Rainbow Landing

An Adventure Story

By

FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK

Author of “The Glacier Gate”

NEW YORK

CHELSEA HOUSE

PUBLISHERS

Rainbow Landing

Copyright, 1926, by CHELSEA HOUSE

Printed in the U. S. A.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign

languages, including the Scandinavian.

CONTENTS

RAINBOW LANDING
CHAPTER I
THE END OF A TRAIL

The boat was late in leaving the Mobile wharf. Dusk fell as it wallowed noisily and slowly up against the current of the Alabama River, under the great bridge, past Hurricane and the lumber mills. The shores ceased to be cleared. Swamps and forests gathered on each shore, dense jungles of cypress and gum and titi, that belted almost the whole course of the river from Mobile to Selma.

Lockwood ate an intensely indigestible supper in the saloon in the company of the dozen or so passengers, mostly silent, malarial-looking up-river farmers. Afterwards there was nothing whatever to do. The passengers smoked for an hour or two on the forward deck, talking in a gentle drawl of cotton and hogs and turpentine, and then vanished to their berths.

It was not much like the old days, when the river boats ran from Mobile to Montgomery crowded with passengers, carrying cotton and slaves and quick-fingered, hair-trigger gamblers; when wine flowed at a gorgeous bar, and rich planters gambled bales of cotton on a single poker hand. The Alabama almost rivaled the Mississippi in those days, and competing boats raced in a flare of pitch smoke, occasionally piling up on a sand bar and blowing up their boilers. But improved roads and motors had killed the river. The few remaining boats ran irregularly and slowly, decadent, slovenly, dejected, carrying only low grade passengers and freight, or those whose destination lay outside the range of railroads or gasoline.

Long before nine o’clock the decks were cleared. Lockwood sat up for half an hour longer, and then went to his stateroom himself, in sheer boredom. It was hot there and close, and there were mosquitoes in spite of the screened window, but he undressed, lay down, smoked, tried to read, and tried to sleep.

Sleep was not a success. He had slept badly for a long time, and when he did sleep his dreams were often worse than wakefulness. Violent and uneasy thoughts do not make a good pillow, and there was nothing soothing to-night in the throb and quiver of the boat, nor the unceasing crash-crash of the stern-wheel paddles under him. He dozed and woke, dozed and finally found himself intensely and nervously awake, his whole imagination concentrated on the encounter he anticipated at the end of the journey. He tentatively touched the little automatic pistol that never left him, slung in a holster under his left arm. He sat and looked out, then dressed himself and went out to the desolate darkness of the forward deck.

The night was pitchy black, and a little fog hung low on the muddy surface of the Alabama. The glow of the boat’s deck lights showed the passing shore close alongside, a sliding series of bald white sycamore trunks, bare cypresses, water maples, clumps of mistletoe, Spanish moss, depths of unending swamp that looked as savage as Africa. The powerful searchlight at the bow shot ahead like an inquiring finger, touching the stream in the far distance, shifting and lifting, throwing into uncanny brilliance a clump of trees on the next bend a mile ahead, as the pilot picked out his landmarks for the deep channel.

Occasionally the whole boat vibrated and shook with the terrific blast of the whistle, a powerful siren made to carry twenty miles over the swamps, to let every landing know the boat was coming, and give plenty of time to meet her.

The air was full of dampness and fog and a woody, musky smell of rotting vegetation from the vast swamps. No light, no sign of human occupation showed anywhere along the shores. Lockwood returned to his stateroom, wearied and mosquito bitten, lay down in his berth, and tried to read yesterday’s Mobile paper.

He could not read any more than he could sleep. He had a singular feeling that something was going to happen at last. Perhaps the boat would run on a sand bar, or blow up her boilers; they were directly under him, but he felt highly indifferent. Some one else was sleepless as well as himself, for in the adjoining cabin he heard a soft sound of movement, a rustle of paper, the click of a suit case being opened and shut. He did not know who was in there. The door of that cabin had remained closed ever since the boat left Mobile that afternoon, and the occupant had not come out for supper.

Lockwood had no curiosity about it. He was brain weary, but not sleepy. He felt desperately tired that night—tired of everything, tired particularly of the long trail he had followed so far without success, which he was still following, which he would continue to follow as long as he lived, for he had nothing else to do with his life.

He had no anxiety, for he feared nothing and loved nothing, he thought. He felt that he was even tired of hate, which, he considered, was the only emotion left for him on earth—the only emotion, that is, except that great final one which he was seeking, and which would last not much longer than the flash of a pistol shot.

He was tired, and perhaps he was so tired that he even dozed a little after all, for he came to himself suddenly, shaken by the enormous bellow of the boat’s siren. It blew again; he heard the clang of a bell. Probably they were approaching a landing, and he got up and opened his door upon the side deck. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearly two o’clock.

Down below him in the gloom there was a great stirring and shouting of the negro roustabouts who were getting out the freight. No port was in sight, but far ahead he saw at last a flicker of a fire somewhere far ahead. The searchlight found it, quenched it for an instant with its white intensity, then shifted, giving a glimpse of trees, of a wooden shed. Undoubtedly this was a stopping place. Again the whistle roared tremendously.

A negro steward came out from the saloon carrying a couple of suit cases.

“What place is this?” Lockwood asked him.

“Dis yere’s Rainbow Landin’, suh.”

A white man had come out also, and was looking over the rail a yard away. As the boat came up, the landing seemed to be a landing and nothing more. There was a wide, open space on the bank, inclosed by cottonwood trees, and a large wooden building with a platform on the riverside. Some one had lighted a fire ashore. He could see three or four dark figures moving about it. A boat emerged from the gloom and nosed about the warehouse. The searchlight reconnoitered carefully, swept the shore, and lifted to the bluff rising behind it. Lockwood caught a glimpse of a bare clay face, streaked with fantastic strata of crimson and green and white.

A bell clanged. The clumsy boat slowed and turned her nose inshore. The branch of a big cottonwood brushed over the upper deck, as she rammed the warehouse platform with a force that set the structure quivering. A negro leaped ashore with a hawser. The bell clanged again. The boat stopped and swung back, her hawser taut against the current.

A man in the open warehouse door shouted sonorously and unintelligibly up to the pilot house. Two long gangplanks were run ashore, and instantly a stream of negroes shouldered boxes and bales and started to land the freight at a trot, calling, laughing, singing. The searchlight steadied on them like a watchful eye.

In the glare of the electric light Lockwood watched the wild spectacle, the dark river flashing yellow by the boat, the margin of the immense swamp, the grotesquely brilliant streaks of the colored clay, and the fire looking like the camp of some lost expedition. There was a flash of negro eyes and teeth; it was like a midnight scene on the shore of the Congo, and the roustabouts wailed a wild and wordless crooning as they hustled the freight ashore.

The boat clerk called the addresses of the packages as they were carried off, and the warehouse keeper checked them from the other end of the planks. From the high deck rail Lockwood could overlook the freight, and he was surprised at their number for this desolate spot. He was still more surprised at their character. In the brilliant electric light he could see the crates of fruit, the boxes marked “Fragile,” bearing the stencil of the most expensive Mobile stores, a big box that must have contained at least a hundred boxes of cigars, an ornate brass hanging lamp, carefully crated, a great leather easy-chair also elaborately packed. All of them seemed addressed to the same name. It might be a store, or a hotel, perhaps—if it were not so absurd to imagine a hotel in these swamps.

“Power” called the clerk monotonously, as package after package went ashore. “Power—Power.”

All this freight was going to some one named Power—some one evidently who had a cultivated taste and money to spend. But the valuable stuff was all put ashore at last, and the roustabouts began to carry sacks of fertilizer and corn and cottonseed.

Lockwood leaned on the rail and continued to watch the bizarre activity. He did not notice that some one else had come out of the saloon and stood within a yard of his elbow, until the voice of the newcomer reached him.

“Seems like they’ve got a heap of freight to——”

Lockwood never heard the rest of that sentence. For a moment the whole wild scene reeled around him; he turned deaf and dizzy; he felt for an instant as if he had been suddenly dipped in ice water, and then his blood rushed flaming hot.

He had not heard that voice for over five years, but he knew its first word. It had come—the meeting he had pursued for four years, through unimaginable discouragements and hardships and distress. Through sleepless nights he had imagined it a thousand times, but he had never expected it to come like this; and now at the crisis he was astonished to find that he felt no fury of hatred, but only a dead stupefaction.

