Chapter VI: The Ultimate Cause

It is easy to find a probable cause for any given act, but when one seeks the Ultimate Cause--the reason behind it all--that calls for deep thinking, and finesse. Human conduct is not so variable in many of its phases as to call for extended scrutiny, but the problem before Meshackatee was both so baffling and so disquieting that it left his brains in a whirl. That a girl as modest as Allifair Randolph, a woman who for months had received the attentions of scores of cowboys without one answering smile, should suddenly and for no reason throw aside all decorum and rush into the arms of a stranger--that was beyond the bounds of reason. It was so unreasonable it was foolish, and the great Cause must be sought for somewhere else. Then, surely, they had met before. Yes, met and learned to love and this was the reunion of two souls that had drifted far apart Allifair was that "certain party" for whom Hall had been seeking, and he had found her in the kitchen of the Scarboroughs.

Yet this comforting conclusion, plain and obvious as it was, merely opened up new fields of thought. Who was Allifair Randolph and who was this man Hall, and why did they make concealment of their love; and what would he do now, since he had discovered his beloved in the house of the man he despised? Would he cast aside his scruples against feuds and cattle wars and join the gang to be near her, or would he go his way and devise other means of winning the woman of his heart? Meshackatee thought it over and then his scheming mind began to turn the facts to his own purpose; and when the morning came he beckoned to his prisoner and led him across the creek to the mound. Here, beneath a gnarled oak which had grown up near the summit, drawing its strength from the dust of ancient dead, Meshackatee took out his field glasses and gazed long to the east before he broached the matter on his mind.

To the east lay Turkey Creek and the log fort of the Bassetts--and Grimes and his Mexicans as well--and it was to them fully as much as to the winning over of this stranger that his thoughts were turned that day. He had a dual mind, one part taking cognizance of the facts and the other busily using them to work his will; and when he spoke it was all to fit his program, though disguised in the mock-solemnity of a jest.

"Mr. Hall," he began, "I make it a principle never to interfere in the private affairs of any gentleman; but I saw something last night which pained me very much and I jest want to ask a few questions. Now in the first place, Mr. Hall, I want you to understand that Miss Allifair holds a high place in my regard; and I jest want to ask--as a friend, you understand--if your intentions are perfectly honorable?"

"My intentions!" faltered Hall, and then he went white and turned his face away. "Don't tell anybody!" he pleaded, clutching Meshackatee by the leg, "it would ruin our happiness forever. Oh, I was mad--insane--I should never have done it! But Meshackatee--she had thought I was dead!"

"Oh, dead, eh?" rumbled Meshackatee, squinting his calculating eyes and regarding him from beneath his long hair, "well, that makes a difference, of course. She'd heard about that shooting, and the bullet-hole under your heart and----"

"That's it--they told her I was dead!"

"'They'?"

"Yes. Her folks, and Mrs. Scarborough. She was a Randolph, you know, before her marriage; and she told Allifair I was dead."

"I--see!" observed Meshackatee, nodding his head and spitting wisely, "and was you young folks engaged to git married?"

"That was it--that's what caused it. We were engaged to be married, but we belonged to opposing clans. She was a Randolph, you see, and I'm a McIvor----"

"Ah!" exclaimed Meshackatee, "I'm beginning to savvy. The Randolph-McIvor feud--back in Kaintuck!"

"Yes, that's it," went on McIvor feverishly, "but let me explain it to you. Our families have been at war for over twenty years, and each year the feud becomes worse. It's cost the Randolph faction over four hundred dead and the McIvors over three hundred that we know of. Men are found dead in the woods, just as I was left for dead, and others are never found. All our relatives are engaged in it, and hundreds of outsiders who hardly know what they're fighting for. All they think of is free whiskey and midnight raids and a chance to get revenge on some enemy; and so it goes until the mountains are a battle-ground and men have turned to brutes. And there's no power that can stop it, neither the courts nor the militia, because we live far back in the hills; but if I could marry Allifair, then the blood-feud would be ended and the Randolphs and McIvors would be friends."

"I understand," murmured Meshackatee, and sat smiling benevolently as the young man gazed off into space.

"We met by accident," he went on at last, "while I was scouting in their country. But she spared my life, she did not report me, and the next time we met we were friends. She's such a gentle creature--and I had turned rough, from living out and fighting for years--but somehow she learned to love me and the dream came to both of us to marry and end the feud. I was building a cabin, far up in the hills where no one would ever find us, when a dirty little spy discovered our meeting place and the Randolphs became aware of our plans. They watched us--and the next time I went to our tree there was no one there, she was gone. They reported her dead--shot down by the McIvors, for our womenfolks make war among themselves--but I asked all our women and none of them had done it, though many of them would gladly have done so.

"Can you imagine such conditions--gentle women, well-educated, going out like wild animals to strike down a woman like Allifair? I must have gone mad, for I went back to our meeting place, and there this dirty spy shot me. He shot me clean through the heart, or so it appeared, but the bullet went low and after they had left me I came to life and crept to a cave. There I lived on pure water for eleven days and as my body became purified I had visions and dreams, such as no man ever had before. And when I was well I crept up by night and listened at a camp of the Randolphs. That was where I heard that Allifair still lived and had been sent out to her aunt in Arizona.

"But what her aunt's name was, or where her husband lived, was something I never could learn; so I left and came out here, determined to find her if it took the rest of my life."

"Well, you've found her," observed Meshackatee, apparently unruffled by the harrowing tale of his friend, "so what's the next thing now?"

"They'll kill her!" he groaned, "they'll actually kill her before they'll consent to her marrying a McIvor. So if you want to kill me too and ruin both our lives, just tell who I am to the Scarboroughs."

