XXIV.
Quiet did not immediately ensue. After Harshaw had been ushered up the rickety ladder to the roof-room he heard voices below in low-toned conference. Occasionally he noted the peculiar chuckle of “hongry Jeb,” suppressed even beneath its usual undertone; for it was a sort of susurrus of laughter, never absolutely vocal,—a series of snorts and pantings. It was not jocular at best, and now conveyed sinister suggestions to Harshaw, as he listened to the vague sound of words he could not distinguish. He had not been conscious of an effort of close observation during the evening, and he was surprised to discover how definitely he could differentiate the murmurs, the mere methods of speech, of the various members of the household. As they discussed his fate, he knew who urged measures, who was overpowered in argument, who doubted. Now and then a word or two in the woman’s shrill voice broke from the huskiness of her whisper, for she was the most insistent of the group. He divined that her views were not mild, and he took hope from the intimations of opposition in the tones of the men as they gruffly counseled quiet. She it was, he felt sure, whom most he had to fear.
He had thrown himself, dressed as he was, on the sorry couch, which was made by placing two poles between the logs of the house, supported at the other end by a cross-bar laid in two crotched uprights on the floor. It was not a stable contrivance, nor, although it upheld a heavy feather bed, conducive to slumber, but Harshaw cared little for sleep.
The rain came through the leaks in the roof, now in an intermittent, sullen pattering, and now the drops falling in quick succession, tossed by the wind that whistled through the crevices, and piped a shrill refrain to the sonorous cadences trumpeted by the great chimney. Once, in a sudden flash of lightning, which was far distant and without thunder, he saw through gaps in the chinking, the white clouds pressing close to the house.
Again and again his courage would reassert itself, of its own sheer force, and he would experience a sort of affront that it had ever lapsed. He hardly knew how he could hereafter face that fact in his consciousness. Then, in arguing to reinstate his self-respect, he would review the dangers of his position,—and thus rouse anew the fears he had sought to still. He would wonder that he did not die of fright; that he made no effort to escape, to fire the house and force his way out in the confusion,—his fingers even fumbled the matches in his pocket; that he could lie still and listen to the sound of words impossible to distinguish; that he could turn, with the heavy gesture of one roused from sleep, when he heard a footfall on the rude stairs, and look yawning over his shoulder, and demand in a slumbrous voice, “Why in the hell do you make such a racket?”
A glimmer of light quivered on the brown rafters; it grew momently less flickering; it revealed the wretched apartment, the slanting floor, one or two pallets rolled up against the wall. And finally, as from a trap-door of a theatre, through the rude aperture in the floor, Jeb’s gaunt black head appeared among the shadows which the tallow dip, that he carried in his hand, could not dispel.
He came in, and placed the sputtering light on a strut that supported one of the rafters, and was converted to shelf-like utility. Marvin followed, sitting down on the foot of Harshaw’s bed. His face was more lowering than that of the other man; he leaned his hands ponderingly on his knees, his elbows turned outward, and bent his eyes on the floor in deep meditation.
There was a short silence.
“Hello?” said Harshaw interrogatively, raising himself on his elbow and boldly taking the initiative. “Anything the matter?”
Jeb sat down on a keg close to the chimney, and the perturbed hosts glanced at one another.
“Waal, stranger,” said Marvin, “ye hev gone an’ put us in a peck o’ troubles, ter kem interruptin’ us in this fur place, whar we hev been hunted an’ hounded ter.”
“Yes, sir,” remarked “hongry Jeb,” “same ez the varmint, ez be specially lef’ out’n salvation by the Bible.”
Marvin cast a glance over his shoulder at Harshaw. Then he continued, evidently striving to put the worst possible interpretation on the situation and to work himself into a rage: “We-uns air a-thinkin’ ez ye mought be a spy fur the revenuers.”
Harshaw let his head fall back on the pillow. His resonant, burly laugh rang out, jarring the rafters, and rousing in its hearty jocundity the reciprocity of a smile on “hongry Jeb’s” cadaverous face. Even Marvin, casting another hasty look over his shoulder, was mollified.
“Ye’d better be keerful how ye wake Philetus up, with his nap haffen out; ye’ll ’low ye air neighborin’ a catamount,” he admonished his guest.
“I tell you,” said Harshaw, clasping his hands behind his yellow head as he lay at length, “you fellows live up here in these lonesome woods till your brains are addled. Why on earth would I, single-handed, mind you, a lawyer, a member of the legislature, with a good big farm of my own and half a dozen houses in town,” (he had never before thought to brag of them,) “risk myself here, for the little reward I could get if—mighty big if, folks—if I could get away again?”
He lifted his eyes, with a bluff challenge of fair play.
“You know who I am. You’ve seen me in Shaftesville. You know my farm down there in Kildeer County, on Owl Creek. Spy! Shucks! it makes me laugh. Do the quality often come spying for the revenuers in this neighborhood?”
Ten days ago he could not have believed that, however closely harried, his tongue would ever so forget its formula as thus to repudiate his alignment with the Plain People, and to claim to rank with “the quality.”
Under other circumstances the two mountaineers might have resented this arrogation of superiority. They were, however, by virtue of their law-breaking, a trifle more worldly-wise than their stolid compatriots of the hills. It had been in some sort an education; had familiarized them with the springs of commercial action, the relations of producer and consumer, the value of money or its equivalent; had endowed them with an appreciation of emergency and an ingenuity in expedients and makeshifts; had forced upon their contemplation the operations of the law; and their great personal risk had superinduced care, thoughtfulness, and the exercise of a certain rude logic.
As they unconsciously sought to realize Harshaw’s position in the world, resources, opportunity, their suspicion that he was a spy gradually waned.
