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Title: In the "stranger people's" country
A novel
Author: Charles Egbert Craddock
Release date: October 23, 2024 [eBook #74630]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers
Credits: Peter Becker, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE "STRANGER PEOPLE'S" COUNTRY ***
IN THE "STRANGER PEOPLE'S" COUNTRY
A NOVEL
BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
With Illustrations
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1891
Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
ILLUSTRATIONS.
"IT WAS AN ATTITUDE THAT COMMENDED A TEMPORIZING POLICY"
"LEETLE MOSE"
"'WAR--WAR HE 'QUAINTED WITH ENNY OF 'EM?'"
"THE SADDLE BORE NO RIDER"
"'YES, SIR, TER KILL HIM EF HE WAR TER INTERFERE WITH ME!'"
"HE HAD SNAPPED THE BARREL IN PLACE"
"'COME, GUTHRIE,' HE ONLY SAID"
"EVERY DAY THAT DAWNED"
IN THE "STRANGER PEOPLE'S" COUNTRY.
I.
Who they were, and whence they came, none can say. The mountains
where they found their home--their long home--keep silence. The
stars, that they knew, look down upon their graves and make no sign.
Their memory, unless in some fine and subtle way lingering in the
mystery, the pervasive melancholy, the vaguely troublous forecast and
retrospect which possess the mind in contemplating this sequestered
spot, unhallowed save by the sense of a common humanity, has faded
from the earth. None might know that they had ever lived but for a dim
tradition associating them with the ancient forgotten peoples of this
old hemisphere of ours that we are wont to deem so new. For this is one
of the strange burial-grounds of the "pygmy dwellers" of Tennessee;
prehistoric, it is held, an extinct diminutive race; only Aztec
children, others surmise, of a uniform age and size, buried apart from
their kindred, for some unimagined, never-to-be-explained reason; and a
more prosaic opinion contends that the curious stone sepulchres contain
merely infant relics of the Cherokee Indian. All I know is, here they
rest, awaiting that supreme moment when this mortality shall put on
immortality, and meanwhile in the solemn environment of the Great Smoky
Mountains the "Leetle People" sleep well.
Quiet neighbors all these years have they been. So quiet! almost
forgotten. In fact, the nearest mountaineers start, with a dazed look,
at a question concerning them, then become mysterious, with that
superstitious, speculative gleam in the eye as of one who knows much of
uncanny lore, but is shy to recount.
"I do declar' I never war so set back in my life ez I felt whenst
that thar valley man jes' upped an' axed me 'bout'n them thar Leetle
Stranger People buried yander on the rise," declared Stephen Yates, one
July evening, as he stood leaning on his rifle before the door of his
cabin in the cove. His horse, reeking and blown, still saddled, bore a
deer, newly slain, unprotected by the game-laws, and the old hounds,
panting and muddy from the chase, lay around the doorstep.
A young woman of twenty, perhaps, with a pale oval face and dark hair,
and serene dark gray eyes, was on the rickety porch, leaning upon a
rude shelf that served also as a balustrade; she had a cedar piggin in
her hand, and the cow was lowing at the bars. On the doorstep there sat
a rotund and stalwart, but preternaturally solemn young person, who now
and again, with a corrugated countenance, gnashed his gums. His time
and energies were expended in that trying occupation known as "cuttin'
yer teeth," an acquisition which he would some day value more highly
than now. He sought, as far as an abnormally developed craft might
compass, to force, by many an infant wile, his elders to share his
woes, and it was with a distinctly fallen countenance that his father
hearkened to his mother's parenthetical request to "'bide hyar an'
company leetle Moses whilst I be a-milkin' the cow."
[Illustration: "LEETLE MOSE."]
Yates did not refuse, although a braver man might have quailed. It was
his hard fate to regard "leetle Moses" as a supreme fetich, and to
worship him with as unrequited an idolatry as ever was lavished on the
great god Dagon. He only sought to gain time, and continued his account
of the conversation:
"He 'lowed ef he hed knowed afore ez they war buried hyar, he'd hev
kem a hunderd mile jes' ter view the spot," he said, his eye kindling
with a recollection of the "valley man's" enthusiasm.
His wife hardly entered into it at second-hand. She regarded him with a
slow wonderment stealing over her face.
"War--war he 'quainted with enny of 'em in thar lifetime?" she
demanded, hesitating, but seeking to solve the valley man's
reason--"them Leetle Stranger People?"
[Illustration: "'WAR--WAR HE 'QUAINTED WITH ENNY OF 'EM?'"]
"Great Gosh! Adelaide!" Yates exclaimed, irritably, contemptuous all
at once of the limitations of her standpoint. "Ye stay cooped up hyar
sociatin' with nobody but leetle Mose till ye hev furgot every durned
thing ye ever knowed. The Leetle People hev been dead so long ago
nobody 'members 'em--not even old man Peake, an' he air a hunderd an'
ten year old--ef he ain't lyin'," he added, cautiously.
Her face flushed. There was fire in her serene eyes, like a flare of
sunset in the placid depths of a lake. "I'm willin' ter 'bide along o'
leetle Mose," she retorted. "I never expect ter see no better company
'n leetle Mose ter the las' day I live, an' I never _did_ see none!"
Yates shifted his weight uncertainly upon his other foot, and surveyed
with a casual glance the wide landscape. The sense of supersedure
was sharp at the moment. He had been in his day a great man in her
estimation, and now "leetle Mose," with his surly dejection, with only
a tooth or two--and with these he would have gladly dispensed--with
his uncertain gait and his pigeon-toes and his nearly bald head, was a
greater man still. He and his mother were a close corporation, but,
for the sake of his own fealty to the domestic Dagon, Steve Yates
forgave them both. He went on presently:
"The valley man hed jes' hearn tell ez them Leetle People war buried
hyarabout. I never seen a man so streck of a heap ez he war, an' he
axed me fool questions till I felt plumb cur'ous a-talkin' 'bout them
Leetle Stranger People buried thar on the rise." Once more he turned
toward the slope that embarrassed, half-laughing glance--in which,
however, there was no mirth--betokening a spirit ill at ease, and
secretly shrinking from some uncanny, irksome fear.
Her eyes mechanically followed his to the purple slope so still under
the crimson sky. Higher up, the mountain, shielded by the shadow of
its own crags from this reflection of the west, showed a dark-green
shade of an indescribable depth and richness of tone, never merging
into dusky indefiniteness. Through a gap in the range to the east were
visible the infinite blue distances of the Great Smoky peaks, their
color here and there idealized by the far-away glamours of sunset to an
exquisite roseate hue, or a crystalline and perfect amethyst against
the amber horizon. Down the clifty gorge--its walls of solid sandstone,
cloven to the bare heart of the range by the fierce momentum of the
waters--the bounding river came. One mad leap presented the glittering
splendors of a glassy-green cataract, and in its elastic spray an
elusive rainbow lurked. Its voice was like that of one crying in the
wilderness, so far might its eloquent iteration be heard. The Little
People, in their day, might have given ear to its message and pondered
on the untranslated tidings, but now they did not heed.
Only the dwellers in the mountaineer's cabin hard by listened at
times to the pulsing rhythm, as alive as the metre of a great poem;
and, again, in duller mood, its sound was but as silence to those who
cared not to hear. The dark little house seemed small and solitary
and transitory here among the massive, enduring mountains, beside the
majestic flow of the waters, and the rail-fence enclosed the minimum of
space from the great unpeopled wilds.
"I 'lowed ter him they never walked," Yates said, presently. "Ez fur ez
I know, they hain't been seen, nor none o' 'em set out ter walk, sence
they war put thar fust. Nobody ez I know purfesses ter hev seen enny o'
the Stranger People's harnts."
He repeated this with simplicity, evidently desirous of giving the
pygmy dwellers their bounden due.
"I 'lowed ter him," he continued, "ez folks hed let them be, an' they
hed let the mounting folks be. Nobody wanted sech cur'ous harnts ez
folks o' thar size ter git ter walkin' at this late day."
There was a vague chill in the air--or was it in the moral atmosphere?
"What be _he_ a-vagrantin' round fur, inquirin' 'bout them as be dead
an' done with the livin' long ago?" she demanded, a touch of acerbity
in her tone and a restless look in her eyes.
"He 'lows ez he's jes' kem hyar along o' Leonard Rhodes ez be
a-'lectioneerin' fur floater fur the Legislatur'. An' him an' Rhodes
air frien's, an' Rhodes hev got some lan' in this county ez hev got one
o' them Injun mounds on it, an' he hev let this frien' o' his hev
men ter dig an' open it ter see what they could find. I seen 'em arter
it ter-day; this hyar man 'peared mighty nigh ez excited ez a Juny-bug;
I noticed he never dug none, though, hisse'f."
He paused for a moment, chewing hard on his quid of tobacco; then he
slowly laughed. "The folks he hed hired ter dig 'lowed he war teched in
the head, but he 'peared sorter sensible ter me--never teched a spade,
an' 'twar a hot day."
"What did they find?" asked his wife, breathlessly.
"Dirt," Yates said, with an iconoclastic laugh, "a plenty of it.
He 'peared toler'ble disapp'inted till he hearn 'bout the Stranger
People's buryin'-groun'. Adelaide"--he raised his voice suddenly--"that
thar idjit o' a man, he 'lows ez them Leetle People warn't grown folks
at all--jes' chil'n; I tried ter tell the fool better--jes' leetle
chil'n!"
He glanced quickly at her, as if prepared for the shock of surprise
which must be elicited by this onslaught upon the faith of a whole
community. Somehow, as she again fastened her eyes on the sombre
declivity, her face wore the look of one whose secret thought is
revealed in words. In the few years that she had lived here, a
stranger herself, in some sort--not accustomed, as was her husband,
to a lifelong vicinage to the pygmy burial-ground--she had developed
no receptivity to that uncanny idea of a race of dwarfs. Always
as children she had thought of the Little People; she had made no
effort to reconcile this theory with the strange fact that no similar
sarcophagi, enclosing larger frames, were known of far or near;
she found no incongruity in the idea that infants should have been
thus segregated in death from all their kindred; it seemed a meet
resting-place for youth and innocence, thus apart from all others. They
were children--only children; all asleep; asleep and resting! With the
strange fascination that the spot and its unique tradition exerted upon
her, she would glance thither from time to time throughout the day,
pausing at her task to follow the shadow of the clouds sweeping over
the purple slope, and to listen to the whir of bees in the still noon
amongst the sweet fern and to the call of the glad birds. When she sang
in fitful fragments a crooning lullaby to her own child, who had made
all childhood doubly dear and doubly sacred to her heart, she was wont
to watch pensively the tender glow of evening reddening there, so soft,
so brilliant, so promissory of the splendid days to come that it needs
must suggest that supernal dawn when the Little People should all rise
to greet the rising sun that they had seen set for the last time so
long ago. In bright, slanting rows, as swift, as ethereal, as dazzling
as the morning mist transfigured by the sun's rays--with her prophetic
eyes she could behold them, rank after rank, coming down the slope in
this radiant guise; meanwhile they slept as securely as her child slept
in her arms, their waking as certain.
The picture recurred to her thoughts at the moment. "They will all rise
before we-uns at the jedgmint-day," she said, her far-seeing gray eyes
clear and crystalline upon the unmarked place.
"Laws-a-massy, Adelaide!" cried her husband, in a tone of expostulation
and alarm, with a quick glance over his shoulder, "what ails ye ter
say sech ez that--ez ef it war gospel sure?"
Her eyes came back reluctantly to him; the question had jarred upon
her reverie. "Ye air 'bleeged ter know that," she retorted, with a
slighting manner. "The sun strikes through the gap an' teches the
Leetle People's buryin'-groun' a full haffen hour an' better afore it
reaches the graveyard o' the mounting folks down thar in the shadder o'
the range."
He listened ponderingly to this logic, his chin resting upon the muzzle
of his rifle; then, with a noiseless shifting of his posture, he
looked again with a cautious gesture over his shoulder. He was a hardy
hunter, of a vigorous physique and but scantily acquainted with fear,
but this eerie idea of a thousand or so adult pygmy Tennesseeans astir
on the last day, forestalling the familiar mountain neighbors, robbed
immortality for the moment of its wonted prestige.
The oppressive influence even laid hold on his strong frame, and he
extended one powerful arm at full length, with a futile effort to yawn.
"G'long, Adelaide! G'long an' milk the cow!" he exclaimed, with the
irritation that was always apparent in his manner when perplexity
seized upon his brain--a good organ of its kind, but working best in
the clear air of out-of-door contemplation. He was a man of sound
common-sense, but with no endowment for furtive speculation, and
purblind gropings, and tenuous deductions from flimsy premises. He
heaved a great sigh of relief to remember the cow--the good, homely
cow--at the bars.
Adelaide had slowly taken up the piggin. "Ye hain't told me why that
thar valley man sets so much store by the Leetle People. I'll go arter
I hear that word."
"Waal, I ain't a-goin' ter speak it," retorted her husband, with a
threatening conjugal frown. "I ain't a-goin' ter let leetle Mose be
kep' up hyar till midnight a-waitin' for you-uns ter milk the cow. It's
cleverly dark now."
"Leetle Mose" was a name to conjure with; even the wife denied herself
the luxury of the last word, so lost was she in the mother. She put
the piggin hastily upon her head, and went, with the erect, graceful
pose that the prosaic weight fosters, down the winding path beyond the
spring to the bars where the red cow stood lowing.
The household idol, sitting upon the step with a grave, inscrutable
countenance, silently watched her departure, then suddenly set up a
loud and bitter wail of desertion. It was in vain that she paused and
called back promises of return, albeit he understood well the language
which so far he refused to speak; in vain that his father came and
sat beside him on the step, and patted him with a large hand upon his
limited back. It was a good opportunity for the lamentation in which
"leetle Mose" was prone to indulge. He had a reputation that extended
far beyond his ken--for the fence bounded his world--not, however, that
he would have cared. He was known throughout many a cove, and even
in the settlement, as the "wust chile ever seen, an' a jedgmint, ef
the truth war known, on Stephen an' Adelaide Yates fur hevin' been so
fly-away an' headstrong in thar single days--both of 'em wild ez deer,
an' gin over ter dancin' an' foolishness." It was with a certain grim
satisfaction that the settlement hearkened to the fact that they were
"mighty tame now." Thus Dagon's filial exploits lacked no plaudits.
His mental capacities, too, received due recognition. "He be powerful
smart, though; he won't let 'em hev no mo' comp'ny 'n he can help. I
reckon he knows they wouldn't 'tend ter him ef they hed ennything else
they _could_ 'tend ter. Sometimes that chile be a-settin' on the front
porch sorter peaceable, restin' hisse'f from hollerin'," his maternal
great-aunt Jerushy chronicled to a coterie of pleased gossips, "an' ef
he see a wagon a-stoppin' at the gate, or a visitor a-walkin' up the
path, he'll mos' lif' the roof off with his screeches. An' screech he
will till they leaves; he hev mos' made _me_ deef fur life. I useter
spend consider'ble o' my time with that young couple"--and there was an
ousted suggestion in Aunt Jerushy's manner. "It makes his dad an' mam
'shamed fur true, his kerryin's on; they air bowed down ter the yearth!"
The widespread strictures on their idol were very bitter to the
parental worshippers. Often, with a troubled aspect, they took counsel
together, and repeated in helpless dudgeon the criticism of his
kindred and neighbors. It was powerless to shake their loyalty. Even
his father, whom he chose to regard with a lowering and suspicious
mien, unless it were in the dead hours of the night, when he developed
a morbid craving to be trotted back and forth and up and down the
puncheon floor, was flattered with the smallest tokens of his
confidence.
He had an admirable perseverance. He sat still weeping in the midst
of his pink fat with so much distortion of countenance and display of
gums, and such loud vocal exercises, when Adelaide returned, that she
cast upon her husband a look of deep reproach, and he divined that she
suspected him of having gone to the extreme length of smiting Dagon in
her absence, and despite his clear conscience he could but look guilty.
"Oh, Mose!" he said, outdone, as he rose, "ye air so mean--ye air so
durned mean!"
But the callow wrath of the "leetle Mose" was more formidable than the
displeasure of the big man, and his heart burned at the short reply
of his wife, a sarcastic "I reckon so!" when he protested that he had
done nothing to Mose to which any fair-minded infant could have taken
exceptions. The vocalizations of Dagon were of such unusual power this
evening that his strength failed shortly after supper, and he was
asleep earlier than his ordinary hour, for he was something of a late
bird. Belying all his traits, he looked angelic as he lay in his little
rude box cradle. When the moonlight came creeping through the door it
found him there, with a smile on his rose-leaf lips, and both his pink
hands unclasped on the coverlet. Adelaide, despite the silence and
studious air of preoccupation she had maintained toward her husband,
could but beg Yates to observe the child's beauty as she sank down,
dead beat, on the doorstep to rest, but still keeping one hand on the
rocker of the cradle, for motion was pleasing to "leetle Mose," and
by this requisition he doubtless understood that he could absorb and
occupy his elders, even when he was unconscious.
"He's purty enough, the Lord knows," the dejected father assented, as
he sat smoking his pipe at a little distance on the step of the porch.
"I dun' no', though, what ails him ter take sech a spite at me. I do
all I kin ter pleasure him."
Adelaide experienced a vicarious qualm of conscience. "He ain't got no
spite at you-uns," she said, reassuringly, in the hope that her words
could speak louder than Dagon's actions. "It's jes' his teeth harry him
so."
"An' ye didn't useter be so easy sot agin me." Yates preferred this
complaint after a meditative puff of the pipe. There is a melancholy
pleasure in the role of domestic martyr. He was beginning to enjoy
himself.
"I ain't sot agin ye, but _somebody_ hev got ter take up an' gin up fur
leetle Mose. Men folks hain't got no patience with leetle chil'n."
"I never knowed what 'twar ter gin up afore," he protested. "I ain't
done nuthin' else sence Mose war born. Don't go nowhar, don't see
nuthin' nor nobody."
He smoked languidly for a few moments, then, with decision: "Thar
ain't no use in it; we-uns mought jes' ez well hev gone ter the infair
over yander in the cove at Pettingill's ez not ter-night, an' got Aunt
Jerushy ter bide with Moses till we kem back."
"Moses would hev hollered hisself inter a fit; he jes' stiffens at the
sight o' Aunt Jerushy."
"Waal, then, we-uns mought hev tuk Moses along; I hev seen plenty o'
babies sleepin' at a dance an' camp-meetin's, an' even fune'ls. I'll
bet thar's a right smart chance of 'em over at Pettingill's now."
"Mought cotch measles from some of 'em, too, or whoopin'-cough," said
his wife, conclusively.
There was no help for it. Seclusion with their Dagon was evidently
their fate until "leetle Mose" should be grown to man's estate.
There was a long pause, in which the mercurial and socially disposed
Yates dimly beheld the lengthening perspective of this prospect. He
had been a dancer of famous activities and a joyous blade at all the
mountain merry-makings, and he had married the liveliest girl of his
acquaintance--with no little trouble, too, for she had been a mountain
belle and something of a coquette. He sometimes could hardly identify
with these recollections the watchful-eyed and pensive little mother
and the home-staying wife.
"I wouldn't mind it ef Moses didn't treat me so mean," he resumed, all
his sensibilities sorely wounded. "I do declar' I be kep' hid out so in
the woods that I war plumb flustered when I seen them valley men this
evenin' down thar at the mound. I wouldn't hev been s'prised none ef I
hed jes' sot out an' run from 'em an' hid ahint a tree like old folks
'low the Injuns useter do whenst they seen a white man."
"Ye never 'lowed ez what set that valley man ter talkin' 'bout
the Leetle People," she said, seeking to divert his mind from his
unfilial son, and to open a more congenial topic. Her eyes, full
of the moonlight, turned toward the slope where the sheen, richly
metallic and deeply yellow, rested; the rising disk itself was visible
through the gap in the mountains; much of the world seemed in some
sort unaware of its advent, and lay in the shadow, dark and stolid,
in a dull invisibility, as though without form and void. The moon
had not yet scaled the heights of the great range; only that long
clifty gorge cleaving its mighty heart was radiant with the forecast
of the splendors of the night, and through this vista, upon the mystic
burial-ground, fell the pensive light like a benison.
Yates, too, glanced toward it with a kindling eye and an alert interest.
"He 'pears ter be a powerful cur'us man. Somebody 'lowed he war
a-diggin' fur jugs an' sech ez the Injuns hed--leastwise them ez built
the mounds; he 'lows 'twarn't no Injuns; and Pete Dinks tole it ez how
the jugs mus' be like that'n ez Felix Guthrie 'lowed war in the grave
o' one o' the Leetle People."
He paused. She turned her white, startled face toward him, her eyes
distended. Her voice was bated with horror--a mere whisper.
"What grave? How do Fee ondertake ter know sech ez air in the Stranger
People's graves?"
In his instant irritation because of the problem of her mental attitude
he lifted his voice, and it sounded strident above the droning
_susurrus_ of the cicada, which filled the summer night with a drowsy
monotone, and the insistent iteration of the falls.
"Gloryful gracious, Adelaide, surely ye mus' hev hearm ez how one o'
them big rocks in the water-fall thar fell from the top wunst, an'
crashed down inter the ruver. An' it kerried cornsider'ble o' the
yearth along the ruver-bank with it, an' tuk off the top slab o' the
stone coffin o' one o' these hyar Leetle People. They hain't buried
more'n two feet deep. An' Fee--'twar on his lan'--he had ter move his
fence back-'ards, an' whilst he war about it he got that slab an' put
it whar it b'longed, an' kivered the grave agin. An' so he seen the
jug in thar with the bones. The jug hed shells in it, Fee say, an' the
skeleton hed beads round its neck. That all happened, now ez I kem ter
study on it, afore ye an' me war married."
His acerbity had evaporated in the interest of the narration, and in
the evolution of an excellent reason for her ignorance of these things
that had happened previous to her advent into the neighborhood. He did
not notice that she took no advantage of the excuse to upbraid him with
his readiness to find fault, and that she made no rejoinder as she sat,
her head depressed, her whole attitude crouching, her dilated eyes
fixed with a horror-stricken fascination upon the pygmy burial-ground,
in that broad, lucent expanse of the yellow moonlight which was still
streaming through the illuminated gorge of the mountains into an
otherwise dusky world. The events of the afternoon were reasserting
themselves in his mind. He laughed a little as he reviewed them.
"Fee hed been huntin' with me ter-day, an' this valley man--I b'lieve
they 'lowed his name war Shattuck, an' he air a lawyer whar he kem
from; he don't dig fur a living--whenst he hearn 'bout that, he say,
quick ez lightning: 'Would ye know the spot agin? What made ye leave
the jar thar? What made ye put the slab back?' An' Fee--ye know how
crusty an' sour an' cantankerous he be--he say, 'Them Leetle People
air _folks_, an' I hev no call ter go grave-robbin' ez I knows on!'
That thar Shattuck turned fire-red in a minit. He air a mighty nice,
sa-aft-spoken, perlite man, though spindlin'. An' he talked mos'ly ter
me arter that--Fee stood by an' listened--an' I liked Shattuck middlin'
well. He 'lowed ez 'twar important ter know fur the history of the
kentry--an' he did sound sorter like he war vagrantin' in his mind--ter
know ef them Leetle People war grown folks or jes' chil'n. He b'lieves
they war jes' chil'n, but ef he could see jes' one skull he could tell."
Adelaide gasped; she reached out her hand mechanically and laid it upon
the feet of the baby curled up in his soft, warm nest. Her husband's
glance absently followed her movement, but he went on unheeding:
"An' Fee, standin' stare-gazin' him, ez sullen ez a bar with a
sore head, axed, 'How kin ye tell?' ez much ez ter say, 'Ye lie!'
But Shattuck war perlite ez ever. 'Many ways; by their teeth, for
instance--their wisdom teeth.' Then he went a-maunderin' on 'bout a
man he knowed ez could jes' take a bone o' a animal ez he never seen,
ez lived hyar afore the flood, an' tell how tall 'twar an' what it
eat--I do declar' he did sound like he war crazy, though he _looked_
sensible ter the las'--an' this l'arned man could actially medjure an'
make a pictur' of sech a animal out'n a few bones. An' Fee, he jes'
stood listenin' long enough ter say, 'Them Leetle People never done
me no harm, an' I ain't goin' ter do them none jes' 'kase they air
leetle an' dead, an' can't holp tharse'fs. They may hev hed a use fur
thar teeth in thar lifetime; I hain't got no use fur 'em now.' An' he
whurled around an' put his foot inter his stirrup an' war a-goin' ter
ride off, whenst the valley man cotch his bridle an' say, 'Ye hev got
no objections ter my excavatin' on yer land, though?'"
Yates laughed lazily. "I do declar' 'twar too durned funny. Fee didn't
know what the long-tongued sinner meant by 'excavatin',' an' I didn't
nuther till arterward. But Fee, he jes' wanted ter be contrairy, no
matter what, so he jes' say, powerful glum, 'I dun' no' 'bout that,'
and rid off down the road. An' this Shattuck, he jes' stood lookin'
after Fee with his chin cocked up in the air, an' he say, 'That's a
sweet youth!' He speaks out right plain an' spunky fur sech a spindlin'
man. Everybody laughed but Rhodes; _he_ looked mightily tuck back ter
hev his friend making game o' the mounting folks. Fee's vote counts
jes' the same ez ef he war ez pleasant ez a basket o' chips. So Rhodes,
he sorter frowned up an' say, 'Ye don't onderstan' Felix Guthrie. He
air a good-hearted man, but he ain't been treated right, an' it's
sorter soured him. He's good at heart, though.' An' this Shattuck
'peared ter take the hint; he say sorter stridin' about, off-hand, an'
that leetle soft hat o' his'n on the side o' his head, 'I mus' make
frien's with him, then; I mus' git on the right side o' him.' An' up
spoke one o' them Peakes--they war holpin' ter look on at the few ez
war willin' ter dig--'The only way,' he say, 'ter make frien's with Fee
Guthrie air ter fondle him with a six-shooter.' Shattuck laffed. But
Rhodes, he be a-shettin' him up all the time, an' a-hintin' at him, an'
a-lookin' oneasy. Rhodes air skeered 'bout his 'lection, ef the truth
war knowed."
He stretched his arms above his head and drew a long sigh of
pleasurable reminiscence. "We hed a right sorter sociable evenin'. I'll
be bound they air all over yander at the infair now. I know Rhodes
danced at the weddin' the t'other night at Gossam's, an' they do say he
kissed the bride, though they mought hev been funnin' 'bout'n that."
He looked at her once more, noticing at last the absorbed, intent
expression of her lustrous, thoughtful eyes; the thrill of some feeling
unknown to him was in her hand as she laid it upon his, and asked in an
irrelevant, mysterious, apprehensive tone, "What do 'excavate' mean?"
"Hey?" he exclaimed. He had already forgotten what he had said, in the
flexibility of his shallow mental processes, and recalled it by an
effort. "Shucks! Jes' dig--that's all. Folks hev got a heap o' cur'ous
words o' late years."
Her grasp tightened convulsively on his arm, "'Mongst the graves o' the
Leetle People?"
He nodded, looking at her with vague surprise and gathering anger.
"He sha'n't!" she cried, finding her voice suddenly, and it rang out
shrilly into the soft, perfumed night air. "It's in rifle range--the
Leetle People's buryin'-groun'. I hev got aim enough ter stop his
meddlin', pryin' han's 'mongst them pore Leetle People's bones. An'
I'll do it, too," she added, in a lower tone.
Her grasp had relaxed, for he had sprung to his feet and stood looking
at her, infinitely shocked, the image of the unoffending gentleman and
scholar, whom she threatened, in his mind, all unaware how it differed
from the ghoul of her ignorant fancy.
"Adelaide!" he exclaimed, with that accent of authority which he seldom
assumed, "hesh up! Tech that rifle, an' I'll turn ye out'n my door!"
She, too, was standing; she turned a stony face, white in the
moonlight, upon him as if she could not realize his words, but her eyes
were slowly kindling with a fury before which he quailed.
He was, however, in every way the stronger, and the gravity of the
crisis taught him how to use his strength.
"Take them words back," he reiterated, as if all unaffrighted, "or I'll
turn ye out'n my house forever, an' ye'll leave leetle Mose hyar, for
_he_ b'longs ter me!"
The fear that had quivered in his heart seemed suddenly translated
into her eyes; they looked an eloquent reproach, then, suddenly, all
the fire was quenched in tears, and she sank down sobbing by the side
of the cradle, leaving him standing there triumphant, it is true,
but finding bitterness in his victory. He sat down, presently, in
his former posture, feeling ill-used and reproachful and indignant.
It was difficult to resume the conversation in the tone which he had
maintained, and as she persistently wept, he resorted to reproaches.
"I dun' no' what in Canaan is the reason ye an' me can't git along
'thout quar'lin'. We never used ter quar'l none in our courtin' days,
an'"--as a fresh burst of sobs acquiesced in this statement, he
hastened to put the blame upon her--"ye never used ter talk so like a
durned fool." The chilly sensation which her threat, so full of horror,
had caused him, renewed for the moment its thrill.
"'Tain't like a fool," she declared, lifting her tearful face. "Ef
'tis, then the law's a fool--the law, ez ye set sech store on.
Ain't the law agin diggin' up folks's bones? I ain't a-goin' ter
do nothin' 'bout'n it, but ef ennybody war cotched at sech in the
_mounting_-folks's buryin'-groun' they'd hev a few ounces o' lead ter
tote off inside of 'em ef they could git away at all, an' ye know they
would."
The difference of their standpoint--his normal views unconsciously
modified by the talk of the scientific theorist, in which sentiment
was easily subordinated to the acquisition of valuable knowledge,
none of which could he adequately impart at second hand to her,
quivering as she was with the idea of sacrilege and the sanctity of the
tomb--baffled him for the moment; he hesitated; he found no words to
convey the impressions he had received; then he gave way to the anger
always the sequence of the antagonism of opinion between them.
"Ye don't sense nuthin', an' ye dun' no' nuthin', an' ye can't l'arn
nuthin'."
"I don't want ter l'arn sech ez ye 'pear ter pick up in the
settlemints," she retorted, with spirit. "Robbin' the dead an' sech!
I'd ruther stay at home an' jes' 'sociate with leetle Moses--a sight
ruther."
"I hedn't!" he declared, roughly. He rose to his feet. "I don't hev no
peace at home. I reckon I mought ez well go whar I don't get quar'led
with ez much. I mought jes' ez well be at the infair ez hyar."
"Jes' ez well," she sarcastically assented.
He stepped past her into the room to lay aside his shot-pouch and
powder-horn, as not meet accoutrement for a festive gathering.
"Ye hed better kerry yer rifle. Ain't ye 'feared ef ye leave it hyar I
mought take aim at suthin' in the Leetle People's buryin'-ground?" she
said, looking up at him from her lowly seat on the floor, her eyes hard
and dry and bright.
"Edzac'ly--fool enough fur ennything," he declared; but it was
empty-handed that he stepped out into the moonlight.
She made no effort to detain him; she did not call him back. He paused
when in the shadow of the great hickory-trees about the spring, and
looked up at the little house. The moon was above the mountains, nearly
full and radiant. Trailing luminous mists crept over the summits
after it, and caught the light. All the world shared in its gracious
splendors now, and the great gap, the gorge of the river, bereft of the
unique illumination its rugged vistas had monopolized while all was
dark about it, seemed melancholy and pensive, of reduced prominence and
blurred effect.
The dew glistened on the slanting roof of the little log-cabin;
the vines swayed duplicated by their moving shadows, and where the
moonlight fell unbroken through the doorway he saw, against the dark
background of the interior, Adelaide, still sitting on the floor beside
the cradle, and he heard the monotone of the rockers as they thumped to
and fro.
He heard it long after distance had nullified the sound. The wayside
katydids sang their song in chorus with it; the tree-toad shrilling
stridulously but bore it a burden. Even the roar of the water-fall
was secondary, however it might pervade and thrill the wilderness.
More than once, as he went along the dark and dewy road, he paused
doubtfully, half minded to retrace his way. "I oughtn't ter hev tuck
Adelaide up so sharp. Sence she hev hearn the notion ez them Leetle
People war jes' leetle chil'n, like Mose, she'll set mo' store by 'em,
jes' ter compli_mint_ him, ter the las' day she live. I'd hate ter be
sech a fool 'bout leetle Mose ez she be." He shook his head solemnly
as he stood in the road, fragrant with the odor of the azaleas in the
undergrowth and the balsamic breath of the low-hanging firs, which
were all fibrously a-glitter wherever the moon touched the dew in the
dense midst of their shadows. "An' she 'pears to think herse'f gifted
with wisdom now'days, an' sets up ter make remarks ez sobersided ez ef
she war risin' fifty year old. 'Fore she war married she never hed no
'pinions on nuthin'--ez frisky as a squir'l an' ez nimble. An' now'days
she ain't got nuthin' but 'pinions, an' air ez sot in her doctrines an'
ez solemn ez the rider, an' ez slow-spoken."
While he still hesitated, there came into his mind a foretaste of this
slow diction, fashioned to reproach or to ill-disguised triumph in
sedulously casual phrase, that would greet him should he return home,
his threat of attending the infair all unaccomplished. He would have
been glad enough to be sitting once more upon the low step of the
little porch, with Adelaide and the cradle of the slumbering Dagon
close by; but the pleasures of the festive gathering, grown all at once
strangely vapid and sterile to his imagination, lay between him and
the return to this calm domestic sphere; otherwise he would relinquish
all pretence of conserving those elements of primacy which he should
arrogate and maintain.
"It's time Adelaide hed fund out who's the head o' this hyar fambly.
'Tain't her, an' 'tain't leetle Mose, an' she ain't a-goin' to l'arn no
younger."
II.
In those open fields near the Pettingill cabin where the infair was in
progress, the moonlight seemed to reach its richest effulgence. There
was something in the delicate blue-green tint of the broad blades of
the waving Indian corn, where the dew lay with a glitter like that of
the whetted edge of a keen weapon, which was not revoked by the night,
being of so chaste and fine a tone that it comported with that limited
scale of color which the moon countenances. With the unbroken splendor
upon this expanse, all the brighter because of the deep sombre forests
above and the dense dark jungle of the laurel below--for the corn
stood upon so steep a slope that how the crop was cultivated seemed a
marvel to the unaccustomed eye--it was visible a long way to Stephen
Yates as he approached on the country road; even after he had crossed
the little log foot-bridge over the river, and commenced the steep
ascent of a wooded hill, he could still catch glimpses now and then
of this dazzling green through the heavy black shadows of the great
trees, from the foliage of which every suggestion of color had been
expunged. Another light presently came from a different direction,
goading the dulled and preoccupied mind of the young man into fresh
receptivities. A sound arose other than the tinkling metallic tremors
and gurglings of the mountain stream--the sound of a fiddle; a poor
thing enough, doubtless, but voicing a wild, plaintive melody, which
pervaded the woods with vibrant rhythmic tones, even in the distances,
where it wandered fitfully and faint, and now and again was lost. It
issued from out a great tawny flare, under the dense boughs of the
trees, that grew a brighter yellow as Yates drew nearer, soon resolving
itself into the illuminated squares of the doors and windows of the
Pettingill cabin. More than once figures, with gigantic shadows that
reached high up among the trees, eclipsed these lights, and suggested
to him the superannuated spectators of the festivity, looking in
upon it from porch and window. Certain masses of shadow began to
be differentiated amidst the dusky, tawny vistas in the darkness,
now only vaguely asserting an alien texture from the heavy shade of
the foliage, and now becoming definite and recognizable as sundry
household furnishings, evicted and thrust upon the bare ground to make
room for the dancing. The loom cut a sorry figure standing out under
the trees. Dimly discerned, it seemed to wear an aspect of forlorn
astonishment, consciously grotesque and discouraged. And then, as the
path wound, it receded to obscurity, and his attention was bespoken by
the spinning-wheels close by the wood-pile, all a-teeter on the uneven
flooring of the chips, and now and again, as if by a common impulse,
awhirl in a solemn, hesitant revolution, as some tricksy wind came out
of the woods and went its way.
A sinuous turn of the river brought it close to the Pettingill cabin,
and in the darkness he could see the stars, all come down to the earth,
the splendid Lyra playing in the ripples. A flare, too, from the
festive halls glassed itself in certain shallows; the rainbow hues of
the warping bars hard by were reflected on this placid surface, and the
great gaunt frame for the first time beheld its skeleton proportions.
The rhythmic beat of the untiring feet on the puncheon floor of the
cabin pulsed with the palpitations of the stars; the fiddle sang and
sang as ceaselessly as the chanting cicada without, and the frogs
intoning their sylvan runes by the water-side. All the night seemed
given over, in a certain languorous, subtly pensive way, to the rustic
merry-making of the infair, and only Stephen Yates felt himself an
intruder and out of place. As his step fell upon the porch, in its most
secluded and shadowy corner, he winced to note the quick, alert turning
from the window of a shaggy gray head, and the keen, peering eyes of
the hospitably intent father of the bridegroom who made the feast.
"Ye, Steve!" he cried out, "what ye kem a-sneak-in' up ter the house
that-a-way fur? Howdy! howdy!"
This stentorian welcome, pitched high to drown the sound of the dancing
and the long-drawn cadence of the violin, diverted the attention of the
by-standers, who, their faces unfamiliar in the combined effects of
the high lights from the windows and the deep shadows of the darkness
without, all turned to gaze at the new-comer and to assist at the
colloquy.
"We-uns hev all been a-gittin' married round hyar lately. Whar's that
purty wife o' yourn? Lef' her at home?" Genuine dismay and covert
rebuke were in the very inflections of the host's voice, although he
sought to make it as hearty and effervescent as before. "Lef' her at
home? Ter mind the baby? Waal, we air a-goin' ter miss her, but mebbe
the baby would hev missed her mo'. Waal, _ye_ air welcome, ennyhow."
"They tell me, Yates," remarked one of the by-standers, with the pious
intention of making himself disagreeable, "ez you-uns hev got the
meanes' baby in the kentry. Plumb harries ye out'n house an' home with
the temper of him."
"I have hearn that, too," affirmed another, the gleaming teeth of his
half-illumined face attesting his relish of the abashed attitude of the
forlorn Benedict. "I hev hearn 'way down ter Hang-Over Mountain big
tales 'bout'n the survigrous temper o' that thar brat o' yourn. They
'low they kin hear him holler plumb ter the Leetle Tennessee."
The others exchanged glances of derision. The goaded father plucked up
a trifle of spirit.
"He _may_ have a survigrous temper, an' he _do_ holler; he hev got the
lungs ter do it; fur I tell ye now he's a _whale_! He air goin' ter be
the Big Man o' these mountings--a reg'lar Samson!"
"Sure enough?" demanded the host, who, in his double character of
entertainer and father, showed more interest in "leetle Mose" than the
bachelors felt, except as he subdued his paternal relative and rendered
him ridiculous.
"Yes, sir! Git him to stand on his feet, sir, an' I tell ye his
head will reach that high." Yates measured off a length of the post
at least twice the height of Moses. "_He's a whale!_" And, with a
gravely triumphant nod, he pushed boldly into the room, although he
knew that the rows of elderly women against the wall were commenting
upon his "insurance" in appearing without his wife, thence proceeding,
doubtless, to tear the character of the "leetle Moses" in such manner
as that flimsy and much rent and riddled fabric was capable of being
further shred.
The floor trembled and elastically vibrated to the tread of the
dancers. The fiddler was seated in a rickety chair, precariously
perched upon a table that evidently felt also the recurrent thrills of
the measured pace. An intimation of the reverence in which his genius
was held was given in the generous glass at the feet of the musician,
never allowed to grow empty, however often, with a dexterous downward
lurch, he caught it up and applied it to his lips in the intervals of
the "figures," which he cried aloud in a stentorian voice. The big
boots on his long crossed legs swayed above the heads of the company;
his own head was not far from the festoons of red peppers swinging from
the brown beams, his face was rapt, his cheek rested on the violin; his
eyes were half-closed, and yet his vision was clear enough to detect
any effort on the part of a passer-by to perpetrate the threadbare joke
of appropriating the glass at his feet devoted to his refreshment.
Then the fiddle-bow demonstrated a versatile utility in the sharp rap
which it could deal, and its swiftness in resuming its more ostensible
uses. There was little laughter amongst the young hunters and their
partners. They danced with glistening eyes and flushed cheeks and a
solemn agility, each mandate of the fiddler watched for with expectant
interest, and obeyed with silent alacrity. They were all familiar to
Steve Yates, looking on from the vantage-ground of his twenty-two years
at the scenes of his youth, as it were; for in this primitive society
the fact that he was a married man rendered him as ineligible for a
dancing partner as the palsy could have done. Only Leonard Rhodes
seemed something of a novelty. He hailed from the county town, and
was a candidate for the Legislature. In the nimble pursuance of the
road to success and fame he mingled in the dance, and he would have
esteemed it fortunate could his devoirs have always been as congenial.
He affected a pronounced rural air, although even his best manners
were further from the cosmopolitan standard at which he habitually
aimed than he himself realized. He was a tall, well-built, brown-haired
young man, with a deeply sunburned face, a small, laughing brown eye,
a reddish-brown, waving beard of a fine tint and lustre, which he
usually had dyed a darker tone to evade the red shade considered so
great a defect in that region. Owing to the length of his absence from
his home in the interests of his canvass, and the lack of the village
barber and his arts, its color had quite regained its pristine value.
He wore sedulously his old clothes, which, upon his handsome figure,
hardly looked so old or so plain or so democratic as he would fain have
had his constituents see them, or, indeed, as the garments would have
seemed on another man. He danced impartially and successively with
every girl in the room; and it was well for his political prospects,
doubtless, that he had such elastic and tough resources for this
amusement at his command, since the neglect of any one of the fair
might have resulted in the loss of an indefinite number of votes among
her relatives of the sterner sex. His opponent, a family man forty-five
years of age, was in disastrous eclipse. The elder candidate could
only stand in a corner with some old codgers, who were painfully
unresponsive to his remarks and his jolly stories, and whose attention
was prone to wander from his long, cadaverous, bearded face as he
talked, and to follow the mazes of the dance.
Yates bethought himself of Rhodes's friend, the archæologist, and
catching sight of him lounging in a window opposite, his face lighted
with the first suggestion of pleasure that the evening had offered. He
made the tour of the room gradually, pausing now to keep out of the way
of the dancers; now darting mouse-like along the wall in the rear of
a couple advancing to the centre; now respectfully edging past a row
of the mountain dowagers seated in splint-bottomed chairs, and talking
with loud, shrill glee, bestowing but scant recognition on the man who
had left his wife at home. At last, after many hair-breadth escapes, he
reached Mr. Shattuck, still lolling upon the window-seat.
"How hev ye been a-comin' on?" Yates demanded, looking down at him with
a pleased smile.
For Mr. Shattuck, without the affectation of rustic proclivities, made
his way so fairly into the predilections of the mountaineers that his
friend Rhodes, who held himself a famous tactician and full of all the
finer enterprises to capture public favor, had asked more than once how
he managed it.
"I _don't manage_ it," the other had said.
He was a man of some twenty-eight or thirty years of age, of medium
height and with a slender figure, clad somewhat negligently in a dark
suit of flannel; he wore a small, soft, blue hat with an upturned brim,
which left his features unshaded. They were very keenly chiselled
features, not otherwise striking, but their clear cutting imparted
delicacy and intimations of refined force to his pale, narrow face. He
had a long, drooping brown moustache, and his hair, cut close, was of a
kindred tint, but darker. His eyes were full of light and life, darkly
gray, and with heavy lashes, and as they rested upon the scene, unique
to his experience, for he was city bred, one might never have divined
the circumstance of initiation, so ready an acceptance of it all in
its best interpretations did they convey. He made apparently no effort
to assume this air and mental attitude. As he looked up his glance was
singularly free and unaffected.
"I'm taking it all in," he said.
Yates, his fancy titillated by a fresh interest, his blood beginning to
pulse at last to the rhythm of happiness in the air, for which the old
fiddle marked the time, grudged himself so much pleasure which Adelaide
could not share. His heart was warm with the thought of her; a subtle
pain of self-reproach thrilled through his consciousness, and presently
her name was on his lips.
"My wife," he said, with unwonted communicativeness to the stranger,
"she's a great hand fur sech goin's on ez this; an' sech a dancer!
Ye mought ez well compare a herd o' cows ter a nimble young fawn ez
compare them gals ter Adelaide."
As he roared this out with all the force of his lungs above the
violin's strain and the recurrent beat of the dancing feet, his
enthusiasm re-enforcing the distinctness and volume of his speech, the
careless Mr. Shattuck became slightly embarrassed, and looked about
from one side to the other, as if fearful that the colloquy might
be overheard. But no one seemed to notice except a certain long and
lank mountaineer standing hard by, grizzled and middle-aged, who bore
earnest testimony to the same effect, leaning down toward Shattuck to
make himself heard.
"Yes, sir; a plumb beautiful dancer; light on her feet, I tell ye! The
purties' gal ennywhar round hyar. I hev knowed her sence she war no
bigger'n that thar citizen over yander."
He gave a jerk of his thumb toward a year-old child on the outskirts of
the crowd standing at the knee of his grandmother, who supported him in
an upright posture by keeping a clutch upon his petticoats, while he
bobbed up and down in time to the music, thumping first one foot and
then the other upon the floor, emulating and imitating the dancers,
participating in the occasion with the zest of a born worldling. His
grave face, his glittering eye, his scarlet plumpness of cheek, and
his evident satisfaction in his own performance combined to secure an
affectionate ridicule from the by-standers; but he, and indeed all
else, was unobserved by the dancers.
"Ef I hed thunk Adelaide would hev put up with sech ez you-uns, Steve,
I'd hev tried myself," protested the elderly bachelor, "though I ain't
much of a marryin' man in gineral."
Yates received this with less geniality. "Ye needn't hev gin yerse'f
the trouble," he retorted. "Haffen the mounting tried thar luck, an'
war sent away with thar finger in thar mouth."
"An' 'mongst 'em all she made ch'ice of a man ez goes a-pleasurin'
whilst she be lef' ter set at home like a old 'oman," and with a nod,
half reproach, half derision, he strolled away.
A mild form of pleasuring certainly, to watch the solemn capering
of the young mountaineers to and fro on the shaking puncheons, the
vibrations of which, communicated to the tallow dips sputtering upon
every shelf and table, caused the drowsy yellow light to so fluctuate
that with the confusion and the wild whirl of dancing figures the
details of the scene were like some half-discriminated furnishings of
a dream. Such as it was, Yates's conscience gave him a sharper pang,
especially when he thought of her as he had seen her last, the quiet,
pure moonlight falling fibrous and splendid through the open door upon
her grieved, upturned face as she crouched on the floor beside the
sleeping child, angelic in his smiling, pensive dreams. Yates felt that
he had been harsh; he felt this so poignantly that he gave himself no
plea of justification. All that she had said seemed now natural and
devoid of intention; only his alert censoriousness could have called it
in question--and he had been her choice of all the mountain.
"Adelaide ain't keerin' fur sech ez this," he said, loftily. "A nangel
o' light couldn't 'tice her away from leetle Mose. She fairly dotes on
all the other chil'n in the worl' jes' out'n compli_mint_ ter leetle
Mose. I hed a plumb quar'l with her this evenin'," he added, turning
to the archæologist with a smile, "arter I hed told her ez ye reckoned
them Leetle People buried thar on the rise war nuthin' but chil'n. She
jes' fired up, sir, an' 'lowed ef ye went a-foolin' round them with yer
fine book l'arnin' an' diggin' up thar bones, she'd pick ye off with a
rifle. Leetle Mose hev made her mighty tender to all the chil'n."
Shattuck glanced up with a good-natured laugh; he recognized only
fantastic hyperbole in the threat, and Yates once more experienced a
qualm of self-reproach to realize how seriously he had regarded it, how
heavily he had punished the extravagant, meaningless indignation.
"The only trouble I fear is getting the consent of the owner of the
land," Shattuck said, easily, and his eyes reverted to the object
that had before absorbed his attention. It was not the maelstrom of
"Ladies to the right." Yates, following the direction of his intent
gaze, experienced a trifle of surprise that it should be nothing more
striking than Letitia Pettingill, the daughter of the house, standing
in the doorway silently watching the dancing.
"A scrap of a gal" she was esteemed in the mountains, being a trifle
under the average height, and delicately built in proportion. The light
flickering out upon the porch barely showed the dark-green background
of hop-vines in the black darkness without. Her dull, light-blue cotton
dress, defined against this sombre hue, was swaying slightly aslant,
the wind breaking the straight folds of the skirt. Her complexion was
of a clear creamy tone; the hair, curling on her brow, and massed at
the nape of the neck and there tied closely, the thick, short, curling
ends hanging down, was a dusky brown, not black; and her eyes, well
set and with long dark lashes and distinctly arched eyebrows, were of
that definite blue which always seems doubly radiant and lucent when
illumined by an artificial light. Her small straight features had
little expression, but her lips were finely cut and delicately red. She
held up one arm against the door-frame, and bent her inscrutable eyes
on the quickening whirl.
"Waal, what Fee Guthrie kin see in her or what she kin see in Fee
Guthrie ter fall in love with one another beats my time," said Yates,
with a grin, commenting openly upon the focus of the other's attention.
Mr. Shattuck evidently perceived something of interest in her; he did
not lift his eyes, but he rejoined with freshened animation:
"Guthrie? The young 'bear with the sore head' who owns the pygmy
burying-ground?"
"That very actial bear," cried Yates, delighted with this
characterization of his friend and neighbor. "His old cabin thar's
'bout tumbled down; 'twar lef him by his gran'dad, an' he lives up on
the mounting with his step-mam; but he owns that house too; his dad's
dead. Some folks 'low," he continued, rehearsing with evident gusto the
gossip, "ez he don't keep comp'ny with Litt Pettingill. He jes' sot
by her wunst at camp-meetin', 'kase him an' her war all the sinners
present, an' that started the tale ez he war courtin' her; everybody
else war either convicted o' sin, an' at the mourner's bench, or else
shoutin' saints o' the Lord, prayin' an' goin' 'mongst the mourners. I
never hearn tell o' nobody keepin' comp'ny with Letishy Pettingill;
I'll be bound it'll take a heap better-lookin' gal 'n her ter suit Fee
Guthrie."
"I should like ter know where he'd find her," observed Shattuck.
Yates turned to bend the eye of astonished and questioning criticism
upon the unconscious object of their scrutiny.
"Ye 'low ez Litt Pettingill air well-favored, stranger?" he demanded at
last, in amazement.
"Very pretty and very odd. I never saw a face in the least like hers."
"Waal!" exclaimed Yates. "Litt Pettingill's beauty air news ter the
mountings. Some folks 'low she hev got a cur'us kind o' mind. Some even
say she air teched in the head." His tone seemed to intimate that Mr.
Shattuck, in the face of this fact, had reason to reform his standard
of taste.
That gentleman shook his own head in contemptuous negation. "Never in
this world. Never with that face."
"Waal, ye can't size her up now," insisted Yates, "leetle ez she
be"--with a grin--"whilst she be a-standin' still. Ef ye war ter see
her a-movin' an' a-turnin' roun', she's ez quick an' keen-lookin' ez a
knife-blade in a suddint fight, an' mighty nigh ez dangerous. She looks
at ye like she _warn't_ lookin' at ye, but plumb through yer skull
inter yer brains, ter make sure ye war tellin' her what ye thunk. She
talks cur'ous, too, sorter onexpected an' contrariwise, an' she never
_could_ git religion. That's mighty cur'ous in gal folks. I ain't so
mighty partic'lar 'bout men Christians, though I'm a perfesser myself,
but religion 'pears ter me ter kem sorter nat'ral ter gal folks.
'Tain't 'kase she's too religious that she ain't a-dancin'. It's jes'
'kase nobody hev asked her. She ain't no sorter favo_rite_ 'mongst the
boys."
Mr. Shattuck suddenly glanced up, half laughing, half triumphant, for
the little figure in blue had just been led out to the centre of the
floor, and the doorway was vacant save for a large brindled cur that
stood upon the threshold, wagging his tail and watching the scene with
a suave, indulgent, presidial gaze, as if he were the patron of the
ball. To be sure, her partner was that man of facile admiration, the
candidate Rhodes, but Shattuck experienced a vicarious satisfaction
that it could not be said that she had not been asked to dance at all.
He watched the couple as the set formed anew, and noticed that Rhodes,
with his sedulously rustic air, was beginning in the interim some
conversation, stooping from his superior height for her reply. He
rose suddenly to the perpendicular, an almost startled surprise upon
his face as he stared; then he clapped his hands with a jocular air
of applause, and his round laugh rang out with an elastic, unforced
merriment, which suggested to his friend that he was finding the ways
of policy not such thorny ways after all. Shattuck wondered vaguely
if this demonstration, too, were of the affectations of propitiation,
or if what she had said were clever enough to elicit it, or merely
funny. His eyes followed the little blue-clad figure as she began to
dance--her untutored movements all in rhythm with the music, as an
azalea dances in time to the wind. Now she drifted about with short,
mincing, hesitant steps, now with flying feet and skirts whirling, as
if responsive to the circling impetus she could in no wise resist. She
looked almost a child amongst the burlier and coarser forms. With her
delicate hands, and her tiny feet, and her spirited face, and the faint
blue color of her dress, she bore an odd contrast to the buxom beauty
of the other mountain girls, clad in variegated plaided homespun. Her
blue eyes were alight and glancing; her parted lips were red; her feet
hardly seemed to touch the floor as her hands fell from one partner's
grasp, and she came wafting through the party-colored maze, with
outstretched arms, to another.
For the fun was waxing fast and furious with the added and unique
diversion known as "Dancin' Tucker." The forlorn "Tucker" himself,
partnerless in the centre of the set, capered solemnly up and down,
adjusting his muscles and his pride to ridicule, which was amply
attested by the guffaws that ever and anon broke from the spectators.
However nonchalantly each temporary "Tucker" might deport himself in
his isolated position, the earnestness of his desire to escape from
his unwelcome conspicuousness by securing a partner, and his sincere
objection to his plight, were manifested always upon the fiddler's
command, "Gen'lemen ter the right," when he might join the others on
their round, dogging the steps of the youth he wished to forestall,
both balancing to each lady in succession. If, by chance, the "Tucker"
succeeded first in catching a damsel's hands and swinging her around
at the moment that the magic command "Promenade all!" sounded on the
air, he left his pillory to the slower swain, who must needs forthwith
"dance Tucker."
The traits of character elicited by the "Tucker" rôle constitute its
true fascinations, and are manifold. One nimble young hunter seemed
almost stricken with the palsy upon his isolation, or gradually
petrifying, while he sought to dance alone in the middle of the circle,
so heavily did each foot follow the other as he hopped aimlessly up
and down; the expression of his eyes was so ludicrously pitiable and
deprecatory, as they swept the coterie of the dowagers who lined
the walls, that they screamed with laughter. The instant "Promenade
all!" sounded upon the air, he made a frantic burst for liberty so
precipitate that at the moment of touching the hand of the damsel of
his choice he suddenly lost his equilibrium, and fell with a thunderous
crash quite outside of the charmed periphery. Amidst the shouts of the
company Rhodes caught the relinquished hands of the waiting lady, and
triumphantly gallopaded away, thus escaping the ignominy of "dancin'
Tucker."
And then Rhodes bethought himself suddenly of that future seat in the
legislative halls of the State. Shattuck laughed to divine his anxiety
as the meditative gravity gathered upon Rhodes's flushed and distended
countenance; his white teeth, all on display, suddenly disappeared.
His hand doubtfully stroked his beautiful undyed beard. There was
something worse even than dancing Tucker at the infair. With every
sharpened sense and every heightened emotion normal to the estate of
candidacy, he was appreciating with how much less philosophy, with what
scanty grace, indeed, he could endure to dance Tucker before the people
at the polls in the November election. As the rueful "Tucker," with
every bone shaken, gathered himself up slowly from the floor amidst
the screaming and stamping elders--even the dancers and the fiddler
had paused to laugh--his face scarlet, his lips compressed with pain,
his eyes nervously glancing, unseeing, hither and thither, like a
creature's in a trap, Rhodes stepped out from his place.
"This ain't fair," he said, taking the "Tucker" by the arm; "you were
ahead of me, and I'd have been left if you hadn't tripped up. _I'm_
Tucker by rights, an' I always play fair."
The "Tucker" looked at him with a doubtful, red, frowning face; but as
Rhodes jocularly took his place in the centre, and the violin began a
_pizzicato_ movement, as if all the strings were dancing too, with a
long sigh of relief he accepted the situation, and presently joined in
the laugh at the lorn candidate-Tucker.
The fact of an ulterior motive is a wonderfully reconciling influence.
Leonard Rhodes was dancing his way into the ballot-box, and thus it
was that he thought it consistent with his dignity to seek to be an
especially comical "Tucker." But the essential humor of the character
of "Tucker" is his unwillingness to be funny, and his helpless
absurdity and eagerness to elude his solitary dance. Human nature is so
complex that even those whose profession it is to know it can predicate
little even upon its most fundamental facts. As Rhodes bounded about,
now and then executing a double-shuffle and cutting a pigeon-wing of an
extraordinary agility, and more than once intentionally suffering an
opportunity of securing a partner to escape him, remaining "Tucker"
through several rounds, Shattuck heard comments among the by-standers
altogether at variance with the candidate's expectations. "That's all
done a purpose!" "_He_ makes a tremenjious fool of hisself!" "He don't
expect ter git married in this kentry!"
Shattuck wondered by what subtle unclassified perception, appertaining
to candidate-nature, these unexpected results were at last borne in
to Rhodes's consciousness, since he was unable to hear the whispers
by reason of the noise of the dancing, or, in the midst of his
absorbing saltatory activities, to mark any change of aspect among the
spectators. His jocund face grew gradually incongruously grave and
troubled as he bounded about with undiminished agility. These were
muscular forces now, however, at work, sustaining his continuance--mere
strength--instead of the joyous elasticity and animal spirits that
had at first made him so light. When, finally, it was possible to
bring his penance to a close, his politic monitions had all become
confused and contradictory, and he made as blind and vehement a rush
for the nearest opportunity as if he had been merely one of the young
mountaineers, with no further or deeper purpose in participating in
the pastime than the pleasure of dancing. His eyes seemed suddenly
opened to his precipitancy as he stood successful among the couples,
equipped at last with a partner, and flushed and tired and panting.
A wild acclamation of jeering joy had arisen among the spectators,
who during Rhodes's incumbency had grown tired and lost zest, for
it was seldom, indeed, that Felix Guthrie "danced Tucker." As the
young mountaineer, lowering and indignant, stood looking at Rhodes,
the genuine mirth of the situation was communicated once more to the
dancers, to the violin, and to the spectators, and the whole infair was
throbbing with a new lease on life. The tallow candles, sputtering on
tables and shelves, which had occasionally bowed almost to extinction
before the passing breeze--the whole party vanishing in these momentary
eclipses--seemed now endowed with freshened brilliancy; the fiddler
changed the tune to a merrier; the odor of apple-jack, newly drawn from
the barrel, was imbued with zestful suggestions as the jug was passed
among the on-lookers; only to Leonard Rhodes did the hour seem late,
and the room hot, and the violin dissonant, and the company frowsily
rustic and distasteful, and himself an unlucky devil to have his fate
and his best and highest aspirations and his chosen walk in life at
their arbitrary will. No candidate, making the crucial test of personal
experience, ever felt more doubtful of the wisdom of republican
institutions than did Leonard Rhodes, realizing the fatuity of his
choice for displacement, on meeting the gaze of Fee Guthrie, whom he
had constituted "Tucker" for the nonce, for Guthrie's aspect gave no
room for speculation as to the real sentiments with which he regarded
the position.
As Felix Guthrie stood in his conspicuous place, both the strangers
were impressed with the large symmetry of the scale upon which he
was built, its perfect proportion, its graceful ease. His boots,
reaching to the knee, were of a length and weight that might have
been an effective bar to any display of agility on the part of one
less accustomed to such cumbrous foot-gear. His brown jeans coat
was buttoned to the chin and girded about with a leather belt, in
which there were a pistol and a hunting-knife--in fact, the only
preparation which he had made for the dance was the removal of his
spurs and his hat. His face was deeply bronzed by the sun and the
wind, somewhat too square, but otherwise so regularly cut that the
features were inexpressive, save for the long brown eyes, with their
lowering, suspicious, antagonistic gleam. The full, dark, straight
eyebrows almost met above them. His hair, of a rich yellow color,
falling in long, loose, feminine ringlets on either side of this
large, surly, aggressive face, had an almost grotesque effect, so far
is our civilization from the days of the lovelocks. It hung down on
his collar, and curled with a grace and readiness that were the envy
of more than one of his partners. He was known far and wide as an
"ugly customer," in reference to his surly and belligerent traits of
character, which rather overshadowed his physical endowments. Rhodes,
however, had no fear of him, save for his political influence, for he
was a man of some hereditary consideration, and of substance--of more
than moderate means, according to the standard of the cove--and in no
wise had he ever been known to be placated or to forgive an affront.
It was with a heavy heart that the candidate began to dance to his
doom, which he now felt was inevitable, wishing that he could have
the immunity of his opponent, whose age had rendered him ineligible
for mingling in the festivities of the infair. His eyes ever and
anon wandered to the "Tucker," who was beginning to dance too, not
vehemently, but with a wonderful softness and lightness, considering
his ponderous accoutrements, his curls all in commotion, delicately
waving and oscillating about his fierce, intent, unsmiling face. This
was a "Tucker" of unique interest and value. The windows were full
of the loiterers without; the spectators about the walls laughed
breathlessly, and now and again stood up to catch an unimpeded glimpse
of him amidst the dancers moving to the fiddler's mandate.
The musician was a wise man in his generation, and understood the
human nature amongst which his lot was cast. He had kept sundry
"Tuckers" dancing, as mechanically and unwillingly as if they trod on
hot iron, long, long after they had despaired of ever hearing again
the "Gen'lemen ter the right" which gave them their chance, often
elusive, to escape. But he made Fee Guthrie's "Tucker" a short rôle.
