He broke off. . .
He was not conscious that he had struck at all with the knife,337yet there it was in his hand, red. The sleeve was half burned off his left arm, and still smoking. It was dark away from the fire. Beason, stunned, was getting to his feet and hallooing,
"Hold Cleaverage! Somebody hold Cleaverage! He's killed Flent."
And then Lance felt the shoving of a palm against his shoulder. Buck was pushing him quietly away, down between the lines of piled commodities. They were running together toward Satan. Back in the room they could hear the sheriff yelling for lights.
"I thought I might just as well knock them lamps over for good measure," Fuson muttered as they ran. "Here's your horse—my pistol's in that holster, Lance. Air ye hurt?"
"No," Lance returned. "Nothin' but my arm. I reckon I burnt it a little. It's only the left one. Thank you. Buck. You've been a true friend to me this night."
And he was away, down the bit of lamplit street that ran so quickly into country road, past outlying cabins already dark, till he struck the first rise of Turkey Track and slacked rein. A moment he turned, looking over his shoulder at the lights.
Upon the instant the Court House bell back there broke out in loud, frightened clamor.
"Clang! Clang! Clang!" Somebody was pulling wildly on the rope338to call out the little volunteer fire company. He heard cries, shouts, and then the long wavering halloo that shakes the heart of the village dweller.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
Derf's store must be blazing. He wondered dully if they had dragged Flenton's body away from the flames. Hearkening, he suffered Satan to breathe a bit on the rise that would take him to the great boulder where the roads branched, one going up Little Turkey Track, the other leading aside direct to the Big Turkey Track neighborhood.
Suddenly he stiffened in his saddle, cut short a groan wrenched from him by his injury, and listened strainingly. Above the now diminishing noise from the village, he distinguished the sound of hoofs that galloped hard, growing louder with each moment,—the feet of one who pursued him. Looping the bridle rein over the pommel of his saddle horn, he got at the pistol Buck had provided, and thereafter rode warily but as rapidly as he dared, looking back to catch the first glimpse of the shape or shapes which might be following.
He had just rounded the turn at the fork of the way, when somebody burst into it close at hand, coming through the short cut by Cawthorne's Gulch, and he thought he heard his name called.
To be taken now, to be dragged back to the jail, and, if not set339upon and lynched by the Beason-Hands following, to rot there till such time as they chose to try him, and possibly pay for his act of wild justice with his own life, this was a vista intolerable to Lance Cleaverage. Raising the weapon he fired at his pursuer.
"Oh, don't!" wailed the unseen; and the next moment Sylvane leaped from the mule he rode, ran forward and caught at Satan's mane, panting, "Lance—Lance! I was a-goin' to you as fast as I could. I struck down thar 'bout the time you must have left. I come Dry Valley way. Is it—have you—"
At the sound of Sylvane's voice, the heritage of Cain came home to Lance Cleaverage. A great upwelling black horror of himself flowed in on the fugitive. To what had he sunk! A murderer fleeing for his life, in his panic terror of pursuit menacing his own brother who came to help and succor!
"Oh, Buddy—Buddy—Buddy!" he cried, doubling forward over the pommel of his saddle, clutching Sylvane's shoulder, and closing his eyes to shut out the face of the dead man which swam before them in that quivering blue light.
340
THE dark hours of that January night saw the two brothers riding hard up into the mountains toward that tiny cleft in the peaks above East Caney where Lance now remembered the cave that he had once said should shelter him in case he ever killed a man. Sylvane had much of Lance's pride and courage, with little of his dash and perversity. Had the peril been his own, one might have guessed that he would meet it with the gentle stoicism old Kimbro showed. But that Buddy should be in peril, fleeing for his life! The boy's universe reeled around him, confusion reigned where he should have been efficient and orderly; and when they stopped at the cabin in the Gap for supplies, what with the agony of Lance's burn and the disarray of his brother's whole mentality, they made sad work of it. Something to eat, something to keep warm with, something to dress the hurt—these were the things the boy tried to remember, and forgot, and could not find, when he fancied the galloping hoofs of pursuers with every gust that shook the big trees in the dooryard.
He got for the dressing of the arm only a roll of new cloth,341rough and unsuitable; while a few extra garments, a blanket, meat, meal, salt, a cooking vessel and some white beans made up the rest of his packet. He came out at the last carrying Lance's banjo and put it on top of the supplies.
"'Way up yon they'll be nobody to hear you, and I reckon it might take off the edge of the lonesomeness," he half apologized when Lance looked curiously at it in the light of the lantern his brother held.
The owner of the banjo made no movement to take it and swing it upon his back, neither did he decline it; but indifferently Sylvane was allowed to bring the once cherished possession along.
Through the cold, naked woods, they pushed to East Caney. The creek was up. It was three o'clock, nearly four hours before the wintry dawn might be expected; yet a late moon had risen sufficiently to show them the swollen torrent. These mountain streams, fed by the snows of the higher ranges, clear, cold, boulder checked and fretted, sometimes rise in a night to a fury of destruction, scouring away whole areas from one bank or another. To-night Caney, great with the snows from both of the twin peaks above it which a January thaw had sent down, made traveling in its bed a matter of life and death. Yet the boys must attempt it. Once behind that barrier of roaring water,342Lance would be safe. True, mountain streams often subside as abruptly as they rise, so that no one could tell how long this particular safety would last.
"I reckon we can git through better 'n the nags," Sylvane said dubiously, as they divided the pack between them, and started out on the desperate enterprise of leaping from boulder to boulder through the swirling waters. They lost one bundle in the struggle, and they came through fearfully exhausted. Lance with that left arm one surface of exquisite torture, his countenance pinched and his jaw set, his eyes burning in the white face that his brother could dimly discern. But they did get through, and came drenched, dripping, shuddering with cold, into the little valley.
The last time Lance had seen the place it was brimmed with the wine of summer, green, full of elusive forest scents, bird-haunted, drowsing under July sides, and the most beautiful creatures it held in its sweet shelter were Callista and her child. Now his desolate gaze searched its dim obscurity for the black loom of the rock house that had given its roof to their happy gipsying. The blanket and clothing had gone down roaring Caney; but the banjo, carried carefully on Sylvane's shoulders, whined against the bare twigs of the Judas tree he was passing under, whimpered something in its twanging undertone that343demanded awfully of Lance, "How many miles—how many years?"
Without waiting for his brother, and the lantern which the boy was relighting, he dashed down the slope, past the stark, empty rock house—swerving a little like a man going wide of an open grave—and gained the steep pathway to the cave, where Sylvane, panting after, overtook him.
"I'm obliged to get a fire for you, and see can I tie up that there arm," the boy declared pitifully. "Lance, I'm that sorry I lost your blanket and clothes that I don't know what to do!" And his voice trembled.
"It don't make any difference about me," Lance said wearily. "I'd like for you to be dry and warm before you start back—but there's no time. You got to get away from here as quick as you can. If we leave the horses tied down there, and anybody sees 'em—you've got to get away quick, Buddy."
