'Gid Fletcher,' said the man who had been sitting on the stump—he spoke in an accusing voice—'ye ain't keerin' nuthin' fur the law o' the land, nor the peace o' Big Smoky, nuther. It air jes' that two hundred dollars blood-money ye air cottonin' ter, an' ye knows it.'
The love of money, the root of evil, is so rare in the mountains that the blacksmith stood as before a deep reproof. Then, with a moral hardihood that matched his physical prowess, he asked, 'An' what ef I be?'
'What war I a-tellin' you-uns? Satan's a-stirrin'—Satan's a-stirrin' on the Big Smoky!' interpolated old Hoodendin.
'Waal, I'd never hev been hankerin' fur sech,' drawled the moralist.
A number of other men had come out from the houses, and a discussion ensued as to the best plan to keep the prisoner until morning. It was suggested that the time-honoured expedient in localities without the civilization of a jail—a wagon-body inverted, with a rock upon it—would be as secure as the state prison.
'But who wants ter go ter heftin' rocks?' asked Nathan Hoodendin pertinently.
For the sake of convenience, therefore, they left the prisoner bound with a rope made fast around a stump, that he might not, in his desperation, roll himself from the crag, and deputing a number of the men to watch him by turns, the Settlement retired to its slumbers.
The night wore on; the moon journeyed toward the mountains in the west; the mists rose to meet it, and glistened like a silver sea. Some lonely, undiscovered ocean, this; never a sail set, never a pennant flying; all the valley was submerged; the black summits in the distance were isolated and insular; the moonlight glanced on the sparkling ripples, on the long reaches of illusive vapour.
At intervals cocks crew; a faint response, like farthest echoes, came from some neighbouring cove; and then silence, save for the drone of the nocturnal insects and the far blast of a hunter's horn.
'Jer'miah,' said Rick Tyler suddenly, as the boy crouched by one of the stumps and watched him with dilated, moonlit eyes—when Nathan Hoodendin's vigil came the little factotum served in his stead—'Jer'miah, git my knife out'n the store an' cut these hyar ropes. I'll gin ye my rifle ef ye will.'
The boy sprang up, scudded off swiftly, then came back, and crouched by the stump again.
The moon slipped lower and lower; the silver sea had turned to molten gold; the stars that had journeyed westward with the moon were dying out of a dim blue sky. Over the corn-field in the east was one larger than the rest, burning in an amber haze, charged with an unspoken poetical emotion that set its heart of white fire aquiver.
'I'll gin ye my horse ef ye will.'
'I dassent,' said Jer'miah.
The morning star was burned out at last, and the prosaic day came over the corn-field.
Twilight was slipping down on the Big Smoky. Definiteness was annihilated, and distance a suggestion. Mountain forms lay darkening along the horizon, still flushed with the sunset. Eskaqua Cove had abysmal suggestions, and the ravines were vague glooms. Fire-flies were a-flicker in the woods. There might be a star, outpost of the night.
Dorinda, hunting for the vagrant 'crumply cow,' paused sometimes when the wandering path led to the mountain's brink, and looked down those gigantic slopes and unmeasured depths. She carried her milk-piggin, and her head was uncovered. Now and then she called with long, vague vowels, 'Soo—cow! Soo!' There was no response save the echoes, and the vibrant iteration of the katydid. Once she heard an alien sound, and she paused to listen. From the projecting spur where she stood, looking across the Cove, she could see, above the forests on the slopes, the bare, uprising dome, towering in stupendous proportions against the sky. The sound came again and yet again, and she recognised the voice of the man who was wont to go and pray in the desert places on the 'bald' of the mountain, and whom she had likened to the prophets of old. There was something indescribably wild and weird in those appealing, tempestuous tones, now rising as in frenzy, and now falling as with exhaustion—beseeching, adjuring, reproaching.
'He hev fairly beset the throne o' grace!' she said, with a sort of pity for this insistent piety. A shivering, filmy mist was slipping down over the great dome. It glittered in the last rays of the sunlight, already vanished from the world below, like an illuminated silver gauze. She was reminded of the veil of the temple, and she had a sense of intrusion.
'Prayer, though, air free for all,' she remarked, as self-justification, since she had paused to hear.
She did not linger. His voice died in the distance, and the solemnity of the impression was gradually obliterated. As she went she presently began to sing, sometimes interpolating, without a sense of interruption, her mellow call of 'Soo—cow! Soo!' until it took the resemblance of a refrain, with an abrupt crescendo. The wild roses were flowering along the paths, and the pink and white azaleas—what perfumed ways, what lavish grace and beauty! The blooms of the laurel in the darkling places were like a spangling of stars. Dew was falling—it dashed into her face from the boughs that interlaced across the unfrequented path—and still the light lingered, loath to leave. She heard the stir of some wild things in the hollow of a great tree, and then a faint, low growl. She fancied she saw a pair of bright eyes looking apprehensively at her.
'We-uns hev got a baby at our house, too, an' we don't want yourn, ma'am; much obleeged, all the same,' she said, with a laugh. But she looked back with a sort of pity for that alert maternal fear, and she never mentioned to the youngest brother, a persistent trapper, the little family of raccoons in the woods.
She had forgotten the voice raised in importunate supplication on the 'bald,' until, pursuing the path, she was led into the road, hard by a little bridge, or more properly culvert, which had rotted long ago; the vines came up through the cavities in the timbers, and a blackberry bush, with a wren's nest, flourished in their midst. The road was fain to wade through the stream; but the channel was dry now—a narrow belt of yellow sand lying in a long curving vista in the midst of the dense woods. A yoke of oxen, drawing a rude slide, paused to rest in the middle of the channel, and beside them was a man, of medium height, slender but sinewy, dressed in brown jeans, his trousers thrust into the legs of his boots, a rifle on his shoulder, and a broad-brimmed old wool hat surmounting his dark hair, that hung down to the collar of his coat. Her singing had prepared him for her advent, but he barely raised his eyes. That quick glance was incongruous with his dullard aspect; it held a spark of fire, inspiration, frenzy—who can say?
He spoke suddenly, in a meek, drawling way, and with the air of submitting the proposition:
'I hev gin the beastises a toler'ble hard day's work, an' I'm a-favourin' 'em goin' home.'
A long pause ensued. The oxen hung down their weary heads, with the symbol of slavery upon them. The smell of ferns and damp mould was on the air. Rotting logs lay here and there, where the failing water had stranded them. The grape-vine, draping the giant oaks, swayed gently, and suggested an observation to break the silence.
'How air the moral vineyard a-thrivin'?' she asked solemnly.
He looked downcast. 'Toler'ble, I reckon.'
'I hearn tell ez thar war a right smart passel o' folks baptized over yander in Scolacutta River,' she remarked encouragingly.
'I baptized fourteen.'
She turned the warm brightness of her eyes upon him. 'They hed all fund grace!' she exclaimed.
'They 'lowed so. I hopes they'll prove it by thar works,' he said, without enthusiasm.
'Ye war a-prayin' fur 'em on the bald?' she asked, apprehending that he accounted these converts peculiarly precarious.
'Naw,' he replied, with moody sincerity; 'I war a-prayin' fur myself.'
There was another pause, longer and more awkward than before.
'What work be you-uns a-doin' of?' asked Dorinda timidly. She quailed a trifle before the uncomprehended light in his eyes. It was not of her world, she felt instinctively.
'I hev ploughed some, holpin' Jonas Trice, an' hev been a-hauling wood. I tuk my rifle along,' he added, 'thinkin' I mought see suthin' ez would be tasty fur the old men's supper ez I kem home, but I forgot ter look around keen.'
There was a sudden sound along the road—a sound of quick hoof-beats. Because of the deep sand the rider was close at hand before his approach was discovered. He drew rein abruptly, and they saw that it was Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith of the Settlement.
'Hev you-uns hearn the news?' he cried excitedly, as he threw himself from the saddle.
The man, leaning on the rifle, looked up, with no question in his eyes. There was an almost monastic indifference to the world suggested in his manner.
