Chapter XIV: A Mcivor

There is a look in the eyes of eagles which sometimes is found in men--a bold, resolute look, changing swiftly to defiance and a hatred that nothing can quench. It is the sign of the fighting man--not the sly, vicious killer, but the man who will fight till he dies. Hall McIvor wore it blazing when he reached for his rifle and strode over to join the Bassetts.

"Played 'possum, eh?" muttered Winchester, who had lost his old smile.

"Well, I wish we could bring in Sharps."

"No use," answered Hall, "they're just waiting to get you. Shall I kill the rest of those hogs."

"Yes, kill the last one of them!" burst out Winchester in a frenzy. "My God, them Scarboroughs ain't human!"

"No, they're not," replied Hall, and glanced up at the hill before he crossed the room to attend to the hogs. He surveyed them with loathing, with a shudder of horror at the fate he had so narrowly missed; and then, very carefully, he shot them one by one as they gathered about the body of Sharps. They followed their own nature, even as the men upon the hill, and so he shot them down; and so he would shoot--and without any more remorse--the men who had ambushed Sharps. Their bullets had gone wild or they would have shot him too and left him a carcass for the hogs; and, but for the devotion of the woman that he loved, he would be at their mercy still.

At the first volley of shots he had known that he was caught, and that to run was to invite certain death; and so he had dropped down, rolling swiftly out of sight while the smoke was still in their eyes. It was a trick that he had learned from the same careful father who had reared him with but one object in life--to make him a killer of men, a terror to the Randolph clan. He it was who had taught him to shoot left-handed with the rifle, since then he would present his right side to the enemy and avoid a fatal bullet through the heart. But in the battle a bullet had found his guarded heart, he had been left on the field for dead; and now, a second time, he had been spared from death in order to live for revenge.

They still thought he was dead, those whooping cravens on the hillside who had seen him dragged into the house; but if there was a God above to look down and judge men's hearts he swore to make them pay. Not while he could lift a hand should they shoot down white-haired men and make sport of weeping women; they had invited the wrath of Almighty God and he would be His sure sword. His hand, which they thought dead, should rise and smite them; he would kill them one by one----He paused, for Allifair had laid her hand on his and was gazing deep down into his eyes.

"Remember," she said, "you are mine now--I saved you. And we must leave this horrible place."

He frowned and drew back, a stern refusal on his lips as he remembered the pitiless code of the feudist--but at the look in her eyes he bowed his head and gave her his hand in assent.

"It is the only way," she whispered, "if we are ever to end the feud before all our kinfolks are dead. Let these men fight it out--but if you join in with them now, I know you, you will never draw out. Let Winchester and Bill take their revenge on the Scarboroughs, and we will go back home. They cannot kill us then, because I shall be a McIvor and you will have married a Randolph."

"Yes, dear," he nodded, but he would not say more and she left him to watch over the dead.

The long day dragged on with men shouting from the hilltops, and then the smash and thud of the big, explosive bullets announced the beginning of a new attack. In some way the Scarboroughs had procured bullets which blew up the instant they struck against the house, and at each volley of shots the mortised logs crashed and jumped, while the chinks gave off a thin smoke. But after the first volleys the shooting died away and again a voice shouted from the hill. Hall muttered--it was the voice of Isham.

"Hey! Send out that woman!" he called down loudly. "Last chance--we're going to do a clean job!"

"Yes you are!" yelled back Bill, but Winchester was silent and it remained for Hall to speak.

"You'd better go, Allifair," he said. "I'll try to join you later." And then he whispered a few last words into her ear.

"Dare to trust 'em?" questioned Winchester as Hall opened the door, and when Hall nodded he assented. "Well, good-by, then," he said, giving his hand to Allifair, "I'll see that Mr. Hall gets away."

"Oh, will you?" she cried, and glanced guiltily at her lover; then gave the haggard Winchester both her hands. But there was something more behind, and as she gazed at him inquiringly he reached down and picked up a blanket. "For him," he said, and, glancing out at Sharps, he turned and strode abruptly away. Then she knew and the tears started suddenly to her eyes as she stepped bravely out into the open.

"Go back to the Rock House!" directed Isham from his hiding-place, but she went past the body of Sharps. Hall watched her as she bent down and covered it up without even a glance at the hill; and as she went across the plain he followed her through his glasses, though the bullets were smashing against the house. As each ball struck it seemed to rend the timbers, spitting lead viciously in through the chinks; and once more old Susie raised her voice in a wail, for she knew that the end was near. While the sun was in the sky Winchester could keep them at bay; but when the shadows fell and blurred his sights, then the Scarboroughs would come down from their hill. They would creep up to the house and throw fire on the roof and shoot them all down as they ran; and the body of her husband would be burned where it lay--the Scarboroughs would destroy them all. But Winchester had taken the shovel from the fireplace and started a hole under the wall, and as evening came on he buckled on his two six-shooters and stepped to the mouth of his tunnel.

"Well, boys," he said, "we've got to skip out or they'll burn the old woman's house. I'm heading south, myself, as soon as it gets dark; and Bill, you'd better head north. Don't no one come near me, because I'm going to run hog-wild and shoot at every bush I see move. You stay right here, Hall, until the fireworks begin and then give the lady my regards. If I git out of this alive I'll take care of them Scarboroughs without any assistance from _you_."

He shook hands with them gravely and dropped down into the hole; they heard him digging, and then he was gone. Bill wriggled out after him, bellying off through the weeds, and Hall watched from the bottom of the hole.

