The old man shook his head stubbornly. “I tell ye, lawyer, hit ain’t any o’ our war. What happens outside o’ these hills don’t consarn me and my folks. ‘What happens amongst these hills we can take care of when hit comes. Let them as wants to fight, fight. We’uns don’t axe nothin’ o’ other folks and other folks ain’t got no business axein’ nothin’ o’ us. That’s whar hit stands with me, lawyer.”
“Listen, Seth.” Todd leaned toward him from his saddle. “You know, the people outside of Breathitt don’t think much of us who live here. Not only in other parts of Kentucky, but in all the other states and even abroad, they call us ‘Bloody.’ That’s because we’ve been a bit too handy with our guns. We’ve killed too many of our own folks. We haven’t paid much attention to the law. Now this war gives us a chance to show the outside world that there’s more good than bad in us; that we can leave off fighting each other and use our lead on the Germans.”
Todd leaned closer to the old man, enthusiasm in his voice. “Listen, Seth. The President wants volunteers for the army. He’s got to have soldiers, lots of them. And the best soldier material in the country is right up here in these hills. We men of Breathitt are born to the trigger. Most of us soldier in a manner all our lives. Now, I say, we’ve got to stop aiming our rifle-guns at each other and point ’em toward the enemy. I’ve been thinking about it considerably lately and I want your help in bringing this very thing to pass.
“You, Seth, have more influence with the people than any one man in this county. You’re connected by family to every big clan in Breathitt. Whenyou say peace, they keep the peace; when you say war, they fight. For years now there’s been no general trouble. That’s because, as you declared, war don’t pay. And you’re right, indeed you are, where feud wars are concerned. We’ve had enough of them, God knows!”
Todd continued: “Seth, they’re framing a draft bill there in Washington. They’re going to make men join the army if they won’t join it voluntarily. Now our boys never had to be kicked into battle, Seth. They’ve got the good old Kentucky warrior blood in their veins; and the better the cause, the harder they fight. Let’s show the country that Breathitt isn’t as bad as printer’s ink has painted her. Let’s not wait for that draft bill. Tell your men, Seth, that this is the worst war and the best war that ever happened. Tell ’em it’s the most wicked war and the holiest war in which a Kentuckian was ever privileged to draw a bead. Say the word, old friend, and every son of Breathitt will rally to the flag, to wipe the stains from their own hills and help clean the world’s slate for the universal writing of the name Democracy!”
Again old Seth shook his head. He waved his hand with a gesture of finality, then brought his fist to his knee with a dull thud.
“Yer a mighty purty talker, lawyer, and I ’low ye means what ye says—but, I tells ye, I ain’t got no consarn in this here war. Keeser and his Germins ain’t done nothin’ to me and my folks. Them men o’ Breathitt who wants to fight, can fight. I won’t stop ’em. But, lawyer, I ain’t a-goin’ to call ’em to war till that feller Keeser makes the fust move agin one o’ us. That’s what I says to Jim and that’s what I’m a-sayin’ to ye,” he added defiantly.
Lawyer Todd said nothing. He knew the mettle of his people. He believed in them. He also knew that old Seth was a victim of isolation and the teachings of a primitive creed; that his opposition sprang from ignorance, not disloyalty. It was the inborn nature of a mountaineer to prefer battle among his own hills, whose every rock and peak and cove he had studied with an eye to offense and defense, rather than wage war in the enemy’s country where he was a stranger. Besides, as Seth himself had said, the Brannons and their kin had not yet smelled blood. “Keeser and his Germins” must first offer direct injury to one of them before they could feel the personal touch of war and answer the challenge from oversea.
With this realization Todd broke the silence in a firm voice, pointing to the yellow envelope in the old man’s hand.
“Seth, that telegram holds bad news for you folks.”
Seth’s attitude of defiance relaxed. Taut cords stood out beneath the dry skin of his throat as the inner man gripped himself.
“Is Jim hurt?” There was a tremor of paternalism in the question. The yellow envelope fluttered to the ground near the mare’s feet.
Todd looked Seth steadily in the eyes. “Worse than hurt, old friend, yet better than hurt,” he replied. “Jim is dead.”
Not a cry, not a tear, not a groan, not even a quiver of the world-worn mouth and brow. Only an expression of incredulity that hardened into sternness.
“Dead?—dead! My Jim dead.” Then, after a while, “Hit’ll go plumb hard with his ma, herJimmy dead.” The keen eyes widened and the wrinkled face was lifted to the hills.
Directly, in a calm, low voice: “Tell me, lawyer, who kilt him? How was he kilt, my Jim?”
“He was killed in action, Seth, killed by ‘Keeser and his Germins’ while bombing an enemy’s trench.”
“Bombing a trench! Whar in hell was his rifle-gun?”
“He wasn’t using it then.” Todd drew on his imagination. “But he sold out at a high figger, Seth, that boy of yours. A dozen Germans went down before they got him.”
The old man’s eyes flashed. “Ye say they did? Jim he kilt a dozen of ’em?” His friend nodded. “Lord!—now don’t that beat all!” Seth chuckled an unhealthy chuckle. “Kilt a dozen of ’em!”
When he next spoke, however, it was briefly and through lips parched and drawn.
“Wal, I reckon that settles hit. Yas, lawyer, I reckon that mighty nigh settles hit.” And with shoulders bent forward, his chin in his hand, the old man lapsed into lonely meditation.
Todd left him there, seated on the stile, and with a sigh of relief that his mission had been thus far accomplished, rode his mare around to the barn. The Breathitt country that day vibrated with a silent but compelling call. Bare-footed couriers, wizards of short cut and bypath, slipped through valley and over ridge, up rocky creek bed and down steep decline, bearing a message from their chief. The lesser clan heads received the message; and from beneath their clapboard roofs, they in turn sent forth couriers to their followers. Along the waters of Troublesome, Middle Fork, Quicksandand Kentucky River, the word flashed. A hushed suspense closed over the hills. Men greeted one another in undertones, sensing rather than speaking what each had in mind. Action was the necessity of the hour; swift, tense action that tarried neither to question nor to reason, but obeyed.
