XXV
It came to pass in June.
There alighted from an early morning train in Conradsville, North Carolina, a tall and muscular, smooth-faced and sober-visaged, youngish man wearing boots that were laced high in front, a suit of blue serge, a blue flannel shirt, a slim, black tie, and a broad-rimmed black hat. He sent his baggage on to Johnsville, Tennessee, bought for himself a week's supply of traveling rations, and set out immediately, on foot and alone, for the heart of Doe River Wilderness.
It was, of course, Little Buck Wolfe, the Arnold Mason that was. He had been in the great Northwest, dealing in timberlands, for a little more than seven years.
His rise had not been meteoric, but it had been steady. He began by obtaining an option on a wide and finely-timbered boundary of woodland; soon afterward, he won the interest of a group of Eastern lumbermen, and arranged a transfer that gave him a cash base to build upon. Gradually he became known as a timber Midas. In the seven years he had cleared enough money to pay back all that had been lost in the Wolfe's Basin fire, and he was now on his way to pay it. Then the law could have him, if it still wanted him. But first he had to visit the little cabin that stood on the shore of the lake that was the source of Doe River.
During all that time, he had not written once to Colonel and Mrs. Mason. He considered his reason for not writing a very good one, indeed. Whitney Fair was post master at Johnsville. Wolfe's fear of being arrested before his purpose was accomplished had become an obsession, overshadowing everything, except the purpose itself. And then, the fine humility of the man had convinced him that without the money necessary to pay the colossal debt he was a nonentity, nothing, non-existent.
He reached Doe River at a point some two miles below the lake shortly before midnight. This bank of the stream was for the most part cliffs, and, as there was no visible way of effecting a crossing, the remainder of the journey to the cabin would of necessity have to be made in the daytime. Wolfe lighted a fire under a tree, rolled himself in his blanket, and went to sleep.
Early the next morning he rose and climbed down to the crystal-clear river's brink to bathe his face and hands. As he turned from the edge of the stream, he saw, lying on a nearby low ledge of the cliff, where some high water had left it years before, a bare and bleaching human skeleton.
Wolfe stood aghast, dumb, frozen. It had come from the lake, of course, but whose—which was it?Was it the skeleton of a man, or that of a woman?
He approached it slowly, knowing not whether to bless it or to curse it, to hold it sacred or to hate it. Then he saw on one of the arm bones, the unmistakable mark of a bullet, and he knew; it was the mark of the bullet that poor old Grandpap Singleton had fired that long gone day in Devil's Gate to save his, Wolfe's, life.The bones were those of Cat-Eye Mayfield.
The realization clenched Wolfe's fists iron hard, sent him as white as a man in the grip of certain death. He would stone the accursed thing—he would crush to bits all that was left of that most unspeakable of wretches.
No, he wouldn't. He would do as Tot would have him do if she could know; this had been the motto, the balance-wheel, the guiding light of his seven years in exile. With his hands he made a hole in the soft black earth at the cliff's base, and buried the skeleton. When it was done, he felt glad that he had obeyed the finer impulse. And it was a consolation to know that Mayfield had been cheated of the last mean part of his triumph.
Wolfe looked up and down the river's banks for the other skeleton, and didn't find it. When one has drained the iron chalice, Fate is very apt to be merciful!
The little cabin was much dilapidated. Half the stone-and-clay chimney had tumbled down before the eternal onslaughts of wind and rain; a storm had carried away a fourth of the split-board roof. Ferns and rattleweed grew over the doorstep as though trying to bar the way to feet that might profane. Wolfe crossed the feeble green barrier, and entered his holies of holies, the place that had seen enacted his life's one perfect chapter. The interior was damp and musty and mildewed. The rafters were lined with the tiny homes of mudwasps. A copperhead lay coiled comfortably in the little pit where they had kept their savings hidden; he killed the snake with one shot from his revolver and threw it out.