The spectators were hardly accustomed to him in the unbeloved character
when the sudden command "To the right" smote sharply upon the air, and
the circle was awhirl anew. Felix Guthrie, in the midst, manifested
none of the precipitancy of his predecessors. His eyes were aglow; his
feet moved softly in certain "steps" of his own invention; his whole
attitude was one of expectancy, of abeyance. Scanning continually the
revolving crowd, he looked like a panther ready to spring. When the
word came at last, and he darted forward, the whole attack was most
accurately adjusted to the moment. He had chosen to forestall Rhodes,
who was balancing to Letitia Pettingill. There was only an instant's
difference in the quick movements, but instead of "swinging" the man
who came first, according to the rules, she suddenly swerved aside,
passed under Guthrie's outstretched arm, and, with a radiant face and
sapphire eyes, held out both hands to the candidate, who, bewildered,
clasped them, and the two swung round in the customary revolution,
leaving Guthrie "Tucker" as before. He stood as if petrified in the
instant's silence that ensued. Then, as a great clamor of laughter
and surprised comment arose, he sprang upon Rhodes, his grip on the
candidate's throat. Rhodes, himself of a brawny strength, had put forth
its uttermost to defend himself. A wave of wind went through the room,
flickering all its candles and blending the fluctuating shadows. In
their midst the bewildered guests saw, as in a dream, Guthrie deal,
with the butt of the pistol clasped in his hand, a blow upon the
candidate's head. The next moment the sharp crack of the discharged
weapon pealed through the room, and the puncheons trembled with the
heavy fall as Rhodes came down at full length on the floor. The violin
quavered into silence, the crowd drew off suddenly, then again pressed
close about the insensible figure; the wind once more went through the
rooms, with all the shadows racing after; and only the baby, still
dancing in the corner--although he, too, had stopped a moment and
winked hard at the clamorous, jarring tone of the pistol--was unaware
that "dancin' Tucker" at the infair had ended in bloodshed, and that
the gayety was over for the time.
III.
Shattuck sprang up, crying out, "Stop him! Don't let him escape!" as
he rushed to lift his friend's bleeding head from the floor. Despite
the turmoil of his emotions, he appreciated with all his keenly
tutored senses the antithesis of the effect of Felix Guthrie's massive
immobility as he stood hard by wiping the blood from the butt of the
smoking pistol.
"Stop him!" he retorted; "hedn't ye better wait till I set out ter run
somewhar?"
There was a bravado in the situation not altogether distasteful,
Shattuck knew, to the spirit of the backwoodsmen, and although there
were muttered reproaches amongst them, no one laid hands on Felix
Guthrie, still looking about to the right and to the left with lowering
eyes, and still wiping the blood from his pistol with the soft brim of
his hat, that it might not rust upon the weapon to its injury.
The most vehement expressions of reprobation came from the host, who
loudly upbraided Felix Guthrie for his lack of "manners," and bewailed
the omen of the incident, as he knelt beside the wounded candidate with
one of the limp hands in his.
"Thar ain't been nobody died on these puncheons sence Sandy McVeigh
called my gran'dad ter the door an' shot him down in his tracks! Thar's
been cornsider'ble quiet hyar' sence. The old man war a powerful
fighter an' a tartar, an' the neighborhood war peacefuller with him
out'n it than in it, ef I _do_ say it myse'f. An' now Fee Guthrie kems
hyar a-killin' folks ter spite the infair--whenst we hev hed sech
luck with the weddin' an' the supper an' all--an' stain up these old
puncheons with a bloody death one more time!"
His gray shock head bobbed about over the prone figure, and as he
made his unique lament he sought to stanch the wounds, still bleeding
profusely. He rose with a sudden alacrity when, on the outskirts of the
crowd, a heralding cry announced that the doctor was coming. Even then
it was a question of propriety and hospitality which took precedence
with him.
"Let's git him onto a bed, boys; quick! quick! Don't let Doc Craig kem
hyar an' tell the whole kentry-side ez we-uns let Mr. Rhodes die on
the floor 'kase I don't vote on his side. I wonder I never thunk o' it
before. Let's git him onto a bed."
Shattuck's objections to moving him were overborne in the turmoil. A
dozen strong fellows seized the prostrate figure, and it was lifted
as if it had no weight, and swiftly borne up the narrow stairs to be
laid upon a bed in the roof-room. Shattuck, feeling helpless in the
midst of these coercive circumstances, could only follow, his protests
grinding between his teeth, almost unconsciously metamorphosed into
curses. But as he rose step by step on the steep narrow stair blockaded
by the crowd pressing after the wounded man, and the roof-room came
gradually into view, he grew more content, so palpably for the better
was the change. The window at each gable end stood open; into one fell
the silvery splendor of the moon; the other was dusky with shadows,
though beyond he caught the interfulgent rays amongst the sycamore
leaves. The batten shutters swayed gently in the wind. The air was full
of vaguely prophetic intimations of dawn. A pigeon that had nested in
the niche between the chimney and the wall was astir for a moment, and
cooed softly. The dust and glare of the room below seemed far away. The
tent-like roof and the simple furnishing--a bed, a cedar chest, a few
garments and some large wolf-skins hanging to the rafters--all were
made visible by the gracious courtesy of the moon.
Shattuck fancied that he heard his friend sigh faintly as they placed
him upon the great soft feather-bed--the whole structure of an uncommon
stature, but promising ease and comfort in proportionate amplitude.
He made haste to seize his host's arm. "Send them all down," he said,
in an imperative whisper; "you and I are enough to take the doctor's
instructions. He needs air and quiet; send them all down."
To his relief, Zack Pettingill seemed to appreciate the suggestion.
He turned abruptly to the great shadowy figures of the mountaineers,
repeatedly lifting both arms and letting them fall with emphasis, as if
he were driving a flock of sheep or poultry before him.
"_Git out_, boys," he said, in his most clamorous drawl. Shattuck's
nerves recoiled from the rasping tone. "We-uns don't want the
doctor-man around hyar preachin' an' namin' the devil like he seen
him yistiddy--always skeers me out'n my skin ter hear 'bout _him_ so
familiar--an' sayin' we air crowdin' round jes' out'n cur'osity an'
smotherin' the man an' ain't done all we could fur Candidate Rhodes. I
wisht Rhodes _could_ hev tuk another time and somebody else's place ter
git shot! _Git out'n hyar_, boys!" And as he advanced upon the retiring
crowd he once more lifted both arms high and let them fall.
"Hesh!" said one of the retreating mountaineers, in a warning tone--he
had descended three or four steps of the staircase that entered the
room at one corner, his head and shoulders still visible above the
floor. "The doctor's a-comin'." The dusky figures pressed close after
him. He glanced up once more, his face suddenly illumined with a vague
flicker. "_With a candle_," he added, under his breath, as if he
imparted significant matter.
Shattuck drew a long sigh of relief. At last he would be able to see
his friend in proper care, and would be free from that terrifying sense
of responsibility which sorely harassed him, hampered as he was by
the unaccustomed conditions of the place. He would have the aid and
sympathy of a man of some education, and on whose judgment he could
rely--one of his own nationality at least; for he suddenly felt an
alien amongst these men, whose springs of action so differed from his
own.
He waited breathlessly, watching the light grow stronger, casting a
gigantic shadow of the tousled head of the master of the house upon the
walls, as the heavy tread came nearer. The host leaned down to take
the candle from the doctor's hand, and in the flicker of the motion
the stranger was in the room before the light revealed him. Shattuck,
advancing eagerly, suddenly paused. A pang of disappointment--more,
despair--quivered through his heart. He beheld a tall, slow, shambling
man, clad in old brown jeans, with a broad-brimmed hat, and the heavy
boots affected by the mountaineers; he had a grave, meditative face,
and he fixed his eyes upon the patient on the bed with that expression
of proprietorship which everywhere marks the physician. Otherwise
Shattuck could not have believed his senses. "Are you--are you--"
he stammered, overlooking in his agitation the slight gesture of
salutation with which the stranger recognized his presence there--"are
you a regular graduate of a medical college?"
The mountaineer bent a lack-lustre eye upon him. "_Which?_" he said, in
amazement.
"What sort of doctor are you?" demanded Shattuck, troublous
recollections of the old idea of charms and spells rising to his mind.
"I be a yerb doctor, by the grace o' God," returned the mountain
practitioner. He took, without more ado, the candle from his host, and
with it in one hand looked fixedly down at the white face, all streaked
and stained, upon the pillow.
Shattuck, constrained by every sentiment of loyalty to his friend of
which he was capable, quivering with undeserved self-reproach that he
had not earlier made inquiries which might have elicited the nature of
the aid to be summoned, frantic with anxiety for the result, and lest
he omit some essential duty, turned hastily, and without another word
went straight down the stairs. With some instinctive policy animating
him, he sought out the bridegroom as most likely to be won over to his
theory. This was a tall, heavily built young mountaineer, pleased with
the conspicuousness of his position in proportion as his wife, a demure
and staid young woman, was abashed and overcome by it. He had that
universal bridal manner, intimating a persuasion that nobody else has
ever been married. He received Shattuck with the kindly condescension
likely to grace one who has attained so unique a distinction.
"I suppose, Mr. Pettingill," said Shattuck, craftily, "that you don't
feel at home here now, as you are going away to live among the Gossams.
I hear you have built a house across the creek from your father-in-law.
I suppose you feel quite one with the Gossams now."
"Oh, Lord, no! that I ain't," declared the bridegroom, with the
precipitate denial of one whose secret fear has been put into words,
and who seeks to boldly exorcise it. "I hain't married all the fambly;
one's a plenty, thanky. Ye needn't be afeared ter speak yer mind 'bout
'em ter me. I'd hev liked Malviny jes' ez well ef she hadn't been a
Gossam."
The thought of the rose that by any other name would smell as sweet
came incongruously into Shattuck's mind for the instant, but he
rejoined hastily:
"Well, if I could get speech of any member of the Pettingill family
that cares anything for the name, I would say that Mr. Pettingill has
behaved very strangely--sending for an herb doctor instead of the kind
of physician that Mr. Rhodes would have if he were at home."
"Lord!" exclaimed the young fellow, laying his hand on Shattuck's
shoulder and looking earnestly into his eyes, as they stood on the
porch beside one of the flaring windows, "Phil Craig, they say, kin
all but raise the dead; he's reg'lar gifted--a plumb yerb doctor. The
t'other kind--why, they _pizens_ ye"--kindly didactic, and with a
rising inflection.
"Well, people in Colbury will think it mighty strange that Mr.
Pettingill didn't send for the kind of doctor that Mr. Rhodes would
have had if he could have chosen," Shattuck retorted, with a frown.
"You all vote against Rhodes, don't you?"
The countenance of the bridegroom was embarrassed and troubled. Perhaps
he thought the festivities made to celebrate his happiness had been
sufficiently overcast without further clouding them with political
differences.
"But we-uns hain't got no gredge at Mr. Rhodes," he stipulated.
"I should be much grieved," continued Shattuck, "if Mr. Pettingill--he
seems to be a worthy man--should be included in the prosecution, or any
member of his family involved in any way; but of course Mr. Rhodes's
relatives and political friends will make things hot if--if he should
die here with medical attendance denied him."
"Good Lord!" the young man burst out, "_we-uns_ hed nuthin' ter do with
it--jes' Fee Guthrie. Do ye think they'd prosecute Fee? 'Twar jes' a
fight--a sorter fight--but _we-uns_--"
"If I knew where a sure-enough doctor lives, or could find anybody that
does know, I'd have him here if he had to come a hundred miles. I've
asked and asked, and nobody seems to know."
"Wait a minute"--the bridegroom turned to intercept old Zack Pettingill
as he came down the stairs.
Bold as Shattuck's policy had been, he quaked to witness his own
suggestion of political enmity, malicious denial of medical attendance,
and the possibility of prosecution, introduced as a threat into Zack
Pettingill's honest and hospitable consciousness. And yet he could but
laugh at the manner of it. In order to capture and speak apart to his
parent, the bridegroom had drawn the old man almost behind the door. In
fact, while the son stood visible, with earnest and urgent gestures and
grave and deprecatory countenance, the effect of his communication upon
the unseen Pettingill was only intimated by the agitation which beset
the door, as the old man floundered behind it in the activities of his
anger, and his contemptuous floutings of the suggested implication in
crime. Now the door quivered on its hinges; now it received a blow
that would have sent it flaunting wide had not the young man's hand
restrained it; and finally, when it became quiet, Shattuck divined
the success of his effort before the bridegroom turned away and the
liberated father emerged from behind it. He was not prepared, however,
for the glower of deep-seated hatred which Zack Pettingill cast upon
him through the open window before he turned toward the stairs.
Shattuck felt suddenly wounded; the blood mounted to his face as if he
had received a blow; and if he had for the moment forgotten that in
these mountains the poorest honest man holds his dignity as safe from
the imputation of crime as if he were a magnate and millionaire, and
resents it as dearly, what other course could he have pursued with the
interests he had at stake--his own conscience and his friend's life?
As he paced to and fro the short limits of the porch, there sounded
almost immediately the quick thud of galloping hoofs down the rocky
hill, surging through the river, becoming fainter on the opposite bank,
and so dying away. In his preoccupation he attached no importance to
this, as the guests were now beginning to take leave. Only when young
Pettingill reappeared, a trifle breathless and with an excited eye,
and the comment, "We sent fur Doctor Ganey--seventeen mile--Steve
Yates rid fur him," did Shattuck connect the swift departure that he
had unconsciously remarked with the success of his mission. He did not
triumph in it as he had expected. His sensitiveness, with which he
was well enough endowed to keep him amply supplied with unhappiness,
was all astir within him; the knowledge of the wounds that he had
dealt--deep, bitter, and intentional--had developed a double edge and
a sharp retroaction. He doubted if in all Zack Pettingill's hard,
limited, and most respectable life he had ever been brought face to
face with the ignominy of such suspicions and such threats. Not that
the taking of life on a grievous provocation and an implacable quarrel
was held, in the mountain ethics, reprehensible; the deep turpitude
lay in the suggested circumstances--a conspiracy, a political grudge,
and the victim a guest. It would have been far indeed from his own
roof-tree could Zack Pettingill, the very soul of hospitality, have
contemplated the infamy of which Shattuck had affected to suspect
him. He wondered a trifle that so ignorant, so coarse, so violent,
so lawless a man should be so vulnerable in the more æsthetic
sensibilities, forgetting that traits of character are as the solid
wood, indigenous; and that cultivation is, after all, only surface
polish and veneer, and can never give to common deal the rich heart,
the weight, and the value of the walnut or the oak.
"My wife an' all her folks air a-goin' now, an' I reckon I'll hev
ter hustle along an' jine 'em," drawled the bridegroom, presently.
"I reckon they hev hed enough o' dancin' an' fiddlin' an' sech. Thar
ain't been ez much dancin' in the cove afore I got married sence
the Big Smoky war built--'thout," he qualified, meditatively, for
he was a man of speculation--"'thout 'twar the Injuns. Some 'low ez
Injuns war plumb gin over ter dancin' in the old times"--with the
sufficient air of an ethnological authority--"war dances an' scalp
dances." He smiled in slow ridicule. "Folks didn't dance none in the
war ez we hed hyarabouts--Fed and Cornfed--'thout ye call some o'
them quicksteps on the back track dancin'--_they_ war lively enough
for ennything! But"--with the manner of resuming the subject--"they
danced at the weddin' t'other night at Mr. Gossam's, an' they hev
danced at the infair, an' now I hope nobody ain't goin' ter gin no
mo' dances; leastwise not in complimint ter Malviny an' me. They air
toler'ble tiresome ter me," he protested, with a _blasé_ air. "An'
I ain't s'prised none ef they air devices o' the devil ennyhow, ez
ennybody mought know from the eend this one hev kem ter. Malviny ain't
no dancer, an' air mighty religious, an' all this hyar fiddlin' an'
glorifyin' hev been sorter terrifyin' ter her. I ain't pious myse'f,"
he concluded, with an air which to Shattuck's discerning observation
sufficiently identified his type as the incipient man of the world. "I
expec' ter go ter heav'n in partnership with Malviny--she's good enough
fur two."
He strolled off to join a group whose departure was impeded by much
hospitable insistence to remain longer, and by the presentation of
bundles of the supper wrapped in paper; for, alack! the disaster had
preceded the opening of the supper-room, and its triumphs were and
would ever be only a matter of conjecture. The disappointment was
stamped into the lines of Mrs. Pettingill's worn countenance. It seemed
a perversely withheld opportunity of joy in her restricted life, since
it was deemed unmeet that the formal feasting should proceed while
Leonard Rhodes lay up-stairs at the point of death. She could only cut
great slices of cake, and press them upon her guests, with the wheezing
adjuration, "Take it home, and _jedge_ what luck we hed with the
bakin'!"
She had been altogether despoiled of the fine show that the table in
full array would have made, but the apple-brandy that had constituted
Mr. Pettingill's share of the preparations, in circulation since
the first arrival, had by no means been in vain. He was disposed to
offer his example as one that might with profit be adopted. "I always
b'lieved in a _handed_ supper," he remarked. "Then, ef--ef--an accident
war ter happen' 'fore 'twar all over, folks wouldn't go away hongry
from yer house, nohow. But the wimmin-folks air so gin over ter pride
an' fixin's that they air obleeged ter set out a _table_ all tricked
up an' finified off."
The violinist, however, was esteemed in some sort exempt from the rule
of etiquette which necessitated the immediate dispersing of the company
without the formal supper. A curious eye might have discovered him
under the staircase which led to the wounded man's room. He sat with
the "lap-board"--usually used in cutting out the men's clothes--across
his knee, and here was ranged a liberal choice of the viands which the
shed-room had contained. Most of the household dogs--there were twenty
odd--were underfoot in the shed-room, presiding with a speechless
frenzy of interest in the partition of the good things; but two of
the younger ones sat at the fiddler's feet, and watched, with heads
canted askew and the glistening eyes of admiration, the prodigies of
his execution. The stiff tail of one of them--a pointer--sweeping the
floor, now and again came in contact with the violin that stood on end
in the corner, eliciting a discordant twanging of the strings, and
a low, hollow, resonant murmur; whereupon the dog would rise with a
knitted, puzzled brow and an air of irritated interruption, only to
seat himself anew, and with a bland and freshened interest resume his
earnest watch upon the violinist's movements. Again he would wag his
tail in the joy of his heart, again strike inadvertently the strings of
the instrument, and once more arise to vainly investigate the mystery
of "this music in the air."
Occasionally the closed door hard by opened suddenly to disclose Mrs.
Pettingill's anxious face and gray head, as she cast a searching
glance to discern what havoc the fiddler had succeeded in making
in the good things set before him. She added to the normal drawl of
the mountaineers an individual wheeze of singular propitiations,
and implying cordial and confidential relations. There may be more
beautiful sounds, but none of more suave and soothing effect than that
husky, "Jack, jes' try a glass o' this hyar cherry-bounce along with
a bite o' pound-cake"--as she extended the "bite," which, in point of
size, might have discouraged the jaws of the giant Cormoran, but never
Jack Brace's. "It'll _rest_ ye mightily, arter all the fiddlin' ye
hev done." And again, "Jack, hev ye ever tasted my sweet-spiced peach
pickles?"
Jack had, indeed. But Jack said he never had, in order that he might
renew the gustatory delights that he remembered.
Now and then less friendly eyes gazed in upon the nook. A gigantic
mountaineer, slowly strolling through the half-deserted scene, came
to a full halt hard by, leaned peeringly forward, took a step closer,
and, with his shaggy-bearded face inclined pharisaically over the
well-filled lap-board, demanded, in a tone of gruff reproof:
"What air ye a-doin' of hyar, gormandizing like ye hedn't hed nuthin'
ter eat fur a week an' better, an' a man dyin' up-steers?"
"Ye talk like I war a-nibblin' on Len Rhodes," cried Jack Brace,
angered by the mere suggestion that etiquette required that he should
desist. "My goin' hongry ain't a-goin' ter holp him, an' my eatin'
arter fiddlin' all night ain't a-goin' ter hender. Ef he can't go ter
heaven 'count o' me an' this leetle brandy peach"--as he held up the
appetizing morsel both the dogs rose up on their nimble hind-legs in
pathetic misapprehension of his intention, their eyes widening with
dismay as he withdrew the dainty effectually from view--"why, he ain't
got _enough_ religion ter git thar, that's all!"
Shattuck, going up-stairs, glanced down, upon hearing the words, at
the cosy nook and the fiddler, and was reminded anew of his friend's
danger, his sense of achievement in carrying his point having served
for a time to dull his anxiety. The room had taken on that strange,
discordant, forlorn effect which is characteristic of a scene of gayety
overpast, and is never compassed by mere bareness, or disarray, or
disuse. There was a pervasive sense of expended forces, as if all the
elation and effervescent spirit exhaling here had left a veritable
vacuum. The candles on shelf and niche and table were sputtering in
their sockets or burning dimly. Here and there mountaineers slouched
about, awaiting their womankind, who presently flustered out of the
shed-room wrapped in shawls, and with big bundles of the "supper" so
unhappily transformed into a "snack." There were chairs tilted back
against the walls as the spectators of the festivities had left them.
A saddle or two and a trace-chain and some bits of harness were lying
about the floor, where they had been temporarily disposed by the
owners, engaged in "gearing up" the teams without. Now and again voices
could be heard calling refractory beasts to order, but dulled by the
distance, and partaking of the languor of the hour. The baby, who had
danced as assiduously as the best, albeit its walking days were not yet
well ushered in, had succumbed at last, and lay, a slumbering heap of
pink flesh and blue calico, upon the floor. Its attitude demonstrated
the elasticity of its youthful limbs, and its hands clutched one of the
pink feet that had done such yeoman service earlier in the evening. An
old hound, bound to the spot by the talismanic phrase, "Guard him!"--a
duty from which only death itself could lure him--sat bolt-upright by
the prostrate figure, and looked now with sleepy eyes and cavernous
yawns at the departing guests, and now became preternaturally vigilant,
and uttered wistful wheezes of despair and envy as the hopeful gambols
of the young dogs about the munching fiddler caught his attention.
The whole picture grew dim and hazy with its flickering lights, and
fluctuated suddenly into darkness, as if it had slipped from actuality
into a mere memory, as Shattuck went farther up the stair and the
roof-room gathered shape and consistency before him. The window at one
end still held the glamour of the moonlight, the silver green of the
swaying foliage, the freshness and the sparkle of the dew. He heard
the pigeons cooing drowsily. The wolf-skins swinging from the rafters
caught the gleam of the candle, and borrowed a sleek and rich lustre.
The focus of the tallow dip itself glowed yellow in the midst of its
divergent rays, that grew dim as they stretched ever farther among the
duskily brown shadows of the place. Now and again it was eclipsed as
figures, ministering to the wounded man, passed before it. Suddenly
they drew back. Rhodes's face, distinct upon the pillow, caught the
light full upon it. Shattuck started forward, a great throb of relief
astir at his heart, and a loud exclamation, incoherent, upon his lips.
For his friend had opened his eyes, alight with his own old identity;
his face, pallid, and with smears of blood faintly discernible,
although much of it had been washed away, wore a languid smile. It
seemed that the element of his being which was strongest in him, his
sense of postulance, of candidacy before the people, was reasserted
first of all his faculties.
"Did I--did I--hurt anybody?" he faltered; "I didn't mean to hurt
anybody." Then, as he seemed to realize his surroundings, his memory
revived.
"Where's Fee? Fee didn't get hurt, did he? Where am I?" He lifted
himself upon his elbow and looked waveringly about. "Lord!" he
exclaimed, impressed by the silence, "you didn't stop the dancing on
_my_ account, Mr. Pettingill? I've spoiled the party! Well! well! I'll
never be able to look Mrs. Pettingill in the face again." And he sank
back on the pillow.
The surly countenance beneath the host's grizzled shock of hair took on
a milder expression. The stiff grooves and lines of the lips relaxed,
and might be said to have released a smile. "We kin spare the party,
Mr. Rhodes--spare it a sight easier'n we kin spare you-uns." Then, as
Shattuck unwisely pressed up to the side of the bed, the old man's eyes
suddenly assumed a hard glitter of triumph with the hot anger that made
him breathe quickly and stertorously, and curved the lines of his stiff
old mouth.
"Thar be _some_," he remarked, "ez will 'low I be jes' glad ter git
shet o' bein' prosecuted. _Me_ prosecuted, 'kase ye an' Fee tuk ter
tusslin' in the middle o' the dancin', an' Fee war the bes' man.
_Prosecuted!_" He snorted out the word with a repulsion that made the
very tone odious.
Rhodes, visibly agitated, pulled himself into a sitting posture.
"Who--who--said that--such a thing?" Still dazed and confused though he
was, his eyes, sweeping the by-standers, rested with the certainty of
reproach upon Shattuck. There was a momentary silence. "Understand one
thing, Mr. Pettingill," he said at length, with a quick flush upon his
pale face that had seemed to grow lean in the last hour--"understand
this: alive or dead, no man speaks for me."
He sank back once more upon his pillow, which the herb doctor had
readjusted with a hand that was as soft and listless as any fine
lady's; he lifted the injured man's head into another position.
"It air mo' level," he observed, learnedly. "This slit in his head
air a-goin' ter cure up right off," he continued, looking with mild
blue eyes at Shattuck, who stood flushed and indignant among them all,
feeling repudiated in the odd turn that affairs had taken. "'Tain't
goin' ter inflame none, hevin' bled so much. He warn't shot nowhar;
jes' cut on the head. His hair is singed some, whar the powder burnt
it, I reckon. He mustn't git up, though, ter-day nor ter-morrow, else
he'll fever."
If Shattuck, with the cowardice that is the essential sequence of a
well-intentioned mistake, hoped that no more might be said by Mr.
Pettingill, he understood little of the pertinacity and endurance that
can animate him who presses his breast against the thorn. The host had
been unspeakably afflicted by the bare suggestion of foul play. It had
served as a goad when naught else might have moved him. Even although
its efficacy was nullified, he could not pass it by, but again and
again in review he evoked all its capacities of poignancy. "Ye shet
up, Phil Craig," he said, his manner of rebuke palpably affected. "Ye
ain't fitten ter doctor the 'quality.' I hev hed ter send Steve Yates
a-cavortin' _seventeen_ mile in the midnight ter fetch a doctor ter
physic Mr. Rhodes fur a leetle gash side o' the head! May keep we-uns
from bein' _prosecuted_, though; leastwise we'll hope so."
Rhodes, appalled, could only stare with amazement at Shattuck. How his
friend could have brought himself to consider bodily health before
political advantage, and yet call himself a friend, was a thing which
he could not comprehend. It was all too fresh for even the sophistical
comfort of believing that he had tried to do all for the best. He
could only look at Shattuck with eyes full of wonder and reproach,
doubly effective from his reduced and prone estate; and Shattuck,
indignant and resentful, could only turn short about and walk away.
He repented that he had done aught. And then he wondered how any man
of sense could have done aught else. His dignity was affronted by
the position in which he found himself. He despised his friend for
the pusillanimous time-serving of his hearty endorsement of all that
the mountaineers had done and said. And yet he could but acknowledge
that this was ample. He despised himself for his vicarious fright,
his over-serious treatment of the incident. And yet, as he recalled
the scene--the two struggling, swaying figures, the savage blow with
the butt end of the pistol, the sudden discharge of the weapon, the
heavy fall, the long insensibility--it seemed as if the issue were
phenomenally fortunate, rather than such as might have been expected.
Amidst all the nettling subjects of contemplation, one recurred with
continually harassing suggestions--how he should meet the physician
whom he had caused to be summoned in the midnight from the distance
of seventeen miles, when the learning or the ignorance of the simple
herb doctor had so amply sufficed for the emergency. Caused to be
summoned! He thought of Steve Yates riding the horse's back sore,
believing that a dying man lay in the house. As he heard Rhodes's
rollicking laughter--a trifle quavering, to be sure--he quailed before
the idea that there was nothing to offer the physician when he should
arrive. He felt that he would have been glad of a diseased liver or an
injured brain to justify his proceedings. He began in a nervous state
of expectancy to pause whenever he reached the shadowy window, and to
look through the silvered branches of the sycamore-tree, fearing to
descry perchance a mounted figure approaching along the winding road.
All vacant it was as it curved, now in the clear sheen, now lost in
the black shadow, reappearing at an unexpected angle, as if in the
darkness the continuity were severed, and it existed only in sinuous
sections. Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a
maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling
to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with
her lover. An ox-cart lumbering slowly along, with its burly, nodding
team, through the illumined spaces, and disappearing in intervals of
obscurity, the motion of the oxen's horns somehow vaguely discerned
before they emerged again from the shadow, illustrated the leisurely
ideal of mountain travel. After it had quite vanished, and even the
sharp, grating creak of its unoiled running-gear had been lost in
the distance, a swift canine figure, distorted by speed to a mere
caricature of its species, with tail drooping, with ears laid back
close to its head, darted along the serpentine curves--one of the
visitors' dogs, just made aware of his master's departure, and in his
haste to overtake the jogging vehicle adding farcical suggestions of
comparison to its slow progress.
And then for a time Shattuck, pacing the length of the room and pausing
at the window, marked neither approach nor departure. The shadows were
lengthening; the moon was low in the sky; the neighboring massive
mountains were darkly and heavily empurpled against the pensively
illumined horizon. At their base the valley slept; it wot little of the
opaline mists that gathered above it, and enmeshed elusive enchantments
of color, which vanished before the steady gaze seeking to grade them
as blue or amber or green, and to fix their status in the spectrum.
A strange pause seemed to hold the world. Only the pines breathed
faintly. Beneath their boughs he saw suddenly Letitia Pettingill
sitting on a log of the great wood-pile. Her pale-blue homespun dress
seemed white in the moonlight. She leaned back, her hands clasping her
head, which rested upon the higher logs behind her, her eyes fixed
contemplatively upon the slow sinking of the reddening moon.
Another had observed her there. It was only a moment or two before
a tall figure sauntered out from the house and stood near by with a
casual air, surveying not her, but the aspects of the departing night
or the coming day, as retrospection or anticipation might denominate
the hour. Shattuck with a frown recognized the figure; it was easily
marked; its height and breadth and muscle would suffice to distinguish
it, without the added testimony of the long tousled ringlets and the
square, stern, martial face, overshadowed by a broad-brimmed hat.
Guthrie's pistol and a knife gleamed in his leather belt. His long
boots jingled with the replaced spurs, but he made no move toward
departure, and his horse still stood, half in the shadow and half in
the sheen, drowsing under a dogwood-tree. It was only after he had
waited some time thus silent and motionless that he slowly cast his
surly, long-lashed eyes toward Letitia. If she had seen him, she made
no sign. Still clasping the back of her shapely head with both uplifted
hands, she sat, half reclining, against the logs, and watched the
moon go down. The initiative was forced upon him. There was a latent
capacity for expressiveness suggested in the surprise and uncertainty
and subtle disappointment depicted upon his face. He advanced slowly to
the wood-pile, and sat down on one of the lower logs, his booted and
spurred legs stretched out before him, one hand upon his hip, his hat
thrust back, his ringleted head bare to the dew and the sheen. Still
she did not move nor glance toward him. As his eyes absently traversed
the space about them, he caught sight of Shattuck turning away from the
roof-room window. Whether from a full heart, or in despair that she
would break the silence, or on a sudden impulse which the glimpse of
the stranger roused, he spoke abruptly, reverting to the scenes of the
evening.
"I reckon ye air in an' about sati'fied now with what ye hev up-ed an'
done," he drawled, slowly.
She unclasped her hands that she might turn her head and look steadily
at him for a moment. Her lustrous illumined blue eyes either showed
their fine color in the ethereal light of the moon, or the recollection
of it was substituted for the sense of it in the sudden adequateness
of their expression. Her gaze relaxed, and she resumed her former
attitude. The interval was so long before she spoke that the reply
seemed hardly pertinent.
"Ever see _me_ wear a shootin'-iron?" she demanded. Her voice was
not loud, but it had a vibratory quality like that of a stringed
instrument, rather than a flute-like tone.
He stared at her. "Hey?" he demanded. "What ye say?"
She did not change her posture now. "Ever see _me_ pound ennybody on
the head with a shootin'-iron?" she continued.
"Shucks!" he cried, slowly apprehending her meaning; "ye can't git
out'n it that-a-way."
"I never war in it. When ye see somebody o' my size in a fight with one
o' yer size, let _me_ know it."
"'Twar _yer_ fault, an' ye know that full well," he made himself plain,
with an intonation of severity.
"_My_ fault? _Mercy!_" she cried, "_I_ wouldn't hev bruk up that dance
fur a bushel o' sech ez ye an' Rhodes!" She gave a gurgling laugh of
retrospective pleasure.
A moment's silence ensued, while he pushed back his hair to look
gloweringly at the half-reclining figure, which, although not moving,
had contrived to take on an air of flouting indifference.
"Ye air a mighty small matter," he said, scathingly, "fur me an' Rhodes
ter make ourselves sech fools about."
"An' sech _big_ fools!" she cried, with animation. "Whenst I feel
obligated ter see I'm a fool, it's sech a comfort ter know I ain't much
of a fool."
He said nothing in reply, feeling too clumsy and ponderous to follow
the attack with so lithe and elusive an enemy. He did not definitely
realize it, but in dropping his aggressions he assumed far more potent
weapons.
"O my Lord A'mighty!" he groaned, putting his head in one hand, and
covering his eyes as he supported his elbow upon the log behind him;
"it don't make much diff'ence whose fault 'tis. _I_ hev ter suffer fur
it. _I_ hev ter suffer fur everything. Sufferin' air what I war born
fur, I reckon. Leastwise I ain't seen nuthin' else."
Something faintly stirred the trees; it was not the wind, for it did
not seem to come again or to pass further. It was as if they were
awakening from some subtleties of sleep, unknown to science, that had
stilled their pulses. Fragrance was in the air; the great red rose in
the grass by the gate was bursting its buds. The rank weeds asserted
their identity. Even the wood-pile gave evidence of walnut and hickory
and the resinous pine. And still the moon, ever reddening, ever
dulling, sank lower, and the stars were brightening in the darkening
sky.
Once more he groaned. "I never war cut out for a fighter," he declared.
"Whenst I war a leetle bit o' a boy, an' my dad married agin an' brung
that everlastin' wild-cat o' a step-mam o' mine home, I war in a mighty
notion o' bein' frien'ly--leetle liar--leetle cowardly fox! I knowed
what war good fur me, an' which side my bread war buttered on, an' she
couldn't beat me hard enough ter make me hit back or sass her. I war
fur givin' up an' takin' mild ez a lam' everything she hed a mind ter
do ter me. But arter a while I got so ez whenst she beat my leetle
brother it made me winge an' winge--she couldn't hurt sech a calloused
time-server ez _me_! An' so I tuk ter hidin' him in the bresh whenst
she got mad at him. An' one day whenst she fund him, an' tuk ter
larrapin' him, I jes' flew at her, an' I bit her arm 'mos' through.
She let Ephraim alone. She war skeered at me. I seen it. An' I tuk ter
bitin' arter that like a cur-dog. My dad lemme 'lone. Vis'tors ez kem
ter the house war warned off'n me. I begun ter git my growth. I hed
an arm ez growed so it could lam a man like a sledge-hammer; it kep'
all the boys an' everybody else off'n Ephraim, ez never war a fighter,
an' let him git some growth, an hold up his head, an' try ter do like
folks."
He had dropped his hand and was staring at her with surprised eyes. She
was leaning forward, the golden moonlight still on her face. Her finely
cut lips were smiling. She held out, with an air of gay, mysterious
confidence, a tiny object between her finger and thumb.
"'Hold fast what I give ye,'" she quoted, with a low, gurgling
triumphant laugh.
He reached out and took from her with slow suspicion a pistol ball,
turning it around, and looking at her with an air of suspended
comprehension and doubt.
"I fund it hyar at the wood-pile; it never teched Rhodes. He ain't much
hurt--his senses jes' knocked out'n him. They can't do nuthin' ter
you-uns fur sech ez that."
"They better not try!" he cried, belligerently. Then, with the accents
of scorn: "D'ye 'low ez I be a-troublin' _my_se'f 'count o' sech cattle
ez Rhodes? Naw, sir! Nobody air a-goin' ter pester me! The whole
mounting, an' the home folks an' all, hev got mighty perlite ter me,
an' hev been fur a long time." He paused meditatively. "Yes, sir," he
exclaimed; "peace hev kem ter me by the pound!" He smote his massive
chest.
Then, after another silence, he sighed. "But I be troubled," he
resumed, "'kase hyar one day 'bout a year ago I goes ter the church
house. I always loved the Lord, fur He war persecuted, an' I knowed
He felt fur me. I never war so tuk up with this worl'. I hain't
hed no pleasure in it. I yearned fur a better one. An' durned ef
the thin-lipped, turnip-hearted preacher didn't git up an' gin out
the doctrine ef enny war ter hit ye on one cheek, ye mus' turn the
tother one; fur that's religion! That ain't my policy, an' 'tain't
my practice. An' I reckon I'll hev ter go ter hell jes' whenst I war
a-settin' myself in the hope o' heaven."
He drooped his head upon his hand again and groaned aloud. "I hev
wondered," he resumed, his voice somewhat muffled by his attitude, "ef
the cuss read that in the Good Book, or jes' made it up out'n his own
head. But that sayin' hev tormented me in the midnight, an' tuk my
sleep from me. I sorter feel it in me like it _mus'_ be true. Religion
can't be so easy ez jes' lovin' the Lord. It's this hyar hevin' ter
love yer fellow-man ez makes religion so durned hard on ye."
A cloud was in the west, not continuous, but with dusky brown strata
across the gilded spaces above the purple mountains; its shadows lay on
the mists below in dull streaks amidst the shining pearly tone. When
the moon, so golden, so great now and glamourous, passed behind one of
these bars of vapor, and even the sullen cloud was tenderly tinted and
showed radiating verges of dull gold, one might see the bereft world in
the prosaic gray medium of the day that was to come.
Once more he looked about him and sighed. "Why," he argued, "I couldn't
hev got on with all the smitin' folks wanted ter do ter me an' Ephraim,
'specially Ephraim. But then I 'low ez I hev got the mounting too much
skeered ter fool with Ephraim or me nuther now, an' mebbe ef I sot
out ter repent right hearty I mought make out yit. But I furgits--I
furgits! I can't repent more'n a haffen hour at a time. An' hyar
ter-night--jes' on account o' you-uns--I hauls off agin, an' mighty
nigh kills Rhodes!"
"'Twarn't 'count o' me," she drawled, with the musical vibration that
seemed to follow each tone. She had resumed her former attitude and her
air of mocking gayety. "Ye air carryin' it all wrong. 'Twarn't account
o' _me_ ye half killed Rhodes. 'Twar all account o' 'Tucker'!"
He caught the gleam of her laughing eyes as he sat with his elbows on
his knees and glowered sidelong at her.
"I am small," she protested, in dimpling merriment. "I can't ondertake
more'n my sheer. Let 'Tucker' take the blame. Ye warn't dyin' ter dance
with me. Ye war dyin' _not_ ter dance with yerse'f."
His face had flushed. His eyes were full of grave resentment as they
met her laughing glance. "I didn't 'low ez ye war so onfeeling ez ye
'pear ter be," he said, reproachfully. "Ever sence that time at the
church house whenst all were convicted of sin, or saints, 'ceptin' ye
an' me settin' alongside o' one another, I hev been sorter sorry fur
ye, an' 'lowed ye war sorter sorry fur me."
She only replied with a laugh, and he evidently deemed futile the bid
for sympathy on the score of religious or irreligious fellowship, for
he recurred to it no more.
There was a stir along the path; a great high-stepping turkey gobbler
was slowly coming down it, pausing now and then, and turning his
wattled head askew to bring his eye to bear upon some incident of the
high dewy weeds, that might promise a preliminary bit to a morning
meal. The rest of his tribe, yet roosting on a bare branch of an
otherwise full-leaved tree, looked big and burly against the roseate
sky; each long inquisitive neck now and again stretched downward, each
clutching claw ever and anon moving uncertainly along the perch with a
fluctuating intention to descend, was growing momently more distinct as
the gray light more and more encroached upon the moon, all obscured now
by one of those cloud strata.
In this interval of eclipse Guthrie asked, suddenly, from out the dusk:
"Ye know I warn't 'Tucker' by rights. Whyn't ye wanter dance with me?"
The shadow made her face uncertain. He could only see that she did not
move. "Did I say I didn't want ter dance with you-uns? I don't 'pear
ter remember it." Her tones, vibrant with mockery, were a trifle louder
upon the air--a trifle strained; or was it that the world seemed more
silent, muffled in the cloud that hid the moon?
"What's the reason ye wanted ter dance with Rhodes?" he demanded,
pursuing the subject.
"Did I say I wanted ter dance with Rhodes?" She asked the
counter-question with the sharp note of inquiry.
He detected its spuriousness, but her enigmatical intention embarrassed
him. "Ye hed ruther dance with him than with me," he said, forlornly,
losing his balance.
"Waal, it looks sorter that-a-way, now don't it?" she replied, in
casual, irrelevant accents, as of an unconcerned third person.
The moon came out from under the cloud with a great flare of golden
glory. Somewhere a cock's crow sounded--clear, mellow tones, delivered
with the precision and aplomb of the blast of a bugle. The wind of
dawn was coming over the eastern summits, and suddenly the moonlight
was all superfluous above the dark, rugged western mountains, for the
gray day was on the land. The little house stood distinct and forlorn,
all its windows flaring to show its denuded state within; here, and
there a tallow dip still sputtered. And if by moonlight and half
distinguished the loom and the warping bars had looked disconsolate in
their evicted estate under the trees, by daylight they wore so sorry
and so consciously distraught an air that such definite expressiveness
seemed oddly incongruous with their inanimate condition. All atilt and
unsteady they stood on the uneven ground, and about them were many
other objects of the household gear which the night had served to
obscure. Pots and pans were scattered about or congregated in heaps.
Chests and bedsteads, bags and bundles, quilting-frames and churns
and tubs--all bore token how the behests of hospitality had stripped
the house to make room for the dancing and the exigent demands of the
extensive supper-tables. The dogs seemed to take much note of this
unprecedented dislocation of the domestic administration, and they
went about with inquisitive, exploring noses, and tails stilled and
drooped in suspended judgment, amongst the various objects which they
snuffingly recognized. One old fellow, the evening of his days much
racked by rheumatism, seemed to discern an adequate reason in all
the confusion, as he curled himself to doze on the plumpest of the
feather-beds, with a large bone disposed within easy reach, to which he
might refer as inclination prompted. The spinning-wheels all teetered
unsteadily on the uneven chips about the wood-pile; now and again the
wheels revolved with precipitate, erratic action as the wind stirred
them. Letitia no longer looked at the moon--a mere pallid simulacrum
of itself, worn thin and gauzy against the pale west; one might hardly
know if it still hung there when the first red dart of the sun, yet
below the horizon, was aimed at the flushing zenith. Her dress was
blue again, not white; her face had something of the flush of the sky
upon it, half seen though it was. She had bent forward to the little
flax wheel, and had drawn out a thread, breaking and tangling it, only
affecting to spin, while the whimseys of the wind turned the wheel.
The light was distinct enough to show even the pistol ball in Felix
Guthrie's hand as he held it up and gazed at it speculatively.
"I wisht it war in Rhodes's heart," he observed, slowly. "That's whar I
wisht 'twar."
The spinning-wheel stopped suddenly; the blue eyes were bent upon him;
her lips curved in laughter. "Thar ye go ter heaven!" she cried, waving
her hand as if to point the way, "repentin' by the half-hour."
IV.
All day the slow process of the restoration of the household gods went
on. For many a year thereafter all manner of losses dated from this
period. "Hain't been seen nor hearn tell on sence 'fore the infair,"
was a formula that sufficiently accounted for any deficit in domestic
accoutrement. There was no one in the Pettingill family so lost to
the appreciation of hospitality and the necessity of equalling the
entertainment given by the bride's relatives as to opine that the game
was not worth the candle. But more than once Mrs. Pettingill, with a
deep sigh, demanded, "Who would hev thunk it would hev been so much
more trouble ter kerry in things agin 'n ter kerry 'em out!" She did
not accurately gauge the force of enthusiastic anticipation as a motive
power. Nevertheless she bore up with wonderful fortitude, considering
that the triumph of the supper had been eclipsed. The inanimate members
of the household were exhibiting a sort of wooden sulks as they were
conveyed to their respective places--now becoming stiffly immovable,
despite the straining muscles of the "men folks;" then suddenly,
without the application of appreciably stronger force, bouncing forward
so unexpectedly that the danger of being overrun was imminent, and
cries of "Stiddy, thar! Ketch that eend! Holp up, thar!" resounded even
through Rhodes's dreams in the roof-room, as he drowsed peacefully
under the narcotic influences of hop tea. The loom might have seemed
to entertain a savage resentment for its supersedure, and was some two
hours journeying back to its place in the shed-room, the scene alike
of the blighted supper and its old industrial pursuits. After that the
"men folks" took a vacation, and applied themselves with some zest to
apparently incidental slumber; old Zack Pettingill nodded in his chair
on the porch; the others, chiefly volunteering neighbors, fell asleep
in the hay at the barn while ostensibly feeding the cattle, leaving the
great skeleton of the warping bars staring its reflection in the river
out of countenance as it leaned against the fence, with its skeins of
carefully sized party-colored yarn the prey of two nimble kittens, who
expressly climbed the gaunt frame to tangle them. Even Mrs. Pettingill,
sitting on an inverted basket in the yard amongst her gear, looking
a trifle forlorn, bareheaded, with her gray hair tucked in a small
knot at the nape of her neck, her spectacles poised upon her nose, her
hands on her knees, lost herself while gazing at her possessions in
the effort to decide at which end she had best begin to rehabilitate
the confusion; her eyelids presently drooped, and scant speculation
looked through those spectacles. The great shady trees waved above
her head. Bees robbed the clover at her feet, and flew, laden and
drowsily droning, away; the light shifted on the river; the sun grew
hot; the far blue mountains were like some land of dreams, so fair, so
transfigured, that they hardly seemed real and akin to these rugged,
craggy, darksome heights which loomed beside the little cottage.
Everywhere were sleeping dogs; now and then one roused himself to
recollections of the infair and the supper, and invaded the shed-room,
standing in the door and with drooping tail gazing upon the simple
domestic apparition of the loom in its accustomed place, evidently
having believed, in his optimistic simplicity, that the good things
and the splendor and the delightful bustle of the past evening were to
continue indefinitely, and infinitely disappointed to find them already
abolished, the fleeting show of a single occasion.
Shattuck would hardly have acknowledged it to himself, but he certainly
felt relieved of an irksome prospect by this succumbing of the
Pettingills to the influence of excitement and fatigue. Conversation
with his host would necessarily be somewhat hampered by the events
of the preceding evening. He could not well resent the old man's
indignation, and yet a hospitable forbearance and courtesy would be of
even more poignant intimations. He had winced when the bridegroom had
taken leave of him with a punctilious show of cordiality and a hearty
handshake, as assurance that he bore no malice for those insinuations.
For these reasons the guest was not sorry to note the solemn
preoccupation in his host's open-mouthed countenance as he passed out
from the porch to the shade of the trees, where he came presently
upon Mrs. Pettingill, sitting as motionless as a monument amongst her
distorted and dislocated "truck," as in her waking moments she would
have phrased her belongings. He lighted his cigar as he strolled down
to the river, pausing to strike the match upon the white bark of an
aspen-tree. The ferns gave out a sweet woodland odor, faint and
delicate, overpowered presently by the pungent fragrance of the mint as
his feet crushed the thick-growing herb. The crystal river murmured as
it went, and seemed to draw reflective, half-breathed sighs, as in the
pauses of a story that is told. Now and again, when the banks were high
on either side, the rocks duplicated the sound of the lapsing currents
with a more sonorous, cavernous emphasis, as if they sought to enter
into the spirit of this sentient-seeming life. The sky, looking down
from its blue placidities, only here and there smote the water to azure
emulations of its tint; for the shadows predominated, and the gravel
gave the stream that fine brown, lucent tone, impossible to imitate,
broken occasionally where some high boulder incited the impetuosity of
the current to bold leaps. Then it was crested with snow-white foam,
and shoaled away with glassy-green waves to the same restfully tinted
brown and amber swirls. The overhanging rocks were gray and splintered
and full of crevices, with moss and lichen. Where they lay in great
fractured masses under a giant oak, a spring gushed forth. He heard its
tinkling tremor, more delicately crystalline and keyed far higher than
the low continuous monotone of the river. He mechanically turned toward
the sound, and saw Letitia in her light-blue dress sitting upon the
gaunt gray rocks at the foot of the craggy masses, a brown gourd in her
hand and an empty cedar pail at her feet. Her eyes were fixed gravely
upon him, her face was fresh as the wild roses amongst the crevices of
the rocks. She looked not more wilted by the excitements and heat and
turmoil of the dancing at the infair than the flower blooming with the
break of day. He strolled toward her, and spoke at the distance:
"You're the only member of the family awake now, I believe." He smiled,
and flicked off the ash of his cigar.
The expression of her eyes changed as they still rested upon him.
"Dun'no' whether I be awake or no," she observed. "I kem down hyar
arter a pail o' water, an' 'pears like I can't git away agin. Disabled
somehows. Asleep, mebbe, though' I moughtn't look like it."
Her uncouth garb and dialect were somehow softened by the delicacy of
her proportions and the perfect profile and chiselling of her face.
Her speech was hardly more grating upon him, precisian though he was,
than the careless, untutored lapses of a child might have been; all the
senses of comparison as readily ignored them. She looked so sprite-like
as she sat in a drooping, relaxed posture by the spring in the niche
of the rocks, one hand behind her head, the other holding the gourd
against her blue dress; and the idea of an oread or a naiad suggested
to his mind was suddenly on his lips.
Her reply instantly reminded him of her limitations and her ignorance.
"Witched an' bound ter the spot!" she exclaimed, with widening eyes and
breathless tone. She lowered her voice: "Did you-uns ever _see_ one?"
Her literal interpretation embarrassed and threw him off his guard.
"Never till now," he said. He was not intentionally flirting with Zack
Pettingill's daughter; but elsewhere and to another of her sex the
speech would have impressed him as a pretty compliment. In her quality
of woman, in her possession of a heart, she was no more represented in
his mind than if she had been the flower above her.
She either did not comprehend the flattery or she ignored it. Her
mind seemed fixed upon the water-nymph and the oread. "Bound ter
the spot!" she reiterated, with a sceptical air. "Thar's a heap o'
ways o' bein' bound ter the spot. Laziness kin hinder ez totally ez
a block an' chain. Mebbe they war 'flicted that-a-way, sorter like
me." She stretched both arms upward in an attitude that might have
been grotesque in another, but with her was a charming and childish
expression of fatigue.
He sat down on the ledge of the rock, took out his watch, and looked at
it. "I wish I knew whether the doctor wouldn't come or would," he said,
the harassment of the earlier hours recurring to his mind. "I am sorry
they ever sent for him. Doesn't he seem a long time coming?"
"Fee Guthrie axed me that question fourteen hundred an' fifty times
this mornin'. I don't set my mind on doctor men whenst folks air well,
only whenst ailin'. 'Pears ter me like Mr. Rhodes's main complaint air
foolishness."
Shattuck flushed with a sort of loyal resentment for his friend's sake.
"You think he is foolish because he wanted to dance with you?" he said,
tartly.
She cast a rallying side glance down upon him. "Mr. Rhodes warn't
particular 'bout dancin' with me," she protested. "I ain't in no wise a
favor_ite_ 'mongst the boys. That's what makes me 'low I be so smart!"
She turned her head with a bird-like coquetry, more formidable for
being so natural.
"Too smart for them?" he said, placated in spite of himself by her
naïve arrogations.
She nodded the wise little head that she so boldly vaunted. "They all
ax me, 'Hey? hey?'"--she raucously thickened her voice in drawling
mimicry--"ter every word I say--every one I ever see but you-uns."
If he could compliment, she could return the courtesy. He was silent
for a moment, remembering the criticisms that he had heard last night
on her unexpected and contrariwise conversation. She was doubtless far
too clever for her compeers and her sphere--even clever enough to know
it.
"You don't think it worth while to be a favorite amongst fools. But how
is poor Mr. Rhodes a fool?"
"Foolish," she corrected him, as if she made a distinction. "'Kase he
wants ter git 'lected ter office, an' he kerns 'round sa-aft-sawderin'
folks ez laffs, 'an laffs at him, ahint his back. An' he dassent say
his soul's his own! An' he hev ter take sass off'n everybody. He talks
'bout the _kentry_, an' ennybody kin see he don't keer nuthin' 'bout
the _kentry_. I'd ruther be a wild dog down thar by the ruver-bank, an'
feed off'n the bones the wolf leaves, an' be free ter hev a mind o' my
own."
Shattuck seemed to revolve this caustic characterization of his
friend the politician. He did not care to press her further as to her
opinions. He only said, presently, once more looking at his watch, "I
think it so strange that the doctor doesn't come."
"Fee Guthrie waited a considerable time ter make sure ez Mr. Rhodes
wouldn't die, an' 'twouldn't be desirable ter hang nobody ter-day."
Her interlocutor winced a trifle, remembering his threats last night.
Her placid face, however, intimated nothing of any intention that might
animate her words; it expressed only its own unique beauty.
He was charmed by it in some sort. He could see by that mentor, his
watch, how long it had been that he had sat here listening alternately
to the river's song and her low vibrant drawl. But he fancied that
reluctance to meet the mountaineers at the house had detained him, or
eagerness to descry the first approach of the superfluous physician,
rather than the fascination of this rustic little creature, whose words
so combined bitterness and honey. He hastened to divert her attention
from the last suggestion.
"Where _is_ Guthrie now, anyhow?" he said, affecting to look around as
if expecting to see him somewhere at hand amongst the black vertical
shadows of the noon and the still golden sunshine.
"Off in the woods somewhere, I reckon," she said; "prayin', mebbe."
"Praying?" he repeated, in astonishment.
"Lawsy-massy, yes! He's a mighty survigrous han' at prayin' an'
repentin'. He repents some every day--whenst he don't furgit it."
She laughed in a languid way, once more stretching up her tired arms,
the brown gourd in one of her lifted hands, and then she relapsed into
silence, her eyes fixed upon the swift flow of the stream. He too was
silent, gazing upon the gliding waters. Naught so unobtrusively, so
sufficiently fills an interval of quiet as this watching the continual
movement of a current. They neither knew nor cared how the time went
by. Ceaselessly the swift swirling lines made out to the centre of the
stream, and further down swept once more close in to the banks as the
conformation of the unseen channel directed the volume and the force.
The spring gurgled; its sunlit branch, wherein might be seen now and
again a darting minnow, with its _svelte_ shadow beneath it, flowed
timorously down to join the river till a sudden widening and a quicker
motion showed that its pulses felt the impetus of the stronger current.
A kill-deer, flying so low as to dip its wings, ever and anon alighted
on the margin, its stilt-like legs half submerged as it ran hither and
thither, now and then bending to dig in the sand with its long slender
bill. Suddenly there was a darker shadow in the water. A young woman
had abruptly emerged from the undergrowth on the opposite bank, and was
crossing the stream on the rickety little foot-bridge, consisting of
but one log, the upper side hewn; her balance was a trifle difficult
to maintain, as she carried a child in her arms. She looked eagerly
toward the two as they sat by the spring, thus essentially differing
from "leetle Mose," who, upon perceiving them, turned the back of his
pink sun-bonnet upon them with an air of sullen rejection, unaware how
the dignity of his demonstration was impaired by the diminutiveness
of his head-gear, and, sooth to say, of the head within it. If he had
expected to thus formidably crush the two spectators, he was mistaken;
but he could not observe how it affected them, for he buried his face
upon his mother's shoulder. She seemed fatigued and travel-worn as she
came near, and her face bore traces of recent weeping in the pathetic
drooping lips, the heavily lidded eyes, and her pallor. She strove
gallantly for a smile and to speak in a casual tone, as she said,
"Howdy, Litt?" Then, although nodding to Shattuck, for introductions
are not in vogue in this region, she went on, eagerly: "Did Steve
kem ter the infair? He 'lowed he would." She paused, biting her lips
hard to keep back the tears. Letitia looked uncertainly at Shattuck,
as if expecting him to reply. The benedict, drearily superfluous to
the festivities, had hardly been noticed by her as he lurked about
the walls and sought what entertainment was possible to one under the
social disabilities of matrimony.
"Who? Stephen Yates? Oh, yes," said Shattuck. "He talked to me a long
time. You were uneasy because he didn't come home?" he asked, with
facile sympathy. At the kind tones her self-control melted, and the
tears began to flow afresh. "The infair broke up with a row, and Mr.
Rhodes was hurt," he explained, holding out his cigar with a delicate
gesture, and touching off the long ash against a verge of the rock.
"Steve Yates went for the doctor on one of Mr. Pettingill's horses. It
seems to me that it is time for him to be back, too," he added, his
mind recurring to his own interest in the matter, and once more he
looked across the river and up the section of the road which became
visible for a little way along the side of a corn-field, expecting to
see the dust rise beneath the hoof-beats of the messenger's horse or
the doctor's buggy wheels. But all was still and silent; only the air
shimmered in the heat, and from amidst the blue-green expanse of the
corn he saw a mocking-bird rise in the ecstasy of its redundant song,
its wing-feathers a dazzling white in the sun, and drop back quivering
and still singing upon the unstable perch of a waving tassel.
Adelaide's tears continued to flow, although she sought to stanch them
now and again with the curtain of her sun-bonnet, which she pressed
to her eyes. She had seated herself upon one of the rocks on the
opposite side of the spring, and the "leetle Moses," whom she held
upon her knee, one arm passed about his sufficiently burly waist,
seeing that he was not noticed, indulged his own curiosity, and from
the interior of his pink sun-bonnet bent a stare of frowning severity
first upon Letitia, and then transferred his callow speculation to
Shattuck. Perhaps it was far less Adelaide's natural embarrassment
at thus meeting in tears a stranger than her divination of the young
girl's mental attitude toward her that roused her pride and the
resources of her fortitude. She sought to put away the recollection,
hardly less poignant than the reality, of the long sad hours of the
wakeful night--spent in reviewing the quarrel, repenting her hasty
words to her husband, and anon inconsistently angered anew because
of the memory of his own bitter sayings--the keen expectancy of the
lagging morning, and the terrible morbid fear that had grown upon her
jarred and shaken nerves that he would come back no more. Far, far
was all her feeling from the girl's comprehension, and she deprecated
that, with that half-scoffing face, Letitia should look in upon her
sorrows--disproportionate and fantastic though they might be, but none
the less piercing--and seek to gauge them by the narrow measure of her
own experience and her own untried, undeveloped gamut of emotions.
"I ain't a-goin' ter git married," remarked the fancy-free scoffer from
her perch, "till I kin find a man ez I kin trust wunst in a while ter
take keer o' hisself, a-goin' an' a-comin' from a neighbor's house.
Mus' be powerful sorrowful ter set at home an' shed tears lest he
mought hev stumped his toe on the road. Mighty oncommon kind o' man
I want, I know, but"--with resolution--"I be a-goin' ter s'arch the
mountings, far an' nigh, till I find him. I'd like ter marry a man ez
could be trusted ter take keer o' hisself, an' mought even, on a pinch,
take keer o' me."
Shattuck, with a smile, glanced across at the weeping wife, who laughed
a trifle hysterically amidst her tears, and said:
"Oh, _don't_, Litt!" Then, regaining her composure, she once more
pressed the curtain of her calico sun-bonnet to her eyes. It seemed
that her dignity required some explanation. "I wouldn't hev minded it
so," she said, "ef me an' Steve hedn't hed words. He wanted me ter kem
with him ter the infair, but I war 'feared ter bring leetle Mose, fur
he mought hev cotched the measles or the whoopin'-cough."
"He's safe now," remarked Letitia. "I be the youngest o' the fambly. I
hed the measles thirteen year ago, an' I never _did_ demean myself so
fur ez ter hev the whoopin'-cough."
Somehow the tone of raillery, the sense of the freedom and the
irresponsibility of the young girl, roused a vague sort of protest in
the other, only a few years older, but upon whose heart were so many
clamorous demands, all the dearer for their exactions. She felt bound
to set herself right. Who had ever a happier married life than she and
Stephen, a more contented home? And then the supreme unanimity of their
worship of the domestic god Dagon--the extraordinary "leetle Mose!"
"I 'low I wouldn't hev been sech a fool ef 'twarn't so uncommon fur
me an' Steve ter fall out," she said, her face resuming its serene
curves, her full, luminous dark eyes fixed with a sort of recognition
on Shattuck, which his quick senses apprehended as identification from
description. "I oughtn't ter hev set up my 'pinion 'gin his, I reckon.
He war mightily tuk up with a man--I reckon 'twar you-uns--ez hed been
a-diggin' in the Injun mounds."
Shattuck nodded in response to this unique introduction.
"An'--an'"--she faltered a trifle--"ez hed a mind ter go a-diggin' up
the bones o' them Leetle Stranger People o' ourn, ter--ter sati'fy
hisse'f what sort'n nation they used to be, an' ter git thar pearls
off'n thar necks."
There was a shocked gravity and surprise even on Letitia's face.
Adelaide had looked away toward the road, affecting to watch for an
approach, in despair of being able to fitly meet Shattuck's gaze after
saying this, which seemed to affect other people as a commonplace
matter, but to her was an accusation of the deepest turpitude. The
countenance of the infant Moses, still bent upon him with a sternly
investigating stare, was the only one whose gaze had not a covert
reproach. He hardly cared to argue with their prejudice. He sought to
effect a diversion--in questionable taste he might have deemed it at
another time, however little taste might be considered to be concerned
in his conversation with the humble mountaineers. He had often heard,
and had formally accepted as worthy of credence, the popular axioms
concerning the dangers of interference between man and wife. But he
certainly did not anticipate the effect of his words when he said:
"I shall have to look out for you, I hear. You are such a friend to
the Little People that you have loaded a rifle for me. What sort of a
shot are you, now; and how far will your rifle carry?" He cocked his
cigar between his teeth, and looked at her with an air of good-natured
raillery.
