The Roof Tree

"Now, me an' you are goin' ter play a leetle game by ther name of 'craven an' damn fool'," Thornton enlightened him with a grim smile. "I'm ther damn fool. Hit's fist an' skull, tooth an' nail, or anything else ye likes, but fust I'm goin' ter put this hyar gun of mine in a place whar ye kain't git at hit, an' then one of us is goin' ter fling t'other one offen thet rock-clift whar she draps down them two hundred feet. Does ye like thet play, Bas?"

"I reckon I'll do my best," said Rowlett, sullenly; "I hain't skeercely got no rather in ther matter nohow."

Thornton stripped off his coat and rolled his sleeves high and the other man followed suit. Bas even grinned sardonically in appreciation when the other at length thrust his pistol under a rock which it strained his strength to lift. The man who got that weapon out would need to be one who had time and deliberation at his disposal – not one who snatched it up in any short-winded interval of struggle.

Then the two stood glaring into each other's faces with the naked savagery of wild beasts, and under the stress of their hate-lust the whites of their eyes were already bloodshot and fever-hot with murder-bent.

Yet with an impulse that came through even that red fog of fury Parish Thornton turned his head and looked for the fraction of an instant down upon the gray roof and the green tree where the shadows lay lengthed in the valley – and in that half second of diverted gaze Rowlett launched himself like a charging bull, with head down to ram his adversary's solar plexus and with arms outstretched for a bone-breaking grapple.

It was a suddenness which even with suddenness expected came bolt-like, and Thornton, leaping sidewise, caught its passing force and stumbled, but grappled and carried his adversary down with him. The two rolled in an embrace that strained ribs inward on panting lungs, leg locking leg, and fingers clutching for a vulnerable hold. But Thornton slipped eel-like out of the chancery that would have crushed him into helplessness and sprang to his feet, and if Rowlett was slower, it was by only a shade of difference.

They stood, with sweat already flowing in tiny freshets out of their pores and eyes blazing with murderous fire. They crouched and circled, advancing step by step, each warily sparring for an advantage and ready to plunge in or leap sidewise. Then came the impact of bone and flesh once more, and both went down, Thornton's face pressed against that of his enemy as they fell, and Rowlett opened and clamped his jaws as does a bull-dog trying for a grip upon the jugular.

That battle was homerically barbaric and starkly savage. It was fought between two wild creatures who had shed their humanity: one the stronger and more massive of brawn; the other more adroit and resourceful. But the teeth of the conspirator closed on the angle of the jawbone instead of the neck – and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch of darkening sky went black.

It was only the collapse of the human mass in his arms into dead weight that brought Parish Thornton again out of his mania and back to consciousness. The battle was over, and as he drew his arms away his enemy sank shapeless and limp at his feet.

For a few seconds more Thornton stood rocking on unsteady legs, then, with a final and supreme effort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid.

With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man from side to side, gaining momentum.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-shiny and tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock.

How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now, Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol – so there must have been time enough for that.

But his perplexed brain reeled to the realization that he still lay up here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity.

But Thornton's unaccountable whims had flown at another tangent.

"Git up, Bas," he commanded, briefly, "yore life b'longs ter me. I won hit – an' ye're goin' ter die – but my fingers don't ache no more fer a holt on yore throat – they're satisfied."

"What air – ye goin' ter do, now?" Rowlett found words hard to form; and the victor responded promptly, "I've done concluded ter take ye down thar, afore ye dies, an' make ye crave Dorothy's pardon on yore bended knees. Ye owes hit ter her."

Slowly Rowlett dragged himself to a sitting posture. His incredulous senses wanted to sing out in exultation, but he forced himself to demur with surly obduracy.

"Hain't hit enough ter kill me without humiliatin' me, too?"

"No, hit hain't enough fer me an' hit's too tardy fer you ter make no terms now."

Bas Rowlett exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come and the moon had risen, it would prove not only a respite but a full pardon – capped with a reserved climax of triumph.

