evening at the wood-pile, in tossing off a great stick to hew into
lengths for the chimney-place, he noticed that thin ice had formed in
the moss and the dank cool shadows of the interstices. "I tell ye now,
winter air a-comin'," he observed. He stood leaning on his axe-handle
and looking down upon the scene so far below; for Purdee's house was
perched half-way up on the mountain-side, and he could see over the
world how it fared as the sun went down. Far away upon the levels of the
valley of East Tennessee a golden haze glittered resplendent, lying
close upon an irradiated earth, and ever brightening toward the horizon,
and it seemed as if the sun in sinking might hope to fall in fairer
spheres than the skies he had left, for they were of a dun-color and an
opaque consistency. Only one horizontal rift gave glimpses of a dazzling
ochreous tint of indescribable brilliancy, from the focus of which the
divergent light was shed upon the western limits of the land. Chilhowee,
near at hand, was dark enough--a purplish garnet hue; but the scarlet of
the sour-wood gleamed in the cove; the hickory still flared gallantly
yellow; the receding ranges to the north and south were blue and more
faintly azure. The little log cabin stood with small fields about it,
for Purdee barely subsisted on the fruits of the soil, and did not seek
to profit. It had only one room, with a loft above; the barn was a
makeshift of poles, badly chinked, and showing through the crevices
what scanty store there was of corn and pumpkins. A black-and-white
work-ox, that had evidently no deficiency of ribs, stood outside of the
fence and gazed, a forlorn Tantalus, at these unattainable dainties; now
and then a muttered low escaped his lips. Nobody noticed him or
sympathized with him, except perhaps the little girl, who had come out
in her sun-bonnet to help her brother bring in the fuel. He gruffly
accepted her company, a little ashamed of her because she was a girl;
since, however, there was no other boy by to laugh, he permitted her the
delusion that she was of assistance.
As he paused to rest he reiterated, "Winter air a-comin', I tell ye."
"D'ye reckon, Ab," she asked, in her high, thin little voice, her hands
full of chips and the basket at her feet, "ez Grinnell's baby knows
Chris'mus air a-comin'?"
He glowered at her as he leaned on the axe. "I reckon Grinnell's old
baby dunno B from Bull-foot," he declared, gruffly.
The recollection of the message came over him. He had a pang of regret,
remembering all the old grudges against the Grinnells. They were
re-enforced by this irrepressible yearning after their baby, this
admission that they had aught which was not essentially despicable.
Nevertheless, he suddenly saw a reason for the Grinnell baby's
existence; he loaded up both arms with the sticks of wood, and, followed
by the peripatetic sun-bonnet, conscientiously weighed down with one
billet, he strode into the house, and let his burden fall with a mighty
clatter in the corner of the chimney. The sun-bonnet staggered up and
threw her stick on the top of the pile of wood.
Purdee, sitting silently smoking, glanced up at the noise. Abner took
advantage of the momentary notice to claim, too, the attention of his
mother. "I wish ye'd make Eunice quit talkin' 'bout the Grinnell's old
baby, like she war actially demented--uglies' bald-headed, slab-sided,
slobbery old baby I ever see--nare tooth in its head! I do despise them
Grinnells."
As he anticipated, his father spoke suddenly: "Ye jes keep away from
thar," he said, sternly. "I trest them folks no furder 'n a
rattlesnake."
"_I_ ain't consortin' along o' 'em," declared the boy. "But I actially
hed ter take Eunice by the scalp o' her head an' lug her off one day
when she hung on thar fence a-stare-gazin' Grinnell's baby like 'twar
fitten ter eat."
The child's mother, a cadaverous, pale woman, was listlessly stringing
the warping-bars with hanks of variegated yarn. The grandmother, who
conserved a much more active and youthful interest in life, took down a
brown gourd used as a scrap-basket that was on a protruding lath of the
clay-and-stick chimney, and hunted among the scraps of homespun and bits
of yarn stowed within it. The room was much like the gourd in its aged
brown tint; its indigenous aspect, as if it had not been made with
hands, but was some spontaneous production of the soil; with its bits of
bright color--the peppers hanging from the rafters, the rainbow-hued
yarn festooning the warping-bars, the red coals of the fire, the blue
and yellow ware ranged on the shelf, the brown puncheon floor and walls
and ceiling and chimney--it might have seemed the interior of a similar
gourd of gigantic proportions. She dressed a twig from the pile of wood
in a gay scrap of cloth, casting glances the while at the little girl,
and handed it to her.
"I hain't never seen ez good a baby ez this," she said, with the
convincing coercive mendacity of a grandmother.
The little girl accepted it humbly; it was a good baby doubtless of its
sort, but it was not alive, which could not be denied of the Grinnell
baby, Grinnell though it was.
"An' Job Grinnell he kem down ter the fence, an' 'lowed he'd slit our
ears, an' named us shoats," continued her brother. Purdee lifted his
head. "An' sent a word ter dad," said the boy, tremulously.
