AND now gossip began to weave a confusing veil of myth around the deserted man, such as time and idle conjecture spread about a deserted house. One day, visitors to the cabin in the Gap would find the place apparently forsaken and untenanted; the next, Lance would be seen plodding with bent shoulders at the plow, making ready a patch to plant with turf oats for winter pasture, lifting his head to answer nobody's hail, barely returning a greeting. It was evident that in his times of activity he worked with a fury of energy at the carrying forward of the farm labor, the improvements he and Callista had planned in the home. Plainly these were dropped as suddenly as entered upon when his mood veered, and he shut himself up in the cabin, or was out with his rifle on the distant peaks of White Oak, in the ravines of Possum Mountain, or beating the breaks of West Caney. He made more than one trip to the Settlement, too, where he was known to be trying to get Dan Bayliss to buy back Cindy for him. Always a neat creature, careful of his personal appearance, a certain indefinite forlornness came to show itself 310 upon him now—a touch of the wild. He was thin, often unshaven, and his hair straggled long on his coat collar. But the soul that looked out of Lance's eyes, a bayed, tormented thing, was yet unsubdued. No doubt he was aghast at the whole situation; but willing to abase himself or cry "enough," he was not.
Ola Derf, true to her word, left the Turkey Tracks the day after her unsuccessful attempt at an interview with Lance. When it came to be said that he had sold to the coal company, not only the mineral rights of his land but the acres themselves, and that he was going West, rumor of course coupled the two names in that prospective hegira. There were those who would fain have brought this word to Callista, hoping thereby to have something to report; but the blue fire of Callista's eye, the cutting edge of her quiet voice, the carriage of that fair head of hers, warned such in time, and they came away without having opened the subject.
It was Preacher Drumright who officially took the matter up, and set out, as he himself stated, "to have the rights of it." His advent at the Gentry place greatly fluttered Octavia, who knew well what to expect, and had grown to dread her daughter's inflexible temper. The inevitable chickens were chased and caught; Callista set to work preparing the usual preacher's dinner. Ajax was fence mending in a far field; Octavia entertained the guest in the open porch, since, though it was 311 now mid-October, the day was sunny, and your mountaineer cares little for chill in the air. Drumright's sharp old eyes followed the graceful figure in its journeyings from table to hearth-stone; they stared thoughtfully at the bright, bent head, relieved against the darkness of the cavernous black chimney. Finally he spoke out, cutting across some mild commonplace of Octavia's.
"Callisty, come here," he ordered brusquely.
The young woman put a last shovelful of coals back on the lid of the Dutch oven whose browning contents she had just been inspecting, and then came composedly out, wiping her hands on her apron, to stand before the preacher quite as she used when a little girl.
"I hear you've quit yo' husband—is that so?" Drumright demanded baldly.
Callista kept her profile to him and looked absently away toward the distant round of yellow Old Bald, just visible against an unclouded sky. The color never varied on the fair cheek, and the breath which stirred her blue cotton bodice was light and even. When she did not reply, the old man ruffled a bit, and prompted her.
"I ax you, is it true?"
She drew up her shoulders in the very faintest possible shrug, as of one who releases a subject scarce worth consideration.
"You said you'd heard," she returned indifferently. "I reckon 312 you can follow your ruthers about believing."