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" replied Meshackatee reassuringly, "that won't be necessary at all. Of course I'm working for Isham, and when I take a man's money, I aim to give him my best; but it won't be necessary--that is, always provided you're willing to help _me_ out?"

"I'll do anything!" promised McIvor, "if you'll just keep our secret and help me to meet her again. Oh, since I have seen her and learned she still loves me I feel I could do anything--anything!"

"Hm, a meeting ain't so easy," said Meshackatee after a silence. "Miz Zoolah sure keeps a close watch. But you leave it to me, boy, and meanwhile stay away from her--I ain't the only man that has eyes. Them Texas toughs are jealous--they see you go in there yesterday--so keep plumb out of that kitchen. And the look in that gal's eyes when she see you at the well gave the whole business away, to _me_. You're kind of daffy now, don't notice where you're going or answer when other people speak to you, so the best thing for you is to go away a few days and let this excitement die down. Now I've got a little job, if you think you can do it----"

"Oh, I can't leave her, now!" protested McIvor broken-heartedly, but Meshackatee tapped him sharply on the knee.

"You're going to leave, see? Right now and no danged fooling. You're going over to hunt up them sheep."

"The sheep?" repeated McIvor, and Meshackatee smiled grimly as he took him gently by the arm.

"Take my advice," he warned, "and git away from Zoolah--she came almighty close to recognizing you. Now about this sheepman, Grimes, he knows these boys by sight and they can't any of 'em git near him; but that saddle of yours will tell any one you're no Texan and I believe you can ride plumb up to him. You're a stranger, see, and you can cuss out the Scarboroughs and tell him all the things they done to you; and after you've got next to him and found out all his plans--_you come back here and tell me_. Do that, and you'll git to see Allifair."

"Well, it's treacherous," observed McIvor at last, "but I've been that, and worse, before now. And if this man is coming in to stir up a war perhaps I can turn him back."

"This is what will turn him back," returned Meshackatee, patting his pistol, "and, believe me, nothing else. That _hombre_ is a fighter, he comes on a-charging, and nothing but a bullet will stop him. But leave that to me and this bunch of inbred Texans--and by the way, that's Isham coming."

He pointed to the canyon down which they had come and two horsemen, riding fast, flashed around a point and came galloping across the plain.

"You'd better wait," suggested Meshackatee, "you're supposed to be a prisoner, and maybe he'll have other plans."

"I'm not working for _him_!" declared McIvor, obstinately, "I'm doing this work for you."

"Fair enough," agreed Meshackatee, "but I'm working for him. So try to stand in on the play. Come on, we'll go down to the house."

They arrived just as Elmo, the youngest of the Scarboroughs, stepped out from where he had been sulking. He was short and sandy, with a slouchy wool hat and two guns hung low on his hips. Each was tied at the bottom with a buckskin string which held the muzzles close to his legs, so that the carved ivory handles stuck out at such an angle that they practically touched his hands. Both holsters were cut away until they barely held their pistols, and the whole was arranged so that he could draw and shoot in the shortest possible time. But the boy himself--for he was hardly a man--had on his face such a look of both weakness and reckless deviltry that McIvor looked him over again. He was sullen now, after his defeat by the sheepmen and the tongue-lashing that Zoolah had given him, but he stepped out to meet his brothers with such a purposeful swagger that Mrs. Scarborough allowed him to pass.

"Well, they've come, boys," he announced, "Dave Grimes and twenty Mexicans, and nigh onto ten thousand sheep. They got in behind us--come across the Reservation--and now they're headed for the Basin!"

"Let 'em come!" challenged Isham, dropping down off his horse, "that suits me to a hickey--let 'em come! But the first damned Mexican that puts a sheep across Turkey Crick is going to git killed, that's all! That's my dead-line--Turkey Crick--and the minute they step across it the fireworks is going to begin!"

"We thought we'd better wait," explained Elmo hastily, "until you and Red got home----"

"That's right, kid," praised Isham, "you've got the right idee--leave it to me, and they won't nobody git hurt. But if you go riding in on 'em when they're down on their knees and shooting----"

Elmo glanced at Miz Zoolah and spit a thin jet of tobacco-juice, while the Texas gunmen smirked. But Zoolah was not the woman to let this pass unchallenged and she stepped out and confronted her husband.

"Do you happen to know," she demanded contentiously, "that Elmo and these cowboys ran away? Well, they did--ran away from those Mexicans like cowards--and now look at the way they act!"

The cowboys winced but Isham was excited and he paid scant attention to his helpmeet.

"Now come on, boys," he ordered, "ketch up your horses and git ready and we'll go out and meet the danged Mexicans. But no shooting, savvy, until I give the word; unless they shoot at us first."

He paced up and down while they ran to saddle their horses and Miz Zoolah assailed his ears with complaints; but he only glanced at her absently, slapping his boot with his quirt and staring off towards the Bassetts.

"Where are them Sorry Blacks at?" he demanded of Meshackatee. "Have you seen 'em around this morning? The dirty, half-Injun bastards, they may be laying in wait for us--better send somebody over to the store."

"I'll go!" volunteered Elmo, making a run to mount his horse, but Isham motioned him back.

"You look out, kid," he warned, "them Injuns are treacherous. They're liable to shoot you from the bresh."

He turned to Meshackatee and as they consulted together Hall felt Isham's eyes fixed upon him. Beneath their bleached, white lashes they regarded him coldly, as if appraising his worth as a spy; and at last, as Meshackatee drove his point home and nailed it, the chief of the Scarboroughs beckoned. But McIvor stood firm, his mouth grimly set, his eyes far away on the hills, and Meshackatee understood.

"I'll tell him," he said, and half an hour later McIvor rode forth over towards the store.