“But Hallie.” The girl’s heart was wrung by the thought of the innocent child’s suffering.
“Hallie’s all right for now. You have heard her cry in that way often before. It’s just a fretful, sleepy cry. She will soon fall asleep.”
It was true. Even as they waited and listened the crying ceased and over the hills and the forest there fell the hush of night.
Into this hush Patience burst with an exceedingly strange whispered remark:
“If only we had that coon. Marion, have you any money?”
“Five dollars.”
“Oh! Good! They’d sell it for that, I am sure. But we won’t ask them; just pin the money to the coon’s box.”
“But it’s all we have. We will need food. The kidnappers may go to the railroad. We will need money. Anyway, why the coon?”
Patience did not answer. Snatching the money, she was away in the night, leaving Marion alone in the dark and with the strange men scarcely more than a stone’s throw beneath her.
Who can tell what this city girl’s thoughts were as she sat there alone with the silence of night hovering over her? Whatever the thoughts might have been, they were at last broken in upon by the low rattle of a chain. Beside her stood Patience and in her arms, cuddled up like a kitten, was the pet coon.
“Now what in the world did you do that for?” demanded Marion as, having picked up Patience’s long squirrel rifle, she came trudging after her.
“Wait and see!” she panted.
Very weary and very skeptical, Marion waited. Having once more reached the crest of the cliff, Patience felt her way about until she had located a tall young hickory tree with branches some six feet from the ground.
Placing the coon on the ground and handing the chain to Marion, she whispered: “Give me a lift to the first limb. Then hand me the coon.”
Having complied with her request, Marion leaned wearily upon the rifle while she listened to the sound of her companion scaling the tree, branch by branch.
Presently she heard Patience coming down. When at last Patience caught the lowest branch and swung herself down Marion saw that her hands were empty.
“C’mon!” Patience whispered hoarsely as she dragged her companion through the brush.
In silence they skirted the mountain side until they were almost directly above the cabin.
“Hist! Listen!” Patience came to a sudden standstill.
“Wha—what is it?” the other girl breathed.
“It’s the sound a coon makes when he’s lonesome. But listen!”
A new and louder sound burst upon their ears. There was no need for asking what this was. Marion knew all too well. It was the booming baying of a hound. The next second he was joined by his companion.
“Are they coming this way?” asked Marion, while a cold chill shook her from head to foot.
“No.” There was a quiet assurance in Patience’s tone. “We’ve made no sound. It isn’t us they hear. It’s that coon. They’ll race over to that tree and bay up at it if the men’ll let ’em, and I think they will.”
“And then they’ll get on our scent and—and it will all be over!” Marion’s teeth were chattering in spite of her.
That this was a possibility she had not thought of was told by the long moment of silence before the mountain girl spoke.
“Well, they might,” she whispered, measuring her words, “but a hound’s a hound, and all hounds love to bay a coon tree. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Waiting out there in the dark forest with every least sound, the flutter of a bird or the movement of some small living thing in the grass at their feet giving them a start, was not the easiest thing in the world. Indeed, Marion found it almost the hardest.
Now and again there came the call of the coon, then the booming of the hounds.
“Why don’t they let them go?” Patience murmured impatiently. “If they don’t; if—”
She paused in the midst of a sentence to listen. Then in a joyous whisper she exclaimed:
“There! There they go!”
It was true. As Marion strained her ears she caught the sound of the hounds tearing away through the brush.
But even as she listened her heart suddenly went wild. What if the hounds had somehow gotten scent of them and were coming their way? How terrible that would be! They were sure to be great, gaunt, vicious beasts.
In the darkness it was impossible to tell what direction they were taking. Aided by her heightened imagination, she fancied the sound of their rush through the bushes growing louder, seemed to catch more plainly their hoarse breathing.
Wildly she strained her eyes in the dark, searching for a tree that she might climb, but in vain. The trees were either too large, with branches twenty feet in air, or too slender to bear her weight. In her wild terror she was about to flee when again Patience whispered:
“There they go!”
