acrid of scent by the night. All was very quiet except for a stir of voices in the distance here and there, always kept hushed as though the speaker felt and acknowledged the influence of the profound night in the mountains. Someone came down the street carrying a lantern. It turned his steps into vast spokes of shadows that rushed back and forth across the houses with the swing of the light. The lantern light gleamed on the stained flank of El Sangre.
“Halloo, Jake, that you?”
The man with the lantern raised it, but its light merely served to blind him. Terry passed on without a word and heard the other mutter behind him: “Some damn stranger!”
Perhaps strangers were not welcome in Craterville. At least, it seemed so when he reached the hotel after putting up his horse in the shed behind the old building. Half a dozen dark forms sat on the veranda talking in the subdued voices which he had noted before. Terry stepped through the lighted doorway. There was no one inside.
“Want something?” called a voice from the porch. The widow Rickson came in to him.
“A room, please,” said Terry.
But she was gaping at him. “You! Terence—Hollis!”
A thousand things seemed to be in that last word, which she brought out with a shrill ring of her voice. Terry noted that the talking on the porch was cut off as though a hand had been clapped over the mouth of every man.
He recalled that the widow had been long a friend of the sheriff and he was suddenly embarrassed.
“If you have a spare room, Mrs. Rickson. Otherwise, I'll find—”
Her manner had changed. It became as strangely ingratiating as it had been horrified, suspicious, before.
“Sure I got a room. Best in the house, if you want it. And—you'll be hungry, Mr.—Hollis?”
He wondered why she insisted so savagely on that newfound name? He admitted that he was very hungry from his ride, and she led him back to the kitchen and gave him cold ham and coffee and vast slices of bread and butter.
She did not talk much while he ate, and he noted that she asked no questions. Afterwards she led him through the silence of the place up to the second story and gave him a room at the corner of the building. He thanked her. She paused at the door with her hand on the knob, and her eyes fixed him through and through with a glittering, hostile stare. A wisp of gray hair had fallen across her cheek, and there it was plastered to the skin with sweat, for the evening was, warm.
“No trouble,” she muttered at length. “None at all. Make yourself to home, Mr.—Hollis!”
CHAPTER 18
When the door closed on her, Terry remained standing in the middle of the room watching the flame in the oil lamp she had lighted flare and rise at the corner, and then steady down to an even line of yellow; but he was not seeing it; he was listening to that peculiar silence in the house. It seemed to have spread over the entire village, and he heard no more of those casual noises which he had noticed on his coming.
He went to the window and raised it to let whatever wind was abroad enter the musty warmth of the room. He raised the sash with stealthy caution, wondering at his own stealthiness. And he was oddly glad when the window rose without a squeak. He leaned out and looked up and down the street. It was unchanged. Across the way a door flung open, a child darted out with shrill laughter and dodged about the corner of the house, escaping after some mischief.
After that the silence again, except that before long a murmur began on the veranda beneath him where the half-dozen obscure figures had been sitting when he entered. Why should they be mumbling to themselves? He thought he could distinguish the voice of the widow Rickson among the rest, but he shrugged that idle thought away and turned back into his room. He sat down on the side of the bed and pulled off his boots, but the minute they were off he was ill at ease. There was something oppressive about the atmosphere of this rickety old hotel. What sort of a world was this he had entered, with its whispers, its cold glances?
He cast himself back on his bed, determined to be at ease. Nevertheless, his heart kept bumping absurdly. Now, Terry began to grow angry. With the feeling that there was danger in the air of Craterville—for him—there came a nervous setting of the muscles, a desire to close on someone and throttle the secret of this hostility. At this point he heard a light tapping at the door. Terry sat bolt upright on the bed.
There are all kinds of taps. There are bold, heavy blows on the door that mean danger without; there are careless, conversational rappings; but this was a furtive tap, repeated after a pause as though it contained a code message.
First there was a leap of fear—then cold quiet of the nerves. He was surprised at himself. He found himself stepping into whatever adventure lay toward him with the lifting of the spirits. It was a stimulus.
He called cheerfully: “Come in!”
And the moment he had spoken he was off the bed, noiselessly, and half the width of the room away. It had come to him as he spoke that it might be well to shift from the point from which his voice had been heard.
The door opened swiftly—so swiftly was it opened and closed that it made a faint whisper in the air, oddly like a sigh. And there was no click of the lock either in the opening or the closing. Which meant an incalculably swift and dexterous manipulation with the fingers. Terry found himself facing a short-throated man with heavy shoulders; he wore a shapeless black hat bunched on his head as though the whole hand had grasped the crown and shoved the hat into place. It sat awkwardly to one side. And the hat typified the whole man. There was a sort of shifty readiness about him. His eyes flashed in the lamplight as they glanced at the bed, and then flicked back toward Terry. And a smile began somewhere in his face and instantly went out. It was plain that he had understood the maneuver.
He continued to survey Terry insolently for a moment without announcing himself. Then he stated: “You're him, all right!”
“Am I?” said Terry, regarding this unusual visitor with increasing suspicion. “But I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”