Her face seemed, in the shadow of her purple sun-bonnet, to be slowly
turning to stone, so rigid and white it was. She did not reply, but as
he noted her startling change of expression he felt a sudden rush of
indignation. The mountaineers, with their unconscious ignorance, their
intolerance of all standpoints save those within their own limitations,
their arrogations of censorship, their suspicions of occult wickedness
in his motives and intentions, their overt assumption of a right to
direct the public conscience, had begun to strongly anger him. His
capacity for making allowances was all at once exhausted, and he found
the intensity of her look strangely irksome.
"Well, what's the matter?' he asked, a trifle more roughly than he ever
permitted himself to speak to a woman; for he was a man of consciously
chivalric impulses, which he had willingly permitted to agreeably
tinge his manners. He held his cigar suspended between his fingers
while he waited.
"Did--did Steve tell you-uns _that_ word?" she cried, in a tone like
despair.
"Why, yes," he returned, promptly.
There was a moment when the vivid sunshine, the cool, dank shadows of
the foliage stirring with such soft dryadic murmurs above her head, the
song of the bird from the strong, rich effulgence of the corn-field,
the chant of the river, even the cry of her child, were as null to her
as if her every faculty had been numbed in the centuries of death that
crumbled slowly the pygmy burying-ground.
"Did _he_ tell that word on me?" she cried at last, her voice rising
discordantly. "He hev gone--he hev gone fur good. He warned me ef I
teched that rifle ter fire at them that disturbed the rest o' the
Leetle People whilst waitin' fur jedgment--or said that word--that he'd
turn me out'n his door. But he 'lowed 'twar the easiest way ter go
hisself. An' he hev gone--gone fur good." And once more she lapsed into
stony immobility.
Mr. Shattuck turned his cigar and looked down at it. It was a casual
gesture, but there was a spark of irritation in his eye. He had lost
all appreciation of any element of interest in her beauty, in the
picturesque charm of the surroundings. The incongruity that he and his
semi-scientific researches in his idle summer loiterings should become
involved in a foolish quarrel between a mountaineer and his wife struck
him as grotesque, and offended his every sense of the becoming. He had
piqued himself somewhat upon his sensibilities, his ever-ready sympathy
with all sorts and conditions of people. He had fine abilities in
many æsthetic ways; he could discern the higher values, to seek to
make them his own and assimilate them. He appreciated the correct
standpoint; he felt the susceptibility to the glow of a noble emotion,
and he appraised its possession exactly as he did his knowledge of the
Italian language--a fine thing _per se_, and one to grace a gentleman.
His capacity to enter into the feelings of the mountaineers, to meet
them, despite the heights of his learning and his social position,
without effort and without affectation, had extorted the admiration
and emulation of his friend the politician, versed in all the arts of
currying favor. But he was not equal to this crisis, since it bore
heavily upon the fund of pride encompassing his own personality.
His consideration, his kindness, his whole attitude was to them as
themselves, not in any sort as one with himself. He had not a word
of pity for her; he did not see, with that fine far sight which he
sometimes called insight, her long, desolate future that challenged her
eye and turned her heart cold; he had no perception of those farthest
perspectives of altruism, a share in another's morbid terror--he so
despised her folly.
And when once more she broke silence--"He hev gone!"--"I reckon not,"
he said, coolly, still looking with a smile at the end of his cigar,
and presently returning it to his lips.
The nervous strain of the moment seemed hardly capable of extension
till that most wearing and jarring sound, a fretful child's discordant
wail, rose upon the air. Perhaps her rigid arm hurt Moses; perhaps he
detected that something was going awry with her; perhaps he merely
felt too long overlooked and neglected; but the great Dagon lifted a
stentorian and unwelcome cry, and paused only with an air of vengeance,
as if he expected all who beheld to be properly dismayed, seized his
pink sun-bonnet by the crown, and cast it from him on the ground with a
great sweep of his short arm. As he gazed around, bald-headed, to note
the effect, his sullen eye encountered Letitia's, who was for once in
her life silenced and amazed by the turn affairs had taken. She made an
effort to regain her balance.
"I ain't s'prised none ef ye want some water," she said, producing the
great brown gourd, and bending down to submerge it in the depths of the
cool, gurgling, crystal spring.
"Leetle Mose," emitting a piercing shriek of anger that she should
take the liberty of addressing him, flung himself with averted face
into his mother's arms. The tone went through Shattuck's head, so to
speak; his brows knitted involuntarily with pain; he was about to rise
to go in-doors, for the possible embarrassments and discomforts of
conversation with old Zack Pettingill were insignificant indeed to the
hardships encountered in the society of "leetle Mose," upon whom he
cast a look of aversion, forgetting that he was a specific unit of that
genus, man, for whom Shattuck felt so largely.
Feminine ears seem curiously callous to that frenzied infantile
shrillness. Letitia, all unaffected, brought the brimming gourd close
to the shrieking Mose, who turned to find it beside him. Now the way
had been long, and the sun was hot, and had burnt the great Dagon as
if he had been any common person. The deep coolness of the gourd--it
must have been very large to his eye--allured him. He involuntarily
gave a bounce and a gurgle of delight. Few people ever saw "leetle
Mose" smile, and a most beguiling demonstration it was. His elastic
pink lips parted wide; his few teeth, so hardly come by, glittered;
his very tongue, coyly dumb--though it was better tutored than it
would admit--might be seen frisking between his gums. He waited
expectantly for his mother for a moment, and as she did not move he
permitted Letitia to serve him; he reached out eagerly, holding the
gourd with both hands, lifting his pink feet as if he intended to stay
the bottom of the vessel by those members, and after several futile,
ill-directed bounces he succeeded in applying his soft lips to the
verge. He stopped, sputtering, once to look up, with laughing eyes
full of gladness and with a dripping chin, at Letitia, and then, as
he plunged his head again to the water, they could hear him laughing
and gurgling in the gourd that echoed cavernously. The specific unit
became all at once more tolerable to contemplate. Shattuck, in laughing
ridicule of him, glanced at Letitia. Her eyes did not meet his. She
was staring intently at the section of the road visible at some little
distance by the side of the corn-field. He turned to follow her gaze.
He had not before noticed the thud of hoofs; the sound was upon the
air now. From out the deep shadow about the spring naught was visible
in the sun-flooded highway but a cloud of dust, every mote red in the
dazzling radiance. The approach had been obscured by the intervening
undergrowth that grew close about the river where the road came down
to the bank. He could still hear the thud of hoofs. Did he fancy it,
he asked himself suddenly, or was there something erratic suggested
in the sound? Certainly the interval was strangely long, reckoning by
the distance, while they stood and watched the close undergrowth on
the opposite bank, and waited for the rider to emerge from the covert.
At last, as the horse appeared, the mystery was solved. He was a bay
horse, in good condition, with a long stride, and an old-fashioned
Mexican saddle with a high-peaked pommel. He came down the slope and
waded into the water in a slouching, undetermined way, now and then
turning his head to look with wondering dissatisfaction at the heavy,
swaying stirrups as his movements caused them to lunge heavily back
and forth--for they were empty, and the saddle bore no rider. He
paused to drink in the middle of the stream, but as Letitia ran toward
him, calling "Cobe! Cobe!" he desisted, looked intelligently at her,
and again at his swaying empty stirrups. He could have told much,
evidently, if he had not been dumb. Then he came readily trotting
through the water, which swept away from his swift strides in foamy
circles, and, struggling up the bank, let her catch his bridle and
stroke his head. He shook his mane and neighed with pleasure to be at
home again.
[Illustration: "THE SADDLE BORE NO RIDER."]
Adelaide was standing, her child in her arms, gazing breathlessly at
him. Letitia, still stroking the animal's head, had turned a pale face
and eyes full of vague appeal upon Shattuck.
"I don't understand," he exclaimed.
"This is the horse he rode," she said.
V.
The news of the horse's return with an empty saddle was received at
first lightly enough by others. The treasures of old Zack Pettingill's
whiskey keg and his wife's cherry-bounce, lavished forth on the
preceding evening, were deemed amply sufficient to account for any
eccentricities of equestrianism. But when several days had passed
without the reappearance of the dismounted horseman, the slowly
percolating gossip touching a conjugal quarrel began to offer another
and a more exciting interpretation of the mystery. So general was
its acceptance that although a company of men organized a search and
patrolled the roads and the by-paths and the mountain-sides, it was
with scant hope or expectation of any definite discovery, and inquiry
of the physician whom Yates had been despatched to summon resulted only
in a verification of the popular conviction that he had never delivered
the message. Thus the fears evoked for his safety were very promptly
merged in reprehension, and speculative gossip was mingled in equal
parts with pity for his wife.
"Who'd ever hev thunk ez Adelaide Sims, counted the prettiest gal
this side o' nowhar, would hev been deserted by her husband 'fore
three years war out?" Mrs. Pettingill said, meditatively, her pipe
between her lips, as she "walked" a spinning-wheel into the house,
making it use first one and then the other of its own spindling legs
to achieve progression rather than lifting it by main force. She half
soliloquized and half addressed a tall, lank mountaineer who sat upon
the edge of the porch, his horse grazing hard by. He had stopped on
the pretext of asking for a "bite," saying that he had travelled far
over the mountain, looking up some stray cattle of his, and albeit
Mrs. Pettingill disapproved of his reputation, the "snack" that she
could give him was one of those admirable things in itself that could
not go amiss even with a sinner. He had a big-boned, powerful frame
and was middle-aged; but despite that his hair was streaked with gray,
and the crow's-feet about his eyes gave evidences of the lapse of
time, he was the very impersonation of the spirit of "devil may care."
He had a keen, hooked nose, an eye far-seeing, gray, and of a steely
brilliancy, and the thin lips of his large mouth, mobility itself,
curved to a vast range of expression. His manner implied an elated,
ever-ready, breezy confidence; his eye now covertly measured you, then
gayly overlooked you as of no manner of consequence. His reputation
might, indeed, be accounted a doubtful one. He had come before the bar
of justice several times: the altering of the brand on certain cattle
herded upon the "Bald" had been laid at his door; the manner in which a
horse had been lost, by a drover passing through the country, and found
in his possession, had been called into question. On each occasion his
escape had been made good by the lack of adequate evidence to convict,
although little doubt existed as to his guilt. He was one of those
singular instances of an undeserved popularity. Better men, amply able
to discern right from wrong, often opined that there was no great harm
in him, that injustice had been done him, and that much meaner men
abounded in the cove who had never been "hauled over the coals." He had
been a brave soldier, although the flavor of bushwhacking clung to his
war record. He had certain magnetic qualities, and there were always
half a dozen stout fellows at his back--ne'er-do-weels like himself.
He had been suspected of moonshining, but this was not considered a
natural sequence of his lawless habits, for many otherwise law-abiding
citizens followed this pursuit; in defence, they would have urged, of
their natural right of possession--to make what use they chose of their
own corn and apples, as their forefathers had done in the days before
the whiskey tax. Buck Cheever's suspected adherence to the popular
standpoint on this burning question might have been considered to only
lower the tone of the profession.
Mrs. Pettingill regarded him with contradictory emotions. As a
religionist, she felt that she would prefer his room to his company;
but his room was but scant encroachment, for he only sat upon the
edge of the porch, and he by no means asserted any equality of piety
or moral standpoint; on the contrary, he seemed to esteem her, and,
by her reflected lustre, Mr. Pettingill, as shining lights, and
vastly different from the general run of the cove. His breezy talk
was peculiarly refreshing to her in the midst of the ordeal, still
in process, of restoring the routine of twenty years, shattered by
the havoc of the infair. He had a discerning palate and a crisp and
flexible tongue, and she felt, with a glow of kindness, that he said as
much in praise of her corn-dodgers, which formed a part of his lunch,
as any one else would have said for her pound-cake.
"Mos' folks don't sense the differ in corn-meal cookin'. It takes a
better cook ter make a plain, _tasty_ corn-dodger, ez eats short with
fried chicken, 'n a cake."
"It takes _Mis' Pettingill_ ter make this kind o' one," he protested,
with his mouth full. "No sech air ever cooked ennywhar else I ever see."
"I hev got some mighty nice fraish buttermilk, Buck, jes' churned," she
remarked, precipitately. "I be goin' ter fetch ye a glass right off."
Old Zack Pettingill, with his shock head of thick gray hair, and his
deeply grooved face, sat in his shirt-sleeves in his accustomed chair
on the porch, and his expression betokened a scorn of his helpmeet's
susceptibility to the praises of her culinary accomplishments, and held
a distinct intimation, by which Buck Cheever might have profited had he
been so disposed, that he was not to be propitiated in any such wise.
Little, however, Buck Cheever cared. The lady in command of the larder
dwarfed her husband's importance.
"Yes, 'm," he drawled, taking up the thread of the gossip where the
victualling interlude had left it; "Adelaide's been left. That's mighty
bad. An' I reckon it hurts her pride too." He showed himself thus not
insensible to æsthetic considerations.
"I'll be bound it do," Mrs. Pettingill agreed, as she seated herself.
She cast a speculative look upon her husband, silent and grum as if he
had been thus gruffly carved out of wood. He had been a stumbling-block
in many respects in his conjugal career. He was "set" in his ways,
and some of them she felt were ways of pure spite. She had never
before realized, however, that his continued presence was a thing to
be thankful for. Such as he was, she had him at hand. Public pity,
which the sensitive feel as public contempt, had never been meted
out to her because of his desertion. Thus, although she could with
convenience have dispensed with him, and his loud harangues, and his
overbearing ways, and his dyspepsia--the cove said he had been fed till
he foundered--which placed an embargo on three fourths of the dishes on
which she loved to show her skill, he was revealed to her suddenly as a
boon in that he would yet stay by her, and the phrase "a deserted wife"
had no affinity with her fully furnished estate.
"Waal, Steve always 'peared ter me a good match whenst he war
young"--she meant unmarried--"though riprarious he war, an' sorter
onstiddy an' dancified, but I never 'lowed he'd hev done sech a mean
thing. An' that thar baby o' theirn! well growed, an' fat, an' white,
an' strong, but, I will say, _bad_ ez the Lord ever makes 'em. Waal,
waal, a body dun'no' _how_ thar chil'n will turn out; them with small
famblies, or none, oughter thank the Lord--though _that_ ain't in the
Bible. 'Blessed be the man with a quibble on 'em.' That's what the Good
Book say."
This was a new view with Mrs. Pettingill. She had often floutingly
wished she had a "sure enough fambly," as if her own were so many
rag dolls. "Jes' _one_ son," she would say; "an' him, through being
in love, hed ruther eat his meals at the Gossams'--'long o' Malviny
Gossam--whar they don't know no mo' _how_ ter cook a corn puddin' or a
peach cobbler 'n ef they war thousand-legs; an' jes _one_ darter, ez
will pick a chicken bone an' call _it dinner_! an' a 'speptic husband
ez hev sech a crazy stommick that jes' 'Welsh rabbit' will disagree
with him!"
What sort of chance was there here for a woman who knew what good
cooking was? "Ef 'twarn't fur the visitors ez kem ter the house," she
often declared, "I'd git my hand out."
"Folks raise thar chil'n wrong," said old man Pettingill in a
dirge-like tone--"raise 'em for the devil's work like I raise my cattle
fur the plough. Marryin' is a mighty serious business. Yes, sir!"
"A true word!" interpolated his wife, desirous of not seeming
behindhand in this view of the seriousness of matrimony, in order to
intimate that whatever reason he had to be solemn upon the subject, she
too had cause to be sobered by it. She knitted a trifle faster, and her
needles clicked resentfully.
"Yes, sir," he reiterated. "An' steddier singin' o' psalm tunes over
the bride an' groom, an' a-prayin' over 'em, an' hevin' a reg'lar
pray'r-meetin', repentin' o' sins an' castin' o' ashes on thar heads,
we hev _dances_, an' _dancin' Tucker_, an' all manner o' eatables, an'
infairs, ez ef they war a-goin' ter dance through life, when married
life is mos'ly repentance."
"That it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Pettingill, forgetting her gratitude
that she too had not been "left." "Repentance o' ever bein' married.
Sackcloth an' ashes is the word!"
Old Pettingill took no notice of this confirmation of the letter if
not the spirit of his dogma, save by a surly baited glance, and went
on: "Church members though we all war, we stood round an' watched them
young folks dance ter the devil till he fairly riz up through the floor
an' smit one of 'em down."
"By gosh!" exclaimed Cheever, a sudden fear and wonder upon his face;
"which one war smit?"
"'Twar Len Rhodes," his host began, but Mrs. Pettingill's wheeze,
persistently sibilant, dominated even his louder tone.
"Don't you-uns be 'feared, Buck. Satan hisself didn't show up. He
struck through Fee Guthrie's arm--a mighty survigrous one. Ye know the
En'my hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble smart, an' he never made
ch'ice o' a spindlin' arm."
Once more Mr. Pettingill resumed, overlooking what she had said: "An'
so Mr. Shattuck hyar 'lowed the law would be down on us ef Mr. Rhodes
didn't hev his own doctor-man--ez 'peared ter be the apple o' his eye!
An' bein' ez my son war the groom, an' the 'casion war the infair,
I couldn't send him off, an' I jes' axed Steve Yates ter go fur the
doctor, an' go he did."
"An' go war _all_ he did," interpolated Mrs. Pettingill; "he never kem
back no mo'."
"I be powerful obligated ter him ez he never tuk my bay horse-critter
along; sent him home with the saddle onter him an' all. I dun'no' but
what I be s'prised. Ef he war mean enough ter desert his wife, he air
plenty mean enough ter steal a horse."
Shattuck, who was lounging with a cigar in a big arm-chair, looked
frowningly at the speaker. He had felt much distress that it should
have been upon his insistence that the young man was despatched upon
that errand whence he had never returned. He could hardly control
his anxiety and forebodings while searching parties went forth; and
so earnestly he hoped that no broken and bruised body would be found
along the roadside, betokening a fatal fall from the saddle, no trace
of robbery or foul deed resulting in death, that when public opinion
settled upon the theory of Yates's desertion of his wife he experienced
a great relief, a welcome sense of irresponsibility. And yet this was
so keen and vivid that he could but reproach himself anew, since he
so rejoiced because of the disaster that sealed her unhappiness. His
spirits had recovered somewhat their normal tone, but nevertheless he
could ill endure an allusion to his share in the circumstances that
precipitated the event.
"How air she a-goin' ter git along?" demanded Cheever; a sufficiently
uncharacteristic question, since his was not the type of practical mind
that is wont to occupy itself with domestic ways and means. "Goin' back
ter her own folks?"
"She 'lows she'd ruther die. She's goin' ter stay thar in her cabin
an' wait fur him," said Mrs. Pettingill. "Sorter seems _de_-stressin',
I do declar'! A purty, young, good, r'ligious 'oman a-settin' herself
ter spen' a empty life a-waitin' fur Steve Yates ter kem back. _He_'ll
never kem. He's in Texas by now," she declared, hyperbolically; for
Texas is the mountaineer's _outremer_. "Litt say she ain't never goin'
ter git married," she continued, irrelevantly.
"How long d'ye reckon she'll stick ter _that_?" demanded old
Pettingill, sourly, glancing up from under his grizzled eyebrows.
"Waal," his wife defended her, "she hain't never got married yit, and
that's more'n _ye_ kin say."
And to this taunt the unhappy Mr. Pettingill could offer no response,
save an inarticulate gruffness that only betokened his ill-will and the
ill grace with which he accepted defeat. The dirge-like monody to which
he seemed to have attuned his spirit was but the retroactive effect of
the gayety of the infair, the swinging back of the pendulum as far as
it was flung forth. More sophisticated people have encountered that
melancholy reflux of pleasure, and, with the knowledge that the cure
lies in "a hair of the dog that bit you," find a revival of their
capacities for gayety in new scenes of mirth. But the society of the
cove had not these opportunities for extension and reduplication.
There were no more infairs nor dances nor weddings. Mr. Pettingill
was constrained to recover the tone of his spirits as best he might,
despite the sheer descent from the heights of the gayeties of the feast
he had made to the humdrum level of his daily life, with all the zest
taken out by contrast. Few people over eighteen have this experience
without acquiring with it such philosophy as serves to nullify it, but
it made Mr. Pettingill very sour at sixty.
"Where is Letitia?" queried Shattuck, who had missed that element which
gave a different interpretation to the whole life of the house, which
lent most blithesome wings to the heavy-footed hours. He had wondered
all the previous day, but until her name was mentioned he would not ask.
"Litt? She went ter stay with Adelaide," said Mrs. Pettingill,
complacently knitting. "Litt air more company 'n help. I miss her
powerful."
"I kin spare her easier 'n ennything round the house," observed her
father, acridly.
Mrs. Pettingill burst into an unexpected laugh. Her eyes twinkled with
reminiscent raillery as they were fixed upon her husband, who seemed a
trifle out of countenance.
"Waal, Litt _do_ make remarks," she offered in explanation.
"I have observed that," said Shattuck.
Mrs. Pettingill became all at once grave and concerned. The quality
of Litt's remarks was disconcertingly satiric, and she deprecated the
fact that the stranger should have acquaintance with them. Shattuck
reflected her embarrassment in some sort; it suggested "remarks"
upon him which he had not had the opportunity of hearing, the very
recollection of which in his presence evidently confused their amiable
auditor, as if the mere consciousness of them implied discourtesy.
"Naw," she went on, somewhat precipitately, addressing herself rather
more directly to Cheever, "Adelaide ain't goin' home ter her folks.
Steve lef' his craps all laid by, an' 'ceptin' fur cuttin' wood an'
fetchin' water thar warn't much use fur him thar. I dun'no' what
Adelaide wanted with Letishy; she jes' seemed ter cling ter her. I
'lowed ter Litt ez _she_ warn't no comp'ny fur grief. But Litt, she
'lowed ez leetle Moses war apt ter make her sorrowful enough fur chief
mourner at a fun'al 'fore he got done with her. His temper fairly
tarrified her."
Cheever suddenly seemed disposed to bring his visit to an end. He
had an inattentive look during Mrs. Pettingill's last words, an
introspective pondering thoughtfulness, inconsistent with his almost
suspicious and vigilant habit of countenance. He started as if with
an effort to recapture his vagrant wits, and it was a long moment of
review before he understood Mrs. Pettingill's commonplace remonstrance,
"What's yer hurry, Buck?"
Mr. Pettingill, sufficiently averse, for not unnatural reasons of his
own, to conversation with Shattuck alone, made haste to second her.
"Ye 'pear ter be scorchin' ter git away," he said, although under
normal circumstances both would have considered Buck Cheever's society
no boon. They were aware that ordinarily he, with his ne'er-do-weel
record, would have been flattered by their courtesy. They noted, with
a sort of unformulated speculation and curiosity, his indifference to
it, the definite intention expressed in his face, the preoccupation
with which he looked to his saddle-girth and his stirrup-irons before
he mounted. Even to their languid and half-dormant perceptions the fact
was patent that he was going because he had got what he had come for.
In their simplicity they thought it was his luncheon!
Despite his lank length and slouching awkwardness afoot, he was a
sufficiently imposing horseman when he swung himself into his saddle
and speedily went down the winding way. He rode with his chin high
in the air, his legs stretched straight to the extreme length of
the stirrup-leathers, not rising to the motion of the horse, but
sitting solidly in the saddle as if he were a part of the animal,
like an equestrian statue endowed with motion. A gallant horse it
was, unlike the humble brutes of the mountaineers, with good blood
in his throbbing veins and fire in his full eye, and a high-couraged
spirit breathing in the dilatations of his thin red nostrils; he was
singularly clean-limbed; his red roan coat shone like satin; he had
a compact hoof, a delicate, ever-alert ear, a small bony head, and a
long swinging stride as regular as machinery. If it were possible to
disconcert Buck Cheever, it might be accomplished by the question how
he became possessed of this fine animal--finer even than the mountain
men in their limited experience were able to appreciate. He had been
known to account for him as being identical with a certain lame
colt, which he had bought a few years before from Squire Beamen in
the valley. "I didn't gin much fur him, bein' his laig war crippled,
but he cured up wonderful. An' I wouldn't sell him now. He's some
lighter-complected 'n he war then, through bein' sun-burnt. That's how
kem ye didn't know him fur the same. He's better-lookin' now, though I
hev ter handle his nigh fore-laig keerful."
This "nigh fore-laig" was lifted and thrust forth with a vigorous,
high-stepping action that would have attested much for veterinary
surgery had it been a restored instead of a pristine power. Beneath it
the miles of sandy road, now sunshiny, now flecked with the shadows of
the wayside trees, reeled out swiftly; the landscape seemed speeding
too, describing some large ellipse.
Cheever's far-seeing gray eyes rested absently on the shifting scene
as on and on he went--a certain supercilious observation it would
seem, since from the backward pose of his head he looked out from
half-lowered eyelids. It was too familiar to him, too stereotyped upon
his senses, to produce responsive impressions, and he was familiar with
few others, and knew no contrasts. Thus the farthest mountain's azure
glowed for him in vain. The multitudinous shades of green in the rich
drapings that hid the gaunt old slope near at hand with masses and
masses of foliage--from the sombre hue of the pine and fir, through the
lightening tones of the sycamore and sweet-gum, to the silvered verdure
of the aspen-tree swinging in the wind--might be a revelation to other
eyes of the infinite gradations, the manifold capacities, of the color.
Not to his. And he was as unmindful of the purple bloom that rested
upon other ranges as they drew afar off, of the swift clear water of
the river crossing his path again and again, of the cardinal-flower on
the bank, so stately and slender, with the broken reflection of its
crimson petal glowing in a dark swift swirl below--as oblivious as
they were of him. Only he noticed the sky, the clouds, harbingers of
change, despite the azure above and the golden illusions of sunshine in
which all the world was idealized--change, although the long, feathery,
fleecy sweeps of vapor, like the faint sketchings of snowy wings upon
the opaque blue, otherwise void, might seem only lightest augury.
"Mares' tails," he soliloquized as he went. "Fallin' weather."
The voice of the cataract had long been on the air, growing louder and
louder every moment--only its summertide song, when languors bated its
pulses, and daily its volume dwindled. He had heard it call aloud in
the savage ecstasy of the autumn storms, when reinforced by a hundred
tributaries, and bold and leaping in triumph. And he knew it, too, in
winter--a solemn hush upon it, a torpor like the numb chill of death,
its currents a dull, noiseless, trickling flow through a thousand
glittering icy stalactites. So well he knew it that for its sake he
would not have glanced toward it.
Nevertheless, he drew his horse into a walk, and gazed fixedly out
of his half-closed eyes up the long gorge between the ranges, at the
river, at the glassy emerald sheet of the water-fall, and at the little
house hard by. Its door was closed, as if it too had been deserted;
and it seemed very small in the shadow of the great mountains, against
whose darkling forests its little gray roof and its tendril of smoke
were outlined; but it was only a moment before his quick eye detected
the presence of the household. Down by the water-side the three were.
The great caldron betokened a wash-day; the fruits of the industry were
already bleaching and swinging in the fragrant air on the Sweet-Betty
bushes. The fire smouldered almost to extinction under the caldron,
which barely steamed with a dull, lazily wreathing, lace-like vapor;
the work was evidently all done. Adelaide sat upon the roots of a
tree, her arms bare, her chin in her hand, her eyes, that had learned
all the brackish woe of futile weeping, ponderingly fixed upon the
never-ceasing, shifting fall of the water. Letitia, too, was silent as
she leaned upon the paddle that was used to beat the clothes white,
its end poised upon the bench. Moses, seated in a clumped posture,
with his legs doubled in a manner impossible to one of elder years and
less elastic frame, now and again babbled aloud disconsolately, and
ground his gums with the cruelty of rage and with great distortion
of his indeterminate features. He had so implacable an air of such
crusty gravity as he sat on the fine green moss, with his obedient
vassals about him, and his newly washed habiliments, ludicrously small,
swinging on the perfumed branches of the undergrowth, that he might
have provoked a smile from one less preoccupied than Cheever. The keen
eyes of the horseman--very watchful they were under their half-drooping
lids--were fixed upon the two young women.
The horse, alternately bowing low and tossing up his head with its
waving mane, moved in an easy, light walk that hardly raised a mote
of dust upon the road, overgrown with the encroaching weeds, and
intimating few passers. The sound was thus muffled, and Cheever was not
observed until he was close at hand. Letitia was first to recognize
him, and, as she turned toward him, her blue eyes said much, he felt,
but in a language that he wot not of. In some sort her inscrutability
disconcerted him. He was sensible of being at a loss as he reined
up at the riverside. He seemed to forget, to vaguely fumble for the
motive that led him here. The dreary indifference on Adelaide's face as
she met his gaze restored in some degree his normal mental attitude.
He was conscious of a sort of vague wonder that there was no sense
of humiliation, of mortified pride, in its expression. The supreme
calamity of her loss had dwarfed into nullity all the opinion of
others, all the bitterness of being the theme of pitying, half-scornful
gossip. The cove was nothing to her, and nothing all it could say. She
was bereaved.
As to Moses, he should never feel the loss; she would be to him father
and mother too. And if Moses had been unduly pampered heretofore,
he bade fair now to break the record of all spoiled babies. Never
a gesture was lost upon her, never a tone of his oft inharmonious
voice. Now, because the horse which Cheever rode suddenly caught his
attention, and his discordant remonstrance with his teeth ceased
abruptly, she looked around with a wan, pleased smile curving her lips.
The little biped gazed up at the great, overshadowing four-footed
creature with a gasp of joy, delighting in his size and the free motion
of his whisking tail. A dimple came out in Dagon's pink cheek, although
a tear still glittered there. He was suddenly indifferent to his teeth,
and showed them all in a gummy smile. Then, with a self-confidence in
ludicrous disproportion to his inches, he pursed his lips, and giving
an ineffectual imitation of a chirrup, and a flap of the paw, he sought
to establish personal relations with the big animal, who took no more
notice of the great Dagon than if he had been a wayside weed, but bent
down his head and pawed the ground.
"The young un likes the horse," Cheever observed, leniently, conscious
of sharing the "young un's" weakness in equine matters, and seizing the
opportunity to so naturally open the conversation, for he was not, in
a manner, received at the Yates house. "How air ye a-comin' on, Mis'
Yates?" he continued, his voice seeking a cadence of sympathy.
"Toler'ble well," replied Adelaide, reticently, scarcely disposed
to discuss her sorrows with this interlocutor. She turned her eyes
toward the water-fall once more, and her quiet reserve would have
discouraged another man from pursuing the conversation. Cheever, blunt
as his sensibilities were, could have hardly failed to apprehend the
intimations of her manner, so definite were they, so aided by the
expression of her face; but he had his own interest in the premises,
and he was not likely to be easily rebuffed.
"I hev been mightily grieved an' consarned ter hear how Steve hev
tuk an' done," he went on, his countenance readily assuming a more
sympathetic cast than was normal to it, since, as they were on a
lower level, his downward look seemed but a natural slant, and not
the same suspicious, sneering, supercilious disparagement from under
half-drooped eyelids which his usual survey betokened. "I war powerful
grieved," he reiterated. "I never would hev looked fur sech conduc'
from Steve."
She made no answer, but her eyes turned restlessly from one point to
another; her face was agitated. It was a critical moment. She felt
as though she could scarcely forgive herself should she weep to the
erratic measure of Cheever's shallow commiseration. It was an affront
to her sacred grief. And she had no pretext to withdraw.
Letitia had not been addressed, but she seemed to find that fact no
hindrance to assuming a share in the conversation. "Ye war grieved!"
she exclaimed, with a keen, frosty note in her voice, as she swayed
her weight upon the paddle, poised on the wash-bench. "I never war
so _tee_-totally delighted with nuthin' in my life. Steve Yates
never 'peared so extry ter me. Moses thar air fower times the man he
war, an' fower times, I dun'no' but _five_ times"--mathematically
accurate--"better-lookin'. I never war so glad in all my life ez ter
hear he hed vamoosed."
A most ingenuously merry face she had, with its red lips curving, and
its dimpled cheeks flushing, as she turned her clear sapphire eyes
up to the rider; but a duller man than he might have read the daring
and the ridicule and the banter in their shining spheres. His look of
mingled reproach and anger had, too, a scornful intimation that she
had not been spoken to, as he glanced indifferently away, passing her
over. This was implied also in the pause. It seemed as if he could not
bring himself to make a rejoinder. It was Mrs. Yates, evidently, with
whom he wished to confer. But conversation with her on this theme was
apparently impracticable, and yet on this theme only would he talk. He
therefore sought presently to make the best of the situation, and to
avail himself of Letitia as a medium for his ideas. He reckoned for a
time without his host, for he only received a superfluity of her ideas.
"Waal, sir," he exclaimed at last, in polite reproach, "I dun'no' why
ye be glad he is gone. I dun'no', but 'pears ter me ye mought be more
cornsiderin' o' Mis' Yates."
"Hev ye lived ez long ez ye hev in this life, an' not f'und out
yit ez nobody cornsiders nobody else?" she cried, with affected
cynicism. "Waal, ye air some older'n me," she continued, blandly
smiling--conscious of his grizzled hair, he was a trifle confused by
this limited way of putting the difference in years--"but I be plumb
overjoyed o' Steve's caper, 'kase I git a chance ter 'company Mis'
Yates. Ye know"--looking up gravely at him--"I hev hed a heap o'
trouble a-fotchin' up my parents in the way they should go--_specially
dad_. They air fractious yit wunst in a while. An' now ef they ain't
obejient an' keerful o' pleasin' me, I jes' kin run away from home an'
'company Mis' Yates. An' ef Mis' Yates don't treat me right, an' Moses
gits _too_ rampagious, I kin run away ter my home folks agin, an' fetch
up my parents some mo' in the way they should go--_specially dad_."
Mrs. Yates gave a short hysterical laugh, ending in a sob. Cheever, his
cheek flushing under this ridicule, looked down at the mocking little
creature still leaning on the paddle as it rested upon the bench.
Letitia's face had grown suddenly grave. Her blue eyes, with a strange
far-seeing look in them, seemed to pierce his very soul.
"Thar's nuthin'," she said, slowly--"thar's nuthin' ter improve the
health an' the sperits an' the conduc' o' yer family like runnin' away.
_Tell Steve Yates that fur me!_"
He started as if he had been shot. A sharp, half-articulated oath
escaped his lips. His manner betokened great anger, and his eyes
burned. He could hardly control himself for a moment, and Adelaide, her
pale face still more pallid with fear, trembled and sprang to her feet.
"I dun'no' what ye mean by that," he cried, indignantly. "An' ef
_ye_ war a man ye shouldn't say it twicet. I ain't seen Steve Yates,
an' ain't like ter see him. _I_ hed nuthin' ter do with his runnin'
away. Lord! Lord!" he added, bitterly, "I 'lowed some folks in the
cove, specially some o' the name o' Pettingill"--he had forgotten the
good corn-dodger--"hed in an' about accused me o' everything, but I
didn't expec' Steve Yates's runnin' away, 'kase he war tired o' his
wife, ter be laid at my door. Naw, Mis' Yates"--he turned toward her
earnestly--"I dun'no' _nuthin'_ o' the whar'bouts o' yer husband. Ef
I did, I'd go arter him ef 'twar fifty mile, an' lug him home by the
scruff o' his neck ter his wife an' chile."
"I b'lieve ye," said Adelaide, in a broken voice, the tears coming
at last--"I b'lieve ye. Don't mind what Litt say. She always talks
helter-skelter."
Letitia stood looking from one to the other, her alert, exquisitely
shaped head, with the hair smooth upon it, save where it curled over
her brow and hung down from the string that gathered the ringlets
together at the nape of the neck, clearly defined against the
dark-green foliage of the young pines, that brought out, too, in high
relief the light blue of her cotton dress. Her glance was full of gay
incredulity, and she evidently found food for satiric laughter in the
mental standpoint of first one and then the other. It is seldom that a
creature of so charming an aspect is the subject of so inimical a look
as that which he bent upon her. But he replied gently to Mrs. Yates:
"Don't ye pester 'bout that, Mis' Yates. Ye hev got plenty ter pester
'bout 'thout it. I jes' kem ter ax ye how ye war a-goin' ter git along
'bout craps an' cuttin' wood an' sech like. I be mighty willin' ter
kem an' plough yer corn nex' week ef 'tain't laid by, an' I 'lowed I
could haul ye a load o' wood wunst in a while ef ye war so minded. I
'low everybody oughter loan ye a helpin' han', now Steve is gone."
Once more her tears flowed. The generosity and kindness implied in
the offer touched her heart as the deed might have done. And yet her
gratitude humiliated her in some sort. She was ashamed to have the
cause to be beholden to such as Buck Cheever for a kind word and a
proffered service. She shook her head.
"Naw," she said, the prosaic words punctuated by her sobs; "the corn's
laid by, an' the cotton an' sorghum an' terbacco." She stopped to
remember that Steve Yates, constitutionally a lazy fellow, and fonder
far of the woods and his gun than of the furrow and the plough,
had never failed in any labor that meant comfort to the household,
though he did little for profit. She recalled like a flash a thousand
instances of this care for her and for Moses. Why, was not one animal
of every kind--a calf, and a lamb, and a filly, and a shote--upon the
place marked with little Moses's own brand? She wondered how often she
had heard Steve say, as he sat meditating before the fire, "By the
time he's twenty he'll hev some head o' stock o' his own, ye mark my
words." And last year the cotton was soft and clean beyond all their
experience, and the flax was fine, and the weaving had been successful
out of the common run, and little Moses's homely clothes thus appeared
to their unsophisticated eyes very delicate and beautiful, and she had
been almost ashamed of Stephen's pleasure in this smart toggery--it
seemed so feminine. And now he was gone! And here she, the object
of this constant, honest, thrifty care of the thriftless Yates,
was weeping because of a kind word, and thanking Buck Cheever for
remembering that she might need to have wood hauled.
"We don't need wood," she said, "'kase Cousin Si Anderson sent his
nevy, Baker Anderson--he's 'bout sixteen year old--ter haul wood an' be
in the house of a night, 'count 'o robbers an' sech, though Letishy an'
me air nowise skeery."
"Naw," put in Letitia, suddenly; "an' I didn't want him round hyar,
nohow. I jes' kin view how reedic'lous I'd look axin' the robber ter
kem in an' help wake Baker Anderson, 'kase we-uns couldn't wake him--he
bein' a hard sleeper, sech ez Gabriel's trump wouldn't 'sturb from
his slumber--so ez we could git the boy ter the p'int o' sightin' a
rifle. Naw! Steve war perlite enough ter leave one o' them leetle
shootin'-irons ye call pistols hyar, an' plenty o' loads fur it. It's
handy fur folks o' my size. An' Moses air men folks enough 'bout the
house ter suit my taste."
Cheever made no sign that he heard. His eyes still rested with their
sympathetic expression--patently spurious--upon Mrs. Yates. To the
hard, keen lines of his face the affected sentiment was curiously
ill-adjusted. Letitia's eyes were fairly alight as she gazed at him,
gauging all the tenuity of this æsthetic veneer.
"I be glad ter know ye air so well pervided fur, Mis' Yates," he said;
"an' so will all yer frien's be. Ye air mighty well liked in the cove
an' the mountings hyarabouts. I dun'no' ez I ever knowed a woman ter
hev mo' frien's. Ye hev got a heap o' frien's, shore."
"Lots of 'em hev been hyar jes' ter find out how she takes it,"
remarked the small cynic. "An' 'fore they go away they air obleeged ter
see ez _I_ bear up wonderful."
Letitia had dropped the paddle, and was leaning back against the
silver bark of a great beech-tree. She had plucked a cluster of the
half-developed nuts from the low-hanging boughs, and as she bent her
head and affected to examine them she half hid and half vaunted a
roguish smile.
"They hev all kem, sech acquaintances ez I hev got," said Adelaide,
flustered by this attack upon the motives of the community, fearful
that Cheever might repeat it, and thus eager to set herself right
upon the record. "Folks hev been powerful good; everybody hev kem
round-about ez knowed Steve."
"'Ceptin' Mr. Rhodes," observed Letitia. "He war toler'ble constant
visitin' hyar whilst in the neighborhood ez long ez Steve Yates held
forth. But ez it air agin the religion o' wimmen ter vote, an' they
think it air a sin, this hyar wicked Mr. Rhodes, ez air stirrin' up all
the men folks ter tempt Satan at the polls, jes' bides up thar at some
folkses ez be named Pettingill, they tell me, a-nussin' of his nicked
head. He knows Adelaide an' me air too righteous ter vote, so he don't
kem tryin' ter git us ter vote fur him."
"Whar's Fee Guthrie?" asked Cheever, suddenly, reminded of him by the
allusion to the wound he had given the candidate.
The next moment there was a sneer upon his face, for the young scoffer
had changed color. It crept up from the flush in her cheeks to the
roots of her hair; but she replied, with her air of mock seriousness:
"I seem ter disremember at the moment."
Adelaide was dulled by the trouble and the preoccupation that had
fallen upon her. "He war hyar this mornin', an' yistiddy too," she
remarked, all unconscious of any but the superficial meaning of what
she said. "He 'pears ter be powerful troubled 'bout his soul."
"He seems ter 'low ez he _hev_ got a soul," observed Letitia, casually.
"The pride o' some folks is astonishin'."
"He 'lowed he war goin' ter the woods ter pray," said Adelaide.
"An' I tole him," said Letitia, "that the Lord mought like him better
ef he went ter the field ter plough. His corn is spindlin', an' his
cotton is mightily in the grass. But it takes more elbow grease ter
plough corn an' scrape cotton than ter pray, so the lazy critter is
prayin'."
Her complexion had recovered its normal tints, and she laughed at
this fling with manifest enjoyment, although the other two failed to
respond--Adelaide deprecating its tone, and Cheever preserving an
elaborate manner of ignoring that she had spoken at all.
"Waal, waal, Mis' Yates, I mus' be ridin'," he said, gathering up the
reins. "Good-by. Ef ye want me fur ennything jes' call on me, an' ye'll
do me a pleasure. Yes, 'm."
Her recognizant response was lost in the tramp of his horse, keen to be
off on the first intimation that progress was in order, and in the wail
which Moses set up in logical prescience that the admirable quadruped
was to be withdrawn from his enchanted gaze. He lunged forward,
bending his elastic body almost double, to see the horse go, mane and
tail flying, and with the sun upon his neck and his sides that had a
sheen like satin. As the rider was turning at right angles to cross
the rickety bridge, he looked back over his shoulder at the group.
Adelaide's dark attire and the diminutive size of Moses rendered them
almost indistinguishable, but the faint blue of Letitia's dress defined
her figure against the sombre green of the banks as if it was drawn in
lines of light. She had not changed her posture; her face was still
turned toward him. He knew that she was gazing after him as the fleet
hoofs of the horse with the "nigh fore-laig crippled" swiftly bore him
into invisibility. He could not hear her words, but he instinctively
felt that she spoke of him, and he could only vaguely guess their
import. So unflattering were these divinations that he ground his teeth
with rage at the thought.
"I wisht I hed never seen her," he said, as the hollow beat of the
slackened hoof sounded upon the bridge. "I wisht I hedn't stopped. But
_who_ would hev thunk ez that darned leetle consarn would hev been so
all-fired sharp ez ter guess it? I wisht I hedn't stopped at all."
An incongruous fear, surely, for a man like this; but more than
once, as he rode, he looked over his shoulder with a knitted brow
and a furtive eager eye. Naught followed but the long shadows which
the sinking sun had set a-stalking all adown the valley. The world
was still. He heard only here and there the ecstatic burst of a
mocking-bird's wonderful roulades. Then the horse, with muscles as
strong as steel, distanced the sound. Once, as the woods on either
side fell away, he saw the west; it glowed with purest roseate tints,
deepening to a live vermilion in the spaces about the horizon whence
the sun but now had blazed; the nearest mountains were darkly purple;
the northern ranges wore a crystalline, amethystine splendor, with a
fine green sky above them that had an opaque hardness of color, which
gradually merged into amber, giving way at the zenith to azure. In the
midst of all a great palpitating star glistered, so white that with
these strong contrasts of the flaunting heavens one might feel, for the
first time, a full discernment of the effect of white.
Another moment the deep woods had closed around, and it seemed that
night had come. He presently ceased to follow the road. The jungle
into which he plunged had no path, no sign of previous passing, and
the earth was invisible beneath the inextricable interlacings of the
undergrowth. But if the sense of man was at fault, the good horse
supplied the lack with a certain unclassified faculty, and with the
reins on his neck and his head alert pushed on at fair speed, stepping
gingerly over the boles of fallen trees, making his way around
insurmountable boulders, swimming a deep and narrow pool; and finally,
in struggling up the opposite bank, he uttered a whinny of triumph and
recognition that bespoke his journey's end. The sound rang through the
evening stillness of the woods with abrupt effect, repeated a thousand
times by the echoes of the huge rocks that lay all adown the gorge. The
place might realize to the imagination the myths of magic castles to be
summoned into symmetry out of the craggy chaos by some talismanic word.
It was easy to fancy, in the solitude and the pensive hour, castellated
towers in those great rugged heights, a moat in the deep pool, even a
gateway, a narrow space above which the cliffs almost met. Buck Cheever
wot of none of these things, and no fancied resemblance embellished
the stolidity of his recognition of the place as "mighty handy" for
his purposes. Perhaps the horse had more imagination, for when his
owner dismounted and sought to lead him through this narrow space, that
seemed a broken doorway to an unroofed tunnel--so consecutive were the
crags, so nearly their summits approached each other--he held back,
making a long neck, hanging heavily on the bridle, and lifting each
hoof reluctantly.
"D---- yer durned hide! ain't ye never goin' ter l'arn nuthin', many
times ez ye hev been hyar?" cried his master.
Thus encouraged, the horse slowly followed Cheever along the narrow
passway between the cliffs, that finally met in a veritable tunnel,
which might have seemed an entrance into a cave, save that at its
extremity Cheever emerged into a lighted space and the free out-door
air, and stood facing the western skies.
Nevertheless, the ledges of the cliff extended, roof-like, far out
above; its walls were on either side; the solid rock was beneath his
feet. It was a gigantic niche in the crags, to which the subterranean
passage alone gave access, one side being altogether open, showing
the tops of the trees on the low opposite bank of the river, the
stream itself in the deep gorge below, and many and many a league of
cloud-land. This unexpected outlook, these large liberties of airy
vision, formed the salient feature of the place, dwarfing for the first
moment all other properties. On the resplendent background of the
sunset, still richly aglow, the slouching figures of a group of half
a dozen men about a smouldering fire had an odd dehumanized effect.
Familiar though he was with these uncanny silhouettes, he started
violently, and hesitated, as if about to turn and flee.
VI.
His gesture elicited a guffaw.
"Hold on, Buck," cried one of the men, affecting to clutch him to stay
his flight.
"'Stan' the storm; it won't be long,'" trolled out another, a rich
stave, with the resonance of the echoing walls. "What ye feared o',
Buck--the devil? He don't keer ter 'sociate none with we-uns ez long ez
ye air abroad an' afoot."
"I dun'no' what ails my eyes," said Cheever, visibly disconcerted, and
passing his hand across his brow, as he still stood near the entrance,
the bridle in his hand, the fine head of the impatient horse at his
shoulder.
"Think ye see the devil?" cried another, jeeringly.
Cheever colored, and frowned heavily. The ridicule elicited what other
means might have failed to lead forth. He could not brook this merry
insolence, these flouts at his momentary fright. He justified it.
"I 'lowed I seen _another man_, what ain't hyar, an' never war," he
said, gruffly, looking out at them from his drooping lids, his chin
high in the air. The words seemed to have subtly transferred his
transient terror. It took a longer lease in the exchange.
There was a momentary silence, while they stared with sudden gravity
at him. A sort of remonstrance, a struggle against credulity, was in
the square face of one burly fellow, seeming less a dark, illegible
simulacrum of a man than the others, since he stood at an angle where
the light fell slanting upon his features.
"What man, now?" Derridge said, in a deep bass voice, and the
argumentative accents of one who will tolerate in evidence only fact
and right reason. His tone seemed to challenge the name of the rash
being who, in corporal absence, should venture in similitude among them.
"Dad burn ye, shet up!" cried Cheever. "I couldn't see his face. He
turned it away. Whenst I looked at him he turned it away."
"In the name o' Gawd!" ejaculated one of the men, in a low-toned quaver.
Another, one Bob Millroy, Cheever's mainstay and lieutenant, glanced
over his shoulder. "He ain't hyar now?" he demanded, in expostulatory
haste.
"Naw, naw!" exclaimed Cheever, recovering himself, the more quickly
as a monition of the possible disintegration of his gang, under the
pressure of this mysterious recruit to their number, flitted across his
mind. "Naw; he went ez soon ez I kem. Thar, now!" he continued, more
lightly; "I know how it happens." He broke into a laugh that might have
seemed strained, save that the rocks made such fantastic riot in the
acoustics of the place. "It's Steve Yates. I'm used ter seem' _six_
men, an' whenst I count my chickens thar's _seven_. I looked ter see
jes' six!" and he laughed again.
"But Steve air over yander in the shadder!" expostulated Derridge, the
disciple of pure reason. "Ye couldn't hev seen him at all."
"Waal, then," sneered Cheever, "I seen double. They say thar air good
men, an' ministers o' the gospel, ez kin view a few more snakes 'n air
nateral ter thar vision whenst the liquor air strong; an' that thar
whiskey o' old Pettingill's kin walk a mile, I reckon, ef need war."
The others had hardly recovered from the superstitious thrill induced
by the explanation of the strange agitation that beset him upon his
entrance. They were ill-prepared to so summarily cast the subject
aside, and stood still, with preoccupied, dilated eyes, mechanically
gazing at him as he turned lightly toward Yates, who rose from a saddle
on which he had half reclined beside the fire. The young mountaineer's
face had a tinge of pallor, despite its sunburn. His dull brown eyes
were restless and anxious. He was hardly an apt scholar for scheming
and dissimulation, but he sought an air of ease and satisfaction as he
asked:
"Waal, did ye hear ennything o' my fambly in yer travels?"
Cheever, all himself again, clapped him on the shoulder with a
heartiness that made the blow ring through the high stone vault. "I
_seen_ 'em, my fine young cock, I _seen_ 'em. I wouldn't take no
hearsay on it. I seen Mis' Yates _herself_, an' talked a haffen hour
with her. An' I seen Moses."
Steve Yates made shift to glance at him once, then he turned his eyes
away toward the western sky, nodding repeatedly, but silently, to the
items of news with which Cheever favored him.
"Mis' Yates ain't wantin' fur nuthin', though Moses wants everything,
_'ceptin' teeth_; like ter hev took my horse-critter away from me,
willy-nilly! Mis' Yates hev got that thar ugly, leetle, frazzle-headed
Pettingill vixen ter 'company her, an' Baker Anderson with his rifle
bides thar o' nights. Mis' Yates war cheerful an' laffin'. 'Steve will
kem back whenst he gits tired,' she say. 'He an' me had words 'fore he
lef'. I'll hold out ez long ez he kin,' she say. 'I don't believe he
hev done nuthin' agin the law,' she say. 'But _ef_ he hev,' she say,
'he air better off away than hyar at home, 'kase lynchers air mighty
lawless round these parts.' An' she say, 'I know Steve air man enough
ter take keer o' hisself an' do fur the bes', an' I'm willin' ter bide
by what he do.'"
Alack! that a lie can so counterfeit the truth! To this wily and
specious representation Stephen Yates listened with his eyes full of
tears, afraid to trust a glance upon the face of his crafty companion.
"She say," Cheever went on, "ef Steve hev done ennything agin the law,
I hope he'll make hisself sca'ce.'"
The other men, now affecting to stroll about in the ample spaces of
the cavernous place, busying themselves with replenishing the fire
or feeding the horses, of which there were half a dozen in a shadowy
nook that seemed to extend downward to further subterranean regions,
all gave furtive heed to these domestic reports. Ever and again they
eyed the disingenuous face of the narrator with its half-closed lids
and flexible lips. Then they would look at one another, and slyly wink
their recognition of his craft. One of them, standing with his hands
in his pockets and with a fire-lit face above the blazing logs, after
a survey of this sort, grotesquely imitated the speaker's attitude and
gesture, and silently worked his jaws with abnormal activity, as if
in emulation of Cheever's ready eloquence, shook his head in affected
despair, and desisted amid a smothered titter from the rest.
"Moses hev got another tooth; mighty nigh ez long ez a elephint's I
seen at Colbury, I told him; an' it seemed ter make him mad--leastwise
madder'n he war at fust. He wouldn't take no notice o' me, 'ceptin'
whenst I put my finger in his mouth ter view his teeth, an' durned ef
he didn't nearly bite it off. Oh, ye needn't ter trouble, Steve; ye air
all right, an' hev done the bes' ye could, cornsiderin' all."
"I reckon so! I hope so!" said Yates, with something very like a sob.
They all sat around the fire late that night, after their supper of
venison broiled on the coals, and corn-bread baked in the ashes, and
washed down with a plentiful allowance of innocent-looking moonshine
whiskey, colorless and clear as spring-water. The stars seemed very
near, looking in at the wide portals of the niche; the tops of the
gigantic trees swaying without were barely glimpsed above the verge.
The shadows of the men lengthened over the floor, or fluctuated on
the wall as the flames rose or fell. Now and again the fire-light was
strong enough to show the horses at their improvised manger in those
recesses where the darkness promised further chambers of the cavern.
One steed lay upon the ground, the others stood, some still and
drowsing, but more than once the sharp pawing of an iron-shod hoof
challenged the abrupt echoes.
Outside, so sweet, so pure was the summer night; the buds of the
elder-bush were riven into blooms, the mocking-bird piped for the
rising moon, the katydids twanged a vibrant note, and the river
sang the self-same song it had learned in the prehistoric days of
the pygmies. Even so still, so calmly pensive was the time that the
far-away murmur of the water-fall came to Yates's ears, or it may be
to his memory only, which transmitted the fancy transmuted in sound to
his sense. He lounged, half pillowed upon his saddle, in the circle
about the fire, and strove to drink and laugh and talk with the rest.
Many a merry jest had those walls echoed, seeming almost sentient in
emulation of the boisterous joy. To-night, somehow, they had forgotten
their jovial wiles. More than once the echo of laughter quavered off
into strange sounds that the ear shrank to hear, and one after another
of the brawny fellows looked furtively over his shoulder.
A sudden jar--only a screech-owl shrilling in a tree on the river-bank
below--but one of the men was on his feet, all a-tremble, crying out,
"What's that?" And this was the bold Cheever.
"Put up yor pistol, ye darned idjit!" exclaimed Derridge, the disciple
of reason. "Don't ye know a squeech-owel whenst ye hear one? Ye must be
plumb sodden in Pettingill whiskey."
Cheever, with a half-articulate oath, sank back upon the saddle upon
which he half lay and half sat, and presently evolved an excuse for his
nervousness. He had something too in his face that implied a doubt, a
need of support, a wish for counsel.
"That gal at Yates's, I mean Litt Pettingill, sorter purtended ez she
b'lieved ez I knowed o' Steve's wharabouts. Now Steve's welcome to
shelter with we-uns. But I'd hate it powerful ef jes' 'kase he fell
in with we-uns that night ez he war a-goin' fur the doctor ter patch
Len Rhodes's head, 'twar ter be the means o' draggin' the law down on
we-uns, an' gittin' it onto our trail."
"Ye mus' hev said suthin'. _She_ couldn't jes' hev drawed the idee
out'n _nuthin'_," reasoned the deep bass voice of Derridge, who wore a
severe and reprehensive frown. "Ye air a smart man, Buck, an' I ain't
denyin' it none, but whenst a man talks ez much ez you-uns he _can't_
gin keerful heed ter _all_ his words, an' ye mus' hev said suthin' ez
gin her a hint. Folks kin talk too much, specially whenst they set up
ter be _smart_." He was a silent man himself, and was accounted slow.
Cheever sneered. "Ye air powerful brigaty ter-night. I reckon I be
ekal ter keepin' a secret from enny gal folks. Leastwise I hev knowed
a power o' secrets an' cornsider'ble gal folks. An' they never got
tergether ez I ever hearn tell on."
This was logic, and it silenced his interlocutor. They all sat
musing for a time, while the smoke mounted into the lofty dome of
the niche, and the fire leaped fitfully, casting its flicker on all
their faces, and the whole interior, a dull red and a dusky brown,
seemed a discordant contrast to the white, lucent light of the unseen
moon, stretching across the shadowy landscape. Dew there was on the
trees without; it scintillated now and then, and far away rose soft
and noiseless mists. More than once the night sighed audibly in sheer
pensiveness.
"Boys," said Bob Millroy, suddenly, "I be a believer in signs."
There was a motionless interest in every face turned toward him. A
contagion of credulity was in the very word.
"Hyar we-uns hev been," he went on, "a-goin' tergether fur many a day
in secret, an' sech ez our workin's air they ain't 'cordin' ter law nor
the 'pinion o' the cove. An' I ain't felt 'feard nowise--though some
mought say the hemp air growed an' spun, an' the rope air twisted--till
this evenin', whenst Buck Cheever seen an' extry man 'mongst we-uns, ez
turned away his face. Sence then the fire's cold!"
He spread out his hands toward it, shaking his head in token of the
futility of its swift combustion, with its flashes and sparkle and
smoke, as he chafed them together.
"Lord A'mighty, ye durned cowardly fool!" cried the leader of the
party, beside himself with anxiety and many a premonition. "Didn't I
tell ye agin 'twar jes' Steve, ez I never looked ter view, bein' ez he
ain't reg'lar 'mongst we-uns?"
"Ye 'lowed he turned his face away," said the believer in signs.
"Waal, hev Steve got enny crick in his neck that disables him from
a-turnin' of _his_ face away?" demanded Cheever.
"He war in the shadder; ye never seen Steve," said Derridge, slowly
shaking his logical head.
"He turned his face away so ez ye mought not view it," said Millroy,
with a credulity that coerced responsive conviction.
Cheever was shaken. He suddenly desisted from argument. "Who air ye
a-'lowin' 'twar?" he demanded from the opposite side of the fire.
The ligaments of his neck were elongated as he thrust his head forward.
The fire-light showed only a glassy glitter where it struck upon the
eyeballs beneath his half-closed lids. Bereft of the expression of his
eyes, it was wonderful how much of suspense, of petrified expectation,
of the presage of calamity, the hard lines of his face conveyed.
"'Twar him we met up with on the road that night," said Millroy, who
from the affluence of his resources of conjecture could afford to
dispense with mere proof and fact.
Cheever was conscious that the others were watching him with the urgent
anxiety of those who have a personal interest at stake. The sense of
emergency was substituted for courage.
"I wish 'twar," he said, coolly. "_He_ ain't dead--a mighty pity! I'd
give the bes' horse I ever see"--he nodded his head toward the gallant
roan--"ef I could view _his_ harnt."
There was an evident revulsion in the plastic minds of his followers.
They had no sense of consistency to sustain adherence to any dogma.
Millroy was in the minority when he said, still mysteriously shaking
his head, "I'll bet the minit ye seen him 'mongst we-uns an' he turned
his head away war the minit o' his takin' off."
"Ye air always skeered o' yer shadder, Bob," said Cheever; "an' I never
knowed a feller so rich in signs ez kem ter nuthin'. That man would
be powerful welcome hyar in the sperit. I be a heap more pestered
'kase we let him git off soul an' body tergether. I know he war shot.
I dun'no' who fired it"--he mechanically closed his right hand as upon
the handle of a pistol, his first finger extended and crooked upon
the imaginary trigger, while the observant Bob Millroy scanned with
unspoken deductions the unconscious, involuntary gesture. "I never
thunk he war much hurt, though ez he went scourin' off he war bowed ter
the saddle-bow, but that war ter escape the bullets ez kem arter him.
He'll live ter lead a posse an' the sher'ff ter the spot, mos' likely;
_I'm_ 'feared o' that. I'd _de_light ter see his harnt."
"Bob oughter hev a muzzle," said the reasonable Derridge,
irritably--"ter keep him from spittin' out signs hyar, whilst we-uns
oughter be cornsiderin' how the law mought be takin' us, red-handed,
with all our plunder ter convict us"--he cast a glance at certain
saddle-bags that lay close to Cheever's side. "He jes' sets up an' gins
us a sign fur this, an' a warnin' fur that, till we air plumb wore out
with his foolishness."
"This place be safe enough, I'm a-thinkin'; no use a-worryin' an'
a-fussin'," said the unctuous voice of Pete Beckett, always full of a
hopeful content, and like oil upon the troubled waters.
The others listened with clearing countenances, but Cheever shook
his head. "Revenuers know it; they raided a still hyar wunst." The
red fire-light on the circle of faces showed their alarm at the
recollection, the prophetic suggestion. "Old man Peake run it."
"Ye 'low ef they war ter s'picion ennybody roundabouts, they mought
s'arch hyar," said Derridge, drawing the logical conclusion.
"Edzac'ly," said Cheever, impatient of the waste of words by so patent
a deduction.
"They do say," remarked Millroy, sepulchrally, "that arter Zeb Tait
went deranged, he hid hyar whenst they wanted ter jail him ez a crazy."
"Too crazy ter want ter go ter jail," exclaimed Derridge, satirically.
"An'," pursued Millroy, lugubriously, "he starved hisself ter death
in this place; leastwise they fund his corpse hyar, though he mought
hev died from his ailment. But I dun'no' _ef_ folks _do_ die from jes'
bein' crazy an' bereft."
"Naw, they don't," said Cheever, suddenly, "else ye'd hev been dead
long ago, ez crazy a loon ez ever went a-gibberin' o' foolishness
around."
