XXIX.
It seemed to Mink Lorey, trudging on toward the mountains, as if they had been suddenly caught up in the clouds. The horizon had fallen from their invisible summits to the levels of the cove, and where the flat stretches of the perspective met the nullities of the enveloping vapors the scene had all the prosaic, denuded desolation of prairie distances. Yearning for the sight of the blue peaks, he felt as if it were in rebuke, in alienation, that they had hidden their faces from him, had drawn the tissues of the air about them and veiled their heads. As the day unfolded hour by hour, as the distance lessened mile by mile, he sought if perchance in a rent of the mist he might not glimpse some dome, the familiar of his early life, unchanged through all the vicissitudes that time had wrought for him. Once he was not sure if it were mountain or cloud outlined in individual symmetry amongst the indeterminate, shapeless masses of vapor. Then the haze thickened, and he lost the semblance, whether of earth or air.
It was before dawn that he had escaped from the haven he had found, and Mrs. Purvine, throughout the day, keeping watch over these snug quarters, guarded an empty nest. After the first deep, dreamless slumber of exhaustion he had silently slipped out, taking his way toward the Great Smoky, the thought of Alethea heavier than all his calamities. He knew naught of the report of his pardon; he hardly cared now what might betide him. He would see her and tax her with her fickle heart, and then he would flee whither he might. Sometimes, as he toiled along, he would raise his arm with a frantic gesture, and again and again his lips moved unconsciously as he forecast in sibilant mutters the words that he would say.
There was little danger at this early hour of meeting any traveler along the deserted road, but he hardly felt safe until he reached the base of the Great Smoky, and was amongst the dense laurel of those mighty forests, still veiled with the mists and effaced from the day. He turned back often, despite the numbing clutch of despair in his heart and the turbulence of his rage, hoping that he might see again Chilhowee with the sunshine on it; with the circuit of birds in the adjacent domains of the sky; with detached flakes of mist, like stole-clad figures, in airy processional pacing the summit to elusive evanescences; with its colors of bronze-green, and anon purple, and, stretching far away, more finely, softly azure than the heaven it touched. Alas, no,—this he might remember. And yet he had chance rencontres with old familiars. A torrent, gray-green, glassy, whitely foaming, darted out from the vapors suddenly, and was suddenly withdrawn into the blank spaces. And was he akin to the balsam firs; could he have met brethren with more joy? Even when they towered undistinguishably above him, they whispered to him a word now and then, and filled the air with the cordial, inspiriting sense of their presence. And what was this? He stood still to listen, staring into the white vagueness of the invisible woods. A fitful, metallic tinkling. Was he so high up the great steeps that already he could distinguish the bells of the herds, or was this a stray? He heard a hoof struck upon the ground presently, the sound of munching teeth, and suddenly a horse’s head was thrust forward amongst the mists, showing a black mane and wide brilliant eyes and the arch of a clay-bank neck.
“Thar ye be, Grasshopper! At it agin, air ye?” Mink called out, with the rancorous formula of an old reproach.
It was a horse that he knew, and knew well,—one of the charges of the herders during the previous summer,—a wild young creature, with a proclivity for breaking bounds and straying. The animal pricked up his ears at the sound of his name, and his eyes met Mink’s with seeming recognition. The young mountaineer reflected that it was he who had usually salted the animals. With a hope of bettering his plight he held out his hand.
“Cobe! Cobe!” he called seductively. The horse looked dubiously at him, as he stood, one hand thrust in his leather belt, his white hat—an old one belonging to Jerry Price, which Mrs. Purvine had loaned him—perched on the back of his head, his red hair limp with the moisture of the damp day. The creature approached gingerly, snuffing at the empty hand. He moved back abruptly, detecting the deception; but Mink had caught him by the halter which he wore, and sprung upon his back.
“Gimme a lift up the mounting, Grasshopper,” suggested Mink placidly.
