When he reached the ground he dashed along the trail like a madman. On past the cabin he ran in great bounds; down the cypress cut, his speed increasing every second. As he rushed headlong down into the loop, a startling thing happened.
As Lem shot around a clump of scrub cedars that marked a sharp twist in the trail, the form of a man confronted him with a shotgun leveled at his head. At the same time the ambuscader pulled the trigger with murderous intent. The gun snapped with no report, and the sheer impetus of Lem's body moving at terrific velocity bore him down in a trice. As Lem flashed past, unable to check his headlong speed on the moment, he struck the mystified face a stunning, crashing blow. The man tumbled backward—his head striking a rock with a crushing impact.
It was only when Lem had turned back that he fully established the identity of his assailant, who had started to grow a beard. In his excitement and utter amazement, he had not heard the footsteps behind him. However, he received another shock when he saw Buddy run up to the prostrate McGill and thrust the muzzle of his rifle against the man's side. The infuriated Buddy was on the verge of pulling the trigger when Lem sprang forward and grabbed the rifle out of his brother's hands. The irate boy shot an inquiring look at Lem.
"Warn't he layin' t' kill yo'—hain't I bin watchin' em fo' mo'n a hour?" protested Bud, plainly disgusted with his brother's interference. "Didn't I break his ole damn shotgun when he drinked hisse'f asleep, an' take his loads out—heah they air—now—now—see?—an' yo' hain't 'lowin' t' kill em?—when he plugged me twict in Junction City?" Buddy shook his head savagely, and glared at the unconscious form lying prone and inert on its back.
"Now yo' jest hol' yore han'," panted Lem. "Sho'—I'm aimin' to kill em, kill em?—I'll kill em twict er three times—I will——" He cast an anxious, wistful look behind him, then ran a dozen yards down the path, turned and plunged crazily back again, and acted like he had suddenly gone daft. He was mumbling muddled words that Buddy could not make out. Buddy had never before seen his brother in such a confused flurry.
"Sho'—I'll kill em, Buddy," reiterated the flustrated Lem, "but I hain't 'lowin' to kill em thes minit—his haid air busted ag'in' that rock—he don't know nothin'—an' I want em to know who kilt em, I do—I want em to see me—I want em to know that Lem Lutts keetched em at last."
"Whut yo' a runnin' roun' like a shot deer fo'?" interrupted Buddy in alarm.
"I want em to know thet he air a payin' in to Lem Lutts fo' all his other divilmint—an' fo' shootin' a boy—yo'—all watch em, Buddy—keep your gun on em when he wakes up, an' don't yo' plug em—hold em 'til I git back—Gawd'll Moughty! I got to go——"
The gravel scattered and there was a rush of feet. Buddy looked around and saw Lem tearing off down the trail like a being distraught, and even faster than he had appeared a few moments since. Nonplussed at his brother's conduct, amazed, he waited sulkily.
With fiery, belligerent eyes Buddy regarded the motionless figure of McGill. The terrible, pitiless hate that seethed and flamed in Buddy's heart for the fallen foe lying on the ground before him had superseded a measure of his natural curiosity concerning his brother's frantic and lightning-like appearance and his sudden and frenzied departure. Lem, in his excitement, had carried Buddy's rifle away, leaving him weaponless.
A thought brought a grim smile to the boy's lips, and a satanic light flitted across his eyes, like the shadow of a bird skimming the ground. He hurriedly withdrew one of the loaded shells from his pocket. He would surely now put an end to Sap McGill. A brute of his caliber should have died long, long ago. He would be dead and safely beyond all further deviltry in a few seconds. His eyes burning with the lust of this design, Bud reached down to take up McGill's shotgun to reload it, when he heard Lem's distant voice. His words startled Buddy, and arrested his hand.
"Belle-Ann's a comin'—Belle-Ann's a comin'—Belle-Ann's come back," echoed back to the boy.
Then it was that the psychological impulse dashed upon little Bud, wrenching out of his mind his intent of manslaughter. His fingers never reached the shotgun. He dropped the loaded shell and, jerking his new hat off, he flung his head back and fairly flew after his brother. With all the might he could muster into his skinny legs, he left the scene of this bloodless encounter behind.
McGill lay face upward. He had not moved a muscle since he fell. The sleepy stillness was broken only by the wild bird voices of the wood. A suspicious catbird dropped down on the end of a log near the silent figure and gave vent to his whining, petulant phrase.
From under the rock upon which McGill's head had struck, the head of a live thing was thrust. Then a long, gorgeous body slid into view. Its sinuous length was embellished with beautiful pigments of gold and black and light canary. With the omnivorous curiosity of the reptile for all inanimate objects, the rattlesnake thrust his mouth, shaped like that of a catfish, up to Sap's ear. The two black rings circling his little incandescent eyes began to swell. The whole surface of his mottled head flattened out and pulsed. He seemed to be breathing through the top of his head. A peculiar half-sound, indescribable, issued forth when the dappled tip of the snake's tail quivered. Like a forked needle his tongue flashed in and out of his throat.
As the rattlesnake's challenge met with utter immobility, he started a thorough inspection. He began at the ear and nosed on down to the feet. Then he came up on the other side of the unconscious man, back to the starting point. A cloud passed, and the sun fell straight down upon the man's face. With a snake's love for radiation the rattler, now apparently satisfied, glided up on McGill's breast. With no sign of life communicating, and finding warmth beneath him, and warmth above him, the rattler coiled himself in a jiffy and lay basking comfortably on McGill's bosom.
At the glad sight that met his eyes, Lem Lutts checked his wild, joy-mad race down toward Boon's ford. He became suddenly and acutely conscious that such a helter-skelter approach did not compare favorably with the beautiful theme of sweet dignity presented ahead of him. Lem now walked moderately to recover his breath and to compose and regain his equipoise. What he saw was a magnificent blood-bay horse flashing like crimson satin in the sunlight, his black mane and tail rippling in the south breeze. The animal lifted his noble head and emitted a neigh, which utterance was a royal echo from the pasture realms of the Blue-grass. The horse stopped under a great sycamore tree, where still remained the quaint characters they had cut into its bark in childhood days, when they two were playfellows.
Lem's amazed, staring eyes beheld a lovely girl dismount. She was tall and round, and withal more beautiful than any stretch of his imagination could picture a girl. She was attired in a handsome, modish riding costume, with dainty patent-leather riding boots. She stood now waving a silver-mounted whip as he approached.
"Oh!—Lem!" she dropped her gauntlets, tossed back her mass of curls and held her hands out to him.
"Belle-Ann!" His voice was husky and quavering. Her hands were closed within his mighty pressure.
They were looking into each other's face. The boy with incredulous, wondering eyes, reflecting a heart full to the brim with adoration; she, palpitating, her dimples aflush, her bosom lifting, her delicious red mouth ajar. And in the exquisite domains of those azure-tinted orbs lay the lucid litany of a wondrous, beautiful parable. Those two violet-stained eyes were misty with the text of a miracle that nestled in her heart, the tendrils of which she meant to train with care around the boy's mountain soul. In wordless, panting silence they studied each other's happy face for a long minute.
"I knew that was you-all up thah on Eagle Crown. Were you-all looking for me, Lem?" she questioned in a half-whisper, predicating an affection that had its inception back in the child days of yore.
"I was up thah a lookin' fo' yo', Belle-Ann—th' same's I bin a lookin' every hour since yo'-all went away," he assured her, dropping her hands and with a movement to take her into his arms and kiss her bowed, smiling mouth.
Belle-Ann quickly threw back, with a tolerant ripple of mirth, thwarting his intent with the guise of a half-coquettish, half-mischievous challenge. But her purpose in this denial was tenfold deeper than girlish byplay. Her motive was infinitely more profound than to tantalize. She meant to withhold that priceless first kiss as a leverage to undo that which she had done. She meant to hold that first embrace as a reward for the reversal of the godless compact, the tenure of which she had long since penitently recanted.
