31. The Bluest Flame
The "spare-room'' bed of state, built of homefelled timber, boasted both headboard and footboard, as well as four hand-carved posts. Beside it, In a low rocking-chair, sat Vernaluska Metcalf, as she had sat the greater number of hours since Calvin Parker had been "toted in" the day before.
It was nearly noon and he still lay in the trancelike sleep which mercifully had claimed him before and since he had undergone Miss Emmy's ministrations. That good spinster, stoic from adopted motherhood's experience with splinter-lifting, bruise-healing and bone-setting, had found and extracted the bullet from his shoulder; had cleansed and skillfully bound the wound; had declared that her patient had "a chance."
The girl, almost prostrated with relief when the fluttering at his heart had answered her desperate recall, had been glad to let the older woman take charge of the case; but no nurse ever had followed orders more carefully than she. With clock-tick regularity the prescribed stimulant had been administered and the cold packs changed.
Now hope, strong in her heart, was expressed In the murmured tune she was picking from her duclimer. Soft almost as thought, the music seemed to soothe him, rather than disturb. The rested look had deepened on his face, and he breathed easily. Soon she dropped the instrument Into her lap and leaned forward to throw back the "company" coverlet. Beneath it, almost lost In the sea of white clothing, the artist's long body stretched quite still; his face looked white as the linen by contrast with his black hair. Fearing an Increase in his temperature from the noon heat, she crossed to the window and pinned the centers of the blue-print side curtains over the dimity ones.
"What was the name of that piece?"
She turned, startled as though the weak voice had sounded from another world. Her heart stood still. The moment was almost too much to endure. Swiftly she recrossed to the bedside. The lids which she had touched so despairingly at the mountain base had lifted, his intense eyes looked sentiently into hers.
"Why - why," she stammered, "it is called 'Pull the Mule.' "
"Dedicated to Solomon, I suppose?"
Joy over his small attempt at levity limbered her tongue. "My mule don't need pulling," she flashed.
She sat down, leaned toward him. After all they had been through, he physically, she mentally, it seemed strange to be speaking commonplaces. Could it be possible, she wondered, that he did not realize who had shot him?
"I'm right glad," she said softly, "that you-all are better. You can never know how glad. But that's enough for now. You mustn't talk or even think, and you'd best mind me. I'll play a rocking song; you-uns just listen and maybe you'll fall off to sleep again."
"But I don't want to fall off again. A fellow asleep is at an awful disadvantage. I'm afraid I've missed a lot already. That banjo-harp-guitar effect you've been playing "
He started to stretch his hand toward the dulcimer, but winced from the sudden pain of movement. When he spoke again:
"Sandy - where is he? I want to ask him why he did it."
He put the question with his eyes shut, so did not see the instant tension of her face at this proof that he did remember.
"Sandyred - oh, he's around, I reckon," she replied.
For a while he lay in silence. She slowed down the lullaby until it was scarcely audible, hoping he had been forced by weakness to take her suggestion of falling asleep.
His next words, however, showed that he had been thinking: "I fixed it up before your court of the hills; convinced even the judge. I want to kncT, does my counsel believe in me yet?"
The noise of a horse arriving in the yard diverted her answer. Startled, she arose, laid the dulcimer on the bed and, with her lithe, boyish swing of the open, hurried from the room. The door she closed behind her.
At the front step, her father was greeting Asa Simms. The transplanted Yankee noted the girl's appearance with but a nod, his manner excited.
"I've nearly winded a good horse riding ahead to warn you. That traitor, Currie, has tipped off the sheriff, and there's a posse headed this way - '
Dry Dryden and a bunch of his Ilk, along with Dr. Prosch."
"What for, do you reckon?" The old red lion of the Metcalf clan drew up bristling.
"What for? Well, only just to clap a pair of wrist-irons on Sandyred - that's all! Crime, murder. Victim, a revenue officer."
Old Tom reached for and began to examine the repeating rifle that had been leaning against the door jamb. "Irons on my Sandy - hell's banjer!"
"Lay off the gun, Tom." Vernaluska placed an urgent hand upon her parent's arm. "There's nothing to arrest Sandy for. If they're thinking to charge that he committed the - the accident. It won't hold. Parker's going to get well."
The postmaster looked surprised. "Glad to hear that for your sakes If not for the slick's. Rex reported him dead as a doornail. But this posse can grab the fellow that plugged him and hold him for assault with Intent to kill. All they need Is the revenuer's accusation. If It happens he knows who "
The girl didn't wait to hear the old man's angry denial that his son had been anywhere In the vicinity at the time of the shooting. She made a brief visit to the room shared by father and son, after asking Miss Emmy to "do up a quick poke of grub." With her two parcels, she hurried to the barn, saddled Sandy's mount, and rode to the patch where she knew him to be hoeing corn. She did not consult or advise; rather, she commanded him.
