“Couldn’t help it,” he said. “He had his gun on me. I wouldn’t get shot just for Craig’s pay roll.”
“Well, I reckon you saved the pay roll, anyway,” said Williams. “He had me plumb paralyzed just for a minute. Did you get a look at him?”
“Not so that I’d know him again. Hadn’t we better move on? He might take a crack at us from the woods.”
“Wish I could get a crack at him!” the foreman grumbled, peering at the dismal swamp edge. “Well, let’s go. This’ll scare Craig some. First time anybody got held up here that I can remember. This here’s a rough country, but there ain’t no crime in it.”
Lockwood had his own opinion about that. Crime seemed to be the only thing he had met since coming into the swamp country. This unexpected encounter had suddenly changed all his attitude. He no longer dared to confide anything in Craig—not, at least, until he had seen Jackson Power again, and learned why the heir to a fortune came to be holding up the turpentine pay car. Very likely it was sheer criminal instinct, he thought. He did not see how it could be anything else; and he sickened of the whole loathsome tangle.
He was sick of it. He wanted to get out of it all, but he wanted to take Louise with him. She ought to be glad to go, too, he thought—almost as glad as she had been when she fled in girlhood from a home that was perhaps more squalid, but surely not more criminal.
They could go to New Orleans. As the car jolted and splashed, his weary mind hazily dissolved itself into dreams. He could always earn a living. Or they might settle on the Gulf coast. He liked the South; there was an ease and balm about it that was medicine to the soul—only not here, not at Rainbow Landing. He could plant a grove of Satsuma oranges or figs or pecans. He might get a partner and go into turpentine; he knew the business now and liked it. He would forget his past life. He would forget everything, even his revenge. If Louise would go with him he would leave Hanna and the rest of the Powers to swindle one another as they pleased, a nest of criminals together.
The glare of the lamps through the mist showed a pine tree by the road with a great livid blaze on its trunk. They were getting into the turpentine region. They turned down the woods trail to the camp. There was a great uproar at the news of the attempted holdup, when the car stopped at the commissary store.
Lockwood got praise and welcome, but he could not talk. He was deadly tired, and every nerve and muscle seemed to ache. He got away to his old room as soon as he could, took a heavy dose of quinine and went to bed, where he fell as instantly asleep as if the medicine had been a knock-out drop.
He slept all night, and awoke feeling rested and considerably more optimistic. To his astonishment, it was past eight o’clock; to his joy, he had no fever symptoms. The sun was ablaze on the fresh-washed pines, and the hard sand had already dried. The camp was quiet; most of the men were away, but when he went downstairs to breakfast Mrs. Williams told him that Craig was waiting at the commissary to see him.