The Tempering

CHAPTER XLVII

With the half-realized familiarity of unplaced features, one face besides that of his two distinguished companions, declared its existence to Boone Wellver out of all the faces that set the stage that night. When they had entered the room where the body lay and the soldiers had turned and clanked out, they had been as devoid of personal entities as links in a chain – except one.

An officer, though seen only through half shadow, had worn a stamp of grief on eyes and a mouth which the Kentuckian did not seem to be seeing for the first time.

Again under the night skies by the open grave, when the lanterns burned yellow and the white shaft of an automobile lamp bit out a hard band of glare, the figures of the burial party might have been effigies, but once more the tight-drawn figure of that spare officer declared itself human because only something human could, without word or motion, convey such a declaration of suffering.

It was he who gave the orders, and as Boone watched the firing squad step forward – gaunt, shadow shapes in silhouette – to fire the last salute, he saw the details with a dazed and blunted gaze.

The sharp order which brought the pieces to shoulder; the other sharp order, and the clean-tongued reports, single in unison but multiple in their crimson jets – somehow these took a less biting hold on his memory than the hint of the break in the officer's voice or the empty click of the back-thrown breech-blocks and the light clatter of empty and falling cartridge shells from the chambers.

It was over, and back in his bare inn room Boone sat in a heavy dulness, alone once more, when a rap sounded on the door.

"You are Mr. Boone Wellver, sor'r, are ye not? I heard them call ye so."

With the Scotch rolling of the r's, a flood of memory came back to the Kentuckian. This was the messenger who so long ago had come to the mountain cabin, seeking to lure his preceptor out of his hermitage, to China. The years had drawn him leaner and battered him, and his insignia proclaimed him a major, but his beard and uniform had not Russianized him.

"Major McTavish!" exclaimed the younger man, and across the older face passed a momentary surprise, too trivial to endure long against the head currents of graver emotion. "Yes, I am Boone Wellver. I was his foster-son."

The veteran of forty years of soldiering stood stiff for a little while and embarrassed. His undemonstrative nature was, just now, an ice-flow racked by a warm and unaccustomed freshet, and his straight lip-line twisted up, down, and up again under his effort.

"I have a message for ye, sor'r. He did not die at once – and I was with him from the moment he was struck."

Boone closed the door and turned eagerly. He had been hungry for a word – for a reassurance that in these last busy years this gallant gentleman had remembered him; yet now he put another matter ahead of that.

"But tell me first, sir, of his death," he begged. "I have heard little of that."

"It was as he would have had it." The soldier spoke brusquely, as if jealous of his superior's military devotion and in a monotone because his voice needed guarding. "He fell under fire, holding steady a shaken command."

"Was there – much suffering?"

"There was fever, sor'r, and he was out of his head at the end." The officer reached into his tunic and brought out a pencil-scribbled paper. "He had me write this for him. 'Tis to you."

Boone took the note in tremulous fingers and spread it close to the lamp. While he read, the other stood stiff, but his breathing, with a catch like the ghost of an inhibited sob, was audible.

"My dear boy," ran the message, "McTavish writes this for me. I have fallen at last in what I believe to be a fight for God's cause on earth. That is well. I go now to report to the Great Commander-in-Chief, before whom mere appearances do not damn a man if he go clean-hearted. Russia will collapse and the cause will depend upon your own country – a country no longer aloof, thank God.

"But, my dear boy, my thoughts that have been with you so long, turn to you at the end. You filled with affection and pride an emptiness that would have starved my soul. When I think of your country, I think of you as an embodiment of its intrepid youth and strength. Can I say more? God keep you. I – "

It broke off there, and Boone raised his eyes to the Major, who, divining that the glance was an inquiry, said shortly, "He gave out there, sor'r. The fever took him. What you have read required half an hour to give me – between breaths, as it were."

"You say he was delirious – after that?"

The other nodded.

"He spoke your name – and another."

"Whose?" Boone whispered the question.

"A man named Prince. Some General Prince, of whom I never heard. He fancied that this man came from God to fetch him, sor'r. It was part of the lightheadedness."

"Can you recall his words?"

"I was holding his hand. He pressed mine a bit and said very faintly, 'Good-bye, Sergeant.' – 'Twas so he remembered me from other times. – 'Tell Boone good-bye. General Prince has come for me.'"

The narrator broke off, and Boone refrained from hastening him. Finally McTavish resumed:

"He said, 'General Prince has come. Don't ye hear him, McTavish? He says, "The Commander-in-Chief sends His compliments, and you will report to Him, in person."' – That was all, sor'r. I thought at the time he meant Brussilov, but I comprehend now that it was of God he spoke."

"I see," responded Boone huskily. "I thank you."

