'An' I won't be 'lected, hey?'
'Ye won't be 'lected.'
The deputy touched the sheriff on the shoulder.
'I want ter see ye.'
'In a minute,' said the elder man impatiently.
'I want ter see ye.'
Something in the tone constrained attention. The sheriff turned, and looked into a changed face. He suffered himself to be led aside.
'Yeain'tgoin' ter be 'lected,' said the deputy grimly, 'an' for a damned good reason. Look-a-thar!'
They had walked to the blacksmith's shop. The deputy motioned to him to look into the window.
'Damn ye, what is it?' demanded Micajah Green, mystified.
The other made no reply, and the officer stooped, and looked into the dusky interior.
Three sides of the blacksmith's shop, the door, and the window were in full view from the little hamlet; the blank wall of the rear was close to a sheer precipice. The door was locked, and the key was in the sheriff's pocket.
The prisoner, bound with cords around his ankles and limbs, and with his wrists manacled, was gone!
Every detail was as it had been left, except that at the rear, the only point secure from observation, there were traces of burrowing in the earth. In the cavity thus made between the lowest log and the 'dirt floor' a man's body might with difficulty have been compressed—but a man so shackled! Undoubtedly he had had assistance. This was a rescue.
Only a moment elapsed before the great barn-like doors were widely flaring, and the anxious care of the officers and the eager curiosity of the crowd had explored every nook and cranny within.
The ground was dry, and there was not even a footprint to betoken the movements of the fugitive and his rescuers; only in the freshly upturned earth where he effected escape were the distinct marks of the palms of his hands, significantly close together.
Evidently he was still handcuffed when he had crawled through.
'He's a-wearin' my bracelets yit!' exclaimed the sheriff excitedly. 'Him an' his friends warn't able ter cut them off, like they done the ropes.'
A search was organized in hot haste.
Every cabin, the corn-fields, the woods near at hand, were ransacked. Parties went beating about through the dense undergrowth. They climbed the ledges of great crags. They hovered with keen eyes above dark abysses. They pursued for hours a tortuous course down a deep gorge, strewn with gigantic boulders, washed by the wintry torrents into divers channellings, overhung by cliffs hundreds of feet high, honeycombed with fantastic niches and rifts.
What futile quest! What vastness of mountain wilderness!
The great sun went down in a splendid suffusion of crimson colour, and a translucent golden haze, with a purple garb for the mountains, and a glamourous dream for the sky, and bestowing far and near the gilded license of imagination.
The searchers were hard at it until late into the night; never a clue to encourage them, never a hope to lure them on.
More than once they flagged, these sluggish mountaineers, who had passed the day in unwonted excitement, and had earned their night's rest. But the penalties of refusing to aid the officers of the law spurred them on.
Even old Hoodendin—not so old as to be exempt from this duty, for the sheriff had summoned every available man at the Settlement to his assistance—hobbled from stone to stone, from one rotting log to another, where he sat down to recuperate from his exertions.
The search degenerated into a mere form, an aimless beating about in the brush, before Micajah Green could be induced to relinquish the hope of capture, and blow the horn as a signal for reassembling.
The bands of fagged-out men, straggling back to the Settlement toward dawn, found reciprocal satisfaction in expressing the opinion that 'Cajah Green had 'keerlessly let Rick git away, an' warn't a-goin' ter mend the matter by incitin' the mounting ter bust 'round the woods like a lot o' crazy deer all night, ter find a man ez warn't nowhar.'
They wore surly enough faces as they gathered about the door of the store, or lounged on the stumps and the few chairs, waiting for a mounted party that had been ordered to extend the search down in the adjacent coves and along the spurs.
The agile Jer'miah scudded about, furnishing such consolation as can be contained in a jug. Had the quest resulted differently, they would have laughed and joked and caroused till daybreak. As it was, their talk was fragmentary; slight and innuendo were in every word.
The sheriff had supplemented his own negligence by a grievous disregard of their comfort, and the sense of defeat, so bitter to an American citizen, completed the æsthetic misery of the situation.
The waggons still stood about in the clearing; here and there the burly dark steers lay ruminant and half asleep among the stumps. Among them, too, were the cattle of the place; the cows, milked late the evening before, had not yet roamed away.
Against a dark background of blackberry bushes a white bull stood in the moonlight, motionless, the lustre gilding his horns and touching his great sullen eyes with a spark of amber light. In his imperious stillness he looked like a statue of a masquerading Jupiter.
A sound.
'Hist!' said the sheriff.
The moon, low in the west, was drawing a seine of fine-spun gold across the dark depths of the valley. In that enchanted enmeshment were tangled all the fancies of the night; the vague magic of dreams; vagrant romances, dumb but for the pulses; the gleams of a poetry too delicately pellucid to be focused by a pen. The mountains maintained a majesty of silence. All the world beneath was still. The wind was laid.
Far, far away, once again, a sound.
So indistinct, so undistinguishable—they hardly knew if they had heard aright. There was a sudden scuffle near at hand. Over one of the rail fences, gleaming wet with dew, and rich with the loan of a silver beam, there climbed a long, lean old hound; with an anxious aspect he ran to the verge of the crag. Once more that sound, alien alike to the mountain solitudes and the lonely sky; then the deep-mouthed baying broke forth, waking all the echoes, and rousing all the dogs in the cove as well as the canine visitors and residents at the Settlement.
'Dod-rot that critter!' exclaimed the sheriff angrily. 'We can't hear nuthin' now but his long jaw.'
'Jes' say "Silence in court!"' suggested Amos James from where he lay at length in the grass.
The sheriff nimbly kicked the dog instead, and the night was filled with wild shrieks of pain and anger. When his barking was renewed, it was punctuated with sharp, reminiscent yelps, as the injustice of his treatment ever and anon recurred to his mind.
The sound of human voices grew very distinct when it could be heard at all, and the tramp of approaching horses shook the ground.
Every eye was turned toward the point at which the road came into the Settlement, between the densities of the forest and the gleaming array of shining, curved blades and tossing plumes, where the corn-field spread its martial suggestions. When an equestrian shadow suddenly appeared, the sheriff saluted it in a tremor of excitement.
'Hello!' he shouted. 'Did ye ketch him?'
The foremost of the party rode slowly forward: the horse was jaded; the rider slouched in the saddle with an aspect of surly exhaustion.
'Ketch him!' thundered out Gid Fletcher's gruff voice. 'Ketch the devil!'
The bold-faced deputy was brazening it out. He rode up with as dapper a style as a man may well maintain who has been in the saddle ten hours without food, sustained only by the strength of a 'tickler' in his pocket, whose prospects are jeopardized and whose official prestige is ruined. The demeanour of the other riders expressed varying degrees of injured disaffection as they threw themselves from their horses.
The blacksmith dismounted in front of the cumbersome doors of his shop, on which still hung the sheriff's padlock, and with the stiff gait of one who has ridden long and hard he strode across the clearing, and stopped before the group in front of the store.