"What word did he send ter--_me_?" cried Purdee.
The boy quailed to tell him. "He tole me ter ax ye ef ye ever read sech
ez this on Moses' tables in the mountings--'An' ye shell claim sech ez
be yer own, an' yer neighbors' belongings shell ye in no wise boastfully
medjure fur yourn, nor look upon it fur covetiousness, nor yit git a big
name up in the kentry fur ownin' sech ez be another's,'" faltered the
sturdy Abner.
The next moment he felt an infinite relief. He suddenly recognized the
fact that he had been chiefly restrained from repeating the words by an
unrealized terror lest they prove true--lest something his father
claimed was not his, indeed.
[Illustration: "'WHAT WORD DID HE SEND TER--_ME_?'"]
But the expression of anger on Purdee's face was merged first in blank
astonishment, then in perplexed cogitation, then in renewed and
overpowering amazement.
The wife turned from the warping-bars with a vague stare of surprise,
one hand poised uncertainly upon a peg of the frame, the other holding a
hank of "spun truck." The grandmother looked over her spectacles with
eyes sharp enough to seem subsidized to see through the mystery.
"In the name o' reason and religion, Roger Purdee," she adjured him,
"what air that thar perverted Philistine talkin' 'bout?"
"It air more'n I kin jedge of," said Purdee, still vainly cogitating.
He sat for a time silent, his dark eyes bent on the fire, his broad,
high forehead covered by his hat pulled down over it, his long, tangled,
dark locks hanging on his collar.
Suddenly he rose, took down his gun, and started toward the door.
"Roger," cried his wife, shrilly, "I'd leave the critter be. Lord knows
thar's been enough blood spilt an' good shelter burned along o' them
Purdees' an' Grinnells' quar'ls in times gone. Laws-a-massy!"--she wrung
her hands, all hampered though they were in the "spun truck"--"I'd
ruther be a sheep 'thout a soul, an' live in peace."
"A sca'ce ch'ice," commented her mother. "Sheep's got ter be butchered.
I'd ruther be the butcher, myself--healthier."
Purdee was gone. He had glanced absently at his wife as if he hardly
heard. He waited till she paused; then, without answer, he stepped
hastily out of the door and walked away.
* * * * *
The cronies at the blacksmith's shop latterly gathered within the great
flaring door, for the frost lay on the dead leaves without, the stars
scintillated with chill suggestions, and the wind was abroad on nights
like these. On shrill pipes it played; so weird, so wild, so prophetic
were its tones that it found only a shrinking in the heart of him whose
ear it constrained to listen. The sound of the torrent far below was
accelerated to an agitated, tumultuous plaint, all unknown when its
pulses were bated by summer languors. The moon was in the turmoil of the
clouds, which, routed in some wild combat with the winds, were streaming
westward.
And although the rigors of the winter were in abeyance, and the late
purple aster called the Christmas-flower bloomed in the sheltered grass
at the door, the forge fire, flaring or dully glowing, overhung with its
dusky hood, was a friendly thing to see, and in its vague illumination
the rude interior of the shanty--the walls, the implements of the trade,
the bearded faces grouped about, the shadowy figures seated on whatever
might serve, a block of wood, the shoeing-stool, a plough, or perched on
the anvil--became visible to Roger Purdee from far down the road as he
approached. Even the head of a horse could be seen thrust in at the
window, while the brute, hitched outside, beguiled the dreary waiting
by watching with a luminous, intelligent eye the gossips within, as if
he understood the drawling colloquy. They were suffering some dearth of
timely topics, supplying the deficiency with reminiscences more or less
stale, and had expected no such sensation as they experienced when a
long shadow fell athwart the doorway,--the broad aperture glimmering a
silvery gray contrasted with the brown duskiness of the interior and the
purple darkness of the distance; the forge fire showed Purdee's tall
figure leaning on the door-frame, and lighted up his serious face
beneath his great broad-brimmed hat, his intent, earnest eyes, his
tangled black beard and locks. He gave no greeting, and silence fell
upon them as his searching gaze scanned them one by one.
"Whar's Job Grinnell?" he demanded, abruptly.
There was a shuffling of feet, as if those members most experienced
relief from the constraint that silence had imposed upon the party. A
vibration from the violin--a sigh as if the instrument had been suddenly
moved rather than a touch upon the strings--intimated that the young
musician was astir. But it was Spears, the blacksmith, who spoke.
"Kem in, Roger," he called out, cordially, as he rose, his massive
figure and his sleek head showing in the dull red light on the other
side of the anvil, his bare arms folded across his chest. "Naw, Job
ain't hyar; hain't been hyar for a right smart while."
There was a suggestion of disappointment in the attitude of the
motionless figure at the door. The deeply earnest, pondering face,
visible albeit the red light from the forge-fire was so dull, was keenly
watched. For the inquiry was fraught with peculiar meaning to those
cognizant of the long and bitter feud.