In Cincinnati, loyal to the core, yet Germanic enough of feature and accent to render him inconspicuous, a fair-haired Bavarian with borrowed naturalization papers pursued an avocation which merited the attention of a firing squad. One day in a boarding house of excellent repute, not far from Eden Park, a stranger called to see him, whose dark hair fell in a forelock over a face of sardonic cast.

This pair strolled out through the wooded acclivities of the park which looks down over the city and, between blossoming redbud trees, found a spot favourably secluded for their interview.

"I still don't see," admitted the sallow stranger in a dubious voice, "what it's going to profit your Kaiser to preach draft resistance down there in the hills. I'm not contending that they don't hate to have the Government say, 'You must,' yet on the other hand, they don't hang back on soldiering. What's the bright idea?"

The German lifted his straw-coloured brows indulgently.

"You Americans have no thoroughness. You cannot grasp the detail because you are too impatient of small matters. One does not seek to administer a cumulative poison with a single dosage. The German mind considers each contributing element – and of the small things are born the large. I sketch for you a picture: your mountaineer in resistance; the southern negro stirred to sullenness; the reservation Indian made restive – all small problems in themselves, perhaps, but taken together making a sabotage of human machinery that destroys your unity. At all events, we are paying those whom we employ. We can afford to be liberal since in the end the foe will foot the bill."

Saul Fulton shrugged his shoulders. "All right, Gehr – "

"Not Gehr," the other irritably interrupted him. "That was my name when we met in South America. It is not the name on my papers. Schultz, it is. Please do not forget again."

"Schultz, then… I'm willing to take my share of this wasted coin, but I can't work in my home county. I tried going back there once and it was enough."

"You know other mountain sections, though – and in your native county you can influence lieutenants?"

"Yes, I reckon maybe I can do that, all right."

Saul Fulton, to whom intrigue was as the breath of life, had again undertaken to earn the Iscariot wage, and he worked as covertly as if he had lain hidden in the laurel thickets.

The result of his efforts was that in one county, not his own, a handful of desperadoes listened greedily to his teachings, and in his own a single man – or boy – of whom it was said that he "was pizen mean an' held a grudge ergin all creation."

Save for that, he gained no disciples, and if, when the registration day came, only one quarter of the men of military age went to enroll themselves, it was because already, through the channels of recruiting offices, the other three-fourths had flowed into the khaki-brown reservoirs of the army. It is history now how the "feud counties" responded; how in two of them not a single man claimed exemption; how in one only two souls waited for the draft.

But Marlin County had her shameful exception in young "Dog" Burtree, who lived alone in a log shack at the head of Pigeonroost Creek.

One Saturday night young Dog drank white whiskey at a blind tiger, and it was reported of him that, in the Holly Hill barber shop, he "made the brag thet he hedn't registered, an' didn't aim ter register." Those who were present reported his manifesto with admirable promptness to the local draft board, and the scandal winged its way along the creek-beds.

Dog may have been drunk beyond remembrance that evening, for when neighbours with faces set in lines of patriarchal sternness rode to his door demanding the truth, he turned putty pale and swore that he had been libelled, and would make his detractors eat their calumnies.

It was on the next Saturday night and in the same barber shop, with much the same group of loiterers present, that the ensuing act was staged.

The shabby little place, lighted by lamps with tin reflectors, was full of pipe smoke and talk that evening, when some one, looking up from a tilted chair, saw a figure in the door.

A startled silence fell and lasted, though not for long – because the eyes of the face that looked in were blood-shot and the lips twisted to an ugly snarl.

Except for its malevolence of expression it was not a repulsive face, though its lower jaw was overly prominent. Its eyes were amber spots beneath heavy brows, and under the back-thrust, felt hat a heavy mass of chestnut hair bushed in curls about the temples. The lips were brightly red like a girl's, but over the whole countenance now lay a spirit both desperate and wicked.

Dog appreciated that what he did must be speedily done, and before the pause broke; before the startled accusers had realised the mission that had brought him his pistol had leaped from its holster; had, several times, risen and fallen in the grasp of a hand hinged on a steady wrist, and had barked each time its muzzle fell level.

Wreaths of smoke and the acrid smell of burnt powder drifted through the barber shop, and four bodies lay on the puncheon floor – of whom two were already dead.

Swiftly the night took Dog Burtree to itself, and almost as swiftly a posse was on the trail, with Joe Gregory, now high sheriff of Marlin County, riding a blood-sweat out of his black colt to assume command of the man-hunt.

The quarry circled over a wide arc of broken fastnesses and went to earth in an abandoned cabin thickly timbered about, and shielded back of huge boulders. There he barred the door and barked out his defiant challenge, "Come in an' git me!"