He looked infuriated. It might have been a matter of wonder that so tired a man could nourish so strong and active a passion.
'Look a-hyar, 'Cajah Green!' he exclaimed, with an oath, 'folks 'low ter me ez I ain't got no right ter my reward fur ketchin' that thar greased peeg,—ez ye hed ter leave go of—kase he warn't landed in jail or bailed. That air the law, they tells me.'
'That's the law,' replied the sheriff. His chair was tilted back against the wall of the store, his hat drawn over his brow. He spoke with the calmness of desperation.
'Then 'pears like ter me ez I hev hed all my trouble fur nuthin', an' all the resk I hev tuk,' said the blacksmith, coming close, and mechanically rolling up the sleeve of his hammer-arm.
'Edzac'ly.'
The blacksmith turned on him a look like that of a wounded bear. 'An' ye sit thar ez peaceful ez skim-milk, an' 'low ez ye hev let my two hundred dollars slip away?' he demanded. 'Dad burn yer greasy soul!'
'I hopes it air all I hev let slip,' said the sheriff quietly. There was so much besides which he had cause to fear that it did not occur to him to be afraid of the blacksmith.
Perhaps it was the subacute perception that he shared the officer's attention with more engrossing subjects which had the effect of tempering Gid Fletcher's anger.
The rim of the moon was slipping behind the purple heights of Chilhowee. Day was suddenly upon them, though the sun had not yet risen—when did the darkness flee?—the day, cool, with a freshness as of a new creation, and with an atmosphere so clear that one might know the ash from the oak in the deep green depths of the wooded valley.
The hour had not yet done with witchery: the rose-red cloud was in the east, and the wild red rose had burst its bud; a mocking-bird sprang from its nest in a dogwood-tree, with a scintillating wing and a soaring song, and a ray of sunlight like a magic wand fell athwart the landscape.
Gid Fletcher sat vaguely staring. Presently he lifted his hand with a sudden gesture demanding attention.
'Ye ain't goin' ter be 'lected, air ye, 'Cajah Green?'
The sheriff stirred uneasily. His ambition, a little and a selfish thing, was the index to his soul. Without it he himself would not be able to find the page whereon was writ all that there was of the spiritual within him. He writhed to forego it.
'Naw,' he said desperately. 'I s'pose I ain't.' He pushed his hat back nervously.
He heard, without marking, the sudden rattling of one of the waggons that had left some time ago: it was crossing a rickety bridge near the foot of the mountain; the hollow reverberations rose and fell, echoed and died away. One of the cabin doors opened, and a man came out upon the porch. He washed his face in a tin pan which stood on a bench for the public toilet, treated his head to a refreshing souse, and then, with the water dripping from his long locks upon the shoulders of his shirt, the bold-faced deputy, much refreshed by a snack and his ablutions, came lounging across the clearing to join them.
Suddenly Micajah Green noted that the blacksmith was looking at him with a significant gleam in his black eyes and a flush on his swarthy face.
'Who said ye warn't goin' ter be 'lected?'
'Why, this hyar prophet o' yourn on the Big Smoky.'
'Why did he 'low ez that warn't comin' ter pass?'
'He wouldn't gin no reason.'
'He lef' ye ter find that out. An' ye fund it out?'
The sheriff said nothing. He was breathlessly intent.
'An' he met me in the woods, an' lowed ez Rick Tyler oughtn't ter be tuk, an' hed done no wrong; an' he called the gov'nor's reward blood-money, an' worked hisself nigh up ter the shoutin' p'int; an' called me "Judas" fur takin' the boy, sence me an' him hed been frien'ly, an' lowed ez them thar thirty pieces o' silver warn't out o' circulation yit.'
'An' then,' the bold-faced deputy struck in, 'he rode up yestiddy, a-raisin' a great wondermint over a gaynder-pullin', ez if thar'd never been one before; purtendin' 'twar wicked, like he'd never killed an' eat a fowel, an' drawin' pistols, an' raisin' a great commotion an' excitin' an'destractin' the Settlemint, so a man handcuffed, an' with a rope twisted round his arms an' legs, gits out of a house right under thar nose, an' runs away. Rick Tyler couldn't hev done it 'thout them ropes war cut, an' he war gin a chance ter sneak out. Now, I ain't a prophet by natur'e but I kin say who cut them ropes, an' who raised a disturbamint outside ter gin him a chance ter mosey.'
'Whar's he now?' demanded the sheriff, rising from his chair and glancing about.
'He was a-huntin' with the posse, las' night,' said the deputy. 'He never lef' till 'bout an hour ago. He never wanted nobody ter 'spicion nuthin', I reckon. Mebbe that's him now.'
He pointed to a road in the valley, a tawny streak elusively appearing upon a hilltop or skirting a rocky spur, soon lost in a sea of foliage. Beside a harvested wheat-field it was again visible, and a tiny moving object might be discerned by eyes trained to the long stretches of mountain landscape. The sun was higher, the dew exhaled in warm and languishing perfume, the mocking-bird filled the air with ecstasy. The men stood among their elongated shadows on the crag, staring at the moving object until it reached the dense woods, and so passed out of sight.
Down a precipitous path, hardly more civilized of aspect than if it were trodden by the deer, filled with interlacing roots, barricaded by long briery tangles, overhung by brush and overshadowed by trees—down this sylvan way Dorinda, followed by Jacob and one or two of the companionable old hounds, was wont to go to the spring under the crag.
The spot had its fascinations. The great beetling cliff towered far above, the jagged line of its summit serrating the zenith. Its rugged face was seamed with many a fissure, and here and there were clumps of ferns, a swaying vine, a huckleberry bush that fed the birds of the air. Below surged the tops of the trees. There was a shelving descent from the base of the crag, and Jacob must needs have heed of the rocky depths beneath in treading the narrow ledge that led to a great cavernous niche in the face of the rock.
Here in a deep cleft welled the never-failing spring. It always reminded Dorinda of that rock which Moses smote; although, of course, when she thought of it, she said she knew that Mount Horeb was in Jefferson County, because a man who had married her brother's wife's cousin had an aunt who lived there. And when she had abandoned that unconscious effort to bring the great things near, she would sit upon the rock and look with a sigh of pleasure at that pure, outgushing limpidity, unfailing and unchanging, and say it reminded her of the well-springs of pity.
One day, as she sat there, her dreaming head thrown back upon her hands clasped behind it, there sounded a sudden step close by. The old hounds, lying without the cavernous recess, could see along the upward vista of the path, and their low growl was rather in surly recognition than in active defiance. Dorinda and Jacob, within the great niche, beheld naught but the distant mountain landscape framed in the rugged arch above their heads. The step did not at once advance; it hesitated, and then Amos James came slowly into view. Dorinda looked up dubiously at him, and it occurred to him that this was the accepted moment to examine the lock of his gun.
'Howdy,' he ventured, as he turned the rifle about.
