Drawn by Oliver HerfordA CLEAN SHAVE
Drawn by Oliver Herford
Drawn by Oliver Herford
BY GRACE MAC GOWAN COOKE
Author of “Mistress Joy,” “The Machinations of Ocoee Gallantine,” etc., etc.
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY F. E. SCHOONOVER
THERE was a storm brewing. The sun had gone down in splendor over Big Bald; heat lightnings laced the primrose of its afterglow. Now the air trembled to a presage of thunder; the world panted for its outburst of elemental rage.
The camp-meeting was in a brush arbor; the dry leaves on the boughs with which it was roofed rustled faintly when breathings of the coming tempest whispered across the highlands. The congregation, seated on backless puncheon benches, seemed to crouch beneath the uncertain illumination of a few torches and lanterns. Protracted meetings in the mountains are always held in midsummer, when the crops are laid by, so that perhaps the rising generation comes to associate their souls’ salvation and hot, breathless nights like this. Fleeing from the wrath to come no doubt gets hopelessly mixed in some minds with running for adequate shelter from the sudden passionate thunder-storms of the season.
There were six exhorters at work, swaying on their feet, shouting, two of them singing, the mourners’ bench partly filled, a promising tremor of excitement abroad in that portion of the congregation which had not yet come forward or risen for prayer—and the shower was almost upon them.
Vesta Turrentine, who always came up from the riverside store kept by her widower father at Turrentine’s Landing to stay with her Aunt Miranda during protracted meetings, had withdrawn to the end of a bench, where she sat with bowed head, watchful, agonizedly alert, letting her attitude pass for that of a penitent, hoping to be undisturbed. She was a slim, finely built young creature, already past the mere adolescence at which the mountain girl is apt to seek a mate. As she sat, chin on hand, dark eyes staring straight forward, her salient profile, a delicate feminine replica of old Jabe Turrentine’s own eagle outlines, relieved againstthe lights of the meeting, a man who crawled through the bushes found her very good to look upon. So absorbed was he in staring at her that he did not notice another man, deeper in shadow, who stared at him. Careless of observation, certain that the meeting was fully occupied with itself, Ross Adene, the first man, crept forward to the girl’s knee, touched it, laid his yellow head against it with a murmured greeting.
Drawn by F. E. SchoonoverHalf-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill“HE WORKED WITH THE AIR OF A MAN WHO HAS COME AT LAST TO SOME DECISION, TURNED TO REACH FOR THE TOWEL—AND LOOKED INTO THE MUZZLE OF HIS OWN GUN, WITH HIS DAUGHTER’S RESOLUTE EYES BEHIND IT” (SEEPAGE 69)
Drawn by F. E. SchoonoverHalf-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill
“HE WORKED WITH THE AIR OF A MAN WHO HAS COME AT LAST TO SOME DECISION, TURNED TO REACH FOR THE TOWEL—AND LOOKED INTO THE MUZZLE OF HIS OWN GUN, WITH HIS DAUGHTER’S RESOLUTE EYES BEHIND IT” (SEEPAGE 69)
“Ross?” The whisper was strangled by terror; her hand went down against his hair, spread protectingly to conceal its shine.
“Who did you reckon it was?” whispered the young fellow. “Anybody else hangin’ round hidin’ to get sight of ye and a chance to speak with ye?”
“Didn’t you get my word?” Vesta breathed. “Pappy’s on the mounting—unless’n the storm’s turned him back.”
“I reckon it has,” Ross answered, settling himself comfortably in the deep shadow beside her. “It’s shore goin’ to be a big one.”
As he spoke there was an instant’s breathless hush of the voices in the meeting, a dying down of the lights. It was followed by a white flash so blinding, so all-enveloping, that in it one could see nothing. Close after came a crash which seemed to rend earth and menace heaven. The young fellow leaped to his feet, regardless of all concealment, pulling the girl up beside him, flinging an arm about her. After that lightning-flash the torches and lanterns seemed darkness. Women were screaming, mothers calling to their children, men shouting hoarsely, and running toward plunging teams hitched in the grove.
