Paul Rundel: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

his (Blak X Buck) mark.

That was all. Hoag took it to the fireplace, struck a match, and was about to ignite the paper, but refrained. Extinguishing the match, he rested a quivering elbow on the mantelpiece, and reflected. What ought he to do with the paper? If it were found on his dead body it would explain things not now generally known. Dead body! How could he think of his dead body? His body, white, cold, and lifeless, perhaps with a stare of terror in the eyes! Why, he had never even thought of himself as being like that, and yet what could prevent it now? What?

Some one—Ethel or her mother—was playing the piano in the parlor. Aunt Dilly was heard singing while at work behind the house. Jack ran through the hall, making a healthy boy's usual clatter, and his father heard him merrily calling across the lawn to Paul Rundel that he had left a letter for him on his table.

All this was maddening. It represented life in its full swing and ardor, while here was something as grim and pitilessly exultant as hell itself could devise. Hoag folded the paper in his bloodless hands and sank upon the edge of his bed. He had used his brain shrewdly and skilfully hitherto, and in what way could he make it serve him now? Something must be done, but what? He could not appeal to the law, for he had made his own laws, and they were inadequate. He could not evoke the aid of friends, for they—such as they were—had left him like stampeded cattle, hoping that by his death the wrath of the hidden avenger might be appeased. He could flee and leave all his possessions to others, but something told him that he would be pursued.

When the dusk was falling he went out on the lawn. Ethel and Paul were seated on a rustic bench near the summer-house, and he avoided them. Seeing Mrs. Mayfield at the gate, he turned round behind the house to keep from meeting and exchanging platitudes with her. In the back yard he pottered about mechanically, inspecting his beehives, his chicken-house and dog-kennel, receptive of only one thought. He wondered if he were really losing his mental balance, else why should he be so devoid of resources? He now realized the terrible power embodied in the gruesome warnings his brain had fashioned and circulated among a simple-minded, superstitious people. What he was now facing they had long cowered under. The thought of prayer, as a last resort, flashed into his mind, but he promptly told himself that only fools prayed. Biblical quotations flocked about him as if from his far-off childhood. And such quotations as they were!

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” These things seemed to be borne to him on the breeze that swept down from the beetling rocks of the mountains which leaned against the star-studded sky.

After an all but sleepless night, Hoag ate breakfast with the family the next morning, and announced his intention of running down to Atlanta for a day or so on business. Paul wanted to ask some questions pertaining to his work, but Hoag swept them aside with a turgid wave of the hand.

“Run it yourself; it will be all right,” he said. “Your judgment is as good as mine. I don't feel exactly well here lately. I have headaches that I didn't use to have, an' I think I'll talk to a doctor down thar. I don't know; I say maybe I will.”

Riding to town, he left his horse at Trawley's stable, and going to the railway station below the Square he strolled about on the platform. A locomotive's whistle several miles up the valley announced that the train was on time. Approaching the window of the ticket-office, which was within the little waiting-room, he found the opening quite filled by a broad-brimmed farmer's hat, a pair of heavy shoulders on a long body, supported by a pair of gaunt jeans-clothed legs.

“Yes, I'm off for Texas.” He recognized Purvynes's voice in cheerful conversation with the agent. “My brother says I ought to come. He's got a good thing for me out thar—land's as black as a hat, an' as rich as a stable-lot a hundred year old. He was so set on havin' me that he lent me the money to go on. So long! Good luck to you!”