THE WARNING
Vane slept until Jard Hassock awoke him by pulling his toes. It was then close upon nine o’clock of a fine morning.
“Say, what ails you?” asked Jard. “You act like you’d been up an’ roustin’ round all night.”
“It’s your fine fresh air,” replied Vane, sliding reluctantly out of bed.
He breakfasted in the kitchen, but not a word did he say of the night’s activities. He was told that McPhee had already called to say that young Steve Dangler had already been in from Goose Creek with a message from old Luke Dangler to old Dave Hinch. The gist of the message was that Granddaughter Joe should remain where she was for as long as Grandpa Dangler chose to keep her and if Grandpa Hinch didn’t like it the only thing left for him to do was to lump it.
“It wasn’t eight o’clock, but Steve was slewed already,” concluded Jard.
“It’s a cruel, cryin’ shame and disgrace!” exclaimed Miss Hassock. “Dave Hinch is a crooked old sinner and mean company for a girl like Joe—but those Danglers are downright low. They’ll marry her to that swillin’, bullyin’ rapscallion Steve, you see if they don’t; and not a man hereabouts man enough to raise a hand!”
“What’s his tipple?” asked Vane. “I thought this country was dry. Surely he is not drinking lemon extract—and alive to show it? You used the word swilling.”
“He’s a hog, that’s why—whatever the stuff in his trough may be,” retorted Liza.
Jard winked at Vane. “You don’t have to drink lemon extract round here nowadays, nor ain’t for nigh onto two years,” he said. “There’s real liquor—so I hear—to be had for eight dollars a bottle, an’ somethin’ that acts a darn sight more real for half the price. All you need’s the money an’ the high sign.”
“And the law?”
“Law!” exclaimed Miss Hassock in a voice of angry derision. “Law! With Danglers to bust it an’ a bunch of cowards an’ live-an’-let-livers to look on, what’s the good of a law?”
Jard nodded at Vane. “If Liza had been born a man she’d of been dead quite a spell now,” he said.
“But I guess there’d been a few other funerals about the same time as mine,” said Miss Hassock, smiling grimly.
“Bootleggers?—moonshiners?” queried Vane.
This, he felt, explained the sentinels and the signals.
“You said it that time, Mr. Vane—and it’s a treat to hear a man with grit enough in his crop to say it out loud, even if he is only askin’,” returned Liza. “Bootleggers and moonshiners is right. The Danglers take the lead in every low devilment.”
“Liza’s maybe right an’ maybe wrong,” said Jard. “I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ about it, whatever I’m thinkin’; an’ I hope you won’t, neither—not while you live in Moosehead House, anyhow. Liza’s mighty free with her mean names, talkin’ about cowards an’ the like—but—well, her an’ my property is all right here—this hotel an’ the land an’ the barns. So we got to stop right here, an’ I’d sooner stop here alive than dead. I can’t afford to be so gosh darned brave—like Liza.”
The fire went out of the big woman’s eyes and the derision left her lips. She strode over to her brother, stooped and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Please forgive me, Jard,” she said. “You are right and I am all wrong.”
Steve Dangler had not come to Forkville that morning for the sole purpose of delivering old Luke’s defiant message to old Dave. He had been instructed to hunt out and look over and size up the stranger who was rigged out like a sport, and who had passed him and yet escaped him the night before. There was no doubt in either Steve’s or old Luke’s mind that this person was a police officer or law officer spying around on behalf of the nearest Prohibition Enforcement Inspector. But even so, it would be wise to make sure, and to size him up and get a line on his character and methods, before deciding on the safest and surest way of dealing with him. To date, the usual methods of lulling official suspicion, combined with the long-established terror of the Dangler name, had suffered to keep inviolate the secret activities of Goose Creek.
When Steve reached the front door of Moosehead House, Jard Hassock was gossiping at the village smithy, Miss Hassock was in the kitchen and Robert Vane was up in his room writing a letter to a friend whose father owned a town house in New York, a country home on Long Island and a winter place in Florida. He was writing to the Florida address. Steve opened the hotel door, entered, glanced into the empty office on the right, and the empty “settin’-room” on the left, cocked his ear for sounds of Miss Hassock, whom he feared, then ascended the stairs swiftly and silently. After looking into three unoccupied bedrooms, he halted and struck a casual attitude on Vane’s threshold.
“Where’s Simmons?” he asked. “He ain’t at the store.”
This was a lie, but Steve would rather tell a lie than the truth even when no advantage was to be derived from it.
Vane looked up from his letter, which was progressing very slowly and dully, and regarded the questioner from beneath slightly raised eyebrows.
