III.
The iterative echoes of the shooting-match, sharply jarring from mountain to mountain, from crag to crag, evoked a faint reverberation even in the distant recesses of Wild-Cat Hollow. Alethea Sayles, sitting at her loom on the porch of the little log cabin, paused, the shuttle motionless in her deft hand, to listen.
All aloof from the world was Wild-Cat Hollow, a limited depression, high up on the vast slope of the Great Smoky. It might have seemed some secret nook, some guarded fastness, so closely did the primeval wilderness encompass it, so jealously did the ridgy steeps rise about it on every hand. It was invisible from the valley below, perhaps too from the heights above. And only a glimpse was vouchsafed to it of the world from which it was sequestered: beyond a field, in a gap of the minor ridges superimposed upon the mountain, where the dead and girdled trees stood in spectral ranks among the waving corn, might be seen a strip of woods in the cove below, a glint of water, a stately file of lofty peaks vanishing along the narrow skyey vista. Sunrise and sunset,—the Hollow knew them not: a distant mountain might flare with a fantasy of color, a star of abnormal glister might palpitate with some fine supernal thrill of dawn; but for all else, it only knew that the night came early and the day broke late, and in many ways it had meagre part in the common lot.
The little log cabin, set among its scanty fields, its weed-grown “gyarden spot,” and its few fruit-trees, was poor of its kind. The clapboards of its roof were held in place by poles laid athwart them, with large stones piled between to weight them down. The chimney was of clay and sticks, and leaned away from the wall. In a corner of the rickety rail fence a gaunt, razor-backed hog lay grunting drowsily. Upon a rude scaffold tobacco leaves were suspended to dry. Even the martin-house was humble and primitive: merely a post with a cross-bar, from which hung a few large gourds with a cavity in each, whence the birds were continually fluttering. Behind it all, the woods of the steep ascent seemed to touch the sky. The place might give a new meaning to exile, a new sentiment to loneliness.
Seldom it heard from the world,—so seldom that when the faint rifle-shots sounded in the distance a voice from within demanded eagerly, “What on yearth be that, Lethe?”
“Shootin’ fur beef, down in the cove, I reckon, from thar firin’ so constant,” drawled Alethea.
“Ye dunno,” said the unseen, unexpectedly, derisive of this conjecture. “They mought be a-firin’ thar bullets inter each other. Nobody kin count on a man by hisself, but a man in company with a rifle air jes’ a outdacious, jubious critter.”
Alethea looked speculatively down at the limited section of the cove visible from the Hollow above. Her hazel eyes were bright, but singularly grave. The soft sheen of her yellow hair served to definitely outline the shape of her head against the brown logs of the wall. The locks lay not in ripples, but in massive undulations, densely growing above her forehead, and drawn in heavy folds into a knot at the back of her head. She had the delicate complexion and the straight, refined lineaments so incongruous with the poverty-stricken mountaineer, so commonly seen among the class. Her homespun dress was of a dull brown. About her throat, of exquisite whiteness, was knotted a kerchief of the deepest saffron tint. Her hands and arms—for her sleeves were rolled back—were shapely, but rough and sun-embrowned. She had a deliberate, serious manner that very nearly approached dignity.
“I hopes they ain’t,” she said, still listening. “I hopes they ain’t a-shootin’ of one another.”
“Waal, I’m a-thinkin’ the lead wouldn’t be wasted on some of ’em,” said the acrid voice. “Piomingo Cove could make out mighty well ’thout some o’ them boys ez rip an’ rear aroun’ down thar ez a constancy. I dunno ez I’d feel called on ter mourn fur Mink Lorey enny. An’ I reckon the cove could spare him.”
Looking through the window close by the bench of the loom, Alethea could see the interior of the room, rudely furnished and with the perennial fire of the wide chimney-place slowly smouldering in a bed of ashes. A half-grown Shanghai pullet was pecking about the big flat stones of the hearth in a premature and unprescient proximity to the pot. There were two bedsteads of a lofty build, the thick feather beds draped with quilts of such astounding variety of color as might have abashed the designers of Joseph’s coat. The scrupulous cleanliness and orderliness of the place were as marked a characteristic as its poverty.
A sharp-featured woman of fifty sat in a low chair by the fire, wearing a blue-checked homespun dress, a pink calico sun-bonnet, and a cob-pipe,—the last was so constantly sported that it might be reckoned an article of attire. She was not so old as she seemed, but the loss of her teeth and her habit of crouching over the fire gave her a cronish aspect.
Alethea hesitated. Then, with a deprecatory manner, she said in her soft contralto drawl, “He ain’t down ’mongst the boys in Piomingo Cove none.”
Mrs. Sayles sneered. “Ye b’lieve that?”
“He be a-herdin’ cattle along o’ Ben Doaks on Piomingo Bald.”
Mrs. Sayles looked at her step-daughter and puffed a copious wreath of smoke for reply.