Nevertheless, Lem was quick to divine the import of her act. He fell back a pace, abashed and crestfallen.
"Thet's so," he said sorrowfully, "I hain't kilt th' revenuer yet, Belle-Ann—but I 'low I tried hard enough, Belle-Ann,—Johnse Hatfield shot em through th' haid three weeks back—but all we ever found o' him wus a hat, an' a rifle, an' a barrel o' blood—he must hev jest flopped his arms an' flew up in th' sky—daid er alive—he hain't on Hellsfork—he——"
Here Buddy rushed up, perspiring and breathing hard. He seized the girl's hand and hung on with a tenacity that bade fair to incumber her forevermore. The boy was too full to speak. His lips only trembled as he gazed up at her. When with endearing terms she pressed his thin little form to her and kissed him, the tears welled up and obscured his hard little eyes. Although these were tributes of joy from his stormy, suspicious heart, it was the first signs of tears any one had seen him manifest since old Cap Lutts had lain white and still, amid the flowers on God's acre. Then while Buddy fondled and admired the salient, superb horse with his fire-rimmed eyes and slender legs, the other two sat down on a rectangular stone, all coated in liverwort, upon which they had lolled many times in days agone. And here they communed with happy, hurried words.
"But Lem," Belle-Ann was saying, "you are all dressed up—but for your beautiful locks, you look really citified—perhaps you-all was on your way to visit some young lady—am I right?—come now,"—she laughed coyly.
"Belle-Ann, ef yo' had come 'bout half hour later—yo' wouldn't a found me—I wus jest a startin' out on my way below t' look fo' yo', Belle-Ann.—I wus 'lowin' t' scour th' whole earth fo' yo'—I told Buddy an' Slab thet I'd never come back till I seed yore face jest onct, anyways—I wus goin' t' spend th' balance of my life lookin' fo' yo', Belle-Ann."
"Lem—didn't I cross my heart that day and pledge you that I'd come back?"
"Yes—but I wus afeerd thet somethin' had happened t' yo'-all, Belle-Ann,—then I togged myself up an' fixed to go below—then I thought I'd go up on th' Crown an' take a last look at the spot where I saw yo' last a wavin' at me, and pretty soon I seed somethin'—an'—an'—Gawd'll Moughty—thah yo' wus a wavin' right at me—then I sho' did make time a gettin' down off'n thah—an' as I run down th' trail—thet ornery Sap McGill jumped out an' tried t' shoot——"
With a fear-fraught half-scream, Belle-Ann had bounded to her feet.
"Sap McGill—McGill, here?" she cried out incredulously. Her bosom heaved with excitement, and her eyes were wide and starry with a sudden new-born terror. "Oh!—don't tell me that McGill is up heah—on this side of Hellsfork!"
Then it was, with bated breath and hurried, fear-laden words, that she implored Lem to hide somewhere. When she finished, all the blithesome, pulsing happiness that had dwelt in her beautiful face a few moments previously had vanished.
Lem got quickly to his feet and stood eyeing her bloodless countenance in a trance of blank incomprehension.
"Tell me—tell me quick, where is McGill now?" she panted, her hat dropping from her nerveless hands and falling at her feet.
"Why—Belle-Ann—I left em a layin' on his back up at th' loop."
"Did you kill him?"
"Naw—I didn't hev time—I wanted t' meet yo'-all—I left Buddy a guardin' em."
There was pitiable, livid dread in her face now. Her pathetic mouth dropped woefully. She stood, with fingers interlocked helplessly, in the grip of a seething apprehension. Buddy, who did not understand the real cause of Belle-Ann's distress, stood with two clinched fists, and a look of awful destruction aglow in his eyes.
"Didn't I say yo' oughter kilt em—didn't I tell yo'?" he cried in piping, admonishing tones. Lem had not moved a muscle, though the girl's whiteness was communicated to his mask-like visage. Now he frowned upon Buddy.
"What ded yo' leave em fer?" he said.
"McGill will kill you, Lem," muttered the girl, beside herself with the violence of this sudden new fear that overpowered her. "If he isn't dead now—I know that he is lurking along the trail to kill you, Lem!—Oh, it's awful!—It's so disheartening to live such lives—what can we do?—I—I——" With her hands to her face she burst into sudden tears, precluding all speech.
Just as suddenly was Lem Lutts electrified with a quick determination. He grabbed Buddy's rifle.
"I'll trail em down ef he's gone, Belle-Ann—I'll sho' kill em now."
With a swift movement Belle-Ann clutched Lem's sleeve tenaciously to detain and dissuade him. But his eyes shone with a maniacal fire as he jerked away from her and ran back up the trail with strides that carried him far ahead of the nervous horse that had taken affright and had bolted and was now galloping up the rock-strewn path in Lem's wake. Deaf to Belle-Ann's appealing voice urging him to come back, Lem only yelled back over his shoulder:
"I'll sho' kill em now!"
The horse soon swerved off from the trail and plunged down toward the valley amidst the brush, with Buddy in pursuit. Belle-Ann ran now along after Lem as swiftly as her trembling, weak limbs would carry her.
When Lem Lutts reached the loop he halted, struck dumb with the spectacle before his gaze. McGill lay just as he had left him more than an hour before. Apparently he had not moved a finger.
Thinking McGill dead, Lem made one step forward and stopped, attracted by a strange, quivering movement; then he beheld the rattlesnake coiled up on Sap's breast. Then a sudden revelation dawned upon Lem Lutts. He felt instinctively that Sap was not dead, although he could not have been whiter and more inert had he been so.
To make certain Lem cautiously shrank back, and taking care not to make the slightest sound, he worked his way around to the opposite side and gained a position where he could see McGill's face. Like a shadow he stepped out from behind a boulder and looked at Sap.
What he saw almost caused him to laugh outright. Sap was far from being dead. He was wholly conscious and wholly alive, but ludicrously quiet. His eyes were popping out of his head. They told that he would beg for his life if he dared so much as to speak. He hardly dared breathe. Great tears of terror were oozing out of his forehead and trickling in copious streams down across his death-like features. The only risk the dullard could take to express his agony was to roll his eyes.
The rattlesnake's head was focused less than twelve inches from his chin, and he knew well that upon the slightest tremor of his body the rattler would stab him in the throat. He knew well that the lightning of the heavens could not emulate the fatal quickness and rapidity of that snake's poisonous blow. For well on to two hours McGill had suffered the agonies of a thousand hells. Lem now spoke to him.
When Lem's words reached McGill's ears, his only sign of comprehension was an added bulge transmitted to his rolling eyes. Standing motionless and in even tones, to avoid startling the rattler, Lem said:
"Well—so yo' got t' yore jest end at last, didn't yo'—egg-dog? Belle-Ann is a comin' up the trail in a short spell—an' I air a goin' t' kill yo' 'fore she gits heah, which is a mighty short spell t' live I 'low—so ef a skunk like yo'-all knows a prayer, why now's yore time to think hit—but I advise yo' not t' git up on yore knees er stir roun' much." Here Lem chuckled tauntingly and gleefully.
"Say—air thet a tame snake yo'-all got thah—eh? Ac's like he wus some kin to yo'-all—say, 'fore y'o go away—just glance yore mind over all th' pesky, onery divilmint yore folks has been a doin' fo' twenty years. 'Member th' day yore old pap shot my dad under th' truce flag thet my maw held up, 'cause we'uns wanted t' have peace—but yore old pap didn't git away, did he?—he was kindy slow-like. Say—yo' know a feller in these mountains named Johnse Hatfield—eh? Did yo'-all ever hern tell on em—eh? Ha-ha-ha! Hit wus a good dance, wusn't hit? Pears like Johnse sort a put a crimp in yore folks down at Junction City thet night—eh? Say—yo' ugly groun'-dawg—I hain't a killin' yo' exactly fo' all thet—I air only aimin' t' kill yo' onct fer thet—but I air goin' t' kill yo' twict fo' shootin' a boy—yo' shot a little boy, dedn't yo'—eh? Yo' shot my boy brother twict an' tried t' kill em—didn't yo'—eh? Now I air goin' t' blow yore brains out——"
With his last taunts a dull rush of red rage overspread Lem's countenance, as with a quick, decisive movement he jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fell upon one knee. A groan of despair escaped McGill's bloodless lips now, and the rattlesnake instantly made that fatal loop at the narrow of its neck. Evidently Sap preferred a bullet in the head to a stab in the throat from the yellow monster that was flashing its pronged tongue in his face.