"Where'd I better take Sate?" asked Sylvane, as he had asked before.
"I've been studyin' about that," Lance told him. "They're bound to know I'm in the mountains. We can't get rid of the nag, and if he goes to our house it will seem no more than natural. Best just take him home and put him in the stable."
Sylvane had gathered pitch pine for light and heat. He made a344roaring fire and then attempted an awkward dressing of the injured arm. The rough cloths hurt. There was no liniment, not even flour to lay on the burn. Lance locked his teeth in agony and bore it till time seemed to press.
"Go on, Buddy," he urged. "When you can get to me with anything, do it. When you can't—I'll make out, somehow."
"The good God knows I hate to leave you like this," the lad repeated, as he made his final preparations for departure. "Pappy or me will be here inside of two days and bring you news, and something to keep warm with, and something to eat. Lance, please lemme leave ye my coat—"
"No, no, Sylvane, you'd nigh about freeze without it a-ridin' home. It's not cold in the cave here. You go on now, Buddy—that's a good boy." And blindly the younger lad turned and crept down the bank.
345
IT was nearly noon when Sylvane, reaching home by an obscure, roundabout trail, half perished from the cold, scouting the place long and fearfully before he dared enter, found that Sheriff Beason with a posse had been at his father's house, searched it, and gone. At the door his sister Roxy met him, clutching his arm, staring over his shoulder with fear-dilated eyes, and whispering huskily,
"Whar is he? Whar's Lance?"
The boy shook his head, pulling the drenched hat from his curls, and moving toward the hearth-stone where his father sat bowed over.
"He's safe," the words came finally in a half-reluctant tone. New lines of resolution and manhood's bitter knowledge had been graving themselves on Sylvane's face the past twenty-four hours. "I helped him to whar they cain't find him nor take him. Let that be enough."
"No—but it ain't enough," his sister rebelled. "Here's Beason has swore him in a posse of six, and he's out a-rakin' the mountings after Lance. Six men." Roxy's face was gray.
"They've started, have they?" said Sylvane in the voice of exhaustion. "Well, what you don't know they cain't find out from346you, Sis' Roxy. And I best not tell you whar Lance is hid."
"Sylvane!" The woman's tone was sharp with suffering, rather than anger. "Do you think I'd tell on my own brother? Tham men might cut me into inch pieces and get nothin' from me. You don't know me, boy. I'd think little of puttin' one of 'em out of the way! Thar was women in the Bible done sech—and was praised for hit. I want to know whar Lance is at," she choked, "and whether he's hurt, and what he's got for to comfort him—pore soul!"
"Hush, daughter," counselled Kimbro gently. "Sylvanus is right. People do sometimes betray what they aim to cover up. If I can guess whar my son is—and I reckon I could—that's one thing; but for any of us to be told, ain't safe."
Silently, almost sullenly, Roxy hunted out dry clothes for Sylvane, the boy sitting near his father, telling Kimbro in a few brief sentences Lance's version of the night's happenings, the old man nodding his head without a word of comment. She set food on the table and Sylvane drew up to eat.
"I want to go whar my Unc' Lance is at," whispered Mary Ann Martha, suddenly pushing a tow head up under Sylvane's arm and nearly causing him to overturn his coffee. "I'm a-goin' to he'p him fight."
Sylvane lifted the child into his lap, and began to feed her347with bits from his plate.
"Its Unc' Lance is all right, Pretty," he said absently. "Unc' Sylvane and Gran'pappy'll look after him. That's men's work. It help its Mammy to keep the house, and soon Unc' Lance is goin' to be back and play the banjo for it."
All day, that strange, brief, silent Sunday in February, Roxy strove to have the secret of Lance's hiding place from her younger brother. Again and again she turned from what she was doing to demand it of him; more than once she quit abruptly her labors about the house, to go and hunt him up, to ask him sometimes half-angrily, sometimes cajolingly, pleadingly, almost with tears. The boy withstood the fire of her importunities as best he could. He answered her in as few words as might be. Without harshness, but only doggedly, he still responded in the negative, and always with mildness and a sort of regret.
As it drew toward dusk, Roxy's face began to harden into grim lines, and she went about her preparations for supper with a gleaming eye. Her father, who had walked to a far pasture to salt cattle, came in, and sat with Mary Ann Martha on his knee by the fireplace. Roxy looked in at the door. Mutely, with only a backward jerk of the head, she called them to their meal. As348the child was following, her mother detained her and, giving no explanation, went with her into the far room. A moment later she came to the men sitting at the table.
"Well, there's yo' supper," she said resentfully to Sylvane, "sence you 'low that's all I'm fitten to do. Ye can put the things away yo'selves, I reckon. I'm a-goin' on a arrant."
And with the chubby Mary Ann Martha bundled heavily in shawls, silent as a small mummy, and plainly under the hypnotism of impressive instructions from her mother, she turned and went from the room, and they heard the front door close softly after her.
The men looked at each other uneasily, but there seemed nothing to be done.
Outside, Roxy stooped and spoke again to the child. She straightened up and peered long about her, listening intently, then moved obliquely among the yard shrubbery down to the gate. Crossing the road in the deep shade of cedar trees, she struck direct for the Gentry place, going by woods-paths that had so often known Lance's feet. When the short, fat little legs that trotted beside her in silence grew weary, she carried Mary Ann Martha pick-a-back, and always she was whispering to her.
"We're Injuns now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'. Mammy's a squaw, and you' a little papoose, out a-scoutin' to see can we find Unc' Lance; or349head off them that's a-aimin' to do him mischief. Don't it make no noise."
When, in turn, Roxy herself was too tired to carry her daughter longer, she broke a thick willow switch beside a spring branch, and encouraged the little girl to ride a stick horse.
"But remember we' Injuns, honey," she whispered. "Injuns don't make no noise nor let they' nags make none."
In this wise they came to the edge of the timber and surveyed the opening where lay the Gentry farm. Here Roxy left the child, motionless as a little image in her swaddling of thick shawls—stationing her in the grove of young chestnuts from which Lance had emerged the night he came singing to Callista's window—while she scouted with infinite pains the entire circuit of the clearing. She encountered nobody, and heard nothing; yet surely the house where Lance Cleaverage's wife and child were would be subject to espionage. The clear stars hung above the bleak treetops, and by their dim light she could just make out the various buildings, trees and bushes. Once more carrying Mary Ann Martha, she moved down to the corner of a small out-building. Here she gave her last instructions to the child.
"Now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth', you go right up that line of bushes, on the shady side, to yo' Aunt Callisty's house; and don't you speak a word to anybody but her. You say to her that they's350somebody—mind, honey,somebody, don't you name who—that wants speech with her, a-waitin' out here by the chicken-house. Tell her to slip down here longside o' them same bushes. Can Mammy's gal say all that and say it right?" And she looked anxiously into Mary Ann Martha's solemn little face.
