CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH FRALE RETURNS AND LISTENS TO THE COMPLAINTS OF DECATUR IRWIN'S WIFE
All was quiet and lonely around Carew's Crossing when Frale dropped from the train and struck off over the mountain. Soon there would be bustle and stir and life about the place, for the hotel would be open and people would be crowding in, some to escape the heat of the far South and the low countries, some from the cities either North or South to whom the bracing air of the mountains would bring renewed vitality—business men with shattered nerves and women whose high play during the winter at the game of social life had left them nervous wrecks.
But now the beauty of the spring and the sweet silences were undisturbed by alien chatter. As yet were to be heard only the noises of the forest—of wind and stream—of bird calls and the piping of turtles and the shrilling of insects or vibrant croaking of frogs—or mayhap the occasional sound of a gun, discharged by some solitary mountain boy, regardless of game laws, to provide a supper at home,—only these, as Frale climbed rapidly away from the station toward the Fall Place, and Cassandra. He would stop there first and then strike for his old haunts and hiding-places.
He felt a leaping joy in his veins to be again among his hills. How lonely he had been for them he had not known until now, when, with lifted head and bounding heart, he trod lightly and easily the difficult way. And yet the undercurrent of a tragedy lay quiet beneath his joy and haunted him, keeping him to the trails above,—the secret paths which led circuitously to his home,—even while the thought of Cassandra made his heart buoyant and eager.
The sight of Doctor Thryng who during these months had been near her—perhaps seeing her daily—aroused all the primitive jealousy of his nature. He would go now and persuade her to marry him and stand by him until he could fight his way through to the unquestioned right to live there as his father had done, defying any who would interfere with his course. Had he not a silver bullet for the heart of the man who would dare contest his rights? It only remained for him to meet Giles Teasley face to face to settle the matter forever.
Since it was purely a mountain affair, and the officers of the law had already searched to their satisfaction, there was little chance that the pursuit would be renewed by the State. It would, however, be impossible for him to go back to the Fall Place and live there openly until the last member of the Teasley family capable of wreaking vengeance on his head had been settled with; but as the father was crippled with rheumatism and could do no more than totter about his mill and talk, only this one brother was left with whom to deal. Now that Frale was back in his own hills again, all terror slipped from him, and the old excitement in the presence of danger to be met, or avoided, stimulated him to a feeling of exuberance and triumph. With childlike facility he tossed aside the thought of his promise to Cassandra. It all seemed to him as a dream—all the horror and the remorse. Time had quickly dulled this last.
"Ef I hadn't 'a' killed Ferd, he would 'a' shot me. Anyhow, he hadn't ought to 'a' riled me that-a-way."
He thought with shame of how he had sat cowering at the head of the fall, and had hurled his own dog to destruction, in his fear. "I war jes' plumb crazy," he soliloquized.
As to how he could deal with Cassandra, he did not as yet know, but he would find a way. In his heart, he reached out to her and already possessed her. His blood leaped madly through his veins that he was so soon to see her and touch her. Have her he would, if he must continue to kill his way to her through an army of opponents.