“Reuben tole me that hisself,—an’ so did Ben Doaks,” persisted Alethea.
“Mink, I calls him, an’ nuthin’ shorter,” said Mrs. Sayles, obdurately,—as if anything could be shorter. “But ef Ben Doaks gin the same word, it mus’ be a true one.”
Alethea flushed. “I know ye air sot agin Reuben, but I’d believe his word agin enny other critter’s in the mountings.”
“Set a heap o’ store on him, don’t ye?” said Mrs. Sayles, sarcastically. “An’ when he kem a-courtin’ ye, an’ ’peared crazy ’bout’n ye, an’ ye an’ him war promised ter marry, ye couldn’t quit jowin’ at him fur one minit. Ye plumb beset him ter do like ye thought war right,—ez ef he hed no mo’ conscience o’ his own ’n that pullet thar, an’ hedn’t never hearn on salvation. An’ ye’d beg an’ beg him ter quit consortin’ with the moonshiners; an’ a-drinkin’ o’ apple-jack an’ sech; an’ a-rollickin’ round the kentry; an’ layin’ folkses fences down on the groun’; an’ liftin’ thar gates off’n the hinges; an’ ketchin’ thar geese, an’ pickin’ ’em, an’ scatterin’ thar feathers in the wind, an’ sendin’ ’em squawkin’ home; an’ a-playin’ kyerds; an’ a-whoopin’, an’ ridin’, an’ racin’. An’ ye war always a-preachin’ at him, an’ tryin’ ter straighten him out, an’ make him suthin’ he war never born ter be.”
Her pipe was smoked out. She drew from her pocket a fragment of tobacco leaf, which was apparently not sufficiently cured for satisfactory smoking, for she laid it on the hot ashes on the hearth and watched it as it dried, her meditative eyes shaded by her pink calico sun-bonnet.
“Naw, sir!” she continued, as she crumpled the bit of leaf with her fingers and crowded it into the bowl of her pipe, “I hev never liked Mink. I ain’t denyin’ it, nuther. I ain’t gamesome enough ter git tuk up with sech ways ez his’n. Mighty few folks air! But I could see reason in the critter when he ’lowed one day, right hyar by this very chimbly-place,—he sez, sez he, ‘Lethe, ye don’t like nuthin’ I do or say, an’ I’m durned ef I kin see how ye like me!’”
Alethea’s serious, lustrous eyes, looking in at the window, saw not the uncouth interior of her home,—no! As in a vision, irradiated by some enchantment, she beheld the glamours of the idyllic past, fluctuating, waning.
Even to herself it sometimes seemed that she might have been content more lightly. Her imbuement with those practical ideas of right and wrong, the religion of deeds rather than the futilely pious fervors of the ignorant mountaineers in which creed and act were often widely at variance, was as mysterious an endowment as the polarity of the loadstone. She was not introspective, however; she never even wondered that she should speak openly, without fear or favor, as she felt impelled. Had she lived in an age when every inward monition was esteemed the voice of the Lord, she might have fancied that she was called to warn the world of the errors of its ways. Her sedulous conscience, the austere gravity of her spirit, her courage, her steadfastness, her fine intelligence, even her obdurate self-will, might all have had assertive values in those long bygone days. As an historic woman, she might have founded an order, or juggled with state-craft, or perished a martyr, or rode, enthusiast, in the ranks of battle. By centuries belated in Wild-Cat Hollow, she was known as a “perverted, cross-grained gal” and “a meddlin’ body,” and the “widder Jessup” had much sympathy for having in a misguided moment married Alethea’s father. Sometimes the Hollow, distorted though its conscience was, experienced a sort of affright to recognize its misdeeds in her curt phrase. It could only ask in retort who set her up to judge of her elders, and regain its wonted self-complacency as best it might. Even her own ascetic rectitude lacked some quality to commend it.
“I can’t find no regular fault with Lethe,” her step-mother was wont to say, “’ceptin’ she’s jes’—Lethe.”
Mrs. Sayles’s voice, pursuing the subject, recalled the girl’s attention:—
“An’ ye tired his patience out,—the critter hed mo’ ’n I gin him credit fur,—an’ druv him off at last through wantin’ him ter be otherwise. An’ now folks ’low ez him an’ Elviry Crosby air a-goin’ ter marry. I’ll be bound she don’t harry him none ’bout’n his ways, ’kase her mother tole me ez she air mighty nigh a idjit ’bout’n him, an’ hev turned off Peter Rood, who she hed promised ter marry, though the weddin’ day hed been set, an’ Pete air wuth forty sech ez Mink.”
