Part 5

“You try to arrest me,” he said softly to the sheriff, “and I’ll blow your head off. And as for you, Vladimir”--he made his tone as convincing as he could--“I just tell you that you’d better call that mob off or I’ll tell them who the Strangers are and where they came from!”

Vladimir’s eyes flamed close to madness, while his cheeks went ashen.

“So they told you!” he purred. “Sheriff, go to the door. I wish to speak to this man privately.”

The sheriff, rumbling, moved away.

“My friend,” murmured Vladimir softly, “now I shall have to kill you. Not myself, of course, because that would be illegal. And dangerous. But I give you news. Today, while you and Gray were outside, a little note was tossed into your window. I heard the breaking glass and found it. It was from a girl, who signed, ‘Maria.’ She said that she loved you and would wait for you at a certain spot to flee with you.”

Cunningham’s heart stopped. Vladimir laughed at his expression.

“Oh, she was met,” murmured Vladimir. “She was met--and arrested. She is held fast. And tonight a story will go about and the women of the neighborhood will learn where she is. She is in the hotel here, safely bound. With such a tale as will be spread about, do you not think the women will pull down the whole hotel to tear her in bits? Now do you go and tell the secret of the Strangers! No one will believe you. But you believe me!”

He tossed a scrap of paper to Cunningham. And Cunningham knew that the story was true.

“Now,” said Vladimir, purring, “I shall give orders that you be arrested. If you are taken, she will be torn to bits. And that is how I kill you, my friend. That is how I kill you! For I do not want anyone to live who will remember or believe the secret of the Strangers.”

13

Then the news took a definitely dangerous turn. A farmer who was hastening to Coulters was stopped by a band of Strangers. They had taken his shotgun and shells from him, contemptuously tossing him half a dozen of the square lumps of gold. The gold would pay for the gun ten times over, but men raged. Another man came in foaming at the mouth, with a similar tale. He had seen a Stranger and raised his gun to fire as at a wild beast. A knife had flicked at him and gone through the fleshy part of his arm. They took his gun and shells, leaving gold to pay for them.

No one saw anything odd in firing on the Strangers at sight. But everyone grew hysterically excited at the thought of the Strangers taking guns with which to shoot back. Then a man rode up on a lathered horse, shouting hoarsely that twenty Strangers had raided a country store some six miles away. They had appeared suddenly. When they left they took half a dozen shotguns--the whole stock--three rifles, and all the ammunition in the store. They left gold to pay for the lot.

Cunningham heard all this as one would hear outside sounds during a nightmare. He was like a madman. He would have gone rushing through the place in search of Maria but that it was still broad daylight and there were twenty or more armed men in the place, all mad with excitement and fury. As it was, Cunningham was in a cold, clear-headed rage. He went to his own room and packed his pockets with cartridges.

Vladimir was right in one respect. The natives were in no mood to listen to the truth. They would believe nothing that he told them. He was suspect, in any event. They classed him with the Strangers, and they classed the Strangers with the beasts. Fighting such men was not fighting law and order. The sheriff was bribed. The rest were wild with rage and terror. They did not know they were catspaws for Vladimir. Even the sheriff probably knew but little of Vladimir’s plans.

He went into Gray’s room and searched for a possible second revolver. As he pawed grimly among Gray’s possessions he heard the sheriff speaking, through a partition. Gray’s room was next to that occupied by Vladimir, and Cunningham abruptly realized how Gray had obtained much information.

“I’m doin’ my best to hold ’em,” the sheriff was saying anxiously, “but it’s gettin’ to be a tough job. I’d better send for militia----”

“Fool!” snarled Vladimir. “What do I give you money for? There will be no fighting! We will march into the hills. We will pen up these folk--surround them. If your mob kills a few, what harm? Afterward you shall pick out your murderers--as many as you choose! They will confess to anything you choose, after I have spoken to them. And then the rest of the Strangers will move away. They will go away forever, with me! I will take them!”

“But it looks bad----”

“They will lick my boots,” rasped Viadimir. “They will crawl upon their knees and beg me for mercy. And I will give you four men to hang. They will confess to their crime. And I will take the rest away.”

