IV
Shortly after daybreak on the following morning, Little Buck Wolfe woke, sat up, reached for his clothing—and thought of Tot Singleton. He kept thinking of her. He caught himself saying aloud as he drew on his boots that she would never have turned him down because he had a brother in the county's chain-gang. Why, Tot would have clung to him but the closer on that account!
He meant to spend the morning in looking over the central part of the basin, where the big sawmill was to be built. After breakfast was over, he talked with his father for an hour; then he set out up the creek, on foot and alone.
When he came in sight of the gnarled old willow that shaded the sand-bar, he halted very suddenly. Sitting at the base of the tree was Tot! Her head was bent low, and there was an indescribable air of loneliness about her. He stood there and watched her thoughtfully for a full minute. She did not move even a finger.
He had reached a point behind a clump of blooming laurel a dozen paces from herwhen she lifted her head. But she didn't look toward him. She went to dreaming again, and he was saddened by the signs of unhappiness he saw on her countenance.
Just when he was about to make his presence known to her, an angular, slouching figure stepped before her from the bushes beyond. The newcomer was dressed in run-over cowhide boots, blue denim trousers baggy at the knees and held in place by a pair of homemade suspenders, a striped cotton shirt without buttons, and a worn black hat with its rim pinned up desperado fashion in front. His black eyes were lustreless, opaque, and uncanny. His thin lips were twisted in a smile that was decidedly unpleasant.
"Hi thar, Tot!" he sneered. "Waitin' here fo' that 'ar town smarty, like ye used to, I reckon; hain't ye?"
Wolfe's strong, smooth face lost a part of its healthy color. Tot made no reply; it seemed almost that she did not know that Mayfield, her tormentor, was there.
"He throwed me in the creek oncet," Mayfield went on, "but he cain't do it now. I was jest a boy then. I'm a man now. I wisht he'd come along and try it ag'in!"
At last the young woman gave him her attention.
"Little Buck was a boy then, too," she said; "and he wasn't no bigger'n you was, neither. And he's a man now, too—you bet."
"I jest wisht he'd happen along——"
Wolfe had stepped from behind the clump of laurel, and Cat-Eye Mayfield had seen him.
"Well, Cat-Eye," Little Buck said evenly, "you've got your wish."
Mayfield's manner became one of defiance, bitterness, and desperation. He took from a pocket in his blue denim trousers a lump of sticky pine resin wrapped in a green poplar leaf; he threw the leaf aside, and in one quick movement deliberately pressed the resin deep into Tot Singleton's copper-colored hair!
And Tot, her blue eyes glowing and triumphant, had not lifted a hand to prevent it.
The mountain blood leaped madly in the heart of Little Buck Wolfe. He rushed at Mayfield like an enraged panther. His blows, the blows of a primitive man, fell upon Mayfield's sallow face like the pounding of a riveting-hammer, completely stunning him. Then he gathered the angular body up in his arms, bore it across the bar of sand, and hurled it into the water—just as he had done on that red-letter day of his boyhood.
Mayfield crawled sullenly out on the other side, gave the man who had whipped him a look of poisonous black hate, and slouched off up the creek's bank. Wolfe watched him until he was a good hundred yards away to see that he did not find a repeating rifle somewhere in the bushes; then he turned toward Tot.
In another moment he was standing face to face with her—smiling, blushing, finely handsome, barefooted Tot Singleton. He realized that the entire repetition of the little drama of his youth lacked but the climax—a kiss from Tot as a reward for his gallantry. She was looking straight into his eyes. Her slender, sunburned hands crept slowly to his shoulders. She stood on her toes, lifted her lips, and offered him his reward.
For she had no way of knowing that he had outgrown their juvenile affair; that he was for the present heart-broken because of the shallowness of another woman. He had fought for her, and he never could have made a stronger declaration that he still cared for her—it is a law of the cave. Besides, if he hadn't come there to meet her, as of old, why had he come?
Wolfe was not without chivalry. He could not strike down, like an assassin, the glory of her beautiful eyes; it was a glory that awed him, that could have come into being only after the longing, and the faith, and the waiting of years. He bent his head, and kissed her.
But he knew it was unfair, and he blamed himself heavily. He caught her hands as they were about to clasp at the back of his neck, and put them gently from him. She stepped backward, wondering, somehow pitiful. A disc of yellow sunlight fell through the branches of the willow, and burnished the copper of her hair.
"What made you do that, Little Buck?" she asked in the tiniest of voices.
He led her to the base of the tree, and they sat down together on the pure white sand. It seemed better to tell her the whole truth, and he told her the whole truth. Of every momentous thing that had occurred to him since his going away with the Masons to be their son, he told her; and he saw on her now slightly pale face more sympathy for him than disappointment for herself. Some there are who are built for sacrifice, but more there are who are not. Tot Singleton was.
When he had finished, he took from his pocket the ring that Alice Fair had givenback to him, and showed it to her. She merely glanced at it; she knew nothing whatever of the value, intrinsic or sentimental, of diamonds.
"Ef—ef I had that fool woman here," she said, her words fairly throbbing, "I—I'd whip her!"
To Wolfe the ring was in a manner sacred because of the memories associated with it; but it was a link that bound him to something that was lost and gone, and he decided that he had best do away with that link. Perhaps his inborn pride, the pride of the hillpeople, had its influence in the matter—he smiled a mirthless little smile, and flung the ring into the centre of the pool before him, the pool that used to be eight feet in depth and now was only two.
"And now I'll have to tell you good-by," he said, going to his feet. "I start back to Johnsville at noon, and I've a good deal of looking around to do here before I go."
Tot rose, said good-by to him, and went homeward.
A few rods down the creek, Wolfe came abruptly upon his father. The iron-hearted old hillman's face was ashen under his beard, and his black eyes were like two points of flame. He had followed his son. He had seen the kiss, from his little distance, though he had heard none of that which they said.
Old Buck waited until Tot Singleton was well out of hearing before he spoke.
"Mr. Mason," he announced, "listen to me. I said we was all with ye ef the' wasn't somethin' ahind of it 'at I couldn't see. The' is somethin' ahind of it 'at I couldn't see—mixin' up wi' that lowdown Singleton set. I promised I wouldn't start a fight with 'em no more, I know, and I won't. The feud it's dead, as dead as hell. And so are you. To me, you're dead. Acause I seed you kiss a lowdown Singleton."
"But——"
"Now le' me tell ye this here: you cain't never darken the door of a Wolfe no more, and you cain't bring no railroad nor no sawmill into this here basin ontel atter you've killed me. You've got my word fo' that, and it's the word of a Wolfe!"
The younger man shook his head dejectedly. "Dad," he began, "you don't know what you're talking about. I——"
"Hack it off right whar you're at!" Old Buck blazed. "I don't never want to hear the sound o' yore voice no more as long as the breath o' life's in me. You're dead, so far's I'm consarned."
The son tried hard to reason, tried harder to explain, all to no avail. The unlettered giant would listen to nothing. It angered Little Buck in spite of himself.
"I've given my word, just as you've given yours," he said spiritedly; "and, as I'm a Wolfe, just as well as you are, I'll keep my word if I live. The lumber track and the mill are coming, and it doesn't greatly matter who likes it or who doesn't."
Old Buck stalked off. His son then regretted that he had lost his temper.