XII.
Owen Hainesspent many a lonely hour, in these days, at the foot of a great tree in the woods, riving poplar shingles. Near by in the green and gold glinting of the breeze-swept undergrowth another great tree lay prone on the ground. The space around him was covered with the chips hewn from its hole,—an illuminated yellow-hued carpet in the soft wavering emerald shadows. The smooth shingles, piled close at hand, multiplied rapidly as the sharp blade glided swiftly through the poplar fibres. From time to time he glanced up expectantly, vainly looking for Absalom Tynes; for it had once been the wont of the young preacher to lie here on the clean fresh chips and talk through much of the sunlit days to his friend, who welcomed him as a desert might welcome a summer shower. He would talk on the subject nearest the hearts of both, his primitive theology,—a subject from which Owen Haines was otherwise debarred, as no other ministerial magnate would condescend to hold conversation on such a theme with the laughing-stock of the meetings, whose aspirations it was held to be a duty in the cause of religion to discourage and destroy if might be. Only Tynes understood him, hoped for him, felt with him.But Tynes was now at the schoolhouse in the Cove, listening in fascinated interest to the juggler as he recited from memory, and himself reading in eager and earnest docility, copying his master’s methods.
Therefore, when the step of a man sounded along the bosky path which Haines had worn to his working-place, and he looked up with eager anticipation, he encountered only disappointment at the sight of Peter Knowles approaching through the leaves.
Knowles paused and glanced about him with withering disdain. “Tynes ain’t hyar,” he observed. “I dunno ez I looked ter view him, nuther.”
He dropped down on the fragrant carpet of chips, and for the first time Haines noticed that he carried, after a gingerly fashion, on the end of a stick, a bundle apparently of clothes, and plentifully dusted with something white and powdery. Even in the open air and the rush of the summer wind the odor exhaled by quicklime was powerful and pungent, and the scorching particles came flying into Haines’s face. As he drew back Knowles noticed the gesture, and adroitly flung the bundle and stick to leeward, saying, “Don’t it ’pear plumb cur’ous ter you-uns, the idee o’ a minister o’ the gorspel a-settin’ out ter l’arn how ter read the Bible from a onconverted sinner? I hearn this hyar juggler-man ’low ez he warn’t even a mourner, though he said he hed suthin’ ter mournover. An’ I’ll sw’ar he hev,” he added significantly, “an’ he may look ter hev more.”
The poplar slivers flew fast from the keen blade, and the workman’s eyes were steadfastly fixed on the shingle growing in his hand.
Peter Knowles chewed hard on his quid of tobacco for a moment; then he broke out abruptly, “Owen Haines, I knows ye want ter sarve the Lord, an’ thar’s many a way o’ doin’ it besides preachin’, else I’d be a-preachin’ myself.”
Such was the hold that his aspiration had taken upon Haines’s mind that he lifted his head in sudden expectancy and with a certain radiant submissiveness on his face, as if his Master’s will could come even by Peter Knowles!
“I brung ye yer chance,” continued Knowles. Then, with a quick change from a sanctimonious whine to an eager, sharp tone full of excitement, “What ye reckon air in that bundle?”
Haines, surprised at this turn of the conversation, glanced around at the bundle in silence.
“An’ whar do ye reckon I got it?” asked Knowles. Then, as Owen Haines’s eyes expressed a wondering question, he went on, mysteriously lowering his voice, “I fund it in my rock-house,—that big cave o’ mine whar I stored away the lime I burned on the side o’ the mounting—this bundle war flung in thar an’ kivered by quicklime!”
Haines stared in blank amazement for a moment. “I ’lowed ye hed plugged up the holegoin’ inter yer cave, ter keep the lime dry, with a big boulder.”
“Edzac’ly, edzac’ly!” Knowles assented, his close-set eyes so intent upon Haines as to put him out of countenance in some degree.
Haines sought to withdraw his glance from their baleful significant expression, but his eyelids faltered and quivered, and he continued to look wincingly at his interlocutor. “I ’lowed ’twar too heavy for enny one man ter move,” he commented vaguely, at last.
“’Thout he war helped by the devil,” Knowles stipulated.
There was a pause. The young workman’s hand was still. His companion’s society did not accord with his mood. The loneliness had been soft and sweet, and of peaceful intimations. His frequent disappointments were of protean guise. Where was that work for the Master that Peter Knowles had promised him?
“Owen Haines,” cried Peter Knowles suddenly, “hev that thar man what calls hisself a juggler-man done ennythin’ but harm sence he hev been in the Cove an’ the mountings?”
