CHAPTER XIXTHE SUN BREAKS THROUGH
Threedays of raw chill, leaden cloud, and numbing wind rolled past. No more rain fell, but, except by fitful gleams, no sun shone. Through each gray day the dying leaves fluttered limply down, carpeting the damp ground thicker and thicker with yellow and crimson and brown. Through each black night a few hardy survivors of the former myriad of katydids quacked despairingly, and here and there a cricket sounded a mournful call to comrades which no longer answered him. Bleak November was drawing near.
In those gray days Hammerless Hampton ranged the roads, the fields, and the forest, implacably hunting the man or men who had struck in the dark at the lay figure representing himself. Time and again he visited the Oaks house and the Sanders shack. But never did he find his quarry there. Time and again he was asked, with suspicion verging on anger, why he kept “a-pesterin’ round.” But he never told.
The manner of both Nigger Nat’s woman and Snake Sanders’ woman became sullenly hostile. Yet, though their attitude toward him was basically the same, there was a difference. In the shrewish face and the snappish answers of the former was revealed worrimentfor the missing man. In the lowering countenance and the dogged replies of the latter was clumsy untruth. The man who studied them both knew that Snake, though always absent when he came, was present at certain other times; while Nat had never come home.
Of Marion he saw little. When he did see her it was at her own door, and few words passed between them. He knew, though, that her active brain was surmising more or less accurately why he was hunting her father, and in her sober face he saw grave concern. But the rankling irritation of the other two women was never visible in her voice or manner. Whether her sympathies were with him or with her own kin he did not know.
He did not confine his questioning, however, to these three. Though he felt it to be useless—and, indeed, found it so—to ask any of the clansmen for information regarding the two whom he sought, he quizzed every man he met. The only result was to cause keen interest in his movements and to spread throughout the mountain bowl the word that he was “a-huntin’ Nat an’ Snake with blood into his eye.”
Even Uncle Eb gave him no aid. But this time it was not clannishness nor habitual taciturnity regarding his neighbors that made fruitless the younger man’s call on him. He really knew nothing of either of the rascally pair.
“Nor I don’t want to,” he added bluntly. “If ther’s anybody into the world I don’t want to know nawthin’ ’bout, it’s them fellers. No, I take that back,now I think onto it. Ther’s one thing I’d like awful well to know ’bout ’em—that they was both dead. But that’s too good to come true.”
The old man was standing in his doorway at the time, and his manner was even more jerky than usual. Douglas, outside, was conscious of the frank scrutiny of two women at a near-by window—Uncle Eb’s wife and spinster daughter, both intelligent-looking but decidedly plain of feature. Uncle Eb, too, seemed aware of listening ears, for he left his stoop and walked to the road, out of hearing. He asked no question, but his move was an obvious invitation to tell why Nat and Snake were wanted. And, briefly, Douglas did.
“The varmints!” Eb muttered fiercely. “The murderin’ snakes! They’d oughter be shot! Only for ye bein’ away they’d got ye. They’re a-layin’ low now ’cause they know ye’re a-trackin’ ’em. By mighty, boy, ye must have a good angel a-watchin’ out for ye, sendin’ ye out that day an’ all! Ye’d oughter change yer bed now—mebbe change yer house too. I ain’t soop’stitious, but ther’ ain’t no good luck into that house o’ Jake’s.”
Douglas wavered, half minded to tell him of his previous change in sleeping quarters and of the mysterious missive of warning. But he held his tongue. Such disclosures would do no good. Instead, he shifted the subject.
“Maybe so, but I’m not moving out yet. By the way, I saw those two detectives the other day. They say they’ll get what they’re after.”
Uncle Eb scowled. After a glance around he whispered:
“Son, I’m right worried. This is turrible weather for that boy to lay up into the rocks. He ain’t tough now—he was into the pen three year, ye know, an’ that weakens a feller—specially us hill fellers that’s used to lots o’ air. I dasn’t bring him back down here—I dasn’t go nigh him—for fear them detectives’ll git to him; they been round here two-three times, a-watchin’ an’ a-layin’ low. But I wisht he could git under cover some’rs. I hear he’s got a misery onto his chest already.”
The younger man frowned in concern. Comfortably clad though he was, he felt the raw bite of the air; his ungloved fingers, in fact, were partly numbed. And Steve, cowering among those clammy bowlders, unable to risk a fire—why, the boy was barefoot!