He collected himself, muttered some answer. He ventured a glance, and met the man’s eye. It was McGibbon, right enough, and not greatly changed; his eye rested casually on Lockwood, and then shifted back to the landing. Lockwood was not himself afraid of recognition; for years he had guarded against that danger, and those years had changed him greatly.

It flashed upon him that McGibbon must have been the unseen passenger in the next cabin, since he had not been visible on the boat before. No wonder Lockwood had been sensible of something ominous in the air! Evidently McGibbon was going ashore here as soon as the gangplanks were cleared of freight, for the two suit cases stood beside him, and the deck steward was hovering about, fearful of losing his tip.

Had it not been for this negro, Lockwood could have shot the man unseen, as they stood there. His hand unconsciously crept toward the little automatic that he had carried for years, awaiting this day. He could slip ashore in the darkness, hide in the swamps, reach the railroad. But the steward loitered behind them, and Lockwood waited, his head still awhirl, for the situation to develop itself.

McGibbon said nothing more, and in a few minutes he beckoned to the negro and they started down the stairs to the lower deck. Lockwood saw him come out on the gangplank, make his way between the roustabouts, pass into the dark warehouses at the other end. With a shock Lockwood realized that he had let his opportunity pass. In a panic he plunged back to his cabin, snatched up his own suit case and dashed out, and down to the lower deck.

“Hol’ on, captain! Dis yere ain’t whar you gits off!” the porter cried as he headed for the plank; but Lockwood brushed past, through roustabouts, and into the warehouse. It was dimly lighted by a couple of lanterns, showing the piled freight, the sacks of oats and cottonseed and fertilizer, the crates and barrels and cases. But McGibbon was not there.

There was an open door at the other end. He set down his suit case and hastened toward it. Outside was the flat, sandy shore space, backed by the woods and the rainbow-colored hill. A road led slantingly up the bluff. He saw a lantern swinging in the distance, and still farther was a white glare that could be nothing but the lights of a motor car on the higher ground.

He was furious with himself now for his delay. He had never dreamed that he was going to flinch at the critical moment. With the pistol in his hand he rushed madly out of the circle of the searchlight and toward the landward road. But he was too late once more. He heard a sound of loud talking, then the car started with an enormous roar, broke into what seemed sudden, reckless speed, and its lights vanished into the encircling woods.

McGibbon must have gone in it, but to make sure he went on to the top of the hill, and found no one there. He could dimly make out the commencement of a very good road, and far away now he could see the lamp rays of the flying car. He turned back, sick and almost weak with the reaction, and slipped the automatic into his pocket again.

A horse hitched to a buggy was tied to a live oak on the shore, and there were a couple of men beside it as Lockwood came down to the bottom of the road again. One of them was carrying a strong flash light, and turned it on the stranger. Its ray also revealed a row of rough barrels, and something crunched under his feet with a familiar feeling. He had worked in the turpentine woods before, and he knew rosin barrels when he saw them.

“Was that car from the turpentine camp?” he inquired, by an inspiration.

“No, sir; I reckon not. Must have been the Power boys’ car,” came an answer in a soft Alabaman voice from behind the electric ray.

“Sure was,” confirmed another drawl. “Reckon it was here to meet Mr. Hanna. I seen him get off the boat. He’s stayin’ with the Power boys.”

Hanna? McGibbon had changed his name then. But that was to be expected; and Lockwood himself was not carrying the same name as five years ago, when he and McGibbon were partners.

“Where do the Powers live?” he asked his almost invisible interlocutors.

“’Bout two mile from here, past the post office. Goin’ thar to-night?”

“Oh, no,” Lockwood exclaimed. “In fact, I’m going to the turpentine camp. But I’ve got to find a place to stay to-night.”

“Ain’t but one, I reckon. Mr. Ferrell at the post office takes in travelers sometimes. It’s a right smart ways from here, but I’ve got his hawse an’ buggy, and I’m goin’ that way, so I can carry you, if you like.”

Lockwood accepted gladly. It was too dark for him to see much of the road as they topped the rising ground, but he made out the loom of immense woods against the sky. The road dipped again; mist lay thick and choking close to the ground, full of the swamp odor of rotting wood. Innumerable frogs croaked and trilled, and though it was a warm spring night the air in the hollows struck with a poisonous chill.

The road rose again. The woods fell away; they passed several negro cabins and cornfields. Then it wound through a belt of dense forest, but this time scented with the clean, sweet aroma of the long-leafed pine. The mist vanished, and he could see the crests of the big trees palmlike against the sky.

“You are a turpentine man, sir?” inquired his guide, after a long period of silence.

“Yes, I’ve been in the turpentine business,” Lockwood answered truthfully. He was afraid to ask directly about what most filled his mind, but at last he ventured to inquire:

“Has Mr. Hanna got anything to do with the camp?”

“Hanna? No, sir. I don’t reckon he knows anything ’bout turpentining. He’s just stayin’ with the Power boys. Been with ’em ever sence they come into their good luck, I reckon—brought it to ’em, some says.”

It was a new thing for McGibbon, or Hanna, to bring anybody good luck, Lockwood thought; and he asked:

“What sort of luck?”

“All kinds—money, mainly. Well, right here I’ve got to turn off. But you keep right straight down the road, and you’ll come to the post office in ’bout a quarter mile. They’ll all be asleep, I expect, but you kin roust ’em out. They won’t mind—no, sir!”

The road indeed forked here, and the buggy proceeded down the other branch, as Lockwood started to walk in the indicated direction. A moon was just beginning to show above the pines now, and he could see a little more distinctly. Presently he saw a group of three or four middle-sized buildings close to the road.

Undoubtedly this was Mr. Ferrell’s post office. Lockwood hesitated; he did not much care to attract attention, considering his mission; and lodging was immaterial to him, after all. It would be only a few hours till daylight, and he had never felt less inclined to sleep in his life.

He sat down on a log opposite the dark and silent group of houses. Nothing moved in that whole wilderness landscape. The moon crept up; its light fell white on the sand of the road, crossed by the intensely black shadows of the water-oaks. Restlessly Lockwood got up and walked on again. The Power boys’ place was not much farther, he understood, and he desired above all things to see the spot where his enemy had gone.

The moon was growing brilliantly clear now. The road passed through a strip of pine woods, a series of partially cultivated fields. Then there was a fence on the right, with a great grove of some stately trees behind it, oaks or walnuts, planted with symmetry. Within a hundred yards he came to a pair of heavy gateposts, from which a broken gate hung askew. He looked within and stopped, taken aback.

Fifty yards within, at the end of a long and wide drive, stood a great house, fronted with a Colonial portico, looking like pure marble in the moonlight. The earth of the drive was of silver-white sand. The faintest haze of mist hung in the air, transfiguring the breathless scene to magic. Not a leaf stirred on the trees. It was a spectacle of black and silver and marble, half theatrical, half ghostly, but seeming wholly unreal, as if it might vanish at a breath.

CHAPTER II
RESPITE

The sheer unearthly beauty of the spectacle was so thrilling and unexpected that Lockwood stepped back, breathless. A sense of deep peace that was as strange and poignant as pain sank into his heart. He felt himself and his grim purpose to be a blot on this exquisite earth.

But this was certainly where McGibbon lay, or Hanna, as he called himself now. This was certainly the Powers’ place. There was no light at any window, no sound or movement anywhere about the place. Afraid of being seen from the house, he moved a little way up the road, and sat down on a fallen tree trunk. The live-oak leaves were silvery and still overhead, and a whip-poor-will reiterated its monotonous and musical cry among the deep leaves.

But memory had broken the enchantment of the night for Lockwood. To meet McGibbon on the river had been the last thing he expected, still less to find him landing in this wilderness of swamp, bayou, and pine forest. He had traced the man to Mobile from New Orleans, from Pensacola, and had heard a rumor that he might be in Selma. He had taken the boat instead of the train; it was cheaper, and he was short of money, and for money his poverty had proved his fortune.

It was a three years’ trail that had come to an end here at Rainbow Landing, a trail that had led from Virginia to Washington, and halfway across the continent, and south to the Gulf Coast. The search was all he had to live for—if he could signify by the name of Life the wretched and ruined years which seemed all that were left to him.

He was not the first man who has been ruined by a business associate, but it is not often that the ruin is so complete and sweeping. Looking back now, Lockwood was continually filled with an increasing amazement that anybody could ever have been so incredibly trusting, so almost criminally young as he had been.

