OCR Text |
Show CHAPTER X Continued 10 Daniels spoke without preamble. "You were down at the other end of the mill yesterday, Wills. Did you see anyone fooling around the big vats the digesters? We lost a batch of pulp through some funny business or other." "I don't know all the men In the mill as yet," Wills said. "And I was out for two or three hours. The vats have padlocks, don't they?" "That's it." Daniels frowned. "It's an inside Job, evidently without even a motive that we can discover. discov-er. You haven't made any of these fellows sore, have you?" Wills looked puzzled. "How could I? I've only been watching and listening. lis-tening. And if I made a man sore he'd be more likely to give me a poke in the jaw, wouldn't he, than to ruin a run of pulp?" "It sounds reasonable. It's a mysteryand mys-teryand not so good for me because be-cause I carry the keys. Well, much obliged." At shouted Instructions from a lank man in overalls, Wills went to help smooth the thick blanket into place on the bed-of the machine. But the odd unease of being pressed upon by strange and unfriendly forces persisted. He hated the feeling feel-ing of defensiveness, of needing to justify himself In his own mind. He liked this job, and he had been swept up Into admiration for the Intrepid In-trepid spirit of Virgle Morgan. And now, as the mill clamor beat around him, he was certain that it was the remoteness, the indifference in her eyes that made this feeling of being on trial without a friend in court. He had to show her. He had to show her that he was something other than a lost and rather pathetic young man whom a big-hearted elderly el-derly woman had befriended. A sudden sharp nausea caught him as his mind raced. Young men had been befriended by middle-aged women before it she thought he was that sort, an opportunist, a heel! He gave an Involuntary jerk and Bud Spain yelled, "Hey I" But the yell was lost in other yells, rough and sudden and startling. Frank Emmet banged the gears of the Jordan machine back, jumped and ran. Wills ran, too, and because be-cause the others were yelling, he yelled, too. Hobe Anderson was dragging a flat hose off a reel. Another An-other man struggled with a fire extinguisher. ex-tinguisher. The smoke was pouring from a little oil house, built against the north wall of the mill. They kicked the door in, there were yells and men running into each other, and much coughing and hissing of chemicals. chem-icals. The smoke grew blacker, then turned white and sank to the ground. Wills' eyes were running scalding water but it was he who kicked the smoldering barrel into the open, where Hobe Anderson knocked it over and sent it rolling with a stream from the hose. "Take it easy!" Wills shouted at Hobe. "Cut that water oft. Let's have a look at this." A dozen hands jerked the charred, smoking staves of the barrel apart A label, still intact, on its side, indicated in-dicated that it had held bisulphide. In the bottom an oily mass still smoked acridly. Dragged out, it flared into flame briefly a soaked, dangerous bundle of cotton rags and paper. Men stamped out the flame, looked at each other somberly. "Somebody," announced Frank Emmet, "was fixing to burn the mill." "Wind's wrong," Hobe said, kicking kick-ing a smoking heap into a pool of water, "or she'd have went sure. Looks like if anybody wanted to burn her they'd have figured on the wind." Wills was aware of Lucy Fields' white face near to his elbow. "It was set, wasn't it?" she said. "Obviously. Though, even if the barrel had burned, there might not have been serious damage. That little building is more or less airtight. air-tight. The fire probably would have smoldered out." "But why would anyone want to set fire to the mill? The town would be ruined if it was destroyed." "Why," Daniels cut in, "wouH anyone want to spoil the pulp? Something's wrong somewhere. Where is Mrs. Morgan?" "She went to Asheville to see Tom Pruitt's lawyers. I'd better telephone tele-phone her." "I wouldn't," Wills said. "The fire is out. Why worry her? She has troubles enough already." "That's true. I won't tell her. You'd better clean this up, Frank." "Let's have a look at it first" Wills looked at Daniels. "We can find out perhaps where this stuff came from." For an instant Wills sensed an edge of hesitation in Daniels' manner. man-ner. His eyes flicked around, then were as quickly