Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“ Amos was a crafty plotter. He had a strong imagination of the crafty and destructive sort, and a genius for detail. No man had ever escaped from a plot of his planning except by chance.
Vane was at a loss to know what to do next. His curiosity concerning the Danglers of Goose Creek was now quite as keen as his distaste for them, and both his distaste and curiosity were keener than his original purpose in visiting Forkville. It was still his intention to obtain a young animal of the Willoughby Girl strain, a bay with white legs, for choice ”

“ Vane was not exactly what he had expected to find. The only thing in which the stranger had met expectations was the matter of lying. He had lied concerning his knowledge of the road to Goose Creek, but in everything else he had proved unexpected. His manner was not that of any enforcement officer known to or imagined by Steve. It was the manner of the best type of “sport” known to Steve, of the two-guides sportsman. And the talk about wanting to buy a horse! That was clever. He’d picked up the dope from Jard Hassock, of course—but it was smart. But it didn’t fool Steve. ”

“ Again a few matches changed pockets.
“I always make a p’int of pickin’ ’em up,” explained the collector. “Good things for to keep handy, matches. When you do need ’em, you need ’em bad.”
“I believe you,” returned Vane. “A match is like a gun.”
“Somethin’ like, but not altogether. You can’t light a fire with an axe—but sometimes you can make an axe do instead of a gun.”
“Yes, that’s so. You are Pete Sledge, aren’t you?”
“That’s me. How did you know?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Vane replied, “Jard Hassock spoke of you as the smartest hunter and trapper in these parts. ”

“ They wondered if the life of any one stranger could possibly be worth the risk they were taking. They and their fathers had put up with the habits and customs of the Danglers of Goose Creek for over one hundred years. This attitude had acquired the dignity of a tradition. Was it wise to break with tradition now on the question of whether or not a stranger in trick pants and a fancy mackinaw were dead or alive?
Nothing of Vane was discovered on or about old Luke’s premises. Then the deputy sheriff of the county appeared suddenly in the midst of the searchers. ”

“ I’ll give you the pedigree book for five hundred dollars. You couldn’t git it for thousands, if it wasn’t that the police is after me to put me back in jail, an’ I need the money the worst way.”
“Dangler, you are hard-boiled. And you’re a fool! Why do you imagine for a moment that I’ll supply you with money to escape with? Anything the law may hand to you will be less than you deserve. If you were to receive your deserts you’d be hanged for a murderer. ”

“ I can’t afford to be so gosh darned brave—like Liza.”
The fire went out of the big woman’s eyes and the derision left her lips. She strode over to her brother, stooped and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Please forgive me, Jard,” she said. “You are right and I am all wrong.”
Steve Dangler had not come to Forkville that morning for the sole purpose of delivering old Luke’s defiant message to old Dave. He had been instructed to hunt out and look over and size up the stranger who was rigged out like a sport, and who had passed him and yet escaped him the night before. ”

“ She soon stood up and moved on, and again he passed her and led the way. In places the gloom shut down in absolute dark, with the vague glimmer of rifts of faint starshine far behind and far ahead. It was in such a place that he became suddenly aware that she was no longer moving close after the dragging tails of his rackets. He halted and stood for a few seconds, listening. He moved back slowly; and soon he came upon her crouched, sobbing, in the snow.
“It is my foot, my ankle,” she said in broken and contrite tones. ”

“ Jard winked at Vane. “You don’t have to drink lemon extract round here nowadays, nor ain’t for nigh onto two years,” he said. “There’s real liquor—so I hear—to be had for eight dollars a bottle, an’ somethin’ that acts a darn sight more real for half the price. All you need’s the money an’ the high sign.”
“And the law?”
“Law!” exclaimed Miss Hassock in a voice of angry derision. “Law! With Danglers to bust it an’ a bunch of cowards an’ live-an’-let-livers to look on, what’s the good of a law?”
Jard nodded at Vane. “If Liza had been born a man she’d of been dead quite a spell now,” he said. ”