Alethea turned away abruptly to her work, and as she lightly tossed the shuttle to and fro she heard, amidst the creaking of the treadle and the thumping of the batten, her step-mother’s persistent voice droning on:—
“An’ so ye hed yer say, an’ done yer preachin’, an’ he profited by it. I reckon he ’lowed ef ye jawed that-a-way afore ye war married, thar war no yearthly tellin’ what ye could say arterward. An’ now,” rising to the dramatic, “hyar kems along Ben Doaks, powerful peart an’ good enough ter satisfy ennybody; perlite, an’ saaft-spoken, an’ good-lookin’, an’ respected by all, an’ ready ter marry ye ter-morrer, ef ye’ll say the word. He owns cattle-critters”—
“An’ sheep,” put in an unexpected voice. A dawdling young woman, with a shallow blue eye and a pretty, inane soft face, had stepped into the back door, and heard the last words of the monologue which apparently had been often enough repeated to admit of no doubt as to its tenor. She had a slatternly, ill-adjusted look, and a snuff-brush in the corner of her mouth.
“An’ herds cattle in the summer season,” said Mrs. Sayles.
“He hev a good name ’mongst the cattle-owners,” observed the young woman, her daughter-in-law.
“An’ hev bought him right smart land,” added Mrs. Sayles.
“Down in Piomingo Cove! not h’isted up on the side o’ the mounting, like we-uns!” exclaimed the young woman, with more enthusiasm than one would have believed possible from the flaccid indifference of her manner.
“An’ he put in all the fair weather las’ winter a-raisin’ him a house,” Mrs. Sayles pursued.
“An’ he ’lowed ter me ez every log war hefted, an’ every pat o’ clay war daubed on the chinkin’, with the thought o’ Lethe!” cried the other.
“He hev been plantin’ round thar some, a’ready,” said the old woman.
“Corn, pumpkins, wheat, an’ terbacco,” supplemented the daughter-in-law.
“An’ he hev got him some bee-gums,—I never hearn how many bees,” said Mrs. Sayles.
“Down in Piomingo Cove!” the climax of worldly prosperity.
“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, with a freshened realization of despair. “Lethe ain’t never goin’ ter live in that house! I dunno what ails the gal! She takes a notion ez she likes a man with sech ways ez she can’t abide, an’ she quar’ls with him mornin’ an’ evenin’. An’ then when a feller kems along, with all sort’n good ways ez she likes, she don’t like him! Gals never acted similar whenst I war young. I ’low it mus’ be the wiles o’ Satan on the onruly generation.”
“Lethe ’pears ter think the Lord hev app’inted the rocky way,” said the other. “She be always a-doin’ of what’s the hardest. An’ she can’t quit nowhar this side o’ nuthin’! Ef ever she’s condemned ter Torment she’ll kerry a leetle kindlin’ along, fur fear the fire won’t be het up hot enough ter burn her fur her sins.”
She was silent during a momentary activity of the snuff-brush.
“But ef I war you-uns, Lethe, an’ hed the chance o’ livin’ in my own house all ter myself”—she began anew.
“Plenty o’ elbow-room,” interrupted Mrs. Sayles; “not all jammed tergether, like we-uns hyar.”
Alethea, aware of her lack of logic, made an effort to effect a diversion.
“I never hearn o’ folks a-grudgin’ a gal house-room, an’ wantin’ her ter go off an’ marry fur a place ter bide,” she said, pausing in her weaving.
Mrs. Sayles, who piqued herself, not without some reason, on her kindness to her step-daughter, having her prosaic welfare, at least, at heart, retorted in righteous wrath. “An’ nobody ain’t never said no sech word,” she declared, with amplest negation. “Grudgin’ ye house-room,—shucks!”
“One less wouldn’t be no improvemint ter we-uns, Lethe,” said the daughter-in-law. “We air jes’ like a hen settin’ on forty aigs: she kin kiver ’em ez well ez thirty-nine.”
“But I ain’t got no medjure o’ patience with this latter-day foolishness!” said Mrs. Sayles, tartly. “Whenst I war young, gals married thar fust chance,—mought hev been afeard they’d never git another,” she added, impersonally, that others might profit by this contingency. “An’ I don’t keer much nohow fur these hyar lonesome single wimmen. Ye never kin git folks ter b’lieve ez they ever hed enny chance.”
“Laws-a-massy, Lethe,” the daughter-in-law reassured her, still vaguely serene, “I ain’t wantin’ ter git shet o’ ye, nohow. Ye hev tuk mo’ keer o’ my chill’n than I hev, an’ holped me powerful. It’s well ye done it, too, fur Jacob Jessup ain’t sech ez kin content me with Wild-Cat Hollow. I war raised in the cove!”
“Thar’s L’onidas now, axin’ fur suthin’ ter eat,” said the uncompromising Alethea, whose voice was the slogan of duty.
