V.
The news of the horse's return with an empty saddle was received at first lightly enough by others. The treasures of old Zack Pettingill's whiskey keg and his wife's cherry-bounce, lavished forth on the preceding evening, were deemed amply sufficient to account for any eccentricities of equestrianism. But when several days had passed without the reappearance of the dismounted horseman, the slowly percolating gossip touching a conjugal quarrel began to offer another and a more exciting interpretation of the mystery. So general was its acceptance that although a company of men organized a search and patrolled the roads and the by-paths and the mountain-sides, it was with scant hope or expectation of any definite discovery, and inquiry of the physician whom Yates had been despatched to summon resulted only in a verification of the popular conviction that he had never delivered the message. Thus the fears evoked for his safety were very promptly merged in reprehension, and speculative gossip was mingled in equal parts with pity for his wife.
"Who'd ever hev thunk ez Adelaide Sims, counted the prettiest gal this side o' nowhar, would hev been deserted by her husband 'fore three years war out?" Mrs. Pettingill said, meditatively, her pipe between her lips, as she "walked" a spinning-wheel into the house, making it use first one and then the other of its own spindling legs to achieve progression rather than lifting it by main force. She half soliloquized and half addressed a tall, lank mountaineer who sat upon the edge of the porch, his horse grazing hard by. He had stopped on the pretext of asking for a "bite," saying that he had travelled far over the mountain, looking up some stray cattle of his, and albeit Mrs. Pettingill disapproved of his reputation, the "snack" that she could give him was one of those admirable things in itself that could not go amiss even with a sinner. He had a big-boned, powerful frame and was middle-aged; but despite that his hair was streaked with gray, and the crow's-feet about his eyes gave evidences of the lapse of time, he was the very impersonation of the spirit of "devil may care." He had a keen, hooked nose, an eye far-seeing, gray, and of a steely brilliancy, and the thin lips of his large mouth, mobility itself, curved to a vast range of expression. His manner implied an elated, ever-ready, breezy confidence; his eye now covertly measured you, then gayly overlooked you as of no manner of consequence. His reputation might, indeed, be accounted a doubtful one. He had come before the bar of justice several times: the altering of the brand on certain cattle herded upon the "Bald" had been laid at his door; the manner in which a horse had been lost, by a drover passing through the country, and found in his possession, had been called into question. On each occasion his escape had been made good by the lack of adequate evidence to convict, although little doubt existed as to his guilt. He was one of those singular instances of an undeserved popularity. Better men, amply able to discern right from wrong, often opined that there was no great harm in him, that injustice had been done him, and that much meaner men abounded in the cove who had never been "hauled over the coals." He had been a brave soldier, although the flavor of bushwhacking clung to his war record. He had certain magnetic qualities, and there were always half a dozen stout fellows at his back—ne'er-do-weels like himself. He had been suspected of moonshining, but this was not considered a natural sequence of his lawless habits, for many otherwise law-abiding citizens followed this pursuit; in defence, they would have urged, of their natural right of possession—to make what use they chose of their own corn and apples, as their forefathers had done in the days before the whiskey tax. Buck Cheever's suspected adherence to the popular standpoint on this burning question might have been considered to only lower the tone of the profession.
Mrs. Pettingill regarded him with contradictory emotions. As a religionist, she felt that she would prefer his room to his company; but his room was but scant encroachment, for he only sat upon the edge of the porch, and he by no means asserted any equality of piety or moral standpoint; on the contrary, he seemed to esteem her, and, by her reflected lustre, Mr. Pettingill, as shining lights, and vastly different from the general run of the cove. His breezy talk was peculiarly refreshing to her in the midst of the ordeal, still in process, of restoring the routine of twenty years, shattered by the havoc of the infair. He had a discerning palate and a crisp and flexible tongue, and she felt, with a glow of kindness, that he said as much in praise of her corn-dodgers, which formed a part of his lunch, as any one else would have said for her pound-cake.
"Mos' folks don't sense the differ in corn-meal cookin'. It takes a better cook ter make a plain, tasty corn-dodger, ez eats short with fried chicken, 'n a cake."
"It takes Mis' Pettingill ter make this kind o' one," he protested, with his mouth full. "No sech air ever cooked ennywhar else I ever see."
"I hev got some mighty nice fraish buttermilk, Buck, jes' churned," she remarked, precipitately. "I be goin' ter fetch ye a glass right off."
Old Zack Pettingill, with his shock head of thick gray hair, and his deeply grooved face, sat in his shirt-sleeves in his accustomed chair on the porch, and his expression betokened a scorn of his helpmeet's susceptibility to the praises of her culinary accomplishments, and held a distinct intimation, by which Buck Cheever might have profited had he been so disposed, that he was not to be propitiated in any such wise. Little, however, Buck Cheever cared. The lady in command of the larder dwarfed her husband's importance.