“D’ye s’pose, now, ye could toll them fellers out o’ the Traps for good?” Eb suggested hopefully. “Ye fooled ’em deef, dumb an’ blind that time they was right onto his back. Mebbe ye could——”
He paused. Douglas reluctantly shook his head.
“Afraid not. They know now that I’m on Steve’s side. It wouldn’t work. But—I’ll see if I can think of something.”
Dubious as the answer was, Eb’s face showed some relief.
“Do that, son! Think o’ sumpthin’—anythin’—an’ then go do it. I been a-thinkin’ till I’m all jumpy like, an’ it don’t git me nowheres. Mebbe I’d oughter let him shift for himself, seein’ he ain’t no relation o’mine, but I can’t keep my mind offen the boy. He was borned unlucky, ye might say, an’ he never had much of a chance, an’—I’m right sorry for him.”
“Born unlucky? How do you mean?”
Uncle Eb glanced sidewise at him; pulled at one end of his walrus mustache; spat loudly, looked at his windows, and spoke—but did not answer.
“I got to be gittin’ in. I’m a-gittin’ cold. Uh—do what ye can for the pore feller. G’by.”
Hastily he lumbered houseward. Douglas stared, laughed shortly at the awkward rebuff, and sauntered away, unoffended. He knew the old man’s tongue had been clutched by the hand of habit—the habit of telling no tales about others; and, in a way, he honored the old fellow for it. What mattered Steve’s birth, anyway? The real crux was the problem of his immediate future.
All the way back to his abiding-place that problem bothered him. Night was not far off now, and the cold was increasing. Looking up at the chill gray cliffs of Dickie Barre as he passed along the road, he shivered. What a cheerless refuge for a half-clad boy! Skulking there alone in a black hole night after night, numbly waiting day after day, subsisting on cold food smuggled to him by stealth, dreading every sound, with a growing “misery onto his chest”—he was in a worse prison than the one from which he had escaped. Beside him, its grisly fingers perhaps already touching his lungs, lurked the dread spectre of the hills—Pneumonia. And he, Hampton, though he lived in a haunted house, had shelter and stove and warmth—andmore room than he needed. All at once he nodded sharply. He knew what he would do.
Before night set in he worked a little while at his back door, which opened hard and creaked loudly. With his camp-ax he trimmed its edges, and with gun-oil he lubricated the rusty hinges, until it could swing easily and silently. After barring it he turned to the window of his sleeping-room, which hitherto had been wedged so that it would admit fresh air but nothing else. On this also he labored for a time. When it would rise with smooth speed he locked it with a short stake and turned his attention to preparing supper.
“Maybe to-morrow night we’ll have company,” he informed the emptiness. “Maybe.”
An hour later he was asleep on his aromatic couch, and the whole house was given up to darkness and silence.
As the black hours wore on, the boards above his head dully gave notice that the ha’nt was prowling back and forth on its softly thumping bare heels. Perhaps his subconscious self knew of the movement, but it did not arouse his sleeping senses—it was only the usual nightly occurrence. Out in the main room beyond his closed door, too, something moved about: a silent, hideous, unhuman thing which paused awhile beside the wooden barrier, then glided elsewhere; a thing which opened no doors or windows, which neither entered the house nor left it, but which presently was gone. Of this, too, he knew nothing. The weird sough of the sepulchral pines behind the house, the proximity of the mound holding all that was leftof the man who had been done to death here, the steel-slashed rent in the corn-husk mattress beyond the wall—none of these things troubled him. Tranquilly he slept until morning light smote softly on his lids and woke him to a new day.
Sun and warmth flooded the Traps when, after breakfast, he emerged into the open. After the grayness and the numbness of the past few days, the change was magical. But for the thinly clad branches above and the sodden wind-blown leaves below, it would have seemed mid-August instead of late October. In the hot air flies buzzed, bees hummed, and a resounding chorus throbbed from crickets and katydids defiantly informing the world that they were not yet dead. And from all sides drifted the damp fragrance of forest mould and of grass-ground drying in the heat.
But, as a wandering breeze floated from the region of a bush-bound little brook beyond the road, it bore into the pleasant aroma of plant life a vague taint.
Douglas, inhaling the freshness of the morning, half sensed that slight odor and glanced around. But then the breeze died and he forgot it. Drawing another great lungful of air, he struck off up the road toward the Oaks place.