"Now I'll show Belle-Ann whut ugly brains yo'-all got," muttered Lem, sighting along the glistening gun barrel.
A piercing shriek of horror rent the air. Belle-Ann was not a hundred feet away. A vivid terror stood in her eyes. She struggled for breath to thwart the tragedy that filled that instant.
"For God's sake—oh!—for my sake—don't shoot—Lem—Lem—Lem!" she screamed out, terrified, in begging, forbidding, distraught utterances, and collapsed in the path.
But Lem, unheeding, quickly pressed the trigger. There was a pungent crack. The rifle spat out a long, slender tongue of flame. A ragged wisp of blue-white smoke spread out, separated and floated languidly upward. There was an acrid odor of burnt powder in the air. Across the tenseness of that long, awful moment the soft trill of a catbird grated like the harsh blasphemy of a parrot. The gentle barking of a squirrel impinged like a nerve-shattering noise.
Belle-Ann was on her knees in the trail—her face averted and her hands over her eyes to hide them from what lay before her. Her curls were shaking and trembling with the chill that swept over her body. She, Belle-Ann Benson, who could, in days gone by, have watched with interest and pleasure the killing of an enemy, and smile. But now the subtle crack of that gun-shot rived into her senses like a withering scourge. Had the bullet pierced her own vitals she could not have suffered thus. All through the after years of her life the reverberation of that sharp, little gun-noise hung about her ears, and she could never think of this scene without a shudder.
She heard a loud, strained laugh, carrying a volume of contempt and scorn. She peeped through her fingers fearfully. McGill was standing upright, wiping his wet, pallid face with his shaking, naked hand. Belle-Ann's hands came away from her eyes as she regained her feet, dumfounded, and stared as if a ghost confronted her. She doubted her senses.
"Belle-Ann," shouted Lem, "cum an' take a look at th' live coward!"
With a sudden influx of gladness she ran forward, a thankful heart beating color back into her dimpled face. She looked at Lem, dazed, nonplussed. Then she gazed at McGill and at a rattlesnake, whose bloody head hung to its neck by a slender ligature of skin as it lashed the rocks with its dying tail. Not once did McGill look in Belle-Ann's direction; nor indeed did he meet Lem's truculent gaze. He stood abject, with downcast eyes, and the dull apathy of a sick ox. On his depraved features was a lettering of criminal sullenness; on his twitching lips the curse of cowardice. Beneath this avenging stroke of Fate his big, sinister hulk lopped down, and he stood stupidly licking his cracked lips like a spiritless dog.
Belle-Ann still stood awed, nearby, trying to solve this strange phenomenon. McGill's guilty heart plainly dreaded this fair girl's presence. He did not look up, nor did he essay to utter a word of defense. His shallow eyes only roved at his feet. He presented the picture of the crestfallen criminal cornered on the premises of his last losing stand.
"Pears like yo' hain't a carin' t' say much—eh?" taunted Lem, as with a sudden rising fury he stooped down and grabbed up McGill's shotgun from the ground, and with a series of terrific blows upon a nearby boulder he reduced the weapon to a broken, twisted wreck in no time. Flinging what was left of it out into the rhododendrons, he advanced and stood before his erstwhile dangerous enemy.
"Sap," he began, "how did yo'-all ever git out o' hell in th' first place—eh? 'Cause I know thet Gawd'll Moughty never made sich as yo' to be born—I don't 'low yo' wus ever born, an' I believe yo' wus too mean and pesky and treacherous t' live in hell—I 'low th' devil drove yo' out." He aimed a finger within an inch of McGill's nose.
"Looky heah—yo' owe yore dirty life t' Belle-Ann thah—not t' Lem Lutts—'cause ef she hadn't come, yo'd be powerful daid against now—hit's a shame t' take thet pore snake's life away t' save sich as yores—now git away from heah—git out'n my sight 'fore I do kill yo'. Git out o' heah—an' ef I ever lay an eye on yo' agin on thes side o' Hellsfork—Belle-Ann and Gawd'll Moughty together won't keep me from killin' yo' on sight—yo' heer? Go, skunk—hit's ole Cap Lutts' boy a talkin' t' yo'—Lem Lutts."
In the tenseness and absorbing excitement of the moment, they had not heard the hurried clatter of hoofs, like the tattoo of a cavalcade coming up the trail. They did not see Buddy ride up on Belle-Ann's charging blood-bay—nor the other three horsemen that crowded along close behind him. 'Twas only when the three men rushed in upon them and arrested and shackled McGill that they fully realized what had really taken place.
The officer removed his hat and bowed in respectful admiration to Belle-Ann, with a smiling light of recognition in his eyes. He was the deputy sheriff who had spent a night at the Lutts cabin before Belle-Ann went away to school.
"With the charges against him at Junction City, I don't think this gentleman will bother you for a long time. You know the McGills don't own Junction City any more," he said, obviously wondering at the pretty up-to-date picture presented by the girl before him. The last time he saw Belle-Ann she wore moccasins, was bare-legged, and dressed in a gingham gown; but he had never forgotten her beauty.
In mutual contented silence they stood looking after the three officers leading their sullen prisoner down the mountain trail toward Boon's Ford. With the first wholesome grin that had touched his face for nearly two years, Buddy rode on toward the cabin astride Belle-Ann's splendid horse. Presently Belle-Ann looked up into the pensive face behind her.
"Why didn't you kill Sap, Lem?" she probed, though its answer had been happily divined.
"I hed a bead on his ear when I heered yore voice, Belle-Ann—I heered yore voice a callin' 'fo' my sake'—an' I jest couldn't do hit—then I shot th' snake's haid off."
Knowing Lem as thoroughly as she did, she knew that this humane, gallant act had been to him a real sacrifice. They sat down upon the log behind which McGill had hidden. She was waiting for him to speak. With covert, abashed glance, he was regarding her handsome costume. She knew that he was puzzled and wondering at this astounding exposition of wealth. Presently he spoke up:
"Yo'-all look powerful beautiful, Belle-Ann—I never 'lowed they wus sich fine things in th' worl'."
Her merry, sweet laugh rippled out now as she laid a white hand on his arm and looked up into his face with a challenge in her eyes. He did not press her for an explanation. Then with a toss of her curls, she launched forth and poured her fairy-like tale into his amazed ears, all about her wondrous discovery of a lovable, priceless grandfather.
Then in wretched contrast to Belle-Ann's glittering conquest below, Lem recounted his capture by the revenuer, and his tortuous measure of months in prison. He told of how he had written letter after letter to her, hoping, always hoping, hourly, daily, monthly, to hear from her. And the girl's eyes grew misty and her heart went out to him. The very recital of this experience cast a gloom over him now. Wherefore she sought to introduce a pleasanter theme and cheer him with prospects of the future.
"And, Lem," she was saying, "I have ever so much money—oh!—I don't know how many thousands of dollars—all my own, grandpa says."
Lem had not digested the story of her opulence as enthusiastically as Belle-Ann had anticipated.
"But I hain't kilt th' revenuer yet—so—so—I 'low——"
"No words can tell you how glad I am, Lem—that you have not succeeded in killing the revenuer. God will surely lead him to his retribution, but it is not for you to exact, and I now take back all I said—and you must promise me not to kill him if you get the chance, and I can't ever promise you-all anything until you make me this pledge."
