When he came back for a short stay in the hills between periods of quiet but strenuous affairs in Louisville, he brought gifts that delighted Glory and a devotion that made her forget her misgivings. She had him back, and he found the house expressing in many small ways a taste and discrimination which brought to him a flush of pleasurable surprise. Glory knew the menace that hung over Spurrier. She knew of the malevolent and elusive enmities to which her own life had so nearly become forfeit, and the old terror of the mountain woman for her man became the cross that she must carry with her. Because of her militant father’s antagonisms she had been inured from childhood to the taut moment of suspense that came with every voice raised at the gate and every knock sounding on the door.

There was an element of possible threat in each arrival. She had become, as one has need to be, under such circumstances, somewhat fatalistic as to the old dangers. Now that the fear embraced her husband as well as her father, the philosophy which she had cultivated failed her. Yet their happiness was so strong that it threw off these things and drew upon the treasury of the present.

Spurrier, who talked little of his own dangers, was far from forgetting. His suspicion of Colby strengthened, and he looked forward to the day as inevitable 215 when there must be a reckoning between them, which would not be a final reckoning unless one of them died, and for that encounter he went grimly prepared.

One thing puzzled him. Of Sim Colby he had thought as a somewhat solitary character, whose relations with his neighbors, though amicable, were yet rather detached. He had seemed to have few intimates, yet if he had led this attack, he was palpably able to muster at his back a considerable force of men for a desperate project. That meant that the infection of hatred against himself had spread from a single enmity to the number, at least, of the men who had joined in the battle, and it had been a battle in which more than one had fallen. Before, he had recognized a single enemy. Henceforth he must acknowledge plural enmities.

And along that line of reasoning the next step followed logically.

Who would suggest himself as so natural a leader for a murder enterprise as Sam Mosebury, whose record was established in such matters? Certainly if this suspicion were well-founded it would be safest to know.

Spurrier, despite all he had heard of Sam Mosebury, was reluctant to entertain the thought. The man might be, as Cappeze painted him, the head and front of an infamously vicious system, yet there was something engaging and likable about him, which made it hard to believe that for hire or any motive not nearly personal he would have conspired to do murder.

So among the many claims upon Spurrier’s attention was the effort to find out where Sam Mosebury 216 stood, and it was while he was thinking of that problem that he encountered the object of his thoughts in person. The spot was one distant from his own house. Indeed it was near Colby’s cabin—still apparently empty—that the meeting took place.

The opportunity hound had made several trips over there of late, because he required to know something of Colby’s activities, and, of course, when he came he observed a surreptitious caution which sought to guard against any hint leaking through to Colby of his own surveillance. He firmly believed that Sim was “hiding out,” and that despite the seeming emptiness of his habitation he was not far away.

So it was Spurrier, the law-abiding man, who was skulking in the laurel while the notorious Mosebury walked the highway “upstanding” and openly—and the man in the thicket stooped low to escape discovery. But his foot slipped in the tangle and a rotting branch cracked under it, giving out a sound which brought Mosebury to an abrupt halt with his head warily raised and his rifle poised. He, too, had enemies and must walk in caution.

There had been times when Sam’s life had hinged on just such trivial things as the snapping of a twig, and now, peering through the thickets Spurrier saw a flinty hardness come into his eyes.

Sam stepped quietly but swiftly to the roadside and sheltered himself behind a rock. He said no word, but he waited, and Spurrier could feel that his eyes were boring into his own place of concealment with a scrutiny that went over it studiously and keenly, foot by foot.

He hurriedly considered what plan to pursue. If 217 Mosebury was in league with Colby, to show himself would be almost as undesirable a thing as to show himself to Colby direct. Yet if he stayed there with the guilty seeming of one in hiding, Mosebury would end by locating him—and might assume that the hiding was itself a proof of enmity. He decided to declare himself so he shouted boldly: “It’s John Spurrier,” and rose a moment later into view.

Then he came forward, thinking fast, and when the two met in the road, mendaciously said:

“I guess it looks queer for a man with a clear conscience to take to the timber that way, Mr. Mosebury—but you may remember that I was recently attacked, and I don’t know who did it.”

Mosebury nodded. “I’d be ther last man ter fault ye fer thet,” he concurred. “I was doin’ nigh erbout ther same thing myself, but I didn’t know ye often fared over this way, Mr. Spurrier.”

“No, it’s off my beat.” Spurrier was now lying fluently in what he fancied was to be a game of wits with a man who might have led the siege upon his house. “I was just going over to Stamp Carter’s place. He wanted me to advise him about a property deal.”

For a space Sam stood gravely thoughtful, and when he spoke his words astonished the other.

“Seein’ we hev met up, accidental-like, I’ve got hit in head ter tell ye somethin’ deespite hit ain’t rightly none of my business.” Again he paused, and it was plain that he was laboring under embarrassment, so Spurrier inquired:

“What is it?”

“Of course, I’ve done heered ther talk erbout yore 218 bein’ attacked. Don’t ye really suspicion no special man?”

“Suspicion is one thing, Mr. Mosebury, and knowledge is another.”