'Thar's a mighty disturbamint at the Settlemint. Las' night this hyar Rick Tyler—what air under indictment fur a-killin' o' Joel Byers—he kem a-nosin' 'roun' the Settleminta-tryin' ter buy powder——'
Dorinda stretched out her hand; the trees were unsteady before her; the few faint stars, no longer pulsating points of light, described a circle of dazzling gleams. She caught at the yoke on the neck of the oxen; she leaned upon the impassive beast, and then it seemed that every faculty was merged in the sense of hearing. The horse had moved away from the blacksmith, holding his head down among the boulders, and snuffing about for the water he remembered here with a disappointment almost pathetic.
'War he tuk?' demanded the preacher.
'Percisely so,' drawled the blacksmith, with a sub-current of elation in his tone.
There was a sudden change in Kelsey's manner. He turned fiery eyes upon the blacksmith. Light and life were in every line of his face. He drew himself up tense and erect; he stretched forth his hand with an accusing gesture.
''Twar you-uns, Gid Fletcher, ez tuk the boy!'
'Lord, pa'son, how'd you-uns know that?' exclaimed the blacksmith. His manner combined a difference, which in civilization we recognise as respect for the cloth, with the easy familiarity, induced by the association since boyhood, of equals in age and station. 'I hedn't let on a word, hed I, D'rindy?'
The idea of an abnormal foreknowledge, mysteriously possessed, had its uncanny influences. The lonely woods were darkening about them. The stars seemed very far off. A rotting log in the midst of the débris of the stream, in a wild tangle of underbrush and shelving rocks, showed fox-fire and glowed in the glooms.
'I knowed,' said Kelsey, contemptuously waiving the suggestion of miraculous forecast, 'bekase the sher'ff hain't been in the Big Smoky for two weeks, an' that thar danglin' shadder o' his'n rid off las' Monday from Jeemes's Mill in Eskaqua Cove. An' the constable o' the deestric air sick abed. So I 'lowed 'twar you-uns.'
'An' why air it me more'n enny other man at the Settlemint?' The blacksmith's blood was rising; his sensibilities descried a covert taunt which as yet his slower intelligence failed to comprehend.
'An' ye hev rid with speed fur the sher'ff—or mebbe ter overhaul the dep'ty—ter come an' jail the prisoner afore he gits away.'
'An' why me, more'n the t'others?' demanded the blacksmith.
'Yer heart air ez hard ez your anvil, Gid Fletcher,' said the mind-reader. 'Thar ain't another man on the Big Smoky ez would stir himself ter gin over ter the gallus or the pen'tiary the frien' ez trested him, who hev done no harm, but hev got tangled in a twist of a unjest law. Ef the law tuk him, that's a differ.'
''Tain't fur we-uns ter jedge o' the law!' exclaimed Gid Fletcher, his logic sharpened by the anxiety of his greed and his prideful self-esteem. 'Let the law jedge o' his crime.'
'Jes' so; let the law take him, an' let the law try him. The law is ekal ter it. Ef the sheriff summons me with his posse, I'll hunt Rick Tyler through all the Big Smoky——'
'Look-a-hyar, Hi Kelsey, the Gov'nor o' Tennessee hev offered a reward o' two hundred dollars——'
'Blood-money,' interpolated the parson.
'Ye kin call it so, ef so minded; but ef it war right fur the Guv'nor ter offer it, it air right fur me ter yearn it.'
He had come very close. It was his nature and his habit to brook no resistance. He subdued the hard metals upon his anvil. His hammer disciplined the iron. The fire wrought his will. His instinct was to forge this man's opinion into the likeness of his own. His conviction was the moral swage that must shape the belief of others.
'It air lawful fur me ter yearn it,' he repeated.
'Lawful!' exclaimed the parson, with a tense, jeering laugh. 'Judas war a law-abidin' citizen. He mos' lawfully betrayedhisFrien' ter the law. Them thirty pieces o' silver! Sech currency ain't out o' circulation yit!'
Quick as a flash the blacksmith's heavy hand struck the prophet in the face. The next moment his sudden anger was merged in fear. He stood, unarmed, at the mercy of an assaulted and outraged man, with a loaded rifle in his hands and all the lightnings of heaven quivering in his angry eyes.
Gid Fletcher had hardly time to draw the breath he thought his last, when the prophet slowly turned the other cheek.
'In the name of the Master,' he said, with all the dignity of his calling.
As the blacksmith mounted his horse and rode away, he felt that the parson's rifle-ball would be preferable to the gross slur that he had incurred. His reputation, moral and spiritual, was annihilated; and he held this dear, for piety, or its simulacrum, on the primitive Big Smoky, is the point of honour. What a text! What an illustration of iniquity he would furnish for the sermons, foretelling wrath and vengeance, that sometimes shook the Big Smoky to its foundations! He was cast down and indignant too.
'Fur Hi Kelsey ter be a-puttin' up sech a pious mouth, an' a-turnin' the t'other cheek, an' sech, ter me, ez hev seen him hold his own ez stiff in many a free-handed fight, an' hev drawed his shootin'-irons on folks agin an' agin! An' he fairly tuk the dep'ty, at that thar disturbamint at the meet'n'-house, by the scruff o' the neck, an' shuck him ez ef he hed been a rat or suthin', an' drapped him out'n the door. An' now ter be a-turnin' the t'other cheek! An' thar's that thar D'rindy, a-seein' it all, an' a-lookin' at it ez wide-eyed ez a cat in the dark.'
Dorinda went home planning a rescue. Against the law this probably was, she thought. 'Ef it air—it oughtn't ter be,' she concluded arbitrarily. 'It don't hurt nobody.' How serious it was—a felony—she did not know, nor did she care. She went on sturdily, debating within herself how best to tell the news. With an intuitive knowledge of human nature, she reckoned on the prejudice aroused by the recital of the blacksmith's assault upon the preacher, and the forbearance of the man of God. She began to count those who would be likely to attempt the enterprise when it should be suggested. There were the five men at home, all bold, reckless, antagonistic to the law, and at odds with the sheriff. She paused, with a frightened face and a wild gesture, as if to ward off an unforeseen danger. Send them to meet him! Never, never would she lift her hand or raise her voice to aid in fulfilling that grimly prophesied death on the muzzle of the old rifle-barrel. She trembled at the thought of her precipitancy. His life was in her hand. With a constraining moral sense she felt that it was she who had placed it in jeopardy, and that she held it in trust.
She was cold, shivering. There was a change in the temperature; perhaps hail had fallen somewhere near, for the rare air had icy suggestions. She was seldom out so late, and was glad to see, high on the slope, the light that was wont to shine like a star into the dark depths of Eskaqua Cove. The white mists gathered around it; a circle of pearly light encompassed it, like Saturn's ring. As she came nearer, the roof of the house defined itself, with its oblique ridge-pole against the sky, and its clay and stick chimney, also built in defiance of rectangles, and its little porch, the curtaining hop-vines, dripping, dripping, with dew. In the corner of the rail fence was the 'crumply cow,' chewing her cud.
The radiance of firelight streamed out through the open door, around which was grouped a number of shadows, of intent and wistful aspect. These were the hounds, and they crowded about her ecstatically as she came up on the porch.
She paused at the door, and looked in with melancholy eyes. The light fell on her face, still damp with the dew, giving its gentle curves a subdued glister, like marble; the dark blue of her dress heightened its fairness. A sudden smile broke upon it as she leaned forward. There were three men, Ab, Pete, and Ben, seated around the fire; but she was looking at none of them, and they silently followed her gaze. Only one pair of eyes met hers—the eyes of a fat young person, wonderfully muscular for the tender age of three, who sat in the chimney-corner in a little wooden chair, and preserved the important and impassive air of a domestic magnate. This was hardly impaired by his ill-defined, infantile features, his large tow-head, his stolid blue eyes, his feminine garb of blue-checked cotton, short enough to disclose sturdy white calves and two feet with the usual complement of toes. He looked at her in grave recognition but made no sign.
