XVII.
Alethea stood motionless for some little time, still leaning on the fence. A stalk of golden-rod, brown and withered, its glory departed, touched the rails now and then. Its slight, infrequent swaying was the only intimation of wind, except that the encompassing smoke, filling the vast spaces between heaven and earth, shifted occasionally, the dense convolutions silently merging into new combinations of ill-defined shapes,—colorless phantasmagoria, dimly looming. It might have seemed as if all the world had faded out, leaving only these blurred suggestions of unrecognized forms, like the vestiges of forgotten æons.
Even the harvesters did not maintain always a human aspect. Through the haze they were grotesque, distorted, gigantic; their hands vaguely visible, now lifted, now falling, in their deliberate but ceaseless work. They looked like vagrants from that eccentric populace of dreams, given over to abnormal, inconsequent gestures, to shifting similitudes, to preposterous conditions and facile metamorphoses of identity. Alethea felt a strange doubt, in recognizing Sam Marvin, whether it were indeed the moonshiner whom she saw.
An insistent silence possessed the air, broken only by the rustle of the crisp husks as the three dim figures pulled the corn. Suddenly there sounded a mad, scuttling rush, shrill canine yelps, and a series of nimble shadows vaulted over the fence. The coon ran up a tree, while the moonshiner’s dogs ranged themselves beneath it, with upturned heads askew, and gloating, baffled eyes, and moans of melancholy frustration, punctuated ever and anon with yaps of more poignant realization of the coon’s inaccessibility. Tige, irresolute, showed fight at first to the strangers; then he too sat down, and with quivering fore-paws and wagging tail wheezed and yelped at his fireside companion, as if he had no personal acquaintance with the raccoon, had held with him no relations of enforced amity, and could not wait one moment to crunch his bones.
The half-grown girl, desisting from her work, turned her head in the direction of the noise, and caught a glimpse of Alethea. She had an excited eye, high cheek-bones, and a thin, prominent nose. Her face looked peculiarly sharp inside her flabby sun-bonnet. She was at the “growing age,” and her frock was consequently short for the bare, sun-embrowned legs which protruded from it. Her bare feet were long and bony. She seemed to be growing lengthwise only, for her shoulders were narrow, her arms slim. She had a callow, half-fledged look, not unlike a Shanghai pullet. Her manner was abrupt and fluttered, and her voice high and shrill.
“Laws-a-massy!” she exclaimed, jumping precipitately backward on her long, attenuated legs, “yander’s Lethe Sayles!”
Both the man and the woman started violently,—not because of the matter of the disclosure, but of its manner, as was manifested in his rebuke.
“By Gosh, Sereny! ef ye ain’t mighty nigh skeered me ter death!” he cried angrily. “S’pose it air Lethe Sayles!” He bowed his body grotesquely amidst the smoke, as he emphasized his reproof. “Air she ennything so powerful oncommon ez ye hev ter jump ez sprightly ez ef ye hed stepped on a rattlesnake, an’ squeech out that-a-way? Howdy, Lethe,” he added, with an odd contrast of a calm voice and a smooth manner, as if Alethea were deaf to these amenities. “Thrivin’, I s’pose?”
Alethea faltered that she was well, and said no more. The imperative consciousness of all that she had done against him, of all for which she feared him, prevailed for a time. She knew that it would have been wiser to venture some commonplace civility, and then go. But that insistent conscience, strong within her, forbade this. She was all unprepared now for the disclosure of her testimony in the court-room, but the fact that she had ever intended to warn him made it seem as if this were due. She felt as if she had missed a certain fortification of her courage in that she had not had the privilege of trembling over the prospect, of familiarizing herself with it, of approaching it slowly, but none the less surely, by lessening degrees of trepidation. She wondered that he did not look at her with more of the indignation which she knew he must feel toward her. Bitterness, however, was acridly manifested in the woman’s manner, her averted head, her sedulous silence. She continued industriously pulling the corn, as if no word had been spoken, no creature stood by. The gallinaceous girl, silent too, returned to her work, but often looked askance at Alethea over her shoulder.
