VI
Return
It was spring again, the warm, bright spring of the year 1866, when Kane Lanark rode again into the Fearful Rock country.
His horse was a roan gray this time; the bay gelding had been shot under him, along with two other horses, during the hard-fought three days at Westport, the “Gettysburg of the West,” when a few regulars and the Kansas militia turned back General Sterling Price’s raid through Missouri. Lanark had been a captain then, and a major thereafter, leading a cavalry expedition into Kentucky. He narrowly missed being in at the finish of Quantrill, whose death by the hand of another he bitterly resented. Early in 1865 he was badly wounded in a skirmish with Confederate horsemen under General Basil Duke. Thereafter he could ride as well as ever, but when he walked he limped.
Lanark’s uniform had been replaced by a soft hat and black frock coat, his face was browner and his mustache thicker, and his cheek bore the jaggedly healed scar of the guerrilla pistol-bullet. He was richer, too; the death of his older brother, Captain Douglas Lanark of the Confederate artillery, at Chancellorsville, had left him his father’s only heir. Yet he was recognizable as the young lieutenant who had ridden into this district four years gone.
Approaching from the east instead of the north, he came upon the plain with its grass-levels, its clumps of bushes and trees, from another and lower point. Far away on the northward horizon rose a sharp little finger; that would be Fearful Rock, on top of which Trooper Newton had once died, horrified and unwounded. Now, then, which way would lie the house he sought for? He idled his roan along the trail, and encountered at last an aged, ragged Negro on a mule.
“Hello, uncle,” Lanark greeted him, and they both reined up. “Which way is the Mandifer place?”
“Mandifuh?” repeated the slow, high voice of the old man. “Mandifuh, suh, cap’n? Ah doan know no Mandifuh.”
“Nonsense, uncle,” said Lanark, but without sharpness, for he liked Negroes. “The Mandifer family has lived around here for years. Didn’t you ever know Mr. Persil Mandifer and his stepdaughter, Miss Enid?”
“Puhsil Mandifuh?” It was plain that the old fellow had heard and spoken the name before, else he would have stumbled over its unfamiliarities. “No, suh, cap’n. Ah doan nevah heah tella such gemman.”
Lanark gazed past the mule and its tattered rider. “Isn’t that a little house among those willows?”
The kinky head turned and peered. “Yes, suh, cap’n. Dat place b’long to Pahson Jaguh.”
“Who?” demanded Lanark, almost standing up in his stirrups in his sudden interest. “Did you say Jager? What kind of man is he?”
“He jes a pahson—Yankee pahson,” replied the Negro, a trifle nervous at this display of excitement. “Big man, suh, got red face. He Yankee. You ain’ no Yankee, cap’n, suh. Whaffo you want Pahson Jaguh?”
“Never mind,” said Lanark, and thrust a silver quarter into the withered brown palm. He also handed over one of his long, fragrant cheroots. “Thanks, uncle,” he added briskly, then spurred his horse and rode on past.
Reaching the patch of willows, he found that the trees formed an open curve that faced the road, and that within this curve stood a rough but snug-looking cabin, built of sawn, unpainted planks and home-split shingles. Among the brush to the rear stood a smaller shed, apparently a stable, and a pen for chickens or a pig. Lanark reined up in front, swung out of his saddle, and tethered his horse to a thorny shrub at the trailside. As he drew tight the knot of the halter-rope, the door of heavy boards opened with a creak. His old sergeant stepped into view.
Jager was a few pounds heavier, if anything, than when Lanark had last seen him. His hair was longer, and his beard had grown to the center of his broad chest. He wore blue jeans tucked into worn old cavalry boots, a collarless checked shirt fastened with big brass studs, and leather suspenders. He stared somewhat blankly as Lanark called him by name and walked up to the doorstep, favoring his injured leg.
“It’s Captain Lanark, isn’t it?” Jager hazarded. “My eyes—” He paused, fished in a hip pocket and produced steel-rimmed spectacles. When he donned them, they appeared to aid his vision. “Indeed it is Captain Lanark! Or Major Lanark—yes, you were promoted—”
“I’m Mr. Lanark now,” smiled back the visitor. “The war’s over, Jager. Only this minute did I hear of you in the country. How does it happen that you settled in this place?”
“Come in, sir.” Jager pushed the door wide open, and ushered Lanark into an unfinished front room, well lighted by windows on three sides. “It’s not a strange story,” he went on as he brought forward a well-mended wooden chair for the guest, and himself sat on a small keg. “You will remember, sir, that the land hereabouts is under a most unhallowed influence. When the war came to an end, I felt strong upon me the call to another conflict—a crusade against evil.” He turned up his eyes, as though to subpoena the powers of heaven as witnesses to his devotion. “I preach here, the gospels and the true godly life.”
“What is your denomination?” asked Lanark.