"He's come to, Sandy - he knows who potted him. See to it you keep on the dodge until I give you leave to show. No Metcalf has ever worn wristlets, and it ain't fitten this generation should set the style."
Scarcely had she turned from the sight of his disappearance within the brush that led Into the fastness of Crumbly Bald, every hollow and by-path of which he knew, when she heard the approach of what sounded a goodly cavalcade entering the clearing from the other side.
Unseen, she returned to the house through the cook-shack door and loitered out on the front stoop just as the posse, headed by "Gettum" Stannard, the wiry, black-browed sheriff, drew rein. A detachment composed of Dry Dryden and that conqueror of the deepest root and most fractious nerve, Dr. Hezeklah Plott, proceeded at a sign from their leader to the back yard, evidently to guard against escape.
"Well, Asa," drawled the county's small but redoubtable chief peace officer, "be you delivering the United States mail in person these days?"
Without awaiting a reply, he turned his celebrated official smile upon Old Tom. "We-all have come to invite your boy Sandy to a little visit down to the jail at the county-seat."
The patriarch's gaze veered from the reassuring, fawn-green eyes of his daughter to meet that of the official.
"That's mighty polite of you, Gettum, but our-all corn needs Sandy for the hilling. What's the special occasion?"
"The special occasion" - Stannard spat deliberately and far before finishing - "is murder in the first degree. It ain't the charge I'd cal'calated on taking one of yourn on, Tom, but I reckon it will hold as good as any. We'll try to give the boy as comfortable a time as can be "
"Mighty polite of you," Tom repeated, with no particular change of expression. "Won't you-all light and come in?"
"You bet we will, since Dr. Prosch intends to take back the body as well as him what laid it low. The first and likeHest place to search, we're agreed, is this house."
The hint of a twinkle flashed in Tom's eyes. "You're welcome. We-all are right proud of our house. Doubt if you'll find what you're looking for, although there is a particeps criminis critter inside that may do as well."
Cordially he gestured the two into the livingroom and invited their attention to its objects of interest - the decorative frieze of the newspaper wall-covering, the solidity of a table now serving the fourth generation, the inherited Metcalf leaning toward art as represented by Vernaluska's jugs.
The girl, sensing his idea in this game of delay, played a hand of her own. She brightened; chatted first with one and then the other; conducted them, as if on a pleasure tour, through the dining-room, kitchen, and family chambers. A tuneless twanging it was that focused the visitors' suspicion upon the one closed door.
"Sandyred!" m.uttered Stannard, clamping a masterful hand on the knob. Stealthily he opened the door and crossed the sill.
Dr. Prosch followed, his dimpled fists doubled to aid in any emergency.
After them came Vernaluska, her heart hurting with anxieties, both for the man who was within and him who was not. Miss Emmy, Asa Simms and Old Tom brought up in the rear.
Just within, they all stopped short from varied causes.
The eyes of the man on the bed dilated, glanced among them.
"Parker - alive?" Sheriff Stannard rasped.
"Why, yes, I think so." That Cal Parker smile which yesterday Vernaluska had invoked in vain, wavered around one corner of his mouth.
"But with a near-fatal wound on him somewhere, which it is my professional duty to examine." The pudgy practitioner recovered from the situation's crux and strutted toward the patient.
"Thank you, but I have a doctor and a nurse. I am satisfied - don't wish to change."
The sheriff had hectored away his surprise by a noisy clearing of his throat. He now showed himself prepared for anything.
"I feared worse results from this attempt on your life, Mr. Parker.
"Attempt on my life?"
"You need not fear, brother officer of the law, that the guilty can escape the justice of Gettum Stannard, at your service, any more than if you'd actually been finished. All you've got to do is to accuse; / do the rest. I await your word, sir, to do my duty."
The little official drew himself up and scowled effectively.
"But what duty?" Parker spoke somewhat irritably.
"To arrest the ruffian that drilled you, likewise all that aided and abetted. I get 'em, try 'em, punish 'em - according to Hoyle and Blackstone. Don't you fear that we're outnumbered, for my posse awaits without - the house is completely surrounded. In view of your daring service to the community and State, this here attack on you had ought to be made a horrible example of. We have the word of a competent eye-witness, but we want your declaration."
