Chapter XXV: A Trip to the Mountains

Next morning at breakfast Doctor Somers set forth his plan. For once all the people of Fort House sat down together; even Aunt Mary appeared in time to be wheeled to her place before we were seated.

“I will go up into the mountains,” he announced. “I’ll start this evening, spend the night in Asheville, and go on to-morrow. How far is it, Anne?”

“All of twenty miles, the way one has to go, and no roads worth speaking of. You can’t drive a car.” The girl was very pale; there were bluish shadows beneath her eyes. She spoke reluctantly and seemed determined to make the way as difficult as might be. “And you’d never find the place without a guide.”

“Humph! If I can’t drive a car, I can ride a horse. They taught us equitation in the army--what, Peter, old son? Also, I can walk; my legs are long enough. And, if you’ll draw a map, I’ll engage to find the Devil’s Branch. I’m not easy to lose, even in the mountains.”

Miss Christie still objected, and Dorothy seconded her. “It won’t do any good,” she declared. “You’ll get lost, or killed, and Lewis needs you here. Why not just go to the sheriff or the district attorney and swear out a warrant, and let the police arrest him? That’s their business.”

Somers shrugged. “Swear out a warrant? On what grounds? He was in town--Rutledge, I mean--and he had threatened to shoot Doctor Gaskell several years ago. That’s all we could prove. Satterfield won’t testify; he wouldn’t even admit to me that Rutledge was the man whom he saw. And, if we could get a warrant on that, your name would have to be signed to it, as complaining witness, and Rutledge would know where you are, Anne. And, if the sheriff’s afraid of him, as you say, Rutledge wouldn’t be caught anyhow. He’d be warned, have a chance to hide out, and maybe to slip down here and make trouble for you. I wish old man Redden were the sheriff of Whitfield County up there! I’ll bet he wouldn’t be afraid of Roaring Lafe!”

He paused, looking about the table, with half-whimsical seriousness. “And, furthermore, my children, have you considered that I shan’t be perfectly safe here in Pinelands from now on? No, nor you two, either.” He jabbed at Peter and me successively with a long, bony finger. “When Satterfield reports to his mysterious chief and tells him that the three of us know all about this whisky-running game of theirs, it’s quite on the cards that Mr. Roaring Lafe may decide we could all be spared, just like Gaskell. Suppose we just stayed here and did nothing, and a couple of sturdy bootleggers ambushed Fort House and shot us up?”

Here Aunt Mary interposed. She had been waiting, open-mouthed, for a chance to interrupt.

“I won’t have it!” she declared shrilly. “I can’t stand it! My rest is broken enough now; those miserable birds are driving me frantic; I haven’t a bit of rest, and nobody cares if I die of exhaustion. But this is too much. You’ll have to go, all three of you! You’ll have to leave Fort House at once. No, Dorothy, I insist. I will be heard for once. I’ve submitted to being ignored and put aside and slighted long enough. Nobody considers me any more; nobody seems to care whether I live or die. As if Lewis Parker, a big, healthy young man, weren’t lots more comfortable in jail than I am here, lying on my bed of pain! It’s absurd--it’s monstrous! But I will assert myself for once: Either you men leave this house, all three of you--Peter’s no more help or comfort to me than you others--either you leave Fort House, or I will!”

We stared uncomfortably, the others, no doubt, as much amazed as I was by the old lady’s colossal, callous selfishness. For she had not a cent of her own, and she was a pensioner upon the bounty of her nephew and niece.

“You can stay,” she went on, “but if you do, I go to a hotel this very morning. I won’t have my life endangered; I won’t have my rest broken any longer! Why, this whole affair of the murder has annoyed me beyond endurance.” One would have thought that we had planned Doctor Gaskell’s death, with malice aforethought. “But I’ve stood all I can. Dorothy, phone to the Pinelands House at once and engage two rooms and bath for me. And you’d better pay them a week in advance, too.”

“Humph,” said Doctor Somers, placidly. “You see?”

Dorothy nodded reluctantly. Miss Christie said nothing. She was very pale.

Somers rose. “It’s settled, then. I start for the mountains to-night. And, Peter, you and Uncle George had better come along, I think. You can put up at a hotel in Asheville. I really think you’ll be safer there than to stay in Pinelands just now.”

“Oh, we’ll come,” I answered for both of us. “But you needn’t think we’re going to stay at any hotel and let you go off alone. You need somebody to look after you, man!”

“Humph! Well, we can settle that later.” He pushed back his chair and bowed to Aunt Mary. “And now, madam, we’ll relieve you of the distress of our presence. Come along, you chaps, we’ll stay at Uhlman’s house until train time.” He bowed ironically and stalked out.