The man spoke presently. His face and figure were blurred now in the smoke. It was as if a shadow had purloined a sarcastic voice. Alethea’s nerves were unstrung by the surprise of the meeting, and the fact that she could see only this elusive suggestion of his presence harassed and discomposed her.
“Waal, Lethe, I dunno ez I be s’prised ter see ye. I hev seen ye sech a many times whenst I never expected ye,—startin’ up yander at Boke’s barn ez suddint ez ef ye hed yer headquarters in the yearth or the sky. An’ jes’ at this junctry, whenst we air a-tryin’ ter steal our own corn away from hyar, ye kem a-boundin’ out’n the smoke, like ye hed no abidin’ place more ’n a witch or that thar Herder on Thunderhead, or sech harnts. I never see yer beat ez a meddler. Satan ain’t no busier with other folkses’ souls.”
She made no reply. The shifting vapor hid the tree where the bright-eyed coon hung fast by his claws, and the wheezing yapping of the foiled dogs besieging his stronghold seemed strangely loud and near since they were invisible.
The shucks rustled sibilantly. The ears of maize fell with a monotonous sound upon the heaps in the turn row.
“What did the revenuers do when they kem up the mounting?” Marvin asked suddenly. His tone was all alert now with curiosity. He could reserve his rebukes till his craving for gossip should be satisfied. Conversation, a fine art elsewhere, assumes the dignity of a privilege in these sparsely settled wilds, where its opportunities are scant.
“They ain’t never kem, ez I knows on,” said Alethea tremulously. They might come yet, and here he was still unwarned and at the mercy of accident. She had climbed the fence, springing lightly down on the other side, and had mechanically begun to assist them in their work,—the usual courtesy of a guest in the mountains who finds the host employed.
“Slip-shuck it, Lethe,” he remarked, calling her attention to the fact that the outer husks were left upon the stalks, and the ear, enveloped merely in its inner integuments, was thrown upon the heap. “I hates powerful ter be obleeged ter leave all this hyar good roughness;” he indicated the long rows of shucks upon the stalks. “My cattle would be mighty thankful ter hev sech fedded ter ’em. But the corn itself air about ez much ez I kin haul so fur”—
“Don’t ye tell her wharabouts we-uns lives nowadays,” broke out the woman.
She was standing near Alethea, and she turned and looked at her. The girl’s fresh and beautiful countenance was only more delicate, more sensitive, with that half-affrighted perturbation on it, that piteous deprecation. The elder woman’s face was furrowed and yellow in contrast; her large, prominent eyes, of a light, hazel color, were full of tears, and had a look as if tears were no unfamiliar visitants. She wiped them away with the curtain of her pink sun-bonnet, and went on pulling the corn.
“I dunno whar Sam Marvin lives, myself,” the moonshiner declared, with reckless bravado. “I don’t go by that name no mo’.”
He straightened up and set his arms akimbo, as he laughed.
“Ye needn’t send no mo’ o’ yer spies, Lethe, arter me,” he declared. “My neighbors way over yander dunno no sech man ez Sam Marvin.”
Alethea’s lifted hand paused upon the shuck on the sere stalk. As she turned half round he saw her face in the smoke; her golden hair and fresh cheek, and the saffron kerchief tied beneath the round chin. He was not struck by her beauty; it always seemed a thing apart from her, the slightest incident of her personality, so much more forceful were the impressions of her character, so much more intimately her coercive opinions concerned those with whom she came in contact. But in her clear eyes he detected a surprise which he hardly understood at the moment. And he paused to look at her, wondering if it were only simulated.
Her heart throbbed with a dull and heavy pain. So angry were they because she would not promise to keep their secret. She shrank from their rage when she should tell that she had voluntarily disclosed it.