Yet that far-away, foolish, and happy life dated only seven years back. It seemed twenty; but three of those years had been the life of a dog, of a wolf; and two of them had been spent in prison for a crime that was not, at least willingly, his own. He remembered well the day of his release, when he saw the aged and pallid face in the shop-front mirror, and barely recognized it as his own. He did not care. It was more effectual disguise, and he had already determined what he must do. Luckily he had a little cash now to help him—a small legacy of a thousand dollars left him during his imprisonment. With this he established his “gold reserve.”

McGibbon, he found, had ventured back to Melbourne to pick up the last profits from Lockwood’s once-flourishing business, which he had first inflated and then wrecked. Afterward he had gone with the plunder to Washington, and this was where Lockwood first took up the trail.

McGibbon was flush then; he spent his money freely, and he left his tracks in the capital, and afterward in Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Here the money must have run short, for he went to Smithfield, Illinois, where he became interested in a small printing concern, remained there six months, and left, leaving the printing shop bankrupt.

He left under a cloud, which for some time Lockwood could not pierce. His own money became exhausted. He had to seek work, and he took what he could get. He became an unskilled laborer; he was a department-store salesman. It never occurred to him to seek office work, or in his own field of real-estate dealing. When he had again accumulated a stake, he renewed the search, and eventually found that McGibbon had gone to Ohio.

But he was still a year behind his quarry’s movements. McGibbon had left Ohio, had gone west. In Colorado he was concerned in a sugar-beet factory, which had its safe blown open and several thousand dollars taken. The track was lost again. Lockwood fell into grievous straits in the West, but his determination only blackened and hardened. McGibbon moved East. Lockwood might have come up with him, but he was crushed under a motor car in St. Louis and in the hospital for six weeks. He found that his man had gone down the river, possibly to New Orleans. Lockwood followed to that city, and secured a job in a motor-sales establishment. He understood automobiles, and had a knack with machinery.

McGibbon, who now used another name, had left his mark unmistakably in New Orleans, where he had been tried on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses. He had been acquitted, had left the city apparently, but all that had happened a year before Lockwood unearthed the facts. He spent months in fruitless investigation during the time he could spare from his work at the motor shop. Finally he imagined a clew leading to Pensacola and West Florida. Lockwood spent three months in a turpentine camp in the pine woods, returned to New Orleans, went to Mobile, and finally thought he had information of his man in Selma, up at the navigable head of the Alabama River.

The moon wheeled and sank low over the vast swamps as he sat half drowsily on his log, wondering at the strange chance that had cut his wanderings suddenly short. He could scarcely believe that the end was so near, that the forces accumulated for years were about to burst.

He tried to think out a detailed plan. It was useless. He would have to learn Hanna’s habitual movements, learn the geography of this wild country, plan his escape in advance. At the moment he had to admit that he did not feel equal to the situation. He felt none of the wild and vindictive exultation that he had anticipated. He felt merely empty and tired and anxious for rest and delay.

It was partly due to a sleepless night and lack of food, as he knew. But the moonlight had gone, and a gray dawn was breaking. The oak leaves looked cold and dead, dripping with heavy dew. The east began to glow and flare. Somewhere he heard a negro voice chanting weirdly. The South was waking up. He arose from his seat and began to walk slowly back toward the post office.

The Power house was still silent and asleep when he passed the gate again. It looked slightly dingy in the morning light, and its magic had gone. But when he reached the business settlement at the post office he found everything wide-awake. Smoke was rising from the stone outside chimneys of the three houses, and the two or three negro cabins in the background, a negro was chopping wood by the road, and the door of the postal station already stood wide open.

A signboard over the door said “Atha,” the official name of the office, and a larger and almost obliterated board was painted “T. Ferrell, General Merchandise.” The store was a long, unpainted plank building of one story, with the end toward the road, finishing in a square, roofed “gallery,” whence steps led down. Farmers could drive up alongside this gallery and transact their business without leaving their buggy seat or saddle. Heavy plank shutters, now thrown back, defended the front windows that displayed a dusty collection of most miscellaneous articles.

Lockwood went in. There was something of everything in the dim recesses of that store. There were hardware and guns and ammunition; bananas, oranges, snuff, and tobacco; patent medicines and millinery; boots, shoes, plows, and harness, carpentering tools and cotton, silk, and ribbons. One corner was walled off by a partition with a wicket and a window. This was the post office, and here Lockwood found Ferrell slowly sorting letters, evidently for an out-going early mail.

“Why, yes, sir; I certainly reckon so,” he said in reply to Lockwood’s request for breakfast. “Sam! O-oh, Sam! Run up to the house and tell Mrs. Ferrell there’s a gentleman goin’ to eat breakfast with us.” He dropped the last of the letters into the pouch, came out from his inclosure, and looked the stranger over genially. He was a middle-aged man with a stubby beard, long, untidy, brown hair, and wrinkled, kindly, simple eyes.

“Come in on the boat last night?” he inquired. “I heard her blowin’. She was right late, wasn’t she? Where’d you stay all night?”

“They told me to come here,” Lockwood explained. “But it was close to morning then and I didn’t like to wake you up, so I sat by the road till daylight. It was only two or three hours.”

“Shucks! You oughter just given us a holler. Mighty glad to have you. Breakfast’ll be ready right directly. What did you say your name might be, sir?”

Lockwood stayed chatting with the merchant while they waited for the breakfast. He ate with appetite, and it occurred to him that this might be the last meal he would eat in safety for a long time. Afterward they went back to the store. Lockwood was eager to obtain information, but he hesitated to ask questions, and for some time they smoked on the gallery in the level, early sun, exchanging indifferent remarks.

“Reckon you’re a turpentine man, ain’t you?” Ferrell said at last.

“Well, I’ve worked in the turpentine woods,” Lockwood admitted. “There’s a big camp down this way, isn’t there?”

“Sure—Craig’s camp. I just ’lowed that’s where you were bound for. I reckon you’re the new woods rider that Craig’s expecting.”

“Well—I might be,” said Lockwood cautiously, “He’s expecting one, is he?”

“Sure. Burns, the other woods rider, he got throwed from his horse last week. Hit against a pine stump hard and was hurt right bad. It’s the busy season now, and Craig needs a man bad.”

“Yes, I was going down to see Craig,” Lockwood responded carelessly. “How far is the camp from here?”

“Couple of miles, straight down past the Powers’ place. Cross the bridge over the bayou and take the trail into the woods.”

“The Powers’ place?” said Lockwood. “That’s the——”

It was the opening he wanted, but at that instant a farmer drove up in a shaky buggy drawn by a mule, got out, and came up the steps. He was introduced to Lockwood, took a chew of tobacco, and finally went into the store, where he spent half an hour.

“Well, you’ll likely find Charley Craig at the camp ’bout noon,” Ferrell resumed when the customer had gone. “Not much before. He’s out in the saddle by daylight and don’t get back to the camp till dinner time. But if you’re a turpentine man he’ll sure be glad to see you.”

The mail rider came up then and took away the pouch, starting on his round of twenty-five miles through the isolated post offices of that river region. Another farmer came up, sat for some time on the steps and departed. Three men went by in a frightfully dilapidated Ford car. More people loafed in; a little group formed on the gallery; and Ferrell introduced Lockwood to them all with punctilious ceremony, with the air of presenting an honored guest.

It was an attention with which Lockwood would willingly have dispensed. At this rate, he thought, every one in the neighborhood would soon know his face.

He sat back, saying little, listening to the slow drawl of talk and the low-pitched laughter. They were unlettered and ragged and sunburned, these Alabama farmers, but they had the courtesy of gentlemen and the leisure of aristocrats. He heard the gossip of the country—of the rise in the river, flooding out the bottom lands, of the weather for cotton, of a nigger who had been stealing hogs, and of a man who had been shot near Nadawah.

He gathered an impression of the district from it all, an isolated, almost primeval country of forest and swamp, of scattered farms, of the overgrown ruins of once great estates, of great timber mills and turpentine camps, the industries of the forests. It was thirty miles to the railroad, twenty to the telegraph, though a rural telephone line intersected the district.

