293
FOR a region of dwellers so scattered as those of the Turkey Tracks, the word neighborhood is a misnomer. Where the distances are so great from house to house, where there is no telephone, no milkman on regular rounds, no gossiping servants, one would have said that Callista might go home to her grandfather's and live a month without anyone suggesting that there had been a serious rupture between herself and Lance. But news of this sort travels in a mysterious way through the singularly intimate life of these thinly settled, isolated highlands. The first comers who saw Callista and her baby at the Gentry place knew in some curious fashion that she had forsaken Lance. Perhaps it was her air of permanence in the new home which was her old one; perhaps it was the fact that she had established her little household of two in that outside cabin. However it may be, Buck Fuson rode straight from the Gentry place to Derf's with the information—and found it there before him.
"Iley's man seen her jest at the aidge o' the evenin', streakin' through the woods 'crost the holler with the chap on her hip, and a bundle over her shoulder," Garrett Derf explained. "Them294Injuns is smart about some things. He said to Iley when he come home that Lance's squaw had done shook him. Well!"
Gossip is generally personified as an old woman, but the men of a region like the Turkey Tracks are much thrown back upon it for an interest.
"Looks like Callisty never had been greatly petted on Lance," Fuson put forward, flinging a leg around the pommel of his saddle and sitting at ease.
Derf shook his head.
"I reckon she's like any other womern," he deprecated, with a sort of passive scorn. "You can spile the best of 'em. When Lance come over here the day after him and Callisty was wed and sot up housekeepin', and he showed hisse'f plumb crazy to spend money on her, I says to myse'f, says I, 'Yes, an' there'll be trouble in that fambly befo' snow flies.'"
He nodded with an air of one who utters the final wisdom, and Fuson could but agree.
"That's a fact," assented Buck, as one who knew something of the matter himself. "Man can pay out all he's worth, and still not satisfy a woman."
"Satisfy her!" echoed Derf. "Don't I tell you that it's the ruination of the best of 'em? They'll ax ye for anything, and then when they git it they'll quit ye, or turn ye out and pop295the do' in yo' face. Lance was jest that-a-way. He wouldn't take a dare. Ef Callisty said she wanted the moon, and let on like she thought he was able to git it, he'd say nothin' and try to grab it for her."
"Ain't that Flent Hands's hawse?" asked Fuson suddenly, as Cindy trotted across the small home pasture and came to the fence.
"Uh-huh," agreed Derf, and the two men steadily avoided looking at each other. "Flent, he put the nag here with us so as to be handy. Him and me's got a trade up for openin' a store in the Settlement, him to run that end o' the business and me to run this end. Don't know how it'll turn out. He's been a-comin' and a-goin' considerable, and he left the filly with us. Says he aims to take her away to-morrow."
"Alf Dease 'lowed to me that Lance was sort o' pestered 'count of Flent havin' the filly," Fuson murmured abstractedly. "Said Lance wanted him to see could he buy her back. I reckon he couldn't go to Hands himself—Lance couldn't—way things air; but it seems he axed Dease to do it."
Derf was silent a moment, then,
"Some says that Lance Cleaverage is fixin' to sell and go to Texas," he opened out categorically. "I've always been good friends with the feller, but I tell you right here and now, I'd be glad to see the last of him. He's got his word out agin296Flenton Hands, and, whenever them two meets, there's liable to be interruptions. I'm a peaceful man, and I aim to keep a peaceful place, and I ain't got any use for sech. I wish't Lance would see it that-a-way and move out—I do for a fact."
Slowly Fuson straightened his foot down, sought and found his stirrup; meditatively he switched the mule's withers with the twig he carried, and spoke to the animal, digging a negligent heel into its side, to start it.
"Well, I must be movin'," he said.
Derf stood long, leaning on the rail fence, looking absently after the slow pacing mule in the dusty highway. He turned at the sound of Ola's steps behind him. She had a halter in her hand and was making for the horse lot.
"I hearn what you and Buck was talkin' about," she said defiantly. "I'm goin' to ketch me out Cindy and ride over to Lance's."
"Oh, ye air, air ye?" demanded her father. "Well," with free contempt, "much good may it do ye!"
But Ola was impervious to his scorn. A stone wall was the only barrier her direct methods recognized. She caught and saddled the filly, brought out her black calico riding skirt, hooked it on over her workaday frock, clambered to Cindy's back, and turned her into the little frequented woodsroad down which Lance used to come with his banjo to play for the dances. Cindy put297forward her ears and nickered softly as they neared her old home, and Satan, running free in a field of stubble from which Lance had gathered the corn, came galloping to the boundary to stretch a friendly nose across to his old companion. Ola looked with relief at the black horse. Here was assurance that Lance was at home. Yet, when she got off, tied the filly, and made her way to the cabin, she found it all closed, silent, apparently deserted.
In the mountains, nobody raps on a door. Ola gave the customary hail, her voice wavering on the "hello!"
There was no answer.
Again she tried, drawing nearer, circling the house, forbearing to touch either of the doors or step on the porch.
"Hello, Lance! Hoo-ee—Lance!" she ventured finally. "It's Ola. I got somethin' to say to you."
She stood long after that effort. A wind went by in the oak leaves, whispering to itself derisively. The shabby, stubbed little figure in the dooryard, halting with rusty calico riding skirt dragged about her, choked and shivered.
"I know he's in thar," she muttered to herself resentfully, and then marched straight up the steps and shook the door. The rattling of the latch gave her to understand that the bar was dropped. People cannot go outside and bar a door.
"Lance," she reiterated, "I got somethin' to tell you about Cindy."
The hound who had accompanied Lance and Ola on many a stolen298hunting trip or fishing excursion roused from his slumbers in the barn and came baying down to greet her. She paid no attention to the dog.