Lem rose slowly up off the log and looked curiously down upon her. At the end of a long minute he spoke:
"Belle-Ann," he said, "I can't understan' yo'—'fore yo' went away t' school I axed yo' t' promise t' marry me. Yo' wouldn't promise—yo' wouldn't even 'low me t' kiss yore face then—yo' said thet yo'd never 'low nobuddy t' kiss yo'—thet yo'd never promise t' marry me—lessen I kilt th' revenuer—an' Gawd knows I been a tryin' t' kill em! Now yo'-all comes back an' tells me thet yo' don't 'low t' promise me anythin' ef Idokill th' revenuer—I can't understand thet, Belle-Ann—I 'low yo'-all is hankerin' t' git shut o' me, Belle-Ann," he ended despairingly, passing his hand over his eyes as if to brush away this strange philosophy that had skeined itself in his brain in one insoluable tangle.
She did not respond straightway. She fully understood the magnitude of the task she had before her. To convert Lem to her new creed would enlist all of the gentle diplomacy at her command.
"Belle-Ann, I hev always loved yo'," he resumed solemnly. "I love yo' now—I love yo' mor'n I love my life—my life hain't as much as thet daid snake 'sides th' way I love yo'—I'd stand on Henhawk's Knob an' jump into Hellsfork ef yo'd ax me t'—but, Belle-Ann, I owe th' blood o' thet revenuer t' pap and t' maw—th' two graves up in th' orchard air a cryin' out fer th' revenuer's blood. I saved Sap's blood—saved him 'cause yo' called t' me not t' shoot—I let em go, much as I hate th' pizon mad-dog—saved em as bad as he oughter be daid—but, Belle-Ann, much as I love yo', yo' can't take th' revenuer 'way from me ef he's alive yit."
She was appalled at the terrible wave of pain and passion that now swept his countenance. He poised a clinched fist above his head, as he removed his derby hat, and casting his eyes upward he added:
"I'll kill thet revenuer—I'll kill thet revenuer, I will, ef lead'll kill em—I'll have his blood ef I git th' chanct—I'll kill em with my last lick o' lead—ef I go t' hell th' next minit."
She responded to this volcanic outburst with a soothing pressure on his arm, as she thrust her arm through his and they walked up the trail toward the cabin, her mind busily occupied, groping for a mode of procedure whereby she could convey to him the great divine law of universal love and charity, prescribing the return of good where evil is given—a practice not only to shame his erring enemies and brim their thoughts with penitence; but in its doing to enrich his own soul with a mollient peace, and clothe his life in a spiritual raiment rarer than gems and bullion of kings.
When they reached the old honeybee tree, they saw Slab cavorting down to meet them. His head was back-flung, his arms akimbo, and he showed a hock action, despite his age, that would have inspired a coach horse with bitter envy. As he neared them he began yelling:
"Hallalujah—hallalujah—hallalujah!"
He wrung Belle-Ann's hand, tears of joy following the creases in his old face. He circled around and around her, chanting various adages filched from the tenets of his sorceristic faith, all of which compared happily with Belle-Ann's presence. All the way to the cabin Slab's utterances and antics were effervescent.
"I done tol' dem yo'-all sho'd cum back," he said stoutly. "Den when yore deah li'lle spirrut cum dat night an' tuck er way dat li'lle Obeah-stone—den I shore knowed yo' war due—an' ma heart war a shoutin' all night so hard dat hit keep me wake—an' heah yo' be li'lle gal—heah yo' be—hits Slab dat knows—Slab he knows."
"Slab," projected Belle-Ann, without the slightest prelude, "Amos Tennytown wants you."
These words halted Slab with one foot raised. He cautiously let the one foot down. The smiles that had wreathed his visage when Belle-Ann spoke were frozen there.
"Come on, Slab," urged Belle-Ann. "Surely you are not scared. Colonel Amos Tennytown sent you-all a kind message. He wants you to drop in and see him at Lexington, Slab. Do you remember when that cruel snapping turtle woke you up?"
Slab was now stumbling along open-mouthed, blinking down at the girl, his dim eyes shot with a smoldering fire of endeared reminiscences; a cherished theme that had hovered in his memory since the distant day when the blue and the gray had dueled,—scenes mellowed by time, but sweetly mated with "Kitty Wells." Unbelieving and in faltering tones of half reproach, he said:
"Li'lle gal, don' pesticate de ole man,—I's er ole man, li'lle gal,—yo' orter be good t' de ole man now—don' fool de ole man—no—don' fool Slab, li'lle gal—he—he—"
"Slab, I am not fooling you. How could I know about the turtle and old Hickamohawk if I had not seen Colonel Tennytown? And he wants you down thah, Slab."
"Li'lle Amos—li'lle Amos?" he repeated, measuring the imaginary height of a boy with his hand. "Li'lle Amos—he want Slab?"
All doubt vanished.
"Hallalujah—hallalujah—hallalujah!"
Intermittently, Slab advanced stout volumes of oral matter to demonstrate that the long-looked-for millennium had arrived at last.
At the witch-elm block the old blind hound staggered exultantly about. Obeying the instinct of his lonely dog-heart, he yelped and yelped with joy at the vision his senses pictured for him, though which his blank, sightless eyes could not behold. Belle-Ann fell on her knees and took his old head to her, stroking his gray face and kissing his ears.
One of the girl's first acts was to gather two great sheaves of forget-me-nots. These she carried to the orchard. Lem walked beside her, and now they both fell silent. Dividing the flowers equally, Belle-Ann knelt down and arranged them with infinite care.
"Maw loved these," she whispered. "Maw loved these best of all, didn't she, Lem?" She looked up through a film of mist. Their eyes met, and Lem turned his back and walked slowly away and did not answer.
For half an hour the girl lingered there between these two graves with her memories. When she finally got to her feet and lifted her swollen eyes, she saw Slab standing looking at her. The tears were streaming down his ancient, creased visage. His lips moved helplessly, but no words crossed them. He could only point to numberless withered flowers, and seared wreaths scattered hard by, which he had discarded to replace with fresh ones.
"Yes, Slab—you-all did not forget, did you?" she managed to say.
The old negro shook his white head, too overcome to respond.
Belle-Ann and Lem then made the rounds of the place, followed by little Buddy, lugging his father's rifle. They walked out beneath the magnolias, and the giant pines, and visited their old haunts, each of which stirred memories of hours agone.
When they returned to the house, Slab had a most tasteful meal prepared for them. The menu consisted of two kinds of bread, hoe-cake, and hot butter-milk biscuits with honey. It also embraced baked yams with fresh butter, fried spring chicken, poached eggs, rich, fresh milk, and blackberries and cream.
As Belle-Ann lingered over this repast, she felt that she had not, during her absence, tasted anything quite so delicious. Near dusk, Slab took up his hybrid banjo and repaired to the witch-elm block, followed by the others. There, with the blind hound's aged head in her lap, Belle-Ann joined in the chorus of "Kitty Wells." And as the shadows stole down and put their arms about them, the day lifted, and the thread-like note of the mock-thrush ebbed away from the blossomed sides of the mountain. The plaintive callings of the Bob White ceased, and the forest birds folded their wings. And another choir of voices awoke to cross and re-cross the void of twilight.
The katydids began to purl. A symphony of crickets trilled away in the darkling rhododendron thickets. The tree-frogs piped an avalanche of pleading notes amid the ruby-throated magnolias. The silvery treble of the nightingale floated down from afar, and the hilarious killdeers, king of all-night revelers, screamed aloft and flapped their speckled wings in the early starlight. And above this, in soughing, alternate waves of sound, a titanic rhythm trailed into this medley of wilderness voices—the savage, deathless music of the cascade ranting in the rock-barbed throat of Hellsfork, dying, swelling, reverberating like the barbaric boom of a tom-tom.