'Jacob,' she softly drawled, 'whyn't ye go ter bed?'
But Jacob was indisposed to conversation on this theme; he said nothing.
'Whyn't you-uns git him ter bed?' she asked of the assemblage at large. 'He'll git stunted, a-settin' up so late in the night.'
'Waal,' said one of the huge jeans-clad mountaineers, taking his pipe from his mouth, and scrutinizing the subject of conversation, 'I 'low it takes more'n three full-grown men ter git that thar survigrus buzzard ter bed when he don't want ter go thar, an' we warn't a-goin' ter resk it.'
'I did ax him ter go ter bed, D'rindy,' said another of the bearded giants, 'but he 'lowed hewouldn't. I never see a critter so pompered ez Jacob; he ain't got no medjure o' respec' fur nobody.'
The subject of these strictures gazed unconcernedly, first at one speaker, then at the other. Dorinda still looked at him, her face transfigured by its tender smile. But she was fain to exert her authority. 'Waal, Jacob,' she said decisively, 'ye mus' gin yer cornsent ter go ter bed, arter a while.'
Jacob calmly nodded. He expected to go to bed some time that night.
The hounds had taken advantage of Dorinda's entrance to creep into the room and adjust themselves among the family group about the fire. One of them, near Jacob, lured by the tempting plumpness, put out a long, red tongue, and gave a furtive lick to his fat white leg. The little mountaineer promptly doubled his plucky fist, and administered a sharp blow on the black nose of the offender, whose yelp of repentant pain attracted attention to the canine intruders. Ab Cayce rose to his feet with an oath. There was a shrill chorus of anguish as he actively kicked them out with his great cowhide boots.
'Git out'n hyar, ye dad-burned beastises! I hev druv ye out fifty times sence sundown; nowstaydruv!'
He emphasized the lesson with several gratuitous kicks after the room and the porch were fairly cleared. But before he was again seated the dogs were once more clustered about the door, with intent bobbing heads and glistening eyes that peered in wistfully, with a longing for the society of their human friends, and a pathetic anxiety to be accounted of the family circle.
There was more stir than usual in the interval between supper and bedtime. During the three memorable days that Dorinda had sojourned in Tuckaleechee Cove, Miranda Jane's ineffective administration had resulted in domestic chaos in several departments. The lantern by which the cow was to be milked was nowhere to be found. The filly-like Miranda Jane, with her tousled mane and black forelock hanging over her eyes, was greatly distraught in the effort to remember where it had been put and for what it had been last used, and was 'plumb beat out and beset,' she declared, as she cantered in and cantered out, and took much exercise in the search, to little purpose. One of the men rose presently, and addressed himself to the effort. He found it at last, and handed it to Dorinda without a word. He did not offer to milk the cow—as essentially a feminine task, in the mountains, as to sew or knit. When she came back she sat down among them in the chair usually occupied by her grandmother—who had in her turn gone on a visit to 'Aunt Jerushy' in Tuckaleechee Cove—and as she busied herself in putting on her needles a sizable stocking for Jacob she did not join in the fragmentary conversation.
Ab Cayce, the eldest, talked fitfully as he smoked his pipe—a lank, lantern-jawed man, with a small, gleaming eye and a ragged beard. The youngest of the brothers, Solomon, was like him, except that his long chin, of the style familiarly denominated jimber-jawed, was still smooth and boyish, and, big-boned as he was, he lacked in weight and somewhat in height the proportions of the senior. Peter was the contentious member of the family. He was wont to bicker in solitary disaffection, until he seemed to disprove the adage that it takes two to make a quarrel. He was afflicted with a stammer, and at every obstruction his voice broke out with startling shrillness, several keys higher than the tone with which the sentence commenced. He was loose-jointed and had a shambling gait; his hair seemed never to have outgrown the bleached, colourless tone so common among the children of the mountains, and it hung in long locks of a dreary drab about his sun-embrowned face. His teeth were irregular, and protruded slightly. 'Ez hard-favored ez Pete Cayce,' was a proverb on the Big Smoky. His wrangles about the amount of seed necessary to sow to the acre, and his objurgation concerning the horse he had been ploughing with that day, filled the evening.
'Thar ain't a durned fool on the Big Smoky ez dunno that thar sayin' 'bout'n the beastises:—
"One white huff—buy him;Two white huffs—try him;Three white huffs—deny him;Four white huffs an' a white nose—Take off his hide an feed him ter the crows."'
"One white huff—buy him;Two white huffs—try him;Three white huffs—deny him;Four white huffs an' a white nose—Take off his hide an feed him ter the crows."'
Outside, the rising wind wandered fitfully through the Great Smoky, like a spirit of unrest. The surging trees in the wooded vastness on every side filled the air with the turbulent sound of their commotion. The fire smouldered on the hearth. The room was visible in the warm glow: the walls, rich and mellow with the alternate dark shade of the hewn logs and the dull yellow of the 'daubin''; the great frame of the warping-bars, hung about with scarlet and blue and saffron yarn; the brilliant strings of red pepper, swinging from the rafters. The spinning-wheel, near the open door, revolved slightly, with a stealthy motion, when the wind touched it, as though some invisible woodland thing had half a mind for uncanny industrial experiments.
Dorinda told her news at last, in few words and with what composure she could command. As the listeners broke into surprised ejaculations and comments, she sat gazing silently at the fire. Should she speak the thought nearest to her heart? Should she suggest a rescue? She was torn by contending terrors—fears for them, for the man in his primitive shackles at the Settlement, for the enemy whose life she felt she had jeopardized. She had a wild vision—half in hope, half in anguish—of her brothers, in the saddle, armed to the teeth and riding like the wind. They had not moved of their own accord. Should she urge them to go?
Oh, never had the long days on the Big Smoky, never had all the years that had visibly rolled from east to west with the changing seasons, brought her so much of life as the last few hours—such intensity of emotion, such swiftness of thought, such baffling perplexity, such woe!
Kelsey trudged on with his slide and his oxen, elated by his moral triumph. He glorified himself for his meekness. He joyed, with all the turbulent impulses of victory, in the blacksmith's discomfiture.
Yet he was cognizant of his own deeper, subtler springs of action. There was that within him which forbade him to take the life of an unarmed man, but he piqued himself that he forbore. He had withheld even the return of the blow. But he knew that in refraining he had struck deeper still. He dwelt upon the scene with the satisfaction of an inventor. He, too, could foresee the consequences: the blood-curdling eloquence; the port and pose of a martyr; the far-spread distrust of the blacksmith's professions of piety, under which that doughty religionist already quaked.
And as he reflected he replied, tartly, to the monitor within, 'Be angry, and sin not.'
And the monitor had no text.
Because of the night drifting down, perhaps—drifting down with a chilling change; because of the darkened solemnity of the dreary woods; because of the stars shining with a splendid aloofness from all that is human; because of the melancholy suggestions of a will-o'-the-wisp glowing in a marshy tangle, his exultant mood began to wane.
'Thar it is!' he cried suddenly, pointing at the mocking illusion—'that's my religion: looks like fire, an' it's fog!'
His mind had reverted to his wild supplications in the solitudes of the 'bald'—his unanswered prayers. The oxen had paused of their own accord to rest, and he stood looking at the spectral gleam.
'I'd never hev thunk o' takin' up with religion,' he said, in a shrill, upbraiding tone, 'ef I hed been let ter live along like other men be, or ef me an mine could die like other folks be let ter die! But it 'peared ter me ez religion war 'bout all ez war lef', arter I hed gin the baby the stuff the valley doctor hed lef' fur Em'ly—bein' ez I couldn't read right the old critter's cur'ous scrapin's with his pencil—an' gin Em'ly the stuff fur the baby. An' it died. An' then Em'ly got onsettled an' crazy, an' tuk ter vagrantin' 'roun', an' fell off'n the bluff. An' some say she flunged herself off'n it. And I knows she flunged herself off'n it through bein' out'n her mind with grief.'
