“Then resist that temptation,” advised Mandifer urbanely. “It might be disastrous to you if we became enemies.”
“Then be kind enough to explain what you’re talking about,” commanded Lanark. Something swam into the forefront of his consciousness. “You say that your name is Mandifer. We found a girl named Enid Mandifer in the gulley yonder. She told us a very strange story. Are you her stepfather? The one who mesmerized her and—”
“She talked to you?” Mandifer’s soft voice suddenly shifted to a windy roar that broke Lanark’s questioning abruptly in two. “She came, and did not make the sacrifice of herself? She shall expiate, sir, and you with her!”
Lanark had had enough of this high-handed civilian’s airs. He made a motion with his left hand to Corporal Gray, whose carbine-barrel glinted in the light from the house as it leveled itself at Mandifer’s skull-head.
“You’re under arrest,” Lanark informed the two men.
The bigger one growled, the first sound he had made. He threw his enormous body forward in a sudden leaping stride, his gross hands extended as though to clutch Lanark. Jager, at the lieutenant’s side, quickly drew his revolver and fired from the hip. The enormous body fell, rolled over and subsided.
“You have killed my son!” shrieked Mandifer.
“Take hold of him, you two,” ordered Lanark, and Suggs and Josserand obeyed.
The gaunt form of Mandifer achieved one explosive struggle, then fell tautly motionless with the big hands of the troopers upon his elbows.
“Thanks, Jager,” continued Lanark. “That was done quickly and well. Some of you drag this body up on the porch and cover it. Gray, tumble upstairs and bring down that girl we found.”
While waiting for the corporal to return, Lanark ordered further that a bonfire be built to banish a patch of the deepening darkness. It was beginning to shoot up its bright tongues as the corporal ushered Enid Mandifer out upon the porch.
She had arranged her disordered clothing, had even contrived to put up her hair somehow, loosely but attractively. The firelight brought out a certain strength of line and angle in her face, and made her eyes shine darkly. She was manifestly frightened at the sight of her stepfather and the blanket-covered corpses to one side; but she faced determinedly a flood of half-understandable invectives from the emaciated man. She answered him, too; Lanark did not know what she meant by most of the things she said, but gathered correctly that she was refusing, finally and completely, to do something.
“Then I shall say no more,” gritted out the spidery Mandifer, and his bared teeth were of the flat, chalky white of long-dead bone. “I place this matter in the hands of the Nameless One. He will not forgive, will not forget.”
Enid moved a step toward Lanark, who put out a hand and touched her arm reassuringly. The mounting flame of the bonfire lighted up all who watched and listened—the withered, glaring mummy that was Persil Mandifer, the frightened but defiant shapeliness of Enid in her flower-patterned gown, Lanark in his sudden attitude of protection, the ring of troopers in their dusty blue blouses. With the half-lighted front of the weathered old house like a stage set behind them, and alternate red lights and sooty shadows playing over all, they might have been a tableau in some highly melodramatic opera.
“Silence,” Lanark was grating. “For the last time, Mr. Mandifer, let me remind you that I have placed you under arrest. If you don’t calm down immediately and speak only when you’re spoken to, I’ll have my men tie you flat to four stakes and put a gag in your mouth.”
Mandifer subsided at once, just as he was on the point of hurling another harsh threat at Enid.
“That’s much better,” said Lanark. “Sergeant Jager, it strikes me that we’d better get our pickets out to guard this position.”
Mandifer cleared his throat with actual diffidence. “Lieutenant Lanark—that is your name, I gather,” he said in the soft voice which he had employed when he had first appeared. “Permit me, sir, to say but two words.” He peered as though to be sure of consent. “I have it in my mind that it is too late, useless, to place any kind of guard against surprise.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lanark.
“It is all of a piece with your offending of him who owns this house and the land which encompasses it,” continued Mandifer. “I believe that a body of your enemies, mounted men of the Southern forces, are upon you. That man who died upon the brow of Fearful Rock might have seen them coming, but he was brought down sightless and voiceless, and nobody was assigned in his place.”
He spoke truth. Gray, in his agitation, had not posted a fresh sentry. Lanark drew his lips tight beneath his mustache.
“Once more you feel that it is a time to joke with us, Mr. Mandifer,” he growled. “I have already suggested gagging you and staking you out.”
“But listen,” Mandifer urged him.
Suddenly hoofs thundered, men yelled a double-noted defiance, high and savage—“Yee-hee!”
It was the rebel yell.
Quantrill’s guerrillas rode out of the dark and upon them.
V
Blood in the Night
Neither Lanark nor the others remembered that they began to fight for their lives; they only knew all at once that they were doing it. There was a prolonged harsh rattle of gunshots like a blast of hail upon hard wood; Lanark, by chance or unconscious choice, snatched at and drew his sword instead of his revolver.
A horse’s flying shoulder struck him, throwing him backward but not down. As he reeled to save his footing, he saved also his own life; for the rider, a form all cascading black beard and slouch hat, thrust a pistol almost into the lieutenant’s face and fired. The flash was
