



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive







THE FORTUNE OF THE LANDRAYS

By Vaughn Kester

Illustrated by The Kinneys

New York: McClure Phillips and Company

1905

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CHAPTER ONE

THE boy on the box was surfeited with travel. Glancing back over the
swaying top of the coach, he had seen miles upon miles of hot dusty
road, between banked-up masses of forests or cultivated fields, dwindle
to a narrow thread of yellow. Day after day there had been the same
tiresome repetition of noisy towns and sleepy cross-road villages, each
one very like the other and all having a widely different appearance
from that which he conceived Benson would present.

The wonderful life of the road, varied and picturesque, no longer
claimed his attention. The black dot a mile distant was unnoticed. It
was a long line of freight wagons north-bound to some lake port, laden
with pork, flour and hides. Presently, these wagons would be passed by
a party of mounted traders, travelling south to Baltimore for supplies,
with their sacks of Spanish dollars loaded upon pack horses. Next they
would journey for a little space with a cattle dealer and his men, who
were taking a drove of Marino sheep across the state to Indiana. But the
boy's curiosity had been more than satisfied; he had only to close his
eyes to see again the vivid panorama of the road in the blaze of that
hot June sun.

They had changed drivers so many times he had lost all count of them;
and with the changing drivers a wearisome succession of passengers had
come and gone; but to-day he and his father rode alone upon the box.
That morning, the latter had told him they would reach Benson by
noon, yet strangely enough his interest flagged; the miles seemed
endless--interminable. He was sore and stiff; his little legs ached
from their cramped position, and at last utterly weary he fell into
a troubled sleep, his head resting on his father's arm, and his small
hands, moist and warm, clasped idly in his lap.

His father, grim, motionless, and predisposed to silence, gave brief
replies to such questions as Mr. Bartlett, the driver, saw fit to
ask;--for Mr. Bartlett was frankly curious. As he said himself, he
always liked to know who his passengers were, where they came from,
where they were going, and if possible their business.

Now as they began the long descent of Landray's Hill, south of Benson,
Mr. Bartlett pushed forward his brake handle and said, "That's Benson
ahead of us, off yonder where you see the church spires; would you 'a
knowed it, do you think?"

Instantly the man at his side who had been sitting low in his seat, took
a more erect position, while a sudden light kindled in his dull eyes.

"Known it?" after a moment's survey of the scene before him. "Well, I
guess not." There was palpable regret in his tone, just touched by some
hidden emotion; a passing shade of feeling not anticipated, that moved
him.

"I allowed you wouldn't. Twenty years makes a heap of difference, don't
it? Gives you a turn?" interestedly.

"Well, sort of," with gentle sadness.

"I know how you feel. I been that way myself," said the driver. Mr.
Bartlett was short and stocky, with ruddy cheeks and great red hands.
As one who mingled muck with the world, he prided himself on his social
adaptability.

The stranger bestowed upon him a glance of frank displeasure. He felt
vaguely that the other's sentiment was distasteful to him. It smacked of
such fat complacency. At last he said, "I'd about made up my mind that I
wa'n't to see it again." here a violent fit of coughing interrupted him.
When it subsided, Mr. Bartlett remarked sympathetically:

"You ought to take something for that cough of your's. I would if it was
mine."

The stranger, still choking, shook his head.

"Where does it take you?"

"Here," resting a bony hand on his sunken chest.

"Lungs?"

The stranger's jaws grew rigid. He favoured the driver with a sinister
frown.

There was silence between them for a little space, which Mr. Bartlett
devoted to a thoughtful study of his companion. Under this close
scrutiny the stranger moved restlessly. A sense of the other's physical
health oppressed him; it seemed to take from his own slender stock of
vitality.

"Hope I ain't crowding you," said Mr. Bartlett. "Here, I'll make more
room for you. Well sir, Benson's about the healthiest place I know of.
When a man gets ready to die there, he has to move away to do it."

"Who the hell's talking about dying?" demanded the stranger savagely.
"There are plenty of graveyards where I came from."

"There are plenty of graveyards everywhere; yes sir, you'd have to do
a heap of travelling to get shut of them." admitted Mr. Bartlett
impartially.

"And all the thundering fools ain't buried yet," said the stranger
shortly.

Mr. Bartlett meditated on this apparently irrelevant remark in silence.
He had found the stranger taciturn and sullen, or given to flashes of
grim humour.

"Where's Landray's mill?" the latter now demanded, the glint of anger
slowly fading from his eyes.

