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Show rSTflawRWind run m BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER D' WffiS!Sn C0' m " THE STORY THUS FAR .vV1?le MorBan. widow, and owner of the Morgan paper mill in the Carolina mountain district, turns down a marriage mar-riage proposal from Wallace Withers. He leaves in a rage. Branford Wills, a young Jtranger, who has been lost in the mountains moun-tains for three days, finds his way to the Morgan home. He is fed and allowed to remain overnight. He identifies himself as a government employee, working with surveyors in the district. Wills develops pneumonia and is forced to remain in the household. Marian. Virgle's daughter, dlslike3 wlUs Trout,,, is developing as Withers meets Stanley Daniels, the mill's chemist. Virgie learns someone is attempting at-tempting to obtain title to timber lands owned by Tom Pruitt. life-long friend of her deceased husband and part owner of the mill. She advises Tom to clear up title to his property. A love affair is developing between Daniels and Lucy Fields, Virgie's secretary. Withers attempts at-tempts to bargain with Daniels to have mm help in getting possession of the Morgan mill. Daniels refuses. Wills improves, im-proves, and discovers he is In love with Marian. She is developing similar symptoms. symp-toms. Both keep it secret. Virgie offers Wills a job at the mill. Tom learns Umber Um-ber Interests have sent men to look over his land. He takes a rifle and goes into the woods. His health greatly improved, Wills leaves the Morgan household to live in the viilage. CHAPTER VI Continued -7- The clerk rang the register and counted out some bills. "If your mother wants to see Perry Per-ry Bennett about that piece of spruce of his, Marian," he said, "you tell her it ain't any use. Perry's sold it they drew the papers Saturday. He sold it to Wallace Withers." "What would Wallace Withers want with that spruce?" "Don't ask me. Maybe he's going go-ing to sell Christmas trees. Whatever What-ever he wants' there's money in it. That old guy is so stingy he honed a nickel razor-blade and used it over and over for ten years." Marian followed Bry out to his car. She was quiet and thoughtful as Bry tore through town and around the mountain curves. She knew a great deal about her mother's moth-er's affairs. She was certain that Virgie had counted on buying Perry Bennett's spruce. "What are we supposed to do when we get to Asheville?" Bry broke in on her silence. "We aren't eloping, by any chance?" "In a rain-coat?" Marian gave him a pitying look. "When I elope it will be by moonlight, and the man will be lean and handsome. He won't look like you." "What does it matter how he looks in the moonlight?" "It doesn't matter. But it matters mat-ters a lot when I look at him next day and discover what I've eloped with. And I wouldn't be thrilled at looking at you across a breakfast table, Bry, for years and years." "I never get up for breakfast." "The man I elope with has to get up. He'll bring me my toast and coffee, with a rosebud on the tray." "You can't marry that fellow. He's married already. No weak-minded, weak-minded, angelic sap like trlat could possibly have escaped until now." "It isn't weak to be gallant." Marian Mar-ian was abstracted because she had been trying to picture Bry across a breakfast table. His dampish hair and eyes full of things he had seen things you didn't like to think about. "Gallant and goofy," Bry finished for her. "Your forefathers hitched their women to the plow along with the ox. If they didn't pull a straight furrow they got the whip around their legs. I'll bet your great-grandfather sat by the fire in Scotland and smoked while his wife did the milking and brought in the wood." "They didn't burn wood in Scotland. Scot-land. They burned peat." "Well, whatever it was she had to carry it in. You're soft all you women!" "You," Marian stated, dryly, "aren't so hard yourself. If this car stalled in the mud right now, I've got more muscle to push it out than you have." "I don't need muscle." He was complacent. "I've got brains. I know enough to give you good advice ad-vice while you were pushing the car out." "You make me sick with your conceit I don't know why I came with you anyway. Turn around I want to go back." "Okay." He turned the car into a drive, without protest, backed it, and turned it, not looking at her. CHAPTER VII Virgie had spiked her old hat on the hook and given a flick across her desk with a