The trouble at Pinelands A detective story

I knew it wa’n’t healthy f’r me around there, an’ I beat it. Honest, that’s all!” “Humph!” said Somers. “Who was it?” But there Satterfield balked. He would say no more; nothing could move him to give the man’s name, he protested. We would go to the collector; to the prohibition enforcement agents? Very well! That would be the death of _him_, but it would do us no good. “I tell yuh I’m a-scared o’ this feller,” he repeated. “I ain’t a-goin’ t’ say nothin’ _about_ ’im--not one thing! He might as well kill me f’r squealin’ about one thing as another, an’ I ain’t a-goin’ t’ squeal, neither! You-all c’n git me killed if yuh like, but I ain’t done nothin’ t’ deserve it.” His final protest was not without its dignity. He was adamant; he admitted, white-faced and shaking, that a horrible death awaited him if it should be thought that he had betrayed his confederates in the illicit liquor traffic. None the less, he would tell us nothing. “You seem as much frightened of this man you saw waiting for Gaskell as you do of the leader of your gang,” declared Somers at last. Then he added a shrewd suggestion: “Perhaps they’re the same man?” Satterfield threw up his hands. “For law’s sake, doc!” he exclaimed. “Naw--yes--naw! I don’t know what t’ say!” And he fell to weeping openly. “Well, tell me this: Why did you plan to kill Gaskell?” He looked up sullenly. “I had my orders. Th’ feller knowed too much.” “It wasn’t just because he sent you to jail, then?” asked Somers. “Huh? That wa’n’t s’ much. I been in jail afore that.” “You had orders to shoot Gaskell, then. And, when you got down there, you found the man who gave you those orders, and you decided he was going to take the matter over himself. Is that right?” Satterfield nodded reluctantly. “Did the same man order you to lynch Parker?” “We-ell, no, not exactly, but I figgered mebbe he’d like t’ have it seed to.” “Exactly! So you think the chief of your bootlegging gang killed Doctor Gaskell? But you’re afraid to admit it, even though we don’t know the fellow.” Somers rose. The other, completely cowed, gazed at him in fear. “No,” said Somers, with a grim laugh, “we shan’t turn you up this time. But listen closely, Satterfield: You keep quiet! If you drop so much as a hint to this mysterious boss of yours, that you’re so scared of, if you suggest to him that we’re after him, Heaven help you! And now, get out!” Satterfield rose with alacrity, half in doubt that he was to be let off so easily. “I won’t say nothin’,” he replied. “Ain’t got to! You go monkeyin’ round with _him_, an’ that’ll be th’ last of yuh!” He disappeared, and we locked up the place and started back toward Fort House. At the corner, Peter turned. “I’ll trot down after the mail,” said he. “Be back in five minutes.” We found Dorothy and Miss Christie in the living room. Both looked up at us expectantly. “Progress,” said Somers. “I think we’re on the trail of the murderer at last.” And he told them briefly of to-day’s work. As he finished, a thought struck me. “Look here, Somers; remember that third man out there? I told you he was in town the night of the murder. He was over at Gaskell’s, and he made some sort of a threat; you remember my telling you, Dorothy? A tremendous old man with a long, white beard, called himself ‘Roaring Lafe’ Rutledge? What if he were this mysterious leader of the whisky smugglers? He was in town, and he threatened Gaskell.” Somers did not reply. His eyes were on Anne Christie, who had grown very white. I had seen her flinch at the name of Rutledge, and now I recalled her strange conduct of that other night, when she had dashed from the house after hearing that name. What did she know of this thing? “Are you sick?” asked Somers. “Miss Christie--Anne! What’s the matter?” Her lips opened, but Peter dashed in with a black face. “Grand jury proceedings are out,” he announced. “And they’ve indicted Lewis Parker for murder in the first degree!” The news stunned us all, though we had been more or less prepared for it. Then, in the sudden silence which greeted this bombshell, Anne Christie spoke. “I--perhaps I could help a little,” she said. CHAPTER XXIII ANNE CHRISTIE’S STORY We all turned upon the nurse. Beneath our wondering gaze the bright color rose high, flooding her fair face; then receded once more, leaving her very pale. But she faced us bravely. “I--I----You see, I’ve hated so to talk about it all, even to think about it, and especially this last two weeks.” She spoke to all of us, but her big violet eyes were fixed upon Doctor Somers. “And now, to make you-all understand, I’ll have to go back to the very beginning, I’m afraid, and tell you about me. You won’t mind?” I suppressed an exclamation. Truly this quiet, somnolent nurse had changed! I wondered what explanation she was about to offer for her queer conduct of that night before the murder, when the name of “Roaring Lafe” Rutledge had driven her from the house; of her excitement next morning, when she had fainted at the news of Doctor Gaskell’s death. And I wondered the more what had moved her to volunteer any information about herself, for I remembered--and the thought had puzzled me more than once--that never, save once, during all her six months at Fort House, had she spoken so much as a word about her past life. “You won’t mind?” she asked again, eyes wistfully fixed upon Doctor Somers. “And you’ll try to make allowances--not to think little of me? I----” She stopped and bit her lips, then went bravely on, slender hands clenched at her sides. “I was born in the mountains, up near the Tennessee border, in a log cabin on Lick Run. My mother came from the settlements; I never knew my father. He died when I was a baby. I’ve heard mother say he was educated; that he’d been to college, even. But