Now she faced him again and spoke, and her words carried a volume of reproach.
"Orlick," she began, "why do yo'-all cum t' see th' boys fo'—when you're a drinkin'?"
By way of denial he suddenly gave vent to a raucous guffaw and whipped his knee with his hat, which artifice he calculated would enhance his prestige off-hand. On the contrary, his strident laugh grated strangely upon the girl's mood.
"Drinkin'—drinkin'!" he cried out, amazed. "Why, Belle-Ann, I hain't teched a drap o' liquor fo' six months! An' what's a heap sight mo', Belle-Ann, I hain't never a goin' t'!"
Here he stood up and raised his hand high over his head. "An' I hope Gawd'll paralyze me daid ef I ever touch th' stuff agin!" he declared with a profound, solemn flourish, calculated to emphasize a pledge.
A sudden look of pity grew in the girl's eyes as she studied his face, a look which Orlick mistook for interest.
"Yo' hain't a gittin' down on me like th' tuther fools, air yo', Belle-Ann?"
Belle-Ann smiled ambiguously, lifted her pretty arched brows, and centered her azure eyes upon a red-head which at that instant was hammering a hole into a dead sycamore hard by. Orlick sighed.
"Yo' orten t' git down on a feller lessen he's done somethin' pesky," he resumed tentatively. "What hev I done more'n cum an' go peaceable—an' make more money than any of 'em? Yo' see, Belle-Ann, our people hain't got no use fer a feller whut's got spunk enough t' git out o' th' mountains an' make money. Hit's hard draggin' when a feller's tryin' t' do right an' everybuddy ag'in em."
His words stopped. Belle-Ann gazed his way. Orlick looked like a martyr, the very picture of persecuted righteousness. The left corner of his mouth, usually tilted, descended in emulation of its mate.
His woebegone eyes followed the sky-line, and he appeared to be on the verge of an oral prayer.
Belle-Ann's tender, unsophisticated heart was momentarily swayed with compassion. She glanced covertly at his averted, forlorn face, and her frigidity thawed a trifle as she was cognizant of an element of truth in Orlick's claims.
She knew that a mountaineer was respected and eligible only while he stayed closely in the mountains.
Orlick sat rigid, immobile, with eyes afar and apparently utterly oblivious of Belle-Ann's presence at that moment. She walked back to the wagon-bed.
Her low, dulcet voice roused him out of his lethargy.
"Orlick," she said, "why don't yo'-all stop traipsin' round an' snookin' below—an' cum Sabbath an' jine pap's church? Don't yo'-all want t' be a Christian?"
If all the sins of Orlick's past had taken life and come up out of the ground at his feet to confront him he would have been less shocked. He flushed guiltily.
He started perceptibly and squirmed in speechless discomfort. Belle-Ann's wide, clear eyes were upon him, and as he hesitated her lips parted to speak.
"Eh?" he gurgled.
"I say—don't yo'-all——"
As though not daring to hear that seductive voice repeat its query, he spoke up hastily.
"Why, sho', Belle-Ann!" he blurted in confusion. "O' course, I'd like t' be a Christian—an' I'll sho' be at th' ded'cation Sabbath. Belle-Ann, air yo' down on me 'cose I go below t' make money what I can't make th' likes of hyarbouts?"
Orlick suddenly produced the roll of bank-notes, and, shuffling them up, rained them down in one greenish, crisp pile of opulence upon the wagon-bed.
This unexpected spectacle staggered the girl's senses for the moment. She had never seen so much money in all her life before. Her eyes grew round with astonishment.
"Oh, Orlick!" she breathed in amazement.
Unconsciously she sat down on the wagon-bed, with the pile of money beside her; and thus, wholly enthralled, she muttered faint exclamations. Orlick's eyes glittered in their devouring scrutiny, fixed upon Belle-Ann's beauty.
"Oh, Orlick," she reiterated, "is thes all yore money? Where did yo' git all thes money, Orlick?"
For an instant he fumbled blindly for words; then found them at the end of his short, ingratiating laugh. He lied with a gusto that reddened his face.
"Git hit!" he echoed blatantly. "Why, Belle-Ann, I worked fo' hit! I'm trainin' hosses below, I git a hundred a month, Belle-Ann; an' I don't drink, an' I 'low t' save my money, I do, 'cose yo' know I 'low t' git married, Belle-Ann; an' hit takes a powerful sight o' money t' keep a wife like I'm aimin' t' do.
"I hain't aimin' t' keep my wife in these mountains. She'll dry up an' blow away 'fore a buddy kin git to her to bury her. I air a goin' t' buy a nice house in Louisville an' fill hit up with fancy fixin's, an', talk about fine, fancy clothes—well, mebby my wife won't hev some fine things, 'cose I got th' money t' git 'em with, Belle-Ann!"
"Orlick," she said, "how much do yo' 'low is heah?"
So engrossed was she in lifting the bills one by one out of the tangled heap, examining both sides minutely, and laying them in one smooth stack, that she had heard little of Orlick's discourse, being vaguely conscious only that he was talking.
"Why, Belle-Ann," said he, "hit's fo' hundred dollars!"
He chuckled immoderately and pressed his cowlick down, which defiant tuft popped instantly back to its position of attention.
"Yes," he went on, noting every look that crossed her lovely face as she proceeded, deeply absorbed in handling this dazzling pile of wealth. "Yes—an' a hundred a month comin' long all th' time. Thet hain't powerful bad fo' a boy like me—air hit, Belle-Ann?"
Orlick rubbed his hands in the throes of self-exaltation and added a laugh that grated upon the girl's senses, inspiring her with a sudden impulse to end this conversation without delay.
"I reckon I'll be a goin'. Slab'll cum soon from th' mill, an' I got some bakin' t' do."
She made as if to rise. With a swift stride Orlick stood close to her, defeating this move. The money lay in one even, smooth pyramid on the wagon-bed.
With one hand he snatched up the bills and laid them in Belle-Ann's lap.
She tossed her curls, lifted her face, and fixed an inquiring look upon him. Above her his face had changed to something evil. His features were shot with a dull red from chin to brow. His lips were a-quiver with the words that clamored in his throat.
"Belle-Ann, thet money 'is all yo'ren," he blurted out, "an' all I make's yo'ren, Belle-Ann; an' I want yo' t' run away with me an' marry me, eh? I want yo' t' go now!"
This effrontery brought her to her feet, and the money spilled out on the ground. He stepped quickly in front of her and held up a restraining hand, blocking her intent to move away.
"I bin a lovin' yo', Belle-Ann, I hev. I bin a lovin' yo'-all fo' mo' than two year gone. I'm a goin' t' keep on a lovin' yo', I air, an' I hain't 'lowin' t' let any man take yo' away from me. I make mo' money in a month than Lem makes in six, Belle-Ann. Yo'-all hain't got no business in these mountains noways.
"Yo' belong down below where th' worl' kin see yo'—down in Louisville, er Lexington, among th' fine folks where yo' maw wus born, an' all dressed up like I'm lovin' t' dress yo', with a diamond ring, an' a watch, an' a gold bracelet; an' a trap with a cob-hoss which has a hock fling t' em—an' a fine house full o' fixin's."
"Thet's the place yo'-all belongs by rights, an' thet's th' place I'm a goin' t' take yo'. I bin in all th' big towns below, an' in Mexico, an' I'll swear t' Gawd I hain't never seen a gal with yore purtiness! They hain't no gal a livin' with curls fixed aroun' a face like yo'ren! Gawd only made one pair o' blue eyes—yo' got 'em! Heah, Belle-Ann, I want yo' t' marry me, eh? Cap an' th' boys air gone, an' Slab's away. Let's hurry off now, eh, Belle-Ann?" he urged in breathless tremor, his eyes afire with the quest that trumpeted in his heart.
