9 Into the Wilderness

Guthrie sent a brief despatch to the office stating the case, its importance, his ability to cover it and return in time for the Carton trial. He added that the east-bound train which would pass through Sayville was due in the Capital in three hours, and unless he received instructions to the contrary, he would go on it with Mr. Pike, expecting another man to be sent to the Capital to take his place temporarily.

He saw the despatch sent, and went to Mr. Pike’s boarding-house. He walked up to the Senator’s door and knocked, unannounced. In reply to the brief “come in,” he pushed open the door and entered.

Mr. Pike was on his knees on the floor, putting some things into an old shiny black valise, and the last article that went in just as Guthrie approached had a metallic blue look. Guthrie knew from the single glance that it was a self-acting, seven-shot, 38-calibre revolver.

Mr. Pike looked up.

“Ah! it is you, Mr. Guthrie?” he said.

Guthrie did not reply, startled by the change in the Senator’s appearance. Mr. Pike’s face, always thin, looked thinner than ever; a dark blue tint had overspread it, and the bloodless lips, slightly parted, disclosed the two rows of sharp, white teeth. The cheek-bones were high and prominent, and the skin lay upon them like parchment.

Mr. Pike’s whole character seemed to have changed with his appearance. There was something ferocious, something savage in the look of his black eyes and the angles of his lean face. It was the gaze of a North American Indian, or rather of a man from whom a hard-won civilisation had suddenly slipped.

Guthrie hesitated. He scarcely knew how to approach this new man, this stranger.

“Mr. Pike,” he said, “I have heard of your misfortune.”

“Mr. Guthrie,” said Mr. Pike quietly, “Nathan was my brother, and it was right that they should send for me. I know my duty here—I am a senator of this State, and there is a great trial coming—but out there in the mountains, where my home is, blood is calling— the blood of my murdered brother. Mr. Guthrie, with us of the mountains the family always comes before the State.”

Guthrie knew this, he knew the strength of kinship in the mountains, and he knew Mr. Pike must be suffering.

“I am going with you,” he said.

“That can’t be,” said the Senator. “This concerns only the Pikes and the Dilgers.”

“I think not,” replied Guthrie firmly. “At any rate, I am going. The same train that takes you to Sayville will take me too.”

Mr. Pike fastened the catch of his valise before he replied, and, when he looked up again, his face was stern and fixed.

“You had better stay here, Mr. Guthrie,” he said, “and I tell you because I like you. But, if you insist on going, I can’t prevent it.”

“That’s quite true,” replied Guthrie with a slight laugh. “You, for one reason, think that it is your duty to go, and I, for another reason, think that it is mine to go, too.”

“Very well,” replied the Senator, “yet I wish you wouldn’t do it. And, when you get in the mountains, you’d better keep away from me. It’s all between the Pikes and the Dilgers, and there’s no need of anybody else’s being drawn into it.”

He spoke quite simply. At no time had he raised his voice above its customary pitch, but Guthrie soon saw that his attention was wandering; he was thinking now of the wintry hills, the dwarfed undergrowth, hidden marksmen, and his dead brother. Guthrie was much moved.

“Mr. Pike,” he suddenly exclaimed, “I wish to offer you my deepest sympathy.”

He held out his hand, and Mr. Pike clasped it in a firm grasp. Nothing more was said, and Guthrie left the house at once. He, too, had packing to do, and he intended to make a call after that. In the street, a messenger boy handed him a telegram containing the single word, “Go.” Guthrie had known that it would be so, and, thrusting the message in his pocket, continued on his way to his own room where he finished his task in half an hour.

He understood that it was no light journey on which he was going. The mountains are sufficiently arduous in summer, but are trebly so in winter, and Guthrie provided himself with top-boots and a flask of strong whiskey, something that he never drank at the capital.