But little time elapsed after Lawyer Todd left old Seth at the stile, before the Brannons and their kinsmen began to gather at the cabin of their chief. They straggled in by ones and twos and threes, some mounted and some on foot. Among them were grandfathers, with stooped shoulders and snowy beards; others were mere boys.
Most of the men bore modern rifles and revolvers; a few had shotguns. One, on whom the hookworm had set its blight, had been able to muster only a pitchfork. Another was armed with a kitchen knife and a hickory club. Besides their weapons all the equipment the men carried was a bundle of food, done up in a greasy paper, consisting of chunks of corn bread, a bit of salt and several strips of bacon.
Some of the “neighbor wimmen” had come to Seth’s cabin to tender their services and sympathies to the bereaved mother. Old Seth himself sat alone on the edge of the weather-warped porch, brooding. His rifle lay across his knees, and while one hairy hand stroked the polished stock, his eyes were fastened on the horizon above the eastern hills. The only hint of emotion in his face was the dumbness of an emotion too deep for expression.
The men stood about the yard in little groups. Out in the barn lot several of the younger men pitched horseshoes. Others played mumble-peg near the stile block, or lounged against the railfence, whittling. The patriarchs of the clan squatted at a respectful distance from their chief, waiting to be called to council.
And upon them all poured the warming rays of the afternoon sun. The pine-fringed mountains, green with the fresh, soft green of spring, closed in grim but kindly embrace about the little army in the valley below. A dove cooed plaintively from a near-by hollow; beneath the cabin porch the cur whined and howled with a sense of approaching crisis.
After a while old Seth arose, steadying himself against the corner of the porch. And silently his followers gathered about him.
“Boys,” he said, “I reckon ye all know why I sent fer ye. Jim’s been kilt. Him that was o’ my flesh and blood, and o’ yer flesh and blood, is dead. Keeser and his Germins kilt him, boys. Nothin’ on this airth that me or ye can do will bring him back to life.
“When Jim went to war, he went withouten my lief. I’d fought a lot in my time and I wanted him to keep outen sech trouble. But he went; he got the notion he ought to go, and all I could say wouldn’t stop him. Jim says that Keeser and his Germins ’as killin’ wimmen and chil’ren over yan. He says this country’d soon be at war and that we folks o’ Breathitt ought to git ready and fight same as the rest o’ the people. I studied on hit a heap then—and today I’ve studied on hit some more.
“As Jim ’lowed hit’d be, boys, this here country’s at war. I don’t understand all about hit myself, about this de-mocracy we’re a-fightin’ fer or what we’re goin’ to do with the thing after we gits hit. Lawyer Todd says hit’s jest another namefer freedom and liberty. Maybe hit is. Anyway, boys, since I’ve thought hit over, thar ain’t been a war yet when us fellers o’ the hills ain’t took a hand. Some fought fer the Union, some fer the South. Some fought in Cuby, and some o’ our kin helped whop them sassy niggers in the Fillerpines.
“Whenever we’ve fought, boys, we’ve had a reason fer hit, a mighty good reason. Do ye remember back thar, several year ago, when Bulger Allen plugged Hal Brannon in the heart as Hal ’as comin’ home from meetin’ with his gal? Do ye recollect how hit riled us and how we got our rifle-guns and went after them Allens? They’d kilt one o’ our folks, they’d broke the peace. But afore we got through with ’em, they seen hit ’as healthiest to leave our folks alone and keep their lead to themselves!”
Seth paused, swallowed, then went on:
“Boys, Jim’s been kilt. Yesterd’y we weren’t holdin’ nothin’ agin’ Keeser and his Germins. They hadn’t hurt none o’ we’uns. What devilment they’d done, they’d done outsider these hills whar we ain’t got no concarn. But now hit’s different. Hit’s jest another case o’ them Allens, boys. Hit means we got to draw blood fer blood. Had Jim been one o’ ye or yer sons, I’d say the same thing. A Brannon’s life has been took: ye and me and all our folks has got to take lives to pay fer hissen. That’s the way we do hit up here in these mountings. That’s the way we got to do hit with Keeser and his Germins.”
Lawyer Todd, standing on the edge of the company, frowned and bit his lip. He had been listening to the speech. Inwardly he had rejoiced. But now he felt a pang of disappointment. Seth, hefeared, was about to overshoot the mark in his newly aroused enthusiasm. He was reckoning on personal vengeance against “Keeser and his Germins,” something that could not be but which would be hard for him to realize.
Todd, trying to attract as little notice as possible, edged through the crowd until he stood at the old chief’s elbow. As he paused in his delivery, the lawyer caught his attention.
“Seth,” he began in an undertone, “Seth, it doesn’t pay to be too hasty about this thing you’re doing. You know, those people at Washington don’t believe in fighting exactly the way we do down here. They go about it different. It’s the young men who are sent to war. The government takes only those who are in their prime, and it’s the government that picks out the guns they’ll shoot and the clothes they’ll wear and tells ’em how to act and what to do. Don’t misunderstand me, Seth. It’s all right for you to want to go to Europe and whip ‘Keeser and his Germins,’ but Seth, you just naturally can’t go.”
The old man looked at the lawyer in surprise.
“Can’t go?” he repeated aloud. “Ye mean to say I’m too old to go?” There was wrath in the tone. Those near by moved closer, listening. “Why, lawyer, I’m as young in feelin’s as any boy here. I can tromp as fer, shoot as straight and stand as much as any sodjer the gover’nent’s got.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Todd; “that all may be very true. But it’s only the young fellows they want. Lead your men down to Jackson, let the recruiting officers there pick those who are fit: then you and the rest come back here to your farms, raise more crops, pray for them that’s gone, and begood citizens. That’s your part in the war, old friend.”
“I’ll be damned if hit is!” Seth threw up his grizzled head in anger. “I can fight as well as the best of ’em. I reckon I’m an Amerikin too. Hit’s my country and my war and my Jim what’s been kilt. Won’t they let a pa fight them as murdered his son? Won’t they let him shoot them as shot him? By Gawd! o’ course they will, lawyer, and nothin’ in all creation can make me stay home!”
Todd stepped back. He saw the futility of further argument. He even doubted the wisdom of his speaking as much as he had.