The child nodded her head vigorously, and a moment later the shapeless small figure started worming its way up along the obscuring row of bushes. Finally she stopped on the doorstone of that cabin where she could hear the "thump-a-chug" of Callista's loom. She well remembered that the last time she was over here her Aunt Callie had entertained her in that building, refusing to come out and see her mother. Unacquainted with any such ceremonial as knocking, incapable of achieving the customary "hello," she planted herself on the doorstep and remarked gruffly,
"Huh!"
The sound did not amount to much as a hail or an alarum, yet it reached the ear of the woman who sat at the loom inside working, with what strange thoughts as her companions it were hard to guess. Somehow, it was now known all over both Turkey Track neighborhoods that Lance had killed his man and fled, and that the sheriff and posse were out after him. The face that bent351over the web of rag carpet was sharpened and bleached by this knowledge. The blue eyes gleamed bright with it. When that curious, gruff little "huh" came to her ears, Callista stopped her work like a shot and stood long hearkening.
"Hit was nothing," she told herself, half-scornfully. "I'm just scared, and listenin' for something."
She started the treadle again, and the noise of the batten once more checked the silence into a rhythmic measure. But the dogs had become aware of an intruder. Rousing from their snug quarters under the porch of the big log house, they came baying across the frozen ground. At their outburst of clamor, almost with one motion, Callista stopped the loom a second time, turned out her lamp, and was at the door, drawing it open with a swift, yet cautious movement. There in the vague starlight was Mary Ann Martha backed up against it, shaking a small and inadequate stick at the approaching pack. Swiftly Callista caught the little thing and pulled her inside, closed the door and dropped the bar across. She stooped to the child in the uncertain shine of the fire, questioning in amazement,
"Why, Mary Ann Martha! How on earth did you get here—all alone—at night this-a-way?"
"Thest walked," returned the ambassador briefly. "Aunt Callie,"352she embarked promptly and sturdily upon her narrative, "they's somebody down at the corner of the chicken-house that wants to have speech with you. Don't you tell nobody, and you thest come along o' me and be Injuns, and don't make no noise, an' slip down thar in the shadder o' the bubby bushes, like I done, so nobody cain't see."
Faithful to her trust, Mary Ann Martha the outrageous, the terror of Little Turkey Track, had delivered the entire message without an error. Callista's mind was a turmoil of wild surmise. Who could the "somebody" waiting for her out there be—somebody who arranged all these precautions with such care and exactness? She gave but one glance at the sleeping baby on her bed, caught a heavy shawl from its peg, and, winding it about her head and shoulders, slipped soundlessly from the door, holding Mary Ann Martha's hand. Not a word was spoken between them. When they finally entered the area darkened by the chicken-house, Callista started and her eyes widened mutely at the touch of a hand on her arm.
"H-ssh—Callisty!" came Roxy Griever's thin, scared tones, just above a whisper. "God knows who might be a-watchin' and a-listenin'."
Callista faced about on the older woman staring with sharp inquiry at her in the gloom. Lance's wife found it hard to guess what attitude would be her sister-in-law's now.
"Callisty, honey," began the Griever woman with a sort of353wheedling, "I ain't a-goin' to ax one thing of you. Hit's but natural that you don't want to hear mention of my brother's name at this time; but, honey. Pappy and Sylvane has got him hid out somewhars, and they won't tell me whar. I know in reason it's the place you and him camped last summer. Couldn't you lead to it?"
It seemed for a moment as though Callista would spring at her sister-in-law; then she said in a low, distinct voice,
"Well, Roxy Griever, what sort of woman are you, anyhow?"
Roxy studied the horrified countenance turned toward her as well as she could in the half light. She was thick-witted, but eventually she understood.
"You Callisty Gentry!" she ejaculated with a note of passive savagery. "Do you think I'd lead the law to Buddy? What I want to know is whar he's at and how bad hurt is he? Tham men won't trust me, but I 'lowed you'd think enough of the father of yo' child to give me the directions so I could git to him. He's got to have good vittles, and someone to—he's got to have care. L—L"—her mouth quivered so that she could scarce go on—"Lance ain't like some folks—he could jest die for want of somebody to354tend on him. Don't I know?" A tremor shook her. "I mind after Ma was gone, and Sylvane was a baby, an' Lance he cried bekaze I—oh, my God, Callisty! tell me whar he's at. I got to git to him. Don't be so hard-hearted, honey. I know hit seemed like Lance was a sinner—oftentimes; but the good God Hisself did love sinners when He was here on earth. Hit says so in the Book. He used to git out an' hunt 'em up. Oh! oh! oh!"
Flinging an arm against the trunk of a sapling, Roxy Griever hid her face upon it and began to weep. Mary Ann Martha stood the sight and sound as long as she could, and then added her shrill pipe of woe.
"Sssh! Hush; both of you, for mercy's sake!" besought Callista. "Stay here just a minute, Roxy. I'm going back to the house to get—well, I know about what he'll need. Then I have to tell Mother to look after the baby."
"Air you goin' with me? Oh, Callisty, air you goin' with me now?" the widow quavered.
"No," answered Callista. "I'm going alone. Grandfather can let me have a horse, or not, as he's a mind. If I can't get it from him, I'll slip back with you and see what Sylvane and Father Cleaverage can do for me. I'm the one to go and look after Lance."
Roxy and the child waited in stoic silence while Callista returned cautiously to the main house. There was some quiet moving about from one building to another, a stir over at the355log stable, and in an incredibly brief time Callista came to them riding on her grandfather's horse and leading the mule, saddled, for the other two.
"We'll go a-past yo' house—hit's as near as any way," was all she said.
Once at the Cleaverage place, Lance's wife was persuaded to accept Sylvane's company for the night journey, though she peremptorily—almost impatiently—refused any addition to her ample provision for Lance's comfort. But when the two, all ready to leave, stood reconnoitering in the dark outside the house to see that the coast was clear before starting, Roxy came trembling out with a package which she thrust into her brother's hand.
"Thar," she whispered, "take it to him. I only wish't I'd 'a' got it in the frames and quilted it, so that it might have been some use keepin' him warm."
"It—it ain't yo' gospel quilt, Sis' Roxy, is it?" Sylvane inquired, fumbling with doubtful inquiry at the roll in his hands.
"Hit air," returned his sister, the dignity of a high resolve in her brief response.
"Why, daughter, I think I wouldn't send that," Kimbro deprecated, drawing close in the obscurity. "Of course it's a mighty improvin' thing, but I doubt if Lance has the opportunities to take care of356it that a body ought to have to handle such. Don't send it, Roxana. Without doubt it would do him good, if he was whar he could make use of it."
Roxy did not move to receive the bundle which her brother hesitatingly offered back to her.
"I know hit ain't much account," she said disconsolately. "But I 'lowed hit might make him—maybe he'd laugh at it, and hit would cheer him up a leetle. He used to laugh powerful at some of 'em. I've put in my good shears and that Turkey-red calicker, and you tell him, Sylvane, that I want him to cut me out them little davils he was a-talkin' about, as many of 'em as hit'll make."