Throughout this impassioned discourse Belle-Ann had covertly maneuvered inch by inch toward the cabin. But Orlick had hedged in front, and they now stood scarce twenty feet from the wagon-bed.
His words stirred her to a resentment that at first suffused her neck and face with a flood of crimson indignation; a humiliation that ebbed slowly away before the chill of a fear that now crept into her countenance, leaving her sweet, bowed lips a trifle pallid.
"What ails yo', Belle-Ann—don't yo' 'low t' go?" he blurted out fiercely.
She pointed toward the wagon-bed. In his voice she had sensed a note that boded ill.
"Pick up yore money, Orlick; yo' mought need hit," she advised with calm dignity, while he stooped and gathered up the bills in a flurry of haste, stuffing them in a tangled mass into his pocket. When he turned about Belle-Ann was walking leisurely, but directly toward the cabin. He was at her side in a trice.
He kept pace with her, dinning into her ears an avalanche of torrid appeals, urging her to flee with him. To his onslaught of frantic words she maintained a stoic silence.
This apparent indifference seemed to enrage him beyond all self-restraint. At a point near the open door of the kitchen, he suddenly grasped her wrist and pulled her toward him. With a dexterous turn she put her back to him, twisting her arm so a cry of pain rose to her throat, though she closed her teeth hard upon it.
He held on, and she felt the wheeze of his hot, fierce breath beating against her shoulder.
She could not alter her position without throwing herself face to face with him, so she leaned outward, and then slowly turned her head and their eyes met; and in that instant Orlick loosened his grip as though a hot bar had been laid across his two hands.
Sin had long been Orlick's adopted brother. Since early boyhood odious temptings and wild deeds had been his running-mates. When a soul has known naught but abasement and evil the sight of good is appalling. He stood away now, puzzled at first and strangely disturbed.
She still stood half smiling. It was a pitying smile. Orlick was dismayed and crestfallen, and in that minute he knew that he had jeopardized his last hope.
With a tenacious persistence, born to the breed of his kind, he ventured a lame apology. With his perfunctory laugh he suddenly stammered the fragments of words, confused and inarticulate.
"Sho'," he was muttering. "I wus jest a funnin', Belle-Ann. Yo' thought I wus a goin' t' kiss yo'. I warn't. Ha! ha! ha!—thet's one on yo'-all! Yo' thought I wus a meanin' thet. I wus jest a funnin', Belle-Ann," he ended in a faltering attempt at vindication.
"I air powerful sorry," she breathed in her soft tones, "I've hearn lots th' folks says, Orlick; but I wusn't a believin' thet yo'-all'd hurt a gurl thet-away."
Her mild reproach stirred him to a vehement defense. He sprang forward. In two strides he was beside her.
With a hand that shook perceptibly he strove gently to touch her hand. But she deftly raised her hands and locked them safely behind her head; a posture which seemed to fix the crucifixion of his one last, fleeting hope.
"Good Gawd, Belle-Ann," he cried, "yo' hain't hurted! I wus only foolin'. I wouldn't darst kiss yo', Belle-Ann, lessen yo' let me. I'd die daid ten times 'fore I'd hurt yo'-all! Don't be mad, Belle-Ann," he pleaded guiltily.
"I air powerful sorry—sorrier than I kin say—thet I ever knowed a man's name whut'd hurt a gurl. I don't know what pap an' Lem 'll say."
The terrible look that flamed up into Orlick's face stopped her words. The mention of Lem's name had a galvanic effect upon him.
It seemed to rake across all the rampant, violent passions of his nature.
He was transformed instantly from a penitent subject to a dangerous animal-thing that knew naught but the power of its own brute strength. A scowl of jealous rage distorted his features. He stepped near to her.
"I want yo' t' marry me, Belle-Ann," he panted. "Air yo' a goin' t' run away an' marry me? Jest say yes or no."
The desperate, unbridled fury in his eyes sent a chill to her heart. Notwithstanding this, she preserved her outward calm and smiled back serenely upon his menacing grimace.
"Well—yo' better saddle up. See, yore hoss is at th' trough. I'll wait at th' block."
For a moment he stood nonplused. His shifting eyes lighted with the back tide of hope that had all but ebbed away.
"Yo're a meanun' t' go?" he cried out in a voice husky with new exultation.
"I said fo' you'-all t' saddle an' I'll meet yo' at th' block," she repeated.
He started away, then jerked about and looked searchingly into her face, the light of a sudden suspicion a-glitter in his eyes.
"Yo're aimin' t' run in an' shet th' door on me, hain't yo'?"
Indignation was now in her eyes as she tossed her mass of curls and regarded him with a sense of outraged veracity.
"I said I'd wait fo' you'-all at th' witch-block," she said once more.
He turned quickly and hurried after his horse.
True to her word, Belle-Ann was waiting for Orlick at the horse-block. She sat serenely, watching his advance. At the ends of a rawhide thong a cow-horn dangled at her side, and there was no longer any fear in her heart.
When Orlick caught sight of the cow-horn he stopped as though a gun was leveled at him. A flash of fury swept his face. Then she raised the horn to her lips.
"Lord!" he ejaculated; "don't blow, Belle-Ann. They hain't no need—I'm a ridin' now."
His rage had instantly given place to a sudden meekness, and he came on, his twitching features the hue of chalk and the gloom of utter defeat in his eyes.
Belle-Ann slowly swung the horn to her side. She leaned against the horse-block and watched him saddle. Her look was neither triumphant nor scathing. Orlick did not glance at her, nor did he speak, being strenuously engaged with the horse which, having recovered its spirits, fought the bit determinedly. The saddle was double-cinched, and when Orlick tightened the flank girth the animal revolved, kicking in a circle like a bucker.
When he had leaped into the saddle Orlick wheeled about facing the girl, grinning, arrogant, and bombastic. The only sign of his thoughts was a peculiar glitter playing in the depths of his eyes.
"I'll say good-day t' yo'-all, Miss Benson," he said, with mockery in his tone and giving vent to a laugh, though it carried a threatening note.
"I 'low yo'-all'd be happier, Orlick," ventured Belle-Ann, "ef yo'd change a bit an' jine pap's church thes Sabbath a comin', an' settle down in th' mountains an' marry some gurl thet's better matched t' yo'-all."
His vibrant laugh cut into her words.
"Belle-Ann Benson," he cried, glowering down upon her placid face, with one arm pointing downward across the sunlit valley, "yo' know wheretheybe. My pap an' my fo' brothers air asleep down yander under th' willers on Pigeon Creek. They died fo' the Luttses, they ded—shot t' pieces a fightin' fo' yo'-all!
"Who knows hit better 'n yo'? An' this day yo'-all run th' last Orlick off en yore place. Whut fer—'cause I'm a lovin' yo'? Whut fer air yo'-all so stuck up? 'Cose yore beaut'f'l, an' 'cose yore mother wus a blue-grasser, an' 'cose yore a goin' below t' school?
"Yes, I reckon yo' an' Lem Lutts 'll be satisfied now—yo'-all run th' last Orlick offen yore place."
With a vicious jerk he turned the horse's head around and spurred the animal so cruelly that it reared and plunged away down the steep, rocky trail at a gallop that threatened disaster to both horse and rider. And above the jumbled clatter of the horse's shod hoofs the echoes of Orlick's wild, defeated laugh came back to Belle-Ann's ears.
