Belle-Ann's face was ever before him. Her beautiful vision floated evermore through the dark confines of his cell. Many times he had scribbled letters to Belle-Ann, with fond hopes that some word from her would come back to him, not knowing that these missives had never reached the outside of the jail.
He had lolled upon the iron cot through the soul-wrenching hours of countless nights, staring up through the black toward the concrete ceiling. His groping mind saw no solution written in the dark. Merciless assumptions in default of proofs had opened the great loathsome cage whose maw had gulped his body.
True—he had helped his father work the "still" that his great-grandfather had worked with a free conscience. That was all—the "still" that the despised law had never yet unearthed. The aspect of the law conformed with the teachings of his father. It fitted unto the sights that his own eyes had beheld. Where was its equity? He had seen his own relation shot down in cold, cruel blood. This law had never come forward to punish the wrong and champion the right. This law only hovered like a python above its prey, and struck when it had advantage.
The law was a mangy, fanged reptile—a monster that bit the honest rights of the people out of their hearts; then clawed and rolled and mauled their bodies. He had heard that God inspired the wise men who made the law. Surely, the Almighty had not lent His seal to this curse. The God that Maw Lutts had told him about—He, who would some day make all things right in Kentucky—was not a party to this law that had finally taken the lives of his parents and had taken him. It was all the evil, godless work of men. It was the plot of a city faction. He was in the hands of a gang. In the last days of his jail life, the boy's philosophy had reduced the blame to a unit, until it fixed the whole responsibility upon a single man—"Big Pete" Burton—leader of the gang.
The boy, who had never in his life before been outside the limits of the Cumberland, had gone to jail, on that eventful day, innocent. He came out guilty. The mountain tinge had long since deserted his cheek and left it jail-hued. The simple-souled eyes now shone with the flinty stare, the designing needle-glints, the relentless play from eye to eye that traverses the orbs of the jail-man. He came out guilty, not of that which he had knowingly already done, but guilty of the added thing now stored away in the core of his being that he meant to do.
The heart-breaking midnight loneliness and the nerve-stabbing "third degree" had not sucked the fire from his feudal veins. His religion now measured by his capacity for revenge, Lem Lutts came out of prison, his young heart and soul and strength obsessed by a sacred quest. His suspicions ratified in jail, he came out tarnished and arrayed against the world. In the centre of this flaming theatre of vengeance there ever stalked one leading figure, one solitary actor—a huge animal-headed man flaunting a frayed precept, called law—the monster law-man reaching for the rights and the blood of the people—he of the shadow-built body and the charmed life—that fearless ghost-spawn who never backed away from the mouth of a gun—he who always plunged toward the flame and the smoke and fought in the open—he whose skin was tattooed by the Winchester stencil of the mountaineer; but who still lived, and pursued, and fought on—the man who forged always onward with uncanny precision, ever stalking the hillman, ever reaching for his sanctum with merciless, untiring law-biting fury.
The vision of this supernatural man, who had killed his parents, stood in front of the boy's life and blocked his untamed spirit with taunts. Loyal to inherited instincts; guided by the influence of environment; handicapped by ignorance; fanatically brave in his peculiarly educated understanding of justice, and property rights—the boy saw only this man. This hated enemy had not deserted him in jail. "Big Pete" had visited him time and time again. He had coaxed, abused, threatened, cajoled. He had even "manhandled" Lem, but never an utterance had crossed the boy's lips to betray. Finally, they had put him in the dungeon. When he emerged from the "black hole of Calcutta," he was thinner, chalk-hued, and benumbed of brain, but unrelenting, and "Big Pete" knew there was a demerit across his record. He did not make an informer.
To-day they had released Lem Lutts in disgust. The revenuer, Burton, was on hand with that same despicable stare, and followed him from the warden's office to the street.
"I'll get you yet, Lutts," predicted the detective. "I'll bust that gang, and I'll send you to Atlanta the next time. I'll bust you, or I'll get you like I did your—your——" his temerity broke. "I'll get you all right—I'll be on your trail in a week." To this gentle benediction he added a gentle push as emphasis.
Slight as the push was, Lem lost his balance and went to his knees, his hat falling to the walk. When he gained his feet and faced about, the officer stared in dumb amazement at the savage figure before him. Lem's stoicism had left him. His immobile features yielded to the volcanic hatred within. His light eyes glinted like full sockets of quicksilver. The froth fermented and bubbled off his twitching lip.