Somehow his magnetic quality was at fault. The others failed to fall
in with his humor. They all sat silent, staring at the red coals; the
image of the distraught, solitary creature, who had in the secret
stronghold of the mountains wrought out his terrible doom, was in the
mind of each.
Millroy spoke rather to their thought than to the words of Cheever,
when he said, "The buzzards an' the eagles flyin' an' flusterin' round
the body led the sher'ff ter the spot."
The prosaic word, full of worldly omen, broke the breathless spell.
"An' the _sher'ff_ knows the place, too!" cried Derridge. "Waal"--he
turned his eyes, at once furious and upbraiding and full of prescient
terror, upon Cheever--"hell-fire be my portion ef I don't think ye hev
tuk the mos' public place about the cove fur these hyar doin's"--he
pointed at the saddle-bags. "An' a man in Colbury either dead by this
time, with warrants sworn out for we-uns, or else on our track ter
identify us fur the sher'ff."
"I tuk this place 'kase 'twar our reg'lar stampin'-groun'," cried
Cheever, lifting his voice to defend himself against the burly,
swelling tones of his accuser. "It air ez safe ez enny other. Thar
ain't none o' us out o' place 'ceptin' Steve." He winked slyly at
the others, for the young mountaineer lay a little in the shadow and
a trifle behind him. So blunted was the conscience, the humanity in
each, that the sense of possessing a scape-goat, the opportunity of
profit on another's injury, had a suave and unctuous influence to
heal their dissension. "_We-uns_, why, we-uns air some a-herdin' o'
cattle twenty mile away on the Balds; some war in Car'liny yistiddy
tradin' fur cattle"--he pointed at the mire on the boots of two of the
party--"Buncombe County mud! An' _I_ hev jes' got back from ridin' in
open daylight about the cove, with my mouth an' eyes stretched ter
hear how Yates hev disappeared. I be a-goin' home ter-morrer ter git
salt fur my cattle"--he put on a waggishly virtuous air. "An' _I_ war
thar ter-day, ez my fambly kin testify. 'Tain't safe, though, I know,
ter keep this truck hyar long"--he winked at the saddle-bags--"nor ter
divide it yit."
The alert expression with which each man hearkened to the allusion of
partition was eminently suggestive of the pricking-up of ears. Indeed,
as they all sat indistinct in the shadow and the flicker, there was
something dog-like or wolf-like in the whetted expectancy of their
waiting attention.
"I laid off ter hide it hyar fur ter-night an' ter-morrer," continued
Cheever, "an' whilst some gyards it, the t'others go off an' show
tharsef's in place--'ceptin' Steve"--his thin, expressive lips were
slightly elongated. "The news 'ain't got ter the cove yit, but time it
do they will all be fur stringin' him up. _Him_--_knowed_ ter be on
that road _that_ night at _that_ hour, _an' 'ain't never showed up no
mo'_."
A grin of many conceits was upon his countenance, unseen by the subject
of conversation, while the men in the full flare of the fire-light
had some ado to suppress any facial response of relish. For in this
circumstance the dullest amongst them found it easy to discern their
safety. Some discussion ensued as to the best method of secreting the
treasure until it should be safe to divide and use it.
"Jest ter think," remarked Cheever, with jovial hypocrisy, "o' the
strange workin's o' Providence. All we-uns war arter war the man's
horse--jes ter take the horse-critter an' turn the man afoot in the
road--an' stiddier that we tuk this pile o' money. It'll buy a hundred
sech horses."
Perhaps it was because of the succumbing of their fears in the drowsy
influences of the hour, waxing late, perhaps because of the confidence
engendered by elation and success, but a new sentiment of security, of
capability, was perceptible upon the mere mention of their exploit, and
several were disposed to dilate upon the future expenditure of their
share rather than to devise means to properly secrete it. Here was
where they seemed, strangely enough, Yates thought, to misunderstand
Cheever. He took little part in the discussion; he listened to each
with a sneering negation, half masked beneath his lowered eyelids, and
Yates readily divined that none probably would know the hiding-place of
the plunder but himself and Millroy, his loyal henchman, and the only
one of them all in whom he really reposed any confidence.
Derridge sat gazing at the embers; once he offered a characteristic
observation. "I know 'twouldn't do ter keep it hyar till the s'arch
be over," he said, ponderingly, accepting Cheever's suggestion, "an'
'twouldn't do fur all o' we-uns ter light out fur Texas an' sech
tergether. The folks would be a-talkin' 'bout our vamosin' like Steve
done, an' the sher'ff would be on our track with a requisition. An' it
hev ter be hid; not in the woods, 'kase we-uns might lose the spot, or
a big rain mought wash the dirt off'n it, or sech."
"I tell ye," interjected Beckett, with a swift look of inspiration.
"You know old Squair Beamen's fambly buryin'-groun'. Old Mis' Beamen
hev got a tombstone like a big box. Lift up the top, and put the truck
in thar."
"I'd like ter put ye in thar," replied Cheever, who had stolidly eyed
him during this prelection. "I wouldn't hev that truck that close ter a
jestice o' the peace fur nuthin'."
"An' I hev hearn o' other truck bein' hid thar," objected Ben Tyson,
indignantly. "Them men ez robbed the cross-roads store up on Scolacutta
River--thar plunder war fund thar."
"Not fur a long time; 'twar powerful well hid," insisted Pete Beckett,
as if stating an essential value. But the other two laughed, and the
vexed question seemed hardly soon to be decided.
The waning moon in the skies had swung now so high that her white
light lay upon the verge of the niche with a sharply drawn and jagged
outline--the shadow of the roofing ledge. Momently this belt grew
broader, and the glow of the coals more dully red. The two mountaineers
who were deputed to watch while the others slept beguiled the tedium
by a game with a greasy pack of cards, using as a table the seat of a
saddle laid between them as they half reclined on the floor, and played
less by the light of the fire than the clear lustre streaming in at
the arched opening of the grotto. The prone figures of the others gave
evidence in heavy breathing of their unconscious slumbers. All was
silent without; the silver sheen made splendid the woods, although it
was invested with some strange yearning melancholy, belonging only to
the moon on its wane. The frogs had ceased their chanting; the katydid
was dumb; the earth seemed to sigh no more; the insensate vegetation
slept. Once across the white space at the verge, where fell on the
floor the sharp rugged shadow of the roof, there was in the midst of
the stillness a sudden movement; it came from the top of the precipice
above. The two gamesters sat as if petrified, the cards in their hands,
their burning eyes intent upon the shadow of the summit of the cliff.
Nothing--a long moment of suspense. Nothing! And then it came again;
the outline of a floating wing--a swift similitude of the night-hawk
sweeping in its noiseless flight through the air to seek its unwarned
prey. The two men did not so much as glance at one another as they
resumed their game; of these thrilling moments, charged with suspense
and danger, their lives counted many.
So still it was without that it seemed to Yates that he might lose
in sleep the consciousness of those few momentous hours that had
changed the whole current of his life. He went over them again and
again in his scanty dreams with a verisimilitude of repetition that
sufficed almost to prevent him from discerning his waking thoughts
from his slumber. Now and again as he reviewed them he so realized to
his imagination a different ordering of their sequence, which might
have been so readily effected at the time had he but foreseen, that
he experienced almost the relief of escape. Why had he not refused
old Pettingill's request to ride seventeen miles for the doctor? But,
indeed, had he not offered the service from the superabundance of his
good-nature? "I hope the old man got his horse again, like Cheever
say," he sighed; for in the interim his conscience had been loaded with
every ounce that the good bay weighed. And then, again, without the
fancy of what he might have done and what he wished, he would recall
the circumstances as they had befallen him. Never had impressions
been so burned into his consciousness as in those most significant
moments of his life. He could even now recollect the glow of friendly
feeling with which he said, "I don't b'lieve but what the yerb doctor
kin bring Len Rhodes through; but ter pleasure Mr. Shattuck _I'll_
ride fur the t'other doctor, Mr. Pettingill--_I'll_ ride fur him."
He could even feel again his foot in the stirrup, the quick, smooth
gallop of the fresh horse beneath him. And then, the winding lengths
of the sandy woodland roads, so sweet with the breath of the azaleas,
all white and star-eyed in dark bosky places, so fresh with the dew,
so idealized by the moon. And thinking no harm! Thinking of Adelaide,
with regrets for the harsh words between them, with resolutions that
they should be the last. Alack! they were likely to be the last indeed.
And of Moses--proteanwise! For he could see Moses as a half-grown lad,
tall and strong and straight; and then as a bearded man; sometimes
as a justice of the peace; sometimes the elastic paternal ambition
pre-empted for him a seat in the State Legislature; and then the image
dwindled, best of all, to the small limits of the cradle where he
slept, so pink and white and warm, the highest potentate in all the
land! Thinking of these things Yates was as the miles sped; hearing
once afar, afar, a horn wound in the stillness, and then only his
horse's hoofs with the alternate beat of the gallop.
He had ridden hard, since it might be a case of life and death; but
there was a bad stretch of road ahead, a long hill to climb, and the
horse was blown. It was a saving of time, he thought, as he slackened
the pace and went slowly, slowly up the rugged ascent. The grass was
thick on the margin; he drew his horse to the side where the hoofs
might fall on the smooth dank sward. He could scarcely hear his saddle
creak. The animal paused at the summit to snatch a mouthful of cool wet
sassafras leaves, munching with relish, despite the hindrance of the
bit.
Suddenly a wild hoarse scream rang out, startling the night; a tumult
of voices sounded; a pistol shot split the air, another; and, as he
looked from the summit of the hill down the declivity, he saw a group
of horsemen in fierce altercation in the middle of the road. Scant
as the moment was, so bright was the moon that he recognized more
than one face. And the moment was scant, for the central figure, his
whole pose vigorously resistant, fired again, wide of the mark, the
ball whizzing by the ear of Zack Pettingill's bay horse. The animal
uttered a sharp neigh, almost articulate, wheeled abruptly, and,
heedless of either whip or spur, breaking into an unmanageable run,
fled frantically homeward. Behind there were swifter hoofs than his. It
was hardly a moment before Cheever's splendid horse was alongside; his
burly strength re-enforced Steve Yates's pull on the reins. Whether,
in the confusion of the moment, Cheever and his gang had mistaken
the neighing of Pettingill's horse and the sound of his hoofs for
pursuit and incontinently fled, or whether they thus divined that
they were discovered, Yates did not then definitely understand, nor
was it clearer to him afterward. Certainly they dreaded the escape of
the witness who beheld the deed, and knew its perpetrators by face
and name, far more than that of the plundered wayfarer, who, upon the
diversion effected in his favor, made good use of his horse's hoofs
upon the road that he had so lately travelled. Beyond a pistol ball
or two, one of which Yates thought undoubtedly took effect, they did
not offer to pursue him. They rode alongside of their protesting and
unarmed captive, and discovering shortly how efficacious was the
suggestion that he would doubtless be accused of the deed, since so
many knew of his errand at this unusual hour and on this unfrequented
road, they caused him to be pondering heavily upon the dreary
possibilities of circumstantial evidence before they had gone many
miles. Not that he did not offer resistance and seek flight. "What's
the use o' swallerin' this bullet whether or no, Steve?" Cheever had
demanded, as he presented a pistol to his captive's mouth. "I don't
want ye ter eat lead, an' how would that mend the matter fur you-uns?"
And when Yates sought to urge his horse into a gallop, it was but a
shamble in comparison with the smooth, swift gait of the splendid
animal that Cheever bestrode. He could do naught at the time, not even
by screams arouse a wayside habitation, for they had soon plunged into
unfrequented forests, and were far away from the haunts of men.
That they had not used him more unkindly than the interests of their
own safety necessitated made no claim upon his gratitude. Perhaps,
although he had not the courage to court it, he would have preferred
death. He only took advantage of their leniency to stipulate that
Pettingill's horse should be turned loose to return. "He mought be
viewed 'mongst our'n some time. He's too close a neighbor ennyhow,"
said Cheever, and so he consented. Even the trivial detail of the
creature's bewilderment was still in the young man's mind--how the
horse persistently trotted along in the cavalcade, with his lustrous
surprised eyes and his empty saddle, his erstwhile rider mounted behind
one of the other men. More than once after he was driven back he
reappeared from behind a sharp curve of the road, nimbly cantering and
with an appealing whinny. Finally blows prevailed, and from the crest
of a ridge they afterward saw him ambling erratically homeward along
the white moonlit road, now and again stopping by the wayside to crop
the grass or bushes.
"Ef he keeps on that-a-way he'll git home next week," Cheever had
commented.
Even now, reviewing the disaster, Yates could not say definitely what
he should have done, but it seemed that some rescue would have waited
upon his effort had his slow brain but devised it. More than all,
above all, the sight of the saddle-bags containing a considerable sum
of money taken from the stranger had a horror for him. He dwelt upon
the idea that among the people of the cove he must be believed to
have committed the crime, until he had a morbid sense of complicity.
His mind was, as he knew, but a poor tool for scheming, but he was
imperatively, urgently moved by some inward power to make an effort
which might result in the restoration of the money to its proper owner.
He began to feel that integrity is not a repute; it is an attribute of
the mind and a spontaneous emotion of the heart. "'Tain't ter hev folks
_say_ ye're honest; it air ter _be_ honest."
He felt himself forever blasted; he doubted if, in any event, he would
ever dare to return to his home. He had known of men with far less
evidence against them than these perverse lies, that masqueraded as
facts in his case, strung up to a tree without judge or jury. He would
do himself, his wife, his child scant favor in courting that ignoble
doom. He only revolved the robbery for the sake of honesty alone, that
he might devise some scheme to frustrate the highwaymen and restore the
money.
Somehow, as he lay looking out at the gibbous moon, visible now, all
distorted and weird in the purple sky, and no less lustrously yellow
because of the sense of dawn gradually stealing upon the air, he could
not disassociate Shattuck from his train of ideas despite the lack of
logical connection. It was perhaps, he thought dully in recognizing the
fact, because it was upon Shattuck's errand that he had gone to this
dreadful fate; perhaps because the mention of a box-like tombstone had
suggested to him the strange underground sarcophagi, also box-like and
of stone, of the pygmy burying-ground in which Shattuck was interested.
And suddenly he caught his breath and lay still, thinking, a long time.
So languid-footed was the night, but he smelt the rose in its morning
blossoming! A mocking-bird sang, all faint and sweet and fresh, and
dreamed again. Stars were fading; the great valley of East Tennessee
was beginning to be outlined, with ridges and smaller valleys and
rivers and further mountains, with a sense of space and of large
symmetry that outdoes the imagination. And still the moon shone in his
face.
"Buck," he said, suddenly, for all the others slept, and it was
Cheever's turn to watch, "did you-uns ever hear tell o' the Leetle
Stranger People?"
Cheever, smoking his pipe near at hand, as he lay on the floor, lifted
himself upon one elbow. He nodded. "Many a time."
"Folks 'low they useter hev this kentry. They seem sorter small ter hev
ter die."
"I dun'no' but what they do," said Cheever, impressed by the hardship
of the common fate which overtook even such "leetle people." "An' folks
hev fairly furgot they ever lived, too."
Yates nodded his head.
"I dun'no' ez I hev hearn the Leetle People named fur thirty year an'
better. My gran'mam tole me 'bout 'em whenst I war a boy. What ailed
you-uns ter git a-goin' 'bout 'em?"
"Jes' thinkin' 'bout home. Thar buryin'-groun' ain't more'n haffen mile
from my house," replied Yates, casually. "Ye hev hearn tell how they
coffins the dead in stone boxes, two feet undergroun', an' I reckon
that fool talk 'bout Mis' Beamen's tombstone bein' like a stone box
reminded me of 'em."
Cheever held his pipe in his hand. The coal had dwindled to an ash as
he listened. A thought was astir in his crafty brain. Dull at scheming
as Yates was, he could almost divine its processes.
"I dun'no' _when_ I hev hearn the Leetle People named afore," Cheever
said, meditatively.
"The old folks used ter talk 'bout 'em sometimes," rejoined Steve,
apparently inadvertently, "though few knows now they ever lived, nor
whar they lie. One grave air right on the south side o' that thar
laurel bush--the only laurel on the slope; I know, fur the ground
sounds hollow thar; I sounded it one day."
He cast a covert glance at Cheever. The robber's eyes, opened widely
for once, were full of light as they glanced swiftly and searchingly
at the sleeping men, all unconscious, about them. Then he said, in a
casual tone, "I reckon thar's a heap o' lie in all that thar talk 'bout
the Leetle People." And his earnest, intent, breathless face belied his
words as he spoke them.
Yates sank back upon the improvised pillow of saddle and blanket,
breathing quick, feeling alive once more. He had relied on Cheever's
ignorance of Shattuck's intention--known, indeed, to few, and
infinitely unimportant in their estimation--since the horse-thief's
protective seclusion debarred him from much gossip. To this spot
beneath the laurel Yates himself had directed Shattuck's attention. Now
if the treasure should be concealed there, and Shattuck's enthusiasm
should not fail, the discovery would be made and noised abroad, and
some right at last would blossom out of all this wrong.
VII.
The "falling weather" came hard upon its prophecy. All that day the
clouds mustered. Films, lace-like and fretting the roseate heavens,
thickened as the light gradually dawned, and were dense before the sun
rose--dense, but white and semi-translucent, and a certain focus of
opaque glister, slowly mounting and mounting the sky, gave token how
the great chariot of the sun fared along the celestial highways to the
zenith. No fierce monitions in this noiseless eclipse of the diurnal
splendors of the rich summertide; the landscape lay in a lethargic
shadow, and time seemed to wait somewhere and to drowse dully, so
long the hours loitered, so little did they change; the leaves hung
still; a breathless, sultry pause bated the pulses of the world. In the
afternoon--one who judged of time by the sun might hardly know were it
the impending cloud or the approach of night--this long monotony of the
atmosphere was broken by a gradual darkening, and presently an almost
imperceptible rain was gently falling. The air was dank, the lungs
expanded to longer and longer respirations, and the clouds were coming
down the mountain-side--coming in fleecy ranks along the dark purple
indentations which marked the ravines, the vanguard with broken flakes
that suggested woolly leaders of flocks.
"Look yander at the sheep, Moses," Letitia adjured the infant as he
sat on the floor of the porch--"look yander at the flocks o' the old
man ez herds the clouds on the bald o' the mounting."
Moses stared with inconceivable impressions at the fictitious sheep,
and more than once looked up with a contemplative eye and a sensitive
lip at Letitia to hear again of the fabled herder whose flocks wore
this tenuous guise. How much he believed, how much he understood,
must ever remain a matter of conjecture. He hearkened to all that was
told to him which trenched upon the wonderful lore of the nursery,
but maintained the while the inscrutable, impenetrable reticence of
the infant who can but who will not talk. And now all similitude of
flocks was lost in a sudden precipitation of the cloud masses toward
the valley. Gullies, abysses, the river, every depression seemed to
exude vapors, that hung suspended in the air, till they were met by the
downward rush. All at once a louder patter was on the little slanting
roof of the porch, and upon its floor the drops, glittering in their
elastic rebound, multiplied till Letitia, catching Moses under the
arms, bore him within, his feet sticking straight out, conserving his
sitting posture, and placed him on the broad hearth before the fire.
And at last--whether the night or only its dull simulacrum--darkness
descended. Letitia, looking forth from the open door, could see the
pale shifting mists rather by the glow from the hearth than by the
aid of such gray and sombre twilight as might linger without. The
rain fell invisibly in the midst of the vapors; only the detached
drops that pattered upon the edge of the floor of the porch gave out a
steely gleam as they smartly rebounded and fell again. The room was
all the cheerier for the dull and dank aspect of the world outside.
The spinning-wheel drawn up to one corner of the hearth promised an
evening full of quiet industry and a musical whirring pleasant to
hear. The warping bars, on the opposite side of the brown wall, were
full of color, much red predominating in many shades, for Moses had
early seemed to notice the rich, brilliant tint, and it had won his
rare approval. Indeed, so much Turkey red went into the fashioning of
his garments that the hanks of yarn and cotton designed for them and
hanging from the ceiling served to brighten the room, as if a bizarre
decorative effect had been intentionally sought. The fire blazed
merrily, and the light flashed back from the barrel of the rifle that
rested on its rack of deer antlers against the chimney.
Letitia, in her faint-blue dress, moved deftly about, giving a touch
here and there to set things in their eventide order, murmuring as she
went a little song, scarcely a tune--more like the fragmentary melodies
that the mountain brooks sing on their way to the valley. "A cur'ous
sort'n psalmin' what she makes up out'n her own head," her mother used
to say, with that rural distrust of all out of the usual experience.
An ash cake was baking under the clean silver-gray mounds at one side
of the great fire, which was too large for comfort--for the air was
not chilly, albeit both doors and windows stood open--and too hot even
for its purpose of cooking supper, for now and again the eggs, also
roasting under the ashes, gave token by a sharp crack that one had
succumbed unduly to the heat, had burst and spilled its yolk. On each
occasion Moses, sitting after his lowly habit on the floor before the
fire, gave a nervous little jerk, and looked with a certain anxiety at
his mother, aware that all was not well in the domestic administration.
Adelaide, kneeling by the hearth, frowned almost mechanically, and
forgot the mishap the next moment. Presently she looked up at the
grayish blackness that filled the door and window.
"I dun'no' whether it air night or no," she said, the red live coals
that she had raked out upon the hearth casting a dull reflection upon
her oval face and large dark eyes. "I mought be _too_ forehanded
a-gittin' supper fur aught I kin tell."
"Ye'll find out whenst it air supper-time by the comin' o' Baker
Anderson," remarked Letitia. "That boy air wound up ter the very
minute. His folks never kin need a clock ter find out what's
meal-times, nor ter look at the sun. Mus' be a great comfort ter
ennybody ter hev sech a punctual stommick in the house. My mother would
dote on feedin' him."
And, sure enough, presently here was Baker, a great thumping boy of
sixteen, with a man's frame and a callow, square, beardless, sheepish
face, as conscious of his feet as if he were a centipede, as conscious
of his big hands as if he had a hundred. All the grace and the strength
of his muscles deserted him at the door, where he hesitated as if he
doubted how he should before all these spectators ever reach the chair
by the fireside which he usually occupied. Then he made a tremulous
rush, deposited himself sidelong upon it, and, looking up from under
his straight eyebrows, said, with a gasp, "G'evenin', Mis' Yates."
He did not dare to address Letitia, so conscious was he of her latent
mockery, and of her knowledge of the criticism upon the household
which he had made in his innocent confidences to his aunt, who had
ruthlessly repeated it to the parties in interest: he had said that
he had no objection to Mis' Yates, but that Letitia eyed him ez ef
she could sca'cely keep from laffin' at him, an' Moses eyed him ez if
he could sca'cely keep from smackin' his jaws; an' 'twixt 'em both he
hardly knew whether he stood on his head or his heels; an' ef 'twarn't
fur Mis' Yates, he an' his rifle would make tharselves sca'ce at Steve
Yates's cabin.
To the manners of Moses, indeed, one far less sensitive than the guest
might readily have taken exceptions. From time to time he angrily
surveyed Baker, knitting his scanty brows, and always crooking his
fat dimpled arm above his forehead whenever he renewed his gaze; and
although this gesture is not among the generally accepted expressions
of contumely, it had especial capacities to convey a flout. Poor Baker
had expected gambols with the infant to be a means of lessening the
awkwardness of his self-consciousness, and to put him on a more easy
basis with the household. Mrs. Yates often felt herself obliged to
apologize for the unfriendly conduct of Moses, and even to expostulate
with the great Dagon, and beg him to mitigate his severity. He seemed
instigated to this course in some sort by the malice of an old dog,
brindled a bluish-gray and white, who had adopted a senile vagary
that the visitor harbored wicked intentions against the household
hero, which he evidently felt delegated to frustrate. He always came,
upon the boy's entrance, and placed himself between the guest and
the precious "leetle Mose," who found the animal's side, cushioned
with fat, a sufficiently soft and comfortable pillow, and was wont to
lean upon it, resting his downy head and fine pink cheek on the dark
tigerish hair of the thick neck--the formidable fangs of the brute's
half-open mouth, the fiery eye and rising bristles, bearing fierce
contrast to the delicate infantile curves and coloring of the child's
face. Here nightly, until Baker Anderson was led off to his slumbers
in the roof-room, the dog sat immovable, now and then emitting a growl
if he so much as glanced at Moses. Mrs. Yates could only redouble her
suavity to the household defender, and add some soothing dainty to the
supper. "I made this johnny-cake express fur _you-uns_, Baker," she
would say. And when he could no longer be fed, she exerted herself to
entertain him in the brief interval before the young fellow, tired out
with the day's ploughing or hunting, would succumb to the heat and the
stillness, and nod before the fire. Doubtless this talk was a salutary
necessity for Adelaide, for the days were full of tears, and the
nights of sighs and wakeful hours, and dreams of vague unhappiness and
discordant, half-realized terrors. Letitia's smiling assurance, "How ye
an' Steve air a-goin' ter laff an' laff over this some o' these days!"
she could not accept, although it was grateful to hear, and she would
still her sobs to listen to its iteration. But poor Baker, when awake,
called for all her sympathy and countenance, thus helpless amongst his
enemies, and so sorrow must needs be forgotten for a time.
They all sat thus this evening, the supper cleared away, the hearth
swept, one of Moses's red stockings for winter wear growing under
the needles in Adelaide's hand, the little flax spinning-wheel awhirl
as Letitia drew out the long thread, the baby half drowsing on the
fierce old dog's neck, the doors all aflare, when a sudden chill wind
sprang up. They heard it rising far, far away--a deep, hollow murmur,
all unlike the throbbing of the cataract, which was ceaseless in the
darkness, beating like the heart of the night; it came stealthily
down through the gap in the mountain, and the trees, hitherto silent
and motionless above the little house, suddenly fell to trembling and
clashed their boughs, and long-drawn sibilant sighs pervaded all their
rustling foliage.
"Listen!" Letitia said, her foot pausing on the treadle, as she turned
her brilliant azure eyes to the night, all black without. "Thar's the
last o' the rain and the fog."
The drops were redoubled on the roof, but presently they grew fewer,
discursive, and now sounded only the fitful patter of those shed by the
foliage where they had lodged.
A more turbulent gust banged the batten shutters and shook the door,
then went screaming, screaming through the black night, with a voice so
dolorous and wild that more than once Adelaide put down her knitting,
and looked up with a face pallid and agitated, as if she realized in
the sound the utterance of the dreary grief that rent her heart.
"Shet the door an' bar it up, Baker," observed Letitia. "Ye air
younger'n me"--with a mimicry of age--"or I'd wait on you-uns."
The boy's manner of shuffling to the door and window and securing them
kindled a smile in her eyes. He could not encounter them when he was
once more ensconced in the corner, so he chanced to glance at the old
dog, which instantly growled, and then he was fain to stare sedulously
into the fire. "I wouldn't be s'prised none ef the coals war ter hop up
an' scorch me," he said bitterly to himself, for the inner man, or boy,
was by no means the submissive, humble entity which the outward shy,
awkward cloddishness might intimate. The gusts had sprung after him
upon the door, and shook it as if a hundred beasts had lain in ambush
there, baffled by his forethought.
"Oh!" cried Adelaide, all her distraught nerves a-jarring. "What do
that sound like?"
"Like the wind," said Letitia, bending her smiling face to the
spinning-wheel, "the wind ez air stoppin' the rain, an' the corn
crap'll be short. Don't ye see Baker thar drappin' a tear, like a good
farmer, 'count o' the drought that this leetle rain don't break?"
Baker turned scarlet and shuffled his big feet and moistened his lips
with his tongue, his traduced dry eyes, hot and angry, staring steadily
at the fire.
"One tear, Baker, shed fur sins mought go further than that leetle tear
o' yourn will go with the country's corn crap."
Letitia spoke solemnly, and looked with affected gravity at the boy,
who was so lugubrious under her teasing that she could not resist,
and burst into a peal of laughter. His lips mechanically distended,
exhibiting two great unbroken arches of strong teeth.
"Don't, _don't_ show all them teeth ter Moses, Baker," she adjured
him, in pretended alarm. "Think how bent on gittin' teeth he be now,
an' ef he war ter set his heart on havin' _yourn too_, how lonesome
ye'd be 'thout 'em at meal-times!"
Moses, hearing his name, roused himself with an effort, looking over
his shoulder frowningly, with a shrill little ill-tempered squeal, for
he did not permit her to speak of him, and rarely to address him.
"Oh, oh, listen to the wind!" cried Adelaide, unheeding them all. "It
sounds like the voice o' suthin' that can't rest in its grave."
"Waal," said Litt, sturdily, "I ain't 'quainted with that kind o'
harnts myself, ez 'ain't got no better manners 'n ter go screechin'
like the bad boys in the cove arter a day at the still--'thout the
excuse o' bein' in liquor, too. We'd better make mo' stir ourselves,
then we can't hear 'em. Baker, mebbe ye mought gin us a song--" she
bent a beguiling smile upon him--he, who could not even talk, to be
asked to sing! "I hev got a notion ez you-uns be a plumb sweet singer."
Her air of coquetry and the implied compliment were of that phase of
her manners far more formidable to the callow youth than even her open
ridicule. He could have sunk through the floor. He knew, however, that
his blushes, his abashed and downcast eyes, were delightful to her. The
indignation and resentment kindled by this reflection roused that more
stalwart personality of self-respect within him, and gave him courage
to mumble, a trifle surlily, that she had better sing a song herself
if she hankered for singing. To this she replied, with a sudden swift
transition to patently mocking glee:
"I think so myself, Baker, I _do_ think so; but I didn't s'pose _ye_
war so smart ez ter know it too."
And then, with the accompaniment of the musical whir of her wheel,
and the sibilant fugue of the wind in the trees, and the blare of the
fluctuating flames in the chimney, she began to sing in a voice low and
sweet; and while she sang a strange thing happened.
As she drew the thread along, holding the end out in her hand with a
graceful sweep of her arm, her blue eyes full of pensive lights, her
lips parted, her tiny foot marking time on the treadle, she noted
that one of the batten shutters, which had so regularly beaten in the
blast against the window-frame, as the other did even now, had grown
steady. All at once the fire-light leaped up with a keen glitter, and
at the long narrow crevice between the shutter and the window she
saw a face peering in so stealthily, a face so long and white and
unrecognizable--seeming hardly human in the narrow section which the
rift showed--that a sudden terror smote her heart, the words of the
song rose to a scream, and, the wheel still whirling, the thread in her
hand, she pointed to the window, exclaiming: "The face! the face! I'm
feared o' the face!"
Adelaide had sprung wide-eyed and pale to her feet; the dog, vaguely
apprehending the commotion, was fiercely growling. The clumsy boy had
risen, overturning the chair with the motion, and at that instant the
shutter slammed freely back and forth against the window-frame at the
whim of the wayward gusts, and naught was there when the rifle was
thrust to the crevice.
"Let him look down the muzzle o' that now," cried Baker Anderson, "ef
he's so fond o' peekin'!"
"Don't shoot, Baker; don't shoot!" exclaimed Adelaide, her face still
drawn and white. "I reckon Litt didn't see nuthin', nohow."
"My eyesight bein' sorter poorly, through agin' so much lately," the
girl said, in her characteristic tone; but her own face was pallid, and
as she leaned back in the chair she panted heavily.
"Don't fool me, Litt," the other adjured her, with heart-break in her
voice. "War it Steve?"
"I never admired Steve," Litt gasped, "but I never thunk he war ugly
enough ter be tarrified at the sight o' him."
Moses, who had turned his head upward, and looked bewildered from
one to the other, now burst into a piteous wail with tears and sobs,
imagining, from the excited talk, that an altercation was in progress,
for, singularly enough for one of his stern and belligerent character,
he deprecated a quarrel, and resented all interchange of loud words.
His mother knelt by him to pat him on the back; the old dog licked his
bare pink foot. Letitia still leaned back in the chair, her frightened
face all at variance with her usual gay bravado.
"Who did it look like, Litt?" demanded Adelaide, not lifting her voice,
and the peace-loving Moses, tolerating no quarrel that was not of his
own making, turned his face, where the tears still lodged on the curves
and in the dimples, to supervise the pacific answer.
"Like nuthin' I ever see afore; like nuthin' livin'," Litt barely
whispered.
Adelaide's face blanched even in the red fire-light. The hand that
patted Moses trembled as she knelt beside him.
Baker Anderson's blood was merely slightly stirred. The bluff courage
with which he was endowed--no less sturdy because callow--enabled him
to regard the odd incident as a welcome and exciting break in the
monotony. He had considered his stay here with his rifle as rather
the result of a senile whim on the part of his uncle than because any
danger might menace the deserted Yates household. He was glad to have
his presence and that of his weapon justified by some simulacrum of
fear and trouble. Litt fancied that she detected in his manner a relish
of her terrors. At all events, he evidently suddenly thought well
enough of himself to venture an observation.
"Ye needn't be 'sturbed none, Mis' Yates. 'Twarn't nobody, mebbe. Ef
ye'd like fur me, I'd take my rifle an' sorter tramp round the yard a
leetle an' look out."
"No; no; bide whar ye air," cried Mrs. Yates. "Litt say," she faltered,
"it moughtn't--be--alive," her voice quavered to silence.
"Oh, thar ain't nobody buried close enough round hyar ter git ter
'sturbin' we-uns, Mis' Yates," Baker reassured her with a capable
swagger.
So fully had his sense of superiority been restored by the
demonstration of the imperviousness of his courage that it seemed
impossible that he should ever have quaked before that small bully in
blue, even with her beautiful and bewildering eyes and her smiling
lips and the keen whetted edge of her ridicule; he glanced hardily at
her as she still leaned back in her chair, limp and prostrated by the
fright, the overturned spinning-wheel at her feet. Oh, it was a great
thing to be a man--or a boy who thought himself a man--even burdened
with a pair of big clumsy feet, and several superfluous hands, and a
tongue tied in the presence of small bright-eyed bullies in blue! He
was emboldened to evolve a theory of his own concerning the conduct of
ghosts, which was doubtless as worthy of respect as any such theories
ever are.
"Harnts don't wander much ginerally," he said. "They hang round thar
own buryin'-groun' mainly. Ye kin see 'em of a moonlight night, they
say, a-settin' on thar graves, an' lookin' through the palin's o' the
church-house yard--though I 'ain't viewed none, _myse'f_. An' sometimes
whenst fraish-buried they walk in thar kin-folkses' house."
"Oh, Baker!" interpolated Mrs. Yates.
"But _ye_ ain't got no fraish-buried kin, Mis' Yates," Baker hastened
to stipulate. "Steve air alive an' hearty, else ye'd hev hearn 'bout
him, bad news bein' a fast rider. An' thar ain't no graves in the
neighborhood, an' so thar ain't no harnts o' course."
"He hev tuk a census o' sperits lately," cried Letitia, with a
tremulous laugh.
"Thar air the Leetle People's buryin'-groun' nigh hyar," faltered
Adelaide.
But Baker Anderson had never heard of the "Leetle People." He looked
mystified, and a trifle startled, despite the resources of his courage;
and, after she explained, he presently spoke with an insistent desire,
most plainly to be observed, to exclude the Little People from the
possibilities.
"Mos' likely it air jes' some lazy loon a-goin' home from the still
or suthin', an' hearin' the singin', stopped to listen. Ez ter the
_Leetle People_"--his voice drawled the words lingeringly, his eyes
dwelt meditatingly on the fire, he was evidently falling under a morbid
mysterious fascination--"I reckon ez they hev been lef' be all these
years mebbe they won't git a-goin' at this late day."
The wind came and went in mighty surges; the trees groaned. Amongst it
all one could hear the melancholy roar of the falls, and now and again
a gust with a stealthy touch tried the door or the shutter, and went
skurrying around the house with a rustle of the grass and the bushes to
simulate a human flight.
"I wonder," said Letitia, suddenly--she had lifted the spinning-wheel,
had placed it before her, and was bending her face above it, still
white from the nervous shock, as she righted the confusion of the
tangled thread--"I wonder, Adelaide, ef ye ever hearn that thar Mr.
Shattuck talkin' much 'bout them Stranger People?"
"No--but I hev hearn Stephen tell 'bout'n it, an' how he wants thar
pearls on thar necks an' thar leetle jugs an' dishes, ez they thunk
enough of ter hev buried with 'em, 'lowin' they'd be thar at the las'
day."
She paused in surprise. Letitia's pale face had turned a vivid scarlet.
"Adelaide!" she cried. "Do ye actially b'lieve that? Ye 'pear plumb
bereft, an' ye talk like a fool. He ain't wantin' thar pearls an'
sech. They 'ain't got none wuth hevin'!"
"Why don't he let 'em stay in thar peaceful graves, then, till the
light shines in the east?" retorted the other, with spirit.
"I axed him 'bout'n it," Letitia went on; "he say he wants ter know
ef they air small people sure enough, or whether they air jes' common
Injun chil'n; he 'lows he kin tell suthin' o' what nation they war by
thar skulls an' jugs an' ornamints." She paused, her eyes bright with a
sort of bewildered surprise. How she had remembered this strange talk
of his! How she had laid it to heart!
"Mr. Shattuck told about one man," she resumed, "that seen the
skeletons of some Tennessee pygmies, an' he writ in a book ez they war
all grown up, but leetle, _leetle_ folks, with thar teeth all separate
an' sharp at the p'ints, like a dog's or a wolf's fangs."
Adelaide uttered an exclamation of horror.
"An' thar air lots o' cur'ous leavin's in Tennessee--bones o' big
animals sech ez thar ain't none of now; an' old forts with trees many
hundred year old growin' over 'em, an' built out'n stones; an' strange
paintings on high cliffs, what some say war done by folks in a boat
whenst a flood war in the lan'; an' cur'ous images an' weepons, an'
cups an' jugs sech ez can't be fund nowadays nowhar. An' of all the
queer things an' cur'ous tales in Tennessee, the Leetle People take the
lead."
"What do he want ter know thar nation fur?" demanded Adelaide, stonily.
"They lived, and they air dead. Let him take God's grace for the wisdom
of it, an' ax no questions."
"Oh, ye think he air a common thief ez be arter the value o' thar
truck, like the ignorant folks round hyar!" cried Letitia, repudiating
kinship and the community in the pride of her new scientific
acquisitions.
"Ye l'arnt _that_ from him, too, I reckon--a-girdin' at yer own home
folks!" said Adelaide, reproachfully.
Letitia's face was dyed even a deeper scarlet. "Oh, he be some smarter
'n folks in gineral," she protested, nevertheless. "An' Steve tole ye
so, too, I'll be bound."
This allusion struck home.
"Waal, thar's been enough an' too much quar'lin' over him now, Litt,"
Adelaide said, sadly. "Don't let's ye an' me fall out 'bout'n him. Sing
some mo'--yer singin' air powerful clear an' sweet--sing some mo'."
Letitia, only half appeased, shook her head. "My singin' 'pears ter
raise harnts, or the devils, or suthin', ter-night. I can't sing no mo'
with sech white queer faces ter peek through the window at me."
All her sparkle seemed quenched somehow; the airy wings of her wit were
folded and trailing, and she was afoot, as it were, in the dust.
This perception, subtly realized, emboldened Baker Anderson to
perpetrate in his turn a small jest at the expense of his late
tormentor.
"Oh, ye mought ez well sing," he said, in a humorous, callow growl,
and with an awkward wag of his square head. "I reckon ye never see
nobody at the winder, 'ceptin' mebbe 'twar Fee Guthrie, 'shamed ter
kem a-visitin' ye _every_ night, so he mus' hev a look at ye whilst
singin', through the winder--he 'lows ye be so powerful pritty." And
he grinned broadly in the pride of this achievement.
For Felix Guthrie had repeatedly made one of the small party, talking
chiefly about his obdurate soul, resistant to conversion, much as
if it were an obstinate mule, until a late bedtime turned his steps
from the door. But Letitia was neither discomfited nor roused by this
unprecedented conversational effort on the part of the shy Baker. She
only replied, in a dull, spiritless tone, "'Twarn't Fee."
Her eyes, their fine color still asserted in the glow of the red
embers, had in them a certain wonder, a sentiment of pain, a touch
of fear. The boy's words had given direction to her thoughts. Felix
Guthrie would not have lingered to see her sing--he knew but vaguely
that her face charmed him. He had no adequate sense of its beauty.
She herself had learned it only in another man's eyes--so loath they
were to leave it, so fired with some subtle enthusiasm for it. He
could look at her silently for hours; but surely, she thought, she
could not have fancied in that sinister apparition at the window any
resemblance to him. And why should he linger without and peer in at the
fireside group when the door would have opened willingly? It was not
he; but who was it? And this mystery bore her company into the dull,
dead hours. She could not sleep; her eyes were open, and staring into
the darkness long, long after slumber had enwrapped all others of the
household. She was not restless, only wakeful, as if she should never
sleep again. She marked all the successive changes of the night. A long
time a cricket shrilled and shrilled in some cranny of the room, and
at last was weary, and so grew mute. An owl screamed once without, and
was heard no more. Occasionally the dogs, who slept under the house,
stirred and wheezed and changed their posture, bumping their heads
against the floor as they moved, and were still again. The wind roved
for a while listlessly about the garden bushes, and at last was lulled
amongst them. And then ensued a hush so intense, so prolonged, that
it weighed upon her senses, alert to catch and distinguish some sound
that might break it. Naught. Not even the ashes crumbled in the wide
chimney-place, where they covered the embers. So deep was the slumber
of Adelaide beside her, of Moses in his crib, that they hardly seemed
to breathe. Darkness unbroken and silence absolute. Thus might she
feel, she thought, without sound or light, if perchance she should
wake some time in her grave, after she had lain five centuries, say,
quite dead; as the Little People might feel, stirred to some merely
mechanical sensation of falling to dust, in those quaint coffins that
had become a curiosity, bereft of human significance, of fraternal
sanctity, so old, so queer they were. Thus they felt, no doubt, in the
long pauses of the centuries while they waited for the judgment.
And with a sudden fear of a dull numbness stealing over her, she roused
herself to a sitting posture, and slipped from the high piles of the
thick feather-bed to the floor. Her bare feet were noiseless as she
crossed the room and sat down in a rocking-chair. The stones of the
hearth were warm yet, and pleasant to the touch. She heard the dogs
stir once again, and a young horse that was at liberty without trot
slowly around the cabin.
What sort of lives did those Little People lead here? she began to
wonder anew. Was the grass so fine and soft and green in their day as
now? Did the flowers bloom, and the sun shine, and the earth grow so
fair of face in the long summer-time that the thought of death became
inexpressibly repugnant, and one might wish it afar off, long, long to
wait on this sweet existence? O Little People, that it should have come
at last! O Little People, to lie so long and wait in gloom!
Somehow the thought of the eventless passing of centuries to them gave
her a more adequate idea of the quietus of death--its insoluble change.
She felt stifling. She rose to her feet, opened the batten shutter near
at hand, and looked out upon the night. The moon had risen; she had
hardly expected to see it there, hanging in the gorge of the mountains
above the falls. Melancholy and waning it was. She had never heard that
it was a dead, burnt-out world of spent fires; she thought it of this
life, and she welcomed the sight. Stars were out, and the clouds all
gone. The dank breath of herbage, sodden with rain, came to her; the
mists were barely visible, hovering above the dark ravines. The shadows
were long. She saw the horse whose hoof-beats she had heard, not
drowsing, but standing beside a clump of bushes, his ears alert, his
motionless head turned intently toward the mountains. The sound of the
cataract was only a dull monotone, as if it slept in the dead midnight.
And suddenly, as she stood there, with the moonlight on her white gown
and her disordered hair and in her lustrous eyes, another sound smote
her ear--the sound of a pickaxe striking suddenly upon stone. It came
from the pygmy burying-ground. She heard it only once, for it came no
more.
VIII.
Leonard Rhodes arose from the bed to which his wounds had consigned
him when he was at last permitted to dispense with the vigilant care
and alert fears of the "yerb doctor." The methods of Phil Craig's
practice consisted largely in frustrating disastrous possibilities.
"Ye can't git up; ye _mought_ fever," he replied to every appeal.
"Ye mustn't think 'bout nuthin'; ye _mought_ fever!" And after the
extreme limits which had been assigned to Rhodes's durance were
reached, the doctor revoked his promises of liberation, and required
of him one day more, quiet and recumbent, for full measure. Rhodes
might hardly have submitted had he not been willing that the community
should think his hurt more serious than it really was. He himself
appreciated that the wound was as trivial as it might be. But there
was something disastrous to the pretensions of a candidate in the
disproportionate importance that had been attached to it--the insult,
for its paltry sake, that his friend had offered to Mr. Pettingill,
his host, and a man who habitually voted with the opposite faction;
and in a minor degree the slur cast upon the science of Phil Craig,
who cared, however, not at all, looking upon Rhodes merely as an
object of flesh and blood that might, under certain contingencies,
perversely undertake to fever. Most of all, Rhodes deprecated the
tragic conclusion of the midnight errand in his interest on which
Steve Yates had been despatched. Although the community had generally
accepted the conclusion that Yates had seized the opportunity for
some unknown reason--a quarrel with his wife was frequently assigned
as the cause--to flee the country, there were those who shook their
heads darkly over the mystery, with misgivings and grim suggestions and
hopes that "the body" would be found some day. And from these rumors
Leonard Rhodes feared the defeat of all his cherished schemes. It was
a personal popularity which he sought to conserve. Party feeling ran
very high, and in point of strength the two opposing factions were
closely matched. It was only by virtue of his own superior quality of
comradeship, his geniality, the fact that he was untried and had the
fascination of novelty, and was held to possess certain elements of
character challenging admiration--being esteemed brave, gay, full of
generous high spirits--that he had expected to overbear the balance,
swinging at an impartial poise, and tip it ever so slightly in his
favor. How far this prospect had been wrecked, how indissolubly his
name was coupled with ridicule or reprobation, he had hardly dared to
consider as he lay at length watching the light and shadow play in the
full-leaved sycamore-tree close by the roof-room window, the flash of
sunshine on the white wings of the nesting pigeons by the chimney, the
wolf-skins swaying from the rafters, sometimes seeming, when the sun
was low and the wind flickered, to reassume the symmetries of life,
and to lurk there, with shining eyes and expectant motion, ready to
spring. He could hear the river chant tirelessly its sweet low monody
in its sylvan shadows; he knew the hour by the voice of the herds,
and felt scant need of his watch ticking under his pillow; but most
of all the flight of time was indicated by the sibilant wheeze of
Mrs. Pettingill, often audibly conferring below stairs concerning the
patient's dinner with the anxious, conscientious, cautious Craig, who
seemed to consider all the disorders of the body to arise from the bad
habit of eating to nourish it. His professional interdiction was upon
almost every dish in Mrs. Pettingill's répertoire; but his back would
be hardly turned before her heavy lumbering step was on the stair, and
her countenance, red from bending over the coals, would appear above
the door in the floor, and she would emerge carrying in her hand her
appetizing blue bowl, or one of her large willow-pattern plates that
knew more antiquated delicacies than often grace much finer ware.
Corrugated consciousness of dereliction would be on her face, but a
resolute determination to persevere in sinning.
"Ef Phil Craig hev got the heart ter starve ye, I _ain't_," she would
wheeze. "An' ef ye air so contrairy-minded ez ter die o' this hyar
leetle squab pie an' roastin' ears--roasted in thar husks--an' a
small taste o' cheese and this transparent puddin', I'll jes' swear
I _didn't_ kill ye, an' ye hed _nuthin'_ from my han' but _cold
spring-water_."
And having thus adjusted her deceit to the possible pursuit of the
laws of the land, she would administer her dainties, often descending
heavily to her lair below-stairs for a fresh supply.
Thus it was that with all the hues of health, all his usual vigor
of step and manner, Rhodes appeared once more before the gaze of the
constituents whom he fain would capture.
"Hello! Ye've been 'possumin', Len," was the surprised cry that greeted
him wherever he came. And although he might good-naturedly parry it,
and respond to praise the "yerb doctor's" skill, still the fact that he
had been scarcely hurt at all went the rounds of the gossips and caused
much speculation.
"'Twar a powerful onlucky hit fur Steve Yates," one of the mountaineers
observed at the blacksmith's shop one day, where a group stood about
the door. "Ef' twarn't fur that, he'd hev been hyar yit, I reckon."
"Why did that thar Shattuck hev ter sen' Steve a-skedaddlin' off in the
midnight fur another doctor-man when Phil Craig war thar, handy ter
physic Rhodes with everything ez grows? That 'pears powerful cur'ous
ter me," said the blacksmith, "every time I git ter studyin' 'bout'n
it."
"Mark my words," said an elderly wight, the smith's father, who spent
much time gossiping in his son's shop--he had a grizzled head of hair,
on which his hat was tilted backward; a clean-shaven face, full of
the script of years; and a manner not less weighty and impressive
because his opinions were in some sort impeded by a toothless
utterance, so did the evidences of age and experience lend value to his
prelections--"whenst ye find out _whar_ Steve Yates went, an' _what_ he
went thar fur, ye'll know why Shattuck sent him. They air tergether in
that business. Mark my words!"
The suspicion exploded like a bomb-shell amongst the coterie, doing
great execution. It was so patent a possibility that Shattuck should
have used his friend's temporary unconsciousness and his own affected
solicitude as a blind to despatch Steve Yates upon some mysterious
errand of their own, from which he was never intended to return, that
it amazed all the cronies that so obvious an idea had never occurred
to them before. Far more natural than that Shattuck should experience
so preposterous a fear for so slight a hurt. "Why," said the old man,
"Rhodes looks ez survigrous ez that thar oak-tree!" pointing to a
kingly and stalwart specimen, full-leaved and flush of sap, in all its
ample verdure, as it stood overlooking the barn-like place. Far more
natural than that Shattuck should distrust the science of Philip Craig,
famous as a "yerb doctor," and prefer Dr. Ganey, the man of nauseous
tinctures and extracts, and pills and powders, who was reputed,
moreover, to have poisoned people by his "store drugs," and was known
to have set a man's leg, fractured by a fall, so that although he
walked he could not run nor leap, and had had the good use of it never
since--to send for him, with Phil Craig at hand!
There were busy times after this at the blacksmith's shop, although
not much forging was done, so completely did the mystery absorb
both the frequenters of the place and its working force. They made
a thousand guesses far from the truth, none of which seemed, even
to the projectors, sufficiently plausible to adopt, until one day a
conjecture, with all the coercive force of probability, came to their
minds upon the receipt of strange news, which seemed to account at
once for Steve Yates's absence and Shattuck's motive in employing him
on this wild-goose chase.
On the previous day Shattuck had been singularly ill at ease. He was
not a man vigilant for cause of offence, and when his friendship and
trustfulness had been enlisted he was even obtuse to any change in
the moral temperature of his associates. It had affected his nerves
vaguely, before the fact was even elusively present to his perceptions,
that Rhodes had begun to regard him differently, and that the new
estimate colored his friend's manner. As this gradually grew upon
his convictions, he received it with a sense of injury. He had in
naught justified it. His presence here was not of his own motion.
He remembered how Rhodes had besought his companionship upon this
electioneering tour; how he had painted the beauties of the country,
the quaint character of its inhabitants; how he had promised the
opening of a mound on his own land to feed his friend's archæological
fad, and a monopoly of all the curios that should be found therein,
floridly offering them as lures, protesting himself, too, as under
infinite prospective obligations, and urging his own interest. "I
have to have a friend along, and Lord knows I don't want any of those
Colbury galoots, with one word for me and ten for themselves."
And when Shattuck had acceded, and the peculiarity of his manner had
proved attractive to the mountaineers, and encomiums from the simple
people followed him here and there, Rhodes had been impressed with the
idea that his friend was an immense acquisition and a positive help
in the canvass, in which small matters of personal popularity would
have to count against party principles. Few men in this world could
be more engagingly genial and affectionate than was Leonard Rhodes
at this stage of his onslaught upon the predilections of Kildeer
County. Shattuck, who gave as slight attention as might be to these
circumstances and their influence upon his friend's manner, had only
felt that his heart warmed in turn. Although vaguely aware for some
time that a change had supervened, he experienced a shock when a surly
preoccupation, an intentional espousing of an opposite opinion, which
evidently had no root in conviction, a dull monosyllable in reply, that
was hardly reply at all, acquainted him definitely with Rhodes's state
of mind and his indifference to its discovery--nay, that he rather
courted a quarrel.
The culmination came shortly after the midday dinner; they still sat in
the dining-room and smoked their pipes over a small smouldering fire,
for, despite the brilliance of a July day, the air was chilly. They had
gone back from Pettingill's cabin to Rhodes's own house, some seven
miles distant down the valley, and were re-established there. It had
been unoccupied for many a year; the transient tenant merely rented the
lands of the farm; the house and the furniture remained much as his
grandfather had left them. It was a double frame house, with curiously
low ceilings; and although it had been for fifty years amazingly fine
for the district, it was not quite equal to Colbury ideals, and its
owner often pondered upon getting rid of it when he should have a
sufficient offer for its purchase. He had lately utilized it as a point
of departure for his hill-country canvass of the two counties, being
more convenient than periodic returns to Colbury, and he had in the
kitchen a scornful colored couple--strictly townsfolk--languishing in
exile, amazed at the lack of culture of the mountaineers, and by the
fact that there was so large an extent of waste country in the world.
"Ef Len Rhodes hatter be made gov'nor o' the State, he ain't gwine ter
do it by foolin' dis chile agin up ter dis hyar mizzable, destitute
wilderness ter cook fur him, sure!" Aunt Chancy had remarked to the
equally disaffected and lugubrious Uncle Isham, who had come to cut
wood and feed the horses.
Rhodes made no inquiry as to how they contrived to get through the
lonely time during his absences, nor was he moved by their reproachful
dark faces in the interludes of his returns. They were fond of society,
and ornaments of select colored circles in their normal sphere, and
their imaginings had never pictured aught so bereft of interest as this
uninhabited space in the "flat woods" so near to the great ranges.
The house itself touched Shattuck's predilections. To him a peony,
highly colored, on a black ground, in a mahogany frame, made a picture
full of quaint character. The tall four-post bedsteads, with paper
canopy emblazoned with a wreath of morning-glories, which suggested
matutinal and industrial ideas rather than slothful lingerings beneath
their fading blooms; the three or four carpeted steps at the foot
of the bed, a sort of movable stair to enable one to mount into its
comforts; the long serpentine sand-bag, which lay at the door to keep
out the draughts; the stretch of mountains, blue far away, darkly
bronze near at hand, that was visible from the tiny panes of every
window--all combined to so suggest the past, to so disunite it from the
present, that imagination needed little else to set these dim rooms
astir again with former occupants, and to give him many an idle hour of
pensive fantasies over his pipe.
He had glanced out of the door as he strolled about the dining-room,
which opened on the porch at the side of the house; a mass of
grape-vines twined over its dank and rotting roof; the heavy clusters
of fruit had ripened here and there to a rich purple, with a silver
bloom upon it, and again showed only translucent amber globules
trenching upon a roseate hue. Amongst them all a tangle of white
microphylla roses, their branches clambering high, was splendidly in
blossom, and through the vista he saw the distant blue peaks of the
Great Smoky Mountains, with the elusively glimmering mists upon them.
"Len," he said, suddenly, "you are a fool if you cut away that lot
of grapes and roses. Let the porch rot. You can get a hundred such
porches, but you won't come up with a tangle like that again in a
lifetime."
Rhodes sat at ease, his chair tilted backward; his legs were extended
at full length. His pipe was in his mouth, and his hat stuck on the
back of his head; his richly brown hair was disordered on his forehead;
his face was flushed, partly from the heat of the fire, partly from
the smouldering irritation which Shattuck did not as yet divine; his
nose, usually an inconspicuous feature, white and firm-fleshed, looked
swollen and red, as if he had been drinking; his ungraceful posture
drew his waistcoat into creases, and his old claret-colored coat, with
a velvet collar, seemed high-shouldered and ungainly as he stayed his
shoulder-blades against the back of the chair.
"Well, _I'll_ undertake to do as _I_ choose with my own," he broke
forth, suddenly. "I'll put the axe to the root of the whole business if
I want to."
Shattuck looked at him in amaze. "Why, of course, and welcome. What do
you mean?" His tone was surprised and wounded, but pacific.
Rhodes, with a certain relief in liberating the pent-up tides of his
vexation, went on with a visible increase of vehemence. "I mean that I
have had about as much of your interference in my affairs as I have got
a mind to put up with." He spoke between his set teeth, and with a toss
of his hair, which was prone to fall upon his face.
Shattuck stood motionless, scarcely believing he had heard aright. A
flush had mounted through his thin skin. He had a dismayed and hurt
expression that was almost appealing. It was not that he found Rhodes's
displeasure itself so overwhelming. That meant little to him. He was
only aghast that Rhodes should make him feel it while a guest in the
house. All the exigencies of hospitality hampered its recipient, and he
hardly knew how to assert himself, how to lift his voice in defence.
"Will you tell me how I have interfered with you?" he asked, an almost
imperceptible tremor in his tone. His eyes were fixed upon Rhodes,
who did not meet them in turn, but kept his gaze upon the fire, still
slowly smouldering.
"How? Well, I like that!" He cast his eyes up to the high mantel-piece,
and laughed a little, showing his teeth--white and strong, but
overcrowded and unevenly placed.
With all his odd bits of learning, Shattuck knew little of human
nature. He had mastered more of the science of craniology than of those
fine aerial transient guests that the skull may house--retroactive
motives and full-winged schemes, and, strongest of all, that moral
harlequin, coming and going, none knows whence or whither, the impulse.
A mad bull is hardly in a state of mind or on a plane of culture to
appreciate an accurately balanced syllogism, but Shattuck must needs
offer logic to Rhodes:
"No stranger here could have influence enough with these people to
interfere in your affairs. I am a stranger here. I could not interfere
even if I would. How could I? Why should I?"
"That's what gets me!" cried his host, coarsely. "_Why_ you should
have undertaken to send seventeen miles for a doctor to physic a small
scratch on the head, and _how_ you could insinuate to an old man, whose
guest I was--had forced myself on him, in fact, as well as you--that he
might be strung up if I should die in his house for no fault of his--it
all passes my comprehension."
Shattuck's flush grew deeper. His eyes, whose reproachful look the
other never met, had a hot, hunted, harried look.
"I wouldn't have had it happen," cried Rhodes, clasping his hands
behind his tousled head, the change in his attitude adding to the
dislocation of his aspect and the precariousness of his posture, his
chair still balanced on its hind-legs, his own legs still stretched out
at full length--"I wouldn't have had Steve Yates sent on that lonely
road at midnight on my errand, if I had known it, for a million--a
_quadrillion_ of dollars."
"Money seems really no object," Shattuck retorted, somewhat in his
host's own vein. His eyes were alert now. The dull, hurt look had
vanished. He was moved to defend himself against a reproach, unjust,
indeed, but which his own troubled heart and tormented conscience and
sensitive consciousness had often urged in their reasonless impunity.
He was in naught to blame that any evil had befallen Yates--this
he knew full well--and still he regretted, and still he reproached
himself. And because of this he had become expert at his logical
self-defence, and he sprang to its weapons as if for his life.
"A lonely road!" he sneered. "A late hour! As if I, a stranger in the
country, did not travel it alone, and at midnight too, to escape the
heat of a daytime journey, as everybody does who has occasion to come
or go at this season. I took excellent care of myself upon it. I met
nothing but a rabbit or two and a few stray cattle. It never occurred
to me that Yates was not as safe on that road as in his own house. And
I _did not_ ask him to go. He volunteered. I _did_ make too great a
commotion over your being hurt, and I admit it. I was a fool for that;
and I was mistaken--considerably--both in the nature of the wound and
the man that got it. I gave myself too much solicitude altogether, far
more than the subject warranted."
His eyes had succeeded in meeting Rhodes's at last, but they saw
little of what was before them. The candidate had lowered his arms to
a normal posture; the fore-legs of his chair had dropped to the floor;
he sat erect, looking intently and deprecatingly at his angry friend,
so hard to rouse, so thoroughly roused at last. Rhodes was of that
temperament best controlled by the exhibition of a counterpart emotion.
Shattuck's anger quelled his own. He was eager to interrupt, wincing
under the low-toned words, husky with passion. He was of versatile
capacities; he could be a balance-weight were there no one else to keep
the poise. His anger was only indulged under the license of impunity.
It had evaporated as if it had never fired his blood. He received
the demonstration with a palpable surprise--as though he had done
naught to provoke it--when his friend, turning toward the door, said,
ceremoniously:
"And now, Mr. Rhodes, if you will add to your kind hospitality, for
which I am indebted, the favor of ordering my horse, I will trouble you
with my 'interference' no more."
Even Shattuck felt that he had gone too far, that he had needlessly
quarrelled on a small provocation, when the other called out, naturally:
"Why, Shattuck, I _am_ surprised! You ought to be ashamed to get mad
so easy, when you know how I'm bothered and tormented out of my life.
And with so much at stake! And you won't let me growl a little bit here
with you at home, when I can afford to growl nowhere else, confound it!
You ought to be ashamed!"
Shattuck hesitated. He cast a worried, agitated glance out of the
window into the large freedom of the sunshine and the wind and the
flying shadows of the fleecy summer clouds. There came a day when he
remembered the moment, when he regretted that he had not ridden off
into the buoyant midst of these lightsome elements. But at the time
it seemed impracticable. There was something ludicrous, even more,
unbecoming a gentleman, in leaving a friend's house in a pet, with
the host's reproaches sounding in his ears, to be matched only by the
bitterness of the guest's sneering retorts. There was, it is true,
that implacable pride within him to which forgiveness is an unimagined
possibility, and every fibre of it was poignantly astir. He did not
conceive it possible that he could ever overlook Rhodes's lapse into
the blunt speech of angry sincerity, unjustified by whatever his host
might have come to feel. But he must have the semblance of comity and
courtesy. In fact, he could hardly bestride his horse and ride away
from the man's door without this friendliness, spurious though it might
be, in his farewell. His face gave such token of his train of thought
that Rhodes, although seeing him hearken to the suggestion of amity,
did not swing back to the half-veiled surliness, too often the effect
of an accepted effort at reconciliation.
