X.
One day a letter was mailed in Colbury by an unknown hand, addressed to Mrs. Persimmon Sneed and it fared deliberately by way of Sandford Cross-Roads to its destination. It awoke there the wildest excitement and delight, for although it brazenly asserted that Mr. Persimmon Sneed was in the custody of the writer, and that he would be returned safely to his home only upon the payment of one hundred dollars in a mysterious manner described,—otherwise the writer would not answer for consequences,—it gave assurance that he was alive and well, and might even hope to see friends and home and freedom once more. In vain the sheriff of the county expostulated with Mrs. Sneed, representing that the law was the proper liberator of Persimmon Sneed, and that the payment of money would encourage crime. The contradictory man's wife was ready to commit crime, if necessary, in this cause, and would have cheerfully cracked the bank in Colbury. And certainly this seemed almost unavoidable at one time, for to possess herself of this sum of her husband's hoard his signature was essential. The poor woman, in her limp sunbonnet and best calico dress, clung to the grating of the teller's window, and presented in futile succession her husband's bank-book, his returned checks, and even his brand-new check-book, each with a gush of tears, while the perplexed official remonstrated, and explained, and rejected each persuasion in turn, passing them all back beneath the grating, and alas! keeping the money on his side of those inexorable bars. It seemed to poor Mrs. Sneed that the bank was of opinion that Persimmon corporally was of slight consequence, the institution having the true value of the man on deposit. To accommodate matters, however, and that the poor woman should not be weeping daily and indefinitely on the maddened teller's window, an intermediary money-lender was found, who, having vainly sought to induce the bank to render itself responsible, then Mrs. Sneed, who had naught of her own, then a number of friends, who deemed the whole enterprise an effort at robbery and seemed to consider Persimmon a good riddance, took heart of grace and made the plunge at a rate of interest which was calculated to cloy his palate forever after. The money forthwith went a roundabout way according to the directions of the letter.
It came to its destination in this wise.
Con Hite's distilling enterprise was on so small a scale that one might have imagined it to be altogether outside the purview of the law, which, it is said, does not take note de minimis. One of those grottoes under a beetling cliff, hardly caves, called in the region "rock houses," sufficed to contain the small copper and its appurtenances, himself and his partner and the occasional jolly guest. It was approached from above rather than from below, by a winding way, beside the cliff between great boulders, which was so steep and brambly and impracticable that it was hardly likely to be espied by "revenuers." The rock house opened on space. Beyond the narrow path at its entrance the descent was sheer to the bottom of the gorge below.
In this stronghold, one night, Con Hite sat gloomy and depressed beside the little copper still for the sake of which he risked so much. It held all it could of singlings, and it seemed to him a cheery sight in the shadowy recesses of the rock house. He regarded it with mingled pride and affection, often declaring it "the smartest still of its capacity in the world." To him it was at once admirable as an object of art and a superior industrial agent.
"An' I dunno why Narcissa be so set agin it," he muttered. "But for it I wouldn't hev money enough ter git a start in this world. My mother an' she couldn't live in the same house whenst we git married." He meditated for a moment, and shook his head in solemn negation, for his mother was constructed much after the pattern of Narcissa herself. "An' I wouldn't live a minit alongside o' Ben Hanway ef I war Nar'sa's husband. Ben wouldn't let me say my soul's my own. I be 'bleeged ter mak the money fur a start o' cattle an' sech myse'f, an' hev a house an' home o' my own."
And then he took the pipe from his mouth and sighed. For even his care seemed futile. It was true that the fair-haired young stranger was dead, and he had a pang of self-reproach whenever he thought of his jealousy, as if he had wished him ill. But she had worn a cold white unresponsive face when he had seen her last; she did not listen to what he said, her mind evidently elsewhere. She looked at him as if she did not see him. She did not think of him. He was sure that this was not caprice. It was some deep absorbing feeling in which he had no share.
The moon, like some fair presence, looked in at the broad portal. Outside, the white tissues of her misty diaphanous draperies trailed along the dark mountain slopes beneath the dim stars as she wended westward. Afar down the gorge one might catch glimpses of a glossy lustre where the evergreen laurel, white with frost, moved in the autumn wind. He lifted his head to mark its melancholy cadence, and while he listened, the moonlight was suddenly crowded from the door as three men rushed in, half helping and half constraining a fourth man forward.
"Durn my boots ef I didn't furgit the password!" cried Nick Peters with his little falsetto laugh, that seemed keyed for a fleer, although it was most graciously modulated now. "Ye mought hev shot us fur revenuers."