He paused, leaning on the yoke, his dreary eyes still on theignis fatuusof the woods. 'An' then Brother Jake Tobin 'lowed ez religion war fur sech ez me. I hed no mind ter religion. But the worl' hed in an' about petered out for me. An' I tuk up with religion. I hev sarved it five year faithful. An' now'—he cast his angry eyes upward—'ye let me believe that thar is no God!'
So it was that Satan hunted him like a partridge on the mountains. So it was that he went out into the desert places to upbraid the God in whom he I believed because he believed that there was no God. There was a tragedy in his faith and his unfaith. That this untrained, untutored mind should grope among the irreconcilable things—the problems of a merciful God and His afflicted people, foreordained from the beginning of the world and free agents! That to the ignorant mountaineer should come those distraught questions that vex polemics, and try the strength of theologies, and give the wise men an illimitable field for the display of their agile and ingenious solutions and substitutions! He knew naught of this: the wild Alleghanies intervened between his yearning, empty despair and their plenished fame, the splendid superstructure on the ruins of their faith. He thought himself the only unbeliever in a Christian world, the only inherent infidel: a mysteriously accursed creature charged with the discovery of the monstrous fallacy of that beneficent comfort, assuaging the grief of a stricken world, and called an overruling Providence. Again his flickering faith would flare up, and he would reproach God who had suffered its lapse. This was his secret and his shame, and he guarded it. And so when he preached his wild sermons with a certain natural eloquence; and prayed his frantic prayers, instinct with all the sincerities of despair; and sang with the people the mournful old hymns, in the little meeting-house on the notch, or on the banks of the Scolacutta River, where they went down to be baptized, his keen introspection, his moral dissent, which he might not forbear, yet would not avow, were an intolerable burden, and his spiritual life was the throe of a spiritual anguish.
Often there was no intimation in those sermons of his of the quaint doctrines which delight the simple men of his calling in that region, who are fain to feel learned. His Christ, to judge from this mood, was a Paramount Emotion; not the Christ who confuted the wise men in the temple, and read in the synagogues, and said dark allegories; but He who stilled the storm, and healed the sick, and raised the dead, and wept, most humanly, for the friend whom he loved. Kelsey's trusting heart contended with his doubting mind, and the simple humanities of these sermons comforted him. Sometimes he sought consolation otherwise; he would remember that he had never been like his fellows. This was only another manifestation of the dissimilarity that dated from his earliest recollections. He had from his infancy peculiar gifts. He was learned in the signs of the weather, and predicted the mountain storms; he knew the haunts and habits of every beast and bird in the Great Smoky, every leaf that burgeons, every flower that blows. So deep and incisive a knowledge of human nature had he, that this faculty was deemed supernatural, and akin to the gift of prophecy. He himself understood, although perhaps he could not have accurately limited and defined it, that he exercised unconsciously a vigilant attention and an acute discrimination; his forecast was based upon observation so close and unsparing, and a power of deduction so just, that in a wider sphere it might have been called judgment, and, reinforced by education, have attained all the functions of a ripened sagacity.
Crude as it was, it did not fail of recognition. In many ways his 'word' was sought and heeded. His influence yielded its richest effect when hisconfrèreof the pulpit would call on him to foretell the fate of the sinner and the wrath of God to the Big Smoky. And then Brother Jake Tobin would accompany the glowing picture by a slow rhythmic clapping of hands and a fragmentary chant, 'That dreadful Day air a-comin' along!'—bearing all the time a smiling and beatific countenance, as if he were fireproof himself, and brimstone and flame were only for his friends.
Rousing himself from his reverie with a sigh, Hiram Kelsey urged the oxen along the sandy road, which had here and there a stony interval threatening the slide with dissolution at every jolt. They began presently to quicken their pace of their own accord. The encompassing woods and the laurel were so dense that no gleam of light was visible till they brought up suddenly beside a rail fence, and the fitful glimmer of firelight from an open door close at hand revealed the presence of a double log cabin. There was an uninclosed passage between the two rooms, and in this a tall, gaunt woman was standing.
'Thar be Hi now, with the steers,' she said, detecting the dim bovine shadows in the flickering gleams.
Tell Hiram ter come in right now,' cried a chirping voice, like a superannuated cricket. 'I hev a word ter ax him.'
'Tell Hiram ter feed them thar steers fust,' cried out another ancient voice, keyed several tones lower, and also with the ring of authority.
'Tell Hiram,' shrilly piped the other, 'ter hustle his bones, ef he knows what air good fur 'em.'
'Tell Hiram,' said the deeper voice, sustaining the antiphonal effect, 'I want them thar steers feded foreshortly.'
Then ensued a muttered wrangle within, and finally the shriller voice was again uplifted:
'Tell Hiram what my word air.'
'An' ye tell Hiram whatmyword air.'
The woman, who was tall as a grenadier, and had a voice like velvet, looked meekly back into the room, upon each mandate, with a nod of mild obedience.
'Ye hearn 'em,' she said softly to Kelsey. Evidently she could not undertake the hazard of discriminating between these co-equal authorities.
'I hearn 'em,' he replied.
She sat down near the door, and resumed her occupation of monotonously peeling June apples for 'sass.' Her brown calico sun-bonnet, which she habitually wore, in doors and out, obscured her visage, except her chin and absorbed mouth, that now and then moved in unconscious sympathy with her work. There was a piggin on one side of her to receive the quartered fruit, and on the other a white oak splint basket, already half full of the spiral parings. On the doorstep her husband sat, a shaggy-headed, full-bearded, unkempt fellow, in brown jeans trousers reaching almost to his collarbone in front, and supported by the single capable suspender so much affected in the mountains. His unbleached cotton shirt was open at the throat, for there was fire enough in the huge chimney-place to make the room unpleasantly warm, despite the change of temperature without. Now and then he stretched out his hand for an apple already pared, which his wife gave him with an adroit back-handed movement, and which he ate in a mouthful or two. He made way for Kelsey to enter, and asked him a question, almost inarticulate because of the apples, but apparently of hospitable intent, for Kelsey said he had had a bite and a sup at Jonas Trice's, and did not want the supper which had been providently saved for him.
Kelsey did not betray which command he had thought best to obey.
'I hed ter put my rifle on the rack in the t'other room, gran'dad,' he observed meekly, addressing one of two very old men who sat on either side of the huge fireplace. There were cushions in their rude arm chairs, and awkward little three-legged footstools were placed in front of them. Their shoes and clothing, although coarse to the last degree, were clean and carefully tended. They had each long ago lived out the allotted threescore years and ten, but they had evidently not worn out their welcome. One had suffered a paralytic attack, and every word and motion was accompanied with a convulsive gasp and jerk. The other old man was saturnine and lymphatic, and seemed a trifle younger than his venerable associate.
'What war ye a-doin' of with yer rifle?' mumbled gran'dad in wild, toothless haste.
'I tuk it along ter see, when I war a-comin' home, ef I mought shoot suthin' tasty for supper.'
'What did ye git?' demanded gran'dad, with retrospective greed; for supper was over, and he had done full justice to his share.
'I never got nuthin',' said Kelsey, a trifle shame-facedly.
'Waal, waal, waal! These hyar latter times gits cur'ouser ez they goes along. The stren'th an' the seasonin' hev all gone out'n the lan'. Whenst I war young, folks ez kerried rifles ter git suthin' fur supper never kem home a-suckin' the bar'l. Folks ez kerried rifles in them days didn't tote 'em fur—fur—a 'ornamint. Folks in them days lef preachin' an' prophecy an' sech ter thar elders, an' hunted the beastis an' the Injun,—though sinners is plentier than the t'other kind o' game on the Big Smoky these times. No man in them days, jes' turned thirty, sot hisself down ter idlin', an' preachin', an' convictin' his elders o' sin.'
Kelsey bore himself with the deferential humility characteristic of the mountaineers towards the aged among them.
'What war the word ez ye war a-layin' off to say ter me, gran'dad?' he asked, striving to effect a diversion.