She had assumed a more constrained attitude, and had unclasped her hands from behind her head. The seat was a low one, and the dark blue folds of her homespun dress fell about her with simple amplitude. Her pink calico sun-bonnet lay on the rock under her elbow. The figure of the pudgy Jacob in the foreground had a callow grotesqueness. He, too, undertook the demeanour he had learned to discriminate as 'manners.' Outside, the old dog snapped at the flies.
Amos James seemed to think an account of himself appropriate.
'I hev been a-huntin',' he said, his grave black eyes on the rifle and his face in the shadow of his big white hat. 'I happened ter pass by the house, an' yer granny said ez ye hed started down hyar arter a pail o' water, an' I 'lowed ez I'd kem an' fetch it fur ye.'
Dorinda murmured that she was 'much obleeged,' and relapsed into silent propriety.
Extraordinary gun! It really seemed as if Amos James would be compelled to take it to pieces then and there, so persistently did it require his attention.
Jacob, whose hearing was unimpaired, but whose education in the specious ways of those of a larger growth was as yet incomplete, got up briskly. Since Amos had come to fetch the pail he saw no reason in nature why the pail should not be fetched, and he imagined that the return was in order. He paused for a moment in surprise; then seeing that no one else moved, he sat down abruptly. But for her manners Dorinda could have laughed. Amos James's cheek flushed darkly as he still worked at the gun.
'I s'pose ez you-uns hev hearn the news?' he remarked presently. As he asked the question he quickly lifted his eyes.
Ah, what laughing lights in hers—what radiant joys! She did not look at him. Her gaze was turned far away to the soft horizon. Her delicate lips had such dainty curves. Her pale cheek flushed tumultuously. She leaned her head back against the rock, the tendrils of her dark hair spreading over the unyielding grey stone, which, weather-shielded, was almost white. In its dead, dumb finality—the memorial of seas ebbed long ago, of forms of life extinct—she bore it a buoyant contrast. She looked immortal!
'I hev hearn the news,' she said, her long lashes falling, and with quiet circumspection at variance with the triumph in her face.
He looked at her gravely, breathlessly. A new idea had taken possession of him. The rescue—it was a strange thing! Who in the Great Smoky Mountains had an adequate temptation to risk the penalty of ten years in the state-prison for rescuing Rick Tyler from the officers of the law? His brothers?—they were step-brothers. His father was dead. Affection could not be accounted a factor. Venom might do more. Some reckless enemy of the sheriff's might thus have craftily compassed his ruin. Then there suddenly came upon Amos James a recollection of the Cayces' grudge against Micajah Green, and of the fact that they had already actively bestirred themselves to electioneer against him. Once, before it all happened, Rick Tyler had hung persistently about Dorinda, and perhaps the 'men-folks' approved him. Amos remembered too that a story was current at the gander-pulling that the reason the Cayces had absented themselves and were lying low was because a party of revenue raiders had been heard of on the Big Smoky. Who had heard of them, and when did they come, and where did they go? It seemed a fabrication, a cloak. And Dorinda—she was the impersonation of delighted triumph.
'Agged the men-folks on, I reckon,' he thought—'agged 'em on, fur the sake o' Rick Tyler!'
A sense of despair, quiet, numbing, was creeping over him.
''Tain't no reg'lar ail, I know,' he said to himself; 'but I b'lieve it'll kill me.'
Conversation in the mountains is a leisurely procedure, time being of little value. The ensuing pause, however, was of abnormal duration, and at last Amos was fain to break it, albeit irrelevantly.
'This hyar weather is gittin' mighty hot,' he observed, taking off his hat and fanning himself with it. 'I feel like I hed been dragged bodaciously through the hopper.'
From the shaded coolness of the grotto the girl admitted that it was 'middlin' warm.'
Despite the slumberous sunshine here, all the world was not so quiet. Over the valley a cloud was hovering, densely black, but with a grey, nebulous margin; now and then it was rent by a flash of lightning in swift zigzag lines, yet the mountains beyond were a tender blue in the golden glow of a sunshine yet more tender.
''Pears like they air gittin' a shower over yander, at the furder eend o' the cove,' Dorinda remarked encouragingly. 'Ef it war ter storm right smart, mebbe the thunder would cool the air some.'
'Mebbe so,' he assented.
Then he marked again the new beauty abloom in her face, and his heart sank within him. His pride was touched, too. He was a man well-to-do for the 'mountings,' with his own grist-mill, and a widowed mother whose plaint it was, night and day, that Amos was 'sech a slowly boy ter git married, an' the Lord knows thar oughter be somebody roun' the house spry'r 'n a pore old woman mighty nigh fifty year old—yes, sir! a-going on fifty. An' I want ter live down ter Emmert's Cove along o' Malviny, my married darter,' she would insist, 'whar thar air chillen, an' babies ter look arter, an' not sech a everlastin' gang o' men, a-lopin' 'round the mill. But I dunnowhatAmos would do ef I lef' him.'
Evidently it was a field for a daughter-in-law. Amos felt in his secret soul that this was not the only attraction. He was well favoured and tall and straight, and had a good name in the county, despite his pranks, which were leniently regarded. He honestly thought that Dorinda might do worse. Whether it was tact or whether it was delicacy, he did not allude to the worldly contrast with the fugitive from justice.
'I s'pose they won't ketch Rick agin,' he hazarded.
'I reckon not,' she said demurely, her long black lashes again falling.
He leaned uneasily on his gun, looked down at his great boots drawn over his brown jeans trousers to his knees, adjusted his leathern belt, and pulled his hat a trifle farther over his eyes.
'D'rindy,' he said suddenly, 'ye set a heap o' store on Rick Tyler?'
Then he was doubtful, and feared he had offended her.
Her sapphire eyes, with their leaping blue lights and dark clear depths, all blended and commingled in the softest brilliancy, shone upon him. The bliss of the event was supreme.
'Mebbe I do,' she said.
He turned and looked away at the storm, seeming ineffective as it surged in the distance. The trees in the cove were tossed by a wind that raged on a lower level, as if it issued from Æolian caverns in the depths of the range. It was a wild, aërial panorama—the black clouds, and the rain, and the mist rolling through the deep gorge, veined with lightnings and vocal with thunder, and the thunderous echoes among the rocks.
Not a leaf stirred on the mountain's brow, and the great 'bald' lifted its majestic crest in a sunshine all unpaled, and against the upper regions of the air, splendidly blue. There was an analogy in the scene with his mood and hers.
A moment ago he had been saying to himself that he did not want to be 'turned off' in favour of a man who was hunted like a wild animal through the woods; who, if his luck and his friends should hold out, and he could evade capture, might look forward to naught but uncertainty and a fearful life, like others in the Big Smoky, who dared not open their own doors to a summons from without, skulking in their homes like beasts in their den.
The dangers, misfortunes, and indignities suffered by his preferred rival were an added slur upon him, who had all the backing of propitious circumstance. Since there was nothing to gain, why humble himself in vain?
This was his logic—sound, just, approved by his judgment; and as it arranged itself in his mind with all the lucidity of pure reason, he spoke from the complex foolish dictates of his unreasoning heart.