Equipped now for a campaign, he went to the Governor’s house and sent his card to Clarice Ransome. Then he waited in the parlour before the blazing wood fire, and began to feel the thrill of coming action. On the whole, he was not sorry that he was starting on this journey. Here was something tangible. He knew just how to proceed. The field of the campaign lay clear before him. He was not groping in the dark, as in the Carton case.

He heard a step, and he rose as Clarice Ransome entered. There was a faint flush on her face as of surprise that he should come back so soon, but no trace of displeasure.

Guthrie hesitated, and was embarrassed. He had come on an impulse to tell her that he was going into the mountains, but really there was no reason why he should tell her this; it occurred to him now that it was of no interest or importance to her. He flushed, and she, seeing his embarrassment, shared it—but for a moment only— then, recovering herself, she was cool and seemingly indifferent.

“I came to tell you good-bye,” said Guthrie, somewhat lamely.

“Good-bye? You are going to leave the capital?”

“Yes, I am going into the mountains,” said Guthrie, “but I expect to be back in eight or ten days. Still it’s quite a journey—particularly at this time of the year, and I’ve got a mission that must seem to you remarkable. Suppose, we sit down here before the fire, and I’ll tell you about it.”

She complied with his request, and she felt a little pleasurable thrill that he had come to tell her of his departure. Had she been analysing herself, she would have said that it made a slight appeal to her vanity.

Guthrie told her of the despatch to Mr. Pike, the state of affairs between the Pikes and the Dilgers, and his interview with the Senator. He offered no apology for the mountaineers, leaving her to infer what she chose. But she made no comment upon them; instead, she spoke of him.

“And are you really going into those wild mountains?” she asked, “and in the depth of winter! Why it is like a campaign! See it is snowing now!”

Guthrie glanced at the window. The flakes had increased in size and number, and were driving against the glass. He looked at the blazing logs, and the fine face of Clarice Ransome, rosy in the twilight; the mountains were not so inviting after all.

“In some respects, I envy you,” she said. “The lives of women are monotonous; those of men are not, or need not be so. You are going upon what is an adventure, full of excitement and the unexpected.”

“I did not know that a woman would take that view of it,” said Guthrie.

“Perhaps I should not have done so a month ago,” she replied, thoughtfully, “but I can do so now. I suppose action is the best thing in life.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said Guthrie with confidence.

She was silent, gazing meditatively into the fire. She was thinking then of Raoul from whom she had received a letter that morning, a letter full of the most beautiful phrases. Her heart had warmed to him as she read it. Raoul could be so expressive! But the picture of him with his beautiful neckties, his unimpeachable coats, his delicate features, and the faint, almost imperceptible odour of perfume about him rose up before her. She could not conceive of Raoul plunging into a wilderness of mountains among men half or wholly wild, who were engaging with zest in the business of shooting at each other: his aptitudes lay in other directions.

“I must go,” said Guthrie, “I have been taking up your time, but I wished to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she said, and she put a cool hand in his. “But remember that I demand the tale of your adventures when you come back.”

“You shall have it,” said Guthrie as he went out.

The winter twilight fell early, and with it came the east-bound train which found Guthrie, wrapped in a big black overcoat, a small valise in his hand, waiting at the station. Mr. Pike, also valise in hand, was waiting there, too, sombre and quiet. Guthrie nodded to him, but did not speak, judging that the Senator wished to be alone with his sorrow and his plans for the future.

It was to be a hard night’s journey. Express trains as good as any in the world passed through the capital on their way to New York, but they did not stop at Sayville, and Guthrie and the Senator were forced to take what is known as a “local,” one that stopped at every station and made slow time. It would put them into Sayville early the next morning, but it had no sleeping-coaches, and Guthrie, with the skill of an old campaigner, made himself as comfortable as possible in one of the red plush seats with his valise for a pillow and his overcoat for a blanket. Mr Pike sat at the other end of the coach staring solemnly out at the hills that slid by.