"Flent he's had the filly at our house for two weeks," she said, addressing the closed and barred door. "He—he's a-aimin' to take her away to-morrow. Do you want me to buy her back for you? Lance—aw, say, Lance—do you? I could."
Outside were the usual summer sounds, the rattle of the dog's feet on the porch floor as he capered about her. Within, hearken as she might, the silence was unbroken, till suddenly across it cut, with a sharp pang of melody, the twanging of banjo strings.
Ola began to cry. Springing forward, she beat fiercely on the door with her palms, then laid hold of its knob once more to rattle it.
Under her touch it swung wide, revealing an empty room, spotlessly clean, in perfect order, with Lance's banjo, yet humming, lying on the floor where it had fallen from its nail.
"I know you' in thar," she sobbed, speaking now to the four walls that mocked her with a semblance of welcome. "This here is jest like you. Lance Cleaverage. This is the way you always treat a friend. You ain't a-lookin', you ain't a-carin'!"
Her voice broke shrilly on the last words, and, whirling,299she sat down on the step, flinging her forehead upon her knees, sobbing, catching her breath, and still accusing.
"I don't know why I come here this-a-way, a-hangin' around after you!" she stormed. "Hit's jest like it's always been—I cain't he'p myself. The good Lord! What's Callisty Gentry thinkin' of?—her that had you, and wouldn't keep you!"
Silence. The hound curled down at her feet. Cindy, pulling loose from her tether, cropped the roadside grass with steady, even bites. Callista's hollyhocks nodded by the doorstone. In the room there Callista's hand showed everywhere. The Derf girl sobbed herself quiet.
"Lance," she said heavily at length, getting to her feet, "I'm a-goin' to leave the Turkey Tracks. You won't see me no more. I"—she stood and listened long—"well, good-bye. Lance."
She halted down the steps, her glance over her shoulder in the vacant room, so like the empty expressionless face Lance used to turn to her and her blandishments. She got to Cindy and prepared to mount. Again she waited, with her hand caught in the filly's mane; but there came no answer from the doorway, no sound nor movement in the house. She climbed droopingly to the saddle, and took the homeward trail.
300
LANCE CLEAVERAGE'S wife had been many weeks in the home of her grandfather when it was noticed that Flenton Hands made occasion to come very frequently to the Gentry place. Ajax was well off, for the mountains, and they had always been hospitable; there was much coming and going about the farm; yet the presence of this visitor could not but be noted.
"I reckon you'll have to speak to him. Pappy," Octavia said finally. "I had it on the end of my tongue to name it to him the other day that hit don't look well for him to come back here a-hangin' around the wife of a man that has threatened him. I know in my soul that Lance Cleaverage would not want more than a fair excuse to—Well, an' I couldn't blame him, neither."
It was evident to all that Octavia Gentry, though now as ever she loved her daughter above everything, could not find it in her soft heart to censure Lance. Indeed that heart bled for him and the sufferings she felt sure were his.
It chanced that Ajax spoke to his frequent guest the next day and in the presence of his daughter-in-law. Flenton had come on301one of his aimless visits; he was sitting on the porch edge, and Callista had gathered up her baby and retreated to the weaving room, whence the steady "thump-a-chug! thump-a-chug!" of the loom came across to them. Flenton's slaty gray eyes began to wander in the direction of the sounds, and Ajax, prompted by anxious looks from Octavia, finally addressed him.
"Flenton," he began, removing his pipe from his lips, and examining its filling as he spoke, "you've come here right smart of late."
The visitor looked doubtfully from one to the other.
"Y-yes, Mr. Gentry," he allowed uneasily, "I have."
"Uh-huh," Ajax pursued in deep, even tones. "Yo're welcome in this house, like any other neighbor, and they ain't a man on top o' the Turkey Track mountings that can say I ever shut my door in the face of a friend. But—I'll ax you fa'r and open—do you think hit's wise?"
Again Flenton's eyes went rapidly, almost stealthily, from one face to the other.
"Do I think what's wise?" he finally managed to inquire, with fair composure.
"Well," said the elder man slowly, "in the first place we'll say that Lance Cleaverage ain't a feller to fool with. We'll say that, and we'll lay it by and not name him again.".
He paused a moment, then went on:
"Like some several other o' the boys hereabouts, you used to302think a heap o' Sis before she was wedded. She's quit her man; and do you think hit's wise to visit so much at the house where she's stayin'? This matter consarns me and the girl's mother, too. I take notice all the rest o' the boys lets Sis alone. How about you?"
This time Flent did not turn his head. He stared out over the hills and made no answer for so long that Octavia spoke up, a tremor of impatience, or of resentment, in her voice.
"Now, Flent, they's no use o' talkin'; of all of Sis's lovyers, you hung on the longest. Look like you wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Why, the very night her and Lance was married, you done yo' best to step betwixt 'em. And worst is, you don't quit it now that they air wedded."
"Octavy," demurred old Ajax, chafed at seeing a man so bearded by one of the weaker sex, "Flenton may have something to say—let him speak for hisself."
Thus encouraged, Hands faced about toward them.
"No, I ain't never give up Callisty," he said doggedly, "and I ain't never a-goin' to. She's quit her husband." Even in his eagerness he did not find it possible to take Lance's name on his lips. "She's left that thar feller that never done her right, and never was fit for her, to consarn himself with his own evil works and ways; and she's come home here to you-all;303and I don't see what should interfere now between her an' me."
Octavia's comely face crimsoned angrily.
"A married woman—a wife—" she broke out with vehemence. But her father-in-law checked her by a motion of the hand.
"Yes, Callisty's quit Lance Cleaverage," agreed Ajax dryly. "An' she's come home. But I reckon she'll behave herself. Leastways, she will while she's in my house."
At the seeming implication, Octavia's fingers trembled in her lap, and she turned a wounded look upon Ajax.
"Well, Pappy! You' no call—" she was beginning, when Flenton, with a manner almost fawning, interrupted her.