There was a pause. The candle sputtered on the timber where it had been placed, the flame now rising apparently with an effort to touch a resinous knot in the wood just above it, and now crouching in a sudden gust from a crevice hard by. The rain came down with redoubled force for a few moments, then subsided again into its former steady, monotonous fall. Harshaw’s senses, preternaturally keen now, detected an almost imperceptible stir on the ladder that ascended to the loft. He knew as well as if he had seen the coterie that Marvin’s wife and the rest of the moonshiners were sitting on the rounds, listening and awaiting the announcement of his fate. Perhaps it was this which prompted his reply, when Marvin said pettishly,—
“It air all M’ria’s fault. Ef she hedn’t been so powerful quick ter git down the gun, ye’d hev never knowed nor axed whar ye war, nor s’picioned nuthin’.”
“Yes, I would, though,” Harshaw declared.
Marvin once more looked over his shoulder, and the lawyer quaked at the risk he ran.
“I saw Tad, you know, and I was figurin’ round, big as all-out-of-doors, how I was going to produce him in court, and she thought I meant right off. Then, the minute I saw you I knew you,—and I had heard that girl say you were moonshining.”
“Ai-yi! Sam Marvin!” cried a shrill feminine voice from the primitive stairway, “that’s what ye got fur tryin’ ter put the blame on me!”
Sam Marvin turned his bushy head toward the aperture in the floor. It might seem that Mrs. Marvin had left him nothing to say, but the versatility of the conjugal retort is well-nigh limitless, and he could doubtless have defended himself with an admirable valor had not Jeb “the hongry” interfered.
“Shet up, Sam,” he said, looking positively famished in his lean anxiety. “We-uns hedn’t thunk o’ that. Mink Lorey hev got ter be tried agin.”
It was all that Harshaw could do to restrain some expression of despair at this infelicitous turn given to the consultation, at which he seemed to assist to devise his own doom. He found a certain relief in shifting his position, and still, with his hands clasped under his head, briskly participated in the conversation.
“Yes,” he assented in a debonair way which caused Marvin to look at him in lowering amazement, “I’m Mink’s lawyer, but I couldn’t testify for him. I couldn’t swear of my own knowledge that this Tad is the same boy, for I never saw him before.”
Both of the men lapsed into the attitude of laborious pondering. Now and then each looked at the other, as if to descry some intimation of the mutual effect.
Harshaw, with another bold effort to possess the situation, yawned widely and stretched his muscles.
“Oh—oh—oh—oh!” he exclaimed on a steadily descending scale. “Well, gentlemen,” his features once more at rest, his voice normal, “I should be glad to continue our conversation to-morrow”—he waved his hand bluffly—“or next week. I ain’t used to huntin’,—that is, huntin’ deer,—and I’m in and about knocked up. If you’ve got anything to say to me, say it now, or keep it till to-morrow.”
The two looked doubtfully at each other.
“Mr. Harshaw,” said Marvin, “we-uns air feared to let you-uns go.”
“Go to sleep?” asked Harshaw jocosely.
Jeb grinned, weakly, however, and Marvin continued:—
“Ter go ’way at all.”
“Well,” said Harshaw, easily, with another demonstration of somnolence, “I’ll stay just as long as you like; you’re a clever lot of fellows, and I’ll be contented enough, I’ll be bound. Your sitting up all night is the only fault I’ve got to find with you.”
They apparently submitted this answer from one to the other, and each silently canvassed it.
“Ye know too much,” said “hongry Jeb.”
“I’ll know more if I stay. I’ll find out whether you are moonshining now, sure enough, and where the still is.”
“That’s jes’ what I hev been tellin’ ye!” cried Mrs. Marvin’s shrill voice from the ladder.
“Shet up, M’ria!” exclaimed Marvin, before “hongry Jeb” could interpose his pacifying “Shet up, Sam.”
“Waal,” resumed Marvin, in angry perturbation, “it’s mighty ill-convenient, yer nosin’ us out this way, up hyar, an’ many a man fixed like me an’ Jeb would fling ye off’n a bluff, ez ef ye hed fell thar, an’ turn yer mare loose.”
Once more Harshaw’s rich, round laughter jarred the room.
“I’m in earnest,” said Marvin, sternly. “That’s what most men would do.”
“Oh no, they wouldn’t,” said Harshaw, cavalierly.
“Why wouldn’t they?” demanded Marvin, his curiosity aroused by this strange indifference.
“Because these fellows I was hunting with will be sure to find this place, and they would know I wouldn’t go fall off a bluff of my own accord, after such a good supper as I had here, and such a good bed. They wouldn’t know I wasn’t allowed to sleep in it, though, on account of a long-jawed couple like you two.”
He looked the picture of unconcern,—as if he had not really credited their words.
“They couldn’t track ye hyar,” argued Jeb; “ground too dry in the evening fur yer critter’s huffs to make enny mark.”
“Bless your bones!” cried Harshaw, contemptuously, “I broke a path nigh a yard wide in the brush, and I blazed every oak-tree I met with my hunting-knife,—look and see how hacked it is,—and I cut my name on the first beech I came across. Think I was going to get lost in this wilderness without leaving any way for my friends to find me? They know pretty well where they left me. As soon as it’s light enough they’ll be on my track.”
He lied seldom, but with startling effect. The verisimilitude of his invention, which had flashed upon him at the last moment, carried conviction. The other two men looked at each other in consternation.
This they thought was the secret of his ease of mind. This was the reason that he was willing to abide with them as long as they listed. These mysterious friends, these lurking hunters, might materialize at any moment when day should fairly dawn. The moonshiners asked with eager curiosity the names of the party. Marvin knew none of them, for it was a new region to him, and his vocation restricted his social opportunities. He had sprung up from the bed, and stood holding his ragged beard with one hand, and gazing with perplexed eyes at the recumbent lawyer. The frightful deed that he and his confederates had contemplated, that had seemed their only safe recourse,—to fling the intruder over a precipice, and to leave his mare grazing near, as if in his search he had fallen,—had a predestined discovery through the craft of the man who had marked the devious trail of his footsteps to their door. The moonshiner trembled, as he stood so near this pitfall into which he had almost stumbled.