"Yes, 'm," he drawled, taking up the thread of the gossip where the victualling interlude had left it; "Adelaide's been left. That's mighty bad. An' I reckon it hurts her pride too." He showed himself thus not insensible to æsthetic considerations.
"I'll be bound it do," Mrs. Pettingill agreed, as she seated herself. She cast a speculative look upon her husband, silent and grum as if he had been thus gruffly carved out of wood. He had been a stumbling-block in many respects in his conjugal career. He was "set" in his ways, and some of them she felt were ways of pure spite. She had never before realized, however, that his continued presence was a thing to be thankful for. Such as he was, she had him at hand. Public pity, which the sensitive feel as public contempt, had never been meted out to her because of his desertion. Thus, although she could with convenience have dispensed with him, and his loud harangues, and his overbearing ways, and his dyspepsia—the cove said he had been fed till he foundered—which placed an embargo on three fourths of the dishes on which she loved to show her skill, he was revealed to her suddenly as a boon in that he would yet stay by her, and the phrase "a deserted wife" had no affinity with her fully furnished estate.
"Waal, Steve always 'peared ter me a good match whenst he war young"—she meant unmarried—"though riprarious he war, an' sorter onstiddy an' dancified, but I never 'lowed he'd hev done sech a mean thing. An' that thar baby o' theirn! well growed, an' fat, an' white, an' strong, but, I will say, bad ez the Lord ever makes 'em. Waal, waal, a body dun'no' how thar chil'n will turn out; them with small famblies, or none, oughter thank the Lord—though that ain't in the Bible. 'Blessed be the man with a quibble on 'em.' That's what the Good Book say."
This was a new view with Mrs. Pettingill. She had often floutingly wished she had a "sure enough fambly," as if her own were so many rag dolls. "Jes' one son," she would say; "an' him, through being in love, hed ruther eat his meals at the Gossams'—'long o' Malviny Gossam—whar they don't know no mo' how ter cook a corn puddin' or a peach cobbler 'n ef they war thousand-legs; an' jes one darter, ez will pick a chicken bone an' call it dinner! an' a 'speptic husband ez hev sech a crazy stommick that jes' 'Welsh rabbit' will disagree with him!"
What sort of chance was there here for a woman who knew what good cooking was? "Ef 'twarn't fur the visitors ez kem ter the house," she often declared, "I'd git my hand out."
"Folks raise thar chil'n wrong," said old man Pettingill in a dirge-like tone—"raise 'em for the devil's work like I raise my cattle fur the plough. Marryin' is a mighty serious business. Yes, sir!"
"A true word!" interpolated his wife, desirous of not seeming behindhand in this view of the seriousness of matrimony, in order to intimate that whatever reason he had to be solemn upon the subject, she too had cause to be sobered by it. She knitted a trifle faster, and her needles clicked resentfully.
"Yes, sir," he reiterated. "An' steddier singin' o' psalm tunes over the bride an' groom, an' a-prayin' over 'em, an' hevin' a reg'lar pray'r-meetin', repentin' o' sins an' castin' o' ashes on thar heads, we hev dances, an' dancin' Tucker, an' all manner o' eatables, an' infairs, ez ef they war a-goin' ter dance through life, when married life is mos'ly repentance."
"That it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Pettingill, forgetting her gratitude that she too had not been "left." "Repentance o' ever bein' married. Sackcloth an' ashes is the word!"
Old Pettingill took no notice of this confirmation of the letter if not the spirit of his dogma, save by a surly baited glance, and went on: "Church members though we all war, we stood round an' watched them young folks dance ter the devil till he fairly riz up through the floor an' smit one of 'em down."
"By gosh!" exclaimed Cheever, a sudden fear and wonder upon his face; "which one war smit?"
"'Twar Len Rhodes," his host began, but Mrs. Pettingill's wheeze, persistently sibilant, dominated even his louder tone.
"Don't you-uns be 'feared, Buck. Satan hisself didn't show up. He struck through Fee Guthrie's arm—a mighty survigrous one. Ye know the En'my hev got the name o' bein' toler'ble smart, an' he never made ch'ice o' a spindlin' arm."
Once more Mr. Pettingill resumed, overlooking what she had said: "An' so Mr. Shattuck hyar 'lowed the law would be down on us ef Mr. Rhodes didn't hev his own doctor-man—ez 'peared ter be the apple o' his eye! An' bein' ez my son war the groom, an' the 'casion war the infair, I couldn't send him off, an' I jes' axed Steve Yates ter go fur the doctor, an' go he did."
"An' go war all he did," interpolated Mrs. Pettingill; "he never kem back no mo'."
"I be powerful obligated ter him ez he never tuk my bay horse-critter along; sent him home with the saddle onter him an' all. I dun'no' but what I be s'prised. Ef he war mean enough ter desert his wife, he air plenty mean enough ter steal a horse."
