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Show T-- a m, " ""tlfIKLD SENTINEL 2 BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER D-TOWeWe C0' SlBl-. anybody else wants to talk about that business on Hazel Fork, tell 'em I've been stricken stone-deal! Tell Mildred when she gets all the town gossip off the wire she can put m a call to Baltimore for me. There's something tunny about this Cragg business, something that doesn't add up." "Yes, Mrs. Morgan. And when you have time Mr. Daniels would like to see you. He said it was important." "I suppose he has another of his ideas. He's always finding something some-thing in a catalogue that saves a thousand dollars or so in production costs and only costs fifteen or twenty thousand to install!" Virgie was very low in her mind as she opened the door of Stanley Daniels' laboratory. "Well, what's on your mind?" she demanded. Daniels looked up from his work, wiped his hands quickly. "Oh, Mrs. Morgan sorry I had to ask you to come over, but there was a risk that this stuff would solid- fllAPTER VIII Continued 9 , came back and Mnrlnn ': ffny without a word. She ' stiffly "ect, behind the wheel, 'rtf straight ahead. Die stern line " r lips snd the guarded chill of UjO 'eves hiding the aching tumult ',1J1J sVeihcd in her heart. D 'c was hating herself for being vulnerable, for the mad desire J rip ; ,,.,( now to swing into a lonely road and let the engine die, she cried helplessly and pitl- jn this man's arms. He was sitting straight. He hadn't ,.red, of course. That had been fe-lie fe-lie foolishness of illness, that !!,' made him look at her adoringly '.'i clutch at her fingers and say Ijgs about gipsy tambourines and j ..er ace burning behind his eyelids 111 night long. But she, Marian Morgan, who all er life had been so fiercely indi- ,,j ridualistic, her mind as coolly prac-n prac-n as a well-made watch, always toss sure, always self-contained, was no longer sure. If this was being in love, it was white pain and tor- , men't and cruelty past belief. She ' stared at the damp road, scudding under, and at the leafless bushes lipping by, and fought for the grim pride she had from her father, and Drlce with it the sharp tonic of anger that made it easier to be frigid and not to look around at this man, sitting sit-ting so near to her, who, even re- , i mote and unconsidering as he ap-peared, ap-peared, could make tingling flashes ybos of awareness tremble along her Dkers rms ani nands so that the steering- spJ:; wheel quivered. e, ric; She fixed her mind on old Tom. Jolori Kemembering things, remembering ! pt;; days when her father lay slowly dy-lass; dy-lass; tog, when the house was heavy with 1 is a the tragic air of sorrow, when peo-odti peo-odti P'e walked on tiptoe somberly and tin I telephones were muffled with wads ;me: of paper. She had been very young :oole; "en, practically a child, but old ajjt enough to be frightened and to suffer suf-fer keenly. She had been summoned home from school into an atmos- phere of doom, and her one comfort niU had been old Tom. fj Many times, when her mother was . busy and harassed at the mill, and if the incoherent mumblings of. the j V paralyzed sick man made Marian's j.l young flesh creep and her throat j cramp horribly, old Tom had ap-I ap-I peared in the drive, steering a rack- ety old truck. mi "Got to go up toward Little Fork to fetch them boys in. You come ,v6i along and go with me. Woods is too ij lonesome when you get as old as I tM be. Feller gets to talking to him-.Jj him-.Jj self and next thing you know they'll be telling round town that old Tom Pruitt has gone crazy." On those trips Tom had taught her all he knew. The ways of the woods creatures, how to tell poison-oak poison-oak from the harmless five-leaved on. creeper, how to keep silent and ob-- ob-- serve' while a snake shed its skin. "1 He had told her stories of early j days before the highways penetrat--J ed the mountains, when a trip to 'J Waynesville was a day's journey, J when wagons had to be taken apart and carried over the mountains, and what dim roads there were followed ,j the beds of streams and were prac-il prac-il tical only for men on horseback. , He had taught her a little of the odd reserve of the mountain people, ' the friendliness that met an ad-' ad-' vance half-way but never presumed, , never was forward, that rested always al-ways on a stony base of elemental pride. The scalawag sons of mountain moun-tain men who ran liquor, set fires, and poached deer on the game reserves, re-serves, he despised and disowned. "Country trash," he dismissed them. Braggarts and liars avoided him. Gentle, mild, and kind how could old Tom have done this incredible thing? What temporary madness had possessed him? Whatever