The Ordeal: A Mountain Romance of Tennessee

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"Good Lord!" Clenk exclaimed angrily, from his seat in the boat, "ain't ye got no human feelin's, Jack Drann? We-uns never went ter shed the innercent blood nohow. We-uns war loaded fur that tricky revenuer, an' Edward Briscoe war kilt by mistake. An' now ye ter be talkin' 'bout heavin' the leetle, harmless deedie over the bluff!"

"What ails yer hearin'?" retorted Drann angrily. "I said su'thin'—his coat, his hat—throw su'thin' over, ter make folks think he war in the accident, too—mare run away and the whole consarn flopped bodaciously over the bluff! They will scour the kentry fur Bubby ef thar ain't su'thin' positive ter make them sure ez he be dead, too."

Jubal Clenk, so readily cast down, meditated dolorously, as he sat still in the boat, on this signal omission in the chain of evidence. "It would sure hev made it all 'pear a heap mo' like an accident," he said disconsolately. Then, with suddenly renewing hopefulness, "But 't ain't too late yet—good many hours 'fore daylight. We kin send the coat an' hat back an' toss them over the bluff long before it is light good."

Thus it was that the moonshiners laid hold on the boy's simple possessions, and thus it was that Archie fought and contended for his own. He clutched at the cuffs as Copenny dragged the sleeves over his wrists; he held on to his hat with both hands, despite the grip of the elastic under his chin, and he stamped and screamed in a manner that he had heretofore known to inspire awe and respect in the nursery and disarm authority. Alack, it had lost its efficacy now! Most of the men took no notice whatever of his callow demonstrations of wrath, though old Clenk, with a curious duality of mental process, laughed indulgently at his antics of infantile rage, despite his own absorptions, his sense of danger, his smart of loss and wreck of prospects.

It was Copenny who undertook to carry the coat and rug back to the spot, and they willingly agreed to this on the score that he knew best the precise locality where the catastrophe had befallen. Secretly, however, he had resolved not to rejoin his companions at a named rendezvous, for he had bethought himself that if all fled but him, remaining in his accustomed home, he would necessarily avoid implication in the crime with them. The boat had been provisioned with a view to their escape by water when the ambush of the revenue officer had been planned, and they were now congratulating themselves on their foresight as they prepared to embark. Clenk had an ill-savored story to tell of the apprehension of a malefactor through the coercion of hunger, constrained to stop and beg a meal as he fled from justice, and Drann had known a man whose neck was forfeited by the necessity of robbing a hen-roost, the cackling poultry in this instance as efficient in the cause of law and order as the geese that saved Rome. Copenny, listening sardonically, could not be thankful for such small favors. His venture as a moonshiner at all events was, so to speak, a side line of employ. He was trained a blacksmith, and had a pretty fair stake in the world, according to the rating of a working-man of this region, now in jeopardy of total loss. The rest had nothing to lose, and as ever and anon they fell to canvassing the opportunities of beginning anew in a fresh place the dubious struggle for bare subsistence, his determination to slip free of them was confirmed. The morrow would see him in his appointed place—nay, he perceived a sure means of hoodwinking any possible suspicion of the authorities by finding a conspicuous position in the searching parties who would go out, he knew, as the night wore on and the alarm was given that the owner of the bungalow had not returned.

The boat with the others embarked was far up the river before the child had ceased to sob and plain for his precious gear. He began to listen curiously to the splash of the oars as they marked time and the boat rode the waves elastically. There was no other sound in all the night-bound world, save once the crisp, sharp bark of a fox came across the water from the dense, dark riparian forests. The mists possessed all the upper atmosphere, but following the boat were white undiscriminated presentments on the sombre surface of the river, elusive in the vapor and suggestive of something swimming in pursuit. Once Archie pointed his mittened hand at this foaming wake, but the question died on his lips as the dank autumnal air buffeted his chill cheek. He shivered in his thin little white linen dress, meant for indoor wear only, with its smart red leather belt clasped low and loose about it, and the hardship of cold and hunger tamed him. He was glad to nestle close to the pasty-faced Holvey, who had not yet recovered the normal glow of complexion, and to stick his yellow head under the moonshiner's arm for warmth while he steered the craft. Indeed, when the boat was at length run into one of the small, untenanted islands and the party disembarked, the little boy began to chirp genially and to laugh for joy as a fire was kindled amidst the rocks and brush of the interior, invisible from the shores. He basked in the blaze and grew pink and gay, and even sought to initiate a game of peek-a-boo from behind his white mittens with one of the ruffians; and although a bit dashed when the surly, absorbed eyes stared unresponsively at him, he plucked up spirit to ask if they were going to have supper, and to say that he wanted some, and that he was a very good boy.

