"Shanghai chicken he grew so tall,In a few days—few days,Cannot hear him crow at all——"
"Shanghai chicken he grew so tall,In a few days—few days,Cannot hear him crow at all——"
Sometimes he would intersperse jocund personal remarks in his Terpsichorean commands: "Gents, forward to the centre—back—swing the lady ye love the best." Then in alternation, "Ladies, forward to the centre—back——" and as the mountain damsels teetered in expectation of the usual supplement of this mandate he called out in apparent expostulation, "Don'tswing him, Miss—he don't wuth a turn."
Suddenly the tune changed and with great gusto he chanted forth:
"When fust I did a-courtin' go,Says she 'Now,don'tbe foolish, Joe,'"
"When fust I did a-courtin' go,Says she 'Now,don'tbe foolish, Joe,'"
thetempo rubatogiving fresh impetus to the kaleidoscopic whirl of the dancers. The young men were of indomitable endurance and manifested a crude agility as they sprang about clumsily in time to the scraping of the fiddles, while their partners shuffled bouncingly or sidled mincingly according to their individual persuasion of the most apt expression of elegance. Considered from a critical point of view the dance was singularly devoid of grace—only one couple illustrating the exception to the rule. The youth it was who was obviously beautiful, of a type as old as the fabled Endymion. His long brown hair hung in heavy curls to the collar of his butternut jeans coat; his eyes were blue and large and finely set; his face was fair and bespoke none of the mid-day toil at the plow-handles that had tanned the complexion of his compeers, for Brent Kayle had little affinity for labor of any sort. He danced with a light firm step, every muscle supplely responsive to the strongly marked pulse of the music, and he had a lithe, erect carriage which imparted a certain picturesque effect to his presence, despite his much creased boots, drawn over his trousers to the knee, and his big black hat which he wore on the back of his head. The face of his partner had a more subtle appeal, and so light and willowy was her figure as she danced that it suggested a degree of slenderness that bordered on attenuation. Her unbonneted hair of a rich blonde hue had a golden lustre in the sun; her complexion was of an exquisite whiteness and with a delicate flush; the chiseling of her features was peculiarly fine, in clear, sharp lines—she was called "hatchet-faced" by her undiscriminating friends. She wore a coarse, flimsy, pink muslin dress which showed a repetitious pattern of vague green leaves, and as she flitted, lissome and swaying, through the throng, with the wind a-flutter in her full draperies, she might have suggested to a spectator the semblance of a pink flower—of the humbler varieties, perhaps, but still a wild rose is a rose.
Even the longest dance must have an end; even the stanchest mountain fiddler will reach at last his limit of endurance and must needs be refreshed and fed. There was a sudden significant flourish of frisky bowing, now up and again down, enlisting every resonant capacity of horsehair and catgut; the violins quavered to a final long-drawn scrape and silence descended. Dullness ensued; the flavor of the day seemed to pall; the dancers scattered and were presently following the crowd that began to slowly gather about the vacated stand of the musicians, from which elevation the speakers of the occasion were about to address their fellow-citizens. One of the disaffected old farmers, gruff and averse, could not refrain from administering a rebuke to Brent Kayle as crossing the expanse of sawdust on his way to join the audience he encountered the youth in company with Valeria Clee, his recent partner.
"Ai-yi, Brent," the old man said, "the last time I seen you uns I remember well ez ye war a-settin' on the mourner's bench." For there had been a great religious revival the previous year and many had been pricked in conscience. "Ye ain't so tuk up now in contemplatin' the goodness o' God an' yer sins agin same," he pursued caustically.
Brent retorted with obvious acrimony. "I don't see no 'casion ter doubt the goodness o' God—I never war so ongrateful nohow as that comes to." He resented being thus publicly reproached, as if he were individually responsible for the iniquity of the bran dance—the scape-goat for the sins of all this merry company. Many of the whilom dancers had pressed forward, crowding up behind the old mountaineer and facing the flushed Brent and the flower-like Valeria, the faint green leaves of her muslin dress fluttering about her as her skirts swayed in the wind.
"Ye ain't so powerful afeard of the devilnowez ye uster was on the mourner's bench," the old man argued.
"I never war so mighty afeard of the devil," the goaded Brent broke forth angrily, for the crowd was laughing in great relish of his predicament—they, who had shared all the enormity of "shaking a foot" on this festive day. Brent flinched from the obvious injustice of their ridicule. He felt an eager impulse for reprisal. "I know ez sech dancin' ez I hev done ain't no sin," he blustered. "I ain't afeared o' the devil fur sech ez that. I wouldn't be skeered a mite ef he war ter—ter—ter speak right out now agin it, an' I'll be bound ez all o' you uns would. I—I—look yander—look!"
He had thrown himself into a posture of amazed intentness and was pointing upward at the overhanging boughs of a tree above their heads. A squirrel was poised thereon, gazing down motionless. Then, suddenly—a frightful thing happened. The creature seemed to speak. A strange falsetto voice, such as might befit so eerie a chance, sounded on the air—loud, distinct, heard far up the slope, and electrifying the assemblage near at hand that was gathering about the stand and awaiting the political candidates.
"Quit yer foolin'—quit yer foolin'," the strange voice iterated. "I'll larn ye ter be afeared o' the devil. Long legs now is special grace."
So wild a cry broke from the startled group below the tree that the squirrel, with a sudden, alert, about-face movement, turned and swiftly ran along the bough and up the bole. It paused once and looked back to cry out again in distinct iteration, "Quit yer foolin'! Quit yer foolin'!"
But none had stayed to listen. A general frantic rout ensued. The possibility of ventriloquism was unknown to their limited experience. All had heard the voice and those who had distinguished the words and their seeming source needed no argument. In either case the result was the same. Within ten minutes the grounds of the famous barbecue and bran dance were deserted. The cumbrous wagons, all too slow, were wending with such speed as their drivers could coerce the ox-teams to make along the woodland road homeward, while happier wights on horseback galloped past, leaving clouds of dust in the rear and a grewsome premonition of being hindmost in a flight that to the simple minds of the mountaineers had a pursuer of direful reality.
The state of a candidate is rarely enviable until the event is cast and the postulant is merged into the elect, but on the day signalized by the barbecue, the bran dance, and the rout the unfortunate aspirants for public favor felt that they had experienced the extremest spite of fate; for although they realized in their superior education and sophistication that the panic-stricken rural crowd had been tricked by some clever ventriloquist, the political orators were left with only the winds and waters and wilderness on which to waste their eloquence, and the wisdom of their exclusive method of saving the country.