It would have seemed that in such confusion even the rashest intruder might go unchallenged, unrecognized, yet Vesta pushed her companion from her and into the shadow again before she looked around for her people. Her Aunt Miranda was puffing ponderously down the aisle toward a shrieking infant which had awakened from its nap on a back bench.
“Aunt ’Randy,” Vesta called, “I’m goin’ home with—somebody. I’m all right. I’ll be thar afore ye.”
She could see Mrs. Minter’s lips shape themselves to some words which her vigorously nodded head suggested were those of assent. She dipped into the dark; Ross swept his sweetheart up on a capable arm, and they set off running down the wood path which led across the fields to the Minter place.
The noises of the meeting behind them diminished as they ran. Other people were hurrying through the forest, calling, assuring themselves of the whereabouts and safety of members of their parties. Here and there lanterns or torches flickered.
“Hadn’t we better go through the bushes?” panted the girl. “Somebody’s apt to see ye—an’ then—”
“No,” returned Adene, half lifting her along; “nobody’ll take notice in a storm like this; an’ if they should, I’m about tired of dodgin’. We got to marry sometime, girl. How about then? Yer pappy’ll know then, won’t he?”
Thereafter they ran in silence. Twice the lightning illuminated their way, diminishing peals of thunder following. It was after the second of these that a shot rang out, startling Vesta so that she clung to Ross’s arm and screamed. The young fellow made the usual dry comment of the mountain-born, “They’s a man standin’ somewhars right now with an empty gun in his hand.” Then they fled breathlessly under the cover of a projecting ledge in the small bluff among the bushes which had been Adene’s objective point. The heavens opened, and the floods descended.
There is something cozy and delightful about standing sheltered and dry, while the whole world falls down in rain, the elements themselves seeking all in vain to reach and destroy you. Vesta put out a hand to let the great drops strike on it, pushing back her hair and lifting her face to the keen, sweet coolness of the downpour.
“Don’t you love it?” she asked again and again. “Hit ’minds me of playin’ when I was a child, and just goin’ crazy hollerin’ ‘Rain flag’ when hit come down this a-way.”
“You an’ me used to play that together,” Ross reminded her. “That was in the days before your dad took up the feud again.”
At this the girl turned and clutched him.
“Oh, Ross, I sent ye word not to come to-night,” she said, “but I wanted to seeye an’ warn ye, too. Pappy’s actin’ quare. He’s bound I shall marry.”
“Well, so ’m I,” assented Ross, half humorously. “Him an’ me won’t fall out over that.”
“Don’t make a joke of it,” said Vesta. “Hit’s as much as your life’s worth, an’ you know it. Hit’s as much as your life’s worth to be here to-night. We ort never to meet again.”
She added the concluding words in a lower tone not intended, perhaps, for her lover’s ears.
“Has he picked out a man for ye?” The young fellow returned to what she had first said.
“U-m—h-m,” assented Vesta, reluctantly.
“Who?”
“Sam Beath.” She spoke very low.
“Sam Beath.” The young fellow repeated her words louder. “That feller that come up from the Far Cove neighborhood to stay in the store?”
“Pappy don’t like him—for me—so very well,” Vesta faltered, “but he’s kin to kin of ourn, an’—you know, he’ll keep up the feud. Pappy says I’m gittin’ awful old; an’—”
“If what he wants is to see his gal married, you an’ me’ll wed to-morrow night after meetin’,” Ross declared.
Vesta laid hold of the lapels of his coat. She even slipped an arm about his neck in entreaty, a tremendous demonstration for a mountain girl, who feels that she must always be in the shy, reluctant attitude of one who is besought, whose scruples are overcome.
“Ross, I know ye don’t mean it, honey, but, oh, for any sakes! walk careful! Three years you an’ me has been promised to each other, a-meetin’ wherever we could, me scared to death for ye all the time; but pappy ain’t never found it out. Ross, give me yo’ word that you’ll be careful.”