why they went up into the mountains to live she never would tell me. All I know is that she wouldn’t go back to the settlements even when he died. A tree fell on him, mother said. When I was a little girl I used to go out and climb up to the very peak of Snagtooth Mountain and sit beside his grave and wonder--about so many things! He was buried there, on the very top of the mountain, under a big, lone pine tree. “After that we were very poor, mother and I. I used to go barefoot, summer and winter; and so did she. We never wore shoes, either of us, for years and years.” She looked down at her slender, high-arched feet, now so trimly shod, as if in wonder at their being covered. We were all very still. Somers’ deep-set gray-green eyes were inscrutable. I blew my nose hard, seeing in fancy that little slim girl, barefooted and ragged, huddled on the peak of a wind-swept mountain beside the grave of the father she could not remember, hugging bare, brown knees and staring off across the jutting hills, wondering about so many things! “I wore the same dress for two years,” she went on dreamily. Her tragic eyes were all for Doctor Somers; she was telling her story to him, watching him for sympathy, for approval, for scorn. She would tell him all. I fancied I could read the determination in her white, set face. And then, if he turned from her--well! “I wore the same dress for two years. Mother patched it and patched it--poor mother--until I’d forgotten its original color. There were homespun patches, I remember, and blue-jean ones, bits of flour sacking and burlap. We were very poor. There was only the small piece of cleared land, and mother wasn’t strong enough even to take care of that. The weeds grew higher than the corn. And she’d take my father’s ax and try so hard to chop down a little tree and blister her poor hands and cry. “We couldn’t live that way. Then this Lafe Rutledge began coming. They called him Roaring Lafe even then, fourteen years ago. He was a great, big man and strong! I remember once there were two city men out hunting. They were so wonderfully dressed, I thought! I’d never seen such clothes. They stopped for a drink of water from our spring and stood talking with mother. She was so pretty, my mother! And they talked and laughed, and seemed so surprised that mother spoke like a lady, had read books, and everything. And she stood there with her poor cheeks so pretty and pink, and Lafe Rutledge came through the woods behind these two men, looking as big as both of them together, with his great beard blowing in the wind--it was black then--and he just made an awful, roaring noise like some great bear. Then he ran at those poor men and caught them, each by his neck, and swung them right up off the ground and carried them off like that, at arms’ length. And then we heard a scuffling and sliding, as he just threw them down the mountain, and he came back, laughing, and threw their guns after them. I ran away and hid. I was always afraid of him. “He used to come like that, twice every week, with his big boots greased, his hair slicked down and shiny, and bear’s grease and cheap perfumery in his beard. I remember still how it smelled. I was afraid of him, and I think mother was, too. He didn’t know how old he was; he couldn’t write or figure, and he couldn’t read much. I suppose he was fifty, even then. He’d had two wives already, and both were dead. “I don’t know how it came about. Perhaps she did it for me. We were very poor--starving, almost, and Lafe Rutledge was rich, as the mountain folks count it. We didn’t know then how he made his money! Anyway, mother married him. That was twelve years ago. She married him, and we went to live in his house on the Devil’s Branch. She was his third, he said, with that awful, roaring laugh he had; but, then, he was her second, so that was all right. Poor mother! After all she’d told me about my kind, gentle father, to marry Roaring Lafe Rutledge! I hated it even then; I ran away and hid and wouldn’t go there until I was starved to it. But I didn’t know, I couldn’t understand then, what it meant to her. “And yet the man was good to her, according to his lights. He never beat her; he bought her a new dress every year. But he used to go down to the store and get drunk, and then come home running his mule and beating the poor beast. He was dreadfully cruel to animals, and it was hard enough for any horse or mule to carry him; he was so big and heavy. And he’d come up the Branch, beating the mule and shouting and roaring worse than a wild bull; that’s why they called him Roaring Lafe, I suppose. And then he’d sit by the fireplace, with a jug at his elbow, and he’d drink and drink. We didn’t dare go to bed; mother would sit beside me in a corner, very still--frightened, I suppose, just as I was frightened--until at last he’d drop over right where he sat. Then we’d drag his boots off and get him to bed some way.” She stopped and wet her lips, looking round at us in apology. “You see, I’ve had plenty of experience in caring for drunken men,” she said. Somers flinched visibly. “It was like a nightmare,” she went on, “and it only got worse. Mother got thinner and thinner and whiter and whiter. She knew long before I did; she tried to keep it from me, but it wasn’t a year before I found it out, too. Lafe Rutledge was running a still. He made moonshine whisky up on the slope of Snagtooth Mountain, made it by the barrel and sold it all over that country. And nobody dared do anything about it; they were all afraid of him. “Ten years ago the revenue officers made a big raid up there, and they nearly caught my--my stepfather. He shot one of them and killed him. He had to hide out in the laurel for months and months, but they never caught him, and pretty soon he’d started up another still in a new