Brent Kayle's talent for eluding the common doom of man to eat his bread in the sweat of his face was peculiarly marked. He was the eldest of seven sons, ranging in age from eleven to twenty years, including one pair of twins. The parents had been greatly pitied for the exorbitant exactions of rearing this large family during its immaturity, but now, the labor of farm, barnyard and woodpile, distributed among so many stalwart fellows of the same home and interest was light and the result ample. Perhaps none of them realized how little of this abundance was compassed by Brent's exertions—how many days he spent dawdling on the river bank idly experimenting with the echoes—how often, even when he affected to work, he left the plow in the furrow while he followed till sunset the flight of successive birds through the adjacent pastures, imitating as he went the fresh mid-air cry, whistling in so vibrant a bird-voice, so signally clear and dulcet, yet so keen despite its sweetness, that his brothers at the plow-handles sought in vain to distinguish between the calls of the earthling and the winged voyager of the empyreal air. None of them had ever heard of ventriloquism, so limited had been their education and experience, so sequestered was their home amidst the wilderness of the mountains. Only very gradually to Brent himself came the consciousness of his unique gift, as from imitation he progressed to causing a silent bird to seem to sing. The strangeness of the experience frightened him at first, but with each experiment he had grown more confident, more skilled, until at length he found that he could throw a singularly articulate voice into the jaws of the old plow-horse, while his brothers, accustomed to his queer vocal tricks, were convulsed with laughter at the bizarre quadrupedal views of life thus elicited. This development of proficiency, however, was recent, and until the incident at the bran dance it had not been exercised beyond the limits of their secluded home. It had revealed new possibilities to the young ventriloquist and he looked at once agitated, excited, and triumphant when late that afternoon he appeared suddenly at the rail fence about the door-yard of Valeria Clee's home on one of the spurs of Chilhowee Mountain.
It was no such home as his—lacking all the evidence of rude comfort and coarse plenty that reigned there—and in its tumble-down disrepair it had an aspect of dispirited helplessness. Here Valeria, an orphan from her infancy, dwelt with her father's parents, who always of small means had become yearly a more precarious support. The ancient grandmother was sunken in many infirmities, and the household tasks had all fallen to the lot of Valeria. Latterly a stroke of paralysis had given old man Clee an awful annotation on the chapter of age and poverty upon which he was entering, and his little farm was fast growing up in brambles.
"But 't ain't no differ, gran'dad," Valeria often sought to reassure him. "I'llwork some way out."
And when he would irritably flout the possibility that she could do aught to materially avert disaster she was wont to protest: "You jes' watchme.I'llfind out some way. I be ez knowin' ez any oldowel."
Despite her slender physique and her recurrent heavy tasks the drear doom of poverty with its multiform menace had cast no shadow on her ethereal face, and her pensive dark gray eyes were full of serene light as she met the visitor at the bars. A glimmer of mirth began to scintillate beneath her long brown lashes, and she spoke first. "The folks in the mountings air mighty nigh skeered out'n thar boots by yer foolishness, Brent"—she sought to conserve a mien of reproof. "They 'low ez it war a manifestation of the Evil One."
Brent laughed delightedly. "Warn't it prime?" he said. "But I never expected ter work sech a scatteration of the crowd. Thar skeer plumb tarrifiedme. I jes' set out with the nimblest, an' run from the devil myself."
"Won't them candidates fur office be mighty mad if they find out what it war sure enough?" she queried anxiously. "They gin the crowd a barbecue an' bran dance, an' arter all, the folks got quit of hevin' ter hear them speak an' jaw about thar old politics an' sech."
"Them candidates air hoppin' mad fur true," he admitted. "I been down yander at Gilfillan's store in the Cove an' I hearn the loafers thar talkin' powerful 'bout the strange happening. An' them candidates war thar gittin' ready ter start out fur town in thar buggy. An' that thar gay one—though now he seems ez sober ez that sour one—he said 't warn't no devil. 'Twar jes' a ventriloquisk from somewhar—that's jes' what that town man called it. ButInever said nuthin'. I kep' powerful quiet."
Brent Kayle was as vain a man as ever stood in shoe leather—even in the midst of his absorption in his disclosure he could not refrain from a pause to reflect on the signal success of his prank and laugh and plume himself.
"But old Gilfillan he loves ter believe ez the devil air hotfoot arter other folks with a pitchfork, an' he axed how then did sech a man happen ter be in the mountings 'thout none knowin' of it. An' that candidate, the gay one, he say he reckon the feller kem from that circus what is goin' ter show in Shaftesville ter-morrer—mebbe he hearn 'bout the bran dance an' wanted ter hev some fun out'n the country folks. That candidate say he hed hearn dozens o' ventriloquisks in shows in the big towns—though this war about the bes' one he could remember. He said he hed no doubt this feller is paid good money in the show, fur jes' sech fool tricks with his voice—good money!"
Valeria had listened in motionless amazement. But he had now paused, almost choking with his rush of emotion, his excitement, his sense of triumph, and straight ensued a certain reluctance, a dull negation, a prophetic recoil from responsibility that clogged his resolve. His eyes roved uncertainly about the familiar domestic scene, darkening now, duskily purple beneath the luminous pearly and roseate tints of the twilight sky. The old woman was a-drowse on the porch of the rickety little log-cabin beneath the gourd vines, the paralytic grandfather came hirpling unsteadily through the doorway on his supporting crutch, his pipe shaking in his shaking hand, while he muttered and mumbled to himself—who knows what?—whether of terror of the future, or regret for the past, or doubt and despair of to-day. The place was obviously so meagre, so poverty-bitten, so eloquent of the hard struggle for mere existence. If it had been necessary for Brent Kayle to put his hand to the plow in its behalf the words would never have been spoken—but "good money" for this idle trade, these facile pranks!
"Vallie," he said impulsively, "I'm going ter try it—ef ye'll go with me. Ef ye war along I'd feel heartened ter stand up an' face the crowd in a strange place. I always loved ye better than any of the other gals—shucks!—whenstyewar about I never knowed ez they war alive."
Perhaps it was the after-glow of the sunset in the sky, but a crimson flush sprang into her delicate cheek; her eyes were evasive, quickly glancing here and there with an affectation of indifference, and she had no mind to talk of love, she declared.
But she should think of her gran'dad and gran'mam, he persisted. How had she the heart to deprive them of his willing aid? He declared he had intended to ask her to marry him anyhow, for she had always seemed to like him—she could not deny this—but now was the auspicious time—to-morrow—while the circus was in Shaftesville, and "good money" was to be had to provide for the wants of her old grandparents.
Though Valeria had flouted the talk of love she seemed his partisan when she confided the matter to the two old people and their consent was accorded rather for her sake than their own. They felt a revivifying impetus in the thought that after their death Valeria would have a good husband to care for her, for to them the chief grief of their loosening hold on life was her inheritance of their helplessness and poverty.
The courthouse in Shaftesville seemed a very imposing edifice to people unaccustomed to the giddy heights of a second story. When the two staring young rustics left the desk of the county court clerk and repaired to the dwelling of the minister of the Methodist Church near by, with the marriage license just procured safely stowed away in Brent's capacious hat, their anxieties were roused for a moment lest some delay ensue, as they discovered that the minister was on the point of sitting down to his dinner. He courteously deferred the meal, however, and as the bride apologetically remarked after the ceremony that they might have awaited his convenience were it not for the circus, he imagined that the youthful couple had designed to utilize a round of the menagerie as a wedding tour. The same thought was in the minds of the metropolitan managers of the organization when presently the two young wildings from the mountain fastness were ushered into their presence, having secured an audience by dint of extreme persistence, aided by a mien of mysterious importance.