The cordon closed about the house and awaited the light of day. Until hunger and thirst conquered him, the few casualties were all of the refugee's making, but after two nights and a day of siege, a white rag appeared through a chink on the end of a ramrod.

"Tell Joe Gregory he kin come in," shouted the voice of the besieged man. "I'm ready ter surrender ter him– but not ter nobody else!"

"No," shouted back Gregory, who already wore a bandage about a grazed arm; "you come out, and come with your hands high."

So it was that Saul's single convert came, and it was three weeks afterwards that, the jury having spoken and the higher court having denied an appeal, Joe sat in a day-coach leaving Marlin Town, while in the seat facing him sat Dog Burtree, with irons on his wrists, and a journey before him which should have no return. He was going to the electric chair at Eddyville.

Word ran mysteriously through the length of the train that the slight, youthful prisoner in charge of the tall, grave-faced sheriff was the Holly Hill murderer, and passengers sauntered, with specious carelessness and inquisitive side glances, past the section where he sat.

The condemned man gave them back stare for stare, seeking the sorry refuge of a bravado which, when he forgot his pose and gazed out of the window, sagged into a spiritless and haunted misery. The face of his captor was harder to read, yet the young woman who had also boarded the train at Marlin Town with a group of settlement school children bound for trachoma treatment in Lexington thought that it held an unusual magnetism.

Simplicity and courage were written in the sober eyes; responsibility and self-knowledge were stamped on the firm mouth-line and jaw-angle.

Joe, who had once come to Frankfort to seek Boone's aid in curbing the violence of Gregory wrath, was going through the capital now on another mission, and he made no effort to conceal his heaviness of heart. He was taking a fellow-man to die, and though the duty lay as clear-writ as when it had called him into rifle fire from the fugitive's barricade, it was no longer so easy to obey.

From time to time the condemned man leaned forward and talked, and Joe bent with as considerate an attention as though he were listening to a dignitary. Sometimes he smiled in answer to a forced jest; sometimes to a more sincere and less brazen effort he nodded grave response. One would have said that the two were friends, and against the approaches of the morbidly curious Joe interposed an aloofness as repellent as bayonets. What were they, he thought, but men anxious to see the wheels turn in a head that was soon to wear a cap with electrodes fitting against shaven temples?

From across the car Happy Spradling watched the mingled strength and gentleness of the law's servant, and felt that she would like to know this neighbour, whom, as it happened, she had never met.

The girl was going home, a few days after that, on the same train that carried the returning sheriff – this time travelling alone – and coming to her seat somewhat diffidently, he held out a book.

"If you'll excuse me for introducing myself," he said, "I'll give you this. You left it in your seat when you got off the train coming down."

Happy smiled, and, since they were, after all, neighbours, talked with him for the rest of the journey. Though it had been a long while since her heart had admitted a flutter at the glances or speeches of a man, the young woman found herself awakening to the discovery that she was still young. He asked if he might come to see her, and often after that his horse stood hitched at the settlement school. When one night a few months later he smiled his grave smile and said, "I've come to bid you farewell; I'm going away tomorrow," she acknowledged a sudden sharpness of pang.

"Where?" she demanded. And he answered:

"Over there."

They were standing on the squared log that made a foot bridge between the thicketed banks of Little Laurel, and through a heavy mass of clouds the moon was just emerging into a narrow field of pearl and opal.

Because it was rising and still hung low, its face was not pallid but rosy, and the top plumes of a single hemlock-clump showed outlined, and swaying. Elsewhere the sky was still cloud-dark.

"I haven't known you long," Joe Gregory was saying, "and I've always been a mighty plain, uninteresting sort of man, but if I come back, there'll be things I've got to say to you." He paused, and there was a touch of eager hope in his voice as he finished. "The war'll change lots of things. Maybe it'll change me some, too."

"Don't let it change you too much, Joe," the girl cautioned him, and he bent forward to assure himself that the light which he thought he saw in her eyes was real.

CHAPTER XLVIII

Paris by night was a dancer who has taken the veil. Paris by day, when the siren screamed its air-raid warning, was a bold spirit not cowed but sobered with a realization of death. Yet today Paris was vibrantly alive along her boulevards where, despite the shadow, bright currents flowed and sparkled.

For was not this the Fourth of July, the national day of the sister republic across the sea? And this afternoon would not the avenues echo to the tramp of the first marching feet, as columns in khaki swung along under the flag of the new ally?

Paris had bled as she waited; France had given life and treasure and made no lament, but now the vanguard of mighty reinforcements had arrived, and this afternoon, in the welcome poured out upon them, Paris would voice her quickened spirit of confidence restored and doubt dispelled.