A fleeting glow showed Adene his sweetheart’s pale, entreating face, and then came darkness and the steady drumming of the rain on the leaves.
“You an’ me are a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night after meetin’ at Brush Arbor,” he repeated doggedly. And Vesta, used to the men of her world, with whom action follows the word swiftly, if it does not precede, began to cry, leaning weakly against his shoulder.
“Ross, I’ll run away with ye, I’ll go anywhars you say. I’ll work my fingers to the bone for you. I’ll never look on the face of my kin again—for your sake.”
In her pleading she raised her voice until it was almost a cry. The storm had died down; the lisp of falling water scarcely blurred the sound of their words.
“Not for my sake you won’t,” returned her lover, sturdily, putting a strong arm about her, bending to cup her cheek in his hand. “Why, I like your daddy fine. I picked him out for a father-in-law same’s I picked you out for a wife. I ain’t never had any dad of my own to look to. Yourn suits me. I’ll make friends with him.”
“And why ain’t you got no father?” inquired Vesta, tragically. “’Ca’se my uncle shot him down when you was a baby in your mother’s lap—and there all the trouble began.”
“Hit’s a long time ago,” said Ross, philosophically. “I ain’t bearin’ any grudge till yet. I reckon if your uncle hadn’t ’a’ got my father, my father’d ’a’ got him. I aim to marry ye, here in Brush Arbor meetin’, an’ make friends with your daddy an’ put an end to the feud.”
As a spectacular conclusion to the storm, and apparently to Ross’s speech as well, there blazed through the woods a sudden greenish-white radiance of lightning. It flickered on the wet leaves, giving them a phosphorescent glow; it lit with an infernal illumination a face peering between those leaves, looking squarely into Adene’s own—a dark face, full of the strong beauty of age and courage, vivid yet with the zest of life. The young fellow’s hand went up to cover Vesta’s eyes, to press her head in against his breast.
“What is it?” she breathed.
“You said you was scared of lightning,” Ross answered close to her ear, as the thunder reverberated through a darkened, wet world.
Evidently she had not seen. Certainly he would not tell her. As the detonations died down, he stood rigid, waiting for the bolt of death, weighing with instant clearness the chance of whether old Jabe would kill only him, or slay as well the daughter who had proved treacherous.
Nothing came. A light wind sprang up and set drops pattering down from the boughs. The storm-clouds were rent,torn, scattered, rolling sullenly away to the north. A few drowned stars began to make the sky lighter.
All at once, as he waited for the death that came not, Ross remembered the shot they had heard as they ran through the woods. That was Jabe Turrentine’s gun. Turrentine had been the man standing with an empty weapon, without another cartridge to reload. When he was certain of this, Adene felt momentarily safe. The old panther had missed his spring; he would not try again to-night. Ross laughed a little softly to himself as he imagined Jabe skulking quietly between the dripping trees to the horse that must be tied somewhere near the timber’s edge, getting on the animal and riding down the river road to his store. Yes, that’s what the old man would do. And, after that, Ross Adene knew that the next move in the game was his.
“I reckon I’d better take you on home,” he said at length. “If we’re a-goin’ to be married to-morrow night, I’ve got some sev-rul things to do.”
Hand in hand they went through the drenched leafage, speaking low, Vesta trying feebly to remonstrate. When they came to where the lighted windows of the Minter cabin made squares of ruddy light in the blue-black darkness, Ross said his farewells.
“You put on whatever frock it is you want to be married in to-morrow night and go to meetin’,” he concluded. “For wedded we’ll shorely be at Brush Arbor church. I’ll speak to the preacher, an’ mebby your daddy’ll come to the weddin’ hisself.”
Vesta wept. She kissed her lover farewell as we bid good-by to the dead. In the dim radiance streaming out from the dwelling she watched his rain-gemmed, yellow head as he walked away, hat in hand, shoulders squared, moving proudly.