She lingered a while at the horse-block, and pondered soberly upon the advisability of acquainting the old man and Lem with Orlick's visit. There could be only one consequence if she did this.
Presently she decided humanely to keep her own counsel, and, slipping to the ground, she walked slowly toward the cabin.
She walked slowly to allow the two unfortunate dogs tagging at her heels to keep pace with her. One was old Ben, the blind hound, the other a pup with a broken fore-leg which Belle-Ann had bolstered up with splints. As she approached the kitchen door, she beheld Slab standing in the yard, rigid, and looking at her with a beaming countenance. Slab, always an optimist, ever presented a hopeful face. But at this moment when she noted his presence with the tail of her eye, she glimpsed something so extraordinarily illuminating as straightway to pique her curiosity, and she stopped short and regarded him inquiringly. A prodigious grin now lured the corners of his mouth beyond sight; inspiring the freakish suspicion that they met at the back of his head.
"Lan's sake'—what ails yo'—Slab?" she interrogated.
The sound of her voice seemed to fuse some combustible deposit of exultation cached within him. Instantly he began leaping up and down in a most frantic and alarming manner, yelling in loud outbursts, causing the girl mentally to question his sanity.
"I tol' ye so—I tol' ye so—I tol' ye so——"
"What ails yo'-all?"
"Halliluja'—halliluja'——" he answered, keeping time with a grotesque dance.
"Slab—have yo' gone plum offin' yore haid?"
Belle-Ann watched his antics curiously. Presently he ceased this puzzling exposition as abruptly as he had startled her, and advanced, smearing the sweat over his seamed face with one gnarled hand, and she noticed that he kept the other hand concealed behind his back. His unique plaudits having subsided, he stood before her. He screwed his head around and looked furtively about, his sable features now drawn into a visage of deep and profound solemnity. He spoke in low, mysterious accents.
"Lil'le gal," he began softly, "lil'le gal,—sompin' hev drap—some mammon hev drap—some mammon, lil'le gal—drap plunk inter de ole man's han's. I got sompin' heah ter show yo'-all,—sompin' whut makes dis ole man nigh bus' wif gratatudness an' praise fo' de good Lo'd,—no—no—now yo' jest wait, honey—Slab'll show yo'—I mos' bus' when dis mammon drap down ter de ole man—drap down ter Slab, lil'le gal,—jest like olen times when de good Lo'd drap mammon down ter his starvin' chillens—de good Lo'd do sho' love dis ole niggah man, same ez he do good white folks. Belle-Ann—fo' seben nights Slab, he pray jes' ez hard—he pray de good Lo'd fo' wharwithal ter buy some flannel shirts wif. I done pray fo' seben nights, lil'le gal—den las' night, er big ole owl he sot on dat sycamore, an' he call me outen ma sleep—den I snuck down dar by dat wagon-bed, an' I wait, an' when Mr. Owl say 'hoo-ho' I say 'hoo-hoo' back—den when owl say 'hoo-ho' seben times, he goed away—Slab, he know zacly what dat mean—den I look roun' an' fine er lil'le bitty obeah-stone, an' lay it on de wagon-bed. Den dis morn'n' 'fore I goed ter de mill, I tuk er peek—but de obeah-stone war jes' zacly whar I lay him—den on ma way back jes' now, I tuk er nudder peek—obeah wus goed away. Den I look all roun' an' ma eyes see sompin' layin' clost up ter de wagon-bed—den ma han' reches down an' picks it up—an', lil'le gal, I mos' bus' wif happiness—whut yo' think I pluck, lil'le gal?—looky—looky—jes' look at dat bull, feedin' on dat green."
A triumphant, gloating grin broke over his face again, as he exhibited to the impatient girl a crisp, new five-dollar bill, with a buffalo engraved thereon.
As Belle-Ann took a bucket and gourd, and proceeded to water the flowers on the shady side of the house, a knowing smile lingered at the up-turned corners of her little red mouth. Again she was holding her own counsel.
The following morning, being Saturday, Cap Lutts held a conclave in the cavern that concealed the illicit still. When the conference was over half a dozen men were scattered about the mountain to watch for the approach of the law, which now seemed likely.
Not until late in the day did Lutts and the boys reach the clearing and the gospel-house. By the time they had placed the last window casement and hung the church door nightfall was near at hand.
As the old man sat rigid on a log in the clearing, at an angle where he could view the church—front, side, and bell-crowned roof—he was filled with a profound, soul-satisfying joy.
Beside him sat Lem and little Bud; and the family of three regarded the church in silent admiration, for all was now ready for the great dedication to-morrow.
The sun had turned from yellow to a crimson glory as it made for a niche in the haze-shrouded peaks. The billows of emerald, capped with frothy banks of blossoms that tumbled down from the savage heights above, grew somber as the shadows reached out and wrapped their arms about Moon mountain.
Silhouetted across the clearing, the little church contributed a quaint design.
In the cool laurel thickets a hidden chorus arose. A redbird dipped through space from across the creek, and his florid wings shed a flash of blood as he forded a shaft of fleeting sunlight.
The long-drawn cry of a she-panther echoed up from the shaggy maw of the ravine, answered straightway by the quick, broken squall of her mate, betraying an early forage plot. With magic minstrelsy issuing from the thickets the wilderness evening drifted in.
With common impulse the two boys awoke from their reverie and looked up at their father.
The joy of a moment since had gone from his eyes. As he stared in blank pathos at the church a face rose up and blotted out the vision of the belfry—the smiling face of his dead wife.
"Ef Maw had lived t' see thes, Lem!" deplored the old man in a faint voice.
"Yes, ef Maw had lived, pap!" echoed Lem.
"Ef Maw had lived!" repeated the small voice at the end of the log.
"Leastways, Maw's better off 'n we-uns, boys," consoled Cap Lutts, "'cause she air up thar whar they hain't no sorry—ner pain—ner fightin' an' killin'—an' I 'low as how Maw air a lookin' down on hit all now—on th' gawspel-house an' on we-uns, boys. An' say, boys, mebby yo' pore good Maw hain't glad like—eh? Why, I kin jest see her now—I kin see Maw now jest as plain—a smilin' an' a smilin'—an' whar——"
"Yes—so kin I," interrupted Lem reflectively.
"I kin see Maw now," supplemented little Bud.
Suddenly a look shot into the old man's eyes like the florid tongue of flame at the muzzle of a gun. Instantly it was communicated to the two brothers. If the volcanic fires reflected in the eyes of the men were terrible, the molten, satanic hatred that crossed the countenance of little Bud was appalling because of his tender years. Each knew of what the other was thinking. Each recalled that hillside fight when Big Pete Burton had again struggled to do his duty and a misdirected bullet had killed Maw Lutts.
The old man kicked viciously at a root, then pointed to the belfry.
"I kin see Maw jest this minnut," he resumed, "a smilin' an' a smilin' an' a walkin' 'mong th' folks an' a shakin' han's like she done down Sandy thet air time th' ridin' pahson stuck fo' two weeks. I kin jest heer her now a tellin' 'em as how Gawd an' we-uns walcums every pizen sinnah in thes end o' Kaintucky—an' as how th' spurrut o' Gawd 'll he'p we-uns an' stop all th' fightin' an' killin' an' cheatin' an' lyin' an' cussin' an' chawin' 'mong th' weemanfolk.
"Jes' wait till Sabbath day—an' thet's to-morry; jest wait till th' ridin' pahson cum t' ded'cate th' gawspel-house—I bets yo'll see a rousin', whoppin', boostin', prayin' 'vival—yo' sho' will, boys," promised the old man in the heat of growing anticipation as he wafted the rebellious hair backward with a jerk of his head.