'I hev hoped ter marry ye, D'rindy, like I hev hoped fur salvation,' he said abruptly.
He looked at her now, straight and earnestly, with his shaded, serious black eyes. Her rebuking glance slanted beyond him from under her half-lifted lashes.
'I thought ye war a good church member,' she said unexpectedly.
'I am. But that don't make me a liar ez I knows on. I'd ruther hear ye a-singin' 'roun' the house in Eskaqua Cove, an' a-callin' the chickens, an' sech, 'n ter hear all the angels in heaven a-quirin' tergether.'
'That ain't religion, Amos Jeemes,' she said, with cool disapproval.
'Waal,' he rejoined with low-spirited obstinacy, 'mebbe 'tain't.'
There was a delicate odour of ferns on the air; the cool, outgushing water tinkled on the stones like a chime of silver bells; his shadow fell athwart the portal as he leaned on his rifle, and his wandering glance mechanically swept the landscape.
The sudden storm had passed, the verge of the cloud hovering so near that they could hear the last heavy raindrops pattering on the tops of the trees in Eskaqua Cove. Vapours were rising from the ravine: the sun shone upon them, throwing a golden aureola about the opposite mountains, and all the wreathing mists that the wind whirled down the valley had elusive, opalescent effects. The thunder muttered in the distance; the sharp-bladed lightnings were sheathed; a rainbow girdled the world, that had sprung into a magic beauty as if cinctured by the zone of Venus. The arch spanned the blue sky, and on the dark mountains extended the polychromatic reflection. The freshened wind came rushing up the gorge, and the tree-tops bent.
'Look-a-hyar, D'rindy,' said Amos James sturdily; 'I want ye ter promise me one thing.'
Dorinda had risen in embarrassment. She looked down at Jacob.
'It air about time for we-uns ter be a-goin' ter the house, I reckon,' she said.
But Jacob sat still. He was apt in 'takin' l'arnin',' and he had begun to perceive that his elders did not always mean what they said. He was cool and comfortable, and content to remain.
'I want ye ter promise me that ef ever ye find ez ye hev thunk too well o' Rick Tyler, an' hev sot him up too high in yer mind over other folks, ye'll let me know.'
Her cheek dimpled; her rare laughter fell on the air; a fervid faith glowed in her deep, bright eyes.
'I promise ye!'
'Ye think Rick Tyler air mighty safe in that promise,' he rejoined, crestfallen.
But Dorinda would say no more.
The disappointment which Amos James experienced found expression in much the same manner as that of many men of higher culture. He went down to his home in Eskaqua Cove, moody and morose. He replied to his chirping mother in discouraging monosyllables. In taciturn disaffection he sat on the step of the little porch, and watched absently a spider weaving her glittering gossamer maze about an overhanging mass of purple grapes, with great green leaves that were already edged with a rusty red and mottled with brown. A mocking-bird boldly perched among them, ever and anon, the airy grace of his pose hardly giving, in its exquisite lightness, the effect of a pause. The bird swallowed the grapes whole with a mighty gulp, and presently flew away with one in his bill for the refreshment of his family, whose vibratory clamour in an althea bush hard by mingled with the drone of the grasshoppers in the wet grass, louder than ever since the rain, and the persistent strophe and antistrophe of the frogs down on the bank of the mill-pond.
'Did they git enny shower up in the mounting, Amos?' demanded his mother, as she sat knitting on the porch—a thin little woman, with a nervous, uncertain eye and a drawling, high-pitched voice.
'Naw'm,' said Amos, 'not ez I knows on.'
'I reckon ye'd hev knowed ef ye hed got wet,' she said, with asperity. 'Ye hain't got much feelin', no ways—yer manners shows it—but I 'low yewouldfeel the rain ef it kem down right smart, or ef ye war streck by lightnin'.'
There was no retort, and from the subtle disappointment in the little woman's eye it might have seemed that to inaugurate a controversy would have been more filial, so bereft of conversational opportunity was her lonely life, where only a 'gang o' men loped 'round the mill.'
She knitted on with a sharp clicking of the needles for a time, carrying the thread on a gnarled fourth finger, which seemed unnaturally active for that member, and somehow officious.
'I'll be bound ye went ter Cayce's house,' she said aggressively.
There was another long pause. The empty dwelling behind them was so still that one could hear the footsteps of an intruding rooster, as he furtively entered at the back door.
'Shoo!' she said, shaking her needles at him, as she bent forward and saw him standing in the slant of the sunshine, all his red and yellow feathers burnished. He had one foot poised motionless, and looked at her with a reproving side-glance, as if he could not believe he had caught the drift of her remarks. Another gesture, more pronounced than the first, and he went scuttling out, his wings half spread and his toe-nails clattering on the puncheon floor. 'Ye went ter Cayce's, I'll be bound, and hyar ye be, with nuthin' ter tell. Ef I war free ter jounce 'round the mounting same ez the idle, shif'less men-folks, who hev got nuthin' ter do but eye a mill ez the water works, I'd hev so much ter tell whenst I got home that ye'd hev ter tie me in a cheer ter keep me from talkin' myself away, like somebody happy with religion. An' hyar ye be, actin' like ye hed no mo' gift o' speech'n the rooster. Shoo! Shoo! Whar did ye go, ennyhow, when ye war on the mounting?'
'A-huntin',' said Amos.
'Huntin' D'rindy Cayce, I reckon. An' ye never got her, ter jedge from yer looks. An' I ain't got the heart ter blame the gal. Sech a lonesome, say-nuthin' husband ye'd make!'
The sharp click of her knitting-needles filled the pause. But her countenance had relaxed. She was in a measure enjoying the conversation, since the spice of her own share atoned for the lack of news or satisfactory response.
'Air old Mis' Cayce's gyarden-truck suff'rin' fur rain?'
There was a gleam of hopeful expectation behind her spectacles. With her reeking 'gyarden-spot' dripping with raindrops, and the smell of thyme and sage and the damp mould on the air, she could afford some pity as an added flavour for her pride.
'Never looked ter see,' murmured her son, between two long whiffs from his pipe.
His mother laid her knitting on her lap.
'I'll be bound, Amos Jeemes, ez ye never tole her how 'special our'n war a-thrivin' this season.'
'Naw'm,' said Amos, a trifle more promptly than usual, 'I never. 'Fore I'd go a-crowin' over old Mis' Cayce 'bout'n our gyarden-truck I'd see it withered in a night, like Jonah's gourd.'
'It's the Lord's han',' said his mother quickly, in self-justification. 'I ain't been prayin' fur no drought in Mis' Cayce's gyarden-spot.'
Another long pause ensued. The sun shining through a bunch of grapes made them seem pellucid globes of gold and amber and crimson among others darkly purple in the shadow. The mocking-bird came once more a-foraging. A yellow and red butterfly flickered around in the air, as if one of the tiger-lilies there by the porch had taken wings and was wantoning about in the wind. On the towering bald of the mountain a cloud rested, obscuring the dome—a cloud of dazzling whiteness—and it seemed as if the mountain had been admitted to some close communion with the heavens. Below, the colour was intense, so deeply green were the trees, so clear and sharp a grey were the crags, so blue were the shadows in the ravines. Amos was looking upward. He looked upward much of the time.