Shattuck, who was lounging with a cigar in a big arm-chair, looked frowningly at the speaker. He had felt much distress that it should have been upon his insistence that the young man was despatched upon that errand whence he had never returned. He could hardly control his anxiety and forebodings while searching parties went forth; and so earnestly he hoped that no broken and bruised body would be found along the roadside, betokening a fatal fall from the saddle, no trace of robbery or foul deed resulting in death, that when public opinion settled upon the theory of Yates's desertion of his wife he experienced a great relief, a welcome sense of irresponsibility. And yet this was so keen and vivid that he could but reproach himself anew, since he so rejoiced because of the disaster that sealed her unhappiness. His spirits had recovered somewhat their normal tone, but nevertheless he could ill endure an allusion to his share in the circumstances that precipitated the event.
"How air she a-goin' ter git along?" demanded Cheever; a sufficiently uncharacteristic question, since his was not the type of practical mind that is wont to occupy itself with domestic ways and means. "Goin' back ter her own folks?"
"She 'lows she'd ruther die. She's goin' ter stay thar in her cabin an' wait fur him," said Mrs. Pettingill. "Sorter seems de-stressin', I do declar'! A purty, young, good, r'ligious 'oman a-settin' herself ter spen' a empty life a-waitin' fur Steve Yates ter kem back. He'll never kem. He's in Texas by now," she declared, hyperbolically; for Texas is the mountaineer's outremer. "Litt say she ain't never goin' ter git married," she continued, irrelevantly.
"How long d'ye reckon she'll stick ter that?" demanded old Pettingill, sourly, glancing up from under his grizzled eyebrows.
"Waal," his wife defended her, "she hain't never got married yit, and that's more'n ye kin say."
And to this taunt the unhappy Mr. Pettingill could offer no response, save an inarticulate gruffness that only betokened his ill-will and the ill grace with which he accepted defeat. The dirge-like monody to which he seemed to have attuned his spirit was but the retroactive effect of the gayety of the infair, the swinging back of the pendulum as far as it was flung forth. More sophisticated people have encountered that melancholy reflux of pleasure, and, with the knowledge that the cure lies in "a hair of the dog that bit you," find a revival of their capacities for gayety in new scenes of mirth. But the society of the cove had not these opportunities for extension and reduplication. There were no more infairs nor dances nor weddings. Mr. Pettingill was constrained to recover the tone of his spirits as best he might, despite the sheer descent from the heights of the gayeties of the feast he had made to the humdrum level of his daily life, with all the zest taken out by contrast. Few people over eighteen have this experience without acquiring with it such philosophy as serves to nullify it, but it made Mr. Pettingill very sour at sixty.
"Where is Letitia?" queried Shattuck, who had missed that element which gave a different interpretation to the whole life of the house, which lent most blithesome wings to the heavy-footed hours. He had wondered all the previous day, but until her name was mentioned he would not ask.
"Litt? She went ter stay with Adelaide," said Mrs. Pettingill, complacently knitting. "Litt air more company 'n help. I miss her powerful."
"I kin spare her easier 'n ennything round the house," observed her father, acridly.
Mrs. Pettingill burst into an unexpected laugh. Her eyes twinkled with reminiscent raillery as they were fixed upon her husband, who seemed a trifle out of countenance.
"Waal, Litt do make remarks," she offered in explanation.
"I have observed that," said Shattuck.
Mrs. Pettingill became all at once grave and concerned. The quality of Litt's remarks was disconcertingly satiric, and she deprecated the fact that the stranger should have acquaintance with them. Shattuck reflected her embarrassment in some sort; it suggested "remarks" upon him which he had not had the opportunity of hearing, the very recollection of which in his presence evidently confused their amiable auditor, as if the mere consciousness of them implied discourtesy.
"Naw," she went on, somewhat precipitately, addressing herself rather more directly to Cheever, "Adelaide ain't goin' home ter her folks. Steve lef' his craps all laid by, an' 'ceptin' fur cuttin' wood an' fetchin' water thar warn't much use fur him thar. I dun'no' what Adelaide wanted with Letishy; she jes' seemed ter cling ter her. I 'lowed ter Litt ez she warn't no comp'ny fur grief. But Litt, she 'lowed ez leetle Moses war apt ter make her sorrowful enough fur chief mourner at a fun'al 'fore he got done with her. His temper fairly tarrified her."
Cheever suddenly seemed disposed to bring his visit to an end. He had an inattentive look during Mrs. Pettingill's last words, an introspective pondering thoughtfulness, inconsistent with his almost suspicious and vigilant habit of countenance. He started as if with an effort to recapture his vagrant wits, and it was a long moment of review before he understood Mrs. Pettingill's commonplace remonstrance, "What's yer hurry, Buck?"
