XXIV
The Wolfes had been in the State's prison at Nashville a little more than four years. They now stood convinced that they had erred, that they had wilfully violated a law that was absolutely just, and they were atoning like men. There was about them none of the grimness, none of the moroseness, none of the sullen bitterness that is usually found in the hillman when he has had iron bars and walls of stone placed between him and his liberty. If they pined for home and the great dim-blue mountains with their trees and rocks and sparkling streams, there was certainly no outward sign of it.
Only one of them had felt the cold touch of the white plague, the scourge that so frequently cuts short the life of the imprisoned mountaineer. This was Brian Wolfe's son, Charley, who was not much more than a boy for all of his six feet in height. But Charley didn't whine about it; to have whined about it, to him, would have been the part of a yellow dog. In point of fact, Charley Wolfe kept his afflictions so well hidden that no one else even suspected it.
It was pitiful how he did that. In the daytime he staved off the telltale cough by means of a force of will that was truly remarkable; at night he buried his head in the folds of his blankets and smothered the cough. He laughed lightly at his increasing thinness and at the hectic flush that glowed in his cheeks in the afternoons—when anybody chanced to mention it.
Christmas Day came snowy and cold, with a biting north wind. The spirit of peace and good-will had found its way through the high and forbidding stone walls of the penitentiary. The convicts were not kept in their cells, nor were they made to work, on this day. Even Bully McCrary, who had been an incorrigible and the fighting man of the prison before the coming of the Wolfes, cried "Merry Christmas!" to every person he met—which included his former sworn enemy, a sad-eyed, intelligent fellow nicknamed and named Pale Tom Ledworth.
Now it was customary for the Fiddling Governor, Tennessee's best loved man, to give the inmates of the State's prison a fine dinner on Christmas Day; and on this occasion, he had decided that he would drive out to say grace over it himself.
He arrived half an hour before noon-time. The warden met him at the office door, bowed almost reverently, for the Governor was a man whose faults were so magnificently human that they were almost virtues, and greeted him with the compliments of the season. He entered, drew off his overcoat and gloves, and sat down before the glowing stove.
Just then Old Buck Wolfe, an iron gray giant whom stripes seemed altogether unable to disgrace, appeared before the door of heavy iron-lattice that stood between the office and the prison proper. His range of vision did not take in the distinguished visitor.
"Warden," said he, "will you please see if you can't get a fiddle for me—just for this one afternoon, sir? I used to fiddle.I don't think I've forgot how. If it's not asking too much, that is."
The warden looked toward his caller.
"It's Christmas Day, Warden," the Governor said. "Get one if you can. I think I can understand how a fiddler feels when he hasn't touched a fiddle for several years. Who is it, Warden?"
"The chief of the Wolfes, sir."
At that the Governor rose, went to a desk, sat down beside it and reached for a telephone receiver. He asked for his residence, got the connection, and ordered that his own fiddle be sent at once to the penitentiary!
Old Buck Wolfe turned away the gladdest and proudest man in the sovereign State of Tennessee.
When he had gone, the Governor asked of the warden, "How are these mountaineers behaving now?"
"Men couldn't conduct themselves better than our mountaineers, sir," the warden answered. "They've done finely, all of them. The old man had a fight soon after his arrival here, but we couldn't blame him for it; he was very much in the right, sir. I'd be glad to tell you about that fight."
"I'd be glad to hear about it, Warden."
"The Wolfes," the prison official began, "had just finished putting on their first stripes when the supper gong rang. We marched them to a table that was all taken up on one side by Bully McCrary and his following. They had always made trouble among the other prisoners, the McCraryites had, and we kept them to themselves when it was convenient.
"Old Buck talked in mountaineer dialect then—Pale Tom Ledworth has since taught the Wolfes how to read and write and speak correctly, as well as a great many other things; oh, they've made the best of their prison term! Well, as I was saying—Old Buck looked across the table, straight at McCrary, drew his shaggy brows, and drawled this:
"'You fellers over thar bend yore heads down'ards a little. I am now a-goin' to ax the blessin'. The' hain't no use in a-bein' damned hawgs jest acause we happens to be here in the penitenchy.'
"McCrary and his outfit roared with laughter, and began to make sport of Old Buck Wolfe. Old Buck's eyes flashed like the fire of powder. He turned to his kinsmen and said, 'See 'at not more'n five o' them weasels over thar jumps on me at oncet.'
"Then he went straight across the table and its dishes, and collared McCrary; and before the guards could stop the fight, McCrary had received a mighty good pounding. I—I guess the guards were not in much of a hurry to interfere, to tell the truth about the matter; you see, sir, Bully McCrary was only getting what was coming to him.
"Old Wolfe went around to his place at the table, sat down, and eyed the McCrary crowd sharply.
"'You fellers over thar bend yore heads down'ards a little,' he repeated very quietly. 'I am now a-goin' to ax the blessin'. The' hain't no use in a-bein' damned hawgs jest acause we happens to be here in the penitenchy.'
"Every prisoner in the mess-hall bowed his head. So did the guards. And so, for that matter, did I. Since that time, Old Buck has said grace at every meal. He's held up his banner like a soldier, and most of the others have flocked to it. He was born to leadership, I'd say, born to rule. He's a king of his kind, sir."
