For Tom was his son, and he had not suspected filial treachery in the matter of the spectral blackberry bush.
Rufe stared in his turn, not comprehending Byers’s surprise.
“
Tom
,” he reiterated presently, with mocking explicitness. “Tom Byers - I reckon ye knows him. That thar freckled-faced, snaggled-toothed, red-headed Tom Byers, ez lives at yer house. I reckon ye
mus
’ know him.”
“Tom tole ye -
what
?” asked the tanner, puzzled by Byers’s grave, anxious face, and Rufe’s mysterious sneers.
Rufe broke into the liveliest cackle. “Tom, he ’lowed ter me ez he war tucked up in the trundle-bed, fast asleep, that night when his dad got home from old Mis’ Price’s house, whar he had been ter hear her las’ words. Tom, he ’lowed he war dreamin’ ez his gran’dad hed gin him a calf - Tom say the calf war spotted red an’ white - an’ jes’ ez he war a-leadin’ it home with him, his dad kem racin’ inter the house with sech a rumpus ez woke him up, an’ he never got the calf along no furder than the turn in the road. An’ thar sot his dad in the cheer, declarin’ fur true ez he hed seen old Mis’ Price’s harnt in the woods, an’ b’lieved she mus’ be dead afore now. An’ though thar war a right smart fire on the h’a’th, he war shiverin’ an’ shakin’ over it, jes’ the same ez ef he war out at the wood-pile, pickin’ up chips on a frosty mornin’.”
And Rufe crouched over, shivering in every limb, in equally excellent mimicry of a ghost-seer, or an unwilling chip-picker under stress of weather.
“My!” he exclaimed with a fresh burst of laughter; “whenst Tom tole me ’bout’n it I war so tickled I war feared I’d fall. I los’ the use o’ my tongue. I couldn’t stop laffin’ long enough ter tell Tom what I war laffin’ at. An’ ez Tom knowed I war snake-bit las’ June, he went home an’ tole his mother ez the p’ison hed done teched me in the head, an’ said he reckoned, ef the truth war knowed, I hed fits ez a constancy. I say -
fits
!”
Once more the bewildered tanner glanced from one to the other.
“Why, ye never tole me ez ye hed seen su’thin’ strange in the woods, Andy,” he exclaimed, feeling aggrieved, thus balked of a sensation. “An’ the old woman ain’t dead, nohow,” he continued reasonably, “but air strengthenin’ up amazin’ fast.”
“Waal,” put in Rufe, hastening to explain this discrepancy in the spectre, “I hearn you-uns a-sayin’ that mornin’, fore ye set out from the tanyard, ez she war mighty nigh dead an’ would be gone ’fore night. An’ ez he hed tole me he’d skeer the wits out’n me, I ’lowed ez I could show him ez his wits warn’t ez tough ez mine. Though,” added the roguish Rufe, with a grin of enjoyment, “arter I hed dressed up the blackberry bush in mam’s apron an’ shawl, an’ sot her bonnet a-top, it tuk ter noddin’ and bowin’ with the wind, an’ looked so like folks, ez it gin
Me
a skeer, an’ I jes’ run home ez hard ez I could travel. An Towse, he barked at it!”
Andy Byers spoke suddenly. “Waal, Birt holped ye, then.”
“He never!” cried Rufe, emphatically, unwilling to share the credit, or perhaps discredit, of the enterprise. “Birt dunno nuthin’ ’bout it ter this good day.” Rufe winked slyly. “Birt would tell mam ez I hed been a-foolin’ with her shawl an’ bonnet.”
Andy Byers still maintained a most incongruous gravity.
“It warn’t Birt’s doin’, at all?” he said interrogatively, and with a pondering aspect.
Jubal Perkins broke into a derisive guffaw. “What ails ye, Andy?” he cried. “Though ye never seen no harnt, ye ’pear ter be fairly witched by that thar tricked-out blackberry bush.”
Rufe shrugged up his shoulders, and began to shiver in imaginary terror over a fancied fire.
“Old - Mis’ - Price’s - harnt!” he wheezed.
The point of view makes an essential difference. Jube Perkins thought Rufe’s comicality most praiseworthy - his pipe went out while he laughed. Byers flushed indignantly.
“Ye aggervatin’ leetle varmint!” he cried suddenly, his patience giving way.