There were a few mementoes of the gloriously happy days. A rusted table knife, a rusted spoon, a broken dish, two mother-of-pearl buttons, a rusted wire hairpin, a rotting mealbag window-curtain that Tot's own fingers had hemmed. He fondled them for a little while, a sort of Pagan worship in his eyes; then he put them down on the mildewed table and went out and sat in the lush grass beside the bluish-black lake for a long time. The milestones of his life trooped back to him there, passed before him one by one, like soldiers in review.
Two days and two nights he spent there in the silence.
He set out for Wolfe's Basin at daybreak of a fine morning. Yellowhammers and squirrels were making love and quarreling everywhere in the forest about him. Bright-winged butterflies were busily sipping honey from the tiny blossoms of the rattleweed; wild bees were humming about the pink-eyed bloom of the ivy and the white and waxen cups of the laurel flowers. It was springtime for every living thing on earth but him.
After walking hard all that day and all the next and one hour more, he reached the rugged, pine-fringed crest of a mountain that he believed to be his home mountain, the Big Blackfern. He strained his eyes to the westward, trying to make out in the darkness the shape of bald and majestic Picketts Dome above the Lost Trail. He saw dimly a peak that he believed to be Picketts Dome.
Then he went on, and halted at a point from which he could look down into the long, broad valley that lay below. In a building that stood in the center of that valley, there was a series of lighted windows.
"It's Sunday night, and that's a church," he said to himself. "I've lost my way. There's no church in Wolfe's Basin. That must be Beechwood. Perhaps—wait! Maybe I've——"
A fine hope broke into his heart; he was no very religious man—churches went with civilization's advance, always. When he reached the level land it was late, and there was not a light to be seen anywhere; a perfect stillness reigned. He found himself walking along a graveled street between two rows of vine-covered cottages. The mingled perfume of honeysuckles and roses was well-nigh intoxicating. He passed between a church and a schoolhouse, both of which were painted white.
There was a wide concrete bridge that had been built across a rippling, tinkling creek. He went over and turned up the stream, looking for a stately willow that stood over a bar of white sand. If he could but find the willow, he would know.
He found it, and he knew!
For the present, this was enough. He would wait until morning to meet his people. Besides, he dreaded having to tell the Singletons about poor Tot. He stretched his weary figure out on his blanket, and watched the bright stars—Grandpap Singleton's promises—through the branches ofthe patriarchal tree until he went to sleep. He dreamed then that he sat on a burning desert with a heavy cup in his hand; and that a woman, in flowing white, came and took the cup from him, and dashed it away.
Little Buck Wolfe woke in a cold sweat. It was hard for him to go to sleep again.
When he woke again, broad daylight had come. He rose, combed his hair with his fingers, put on his hat, and looked about him. Nearby stood an especially home-like cottage with an inviting veranda in front. All manner of sweet, old-fashioned flowers bloomed in the spacious yard. He went slowly toward it.
Sitting in a deep and comfortable veranda rocker, he saw a very old woman in dark-figured calico; she wore a red bandanna about her perfectly white head, and there was a long-stemmed clay pipe in her toothless mouth. It was Granny Wolfe, yet alive.
"Buck, is 'at you?" she asked shrilly as he approached. "'Pears like it's yore walk, and 'pears like it hain't. But whoever it is, come right on in and set down here wi' me. Hey?"
She was now almost blind. The strapping figure of her grandson was only a blur to her eyes.
Wolfe bent over her. "Don't you know me, grand—grammaw?"
The poor old creature did not recognize his voice. "Not from Adam's off ox, nor a side o' sole-leather!" she cried. "You're a stranger to me, shorely! And might I ax, dad-burn it, what ye're a-sellin'—lightnin'-rods, sewin'-machines, patent churns, spec's, potater-peelers, or hillside plows; hey?"
Wolfe dropped into a chair facing hers, and picked up one of her pitifully thin hands.
"I—I'm Little Buck, grammaw," he said, a trifle unsteadily.