guarded. But his voice was carefully casual when he answered, "Not much left but there may be a clue." Wills went back to his work at the Jordan machine. It was an hour later that one of the Spain boys came to him and said. "Lucy wants to see you. In the office." Wills crossed the yard to the little lit-tle structure that stood so bleakly alone. Lucy Fields sat at her little desk, and her face went first red' and then white as Wills came in. "Sit down, please," she faltered a little, then plunged rapidly. "Mr. Wills, I'm doing a very bold thing HawkintheWind .... . m D. APPLLTON-CENTIRY CO. BY HELLN TOPPING MILLER w-N.u.scrvice asking you to come here. But I had to talk to you. There's nothing noth-ing else to do." "I see. And what was it you wanted to say to me?" He took the chair opposite the chair that still bore the Imprints of David Morgan's Mor-gan's shoulder-blades. Her throat fluttered. A strained look came over her small wistful face. "This Is such a little town," she began. "It's rather awful to live in such a gossipy little place. It Isn't easy what I have to say to make it clear, I mean. About the town. About the mill. It belongs to the town to all of us, Mr. Wills. The men who work here have been here always. Nobody ever came in from outside till Mr. Daniels came last year." "What is it you're trying to tell me?" Wills asked bluntly. "That I'm an outsider? That somehow or other oth-er I am to blame for the trouble in the mill?" "And so your suggestion is that I leave town in haste and never come back! " Tears ran down her pale face. "I know I sound like a fool to you. IP J; :tT llh-TfiingirTrV'i-rr--TMf Her face went red and then white as Wills came in. but Mrs. Morgan has been a mother moth-er to me to all of us. We've all fought and worked and struggled together to-gether always for the mill." "All but the fellow who poured oil on the newspapers and ruined the pulp. He was fighting for himself." him-self." "Perhaps he thought he was fighting fight-ing for the mill. Perhaps he thought that outsiders would be coming in to take it away from us. He might have thought that you were the first." "It sounds fantastic. But it may be true. I'll talk to Mrs. Morgan and you can be sure I won't let the mill be destroyed on my account." ac-count." "Oh please don't talk to Mrs. Morgan! Please just go! You can make some excuse you had a job, you can say you are going back to it You could say you had changed your mind." "I'm sorry I couldn't leave without with-out talking to Mrs. Morgan. I'm very much indebted to her." "I appealed to you," she sighed. "It's all I can do. But if you were convinced " "You've done your part Whatever What-ever happens I'm to blame." "I hope nothing happens. I hope I'm wrong." She smiled thinly. But there was a dubious uneasiness uneasi-ness in her heart as Wills went away. Had Stanley Daniels been a little odd a trifle curt and watchful? watch-ful? He couldn't know anything about this affair and yet, he alone carried the keys. Lucy was heavily unhappy as she walked home alone that night. Life could be so hopeless, so ghastly when you lived in a shabby old house at the end of a shabby street. When you were so achingly in love! CHAPTER XI Marian Morgan had driven her little car up a twisting stretch of ridge road, without having any very definite idea of where she was going go-ing or why. She drove slowly because she told herself that it was thrifty to spare tires on a rocky, boulder-edged track. She searched the hills above and below with her eyes, but not even to herself would she admit that she looked for anything. She had heard her mother telephoning instructions in-structions that morning, but she had kept her mind sternly on her breakfast break-fast grapefruit and adjured herself not to listen. What did it matter where the woods truck went or who went with it? She slipped out of the car, dragged the cushion out and rummaged for the pump, set it up on the ground. With a nail-file from her purse she pressed down the valve of a front tire, let the air escape until the tire sagged, loose and flabby, a discouraging dis-couraging flummox of limp rubber. Then she climbed back into the car, ' wrapped the rug around her knees and sat in a small, cold huddle waiting. Instantly, now that the thing was done, a hundred accusing and con demning voices clamored in her ears. She was being cheap, she was doing the