The stray reared and plunged and kicked, striving to unhorse the rider, who, although without saddle or bridle, contrived to maintain his seat, but could neither govern nor guide the animal, that at last bolted off through the woods, running as rapidly as the nature of the ground would permit. On he went, invading the mists; piercing the invisibilities of the wilderness; up hill and down; among bowlders and gigantic trees, dimly looming; fording streams and standing pools and morasses; pausing to kick and rear and plunge anew, and away once more. Mink waited calmly till the stray should exhaust his energies. This proved longer than he had anticipated. But after several delusive intimations of abating speed the horse fell into a canter, then into a trot, and as Mink pulled on the halter the comity with his rider was renewed once more, and he lent himself to guidance. Looking about him, the young mountaineer could hardly say where he had been carried. Once as the mist shifted he saw through the limbs of stunted trees a great peak, a mile away perhaps, appearing and disappearing elusively among the rifts. He began to understand that he was on the summit of the ridge in the interval between two great uprising domes. Often he must needs lie flat on the horse’s back, lest the low boughs of the ancient dwarfed trees sweep him to the ground; as it was, they played cruel havoc with his old jeans coat, and once snatched his hat away. He drew up with difficulty, and as he clapped it on his head he heard again, in the momentary silence of his horse’s hoofs, the tinkling of bells other than the one which the nomadic Grasshopper wore at his neck. He rode toward the sound. It led him into a limited open space where the trees, struck and burned by the lightnings, had fallen charred upon the earth: two or three cows were pausing to crop in the lush grass, despite the crack of a whip and the call of a herder. Mink recognized the voice of his old comrade, Doaks.
The mounted figure of the fugitive loomed, half discerned, gigantic in the mist, as Ben Doaks stood and stared. The horse, restive, freakish, rose upon his hind feet, pawing the air. The young mountaineer, half doubting the policy of revealing himself, his prudent fears returning, hesitated, then leaned forward and waved his hand. He did not speak, for Doaks suddenly, with a wild shrill cry of terror, turned and fled.
Mink sat his horse motionless, staring in amazement. An angry flush rose to the roots of his hair.
“Ben’s ’feared ter hev enny dealin’s with law-breakers an’ sech,” he sneered. “’Feared the law mought take arter him.”
He rode along for a few moments, pondering his jeopardy and the long imprisonment to which he was sentenced. If this demonstration were any indication of the feeling against him, he would be taken again here amongst the herders, or at his home in Hazel Valley, or in Wild-Cat Hollow.
“I oughtn’t ter go ter see Lethe,” he said to himself. “I ought jes’ ter hustle over inter North Carliny, whar they dunno me, an’ git in with some o’ them folks ez lives lonesome, the herders, or them Injuns at Quallatown, till the sher’ff gits tired o’ huntin’ fur me. Nobody ’lows but what I’m dead ’cept Mis’ Purvine, an’ she ain’t a-goin’ ter tell on me. I dunno ’bout Lethe; mebbe she’ll ’low ’tain’t right, ’specially sence she air so powerful pleased with the jedge. I’ll git cotched sure ef I keep a-roamin’ ’round hyar like a painter, or that thar harnt o’ a herder ez rides on Thunderhead.”
With the words there flashed upon him a new interpretation of Ben Doaks’s sudden flight. He recollected the significance of an equestrian figure here, strangely silent, looming in the mist. As he looked about him, catching vague glimpses of the neighboring peaks, he recognized the slopes of Thunderhead.
“Ben mus’ hev been over ter s’arch fur strays, an’ I reckon ye air one of ’em, Grasshopper,” he said.
His lips were curving, and his eyes brightening beneath the brim of the old wool hat. His prudent resolves vanished. He leaned forward and deftly divested the horse of the bell. He tossed his head gayly as he struck his heels against the flanks of the animal with an admonition to get up.
“Ef I don’t ride up thar an’ skeer them herders on Thunderhead inter fits, I’m the harnt Ben takes me fur, that’s all.”
That misty morning was long remembered on Thunderhead. To the herders, busy with their simple, leisurely, bucolic avocation on the great elevated pastures, as aloof from the world, as withdrawn from mundane influence, as if they herded on lunar mountains, there appeared, veiled with the mist and vague with a speedy gait, the traditional phantom horseman: more distinct than they could have imagined, more personally addressing its presence to the spectators, silently waving its hand, and once leaning forward and clutching at the empty air, as if it would fain reach them, and once assuming an aggressive aspect and leveling an unseen weapon.
