cruel that delay should be added to his hardships, and he lifted up his
voice in a plaintive remonstrance. This reminded Mrs. Todd of his
existence; she turned and let down the bars that served to exclude him.
The stranger was staring at her very hard. Somehow she quailed under
that look. Though it was fixed upon her in unvarying intensity, it had a
strange impersonality. This woman was not seeing her, despite that wide,
wistful, yearning gaze; she was thinking of something else, seeing some
one else.
And suddenly Luke Todd's wife began to stare at the visitor very hard,
and to think of something that was not before her.
"I be the ranger's wife," said Eugenia. "I kem over hyar ter tell ye he
never tuk yer black mare nowise but honest, bein' the ranger."
She found it difficult to say more. Under that speculative, unseeing
look she too faltered.
"They tell me ez Luke Todd air powerful outed 'bout'n it. An' I 'lowed
ef he knowed from me ez 'twar tuk fair, he'd b'lieve me."
She hesitated. Her courage was flagging; her hope had fled. The eyes of
the man's wife burned upon her face.
"We-uns useter be toler'ble well 'quainted 'fore he ever seen ye, an' I
'lowed he'd b'lieve my word," Eugenia continued.
Another silence. The sun was rising; long liquescent lines of light of
purest amber-color were streaming through the snowy woods; the shadows
of the fence rails alternated with bars of dazzling glister; elusive
prismatic gleams of rose and lilac and blue shimmered on every
slope--thus the winter flowered. Tiny snow-birds were hopping about; a
great dog came down from the little snow-thatched cabin, and was
stretching himself elastically and yawning most portentously.
"An' I 'lowed I'd see ye an' git you-uns ter tell him that word from me,
an' then he'd b'lieve it," said Eugenia.
The younger woman nodded mechanically, still gazing at her.
And was this her mission! Somehow it had lost its urgency. Where was its
potency, her enthusiasm? Eugenia realized that her feet were wet, her
skirts draggled; that she was chilled to the bone and trembling
violently. She looked about her doubtfully. Then her eyes came back to
the face of the woman before her.
"Ye'll tell him, I s'pose?"
Once more Luke Todd's wife nodded mechanically, still staring.
There was nothing further to be said. A vacant interval ensued. Then, "I
'lowed I'd tell ye," Eugenia reiterated, vaguely, and turned away,
vanishing with the vanishing mists.
Luke Todd's wife stood gazing at the fence through which the apparition
had peered. She could see yet her own face there, grown old and worn.
The dog wagged his tail and pressed against her, looking up and claiming
her notice. Once more he stretched himself elastically and yawned
widely, with shrill variations of tone. The calf was frisking about in
awkward bovine elation, and now and then the cow affectionately licked
its coat with the air of making its toilet. An assertive chanticleer was
proclaiming the dawn within the hen-house, whence came too an impatient
clamor, for the door, which served to exclude any marauding fox, was
still closed upon the imprisoned poultry. Still she looked steadily at
the fence where the ranger's wife had stood.
"That thar woman favors me," she said, presently. And suddenly she burst
into tears.
Perhaps it was well that Eugenia could not see Luke Todd's expression as
his wife recounted the scene. She gave it truly, but without, alas! the
glamour of sympathy.
"She 'lowed ez ye'd b'lieve her, bein' ez ye useter be 'quainted."
His face flushed. "Wa'al, sir! the insurance o' that thar woman!" he
exclaimed. "I war 'quainted with her; I war mighty well 'quainted with
her." He had a casual remembrance of those days when "he tuk ter the
woods ter wear out his grief." "She never gin me no promise, but me an'
her war courtin' some. Sech dependence ez I put on her war mightily
wasted. I dunno what ails the critter ter 'low ez I set store by her
word."
Poor Eugenia! There is nothing so dead as ashes. His flame had clean
burned out. So far afield were all his thoughts that he stood amazed
when his wife, with a sudden burst of tears, declared passionately that
she knew it--she saw it--she favored Eugenia Gryce. She had found out
that he had married her because she looked like another woman.
"'Genie Gryce hev got powerful little ter do ter kem a-jouncin' through
the snow over hyar ter try ter set ye an' me agin one another," he
exclaimed, angrily. "Stealin' the filly ain't enough ter sati'fy her!"