“ I’m the grandson of the man who brought Willoughby Girl to this country, and lost her by theft. He hunted for her over half the world—almost everywhere but on Goose Creek.”
“Sufferin’ cats! An’ you come lookin’ for a bit of the old strain of blood! Why the hell didn’t you say so first off? If you’d told me who you was I’d believed you an’ sold you a horse. But you be from the States, an’ the gent who owned the English mare was an Englishman! My pa told me so many’s the time.”
“It was your mistake—all your own fault! As to my grandfather being an Englishman—why not? We are all Americans now.” ”

“ So he plowed forward in the tracks of the girl’s narrow webs.
They descended the little clearing, and entered the screen of alders along the brook. The snow took him to the hips there, and deeper. He plunged, stuck, plunged again and plowed through. The girl turned and watched his efforts for a few seconds with veiled eyes, then turned to her front again, and passed across the brook. Vane staggered in the shallower snow of the brook, fell to his hands and knees and came up again in a flash. He set his teeth and struggled forward. Halfway up the opposite bank he stuck fast. ”

“ Old Hinch was ill—so ill that he had sent Tom down to Rattles for the doctor—so ill that his conscience was troubling him for having parted with his granddaughter.
“If he don’t feel better by mornin’ he’ll send for her,” said McPhee. “And a good thing, too. That young skunk Steve Dangler’s sweet on the girl; an’ Dave knows it. Now that he’s feelin’ real sick he don’t like it. He ain’t a bad sort of old man when he’s scart he may die any minute.”
“Maybe Luke Dangler won’t sent Joe back ag’in. He’s as much her grandpa as Dave Hinch himself,” said Jard. ”

“ When they tore the webbing they killed you as surely as if they had cut your throat—as far as they knew. You have no compass, no food, no matches, no blankets, no snowshoes—nothing. You are weak—for they have hurt you. You are lost—and the snow is deep and still falling. You are lost. They lost you.”
“I see. You have saved my life.”
“I know the way out; and I have matches, but nothing to eat—and nothing to mend your rackets with.” ”

“ Robert Vane, the engine which had been selected by fate for the undoing of the Danglers, did not permit pity for the men who had plotted his death to halt his activities. The obstacles to his inspection of old Luke’s stables having been removed with the removal of the old breeder, Vane went ahead in that matter, advised by Jard. They did business with an elderly spinster, a daughter of Luke’s, who had the old ruffian’s power-of-attorney, but none of his pride in, and jealousy of, the horses of the ancient strain. ”

“ Doubtless it is more romantic to carry a lady in distress in your arms, and more dignified to pull her along on a sled, and even trundling her in a wheelbarrow (wind and weather permitting) may seem a more conventional way to some people—but every woodsman and soldier knows that pig-a-back is the style when a job of this sort has to be done for its own sake. ”

“ He squirmed free of her hands and clear of the drift, leaving her behind him. But her tracks were still in front for a distance of twenty yards or more; so he plowed his way onward without a backward glance. She ran past him and again led the way. He followed—but he fell at last, all in. He felt her arms, her hands. She was trying to raise him from the smothering snow. He pulled himself to his knees. ”

“ A horse? You must want one real bad. Now if it was a woman it would be different, but any man who’d go git himself mixed up with them Danglers for a horse—for the best durned horse in the world—ain’t got all his brains workin’, to my way of thinkin’.”
“You may be right. They seem to be difficult people to deal with, that’s a fact. I had no idea that they went so far as to post sentries on the road. Have many attempts been made to steal their horses?”
Pete turned his glance from the crack in the wall to Vane’s face. Vane could see the glimmer of the eyes and feel the searching of them. ”