The loom occupied a full third of the space on the little porch; two or three rickety chairs stood there, besides; a yoke hung against the wall; the spinning-wheel was shadowed by the jack-bean vines, whose delicate lilac blooms embellished the little cabin, clambering to its roof; on the floor were several splint baskets. A man was languidly filling them with peaches, which he brought in a wheel-barrow from the trees farther down on the slope. He was tall and stalwart, but his beard was gray, and he had assumed the manner and all the exemptions of extreme age; occasionally he did a little job like this with an air of laborious precision. He was accompanied both in going and coming by his step-son’s daughter, a tow-headed, six-year-old girl, and a gaunt yellow dog. The little girl’s voice, dictatorial and shrill, was on the air continuously, broken only by the low, acquiescent refrain of the old man’s replies, carefully adjusted to meet her propositions. The dog paced silently and discreetly along, his appreciation of the placid pleasure of the occasion plainly manifested in his quiet demeanor and his slightly wagging tail. His decorum suffered a lapse when, as they came close to the porch, he observed Leonidas issue from the door,—a small boy of four, a plump little caricature of a man, in blue cotton trousers, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a laughably small pair of knitted suspenders. He held in his hand a piece of fat meat several inches square, considered in the mountains peculiarly wholesome for small boys, and a reliable assistant in “gittin’ yer growth.”
Tige paused not for reflection. He sprang upon the porch, capering gleefully about, and uttering shrill yelps of discovery with much his triumphant manner in treeing a coon. Leonidas shared the common human weakness of overestimating one’s own size. He thought to hold the booty out of Tige’s reach, and extended his arm at full length, whereupon the dog, with an elastic bound and extreme nicety of aim, caught it and swallowed it at a single gulp. Leonidas winked very fast; then, realizing his bereavement, burst into noisy tears. Tige’s facetiousness had a discordantly sudden contrast in the serious howl he emitted as he was kicked off the porch by the child’s father. This was an unkempt young fellow just emerging from the shed-room. He had a red face and swollen eyes, and there were various drowsy intimations in his manner that he was just roused from sleep. No natural slumber, one might have judged; the odor of whiskey still hung about him, and he walked with an unsteady gait to the end of the porch and sat down on the edge of the floor, his feet dangling over the ground. Tige, who had sought refuge beneath the house, and was giving vent to sundry sobbing wheezes, thrust his head out to lick his master’s boots. Upon this mollifying demonstration, the man looked down with the lenient expression of one who loves dogs. “What ails ye, then,” he reasoned, “ter be sech a fool as ter ’low ye kin be let ter rob a child the size o’ L’onidas thar?”
And forthwith the mercurial Tige came out, cheerful as before.
In the limited interval when Leonidas—who had been supplied with another piece of meat, but still wept aloud with callow persistence because of the affronts offered by Tige—was fain to pause for breath, and between the alternate creaking of the treadle of the loom and the thumping of the batten, the man’s ear caught that unwonted stir in the air, the sound of consecutive rifle-shots.
“Look-a-hyar,” he cried, springing to his feet, “what’s that a-goin’ on down in the cove? Lethe, stop trompin’ on that thar n’isy treadle, so ez I kin listen! Quit yellin’, ye catamount!” with a vengeful glance at the small boy.
But the grief of Leonidas was imperative, and he abated nothing.
Jacob Jessup stood for an instant baffled. Then suddenly he put both hands to his mouth, and roused all the echoes of Wild-Cat Hollow with a ringing halloo.
“Who be ye a-hollerin’ at?” asked his mother from her nook in the chimney corner.
“I ’lowed I viewed a man up yander ’mongst them woods,—mought be one o’ the herders.”
Alethea’s foot paused on the treadle. Her uplifted hand stayed the batten, the other held the shuttle motionless. She turned her head and with a sudden rich flush on her cheek and a deep light in her lifted eyes looked up toward the forests that rose in vast array upon the steep slopes of the ridge until they touched the sky. Accustomed to the dusky shadows of their long avenues, she discerned a mounted figure in their midst. There was a tense moment of suspense. The man had wheeled his horse on hearing the halloo. He seemed to hesitate; then in lieu of response he took his way down the hill toward the cabin. The trees were fewer on the edge of the clearing. Before he drew rein by the rail fence she had turned back to the loom, and once more the shuttle winged its short, clumsy flights, like a fledgeling bird, from one side to the other, and the treadle creaked, and the batten thumped, and she spared not an instant from her work.
For it was only Ben Doaks dismounting, glad of a pretext, throwing the reins over a projecting rail of the fence, and tramping up to the house.
“Howdy,” he observed comprehensively. And the family, meditatively eying him, responded, “Howdy.”
“Keep yer health, Ben?” the old woman demanded. She had come to the door, and took a gourd of water from a pail which was on a shelf without. She drank leisurely, and tossed the surplus water from the gourd across the porch, where it spattered the half-grown pullet, which shunted off suddenly with a loud, shocked exclamation, as if it sported half a score of ruffled petticoats.
“Yes’m,” drawled Ben, seating himself on the edge of the porch, near Jacob, “I keeps toler’ble well.”