He seized the crouching mimic by the collar, and although he did not literally knock him off the wood-pile, as Rufe afterward declared, he assisted the small boy through the air with a celerity that caused Rufe to wink very fast and catch his breath, when he was deposited, with a shake, on the soft pile of ground bark some yards away.
Rufe was altogether unhurt, but a trifle subdued by this sudden aerial excursion. The fun was over for the present. He gathered himself together, and went demurely and sat down on the lowest log of the wood-pile. After a little he produced a papaw from his pocket, and by the manner in which they went to work upon it, his jagged squirrel teeth showed that they were better than they looked.
Towse had followed his master to the tanyard, and was lying asleep beside the woodpile, with his muzzle on his forepaws.
He roused himself suddenly at the sound of munching, and came and sat upright, facing Rufe, and eyeing the papaw gloatingly. He wagged his tail in a beguiling fashion, and now and then turned his head blandishingly askew.
Of course he would not have relished the papaw, and only begged as a matter of habit or perhaps on principle; but he was given no opportunity to sample it, for Rufe hardly noticed him, being absorbed in dubiously watching Andy Byers, who was once more at work, scraping the hide with the two-handled knife.
Jubal Perkins had gone into the house for a coal to re-kindle his pipe, for there is always a smouldering fire in the “smoke-room” for the purpose of drying the hides suspended from the rafters. He came out with it freshly glowing, and sat down on the broad, high pile of wood.
As the first whiff of smoke wreathed over his head, he said, “What air the differ ter ye, Andy, whether ’t war bub, hyar, or Birt, ez dressed up the blackberry bush? ye ’pear ter make a differ a-twixt ’em.”
Still Byers was evasive. “Whar’s Birt, ennyhow?” he demanded irrelevantly.
“Waal,” drawled the tanner, with a certain constraint, “I hed been promisin’ Birt a day off fur a right smart while, an’ I tole him ez he mought ez well hev the rest o’ ter-day. He ’lowed ez he warn’t partic’lar ’bout a day off, now. But I tole him ennyhow ter go along. I seen him a while ago passin’ through the woods, with his rifle on his shoulder - gone huntin’, I reckon.”
“
Gone huntin
’!” ejaculated Rufe in dudgeon, joining unceremoniously in the conversation of his elders. “Now, Birt mought hev let me know! I’d hev wanted ter go along too.”
“Mebbe that air the reason he never tole ye, bub,” said Perkins dryly.
For he could appreciate that Rufe’s society was not always a boon, although he took a lenient view of the little boy. Any indulgence of Birt was more unusual, and Andy Byers experienced some surprise to hear of the unwonted sylvan recreations of the young drudge. He noticed that the mule was off duty too, grazing among the bushes just beyond the fence, and hobbled so that he could not run away. This precaution might have seemed a practical joke on the mule, for the poor old animal was only too glad to stand stock still.
Rufe continued his exclamatory indignation.
“Jes’ ter go lopin’ off inter the woods huntin’, ’thout lettin’
Me
know! An’ I never gits ter go huntin’ nohow! An’ mam won’t let me tech Birt’s rifle, ’thout it air ez empty ez a gourd! She say she air feared I’ll shoot my head off, an’ she don’t want no boys, ’thout heads, jouncin’ round her house - shucks! Which way did Birt take, Mister Perkins? - ’kase I be goin’ ter ketch up.”
“He war headed fur that thar salt lick, whenst I las’ seen him,” replied the tanner; “ef ye stir yer stumps right lively, mebbe ye’ll overhaul him yit.”
Rufe rose precipitately. Towse, believing his petition for the papaw was about to be rewarded, leaped up too, gamboling with a display of ecstasy that might have befitted a starving creature, and an elasticity to be expected only of a rubber dog. As he uttered a shrill yelp of delight, he sprang up against Rufe, who, reeling under the shock, dropped the remnant of the papaw. Towse darted upon it, sniffed disdainfully, and returned to his capers around Rufe, evidently declining to believe that all that show of gustatory satisfaction had been elicited only by the papaw, and that Rufe had nothing else to eat.
Thus the two took their way out of the tanyard; and even after they had disappeared, their progress through the underbrush was marked by an abnormal commotion among the leaves, as the saltatory skeptic of a dog insisted on more substantial favors than the succulent papaw.
The tanner smoked for a time in silence.
Then, “Birt ain’t goin’ ter be let ter work hyar ag’in,” he said.
