“In the stories,” she answered, though she did not seem disturbed at the thought, “the stranger in the Cumberlands always arouses the ire of some whiskered moonshiner and falls in a creek bed pierced by a shot from the laurel.”
Spurrier grinned.
“Or he falls in love with a barefoot Diana and teaches her to adore him in return.”
Miss Harrison made a satirical little grimace. “At least teach her to eat with a fork, too, Jack,” she begged him. “It will contribute to your fastidious comfort when you come back here to sell your pearls at Tiffany’s or in Maiden Lane, or wherever it is that one wholesales his treasure-trove.”
If John Spurrier had presented the picture of a man to the manner born as he sat with Martin Harrison’s daughter at Martin Harrison’s table, he fitted into the ensemble, too, a week later, as he crossed the hard-tramped dirt of the street from the railway station 74 at Waterfall and entered the shabby tavern over the way—for the opportunity hound must be adaptable.
Here he would leave the end of the rails and travel by mule into a wilder country, for on the geological survey maps that he carried with him he had made tracings of underground currents which it had not been easy to procure.
These red-inkings were exact miniatures of a huge wall chart in the headquarters of American Oil and Gas, and to others than a trusted few they were not readily accessible. How Spurrier had achieved his purpose is a separate story and one over which he smiled inwardly, though it may have involved features that were not nicely ethical.
The tavern had been built in the days when Waterfall had attracted men answering the challenge of oil discovery. Now it had fallen wretchedly into decay, and over it brooded the depression of hopes and dreams long dead. Gladly Spurrier had left that town behind him.
Now, on a crisp afternoon, when the hill slopes were all garbed in the rugged splendor of the autumn’s high color, he was tramping with a shotgun on his elbow and a borrowed dog at his heels. He had crossed Hemlock Mountain and struck into the hinterland at its back.