“O, call the dogs—Yo he!—Yo ho!Boone and Ranger, Wolf an’ Beau,Little Bob-tail an’ Big Dew-claw,Old Bloody-Mouth an’ Hanging Jaw.Ye hear the hawns?—Yo he!—Yo ho!They all are blowin’, so far they go,With might an’ main, for the trail is fresh,A big bear’s track in the aidge o’ the bresh!”
“O, call the dogs—Yo he!—Yo ho!Boone and Ranger, Wolf an’ Beau,Little Bob-tail an’ Big Dew-claw,Old Bloody-Mouth an’ Hanging Jaw.Ye hear the hawns?—Yo he!—Yo ho!They all are blowin’, so far they go,With might an’ main, for the trail is fresh,A big bear’s track in the aidge o’ the bresh!”
“O, call the dogs—Yo he!—Yo ho!Boone and Ranger, Wolf an’ Beau,Little Bob-tail an’ Big Dew-claw,Old Bloody-Mouth an’ Hanging Jaw.Ye hear the hawns?—Yo he!—Yo ho!They all are blowin’, so far they go,With might an’ main, for the trail is fresh,A big bear’s track in the aidge o’ the bresh!”
“O, call the dogs—Yo he!—Yo ho!
Boone and Ranger, Wolf an’ Beau,
Little Bob-tail an’ Big Dew-claw,
Old Bloody-Mouth an’ Hanging Jaw.
Ye hear the hawns?—Yo he!—Yo ho!
They all are blowin’, so far they go,
With might an’ main, for the trail is fresh,
A big bear’s track in the aidge o’ the bresh!”
“Yo he! yo ho!” said the riverfaintly. “Yo he! yo ho!” said the rocks more faintly; and fainter still from the vague darkness came an echo so slight that it seemed as near akin to silence as to sound, barely impinging upon the air. “Yo he! yo ho!” it murmured.
But old Joel Ruggles, standing and listening, silently shook his head and said nothing.
“Yo he! yo ho!” sung Mark, further away, and the echoes of his boyish voice still rang vibrant and clear.
Then there was no sound but the stir of the river and the clang of the iron-shod hoofs of Cockleburr, striking the stones in the rocky bridle-path. The flint gave out a flash of light, the yellow spark glimmering for an instant, visible in the purple dusk with a transitory flicker like a firefly.
And old Joel Ruggles once more shook his head.
Far away in a dim recess of the deep woods, on the summit of the ridge, amidst crags and chasms and almost inaccessible steeps, the shadows had gathered about a dismal little log hut of one room—like all the other dismal little hovels of the mountain, save that in front of the door the grass was worn away from a wide space by the frequent tread of many feet; a preternaturally large wood-pile was visible under a frail shelter in the rear of the house; from the chimney a dense smoke rose in a heavy column; and the winds that rushed past it carried on their breath an alcoholic aroma. But for these points of dissimilarity and its peculiarly secluded situation,Mark Yates, dismounting from his restive steed, might have been entering his mother’s dwelling. The opening door shed no glare of firelight out into the deepening gloom of the dusk. It was very warm within, however—almost too warm for comfort; but the shutters of the glassless window were tightly barred, and the usual chinks of log-house architecture were effectually closed with clay. The darkness of the room was accented rather than dispelled by a flickering tallow dip stuck in an empty bottle in default of a candlestick, and there was an all-pervading and potent odor of spirits. The salient feature of the scene was a stone furnace, from the closed door of which there flashed now and then a slender thread of brilliant light. A great copper still rose from it, and a protruding spiral tube gracefully meandered away in the darkness throughthe cool waters of the refrigerator to the receiver of its precious condensed vapors.
There were four jeans-clad mountaineers seated in the gloomy twilight of this apartment; and the stories of “bar-huntin’ an’ sech” must have been very jewels of discourse to prove so alluring, as they could certainly derive no brilliancy from their unique but somber setting.
“Hy’re, Mark! Come in, come in,” was the hospitable insistence which greeted young Yates.
“Hev a cheer,” said Aaron Brice, the eldest of the party, bringing out from the darkness a chair and placing it in the feeble twinkle of the tallow dip.
“Take a drink, Mark,” said another of the men, producing a broken-nosed pitcher of ardent liquor. But notwithstanding this effusive hospitality, which was very usual at the still-house, MarkYates had an uncomfortable impression that he had interrupted an important conference, and that his visit was badly timed. The conversation that ensued was labored, and hosts and guest were a trifle ill at ease. Frequent pauses occurred, broken only by the sound of the furnace fire, the boiling and bubbling within the still, the gurgle of the water through its trough, that led it down from a spring on the hill behind the house to the refrigerator, the constant dripping of the “doublings” from the worm into the keg below. Now and then one of the brothers hummed a catch which ran thus:—
“O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,Adam did the pomace make;When the brandy told upon ’em,They accused the leetle snake!”