He lingered and waited, hoping to pick up something of importance. There was a sense of deep peace and rest on that sunny veranda in the sweet, hot May morning. Among these gentle-voiced Southerners there seemed neither hurry nor strife. Negro women went by in gay ginghams, shuffling their bare, black feet in the amber dust. The air was like a caress to the nerves, and for the first time in years Lockwood felt his tension relax. He was within sight of the end, he told himself, and he could afford to take breath.

CHAPTER III
POWER’S LUCK

Lockwood had already resolved to accept the hint of the turpentine camp. It was absolutely necessary now that he should have some excuse for his presence. He was sure he could get work in the camp, now that the rush of the season was in full swing, and it would give him time and countenance.

So he waited, till it should be time to find Craig at his place. Whites and blacks came and went in a slow dribble, leaving always a residual group on the gallery, but toward the middle of the forenoon he espied a large car in the distance, driven up the road at a furious pace. It swerved up to the store, skidded wildly in the sand, and brought up in front of the steps.

Lockwood coveted that machine. With its aid he could make a hundred miles in a night, and an escape would be easily arranged. With acute interest he turned to look at the two young men who leaped out and came up the steps, passing loud and cheerful greetings by name to almost every one on the store gallery.

“Mornin’, Mr. Power! Howdy, Jackson! Good mornin’, sir!” went round, and Lockwood noticed that everybody looked pleased and interested. He was more than interested himself. These were more than the owners of the coveted car. These were the men he most wanted to see—McGibbon’s new friends.

Both of them were extravagantly well dressed for that place. They wore expensive outing suits, with silk shirts and gorgeous ties under their soft collars. Silk socks of brilliant hue showed above their canvas shoes, and each of them sported a heavy watch chain.

One of the flashy motorists might have been twenty-five, big and heavily built, with a florid, good-natured face and a thick, brown mustache. He wore a large, scintillating stone in his tie, which might truly have been a diamond. His brother appeared much younger, perhaps not twenty, slim and dark and handsome, also decorated with a diamond pin and a flashing ring on his left hand. The faces of both of them expressed reckless good-humor and an undisciplined exuberance of animal spirits—possibly, also, the effect of a drink or two, early in the day as it was.

These, then, were the recipients of the cigars and furniture, of the expensive freight. It appeared that these were McGibbon’s hosts. But they most certainly did not appear all likely to be confederates or associates of such a man as McGibbon. Lockwood’s first suspicions died as he looked and listened. More likely, he thought, these rich young countrymen were fresh victims of his enemy, though his guide of the night before had said that Hanna had brought them luck—all kinds, mostly money.

The brothers got their mail at the post-office wicket, and came out on the gallery again, laughing loudly. They were duly introduced to Lockwood, and shook his hand heartily.

“Right glad to know you, suh,” declared the eldest. “I hope you’ll come in and see us. Everybody knows where we-all live. Will you be stoppin’ long?”

“Mr. Lockwood’s the new woods rider for the turpentine camp,” the postmaster explained.

“Well, I’m not sure about that yet,” Lockwood put in. “It depends on Mr. Craig. I haven’t seen him.”

“I reckon that’ll be all right,” said Tom Power, with large optimism “I might run you down to the camp. Charley Craig’s a good friend of mine. Only he likely wouldn’t be there now. We’ll be comin’ back by here in an hour or so. Kin you wait that long?”

“Why, yes. That’ll be mighty good of you,” said Lockwood gratefully. Things were shaping just as he could have wished. “I’ll wait here a while. But don’t trouble unless it happens to suit.”

“Suit us right down to the ground,” cried the younger brother. “We’ve got to go down to the landing right now. Got to see about some freight that come in on the boat last night. Any of you-all want to ride down with us?”

Two of the idlers accepted, and the big car went off in a whirl of sand.

“Them boys certainly are goin’ the pace,” some one said.

“They shorely are,” a second concurred. “Well, I reckon they’ve got the price, and they’re both of ’em good fellows.”

“Best in the world,” said Mr. Ferrell. “I hear the old man don’t like it, though. Says he can’t live up to autymobeels and champagne, and he’s goin’ back to live in the woods.”

“They’ve come into money, have they?” Lockwood inquired.

“Yes, sir. I dunno how much. Nobody does. I don’t reckon they know themselves, nor cares, so long’s it lasts. Anyhow, they say they didn’t git half, nor a quarter of what was comin’ to ’em by rights.”

“They was livin’ ’way up the river in the swamps, an’ never heerd on it,” drawled another lounger. “Might have died without knowin’ nothin’ ’bout it, ef it hadn’t been for that smart lawyer down in Mobile.”

“Some says Hanna had something to do with it,” said Ferrell.

“What’s the story?” Lockwood ventured to ask openly.

“Why, this here property—the old Burwell plantation—used to be one of the big estates here one time, before the war,” said the postmaster. “There was the house; you’ll see it when you go by to the camp, and maybe a thousand acres with it. Most of it was timbered, though, and pine wasn’t worth nothin’ in them days; but there was two or three hundred acres of good light land, and some bottom land, and they used to run fifteen or twenty plows, and raise right smart lot of cotton, I reckon.

“But then the whole Burwell family died out, all in one generation, you might say. Some kind of a third cousin got it, and he hadn’t no kin, and died without marryin’. There wasn’t no heirs then nowhere. A good few people put in some claim, I guess, but they couldn’t make good; and the whole place laid idle, and most of the plantation growed up with blackberries and dogwood. So, of course, the State took it at last.

“Most of the timberland was sold then. Charley Craig, the turpentine man, bought some of it, and leased some more to turpentine it. Gradually the State land agents sold most all of it off in bits, all but the house and about a hundred acres of sandy land that wasn’t no good for anything. They rented that to a fellow from Monroe County, and he tried to farm it. I reckon he never got rich on it, but the Powers sure ought to be thankful to him for keeping the brush cut off.

“Then this smart lawyer in Mobile got wind of it and started to dig up an heir. He figured that the Burwells must surely have some sort of kinsfolk somewhere, and sure enough he located old Henry Power, three years ago.

“Power was livin’ up the river then, as I said, in a cabin in the swamps, not much better’n any nigger. I didn’t know ’em much then, but I reckon they was a tolerable tough lot. The boys was up to most kinds of devilment, and some said they was mixed up with ‘Blue Bob’s’ river gang. I dunno; likely there was nothing in that yarn; for they was mighty good boys, if somewhat lively, and everybody liked ’em, pore as they was.

“It sure must have jolted old Henry Power when he heard that the Burwell property was coming to him. But it took close to a year to get it. The legislature had to pass a bill; but that lawyer had things fixed up hard and fast, and there was no getting away from the evidence that Power was the right man.

“But he didn’t get the whole estate—not by a heap. In the first place, the State couldn’t give back what it had sold, and it wouldn’t give up but half of what it got from selling the timber, and then I guess the lawyer got about half of that again for his share. But, anyhow, I’ve heard that Power got a haul of close on to fifty thousand, besides getting their clear title to the house and what was left of the land.”

“I see,” said Lockwood, more interested than he cared to show. “And now they’re enjoying it!”

“They shorely are. You seen that big autymobeel. They’ve got a fast motor boat down in the bayou, too—cost a thousand dollars, I hear. Champagne at ten dollars a bottle is what they drink.”

“Old Henry Power don’t drink none of it,” drawled a farmer. “Says corn liquor is good enough for him yet.”

“Mebbe so. I reckon so. Anyway, the boys is some high rollers these days, and not stingy, neither. Any man what wants a loan can get it there. And there ain’t nothing too good for Miss Louise.”

“Their sister?”

“Yes, sir. She’s been away in N’Orleans, they say. Earnin’ her own livin’, likely. But she come back last fall. The old man wanted her back, and she had to have her share of what’s going.”

“How about Mr. Hanna?” asked Lockwood. “Has he been here long?”

There was a short silence.

“Sharp cuss, that Mr. Hanna!” said a man sitting on the steps.

“Why, I reckon he’s all right,” said Ferrell indulgently. “Great friend of the Power boys. He come here soon after they got the place. Northern man, seems to be, and knows his way round all the big cities, I reckon. Likely it was him put the boys up to all them fancy drinks. They never knowed nothing about such things before.”

“Well, I’d like to know the Power boys,” Lockwood remarked carelessly.

“Why, you do know ’em!” Ferrell exclaimed with amazement. “Wasn’t you introduced to ’em both right here? They’ll expect you to go and see ’em—visit ’em if you can, and stay as long as you like. We ain’t got no Northern ways down here in the piny woods.”