She looked pathetically from one to the other.
"There ain't nothin' like gittin' a man person that's in trouble intrusted in something. You git him intrusted in cuttin' out davils for my gospel quilt, won't you, Sylvane, honey?—or you do it, Sis' Callie. Maybe hit might make him laugh—po' Buddy, away off to hisself in some old hideout, an' nary soul to—to—an' the sheriff chasin' him like he's a wolf!"
And Callista, wiser than the men, knowing that the gospel quilt would take its own message to Lance, stretched out a hand for the package.
357
IN the skull-shaped pocket—which was the inner chamber of the cave where Lance lay, was neither light nor life. They were the bare ribs of the mountain that arched above him in that place, blackish, misshapen, grisly in an unchanging chill. The continual dripping which would have seemed music if he had come upon it in a summer's noon, vexed him now, and took on tones that he wished to forget. Sylvane had provided him pitch pine to burn, because it would give more light, and there was a crevice which would lead the smoke away; but he fretfully told himself that the resinous sticks made the place smell like a tar kiln, and put out his fire rather than endure it.
Then in the blank darkness his burned arm pained him intolerably, and presently he crept forth into the entrance which held the tiny spring to steep the cloths in water, hoping to assuage the hurt.
Day filled this outer chamber with a blue twilight, while round the turn was always black obscurity. Summer spread upon it each year a carpet of the finest ferns; now the delicate fronds358lay shriveled and yellow on the inky mold; only a few tiny bladderworts remained in the shelter of the remote crevices. In spite of the raw cold he lingered by the little basin, his lifted eye encountering the bird's nest he and Callista had found there in July, full then of warmth and young life and faithful love. It was beneath a breadth never penetrated by the drip. He studied the little abandoned home of the phoebe, built there of moss and leaves plastered together against the rock with clay. He noted absently how beside it remained a portion from the building of the previous year; and by looking closer in the half light he made out at least five rims of mud, from which the nests of five preceding spring-times had crumbled away.
Then, a caged, fevered animal, he went back into the cave and lay down. It was not freezing cold there—such a place is much like a cellar, warmer than the outside air in winter, as it is cooler in summer—but the sensation of being buried came to wear upon the spirit of the fugitive, and he was fain to creep nearer to glimpses of the sky, out once more into the vestibule of his prison. There were bits of life here, too, humble, and—as his own had come to be—furtive. Plastered upon the limestone walls were the homes of countless mud wasps, and the bell-shaped tents of the rock spiders. Around the edges the dry sand of its359floor was pitted with the insect traps of the ant-lion, that creature at the mouth of whose tiny burrow a prehistoric Lance Cleaverage—a Lance whose tousled head would scarce have reached above this man's knee—used to call long and patiently, "Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, come up and get some bread!" As though recalling the childhood of another, he could see that valiant small man, masterfully at home in his world, arrogantly sure of himself, coming to—this. The rock vole, whitish-gray, rat-like, most distinctive of all the small, subterranean life of the cave, peered out at him and reminded him where he lay, and for what reason.
In suffering, half delirious, those earlier hours went by. He had never contemplated killing Flenton Hands. There was none of the bully in Lance Cleaverage, iron as his nerves were, high as his courage. He had gone purposely unarmed to the quarrel, regarding Flenton contemptuously as a coward; believing that he could make the man publicly eat his words and apologize for them. But this open humiliation was as far as his intentions went. The poet in him, the Lance of the island, recoiled desperately from memory of that dead face, the eyes closed, the mouth crookedly a-gape, the ghastly light from the flaming alcohol wavering upon it.
So greatly was he wrought upon by his situation and his hurts, that by the second night his anguish of mind and body had only360sunk from that first fierce clamor to a dull ache, which was almost harder to bear, and which kept sleep from him quite as effectually. He scarcely ate at all of the food Sylvane had left; but drank thirstily at the little spring every hour of the twenty-four. In this sort the time had passed, and now Sunday and Sunday night were gone; the morning of the second day was here.
The thought of Callista haunted him continually. What, at such a juncture, would be her attitude? One of reprehension, certainly; but if he knew that mind of hers at all, there would be no hostility. Her pride would lead her to offer, perhaps, some assistance to the man whose name she bore. And then suddenly he was aware of a figure in the mouth of the cave, and Callista's voice whispering,
"Lance—Lance!"
He stumbled to his feet and went gropingly forward, encountering with his right hand—held out as a sort of shield to the burned arm—the bundle she carried,—the great hunter's quilt, wool-padded and well-nigh waterproof, the pair of homespun blankets, and, riding upon them, a basket of cooked food,—while from the other hand swung a tin pail. She was laden like a strong man.
"Who's with you—who packed all this?"—he made his first inquiry quite as though he had expected her. There was no word361of surprise or gratitude.
"Sylvane," she answered in the same hushed tone. "I aimed to come alone, but he wouldn't let me. We made it since midnight. He left me yon side the creek, so as to make haste home. He'll be burning brush in the nigh field on the big road where everybody can see him all day. Come night, he'll be back for me. What you got it all dark here for, Lance? I'll make ye a fire that won't smoke."
She felt the earth, to be sure that it was dry, and then, with brusque kindness, refusing all aid from him, flung down her burden. She carried quilt and blankets in and spread a comfortable pallet of them.
"You go back inside where it's not so cold," she commanded briefly. "I'll bring some chestnut chunks and make you a good fire. Go back. Lance."
He turned obediently. Did memory come to either of the chill, inhospitable hearth she had once refused to tend? She was swift and efficient in her preparations, breaking an armful of dry chestnut limbs and twigs for a clean, smokeless fire; and when that was sending forth its flood of clear, hot radiance, she knelt down and dressed his hurt with the liniment and soft old cloths she had provided.
"Brother Sylvane said he'd be at the creek about nine o'clock362to-night for me," she told Lance, as she deftly arranged a sling by means of a bandana. "We got to be right careful about comin' here, now that Caney's goin' down. Wish't it had stayed up, like Sylvane said it was when you-all came."
Lance stared at her with the ghost of a laugh in his eyes.
"You never could have got through it in this world, Callista," he said softly. "It was all Buddy and me could do. We was wet to the skin and nigh drowned."
"Oh, yes I could," Callista assured him with that new, womanly authoritativeness which seemed now to make him her own, rather than set him outside her caring, as it had once done. "I'd 'a' found a way to get through to you. If you have to hide out long, I'm goin' to fix it so that I can be nearer you and do for you. Does that arm feel better now?"
There was a large, maternal tenderness about her which appealed powerfully to Lance, upon whose boyhood fretful, chiding Roxy had tended. She seemed a refuge, a comforter indeed.