“Who?” Marion whispered back.
“The men. They are all alike—hounds and mountain men. They can’t stand the call of a coon. Oh, thank God! Our chance is coming. See!”
As she looked toward the cabin Marion did see. Not alone did she see the men, but saw their faces plainly. By the glaring light of a burning pine knot held aloft by one of the men, faces of three tall, gaunt, stubby-whiskered men were silhouetted against the shadows of night.
“Know them?” Marion whispered as they disappeared behind a clump of trees.
“Narry a one.”
“I guess that’s all of them,” Patience whispered a moment later. “Away, now, for little Hallie. We’ll have to take a chance. C’mon, and remember—not a sound. Not a snap of a twig, not a breath!”
The next moment found them silently sliding down the mountain. Now pausing, holding their breath to listen, they caught the roar of the hounds, the crash of the men making their way through the brush. Now they came to a dense thicket of briars that tore at their clothes. Luckily they were clad in suits of stout khaki. Now they plunged down a deep ravine that threatened to be their undoing. At last they were up the other side and nearing the cabin.
“Have to work fast!” panted Patience. “Find—find her! Pick her up. Don’t wake her! Don’t let her cry! Then go down the mountain—fast—fast as we can!”
Then they caught sight of the dark bulk of the cabin ahead of them. A faint light shone in the open doorway.
“A—a light—” faltered Marion, drawing her companion back. “Maybe a man has been left behind.”
“Just the fire on the hearth, I guess. Anyway, we have to risk it. C’mon.”
Again they crept forward. Now they were a hundred yards away, now fifty, now twenty-five, and now, with hearts beating wildly, they were skirting the cabin.
Dropping to the ground, Patience crept to the doorway. One glance within and she was up on hands and knees, creeping rapidly forward.
One moment of tense silence and she appeared at the door. In her arms was a large bundle.
“Got—got her,” she breathed. “Now go! Go fast! C’mon.”
Once more they crept forward through the dark. A moment passed, another, and yet another. A hundred yards below the cabin they were making rapid progress in spite of fallen logs, brush and the dark, when Patience suddenly stopped and gripped Marion’s arm.
“Listen!” she breathed.
“Wha—what is it?”
“The hounds! They’re baying!”
“They’ve been baying for a long time.”
“It—it’s different now. They’ve got our scent. They’re on our trail. C’mon! We’ve got to go fast!”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know, but come on!”
* * * * * * * *
What was happening during all this time at the head of Laurel Branch beyond the natural gateway? Had old Job and his followers discovered that little Hallie had been stolen? And were they hot on the trail of the kidnappers? Would they arrive in time to save the little captive and her brave deliverers?
They had indeed discovered their loss and were mourning it bitterly. As old Job sat in the chimney corner reading his well worn Bible, from time to time a tear fell upon the faded pages. But the search had not begun; might not begin for several days. Such are the slow and silent ways of mountain folks. Besides, no clew had been left for them to follow. The kidnappers had entered the valley on foot. Fortune had favored them. It was during the excitement over the narrowly averted raid by Ransom Turner’s men that they had slipped into the cabin and had carried away the sleeping child.
On the rocky creek-bottom road the shoes of the kidnappers made no imprint. It was only after walking two miles that they mounted horses, concealed all this time in a paw-paw thicket, and rode away. No aid could be expected from old Job’s men.
As she dashed after her companion, Marion felt a dizzy wave of faintness sweep over her. With her knees all but refusing to support her, she seemed in danger of plunging head foremost down the mountain side. By a supreme effort she regained control of herself and, still gripping the long squirrel rifle, followed on as best she could.
After stumbling through brush and over logs, with the baying of hounds growing louder in their ears, they came to the bed of a small ravine. There was water here and it offered better going. Besides, it might throw the hounds off the trail. So, sometimes to their ankles and sometimes to their knees in water, they plunged forward.