“Yes, thet’s Bible truth, an’ yit I wouldn’t marvel none yore suspicions went over thet-away—an’ came up not fur off from hyar.” He nodded his head toward Sim Colby’s house, and Spurrier, who was steeled to fence, gave no indication of astonishment. He only inquired:

“Why should Mr. Colby hold a grudge against me?”

“I ain’t got no power of knowin’ thet.” Mosebury spoke dryly. “An’ es I said afore, hit ain’t none of my business nohow—still I does know thet ye’ve been over hyar some sev’ral times, an’ every time ye came, ye came quietlike es ef ye sought ter see Sim afore Sim seed you.”

“You think I’ve been here before?”

“No, sir, I don’t think hit. I knows hit. I seed ye.”

“Saw me!”

“Yes, sir, seed ye. Hit’s my business to keep a peeled eye in my face.”

So Spurrier’s careful secrecy had been transparent after all, and if this man was an ally of Colby’s, Colby already shared his knowledge. More than ever Spurrier felt sure that his suspicions of the man whose eyes had changed color, were grounded in truth.

“Howsomever,” went on Mosebury quietly, “I ain’t nuver drapped no hint ter Sim erbout hit. I ain’t, gin’rally speakin’, no meddler, but ef so be I kin forewarn 219 ye ergainst harm, hit would pleasure me ter do hit.”

There was a cordial ring of sincerity in the manner and voice, which it was hard to doubt, so the other said gravely:

“Thank you. I did suspect Colby, but I have no proof.”

“I don’t know whether Sim grudges ye or not,” continued Mosebury. “He ain’t nuver named ther matter ter me nowise, guise, ner fashion—but Sim wasn’t with ther crowd thet went atter ye. He didn’t even know nothin’ erbout hit. Sometimes a man comes to grief by barkin’ up ther wrong tree.”

Again suspicion came to the front. This savored strongly of an attempt to alibi a confederate, and Spurrier inquired bluntly:

“Since you broached this subject, I think it’s fair to ask you another question. You tell me who didn’t come. Do you know who did?”

For a moment Mosebury’s face remained blank, then he spoke stiffly.

“I said I’d be glad ter warn ye—but I didn’t say I war willin’ ter name no names. Thet would be mighty nigh ther same thing es takin’ yore quarrel onto myself.”

“Then that’s all you can tell me—that it wasn’t Colby?”

“Mr. Spurrier,” rejoined the mountaineer seriously, “ye knows jedgmatically an’ p’intedly thet ye’ve got enemies that means business. I ain’t nuver seed a man yet in these hills what belittled a peril sich as yourn thet didn’t pay fer hit—with his life.”

“I don’t belittle it, but what can I do?”

Sam Mosebury stood with a gaze that wandered off over the broken sky line. So grave was his demeanor that when his words came they carried the shock of inconsistent absurdity.

“Thar’s a witch woman, thet dwells nigh hyar. Ef I war in youre stid, I’d git her ter read ther signs fer me an’ tell me what I had need guard ergainst most.”

“I’m afraid,” answered Spurrier, repressing his contempt with difficulty, “I’m too skeptical to pin my faith to signs and omens.”

Again the mountain man was looking gravely across the hills, but for a moment the eyes had flashed humorously.

“I reckon we don’t need ter cavil over thet, Mr. Spurrier. I don’t sot no master store by witchcraft foolery my ownself. Mebby ye recalls thet oncet I told ye a leetle story erbout my cat an’ my mockin’ bird.”

“Yes,” Spurrier began to understand now. “You sometimes speak in allegory. But this time I don’t get the meaning.”

“Waal, hit’s this fashion. I don’t know who ther men war thet tried ter kill ye. Thet’s God’s truth, but I’ve got my own notions an’ mebby they ain’t fur wrong. I ain’t goin’ ter name no names—but ef so be ye wants ter talk ter ther witch woman, I’ll hev speech with her fust. What comes outen magic kain’t hardly make me no enemies—but mebby hit mout enable ye ter discern somethin’ thet would profit ye to a master degree.”

Spurrier stood looking into the face of the other and then impulsively he thrust out his hand.

“Mr. Mosebury,” he said, “I’ll be honest with you. 221 I half suspected you—because I’d met you at Colby’s and I knew you hated Cappeze. I owe you an apology, and I’m glad to know I was wrong.”

“Mr. Spurrier,” replied the other, “ef I hed attempted yore life I wouldn’t hev failed, an’, moreover, I don’t hate old Cappeze. Ther man thet wins out don’t hev no need ter harbor hatreds. He hates me because he sought ter penitentiary me—an’ failed.”

“When shall we go to consult the oracle?” asked Spurrier, and Mosebury shook his head.

“I reckon mebby I mout seem over cautious—even timorouslike ter ye, in bein’ so heedful erbout keepin’ outen sight in this matter,” he said. “But them thet knows my record, knows I ain’t, jest ter say easy skeered. You go home an’ wait an’ afore long I’ll write ye a letter, tellin’ ye when ter go an’ how ter go. Then ye kin make ther journey by yoreself.”

“That looks like common sense to me,” declared the other, and he went home, forgetting the witch woman on the way, because of the other and lovelier witchcraft that he knew awaited him in his own house.