Before he reached it the sound of chopping came to him. As he entered the yard he found a figure slugging away at a chopping-block with an ax which seemed dull. It wore a man’s hat, but it also wore a dress. The hat fell off as he approached, and the sun glowed red in the tumbled hair suddenly revealed.At the sound of his step the girl wheeled sharply and, panting and flushed, looked at him.
“No, he ain’t home,” she said before he could speak. “You can run right ’long up to Lou’s.”
She turned from him, picked up another stick of fire-wood, swung the ax dexterously, and split the fagot clean. Something about her words and manner gave him a sudden glimpse of her side of that pride-wall which had stood between them: the side which he had supposed to bear the face of Steve, but which now seemed to hold something else. He stepped forward and closed one hand over the ax-helve.
“Look here, Marion,” he said quietly, “I don’t like that.”
“’Tain’t much to me what you like,” she retorted, though with little heat. “Jest travel ’long.”
“When I’m ready.” He kept his grip on the handle. “But let’s settle this now. You’ve been acting offish for quite awhile—ever since the day we talked about art and—and so on, up the brook. I’ve been too bull-headed to ask you why. But I’m asking you now, straight and square; and asking you, too, why you keep intimating that Lou is a particular friend of mine. Now speak up, man to man.”
With steady directness she looked up at him. Wide gray eye and clear blue eye searched each other to the depths. And then, man to man, straight from the shoulder, she spoke out.
“I heard ’bout you huggin’ her under the bridge. ’Tain’t any of my business, only——”
“What’s that?Hugging?”
“Yes, sir, huggin’. And pretty hard, too. And that wasn’t much more’n an hour after—after”—she flushed crimson—“after you—made me—fight to git my picture. The only difference it makes to me is this: you couldn’t have much respect for yourself to do it, or for me either. ’Course, I’m only Nigger Nat’s girl, and folks ain’t got much respect for him or anybody of his, but—but that’s different.”
“I should think so!” he agreed crisply. “Those dirty little gossips who spied us made a fine tale of it, didn’t they! Well, now, here’s the exact truth.”
And the exact truth of that incident he gave her. He omitted only to tell of the woman’s clumsy attempt to lure him and of her appeal for silver from the lost mine; and these parts he left out only because of innate chivalry toward even such drab womanhood as Lou’s.
“So that’s all there is to it,” he concluded. “I tried to help her out but only got her into a worse mess, thanks to lying tongues. Now you can believe me or those kids, just as you like.”
A little longer the gray eyes held his. Then they fell, and on her lips dawned the first smile he had seen there in many a long day.
“I’m—I’m glad you come visitin’ this mornin’, even if you are mad at my pop,” she said softly. “But have we both got to keep holdin’ this ax?”
“No,” he smiled. “I can hold it alone. Let go.” She obeyed.
“Now I didn’t come hunting your pop to-day,” he went on, “although I’m on the lookout for him all thetime, and—— Tell me, do you care much about your pop?”
“Well, he’s the onliest pop I’ve got,” she naively reminded him. “But I don’t care much about him. He’s awful ornery.”
“Quite right. He’s all of that. But we’ll forget him for now. I came over to-day to ask you to take me to—a friend of ours.” She looked up quickly. “Uncle Eb tells me he’s sick, and I want to see him. Will you guide me?”
Dubiously she looked all about. Her whispered reply was hardly audible.
“We’ve got to go careful. The detective fellers, they’re a-watchin’ all round—mebbe they’re up into some of these trees right now. But—can you help him some way?”
“I’m going to try.”
“All right, we’ll go. Cut me a little more wood while I take this into the house. Mom, she’s abed yet; she don’t feel good this mornin’. But she ain’t real sick. We’ll go pretty quick.”
With another smile at him she gathered up wood and hastened in. And Hammerless Hampton set his gun against the wall and looked around, marveling at the brightness of the sun and the sweetness of the air and the cheeriness of the birds. Even the harsh cries of the bluejays in the woods sounded musical. In all the Traps at that moment he could perceive not one discordant note of sound or color. Indeed, something disagreeable seemed magically to have vanished from the world, and it was good to be alive.
And something had vanished: something nebulous, intangible, yet real and rock-hard: the two-sided wall of Pride. And Douglas, feeling that all was well with the universe, began lustily swinging the ax in the service of the girl who was glad he had come visiting.