The Law-Breakers

CHAPTER XXX

THE COMMITTEE DECIDE

The earlier days of summer were passing rapidly. And with their passage Kate Seton’s variations of mood became remarkable. There were times when her excited cheerfulness astounded her sister, and there were times when her depression caused her the greatest anxiety. Kate was displaying a variableness and uncertainty to which Helen was quite unaccustomed, and it left the girl laboring under a great strain of worry.

She strove very hard to, as she termed it, localize her sister’s changes of mood, and in this she was not without a measure of success. Whenever the doings of the church committee were discussed Kate’s mood dropped to zero, and sometimes below that point. It was obvious that the decision to demolish the old landmark in the service of the church was causing her an alarm and anxiety which would far better have fitted one of the old village wives, eaten up with superstition, than a woman of Kate’s high-spirited courage. Then, too, the work of her little farm seemed to worry her. Her attention to it in these days became almost feverish. Whereas, until recently, all her available time was given to church affairs, now these were almost entirely neglected in favor of the farm. Kate was almost always to be found in company of her two hired men, working with a zest that ill suited the methods of her male helpers.

On one occasion Helen ventured to remark upon it in her inconsequent fashion, a fashion often used to disguise her real feelings, her real interest.

Kate had just returned from a long morning out on the wheat land. She was weary, and dusty, and thirsty. And she had just thirstily drained a huge glass of barley water.

“For the Lord’s sake, Kate!” Helen cried in pretended dismay. “When I see you drink like that I kind of feel I’m growing fins all over me.”

Kate smiled, but without lightness.

“Get right out in this July sun and try to shame your hired men into doing a man’s work, and see how you feel then,” she retorted. “Fins? – why, you’d give right up walking, and grow a full-sized tail, and an uncomfortable crop of scales.”

Helen shook her head.

“I wouldn’t work that way. Say, you’re always chasing the boys up. Are they slacking worse than usual? Are they on the ‘buck’?”

Kate shot a swift glance into the gray eyes fixed on her so shrewdly.

“No,” she said quite soberly. “Only – only work’s good for folks, sometimes. The boys are all right. It just does me good to work. Besides, I like to know what Pete’s doing.”

“You mean – ?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter what I mean,” Kate retorted, with a sudden impatience. “Where’s dinner?”

This was something of her sister’s mood more or less all the time, and Helen found it very trying. But she made every allowance for it, also the more readily as she watched the affairs of the church, and understood how surely they were upsetting to her sister through her belief in the old Indian legend of the fateful pine.

But Kate’s occasional outbursts of delirious excitement were far more difficult of understanding. Helen read them in the only way she understood. Her observation warned her that they generally followed talk of the doings of Inspector Fyles, or a distant view of him.

As the days went by Kate seemed more and more wrapped up in the work of the police. Every little item of news of them she hungrily devoured. And frequently she went out on long solitary rides, which Helen concluded were for the purpose of interested observation of their doings.

But all this display of interest was somewhat nullified by another curious phase in her sister. It quickly became obvious that she was endeavoring by every artifice to avoid coming into actual contact with Stanley Fyles. Somehow this did not seem to fit in with Helen’s idea of love, and again she found herself at a loss.

Thus poor Helen found herself passing many troubled hours. Things seemed to be going peculiarly awry, and, for the life of her, she could not follow their trend with any certainty of whither it was leading. Even Bill was worse than of no assistance to her. Whenever she poured out her long list of anxieties to him, he assumed a perfectly absurd air of caution and denial that left her laboring under the belief that he really was “one big fool,” or else he knew something, and had the audacity to keep it from her. In Bill’s case, however, the truth was he felt he had blundered so much already in his brother’s interests that he was not prepared to take any more chances, even with Helen.

Then came one memorable and painful day for Helen. It was a Saturday morning. She had just returned from a church committee meeting. Kate had deliberately absented herself from her post as honorary secretary ever since the decision to fell the old pine had been arrived at. It was her method of protest against the outrage. But Mrs. John Day, quite undisturbed, had appointed a fresh secretary, and Kate’s defection had been allowed to pass as a matter of no great importance.

The noon meal was on the table when Helen came in. Kate was at her little bureau writing. The moment her sister entered the room she closed the desk and locked it. Helen saw the action and almost listlessly remarked upon it.

“It’s all right, Kate,” she said. “Bluebeard’s chamber doesn’t interest me – to-day.”

Kate started up at the other’s depressed tone. She looked sharply into the gray eyes, in which there was no longer any sign of their usual laughter.

“What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, with affectionate concern. “Mrs. John?”

Helen nodded. Then at once she shook her head.