'Waal, waal, look a-hyar, Hiram,' exclaimed the old man, remembering his question in eager precipitancy. 'This hyar 'Cajah Green, ye know, ez air a-runnin' fur sher'ff—air—air he Republikin or Dimmycrat?'
'Thar's no man in these hyar parts smart enough ter find that out,' interpolated Obediah Scruggs in the door, circumspectly taking the apple seeds out of his mouth. He was the son of one of the magnates, and the son-in-law of the other; his matrimonial venture had resulted in doubling his filial obligations. His wife had brought, instead of a dowry, her aged father to the fireside.
''Cajah Green,' continued the speaker, 'run ez a independent las' time, an' thar war so many bolters an' sech they split the vote, an' he war 'lected. An' now he air a-runnin' agin.'
The old man listened to this statement, his eye blazing, his chin in a quiver, his lean figure erect, and the pipe in his palsied hand shaking till the coal of fire on top showed brightening tendencies.
'Waal, sir! waal!' exclaimed the aged politician, with intense bitterness. 'The stren'th an' the seasonin' hevallgone out'n the lan'! Whenst I war young,' he declared dramatically, drawing the pitiable contrast, 'folks knowed what they war, an they let other folks know, too, ef they hed ter club it inter 'em. But them was Old Hickory's times. Waal, waal, we ain't a-goin' ter see Old Hickory no more—no—more!'
'I hopes not,' said the other old man, with sudden asperity. 'I hopes we'll never see no sech tormentin' old Dimmycrat agin. But law! I needn't fret my soul. Henry Clay shook all the life out'n him five year afore he died. Henry Clay made a speech agin Andrew Jackson in 1840 what forty thousan' people kem ter hear.Tharwar a man fur ye! He hed a tongue like a bell; 'pears like ter me I kin hear it yit, when I listens right hard. By Gum!' triumphantly, 'that day he tuk the stiffenin' out'n Old Hickory! Surely, surely, he did! Ef I thought I war never a-goin' ter hear Old Hickory's name agin I'd tune up my ears fur the angel's quirin'. I war born a Republikin, I grow'd ter be a good Whig, an' I'll die a Republikin. Ef that ain't religion I dunno what air! That's the way I hev lived an' walked afore the Lord. An' hyar in the evenin' o' my days I hev got ter set alongside o' this hyar old consarn, an' hear him jow 'bout'n Old Hickory from mornin' till night. Ef I hed knowed how he war goin' ter turn out 'bout'n Old Hickory in his las' days, I wouldn't hev let my darter marry his son, thirty-five year ago. I knowed he war a Dimmycrat, but I never knowed the stren'th o' the failin' till I were called on ter 'speriunce it.'
'Ye 'lowed t'other day, gran'dad,' said Kelsey, addressing the aged paralytic in a propitiatory manner, 'ez ye warn't a-goin' ter talk 'bout'n Old Hickory no more. It 'pears like ter me ez ye oughter gin yer 'tention ter the candidates ez ye hev got ter vote fur in August—'Cajah Green, an' sech.'
But it must be admitted that Micajah Green was not half the man that Old Hickory was, and the filial remonstrance had no effect. The acrimonies of fifty years ago were renewed across the hearth with a rancour that suggests that an old grudge, like old wine, improves with time. No one ventured to interrupt, but Obediah Scruggs, still lounging in the door, commented in a low tone:
'The law stirs itself ter sot a time when a man air old enough ter vote an' meddle with politics ginerally. 'Pears like ter me it ought ter sot a time when he hev got ter quit.'
'Waal, Obediah!' exclaimed the soft-voiced woman, the red parings hanging in concentric circles from her motionless knife. 'That ain't religion. Ye talk like a man would hev ter be ez sensible an' solid fur politics ez fur workin' on the road. They don't summons the old men fur sech jobs ez that. They mought ez well enjye the evenin' o' thar days with this foolishness o' politics ez enny other.'
'Shucks!' said Obediah, who had the courage of his convictions. 'These hyar old folks hev hed ter live in the same house an' ride in the same wagin thirty-five year, jes' 'kase, when we war married, they agreed ter put what they hed tergether; an' they hev been a-fightin' over thar dead an' gone politics ev'ry minit o' the time sence. Thar may be some good Dimmycrats, an' thar may be some good Republikins, but they make a powerful oneasy team, yoked tergether. An' when it grows on 'em so, the law oughter step in, an' count 'em over age, an' shet 'em up. 'Specially ez dad hev voted fur Andy Jackson fur Presidintouter respec' fur his mem'ry, ev'y 'lection sence the tormentin' old crittur died.'
But he said all this below his breath, and presently fell silent, for his wife's face had clouded, and her soft drawling voice had an intimation of a depression of spirit.
'The kentry hev kem ter its ruin,' exclaimed the paralytic, 'when men—brazen-faced buzzards—kin go an' git 'lected ter office 'thout no party ter boost 'em! Look a-hyar,'—he turned to his grandson,—'ye air always a-prophesyin'. Prophesy some now. Air 'Cajah Green a-goin' ter be 'lected?'
He thumped the floor with his stick, and fixed his imperative eye upon Hiram Kelsey's face.
'Naw, gran'dad. He won't be 'lected,' said the prophet.
The old man's face was scarlet because of this contradiction of his own dismal vaticinations.
''Cajah Greenwillbe 'lected,' he cried. 'The kentry's ruined. Folks dunno whether they air Republikins or Dimmycrats! Lor' Almighty, ter think o' that! The kentry's ruined! An' yer prophesyin' don't tech it. They hed false prophets in the old days, an' the tribe holds out yit.'
He struck the floor venomously with his stick. Its defective aim once or twice brought it upon a rough black bundle that lay rolled up in front of the fire like a great dog. A slow head was lifted inquiringly, with an offended mien, from the rolls of fat and far. Twinkling small eyes glared out. When another blow descended, with a wild disregard of results, there was a whimper, a long, low growl, a flash of white teeth, and with claw and fang the pet cub caught at the stick. The old man dropped it in a panic.
'Look a-yander at the bar!' he shrieked.
But the cub had crouched on the floor since the stick had fallen, and was whimpering again, and looking about in cowardly appeal.
The old man rallied. 'What d'ye bring the savage beastis home fur, Hiram, out'n the woods whar they b'long?' he vociferated.
'Kase he 'lowed he hed killed the dam, an' the young 'un war bound ter starve,' put in the other old man, actuated, perhaps, by some sympathy for the grandson, whose strength and youth counted for naught against this adversary.
'What air ye a-aimin' ter do with it? Ter kill sech chillen ez happen ter make game o' ye? That's what the prophets of old 'cited thar bars ter do—ter kill the little laffin' chillen.'
Kelsey winced. The cruelties of the old chronicles bore hard upon his wavering faith.
The old man saw his advantage, and with the wantonness of tyranny followed it up: 'That's it—that's it! That would suit Hiram, like the prophets—ter kill the innercent chillen!'
The young man recoiled suddenly. The patriarch, a wild terror on his pallid, aged face, recognised the significance of his words. He held up his shaking hands as if to recall them—to clutch them. He had remembered the domestic tragedy; the humble figure of the little mountain child, all gaiety and dimples and gurgling laughter, who had known no grief and had wrought such woe, who had left a rude, empty cradle in the corner, a mound—such a tiny mound!—in the graveyard, and an imperishable anguish of self-reproach, unquenchable as the fires of hell.
'I furgot—I furgot!' shrieked the old man. 'I furgot the baby! When war she buried?—las' week or year afore las'? The only one—the only great-gran'child I ever hed. The frien'liest baby! Knowed me jes' ez well!' He burst into senile tears. 'Don't ye go, Hiram. What did the doctor say ye gin her? Laws-a-massy! 'Pears like 'twar jes' yestiddy she war a-crawlin' 'round the floor, stidd'er that heejus beastis ez I wisht war in the woods—laffin'—Lord A'mighty! laffin' an' takin' notice ez peart. Hiram, don't ye go—don't ye go! Peartes', pretties' chile I ever see—an' I had six o' my own—an' the frien'lies'! An' I hed planned fur sech a many pleasures when she hed got some growth an' hed l'arned ter talk. I wanted ter hear what she hed ter say—the only great-gran'child I ever hed—an' now the words will never be spoke. 'Pears like ter me ez the Lord shows mighty little jedgmint ter take her, an' leave me a-cumberin' the groun'.'
