Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 21
DEAR MR. HARRINGTON," this disturbing letter began, and ran along through a half page of preliminaries to:
"The dynamite in this case for us lies, not so much in whether the southern boundary line of the reservation was correct or in error, as in whether, if in error, that error was accidental or deliberate, i. e. fraud. There is, as you know, testimony in the record tending to show that there was such fraud, and we must congratulate you upon having induced the trial jury and your appellate court to disregard this testimony. We are not altogether sanguine that Washington will be as complacent.
"The appellants, as you know, have strengthened their position dangerously by getting Senator Burnside to represent them. He is exceedingly able, half-fox and half-wolf, keen for the smell of scandal and although there is only one of him, he howls on the trail like an entire pack.
"We therefore urge that you fortify us with every scrap of information that may be of assistance to our Mr. Wendell in arguing the case; especially . . ."
And so the letter went on.
"So, they're getting scared too," murmured Henry, a little bit awed; and proceeded to empty his files and his mind of everything that could possibly be helpful to the eloquent Mr. Wendell in the circumstances.
Having done this and attended to certain other routine matters, Henry was thinking of Lahleet. She must know of his—his enlarged perception of the Shell Point transaction; but he decided to postpone sending for the girl. She was impulsive and quick-tempered, suspicious where Mr. Boland was concerned. She would be difficult to reason with; she was a dear little thing and he did not want to hurt her. But just at this juncture, Lahleet's card was sent in to him again.
"The little minx," he commented. "She must have just been hanging around the corridors till she saw me come back." It was the first time in their acquaintance that he had not been spontaneously glad to see her; yet the first sight of the girl was reassuring.
"Henry!" she cried cheerily, and came bounding to him as if on moccasined feet upon her island. "Henry! You have told him? . . . You have blocked the Shell Point deal? . . . You have saved their millions of oil for them? What did he say? How did he take it?" But the stream of naively gloating interrogation was halted. The girl had read something in Harrington's face. "You . . . you didn't tell him!" she panted in dismay. "You have fallen down!" She uttered the words hollowly, unbelievingly, as hoping to be assured that her deduction was false.
"Mr. Boland showed me that the deal was all right," answered Harrington with some dignity.
"All right!" . . . Lahleet breathed the speech slowly. "All right? . . ." she whispered whitely, and sank into a chair, staring at the lawyer with great bewildered eyes. "All right? . . ." she said a third time.
Henry found this white, staring iteration difficult. He wished she had flown into a tantrum, raged, sworn, denounced him, anything but this appalled manner, this stunned incredulity in which shattered faith and regret were mingled so poignantly.
"But, you see, the knowledge that the oil was there was his knowledge," Harrington undertook to explain patiently. "He had paid for it and it belonged to him. The Indians did not put the oil there."
"Neither did John Boland," Lahleet retorted with rising spirit.
"But his enterprise discovered that it was there."
"And like a cheap trickster in a horsetrade, he took advantage of this knowledge," accused the girl.
"As I see it now, that was legitimate business strategy," argued Henry, uncomfortably.
"Business strategy? . . . Then stealing, any kind of ordinary stealing, is legitimate business strategy," the girl scorned, gazing at him for an instant in sheer incredulity, then screamed: "You are a cheat! A damned cheat is what you are!"
Harrington's face went white. "You little spitfire!" he frowned.
For a moment the girl stood a trifle aghast at herself. "Boland has ruined you! "she accused, eycs suffusing. "You're bribed; you're bought—bribed with position—bribed with money, bribed with all this public favor. Do you know where that public favor comes from? It comes from John Boland, Your own acts did a little and he arranged the rest. It was a deliberate propaganda of popularity. It began when he discovered that you had talents which"
"Miss Marceau!" thundered Harrington. "Enough of this!" But he was discovering how difficult it is for a gentleman to dam an angry woman's mouth.
The girl backed off unconquered. "Oh, you did not surrender easily," she taunted. "You came high. Boland has had to hold out glittering baits. It took everything, his dearest possessions, or the promise of them, to get you where he has you now, but at last you are there—where a cruel, contemptible fraud seems to you a laudable business enterprise. No one else could have done this but John Boland. He is a cunning corrupter of the souls of men. In your old office you told me once that you could never be retained by 'the other side.' But today you are, Henry Harrington; you are."
"That is all. Positively all!" declared the lawyer, patience tried to the limit.
Suddenly the girl was calm—with the calmness of a tornado that had blown itself out. "Yes," she assented; "that is all." Her bosom still heaved with the aftermath of her emotions, but she was manifesting an almost impertinent self-possession. "You left the Stanfield report with Mr. Boland, I suppose?" she questioned coldly.
"I returned it to its rightful owner," Harrington responded with a bite in his tone.
"I had taken the precaution to have it photographed," the girl observed dryly.