“Yes – no. Oh, I don’t know. No, I don’t think it’s Mrs. John. It’s – it’s everybody.”

Kate had moved to the head of the table, and stood with her hands gripping the back of her chair.

“Everybody?” she said, with a quiet look of understanding in her big eyes. “You mean – the tree?”

Helen nodded. She was very near tears.

But Kate rose to the occasion. She knew. She pointed at Helen’s chair.

“Sit down, dear. We’ll have food,” she said, quietly. “I’m as hungry as any coyote.”

Helen obeyed. She was feeling so miserable for her sister, that she had lost all inclination to eat. But Kate seemed to have entirely risen above any of the feelings she had so lately displayed. She laughed, and, with gentle insistence, forced the other to eat her dinner. Strangely enough her manner had become that which Helen seemed to have lost sight of for so long. All her actions, all her words, were full of confident assurance, and quiet command.

Gradually, under this new influence, the anxiety began to die out of Helen’s eyes, and the watchful Kate beheld the change with satisfaction. Then, when the girl had done full justice to the simple meal, she pushed her own plate aside, planted her elbows upon the table, and sat with her strong brown hands clasped.

“Now tell me,” she commanded gently.

In a moment Helen’s anxiety returned, and her lips trembled. The next she was telling her story – in a confused sort of rush.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she cried. “It’s – it’s too bad. You see, Kate, I didn’t sort of think about it, or trouble anything, until you let me know how you felt over that – that old story. It didn’t seem to me that old tree mattered at all. It didn’t seem to me it could hurt cutting it down, any more than any other. And now – now it just seems as if – as if the world’ll come to an end when they cut it down. I believe I’m more frightened than you are.”

“Frightened?”

Kate smiled. But the smile scarcely disguised her true feelings.

“Yes, I’m scared – to death – now,” Helen went on, “because they’re going to cut it down. They’ve fixed the time and – day.”

“They’ve fixed the time – and day,” repeated Kate dully. “When?”

Her smile had completely gone now. Her dark eyes were fixed on her sister’s face with a curious straining.

“Tuesday morning at – daybreak.”

“Tuesday – daybreak? Go on. Tell me some more.”

“There’s no more to tell, only – only there’s to be a ceremony. The whole village is going to turn out and assist. Mrs. Day is going to make an ad-dress. She said if she’d known there was a legend and curse to that pine she’s have had it down at the start of building the church. She’d have had it down ‘in the name of religion, honesty and righteousness’ – those were her words – ‘as a fitting tribute at the laying of the foundations of the new church.’ Again, in her own words, she said, ‘It’s presence in the valley is a cloud obscuring the sun of our civilization, a stumbling block to the progress of righteousness.’ And – and they all agreed that she was right – all of them.”

Kate was no longer looking at her sister. She was gazing out straight ahead of her. It is doubtful even if she had listened to the pronouncements of Mrs. John Day, with her self-satisfied dictatorship of the village social and religious affairs. She was thinking – thinking. And something almost like panic seemed suddenly to have taken hold of her.

“Tuesday – at daybreak,” she muttered. Then, in a moment, her eyes flashed, and she sprang from her chair. “Daybreak? Why, that – that’s practically Monday night! Do you hear? Monday night!”

Helen was on her feet in a moment.

“I – I don’t understand,” she stammered.

“Understand? No, of course you don’t. Nobody understands but me,” Kate cried fiercely. “I understand, and I tell you they’re all mad. Hopelessly mad.” She laughed wildly. “Disaster? Oh, blind, blind, fools. There’ll be disaster, sure enough. The old Indian curse will be fulfilled. Oh, Helen, I could weep for the purblind skepticism of this wretched people, this consequential old fool, Mrs. Day. And I – I am the idiot who has brought it all about.”

CHAPTER XXXI

ANTAGONISTS

Fyles endured perhaps the most anxious time that had ever fallen to his lot, during the few days following his momentous interview with Kate. An infinitesimal beam of daylight had lit up the black horizon of his threatened future. It was a question, a painfully doubtful question, as to whether it would mature and develop into a glorious sunlight, or whether the threatening clouds would overwhelm it, and thrust it back into the obscurity whence it had sprung.

He dared not attempt to answer the question himself. Everything hung upon that insecure thread of official amenability. Such was his own experience that he was beset by the gravest doubts. His only hope lay in the long record of exceptional work he possessed to his credit in the books of the police. This, and the story he had to tell them of future possibilities in the valley of Leaping Creek.

Would Jason listen? Would he turn up the records, and count the excellence of Inspector Fyles’s past work? Or would he, with that callous severity of police regulations, only regard the failures, and turn a deaf official ear to the promise of the future? Supersession was so simple in the force, it was the usual routine. Would the superintendent in charge interest himself sufficiently to get away from it?