Byers elevated his shaggy eyebrows in surprise.
“Ye see,” said the tanner in a confidential undertone, “sence Birt hev stole that thar grant, I kin argufy ez he mought steal su’thin’ else, an’ I ain’t ekal ter keepin’ up a spry lookout on things, an’ bein’ partic’lar ’bout the count o’ the hides an’ sech. I can’t feel easy with sech a mischeevious scamp around.”
Byers made no rejoinder, and the tanner, puffing his pipe, vaguely watched the wreaths of smoke rise above his head, and whisk buoyantly about in the air, and finally skurry off into invisibility. A gentle breeze was astir in the woods, and it set the leaves to whispering. The treetoads and the locusts were trolling a chorus. So loudly vibrant, it was! So clamorously gay! Some subtle intimation they surely had that summer was ephemeral and the season waning, for the burden of their song was, Let us now be merry. The scarlet head of a woodpecker showed brilliantly from the bare dead boughs of a chestnut-oak, which, with its clinging lichens of green and gray, was boldly projected against the azure sky. And there, the filmy moon, most dimly visible in the afternoon sunshine, swung like some lunar hallucination among the cirrus clouds.
“Ye ’lows ez I ain’t doin’ right by Birt?” the tanner suggested presently, with more conscience in the matter than one would have given him credit for possessing.
“I knows ye air doin’ right,” said Byers unexpectedly.
All at once the woodpecker was solemnly tapping - tapping.
Byers glanced up, as if to discern whence the sudden sound came, and once more bent to his work.
“Ye b’lieves, then, ez he stole that thar grant from Nate Griggs?” asked Perkins.
“I be
sure
he done it,” said Byers, unequivocally.
The tanner took his pipe from his lips. “What ails ye ter say that, Andy?” he exclaimed excitedly.
Andy Byers hesitated. He mechanically passed his fingers once or twice across the blunt, curved blade of the two-handled knife.
“Ye’ll keep the secret?”
“In the sole o’ my boot,” said the tanner.
“Waal, I
knows
ez Birt stole the grant. I hev been powerful changeful, though, in my thoughts bout’n it. At fust I war glad when he war suspicioned ’bout’n it, an’ I war minded to go an’ inform on him an’ sech, ter pay him back; ’kase I held a grudge ag’in him, believin’ ez he hed dressed out that thar blackberry bush ez Mrs. Price’s harnt. An’ then I’d remember ez his mother war a widder-woman, an’ he war nothin’ but a boy, an’ boys air bound ter be gamesome an’ full o’ jokes wunst in a while, an’ I’d feel like I war bound ter furgive him ’bout the harnt. An’ then ag’in I got toler’ble oneasy fur fear the Law mought hold
me
’sponsible fur knowin’ ’bout Birt’s crime of stealin’ the grant an’ yit not tellin’ on him. An’ I’d take ter hopin’ an’ prayin’ the boy would confess, so ez I wouldn’t hev ter tell on him. I hev been mightily pestered in my mind lately with sech dilly-dallyin’.”
Again the sudden tapping of the woodpecker filled the pause.
“Did ye
see
him steal the grant, Andy?” asked the tanner, with bated breath.
“Ez good ez seen him. I seen him slyin’ round, an’ I
hev fund the place whar he hev hid it.
”
And the woodpecker still was solemnly tapping, high up in the chestnut-oak tree.
CHAPTER X.
Birt, meanwhile, was trudging along in the woods, hardly seeing where he went, hardly caring.
He had not had even a vague premonition when the tanner told him that he might have the rest of the day off. He did not now want the holiday which would once have so rejoiced him, and he said as much. And then the tanner, making the disclosure by degrees, being truly sorry to part with the boy, intimated that he need come back no more.
Birt unharnessed the mule by the sense of touch and the force of habit, for blinding tears intervened between his vision and the rusty old buckles and worn straps of leather. The animal seemed to understand that something was amiss, and now and then turned his head interrogatively. Somehow Birt was glad to feel that he left at least one friend in the tanyard, albeit the humblest, for he had always treated the beast with kindness, and he was sure the mule would miss him.
When he reached home he loitered for a time outside the fence, trying to nerve himself to witness his mother’s distress. And at last his tears were dried, and he went in and told her the news.