His haggard gaze still on her face, he answered in a half-voice that the arm did feel better. The food she warmed for him, the coffee that was heated and served steaming, these gave him courage as nothing yet had. He fairly choked, and a mist swam before his eyes, when she suddenly held the fragrant, inspiring363beverage to his lips. Her voice drove away at once the haunting noises of the wind howling up the breaks of the creek, the insistent drip-drip of the water; her presence shut out the vast, oppressive loneliness of the place; her bright warm color shone in that dark against which the mere blaze of the pine knots had been so feeble; sounds of her living presence vanquished the silence that had weighed heavier on his spirit than all the rocks in the bluff. The dome of that stone skull at once became a round, cozy cup of sheltered warmth and kindly human cheer; as much a home, there in the heart of the wilderness, as the phoebe's nest had ever been. For the first time the grim fact that had sent him into hiding, the horrid tragedy, seemed to blur a bit in its outlines. Callista made a trip down the bank to the floor of the valley, and brought up from where she had left them a small kettle and a frying pan.
"I'll cook you a fine dinner," she said in a cheery, practical tone, speaking as though she were in her own kitchen. She maintained an absolutely commonplace note. Neither of them mentioned Flenton Hands nor the reason for Lance's present predicament. "That stuff I brought ready cooked made a pretty good breakfast snack; but when I get me plenty of clean coals here, we'll have some good hot sweet potatoes and bacon. I'm right hungry myself."
Lance sighed.364
"I reckon I'm as much perished for sleep as for victuals," he told her heavily. "After Buddy left me, I tried to get dry; but we'd missed out most of the things we ought to have got when we come a-past the place, and lost the rest in the creek; I hadn't scarcely anything to change with. Look like I couldn't get to sleep. Then all day yesterday I thought I'd catch a nap; but my arm sort o' bothered me some, and—well, the water drip-drip-drippin' out there pestered me. It seemed I must sleep when night come again; but I don't think I had to exceed two hours of rest."
Callista glanced keenly sidewise at him where he lay inert. The weeks of their separation were now running into months. What these had done to Lance grieved her generosity and flattered her pride. Always lean and bright eyed, there was now a painful appearance about the extreme fleshlessness of jaw and temple, the over-brilliance of the eye in its deeply hollowed orbit. Sight of what he had suffered for her and by her softened Callista's voice to tenderness when she spoke.
"We'll fix it for you to rest after dinner," she told him positively. "I can set out at the mouth of the cave, so you will be easy in your mind; then you'll get some good sleep."
Lance accepted this as indicating that she was very willing to365be rid of him and his talk. It was what might be expected. He asked her a question or two and relapsed into silence. Presently, noticing that his eyes were not closed, she gave him some additional news.
"The baby's about to walk," she said. "He's a-pullin' up by the chairs all the time, and he can go from one person to another, if they'll hold out they' hands."
A swift contraction passed over Lance's features at the picture her words called up.
"Haven't got him named yet?" he suggested huskily.
The color flared warm on Callista's face as she bent to the fire.
"I—why—Gran'pappy's an old man, and I'm the onliest grandchild he's got. He always was powerful kind to me; and the baby—why, he just—"
"You've called the boy Ajax," supplied Lance, in that tired voice which now was his. "That's a good name."
While she cooked the "fine dinner" their talk blew idly across the surface of deeps which both dreaded.
"Pore Roxy!" Lance said musingly. "Hit was mighty kind of her to send me her gospel quilt."
From her work at the fire Callista answered him.
"Your sister Roxy thinks a heap o' you, Lance; you needn't never366to doubt it. Course she does, or she wouldn't always have been pickin' at you."
Lance lay tensely quiescent a moment, then he questioned softly,
"Is that a sign?"
Callista glanced at him a bit startled; but the long lashes veiled his eyes, and the face was indecipherable.
"Roxy was bound and determined to come here in my place," she observed. "I reckon I'd never 'a' got the word where you was hid out if it hadn't 'a' been for her. Sylvane wouldn't tell her, and she come to me about it. Sis' Roxy has a kind heart under her sharp speech."
From beneath those shadowing lashes Lance looked long and curiously at her, but made no response. After the meal was served and eaten with a sort of subdued enjoyment, they continued silent, glancing furtively at each other, Callista a bit uneasy, and most urgent that he should try to rest.
When she rose and went lightly about little homely tasks, her husband's eyes followed her every movement. Something he wanted to say—the sum of all those days of black loneliness and nights of brooding in the Gap cabin after she left him there—stuck in his throat and held him silent. A tiny creature, probably the367rock vole, nosing about in the obscurity which hid the rear of the cave, dislodged something which fell with a sudden pang of musical sound across the aching silence, to be followed by tiny squeakings and scuttlings. Callista turned, her hand raised to her lip, and stared into the darkness whence the airy chord spoke to her. Lance looked up and caught the shine of the firelight on her white cheek, her bright hair, lighting a spark in the eye which was averted from him.
"It's my old banjo," he said nervelessly. "Go get it, Callista, and break it up and put it on the fire."
She seemed to hear only the opening words of his command, and moved quietly into the shadows behind them, groped for the instrument, found and brought it forward in her hand.
"Break it 'crost your knee, and then burn it," Lance prompted her.
She looked at him with a curious round of the eye, a swift surprise that was almost terror. The banjo, lacking a string and with the remaining four sagging woefully, yet spoke its querulous little protest in her fingers. This was the voice that had cried under her window. Here was the singer of "How many miles, how many years?" and she was bidden to break it and cast it to the flames. This had been Lance's joy of life, the expression of moods outside her understanding and sympathy. She367caught the shining thing to her as though she defended it from some menace, cherishing it in a kindly grasp.
"Oh, no," she answered softly. "No, Lance. I couldn't burn it up. It's—the banjo is the most harmless thing in the world. Why should I be mad at it?"
"You used to be," said Lance simply. "I—" he hesitated, then finished with a sort of haste—"I always was a fool about it. I think you'd better put it in the fire."
Reverently she touched the strings, struggling with something too big for expression.
"I'll never harm it," she told him. "If I thought you would, I'd take it back with me and keep it till—till you could come and play it again. You just don't feel like yourself now."
His arm dropped to the rock beside him. His face, turned away from her, was laid sidewise upon it. She guessed that he feigned sleep.
She had forgiven the banjo. She spoke of his homecoming. She would accept him. She would hold nothing against him! . . . Yet, somehow, he could not find in his sore heart the joy and gratitude which should have answered to this state of affairs. He ought to be thankful. It was more than he deserved. Yet—to be forgiven, to be accepted—when had Lance Cleaverage ever desired such boons?
When all was cleared away with efficient, skillful swiftness,369Callista left her patient lying quiescent, and went to the cave, wrapping herself in one of the homespun blankets and sitting where she could look out and see the valley. After a time inaction became irksome, and she went down to gather more chestnut wood for his fire. This she piled in the vestibule, laying it down lightly for fear of disturbing the sleeper. The afternoon wore on. Once she looked around the turn, but the fire had declined, and she could make out nothing save a bulk of shadow where Lance lay. Stealing in, she laid on more wood. The next time she went out the sun was sunk behind the western ranges, and twilight, coming fast, warned her that she must presently get back to her tryst with Sylvane. Returning with the last load of fuel, she found the inner chamber of the cave full of the broken brightness that came from a branch of pine she had ventured to put in place, seeing that the smoke so completely took care of itself. Her husband still lay with his head on his arm. She would not wake him. Doubtfully she regarded the prostrate figure, then knelt a moment at his side and whispered,
"Lance. Lance, I have obliged to go now. Either Sylvane or me—or both of us—will be here a-Wednesday night about moonrise. If anything happens that we can't come Wednesday, we'll be here the next night."