She pulled her hand away quickly. "Stuff! Stuff!" she exclaimed. "It's a durned pore joke, stranger! Little Buck, pore boy, he's been dead a long time. And ef ye try to spring 'at joke on me ag'in, I'll bust ye acrost the forrard wi' my stick—ef I don't, I wisht I may drap dead right here in my tracks, and never git another breath!"
Wolfe shrugged, then he asked anxiously, "Are the Masons still living? And who—who has died here in the last seven years?"
"The Masons is both alive. Hain't been but one grown pusson died here in the last seven year; 'at was pore old Grandpap Bill Singleton, the Prophet. Pore old Bill! Yes, he's done went up to his little shelter in the skies."
The assurance that both his fathers and both his mothers still lived filled Wolfe's heart with thankfulness. "If you'll only listen, grammaw," he pursued, "I'll prove to you that I'm Little——"
"Hush yore mouth!" she cut in angrily. "I hain't a-goin' to listen to no sech danged fool talk! But—" and she lowered her creaking voice to a whisper—"but I mustn't be so consarned loud. The widder woman I live with here she's a-sleepin', and she mustn't be woke up. Pore gyurl, she set up mighty nigh it the whole night wi' Lon Singleton's little boy, Robert Bob, who went and et a whole wagon-load o' green apples yeste'day."
"So Lon is married?"
"Why, shore; he married Hallie Wolfe, o' course," rather irritably. "He was the fust pusson 'at ever married a Wolfe and kep' his own name. But sence then, the's been sev'ral Singletons married Wolfes and kep' their own names, jest as the's been sev'ral Wolfes married Singletons and kep' their names. I can tell ye, stranger, them 'ar Singletons is good folks, every one of 'em."
Wolfe looked thoughtfully out across the bottom of the great basin. Suddenly he realized that he was staring at one of a series of yawning holes that had been made in the base of the Blackfern. Those holes had not been there seven years before, certainly. He asked his grandmother about them.
"Iron," said the old woman.
"Iron!"
"Yes, iron." Three puffs at her clay pipe. "What they calls magnetic iron ore, and the finest in Ameriky—says the Colonel. Both mountains is chuck a-bustin' full of it. My son, Buck, he found it whilst he was hid in a cave from the law. The depity he chased Buck back in the cave a hundred yards, and thar Buck found it. It was the treasure the dyin' stranger talked about a long, long time ago, and which Buck he allus thought was gold."
Her grandson gasped. She went on in her garrulous way.
"The colonel he took a-holt of it. He borried money from the bank, and bought t'other side o' both mountains, bought out t'other part owners o' the lumber comp'ny, and built the narrer-gauge railroad on down to the big blast furnace at Johnsville. This here—this here—er, what'n the devil was I a-talkin' about' anyhow? Oh, yes—iron. I never slep' none last night. Why, yes—the colonel he paid the bank back mighty soon, I'm a-tellin' ye, Mister!
"The colonel he gives all o' us Wolfes and Singletons work at plum' scan'lous good pay. Bless the bones of him, he built us a church and a schoolhouse, and brung in a fine teacher and a fine preacher; and he put up a big gen'al store and a post office fo' us, too. Utopia, 'at's the name o' the post office. Utopia, Tennessee. Purty, hain't it? And the colonel he gi' us all land in the name o' pore Little Buck, and he he'ped us to build dandy houses like these ye see. Se we're all happy 'cept fo' one thing, which is the losin' o' pore Little Buck. God rest the ashes o' him!
"Mister, I—" Again she caught herself and lowered her voice. "Durn my old pickcher, I allus was a fool fo' talkin'. Why, I bet I've done woke her up." (It was a safe bet) "I wisht these here drotted boys'd keep them wagon-loads o' green apples out o' their blasted little bellies, so's she could stay home o' nights whar she belongs. Anybody gits sick—she's the nuss and doctor."
The heart of Wolfe throbbed wildly. His most roseate hopes, long lost, had never touched so perfect a fulfilment of his dream, his big dream. If only he had Tot! If only she could know! The insufferableness of it made him weak. He slumped down a trifle in his chair.
