IX.
The thick tangled mass of the undergrowth presently intervened, so that, as he broke his way through it, he wondered that its bosky dimness should be so visible beneath the heavy shadows of the great trees looming high overhead. Once he stopped dubiously; the glow evidently came rather from below than above. It is too much to say that a thrill of fear tried the fibres of Persimmon Sneed's obdurate old heart. But he listened for a moment to hear, perchance, the sound of voices from the group he had left, or the champing of the picketed steeds. He was an active man, and had come fast and far since quitting his companions. Not even a vague murmur rose from the silent autumnal woods. The stillness was absolute. As he moved forward once more, the impact of his foot upon the rain-soaked leaves, the rustle of the boughs as he pressed among them, the rise and fall of his own breathing, somewhat quicker than its wont, served to render appreciable to Persimmon Sneed the fact that he possessed nerves which were more susceptible to a quaver of doubt than that redoubtable endowment called his hard head.
"Somebody hev jes' sot out fire in the woods,—though powerful wet," he muttered, his intellectual entity seeking to quiet that inward flutter of his mere bodily being. "But I'm a-goin' on," he protested obstinately, "ef it be bodaciously kindled by the devil!"
And as he spoke, his heart failed, his limbs seemed sinking beneath him, his pulses beat tumultuously for a moment, and then were abruptly still; he had emerged from the woods in a great flickering glare which pervaded an open, rocky space shelving to a precipice, and beheld a tall, glowing yellow flame rising unquenched from the illuminated surface of a bubbling mountain spring. His senses reeled; a myriad of tawny red and yellow flashes swayed before his dazzled eyes. He had heard all his life of the wild freaks of the witches in the woods. Had he chanced on their unhallowed pastimes in the solitudes of these untrodden mountain wildernesses? Was this miraculous fire, blazing from the depths of the clear water, necromancy, the work of the devil?
The next moment his heart gave a great throb. He found his voice in a wild halloo. Among the fluttering shadows of the trees he had caught sight of the figure of a man, and, a thousand times better, of a face that he knew. The man was approaching the fire, with a stare of blank amazement and fear as his distended eyes beheld the phenomenon of the blazing spring. Their expression changed instantly upon the sound. His face was all at once alert, grave, suspicious, a prosaic anxiety obliterating every trace of superstitious terror. His right hand was laid upon his hip in close proximity to a pistol-pocket, and Persimmon Sneed remembered suddenly that his own pistol was in its holster on his saddle, he could not say how far distant in these wild, trackless woods, and that this man was a notorious offender against the law, sundry warrants for his arrest for horse-stealing having been issued at divers times and places. There had been much talk of an organized band who had assisted in these and similar exploits in secluded districts of the county, but Persimmon Sneed had given it scant credence until he beheld several armed men lagging in the rear, their amazed, uncouth faces, under their broad-brimmed hats, all weird and unnatural in the pervasive yellow glow. They had, evidently, been led to the spot by the strange flare in the heart of the woods; but Nick Peters could well enough pretermit his surprise and whatever spiritual terrors might assail him till a more convenient season for their indulgence. A more immediate danger menaced him than the bodily appearance of the devil, which he had momently expected as he gazed at the flaming water. He had seen the others of his own party approaching, and he walked quickly across the clear space to Persimmon Sneed. He was a little, slim, wiry man, with light, sleek hair, pink cheeks, high cheek-bones, and a bony but blunt nose. He had a light eye, gray, shallow, but inscrutable, and there was something feline in his aspect and glance, at once smooth and caressing and of latent fierceness.
"Why, Mr. Persimmon Sneed," he exclaimed in a voice as bland as a summer's day, "how did you-uns an' yer frien's do sech ez that?" and he pointed at the flaring pyramid on the surface of the water.
Persimmon Sneed, in his proclivity to argument, forgot his lack of a pistol and his difficult position, unarmed and alone.
"I'll hev ye ter remember I hev no dealin's with the devil. I dunno how that water war set afire, nor my friends nuther," he said stiffly.
"Whar air they?"
Nick Peters's keen, discerning eye had been covertly scanning the flickering shadows and the fluctuating slants of yellow light about them. Now he boldly threw his glance over his shoulder.
Persimmon Sneed caught himself sharply.
"They ain't hyar-abouts," he said gruffly, on his guard once more.
A look of apprehension crossed the horse-thief's face. The denial was in the nature of an affirmation to his alert suspicion; for it is one of the woes of the wicked that, knowing no truth themselves, they cannot recognize it in others, even in a transient way, as a chance acquaintance. He must needs have heed. A number of men, doubtless, well armed, were in the immediate vicinity. As he whirled himself lightly half around on his spurred heel, his manner did not conform to his look.
"Did you-uns an' them kem all the way from the valley ter view the blazin' spring?" he asked. "Looks some like hell-fire," he added incidentally, and with the tone of one familiar with the resemblance he descried.