There had been a stir on the ladder; clumsy feet descended the rickety rungs. The movements below continued; there sounded the harsh scraping of a shovel on the rude stones of the hearth, and presently the newly kindled flames were crackling up the chimney; the flickering tallow dip was not so bright that the lines of light in the crevices of the flooring might not indicate how the room below was suddenly illumined. A smell of frying bacon presently pervaded the midnight.
“By Gosh!” cried Marvin, rousing himself from his brown study with a quick start, “air M’ria demented, ter set out a-cookin’ o’ breakfus’ in the middle o’ the night?”
He turned himself suddenly about, and started down the ladder. “Hongry Jeb,” looking after him with a keen anxiety, rose abruptly, took the candle, and, holding it above his lean, cadaverous face, vanished by slow degrees through the trap-door, feeling with his feet for each round of the ladder before he trusted his weight upon it. Harshaw lifted himself upon his elbow, watching the gradual disappearance. His face was pink once more; the flesh that had seemed ten minutes since to hang flabbily upon it was firm and full; his opaque blue eyes were bright; the last feeble, ineffective rays of the vanishing candle showed his strong white teeth between his parted red lips, and his triumphant red tongue thrust out derisively.
Then he fell back on his pillow and tried to sleep. He felt, however, the pressure of the excitement; his pulses, his nerves, could not so readily accord with his calm mental conclusions, his logical inference of safety. The tension upon his alert senses was unrelaxed. The stir below-stairs made its incisive impression now, when he hardly cared to hear, as before, when he had strained every faculty to listen. He knew that it was Mrs. Marvin who had first devised the solution of the difficulty; she had already set about its execution while she advocated the measure, and insisted and argued with the men, who were disposed to canvass alternatives, and doubt, and wait. Often her shrill voice broke from the bated undertone in which they sought to conduct the conference, or she whispered huskily, with vibrant distinctness, hardly less intelligible.
“Ye an’ Jeb take him,” she urged. “Let the t’others go an’ hide round ’bout the still. When the hunters git hyar they’ll find me an’ Mose an’ the chillen, an’ I’ll tell ’em my old man be gone with Mr. Harshaw, a-guidin’ him down the mounting. They’ll never know ez thar be enny moonshinin’ a-goin’ on hyar-abouts,—nuthin’ ter show fur it.”
She clashed her pans and pots and kettles, in the energy of her discourse, and Harshaw lost the muttered objection.
“Ef ye don’t,” she persisted, in her sibilant whisper,—“ef ye kill him, fling him off’n the bluff or sech,—they’ll find the body, sure!”
A chill ran through the listener as he bent his ear.
“The buzzards or the wolves will fust, an’ them men’ll track him ter our door, an’ track ye ter the spot.”
The rain pelted on the roof; the flames roared up the chimney; the frying meat sputtered and sizzled, and the coffee dissipated a beguiling promissory odor. One of the men—the lawyer thought it was “hongry Jeb”—suggested in a dolorous whisper that they could depend in no degree on Harshaw’s promise of secrecy. No man regarded an enforced pledge as sacred.
“Them’s all old offenses, ennyhows,” argued the woman. “But this hyar, what ye men air a-layin’ off ter do”—
“‘Ye men’!” sneered her husband. “Ye war the bouncin’est one o’ the whole lay-out fur doin’ of it.”
“But, Lord A’mighty,” she protested, “who’d ever hev thunk o’ sech a smart thing ez markin’ his trail ter the very door? He mus’ be the devil. Smart enough, ennyways!”
She clashed her pots and pans once more, and moved about heavily across the floor.
“I ain’t misdoubtin’ but what he air a big man whar he hails from, an’ they sets store by him, an’ they’d be mighty apt ter stir round powerful arter him ef he was los’. An’ this would be a new offense,—sure ter git fund out. An’ Lord knows, we-uns hev been runned mighty nigh ter the jumpin’-off place from the face o’ the yearth, an’ I want ter be let ter set down, an’ ketch my breath, an’ see Philetus grow an’ git hearty, an’ let me hev a chance ter die in peace.”
Once more Jeb’s rumbling voice rose along the stairway.
“Shet up, Jeb!” she cried. “Ye hev jes’ been a-settin’ thar all the night a-shakin’ yer head, an’ a-lowin’ ye wisht he hed done suthin’ mean ter ye, so ez in gittin’ rid o’ him yer feelins wouldn’t be hurt. Now yer feelins air safe, an’ ye ain’t got no mo’ thankfulness ’n that thar cross-eyed, mangy hound fur the loan o’ a pipe.”
The mystery of cerebration; the strange, unmeasured force which works in uncomprehended methods to unforeseen results; the subtle process now formulating, and now erasing, an idea, like the characters of a palimpsest, was never so potently present to Harshaw as in contemplating the inspiration, the lucky thought, that had given him back to life, to hope, to sheer identity. He took himself to task, knowing that the obvious, the natural, the simple suggestion had lain all the evening in his mind, waiting the effective moment. He reproached himself that he should have suffered the agony of fright which he had endured. “I might have known,” he argued within himself, in his bluff vanity, “that I’d come out all right.”
He fell asleep, presently, and when he was roused he rose with so genuine a reluctance that the last lurking doubt which Marvin and “hongry Jeb” had entertained vanished, as he went yawning down the ladder.