"Photographed!" Harrington had learned to be suspicious of this Indian blood when it became unexpectedly calm or unexplainably complacent. He darted a threatening glance and moved swiftly between his visitor and the door. "You . . . you wouldn't take this thing up with Washington yourself? . . . You . . . You'd best not interfere!" he breathed angrily.
The girl's manner changed like lightning, as if a carefully designed maneuver had succeeded; and she thrust out her face at him, white teeth gleaming in a smile of exultation, "No!" she cried. "I wouldn't. If anybody saves those Indians, it will be you, Henry Harrington. You protect or you victimize those helpless people yourself. I commit them entirely to your conscience."
With that she left him. . . . He was angry and insulted for a minute, then felt a great wave of sympathy for the girl.
"Now isn't that too bad?" he frowned, and stroked a troubled brow. "Too darned bad! . . . And she thinks I'm bribed!" He smiled. He could forgive such an absurdity from Lahleet—could forget it even, as he pressed the button and began to dictate articles of incorporation of the Shell Point Land Company; and thereafter plunged into the appetizing menu of his daily life which, in these days, was composed of unequal parts of business and of love, love getting the shade.
From his desk went frequent ecstatic telephone calls to the glowing beauty in the big house on the hill and there was astoundingly frequent: necessity for leaving the desk and rushing up the hill to conference with Billie on all sorts of pretexts from some of her own minor legal business to certain of her major social enterprises; while, once office or court hours were over, no sort of pretty little deceit was needed.
It was just to be with her, whether strolling on the terraces, or dancing or golfing at the Country Club with Billie beating him most of the time on the links now, for he was off his game these days. Always together and alone when it could be managed—always together! Everybody saw and knew. The town talked about it and admired and approved, save some who envied.
And while Henry's love flourished, his business flourished also, for somehow each contact with Billie was an incentive to diligence, although he had not even yet realized that it was because he was falling into love that he reached that sudden resolve to push his practice, and in these days of rapture he was quite incapable of suspecting that it was because his love had been approved that his business prospered so amazingly. He had no conception how closely love interests and business interests were united within the Boland breasts.
Oh, yes, there was much for Henry to do now, and so many, many thrills in the doing of it. And while he was busy in Edgewater, knot by knot the red tape was being tied in Washington. From desk to desk certain documents moved forward to that day when official seals and signatures would be attached and the landed inheritance of a handful of Indians would become the property of a corporation of which Henry Harrington was president.
But in Edgewater also, some knots were being tied—knots in that procedure by which Adam John's island was to become the island of the Edgewater & Eastern Railway. Each was made fast with meticulous care and a scrupulous regard for that great document which faithfully assures that no citizen shall be deprived of his property "without due process of law." Never were the processes more strictly observed, for the promoters of the Edgewater & Eastern, like John Boland, manifested a most exemplary regard for law.
And so the court condemned, the appraiser appraised; and the seven thousand dollars most generously found to be the value of the said Hurricane Island was tendered; but, lo, the Siwash owner spurned the tender—stubbornly, disrespectful of those solemnly moving processes. The island was his. Uncle Sam had given it to him. No railroad, no anybody should take it away from him. So he stolidly affirmed.
The duty of the patient court was clear. It appointed a special commissioner to sign a deed conveying Hurricane Island to the railway, and to receive the said seven thousand dollars to be held subject to the order of the said Adam John, an Indian, but also a citizen. This deed was duly executed; the money was duly paid and duly held. All that remained was for the sheriff to go out and take the island and turn it over to the Edgewater & Eastern.
But when, blithely enough, glad of a chance for a launch-run up the inlet, Sheriff James Hogan headed in toward that little cove where boats were accustomed to land upon Hurricane Island, behold, a rifle cracked and a bullet ricocheted across the officer's bow.
"The hell!" remarked Sheriff Jim. "That damn Indian is going to fight." And he turned and gazed where the bullet skipped three times upon the blue.
But the sheriff was a man who had respect for a bullet, so he turned back to Edgewater for reënforcements. Excitement was instantly rife in the little city. Law had been defied in the county of Socatullo; the due processes of its court had been scorned and an officer of that court and county murderously fired upon. Such lawlessness had not been known before; it must be dealt with.
What made the offense more heinous was that the rebel was an Indian—a half-white, half-educated Siwash upon whom the right of citizenship had been conferred but recently by a mawkishly sentimental government simply because the Siwash had gone out and let himself be shot at in the World War. The wider the rumor spread, the more wrathful the citizens waxed. Mr. Boland was inexpressibly shocked at this news of insurrection in his realm.
Sheriff Hogan, turning out the arsenal of his office, was swearing loudly that he would fix that damn Siwash and while he swore, his office was stormed with citizens volunteering their services for a posse and bringing with them a great variety of armament. All of them, the sheriff accepted heartily; the more the merrier, the mightier the lesson to the Indian insurrecto.