“ I’ve seen Hassock’s roan filly, but I hear that the real breeder is an old man named Luke Dangler who lives up on Goose Creek. You know him, I suppose. Do you know if he has any young bays of that strain? Bay is the right color—the Willy Horse color. I have a few hundreds that are ready and eager to talk horse.”
“Sure I know old Luke Dangler. My own name’s Dangler, an’ I come from Goose Crick myself. He’s got a couple of young uns of the right color, an’ the right lines. Say, I guess ye’re the gent who drug old Dave Hinch an’ Joe out of the fire?” ”

“ Vane—and it’s a treat to hear a man with grit enough in his crop to say it out loud, even if he is only askin’,” returned Liza. “Bootleggers and moonshiners is right. The Danglers take the lead in every low devilment.”
“Liza’s maybe right an’ maybe wrong,” said Jard. “I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ about it, whatever I’m thinkin’; an’ I hope you won’t, neither—not while you live in Moosehead House, anyhow. Liza’s mighty free with her mean names, talkin’ about cowards an’ the like—but—well, her an’ my property is all right here—this hotel an’ the land an’ the barns. ”

“ If you don’t, there’ll be murder done. Go tell the McPhees, and the Joneses and the Browns and the Wickets and the Haywards and the McKims and old man Pike—the whole bunch. Get your guns and pistols and light out for the Crick with a couple of teams quick’s the Lord’ll let you! But send Charlie McPhee, or some other lad with a fast horse, to Jim Bell’s to fetch him along too—and tell him to tell Jim to telephone over to Lover’s Glen for the deputy-sheriff. I’ll have coffee ready when you get back, Pete, you go too and help Jard stir ’em up. ”

“ That’s your old game, Amos. I don’t give a damn about this rum, but we got to find the stranger.”
“My game!” sneered Amos. “You say so now, do you—an’ scart to open yer mouth for nigh onto twenty years!”
“And what about Joe,” queried one of the McPhees. “I reckon she’s the one we’re worryin’ about.”
“She’s run back to old Dave Hinch, that’s what she’s done,” said Jard. “Nobody’s tryin’ to lose her. But it’s good night to Vane if we don’t find him before dark. We’d best scatter an’ hunt the woods. I know their dirty, sneakin’ tricks.” ”

“ Half an hour later, Charlie McPhee set out in a red pung, behind a sorrel mare, for Jim Bell’s place a few miles below the village. Mr. Bell was the nearest constable. Half an hour after that again, two sleds set out for the Dangler settlement on Goose Creek. Each sled was drawn by a pair of horses, and crowded with men armed with many kinds and patterns of explosive weapons in their pockets and their hands. Snow was falling thick and soft and steady. ”

“ It’s Joe I’m worryin’ about. Them Danglers is all rough an’ tough, men an’ women alike. It was a bad day for Joe old Dave Hinch’s house burnt down. If I was a man I’d bust up that bunch on Goose Crick if I was killed for it.”
“It’s been there nigh onto a hundred years; an’ I reckon there’s as good men hereabouts as anywhere,” objected McPhee. “If the law can’t fasten nothin’ onto them, what can us fellers do?”
“The law!” exclaimed Liza derisively. “An’ what about the officers of the law? The law’s no more than printed words if it ain’t worked by human hands.” ”

“ What do you think?”
“I guess he’d rectify his mistake without loss of time—an’ that he’d do it with an axe. Maybe he’d even chase Amos up a tree first an’ then chop him down, jist so’s to have everything right. Folks who’ve been demented, crazy, lunatic as long as Pete has ain’t always practical. They like to do things their own way, but they sure like to do ’em. How do you cal’late to set about gettin’ a horse out of old Luke?” ”

“ There’s a pair of hellyuns you wouldn’t have the heart to wish onto your worst enemy for grandpas. Dave’s mean an’ crooked an’ a coward. Luke’s mean an’ crooked an crazy—but he ain’t afeared of anything nor anybody. Now with horses an’ horned cattle the top-crosses is the things to look at an’ consider in their pedigrees; an’ so it should be with humans, and usually is—but there’s throw-backs in both, now an’ then. There must surely be some fine strains in Joe’s pedigree, but an all-fired long ways back. ”