“O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,Adam did the pomace make;When the brandy told upon ’em,They accused the leetle snake!”
“O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,Adam did the pomace make;When the brandy told upon ’em,They accused the leetle snake!”
“O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,
Adam did the pomace make;
When the brandy told upon ’em,
They accused the leetle snake!”
Another thoughtfully snuffed the tallow dip, which for a few momentsburned with a brighter, more cheerful light, then fell into a tearful despondency and bade fair to weep itself away.
Outside the little house the black night had fallen, and the wind was raging among the trees. All the stars seemed in motion, flying to board a fleet of flaky white clouds that were crossing the sky under full sail. The moon, a spherical shadow with a crescent of burnished silver, was speeding toward the west; not a gleam fell from its disk upon the swaying, leafless trees—it seemed only to make palpable the impenetrable gloom that immersed the earth. The air had grown keen and cold, and it rushed in at the door as it was opened with a wintry blast. A man entered, with the slow, lounging motion peculiar to the mountaineers, bearing in his hand a jug of jovial aspect. The four Brices looked up from under their heavy brows withsharp scrutiny to discern among the deep shadows cast by the tallow dip who the newcomer might be. Their eyes returned to gaze with an affected preoccupation upon the still, and in this significant hush the ignored visitor stood surprised and abashed on the threshold. The cold inrushing mountain wind, streaming like a jet of seawater through the open door, was rapidly lowering the temperature of the room. This contemptuous silence was too fraught with discomfort to be maintained.
“Ef ye air a-comin’ in,” said Aaron Brice, ungraciously, “come along in. An’ ef ye air a-goin’ out go ’long. Anyway, jes’ ez ye choose, ef ye’ll shet that thar door, ez I don’t see ez ye hev any call ter hold open.”
Thus adjured the intruder closed the door, placed the jug on the floor, and looked about with an embarrassedhesitation of manner. The flare from the furnace, which Aaron Brice had opened to pile in fresh wood, illumined the newcomer’s face and long, loose-jointed figure and showed the semicircle of mountaineers seated in their rush-bottomed chairs about the still. None of them spoke. Never before since the still-house was built had a visitor stood upon the puncheon floor that one of the hospitable Brices did not scuttle for a chair, that the dip was not eagerly snuffed in the vain hope of irradiating the guest, that the genial though mutilated pitcher filled with whisky was not ungrudgingly presented. No chair was offered now, and the broken-nosed pitcher with its ardent contents was motionless on the head of a barrel. It was a strange change, and as the broad red glare fell on their stolid faces and blankly inexpressive attitudes the guest looked fromone to the other with an increasing surprise and a rising dismay. The light was full for a moment upon Mark Yates’s shock of yellow hair, gray eyes, and muscular, well-knit figure, as he, too, sat mute among his hosts. He was not to be mistaken, and once seen was not easily forgotten. The next instant the furnace door clashed, and the room fell back into its habitual gloom. One might note only the gurgle of the spring water—telling of the wonders of the rock-barricaded earth below and the reflected glories of the sky above—only the hilarious song of the still, the continuous trickle from the worm, the all-pervading spirituous odors, and the shadowy outlines of the massive figures of the mountaineers.
The Brices evidently could not be relied upon to break the awkward silence. The newcomer, mustering heart of grace, took up his testimonyin a languid nasal drawl, trying to speak and to appear as if he had noticed nothing remarkable in his reception.
“I hev come, Aaron,” he said, “ter git another two gallons o’ that thar whisky ez I hed from you-uns, an’ I hev brung the balance of the money I owed ye on that, an’ enough ter pay for the jugful, too. Hyar is a haffen dollar fur the old score, an’—”
“That thar eends it,” said Aaron, pocketing the tendered fifty cents. “We air even, an’ ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar, Mose Carter.”
“Wha—what did ye say, Aaron? I hain’t got the rights ’zactly o’ what ye said.” And Carter peered in great amaze through the gloom at his host, who was carefully filling a pipe. As Aaron stooped to get a coal from the furnace one of the others spoke.
“He said ez ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar. An’ it air a true word.”
The flare from the furnace again momentarily illumined the room, and as the door clashed it again fell back into the uncertain shadow.
“That is what I tole ye,” said Aaron, reseating himself and puffing his pipe into a strong glow, “an’ ef ye hain’t a-onderstandin’ of it yit I’ll say it agin—ye an’ the rest of yer tribe will git no more liquor from hyar.”