Mr. Pettingill, sufficiently averse, for not unnatural reasons of his own, to conversation with Shattuck alone, made haste to second her. "Ye 'pear ter be scorchin' ter git away," he said, although under normal circumstances both would have considered Buck Cheever's society no boon. They were aware that ordinarily he, with his ne'er-do-weel record, would have been flattered by their courtesy. They noted, with a sort of unformulated speculation and curiosity, his indifference to it, the definite intention expressed in his face, the preoccupation with which he looked to his saddle-girth and his stirrup-irons before he mounted. Even to their languid and half-dormant perceptions the fact was patent that he was going because he had got what he had come for. In their simplicity they thought it was his luncheon!
Despite his lank length and slouching awkwardness afoot, he was a sufficiently imposing horseman when he swung himself into his saddle and speedily went down the winding way. He rode with his chin high in the air, his legs stretched straight to the extreme length of the stirrup-leathers, not rising to the motion of the horse, but sitting solidly in the saddle as if he were a part of the animal, like an equestrian statue endowed with motion. A gallant horse it was, unlike the humble brutes of the mountaineers, with good blood in his throbbing veins and fire in his full eye, and a high-couraged spirit breathing in the dilatations of his thin red nostrils; he was singularly clean-limbed; his red roan coat shone like satin; he had a compact hoof, a delicate, ever-alert ear, a small bony head, and a long swinging stride as regular as machinery. If it were possible to disconcert Buck Cheever, it might be accomplished by the question how he became possessed of this fine animal—finer even than the mountain men in their limited experience were able to appreciate. He had been known to account for him as being identical with a certain lame colt, which he had bought a few years before from Squire Beamen in the valley. "I didn't gin much fur him, bein' his laig war crippled, but he cured up wonderful. An' I wouldn't sell him now. He's some lighter-complected 'n he war then, through bein' sun-burnt. That's how kem ye didn't know him fur the same. He's better-lookin' now, though I hev ter handle his nigh fore-laig keerful."
This "nigh fore-laig" was lifted and thrust forth with a vigorous, high-stepping action that would have attested much for veterinary surgery had it been a restored instead of a pristine power. Beneath it the miles of sandy road, now sunshiny, now flecked with the shadows of the wayside trees, reeled out swiftly; the landscape seemed speeding too, describing some large ellipse.
Cheever's far-seeing gray eyes rested absently on the shifting scene as on and on he went—a certain supercilious observation it would seem, since from the backward pose of his head he looked out from half-lowered eyelids. It was too familiar to him, too stereotyped upon his senses, to produce responsive impressions, and he was familiar with few others, and knew no contrasts. Thus the farthest mountain's azure glowed for him in vain. The multitudinous shades of green in the rich drapings that hid the gaunt old slope near at hand with masses and masses of foliage—from the sombre hue of the pine and fir, through the lightening tones of the sycamore and sweet-gum, to the silvered verdure of the aspen-tree swinging in the wind—might be a revelation to other eyes of the infinite gradations, the manifold capacities, of the color. Not to his. And he was as unmindful of the purple bloom that rested upon other ranges as they drew afar off, of the swift clear water of the river crossing his path again and again, of the cardinal-flower on the bank, so stately and slender, with the broken reflection of its crimson petal glowing in a dark swift swirl below—as oblivious as they were of him. Only he noticed the sky, the clouds, harbingers of change, despite the azure above and the golden illusions of sunshine in which all the world was idealized—change, although the long, feathery, fleecy sweeps of vapor, like the faint sketchings of snowy wings upon the opaque blue, otherwise void, might seem only lightest augury.
"Mares' tails," he soliloquized as he went. "Fallin' weather."
The voice of the cataract had long been on the air, growing louder and louder every moment—only its summertide song, when languors bated its pulses, and daily its volume dwindled. He had heard it call aloud in the savage ecstasy of the autumn storms, when reinforced by a hundred tributaries, and bold and leaping in triumph. And he knew it, too, in winter—a solemn hush upon it, a torpor like the numb chill of death, its currents a dull, noiseless, trickling flow through a thousand glittering icy stalactites. So well he knew it that for its sake he would not have glanced toward it.
Nevertheless, he drew his horse into a walk, and gazed fixedly out of his half-closed eyes up the long gorge between the ranges, at the river, at the glassy emerald sheet of the water-fall, and at the little house hard by. Its door was closed, as if it too had been deserted; and it seemed very small in the shadow of the great mountains, against whose darkling forests its little gray roof and its tendril of smoke were outlined; but it was only a moment before his quick eye detected the presence of the household. Down by the water-side the three were. The great caldron betokened a wash-day; the fruits of the industry were already bleaching and swinging in the fragrant air on the Sweet-Betty bushes. The fire smouldered almost to extinction under the caldron, which barely steamed with a dull, lazily wreathing, lace-like vapor; the work was evidently all done. Adelaide sat upon the roots of a tree, her arms bare, her chin in her hand, her eyes, that had learned all the brackish woe of futile weeping, ponderingly fixed upon the never-ceasing, shifting fall of the water. Letitia, too, was silent as she leaned upon the paddle that was used to beat the clothes white, its end poised upon the bench. Moses, seated in a clumped posture, with his legs doubled in a manner impossible to one of elder years and less elastic frame, now and again babbled aloud disconsolately, and ground his gums with the cruelty of rage and with great distortion of his indeterminate features. He had so implacable an air of such crusty gravity as he sat on the fine green moss, with his obedient vassals about him, and his newly washed habiliments, ludicrously small, swinging on the perfumed branches of the undergrowth, that he might have provoked a smile from one less preoccupied than Cheever. The keen eyes of the horseman—very watchful they were under their half-drooping lids—were fixed upon the two young women.