“Ye’ll be purtendin’ ez ’twar somebody else ez sent the spy ter make sure o’ the place whar we kep’ our still. I know ye!” He wagged his head in more active assertion that her machinations could not avail against his discernment.
“I never sent no spy,” faltered Alethea.
“Thar now! What did I tell ye!” he broke out, laughing disdainfully; the woman added a high, shrill, unmirthful refrain; even Serena the pullet, stepping about in the smoke on her long, yellow feet and in her abbreviated garments, cackled scornfully.
“Ye may thank yer blessed stars,” cried the woman scathingly,—she could hold silence no longer—“ez ye done nuthin’ agin we-uns. An’ the revenuers never raided our still, nor got nare drap o’ our liquor, nor tuk nuthin’ o’ ourn. Yer bones would be a-bleachin’ on the hillside ef they hed! Jes’ afore yer spy kem them white-livered men—Sam thar, an’ the t’other distillers—war a-talkin’ ’bout how they could make ye hesh up yer mouth, ez ye wouldn’t keep it shet yerse’f. They ’lowed it never seemed right handy ter them ter shoot a woman same ez a man, an’ I jes’ up-ed an’ tole ’em ez ye desarved no better ’n a bullet through that yaller head o’ yourn, an’ they could git a shot at ye enny evenin’ whenst ye war a-drivin’ up the cow. An’ I ’lowed ez whenst a woman went a-meddlin’ an’ informin’ like a man, let her take what a man hev ter take. Naw, sir! but they mus’ run away, ’count o’ a meddler like you-uns, an’ go live somwhar else! An’ I hed ter leave my home, an’ the three graves o’ my dead chill’n, yander on the rise, ez lonesome an’ ez meagre-lookin’ ez ef they war three pertater hills.”
She burst into a tumult of tears. The smoke wafted down, obscuring her,—there was commotion in its midst, for the wind was rising,—and her sobs sounded from out the invisibility that had effaced the earth as if some spirit of grief were abroad in it.
“Shet up, M’ria! Ye talk like ye hed no mo’ sense ’n a sheep. The chill’n ain’t in them graves,” Marvin said, with the consolations of a sturdy orthodoxy.
“Thar leetle bones is,” said the spirit of grief from the densities of the clouds.
And he could not gainsay this.
She wept on persistently for the little deserted bones. He could not feel as she did, yet he could understand her feeling. His under-jaw dropped a little; some stress of melancholy and solemnity was on his face, as if a saddened retrospection were evoked for him, too. But it was a recollection which his instinct was to throw off, rather than to cherish as a precious sorrow, jealously exacting for it the extremest tribute of sighs and tears.
“Lethe,” he said suddenly, with a cheerful note, “bein’ ez they never cotch us, did they pay ye ennything ez informer? I ain’t right sure how the law stands on that p’int. The law ’pears ter me ter be a mighty onstiddy, contrariwise contrivance, an’ the bes’ way ter find out ennything sartain sure ’bout’n it air ter ’sperience it. Did they pay ye ennything?”
“I never informed the revenuers,” declared Alethea, once more.
He turned upon her a look of scorn.
“I knowed ye war a powerful fool, a-talkin’ ’bout ‘what’s right,’ an’ preachin’ same ez the rider, an’ faultin’ yer elders. But I never knowed ye war a liar an’ a scandalous hypocrite. The Bible say, ‘Woe ter ye, hypocrites!’ I wonder ye ain’t hearn that afore; either a-wrastlin’ with yer own soul, or meddlin’ with other folkses’ salvation.” It occurred to him that he preached very well himself, and he was minded, in the sudden vanity of the discovery, to reiterate, “Woe unto ye, hypocrite!”
“What makes ye ’low ez I gin the word ter the revenuers?” demanded Alethea.
“’Kase the spy kem up thar with yer name on his lips. ‘Lethe Sayles,’ he sez,—‘Lethe Sayles.’”