“I hate ter hev ter turn ye out’n my house ’fore day,” Marvin remarked, “but ye know I’m hunted like a b’ar, or suthin’ wild, an’ I can’t be expected ter show manners like folks. Me an’ Jeb air a-goin’ ter take ye pretty fur off, so ez ye kin never find yer way back, an’ by daylight ye’ll be set in yer road. I’m hopin’ yer friends won’t git hyar; ef they does, I don’t want ’em ter kem in, an’ ef they hain’t got no reason ter stop I reckon they’ll go on. I’m powerful sorry ye kem along.”
“Though ye be toler’ble good com’p’ny, an’ we-uns ain’t got nuthin’ agin you-uns,” remarked “hongry Jeb,” politely.
“’Kase,” continued Marvin, in a sing-song fashion, as he sat down at his table, on which the corn-dodgers and bacon smoked, “’kase we-uns air hunted an’ driv by the law,—ez ’lows we sha’n’t still our own corn ef we air a mind ter,—we hev been afeard ye’d tell ’bout’n we-uns an’ whar we air hid.”
“What for?” demanded Harshaw, with an incidental manner. He too was seated at the board; one elbow was on it, and he passed his hand over his eyes and yawned as he spoke. “So as to be dead sure to get beat like hell the next time I run for anything? An informer is mighty unpopular, no matter what he has got to tell. And make the biggest kind of hole in my law practice?”
“That’s a fac’,” said Jeb, impressed with the logic of this proposition.
“The favor of Cherokee and Kildeer counties is the breath of my political life, and you don’t catch me a-fooling with it by letting my jaw wag too slack,” continued Harshaw.
Philetus, the only member of the family that had gone to bed, slumbered peacefully in a small heap under the party-colored quilts. The dancing firelight revealed his yellow head, and again it was undistinguishable in the brown shadow. The pullet and Mose sat on a bench at one side of the fire, and the moonshiners tilted their chairs back on the hind legs, and watched the bright and leaping flames, which were particularly clear, the fire being rekindled upon a warm hearth and in a chimney already full of hot air. The occasional yawning of the group gave the only indication of the hour. The sharp-faced woman sat in her chair, with folded arms, and ever and anon gazing at her guest, who had so strangely commended himself. His clever ruse to insure being followed by his friends had induced infinite admiration of his acumen.
“I reckon ef ye wanted ter go ter Congress or sech, thar wouldn’t be nuthin’ ter hender,” she said slowly, contemplating him.
She was a simple woman, and he a wise man. He flushed with pleasure to hear his cherished thought in another’s words. He bore himself more jauntily at the very suggestion. He toyed with his knife and fork as he protested.
“There’s a mighty long road to travel ’twixt me and Congress.”
“Waal, you-uns kin make it, I’ll be bound,” she said.
And he believed her.
As he rose from the table, at the conclusion of the meal, he took out his purse.
“Nare cent,” said Marvin hastily. “We-uns hev been obligated by yer comp’ny, an’ air powerful pleased ter part in peace.”
Harshaw insisted, however, on leaving his knife for Philetus, and expressed regret that one of the blades was broken.
“He can’t cut hisself with that un, nohow,” said the anxious mother, in graciously accepting it.
Harshaw divined that she might have valued it more if all the blades had been in like plight. She placed it carefully on the high mantelpiece, where, it was safe to say, Philetus would not for some years be able to attain it.
Harshaw never forgot that ride. As the light flickered out from the door into the black midnight, vaguely crossed with slanting lines of rain, to the rail-fence where his mare stood, saddled, the pistols in the holster, he experienced an added sense of confidence in his own methods and capacities, and an intense elation that so serious an adventure had terminated with so little injury.
When he was in the saddle he looked back at the little house, crouching in the infinite gloom of the night and the vast forests that overhang it, with no fierce recollection of his trepidation, of his deadly and imminent peril. In conducting himself with due regard for the representations he had made, his mental attitude had in some sort adapted itself to his manner, and he felt as unconcerned, as easy, as friendly, as he looked. He hallooed back a genial adieu to the household standing in the doorway, in the flare of the fire. Philetus, roused by the noise to the sense of passing events, appeared in the midst, rubbing his eyes with both hands. The group gave the guest godspeed, the dogs wagged their tails. As Harshaw rode out of the inclosure, the vista of the room seemed some brilliant yellow shaft sunk in the dense darkness. And then he could see nothing: the rain fell in the midst of the black night; he felt it on his hands, his face, his neck; he turned up the collar of his coat; he heard the hoofs of his mare splashing in the puddles, and he marveled how the beast could see or follow Jeb, who, mounted on the smaller of Marvin’s two mules, led the way, while Marvin himself brought up the rear. He could only trust to the superior vision of the animal, and adjust himself to the motion which indicated the character of the ground they traversed: now through tangles and amongst rocks; now coming almost to a halt, as the mare stepped over the fallen bole of a tree; now a sudden jump, clearing unseen obstructions; now down hill, now up; now through the rushing floods of a mountain torrent. Harshaw’s buoyant mood maintained itself; his bluff voice sounded in the midst of the dreary rainfall, and his resonant, gurgling laugh over and again rang along the dark, wintry fastnesses. His geniality was communicated to the other men, and the conversation carried on at long range was animated and amicable.
“I wonder what’s become of those scamps I was hunting with,” he remarked. “I just know that shed of pine branches they fixed has leaked on ’em this night. I’ll bet they’re wallowin’ in mud.” He experienced a certain satisfaction in the thought. They had not been so badly scared as he, but at all events the camp hunters could not be happy under these circumstances.