His wife was in some sort mollified. She sought to reassure herself.
"Air we-uns of a favor?"
"I dunno," he replied, sulkily. "I 'ain't seen the critter fur nigh on
ter ten year. I hev furgot the looks of her. 'Pears like ter me," he
went on, ruminating, "ez 'twar in my mind when I fust seen ye ez thar
war a favor 'twixt ye. But I misdoubts now. Do she 'low ez I hev hed
nuthin ter study 'bout sence?"
Perhaps Eugenia is not the only woman who overrates the strength of a
sentimental attachment. A gloomy intuition of failure kept her company
all the lengthening way home. The chill splendors of the wintry day
grated upon her dreary mood. How should she care for the depth and
richness of the blue deepening toward the zenith in those vast skies?
What was it to her that the dead vines, climbing the grim rugged crags,
were laden with tufts and corollated shapes wherever these fantasies of
flowers might cling, or that the snow flashed with crystalline
scintillations? She only knew that they glimmered and dazzled upon the
tears in her eyes, and she was moved to shed them afresh. She did not
wonder whether her venture had resulted amiss. She only wondered that
she had tried aught. And she was humbled.
When she reached Lonesome Cove she found the piggin where she had hid
it, and milked the cow in haste. It was no great task, for the animal
was going dry. "Their'n gins a gallon a milkin'," she said, in rueful
comparison.
As she came up the slope with the piggin on her head, her husband was
looking down from the porch with a lowering brow. "Why n't ye spen' the
day a-milkin' the cow?" he drawled. "Dawdlin' yander in the cow-pen till
this time in the mornin'! An' ter-morrer's Chrismus!"
The word smote upon her weary heart with a dull pain. She had no
cultured phrase to characterize the sensation as a presentiment, but she
was conscious of the prophetic process. To-night "all the mounting"
would be riotous with that dubious hilarity known as "Chrismus in the
bones," and there was no telling what might come from the combined orgy
and an inflamed public spirit.
She remembered the familiar doom of the mountain horse-thief, the men
lurking on the cliff, the inimical feeling against the ranger. She
furtively watched him with forebodings as he came and went at intervals
throughout the day.
Dusk had fallen when he suddenly looked in and beckoned to the
"Colonel," who required him to take her with him whenever he fed the
mare.
"Let me tie this hyar comforter over the Cunnel's head," Eugenia said,
as he bundled the child in a shawl and lifted her in his arms.
"'Tain't no use," he declared. "The Cunnel ain't travellin' fur."
She heard him step from the creaking porch. She heard the dreary wind
without.
Within, the clumsy shadows of the warping-bars, the spinning-wheel, and
the churn were dancing in the firelight on the wall. The supper was
cooking on the live coals. The children, popping corn in the ashes, were
laughing; as her eye fell upon the "Colonel's" vacant little chair her
mind returned to the child's excursion with her father, and again she
wondered futilely where the mare could be hid. The next moment she was
heartily glad that she did not know.
It was like the fulfillment of some dreadful dream when the door opened.
A man entered softly, slowly; the flickering fire showed his shadow--was
it?--nay, another man, and still another, and another.
The old crone in the corner sprang up, screaming in a shrill, tremulous,
cracked voice. For they were masked. Over the face of each dangled a bit
of homespun, with great empty sockets through which eyes vaguely
glanced. Even the coarse fibre of the intruders responded to that
quavering, thrilling appeal. One spoke instantly:
"Laws-a-massy! Mis' Pearce, don't ye feel interrupted none--nor Mis'
Gryce nuther. We-uns ain't harmful noways--jes want ter know whar that
thar black mare hev disappeared to. She ain't in the barn."
He turned his great eye-sockets on Eugenia. The plaid homespun mask
dangling about his face was grotesquely incongruous with his intent,
serious gaze.
"I dunno," she faltered; "I dunno."
She had caught at the spinning-wheel for support. The fire crackled. The
baby was counting aloud the grains of corn popping from the ashes. "Six,
two, free," he babbled. The kettle merrily sang.