They found two men standing just within the great empty tent, for the crowd had not as yet begun to gather. The most authoritative, who was tall and portly, had the manner of swiftly disposing of the incident by asking in a peremptory voice what he could do for them. The other, lean and languid, looked up from a newspaper, in which he had been scanning a flaming circus advertisement, as he stood smoking a cigar. He said nothing, but concentrated an intent speculative gaze on the face of Valeria, who had pulled off her faint green sun-bonnet and in a flush of eager hopefulness fanned with the slats.
"Ventriloquist?" the portly man repeated with a note of surprise, as Brent made known his gifts and his desire for an engagement. "Oh, well—ventriloquism is a chestnut."
Then with a qualm of pity, perhaps, for the blank despair that settled down on the two young faces he explained: "Nothing goes in the circus business but novelty. The public is tired out with ventriloquism. No mystery about it now—kind of thing, too, that a clever amateur can compass."
Brent, hurled from the giddy heights of imminent achievement to the depths of nullity, could not at once relinquish the glowing prospects that had allured him. He offered to give a sample of his powers. He would like to bark a few, he said; you couldn't tell him from a sure enough dog; he could imitate the different breeds—hound-dog, bull-pup, terrier—but the manager was definitely shaking his head.
Suddenly his partner spoke. "The girl might take a turn!"
"In the show?" the portly man said in surprise.
"The Company's Una weighs two hundred pounds and has a face as broad as a barn-door. She shows she is afraid of the lion when she stands beside him in the street parade, and—curse him—he is so clever that he knows it, no matter how he is doped. It incites him to growl at her all through the pageant, and that simply queers the sweet peace of the idea."
"And you think this untrained girl could take her place?"
"Why not? She couldn't do worse—and shecouldlook the part. See," he continued, in as business-like way as if Valeria were merely a bale of goods or deaf, "ethereal figure, poetic type of beauty, fine expression of candor and serene courage. She has a look of open-eyed innocence—I don't meanignorance." He made a subtle distinction in the untutored aspect of the two countenances before him.
"Would you be afraid of the lion, child?" the stout man asked Valeria. "He is chained—and drugged, too—in the pageant."
It was difficult for the astonished Valeria to find her voice. "A lion?" she murmured. "I never seen a lion."
"No? Honest?" they both cried in amazement that such a thing could be. The portly man's rollicking laughter rang out through the thin walls of canvas to such effect that some savage caged beast within reach of the elastic buoyant sound was roused to anger and supplemented it with a rancorous snarl.
Valeria listened apprehensively, with dilated eyes. She thought of the lion, the ferocious creature that she had never seen. She thought of the massive strong woman who knew and feared him. Then she remembered the desolate old grandparents and their hopeless, helpless poverty. "I'll resk the lion," she said with a tremulous bated voice.
"That's a brave girl," cried the manager.
"I hev read 'bout Daniel's lions an' him in the den," she explained. "An' Daniel hed consid'ble trust an' warn't afeard—an' mebbe I won't be afeard nuther."
"Daniel's Lions? Daniel's Lions?" the portly manager repeated attentively. "I don't know the show—perhaps in some combination now." For if he had ever heard of that signal leonine incident recorded in Scripture he had forgotten it. "Yes, yes," as Valeria eagerly appealed to him in behalf of Brent, "we must try to give Hubby some little stunt to do in the performance—butyouare the ticket—a sure winner."
Of course the public knew, if it chose to reflect, that though apparently free the lion was muzzled with a strong steel ring, and every ponderous paw was chained down securely to the exhibition car; it may even have suspected that the savage proclivities of the great beast were dulled by drugs. But there is always the imminent chance of some failure of precaution, and the multitude must needs thrill to the spectacle of intrepidity and danger. Naught could exceed the enthusiasm that greeted this slim, graceful Una a few days later in the streets of a distant city, as clad in long draperies of fleecy white she reclined against a splendid leonine specimen, her shining golden hair hanging on her shoulders, or mingling with his tawny mane as now and again she let her soft cheek rest on his head, her luminous dark gray eyes smiling down at the cheering crowds. This speedily became the favorite feature of the pageant, and the billboards flamed with her portrait, leaning against the lion, hundreds of miles in advance of her triumphal progress.
All this unexpected success presently awoke Brent's emulation—so far he had not even "barked a few." A liberal advance on his wife's salary had quieted him for a time, but when the wonders of this new life began to grow stale—the steam-cars, the great cities, the vast country the Company traversed—he became importunate for the opportunity of display. He "barked a few" so cleverly at a concert after the performance one evening that the manager gave him a chance to throw the very considerable volume of sound he could command into the jaws of one of the lions. "Let Emperor speak to the people," he said. Forthwith he wrote a bit of rodomontade which he bade Brent memorize and had the satisfaction soon to hear from the lion-trainer, to whom was intrusted all that pertained to the exhibition of these kings of beasts, that the rehearsal was altogether satisfactory.
An immense audience was assembled in the great tent. The soaring dome of white canvas reflected the electric light with a moony lustre. The display of the three rings was in full swing. That magic atmosphere of the circus, the sense of simple festivity, the crises of thrilling expectancy, the revelation of successive wonders, the diffusive delight of a multitude not difficult to entertain—all were in evidence. Suddenly a ponderous cage was rolled in; the band was playing liltingly; the largest of the lions within the bars, a tawny monster, roused up and with head depressed and switching tail paced back and forth within the restricted limits of the cage, while the others looked out with motionless curiosity at the tiers of people. Presently with a long supple stride the gigantic, blond Norwegian trainer came lightly across the arena—a Hercules, with broad bare chest and arms, arrayed in spangled blue satin and white tights that forbade all suspicion of protective armor. At a single bound he sprang into the cage, while Brent, garbed in carnation and white, stood unheralded and unremarked close by outside among the armed attendants. There seemed no need of precaution, however, so lightly the trainer frolicked with the savage creatures. He performed wonderful acrobatic feats with them in which one hardly knew which most to admire, the agility and intrepidity of the man or the supple strength and curious intelligence of the beasts. He wrestled with them; he leaped and rolled among them; he put his head into their terrible full-fanged jaws—but before springing forth he fired his pistols loaded with blank cartridges full in their faces; for the instant the coercion of his eye was pretermitted every one treacherously bounded toward him, seeking to seize him before he could reach the door. Then Emperor, as was his wont, flung himself in baffled fury against the bars and stood erect and shook them in his wrath.
All at once, to the astonishment of the people, he spoke, voicing a plaintive panegyric on liberty and protesting his willingness to barter all the luxury of his captivity for one free hour on the desert sands.