feather duster, when Branford Wills walked into the office of-fice that afternoon. "I made it." He grinned feebly. "I won't be an important asset to the pulp business for a day or two not till my knees stop knocking together, to-gether, anyway. But here I am." Virgie grinned back. She liked this lean, clear-eyed young man with the trace of iron in the set of his mouth and chin. And she needed him. Days had passed and still Tom Pruitt had not come back. "Well," she said aloud to Wills, "it looks like I'm going to need some young bones in this business. My old ones are about worn out. Come along out with me and I'll tell the boys you're here. You better hang around and watch the process for a few days, ask questions, and get underfoot. You can't work in a pulp mill unless you know what it's all about. Oh, yes this is Lucy Fields. Mr. Wills. I run the mill and Lucy runs me." Lucy looked up and said. "How do you do?" swallowing nervously. "I shall probably have to ask Miss Fields to boss me for a while," he said. "I'll be a sad tenderfoot, I'm afraid." "I'll boss you," Virgie stated firmly, firm-ly, "and this plant can't afford ten-derfeet. ten-derfeet. You have to cut your eye-teeth eye-teeth quick and cut them hard. Begin Be-gin by stepping high over that steam hose if you don't want Jerry Shel-ton Shel-ton in your hair." There was, to Virgie's eyes, only the customary reticence of the mountain man in the attitude of the old hands in the mill toward Branford Bran-ford Wills. They greeted him with the taciturn "Howdy" of the hills, looked him up and down, went on "with their work. "You show Wills how the drum-barkers drum-barkers work, Mank," Virgie ordered. or-dered. "Start him in with the logs at this end and he'll come out with the pulp into the stuff chests, at the other." But if she was satisfied with the calm of events at the mill, she was displeased when she went home at night, very weary. The rain had stopped. The ground was freezing again and the wind "When I elope it will be by moonlight, moon-light, and the man will be lean and handsome." was friendless and dreary. Lossie had not lighted the fire and the room that Virgie persisted in calling the "sitting-room" was cold. The upper floor still smelled of camphor and alcohol and Ada Clark's starched, scorched uniforms. uni-forms. But it was very stilL Lossie Los-sie had cleaned up the sick-room and put a clean counterpane on the bed, very flat and white. It looked lonely. Marian's room was empty, too, and Virgie felt irritated at that. You spent your best years raising young ones, you gave them the best of everything and all the freedom in the world. You were a good parent and what did you get? A cold house, empty and forlorn, nobody to talk to, nobody to give a darn if you dropped over from weariness or got pleurisy from dressing in a cold room. Even in her own mind Virgie was only half aware of the real cause of her irritation, the pressing apprehension appre-hension half ignored, which was her anxiety about Tom Pruitt She sat and stared gloomily' into the fire, wondering what had happened hap-pened to the old man and what he meant by wandering off, anyway, without a word to any one the old mule-head! Sat all unaware of the drama that had been enacted that day, on the cold slope of the ridge above Hazel Fork, a drama with only one witness. That witness was young Bill Gallup. Bill Gallup had been driving the maintenance truck along a rutty mountain road. The road followed the slash ribbon rib-bon over the slope of a ridge where the steel towers and wires of a main transmission line linked up the eager ea-ger plunge of mountain torrents with the deeper surge of the commerce of the world. Through the low growing brush of the slash he saw a tall figure approaching ap-proaching a man who carried a gun. He slowed the truck and waited. Mountain men were sensitive for all their harsh exteriors and to pass on without stopping to pass the time of day might give offense that could bring down on a power concern the vindictive and sadistic enmity of a whole family connection. Bill called, "Howdy, neighbor," and trod the brake. The engine instantly in-stantly sighed, gurgled, steamed, and died. The man with the gun came nearer and Bill saw that it was old Tom Pruitt. "Hello. Tom." he greeted. "What are you fixing to hunt up here, this time of year? That looks like a bear gun to me." "Yeah." he said, "this here's a bear gun. I been toting it round over the ridge yonder. Thought I