IV
The Mandifers
Jager, bending, lifted the newspaper and then dropped it back. He said something that, for all his religiosity, might have been an oath.
“What’s the matter, sergeant?” demanded Lanark.
Jager’s brows were clamped in a tense frown, and his beard was actually trembling. “His face, sir. It’s terrible.”
“A wound?” asked Lanark, and lifted the paper in turn. He, too, let it fall back, and his exclamation of horror and amazement was unquestionably profane.
“There ain’t no wound on him, Lieutenant Lanark,” offered Suggs, pushing his wan, plump face to the forefront of the troopers. “We heard Newton yell—heard him from the top of the rock yonder.”
All eyes turned gingerly toward the promontory.
“That’s right, sir,” added Corporal Gray. “I’d just sent Newton up, to relieve Josserand.”
“You heard him yell,” prompted Lanark. “Go on, what happened?”
“I hailed him back,” said the corporal, “but he said nothing. So I climbed up—that north side’s the easiest to climb. Newton was standing at the top, standing straight up with his carbine at the ready. He must have been dead right then.”
“You mean, he was struck somehow as you watched?”
Gray shook his head. “No, sir. I think he was dead as he stood up. He didn’t move or speak, and when I touched him he sort of coiled down—like an empty coat falling off a clothesline.” Gray’s hand made a downward-floating gesture in illustration. “When I turned him over I saw his face, all twisted and scared-looking, like—like what the lieutenant has seen. And I sung out for Suggs and McSween to come up and help me bring him down.”
Lanark gazed at Newton’s body. “He was looking which way?”
“Over yonder, eastward.” Gray pointed unsteadily. “Like it might have been beyond the draw and them trees in it.”
Lanark and Jager peered into the waning light, that was now dusk. Jager mumbled what Lanark had already been thinking—that Newton had died without wounds, at or near the moment when the horned image had been shattered upon the cellar floor.
Lanark nodded, and dismissed several vague but disturbing inspirations. “You say he died standing up, Gray. Was he leaning on his gun?”
“No, sir. He stood on his two feet, and held his carbine at the ready. Sounds impossible, a dead man standing up like that, but that’s how it was.”
“Bring his blanket and cover him up,” said Lanark. “Put a guard over him, and we’ll bury him tomorrow. Don’t let any of the men look at his face. We’ve got to give him some kind of funeral.” He turned to Jager. “Have you a prayerbook, sergeant?”
Jager had fished out the Long Lost Friend volume. He was reading something aloud, as though it were a prayer: “… and be and remain with us on the water and upon the land,” he pattered out. “May the Eternal Godhead also—”
“Stop that heathen nonsense,” Lanark almost roared. “You’re supposed to be an example to the men, sergeant. Put that book away.”
Jager obeyed, his big face reproachful. “It was a spell against evil spirits,” he explained, and for a moment Lanark wished that he had waited for the end. He shrugged and issued further orders.
“I want all the lamps lighted in the house, and perhaps a fire out here in the yard,” he told the men. “We’ll keep guard both here and in that gulley to the east. If there is a mystery, we’ll solve it.”
“Pardon me, sir,” volunteered a well-bred voice, in which one felt rather than heard the tiny touch of foreign accent. “I can solve the mystery for you, though you may not thank me.”
Two men had come into view, were drawing up beside the little knot of troopers. How had they approached? Through the patroled brush of the ravine? Around the corner of the house? Nobody had seen them coming, and Lanark, at least, started violently. He glowered at this new enigma.
The man who had spoken paused at the foot of the porch steps, so that lamplight shone upon him through the open front door. He was skeleton-gaunt, in face and body, and even his bones were small. His eyes burned forth from deep pits in his narrow, high skull, and his clothing was that of a dandy of the forties. In his twig-like fingers he clasped bunches of herbs.
His companion stood to one side in the shadow, and could be seen only as a huge coarse lump of a man.
“I am Persil Mandifer,” the thin creature introduced himself. “I came here to gather from the gardens,” and he held out his handfuls of leaves and stalks. “You, sir, you are in command of these soldiers, are you not? Then know that you are trespassing.”
“The expediencies of war,” replied Lanark easily, for he had seen Suggs and Corporal Gray bring their carbines forward in their hands. “You’ll have to forgive our intrusion.”
A scornful mouth opened in the emaciated face, and a soft, superior chuckle made itself heard. “Oh, but this is not my estate. I am allowed here, yes—but it is not mine. The real Master—” The gaunt figure shrugged, and the voice paused for a moment. The bright eyes sought Newton’s body. “From what I see and what I heard as I came up to you, there has been trouble. You have transgressed somehow, and have begun to suffer.”
“To you Southerners, all Union soldiers are trespassers and transgressors,” suggested Lanark, but the other laughed and shook his fleshless white head.
“You misunderstand, I fear. I care nothing about this war, except that I am amused to see so many people killed. I bear no part in it. Of course, when I came to pluck herbs, and saw your sentry at the top of Fearful Rock—” Persil Mandifer eyed again the corpse of Newton. “There he lies, eh? It was my privilege and power to project a vision up to him in his loneliness that, I think, put an end to his part of this puerile strife.”
Lanark’s own face grew hard. “Mr. Mandifer,” he said bleakly, “you seem to be enjoying a quiet laugh at our expense. But I should point out that we greatly outnumber you, and are armed. I’m greatly tempted to place you under arrest.”
“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.