The girl stared wide-eyed and amazed at him.
Marvin’s wife noted the expression. “Oh, g’long, Lethe Sayles!” she cried impatiently; “ye air so deceivin’!”
“The spy!” faltered Alethea. “Who war the spy? I never tole nobody ’bout seein’ ye at Boke’s barn, nor whenst I war milkin’ the cow, nuther, till a few weeks ago. Ye hed lef’ hyar fur months afore then.”
The woman, listening, with an ear of corn in her motionless hand, turned and cast it upon the heap with a significant gesture of rejection, as if she thus discarded the claims of what she had heard. She sneered, and laughed derisively and shrill. The pullet, too, broke into mocking mirth, and then both fell to pulling corn with a sort of flouting energy.
“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Marvin, with a feint of sharing their incredulity. But he held his straggling beard in one hand, and looked at Alethea seriously. To him her manner constrained belief in what she had said. “Why, Lethe,” he broke out, abruptly, “’twarn’t long arter that evenin’ whenst I seen ye a-milkin’ the cow when the spy kem. We-uns war a-settin’ roun’ the still,—we kep’ it in the shed-room, me an’ my partners,—an’ we war a-talkin’ ’bout you-uns, an’ how ye acted; an’ M’ria, she war thar, an’ she went agin ye, an’ ’lowed ez we hed better make ye shet yer mouth; an’ some o’ the boys were argufyin’ ez ye war jes’ sayin’ sech ez ye done ter hear yerse’f talk, an’ feel sot up in yer own ’pinion. They ’lowed ye’d be feared ter tell, sure enough, but ye hankered ter be begged ter shet up. ’Twar a powerful stormy night. I never hear a wusser wind ez war a-cavortin’ round the house. An’ the lightnin’ an’ thunder hed been right up an’ down sniptious. A lightnin’ ball mus’ hev bust up on Piomingo Bald, ’kase nex’ day I see the ground tore up round the herders’ cabin, though Ben Doaks warn’t thar,—hed gone down ter the cove, I reckon. Waal, sir, it quit stormin’ arter a while, but everything war mighty damp an’ wet; the draps kep’ a-fallin’ off’n the eaves. We could hear the hogs in the pen a-squashin’ about in the mud. An’ all of a suddenty they tuk ter squealin’ an’ gruntin’, skeered mighty nigh ter death. An’ my oldest son, Mose, he ’lowed it war a varmint arter ’em; an’ he snatched his gun an’ runned out ter the hog-pen. An’ thar they war, all jammed up tergether, gruntin’ an’ snortin’; an’ Mose say he war afeard to shoot ’mongst ’em, fur fear o’ hittin’ some o’ them stiddier the varmint. An’ whilst he war lookin’ right keerful,—the moon hed kem out by then,—he seen, stiddier a wolf, suthin’ a-bowin’ down off’n the fence. An’ the thing cotch up a crust o’ bread, or a rind o’ water-million, or suthin’, out o’ the trough fur the hogs, an’ then sot up ez white-faced on the fence, a-munchin’ it an’ a-lookin’ at him. An’ Mose ’lowed he war so plumb s’prised he los’ his senses. He ’lowed ’twar a harnt,—it looked so onexpected. He jes’ flung his rifle on the groun’ an’ run. It’s mighty seldom sech tracks hev been made on the Big Smoky ez Mose tuk. We-uns ain’t medjured ’em yit, but Mose hev got the name ’mongst the gang o’ bein’ able ter step fourteen feet at a stride.”
He showed his long, tobacco-stained teeth in the midst of his straggling beard, and as he talked on he gnawed at a plug of tobacco, as if, being no impediment to thought, it could be none to its expression.
