undiscriminated, unimportant members of the group, who seemed to the
groping scrutiny of Nehemiah to be only endowed with sufficient identity
to do the rough work of the still, and to become liable to the Federal
law. "Thar's Hil'ry--he seen it right off. Hil'ry he tuk a look at
Lee-yander whenst he wanted ter kem an' work along o' we-uns, 'kase his
folks wanted ter take him away from the Sudleys. Hil'ry opened the
furnace door--jes so; an' he cotch the boy by the arm"--the great brawny
fellow, unconsciously dramatic, suited the action to the word, his face
and figure illumined by the sudden red glow--"an' Hil'ry, he say, 'Naw,
by God--ye hev got yer mother's eyes in yer head, an' I'll swear ye
sha'n't larn ter be a sot!' An' that's how kem Hil'ry made Alf Bixby
take Lee-yander ter work in the mill. Ef ennybody tuk arter him he war
convenient ter disappear down hyar with we-uns. So he went ter the
mill."
"An' I wisht I hed put him in the hopper an' ground him up," said the
miller, in a blood-curdling tone, but with a look of plaintive anxiety
in his eyes. "He hev made a heap o' trouble 'twixt Hil'ry an' me fust
an' last. Whar's Hil'ry disappeared to, ennyways?"
For the flare from the furnace showed that this leading spirit amongst
the moonshiners had gone softly out. Nehemiah, whose courage was
dissipated by some subtle influence of his presence, now made bold to
ask, "An' what made him ter set store on Lee-yander's mother's eyes?"
His tone was as bluffly sarcastic as he dared.
"Shucks--ye mus' hev hearn that old tale," said the miller, cavalierly.
"This hyar Malviny Hixon--ez lived down in Tanglefoot Cove then--her an'
Hil'ry war promised ter marry, but the revenuers captured him--he war
a-runnin' a still in Tanglefoot then--an' they kep' him in jail somewhar
in the North fur five year. Waal, she waited toler'ble constant fur two
or three year, but Ebenezer Yerby he kem a-visitin' his kin down in
Tanglefoot Cove, an' she an' him met at a bran dance, an' the fust thing
I hearn they war married, an' 'fore Hil'ry got back she war dead an'
buried, an' so war Ebenezer."
There was a pause while the flames roared in the furnace, and the
falling water desperately dashed upon the rocks, and its tumultuous
voice continuously pervaded the silent void wildernesses without, and
the sibilant undertone, the lisping whisperings, smote the senses anew.
"He met up with cornsider'ble changes fur five year," remarked one of
the men, regarding the matter in its chronological aspect.
Nehemiah said nothing. He had heard the story before, but it had been
forgotten. A worldly mind like his is not apt to burden itself with the
sentimental details of an antenuptial romance of the woman whom his
half-brother had married many years ago.
A persuasion that it was somewhat unduly long-lived impressed others of
the party.
"It's plumb cur'us Hil'ry ain't never furgot her," observed one of them.
"He hev never married at all. My wife says it's jes contrariousness. Ef
Malviny hed been his wife an' died, he'd hev married agin 'fore the year
war out. An' I tell my wife that he'd hev been better acquainted with
her then, an' would hev fund out ez no woman war wuth mournin' 'bout fur
nigh twenty year. My wife says she can't make out ez how Hil'ry 'ain't
got pride enough not ter furgive her fur givin' him the mitten like she
done. An' I tell my wife that holdin' a gredge agin a woman fur bein'
fickle is like holdin' a gredge agin her fur bein' a woman."
He paused with an air, perceived somehow in the brown dusk, of having
made a very neat point. A stir of assent was vaguely suggested when some
chivalric impulse roused a champion at the farther side of the worm,
whose voice rang out brusquely:
"Jes listen at Tom! A body ter hear them tales he tells 'bout argufyin'
with his wife would 'low he war a mighty smart, apt man, an' the pore
foolish 'oman skeercely hed a sensible word ter bless herself with. When
everybody that knows Tom knows he sings mighty small round home. Ye
stopped too soon, Tom. Tell what yer wife said to that."
Tom's embarrassed feet shuffled heavily on the rocks, apparently in
search of subterfuge. The dazzling glintings from the crevices of the
furnace door showed here and there gleaming teeth broadly agrin.
"Jes called me a fool in gineral," admitted the man skilled in argument.