How vast, how vast was the wilderness! Unseen, it gave an impression of infinite space. The wind clashed the bare boughs above his head. The pines wailed and groaned aloud. The commotion of the elements, the many subordinate, undetermined sounds, the weird, tumultuous voices of the forest, rising often to a terrible climax, had a mysterious, overpowering effect. It was a relief to detect a familiar note in the turmoil, even if it were the howl of a wolf, or the distant crash of a riven tree. How his mare plunged and floundered!—her head and neck now high before him, till he almost fell back upon her haunches, and now diving down so low that he had much ado to keep from slipping over the pommel.
“Well, Marvin,” said Harshaw, once more on level ground, “if you and Jeb will come down to my farm and visit me, I’ll promise you one thing,—I won’t turn you out of the house at midnight in a down-pour like this—ha! ha! ha! Confound you, old lady,”—to the mare, as she stumbled,—“stand up, can’t you?”
“You-uns oughtn’t ter set us down that-a-way,” said Marvin, grieved at the reflection on his hospitality.
“Lord A’mighty!” exclaimed “hongry Jeb,”—his tones from out of the darkness were vaguely yearning,—“talkin’ ter me ’bout ever kemin’ ter see ennybody at thar farm! Ye mought ez well ax that thar wolf ez we-uns hearn a-hollerin’ yander, ‘Jes’ kem an’ set awhile, Mister Wolf, an’ eat supper at my farm.’ I wouldn’t dare no mo’ ter show my muzzle in the settlemints ’n he would his’n. The law ’lows both o’ us air pests an’ cumberers o’ the groun’, an’ thar’s a price on his head ez well ez mine. The law ’lows we air both murderers.”
There was a pause, while the thud of the horses’ hoofs was barely heard on the dank, soft mould. Then the voice of “hongry Jeb” seemed to detach itself from kindred dreary voices of the rain and the winds and the woods, and become articulate.
“That’s edzac’ly whar it hurts my feelins. The wolf air enough mo’ like the revenuers, a-seekin’ who they may devour. I oughter played the sheep, I reckon, an’ gin ’em my blood stiddier lead; but I’m human,—I’m human,” insistently. “An’ when a feller with a pistol draws a bead on me, I jes’ naterally whips up my rifle an’ bangs too. An’ he war a pore shot an’ I war a good un, an’ he got the wust o’ it.”
The horses surged through the ford of an invisible torrent, stumbling among the rolling bowlders and struggling out on the other bank, and then they could hear again the monotonous falling of the multitudinous raindrops; the dreary wind took up its refrain, and the melancholy voice of Jeb began anew.
“’Twould hev been self-defense, ef I hedn’t been engaged in a unlawful act, preferrin’ ter squeege the juice out’n my apples, an’ bile an’ sell it, ’n ter let ’em rot on the groun’. I war a fool. I ’lowed the apples war mine. Me an’ my dad an’ my gran’dad hed owned the orchard an’ the lan’ sence the Injun went. But ’twarn’t my apples,—b’long ter the governmint. I ain’t never shot at no man ez didn’t shoot at me fust. But ’tain’t self-defense fur me. I’m got ter play sheep.”
The woful tenor of this discourse seemed to anger Marvin suddenly.
“Waal, I wish ye war slartered now!” he broke out. “I’d jes’ ez lief listen ter that thar wolf conversin’ by the hour. What ails ye, Jeb, ter git set a-goin’ so all-fired lonesome an’ doleful?”
“Lord, nuthin’,” said Jeb amenably, from the van of the procession. “I ain’t lonesome nor doleful, nuther. When Mr. Harshaw ’lowed suthin’ ’bout my kemin’ ter see him on his farm, it jes’ reminded me sorter ez when I war young, afore my diff’unce with the governmint, I used ter be a powerful lively boy, an’ knowed plenty o’ folks, an’ went about mightily,—never lived like I does now. I war sorter o’ a vagrantin’ boy,—used ter consort with boys in the valley, an’ they’d kem up ter the cove an’ bide an’ go huntin’, an’ I’d go down ter thar farms; an’ that’s how it kem I knowed whar ye live on Owel Creek. Powerful good land some of it air,—mellow, rich sile; some cherty hillsides, though. None o’ them boys hev turned out like me. Why, I used ter know Jeemes Gwinnan ez well ez the road ter mill, an’ Jim’s a jedge a-gracin’ the bench, an’ I’m—a wolf!”
Harshaw experienced a sudden quickening of interest. “You knew Gwinnan?”
“Lord, yes; ez well ez the bark knows the tree. Jeemes war a fine shot, an’ he liked huntin’ fust-rate. He hedn’t his health very well, an’ his mother, bein’ a widder-woman, war more’n naterally foolish ’bout’n him, an’ war always lookin’ fur him ter die. So she’d keep him out’n doors ez well ez she could. But he’d kerry his book along, an’ read, ’thout he war a-huntin’. So she let him kem whenst he war jes’ a boy, an’ go huntin’ in the mountings along o’ the men growed. An’ it done him good. He war ez fine a shot ez I ever see.”
A wonderful thing was happening in the woods,—the familiar miracle of dawn. The vast forests were slowly asserting dim outlines of bole and branch, lodgment for the mist which clothed them in light and fleecy illusions of foliage. A gray revelation of light, rather the sheer values of distinctness than a realized medium, was unfolding before the eye. The serried slants of rain fell at wider intervals, and the equestrian form of Jeb became visible,—lank, lean, soaked with rain, his old white hat shedding the water from its brim in rivulets upon his straight and straggling hair. As he jogged along on the little mule, whose long ears seemed alternately to whisk off the shades of night, he seemed a forlornly inadequate individual to have had a “diff’unce with the governmint.”
“Jim’s what reminded me of how I war fixed in life,” he went on, more cheerfully. “An’ this hyar whole trip air what reminded me o’ Jim. I guided him—mus’ hev been fourteen year ago, or mo’—through jes’ sech a rainy night ez this, an’ through these hyar very woods—naw, sir! more towards the peak o’ Thunderhead.”