the impulse, Tom had believed himseh fundamentally justified. It was an old law. In the mountains a man defended his own. Now, he accepted the penalty with a dignified grace. She could not desert him. Virgie would hire the best lawyer available,' but a lawyer could do little with Tom and nothing at all for him till it was known whether the man, Cragg, would live or die. At a little store on the edge of the county-seat, Marian stopped and bought a bag of little cakes, a package pack-age of raisins. Always on their trips in the old truck, Tom had carried car-ried raisins loose in the pocket of his denim coat. She had seen him many times, luring a mountain jay or a squirrel near-by, scattering raisins rai-sins on the moss at the foot of a tree. The deputy jailer was a man she did not know, but he let them in when he heard her name. The jailer's jail-er's wife looked in her purse, ran her flat hands over Marian's body, automatically, looked in the paper bag, "I don't reckon you fetched Pruitt a"y hack-saws" the deputy showed broken teeth in a grin "but them's "e rules." Tom was pitifully glad to see her and he shook hands with Wills with I a grave and pathetic dignity. Mother has gone to see about getting you out, Tom," Marian said. "u must come home. Mother I "eeds you." Tom considered this, looking "aight ahead, sitting on a bench j 'djig Marian's hand tightly. Then M shook his head "I reckon I'll stay here. I shot that feller. He was fixing to steal my timber. I'd a shot them all if my gun hadn't jammed. Never knowed it to do that-a-way before." be-fore." "But you must come, Tom. He didn't die. He won't die. And the mill will go to ruin without you. It's your mill, Tom part yours. You can't let the mill down." "She's hired you, ain't she?" Tom looked levelly at Wills. "I figured she got put out at me when I stayed over there so long. I was waiting for them fellers to come back and it looked like they never was com-in'. com-in'. Then Lon told me Mis' Morgan had hired this feller, so I figure I'll just stay here a spell Lon treats me all right." They argued in vain. Wills strove to be convincing and caught a grateful grate-ful look in Marian's eyes. But Tom was immovable. He tore the top from the box of raisins and poured some out into Marian's hand. "Why did you do it, Tom?" Marian Mar-ian pleaded. "You could have scared them off. You didn't need to shoot." "They was after my timber. I had a right to that piece of poplar your ma said so. I reckon I better stay on here a spell." He did not, she saw, look ahead. He was old and growing childish. He was not thinking of what might lie ahead, remorselessly, for him. He had an idea that by remaining here, patiently, behind bars, he was somehow paying his debt to an over-zealous over-zealous system of jurisprudence, the payment demanded for a private act of reasonable reprisal. He was resigned to legal interference inter-ference with his personal liberties, but it was obvious that he had no idea of having done a capital crime. There was a grim patience in his attitude that went back to codes older old-er than America, went back as the mountain people's odd speech and ancient ballads went back to an Anglo-Saxon tradition, an older,, sterner stern-er civilization of harquebus, land entailed and inviolate, and freemen responsible only to a preoccupied king or a silent Heaven. Marian choked on the thought of what lay ahead for Tom, and flung her arms around him suddenly, "Oh, Tom, why did you do it? Everything Ev-erything is so wrong! We can't get along without you." Tom gulped, reddened, scrubbed his hand over his unshaven chin. "What you worrying about? Mis' Morgan'll git along. She's enough for a whole pack of 'em. Nobody ain't never got the best of her yet." They left him soon after that, left him calmly superintending the jailer's jail-er's children, who were cracking walnuts in the corridor. Wills, seeing the misting of tears on Marian's eyelids, said quietly, "Would you like me to drive?" "No, I'll drive. I'm all right," But he, Wills thought bitterly, as they flew along the curving mountain moun-tain road, was not all right. Nothing Noth-ing was all right. He looked sidelong side-long at Marian's delicate profile, at the sweet, strong curve of her lips, the dusting of golden freckles on her nose, the faint tinge of pink along her misted lashes, and ached fiercely fierce-ly to take her into his arms. He twisted his lips ironically, thinking of her scathing scorn if he tried it, missing entirely the desolation that dimmed every line of her face, and made her hands move dully. Stiffly silent, eyes straight ahead, they drove back to the mill two young, angry, frustrated creatures, yearning for each other, braced against each other, rigidly