Surprise, absolute, unqualified, reigned for one moment. But a circus-going crowd is uncannily quick. The audience perceived a certain involuntary element of the entertainment. A storm of cat-calls ensued, hisses, roars of laughter. For the place was the city of Glaston, the Company being once more in East Tennessee, and the lion spoke the old familiar mountain dialect so easily recognizable in this locality. Even alapsus linguae, "you uns," was unmistakable amidst the high-flown periods. Although the ventriloquism was appreciated, the incongruity of this countrified jargon, held in great contempt by the townfolks, discounted Emperor's majesty and he was in ludicrous eclipse.
Behind the screening canvas the portly manager raged; "How dare you make that fine lion talk like a 'hill-Billy' such as yourself—as if he were fresh caught in the Great Smoky Mountains!" he stormed at the indignant ventriloquist. The other partners in the management interfered in Brent's behalf; they feared that the proud mountaineer, resenting the contemptuous designation "hill-Billy" might withdraw from the Company, taking his wife with him, and the loss of Valeria from the pageant would be well nigh irreparable, for her ethereal and fragile beauty as Una with her lion had a perennial charm for the public. The management therefore assumed the responsibility for the linguistic disaster, having confided the rehearsal to a foreigner, for the Norwegian lion-trainer naively explained that to him it seemed that all Americans talked alike.
A course in elocution was recommended to Brent by the managers, and he fell in with this plan delightedly, but after two or three elementary bouts with the vowel sounds, long and short, consonants, sonant and surd, he concluded that mere articulation could be made as laborious as sawing wood, and he discovered that it was incompatible with his dignity to be a pupil in an art in which he had professed proficiency. Thereafter his accomplishment rusted—to the relief of the management—although he required that Valeria should be described in the advertisements as the wife of "thecelebrated ventriloquist, Mr. Brent Kayle," thus seeking by faked notoriety to secure the sweets of fame, without the labor of achievement.
Valeria had welcomed the pacific settlement of the difficulty, because her "good money" earned in the show so brightened and beautified the evening of life for the venerable grandparents at home. For their sake she had conquered her dread of the lion in the pageant. Indeed she had found other lions in her path that she feared more—the glitter and gauds of her tinsel world, the enervating love of ease, the influence of sordid surroundings and ignoble ideals. But not one could withstand the simple goodness of the unsophisticated girl. They retreated before the power of her fireside traditions of right thinking and true living which she had learned in her humble mountain home.
It had come to be a dwelling of comfortable aspect, cared for in the absence of the young couple by a thrifty hired housekeeper, a widowed cousin, and here they spent the off-seasons when the circus company went into winter quarters. Repairs had been instituted, several rooms were added, and a wide veranda replaced the rickety little porch and gave upon a noble prospect of mountain and valley and river. Here on sunshiny noons in the good Saint Martin's summer the old gran'dad loved to sit, blithe and hearty, chirping away the soft unseasonable December days. Sometimes in the plenitude of content he would give Valeria a meaning glance and mutter "Oh, leetleOwel! Oh, leetleOwel!" and then break into laughter that must needs pause to let him wipe his eyes.
"Yes, Vallie 'pears ter hev right good sense an' makes out toler'ble well, considerin'," her husband would affably remark, "though of course it warmeez interduced her ter the managers, an' she gits her main chance in the show through my bein' a celebrated ventriloquisk."
Night came early. It might well seem that day had fled affrighted. The heavy masses of clouds, glooming low, which had gathered thicker and thicker, as if crowding to witness the catastrophe, had finally shaken asunder in the concussions of the air at the discharges of artillery, and now the direful rain, always sequence of the shock of battle, was steadily falling, falling, on the stricken field. Many a soldier who might have survived his wounds would succumb to exposure to the elements during the night, debarred the tardy succor that must needs await his turn. One of the surgeons at their hasty work at the field hospital, under the shelter of the cliffs on the slope, paused to note the presage of doom and death, and to draw a long breath before he adjusted himself anew to the grim duties of the scalpel in his hand. His face was set and haggard, less with a realization of the significance of the scene—for he was used to its recurrence—than simply with a physical reflection of horror, as if it were glassed in a mirror. A phenomenon that had earlier caught his attention in the landscape appealed again to his notice, perhaps because the symptom was not in his line.
"Looks like a case of dementia," he observed to the senior surgeon, standing near at hand.
The superior officer adjusted his field-glass. "Looks like 'Death on the White Horse'!" he responded.
Down the highway, at a slow pace, rode a cavalryman wearing a gray uniform, with a sergeant's chevrons, and mounted on a steed good in his day, but whose day was gone. A great clot of blood had gathered on his broad white chest, where a bayonet had thrust him deep. Despite his exhaustion, he moved forward at the urgency of his rider's heel and hand. The soldier held a long, heavy staff planted on one stirrup, from the top of which drooped in the dull air the once gay guidon, battle-rent and sodden with rain, and as he went he shouted at intervals, "Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the guidon!" Now and again his strident boyish voice varied the appeal, "Hyar's yer Dovinger's Rangers! Rally, boys! Rally on the reserve!"
Indeed, despite his stalwart, tall, broad-shouldered frame, he was scarcely more than a boy. His bare head had flaxen curls like a child's; his pallid, though sunburned face was broad and soft and beardless; his large blue eyes were languid and spiritless, though now and then as he turned an intent gaze over the field they flared anew with hope, as if he expected to see rise up from that desolate expanse, from among the stiffening carcasses of horses and the stark corpses of the troopers, that gallant squadron wont to follow, so dashing and debonair, wherever the guidons might mark the way. But there was naught astir save the darkness slipping down by slow degrees—and perchance under its cloak, already stealthily afoot, the ghoulish robbers of the dead that haunt the track of battle. They were the human forerunners of the vulture breed, with even a keener scent for prey, for as yet the feathered carrion-seekers held aloof; two or three only were descried from the field hospital, perched on the boughs of a dead tree near the river, presently joined by another, its splendid sustained flight impeded somewhat by the rain, battling with its big, strong wings against the downpour of the torrents and the heavy air.
And still through all echoed the cry, "Rally on the guidon! Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the reserve!"
The bridge that crossed the river, which was running full and foaming, had been burnt; but a span, charred and broken, still swung from the central pier. Over toward the dun-tinted west a house was blazing, fired by some stray bomb, perhaps, or by official design, to hinder the enemy from utilizing the shelter, and its red rage of destruction bepainted the clouds that hung so low above the chimneys and dormer-windows. To the east, the woods on the steeps had been shelled, and a myriad boughs and boles riven and rent, lay in fantastic confusion. Through the mournful chaos the wind had begun to sweep; it sounded in unison with the battle clamors, and shrieked and wailed and roared as it surged adown the defiles. Now and then there came on the blast the fusillade of dropping shots from the south, where the skirmish line of one faction engaged the rear-guard of the other, or the pickets fell within rifle-range. Once the sullen, melancholy boom of distant cannon shook the clouds, and then was still, and ever and again sounded that tireless cry, "Dovinger's Rangers. Hyar's yer guidon! Rally, boys! Rally on the guidon! Rally on the reserve!"