"Naw; we-uns never hearn on it afore; I jes' run on it accidental," Sneed replied succinctly, hardly daring to trust himself to an unnecessary word; for the staring men that had gathered at a respectful distance about the blazing spring numbered nine or ten, and an ill-advised tongue might precipitate an immediate attack on the dismounted, unarmed group awaiting his return at the verge of the bluff. A genuine thrill of terror shook him as he realized that at any moment he might be followed by men as ill prepared as he to cope with the horse-thief's gang.
"I see ye rid," said Nick Peters, observing his acquaintance's spurs.
"Yer frien's rid, too, I s'pose?"
Persimmon Sneed, desirous of seeming unsuspicious, merely nodded. He seemed as suspicious, in fact, as watchful, as stanch, as ready to spring, as a leopard in a cage. His thin lips were set, his alert eyes keen, his unshaven, stubbly jaws rigid, his whole body at a high tension. The man of quicker perceptions was first to drop the transparent feint, but only to assume another.
"Now, Mr. Sneed," he said, with an air of reproach and upbraiding, "do ye mean ter tell me ez ye hev kem up hyar with the sheriff or dep'ty ter nose me out; me, who hev got no home,—folks burned my house ter the yearth, namin' me 'horse-thief' an' sech,—nor frien's, nor means, nor havin's, plumb run ter groun' like a fox or sech?"
"Ef ye did"—said a gigantic ruffian who had come up, backed by a shadow twice his size, and stood assisting at the colloquy, looking over the shoulder of his wiry little chief. He left the sentence unfinished, a significant gesture toward the handle of the pistol in his belt rendering the omission of slight moment.
"Some o' them boys war wondering ef that fire out'n the water would burn," observed a fat, greasy, broad-faced lout, with a foolish, brutal grin. "It mought make out ter singe this stranger's hair an' hide, ef we war ter gin him a duckin' thar."
"Air ye a-huntin' of me, too, Mr. Sneed,—ye that war 'quainted with me in the old times on Tomahawk Creek?" Peters reiterated his demand in a plaintive, melodramatic tone, which titillated his fancy, somehow, and, like virtue, was its own exceeding great reward; for both he and Persimmon Sneed knew right well that their acquaintance amounted only to a mere facial recognition when they had chanced to pass on the country road or the village street, years before. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the inherent persuasiveness of the suggested retribution, Persimmon Sneed made haste to aver that his errand in the mountains was in no sense at the sheriff's instance. And so radical and indubitable were his protestations that Nick Peters was constrained to discard this fear, and demand, "What brung ye ter Witch-Face Mounting then, Mr. Sneed?"
"Waal, some fellows war app'inted by the county court ter view the road an' report on it," said Persimmon, "an' I kem along ter see how it mought affect my interust."
How far away, how long ago, how infinitely unimportant, seemed all those convolutions of trail and argument in which he had expended the finest flowers of his contradictory faculties, the stanch immobility of his obstinacy, his unswerving singleness of purpose in seeing only one side of a question, this afternoon, a few short hours since! The mutability of the affairs of the most immutable of human beings!
This reflection was cut short by observing the stare of blank amazement on Nick Peters's face. "Road!" he said. "Thar ain't no road."
"They air app'inted ter lay out an' report on openin' one," explained
Persimmon Sneed.
Evidently Nick Peters's experience of the law was in its criminal rather than in its civil phases, but the surprise died out of his face, and he presently said, with a beguiling air of frankness, "Now, Mr. Sneed, ye see this happens right in my way of trade. Jes' tell me whar them loafers air, an' how many horses they hev got along, an' I'll gin ye the bes' beastis I hev got ter ride, an' a pair o' shootin'-irons and set ye in the valley road on the way home. Ye kin say ye war lost from them."
It is true that in this moment Persimmon Sneed remembered each of his contumacious comrades, and saw that they outnumbered by one the horse-thief's gang; he realized that they were out of leading-strings, and amply capable of taking care of themselves. He had that wincing terror which an unarmed man experiences at the sight of "shootin'-irons" in the grasp of other and antagonistic men. More than all, he looked at those hell-lighted flames, as he esteemed them, rising out of the lustrous water, and believed the jocose barbarity of the threat of the brutal henchman might be serious earnest in its execution.
But the jury of view and their companions were all unprepared for molestation in such wise as menaced them. He reflected anew upon their dismounted condition, the horses hitched at a distance, the saddles scattered on the ground in the darkness, with the holsters buckled to them and the pistols within. A sudden attack meant a successful robbery and perchance bloodshed.
"I'll die fust!" he said loudly, and he had never looked more painfully obstinate. "I'll die fust!" He lifted his quivering hand and shook it passionately in the air. "I ain't no ransomed saint, an' I know it, but afore I'll betray that thar jury o' view what's been app'inted by the county court ter lay off the damned road, I'll die fust! I ain't no ransomed saint, I ain't, but I'll die fust! I ain't no ransomed"—
"Stop, boys, stop!" cried the wiry little horse-thief, as the others gathered about Sneed with threatening eyes and gestures, while he vociferated amongst them, as lordly as if he were in his oft-time preëminence as the foreman of a jury. Nick Peters's face had changed. There was a sudden fear upon it, uncomprehended by Persimmon Sneed. It did not occur to him until long afterward that he had for the first time used the expression "a jury of view," and that the horse-thief's familiarity with the idea of a jury was only in the sense of twelve men.