"You don't rightly git my meaning, Mr. Gentry—nor you, neither, Miz. Gentry," he said humbly. "I've lived considerable in the Settlement. Down thar, when married people cain't git along, and quits each other, there's—there's ways—Down in the Settlement—"
He broke off under the disconcerting fire of Ajax's eye.
"Oh—one o' them thardi-vo'ces, you mean?" the old man said, strong distaste giving an edge to his deep voice.
"Well, they ain't a-goin' to be none sech between Lance and Callisty," Octavia protested indignantly. "If that's what you' hangin' around for, you'll have yo' trouble for yo' pains,304Flenton Hands." She got up sharply, went into the house, and shut the door, leaving the two men together.
Yet when she reviewed her daughter's conduct, her mind, ever alert to the interests of the erring Lance, misgave her. Callista seemed hard enough and cold enough for anything. Octavia heard the two masculine voices, questioning, replying, arguing. She had put herself beyond understanding the words they uttered, but presently feminine curiosity overcame her, and she was stealing back to listen, when, through the small window, she saw Flenton Hands get heavily to his feet. A moment he stood so, looking down, then, her head close to the sash, she heard him ask,
"I've got yo' permission, have I, Mr. Gentry, to go over thar and name this all out to Callisty?"
"I don't know as you've got my permission, and I don't forbid ye," Ajax Gentry said haughtily. "I hold with lettin' every feller go to destruction his own way. He gits thar sooner; and that's whar most of 'em ort to be."
"Well, you don't say I shain't go and speak to her of it," Hands persisted. "I'm a honest man, a perfesser and a church member, and what I do is did open and above-boards. I thank ye kindly for yo' good word."
Old Ajax, who certainly had given no good word, merely grunted as Hands made his way swiftly across the grass to the cabin where the loom stood.
"Don't werry, Octavy," he said, not unkindly, as his daughter-in-law's distressed face showed at the window. "Shorely Sis has305got the sense to settle him."
Callista, hard at work, was aware of her visitor by the darkening of the doorway. She looked up and frowned slightly, but gave no other sign of noting his coming. The baby sat on the floor, playing gravely with a feather which stuck first to one plump little finger end and then another. Had Flenton Hands possessed tact, he might have made an oblique opening toward the mother through the child. As it was, he began in a choked, husky voice,
"Callisty, honey—"
He broke off. The concluding word was said so low that Callista could pretend not to have heard it, and she did so.
"Callisty," he repeated, coming in and leaning tremulously forward on the loom, "I want to have speech with you."
"I'm not saying anything against your speakin', am I?" inquired Callista. "But I'm right busy now, Flenton. It isn't likely that you could have anything important to say to me, and I reckon it'll keep."
"You know mighty well and good that what I have to say to you is plenty important," Flenton told her, shaken out of his usual half-cringing caution. "Callisty, yo' husband has quit ye; he's306down in the Settlement, and is givin' it out to each and every that he's aimin' to sell to the Company and go to Texas."
He would have continued, but a glance at her face showed him such white rage that he was startled.
"I didn't aim to make you mad," he pleaded. "I know you quit Lance first—good for nothin' as he was, he'd never have given you up, I reckon, till you shook him."
Callista set a hand against her bosom as though she forcibly stilled some emotion that forbade speech. Finally she managed to say with tolerable composure,
"Flenton Hands, you've named a name to me that I won't hear from anybody's lips if I can help it—least of all from yours. If that's the speech you came to have with me, you better go—you cain't take yourself off too soon."
"No," Hands clung to his point, "no, Callisty, that ain't all I come to say. I want to speak for myse'f."
He studied her covertly. He did not dare to mention the divorce which he had assured her grandfather he was ready and anxious to secure for her.
"I,"—he was breathing short, and he moistened his lips before he could go on—"I just wanted to say to you, Callisty, that thar's them that loves you, and respects and admires you, and307thinks the sun rises and sets in you."
Lance's wife looked down with bitten lip. Her full glance studied the cooing child playing on the floor near her feet.
"Well—and ifthat'sall you came to say, you might have been in better business," she told him coldly. "I reckon I've got a few friends."
She chose to ignore the attitude of lover which he had assumed. After a moment's silence Flenton began desperately,
"Yo' grandfather named to me that I ought not to visit at the house like I do without my intentions towards and concerning you was made clear," twisting Grandfather Gentry's words to a significance that would certainly have amazed the original speaker. "I told him that I was a honest man and a member in good standin' of Brush Arbor church, and that what I wanted of you was—"
He caught the eye of the girl at the loom and broke off. The red was rising in her pale face till she looked like the Callista of old.
"Don't you never say it!" she choked. "Don't you come here to me, a wedded wife, doin' for my child, and talk like I was a girl lookin' for a husband. I've got one man. Him and me will settle our affairs without help from you. I may not let you nor nobody else, name him to me—but I'll take no such words as this from your mouth."
"An' you won't let me come about any more—you won't speak to me?" demanded Hands, in alarm.
"What is it to me where you come or where you stay?" Callista308flung back scornfully. "This ain't house of mine—I'm not the one to bid you go or come."
And with this very unsatisfactory permission, Flenton was obliged to content himself. Thereafter he went to the Gentry's as often as he dared. He sent Little Liza when he was afraid to go; and if Callista put her foot off the place, she found herself dogged and followed by her unwelcome suitor.