The man still stared silently at the ranger's wife. The expression in
his eyes changed suddenly. He chuckled derisively. The others echoed his
mocking mirth. "Ha! ha! ha!" they laughed aloud; and the eye-sockets in
the homespun masks all glared significantly at each other. Even the dog
detected something sinister in this laughter. He had been sniffing about
the heels of the strangers; he bristled now, showed his teeth, and
growled. The spokesman hastily kicked him in the ribs, and the animal
fled yelping to the farther side of the fireplace behind the baby, where
he stood and barked defiance. The rafters rang with the sound.
Some one on the porch without spoke to the leader in a low voice. This
man, who seemed to have a desire to conceal his identity which could not
be served by a mask, held the door with one hand that the wind might not
blow it wide open. The draught fanned the fire. Once the great bowing,
waving white blaze sent a long, quivering line of light through the
narrow aperture, and Eugenia saw the dark lurking figure outside. He had
one arm in a sling. She needed no confirmation to assure her that this
was Sam Peters, whom her husband had shot at the stable door.
The leader instantly accepted his suggestion. "Wa'al, Mis' Gryce, I
reckon ye dunno whar Tobe be, nuther?"
"Naw, I dunno," she said, in a tremor.
The homespun mask swayed with the distortions of his face as he sneered:
"Ye mean ter say ye don't 'low ter tell us."
"I dunno whar he be." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.
Another exchange of glances.
"Wa'al, ma'am, jes gin us the favor of a light by yer fire, an' we-uns
'll find him."
He stepped swiftly forward, thrust a pine torch into the coals, and with
it all whitely flaring ran out into the night; the others followed his
example; and the terror-stricken women, hastily barring up the door,
peered after them through the little batten shutter of the window.
* * * * *
The torches were already scattered about the slopes of Lonesome Cove
like a fallen constellation. What shafts of white light they cast upon
the snow in the midst of the dense blackness of the night! Somehow they
seemed endowed with volition, as they moved hither and thither, for
their brilliancy almost cancelled the figures of the men that bore
them--only an occasional erratic shapeless shadow was visible. Now and
then a flare pierced the icicle-tipped holly bushes, and again there was
a fibrous glimmer in the fringed pines.
The search was terribly silent. The snow deadened the tread. Only the
wind was loud among the muffled trees, and sometimes a dull thud sounded
when the weight of snow fell from the evergreen laurel as the men
thrashed through its dense growth. They separated after a time, and only
here and there an isolated stellular light illumined the snow, and
conjured white mystic circles into the wide spaces of the darkness. The
effort flagged at last, and its futility sharpened the sense of injury
in Luke Todd's heart.
He was alone now, close upon the great rock, and looking at its jagged
ledges all cloaked with snow. Above those soft white outlines drawn
against the deep clear sky the frosty stars scintillated. Beneath were
the abysmal depths of the valley masked by the darkness.
His pride was touched. In the old quarrel his revenge had been hampered,
for it was the girl's privilege to choose, and she had chosen. He cared
nothing for that now, but he felt it indeed a reproach to tamely let
this man take his horse when he had all the mountain at his back. There
was a sharp humiliation in his position. He felt the pressure of public
opinion.
"Dad-burn him!" he exclaimed. "Ef I kin make out ter git a glimge o'
him, I'll shoot him dead--dead!"
He leaned the rifle against the rock. It struck upon a ledge. A metallic
vibration rang out. Again and again the sound was repeated--now loud,
still clanging; now faint, but clear; now soft and away to a doubtful
murmur which he hardly was sure that he heard. Never before had he known
such an echo. And suddenly he recollected that this was the great
"Talking Rock," famed beyond the limits of Lonesome. It had traditions
as well as echoes. He remembered vaguely that beneath this cliff there
was said to be a cave which was utilized in the manufacture of saltpetre
for gunpowder in the War of 1812.
As he looked down the slope below he thought the snow seemed broken--by
footprints, was it? With the expectation of a discovery strong upon him,
he crept along a wide ledge of the crag, now and then stumbling and
sending an avalanche of snow and ice and stones thundering to the foot
of the cliff. He missed his way more than once. Then he would turn
about, laboriously retracing his steps, and try another level of the
ledges. Suddenly before him was the dark opening he sought. No creature
had lately been here. It was filled with growing bushes and dead leaves
and brambles. Looking again down upon the slope beneath, he felt very
sure that he saw footprints.