“Keep the rifle dry,” Patience panted back. “We may need it.”
“Would—would you shoot?” Marion asked.
“I’d shoot anything to save Hallie.”
The child, now half awake, was crying softly to herself.
Suddenly Patience came to a standstill.
“Listen!” she whispered.
Marion did listen, and what she heard caused her to shrink back in fear. Above the baying of the hounds and the shouts of men who had doubtless discovered that Hallie was gone, came the sound of water as it rushed over the cliff to dash upon the rocks far below. So near did it seem that Marion shrank back in fear lest she be washed over the precipice.
“Blocked!” she whispered.
“Here,” said Patience, “you take Hallie. Give me the rifle. Now come on. It may not be too late.” She went scrambling up the bank of the ravine. Twice she slipped and seemed about to fall back, but each time grasped the friendly branch of some shrub for support. Many times she held out a helping hand to the other less experienced climber.
At last with a deep breath, Patience leaped upon the crest of the ridge.
“Listen!” she whispered. “The hounds! They’ve lost the scent. The water did that. There’s a chance yet. C’mon!”
So weary were her limbs, so spent her strength, that Marion felt she would rather lie down and die than to go on, but the thought of the innocent child she protected gave her new strength. So down the other side of the ridge they dashed.
“Here’s hoping for better luck this time,” sighed Patience as she parted the bushes that lined the next ravine. Hardly had she thrust her right foot forward than she slipped, then started gliding downward. Only a fortunate grab at an overhanging bough saved her from a fall.
“What is it?” asked Marion.
“It’s a skidway for logs,” whispered Patience, struggling to regain her footing. “It’s our chance. We’ll have to be careful, awful careful, but it will take us to the river. Mebby down there in the bottoms there’s some one who’ll help us.”
With a few well chosen words she explained to her companion that when the white wood timber had been cut down from the mountains some years previous the woodsmen had felled trees into the ravine and having trimmed the branches from them had formed of them a steep chute down which thousands of logs had been sent gliding and booming to the river.
“It’s slippery,” the mountain girl warned, “but if we are careful we can make it. Hold Hallie with one hand, hug the bank and cling to branches with the other. I’ll go before you. If you slip I’ll try to stop you.”
Then in silence, foot by foot, yard by yard, rod by rod, they made their way down the treacherous pathway. Now they came upon a moss-grown portion that was safe as a sidewalk, and now there lay before them the shining whiteness of logs over which water had run until they were smooth as polished mahogany. Gliding, climbing, faltering, they made their way downward.
“Listen!” whispered Patience at last. “The hounds! They’re on our trail again.”
Then sudden disaster from a new field threatened. At a slight bend in the ravine they came upon a log chute. A great quantity of debris—twigs, rotten limbs, leaves and dead grass had collected in the chute and the whole lay directly in the path. As they climbed confidently upon it the whole mass broke away and the next moment, like children on a pillow in a play chute, they were gliding downward.
Faster, faster, with fear tugging at their hearts, they flew downward. With no power to help themselves, dumb with apprehension they sat there, sensing brush and trees rushing past them, feeling the sharp cut of leaves on their cheeks until Marion found her tongue to scream:
“Patience, are we going into the river?”
“If—if nothing happens first,” stammered the mountain girl, for the first time truly frightened.
“Can you swim?”
“Yes, can you?”
“Yes. Listen, Patience. We are older, we can stand much. Hallie is a small child. The cold of the river will kill her. Take off your cape and make it into a ball. Try to keep it dry. I’ll do the best I can to protect her. Somehow we’ll make shore. We—”
At that instant her lips were sealed by the sight that burst upon her startled eyes. Apparently directly beneath them, its silently sweeping waters yellow and swollen by recent rains, lay the river and upon it, having just emerged from behind a cloud, shone the moon.