Then he began once more to wring his hands and sob aloud—that piteous weeping of the aged!—and to mumble brokenly, 'The frien'lies' baby!'
The woman left her work and took off her bonnet, showing her grey hair drawn into a skimpy knot at the back of her head, and leaving in high relief her strong, honest, candid features, on which the refinements of all benign impulses effaced the effects of poverty and ignorance. She crossed the room to the old man's chair; her velvety voice soothed him. He suffered himself to be lifted by his son and grandson, and carried away bodily to bed in the room across the passage. In the meantime the woman filled a tin cup with lard, placing in its midst a button tied in a bit of cloth to serve as a wick, and lighted it at the fire, while the cub presided with sniffing curiosity at the unusual proceeding, pressing up close against her as she knelt on the hearth, well knowing that she was not to be held in fear nor in any special respect by young bears.
'I'm goin' ter gin him a button-lamp ter sleep by, bein' ez he hev tuk the baby in his head agin,' she said to her father in explanation; 'he won't feel so lonesome ef he wakes up.'
He had looked keenly after his venerable compeer as the paralytic was borne across the uninclosed passage between the two rooms.
'He's breaking some. He's aging,' he said critically; not without sympathy, but with a stalwart conviction that his own feebleness was as strength to the other's weakness. 'He's breaking some,' he repeated, with a physical vanity that might have graced a prize-fighter.
The next moment there came sharp and shrill through the open door the old man's voice, high and glib in cheerful forgetfulness, conversing with his attendants as they got him to bed.
'Whenst I war young,' he cried, 'I went down to Sevierville wunst. 'Twar when they war a-runnin' of Old Hickory.'
'Thar it is again!' exclaimed the ancient Republican. 'Old Hickory war bad enough when he war alive; but I b'lieves he's wusser now that he is dead, with this hyar old critter a-moanin' 'bout him night and day. I'd feel myself called ter fling him of'n the bluff, ef it warn't that he hev got the palsy, an' I gits sorry fur him wunst in a while. An' then I b'lieves that ennybody what is a Dimmycrat air teched in the head, an' ain't 'sponsible fur thar foolishness, 'kase sensible folks ain't Dimmycrats. That's been my 'speriunce fur eighty year, an' I hev hed no call ter change my mind. So I hev to try my patience an' stan' this hyar old critter's foolishness, but it air a mighty tough strain.'
The shadows of the great dead trees in the midst of the Settlement were at their minimum in the vertical vividness of the noontide. They bore scant resemblance to those memorials of gigantic growths which towered, stark and white, so high to the intensely blue sky; instead, they were like some dark and leafless underbrush clustering about the sapless trunks. The sandy stretch of the clearing reflected the sunlight with a deeply yellow glare, its poverty of soil illustrated by frequent clumps of the woolly mullein-weeds. The Indian corn and the sparse grass were crudely green in the enclosures about the grey, weather-beaten log-houses, which stood distinct against the dark, restful tones of the forest filling the background. The mountains with each remove wore every changing disguise of distance: shading from sombre green to a dull purple; then overlaid with a dubious blue; next showing a true and turquoise richness; still farther, a delicate transient hue that has no name; and so away to the vantage-ground of illusions, where the ideal poises upon the horizon, and the fact and the fantasy are undistinguishably blended. The intermediate valleys appeared in fragmentary glimpses here and there; sometimes there was only the verdure of the tree-tops; one was cleft by a canary-coloured streak which betokened a harvested wheat-field; in another blazed a sapphire circle, where the vertical sun burned in the waters of a blue salt 'lick.'
The landscape was still—very still; not the idle floating of a cloud, not the vague shifting of a shadow, not the flutter of a wing. But the Settlement on the crags above had known within its experience no similar commotion. There were many horses hitched to the fences, some girded with blankets in lieu of saddles. Clumsy waggons stood among the stumps in the clearing, with the oxen unyoked and their provender spread before them on the ground. Although the log-cabins gave evidence of hospitable proceedings within, family parties were seated in some of the vehicles, munching the dinner providently brought with them. All the dogs in the Great Smoky, except perhaps a very few incapacitated by extreme age or extreme youth, were humble participants in the outing, having trotted under the waggons many miles from their mountain homes, and now lay with lolling tongues among the wheels. About the store lounged a number of men, mostly the stolid, impassive mountaineers. A few, however, although in the customary jeans, bore the evidence of more worldly prosperity and a higher culture; and there were two or three resplendent in the 'b'iled shirt and store clothes' of civilization, albeit the first was without collar or cravat, and the latter showed antique cut and reverend age. These were candidates—talkative, full of anecdote, quick to respond, easily flattered, and flattering to the last degree. They were especially jocose and friendly with each other, but amid the fraternal guffaws and interchanges of 'chaws o' terbacco' many quips were bandied, barbed with ridicule; many good stories recounted, charged with uncomplimentary deductions; many jokes cracked, discovering the kernel of slander or detraction in the merry shell. The mountaineers looked on, devoid of envy, and despite their stolidity with an understanding of the conversational masquerade. Beneath this motley verbal garb was a grave and eager aspiration for public favour, and it was a matter of no small import when a voter would languidly glance at another with a silent laugh, slowly shake his head with a not-to-be-convinced gesture, and spit profusely on the ground.
In and out of the store dawdled a ceaseless procession of free and enlightened citizens; always emerging with an aspect of increased satisfaction, wiping their mouths with big bandanna handkerchiefs, and sometimes with the more primitive expedient of a horny hand. Nathan Hoodendin sat in front of the door, keeping store after his usual fashion, except that the melancholy wheeze 'Jer'miah' rose more frequently upon the air. Jer'miah's duties consisted chiefly in serving out whisky and apple-jack, and the little drudge stuck to his work with an earnest pertinacity, for which the privilege of draining the very few drops left in the bottom of the glass after each dram seemed hardly an adequate reward.
The speeches, which were made in the open air, the candidate mounted on a stump in front of the store, were all much alike—the same self-laudatory meekness, the same inflamed party spirit, the same jocose allusions to opponents,—each ending, 'Gentlemen, if I am elected to office I will serve you to the best of my skill and ability. Gentlemen, I thank you for your attention.' The crowd, close about, stood listening with great intentness, each wearing the impartial pondering aspect of an umpire.
On the extreme outskirts of the audience, however, there was an unprecedented lapse of attention; a few of the men, seated on stumps or on the waggon-tongues, now and then whispering together, and casting excited glances towards the blacksmith's shop. Sometimes one would rise, approach it stealthily, stoop down, and peer in at the low window. The glare outside made the interior seem doubly dark, and a moment or two was needed to distinguish the anvil, the fireless hearth, the sooty hood. A vague glimmer fell through a crevice in the clapboard roof upon a shock of yellow hair and gleaming eyes, two sullen points of light in the midst of the deep shadows. None of the mountaineers had ever seen a wild beast caged, but Rick Tyler's look of fierce and surly despair, of defiance, of all vain and vengeful impulses, as he sat bound hand and foot in the forge, was hardly more human. The faces multiplied at the window,—stolid, or morbidly curious, awe-struck, or with a grinning display of long tobacco-stained teeth. Many of them were well known to Rick Tyler, and if ever he had liked them he hated them now.
There was a stir outside, a clamour of many voices. The 'speaking' was over. Footsteps sounded close to the door of the blacksmith's shop. The sheriff was about to enter, and the crowd pressed eagerly forward to catch a glimpse of the prisoner. Arriving this morning, the sheriff had been glad to combine his electioneering interests with his official duty. The opportunity of canvassing among the assemblage gave him, he thought, an ample excuse for remaining a few hours longer at the Settlement than was necessary; and when he heard of the impending diversion of the gander-pulling he was convinced that his horse required still more rest before starting with his prisoner for Shaftesville jail.