Seth wrestled with his emotions for some moments in silence. Then the passion left his wrinkled features. He was thoughtful, debating with himself. Finally, his selfcontrol regained, he turned to the waiting multitude before him.
“Maybe Lawyer Todd’s right, boys,” he said with sudden frankness. “Maybe hit’s so that we can’t all go to war agin’ them as kilt our Jim.” He flashed a friendly glance of reassurance over the heads of his followers to where the lawyer stood. “Hit’s different outsider these hills ’an hit is here. We ain’t the only ones a-fightin’ Keeser and his Germins. The whole nation’s a-got hits dander up. Lawyer Todd says that afore the break o’ another spring thar’ll be more’n a million sodjers ’long side o’ us, ready to whop them Germins. I reckon I spoke kinda hasty jest now. We can’t have hit all our way. We’ll jest have to fit in with the rest wharever we can. Hit may be a close fit and hit may pinch at times, boys, but hit’s best. Lawyer Todd and them army men knows. We’ll try and make up our minds to do what they ’lows is fer the good o’ all o’ us.
“So we’ll go down to Jackson town, to that re-cruitin’ office, and axe them sodjer fellers thar to git us to Eurip. They’re showin’ others the way and I reckon they’ll show us. Some o’ us won’t come back, boys, like Jim won’t come back. Some o’ us is liable to lose a arm or a leg. But remember this, boys, wharever ye go or whoever ye’re fightin’, that ye’re men o’ Breathitt. Remember ve’re not only goin’ to kill Germins but to kill the bad name that the world ’as give us. Me and Lawyer Todd stands together on that. We’re goin’ to stop wastin’ powder on our own folks. We’re goin’ to show them people in the Blue Grass and all over the country, that the men o’ these mountings is men no different from them when hit comes to shoulderin’ a rifle-gun and pertectin’ their homes and wimmen and chil’ren. We’re goin’ to make Breathitt stand fer somethin’ else besides Breathitt blood.”
Old Seth picked up his rifle from where he had leaned it against the porch wall. His hand was steady; he pressed the gun over his heart as if to breathe into its lifeless mechanism a part of his own warrior spirit.
“Boys, time’s up,” he said. “War’s on. Jim’s body over yan is callin’ us to come. Hit’s a-callin’ us men o’ the hills, us men o’ Breathitt. We’re a-goin’”—he raised his voice. “Wars on, I say, boys, war’s on; and Keeser and his Germins is goin’ to catch hell—Breathitt hell—and hell a-plenty!”
As their chief concluded a wild yell burst from ten score mountain throats, a weird and ringing yell that surged through the neighboring valleys, beat against the stolid walls of rock and pine, andbounded upward and beyond, the answer of the Breathitt folk to humanity’s call to arms.
Lawyer Todd, a smile lifting the weariness from his face, sat his mare and watched the departure of the little army. There was no saying of farewells to the women and children; there were no handclasps or tears. Old Seth, astride a long-eared mule, led the way. The others straggled after him in irregular order. Those who had mounts rode them; the rest followed on foot. With their packs of food slung over their shoulders, their guns in the crook of their arms, the men filed out of the cabin yard and through the valley toward a distant gap in the hills.
“My people, my people!” softly exclaimed Todd, as he moved after them. “Kentuckians all, Americans all, this day you give the lie to the slander put upon your mountain race. My people, my noble people!”
Dry-eyed women, shading their brows with toil-scarred hands, lingered at their cabin doors, their children clustered about them, and watched their men go by. Occasionally one of them waved, and an answering salute came from among the irregular ranks.
Beyond the western ridges the sun dropped into a saffron sky, crowning with a halo of gold the reborn feudland, touching with mellow light the crags and peaks that stood out proudly in the dusk. High above the misty valleys a bald eagle circled, forward, backward, forward, backward, over the country of warrior clans; while through the distant gap marched mountain men, men of soul and heart and brawn.
Breathitt was at war!
Lewis H. Kilpatrick.
Religion, said the mining man, sometimes puts me in mind of one of those new blasting powders; there’s no just telling when it’ll go off or whom it’ll blow up.
I was thinking then of Radway and Billsky: “Bad” Radway, him that beat up Ellis at Borromeo and shot Fargue O’Leary. You will have heard of him. Every one was hearing of him at one time, and then all the talk kind of faded out. By and by Radway himself faded out. It was Billsky that faded him.
Billsky was a little, serious, hairy fellow, not much higher than Radway’s elbow; a good little fellow, that never gave any trouble to any one. He always seemed, in a meek sort of way, puzzled over existence in general and his own share in it in particular. Men liked him. He was awful kindhearted, but he’d the same sense of humor as an Apache. Primitive, that’s what he was. He was part Russian, and he’d a primitive sort of name that no one ever tried to pronounce. Billsky came near enough.
He scarcely ever came in Rad’s way, though he moved with the same crowd. Rad was in the center, you see, Billsky just wanderin’ on the outskirts. They got mixed up pretty close, though, later.
It began with a girl, of course, a girl atBorromeo. No need for names. She was a nice girl, and a nice-lookin’ girl, just one of many, thank God. No one so much as guessed Billsky was sweet on her till she went away suddenly and was seen no more, and her folks moved away. It was put down to Rad, and he didn’t deny it; sort o’ smiled and looked knowin’. You know the kind. Then Billsky heard of it. He was working up at the Joyeux then, for that was before the irrigation was put through, and it was all cattle. He sent a message through to Radway. “I’m coming down to kill you,” said the message, “soon as I can get my time. Don’t go away.”
Well, that was Billsky all over, and most men thought it was a great joke. Radway did. “What does the little rat take me for?” he said. “I guess he’s in no hurry. I’ll have some time to wait.” Most men thought so, too, but not all.
Meanwhile, Billsky stuck to his job till he could quit without giving inconvenience. Then he got his time. He sunk every dollar of his pay in a fine pony, a quick goer. And down he came the eighty miles to Borromeo, like a fire in grass.
The betting was all on Rad, of course. It was said he thought Billsky too good a joke to shoot; he’d just beat him up a bit if he was troublesome, and let him go.
Twenty miles out of Borromeo, Billsky had to stop at a preacher’s. And there he got religion.