“Mose lept inter the house, declarin’ thar war a harnt a-settin’ on the fence. Ye know Jeb Peake?—hongry Jeb, they useter call him.” Marvin broke off suddenly, having forgotten the significance and purpose of the recital in the rare pleasure of recounting. Even his wife’s face bore only retrospective absorption, and Serena had lifted her head, and fixed an excited, steadfast eye upon him. “Waal, hongry Jeb war a-settin’ thar in the corner, an’ bein’ toler’ble sleepy-headed he hed drapped off, his head agin the chimbley. An’ when Mose kem a-rampagin’ in thar, with his eyes poppin’ out, declarin’ thar war a harnt settin’ on the fence, eatin’,—‘Eatin’ what?’ sez hongry Jeb, a-startin’ up. Ha! ha! ha!”
“Jeb ain’t never forgot the bottom o’ the pot yit,” chimed in the wife.
“I ain’t a-grudgin’ him ter eat, though,” stipulated the moonshiner, “nor the harnt, nuther. I jes’ ’lowed ez that thar white-faced critter a-settin’ on the fence, a-thievin’ from the hog, mought take up a fancy ter Mose’s rifle, lef’ onpertected on the ground. So I goes out. Nuthin’ warn’t settin’ on the fence, ’ceptin’ the moonlight an’ that thar onregenerate young tur-rkey ez nuthin’ could hender from roostin’ on the rails o’ the hog-pen, stiddier on a limb o’ a tree, ’longside o’ the t’other tur-rkeys.”
“An’ thar a fox cotch her afore daybreak,” interpolated Mrs. Marvin, supplying biographical deficiencies.
“I always did b’lieve ’twar them thar greedy old hogs,” said Serena.
Marvin went on, disregarding the interruption:—
“I picked up Mose’s gun, an’ in I kem. I barred up the door, an’ then I sot down an’ lighted my pipe. An’ Jeb, he tuk ter tellin’ tales ’bout all the folks ez he ever knowed ter be skeered haffen ter death”—
“Nare one of ’em war Jeb,” remarked the observant Mrs. Marvin, seizing the salient trait of the romancer. “In all Jeb’s tales he comes out’n the big e-end o’ the hawn.”
“An’ ez I sot thar, jes’ wallin’ my eyes round the room, I seen suthin’ that, ef the t’others hed said they seen, I’d hev tole ’em they war lyin’. ’Twar a couple o’ eyes an’ a white face peekin’ through the holes in the chinkin’ o’ the walls, whar the daubin’ hed fell out. ’Twar right close ter me at fust,—that war how I kem ter see it so plain. I ’lowed ter jes’ stick my knife right quick inter one o’ them eyes. I ’lowed ’twar a raider. ’Fore I could move ’twar gone! Then all of a suddenty I seen the face an’ eyes peekin’ in close ter the door. I jes’ flew at it that time,—warn’t goin’ ter let nuthin’ hender”—
“I war ’twixt him an’ the door, an’ he jes’ run over me,” interpolated the pullet. “Knocked me plumb over, head fust, inter a tub o’ beer. Hed ter set in the sun all nex’ day fur my hair ter dry out, an’ I smelt like a toper.”
Sam Marvin not ungenially permitted his family thus to share in telling his story. He resumed with unabated ardor:—
“An’ I jumped through the door so quick that the spy jes’ did see me, an’ war steppin’ out ter run when I cotch him by the collar. I don’t reckon thar ever war a better beatin’ ’n I gin him. I hed drapped my knife a-runnin’, an’ I hed no dependence ’ceptin’ my fists. His face war so bloody I didn’t know him a-fust, when I dragged him in the house, with his head under my arm. An’ when I seen him I knowed he never kem of hisself, but somebody had sent him. An’ I say, ‘What did ye kem hyar fur?’ An’ he say, ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ I say, ‘Who sent ye?’ An’ he say, ‘Lethe Sayles.’”