“An’ what’s the reason I hain’t a-goin’ ter get no more liquor from hyar?” demanded Moses Carter in virtuous indignation. “Hain’t I been ez good pay ez any man down this hyar gorge an’ the whole mounting atop o’ that? Look-a hyar, Aaron Brice, ye ain’t a-goin’ ter try ter purtend ez I don’t pay fur the liquor ez I gits hyar—an’ you-uns an’ me done been a-tradin’ tergither peaceable-like fur nigh on ter ten solid year.”
“An’ then ye squar’ round an’ gitsme an’ my brothers a-turned out’n the church fur runnin’ of a still whar ye gits yer whisky from. Good pay or bad pay, it’s all the same ter me.”
“I never gin my vote fur a-turnin’ of ye out ’kase of ye a-runnin’ of a still.” Moses Carter trembled in his eager anxiety to discriminate the grounds upon which he had cast his ballot. “It war fur a-gittin’ drunk an’ astayin’ drunk, ez ye mos’ly air a-doin—an’ ye will ’low yerself, Aaron, ez that thar air a true word. I don’t see no harm in a-runnin’ of a still an’ a-drinkin’ some, but not ter hurt. It air this hyar gittin’ drunk constant ez riles me.”
“Mose Carter,” said the youngest of the Brice brothers, striking suddenly into the conversation, “ye air a liar, an’ ye knows it!” He was a wiry, active man of twenty-five years; he spoke in an authoritative high key, andhis voice seemed to split the air like a knife. His mind was as wiry as his body, and it was generally understood on Jolton’s Ridge that he was the power behind the throne of which Aaron, the eldest, wielded the unmeaning scepter; he, however, remained decorously in the background, for among the humble mountaineers the lordly rights of primogeniture are held in rigorous veneration, and it would have ill-beseemed a younger scion of the house to openly take precedence of the elder. His Christian name was John, but it had been forgotten or disregarded by all but his brothers in the title conferred upon him by his comrades of the mountain wilds. Panther Brice—or “Painter,” for thus the animal is called in the vernacular of the region—was known to run the still, to shape the policy of the family, to be a self-constituted treasurer and disburserof the common fund, to own the very souls of his unresisting elder brothers. He had elected, however, in the interests of decorum, that these circumstances should be sedulously ignored. Aaron invariably appeared as spokesman, and the mountaineers at large all fell under the influence of a dominant mind and acquiesced in the solemn sham. The Panther seldom took part even in casual discussions of any vexed question, reserving his opinions to dictate as laws to his brothers in private; and a sensation stirred the coterie when his voice, that had a knack of finding and thrilling every sensitive nerve in his hearer’s body, jarred the air.
“I hev seen ye, Mose Carter,” he continued, “in this hyar very still-house ez drunk ez a fraish biled owl. Ye hev laid on this hyar floor too drunk ter move hand or foot all night an’ haffen the nex’ day at one spree. Ihev seen ye’, an’ so hev plenty o’ other folks. An’ ef ye comes hyar a-jowin’ so sanctified ’bout’n folks a-gittin’ drunk, I’ll turn ye out’n this hyar still-house fur tellin’ of lies.”
He paused as abruptly as he had spoken; but before Moses Carter could collect his slow faculties he had resumed. “It ’pears powerful comical ter me ter hear this hyar Baptis’ church a-settin’ of itself up so stiff fur temp’rance, ’kase thar air an old sayin’—an’ I b’lieves it—ez the Presbyterians holler—‘What is ter be will be!—even ef it won’t be!’ an’ the Methodies holler, ‘Fire! fire! fire! Brimstun’ an’ blue blazes!’—but the Bapties holler, ‘Water! water! water! with aleetledrap o’ whisky in it!’ But ye an’ yer church’ll be dry enough arter this; thar’ll be less liquor drunk ’mongst ye’n ever hev been afore, ’kase ye air all too cussed stingy ter pay five cents extry aquart like ye’ll hev ter do at Joe Gilligan’s store down yander ter the Settlemint. Fur nare one o’ them sanctified church brethren’ll git another drap o’ liquor hyar, whar it hev always been so powerful cheap an’ handy.”
“The dryer ez ye kin make the church the better ye’ll please the pa’son. He lays off a reg’lar temperance drought fur them ez kin foller arter his words. I be a-tryin’ ter mend my ways,” Moses Carter droned with a long, sanctimonious face, “but—” he hesitated, “the sperit is willin’, but the flesh is weak—the flesh is weak!”
“I’ll be bound no sperits air weak ez ye hev ennything ter do with, leastwise swaller,” said the Panther, with a quick snap.