The perils that lay before the two girls and their small charge, though great enough, were not so imminent as they had appeared. A sudden turn in the chute brought them to a more gradual slope. When at last their cushion of debris floated out upon the river, so slight was the splash it made that it seemed hard to believe that they had reached the end of their perilous glide to safety. But there was still danger, for all too soon their frail raft was water-logged and sinking.
“Remember the cape,” cautioned Marion as, with her left hand holding little Hallie tightly upon what was left of the raft, she struck out into the dark, chilling waters.
“Let—let’s keep together,” she called through chattering teeth. “It—it’s going to be hard, but we can make it. Let—let’s try for the other shore.”
Patience struck boldly out before her.
In spite of Marion’s best efforts to protect the child, she was getting wet. She began to cry. The cry wrenched the older girl’s heart. “If the water makes my teeth chatter, what must it mean to her!” she thought.
“Look!” she called to Patience. “What’s that off to the right?”
“Looks like a log, a saw log. Ought we try for it?”
“Yes.”
Instantly the course was changed. A moment later they were clambering aboard a great log of white wood that buoyed them up as easily as a boat.
Sitting astride the log, Marion wrapped Patience’s warm dry cape about the child. Hardly a moment had elapsed before her crying ceased.
Of all the strange experiences that had come to Marion, this was the most weird. To have escaped from hounds and kidnappers with a child, to have come gliding down here in such a strange manner, to find herself sitting astride a huge log surrounded by black, rushing waters, and gliding steadily forward to an unknown destination, this was adventure of the most stirring kind. But Marion found little enough time for such reflections. Now that she had come to a time of inaction she began to realize how cold the water and night air were. She was seized with such a fit of shivering that she feared she would be shaken off the log.
“The wat—the water’s better than this,” she chattered, yet for the sake of the peacefully sleeping child she decided to endure the torture as long as possible.
Trees and bushes along the river’s bank swept by. A dog at some cabin barked. Off in the far distance a light flickered, then went out. The cold was becoming easier to bear. She was growing drowsy. She wanted to sleep. Sleep—yes, that was what she needed. Sleep, one wink of sleep. Her head fell upon her breast. The cold was overcoming her, but she did not realize it.
She dreamed she had left the log, to find a roaring fire right by the river’s bank, by which she was warming herself. Suddenly a jolt which almost threw her from the log rudely brought her back to life.
“Wha—what is it!” she exclaimed, gripping Patience with one hand and clinging frantically to the sleeping child with the other.
“We’ve gone aground,” said Patience. “If we’re careful we can get ashore.”
Three minutes later, beside a clump of paw-paw bushes, they were wringing the water from their garments.
“I saw a light just over yonder,” said Patience. “We’d better try to find it.”
A very few steps and they were out of the brush and on a well beaten road. A quarter mile down this road they came suddenly upon a broad clearing, in the midst of which were three large white buildings.
“A school!” exclaimed Marion. “The mission school! Oh, we are safe!”
For a moment, worn out as she was by over-exertion, excitement and cold, she was obliged to battle with an almost overwhelming desire to drop in her tracks. Her splendid will, however, stood her in good stead and with a firm “Let’s go on,” she led the way.
There was a light in the lower right room of the nearest building. Straight to the door of this room they went and the next second found them blinking at the light and at the same time looking into one of the most saintly faces they had ever seen, the motherly face of Miss Bordell, who had for many years devoted her life to the education of mountain children.
The girls quickly told their story. Almost before they knew it, having been assured that here they would be quite safe from any intruders, they found themselves tucked in between a pair of white sheets with Hallie sleeping peacefully between them.
“We’re safe,” Marion whispered to herself, “but the mystery is not solved. To-morrow—to-mor—” Her thoughts were never finished. Her weary brain had closed shop for the night.
“It’s the most unusual thing I have ever heard of,” said the school principal after she had heard the girls’ story the next morning. “You say they were regular mountain folks?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Patience nodded.