They had less than a dozen persons for company, and none of them made any impression on Guthrie. He wished to go to sleep at once, but his eyes refused to close. He, too, began to stare out of the window like Mr. Pike, although he saw the hills that fled past, while Mr. Pike did not. The snow cased falling, the moon came out, silvery and clear, and it was a comfortable landscape, despite the wintry night, intersected with stone fences, dotted here and there with big, red brick houses, and bearing all the signs of opulence and an old civilisation. It was hard to realise that another hundred and fifty miles would take him into a region so wild that the old clan feuds of the Celt yet endured, and the law of the rifle was still the chief law of the land. But Guthrie knew well that he would wake up the next morning in a world wholly different from his, and, although he had seen it often, the contrast always struck him with great force.

Passengers got off at the little stations, and new ones got on, but the number aboard the train did not change materially, nor did their character or lack of it. There was not one among them whose features Guthrie could remember ten minutes later; all paled before the swart, set face of Mr. Pike still staring steadily out of the window at the hills flying past and never seeing them.

Guthrie was glad to notice that the snow had stopped; fifty miles east of the capital, none at all seemed to have fallen, and the red brick houses looked snug and warm in the moonlight. At last he began to feel sleepy; the dim train-lights flickered overhead, the figures of the passengers wavered, and only the stern face of Mr. Pike at the window remained fixed and vivid. Then he fell asleep, and was unconscious of everything till the conductor awoke him on a raw, cold morning, with a misty dawn creeping in at the car windows.

“Sayville!” cried the conductor. “All off for Sayville!”

Guthrie shivered, drew on his gloves, and pulled the high collar of his overcoat about his ears. Mr. Pike, valise in hand and watchful, was already at the door. Guthrie was sure that the Senator had not closed his eyes throughout the night, and, taking his own valise, he followed.

He stepped out on the little platform, and the train with a shriek and a whiz left him, sending back a farewell and derisive column of smoke. Guthrie looked about him. The expected change from the night before had come in all its completeness, and the contrast, as always, struck sharply upon his mind.

He was deep in the mountains, and they lay in a coil about him, ridge on ridge, until they died away in a faint blur on the horizon. The dwarfed forests that clothed them from base to summit were swept bare of leaves by the winter winds, and the naked branches hung mournfully. Sayville, a mean little village of squalid houses, sprawled in a cleft between the hills, and Guthrie, looking at it, wondered why anybody should ever want to live there. The sun was not yet risen, and the gray dawn, its vanguard, was still misty. The village was asleep, but, even in its rest, it conveyed to Guthrie no idea of comfort, like the snug towns of the lowlands that he had left behind.

Mr. Pike tapped him on the shoulder. A long, thin mountaineer of uncertain age, leading a spare horse, had met the Senator at the station.

“Mr. Guthrie,” said Mr. Pike, “I take horse now for Briarton, and I ride fast. It wouldn’t do at all for you to go with me from here, and I tell you that, if you go to that two-story house over there, you can get breakfast and a fire.”

Guthrie nodded cheerfully.

“I understand, Mr. Pike,” he said. “I don’t want to go with you now, but I’ll follow. I’ll be in Briarton not many hours behind you. Good-bye, Mr. Pike; I hope no harm will come to you.”

He held out his hand, and it was enclosed in a warm and hearty clasp. Then the Senator sprang into the saddle, and, with the messenger by his side, rode away on the slope of the mountain. Guthrie watched them until they were lost in the bleak forest, and then he went to the house that Mr. Pike had pointed out to him. He ate a poor breakfast in a cold room, and felt that he was beginning the day badly. The inside of the house was more cheerless than the outside; everything was slatternly, and the people were lank and pasty-faced. It gave Guthrie a sense of keen discomfort, and he began to appreciate all the risks and troubles of his venture.