“I dunno how ye do it,—livin’ off’n what ye cooks yerse’f.” She manifested a truly mundane interest in the eligible young man. She did not return to her chair by the fireside, but sat down on the doorstep. “I’d look ter be p’isoned ef I hed ter live on yer cookin’.”
“Waal, I reckon ye couldn’t put up with it right handy, seem’ the sorter table ye set out hyar.”
Was the old woman more than human, to be untouched by this sincere tribute?
“Ye oughter kem down hyar oftener ye do, Ben, an’ bide ter meals,” she said, her spectacles turned upon him with a certain grave luminosity. “We’ll make ye powerful welcome ter sech vittles ez we hev got. Ye ain’t been hyar fur a right smart time.”
“I know that, but somehows I never kin feel right welcome comin’ so often,” said Ben. He had leaned back against the post of the porch. He could look, without moving, into Alethea’s grave, absorbed face as she worked.
“’Count o’ Lethe? Shucks! thar ain’t but one fool hyar. Mought kem ter see the rest o’ we-uns.”
Alethea’s face flushed. Ben Doaks, dismayed to be the indirect occasion of her anger, and secretly affronted by the breach of decorum which he considered involved in this open mention of his bootless suit, hastened to change the subject. “Did ye hev a word ter say ter me, Jacob?” he asked. “Ye ’lowed, day ’fore yestiddy, ye wanted ter sell yer steer.”
There was now no sound from the cove. The burnished glisters of the sunshine hung above it, holding in suspension a gauzy haze, through which the purple mountains were glamourous and darkly vague. Jacob, his senses yet in thrall, could hardly recall the question he had desired to ask concerning the rifle-shots that had trivially jarred its perfect serenity.
“Yes, yes,” he said hastily. “Buck, ye know,” with the manner of introduction. “Yander he be.” He pointed to a gaunt dun-colored ox with long horns and a joyless mien, standing within a few feet of a rude trough which the spring branch kept supplied.
“Jacob,” said Alethea, turning her head with a knitted brow, “ef ye sell Buck, how air we goin’ ter plough our craps? How air we goin’ ter live along?”
“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles. “I ain’t s’prised none ef the man ez marries Lethe at last will find out he hev got a turrible meddler. She jes’ ups an’ puts inter her elders’ affairs ez brash ez ef hern war the only brains in the fambly. Jacob’s a-savin’ ter buy a horse, child. Yer dad ’lowed Jacob mought use his jedgmint ’bout all the crappin’, bein’ ez yer dad’s old an’ ain’t long fur this worl’. So Jacob hev determinated ter buy a horse. Who wants ter work a steer when they ken hev a horse?”
Doaks looked intently at Alethea, loyally eager to range himself on her side. She was oblivious of his presence now; every faculty was on the alert in her single-handed contest against the family.
“Whar’s the money he hev saved?” she demanded.
Her step-brother seemed frowzier than ever, as he lifted his eyebrows in vain cogitation for an answer.
“Ye shet up,” he said, in triumphant substitution; “ye ain’t no kin ter me.”
Alethea, all lacking in the bland and mollifying feminine influences that subtly work their ends in seeming submission, bluntly spoke her inmost thought:
“Ez long ez thar’s a moonshine still a-runnin’ somewhar round Piomingo Cove, Jacob ain’t goin’ ter save no money.”
“Thar ain’t no still round hyar ez I knows on,” said Doaks, in surprise. “Over yander in Eskaqua Cove thar air a bonded still, I know.”
“That bonded still hev ter sell wholesale, hevin’ no license otherwise,” she retorted, “an’ Jacob hain’t saved enough yit ter buy by the five gallon. An’ though he may ’pear sober ter you-uns, he don’t ter me.”
Jacob bore her scathing glance with an admirable equanimity.
“Ye shet up, Lethe; ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout stills, bonded or no. Look-a-hyar, Ben, don’t ye want ter buy Buck? See him thar?”
“I don’t want him,” said Ben.
Jacob turned fiercely on Alethea. “Whyn’t ye hold yer jaw, ef ye know how; ye have done spiled my trade. Look-a-hyar, Ben,” he said alluringly, “it’s this hyar steer,”—there was but one,—“this hyar steer; he’s wuth money. I tell ye,” he vociferated, with a drunken wag of his head, “Buck’s a good steer. I dunno ef I kin git my cornsent ter trade Buck off, no-ways. Buck’s plumb like a member o’ the fambly. I tell ye we-uns fairly dote on Buck.”
“Waal, I don’t want him. Older ’n enny of ye, ain’t he?” drawled Ben. He was not a dull fellow, and he had taken his cue. He would decry the ox and forego his bargain, a consciously hopeless sacrifice to his affection.
Jacob straightened himself with an effort, and stared at his interlocutor.
“Who? Buck? Why, Buck ain’t much older than L’onidas thar.” He waved his hand toward the boy, who had perched on the bench of the loom beside Alethea. Now and then she patted his shoulder, which effort at consolation he received with a distinct crescendo; he had begun to relish the sound of his vocal performance, evidently attempting new and bizarre effects.