“Not here,” he said, and stared down at the half-written letter again and crossed out the last line.
“He lives here, don’t he?”
“Not in this room.”
“He hangs out in this hotel, I guess.”
“He snores here, and eats here.”
“Guess I’ll go try the store ag’in.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Vane turned his eyes and attention back to his letter, and Steve shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. Vane made no headway. He realized that he was not in the least interested in the task under his pen and suddenly wondered, with a disconcerting feeling of futility, if he had ever been sincerely interested in the person for whom this letter was intended. Or was it all part of a game—this unfinished letter and other completed letters?
“Have a seegar, mister,” suggested the man on the threshold, digging fingers into a pocket.
“I’ll smoke a pipe, if it’s all the same to you,” returned Vane. “Come in and sit down, won’t you—if you’re not too busy?”
The other accepted the invitation, selected a comfortable chair, dropped his cap on the floor, lit a cigar and spat neatly into the fire. Vane laid aside his pen, turned an elbow upon ink and paper and lit his pipe.
“Sportin’?” queried Steve, in his best society manner.
“Not as you mean,” replied Vane. “I’m not lookin’ for anything to shoot. Close season, for that matter. But my visit is certainly connected with sport.”
“Zat so,” returned Steve, with honest curiosity and ill-hid suspicion conflicting in his hot brown eyes. “Sport, hey?”
“Yes. I came here to find a horse.”
“A horse? Did you lose one?”
“No. But I have heard of good horses coming from this part of the country, and I hope to be able to buy a young one of the good strain—of the Strawberry Lightning strain. I’ve seen Hassock’s roan filly, but I hear that the real breeder is an old man named Luke Dangler who lives up on Goose Creek. You know him, I suppose. Do you know if he has any young bays of that strain? Bay is the right color—the Willy Horse color. I have a few hundreds that are ready and eager to talk horse.”
“Sure I know old Luke Dangler. My own name’s Dangler, an’ I come from Goose Crick myself. He’s got a couple of young uns of the right color, an’ the right lines. Say, I guess ye’re the gent who drug old Dave Hinch an’ Joe out of the fire?”
“Yes, I happened along just in time.”
“I’ll say so. But why ain’t you been out to see Luke Dangler before this? It ain’t far to his place.”
“I was thinking of calling on him to-morrow.”
“D’ye know the way to Goose Crick?”
“I’ll find it, don’t worry. Hassock will start me right.”
“Sure he’ll start you right, an’ it’s a straight road once you git started; an’ you’ll find the old man all ready to talk horse. I’ll tell him ye’re comin’.”
Steve Dangler went away, puzzled, but still suspicious. Vane was not exactly what he had expected to find. The only thing in which the stranger had met expectations was the matter of lying. He had lied concerning his knowledge of the road to Goose Creek, but in everything else he had proved unexpected. His manner was not that of any enforcement officer known to or imagined by Steve. It was the manner of the best type of “sport” known to Steve, of the two-guides sportsman. And the talk about wanting to buy a horse! That was clever. He’d picked up the dope from Jard Hassock, of course—but it was smart. But it didn’t fool Steve. If the stranger had wanted to see old Luke’s horses, why had he tried to sneak into the settlement in the middle of the night—unless he’d figured on stealing one? No, even Steve could not seriously suspect him of being a horse-thief. He was some sort of damn detective looking for something he knew they wouldn’t show to him, that’s what he was.
Steve went home and made his report and as many comments on the subject of the same as old Luke had patience to listen to. Then Steve was dismissed, Amos and Hen called in by the old man, and many methods of eliminating the dangerous stranger from the existing scheme of things on Goose Creek were discussed. Amos was a crafty plotter. He had a strong imagination of the crafty and destructive sort, and a genius for detail. No man had ever escaped from a plot of his planning except by chance.
Vane was at a loss to know what to do next. His curiosity concerning the Danglers of Goose Creek was now quite as keen as his distaste for them, and both his distaste and curiosity were keener than his original purpose in visiting Forkville. It was still his intention to obtain a young animal of the Willoughby Girl strain, a bay with white legs, for choice; but to deal these Danglers a blow of some sort seemed to him now a more worthy and more intriguing ambition. Something of the kind was due them. Something of the nature of a nasty set-back had been due them for years and years. He decided to have another session with Pete Sledge.