Shortly afterward a messenger arrived with the fiddle and bow in a leathern case. The Governor took the case and put it on the desk at his side. The ringing of the gong announced that dinner was ready, and Warden Gray escorted the State's high light to the big mess-hall. They found the convicts seated at the long tables, which were well laden with the good things to eat one expects on Christmas Day.
Then the chief executive bared his head and raised one fine, white hand. In clear and impressive tones he repeated the old-fashioned blessing that he had heard so many thousands of times back in his boyhood home in Happy Valley.
Old Buck Wolfe echoed fervently the "Amen!" and added in the voice of a Goliath, "God bless the Governor!"
Pale Tom Ledworth rose and held up his glass of innocent wine in a hand that wasn't quite steady.
"The Governor," he cried, "God bless him!"
The other prisoners went to their feet and lifted their glasses high.
"The Governor," they cried, "God bless him!"
It rang and rang and rang.
Tennessee's best-loved man was suffering keenly at the heart. He was thinking of the lonesome and desolate homes of these men who were paying their debts to the law and to society, of the saddened firesides and empty chairs of this Christmas Day. He was thinking of the longing of women, and the prayers of women, and of the heavy crosses men make their mothers bear—their mothers, the finest fighters in the world.
"Warden," he whispered, his eyes bright and twinkling, "you'd better get me out of here."
"This way, sir."
The two of them went back to the office, sat down, and silently watched the whirling snow through the windows. When dinner was over, they went again to the mess-hall, and the Governor placed his fiddle and bow in the hands of Old Buck Wolfe.
"If you can play 'Buffalo Gals,'" he smiled, "play it. It comes very near to being my favorite jig."
"It's mine, my favorite," the big hillman exclaimed happily, "by a long shot!"
He handled the beloved instrument with reverence. It seemed that he feared his knotty, work-hardened hands would scar it. On his countenance was the light of a rapture that the owner of that fiddle, being himself a fiddler, understood. Old Wolfe began to play his favorite; his left foot kept time on the stone floor, and his huge body swayed rhythmically to and fro. Soon every other person present was tapping the floor with a restless foot. There is no gloomy note in "Buffalo Gals."
When the delighted mountaineer's wrists and fingers had become too weary to function properly, he lowered the instrument amid much applause. Then somebody lifted the cry, "One little tune from the Governor!" Others took it up, and it became a roar.
The Fiddling Governor took the fiddle and tightened two of its strings a trifle.
Because it was Christmas Day, the day of peace on earth and good will toward men.
"What shall it be, boys?" His eyes twinkled pleasurably.
Bully McCrary never made a greater mistake, though it came out all right in the end.
"Home, Sweet Home, if you please, sir," he begged.
The State's leading official rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Of course, he did not want to play that; there were those who would feel very much upset, if he did—why, it would be torture. But McCrary's gaze pleaded so hard; the melodramatic McCrary was ready to preach, pray, shout hallelujahs, sing, dance, or fight. The Governor put the fiddle into place and began, striving purposely to give a poor interpretation. But his fingers trembled in spite of him, rendering a delicate and soulfulvibrata. The prisoners stared toward one another with wide, friendly eyes. Then, one by one, they began to stare toward the floor.
Only a few bars had been played when Charley Wolfe, who had tried manfully to be a credit to his name, who had so bravely hidden all signs of his affliction, crumpled to his knees and cried out in the musical hill dialect two unbidden words in one—"Goddle-mighty!"
Just that.
The Governor quickly passed his fiddle and bow into the hands of the warden, knelt beside Charley Wolfe, and swept back from the clammy brow the thick, dead-black hair. He lifted the lean face, saw a trace of red at each corner of the quivering, sensitive mouth, and knew. Charley Wolfe no longer had a secret.
"He's got the bugs, sure," very sympathetically said Bully McCrary, who also had seen. "He's got 'em, sure."
"Warden," the Governor asked, "how much is there left of this boy's sentence?"
"Let's see: with eight months counted off for good behavior—about three more months, sir."
The executive went to his feet. "I'll see that he's pardoned at once, Warden. While the matter is being arranged, keep him in the hospital; and tell the doctors to give him plenty of medicines and instructions when he starts for home—don't forget it."
"If you don't mind," Charley Wolfe murmured, rising with his father's help, "I'd like to stick it out, sir. I consider that this is a debt I owe. A Wolfe always pays his debts, and tells the truth, and keeps his word. I—I want to stick it out."
"You're going home," frowned Old Buck. "You've got to go, so you can get well. We'll be there with you, in about three more months. Don't say anything against it, Charley."
He was still the chief of the Wolfes. There was no disobeying him. Before the sick young man's mental vision there flashed scenes of home and loved ones and the majestic dim-blue mountains with their trees and rocks and sparkling streams. A great longing came to him, the longing he had fought away so many times. He caught the Governor's hand.
Three months later, the rest of the Wolfes walked proudly out of the State's prison and started for the railway station. They were dressed in the clothing of Southern gentlemen, and they attracted no little attention on the street.
"Say, but we're sure goin' to miss 'em," remarked Bully McCrary to Pale Tom Ledworth. "Look at Warden Gray; even him, he's got that I-wonder-will-I-ever-be-happy-again look on him. Say, take this from me, Pallid, them was all men, them Wolfes."
"It's not being free that makes them so glad," Pale Tom replied in his soft voice. "They had a letter from home this morning, and it told them that Charley was improving rapidly. That's what makes them so glad."