The horse, alternately bowing low and tossing up his head with its waving mane, moved in an easy, light walk that hardly raised a mote of dust upon the road, overgrown with the encroaching weeds, and intimating few passers. The sound was thus muffled, and Cheever was not observed until he was close at hand. Letitia was first to recognize him, and, as she turned toward him, her blue eyes said much, he felt, but in a language that he wot not of. In some sort her inscrutability disconcerted him. He was sensible of being at a loss as he reined up at the riverside. He seemed to forget, to vaguely fumble for the motive that led him here. The dreary indifference on Adelaide's face as she met his gaze restored in some degree his normal mental attitude. He was conscious of a sort of vague wonder that there was no sense of humiliation, of mortified pride, in its expression. The supreme calamity of her loss had dwarfed into nullity all the opinion of others, all the bitterness of being the theme of pitying, half-scornful gossip. The cove was nothing to her, and nothing all it could say. She was bereaved.
As to Moses, he should never feel the loss; she would be to him father and mother too. And if Moses had been unduly pampered heretofore, he bade fair now to break the record of all spoiled babies. Never a gesture was lost upon her, never a tone of his oft inharmonious voice. Now, because the horse which Cheever rode suddenly caught his attention, and his discordant remonstrance with his teeth ceased abruptly, she looked around with a wan, pleased smile curving her lips. The little biped gazed up at the great, overshadowing four-footed creature with a gasp of joy, delighting in his size and the free motion of his whisking tail. A dimple came out in Dagon's pink cheek, although a tear still glittered there. He was suddenly indifferent to his teeth, and showed them all in a gummy smile. Then, with a self-confidence in ludicrous disproportion to his inches, he pursed his lips, and giving an ineffectual imitation of a chirrup, and a flap of the paw, he sought to establish personal relations with the big animal, who took no more notice of the great Dagon than if he had been a wayside weed, but bent down his head and pawed the ground.
"The young un likes the horse," Cheever observed, leniently, conscious of sharing the "young un's" weakness in equine matters, and seizing the opportunity to so naturally open the conversation, for he was not, in a manner, received at the Yates house. "How air ye a-comin' on, Mis' Yates?" he continued, his voice seeking a cadence of sympathy.
"Toler'ble well," replied Adelaide, reticently, scarcely disposed to discuss her sorrows with this interlocutor. She turned her eyes toward the water-fall once more, and her quiet reserve would have discouraged another man from pursuing the conversation. Cheever, blunt as his sensibilities were, could have hardly failed to apprehend the intimations of her manner, so definite were they, so aided by the expression of her face; but he had his own interest in the premises, and he was not likely to be easily rebuffed.
"I hev been mightily grieved an' consarned ter hear how Steve hev tuk an' done," he went on, his countenance readily assuming a more sympathetic cast than was normal to it, since, as they were on a lower level, his downward look seemed but a natural slant, and not the same suspicious, sneering, supercilious disparagement from under half-drooped eyelids which his usual survey betokened. "I war powerful grieved," he reiterated. "I never would hev looked fur sech conduc' from Steve."
She made no answer, but her eyes turned restlessly from one point to another; her face was agitated. It was a critical moment. She felt as though she could scarcely forgive herself should she weep to the erratic measure of Cheever's shallow commiseration. It was an affront to her sacred grief. And she had no pretext to withdraw.
Letitia had not been addressed, but she seemed to find that fact no hindrance to assuming a share in the conversation. "Ye war grieved!" she exclaimed, with a keen, frosty note in her voice, as she swayed her weight upon the paddle, poised on the wash-bench. "I never war so tee-totally delighted with nuthin' in my life. Steve Yates never 'peared so extry ter me. Moses thar air fower times the man he war, an' fower times, I dun'no' but five times"—mathematically accurate—"better-lookin'. I never war so glad in all my life ez ter hear he hed vamoosed."