"Aw—my soul!" ejaculated little Bud.
"An' I kin tell yo' a heap sight more, boys; I kin," promised the old man, rubbing his huge hands together gloatingly. "One day nigh yo'll see th' steers a pullin' a real slappin' new organ machine into th' clearin'—yo'll see th' steers cum jest in 'twix' yon two spruces an' pull jest roun' thar, an' stop jest a frontin' th' do'r!"
At this moment the long, ominous blast of a cow-horn echoed across the ravine with startling import, and the utterance failed and died in the old man's throat.
Immediately the faint note of a bell reached their ears, followed by a second horn-call, strong and clear, farther up the gulch. The three rose to their feet simultaneously, and the old man felt instinctively about him for something that was not there. For the first time in his career his groping hands encountered neither stock nor steel. The rifle was absent!
A pallor overspread his face. With head reared like a bull elk he listened to the portentous sounds of mountain warfare that floated into his brain.
The pallor was not from fear. It was the mantle of chagrin—he had forgotten for the moment where he had rested the rifle. He stood befuddled, but alert.
His gun gone, he felt that a part of his big body had suddenly been dismembered. The thought that he had been such a fool seemed to lock his two feet to the ground.
Again the blare of the horn followed the notes of the bell.
"Sompin's sho' bust loose, boys!" growled the old man as the three listened through several tense seconds. In his extremity he wondered if he could coax the lost information out of the lad behind him.
"Han' hit heah, Lem! han' me hit!" Without turning his head he thrust both hands behind him, his working fingers begging for the gun.
The boy, as innocent of the whereabouts of the weapon as his father, only muttered and pointed toward the rim of the clearing. The next second came the crackling noise of dead brush, then the sound of a rush to the left.
The old man clenched his teeth as a horse mouths the bit, and his birdlike eyes snapped when he saw the disheveled figure of a girl burst through the wall of laurel that bordered the clearing. She halted for an instant, then dashed toward them.
"Hit's Belle-Ann!" cried the awe-stricken Bud.
The girl fairly leaped over the space that intervened. Her black curls streamed in the wind. She was wild-eyed and panting. Her bare legs were bleeding from brush scratches, and the tatters of her torn skirt were weighted with burs.
"He's cum! He's got through, he air! He's a cumin' now! Go! Go! Run, Lem! Run away!" she cried in a choking riot of fear, throwing her body against Lem and fairly pushing him before her.
"Whar's yo' gun, pap? Whar's yo' gun? Run, Lem! Fo' Gawd's sake, run away! He's follerin' right ahin' o' me—thah! thah! thah!" she screamed in her terror, pointing, heaving, gazing with charmed stare at the spot where she had emerged from the thicket.
Despairing, horrified at the stunned inactivity of the Lutts men, the frantic girl grabbed little Bud by one arm and half dragged, half carried him across the clearing. Together they disappeared into the undergrowth.
Then, rousing suddenly, stung to action, the old man remembered his gun and started for the church, while Lem fell prostrate and lay close behind the log on which they had been seated.
Old Lutts had no more than gained the threshold of the sanctuary when a giant figure, with heaving chest, sprang into the open behind the church and just to the right. It was Peter Burton, and the surprise was full and complete, for his rifle was leveled at the old man's blue shirt-front as he called:
"None of your damned nonsense now, Lutts! I've got you at last, and I want you alive! Stand where you are!"
His voice rang triumphantly as he hurried nearer, and he leered and cried:
"Maybe I'll take you down Blue Grass this time, eh? Well, I guess yes!"
Cap Lutts hesitated for just the fraction of a second.
In that fleeting time a horde of impossibilities raced through his brain. The downfall that had haunted him for years was at hand.
Fear of death was beyond his comprehension, but the sting of defeat was agonizing.
Then, glaring defiance and hatred, he whirled about and fled into the church, and there he leaped toward the altar. With a feline bound the big revenue detective was through the door and into the church after him.
And now the old man had gained the pulpit itself, and was reaching for the rifle he had left leaning against the wall.
Through the little church an ear-splitting crash rang out that fairly rocked the walls!
In the pulpit the war-scarred moonshiner drew gently, deliberately backward, leaving the rifle untouched. Straightening up with strange majesty, he turned half around, and the malevolence melted away and left his face empty of all hatred.
His eyes grew very soft, gazing upward at something beyond this world; his lips moved in soundless speech.
Then, abruptly, his legs crumpled beneath him. He sagged and swayed for an instant; there was a ghastly, ragged, spongy gap between his shoulders.
Then, with a crash, the mighty form sank to the altar, and lay there motionless upon its back, legs close together, the arms stretched straight outward from the body.
Burton mopped his wet features and eyed his awful work without emotion.
A little the hard-breathing man-hunter pondered. Then, having taken a fresh quid of tobacco, he levied upon his strength and lifted the body from the pulpit, and placed it upon a bench. He wiped the blood from his clothes and shoes and, rolling his handkerchief into a ball, tossed it away.
He stared at the pulpit for a time.
The red blood had crawled upward and touched the old man's hoary crown. It had traveled downward toward his heavy boots. It had followed the coat-sleeves of his two sprawling arms.
And now that the body had been taken away, the vermilion imprint of a ragged, dripping cross was clearly etched upon the smooth pine of the unpainted altar.
When the crash of the gun had died away, Lem raised his head and peered over the log toward the church, expecting to see his father emerge. He waited several seconds. He wondered why the old man did not call. He yearned for his own gun now, inside the church.
Then he lay down behind the log again with a sober fear creeping upon him. Then he remembered whose son he was, and almost snickered aloud at his fears. The boy could not conceive any odds that his father, Cap Lutts, could not vanquish. His thoughts flew backward to the valorous achievements of his parent.
Now he crawled to the end of the log and peered again toward the church door. He told himself that the old man would come out of that door where he had gone in. He knew that the old man would come out of the church dragging the revenuer after him—hauling the thing as he had seen him haul a half-dead, struggling bear.
Lem lay on his stomach and waited.
Presently he spied a yellowish-white vapor trailing out of the church door into the lifeless air. Instinct told him that it was not his father's gun that had spoken. He started to his feet.
A terrible, sickening apprehension filtered into his numbed senses. Then, weaponless and forgetful of the prowess of the uncanny man-tiger within, the boy grabbed a huge wooden mallet near by and rushed inside.
As he ran toward the altar his fire-shot eyes swept the church for the old man. He saw only the towering hulk of the hated Burton standing erect, with hands in his trousers-pockets, calmly eyeing his approach.
When Lem reached the altar he halted short, dumb, fear-stricken, trembling. He stared at the bloody cross. He whirled around.
His eyes fell upon the still form on the bench, and he knew. With an inarticulate scream he fell one step backward and aimed a terrific, deadly blow at the unblinking, fishy eyes of the animal-headed thing before him.
Some minutes later Lem Lutts crouched upon a bench, hunched up, naked to the waist, broken, bleeding, panting, heaving, piteously weeping, his chin down till it touched his bare, lacerated breast.
Without, amidst the darkling shades of night, the she-panther crept from the gloomy haunting depths of the ravine, up to the very rim of the clearing. Up-reared, with her bowed fore-legs upon a scrub cedar stump, the big cat's spotted lips parted and she cried out a tremulous portentous wail across the dusk. Then came the sound of the pattering of padded jungle feet as she skulked back to her lair down in the bristling bowels of the shadow-peopled gulch.
The man of iron who stood scowling over the conquered, broken youth, felt a compelling loneliness picking upon his steely nerves.