The cattle had not all arrived at their summer pastures from the coves and the “flat woods.” To-day young Bylor, whose father was a farmer on the slopes below, had driven up a “bunch” of cows, and while he was standing quite alone at some distance from the cabin, engaged in readjusting a brass tag which had been lost from the horn of one of the animals, he heard the sound of an approach, and glanced about him in the fleecy white nullity that had taken the place of the erased world. He did not recognize in the dim figure of the horseman the terrible ghostly herder, the steed rearing and plunging, the erect figure looming gigantic, merging with no distinct outlines into the enveloping uncertainty of the mist. He stood stolidly gazing for a moment; then he hailed it.
“Howdy, stranger!” he cried.
The figure paused; the horse fell upon his haunches and pawed the air with his forefeet, while the rider leaned forward, beckoning slowly as Bylor approached. What monition induced him to pause he could hardly have said. The significance of the insistently beckoning apparition flashed upon him in the moment. He turned precipitately, stumbling over the roots of a tree and falling prone upon the ground; then recovering himself, he ran at full speed through the blinding fog toward the cabin. He swore afterward that he heard behind him the tramp of a horse’s hoofs and a voice laughing mockingly.
At the herders’ cabin he found Ben Doaks and his partner from Piomingo Bald, pallid and shaken, among the other herders who had gathered there, all panic-stricken, and each arguing to shift to his partner the responsibility of the care of the cattle, that he might leave the weird, haunted summits, and find rest and peace and reassuring human comradeship in the prosaic depths of the cove.
“From what I hev hearn tell ’bout that thar herder,” said Doaks, with his facile credulity, “none o’ we-uns air a-goin’ ter hev sense enough ter keer fur cattle ’n’ nuthin’ else fur a year an’ a day. Leastwise that hev been the ’speriunce o’ other folks ez hev viewed the harnt.”
He laid on another stick of wood, for the day was chill, and the great fire crackled and sparkled, and the red and yellow flames darted up the rude and tremulous chimney, and gave the one bright element of illuminated color to the dark interior. The bearded men grouped about the fire were seated one upon a keg of salt, three on a log, and Ben Doaks had dropped on a saddle flung down upon the hearth. The door was closed; once it came unbuttoned, and every face turned quickly to scan the shivering mists, pallid and cold and opaque, crowding to the entrance, to be shut out summarily into the vast vagueness of the outer world.
“I dunno ez I feel ennywise lackin’,” observed another, after a long introspective pause. He rubbed his hand meditatively over his beard. “I never ’lowed ez I war special gifted, but I ain’t a spang fool yit.”
“I reckon we hain’t hed time ter ’speriunce it,” said Doaks, as he settled himself to wait for the dreaded doom, a little astonished, subacutely, to be conscious of no diminution of mental power.
“I seen him so close!” cried Bylor. “I wish ter goodness I hed shot at him!”
“Bullet would jes’ hev gone through him,” said Doaks, “’thout interruptin’ him none.”
“Waal,” rejoined Bylor, “I hev hearn some folks ’low ef ye shoots at a harnt they don’t like it, an’ sorter makes tharse’fs sca’ce arter that. I dunno what ailed him ter take arter me. I never herded with him on Thunderhead. I ain’t no herder, an’ never war. I hate powerful ter go down inter the cove ter drivel fur a year an’ a day. I never done no work sca’cely las’ year, through feelin’ sorter keerless ’bout’n it. An’ ef I hed drempt bout’n’ this hyar harnt a-takin’ arter me I’d hev put in my work then.”
“Waal, ye can’t git the time back,” said Ben Doaks; and many an idler before and since Bylor has learned this melancholy truth.
He sat silent for a time, ruefully pondering upon his blasted industrial prospects. Then he broke forth fretfully once more:—
“I war fool enough ter go so close. I seen the very hat he wore,”—his tones were full of a despairing regret,—“a big white hat sot onto the back o’ his head.”
“That war jes’ Josh Nixon,” said the elder of the herders, gravely shaking his head. “That war the very kind o’ hat he wore, an’ set the same.”
Three of the five hats in the room were of that exact description; in fact, it was a fashion common enough in the region for Jerry Price to have two alike, and the old one which Mrs. Purvine had lent the fugitive was hardly distinguishable from Mink’s own, floating down the Tennessee River.