correct and stone-blind! CHAPTER IX In the early afternoon Virgie returned re-turned to the mill, spent and dispirited dis-pirited and rasped raw with irritation. irrita-tion. She had hired the best lawyer to be found, she had arranged for bail for Tom, only to have him sit back stubbornly, refuse to leave the jail or to co-operate with the lawyer. "I done it. I shot him," he said over and over. There was, apparently, nothing to be done at present. "Leave him set a while," advised Lon Hicks. "He's kind of numb right now, layin' up there on that ridge in the cold. He'll come to himself before long and git to thinking and then you can talk sense to him." So there was nothing to do but abandon her futile efforts, and go back to the mill. And once there she let her weariness and exasperation exaspera-tion have their way with her. "You'd think," she snapped at Lucy Fields, "that those men out there loading that car were building the pyramids and had six thousand years to finish the job!-When did we start running this plant in slow motion?" "They're short-handed, Mrs. Morganand Mor-ganand with Tom gone" Lucy faltered explanations. "Where's Wills? Did he come today?" to-day?" 'He's working with Jerry on the feeders. He went away with Marianbut Mar-ianbut they came back before noon. -It was so cold in the yard and he isn't really well yet" "So he went off with Marian? I suppose she wanted something for that Little Theater and if the whole mill happens to go to pot, why, that's no consequence?" "I think they went to the jail. Hobe said" "Answer that, will you? And if plant, some of them sons of men who had laid the first bricks. Repeatedly she had called them into conferences, during the black years of the depression, laying the facts before them, speaking then-language. then-language. She had made sacrifices to keep the mill in operation when there was no profit for her, no possible pos-sible way to show a profit. If the mill closed there was no other employment em-ployment for them and yet here was suspicion, sabotage and ugly doubt that rested, till she had proof and certain knowledge, upon every man in the mill. Virgie hated the thought with the frightened hate of the innately kind and candid woman. She hated looking look-ing at Jerry and Hobe and the Spain boys, with speculation in her eyes. She loathed the feeling that hostile looks might be following her. Every man in the mil owed something to her and yet people were funny! She went home at night, lost in a heavy, ruminative gloom. She changed her clothes and went down to her big chair that faced David Morgan's picture and still had the print of David Morgan's head in the leather of the back. David looked tired, too, she thought. David Da-vid was out of it all. He was lucky. Marian sat, moodily, in front of the fire staring into the blaze. "You," sighed Virgie, sinking into the cushions with a groan, "are a cheerful sight for tired eyes! If a merry laugh or a song ever sounded sound-ed in this room I suppose I'd drop dead from shock. What were you doing over at the jail?" "I went over to bring Tom back. He wouldn't come." "Being locked up on a criminal charge, that is kind of odd." "You were going to arrange bail for him. Lon Hicks said so. But Tom wouldn't come." "I suppose you, bad to take young Wills along in case you needed somebody to carry Tom's baggage his other bandana! Did Wills mention men-tion that he's working for me? Not that it matters, but now and then we do run off a batch of pulp when we can get a little co-operation from the gentlemen I employ." "Mother, don't be so prickly! I took Mr. Wills over there because Lossie said the people in town were saying you had fired Tom and given Wills Tom's job. I thought perhaps Tom might have heard it. I hope you don't think I took him because I enjoyed his company?" Virgie looked at her daughter levelly. lev-elly. Her heart gave a little jerk. Like every other mother she had postponed stubbornly admitting to herself her child's maturity; she had put off the inevitable hour of change when some man should desire her child for his own. For days she had been seeing through Branford Wills clearly and she had not been displeased. She liked his straightforwardness, straight-forwardness, the trace of iron in him, the strong and gentle way he had with women. But there was no seeing through Marian. Virgie admitted ad-mitted to herself that her child was a dark-eyed enigma to her mother. And in her present state of mind, nerve-taut and weary, puzzles were irritating. "Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that that chap is in love with you?" she demanded. "Have I raised up a daughter with no more feminine intuition than a ground turtle? Why Lossie knows more than that! Or am I