"Lordy mercy! I'll let the weeds grow sky-high if you want to see the
place go to rack and ruin," he said, as he bent forward to scoop up a
coal in his pipe after the rural fashion he affected. "I didn't think
you'd treat me so mean--the only friend I've got left; a broken reed,
sure!" with a glance of reproach. "You might afford to let me maunder,
and blame you or anybody else, I should think, for the confounded
affair. As I'm likely to lose my election by it, I might have the poor
privilege of a scape-goat."
"I won't play your scape-goat, I thank you very much," said Shattuck,
his eyes eager with his wish to go, still hovering about the closed
door.
"So I perceive," said Rhodes, shortly. Then, with a change of tone
and an appealing glance of his dark-brown eyes: "But, for God's sake,
Shattuck, don't run away and leave me the minute I flounder into a
lot of bothers! For the Lord's mercy, try to put up with me a little,
and let me grumble once in a while, for I do swear to you this whole
thing has put me nearly beside myself. You know it is a canvass of
personalities, and there's no telling the use this will be to Devens
and his friends. If I can't carry these mountain districts _I'm done_,
for the party issues will beat me like hell in Colbury and round about."
He took out of the breast pocket of the old claret-colored coat the
envelope of a letter, which was scrawled over with figures pertaining
to the relative population of the mountain districts, with an
approximative calculation of the votes which he and his opponent might
respectively receive. The smoke from his pipe curled between the paper
and his eyes, but not even its sinuous vagaries served to alter the
obdurate result, nor had his disaffected anxious gaze any effect,
however slight, although he scanned these estimates forty times a day.
"I wish to God I knew where that confounded fellow Yates was!" he
exclaimed. "They'll all have it that he died on account of _my_
selfishness, being forced into Lord knows what dangers in my service."
Then, with the politician's instinct for a popular pose--although
at his own fireside, and with a man whom he did not care nor seek to
deceive--he continued: "And for his sake, Shattuck, I'm more troubled
than for my own. Why, I give you my word of honor, 1 hardly knew how to
speak to his wife--I nearly said his widow--when I went to the house
yesterday. And I couldn't look at that child of his. It's a calamity
to them--a tremendous calamity--and I am concerned in it; and the Lord
above knows I had no more to do with it than if I had been as dead as
Hector!"
Shattuck had seated himself, his elbow over the back of the chair, his
chin in his hand. He frowned heavily as he looked absently out of the
tiny window-panes at the blue mountains, with so unseeing and troubled
a gaze that Rhodes began to perceive that he had not only his own
anxieties to restrain, but those of his friend as well. He sighed to
assume the double load. He had a definite appreciation, however, that
his position would hardly be bettered by his friend's desertion of him
now, when he could not control the reasons therefore which Shattuck
might give in his anger, and his opponent devise with so illimitable a
license as speculation. He came to wish that he had let him go, but at
that moment he exerted all his reserve force of geniality to heal the
wound and frustrate his guest's departure.
"Oh, come on!" he cried out, suddenly, springing up actively,
stretching both arms above his head, shaking out first one leg and then
the other, that the trousers might slip down over his long boots, and
seeking to rid himself of that stupor which waits on drowsing before
a fire out of season--"come on! We are fairly baked before this fire.
What ails that old nigger to build a big enough fire this weather to
barbecue himself--and I wish he would! I'll order both the horses, and
we will get out into the air, and get the cobwebs out of our brains.
We'll ride up to Fee Guthrie's on the mountain, and I'll do a little
electioneering, and show I bear no malice to him. And you'll see if
he won't let you go digging around on his land in the cove for your
pygmies. I declare I haven't treated you right, old fellow;" he clapped
his hand jocularly on his guest's shoulder as they stood facing each
other, and his manner of friendliness was not impaired, although he
did not fail to see that Shattuck winced almost imperceptibly at his
touch. "You haven't got a thing in the world but that old jug out of my
mound"--and he glanced with a careless eye at a strangely decorated jar
on the high mantel-piece--"and not a bone of a pygmy yet. Maybe Aunt
Chancy could fool you with a beef bone or two--ha! ha! ha!--hearing you
set such store on bones, hey?"
His discretion and his intuition were at fault. There is naught of
which the man of science, albeit the veriest amateur, is so intolerant
as ignorant ridicule. His fleering laugh jarred Shattuck's nerves,
made sensitive by the ordeal of the morning, and his utter lack of
appreciation of the meaning of that bit of pottery was as pitiable as
if he lacked a sense--that of sight, for instance, and jeered at the
idea of light. The human significance of it; the lost history of lands
and peoples and civilization, of which it was a dim, vague intimation;
the flight of time that it so fully expressed; the idea of death, of
oblivion, of which it was so apt an exponent! Shattuck could not look
at it without the thought of the hands that had carried it; the lips
that had touched it; the strange, strange faces that had bent above
it, reflected within its walls when full of water; the words, spoken
in an unknown, forgotten language, of ambition or love or homely
household usage, to which it had echoed--for a vibrant quality it had,
porcelain-like. These immortal-seeming essences were all gone; yet here
was the dumb insensate bit of clay left for him to turn in his foreign
hands and ponder over with his foreign fancies--the idea wrung every
fibre of feeling within him! And Rhodes's laugh was the vulgarity of
the vandal.
The state of vacuity that does not feel and cannot know is made
cognizable sometimes to the thinking and the feeling soul by a
dreary sense of solitude, for which the consciousness of the finer
susceptibility does not compensate. It was not that Shattuck
resented the fact that his friend's limitations precluded his
sharing these enthusiasms, as that that burden of isolation, that
painful consciousness of a lack of congeniality, that yearning for
fellowship, so poignant to the gregarious human animal, came upon him
for the moment; a realization of being alone, out of the reach of his
companion, beset him, and he found it bitter, albeit he recognized that
his higher standpoint created the inaccessibility.
Rhodes, once more in the saddle, was infinitely conversable. He had
on the face which he took about with him on his canvass--his best
expression, gay, gentle, kind; his conversation was full of country
jokes, which he delivered with a rural drawl, and he was about as
rustic a specimen as an educated man can well personate. He never
dropped the character for a moment, although he hardly cared to impress
his friend with its value. Its lapses from his usual habit of speech
revolted Shattuck in some sort, albeit the contorted language of the
ignorant mountaineers never grated upon his somewhat nice philological
prejudices. One was the voice of affectation--an aping of boorishness
and rusticity and yeoman simplicity, which Shattuck called by the not
inapt name of "poor-mindedness;" the other was the natural speech and
manners of those deprived of opportunities of culture, and was entitled
to respect as being the best they could do.
"Bless your soul, Rhodes," he said at last, with a touch of satire,
"you needn't put so many negatives in a sentence with the kind object
of pleasing me; I'm not a registered voter in either of your counties.
And I love you so that I'd vote for you, if I could, just as willingly
for three or four negatives in a single negation as for eight. Save 'em
up, my dear boy. I remember the fate of the man who couldn't say 'No,'
but I must say I _don't_ think it impends for you at present."
"Hello! I didn't know you were such a school-master. I'll have to mind
my p's and q's, hey?" said Rhodes, with a good-natured intonation,
although he had flushed darkly at the taunt.
So instilled into his blood was the instinct of policy, however, that
he abated naught of his determination to conciliate his friend if
possible beyond this merely outward truce. And now was illustrated
how subservient is the science of propitiation to the object upon
which it is exerted, for Leonard Rhodes had been held to possess
the subtle art to an extreme degree, and so proficient had he become
therein that he was wont to find its unctuous exercise a pleasure.
He could but himself admire the dexterity with which he brought the
conversation to prehistoric America, especially prehistoric Tennessee.
He had paused when they had reached one of the high ridges about the
base of the great mountains far above, and he called to Shattuck to
observe that, looking back toward his place, they could distinctly see
the mound, and that, looking forward down the multitudinous defiles
amongst the ranges, the pygmy burying-ground might be located by
the proximity of the cataract, a mere cascade in the distance, an
emerald gleam and a glittering, white, plume-like waving. Thence the
transition was easy to the many antiquities found within the state.
To his surprise, Shattuck seemed incomprehensibly to hold back and to
grow reticent. Rhodes had material to work upon far different from the
simple unsuspecting country folk. He had not thought that divination
could so keep pace with most secret and supple intention, and that his
object was perfectly plain and unglossed to the man whom it sought to
mislead. Shattuck was almost openly impatient of the topic on which he
was wont to love to talk, and which he often could not be prevailed
upon to relinquish. He would not seriously discuss it now. When Rhodes
demanded of him a theory concerning the ancient aboriginal races,
based upon evidences of their advanced civilization, he replied with
uncharacteristic flippancy that he was never acquainted with any of
them, and that he could make a pretty pot of money if he had been. And
when Rhodes, with that heavy assuming ignorance which is so ready to
trench upon unknown, untried ground of laborious research, deeming all
things slight and of small difficulty that are strange to its meagre
acquisitions, attempted to argue certain hypotheses upon which he had
heard him descant, Shattuck left the disquisition to his host, not even
affecting to set him right when Rhodes himself could feel that he was
floundering. The candidate was wanting in any fine capacity to read
character or conduct in its more delicate script, and Shattuck's state
of mind was as undecipherable hieroglyphics. Thus at cross-purposes
they at last reached Guthrie's home, high up on the mountain.
IX.
The house was the usual small log-cabin, so overshadowed, however, by
trees, dense and dark, that not the whole structure, but only the tiny
porch and door were visible up the dusky green vista. When the sun fell
through the leaves it was in fleckings of abnormal lustre, so deep was
the shade. Fowls pecked about in the long dank grass. From high up
on the mountain-side came the clear metallic clink of a cow-bell. A
spring gurgled close at hand in the yard, and a vessel, with butter or
milk in it, covered with a white cloth, was visible among the gravelly
banks that bounded the spring branch. An old woman, tall and stalwart,
sitting upon the porch, furtively looking at the two visitors as they
came through the bars and up the path, had so forbidding an aspect
that Shattuck was reminded of the superstition of "an evil eye." She
gave them no greeting, but listened silently as Rhodes, having pulled
himself together again into his genial, rustic, canvassing identity,
asked for Felix Guthrie. He broke off short.
"Now, I wonder if you ain't Mrs. Guthrie!" he exclaimed.
"Ye air a good guesser," she said, with a sneer. "Who else would I be,
hyar in Fee Guthrie's house?"
She wore no cap. Her hair, luxuriant and gray, was combed plainly down
over her ears and caught in a heavy coil, that betokened its great
length, at the back of her head. Her face in contrast was sallow and
parchment-like. The features were singularly straight; her eyes were
dark, her spectacles were mounted upon her head, and her expression
was unsmiling. It was hardly wonderful that Rhodes should have lost
his balance, and he had a discomfited sense that Shattuck might relish
the fact. Shattuck, however, was looking about with his usual keen
susceptibility to the interest of new places and people.
"I mean," said Rhodes, confused, "the second Mrs. Guthrie."
"I ain't the _fust_ one, now, sure," she said, her eyes fixed upon him
with a sort of pertinacious attention. "An' what's that to you?"
Rhodes made a mighty endeavor to cast off the influences that paralyzed
his advances. "You'd never guess, and so I'll tell you. I have heard
my grandfather talk about you enough--how he danced with you at a bran
dance down on Tomahawk Creek. Remember old Len Rhodes? Young Len, he
used to be; but I am young Len now, myself."
Her face changed suddenly, so unexpectedly that one might wonder that
it did not creak, so stiff and immobile had the features seemed. There
was a new expression in her eye--a sort of glitter of expectancy.
"What did he say, this hyar old young Len Rhodes o' yourn? What did
he say 'bout'n me?" She had a cautious air, as if she reserved her
opinions.
Rhodes had taken off his hat and was leaning against the post of the
porch, although he still stood upon the ground. He burst into sudden
laughter that seemed to startle the somnolent dark stillness of the
shadows.
"Oh, no, Mrs. Guthrie," he cried, archly. "You don't catch me that
way. You'll be saying next thing that because I'm running for the
Legislature I'm going round the country trying to get votes by
flattering the ladies. I don't know what the _t'other_ Len Rhodes
said to _you_ that day at the bran dance on Tomahawk Creek years and
years ago, but _this_ Len Rhodes ain't a-goin' to repeat any of his
second-hand compliments, not if he knows himself, and he think he do!"
A faint color was in her parchment-like cheek, a yellow gleam in her
black eyes; the woman seemed to have grown suddenly young! A moment ago
the idea might have been ridiculous, but now it was easy to see that
she must have been beautiful--most beautiful. And she was determined
to hear the words in which old Len Rhodes--in her day young Len
Rhodes, the judge's son, and the richest and most notable man in all
the county--had celebrated the fact. Her vanity still burned, albeit
embers. How long, how long since fuel had been brought to feed this
fire, that nevertheless would die only when her breath might leave her!
"Oh, ye air jes' a-funnin'! Ye can't remember nuthin' yer gran'dad tole
'bout the gals he danced with forty-five year ago. He couldn't tell 'em
one from t'other hisself arter twenty year had passed. Gals is mos'ly
alike," she added, with a consciousness that Rhodes had knowledge,
as far as she herself was concerned, which contradicted this humble
assertion. She smiled upon him. "Ye mus' git in the habit o' tellin'
a heap o' lies electioneerin'. An' ye feel like ye mought ez well
bamboozle one or two old wimmin ez not 'mongst the men. A few lies mo'
or less won't make much diff'ence in the long count again ye at the
jedgmint-day."
"I'll tell _you_ something that's got the ear-marks of truth--something
that Len Rhodes told _me_ about _you_," declared Rhodes, apparently led
on and over-persuaded into loquacity--"something that I couldn't know
of myself. Ain't that fair, Shattuck? This is my friend Mr. Shattuck,
Mrs. Guthrie. I carry him around to keep the girls from running off
with me. The other Len Rhodes had no such trouble when you knew him.
I'll be bound the main thing was to keep _him_ from running off with
the girls. Ha! ha! ha!"
Mrs. Guthrie bent her softened and unrecognizable face upon Shattuck,
and said that he was "right welcome" and she was glad to see him. Then
she turned to the candidate, with an anxiety which was almost pathetic,
to hear that younger self praised in the repeated words of a man she
had known forty-five years ago.
"Waal, I'll know the ear-marks of the truth whenst I hear it," she
prompted his lagging resolve.
"Your name was Madeline Crayshaw," he began. He was gayly fanning
himself with his hat.
"Ye could hev fund that out ennywhar," she said, expectantly.
"And your eyes were black," he went on, with an air of gallantry.
"They air yit," she interposed, flashing them at him.
"And for all your eyes were black, your hair was as yellow as gold, a
yard long. Could I find that out _now_ by looking at you?"
She shook her head.
"And Len Rhodes said you looked when you danced for all the world 'like
a lettuce-bird a-flying.'"
"Who would hev thunk o' hearin' that old foolishness agin?" she cried,
her eyes dim with pleasure. "I don't look like a lettuce-bird now; some
similar ter a ole Dominicky hen, I reckon, stiddier a lettuce-bird.
But that war the word on the tip o' Len Rhodes's tongue, for he never
got tired o' talkin' o' yaller hair an' black eyes. I wonder the 'oman
he married at las' warn't no better favored," she added, with a sudden
hardening of the lines of her features. "Sech a admirer o' beauty ez he
war! But he war a admirer o' lan's an' cattle an' bank-stock ez well;
an' yer granmam war mighty well off, ef she _war_ little an' lean an'
hed no head o' hair at all, ter speak of."
Rhodes did not change color. There may have been those in his
grandmother's days ready to break a lance in support of the supremacy
of her charms, but her grandson had no mind to enter such antiquated
lists. He only said, with electioneering subtlety--the development
of which Shattuck watched with the admiring curiosity and wonder
that he might feel concerning some acrobatic feat which he should,
nevertheless, never desire to imitate or emulate--"Yes, pretty girls
had mighty little need of bank-stock and lands then, as now. Beauty
always will be chosen. If you had a daughter now, you might make it up
to me for having given my grandad the go-by."
She looked at him with narrowing lids, wondering if he truly thought
it possible that his grandfather had been her rejected suitor--a gay
gallant, who had danced with all the country-side beauties, among whom
he was a toast with his soft words and his flatteries sown broadcast,
but who, when about to settle down, had chosen a staid, pious,
educated wife, whose social status was such as to make his marriage a
decided looking-up, even for him. Leonard Rhodes's claim to rank with
"the quality" was largely dependent upon her side of the house. The
assumptions of vanity, however, have an elastic limit. Mrs. Guthrie
stretched it, convinced that he believed that the rich, dashing,
flirting son of the judge was in the old days the disappointed swain of
a simple mountain girl. Thenceforward, when she set herself to boast of
her youth, she claimed the trophy of his heart, dust and ashes long ago
in the grave of the simple-minded old gentleman, who had grown sober
under life's discipline before he was forty, and had forgotten his
merry youth save for a casual reminiscence.
"Yes," continued Rhodes, "I ought to be coming up here to see some
lettuce-bird of a girl, instead of those hulking step-sons of yours,
Fee and Ephraim, to humbug 'em into voting for me. _Make_ 'em vote for
me, Mrs. Guthrie. You owe me one now--you owe me one for the old time's
sake."
"They needn't kem home ter me ef they don't vote fur ye," she said,
fascinated with this fictitious conquest. She bore herself more proudly
for it to the day of her death, although she knew in her secret soul
the falsity of what he seemed to believe. On such slight fare as this
can the vanity of a woman subsist.
And when he turned casually and asked, "Where are the boys, anyhow?"
she directed him to a barley field, where they were cradling barley,
and told him to come back that way with his friend, and she would have
a "snack" for them. Shattuck marked, as they started, the alacrity
with which she was rolling up the stocking that she had been knitting,
and sticking the needles into the ball of yarn, her fine head, with
its wealth of gray hair, distinct against the heavy vines that draped
the porch. Their way took them around the side of the house in the
deep lush grass, past the beehives all ranged by the fence, which
was ascended and descended by a flight of steps, and surmounted by a
small platform, and thence down through the orchard. Here the birds
congregated in the thickly matted foliage. Only now and then at long
intervals its dark-green shadow was penetrated by the sun. The warm
fragrance of the so-called June apples was on the July air; the clover
bloomed underfoot, and the bees boomed; the call of the jay, the sweet
pensive cooing of a dove, sounded; then all was silence, save for a
mere whisper of the sibilant wind.
Rhodes took off his hat as he walked, with the air of a need to refresh
himself, his richly brown hair slightly stirring in the breeze. He cast
his absorbed glance at his friend.
"Ain't she tur'ble 'oman?" he said, his electioneering ellipses
sticking to his speech.
"Not so very 'tur'ble,' that I can see," said his friend, with
unnoticed mimicry.
"Oh, Lord! yes, she is!" And Rhodes wagged his head with an unequivocal
sincerity. "I know folks say she was an awful termagant with her first
husband, who was a consumptive; and they _did_ have a story"--he
lowered his voice, and glanced cautiously around him--"that she
hastened his end to be rid of the bother of nursing him. And then she
married this fellow Guthrie's father. And she made a perfect jubilee
up here a-beatin' the childern. I know the tales about it useter skeer
me! I was a little shaver then, and I wouldn't go in the dark for fear
of meeting her, though I had never seen her. At last one day Felix
got his chance, and bit her arm nearly through, and ever afterward he
clawed and bit and fought till she let him and Ephraim alone. Yes, my
grandfather said she turned out exactly like he always knew she would."
"Why, I thought you said he was in love with her," exclaimed Shattuck,
for Rhodes's representation had borne such verisimilitude as might
deceive a casual on-looker as well as one eager to be convinced. Rhodes
cast upon him an amazed glance.
"What!" he said, in his genuine "quality" voice, as if this had touched
the climax of the improbabilities.
Shattuck marked the vibrations of pride and surprise ring out smartly.
Then Rhodes, hesitating for a moment, added, "My grandmother was
a _lady_. As to beauty"--the sneer about beauty _had_ evidently
rankled--"why, such things as prettiness and coquetry were never
thought of in connection with _her_. She was a _lady_, and when you've
said _that_ you've said it all. And she was such a superior woman! My
grandfather outmarried himself more than any man you ever saw."
Shattuck was silent for a moment. "I thought," he remarked at
length, "that it was the American eagle that fluttered most through
the rhetoric of electioneering eloquence. I didn't know that the
lettuce-bird had superseded the big national fowl."
"Oh," exclaimed Rhodes, who had waited on his friend's words with a
knitted brow, and he drew a long breath of comprehension, "grandpa
_did_ use to say the prettiest girl he ever saw was this Madeline
Crayshaw. He never saw her but once. It was at a bran dance on Tomahawk
Creek--some sort of a political commotion, speechifying in favor of
Henry Clay or some other old cock. He said her hair was the color of
nothing in this world but a lettuce-bird, and she had the disposition
of a panther. He said she reminded him of a wild woman--some sort of
savage--and he wondered if she _could_ look pleased, and if she were
subject to the same sort of compliments that other girls like. So when
she was glowering round at the other girls as if she could rend 'em
with jealousy, he tried the lettuce-bird dodge. And, bless your soul,
she was as pleased and sweet as pie."
"And has remembered it for forty-five years, poor thing!" said Shattuck.
"Ha! ha! ha! 'Poor thing!' She never made _you_ learn to kick and bite
and fight to keep a whole skin and a whole set of bones. Fee Guthrie
don't say 'poor thing!' I won't go back to the first husband, for I
hadn't the pleasure of his acquaintance, and he may have died simply
because it was too much trouble to live."
"And _you_ made her believe that you thought your grandfather was in
love with her--had been rejected by her. You deceived her!"
"Man alive! how could I? She knew she never saw him but once in her
life. And how can I make tenders of his affections at this late day?
Tenders of affection are not retroactive. A man can't flirt as proxy
for his dead grandfather. It was merely a little electioneering
compliment."
"Oh, Rhodes, how do you manage to look yourself in the face in the
mirror?" exclaimed Shattuck, with a laugh.
"I look at myself in the mirror with a good deal more pleasure than is
proper, I expect," said Rhodes, smoothing his handsome and lustrous
red-brown beard. He tipped his straw hat over his smiling, full-lashed
dark eyes, for they were out of the shadows at last, and in the sun
amongst a stretch of the barley. The wind bent it; long glintings of
pale light pervaded it. The whole field was of a delicate, fluctuating
green, with these fine undulations like quicksilver running over it.
Sometimes the shadow of a cloud came, a thing swiftly scudding and
noiseless too, and the green, hitherto held in indefinite solution, was
precipitated into a pure emerald tint, for this was a later sowing than
the spaces further down the slope, which had grown tawny with ripeness,
and showed on the hither side the long swaths from the cradling, drying
upon the ground. The cradles lay there too, and beneath the dark
shadow of a great spreading buckeye-tree in a corner of the fence--the
only one in the field that bore its pristine richness of foliage, for
the rest, gaunt and bare, girdled long ago, towered into the air, dead,
white, and unsightly--lounged the two brothers, loitering away the
heated hour.
From the depths of the cove below, this field on the mountain slope
was visible a long way. Shattuck remembered having observed it as a
dull, light-tinted, tiny square in the midst of the dense primeval
woods that encompassed it. Now he looked with interest to identify in
turn the landmarks of the cove. So purple it was in the distance, save
where the slopes rose on either hand, and the summits of the forest
grew gradually into a bronze hue, and thence to the deep, restful green
of the full summertide. Far away all the horizon was bounded by many
a range and peak, painted in all the gradations of blue, from a dull,
blurred tint to the finest turquoise delicacy, and rising tier upon
tier, till at last the enamelled sky limited the climbing heights. Here
and there in the depths below, vague lines marked where the fences
ran. A tiny curl of smoke first betokened the Yates cabin; he saw the
sun strike full on its shining roof. But most salient of all, the
river gleamed a steely gray beneath the craggy walls of the gorge, and
the cataract danced all white and green, like a jewel endowed with a
flashing life. This only, in the sweet serenity and peace of the scene,
seemed to move. The wind came and went, it is true, but with scant
token of its presence; only now and again a suggestion of the pallid
reverse side of the leaves bestreaked the mountain slopes and marked
its path. A flock of sheep feeding in a brambly, rocky space were as
motionless as a pastoral scene on canvas. Once a glow of an intense
blood-bay color struck his keen eye, and made him aware that a horse
was tethered a little way down from the house; the sun struck upon the
glossy flank; then the animal slipped into the deep shadow, and was
seen no more.
None of this had Rhodes observed. His eyes were fixed upon the two
brothers as they lounged amongst the grass and weeds in the fence
corner, culpably overgrown in the eyes of a farmer, but cool and
sweet in the dense shade of the buckeye-tree, and with sundry long
tangled vines of the purple and white passion-flowers, clear-eyed in
the grass, and the scarlet trumpet-blossom flaring over the staked
and ridered rail-fence. There could hardly be two men less alike,
the difference accented since they were both bareheaded--the one
with his grave, forceful features, at once sullen and sad, his long
curling hair hanging on the shoulders of his blue cotton shirt; the
other bullet-headed, close-cropped, with a twinkling, merry eye, a
propitiatory expression, a broad face that would look young even
when it should be withered and wrinkled like a shrivelled apple, and
the coarse brown tufty hair should be as white as snow. The latter
looked up with a ready-made, adjustable smile as Rhodes's hearty
"Howdy, boys?" rang upon the perfumed air. The candidate did not wait
for them to rise, but flung himself at length into the sweet grass,
taking his hat off his head and leaning his shoulders against the big
buckeye-tree.
"Waal, how do _you_-uns do, Mr. Rhodes?" said Ephraim, with smooth
cordiality. "How be you-uns a-kemin' on these days? A month o' Sundays
sence we hev seen ye."
He then looked quickly at his brother, with an anxious submission of
his conduct for the fraternal approval. For Ephraim Guthrie labored
heavily between the quick geniality of a mercurial temperament, a lack
of confidence in his own judgment, and a childlike reliance on his
brother's opinion: without its coincidence with his own he could not be
at ease for a moment. He always spoke precipitately on the impulse of
the first, was checked by the second, and waited with pathetic anxiety
for the third. He was all things to all men, and this vacillating
lack of consistency rendered his amiability of little value in the
estimation of the candidate. Rhodes saw with disappointment the other
brother, the valid object of conciliation, rise, after a mutter of
salutation, to join Shattuck, who, with a nod to the two, had turned
away, and stood, with one hand in his pocket, silently surveying the
scene below him. He only lifted his eyes slightly in recognition of
Guthrie's approach as the burly young mountaineer drew near him, and it
was his uncommunicative host who spoke first.
"Glad ter see ye, Mr. Shattuck--glad ter see ye on the mounting."
Shattuck divined that he enjoyed unusual cordiality in being deemed
by his host preferable for conversation to Rhodes. The injury which
Guthrie had inflicted upon the candidate, and which he had been thought
to so magnify, recurred to his mind, with the further fact that it
was no accident. Guthrie evidently still cherished the motive that
prompted it, and bore malice. It was intention that had led him to
leave the candidate to talk to the plastic younger brother while
he himself held aloof under the guise of joining the other guest.
Nevertheless, his ear was keen for the conversation between the two,
which the crafty Rhodes may have in part designed for him, and Shattuck
was aware that it was only a divided attention with which he was
favored. He responded, however, with equal courtesy.
"A fine view you have here, Mr. Guthrie--a very fine view. I don't know
its equal anywhere."
Guthrie glanced quickly at him, then ran his eye over the scene, with
the effect of seeing it for the first time. He knew no other aspect
of the world. It had never occurred to him that the lives of many
other people were not bounded by these fine and massive symmetries of
mountain ranges in every tender phase of purest color; by infinite
distances, challenging the capacities of farthest vision; by softest
pastoral suggestions of cove and slope; by primeval wildernesses and
stern and rugged solemnities of crags; by phantasmal chutes of flying
mountain torrents. His sense of its beauty was blunted by the daily
habit of its presence; paradoxically, it could be brought home to him
only if it were swept away.
"Yes," he said, uncertainly, "an' we'd hev a good lookout fur corn ef
we could hev mo' rain." And he cast a weatherwise eye angrily at the
sky, where all the clouds seemed gadding abroad a-pleasuring only, and
with no idea of utility as they dallied with the wind. "Not," he added,
with an after-thought and a certain precipitation, as if he were afraid
that the remark might be overheard, and forthwith acted upon--"not ez
I want ter hev enny fallin' weather nuther till we-uns git in this hyar
barley."
The differing interests of his crops evidently divided his affections,
and he was in the normal condition of the farmer disappointed in either
rain or shine.
They stood silent for a moment by the fence, and as Shattuck turned
one of the great trumpet-flowers in his hand and looked down into its
scarlet horn, then let the tendril spring back elastically into its
place, Rhodes's words came to them as he wrestled with Eph Guthrie's
presumable political persuasions against him. These were altogether
assumed by the candidate for the purposes of argument, for which the
plastic Eph furnished but a straw man, as it were, easily knocked down,
requiring to be cleverly and surreptitiously picked up again by his
insistent opponent, in order to plant still more well-delivered and
coercive blows.
"Fee 'ain't got no grudge against me, I know," Rhodes was saying. "_I_
don't bear no malice for a little tussle like that, and I _know_ Fee
don't."
"How ye know he don't?"
Shattuck was startled by hearing this _sotto voce_ comment upon the
dialogue by Fee in person close to his elbow. He turned and looked
at the man, seeking to convey in the glance an intimation that he
had spoken his thought aloud and that it had been overheard. Felix
Guthrie evidently cared as little as might be. His eyes met Shattuck's
unabashed.
"Fee ain't in no wise malicious," Eph piped up.
"I know it--I know that--no man better," Rhodes interrupted him
promptly, for he knew that Eph could talk by the yard measure on the
subject of his brother's perfections, so close was the fraternal bond.
"I _know_ Fee can't bear malice. I like Fee, and Fee likes me, and
won't do a thing against me--not a thing!"
"Waal, ye better not be too sure o' that," the voice at Shattuck's
elbow said, in that suppressed, significant soliloquy.
Shattuck, embarrassed by these confidences in prejudice to his friend's
loudly expressed conclusions, was about to turn away, when Guthrie's
hand was laid upon his arm.
"Stranger," he said, his head with his big broad hat and its clinging
curls bent forward, "don't it 'pear a sorter cur'ous dispensation to
you-uns that that man yander b'lieves so what he say whenst it air in
my heart ter kill him--yes, sir, ter kill him!--if he war ter interfere
with me?"
[Illustration: "'YES, SIR, TER KILL HIM EF HE WAR TER INTERFERE WITH
ME!'"]
"What!" said Shattuck, uneasily feigning. "Do you want to go to the
Legislature too?"
"Legislatur' be damned!" said the other, in a deep husky tone, and with
a meeting of the straight heavy eyebrows above his intent eyes. "I
ain't keerin' a minit's breath 'bout'n the kentry an' sech. But ef he
interferes with me 'bout--'bout Letishy Pettingill, his life ain't wuth
much purchase--not," he shook his head with a formidable look in his
eye, "much purchase."
Shattuck was roused to a sense of danger. He had already interfered too
much, and with disastrous results, in his friend's interests; but here
was a peril so patent, so immediate, that it was a most obvious duty
to seek to diminish the menace. "You mus'n't be disposed to lay too
much blame on Rhodes," he said. "She mightn't like either one of you,
but somebody else."
"Who's _he_?" demanded Guthrie, breathlessly, with an evident
instantaneous transference of the intention of vengeance and the pangs
of anxiety to this myth.
"_I_ don't know. Do you suppose she told _me_? Women don't tell these
things; that's one of their little ways."
Guthrie drew a long sigh. "An' a mighty mean way too," he commented.
"And men are not often more communicative," Shattuck dexterously
equalized the balance. "Mr. Rhodes hasn't talked to me on the subject,
but I think I might undertake to say for him that he doesn't want to
interfere with you in that quarter."
"He did the night o' the infair at Pettingill's," the slow mountaineer
argued, with a swift application of logic.
"Oh, pshaw! he didn't want to 'dance Tucker,' that's all," said
Shattuck, with a laugh, and once more seeking to turn away.
Guthrie's hand closed upon his arm; his eyes were on the stretch of
barley, bending and swaying as the wind swept through its pliant
blades, and shoaling from an argentine glister to green, and from
green again to elusive silver glintings--what time the cove below was
dark and purple and blurred, as a great white cloud hung, dazzling
and opaque, high, high in the sky, and, as it passed, the valley grew
graduually into distinctness again, with the privilege of the sunshine
and the freedom of the wind, and all its landmarks asserted anew.
"Stranger," Felix said, lowering his tone, "she made ch'ice o' him
stiddier me. _I_ hed the right ter dance with her, an' she made ch'ice
o' him."
"What of it? That happens every day; a woman prefers one man to
another. 'Tisn't worth a quarrel."
"'Pears ter me it's better wuth killin' a man fur than all the other
quar'ls that men die in daily."
Shattuck, looking into those vehement eyes, felt an uncomfortable chill
stealing along his spinal column, hearing all the time Rhodes's hearty
voice as he lay all unconscious on the grass, and held forth to the
acquiescent, utterly unimportant Ephraim.
"Would that make her like you any better if she liked him?"
Guthrie's eyes turned ponderingly away to the roof gleaming in the cove
that sheltered her at the moment.
Shattuck took confidence. "That isn't the way to make her like you, and
that's what _you_ want."
"Hain't Rhodes been thar lately?" demanded Guthrie. "I axed her, but
she hev got sech a tormentin' way she wouldn't tell me."
"Only to talk to Mrs. Yates, and see if he could do anything to help
her to hear from her husband. Oh, Rhodes would like Letitia a deal
better if she could vote for him. He would go to see her every day
_then_, you might be sure."
Guthrie cast a glance of frowning contempt over his shoulder at Rhodes;
then, with a sudden change of tone, he said: "I hev been mightily
troubled in my mind lately 'bout'n him. I war fitten ter hope in my
heart ez he wouldn't git well, though I hev been layin' off ter repent
some, fur I know _that_ ain't well pleasin' ter the Sperit. I wouldn't
hold Rhodes no gredge ef 'twarn't fur her. An' though she showed she
hed ruther dance with him than with me, she _don't_ 'pear ter like him
noways special. An' sometimes I feel like I ought ter make myse'f easy."
The pitiable vacillations of a lover's hopes and fears appealed to
Shattuck. The strength of the man's will, the sternness, almost
savagery, of his character, added a force to all that he said, not
lessened by Shattuck's knowledge of the object of his affections, or,
rather, that upon that aerial and whimsical identity little knowledge
was predicable. His disposition was to reassure, to soothe.
"Oh, you may indeed make yourself easy as far as Rhodes is concerned,"
he insisted. "Rhodes is thinking about nothing in this world but his
election, and you ought to show a generous, friendly spirit, and vote
for him, and let by-gones be by-gones."
"Oh, Lord! I'd jes' ez soon vote him inter a seat 'mongst the choir
o' archangels ez not--though he'd look mighty comical thar, I'm
a-thinkin'--ef I war sure ez he warn't gittin' ahead o' me 'bout Litt
Pettingill."
He sighed deeply, and cast an absorbed, unseeing glance over the
landscape. His strong brawny hand, still on Shattuck's arm, trembled
slightly.
"I ain't like other men, stranger. I never loved nobody but her in all
my life. Hate hev been my portion. Hard licks hev been my policy, an'
the more ye air ready ter give, the less ye hev ter take. That's the
way the world goes."
And Shattuck could not gainsay this dictum of the mountain philosopher,
albeit the world from which he deduced this cogent truth was but the
breadth of the cove.
"Ephraim I hed ter stan' up fur, bein' ez he war so all-fired helpless
whenst small, but it air sorter of a habit o' takin' keer o' him an'
speakin' him fair, account o' other folks treatin' him mean; I never
sure enough keered fur him--though I don't want him ter hear me _say_
that, nuther. I never knowed what love meant till I tuk ter dreamin'
'bout Litt all night an' studyin' 'bout her all day. An' I do swear
it's in my heart ter kill enny man ez kems atwixt us."
"Well, 'tisn't Rhodes," Shattuck declared, easily. "And to that I'd be
willing to take my oath."
"Ye see, stranger, I be mightily afflicted," said Fee Guthrie, and his
strong voice trembled.
"You don't look like it, my friend," returned Shattuck, with a smile.
"Oh, I _am_!" cried the other, with a poignant intonation. "Even ef
Rhodes warn't ahead of me, an' ef she liked me, she moughtn't be
willin' ter marry me. Some wimmen wouldn't. I hev got that step-mam o'
mine ter take keer of; many a gal wouldn't 'gree ter 'bide with her.
An' I can't leave her!"
Shattuck, tiring but a moment ago, felt a freshening of interest.
"Why," he said, "I have heard that she was unkind to you and your
brother when you were children."
"Onkind! Lord! that warn't the word fur it till I got the strength
ter be more onkind ter her. But she don't own nuthin'. She 'ain't got
nuthin' ter live on. I promised my dad ter support her."
There was a pause.
"Stranger, folks tell a heap o' tales on her. They 'low she killed
her fust husband, an' hev 'witched folks, and casts the evil eye. She
wouldn't be safe. Ef 'twarn't fur my dad fust, an' then fur me, she'd
hev been made ter answer ter the folks in the cove fur her deeds. But
the Guthries hev the name o' shootin' mighty straight. So she hev been
lef' ter be."
There was another pause while he took off his hat and fanned himself
with its broad brim. With it still in his hand he resumed: "She
'witched my dad, I reckon, ter git him ter marry her, though folks said
she war good-lookin' in them days. An' dad ez good ez 'witched me; it's
an evil spell he flung around me, sure. I knowed what he war goin' ter
ax me on his death-bed; I jes' knowed it in all my veins, in every drap
o' blood. The doctor said he couldn't live fur twelve hours more. An' I
got on my horse an' I rid away. I rid fur an' I rid constant, an' when
the horse couldn't git along no furder I rested under a tree. I rid fur
forty-eight hours--mind ye, the doctor said _twelve_--an' at last I
'lowed 'twar safe ter kem home. I kem. An' thar, propped up in the bed,
war the skeleton o' a man with Death's hand on his throat, waitin' fur
me an' fur my promise--an' Death waitin' too. I reckon Death tuk right
smart pleasure in that minit--he knowed he got us both through that
promise, fur life couldn't mean nuthin' fur me arterward. An' somehow,
though I hed fled that promise, I couldn't holp makin' it. How kin
ye look in a dyin' man's eyes an' deny him? I promised I'd bide with
her an' take keer of her ez long ez she should live. He war dead in a
minit. He jes' waited till the words passed my lips. An' he looked at
me. An' then he fell back dead."
Shattuck was silent. Even his facile optimism was at fault for the
nonce. And after another long-drawn sigh Felix went on:
"'Tain't made my life easy. I knowed that minit I went into chains, fur
a promise ter the dead ain't like one ter the livin'. An' though I owe
her nuthin' but gredges, both fur me an' Ephraim, 'tain't in gredges I
be 'lowed ter pay the debt. I never knowed the weight of it, though,
till I met that thar leetle snip o' a gal. 'Pears ter me Litt ain't
like nobody that ever lived afore; the very way she turns her head air
diff'ent, an' the hair grows on it not similar ter none. Folks round
about the mountings say she ain't good-lookin', but her face shines ter
me in the darkest night."
"She _is_--she is beautiful, and the rarest type of beauty," cried
Shattuck, warmly; "she is unique. She would be considered most
beautiful anywhere else."
Guthrie turned upon him a face aglow with gratification. "That's what
makes me like you-uns, stranger," he said, cordially. "Ye 'pear ter
_sense_ things so. But I war set agin ye some, at fust, knowin' ye ter
be Rhodes's friend," he added, frankly. "She likes ye too, Litt do. The
t'other night whenst I war visitin' thar she talked ter Mis' Yates an'
me an' Baker Anderson 'bout nuthin' in this worl' but you-uns, an' how
smart an' perlite ye be, an' book-l'arned, an' diff'ent from them in
the cove."
Shattuck received this with a vague, indeterminate thrill, which he did
not then discriminate as premonition, but which he remembered afterward.
Guthrie was beset by no suspicion. "Lord!" he exclaimed, his face
fervent and flushed, "ef I could take that thar leetle gal's hand in
mine ter walk through this life, I could make the journey well pleasin'
ter the Lord, though I don't reckon I'd keer whether 'twar heaven or
hell arterwards. 'Twould make up ter me fur all the troubles I hev hed
in this life. An' they ain't a few--they ain't a few. But I be powerful
hampered, powerful hampered, stranger, even ef I warn't so all-fired
'feared o' Rhodes. She never would abide ter live along o' my step-mam,
an' I can't leave her. I hev swore a oath ter the dead." Then he seemed
to shake off his fears. "It's done me good ter talk so free. I couldn't
hev done it--ter a stranger too--'ceptin' I knowed what store Litt set
by ye, an' how smart she 'lows ye air."
Once again that vague prophetic disquiet thrilled along Shattuck's
nerves. Felix had put his hat again upon his head; his face was
softened with a reminiscent smile, as his eyes dwelt upon the furthest
blue peaks, most illusory semblances of mountains, faint sublimations
of azure, refined almost to nullity, upon the horizon.
"T'other night, what time she could spare from tormentin' Baker
Anderson--an' she do make _him_ funny enough ter set a horse
a-laffin'--she spent in tellin' them cur'ous tales ye hev set a-goin'
'bout the folks ez war in this kentry 'fore the Injuns. An' Baker axed
ef them Phœnicians warn't jes' the Fed'ral army. He 'peared ter think
ez ye hedn't got the news o' the War yit. It liked ter hev killed Litt.
She couldn't quit laffin'. But she tuck Mis' Yates up mighty short
'bout the Leetle People, an' 'lowed ye didn't want ter examinate thar
graves fur gain, but fur knowledge fur the hist'ry o' the kentry."
And suddenly Shattuck's eyes were alight. He took instant advantage of
this unexpected recruit to the ranks of scientific investigation. "She
was exactly right, and shows her common-sense. And I wish, Fee"--he
adopted a cordial familiarity of tone in his anxiety--"you would take
that view yourself, and let me examine one or two of those graves."
Guthrie evidently experienced an inward struggle. He was divided
between a sincere attraction which he felt toward the stranger, a wish
to please, and a repugnant reluctance into which conscience--his queer,
distorted, backwoods conscience--entered largely.
"I couldn't let ye tote the bones off, even ef they air prehistoric."
He thought the word signified some sect different from Baptist or
Methodist, and heterodox enough to forfeit the sanctity of sepulchre,
since he had heard it so often urged by Shattuck, in extenuation of
his wish to examine the graves. "I couldn't do that. _He_ mought not
like it whenst he wakes on the jedgmint-day ter find his bones in a
strange place; he mought never hev been out'n Tennessee in his life,
an' not be 'quainted with nobody risin' at the same time 'round him.
But ye may open one grave, an'"--he relented still further, looking
into Shattuck's eyes, eagerly fixed upon him--"an' ef he hev got a jug
like the one I seen, I'll let ye hev it, an'," his brows grew anxious
with the devising of the expedient, "I'll _loan_ him a pitcher from the
house, so he'll hev one, though the Lord only knows what he wants with
it, an' mebbe at the las' day he will hev forgot, an' won't know the
diff'ence."
"I won't take the jug," said Shattuck, suddenly infected with
the reluctance to rifle the sarcophagus, so strong amongst the
mountaineers, so alien to the man of science. The forgotten relics
lying there in that long rest became all at once, through Guthrie's
homely speech, individualized, invested with the rights of property,
the sense of a past and the certainty of a future, humanized as a man
and a brother, rather than a system of bones that might, ethnologically
considered, establish or disprove a theory, its manner of burial less
significant of the universal doom of death and the hope of resurrection
than of the civilization of the race and the fashion of the day. "I
won't take the jug. I only want to see what this widespread story of
prehistoric pygmy dwellers in Tennessee rests upon. That is all. I
think they must be children--these Little People. I won't take the jug."
Guthrie's face cleared instantly. "Waal"--he drew a long breath--"I'm
glad o' that. Fur ef they air chil'n, _he_ mought set mo' store on his
jug an' his beads 'n on his soul's salvation. I don't see ez it could
hurt ter jes' lift up the top stone an' set it back agin. Bein' ez it's
you-uns, I'll resk it enny-hows." The opportunity of investigating
this most unique myth, originating how and where no man can tell, of
which so much has been so diversely written and said, caused every
sentiment of the archæologist to glow within him. In this secluded
region it was hardly probable that the tread of science had ever
before pressed the turf of the pygmy burying-ground. He should be able
to speak from actual experience. There was no doubt concerning the
spot. And all the country-side confirmed the tradition with singular
unanimity, with one voice. Every detail was full of interest; the very
method of coffining--the six slabs of stone in the shallow graves,
the strange weavings and material of the shrouding rugs and mats, the
ornaments, the weapons, the jugs with the sea-shells within--what rich
intimations of the industrial status, the civilization of these people
of the pygmy myth! Ah, here indeed was history in its most unimpugnable
form! These tokens should balk oblivion, and truth prevail even in the
grave.
X.
Shattuck turned with an excited, flushed face and his eyes triumphant.
He had no intuition of Rhodes's anxious, disconcerted frame of mind,
for the candidate was seized by a sudden fear that he was to have
no opportunity to confer with Felix Guthrie anent the living issues
of the election. His long ride had been taken with scant result,
indeed, to flatter an old woman and to loll on the grass with the
acquiescent younger brother, who would not hesitate to rescind the
promise of support he had made if he fancied that it fell under the
disapproval of Felix. Rhodes had had no idea that the colloquy would be
so soon terminated. He scrambled sheepishly to his feet as the others
precipitately passed, oblivious of the two under the tree.
"Hello! Hold on!" cried Rhodes. "Where are you making off to?"
Guthrie turned an absorbed face upon him, continuing what he was
saying, but including him in the invitation extended to Shattuck to
come to the house for refreshment for themselves and their horses
before beginning the descent of the mountain.
"We hev had dinner long ago, but I know mam kin git ye up some sorter
snack ter hearten ye up, an' ye kin leastwise take a drink 'long o' Eph
an' me. An' I'll loan ye a pickaxe an' a spade, an' saddle my beastis,
an' holp ye go an' dig."
It seemed to Rhodes unpardonable that his friend should be so forgetful
of the interests of the election, for the allusion to the pickaxe
and spade, coupled with his previous knowledge of Shattuck's chief
absorption, was enough to acquaint him with the nature of the business
in progress. The color had diffused itself over his handsome face to
the roots of his brown hair, and his eyes were surprised and perturbed
as he mechanically glanced about his attire, picking here and there a
clinging barley straw from his garments. He contrived, on joining the
others, to walk abreast with them, and thus end the burdensome dialogue
with Eph, who, in no degree offended by his defection and accustomed to
slight consideration, lagged cheerfully in the rear, chewing a straw
with abnormal activity of jaw, his hat pushed far back from his broad,
sunburned, fleshy face, his gait shambling and awkward, as if he still
were in the furrow.
Rhodes, however willingly he might have balked his friend's preference
in the choice of a subject of conversation, could hardly intimate with
impunity that the enlightened voter, whose suffrage he coveted, held
forth upon a theme which he considered trivial and to the last degree
irksome. Nevertheless, as he walked along in the glare of the sun upon
the forever shoaling waves of the silver-green grain, and listened
to Guthrie droning forth his slowly forming purposes concerning the
arrangements for the investigation of the pygmy graves, his irritation
that the primary intention of his visit should be frustrated, and the
interest appertaining to his candidacy ruthlessly thrust aside, so
increased that he set himself to devise an expedient whereby he might
safely disparage the matter in hand, and thus reassert the significance
of his presence and the propriety of his prominence as guest. He turned
his head suddenly, archly lifting his eyebrows, and distending his eyes
with a burlesque of amazement; then breaking into his joyous "ha! ha!"
he clapped Guthrie jocosely on the shoulder.
"Lordy mercy, Fee!" he exclaimed, "you don't mean to say that Shattuck
is devil-ing you about his confounded Little People! Stave him off! Gag
him! Shut him up somehow. Don't listen to him, thinking he'll quit in
the course of time. For he won't! I've tried him. The more inches you
give him the more ells he'll take."
Mr. Rhodes had a theory that culture is synonymous with mind and
essentially coexistent. That each assists the other, no one will
deny; but that they are often largely independent, one of the other,
is frequently demonstrated. The man of more culture than capacity is
painfully familiar to us all. In the rural districts the reverse may
sometimes be observed--a stalwart mental endowment, unaided by aught
of alien training, seeming occasionally, in its highest development
and in an uncouth subject, so incongruous as to strike one as almost
inspirational.
It was none of these rare native intelligences, full-winged and of
strong flight, that Felix Guthrie possessed; only a good plodding
capacity, serviceable afoot, but of much sturdiness, and indeed of some
slight acrobatic activity. Rhodes was more taken aback than he had
thought possible when his host, bending grave, disconcerting eyes upon
him, said:
"It war _me_ a-talkin' about the Leetle People. Yer ears didn't serve
ye right, fur me an' Mr. Shattuck don't talk in no ways alike. Them
Leetle People 'pear ter me ez well wuth talkin' 'bout ez some folks
ez be bigger in stature but small-minded. Thar air a heap o' them
leetle-big men lef' yit. So plenty 'tain't wuth while ter go diggin'
'em up ez cur'osities whenst dead."
There was no direct implication which of necessity conveyed offence,
but Rhodes again flushed darkly, and his expression changed with the
change of color. His regret had always that most nettling quality,
self-reproach. No man can repent with the fervor of him who has the
candor to blame himself. After an interval of tart internal colloquy
with his inner consciousness, in which he called himself a fool, with
the emphatic prefix of a certain strong old adjective, unhackneyed even
by constant use, and upbraided himself that he should have supposed
that Guthrie, like more simple-minded, ignorant men, would adopt his
plausible words instead of the facts, he recovered in some degree his
normal complexion and assurance, and responded glibly:
"Mountain air is mighty good for Shattuck if it's cured him of his
crazy gabble about the Leetle People. Ha! ha! ha! Hey, Shattuck? I'll
send him up here every few days, Fee, when the fit begins to come on
again. You can hobble him out there in the orchard to keep him from
running away. Ha! ha! ha! May get his wits back on your mountain air.
For I swear to you he has said hardly a sane thing to me since he
first heard there was any pygmy burying-ground round hereabouts. Ha!
ha! ha!"
Guthrie did not laugh, nor did Shattuck; but Ephraim, trudging in the
rear, strove to be polite as best he knew how, and added a guffaw to
the forced laugh of the visitor, with whom no one else would consent to
be merry.
Rhodes accorded no overt attention to their silence; but his eyes, the
iris of each somehow like a darkly ripe cherry in a certain red lustre,
albeit merely escaping blackness, like a cherry too in its definite
pronounced effect of roundness, were restless and unnoticing, and as
Shattuck caught their gleam they looked angry and hot.
Shattuck was one of those people who accept the Biblical injunction
touching the forgiveness of injuries, but in a purely human way. He
would not revenge himself, for this was not becoming in one acquainted
in some sort with Christianity, nor did it comport with the dignity of
a gentleman. But he could not forget. He resented Rhodes's apparently
causeless anger toward him now, and it recalled the disagreements
of the morning, which still galled him. The stay that he had made
here, pleasant enough he had once deemed it, grew irksome in the
recollection, in the light of these new relations with his host. He
was saying to himself that it was time he was off; he was tired of it
all, and Rhodes was insufferable. He had no mind to bear the brunt of
all the mishaps and irritation of electioneering, and this was indeed a
lucky ride, since on the eve of departure it gave him the opportunity
of examining the sarcophagi of the so-called pygmies at once and
with the permission and aid of the man who owned the land. He had not
realized how definitely he had given up this hope until the expectation
was before him again in so immediate a guise. It would have been an
incalculable loss to have relinquished the chance, and quitted the
region no wiser than he came. His step was light, his face was sharp
and eager; he looked anxiously toward the west as they neared the
house, to gain some intimation through the trees how the sun fared down
the great glistening concave of the western sky. The hour mattered less
to him than the duration of the light.
He was hardly less impatient of interruption than Rhodes had become,
and, widely at variance though the subjects were that respectively
absorbed them, they both saw with unanimity of sentiment that Mrs.
Guthrie, standing in the doorway, had a knitted angry brow, and a mien
which betokened that they were far enough from her contemplation, and
that topics of an engrossing character were in her mind and framing
themselves into speech. The pervasive green tint, which seemed a trait
of the very atmosphere in this dankly shady spot, rendered her white
hair even whiter, her gray gown, her blue checked apron, on which she
mechanically wiped her spectacles, more distinct. Her face was deeply
furrowed with its frown, and there was something about her heavy jaw,
her half-parted thin lips, her pertinacious eye, that gave testimony to
establish the terrible stories that were told about her.
"Fee," she said, in a strained harsh voice, as soon as they were well
within ear-shot, not waiting for a nearer approach, "I hev got bad news
fur ye."
"I mought hev knowed it," her step-son responded, promptly. He looked
at her with a reluctant face, as if by postponing to give audience to
the new disaster he nullified it. He evidently held the fear of an
unknown calamity as less than its realization. There was manifested
none of the usual impulse to fling one's self upon the point of the
sword held out. He knew too much already of that sharp edge of trouble.
His many words, his dallying with the imminent discovery, bore an odd
contrast to her silence, her intent ready gaze, her expectant waiting
attitude. "I never knowed ye ter hev enny other sorter news. Bad news
follers me. Ef I war ter go ter the eends o' the yearth--plumb ter
Texas--I'd meet a man thar with, 'Fee, I hev got bad news fur ye.' Bad
news begun fur me the day I war born. A body mought hev said: 'Fee,
hyar ye air! I hev got bad news fur ye! Sech a life ez ye hev got ter
live; sech a death ter die!' An' whenst I git ter hell, the devil will
be thar with, 'Fee, I hev got bad news fur ye; sech an eternity o'
mis'ry ez even you-uns, with all yer speriunce o' dolefulness, hain't
bed no notion of!' An' the funny part of it," he cried, with a sudden
change of tone, taking off his hat and shaking his long ringleted hair
backward, "none of 'em can't tell me no news. I _expect_ it--'tain't
news! I expec' everything bad! Torment an' trouble can't be news ter
Fee Guthrie!"
His step-mother made no rejoinder, although words evidently trembled
upon her lips, and all the impetus of disclosure was in her eager
eye; the effort by which she constrained herself to mute waiting upon
his will was intimated in every line of her hard set face. There was
even drawn upon it an expression of spurious sympathy, a pretence of
affectionate deprecation, infinitely sycophantic and painful to see
in a woman of her age and with her white hair. She was kind enough
now, doubtless, to her step-son, when all her interests hung upon
his clemency. The humble Ephraim was hardly able to emulate her
subservience to his brother's procrastination of the evil moment, and
more than once broke out with an exclamation compounded of impatience
and displeasure: "Dell lawsy mercy!" "Did ennybody ever?" His face
was red and eager, and in its round, expectant, pouting look it
was positively of a porcine expression. Even the preoccupied and
uninterested Rhodes was moved to a wish to elicit the intelligence.
"I hope it's nothing very serious, Mrs. Guthrie," he said, anticipating
developments in reply.
But she still stood silent, looking intently with her bright, fierce
eyes at Felix, who broke out instead:
"Oh, I'll be bound it's serious! I don't look like a feller ez hev
many jokes ter fill up my days. Leastwise, they ain't jokes ter me. I
reckon, though, mebbe I be a joke myself--ter the devil. I'll bet all
I hev got ez he fairly holds his sides whenst laffin' at me, a-goin'
on like I do a-tryin' ter repent o' my sins, while all the 'bad news,'
ez mam names it, in the kentry is on the hue and cry arter me all the
time. I ain't got no stiddy chance ter repent." He had reached the
porch at last, and leaned against one of the vine-grown posts, his hat
in his hand, his frowning brow uncovered. The others stood about in
expectant attitudes, the lout Ephraim the very picture of painful,
agitated suspense, his mouth open, his eyes fixed on the stern, eager
face of his step-mother, his hat on the back of his head.
Felix glanced up presently, and with a changed, steady voice said,
"Talk on, mam."
All her forced composure gave way suddenly. She seemed metamorphosed
into a fury in the very instant. "Felix, Felix," she cried, between her
set teeth, "yer cattle! Somebody be arter yer cattle. Peter Brydon rid
by hyar jes' now, an' tole me ez one o' yer young steers war lyin' dead
yander by Injun Bluffs. An' up on the mounting that fine red cow Beauty
Bess air dead, too, an' half tore up." Her teeth were grinding, one jaw
upon the other; there was foam upon her lips.
"Wolves!" he said, quietly, looking up at her, a certain surprise on
his face. "No use takin' on 'bout that. Hev ter lose some cattle by
wolves every year. I ain't so close-fisted ez ter mind losin' a few
cattle wunst in a while by accident." He cast a deprecatory glance at
Shattuck, the first token of self-consciousness, of anxious regard for
the opinion of others, which the young townsman had ever remarked in
him. He evidently was touched by a sense of shame; he could not endure
to be held susceptible of distress for a small loss of worldy goods.
There was a distinct intimation of reproach in his voice as he added,
"Waal, mam, I never knowed you-uns ter git inter sech a takin', an'
'low it would lay me so low, jes' kase thar be a few head o' cattle
los' by wolves out'n my herd."
"_Wolves! wolves! wolves!_" She huskily jerked out the words. "Ever
hear o' wolves cuttin' a beastis's throat with a knife? _Wolves!_ Ever
hear o' wolves cuttin' out the tenderline, an' leavin' the rest o' the
meat ter spile, or ter the buzzards, till they want another feed? Then
they make ch'ice o' another fat brute, an' get jes' the best cuts o'
meat, an' leave the rest ter waste. _Wolves!_--two-legged _wolves_! An'
they ain't much _afeard_ o' you-uns, Fee Guthrie, them wolves ain't."
She had an accurate knowledge of his springs of action. He hardly cared
for the loss, but as her detail progressed, the wantonness of the
waste, the possible motive of spite, called a flush into his cheek and
a spark into his eye. The moment the last words passed her lips, and
the fact was made patent to his mind that his name was not a terror to
protect his property, his whole consciousness was resolved into fire.
He stood for one instant motionless, a terrible oath upon his lips.
Then he sprang off like an unleashed hound, with her exultant laugh
harshly ringing through the dusky shades behind him.
"I knowed it. Fee'll lay 'em low enough!" she cried, with the
satisfaction of a Bellona, as she towered above them all, her stern,
lined, dark old face so repellently triumphant that both her visitors
felt a sense of recoil. "Felix will tame 'em--he'll tame them wolves.
He air ekal ter it." She nodded her head, with a look promissory
of horrors, and then fell to rubbing her left arm, which had been
partially paralyzed of late years.
Rhodes gazed wistfully into the dense umbrageous tangle whence his host
had disappeared. "Now I don't think it's sensible to send Fee off that
way. He might get hurt," he said.
"He ain't one o' that kind," replied the old woman, with a fierce
pride in the spirit that had tamed even hers. "The Guthries--ye hev
hearn them called 'the fightin' Guthries'--air a survigrous tribe. An'
my step-son Felix air knowed ter be the bravest o' all the 'fightin'
Guthries.' Whenst ye see him a-crawlin' out'n the leetle eend o' the
horn, ye let me know."
A quick thud of hoofs, the deep-mouthed, joyous baying of a fierce
hound that galloped after the horseman, gave notice to the party, whose
vision was all cut off by the heavy woods, of the departure of the
master of the house. Mrs. Guthrie looked at the two visitors with a
smile as she listened, then fell again to softly rubbing her arm.
Rhodes and Shattuck, although from diverse points of view, could hardly
have been more disconcerted than by the turn affairs had taken. The
candidate was without recourse. He had allowed the golden opportunity
of electioneering with Felix to evade him while he lounged under
the tree in the barley field with the unimportant younger brother.
He conceived a repugnant hatred of this unconscious factor in his
discomfiture as he glanced at Ephraim, who stood gazing dully and
blankly in the direction whence the sound of the hoofs had come, now
faint in the distance. With his elastic faculty for regret, Rhodes was
upbraiding himself anew, taking account of the wasted day, the long
ride, and the fact that electioneering in this quarter was estopped,
since the visit could not be decorously repeated; presently he was
seized by forebodings that the waste of time was not at an end, for
Shattuck's project was not so easily concluded. As the candidate's
attention returned to the matters more immediately in hand, he became
aware that his friend was declining to take luncheon with Mrs. Guthrie,
on the score that he should hardly have time to get to the foot of the
mountain and accomplish before sundown an errand upon which Felix had
promised to accompany him.
"Ephraim, however, will do as well," he said, genially, turning to the
younger brother, who instantly signified his acquiescence, and made off
with alacrity for the pickaxe and spade. "But as I'll leave you Mr.
Rhodes, I am sure I shall not be missed," Shattuck saw fit to add to
his own excuses.
"No," Rhodes said, somewhat curtly; "if you go, I shall go too. I don't
want my visitors"--he added, recovering his smile in a meagre degree,
and bending it upon Mrs. Guthrie's forbidding countenance as she looked
from one to the other--"to go about the mountains breaking their necks,
and then putting the blame on me for not being along to advise and
point out the way."
"Jes' ez yer please," she retorted, tartly, still looking from one to
the other. "We ain't never considered our Ephraim plumb smart like
Felix. But I never did expec' ter hear ez he warn't even fit fur a
guide-post. But jes' ez ye two gentlemen feel disposed." And she
reseated herself in her chair upon the porch, and resumed her knitting.
"Oh, you stay, Rhodes," Shattuck insisted, aghast at interfering so
radically with Mrs. Guthrie's lunch as to remove both guests from the
feast. "You can stay."