309
AND now gossip began to weave a confusing veil of myth around the deserted man, such as time and idle conjecture spread about a deserted house. One day, visitors to the cabin in the Gap would find the place apparently forsaken and untenanted; the next, Lance would be seen plodding with bent shoulders at the plow, making ready a patch to plant with turf oats for winter pasture, lifting his head to answer nobody's hail, barely returning a greeting. It was evident that in his times of activity he worked with a fury of energy at the carrying forward of the farm labor, the improvements he and Callista had planned in the home. Plainly these were dropped as suddenly as entered upon when his mood veered, and he shut himself up in the cabin, or was out with his rifle on the distant peaks of White Oak, in the ravines of Possum Mountain, or beating the breaks of West Caney. He made more than one trip to the Settlement, too, where he was known to be trying to get Dan Bayliss to buy back Cindy for him. Always a neat creature, careful of his personal appearance, a certain indefinite forlornness came to show itself310upon him now—a touch of the wild. He was thin, often unshaven, and his hair straggled long on his coat collar. But the soul that looked out of Lance's eyes, a bayed, tormented thing, was yet unsubdued. No doubt he was aghast at the whole situation; but willing to abase himself or cry "enough," he was not.
Ola Derf, true to her word, left the Turkey Tracks the day after her unsuccessful attempt at an interview with Lance. When it came to be said that he had sold to the coal company, not only the mineral rights of his land but the acres themselves, and that he was going West, rumor of course coupled the two names in that prospective hegira. There were those who would fain have brought this word to Callista, hoping thereby to have something to report; but the blue fire of Callista's eye, the cutting edge of her quiet voice, the carriage of that fair head of hers, warned such in time, and they came away without having opened the subject.
It was Preacher Drumright who officially took the matter up, and set out, as he himself stated, "to have the rights of it." His advent at the Gentry place greatly fluttered Octavia, who knew well what to expect, and had grown to dread her daughter's inflexible temper. The inevitable chickens were chased and caught; Callista set to work preparing the usual preacher's dinner. Ajax was fence mending in a far field; Octavia entertained the guest in the open porch, since, though it was311now mid-October, the day was sunny, and your mountaineer cares little for chill in the air. Drumright's sharp old eyes followed the graceful figure in its journeyings from table to hearth-stone; they stared thoughtfully at the bright, bent head, relieved against the darkness of the cavernous black chimney. Finally he spoke out, cutting across some mild commonplace of Octavia's.
"Callisty, come here," he ordered brusquely.
The young woman put a last shovelful of coals back on the lid of the Dutch oven whose browning contents she had just been inspecting, and then came composedly out, wiping her hands on her apron, to stand before the preacher quite as she used when a little girl.
"I hear you've quit yo' husband—is that so?" Drumright demanded baldly.
Callista kept her profile to him and looked absently away toward the distant round of yellow Old Bald, just visible against an unclouded sky. The color never varied on the fair cheek, and the breath which stirred her blue cotton bodice was light and even. When she did not reply, the old man ruffled a bit, and prompted her.
"I ax you, is it true?"
She drew up her shoulders in the very faintest possible shrug, as of one who releases a subject scarce worth consideration.
"You said you'd heard," she returned indifferently. "I reckon312you can follow your ruthers about believing."
Drumright's long, rugged face crimsoned with rising rage. His lean, knotted hands twitched as he started forward in his seat. He could have slapped the delicate, unmoved, disdainful face before him.
"To yo' preacher, that's nothin' less than a insult," he stated, looking from one woman to the other.
"Well, Sis won't let nobody name this to her," Octavia broke in hurriedly. "An' I ort to have warned you—"
"Warned me!" snorted the preacher. "Callisty won't let this and that be named! Well, if she was my gal, she'd git some things named to her good and plenty."
Callista bent to pick up, from the porch floor, an acorn that had fallen with a sharp rap from the great oak over their heads; she tossed it lightly out into the grass, then she made as though to return to her cooking.
"Hold on!" Drumright admonished her. "I ain't through with you yet. This here mammy o' yourn sp'iled you till them that ort to give you good advice is scared to come within reach. But I ain't scared. I've got a word to say. This man Cleaverage has got property—and a right smart. Hit's been told all around that he's sold out to the coal company and is goin' West with—well,313they say he's goin' West. Now, havin' a livin' wife and a infant child, he cain't make no good deed without you sign; and what I want to know is, has he axed you to sign sech? Ef he has, I hope you had the sense to refuse. Ef he comes to you with any sech, I want you to send for me to deal with him—you hear? Send for me."
The rasping voice paused. Drumright was by no means through with his harangue, but he stopped a moment to arrange his ideas. He dwelt with genuine comfort on the thought of being called in to have it out once for all with Lance Cleaverage. Then Callista's voice sounded, clear and quiet.
"Mr. Drumright," she said, "if you're never sent for till I do the sending, you'll stay away from this house the rest of yo' days. I'm a servant here, a-workin' for my livin' and the livin' of my child. Them that my grandfather and my mother bids to this house, I cook for and wait on; but speak to you again I never will. Mammy, the dinner's ready; if you don't mind putting it on the table, I'll go out and see is the baby waked up."
With this she stepped lightly down and walked across to her own cabin.
Drumright turned furiously upon Octavia. She, at least, was a member of his church, and bound to take his tongue-lashings meekly. What he found to say was not new to her, and she314accepted it with tears of humiliation; but when he wound up with declaring that she had brought all this about by giving her daughter to an abandoned character, even she plucked up spirit to reply.
"You may be adzactly right in all you say," she told the harsh, meddlesome old man; "but I've got the first thing to see about Lance Cleaverage that I couldn't forgive. What him and Sis fell out about I don't know, and she won't tell me; but as to blamin' it all on Lance, that I'll never do."
Then she dished up and set before her irate guest a dinner which might have soothed a more perverse temper. Ajax Gentry came in from his fence mending, and, with the advent of the man, Drumright's tone and manner softened. He made no further reference to Callista's personal affairs, nor to the castigation she ought to receive. The two old men sat eating and talking—the slow grave talk of the mountaineer—about crops and elections and religion. Callista did not come back from the little cabin, whence presently the sound of her loom made itself heard. At this point Drumright ventured a guarded suggestion to his host, in the matter of her affairs. He was met with a civil but comprehensive negative.