"Come, Lutts! Let's hike out of here," ordered the detective as he pulled the stupefied boy to his feet.
He half dragged Lem to the door of the church, saying:
"I guess I'll take you down to Frankfort. Mebby when you're there a while you'll tell where that damn whisky shop is you've been running up here the last hundred years."
Near to the door in the dim light, a few scant feet to one side, the boy caught sight of a long, vertical streak of yellow rope crossing the dark background of the gloom. Then it was that, with a lightning-like quickness, Lem lunged sidewise and fastened his fingers like dog's teeth upon the length of hemp suspended from the belfry. With a growl of rage Burton sprung upon him.
He rained blow after blow down upon the boy's head and body, torrents of resounding smashes, awful, crushing, killing blows.
The terrific struggle, with the bell-rope for a prize, set the new bell ringing, and the reverberations carried for miles up and down Hellsfork. Its frantic utterances resounded across the hills like the screams of a woman.
In despair the revenuer ceased his beating, and his fingers, reeking with the boy's blood, found Lem's neck.
His terrible hands garroted Lem's throat flat and stopped his breath. With all his mighty strength, the revenuer choked him until the lad's face blackened and his tongue and eyes started.
Then, with a great heave upward, he shook his victim as a terrier shakes an old boot, and cast him away and stood panting in the dark and cursing breathlessly.
The damage was done. The revenuer knew that he could count himself lucky to get away alive now, far less drag a prisoner; even at that moment desperate men were hurrying to answer the call of that church-bell.
Burton fled into the night toward the spot where he knew that Jutt Orlick awaited him.
Out into that troublous, tempestuous night a hundred alarmed militant mountaineers rushed down through the jungle shadows, over a score of savage, rugged trails. Onward they hastened, down toward the startling night-cry of the bell which they knew emanated from the new church on Hellsfork. That choking, desperate bell-scream had raked across their senses like the cracking of a hundred rifles. To them its importunities had resolved into the sanguine roar of a fusillade. It had aroused in them an audacious, desperate quickness to kill. They rushed hither, prepared to sprinkle the white-clover with their blood, and die there in the churchyard, or vanquish whatever the menace might be.
They pictured an assault on the church by the McGills or the revenuers, and in their fancy saw old Cap Lutts, his great figure in the forefront, spouting soft-nosed bullets from his hot rifle! The ringing of the bell inspired those on-coming loyal mountain hearts with a red-eyed animal fierceness, and lent a lightness to their heavy feet that brought them to the church within the hour.
Men and boys, and indeed a few women, with weapons of all sorts, descended on the church, wild and panting with the lust of conflict.
When Lem Lutts opened his dazed eyes the place was half filled with frenzied people. Belle-Ann knelt beside him, bathing his wounds and uttering in her soothing, low drawl, little phrases of encouragement and condolence.
Buddy's hard little visage protruded out of the lantern light like a ghostly mask done in white marble.
Lem finally got to his feet and staggered toward the altar. A dozen lanterns were scattered about the church. The shaggy band stood around gazing at their dead leader. Crazed with rage, they stood and wept, walked aimlessly and cursed, or knelt and prayed.
To a man they were for beating the mountains for the revenuers; but Lem held them back. He climbed upon the altar, and little Bud scrambled up beside him, hugging his father's rifle which he had hungrily recovered.
With the realization that Lem was now their leader, the Moon mountain men crowded up toward the pulpit, eager for his words.
Lem pointed one unsteady hand to the bloody cross at his feet, and the other to the dead form of his father stretched on the first bench. He raised his bruised, torn face upward; then, in a voice that was terrible in its calmness, he said the only prayer he knew, while the grief torn host fixed their eyes upon him and drank in every word:
"God Almoughty, plead thou my cose with them thet strive agin we-uns. Lay a han' on yore shiel' an' buckler an' stan' up t' he'p we-uns. Let 'em be confound' an' put t' shame, fo' they hev privily laid thar net t' destroy me withouten a cose—even withouten a cose hev they made a pit fo' my soul. Let th' sudden destruction cum on our'n enemy onawares, an' his net thet he hev laid privily keech hisse'f, thet he mought fall int' his own mischief his ownse'f. Ahmen!"
And a great volume of vibrant amens rose from the hot hearts present.
Lem talked from the altar for an hour; exhorting the clan to stick together and cleave to the tenets of his dead father. All through the discourse little Bud kept close to his brother on the pulpit, steadying the long rifle with one caressing hand and not once did a word escape him; his eyes were glued to his brother's face.
Finally, Lem wound up his appeal with a stern adjuration. His calmness deserted him at the end, and his voice soared to a frenzied pitch that carried it through the open windows, far out into the brooding night.
"Yo'-all heer me? Yo'-all heer me?" he shouted in vibrant tones. "Not a bein' o' yo'-all darst lift a han' t' harm the revenuer—not a han', yo' heer? He air my houn'-dog t' kill.
"He belongs t' me, an' ef yo'-all ketch em, yore t' han' him t' me, ole Cap Lutts's boy whut stan's heah frontin' his pap's daid body, a callin' on yo'-all t' see jestus done! I'll bring th' skunk heah, my men, an' kill em heah—heah whar he kilt my pap!"
His mouth fairly frothed as with both clenched fists he beat his breast. Bud beat his own thin chest and wrenched his peaked face into a terrible grimace, but said never a word.
The watchers relapsed into dumb, stunned silence and waited with their dead—waited for the saddest of all days; a day crowned with a grievous memory that followed them through life.
No Sabbath born to the mountains had ever dawned as this one. The early morning was charged with a sepulchral mist, impinging upon the senses like sounds vocal, telling of some great sorrow hanging on the crest of the world.
The first chill light saw the gospel-house holding its dead to its breast—the venerable sire that begot it. The dawn-breath floated down from the blue-wooded ridges to the clearing and stooped to kiss the pallid belfry.
And all the blossoms bowed down their tremulous heads and shed their dew-tears amidst the chanting of spirit-voices. The tumultuous cry of the cascade, wont to rant in the ragged throat of Hellsfork, was now hushed to a repining monotone.
The first beam of sunlight, pallid as a candle ray, parted the vapor shroud enveloping the gospel-house, and a dolorous ring-dove mourning on the pinnacle of a dead sycamore tolled her triple-noted angelus across the clearing in measured, solemn accents.
Before the day had fairly broken, an exodus of humanity had begun, bound for Hellsfork. For weeks and months the day of dedication had been discussed throughout the mountains. Hour after hour the rock-strewn highways of the hills were traversed by travel-worn crusaders. This stream of human souls converged at the church clearing, filling it up like the gradual rise of a tide.
They came on mule-back, on horse-back, in buck-boards. They came singly and in twos and threes.
Bed-ridden cripples were borne hither by their loved ones, that the great preacher might lay hands upon their infirmities and implore the merciful God to alleviate their sufferings. The halt and the maimed were come to sue for absolution and to be made whole again.
One misshapen hunchback—a veritable Quasimodo—with stubby bowed legs, abnormal arms, and ape-like visage, carried his helpless offspring eighteen miles to this sanctuary; begging prayers to relieve the creature's torture.
Every man and boy of them was armed in some fashion, and by high noon the clearing was filled with a multitude of people, sorrow-torn, racked with abject grief.
Over in Southpaw the enemy gazed down from the heights upon this spectacle in amazement. As young Sap McGill stood on a crag and watched, his eyes met a sight unlike any which the ranges of Kentucky had ever witnessed.
