CHAPTER XVITHE MOVING FINGER WRITES
Oneby one the October days and nights stole in from the nebulous realm of To-morrow and, like pearls magically taking form on an enchanted thread of gold, added themselves to the memory-gems of Yesterday. Each morning found a new jewel vaguely appearing out of the wan dawn-light; every passing hour imperceptibly shaped the growing form; each rising moon looked down on the completely rounded treasure, nestling beside its mates which had come before. No two were quite alike, for each was tinted with its own delicate hues—the flush of a rosy sunrise, the blue of the sky and the gray of the clouds, the leaden tinge of rain, the sombre shadows of dusk, the brilliant gleams of the stars. Yet no one of them was all-sufficient; it was the blending, the intermingling, of all of them that produced, or would produce, the perfect circle.
And as the unseen hand of their Maker placed on each its own peculiar tints, so the gentle fingers of Mother Nature also worked unceasingly on the mantle she had worn since the springtime, weaving into its monotone new and ever-changing touches of color. This was her play-day, this season between the summerand the snow; and with scarlet and crimson, with yellow and cream, with the palest of green and the rustiest brown, she transformed her emerald cloak into a gay robe on which the dusky evergreens, hitherto merged into the sweeping expanse of verdure, now stood out bold and clear. Too, by night she painted dingy house-roofs and rickety wagons and all the other ugly man-made things—painted them gray-white with frost, which the new sun quickly blackened and sent creeping down the shingles to drip gently from the eaves of a morning. And as that sun mounted the Wall and rolled its warmth over into the Traps below, she coyly loosed white clouds of mist to go drifting along over the new colors she had made in the dark hours, presently to draw them aside and reveal to human eyes the glory of her handiwork.
Yet it was love’s labor lost, this wondrous wizardry of hers—or almost lost. Of all the eyes which daily opened in the Traps, few gave more than a casual glance to all the enchantment wrought around them. Most of those eyes turned inward upon the stomachs of their owners, seeing only the “pannicakes” and gravy, the “buttermilk pop” and other components of breakfast; or they looked at pigs and hens and cows. Few indeed were those who lifted up their thoughts to the gorgeous hills surrounding them, and fewer still those who, glimpsing what lay before them, were moved to admire for even a passing minute. In the flaming woods they visioned only animals and birds to be killed, millstones to be rifted, hardwood to be “mined” into charcoal, hoops to be shaved, and secretcoverts where nameless industry might be carried on in stealth.
But there were two in the Traps who saw. At their doorways in the morning they looked long at the limited sections of the panorama which were visible from their respective abodes, noting the added touches of color laid on during the silent hours of sleep. Through the day, as they traversed the byways on self-imposed missions, they paused often to gaze at some striking bit of natural beauty near at hand or to dwell upon the vistas opening out around them at some higher point. In the twilight they sat somewhere in silent solitude, watching the deepening of the dusk and the shy appearance of the first night stars in the darkening blue. These two were a blond-haired man and a red-haired girl, who lived in little houses on the road leading to the Clove.
Yet, though they looked on the same things, though their souls were lifted up in the same way, though they dwelt not far apart and their minds turned toward each other many a time as the tinted days glided away, they saw nothing of each other. The little bare feet and the sturdy booted feet never turned into the same path. They came and went, they paused and passed on, they traveled open road and faint trail—but never together. Between them stood a wall: a cold, stony, stubborn wall which had suddenly thrust itself up out of the ground as if conjured by the wand of an old-time magician. And on that side of the wall facing the man were graven words spoken by the girl:
“I don’t want to walk with you.”
On the other side—the side which the girl saw—the wall bore other words: malicious words, evil words, which yet had the ring of truth: words spoken not by the man, but about the man, by others. And beside those words burned a picture which made her writhe and set her teeth into a red lip—a picture of herself held unresisting in that man’s arms, beside the plashing Coxing Kill. And atop that wall, leering down at both of them alike, squatted the ugly little demon who has wrecked many a life and will wreck many more: Pride.
But for the presence of that malevolent imp, with his taunting grin and his hissing repetition of the rankling words, either of these two could have walked straight through that wall. But there he perched by day and by night, his claw-like fingers pointing ever downward at the unfading words and picture, his sneering grimace repelling them from taking the first step toward each other. So, instead of moving toward the barrier, each turned from it and traveled along it or away from it—the girl traversing her own chosen paths toward Dickie Barre, the home of Uncle Eb, the upper reaches of Coxing Kill; the man roving along the slopes of Mohonk, sitting for hours on the brink of the Wall, or circling westward around the Clove end of Dickie Barre and onward into the gorge of cascading Peters Kill.