It was hard for him nowadays to understand that simple mother of his. She did nothing that he expected. To be sure her cheek paled, her eyes looked anxious for a moment, and her hands trembled so that she carefully put down upon the table a dish which she had been wiping. But she said quite calmly, “Waal, sonny, I dunno but ye hed better take a day off from work, sure enough, an’ go a-huntin’. Thar’s yer rifle, an’ mebbe ye’ll git a shot at a deer down yander by the lick. The chill’n haint hed no wild meat lately, ’ceptin’ squir’ls out’n Rufe’s trap.”
And then he began to cry out bitterly that nobody would give him work, and they would all starve; that the tanner believed he had stolen the grant, and was afraid to have him about the hides.
“‘Tain’t no differ ez long ez ’tain’t the truth,” said his mother philosophically. “We-uns will jes’ abide by the truth.”
He repeated this phrase over and over as he struggled through the tangled underbrush of the dense forest.
It was all like some terrible dream; and but for Tennessee, it would be the truth! How he blessed the little sister that her love for him and his love for her had come between him and crime at that moment of temptation.
“So powerful peart!” he muttered with glistening eyes, as he thought of her.
The grant was gone, to be sure; but he did not take it. They accused him - and falsely!
It was something to be free and abroad in the woods. He heard the wind singing in the pines. Their fine, penetrating aroma pervaded the air, and the rusty needles, covering the ground, muffled his tread. Once he paused - was that the bleat of a fawn, away down on the mountain’s slope? He heard no more, and he walked on, looking about with his old alert interest. He was refreshed, invigorated, somehow consoled, as he went. O wise mother! he wondered if she foresaw this when she sent him into the woods.
He had not before noted how the season was advancing. Here and there, in the midst of the dark green foliage, leaves shone so vividly yellow that it seemed as if upon them some fascinated sunbeam had expended all its glamours. In a dusky recess he saw the crimson sumach flaring. And the distant blue mountains, and the furthest reaches of the azure sky, and the sombre depths of the wooded valley, and the sheeny splendors of the afternoon sun, and every incident of crag or chasm - all appeared through a soft purple haze that possessed the air, and added an ideal embellishment to the scene. Down the ravine the “lick” shone with the lustre of a silver lakelet. He saw the old oak-tree hard by, with the historic scaffold among its thinning leaves, and further along the slope were visible vague bobbing figures, which he recognized as the “Griggs gang,” seeking upon the mountain side the gold which he had discovered.
Suddenly he heard a light crackling in the brush, - a faint footfall. It reminded him of the deer-path close at hand. He crouched down noiselessly amongst the low growth and lifted his rifle, his eyes fixed on the point where the path disappeared in the bushes, and where he would first catch a glimpse of the approaching animal.
He heard the step again. His finger was trembling on the trigger, when down the path leisurely walked an old gentleman attired in black, a hammer in his hand, and a pair of gleaming spectacles poised placidly upon the bridge of an intellectual Roman nose. And this queer game halted in the middle of the deer-path, all unconscious of his deadly danger.
It was a wonder that the rifle was not discharged, for the panic-stricken Birt had lost control of his muscles, and his convulsive finger was still quivering on the trigger as he trembled from head to foot. He hardly dared to try to move the gun. For a moment he could not speak. He gazed in open-mouthed amazement at the unsuspecting old gentleman, who was also unaware of the far more formidable open mouth of the rifle.
“Now, ain’t ye lackin’ fur head-stuffin’?” suddenly yelled out Birt, from his hiding-place.
The startled old man jumped, with the most abrupt alacrity. In fact, despite his age and the lack of habit, he bounded as acrobatically from the ground as the expected deer could have done. He was, it is true, a learned man; but science has no specific for sudden fright, and he jumped as ignorantly as if he did not know the difficult name of any of the muscles that so alertly exercised themselves on this occasion.
Birt rose at last to his feet and looked with a pallid face over the underbrush. “Now, ain’t ye lackin’ fur head-stuffin’,” he faltered, “a-steppin’ along a deer-path ez nat’ral ez ef ye war a big fat buck? I kem mighty nigh shootin’ ye.”
The old gentleman recovered his equilibrium, mental and physical, with marvelous rapidity.
“Ah, my young friend,” - he motioned to Birt to come nearer, - ”I want to speak to you.”
Birt stared. One might have inferred, from the tone, that the gentleman had expected to meet him here, whereas Birt had just had the best evidence of his senses that the encounter was a great surprise.