"No, sir, I shall not make nor meddle," Grandfather Gentry told the preacher, as he stood finally at the roadside, looking up at that worthy mounted on his mule for departure. "Callista is my315only grandchild, and I've always thought a heap of her. She is welcome in my house. If she had done worse, I should still be willing to roof her; but I reckon it's best to tell you here and now, Mr. Drumright, that I have no quarrel with Lance Cleaverage, and no cause to meddle in his affairs. I take him to be a good deal like I was at his age—sort o' uneasy when folks come pesterin' around asking questions—and I don't choose to be one of them that goes to him that-a-way."
The season wore on toward winter. There was frost, and after it a time of exquisite, mist-haunted Indian summer, the clean, wooded Cumberland highlands swimming in a dream of purple haze, that sense of waiting and listening brooding over all. Then again the days were cold enough to make the fire welcome, even at noon, and Callista piled the hearth in her outside cabin room and set the baby to play before it. She had run down to the chip pile for an apronful of trash to build the blaze higher (the vigorous, capable young creature made light work, these days, of getting her own fuel), when she was aware of two people mounted on one mule stopping at the gate. She paused a moment, shading her eyes with her hand, while Rilly Trigg slid down and Buck Fuson swung himself leisurely to earth.
Above the irregular line of the brown-gold trees, beginning to be dingy with the late storms, the sky was high, cloudless,316purple-blue. The sweet, keen air lifted Callista's bright hair and tossed it about her face.
"Howdy, Callisty. Me and Buck jest stopped apast to say good-bye," Rilly announced, joining her beside the chopping block, and bending to fill her own hands with the great hickory chips.
"And where was you and Buck a-goin'?" smiled Callista, after she had greeted the young fellow, who tied his mule and came following the girl over to her.
"Buck and me was wedded this morning." Rilly made her announcement with a mantling color, as they all turned in at the cabin door. "We're goin' down to Hepzibah for a spell. Looks like a man cain't git nothin' to do here, and Buck's found work in the Settlement."
Callista looked at them with a steady smile.
"I hope you-all will be mighty happy," she said in a low tone.
Rilly, suddenly overtaken by the embarrassment of making such an announcement to Callista in her present situation, sat down on the floor beside the baby and began to hug him ecstatically.
"Ain't he the sweetest thing?" she cried over and over again. "He ain't forgot me. He ain't a bit afraid of me. Last time him an' me was together I had to make up with him mighty careful. I reckon he sees more strangers and more comin' and goin' over here."
Callista's beautiful mouth set itself in firm lines as she took317her chair beside the hearth, motioning Buck to one opposite. Rilly glanced nervously from one to the other, and again looked embarrassed.
"Derf, he's opened his store down in the Settlement," she returned hastily to her own affairs, for the sake of saying something, "and he offered Buck a job with him; but I jest cain't stand that old Flent Hands, and so I told Buck."'
"What has Flenton got to do with it?" inquired Callista in a perfunctory tone.
"Why, him an' Derf's went partners," Buck explained. "Didn't you know about it? Flent's to run the town store, an' Derf this'n up here."
Rumor in the Turkey Tracks now declared with a fair degree of boldness that Flenton Hands was getting, or was to get, for Callista a divorce from her husband, and that then they would be married and live in the Settlement. Lance's wife looked her visitor very coolly in the face as she answered,
"I certainly know nothing of Flenton Hands's comings or goings. The man made himself mighty unpleasant here. Hit's not my house, and not for me to say who shall be bidden into it; but I did finally ax Gran'pappy would he speak to Flent Hands and tell him please not to visit us any more. I hate to do an old neighbor that-a-way," she added, "but looks like there are some things that cain't be passed over."
A swift glance of satisfaction flashed between the newly wedded318pair. Rilly rose and went timidly to Callista, putting a hesitant arm about the other's neck.
"We come a-past yo' house this morning, Callisty, honey," she whispered, her cheek against the older girl's. "I—Buck an' me wanted to see him; and we hoped—we thort—"
Not unkindly Callista pushed the clinging arm away and looked straight into Rilly's eyes, overflowing with tears.
"You're not thinkin' what you say, Rilly," she told the girl, almost sharply. "You never come a-past no house of mine. You are in the only house I've got on earth right now, and this belongs to Grandfather Gentry. I stay here on sufferance, and work for what I get. I've got no home but this."
"Oh, Callisty—you're so hard-hearted!" Rilly protested. "We come a-past, and he was thar, an' he never hid from us, like he does from most, nor shet the do' in our faces. He let us set on the porch a spell. Oh, honey, he looks mighty porely. Ain't you never scared about what he might do? Heap o' folks tells tales about him now; but he came out jest as kind—jest like he used to be—Oh, Callisty!"
Callista's face was very pale; it looked pinched; she sat staring straight ahead of her, with the air of one who endures the babble of a forward child.
"Rilly," she said finally, when the other had made an end,319"you've named something that I don't allow anybody to name in my hearing. If you and me are going to be friends, you've said your last word about it to me."
"Well,—I have, then," returned the visitor half angrily. She searched in a small bag she carried hung on her arm and brought out something. "I've said my last word, then," she repeated. "But—I brung you this."
"This" proved to be a late rose marked by frost, its crimson petals smitten almost to black at their edges. Callista knew where it had grown, she recalled the day that she and her bridegroom had planted it. The root came from Father Cleaverage's place; Lance had brought it to her; and he had helped her well, and watered the little bush afterward.
Rilly cast the blossom toward her with a gesture half despair, half reproach. It lodged in her clasped hands a moment, and she looked down at it there. Memory of that October day, the tossing wind that blew her hair in her eyes, the familiar little details of the dooryard, Lance with his mattock and spade, the laughter and simple speech, the bits of foolish jest and words of tenderness—these took her by the throat and made her dumb. She knew that now the cabin which fronted that dooryard was desolate. She could not refuse to see Lance's solitary figure moving from house to fence to greet these two. Somehow she320guessed that it was he who had plucked the rose and given it to the girl—that would be like Lance.