A most ingenuously merry face she had, with its red lips curving, and its dimpled cheeks flushing, as she turned her clear sapphire eyes up to the rider; but a duller man than he might have read the daring and the ridicule and the banter in their shining spheres. His look of mingled reproach and anger had, too, a scornful intimation that she had not been spoken to, as he glanced indifferently away, passing her over. This was implied also in the pause. It seemed as if he could not bring himself to make a rejoinder. It was Mrs. Yates, evidently, with whom he wished to confer. But conversation with her on this theme was apparently impracticable, and yet on this theme only would he talk. He therefore sought presently to make the best of the situation, and to avail himself of Letitia as a medium for his ideas. He reckoned for a time without his host, for he only received a superfluity of her ideas.
"Waal, sir," he exclaimed at last, in polite reproach, "I dun'no' why ye be glad he is gone. I dun'no', but 'pears ter me ye mought be more cornsiderin' o' Mis' Yates."
"Hev ye lived ez long ez ye hev in this life, an' not f'und out yit ez nobody cornsiders nobody else?" she cried, with affected cynicism. "Waal, ye air some older'n me," she continued, blandly smiling—conscious of his grizzled hair, he was a trifle confused by this limited way of putting the difference in years—"but I be plumb overjoyed o' Steve's caper, 'kase I git a chance ter 'company Mis' Yates. Ye know"—looking up gravely at him—"I hev hed a heap o' trouble a-fotchin' up my parents in the way they should go—specially dad. They air fractious yit wunst in a while. An' now ef they ain't obejient an' keerful o' pleasin' me, I jes' kin run away from home an' 'company Mis' Yates. An' ef Mis' Yates don't treat me right, an' Moses gits too rampagious, I kin run away ter my home folks agin, an' fetch up my parents some mo' in the way they should go—specially dad."
Mrs. Yates gave a short hysterical laugh, ending in a sob. Cheever, his cheek flushing under this ridicule, looked down at the mocking little creature still leaning on the paddle as it rested upon the bench. Letitia's face had grown suddenly grave. Her blue eyes, with a strange far-seeing look in them, seemed to pierce his very soul.
"Thar's nuthin'," she said, slowly—"thar's nuthin' ter improve the health an' the sperits an' the conduc' o' yer family like runnin' away. Tell Steve Yates that fur me!"
He started as if he had been shot. A sharp, half-articulated oath escaped his lips. His manner betokened great anger, and his eyes burned. He could hardly control himself for a moment, and Adelaide, her pale face still more pallid with fear, trembled and sprang to her feet.
"I dun'no' what ye mean by that," he cried, indignantly. "An' ef ye war a man ye shouldn't say it twicet. I ain't seen Steve Yates, an' ain't like ter see him. I hed nuthin' ter do with his runnin' away. Lord! Lord!" he added, bitterly, "I 'lowed some folks in the cove, specially some o' the name o' Pettingill"—he had forgotten the good corn-dodger—"hed in an' about accused me o' everything, but I didn't expec' Steve Yates's runnin' away, 'kase he war tired o' his wife, ter be laid at my door. Naw, Mis' Yates"—he turned toward her earnestly—"I dun'no' nuthin' o' the whar'bouts o' yer husband. Ef I did, I'd go arter him ef 'twar fifty mile, an' lug him home by the scruff o' his neck ter his wife an' chile."
"I b'lieve ye," said Adelaide, in a broken voice, the tears coming at last—"I b'lieve ye. Don't mind what Litt say. She always talks helter-skelter."
Letitia stood looking from one to the other, her alert, exquisitely shaped head, with the hair smooth upon it, save where it curled over her brow and hung down from the string that gathered the ringlets together at the nape of the neck, clearly defined against the dark-green foliage of the young pines, that brought out, too, in high relief the light blue of her cotton dress. Her glance was full of gay incredulity, and she evidently found food for satiric laughter in the mental standpoint of first one and then the other. It is seldom that a creature of so charming an aspect is the subject of so inimical a look as that which he bent upon her. But he replied gently to Mrs. Yates:
"Don't ye pester 'bout that, Mis' Yates. Ye hev got plenty ter pester 'bout 'thout it. I jes' kem ter ax ye how ye war a-goin' ter git along 'bout craps an' cuttin' wood an' sech like. I be mighty willin' ter kem an' plough yer corn nex' week ef 'tain't laid by, an' I 'lowed I could haul ye a load o' wood wunst in a while ef ye war so minded. I 'low everybody oughter loan ye a helpin' han', now Steve is gone."
Once more her tears flowed. The generosity and kindness implied in the offer touched her heart as the deed might have done. And yet her gratitude humiliated her in some sort. She was ashamed to have the cause to be beholden to such as Buck Cheever for a kind word and a proffered service. She shook her head.