The boy observed his interlocutor more carefully than he had yet been able to do. He remembered all at once Rufe’s queer story of meeting, down the ravine, an eccentric old man whom he was disposed to identify as Satan. As the stranger stood there in the deer-path, he looked precisely as Rufe had described him, even to the baffling glitter of his spectacles, his gray whiskers, and the curiously shaped hammer in his hand.
Birt, although bewildered and still tremulous from the shock to his nerves, was not so superstitious as Rufe, and he shouldered his gun, and, pushing out from the tangled underbrush, joined the old man in the path.
“I want,” said the gentleman, “to hire a boy for a few days - weeks, perhaps.”
He smiled with two whole rows of teeth that never grew where they stood. Birt wished he could see the expression of the stranger’s eyes, indistinguishable behind the spectacles that glimmered in the light.
“What do you say to fifty cents a day?” he continued briskly.
Birt’s heart sank suddenly. He had heard that Satan traded in souls by working on the avarice of the victim. The price suggested seemed a great deal to Birt, for in this region there is little cash in circulation, barter serving all the ordinary purposes of commerce.
As he hesitated, the old man eyed him quizzically. “Afraid of work, eh?”
“Naw, sir!” said Birt, sturdily.
Ah, if the bark-mill, and the old mule, and the tan-pit, and the wood-pile, and the cornfield might testify!
“Fifty cents a day - eh?” said the stranger.
At the repetition of the sum, it occurred to Birt, growing more familiar with the eccentricity of his companion, that he ought not in sheer silliness to throw away a chance for employment.
“Kin I ask my mother?” he said dubiously.
“By all means ask your mother,” replied the stranger heartily.
Birt’s last fantastic doubt vanished. Oh no! this was not Satan in disguise. When did the enemy ever counsel a boy to ask his mother!
Birt still stared gravely at him. All the details of his garb, manner, speech, even the hammer in his hand, were foreign to the boy’s experience.
Presently he ventured a question. “Do you-uns hail from hyar-abouts?”
The stranger was frank and communicative. He told Birt that he was a professor of Natural Science in a college in one of the “valley towns,” and that he was sojourning, for his health’s sake, at a little watering-place some twelve miles distant on the bench of the mountain. Occasionally he made an excursion into the range, which was peculiarly interesting geologically.
“But what I wish you to do is to dig for - bones.”
“
Bones?
” faltered Birt.
“Bones,” reiterated the professor solemnly.
Did
his spectacles twinkle?
Birt stood silent, vaguely wondering what his mother would think of “bones.” Presently the professor, seeing that the boy was not likely to ask amusing questions, explained.
He informed Birt that in the neighborhood of salt licks - ”saline quagmires” he called them - were often found the remains of animals of an extinct species, which are of great value to science. He gave Birt the extremely long name of these animals, and descanted upon such conditions of their existence as is known, much of which Birt did not understand. Although this fact was very apparent, it did not in the least affect the professor’s ardor in the theme. He was in the habit of talking of these things to boys who did not understand, and alack! to boys who did not want to understand.
One point, however, he made very clear. With the hope of some such “find,” he was anxious to investigate this particular lick, - about which indeed he had heard a vague tradition of a “big bone” discovery, such as is common to similar localities in this region, - and for this purpose he proposed to furnish the science and the fifty cents
per diem
, and earnestly desired that some one else should furnish the muscle.
He was accustomed to think much more rapidly than the men with whom Birt was associated, and his briskness in arranging the matter had an incongruous suggestion of the giddiness of youth. He said that he would go home with Birt to fetch the spade, and while there he could settle the terms with the boy’s mother, and then they could get to work.
He started off at a dapper gait up the deer-path, while Birt, with his rifle on his shoulder, followed.
A sudden thought struck Birt. He stopped short.
“Now
I
dunno which side o’ that thar lick Nate Griggs’s line runs on,” he remarked.
“Never mind,” said the professor, waving away objections with airy efficiency; “I shall first secure the consent of the owner of the land.”
Birt cogitated for a moment. “Nate Griggs ain’t goin’ ter gin his cornsent ter nobody ter dig ennywhar down the ravine, ef it air inside o’ his lines,” he said confidently, “‘kase I - ’kase he - leastwise, ’kase gold hev been fund hyar lately, an’ he hev entered the land.”