The front door's screen opened and closed softly, and he heard the pattering of small feet beside him. It was a very little boy, chubbily-built; he was strutting proudly in his first pair of knee-trousers, real knee-trousers.
"Good morning, Judge!" smiled Wolfe.
"Good mawnin', suh!" the very little boy said sweetly, in a grown-up fashion that was delightfully ludicrous—and Wolfe knew then that the child had been much associated with old Colonel Mason, Southern gentleman. Granny Wolfe jumped out of the edge of a nap.
"Why, Bobolink!" she cackled. "You've come out here to show off yore new britches, you honey-dumplin'! His name, Mister, is Bob Taylor Wolfe; but the's so danged many Bob Taylor Wolfe's here in Utopia 'at we calls him mostly Bobolink to make a diffunce. He's got another name, too, which, down in the hearts of us, we likes the best; I think it was his granpaw, Old Buck, my son, who put him up to it. Now, Bobolink, tell the stranger yore other name."
It came promptly, "Littlest Buck Wolfe."
Little Buck Wolfe went as white as chalk. He looked straight into the boy's wide, serious, unflinching eyes, and the light broke suddenly—he was looking into his own eyes. But he dared not hope. It couldn't be. Tot was dead; she had been dead for seven eternities of years. Still——
It was at that moment that the Littlest Buck Wolfe's mother came to the door. She was round-figured, mature, magnificent; her face was that of a Madonna; her hair was of the color of dark copper.
Her husband shot up straight.
"Tot!"
After they had succeeded in convincing Granny Wolfe that she had been talking to her own grandson, Wolfe told the story of the tragedy, as he knew it, that had taken place at the lake that was the source of Doe River.
"Mayfield deceived us both," said Tot. "Most of what he told you was true. But instead of going down in the lake, I took the stolen money and my rifle and came back here to prove your innocence of the charge of robbing the company's safe. Mayfield had been threatening to kill me if I didn't marry him and run away to Virginia with him. I escaped by some means, I never could remember just how, for I was really sick and delirious; I got back here only after days and days of wandering. How he must have hated you, to die as he did! But he was blind.
"And the man in officer-blue was Lon, my brother!" she went on. "He had himself made a deputy-sheriff, and went to hunt Cat-Eye Mayfield. He didn't take any irons along; he meant to kill Mayfield. And that miserable little ant—what a tiny, tiny thing to keep us apart for so long! But life is like that."
"Well, we won't be separated again," said Wolfe, "unless Whitney Fair has me prosecuted for helping my people get away."
"Whitney Fair is dead, and his family don't live in Johnsville any more," Tot replied. "I'm sure nobody else will remember it against you."
In which she was correct.
News of Little Buck Wolfe's return spread rapidly. The people of Utopiahastened to welcome him; the Masons came up in a little passenger car carried by the daily ore train. It was a gala day, a Christmas, a July Fourth, and a Thanksgiving Day, all in one.
When the pointed shadow of Picketts Dome was reaching for the crest of the Big Blackfern, Wolfe stole away with his wife to pay his respects, as it were, to the one soul that had not been there to greet him. Tot led the zigzag way up the bald peak, upon which the ironwood cross still stood. They gathered sheafs of waxen-white laurel bloom, and later they put these in reverence on a mound between the great cross and a great boulder, the last earthly resting place of Grandpap Singleton, who had been called the Prophet.
"There, look," Tot said in the hushed voice of one who speaks in an atmosphere of holiness. She pointed. "The colonel had that done."
High on the even face of the huge stone had been cut in bold letters;
GRANDPAP WILLIAM SINGLETON
He, too, had drained life's iron chalice bravely. Wolfe's eyes dimmed.
And below the name, in the old hill dialect, had been chiseled in smaller letters this gem from the Prophet's crude philosophy, which well might ring down the centuries to come:
To Them As Thinks The' Ain't No God The' Ain't None, So Far As They're Concerned