His old arch enemy's strength in death was a force that appalled him. It was only now that he fully realized the peculiar far-reaching power wielded by old Cap Lutts throughout his lifetime. The dead monarch had always ruled his followers through strength and love. Fear had never been a dictator. He repelled his enemies through a will and courage that never flinched, and elicited from them a meed of awesome respect.
The church was wofully inadequate and would not hold a twentieth of the mass. A great abundance of live laurel was cut and piled beneath a tree in the church clearing. And hundreds of eager hands hurried into the byways of the vale and returned with arms heaped with blossoms. These tender tributes were carefully placed on the couch of laurel until it rose to a great bier of fragrant petals.
Tender hands removed the old man's body from the church and laid him in this laurel-thatched casket of many-hued flowers.
Later, a great yellow mule paced out of the west, bearing a tall figure garbed in black, and the voices were hushed to a murmur and the church-bell began its tolling.
When the circuit rider reached the clearing the mass of awed humanity parted and opened an aisle leading to the mammoth bier, where smiling death reposed, cradled amidst billows of blossoms. The parson had been a lifelong friend of old Cap Lutts.
His towering figure moved on toward the bier and his clean-shaven features were drawn in a terrible sorrow. When his anguished eyes rested upon the still form, a great sob convulsed him; and like an echo the pent-up achings burst in a horde of throats; subdued, piteous weeping ebbed and rolled over the dead hero of the host.
Two benches had been carried from the church and placed near the dead man. One was for the parson; on the other sat Lem and Bud and Belle-Ann. Little Bud crouched like a shrunken, lifeless thing. Belle-Ann's beautiful eyes were swollen and her heart wrung dry of tears.
Lem's eyes, too, were dry as bone; not a single tear had he shed. For hours he sat staring over the heads of the people, and on his bruised and swollen face was stamped a grief more soul-searing than words or tears could tell.
At eventide a cortège reaching from the church to the cabin bore the old man to the barren orchard, and there they laid him beside Maw Lutts. Old Cap Lutts, monarch of Moon mountain, had passed out of feudal history, and beyond Federal jurisdiction; his church on Hellsfork had been dedicated with his blood!
Tom-John Benson did not come up to Moon mountain the following week, nor the next. But at the end of the third week he appeared to take Belle-Ann below to Beattyville and across the Kentucky River to the mission school at Proctor.
He came riding a strong, mountain horse and leading another for Belle-Ann. He unwrapped a huge bundle, and displayed an entire new outfit for the girl—two blue sailor dresses with white collars, shoes, hat, and kindred articles of apparel.
Belle-Ann dressed herself in these store things; and while Slab prepared a lunch for Benson, she walked out and down toward the spring, where she thought Lem was lingering. But Lem was not there, and she continued on to the old honeybee tree, where he sat on a log in deep meditation.
He wished to see her alone. He knew she would find him.
He looked up with a smile when he saw her trim, round figure approach, beautiful even in the cheap clothes.
She tossed the black curls from her oval face, smiled back at him, and stood demurely waiting his approval of her apparel.
"Yo' sho' do look purty, Belle-Ann," he observed. "Air yore pap ready yet?"
"Yes. When he's done his snack, I 'low we-uns 'll be goin', Lem," she answered, with an assumed cheerfulness she was far from feeling.
Although her heart ached, she had determined before she came to meet Lem that she would not cry. She had been steeling herself for days for the ordeal of this parting. Down in the depth of her heart she held fast to one great purpose; and if she gave way to her feelings and cried, she knew that it would be shattered.
"I 'lowed yo'-all wanted t' say good-by, Lem," she said presently. He aroused himself and stood up before her, his eyes full of a meaning she had never seen there before.
"Naw, Belle-Ann, I hain't wantin' t' say good-by; but I 'low I hev t'. But thar air one thing I air wantin' yo' t' promise me, Belle-Ann," he said soberly as he reached down and took her small, tanned hand.
Belle-Ann's heart was throbbing wildly now. This was the crucial moment she had foreseen, and now was the time to summon all the forces at her command.
"Mebby I cayn't promise hit, Lem," she rejoined almost inaudibly, with violet eyes that wandered guiltily away from his face.
He stared at her. There was a timbre in her tone that startled him. He saw and felt instinctively that she had discerned what he held in his mind. The fact that she had divined correctly, and answered in this way, filled him with a sudden, sinking apprehension.
Her words shocked him into a stupor. He thought that he knew her very soul as he knew his own soul. Had the years that had unfolded her young life before him, betrayed him and withheld deep things from his understanding? Things that would join in the pursuit with other searing grievances to sting and urge his being onward toward desperation? There was, in truth, a depth to this girl, whom he had known all her life, that his cursory penetration had failed utterly to fathom. When Lem's parents had been killed by the revenuer, then it was that an inexorable avowal had resolved itself in the soul of Belle-Ann. An inviolable thing, the evulsion of which could never obtain save at the shrine of death—the death of the hated Ghost-man. Lem had only a general and superficial conception of the intrinsic intensity of this thing that had taken hold of the girl. Little did he know of the doleful hours she had brooded away over this theme of vengeance. Long, brain-dulling hours during her waking time. Haunting, troublous hours during her dream-time. And always in the imaginings of her girl-heart she nurtured and built up an ideal, who would kill the revenuer. A hero who would hasten to her with the affiliating tribute, and lay the crimson laurels of the deed at her feet. She well knew that Lem thirsted for the life of this uncanny man, who had come and deprived him of his beloved mother and father. She knew that day and night as he traversed the hills he was ever waiting and watching for him. She was keen, and appreciatively sensible to this, and ever prayed that Lem would succeed. But all this was not the deed. Theoretically, it occupied the tenure of a debt. A premise that looked for no advancement save payment. Until this thing was done they would both suffer. She told herself over and over again that she would never betray her true feelings to Lem until he had killed Burton, and appeased her vengeance. Love him as she thought she did, some vital element was poignantly amiss. However unwarranted, and fatuous, an indefinable barrier would stand between them until the culmination of the yearning that had made ugly crosses in her heart.
Never could she forget the past. As she stood now before Lem, with downcast eyes, the past rushed upon her more vividly than ever. That sun-smitten day, made dark and dreadful, when she had hovered over the still form of Maw Lutts in the yard. Maw Lutts, who from Belle-Ann's baby-days to the woman's last minute in the yard, had never uttered to the girl a cross word, or cast her an impatient look. Her parting smile was rooted in Belle-Ann's soul, climbing and wrapping its tendrils around her heart like an evergreen.
Even at this instant in her gloomy retrospection, she could put her finger on her own bosom, precisely where the bullet had struck. That reddish-purple spot that did not bleed. Very often the vision of that small, round death-sore multiplied and floated in one gesticulating mirage before her eyes. Often they consolidated into one compact darkish background, against which would develop the satanic, puffed visage of the revenuer who had done this thing. When old Cap Lutts' spirit went out by the same hand, the girl's soul had sickened to a distortion of mingled fear and hate, which at times bade fair to drive her primitive mind bereft.
A devouring monitor of revenge had skulked into her life, following her better self relentlessly, as a panther stalks a spent beast. To her it was all like the happening of the past hour. Three weeks only had elapsed since she had witnessed the last withering stroke of this evil creature bent upon their destruction. Across her every mood the prickling echoes of that frantic bell-scream raked. It filled her ears when she strove to shut it out, and projected its curse into her slumbering hours.
She felt that unhallowed hour upon her—the moonlit night when the very trees shuddered as she and little Buddy, clinging to each other, had crept through the ghastly shadows back to the meeting-house after the mad bell's appeal had died and the demon had gone.