Down there at that house the mob would soon come, and circumstance would convert him, at a single turn of the wheel, from humbled victim to the avenger ironically witnessing the execution of his late victor.

After a while he rose and stood experimentally on his legs.

"I reckon I kin walk now," he said, drearily, "ef so be ye lets me go slow – I hain't got much of my stren'th back yit."

"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste," responded Thornton; "we've got all night afore us."

* * *

When they reached the house, it stood mistily bulked among shadows, with its front door open upon an unlighted room.

The men had tramped down that slope in silence, and they crossed the threshold in silence, too, the captive preceding his captor; and the householder paused to bolt the door behind him.

Then, holding a vigilant eye on the forced guest who had not spoken, Thornton lighted a lamp and backed to the closed bedroom door at whose sill he had seen a slender thread of brightness. In all his movements he went with a wary slowness, as though he were held by a cord, and the cord was the line of direct glance that he never permitted to deviate from the face of his prisoner.

Now while his right hand still fondled the revolver, he groped with his left for the latch and opened the door at his back.

"Dorothy," he called in a low voice, "I wisht ye'd come in hyar, honey."

From within he heard a sound like a low moan; but he knew it was a sigh of relief loosening tight nerve cords that had been binding his wife's heart in suspense.

"Thank God, ye're back, Ken," she breathed. "Air ye all right – an' unharmed?"

"All right an' unharmed," he responded, as he stepped to the side of the door frame and stood there a rigid and unmoving sentinel.

But when Dorothy came to the threshold, she took in at once the whole picture, pregnant with significance: the glint of lamplight on the ready revolver, the relentless, tooth-marked face of her husband, and the figure of the vanquished plotter with its powerful shoulders hunched forward and its head hanging.

On the mantel ticked the small tin clock, which Bas Rowlett watched from the tail of a furtive eye.

As Dorothy Thornton stood in gracious slenderness against the background of the lighted door with a nimbus about her head, she was all feminine delicacy and allurement. But in that moment she stiffened to an overwhelming rush of memories which incited her to a transport of wrath for which she had no words.

She saw Bas Rowlett stripped naked to the revolting bareness of his unclean soul, and she drew back with a shudder of loathing and unmoderated hate.

"Why did ye dally with him, Ken?" she demanded, fiercely; "don't ye know thet whilst ye lets him live yere jest handlin' an' playin' with a rattlesnake?"

"He hain't got long ter live," came the coldly confident response, "but afore he dies, he wants ter crave yore pardon, Dorothy, an' he wants ter do hit kneelin' down."

Bas Rowlett shot a sidelong glance at the clock. Time was soul and essence of the matter now and minutes were the letters that spelled life and death. He listened tensely, too, and fancied that he heard a whippoorwill.

There were many whippoorwills calling out there in the woods but he thought this was a double call and that between its whistlings a man might have counted five. Of that, however, he could not be sure.

"I hain't got no choice, Dorothy," whined the man, whose craven soul was suffering acutely as he fenced for delay – delay at any cost. "Even ef I hed, though, I'd crave yore pardon of my own free will – but afore I does hit, thar's jest a few words I'd love ter say."

Dorothy Thornton stood just inside the door. Pity, mercy, and tenderness were qualities as inherent in her as perfume in a wild flower, but there was something else in her as well – as there is death in some perfumes. If he had been actually a poisonous reptile instead of a snake soul in the body of a man Bas Rowlett could have been to her, just then, no less human.

"Yes," she said, slowly, as a memory stirred the confession of her emotions, "thar's one thing I'd like ter say, too – but hit hain't in no words of my own – hit's somethin' thet was said a long spell back."

From the mantel shelf she produced the old journal, and opened its yellowed pages.

"I've been settin' hyar," said Dorothy Thornton, in a strained quietness of voice, "readin' this old book mighty nigh all day – I hed ter read hit – " her voice broke there, then went steadily on again – "or else go mad, whilst I was waitin' – waitin' ter know whether Ken hed kilt ye or you'd kilt him." Again she paused for a moment and turned her eyes to her husband. "This book sheds light on a heap of things thet we all needs ter know erbout – hit tells how his foreparent sought ter kill ther tree thet our ancestors planted – an' hit's kinderly like an indictment in ther high co'te."