sort of shallow trick that a girl of Lossie's class might devise, de-vise, she was forgetting that she was the daughter of Virgie Morgan Mor-gan of the Morgan mills. But drawing draw-ing out all these self-reproaches was the thin, poignant cry that had trembled trem-bled through her heart and beat in her blood since the night she had talked to her mother before the fire. "I have to know!" she said, plaintively, plain-tively, aloud. "I know it isn't true but I have to be sure!" This contradictory patching up of her conscience helped her to be calm, to wait, though her feet tingled tin-gled with cold. A mountain jay came and shrieked at her from a sumac clump. A deer stood for an instant, tense and listening under some gnarled ancient apple-trees beside the ruin of a stone chimney. chim-ney. Then suddenly he bounded away. There was a metallic vibration vibra-tion through the woods. The truck was starting. She caught the backfire back-fire of a cold engine and the clank of shovels tossed aboard, and leaned' her elbow on the button of her horn. The blare made the jays and the little lit-tle pine sparrows and crossbills scatter with a whirring and snapping snap-ping of twigs. Then the rusty radiator appeared over the rise emitting steam. Joe had let the engine run hot on the grade. He was always doing that, too impatient to cool it out properly when they reached the top of a long climb. Two men jumped down when they saw Marian's car, and came running. run-ning. One was Joe. The other was Branford Wills. Swiftly Marian put every scruple out of her mind. She was a woman, using a woman's devious and often unfair weapons. She said, "I'm stuck. That miserable miser-able old tire insists on going flat. And I left the key to the spare in my other purse. Isn't mother with you? I thought she came up here. There's a long-distance call for her 1 came up to tell her." "She didn't come with us. She must be at the mill," Wills said. "Let's have a look at that tire." "It's flat, all right." Joe .gave the wheel a kick. "But there's still a little air in it. Maybe we can pump it up so you can get down to the road." They pumped up the tire, and Joe studied it, testing the valve. "Must be a pressure leak," he said. "Valve's all right Can you turn around here without getting stuck?" "I think so I'll try." "You better do it," Joe said to Wills. "It's steep off there. She could turn over easy." Marian slid along meekly. "I'm a lot of trouble," she said in a voice which would have amazed her mother, moth-er, so humble was it. "No trouble." Wills whipped the steering-wheel about "This is a bad place to turn. Flag for me, Joe," he shouted. "0. K. Cut deep." Joe semaphored sema-phored his arms. The car came about. Wills got out again to look at the tire. "Standing up all right," he announced. an-nounced. "You'll make it." Marian's throat cramped. But she fought its quivering, got the words out. "Would you drive it down for me? The tire might go down again and I'm not much good at the pump." "Of course." He resumed the wheel again, while Joe followed with the truck. "You shouldn't be driving driv-ing on lonely mountain roads alone, you know," he said, as they bumped over a wooden bridge. "No one would hurt me," she declared. de-clared. "Everybody for miles around knows1 me knows mother. And mother hasn't any enemies." "She has one, obviously," Wills said. "The fellow who kindled a fire in the oil house at the mill yesterday yes-terday wasn't celebrating the Fourth of July. He was getting even." Marian looked thoughtful. "Perhaps "Per-haps that wasn't mother's enemy." "That might be true." He drove the little car carefully around a slippery hair-pin turn. "But even without enemies there are dangers. This morning, for instance. Suppose you had had to walk back to the highway? Suppose the truck had not been on the ridge?" "I knew the truck was on the ridge." Marian was truthful. "That's why I came. Does this catechism and fatherly admonition have to go on indefinitely? We could talk about other things. I'm fairly intelligent. I know all the tenses and that you shouldn't say ain't." "I'd better take another look at that tire." Wills stopped on a wide bit of road, waved the truck past It roared down grade, flinging mud. cheerfully. Marian sat looking straight ahead, her cameo profile a trifle grim, her chin squared. "There's nothing the matter with the tire," she