'See old Groundhog?' inquired his mother, suddenly.
'Whar?' he demanded with a start, breaking from his reverie.
'Laws-a-massy, boy!' she exclaimed, in exasperation. 'Whenst ye war up ter the Cayces', this mornin'.'
'Naw'm,' said Amos. He had never admitted, save by indirection, that he had been to the Cayces'.
'War he gone ter the still?'
'I never axed.'
'I s'pose not, bein' ez ye never drinks nuthin' but buttermilk, do ye?'—this with a scathing inflection.
She presently sighed deeply.
'Waal, waal. The millinium an' the revenue will git thar rights one of these days, I hopes an' prays. I'm a favorin' of ennythink ez'll storp sin an' a-swillin' o' liquor. Tax 'em all, I say! Tax the sinners!'
She had assumed a pious aspect, and spoke in a tone of drawling solemnity, with a vague idea that the whisky tax was in the interest of temperance, and the revenue department was a religious institution. The delusions of ignorance!
'Thar ain't ez much drunk nohow now ez thar useter war. I 'members when I war a gal whisky war so cheap that up to the store at the Settlemint they'd hev a bucket set full o' whisky an' a gourd, free fur all comers, an' another bucket alongside with water ter season it. An' the way that thar water lasted war surprisin'—that it war! Nowadays ye ain't goin' to find liquor so plenty nowhar, 'cept mebbe at old Groundhog's still.'
Amos made no reply. His eyes were fixed on the road. A man on an old white horse had emerged from the woods, and was slowly ambling toward the mill. The crazy old structure was like a caricature; it seemed that only by a lapse of all the rules of interdependent timbers did it hang together, with such oblique disregard of rectangles. Its doors and windows were rhomboidal; its supports tottered in the water. The gate was shut. The whir was hushed. A sleep lay upon the pond, save where the water fell like a silver veil over the dam. Even this motion was dreamy and somnambulistic.
On the other side of the stream the great sandstone walls of the channel showed the water-marks of flood and fall of past years, cut in sharp levels and registered in the rock. They beetled here and there, and the verdure on the summits looked over and gave the deep waters below the grace of a dense and shady reflection. Above the dark old roof on every hand the majestic encompassing mountains rose against the sky, and the cove nestled sequestered from the world in this environment.
The man on the gaunt white horse suddenly paused, seeing the mill silent and lonely; his eyes turned to the little house farther down the stream.
'Hello!' he yelled. 'I kem hyar ter git some gris' groun'.'
'Grin' yer gris' yerse'f,' vociferated the miller, cavalierly renouncing his vocation. 'I hev no mind ter go a-medjurin' o' toll.'
Thus privileged, the stranger dismounted, went into the old mill, himself lifted the gate, and presently the musical whir broke forth. It summoned an echo from the mountain that was hardly like a reflection of its simple, industrial sound, so elfin, so romantically faint, so fitful and far, it seemed! The pond awoke, the water gurgled about the wheel, the tail-race was billowy with foam.
Presently there was silence. The gate had fallen; the farmer had measured the toll, and was riding away. As he vanished Amos James rose slowly, and began to stretch his stalwart limbs.
'I'm glad ye ain't palsied with settin' so long, Amos,' said his mother. 'Ye seem ter hev los' interes' in everythink 'ceptin' the doorstep. Lord A'mighty! I never thunk ez ye'd grow up ter be sech pore comp'ny. No wonder ez D'rindy hardens her heart! An' when ye war a baby—my sakes! I could set an' list'n ter yer jowin' all day. An' sech comp'ny ye war, when ye couldn't say a word an' hedn't a tooth in yer head!'
He lived in continual rivalry with this younger self in his mother's affections. She was one of those women whose maternal love is expressed in an idolatry of infancy. She could not forgive him for outgrowing his babyhood, and regarded every added year upon his head as a sort of affront and a sorrow.
He strode away, still gloomily downcast, and when the woman next looked up she saw him mounted on his bay horse, and riding toward the base of the mountain.
'Waal, sir!' she exclaimed, taking off her spectacles and rubbing the glasses on her blue-checked apron, 'D'rindy Cayce'll hev ter marry that thar boy ter git shet o' him. I hev never hearn o' nobody ridin' up that thar mounting twict in one day 'thout they hed suthin' 'special ter boost 'em—a-runnin' from the sher'ff, or sech.'
But Amos James soon turned from the road that wound in long, serpentine undulations to the mountain's brow, and pursued a narrow bridlepath, leading deep into the dense forests. It might have seemed that he was losing his way altogether when the path disappeared among the boulders of a stream, half dry.
He followed the channel up the rugged, rock-girt gorge for perhaps a mile, emerging at length upon a slope of out-cropping ledges, where his horse left no hoof-print.
Soon he struck into the laurel, and pressed on, guided by signs distinguishable only to the initiated: some grotesque gnarling of limbs, perhaps, of the great trees that stretched above the almost impenetrable undergrowth; some projecting crag, visible at long intervals, high up and cut sharply against the sky.
All at once, in the midst of the dense laurel, he came upon a cavity in the side of the mountain. The irregularly shaped fissure was more than tall enough to admit a man.
He stood still for a moment, and called his own name. There was no response save the echoes, and, dismounting, he took the bridle and began to lead the horse into the cave. The animal shied dubiously, protesting against this unique translation to vague subterranean spheres. The shadow of the fissured portal fell upon them; the light began to grow dim; the dust thickened.
As Amos glanced over his shoulder he could see the woods without suffused with a golden radiance, and there was a freshness on the intensely green foliage as if it were newly washed with rain. The world seemed suddenly clarified, and tiny objects stood out with strange distinctness; he saw the twigs on the great trees and the white tips of the tail-feathers of a fluttering bluejay. Far down the aisles of the forest the enchantment held its wonderful sway, and he felt in his own ignorant fashion how beautiful is the accustomed light.
When the horse's stumbling feet had ceased to sound among the stones, the wilderness without was as lonely and as unsuggestive of human occupation or human existence as when the Great Smoky Mountains first rose from the sea.
Amos and his steed made their way along a narrow passage, growing wider, however, and taller, but darker, and with many short turns—an embarrassment to the resisting brute's physical conformation.
Suddenly there was a vague red haze in the dark, the sound of voices, and an abrupt turn brought man and horse into a great subterranean vault, where dusky distorted figures, wreathing smoke, and a flare of red fire suggested Tartarus.
'Hy're, Amos!' cried a hospitable voice.
A weird tone repeated the words with precipitate promptness.
Again and again the abrupt echoes spoke; far down the unseen blackness of the cave a hollow whisper announced his entrance, and he seemed mysteriously welcomed by the unseen powers of the earth.
