tartly.
"That would be telling! Let it suffice that they depart in some haste. Next I take the little girl into my care and start for the camp. You, Archie, will remain here to watch Mr. Putney Congdon."
"I didn't come here with you, did I? They won't suspect me of complicity or anything—oh, no!" moaned Archie.
"Bless you, my boy, I'm far less stupid than you think. I'm leaving here at once and the little girl will be carried off with all circumspection. My lines of communication are working splendidly and some of the keenest wits in the underworld are assembling here and there to assist in my various enterprises. The part I'm assigning you flatters your intelligence. You are to watch Putney Congdon and follow him when he leaves."
"Cut that rubbish and listen to me," said Archie, his voice quavering with anger; "you can't play the fool with me in this fashion. You mean to leave me here with a man I shot; and you think I'm going to follow him! What if he never goes; what if he stays all summer!"
"He won't," the Governor answered. "He's going to follow that child of his if it leads him to kingdom come. If you want to see your Isabel again, follow Putney Congdon. You will of course be a model of discretion, but—"
"Do you mean to say you'll tell him where you're taking his child? If I didn't know you for a sober man I'd swear you'd been drinking!"
"Never more sober in my life, Archie. I shall not of course spoil the joy of the kidnaping by taking Putney into my confidence, but after the child's well out of the way I shall send him a wire telling him where his daughter may be found—a gentle hint, but sufficient to tease his curiosity."
Archie stamped his foot in impotent fury.
"You're leaving me here on this infernal farm, with a man I shot and nearly murdered! And you'll wire him where you're headed for when you haven't told me!"
"Steady, lad; steady! Don't forget that the underworld is a labyrinth of mystery. I'm utilizing all my power among the brotherhood to pull off this undertaking. All about us—" he waved his hand—"with their functions duly assigned, are men I can trust and who trust me—some of them utter strangers to one another but bound by the same tie. But I'll just whisper the address in your ear and you'll do well to remember it. Heart o' Dreams Camp, Huddleston, Michigan; post-office, Calderville. When the victim of your ready gun rises from his couch and strikes out for the northwest you will not lose sight of him. If you do you'll muddle everything. Your hand baggage has been planted safely with the baggage master at the railway station at Tiffin, seven miles from where we stand, and here's the check for it. Once more you shall renew your acquaintance with scented soap. Observe my instructions strictly, Archie; meet all difficulties with a confident spirit and you will neither stumble nor fall. Good-by and God bless you!"
The Governor's blessing failed to dispel the gloom that settled upon Mr. Archibald Bennett as he crept through the shed where the laborers were housed and found his cot. It was a hot humid night, with the chirr of queer insects outside mocking with weary iteration the lusty snores of the weary farm hands. He might bolt, now that he had Isabel's address, and suffer the Governor to manage in his own fashion the foolhardy enterprises, of which he had spoken so lightly; but to do this would be only to prove himself a deserter. The business of delivering Edith Congdon into Isabel's hands was his affair as much as the Governor's. And having twice had a taste of Isabel's anger his appetite was sated. To win her applause he must appear before her a heroic figure, but the part the Governor had assigned him was little calculated to develop his chivalric qualities. He found himself warmly hating Putney Congdon. If Congdon had only had the decency to die there would not be all this bother, and in his bitterness he resolved that if he got another chance he would make an end of him. Soothed by this decision he fell asleep.