This theory of reckless hospitality did not, however, deter Mr. Ferrell from accepting fifty cents from Lockwood for his breakfast. Lockwood waited and smoked on the gallery as the forenoon wore on. He wanted to get another look at the Power boys; certainly he would call on them if he saw any opening. He was not afraid that McGibbon—or Hanna—would recognize him. His face was thinner and darker and had, he thought, totally changed in expression. His hair had grizzled. In the old days, too, he had worn a small, pointed beard and mustache; and he now went clean shaven.

But the big car did not return from the landing. As he waited and meditated, the balance of Lockwood’s purpose changed a little. He thought he saw light in the situation. There might be good hunting here after all, for a bird of prey. He imagined Hanna arriving in this wilderness, suave, dignified, experienced, swooping down upon these newly rich poor whites, and he imagined the tremendous weight and influence the man would carry.

Even so McGibbon had swooped down upon him at Melbourne, seven years ago—handsome, dignified, wise, with an apparently vast experience of men and affairs, and Lockwood had fallen under the impression, though he had had considerable experience of men and affairs himself. He had a real-estate business at that time in Melbourne, Virginia, a fast-growing city, and his business was growing with it.

The two men became friends, and soon were in practical partnership, though no legal partnership was ever established. Lockwood was an excellent salesman of real-estate, but a timid speculator, and incapable of the intricacies of office detail and bookkeeping. It was in these last that McGibbon excelled. In fact, the expert accountants at the trial had been obliged to confess themselves baffled by some of the extraordinary complications of figures with which McGibbon had covered up his tracks.

Looking back, Lockwood saw that the man must have been bleeding the business all along, though to this day he did not understand all the methods employed. Nor did he yet have any positive proof that Maxwell was McGibbon’s confederate—Maxwell, smooth, hard, close-mouthed, but with eyes and ears open for real-estate opportunities. He had got them, too. McGibbon had seen to that.

It was Maxwell who had come forward when the crash arrived. Lockwood’s whole assets were tied up in a block of speculative building; a business depression had killed the market, and he could neither finish the half-built houses nor sell them as they stood. He was obliged to accept Maxwell’s ridiculous valuation; and Maxwell had finished the houses, held them for a few months, and then apparently turned them over to McGibbon, who had sold them at an immense advantage. The method of the freeze-out was plain enough now. But Lockwood had known the latter part only by report, for the prison doors had closed behind him. McGibbon had been also indicted as an accessory, on the same charges of fraud and misappropriation of funds; but he had no difficulty in clearing himself; and with apparent reluctance he had given damning evidence against his partner.

Now Lockwood believed that he had caught the bloodsucker in the act of attaching himself to another prey. It was poetic justice, it was no less than providential that he should have arrived at that moment at Rainbow Landing.

Noon approached, and still Power’s car did not return. Lockwood grew restless and uneasy. He got up and walked back down the amber and yellow road. He might go to the turpentine camp; at any rate, he was anxious to have another look at the house where McGibbon had managed to establish himself.

He passed the great grove of walnut and oak and reached the entrance. The white colonial house wore by no means its moonlight air of mystery and grace. In the blazing sun it showed sadly old and weatherworn; its white paint was scaling off, a sickly and dirty gray; the fence was broken down in many places; the rickety gate hung by one hinge. Rubbish of deadwood, a tin can or two and rags of burlap littered the white sand of the driveway. None of the family was in sight; but at the front door a negro was holding two saddled horses, and Lockwood walked quickly on.

He had not gone fifty yards when he heard the trample of the horses’ hoofs behind him, and stepped aside. He had a glimpse of the shining coats of the animals, and the glitter of new leather, but his attention was all for the riders.

A girl was riding past him, sitting astride, in a gray skirt and a white waist. He knew instantly that it must be Louise Power; he had only a flash of brown hair under the black hat, of dark eyes, of a sweet and slightly opened mouth, but it roused a dim stirring of recollection in him.

She was gone before he could analyze it, and McGibbon rode close after her. Lockwood had raised his hat, and McGibbon acknowledged the salutation curtly, with a casual glance at the pedestrian. The horses went ahead at a canter, and were presently small in the distance between the pines.

It was McGibbon, beyond any doubt. Lockwood recognized him even more certainly than the night before. He looked after the riders with dark satisfaction. He knew where to have McGibbon now; he could take his time and choose his hour. But his mind involuntarily and uneasily turned to search the problem of where he had already seen the girl’s face.

CHAPTER IV
A MISFIRE

He could not place the recollection; it was lost somewhere in the shadowy past. But the sight of his enemy in the clear light of day had stirred up all the bitterest depths of his memory and his hate. McGibbon—or Hanna, as he must now call him—seemed to have changed little; he looked as handsome, as suave, as dignified as ever, and Lockwood imagined what an imposing presence he must appear to this pretty girl of the backwoods.

The riders were out of sight now, but he continued down the road almost unconsciously, deep in plans. He took no notice of how far he had walked, until he felt planks resounding hollowly under his feet. He had come to a bridge, an immensely long bridge of timber, crossing a small creek bordered by dense swamp. He crossed the bridge and peceived a road, apparently not greatly in use, that led away to the left into the woods.

He remembered Mr. Ferrell’s directions. This must be the trail to the turpentine camp, and now that he had come so far he determined to go on and interview Charley Craig. A job in the pine woods would exactly suit his purposes in every way just then, and he needed the wages it would earn. This was no moment to break in on his gold reserve.

He turned down the road to the left, which curved off uncertainly among the pines. The ground was marked here and there by the ruts of heavy wagons; he detected also the corrugated imprint of a motor’s tire, and within a few rods he began to see traces of the turpentine industry.

The ground was rising from the creek swamp into pine land, grown with pines of all sizes, from bushy shrubs to immense trunks rising arrow-straight and without a branch to the feathery, palmlike crest a hundred feet from the earth. Nearly every pine of more than eight inches in diameter had a great slash of bark chipped from one side, showing the bare wood smeared and frosted with drops of gum, oozing, dripping, or crystallized into solid white or bluish masses, looking livid and diseased. At the lower edge of this slash a tin gutter was fixed, collecting the slow ooze of the gum, and leading it into a large tin cup that hung from a hook.

All this was very familiar to Lockwood, and he regarded it with something of an expert eye. Under the stimulus of the hot weather the gum was flowing freely. Many of the cups were nearly full of the intensely sticky, whitish mass that exhaled a sharp, wholesome odor. Everywhere he looked the trees had been turpentined; the camp was evidently running at full blast; and a little way farther he came upon a negro “chipper” who was taking off a fresh slice of the bark with his razor-edged tool like a light adze.

The road wound about through the pines and crossed a gallberry flat. He heard voices and came out into the clearing where the camp itself was built.

There were thirty or forty negro families living in the camp, and women and children swarmed about the cabins, staring at the stranger. Lockwood approached the still—a huge brick furnace with a built-in copper retort, sheltered by a corrugated iron roof and topped by a tall chimney. Lumps of rosin littered the earth; empty and full rosin barrels stood everywhere; there was a powerful smell of pine and tar and turpentine, but the still was not working that day.

No white man was in sight, but he picked out a house of superior quality, painted green and with curtained windows, which must be the quarters either of Craig himself or of the foreman. Close to it stood a long, low building, much resembling the Atha post office, which was undoubtedly the commissary store. This place is always the real center of a turpentine camp, and Lockwood went in to make inquiries.

A young man without coat or vest, smoking a cigarette, greeted the visitor with lazy affability. Lockwood inquired for the chief.

“He’s just now come in,” said the clerk, and he knocked at the door of the inner office, and then opened it.

A tall, spare, oldish man sat within, writing at a plain table. Charley Craig was a well-known figure in central Alabama, and is so still. All his life had been spent in contact with the long-leaf pine; he had turpentined the trees, lumbered them, run sawmills. The rosin of the gum must have preserved his youth, for he was past sixty, but still able to ride, run, or fight with almost any of the young fellows he employed.

“I understand you want a woods rider, Mr. Craig,” Lockwood explained himself.

Craig searched him up and down with piercing gray eyes.

“You understand the turpentine business? Come in and take a seat,” he said. “I may need another man for a while. One of my men got hurt. You’ve done this job before?”

“No, I never rode the woods,” Lockwood admitted, “but I think I understand what the job is. I’ve worked in camp in west Florida. I know something about the still, and how to run a charge——”

“Can you ride?”