The senior surgeon, as the road wound near, stepped down toward it when the horseman, still holding himself proudly erect, passed by. "Sergeant," he hailed the guidon, "where is Captain Dovinger?"
The hand mechanically went to the boy's forehead in the usual military salute. "Killed, sir."
"Where are the other officers of the squadron—the junior captain, the lieutenants?"
"Killed, sir."
"What has become of the troopers?"
"Killed, sir, in the last charge."
There was a pause. Then Dr. Trent broke forth: "Are you a fool, boy? If your command is annihilated, why do you keep up this commotion?"
The young fellow looked blank for a moment. Then, as if he had not reasoned on the catastrophe: "I thought at first they mought be scattered—some of 'em. But ef—ef—theywardead, but could onceseethe guidon, sure 't would call 'em to life. Theycouldn'tbe so dead but they would rally to the guidon! Guide right!" he shouted suddenly. "Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the guidon, boys! Rally on the reserve!"
It was a time that hardened men's hearts. The young soldier had no physical hurt that might appeal to the professional sympathies of the senior surgeon, and he turned away with a half laugh. "Let him go along! He can't rally Dovinger's Rangers this side of the river Styx, it seems."
But an old chaplain who had been hovering about the field hospital, whispering a word here and there to stimulate the fortitude of the wounded and solace the fears of the dying, recognized moral symptoms alien to any diagnosis of which the senior surgeon was capable. The latter did not deplore the diversion of interest, for the old man's presence was not highly esteemed by the hospital corps at this scene of hasty and terrible work, although, having taken a course in medicine in early life, he was permitted to aid in certain ways. But the surgeons were wont to declare that the men began to bleat at the very sight of the chaplain. So gentle, so sympathetic, so paternal, was he that they made the more of their wretched woes, seeing them so deeply deplored. The senior surgeon, moreover, was not an ardent religionist. "This is no time for a revival, Mr. Whitmel," he would insist. "Jack, there, never spoke the name of God in his life, except to swear by it. He is too late for prayers, and ifIcan't pull him through, he is a goner!"
But the chaplain was fond of quoting:
"Between the stirrup and the groundHe mercy sought and mercy found——"
"Between the stirrup and the groundHe mercy sought and mercy found——"
and sometimes the scene was irreverently called a "love feast" when some hard-riding, hard-swearing, hard-fighting, unthinking sinner went joyfully out of this world from the fatherly arms of the chaplain into the paternal embrace of an eternal and merciful Father, as the man of God firmly believed.
He stood now, staring after the guidon borne through the rain and the mist, flaunting red as the last leaves of autumn against the dun-tinted dusk, that the dead might view the gallant and honored pennant and rise again to its leading!
No one followed but the tall, thin figure of the gaunt old chaplain, unless indeed the trooping shadows that kept him company had mysteriously roused at the stirring summons. Lanterns were now visible, dimly flickering in one quarter where the fighting had been furious and the slain lay six deep on the ground. Their aspirations, their valor, their patriotism, had all exhaled—volatile essences, these incomparable values!—and now their bodies, weighted with death, cumbered the earth. They must be hurried out of sight, out of remembrance soon, and the burial parties were urged to diligence at the trenches where these cast-off semblances were to lie undistinguished together. And still the reflection of the burning house reddened the gloomy west, and still the cry, "Rally on the guidon! Dovinger's Rangers!" smote the thick air.
Suddenly it was silent. The white horse that had been visible in the flare from the flaming house, now and again flung athwart the landscape, no longer loomed in the vista of the shadowy road. He had given way at last, sinking down with that martial figure still in the saddle, and, with no struggle save a mere galvanic shiver, passing away from the scene of his faithful devoirs.
Fatigue, agitation, anguish, his agonized obsession of the possibility of rallying the squadron, had served to prostrate the soldier's physical powers of resistance. He could not constrain his muscles to rise from the recumbent position against the carcass. He started up, then sank back, and in another moment triumphant nature conquered, and he was asleep—a dull, dreamless sleep of absolute exhaustion, that perchance rescued his reason as well as saved his life.
The old chaplain was a man of infinite prejudice, steeped in all the infirmities and fantasies of dogma; a lover of harmony, and essentially an apostle of peace. Nevertheless, it would not have been physically safe to call him a Jesuit. But indeed he scarcely hesitated; he stepped over the great inert bulk of the dead horse, unclenched the muscular grasp of the soldier, as if it had been a baby's clasp, slipped the staff, technically the lance, of the guidon from its socket, and stood with it in his own hand, looking suspiciously to and fro to descry if perchance he were observed. The coast clear, he turned to the wall of rock beside the road, for this was near the mountain sandstone formation, fissured, splintered, with the erosions of water and weather; and into one of the cellular, tunnel-like apertures he ran the guidon, lance and all,—lost forever from human sight.
In those days one might speak indeed of the march of events. Each seemed hard on the heels of its precursor. Change ran riot in the ordering of the world, and its aspect was utterly transformed when Casper Girard, no longer bearing the guidon of Dovinger's Rangers, came out of the war with a captain's shoulder-straps, won by personal fitness often proved, the habit of command, and a great and growing opinion of himself. He was a changeling, so to speak. No longer he felt a native of the mountain cove where he had been born and reared. He had had a glimpse of the world from a different standpoint, and it lured him. A dreary, disaffected life he led for a time.
"'Minds me of a wild tur-r-key in a trap," his mother was wont to comment. "Always stretchin' his neck an' lookin' up an' away—when he mought git out by lookin' down." And the simile was so apt that it stayed in his mind—looking up and away!
Of all dull inventions, in his estimation the art of printing exceeded. He had made but indifferent progress in education during his early youth; he was a slow and inexpert reader, and a writer whose chirography shrank from exhibition. Now, however, a book in the hand gave him a cherished sentiment of touch with the larger world beyond those blue ranges that limited his sphere, and he spent much time in sedulously reading certain volumes which he had brought home with him.
"Spentmoneyfur 'em!" his mother would ejaculate, contemplating this extreme audacity of extravagance.
As she often observed, "the plough-handles seemed red-hot," and as soon as political conditions favored he ran for office. On the strength of his war record, a potent lever in those days, he was elected register of the county. True, there was only a population of about fifty souls in the county town, and the houses were log-cabins, except the temple of justice itself, which was a two-story frame building. But his success was a step on the road to political preferment, and his ambitious eyes were on the future. Into the midst of his quiet incumbency as register came Fate, all intrusive, and found him through the infrequent medium of a weekly mail. It was at the beginning of the retrospective enthusiasm that has served to revive the memories of the War, and he received a letter from an old comrade-in-arms, giving the details of a brigade reunion shortly to be held at no great distance, and, being of the committee, inviting him to be present.