If Rhodes had been entirely at liberty, it is doubtful whether he
would have remained. There was something so menacing in the old
woman's eye, so coercively albeit vaguely frightful to the imagination,
that the idea of spending a few hours alone with her, to eat at her
board and sit by her fireside and listen to her talk, with that thin
friendly veneer scarcely concealing the harsh vindictiveness of her
nature, was not to be contemplated with equanimity. Whether he would
have feared poison, or the stealthy stroke of a knife, or some other
manifestation of a cruel insanity, although mental aberration had never
been associated with her deeds, Rhodes would hardly have ventured upon
the ordeal of a solitary meal served by her. Nevertheless, he noted
with a pang of anger and alarm that she did not second Shattuck's
insistence, and that the invitation was no longer open to him. If she
heard his adieux, somewhat constrained and uncharacteristic, if she saw
his outstretched hand, she made no sign except by a short nod, which
he might either interpret as response, or as merely the emphasis of
concluding a long row of counted stitches upon her knitting-needles.
She laid them down presently to hearken to the faint baying of
Guthrie's hound on the far slope of the mountain, the echo striking
back the sound, augmented like the voice of a pack in full cry, and
thus, with uplifted eyes and intent, listening attitude, she was left
in the deep green shadow growing duskier.
"Now see what you've done!" cried Rhodes, angrily, and all oblivious of
the presence of Ephraim, as they walked away to their horses hitched to
the fence. "It does seem to me you might forbear insulting my friends."
Ephraim looked with quick anxiety from one to the other. On his ready
impulse he spoke, forestalling Shattuck's reply. "Oh, ye can't holp
makin' mam mad; she gits mad 'kase other folks breathe the breath o'
life. The only way ter suit her is ter die, an' gin her the Great Smoky
Mountings fur elbow-room. Nuthin' less."
"I had no idea that you would come too," protested Shattuck. "I thought
that if one of us stayed, the courtesies would be amply observed; and
so they would."
"You had no right to think," said Rhodes, putting his foot into the
stirrup, his face scarlet under his dark straw hat. "You continually
jeopardize my interests by taking the initiative in my affairs. We
had accepted her invitation, and you had no right to withdraw, as I
couldn't stay without you."
"Laws-a-massy, boys! don't git ter quar'lin'," Ephraim eagerly and
familiarly adjured them, as he mounted an old sorrel mare, who was
attended by a frisking long-legged colt. "Ye don't expec' mam ter vote
fur ye noways ennyhow, Mr. Rhodes. It don't make no diff'unce. Me an'
Fee ain't goin' ter hold no gredge agin ye; ye needn't mind."
The unvarnished promise, and the evident comprehension of his
intentions and mission, however grating to Rhodes's more delicate
sensibilities and pride, were nevertheless salutary. Once more the
ground of offence was proved untenable, and he saw that a simulation
of reconciliation was in order. Although he chafed under the continual
constraints with which Shattuck had unintentionally burdened him,
he felt that it was not yet time to boldly throw them off. Thus he
adjusted himself anew to their weight.
XI.
He was not sorry that farther conversation was precluded by the
necessity of riding in single file, for the road, rocky and narrow,
hardly more than a bridle-path, indeed, was beset by precipices, now
on one side, now on the other, and again sheer down on both, their way
lying along the crest of a high comb-like ridge, above abysses veiled
by the heavy growth of pines, the plumy tops waving far below. Rhodes
and Shattuck found it needful to give careful heed to their steps, for
their horses, bred in the "flat woods," trod this narrow ridge with a
gingerly gait as if the ground were hot, with pricked-up ears, and with
now and again a convulsive snort of surprise and disparagement. But
the sure-footed mountain mare, well inured to the craggy heights, went
deftly and carelessly along at a sharp trot, occasionally snatching a
casual mouthful from the bushes that precariously clung to the wayside,
while the colt, with the nimblest disregard of lurking dangers,
caracoled and curveted, now in advance and now behind the party,
showing its flying, unshod heels in almost impossible attitudes against
the sky, inconsistent with the laws of gravity and of standing upon
the earth at all. Here could be seen the great contours of the range,
invisible from the cove, or but dimly suggested by variant shades. The
massive slopes rose on every hand; from deep intervenient ravines came
now and then silver gleams of mountain torrents among the crags and
the pines. Often and often the tremors and tinklings of hidden streams
struck clearly on the ear, mingled with the sigh of the rustling
foliage, and their breath gave to the fragrant air freshness. A great
peak near at hand loomed up high against the sky; as the horsemen made
a sudden turn the massive shoulder of the mountain intervened and the
dome disappeared. The cove seemed nearer and nearer whenever a glimpse
of it was vouchsafed from amidst the dark-green forest that presently
towered about them, for the road now ran through the woods upon a broad
slope, with ever and anon a cliff beetling over their way. The dense
foliage of the laurel jungles was bronzed by the sunlight, growing ever
more tawny as the afternoon waned. Purple shadows were lurking in the
midst of the valley. Farthest mountains, blue once, were violet now
and faintly flushed. And when at last the horsemen emerged from the
densities of the woods into the clifty gorge, and rode still in single
file upon the swaying, hollow-sounding bridge, they found a deep red
cloud reflected in the river, and all the harbingers of twilight abroad
in the cove. The smoke from the Yates cabin, seeming nearer than the
fact might warrant, since the undulations of the land, which plodding
feet must measure, were not a part of the line of sight, curled up
with a brisk convolution and a volume that heralded the evening meal.
All adown the lane the cows were coming home, and the mellow clanking
of their bells accented the quietude. Some night-blooming flower
was awake in the woods with a sweet, wild, indefinite odor. Here and
there on the purple slope, reputed to be the pygmy burying-ground, a
fire-fly flickered, swift, elusive, evanescent. And on a great blooming
laurel-bush the mocking-bird sang, heedless of the darkness to come,
heedless of the day gone by, possessed by its fervor of music that made
gloom light and all life a joyance, like some enthusiast soul in the
ecstasy of a gift, unmindful of the world and of all the paltry outward
aspects.
"This hyar big laurel-bush air a good landmark," Ephraim said, turning
in his saddle, his hand on his mare's back, that he might better
reverse his posture as he spoke to the two men that followed. "About
the only one thar be, too. We had better begin thar, I reckon. Fur
ef ye find nuthin,' ye'd know whar ye started ef ever ye kem ter dig
ag'in. The t'other trees air all too much alike." And he turned his
face again toward the mare's head, and surveyed anew the space before
him.
Singularly clear it was and free from underbrush; the steepness of the
slope and the great draught of the gorge made it a fair field for the
fierce autumn fires that annually swept over it. Only the gigantic oak
and poplar and chestnut-trees were spared, standing full-leaved and
in a heavy phalanx upon the declivity. Beneath their boughs mystery
lurked unsolved. A sentiment of awe, of doubt, of reluctance took
possession even of Rhodes's prosaic mind as he reined up in the deep
shadow. He drew out his watch, albeit he had resolved that he would not
remonstrate.
"Will you have time, Shattuck?" he said. "Hadn't you better wait until
to-morrow?"
"I war a-thinkin' ez much myself," said Ephraim, turning a hopeful face
toward Shattuck, who had drawn rein, and sat motionless upon his horse,
looking about him with a quick dilated eye, as if he hardly heard.
The strange place! The thronging shadows! How many times had they
mustered here! With what pathetic sense was the silence replete! What
tears had been shed for those who lay here hushed, and themselves
would weep no more, as once they had wept in that universal heritage
of sorrow! What hearts had bled that these hearts, dust now, should
cease to beat! Time--there is no time, when man through all the vain
centuries can feel so close to man, can think his thoughts and measure
the throb in pulses long ago stilled. Ah! the confusion of tongues
wrought no divergence here! The conclusiveness of the grave, however
named; the yearning sense of loss; the insistent expectation, nay,
the imperative demand of the soul that this terrible pause, this
nullity, should not be the final period of that fair promise called
life--all hung about the forgotten pygmy burying-ground with infinite
mystery, with unassuaged pathos. Only science, of all the developments
of the human mind, might fitly take account of the mere functional
disabilities which it represented--might speculate and exert its fine
rational inferential imagination, and construct a status from assumed
facts, and promulgate dicta so founded, to be received and accepted
for a time, and then demolished by a still more fine-spun theory in
what is called the march of progress. These forces were astir in
Shattuck as he flung himself from the saddle. His brow was slightly
corrugated, his eyes were alight, his pulses beat at fever-heat; not
that he entertained so far-fetched a theory as that these poor mortal
relics were aught but the infant remains of the American Indian, or,
perhaps, of earlier aboriginal people, but the talk of strange myths,
and that inexplicable Tennessee tradition of pygmy dwellers, colored
even his mind, which he sedulously sought to hold blank for the correct
impression, and made his hand tremble as he laid hold of the pickaxe,
extended down to him by Ephraim Guthrie, as if he were indeed on the
verge of some superlatively strange discovery discounting all human
experience, and befitting the realm of a fairy tale.
"Hyar they air, pick an' spade, ef ye be a-goin' ter dig yerse'f,"
remarked Ephraim. He did not realize any difference in social status
that might have relegated the manual labor to him, nor even the
fact that it was better suited to his massive and burly frame. He
had intended to perform it, in his character of host, to shield his
guest from the discomfort of the slight exertion. He relinquished
the implements with reluctance, remembering this resolution; but
superstition, now that he was upon the spot, prevailed, and overbore
even the instinct of hospitality native in the mountaineer's heart. The
two implements clashed together, the sound loud and metallic in the
stillness; he looked a little wistfully after his guest as Shattuck
bore them away out into the more open spot where the laurel bush
grew almost to the proportions of a tree, unimpeded by others of its
kindred. He had no wish, this simple Ephraim, to peer in at the strange
sepulchre--the six-slab stone coffin he had often heard of in the
terrible fireside stories; he cared naught for curiously woven shrouds,
and feathered mantles, and carcanets of pearl beads, and jars of quaint
pottery; nor for questions of race and time and civilization these may
betoken and solve. Rhodes still sat in the saddle, as motionless as
an equestrian statue, sharply outlined against the crimson sky, and
beneath an oak bough as dark, as heavy, and as massive as if it were
wrought of bronze. The light was clearer in the open space where the
branches could not fling their gloom, and as Shattuck ran swiftly down
through the long grass he could still see a flower here and there smile
up at him--the tawny red of the jewel-weed, and the close-tufted ball
of the "mountain snow." The range loomed far above. A star was on its
crest, faintly scintillating. The door and window of the Yates cabin,
farther down the cove, were illumined from the fire-lit hearth, a
dimly fluctuating radiance, sidereal too in the midst of the gathering
shadows. The falls still showed their gleaming green and white, and the
mists, exhaled from the depressions between the purple slopes, wore a
gentle dove-like gray. A tender hour of reveries, and blurring tints,
and restful recollections of the day done, but still far from the
morrow. The two men under the tree did not speak; the horses did not
stir; only the vague rustling of the saddle betokened the regular rise
and fall of respiration; even the frisky colt stood motionless, and
gazed at the flashing river with a full and meditative eye. Shattuck
had paused before the laurel on the side toward the water; neither of
the other men, albeit country-bred, might have noticed that here the
grass and weeds were a trifle bent--under the recent rain, perchance;
a trifle withered--by the sun, it might have been. Nor did he; he chose
the spot, remembering Yates's words that here the ground sounded hollow.
But no man who had ever wielded a pickaxe could have failed to
discern, as he lifted it high, and the sharp point sank into the
ground, that it was merely a replaced turf that yielded so readily to
the blow--replaced with its mat of roots severed--and not the tough
earth bound by a thousand veinous fibres to the full-pulsed herbage.
He was unaccustomed to the earth save geologically or geographically
considered, and to herbage except in its botanical aspects. He only
lifted the pickaxe high above his head once more, and once more the
point struck down into the loosened mould--struck down with a sharp
metallic clangor, as of steel upon stone. It rang far through the quiet
cove. A low, hollow, vibratory, vault-like resonance followed--mute,
indeed, to all ears save his own, but what significance that murmur
held for him! He lifted his head to look at the two men who had
turned toward him upon the sudden smiting of the rock, and were
gazing at him. The next moment--a moment confused forever after in
his recollection--something invisible passed him in the air, singing
shrilly, a high-keyed tone; a sharp report, and all the echoes of
mountain and crag were clamoring. He hardly realized its meaning. He
turned dully in the direction whence the sound seemed to come, and so
trivial a thing as the movement saved his life. Close by his head again
a rifle ball whizzed; it kept the line unswervingly, entered the skull
of the staring, amazed colt upon the slope, pierced his brain, and
the creature dropped dead without a struggle on the long grass. The
sight served to convince the stupefied, reluctant faculties of Shattuck
that some enemy in the dusk was firing at him. He could not, in the
bewilderment of the moment, distinguish the words that Rhodes shouted
to him. It was rather in obedience to his gesture, as he rode a little
way out from the gloom, leading by the bridle his friend's plunging
and frightened horse, that Shattuck dropped pickaxe and spade, and ran
toward him across the dusky, tangled grasses. He caught the reins as
they were flung to him; but it was no easy matter to mount the rearing
and snorting animal. The other two men were fairly in retreat before
Shattuck, running by the horse's side, and hanging with all his weight
upon the bridle, contrived to get his foot into the stirrup. Rhodes,
riding down the smooth slopes of the pygmy burying-ground, across
unnumbered graves, the heavy shadow of the forest trees shielding the
party, and making further attack futile, heard at last the hoof-beats
of his friend's horse at a regular gallop pressing hard behind him,
and turned to see Shattuck once more safe in the saddle. He put spurs
to his own steed without more ado. The dank evening air fanned his
face; he could hear its silken rustle as it was stirred into seeming
activity by his own quick rush through it. This vague simulation of a
sound, the horses' muffled hoof-beats barely distinguishable in the
thick grass, the drowsy chant of the cicada, the dull monotone of the
river--all hardly impinged upon the sense of primordial stillness that
pervaded the eventide; it might have seemed that that keen, menacing
note of the rifle, the sharp shibboleth of doom, was but some jarring
incongruity of a morbid fancy.
The trees began to give way; the more open, level spaces of the cove
were at hand; the darkness gradually diminished. Rhodes again clapped
spurs to his horse, since here they were to leave the protecting shade.
Foremost of the three, he was already in the lane when he became aware
that he was not followed; his companions had fallen away. His first
impulse, as he glanced over his shoulder into the vacant gloom, was
to pursue his own way, and make good his escape. Then he reined up so
suddenly that the horse, still trembling and wild and frightened, fell
back upon his haunches. Rhodes sat motionless for a moment, gazing over
his shoulder.
Night possessed the pygmy burying-ground, and the great phalanx of
oak and chestnut-trees was lost in an indistinguishable gloom; but
here, where no shadow hindered, he could see the contours of the wide
landscape, from which color had faded, and, above its dusky, blurring
expanse, the dark sky embossed with a myriad of stars. The fences on
either hand of the grass-grown way were dimly visible to his alert
senses. Along their parallel lines naught was to be seen, save once a
flash betokening the striking of a spark betwixt flint and iron; and in
that moment he thought he heard the thud of hoofs. He ground a curse
between his teeth as he wheeled his horse. Shattuck, it seemed, had
seen fit not to follow his host's lead, and doubtless the dull Ephraim
was not yet aware, as he cantered along in the rear, that Rhodes did
not still guide the little party. The candidate was a brave man, and
in any sufficient quarrel could have stood his ground with equanimity.
To be the target, however, for a mysterious enmity that lurked in
ambush and in the nightfall promised heavy draughts upon the resources
of his courage. The prosaic and utilitarian phase of his mind took
account of his candidacy in this connection. No man is so heavily
handicapped in a race as he who bears the imputation of unpopularity.
The public expectation of success is as a loadstone to the event. He
sustained a positive loss in the mere fact that he or his friend had
been fired upon. And whither was Shattuck bound now, and what to do?
With a determination to hold him in check and to thwart his purpose,
Rhodes galloped in the direction whence the faint hoof-beats sounded,
albeit the darkness held unknown terrors, the thought of which shook
his nerves, and although silence as profound as this had but now been
rent by that tense report of the rifle. It was only for a few moments
that the successive cross-stakes of the zigzag rail-fences, seeming
disconnected from the rest, and high as the horse's head, flew by
him on either side in relief against the lighter tones of the fields
they enclosed. The river suddenly shows between its banks, gleaming
darkly with the night sky, all the splendors of the stars shattered
in the ripples, and is gone as he dashes on. He hears the booming
of the cataract; and from the pygmy burying-ground, where late the
mocking-bird sang, the sudden ill-omened shrilling of an owl. He sees
above the western mountains a dull red after-glow of the sunset, and
below its darkling pine-grown slopes the little Yates cabin, its
windows shining squares of yellow light. The radiance issued forth so
far as to reveal Shattuck alighting from his horse at the bars, and the
clumsier figure of Ephraim Guthrie still mounted, and looking over his
shoulder, as he perceived for the first time that Rhodes was not in the
lead.
An aptitude in emergency is a natural trait, not cultivated, and Rhodes
possessed it to a useful degree. He flung himself from his horse, and
followed on his friend's heels with such despatch that albeit he did
not hear the words with which Shattuck greeted the party within, he was
on the threshold before a rejoinder was elicited. No friendly greeting
had it been, to judge from the dismayed, deprecatory faces grouped
about the fire. Adelaide had risen with a slow look of doubt, a sort
of stunned surprise. Letitia, who had been out milking the cows, stood
in the back doorway, the brimming piggin on her head, one hand lifted
to stay it, the wind rustling the straight skirt of her dress, the
twilight and the fire-light mingled on her face. Her blue eyes were
alight with a sort of wonder, that held nevertheless an intimation
of comprehension, which was at variance with the stolid amazement in
Baker Anderson's countenance, as, just arrived and still breathless,
he sat squarely in his chair, one hand on either knee, his jaw fallen,
gaping thunder-struck at the intruder. The centre of the family group,
Moses, was seated upon the floor in the fire-light, and turned himself
dexterously about to survey over his small shoulder the new-comers;
he was silent in seeming recognition of the fact that their gaze
overlooked him, and had no reference to his existence; his soft face
only expressed a sort of infantile apprehensiveness and suspension
of opinion. A tallow dip sputtered on the high mantel-piece; there
was pine amongst the fuel, and the resin flared white in the flames.
Very distinct the scene was, although, as the lights fluctuated, the
fire flickered in the breeze, which swayed it like a canvas: the brown
walls; the purplish black squares where the night looked in through the
windows, with here a feathery bough, and here a star, and here the dim
contours of a dark summit against the sky; the red-bedecked warping
bars; the table not yet set forth with the supper crockery, save
only a great brown pitcher and a yellow bowl; the sheen of tin-ware
on a shelf; even Shattuck's shadow, as sarcastically nonchalant as
the substance which it mimicked, as it waved its hand in mockery of
courtesy, while he reiterated his bitterly merry congratulations.
The white light showed the very flare of fury in his eyes that oddly
dallied with the smile on his face.
"You are a courageous rifleman, Mrs. Yates," he was saying, glancing
up at the rifle on the wall, glittering upon the rack of deer antlers.
"You have set three men off at full run this evening. Few ladies could
say as much, I am sure. If you would only mend your aim a little!"
With a blunt accusation she could doubtless have coped; but she could
only stare at him in silent amazement as he made these elusive feints.
The other two men, lumbering and massive shadows in the background,
stared too in surprise at him, and silently waited developments.
He had his hat in his hand as he leaned on the tall back of a chair,
and he looked steadily at her with an air of graceful and good-natured
raillery, all at variance with the fire in his eyes.
"Mend your aim, only a trifle, Mrs. Yates, and next time perhaps your
target won't be so unmannerly as to run off from so accomplished a
marksman," and once more he laughed with a genial inflection, then
caught his breath with a sort of gasp as his face grew scarlet.
Rhodes laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Why, Shattuck," he exclaimed,
with a resonant amazement that made the roof of the little cabin ring
like a sounding-board, "what are you thinking of? Mrs. Yates to fire a
rifle at us?"
"At me, if you please!" cried Shattuck. Then addressing Adelaide:
"Didn't you say you would--or perhaps my treacherous memory misleads
me--in case I ventured to open the pygmy graves? Your husband told me
this."
"Yes; but I never--" she faltered; then she paused.
Letitia had placed the piggin on the shelf, and crossed the room with a
quick, light, definite step. The clumsy rifle was off the rack and in
her slight, incongruous grasp in another moment. She held it up before
the men; there was the powder stain of a recent discharge about its
lock. And then her eyes, like blue flames, burned upon the shrinking,
overwhelmed mistress of the house, thus seemingly convicted on her own
hearth-stone.
Adelaide never knew how she found the breath to gasp forth the words;
the instinct of self-defence alone framed them. "I fired the rifle
off at a hawk ez war arter the chickens, early, early this arternoon
whilst ye war away," she replied to the woman who had said nothing,
instead of to the man who had spoken so plainly.
Rhodes's eye was suddenly steady. His face had grown graver, indeed,
but it had cleared. It wore a look now adjusted to inspection, and
thoroughly in character--the pallid hue, the relaxing ligaments, and
flabby flesh it showed only a moment ago were all resolved into the
firm, controlled countenance of a man who has his nerves, his fears,
his prospects, well in hand.
"Mrs. Yates," he said, with sober circumspection, "this is a very
serious matter, to threaten to shoot Mr. Shattuck. I hope your husband
told you so."
Poor Adelaide! With that sense of responsibility for woe which is in
some sort assuaged by a completeness of confession, she broke out,
with all the abasement of self-blame: "Oh, he did! he did! That's why
we quar'led; that's why he lef' me. I know 'twar wrong, now. I reckon
I never meant it then. But I wanted the Leetle People lef' be in thar
graves, like they hev always been."
Rhodes's comprehension was at best but ill adapted to the reception of
any subtle meanings. To his mind those words expressed a recantation of
her former denial. His face hardened, but at the same time there was
a look of genuine relief upon it, which Shattuck--still leaning upon
the back of the chair, and airily flirting his hat in his hand as he
glanced from one to the other--could not altogether interpret.
"It was indeed very wrong," Rhodes said, severely. "And might have been
far worse. If your aim had been better, you might have killed Mr.
Shattuck instead of Guthrie's colt."
She turned her eyes, full of a sort of confused terror, and her pallid
face toward Ephraim, who stood near the doorway, a massive, stolid
presentation of the rustic. He met her look with a glance of deep
reproach.
"Fee hev been in mighty hard luck ter-day," he remarked. "Somebody hev
been a-shootin' of his cattle--the leetle red steer, an' that thar
small crumply cow named Beauty Bess." His tone was as if he recalled
acquaintances to Mrs. Yates's mind, and had something of an elegiac
cadence. "An' now hyar's that leetle colt ez he sot sech store by--spry
leetle critter, with a powerful springy gait. Fee looked ter him ter
show speed one o' these days."
Her wild eyes dilated. "Why, Eph," she cried, in a convincing, coercive
voice, "I--I never shot the pore leetle critter!"
"He warn't _pore_! He war fat, fur true," asseverated Ephraim, with a
farmer's pride in the state of his stock.
Rhodes burst into a sudden rollicking laugh, and Shattuck wondered at
the evident change in his moral atmosphere. The candidate had found
the explanation of his friend's unpopularity far more easily to be
endured than the idea that he himself sustained a secret enmity. The
circumstance of the rifle-shot would be felicitously accounted for by
this woman's threats against Shattuck's projected investigation, her
husband's quarrel with her for this reason and his subsequent desertion
of her. The political status of the canvass might remain intact,
suffering naught from her inimical feeling against Shattuck, who had
made her husband his partisan.
"But I wouldn't shoot a colt. I wouldn't be so mean," she declared, her
eyes full of tears.
"You had rather shoot merely a man," Shattuck suggested, lightly.
"We ought to have you bound over to keep the peace, Mrs. Yates." Rhodes
resumed his note of severity.
"For I have the permission of the owner of the land to open the graves
and to search for curiosities and relics, and I shall do so, relying on
the protection of the law," Shattuck added.
"You'd better do like ye done the t'other night," Letitia put in,
unexpectedly; "kem whenst all be asleep."
Shattuck turned a look of questioning amazement upon her.
"Oh, I hearn ye!" she said, impatient of the denial in his face--"I
hearn yer pickaxe a-striking inter the ground agin the rock coffins o'
the Leetle People."
Once more Rhodes looked ill at ease. A strange ghoulish guest this
seemed even to his standpoint of superior education--to haunt the
vicinage of those pygmy graves in the light of the midnight moon.
But Shattuck's face had a distinct touch of anxiety upon it. "Why, who
could that have been?" he exclaimed, with so genuine a note of surprise
that Rhodes's suspicion was disarmed.
"Never mind, never mind," he said, with his coarse jocularity;
"there'll be a few pygmies left for you, I'll be bound! Come along, we
must be getting home."
Shattuck shook off the hand which his friend placed upon his shoulder;
but Rhodes turned with unimpaired cheerfulness to the others.
"Now look-a-here, Mrs. Yates, this must stop, short off, right _here_.
I'd like to think I'd leave as good a friend behind me as the pygmies
have in you; but you can't befriend with impunity people who have
been dead so long that they are too funny to keep their coffins to
themselves. You look out! You don't want an action for assault with
intent to kill brought against you, I reckon. I think I may promise
that Mr. Shattuck will do nothing about this offence--if it is not
repeated. At least, I would go that far myself," he concluded, with an
air of prompting his friend's generosity.
But Shattuck said nothing. His whole interest in the present moment
had given way to that suggestion of a strange sound in the midnight
and what it might signify. He still hung on the back of the chair, his
hat in his listless hands, but his face was turned toward the purplish
black square of the window, and his meditative eyes dwelt upon the
inscrutable darkness that encompassed the pygmy burying-ground.
Adelaide had seen, in a sort of numb despair, her denial of the deed
swallowed up in her admission of the threat. In her confused sense
of the fact, and her loss of courage before the inexorability of the
conviction, as it were, out of her own mouth, she could only reiterate:
"I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" And her stunned immobility of aspect
seemed sullen, and her tone was interpreted as dogged.
"Oh, well, all right," said Rhodes, lightly. He could be casual enough
now, since it could be made plain to all the country-side that it was
no affair of his, but a quarrel between Shattuck and the fugitive Yates
and the deserted wife. "Come, come, Shattuck," again clapping his heavy
hand on his friend's shoulder, "we must be a-jogging."
Ephraim, too, had the voice of accusation in his farewell. "I ain't
s'prised none," he said, looking over his shoulder, with a lowering
melancholy gleam in his eyes under the broad brim of his hat, as he
turned toward the door--"I ain't s'prised none ef Fee makes ye pay fur
that thar leetle colt, an' takes it 'fore the court." He paused upon
the threshold after a heavy lumbering step or two. "I reckon he won't
make ye pay _much_, though; an' Fee ain't one nohow ter set store on
courts," he added, relenting.
She stood there, arraigned on her own hearth-stone, silent, pale, her
face seeming as rigid as if it were some changeless symmetry of marble,
in the interval while they mounted their horses and rode way. The sound
of the hoofs came, then ceased as a marshy dip intervened, and rose on
the air once more from the farther side, and dulled in the distance to
silence. The throbbing of the cataract asserted itself anew. From every
weed growing rank about the fence corners, from amongst the vines over
the porch, vibrated the voice of the myriad nocturnal insects, chiming
and chiming interminably. Only the irresponsive darkness without met
her eye as she still mechanically gazed through the doorway where the
visitors had disappeared.
Letitia had sunk down in the great spacious high-backed chair on which
Shattuck had leaned. It was a half-reclining posture, to whose languors
her slenderness and drooping grace lent a sort of individuality, and
she looked like a child half recumbent in the corner, both hands
clasping one of its arms. Her curling hair, a tress or two falling on
her forehead, the rest drawn back and tied at the nape of the neck,
whence the ends all escaped, seemed longer as her head drooped. Her
eyes for the moment were upon the fire. When she suddenly lifted them,
they shone like sapphires, with crystalline splendor, and Adelaide, in
amazement, saw that they were full of tears--saw them thus that night
for the first and last time in all her life.
"How could ye have done it?" she exclaimed. "Ye wicked heart! Ye cruel,
evil soul!"
"Litt," cried Adelaide, aghast, "ye ain't believin' what them men said
ter me? Ye 'ain't turned agin me too?"
She looked down piteously at the girl; then as she stooped to lift the
baby, her hands trembled, and she fumbled so that Moses made some shift
to raise his own indolent bulk and snuggle into her arms.
"_B'lieve them men?_" echoed Letitia, her eyes ablaze. "I'd b'lieve
_his_ word agin the Bible. I ain't keerin' 'bout t'others." She seemed,
with a toss of her head, as if she annihilated them.
Adelaide could not account for her own words afterward. It was so
strange a transition from her own absorbing; tumultuous, insistent
troubles to intrude into the subtle, incipient, unrealized thoughts and
feelings of another.
"Litt," she said, as calmly as if nothing of moment had happened--she
had seated herself, with the child's face close to her cheek--"ye
oughtn't ter talk that-a-way. That man don't keer nuthin' 'bout
you-uns."
Letitia slowly turned her face. There was in its expression many a
phase of bitter introspection, wonder underlying them all, and a sort
of helpless despair as a finality, dumb and infinitely pathetic.
Somehow, ignorant as the other was, little as she could have described
or differentiated it, she became sharply aware of the wound she had
dealt, the poignant rankling of the heart that received it. She sought,
in a panic of regret and self-reproach, to nullify it.
"Ye don't keer, though," she clumsily tried to laugh it off. "Ye be
always a-tellin' ez how ye be no favorite 'mongst the men folks, an'
'pear ter think it's a sorter feather in yer cap ter be too ch'ice an'
smart fur the gineral run."
To her surprise, the girl showed no resentment. It seemed that that
calamitous possibility had dwarfed every other consideration.
"I ain't keerin' fur sech ez them," she said, slowly, with a tremor in
her low voice, as if she made the distinction clear to her own mind.
The sudden, heavy footfalls of Baker Anderson sounded upon the
puncheons. He had repaired to the wood-pile for pine knots, and he
seemed, in heaping them upon the fire, to seek to make amends for a
dereliction of duty, plain to his own sense if not to others.
"I didn't know what in thunder I oughter hev said or done, Mis' Yates,"
he remarked, as he knelt on one knee on the hearth, his square, boyish
face showing its grave sympathy as the white light streamed up the
chimney. "I didn't know but what whilst them men war a-sassin' round so
'twould be the right way ter pertect the fambly ter take down my rifle
ter 'em."
Letitia's face was aflame. "Thar's been too much o' takin' down rifles
a'ready. Leave that ter Adelaide."
Baker, still in his humble posture, turned his eyes toward her, a
clumsy sneer upon his blunt features. "Ef ye 'low Mis' Yates done sech
ez that, I wonder ye air willin' ter bide with her. Whyn't ye go home?"
Once more her eyes, with their jewelled effect, so crystalline a blue
they were, shone upon him, fiery and fierce. "I'll bide with that
thar rifle. I'll watch it by day, an' I'll guard it by night. 'Twon't
send a ball agin soon ter scorch his head. I saw his hair all whar
'twar singed. An'"--she turned suddenly upon Adelaide, who was quaking
beneath the storm her ill-considered words had raised--"ef ye tell me
he don't think nuthin' of me, I tell you-uns I could think o' him a
thousand years without a 'thanky.'"
She sat erect in her chair, flushed and defiant. She suddenly drooped
back into her former, half-recumbent posture, and again burst into
tears.
Adelaide, her nerves all strained and jarring, feeling at fault to
have elicited this outburst in the presence of Baker Anderson, who was
something of a gossip, and with the false accusations and reproaches,
the danger and the trouble of her own position still pressing heavily
on her, could but fall a-weeping too.
"I 'ain't got but one friend in the worl'," she said, clasping her
child. "An' hyar he is."
"Yes, an' he'll be yer frien' ez long ez he needs ye, an' no longer,"
said the tactless Baker, who had no talent for woe, and who hardly
entered into the emotions of either woman, except to grasp the division
of their friendship.
He thought them dreary company that evening, and that they were much
given to silent tears, which were troublesome, cowardly things for
which Baker Anderson had never found any use.
XII.
Felix Guthrie rode far and fast that afternoon. The pillage of his
herds fired his blood, and his anger lent motive power to his sloth.
Many a mile his search led him through the tangled mountain woods,
and in devious ways along the craggy ledges, the sun sinking low in
the sky, the reeking horse flecked with foam, before the slaughtered
beef was at last found, far astray--according to the old herder's
report. Long before he reached the spot the circling flight of the
strong-winged mountain vultures, high in the air, served to verify
the story. Others rose gibbering from their quarry as his panting
horse galloped up the slope. He paused to assure himself how plain his
brand was marked upon the creature's hide. It had been killed, then,
in defiance of the name of Felix Guthrie, and the idea brought the
hot blood into his cheek. Killed for spite or for a purpose? And what
purpose? The choicest cuts only were taken, and the great carcass left
to waste and for the buzzards. He pondered vaguely as he once more put
his foot into the stirrup.
"Somebody ez likes ter feed on beef," he muttered his conclusion.
"They 'lowed I'd never find it out till the cattle war rounded up in
the fall; then think a wolf cotch 'em so fur from home." Suddenly the
conviction smote him that the larder which the beef had served could
hardly be distant. "They wouldn't want ter lug the meat fur," he said.
He flung himself into the saddle, riding slowly through the pathless
forest, guided only by the sun in the sky, the shadows on the ground.
He seemed as native to these deep seclusions as if he had been bred
a savage thing in their midst. And yet he had never before traversed
their intricacies. His adaptation to the conditions of these unknown
fastnesses was like a worldling's facile mastery of the ways of a
strange city. He looked about him with the speculative interest of a
new-comer. Once, when the woods gave way upon the crest of a precipice,
he rose in his stirrups to gaze over the jungle of the laurel and
upon the great mountain panorama stretching to the horizon. Here were
landmarks that he recognized, and again features of the landscape all
strange to his experience.
"I never knowed ez folks lived hyarabouts," he observed, in surprise.
"Ef I ain't powerful out'n my reckoning, Crazy Zebedee's cell mus' be
somewhar nigh."
He sighed deeply for the thought as he slowly took his way once more
into the dense dark-green leafage of the woods; the very sky was shut
out, and the ethereal blue and purple tints of the great mountain
masses, that seemed to express the idea of light almost as definitely
as the luminous heavens, were withdrawn, leaving a sense of loss and
monotony, like the vanishing mirage of a desert. And in the more heavy
glooms of the shadows he sighed again as if they weighed upon him.
"Zeb hed ruther hev hed this than the jail in town," he muttered, "an'
so he runned away, an' hid hyarabouts. I dun'no' ef he war so durned
crazy; the trees air mighty green, an' it air sorter peaceful out'n the
sight an' the sound o' folks."
He had a melancholy affinity with sorrow--from so long ago had its
fellowship with him dated. He realized, with almost the strength of
divination, the sentiments of the fate that the distraught creature
had wrought out here. He gazed with a sort of vicarious recognition
at the shadows, at the grewsome crags, at the deep, dark waters
of a pool, where some riving of the rocks suffered them to gather
lake-like. He wondered, with a morbid alertness of fancy, how did the
forest look to the hot and fevered brain?--what strange distortions
of fact metamorphosed these simple and majestic dendritic forms, and
the crags, and the waters? It was a severe tension of the sympathetic
power of reduplicating another's sentiment. He hardly knew what hideous
phantasy of speculation had crept into his mind. So far it had swung
from its wonted poise that when a sudden, faint, blood-curdling shriek
of foolish laughter rang through the utter silence, he did not for an
instant credit its reality. He only drew up his horse with a hasty
convulsive clutch upon the rein, a cold tremor stealing over him, and
sat motionless, a terrible superstition quickening his breath and
dilating his eye.
Naught stirred. The gloomy primeval magnificence of the forest seemed
tenantless. Adown none of those green ferny aisles, where the light
trembled to intrude, could a willing fancy discern even a flitting
dryadic shape, so native to these haunts. A fairy ring was on the
grass beneath a tulip-tree. But who did see the dance? Not even the
wind might come and go, for the woods would be lonely and were all
a-brooding. Far, far less possible than any was the wild, dishevelled,
haggard apparition that Felix Guthrie strained his eyes, yet feared,
to see. And when the laugh rose again, faint, faint from the depths
of the earth, ending in a wild derisive cackle, he became all at once
impressed with its genuineness, and the idea of "Crazy Zeb's cell"
flashed into his mind again, coupled with the recollection of his
injury and the object of his search.
"The very place! Hevin' a reg'lar barbecue off'n my beef, the lazy,
shif'less half-livers," he exclaimed, angrily, forgetting his terrors,
although his face had not regained its wonted hue.
He was all alert now, erect in the saddle, the reins drawn closely in
his hand, keenly peering to the right, and again to the left, as if he
had some definite goal in mind. For alien though he was to the place,
he had heard it frequently described in those horror-loving tales of
the winter-night firesides.
"A gate"--he repeated the oft-spoken words--"a gate of rocks that looks
like it mought open on hell; a gate, an' a windin' way walled in, an' a
big hollow in the solid cliff ez would be a cave 'ceptin' it air open
on one side, high, high above the ruver."
And then the pulsing of the current of a stream made its impression
upon his senses. He had not heard it before, so essentially sylvan
a sound it was, its monotony so germane to the silence. It was near
at hand, this river; and here was the deep pool wherein its hurrying
tributary was lulled, and dallied quiescent by the way. He lifted
his eyes to two great neighboring crags, each beetling toward the
other, the first of a tunnel-like series. A gateway? Could even fancy
have wrought these simple forms into the semblance of a portal?--he
marvelled with that incredulity which possesses the mind when looking
for the first time upon some reputed similitude in nature to an
artificial object. Nevertheless, he slowly dismounted, intently gazing
all the while, and as he gazed the resemblance grew upon him. So
definitely had the idea tutored his fancy that he had not a doubt when
he hitched his horse in the dense covert of the laurel, and took his
way across the narrowest portion of the stream by means of scrambling
cat-like along a pendulous branch of an overhanging tree, and springing
lightly from its elastic extremity near to the opposite bank. He waded
out, his long boots full of water--a small matter to a hardy woodsman,
save that he could hear the splash which thereafter accompanied each
step, as his feet were lifted in the roomy integuments, thus preventing
a noiseless approach. When he was at last beneath the great jagged gray
rocks, with their niches filled here with moss, and again flaunting a
tangled vine, he paused and looked up, a smile of iconoclastic ridicule
upon his face. So this was what was thought to resemble a gate by the
few who knew the place. And then he was minded to imagine how like an
infinitely magnified portal it was--so gaunt, so vast, so grim and
grewsome, leading down to the dark unknown! "Like the gates o' hell fur
true," he muttered, plunging into the gloomy, tunnel-like way.
For one moment after the darkness had enveloped him he fancied he heard
a step behind him--a shambling, stumbling step--and the snuffling snort
of a frightened horse. He paused in the narrow corridor, and looked
back, but the tortuous turnings of the passage obscured the entrance,
and the light that it admitted was feeble and far behind. He heard his
own breath in a quickly drawn _susurrus_; it echoed sibilantly. He
might have counted the throbs of his heart. It was a chilly place, but
the surge of excitement warmed his blood, and with another turn he had
burst forth from the narrow passage.
For all his expectancy, his preparation for the emergency, he was dazed
for a moment as he stood in the open space facing the great western
sky. The breadth of this impression left scant room for detail--a
charring fire, where only an ember glowed; a recumbent, somnolent
figure wrapped in a blanket beside it; two men playing cards on a
saddle; a horse's head looking out from a shadowy niche; and a cry of
rage as a man who was grooming the creature turned, with the curry-comb
in his hand. The sound was like a bugle call to rouse the others. It
rang through Guthrie's senses with a menacing clamor. Here was matter
far more significant than cattle-stealing; he had tracked home some
terrible deed, he knew by the unguarded anger of the startled tones.
His logic, such as he had, made itself felt in deeds. Long before the
slow processes of his brain had consciously evolved the idea of danger,
he had drawn his pistols, and stood, his back against the wall, a
weapon in either hand.
It was an attitude that commended a temporizing policy and invited
parley. Taken off their guard, the party made an ineffectual effort to
secure their arms. The man beside the horse had indeed grasped a rifle
that leaned against the wall, but it was an old-fashioned weapon, whose
single discharge would exhaust its offensive and defensive capacities,
leaving him at a pitiable disadvantage against the six-shooters which
the intruder held, and therefore he forbore even to sight it. One of
the card-players had struggled up on his knee, his hand behind him
grasping his revolver in his pistol pocket. In view of the bead drawn
upon him, he did not dare to pull it; he moved not a muscle. The other
held nothing more deadly than a "bobtailed flush," which a moment ago
he had regarded as the extremest spite of fate. There was something
ludicrous in his petrified attitude, as he sat mechanically holding
his cards before him, his mind apparently indissolubly associated with
the game, his eyes fixed upon Guthrie as if he had been some amazing
combination--a "show of hands" altogether uncalled for and beyond all
limits of expectation. To none of them was the moment charged with such
signal force as to Steve Yates, rising from his affected slumber, for
it was only by feigning thus among his merry comrades that he could be
alone with his own thoughts. He turned his face, full of astonished
anxiety, upon Guthrie, and then he turned it away, suffused with shame,
anticipating accusation. It came upon the instant.
[Illustration: "IT WAS AN ATTITUDE THAT COMMENDED A TEMPORIZING
POLICY."]
"Hyar ye air, Steve Yates! This is whar ye hev disappeared to, hey? I'd
do yer wife an' Mose a favior ef I war ter fill up yer carcass with
lead. An' ef I hed it ter spare, I'd do it."
Guthrie looked about, expectant of the signs of some illegal
occupation--not moonshining, for his judgment and conscience could
approve of this defiance of the law, as well as his heart bear it
sympathy, but something that outraged the popular sense of right. There
was naught, unless those fine-limbed shadowy equine figures might
suggest it.
"Hoss-thievin', hey? An' hed ter steal my cattle ter feed ye on beef
whilst hid out?"
"Say, now, Fee, war _that_ yer cow?" cried Beckett, the man under the
insufficient protection of the "bobtailed flush." Perhaps the fact of
being a helpless object of pity to his opponents both at cards and
at arms quickened his sense of expedients, and lubricated his clumsy
tongue. "We-uns didn't know it. Durned ef we don't pay ye fur it," with
an air of unctuous sympathy.
"Naw, ye won't," retorted Guthrie--"ye won't, now. I won't tech yer
lyin', thievin', black-hearted money!"
A sudden anxiety crossed the face of Derridge, who still stood by the
horse's side. "It's jes' ez well ye don't want our money, _fur we ain't
got none_," he said, flashing a significant glance at the card-player,
who was still mechanically holding his cards well together, although
his opponent's hand lay scattered on the saddle that served as board.
"Pete means we'd gin ye a beastis fur the one we tuk. But ef ye don't
want her, go lackin'." He sarcastically waved his hand, and the gesture
in a measure shielded the other hand as he slyly cocked the rifle.
"Steve Yates hev got inter a sorter difficult with the law, an' axed
we-uns ter take him in," continued Derridge, recovering his reasoning
faculties from the chaos of his fear and surprise, and adding to them
the protean influences of imagination. "We-uns stop by hyar at Crazy
Zeb's cell whenst ridin' arter cattle, ter swop lies, an' take a leetle
drink, an' play kyerds; leastwise the t'others, not me. Them boys air
gettin' ter be tur'ble gamesters, a-bettin' thar money an' gear an'
sech, an' wunst in a while hevin' a reg'lar knock-down an' drag-out
fight. I ain't s'prised none ef the church folks in the cove hears o'
thar goin's on an' turns 'em out; they bein' members in good standing,
too; an' I wouldn't blame pa'son an' the deacons an' sech. Naw, sir, I
wouldn't."
"Me nuther," said Guthrie, his vigilance relaxed, his credulity
coerced. All at once the gathering of the coterie in this sequestered
place, that had been so mysterious a moment ago, seemed readily
explicable. Jollity, companionship, card-playing, sloth--all combined
to attract the mountain loafers, expert to fend off work with any
odd dallying with time. He felt the pistol in each hand a cumbrous
superfluity. He did not realize why he had drawn them, why he had so
quickly assumed the aggressive. He wondered that, interrupted thus in
their pacific absorptions, they did not reproach him. It was no longer
in suspicion, but with a sort of attempt to justify his precipitancy,
that he demanded, "What hev Steve Yates been a-doin' of ter run him off
from home an' be searched fur ez dead?"
He had unconsciously moved several paces from the wall; the weapons in
his hands were lowered and hung listlessly; the fire-light slanted
athwart the place; the monstrous elongated shadows of the men extended
across the floor and up the side of the niche; a bee went booming by;
the river sang; and the entrance behind him was so noiseless that these
trivial sounds he heard, and not Cheever's step.
The leader of the gang wore an excited face as he suddenly came in.
It turned pale in the moment. He threw his arm across his eyes with
a wild, hoarse cry, while the others stared in amazement, until Bob
Millroy, also entering, his superstition always on the alert, was
reminded of that strange intruder here revealed once before to Cheever,
then visible to none else.
"Thar, now! the extry man!" he cried out, hardly less discomposed.
Guthrie, a trifle shaken by the uncomprehended commotion, reverted to
the instinct of self-defence. He perceived, with a flutter of fear and
a pang of self-reproach, that his remitted watchfulness had permitted
him to be surrounded. They had all drawn their pistols in the interval.
He spoke upon his impulse. "Lemme git out'n this!" he growled, half
articulately, advancing upon Cheever, intending to push by to the only
exit. Cheever, restored by the sight of the revolvers and the sudden
recognition of the young mountaineer's face, laid a hand upon Guthrie's
shoulder, grinding his teeth, and with a concentrated fury in his eyes.
"So ye hev fund out whar we-uns war, ye peekin', pryin' sneak; _she_
tole ye ez Steve war along o' we-uns--the leetle Pettingill she-devil,
that frazzle-headed vixen of a Letishy!"
Her name stunned Guthrie in some sort; he stood wide-eyed, quiescent,
in amazed dismay, hearing naught of the babel of remonstrance from the
others: "Hesh! hesh! he dun'no' nuthin'. Don't tell him nuthin'! Let
him be--let him be!"
Guthrie realized the situation only when Cheever, whose grip prevented
the use of the pistols, cried suddenly, "Take that!" and he heard
his flesh tear under the knife, and felt a pain like the pangs of
dissolution, as his warm blood gushed forth--"an' that! an' _that_!"
The next moment all the thunders of heaven seemed loosed in the cavern.
How he wrenched himself away he could never say. He only knew that he
was firing alternately the pistols in both hands, retreating backward
through the dark tunnel. He flung himself upon the horse that stood
saddled and bridled cropping the grass without, and he was miles away
before he realized that the hot pursuit, which he had heard at first in
full hue and cry after him, must of necessity be futile, since it was
Cheever's incomparable steed that in his haste he bestrode, and not his
own.
He felt a certain glow of achievement, a fervor of pride in his
prowess; no slight thing it was to have escaped with his life from
that desperate gang of outlaws. With a kind of valiant boastfulness he
made light of his wounds as his step-mother dressed them, herself the
impersonation of a panther whose young is wounded, snarling and fierce
and tender. She had a sort of reverential admiration of his courage,
his ferocity, that her own savagery had fostered. It was said in the
cove that her semblance of kindness and affection for him was the
natural outgrowth of her respect for anybody that was a "better man"
than she--a pluckier fighter. She, too, would admit no efficacy in
aught that Cheever could do.
"I'll be bound them pistol balls o' yourn worked many a button-hole
whar thar warn't no buttons in the gyarmints ter match!" she cried,
bitterly joying in the possible execution of the shots.
But Ephraim surveyed the yawning slashes with a groan, and went with
averted eyes hastily out of the door, and an old house-dog stood beside
Felix, and wheezed pitifully and licked his hand with an unrecked-of
sympathy.
Felix was out next day, but with that singular parchment-like pallor
that ensues on a great loss of blood. Mrs. Guthrie had remonstrated
against all exertion, then openly applauded his decision.
"Ef 'twar you-uns, Eph," she said, looking after Felix as he rode
Cheever's horse down the winding mountain way, "I mought look for'ard
ter three solid weeks a-nussin' ye; ye would be tucked up in bed. But
twenty yoke o' oxen couldn't hold Fee Guthrie down; he couldn't even
die handy, like other folks. He hev got the very sperit o' livin' in
him. Ye mark my words, he ain't a-goin' ter die handy."
And in truth it was a very spirited and gallant figure that the fine,
clean-limbed roan carried down into the cove. Guthrie's curling hair
flaunted back from his broad shoulders; his wide-brimmed hat was cocked
to one side; his spurs jingled on the heels of his great boots. And
he sat in the saddle proudly erect, in defiance of the sore-rankling
wounds--the knife had not had the mercy to be sharp, and in lieu of
clean cuts had torn and jagged the flesh. There was one wound sharper
than all, that no blade had dealt, that was so keen, so deep, so
insidious that it made a coward of him, and set astir a chill in his
blood and a quiver in his heart.
It was one word--Letitia--from lips that he had never thought to hear
it. Letitia! So she knew of Steve Yates's crime; and more than once he
wondered what it might be, pausing to look absently down with unseeing
eyes, as his stirrup-irons, sweeping through the blooming weeds that
bordered the bridle-path, sent the petals flying. Was she a party,
too, to the deception the wife maintained, to her pretended desertion,
her affected ignorance of Yates's whereabouts? "Letishy oughtn't ter
be mixed up in sech," Guthrie said to himself. "_She_ oughtn't ter be
abidin' along o' Mis' Yates, whose husband air hid out with a gang o'
evil-doers, purtendin' ter be dead an' disappeared. Litt oughtn't ter
know about thar thieveries an' dens. It can't tech _her_--thar ill-got
gains--but she oughtn't ter know secrets agin the law."
He remembered, with a throb between anger and pain, the evenings that
he had spent at the Yates cabin, the air of desolate sorrow that the
deserted wife maintained, even when she seemed to seek to cast it
off, and to respond to neighborly kindness. A flush mounted to his
pallid cheek, he so resented a deceit sought to be practised upon him.
And how ready a gull he must have seemed, he thought, with a sneer
at the memory of his cumbrous phrases of hope and consolation, at
which Letitia had not scrupled to laugh. "_She_ warn't puttin' on no
lackadaisical pretence," he thought, with a glowing eye. "She hev got
the truth in her too deep. She jes' busied herse'f a-spinnin' ez gay ez
a bird, an' tole them queer tales ez Mr. Shattuck hev gin out, 'bout
cave-dwellers long time ago, an' sun-worshippers, an' a kentry sunk in
the sea, named Atlantis or sech outlandish word; tole 'em over agin
nearly every evenin'. An' I could listen through eternity! She hev got
sech smartness an' mem'ry. I dun'no' how she _do_ make out ter remember
sech a lot o' stuff. An' Mis' Yates--a deceitful sinner that woman
air!--a-bustin' out cryin' agin, fust thing ye know. Litt oughtn't ter
'sociate with sech ez knows secrets agin the law."
XIII.
With all this in his mind, the little house, coming in sight below the
massive dark-green slope of the great mountain, seemed to Guthrie to
hold peculiar significance. With a poignant sentiment which he might
not analyze, he watched it grow from a mere speck into its normal
proportions. The sun flashed from its roof, still wet with the dew,
but the shadows were sombrely green in the yard. Such freshness the
great oaks breathed, such fragrance the pines! Adown the lane the cows
loitered, going forth to their pastures. He saw a mist, dully white,
move in slow convolutions along a distant purple slope, pause for a
glistening moment, then vanish into thin air. Away up the gorge all
diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of endless luminous
vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining azure heavens, the
ranges and valleys changing with every mood of the atmosphere, with the
harlequinade of the clouds and the wind. The river, with all the graces
of reflection, presented a kaleidoscopic comminglement of color--it
showed the grim gray rocks, the blue sky, the glow of the rose-red
azalea, the many gradations of tint in the overhanging foliage and
in the umber and ochre of the soil of the steep banks. The ponderous
cataract fell ceaselessly with its keen, swift, green rush above and
its maddening white swirl below. On the bank the pygmy burying-ground
seemed by contrast the fullest expression of quiet, with its deep
shadows and its restful sheen, and naught to come and go but a booming
bee or a bird upspringing from the long grass.
All was imprinted upon his consciousness with a distinctness which he
had never before known, which he did not seek to interrogate now. It
seemed to partake of the significance of a crisis in his life, and
every trifle asserted itself and laid hold upon him.
Letitia was sitting upon the porch in a low rocking-chair. He
recognized her from far away; but when he had hitched the horse at the
gate and came walking slowly up the path, and she lifted her eyes to
meet his grave, fixed look, there was something in them that he thought
he had never before seen--infinitely beautiful, indescribable; a mere
matter of expression, perhaps, for the luminous quality and the fine
color of the deep-blue iris were as familiar even to his dreams as to
his waking sense. It seemed a something added; it served, in some sort,
to embellish the very curve of her cheek, the curl of her delicate lip,
the waving of her hair where it was gathered out of the way at the nape
of her white neck.
He had known that her beauty was generally held in scant esteem, and he
had vaguely wondered to find himself in contradictory conviction to the
popular sentiment. He had welcomed Shattuck's protestation of its charm
as a trophy of its high deserts. He remembered this now. "Shattuck
'lowed she war plumb beautiful, an' hed a rare face; an' she hev! she
hev! Thar's nobody looks like her."
More than the usual interval of survey warranted by the etiquette of
salutation passed as he stood by the step of the porch, and gazed at
her with absorbed, questioning eyes. Her light, caustic laughter roused
him.
"What ails ye ter kem hyar with the manners o' a harnt, Fee Guthrie;
not speakin' till ye air spoke ter; stare-gazin'"--she opened her eyes
wide with the exaggeration of mimicry--"ez ef me an' Moses war some
unaccountable animals ez ye hed kem ter trap?"
Then, with a smile that seemed to have all the freshness of the
matutinal hour in it, she bent again to her work of hackling flax. No
arduous job was she making of it. The hackle was placed upon the low
shelf-like balustrade close by, and as the swaying of the rocking-chair
brought her forward she would sweep the mass of flax in her hands
across its sharp wires, drawing all the fibres through as she swung
back again. She had hardly more industrial an aspect than a thrush
poised on a blooming honeysuckle vine that ran over the porch, idly
rocking in the wind, with not even a trill in his throat to attest his
vocation as musician. A bundle of the flax lay in a chair at her side,
and another in her lap; and as she swayed back and forth some of the
fine, silvery white stuff slipped down over her light-blue dress and
on the floor in the reach of Moses. He was beginning to appreciate the
value of occupation, and could not all day quiescently resign himself
to the passive development of teeth. He had attained the age when the
imitative faculties assert themselves. He had furnished himself with
a wisp of flax from the floor, and now and again bent his fat body
forward, swaying the wisp to and fro in his hand, after the manner in
which Letitia passed the flax over the hackle, then sought to stuff it
into his mouth--with him a test of all manner of values. Somehow the
meeting of his callow, unmeaning, casual glance, for he was very busy
and ignored the new-comer, disconcerted Guthrie. So forlorn was he,
and little!--his future was an unwritten page, and what bitter history
might it not contain! And those who were nearest to him were framing
the words and fashioning the periods. But it was to be his to read! A
heavy intimation of its collocations was given by the recollection of
his father yesterday in the horse-thief's gang--and Stephen Yates once
had an honest name, and came of honest stock! Then Guthrie thought of
the deceitful mother, and he sat down on the step with a sigh.
"Mought ez well! mought ez well!" he said, lugubriously, unconsciously
speaking aloud, as Letitia adjured Moses not to swallow the flax and
choke himself.
"He _hedn't_ 'mought ez well,'" she retorted, tartly. Then, for the
infant's benefit, "I reckon, though, I could get hold o' the eend of it
in his throat, but Mose would feel mighty bad when I h'isted him up on
my spinnin'-wheel an' tuck ter spinnin' him all up!"
The great Dagon, not altogether comprehending this threat, listened
with an attentive bald head upturned, a damp and open mouth, his
two bare feet stretched out motionless, one above the other, and
his _décolleté_ red calico dress quite off one stalwart shoulder.
But with a gurgle and a bounce he let it pass, with only his usual
sharp-tempered squeal of rebuke, and then placidly addressed himself
anew to discover what gustatory qualities lurked in the unpromising,
unsucculent wisp of flax.
"Mose an' me air keepin' house," observed Letitia. "Mis' Yates air
a-dryin' apples down yander by the spring."
Guthrie's glance discovered the mottled calico dress and purple
sun-bonnet of Adelaide at some distance down the slope, as she spread
the fruit upon a series of planks laid in the sun.
"It air jes' ez well," he said, gloomily. "I dun'no' ez I keer ter see
her ter-day."
Letitia, as she swayed forward and flung the flax across the wires,
cast a surprised glance upon him. "Ye air toler'ble perlite fur so soon
in the mornin'--I notice ginerally ez perliteness grows on ye ez the
day goes on--cornsiderin' ye air a-settin' on _her_ doorstep, an' this
air _her_ house."
"I want ter see jes' you-uns," he indirectly defended himself. He
took off his hat, the wind tossing his curling hair as he leaned
backward against the post of the porch; he started to speak again, then
hesitated uncertainly.
If she noticed that he had lost his wonted slow composure, the
discovery did not affect her. She still swung back and forth in her
rocking-chair, as nonchalantly as the thrush swayed on the vibrating
bough.
"Letishy," he said at last, "I wisht ye wouldn't 'bide hyar."
Her eyes widened. "Perliteness _do_ grow on ye," she exclaimed. "Whar
air ye 'lowin' I hed better 'bide?"
The opportunity was not propitious. Nevertheless he seized it. "I wish
ye'd marry me an' 'bide up on the mounting at my house," he said,
breathlessly.
The color flared in her face, but she still rocked to and fro, and with
her casual indolent gesture hackled the flax. "Mus' be so pleasant
'long o' Mis' Guthrie," she said.
She had adopted as response the first suggestion that came, only to
escape from the confusion that beset her; but as a painful flush dyed
his face, she rocked a trifle less buoyantly back and forth, and looked
keenly though covertly at him, when he rejoined, quietly:
"I be powerful mistaken in you-uns ef ye would gredge a shelter ter a
'oman ez be old, an' frien'less, an' pore, an' not kind, an' hev earned
nuthin' but hate in a long life--_ye_, young, an' pritty, an' good, an'
respected by all!"
She paused in her rocking. She looked steadily, motionlessly at him.
"Would ye turn her out ef I did?" she asked, in a tone of stipulation.
He hesitated; then, "Naw, by God, I _wouldn't_!" he declared.
There was a momentary silence. A smile crept to the delicate curves of
her lips and vivified with its light the sapphire of her eyes. "Fee
Guthrie," she exclaimed, "I never looked ter have cause ter think so
well o' ye!"
He gazed at her a trifle bewildered. "An' ye will marry me? Litt, ye
know how much I think o' ye; 'pears like I can't tell how much I love
ye."
She had thrown herself into her former nonchalant attitude, and was
swaying back and forth in the rocking-chair, and gayly hackling the
flax. She shook her head, smiling at him.
In his heartache, the pang of disappointment, the demolition of all his
cherished hopes--and how strong they had been, albeit he had accounted
them slight, had named them despair! with what throes they died!--he
felt as some drowning wretch that sees a swift, unheeding bark sail
past his agony.
"Account of her?" he gasped.
Once more she smilingly shook her head.
"Some other man?" his face had grown sterner; its hard lines were
reasserted.
The telltale color flared in her cheeks; he saw again, rising with
the thought of that "other man," the look in her eyes which made
them trebly beautiful. It was in vain that she shook her head, and
carelessly flaunted the flax as she swayed back and forth.
His eyes were full of fire; his breath was quick; the fever of angry
hate was in his pulses. "'Twon't be the _fust_ time ye hev throwed me
over fur Rhodes," he said between his teeth, the instinct to identify
his rival strong within him.
She laughed aloud with such ready scorn that credulity failed him.
"Then _who kin_ it be?" he demanded, expectantly.
She paused once more, gravity on her face, the shining fibrous flax
motionless in her hand. "I'll tell ye--I'll tell ye, ef ye promise
never ter tell."
He was dumfounded for an instant. Surely a lover never received a
confidence like this!
"I dun'no' ez I want ter know till I be obligated ter find out," he
said, gruffly.
"What did ye ax fur, then?" she retorted.
In his state of feeling he had scant regard for logic. It was only
for the space of a moment that he sat silent, then asked, "Who, then,
Litt--_who_ is the man?"
She looked down upon him with a sort of solemnity that induced a
forlornly eager, palpitating expectancy, as he looked up wincing and
waiting to hear.
"_Baker Anderson!_" She pronounced the words soberly. Then, with
a peal of laughter, she flung herself back in the rocking-chair,
swinging backward with a precipitancy that startled the idle thrush,
still preening his morning wing on the honeysuckle vine, and sent him
flashing through the sunshine like a silver arrow to the woods.
Guthrie stared stolidly at her for a time, hardly knowing his mind
between anger and surprise. Then his stern features gradually relaxed.
There was something in her merry subterfuge that savored of coquetry.
The terrible vitality of his starveling hope roused itself upon the
intimation. His long sigh was a breath of relief. Perhaps he should
not have expected a direct response in his favor. "Wimmin 'pear ter
set store on all sort'n round-about ways; I reckon I'll hev ter try
a haffen dozen." This was his unspoken deduction. He only said,
cumbrously seeking to adopt her lightsome vein, "I be powerful 'flicted
ter hear it be Baker ez air the favored ch'ice. I dun'no' how I'll ever
make out ter stan' up agin Baker."
