That conversation had taken place quite a long while before the present, but it set into quiet motion the wheels of a large and powerful organization.
The knowledge that John Spurrier was objectionable to A. O. and G. had filtered through to more local, yet confidential, officials, and through them to “men in the field,” and it is characteristic of such delegations of authority, that each department suits the case referred to it to the practical workings of its own environment.
Gentlemen of high business standing in lower 229 Broadway could permit themselves no violence of language, beyond the intimation that this upstart was a nuisance. Translated into the more candid brutality of camp-following parasites in the wildness of the hills, that mild declaration became: “The man needs killin’. Let’s git him!”
Now, Spurrier found that the visit to Louisville and Lexington, which had promised to be the matter of weeks, must stretch itself into months, and that until the convening and adjournment of the assembly itself, his presence would be as requisite as that of a ship’s officer on the bridge. In one respect he was gratified. American Oil and Gas seemed serenely unsuspicious of any danger. Vigilance seemed lapsed. Those men whose duty it was to watch the corporation’s interest and to hold in line the needed lawmakers, appeared to regard legislative protection as a thing bought and paid for and safe from trespass.
And Spurrier, knowing better, was secretly triumphant, but without Glory he was far from happy.
Had he known what influences were at work with cancerlike corrosions upon her loyalty, what food was nourishing her anxiety, he would have stolen the time to go to her. Hers was an anxiety which she did not acknowledge. Even to herself she denied its existence and against any outside suggestion of inner hurt pride would have risen in valiant resentment.
But in her heart it talked on in whispers that she could not hush. At night she would waken suddenly, wide-eyed with apprehension and seek to reassure herself by the emphasis of her avowals: “He’s not ashamed of me. He’s not leaving me because of that! 230 He’s a big man with big business, and some day he’ll take me with him, everywhere!”
When old Cappeze, a man not given to unreflecting or careless speech, flatly questioned: “Glory—why doesn’t John ever take you with him?” she flinched and fell into exculpations that limped.
The old man was quick to note the pained rawness of the nerve he had touched, and he began talking of something else, but when he was alone once more his old eyes took on that fanatic absorption that came of his deep love for his daughter, and he shook his head dubiously over her future.
One day a neighborhood woman came by Glory’s house and found her standing at the door. Tassie Plumford neither claimed nor was credited with powers of magic, but she, too, might have been called a “witch woman.” In curdled disposition and shrewishness of tongue, she merited the title.