Girard had participated in great military crises; he had marshalled his troop in line of battle; as a mere boy, he had ridden with the guidon lance planted on his stirrup, with the pennant flying above his head, as the marker to lead the fierce and famous Dovinger Rangers into the thickest of the fight; yet he had never felt such palpitant tremors of excitement as when he stood on the hotel piazza of the New Helvetia Springs, where the banqueters had gathered, and suffered the ordeal of introduction to sundry groups of fashionable ladies. He had earlier seen specimens of the species in the course of military transitions through the cities of the low-lands, and he watched them narrowly to detect if they discerned perchance a difference between him and the men of education and social station with whom his advancement in the army had associated him. He did not reflect that they were too well-bred to reveal any appreciation of such incongruity, but he had never experienced a more ardent glow of gratification than upon overhearing a friend's remark: "Girard is great! Anybody would imagine he was used to all this!"
No strategist was ever more wary. He would not undertake to dance, for he readily perceived that the gyrations in the ball-room were utterly dissimilar to the clumsy capering to which he had been accustomed on the puncheon floor of a mountain cabin. He had the less reason for regret since he was privileged instead to stroll up and down the veranda,—"promenade" was the technical term,—a slender hand, delicately gloved, on the sleeve of his gray uniform, the old regimentals beingde rigueurat these reunions. A white ball-gown, such as he had never before seen, fashioned of tissue over lustrous white silk, swayed in diaphanous folds against him, for these were the days of voluminous draperies; a head of auburn hair elaborately dressed gleamed in the moonlight near his shoulder. Miss Alicia Duval thought him tremendously handsome; she adored his record, as she would have said—unaware how little of it she knew—and she did not so much intend to flirt as to draw him out, for there was something about him different from the men of her set, and it stimulated her interest.
"Isn't the moon heavenly?" she observed, gazing at the brilliant orb, now near the full, swinging in the sky, which became a definite blue in its light above the massive dark mountains and the misty valley below; for the building was as near the brink as safety permitted—nearer, the cautious opined.
"Heavenly? Not more'n it's got a right to be. It's a heavenly body, ain't it?" he rejoined.
"Oh, how sarcastic!" she exclaimed. "In what school did you acquire your trenchant style?"
He thought of the tiny district school where he had acquired the very little he knew of aught, and said nothing, laughing constrainedly in lieu of response.
The music of the orchestra came to them from the ball-room, and the rhythmic beat of dancing feet; the wind lifted her hair gently and brought to them the fragrance of flowering plants and the pungent aroma of mint down in the depths of the ravine hard by, where lurked a chalybeate spring; but for the noisy rout of the dance, and now and again the flimsy chatter of a passing couple on the piazza, promenading like themselves, they might have heard the waters of the fountain rise and bubble and break and sigh as the pulsating impulse beat like heart-throbs, and perchance on its rocky marge an oread a-singing.
"But you don't answer me," she pouted with an affectation of pettishness. "Do you know that you trouble yourself to talk very little, Captain Girard?"
"I think the more," he declared.
"Think? Oh, dear me! I didn't know that anybody does anything so unfashionable nowadays as tothink! And what do you think about, pray?"
"About you!"
And that began it: he was a gallant man, and he had been a brave one. He was not aware how far he was going on so short an acquaintance, but his temerity was not displeasing to the lady. She liked his manner of storming the citadel, and she did not realize that he merely spoke at random, as best he might. He was in his uniform a splendid and martial presentment of military youth, and indeed he was much the junior of his compeers.
"Who are Captain Girard's people, Papa?" she asked Colonel Duval next morning, as the family party sat at breakfast in quasi seclusion at one of the small round tables in the crowded dining-room, full of the chatter of people and the clatter of dishes.
"Girard?" Colonel Duval repeated thoughtfully. "I really don't know. I have an impression they live somewhere in East Tennessee. I never met him till just about the end of the war."
"Oh, Papa! How unsatisfactory you are! You never know anything about anybody."
"I should think his people must be very plain," said Mrs. Duval. Her social discrimination was extremely acute and in constant practice.
"I don't know why. He is very much of a gentleman," the Colonel contended. His heart was warm to-day with much fraternizing, and it was not kind to brush the bloom off his peach.
"Oh, trifles suggest the fact. He is not at allau fait."
He was, however, experienced in ways of the world unimagined in her philosophy. The reunion had drawn to a close, ending in a flare of jollity and tender reminiscence and good-fellowship. The old soldiers were all gone save a few regular patrons of the hotel, who with their families were completing their summer sojourn. Captain Girard lingered, too, fascinated by this glimpse of the frivolous world, hitherto unimagined, rather than by the incense to his vanity offered by his facile acceptance as a squire of dames. For the first time in his life he felt the grinding lack of money. Being a man of resource, he set about swiftly supplying this need. In the dull days of inaction, when the armies lay supine and only occasionally the monotony was broken by the engagement of distant skirmishers or a picket line was driven in on the main body, he had learned to play a game at cards much in vogue at that period, though for no greater hazards than grains of corn or Confederate money, almost as worthless. In the realization now that the same principles held good with stakes of value, he seemed to enter upon the possession of a veritable gold mine. The peculiar traits that his one unique experience of the world had developed—his coolness, his courage, his discernment of strategic resources—stood him in good stead, and long after the microcosm of the hotel lay fast asleep the cards were dealt and play ran high in the little building called the casino, ostensibly devoted to the milder delights of billiards and cigars.
Either luck favored him or he had rare discrimination of relative chances in the run of the cards, or the phenomenally bold hand he played disconcerted his adversaries, but his almost invariable winning began to affect injuriously his character. Indeed, he was said to be a rook of unrivalled rapacity. Colonel Duval was in the frame of mind that his wife called "bearish" one morning as his family gathered for breakfast in the limited privacy of their circle about the round table in the dining-room.
"I want you to avoid that fellow, Alicia," he growledsotto voce, as he intercepted a bright matutinal smile that the fair Alicia sent as a morning greeting to Girard, who had just entered and taken his seat at a distance. "We know nothing under heaven about his people, and he himself has the repute of being a desperate gambler."
His wife raised significant eyebrows. "If that is true, why should he stay in this quiet place?"
Colonel Duval experienced a momentary embarrassment. "Oh, the place is right enough. He stays, no doubt, because he likes it. You might as well ask why old Mr. Whitmel stays here."
"The idea of mentioning a clergyman in this connection!"
"Mr. Whitmel is professionally busy," cried Alicia. "He told me that he is studying 'the disintegration of a soul.' I hope it is notmysoul."
The phrase probably interested Alicia in her idleness, for she was certainly actuated by no view of a moral uplift in the character of Girard, the handsome gambler. She did not recognize a subtle cruelty in her system of universal fascination, but her vanity demanded constant tribute, and she was peculiarly absorbed in the effort to bring to her feet this man of iron, her knight in armor, as she was wont to call him, to control him with her influence, to bend this unmalleable material like the proverbial wax in her hands.