That night Belle-Ann occupied her own little crude apartment in the four-room cabin. She slept soundly and sweetly in this little wooden bed, which Slab had reverently preserved unaltered for her coming. And the night air drifted in upon her face, pungent with the scent of pine, and the old sweet odors that summoned a hundred memories to vivid life. There were the self-same multiplicity of night enunciations, consolidated and merged into a soothing litany, harping a pulsing consonance that lured the girl's senses away to the fantastic shoals of dreamdom. And betimes, the same great, friendly moon that had followed her abroad, came now and stood at her window.
Lem had said little, but upon his honest, pleasing face there was now etched the momentous outlines of the most serious, profound problem that had ever confronted his tempestuous life. With the sober, solemn realization of this vital issue that had come upon him, he found himself mentally reaching out for sustenance. Seemingly he stood upon the pinnacle of an epochal summit, with all the threads governing his life, past and future, dangling limply beneath him. It was the tensest hour of his existence.
They sat in the moonshine on the witch-elm block, and the whip-poor-will was calling. They came here in the whispering gloaming ere twilight and night had parted. They still sat there; the girl talking incessantly. Time galloped by unheeded with the flight of an affrighted Pegasus. Phantom shadows grew and gesticulated and stretched their wraith-like arms out toward them. And the moon slipped over the spur and laved them with an effulgent benediction. Lem sat non-committal and stoic.
Belle-Ann's curls bobbed in the moonlight as she tossed them back restlessly. For more than an hour she had been pouring into his ears all the things that lay in her heart which had been re-cast in a new mould of understanding and burnished with ethics of education. The titanic moment she had anticipated had arrived. The dawn of the morrow was to part them forevermore, or it was to bind their lives together irrevocably. He had again begged her to promise to marry him, and this was her answer. Her low, dulcet tones rippled on and on. Her little hands fluttered appealingly in their flights of emphasis. Her violet orbs were starry with the truths that hurried across her lips, and her whole being throbbed with the vibrant force of this conquest. He spoke for the first time.
"Ef yo' keep on a talkin' thet away, Belle-Ann,—yo'll make me lie t' yo'," he predicted dolefully, casting yearning eyes upon her. As yet not once had he kissed that red-mouthed, dimpled face. Not yet had he clasped that withy, supple form to him. The price now of that treasured kiss, and that longed-for embrace, and her priceless love, was his whole and complete repudiation of his bloody creed of feudalism.
"I am not afraid of your deceiving me, Lem—you have never lied to me in the past, and I'll trust you-all in the future. I mean to lift you up," she went on earnestly,—"to show you a worthy goal that I know is thah awaiting your acknowledgment. As I have said over and over, Lem, I do not expect you to understand it all now, but I hoped that you would believe me, who have gone through it all with its blighting misery. Your whole life is now and always will be made furtive and fear-ridden, while you cling to this blood-dogma of revenge—always looking for the blood of your enemies, and when at last you get that blood and delude yourself into the thought that you are satisfied, you find springing out of that very act other enemies waiting in your path. It is an endless chain of fight and flight and blood that is harrowing. I saw an example of it yesterday before my very eyes, because I know you would have killed Sap McGill had I not been thah. It is all fundamentally wicked. Oh, Lem! It is all hideously wrong. Now that I am rid of that awful sting, I cannot and will not link my life to one who harbors these awful things to drag us both down.
"Won't you put this life behind you, Lem, and come down where God has granted a paradise—a paradise of peace? Down where nature has unfurled a grassy, level land and men walk in the open and can see each other's faces? Down thah, Lem, where hearts beat uncontaminated beyond the maelstrom of feudal hate, and where all men are brothers—down in the land of hope—hope that makes a song of life—in the land of hope, Lem,—a cloudless, sunshiny fairy world—where dreams come true?
"You said you would love to go to Lexington to my grandfather, but you won't leave the mountains until you have killed the revenuer and Sap McGill. Is that evidence that you love me, Lem? To-morrow morning I'll ride Rajah back alone. I don't believe that you love me, Lem—I can't believe it——"
Lem got to his feet. He was very white in the moonlight now. He picked up a stick off the ground. He rested the butt of his rifle against the block and, placing the muzzle of the gun against his breast, he reached down and touched the trigger with the end of the stick before Belle-Ann realized what he was up to.
"Belle-Ann, say that I don't love yo' agin an' I'll blow my heart out." Gently and quickly she took the stick out of his hand in alarm.
"Lem, there is a way out for you—there is a sustaining power that will help you, if you will only have faith," she pleaded. "'Know ye the truth and the truth shall make ye free.'"
"But he kilt my old pap,—an' my good old maw, Belle-Ann. I'd alers heer their spirits a cryin' ef I went away an' didn't git th' revenuer's blood," he protested for the twentieth time. "An' didn't McGill try t' kill me jest yisterday?"
"Lem," she said, "I tell you what we'll do. We'll go down to the church—we'll go down thah—you and me and Buddy—down thah by the altar where your father died. God won't deny you thah. We will offer up a little prayer for pap and maw, and you will ask God to show you the truth of my words—that it is wrong for you to hang back and sacrifice your future for the blood of your enemies. Take my word for it, Lem—God will surely lay His hand on those who have harmed you. Will you go, Lem—come now—will you go with Belle-Ann?"
For the first time Lem's face lost a measure of its despair. His eyes lighted up with the advent of an emollient hope, and a half-smile touched his lips.
"Come 'long, Belle-Ann," he agreed, "let's do thet." And a prayer mounted in Belle-Ann's breast as she called to Buddy to come along and bring a lantern. Then hand in hand they wound their way down the moonlit mountain-side toward the deserted church. And up from the girl's heart a spa of hope was abubble. The joy of life was again strong upon her. There was a song in her soul and the blithesome days of yore were rippling in her veins.
The forsaken church stood out big and white, magnified in a pool of moonlight, like a runic tomb guarding the memory of a martyr. With a ruthless swish, the laurel wall that hemmed the clearing suddenly parted, and the next instant the scathed, battered semblance of a man-being crawled out into the silver moonshine.
A wound-burnt, sinister shape, half naked. The revengeful way-path rocks had bitten into his inflamed knees. The vicious thorns had torn and stabbed maledictions into his hands. The clawing underbrush had stripped his clothing away, and the poison ivy and skunk-viper had sprung upon and spat their gangrene acid against his nakedness. There was misery in each lift of knees and hands, as though weighted with ball and chain. In his zigzag wake there was a lesion of nauseous mocking horror. This thing panted like a spent buffalo, as with popped, blood-rimmed eyes it stared at the church.
It was the revenuer come back in the hour of his extremity.
With wabbling head, he focused his blighted face upon the church—a shrine all in white beckoning to him, insistently. Foot by foot he forged his tortuous way across the open and onward. His corporal being, ruined, ravished and wrecked, his derelict spirit was blindly upstanding. Excruciatingly and piteously he moved across the sea of wild honey clover and foxtail with the slowness of a shore-viewed water craft, stationary only while the eye held it, but with a trick to move when the gaze is lifted.
When this odious, strange apparition had gained a point midway to the church, then it was that a lithe, agile, uncertain shape, a spawn from the matrix of the shadowless gulch below, slid up out of the dark, halted on the verge of the shades and then as lightly as air sprung its haunches upward to a great spruce stump. It was the male panther who owned a mate and cubs, and who patrolled the darkling hours with a dare-all note in his minor night-squall; who dominated the animal kingdom and held in subservient fear all the lesser pantomimic pirates of the forest.
At first his eyes widened curiously as they settled upon the audacious trespasser in the clearing. Had this thing under his quizzical gaze walked upright, he could have understood and would have skulked hastily away, but now a quick challenge crowded into his feline breast, as he realized that an alien, hairy creature, that stalked on four legs, had dared to invade the night that belonged to him and the province that was his.