“Yes, after I get over some saddle soreness.”

“Know how to handle the men? The turpentine nigger is a special sort, you know—tough devils, and hard to manage.”

“I’ve lived among niggers all my life, and I reckon I can handle most of ’em.”

“What wages do you want?” Craig asked, after a little thought.

“Well, I don’t claim to be a first-class turpentine man,” said Lockwood, “but I want to learn to be one. It’s possible that I may go into the business myself next year with a partner. Wages aren’t the main point with me. I’d like, though, to be able to get a day off now and again, when things aren’t too busy.”

“I dunno. I’d rather get an experienced man,” said Craig. “Stay and eat dinner with us, anyway, and then we’ll look over the camp.”

Lockwood ate a large, hot, and homely dinner at the house of the camp foreman, in company with the foreman, Craig, and store clerk and the “stiller”—the principal white employees. Afterward Craig took him out, smoking innumerable cigarettes which he rolled up with a single deft twist, and conducted him over the camp, about the still, the storehouse, the cooperage workshop, the grindery where hundreds of axes and “hacks” were kept keen, the mule stables, the quarters of the negroes. Apparently pointing out these details, Craig shrewdly elicited all Lockwood knew of the turpentine process. Afterward they walked into the woods, observed the run of the gum, and the work of the chippers. Craig looked at his watch.

“I’ve got to be on horseback,” he said. “How about two dollars a day and board, until my man gets out of the infirmary?”

Lockwood accepted instantly. In fact, he would almost have worked for a week for his board alone—his board, and the local standing which the regular job would furnish.

He was to start work the next day, and meanwhile he had to bring up his suit case from the landing, where he had dropped it in the warehouse the night before. He loitered at the commissary for some time, cementing his friendship with the store clerk, and it was past the middle of the afternoon when he started to walk back to the landing.

The Power boys had come back. He saw their big car standing by the front door when he passed the house, but no one was in sight. He hurried past; the great, white, dilapidated old mansion seemed already intensely familiar to him, and intensely significant—the theater of a coming crisis.

He went past the post office without stopping to speak to Mr. Ferrell, who nodded from the gallery. He retraced the road that he had traveled in the night; the creek rushed swirling over glittering pebbles, shut in by thickets of titi, glossy-green bay leaves, cypress and gum, lighted up by huge, blazing-red, trumpet-shaped flowers that hung in clusters from tangling vines. Beyond the swamp the road rose into pine woods again. Then he came to the crossing road, and turned toward the river.

Far in the distance he caught a glimpse of the Alabama River, like a pinkish streak through the brilliant pine foliage. It was still more than a mile away, and the corduroyed road ran through depths of swamp for the most part, skirted lagoons of stagnant black water, crossed sluggish-brown bayous, went over a higher and dryer ridge of “hammock land,” and came down at last to the landing.

The warehouse was open, and there were a few men about it. A couple of buggies were hitched to a tree, and a wagon was loading with cases of freight. It was a wagon from the turpentine camp, he discovered, and he had his suit case put aboard, glad to be saved the trouble of its weight.

The river was high, carrying planks and rails and drift of all sorts on its flood. Wisps of mist clung to its surface, and the water boiled strangely brown and pink and muddy strawberry. On the other shore rose the clay bluff, crowned with pine, striped with that bizarre and brilliant coloring that must have given the landing its name.

Lockwood turned back slowly up the swamp road, in no hurry to return to the turpentine camp. The air in the swamp was hot and heavy and enervating, and at the top of the ridge he turned aside into a trail that seemed to run parallel with the river.

Pine woods bordered it, high and dry, and he walked aimlessly for some distance. Through rifts he occasionally caught glimpses of the river rolling greenish-pink between its highly colored shores. The trail turned slightly down the slope and came out into a field of perhaps twenty acres, running almost to the river. It was a piece of rich, black bottom land, one of the gambles of Southern farming, capable of growing an immense crop of cotton or cane, but running an even chance of being flooded out by high water. This year no one was gambling on it, nor did it seem to have been plowed the year before, for it carried weeds and bushes that must have been the growth of more than one season.

He walked down to the end of the field, almost to the belt of willows and cottonwoods that screened the margin of the river. This was the worst country for his projects, he thought, that he had ever seen. It was settled just enough to make a stranger conspicuous; it was wild enough to be hard to get out of. He had no idea how the roads ran, nor whither; and he fancied himself hiding in the swamps, bitten by snakes, devoured by insects, hunted by bloodhounds. He would have found more secrecy and cover in a great city.

Another trail went wandering down the river bank, and he turned into it from a reluctance to go back by the way he had come. It was a mere footpath, worn probably by the tread of negroes, cutting through thickets of titi, opening into glades of vivid green, and crossing creeks on fallen logs. He followed it until his absorbed meditations were suddenly broken by a whiff of smoke and the sound of a voice.

With a criminal’s instinct of caution he stopped short. There was a wide opening on the shore just before him, and he caught the loom of a whitish mass through the willows. He edged forward till he could see clearly.

It was a large house boat of much the usual model, a mere cabin built upon a scow, the rusty and squalid floating house used by the river vagrants that hang upon all the great waterways of the South. But this boat was a little superior in quality; she was painted, though the paint was gray and weatherworn; there was a considerable deck space at each end; and, most important of all, she carried power. There was a small gasoline engine and propeller.

Half tramp, half criminal, Lockwood knew these river dwellers to be, devoured by malaria and hookworms, too tired to work, living on nothing, by a little stealing, a good deal of fishing, and some begging. The three men he saw looked true to type, sallow and malarial-looking, sprawling on the ground as they smoked and spat. Two of them were young fellows, one a mere boy, but the third was a heavily built man of middle age with a tangle of brown beard and a stupid, savage face. They all wore “pin-check” cotton trousers, loose shirts, sleeves rolled up, and dirty canvas shoes. They were watching a very light-yellow negro who was cooking something in a frying pan over a small fire.

Lockwood was armed, and not in the least afraid of them; but he did not want to be seen. He wormed his way into the jungle and edged slowly past the camp, tearing himself on thorns and stepping into deep, black mud, till he was safely past. He got through without being observed, as far as he knew, came out into the path and started more briskly down the river again.

The sun was almost down. In another half hour the sudden, Southern darkness would be deep in the woods, and he made haste, walking soundlessly on the soft, damp earth. But within a quarter of a mile, as a long vista opened before him, he caught a glimpse of some one else coming toward him up the twilight path.

His first thought was that it was a fourth of the river men returning to camp, and he did not wish to seem to have been spying. He stepped instantly into the thickets, behind a screen of bamboo vines, to let the man go past. But as he came nearer, Lockwood saw that it was Hanna.

He still wore the gray suit and the leggings of his morning ride, and he walked carelessly, whistling between his teeth, looking ahead as if he expected to meet some one. Evidently he was going to the house boat. In a moment the whole possibilities of the situation flashed upon Lockwood.

From where he stood he could drop Hanna with a single shot, and the slight, sharp crack of the smokeless cartridge would be heard by nobody. His death would certainly be credited to the river men, and their record and reputation would probably make the charge plausible.

Almost without knowing it, he drew the little automatic he had carried so long, and pushed back the safety. Hanna was coming on carelessly, still whistling. Through the leaves Lockwood had the bead drawn unwaveringly on his chest, when he found that he could not shoot. A mighty force seemed to stay his finger on the trigger. The great moment he had desired for years had come, was passing, and he could not use it! He did not hate Hanna less, but he did not want to drop him dead in his tracks. Hanna went by unconsciously, within a yard of the blue muzzle.

Lockwood lowered the pistol, and found himself shaking and sweating. He looked helplessly after his enemy’s back, watched till Hanna was out of sight, and then turned on his own way. He swore under his breath; he felt as if he had failed in an imperative duty; he was full of disappointment and disgust. It was not till he had almost reached the turpentine camp that he thought to wonder why Hanna should be going to visit the river pirates. But when he thought of the problem it seemed full of perplexity and interest.

CHAPTER V
THE WOODS RIDER

The next morning Lockwood was assigned the brown horse and saddle outfit that had been used by the injured man, and he began active work as a turpentine woods rider. The “orchard” which he was to supervise covered an irregular area of perhaps a couple of miles, in a long strip around to the south and west of the Power property. All of it had, indeed, originally belonged to the Burwell estate. The ground was level, or very gently rolling, broken only by occasional strips of dense creek swamp. Nearly all the underbrush had been cleared out the preceding year, and the woods were easy and pleasant for riding.