“I dunno ez ye hev got enny call ter be so durned pertic’lar ’bout the percise spot,” said Marvin, significantly.
“That’s a fac’,” said Jeb, good-naturedly. “I guided him through the mountings an’ over the line inter the old North State.”
“What in hell did he want to go there for, in the rain and the dead of the night?” asked Harshaw. His breath was quick; he felt that he panted on the brink of a discovery. Now plunge!
“’Kase, stranger, he war obleeged ter, sorter like you-uns,” said Jeb enigmatically.
He looked back over his shoulder, with perhaps some stirring doubt, some vague suspicion, at the man who followed; but Harshaw, now lifting a hand to thrust a branch from across the path, now adjusting the bridle about the mare’s head, seemed so careless, so casual, in his curiosity that Jeb was reassured as to the innocuousness of his gossip, and went on.
“Ye see, them fellers he consorted with—huntin’, an’ a-pitchin’ o’ quates, an’ a-foot-racin’, an’ sech—war mostly powerful servigrus, gamesome folks; an’ some o’ ’em war gin ter toler’ble wild ways, an’ Jeemes—his mother never keered much what he done, so ez he’d quit stickin’ so all-fired constant ter his law-books, ’kase he war a-studyin’ law by that time in old Squair Dinks’s law-office in Colbury—he war ’bout twenty-two year old—he war mixed up in a deal o’ them goin’s-on. An’ from one little thing an’ another he hed some ill-will started agin him wunst in a while. Him an’ Eph Saunders hed a fallin’-out wunst. Eph war a tremenjious strong man, an’ he kep’ flingin’ words at Jeemes. Sence Jeemes hed tuk ter studyin’ o’ law an’ sech, an’ ’peared right hearty, he tuk up with town ways powerfill, an’ went ter meet’n a-Sunday nights, escortin’ the gals, an’ dressed hisself like a plumb peacock. An’ whenst Eph ’tended circus in Colbury he met up with Jeemes, who hed a lot o’ his gal cousins along. An’ Eph war drunk, an’ Jim gin him a push aside, an’ Eph, he fell on the groun’. Waal, sir, it like ter killed Eph,—ter be knocked down by a man o’ Jeemes’s weight! Jim couldn’t hev done it ef Eph hedn’t been drunk. Eph jes’ mourned like Samson arter his hair war cut off. Ye’d hev ’lowed he war de-sgraced fur life! An’, like Samson, he warn’t a-goin’ ter bide stopped off an’ done fur. He kep’ a-sendin’ all sorts o’ words ter Jeemes; an’ ez Jeemes never wanted no fuss with Eph, he kep’ out’n his way for a while. An’ Eph, he ’lowed ez Jim war afeard an’ a-hidin’. Waal, sir, that hustled up Jeemes’s feelins mightily. He jes’ wanted ter keep out’n his mother’s hearin’, though; she war a powerful chicken-hearted, floppy kind o’ woman,—skeered at everything. Then Jeemes, he sent Eph word ez he warn’t a-goin’ ter be beat inter a jelly fur nuthin’ by a man twict his size; but he war a-kemin’ up ter settle him with his rifle. An’ Eph, he sent word he’d meet him at the big Sulphur Spring, thar on that spur o’ the mounting nigh Gran’dad’s Creek. Ef Jeemes so much ez dared ter cross the foot-bredge over Gran’dad’s Creek, an’ set his foot on the t’other side, Eph swore he’d shoot him dead. An’ Eph, he sent word ter come Chewsday an hour by sun, an’ bring his friends ter see fair play.”
“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Marvin, in the fervor of reminiscence, “I kin jes’ see that thar spot,—that thar old foot-bredge in the woods, an’ the water high enough ter lap the under side o’ the log; ’twar hewn a-top, an’ made toler’ble level footin’. An’ me an’ Jeb dodgin’ in the laurel, fur fear Eph would shoot ’fore Jeemes crost.”
“Jeemes seemed toler’ble long a-crossin’,” Jeb resumed,—“I ’member that; an’ he stopped at the furder eend, an’ lifted his rifle ter his shoulder ter be ready ter shoot. An’ thar stood Eph, a-sightin’ him keerful ez he kem”—
“You were both there?” said Harshaw, hastily.
“Lord, yes,” said Jeb. “Jeemes hed stayed at my dad’s house the night afore. An’ he never brung none o’ his town friends,—afeard o’ word gittin’ ter his mother. So me an’ Sam,—Sam, he lived nigh me,—we-uns went along.”
“Did he kill Eph?” demanded Harshaw, the query swift with the momentum of the wish.
“Waal, not edzac’ly,” drawled Jeb. “That’s whar the funny part kem in. Eph, he knowed ef Jeemes shot fust he war a dead man,—mighty few sech shots ez Jeemes,—but he warn’t a-goin’ ter murder him by shootin’ him afore he put his foot on the groun’ an’ tuk up the dare. So he waited, an’ Jeemes stopped short right at the aidge o’ the bredge.”
“Lord, I ’members how he looked!” cried Marvin. “He had tuk off his coat an’ vest, though we-uns hed tole him that thar b’iled shirt o’ his’n war a good mark for Eph, ez looked jes’ the color o’ the clay-bank ahint him, in them brown jeans clothes. Jim’s straw hat war drawn down over his eyes; he war jes’ about the build o’ his ramrod,—slimmest, stringiest boy!—ez delikit-lookin’ ez a gal. One thing Eph called him, ez riled him wuss ’n all, war ‘Miss Polly.’”
“He hev widened out mightily sence then, though he ain’t got no fat ter spare yit,” put in Jeb.