"Naw," she said, the prosaic words punctuated by her sobs; "the corn's laid by, an' the cotton an' sorghum an' terbacco." She stopped to remember that Steve Yates, constitutionally a lazy fellow, and fonder far of the woods and his gun than of the furrow and the plough, had never failed in any labor that meant comfort to the household, though he did little for profit. She recalled like a flash a thousand instances of this care for her and for Moses. Why, was not one animal of every kind—a calf, and a lamb, and a filly, and a shote—upon the place marked with little Moses's own brand? She wondered how often she had heard Steve say, as he sat meditating before the fire, "By the time he's twenty he'll hev some head o' stock o' his own, ye mark my words." And last year the cotton was soft and clean beyond all their experience, and the flax was fine, and the weaving had been successful out of the common run, and little Moses's homely clothes thus appeared to their unsophisticated eyes very delicate and beautiful, and she had been almost ashamed of Stephen's pleasure in this smart toggery—it seemed so feminine. And now he was gone! And here she, the object of this constant, honest, thrifty care of the thriftless Yates, was weeping because of a kind word, and thanking Buck Cheever for remembering that she might need to have wood hauled.
"We don't need wood," she said, "'kase Cousin Si Anderson sent his nevy, Baker Anderson—he's 'bout sixteen year old—ter haul wood an' be in the house of a night, 'count 'o robbers an' sech, though Letishy an' me air nowise skeery."
"Naw," put in Letitia, suddenly; "an' I didn't want him round hyar, nohow. I jes' kin view how reedic'lous I'd look axin' the robber ter kem in an' help wake Baker Anderson, 'kase we-uns couldn't wake him—he bein' a hard sleeper, sech ez Gabriel's trump wouldn't 'sturb from his slumber—so ez we could git the boy ter the p'int o' sightin' a rifle. Naw! Steve war perlite enough ter leave one o' them leetle shootin'-irons ye call pistols hyar, an' plenty o' loads fur it. It's handy fur folks o' my size. An' Moses air men folks enough 'bout the house ter suit my taste."
Cheever made no sign that he heard. His eyes still rested with their sympathetic expression—patently spurious—upon Mrs. Yates. To the hard, keen lines of his face the affected sentiment was curiously ill-adjusted. Letitia's eyes were fairly alight as she gazed at him, gauging all the tenuity of this æsthetic veneer.
"I be glad ter know ye air so well pervided fur, Mis' Yates," he said; "an' so will all yer frien's be. Ye air mighty well liked in the cove an' the mountings hyarabouts. I dun'no' ez I ever knowed a woman ter hev mo' frien's. Ye hev got a heap o' frien's, shore."
"Lots of 'em hev been hyar jes' ter find out how she takes it," remarked the small cynic. "An' 'fore they go away they air obleeged ter see ez I bear up wonderful."
Letitia had dropped the paddle, and was leaning back against the silver bark of a great beech-tree. She had plucked a cluster of the half-developed nuts from the low-hanging boughs, and as she bent her head and affected to examine them she half hid and half vaunted a roguish smile.
"They hev all kem, sech acquaintances ez I hev got," said Adelaide, flustered by this attack upon the motives of the community, fearful that Cheever might repeat it, and thus eager to set herself right upon the record. "Folks hev been powerful good; everybody hev kem round-about ez knowed Steve."
"'Ceptin' Mr. Rhodes," observed Letitia. "He war toler'ble constant visitin' hyar whilst in the neighborhood ez long ez Steve Yates held forth. But ez it air agin the religion o' wimmen ter vote, an' they think it air a sin, this hyar wicked Mr. Rhodes, ez air stirrin' up all the men folks ter tempt Satan at the polls, jes' bides up thar at some folkses ez be named Pettingill, they tell me, a-nussin' of his nicked head. He knows Adelaide an' me air too righteous ter vote, so he don't kem tryin' ter git us ter vote fur him."
"Whar's Fee Guthrie?" asked Cheever, suddenly, reminded of him by the allusion to the wound he had given the candidate.
The next moment there was a sneer upon his face, for the young scoffer had changed color. It crept up from the flush in her cheeks to the roots of her hair; but she replied, with her air of mock seriousness:
"I seem ter disremember at the moment."
Adelaide was dulled by the trouble and the preoccupation that had fallen upon her. "He war hyar this mornin', an' yistiddy too," she remarked, all unconscious of any but the superficial meaning of what she said. "He 'pears ter be powerful troubled 'bout his soul."
"He seems ter 'low ez he hev got a soul," observed Letitia, casually. "The pride o' some folks is astonishin'."
"He 'lowed he war goin' ter the woods ter pray," said Adelaide.
"An' I tole him," said Letitia, "that the Lord mought like him better ef he went ter the field ter plough. His corn is spindlin', an' his cotton is mightily in the grass. But it takes more elbow grease ter plough corn an' scrape cotton than ter pray, so the lazy critter is prayin'."
Her complexion had recovered its normal tints, and she laughed at this fling with manifest enjoyment, although the other two failed to respond—Adelaide deprecating its tone, and Cheever preserving an elaborate manner of ignoring that she had spoken at all.
