Pete shook his head and answered with the importance of an envoy:
"Bas, he's fer us, body an' soul, an' he aims ter succour us every way he kin but he figgers he kin compass hit best fashion by seemin' ter stand solid with ther old leaders."
Sim Squires said nothing but he spat contemptuously when the name of Bas Rowlett was mentioned.
"Ther fust task that lays ahead of us," declared the voice of Rick Joyce who seemed to be the presiding officer of the meeting, "is ter see that Sam Opdyke comes cl'ar in cote. When ther Doanes met in council, Sam war thar amongst 'em an' no man denied he hed as good a right ter be harkened to as anybody else. But they rid over him rough-shod. A few men tuck ther bit in their teeth and flaunted ther balance of us. Now we aims ter flaunt them some."
"How air we goin' ter compass hit?" came a query, and the answer was prompt.
"When ther panel's drawed ter try Sam we've got ter see that every man on the jury gits secretly admonished thet atter he finishes up thar, he's still got ter answer ter us—an' meantime we've got ter handle some two-three offenders in sich a fashion thet men will fear ter disobey us."
So working on that premise of injustices to be righted, malcontents from the minorities of both factions were induced with fantastic ceremonials of initiation into the membership of the secret brotherhood. And though they were building an engine of menacing power and outlawry, it is probable that more than half of them were men who might have turned on their leaders, as a wolf pack turns on a fallen member, had they known the deceit and the private grudge-serving with which the unseen hand of Bas Rowlett was guiding them.
The dreamy languor of autumn gave way to the gusty melancholy of winds that brought down the leaves from the walnut tree until it stretched out branches disconsolate and reeking with only the more tenacious foliage left clinging. Then Dorothy Thornton felt that the sand was running low in the hour glass of respited happiness and that the day when her husband must face his issue was terribly near.
Indian summer is a false glory and a brief one, with alluring beauty like the music of a swan-song, and it had been in an Indian summer of present possession that she had lived from day to day, refusing to contemplate the future—but that could not go on.
The old journal which had fired her imagination as a door to a new life had lain through these days neglected—but they had been days of nearer and more urgent realities and, after all, the diary had seemed to belong to a world of dreams.