The Roof Tree

by Charles Neville Buck

Squires had come as Rowlett's spy into that house, hating Thornton with a sincerity bred of fear, but now he had grown to hate Rowlett the more bitterly of the two. Indeed, save for that sword of Damocles which hung over him in the memory of his murderous employment and its possible consequences, he would have liked Parish, and Dorothy's kindness had awakened in the jackal's heart a bewildering sense of gratitude such as he had never known before.

So while compulsion still bound him to Bas Rowlett, his own sympathies were beginning to lean toward the fortunes of that household from which he drew his legitimate wage.

But complications stood irrevocably between Sim and his inclinations. His feeling against Bas Rowlett was becoming an obsession of venom fed by the overweening arrogance of the man, but Bas still held him in the hollow of his hand, and besides these reefs of menace were yet other shoals to be navigated.

Squires had been compelled by Rowlett not only to join the "riders" who were growing in numbers and covert power, but to take such an active part in their proceedings as would draw down upon his head the bolts of wrath should the organization ever be brought to an accounting.

There was terrible danger there and Sim recognized it. Sim knew that when Rowlett had quietly stirred into life the forces from which the secret body was born he had been building for one purpose—and one purpose only. To its own membership, the riders might be a body of vigilantes with divers intentions, but to Bas they were never anything but a mob which should some day lynch Parish Thornton—and then be themselves destroyed like the bee that dies when it stings. Through Squires as the unwilling instrument Rowlett was possessing himself of such evidence as would undo the leaders when the organization had served that one purpose.

Yet Sim dared reveal none of these secrets. The active personality who was the head and front of the riders was Sam Opdyke's friend Rick Joyce—and Rick Joyce was the man to whom Bas could whisper the facts that had first given him power over Sim.

For Sim had shot to death Rick's nephew, and though he had done it while drunk and half responsible; though he had been incited to the deed by Bas himself, no man save the two of them knew that, and so far the murderer had never been discovered.

It seemed to Sim that any way he turned his face he encountered a cul-de-sac of mortal danger—and it left him in a perplexity that fretted him and edged his nerves to rawness.

Part of Christmas day was spent by the henchman in the cabin where he had been accustomed to holding his secret councils with his master, Bas Rowlett, and his venom for the man who had used him as a shameless pawn was eclipsing his hatred for Parish Thornton, the intended victim whom he was paid to shadow and spy upon. For Dorothy he had come to acknowledge a dumb worship, and this sentiment was not the adoration of a lover but that dog-like affection which reacts to kindness where there has been no other kindness in life.

It was not in keeping with such a character that he should attempt any candid repudiation of his long-worn yoke, or declare any spirit of conversion, but in him was a ferment of panic.