“An’ then, suddint,” resumed Marvin, “he jes’ stepped his foot right on the groun’. In that very minute Eph’s gun flashed. An’ I seen Jeemes standin’ thar, still sightin’. An’ then Eph, he drapped his gun, an’ held his hands afore his face, an’ yelled out, ‘Shoot, ef ye air a-goin’ ter shoot! I ain’t a-goin’ ter stan’ hyar no longer.’ An’ Jeemes, he looked ez scornful”—
“I never seen a boy’s looks with sech a cuttin’ aidge ter ’em,” interpolated Jeb.
“An’ Jeemes, he say, ‘I ain’t a-wastin’ powder ter-day. I never ’lowed ez skunks war game.’ An’ he drapped his gun.”
“Yes sir!” exclaimed Jeb, “he jes’ hed that much grit,—ter stan’ up ez a shootin’ mark fur Eph Saunders, an’ prove he warn’t afeard o’ nothin’. He did sir!”
“Why, look here, my good friends!” cried the lawyer. “That was a duel. It was a cool, premeditated affair. They met by previous appointment, and fought with deadly weapons and with witnesses. It was a duel.”
“Mebbe so,” said Jeb, indifferently and uncomprehendingly. “I call it clean grit.”
“Waal,” went on Marvin, “I run across the bredge lookin’ fur Eph’s bullet. I said, ‘Whar’d it go?’ An’ by that time Eph an’ them low down Kitwin boys war slinkin’ off. An’ sez Jeemes, ‘Don’t let ’em know it. I don’t want my mother ter hear ’bout it. She air fibble an’ gittin’ old.’ An’ thar I seen the breast o’ his shirt war slow a-spottin’ with blood. Waal, sir, that’s how kem me an’ Jeb an’ him rid over the mountings inter North Carolina, whar he hed some kinsfolks livin’ ’mongst the hills.”
“Ye see,”—Jeb again took up his testimony,—“he didn’t want the news ter git ter his mother afore he got well, ’kase he war delikit, an’ she war always a-lookin’ fur him ter die; an’ Eph never knowed Jim war shot, an’ couldn’t kerry the tale down ter Colbury. Waal, we-uns war all young an’ toler’ble bouncin’ fools, I tell ye, an’ we sorter got light on that fac’ whenst we-uns sot out ter ride with a man with a gun-shot wound—I furgits ’zac’ly whar the doctor say the bullet went in—miles an’ miles through the mountings; an’ the dark kem on an’ the rain kem down, an’ Jeemes got out’n his head. An’ this ride with you-uns air what reminded me o’ it.”
“I ain’t out of my head!” cried Harshaw, with covert meaning. “You bet your immortal soul on that!”
“Naw,”—Jeb admitted the discrepancy,—“but the rain, an’ the ride, an’ the mountings, an’ the darksomeness.”
“Lord! a body wouldn’t hev b’lieved how Jeemes’s pride war hurt ter be called afeard!” exclaimed Marvin. “I ’low he’d hev let Eph chop him up in minch meat ter prove he warn’t. He air prouder of hisself ’n enny man I ever see. Thar’s whar his soul is—in his pride.”
“I’m glad ter hear it,” said Harshaw, so definitely referring to an occult interpretation of his own that the old white hat, bobbing along in front of him, turned slowly, and he saw the lank, cadaverous face below it, outlined with its limp wisps of black hair against the nebulous vapors. So strong an expression of surprise did Jeb’s features wear that Harshaw hastily added, “A man that ain’t got any pride ain’t worth anything.”
“Ef he hev got ennything ter be proud of,” stipulated melancholy Jeb.
The day had fully dawned; the rain, the mists, the looming forests, had acquired a dull verity in the stead of the vague, illusory shadows they had been. Nevertheless, the muddy banks of the creek down which the mare slided, her legs rigid as iron; the obstructions of the ford,—rocks, fallen limbs of trees, floating or entangled in intricacies of overhanging bushes,—were all rendered more difficult, for Harshaw mechanically controlled the reins instead of trusting to the mare’s instinct; as he sawed on the bit, while she threw back her head, foaming at the mouth, he brought her to her knees in the midst of the stream. The water surged up about the great boots which he wore drawn over his trousers to the knee, and the mare regained her footing with snorting difficulty. There were no expletives, and Jeb looked back in renewed surprise.
“Ye mus’ be studyin’ powerful hard, stranger,” he commented, “not ter hev seen that thar bowlder.”
“Yer beastis war a-goin’ ter take slanchwise across the ruver whar thar warn’t nuthin’ ter hender, till ye in an’ about pulled the jaw off’n her,” Marvin said, as Harshaw pushed through the swollen flood and up the opposite bank. His flushed face was grave; his eyes were intent; he rode along silently. He was indeed thinking.
He was thinking that if what they had told him were true—and how could he doubt it?—Gwinnan in taking the official oath had committed perjury; he was disqualified for the judicial office, and liable to impeachment. Harshaw was vaguely repeating to himself and trying to remember the phraseology of the anti-dueling oath exacted of every office-holder in the State of Tennessee,—an oath that he had not directly or indirectly given or accepted a challenge since the adoption of the Constitution of 1835.
Under what pretext, what secret reservation or evasion, had Gwinnan been able to evade this solemn declaration? Or had he adopted the simple expedient of swallowing it whole? Harshaw wondered, remembering all the acerbities of Gwinnan’s canvass and election, that the old story had not before come to light. But it was a section of frequent feuds and bloody collisions, the subject was trite and unsuggestive, and the details of an old fight might seem to promise no novel developments. How odd that he, of all men, should stumble on it, in view of its most signal significance!