“Now, Lethe, see what a liar ye hev been fund out ter be!” said the woman, scornfully. “Lord knows I never ’lowed ye would kem ter sech. I knowed ye whenst ye war a baby. A fatter one I never see. Nobody would hev b’lieved ye’d grow up sour, an’ preachified, an’ faultin’ yer elders, an’ bide a single woman, ez ef nobody would make ch’ice o’ ye.”
Alethea looked vaguely from one to the other. Denial seemed futile. She asked mechanically, rather than from any definite motive, “Did ye hear o’ enny revenuers arter that?”
“Didn’t wait ter,” said Marvin. “We hed hearn enough, knowin’ ez ye hed tole, an’ the word hed got round the kentry, so ez the spy hed been sent up ter make sure o’ the place. We-uns war too busy a-movin’ the still an’ a-hustlin’ off. Ef thar hed been time enough fur ennything, I reckon some o’ them boys would hev put a bullet through that thar sandy head o’ yourn. But the raiders never kem up with we-uns, nor got our still an’ liquor,—we-uns war miles an’ miles away from hyar the night arter Tad kem a-spyin’.”
Alethea stood staring, speechless. “Tad!” she gasped at last. “Tad!”
They all stopped and looked at her through the wreathing smoke, as if they hardly understood her.
“Lethe, ye air too pretensified ter be healthy!” Mrs. Marvin exclaimed at last.
“O’ course ye knowed, bein’ ez ye tole him,” said the moonshiner. He did not resume his work, but stood gazing at her. They were all at a loss, amazed at her perturbation.
Her breath came fast; her lips were parted. One lifted hand clung to the heavily enswathed ear of corn upon the tall, sere stalk; the other clutched the kerchief about her throat, as if she were suffocating. Her face was pale; her eyes were distended.
“I wouldn’t look so pop-eyed fur nuthin’,” remarked the pullet, in callow pertness; she might not have been suspected of laying so much stress on appearances.
“I’m tryin’ ter think,” said Alethea, dazed, “ef that war afore Tad war drownded or arterward.”
Marvin turned, and leered significantly at his family.
“Mus’ hev been afore he war drownded, I reckon,” he said satirically.
“Lethe Sayles,” observed Serena reprehensively, “ye air teched in the head.”
She tossed her own head with a conviction that, if not strictly ornamental, it was level. Then, like the sane fowl that she was, she went stepping about on her long, yellow feet with a demure, grown-up air.
“Oh,” said Alethea, fixing the dates in her mind, “it mus’ hev been arterwards”—
“Likely,” interrupted Sam Marvin.
—“’kase that very evenin’ arter I seen ye at the cow-pen Elviry Crosby kem an’ tole ez how Reuben Lorey hed bust down old man Griff’s mill, an’ his nevy Tad war in it, an’ war drownded in the ruver.”
“Laws-a-me!” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, clutching her sun-bonnet with both hands, and thrusting it backward from her head, as if it intercepted the news.
“Waal, sir!” cried the moonshiner, amazed.
“Oh,” cried Alethea, clasping both her hands, “ef I hed called ye back that evenin’, an’ promised not ter tell, like I war minded ter do”—
“Ye ’lowed ’twarn’t right,” suggested the moonshiner.
—“ye would hev knowed ez Tad warn’t no spy, but war jes’ vagabondin’ round the kentry, a runaway, houseless an’ hongry; an’ ye would hev tuk him back ter old man Griff, an’ Reuben wouldn’t hev been tried fur killin’ him!”
“Shucks, Mink warn’t tried fur sech sure enough?” said Marvin, uneasily. His face had changed. His wife was turning the corner of her apron nervously between her fingers, and looking at him in evident trepidation.
“He hev been in jail fur months an’ months,” said Alethea. “An’ when he war tried, I told on the witness stand ’bout glimpsin’ Tad one night whenst I kem from camp,—mus’ hev been the same night whenst he went up the mounting ter yer house, ’kase thar war a awful storm. An’ when I seen him suddint I screamed, bein’ s’prised; an’ I reckon that war the reason he said ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ at the trial they lowed I hed seen nuthin’ but Tad’s harnt, an’ the jury disagreed.”