And he slowly laughed again. He could hardly have expressed how much
the incongruity of the idea comforted him. He was looking about with
the relief that ensues upon a grave and poignant crisis happily
overpast. He saw, with a sort of indiscriminating satisfaction, the
dew so coolly glittering on the long grass; in the deep green shadow
of the trees the white elder blossoms gleamed. The wind came straight
from the mountains, so full of strength and freshness and perfume, it
seemed like the very breath of life. So often a wing cleft the blue
sky, and all the nestlings were abroad! He noted a dozen yards down
a dank path a stubby, ruffled scion of a mocking-bird, standing in
infantine disaffection to the prospect of locomotion, and watching
with unambitious eyes the graceful example of the paternal flight, as
the parent aeronaut darted across short distances from honeysuckle
to glowing cabbage-rose, and called forth encouragement in clearest
clarion tones, and sought to stimulate emulation--fated, like
some disappointed worldly fathers, to hear only a whining vibrant
declination of the mere attempt at progression from the sulky brat in
the path. Guthrie, his mind once more receptive to details, observed
for the first time that the little party on the porch had been joined
by the old dog, who so valued the society of Moses, and who sat beside
him as the infant capably went through all the motions of hackling
flax; the canine friend followed with alert turns of the head and
puzzled knitted brow the wavings of the short fat arm, and kept time
the while with an approving wagging tail.
"Thinks mo' of him now than Steve do," Guthrie reflected, for the very
sight of Moses's bald head was pathetic in his eyes. Then his mind
reverted to his own anxiety because of Letitia. "Litt," he said, and
there was a sort of peremptory proprietary vibration in the tone, "I
don't want ye ter 'bide hyar no longer. I want ye ter go home."
She paused, the flax motionless in her hand. A resolute light was in
her eyes. She gave a decisive nod. "Mis' Yates ain't a-goin' ter shoot
off that rifle at nobody agin," she said, unexpectedly. "_I_ be goin'
ter company that rifle closer'n a brother."
For a moment Guthrie was a trifle bewildered--the story of the
mysterious shots fired at the party in the pygmy burial-ground, the
slain colt, Mrs. Yates's futile denials, all detailed by Ephraim, had
been superseded in interest by his own adventures and the theories that
he had deduced from them. "Waal," he said at last--formally taking her
standpoint into account--"that ain't nuthin' ter you-uns; ye can't
guide Mis' Yates's actions. It jes' shows another reason why ye oughter
be at home. Mis' Yates s'prises me; she ain't the 'oman I took her fur;
but ef she kills Mr. Shattuck fur her foolish notions 'bout opening
the graves o' the Leetle People, _she'll_ hev ter answer ter the law.
'Tain't nuthin' ter _you-uns_."
He was not looking at her; he had plucked a blade of the sweet-flag
that grew by the step, casually tearing its delicate stripes of white
and green, all unnoting that her face had turned a pallid, grayish hue;
that she sat as still as if petrified, her eyes dilated, and fixed with
a sort of fascinated terror upon some frightful mental picture.
"Mis' Yates s'prises me," Guthrie resumed. "Eph says she 'lows ez her
husband lef' her 'kase she swore she would fire that very rifle at
Shattuck ef he opened a 'pygmy' grave, ez he calls it. I'll be bound,
though, Steve didn't leave fur sech ez that. I ain't got nuthin' agin
the Leetle People," he stipulated, with a quick after-thought. "I know
no harm of 'em, an' I respec' 'em, though dead an' leetle. I wouldn't
'low nobody ter kerry thar bones off'n my lan', not even Mr. Shattuck,
though I'd do mo' fur _him_ 'n ennybody else--he hev got sech a takin'
way with him! I tole him he mought hev one o' thar pitchers ez air
buried with 'em, an' I'd gin the leetle pusson one o' my pitchers out'n
the house. I reckon 'twould be ez good ez his'n." He paused, meditating
on the ethics of this exchange. "But I war glad when Shattuck 'lowed
he hankered fur no pitcher, but jes' wanted ter take a look at thar
jugs an' ornamints an' sech, fur the knowledge o' the _hist'ry o' the
kentry_." He repeated these last words with a sort of solid insistent
emphasis, as charged with impressiveness and importance, for the whole
enterprise was repugnant to him, and he sought to justify it to himself
by urging its utility, a magnified idea of which he had gleaned from
Shattuck's talk. He had torn the blade of sweet-flag into shreds, and
now he cast the fragments from him. "But it jes' shows ez Mis' Yates
ain't a fit 'oman fur ye ter be with, firin' rifles an' sech, an'
knowin' the hiding-place o' evil-doers, purtendin' all the time ter
be so desolated an' deserted. Litt, air it jes' lately ye knowed whar
Steve war, or did ye know it 'fore ye kem hyar ter keep her comp'ny?"
Then, as she sat stonily gazing at him, he added, "Did ye know it them
evenin's ez I kem a-visitin' down hyar?"
She spoke slowly, with a measureless wonderment on her face. "Air ye
bereft, Felix Guthrie? I dun'no' whar Steve Yates air, an' Adelaide
don't nuther."
It was hard to shake his confidence in her. Perhaps no words might
have served--least of all any that Cheever could speak--save those
accompanied by the savage, deep strokes of a bowie-knife aiming for his
heart. The frank sincerities of the steel were coercive; it had been
thus that her name had been cut into his very flesh, a slash for each
syllable. They all ached in unison with the recollection.
"Ye air foolin' me," he said, reproachfully. But even then he sought to
adduce a worthy motive. "Ye air doin' it fur the sake o' yer frien's,
Litt. But ye can't mend thar mean, preverted natur'. Ye oughter go
home; home is the place fur gals."
To an overbearing man, unfurnished with the authority of kindred,
and restrained by even primitive etiquette from aught more coercive
than advice, there was something painfully baffling in the headstrong
impunity with which she cried, gayly, as she set her chair to rocking
once more, "The angel Gabriel with his trumpet mought wake the dead an'
'tice 'em from the grave, but he couldn't say nuthin' ez would summons
me from this spot."
So small, so feminine, and yet so easily and amply victorious!--it
was hardly in his imperative nature to submit gracefully to so
inconsiderable an adversary. "An' thar's daddy Pettingill," he cried,
angrily, "a-quar'lin' 'kase his craps hev got too much rain, or
too leetle, an' stare-gazin' the clouds, so sulky an' impident, I
wonder the lightnin' don't strike him fur his sass. An' thar's mammy
Pettingill makin' quince preserves, an' callin' all the created worl'
ter see how cl'ar they be. An' thar's that fool, Josh Pettingill, mus'
take this junctry ter marry Malviny Gossam, an' go off ter live, an'
leave _nobody_ ter take keer of his own _sister_. An' ye air lef' hyar
ter 'company a 'oman ez fires off rifles at peaceful passers, an' ter
know the secrets o' whar Steve Yates an' Buck Cheever be hid out. Ef
ye war _my_ darter"--severely paternal--"I would put ye right now up
on that horse ahint o' me, an' ride off _home_ with ye; an' _darned_
ef I hain't got a good mind ter tote ye back ter them absent-minded
Pettingills ennyhow!"
There was no absolute intention in his words, but he had risen as he
spoke, and she cowered a little; there was something in his proportions
that constrained respect, and her spirit of defiance was abated
somewhat.
"Fee," she said, seeking to effect a diversion, "what makes ye 'low ez
Adelaide an' me know whar Steve Yates be hid out?"
"'Kase yestiddy whenst I run agin a gang o' fellers, hid out--I reckon
they air arter some mischief--an' Steve war 'mongst 'em, Buck Cheever
'lowed ez 'twar you-uns ez told me. They air workin' agin the law, I
_know_."
She did not at once remember the hasty chance shot--the keen
divination--in the mock message she had sent to Steve Yates by
Cheever; but the expression on the horse-thief's face came back to her
presently, as if it had been held indissolubly in her mind for future
recall. Evidently Cheever had believed that in some incomprehensible
way she had possessed herself of the knowledge, and spoke from its
fulness.
She sat still, absently gazing at the flax. "An' ye 'lowed I
knowed sech ez that, an' be in league with folks ez work agin the
law--thievin' or sech--an' yit ye kem down hyar an' ax me ter marry ye?"
"'Kase I be dead sure, Litt, ez ye wouldn't do no harm _knowin' it_,"
he replied, precipitately. "I wish I hed faith in Heaven like I hev in
you-uns. I war jes' feared Mis' Yates an' them war foolin' ye 'bout'n
it, an' hed tangled ye up in suthin' ez ye didn't onderstand the rights
of." He looked down eagerly at her, but her face was inscrutable.
"I ain't so easily fooled," she observed, succinctly.
He glanced about him, evidently on the eve of reluctant departure, but
still lingering. The infantile mocking-bird at intervals piped his
strident vibrant "C-a-a-ant! c-a-a-ant! c-a-a-ant!" The parent bird's
keen, clear call rang out, so full of meaning that it seemed strange
that it should be inarticulate, and ever and anon his white wing
feathers, as he whirled in the air, shone dazzlingly in the sunshine.
Moses continued to experiment with the possibilities of flax for food,
sometimes constrained to sputter by his misdirected ardor. Guthrie
would fain prolong the pleasant peaceful time.
"I mus' be a-joggin'," he said, however. "I feel powerful foolish
ridin' another man's horse. An' I be a-goin' ter turn him over ter the
constable o' the deestric', an' tell how I got him by accident, so
flustered by the fight."
For the first time she recognized Cheever's horse at the gate.
"War thar a fight?" she said.
He nodded.
"_Ye_ didn't take a hand in it? Waal, I be s'prised--_ye_, ez hev sot
out ter be a saint o' the Lord!"
"That don't make no diff'unce," he said, hastily defending his piety.
"The reason thar ain't no mo' fightin' 'mongst the saints an' disciples
the Bible tells about air 'kase thar warn't no fire-arms in them days;
I hev hearn pa'son say thar warn't none. An' that's why peace war so
preached up then, fur mighty few men like ter kem ter close quarters
with a knife."
His own wounds ached anew with the suggestion, but with a savage pride
in his prowess he said naught of them; he would not have admitted their
existence to the man who had dealt them; Cheever might take only what
testimony he could from the blood on his knife.
She was looking at him with that admiration, so essentially feminine,
of his valor, his ready hand, his fierce spirit. "So ye j'ined in?" she
said, smiling.
"Ef firin' a dozen pistol-shots be j'inin' in," he replied, his eye
alight at the recollection.
She changed color. "War ennybody hurt?" she quavered.
"Listen at the female 'oman!" he exclaimed, in exasperation, because
of the contradictions of sentiment she presented. "Fairly dotes on
the idee o' other folks a-fightin', an' yit can't abide the notion o'
nobody gittin' hurt! The Guthries hev the name o' shootin' straight,
Litt Pettingill, an' I'd be powerful 'shamed ef in twelve shots I done
no damage. 'Tain't been my policy nor my practice ter waste lead an'
powder."
He stood leaning against the post, vainly speculating concerning the
probable execution of his revolvers when he had escaped, firing
them with both hands. It was for a moment with absent, unseeing eyes
that he mechanically regarded her, but the image that had so great
a fascination for him presently broke through the absorptions of
his retrospect, and asserted itself anew--so dainty, so blithe, so
bird-like, so lightly swaying as she sat in the rocking-chair.
Her association with these incongruous elements of suspected fraud, and
ill-favored deeds, and unfitting companions seemed a profanity, and his
eager wish to have her removed far from them, shielded, inaccessible,
was renewed.
"Mr. Shattuck hain't got no need o' you-uns, Litt, ter pertect him," he
urged, suddenly. "He'd laff at the idee, ef he warn't ashamed of it;
ennybody o' yer size an' sex a-settin' out ter pertect a able-bodied
man from rifle-balls."
He looked down at her with a laugh of ridicule and a sneering eye,
calculated to put out of countenance her valorous intention.
She said nothing; but determination, immobility, could hardly have had
more adequate expression than in her face, her soft and delicate lips
closed fast, her eyes bright and fearless.
"But shucks!"--he sought to make light of it--"Shattuck ain't a-goin'
ter kem agin ter the Leetle People's buryin'-groun'--leastwise not
when Mis' Yates be out an' stirrin'." A dim prospect of organizing a
nocturnal expedition for Shattuck's assistance was shaping itself in
his mind. "She can't be on watch night and day."
Letitia looked up, her interest in all that interested Shattuck
shining in her eyes. "That's the very word what _I_ told him," she
said. "He'd better kem an' dig at night, whenst the moon shines, like
he done afore."
A sudden angry pain thrilled through Guthrie. It was only yesterday
that Shattuck had received his permission to make these investigations
upon his land; had sought it with deepening deference and solicitude,
as if it were essential. And when at last it had been granted, it was
in disregard of previous refusals, in despite of his repugnance, and
his primitive sense of sacrilege. Thus he had been overborne by the
facile influence of this suave stranger, with his ready smile and his
pleasant eyes, and his frank off-hand speech. It must have been that
to work freely and openly in broad daylight had become a necessary
condition of Shattuck's success, for evidently he had been here
before--when the moon shone!
Whether it were because of some inward monition, which by an
unconscious process served Guthrie's interest, or some latent,
undeveloped suspicion astir in his mind, he gave no intimation of
his thought; he held himself plastic to the discovery which he felt
imminent in the air. He could not, however, meet her eyes; as he sought
an alternative, perhaps it was as happy an idea as any that could have
come at a more propitious and reflective moment to draw out one of the
pistols that he wore in his belt and turn it in his hand; he had an
incidental preoccupied air as he glanced successively into the empty
chambers.
"Did he find ennything _then_, d'ye know, Litt?"
"I dun'no'. I ain't seen him sence till las' night," she replied,
unsuspiciously.
He had snapped the barrel in place and silently sighted the pistol at
a flying bird, as if he had in view some experiment of marksmanship.
Moses had ceased his femininely domestic labors, with the wisp of flax
hanging motionless in his limp hand. Here was matter more to his mind,
attesting his inherent masculine taste; he winked very hard at every
sharp clash of the steel, but bent forward with wide uplifted eyes, a
tremulous, absorbed, open mouth, and watched the big man's attitude as
he held up the weapon to a line with his eye, his whole massive figure,
from the great slouch hat to his jingling spurs, clearly imposed upon
the fair morning sky.
[Illustration: "HE HAD SNAPPED THE BARREL IN PLACE."]
A pointer, who had been asleep under the house, had rushed out
upon recognizing the click of the cocking of a weapon, and stood
in tremulous, wheezing agitation, now scanning the prospect for
the threatened game and eagerly snuffing the air, now glancing up,
surprised at the abnormal inactivity of this presentment of the genus
sportsman.
"What makes ye 'low 'twar Shattuck, Litt?" Guthrie observed in the tone
of a casual gossip.
There was a touch of rose in her cheek. "Waal, I warn't sartain a-fust.
I 'lowed it _couldn't_ be. Till toler'ble late, arter the moon hed riz,
I hearn a pickaxe strikin' on rock up in the pygmy buryin'-ground"
(he noticed that she had discarded the colloquial "Leetle People" for
Shattuck's more scientific term), "an' then I knowed it couldn't be
nobody but him. I didn't say nothin' 'bout'n it afore, 'kase I didn't
know till las' night ez he hed got yer say-so ez he mought dig on
yer land." She looked up with an unsuspicious smile; then, with the
glow of mirth in her eyes, she burst suddenly into a peal of laughter.
"Baker Anderson would hev it ez 'twar _you-uns_ ez 'peared suddint at
the winder whilst I war a-singin' a song. I wisht ye could hev seen
Baker offerin' ter take down his rifle an' go arter ye fur hevin' gin
me an' Mis' Yates sech a skeer. Ye could run Baker with yer ramrod!
Baker 'lows yit ez 'twar you-uns. We-uns couldn't make out the man's
face clear; jes' seen it fur a minit ez he looked through the winder.
But ez soon ez I hearn that pick strike on the rock, I guessed mighty
easy who hed been hangin' roun' the porch listenin' ter the singin',
waitin' fur the moon ter rise."
A miracle could not have more stringently coerced his credulity; and,
in truth, the circumstances wore all the sleek probability of fact. No
man familiarized by song and story since the Middle Ages with the idea
of the cavalier lingering without the castle walls to hear a lady's
lute could have more definitely grasped its significance than did this
primitive lover. It lent a strong coherence to every word that Shattuck
had uttered; the praises of her beauty, to which he had hearkened with
such simple joy; of her mind, of her unique grace, so at variance with
the uncouth conditions of her life. And what new light was thrown
upon her strangely retentive memory hoarding Shattuck's words; her
eager determined vigilance in his behalf, from which the trump that
might summon the dead from their graves would be futile to lure her;
that radiant freshened beauty in her sapphire eyes! "Religion itself
couldn't make her look more like an angel in the eyes!" Guthrie had
said to himself, with a lover's alert and receptive recognition of an
embellished loveliness. And Shattuck had come, in good sooth, to listen
and linger without to hear her sing while he waited for the moon to
rise.
He remembered, with an angry quickening of his pulse, his own
simple-minded confidences to Shattuck yesterday in the barley fields.
What! in his unsuspicious folly he had even told the man how she talked
of him, how she treasured his words, how she valued his great learning,
for thus she was minded to regard those acquisitions which the more
staid and experienced people of the country-side esteemed crack-brained
fantasies. And somehow this reflection operated as a check upon the
bounding fury that possessed him; it held an element of self-reproach.
He had unwittingly revealed to this stranger the sentiment which
Letitia would have guarded as a sacred secret--if, indeed, she herself
were aware of it. His face was set and hard; but the strong hand
trembled that held the pistol, silent and empty and harmless enough
now, albeit so recently flinging out its fate-freighted balls and its
wild barbaric shriek.
"She never war gin ter 'settin' caps' arter folks, like other gals; she
sorter sets store on herse'f 'kase the common run o' boys didn't like
her. She feels too ch'ice fur enny or'nary cuss; an' I reckon she'd
be hoppin' mad--" And then he paused with the conviction that she did
not esteem Shattuck an "or'nary cuss." This revelation would probably
only result in facilitating an understanding between them. "Ef he ever
sees her agin," he said, between his set teeth. There recurred to him
suddenly his words yesterday, amongst the waving barley--that he had it
in his heart to kill any man who came between him and Letitia. He had
spoken them with other intentions, with the thought of Rhodes in his
mind; but Shattuck was warned, already warned. And if he had spoken too
freely, it was at least not equivocally. "Ef ever he sees her agin," he
once more muttered.
"What air you-uns sayin'?" she demanded, suddenly, all unsuspicious
of his train of thought. "Mose kin converse ez well ez that. The only
trouble with Mose's talk is that grown folks air too foolish ter
onderstan' it. Ain't it, Mose?"
But the child gave her no heed, still fixing his upturned gaze on the
pistol in Guthrie's hand, as eager of expression as the uplifted muzzle
of the dog, who writhed and wagged his tail, and wheezed about the
great boots.
Guthrie looked down at Letitia, his eyes changed and strange, and
little to be understood. She paused as her own encountered them,
holding the wisp of flax motionless in her hand, vaguely and
superficially aware that a crisis had supervened, albeit beyond her ken.
"I mus' be a-goin'," he said, absently, still looking at her, his eyes
freighted with his unread thoughts.
Their dull solemnity grated upon her mood, so far afield was it from
any standpoint yet revealed in his words. She resented his motionless,
intent, pondering survey.
She sought to shake off the responsive gravity his mien induced.
"Goin'!" she cried, her eyes growing brighter and deeper and darker as
they dilated. "Waal, we'll hev ter try ter spare ye. Waal! waal!" with
an affected sigh.
The familiar note of irony seemed to rouse him to more immediate
intention. He thrust his pistol in his belt, and with a nod turned away
down the path.
Moses, who could never be prevailed upon to greet a visitor, always
took welcome heed of departure. To his mind the dearest behest of
hospitality was speeding the parting guest. Without prompting, he sent
a jubilant cry of "Bye! bye!" after Guthrie's retreating form, and
beamed upon him with a damp and gummy sputtering smile, graced by all
his glittering teeth.
Letitia, too, gazed after the guest, whose manner had suddenly
presented an enigma. "Looked all of a suddint ez ef he hed fund suthin'
he didn't want, like a rattlesnake; or hed furgot suthin' he couldn't
do without, like his breakfast, or a thimble, or his brains."
He went slowly and thoughtfully along the dank path, over which the
heavy long-tasselled grasses leaned. Pinks bordered it here, and anon
the jimson weed; again it was enlivened by the glow of a great red
rose, with the essence of summer in its fresh breath, as it swayed on
a long, full-leaved, thorny wand. This clutched at his coat, and as
he paused to disengage the cloth, he looked back at the house--the
mountain looming behind it, with a horizontal band of mist athwart the
slope; the little roof still dank and shining with dew; the tiny porch
all wreathed with vines that stretched a surplusage of their blooming
lengths across to the window; the little glassless square where the
batten shutter swung. Here it was, he thought, that Shattuck had stood,
knee-deep in the lush thick grass, when the shutter was closed, and
colors were null, and the black night gloomed, and she sang within
while he waited, and the moon rose all too soon! He turned and looked
at the gorge, as if he expected to see there the pearly disk amidst
the dark obscurements of the night-shadowed mountains. It was instead
a vista of many gleaming lights: the sunshine on the river, and the
differing lustre of the water in the shadow; the fine crystalline green
of the cataract, and the dazzling white of the foam and the spray; the
luminous azure of the far-away peaks, and the enamelled glister of the
blue sky--all showing between the gloomy, sombre ranges close at hand.
And while he still looked, he mounted the horse at the gate and rode
away.
XIV.
It was a fine sensation for the group of gossips that always seemed
an essential appurtenance to the blacksmith shop at the cross-roads
when, this bright morning, the sheriff of the county, an infrequent and
unfamiliar apparition, rode up to the open doors, and drew rein under
the branches of the overhanging oak-tree. So broadly spreading were
these branches that not even the diminishing shadow, ever waning as the
day waxed on to noon, had bereft the space beneath of its gray-green
gloom and its sense of dew. A wagon, one wheel lying tire-less on the
ground, and a stout stave lashed crutch-like in its place, stood near
by in the full yellow glare, with a reduced cartoon of itself, sadly
out of drawing, on the sand beneath it, supplemented by a caricature
of two men who sat upon its pole. The interior of the shop looked
dark and cool, and the blacksmith's father, bareheaded and in his
shirt-sleeves in a rickety chair by the door, caught the softening
effect of its twilight in his aged and minutely wrinkled face. Two or
three dim figures were indistinct within; upon a bench outside a couple
of loafers smoked, while still another utilized as a seat the roots of
the tree. The shadow of its foliage played on the clapboards of the
roof, long ago broken here and there, and still unmended, for the rain
and the snow were welcome to wreak their worst, drizzling through upon
the republican simplicity of the "dirt floor" within. Hardly a curl
of smoke ascended from the chimney, and as the officer cast his eye
along the two red clay winding roads, both of a most irresponsible and
vagrant-like aspect, as if they had no goal in expectation, there was
no other sign of habitation in sight; the woods closed in, limiting the
prospect; here and there mountains rose, seeming, as always, nearer
than reality warrants; and it was a most sequestered, slumberous spot
to which the sheriff had betaken his brisk individuality and the
energetic potentiality of his official presence.
So welcome a break in the monotony had not occurred for many a day. A
sentiment of gratitude merely for his company pervaded the by-standers.
They looked for no developments more striking than the detail of the
ordinary news from the town, some good-natured raillery back and forth,
and the intimation of his errand, which perchance might touch the
summoning of jurors or witnesses in some of the more remote districts
of his bailiwick; and each idler was devoutly glad that the allurements
of plough and harrow and hoe had not availed to keep him at work and
at home on this momentous occasion, which might not be duplicated for
months. But when the officer's hard face and unsmiling eyes betokened
the more serious import of his visit, there ran through the assembly a
keen thrill of curiosity and expectancy.
The sheriff, not perhaps all indifferent to the flutter his advent
roused, flung the reins over his horse's head and dismounted.
"News?" He echoed the question that had been coupled with the
salutation, and glanced loweringly about. "News enough. _Murder!_"
He spoke the word with a melodramatic unction, dropping his voice. He
was a tall, well-built man, of a large frame, implying bone and muscle
rather than fat, and promising most stalwart possibilities; and if the
somewhat imposing strut, which was his favorite method of locomotion,
savored of pride, it also invited attention to the many reasons which
had justified him in indulging that sentiment. He turned with the
blacksmith to the eager examination of the hoof of his horse which had
cast a shoe, and was going a trifle lame. As the smith, this colloquy
over, set about repairing the disaster, the officer, taking off his
hat, lent himself with an air of consideration to heed the clamorous
inquiries.
"It's a tough job, an' I ain't s'prised if I have you all on a posse
'fore night." He shook his head with serious intimations as he seated
himself on an empty inverted barrel just outside the door. "Ye,
Phineas!" he broke off, admonishing the smith, who had paused in paring
the horse's hoof, which he held between his knees upon his leather
apron, his stooping posture unchanged, his bushy eyebrows lifted as he
looked up from under them in expectant curiosity at the officer. "_Ye_
jes' _perceed_ with yer rat-killin'. I'm in a hurry ter git away from
hyar! An' I'm a-goin' ter ketch them buzzardy rascals, ef I hev ter go
ter Texas." He nodded with the word as if he expressed the limits of
the known globe.
"I'll be bound ye do, sher'ff!" cried the blacksmith's father, with an
eagerness to bring himself to the great man's notice and impress his
own importance--a characteristic of local magnates other than rural.
He had seized upon the first opportunity, and thus the matter of his
speech was less cogent than he would fain have had it. "Ye needn't be
borryin' trouble thinkin' they air hid well. Town-folks git out'n thar
depth mighty quick whenst they take ter the mountings. I be a old man
now, turned sixty, an' I hev knowed a power o' sher'ffs, through not
many bein' re-'lected, an' they don't hev no trouble ketchin' town
malefactors ez takes ter the woods."
The sheriff bent his eyes upon the toe of his big spurred boot as his
long leg swung it before him. A sarcastic smile curved his shaven
lips. It seemed for a moment as if he would not speak. Then, with that
respect for the old so habitually shown among the mountaineers, he
said, "These are mounting folks--mounting folks, Mr. Bakewell."
The smith dropped the horse's hoof, the knife clattering upon the
ground, and straightened his bent back. "In the name o' goodness," he
cried, overcome with curiosity, "_who_ hev been kilt?"
The sheriff, albeit his enjoyment of the frenzied interest of which he
was the centre showed in every line of his gloomy, important face, was
dominated by his official conscience. He pointed to the implement on
the ground.
"Pick up that thar contraption an' _go to work_," he said, sternly.
"Gimme a horse ter ride on, or the law will take arter _you_, with a
sharp stick, too."
The smith bent down to his work once more, his eyes fixed,
nevertheless, on the officer's face instead of the hoof between his
knees; the horse turned slowly his head, and looked back with evident
surprise at these dallying and unprecedented proceedings.
The sheriff resumed: "Mounting men, 'cordin' ter the _ante_-mortem
statement."
"Air--air he _dead_?" said one of the men on the wagon pole, leaning
suddenly forward.
"Persumed ter be, hevin' been buried," replied the officer, his
sarcastic mien unchecked now by the mandates of decorum.
"Mighty fool ter run agin the mounting folks, hey?" said the old man,
reflectively rubbing his pointed chin, and with the air of tempering
his regrets, as if he thought that, with this foolhardy temerity, the
blood of the unknown was presumably upon his own head.
"He war a-travellin' peaceable along the road," said the sheriff,
suddenly entering upon the pleasure of narrative; "bound fur the
Spondulix Silver Mine, on the t'other side o' Big Injun Mounting. An'
the weather bein' so durned hot, an' the moon nigh the full, he rid
at night, like mos' folks do, ye know, the road bein' no lonesomer
sca'cely 'n by day, an' he hed fire-arms. And he hed suthin' else; he
hed 'bout fifteen hundred dollars ter kerry, ez nobody but the head men
o' the mine an' him knowed 'bout. Thar's the riddle of it!" He paused,
the lids drooping meditatively over his thoughtful eyes as if he sought
to pierce the mystery.
"Fifteen hundred dollars!" exclaimed the old man, as if he could hardly
credit the existence of so many in company; he had seen few of this
welcome denomination at a time. His look, unguarded for the moment,
implied suspicion that the sheriff was drawing the long-bow.
"'Twar ter pay off the hands an' some o' the expenses o' the gear an'
sech--they war behindhand some," continued the sheriff. "Thar ain't no
express nor railroad nor nuthin', 'ceptin' jes' the mail-rider, an'
they 'lowed 'twar safer in this man's hands, special ez they 'lowed ez
nobody knowed nuthin' 'bout it, 'ceptin' him an' them. Mus' hev got
out somehows, though." He lifted his eyes, scanning each of the group
in turn as if to note the impression. "Fur he 'lowed he rid along
feelin' ez free an' favored ez ef 'twar broad daylight, an' his horse
travelled well, an' didn't feel the weather none, an' though he war a
stranger ter the kentry, he never thunk o' sech a thing ez danger till
he got 'bout two mile past Doctor Ganey's house; he war on the top o'
a hill, a-beginnin' ter go down, an' the moon war ez bright ez day,
an' him a-whistlin' of a dancin' chune, whenst he tuk up a notion ez
thar war suthin' movin' down in the road on the level; sorter 'peared
ter him one minit 'twar men, an' the nex' minit he 'lowed 'twar jes'
the wind in a pack o' bushes--sumach an' blackberries an' such--ter
one side o' the road. He halted fur a minit, an' didn't see nuthin',
nor hear nuthin'; so he rid on, an' whenst he reached the levels thar
started up in the midst o' the road--he 'lowed it 'peared ter him ez
hell hed spewed 'em out all of a suddenty, fur he couldn't see _whar_
they kem from--a gang o' 'bout half a dozen mounting fellers. He 'lowed
he hed never seen 'em afore, an' they didn't know him, fur they called
him 'stranger.' Every man pursented a pistol at him, an' look whar
he would, 'twar down a muzzle. But they war all a-laffin' at him, an'
purtendin' not ter be so fur on the cold side o' friendly; they kep'
callin' out, claimin' his horse, 'lowin' he hed stole it from them, an'
tellin' him he hed ter gin it up, an' march afoot, an' grinnin', an'
axin' him ef he didn't know they hung horse-thieves, an' sayin' they
war a-goin' ter make him git down on his knees an' thank them fur his
life; an' he war a-declarin' an' a-protesting an' though he had drawed
his pistol, he hadn't fired it. An' ez they war a-tryin' ter pull him
out'n the saddle, one sly rascal cut the girth, an' an idee kem ter him
ez the whole consarn lurched; he slipped his feet out'n the stirrups,
an' let saddle an' saddle-bags drap ter the ground, fur he 'lowed they
meant ter kill him, sure, an' that way he got loosed fur a second, an'
in that second he whirled his horse round an' galloped along the road,
leadin' the gang that fired arter him at every jump. One bullet went
through his lung--lef' lung I b'lieve Doctor Ganey say. I ain't sure
now whether 'twar lef', or right, or middle, or what not; leastwise
Doctor Ganey pulled a tur'ble long face whenst the man had eluded the
horse-thieves an' got inter his hands."
"Dun'no' which war the fryin'-pan an' which war the fire, myself,"
commented old Bakewell.
"But he tole the man at fust he wouldn't die," continued the sheriff.
"But I could hev tole him he would whenst he called Doctor Ganey,"
chuckled the sexagenarian.
The officer looked somewhat surprised, for the "valley folks" thought a
trifle better of science expressed in drugs than did the mountaineers,
who presumed them to be the spontaneous production of the apothecary
shop, and thus opposed to nature, expressed in herbs. He was, however,
country-bred, hailing originally from one of the mountain spurs, and
had been transplanted to the town only by the repeated success of his
political schemes, resulting in his election to the office of sheriff
on more than one occasion. The rural standpoint medically was thus
perfectly comprehensible to him; and, being in full health, entirely
independent of aught that Doctor Ganey might or might not know, he
himself leaned to facile disparagement.
"Folks in Colbury 'lowed Doctor Ganey ought not ter hev let him be
brung ter town nex' day in the cool o' the mornin' on a spring bed an'
in a spring wagon; though he war turrible anxious ter be sure ter make
a ante-mortem statement; the robbers hed got the saddle-bags an' money,
ye see, an' he didn't want folks ter think 'twar him ez stole it."
There was a momentary pause, broken only by the sharp staccato sound
of the hammer within the shop, beating into shape the shoe that must
be fitted to the hoof; the horse outside turned his glossy neck,
holding up the unshod hind foot a trifle from the ground, and looked
through the door into the dark interior of the forge, where the
smith's figure was to be dimly discerned in the scanty flicker of
the smouldering fire; the animal watched the process with a definite
anxiety and interest that seemed to bespeak a desire to superintend
its proper performance. His resignation to human guidance evidently
arose more from the constraint of circumstance than reliance on man's
superior wisdom. More than once the blacksmith stopped to listen,
and afterward the matters at the forge went awry; outside one could
hear him muttering surly comments upon the inanimate appurtenances,
especially when he dropped the hot iron once in taking it from the
coals, letting it slip through the inadequate grasp of the tongs, and
requested it to go to a hotter place even than the fire, and there to
be infinitely and inimitably "dad-burned." All of which had as little
effect as such objurgations usually do upon the insensate offender; but
the ebullitions seemed to serve, like thunder, to clear the atmosphere,
and to enable the smith better to resign himself to the terrible
deprivation of the sheriff's talk, lost in the reverberations of his
own hammer and the sibilant singing of the anvil.
Outside, the sound hardly impinged upon the privilege of conversation.
The sheriff's lip was curling; he hastily shifted one leg over the
other, and this posture enabled him to eye the toe of his boot,
with which he seemed to have confidences in some sort, reverting
to it in moments when at a loss, as if its contemplation in some
incomprehensible way refreshed his memory.
"Waal, the bosses o' the consarn--shucks! mighty knowin' cusses--they
_would_ hev it 'twar some folks down yander neighborin' the mines. I
won't say who, and I won't say what," he interpolated, with a sudden
recollection of a seemly official reticence; "but ez 'twar thought the
man wouldn't die, an' all war keen ter git holt o' the money agin, I
hed ter go fust an' air thar s'picions, ez arter a-chasin' an' a-racin'
an' keepin' secret an' mighty dark turned out nuthin' at all. Fust one
man an' then t'other showed up in a different place that night. Every
one! I lef' word with my dep'ty, Ben Boker, who 'twas _I_ wanted looked
arter, an' he tuk sick with the bilious fever the very day I lef', an'
air a-bed yit; so I hev got behindhand with this job, an' I hope the
folks won't lay it up agin me."
"Waal," said the old man, leaning forward, his hard hands clasped, a
smile upon his wrinkled face, a slender sunbeam sifting through the
boughs of the oak-tree, touching the thick tufts of gray hair on his
brow, and brightening them to a whiter lustre, "I'll be bound old
man Ganey warn't behindhand with _his_ job," and he lifted his heavy
eyebrows and chuckled softly.
"Naw, sir," said the officer, respectfully. "The doctor's job tuk off
day before yestiddy mornin' 'fore daybreak. The doctor 'lowed ef he
could make sunup he mought last through till evenin'. But he had seen
his las' sunrise."
"Ez ef Dr. Ganey knowed sech," exclaimed the old man. "He 'pears ter
me ez ef his foolishness grows on him. Ye'll die whenst yer time kems,
an' it'll kem mighty quick ef ye hev in Ganey. An' yit," with a nodding
head and narrowing eyes, "thar be them ez fairly pins thar hopes o'
salvation on ter the wisdom, that air foolishness, o' that old consarn.
Thar's a valley man, Shattuck, ez hev been 'bidin' fur a while with Len
Rhodes in the cove, a-holpin' him 'lectioneer, an' whenst Len fell down
a-dancin'--mus' hev been drunk--at the Pettingill infair, an' seemed
ter bump his head a passel, an' shed some blood, nuthin' would do this
Shattuck but Ganey mus' be sent fur. He threatened old man Pettingill
with the gallus ef Rhodes should die."
"Old Zack Pettingill! Why, he's one of my _bes'_ friends, an' a
better man never lived," interrupted the officer, although he lent an
attentive ear, for Rhodes was of the opposite party, and the sheriff
was a candidate for re-election.
"Yes, sir"--the old man redoubled his emphasis--"though Phil Craig
war in the house a-bathin' the wounds an' a-bindin' 'em up with yerbs
ter take the soreness out. An' ef ye'll b'lieve me he cavorted so ez
old Zack Pettingill, though an obstinate old sinner, hed ter gin up,
an' put Steve Yates on his bes' horse, an' send seventeen miles fur
Ganey. It all 'peared so onreasonable an' so all-fired redic'lous ez I
couldn't holp but b'lieve ez this hyar Shattuck hed some yerrand o' his
own ter send Yates on, special ez Dr. Ganey never kem."
"P'litical bizness--bribery an' sech," suggested the sheriff,
acrimoniously, for each man was phenomenally eager for the success of
the whole ticket. So closely were the opposing factions matched, so
high ran party spirit in this section, that his own candidacy, albeit
for a far different office, made him in some sort Rhodes's opponent.
"Mought hev been electioneerin'. I hev always 'lowed, though, whenst ye
fund out whar Steve Yates be now, ye'll find out what Shattuck sent him
fur, though some say Yates jes' hed a quar'l with his wife, an' hed run
away from her."
The officer's color suddenly changed; it beat hot in his bronzed
cheeks; it seemed even to deepen in his eyes, that were of too light a
tint ordinarily. He pushed his hat back from his brow, where the beads
of perspiration had started in the roots of his brown hair.
"Hain't Yates kem back yet?" he asked, breathlessly.
"Hide nor hair hev been seen o' him since that night."
"What night?" demanded the officer.
"Night o' the Pettingill infair, o' course," rejoined the old man,
tartly; "an' that war the second day o' July--a Friday it war; they
oughter hev got the weddin' over 'fore Friday. Them young folks can't
expec' no luck."
"They can't hev none worse'n they _hev_ hed, 'cordin' ter my view,
a-marryin' one another. The Lord's been toler'ble hard on 'em a'ready,
I'm thinkin'."
This observation came from one of the men perched on the pole of
the broken wagon, reputed to be a rejected suitor of the bride, and
a defeated rival of the groom. The opportunity for the ridicule of
sentimental woe in which the rustic delights was too good to be lost,
and under the cloak of the raillery the sheriff unobtrusively drew out
a note-book and casually referred to it. The night of the second of
July--a Friday night--the agent of the Spondulix Mine was waylaid by
horse-thieves, lost his saddle and the treasure in his saddle-bags in
the fracas, and received in his flight such wounds that he died thereof
within a few weeks. The officer had closed the book and returned it to
his pocket before the attention of the party had reverted to him anew.
"What sorter man air this hyar Shattuck?" he asked, casually, as he
held a huge plug of tobacco between his teeth, from which he gnawed,
with an admirable display of energy, a fragment for present use. "What
sorter man?"
"Waal," said old Bakewell, narrowing his eyes and pursing his mouth
critically, as he glanced absently down at a brilliant patch of
sunshine, gilded and yellow in the midst of the dark olive-green shadow
of the oak-tree, "I dun'no' what ter say 'bout'n a man ez goes roun'
payin' folks ter dig in Injun mounds fur a lot o' bowls an' jars an'
sech like, whenst fur the money he could buy better ones right down
yander at the store."
The officer had faced about on the barrel and sat bolt-upright, a hand
on either knee, his amazement looking alertly out of his light-gray
eyes.
"He hev quit that, though, lately," the smith struck in, dropping the
hoof to which he had tentatively applied the shoe and standing still,
half supporting himself with his hand on the shoulder of the animal,
who once more turned his head with a slow, deprecatory motion, and
gazed back upon the displeasing and seemingly incompetent doings of
this dilatory workman. "Baker Anderson--he's a half-grown boy ez hev
been 'bidin' at Mis' Yates's of a night ter keer fur the house agin
lawless ones an' sech--he kem hyar this mornin' ter git his plough
sharpened, an' he 'lows ez this hyar Shattuck say he wants ter dig up
the bones of the Leetle People, buried nigh the ruver on Fee Guthrie's
lan'. An' Steve favored it; but Mis' Yates 'lowed she'd shoot him ef he
tampered with the Leetle People's bones, an' Baker 'lows ez that war
why Steve lef' her."
"The Leetle People!" echoed the sheriff in a dazed tone, as if he
hardly believed his ears.
"Lord A'mighty, Tawmmy Carew! Hain't ye never heard 'bout a lot o'
small-sized people, no bigger'n chil'n, ez hed this kentry 'fore the
Injun kem--'bout the time o' the flood, I reckon." Old Bakewell hardily
hazarded this speculation, which had about as much justification
of probability as the conclusions of many other scientists of more
pretensions. "Hev ye got yer growth ez a man, an' lived ter be 'lected
sher'ff o' the county, an' ter thrive on the hope o' bein' 'lected
agin, an' _yit_ air ez green ez a gourd?--so green ez never ter hev
hearn tell o' the Leetle Stranger People?" demanded the old man,
scornfully.
Thus adjured, the sheriff, for his credit's sake, was fain to refresh
his memory. "'Pears like I useter know some sech old tale ez that,
but I had nigh forgot it," he said, mendaciously, the lie staring
irrepressibly out of his widely opened, astonished eyes. "I never
'lowed it war true."
"But it _air_ true," said the smith, the shoe and hammer hanging
listlessly in one hand, while the other, leaning heavily on the horse's
back, sufficed to transfer much of his weight to the animal. "They air
the nighest neighbors Mis' Yates hev got. An' though Steve an' this man
Shattuck agreed so mighty well, Mis' Yates couldn't abide the idee o'
diggin' up the Leetle People's bones, an' swore she'd shoot ennybody ez
tried it. An', by hokey"--with a sudden excitement in his eyes--"she
_done_ it! Las' night, Baker say, this man an' Rhodes war thar in the
pig buryin'-ground--he calls them humans 'pigs'--an' she gin 'em two
toler'ble fair shots. Shoots toler'ble well fur a 'oman. Baker say the
bullet cut through Shattuck's hair good fashion."
"Waal, that's agin the law," said the sheriff, with his bitter,
implacable official expression; "assault with intent to kill."
"Oh, shet up, Tawmmy," the old man admonished him from the
vantage-ground of his age and experience. "What else air fire-arms
manufactured fur?"
Beyond this cogent reasoning "Tawmmy's" speculation could not go.
Nevertheless, he was sworn to administer the law, albeit thrice proven
a foolish device of fools, and his brow did not relax. It was with
a dark frown, indeed, that he contemplated the mental image of Mrs.
Yates, because he felt that it behooved women so to order their walk
and conversation as to keep without the notice of the law, since
it was infinitely unpalatable to him to enforce it where they were
concerned, making him, rather than the culprit, the sufferer, and
forcing him to endure many unclassified phases and extremes of mental
anguish. He protested at times that they ought to be exempted from the
operations of the law. "They ain't got no reason, nohow," he gallantly
asseverated. "An' what sorter figure does a big man cut arrestin' a
leetle bit of a 'oman? An' no jury ain't goin' ter convict 'em, ef they
kin git around it, an' no jedge ain't goin' ter charge agin 'em, ef he
kin holp himself. The law jes' devils the sher'ff with 'em; _he_ hev
got ter go through all the motions fur nuthin'. They say Jedge Kinnear
air a out an' out 'oman's jedge. An' no man, even in civil cases, hev
got a chance agin enny 'oman or enny minor chil'n, gals 'specially, in
his court. Waal, now, _I'm_ a _man's_ sher'ff. An' I want the wimmin
an' chil'n ter keep out'n my way, an' I'll keep out'n theirn."
Shattuck, however, and especially as connected with Rhodes, offered a
prospect more in keeping with his professions and views of his office.
"What do he want ter dig up thar bones fur?" he demanded. "That air
agin the law, too."
"Fur the hist'ry o' the kentry, Baker say," the smith suggested; the
phrase seemed to have a sort of coherency that commended it generally.
But the sheriff shook his head. "I hev studied the history o' the
kentry," he asserted, capably. "I hev 'tended school, an' the Leetle
People hain't got nuthin' ter do with the hist'ry o' the kentry. I
read 'bout the Injun war, an' the Revolutionary war, an' the Mexican
war, an' this las' leetle war o' ourn, an' the Leetle People warn't in
_none_ of 'em."
He was silent for a moment, looking at the ground, his head tilted
askew, a wistful expression on his face, so did the mystery baffle him.
The light taps of the hammer sounding on the air as the smith drove
in the last nail were suddenly blended with the quick hoof-beats of a
galloping horse, and Guthrie, mounted on Cheever's famous roan, came
into view along the vista of the road, reining up under the tree as he
recognized the sheriff.
It was a scene remembered for many a day, reproduced as the preamble of
the fireside tale recited for years afterward by the by-standers. The
sheriff, standing with his hand on the forelock of the captive charger,
his head a trifle bent, listened with a languid competent smile as if
he had known before all that the horseman recounted; Guthrie himself,
pale from the loss of blood, his hair hanging upon his shoulders, his
face, so fierce, so austere, framed by his big black hat, his spurs
jingling on his high boots, his pistols and formidable knife in his
belt, began to take to their accustomed eyes the changed guise which
afterward attended his personality when they told of the part he
bore and of all that befell him. The only exclamations came from the
spectators, as they pressed close about the two restive horses. They
fell back amazed and impressed by the official coolness when all was
done, and the sheriff turned calmly aside.
"Come, Guthrie," he only said, "you may ride with me to-day."
And with this he put his foot in the stirrup.
[Illustration: "'COME, GUTHRIE,' HE ONLY SAID."]
XV.
The accuracy of Felix Guthrie's oft-vaunted aim was attested by two
ghastly objects that had exhaled life and found their doom in Crazy
Zeb's cell. In the presence of these dumb witnesses of the struggle,
lying surrounded by the charred and cold remnants of the fire, and
scattered hay and corn which the vanished horses had left, and shadowed
by the gloomy gray walls with their sinister resonance, the place
seemed charged with the tragedies of its associations, frightful to
contemplate, ill to linger about, and far removed from any possible
conjunction with the idea of mirth and the festivities which a greasy,
thickened pack of cards strewed about the two bodies, and a flask,
broken by its fall on the rock, but still containing whiskey, might
betoken. The chilly vault opened upon the serene splendors of the
infinitely pellucid sunshine that glowed to midsummer warmth. Had ever
the sky worn so dense, so keen, so clear a blue? It discredited the
azure of the far western mountains, and marked how the material, even
attenuated by distance to the guise of the veriest vapor, fails of the
true ethereal tint of the ambient spaces of the air. The birds sang
from the sun-flooded trees just beneath the cliff--so limpidly sweet
the tones!--and within were two men dead in their sins, in this drear
place that had known woe.
Death is not easily predicable of those of a common household, and in
this scantily populated region the sense of community is close. There
were some involuntary exclamations from the posse upon the recognition
of the malefactors, implying a sense of catastrophe and regret;
especially for one of them, a young man with the down on his lips, his
face and posture contorted with the agony long endured while he had
lain here deserted in the darkness of the night, lighted only by the
mystic moon, beside the stark figure of his comrade, who had been shot
through the heart, dying in the space of a second.
"Lordy massy 'pon my soul, ef hyar ain't Benjy Swasey! What a turrible
time he mus' hev hed afore he tuk off!" cried old Bakewell, his pallid
face aquiver, and his voice faltering as he bent over the recumbent
form.
The sight and the circumstance failed to affect the official nerve of
the sheriff. "Now this is plumb satisfactory," he remarked. "I never
expected ter see Buck Cheever in this fix. I 'lowed the devil takes
too good care o' his own. It's mighty satisfactory. I hed planned," he
added, as he looked about at the high roof and the inaccessible depths
below, "that I'd blow up this place some with giant powder or sech; but
I reckon I hed better let it be--it does lead the evil-doer ter sech a
bad end!"
But the old man still leaned with a pitiful corrugated brow over
the lifeless figure. Age had made his heart tender, and he chose to
disregard the logic that spoke from the muzzles of Swasey's discharged
pistols, one lying close by, and from Cheever's bloody knife still held
in the stiffened clasp of the hand that had wielded it. "Fee," he
said, tremulously, "ye shoot _too_ straight."
And Guthrie, his hand meditatively laid on his chin, and his eyes
staring absently forward as if they beheld more or less than was before
them, replied, "That's a true word, I reckon."
The air freighted with tragedy, with all the ultimate anguish of life
and sin and death, seemed to receive with a sort of shock the sheriff's
gay rallying laughter as he clapped Guthrie's shoulder.
"Then, Fee, my fine young rooster, ef ye hedn't shot straight I'd be
a-sendin' fur the coroner ter kem an' set on _you_!"
"'Pears ter me," said the blacksmith, who still had on his leather
apron, having forgotten, in the excitement, to lay it aside, and gazing
with dilated eyes at the blood stains on the rock floor--"'pears ter me
he'd hev a mighty oneasy seat on Fee, dead or alive."
The sheriff's jaunty jubilance, in that the lawbreakers had been so
smartly overtaken, attended him through the woods and down the road,
as he cantered at the head of his posse, all armed and jingling with
spurs--a cavalcade both imposing and awful to the few spectators which
the sparsely populated country could muster, summoned out from the
cabins by the sound of galloping horses and the loud-pitched talk.
The elders stood and stared; tow-headed children, peeping through the
lower rails of the fence, received a salutary impression, and beheld,
as it were, the majesty of the law, materialized in this gallant style,
riding forth to maintain its supremacy. Only the dogs were unreceptive
to the subtler significance of the unwonted apparition, evidently
accounting it merely a gang of men, and, according to the disposition
of the individual animal, either accepting the fact quietly, with
affably wagging tail, or plunging into the road in frenzied excitement,
and with yelps and defiant barking pursuing the party out of sight of
the house, then trotting home with a triumphant mien. The tragedy that
the posse had found in Crazy Zeb's cell lingered still in the minds of
two or three of the horsemen, their silence and gloomy, downcast faces
betokening its influence; but the others instinctively sought to cast
it off, and the effort was aided by the sunshine, the quick pace, the
briskening wind, and the cheery companionship of the officer. He seemed
to have no receptivity for the sorrowful aspects of the event, and his
spirits showed no signs of flagging until he drew rein at the door-yard
of one of the escaped robbers with whose names Guthrie had furnished
him.
"'Ain't he got no sort'n _men_ kin-folks?" he asked, his cheery,
resonant voice hardly recognizable in the querulous whine with which he
now spoke. "Lord have mercy on my soul! _how_ am I a-goin' ter make out
a-catechisin' the man's wife an' mother 'bout'n him! _Git_ off'n yer
horse thar, Jim. 'Light, I tell ye, an' kem along in the house with me
ter holp bolster me up."
In several of these doomed households the forlorn women, in their grief
and despair, turned fierce and wielded a biting tongue; and as the
hapless officer showed an infinite capacity for anxious deprecation,
their guarded sarcasms waxed to a vindictive temerity. Among them he
was greatly harassed, and more than once he was violently threatened.
Indeed, one old crone rose tremulously up in the chimney-corner as he
sat before the fire, after searching the premises, keenly questioning
the younger members of the family, and with her tremulous, aged palm
she smote him twice in the face. He sat quite still, although the color
mounted to the roots of his hair, while her children in frantic fear
besought her to desist.
"Lord knows, Mis' Derridge," he said, looking meekly at her, "I'd be
willin' fur ye ter take a hickory sprout an' gin me a reg'lar whalin'
ef 'twould mend the matter enny, or make yer son Josiah a diff'ent man
from what he hev turned out. I reckon ye oughter hev gin _him_ a tap or
two more'n ye done. But ef it eases yer feelin's ter pitch inter me,
jes' pitch in, an' welcome! I don't wonder at ye, nuther."
She stared at him irresolutely from out her bleared eyes, then burst
into that weeping so terrible to witness in the aged, bewailing that
she had ever lived to see the day, and calling futilely on Heaven to
turn the time back that she might be dead ten years ago, and upbraiding
the earth that so long it had grudged her a grave.
The officer found it hard after this scene to lay hold on his own bold
identity again, and he had naught to say when he got on his horse and
rode away. It became possible to reassert himself and his office only
when he chanced upon a household where there were men and boys. There
he raged around in fine style, and frowned and swore and threatened,
every creature trembling before the very sound of his voice. Thus he
made restitution in some sort to the terrors of the law, defrauded by
his former weakness of their wonted fierce effectiveness.
The afternoon was on the wane, and no captures had been made; the
cavalcade was about turning from the door of a house--it was the last
to be visited, the most distant of all--a poor place, perched high
up on the rugged slope of the mountain, with a vast forest below it
and on either hand, from the midst of which it looked upon a splendid
affluent territory seeming infinite in extent. Peak and range, valley
and river, were all in the sunset tints--purple and saffron and a
suffusive blood-red flush, all softened and commingled by the haze;
and above, the rich yellow lucency of the crystalline skies. A lateral
spur was in the immediate foreground, high, steep, and heavily wooded,
the monotony of the deep, restful green of its slopes broken here and
there by vertical lines of gleaming white, betokening the trunks of the
beech-trees amidst the dark preponderance of walnut and pine; more than
one hung, all bleached and leafless, head downward, half uprooted, for
thus the wind, past this long time, left trace of its fury. A stream--a
native mountaineer, wild and free and strong--took its way down the
gorge between the spur and the mountain from which it shot forth. From
the door-yard might be had a view of a section of its course, the water
flowing in smooth scroll-like swirls from the centre to the bank, and
thence out again, the idea of a certain symmetry of the current thus
suggested in linear grace--all crystal clear, now a jade-like green,
and again the brownish yellow of a topaz, save where the rapids flung
up a sudden commotion of white foam that seemed all alive, as if some
submerged amphibian gambollings made the depths joyous. The crags stood
out distinct on either hand, with here and there a flower sweetly
smiling in a niche, like some unexpected tenderness in a savage heart.
All was very fresh, very keenly and clearly colored; the weeds, rank
and high, sent up a rich aromatic odor.
The officer, for years a farmer, and alive to all weather signs, hardly
needed a second glance at the clear tint of the vigorous mould of the
door-yard beneath his feet to know that it had rained here lately.
"The drought in town ain't bruk yit," he said, half enviously--a mere
habit, for he had now no crops to suffer from stress of weather. Here
there had been copious storms, with thunder and lightning, gracious to
the corn and the cotton, and not disdaining the humbler growths of the
wayside, the spontaneous joyance of nature. The torrents had fallen
in a decisive rhythm; the ground was beaten hard; the rails of the
fence looked dark and clean; the wasp nests and the cobwebs were torn
away--alack for the patient weavings!--the roof of the little cabin was
still sleek, and shining. As he turned on his heel he marked how the
new-built hay-stacks were already weathering, all streaked with brown.
He had searched the little barn whose roof showed behind the
hay-stacks, but as he glanced toward it, in the mere relapse of bucolic
sentiment, he became vaguely aware of an intent watchfulness in the
lantern-jawed and haggard woman of the house, who had followed him and
his party to the fence, in hospitality, it might seem, or to see them
safely off the place. The reflection of her look--it was but a look,
and he did not realize it then; he remembered it afterward--was in the
eyes of a tallow-faced, shock-headed girl of ten. His own eyes paused
in disparagement upon her; the hem of her cotton dress was tattered
out and hung down about her bare ankles, all stained with red clay
mud. There were straws clinging to her attire, and here and there in
her tousled red hair. He was no precisian, to be sure, but her unkempt
aspect grated upon him; these were truly shiftless folks, and had a
full measure of his contempt, which he felt they richly merited; and
so he turned once more to the fence, facing the great yellow sky, and
the purple and amber and red flushed world stretching so far below.
A little clatter at the bars where the posse prepared to mount and
ride away was pronounced in the deep evening stillness; the cry of
a homeward-bound hawk drifted down as with the sunset on his swift
wings he swept above the abysses of the valley; and then the sheriff,
stepping over the lower rail, the others lying on the ground, paused
suddenly, his hand upon the fence, his face lifted. A strange new sound
was on the air, a raucous voice muttering incoherently--muttering a few
words, then sinking to silence.
Carew looked quickly at the woman. Her face had stiffened; it hardly
seemed alive; it was as inanimate as a mask, some doleful caricature
of humanity and sorrow, forlornly unmoving, with no trace of beauty
or intelligence to hallow it; she might seem to have no endowment
in common with others of her kind, save the capacity to suffer. The
child's face reflected hers as in a mirror. The same feeble, pitiable
affectation of surprise was on each when the sheriff exclaimed,
suddenly, "What's that?"
The men outside of the fence paused in the instant, as if a sudden
petrifaction had fallen upon the group--one was arrested in the
moment of tightening a saddle-girth; another was poised midway, one
foot in the stirrup, the other just lifted from the ground; two or
three, already mounted, sat like equestrian statues, their figures
in high-relief against the broad fields of the western sky above the
mountain-tops. Once a horse bent down his head and tossed it aloft and
pawed the ground; and again the silence was unbroken, till there arose
anew that strangely keyed, incoherent babbling. There was an abrupt
rush in the direction whence the sound came, for it was distinct this
time. The forlorn woman and girl were soon distanced, as they followed
upon the strides of the stalwart sheriff. He ran fast and lightly,
with an agility which his wonted pompous strut hardly promised. He
was at the barn door and half-way up the ladder leading into the loft
before his slower comrades could cross the yard. When they reached the
barn the woman was standing in the space below the loft, her face set,
her eyes restless and dilated; her self-control gave way at last to a
sudden trivial irritation, incongruous with the despair and grief in
her fixed lineaments.
"Quit taggin' arter me!" she cried out, huskily, to the tattered little
girl, who, in tears and trembling with wild fright, hung upon her
skirts.
The sheriff at the head of the ladder seemed, impossibly enough, to
be tearing down the wall of the building. He had a hatchet in one
hand; he used the handle of his pistol for a wedge, and presently the
men, peering up into the dusky shadow, understood that he was plucking
down the boards of a partition that, flimsy as it was, had seemed to
them the outer wall when they had searched the place. Within was a
space only two feet wide perhaps, but as long as the gable end. Upon
a heap of straw lay a man, wounded, fevered, wild with delirium. He
had no sense of danger; he could realize no calamity of capture; his
hot, rolling, bloodshot eyes conveyed no correlative impression to
his disordered brain of the figures he beheld before him. He talked
on, unnoting the cluster of men as they pressed about him in the dust
that rose from the riven boards, and gazed down wide-eyed at him. The
only light came in through the crevices of roof and wall, but these
were many. It served amply for his recognition, if more evidence had
been needed than the fact of his home and the careful concealment,
and it showed the attitudes of his captors as they looked around the
thrice-searched place--at the hay that they had tossed about, the piles
of corn they had rolled down, the odds and ends of plough gear and
broken household utensils in one corner that they had ransacked. More
than one commented, with a sort of extorted admiration, upon the craft
that had so nearly foiled them. The triumphant figure of the sheriff
was the focus of the shadowy group, easily differentiated by his air of
arrogantly pluming himself; one might hardly have noticed the frowzy
shock of hair and the pale face of the little girl protruding through
the aperture in the floor, for she had climbed the ladder, and with a
decapitated effect gazed around from the level of the puncheons.
It was a forlorn illustration of the universal affections of our
common human nature that this apparition should be potent to annul the
mists of a wavering mind, and to summon right reason in delirium. The
thick-tongued, inarticulate muttering ceased for a moment; a dazed
smile of recognition was on the unkempt, bearded face of the wounded
man.
"Bet on Maggie!" he said, quite plainly. "She kin climb like a cat. She
kin drive a nail like a man! Takes a heap ter git ahead o' Maggie!"
And then his head began to loll from shoulder to shoulder, and the look
of recognition was gone from his face. He was now and again lifting his
hands as if in argument or entreaty, and once more muttering with a
thick, inarticulate tongue.
The sheriff glanced at a twisted nail in his hand, then down at the
decapitated Maggie.
"Did you holp do this hyar job?" he asked.
The child hesitated; the law seemed on her track. "I druv the top
nails," she piped out at last. Then, with a whimper, "Mam couldn't
climb along the beam fur head-swimmin', so I clomb the beam an druv the
top nails," she concluded, with a weak, quavering whine.
He looked down with a tolerant eye at the unprepossessing countenance.
"Smart gal!" he exclaimed, unexpectedly; "a mighty smart gal! An' a
good one too, I'll be bound! Ye jes' run down yander ter the house,
sissy, an' fix the bed fur yer dad, fur we air goin' ter fetch him down
right now."
She stared at him with dumb amazement for a moment, then turning her
little body about with agility, her tousled shock of hair and her
pallid little face vanished from the opening in the floor.
The appearance there of an armed party of rescuers could hardly have
been more unwelcome, and the sheriff breathed freely when she was at
last gone.
He lifted his head presently, glancing questioningly about the
darkening place, for the irregular spaces of the crevices gave now only
a dim fragmentary glimmer. He turned, as if with a sudden thought,
took his way down the ladder and stood in the door, slipping the
pistol into his pocket, and looking out with a lowering, disaffected
eye. In that short interval within the barn all the world had
changed; the flaring sky had faded, and was of a dull gray tint, too
pallid to furnish relief to the coming of the stars, which were only
visible here and there in a vague scintillation, colorless too. The
gloom of the darkling mountains oppressed the spirit, something so
immeasurably mournful was in their sombre, silent, brooding immensity.
The indubitable night lay on the undistinguishable valley as if the
darkness rose from the earth rather than came from the sky; only about
the summits the day seemed to tarry. Many a vibrant note was tuning in
the woods; for the nocturnal insects, and the frogs by the water-side,
and vague, sibilant, undiscriminated sounds, joined in a twanging,
melancholy chorus that somehow accented the loneliness.
"Waal, night hev overtook us," the sheriff remarked to Felix Guthrie,
who had joined him at the door. Then, with gathering acerbity, "'Pears
like ter me ef Providence lays ez much work on a man ez I hev got ter
do, he ought ter hev daylight enough left him ter git through with it,
or else hev a moon allowed him ter work by."
Guthrie said nothing, but stood solemnly watching the darkening face of
the landscape.
"We air roosted up hyar fur all night, Fee," Carew continued, in a tone
that was a querulous demand for sympathy. "We could sca'cely make out
ter git up that thar outdacious, steep, rocky road in the daytime; ef
we war ter try it in the pitch-dark with a bed-ridden prisoner, the
whole posse, prisoner an 'all, would bodaciously roll over the rocks
into some o' them gorges ez look ter be deep ez hell!" He paused for
a moment, his light-gray eyes narrowing. "I could spare the posse
toler'ble well, but I could in no wise git along 'thout the prisoner."