Straightway a keen and malignant resentment seized and traversed his bristling spine, and his long tail began to lash the ground menacingly. It wagged him into a great fury. As noiselessly as a moccasin slides into the water, he dropped from the dark spruce stump into the velvet mullein leaves, and skirted the whiteness of the moon. He leaped lightly through the space and landed in the shade of the church. With a sudden wary flash, he darted forward. Then, boldly and ready, he turned sharply and advanced in the forefront of this new enemy that now was his prey. Stealth was in his padded paws as he lowered his ermine belly to the ground and crept sneakingly to meet the newcomer.
When a mere six feet separated the two, the panther's hairy, spotted lips parted thirstily. He choked back the growl of savage exultation that welled up in his chest, his yellow eyes all afire with lust. He gathered his steel-like thews under him with a mighty tenseness to spring. His wagging tail stopped and stiffened. As he made to leave the ground, the thing before him jerked its gory head suddenly upward, looked, and thrust a laugh in the brute's face.
Such a laugh! The splintering, squawking reiterations of petered-out echoes, bubbling up into a mundane night from the precincts of the eternally damned. That laugh splashed upon the serene night like the plunge of a boulder into a placid pool. It drove the pith out of the panther's militant cat-heart. It curdled the will to kill that had blazed from the beast's agate eyes. Instantly the brute, dazed with terror, wrenched his round head askew, to shut from his tan eyes and black ears the sight and the sound of this monstrous, unknown antagonist.
The brute's tail went limp as he hurtled obliquely through the air, landed in the bull-grass, plunged into the inky shadows and fled away from this moonlit spot with its hideous blot of terror, and hurried toward the pitchy brakes that hemmed the river, with panic curdling his jungle blood.
The maimed, bedraggled hulk careened; then at the end of a panting struggle fell over the door block and tumbled heavily against the church portal. The dilapidated, weather-scarred door gave way unresistingly to him and his bedlam cry as though it had boded this unholy visitation. He stopped on the threshold, sprawling half in, half without. The uncouth noise of his breathing hissing through a ragged ruin of teeth, cut the sepulchral stillness of the church room with the portent of some awful prediction. His haggled, bleeding hand stamped its red curse upon the door panel. Then, with a mad, mighty will, he lashed his flagging spirit to another effort and broke into a pitiable, wabbling, four-legged trot.
When his swollen, bleeding feet disappeared, the church door swung back and engulfed the revenuer's racked, gaunt bones within the ostracised temple of death. With stark eyes upward and ahead, he stared through the dark to the spot where a single lance of moonlight stabbed obliquely through the dismantled window, revealing a cross done in blood that lay prone athwart the untrodden pulpit floor.
Without, a white virgin mantle of peace and purity enveloped the haunted church. The honey clover, foxtail, mullein, and dill-poppies had closed over the horrible path-way leading to the church door-block. The panther was gone. A seductive south wind rippled across the blossomed clearing and a hundred families of unnamed flowers raised their heads and nodded to the stars. The far-off, drowsy baying of a hound drifted down from the ridge and trailed plaintively into the night. And from somewhere the sweet love-tale of the elusive nightingale was told over and over again. There was utter papal peace without for several moments. Then suddenly this magic spell was startlingly burst asunder with a rising tempo of sounds issuing from within the church. It grew into a horrific, guttural clash. The noise of contending demons dead-locked. The riotous commotion of a thousand struggling, distraught fiends told of some terrible enactment inside the church.
As the trio approached the church, Buddy hung back reluctantly. He did not relish this nocturnal invasion of the gospel-house where no human foot had trod since the killing of his father. In truth, Lem shared this apprehension also, but was valiantly cautious not to betray this aversion in Belle-Ann's presence. With this cryptic timidity, both the boys marveled at the voluble mirth and bold blithesome advance of the girl; not understanding that Belle-Ann's education had burned away all barriers of superstition.
The denizens on Hellsfork had long given this lonely, desolate structure a wide berth. Many a bold and audacious spirit, knowing no other fear, quaked with the thought of entering that dilapidated storm-battered sepulchre. Not because a man had been killed therein, but there was a ghostly phenomenon connected with that musty, bat-haunted altar, uniquely horrible.
That rubric cross had cut its ragged blight into the senses of the mountaineers to a degree that forbade all thoughts of approach. There was something at once subtle and strange and unspeakably terrifying in the remembrance of that red picture, something that inspired them with a lasting, superstitious dread.
Indeed, a treasure trove could have reposed upon the dank floor of this haunted church within easy sight without fear of molestation. Weird and creepy tales were rife outlining amazing visitations here. It was told with conviction by some whose ears had heard, and whose eyes had seen, that on each moonlight night a screech-owl would flutter to the broken window of the church and call. Whereupon the red, ragged picture on the altar would stir and move and sit up; then gather itself into human semblance and stalk to the window. And old Captain Lutts' ghost would commune with the little feathered creature. Then the screech-owl would hurtle away, and the phantom would stalk back and lie down, and resolve itself again into that fearsome, crimson death-splotch that naught save fire could ever obliterate.
Belle-Ann was in the lead when the three reached the door-block of the church. Then, with a self-conscious lack of chivalry which inspired him with a sudden spurt of courage, Lem stepped in front of her, where he stood lighting the lantern, when Buddy, who had halted at the corner of the building, suddenly hissed softly and motioned for them to join him. Bud stood pointing ominously amid the skeleton limbs of a dead sycamore tree. Belle-Ann laughed amusedly.
"Why, Buddy," she reassured, "that's only a pretty, harmless little owl."
"But hits a scrutch-owl," frowned the boy, shrinking away.
"Oh, come on, Buddy!—I really believe you are afraid of ghosts," returned Belle-Ann, taking him protectingly by the hand.
Re-enforced by the girl's utter absence of fear, Lem pushed the door open, and stepping within led the way, lantern in hand. Upon their approach to the altar, the bull-bats flapped their bony wings amongst the rafters. There was in the fetid gloom of the place a permeating musk of things seemingly not of this earth. Lem hung up the lantern on the hook at the end of the dingy rope suspended near the pulpit. The rope, which great spiders had converted into a swing, now felt soft and snaky beneath his touch. He turned the light up as high as he could without smoking and faced Belle-Ann. He saw at a glance that a measure of her temerity had vanished.
A smothered exclamation fell from Lem's lips. He pointed through the buff halo cast from the lantern. There against the south wall of the room some of the benches could be dimly discerned overturned,—others twisted and broken and scattered in a mass of wreckage—while one balanced perilously on the casement as though a hand had sought to take it out through the window.
"Who yo' 'low done thet?" inquired Buddy in a tremulous whisper, clinging timorously to Belle-Ann's skirts.
"I don't 'low any human bein' done hit," predicted Lem in faint undertones that faltered with a creeping, choking apprehension. A queer brain-numbing apathy settled upon them that seemed to deprive them suddenly of the use of their tongues and limbs.
"Oh, nonsense!" discredited Belle-Ann bravely. "Some mean boys perhaps."
Disbelieving, the brothers stood rigid and shook their now pale faces in denial. Belle-Ann did not fear ghosts, but there was undeniably some strange mortal influence circulating the eery atmosphere of this place like the proximity of some menacing presence close at hand, but unseen. She fought hard to repel this unknown fear that was stealing upon her, but, despite her valiant struggle, it was fast seizing upon her nerves and permeating her whole being with singular insistency.
With an effort she gathered herself together.
"Now hurry on, boys," she directed briskly in a voice that sounded unnaturally furtive and low. "Buddy, you get in here between Lem and I—there—that's it. Now, boys, we are going to say a little prayer for pap and maw, and you, Lem, remember."