The blossom slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor. Young Ajax, cruising about seeking loot, discovered it with a crow of rapture, seized upon it and began, baby fashion, to pull it to pieces.
The three watched with fascinated eyes as the fat little fingers rent away crimson petal after petal, till all the floor was strewn with their half withered brightness.
"Well," said Rilly, discouraged, getting to her feet, "I reckon you an' me may as well be goin', Buck."
321
DOWN in Hepzibah, Flenton Hands and Derf had rented a store building close under the shadow of the Court House. Furtive grins were exchanged among those who knew; since it was expected that, the Derf store on Little Turkey Track Mountain being a depot for wildcat whiskey, the Derf Hands store in the Settlement would be a station along the line of that underground railway always necessary for the distribution of the illicit product. At last Flenton Hands seemed about to give some shape to that cloud of detraction which, with certain of his neighbors, had always hung over his name. As the separation between Lance Cleaverage and his wife continued, and appeared likely to be permanent; as Hands felt himself in so far justified in his hopes concerning Callista, his terror of the man whose word was out against him increased and became fairly morbid. This it was which drove him to Hepzibah, where the strong arm of the law could reach, where there were such things as peace warrants, and where fortunately, just at present, Lott Beason, the newly elected sheriff, was his distant cousin and an322old business partner, who still owed him money.
To Sheriff Beason, then, Hands went, with the statement that he would like to be a constable, so that, as an officer of the law, any attack Lance made on him might appear at its gravest.
"Constable," debated Beason. "That ain't so everlastin' easy; but I can swear you in as one of my deputies, and a deputy sheriff can pack a gun—you git you a good pistol, Flent, and don't be ketched without it. Yes, you might as well have a peace warrant out against the feller, too. I tell you, down in the Settlement here we don't put up with such. You stay pretty close to town for a spell, Flent. Hit's the safest place."
Hands got out his peace warrant, he armed himself with a pistol, as is right and proper for an officer of the law. He followed Beason's final suggestion as well, and stayed pretty close to town. Lance Cleaverage was far away on Little Turkey Track Mountain. The sense of security which Hands drew from all these precautions loosened his tongue. Wincing at remembrance of his former terror, he boasted of the favor with which Cleaverage's wife regarded him; he let pass uncontradicted the statement that he had broken up that family, and added the information that he was going to get a divorce for Callista and marry her.
Buck Fuson, working in the woolen mill, had rented a tiny shack323where the newly married pair were keeping house. One evening when he came home, Orilla met him with a rather startling story. She had been down to Derf's store to buy molasses and bacon for supper.
"They was all in the back end of the room behind the boxes and the piles of things, Buck," she told her husband. "The old Injun, he waited on me; and when he went back with my bucket, Injun-like, he never give them the word as to who nor what was a-listenin', and they just kept on talkin' re-dic'lous. Flenton was a-braggin', an' after what Callista's said to me and you, I knowed good an' well that every word he spoke was a lie. Emmet Provine bantered him to sell him that Cindy filly that Lance used to own, an' give to Callista. An' Flent said no, he wouldn't sell her for nothin'; he was a-goin' to keep the filly an' git the woman, too. He let on like he was shore goin' to marry Callista—talked like they wasn't sech a man as Lance Cleaverage in the world. Then Derf peeked around and ketched sight of me, and they all hushed. But I heard what I heard."
Buck ate awhile in silence and with a somewhat troubled countenance.
"I reckon I've got to send word to Lance," he said finally, looking up. "Lance Cleaverage never was one of the loud-talkin', quarrelin' kind; but he sure don't know what it is to be scared;324and I'm sartain he would take it kindly to be told of this."
"An' yit I don't know," Rilly debated timidly from across the table. "Looks like you men are always killin' each other up for nothin' at all. 'Course, ef I thought Flent would be the one to git hurt—but like as not it would be Lance. No, honey, I wouldn't send him no word."
"You don't need to," smiled Buck rather grimly. "I have my doubts whether he'd take the word from a gal o' yo' size; but I'm sure a-goin' to lay for him or Sylvane and tell 'em what I know. I'd thank anybody to do the same by me."
During the rest of the meal Buck seemed to be in deep thought; Rilly watched him anxiously.
It was the next Saturday afternoon that Lance was down doing some trading. About dusk Fuson, coming home from his work, found him on the street corner preparing to get his wagon from the public yard and make a night ride up the mountain. In these days Lance made most of his journeyings after dark, shunning the faces of his neighbors.
"I was sorter watchin' for ye, Lance," said his friend. "I wanted to talk to ye—to tell ye somethin'."
Lance shot a swift glance at Fuson; but he answered promptly, and with seeming indifference:
"All right, Buck; come on down to Dowst's with me."325
They walked side by side down to the tiny, dingy, deserted office of the wagon yard. Here a small stove, crammed with the soft coal of the region till the molten, smoky stuff dripped from the sagging corners of the gaping door to its firebox, made the room so intolerably warm that the window was left open. On a high desk rudely constructed of plank, an ill-tended kerosene lamp flared and generated evil odors. From nails upon the wall hung harness and whips, horse blankets, and one or two articles of male wearing-apparel. A dog-eared calendar over the desk gave the day of the month to the blacksmith when he was forced at long last to make out bills.
Alone together, safe from interruptions, the two young fellows faced each other for a moment in constrained silence. Then, hastily, awkwardly, halting and hesitating for a word now and again. Buck gave the information which he thought was due.
"Now, that's what was said," he finally made an end when he had repeated all that Rilly heard, and all that he himself had since gathered from various sources, of Flenton Hands's boasting concerning Callista Cleaverage.