"I mought hev shot ye fur wuss," Con Hite growled, rising slowly from his chair, his big dark eyes betokening his displeasure. "I dunno how ye ever kem ter know this place."
"It'll go no furder, Con, I'll swear," said the horse-thief, lifting his hand to Hite's shoulder, and affecting to see in his words an appeal for secrecy. "This," he added blandly, "is Mr. Persimmon Sneed, ez hev been a-visitin' me. Lemme make ye acquainted."
He seemed to perceive nothing incongruous in the fact that Mr. Persimmon Sneed should be blindfolded. But as Con Hite looked at the elder man, standing helpless, his head held slightly forward, the sight apparently struck his risibilities, and his wonted geniality rose to the occasion.
"An' do Mr. Persimmon Sneed always wear blinders?" he asked, with a guffaw.
Peters seemed immeasurably relieved by the change of tone.
"Whilst visitin' me, he do," he remarked. "Mr. Persimmon hev got sech a fine mem'ry fur localities, ye see."
Hite with a single gesture pulled off the bandage. "Waal, let him look about him hyar. I s'pose ye hev ter be more partic'lar 'n me 'count o' that stranger man's horse."
Peters changed countenance, his attention riveted. "What horse?" he demanded.
"The horse of the man ez war kilt,—ye know folks hev laid that job ter you-uns. Jerry," turning aside to his colleague, who had done naught but stare, "whar's yer manners? Why n't ye gin the comp'ny a drink?"
Hite shoved the chair in which he had been seated to Persimmon Sneed, who was lugubriously rubbing his eyes, and flung himself down on a boulder lying almost outside of the recess in the moonlight, his long booted and spurred legs stretching far across the entrance. His hat on the back of his head, its brim upturned, revealed his bluff open face—it held no craft surely; he hardly seemed to notice how insistently Peters pressed after him, unmindful of his henchmen and Jerry imbibing appreciatively the product of the cheerful little copper still.
"But I never done sech ez that," protested Peters. "I always stop short o' bloodshed. I never viewed the man's beastis, ye'll bear me witness, Con."
"Me?" said Con, with a laugh. "I dunno nuthin' 'bout yer doin's.
Whar's Mr. Sneed's horse?"
"Never seen him,—never laid eyes on him! How folks kin hev the heart ter 'cuse me of sech doin's ez I never done!" he lifted his eyes as if appealing to heaven.
"The killin' 's the wust; an' Mr. Sneed's critter bein' gone too mought make folks lay it ter ye fur sure," persisted Hite.
"I ain't seen Mr. Sneed's horse. Mr. Sneed—ye wouldn't b'lieve it ter look at him, but he's a ransomed saint! ha! ha! The money fur him will be fotched hyar ter yer still. I sent fur it ter kem by Jake Glenn; he knows ye, an' ye know him."
Con Hite's open brow did not cloud. If there were any significance perceptible in the fact that Mr. Persimmon Sneed, with so fine a head for locality, should be able to identify only the still among his various shelters during his "visit" to Nick Peters, Con Hite made no sign.
"Lord, how glad I'll be ter git rid o' him!" Peters said in an undertone to Hite. "He hev mighty nigh argufied me ter death,—'bout sperits, an' witches, an' salvation, an' law, an' craps, an' horse-flesh, an' weather signs. I be sorter 'feard his wife won't pay nuthin' ter git him again. He 'pears sorter under the weather now, or eavesdroppin' or suthin'. The money 'll pay me mighty pore fur my trouble. Thar—what's that?"
He paused to listen; there was a sound other than the tinkling of the little rill near at hand or the blare of the autumn wind. A stone came rolling down the path, dislodged by a cautious step,—then another. Hite drew a revolver from his pocket, and, holding it in his right hand, stepped out on the rugged little parapet and stood there, with the depths of the gorge below him, looking up the ascent with the moonlight in his face. He spoke in a low voice to some one approaching, and was answered in the same tone. He stepped back to give the new-comer space to enter, and as Jake Glenn came in held out his hand for the package the messenger bore.
"Let's see it, Nick," he said, tearing it open; "it's the money sure enough."
Old Persimmon Sneed turned his head with a certain alert interest. Perhaps he himself had doubted whether his wife would think him worth the money. There was a general flutter of good-natured gratulation, and it seemed at the moment only some preposterous mistake that Con Hite should put it into Persimmon Sneed's lean paw and close his trembling fingers over it.
