Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/63

Rh a torn shirt stained with oil. His black oilskin kit sprawled on the floor, vomiting underwear and stockings, and the well-known initials stared up from it in bold white. Waist-belts, cartridge-belts, empty shells, leather straps, an unrolled puttee, moccasins, and a spur with a broken rowel strewed Kennedy's bed, conclusively proving that Kennedy was away. And Dick's clothes were everywhere. Against the wall a half-dozen of his sketches were crookedly pasted; but never a photograph or a picture to hint of past days.

Tempest walked across the room to look at the sketches. Kennedy had regularly ripped them down until Dick brought the paste-pot, and they showed signs of his disapproval.

"Sloushy kind o' thoughts," he called them; but Tempest looked at them with bitten lips.

A woman's moccasin, one; fine in the upper with bead-work and porcupine-quills, but worn through and blood-stained in the sole. A spider-web spun from star to star, to catch a spinning world. A half-shut eye on the edge of space, looking out with serene contemplation on nothingness. Two heads; the man's stooped to that of the woman who lifted her lips but covered her eyes.

Tempest trod down again slowly. Was Dick also seeking in his own wild way for that eternal secret? And, if so, which man would find it, or would both go out into the rimless future, seeking still? Very surely they sought along different trails—Dick with the bitter goad of a wasted life to flail him on; Tempest with the pure heart to which it is promised that it shall see God. Down in the kitchen he heard Poley setting out the granite bowls and cups in which Dick carried the food across the yard to the cells. Then he heard Dick swear in sharp wrath at the heat of the bowls.

"Don't you try those games with me, you old sinner," he said. "Fetch me some plates to put 'em on."

"Don't you come your Judge-an'-whole-dam-constitution style over me," retorted Poley with spirit. "Fetch yer bloomin' plates yer bloomin' self."

Tempest waited the next move with interest. Dick spoke softly.