And yet on that day when the bobwhites had sounded and the blow had fallen, Sim Colby was nowhere near the opportunity hound’s house. He sat tippling in a mining town two days’ journey away, and he had no knowledge of what went on at home. His companion was ex-Private Severance—once his comrade in arms.

The town was one of those places which discredit the march of industry by the mongrelized character of its outposts. The wild aloofness of the hills and valleys was marred there by the shacks of the camp and its sky soiled by a black reek of coke furnaces.

Filth physical and moral brooded along the unkempt streets where the foul buzz of swarming flies sounded over refuse piles, and that spirit of degradation lay no less upon the unclean tavern, where the two men who had once worn the uniform sat with a bottle of cheap whisky between them.

Colby, who had need to maintain his reputation for probity at home, made an occasional pilgrimage hither to foregather with his former comrade and loosen the galling rein of restraint. Just about the time when the attack on Spurrier’s house had begun, he had leaned forward with his elbows on the table, his face heavy and his eyes inflamed, pursuing some topic of conversation which had already gained headway.

“These hyar fellers that seeks ter git rid of Spurrier,” 202 he confided, “kinderly hinted ’round thet they’d like ter git me ter do ther job for ’em, but I pretended like I didn’t onderstand what they war drivin’ at, no fashion at all.”

“Why didn’t ye hearken ter ’em?” questioned Severance practically. “Hit hain’t every day a man kin git paid fer doin’ what he seeks ter do on his own hook.”

But Colby grinned with a crafty gleam in his eye and poured another drink.

“What fer would I risk ther penitenshery ter do a killin’ fer them fellers when, ef I jest sets still on my hunkers they’ll do mine fer me,” he countered.

For a time after that whatever enemies Spurrier had seemed to have lost their spirit of eagerness. One might have presumed that to the rule of amity which apparently surrounded him, there was no exception—and so the mystery remained unsolved. Even blind Joe Givins made a detour in a journey to stop at Spurrier’s house and sing a ballad of his own composition anent the mysterious siege and to express his indignation at the “pizen meanness” of men who would father and carry forward such infamies.

And Glory, who had penetrated so deeply into the shadow that life had seemed ended for her, was recovering. Into her pale cheeks came a new blossoming and into the smile of her lips and eyes a new light that was serene and triumphant. She had been too happy to die.

While the summer waned and the beauties of autumn began to kindle, the young wife grew strong, and her husband, seemingly, had nothing to do except to wander about the hills with her and discover in her new charms. Neighborly saws and hammers were 203 ringing now as his place was transformed from its simple condition to the “hugest log house on seven creeks.”

In some respects he wished that his factitious indolence were real, for he felt no pride in the occult fashion in which he was directing the activities of his henchmen. And yet a few months ago this progress would have been food for satisfaction—almost triumph.

His plans, as outlined to Martin Harrison were by no means at a standstill. They were going forward with an adroit drawing in and knitting together of scattered strands, and the warp and woof of this weaving were coming into definite order and pattern.

The dual necessity was: first to slip through a legislature which was supposedly under the domination of American Oil and Gas, a charter which should wrest from that concern the sweet fruits of monopoly, and secondly, to secure at paltry prices the land options that would give the prospective pipe line its right of way.

As this campaign had been originally mapped and devised it had not been simple, but now it was complicated by a new and difficult element. In those first dreams of conquest the native had been no more considered than the red Indian was considered in the minds of the new world settlers. Spurrier himself had brushed lightly aside this aspect of the affair. Every game has and must have its “suckers.” And their sorry destiny it is to be despoiled. Now the very term that he had used in his thoughts, brought with it an amendment. It is not every game that must have its suckers but every bunco game.

Martin Harrison did not know it, but his lieutenant had redrawn his plans, and redrawn them in a fashion which the chief would have regarded as insubordinate, impractical and sentimental.

Spurrier intended that when the smoke cleared from the field upon which the forces of Harrison and those of Trabue had been embattled, the Harrison banners should be victoriously afloat and the Trabue standards dust trailed. But also he intended that the native land-holders, upon whom both combatants had looked as mere unfortunate onlookers raked by the cross fire of opposing artillery, should emerge as real and substantial gainers.

Of late the man had not escaped the penalty of one who faces responsibility and wields power. He had abandoned as puerile his first impulse, after his marriage, to throw up his whole stewardship to the Wall Street masters. That would have amounted only to an ostentation of virtue which would have surrendered the situation into the merciless hands of A. O. and G., and would have left the mountain folk unprotected.

Yet he could not escape the realization that he would stand with all the seeming of a traitor and a plunderer to any of his simple friends who learned of his activities—for as yet he could confide to no one the plans he was maturing.

It was when the refurnished and enlarged place had been completed that the neighbors came from valley, slope, and cove to give their blessing at the housewarming which was also, belatedly, the “infaring.”

That homely, pioneer observance with which the groom brings home his bride, had not been possible 205 after the wedding, but now Aunt Erie Toppitt had come over and prepared entertainment on a lavish if homely scale since Glory was not yet well.