He was more than an hour in securing a horse and a guide, the horse to be used all the way, while the guide was to stop at Lone Oak, another tiny village on the way, thirty miles deeper into the mountains; he would have to go the remaining twenty miles alone, and take his chances. He tied his little valise on the saddle behind him, and, with the twenty-year old boy, his guide, he set forth. The boy, as he soon disclosed of his own accord, bore the name of Ezra Perkins, and he was very curious about the world in which his own orbit was so limited.

“What be you goin’ to Briarton fur?” he asked with the frank curiosity of the mountains.

“Business,” replied Guthrie vaguely.

“What’s your line? Groceries? No! Wa’ll, I reckon then it’s shoes, but I ’low it’s a pow’ful bad time to be goin’ to Briarton. They’re all took up there with the feud that’s broke out fresh between the Pikes and the Dilgers. That was Senator Pike hisself that got off the train when you did—the tall man with the black hair—smartest man in the mountings they say—he’s mighty nigh the head of the hull kit an’ b’ilin’ of the Pikes, but the Dilgers hev laid his brother out cold for shore!”

The road began to ascend the slope of the mountains, and led away over the ridges.

The earth here was free from snow, and the cold crisp air sparkled with freshness. Guthrie’s spirits returned. This was a lonely world, but it was worth while to see it at times, in the brown grandeur of winter, ridge on ridge, and peak on peak. The sun shot up, and poured down a flood of gold on the wilderness, in which Guthrie with a sweep of miles now saw not a single house, not a singe cabin-smoke. But he enjoyed the absence of human beings after the fret and struggle of the capital, and, lifting up his voice, he sang, then listened to the echo in the hollows of the hills.

“I took over to Lone Oak oncet a drummer who sing like that,” said Ezra. “I thought somethin’ was wrong with him, and shore nuff there was. He’s in the ’sylum now—disapp’inted in love.”

Guthrie laughed. He knew how to take this, which was not meant as a satire, but merely as a plain statement of facts, irrespective of consequences or deductions.

“I’m not like the drummer,” he said, “I’m not disappointed in love.”

“You’re lucky,” said Ezra. “I am, an’ it’s a thing you don’t want to happen to you more’n oncet in a lifetime. It was Sukey Parker, t’other side of the mounting. We got religion at the same meetin’ an’ kep’ comp’ny a hull year. I thought it was all right, but she sacked me an’ took Bill Hubbard. I felt pow’ful bad over it fur a while. You see, I’m a-gittin’ old, an’ it’s time I wuz married an’ settled down.”

“How old are you?” asked Guthrie.

“Twenty-one, come next June,” replied Ezra sadly, “an’ I don’t want to be no old bachelor, with all of ’em hevin’ the laugh on me!”

Guthrie made no comment, knowing that, by mountain standards of development, Ezra should have been comfortably married a couple of years ago. Instead, he let the boy chatter on, but now he paid little attention, his mind becoming absorbed with the mountains about him over which he rode. Although it was a colder and higher region, there was no sign of snow here. The sunlight streamed over everything, gilding the bare rock and the brown bushes and filling the lungs with tonic.

Guthrie, looking upon the sea of crests and ridges, could understand how the main currents of civilisation had passed them by, one turning to the North and the other to the South, reuniting in a grand westward sweep after they had flanked the mountain chain.

Silence and desolation reigned everywhere. There was no sound save the faint murmur of the wind about the slopes and through the bare branches. They did not meet a human being, and they were two hours out of Sayville when Guthrie saw the smoke of the first cabin. It was a thin stream rising from a glen half a mile to the right, and he felt that it was a blur on the landscape. Ezra volunteered information as to who lived there, but the name made no impression on Guthrie. They were now in a narrow road leading along the side of a ridge, and Ezra rode before, the way not being wide enough for two.

They came presently to the crest of the ridge, and Guthrie saw far ahead a narrow valley.

“That,” said Ezra, pointing with a long forefinger, “is Lone Oak, but it’s a good fifteen miles from here. I reckon, stranger, that you’ll have to stay all night there.”