In the pause, silence tortured the seconds. Miss Emmy, despite her nerve-control at the recent operation, was trembling. Simms's eyes, seeing In imagination the last demijohn of his most profitable "inside goods" turned upside down, shifted from face to face. The grin had deserted Old Tom's weathered countenance, the chuckles his throat. And Vernaluska
She felt she could not endure to look at him whose life they had saved for this debacle, yet she could not look away. When she saw his lips begin to move, It seemed she must scream to silence his words, but she listened with dread Intensity. She must not resent his statement of facts, slhe reminded herself; she must be fair. He owed them nothing, not even their care of him, since a life dear to them must be paid for his life. He had reason to hate her brother besides that of the mountain attack, if all Sandy had told of the carnival was true. She had witnessed his resentment against Currie for the "doctoring" of the liquor he had drunk - how much more ruthless it must be against Sandy who, as she understood, had pressed It upon him!
Yesterday she had called him back from the borderland with the cry of her heart. Through his flaccid lips she had poured her own life-breath, with no thought but for the unutterable loss of him. Had she let him cross over, had she remembered In time her Influence over Currie, another explanation of the accident might have been invented and established - Sandy might the more easily have been saved. And yet, she could not regret. And yet
Prosch had limbered his throaty tones:
"Don't hesitate, Parker of the Revenue, don't you ever hesitate ! You will be amply protected, wounded though you be. I myself will stay here with you until you are strong enough to move, provided the sheriff will leave a special guard. Name the name of the man that shot you down."
"Tom Metcalf "
Parker raised his head slightly as he spoke; started to turn toward the door; at once collapsed from the pain of the attempt.
A low moan escaped Vernaluska, as she crossed to the bedside.
"Not my pappy! No, no, Cal, you don't dast name my pappy!"
"The old stiller himself, eh? Thank God - at last!"
"Thank me!"
The last two exclamations punctuated a scuffle at the door. Instigated by Prosch and the official of significant sobriquet.
"That's right, bring him closer," said Parker weakly. Trying somewhat ineffectually to smile up at the girl, he added: "I just wanted to make sure he was among those present."
Elation, as well as his black mustache, decorated the sheriff's face when, with revolver drawn, he produced and started to manipulate a pair of handcuffs.
"Suffering possums, what's this all about?" demanded the trapped lion in a bellow.
"Just a minute, I'll explain." Obviously the wounded man was making an effort to rise above his condition, to command his voice. "Nobody is to be arrested. You have been given a false report, sheriff. I know who made it. It was a scoundrel who, for reasons of his own, would like to get the Metcalfs into trouble. I guess you can take my word against that of a bootlegger, can't you?"
"But what is your word? Don't fear to tell the truth. Somebody must have shot." Stannard flourished his gun by way of reassurance, the bracelets dangling disappointedly in his other hand.
"Fear? I should say not! The accident came from a quarrel of my own with Rex Currie. I tried to take his pistol away from him and It went off In the scrap. The Metcalfs really saved my life. They are my friends. I feel sort of played out. Would you mind excusing me now? Thank you for coming, sheriff. Glad to have met you. Dr. Prosch."
When, a moment or so later, the dismissed avengers were filing out the door, the weary voice trailed after them. z
"And, say, for the love of peace and quiet, forget this revenue stuff ! As I said from the first, Fm not an officer - have no connection with the government. I am - just Cal Parker - private citizen - minding his own "
The brilliant eyes had drooped from utter exhaustion when Vernaluska sank to her knees at the side of the bed. A question asked awhile back demanded answer.
"I - we-all believe at last," she murmured. "We do believe."
Old Tom leaned toward the two from the footpiece of the bed. His voice had gentled unbelievably as he said: "I just want to say, Parkenman, that Sandy didn't know your drinks were buckeyed tother day. He told me so. The boy may get flighty, but he ain't that sort of a skunk."
"I'm glad to hear that - glad he didn't know." The assurance was scarcely more than a whisper.
Miss Emmy's tribute was sobbed into her apron as she followed her brother and Asa Simms out of the room.
The girl Vernaluska maintained her lowly posture beside the bed, hoping that her patient had passed into that sleep he so sadly needed, fearing to disturb him. A sudden question undeceived her.
"Verne, you are there?"
*Tes, Cal, right here."
From the remembrance awakened by the interchange, he smiled a moment into her eyes, then again the heavy lids dropped. Despite the pain of any movement his hand stole out and touched her head, smoothed It, settled on it. A quavering sigh suggested the reward he had found In the effort, told without words how, ever since that first day, he had wished to touch her hair, to realize Its beauty through his sensitive artist fingers, as well as by sight.
All at once his eyes opened again and blazed with a look she never had seen In them before. His lips moved. She leaned toward him to catch their message.
"They can't put out - the bluest flame - that bums - for you!"
She watched him anxiously, hoping, praying that the Interview In which he had exculpated her brother had not taxed him into delirium.