A secret twinkling that lighted his eyes seemed communicated in some
sort to his lips, which twitched suddenly, as if suppressing a laugh.
Fee Guthrie's face wore no responsive gleam. He stood gruffly silent
for a time, his gaze fixed uncomprehendingly upon the sheriff. "Air
thar ennything ter hender yer stayin' all night?" he asked at last.
The officer hesitated, then moved nearer, and laid his hand
confidentially upon his companion's shoulder, among the ends of his
flaunting, tawny curls.
"Fee," he said, lowering his voice, and with a very definite accession
of gravity and anxiety, "I hev made a mistake--a large-sized one--about
the build o' that man Shattuck."
Guthrie's immobile, unfriendly face changed suddenly. There was a
slight quiver upon it, which passed in an instant, leaving it softened
and wistful and anxious. He knew naught of the officer's suspicions
touching Shattuck; he only knew that this man had lingered without
the window to hear Letitia sing, while he waited for the moon to rise
in the great rocky gorge of the river. It seemed to Guthrie that the
very suggestion of her name would have a power over him, that it would
stir him if he were dead, if he shared the long death in which the
Little People lay and waited for their summons to rise again. And
somehow the thought of them, silent, motionless, undisturbed in their
long, long abeyance, brought a qualm of remorse. "I ought not ter hev
gin my cornsent ter open one of thar coffins," he reflected, his lips
moving unconsciously with the unspoken words. "My head won't rest no
easier in the grave fur hevin' stirred _his'n_, an' jes' fur Shattuck's
cur'osity, ef the truth war knowed; 'the hist'ry o' the kentry'"--he
remembered the words with a sneer--"air nowhar." "This hyar Shattuck
air a mighty takin' man," he said aloud, suddenly. The sheriff cocked
his head with keen attention. "Nowise good-lookin', special, but
saaft-spoken. Folks like him mighty well; he pulls the wool over
everybody's eyes."
He again remembered his threat for the man who should come between him
and Letitia; he had unwittingly spoken it to Shattuck himself, but it
was well that he was warned.
"Waal, Fee, I ain't wantin' ter arrest him too suddint--unless I hed
more grounds for suspicion agin him; but this hyar thing is murder,
man, _murder_! An' 'twon't do fur ennybody ez hed enny part in sech
ter get away. He sent Stephen Yates on a fool pretensified yerrand the
night the man war waylaid an' kilt, an' ye seen Steve 'mongst the gang
in Crazy Zeb's cell."
"How d'ye know ez the gang hed ennything ter do with that job? Mought
hev been other folks," Guthrie demanded, the cause of justice urgently
constraining him.
"Don't know it; that's jes' the reason I oughter keep an eye, a sorter
watch, on Shattuck, an' not arrest him 'thout he war tryin' ter clear
the kentry. I oughter hev lef' a man ter look arter him."
Guthrie said nothing. He seemed to silently revolve this view.
"Would _you-uns_ ondertake ter keep him under watch till I git back
ter-morrow?" Carew moved his hand caressingly on Guthrie's shoulder
amongst his long, wind-stirred hair. "I couldn't git down the mountain
in the dark, specially lumbered up with that man, ez 'pears ter be
dyin'--ye shoot mighty straight, Fee!--an' I 'lowed ye be 'feared o'
nuthin, an' air a mighty fine rider, an' yer horse air sure-footed.
Ye mought walk ef ye warn't willin' ter try it mounted. Wouldn't ye
obleege me, Fee?"
Guthrie's dark eyes, with their suggestions of implacability, were
turned reflectively upon him. The dying light did not so much as
suggest their color, but their lustre was visible in the dusk, and
their expression was unannulled.
"I hain't got no nose fur game," he replied at last. "Ye can't hunt
folks down with me."
The sheriff's hand suddenly weighed heavily on his shoulder. "What
be ye a-talkin' 'bout, boy?" he said, imperiously. "I _require_ yer
assistance in the name o' the law! I war jes' a-perlitin' aroun', and
axin' like a favior, fur the name o' the thing. I hev got a _right_ ter
yer help."
"Make yer right good"--Felix Guthrie had faced round, his indomitable
eye bright and clear in the dusk, where all else was blurred--"_ef ye
kin_. Thar's no law ever made ez kin turn _me_ inter a spy ter lead a
man ter the gallus or shet a prison door on him. Make yer right good,
why don't ye?"
The strong vitality of the sheriff's self-confidence, the belligerent
faith in his own prowess--an essential concomitant of his physique
and bold spirit--tempted him sorely. The occasion was propitious, for
a collision on such a scale was a rare opportunity to his bridled
pugnacity, and with his posse at his back the consequences of defeat
were infinitely reduced. The realization that Guthrie defied his power,
even thus supported, cried aloud for due recognition, but gentler
counsels prevailed in that stormy half-second while his broad chest
heaved and his eyes flashed. His prospects as a candidate hampered him.
Mutiny in the forces of so popular a man as he affected to be was an
incongruity of insistent significance to the returns of the midsummer
election.
"No, no, Fee; suit yerse'f," he said, smothering his feelings with a
very pretty show of geniality, which, however it might fail to impose
on Guthrie, ostensibly filled the breach. "I ain't a-goin' ter make my
right good by requirin' a man ter resk his life 'mongst them slippery
gorges on a night ez dark ez the grave itself. Naw; ef ye don't want
ter go, ye don't need ter, though ye mought be some perliter-spoken
'bout'n it. Some o' the t'others mought take a notion ter volunteer,
even though they ain't so well used ter the mountings ez you-uns
be, through livin' up on the side o' the mounting; an' that horse o'
Cheever's air plumb used ter sech roads through travellin' on 'em every
day or so. But jes' ez ye choose--I ain't keerin'."
He strode forward to a group of men collected in the door-yard, and,
standing with an arm about the shoulders of two of them, engaged in
a low-voiced colloquy. The subject was presumably the despatching of
an envoy to keep Shattuck under surveillance, and, with his reasons
for the keenest interest in aught that touched this stranger, Guthrie
with intent eyes gazed at them. Naught could be divined from their
inexpressive attitudes; their low tones baffled his hungry ears. The
excitements of the day had in a measure withdrawn his mind from his
own antagonisms to Shattuck, his fear of being supplanted, his sense
of injury because of the silence with which Shattuck had received his
confidence, making no sign to divulge an inimical interest. Shattuck
would, however, soon enough be dealt with, he reflected. And then he
found, in a sort of dull surprise, that he could take no pleasure in
the thought of the calamities impending for his rival, because, he
reasoned, they were not in direct retribution for his own wrongs.
"I'd hev liked ter hev talked ter him one more time fust," he said,
mentally revolving words bitterly eloquent with anger.
Pleasure? Nay, he deprecated the coming events. "Tawm C'rew air a
mighty smart man--in his own opinion," he said, still scornfully gazing
at the friendly pose of the important sheriff, which had all the values
of the infrequent unbending of a very great man. "He oughter know ez
Shattuck never hed no hand in sech ez murder an' thievery, an'"--with
a sudden after-thought--"he _would know it, too_, ef he hed ever seen
him."
There was a sudden strange stir at his heart. He had felt it once
before, when the reproachful praise of shooting too straight had first
fallen upon his ear. On a rude litter four men were bearing out from
the barn door and carrying across the yard the recumbent figure of Bob
Millroy, looking in the drear light of the dusk like death itself,
so still he lay, suggestively stark, but with a ceaseless monotonous
mutter, as if he had conveyed beyond death some feeble distraught
capacity of speech. The uncomprehended words had a weird effect, and
the groups of men grew silent as the litter was borne past. The sheriff
followed it into the house, where with his own hands he kindled a fire
on the hearth, that forthwith gave light and cheer, and converted
the poor place from the aspect of a hovel to that of a home; he
recommended that the patient--for thus he called him, rather than the
prisoner--should be fed with chicken broth, and suggested that as all
the poultry had gone to roost, Maggie would find a fat young pullet an
easy capture. He saw that Millroy was comfortably ensconced in bed,
with his wounds newly dressed, at which process Carew presided with
_ex cathedra_ utterances and a dignity bespeaking the experience of a
medical expert. The restless head soon ceased to roll, the thick tongue
grew silent, and the prisoner sank into slumber that seemed deep and
restful.
Maggie had deftly seconded the officer's efforts, and was as helpful
as a woman. But the wife held back, sullen and suspicious, speaking
only when she was spoken to, and moving reluctantly in obedience to a
direct command. More than once she fixed a surly, mutinous gaze upon
the sheriff; and when the babble of delirium was still at last, and the
room seemed full of homely comfort, the fire-light flickering on wall
and ceiling, she could hold her peace no longer.
"Ye air a faithful servant of the devil," she said. "Look ter him fur
yer thanks--ye'll git none from me. I know ye air a-doin' all this jes'
ter git Bob well enough ter jail or hang him. He's yer sheep ter lead
ter slarter."
"Lawdy mighty, Mis' Millroy!" exclaimed the officer, "what air ye
a-talkin' 'bout? Ye dun'no' whether Bob hev done ennything ter be
jailed or hung fur. Ef ye _do_, ye know more'n I do. All I know is that
Fee Guthrie reported gittin' in a fight with a gang o' fellers, an' he
shot sev'ral an' the res' run. I 'lowed I had better look 'em up an'
see what sorter account they could give o' tharse'fs, ez thar hev been
crimes commit in the county. Naw'm; ye hev got ter git through with a
jury, an' a pack o' lawyers, an' a deal o' palaver, 'fore I take the
trouble ter make up _my_ mind. Law's mighty scientific nowadays. Ye hev
got ter prove a thing on a man 'fore I'll go lookin' inter the hemp
market. An' Bob hain't proved nuthin' 'ceptin' that Fee Guthrie shoots
straight, ez he hev hed the name o' doin' from a boy."
He looked anxiously at his interlocutor, whom he had more bestirred
himself to disarm than if she could have wielded a ballot in his
behalf. She gave no overt sign of being placated, but there was
something in her face which reassured him, and he observed that when
the child came and leaned against her knee, she did not irritably
repulse her as heretofore.
"She's a good child, Maggie air," he observed, contemplating her,
remembering the little creature's eager help.
The child's small friendly gray eyes were fixed intelligently upon him
as he sat resting a moment on the opposite side of the hearth; the
flickering fire-light showed her shock of tousled red hair and threw
her magnified shadow on the wall. The shutters of the low, broad window
stood open to the fresh balsamic mountain air, revealing the myriads
of scintillating stars in the dark moonless concave above the western
ranges; the greenish-white clusters of an elder-blossom, growing close
outside in a clump of weeds, looked in and nodded, as if in greeting to
those within.
"An' she's a mighty smart leetle gal too," he added.
"Yes," her mother drawled, disparagingly, "but so turrible ugly. I
hain't never tuk no comfort in her. But Bob, he 'lows he kin put up
with her looks mighty easy."
"Waal, the bes'-lookin' gals ain't always pritty whenst little," said
the sheriff, optimistically.
His plastic countenance took on a sudden absorption in graver matters,
and he arose and strode to the middle of the room, stooping to glance
out of the window, as if to exert some slight surveillance upon the
members of his posse without.
The door-yard was all illumined. A fire of pine knots and hickory
logs flared in its midst. Around it were grouped the figures of the
night-bound posse, making what cheer they could for themselves.
Spurred and booted and armed, they had a reminiscent suggestion for
the sheriff, who had been a soldier and could look down the vistas
of memory, where many a bivouac fire was still ablaze. The familiar
features of the place seemed now and again to advance, then to shrink
away askance amongst the shadows, as the yellow and red flames rose
and fell with a genial crackling sound pleasant to hear. The rail
fence showed with a parallel line of zigzag shadows; the ash-hopper,
the beehives all awry, the haystack, were distinct; and the roof of
the barn looked over them all, the window-shutter of the loft flaring
wide, revealing the stores of hay whereon the visitors were to sleep;
through the open door below their horses were visible, some stalled
and at the mangers, but one or two lying on the straw. Quite outside
stood another--a sleek, clay-bank creature--so still that, with the
copperish hue and the lustre of the fire, he looked like some gigantic
bronze. Around all the dark forest gloomed. Sometimes the flames were
tossed so high, with a flickering radiance so bright, that the outline
of a mountain would show against that dark, cloudless, starlit sky;
and once were discovered mists in the valley--silent, white, secret,
swift--journeying on their unimagined ways under cover of the night.
The fire-lit figures sprawling about the logs wore merry, bearded
faces, and jests and stories were afoot. Amongst the men were certain
canine shapes, seeming to listen and to share the mirth; a trifle ill
at ease, they now and again made a sniffing circuit of the guests,
wondering, doubtless, where poor Bob Millroy was, and that upon them
alone should devolve the entertainment of so many strangers.
The sheriff had a keen eye; one glance at the group and he went forward
to the window, leaning his palms on the sill. The rank weeds below
glowed in the fire-light; the elder-bloom breathed dew and fragrance in
his face. He gave a low whistle, which a dog heard first, and turned
its head, its ears cocked alertly, but nevertheless sat still, loath to
leave the merry company. A second summons and one of the men sprang up,
and approached the window.
"Whar's Felix Guthrie?" demanded the officer.
The fire-light showed a surprised glance from under the brim of his
interlocutor's old slouched hat. "Why, I thunk ye sent him on some
yerrand. He saddled his beastis an' put out long ago fur down the
mounting. An' I axed him ef he warn't afeard o' the gorges. An' he
'lowed he war 'bleeged ter go."
The officer in his turn stared. "That's all right. I didn't know
whether he hed gone," he said at last, with an airy wave of the hand.
He turned within, smiling. "Fee air like the man in the Bible ez
say, 'I go not,' an' goes," he muttered to himself, in triumphant
satisfaction.
The sheriff found it a long night. The voices gradually dwindled
until only a fragmentary, low-toned colloquy could be heard beside
the fire outside, so had the number of renegades to the loft of the
barn increased; and when at last the drowsy converse was hushed, the
impetuous flare had died away; no fluctuating glimpses of the landscape
embellished the darkness; the fire had sunk to a mere mass of vermilion
embers amidst the utter gloom which it did not illumine. A wind after
a time arose, and hearing it astir in the valley, the sheriff, in his
frequent stridings to and fro in the little cabin, bethought himself
of the menace of scattered coals to the hay and straw, and now and
again looked out of the window to see how the gray ash was overlapping
this smouldering mass, that had spent its energies in those wild,
upspringing, tumultuous flames, and had burned out to the ground.
More than once he mended the fire on the hearth-stone within, merely
that he might have the company of the flicker on the wall; but it,
too, was drowsy, and often sent up sluggish columns of smoke in lieu
of blaze, and he seemed to himself the only creature alive and awake
in all the spread of mountain and valley. He had contrived to keep
his vigil alone. He had given a special promise that he would call
the prisoner's wife at twelve o'clock to watch the latter half of the
night. By no means reluctant, exhausted with the excitements of the
evening superimposed upon the work and cares of the day, she and Maggie
had climbed the ladder to the roof-room, and had left the officer in
undisturbed possession below.
After a while he lighted a tallow dip, and surveyed the haggard face of
the patient, as he still chose euphemistically to call the prisoner.
The feeble glimmer illumined the room in pallid and melancholy guise,
instead of with the hilarity and glow and bright good-will which the
sulking fire had shown earlier in the evening. A great, distorted
silhouette of his own head appeared upon the wall, leaning ogreishly
over the pillow. He noted these things in the midnight. His hand on
the round knob of the bedstead seemed to stealthily grasp a club. The
forlorn face of the recumbent man added its significance to the shadow.
A more sinister and threatening picture it was hardly possible to
imagine, and after gazing at it with gruff disfavor, Carew shifted his
position, and once more looked anxiously at the haggard face on the
pillow. It bore certain tokens which in his ignorance he fancied were
characteristic of the _facies hippocratica_; from time to time, as he
lighted the candle anew, he noted them again, and his own face seemed
to reflect them in a sort of dismay and terror. Once, as he struck the
candle sharply downward to extinguish the flame, he apostrophized the
patient out of the sudden darkness:
"Ef ye don't git sensible enough ter talk sorter straight afore ye take
off from hyar fur good an' all, I dun'no' how in kingdom come I be
a-goin' ter find out whar it war ez ye hid that plunder--ef ever ye did
hide it."
He walked back to the hearth, where the gray smoke, itself barely
visible, rose in a strong, steady column, now and then darting out a
tiny scintillating tongue of white flame; he threw himself again into
the rickety chair, his anxious eyes on the fire. A black cat, crouched
upon the hearth, commented hospitably upon his proximity by a loud
purring as she alternately opened and shut her witch-like yellow eyes.
She recalled to his mind many a homely fireside fable of witchcraft
that held in permanent solution the terrors of his childhood which the
wisdom of later years might vainly strive to precipitate and repudiate.
He looked at her askance while she peacefully slept, and the wind went
heavily by the window as with the tread of a thousand men. He himself
was never so consciously vigilant. It seemed as if he had never slept.
He could hardly realize the fatigue, the drowsiness, with which he
had struggled in the earlier portion of the night. Not a stir escaped
his attention from the bed where the wounded man lay, whether in the
soft recuperation of slumber, or the heavy stupors that so nearly
simulate death itself, his ignorance could not determine. Once, as the
flame flared white from out the gray smoke, he looked to see if the
hands were plucking at the coverlet, a sign familiar to him of the
approaching doom. And then, as the dull, dense, unillumined column of
vapor streaming up the chimney benighted the room, he heard, with his
keen senses all tense, the howl of a wolf on a far-away summit.
"So durned onlucky!" a thick voice said, suddenly, as it were in his
ear.
Carew gave a galvanic start that jarred his whole frame, and he had a
momentary impression that he had been dreaming. As he turned his head
he heard the wind surging in the infinite leafage of the vast mountain
wilderness. But within all was still save the slowly ascending column
of gray smoke, and all was silent--not the chirping of a cricket, not
the gnawing of a mouse--till abruptly, from out the semi-obscurity of
the room, the thick, unnatural voice came again, came from the pillow
where the restless head was rolling once more.
The sheriff drew a long breath of relief, raucously cleared his throat,
and stretched out his stalwart, booted legs comfortably upon the
hearth. Then he once more turned his face toward the bed, for, whether
because of the pervasive quiet or the absence of other distractions,
the utterances of delirium that had hitherto seemed incoherent and mere
mouthings were now comprehensible--the words, although but half formed
and thickly spoken, having become articulate.
"Durned onlucky," the voice said, over and over again, with falling
inflections infinitely disconsolate.
A smile was on the officer's face. In the absence of other
entertainment, these queer unauthorized gyrations of the powers of
speech, all astir without the concurrence of the brain, promised to
relieve somewhat the tedium.
"_Onlucky!_ I b'lieve ye!" he commented, with a laugh. "Onlucky fur
true--fur you!"
"So durned onlucky," the weird voice rose louder.
Then it fell to silence which was so long continued that the officer
relapsed into a reverie, and once more eyed the veiled fire.
"Dun'no' nuthin' 'bout them Leetle People," the voice droned.
Once more Tom Carew lifted his head with a renewed interest; he felt
as if long ago, in some previous state of existence, he had heard of
those strange extinct folk; and then he recalled their more immediate
mention--for the first time that he could remember--at the blacksmith's
shop to-day, and their connection with the name of Shattuck. He sat
with a half-scornful, half-doubting smile upon his face, that bespoke,
nevertheless, an intent attention, and the influence of the fascination
which the supernatural exerts; his hands were in his pockets, his hat
on the back of his head, his long legs stretched out, his whole relaxed
attitude implying a burly comfort.
"Buried jes' two feet deep; shows how small they actially war," said
the thick voice, "them Stranger People."
The face of the sheriff, revealed in one of the lashing thongs of
flame, had a breathless wonder upon it. "Durned ef it don't!" he
muttered, in the accents of amazed conviction. And again he lent his
ear to the delirious exclamations as the fevered brain retraced some
scene present once more to its distortions.
"Naw, Buck, naw," Millroy cried out, with sudden vehemence. "'Twarn't
me ez told. An' Steve Yates couldn't hev gin the word ter Shattuck.
Nobody knowed but ye and me. Ye oughtn't ter hev shot at Shattuck. It
air so durned onlucky ter shoot nigh a graveyard. Ah! ah! ah-h!" The
voice rose suddenly to a hoarse scream, and he tossed uneasily from
side to side.
The sheriff sat motionless, and albeit he had assumed the functions
of nurse as well as watcher, offered no assistance or alleviation to
the sufferer, but with a puzzled face meditated for a time on this
unexpected collocation of names; then scratched his head with an air of
final and perplexed defeat as he listened to the groans of the wounded
man gradually dying away to silence.
He waited expectantly, but naught broke the stillness save the wind
outside in the immensity of the night and the wilderness. "I wish ter
God ye'd talk sense," he adjured the patient, disconsolately.
Then he fell to thoughtfully eying the fire, the simple elements of
his interest in the disconnected monologue merged into anxiety and
perplexity and baffled speculation. The veiled flame still tended
sluggishly upward; he heard the sobbing of the sap oozing out at
the ends of the logs. "This wood is mighty green," he observed,
disparagingly, "an' post oak, too, I b'lieve. 'Tain't fitten ter make a
fire out'n."
A vague stir was on the roof--pattering drops; slow, discontinued
presently, and discursively falling again. The little cabin was on the
very verge of a rain cloud. In the valley the rhythmic beat of the
downfall upon the tree-tops came muffled to his ears, and he noted
the intermittent sound of the wind dying away and rising fitfully and
farther off. All at once his attention was deflected from the outer
world.
"The Leetle People revealed the secret, Buck. Lay it at thar door,"
cried the weird voice of delirium.
Carew drew his sprawling members into a tense attitude, a hand on
either knee, his head thrust forward, his eyes distended, staring into
the gloom, his lower jaw falling.
"Thar warn't room enough fur the bones an' the jug an' the plunder too.
An' that thar one o' the Leetle People's harnts hev sot out ter walk,
ez sure ez ye air born--no room sca'cely bein' lef' in his grave. So
durned onlucky ter meddle with the Leetle People's graves! So durned
onlucky, to be sure!"
The officer sat as if turned to stone, breathless, motionless, staring
fixedly into the dusky room, and seeing nothing that was before
him--only the goal which he had sought--while the fevered head still
rolled back and forth on the pillow, the delirious voice repeating,
with every inflection of dull despair: "So durned onlucky! So onlucky,
to be sure!"
How long the sheriff sat there, unconsciously striving to realize the
situation, the significance of this strange discovery, he did not know.
It was with a distinct effort of the mind at last that he sought to
pull himself together and turn to the consequent step. He felt as if he
were dreaming even after he was on his feet, and he paused irresolutely
in the middle of the floor, and looked expectantly toward the bed,
where the wounded man's head still restlessly rolled as he muttered:
"So durned onlucky! So onlucky, to be sure!" But if Bob Millroy should
talk all night he could add naught of importance to what the sheriff
already knew.
"No use a-listening ter him jabber now," he said.
A sudden look of thought smote his face; his eyes narrowed, his teeth
closed firmly, as he revolved the idea in his mind, and he turned
abruptly to the window. The blasts had closed the batten shutter fast,
and he shook it smartly before it would open in his hand. The slow
wheeling of its edges against the sky revealed a change since last he
had looked out. The stars still scintillated above in the clear spaces
of the zenith, but a rain-cloud hung in the south, bulging low over
the ranges, its blackness differing vastly in tone from the limpid
darkness where the night was clear and serene. One summit below it was
distinctly defined; there it had betaken a dusky brown color, and about
its lower verge a fringe of fine straight lines of rain was suggested;
a moon--a belated, waning moon--was rising in the melancholy dead hour
of the night, its distorted, mist-barred disk showing between the bare
eastern peaks, which were all silvered and clearly outlined above the
massive wooded slopes darkling below. It shone full in the officer's
eyes as for a moment he steadfastly gazed upon it. Then he laid his
hand upon the window-sill and lightly sprang upon the ground below. The
next moment he was standing in the door of the barn, and his stentorian
halloo had roused all the slumbering mountaineers amongst the hay, and
hailed the echoes in many a rocky gorge far away.
XVI.
In the deep obscurity of those dark hours before the moonrise, in the
effacement of all the visible expressions of material nature, save the
glitter of the stars and the glooming of the shadows, Felix Guthrie had
been alone, as it were, with his own soul. He had never known, native
of the wilderness though he was, so intense a sense of solitude. It
was as if his spirit had gone forth from the familiar world into the
vast voids of the uncreate. He took no heed of the dangerous way down
the steeps, but gave the horse the rein, and trusted to the keener
nocturnal sight of the animal. His dog ran on ahead pioneer-wise,
retracing his way from time to time and gambolling about his master's
stirrup irons, his presence only made known by a vague panting which
Guthrie neither heard nor heeded. Even to the voice of the mountain
torrent he was oblivious, although it seemed louder far by night than
by day, assertive, unafraid, congener of the solitude, the darkness,
and the melancholy isolations of the mountain woods. The rhododendron
blooming all unseen by the way touched his cheek with a soft petal
and a freshness of dew; now and again a brier clutched at his sleeve;
sometimes a stone rolled beneath his horse's hoofs, and fell into the
abyss at the side of the road, sonorously echoing and echoing as it
smote upon the rocky walls of the chasm, the decisive final thud so
long delayed that to judge thus of the unseen depths which lurked at
either hand might have daunted him had he listened. The horse would
hesitate at times, and send forth a whinnying plaint of doubt or fear
when the rushing torrent crossed the way, plunging in presently,
however, and, if need were, swimming gallantly, with the swimming dog
in his wake.
Guthrie's thoughts made all the way heavy; deeper than the glooms of
the night they shadowed his spirit.
"Though she may sing an' he may listen, I ain't a-goin' ter spy him
out fur no sher'ff ez ever rid with spurs. I ain't a-goin' ter hound
him an' track him, fur I ain't no dog; though I ain't got nuthin' agin
dogs, nuther. But"--with a hardening of the face--"I'll hold him ter
account ter me. I'll bring him ter jedgment. He'll 'low the law o' the
lan' hev got a toler'ble feeble grip compared with the way I'll take
holt o' him. He war warned. I told him ez I hed it in my heart ter kill
the man ez kem atwixt Litt an' me."
When he reached the levels of the cove the springy turf served to add
speed to the smooth, swinging, steady pace. He had hardly expected so
soon to see before him the steep gables of the old Rhodes homestead.
These were cut sharply against the sky, for the house stood in the
midst of its open fields. One or two sycamore-trees swayed above its
roof, and great overgrown bushes--lilac and snowball and roses--crowded
the yard. A garden, overgrown too, extended down the slope at the side,
and here as well were masses of shrubs blackly visible in contrast with
the open spaces.
Guthrie was a stranger here. He had never before seen so great a
house as the rambling old brick dwelling. When he had dismounted at
the fence he was for a moment at a loss how to enter. A porch was at
the front and another at the side, and while he hesitated a vague
glimmer of yellow light came through the masses of the foliage that
clustered about one of the windows. He opened the gate; his foot fell
noiselessly upon the weed-grown path. A great white lily was waving
in the gloom close by--he saw it glimmer--another, and another; and
as the file stood close in the border, the heavy rich perfume seemed
to make the air dense. The window glared forth suddenly--the light in
every tiny pane--when he had passed a great arbor-vitæ that stood near
it, trailing its branches on the ground. Within, unconscious, at ease,
unprescient, a man sat by a lamp, a book in his hand, his chair tilted
back, a pipe between his teeth. Save the light, vaporous curling of the
smoke above his head, there was no motion. The fire dwindled in the
chimney-place; the clock had stopped as if it fell a-drowsing on the
midnight hour. The wind had ceased even its vague stir, and the vines
that hung about the window were still. Guthrie stood for a moment as
if the inertia of the scene had fallen upon him, staring at the face
that he had learned to know rather in meditating upon it in its absence
than in the study of its traits. It was softer than he had thought,
younger; but he recognized anew, with an infinite change of sentiment,
that indefinable quality of expression, to which glance, contour, pose,
all contributed, which made it so likable. And if this had been patent
to him, why not to others--to Letitia? A new standpoint had wrought
a radical difference. The vague fascination that had once commended
Shattuck kindled Guthrie's hatred now. His eyes glowed like a panther's
from out of the darkness, and when Shattuck abruptly put up his hand
with the quick, decisive motion of keen interest and turned a page of
the volume, it broke the lethargic spell that seemed to have fallen
upon the mountaineer. Guthrie moved up suddenly close to the window,
his very touch upon the pane. There was an imperious look upon his
face. It seemed to hail the unconscious reader within, who with his
quick deft gesture presently turned another leaf. Guthrie could see
his intent eyes, full of light, shifting from side to side of the page
as they scanned the lines. He made no effort to attract Shattuck's
attention beyond that long steady, glowering look, albeit he wondered
that its effect should be so belated. He had noted often that strange
mesmeric influence of the eye; a wild beast in the woods would not
remain oblivious of the presence of his natural enemy were a human
being's gaze steadily fixed for some space upon him. Shattuck suddenly
put up his hand with a vaguely impatient air of interruption, and
passed it over his cheek; then he rose abruptly to his feet, crossed
the hearth with his quick, sure step, and reached up to the high
mantel-piece, dusky in the shadow. There was a sharp metallic click
outside amongst the honeysuckle vines--Guthrie had cocked his pistol.
But it was no weapon which Shattuck had grasped from the mantel-piece.
His train of thought was evidently still unbroken, for he came slowly
back into the circumference of the light of the lamp, as it stood on
the table, turning in his careful deft hands a curiously decorated jar.
Then, still standing, with the other hand he whirled over the leaves of
the book, and seemed to compare the jar which he held to an engraving
upon the page. That serene light of a purely intellectual pleasure was
upon his face, and its peculiar charm, its alertness, its mobility,
its sympathetic intimations, its clear candor, its courage, had never
been more individual, more marked. The man outside, with his pistol
cocked in his hand, keenly alive to all impressions that mutually
concerned them, sought to see him as once he had seemed. Jealousy
had tampered with Guthrie's vision, and he could no longer read
these patent characters; they were like a language that one has half
forgotten--a vague suggestion here and there, a broken association, a
dull misconception. The next moment their eyes met.
For one instant the sudden sight of that white cheek pressed close to
the glass drove the blood from Shattuck's face. He stood, the jar still
in his hand, his head bent down, his questioning, searching eye intent.
Then, still without recognizing the features of the man outside, he
placed the jar on the table, and walked slowly to the window, unarmed
as he was. He laid both hands on the sash to lift it; it was thrown
creakingly up, and the light fell full on the face without, its square
contour, its austere, sullen expression, its long yellow ringlets, all
framed by the big brim of the broad hat thrust far back.
"Is that you, Fee?" Shattuck said, in surprise. "You nearly scared me
to death. Why don't you come in?"
His tone was untroubled and casual. It implied a conscience void of
offence.
"He thinks I hain't fund him out," Guthrie commented to himself. Aloud
he replied, grimly: "'Tain't wuth while ter kem in. I kin say what I
hev got ter say right hyar."
Shattuck, all unnoting the pistol in his interlocutor's hand, sat down
upon the window-sill, leaning almost against its muzzle. He held one of
the cables of the many-stranded honeysuckle vine in his hand, by way
of assisting his equilibrium, as he looked down at his guest. There
was no more serious thought in his mind at the moment than the wish
that he could paint, or even sketch. It seemed a pity that so massive
and impressive an embodiment of the idea of manhood, of force, as that
which Felix Guthrie's face and figure presented should be known only to
his few and unappreciative neighbors as a "tarrifyin' critter, full o'
grudges, who shot mighty straight."
Guthrie was a trifle thrown off his balance by this serene
unconsciousness. He hesitated, expecting that Shattuck would ask him
what had brought him hither, unaware that the etiquette in which the
townsman was reared forbade him to inquire or to manifest curiosity
concerning the mission of even an untimely visitor. As Guthrie said
nothing, Shattuck essayed to break the pause.
"See my prehistoric jug?" he smilingly asked, pointing with the stem of
his empty pipe toward the quaint jar upon the table. "I dug that out of
Mr. Rhodes's mound. It's mightily like the cut of a Malay water-cooler
I came across in that book on the table--surprisingly."
Before the unsuspicious suavity of his face and manner Guthrie felt
a vague faltering, such as no ferocity or danger could have induced.
So conscious of this was he that he sought, with a sort of indignant
protest, to throw it off. He seized upon the first pretext to express
his enmity, albeit his judgment failed to approve it. He felt it all
inadequate to the passion which shook him, and far from what he had
intended to say.
"Content yerse'f with that," he exclaimed; "fur ye shall hev nuthin'
from the Leetle People. They hev tuk up thar rest on my lan', an' thar
shell they sleep in peace till the last trump sounds."
The hand that trifled with the heavily twisted vine was still
for a moment, and Shattuck looked down seriously into Guthrie's
eyes--seriously, but without anger.
"It shall be just as you say," he replied. "I don't wonder you feel
strongly about it. At first I was furious at being shot at in a way
that I can't resent, by a woman"--his eyes flashed, and his lips
trembled--"and I declared I would try it again. But afterward I felt we
were fortunate indeed that no one was killed except the colt. It might
have been your brother or Mr. Rhodes as well as myself. You see?" He
turned his head toward the light. Where the hair had been clipped to
the skin a red line showed that the rifle ball had grazed the flesh.
"Pretty good aim in the twilight. And perhaps since there is so strong
a feeling against disturbing the 'pygmies,' so called"--his second
nature of scientific exactitude unconsciously qualified the phrase--"I
ought to let them alone. Still, I am sorry about the little colt; and
as the disaster happened in my errand, I should like to offer some
indemnity." He made a motion toward his pocket.
"I hev a mind ter take ye by the nape o' yer neck an' break it
across the winder-sill!" cried Guthrie, his eyes blazing. "Ye think
I keer 'bout the wuth o' the leetle critter!" He snapped his fingers
scornfully in the air, holding his arm aloft with a fine free gesture.
"I be sorry he is dead, 'kase he hev got no hereafter, an' he war a
frisky beastis, an' loved ter live, an' we-uns will miss seein' him so
gayly prancin' in the pastur'. Ye think I kem hyar ter git a leetle pay
fur him?" He would not wait for Shattuck's protest that both eyes and
gesture preluded. "Naw!" he thundered. "I kem hyar ter-night ter take
yer life"--for the first time Shattuck marked the burnished glimmer on
the barrel of the pistol that he held in his hand--"an' ter do what I
hev never demeaned myself ter do afore--ter take back my promise."
"What promise?" Shattuck interjected.
"Ah, ye know! Ye know full well!" Guthrie shook his head, and in his
voice was a quaver of poignant reproach. "The promise ye got by talkin'
round me, 'kase ye 'lowed I war a ignorant cuss, and not able ter see
through yer deceit with all yer school l'arnin'--by praisin' her looks,
an' tellin' me ter keep up my courage, an' how I mought make out ter
git her ter marry me, arter all. 'Twon't make no difference takin' back
the promise, fur I mean ter take yer life with it. Ye surely remember
the word I said ter you-uns, ez 'twar in my heart ter kill the man ez
kem betwixt me an' Litt; an', by God! it is."
A sudden comprehension was dawning in Shattuck's eyes. He leaned
forward, and laid his hand on Guthrie's shoulder. "Now go slow, Fee,"
he said, soothingly. "Who is this man? Not _I_, and this I swear!"
The imperious face, its pallor distinct in the lamplight falling upon
it from within, the rest of the figure shadowy in the black darkness
without, looked up at him with a scathing contempt wrought in every
feature.
"An' so I swear that I'd be justified ef I war ter put a bullet through
yer heart, an' let yer soul go down ter hell with that word ter damn ye
ter all eternity!"
Shattuck withdrew his hand, frowning heavily. "Look here, my fine
fellow, this is strong language. If I didn't believe you are under some
strange mistake, I'd make you eat your words syllable by syllable. What
do you mean?"
"But I don't want ter murder ye," Guthrie went on, as if Shattuck
had not spoken. "I can't shoot ye down without a weepon in yer han',
like Mis' Yates tried ter do, though ye richly desarve it. Git yer
shootin'-iron an' come out--come out an' stan' up fur yerse'f." He
waved his hand with the pistol in it toward the more open space beyond
the shrubbery. "Come out, or I'll shoot ye ez ye set thar."
"Not one step will I stir until you tell me why you say that I have
come between you and Letitia."
"Bekase _she_ told me so."
Shattuck's unconscious reliance upon his mental supremacy, his
equipment of delicate tact, his assurance of a pleasing personality,
which was half his courage, began to give way. He had yet that
physical self-respect which would enable him to meet his enemy without
a pusillanimous shrinking, but he no longer hoped to command the
adroitness to evade the event. Still he strove to be calm.
"Impossible! Now, what did she say?" he demanded, in a reasonable
voice. Somehow, he had the key to Guthrie's confidence. Even now it
opened to him.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a voice of despair, throwing up the arm that
still grasped the weapon, "I knowed it ez much from what she _didn't_
say ez what she _did_. I seen it in her face. I hearn it in her
voice. I ain't blind! I ain't deef! An' then"--every line in his face
hardened--"she tole me how ye kem an' stood outside the winder ter
listen whilst she sung, an' seein' yer face suddint, lookin' in through
the batten shutter, she didn't know ye a-fust--not till arterward,
whenst hearin' yer pickaxe in the Leetle People's graveyard, did she
know 'twar you-uns. An' ye war waitin' fur the moon ter rise. An', damn
ye! what d'ye want ter hear her sing fur?"
Shattuck's face, with a startled astonishment upon it, had grown more
deeply grave. Every intimation of anger had fallen from his manner.
"Guthrie," he said, in a tone so coercive, so serious, that the other
looked up, newly intent, "is there no way to convince you? I never
heard her sing. I never was in the pygmy burying-ground but that one
time with your brother. Now, think! Is there no one else who might
loiter about that house; who might venture--I should never take such a
liberty--to look through the crevices of a closed window?"
Perhaps it was Shattuck's influence over Guthrie; perhaps the anxiety
of a lover to believe his despair unfounded, to hope against hope--at
all events, his long reflective pause indicated a change of mental
attitude.
"Mrs. Yates's husband," suggested Shattuck, plying his advantage; "has
nothing been heard about him lately?"
"Lord, yes!" exclaimed Guthrie, his mind reverting to the sensation of
the day. "I seen him myself yestiddy 'mongst a gang o' horse-thieves
a-hidin' out in the woods. I hed ter run fur my life, ez they set on
me, six ter one. An' the sher'ff overhauled thar den jes ter-day."
His voice faltered a trifle. He looked shamefaced and downcast. The
sheriff's suspicion concerning Shattuck had recurred to him, and he
could not meet the man's eyes with this thought in his mind.
"Now, don't you see, Fee," argued Shattuck, "how likely a thing it is
that Steve Yates should hang around his own cabin, and peer through the
window to take a look at his own wife and child, whom he probably will
never see again, unless in some such way?"
Guthrie nodded, more than half convinced. Still, with his hidden
consciousness of that insult to Shattuck which he carried in his
recollection of the sheriff's menace, of the mission of espionage which
he had refused, he could not look up.
In some subtle way he knew that when Shattuck next spoke it was not to
him alone that he addressed the information, but that the fact might be
made manifest.
"Now I am going to give you a reason why I do not stand between you and
Letitia." At the name Guthrie lifted a listening face. "I am engaged to
be married to a lady in my own city. So Letitia may sing like an oread
and look like a flower, but she is nothing to me."
He said the words with a clear conscience, for if she had fixed her
affection upon him--somehow the idea aroused a vague sweet thrill in
that mortgaged heart of his--it had been unsought.
Guthrie, eager for his own peace of mind to believe him, drew a long
sigh of relief. "I reckon I take up sech notions jes 'kase I am so
all-fired jealous," he said. Then, with a half-laugh, "Litt never
actially said nuthin' nohow--though she air ekal ter sayin' anything
jes ter make me mo' jealous 'n I naterally be."
A mental mutiny possessed Shattuck. Was not this the conclusion that
he had labored in all good faith to precipitate? Where, then, was his
satisfaction in the logical result? Why should he cling in tenacious
triumph to another inference, drawn from her fancy that it was he who
had lingered outside her window to hear her sing? His pulses quickened
with the thought that the very fallacy wore the reflected hues of her
hope. There were other recollections pressing fast upon him--that she
had remembered his words, had recounted his strange stories, the look
in her eyes when she had caught down from the rack the rifle which she
believed had endangered his life. Her dream had in some sort fulfilled
itself. He had long appreciated the charm of her unique beauty, her
sprite-like individuality. His feeling suddenly expanded, glowing like
a bud into the rose at the first warm touch of the sun.
He looked down at Guthrie all oblivious of him, save for weariness of
the importunity of his threats, his constancy of woe, his confidences.
Shattuck was absorbed for the moment in his own emotion, and the world
had suddenly slipped away.
Abstractions befitted the hour. One might hardly think to see it
again--that sordid, dusty, daylight world, full of commerce and hard
bargains, and rigorous conventions of wealth and standing, prosaic
requisites of well-equipped happiness. It had rolled far away out
of consciousness. Upon the low summits of the thick growths of the
orchard gleamed the lustre of the dew and the yellow suffusions of
the rising moon. The shadows had become dense, symmetrical, sharply
outlined. The lilies, their chalices all pearl and gold, were so white
and stately and tall as they stood where the moonbeams conjured them
from out the darkness of the old-fashioned borders. The light drifted
through the fringes of the pines, dark themselves as ever; and between
their boughs, looking to the east, one could see a field of millet,
glistening with all the charmed illusions of a silver lake. And how the
mocking-bird loves the light! From out the midnight his jubilant song
went up to meet it.
Shattuck remembered the moment, the scene, many a year afterward, the
absorption that mulcted Guthrie's words of half their meaning, and more
than half their weight.
"I hev got suthin' else ter say," he began, uneasily. "I dun'no' how
ter tell it ter ye, nor whether I oughter tell it at all. Ef the
sher'ff hed ever seen ye he'd know he war a fool; but thar war a man
robbed an' kilt on the road that night whenst Steve Yates vamosed, an'
folks b'lieve he done it."
The superficial attention with which Shattuck hearkened to this
deepened the next moment.
"An' ez Steve Yates hed no idee o' goin' till ye sent him, the sher'ff
thinks ye might hev sent him on that yerrand."
An inarticulate exclamation of amazement, of indignation, broke from
Shattuck's lips. It was not Guthrie's intention to assuage his fears,
but he felt constrained to be the apologist of the suspicion.
"Ef he hed ever seen ye wunst," he observed, "he'd know better. Of
course he ain't never seen ye."
"Of course not," Shattuck assented, shortly, his confidence renewed.
The suspicion touching himself was not the kind of thing that a man
would willingly consider, even in its most hypothetical and tenuous
guise. That it should be seriously entertained was too terrifying, too
odious an idea to be gratuitously harbored. To seek to throw it off
was the instinct of self-respect, of self-preservation. His nerves
were still sensible of the shock, but his effort was to make light of
it, to treat it as the coarse pleasantry of the officer, perpetrated
concerning the only stranger within the vast circuit of mountainous
country. He felt no gratitude to Guthrie for his warning, as the
mountaineer had expected his revelation to be construed. He looked
down at him with repugnance and indignation in his eyes, and albeit
Guthrie was not skilled in deciphering subtle facial indications, he
understood the sentiment and deprecated it. He did not pursue the
subject further. He cast about in his clumsy way to make amends for
his offence, for thus it seemed to him now, of repeating the obnoxious
suggestion.
"I be powerful sorry I kem a-devilin' ye hyar this time o' night
fur nuthin'," he said. "I reckon ye think I'm plumb gone destracted
'bout Litt," with a pathetic uplifting of his long-lashed eyes to his
interlocutor, who was still sitting in the window. "Ye see a feller
like me is mighty forlorn, especially ez I oughter know ez Litt ain't
one o' them ez kin be hed fur the askin'. I reckon it'll all come right
arter a while?" wistfully interrogative.
"I reckon so," Shattuck was constrained to reply.
Guthrie was never before in so deprecatory or gentle a state of mind.
"I feel plumb outdone whenst I remember how I hev talked ter you-uns,
ez be so powerful perlite an' saaft-spoken ter all, an' considerin'
of feelin's"--Shattuck winced a trifle--"an' how I hev gone on 'bout
takin' back promises an' sech. Ye know I don't mean it. Ye air welcome
ter dig ennywhar ye wanter on my lan', an' I'll holp ye enny time; now,
ef ye like," Guthrie protested with an effort at reparation. "I dun'no'
but what it's ez good a time ez enny. Thar's light enough now, an' Mis'
Yates mus' be off her gyard; she mus' sleep o' nights--leastwise take
cat-naps." He looked up with a propitiatory laugh on his face. "An' I
ain't 'feard o' Baker Anderson, nor Litt, nor even Moses."
Shattuck hesitated. He had been more shaken than he would have
acknowledged even to himself by the crude suggestion that his name
was for a moment connected with one of the brutal and bloody mountain
crimes--a mere æsthetic horror, for his mind could not compass the
atrocity against probability that the suspicion should be seriously
harbored by an officer of the law. He foresaw a night of sleepless
irritability, revolving the idea, should he let Guthrie go, although he
felt that it should fairly be considered only a fit subject of flout,
of ridicule, of inextinguishable laughter. It was rather in the spirit
of defending himself against his own capacities for self-torment that
he readily turned toward the prospect of diverting his mind, occupying
himself with alien interests.
"The spade an' the pick mus' be right thar now," Guthrie observed, by
way of urgence. "Eph say he war so flustrated by Mis' Yates's shootin'
that he forgot ter fetch 'em back home."
Shattuck looked out at the sober solid shadow of the old brick house,
gable and chimney and porch, projected upon the thick herbage of the
yard; the silver-green sea of millet glimpsed between the dark branches
of the pines; the winding road that led the loitering way to the
mountains. "I'll get my hat," he said.
There was no light in the hall save that which the moon cast through
the high window on the landing of the stairs. It seemed fibrous,
skein-like, pendulous, as far as the balusters; then it fell upon the
hall floor below in a distinct, motionless image of the sash and pane,
all white and lustrous. By its radiance one could distinguish a hall
sofa, long and hard, covered with tattered black hair-cloth; above it,
hanging on the wall, the optimistic old barometer that once, perhaps,
had been weatherwise, but now insisted that all signs "set fair"; the
hall tree, whereon Rhodes's hat swung in its place, while its owner
lay unconscious in the room above, the door of which Shattuck need
pass with no solicitous tread, for, bating continuance, the pygmies
themselves slept not more soundly. The door of his own room stood ajar;
the moonlight and the sweet perfumes of the night came in through its
open windows. It had a sort of inhabited look, full of comfortable
suggestions; perhaps it was only because the fatigue of the day was
beginning to hang somewhat heavily on his senses, but as he entered, he
stood for a moment irresolute.
In the midst of the dusky uncertainty of sheen and shadow he was
abruptly startled to see a dim figure suddenly moving at the opposite
side of the room. He advanced a step, and recognized his own image in
the indistinguishable mirror. It had a strange, weird effect, this
half-seen simulacrum of himself, a skulking, uneasy, secret air that
belied its principal, and seemed its own independent attitude, rather
than reflected. It was coercive in some sort. He caught up his hat from
the table, strode down the hall to Rhodes's door, and thus took those
first steps destined never to be retraced. He knocked without response,
then opened the door, which creaked raspingly upon its unoiled hinges,
rusty with long disuse; and Guthrie, waiting at the window below,
amongst the silent pensive lustres of the moon, heard the ringing round
voice of Rhodes break forth in drowsy protest, incongruous, prosaic,
insistently utilitarian. The interval was short before Shattuck ran
down the stair, and sprang through the window, drawing the sash down
behind him, and then the two set forth together.
The lilies bloomed at the gate, their chalices full of dew. The
mocking-bird sang to the silent moon. Far, far away some watercourse
had lifted loud a sylvan song it was not wont to sing by day.
"How still it is! Hear Wild-Duck Creek on the rocks!" Shattuck said
as he buckled his saddle-girth and put his foot in the stirrup. The
eastern windows were all aflare with a white, opaque radiance in
broadened, vitreous, distorted reduplications of the moon. The deep,
elongated shadows of the house lay among the orchard boughs. He looked
around at the old building when once in the saddle, to see its gables
and its chimneys rise anew against the clear sky and the vague outlines
of the mountains, only because it pleased him--its solid decency, even
dignity, in its honest, unornamented validity, touched his receptive
æsthetic sense--not because he divined that he was looking his last
upon it. How finite a creature is man; how little he knows his way
along these earthly paths--adown which soon or late he goes to meet his
fate, never aware how near its approach--one might realize, thinking
on a time like this, when these two, all unprescient, rode together
to the burial-ground of the "Leetle People." The wind was in their
faces--how fresh, how free! The dew glittered in the air; the moon,
although yellow and waning, with a melancholy presage in her lessening
splendors, made the night like some pensive, softly illuminated day of
dreamtides. Their escort of mounted shadows galloped beside them; the
turf stretched out into long miles behind their horses' hoofs. They
met naught save a fox scudding over a stretch of sward with stealthy
speed, and a bundle of feathers between his jaws. The Yates cabin,
that Guthrie was first to see, a dimly glimmering gray, was as silent
and still as if it housed no life within its walls--as silent and as
still as that long slope, with the shadows of the great trees and the
intervenient sheen of the moon all adown it, where the Little People
had slept this many a day, knowing no waking.
Shattuck led the way. He had turned once more to the tall isolated
laurel-bush, almost of tree-like proportions, where he had begun his
labors before. He did not at once throw himself from his horse; he
was taking note of a strange thing, something that he had not marked
heretofore. That mass of bloom and foliage rose between the grave whose
stone coffin his pickaxe had struck and any possible surveillance from
the Yates cabin. A doubt for the first time stirred in his mind whether
it were indeed Adelaide who had fired that murderous rifle ball. The
next moment the absorptions of his intentions, his opportunity, usurped
all else. He flung himself to the ground, breathless, elated, with an
electrical energy in his muscles, as he seized the pickaxe on which
Guthrie leaned irresolute, and struck the first blow.
The mountaineer turned his softened moonlit face upon him with a slow
smile in his eyes. "I be glad ye hed the grit ter begin; I hain't."
The dew had bereft his long curls of their wonted crispness; they
hung in lengthened tendrils and dishevelled on his broad shoulders.
He pushed his hat far back on his head. His heavy spurred boots were
deeply sunken in the long grass. He slowly placed one upon the spade
as he drove it down into the mould. "I can't holp bein' sorry fur the
Stranger People, ez they air leetle, an' air dead, an' hev been waitin'
so long in the dark fur the las' day an' thar summons ter rise."
That sharp smiting of metal upon stone jarred the moonlit quietude, and
Guthrie looked up with dilated eyes, his hand quivering on the spade.
"This ain't no common grave," he cried; "the ground is loose!"
He was not given to logical deductions; he did not speculate; he only
stood staring with wonder; while Shattuck, all unaccustomed to the
practical phenomena of digging, apprehended only cause of gratulation
that the investigation was to be the less hindered. He made no
reply, briskly shovelling out the earth. Presently, with a silent
sign to Guthrie, he reached the topmost slab of the strange small
sarcophagus. How long since it had seen the light that now fell upon
the clay-incrusted stone! When it was first laid here, in what quarter
was the moon? How often had it waxed and waned afterward, unmindful?
The vibrations of the cataract filled the air with the full pulsings
of nature's heart. The wind--wanderer!--came and went, as it did in
the days of the pygmies. A flower from the laurel--a mere tissue of a
bloom, so fine, so fragile of texture--was wafted down, and fell upon
the slab, as transitory, as futile, as unheeded, as ye, O forgotten
Little People!
Then the slab was lightly lifted, albeit with trembling hands. With
averted eyes Guthrie shrank back, and, as his shadow withdrew, the
moon shone straight into the tiny crypt, and Shattuck leaned forward
to look. An exclamation, not of triumph, of horror, smote the air
sharply. The mountaineer, with all his pulses aquiver, looked down into
his coadjutor's white, startled face. Shattuck was kneeling beside
the open grave, holding the coveted jug in his hand, full of silver
currency. The slow mountaineer, hardly mastering the idea, turned to
the coffin. If it still held bones, they lay beneath a pair of folded
saddle-bags that filled the narrow space.
In the confusion that beset his senses, he did not discriminate
the thunderous sound that rose upon the air: the flimsy bridge was
vibrating under the reckless gallop of a score of horsemen. He only
knew, as in a dream, that the moonlight was presently full of swift
mounted shadows bearing down upon them, Shattuck still with the jar in
his hand, although starting to his feet, and he himself leaning upon
the spade. The air reverberated with a savage cheer of triumph. The
sheriff had thrown himself to the ground, and with a smile of scornful
elation held his pistol at Guthrie's head.
"Ye air no spy, air ye, Fee?" he cried out, with ringing sarcasm.
"Got a mighty good reason not ter be. An' I reckon, my pretty Mister
Town-man," turning to Shattuck, "ye air no spy nuther. But I'll gin in,
Fee, I never war so fooled ez I hev been in you-uns. I never thunk ter
set a thief ter ketch a thief this-a-way."
Upon the word, Guthrie, into whose stunned consciousness the truth had
gradually sifted, turned, with a flaring color and a fiery eye, and
dealt the officer a terrible blow in the face with his whole force. The
next moment the two men, their arms interlocked, were swaying to and
fro on the brink of the open grave, so nearly matched in strength that
it was hard to say which might have prevailed, had not a swift flash of
red light sprung out in the pallid moonlight, and a sharp report rung
upon the air. They fell apart, the officer staggering backward, but
Guthrie sinking down upon the ground, whence he would rise no more.
A mingled clamor, terrible, full of fierce meaning, was suddenly loud
upon the night. The shifting temper of the populace was never more
aptly illustrated. In an instant the officer was a prisoner in the
hands of his posse, and his posse was an infuriated mob. The hoarse
cry, "String him up! string him up!" arose more than once. And those
who spoke calmly, and with reason and argument, were equally formidable
as they called upon the officer to justify his deed.
"Air this the law? No trial! no jury! Not a minute gin him to explain!
Call him thief, an' shoot him down, unarmed, in cold blood!"
They pressed about him with eyes hardly less luminous than the eyes
of wolves, hardly so gentle, while the officer protested first
self-defence.
"With twenty men at yer back?" "An' Guthrie's pistols over yander
in the holsters on his saddle?" the refutation rang out. Then, on
the repetition of the terrible cry, "String him up!" the effort at
exculpation shifted to a claim of the accidental discharge of the
weapon. And still the fierce clamor rose anew.
Meantime Felix Guthrie lay very still in the pale moonlight, heedless
of vengeance. His long hair stretched backward on the dank grass; his
face, upturned to the moonbeams, was calm and untroubled; his hands
were listless and limp, and one of the younger men mechanically chafed
them as he now and again bent over to seek some sign of life in the
fixed eyes.
Shattuck stood bewildered, looking with a sort of numb stupefaction
at the prostrate figure upon the grass, and then at the agitated and
furious group about the sheriff. The catastrophe, the very scene before
him, he could not realize. He felt as in a horrible dream, when the
consciousness of fantasy opens before the oppressed senses. More than
once a touch upon his arm failed to rouse him. When he turned his head
at last he saw, half hidden by the boughs of the blooming laurel,
Letitia crouching tremulously in the shadow. He did not wonder how
she came there now, nor note that the door of the little log cabin
was open, and its inmates, roused by the tumult, were standing on the
porch. He only saw her pale elfin face looking out from among the
blooms as if she were native to the laurels. Her voice, though it was
but a whisper, vibrated with urgency.
"Mount an' ride--_ride_ for yer life!" she said; she held his horse by
the bridle. "Thar'll be lynchin' 'fore day." Her tones grew steadier.
"Nobody knows who, nor why."
"I'm not afraid of the law," he said, indignantly.
"This ain't law! Gin yerse'f up in town ef ye want law. But ride
now--ride off in the shadder! Ride fur yer life!"
From the leafy screen she stepped forth, throwing the reins over the
head of the horse, which was frightened and restive, and held the
stirrup for Shattuck. The clamorous voices of those angered men rose
to a hoarse scream, and the agitated tones of the officer, pleading,
arguing, justifying himself, were overborne. Shattuck put his foot in
the stirrup. The next moment he was in the saddle. As he looked down,
he saw Letitia's face distinctly in the moonlight that trickled through
a bough; something of that love of hers, which Guthrie had at once
divined and denied and revealed, was expressed in it.
"Ye'll kem back again--some day--some day?" she said.
He clasped her hand as she lifted it.
"Come back? I'd come back if it were from the ends of the earth!" he
protested.
A little thing to say, wrung out of the impassioned moment, when,
in good sooth, there was no time to measure phrases or take heed of
the cadences of the voice. It changed the world for her. He never
forgot that radiant face in its sprite-like beauty amongst the moonlit
flowers. If there were other eyes in the world so tender, so pathetic,
so exquisite, he never saw them before or afterward. No other creature
of the earth so looked like one of the air. Even as he sought his
escape through the shadows, the dull sound of his horse's hoofs making
scant impression in the midst of the pawing of the posse's steeds,
he turned to catch through the trees a flitting glimpse of her light
dress, her volant attitude, as she sped silently and secretly back to
the waiting group on the porch. Then he rode away--rode for his life,
as she had bidden him.
And he had good need of speed. How the distorted idea gained credence
amongst the infuriated mountaineers it would be difficult to say.
It might have been colored by the circumstance that Guthrie could
logically be presumed to have had no connivance with the robbers whom
he had slain, and no knowledge of where they had hidden their booty;
it might have been suggested by the crafty sheriff as a diversion of
attention; but the suspicion presently permeated the group that Guthrie
had surprised Shattuck in the act of securing the plunder hidden in
the pygmy grave. The discovery of the stranger's flight added the
semblance of confirmation, and lent energy to the pursuit, which,
leading in diverse directions, served to disperse the posse, and thus
annul that formidable engine of the law which the strange happenings
of the night had turned against the sheriff, who had himself summoned
it into existence. It was doubtless with a view to his own safety that
he selected for his share of the search the road back to the county
town, and with no expectation of the result that awaited him there. The
imputation of flight, and of seeking to elude the responsibility of his
act, which might otherwise have attached to this precipitate return,
was in a measure eliminated by the fact that the fugitive had arrived
before him, and had already surrendered to the authorities.
It was a time to which Shattuck could never look back without a
wincing loathing for the part he was constrained to play, although, in
truth, he fared much better than he could have hoped. It so chanced
that the justice of the peace, an old, gentle, friendly man, whom in
those early morning hours he had roused, had himself the spirit of an
antiquarian; his conversation was replete with the ancient and fading
traditions of the Great Smoky Mountains, and he could well appreciate
the strength of the archæological interest which had led Shattuck to
open the pygmy grave. It seemed in the magistrate's estimation an ample
justification for many risks. They were talking of these things quietly
in the justice's office when the sheriff joined them. To his prosaic
amaze, instead of details of the operation of the law indigenous to the
office--points of examining trials and subpœnaings of witnesses, of
arrest and commitment--he heard legends of the old Cherokee settlement,
Chota, the "beloved town," city of refuge, where even the shedder of
blood was safe from vengeance; of the mysterious Ark before which
sacrifices were offered; of Hebraic words in the Indian ritual of
worship; of the great chieftain Oconostota, and his wonderful visit
to King George in London; of the bravery of Atta-Culla-Culla; of the
Indian sibyl known as the Evening Cloud, and the strange fulfilment of
her many strange prophecies.
Thus submitting his motives to no uncomprehending utilitarian
arbitrament, all the rigors of the misunderstanding that Shattuck
feared were averted, and he doubtless owed his admission to bail to
this fortuitous circumstance. That he never came to trial he was
indebted to a chance as friendly, for Millroy, before his death, so far
recovered as to make a sworn statement which inculpated only Cheever
and the horse-thief's gang, thus relieving Yates as well as Shattuck
of all suspicion of complicity in the murder and the robbery.
The mere passing remembrance that his name had ever been mentioned
in connection with these crimes was like the thrust of a knife in
Shattuck's heart for years thereafter, most of all as his enthusiasms
abated, and the more serious interests of life were asserted, and
his worldly consequence increased. Sometimes, amidst the wreaths of
a post-prandial cigar, a sprite-like face, that seemed even in his
unwilling and disaffected recollection supremely fair, was present to
him again, and left him with a sigh half pleasure, half pain. Further
than this his words were naught, and easily forgotten.
Easily forgotten! Every day that dawned to Letitia's expectant faith
held an hour that would bring him. Never a sunset came that was not
bright with his promise for the morrow. Down any curve in the road,
as it turned, she might look to see him. For did he not say he would
come?--and so surely he would! The years of watching wore out her
life, but not her faith. And she died in the belief that her doom fell
all too soon, and that he would come to find her gone. And she clung
futilely to earth for his fancied sorrow.
[Illustration: "EVERY DAY THAT DAWNED."]
Since those days the Little People's burying-ground is doubly deserted.
But few pass, and they eye it askance. And by many a fireside is told
the story of the heavy doom that fell on all who carried their schemes
therein and sought to know its secrets. But the birds nest in its
deep shades. Every year the laurel blooms anew. And Adelaide, looking
with pensive eyes upon it from her home, happy once more, can still
forecast the coming of that fair spring when the morning stars shall
sing together in the vernal dawn of a new heaven and a new earth, and
this mortality shall put on immortality.
Meantime the Little People sleep well.
THE END.
* * * * *
BY MARY E. WILKINS.
A NEW ENGLAND NUN, and Other Stories. 16mo,
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The reader who buys this book and reads it will find treble his money's
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
BY HOWARD PYLE.
THE WONDER CLOCK; OR, FOUR-AND-TWENTY MARVELLOUS TALES: BEING ONE
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"The Wonder Clock" is truly a monument to the genius and industry of
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* * * * *
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BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST.
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