Cunningham nodded grimly. At least this clarified the situation a little. Vladimir was afraid of the Strangers’ secret becoming known. He only wanted to get them away. If he could find Maria and she would tell him, and Gray brought the help he had promised----

Cunningham was not thinking for himself, except as his liberty meant safety for Maria, and secondarily for the Strange People. But he would have to go into every room in the hotel filled with armed and suspicious men. It was lucky he had two guns. There would surely be shooting. There would probably be a bullet or two for him.

“Now send your deputies to arrest Cunningham,” snapped Vladimir on the other side of the wall. “Tell them to shoot him if he resists. He was teaching the Strangers to shoot and advising them to resist arrest. That is enough.”

“I’ll send a bunch,” whined the sheriff uneasily. “He’s a desp’rit character. Talkin’ about accusin’ me of takin’ bribes....”

“You’ll be rich for life when this is over,” Vladimir purred. “Remember that!”

* * * * *

The door closed behind the sheriff. Cunningham grinned savagely. He was to have no chance at all. They had been sent to arrest him, after Vladimir had given him news that would ensure his resisting. He would resist, right enough! And then a wild and utterly reckless scheme sprang full-bodied into Cunningham’s head.

He swung the door to--and heard a squeaking on the other side of the partition as if a closet door had been opened. And then Vladimir spoke purringly in that unknown language of the Strangers!

There could be but one person to whom he would be speaking at such a time and in that language. Cunningham’s heart leaped violently. He heard voices downstairs--men coming up to arrest him in his own room.

He darted out in the hall and plunged into Vladimir’s room, a ready revolver upraised. Vladimir whirled and stared into its muzzle with ashen cheeks. For once there was no purred jibe upon his lips, because Cunningham’s face was the face of a killer after he had seen Maria in the clothes-closet, bound hand and foot and with a gag in her mouth. She had been staring at Vladimir in horror, but her eyes flamed at sight of Cunningham.

For the fraction of a second they gazed at each other. Then her eyes signaled frantic warning. Cunningham whirled and dashed his revolver blindly in Vladimir’s face as his hand came up with an automatic. Vladimir stumbled and crashed backward to the floor.

Footsteps crashed on the steps outside. Nearly all the men in the hotel, it seemed, were coming up in a body to see to the arrest of Cunningham. But he paid no attention. He was ripping away at the gag and tearing loose the bonds that held Maria fast.

“Vladimir told me you’d been captured,” he panted, “and said you’d be mobbed tonight. Now he’s sent a gang to arrest me, knowing I’d resist and get myself killed. We’ve got to make a break for it. All right?”

Maria’s eyes were like stars. Cunningham kissed her suddenly.

“My God!” he laughed shakily. “One can think of love-making even at a time like this! Listen!”

The crowd on the stairs had reached the top. They crowded down the hall before Cunningham’s own door. There they hesitated, shuffling uneasily. At last a voice called loudly, “Open in the name of the law!”

There was no answer from Cunningham’s empty room. They waited breathlessly. A man pounded cautiously on the panel of the door.

“Open in th’ name of th’ law!”

Still silence.

“M-maybe he j-jumped outer th’ window,” suggested someone uneasily.

“R-rush him,” urged a man safely in the rear.

Cunningham and Maria, two rooms away, heard a hand laid on the other room’s door. They heard it fling open with a crash and the scuttling of feet as the mob of hastily deputized men jumped to one side to be out of the way of possible bullets. Dead silence greeted them. And suddenly they crowded into the deserted place.

“Now!” said Cunningham sharply.

He darted out, Maria running with him. She fled to the stairs and down them, Cunningham two steps in the rear. A single straggler of the men who were to have arrested him remained in the hall. He turned his head stupidly at sound of their rush. His mouth dropped open, but before his shout they were half-way to the ground floor.