He was not an imaginative man nor observant, but the upper regions were his sphere, and he had all the acute sensitiveness incident to being out of one's element. Even after he had seated himself he noted a far, faint voice crying, 'Hy're, Amos!' in abysmal depths explored only by the sound of his name.
And here it was that old Groundhog Cayce evaded the law, and ran his still, and defied the revenue department, and maintained his right to do as he would with his own.
'Lord A'mighty, air the corn mine, or no?' he would argue. 'Air the orchard mine, or the raiders'? An' what ails me ez I can't make whisky an' apple-jack same ez in my dad's time, when him an' me run a sour mash still on the top o' the mounting in the light o' day, up'ards o' twenty year, an' never hearn o' no raider. Tell me that's agin the law, nowadays! Waal, now, who made that law? I never; an' I ain't a-goin' ter abide by it, nuther. Ez sure ez ye air born, it air jes' a Yankee trick fotched down hyar by the Fed'ral army. An' if I hed knowed they war goin' ter gin tharse'fs ter sech persecutions arter the war, I dunno how I'd hev got my consent ter fit alongside of 'em like I done fower year fur the Union.'
A rude furnace made of fire-rock was the prominent feature of the place, and on it glimmered the pleasing rotundities of a small copper still. The neck curved away into the obscurity. There was the sound of gurgling water, with vague babbling echoes; for the never-failing rill of an underground spring, which rose among the rocks, was diverted to the unexpected purpose of flowing through the tub where the worm was coiled, and of condensing the precious vapours, which dripped monotonously into their rude receiver at the extremity of the primitive fixtures.
The iron door of the furnace was open now as Ab Cayce replenished the fire. It sent out a red glare, revealing the dark walls; the black distances; the wreaths of smoke, that were given a start by a short chimney, and left to wander away and dissipate themselves in the wide subterranean spaces; and the uncouth, slouching figures and illuminated faces of the distillers. They lounged upon the rocks or sat on inverted baskets and tubs, and one stalwart fellow lay at length upon the ground.
The shadows were all grotesquely elongated, almost divested of the semblance of humanity, as they stretched in unnatural proportions upon the rocks.
Amos James's horse cast on the wall an image so gigantic that it seemed as if the past and the present were mysteriously united, and he stood stabled beside the grim mastodon whom the cave had sheltered from the rigours of his day long before Groundhog Cayce was moved to seek a refuge.
The furnace door clashed; the scene faded; only a glittering line of vivid white light, emitted between the ill-fitting door and the unhewn rock, enlivened the gloom. Now and then, as one of the distillers moved, it fell upon him, and gave his face an abnormal distinctness in the surrounding blackness, like some curiously cut onyx.
'Waal, Amos,' said a voice from out the darkness, 'I'm middlin' glad ter see you-uns. Hev a drink.'
A hand came out into the gleaming line of light extending with a flourish of invitation a jug of jovial aspect.
'Don't keer ef I do,' said Amos politely.
He lifted the jug, and drank without stint. The hand received it back again, shook it as if to judge of the quantity of its contents, and then, with a gesture of relish, raised it to an unseen mouth.
'Enny news 'round the mill, Amos?' demanded his invisible pot companion.
'None ez I knows on,' drawled Amos.
'Grind some fur we-uns ter-morrer?' asked Ab.
'I'll grind yer bones, ef ye'll send 'em down,' said Amos accommodatingly. 'All's grist ez goes ter the hopper. How kem you-uns ter git the nightmare 'bout'n the raiders? I waited fur Sol an' the corn right sharp time Wednesday mornin'; jes' hed nuthin' ter do but ter sot an' suck my paws, like a b'ar in winter, till 't war time ter put out an' go ter the gaynder-pullin'.'
'Waal'—there was embarrassment in the tones of the burly shadow, and all the echoes were hesitant as Groundhog Cayce replied in Ab's stead: 'Mirandy Jane 'lowed ez she hed seen a strange man 'bout'n the spring, an' thought it war a raider—though he'd hev been in a mighty ticklish place fur a raider, all by himself. Mirandy Jane hev fairly got the jim-jams, seein' raiders stiddier snakes; we-uns can't put no dependence in the gal. An' mam, she drempt the raiders hed camped on Chilhowee Mounting. An' D'rindy, she turned fool: fust she 'lowed ez we-uns would all be ruined ef we went ter the gaynder-pullin', an' then she war powerful interrupted when we 'lowed we wouldn't go, like ez ef she wanted us ter go most awful. I axed this hyer Pa'son Kelsey, ez rid by that mornin', ef he treed enny raiders in his mind. An' he 'lowed none, 'ceptin' the devil a-raidin' 'roun' his own soul. But 'mongst 'em we-uns jest bided away that day. I wouldn't hev done it, 'ceptin' D'rindy tuk ter talkin' six ways fur Sunday, an' she got me plumb catawampus, so ez I didn't rightly know what I wanted ter do myself.'
It was a lame story for old Groundhog Cayce to tell. Even the hesitating echoes seemed ashamed of it. Mirandy Jane's mythical raider, and mam's dream, and D'rindy's folly—were these to baffle that stout-hearted old soldier?
Amos James said no more. If old Cayce employed an awkward subterfuge to conceal the enterprise of the rescue, he had no occasion to intermeddle. Somehow, the strengthening of his suspicions brought Amos to a new realization of his despair. He sought to modify it by frequent reference to the jug, which came his way at hospitably short intervals. But he had a strong head, and had seen the jug often before; and although he thought his grief would be alleviated by getting as drunk as a 'fraish b'iled owel,' that consummation of consolation was coy and tardy. He was only mournfully frisky after a while, feeling that he should presently be obliged to cut his throat, yet laughing at his own jokes when the moonshiners laughed, then pausing in sudden seriousness to listen to the elfin merriment evoked among the lurking echoes. And he sang, too, after a time, a merry catch, in a rich and resonant voice, with long, dawdling, untutored cadences and distortions of effect—sudden changes of register, many an abrupt crescendo and diminuendo, and 'spoken' interpolations and improvisations, all of humorous intent.
The others listened with the universal greedy appetite for entertainment which might have been supposed to have dwindled and died of inanition in their serious and deprived lives. Pete Cayce first revolted from the strain on his attention, subordination, and acquiescence. It was not his habit to allow any man to so completely absorb public attention.
'Look-a-hyar, Amos, fur Gawd's sake, shet up that thar foolishness!' he stuttered at last. 'Thar's n-no tellin' how f-f-fur yer survigrus bellerin' kin be hearn. An' besides, ye'll b-b-bring the rocks down on to we-uns d-d'rectly. They tell me that it air dangerous ter f-f-f-fire pistols an' jounce 'round in a cave. Bring the roof down.'
'That air jes' what I'm a-aimin' ter do, Pete,' said Amos, with his comical gravity. 'I went ter meetin' week 'fore las', an' the pa'son read 'bout Samson; an' it streck my ambition, an' I'm jes' a-honin' ter pull the roof down on the Philistine.'
