In the clouds

by Charles Egbert Craddock

The others had reined in their horses, and stood, ill-defined equestrian shadows, on the bank watching him.

He placed the pole beneath the lever by which the gate was raised, its other end being within the building. There was no sound but the monotone of the river. Then with a great creak the gate was lifted. The imprisoned water came through with a tumultuous rush. Mink felt the stir beneath as the wheel began to revolve. There was a sudden jar, a jerk, the structure swayed beneath him, a crash among the timbers, a harsh, wrenching sound as they tore apart. He saw the faint stars reel as in some distraught vision. He heard the wild exclamations of the men on the bank. He could not distinguish what they said, but with an instinct rather than any appreciation of cause and effect he tried to draw away the pole to let the gate down.

Too late. Through the sunken wreck of the race the water still poured over the madly plunging wheel. Mink sprang upon the bank, fell upon his hands and knees, and as he struggled to his feet he saw beneath the race the grotesque distortions of the simple machinery. Some villain’s hand had adroitly contrived a series of clogs, each of insufficient weight to stop the wheel with the water still pouring over it, but as it crushed them—first an empty barrel, then a pole, then a fence-rail—giving it a succession of shocks that were fast breaking it in pieces. Thus what was designed for jest should result in destruction. The mill itself was a rotten old structure at best. Jarring with every convulsive wrench and jerk of the bewitched wheel, its supports tottered feebly in the water, and when all at once the race came down, and the wheel and the heavy beams were driven against its walls, for an instant it quivered, then careened, crashed. There was a great cloud of dust rising from the tumbled wreck on the bank. In the water, floating away on the swollen floods, were timbers, and barrels, and boards, and parts of the clapboard roof.

And then, from their midst, as if the old building had an appreciated agony in its dissolution, a great cry of pain went up. Mink turned with a white face, as he put his foot in the stirrup, to stare over his shoulder. Surely he was drunk, very drunk. Had the others heard? A twinkling light sprang up beyond the orchard boughs. The house had taken the alarm. His companions were getting away in haste. Sober enough for flight and flapping their elbows, they crowed in mockery. Mink leaped into his saddle to ride as ride he must, still looking with a lingering fear over his shoulder, remembering that quavering cry.

Was he drunk, or did he hear? Could any creature have been in the mill, undisturbed,—for they were so craftily quiet,—asleep till awakened by those death throes of the little building? Could it have been a pet fawn bleating with almost a human intonation in that common anguish of all life, the fear of death,—a pet cub? What! his heart ached for it,—he, the hardy hunter? Oh, was his conscience endowed with some subtle discernment more acute than his senses? It seemed a surly fate that had crept up on the unwitting creature in the dark, in the humble peace of its slumbers. And he was sorry, too, for the old man’s mill; and then a vague terror possessed him when he thought of the trickery with the wheel. Surely the hand of another had compassed its destruction, yet when or why he could not understand, could not guess; or was he himself the miscreant? He could not remember what he had done; he had been so very drunk.

Ah, should he ever again see Chilhowee thus receive the slant of the sunrise, and stand revealed in definite purple heights against the pale blue of the far west? Should he ever again mark that joyous matutinal impulse of nature as the dawn expanded into day? The note of a bird, sweet, thrilling with gladness, came from the woods, so charged with the spirit of the morning that it might have been the voice of the light. And the dew was rich with the fragrance of flowers, and as he galloped along the bridle-path they stretched their rank growth across his way, sometimes smiting him lightly in the face, like a challenge to mirth. When he climbed the steep ridge from which were visible the domes of the Great Smoky, all massive and splendid against the dispersing roseate tints in the sky, the sunlight gushing down in a crimson flood while the dazzling focus rose higher than the highest bald, he cared less to look above than into the shadowed depths of Piomingo Cove. Did he fancy, or could he see a stir there? An atom slowly moved down the lane, and across the red clay slope of a hill,—another, and yet one more. Was the settlement already roused with the news of the disaster to the mill? He turned and pressed his mare along the rocky road, up slopes and down again, still ascending and descending the minor ridges that lie about the base of the Smoky. Sometimes he wondered at himself with a harsh, impersonal reprehension, as if his deed were another’s. “How’s the old man goin’ ter make out ter barely live ’thout his mill?” he demanded of himself; “an’ them gran’chil’n ter keer fur, an’ Tad, an’ all.”

Then would come again the recollection of that strange muffled scream, and though the sun was warm he shivered.

Often he drew up the mare and listened with a vague sense of pursuit. Stillness could hardly be more profound. Not the stir of a leaf, never a stealthy tread. Then as he started again down the rocky way, some vagrant echo, or a stone rolling under his mare’s hoof, would bring to him again that sudden affright, and he would swiftly turn to see who dogged him.

There were many curves in the path, and once in its opening vista he saw before him a girl with yellow hair outlined against the green and gold foliage of the sunlit woods, clad in brown homespun, partly leading and partly driving a dun-colored ox, with a rope knotted about his long horns.

She paused, swaying hard on it to check the animal, when she beheld the horseman, and her brown eyes were full of surprised recognition.