said. "I wanted to talk' to you." He looked at her quickly, search-ingly. search-ingly. She was so near and so dear! Even with her chin set at a resolute angle, even with her eyes cool and distant and her lashes evasive. eva-sive. He made an impulsive move, then drew back as her aloof manner man-ner did not change. "I'm listening," he said quietly. She twisted her fingers together, but kept her eyes straight ahead on the thickets where the jays quarreled quar-reled and the frozen slopes where B V J 1 icicles made a diamond passementerie passemen-terie on every rock and twig. "I don't like fighting," she began with a little difficulty. "We seem to clash. And it's rather silly, don't you think?" "Very silly. Especially when " "Especially when we could arrange ar-range things sensibly. I this isn't easy for me to say. But I thought if I talked to you alone if I appealed ap-pealed to you " He stiffened a little. Only the day before Lucy Fields had used those same words. "I've appealed to you!" For a moment eagerness, tenderness had rushed through his blood like flame. He had looked at Marian and seen only her young sweetness, the golden curve of her throat where kisses were born to lie, the yielding curve of her lips. But now the pride in him, that verged so close to a high, fine fury, the terrible, blind, masculine pride, that through a thousand centuries has gone flaunting banners and waving wav-ing swords and trampling small tender ten-der things underfoot, had him again. He could not see the pulse that quivered where a gold shadow lay upon her throat, he did not see the uncertainty of her fingers and her eyelids quivering. He saw only her profile, set against him, the chin that was like David Morgan's. He was blind and savage with hurt and frozen with disappointment. He was a very stupid young man. He drew back and swung the car wide on a curve, not looking at her. "I think I know what you're going to say. I've heard it all, already. I only have one answer. I'm not leaving town. I'm not leaving the mill. I'm not going to be driven out nor wheedled out- I'm in this to stay. So it's too bad you went to so much trouble to let the air out of that tire!" She turned, as though she had been struck, but he did not see. Her She snatched at the wheel, whirled away with frosty mud flying. face was as white and stiff as his own. Her voice snicked like steel on ice. "You're a very famous egotist, aren't you?" she said, brutally. "You couldn't possibly think beyond yourself for a moment. It wouldn't occur to you that I might not want to talk about the mill. That I might be thinking of myself a little. I won't say it now. I won't let you gloat over the kind of a fool that I was. I see how hopeless it is!" She choked a little, then recovered her control, gave a savage drag at the brake, turned the key. Wills said, "Marian! Good God!" But she was not listening. Her eyes were black and blazing. She reached across his knees as the car lurched to a stop, and opened the door. "Get out, will you?" she said hoarsely. "I can't stand any more." He said "Marian!" again, in a husky, stricken voice, but she was like a woman on fire.' "Get out! I hate you! Get out!" She snatched at the wheel, whirled away with frosty mud flying, almost al-most before he was on the ground. Down the winding road she swung past the truck, grazing a hemlock tree, careening on two wheels. "You'd better wait for him," she shouted at the startled Joe. "He isn't riding with me." Down the mountain she tore blindly, blind-ly, shame and a white, torturing pain burning her.' Once she laughed and the laugh was bitter. So he was in love with her, was he? She was a song sung to a gipsy tambourine. Cheap cheap to have surrendered sur-rendered even a little! She hated him! She hated him! As for Branford Wills, he sat morosely mo-rosely in the jolting truck and hated hat-ed himself for a blundering fool. Now with his crass stupidity he had ruined what life with its ruthless ruth-less distinctions had not made intolerable in-tolerable before. At the mill gate the truck halted. "Something's busted again," announced an-nounced Joe grimly. Somehow, the spur track had been undermined. A car, heavily loaded with pulp, had gone off the rails, swung sidewise, and turned over, tearing up a hundred yards of track. "This here," declared Joe, "is gittin' so it ain't even funny! (TO be continued |