“I dunno what else I can do for you, sonny. My stories don’t seem to rest you none.”
“Only leave me,” he said.
“Then lie and think,” she said, thrusting her wicked face closer to his. “You lie and think about the good day that’s comin’ before you, and you eat plenty of good meat and keep yourself fat and strong, because you’ll need all of your strength when they take you out and tie you to a tree, my son.”
She turned from him, shuffling away with the lantern. It cast vast shadows that swung up against the ceiling and then down and out before her. It made the room seem awash.
Then she was gone, and the cellar door was closed with a heavy, smashing sound.
The ears of the captive must have been attuned by sorrow, for he could hear the voice of Will Brett saying calmly: “You spent a long time down there.”
“My business couldn’t be done quick,” she replied. “Gimme your arm into the house, Billy dear.”
After that the long silence began once more and ran on into the morning. Yet Paul did not grow irritated by the blank time. His thoughts ran before him like a rapidly flowing river. He was seeing all the past of his race. Before that, the name of Torridon had had no content to him. The malice of Aunt Ellen with her recital of horrors had given him a history and his people a past. He was almost grateful to her for the torture of that story.
XV
Ten days of blackness, utter blackness.
He was fed once a day. He was shifted into a corner room of the cellar. There it was damper, wetter. Twice during the ten days heavy rains came, and the water covered the floor on which he lay.
He wondered profoundly why he did not sicken and die. But he had not so much as a cold in the head. It was not disease that troubled him. It was the constant misery of the wet, the dirt, the darkness, the scampering of rats, which repeatedly crossed his hands and face. And once, stretching out his hand at a noise, he passed his fingers along the sliding back of a snake.
So ten days passed.
Then he was visited by John Brett in person. The old leader threw the door back and came heavily down the stairs. He pushed his lantern into the face of the captive and leaned above him.
“Are you awake?”
“I’m awake,” said the boy.
“I’ve brought news for you.”
“Yes?” he answered calmly, for he had given up hope.
“We offered you in exchange for Joe. But they say they don’t believe that we’ve got a real Torridon. No real Torridon would’ve lived twelve years with the Bretts.”
He paused to allow this information to sink in.
“They won’t give up Joe Brett for you,” he concluded. “So you see what they done for you? We gotta kill you, my boy. Duty to do it. Only it’s night now. We gotta wait for the mornin’ to have light to see the show. So long, Paul. I hope you keep your head up high in the mornin’, the way that a Torridon should.”
He turned away. At the door he paused and threw over his shoulder: “She’s been here beggin’ for you, draggin’ herself at my knees, weepin’ and cryin’ for you. But though you might be able to make a fool out of the Brett women, you ain’t gonna make a fool out of me through their talk.”
He slammed the door, turned the key with a screech in the rusty bolt, and then stamped away.
Paul Torridon was almost glad that the waiting was over. It was not death, but the manner of it that was terrible. But at least he could depend on good old Jack. Jack Brett would never see him suffer, but would drive a bullet cheerfully through his heart, and so the merciful end.
The wind came up. He heard its distant whining and moaning. And the rain drove against the house in rattling gusts. By fits and starts, the squalls of that storm rushed against the house, and Torridon was glad of the storm, too, because it would help to fill the long hours of the night. He hoped that it would rave and scream in the morning, too, when he was led out to die. For he had only that one grim hope left—that he might find the strength to die with a smile on his lips, as a brave man should. He even hoped that, before the end, he could be able to find a speech of sharp defiance, and taunting, so that the memory of how he had died might have a noble place in the mind of Nancy, since that was all that he could leave to her.
A leak had sprung somewhere in the very center of the cellar. A quick, sharp rattling fall seemed to come at his very door. The wind howled far off; another gust of rain smashed on the house and again he could hear that clatter at his door.
And then, was it not the faint, harsh murmur of the hinges, slowly turned?
He braced himself. There was such a thing as a midnight murder to defeat the hand of justice, which was beginning to be extended more and more often into this region where the gun had been the only judge.
Then a soft voice called: “Paul Torridon!” A man’s voice—quiet, pitched just with the fall of the rain.
He said loudly: “Here I am. If you’ve come to murder me, strike a light. I want to see your face.”
Something crouched beside him. His body turned to rigid steel,
“Torridon, I’m Roger Lincoln.”
That name dissolved the world and left the blackness and the cold and the dark of despair far off, and brought the prisoner suddenly into the light of warm hope and comfort.
Roger Lincoln!
The ropes were cut away from his hands, from his feet. He tried to rise, but Lincoln thrust him back again. There was wonderful power in the famous hand of that hero.
“Lie still. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, and relax.”
He obeyed those quick orders with perfect attention.
And then the strong hands began to move, rubbing his numbed muscles, bringing sense and power into his nerves, into his whole body. Paul began to tingle where the ropes had long worn at the flesh, until the tingling made him almost cry out.
“Now,” said Roger Lincoln, ceasing from his labor. “Now, try your feet.”
Paul stood up in the dark.
He found himself ridiculously weak. His head went around. He would have fallen, but the other clutched and steadied him.
“This is bad,” he heard Lincoln mutter. “This is very bad.” He paused, breathing hard from the work of that rubbing. Then he said: “I’ve brought an extra pistol. Can you use a pistol at all?”
“Yes.”
“Here it is. Double-barreled. It shoots straight and it’s not too heavy. Never fire till I give the word, and I won’t give the word unless it’s the last chance. And . . .”
“Hush,” said Paul Torridon.
He had lain those endless hours in the place until his ear could make out everything, everywhere in the cellar.
Someone had raised the cellar door, the big, flat, massive door.
Outside that was always at least one guard. John Brett took no chances.
“How did you come in?” whispered Paul.
“Through the door,” said Roger Lincoln. “The hail knocked them silly a little while ago. Then I went in when they hunted cover. They’re tired of their work.”
“They know that you’re here,” said Torridon in an agony of conviction.
“How can they?”
“They’re opening the cellar door now.”
“Follow me . . . straight behind me, if you can.”
“I can, I think. If you go slowly, slowly.”
He concentrated. He fought his reeling head, his clumsy, weak limbs, and made them go straight. So he marched ahead. They were through the door of the cell that had held him, and then a suddenly unhooded lantern flamed against their eyes. And behind the lantern light they saw the dim silhouettes of four men, guns in hand.