She had great faith in the coercive power of her hazel eyes, and she brought their batteries to bear on Girard on the first occasion when she had him at her mercy.
"I have heard something about you which is very painful," she said one day as they sat together beside the chalybeate spring. The crag, all discolored in rust-red streaks by the dripping of the mineral water through its interstices, towered above their heads; the ferns, exquisite and of subtle fragrance, tufted the niches; the trees were close about them, and below, on the precipitous slope; sometimes the lush green boughs parted, revealing a distant landscape of azure ranges, far stretching against a sky as blue, and in the valley of the foreground long bars of golden hue, where fields, denuded of the harvested wheat, took the sun. Girard lounged, languid, taciturn, and quiescent as ever, on the opposite side of the circular rock basin wherein the clear water fell.
"I will tell you what it is," Alicia went on, after a pause, for, though he looked attentive, he gave not even a glance of question. "I hear that you gamble."
His gaze concentrated as he knitted his brows, but he said nothing.
She pulled her broad straw hat forward on her auburn hair and readjusted the flounces of her white morning dress, saying while thus engaged, "Yes, indeed; that you gamble—like—like fury!"
"Why, don't you know that's against the law?" he demanded unexpectedly.
"I know that it is very wrong and sinful," she said solemnly.
"Thanky. I'll put that in my pipe an' smoke it! I'm very wrong and sinful, I am given to understand."
"Why, I didn't meanyouso much," she faltered, perturbed by this sudden charge of the enemy. "I meant the practice."
"Oh, I know that I'm a sinner in more ways 'n one; but Ididn'tknow that you were a lady-preacher."
"You mean that it is none of my business——"
"You ought to be so glad of that," he retorted.
She maintained a silence that might have suggested a degree of offended pride, and she was truly humiliated that her vaunted hazel eyes had so signally failed to work their wonted charm. As they strolled back together up the steep path to the hotel he seemed either unobservant or uncaring, so impassive were his manners, and she was aware that her demonstration had resulted in giving him information which he could not otherwise have gained. Later, she was nettled to notice that he had utilized it in prosaic fashion, for that night no lights flared late from the casino.
The gamesters, informed that rumors were a-wing, had betaken themselves elsewhere. A small smoking-room in the hotel proper seemed less obnoxious to suspicion in the depleted condition of the guest-list, since autumn was now approaching. After eleven o'clock the coterie would scarcely be subject to interruption, and there they gathered as the hour waxed late. The cards were duly dealt, the draw was on, when suddenly the door opened and old Mr. Whitmel, his favorite meerschaum in his hand and a sheaf of newly arrived journals, entered with the evident intention of a prolonged stay. A "standpatter" seemed hardly so assured as before he encountered the dim, surprised gaze, but the old clergyman was esteemed a good sort, and he ventured on a reminder:
"You have been here before, haven't you, Mr. Whitmel? Saw a deal of this sort of thing in the army!" And he rattled the chips significantly.
"Used to see that sort of thing in the army? Yes, yes, indeed—more than I wanted to see—very much more!"
Colonel Duval took schooling much amiss. He turned up his florid face with its auburn mustachios and Burnside whiskers from its bending over the cards and showed a broad arch of glittering white teeth in an ungenial laugh.
"Remember, Mr. Whitmel, at that fight we had in the hills not far from the Ocoee, how you rebuked two artillerymen for swearing? Something was wrong with the vent-hole of the piece, and one of the gunners asked what business you had with their language; and you said, 'I am a minister of the Lord,' and the fellow gave it back very patly, 'I ain't carin' ef you was a minister of state!' Then you said, 'No, you would doubtless swear in the presence of an angel.' And the fellow with the sponge-staff declared, 'Say, Mister, ef you arethat, you are an angel off your feed certain'—you were worn to skin and bone then—'an' the rations of manna must be ez skimpy in heaven ez the rations o' bacon down here in Dixie.' Ha, ha, ha!"
Mr. Whitmel had taken a seat in an easy-chair; he had struck a match and was composedly kindling his pipe. "I felt nearer a higher communion that day than often since," he said.
The coterie of gentlemen looked at one another in disconsolate uncertainty, and one turned his cards face downward and laid them resignedly on the table. The party was evidently in for one of the old chaplain's long stories, with a few words by way of application, and there was no decent opportunity to demur. They were the intruders in the smoking-room—not he! Here with his pipe and his paper, he was within the accommodation assigned him. They must hie them back to the casino to be at ease, and this would they do when he should reach the end of his story—if indeed it had an end.
For with the prolixity of the eye-witness he was detailing the points of the battle; what troops were engaged; how the flank was turned; how the reserve was delayed; how the guns were planted; how the cavalry was ordered to charge over impracticable ground, and how in consequence he saw a squadron literally annihilated; how for hours after the fight was over a sergeant of the Dovinger Rangers pervaded the field with the guidon, calling on them by name to rally.
"And, gentlemen," he continued, turning in his chair, the fire kindling in his eyes as it died in the bowl of his pipe, "not one man responded, for none could rise from that horrid slaughter."
There was a moment of tense silence. Then, "Back and forth the guidon flaunted, and the rain began to fall, and the night came on, and still the dusk echoed the cry, 'Guide right! Dovinger's Rangers! Rally on the guidon! Rally on the reserve!'"
The old chaplain stuck his pipe into his mouth and brought it aflare again with two or three strong indrawing respirations.
"The surgeons said it would end in a case of dementia. I was sorry, for I had seen much that day that hurt me, and more than all was this. For I could picture that valiant young spirit going through life, spared by God's mercy; and it seemed to me that when the enemy, in whatever guise, should press him hard and defeat should bear him down he would have the courage and the ardor and the moral strength to rally on the reserve. He would rally on the guidon."
The old chaplain pulled strongly at his pipe, setting the blue wreaths of smoke circling about his head. "I should know that young fellow again wherever I might chance to see him."
"Did he collapse at last and verify the surgeon's prophecy?" asked the dealer.
"Well," drawled the chaplain, with a little flattered laugh, "I myself took care of that. Many years ago I studied medicine, before I was favored with a higher call. Neurology was my line. When the boy's horse sank exhausted beneath him, and he fell into a sleep or stupor on the carcass, I removed the object of the obsession. I slipped the flag-staff, guidon and all, into a crevice of the rocks, where it will remain till the end of our time, be sure." He laughed in relish of his arbitrary intervention.
"There was a fine healthy clamor in camp the next morning about the lost guidon. But I did the soldier no damage, for he had been promoted to a lieutenancy for special gallantry on the field, and he therefore could no longer have carried the guidon if he had had both the flag and the troop."
The stories of camp and field, thus begun, swiftly multiplied; they wore the fire to embers, and the oil sank low in the lamps. There was a chill sense of dawn in the blue-gray mist when the group, separating at last, issued upon the veranda; the moon, so long hovering over the sombre massive mountains, was slowly sinking in the west.