It did not shadow a face altogether appreciative of his own pranks, as Mink drew it down over his brow and rode away in the mist, when convinced that the herders were likely to come out no more for the present.
“I can’t take no sure enough enjyemint in nuthin’,” he complained. “I feel so badgered an’ hunted.”
He looked about him doubtfully. A few strides of his horse and he would be across the state line, and safer than for many a day. He stood drearily contemplating the vacancy of the clouds above the Carolina side, as unresponsive to the imagination as his future, which in vain he sought to forecast. He suddenly wheeled.
“I’m bound ter see Lethe, though! I’m bound ter tell her I hev fund her out. She’ll know what I think o’ her afore I’m done.”
He pressed the horse, broken now to a steady gait, into the elusive ways of the herders’ trail through the weird, stunted woods along the ridge to the great Piomingo Bald; thence into a path that led down into Wild-Cat Hollow. He noted its well-worn and smooth curves.
“Ben Doaks hev made a reg’lar turnpike, a-travelin’ ter see Lethe Sayles,” he said, with some half scornful pity that would not bestir itself to be jealous.
He made a wide detour of the little house, nestling in the great cleft of the mountain, occasionally becoming dimly visible as the mist shook out its gauzy folds in long pervasive shivers, and anon obliterated as it dropped its denser curtain. Over the valley it was torn into fringes, a slant of sunlight gilding it, the blue of the sky showing through.
One of the sudden precipitous ascents from the deep depression of the hollow was distinctly imposed against the horizon. There were great rocks, with herbs and grasses growing in niches, on either side of a narrow gorge. Two splintered cliffs amongst them were like a rude and gigantic gateway giving access to the higher verdant slopes of the mountain. His eyes, turning mechanically toward the opening vista, were arrested by the sight of Alethea high up the gorge, standing in the clifty gateway. Her sun-bonnet, still tied under her chin, had fallen on her shoulders; her yellow hair was like the golden sunlight denied to the dreary heights; her familiar brown homespun dress was distinct against the tender green of the slope; a basket of herbs was on her arm. Now and then she moved a step and plucked a sprig from a niche, and again she would pause looking down upon the valley, where the white glister of the mist united with the suffusion of yellow sunshine beyond in a gauzy, splendid sheen that now and then parted to reveal the purple mountains, the blue sky, the silver river, the fields as radiantly green as the meadows of the blest. His heart beat with emotions he hardly comprehended, as he noted her luminous, grave, undimmed eyes, her fair, delicately tinted face.
He dismounted and hitched the horse by the halter to a tree. She did not see him; she heard nothing; she silently looked about her, and plucked the herb she sought. He took his way softly up the gorge among the fallen fragments of rock; he was standing still in the great rift that simulated a gateway when she turned slowly, and her eyes, widening with fear, with surprise, with rapture, fell upon him.
His heart could but thrill at her loud, wild cry of joy. He had meant to upbraid her. She was sobbing on his shoulder, and he held her in his arms.
The mists flickered and faded about them; the sunshine slanted down through the clouds. The wind lifted its wings, for they heard the flutter of the breeze, and beside some hidden nest amongst the gray old rocks a mocking-bird was suddenly singing—singing!
“Ye war pardoned! I know it!” she cried. “I know it!”
He had for once a thought for her,—a vain regret to annul her joy. When had Alethea looked thus?—the radiant spirit of love, the triumphant delight of the spring.
He delayed replying. He stooped to gather up the herbs that had fallen on the ground; for the old hound that followed her had smelt the basket, and was thrusting his intrusive muzzle among them.
“What be ye a-doin’ of, Lethe?” asked Mink, restoring them, and setting the basket up on a bowlder.
To detail the simple domestic errand relaxed the tense agitation of their meeting, and it was a relief to him to listen.
“A-getherin’ wild sallet fur dinner,” she drawled, her happy smiles and tears together in her eyes. “Our turnip patch never done nuthin’, sca’cely, an’ ez we-uns ain’t got no turnip-greens I ’lowed I’d gether a mess o’ wild sallet. The chillen hone so fur suthin’ green.”
There was no quivering sense of deprivation in her voice; the hardships of poverty would wear to-day the guise of triumphant expedient.