“That’s what makes it so unusual,” said the elderly lady, wrinkling her brow. “Mountain folks aren’t given to stealing and kidnapping. That sort of crime seems almost foreign to their nature. I’ll tell you what we will do. The Circuit Judge, John Bascomb, happens to be down at the village. We’ll go down and talk it over with him. It’s only a mile.”
So down the road to the village they marched, Marion, Patience, little Hallie, and their benefactress.
They had reached the first cabin that stood by the creek road when of a sudden Patience, pulling excitedly at the principal’s sleeve, whispered hoarsely:
“That’s them there! They’re the three men that carried Hallie away!”
A single glance told Marion she was right. So great was her fear of them that her first impulse was to snatch up Hallie and flee. But her better judgment prevailed. Surely here they were safe.
The men, apparently without having seen them, turned up a side path to enter a cabin.
“Are you sure those are the men?” asked the principal.
“Yes, yes!” the girls answered in unison.
“Let’s hurry, then.”
A short time later they were telling their story to Judge Bascomb, a kindly old man.
“First thing,” he said after they had finished, “is to find out who the men are. Come on out and show me the cabin they entered.”
“H’m,” he mused as he sighted the cabin. “Can’t be Long Jim. That’s his cabin. He’s laid up with rheumatism. Must be some of his friends. Here, John Henry,” he called to a barefoot boy. “Who’s visiting at Long Jim’s?”
“Reckon hit’s Black John Berkhart and his brother, Blinkie Bill, and mebby Hog Farley.”
“H’m,” said the judge. “I know ’em. We’ll just step over there.”
“No, no,” said Marion, hanging back. “I—I couldn’t.”
“That’s all right, little girl,” the judge reassured her. “They’re just plain mountain folks. I can’t understand their actions of yesterday, but that’s what we’re going over there to find out.”
The men in the cabin appeared a little startled at sight of the judge and the girls, but having motioned them to seats around the crude fireplace, they sat there in stoical silence.
“Black John,” said the judge in a friendly tone, “I’m told you took this little girl from her home yesterday and carried her away over the mountains.”
“I ’low you’re right informed, Jedge.”
“Don’t you know that’s kidnapping?”
“You kin name it, Jedge. I ain’t much on larnin’ nohow.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Jedge, it’s this way,” the black-eyed mountaineer settled himself to explain. “That little gal there is the last of her clan, the Cawoods, the fightenest clan that I reckon ever lived in these here mountings. They fit us and we fit them, and I reckon, Jedge, if’n ther’d been more Cawoods and less Berkharts there wouldn’t been any Berkharts left, same’s there’s only one Cawood left, an’ that’s little Hallie.
“Jedge,” the mountain man paused to stare moodily at the fire, “us folks is plum tired fightin’. ’T’ain’t no satisfaction to go out a hoein’ corn an’ makin’ crops on these here rocky hillsides when you know like as not some feller’s lying up there in the bresh above you waitin’ for to put daylight through you. And Jedge, long’s there’s a Cawood a-livin’ in these here mountings, even a little one like Hallie, there’s some one goin’ to rise up to shoot and kill us. So, Jedge, we took her an’—
“No, Jedge,” he protested as he saw the look of horror on the faces about him, “we didn’t aim to kill her. Reckon there ain’t no mounting folk anywhar mean as that. But, Jedge, out of the mountings thar’s places I’ve heard tell of, big places whar they keep orphans. Hallie bein’ a true orphan, we ’lowed we’d jest take her out thar and give her another name. She’d grow up and never know she was a Cawood, and not nobody else’d know, either, and then thar’d be peace in these here mountings.”
For a moment there was silence, then the judge spoke.
“Black John,” he said, “you can’t make right by doing a wrong. Hallie was not kin to you. You had no right to lay one finger upon her. You believe in God, don’t you?” The mountaineer dropped his head. “God never told you that men would be raised up to kill your people for Hallie’s sake. It was the powers of evil and darkness that told you that. It’s not true.