"See that clump of willows down yonder, to the right of the road? It's
just back of them."

"Who's running it?"

"Old General Landray's sons, Bush and Steve," he spoke of them with easy
familiarity.

"I see you know them," said the stranger.

"It'd be funny if I didn't,--everybody knows 'em."

"I reckon so," said the stranger briefly.

"I allow you knowed the general?" remarked Mr. Bartlett.

"I recollect him well enough."

"He was right smart of a man in his day, and one of the old original
first settlers. I knowed him well myself," observed Mr. Bartlett.

"Powerful easy man to get acquainted with; awful familiar, wa'n't he?"
and the stranger grinned evilly.

"Well, I knowed him when I seen him," said Mr. Bartlett, with some
reserve; and he seemed willing to abandon the subject. "What you
laughing at?" he added quickly, for the stranger was chuckling softly to
himself.

"Oh, nothing much. Did you know him after he was took with the gout?
You're sort of fat; say now, did he ever cuss you for getting in his
way? It's likely that's what brought you to his notice," and he
exploded in a burst of harsh laughter. "Oh, yes, I reckon you knowed him
well--when you seen him."

This singular assault on his innocent pretensions had a marked and
chilling effect on the driver. He edged away from the stranger, and
there was a long pause; but silence was not to be where Mr. Bartlett
was concerned. He now asked, pointing to the sleeping child, "Ain't you
going to wake him up? He'll feel as if he'd missed something."

"I guess he'll have a chance to see all there is to see when we get
there. He's clean tired out. You say the Landray boys have the mill?
The old general used to own a distillery across the race from it; what
became of that?"

"It's there yet; Levi Tucker has it now. He's got the tavern, too, and I
don't suppose he'd care to part with either. He's his own best customer;
Colonel Sharp says he's producer and consumer both; I allow you didn't
know the colonel?"

Again the stranger shook his head, and the driver's placid voice just
pitched to carry above the rattle of wheels and the beat of hoofs,
droned on, a colourless monotone of sound.

"I didn't suppose you did, he's since your time, I guess; he's editor
of the _Pioneer_ at Benson, and a powerful public speaker; I reckon
near about as good as old Webster himself, only he ain't got the name.
I don't remember ever seeing him but what he had his left hand tucked
in at the top of his wes'-coat; yes, I reckon you might say he was a
natural born speaker; when he gets stumped for a word he just digs it
up from one of them dead languages, and everything he says is as full of
meat as an egg; it makes you puzzle and study, and think, and even then
you don't really get what he's driving at more than half the time. He's
a mighty strong tobacco chewer, too, and spits clean as a fox--why clean
as a fox I don't know," he added, but he was evidently much pleased with
this picturesque description of the colonel's favourite vice.

The stranger's glance had wandered down into the cool depths of the
valley. It was twenty years since his eyes had rested on its peace and
calm; its beauty of sun and shade and summer-time; much of his courage
and more of his hope had gone in those years; he was coming back, wasted
and worn, to the spot he had never ceased to speak of and to think of as
home. He had looked forward to this return for health, but he knew now
that the magic he had expected in his misery and home-sickness was not
there; but he was inarticulate in his suffering, and perhaps mercifully
enough did not know its depths, so even his own rude pity for himself
was after all but the burlesque of the tragedy he had lived. Yet there
still remained that greater purpose which was to make the road smooth
for the child at his side where it had been filled with difficulties for
him; there should be no more hardships, no more of those vast solitudes
that sapped the life that filtered into them, that crazed or brutalized;
these he had know; but these the boy should never know, for him there
should be ease and riches,--splendid golden riches; his ignorance could
scarce conceive their limit, the possibilities were so vast. Now he
leaned far forward in his seat, hunger for the sight of some familiar
object pinched his face with sudden longing.

"It's mighty pretty!" he said at last with a deep breath.

"Ain't it?" agreed Mr. Bartlett indulgently.

But the log cabins he had known were gone, and frame houses painted
an unvarying white with vivid green blinds closed to the sun had taken
their place. To the east and to the west of the town were waving fields
of grain; with here and there an island of dense shade where a strip of
woodland had been spared by the axe of the pioneer; on some of the more
rugged hillsides from which the timber had been but recently cleared
the blackened stumps were still standing. A blur of sound rose from the
valley, it was like the droning of bees.

"That's the old Bendy furnace I hear, ain't it?"

"That's what it is," said Mr. Bartlett.

The stranger sank back with a gesture of weariness, "It's a hell of a
ways to come," he said sourly. "It will be a lot easier when they get
the rail