“He is hyar in the mounting ter-night, the pa’son,” resumed Mose Carter, with that effort, always ill-starred,to affect to perceive naught amiss when a friend is sullenly belligerent; he preserved the indifferent tone of one retailing casual gossip. “The pa’son hev laid off ter spen’ the better part o’ the night in prayer and wrestlin’ speritchully in the church-house agin his sermon ter-morrer, it bein’ the blessed Sabbath. He ’lowed he would be more sole and alone thar than at old man Allen’s house, whar he be puttin’ up fur the night, ’kase at old man Allen’s they hev seben gran’chil’ren an’ only one room, barrin’ the roof-room. Thar be a heap o’ onregenerate human natur’ in them seben Allen gran’chil’ren. Thar ain’t no use I reckon in tryin’ ter awake old man Allen ter a sense of sin an’ the awful oncertainty of life by talkin’ terhimo’ the silence an’ solitude o’ the grave! Kee, kee!” he laughed. But he laughed alone.
“Wrestlin’!The pa’son a-wrestlin’! I could throw him over my head! It’s well fur him his wrestlin’s air only in prayer!” exclaimed Painter, with scorn. “The still will holp on the cause o’ temp’rance more’n that thar little long-tongued preacher an’ all his sermons. Raisin’ the tar’ff on the drink will stop it. Ye’re all so dad-burned stingy.”
“Jes’ ez ye choose,” said Moses Carter, taking up his empty jug. “’Tain’t nuthin’ s’prisin’ ter me ter hear ye a-growlin’ an’ a-goin’ this hyar way, Painter—ye always war more like a wild beast nor a man, anyhow. But it do ’stonish me some ez Aaron an’ the t’other boys air a-goin’ ter let ye cut ’em out’n a-sellin’ of liquor ter the whole kentry mighty nigh, ’kase the brethren don’t want a sodden drunkard, like ye air, in the church a-communin’ with the saints.”
“Ye needn’t sorrow fur Aaron,” said Panther Brice, with a sneer that showed his teeth much as a snarl might have done, “nor fur the t’other boys nuther. We kin sell all the whisky ez we kin make ter Joe Gilligan, an’ the folks yander ter—ter—no matter whar—” he broke off with a sudden look of caution as if he had caught himself in an imminent disclosure. “We kin sell it ’thout losin’ nare cent, fur we hev always axed the same price by the gallon ez by the bar’l. So Aaron ain’t a needin’ of yer sorrow.”
“Ye air the spitefullest little painter ez ever seen this hyar worl’,” exclaimed Moses Carter, exasperated by the symmetry of his enemy’s financial scheme. “Waal—waal, prayer may bring ye light. Prayer is a powerful tool. The pa’son b’lieves in its power. He is right now up yander in the church-house, fur I seen the light, an’ Ihearn his voice lifted in prayer ez I kem by.”
The four brothers glanced at one another with hot, wild eyes. They had reason to suspect that they were themselves the subject of the parson’s supplications, and they resented this as a liberty. They had prized their standing in the church not because they were religious, in the proper sense of the word, but from a realization of its social value. In these primitive regions the sustaining of a reputation for special piety is a sort of social distinction and a guarantee of a certain position. The moonshiners neither knew nor cared what true religion might be. To obey its precepts or to inconvenience themselves with its restraints, was alike far from their intention. They had received with boundless amazement the first intimation that the personal and practical religionwhich the “skimpy saint” had brought into the gorge might consistently interfere with the liquor trade, the illicit distilling of whisky, and the unlimited imbibing thereof by themselves and the sottish company that frequented the still-house. They had laughed at his temperance sermons and ridiculing his warnings had treated the whole onslaught as a trifle, a matter of polemical theory, in the nature of things transitory, and had expected it to wear out as similar spasms of righteousness often do—more’s the pity! Then they would settle down to continue to furnish spirituous comfort to the congregation, while the “skimpy saint” ministered to their spiritual needs. The warlike little parson, however, had steadily advanced his parallels, and from time to time had driven the distillers from one subterfuge to another, till at last, althoughthey were well off in this world’s goods—rich men, according to the appraisement of the gorge—they were literally turned out of the church, and had become a public example, and they felt that they had experienced the most unexpected and disastrous catastrophe possible in nature.
They were stunned that so small a man had done this thing, a man, so poor, so weak, so dependent for his bread, his position, his every worldly need, on the favor of the influential members of his scattered congregations. It had placed them in their true position before their compeers. It had reduced their bluster and boastfulness. It had made them seem very small to themselves, and still smaller, they feared, in the estimation of others.
Moses Carter—himself no shining light, indeed a very feebly glimmering luminary in the congregation—lookedfrom one to the other of their aghast indignant faces with a ready relish of the situation, and said, with a grin:
“I reckon, Painter, ef the truth war plain, ye’d ruther hev all the gorge ter know ez the pa’son war a-spreadin’ the fac’s about this hyar still afore a United States marshal than afore the throne o’ grace, like he be a-doin’ of right now.”