"Better coöperate with Hogan," Mr. Boland had said to Edmunds. "Hogan is a very worthy official. The law must be upheld at all times, Edmunds; at all times." Edmunds was Boland's vice-president in charge of transportation, and as such, commodore of the Boland fleet, from largest steamship to smallest skiff; and he placed unlimited motorboats at the sheriff's disposal.
When Hogan's posse turned out for the march from the courthouse to the dock, its members held themselves with dignity. Their chests swelled; they felt like heroes going out to defend their homes and properties against an insolent and dangerous enemy.
They fell into step and this rhythmic tread of feet along the street, with the sight of a moving column of determined men, roused the onlookers to a fervor. This fervor reacted on the marching militants and stirred them to a mild hysteria of patriotism. Somebody had thought of flags and brought along an armful of yard-square ones, mounted on short staffs.
Seven motorboats were required to carry the posse, and in their patriotic ardor the men nailed a flag to the prow of each boat. Your naval man raises his flag amidships, but these were landsmen. They were inordinately proud and satisfied with their small armada as it strung out in the inlet, headed for Hurricane Island. The hour was about four o'clock in the afternoon of a day in late July. A vivid beauty lay upon land and water. Life seemed playful and happy.
They shouted to each other from boat to boat; they protested loudly their contempt for Bolsheviks, homeborn or foreign-born. They threatened this lone and obstinate insurgent Siwash with many bullets; nervously they worked the mechanism of their shotguns, or rifles or revolvers; yet sneeringly they assured themselves and each other, that an Indian would never think of resisting when he saw himself borne down upon by such numbers. Therefore, it was the strategy of Admiral Hogan to keep his armada massed, a demonstration in force. As the string of boats emerged from the channel and approached the island, by dint of much motioning and shouting, their commander got them into an abreast formation and at reduced speed they drew in toward the little landing.
There was no sign of life on the island. It was as still as if its defender had fled. And yet Sheriff Hogan, mindful of that ricocheting bullet, was awed and cautious. Intuitively, his posse fell into the same mood; voices were lowered, oaths muffled. The silence, the unmoving silence of that green-bushed island seemed somehow ominous. A hundred sharpshooters might lie concealed in any one of its leafy headlands. A realization that from a military point of view their position was highly exposed—they could be seen, but they could not see—made for subdued enthusiasm.
But there had been too much hot blood in their veins, too much stirring of elemental passions for the men to be long held in check by a mere state of mind. Somebody wantonly shouted a taunt at the silent greenery, and another hurled an obscene epithet. Sheriff Hogan, hesitant and uncertain, overcome by caution and wary of this taciturnity of leafy barricades took out of his pocket the process of the court.
"I'll read this to him, boys," he said, "and then we'll close in on him." He stood up, braced himself and began to read in hoarse, bellowing tones:
"In the Superior Court of the County of Socatullo and State of" He had got that far, his huge voice echoing into the cove, and undoubtedly penetrating a considerable distance into the green lanes of Adam John's homestead, when Nate Hampton, nervously fingering his pump gun, twitched the trigger. The weapon roared.
"What in the devil!" everybody seemed to exclaim at once, and glared at Nate, who sat looking shamed and silly, when abruptly from the green barriers in front of them issued a vicious spat and s-s-splug went something on the broad front of Sheriff Hogan. He placed his hand upon his stomach and looked around him with an expression of fierce wonderment as demanding what joker had struck him thus, and as determining to visit resentment on the irreverent one. But an instant later he was swaying, a sick look on his face.
"Lord, boys! I'm shot," he cried in mystified surprise, and sat over backward in the bottom of the boat. The process of the court had fluttered from the sheriff's astonished hand and floated now upon the blue bosom of the channel, quite unregarded.
"Hell! He's shot Jim!"
Somebody remarked this curiously; then all at onee everybody was firing—at whatever spot in the green seemed to the firer's fancy the one from which the bullet had sped. The shotguns roared; the rifles and the automatics cracked and spat and spat and cracked. But there came no answer from the island. Yet instead of advancing upon the cove the armada was retiring. Without orders, each engineer, perforce a noncombatant, had instinctively reversed his engine. Eventually the futility of further firing under these conditions made itself apparent.
"Perhaps we got him!" suggested one excited voice.
"Perhaps we didn't too," scorned another. "An Indian would know enough to duck behind a tree. He's probably laying there ready to pick off the next one of us he wants, if we shove in close again."
"Look, I can see a sort of a cabin. By Jinks! It's got a flag on it. What do you know about that! Defying the law with a flag!" Men stared at each other blankly.
"Probably this Indian is in the shack by now. It's log-built—a regular fort."
Everybody took a shot at the shack on the chance. There being no responding shot, by a sort of common consent, the armada gradually put about and followed the boat containing the wounded sheriff which was already heading back down the channel. The attack upon Hurricane Island had been repulsed.
As they were lifting him to the ambulance at the dock, Sheriff Hogan murmured: "Get that damned Siwash for this, boys." Then he gulped and died.