“O Lord,” she sighed to herself, “why can’t men persons take things like women does—a few ill words and no harm done?”
The night sky refusing answer, she went silently in and to bed.
NEXTmorning Ross Adene put his house in order, as might a man on the eve of a duel. His day was busily spent. He notified the revivalist who was conducting meetings at Brush Arbor church of an intention to wed Vesta Turrentine directly after sermon that night, and, late in the afternoon, took his dugout canoe and dropped thoughtfully down the river toward Turrentine’s Landing. There was money in his pocket, but no weapon on him. He had not traveled the road, for he knew that even in daylight some wayside clump of trees might hide an ambush. He put his canoe into the current, crossed the stream, going down the farther bank, out of rifle-shot of the leaning willows that dipped long, green tresses to the water, offering a veil for a possible foe. When he was opposite the landing he came squarely across, his eyes searching the prospect ahead.
There was nobody about as he beached his boat, pulling it well up out of reach of the current, and walked deliberately toward the store. The landing had no village, the only buildings being the store, Turrentine’s dwelling, and barns. He approached the former by the front way, and stopped in the door, offering a glorious target to any hostile person who might be within; for he stood six feet tall and broad-shouldered against the westering light. The interior of the room was at first obscure to him, but almost immediately he made out old Jabe behind the counter and Sam Beath sitting humped in a chair at the back of the store.
For a moment no word was spoken. There was no exclamation, though there was a mental shock of encounter, evinced by not so much as the tremor of an eye upon the part of either of the principals. Beath it was who glanced stealthily toward the corner where Turrentine’s loaded rifle stood.
“Howdy,” said Ross in the even, musical monotone of his people.
“Howdy,” responded old Jabe’s deep bass.
Beath did not speak. Ross remained in the doorway until he considered that he had given quite sufficient opportunity for any gentleman who desired to pick a vital spot in his frame. When he felt he had been amply generous in this way, he came stepping slowly into the building, walked to the counter, and laid his empty hands upon it.
“And what can I do for you to-day?” inquired old Jabe with a sardonic exaggeration of the shopkeeper’s manner.
“I want to buy me a right good suit of clothes,” returned Ross, mildly.
The man in the back of the store, staring at the two, began to wonder when old Jabe would take advantage of the opening offered him.
“Err-um,” grunted Turrentine. “Somethin’ to be buried in—eh?”
“Well—no,” demurred the customer, amiably. “Somethin’ to be married in. A weddin’ suit is what I’m a-seekin’.”
Beath’s eyes went without any volition of his own to a bolt of fine white muslin on the shelf. From that Vesta had chosen a dress pattern the day her father bade him ask her in marriage. His proposal had been bafflingly received, but she had chosen the dress and taken it with her to her Aunt Miranda’s to finish.
Meantime, as though his customer had been any mountain man of the district, the storekeeper calmly estimated Ross’s height and breadth, turned to his shelves, and pulled down a suit. The two immersed themselves in a discussion of fabric and cut. The assistant, used to old Jabe’s browbeating, could scarcely believe his eyes as he noted the glances of approval his employer gave to the goodly proportions he was fitting. Beath’s ears seemed to him equally unreliable when Turrentine, a big man himself, remarked with apparent geniality on the chance of a wrestling-bout between them.
“I ain’t backin’ off,” responded Adene, “but I’d ruther stand up to you when I didn’t have somethin’ else on hand.”
“Aw, I’m gittin’ old,” said Turrentine, deprecatingly. “Time was when you might have said such of me; but I’m gittin’ old.”
The blue eyes of the younger man looked ingenuously into the face so like Vesta’s.
“Well, we’re all gettin’ older day by day,” Ross allowed, “but yet you don’t look as though you was losin’ your stren’th, an’ that’s a fact.”
Turrentine folded the suit and laid it on the counter.