“An’—an’—an’ air Mink in jail yit?” demanded the moonshiner, his jaw falling in dismay.
“The rescuers tuk him out,” said Alethea.
“Waal, sir,” he exclaimed, with a long breath. “Ye see,”—he seemed to feel that he must account for his excitement and interest,—“bein’ hid out, I hain’t hearn no news, sca’cely, sence we-uns lef’.”
“Whar be Tad now?” Alethea asked suddenly, realizing that here was the man who had seen him last.
He glanced quickly at her, then in perplexed dubitation at his wife. In common with many women, she was willing enough to steer when it was all plain sailing, but among the breakers she left him with an undivided responsibility. She fell to pulling corn with an air of complete absorption in her work.
He made a clumsy effort at diversion. “By Gosh,” he declared, waving his hand about his head, “ef this hyar smoke don’t clar away, we-uns’ll all be sifflicated in it.”
But the smoke was not now so dense. High up, its sober, dun-colored folds were suffused with a lurid flush admitted from the wintry sunset. The black, dead trees within the inclosure stood out distinctly athwart the blank neutrality of the gray, nebulous background. The little house on the rise was dimly suggested beyond the corn-field, across which skulked protean shapes of smoke,—monstrous forms, full of motion and strange consistency and slowly realized symmetry, as if some gigantic prehistoric beasts were trembling upon the verge of materialization and visibility. The wind gave them chase. It had lifted its voice in the silences. Like a clarion it rang down the narrow ravine below. But Sam Marvin, expanding his lungs to the freshened air, declared that he felt “plumb sifflicated.”
“Whar be Tad now?” persisted Alethea.
He spat meditatively upon the ground. “Waal, Lethe,” he said at last, “that’s more’n I know. I dunno whar Tad be now.”
She detected consciousness in the manner of the woman and the girl. She broke out in a tumult of fear:—
“Ye didn’t harm Tad, did ye?” with wild, terrified eyes fixed upon him. “Ye didn’t kill Tad fur a spy?—’kase he warn’t.”
“Shet up, ye blatant fool!” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, “layin’ sech ez that at we-uns’s door.”
“An’ shet up yerse’f, M’ria. Least said, soonest mended,” Marvin interposed. “Look-a-hyar, Lethe Sayles, ye hev done harm enough; it may be ’kase it war right. Take sech satisfaction ez ye kin in yer notion. It never turned out right,—turned out mighty wrong. I ain’t goin’ ter answer ye nare nuther word. I hev got a question ter ax you-uns right now. Who war it ye tole ’bout findin’ out ’twar me a-moonshinin’?”
She detailed tremulously the scene in the court-room, and the impression it produced was altogether at variance with her expectations. Perhaps, however, it was only natural that Sam Marvin should feel less interest in the belated disclosure, which he had thought was made months previous, than in the circumstances of the trial, Peter Rood’s death, the imprisonment of the jury, and the riot of the rescuing mob. As to his wife, she was chiefly shocked by the publicity attaching to testimony in open court.
“An’ ye jes’ stood up thar, Lethe Sayles, ez bold-faced ez a biscuit-block, an’ lifted up yer outdacious voice afore all them men? Waal, sir! Waal! I dunno what the wimmen air a-comin’ ter!”
“I war obligated ter tell sech ez I knowed,” Alethea contended against this assumption of superior delicacy. “I never felt no more bold-faced than in tellin’ ’speriunce ’fore the brethren at camp.”
“Oh, child!” cried Mrs. Marvin. “It’s the spirit o’ grace movin’ at camp, but at court it’s the nimbleness o’ the devil.”