Cunningham stopped at the foot of the stairs to fire three times up at the ceiling of the second floor. A cloud of smoke filled the hall, and heads that had craned over the balustrade withdrew, in a panic. A dozen paces more and the fugitives were out in the roadway. Half a dozen horses were tethered there and Cunningham tore loose the reins and leaped on one. Maria sprang up lightly behind him and he kicked the animal madly with his heels. It sprang into a panic-stricken gallop and was off down the road.

They were nearly out of sight before the first of their pursuers had run out into the road behind them. Then half a dozen puffs of smoke showed that they were fired on, but an instant later they were out of sight around a bend in the road.

14

Cunningham laughed a little as the horse’s hoofs clattered beneath and the white road shot past. Maria was clinging to his shoulders.

“Safe so far,” he told her, “but now we have to take to the woods. The hand of every man is against us, Maria. Do you trust me to get you away?”

“Anywhere,” she said softly. “You know I do.”

A motorcar came racing toward them over the rough road. It was not fit going for an automobile and the car swayed and lurched from side to side with dangerous abandon. Cunningham swerved his horse out of the road. The car slowed and stopped with a screaming of brakes. Cunningham’s hand fell to his weapon.

Gray tumbled out of the cloud of dust that enveloped the machine.

“Cunningham,” he panted. “Just found--Vladimir had bribed the telegraph operator. None of my wires got through. Found an amateur radio fan and he sent my message. Relay League. Help’s coming. By airplane. Bendale is a town of lunatics. Wild yarns have gone into it and a mob is coming out to wipe out the Strangers. They think they’ve been burning children. You’ve got to get up to the Strangers. Tell ’em about planes. Tell them to get going and keep moving or there ’ll be a massacre. Help’s coming as fast as it can get here. But for God’s sake keep them away from the mob. They’ll be wiped out!”

“I’m going to get Maria away,” said Cunningham defiantly. “I’m going to get her out of this state and marry her. The Strangers and anybody else can go to the devil!”

Gray, choking upon the dust he had swallowed, gasped out a raging order.

“Don’t be a fool!” he cried. “Look at her clothes! She’s in the Strangers’ costume! You’ll be spotted if you’re seen, and three townships are raving crazy! A dog couldn’t get away from here like that! You’ll be shot at by every damned fool in three counties and arrested anywhere else you go! Get up in the hills and keep the Strangers moving! The planes may not get here until dark, and they can’t land in the hills in the darkness. I’m going to meet them at Hatton Junction and guide them here. You get up in the hills and keep the Strangers moving or there’ll be a massacre! That mob will even wipe out the children! Everybody’s crazy! You’ve got to save them, Cunningham! You’ve got to!”

And Cunningham knew that he was telling the truth. The Strange People might not fight, if he begged them not to. To desert them would mean a tragedy in the hills. The people about them were no more accountable than so many lunatics. But to ride among the Strange People with Maria upon his saddle! ... They would know that she loved him, and they would believe that she had told him their secret. They would never let him leave the hills again alive.

It was death either way, and probably for them both. He looked at Maria and found her eyes misty with tears.

“Let me go,” she said suddenly, with a sob in her throat. “You go away. I will go up to my people and tell them what this man has said. Without me, you can escape. My people will tell me to die, but you will not know who we are and you will never hate me or despise me....”

Cunningham caught her hand and laughed shortly.

“No, my dear,” he said grimly. “We won’t be separated. It’s a choice between being shot like mad dogs or facing your people. We’ll ride up into the hills. We’ll tell your people that help is coming to hold off the mob. Their lives will be safe and their secret too, for all of me. And if we die, it will be decently. I’ve two guns for the pair of us.”

He found himself laughing as he waved his hand at Gray and drove his horse at the steep slopes that led upward to the tree-clad heights in which the Strangers lurked.

As the trees closed over their heads he smiled again and swung Maria before him. He gave the horse its head and the animal dropped to a plodding walk. And they talked softly. They had but a little while to be alone and they had never talked the tender foolishness that lovers know. Now they were riding at a snail’s pace upward to the stern vengeance of the Strangers upon a woman of their number who had loved outside the clan.