He went briskly into the forge, carrying a pair of clanking handcuffs. He busied himself in exchanging these for the cord with which the young fellow's wrists were bound. It had been drawn brutally tight, and the flesh was swollen and raw. 'It seems ter me, ez 'twas the blacksmith that nabbed ye, he might hev done better for ye than this, by a darned sight,' he said in an undertone.
He had not been reluctant at first that the crowd should come in, but he appreciated unnecessary harshness as an appeal for sympathy, and he called out to his deputy, who had accompanied him on his mission, to clear the room.
'We're goin' ter keep him shet up fur an hour or so, an' start down the mounting in the cool o' the evenin',' he explained; 'so ef ye want ter view him the winder is yer chance.'
The forge was cleared at last, the broad light vanishing with the closing of the great barn-like doors. Rick heard the lowered voices of the sheriff and deputy gravely consulting without, as they secured the fastenings with a padlock which they had brought with them in view of emergencies. They had taken the precaution, too, to nail strips of board at close intervals across the shutterless windows; more, perhaps, to prevent the intrusion of the curious without than the escape of the manacled prisoner. The section of the landscape glimpsed through the bars—the far blue mountains and a cluster of garnet pokeberries, with a leaf or two of the bush growing close by the wall—sprang into abnormal brilliancy at the end of the dark vista of the interior. It was a duskier brown within for that fragment of vivid colour and dazzling clearness in the window. Naught else could be seen, except a diagonal view of the porch of one of the log-cabins, and the corn-field beyond.
Curiosity was not yet sated; now and then a face peered in, as Rick sat bound securely, the cords still about his limbs and feet and the clanking handcuffs on his wrists. These inquisitive apparitions at the window grew fewer as the time went by, and presently ceased altogether. The bustle outside increased: it drowned the drowsy drone of the cicada; it filled the mountain solitudes with a trivial incongruity. Often sounded there the sudden tramp of a horse and a loud guffaw. Rick knew that they were making ready for the gander-pulling, which unique sport had been selected by the long-headed mountain politicians as likely to insure the largest assemblage possible from the surrounding region to hear the candidates prefer their claims.
Electioneering topics were not suspended even while the younger men were saddling and bridling their horses for the proposed festivity. As Micajah Green strolled across the clearing and joined a group of elderly spectators who in their chairs sat tilted against the walls of the store, which began to afford some shade, he found that his own prospects were under discussion.
'They tell me, 'Cajah,' said Nathan Hoodendin, who had hardly budged that day, his conversational activity, however, atoning for his physical inertia, 'ez ye air bound ter eend this 'lection with yer finger in yer mouth.'
'Don't know why,' said Micajah Green, with a sharp, sudden effect as of an angry bark, and lapsing from the smiling mien which he was wont to conserve as a candidate.
'Waal, word hev been brung hyar ter the Settlemintez this prophet o' ourn in the Big Smoky, he say ye ain't goin' ter be re'lected.'
The sheriff laughed scornfully, snapping his fingers as he stood before the group, and whirled airily on his boot-heel.
Nevertheless, he was visibly annoyed. He knew the strength of a fantastic superstition among ignorant people, and their disposition to verify rather than to disprove. There were voters in the Big Smoky liable to be controlled by a morbid impulse to make the prophet's word true. It was an unexpected and unmeasured adverse influence, and he chafed under the realization.
'An' what sets Pa'son Kelsey agin me?' he demanded.
'He ain't in no wayssot agin you-unsez I knows on,' discriminated Nathan Hoodendin, studious impartiality expressed among the graven wrinkles of his face. 'Not ez it warsot aginye; but ye jes' 'lows ez that air the fac'. Ye ain't goin' ter be 'lected agin.'
'The pa'son hev got a gredge agin the old man, hyar,' said the deputy. He was a stalwart fellow of about twenty-five years of age. He had sandy hair and moustache, a broad freckled face, light grey eyes, and a thin-lipped, defiant mouth. He bore himself with an air of bravado which conveyed as many degrees of insult as one felt disposed to take up. 'He lit out on me fust—I war with Amos Jeemes thar,—an' the pa'son put us out'n the meet'n'-house. He did! He don't want no sorter sher'ff's in the Big Smoky. An' he called Gid Fletcher, the blacksmith, "Judas" fur arrestin' that lot o' bacon yander in the shop, when he kem hyar ter the Settlemintfur powder, ter keep him able to resis' the law! Who sold Rick Tyler that powder, Mister Hoodendin?' he added, turning his eyes on the proprietor of the store.
Old Hoodendin hesitated. 'Jer'miah,' he wheezed feebly.
His anxious eyes gleamed from out their perplexed wrinkles like a ray of sunlight twinkling through a spider-web.
There was an interchange of glances between the sheriff and his deputy, and the admonished subordinate continued:
''Twar jes' the boy, eh; an' I reckon he war afeard o' Rick's shootin'-irons an' sech.'
''Twar Jer'miah,' repeated the storekeeper, his discreet eyes upon the bosom of his blue-checked homespun shirt.
'Waal, the pa'son, ez I war sayin', he called the blacksmith "Judas" fur capturing the malefactor, an' the gov'nor's reward "blood-money,"' continued the deputy, expertly electioneering, since his own tenure was on the uncertain continuance of the sheriff in office. 'An' now he's goin' round the kentry prophesyin' as 'Cajah Green ain't goin' ter be 'lected. Waal, thar war false prophets 'fore his time, an' will be agin, I'm thinkin'.'
There was a sudden clamour upon the air; a vibrant, childish voice, and then a great horse-laugh. An old crone had come out of one of the cabins and was standing by the fence, holding out to Gid Fletcher, who seemed master of ceremonies, a large white gander. The fowl's physiognomy was thrown into bold prominence by a thorough greasing of the head and neck. His wings flapped, he hissed fiercely, he dolorously squawked. A little girl was running frantically by the side of the old woman, clutching at her skirt and vociferously claiming the 'gaynder.' Hers it was, since 'Mam gin me the las' aig when the grey goose laid her ladder out, an' it war sot under the old Dominicky hen ez kem off'n her nest through settin' three weeks, like a hen will do. An' then 'twar put under old Top-knot, an' 'twar the fust aig hatched out'n old Top-knot's settin'.'
This unique pedigree, shrieked out with a shrill distinctness, mixed with the lament of the prescient bird, had a ludicrous effect. Fletcher took the gander with a guffaw, the old crone chuckled, and the young men laughed as they mounted their horses.
The blacksmith hardly knew which part he preferred to play. The element of domination in his character gave a peculiar relish to the rôle of umpire; yet with his pride in his deftness and strength it cost him a pang to forego the competition in which he felt himself an assured victor. He armed himself with a whip of many thongs, and took his stand beneath a branch of one of the trees, from which the gander was suspended by his big feet, head downward. Aghast at his disagreeable situation, his wild eyes stared about; his great wings flapped drearily; his long neck protruded with its peculiar motion, unaware of the clutch it invited. What a pity so funny a thing can suffer!
The gaping crowd at the store, on the cabin porches, on the fences, watched the competitors with wide-eyed, wide-mouthed delight. There were gallant figures amongst them, shown to advantage on young horses whose spirit was not yet quelled by the plough. They filed slowly around the prescribed space once, twice; then each made the circuit alone at a break-neck gallop. As the first horseman rode swiftly along the crest of the precipice, his head high against the blue sky, the stride of the steed covering mountain and valley, he had the miraculous effect of Prince Firouz Shah and the enchanted horse in their mysterious aërial journeys. When he passed beneath the branch whence hung the frantic, fluttering bird, the blacksmith, standing sentinel with his whip of many thongs, laid it upon the flank of the horse, and despite the wild and sudden plunge the rider rose in his stirrups and clutched the greased neck of the swaying gander. Tough old fowl! The strong ligaments resisted. The first hardly hoped to pluck the head, and after his hasty, convulsive grasp his frightened horse carried him on almost over the bluff. The slippery neck refused to yield at the second pull, and the screams of the delighted spectators mingled with the shrieks of the gander. The mountain colt, a clay-bank, with a long black tail full of cockle-burrs, bearing the third man, reared violently under the surprise of the lash. As the rider changed the balance of his weight, rising in his stirrups to tug at the gander's neck, the colt pawed the air wildly with his fore feet, fell backward, and rolled upon the ground, almost over the hapless wight. The blacksmith was fain to support himself against the tree for laughter, and the hurrahing Settlement could not remember when it had enjoyed anything so much. The man gathered himself up sheepishly, and limped off; the colt being probably a mile away, running through the woods at the height of his speed.