The Panther rose with a quick, lithe motion, stretched out his hand to the head of a barrel near by, and the thread of light from the closed furnace door showed the glitter of steel. He came forward a few steps, walking with a certain sinewy grace and brandishing a heavy knife, his furious eyes gleaming with a strange green brilliance, all the more distinct in the half-darkened room. Then he paused, as with a new thought. “I won’t tech ye now,” he said, with a snarl, “butarter a while I’ll jes’ make ye ’low ez that thar church o’ yourn air safer with me in it nor it air with me out’n it. An’ then we’ll count it even.” He ceased speaking suddenly; cooler now, and with an expression of vexation upon his sharp features—perhaps he repented his hasty threat and his self-betrayal. After a moment he went on, but with less virulence of manner than before. “Ye kin take that thar empty jug o’ yourn an’ kerry it away empty. An’ ye kin take yer great hulking stack o’ bones along with it, an’ thank yer stars ez none of ’em air bruken. Ye air the fust man ever turned empty out’n this hyar still-house, an’ I pray God ez ye may be the las’, ’kase I don’t want no sech wuthless cattle a-hangin’ round hyar.”
“I ain’t a-quarrelin’ with hevin’ ter go,” retorted Carter, with asperity. “I never sot much store by comin’hyar nohow, ’ceptin’ Aaron an’ me, we war toler’ble frien’ly fur a good many year. This hyar still-house always reminded me sorter o’ hell, anyhow—whar the worm dieth not an’ the fire is not quenched.”
With this Parthian dart he left the room, closing the door after him, and presently the dull thud of his horse’s hoofs was borne to the ears of the party within, again seated in a semicircle about the furnace.
After a few moments of vexed cogitation Aaron broke the silence, keeping, however, a politic curb on his speech. “’Pears ter me, John, ez how mebbe ’twould hev done better ef ye hedn’t said that thar ez ye spoke ’bout’n the church-house.”
“Hold yer jaw!” returned the Panther, fiercely. “Who larned ye ter jedge o’ my words? An’ it don’t make no differ nohow. I done tole him nuthin’ ’bout’n the church-house ez the whole Ridge won’t say arterward, any way ez ye kin fix it.”
If Mark Yates had found himself suddenly in close proximity to a real panther he could hardly have felt moreuncomfortable than these half-covert suggestions rendered him. He shrank from dwelling upon what they seemed to portend, and he was anxious to hear no more. The recollection of sundry maternal warnings concerning the evils, moral and temporal, incident upon keeping bad company, came on him with a crushing weight, and transformed the aspect of the fascinating still-house into a close resemblance to another locality of worm and fire, to which the baffled Carter had referred. He was desirous of going, but feared that so early a departure just at this critical juncture might be interpreted by his entertainers as a sign of distrust and a disposition to stand aloof when they were deserted by their other friends. And yet he knew, as well as if they had told him, that his arrival had interrupted some important discussion of the plot they were laying,and they only waited his exit to renew their debate.
While these antagonistic emotions swayed him, he sat with the others in meditative silence, gazing blankly at the pleasing rotundity of the dense shadow which he knew was the “copper,” and listening to the frantic dance and roistering melody of its bubbling, boiling, surging contents, to the monotonous trickling of the liquor falling from the worm, to the gentle cooing of the rill of clear spring water. The idea of pleasure suggested by the very sight of the place had given way as more serious thoughts and fears crowded in, and his boyish liking for these men who possessed that deadly fascination for youth and inexperience,—the reputation of being wild,—was fast changing to aversion. He still entertained a strong sympathy for those fiercequalities which gave so vivid an interest to the stirring accounts of struggles with wolves and wild cats, bears and panthers, and to the histories of bitter feuds between human enemies, in the bloody sequel of which, however, the brutality of the deed often vied with its prowess; but this fashion of squaring off, metaphorically speaking, at the preacher, and the strange insinuations of sacrilegious injury to the church—the beloved church, so hardly won from the wilderness, representing the rich gifts of the very poor, their time, their labor, their love, their prayers—this struck every chord of conservatism in his nature.
There had never before been a church building in this vicinity; “summer preachin’” under the forest oaks had sufficed, with sometimes at long intervals a funeral sermon at the house of a neighbor. But in responseto that strenuous cry, “Be up and doing,” and in acquiescence with the sharp admonition that religion does not consist in singing sleepy hymns in a comfortable chimney-corner, the whole countryside had roused itself to the privilege of the work nearest its hand. Practical Christianity first developed at the saw-mill. The great logs, seasoned lumber from the forest, were offered as a sacrifice to the glory of God, and as the word went around, Mark Yates, always alert, was among the first of the groups that came and stood and watched the gleaming steel striking into the fine white fibers of the wood—the beginnings of the “church-house”—while the dark, clear water reflected the great beams and roof of the mill, and the sibilant whizzing of the simple machinery seemed, with the knowledge of the consecrated nature of its work, an harmoniousundertone to the hymning of the pines, and the gladsome rushing of the winds, and the subdued ecstasies of all the lapsing currents of the stream.