Alethea argued no further, for conversation was impeded by the succeeding operations of gathering the crop. Marvin was leading the team of the great wagon from one to another of the heaps of corn. The huge creaking wheels crushed the ranks of stalks that fell in confusion on either side; the white canvas cover had been removed from the hoops, in order to facilitate the throwing of the corn into the wagon. Through the wreaths of smoke appeared the long ears of a pair of mules. Sam Marvin had apparently found his new home in a thirstier locality than his old, for he was evidently thriving. The pair of mules might have been considered a sorry team in point of appearance: their sides were rubbed bare with the friction of the trace-chains; they were both unkempt, and one was very tall and the other small, but they were stalwart and sure-footed and fleet, and a wonderful acquisition in lieu of the yoke of slow oxen she remembered. The continuous thud, as the ears of corn were thrown into the wagon, enabled Marvin to affect not to hear Alethea’s reiteration as to Tad’s fate.
“I wisht ye’d tell me suthin’ ’bout’n Tad,” she said piteously. “I wisht I knew ye hedn’t hurt him, nor—nor”—
She paused in the work, looking drearily about her. The wind tossed her garments; she was fain at times to catch her bonnet by the curtain, to hold it. The smoke had taken flight; dragons, winged horses, griffins, forgotten myths, all scurrying away before the strong blast. And still they came and went, and rose once more, for the wind that lifted the smoke fanned the fire. The flames were in sight along the base of Big Injun Mounting, writhing now like fiery serpents, and now rising like some strange growth in quivering blades; waving and bowing, appearing and disappearing, and always extending further and further. They seemed so alive, so endowed with the spirit of destruction, so wantonly alert, so merciless to the fettered mountain that tossed its forests in wild commotion, with many a gesture of abject despair, and spite of all could not flee. Their strong, tawny color contrasted with the dull garnet of the bare boughs and the deep, sombre green of the solemn pines. The smoke carried from the fire a lurid reflection, fading presently in the progress across the landscape of the long, dun-colored flights. The wintry sunset was at hand. The sky was red and amber; the plains of the far west lay vaguely purple beneath. On Walden’s Ridge, rising against the horizon, rested the sun, from which somehow the dazzling fire seemed withdrawn, leaving a sphere of vivid scarlet, indescribably pure and intense, upon which the eye could nevertheless gaze undaunted.
Pensive intimations there were in its reduced splendors; in the deep purple of Chilhowee, in the brown tints of the nearer ranges. Something was gone from the earth,—a day,—and the earth was sad, though it had known so many. And the night impended and the unimagined morrow. And thus the averted Future turns by slow degrees the face that all flesh dreads to see. The voice of lowing cattle came up from the cove. The fires in the solitudes burned apace.
“I hev axed ye time an’ agin, Sam Marvin, whar Tad be. Ef ye don’t tell, I’ll be bound ter b’lieve ye moonshiners hev done suthin’ awful ter him.”
They were about to depart on their journey. Already Serena was on her uneasy bed of corn in the ear. But the pullet’s life had been made up chiefly of rough jouncing, and never having heard of a wagon with springs, she was in a measure incapable of appreciating her deprivation. She had wrapped a quilt of many colors about her shoulders, for the evening air was chill, and she looked out of the opening in the back of the canvas-covered wagon in grotesque variegation. Mrs. Marvin was climbing upon the wheel to her seat on the board in front. The moonshiner stood by the head of one of the mules, busy arranging the simple tackling. He looked with a sneer at Alethea over the beast’s neck.
“An’ I hev tole ye, Lethe Sayles, ez I dunno whar Tad be now. I’m a mighty smart man, sure enough, but ’twould take a smarter one ’n me ter say whar Tad be now, an’ what he be a-doin’.”
He looked at his wife with a grin. She laughed aloud in tuneless scorn. The girl, gazing out of the back of the wagon as it jolted off, echoed the derision in a shrill key. And as the clumsy vehicle went creaking down the precipitous slope, beyond which could be seen only the flaming base of the opposite mountain, all luridly aflare in the windy dusk, they seemed to Alethea as if they were descending into Tophet itself.