“I think them clothes’ll fit ye,” he said. “An’ I’ll th’ow in this hyer necktie you looked at. I always th’ow in a necktie with a suit. That all?”
“Well—no,” Ross repeated his phrase. “I want to buy the best razor you’ve got in the shop.”
With a sudden movement that might have been excitement or even rage, Sam Beath took off his hat and cast it on the floor beside his chair. Turrentine bent down to get from under the counter a tray of razors, setting it on the boards and inviting his customer’s attention. Beath could scarcely bear to look at the two men facing each other across these bits of duplicated and reduplicated death, so tremendously did the juxtaposition excite him. He felt as he had sometimes on the hunting trail when the kill was imminent—as though he must cry out. Jabe and Ross were oblivious, trying, choosing, drawing their thumbs lightly over edges.
“I believe I like that un,” Ross said finally. “What say?”
“You’ve got a good eye for a blade,” old Jabe agreed, taking the razor in his fingers. “That thar’s by far the best un in the lot.” He opened and held it up, so that a stray gleam of sun winked wickedly upon the steel. “You could cut a man’s head off with that, slick an’ clean, ef ye had luck strikin’ a j’int—an’ I allersdohave luck.”
“I wasn’t aimin’ to put it to no such use,” Ross commented gently. “An’ yit, when you’re a-buyin’ a tool, hit’s but reasonable to know what its cay-pacities may be. I’ll take that un.”
“Now—is that all?” Jabe put his query with the half-smile of a man who might easily suggest something else. He laid the razor with the other purchases.
“Is it honed, ready to use?” inquired Ross.
“Why, yes,” agreed old Jabe in a slightly puzzled tone. “A few licks on a strop or your boot-laig’ll make it all right.”
Ross was rubbing a rough cheek with thoughtful fingers, looking sidewise at the storekeeper.
“I’m a-goin’ to git married to-night,” he murmured. “Looks like I need a clean shave. They tell me you’re a master hand at shavin’ folks. Will ye shave me?”
Beath’s chair dropped forward with a slam, but neither of the men started or turned. The black eyes burned deep into the blue; the blue were unfathomable. Behind a mask of primitive civility the two men interrogated savagely each other’s motives. Jabe was the first to speak.
“Why, shorely, shorely,” he said withwhat seemed to Beath ominous relish. “Set down on that thar cheer that’s got a high back to it, so’s you can lean yo’ head right. Sam,”—Beath leaped as though he had been struck,—“bring me the wash-pan an’ soap an’ a towel. I’ll git the lather-brush.”
Beath finally arrived with the required articles. His shaking hand had spilled half the water from the basin; his eyes gloated. He put the things down on a box and retired once more to his chair, seating himself with the air of a man at a play.
Ross leaned back, found a comfortable rest for his head, and closed his eyes. The strong, brown young throat exposed by the turned-down collar of his shirt fascinated Beath so that he could not look away from it.
Jabe took the towel and put it about his customer’s neck with expert fingers. As he did so, Beath’s hand began to play about his own throat, and there was a click as it nervously contracted. Turrentine dipped his brush in the water and whirled it on the soap-cake, lathering Ross’s face silently and with a preoccupied manner. Beath’s glance flickered from the man in the chair to the man who worked over him. When Jabe took up the razor, passed it once or twice across the strop and approached it to Ross’s cheek, Beath swallowed so noisily that the sound of it was loud in the silent room.
Suavely—the old man was grace itself—the operation of shaving the bridegroom was begun. Placidly it progressed, with a murmured word between the two men, the deft turning of the inert head by the amateur barber, an occasional deep-toned request.
Yet always the onlooker shook with anticipation of the sweep of old Jabe’s arm which must come. Continually Beath figured to himself the sudden jetting out of crimson from that artery in the neck that was beating evenly and calmly under old Jabe’s touch. Perhaps the end might have arrived then and there, and swiftly, had those fingers felt the swell of excitement in the blood of a possible victim. But Ross had closed his eyes and seemed to be dozing. Jabe made an excellent job of it.