Among the shadows of the pillars a tall, martial figure lurked in ambush for the old chaplain, as he rounded the corner of the veranda on his way to his own quarters.
"Pa'son," a husky voice spoke from out the dim comminglement of the mist and the moon, "'twas me that carried that guidon in Dovinger's Rangers."
"I know it," declared the triumphant tactician. "I recognized you as soon as I saw you again."
"I'm through with this," the young mountaineer exclaimed abruptly, with an eloquent gesture of renunciation toward the deserted card-table visible through the vista of open doors. "I'm going home—to work! I'll never forget that I was marker in Dovinger's Rangers. I carried the guidon! And that last day I marked their way to glory! There's nothing left of them except honor and duty, but I'll rally on that, Chaplain. Never fear for me, again. I'll rally on the reserve!"
It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,—the panther, the bear, the catamount, the wolf,—and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both fearsome and afraid, the man with a "wolf's head," on which was set a price, even as the State's bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.
One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of being summoned to serve on a sheriff's posse in the discharge of the grimmest of duties.
"But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has survived, but the fact is obsolete," said Seymour, who was both a prig and a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain of his sylvan accomplishments. "Our law places no man beyond the pale of its protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in court."
"What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy that privilege—five hundred dollars?" asked Bygrave, who was a newspaper man and had a habit of easy satire.
"Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive." Purcell's vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination of chances and relative values. "Therefore he is as definitelycaput lupinumas any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for cracking his 'wolf's head' off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive to live?"
"Jes by his rifle, I reckon," replied the rural gossip whom intrusive curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. "Though sence that thar big reward hev been n'ised abroad, I'd think he'd be plumb afraid ter fire a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days."
The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect, despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved, narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened by his persistent, rasping chirp.
"That's what frets Meddy; she can't abide the idee of huntin' a human with sech special coursers ez money reward. She 'lows it mought tempt a' evil man or a' ignorunt one ter swear a miser'ble wretch's life away. Let the law strengthen its own hands—that's what Meddy say. Don't kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother's breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin', though it's all on account of that thar man what war growed up in a tree."
The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour's mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural perversion of the legend. But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the ground about it and idly listened.
"One day—'t war 'bout two year' ago—thar war a valley-man up hyar a-huntin' in the mountings with some other fellers, an' toward sunset he war a-waitin' at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek, hopin' ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon luck war ag'in' him, fer he got nuthin' but durned tired. So, ez he waited, he grounded his rifle, an' leaned himself ag'in' a great big tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his head, an', folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek, he looked into a skellington's eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington's grisly face peerin' at him through a crack in the bark."
The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as he resumed:
"Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o' place. So he kem,—the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the rise,—an', folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off'n the face of the yearth, hid out from the law,—that's the way Meddy takes it,—he hed clomb the tree, an' it bein' holler, he drapped down inside it, thinkin' o' course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It mought hev been deeper 'n he calculated, or mo' narrow, but he couldn't make the rise. He died still strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood—it's rotted a deal sence then."
"Who was the man?" asked Seymour.
"Nobody knows,—nobody keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o' tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock rifle he bed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin' on that of a winter night, an' how the woman that keered fer him mus' hev watched an' waited fer him, an' 'lowed he war deceitful an' desertin', an' mebbe held a gredge agin him, whilst he war dyin' so pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a mocking grin.
"A horrible fate!" exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.
"Edzac'ly," the old mountaineer assented easily.
"What's her name—Meggy?" asked the journalist, with a mechanical aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
"Naw; Meddy—short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox; but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes Meddlesome by name, an' meddlesome by natur'."
He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
"That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread. She 'lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her you-uns war lackin'."
For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower; the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had returned home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who had not yet arrived. Purcell's boast that he could bake ash-cake proved a bluff, and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff of life.
Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant's favor as she appeared, and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity since there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her throat had in its folds a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands, and her hair, meekly parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown, and fell in heavy undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but distinct tracery of blue veins in her milky-white complexion, and she might have seemed eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with the peace of mind of the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied expression of her eyes. Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were full of care and perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between her eyebrows was so marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing. Troubled about many things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not even delegate the opening of a basket that her little brother had brought and placed beside the camp-fire.
"Don't, Gran'dad," she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly forward—"don'tput that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box 'pears ter be damp. Leave the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It'll eat shorter then, bein' fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer supper,"—dropping on one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the basket on her arm, some thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,—"I baked some dodgers, too—four, six, eight, ten,"—she was counting a dozen golden-brown cates of delectable aspect—"knowin' they would hone fer cornmeal arter huntin' an' nuthin' else nohow air fitten ter eat with feesh or aigs. Hev you-uns got any aigs?" She sprang up, and, standing on agile tiptoe, peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly she recoiled with a cry of horrified reproach. "Thar's ants in yer short-sweetenin'! Howcouldyou-uns let sech ez that happen?"
"Oh, surely not," exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact could not be gain-said; the neglected sugar was spoiled.
Meddlesome's unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic concerns disclosed other shortcomings. "Why n't ye keep the top on yer coffee-can? Don't ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin' open?" She repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: "We-uns ain't got no short-sweetenin' at our house, but I'll send my leetle brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin' fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar, Sol,"—addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,—"run ter the house an' fetch the sorghum-jug."
As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly called out in a frenzy of warning: "Go the other way, Sol—up through the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife."
Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger. Being unhurt, he was resentful. "They ain't none o'yerfeet, nohow," he grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.
"Oh, yes, Sol," said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome's iron rule. "Everything belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, 'ca'se she jes makes it hern. So take keer ofyerfeet forhersake." He turned toward her jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even ter meddle with other folkses' mournin',—what they got through with a hunderd year' ago—tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in the tree."
She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.
Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky. He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections, and the helpless jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the door-yard. Should his integrity succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond the pale of polite society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place for Sol till such time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry clothes.
"Poor Sol!" she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm between possibility and accomplished fact. "I'll fetch the jug myself. I'll take the short cut an' head him."
Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense, tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the mountain-side. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing it, but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and after a moment's hesitation, she was springing from one to another of the great, half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent crystal-brown water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More than once, to evade the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the continuous roar, she stood still in mid-stream and gazed upward or at the opposite bank. The woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow and variant russet and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was impenetrable. The great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted sharply with the white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and sycamore and poplar, and, thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost illimitable avenues of sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of willows on the opposite bank, at the water's-edge, a spring, a circular, rock-bound reservoir; in the marshy margin she could see the imprints of the cleft hoofs of deer, and thence ran the indefinite trail known as a deer-path. The dense covert along the steep slope was a famous "deer-stand," and there many a fine buck had been killed. All at once she was reminded of the storied tree hard by, the tragedy of which she had often bewept.