“I don’t think so,” said Guthrie. “I suppose I can get another guide in that town, and, if I don’t, I can push on alone.”

Ezra looked questioningly at Guthrie.

“’Pears to me,” he said, “that you’re pow’ful anxious to git to Briarton; never knowed a drummer to be in sich a hurry afore. An’ that ain’t sich a mighty big grip to tote samples in neither!”

He looked at the little valise that his employer carried on his saddle, and Guthrie knew that he was eaten up with curiosity concerning its contents, but he would not gratify it. He was willing to let Ezra, if he chose, suppose that it was filled with improved revolvers, for sale either to the Pikes or the Dilgers, whichever faction made the better bid.

The promise was still all of fair weather, and the horses, trained to the steep and narrow roads of the mountains, made good speed toward Lone Oak. Guthrie rejoiced in the glorious peace and sunshine, but he could not forget that to which he was riding. He had an inborn love of order, and he respected the law; he did not believe that there could be any complete civilisation without it; lynching shocked him as something debasing to those who took part in it, and the inevitable road to things yet worse; and much as he loved his State, he always felt a sense of shame when any fresh outbreaks in these mountains occurred; they were as much a part of the State as were the lowlands, and responsibility for them could not be escaped: here was a new cause for disgrace in this sudden outcropping of the war between the Pikes and the Dilgers.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, they reached the narrow valley in which stood the village of Lone Oak, a cluster of about fifteen houses, wrapped in mountain isolation. Ezra expressed his joy vocally. He did not care to go any farther into the mountains; the Pikes were nothing to him, nor were the Dilgers, but Briarton would belong for the time to the one family or the other, whichever was strong enough to hold it, and even a man attending strictly to his own business might get in the way of a stray bullet.

His words made no impression on Guthrie, who was reckoning the time of day, and how long it would take him to reach Briarton after a brief stop in Lone Oak, as he had set his heart upon arriving without delay at the seat of the trouble.

Lone Oak proved to be a lean and unpicturesque village, but Guthrie found in it enough overcooked food for a dinner, and was able to hire a horse for the second stage of the journey, though he could secure no guide. Senator Pike and his companion had passed on three hours before, riding hard, and there was sure to be trouble when they reached Briarton. Ezra strongly advised Guthrie to stay in Lone Oak until the next morning, as darkness was likely to catch him alone on the mountains, but Guthrie felt no apprehensions, since the trail from Lone Oak led straight out to Briarton and nowhere else.

Ezra bade him a friendly good-bye, and Guthrie rode on, not sorry to be alone, because there were times when his own company was good enough, and the majesty of the mountains appealed to him in solitude.

In the East, long shadows began to appear on the peaks and ridges, and the rocks burned in red gold. Guthrie stopped once, on a crest and looked at the half of the world that was beginning already to feel the touch of the coming twilight. In its loneliness and its solitary grandeur, it had so much solemn majesty that he wondered why the people who lived in such a world did not come under its spell. But his experience in the mountains told him that it made no appeal to them, put no ennobling thoughts in their minds. Hence Guthrie concluded that strength and loftiness of character were not developed by isolation and loneliness, but by the constant struggle with other men. As for himself, he wanted seclusion only at intervals, and the remainder of his time he wished to spend in a crowded and therefore more interesting and stimulating arena; he saw no merit in avoiding the battle of life.

The twilight deepened on the eastern peaks, but the west was yet filled with the fire of the sun; every rock and bush there stood out in sharp tracery against the blazing heavens. Guthrie saw now that he would not arrive in Briarton until long after dark, but he was yet without fear. His horse, bred in the mountains, was sure of foot, and he knew that he had only to give him rein in the darkness in order to be taken safely to his destination.

Some figures outlined in black against the red sunlight appeared on the slope of a mountain, separated from him only by a deep ravine. They were men with guns on their shoulders, and Guthrie saw that they were typical mountaineers, tall, lean, high of cheek-bone and wary of eye. They were watching him, and, waving his hand to them in friendly fashion, he rode calmly on.