"An' didn't she 'low ez men folks war fickle too, an' remind ye o' yer
young days whenst ye went a-courtin' hyar an' thar, an' tell over a
string o' gals' names till she sounded like an off'cer callin' the
roll?"
"Ye-es," admitted Tom, thrown off his balance by this preternatural
insight, "but all them gals war a-tryin' ter marry me--not me tryin' ter
marry them."
There was a guffaw at this modest assertion, but the disaffected
miller's tones dominated the rude merriment.
"Whenst a feller takes ter drink folks kin spell out a heap o' reasons
but the true one--an' that's 'kase he likes it. Hil'ry 'ain't never
named that 'oman's name ter me, an' I hev knowed him ez well ez ennybody
hyar. Jes t'other day whenst that boy kem, bein' foolish an' maudlin, he
seen suthin' oncommon in Lee-yander's eyes--they'll be mighty oncommon
ef he keeps on readin' his tomfool book, ez he knows by heart, by the
firelight when it's dim. Ef folks air so sot agin strong drink, let 'em
drink less tharsefs. Hear Brother Peter Vickers preach agin liquor, an'
ye'd know ez all wine-bibbers air bound fur hell."
"But the Bible don't name 'whiskey' once," said the man called Tom, in
an argumentative tone. "Low wines I'll gin ye up;" he made the
discrimination in accents betokening much reasonable admission; "but
nare time does the Bible name whiskey, nor yit peach brandy, nor
apple-jack."
"Nor cider nor beer," put in an unexpected recruit from the darkness.
The miller was silent for a moment, and gave token of succumbing to this
unexpected polemic strength. Then, taking thought and courage together,
"Ye can't say the Bible ain't down on 'strong drink'?" There was no
answer from the vanquished, and he went on in the overwhelming miller's
voice: "Hil'ry hed better be purtectin' hisself from strong drink,
'stiddier the boy--by makin' him stay up thar at the mill whar he knows
thar's no drinkin' goin' on--ez will git chances at it other ways, ef
not through him, in the long life he hev got ter live. The las' time the
revenuers got Hil'ry 'twar through bein' ez drunk ez a fraish-biled owl.
It makes me powerful oneasy whenever I know ye air all drunk an'
a-gallopadin' down hyar, an' no mo' able to act reasonable in case o'
need an' purtect yersefs agin spies an' revenuers an' sech 'n nuthin' in
this worl'. The las' raid, ye 'member, we hed the still over yander;" he
jerked his thumb in the direction present to his thoughts, but unseen by
his coadjutors; "a man war wounded, an' we dun'no' but what killed in
the scuffle, an' it mought be a hangin' matter ter git caught now. Ye
oughter keep sober; an' ye know, Isham, ye oughter keep Hil'ry sober. I
dun'no' why ye can't. I never could abide the nasty stuff--it's enough
ter turn a bullfrog's stomach. Whiskey is good ter sell--not ter drink.
Let them consarned idjits in the flat woods buy it, an' drink it.
Whiskey is good ter sell--not ter drink."
This peculiar temperance argument was received in thoughtful silence,
the reason of all the mountaineers commending it, while certain of them
knew themselves and were known to be incapable of profiting by it.
Nehemiah had scant interest in this conversation. He was conscious of
the strain on his attention as he followed it, that every point of the
situation should be noted, and its utility canvassed at a leisure
moment. He marked the allusion to the man supposed to have been killed
in the skirmish with the raiders, and he appraised its value as coercion
in any altercation that he might have in seeking to take Leander from
his present guardians. But he felt in elation that this was likely to be
of the slightest; the miller evidently found himself hampered rather
than helped by the employment of the boy; and as to the moonshiner's
sentimental partisanship, for the sake of an old attachment to the
dead-and-gone mountain girl, there was hardly anything in the universe
so tenuous as to bear comparison with its fragility. "A few drinks
ahead," he said to himself, with a sneer, "an' he won't remember who
Malviny Hixon was, ef thar is ennything in the old tale--which it's
more'n apt thar ain't."