"The old folks useter 'low ez thar war two openings ter this hyar cave,"
he said. "Tobe Gryce mought hev hid hyar through a opening down yander
on the slope. But _I'll_ go the way ez I hev hearn tell on, an' peek in,
an' ef I kin git a glimge o' him, I'll make him tell me whar that thar
filly air, or I'll let daylight through him, sure!"
He paused only to bend aside the brambles, then he crept in and took his
way along a low, narrow passage. It had many windings, but was without
intersections or intricacy. He heard his own steps echoed like a
pursuing footfall. His labored breathing returned in sighs from the
inanimate rocks. It was an uncanny place, with strange, sepulchral,
solemn effects. He shivered with the cold. A draught stole in from some
secret crevice known only to the wild mountain winds. The torch flared,
crouched before the gust, flared again, then darkness. He hesitated,
took one step forward, and suddenly--a miracle!
A soft aureola with gleaming radiations, a low, shadowy chamber, a beast
feeding from a manger, and within it a child's golden head.
His heart gave a great throb. Somehow he was smitten to his knees.
Christmas Eve! He remembered the day with a rush of emotion. He stared
again at the vouchsafed vision. He rubbed his eyes. It had changed.
Only hallucination caused by an abrupt transition from darkness to
light; only the most mundane facts of the old troughs and ash-hoppers,
relics of the industry that had served the hideous carnage of battle;
only the yellow head of the ranger's brat, who had climbed into one of
them, from which the mare was calmly munching her corn.
Yet this was Christmas Eve. And the Child did lie in a manger.
Perhaps it was well for him that his ignorant faith could accept the
illusion as a vision charged with all the benignities of peace on earth,
good-will toward men. With a keen thrill in his heart, on his knees he
drew the charge from his rifle, and flung it down a rift in the rocks.
"Chrismus Eve," he murmured.
[Illustration: "YET THIS WAS CHRISTMAS EVE"]
He leaned his empty weapon against the wall, and strode out to the
little girl who was perched up on the trough.
"Chrismus gift, Cunnel!" he cried, cheerily. "Ter-morrer's Chrismus."
The echoes caught the word. In vibratory jubilance they repeated it.
"Chrismus!" rang from the roof, scintillating with calc-spar;
"Chrismus!" sounded from the colonnade of stalactites that hung down to
meet the uprising stalagmites; "Chrismus!" repeated the walls incrusted
with roses that, shut in from the light and the fresh air of heaven,
bloomed forever in the stone. Was ever chorus so sweet as this?
It reached Tobe Gryce, who stood at his improvised corn-bin. With a
bundle of fodder still in his arms he stepped forward. There beside the
little Colonel and the black mare he beheld a man seated upon an
inverted half-bushel measure, peacefully lighting his pipe with a bunch
of straws which he kindled at the lantern on the ash-hopper.
The ranger's black eyes were wide with wonder at this intrusion, and
angrily flashed. He connected it at once with the attack on the stable.
The hair on his low forehead rose bristlingly as he frowned. Yet he
realized with a quaking heart that he was helpless. He, although the
crack shot of the county, would not have fired while the Colonel was
within two yards of his mark for the State of Tennessee.
He stood his ground with stolid courage--a target.
Then, with a start of surprise, he perceived that the intruder was
unarmed. Twenty feet away his rifle stood against the wall.
Tobe Gryce was strangely shaken. He experienced a sudden revolt of
credulity. This was surely a dream.
"Ain't that thar Luke Todd? Why air ye a-waitin' thar?" he called out in
a husky undertone.
Todd glanced up, and took his pipe from his mouth; it was now fairly
alight.
"Kase it be Chrismus Eve, Tobe," he said, gravely.
The ranger stared for a moment; then came forward and gave the fodder to
the mare, pausing now and then and looking with oblique distrust down
upon Luke Todd as he smoked his pipe.
"I want ter tell ye, Tobe, ez some o' the mounting boys air a-sarchin
fur ye outside."
"Who air they?" asked the ranger, calmly.
His tone was so natural, his manner so unsuspecting, that a new doubt
began to stir in Luke Todd's mind.
"What ails ye ter keep the mare down hyar, Tobe?" he asked, suddenly.
"'Pears like ter me ez that be powerful comical."
"Kase," said Tobe, reasonably, "some durned horse-thieves kem arter her
one night. I fired at 'em. I hain't hearn on 'em sence. An' so I jes hid
the mare."