“As for this crime you have committed,” he said in a stern voice, “you are accountable to the law. You should perhaps be bound over to the grand jury, but you did the thing in ignorance—your motives were not criminal motives. If those who were wronged are disposed to forgive you, and if you give me your word of honor that you will never molest the child again, I’ll do my best to see that you go free.”
He turned to Patience and Marion.
“One thing else I want to know,” said Marion, her voice husky with emotion as she turned to face Black John. “Why did you seize my friend at the back of Pine Mountain and hold her against her will?”
“That, Jedge,” said the mountain man, talking to the judge instead of Marion, “was part and parcel of the same plan. Little Hallie were a stayin’ at their cabin then and we thought quite natural we might trade the older girl fer the leetle one that wasn’t only just a mounting girl noways.”
The judge looked at Marion as much as to say: “That is explained. Shall we hold them?”
Marion frowned. She knew mountain ways and mountain courts, knew how seldom justice was done. She recalled a word Ransom Turner had let fall. “Reckon a word of honor given by a mountain man’s a heap site surer than a jury trial.”
“I’ll take his word, if he gives it freely,” Marion said.
“Black John, do we have your word of honor?”
“Jedge, hit’s mighty hard to see through; plumb hard, but I reckon hit’s right. I give my word, Jedge.”
The judge bowed. Then, followed by the judge, they all filed out of the cabin.
At ten o’clock, in her room at the whipsawed cabin, with great events hanging in the air all about her, Marion closed her weary eyes for a few winks of sleep. Little Hallie slept peacefully beside her.
When Florence awoke next morning at dawn she stared wildly about her for an instant, then settled back luxuriously among the covers.
“Home,” she breathed. “Back at the whipsawed cabin!”
She lay there gazing dreamily at the time browned ceiling. Suddenly her gaze fell upon the misplaced board that covered the opening leading to the attic.
At once her mind was filled with all manner of wild speculations. Had Marion, in her absence, thought of some new hiding place in that attic? Had she found the Confederate gold? Or had Uncle Billie talked too much about the vanished gold? Had some one, with no legal right to the gold, come to the house while everyone was away? Had he climbed to the attic and plundered it?
She found herself all but overcome by a desire to climb up there and look for herself.
“But this day,” she said, sitting up wide awake, “this day I have no time for treasure hunting. My business to-day is that of being tried by a jury. And after that,”—her thoughts were bitter,—“after that it is to be my duty to show these mountain folks how gamely a girl from the outside can lose an election.”
Strangely enough, at this moment there passed through her mind moving pictures of her experience at the back of Pine Mountain.
“The deed for Caleb Powell’s land,” she whispered. “I wonder when they will have it? Will they have it at all? Will we get our commission?”
“Oh well,” she exclaimed, leaping out of bed, “there’s no time for such speculation now.”
The trial was on. The house was packed. Lacking a town hall, the Justice had selected the schoolhouse for court room.
To Florence the thing was tragic. To be tried by a jury, a jury of men who two months before were utterly unknown to her; to be tried by a people whose children she had been helping to educate, this was tragic indeed. There were faces in the audience which seemed to reflect the tragedy; seamed faces, old before their time; faces of women who had toiled beyond their just lot that their children might have just a little more than they had enjoyed.
There was humor in the situation, too. To be sitting there in the very chair which she had been accustomed to use in her school-work; to be looking into the faces of scores of children, yet instead of directing their work to be listening to the Justice stumbling over the words of the warrant, all this struck her as decidedly odd, a thing to smile about.
Ransom, too, must have seen the humor of it, for as Florence looked his way she surprised a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth.
The jury was called. Florence, studying their faces as they came shambling forward, was surprised and relieved to find there not a single man who was hostile to her; not one of Black Blevens’ men was on that jury. She caught her breath as the true meaning of it came to her. George Sergeant, the deputy, was her friend. He had seen to it that she had the proper sort of a jury. A lump came into her throat. It is good, at such a time as this, to know that one has friends. The very fact that she had demanded a jury trial had perhaps saved the day for her.