He began, after the fashion of successful people, to cavil because his
success was not more complete. How the time was wasting here in this
uncomfortable interlude! Why could he not have discovered Leander's
whereabouts earlier, and by now be jogging along the road home with the
boy by his side? Why had he not bethought himself of the mill in the
first instance--that focus of gossip where all the news of the
countryside is mysteriously garnered and thence dispensed bounteously to
all comers? It was useless, as he fretted and chafed at these untoward
omissions, to urge in his own behalf that he did not know of the
existence of the mill, and that the miller, being an ungenial and
choleric man, might have perversely lent himself to resisting his demand
for the custody of the young runaway. No, he told himself emphatically,
and with good logic, too, the miller's acrimony rose from the fact of a
stranger's discovery of the still and the danger of his introduction
into its charmed circle. And that reflection reminded him anew of his
own danger here--not from the lawless denizens of the place, but from
the forces which he himself had evoked, and again he glanced out toward
the water-fall as fearful of the raiders as any moonshiner of them all.
But what sudden glory was on the waters, mystic, white, an opaque
brilliance upon the swirling foam and the bounding spray, a crystalline
glitter upon the smooth expanse of the swift cataract! The moon was in
the sky, and its light, with noiseless tread, sought out strange, lonely
places, and illusions were astir in the solitudes. Pensive peace,
thoughts too subtle for speech to shape, spiritual yearnings, were
familiars of the hour and of this melancholy splendor; but he knew none
of them, and the sight gave him no joy. He only thought that this was a
night for the saddle, for the quiet invasion of the woods, when the few
dwellers by the way-side were lost in slumber. He trembled anew at the
thought of the raiders whom he himself had summoned; he forgot his
curses on their laggard service; he upbraided himself again that he had
not earlier made shift to depart by some means--by any means--before the
night came with this great emblazoning bold-faced moon that but
prolonged the day; and he started to his feet with a galvanic jerk and a
sharp exclamation when swift steps were heard on the rocks outside, and
a man with the lightness of a deer sprang down the ledges and into the
great arched opening of the place.
"'Tain't nobody but Hil'ry," observed Isham Beaton, half in reproach,
half in reassurance.
The pervasive light without dissipated in some degree the gloom within
the grotto; a sort of gray visibility was on the appurtenances and the
figures about the still, not strong enough to suggest color, but giving
contour. His fright had been marked, he knew; a sort of surprised
reflectiveness was in the manner of several of the moonshiners, and
Nehemiah, with his ready fears, fancied that this inopportune show of
terror had revived their suspicions of him. It required some effort to
steady his nerves after this, and when footfalls were again audible
outside, and all the denizens of the place sat calmly smoking their
pipes without so much as a movement toward investigating the sound, he,
knowing whose steps he had invited thither, had great ado with the
coward within to keep still, as if he had no more reason to fear an
approach than they.
A great jargon in the tone of ecstasy broke suddenly on the air upon
this new entrance, shattering what little composure Nehemiah had been
able to muster; a wide-mouthed exaggeration of welcome in superlative
phrases and ready chorus. Swiftly turning, he saw nothing for a moment,
for he looked at the height which a man's head might reach, and the
new-comer measured hardly two feet in stature, waddled with a very
uncertain gait, and although he bore himself with manifest complacence,
he had evidently heard the like before, as he was jovially hailed by
every ingratiating epithet presumed to be acceptable to his infant mind.
He was attended by a tall, gaunt boy of fifteen, barefooted, with
snaggled teeth and a shock of tow hair, wearing a shirt of unbleached
cotton, and a pair of trousers supported by a single suspender drawn
across a sharp, protuberant shoulder-blade behind and a very narrow
chest in front. But his face was proud and happy and gleeful, as if he
occupied some post of honor and worldly emolument in attending upon the
waddling wonder on the floor in front of him, instead of being assigned
the ungrateful task of seeing to it that a very ugly baby closely
related to him did not, with the wiliness and ingenuity of infant
nature, invent some method of making away with himself. For he _was_ an
ugly baby as he stood revealed in the flare of the furnace door, thrown
open that his admirers and friends might feast their eyes upon him. His
short wisps of red hair stood straight up in front; his cheeks were
puffy and round, but very rosy; his eyes were small and dark, but
blandly roguish; his mouth was wide and damp, and had in it a small
selection of sample teeth, as it were; he wore a blue checked homespun
dress garnished down the back with big horn buttons, sparsely set on; he
clasped his chubby hands upon a somewhat pompous stomach; he sidled
first to the right, then to the left, in doubt as to which of the
various invitations he should accept.
"Kem hyar, Snooks!" "Right hyar, Toodles!" "Me hyar, Monkey Doodle!"