"Breakfast, Bub—this is the 'tother end of the day," Clenk explained, preparing to broil slices of meat on the coals. There was soon a johnny-cake baked on a board set up before the flames, but the pork was evidently a new proposition to the small captive, and although he eyed it greedily he could make no compact with it. Now and again he licked with a grimace of distaste the unsavory chunk given him, and desisted, to watch with averse curiosity the working jaws of the men and the motion of the muscles in their temples as they hastily gobbled the coarse fare which they cut with their clasp-knives. The fire duplicated their number with their shadows, and occasionally he eyed these semblances speculatively as they stretched on the sandy ground or skulked in the underbrush behind their unconscious principals. Once or twice he lifted his own arm with an alert gesture in imitative energy, and looked over his shoulder at his squat little image, to note its obedience to his behest. One might have thought he had put the greater part of the fat meat in smears about his rosy cheeks and fresh baby lips, and certainly the pleated bosom of his immaculate linen suit had received a generous remembrance. The remnant was still in his hand when he began to nod in the drowsy influences of the heat of the fire; he had collapsed into insensibility long before the coals were raked apart to dull and die. He had no knowledge of the fact when he was borne away by Holvey, who had been delegated to assume charge of him, and who sulked in disaffection under the responsibility and his doubts of the success of their plan.

Once more in the boat, the chill of the dank river atmosphere awakened little Archie. He sent forth a peevish, imperative call, "Mamma!" so shrill and constraining, reaching so far across the dark water, that a hand before his lips smothered its iteration in his throat. "Bee-have!" Holvey hissed in his ear, and as the child struggled into a sitting posture his involuntary bleat, "Mamma!" was so meekened by fear and plaintive recollection and submissive helplessness that it could scarcely have been distinguished a boat's length distant.

The moon was down, but the morning star was in the sky, splendid, eloquent, charged with a subtle message expressed in no other sidereal scintillation, heralding not only the dawn, but palpitant with the prophecy and the assurance of eternal day. There was a sense of light about the eastern mountains, albeit so heavily looming. And suddenly, all at once, the faces of the shadowy men who had borne him hither were fully revealed, and as he sat and shivered in his thin little dress he eyed them, first one for a long time, and then another, and he shivered throughout with a fear more chilly than the cold. Perhaps it was well for the equilibrium of his reason that fear so acute could not continue. He presently began to cough, and when he sought to reply to a question he could only wheeze. An infantile captive wields certain coercions to fair treatment peculiar to nonage. The moonshiners had suddenly before their eyes the menace of croup or pneumonia, and, to do them justice, the destruction of the child had not been part of their project. There ensued gruff criminations and recriminations among them before the baby was rolled up in a foul old horse-blanket, and a dose of the pure moonshine whisky, tempered with river water, was poured down his throat. It may have been the slumber induced by this potent elixir, or it may have been the effects of fever, but he was not conscious when they reached the forks of the Tennessee and were pulling up the Oconalufty River. He only knew vaguely when once more they had disembarked, though now and then he sought vainly to rouse himself to the incidents of a long march. Finally he was still and silent so long in old Clenk's arms as to excite immediate fears. Now and again as they forged along at the extreme limit of their endurance they took the time to shake up the poor baby and seek by suggestion to induce him to say that he felt better. But his head had begun to roll heavily from side to side, and they could not disguise from themselves that he looked at them with uncomprehending eyes, and, left to himself, sank immediately into stupor that simulated slumber.

"Fellows," said old Clenk drearily, "I believe this leetle chap be agoin' ter make a die of it!"