mought maybe could see me a varmint. var-mint. I was just shackling down to get me a bite to eat. You goin' back to that there lighthouse of your'n? I'll ride along and see if Jim Bishop's wire has got a cold pon n the stove." "Sure, get In. You must have been out quite a while you're pretty pret-ty muddy and tired out from the look of you." "Slept out." Tom was laconic. At the Bishop house Tom got out and went around to the back door. Jim Bishop's wife was a girl from the village and Bill remembered that he had heard she was distantly related to Tom. Any kinship, to the most remote degree, was important in the mountains. Bill drove back to the plant confident that Tom would be taken care of. An hour later, as he went back to work after lunch, he saw Tom Pruitt again. Gun slung over his shoulder, Tom was slogging down the muddy road. His shoulders were slumped and his legs moved heavily as though he were very weary. Tom turned off the road presently and struck directly across the ridge, following a dim trail through the crowding laurel. The path was steep and tangled, having been made by yame. It crept beneath tall, knotty thickets of rhododendron, and skirted skirt-ed open places, keeping to the shelter shel-ter of the undergrowth. It had been trodden out by creatures wishing to hide, and it suited Tom, for he had no desire to be seen. Twice he rested, crouched on rocks, stretching his legs, his ears buzzing as his heart strained in the thin air. On the upward climb he did not bother to look about him, but toiled on, stooping, the gun heavy under his arm, his head down. But once on the crest his manner changed, turned feral, cautious, his eyes glinting. He stalked silently, his old hat jerked down, the pocket of his overall jacket sagging from a double weight of cartridges. The opposite slope of the ridge was very different from the brushy way he had just climbed. Ahead, as far as his eye could carry, was a great untouched, majestic expanse ex-panse of hardwood forest. Trees, vast and quiet, leafless and magnificent, magnifi-cent, in their aloof columnar austerity, auster-ity, covered the slow descent and a rolling expanse below. Tom breathed heavily, air whistling whis-tling through his teeth as he looked at them. His eyes, for a moment, were worshipful. Taking a downward roundabout way, he advanced from tree to tree, carefully finding the moss underfoot, under-foot, making no sound. A bunch of wild gooseberry bushes offered ambush am-bush and he dropped into them, parting the twigs soundlessly, lying still for a long interval, his gaze fixed on the slope below. There was an indentation in the half-frozen ground and into this his elbow fitted easily, because in that place for two days it had rested. The ground was cold and Tom's body ached after a half-hour in the cramped place, but he shifted his limbs, flexed his hands, and shrugged his collar up about his neck, always keeping his eyes on a spot far below between the tall poplars. The light grew cold and thin, the trees stirred and worried as trees do when night begins to climb the mountains. A dry twig fell, a crossbill cross-bill swung across a lighter space, stopped for an instant on the bark of a cedar, turned head down, and began its. angry cry. All the frost-powdered frost-powdered drift of leaves stirred briefly, in a raw breath of wind, then was as swiftly still. Old Tom tensed a little. For forty years he had been a woodsman. He knew all the signs. Something was abroad in this quiet winter forest. He had waited two days and a night and now his waiting was at an end. He pulled himself up slightly, dropped his hat and rested his left arm upon it. The gun came up and was steady. The cool palm-worn tock and breech were smooth under un-der the old man's hand. Its weight gave him the feeling of power and dominance that belongs only to kings. For a long interval he made no move. Then in a flash the crossbill hurled itself to the top of the tree, screaming. scream-ing. Bark sifted down. And far down the slope Tom Pruitt saw what he had been watching for for forty long hours. A car had stopped on the woods road. Two men got out and walked up the rutty track and presently a third man followed. Tom was troubled trou-bled at that. He had not counted on a third man. But he lay motionless, motion-less, watching. The three began climbing the slope, stopping at intervals to study the trees. One was obviously the conductor of the expedition, making mak-ing gestures, calling the