Never, while reason held its throne, could she obliterate from her eyes what they two saw in the church that night. So it was that Belle-Ann had long since, secretly, reared a citadel within her, and down in a remote grotto therein, had locked away her love; isolated it from her impulses and fealty.
With valiant, tender delicacy, she always tried not to sully and overshadow Lem's life with this that she knew was in her. She knew that Lem had a cross of his own to bear. Although she fancied, as humans are prone to do, that his burden did not parallel her own. But she would not contaminate the boy's love with the presence of this red-rare oath sticking like a projectile in her being. This rubric, monastic avowal of vengeance that now hung in her soul like a garnet etching. But always she prayed that God might direct Lem to avenge her, and thus tear down this phantom picture that overshadowed her life, and thereby redeem her peace.
Like animated photography, all this dashed through the girl's mind in a trice when Lem expressed a wish that she would promise him something. And with it her cryptic avowal centralized and surged up strong within her. Taking a firm hold on her will, she raised her eyes full upon his supplicant figure suing before her. Lem looked, and acted like a man who had been stunned by a blow. He was confronted with a new and unexpected phase of her nature. As his own gaze met her eyes, he discerned the indelible lettering of some palpable, deep purpose. What strange alien agency had laid hold of her? Was this the call of her blue-grass blood asserting itself in this, the hour of parting? The celerity of the transition, from his romping, hilarious play-fellow, to this serious, solemn, sudden incarnation, who denied him so unexpectedly, the pledge upon which he had staked his future, was a cyclonic blow that left his faculties bereft and numbed. Belle-Ann was looking fixedly at him. His lips were palsied. His mouth moved mutely to form words. Suddenly he found his voice and launched forth out of a daze.
"Why, Belle-Ann, yo' kin sho' promise me thes, cyan't yo' now?"
"Yo' hain't tol' me whut hit air yet, Lem," she protested faintly.
"Belle-Ann," he blurted out huskily, "I air pizen sho' yo'-all knows whut I air a firin' at."
She shook the silken mass of black curls that would insist in tumbling down on her small face, and elevated her pretty brows negatively. But beneath her drooping lids a flicker of tell-tale light was playing.
"Looky heah, Belle-Ann,"—his voice dropped to pleading tones—"Lem wants thet yo' should promise em sompin' 'fore yo'-all goes away. I want yo' t' promise, Belle-Ann," he went on earnestly, recovering the hand he had dropped in his amazement. "I want yo' t' promise thet when yo'-all cums back t' home thet yo'll marry me—eh?"
Not rudely, but reverently and slowly she drew her hand away from him. With eyes averted, her bosom stirred and she struggled with the choking in her throat.
She removed her sun-hat, and stood swinging it in her perturbation. With a great will she steadied her voice.
"I cyan't promise thet, Lem—leastways not now," she answered slowly, without looking at him.
He fell back, crestfallen and hurt.
For a minute silence stood between them. Never before had he seen her so bewitching.
Then she turned her matchless violet eyes upon him.
"I hain't a spitin' yo', Lem," she explained hurriedly. "I hain't a spitin' you, cose yo' air a good boy an'—an' I like yo', Lem. But I jest cyant promise whut yo' want me t' now."
Astounded, he stood fumbling for words. Then he suddenly tossed his long hair back with a jerk of his head—a gesture that had characterized his father.
"Belle-Ann," he cried hotly, "whut ails yo', little gal; air hit some tuther bein' yo' love? Air thet Jutt Orlick bin a pesterin' yo' an' yo're afeerd t' tell me? Belle-Ann, little gal, do yo'-all love Orlick? Air hit em whut yo' love, an' afeerd t' own on hit? Air ye 'lowin' t' get shut o' me, Belle-Ann?" he pursued vehemently.
She faced about and fixed her liquid eyes upon him. Her heart hurt and she turned away again. And he was instantly sorry that he had accused her.
She stepped over and sat on the spruce-log, dangling her hat and regarding her tan shoes.
"Looky heah," he burst out fervently, "cum, deah little Belle-Ann; cum kiss me."
Very slowly she shook her raven curls.
"I cyant, Lem," she said; "not now." At this refusal from her a pallor swept his features. Utterly crushed, he walked to and fro, a prey to conflicting emotions.
Her mysterious mien and unaccountable frigidity drove the chill of another fear into his being. Could it be that this was the first bud of a fruit that had already started to thrive in Belle-Ann's heart, before she had even reached the school?
She was going out into a new world away from him. Did she already regard herself exalted above the things that made up his humble life?
He looked at her sitting on the log, silent, beautiful, mysterious—another girl from the one he had known all his life.
Abruptly he halted before her. Her eyes sought his face. He fell back a few paces, now white to the lips with feelings that tore him. He stretched his two arms toward her beseechingly.
"Looky heah, Belle-Ann! Look t' me now, little gal!" he cried out in words that tumbled over each other, "Hain't I fittin'? Gawd cyan't find th' bein' thet loves yo'-all like me, Belle-Ann! Hain't I honest? Hain't I knowed yo' all yore little life, Belle-Ann? Whut would maw say, seein' yo'-all driftin' away from me like thes? Do yo' 'low t' go below an' never cum back, Belle-Ann? Hain't I alers fit fo' yo'-all, Belle-Ann? Hain't I fit for yo' all my life?"
He took a step nearer, and with his two strong hands ruthlessly ripped his flannel shirt open and exposed his naked breast to her eyes.
Transfixed, the girl stared at the twenty wide, white scars that criss-crossed his bosom. At sight of this, with sheer will and gallant courage she fought back the tears into her aching heart—fought them back desperately, just as he had fought off the she-bear that had made those marks when they two were children—fought her off single-handed with a club, and saved Belle-Ann's life.
With wide eyes she regarded him as he reached out for her.
His impassioned words penetrated to her very soul. She heard him on vaguely, struggling to control herself. The tide of emotion past, his petitions came now in low, entreating accents.
"Gawd 'lows I air honest, Belle-Ann. I hain't pesky, Gawd 'll tell; I hain't sneakin', Gawd 'll tell. Lem wus rise up 'long side o' yo', deah little gal; an' he loves yo' now, same as alers. Why, I'd stan', ef yo'd say th' word, with a laff on my face an' let yo'-all fire on me, an' die a grinnin'—cose I knowed yo' done hit, Belle-Ann.
"I air jest pore regular Lem, little gal, whut has loved yo' all yore life—frum a little bitty gal up t' now. An' my heart's jest heah whar hit alers was—jest heah fo' yo', Belle-Ann, with nothin' hidin' out!"
With back-flung head he paused, his pleading eyes still upon her.
Throughout this, Belle-Ann did not meet his eyes directly. She dared not. She prayed he would stop.
She could no longer withstand his pleadings. She rose up from the log and, in her turn, though more slowly, her little feet trod where Lem had walked.
Unconsciously, her hat dropped to the ground as her fingers relaxed and she placed her two hands upon her bosom. She looked full into his eyes.
"Lem," she breathed, the carmine leaving her cheeks, "yo' axed me t' marry yo' when I cum back. I cyant promise. Yo' axed t' kiss me, Lem; oh, please, please don't kiss me. I—I——"
She shut her teeth tightly, and pressed hard upon her turbulent bosom. Alarmed, he sprang up to catch her. With a quick gesture she held him off.
"Lem, I took a vow—I did," she panted. "I took a vow on th' witch-block. I took hit t' myself—nobuddy but Gawd knows. Now, I got t' tell yo' all, Lem.I took a vow that no livin' bein' 's gain' t' kiss my face lessen he kills th' revenuer!I took a vow thet I'll never—never—never—marry nobuddy, till th' revenuer's daid; I vowed on hit, Lem!"