At a slight sound the three impulsively and unconsciously took hold of each other and turned blanched faces toward the window opposite the altar. At the same instant, a screech-owl closed his wings on the window casement and sat immobile, like a creature without life, while a slender, livid finger of moonlight crossed its speckled back and, continuing on, pointed specifically to the bloody cross athwart the altar.
Little Bud faltered weakly and shook like a boy with the ague. His lips worked mutely and tried to whisper something, but his tongue cleft, paralyzed with a prickly dread that stole over him, and his teeth began a forbidding tattoo. He cast an appealing look at Lem; wherefore the mere sight of Lem's white face accentuated his own fleeting courage. The grim lethargy of this subtle, contagious dread had communicated its blight to Lem's senses with equal virulence.
A pall of lethal fear deprived Belle-Ann of words and action. What with the awful thick dark, made pitchy beyond the buff circle of the flickering lantern; a fetid, curdy, musty, stifling blackness which, she now felt instinctively, held screened just there, some hidden horror reaching out to wrap its smothering terror about her.
The fan-like hiss of the hybrid bats that blundered aloft, their vicious unearthly squeaks, stabbing the dead stillness, added to her cryptic dread. Upon a sudden current of vagrant air a handful of fire-flies were driven through one of the sundered windows, whereupon they bobbed and swayed about evilly against the haunting gloom of the church like ghastly corpse candles. Together with the unblinking stare of the screech-owl from the moon-touched window casement, all these menacing influences combined and laid hold of Belle-Ann's will like overpowering hands of living agencies crowding her remorselessly to the verge of panic.
She stood rigid, listening with a natant, sickening consciousness that something terrible hung at her back. Then, ashamed of her exposition of timid indecision and fear, she valiantly strove to disguise with action the sudden racking shudder that compassed and rippled over her being, like the chill of an icy current.
Belle-Ann summoned all her failing faculties and levied upon her will to proceed with the ceremony of the sacred mission that had led them to this Godless place. But she only stood fixedly, rigid and helpless, growing paler with each succeeding moment, and gazed blankly at Bud and Lem alternately. Their nerves were as yielding as jelly strings. Other than the silky rustle aloft, punctuated occasionally with the thin needle-like anathemas of the bull-bats, there was now not the slightest sound within to disrupt the death-hush of this place. Nevertheless, Lem craned his neck, edging closer to the other two, and whispered portentously:
"Ded yo'-all heer anything?"
"No," returned Belle-Ann faintly and uncertainly.
Buddy could only shake his head. Then sharply and, oddly enough, in unison, impelled by a sudden common instinct, the trio wheeled about, facing the wrecked benches. What they saw in that instant congealed the warm flow in their veins to currents of ice and drove their very breaths away.
Three hearts smote their ribs a single whack; then seemingly, melted away and sank downward and out of their bodies, leaving a trio of lifeless, inanimate mummies, frozen into horrified, stony attitudes. An awful thing hung there on the edge of the grommet of light. A blurred, half-naked, grisly monster sprawled on its loathsome haunches before them,—a thing topped with a blood-mottled, hideous head, made frightful by two luridly igneous, horrible eyes. Eyes girded and shot with a bloody film bulged fixedly up at them, glaring through the flickering orange light. The eyes—the eyes!
Divided by the part in the middle, one half of the wiry hair stuck up, the dead white hue of chalk, admitting its stains of red. The other half bristled, an ebon black blighted with its share of gore. At once it gave the startling impression of separate semi-faces filched from two different rawheads and slapped together thus, in smeared, mismated makeshift, that was hideous. Had only its fearful Nemesis stayed his devil-genius and spared the torrid eyes,—monstrous ember eyes that flamed like live coals against the dark,—mad-red eyes that burned and sparkled and sputtered up from their dancing depths, emitting and vomiting over the brims, a changing luster, blended with all the fevered fires of hell—eyes that eroded a nauseous path with their abhorrent stare. The accursed thing crouched there as immobile as the owl. A limp, blood-oozing tongue protruded from an addled, unspeakable mouth, distended and heinous with jagged teeth askew. Girding the besmeared forehead at the hispid white and black hair line of this festering scourge-scathed visage, just where the scalp separated and curled apart, a revolting ribbon of pure skull shone,—a strip of skull drained dry and clear and white as polished ivory; shimmering out like the badge of a death-head from some grim grot of perdition.
The three tried to flee from the awful, withering presence of this nameless thing. They tried vainly to cry out; to vent the horror that was upon them, depriving them of all utterance and action.
They only clutched each other nervelessly and stared insanely. Thereupon, in an unlooked-for instant before their livid faces, this ghastly misshapen thing struggled to its naked feet and lurched past them toward the altar, with the faltering wabble of a foundered ox. Up across the corner of the pulpit it clambered, and, reeling too near the edge, tumbled off the other side and struck the floor with a heavy, resounding thud, where, amidst jerky groans that were not human enunciations, it panted and floundered and arose once more.
Up again with a mighty torturous effort, the hulk mounted the platform a second time, and with head dangling at the end of a limp neck, crawled to the ragged cross, etched out with the blood of old Cap Lutts. Here it mumbled gutturally and labored crazily to gather up the crimson altar-piece into its seared, torn arms. Then again up to its feet it reared, and, standing thus with arms upflung, the stillness was shattered with frantic echoes of a broken word-spluttering, hell-twisted cackle, carrying a faint gleam of coherency and culminating in ravings that made the night hideous.
"I say—I say—I say—" gathering stress, louder and louder it shrieked until the very air curdled with these eery cries. "I say—you there, you there—you God—you God—I say the law's here—the law's here—the law, the law, the law I say—hear me?—hiding, hiding?—no, no, no, I have never hidden from men—I'll not hide now from my God—I'm here now, God—'Thou shalt not kill—thou shalt not kill'—but I done it—I done this—these hands done it—see, God? They are wet with this deed—but I swear the law drove me to it—the law saddled a hundred offenses to my life—but I'm here now, God—I bring these offenses here—I done it—I done it—these hands done it—these two blood-stained hands—the law made me—I swear it—listen—you can't get me—you can't rend me—you starved heathens—stand back—stand back, you dungeon-dogs—stand away there, you ratty jail-birds—you can't get at me, ha, ha, ha!—gnaw your iron cuffs apart first—bite your cuffs in two—gnaw them until your teeth shatter, and your gums flood your felon throats—ha, ha, ha!—Oh, my head, my head—Christ, the world's afire—the world's burning up—listen—listen——!"
Hereupon the screech-owl awoke to quick animation. With trembling wings slightly lifted, it thrust its head through the broken window-pane and uttered a scathing arraignment—a long-drawn, graduating, derisive titter that raked the ghoulish solitude of the church like perdition-music—a mockery medley wafted from a cortège of the doomed.
As the last prickly notes dropped down and trailed like a thread of sin back into the owl's speckled breast, the gory raw-head blundered around and fixed that mawkish, ghastly hell-mask full upon the girl and two boys, whose feet were locked immovably to the floor with terror. Then in emulation, seemingly, of the owl's tittering, it belched its awful laugh into their faces. Such a laugh—its chilling, unhallowed screech launched a petrific measure of untold vocal wickedness, an awesome, direful gamut of echoes that gathered volume, scattered and split, crossed and recrossed; reverberating through the death-still atmosphere like the hysterical chattering of a band of stricken, tortured souls.
Human senses could not withstand such an onslaught. It startled the three to instant action. The tide of self-preservation ebbed back into their bodies; with one accord they reared their arms upward across their faces to ward off the shock of that accursed sound, as though its very effluvium scorched its scar into their flesh. There was an utterance of mingled gasps. There was a sudden rush of jumbled, panic-stricken footsteps. A tumbling, scrapping, frantic confusion. A groan—a half scream—a sob and the door banged.
The church was empty, save for the mumbling, croaking, mad lazar.