“I hev got about enough,” she said, smiling up at him. “Ye kem on ter the house an’ I’ll gin ye a soon dinner. Ye mus’ be tired an’ hongry with yer travels. They’ll all make ye welcome.”
He hesitated. In the supreme happiness of the moment, his face had in a measure lost the lines that anxiety and suffering had drawn. But now, as he stood doubtful of what he should say, she noted his changed expression.
“Reuben,” she cried, in tender commiseration, laying her hand on his arm, “what makes ye look like that? What hev happened ter you-uns?”
“Waal,” said Mink, leaning against the wall of rock behind him, “right smart o’ different things,—fust an’ last.”
The simple heart’s-ease in being near her again,—he had not realized how dear he held it,—in hearing her voice, full of solicitude for him, in the renewing of his unconscious reliance upon her love, had begun to give way to the antagonism inevitable between them, with their widely opposing views of life and duty, their uncongenial characters and aims.
He laughed satirically. “Ye talk ’bout pardon! I hain’t got no pardon. I ’low ye wimmin-folks hev got no feelin’ nor pride nuther. I wouldn’t hev no pardon off’n Gwinnan. I wouldn’t take a favior from him,—not ter save him from hell, nor me nuther. But I hev got no pardon.”
“Ye air foolin’ me, Reuben, ain’t ye?” she exclaimed, hopefully.
He shook his head.
She gazed gravely at him. “How’d ye git away?”
“Bruk an’ run.”
She stood still; her heart sank; her eyes filled with tears. “Oh,” she cried, with all the despair of a relinquished hope, “I couldn’t but b’lieve yestiddy, when Jacob Jessup kep’ a-lookin’ so secret an’ m’licious, ez thar war good news ez he wouldn’t lemme hear,—more ’n he told ’bout what Jedge Gwinnan said when he rid up ter the cabin, whilst we war all away ter the church-house ter the revival. An’ I b’lieved ’twar ez you-uns war pardoned. I hev drempt of it! I hev prayed fur it! I’d hev died fur it!”
“Look hyar, Lethe Sayles!” he exclaimed, tense and erect again. “That thar ain’t a true word ez ye air a-tellin’ me,—ez that thar man hev kem ter Wild-Cat Hollow!” His eyes blazed upon her.
She was deprecating and downcast. Her intuition warned her that it behooved her to be careful. She was too deliberate. He broke out vehemently:
“He hev! An’ ’twar ter see you-uns.”
“I know ’twar, Reuben, but”—
“I swear ter Heaven,” he cried, lifting his clenched right hand, “ez the Lord never afore built sech a fool ez me!” His self-pity and self-contempt were pathetic. “Ain’t I jes’ now been down yander ter Mis’ Purvine’s, an’ hear her tell how that man—oh, curse him, curse him!—air nigh dead in love with ye, an’ ye hed promised ter marry him!”
“No, Reuben, no! ’Tain’t true. It air jes’ one o’ aunt Dely’s notions.”
“An’ I kem hyar fit in mind ter kill ye dead,” he went on. “An’ the minit I see ye I furgit it all, an’ ye twist me round yer finger the same ez ef I war a bit o’ spun truck! G’way, Lethe!”—his voice broke; “don’t ye tech me.” He moved away, that she might not lay her remonstrant hand on his shoulder. “I wait on yer word like a child. Ye got me inter all this trouble through heedin’ yer wisdom ez turned out folly fur me. The foolishness o’ them ez air bereft air wise ter me! Ye done it!”
He struck his hands despairingly together as he thought of his forlorn past. Perhaps he was the happier that his reflective moods were so rare.
“I know, Reuben,—I know I did. But I never meant it. I jes’ wanted ye ter do what war right.”
“Yes, but I hev got ter abide by the consequences o’ what ye think air right,—don’t ye know it?” he demanded.
“Ef I could hev suffered fur it, stiddier you-uns,” she declared, in tears, “I’d hev gone ter jail happy—happy.”
His manner changed suddenly. He was at once shocked and displeased. “What air ye talkin ’bout, Lethe?” he said, in stern rebuke. “Don’t ye know thar ain’t no ’spectable wimmin in jail?”