Already the evening star was glowing in the west and the dusk gathered deeper among the trees; every shadow veiled some movement, the very earth seemed to whisper and the wind rustled by like a snake. He started and crouched back as he heard a shot up the creek, then three more and a racing through the brush; but still he held back until, down towards the south, the night suddenly burst into flame. There were shouts and loud challenges, a running fusillade that led away rapidly around the hill; and then, like a shadow, he glided out of his hiding-place and disappeared in the river-bottom below. A half hour later, riding a Scarborough horse which he had stolen from its picket on the plain, he circled around and edged in on the Rock House, where the dogs were baying like mad.

Along the hillside to the east the fight was still raging, breaking out after a short silence in a sudden rattle of pistol shots, punctuated by the bang of heavy rifles. Winchester had carried the war into the Scarborough camp, and, knowing every man for his enemy, he had set them all to shooting by the swiftness with which he moved. When they were not firing at him they were firing at each other; and from the Indian mound, where he had agreed to meet Allifair, Hall could see that they were scattered everywhere. Fights were springing up like wild-fire, only to die down suddenly after a veritable blaze of shooting; and in his man-hunter's mind he saw the wisdom of Winchester's move in going among them alone. But he had come to find Allifair and hurry her away before the Scarboroughs returned from their siege; and, standing beneath the oak tree, where she could just see him against the sky, he looked across the creek at the house.

It was dark, except for a dim light in the kitchen, and against the square doorway he could see women's forms as they hastened to and fro. And a woman's voice, loud, scolding and insistent, made known the presence of the vixenish Zoolah. At long intervals, as he listened, he could hear the voice of Allifair as she attempted some faint defense; and then Miz Zoolah would burst out afresh as she hurried out to listen to the shooting.

"I hope he kills them all!" she railed from the doorway. "Yes, and leaves them lay for the hogs!" She dodged into the house to renew her loud scolding and Hall settled down to wait. From the loop-hole in her kitchen Allifair could look out and see him, dimly outlined beneath the branches of the tree; but she could not come out until the battle was ended and Miz Zoolah had retired to her rest. From the bunk-house beyond and around the lighted kitchen, the watchdogs still bayed at the east; but no messenger came to bring news of the fighting and Mrs. Scarborough lingered on and on. At last the shooting stopped and the hounds challenged a galloping rider, who stayed to eat and then spurred away; and as midnight approached the house quieted down and a form came silently up the path.

It was Allifair, her few clothes tied up in a bundle, turning nervously to look back at the house; and as Hall rose to meet her she ran to his arms and burst into long-repressed tears.

"Oh, that woman!" she sobbed, "if she wasn't my own aunt----" And then she fell to weeping. "But anyway," she went on, "Bill and Winchester got away, and two or three men got shot. They're looking for them everywhere, and I suppose the trails will be watched--do you think we can get past their guards?"

"We can try," answered Hall, "that is, if you wish. But perhaps it would be better if I came back for you later, when the excitement has kind of died down. You could hardly stand the journey now; this day has been too much."

"Yes, it has," she acknowledged, sinking down on the ground and pillowing her head against his breast, "and yet--we are always putting it off. Back home we could have married, but you had to build our cabin first; and now--well, where could we go?"

"I don't know," answered Hall, "because I'm a stranger in this country--I only know one trail out. And that trail will be guarded; so perhaps, after all----"

"But you'll come back soon, won't you?" she murmured wearily. "I'm afraid I can't go now. The strain was too much for me, when I thought you were dead--something seemed to snap in my brain. But now listen, dear, please don't join in this fighting. Will you always remember me first? And think of our kinsfolk back there in Kentucky--and of all our happiness, too. Think how happy we could be if we were married at last and back in our own mountains again; and the Randolphs and McIvors, after all these years----"

She stopped and sat bolt upright, a nervous tremor running through her, for Mrs. Scarborough had risen up before them. She held a pistol in one hand and behind her followed a dog which bristled at McIvor and growled.

"Put up those hands!" she commanded, pointing her pistol at him threateningly. "And so you're Hall McIvor! Well, let me tell you, Mr. McIvor, your father killed my brother and he killed my sister's son, too. You're nothing but a murderer and if you make the least move I'm going to shoot you dead. And before I'll let Allifair marry a son of Bland McIvor I'll shoot her down in her tracks!"

She towered above them, like a witch in the starlight, and as Allifair broke down and gave way to tears, Hall lifted her gently up.

"You don't need that pistol," he said to Miz Zoolah, "because no man that claims to be a gentleman ever raised his hand against a woman. I never have, and I never will."

"Yes, there you go again," she burst out vindictively, "I ought to have known it was you. Was there ever a McIvor that didn't have the same twaddle about his 'honor,' and being a gentleman? Well, what kind of honor is it when a grown man like your father shoots down my sister's boy? He was just a child, hardly fourteen years old----"

"Yes, but he shot at my father twice. And a boy, Mrs. Scarborough, can pull just as hard on a trigger as a man that's forty years old."

"Well, if that isn't a McIvor!" she burst out, laughing spitefully, "but I'll fix you, here and now. You put that fool down and march back to the house--I'll turn you over to Isham."

"You know he'll kill me," replied Hall, suddenly stepping away from Allifair, and Zoolah raised her voice.

"Yes, and _I'll_ kill you!" she yelled, "you miserable murderer! Go on, now--step off down that path!"

He hesitated, for his hot Southern blood was up, and Allifair sprang at her aunt.

"Run!" she cried, striking the gun aside, and Hall made a jump into the darkness. The dog, which had been watching him, rushed in and grabbed his leg; but McIvor turned and kicked him off and as Miz Zoolah began to shoot he plunged down the hill and was gone.