“I wonder which they are,” he thought; “the Pikes or the Dilgers?” and he found himself leaning in more friendly fashion toward the Pikes. “This won’t do,” he said; “I must take no part in it, even if Senator Pike is my friend.”

The mountaineers looked at him for a minute, and then, apparently satisfied that he was a harmless stranger, disappeared in the undergrowth. How like, it all was, to the primeval wilderness, thought Guthrie. It was the primeval wilderness—unchanged in four generations, only the red man was gone, and a white man, almost as wild had taken his place! When the mountaineers disappeared, the world blazed again, red and solitary in the light of the setting sun. Once his horse neighed, and the echo ran trembling among the peaks.

The sun fell behind the wall of the mountains, and the night came with a fine shadowy quality, in which the peaks and the ridges rose more grandly than ever and took Protean shapes. The trail was narrow, but it lay clear before him, and Guthrie rode placidly on.

Late in the night, his horse raised his head and neighed again, and Guthrie looked down into a little valley where he saw dark blurs that he knew to be houses. “Briarton!” he exclaimed in pleasure, because he was growing tired and sleepy, and he had been alone long enough. The thought of food, fire, and a bed appealed to him.

He halted his horse for a few moments, and looked down on the hamlet. Peaceful enough, it seemed now, snuggling between the cliffs, with the moonlight throwing stray beams on the log walls. Then he rode on down the hillside, and a man rising up out of the darkness bore on his bridle rein with a heavy hand.

“Be you a-takin’ any part in this, stranger?” asked the phantom figure.

Guthrie knew well what he meant and he replied promptly:

“Pike or Dilger, it’s nothing to me!”

“Then what do you want?”

“Food for an empty stomach and a bed for a tired back.”

“Ride on, stranger, you’ll find both below.” Guthrie resumed his journey. The questions, as he knew, were purely formal—the mountaineer would naturally infer from his dress and manners that he did not belong in the country, and could have no part in the quarrel.

Briarton in the wan moonlight was a beautiful place, its log-houses frosted with silver, the little creek that dashed down from the mountains foaming over the stones, and all the squalor hidden by this kindly veil of the dark.

He beat on the door of the largest log-house in the place, and a woman came at last to his knock. Yes, they took travellers, she said, and she gave his horse to a sleepy boy whom she had roused. Then she raked together the smouldering coals on the hearth, and put on more wood. Evidently, like Ezra, she took Guthrie for a “drummer,” although she looked doubtfully at the small size of his valise. Guthrie wondered what “drummers” ever came to this remote mountain hamlet, and what they came for.

He obtained food, poor in itself and badly cooked, but hunger was an ample sauce. As he ate, he managed to draw deftly from his hostess that nothing had happened in Briarton save the arrival of Mr. Pike, which occurred about sundown, and was a great event in the village. Guthrie inferred readily from this that the hamlet was in the hands of the Pikes, and he could not help being glad, because he leaned to the Senator’s side despite his resolution.

After his supper, he warmed himself, and went to bed in the single spare room of the house. It was a rude little apartment with a worn rag carpet on the floor, and old pictures from illustrated papers on the roughly plastered walls; but the bed looked soft and warm, and Guthrie was content. Before drawing down the covers, he looked out at the little window, and he realised again that two hundred miles and thirty hours had put him in another world. On the other side of the valley rose the bald side of the mountain, gloomy and grand, and nearer by flowed the creek, its waters hurrying noisily over the stones. To right and left were the scattered log houses, all dark and silent. Everything was primitive and wild.

Far off on the mountain, he suddenly saw a single light that blazed and went out. Another appeared lower down the slope, but it, too, blazed and went out, and after that the moonlight was unbroken. Some kind of a signal, concluded Guthrie, but he felt only a vague and fleeting interest which did not keep him from going to bed in another minute and sleeping soundly through the remainder of the night.

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