While Dorothy Thornton accused the blood sprung from the renegade and his Indian squaw out of those ancient pages the men listened.

To the husband it was incitement and revelation. The tree out there standing warder in the dark became, as he listened with engrossed interest, more than ever a being of sentient spirit and less than ever a thing of mere wood and leaf.

To Bas Rowlett it should have been an indictment, or perhaps an excuse, with its testimony of blood strains stronger than himself – but from its moral his mind was wandering to a more present and gripping interest.

Now he was sure he had heard the double whippoorwill call! In five minutes more he would be saved – yet five minutes might be too long.

Dorothy paused. "Ye sees," she said with a deep gravity, "from ther start, in this country, our folks hev been despitefully tricked an' misused by ther offspring of thet Indian child thet our foreparents tuck in an' befriended. From ther start, ther old tree hes held us safe with hits charm erginst evil! Ever since – "

She broke off there and paused with astonished eyes that turned to the door, upon which had sounded a commanding rap. Then she rose and went over cautiously to open it an inch or two and look out.

But when she raised the latch a man, rendered uncognizable by a black slicker that cloaked him to his ankles and a masked face, threw it wide, so that the woman was forced, stumbling, back. Then through the opening poured a half dozen others in like habiliments of disguise.

All held outthrust rifles, and that one who had entered first shouted: "All right, boys, ther door's open."

Parish Thornton had not been able to shoot at the initial instant because Dorothy stood in his way. After that it was useless – and he saw Bas Rowlett step forward with a sudden change of expression on his pasty face.

"Now, then," said Bas, exultantly, "hit's a gray hoss of another colour!"

CHAPTER XXXIV

When Parish Thornton had brought his captive down the slope that afternoon he had left his rifle in safe concealment, not wishing to hamper himself with any weapon save the revolver, which had never left his palm until this moment.

Now with the instant gone in which he might have used it to stem the tide of invasion, he was not fool enough to fire. A silent and steady current of black-clad humanity was still flowing inward across the threshold, and every man was armed.

Yet at the ring of victorious elation in Bas Rowlett's voice the impulse to strike down that master of deceit before his own moment came almost overpowered him – almost but not quite.

He knew that the bark of his weapon would bring chorused retort from other firearms, and that Dorothy might fall. As it was, the mob had come for him alone, so he walked over and laid his revolver quietly down on the table.

But the girl had seen the by-play and had rightly interpreted its meaning. For her the future held no promise – except a tragedy she could not face, and for a distracted moment she forgot even her baby as she reacted to the bitterness of her vendetta blood. So she caught up Hump Doane's rifle that still rested against the wall near her hand and threw the muzzle to Rowlett's breast.

"I'll git you, anyhow," she screamed between clenched teeth, and it was a promise she would have kept; a promise that would have turned that room into a shambles had not one of the masked figures been dexterous enough in his intervention to reach her and snatch the gun from her grasp – still unfired.

Dorothy stepped back then, her eyes staring with the fury of failure as she gazed at the man who had disarmed her – while one by one other dark and uniformed figures continued to enter and range themselves about the wall.

The night-rider who held the captured rifle had not spoken, but the woman's eye, as it ranged up and down, caught sight of a shoe – and she recognized a patch. That home-mending told her that the enemy who had balked her in the last poor comfort of vengeance was Sim Squires, a member of her own household, and her lips moved in their impulse to call out his name in denunciation and revilement.

They moved and then, in obedience to some sudden afterthought, closed tight again without speaking, but her eyes did speak in silent anathema of scorn – and though she did not know or suspect it, the thoughts mirrored in them were read and interpreted by the mob-leader.

Dorothy crossed the floor of the room, ringed with its border of grimly cloaked humanity, and took her stand by the side of the man who leaned stoically at the corner of his hearth. At least she could do that much in declaration of loyalty.