Spurrier, despite his dangers, responsibilities, and conflict of purposes, was happy. He was happy in a simpler and less complicated way than he had ever been before, because his heart was in the ascendancy, and Glory, he thought, was “livin’ up to her name.”

If he could have thrust some other things into the same dark cupboard of half-contemptuous philosophy to which he relegated his own dangers, he might have been even happier. But a mentor who had rarely troubled him in past years became insistent and audible 222 through the silences—speaking with the voice of conscience.

He remembered telling Vivian Harrison, over the consommÉ, that pearls did not make oysters happy and that these illiterates of the hills might have hidden wealth in the shells of their isolation and gain nothing more than the oyster. Indeed, he had thought of them no more than the pearl fisherman thinks of the low form of life whose diseased state gives birth to treasure. They inhabited a terrain over which he and the forces of American Oil and Gas were to do battle, and like birds nesting on a battlefield, they must take their chances.

It was no longer possible to maintain that callous indifference. These men, to whom he could not, without disclosing his strategy and defeating his purpose, tell the truth, had befriended him.

They were human and in many ways lovable. If he succeeded, they would, upon his own advice, have sold their birthrights.

However, he gave an anodyne to his conscience with the thought that if victory came to him there would be wealth enough for all to share. Having won his conquest, he could be generous, rendering back as a gift a part of what should have been theirs by right. The means of doing this he had worked out but he could confide to no one. He had embarked as cold bloodedly as Martin Harrison had ever started on any of the enterprises that had made him a money baron. Indeed it had been Spurrier who had fired the chief with interest in the scheme, and if the thing were culpable the culpability had been his own. Then he had come to realize that in the human equation was a 223 factor that he had ignored: the rights of the ignorant native. He had fought down that recognition as the voice of sentimentality until at last he had no longer been able to fight it down. Between those two states of mind had been a war of mental agony and conflict, of doubt, of vacillation. The conclusion had not been easily reached. Now he meant to carry on the war he had undertaken unaltered as to its objective of winning a victory for Harrison over Trabue and the myrmidons of A. O. and G., but he meant to bring in that victory in such a guise that the native would share in the division of the spoils. He knew that Harrison, if he had an intimation of such an amendment of plan, would sharply veto it, but when the thing was done it would be too late to object—and meanwhile Spurrier regarded himself no less the trustee of the mountain-land holder than the servant of Martin Harrison. He was willing to shoulder, out of his own stipulated profits, the chief burden of this division, and in the end he would have driven a better bargain for his simple friends than they could have hoped to attain for themselves.

Yet in him was being reborn an element of character, which had long been repressed.

And there in the other section of the State where political connections had to be established and the skids of intrigue greased, much stood waiting to be done. Already most of what could be accomplished here on the ground had progressed to a point from which the end could be seen.

John Spurrier, the seeming idler, could control almost all the territory needful for his right of way—all except a tract belonging to Brother Bud Hawkins, 224 cautiously left for the last because he wished to handle that himself and did not yet wish to appear in the negotiations.

In the intricate workings of such a project by a campaign of secrecy, the matter was not only one of acquiring a certain expanse of a definite sort of property in a given region, but of acquiring holdings that commanded the only practicable route through passable gaps. This special lie and trend of ground he thought of and spoke of, in his business correspondence, as “the neck of the bottle.” When he held it, it mattered little who else had liquid in the bottle. It could come out only through his neck and, therefore, under his terms. Yet even when that was achieved, there remained the need of the corkscrew without which he himself could make no use of his range-wide jug of crude petroleum. That corkscrew was the charter to be had from a legislature where American Oil and Gas was supposed to have sentinels at the door.

He could not take Glory with him on these trips, because Glory was of the hills, and loyal to the hills—and he could not yet take the natives into his confidence. For the same reason he could give her only business reasons of the most general and evasive character for leaving her behind.

But the work that Spurrier had done so far was only the primary section of a broader design. What he had accomplished affected the oil field on the remote side of Hemlock Mountain, the part of the field that the earlier boom had never touched, and his entire project looked to a totality embracing also the 225 “nigh” side, where his operations still existed only in projection.

It was while this situation stood that there came to him one day two letters calling upon him for two irreconcilable courses of action. One was from Louisville, urging him to return there at once to busy himself with political plannings; the other was a rude scrawl from Sam Mosebury setting an appointment with the “witch woman.”

Spurrier was reluctant to go to Louisville. It meant laying aside the little paradise of the present for the putting on of heavy harness. It necessitated another excuse to Glory, and more than that, being away from Glory. Yet that was the bugle call of his mission, and he fancied that whatever threatened him here in the hills was a menace of local effect. If that were true he would not need the warning which the unaccountable desperado, Sam Mosebury, meant to relay to him through channels of alleged magic, until he came back.

Therefore, the witch could wait. But in that detail Spurrier erred, and when he answered the summons that called him to town without his occult consultation, he unwittingly discarded a warning which he needed there no less than in the hills.

He was called upon to choose a turning without pause, and he followed his business instincts. It happened that instinct misled him.