slapped him on the head in the same familiar way. She sat brooding over her wrongs until, still secretly smiling, he urged her to further explanation.
“If I'm to be a partner of yours in this restoration of rights, or stolen property, or vindication of family honor,” he said, “I think you should tell me what it's all about. That's the way things are done in a real partnership of any sort, aren't they?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Only I get so angry when I think it all over that I forget that I've taken you into partnership. But it's a pretty long story and I don't intend to bother you with a lot of it.”
She paused a moment as if to collect her thoughts and settled back into the corner of the bench with an arm resting on the back-turned and friendly wing of the marble lion, and the moon that had climbed up across the far hills to lend its light to the glow of the stars shone on her face so that, bending slightly forward and watching her, he could see the profoundly serious expression in her face and eyes. He saw that, no matter how absurd her quest might appear to her brother and to Harnway, to her, at least, it was as vital as was ever the quest of the Grail to an early and fanatical crusader.
“My great-grandfather was a Colonel Yancey Powell, and he fought for Venice in 1849. He was one of the last guards of the treasury and when the Austrians had defeated the Venetians and were entering the city he took from the treasury a historical box called the Crusader's Casket, a very old relic which I won't bother telling you about; but it had a sentimental value with it that appealed to him so much that he didn't want it to fall into Austrian hands. He wouldn't surrender, but succeeded in escaping to America. And he brought the box with him. It's of gold and very, very old, and no one can open it. They say there's a curse rests on whoever does open it, but that's neither here nor there with what happened afterward. Naturally, Yancey Powell felt that he was its custodian and thought a lot of it. He was that sort of a man, was my great-grandfather.”
Ware, listening, gave no indication that the story thus far was old.
He traced idle patterns in the gravel with his stick, bent forward and listening.
“Well, when the war in America came on he fought for the Confederacy, and there's a dispute about how the Crusader's box came into the hands of the Harnways. Yancey Powell was a careless man about money matters. He borrowed some money from a Harnway who was a banker in our town, and that Harnway, being a miserly sort of person as some bankers naturally are, claimed that the chattel mortgage my great-grandfather gave as security covered everything in Yancey Powell's house, and so he kept the Crusader's box when he foreclosed. When the war was over my great-grandfather called for it, and they quarreled and my great-grandfather challenged and killed that Harnway. Which of course served the old miser right. You can see that. Then that Harnway's brother shot my great-grandfather and They must have been terrible years! One or the other side was always finding an excuse to shoot the other!”
“A regular Kentucky feud, I reckon,” Captain Jimmy remarked dryly. “Nonsensical way of settling things!
“Nonsensical nothing!” she declared heatedly. “When two families fall out because one is entirely mean and despicable and wrong, and the law won't do anything, what else is there for the wronged one to do, if they've any honor at all, but fight it out? People who are in the right can't lay down and let themselves be walked over, can they? Well, I should say not—if they've got any spirit! Thank Heaven, my people had spirit.”
“Well, who got the best of it?” Ware asked, still looking at the gravel and the point of his stick.
“That's the unfair part of it. The Harnways did,” she admitted reluctantly. “Not because they were right, but because there were more of them and maybe they were better shots. Anyhow, they kept, and still keep that box that belonged to my great-grandfather.”
“And so”
“That's why I'm over here. Lemuel Harnway is a ridiculous old man! He never did have an awful lot of family pride, I take it, because he was educated up North, and then he traveled a lot and Of course the Harnways are rich. Mighty rich! And he's been like his tribe, money grabbing, and so made a lot more until he's worth millions and millions. He stopped living the year round at Rocky Crossing where we all come from and moved over here and bought a palace for himself. Then after a time he