To the husband as he stood greeting the guests who arrived in jeans and hodden-gray, in bright shawls and calicoes, came the feeling of contrast and unreality, as though this were all part of some play quaintly and exaggeratedly staged to reflect a medieval period. In the drawing rooms of Martin Harrison and his confreres he had moved through a social atmosphere, quiet, contained, and reflecting such a life as the dramatist uses for background in a comedy of manners. Closing his eyes now he could see himself as he had been when, starting out for such an entertainment, he had paused before the cheval glass in his club bedroom, adding a straightening touch to his white tie, adjusting the set of his waistcoat and casting a critical eye over the impeccable black and white of his evening dress. Here, flannel shirted and booted, corduroy breeched and tanned brown, he stood by the door watching the arrival of guests who seemed to have stepped out of pioneer America or Elizabethan England. There were women riding mules or tramping long roads on foot and trailing processions of children who could not be left at home; men feeling overdressed and uncomfortable because they had donned coats and brushed their hats; even wagons plodding slowly behind yokes of oxen and one man riding a steer in lieu of a horse!

So they came to give Godspeed to his marriage—and they were the only people on God’s green earth who thought of him in any terms of regard save that 206 regard which sprung from self-interest in his ability to serve beyond others!

Men who were blood enemies met here as friends, because his roof covered a zone of common friendship and under its protection their hatreds could no more intrude on such a day than could pursuit in the Middle Ages follow beyond the sanctuary gates of a cathedral. Inside sounded the minors of the native fiddlers and the scrape of feet “running the sets” of quaint square dances.

The labors of preparation had been onerous. Aunt Erie stood at the open door constituting, with Spurrier and his wife, a “receiving line” of three, and her wrinkled old face bore an affectation of morose exhaustion as to each guest she made the same declaration:

“I hopes an’ prays ye all enjoys this hyar party—Gawd knows my back’s broke.”

But Spurrier had not in his letters to Harrison mentioned his marriage, and to Vivien he had not written at all. He thought they would hardly understand, and he preferred to make his announcement when he stood face to face with them, relying on the force of his own personality to challenge any criticism and proclaim his own independence of action. Just now there was no virtue in needlessly antagonizing his chief.

Among the guests who came to that housewarming was one chance visitor who was not expected. He came because the people under whose roof he was being sheltered, had “fetched him along,” and he was Wharton, the man whose purpose hereabouts had set gossip winging aforetime.

It seemed to some of the local visitors that despite his entire courtesy, Spurrier did not evince any profound liking for this other “furriner,” and since they had come to accept their host as a trustworthy oracle, they took the tip and were prepared to dislike Wharton, too.

That evening, while blind Joe Givins fiddled, and dancers “ran their sets” on the smooth, new floor, a group of men gathered on the porch outside and smoked. Among them for a time were both Spurrier and Wharton.

The latter raised something of a laugh when he confidently predicted that the oil prosperity, for all its former collapse and present paralysis, was not permanently dead.

“The world needs oil and there’s oil here,” he declared with unctuous conviction. “Men who are willing to gamble on that proposition will win out in the end.”

“Stranger,” responded Uncle Jimmy Litchfield, taking his pipestem from between his teeth and spitting contemptuously at the earth, “ye sees, settin’ right hyar before ye a man that ’lowed he was a millionaire one time, ’count of this hyar same oil ye’re discoursin’ so hopeful about. Thet man’s me. I’d been dirt-pore all my days, oftentimes hurtin’ fer ther plum’ needcessities of life. I’m mighty nigh thet pore still.”

“Did you strike oil in the boom days?” demanded Wharton as he bent eagerly forward.

“I owned me a farm, them days, on t’other side ther mounting,” went on the narrator, “an’ them oil men came along an’ wanted ter buy ther rights offen me.”

“Did you sell?”

Uncle Billy chuckled. “They up an’ offered me a royalty of one-eighth of ther whole production. They proved hit up ter me by ’rithmetic an’ algebry how hit would make me rich over an’ above all avarice—but I said no, I wouldn’t take no eighth. I stud out fer a sixteenth by crickety!”

Both Spurrier and Wharton smothered their laughter as the latter inquired gravely: “Did they play one of them royalty games.”

“They done better’n thet. They said, ‘We’ll give ye two sixteenths,’ an’ thet’s when I ’lowed I was es good es a Pierpont Morgan. I wouldn’t nuver hurt fer no needcessity no more.”

“And what was the outcome of it all?” asked Wharton.

Uncle Jimmy’s face darkened. “The come-uppance of ther whole blame business war thet a lot of pore devils what hed done been content with poverty found hit twice as hard ter go on bein’ pore because they’d got to entertainin’ crazy dreams ther same as me. Any man thet talks oil ter me now’s got ter buy outright an’ pay me spot cash. I ain’t playin’ no more of them royalty games.”

“That’s fair enough,” said Wharton. “But it seems to me that you people are taking the wrong tack. Because the boom collapsed once, you are shutting the door against the possibility of its coming again—and it’s going to come again.”

“A man kin git stung once,” volunteered another native, “an’ hit’s jest tough luck or bewitchment. Ef he gits stung twicet on ther same trumpery, he ain’t no more then a plum’, daft fool.”