These were some of the doubts with which the police officer was assailed. These were some of the endless pros and cons he debated with his lieutenant, Sergeant McBain, when they sat together planning their next campaign, while awaiting Amberley’s reply to both the report of failure, and plea for the future.

But Fyles’s anxieties were far deeper than McBain’s, who was equally involved in the failure. He had far more at stake. For one thing he belonged to the commissioned ranks, and his fall, in conjunction with his greater and wider reputation, would be far more disastrous. For McBain, reduction in rank was of lesser magnitude. His rank could be regained. For Fyles there was no such redemption. Resignation from the force was his alternative to being dismissed, and from resignation there was no recovery of rank.

At one time this would have been his paramount, almost sole anxiety. It would have meant the loss of all he had achieved in the past. Now, curiously enough, it took a second place in his thoughts. A greater factor than ambition had entered into his life, a factor to which he had promptly become enslaved. Far above all thoughts of ambition, of place, of power, of all sense of duty, the figure of a handsome dark-eyed woman rose before his mind’s eye. Kate Seton had become his whole world, the idol of all his thoughts and ambitions, and longings, which left every other consideration lost in the remotest shadows far below.

His earlier love for her had suddenly burst into a passionate flame that seemed to be devouring his very soul. And he had a chance of winning her. A chance. It seemed absurd – a mere chance. It was not his way in life to wait for chances. It was for him to set out on a purpose, and achieve or fail. Here – here, where his love was concerned, he was committing himself to accepting chances, the slightest chances, when the winning of Kate for his wife had become the essence of all his hopes and ambitions.

Chance? Yes, it was all chance. The decision of Superintendent Jason. The leadership of this gang. His success in capturing the man, when the time came. In a moment his whole life seemed to have become a plaything to be tossed about at the whim of chance.

So the days passed, swallowed up by feverish work and preparation. It was work that might well be all thrown away should his recall be insisted upon at Amberley, or, at best, might only pave the way to his successor’s more fortunate endeavors. It was all very trying, very unsatisfactory, yet he dared not relax his efforts, with the knowledge which he now possessed, and the thought of Kate always before him.

Several times, during those anxious days, he sought to salve his troubled feelings by stealing precious moments of delight in the presence of this woman he loved. But somehow Fate seemed to have assumed a further perverseness, and appeared bent on robbing him of even this slight satisfaction.

At such times Kate was never to be found. Small as was that little world in the valley, it seemed to Fyles that she had a knack of vanishing from his sight as though she had been literally spirited away. Nor for some time could he bring himself to realize that she was deliberately avoiding him.

She was never at home when he rode up to the house on the back of his faithful Peter. And, furthermore, at such times as he found Helen there, she never by any chance knew where her sister was. Even when he chanced to discover Kate in the distance, on his rare visits to the village, she was never to be found by the time he reached the spot at which he had seen her. She was as elusive as a will-o’-th’-wisp.

But this could not go on forever, and, after one memorable visit to the postoffice, where he found a letter awaiting him from headquarters, Fyles determined to be denied no longer.

His task was less easy than he supposed, and it was not until evening that he finally achieved his purpose.

It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening. Up to that time his search had been utterly unavailing, and he found himself riding down the village trail at a loss, and in a fiercely impatient mood.

He had just reached the point where the trail split in two. The one way traveling due west, and the other up to the new church, and on, beyond, to the Meeting House.

The inspiration came to him as Peter, of his own accord, turned off up the hill in the direction of the church. Then he remembered that the day was Saturday, and on Saturday evening it was Kate’s custom to put the Meeting House in order for the next day’s service.

In a moment he bustled his faithful horse, and, taking the grassy side of the trail for it, to muffle his approach, hurried on toward the quaint old building.

To his utmost delight he realized that, for once, Fate had decided to be kind to him. There was a light in one of the windows, and he knew that nobody but Kate had access to the place at times other than the hours of service.

In that moment of pleasant anticipation he was suddenly seized by an almost childish desire to take her unawares. The thought appealed to him strongly after his long and futile search, and, with this object, he steadied his horse’s gait lest the sound of its plodding hoofs should betray his approach. Twenty yards from the building he drew up and dismounted.

Once on foot he made his way across the intervening space and reached the window. A thin curtain, however, was drawn across it, and, though the light shone through, the interior remained hidden. So he pressed on toward the door.

Here he paused. And as he did so the sound of something heavy falling reached him from within. Kate was evidently moving the heavy benches. He hesitated only for an instant, then he placed his hand cautiously on the latch and raised it. In spite of his precautions the heavy old iron rattled noisily, and again he hesitated. Then, with a thrust, he pushed the aged door open and passed within.