Mark had looked on drearily. His spirit, awakened by the clarion call of duty, fretted and revolted at the restraints of his lack of means. He could do naught. It was the privilege of others to prepare the lumber. It seemed that even inanimate nature had its share in building the church—the earth in its rich nurture that had given strength to the great trees; the seasons that had filled the veins of each with the rich wine of the sap, the bourgeoning impulse of its leafage and the ripeness of its fine fruitions; the rainfall and sunshine that had fed and fostered and cherished it—only he had naught to give but the idle gaze of wistful eyes.
The miller, a taciturn man, wasvery well aware that he had sawed the lumber. He said naught when the work was ended, but surveyed the great fragrant piles of cedar and walnut and maple and cherry and oak, the building woods of these richly endowed mountains, with a silence so significant that it spoke louder than words. It said that his work was finished, and who was there who would do as much or more? So loud, so forceful, so eloquent was this challenge that the next day several teamsters came and stood dismally each holding his chin-whiskers in his hand and contemplated the field of practical Christianity.
“It’ll be a powerful job ter hev ter haul all that thar lumber, sure!” said one reluctant wight, in disconsolate survey, his mouth slightly ajar, his hand ruefully rubbing his cheek.
“It war a powerful job ter saw it,” said the miller.
The jaws of the teamster closed with a snap. He had nothing more to say. He, too, was roused to the gospel of action. The miller should not saw more than he would haul. Thus it was that the next day found him with his strong mule team at sunrise, the first great lengths of the boles on the wagon, making his way along the steep ascents of Jolton’s Ridge.
And again Mark looked on drearily. He could do naught—he and Cockleburr. Cockleburr was hardly broken to the saddle, wild and restive, and it would have been the sacrifice of a day’s labor, even if the offer of such unlikely aid would have been accepted, to hitch the colt in for the hauling of this heavy lumber, such earnest, hearty work as the big mules were straining every muscle to accomplish. He was too poor, he felt, with a bitter sigh. He could do naught—naught. True,he armed himself with an axe, and went ahead of the toiling mules, now and then cutting down a sapling which grew in the midst of the unfrequented bridle-path, and which was not quite slight enough to bend beneath the wagon as did most of such obstructions, or widening the way where the clustering underbrush threatened a stoppage of the team. So much more, under the coercion of the little preacher’s sermon, he had wanted to do, that he hardly cared for the “Holped me powerful, Mark,” of the teamster’s thanks, when they had reached the destination of the lumber—the secluded nook where the little mountain graveyard nestled in the heart of the great range—the site chosen by the neighbors for the erection of their beloved church. Beloved before one of the bowlders that made the piers of its foundation was selected from the rocky hillside,where the currents of forgotten, long ebbed-away torrents had stranded them, where the detrition of the rain and the sand had molded them, the powers of nature thus beginning the building of the church-house to the glory of God in times so long gone past that man has no record of its spaces. Beloved before one of the great logs was lifted upon another to build the walls, within which should be crystallized the worship of congregations, the prayers of the righteous that should avail much. Beloved before one of the puncheons was laid of the floor, consecrated with the hope that many a sinner should tread them on the way to salvation. Beloved with the pride of a worthy achievement and the satisfaction of a cherished duty honestly discharged, before a blow was struck or a nail driven.
And here Mark, earnestly seeking hisopportunity to share the work, found a field of usefulness. No great skill, one may be sure, prevailed in the methods of the humble handicraftsmen of the gorge—all untrained to the mechanical arts, and each a jack-of-all-trades, as occasion in his lowly needs or opportunity might offer. Mark had a sort of knack of deftness, a quick and exact eye, both suppleness and strength, and thus he was something more than a mere botch of an amateur workman. His enthusiasm blossomed forth. He, too, might serve the great cause. He, too, might give of the work of his hands.
At it he was, hammer and nails, from morning till night, and he rejoiced when the others living at a distance and having their firesides to provide for, left him here late alone building the temple of God in the wilderness. He would ever and anon glance out through theinterstices of the unchinked log walls at the great sun going down over the valley behind the purple mountains of the west, and lending him an extra beam to drive another nail, after one might think it time to be dark and still; and vouchsafing yet another ray, as though loath to quit this work, lingering at the threshold of the day, although the splendors of another hemisphere awaited its illumination, and many a rich Southern scene that the sun is wont to love; and still sending a gleam, high aslant, that one more nail might be driven; and at last the red suffusion of certain farewell, wherein was enough light for the young man to catch up his tools and set out swiftly and joyously down the side of Jolton’s Ridge.