"Now, scoot!" he bawled out at the top of his voice, the little den ringing with the echoes of his excitement, a second revolver drawn in his left hand. "I'll gin ye a day's start o' these fellers." He presented the muzzle of one pistol to Peters's head, and with the other he covered one of the two henchmen in the recess of the little rock house. The other sprang up from a barrel where he sat wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; but Jerry, suddenly realizing the situation, put out a dexterous foot, and the horse-thief fell full length upon the floor, his pistol discharging as he went down. In the clamor of the echoes, and the smoke and the flare, Persimmon Sneed disappeared, hearing as he went a wild protest, and a nimbleness of argument second hardly to his own, as Nick Peters cried out that he was robbed, his hard earnings were wrested from him, the money was his, paid him as a price, and Con Hite had let Mr. Persimmon Sneed run off with it, allowing him nothing for his trouble.
"It war his money," Con Hite averred, when they had grown calmer, and Jake Glenn had returned from a reconnoissance with the news that Hite's father had lent the fleeing Persimmon a horse, and he was by this time five miles away in the Cove. "He could have paid you for yer trouble in ketchin' him ef he had wanted ter."
"It war not his money," protested Peters, with tears in his eyes. "It war sent ter me willingly, fur a valid consideration, an' ye let him hev the money, an' his wife hev got the valid consideration—an' hyar I be lef' with the bag ter hold!"
It may be that Peters had absorbed some of the craft of argument by mere propinquity to Persimmon Sneed, or that Con Hite's conscience was unduly tender, for he long entertained a moral doubt touching his course in this transaction,—whether he had a right to pay the ransom money which Nick Peters had extorted from Persimmon Sneed's wife to Persimmon Sneed himself, thereby defrauding Nick Peters of the fruit of his labor. Perhaps this untoward state of dubitation came about from Narcissa's scornful comment.
"Ye mought hev known that old man Persimmon Sneed would have made off with the money," she said, remembering his reproving glare at her. "I wouldn't hev trested him with a handful o' cornfield peas."
"But I expected him ter make off with it," protested the amazed Con; "that's why I gin it ter him."
"Then ye air jes' ez bad ez he is," she retorted coldly.
And thus it was he examined his conscience.
Persimmon Sneed had no doubts whatever as to the ownership of the money in his pocket, when one fine morning he walked into his own door, as dictatorial, as set in his own opinion as ever; the only change to be detected in his manners and conversation thereafter was the enigmatical assertion at times that he was a "ransomed saint," followed by a low chuckle of enjoyment. Those who heard this often made bold to say to one another that he "didn't act like it," and this opinion was shared by the sheriff who futilely sought some information from him touching the lair of the horse-thieves, looking to brilliant exploits of capture. Such details as he could secure were so uncertain and contradictory as to render him suspicious that the truth was purposely withheld.
"Ye oughter remember these men air crim'nal offenders agin the law,
Mr. Sneed," he said.
"Mebbe so," assented Persimmon Sneed, "mebbe so;" but the situation of Con Hite's still was the only locality which he had visited of which he was sure, and in gratitude to his rescuer he held his peace.
That he was not so softened to the world at large was manifested in the fact that he threatened to plead usury against the money-lender, and forthwith brought him down with a run to the beggaries of the legal rate. He was wont, moreover, to go to the teller of the bank at Colbury and demand of that distracted man such of his papers as were from time to time lost or mislaid, having learned from his wife that she had made the official the custodian of his valuables, these being his bank-book, the ancient returned checks, and the unused check-book.
The points which he had so laboriously made plain to the jury of view proved a total loss of perspicacious reasoning, for the land was forthwith condemned and the road opened, any oil-boring company being allowed by law a right of way thirty feet wide. The heavy hauling of the oil company had already made a tolerable wagon track, and the passing back and forth of the men and teams and machinery added an element of interest and excitement to the thoroughfare such as Narcissa's wildest dreams had never prefigured. She had no heart for it now. When the creak of wheels on the frozen ground, and the cries of the drivers, and the thud of the hoofs of the straining four-horse teams heralded an approach, she was wont to draw close the batten shutter of the window and sit brooding over the fire, staring with moody eyes into the red coals, where she saw much invisible to the simple Ben. He knew vaguely that her grief was for the fair-haired stranger, but he could not dream in what remorseful wise. She had not failed to perceive her own agency in the betrayal of his secret, when the story of the discovery of the oil was blazoned to all the world by those mystically flaring waters in the deeps of the mountain night. It was she who had idly kindled them; she who had robbed him of his rights, of the wealth that these interlopers were garnering. She had sent him to his grave baffled, beaten, forlorn, wondering at the mystery of the hand that out of the dark had smitten him. She kept her own counsel. Her white face grew set and stern. Her words were few. She had no tears. And Ben, who found his tyrant only the harder and the colder, scarcely remonstrated, and could only marvel when one keen, chill afternoon she sprang up, throwing her brown shawl over her head, and declared that she was going to the oil wells to see for herself what progress was making there.