Thornton himself folded his arms and, as his eyes ran over the anonymous beings who had come to kill him, he fell back on the only philosophy left him: that of dying with such as unwhining demeanour as should rob them of triumph in their gloating.

At length the door closed, and it was with a dramatic effect of climax that the last man who entered bore, coiled on his arm, the slender but stout rope which was to be both actual instrument and symbol of their purpose there.

Parish felt Dorothy, whose two hands were clasped about his folded arm, wince and shudder at the sinister detail, and unwilling to remain totally passive, even with the end so near and so certain, he chose to speak before they spoke to him.

"I knows right well what ye've come fer, men," he said, and in the level steadiness of his voice was more of disdain than abjectness, "but I hain't got no lamentation ter make, an' somehow I hain't es much terrified as mebby I ought ter be."

"Ye've got a right good license ter be terrified," announced the disguised voice of the masked leader, "onlessen death's a thing ye favours over life. Even ef ye does thet, hangin's a right shameful way ter die."

But Parish Thornton shook his head.

"Hit hain't hangin' hitself thet's shameful," he corrected the other, "hit's what a man hangs fer." He paused, then with the note of entire seriousness he inquired: "I reckon ye don't aim ter deny me ther privilege of sayin' a few words fust, does ye? I've always heered thet they let a man talk afore he got hung."

"Go on," growled the other, "but mebby ye'd better save hit, twell we've done tried ye. We aims ter give ye a hearin' afore ye dies."

Thornton inclined his head gravely, more sensible of the clutching grasp of his wife's fingers on his tensed biceps than of more fateful matters.

"When ye gits through hangin' me," he told them by way of valedictory, "I wants ye ter recall thet thar's somethin' ye hain't kilt yit in these hills – an' won't nuver kill. Thar's a sperit that some of us hes fostered hyar, and hit'll go on jest ther same without us – hit's a bigger thing then any man, an' hit's goin' ter dog ye till hit gits ye all – every sneakin' mother's son an' every murderin' man-jack of yore sorry outfit! What things we've ondertook hain't a-goin' ter die with me ner with no other man ye gang murders – an' when ther high co'te sets next time, thar'll be soldiers hyar thet hain't none affrighted by ther repute ye b'ars!"

He paused, then added soberly, yet with a conviction that carried persuasiveness: "Thet's all I've got ter say, an' albeit I'm ther victim right now, God in Heaven knows I pities all of ye from ther bottom of my heart – because I'm confident that amongst ye right now air some siv'ral thet, save fer bein' deluded by traitors an' cravens, air good men."

The individual who was acting as spokesman bent forward and thrust his face close to that of the man they had come to lynch.

"Nuther yore brag nor yore threats hain't agoin' ter avail ye none, Parish Thornton – because yore time is done come. Thar's a hugeous big tree astandin' out thar by yore front door, an' afore an hour's gone by, ye're goin' ter be swingin' from hit. Folks norrates thet yore woman an' you sets a heap of store by thet old walnuck an' calls hit ther roof tree, an' believes hit holds a witch-spell ter safeguard ye… We're goin' ter see kin hit save ye now."

He paused, and at the mention of the walnut Dorothy clutched her hands to her breast and caught her breath, but the man went on:

"Ye hain't no native-born man hyar, Thornton, albeit ye've done sought ter run ther country like some old-time king or lord beyond ther water… Ye hain't nuthin' but a trespassin' furriner, nohow – an' we don't love no tyrant. This roof-tree hain't yourn by no better right then ther nest thet ther cuckoo steals from ther bird thet built hit…"

Again he paused, then, added with a sneer:

"We don't even grant ye ownership of thet old walnuck tree – but we aims ter loan hit ter ye long enough ter hang on." He halted and looked about the place, then with cheap theatricism demanded:

"Who accuses this man? Let him stand ter ther front."

Three or four dark figures moved unhurriedly toward the centre of the circle, but one who had not been rehearsed in his part stepped with a more eager haste to the fore, and that one was Bas Rowlett.