“L’onidas air about four year old, ain’t he, Mis’ Jessup?” Doaks asked of the young matron, who seemed placidly regardless how the negotiation should terminate.
“I b’lieve he’s ’bout four,” she said, without animation.
“Waal, he be toler’ble bouncin’ fur that,” said Doaks, looking with the eye of speculation at the boy, as if he were about to offer a bid for Leonidas, “but I kin see a heap o’ diff’unce ’twixt his size an’ Buck’s.”
The drunken man turned and stared at the diminutive person on the bench. “Waal,” he said in a low-spirited way, as if he must yield the point, “I never knowed ye wanted a steer o’ that size. Wouldn’t be much use ter ye. Our’n ain’t.”
“He ’pears sorter jubious in his temper. Does he hook?”
“Who? Buck?”—with an air of infinite amazement. “Why, Buck’s ez saaft ez L’onidas thar.”
As Leonidas was just now extremely loud, the comparison was hardly felicitous.
“I don’t want no work-ox, nohow,” said Doaks. “I want cattle ter fatten.”
“Jes’ try Buck. He’ll lay on fat fur ev’y ear o’ corn fedded him. Ye dunno Buck. He hain’t laid on much yit, ’kase, ye see,”—Jessup’s voice took a confidential intonation, although it was not lowered because of the roaring Leonidas,—“we-uns ain’t hed much corn ter feed ter Buck, bein’ back’ard las’ year. The drought cotched our late corn, an’ so Buck, though he worked it, he never got none sca’cely. An’ that’s why he ain’t no fatter ’n he be.”
Logical of Buck, but it availed him as little as the logic of misfortunes profits the rest of the world.
Alethea had risen and turned half round, leaning against the great clumsy frame of the loom. Her posture displayed her fine height; her supple figure was slight, as became her age, but with a suggestion of latent strength in every curve. There was something strangely inconsistent in the searching, serious expression of her grave brown eyes and the lavish endowment of her beauty, which seemed as a thing apart from her. Perhaps only Ben Doaks noted, or rather felt in a vague, unconscious way, the fascination of its detail: the lustre of her dense yellow hair showing against the brown wall, where a string of red peppers hung, heightening the effect; the glimpse of her white throat under the saffron kerchief; the lithe grace of her figure, about which her sober-hued dress fell in straight folds. To the home-folks she gave other subjects to contemplate.
“Naw,” she drawled, in her soft, low voice, whose intonation only suggested sarcasm, “we didn’t plant much o’ nuthin’ las’ year,—hed no seed sca’cely, an’ nuthin’ ter trade fur ’em. The plenties’ o’ ennythin’ roun’ hyar-abouts war bresh whiskey, an’ ez Buck don’t drink it he ain’t no fatter ’n he be.”
“Waal,” said Doaks, feeling all the discomforts incident to witnessing a family row, incompetent to participate by reason of non-membership, “I ’lowed the mountings hed in an’ about done with moonshinin’, cornsiderin’ the way the raiders kep’ up with the distillers. It’s agin the law, ye know.”
“I ain’t a-keerin’ fur the law,” said Alethea loftily. “The law air jes’ the men’s foolishness, an’ they air a-changin’ of it forever till ’tain’t got no constancy. Ef I war minded ter break it I’d feel no hendrance in the sperit.”
Her eyes met his. He looked vaguely away. Certainly there was no reasoning on this basis.
“’Tain’t right,” she said suddenly. “Jacob sleeps an’ drinks his time away, an’ don’t do his sheer o’ the work. I done all the ploughin’ this year,—me an’ Buck,—an’ I ain’t one o’ the kind ez puts up with sech. I ain’t a Injun woman, like them at Quallatown. Pete Rood,—he hev been over thar,—he ’lows the wimmen do all the crappin’ while the men go huntin’. I’ll kerry my e-end o’ the log, but when the t’other e-end draps ’pears ter me I oughter drap mine.”
“What ye goin’ ter do, Lethe?” said the old woman. “Goin’ ter take ter idlin’ an’ drinkin’ bresh whiskey, too?”
She laughed, but she sneered as well.
Alethea, all unmoved by her ridicule, drawled calmly on: “I dunno nuthin’ ’bout bresh whiskey, an’ I ain’t idled none, ez the rest o’ you-uns kin see; but ef Jacob don’t do his stent nex’ year, thar’ll be less corn hyar than this.”
It was hard for Doaks to refrain from telling her that there was a home ready for her, and one to share it who would work for both. Only futility restrained him. He flushed to the roots of his light brown hair, and as a resource he drew out a clasp-knife and absently whittled a chip as he listened.
“Waal, wimmen hev ter holp men along with thar work wunst in a while,” said Mrs. Sayles patronizingly. “Ye’ll find that out, child, whenst ye git married.”