Wharton lighted a fresh cigar and turned toward Spurrier.

“Mr. Spurrier here, is a man you all know and trust——” he hazarded. “I understand that he’s seen oil fields in the West and Mexico. I wonder what he thinks about it all.”

On the dark porch Spurrier looked at his visitor for a few minutes in silence and his first reply was a quiet question.

“Did I tell you I’d seen oil fields in operation?” he inquired, and Wharton stammered a little.

“I was under that impression,” he said. “Possibly I am wrong.”

“No—you are right enough,” answered the other evenly. “I just didn’t remember mentioning it. What is your question exactly?”

“If I have a hunch that oil holds a future here and am willing to back that hunch, don’t you think I am acting wisely to do it?”

The host sat silent while he seemed to weigh the question with judicial deliberation, and during the pause he realized that the little group of men were waiting intently for his utterance as for the voice of the Delphic oracle.

“I have seen oil operation and oil development,” he said at last. “I have lived here for some time and know the history of the former boom, but I have not bought a foot of ground. That ought to make my opinion clear.”

“Then you don’t believe in the future?”

“Don’t you think, Mr. Wharton,” inquired Spurrier coolly and, his listeners thought, with a shaded note 210 of contempt, “that what I’ve already said, answers your question? If I did believe in it, wouldn’t I be likely to seek investment at the present stage of land prices?”

John Spurrier was glad that it was dark out there. He knew that the mountain men awaited his judgment as something carrying the sanction of finality and he felt like a Judas. He himself knew that back of his seeming betrayal was a determination to safeguard their rights, but the whole game of maneuvering and dissembling was as impossible to play proudly as it would have been to undertake the duties of a spy.

“I’ll admit,” observed Wharton modestly, “that if I lost some money, it wouldn’t break me—and I’m a stubborn man when I get a hunch. Well, I’m going in to watch them dance.”

He rose and went indoors and Uncle Jimmy, when he put a question acted, in effect, as spokesman for them all.

“What does ye think of thet feller, Mr. Spurrier?”

“I think,” said the opportunity hound crisply, “that he’s a fool, and Scripture says, ‘a fool and his money are soon parted.’”

“An’ ef he seeks ter buy?”

“Sell—by all means—if the price is right!”

The next day when they were alone Glory said:

“I don’t like that man Wharton. He’s got sneaky eyes.”

Her husband laughed. “I can’t say that he struck me pleasantly,” he admitted. “We talked oil out on the porch. He was the optimist and I the pessimist.”

And it was to happen that the first rift in Glory’s 211 lute of happiness was to come out of Wharton’s agency, though she did not recognize it as his.

For in these times, despite a happiness that made her sing through the days, something like the panic of stage fright was settling over her: a thing yet of the future, but some day to be faced.

So long as life ran quietly, like the shaded streams that went down until they made the rivers of the greater and outer world, she was confident mistress of her life and had no forebodings. Spurrier loved her and she worshiped him—but out there beyond the ridges, the activities of his larger life were calling—or would call. Then they must leave here and she began to dread the thousand little mistakes and the humiliations that might come to him because of her unfamiliarity with that life. Since the bearings of achievement are delicate, she even feared that she might throw out of gear and poise the whole machinery of his success, and in secret Glory was poring over absurd books on etiquette and deportment. That these stereotyped instructions would only hamper her own naturally plastic spirit, she did not know when she read and reread chapters headed, “How to Enter a Drawing-room” and “Hints upon Refined Conversation.”

That Spurrier would suggest going without her to any field into which his work called him, she did not dream. That he would leave her to wait for him here, as the companion only of his backwoods hours, her pride never contemplated.

Yet in the fall Spurrier did just that thing, and to 212 the letter which induced its doing was signed the name of George Wharton. The latter wrote:

“We must begin to lay out lines for work with the next legislature. There are people in Louisville and Lexington whom you should meet and talk with. I think you had better make your headquarters at one of the Louisville clubs, and when you get here I will put you in touch with the proper bearings.”

That much might have puzzled any of the mountaineers who had taken their own cues from Spurrier’s thinly concealed manner of hostility to Wharton, but the last part of the letter would have explained that, too:

“The little game down at your house was nothing short of masterly. Your acting was superb, and though you were the star, I think I may claim to have played up to you well. The device of gaining their confidence so that, of their own accord, they turned to you for counsel—and then seeming to gloom on me when I talked oil, was pretty subtle. I could openly preach buying and instead of turning away from me in suspicion, they fell on me for a sucker. I—and others acting for me—have, as the result, secured a good part of the options we need—and you appear to be of all men, the least interested.”

Spurrier read the thing twice, then crushed it savagely in his clenched hand and cursed under his breath. “The damned jackals,” he muttered. “That’s the pack I’m running with—or rather I’m running with them and against them at once.”

But when Spurrier had kissed Glory good-by and she had waved a smiling farewell, she turned back into her house and covered her face with her hands.

“I don’t want to believe it,” she declared. “I won’t believe it—but it looks like he’s ashamed to take me with him. Not that I blame him—only—only I’ve got to make myself over. He’s got to be proud of me!”