Still, though the little demon drove them to avoid the spots where they were likely to meet, he could not follow them and regulate their varying thoughts and acts. His place was on that barrier, and on it hestayed. And thus he could not prevent the man from mentally living over at intervals a certain golden hour beside a deep green pool up above, nor keep from that man’s eyes a gentle, far-away look when that memory arose to keep him company. Neither could he block the girl from returning repeatedly to that pool with pencil and paper and crude sketching-board, nor close her ears to the farewell words of the man:
“Keep right on doing that—it’s worth while—you’re doing fine.”
So the pair traveled their separate ways. And, traveling, Douglas noted that the new clothing of the hardwood forests was not the only change taking place round about him. Here and there in the woods he met men. And, as subtly as the chill of frosty morning gave way to the warmth of a sunny day, so the first coolness of these men of the Traps now was thawing into an intangible spirit of friendliness. Where previously they had given him a cold stare and curt replies or stony silence when addressed, now their faces relaxed at sight of him, and of their own volition they called: “H’are ye, Hammerless!”
Moreover, when he paused awhile to watch them rounding millstones into shape or cutting cordwood for charcoal, they betrayed no desire to have him move on. On the contrary, they went ahead with their toil as if he were one of their own neighbors, welcome to stay as long as he liked. Sometimes, too, they took a rest and smoked a pipe with him, saying little of their own accord, but answering without hesitation whenever he spoke. And when he moved alongand left them, their “g’by” was as unobtrusively cordial as their greeting.
As the days drifted by and his wandering feet bore him into repeated contact with some of those men, the conversations became still more easy and natural—though never intimate. They talked of their work, and he learned interesting things: that millstone cutters, despite their hardy appearance and muscular development, usually died fairly young because the stone-dust entering the lungs caused tuberculosis; that charcoal-burning meant much exposure to inclement weather and constant vigilance, day and night, lest the vents of the smoking mound become plugged and the whole “mine” explode; that hoop-shaving, the main industry of the region, was steadily falling off because barrel-makers were adopting the “patent” hoops manufactured by mills; that honey-hunting, though productive of a passable revenue to the few whose instincts led them to follow it up, was arduous, uncertain, and often dangerous work because of the roughness of the country, its unexpected pitfalls, and its deadly snakes. And hunting and trapping, though fairly remunerative if one happened to have a lucky season, could hardly be considered a dependable source of income.
These and other things of the same sort he learned in the course of those recurring smoke-talks. He heard, too, the same phrase repeated by different men regarding their different industries—“a dog’s life.” But he observed also that the men labored faithfully on in that dog’s life, and more than once there recurredto him Uncle Eb’s defense of his neighbors: “Folks is mostly honest round here. Good, hard-workin’ fellers.”
The old man had spoken truth, it appeared. Though a few worthless drones might exist here and there, though more than one man might carry on surreptitious business “up into the rawcks,” the Traps seemed to be inhabited mainly by steady toilers, wringing a primitive living from field and tree and stone and berry-bush. Still, Douglas did not lose sight of the fact that these workers did not compose the entire population. Nor did he fail to observe that the conversation of even those who seemed most friendly was tinged by reticence.
Of their work, of hunting and trapping, of snakes and catamounts and other life, of weather and crops—of these things they would talk freely; but of one another they would say no word. Let a name be mentioned—even that of well-beloved Uncle Eb—and a silence would follow. True, there were two names which brought to their faces expressions as eloquent as words: Snake Sanders and Nat Oaks. At the first their eyes would narrow; at the second, their lips would turn down in contempt. But no comment, good or bad, was spoken of any one. It was borne in on the wanderer that, though civilly received, he still was not considered one of them; and that against all outsiders these hillmen, whatever their private opinions of one another, were a united clan.
In other little ways, too, this was shown. No man ever asked him for tobacco or match. No man everquizzed him as to his past, present, or future. No man betrayed friendly anxiety regarding his movements. None offered to sell him milk or eggs, or invited him to visit. Nor, though every one of them looked wistfully now and then at his up-to-date gun, did any one ask to be allowed to examine it—much less to handle it. Between him and them, as between him and Marion, stood an impalpable wall—though not the same wall. This was the barrier of clannish reserve.
It was in this same clannishness, however, that he found the key to their more friendly attitude. Though not much given to analyzing the motives of others, he naturally meditated on the change in their manner; and the solution came in a name which he never mentioned to them and which never was spoken in his hearing—Steve.
