The Marked Field

Carl L. Biemiller's The Marked Field appeared in
Blue Book Magazine
October 1949, Vol. 89, No. 6

Please respect the copyright.

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two Harvest of Memories Biemiller Home

CHAPTER SIX

Shaw, decided Eddie Dane as he left the locker-room and headed across the common and downtown to his room, was about one more incident away from booting him off the squad—an attempt which might prove embarrassing, especially if Connor decided otherwise. He hadn’t helped any by that one flash of temper, either. He gathered that Connor had been more than waspish on the phone.

It was the tension, he thought, the old groping that made any phase of this business a game of blindman’s bluff which was seldom completed. Connor was doubtless right. The reference to the Rogalski picture put him out in the open, left the quarry still in comfortable, knowledgeable darkness—unless, of course, a definitely known scratching at the trail could build panic pressure. It was worth considering, and might explain the cold removal of young Rogalski if such pressure was mounting. He felt a flash of irritation at Sally Whittaker, curbed it with the equally irritating realization that the incident was his own fault. Shaw was steady, discerning. The thing to do was to stay away from Sally. Dane was at Central to do three things: first, his job; second, make the football team, and third, to further an education. The combination, an outgrowth of the job itself, was enough for any man to handle.

He lengthened his stride through the late dusk, reached the bottom of a slope and cut into Bakerston’s Main Street. He swung off it, past the Blue and Gold Hotel and then retraced his steps to enter the lobby. Might as well see her story, he thought, and bought the Iron City Independent.

Freshman and sophomores crowded dorms at Central. More affluent undergraduates enjoyed the housing privileges of some twenty-five fraternity houses scattered throughout the town and campus. Other earnest students, some with wives and families, lived in trailers, apartments and rented houses when lucky. Still others, Dane among them, found haven in Bakerston’s traditional, frequently gracious, rooming houses.

Dane’s was a big frame structure set back from the quiet street. It was the sort of house that proper families with the proper number of children filled in the Nineties, and its chalk-white, sternly square appearance had a Victorian respectability equaled only by the character of the bird-like woman who owned it. There was no use telling Mrs. Lloyd Canfield Pennypacker that the elms which crowded the house to send exploratory roots into the cellar, and questing branches into the second and third floor rooms, were storm and plumbing hazards. They had always been there, and would remain. Mrs. Pennypacker furnished rooms for exactly eight young gentlemen each year—no more, no less. Each student had his own privacy. Mrs. Pennypacker made certain that each understood that she was to also have hers.

Dane’s room was on a corner of the second floor. He let himself in the front entrance of the house, closed the thick fanlighted doors behind him. He walked down the heavily carpeted hallway, up the stairs which formed a two-flight L, and turned down the carpeted hallway toward his room at the front of the house. Inasmuch as Mrs. Pennypacker personally interviewed her eight young gentlemen before letting her rooms, few of them were ever locked, and Dane opened his door and stepped in without pause….

The room tilted slowly, spun sidewise. It gathered momentum, seemed to pick up speed and whirl. He fell into the cone of the spin, fell a long distance into a blinding patch of light. He never felt the sudden blow or the grinding impact of the rug on his face.

It was a tunnel on a mountainside, high up, above the timberline. It was dark, and he was crawling toward a bead of light. There was wind, a steady rushing draft pouring past his eardrums; it blurred his vision and made the light bead wabble in an eerie dance. He crawled, a curiously leaden movement in his sapless legs, and the light steadied and the wind seemed to die away, returning only now and then with its former rush.

The wind was the blood pounding across his temples, and the light was framed in the window of his room. He was on one knee, still on the floor. He was trying to rise, and his body was heavy and alien. He made it, and staggered to the bed, sat suddenly and brushed an exploratory hand across the back of his head. It came away sticky, and where it had touched, there was a growing, burning pain.

Dane sat a long while, felt the strength come back to his legs, sensed the fuzzed edges leave his mind. Sapped! He heaved to his feet and wobbled to the shower. He turned the cold-water tap and leaned his head into the stream, and the water ran down his neck, drenching his collar, turning on the light. The glow from an outside streetlight butting through the elm branches was enough. He dressed again, fumbling a clean shirt from a drawer. The pain had become a throbbing now, but he was steady. Only a tremor at the back of his thighs signaled weakness, and he braced against it, avoiding thought as such.

The house was still, and only the dim wall light at the stair landing brightened the hallway as he left his room and walked gingerly down the steps, through the downstairs hall to the door. The door was heavy and he strained to open it. It seemed to be too much trouble to close it tightly as he passed through into the night air. He walked down the flagged walk to the street.

There was an automobile at the front of the house, a black Chevrolet sedan. Its lights were off, but its motor was idling, and Dane had a fleeting moment of disaster as he stared at it. He backed at the end of the walk, paused in the heavier shadow of a bush. The door of the car was opening, and a man got out. It was Connor, and the wane vagrant illumination from the streetlight emphasized the gravity of his hawk-like face.

Dane stepped from the shadow to meet him.

“You’re about four hours late,” said Connor. Dane thought his voice came from the bottom of a well. He pitched forward, and Connor caught him as he fell. This time there was no tunnel.

DreamHost Web Hosting - http://www.dreamhost.com/

This site is powered by Dreamhost. Touch the moon to join the "dream."

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two Harvest of Memories Biemiller Home