Jager coughed, as though abashed. “To my sorrow, I am ordained of no church; yet might this not be part of heaven’s plan? I may be here to lead a strong new movement against hell’s legions.”
Lanark nodded as though to agree with this surmise, and studied Jager anew. There was nothing left in manner or speech to suggest that here had been a fierce fighter and model soldier, but the old rude power was not gone. Lanark then asked about the community, and learned that there were but seven white families within a twenty-mile radius. To these Jager habitually preached of a Sunday morning, at one farm home or another, and in the afternoon he was wont to exhort the more numerous Negroes.
Lanark had by now the opening for his important question. “What about the Mandifer place? Remember the girl we met, and her stepfather?”
“Enid Mandifer!” breathed Jager huskily, and his right hand fluttered up. Lanark remembered that Jager had once assured him that not only Catholics warded off evil with the sign of the cross.
“Yes, Enid Mandifer.” Lanark leaned forward. “Long ago, Jager, I made a promise that I would come and make sure that she prospered. Just now I met an old Negro who swore that he had never heard the name.”
Jager began to talk, steadily but with a sort of breathless awe, about what went on in the Fearful Rock country. It was not merely that men died—the death of men was not sufficient to horrify folk around whom a war had raged. But corpses, when found, held grimaces that nobody cared to look upon, and no blood remained in their bodies. Cattle, too, had been slain, mangled dreadfully—perhaps by the strange, unidentifiable creatures that prowled by moonlight and chattered in voices that sounded human. One farmer of the vicinity, who had ridden with Quantrill, had twice met strollers after dusk, and had recognized them for comrades whom he knew to be dead.
“And the center of this devil’s business,” concluded Jager, “is the farm that belonged to Persil Mandifer.” He drew a deep, tired-sounding breath. “As the desert is the habitation of dragons, so is it with that farm. No trees live, and no grass. From a distance, one can see a woman. It is Enid Mandifer.”
“Where is the place?” asked Lanark directly.
Jager looked at him for long moments without answering. When he did speak, it was an effort to change the subject. “You will eat here with me at noon,” he said. “I have a Negro servant, and he is a good cook.”
“I ate a very late breakfast at a farmhouse east of here,” Lanark put him off. Then he repeated, “Where is the Mandifer place?”
“Let me speak this once,” Jager temporized. “As you have said, we are no longer at war—no longer officer and man. We are equals, and I am able to refuse to guide you.”
Lanark got up from his chair. “That is true, but you will not be acting the part of a friend.”
“I will tell you the way, on one condition.” Jager’s eyes and voice pleaded. “Say that you will return to this house for supper and a bed, and that you will be within my door by sundown.”
“All right,” said Lanark. “I agree. Now, which way does that farm lie?”
Jager led him to the door. He pointed. “This trail joins a road beyond, an old road that is seldom used. Turn north upon it, and you will come to a part which is grown up in weeds. Nobody passes that way. Follow on until you find an old house, built low, with the earth dry and bare around it. That is the dwelling-place of Enid Mandifer.”
Lanark found himself biting his lip. He started to step across the threshold, but Jager put a detaining hand on his arm. “Carry this as you go.”
He was holding out a little book with a gray paper cover. It had seen usage and trouble since last Lanark had noticed it in Jager’s hands; its back was mended with a pasted strip of dark cloth, and its edges were frayed and gnawed-looking, as though rats had been at it. But the front cover still said plainly:
John George Hohman’s
Powwows
Or
Long Lost Friend
“Carry this,” said Jager again, and then quoted glibly: “ ‘Whoever carries this book with him is safe from all his enemies, visible or invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the holy corpse of Jesus Christ, nor drown in any water, nor burn up in any fire, nor can any unjust sentence be passed upon him.’ ”
Lanark grinned in spite of himself and his new concern. “Is this the kind of a protection that a minister of God should offer me?” he inquired, half jokingly.
“I have told you long ago that the Long Lost Friend is a good book, and a blessed one.” Jager thrust it into Lanark’s right-hand coat pocket. His guest let it remain, and held out his own hand in friendly termination of the visit.
“Goodbye,” said Lanark. “I’ll come back before sundown, if that will please you.”
He limped out to his horse, untied it and mounted. Then, following Jager’s instructions, he rode forward until he reached the old road, turned north and proceeded past the point where weeds had covered the unused surface. Before the sun had fallen far in the sky, he was come to his destination.
It was a squat, spacious house, the bricks of its trimming weathered and the dark brown paint of its timbers beginning to crack. Behind it stood unrepaired stables, seemingly empty. In the yard stood what had been wide-branched trees, now leafless and lean as skeleton paws held up to a relentless heaven. And there was no grass. The earth was utterly sterile and hard, as though rain had not fallen since the beginning of time.
Enid Mandifer had been watching him from the open door. When she saw that his eyes had found her, she called him by name.