supposed to be just a nice stupid old mother, blind as a bat?" Marian's eyes darkened and her face changed queerly. There was a little convulsion of her lips that was a tremor of pain, but Virgie was too spent and too exasperated to see. "So that," Marian's voice crackled crack-led like ice, "is the cute little plot He's in love with me so you give him a job in the mill It's a Rollo book the nice young man works his way up from sweeping the store and the mill owner's daughter is supposed sup-posed to be all of a twitter because she gets a kind look. Unfortunately, Mother dear, you've been reading Dorothy Dix or seeing too many movies. Mr. Branford Wills happens not to be in love with me as any observer can see with half an eye. Either half. And I happen not to be in love with him." "That," Virgie mumbled aloud, when Marian had gone, "is what you could call a dramatic exit. Very satisfying to the actor." CHAPTER X Branford Wills went to his work at the mill in the morning like a young man riding to a crusade. There was about him, as he entered the gate, a feeling of going into battle. No tangible opposition presented itself, it-self, no definite hostility. The men were not friendly, but they were heavily polite and reserved, as he knew all mountain men to be until they were won over. Daniels was curt and indifferent but their work did not coincide and Wills, following the milling of the product through the plant, from the first removal of the bark to the warm brown rolls of wood-pulp rolled into storage, saw the chemist but seldom. But on the snowy morning following follow-ing his visit to the jail. Daniels emerged from his laboratory, his hands in the pockets of a stained jacket, and came to stand beside Wills who was watching a new couch blanket being spread on one of the big presses. (7 0 BE CO.Y77AX'ED "Xou mean somebody could have ruined that whole digester of pulp deliberately?" ify if I left it and I thought you should know about these tests. Something is going wrong with the solvents I can't say just what till I finish running these. In the number num-ber three vat the fiber seems to be so weakened and destroyed that the whole run will be worthless. Would you like to look at this?" He wiped a tube swiftly, held, it to the light, shook it Virgie crossed the room, studied the brown mixture. "What's wrong with it?" she asked. "Watch." Daniels tilted the tube, let the solution spin out. Ignorant of processes as she was, Virgie saw enough to know that something was vitally wrong. This was not wood pulp in solution, but r sickening foamy brew that spur out on the filter paper Daniels spread beneath it "I have to believe you," Virgie said. "I don't know enough to know what's wronp out something is, evidently. ev-idently. But ..ow could it have happened?" hap-pened?" "There could," Daniels said, "have been some chemical accident. Unlikely though, if you bought the stuff at the same place. Changes do occur accidents in shipment moisture, mois-ture, too much heat but not often. But this seems to me too serious to be explained in that way. Something Some-thing wrong has been added my tests will show what it is when they're finished. Of course that may have been accidental, too wrong label, la-bel, something like that There's always the human element, you know. Workmen make mistakes and hide them. And then of course we have to consider the possibility that it was deliberate." Virgie sat down abruptly on a leather-covered stool. Her legs were weak, all the vague misgivings she had felt assumed a definite shape of menace. "You mean somebody could have ruined that whole digester of pulp deliberately? Put in something to destroy the fiber? How could that have happened? You keep the keys. You test everything." "I did not, unfortunately, test the solvents on this run," Daniels admitted. admit-ted. "I haven't been doing it latelythey late-lythey come sealed and they've always been perfect before. We depended de-pended on the reputation of the manufacturer. man-ufacturer. Of course, hereafter I'll test everything thoroughly but that doesn't help us now." "And in the meantime we lose a batch of pulp and have all the trouble trou-ble of cleaning the digester out?" ."I'm afraid this lot is useless. I'm running every sort of test to be certain but in the meantime it looks pretty dubious." Virgie let her breath out slowly. All sorts of odd, wild ideas seethed in her mind. Someone had ruined an expensive run of pulp, someone had it in for her but why? Vague rumors she had heard of communists at work in industrial regions, re-gions, of sabotage and labor troubles trou-bles fomented, she discounted. Her men had worked in the Morgan mill all their lives. Some of them had helped David Morgan to build the |