Haines, the color flaring to his brow, laid quick hold on his shingle-knife and rived the wood apart; his breath came fast and his hand shook, although his work was steady. He was all unnoting that Peter Knowles was watching him with an unguarded eye of open amusement, and a silent sneer that left long tobacco-stained teeth visible belowthe curling upper lip. But a young fool’s folly is often propitious for the plans of a wiser man, and Knowles was not ill pleased to descry the fact that the relations between the two could not admit of friendship, or tolerance, or even indifference.
“Fust,” he continued, “he gin that onholy show in the church-house, what I never seen, but it hev set folks powerful catawampus an’ hendered religion, fur the devil war surely in it.”
Owen Haines took off his hat to toss his long fair hair back from his brow, and looked with troubled, reflective eyes down the long aisles of the gold-flecked verdure of the woods.
“Then he tricked you-uns somehows out’n yer sweetheart, what ye hed been keepin’ company with so long.”
Haines shook his head doubtfully. “We-uns quar’led,” he said. “I dunno ef he hed nuthin’ ter do with it.”
“Did Phemie an’ you-uns ever quar’l ’fore he kem ter Sims’s?” demanded the sly Knowles.
They had never quarreled before Haines “got religion” and took to “prayin’ fur the power.” He had never thought the juggler chargeable with these differences, but the fallacy now occurred to him that they might have been precipitated by Royce’s ridicule of him as a wily device to rid her of her lover. His face grew hot and angry. There was fire in his eyes. His lips parted and his breath came quick.
“He hev toled off Tynes too,” resumed Knowles,with a melancholy intonation. “He hev got all the lures and witchments of the devil at command. I kem by the church-house awhile ago, an’ I hearn him an’ Tynes in thar, speakin’ an’ readin’. An’ I sez ter myself, sez I, ‘Pore Owen Haines, up yander in the woods, hev got nuther his frien’, now, nor his sweetheart. Him an’ Phemie keeps company no mo’ in this worl’.’”
There was a sudden twitch of Haines’s features, as if these piercing words had been with some material sharpness thrust in amongst sensitive tissues. It was all true, all true.
The iron was hot, and Peter Knowles struck. “That ain’t the wust,” he said, leaning forward and bringing his face with blazing eyes close to his companion. “This hyar juggler hev killed a man, an’ flung his bones inter the quicklime in my rock-house.”
Haines, with a galvanic start, turned, pale and aghast, upon his companion. He could only gasp, but Knowles went on convulsively and without question: “I s’picioned him from the fust. He stopped thar at the cave whar I war burnin’ lime the night o’ the show, an’ holped ter put it in outer the weather bein’ ez the rain would slake it. An’ he axed me ef quicklime would sure burn up a dead body. An’ when I told him, he turned as he went away an’ looked back, smilin’ an’ sorter motionin’ with his hand, an’ looked back agin, an’ looked back.”
He reached out slowly for the stick with thebundle tied at the end, and dragged it toward him, the breath of the scalding lime perceptible as it was drawn near.
“Las’ week, one evenin’ late,” he said in a lowered voice and with his eyes alight and glancing, “hevin’ kep’ a watch on this young buzzard, an’ noticin’ him forever travelin’ the New Helveshy road what ain’t no business o’ his’n, I ’lowed I’d foller him. An’ he kerries a bundle. He walks fast an’ stops short, an’ studies, an’ turns back suddint, an’ stops agin, an’ whirls roun’, an’ goes on. An’ his face looks like death! An’ sometimes he stops short to sigh, ez ef he couldn’t get his breath. But he don’t go ter New Helveshy. He goes ter my cave. An’ he hev got breath enough ter fling away that tormented big boulder, an’ toss in these gyarmints, an’ churn the lime over ’em with a stick till he hed ter hold his hand over his eyes ter keep his eyesight, an’ fling back the boulder, an’ run off faster ’n a fox along the road ter Sims’s.”
There was a long silence as the two men looked into each other’s eyes.
“What air ye tellin’ this ter me fur?” said Haines at last, struggling with a mad impulse of hope—of joy, was it? For if this were true,—and true it must be,—the spurious supplantation in Euphemia’s affections might soon be at an end. If her love could not endure ridicule, would it condone crime? All might yet be well; justice tardily done, the law upheld; the intruder removedfrom the sphere where he had occasioned such woe, and the old sweet days of love’s young dream to be lived anew.
“Fur the Marster’s sarvice,” said the wily hypocrite. “I sez ter myself, ‘Owen Haines won’t see the right tromped on. He won’t see the ongodly flourish. He won’t see the wolf a-lopin’ through the fold. He won’t hear in the night the blood o’ Abel cryin’ from the groun’ agin the guilty Cain, an’ not tell the sher’ff what air no furder off, jes’ now, ’n ‘Possum Cross-Roads.’”
“Why don’t you-uns let him know yerse’f?” demanded Haines shortly.