The gander was in a panic by this time. If ever a fowl of that gender has hysterics, that gander exhibited the disease. He hissed; he flapped his wings; he squawked; he stared; he used every limited power of expression with which nature has gifted him. He was so funny one could hardly look at him.
As Amos James was about to take his turn, amid flattering cries of 'Amos'll pull his head!' 'Amos'll git his head!' a man who had suddenly appeared on horseback at the verge of the clearing, and had paused, contemplating the scene, rode swiftly forward to the tree.
'Ye can't pull out'n turn—ye can't pull out'n turn, pa'son!' cried half a dozen voices from the younger men. The elders stared in amaze that the preacher should demean his calling by engaging in this public sport.
Kelsey checked his pace before he reached the blacksmith, who, seeing that he was not going to pull, forbore to lay on the lash. The next moment he thought that Kelsey was going to pull; he had risen in his stirrups with uplifted arm.
'What be you-uns a-goin' ter do?' demanded Gid Fletcher, amazed.
'I'm a-goin' ter take this hyar critter down.'
His words thrilled through the settlement like a current of electricity. The next phrase was lost in a wild chorus of exclamations.
'Take the gaynder down?'
'What fur?'
'Hi Kelsey hev los' his mind; surely he hev!'
Then above the angry, undistinguishable tumult of remonstrance the preacher's voice rose clear and impressive:
'The pains o' the beastis He hev made teches the Lord in heaven; fur He marks the sparrow's fall, an' minds Himself o' the pitiful o' yearth!' He spoke with the authority appertaining to his calling. 'The spark o' life in this fow-elair kindled ez fraish ez yourn—fur hevin' a soul, ye don't ginerally prove it; an' hevin' no soul ter save, this gaynder hain't yearned the torments o' hell, an' I'm a-goin' ter take the critter down.'
''Tain't yer gaynder!' conclusively argued the blacksmith, applying the swage of his own conviction.
'He airmygaynder!' shrieked out a childish voice. 'Take him down—take him down!'
This objection to the time-honoured sport seemed hardly less eccentric than an exhibition of insanity. To apply a dignified axiom of humanity to that fluttering, long-suffering tumult of anguish familiarly known as the 'gaynder' was regarded as ludicrously inappropriate. To refer to the Lord and the typical sparrow in this connection seemed almost blasphemy. Nevertheless, with the rural reverence for spiritual authority and the superior moral perception of the clergy, the crowd wore a submissively balked aspect, and even the young men who had not yet had their tug at the fowl's neck succumbed, under the impression that the preacher's fiat had put a stop to the gander-pulling for this occasion.
As Kelsey once more lifted his hand to liberate the creator of the day's merriment, the blacksmith, his old grudge reinforced by a new one, gave the horse a cut with his whip. The animal plunged under the unexpected blow, and carried the rider beyond the tree. Reverence for the cloth had no longer a restraining influence on the young mountaineers. They burst into yells of laughter.
'Cl'ar out, pa'son!' they exclaimed delightedly. 'Ye hev hed yer pull. Cl'ar out!'
There was a guffaw among the elders about the store. A clamour of commenting voices rose from the cabin porches, where the feminine spectators stood. The gander squawked dolorously. The hubbub was increased by the sudden sharp yelping of hounds that had started game somewhere near at hand. Afterward, from time to time, canine snarls and yaps rose vociferously upon the air—unheeded, since the inherent interests of a gander-pulling were so enhanced by the addition of a moral discussion and the jeopardy of its conclusion.
The next man in turn, Amos James, put his horse to a canter, and came in a cloud of yellow dust toward the objective point under the tree. In another moment there was almost a collision, for Kelsey had wheeled and ridden back so swiftly that he reined up under the bough where the fowl hung as Amos James, rising in his stirrups, dashed toward it. His horse shied, and carried him past, out of reach, while the blacksmith stepped precipitately toward the bole, exclaiming angrily:
'Don't ride me down, Hi Kelsey!'
He recovered his presence of mind and the use of his whip immediately, and laid a stinging lash upon the parson's horse, as once more the champion of the bird reached up to release it. The next instant Gid Fletcher recoiled suddenly; there was a significant gesture, a steely glimmer, and the blacksmith was gazing with petrified reluctance down the muzzle of a six-shooter. He dared not move a muscle as he stood, with that limited field of vision, and with more respectful acquiescence in the opinion of another man than he had ever before been brought to entertain. The horseman looked at his enemy in silence for a moment, the broad-brimmed hat shading his face, with its melancholy expression, its immobile features, and its flashing eyes.
'Drap that lash,' Kelsey said.
Gid Fletcher's grasp relaxed; then the parson with his left hand reached up and contrived to unloose the fluttering gander. He handed the bird down to the little girl, who had been fairly under the horse's heels at the tree since the first suggestion of its deliverance. She clutched it in great haste, wrapped her apron about it, and carrying it baby-wise, ran fleetly off, casting apprehensive glances over her shoulder.
So the gander was saved, but in its fright, its woe, and the frantic presage in whatever organ may serve it for mind, the fowl had a pretty fair case against the Settlement for exemplary damages.
The sport ended in great disaffection and a surly spirit. Several small grievances among the younger men promised to result in a disturbance of the peace. The blacksmith, held at bay only by the pistol, flared out furiously when relieved of that strong coercion. His pride was roused in that he should be publicly balked and terrorized.
'I'll remember this,' he said, shaking his fist in the prophet's face. 'I'll save the gredge agin ye.'
But he was pulled off by his brethren in the church, who thought it unwise to have a member in good standing again assault the apostle of peace.
Amos James—a tall, black-eyed fellow of twenty-three or four, with black hair, slightly powdered with flour, and a brown jeans suit, thus reminiscent also of the mill—sighed for the sport in which he had hoped to be victorious.
'Pa'son talked like the gaynder war his blood relation—own brothers, I'm a-thinkin',' he drawled disconsolately.
The sheriff was disposed to investigate prophecy.
'I've heard, pa'son,' he said, with a smile ill concealing his vexation, 'ye have foreseen I ain't goin' ter be lucky with this here 'lection; goin' ter come out o' the leetle eend o' the horn.'
The prophet, too, was perturbed and out of sorts. The sustaining grace of feeling a martyr was lacking in the event of to-day, in which he himself had wielded the coercive hand. He marked the covert aggressiveness of the sheriff's manner, and revolted at being held to account and forced to contest. He fixed his gleaming eyes upon the officer's face, but said nothing.
'I'm a-hustlin' off now,' said Micajah Green, 'an' ez I won't be up in the Big Smoky agin afore the 'lection, I lowed ez I'd find out what ails yer ter set sech a durned thing down as a fac'. Why ain't I goin' ter be 'lected?' he reiterated, his temper flaring in his face, his eyes fierce.
But for the dragging block and chain of his jeopardized prospects he could not have restrained himself from active insult. With his peculiar qualifications for making enemies, and the opportunities afforded by the difficult office he had filled for the past two years, he illustrated at this moment the justice of the prophecy. But his evident anxiety, his eagerness, even his fierce intolerance, had a touch of the pathetic to the man for whom earth held so little and heaven nothing. It seemed useless to suggest, to admonish, to argue.
'I say the word,' declared the prophet. 'I can't ondertake ter gin the reason.'
'Ye won't gin the reason?' said the sheriff, between his teeth.
'Naw,' said the prophet.