He dived at his work again, with a back jerk of the head to urge his messenger on. Douglas swung away with long strides.
At the other houses along his way faces looked out from windows as he passed and heads jutted from doorways when he had gone by, but he did not see them. His gaze ranged ahead, seeking a yellow house on the left. His thoughts were a complex of puzzlement over McCafferty’s cryptic last utterances and of worriment for Steve. He did not reflect on the fact that Steve was an escaped convict: he thought of him only as a hunted victim of the machinations of Snake Sanders and as the wild young sweetheart of Marion, and he resented the coming of men who might be human bloodhounds trailing the unlucky youth. And, though he wondered why honest Uncle Eb should need a warning of the presence of those newcomers, he dismissed the enigma with the guess that this was only a part of the “underground telegraph” system of the Traps, whereby its citizens, good or bad, learned news which might or might not concern them vitally.
Though he did not realize it, he was responding to his environment. The mysterious undercurrent of things unseen, half-guessed—of whispers and winks and silences—of secret movements in the jungly brush and the labyrinth of stones—was eddying around his straightforward nature and deflecting him into the channel where, in time, he might become an integral part of the walled-in stream of life revolving about the bowl. Whether he should ride on the surface of that stream, whether he should float below it like a submerged snag, whether he should suddenly drop to the bottom and be forever lost, only time could tell. But the current was working, and he was drifting with it unawares.
Less than a month ago, as Douglas Hampton, newspaperman, he had had a friendly nod and a smile for every blue-coated patrolman he happened to meet. In his own neighborhood he had known personally every “cop,” and some of the plain-clothes “dicks” as well; and many a time in the dead hours of night, when his own work was done and policemen had little to do but patrol vacant beats, he had stood long in some shadowy corner and yarned with a lonesome guardian of the law. “A fine bunch of fellows,” had been his opinion of them then. Yet now, as Hammerless Hampton, his mental reaction to the hint of the arrival of man-trackers was instinctively hostile; hostile, though he himself still was almost universally regarded as a detective. Yes, he was drifting.
But he was not to drift long. The time was close at hand when, in his own mind at least, he must align himself with or against the forces of the law. In fact, every stride he took was narrowing the distance between him and that decision. When he turned into the little dooryard of the only yellow house on the left, he was within ear-shot of the growling voice of the Law. And when he tramped noisily up the steps and looked through the open door at the top he looked squarely into the eyes of the Law itself.
Beyond that door stood three men. One, his hat askew on his silvery hair, was Uncle Eb. The other two, beefy, red-faced, regarding the newcomer with cold eyes, were obviously outsiders. The civilian clothing and blunt-toed shoes, the chilled-steel stare, the untanned hands hovering on a level with the lowest buttons of their vests, the significant bump bulging the coat of the nearer man—over the right rear pocket—all told the same tale to Hampton’s quick survey.
There was no guesswork about it this time. The Law was in the Traps.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CODE OF THE HILLS
Standing there in the doorway, Douglas watched the eyes of the two strangers shift rapidly over him, taking him in from clean-shaven face to laced boots, then returning to the shotgun under his arm. With a cool nod to them, he turned to Uncle Eb—and surprised in the old man’s countenance a look of mingled anxiety and hope.
“Howdy, Uncle Eb,” he said casually. “Thought I’d drop in a minute and smoke a pipe. Didn’t know you had company.”