The details of the case arranged, a lawyer arose to open the case. It was Florence’s lawyer, provided not by herself, but by Ransom Turner and his men.
It was a beautiful and wonderful speech that the young lawyer made. A product of the mountain, born and raised far up in the hills, he had been helped to his earlier education by just such a school as the girls had been teaching.
“An outrage! A shame and a blight to Laurel Creek’s good name!” he exclaimed eloquently. “You all know what these summer schools have meant to us and to our children. Good hearted, generous people of education and refinement come to our mountains to help our children, and how do we repay them? Arrest them for carrying concealed weapons! Arrest a woman for that! And what was it that this lady did? She put a twenty-two pistol in her pocket after she failed to shoot a squirrel. A pistol, did I say? Really a little rifle. A long barrel and a handle. Attach a stock to it and it’s a rifle.
“Concealed weapons!” his voice was filled with scorn. “You couldn’t kill a man with that! A twenty-two! Concealed weapons! If I were to search this crowd to-day I could find a hundred deadlier weapons on the persons who sit before me!” There was a sudden shuffling of the uneasy feet of startled mountaineers.
“Concealed weapons!” he went on. “I’ve a more deadly one in my own pocket!” He drew a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it. “I could kill you quicker with that than with a twenty-two.” He put the knife back in his pocket.
“And yet we arrest a woman, a girl really, who has come among us to help us. As a reward we arrest her! Will you honorable jurymen place a blight on the name of such a one by saying she is guilty of a crime? Something tells me you will not.”
As the young lawyer sat down there was a stir in the room, a whispering that came near to applause, but the bronze faces of the jurymen never changed. Nor had they changed when, after hearing the Justice give his reasons why the girl should be found guilty, they left the room to retire to the shade of a distant beach tree.
It was a tense situation that followed. There was no conversation. To many in the room a sentence of “guilty” would mean the end of their hopes of a winter school worthy of the name.
“If only we can beat old Black Blevens in this trial,” Ransom Turner was whispering to his henchmen. “Hit’s likely there’s men who’ll vote right in the school election this afternoon. It’s a chance, though. It’s a plumb uncertain one. Can’t tell next to nothin’ what men’ll do.”
So, while the distant mumble of the jurymen floated indistinct through the windows, they waited and whispered among themselves.
A moment passed, two, three, four. Then the jurors came marching back.
In the midst of a silence that could be felt, the jurymen took their seats and the Justice said:
“Gentlemen, what is your verdict?”
“Jedge,” said a tall, lanky woodsman, rising to his feet, “we came to the conclusion that there weren’t no deadly weapons packed, not narry one.”
There followed ten seconds more of silence, then came a rush forward to shake the young teacher’s hand.
In spite of her efforts at self control, Florence felt tears splash upon her hands, nor were hers the only tears shed that morning.
“But I must be strong,” she told herself, setting her lips tight. “The day is but begun. This is the day of the election.”
The time for the election came.
Marion, having finished her short sleep and eaten a hearty dinner, was on hand as fresh and young as if she had not passed through the terrors of the previous night.
To the two girls, born and bred on the plains, the election, which had reached a high pitch of excitement by early afternoon, was indeed a revelation. There were judges of that election who served without pay, twenty or more of them, not legal judges but men who were there to see that their side had fair play. Ten or more of Black Bleven’s men were constantly present; an equal number of the Ransom Turner clan were there. Not a word was said by any of them, but everyone knew that guns, not lips, would speak if things went wrong.
These men meant to see that the men of their side were permitted to vote and if trouble arose they were ready to fight.
All that quiet afternoon, as if before a storm, the air seemed electrified. In every heart deep feelings surged; hatred in some, loyalty in others. To every thinking man the situation held dire possibilities. Here might start a bloody feud that would not end until scores were in their graves.