He stood still, his eyes smiling. Kate was at the far end of the room on her knees. She was looking round at him with a curious, startled look in her eyes, which had somehow caught the reflection of the light from the oil bracket lamp on the floor beside her, and set them glowing a dull, golden copper. The long strip of coco-matting was rolled back from the floor, and she seemed to be in the act of resetting it in its place.

Just for a moment they remained staring at each other. Then Kate turned back to her work, and finished rolling out the matting.

“I’ll be glad, mighty glad, when – when we discontinue service in this place,” she said. “The dirt’s just – fierce.”

Fyles moved up toward her. The matting was in its place.

“Is it?” he said. Then, as he came to a halt, “Say, I’ve been chasing the village through half the day to find you, Kate. Then Peter led me here, and I remembered it was Saturday. I guessed I’d have a surprise on you, and I thought I’d succeeded. But you don’t ‘surprise’ worth a cent. Say, I’m to remain here till – after Monday.”

Kate slowly rose to her feet. She was clad in a white shirtwaist and old tailored skirt. She made a perfect figure of robust health and vigorous purpose. Her eyes, too, were shining, and full of those subtle depths of fire which held the man enthralled.

“Monday?” she said. Then in a curiously reflective way she repeated the word, “Monday.”

Fyles waited, and, in a moment, Kate’s thought seemed to pass. She looked fearlessly up into the man’s eyes, but there was no smile in response to his.

“I’m – going away until after – Monday,” she said.

“Going away?”

The man’s disappointment was too evident to be mistaken. “Why?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.

Quite suddenly the woman flung her arms out in a gesture of helplessness, which somehow did not seem to fit her.

“I can’t – bear the strain of waiting here,” she said, with an impatient shrug. “It’s – it’s on my nerves.”

The man began to smile again. “A wager like ours takes nerve to make, but a bigger nerve to carry through. Still, say, I can’t see how running from it’s going to help any. You’ll still be thinking. Thoughts take a heap of getting clear of. Best stop around. It’ll be exciting – some. I’m going to win out,” he went on, with confidence, “and I guess it’ll be a game worth watching, even if you – lose.”

Kate stooped and picked up the lamp. As she straightened up she sighed and shook her head. It seemed to the man that a grave trouble was in her handsome eyes.

“It’s not that,” she cried, suddenly. “Lose my wager? I’m not going to lose, but even if I were – I would pay up like a sportsman. No, it’s not that. It’s these foolish folk here. It’s these stupid creatures who’re just ready to fly at the throat of Providence and defy all – all superstition. Oh, yes, I know,” she hurried on, as the man raised his strongly marked brows in astonishment. “You’ll maybe think me a fool, a silly, credulous fool. But I know – I feel it here.” She placed her hands upon her bosom with a world of dramatic sincerity.

“What – what’s troubling you, Kate? I don’t seem to get your meaning.”

It was the woman’s turn to express surprise.

“Why, you know what they’re going to do here, practically on Monday night. You’ve heard? Why, the whole village is talking of it. It’s the tree. The old pine. They’re going to cut it down.” Then she laughed mirthlessly. “They’ll use it as a ridge pole for the new church. That wicked old, cursed pine.”

“Wicked – cursed? I don’t understand,” Fyles said perplexed. “I heard about the felling of it all right – but, the other I don’t understand.”

Kate set the lamp down on one of the benches.

“Listen. I’ll tell you,” she cried. “Then maybe you’ll understand my feelings – since making my wager with you. Oh, the old story wouldn’t matter so much to me, only – only for that wager. Listen.”

Then she hurriedly told him the outline of the curse upon the tree, and further added an analysis of the situation in conjunction with the matter which stood between themselves. At the finish she pointed her argument.

“Need I say any more? Need I tell you that no logic or reason of any kind can put the conviction out of my mind that here, and now, we are to be faced with some dreadful tragedy as the price we must pay for the – the felling of that tree? I can’t help it – I know calamity will befall us.”

Fyles shook his head. The woman’s obvious convictions left him quite untouched. Had it been any other who spoke of it he would have derided the whole idea. But since it was Kate’s distress, Kate’s belief in the old legend, he refrained.

“The only calamity that can affect you, Kate, is a calamity for young Bryant,” he said seriously. “And yet you refuse to believe him concerned with the affairs of – Monday night. Surely you can have no misgivings on that score?”

Kate shook her head.

“Then what do you fear?” Fyles went on patiently.

Quite slowly the woman raised her big eyes to her companion’s face. For some moments they steadily looked into his. Then slowly into her gaze there crept an inscrutable expression that was not wholly without a shadow of a smile.