She waited a moment. Getting no response, she murmured,
"Good-by, Lance."370
The tone was kind, even tender. Yet the man, whose closed lids covered waking eyes, felt no impulse to let her know that he heard, no desire to respond to her farewell.
371
LANCE CLEAVERAGE lay in the cavern above the East Fork of Caney for nearly two weeks. The search for him was persistent, even savage, the reason given being that he had attempted the life of an officer of the law. Flenton Hands had been taken to the house of his kinsman the sheriff, and the bulletins sent out from his bedside were not encouraging; yet Lance's people clung to such hope as they might from the fact that the man was not yet dead.
"No, Flent ain't gone yet," Beason would rumble out when questioned on the subject, "but he's mighty low—mighty low. He's liable to drop off any time; and who'd take Lance Cleaverage then, I'd like to know? Not me. No, nor not any man I've met, so far. The thing for us to do is to git that thar wild hawk of a feller while they's nothing agin him more than assault with intent to kill, or some such. When he smells hemp in the business, he's goin' to make it too dangerous for anybody to go after him, and his folks'll git him out o' them mountains and plumb away to Texas, or Californy."
This it was which, urging haste, gave the hunt its flavor of372savagery. The empty cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel had been ransacked again and again; it was known to be watched day and night; the espionage on the house of Kimbro Cleaverage and that of the Gentrys was almost as close. But Callista and Sylvane continually evaded it at night, and kept the fugitive in his cave well provided. In spite of their care, Lance pined visibly. His arm was almost healed; he suffered from no definite bodily ailment, save a low, fretting fever; but his manner was one of heavy languor, broken by random breaths of surface irritability.
Then came a Saturday night when Beason's men, watching a trail, surprised and took Sylvane laden with food and necessaries plainly intended for the man in hiding. They rose up from behind some rocks by the roadside and had the boy in their clutches almost before he knew to be alarmed. It was a raw, gray February evening, drawing in sullenly to night, with a spit of rain in the air, freezing as it fell, stinging the cheek like a whip-lash, numbing toes and fingers. The boy looked desolately up the long road which he had intended to forsake for a safer trail at the next turning. He glanced at his laden mule, and answered at random the volleyed questions flung at him. Finally Beason, heavy, black-bearded, saturnine, silenced them all and opened out, with the dignity of his office,
"Now see here, Sylvanus Cleaverage, these gentlemen with me is373sworn officers of the law. We know whar you're a-goin' at, and who you're a-goin' to. They's no use to dodge."
"I ain't a-dodgin'," retorted Sylvane, and in the tilt of his head against the weak light of the western sky one got his full resemblance to Lance. "If you know so mighty well and good right where I was a-goin' at, go thar yo'self," he concluded, desperate, at the end of everything. "What you pesterin' me about it for? With your kind leave I'll turn around and walk myself back home."
"No you won't," Beason countered. "Ain't I told you that we're all officers of the law, and I'm sheriff of this here county, and I aim to do my duty as sworn to perform it? What you got to do is to jest move along in the—in the direction you was a-goin', and lead us to Lance Cleaver-age. You do that, or you'll wish you had."
It was a lack of tact to threaten even this younger one of the Cleaverage boys.
"I'll never do yo' biddin'," Sylvane told him with positiveness, "not this side of the grave. As for makin' me wish I had, you can kill me, but that won't get Buddy for you. He's whar you can't take him. You'll never find him; an' if you did, no ten men could take him whar he's at. An' if I was killed and put out of the way, there's them that would still feed him and carry him the news."
"The good God A'mighty! Who wants to kill you, you fool boy?"374demanded Beason testily. "There's been too much killin' did; that's the trouble."
"Oh—Flent's dead then?" inquired Sylvane on a falling note, searching the faces before him in the dusk.
"Will you lead us to whar Lance is at, or will you not?" demanded Beason monotonously, dropping the flimsy pretense that they had any knowledge of the fugitive's hiding place.
"I'll go with you to Pappy," Sylvane compromised. "Whatever Pappy says will be right."
So they all turned and went together to the old Cleaverage place, the boy on his laden mule riding in their midst. They found Kimbro at home sick. He got up, trembling, from his bed and dressed himself.
"Gentlemen," he said to them, appearing in their midst, humbled, broken, but still self-respecting, "I wish my son Lance would surrender himself up to the law—yes, I do. His health is giving way under what he has to endure. But lead you to him I will not, without I first get his consent to do so. If you have a mind to stay here—and if you will give me yo' word of honor not to foller nor watch me, Sheriff Beason—I will go myself and see what he has to say; and I'll come back and tell you."
Beason held a prolonged whispered consultation with his three375men. At the end of it he turned and said to the father half surlily,
"Go ahead, I give you my word to neither foller nor watch."
The men sprawled themselves about Roxy Griever's hearthstone, warming luxuriously, dreading to go forth again into the raw February weather. Roxy followed her father to the door.
"Pappy," she pleaded, clinging to his arm. "Hit'll be the death of you to go abroad this-a-way, sick like you air, and all."
"No, Roxana—no, daughter," Kimbro replied, drawing her gently out to the porch, whence they could see Sylvane getting a saddle on to Satan. "I feel as though I might be greatly benefited if only this matter of Lance's can be fixed up. I consider that they trust me more than another when they consent to let me go this way."
Roxy's eye rolled toward the doorway and dwelt upon the officers of the law who were to remain her guests till her father's return. Across her mind came dim visions of heroic biblical women who had offered deadly hospitality to such. Step by step she followed Kimbro to the gate, whispering,
"Don't you git Lance to give himself up, Pappy—don't do it. You tell him Sylvane is a-goin' to fetch extra ammunition from Hepzibah, and if he can hold out till Spring, these fellers is376bound to git tired and turn loose the job. He can slip away then; or they'll be wore out, an' ready to make some sort o' terms with the boy."
"Daughter," said the old man, softly, "your brother would be dead before Spring."
"Well, he'll shore die," cried the poor woman, in a sort of piercing whisper, "ef they take him down to jail in the settlement. Pappy, you know Lance ain't never goin' to live—in the jail!"
And Kimbro left her sobbing at the gate, as he rode away on the black horse, his frail, drooping figure a pathetic contrast to the young animal's mettlesome eagerness.
377
AFTER his father left him, Lance slept, the sleep of a condemned and shriven man, long and deep and dreamless, the first sound rest his tortured nerves and flagging powers had known since the night in Hepzibah.