And always was he first at the tryst to greet the sun—standing in the unfinished building, his hammer in hishand, his hat on the back of his head, and looking through the gap of the range to watch the great disk when it would rise over the Carolina Mountains, with its broad, prophetic effulgence falling over the lowly mounds in the graveyard, as if one might say, “Behold! the dispersal of night, the return of light, the earnest of the Day to come.” Long before the other laborers on the church reached the building Mark had listened to the echoes keeping tally with the strokes of his hammer, had heard the earth shake, the clangor and clash of the distant train on the rails, the shriek of the whistle as the locomotive rushed upon the bridge above that deep chasm, the sinister hollow roar of the wheels, and the deep, thunderous reverberation of the rocks. Thus he noted the passage of the early trains—the freight first, and after an hour’sinterval the passenger train; then a silence, as if primeval, would settle down upon the world, broken only by the strokes of the hammer, until at last some neighbor, with his own tools in hand, would come in.
None of them realized how much of the work Mark had done. Each looked only at the result, knowing it to be the aggregated industry and leisure of the neighbors, laboring as best they might and as opportunity offered. This was no hindrance to Mark’s satisfaction. He had wanted to help, not to make a parade of his help, or to have what he had done appreciated. He thought the little preacher, the “skimpy saint,” as his unfriends called him, had a definite idea of what he had done. In the stress of this man’s lofty ideals he could compromise with little that failed to reach them. He was foreverstretching onward and upward. But Mark noted a kindling in his intent eye one day, while “the chinking” was being put in, the small diagonal slats between the logs of the wall on which the clay of the “daubing” was to be plastered. “Did you do all this side?” he had asked.
As Mark answered “Yes,” he felt his heart swell with responsive pride to win even this infrequent look of approval, and he went on to claim more. “Don’t tell nobody,” he said, glancing up from his kneeling posture by the side of the wall. “But I done that corner, too, over thar by the door. Old Joel Ruggles done it fust, but the old man’s eyesight’s dim, an’ his hand onstiddy, an’ ’twar all crooked an’ onreg’lar, sounbeknownterhimI kem hyar early one day an’ did it over,—though he don’t know it,—so ez ’twould be ekal—all of a piece.”
The “skimpy saint” now hardly seemed to care to glance at the work. He still stood with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, looking down at him with eyes in which Mark perceived new meanings.
“You can sense, then, the worth of hevin’ all things of a piece with the best. See ter it, Mark, that ye keep yer life all of a piece with this good work—with the best that’s in ye.”
So Mark understood. But nowadays he hardly felt all of a piece with the good work he had done on the church walls, against so many discouragements, laboring early and late, seeking earnestly some means that might be within his limited power. Oftentimes, after the church was finished, he went and stood and gazed at it, realizing its stanch validity, without shortcomings, without distortions—all substantial and regular, with none of the discrepanciesand inadequacies of his moral structure.
While silently and meditatively recalling all these facts as he sat this night of early spring among the widely unrelated surroundings of the still, the shadowy group of moonshiners about him, Mark Yates looked hard at Panther Brice’s sharp features, showing, in the thread of white light from the closed door of the furnace, with startling distinctness against the darkness, like some curiously carved cameo. He never understood the rush of feeling that constrained him to speak, and afterward, when he thought of it, his temerity surprised him.
“Painter,” he said, “I hev been a-comin’ hyar ter this hyar still-house along of ye an’ the t’other boys right smart time, an’ I hev been mighty well treated; an’ I ain’t one o’ the sort ez kin buy much liquor, nuther. I hevhed a many a free drink hyar, an’ a sight o’ laughin’ an’ talkin’ along o’ ye an’ the t’other boys. An’ ’twarn’t the whisky as brung me, nuther—’twar mos’ly ter hear them yarns o’ yourn ’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech, fur ye air the talkin’est one o’ the lot. But ef ye air a-goin’ ter take it out’n the preacher or the church-house—I hain’t got the rights o’ what ye air a-layin’ off ter do, an’ I don’t want ter know, nuther—jes’ ’kase ye an’ the t’other boys war turned out’n the church, I hev hed my fill o’ associatin’ with ye. I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev nuthin’ ter do with men-folks ez would fight a pore critter of a preacher, what hev got ez much right ter jow ez ef he war a woman. Sass is what they both war made fur, it ’pears like ter me, an’ ’twar toler’ble spunky sure in him ter speak his mind so plain, knowing what a fighter ye be an’ the t’others, too—noother men hev got the name of sech tremenjious fighters! I allow he seen his jewty plain in what he done, seem’ he tuk sech risks. An’ ef ye air a-goin’ ter raise a ’sturbance ter the church-house, or whatever ye air a-layin’ off ter do terit, I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev no hand-shakin’ with sech folks. Payin’ ’em back ain’t a-goin’ ter patch up the matter nohow—ye’re done turned out the church now, an’ that ain’t a-goin’ ter put ye back. It ’pears mighty cur’ous ter me ez a man ez kin claw with a bar same ez with a little purp, kin git so riled ez he’ll take up with fightin’ of that thar pore little preacher what ain’t got a ounce o’ muscle ter save his life. I wouldn’t mind his jowin’ at me no more’n I mind my mother’s jowin’—an’ she air always at it.”
