Hunnewell told you? He wrote me a very hysterical letter afterward. I'd like to wring the man's skinny neck. There is one mistake I made. I meant Hunnewell as a water carrier, nothing else. The big moments are not for him. When he faced one he fell to pieces. That was just one mistake, and not the greatest. You were very clever, Miss Thatcher. You took me in completely."
"I asked nothing of you," replied Gay. "I wanted you to tell me nothing. I came here only to see and hear what Roaring Horse did. There never was a time when I asked you a question or expected you to tell me anything. Remember that."
"Nevertheless," said Wooifridge, "it was shrewd of the governor. Ah well. He is a canny man. And he has watched me closely. I knew it all the time. But my greatest mistake was in allowing Bangor into my plans. I served him well once and expected a return favor. But he was afraid of me. The higher men go in this world the more cold blooded they become. The more treacherous. I should have held the whip over his head. Whatever I wanted done through his office I ought to have done personally. There is the secret. Do things yourself. But the book is closed. I have no regrets."
"You don't mean that," replied the girl. "You can't mean it. All this will come back to haunt you. You have taken the last penny of many families. What of that?"
"Well, and what of it?" Woolfridge shook his head. "The weak perish, the fit survive. Rightly so. Those people are only pawns, sports of fate. It is in the infinite plan of things that they go down. Why be sorry about it? I do not even let myself be sorry for my failure. That intrigues you, I suppose? All that I have has been given to me. I inherited. What can a man do to satisfy the brute instincts in a case like that? Most men would accept their fortune quietly. Not I."
The last sentence rang through the room. He squared his shoulders, looking over her head as if pronouncing the pervading gospel of his existence. "I broke away. I had the courage to smash the picayune barriers. I had a dream. Of an empire in my own making. It would have been an honest one but for the turn of events. Did I halt when I knew it could not be done honestly? Most men would have halted. I did not. I built another dream and went on. And that is going to pot this night. What of it? I have made my mark on this country. I have been a pirate for a little while. To-night, a hundred men fight for me and against me. What is morally wrong about that? In another age it would have been legal, customary. I broke through, I smashed things. And I glory in it. Now I give it up. But there is always another dream to fashion, my dear girl, another empire over the hill!"
"What are you thinking about?" she whispered, appalled by the primitive emotions boiling behind his civilized trappings.
He smiled. "That is the beginning of another dream. We will go as far as we can."
"You'll be trapped before the hour is over," said she, and slowly edged toward the desk. Watching him, she wondered if he could regard the crash of his plans so lightly, or if he took his responsibilities in so indifferent a manner. He couldn't believe, surely, that he would be able to carry on. Or that life for him would be the same. Yet all of these things he appeared to believe. He was talking, talking. Poorly masking the burning fury inside of him—the checked ambition, the shattered pride. And now that he stopped speaking he betrayed himself completely. His arms were locked in front of him; his whole body had turned to steel—somber and overmastered by a savagery of desire. She saw the blood flecking his eyes, and the color go out of his freckled face. And his next words fairly exploded in the room. "I am taking you with me!"
She swung on her heels and sprang for the desk. One hand ripped open the drawer and touched the little pearl-handled gun lying there. The next moment Woolfridge pushed her away, swept her against the wall. She tried to scream and saw his hand flashing flat against her face. Quite blindly she fought back, tearing at his coat, beating at the white blur in front of her. She had no clear vision of him; somehow, his blow had clouded her eyes and made her dizzy. But she heard his breath rising and falling, and she heard him saying shameful things that made her tremble and resist the harder. A flash of pain ran the whole length of her body; all power went out of her. And then she fell to the floor unconscious.
Woolfridge stared down at her crumpled body a moment and raced to the door. There was nobody in the hall. Coming back he bent and lifted her in his arms. "She had that coming," he muttered, trying to check his breathing. "I will gentle her or I will kill her! Now—"
He carried her down the hall to the back stairway. At the bottom he stopped to listen, ear against the panel of the door leading to the kitchen. Apparently the place was empty. Pushing the door quietly in front of him, he found the place half dark and without occupants. So he carried her through, kicked open still another door leading off from the kitchen into what once had been a storeroom, and was now nothing but a barren, half- forgotten cubicle spread with cobwebs. He laid her on the floor and backed out, turning a crooked key in a rusted lock. Then he paused, with always the rising and falling echo of the mob pressing against his ears. His breathing turned normal and there, with half the men of the county lusting for his blood and all fortune swinging against him, he reverted to the habits of his softer side and methodically brushed the dust of the storeroom off his sleeves.
"She'll be unconscious for a few minutes," he reflected. "That's time enough. Now—"
He left the kitchen by the dining door and entered the lobby, at once confronting the sheriff and Theodorik Perrine. The rest of his followers were huddled by the entrance, staring upon the street.
"About time yuh showed up," growled Perrine. "No time to pick posies with all this brimstone and sulphur yonder."
Woolfridge reached for a cigar, eyes roving over the tremendous spread of Perrine's shoulders. There was something so insolently superior, so critically aloof that the latter's smashed lips began to work wrathfully. "Afraid?" murmured Woolfridge. "I have always prided myself on picking the right men for right places. Perhaps I have been mistaken in you. I never thought you'd let this rabble get under your skin—"
"Afraid?" boomed Perrine, the mighty echo rocketing along the lobby. He lifted his great arms above him, chest muscles crowding against the shirt. "I ain't afraid of any man that ever walked, ever drew breath! Bring that pack in here, and I'll wrap my arms around this shebang and bring it down on their heads! Afraid—hell! But I'm tellin' you, Woolfridge, that the lid's goin' to blow off this town in less time than it takes to swing a cat by the tail. If yuh got anythin' to say or anythin' to do, better get started on it now."
Woolfridge rolled the cigar between his fingers until the sheriff, almost in agony from the suspense, cried out: "My God, Mr. Woolfridge, ain't you got no order to give? Ain't you got no way of settlin' this?"
Woolfridge returned the cigar to his pocket. "Crumbling—caving in—turning yellow. The whole pack of you. When a man wishes anything done in this world he alone ought to do it. How many can you get to barricade this hotel, Perrine?"
"About ten boys," grunted the big man. "But if that's all yuh got to offer I don't think much o' the idee. Yuh either got to charge that bunch and scatter 'em with lead or else yuh got to spread the soft soap and do it sudden. Once they get the bit in their jaws yore sunk."
"Let me do the arranging for my own funeral," was Woolfridge's cold retort.
Perrine, even at that moment, was under the sway of this man. There was just one thing the hulking renegade admired, just one thing he bowed to—a courage equal or superior to his own. He clucked his tonque. "Yore a cool cucumber. Well, spit it out."
"Slip out and bring a pair of horses to the back door to the kitchen door," said Woolfridge. "Hurry it."
Perrine's jaws worked slowly. His face wreathed up in puzzlement. "Then what?"
"Then," went on Woolfridge, holding the big man's eyes, "get your men all in here, turn out the lights, and let them have it. Let—them—have—it!"
"What's the horses for?" pressed the renegade.
"I ask questions, not answer them," snapped Woolfridge. "Didn't I tell you I'd arrange my own funeral? Go on—get about it."
Perrine never said a word for a full minute; it took that length of time for his slow brain to catch Woolfridge's real purpose. But when the realization came to him that