"I don't know es I've rightly got no license ter speak up – amongst men that I kain't reecognize," he made hypocritical declaration, "but yit, I kain't hardly hold my peace, because ye come in good season fer me – an' saved my life."

After a momentary pause, as if waiting for permission to be heard, he went on:

"This man thet I saved from death one time when somebody sought ter kill him laywayed me an hour or so back, an' atter he'd done disarmed an' maltreated me, he fotched me home hyar ter insult me some more in front of his woman – afore he kilt me in cold blood… He done them things because I wouldn't censure an' disgust you men thet calls yoreself ther riders."

Parish Thornton smiled derisively as he listened to that indictment, then he capped it with an ironic amendment.

"We all knows ye're ther true leader of this murder-gang, Bas – ye don't need ter be bashful erbout speakin' out yore mind ter yore own slaves."

Rowlett wheeled, his swarthy face burning to its high cheekbones with a flush that spread and dyed his bull-like neck.

"All right, then," he barked out, at last casting aside all subterfuge. "Ef they h'arkens ter what I says I'll tell 'em ter string ye up, hyar an' now, ter thet thar same tree you an' yore woman sots sich store by! I'll tell 'em ter teach Virginny meddlers what hit costs ter come trespassin' in Kaintuck." He was breathing thickly with the excited reaction from his recent terror and despair.

"Men," he bellowed, almost jubilantly, "don't waste no time – ther gallows tree stands ready. Hit's right thar by ther front porch."

Dorothy had listened in a stunned silence. Her face was parchment-pale but she was hardly able yet to grasp the sudden turn of events to irremediable tragedy.

The irrevocable meaning of the thing she had feared in her dreams seemed too vast to comprehend when it drew near her, and she had not clearly realized that minutes now – and few of them – stood between her husband and his death. Her scornful eyes had been dwelling on the one figure she had recognized: the figure of Sim Squires, whom it had never occurred to her to distrust.

But when several night-riders pushed her brusquely from her place beside her man, and drew his hands together at his back and began whipping cords about his unresisting wrists, the horror broke on her in its ghastly fullness and nearness.

The stress they laid on the mention of the tree had brought her out of the coma of her dazed condition into an acute agony of reality.

There was a fiendish symbolism in their intent… The man they called a usurper must die on the very tree that gave their home its significance, and no other instrument of vengeance would satisfy them. The old bitterness had begun generations ago when the renegade who "painted his face and went to the Indians" had sought to destroy it, and happiness with it. Now his descendant was renewing the warfare on the spot where it had begun, and the tree was again the centre of the drama.

Dorothy Thornton thought that her heart would burst with the terrific pressure of her despair and helplessness.

Then her knees weakened and she would have fallen had she not reeled back against the corner of the mantel, and a low, heart-broken moan came, long drawn, from her lips.

There was nothing to be done – yet every moment before death was a moment of life, and submission meant death. In the woman's eyes blazed an unappeasable hunger for battle, and as they met those of her husband they flashed the unspoken exhortation: "Don't submit … die fighting!"

It was the old dogma of mountain ferocity, but Parish Thornton knew its futility and shook his head. Then he answered her silent incitement in words:

"Hit's too late, Dorothy… I'd only git you kilt as well as me… I reckon they hain't grudgin' you none, es things stands now."

But the mob leader laughed, and turning his face to the wife, he ruthlessly tore away even that vestige of reassurance.

"We hain't makin' no brash promises erbout ther woman, Thornton," he brutally announced. "I read in her eyes jest now thet she reeco'nized one of us – an' hit hain't safe ter know too much."

They were still working at the ropes on the prisoner's wrists and the knots were not yet secure. The man had gauged his situation and resigned himself to die like a slaughter-house animal, instead of a mountain lion – in order to save his wife. Now they denied him that.

Suddenly his face went black and his eyes became torrential with fury.

His lunging movement was as swift and powerful as a tiger-spring, and his transition from quiet to earthquake violence as abrupt and deadly as the current of the electric chair.