A Pagan of the Hills

ay's caucus still loafed inactively about the sidewalks, it was not because they were indifferent to possible developments, but in obedience to a settled plan. Last night a party had s

th meticulous care and completeness. For communication and signaling the voices of forest things were available; the caw o

re were washouts and quicksands; treacherous fords and shelving precipices to be encountered

own who with a single companion strode along a wet and tangl

in town also began drifting toward the outbound trail. There m

ntent to accept dismissal-or inactivity. Halloway and Sellers knew that the dangers of which she made little cou

travel across the "roughs" at better than a mounted pace and be less cumbered. His destination was the telegraph office at Viper. Jerry O'Keefe and a handful of others were to mobolize inconspicuously the

tervening country into zones and to arrange outwardly innocent signals which should designate the locality in which it might become imperative to gather and strike. Teleph

ent was to call him up from time to time-if he could. His inquiries would be couched in questions as to possible purchases

a little way two horsemen came up behind her. She knew neither of them, and they were immature boys, with the empty and vacuous faces of almost degenerate illiteracy. They seemed unarmed but since it was vital to Alexander's scheme to ride unwatched it became important to have them either go ahead or to distance them. Accordingly she urged her mule into a lumbering canter and when a turn of

se chance fellow wayfarers had become a definite menace. So, fretting at the delay, she waited there for some time,

coloring of her cheeks and shook her lazy b

and belligerently confronting the trou

d," she demanded angrily, and the two youths seemed at first too abashed for speech

ed. "We kinderly happens ter be travelin' ther sam

g now with a blue light like burning alcohol. "You choose yore gai

tongue by this time and he

rty, I reckon," he announced.

ver and issued an ultimatum. "I warns ye both now. I'm agoin' ter stand right hyar long enough ter count a hundred. If either one of ye's in sight at the

With some grumbled incoherence, they went on. They even went at a gallop

ast and never in Viper until now; so until someone drifted in who remembered his interference at the tavern he would not necessarily be recognized as having any connection with Alexander's affairs. Indeed he had been seen with her so l

alloway passed him and brushed his shoulders, neither gave any sign of recognition and

h they bent on him that he was something less than welcome. Palpably the present occupants of that small room preferred to remain u

graph operator. Then looking down at that person he added with awkward, back-c

an looked up

any timber they sought ter sell." The giant still spoke with a hulking shyness. "I hain't l'arned nothin', because I c

anced in their direction, they fell at once into a semblance of carelessness. The operat

stly thrust b

. I 'lowed I'd get ye ter do hit fer me. Just say I haven't heered of

is instrument fell into a frenzied activity. Halloway thought that the other loiterers, who were really no more genuinely loitering than

questions, and at the end he rose from his chair, not with a regularly transcri

inking himself of the presence of the interloper, and Halloway

age, Stranger? Did t

er take your talk jest now." Then with exaggerated carelessness he turned to one of the other loungers. "Joe, ef ye'll c

spell an' see kin I git my man later on," and making that observa

The man in his chair beyond the door could of course hear no word of that hurried conference, but after all

hey sought to follow her, but she left her mule and tu

e had been short-lived for the operator here at Viper had flashed back the interrogation, "What then," a

r boys there head her off at the mouth of Chim

as he listened. He had recognized the sending from

e dots and dashes of the code, but also the individual peculiarities of their rapping out. Now he would have been willin

al City, or left it in charge of a relief man, and that he had co

ng aimlessly along the sidewalk a half a block away. Jerry too was waiting for instructions and ready, once he had r

ched himself. As he did so his h

or whatever you may choose to call it. Suddenly, into the telegrapher's consciousness flashed the suspicion that in the departure of this unknown observer lurked some hidden menace. In what that danger lay he was all at sea but it was a thing he felt and upon which he acted. The knigh

he shoulders of his captors the distant figure of

ge he might carry down the two armed figures and escape, but before undertaking that he turned his head for a backward glanc

ed so strenuously on pure impulse and not without a cer

town marshal at Coal City talkin'. He described this man an' said he was wanted thar fer s

pair of handcuffs and rattled them as he explained, "

of their shackling. Had any human possibility of a break for freedom presented itself he would have embrace

es of the bracelets the telegrapher

her key. I don't know how we'll e

re in a chair, where with a revolver against his temple, they gagged him and lashed h

er or later be recognized and returned to the stable, but she did not want it recognized too promptly so she led it with her into the woods and turned it loose well up on the mountain side. From that moment she disappeared with

ey been frosty and brittle underfoot, but even had

he conspiracy, but she asked only two hours of freedom. After that she would be

d seen a party of horsemen ride by, far below, and she laugh

ak. That meant that she must for awhile go down to lower and more perilous levels. This was the final,

ness, her spirits began to mount. There are huntsmen who will tell you that the wily and experienced fox come

something like despair tightened about her heart. Across the line of her march boiled a freshet which might as well have been a river. To swim it with her impediments

ry trail and by-way hereabouts. He was a youth with a vacuous, almost idiotic face, whom she had that same day encountered. He had left her sight, but had never been too remote to follow or g

of a small house, which lay scattered where at last the water grew shallow. She co

enness was a screen whose other side might harbor things only to be guessed. There one must risk an ambuscade, trusting to o

her until she came to the last. As she rounded the final shoulder

he roomy freedom of the woods she must come out at last through th

n whose faces were masked and whose bodies were

, until the sheer force of their numbers had smothered her into helplessness. Her coat was ripped and her s

hance of guessing the course, to a place where the air was cool with that freshness of q

lls of an abandoned coal mine. About her too ranged in the spectral formality of masked faces

ad an' awful conclave of ther order of ther Ku-Klux; ther regulators of sich as defies proper an' d