Peters spoke aside to the others, only a word or so, but there was amongst them an obvious haste to get away, of which Persimmon Sneed was cognizant, albeit his head was swimming, his breath short, his eyes dazzled by the fire which he feared. His understanding, however, was blunted in some sort, it seemed to him, for he could make no sense of Nick Peters's observation as he took him by the arm, although afterward it became plain enough.
"Ye'll hev ter go an' 'bide along o' we-uns fur awhile, Mr. Sneed," he said, choking with the laughter of some occult happy thought. "Ye ain't a ransomed saint yit, but ye will be arter awhile, I reckon, ef ye live long enough."
Their shadows skulked away as swiftly as they themselves, even more furtively, running on ahead, in great haste to be gone. The fire-light slanted through the woods in quick, elusive fluctuations, ever dimmer, ever recurrently flaring, and when the jury of view and their companions, alarmed by the long absence of Persimmon Sneed, followed the strange light through the woods to the brink of the burning spring, they found naught astir save the vagrant shadows of the great boles of the trees, no longer held to their accustomed orbit, but wandering through the woods with a large freedom.
That this fire, blazing brilliantly on the surface of the clear spring water, was kindled by supernatural power was not for a moment doubted by the mountaineers who had never before heard of such a phenomenon, and the spiriting away of Persimmon Sneed they promptly ascribed to the same agency. With these thoughts upon them, they did not linger long at the spot where he had met so mysterious a fate. Their ringing halloos, with which the woods were enlivened, took on vaguely appalled cadences; the echoes came back to them like mocking shouts; and they were glad enough to ride away at last through the quiet moonlit glades, their faltering voices silent, leaving that mystic fire slowly dying where it had blazed so long on the face of the water.
* * * * *
A more extended search, later, resulting as fruitlessly, the idea that Persimmon Sneed had been in some way lured bodily within the grasp of the devil prevailed among the more ignorant people of the community; they dolorously sought to point the moral how ill the headstrong fare, and speculated gloomily as to the topic on which he had ventured to argue with Satan, who in rage and retaliation had whisked him away. But there was a class of citizens in Colbury who hearkened with elated sentiments to this story of the burning spring. A company of capitalists was promptly organized, every inch of attainable land on the mountain was quietly bought, and machinery for boring for oil was already at the spring when the news was brought to Selwyn by Hanway, who, not having seen the young stranger for the past week or so, feared he was ill. The flakes of the first snow of the season were whirling past the windows—no more on autumn leaves they looked, no more on far-off bare but azure mountains, feigning summer. The distant ranges were ghostly white. The skeleton woods near at hand were stark and black, and trembled with sudden starts, and strove wildly with the winds, and were held in an inexorable fate, and cried and groaned aloud.
Hanway was right in his surmise, for Selwyn was ill, and lay on the lounge wheeled up to the fire. His cheeks seemed still touched with color, the reflection from the ragged red smoking-jacket which he wore, but a sort of smitten pallid doom was on his brow and in his eyes. His gaze dwelt insistently on the doctor, the tall, thin practitioner of the surrounding country, who had just finished an examination and was slowly returning his spectacles to their case as he stood before the fire. It seemed as if the patient expected him to speak, but he said nothing, and looked down gravely into the red coals.
Then it was that Hanway narrated the sensation of the neighborhood. It roused Selwyn to a frenzy of excitement; his disjointed, despairing exclamations, in annotation, as it were, of the story, disclosed his own discovery of the oil, his endeavors to secure the opinion of an expert as to its value, his efforts to buy up the land, his reasons for opposing the premature opening of a road which might reveal the presence of the oil springs, when the law discriminating in favor of oil works and similar interests would later make the way thither a public thoroughfare at all events. He cried out upon his hard fate, when money might mean life to him; upon the bitter dispensation of the mysterious kindling of those hidden secluded waters to blazon his secret to the world, to enrich others through his discovery which should have made him so rich.
The dry, spare tone of the physician interrupted,—a trite phrase interdicting agitation.
"Why, doctor," said Selwyn, suddenly comprehending, "you think my present wealth will last out my time!"
Once more the physician looked silently into the fire. He had seen a great deal of dying, but he had lived a quiet ascetic life, which made his sensibilities tender, and he did not get used to death. "I wish you would stay with him, if you can," he said to Hanway at the outer door. "It will be a very short time now."
It was even shorter than they thought. The snow, falling then, had not disappeared from the earth when the picks of the grave-diggers cleft through the clods in the secluded little mountain burying-ground. It was easier work than they had anticipated, although the earth was frozen; and the grave was almost prepared when they realized that the ground had been broken before, and that here was the deserted resting-place of the stranger who had come so far to see him. Hanway remembered Selwyn's words, his aversion to the idea that the spot was awaiting him, but the dark November day was closing in, the storm clouds were gathering anew, so they left him there, and this time the grave held its tenant fast.