Lockwood returned in depression to the turpentine camp, and spent the rest of that idle Sunday in anxiety and self-reproach. He seemed to have muddled things badly. He had blundered into a condition of open war with the Powers. He had given Hanna every opportunity to stack all the cards against him. His usefulness was destroyed. He might as well, he thought, revert to his first plan of settling it with Hanna at the pistol’s point. But what, then, of Louise? Gunpowder would hardly solve the situation as it stood now.
He was sorry that he had proposed that Louise meet him on the bayou. It would be the wildest folly. He did not think that she would come. But she might come. All the next forenoon he kept as close to the bayou shore as he could. More than once he tore down to the water, imagining that he heard the boat’s engine. They were false alarms, and he felt deeply relieved when afternoon came, and she had not appeared.
All the next day he was in a tension of dread and expectancy, and the next one after. But days passed; a week passed, and he ceased to look for the boat. He wondered in vain what she was doing. He began to be afraid that she would not come, and he could not imagine any safe means of getting into touch with her.
Twice or thrice he passed the Power automobile on the road, but Louise was never in it. He met Hanna once, who gave him an ironically deferential bow. He thought of using the telephone at the commissary store, which was connected with the Power house. It was a rural wire that ran to Bay Minette. You could get connections with Mobile—with New York, for that matter, if you waited long enough.
Craig had once rung up New Orleans to get a quotation on rosin, though it had taken him nearly all day to get through. The telephone was in the Powers’ hall; its use could be heard all over the house; but if he could ever happen to know that Louise was alone there he resolved to try it.
Once, indeed, he was lucky enough to espy the big car speeding westward with Hanna and the three Power men aboard. He hastened back to the camp, but to his disgust the commissary store was full of loungers, turpentine men and farmers, talking, smoking, laughing close beside the telephone. He waited an hour, and then gave it up.
But the very next morning, before ten o’clock, he heard the unmistakable thud-thud of a gasoline engine on the water. He was two hundred yards inland, but he dashed at a gallop down to the bayou, and saw the motor boat moving slowly up the mud-colored channel, with Louise at the wheel, anxiously scanning the shore.
Dismounting, he caught her attention and signaled her where to steer inland. The boat came alongside a big, half sunken log. He took her hand and helped her out. He almost yielded to the impulse to draw her close to him, but her face showed that this was no time for sentiment.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “What is it? Has anything happened?”
“I didn’t mean to come. I had to. I was afraid—I didn’t know what to do,” she said, breathing fast. “It was the only chance. I knew everybody was going out in the car this morning. I was to go, too, but I made an excuse. It’s that oil well, you know. Papa and the boys are going to buy more of the stock.”