Wolfs Head | Page 7

hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening
door. "Barton Smith!" she exclaimed, with shrill significance. "Hyar is
yer guide, Sher'ff, wet ez a drownded rat."
The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light
flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement.
For a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling
with his suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to
discriminate the powers of the dramatis personæ.
"Now, my man, step lively," said the officer in his big, husky voice.
"Do you know this Royston McGurny?"
To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition

and the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others
as to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard
wretch at the door, mustering his courage, replied: "Know Royston
McGurny! None better. Knowed him all my life."
"Got pretty good horse?"
"Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison's."
"I'll go show ye whar the saddle be," exclaimed Meddy, with her
wonted officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered
scheme. Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom
without, whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate
chance of escape before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton
Smith should balk the possibility. But, no,--and he doubted anew all his
suspicions,--in a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new
hope in that pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among
the equine group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown
skirt of her gown, showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a
coarse, red plaid shawl adjusted over her head and shoulders.
"Gran'dad," she observed, never looking up, and speaking with her
mouth full of pins, "Barton Smith say he kin set me down at Aunt
Drusina's house. Ye know she be ailin', an' sent for me this evenin'; but
I hed no way ter go."
The sheriff looked sour enough at this intrusion; but he doubtless
imagined that this relative was no distant neighbor, and as he had need
of hearty aid and popular support, he offered no protest.
There was a clearing sky without, and the wind was laid. The frenzy of
the storm was over, although rain was still falling. The little cavalcade
got to horse deliberately enough amid the transparent dun shadows and
dim yellow flare of light from open door and window. One of the
mounts had burst a girth, and a strap must be procured from the
plow-gear in the shed. Another, a steed of some spirit, reared and
plunged at the lights, and could not be induced to cross the illuminated
bar thrown athwart the yard from the open door. The official

impatience of the delay was expressed in irritable comments and
muttered oaths; but throughout the interval the guide, with his pallid,
strained face, sat motionless in his saddle, his rifle across its pommel,
an apt presentment of indifference, while, perched behind him, Meddy
was continually busy in readjusting her skirts or shawl or a small
bundle that presumably contained her rustic finery, but which, to a
close approach, would have disclosed the sulphurous odor of
gunpowder. When the cluster of horsemen was fairly on the march,
however, she sat quite still, and more than once Seymour noted that,
with her face close to the shoulder of the guide, she was whispering in
his ear. What was their garnet he marvelled, having once projected the
idea that this late comer was, himself, the "wolf's head" whom they
were to chase down for a rich reward, incongruously hunting amidst his
own hue and cry. Or, Seymour again doubted, had he merely
constructed a figment of a scheme from his own imaginings and these
attenuations of suggestion? For there seemed, after all, scant
communication between the two, and this was even less when the moon
was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds falling away from the
great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with an incomparable
splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the sheriff ordered
the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they went at first, but
presently they were following through bosky recesses a deer-path,
winding sinuously at will on the way to water. The thinning foliage let
in the fair, ethereal light, and all the sylvan aisles stood in sheeny silver
illumination. The drops of moisture glittered jewel-wise on the dark
boughs of fir and pine, and one could even discriminate the red glow of
sour-wood and the golden flare of hickory, so well were the chromatic
harmonies asserted in this refined and refulgent glamour.
"Barton Smith!" called the sheriff, suddenly from the