As I followed, I saw Dorothy turn upon her aunt, her face white with anger, her eyes flashing. I grinned inwardly, feeling that for once the old lady was about to hear some sharply wholesome truths.

I hurried after my companions. “Pack a bag, each of you,” ordered our leader. “Put in things for a week, anyhow. And bring your field glasses, Peter, and that pistol of yours. Wish we had three of them!”

“I’ve got one at home,” I said, “a police revolver. I’ll bring that.”

Miss Christie hurried past us, as we stood in the hall, and returned in two minutes. “Here!” She thrust something into Somers’ hand. “Take that and use it if you must. And, oh, my dear, be careful!”

She was gone in a breath, leaving the lanky physician staring down in bewilderment at a businesslike revolver, whose wooden butt was battered and worn.

Our few preparations made, for we were to go in light marching order, we spent the day perfecting our plans, such as they were.

“For we don’t know what we’ll find up there,” explained Somers. “The best we can do is to get in touch with Rutledge in some way, avoid suspicion if we can, and trust to luck for the rest. Maybe he’ll talk; maybe we can get him out alone, hold him up and take him down the mountains, at pistol’s point. I’ll be a ‘lunger,’ I guess; I look the part.” He surveyed his lean face, hollow chest, and extraordinarily thin limbs in my mirror. “Yes, I’m a consumptive, ordered up into the mountains to live. You’re my uncle, Uhlman, and Peter--oh, he can be the builder who’s going to put up a cabin for me. We’re up in the hills looking for a site, so I can have a house there, live alone in the balmy pine woods, and strive to recapture my lost health--and all that rot. How about it?”

He grinned and went on humorously. “You know, dear ones and kind old things both, I fancy my health is in considerable danger, at that! If I should meet Satterfield in the dark somewhere, Old Man Trouble and I would meet just about the same time. What?”

And he spoke even more truly than he knew. For at dusk that night, as the train pulled out of Pinelands, Somers sat beside me in the smoking car, his lean, bold profile clearly outlined against the lighted window. From the dark without it must have made an excellent mark.

No one had loitered about my house that day; no one, as far as I could see, had watched us climbing into the “shoo-fly” train.

But, as we panted out of the village and began to labor up a steep grade between high embankments, gathering speed slowly, a round hole sprang suddenly into being in the window, just beside Somers’ head, and a bullet sang past my nose, like an angry wasp, bit through the window opposite, and whined away into the night.

“Humph!” said Somers calmly, brushing bits of glass from his lap. He looked at the window, where a star of cracks radiated from that sinister hole. “Humph! A couple of inches this way, and one of the best little old medico-legal experts extant would have ceased abruptly. I told you we’d be safer outside of Pinelands for a while!”

The brakeman hurried through, stopped to survey his damaged windowpanes, and scowled blackly.

“Some darn fool gettin’ fresh!” he muttered. “Lettin’ off a rifle gun that a way an’ never lookin’ to see where th’ bullet’d go. The fool! They’s too much cawn liquor round Pinelands these days!”

“Quite right, my friend,” replied Somers solemnly.

Some one touched Somers’ shoulder. We both turned to face the man in the seat behind us, a quiet, unobtrusive person, gray-clad, gray-haired, with a very keen gray eye.

“Did you know that bullet was meant for you?” he asked casually.

The physician nodded. “Oh, yes, certainly!” He was as cool, as detached of manner, as the stranger, and those keen eyes gave him an admiring glance.

“I happened to get a good look at the fellow,” the other went on. “He showed up against the sky line, there on top of the embankment, and he had a fine bead on you.”

Somers nodded equably. “Thanks, old man!”

“Broad-brimmed felt hat,” continued the other; “big, bushy mustache; looked like a pirate. Know him?”

My companion nodded again, but showed no disposition to satisfy the gray man’s curiosity further.

As the crow flies, Asheville is not much over forty miles from Pinelands; but to reach it one must go to Raleigh, and there you change from one line to another, making it a trip of several hundred miles. Somers’ estimate of time was too sanguine; we could hardly reach Asheville before morning.

As we disbarked at Raleigh, I saw the man in gray once more. He had followed us from the train; he stood in whispered talk with another quiet, inconspicuous person, and I thought that he pointed us out. It may have been my imagination; no doubt it was. For the other stranger, after loitering about, while we bought tickets and berths, stepped up to the window and asked a question, then strolled out of the station, and we saw him no more.

No doubt it was a mere coincidence, also, that the quiet gray-haired man entered the Asheville sleeper with us and deposited a modest leather hand bag in the section across the aisle.