About thirty negroes worked on this orchard, each assigned to a definite “furrow,” or allotment of trees, which had to be freshly chipped every week when the run of gum was good. It was Lockwood’s duty to keep these men up to their work, to see that the cups did not overflow or become displaced, that things went rapidly and smoothly, and, above all, to see that no dropped match or cigarette started a fire, for a fire in a turpentine orchard is as disastrous a thing as can be imagined.

For three days he rode the woods, growing very saddle sore at first, but gathering his ideas and reconstructing his plans, which seemed to have fallen into chaos. He thought of his astounding failure to act on the path by the river, but it did not seem astounding now. He had to realize that assassination was a method barred to him; he would never be able to bring himself to do it. He thought of other means.

He might discover himself to Hanna; he had no doubt that the man would instantly accept the challenge to draw and shoot; and the issue would be self-defense. Lockwood was not afraid of the chances; he had practiced endlessly with the little blue automatic, and the weapon had grown as familiar to him as his own fingers.

During those first days he did not leave the turpentine tract, and he saw nothing of either Hanna or the Power boys. He heard a good deal of them, however. In the evening there was always a group of white men at the commissary store, employees of the camp, and occasional visitors from the neighborhood, and bits of gossip were continually dropped regarding these nouveaux riches of the woods. They were the chief objects of attention of the whole district, but it was an extremely friendly attention.

Nobody grudged them their good luck, though they told amused and admiring tales of the wild pace the boys seemed to be setting. The motor car had cost seven thousand dollars; cases of smuggled wine and liquor were coming in at two hundred dollars apiece—figures which Lockwood could only regard as wild exaggerations. Tom Power had driven the car to Flomaton, thirty-five miles over sandy roads, in less than an hour.

They talked of Hanna with less freedom, and he seemed less popular. Now and again Louise was mentioned, but it would have been beyond their code of courtesy to discuss her. They said she was “a mighty sweet girl,” and let it go at that.

Lockwood heard curious and amusing tales of the swamp country at these gatherings, of flooded rivers and hurricanes, of bears and alligators, of extraordinary snake superstitions, and shootings and outlaw negroes and river pirates. There was a continued talk of the river, which, though deposed from its old importance, yet loomed as the chief physical fact of the district. It rose or fell with amazing rapidity; it flooded the bottom-land cotton; it floated rafts of pine down to Mobile; no one could talk of that part of Alabama without speaking of the river and of the men who used it.

Among these last, Lockwood heard frequent mention of the house boat he had seen moored at the shore. It had moved now and lay at the mouth of the great bayou that bordered the turpentine tract, crossing the road and passing directly behind Power’s house. The boat belonged to “Blue Bob’s gang,” Lockwood heard—a crew that seemed to have made a reputation for themselves all along the river. They were river thieves, it appeared, and were said to drive a considerable trade, mainly among the negroes, in “shinney.” This is a powerful beverage usually distilled from the refuse of cane sirup-making, by means of a couple of empty gasoline tins and a few feet of rubber tubing. Craig did not care to have such an establishment camped so close to his business, for shinney and the turpentine negro make an entirely uncontrollable combination.

He had threatened several times to “run off” these undesirable vagrants, but the Power boys had spoken in their behalf. Lockwood gathered that in the old days the Power family had not been very much better than the house boat people themselves; and they were generous enough to remember their former associates of poverty.

Lockwood followed the course of this bayou every day on his rounds, and only a couple of days later he heard the muffled thud-thud of a motor engine. His first impression was that the house boat was coming up, but the noise came on far too fast for that clumsy craft. He edged his horse behind a titi thicket, and in a moment saw a motor boat come round a swampy curve of the waterway and recognized the figures in it as Hanna and Louise Power.

The girl was at the wheel, and Hanna appeared to be giving her a lesson in navigating the boat. She steered crookedly and uncertainly. Hanna had his face at her shoulder, and seemed to be talking fluently. Lockwood thought that Louise looked uneasy and nervous, as if she were having difficulty with the mechanism. He tried again to remember where he had seen that face, certainly pretty enough to be recollected, and just opposite him the engine stopped.

The boat drifted a little, while Hanna tried to start it. Then the propeller swished, and the boat got under way again, moving slowly past him for thirty yards, and sheering in toward shore where the bank was low and dry enough to land. Hanna got out and held out his hand. Miss Power shook her head. Lockwood could not hear what was said, but the next moment the engine broke into faster explosions, the boat backed off and came flying down the bayou again, leaving Hanna ashore.

Hanna shouted something laughingly and expostulatingly after her, but she paid no attention. The boat drove past Lockwood, sending a great wash of waves up the clay bank, and disappeared around the curve.

The laugh died out of Hanna’s face as he looked after the flying boat. He glanced up and down the bayou, and Lockwood chuckled maliciously. He was on the wrong side of the water; he would have to go by the turpentine camp and up to the bridge over the creek in order to get home—a full three-mile walk, and it was a hot day. Hanna looked dubiously at the muddy water as if he thought of swimming; once across, and it was not a mile in a bee line to Power’s house. But he thought better of it, and turned into the woods.

Still greatly amused, Lockwood rode on his route which led down the bayou shore. He guessed that Hanna had annoyed the girl by his talk, and had been rightly served. Then as he rode round the curve of the bayou he was astonished to see the boat lying motionless not far ahead and close inshore.

Miss Power was leaning back in her seat, doing nothing—waiting perhaps, Lockwood thought, for Hanna to come after her. But when he came a little nearer he saw that the boat had run a third of its length upon a sand bar projecting into the channel as it curved, and was fast aground.

He rode down to the margin and took off his hat.

“Can’t I help you? I see you’re aground,” he said.

“I certainly am,” answered the girl without embarrassment, and she gave him a quick smile that almost seemed to imply an understanding. “But I don’t know whether you can help me much or not. I can’t start the engine to back her off.”

“Well, I can try, anyhow,” Lockwood responded, dismounting. He hung his reins over a gum-tree bough, and splashed through a little mud and water to the stranded boat.

The sound of the girl’s voice deepened the certitude that he had somewhere met her before. She had a soft, slurred Gulf-coast accent that you could cut with a knife—not that this surprised him, for he was used to it, and he had a fair share of Southern accent himself. He took a quick, sharp look at her as he got into the boat. She must be about twenty, he thought. Her dark hair was tucked under a red cloth cap, and she was wearing a raw-silk blouse with a wide, red-embroidered collar, showing the fine, somewhat sunburned curves of her neck.

“I ran on this sand bar without seeing it. I was coming down the bayou pretty fast, and I’m not used to this boat,” she explained.

“Yes, I saw you going by,” said Lockwood.

“You could see me? You saw——” she exclaimed, startled; and he fancied she turned the least shade pinker under her tan.

“Going and coming,” Lockwood nodded, manipulating the levers. The engine burst suddenly into intermittent explosions. It missed frequently, but the propeller tore up the water, failing, however, to pull the boat off the sand.

“I reckon you can manage to get home with it,” he said. “But I’ll have to get out. You’ll never get clear with so much weight in her.”

He stepped out, and the lightened boat slid slowly back and floated clear, backing out into the bayou, and then the throb of the engine ceased.

“Oh, it’s stopped again!” Miss Power exclaimed hopelessly.

From the shore Lockwood directed and advised. Nothing worked. The boat veered slowly on the almost imperceptible current, while the girl fumbled with the levers.

There was only one thing to do. Lockwood waited till the bow swung nearest land, then splashed out, only a little more than knee-deep, and got carefully into the boat again. He applied an expert hand to the machine, produced a few explosions, and then again obstinate silence.

“If I could have this thing for an hour I’m sure I could put it in order,” he said, growing irritated. “As it is——”

“You’ve surely had experience enough with motor engines, haven’t you, Mr. Lockwood?” said Louise, smiling at him.

Lockwood absolutely jumped with the shock of it, and turned quickly to look at her.

“You know me? I knew we had met. But I couldn’t——”

“You don’t remember Lyman & Fourget, in New Orleans?”

“Of course. I worked in their salesrooms and repair shop.”

“I was in the office. I recognized you at once when we passed you the other day on the road. But I don’t suppose you noticed me.”