Yes, it’s a fact; he got it overnight. What he told the preacher, or the preacher said to him, I don’t know. I don’t begin to know. But Billsky went off afoot into the desert, five miles maybe; and it is pretty much of a desert round there. He had nothing with him but the gun he was going toshoot Radway with, and a Bible. He laid them both under a sagebush, and all night he knelt in front of them, and waited for the Lord to begin on him. There isn’t much in the desert at night, you know, but stars; and a sky back of ’em that makes even the planets look cheap. The Lord must have had His way with Billsky, without fear or favor, for at dawn he came staggering back to the preacher, drenched with sweat and dew. He had only the Bible with him.
“I believe,” he said to the preacher, “and as I hope for forgiveness, so I forgive the man it was in my heart to kill. Tell him so from me,” he said; “but it’s laid on me,” said Billsky, “that I’ll never save my soul till I tell him so myself. So tell him, too, to wait for me, for I’m a-coming to forgive him.” Then he went down in a heap at the preacher’s feet.
That old man was a real Christian, and he put Billsky to bed and looked after him like a father. He’d never had an out-and-out hot-on-the-spot convert like that before, and he was so worked up and excited over it that he saddled his old horse and rode into Borromeo himself to give Radway the message of forgiveness.
I was in Duluth’s, with some of the other fellows, looking at some new saddles he had in; and Rad was there, too, and there was a good deal of talk going on of one kind and another. Some one must have told the old preacher where Rad was, for he pulled up his old white nag outside Duluth’s, and “Mr. Radway!” he called, in a high voice, “Mr. Radway! I have a message for you.”
“Hello!” said Rad, winking at his cronies,—I wasn’t one,—“Is Billsky coming with his gun? I must get ready to hide.” And there was laughing.
Sitting his old horse straight as an Indian, the old preacher raised his head and took his hat off. His white hair shone in the sun. There seemed to be more than sun shining on his face. “Mr. Radway,” says he, “the message I bring is one of forgiveness. You have nothing to fear from Billsky. He forgives you. And I was to tell you that he will never rest until he himself can assure you of that forgiveness. And may the Lord have mercy on you,” said the old man, and put on his hat and rode away. I give you my word, I never heard Duluth’s so quiet! There wasn’t a sound till Radway caught his breath and began to curse.
Funny what’ll get a man’s nerve, eh? It sent Rad quite wild to think Billsky wanted to forgive him!
Billsky was sick at the preacher’s some time. He came into Borromeo looking queerer and hairier than ever, and simply eaten alive with the longin’ to forgive Rad. “’Tisn’t him I’m thinking of,” he explained in his careful way, “he’ll get what’s coming to him, anyway; it’s me,” he said. “How’m I to save my soul if I don’t forgive him?”
“Well, you can’t forgive him just yet,” said the man he was talking to, sort of soothing. “He ain’t here. He’s on a new job: foreman at the Llindura, and went out last week.”
“Oh!” said Billsky. He looked all around him, kind of taken aback and hurt. “Oh! Why’d he do that?”
“He didn’t do it because he was afraid of you, old sport,” said the other man, laughing fit to hurt himself, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Billsky looked more hurt than ever. He’d big collie-dog eyes in his furry face, and now theyfairly filled with tears. “Why should I think that?” he said earnestly. “I only want to forgive him. I only want to tell him I forgive him.” And he went away, all puzzled at the contrariety of things in general.
He kept pretty small and quiet about Borromeo for a few days; and then I saw him looking awful pleased with himself. “Gray Thomas,” he told me, “he’s going out to the Llindura with some mules, and he’ll take me along. So now I’ll be able to forgive Radway,” he said, “and get it off my mind.”
He went out to the Llindura with the mules. When he got there, he found Rad had been sent to Sageville with a bunch of calves the day before.
He stayed a week at the Llindura, almost too worried to earn his keep, waiting for Radway. Radway didn’t come. At the end of the week, he lit out for Sageville. Halfway there, he met the rest of Rad’s outfit, coming back. “Rad’s been bit with the mining fever,” they told Billsky, “and he’s off into the Altanero country with a man he met in Sageville. The boss’ll be mad with him.” Billsky looked more grieved than ever.
“Did he know I was waiting for him?” said he.
“No,” said they, “how should he?”
Well, how should he? But I believe he did. You see, Billsky’s forgiveness had got on his nerves.
It was a close call in Sageville that Radway’d get forgiven in spite of himself. He actually rode out one end of the town with his new partner as Billsky came in at the other.
The fellows laughed at Billsky; but they liked him; and maybe they began to wonder. Anyway, Billsky stayed in Sageville a week, selling his ponyand getting an outfit together. When they asked him what he wanted a prospectin’ outfit for, he just looked at them in a surprised, hurt sort of way, and said, “Why, to go after Rad and forgive him, of course. What’d you think?” Pretty soon, they stopped laughing. It was the look on Billsky’s face stopped them. You know how queer brown and yellow faces look to us? That’s because the expression never changes. Billsky began to look queer, like a Chink or an Indian; he’d just one expression in those days, stamped on his hairy face as if he’d been branded with it.
He got two burros and an outfit of sorts, and off he went at the end of the week, trailing Radway into the Altanero. Three days before he went, a mule wagon pulled out for Seear; it overtook Radway and his partner, and the driver told him his forgiver was following on. So, you see, Rad knew.
Have you ever seen the opening of the Altanero: the Gates of the Altanero? There’s desert, and there’s hills, and there’s cañons; and there’s the Altanero. This side the Gates, you’re still somebody, with work to do, and money to get, and girls to kiss: anything, if you go find it. Other side the Gates, you’re nobody, nothing. You just go out. Yes, you just go out. It’s like dying while you’re alive. You don’t count at all; and quite often you die dead.
Have you ever seen the Gates? You go on and on in the heat, away from Sageville, and Seear, and everything you know. They lie flat behind you, lost in the heat. You don’t see ’em if you turn and look. You don’t see anything. Even the sage thins out and goes. It’s all dust. Then ahead, ever so far, you see something gold. It rises higher, littleby little,—oh so slow! and you see it’s rocks, great golden rocks. They lift, and lift, and lift. One day you find they’re behind you as well as in front: nothing but golden rocks; unless it’s red rocks or green rocks or rocks like clear black glass. I’ve known some queer moments, but there’s nothing so queer as when it first comes home to you that, for miles and miles in every direction, there’s just nothing but the rocks—like a world rough-cut from precious stones and left to die.