“Thar—I believe that’s about all you need,” he remarked at length.
The low sun came through the door between piles of calico, heaps of ax-handles, and glinted on Adene’s yellow head. Suddenly Beath felt the light for a moment obscured. He glanced up to see a woman’s figure, black against the glow, yet unmistakable in its slim alertness, and clothed, as his eye accustomed to fabrics told him, in the white muslin he had believed to be selected for a wedding-dress. Neither old Jabe nor his customer appeared to mark as Vesta Turrentine slipped like a shadow through the doorway and stole to the corner where her father’s rifle stood. Sam watched as she lifted the weapon in practised fingers. His mouth was open, but he did not cry out.
Ross unclosed his eyes lazily, raised his thumb to his cheek, close by the ear, very near indeed to the great veins and arteries Beath had looked to see the razor sever.
“Ain’t they a rough place right thar?” he inquired with a half-smile.
The ultimate spark of daring was in the eyes that gazed up into those of the man Ross had chosen for a father-in-law. Old Jabe, with a portentously solemn face, muttered an assent, dabbed the lather on, and made a pass with his razor.
“U-m-m—looks like they was a little more to do in that direction. Maybe I ain’t quite finished ye up yit,” the old man’s voice had a lilt of laughter in it, and it seemed that the end had surely arrived. Turrentine’s devil was always a laughing fiend. He worked with the air of a man who has come at last to some decision, turned to reach for the towel—and looked into the muzzle of his own gun, with his daughter’s resolute eyes behind it.
There was no start, no outcry; the old fellow only stood, scowling, formidable, checked midway in some spectacular vengeance, Beath was sure. The clerk crept, stooping behind the piles of merchandise, toward Vesta.
“Put down that thar razor.”
The girl’s tone had a ring of old Jabe’s own power.
“Ye say,” drawled Jabe, making a jest of a necessity, as he laid the blade on the counter. “What else?”
“You let him walk out o’ that door with me, same as he walked in,” Vesta’s air was resolute, her aim steady.
At the first word Adene had turned hishead merely, showing no disposition to get beyond Jabe’s reach. But in the instant of her demand Beath rose up from behind some boxes, grasped the gun, twisting its barrel upward, and disarming Vesta. Ross sprang toward his sweetheart, hit out at the clerk’s unguarded side, and sent him staggering across the room, to fall sprawling at his employer’s feet. For a long moment while Beath was scrambling to hands and knees, life and death seemed to hang in the balance as old Jabe studied the two opposite; mechanically he had taken the gun Beath thrust into his hand. When Vesta saw it in his grasp, she flung herself upon her lover’s breast, clasping her arms about him, protecting his life with hers.
“Me first,” she screamed. “You’ll have to kill me first.” She waited for the bullet.
Jabe interrogated the pair with remorseless eye; he moved forward a pace, though Sam Beath on all fours thought it was plenty close to shoot. His gun was not raised. Instead, the old man and the young were studying each other once more, speeding messages from eye to eye above Vesta’s bent head. At last Jabe seemed to find that for which he sought. He looked long at the daughter who defied him in words, and her lover who braved him in action. Adene read the look aright.
“You’re bid to the weddin’ at Brush Arbor church, father-in-law,” he said in the tone of one who finds a satisfactory answer to a riddle.
The gun-butt rattled on the puncheon floor.
“Will your dugout hold three?” asked Jabe.
Vesta stirred, but still feared to look up.
“Shore; five, by crowdin’,” came the answer.
The girl raised her head, glanced incredulously from father to lover, and a light of comprehension dawned in her eyes.
“An’ me,” yammered Sam Beath. “What about me?”
“You can keep sto’ or come along to the weddin’, accordin’ to yo’ ruthers,” allowed old Jabe, generously; “ye hearn my son-in-law say his boat would hold five.”
Drawn by Oliver Herford
Drawn by Oliver Herford