“Waal, I be a-settin’ up nights with my sick nephews: three o’ them chil’n down with the measles, an’ my sister an’ brother-in-law bein’ so slack-twisted I be ’feared they’d gin ’em the wrong med’cine ef I warn’t thar ter gin d’rections.” His eye brightened as he noted Haines reaching forward for the end of the stick and slowly drawing the bundle toward him.
It is admitted that a leopard cannot change his spots, and, without fear of successful contradiction, one may venture to add to the illustrations of immutability that a coward cannot change his temperament. Now the fact that Peter Knowles was a coward had been evinced by his conduct on several occasions within the observation of his compatriots. His craft, however, had served to adduce mitigating circumstances, and so consigned the matter to oblivion that it did not once occur to Hainesthat it was fear which had evolved the subterfuge of enlisting his well-known enthusiasm for religion and right, and his natural antagonism against the juggler, in the Master’s service. On the one hand, Knowles dreaded being called to account for whatever else might be found unconsumed by the lime in the grotto, did he disclose naught of his discovery. On the other hand, the character of informer is very unpopular in the mountains, owing to the revelations of moonshining often elicited by the rewards offered for the detection of the infringement of the revenue laws. Persons of this class indeed sometimes receive a recompense in another metal, which, if not so satisfactory as current coin, is more conclusive and lasting. It was the recollection of leaden tribute of this sort, should the matter prove explicable, or the man escape, or the countryside resent the appeal to the law, which induced Peter Knowles to desire to shift upon Haines the active responsibility of giving information: his jealousy in love might be considered a motive adequate to bring upon him all the retributions of the recoil of the scheme if aimed amiss.
Knowles watched the young man narrowly and with a glittering eye as, with a trembling hand and a look averse, Haines began to untie the cord which held the package together.
“He killed the man, Owen, ez sure ez ye air livin’, an’ flunged his bones in the quicklime, an’ now he flunged in his clothes,” Knowles was saying as the bundle gave loose in the handling.
Drawing back with a sense of suffocation as a cloud of minute particles of quicklime rose from the folds of the material, Owen Haines nevertheless recognized upon the instant the garments which the juggler himself had worn when he first came to the Cove, the unaccustomed fashion of which had riveted the young mountaineer’s attention for the time at the “show” at the church-house.
With a certain complex duality of emotion, he experienced a sense of dismay to note how his heart sank with the extinguishment of his hope that the man might prove a criminal and that this discovery might rid the country of him. How ill he had wished him! Not only that the fierce blast of the law might consume him, but, reaching back into the past, that he might have wrought evil enough to justify it and make the retribution sure! With a pang as of sustaining loss he gasped, “Why, these hyar gyarmints air his own wear. I hev viewed him in ’em many a time whenst he fust kem ter the Cove!”
Knowles glared at him in startled doubt, and slowly turned over one of the pointed russet shoes. “He hed ’em on the night he gin the show in the Cove,” said Haines.
“I seen him that night,” said Knowles conclusively. “He hed on no sech cur’ous clothes ez them, else I’d hev remarked ’em, sure!”
“Ye ’lowed ’twar night an’ by the flicker o’ the fire, an’ ye war in a cornsider’ble o’ a jigget ’bout’n yer lime.”
“Naw, sir! naw, sir! he hed on no sech coat ez that, ennyhow,” protested Knowles. Then, with rising anger, “Ye air a pore shoat fur sense, Owen Haines! Ef they air his gyarmints, what’s the reason he hid ’em so secret an’ whar the quicklime would deestroy ’em; bein’ so partic’lar ter ax o’ me ef ’twould burn boots an’ clothes an’ bone,—bone, too?”
“I dunno,” said Haines, at a loss, and turning the black-and-red blazer vaguely in his hands.
“I do; them folks over ter New Helveshy wears sech fool gear ez these,” Knowles insisted, from his superior knowledge, for in the interest of his lime-trade he had visited New Helvetia more than once,—a rare trip for a denizen of Etowah Cove.
“Thar ain’t nobody missin’ at New Helveshy!” Haines argued, against his lingering hope.
“How do you-uns know?” exclaimed Knowles hurriedly, and with a certain alert alarm in his face. “Somebody comin’ ez never got thar! Somebody goin’ ez never got away!” He had risen excitedly to his feet. What ghastly secret might be hidden beneath the residue of quicklime in that dark cavern, the responsibility possibly to be laid at his door!
Owen Haines, looking up at him with childlike eyes, was slowly studying his face,—a fierce face, with the savagery of his cowardice as predatory an element as the wantonness of his malice.
“These hyar air his clothes,” Haines reiterated; “I ’members ’em well. This hyar split buttonhole at the throat”—
“That’s whar he clutched the murdered one,” declared Knowles tumultuously.
