30. Drilled
Vernaluska's handsome suitor had turned to face Calvin Parker, standing with dripping puttees at the streamside. The Northerner was breathing hard, his cap stuffed into a pocket of his Norfolk, his black hair disordered by the wind. His right hand was guarding his hip; his left carried a heavily leaved, forked branch which evidently he had used as a cane In the climb. He looked angry - more forceful than the girl ever had seen him.
"Why are you following me - don't you realize yet Tve got it In for you?" The sneering demand came from Currle.
"And hasn't It occurred to you yet that Fve got it in for yoii? I'd advise you to about-face and make yourself scarce!"
"Gad a'mighty, you've got a nerve! Me make myself scarce at your say-so ?"
"My say-so is good on this property. I hold a mortgage that's going to prevent you bothering others on it. Get off hopping quick or I may ask you to pay what you owe me."
"Owe you? I don't owe you anything, except "
"Oh, yes, you do - a wring of your neck for every pellet of shot in that man-trap you set and every drop of dope you put Into my drinks at the Dismal Gap Fair."
Currle, his eye on the Northerner's right, guffawed his derision. "Me pay - to a goop what don't nose-whiff his demljack before he swiggles It! Besides, I gave you fair warning - told you to look out for me, didn't I? You didn't come up here trailing me so much as - well, somebody that don't favor the foolest revenue slick that ever fell for bumbli: igs and buckeye."
"So you admit the buckeye?"
"I'm admitting nothing except that you'd best kit-caboodle It out of here yourself, Mr. Calvin A. Parker, of New York, before I get you packed. I'll give you two minutes to "
"You'll give me - all the time I want - or else I've made - a wash-foot Baptist of myself for - for nothing.
Parker's rasped remarks, his forward spring, just as the hiilbllly, with a lightning movement, drew from his hip, the lashing sound of the improvised cane - all were incidents of the next second or so.
The watcher's stifled outcry went unheard In the report of a gun. She collapsed to her knees, weak from terror and almost Instant relief, on seeing Currie's revolver flung by that forked branch, thick with leaves, Into the stream. Parker was laughing into the face of the man he had confused and disarmed by his unexpected onslaught.
"Never shoot, myself, unless It's necessary, being no killer at heart. And I'm hard to hit, even for a real gunman. You ready to settle with me now? See, I'll give you an even chance !"
With which Parker tossed his own automatic after Currie's Into the creek.
In the very second of this voluntary disarmament, Currle sprang at him, vociferating In fury: "You've gone and done It now, you varmint, taking my gun a second time. I came up here this morning for two things. You're one of them. You're going to pay "
"Always glad to pay - my debts. Nobody has to dun me - twice."
In contrast with the mountaineer's fury, the Northerner sprang Into the fray with cheer. As If from some previous incarnation, the fighting tactics In which the Parker of college days had excelled revived in this comparative wreck of later years. The vitality he had breathed In from the hills rushed to his aid. The moral punch of a just cause enthused him. Compound Interest on the several attacks of the hillbilly bought up his long-maintained repression.
More than safe-guarding the still made the girl under cover of the brush linger In her part of audience. Now that their weapons were In the creek they had. Indeed, an equal chance, she told herself.
Although Currle had great strength, the city man had shown before that he knew what he was about. He had said he was as good a man as Currle, whom she had come to dislike and fear of late. As a sort of justification for her many defenses of him, she hoped, with all the primordial savagery of her mountain-bred ancestresses, that he might prove, not merely as good, but the better man. After Sandy's lurid account of his weakness at the carnival, she wished fiercely that he should now show strength.
Parker, thrown off by sheer man-weight, tightened his muscles for a new offensive. Currie lunged to meet it. Again they closed, the artist feathering into the bootlegger with tempered fury, aided by admirable foot-work. Currie, solid In his resistance as the mountain Itself, showed inartistic but effective tendencies. In a second-long interval of recovery, he seized the New Yorker in a bearlike clutch, threw him heavily, battered his head upon the ground until there came a stain of blood.
"Now, maybe you'll trail up here after my doneygal - maybe you'll snatch my gun!"
In the moment's respite, Vernaluska started forward to prevent further brutality, but paused, shaken between hope and fear. She saw Parker spring from his feint at exhaustion and go at the mountaineer as thought the combat had only begun. With jabs and swings, systematic, well-directed, and so diverse as to confuse the man of muscle sans science, he Invited and then fought off ponderous rushes. Dodging skilfully, his effort was plain - to wear down the other and becloud his judgment.
Evidently encouraged by the honor of first blood, now streaming from a cut over the artist's left eye, Currie continued his bull tactics and stood up well under punishment. Despite his natural tenacity, however, he In time found himself giving way - backing toward the far side of the ledge, where there was a sheer drop. That he had reached the limit 'of safety he was told from an unexpected source.
"The edge - have a care for the edge!"
