THE IRON CHALICE
ByHAPSBURG LIEBE
Author of "The Clan Call," "Alias Arizona Red," etc.
A STORY OF THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS THAT TAKES YOU INTO THE HEARTS AND LIVES OF BIG-HEARTED, QUICK-TEMPERED CLANSMEN; INTO A BITTER FEUD, AND INTO THE WAR THAT STARTED WHEN LITTLE BUCK WOLFE BROUGHT HIS LOGGING RAILROAD INTO WOLFE'S BASIN
The county's prisoners were passing the gate where Alice Fair and Arnold Mason were standing. They were going jailward, their hands and faces sweat-stained and begrimed from long hours at hard labor. The rattle of picks and shovels and irons drowned out entirely the sounds their weary feet made on the pavement. Arnold Mason saw only the pitiful lack of spirit in their downcast eyes. It touched deeply the sympathetic heart of this man who was of mountain blood, but to whom the Masons had given a city home. He had that tender and magnificent understanding of human sorrows that is so rare except in those who themselves have suffered.
But there was one of the passers-by who walked with his head proudly erect. He was very tall, rawboned and sunburned, and in his dead-black eyes shone the light of an anguish deep and sullen. His great right hand gripped the handle of the pick he carried over his shoulder as though it would crush the wood. He turned his pale, hard face toward the pair of lovers at the gate. Arnold Mason and the girl he hoped to marry saw that three parallel lines, three bow-shaded scars, stood out on his right cheek like streaks of white paint.
They were the marks of a wildcat's claws, put there years before. And it was by those marks, chiefly, that young Mason recognized the man as his own mother's son and her first born.
"Oliver!" he exclaimed.
The big mountaineer centered his gaze upon his youngest brother. To him, also, recognition had dawned. A queer smile parted his beard and mustaches and showed a flash of strong, white teeth.
"Hello thar, Little Buck Wolfe!" he cried sharply. "Leadin' a high life now, hain't ye?"
Mason stood there, as silent and as motionless as a stone, and watched the clanking line of prisoners until friendly trees along the street blotted out the sight. When he faced Alice Fair, he noted a decided change in her manner.
"He called you 'Little Buck Wolfe,'" she observed coldly. "Was that your other name?"
"Yes."
"I think it's horrid. Who was that?"
He told her. She winced, but he continued, "My father's given name was Buck. He was a giant of a man, and he was my boyhood's ideal of what a man should be—naturally. I wanted to be named for him; I went without a name until I was nine. So they called me 'Little Buck.'"
"You told me that your people——"
"Were upright and honorable in their way," Mason cut in gloomily. "As I knew them, they were, certainly. I've never been back there. I had to study almost day and night, because I started to school so late. I—I guess I was so much interested in myself that I forgot them."
"And you didn't know until just now," pointedly, "that you had a brother in jail?"
"I've been out of town for three weeks, Alice, you'll remember," he muttered. "I came home only yesterday."
"Well," frowning, "what's the good of going over it? You can't expect me to marry you when you've got a brother in jail, here under our very noses. Honestly, can you?"
She held out to him the diamond ring he had given her an hour before. He accepted it mechanically, and mechanically put it into his pocket. Without another word, she went rapidly toward the house.
Arnold Mason, Little Buck Wolfe that was, walked slowly, with no clear thought as to direction, up the shadowy street. If there is anything that can change the gold of goodness in the mountain heart to iron, it is—this.
The high, barred window of Oliver Wolfe's cell opened to the east. At that window, his bearded face pressed against the bars, his eyes longingly watching the dim shape of Buffalo Mountain fade into the night, stood Oliver Wolfe. He did this every evening now, watched Buffalo Mountain, which was hardly more than a foothill, fade into the night.
Came the sound of footfalls in the corridor, and he turned his head. Just beyond the iron-latticed door, he saw the shapes of two tall men. A key grated in the lock, and he heard a voice.
"I'd like to be alone with him, Sheriff Starnes."
"Certainly, Mr. Mason," the officer answered courteously. "Call me when you want to go out."
The door opened and closed, the key grated in the lock again, and Oliver Wolfe stood face to face with his brother.
"Why did they put you here, Oliver?"
"For a-provin' I was the best man in town, surlily."
"I see. Assault and battery."
"With attemp' to kill," the prisoner added with a certain pride. "'Leven months and twenty-nine days, and eight o' the days done gone."
He put a hand on his brother's shoulder and shook him roughly.
"Nobody sent fo' you to come here," he said hotly. "Hain't ye afeard ye'll dirty them fine clo'es o' yore'n? You mis'able town dude, whyn't ye be a man, like I am?"
Arnold Mason said nothing to that. A moment of silence passed. Oliver Wolfe's black eyes ceased to stare contempt; perhaps some tender memory of their boyhood days together was at work in his brain.
"But mebbe you ain't as rotten as I thought ye was, Little Buck," he went on. "I thought you was pow'ful stuck-up, y' see. I'm a-goin' to tell ye somethin', and you listen:
"You know pap he used to be the law and its enfo'cement out at home. You know he used to deal out jestice wi' his fists when anybody done wrong, and you know he was allus square. He was king o' the section then. But he hain't no more. He's only the leader o' the Wolfe clan now, Little Buck. He—"
"The Wolfeclan!" Mason exclaimed surprisedly.
"The Wolfe clan," Oliver repeated impatiently. "Well, them Singletons, 'at lives at the upper end o' the basin, has been a-fightin' us fo' a long time. Tuck he's dead, and Biddle, and Simon, and Cousin Lije's Buster, and Aunt Jinny's Simmerly—every one of 'em buried wi' Singleton bullets in 'em. When I left home, pap he was a-layin' on the flat o' his back wi' a bullet in his shoulder. But le' me tell ye this right now—the Wolfe's they hain't a-goin' to quit fightin' ontel they hain't able to crook a trigger-finger no more!"
Oliver Wolfe clicked his teeth together savagely, clenched his fists, and began to pace the cell floor. After a minute spent thus, he went back to Mason and pursued.
"I was a dang fool. I slipped down to town here to buy some ca'tridges, got in a rucus, and got arrested—but it took three good men to do it, and don't ye fo'git that—and them a-needin' every Wolfe by name out thar to fight Singletons! The's a good many more Singletons an' the' is Wolfes,y'see, and the' hain't but dang few Singleton's 'at cain't cut down a hangin' hosshair with a bullet. And so I'll come to the p'int at last.
"Little Buck Wolfe, yore people needs you. You quit these here fool ways o' yore'n, and git ye a rifle, and go out thar and fight wi' yore own flesh and blood!"
Mason straightened as though he had been struck. Just then a lamp was lighted in the corridor, and its rays showed the face of Oliver Wolfe to be jerking under stress of emotion.
"Well," Oliver demanded, "are you a-goin' to wear the boots of a man?"
The other turned toward the iron-latticed door, and called to the sheriff to come and let him out.
"Is yore name, dahlin' brother," sneered the jailbird, "Wolfe, or is it Mason?"
"Wolfe," answered the stalwart young man at the door. "Wolfe. Now and forever."