Lem listened in awe to her panting, hurried words, looking down into her pain-swept features, struck dumb with the earnest vehemence of her avowal. The girl went on:
"I couldn't bust my vow, Lem. Hit air jest heah in my breast by day an' by night. Hit follers me alers, Lem—follers me like a hant. I don't lay no store by nuthin' till hit air gone away—an' hit'll never go away till th' ghost-man's daid."
Lem lunged forth out of a stupor.
"Gawd'llmoughty, Belle-Ann, yo'-all hain't a-lowin' thet I don't want t' kill em, air yo'?" he cried, in a tempest of chagrin and amazement.
"No, no, no!" she interposed hastily. "I know thet yore a-watchin' an' a-waitin' an' a-lookin' fo' em."
She took the hat Lem picked up from the ground, saying:
"Yo'll do somethin' perticlar like, Lem, when yo' do kill em. Keep a-watchin', an' a-tryin', Lem, but don't 'low em t' git first bead on yo', Lem. He air a hant."
"Ef I air lucky, an' kill em—will yo'-all promise then, Belle-Ann?" implored the boy in low, yearning tones. Side by side they were walking now.
"Yo' jest ax me when th' revenuer's daid, Lem," she returned, looking up, the dimples playing and her small Grecian face aflush with the thought.
He could not mistake the light that flickered between her fluttering lids. There was an answer hovering about the red, bowed lips. Her enhanced loveliness in the new sailor dress ravished his senses.
Such a girl! She had always been his, he told himself. He knew she would come back to him. Then a sober fear assailed him again, that contradicted his faith.
"Belle-Ann," he queried, "when yo'-all git yore deah little haid stuffed with th' larnin', an' th' high-tucked ways at th' school—an' know all 'bout books an' sich, mebby yo'-all won't never 'low t' cum back heah agin? Mebby I won't never see yo'-all agin, deah little gal, eh?"
She stopped and stood rigid.
"I kin promise thet, Lem. Heah, watch me, I cross my heart thesaway, Lem—see? Now kiss my han'. I'll sho' cum back some day, Lem—I promise."
Eagerly, ravenously, he grasped her small hand, brown, but fine-textured. A dozen times he kissed it hotly, fervently, wrung with sorrow. So much might happen before he saw her again!
At this juncture, a cow-horn sounded, and they knew that Belle-Ann's father was waiting. The time of parting was at hand. That vibrant horn-call sank deep into Lem's smarting soul.
"Kiss me heah, Lem," the girl said, showing the top of her head. He well knew what she meant.
He placed his hands on her soft curls and pressed his lips to the little white scar that crossed the part in her hair. He had kissed it before. Many times now, did he press it.
His throat pained terribly as he poured his fervent kisses of adoration upon this tiny scar that he had accidentally inflicted years ago, in the excitement of a sham battle.
She suddenly tore away from him and ran ahead. She dared not trust herself to linger longer. He followed, a tribute of grief in his resigned, dull eyes, like a man with flowers to put on a mound.
When Lem left the spot, Orlick ducked sneakingly out of a dense clump of laurel where he had watched the love scene with burning eyes—eyes glittering with hate and jealousy.
Unheard and unobserved, he slunk away through the pawpaw thicket into the impenetrable rhododendrons. For hours he had followed Lem that morning. But he had been too far away to overhear anything that passed between him and the girl.
Now that old Cap Lutts was gone, Orlick had hidden here with the intention of killing Lem. He had worked his way up on his stomach and was just inching his rifle into position, when the girl appeared, and he desisted for some remote reason of his own. However, he slunk away, his foul heart beating high with hate.
If he could not have Belle-Ann, he would make sure that Lem would not. As she neared the horse-block, Belle-Ann turned and waited for Lem.
"Will yo' sho' kill th' ghost-man, Lem?" she reminded him in parting.
He nodded apathetically. He was beyond the heat of any enthusiasm in this tense minute. He only knew that she was going away from him.
In her drawling, sweet voice she continued as they proceeded toward the horse-block where they could see Benson and the horses ready.
"Ef yo' do, Lem, hit'll smoke all th' sorry outen my heart, an' I'll be glad agin, like 'fore maw an' pap wus kilt—gladness th' kind whut hain't a-carin' ef hit rains, or ef hit suns. Don't be sad, Lem," glancing into his woful, tragic eyes. "Belle-Ann'll be a-prayin' fo' yo'-all. An', Lem, when I cum back, mebby yo'll kiss me heah," she ended with a finger on her puckered, red lips.
Buddy and Slab and the dogs were mingling with the restive horses in the sunshine. Benson had already mounted.
Forgetful of her precious dress, Belle-Ann dropped on her knees in the dirt beside old Ben and, with her arms around the blind hound's neck, she hugged the old dog to her and kissed his soft ears. Buddy hung on to her with appeals for her early return. Old Slab shuffled around her with a medley of adjurations.
She turned in the saddle and called back:
"Keep a-watchin' an' a-tryin', Lem—an' yo', Slab—don't yo' fergit whut yo' promised against th' witch."
Her voice was unsteady now.
Benson was leading the way a few rods ahead. As they looped the spur and headed down the trail toward the cypress cut, Belle-Ann could no longer combat her feelings. Bending low over the saddle horn, she wept inconsolably.
At the gap below she looked back. Lem stood up on the horse-block waving to her. Through dim eyes she looked and flourished her wet handkerchief above her head.
Far down in the valley, where they struck the faint wagon trail and the horses came out to the ford at Boon Creek, Belle-Ann turned her eager eyes up toward Moon mountain and there, as she had expected, she discerned Lem's outline high up on the apex of Eagle Crown.
And as the horses paused in mid-stream to drink, she caught flashes in the sunlight, and she knew that Lem was waving his hat to her, and she knew he was straining his eyes and his heart for her.
In these troublesome times, gray and somber with woe, the Lutts cabin on Moon mountain was a dismal and cheerless abode.
Lem and little Buddy were inconsolable, and the monotonous days following Belle-Ann's departure were sad and long—and very lonely.
Slab was tireless in his efforts to keep the boys cheered up.
On pleasant nights he would sit on the witch-elm block before the cabin and sing "Kitty Wells." This sacred duty over, he would turn his talent to enlivening negro melodies, interspersed with doubtful tales, well put together, dealing with war times in general, and the wonders of Lexington in particular.
And when the storms came, and the lightning crackled, and the cascade in Hellsfork raged, and the lashing trees soughed in the rain and tempest, Slab would render the same musical program in the big front room, but vary his plots of fiction woven about his beloved Lexington. In case Lem and Buddy glanced at each other approvingly, or applauded his comics with even a half smile, his old face showed plainly that he was amply repaid.
Lem had eight trusty men working "The Worm" up in the secret cave, but spent most of the time each day, after counting the demijohns to be turned over to the bootleggers, in wandering aimlessly over the mountains. He was always alert and watchful.
Over in Southpaw there were evidences of unrest, and Lem looked for an attack from the revenuers at any hour.
Indeed, so furtive had this habit of vigilance become, that in these days he rarely traveled the trails, but moved under cover parallel with the paths.
One day he stepped out in the open trail and picked up a fledgling hawk that had tumbled out of its nest. Ahead was a group of boulders, one of which was immediately under a spruce sapling.
To these he walked leisurely and, resting his rifle against the first rock, he climbed up to put the youngster beyond reach of the badgers and razorbacks.
He was in the act of reaching up when, at a slight sound, he turned and looked straight into the round, black end of a rifle, less than six feet from his chest!