Vernaluska's cry startled both, but the advantage went to Parker, the quicker of mind. As his adversary lunged forward, he planted himself for a swing. Currie, in trying to slip under this and at the same time escape the menace of the edge, lost his footing and sprawled.
Full weight Parker dropped upon him and strove for a wrestling hold which would bring him to terms. Currie, in the violence of his attempts to squirm from under, seemed to lose his sense of direction. Before he recovered, he was going over the bank; in panic released his hold on his opponent for the flimsier one of rocks that gave way at his weight. With an upward glare at Parker safe on the bank, he started down and down.
Hurrying back toward the creek, with the Idea of locating the source of that warning cry, Parker stopped to wash the cut over his eye and the blood from his face. Imagining that he had seen a flutter of alien green disappearing In the brush, he splashed down-stream eagerly.
"Hi - If you turn in there I'll drill you!"
This threat In a man's voice, brought Parker up short on the bank. For several seconds he stood rigid, wondering whether It really had come from below him, assorting each noise of brook and breeze. Concluding that his ears must have deceived him as to direction and that the unarmed hillbilly, having climbed back to the ledge, was attempting a ruse, he laughed tauntingly and started Into the brush.
But something stinging hot stopped him. While falling, he realized several things. His ears had been right; the gun report had come from below. From out the bush, a woman's scream wavered, to the sound of running feet; Sandyred Metcalf splashed up the branch, a smoking revolver in hand, a delirium of exultation twisting his face.
"So you're the damn spy everybody said, after all? Well, you can't say I didn't warn you - you've got none to blame but yourself!"
The fierce words scourged the ears of the fallen man. Verne's face lowered close to his.
"You, Sandy - you aimed to drill him?" he heard her ask.
"Did I aim to? Do you s'pect I was popping at a boomer?"
Her moan lifted over the lighter nature plaints. "Sandy, you've gone and killed him. He was meaning to be friendly, and now you're gone and killed him!"
For the life of him, Parker could not reassure her. He felt a rush of gratitude for the grief she was showing. Then he gave up to whatever It was soothing his sensibilities.
Vernaluska set herself to do what was possible, demanding the cooperation of her brother.
"I only aimed to nip him," that young hot-head about-faced. "He was heading straight for the stillhouse, wa'n't he? It's only what pap would have done. Shucks, sis, he ain't dead - I had no Intention such. He can't be dead!"
i The girl's lips, as well as her face, had turned to a pale saffron and worked stiffly.
"Give me your knife; I'll cut away his shirt. Go to the still-house and fetch a pail."
It was when she stood mid-stream, scooping up the clearest water, that she fancied she heard retreating steps In the bush of the opposite side.
"Rex - Rexey!" she called.
"For a moment she waited, shaking as if she were some tar-heel dame from the lowlands suddenly "ailing" with chills and fever.
Catching the contagion of her fear, Sandyred rushed to the stream-side. "Rex - hi, Rex, be that you?"
The only answer either of them got came later, after they had "toted" the deadweight of Parker to the mountain's base. This lay in the absence of Currie's horse.
"You make a dash for home, Sandy," was her decisive command. "Send along Tom with the buckboard. The sooner you go on the dodge the better. Rex is no friend of any of us - he's gone to squeal on you."
She stood staring in the direction her brother had disappeared until long after the hoof-beats of his horse were silenced by distance. Then she turned and knelt beside the silent Thing on the ground - the professed friend whom the bite of Sandy's gun had made so unresponsive. She lifted and smoothed back the black hair. With trembling finger-tips she pressed downward the white lids over eyes which looked too dark and brilliant. Her gaze settled, as if hoping, on the tight-pressed lips.
"Sending Sandy on the dodge don't mean that I'm going to give you up yet a while, not until I have to," she addressed him in a hovering murmur. "I've been too tarnal hard on you. I didn't know until to-day how hard and I hanker to tell you so. Don't you want to hear me tell you, Parkerman?"
She slipped her hand inside his slashed silk shirt to a place well below the small red splotch she had found beneath his shoulder. She waited a moment, then forced a seductive smile.
"You-uns said I was strong to help you. You painted me as Spring. Are you going back on that now? Ain't you ever going to call me Verne again? Ain't you ever going to smile at me in your different way, like as if you were too tired, almost, to smile at all? I don't mind telling you its more than fear for Sandy makes me want you to rouse up. I'm Spring and I'm still here. Won't you come back, Cal?"
Her pseudo-smile faded from not being seen; her coaxing voice broke from going unheard - sobbed down into the wordless whisper of a wail. Then, as if terrorized by her own despair, she urged him anew:
''Come, come, won't you rouse up just long enough to hear me? I want you to hear me so - can't you rouse up for Verne?"
She pressed her hand gently upon his heart to warm it; leaned so close that her lips touched his and her breath did for two. It seemed to her, as she waited, that the trees stopped their whispers and the birds their chatter - that even the stream was breathing deep and rythmically with her.