Something agonized in Lance's gaze, something which looked out desperately interrogating, brought Buck to himself with a gasp.
"Rilly and me knowed every word was lies," he hastened to add.326"We come a-past the Gentry place to see Callisty as we was on our way down here—you remember, Lance, that day we was at yo' house. Flenton Hands was named betwixt us, and Callisty she said that she didn't know nothing about the man nor his doings. She said she'd went to her gran'pappy and axed him to warn Flent off the place, becaze she wouldn't have the sort of talk be held."
Noting the sudden relief which showed in Lance's countenance, Fuson added, half doubtfully,
"'Course you might pay no attention to it, seein' it's all lies."
The quiet Lance flashed a sword-like look at him that was a revelation.
"Oh, no," he said. "The thing has got to be stopped. The only question is, how soon and how best can I get at Flenton Hands and stop it?"
"Lance," began the other with some hesitation, "I'm a-livin' right here in the Settlement, and aim so to do from this on. If you can git through without bringin' my name in, I'd be obliged to you. If you need me, I'm ready. If you don't need me, it'll save hard feelin's with the man that keeps the store I trade at, and with all his kin and followin'."
"All right," agreed Lance briefly. "I won't give any names—there's no need to."
"Well, I been a studyin' on this thing right smart, and I had327sorter worked it out in my mind for you to hear the talk yo'self—just happen in and hear Mr. Hands. Don't you reckon that'd be the best way?" suggested Fuson.
"Yes—good as any," assented Lance. "I'm not lookin' for much trouble with Flent Hands. Here, Jimmy," he called to the sleepy boy who came yawning in, "you take my black horse out of the wagon, and put a saddle on him—you've got one here, haven't you? Put a saddle and a riding bridle on him, and tie him in the vacant lot across from Derf & Hands's store about half-past eight o'clock. I'll bring the saddle back when I'm through with it."
"All right," Jimmy roused himself to assure Lance. "I'll have Sate thar on time. Pap's got a saddle an' bridle o' yo' brother Taylor's here, Fuson. Lance can take 'em back."
As the two friends came out shoulder to shoulder, Buck said quietly,
"Derf, he's got it in for you, too."
Lance nodded.
"Derf ain't never forgive me because he robbed me of money," he added, well aware that his indifference to Ola had given the father perhaps greater offence.
They walked for a little time in silence; then Fuson said a little wistfully,
"I 'lowed I ort to tell you."
"Hit was what a friend should do," Lance agreed with him,328putting out a hand.
Presently the other spoke again, out of the dark.
"I wish't thar was time to git word to Sylvane and your father," he hesitated. "Looks like we've got too few on our side."
"Huh-uh, Buck," came back Lance's quiet, positive tones. "This thing is between me and Flent. There it'll stay, and there we'll settle it. I'm not saying that I don't think Pappy and Sylvane would stand by me. They would. My father is one of the best men that God ever made, and he's a religious man; but I know how he'd feel about such as this—I don't need to go ask him. The most I hate in it is that it's bound to bring sorrow to him, whichever way it turns. He's mighty tender hearted."
Fuson debated a moment, but finally forbore to mention having sent word to Sylvane, and being in hourly expectation of the lad's coming. They went to Fuson's home for a belated supper. Rilly found them preoccupied and unusually silent. With big, frightened eyes she waited on them, serving her best, noting that they paid little attention to anything saving the strong cups of coffee provided. The young host glanced from time to time uneasily through the window, and when the meal was over got up, and, telling his wife that they were going down town for a329spell, followed his guest out into the dark. Rilly ran after them to the door of the little shanty, and stood breathing unevenly and staring in the direction of their retreating footsteps.
"I hope to the Lord they don't nothing awful happen," she muttered over and over with chattering teeth. "I wonder will Buck be keerful. I wish't they was something I could do. I wish't I could go along. Oh, women do shore have a hard time in this world!" and she retired, shivering, to her bright little kitchen, where the lamp flared and the disordered table mutely suggested her clearing and washing the dishes.
330
UP the street tramped the two young fellows, Lance silent, pulling his hat down over his face, Fuson whistling in an absent, tuneless fashion. When they came to the store, Buck paused and gave the instructions.
"I'll go in. You walk a-past two or three times, and when you see me standin' with my back to you and my hands behind me, that'll mean that Flenton's thar and the talk started. Hit'll be yo' time to come in."
Lance nodded without a word. He passed the lighted doorway. Beyond it was a butcher shop—for days after he could remember the odor of raw meat from the place, the sight of the carcasses hung up in the frosty winter air. At the corner he turned and walked back. There was no sign of Fuson as he glanced swiftly into the store. On the other side of the way was the vacant lot where he had instructed the boy from the wagon-yard to tie Satan. Lance took the precaution to go down in the shadows and see if the black horse had arrived. He found his mount, the bridle rein looped over a bit of scrubby bush. He examined the331saddle and equipments, and found all as it should be. When he came back to the store door and once more glanced in, he descried Fuson's figure, standing, hands behind the back, in the aisle between the counters.
Quietly, neither hiding nor displaying himself, Lance entered and made his way down the long room toward the far lighted end. After dark, trade in the main portion of the store was practically dead, and only one smoky lamp on the counter illuminated the entrance. In the rear, half-a-dozen men were grouped around a big, rust-red barrel stove, talking. The whole place back there reeked with the odors of whiskey, of the fiery, colorless applejack that comes down from the mountains, kerosene and molasses, with a softening blend from the calico, jeans and unbleached cottons heaped on the counters, narrowing in the approach to this retreat. He paused beside a tall pile of outing flannel, putting up one hand against the rounded edges of their bolts. Fuson, glancing over his shoulder, was aware of the figure in the shadow, and at once spoke in a slightly raised voice.
"Flent, I hear you've sold yo' filly."