"Hurrah fur the leetle-est moonshiner on record!" resounded fulsomely
about him. Many were the compliments showered upon him, and if his
flatterers told lies, they had told more wicked ones. The pipes all went
out, and the broken-nosed pitcher languished in disuse as he trotted
from one pair of outstretched arms to another to give an exhibition of
his progress in the noble art of locomotion; and if he now and again sat
down, unexpectedly to himself and to the spectator, he was promptly put
upon his feet again with spurious applause and encouragement. He gave
an exhibition of his dancing--a funny little shuffle of exceeding
temerity, considering the facilities at his command for that agile
amusement, but he was made reckless by praise--and they all lied
valiantly in chorus. He repeated all the words he knew, which were few,
and for the most part unintelligible, crowed like a cock, barked like a
dog, mewed like a cat, and finally went away, his red cheeks yet more
ruddily aglow, grave and excited and with quickly beating pulses, like
one who has achieved some great public success and led captive the
hearts of thousands.
The turmoils of his visit and his departure were great indeed. It all
irked Nehemiah Yerby, who had scant toleration of infancy and little
perception of the jocosity of the aspect of callow human nature, and it
seemed strange to him that these men, all with their liberty, even their
existence, jeopardized upon the chances that a moment might bring forth,
could so relax their sense of danger, so disregard the mandates of
stolid common-sense, and give themselves over to the puerile
beguilements of the visitor. The little animal was the son of one of
them, he knew, but he hardly guessed whom until he marked the paternal
pride and content that had made unwontedly placid the brow of the irate
miller while the ovation was in progress. Nehemiah greatly preferred the
adult specimen of the race, and looked upon youth as an infirmity which
would mend only with time. He was easily confused by a stir; the
gurglings, the ticklings, the loud laughter both in the deep bass of the
hosts and the keen treble of the guest had a befuddling effect upon him;
his powers of observation were numbed. As the great, burly forms
shifted to and fro, resuming their former places, the red light from the
open door of the furnace illumining their laughing, bearded
countenances, casting a roseate suffusion upon the white turmoils of the
cataract, and showing the rugged interior of the place with its damp and
dripping ledges, he saw for the first time among them Leander's slight
figure and smiling face; the violin was in his hand, one end resting on
a rock as he tightened a string; his eyes were bent upon the instrument,
while his every motion was earnestly watched by the would-be fiddler.
Nehemiah started hastily to his feet. He had not expected that the boy
would see him here. To share with one of his own household a secret like
this of aiding in illicit distilling was more than his hardihood could
well contemplate. As once more the contemned "ping-pang" of the process
of tuning fell upon the air, Leander chanced to lift his eyes. They
smilingly swept the circle until they rested upon his uncle. They
suddenly dilated with astonishment, and the violin fell from his
nerveless hand upon the floor. The surprise, the fear, the repulsion his
face expressed suddenly emboldened Nehemiah. The boy evidently had not
been prepared for the encounter with his relative here. Its only
significance to his mind was the imminence of capture and of being
constrained to accompany his uncle home. He cast a glance of indignant
reproach upon Hilary Tarbetts, who was not even looking at him. The
moonshiner stood filling his pipe with tobacco, and as he deftly
extracted a coal from the furnace to set it alight, he shut the door
with a clash, and for a moment the whole place sunk into invisibility,
the vague radiance vouchsafed to the recesses of the grotto by the
moonbeams on the water without annihilated for the time by the contrast
with the red furnace glare. Nehemiah had a swift fear that in this
sudden eclipse Leander might slip softly out and thus be again lost to
him, but as the dull gray light gradually reasserted itself, and the
figures and surroundings emerged from the gloom, resuming shape and
consistency, he saw Leander still standing where he had disappeared in
the darkness; he could even distinguish his pale face and lustrous eyes.
Leander at least had no intention to shirk explanations.
"Why, Uncle Nehemiah!" he said, his boyish voice ringing out tense and
excited above the tones of the men, once more absorbed in their wonted
interests. A sudden silence ensued amongst them. "What air ye a-doin'
hyar?"
"Waal, ah, Lee-yander, boy--" Nehemiah hesitated. A half-suppressed
chuckle among the men, whom he had observed to be addicted to
horse-play, attested their relish of the situation. Ridicule is always
of unfriendly intimations, and the sound served to put Nehemiah on his
guard anew. He noticed that the glow in Hilary's pipe was still and
dull: the smoker did not even draw his breath as he looked and listened.