This had not occurred to her. She only sighed, and looked away at the shifting mist over the sunlit valley at the heavier masses of cloud dropping down upon the mountain above. A great eagle, near enough to show the gallant spread of his broad wings, swept from their midst, poised in the sunlight high above the cove, and swooped to the slopes below. Mink’s gaze followed the bird, his easily diverted interest quickening. Alethea strove to take advantage of the moment. “I jes’ want ter tell ye, Reuben”—she began.
“I don’t want ye ter tell me nuthin’!” he cried, fixing on her his brown fiery eyes, with a bright red spark in their pupils. “Ye make a fool out’n me. Ye don’t let me hev no mind o’ my own. I reckon it air ’kase I be in love with ye,—an’ nobody else. All the t’other gals war in love with me.”
There was none of his jaunty self-sufficiency as he said this,—only a dreary recognition of the fact.
“Ye hev cut me out’n a heap, Lethe; enny one o’ ’em would hev been mighty willin’ ter put up with me an’ my ways. They never harried me none, ez ef I couldn’t do nuthin’ right. I reckon I’d hev been happy an’ peaceable married ter enny o’ them.”
“I know, Reuben, an’ that’s the reason I wanter tell ye”—She paused, expecting to be interrupted. But he was looking at her coolly and calmly, waiting and listening. He was saying to himself that he might safely hear; it was best that he should know. He would be on his guard. He would not blindly fall again under her influence. He felt with secret elation, stern and savage, the handle of a pistol in his pocket. He had thought it no harm to borrow Jerry Price’s for the purpose of resisting arrest, finding it on the shelf in the spare room at Mrs. Purvine’s, the less because it was he who had given it to his friend, with his wonted free-handedness,—but indeed he had won it lightly, shooting for it at a match.
He stood with one hand on his hip, the other laid against the rock. His head was a little thrown back, his hair tossing slightly in the renewing breeze; he looked at her with dissent and doubt in every line of his face.
“Ye see, he kem hyar ter ax me ’bout Sam Marvin. Ye know I tole on the trial ’bout him moonshinin’.”
Mink nodded. The thought of those terrible alternations of hope and despair and remorse was very bitter to him still.
“An’ he ’lowed I knowed whar Marvin be now.”
“What’s he want along o’ Marvin?” demanded Mink, surprised.
“He wanted Marvin, but mostly Jeb Peake, ter testify fur him, ’kase he ’lows thar air goin’ ter be some sort’n trial agin him. Mr. Harshaw got it up, Jacob Jessup said. Jacob ’lowed the jedge war powerful outed ter find out ez Jeb war s’pected o’ hevin’ kilt a man, ’kase he war feared nare one o’ ’em could be tolled out ter testify fur him. An’ Jacob tole him ez Marvin hed quit this mounting, but he hed hearn ez down on one o’ them ridges nigh Thunderhead thar war a strange man ez war a-moonshinin’,—Jacob’s mighty apt ter know sech ez that,—an’ he hed tuk old man Craig’s house, what he hed lef’ ter go ter North Car’liny ter live with his son. An’ from the account Jacob hearn o’ these folks he wouldn’t be s’prised none ef them war Sam an’ Jeb. An’ the jedge knowed the house an’ whar it be. An’ he jes’ lit out ter ride over thar an’ see. He went yestiddy evenin’, an’ he air kemin’ back hyar ter-day. ’Kase he tole Jacob ef he couldn’t toll Sam or Jeb ter testify thar’d be no witnesses but his enemies. He ’lowed he’d stay all night at Bylor’s house, though Jake tole him ter be mighty keerful how he talked about Sam an’ Jeb thar, fur old man Bylor air runnin’ fur office,—sher’ff, or constable, or jestice, or suthin’,—an’ wouldn’t ax no better ’n ter git a chance ter harry law-breakers. An’ the jedge ’lowed ez things hed come ter a pretty pass with him, an’ rid off.”
She looked up at Mink gravely, earnestly. She had sat down on one of the rocks beside the basket; her hand toyed with a sprig of the herbs within; her dense golden hair, heavily undulating, was all the brighter for the contrast with the dark green vine that draped the gray rocks behind and above her, the delicate coloring of her face the finer, the tint of the saffron kerchief, knotted beneath her chin, the more intense. Her brown gown lay in straight, simple folds about her lithe figure; the gaunt old hound sat down at her feet and leaned his head on her knee.