—“an’ these water-marks on these hyar shoes,—they hed been soaked,—an’ this hyar leather belt, whar two p’ints hed been teched through with a knife-blade, stiddier them round holes, ter draw the belt up tighter ’n it war made ter be wore,—I could swar ter ’em,—an’ this hyar”—
Knowles looked down at him in angry doubt. “Shucks,” he interrupted, “ye besotted idjit! I dunno what ailed me ter kem ter you-uns. I ’lowed ye war so beset ter do—yer—Marster’s—work!” with a mocking whine. “But ye ain’t. Ye seek yer own chance! The Lord tied yer tongue with a purpose, an’ he wasted no brains on a critter ez he didn’t ’low ter hev gabblin’ round the throne. Ye see ter it ye say nuthin’ bout’n this, else jestice’ll take arter you-uns, too, an’ ye won’t be much abler ter talk ter the court o’ law ’n the court o’ the Lawd.” He wagged his head vehemently at the young man, while kneeling to make up anew the bundle of garments, until the scorching vapor compelled him to turn aside. When he arose, he stood erect for one doubtful instant. Then, satisfied by the reflection that for the sake of his own antagonism toward the juggler the jealous and discarded lover would do naught to frustrate the vengeance that menaced Royce, he turned suddenly, and, with the bundle swaying as before on the end of the stick, started without a word along the path by which he had come, leavingOwen Haines gazing after him till he disappeared amongst the leaves.
How long Haines sat there staring at the vanishing point of that bosky perspective he could hardly have said. When he leaped to his feet, it was with a repentant sense of the waste of time and the need of haste. His long, lank, slouching figure seemed incompatible with any but the most languid rate of progression; and indeed it was not his habit to get over the ground at the pace which he now set for himself. This was hardly slackened through the several miles he traversed until he reached the schoolhouse, which he found silent and empty. After a wild-eyed and hurried survey, he set forth anew, tired, breathless, his shoulders bent, his head thrust forward, his gait unequal; for he was not of the stalwart physique common amongst the youth of the Cove. He reached the Sims cabin, panting, anxious-eyed, and hardly remembering his grievances against Phemie when he saw her in the passage. She looked at him askance over her shoulder as she rose in silent disdain to go indoors.
“I ain’t kem hyar ter plague you-uns, Phemie,” he called out, divining her interpretation of his motive. “I want ter speak ter that thar juggler-man,”— he could not bring himself to mention the name.
She paused a moment, and he perceived in surprise that her proud and scornful face bore no tokens of happiness. Her lips had learned a patheticdroop; her eyelids were heavy, and the long lashes lifted barely to the level of her glance. The words in a low voice, “He ain’t hyar,” were as if wrung from her by the necessity of the moment, so unwilling they seemed, and she entered the house as Mrs. Sims flustered out of the opposite door.
“Laws-a-massy, Owen Haines,” she exclaimed, “ye better lef’ be that thar juggler-man, ez ye calls him! He could throw you-uns over his shoulder. Ye’ll git inter trouble, meddlin’. Phemie be plumb delighted with her ch’ice, an’ a gal hev got a right ter make a ch’ice wunst in her life, ennyhows.”
He sought now and again to stem the tide of her words, but only when a breathless wheeze silenced her he found opportunity to protest that he meant no harm to the juggler, and he held no grudge against Euphemia; that he was the bearer of intelligence important to the juggler, and she would do her guest a favor to disclose his whereabouts.
There were several added creases—they could hardly be called wrinkles—in Mrs. Sims’s face of late, and a certain fine network of lines had been drawn about her eyes. She was anxious, troubled, irritated, all at once, and entertained her own views touching the admission of the fact of the juggler’s frequent and lengthened absence from his beloved. Euphemia’s fascinations for him were evidently on the wane, and although he wasgentle and considerate and almost humble when he was at the house, he seemed listless and melancholy, and had grown silent and unobservant, and they had all marked the change.
“We-uns kin hardly git shet o’ the boy,” said Mrs. Sims easily, lying in an able-bodied fashion. “But I do b’lieve ter-day ez he hev tuk heart o’ grace an’ gone a-huntin’.”
Owen Haines’s countenance fell. Of what avail to follow at haphazard in the vastness of the mountain wilderness? There was naught for him to do but return to his work, and wait till nightfall might bring home the man he sought. Meantime, the sheriff was as near as ’Possum Cross-Roads, only twelve miles down the valley. Peter Knowles would probably give the information which he had tried to depute to the supplanted lover. Haines did not doubt now the juggler’s innocence, but he appreciated the cruel ingenuity of perverse circumstances, and he had felt the venom of malice. Thus it was that he had sought to warn the man of the discovery which Peter Knowles had made, and of the very serious construction he was disposed to place upon the facts.