“Ef I war married,” said Alethea, severely contemplating the possibility,—and Doaks felt a vague thrill of jealousy,—“I’d do his work ef he war ailin’ ennywise, but not ter leave him in the enjyement o’ bresh whiskey.”
“Ye shet up, Lethe,” said Jacob, nettled. “Ye ain’t no kin ter me,—jes’ a step-sister,—an’ ye ain’t got no right ter jow at me. Ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout bresh whiskey. Ye dunno whar it’s made nor who makes it.”
“Ef I did”—she began abruptly.
He looked up at her with a sober dismay on his face.
“Don’t go ter ’lowin’ ye’d gin the word ter the revenuers?” he said.
Mrs. Sayles dropped her knitting in her lap.
“Look-a-hyar, Lethe,” she exclaimed, “it’s ez much ez yer life’s wuth ter say them words!”
“I ain’t said ’em,” declared Alethea. She looked vaguely away with absent eyes, disregarding Jacob’s growling defense of himself, which consisted in good measure of animadversions on people who faulted their elders and gals who couldn’t hold their tongues. Suddenly she stepped from the porch.
“Whar be ye goin’, Lethe?” demanded Mrs. Sayles, ruthlessly interrupting Jacob’s monologue.
“Ter hunt up that thar lam’,” replied Alethea calmly, as if nothing else had been under discussion. “I ain’t seen nuthin’ of it ter-day, an’ some o’ the chill’n—I b’lieve ’twar Joe—’lowed its dam war down yander nigh Boke’s spring yestiddy, actin’ sorter cur’ous, an’ I reckon suthin’ ’s happened ter it.”
Doaks looked after her as she went, tempted to follow. She took her way down the path beside the zigzag rail-fence. All the corners were rank with wild flowers, vines and bushes, among which her golden head showed from time to time as in a wreath. She was soon without the limits of Wild-Cat Hollow. More than once she paused as she went, holding her hands above her eyes, and looking at the vast array of mountains on every side. A foreign land to her, removed even from vague speculation; she only saw how those august summits lifted themselves into the sky, how the clouds, weary-winged, were fain to rest upon them. There was a vague blurring at the horizon-line, for a shower was succeeded by mist. The woods intervened presently; the long stretches of the majestic avenues lay before her, all singularly open, cleared of undergrowth by the fiery besom of the annual conflagration. It was very silent; once only she heard the shrill trilling of a tree-frog; and once the insistent clamor of a locust broke out close at hand, vibrating louder and louder and dying away, to be caught up antiphonally in the distance. Often she noted the lightning-scathed trees, the fated of the forest, writhen and blanched and spectral among their flourishing kindred. There were presently visible at the end of the long leafy vista other dead trees: their blight was more prosaic; they stood girdled and white in an abandoned field that lay below the slope on which she had paused, and near the base of the mountain. A broken rotting rail-fence still encircled it. Blackberry bushes, broom-sedge, a tangle of weeds, were a travesty of its crops. A fox, a swift-scudding tawny streak, sped across it as she looked. Hard by there was a deserted hut: the doors were open, showing the dark voids within; the batten shutters flapped with every changing whim of the winds. Fine sport they had often had, these riotous mountain sprites, shrieking down the chimney to affright the loneliness; then falling to sobs and sighs to mock the voices of those who had known sorrow here and perhaps shed tears; sometimes wrapping themselves in snow as in a garment, and reeling in fantastic whirls through the forlorn and empty place; sometimes twitting the gaunt timbers with their infirmities, and one wild night wrenching off half a dozen clapboards from the roof and scattering them about the door. Thus the moon might look in, seeing no more those whose eyes had once met its beam, and even the sunlight had melancholy intimations when it shone on the forsaken hearth-stone. A screech-owl had found refuge among the rafters, and Alethea heard its quavering scream ending in a low, sinister chuckle. There was a barn near at hand,—a structure of undaubed, unhewn logs, with a wide open pass-way below the loft to shelter wagons and farm implements; it seemed in better repair than the house. The amber sky above the dark woods had deepened to orange, to crimson; the waning light suffused the waters of the spring branch which flowed close by the barn, the willows leaning to it, the ferns laving in it. The place was incredibly solitary and mournful with the persistent spectacle of the deserted home, suggestive of collapsed energies, of the defeated scheme of some simple humanity.
A faint bleat rose suddenly. Alethea turned quickly. Amongst a patch of briers she caught a glimpse of something white; another glance,—it was the ewe, quietly nibbling the grass.