Kimbro Cleaverage—following Sylvane's directions—had come without difficulty to his son's cave hide-out, arriving at about eleven o'clock. He found Lance sitting wakeful by the fire, the gay folds of the gospel quilt over his knees, played upon by the shimmer and shine of the leaping blaze. The young man's fever-bright gaze was directed with absorbed attention toward his work. He was delicately snipping loose ends with the shears, while a threaded needle was stuck in the lapel of his coat. He had taken the scarlet calico and cut from it a series of tiny Greek crosses, beautifully exact and deftly grouped and related so as to form a border around the entire square. With that sense of decorative effect which was denied his sister, he had set these so that the interplay of red and white pleased the eye, and almost redeemed the archaic absurdities of the quilt itself.378Skilled with the needle as a woman, he had basted the last cross in place when his father entered.
The talk which followed, there in that subterranean atmosphere that is neither out-nor in-door, neither dark nor light, was long and earnest. Kimbro spoke freely, and there was always that in his father which took Lance by the throat. Perhaps it was the entire lack of accusation; perhaps something in the old man's personality that appealed with its tale of struggle and failure, its frank revelation of patiently borne defeat.
"I'll go right back with you, Pappy, if you say so," Lance murmured huskily at the last, looking up into the gray old face above him like the child he had used to be. "As well now as any time."
"No, son," said Kimbro slowly. His heart ached with the cry, "The Lord knows there ain't no such hurry—there'll be time enough afterward!" But his habit of gentle stoicism prevailed, and he only paused a little, then added, "I reckon we better not do that—I reckon we couldn't very well. I rode the black nag pretty hard coming up. The going's heavy. He couldn't carry us both back, not in any sort of time; and nary one of us is fit to make it afoot. No, I'll take the word to Beason, and him and his men will likely stay at our house till in the morning—poor Roxy! Sylvane'll ride the mule up here tol'able early, and lead your horse. You go straight home. Beason and his men can come379for you to your house. Will that suit?"
"Hit'll suit" Lance answered.
There was along silence between the two. Then the old man moved to the cave's mouth. "Farewell," he said, and stood hesitating, his back to his son.
Lance followed his father a few halting paces, carrying a chunk of fire, lighting the old man down the bank.
"Farewell, Pappy," he echoed.
"All right, son," came back the faint hail, then after a moment's silence Kimbro's voice added, "Thank you for sending this word by me. Farewell," and there was the sound of his footsteps moving on down the little valley.
Probably six hours later, Lance wakened and lay looking at the embers; he reached out a languid hand to push a brand in place. Presently he rose and built up the smoldering fire, and thereafter sat beside it, head on hand, his hollow eyes studying the coals. His father was gone back to notify the sheriff. Well, that was right—a man must answer for the thing he did; and they said that Flenton Hands was dead. He was not consciously glad of this—nor regretful; he was only very weary, spent and at the end of everything. How could he have done otherwise than he had done? And yet—and yet—
His mind went back the long way to his wooing of Callista. What380a flowery path it was to lead to such a bleak conclusion! Then once more his thought veered, like the light shifting smoke above the fire, to Hands. They'd hardly hang him for the killing. It was not a murder. There were those who would testify as to what his provocation had been. But it would mean his days shut away from the sun; a disgraced name to hand down to his boy.
For no reason which he could have given, the sound of a banjo whispered in his memory, "How many miles, how many years?" Ah, the miles and the years then! Callista would be free—and that would be right, too. He had no call to cling to her and claim her. She had never been his, never—never—never! An inconsequent vision of her face lying on his breast the night he had climbed the wild grapevine to her window came mockingly back to tantalize him. He stirred uneasily, and reached to lay another chunk in place, mutely answering the recollection back again—she had never been his.
Then suddenly his head lifted with a start; there was the noise of a rolling stone outside, a thrashing of the bushes, a rush of hurrying feet, and even before he could spring up Callista was in the cave.
But not any Callista Lance had ever known; not the scornful beauty who throned herself among her mates and accepted the homage of mankind as her due; not the flushed, tremulous381Callista of that never-to-be-forgotten night at the window. This was not the young wife of the earlier married days—least of all the mother of his son, or the kindly friend, the stanch partner, who had tended on and served him here in the cave. This was a strange, fierce, half-distraught, shining-eyed Callista, a fit adventurer, if she list, to put forth toward his island. A little dark shawl was tied over her bright head; but from under its confining edges the fair locks, usually so ordered and placid, streamed loosely around the face which looked out white and fearful. Her dress was soaked about the edges and all up one side. It was stained with earth, there, too, ripped loose from the waist, and torn till it hung in long, streaming shreads. A deep scratch across her cheek bled unheeded, and a flying strand of hair had glued fast in it. Her shaking hands were bleeding too, and grimed with woods mold, her finger nails were packed with it, where she had fallen again and again and scrambled up. She walked staggeringly and breathed in gasps.
"They—" she panted, then took two or three laboring breaths before she could go on. "They told me at Father Cleaverage's that they was goin' to send here and fetch you in—is that so?"
"I reckon they are," the man beside the fire assented nervelessly.
A wild look lightened over her face. She came stumblingly up to him.
"Lance!" she choked. "Did you sure enoughsendthat word by your382father to the sheriff?—Did yousayyou'd give up and go in—did you?"
"Yes," he returned somberly. "I did, Callista. That's all that was left me."
"My God!" she breathed. "And I couldn't believe it—not a word of it. But I just slipped out and come. I've got Gran'pappy's horse Maje and the Mandy mule tied down in the bushes below there, and—"
Cleaverage glanced about him and, rising, began to roll together the blankets of his bed.
"Yes," he repeated, in a sort of automatic fashion. "Pappy left me before midnight, and he was riding Satan. I reckon I ought to be moving right soon now. It must be sun-up outside, ain't it?"
She looked at him with desperate doubt.
"Lance!" she demanded, clutching his arm with her trembling hand. "What made you send Father Cleaverage with such word as that?—and never let me know!—Oh, Lance, what did you do it for? Bring them things and come on down quick. There may be time yet."
He stared at her dumbly questioning for a moment. Long misery had made his wits slow. He plainly hesitated between thinking her the emissary sent from home for him and the understanding that she wanted him to escape.
"Time?" he repeated. "Do you mean—?"
Her lips shaped "yes," her eyes fastened upon his face.383
He took it very quietly. Slowly he shook his head.
"I ain't got any right to do that," he said. "I've given my word to Pappy. They'd hold him for it. And if I did go, I'd be running and hiding the balance o' my days. You and the boy would be lost to me—same as you will be as it is. And—and you wouldn't be free. I done the thing. Let me take my punishment like a man, Callista. Oh, for God's sake," he cried out with a sudden sharp cry, "let me do something like a man! I've played the fool boy long enough."
He dropped back into a sitting posture beside the fire. Callista had never released his arm. It was plain that his attitude frightened her more terribly than any violence of resistance would have done. She bent over him now in the tremulous intensity of her purpose, whispering, the low pleading of her voice still interrupted with little gasps.