There’s few wells in the Altanero: few that are known. You travel by, and accordin’ to, the wells. Radway struck off into the hills from the Seaar trail, making for the first well. A week later, there was Billsky following over the same ground. Each night he’d camp by one of Radway’s cold fires; and, each night, he’d kneel in the ashes and pray. Sometimes he’d pray an hour, or two hours, or three, under the tremendous stars; but it was always that he might catch up with Rad quick, and forgive him, and get it off his mind. He wasn’t worrying. He was just eager. He knew he was bound to come across Rad sooner or later in the Altanero. Then he’d sleep, and eat, and off he’d go, singing hymns to the burros: “Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” most likely.
Once, in the dead ashes, he found a broke-off saucepan handle. He was so pleased he carted it along with him, like a mascot. It seemed to put him in touch with Radway: to bring the happy moment o’ forgiveness nearer.
And Radway? Well, there you have me.
The Altanero’s a bad country to travel in if you’ve anything on your nerves. I passed through a few miles of it once when I had something onmine: a sick child two hundred miles away; and I tell you, by the third day I was seein’ the kid everywhere. But Radway—I can’t just explain Radway. I wonder if he was seein’ the girl that started it.
Billsky made the first water-hole six days behind Rad; he’d gained a day.
Rad and company had used considerable of the water in that hole. It had shrunk, and there in the margin, baked hard and white like clay, were footprints of men and burros. Billsky picked out Rad’s footprints and patted ’em, he was so pleased. He rested by the water a few hours, and freshened up his burros. Then he went on.
Between the first water-hole and the second the country opens up. It isn’t just a huddle of rocks. It’s mesas rising from a dead level of dust like the worn foundations of towers and cathedrals and cities, banded in rose and violet and gold. You could no more climb most of ’em than you could climb the outside of a skyscraper. But Billsky found one he could climb, and up he went. He’d seen some sort of dry, grassy stuff at the top, and he wanted it for Sarah, one of the burros that was ailing. He found more than the grass on top. He found a grave. Didn’t know whose, of course; nobody knows, nor ever will. He gave the grass to Sarah; but next day she died. Billsky was terrible hurt and grieved, he was always so careful of beasts. He never realized that Sarah was just beat out: couldn’t stand the pace.
At the second water-hole he was only four days behind Rad.
He rested up a bit, being worried over his burro; and took out the lost time in prayer. Thenon he went, at that terrible pace, overhauling Rad by the mile, achin’ to forgive him. It’s a long stretch to the third hole. Billsky gained two days on it. I can’t guess how. He told me he took short cuts through the cañons, and that they always turned out all right; and that he sang “Hold the Fort, for I Am Coming,” right along.
He found the third hole fouled and shrunk. In a stretch of mud, Rad had written with a stick, “If you follow me any further, I will shoot you on sight.” How did he know Billsky was so near? Maybe he’d seen his fire the night before. Billsky read the writing, and was dreadful hurt and grieved. “He doesn’t understand,” he said, “that I’m going to forgive him. It’s what I’m follerin’ him for.” He prayed half the night, and went on quicker than ever next day.
Few have ever been so far into the Altanero as the fourth hole. It’s hard to find. Long before Billsky made it, he saw a speck in the sky; it was a great bird, sailing round in little, slow circles. Under it was the fourth water-hole.
It was quite a pool when Billsky came to it. There were bushes round it, and fibrous grass. There were three burros feeding on the bushes, and a small tent pitched. A man came out of the tent, and when he saw Billsky he held up his hands.
“Don’t shoot,” he said, “I’m not Radway. You’ve no quarrel with me.”
“Nor with him,” said Billsky. “I’ve come to forgive him. Where is he?”
“Gone,” said the man, “gone mad, I guess. He’s pushed on alone. Day before yesterday I took sick. We was to rest up here, and then cast round careful, always within reach o’ this water.This morning he went out and climbed them rocks there. Then he came back, and said he must go on, he couldn’t wait. I went to stop him, and he laid me out. See here.” The man was most cryin’; he turned his face, and Billsky saw a great black swelling on his jaw. “He went on,” he said, “as if the devil was after him. And the devil’s you!”
Billsky was the meekest little hairy man; and now he too was fit to cry. “He don’t know me,” he said, very sad, “but it’ll be all right. . . . What’s on there?” he said, pointing beyond.
“God knows, who made it,” said the man, “out of hell’s leftovers. But no one else does, for no one’s ever been there.”
“It’ll be all right,” said Billsky again. “I’ll go on after him, and forgive him, and bring him back.”
He started out to do it, taking one of Rad’s burros, which were fresher than his; and bound he’d come up with Rad this time.
I don’t rightly know what happened there, beyond the last water. One thing, I never been there. I gather Billsky just pushed on as usual, following Rad’s tracks. He followed ’em easy: the only footsteps within a hundred miles or so! As he went he sang “Glory for Me,” because he was going to be able to forgive Rad at last.
The big bird in the sky, he swung off from the water-hole and followed Billsky. There was just them two moving things for him to see: Radway on ahead, mad to get away from Billsky, and old Billsky, mad to forgive him, and singing the glory song.
Billsky couldn’t tell me much about this part of it. He just went on, and on, and on.Sometimes, he said, there were stars. The place was so still he began to think he could hear ’em shine: a sort of fizzing, like an arc-light, which, of course, he knew to be foolishness. Sometimes there was just the sun, a great fire, like as if it were fastened to the earth and burning all the life out of it. There were the rocks, of course, but he didn’t remember them much: only one great black cleft, and a glimmer in the walls of it. The glimmer was gold-veined turquoise, just sticking out o’ that cliff so you could have pried it loose with a toothpick. Billsky couldn’t tell you where it was if you paid him. He wasn’t thinking of anything but forgiving Rad.
Then, with a noise, he says, like a roll of rifle-fire, that big bird dropped out of heaven like a stone, and shot past him, and settled just ahead. There was a dead burro there, and an empty water can. But Radway, he’d gone on. Billsky went after him, singing powerful; but his voice didn’t make much noise.