There was a silence for a few moments—only the sound of the tricklingliquor from the worm and the whir inside the still. That white face, illumined by the thread of light, was so motionless that it might have seemed petrified but for the intense green glare of the widely open eyes. The lips suddenly parted in a snarl, showing two rows of sharp white teeth, and the high shrill voice struck the air with a shiver.
“Ye’re the cussedest purp in this hyar gorge!” the Panther exclaimed. “Ye sit thar an’ tell how well ye hev been treated hyar ter this hyar still-house, an’ then let on ez how ye think ye’ re too good ter come a-visitin’ hyar any more. Ye air like all the rest o’ these folks round hyar—ye take all ye wants, an’ then the fust breath of a word agin a body ye turns agin ’em too. Ye kin clar out’n this. Ye ain’t wanted hyar. I ain’t a-goin’ ter let none o’ yer churchbrethren nor thar fr’en’s nuther—fur ye ain’t even a perfessin’ member—come five mile a-nigh hyar arter this. We air a-goin’ ter turn ’em out’n the still-house, an’ that thar will hurt ’em worse’n turnin’ ’em out’n the church. They go an’ turnusout’n the church fur runnin’ of a still, an’ before the Lord, we kin hardly drive ’em away from hyar along of we-uns. I’m a-goin’ ter git the skin o’ one o’ these hyar brethren an’ nail it ter the door like a mink’s skin ter a hen house, an’ I’ll see ef that can’t skeer ’em off. An’ ef ye don’t git out’n hyar mighty quick now, Mark Yates, like ez not the fust skin nailed ter the door will be that thar big, loose hide o’ yourn.”
“I ain’t the man ter stay when I’m axed ter go,” said young Yates, rising, “an’ so I’ll light out right now. But what I war a-aimin’ ter tell ye, Painter, war ez how I hev sot too much storeby ye and the t’other boys ter want ter see ye a-cuttin’ cur’ous shines ’bout the church-house an’ that leetle mite of a preacher an’ sech.”
Once more that mental reservation touching “the strength of righteousness” recurred to him. Was the little preacher altogether a weakling? His courage was a stanch endowment. He had been warned of the gathering antagonisms a hundred times, and by friend as well as foe. But obstinately, resolutely, he kept on the path he had chosen to tread.
“An’ I’ll let ye know ez I kin be frien’ly with a man ez fights bars an’ fightin’-men,” Mark resumed, “but I kin abide no man ez gits ter huntin’ down little scraps of preachers what hain’t got no call ter fight, nor no muscle nuther.”
“Ye’ll go away ’thout that thar hide o’ yourn ef ye don’t put out mightyquick now,” said the Panther, his sinister green eyes ablaze and his supple body trembling with eagerness to leap upon his foe.
“I ain’t afeard of ye, Painter,” said Mark, with his impenetrable calm, “but this hyar still-house air yourn, an’ I s’pose ez ye hev got a right ter say who air ter stay an’ who air ter go.”
He went out into the chill night; the moon had sunk; the fleet of clouds rode at anchor above the eastern horizon, and save the throbbing of the constellations the sky was still. But the strong, cold wind continued to circle close about the surface of the earth; the pines were swaying to and fro, and moaning as they swayed; the bare branches of the other trees crashed fitfully together. As Yates mounted his horse he heard Aaron say, in a fretful tone: “In the name of God,John, what ails ye to-night? Ye tuk Mark an’ Mose up ez sharp! Ye air ez powerful bouncin’ ez ef ye hed been drunk fur a week.”
The keen voice of the Panther rang out shrilly, and Mark gave his horse whip and heel to be beyond the sound of it. He wanted to hear no more—not even the tones—least of all the words, and words spoken in confidence in their own circle when they believed themselves unheard. He feared there was some wicked conspiracy among them; he could not imagine what it might be, but since he could do naught to hinder he earnestly desired that he might not become accidentally cognizant of it, and in so far accessory to it. He therefore sought to give them some intimation of his lingering presence, for Cockleburr had been frisky and restive, anddifficult to mount; he accordingly began to sing aloud:—
“You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”
“You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”
“You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”
“You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”
But what was this? Instead of his customary hearty whoop, the tones rang out all forlornly, a wheeze and a quaver, and finally broke and sunk into silence. But the voices in conversation within had suddenly ceased. The musically disposed of the Brice brothers himself was singing, as if quite casually:—