Mink had not always been definitely aware of her beauty,—it was not of the type which most appeals to the rural admirer; but its subtle, unrealized fascinations had swayed him unconsciously. Now he looked at her critically, speculatively, striving to behold her as she appeared to Gwinnan, to adjust his estimate to Mrs. Purvine’s report of the florid judicial compliments. He cared naught for the rumor of the impending trial. He felt no gratulation that Harshaw had been able to compass the jeopardy, if not the disgrace, of the man he hated. He gazed at her with sedulous attention, to see her with Gwinnan’s eyes.
“Lethe,” he said, suddenly,—he had dropped down upon the ground near her feet, and leaned back against the rock,—“did Jedge Gwinnan say ennything ter you-uns ’bout me?”
She was in a tremor instantly.
He did not seem to notice. He was affecting to offer the dog a morsel in a deceptive bit of stone, and as the creature, with a dubiously wrinkling and sniffing nose, would attempt to take it he would snatch it away. “Did he?” he persisted, looking up at her from under the brim of the old white hat.
“Whenst I talked ter him an’ begged him ter git ye a pardon or suthin’,” she said. She was not without the tact to avail herself of discreet ellipses; but she forecast with dread that with these he would not be content.
“What did he say?” He was suffering the hound to lick the stone in baffled reproach, and turn away disdainful. Mink’s lip was curling with fierce sarcasm as he reiterated, “What did he say?”
“I couldn’t ondertake ter remember all he said, Reuben. ’Twar down yander at the post-office at Locust Levels. Me an’ Jerry Price rid thar in the wagin ter see ef thar war enny letter fur Mis’ Purvine.”
“I’ll be bound I kin tell ye suthin’ ye said!” exclaimed Mink. “Ye tole him ez he war powerful good ter hold no gredge agin me.”
She turned her despairing eyes upon him. He could read the truth in their clear depths.
“An’ he tole ye ez ye war too good ter marry me.”
There was no need to answer.
“An’ ye b’lieved him!”
“Oh, Reuben, ye know better ’n that!” she exclaimed, reassured to speak freely. “He jes’ talked ’bout’n ye like my step-mother, an’ aunt Dely, an’ Jake Jessup’s wife; none o’ them air gamesome, an’ they don’t set store on gamesome ways. ’Twar jes’ sech talk ez theirn.”
He listened, his chin in his hand, his elbow on the rock. She should not delude him again; he would not succumb to her influence. He felt the handle of the pistol in his pocket. There was affirmation in its very touch.
“Gamesome ain’t what he said. He ’lowed I war m’licious.”
Once more he glanced up to read the truth in her eyes.
He slowly pulled himself to his feet. He stood for a moment, erect and jaunty, his hand thrust in his leather belt, his eyes bright and confident, his hair tossing back as he moved his head.
“Ye tole him how good he war,” his merciless divinations went on.
She cowered beneath his serene and casual glance.
“Ye don’t deny it, an’ yit ye expec’ me ter not b’lieve what the whole kentry air a-sayin’,—ez ye hev promised ter marry him an’ hev gin me the go-by.”
He turned abruptly away. “Reuben,” she cried, “air ye goin’ agin, when ye hev jes’ kem back?” She laid her importunate hands upon his arm. His resolution was strong now; he could afford to be lenient and to humor her.
“’Bleeged ter, Lethe,” he said softly, looking down upon her with the calmness of finality. She did not loose her hold. “Ef ye keep me a-foolin’ hyar longer ’n I oughter stay, I mought git cotched agin,” he warned her—“fur twenty year! Jake Jessup would ez soon arrest me ez not.”
She relaxed her grasp, looking fearfully about her in the mist and at the summit of the great rocks. She followed him, the old hound by her side, down to the spot where the horse still stood hitched.
“But ye’ll kem back agin, Reuben?” she said, her heart-break in her voice, her eyes full of tears.
“Laws-a-massy, yes; times an’ times. I kin whistle plumb like a mocking-bird, an’ whenever ye hear one a-singin’ the same chune three times ye kem out ’mongst the rocks an’ ye’ll find me.”
Once more he held her at arm’s length and looked searchingly at her tearful face. Suddenly he mounted his horse and rode away.