Then there was a little crack ahead. Something sang past Billsky, and flipped a tiny flake off of the side of the cañon. Billsky stopped and looked at the flake lying at his feet, just as pretty as a pink rose-leaf. He knew a bullet had chipped it off, and that he’d come within shooting length of Radway. He let out a yell of joy. “It’s me, Rad!” he yelled. “I’m comin’ to forgive you!” But Radway didn’t stop. He went on, as if he was mad; and behind him came the man that was killin’ him: the man that only wanted to forgive him.
There were more shots. Billsky said Rad fired at him all that afternoon, but owing to the refraction, he wasn’t hit once. Besides, Rad wasbreaking up. Once your nerve goes, you break up quick in the Altanero.
It was evening when Billsky came up with him.
You know evening on the Altanero? The sun’s down on the edge of things, as big as a burning house. All the rocks turn clear as glass for a minute. It’s as if the light went clean through them, and came out colored with their colors: rose, violet, gold. The air you breathe glows. The rosy-red cañon Billsky was in ended sudden in a wall that hit the sky. The sunset touched it, and it became like a veil, says Billsky, a blood-red curtain hung from earth to heaven. At the foot of it lay Bad Radway.
Billsky ran at him, trying to yell. He had his water flask ready. All day he’d been saving water to give to Radway, but he was too late. Rad just looked at him; and all that had been inside him: all the remorse, the guilt, the black fear, the unknown damage of the soul that first drove him to be scared of Billsky, came out in that look.
It struck Billsky to the heart. “Rad, Rad,” he said, “don’t you be scared o’ me! I forgive you, Rad!” he said.
But Bad Radway didn’t hear. He was dead.
Billsky had done his part, but he was all broke up. He got back to the water-hole somehow, after burying Rad at the foot of the cliff. He and the other man that had been Rad’s partner lit out for home right away. They’d had enough of the Altanero.
When I last saw Billsky, he was terrible hurt and grieved because the other man held him to blame for what had happened to Radway. “He seems to think,” said Billsky to me, “that I donesomething to him! Me that follered him all that way just to forgive him! He seems to think, that guy does, that I done something!”
Then, in a puzzled, exasperated kind of way, he laughed. “But come to think of it,” said Billsky, “it was funny.”
Well, as I said before, religion’s a queer thing to handle; but I don’t see anything funny in it.
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall.
A little girl came rushing into the gate of the vicarage at Postbridge, Dartmoor, and it chanced that she met the minister himself as he bent in his garden and scattered lime around upspringing seeds.
“These slugs would try the patience of a saint,” he said, hearing footsteps, and not looking up. “They have eaten off nearly all my young larkspurs. How can one fight them?”
Then a small, breathless voice broke in upon him.
“Please, sir, mother sent me, an’ I’ve runned a’most all the way from our cottage wi’out stopping once. ’Tis old Mr. Mundy, please. He’m dying—so he told mother when her fetched him his milk this morning—an’ he says he’ve got something very special to tell anybody as’ll care to come an’ listen to it. But nobody don’t want to hear his secrets in the village; so mother said ’twas your job, please, an’ sent me for your honor.”
“My job—yes, so it is, little maid. I’ll come at once. An’ they’d better send for the doctor. It isn’t his regular visiting day until Thursday, but probably it’s his job, too.”
“Mother axed the old man that; an’ he said as he didn’t want no doctor, nor his traade [medicine] neither. He says h’m nearly a hundred years old, an’ he won’t be messed about with at his time of life, but just die easy an’ comfortable.”
In twenty minutes the clergyman had walked a mile and crossed a strip of the wilderness that stretched round about the little hamlet on Dartmoor where he labored. A single cottage separated from the rest by wide tracts of furze and heather stood here, and near it lay a neglected garden. But “Gaffer” Mundy had long ceased to fight the moor or care for his plot of land. His patch of the reclaimed earth returned fast to primitive savagery. Brake fern sprouted in the potato bed; rush, heather and briar choked the currant bushes; fearless rabbits nibbled every green thing.
“Come in, whoever you may be,” said an ancient voice. So the visitor obeyed and entered, to find the sufferer, fully dressed, sitting by a fire of peat. Noah Mundy was once very tall, but now his height had vanished and he had been long bent under his burden of years. A bald, yellow skull rose above his countenance, and infinite age marked his face. As the earth through centuries of cooling has wrinkled into mountains and flattened into ocean beds between them, so these aged features, stamped and torn with the fret and fever of long life, had become as a book whereon time had written many things for those who could read them. Very weak was the man, and very thin. He was toothless and almost hairless; the scanty beard that fell from his chin was white, while his mustache had long been dyed with snuff to a lively yellow. His eyes remained alive, though one was filmed over with an opaline haze. But from the other he saw clearly enough for all his needs. He made it a boast that he could not write, and he could not read. There was no book in his house.
“’Tis you, eh? I could have wished for a manout of your trade, but it won’t matter. I’ve got a thing worth telling; but mark this, I don’t care a button what you think of it, an’ I don’t want none of your bunkum an’ lies after I have told it. Sit down in that thicky chair an’ smoke your pipe an’ keep cool. Ban’t no use getting excited now, for what I be going to tell ’e happened more’n sixty years ago—afore you was born or thought about.”
“My smoke won’t trouble you?”
“Bah! I’ve smoked and chewed an’ snuffed for more’n half a century. I’m baccy through and through—soaked in it, as you might say. An’ as for smoke, if what you tell to church be true, I shall have smoke, an’ fire too, afore long. But hell’s only a joke to frighten females. I don’t set no store by it.”
“Better leave that, Mr. Mundy. If you really believe your end is near, let us be serious. Yes, I’ll smoke my pipe. And you must feel very, very sure, that what you tell me is absolutely sacred, unless you wish it otherwise.”
“Nought sacred about it, I reckon—all t’ other way. An’ as for telling, you can go an’ shout it from top of Bellever Tor you’m minded to. I don’t care a farden curse who knows it now. Wait till I’m out of it; then do as you please.”
He drank a little milk, remained silent a moment with his eyes upon the fire, and presently began to tell his life’s strange tale.