Alethea had no intention of moving softly, but her skirts brushing through the weeds made hardly a sound. Her light, sure step scarcely stirred a leaf. The ewe saw her presently, and paused in feeding. She had been making the best of her woes, remaining near her lamb, which had fallen into a sink-hole, sustained by the earth, gravel and banks of leaves held in the mouth of the cavity. Its leg was broken, and thus, although the sheep could venture to it, the lamb could not follow to the vantage-ground above. Seeing that succor was at hand, the sheep lost all patience and calmness, and ran about Alethea in a distracting fashion, bleating, till the lamb, roused to a renewed sense of its calamities, bleated piteously too. As it lay down in the cavity upon the dead leaves, it had a strangely important look upon its face, appreciating how much stir it was making in the world for one of its size. Alethea noticed this, albeit she was too self-absorbed at the moment. These treacherous hopper-shaped sink-holes are of indefinite depth, and are often the mouths of caves. To reach the lamb she must needs venture half across the cavity. She stepped cautiously down the debris, holding fast the while to the branches of an elder-bush growing on its verge. She felt the earth sinking beneath her feet. The sheep, which had jumped in too, sprang hastily out. Alethea had a dizzying realization of insecurity. She caught the lamb up in one arm, then stepped upon the sinking mass and struggled up the side of the aperture, as with a great gulp the leaves and earth were swallowed into the cavity. She looked down with that sickening sense of a sheer escape, still holding the lamb in one arm; the other hand readjusted the heavy masses of her golden hair, and the saffron kerchief about the neck of her brown dress. The sheep, one anxiety removed, was the prey of another, and pressed close to Alethea, with outstretched head and all the fears of kidnapping in her pleading eyes.
Alethea waited for a moment to rest. Then as she glanced over her shoulder her heart seemed to stand still, her brain reeled, and but for her acute consciousness she would have thought she must be dreaming.
The clearing lay there all as it was a moment before: the deserted buildings, the weed-grown fields, the rotting rail fence; the woods dark about it, the sky red above it. Around and around the old barn, in a silent circuit, three men were solemnly tramping in single file. She stood staring at them with dilated eyes, all the mystic traditions of supernatural manifestations uppermost in her mind. Once more the owl’s scream rent the brooding stillness. How far that low, derisive chuckle echoed! A star, melancholy, solitary, was in the pensive sky. The men’s faces were grave,—once, twice, thrice, they made the round. Then they stood together in the open space beneath the loft, and consulted in whispers.
One suddenly spoke aloud.
“Oh, Tobe!” he called.
“Tobe!” called the echoes.
There was no answer. All three looked up wistfully. Then they again conferred together in a low tone.
“Oh, Tobias!” cried the spokesman in a voice of entreaty.
“Tobias!” pleaded the plaintive echoes.
Still there was no answer. The owl screamed suddenly in its weird, shrill tones. It had flown out from among the rafters and perched on the smokeless chimney of the hut. Then its uncanny laughter filled the interval.
Once more the men whispered anxiously to each other. One of them, a tall, ungainly, red-haired fellow, seemed to have evolved a solution of the problem which had baffled them.
“Mister Winkeye!” he exclaimed, with vociferous confidence.
The echoes were forestalled. A sneeze rang out abruptly from the loft of the deserted old barn,—a sneeze resonant, artificial, grotesque enough to set the blades below to roaring with delighted laughter.
“He mus’ hev his joke. Mister Winkeye air a mighty jokified old man,” declared the red-haired fellow.
They made no effort to hold further communication with the sneezer in the loft. They hastily placed a burly jug in the centre of the space below, and laid a silver half-dollar upon the cob that served as stopper. The coin looked extremely small in this juxtaposition. There may be people elsewhere who would be glad of a silver coin of that size capable of filling so disproportionately large a jug. Then they ran off fleetly out of the clearing and into the woods, and Alethea could hear the brush crackling as they dashed through it on the slopes below.
She was still pale and tremulous, but no longer doubts beset her. She understood the wiles of the illicit distiller, pursued so closely by the artifices of the raiders that he was prone to distrust the very consumers of his brush whiskey. They never saw his face, they knew not even his name. They had no faint suspicion where his still was hidden. They were not even dangerous as unwilling witnesses, should they be caught with the illicit liquor in their hands. The story that they had left a jug and a half-dollar in a deserted barn, and found the jug filled and the coin vanished, would inculpate no one. From the loft the distiller or his emissary could see and recognize them as they came. Alethea, having crept down the slope amongst the briers in search of the lamb, had been concealed from him. She was seized instantly by the desire to get away before he should appear. She coveted the knowledge of no such dangerous secret. She walked boldly out from the leafy covert, that he might see her in the clearing and delay till she was gone.
The lamb was bleating faintly in her arms; the sheep pressed close to her side, nudging her elbow with an insistent nozzle. The last flush of the day was on her shining hair and her grave, earnest face. The path led her near the barn. She hesitated, stopped, and drew back hastily. A man was swinging himself alertly down from the loft. He caught up the coin, slipped it into his pocket, and lifted the jug with the other hand. The next moment he dropped it suddenly, with a startled exclamation. His eyes had met her eyes. There was a moment of suspense charged with mutual recognition. Then she ran hastily by, never pausing till she was far away in the deep obscurity of the woods.