They spoke in whispers, not to avoid detection but because there are some things that are too tender to be spoken aloud. And their eyes spoke other things for which nobody has ever found words. Maria’s arm was about Cunningham’s neck and her lips were never far from his own and it seemed as if all trouble and care were very far away, though they were riding up to death.

The trees rustled above them. Birds sang all about them. And they rode through an age-old forest upon a weary horse, a scarecrow of a man with a bandaged shoulder and a girl in barbaric finery, gazing at him with tear-misted eyes. And as they rode they talked softly, and now and then they smiled, and in every speech and glance and gesture there was an aching happiness and a wistful regret.

All this was very foolish, but it was the proper and authentic conclusion for a man who has followed the route to romance and adventure to its appointed ending.

But there came a little rustling in the undergrowth beside them as they went on climbing up to the heights. Then other rustlings. Far away there was a whistle as if someone signaled. And very suddenly an arm reached out from the thick brushwood and seized the horse’s bridle. One of the Strangers stepped into view and gazed steadily up into the muzzle of Cunningham’s revolver.

From all about them men materialized as if by magic. No man laid a hand on any weapon. They looked at the pair upon the horse gravely, without rancor but with infinite resolution.

And Stephan, Maria’s father, came into view and regarded them with weary, hopeless eyes.

“Why did you come back?” he asked in a queer and resolute despair. “You knew what we would have to do. Why did you come back?”

15

The sun sank thunderously behind the mountain-range and tinted the tips of all the peaks with gold. Little fleecy clouds floated overhead in contented indolence. The wind of the heights was still. The pine-clad hills seemed very soft and restful as the shadows deepened on the eastern slopes, and contrasted strangely with the still-bright golden fields of the valleys yet unshadowed by the mountains.

Stephan held out a weary hand, pointing. A sullen column of smoke rose from a point far distant. He pointed again, where a thin wisp of vapor grew steadily thicker and denser.

“Our houses,” he said bitterly. “They are being burned. Vladimir has spoken, and we die.”

Cunningham clenched his fists as the sullen gray clouds rose slowly upward in the still air. Once he saw figures moving about the base of the smoke. Once he thought he heard yelling.

“I don’t think he’s told your secret,” he said after an instant. “That’s the mob. Gray promised that help would come. He said it was coming by airplane. And Vladimir----”

He told Stephan swiftly what Vladimir had said to the sheriff: that the Strangers were to be surrounded by the mob, and that then he would speak to them; that they would submit, and that some would go away in chains to be hung for the murder of his brother, and that he would take the others away with him forever; that they would follow when he spoke to them and obey him in all things.

Stephan’s eyes flashed fire for a second.

“Is life so sweet or peace so dear,” he quoted bitterly, “as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” He stopped short. “No,” he said quietly. “We will not obey him. No!”

Cunningham felt again that curious impotent bafflement. Stephan had just quoted Patrick Henry’s speech to the House of Burgesses, the famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech. And Stephan had never seen a revolver until Cunningham showed him one, nor a shotgun save at a distance and in the hands of the farmers about him. None of the Strange People were better informed. Keeping passionately to themselves, it was possible that they would never have seen a pistol if they were ignorant of them before they came mysteriously to these hills. Revolvers are not common in country places, nor are those possessed displayed.

“You see,” said Stephan with a faint smile, “how I was able to spare you for a time. It is likely that we will all soon be dead. And then it does not matter if you know our secret or not.”

“Tell me now,” begged Cunningham. “It will make no difference to you, and it may mean everything----”

Stephan smiled slowly at Maria, who was clinging to Cunningham’s arm as if she feared that at any instant he might be torn away.

“You say you do not know,” he said with a wretched attempt at lightness. “Maria loves you. You would despise her if you knew. Let her be happy as long as may be.” He paused and surveyed the hillside with keen eyes, then added: “We trust you. We might have killed many of that mob already. They were careless. But we have fled before them. We will keep from killing them as long as we can, because you have asked it.”

“Gray will be here!” said Cunningham passionately. “He has promised! Help will come!”

Stephan shrugged his shoulders and gave a low-voiced order in the unknown tongue which the Strangers spoke among themselves.