“Of course!” said Lockwood slowly. “Of course, I remember now.”

Really he remembered very hazily. Miss Power must have been one of those girls, stenographers and bookkeepers, in the glass-inclosed office in one corner of the main floor.

“Of course. I remember you perfectly now,” he said, not quite truthfully. “Strange that I didn’t place you at first. How did you remember my name? Of course, you’re Miss Power. I guessed that anyway.”

“Yes, everybody knows me about here.” She looked at him with candid curiosity. “I reckon everybody knows you by this time. Strangers are rare, you know. What are you doing up here in the woods?”

“I’m a turpentine man, too—I’m all kinds of a man. The fact is, I wanted to get out of the city for the summer. I’ve been in Mobile and Pensacola. I left New Orleans late last fall.”

“Yes, I left not very long after you did. I was glad to get out of New Orleans, too, and papa wanted me to come home.”

She stopped suddenly, and glanced at him with some keenness. Lockwood, sitting with his hand on the useless wheel, as the boat slowly veered on the drift, thought of what he had heard in casual gossip—how this girl had escaped from the primal squalor and discredit of the family life “up the river,” and had gone out to mold her own fortunes. Certainly she had not failed in it. She must have been drawing a fair salary at Lyman & Fourget’s; and she had taken on a tone of city smoothness and culture, a very different manner from the rollicking roughness of her brothers.

“But how am I going to get home?” she cried plaintively. “We’re drifting that way, aren’t we? About an inch an hour.”

“I’ll try again,” and once more he managed to start the engine into a splutter of activity. For a few yards he navigated the boat, and then turned.

“If you’ll allow me, I think I’d better drive her home for you. She might last, though more likely she’ll play out again.”

“I wish you would. One of the boys will drive you back in our car. But what about your horse?”

“He’ll do where he is. Everybody knows who that horse belongs to, and I suppose I can be back in half an hour.”

He was really in no hurry to get back, and he almost wished the engine would give trouble again. He wanted to talk with this girl; he was anxious to get on some sort of terms with her; he desired very much to know on what sort of terms she stood with Hanna.

“Not a very cheerful place to come for an excursion,” he said, as they rounded a bend of raw clay banks, and saw a water moccasin slide off into the bayou.

“Mr. Hanna was teaching me to run the boat. It’s easier in this still water than out in the river. I expect,” she added with some hesitation, “that you saw how I left him ashore.”

“I did.”

“I’d no idea anybody was looking. It was a joke, you know. He thought I was going ashore, too, but I didn’t want to.”

“So you made him walk home,” said Lockwood, at this dubious explanation. “Well, it’ll do him no harm. I expect he’s well on the way by this time.”

So were they, it appeared. The bayou made another twist, and there was a tiny pier, made of three pine logs, and a rough boat shelter of planks. Lockwood steered in, and they landed.

“We’ll go up to the house and get the car,” said Louise, as Lockwood paused dubiously. “You must meet my father besides. He knows about you, and I think you’ve met my brothers already.”

They went up a path for a couple of hundred yards, through the strip of pines, across a garden of collards and cabbages, and into the great, smooth, sandy expanse of the back yard, which an old negro was just sweeping with a huge broom of twigs. Louise opened a gate in an arch smothered in roses, and they passed through into the front yard, equally hard and sandy and swept, and they came to the steps of the wide gallery that ran around two-thirds of the house.

Lockwood was in tense expectation of meeting Hanna, of the critical moment of introduction, of speaking, of possible—though unlikely—recognition. It was with a sensible letting down of the strain that he saw only old Power on the gallery, his feet cocked up on the railing, half somnolent, holding an unlighted cob pipe in his teeth. On the steps young Jackson Power sat huddled up, still wearing his expensive clothing, but coatless and with his sleeves rolled up, looking half dead with boredom.

He jumped up joyfully as the pair came in. Henry Power awakened completely, and they gave him so delighted a welcome that it was plain they were overjoyed at anything to break up the monotony of life.

“Mr. Lockwood, sir! You’re Craig’s new woods rider, I believe. I’ve heerd of you. Come up on the gallery an’ have a chair where it’s cooler.”

Mr. Power had adopted none of the extravagant habits of his sons. He wore a blue cotton shirt without any collar or vest, strong brown trousers whose leather suspenders were very conspicuous, and he had no shoes on. His speech was a little shaky with age; he must have been far over seventy, for he had been in the Civil War as a mere boy, and he had almost as rich and slurred an Alabama accent as any negro. He had no grammar, and he looked what he was—a barbarian from the big swamps, but a trace of old-time courtesy and “family” hung about him yet.

Jackson meanwhile had hurried to bring out a bottle and glasses, and was apparently appalled when Lockwood declined any refreshment. He took a drink himself, while Louise, dropping into a rocking-chair, explained Lockwood’s interposition, rather magnifying the assistance he had given.

“You’ll have to drive Mr. Lockwood back to where I found him, Jackson,” she said. “You can pick up Mr. Hanna as you come back.”

“Oh Lordy, sis!” Jackson exclaimed. “You ain’t gone and made Mr. Hanna walk all that ways round to the bridge?”

He laughed, and yet looked uneasy. If Hanna had offered his sister any insult, he would have to be shown the door, or perhaps thrashed, or perhaps shot. But Louise laughed easily.

“He preferred to come that way,” she said, and Jackson looked relieved.

“Sure I’ll drive you back,” he said to Lockwood. “But you ain’t in no such hurry, surely. Say, why can’t you stop and eat supper with us?”

Lockwood pleaded his duty and his horse left in the woods. He was not yet prepared to meet Hanna, to sit at table with him. But he felt a conviction that he would have to face it sooner or later.

CHAPTER VI
THE MEETING

Lockwood rode his rounds the next day with a queer feeling of change. It had been coming on for days, that feeling—in fact, ever since the night when he had watched that magical moonlight on the white front of the colonial house; and it had culminated in the meeting of yesterday. Memory came back to him slowly and in scraps. He certainly recollected Louise in New Orleans. He remembered having spoken to her casually as she passed him; he had once had some dealing or other with her in the office; but he could not remember a single word she had ever said to him. Evidently, however, she had remembered him, and the thought brought a stir of warmth to his blood.

He wondered anxiously what Hanna’s relations with the girl might be. It made him furious to think that he should have any relations at all. But what, indeed, were Hanna’s relations with the whole family?

In a broad way, Lockwood thought he could answer that. It was undoubtedly a confidence game that was being worked. Hanna was winning the money at cards, perhaps, or appropriating it in some even more crafty manner. Lockwood chuckled rather grimly as he thought how opportunely he had arrived. It would put a fine edge on his vengeance to spoil Hanna’s game before killing him.

The next morning a thunderstorm passed crashing over the woods, with torrents of terrific rain that lasted for twenty minutes. A jet of hail followed it. Lockwood and his horse sheltered in a deserted negro cabin, and immediately afterward the sun burst out again with torrid heat. The earth steamed and reeked.

In this hot weather the turpentine gum had been running very fast, and the cups filled rapidly. “Dipping” was going on in Lockwood’s area. At intervals through the woods he came upon a sweating, half-naked negro staggering with one of the enormously heavy wooden “dip buckets,” filling it from the gum cups. At intervals empty barrels had been sent down, into which the buckets were emptied, and mule wagons were slowly making the rounds, hauling the full barrels to the camp and leaving empty ones. In a day or two the still would be at work.

Lockwood had a continual, unreasoning expectation of again seeing Louise in the motor boat every time he went by the bayou. He took pains with his costume; he polished his boots, removed some of the gum stains from his khaki breeches, and put a preen tie under his low collar. But she did not come.

On the third day afterward, however, he did hear the throbbing of the motor boat coming up the water, and his heart jumped. He was fifty yards back from the bayou, but he drove his horse hastily forward, just in time to see the boat come in sight. It was the Powers’ boat certainly, but all it held was young Jackson Power. Lockwood rode down to the shore and halloed a greeting, and the boy steered in at once.

“Engine running all right now?” Lockwood inquired.

“Seems like. I don’t reckon there was nothing wrong with her really. This boat sure ought to run good. She cost three thousand dollars.”

“What?” exclaimed Lockwood.

“Yes, sir. We got her in Mobile.”

Lockwood scrutinized the boy, suspecting a stupid lie.

“Well, I think you paid too much,” he said. “You could have got it for fifteen hundred at the outside if you’d gone to the right place.”