'Look-a-hyar, Amos Jeemes, ye air the b-b-banged-est critter on this hyar m-mounting! Jes' kem hyar ter our s-still an' c-c-call me a Ph-Ph-Philistine.'
The jug had not been stationary, and as Pete thrust his aggressive face forward the vivid, quivering line of light from the furnace showed that it was flushed with liquor, and that his eyes were bloodshot. His gaunt head, with long, colourless hair, protruding teeth, and homely, prominent features, as it hung there in the isolating effect of that sharp and slender gleam—the rest of his body cancelled by the darkness—had a singularly unnatural and sinister aspect. The light glanced back with a steely glimmer. The drunken man had a knife in his hand.
'Storp it, now!' his younger brother drawlingly admonished him. 'Who be ye a-goin' ter cut?'
'Call m-m-me a Philistine! I'll bust his brains out!' asseverated Pete.
'Ye're drunk, Pete,' said old Groundhog Cayce, in an explanatory manner.
There was no move to defend the threatened guest. Perhaps Amos James was supposed to be able to take care of himself.
'Call me a Ph-Philistine—a Philistine!' exclaimed Pete, steadying himself on the keg on which he sat, and peering with wide, light eyes into the darkness, as if to mark the whereabouts of the enemy before dealing the blow. 'Jes' got insurance—c-c-c-call me a Philistine!'
'Shet up, Pete. I'll take it back,' said Amos gravely. 'I'mthe Philistine myself; fur pa'son read ez Samson killed a passel o' Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, an' ez long ez ye be talkin' I feel in an' about dead.'
Amos James had bent close attention to the sermon, and had brought as much accurate information from meeting as was consistent with hearing so sensational a story as Samson's for the first time. In the mountains men do not regard church privileges as the opportunity of a quiet hour to meditate on secular affairs, while a gentle voice drones on antiquated themes. To Amos, Samson was the latest thing out.
Pete did not quite catch the full meaning of this sarcasm. He was content that Amos should seem to recant. He replaced his knife, but sat surly and muttering, and now and then glancing toward the guest.
Meantime that vivid white gleam quivered across the dusky shadows; now and then the horse pawed, raising martial echoes, as of squadrons of cavalry, among the multitudinous reverberations of the place, while his stall-companion, that the light could conjure up, was always noiseless; the continuous fresh sound of water gurgling over the rocks mingled with the monotonous drip from the worm; occasionally a gopher would skud among the heavily booted feet, and the jug's activity was marked by the shifting for an interval of the red sparks which indicated the glowing pipes of the burly shadows around the still.
The stories went on, growing weird as the evening outside waned, in some unconscious sympathy with the melancholy hour—for in these sunless depths one knew nor day nor night—stories of bloody vendettas, and headless ghosts, and strange provisions, and unnamed terrors. And Amos James recounted the fable of a mountain witch, interspersed with a wild vocal refrain:
Cu-vo! Cu-vo! Kil-dar! Kil-dar! Kil-dar!
Cu-vo! Cu-vo! Kil-dar! Kil-dar! Kil-dar!
Thus she called her hungry dogs that fed on human flesh, while the winds were awhirl, and the waning moon was red, and the Big Smoky lay in densest gloom.
The white line of light had yellowed, deepened, grown dull. The furnace needed fuel. Ab suddenly leaned down and threw open the door. The flare of the pulsing coals resuscitated the dim scene and the long dun-coloured shadows. Here in the broad red light were the stolid, meditative faces of the distillers, each with his pipe in his mouth and his hat on his head; it revealed the dilated eye and unconsciously dramatic gesture of the story-teller, sitting upon a barrel in their midst; the horse was distinct in the background, now dreaming and now lifting an impatient fore-foot, and his gigantic stall-mate, the simulacrum of the mastodon, moved as he moved, but softly, that the echoes might not know—the immortal echoes, who were here before him, and here still.
And behind all were the great walls of the vault, with its vague apertures leading to unexplored recesses; with many jagged ledges, devoted to shelf-like usage, and showing here a jug, and here a shot-pouch, and here a rat—fat and sleek, thanks to the plenteous waste of mash and grain—looking down with a glittering eye, and here a bag of meal, and here a rifle.
Suddenly Amos James broke off.
'Who's that?' he exclaimed, and all the echoes were sharply interrogative.
There was a galvanic start among the moonshiners. They looked hastily about—perhaps for the witch, perhaps for the frightful dogs, perhaps expecting the materialization of Mirandy Jane's raider.
Amos had turned half-round and was staring intently beyond the still. The man lying on the ground had shifted his position; his soft brown hat was doubled under his head. The red flare showed its long, tawny, tangled hair, of a hue unusual enough to be an identification. His stalwart limbs were stretched out at length; the hands he thrust above his head were unmanacled; as he moved there was the jingle of spurs.
'Why, thar be Rick Tyler!' exclaimed Amos James.
'Hev ye jes' fund that out?' drawled the man on the ground, with a jeering inflection.
'W-w-w-whyn't ye lie low, Rick?' demanded Pete aggressively. 'Ef ever thar war a empty cymblin', it's yer head. Amos an' that thar thin-lipped sneak ez called hisself a dep'ty air thick'n thieves.'
There was no hesitation in Amos James's character. He leaned forward suddenly and clutched Pete by the throat, and the old man and Solomon were fain to interfere actively to prevent that doughty member of the family from being throttled on the spot.
Pending the interchange of these amenities, Rick Tyler lay motionless on the ground; Ab calmly continued his task of replenishing the fire; and Ben asked, in a low monotone, the favour of leaving the furnace-door open for a 'spell, whilst I unkiver the kag in the corner, an' fill the jug, an' kiver the kag agin keerful, 'kase I don't want no rat in mine.'
When Pete, with a scarlet face and starting eyes and a throat full of complicated coughs and gurgles, was torn out of the young miller's strong hands, old Groundhog Cayce remonstrated:
'Lord A'mighty, boys! Can't ye set an' drink yer liquor sociable, 'thout clinchin' that-a-way? What did Pete do ter ye, Amos?'
'Nuthin'; he dassent,' said the panting Amos.
'Did he hurt yer feelin's?' asked the old man with respectful sympathy.
'Yes, he did,' said Amos, admitting vulnerability in that tender æsthetic organ.
'Never none—now—koo—koo!' coughed Pete. 'He hev got no f-f-f-feelin's, koo—koo! I hev hearn his own m-mam say so a-many a time.'
'He 'lowed,' said Amos, his black eyes flashing indignantly, his face scarlet, the perspiration thick in his black hair, 'ez I'd tell the deputy—kase he war toler'ble lively hyar, an' I got sorter friendly with him when I hed ter sarve on the posse—ez I seen Rick Tyler hyar. Mebbe ye think I want two hundred dollars—hey!'
He made a gesture as if to seize again his late antagonist.
'A-koo, koo, koo!' coughed Pete, moving cautiously out of reach.