In getting out Lem had stumbled in the door and fallen heavily over his rifle. When he scrambled to his feet again, he beheld Belle-Ann and Buddy fleeing across the moonlit clearing. He started to follow, but checked himself and stopped short; he stood combating the superstitious fear that had dropped into his senses and sapped away his equanimity.
"Gawd'll Moughty," he muttered audibly, "air this ole Cap Lutts' boy runnin' away. Not by a dern sight—I'll go back an' finish em." Then he hallooed lustily after Buddy.
"Hey, Buddy—Buddy—Buddy—cum back heah—cum back heah, I tell yo'—cum back!"
Buddy came back reluctantly, his thin countenance still grim with pallor and an inquiring look in his wild eyes.
"Whut ails yo', Lem?" he panted.
Lem regarded him a second with an admonishing stare, forgetful of his own conduct.
"I'm ashamed o' yo'," he said.
"Whut, Lem?"
"Whut yo'-all a runnin' fo'—eh?" demanded Lem.
Bud jammed one hand into his pocket, abashed, and cast a fearful glance toward the church door.
"Don't yo' know hit's the revenoor?"
"Yes, course I do, Lem—but—but they's a hant in em."
"Hant er no hant, we'uns air agoin' in, an' ef he hain't daid——"
"Yo' darsn't, Lem—no—no," protested Buddy in alarm. "Yo' darsn't kill hit, Lem—yo' darsn't kill a hant—th' witches 'll spell-tuk we'uns an' foller we'uns alers, alers. Slab says so—Slab knows."
"Well," returned Lem, "leastways we'uns 'll go back an' see."
Whereupon he strode to the church door resolutely and pushed it half open. Buddy still hung back undecided.
"Hain't yo' ole Cap Lutts' boy?" rebuked his brother severely. "An' hain't that the revenuer?"
"Sho'," agreed Buddy, now plainly embarrassed, and followed with determined alacrity. Howbeit, the same ghostly dread hung at Lem's elbow, but his mighty will whipped his body into subservience and he boldly re-entered the church, and made his way toward the lantern that shrouded the altar with its yellow glow. Buddy followed closely and tremblingly at his heels.
The soft, irregular, rapid pad of bare feet met their ears, punctuated by a prodigious breathing that might have issued from the bellows of a blown horse. They caught alternate glimpses of the bestial thing, as its lengthy, starved shadow hove around the near corner of the altar and struck the far rim of light. It flitted past like a gesticulating, dying toad, glued to the tire of a wagon wheel. It was galloping madly in a circle—milling around and around and around the platform as if ridden and spurred by an incubus, bent on the reward of a trophy hell-cup.
And each time it came round to the dark blood-picture on the floor, it cleared this with a mighty leap into the air, as a horse makes a wide, dangerous ditch. The rustling wings of the eery creatures amidst the rafters aloft were hushed. The lance of moonlight had faded from the window casement and the owl was gone. The Lutts boys halted; gripped and raised their rifles mechanically for a shot. Each time the tattered apparition flashed into the light on its desperate circuit around, their fingers would curve spasmodically about the triggers for the pull, but each time that opportune fraction of a second eluded them and the ghastly spectre sped onward.
The astounding manner in which this careening, wavering scarehead held the narrow limits of its course without plunging off the stage was acutely awesome, and little short of a phenomenon. Every downward lunge was checked as if jerked by an invisible cord. Verily, it seemed to be held to its path by the influence of a powerful magnet. As the boys stood thus agap, in firing attitude, undoubtedly the subtle agency of a deep-seated plenipotent superstition which so thoroughly saturates the mountain-born had now risen up and cast its obfuscating shade between the quarry and their intent to kill.
With mutual glances they peered at each other irresolutely. At this juncture, the pattering of naked feet suddenly ceased. Again they fixed their eyes on the pulpit and its gloomed blasphemy. It tottered on the brink of the platform a second; inclined perilously forward; started on its headlong plunge outward, then miraculously checked its descent and straightened. Then, backing away, it paused, stiffened and fell backward with the rigidity of a board.
Lem and Buddy, collecting their befuddled senses, made their way forward. The hideous mass of bones and blood and rags now lay quite still on the altar. Through a short interval the two watched it for signs of life. Presently, Lem prodded it with his rifle. It gave way, yielding and inert, and now Lem took the lantern down from the hook at the rope's end and, advancing dubiously, he held the lantern over the awful spectacle and dared a look. That look sufficed. What had once been the revenuer lay sprawled athwart the bloody cross—dead.
Outside the church door Lem halted and wiped his face absently. A look of deep perturbation was plainly perceptible on his countenance. A gulch-scented wind rode the plaintive sobs of the she-panther up from the darksome thicket below, and Lem harkened attentively, as though he had never heard these faltering, familiar notes before.
"Leastways," he projected presently, "he got part o' what's due him, Buddy."
"But he'll cum back, Lem—he will," predicted Bud stoutly. "They's a hant in em—he'll cum back sho'—yo' see—hants alers ac's like thet—then they sneaks back agin."
Lem had started dejectedly across the clearing and did not appear to hear his brother's apprehensions.
"Yo' go ahead, Buddy," advised Lem, "an' catch up with Belle-Ann—I'll be 'long directly."
Buddy's thin, colt-like legs struck a trot, and Lem followed slowly up the mountain side, deeply absorbed in thought and obviously disgruntled. Altogether, the whole untoward events of the night had conspired to cheat him out of his revenge. This was the strangest night he had ever known, the happenings of which seemingly, derided his own reality. A night divided into ecstasy and torture, and above the chaos of his soul, the voice of Belle-Ann ever rippled with the monotone and insistency of running water.
When finally Lem reached the cabin he found Belle-Ann huddled on the horse-block, her face pallid and distressed from the effects of the terrible, revolting scene she had witnessed in the church. Buddy sat beside her saying things, which she heard vaguely and to which she made distrait response.
Lem put his rifle and the lantern down and stood before her.
"I air sorry, Belle-Ann, thet yo'-all had t' see sich a sight," he said slowly. "He's daid."
She arose quickly to her feet and looked searchingly into his face.
"You—you—you didn't——"
"No, Belle-Ann—I didin't kill em. We'uns went back after yo'-all left an' he were up on th' altar daid."
"Oh—how awful—how terrible it all is! Oh, I wish it were morning—that I could ride away from heah! Even a day of this awful life is more than I can bear. Are you satisfied now, Lem?" she ended sadly.
"No, I hain't," he returned hotly. "I wus cheated out'n his blood. Pap an' maw wanted em t' die at my hands—they ded. Belle-Ann, air yo' 'lowin' t' go way in th' mornin' an' never cum back?" he finished, with a look of despair settling on his features.
"I am going in the morning, Lem," she answered decisively, though a note of utter sorrow crept into her gentle tones. "You have had your opportunity. You told me Johnse Hatfteld offered you five hundred dollars for your interests heah. Surely you could have gone down to Blue-grass with my grandpa and taken Buddy and Slab along, and—I—I—could then—but you want to stay here and feed your soul on blood. Could you ask a more bitter punishment for the revenuer than what you saw to-night? I implore for the last time, Lem—put that evil life behind you, Lem. Ask God to help you, and take my heart and hand on it that He will not forsake you. You will come through as I did. Will you try, Lem?" she pleaded softly, with a toss of curls and a tender, compelling light in her sweet, sad eyes. "Let me lead you, Lem," she whispered.
The boy's face paled suddenly. It was the advent of a terrible upheaval coming upon him. Belle-Ann saw and divined his intent.
With no backward word, only a look that embraced an untold, profound meaning, he hurried from her, spiritless and disconsolate and tumultuous. Her eyes followed him, enthralled. She knew where he was bound! She prayed devoutly that the web, traced by destiny, wrapping their two lives into a unit, would not now, at this crisis, burst its ligatures asunder. She prayed with all the fervent strength of her young heart that Lem would come down from Eagle Crown and take her in his arms,—take her willing life to him irrevocably, with a new precept written in his heart.