It was eleven o’clock before Jard left him. Jard had talked of Eclipse blood for two hours without a break, but he had not suggested a way of commencing negotiations with Luke Dangler for the purchase of a horse. Vane extinguished the lamp and replenished the fire upon Jard’s departure. An hour passed, and he was about to venture forth and down the stairs and out of the house in search of Pete when he was startled by a sharp rap on one of his windows. He jumped to his feet and faced the window. On the instant it sounded again, like the impact of a sliver of ice or fragment of snow-crust on the thin glass. He jumped to the window and raised the sash, and was about to stoop and thrust out his head when something hit him smartly on the ribs and dropped to the floor. It was a small white handkerchief weighted and knotted into a ball. He undid the knots in a few seconds, and found inside a small stone and a folded scrap of paper.
Don’t go to Goose Creek to-morrow or ever. Please go away. You are in great danger. I warn you in gratitude. Please destroy this and go away to-morrow morning.
He read it, then stooped again and looked out and down from the window. In the vague starshine he could see nothing of the secretive messenger. He closed the window swiftly but silently, tossed the scrap of paper into the fire, pocketed the stone and little handkerchief, slipped into his outer coat, snatched up cap and mittens and left the room. He had been fully dressed, with his moccasins on and everything ready for a quick exit; and this fact was the very thing that upset the calculations of the thrower of the warning.
Vane made a clean getaway from the window of the kitchen, and overtook the running figure before him just short of the top of the hill. It was Joe Hinch, carrying her snowshoes under an arm. She halted and turned at the touch of his hand, breathing quickly. She glanced at him, then down, without a word.
“I hope I haven’t frightened you,” he said hurriedly. “But I had to know if it was you—or a trick. How did you come? How did you get away? Why are you going back?”
“It is not a trick,” she replied. “You are in danger.”
“Now? Immediate danger?”
“To-morrow—and after. If you go, or if you don’t.”
“Who came with you? And why did you come?”
“Nobody. I slipped out easily, and took a long way through the woods. And now I must hurry back. And you will promise to go away to-morrow. Please promise me that.”
“But why do you go back to that place? You have a grandfather here, and plenty of friends.”
“I’m as safe there as here. I’m not in any danger. You are in danger. You must go away. To-morrow! Promise me that—please!”
“But why? What are they afraid of? I came only to buy a horse.”
“They don’t believe that.”
“What do they think I’m after?”
“I can’t tell you. But don’t you believe me? Don’t you know that I am telling the truth—that you are in danger? Do you think I’d came all that way alone through the woods at night for—for fun?”
“I believe you, of course. But I think you must have an exaggerated idea of the danger.”
“Exaggerated! Do you think I’m a fool? You are in danger of—of—death!”
“Death? Then it is not for the first time; and why should it be the first time for me to run away?”
“You must go!”
“I’m sorry, but it can’t be done. Even if the danger is as actual as you say—and not for a moment do I doubt the sincerity of your belief in it—I can’t allow my plans to be altered by people of that—by a few suspicious countrymen.”
“They are—my people. Their leader—the oldest and worst of them—is my grandfather. I know them better than you do.”
“I’m sorry, really I am; and I think you are a brick for coming out to warn me. You have more than squared our little account, for what I did at the fire required very little effort, and no courage whatever. I promise not to venture alone into their headquarters to-morrow, but it is absolutely impossible for me to run away from them just because they happen to suspect me of being something I am not. If I were to do a thing like that, I shouldn’t be able to live with myself afterward.”
“You won’t go?”
“My dear girl, how can I go? My mission is peaceful and lawful. I’m not looking for trouble. I am sorry, but you can see how absolutely impossible it is for me to run away just to humor a gang of—a violent and suspicious old man and that ignorant young lout.”
And then he realized that she was weeping.
“Miss Hinch! Please—ah, you mustn’t, really! You are tired—the tramp through the woods. Come, be a good girl, let me take you to Miss Hassock, or to the McPhees. You have friends in this village—plenty of them, the entire population, I’m sure. Come, you need a good rest. I’m quite safe, and I’ll not make trouble. There’s really nothing to cry about. Come to Miss Hassock, there’s a good girl. Why should you go back to that place, anyway—against your guardian’s wishes?”
She shook her head. “I—have to—go—for the safety—of my—friends.”
“Then I shall go with you.”
“No! No!”
“Only through the woods. Only to within sight of the house.”
“The road is guarded.”
“Yes, I know that. I’ll get my snowshoes. Half a minute. You wait here. I’ll be back in two ticks.”
He turned and ran. His rackets were in the woodshed; and he was soon back with them. But the young woman was not where he had left her. He went forward, studying the edges of the road. He turned into the Goose Creek road; and then it wasn’t long before he found where she had jumped off into a clump of brush. He tightened and tied the thongs of his snowshoes with eager fingers and followed eagerly on her tracks.