All sylvan grace had departed from the spot. As the two stood on the verge of the clear space, now gashed deep in every direction in the woods and larger by a hundred acres, grim derricks rose sharply outlined against the wintry sky. It was barred with strata of gray clouds in such sombre neutrality of tint that one, in that it was less gloomy than the others, gave a suggestion of blue. Patches of snow lay about the ground. Cinders and smoke had blackened them here and there. The steam-engine, with its cylindrical boiler, seemed in the dusk some uncanny monster that had taken up its abode here, and rejoiced in the desolation it had wrought, and lived by ill deeds. It was letting off steam, and now and then it gave a puffing sigh as if it were tired after its day's work. The laborers were of a different type from the homely neighbors, and returned the contempt with which the mountaineers gazed upon them. Great piles of wood showed how the forests were being rifled for fuel. Many trees had been felled in provident foresight, and lay along the ground in vast lengths, awaiting the axe; so many that adown the avenues thus opened toward the valley a wan glimmering caught the girl's eye, and she recognized the palings of the little mountain graveyard.
She clutched her brother's arm and pointed to it. Her eyes grew dilated and wild, her face was pale and drawn; her hand trembled as she held it out.
"Ye see, Ben, he's close enough ter view it all—an' mebbe he does—an' he knows now who he hev got ter thank fur it all—an' I wisht he war hyar, whar I am, an' I war thar, whar he is."
Her brother thought for the moment that she was raving. The next she caught her shawl over her head, hoodwise, the wind tossing her bright hair, and declared that she was cold, and upbraided him for bringing her on this long, chilling tramp, and protested that she would come never again.
He came often afterward. The spot seemed to have a fascination for him. And within sound of the cheerful hubbub and busy whir of the industry he would lean over the palings and look at the grave, covered sometimes with a drift of leaves, and sometimes with a drift of snow, and think of the two men that it had successively housed, and nurse his grudge against the company. With an unreasoning hatred of it, Hanway felt that both were victims of the great strong corporation that was to reap the value of the discovery which was not its own save by accident. He could not appraise the justice of the dispensation by which the keen observation of the one man, and the science and experience that the other had brought to the enterprise, should fall so far short of achievement, while an idle story, the gossip of the day, should fill the hands of those who were strangers to the very thought. He grudged every augury of success; he welcomed every detail of difficulty. As time went on, the well was said to be of intermittent flow, and new borings resulted in naught but vast floods of sulphur water. Finally, when the admitted truth pervaded the community,—that the oil was practically exhausted, that it had long since ceased to pay expenses, that the company was a heavy loser by the enterprise,—he was as a man appeased.
The result was succeeded by a change in Narcissa so radical and immediate that Constant Hite could but perceive the fact that it was induced by the failure and abandonment of the work. She grew placid as of yore, and was softened, and now and again the gentle melancholy into which she fell suggested sad and reminiscent pleasure rather than the remorseful and desperate sorrow that she had known. He began to realize that it was no sentimental and love-stricken grief she had felt for Selwyn, but a sympathy akin to his own and to her brother's; and since the disappointment of the hope of fortune must needs have come to Selwyn at last, they made shift to resign themselves, and were wont to talk freely of the dead with that affectionate and immediate interest which seems to prolong the span of a mortal's day on earth, like the tender suffusive radiance of the afterglow of a sunken sun.
The road fell quickly into disuse after the abandonment of the work. In the storms of winter, trees were uprooted and thrown athwart the way; overhanging rocks, splitting in the freeze, precipitated obstructive avalanches upon the dim serpentine convolutions; the wind piled drifts of dead leaves above the turns; and in the spring grass began to grow in the tracks of the wheels.
It held no woeful memories now for Narcissa. She loved to sit on the step of the stile and watch through the leafless sunlit trees the silver haze shimmering in the valley, where the winter wheat was all of an emerald richness, and the blue mountains afar off so near akin to the aspect of heaven that one might hardly mark where the horizon line merged the sweet solitudes of earth into the solitary sky. Many a day, the spring, loitering along the shadow-flecked vistas, with the red maple-blooms overhead and violets underfoot, was the only traveler to be seen on the deserted road. And the pensive dusk was wont to deepen into the serene vernal night, sweet with the scent of the budding wild cherry, and astir with timorous tentative rustlings as of half-fledged breezes, and illumined only with the gentle lustre of the white stars; for never again was the darkness emblazoned with that haggard incandescence so long the mystery of Witch-Face Mountain.