“Help,” he said in a moment more, and smiled very wearily indeed. “The soldiers will come, no doubt. And then we die indeed. We move now, my son.”

Half a dozen Strangers hovered near Cunningham. They were guards, to prevent his escape at any cost. That they would kill him to keep him from getting away there was no doubt. That they hated him was totally improbable. The faces of all the Strangers wore a settled, fatalistic look. Every one was now clad in the barbaric costume they had worn about the fires the night before, as if they had abandoned all hope of pretending longer that they were of the same sort as the inhabitants of the valleys.

* * * * *

Cunningham followed as the Strangers moved on. Little bands of them were constantly appearing unexpectedly from the woods and joining the main body. There were quite two hundred in all when they passed over a hill-crest and settled themselves in the valley beyond.

The mob had appeared from Bendale. On horse-back, in motor-cars and in wagons drawn by teams, what seemed to be the whole population had come raging out to Coulters. The farmers of the valley had put their women-folk together and come armed with weapons, from shotguns to pitchforks. And they had surged into the hills in quest of the Strange People. All had forgotten that the only thing genuinely proved against the Strangers was the death of Valdimir’s brother. All were hysterically convinced that the Strangers made a practise of kidnaping children and sacrificing adults in devilish orgies by their fires.

The belief was not unparalleled. To be peculiar is to invite suspicion. The Strangers were peculiar. Suspicion is always based on fear. What fear is more terrible than that of harm to one’s children? Every unknown man or race of men has been accused of the one crime. Gipsies are not yet freed of the suspicion of kidnaping. A lurking tramp or wanderer is instantly and invariably suspected of intent to commit the same offense.

Was it odd, then, that the secretive folk of the hills had been classed as doubtful? The mysterious ceremony of the fires, as described by the ignorant and frightened constables, was capable of any interpretation. What had been doubts and vague surmises became certainties when coupled with the ceremony which was meaningless unless sinister.

Now the Strangers had withdrawn from the first of the mountain-slopes. They abandoned their homes to the mob without a struggle. The houses went up in flames. The Strangers had seen the columns of smoke rising to the sky.

Men and women wore a look of settled calm. A mob that vastly outnumbered them, and was vastly better armed, was seeking them in raging madness. They waited to die. Some of the younger men chafed at the delay in fighting. With their throwing-knives they might have picked off many of their persecutors, but Stephan had forbidden it.

They waited. Darkness fell. Through the stillness of early night came the sound of a shot, then another and another. Wild yells broke loose below.

After a long time a runner came panting to the bivouac. He had bound the embroidered sash that was part of his costume about his arm, but it was stained--a dark purple in the moonlight.

Stephan ordered another move. Uncomplainingly the Strangers rose and plodded farther into the hills. The children were weary. Fretful little cries rose from the long line. Women hushed them gently. There was little talk. Just a long line of barbarously clad people plodding with bowed heads onward, onward, onward, while a shouting, raving mob raged through the woods in quest of them.

Cunningham went with them. He had no choice, but it is doubtful if he would have done otherwise had he been able to.

Again the weary people settled for a little rest. Yells sounded faintly, far to the right. A red glow began and grew larger and became a house burning with a crackling noise in the wilderness. Cunningham saw an old man rise on one elbow and peer at the flames. His face was apathetic. Then he lay down again.

“That was my house,” he said quietly to the man nearest him, and was silent.

Again came runners, panting. One man was sobbing in rage and humiliation, begging leave to plunge into the mob and die fighting--alone, if need be.

Stephan refused him gently.

“I think we die,” he said grimly, “but he”--Stephan pointed at Cunningham--“has promised that help will come. I do not believe it, but we can miss no chance. We have women with us, and children. We must hold ourselves for them. While the least chance remains, we must live.”

Once more came the order to move. And once more the weary march began. It had no object and it had no hope. But beneath the full moon the Strangers plodded on and on, until the baying of dogs set up behind them.

“They’ve sent down in the valley and got dogs!” raged Cunningham in a blend of fury and sick horror.

Stephan stroked his chin and gazed at Cunningham.

“What now, my son?” he asked.