All the echoes clamoured mockingly with the convulsive sound, and thus multiplied they gave a ludicrous suggestion of the whooping cough.
'I dunno, Mr. Cayce,' said Amos, with some dignity, addressing the old man, 'what call ye hev got ter consort with them under indictment for murder, an' offenders agin the law. But hevin' seen Rick Tyler hyar in a friendly way along o' you-uns, he air ez safe from me ez ef he war under my own roof.'
Rick Tyler drew himself up on his elbow, and turned upon the speaker a face inflamed by sudden passion.
'Go tell the dep'ty!' he screamed. 'I'll take no faviors from ye, Amos Jeemes. Kem on! Arrest me yerse'f!' He rose to his feet, and held out his bruised and scarred hands, smiting them together as if he were again handcuffed. The light fell full on his clothes, tattered by his briery flight, the long dishevelment of his yellow hair, his burning face, and the blazing fury in his brown eyes. 'Kem on! Arrest me yerse'f—ye air ekal ter it. I kin better bide the law than ter take faviors from you-uns. Kem on! Arrest me!'
Once more he held out his free hands as if for the manacles.
Their angry eyes met. Then, as Amos James still sat silent and motionless on the barrel, Rick Tyler turned, and with a gesture of desperation again flung himself on the ground.
There was a pause. Two of the moonshiners were arranging to decant some liquor into a keg, and were lighting a tallow dip for the purpose. In the dense darkness of the recess where they stood it took on a large and lunar aspect. A rayonnant circle hovered attendant upon it; the shadows about it were densely black, and in the sharp and colourless contrasts the two bending figures of the men handling the keg stood out in peculiar distinctness of pose and gesture. The glare of the fire in the foreground deepened to a dull orange, to a tawny red, even to a dusty brown, in comparison with the pearly, luminous effect of the candle. The tallow dip was extinguished when the task was complete. Presently the furnace door clashed, the group of distillers disappeared as with a bound, and that long, livid line of pulsating light emitted by the ill-fitting door cleft the gloom like a glittering blade.
'I s'pose ye don't mean ter be sassy in 'special, Amos, faultin' yer elders, talkin' 'bout consortin' with them under indictment,' said old Groundhog Cayce's voice. 'But I dunno ez ye hev enny call ter sot yerse'f up in jedgmint on my actions.'
'Waal,' said Amos, apologetic, 'I never went ter say nuthin' like faultin' nohow. Sech ez yer actions I leaves ter you-uns.'
'Ye mought ez well,' said the elder, unconsciously satiric. 'The Bible 'lows ez every man air a law unto hisself. An' I hev fund I gits peace mos'ly in abidin' by the law ez kems from within. An' I kin see no jestice in my denyin' a rifle an' a lot o' lead an' powder ter a half-starvin' critter ter save his life. Rick war bound ter starve, hid out, ef he hed nuthin' ter shoot deer an' wild varmints with, bein' ez his rifle war tuk by the sher'ff. I knows no law ez lays on me the starvin' o' a human. An' when that boy kem a-cropin' hyar ter the still this evenin', he got ez fair-spoke a welcome, an' ez much liquor ez he'd swaller, same ez enny comer on the mounting. I dunno ez he air a offender agin the law, an' 'tain't my say-so. I ain't a jedge, an' thar ain't enough o' me fur a jury.'
This lucid discourse, its emphasis doubled by the iterative echoes, had much slow, impersonal effect as it issued from the darkness. It was to Amos James, accustomed to rural logic, as if reason, pure and simple, had spoken. His heart had its own passionate protest. Not that he disapproved the loan of the rifle, but he distrusted the impulse which prompted it. To find the hunted fugitive here among the distillers added the force of conviction to his suspicions of a rescue and its instigation.
The personal interest which he had in all this annulled for a moment his sense of the becoming, and defied the constraints of etiquette.
'How'd Rick Tyler say he got away from the sher'ff, ennyhow?' he demanded bluntly.
'He warn't axed,' said old Groundhog Cayce quietly.
A silence ensued, charged with all the rigours of reproof.
'An' I dunno ez ye hev enny call ter know, Amos Jeemes,' cried out Rick, still prone upon the ground. 'That won't holp the sher'ff none now. Ye'd better be studyin' 'bout settin' him on the trail ter ketch me agin.'
The line of light from the rift in the furnace door showed a yellow gleam in the blackness where his head lay. Amos James fixed a burning eye upon it.
'I'll kem thar d'rec'ly an' tromp the life out'n ye, Rick Tyler. I'll grind yer skull ter pieces with my boot-heel, like ez ef ye war a copper-head.'
'Laws-a-massy, boys, sech a quar'lin', fightin' batch ez ye be! I fairly gits gagged with my liquor a-listenin' ter ye—furgits how ter swaller,' said Groundhog Cayce, suddenly fretful.
'Leave Rick be, Amos Jeemes,' he added, in an authoritative tone. And then, with a slant of his head toward Rick Tyler, lying on the ground, 'Hold yer jaw down thar!'
And the two young men lapsed into silence.
The spring, rising among the barren rocks, chanted aloud its prescient sylvan song of the woodland ways, and the glancing beam, and the springing trout, and the dream of the drifting leaf, as true of tone and as delicately keyed to the dryadic chorus in the forest without as if the waters that knew but darkness and the cavernous sterilities were already in the liberated joys of the gorge yonder, reflecting the sky, wantoning with the wind, and swirling down the mountain side. The spirits dripped from the worm, the furnace roared, the men's feet grated upon the rocks as they now and then shifted their position.
'Waal,' said Amos at last, rising, 'I'd better be a-goin'. 'Pears like ez I hev wore out my welcome hyar.'
He stood looking at the line of light, remembering desolately Dorinda's buoyant, triumphant mood. Its embellishment of her beauty had smitten him with an afflicted sense of her withdrawal from all the prospects of his future. He had thought that he had given up hope, but he began to appreciate, when he found Rick Tyler in intimate refuge with her kindred, how sturdy an organism was that heart of his, and to realize that to reduce it to despair must needs cost many a throe.
'I hev wore out my welcome, I reckon,' he repeated dismally.
'I dunno what ails ye ter say that. Ye hev jes' got tired o' comin' hyar, I reckon,' said old man Cayce. 'Wore out yer welcome—shucks!'
'Mighty nigh wore me out,' said Pete, remembering to cough.
'Waal,' said Amos, slightly salved by the protestations of his host, 'I reckon it air time I war a-puttin' out, ennyhow. Jes' set that thar furnace door on the jar, Pete, so I kin see ter lay a-holt o' the beastis.'
The door opened, the red glow flared out, the figures of the moonshiners all reappeared in a semicircle about the still, and as Amos James took the horse's bridle and led him away from the wall the mastodon vanished, with noiseless tread, into the dim distance of the unmeasured past.
The horse's hoofs reverberated down the cavernous depths, echoed, re-echoed, multiplied indefinitely. Even after the animal had been led through the tortuous windings of the passage his tramp resounded through the gloom.