"Waal, waal, Mis' Yates, I mus' be ridin'," he said, gathering up the reins. "Good-by. Ef ye want me fur ennything jes' call on me, an' ye'll do me a pleasure. Yes, 'm."
Her recognizant response was lost in the tramp of his horse, keen to be off on the first intimation that progress was in order, and in the wail which Moses set up in logical prescience that the admirable quadruped was to be withdrawn from his enchanted gaze. He lunged forward, bending his elastic body almost double, to see the horse go, mane and tail flying, and with the sun upon his neck and his sides that had a sheen like satin. As the rider was turning at right angles to cross the rickety bridge, he looked back over his shoulder at the group. Adelaide's dark attire and the diminutive size of Moses rendered them almost indistinguishable, but the faint blue of Letitia's dress defined her figure against the sombre green of the banks as if it was drawn in lines of light. She had not changed her posture; her face was still turned toward him. He knew that she was gazing after him as the fleet hoofs of the horse with the "nigh fore-laig crippled" swiftly bore him into invisibility. He could not hear her words, but he instinctively felt that she spoke of him, and he could only vaguely guess their import. So unflattering were these divinations that he ground his teeth with rage at the thought.
"I wisht I hed never seen her," he said, as the hollow beat of the slackened hoof sounded upon the bridge. "I wisht I hedn't stopped. But who would hev thunk ez that darned leetle consarn would hev been so all-fired sharp ez ter guess it? I wisht I hedn't stopped at all."
An incongruous fear, surely, for a man like this; but more than once, as he rode, he looked over his shoulder with a knitted brow and a furtive eager eye. Naught followed but the long shadows which the sinking sun had set a-stalking all adown the valley. The world was still. He heard only here and there the ecstatic burst of a mocking-bird's wonderful roulades. Then the horse, with muscles as strong as steel, distanced the sound. Once, as the woods on either side fell away, he saw the west; it glowed with purest roseate tints, deepening to a live vermilion in the spaces about the horizon whence the sun but now had blazed; the nearest mountains were darkly purple; the northern ranges wore a crystalline, amethystine splendor, with a fine green sky above them that had an opaque hardness of color, which gradually merged into amber, giving way at the zenith to azure. In the midst of all a great palpitating star glistered, so white that with these strong contrasts of the flaunting heavens one might feel, for the first time, a full discernment of the effect of white.
Another moment the deep woods had closed around, and it seemed that night had come. He presently ceased to follow the road. The jungle into which he plunged had no path, no sign of previous passing, and the earth was invisible beneath the inextricable interlacings of the undergrowth. But if the sense of man was at fault, the good horse supplied the lack with a certain unclassified faculty, and with the reins on his neck and his head alert pushed on at fair speed, stepping gingerly over the boles of fallen trees, making his way around insurmountable boulders, swimming a deep and narrow pool; and finally, in struggling up the opposite bank, he uttered a whinny of triumph and recognition that bespoke his journey's end. The sound rang through the evening stillness of the woods with abrupt effect, repeated a thousand times by the echoes of the huge rocks that lay all adown the gorge. The place might realize to the imagination the myths of magic castles to be summoned into symmetry out of the craggy chaos by some talismanic word. It was easy to fancy, in the solitude and the pensive hour, castellated towers in those great rugged heights, a moat in the deep pool, even a gateway, a narrow space above which the cliffs almost met. Buck Cheever wot of none of these things, and no fancied resemblance embellished the stolidity of his recognition of the place as "mighty handy" for his purposes. Perhaps the horse had more imagination, for when his owner dismounted and sought to lead him through this narrow space, that seemed a broken doorway to an unroofed tunnel—so consecutive were the crags, so nearly their summits approached each other—he held back, making a long neck, hanging heavily on the bridle, and lifting each hoof reluctantly.
"D—— yer durned hide! ain't ye never goin' ter l'arn nuthin', many times ez ye hev been hyar?" cried his master.
Thus encouraged, the horse slowly followed Cheever along the narrow passway between the cliffs, that finally met in a veritable tunnel, which might have seemed an entrance into a cave, save that at its extremity Cheever emerged into a lighted space and the free out-door air, and stood facing the western skies.
Nevertheless, the ledges of the cliff extended, roof-like, far out above; its walls were on either side; the solid rock was beneath his feet. It was a gigantic niche in the crags, to which the subterranean passage alone gave access, one side being altogether open, showing the tops of the trees on the low opposite bank of the river, the stream itself in the deep gorge below, and many and many a league of cloud-land. This unexpected outlook, these large liberties of airy vision, formed the salient feature of the place, dwarfing for the first moment all other properties. On the resplendent background of the sunset, still richly aglow, the slouching figures of a group of half a dozen men about a smouldering fire had an odd dehumanized effect. Familiar though he was with these uncanny silhouettes, he started violently, and hesitated, as if about to turn and flee.