Auxiliary facts pressed upon his attention. Nothing that could be now urged against an official was so prejudicial as the crime of dueling. The episode of Kinsard’s boyish demonstration attested the temper of the public. With much difficulty had his friends shielded him by its ambiguity; and indeed only because it was a meaningless folly, without intention or result, had it proved innocuous. Even Kinsard, fire-eater as he was, had been forced to accept their interpretations of its harmless intent, and to subside under the frown of public displeasure. The more lenient members of the House had had cause to regret their clemency, the disapproval of their constituents being expressed in no measured manner by the local journals. But no ambiguity was here; this was the accomplished fact, this the clue that long he had sought. Even if the House should decline to act in the matter, Gwinnan could be removed by judicial proceedings. He would think it out at his leisure. How lucky, how lucky was this ride!
The rain had ceased at last. They were among the minor ridges that lie about the base of the Great Smoky. They had ridden many a mile out of their way,—Harshaw could not say in what direction,—so that he might not easily retrace his steps. The mists still hung about them when they turned from the almost imperceptible path, which Jeb had followed with some keen instinct or memory, into a road,—a rough wagon track. Bushes were growing in its midst, bowlders lay here and there; its chief claim to identification as a highway being its occasional mud-puddles, of appalling depth and magnitude, and its red clay mire, fetlock deep at least.
Harshaw roused himself suddenly, as the two moonshiners intimated their intention of parting company with him.
“Thar’s yer way, stranger,” said Marvin, pausing on the rise and pointing down the road. It was visible only a few rods in the mist, dreary and deserted, with deep ditches, heavily washed by the rain, on either hand; it might seem to lead to no fair spaces, no favored destination where one might hope to be. But Harshaw drew up his mare, and gazed along it with kindling eyes. His felt hat drooped in picturesque curves about his dense yellow hair, soaked like his beard, to a darker hue. His closely buttoned coat had a military suggestion. His heavy figure was imposing on horseback. He flushed with sudden elation. Alack! he saw more trooping down that prosaic dirt road than the mist, hastily scurrying; than the progress of the wind in the swaying of the stunted cedars, clinging to the gashed and gully-washed embankments; than the last trickling stragglers of the storm.
He did not notice, or he did not care, that the two men had remarked his silence, his evident absorption. He glanced cursorily at them, as they sat regarding him,—one on the little lank mule, his partner on the big lean one, both drenched, and forlorn, and poverty-stricken, and humble of aspect. The politician’s mare, perhaps recognizing the road down into Kildeer County, where she had spent the first frisky years of her toilsome pilgrimage, showed a new spirit, and caracoled as Harshaw rode up to the two men to offer his hand.
“Farewell, stranger,” they said; and in the old-fashioned phrase of the primitive Plain People, “Farewell,” he replied.
They stood looking after him, hardly understanding what they lacked, what they had expected, as the mare, with a mincing, youthful freshness, cantered a little way along the grassy margin of the road, above the rivulets in the ditches, surging twelve or fourteen feet below.
Presently Harshaw paused, yet unobscured by the mist which had gathered about him, and glanced over his shoulder,—not to thank them for such aid and comfort as they had given him.
“Gentlemen,” he said, a little ill at ease because of the restive mare, “I must thank you for the story you told me. You don’t know how much good it did me. A pretty little story, with a pretty little hero. A very pretty little story, indeed.”
He bent his roseate, dimpled smile upon them, and waved his hand satirically; with a bound the mare disappeared in the mist, leaving the grave, saturnine mountaineers staring after him, and listening to the measured hoof-beat of his invisible progress till it died in the distance.
Then they looked at each other.
“Sam,” said Jeb, when they had turned again into their fastnesses, where they could ride only in single file, “I dunno ef we-uns done right las’ night. This worl’ would be healthier ef that man war out’n it.”
“I ain’t misdoubtin’ that none,” replied Marvin. “’Peared ter me powerful comical, the way he took off down the road, an’ I ain’t able ter study out yit what he meant. My gran’mam always ’lowed ez them ez talks in riddles larnt thar speech o’ the devil, him bein’ the deceivin’ one. But ’twarn’t healthy fur we-uns ter kill him, even ef we could hev agreed ter do it. I reckon them hunters would hev tracked him. An’ I don’t b’lieve he war no spy nor sech.”
“Nor me nuther,” said “hongry Jeb,” well enough satisfied with the termination of the adventure, “though I ain’t likin’ him now ez well ez I done a-fust.”
They liked him still less, and all their old suspicions returned with redoubled force, upon reaching home, when the afternoon was well advanced. For no hunters had yet appeared, and the lurking moonshiners, becoming surprised because of this, had tracked Harshaw’s way to the house by the broken brush, the hairs from the mane and tail of the mare, a bit of his coat clutched off by the briers, the plain prints of the mare’s hoofs along a sandy stretch protected from the rain by the beetling ledges of a crag. There were many oak-trees along this path,—not one blazed by a hunting-knife. They understood at last his clever lie. And Marvin upbraided M’ria:—
“Thar air more constancy in the ways o’ the wind, an’ mo’ chance o’ countin’ on ’em, ’n that thar woman. Fust he mus’ be dragged out straight an’ kilt,—flunged off’n the bluff,—else we-uns would all go ter jail, an’ Philetus be lef’ ter starve ’mongst the painters, ez wouldn’t keep him comp’ny, but would eat him up. Then when the man limbered his jaw an’ sot out ter lyin’, she gits so all-fired skeered, she hed breakfus’ cooked for we-uns ter journey ’fore I could sati’fy my mind ’bout nuthin’. Ef the truth war knowed, we’d all be safer ef M’ria were flunged over the bluff.”
And Maria, staring at the line of oak-trees, all undesecrated by the knife, could not gainsay it.
She could only wring her hands, and rock herself to and fro, and revolve her troublous fears, and grow yet more wan and gaunt with her prescient woes for them all—and for Philetus.