Though nothing ever was said about the refugee, he felt that the whole Traps clan knew Steve was here. And, since the thaw in the previous frigidity of the Trapsmen had come about since the afternoon when he had hoisted the desperate youth to the roof and badgered his pursuers into leaving the Wilham place empty-handed, it was not hard to deduce that the hill-dwellers also knew of what he had done that day. If so, they must know that he was neither detective nor criminal; for in the one case he would have worked with the officers, while in the other he would hardly have dared face them down. Therefore they now must regard him as what he actually was: a transient dweller here who had shown himself disposed to standwith them in protecting their own, but who presently would go back to his own world—and who, consequently, need not be trusted with information concerning any of them.
Very well: he could be as taciturn as any of them. And he was. He gave no information regarding himself, sought none about others—with one exception. And to that one exception the reply also was an exception, for it came readily, with a little grin of understanding.
“Heard anything of a couple of strangers?” was his occasional question. To which came the prompt response: “Hearn they was still round here.”
No man ever admitted that he had seen those strangers, or vouchsafed any additional details of what he had “hearn.” But with that answer Douglas was content, for it showed that Ward and Bill had not run down their prey. Of Uncle Eb he saw nothing, for he spent little time at his own house and did not visit that of the old man. He felt, however, that the refugee was safely hidden somewhere among the ledges and faithfully fed, that Eb could take care of Eb very well, and that the less he himself knew about either of them at present the better all around.
Of others who had entered his life recently he also saw nothing in his daily rambles. Whatever Snake Sanders and Nigger Nat Oaks might be doing, they seemed to be avoiding his vicinity for the present. Each evening on returning to his haunted house he narrowly inspected both it and its clearing before entering, and afterward he looked into every room beforepreparing his night meal. Invariably he found all as he had left it. And when, healthily tired by his miles of tramping, he sought early slumber, even the ghostly Dalton’s Death failed to disturb him.
Not that the “ha’nt” was laid. It still walked about overhead, still stole down-stairs on its heels, still rustled the mattress of dead Jake Dalton and moved his bedstead. Perhaps, in the silent watches of the night, it did other things as well. If so, its restlessness meant nothing to the new tenant, who slept the sleep of a tired body and a clear conscience, awaking only at long intervals to hear some unaccountable sound and then, with a drowsy smile, drifting away again into dreamland.
Much of his easy rest, however, may have been due to the fact that he had changed beds. After the “line storm” cleared up he had acted on his decision to move out of reach of that too-convenient front window and door. He had cleaned out the little room where wood was piled, and on its floor he had built up a quieter, more fragrant couch of his own: a foot-thick layer of hemlock and spruce tips gleaned from the trees behind the house. On this real camper’s bed he now slept, leaving Dalton’s bedstead and noisy mattress just as he had first found them. Each morning before leaving the house, though, he carried his blankets to that front bedroom and tossed them on the corn-husks. Thus, if any one came spying in his absence, the curtainless bedroom window would tell that spy that he habitually slept where he was supposed to sleep. A childishly simple ruse, perhaps, this was.Yet life or death sometimes hangs on the simplest things.
And so, as has been said, the days brought their lights and shadows, the nights their stars and dreams; and within the ken of Hammerless Hampton nothing at all happened. Yet, unseen, the fingers of Destiny were steadily writing upon the pages of her future-book certain records which no mere mortal now could glimpse or guess.
Then, one lazy afternoon when he happened to be at his bare little home, there recurred to him the tale of Lou Brackett concerning the lost mine of the legendary Ninety-Nine.
“Where the sun first strikes the wall in the morning, there is Ninety-Nine’s Mine,” ran the saying which the simple-minded woman had confided so mysteriously to him. The “wall,” of course, was the cliff-line within the Traps, not the great outer wall. Whimsically he decided to sleep that night upon the eastern heights and see just where the rising sun would strike first. Sunrise on the Traps, viewed from that lofty edge of things, would be a scene well worth a chilly night outdoors.
With a pack of blankets and spare clothing and a little food he started to go. But, with a boyish laugh, he returned to the house. From some old burlap bags and a few sticks of wood he made on Jake Dalton’s bed a huddle which, in dim light, would resemble a blanketed form. Then he departed, whistling merrily.
Dusk found him high up on the Wall. At the same hour a form slipped out from the trees backing thehouse of Dalton. It peered nervously in at a gloomy window, stole along the side, slipped rapidly to the front stoop, and, with a quick jab, slid a piece of paper under the door. Then it jumped away and ran.
On the paper was written in scrawling characters:
“For gord Sakes dont Sleep hear to Nite.”