Men and women stood in little knots. Questions were asked in whispers. Would they vote? Would some of Black Blevens’ men dare to cross his will? Would they dare? Black Blevens had large logging contracts. He would hire many men during the coming winter. Dared the men, whose very bread and butter depended upon him, desert him?
At three o’clock the question was beginning to be answered. The election appeared clearly lost for Ransom Turner. At three-thirty he was eleven votes behind, and no apparent chance of a rally.
Florence stuck grimly to her post, close to the schoolhouse door. Her heart was breaking. She loved the mountain children, had dreamed of a bigger and better school than Laurel Branch had ever known. That was all passing now. In two or three weeks she would be bidding the valley farewell forever. Yet, with the grim determination of a Spartan, she stuck to her post.
As for Marion, she had learned what seemed to her to be one of the secrets of happiness. When one’s greatest hope seems about to fail, it is well to quickly swing one’s interests to others, less important perhaps, but not less entrancing. As the election appeared lost, she thought once more of the Georgia gold and the attic of the whipsawed house. She it had been who had removed the board from the ceiling. At that time, however, she had been suddenly called to other tasks and, having replaced the board wrong end to, had left without climbing to the attic at all. “There’s time enough now,” she thought, “and who knows what I might discover? There’s no need to stay here any longer. The election is lost.”
Reaching her room, she at once shoved the bed beneath the loose board, and a moment later, candle in hand, found herself swinging along from beam to beam toward the ancient pounding mill in the corner.
“Don’t see why it’s here,” she murmured to herself. “Cumbersome old thing. No good up here.”
She put out her hand to touch it. Then she took it away in disgust. It was black with three decades of accumulated dust.
“Ugh!” she grunted. “Wonder if I could tip it over?”
She tried, and failed to move it,—tried once more and failed. Then she looked about her for some sort of a pry. Having secured a loose board, she attacked the task once more.
This time she was more successful. With a thump that shook the solid old frame from sill to rafter, the cumberstone block rolled over on its side.
As it fell the girl’s heart skipped a beat. What was that she heard? Could it have been a metallic clinking? Had her ears deceived her? She hoped not. But if she had heard aright, from whence had it come? From some dark corner among the rafters, or from within the very heart of the old pounding mill?
At that moment there came to her ears the sound of hoarse shouting. What did it mean? Was there to be trouble? Would there be shots? Would women be fleeing, men dying?
None of these. A strange and stirring scene was being enacted at the schoolhouse at the mouth of Laurel Branch.
A short time after Marion left the school building, as Florence stood looking away at the lovely blue of the hills and trying in vain to tell it all an affectionate goodbye, she heard someone exclaim:
“Look a’yonder!”
“Hit’s them quare folks from up yonder beyond the stone gateway,” said another.
At once the girl found herself staring in wonder at a strange procession moving slowly down the road. A score of mountain men and women, some on horseback, most on foot, led by a one-armed giant and a boy with an arm in a sling, were advancing on the schoolhouse.
“Bud Wax!” the girl breathed. “Bud, and the folks from beyond the gates. What can it mean?”
The distance was short. She soon knew. As the giant’s huge form darkened the schoolhouse door his deep voice rumbled a question:
“’Lection goin’ on here?”
There came no answer from the surprised onlookers.
“Reckon I’ll vote,” said the giant.
At this move, every man of the watchers grew rigid. Whose man was this? Many a hand shifted to a pistol grip. The election hung in the balance. As this man voted, so would all that motley throng. There was no questioning their right. They lived within the district. Their votes could be sworn in. How would they vote? They had come with Bud Wax. That looked bad for Ransom Turner’s clan. But there had been strange whisperings about Bud. He had been heard to say things about the teachers from the outside that were far from unkind. Could it be that, having been fairly conquered by one of these, he had learned a respect for them that he had felt for no other one?
As for Florence, her heart was in her mouth. Would they do it? Could they crush her hopes after she had done so much for little Hallie? They might. There was no accounting for the ways of these strange people.