“He was hidden from view in a mass of stabbing figures.”
15
The sun sank thunderously behind the mountain-range and tinted the tips of all the peaks with gold. Little fleecy clouds floated overhead in contented indolence. The wind of the heights was still. The pine-clad hills seemed very soft and restful as the shadows deepened on the eastern slopes, and contrasted strangely with the still-bright golden fields of the valleys yet unshadowed by the mountains.
Stephan held out a weary hand, pointing. A sullen column of smoke rose from a point far distant. He pointed again, where a thin wisp of vapor grew steadily thicker and denser.
“Our houses,” he said bitterly. “They are being burned. Vladimir has spoken, and we die.”
Cunningham clenched his fists as the sullen gray clouds rose slowly upward in the still air. Once he saw figures moving about the base of the smoke. Once he thought he heard yelling.
“I don’t think he’s told your secret,” he said after an instant. “That’s the mob. Gray promised that help would come. He said it was coming by airplane. And Vladimir——”
He told Stephan swiftly what Vladimir had said to the sheriff: that the Strangers were to be surrounded by the mob, and that then he would speak to them; that they would submit, and that some would go away in chains to be hung for the murder of his brother, and that he would take the others away with him forever; that they would follow when he spoke to them and obey him in all things.
Stephan’s eyes flashed fire for a second.