attention of the others to the lifting majesty of the trunks, the spread of branches. Tom Pruitt followed this man with a narrowed eye, precise and remorseless, re-morseless, over the sight of the rest ing rme. They came closer. The leader moved ahead, turning back at intervals in-tervals to direct the gaze of the others oth-ers upon the lay of the land, the absence of underbrush, the ease with which this virgin stand could be timbered. As though he heard every word Tom Pruitt knew what this man was saying, though their voices reached him only as low murmurs mur-murs through the forest stillness. High in the tree the crossbill was agitated. Men born to the woods, Tom thought with scorn, would have known enough to look around, known that something watched below the crossbill's tree. But these men did not belong In places of watchful silences. si-lences. They were outlanders. They had come to rob. And because they had no craft they were helpless. help-less. Very slowly Tom's long forearm flexed, very slowly the muscles of his lean hand his right hand tightened! tight-ened! The drama came home to Virgie Morgan at ten o'clock, when her ears had begun to ache from listening listen-ing for Marian's return, and wild angers at the stark thoughtlessness of young people to possess her. She heard a car stop, and sprang to her feet grim-faced and reproachful. re-proachful. "Well did they close up all the other places?" She began sharply. But she stopped at the sight of Marian's white face. Marian's' eyes were big and frightened. "Mother " she began "Bry and I went to Sally Gallup's this afternoon after-noon when it stopped raining. On the way back we picked up Tom Pruitt. He's been up there in the woods for days. He's out in the car now he's all muddy. Mother Tom killed a man over on Hazel Fork." The sound Virgie Morgan made at Marian's announcement was half a groan and half a convulsive, absurd ab-surd squeak. There was horror in it but under that a terrible tragic resignation. Somehow, for days, for weeks even, ev-en, she had felt the pressure of this coming thing. The unrest and unhappy un-happy nerve twitchings of impend- "They was in my timber. Mis' Morgan. I was watchin' for 'em. I got one." ing change. She had decided in the morning, in spite of the apparent calm at the mill, that now her forebodings fore-bodings had come true that something some-thing was beginning in the ruthless, inexplicable fashion with which life suddenly shifts to the sinister. But even her stout spirit was not braced against such a fierce acceleration accel-eration of tempo. She stumbled up, gray-faced. "Where is he?" she demanded. "How do you know he killed a man? Killed who?" Marian was steady, though her eyes were big and terrified. "He doesn't know who it was, Mother. He shot somebody. They were trying to steal his timber over on Hazel Creek. Now he wants us to take him over to jail. Bry and I don't know what to do. Bry thinks Tom is crazy." Lossie was standing, staring blankly at the door. "Get my coat," Virgie ordered. "I'll talk to Tom. We're not in a big enough mess he would have to do a thing like this!" Marian protested. "It's no use to talk to him, Mother. He's so excited ex-cited when he tries to talk it doesn't make sense and his teeth chatter. Bry doesn't want to drive way over to the county-seat tonight. Couldn't we telephone the sheriff?" "We won't telephone anybody. I'll handle this. Bring Tom In here. He didn't kill anybody. Tell Bry to bring him in." "I don't believe he'll come in. He didn't want us to stop at all. He said if we wouldn't take him to jail that he'd get out and walk." "Give me that coat Lossie. I'll fetch the old fool in here myself." Virgie fumbled into the sleeves. She was a strong woman but now she felt numb all over and her knees were fluid and cold. She walked out into the winter dark, holding her jaw grimly to keep her teeth from clacking. "What's all this, Tom Pruitt?" Pru-itt?" she demanded, as she came up to the silent car, standing there in the dark with headlights burning dimly. "What's all this foolishness?" Tom seemed to heave himself up with an effort. His long, gaunt body straightened, in the shadows. His breath hissed over his teeth. "They was in my timber. Mis' Morgan. I was watchin' for 'em. I got one. I'd ought to got them all. I would 'a got all of 'em but my old gun jammed. It hadn't ought to jammed, neither I had it cleaned out good. Them cartridges Eryson sold me wasn't no good." (TO BE COSTIM'EDJ |