"You're broke down living this-a-way. Lance. You don't know your own mind—you ain't fit to speak for yourself."
"Oh, Callista," said Lance's quiet tones, "I'm a sight fitter to speak for myself now than I ever was before in my life. I've got it to do."
Up to this time, the trouble between these two had continued to be a lovers' quarrel. Leaving Lance alone in the house he had384builded for her, throwing back into his face such help as he would have followed her with, Callista had but triumphed as she used to when they bickered before an audience of their mates. Angry as she actually was when she broke with him, there could not fail, also, to be a cruel satisfaction in the knowledge of how she put him from his ordinary, how she changed the course of his life, and knew him her pining lover, the man who could not sleep o' nights for thought of her. Perhaps, when his pride was broken, and he came suing to her, personally, she would go home with him and patch the matter up with patronage and forgiveness. From the first this expected consummation had been vaguely shadowed in her mind back of all she did or refused to do. Here and now was the matter sharply taken out of her hands. Lance turned his back on her. He reckoned without her. He promised to others that which would set him at once and permanently beyond her recall. With an impassioned gesture, she flung herself down on her knees before him where he sat. Her arms went around him, her face was pressed against him.
"No, no. Lance," she implored. "You might speak for yourself—but who's to speak for me? What'll I do when they take you from me? I'd sooner hide like a wild varmint all my days. I'd sooner—oh, come on and go with me, Lance. I'll run with you as long as we both live."
"That wouldn't be a fit life for you and the baby," Lance told her.385
"The baby!" replied Callista, almost scornfully. "I didn't aim to take him along. It's you and me, Lance—you and me."
Gazing up at him, she saw the look in her husband's face; she saw that his thoughts were clearing, and that the resolute, formulated negative was coming.
"Oh, don't say it, Lance!" she cried, her arms tightening convulsively around his body, the tears streaming down her lifted face, washing away the blood. A great coughing sob shook her from head to foot. "Oh, Lance, don't—don't do it! I know—" she hastened pitifully—"I know I haven't got any rights. I know I've wore out your love. But oh, please, honey, come with me and let's run."
Through the man's dazed senses the truth had made its way at last. He sat wonder-smitten. The weeping woman on her knees before him looking up into his face, with eyes from which the veil of pride and indifference was rent away, eyes out of which the sheer, hungry, unashamed adoration gazed.
"Lance," she began at last, in a voice that was scarce more than a breath, a mere shadow of sound, "I've never told you. Look like I always waited for you to say. But since—long ago—ever since you and me was boy and girl—and girl together—They was386never anybody for me but you—you, dear. They's nothing you could do or be that would make it different. I—my heart—If they take you away from me, Lance, darlin', they might just as well kill me."
Lance reached around and got the two hands that were clinging to him so frantically. He held them, one over the other, in his own and, bending his head, kissed them again and again. He touched the loose hair about her forehead, then mutely laid his lips against its fairness. He lifted his head and looked long into her eyes with a look which she could not understand.
"You—you're a-comin', Lance?" she breathed.
He shook his head ever so little.
"Callista," he said very softly, and the name was a caress,—"mine—my girl—my Callista, you're a-goin' to help me do the right thing."
She started back a little; she caught her breath, and her blue eyes dilated upon him.
"The right thing," her husband repeated, with something that was almost a smile on his lips. "And that's to ride over home and give myself up. God bless you, dear, I can do it now with a quiet mind. Oh, Callista—Callista—I'm happier this minute than I ever was before in my life! Whatever comes, I can face it now."
Callista crouched with parted lips and desperate eyes. About them there was silence, broken only by the tiny sibilations of the fire, the hushed voice of the night wind muttering in the387outer chamber of the cave, as the air sighs through the open lips of a sea-shell. Her ear was against his breast; with a sort of creeping terror she heard the even beating of his heart. He could say such words quietly! An awful sense of powerlessness gripped her. Lance was arbiter of his own fate. If he chose, he could do this thing. She was like one who waits, the flood at her lips, while the inevitable death rises slowly to engulf. Then it was as if the waters closed above her. With a whispered cry she settled forward against him, and rested so, held close in his embrace. Little shivers went over her lax body. She uttered brief, broken murmurs. Down and down she sank in the arms that clasped her. Lance bent his head to hear.
"Well—if ye won't go with me," she was saying, "I'll go with you. I'll go wherever they take you. What you suffer, I'll suffer, Lance; because the fault was mine—oh, the fault was mine!"
"We ain't got no time to talk about faults, honey," he said to her, slipping a caressing hand beneath her cheek, lifting the bent face, kissing her again and again, offering that demonstrative love for which Callista thirsted, which she had no initiative herself to proffer. "I'll not let you miscall my girl. I wouldn't have a hair of her head different. Come on, darlin', I've got to make good my word."
Strangely stilled as to her grief, Callista rose. She moved388silently about the cave and, without any further word of remonstrance, helped him gather his belongings together and make them ready. Lance himself was like a man for whom a new day has dawned. He was almost gay when they turned to take their farewell of the place that had been his home for weeks.
When they stepped forth, they found the sun fully risen upon a morning fair and promising. Callista looked long at the rock-house as, carrying their bundles, they passed it on the way to their mounts.
"And I had you for my own—all my own—and nobody to hinder—while we lived there," she said, speaking in a slow, wondering tone. "Oh, Lord! Foolish people have to learn hard when 'tis that they're blessed."
Lance's free arm went around her slight body and drew her close to his side as they walked. When they reached the animals, he loaded the bedding and other things carefully upon them, then turned to her.
"Sweetheart," he said, with that strange deep glow in his eyes, "folks that love each other like we do are blessed all the time, whether they're free and together—or separated—or in jail. They're blessed whether they're above ground or below it." He kissed her and lifted her lightly to Maje's back and they rode away.
As they followed down Caney and struck eastward toward the389Cleaverage place, the morning drew on, sweet and towardly. For all the cold, there was an under-note of Spring in the air. February felt the stirring of the year which had turned in its sleep. They rode together, hand in hand, where the trail permitted, both remembering—Lance with an added light in his eyes and a meaning smile, Callista with a sudden burst of tears—that other ride they had taken together. Lance's arm around her, her head on his shoulder, when they went down to Squire Ashe's to be married.
They traveled thus, in silence or with few words spoken, for nearly two hours. Their best road home would take them past the old Cleaverage place, and within a mile of the house. As they drew near this point something stirred down deep under Lance's quiet. His breath quickened, his face set in sharp lines. He suddenly strained Callista to him in a grasp that hurt, then released her, touched the patient Maje with his heel and pushed ahead at a good gait. Callista, watching him, followed drooping and mute. Moving so, swiftly and in single file they reached the place whence they could see the chimney of the Kimbro Cleaverage house through the trees, and were aware of a woman on a black horse, a child carried carefully in her arms, coming toward them. Callista lifted her hanging head and looked wonderingly around her husband.