“Me an’ my brother was the only children our parents ever had; an’ my brother was five years older’n me. My father, Jonas Mundy, got money through a will, an’ he brought it to Dartymoor, like a fool, an’ rented a bit of moor from the Duchy of Cornwall, an’ built a farm upon it, an’set to work to reclaim the land. At first he prospered, an’ Aller Bottom Farm, as my father called it, was a promising place, so long as sweat of man poured out there without ceasing. You can see the ruins of it yet, for when Jonas Mundy died an’ it falled to me, I left it an’ comed up here; an the chap as took it off my hands—he went bankrupt inside three year. ’Tis all falled to pieces now, for none tried again.
“But that’s to overrun the matter. When I was fifteen an’ my brother, John James, was twenty, us both failed in love with the same maid. You stare; but though fifteen in years, I was twenty-five in understanding, an’ a very oncoming youth where women were concerned. Nelly Baker had turned seventeen, an’ more than once I told her that though a boy of fifteen couldn’t wed a maid of her age without making folks laugh, even if he could get a parson to hitch them, yet a chap of three-an’-twenty might very properly take a girl of five-an’-twenty without the deed calling for any question. An’ her loved me truly enough; for though you only see a worn-out scarecrow afore you now, yet seventy year agone I filled the eye of more maidens than one, and was a bowerly youth to look upon—tall, straight, tough, wi’ hair so black as a crow.
“John James he never knowed that I cared a button for Nelly. I never showed it to a living soul but her by word or look; an’ she kept quiet—for fear of being laughed at, no doubt. Her folks were dead on the match with John James, an’ he pressed her so hard that she’d have took him but for me. He was a pretty fellow too—the Mundys were very personable as a family. Quite different, though, from me. Fair polled, wi’ flaxen hair, anterrible strong was John James, an’ the best wrastler on Dartymoor in them days.
“Me an’ her met by appointment a week afore she’d got to give him a final ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I mind it very well to this hour; an’ yet ’tis seventy-odd years agone. On Hartland Tor us sat in the heather unseen, an’ I put my arms around her an’ loved her, an’ promised to make her a happy woman. Then I told her what she’d got to do. First I made her prick her finger wi’ a thorn of the furze, an’ draw blood, an’ swear afore the Living God she’d marry me as soon as I could make her mistress of a farm.
“She was for joking about the matter at first, but I soon forced her to grow serious. She done what I told her, an’ since she believed in the Living God, I reckoned her oath would bind her fast enough. As for me, I laughed out of sight, for I never believed in nothing but myself—not even when I was a boy under twenty years old. Next I bade her fall out with John James. I put words in her mouth to say to him. ‘I know the fashion of man he be—short an’ fiery in his temper,’ I told her. ‘Be hot an’ quick with him. Tell him he’s not your sort, an’ never will be—quarrel with his color, if you like. Tell him he’m too pink an’ white for ’e. Say ’tis enough that your own eyes be blue, an’ that you’d never wed a blue-eyed man. Make him angry—you ban’t a woman if you don’t know how to do that. Then the rest be easy enough. He’ll flare an’ flae like a tar barrel on Guy Fawkes Night. But he’ll trouble you no more, for he’m so proud as Satan.’
“Nelly Baker took in all I said; an’ inside a week she’d dropped my brother. But ’twas whathe done after that startled folks, for without a word to any living soul, he vanished, like the dew of the morning, four-an’-twenty hours after she’d flinged him over. I was the last that seed him. We were working together out ’pon the land; an’ he was sour an’ crusty wi’ his trouble, an’ hadn’t a word to fling at me. Dimpsy light fell, an’ I went in a tool shed to don my jacket an’ go home. ’Twas autumn, an’ us had been spreading manure upon the meadow.
“‘Be you coming, John James?’ I said.
“‘You go to hell,’ he answered. ‘I’ll come when I’ve a mind to, an’ maybe I won’t come at all!’
“So home I walked wi’out another word; an’ he never comed; an’ nobody ever heard a whisper about him again from that day to this. For a soldier he went, ’twas thought; but the after history of un never reached nobody at Postbridge; an’ whether he was shot or whether he gathered glory in foreign parts none ’pon Dartymoor can tell you.
“A nine days’ wonder it was, an’ it killed my mother; for John James was the apple of her eye. Her never cared a button for me, ’cause I was the living likeness of her brother—my uncle, Silas Bond. They sent him to Botany Bay for burning down wheat stacks. A bad lot he was, no doubt; an’ a fool to boot, which is worse. For he got catched an’ punished. An’ he deserved all he got—for letting ’em catch him.
“With John James out of the way, I comed to be a bit more important in the house, an’ when my mother died, father got to trust me with his money. I was old for my years, you see. As for Nelly, she kept so true to me as the bird to her nest—forfive years; an’ then I’d got to be twenty, an’ had saved over three hundred pound for her; an’ she was twenty-two. A good many chaps wanted to marry her; but she kept our secret close, an’ said ‘nay’ to some very snug men, an’ just waited for me an’ Aller Bottom Farm.
“Then, when I’d reckoned to name the day an’ take her so soon as I comed of age, Oliver Honeywell turned up from down country an’ rented that old tenement farm what be called Merripit. So good land as any ’pon all Dartymoor goes with it. An’ he comed wi’ a flourish of trumpets an’ plenty of money. He was going to larn us all how to farm, an’ how to make money ’pon weekdays, an’ how to get to heaven Sundays.
“Rot the devil! I see him now—a smug, sleek, fat, handsome, prosperous man, with the insolence of a spoilt cat! He’d preach in the open air of a Sunday, for there was no parson nor church here in them days. Strong as a horse,—a, very practical man,—always right. Did plenty of good, as the saying goes, an’ went about like a procession, as if he expected angels from heaven to be waiting for him at every street corner with a golden crown. His right hand was generous, but he took very good care his left hand knowed it. He didn’t do his good in secret, nor yet hide his light under a bushel.
“He was a black-haired man, wi’ scholarship an’ money behind him. He knew the better-most folk. They called upon him, I believe, an’ axed him to their houses, it was said. He hunted, and paid money to help three different packs o’ hounds. An old mother kept house for him. He tried to patronize the whole of Postbridge an’ play the squire an’ vicar rolled into one. Men as owed himnought an’ thanked him for nought pulled their hair to him. But there be some fools who will always touch their hats to a pair o’ horses. There comed to be an idea in people’s minds that Honeywell was a Godsend, though if you axed them why, they generally couldn’t tell you.