Yerby did not dare avow the true purpose of his presence after his
representations to the moonshiners, and yet he could not, he would not
in set phrase align himself with the illicit vocation. The boy was too
young, too irresponsible, too inimical to his uncle, he reflected in a
sudden panic, to be intrusted with this secret. If in his hap-hazard,
callow folly he should turn informer, he was almost too young to be
amenable to the popular sense of justice. He might, too, by some
accident rather than intention, divulge the important knowledge so
unsuitable to his years and his capacity for guarding it. He began to
share the miller's aversion to the introduction of outsiders to the
still. He felt a glow of indignation, as if he had always been a party
in interest, that the common safety should not be more jealously
guarded. The danger which Leander's youth and inexperience threatened
had not been so apparent to him when he first heard that the boy had
been here, and the menace was merely for the others. As he felt the
young fellow's eyes upon him he recalled the effusive piety of his
conversation at Tyler Sudley's house, his animadversions on
violin-playing and liquor-drinking, and Brother Peter Vickers's mild and
merciful attitude toward sinners in those unspiced sermons of his, that
held out such affluence of hope to the repentant rather than to the
self-righteous. The blood surged unseen into Nehemiah's face. For shame,
for very shame he could not confess himself one with these outcasts. He
made a feint of searching in the semi-obscurity for the rickety chair on
which he had been seated, and resumed his former attitude as Leander's
voice once more rang out:
"What air ye a-doin' hyar, Uncle Nehemiah?"
"Jes a-visitin', sonny; jes a-visitin'."
There was a momentary pause, and the felicity of the answer was
demonstrated by another chuckle from the group. His senses, alert to the
emergency, discriminated a difference in the tone. This time the laugh
was with him rather than at him. He noted, too, Leander's dumfounded
pause, and the suggestion of discomfiture in the boy's lustrous eyes,
still widely fixed upon him. As Leander stooped to pick up the violin he
remarked with an incidental accent, and evidently in default of retort,
"I be powerful s'prised ter view ye hyar."
Nehemiah smarted under the sense of unmerited reproach; so definitely
aware was he of being out of the character which he had assumed and worn
until it seemed even to him his own, that he felt as if he were
constrained to some ghastly masquerade. Even the society of the
moonshiners as their guest was a reproach to one who had always piously,
and in such involuted and redundant verbiage, spurned the ways and
haunts of the evil-doer. According to the dictates of policy he should
have rested content with his advantage over the silenced lad. But his
sense of injury engendered a desire of reprisal, and he impulsively
carried the war into the enemy's country.
"I ain't in no ways s'prised ter view you-uns hyar, Lee-yander," he
said. "From the ways, Lee-yander, ez ye hev been brung up by them
slack-twisted Sudleys--ungodly folks 'ceptin' what little regeneration
they kin git from the sermons of Brother Peter Vickers, who air
onsartain in his mind whether folks ez ain't church-members air goin'
ter be damned or no--I ain't s'prised none ter view ye hyar." He
suddenly remembered poor Laurelia's arrogations of special piety, and
it was with exceeding ill will that he added: "An' Mis' Sudley in
partic'lar. Ty ain't no great shakes ez a shoutin' Christian. I dun'no'
ez I ever hearn him shout once, but his wife air one o' the reg'lar,
mournful, unrejicing members, always questioning the decrees of
Providence, an' what ain't no nigher salvation, ef the truth war knowed,
'n a sinner with the throne o' grace yit ter find."
Leander had not picked up the violin; this disquisition had arrested his
hand until his intention was forgotten. He came slowly to the
perpendicular, and his eyes gleamed in the dusk. A vibration of anger
was in his voice as he retorted:
"Mebbe so--mebbe they air sinners; but they'd look powerful comical
'visitin' hyar!"
"Ty Sudley ain't one o' the drinkin' kind," interpolated the miller, who
evidently had the makings of a temperance man. "He never sot foot hyar
in his life."
"Them ez kem a-visitin' hyar," blustered the boy, full of the
significance of his observations and experience, "air either wantin' a
drink or two 'thout payin' fur it, or else air tradin' fur liquor ter
sell, an' that's the same ez moonshinin' in the law."
There was a roar of delight from the circle of lumpish figures about the
still which told the boy that he had hit very near to the mark. Nehemiah
hardly waited for it to subside before he made an effort to divert
Leander's attention.
"An' what air _you-uns_ doin' hyar?" he demanded. "Tit for tat."