"Well, then, you hearn a lie," returned Flenton Hands's tones drawlingly. "I hain't sold that filly, and I'm not aimin' to. That thar nag belongs to my wife."
He laughed uproariously at his own jest, and some of the other332men laughed too. Greene Stribling, down from Big Turkey Track to do a bit of trading, had sold a shoat. Instead of getting the coffee and calico and long sweetening it should have purchased, and carrying them, with the remaining money, up to his toil-worn mother and younger brothers and sisters, he had bought a jug of the Derf & Hands wildcat whiskey; and having borrowed the small tin cup from beside the water bucket, he was standing treat to the crowd.
"Fust time I ever heared you had an old woman," Derf said, accepting the cup from the assiduous Stribling.
It was evident, now that Lance had a view of the faces, that this was a Flenton Hands nobody on Turkey Track Mountain ever met. He had, as it were, come out into the open. Certainly he was not drunk; it would have taken a very considerable amount of stimulant to intoxicate that heavy, dense spirit and mentality; but there was color in his cheek, a glint of courage in his pale eye, a warming and freeing of the whole personality, that bore witness to what he had been drinking.
"I reckon you mean the wife that you're a-goin'to have," put in Fuson. "Hit's a good thing to git the pesky old stags like you married off. They have the name of breakin' up families. Bein' a settled man myself in these days, I ain't got no use for such."
Hands turned on him eagerly.333
"Well, I have shore broke up one family," he declared. "I am a church member and a man that keeps the law; but that thar is a thing I'm not ashamed of."
"Yet I reckon you ain't a-braggin' about it," suggested Buck.
"I don't know as I'm braggin' about it, but I shore ain't denyin' it," maintained Hands. "I'm ready to tell any person that will listen at me that me an' Callista Gentry aims—"
"I'm a-listenin'," said a quiet voice from the shadows, and Lance stepped into the circle, clear-eyed, alert, but without any air of having come to quarrel.
For a moment Flenton quailed. Then he looked about him. This was not the wild Turkey Tracks. He was down in the Settlement. There was law and order here. He had a peace warrant out against this man Cleaverage. He glanced across at his cousin, the sheriff. Beason would back him. Why, he was a deputy sheriff himself, and the feeling of the gun in his pocket reassured him. Lance stood at ease, composed, but definitely changed from the light-footed Lance who had come swinging buoyantly down over the little hill that Sunday morning two years ago. Something told Hands that the other was unarmed.
"Now see here, Cleaverage," he began, wagging his head and334backing off a little, "I don't want to hurt your feelin's. I may have said to friends, and it may have got round to you, that the part you had did by—that the part you had did was not to your credit. She—"
He hesitated. There was silence, and no one stirred. He went on.
"She's a-workin' for her livin', and a-workin' mighty hard. She's a-supportin' the child. Divo'ces can be had for such as that—you know they can."
"That isn't what I heard you say—what you said you would tell anyone that'd listen," argued Lance, his eyes fixed unwaveringly upon the other. "You've got to take back all that other talk, here before them you said it to. Hit's a pack o' lies. I'm goin' to make you take it back, and beg pardon for it on your knees, Flenton Hands—on your knees, do you hear me?"
The circle of men widened, each retiring inconspicuously, with apprehensive glance toward a clear exit for himself. The two opponents were left in the center of the floor, confronted, their faces glared upon by lamp-shine and the light from the open door of the stove; drawn by passionate hate, and with a creeping terror much more dangerous beginning to show itself in the countenance of the older man.
"You wasn't never fitten for her," Hands cried out finally, his335voice rising almost to falsetto with excitement. "She's glad to be shut of you." Then like a fellow making a desperate leap, half in fright, half in bravado, "When her and me is wedded—"
He broke off, staring with open mouth. Lance had scarcely moved at all, yet the crouching posture of his figure had something deadly in it. Flenton's clumsy right hand went back toward the pocket where that gun lay. With the motion, Lance left the floor like a missile, springing at his adversary and pinning his arms down to his sides. It was done in silence.
"Hold on thar!" cried Derf in alarm. "You-all boys better not git to fightin' in my store. Sheriff!—hey, you, Beason!—Why don't you arrest that feller?"
The two wrestled mutely in that constricted place. Hands struggling to get his pistol out, Lance merely restraining him. Beason came forward, watching his chance and grabbing for Cleaverage. He finally caught Lance's arm, and his jerk tore loose the young fellow's grip on Flenton Hands. Swiftly Lance turned, and with a swinging blow freed himself, sending the unprepared sheriff to the floor. As he flung his head up again, he had sight of Hands with a half-drawn weapon. Flenton backed away and stumbled against the stove. The great iron barrel trembled—toppled—heaved, crashing over, sending forth an outgush of incandescent coals, its pipe coming down with a336mighty, hollow rattle and a profuse peppering of soot. The strangling smoke was everywhere.
"Name o' God, boys!" yelled Derf, climbing to the counter, to get at a bunch of great shovels that hung on the wall above; "you'll set this place afire! Flent, you fool, we ain't got a dollar of insurance!"
At the moment Lance closed with his man, locked him in a grip like a vise, went down with him, and rolled among the glowing cinders, conscious of a sudden burning pang along the left arm which was under him.
Fuson, watching Hands strain and writhe to draw the pistol, and Lance's effort to prevent him, saw that it was going against his friend. He thrust the haft of a knife into Lance's right hand.
The men were jumping about ineffectually, coughing and choking with the sulphurous fumes, divided between the fascination of that struggle on the floor, and the half-hearted effort to upend the stove by means of a piece of plank. The corner of a cracker box began to blaze.
"Lord God A'mighty!" Derf was protesting, threshing at the burning goods, "We'll be plumb ruined!" Fuson ran for the water bucket. Some fool dashed a cup of whiskey on the coals, and in the ghastly light of the blue blaze. Lance Cleaverage, staggering up, saw a dead man at his feet.