“An’ my Nelly falled in love with him.
“At least she said so; though Heaven knows that the pompous fool, for all his fine linen, weren’t a patch on what I was at twenty-one. Anyway, he comed courting her, for ’twas not known yet that me an’ Nelly was more’n friends; an’ then when he heard how we had been secretly tokened for no less than six years, he comed to see me with a long-winded lie in his mouth. An’ the lie was larded wi’ texts from scripture. Nelly Baker had misunderstood her feelings about me, he said; her had never knowed what true love was till she met him; an’ he hoped I’d behave as honestly as he had—an’ all the rest of it. In fact, she’d throwed me over for him an’ his money an’ his high position; an’ he comed to let me down gently with bits from the Bible. As for her, she always lusted after money and property.
“Us fought hand to hand, for I flew at him, man, like a dog, an’ I’d have strangled him an’ tored the liver out of him, but some chaps heard him howling an’ runned along, an’ pulled me off his throat in time.
“He didn’t have the law of me; but Nelly Baker kept out of my way afterwards, like as if I was the plague; an’ then six months passed an’ they was axed out in marriage so grand as you please at Widecombe Church.
“I only seed her once more; but after lying inwait for her, weeks an’ weeks, like a fox for a rabbit, it chanced at last that I met her one evening going home across the moor above Aller Bottom Farm ’pon the edge of the last of our fields. Then us had a bit of a tell. ’Twas only a fortnight afore she was going to marry Mr. Oliver Honeywell.
“I axed her to change her mind; I spoke to her so gentle as a dove croons; but she was ice all through—cold an’ hard an’ wicked to me. Then I growed savage. I noticed how mincing her’d growed in her speech since Honeywell had took her up. She was changed from a good Devon maid into a town miss, full o’ airs an’ graces that made me sick to see. He’d poisoned her.
“‘Do try an’ be sensible,’ she said. ‘We were silly children all them years, you know, Mr. Mundy. You’ll find somebody much better suited to you than I am—really you will. Have you ever thought of Mary Reep, now? She’s prettier than I am—I am sure she is.’
“Her named the darter of William Reep, a common laborer as worked on Honeywell’s farm at ten shilling a week. The devil in me broke loose, an’ quite right too.
“‘We’ve gone up in the world of late then? ’Twas always your hope and prayer to come by a bit of property. But ’tis a coorious thing,’ I said. ‘Do you know that you’m standing just where my brother, John James, stood last time ever he was seed by mortal eyes?’
“‘What’s that to me?’ she said. ‘Let me go by, please, Mr. Mundy. I’m late, as it is.’
“‘He was never seed again,’ I told her. ‘’Tis a coorious thing to me, as you be stand’—on the same spot at the same time—just as he did, in thefirst shadow of night. His going, you see, made me my father’s heir, an’ rich enough to give you a good home some day.’
“Then her growed a thought pale an’ tried to pass me.
“I went home presently; but from that hour Nelly Baker was seen no more. None ever knowed I’d been the last to speak with her; an’ none ever pitied me. But there was a rare fuss made over Oliver Honeywell. He wore black for her; an’ lived a bachelor for five year. Then he married a widow; but not till his mother died.
“An’ that’s the story I thought would interest some folks.”
The minister tapped his pipe on the hob, and knocked the ashes out. He cleared his throat and spoke. He had learned nothing that was new to him.
“It is a strange story indeed, Mr. Mundy, and I am interested to have heard it from your own lips. Rumor has not lied, for once. The tale, as you tell it, is substantially the same that has been handed down in this village for two generations. But no one knows that you were the last to see Nelly Baker. Did you ever guess what happened?”
The old man smiled, and showed his empty gums.
“No—I didn’t guess, because I knowed very well without guessing,” he said. “All the same I should have thought that you, with your mighty fine knowledge of human nature, would have guessed very quick. ’Twas I killed my brother—broke in the back of his head wi’ a pickax when he was down on one knee tying his bootlace. An’ me only fifteen year old! An’ I killed NellyBaker—how, it don’t matter. You’ll find the dust of ’em side by side in one of them old ‘money pits’ ’pon Bellever Tor. ’Tis a place that looks due east, an’ there’s a ring of stones a hundred yards away from it. The ‘old men’ buried their dead there once, I’ve heard tell. Break down a gert flat slab o’ granite alongside a white thorn tree, an’ you’ll find what’s left of ’em in a deep hole behind. So she never comed by any property after all.”
The ancient sinner’s head fell forward, but his eyes were still open.
“Good God! After all these years! Man, man, make your peace! Confess your awful crime!” cried the clergyman.
The other answered:
“None of that—none of that rot! I’d do the same this minute; an’ if there was anything that comed after—if I meet that damned witch in hell tomorrow I’d kill her over again, if her still had a body I could shake the life out of. Now get you gone, an’ let me pass in peace.”
The reverend gentleman departed at his best speed, but presently returned, bringing soups and cordials. With him there came a cottage woman who performed services for the sick. But when Mrs. Badger saw Noah Mundy, she knew that little remained to do.
“He’s gone,” she said, “soft an’ sweet as a baby falls to sleep. Some soap an’ water an’ a coffin be all he wants now, your honor; not this here beautiful broth, nor brandy neither. So you had best go back along, Sir, an’ send Old Mother Dawe up to help me, if you please.”
Eden Phillpotts.
The child Cecily waited until her brother had made a bridge from a fallen bough, and then clasping her adorably grubby hands about his neck allowed him to carry her across the stream.
“Which way, little sister?” he asked.
A dragon-fly hovered above the water and then darted away, and Cecily with a vague idea of following it chose a sunken path that almost traced the brook in its course. It was a silent little stream running through the sleepy meadows, and where it widened among the pond lilies it almost stopped. Here and there it eddied self-consciously about the yellow flowers and further on it almost rippled in shy haste. And in the golden afternoon Cecily knew that the boy, so clever at building bridges, so capable in the midst of barbed wire, and above all, so kind to her, was wonderful beyond all telling.