Todd was puzzled. He shifted his pipe in his mouth. Finally he said:
"Some folks 'lowed ez ye hed no right ter take up that mare, bein' ez ye
war the ranger."
Tobe Gryce whirled round abruptly. "What war I a-goin' ter do, then?
Feed the critter fur nuthin till the triflin' scamp ez owned her kem
arter her? I couldn't work her 'thout takin' her up an' hevin her
appraised. Thar's a law agin sech. An' I couldn't git somebody ter toll
her off an' take her up. That ain't fair. What ought I ter hev done?"
"Wa'al," said Luke, drifting into argument, "the town-folks 'low ez ye
hev got nuthin ter prove it by, the stray-book an' records bein' burnt.
The town-folks 'low ez ye can't prove by writin' an' sech ez ye ever
tried ter find the owner."
"The town-folks air fairly sodden in foolishness," exclaimed the ranger,
indignantly.
He drew from his ample pocket a roll of ragged newspapers, and pointed
with his great thumb at a paragraph. And Luke Todd read by the light of
the lantern the advertisement and description of the estray printed
according to law in the nearest newspaper.
The newspaper was so infrequent a factor in the lives of the mountain
gossips that this refutation of their theory had never occurred to them.
The sheet was trembling in Luke Todd's hand; his eyes filled. The cavern
with its black distances, its walls close at hand sparkling with
delicate points of whitest light; the yellow flare of the lantern; the
grotesque shadows on the ground; the fair little girl with her golden
hair; the sleek black mare; the burly figure of the ranger--all the
scene swayed before him. He remembered the gracious vision that had
saluted him; he shuddered at the crime from which he was rescued. Pity
him because he knew naught of the science of optics; of the bewildering
effects of a sudden burst of light upon the delicate mechanism of the
eye; of the vagaries of illusion.
"Tobe," he said, in a solemn voice--all the echoes were bated to awed
whispers--"I hev been gin ter view a vision this night, bein' 'twar
Chrismus Eve. An' now I want ter shake hands on it fur peace."
Then he told the whole story, regardless of the ranger's demonstrations,
albeit they were sometimes violent enough. Tobe sprang up with a snort
of rage, his eyes flashing, his thick tongue stumbling with the curses
crowding upon it, when he realized the suspicions rife against him at
the county town. But he stood with his clinched hand slowly relaxing,
and with the vague expression which one wears who looks into the past,
as he listened to the recital of Eugenia's pilgrimage in the snowy
wintry dawn. "Mighty few folks hev got a wife ez set store by 'em like
that," Luke remarked, impersonally.
The ranger's rejoinder seemed irrelevant.
"'Genie be a-goin' ter see a powerful differ arter this," he said, and
fell to musing.
Snow, fatigue, and futility destroyed the ardor of the lynching party
after a time, and they dispersed to their homes. Little was said of this
expedition afterward, and it became quite impossible to find a man who
would admit having joined it. For the story went the rounds of the
mountain that there had been a mistake as to unfair dealing on the part
of the ranger, and Luke Todd was quite content to accept from the county
treasury half the sum of the mare's appraisement--with the deduction of
the stipulated per cent.--which Tobe Gryce had paid, the receipt for
which he produced.
The gossips complained, however, that after all this was settled
according to law, Tobe wouldn't keep the mare, and insisted that Luke
should return to him the money he had paid into the treasury, half her
value, "bein' so brigaty he wouldn't own Luke Todd's beast. An' Luke
agreed ter so do; but he didn't want ter be outdone, so fur the keep o'
the filly he gin the Cunnel a heifer. An' Tobe war mighty nigh tickled
ter death fur the Cunnel ter hev a cow o' her own."
And now when December skies darken above Lonesome Cove, and the snow in
dizzying whirls sifts softly down, and the gaunt brown leafless heights
are clothed with white as with a garment, and the wind whistles and
shouts shrilly, and above the great crag loom the distant mountains, and
below are glimpsed the long stretches of the valley, the two men
remember the vision that illumined the cavernous solitudes that night,
and bless the gracious power that sent salvation 'way down to Lonesome
Cove, and cherish peace and good-will for the sake of a little Child
that lay in a manger.
THE MOONSHINERS AT HOHO-HEBEE FALLS
I