"I ax," said Purdee, presently, "kase Grinnell sent me a mighty cur'ous
word the t'other day." He lifted his head. "Hev enny o' you-uns hearn
him 'low lately ez I claim ennything ez ain't mine?"
There was silence for a moment. Then the forge was suddenly throbbing
with the zigzagging of the bow of the violin jauntily dandering along
the strings. His keen sensibility apprehended the sudden jocosity as a
jeer, but before he could say aught the blacksmith had undertaken to
reply.
"Waal, Purdee, ef ye hedn't axed me, I warn't layin' off ter say nuthin
'bout'n it. 'Tain't no consarn o' mine ez I knows on. But sence ye _hev_
axed me, I hold my jaw fur the fear o' no man. The words ain't writ ez I
be feared ter pernounce. An' ez all the kentry hev hearn 'bout'n it
'ceptin' you-uns, I dunno ez I hev enny call ter hold my jaw. The Lord
'ain't set no seal on my lips ez I knows on."
"Naw, sir!" said Purdee, his great eyes glooming through the dusk and
flashing with impatience. "He 'ain't set no seal on yer lips, ter jedge
by the way ye wallop yer tongue about inside o' 'em with fool words.
Whyn't ye bite off what ye air tryin' ter chaw?"
"Waal, then," said the admonished orator, bluntly, "Grinnell 'lows ye
don't own that thar lan' around them rocks on the bald, no more'n ye
read enny writin' on 'em."
"Not them rocks!" cried Purdee, standing suddenly erect--"the tables o'
the Law, writ with the finger o' the Lord--an' Moses flung 'em down thar
an' bruk 'em. All the kentry knows they air Moses' tables. An' the
groun' whar they lie air mine."
"'Tain't, Grinnell say 'tain't."
"Naw, sir," chimed in the young musician, his violin silent. "Job
Grinnell declars he owns it hisself, an' ef he war willin' ter stan' the
expense he'd set up his rights, but the lan' ain't wuth it. He 'lows his
line runs spang over them rocks, an' a heap furder."
Purdee was silent; one or two of the gossips laughed jeeringly; he had
been proved a liar once. It was well that he did not deny; he was put to
open shame among them.
"An' Grinnell say," continued Blinks, "ez ye hev gone an' tole big tales
'mongst the brethren fur ownin' sech ez ain't yourn, an' readin' of
s'prisin' sayin's on the rocks."
He bent his head to a series of laughing harmonics, and when he raised
it, hearing no retort, the silvery gray square of the door was empty. He
saw the moon glimmer on the clumps of grass outside where the
Christmas-flower bloomed.
The group sat staring in amaze; the blacksmith strode to the door and
looked out, himself a massive, dark silhouette upon the shimmering
neutrality of the background. There was no figure in sight; no faint
foot-fall was audible, no rustle of the sere leaves; only the voice of
the mountain torrent, far below, challenged the stillness with its
insistent cry.
He looked back for a moment, with a vague, strange doubt if he had seen
aught, heard aught, in the scene just past. "Hain't Purdee been hyar?"
he asked, passing his hand across his eyes. The sense of having dreamed
was so strong upon him that he stretched his arms and yawned.
The gleaming teeth of the grouped shadows demonstrated the merriment
evoked by the query. The chuckle was arrested midway.
"Ye 'pear ter 'low ez suthin' hev happened ter Purdee, an' that thar war
his harnt," suggested one.
The bold young musician laid down his violin suddenly. The instrument
struck upon a keg of nails, and gave out an abrupt, discordant jangle,
startling to the nerves. "Shet up, ye durned squeech-owl!" he exclaimed,
irritably. Then, lowering his voice, he asked: "Didn't they 'low down
yander in the Cove ez Widder Peters, the day her husband war killed by
the landslide up in the mounting, heard a hoe a-scrapin' mightily on the
gravel in the gyarden-spot, an' went ter the door, an' seen him thar
a-workin', an' axed him when he kem home? An' he never lifted his head,
but hoed on. An' she went down thar 'mongst the corn, an' she couldn't
find nobody. An' jes then the Johns boys rid up an' 'lowed ez Jim Peters
war dead, an' hed been fund in the mounting, an' they war a-fetchin' of
him then."
The horse's head within the window nodded violently among the shadows,
and the stones rolled beneath his hoof as he pawed the ground.
"Mis' Peters she knowed suthin' were a-goin' ter happen when she seen
that harnt a-hoein'."
"I reckon she did," said the blacksmith, stretching himself, his nerves
still under the delusion of recent awakening. "Jim never hoed none when
he war alive. She mought hev knowed he war dead ef she seen him hoein'."
"Waal, sir," exclaimed the violinist, "I'm a-goin' up yander ter
Purdee's ter-morrer ter find out what he died of, an' when."
That he was alive was proved the next day, to the astonishment of the
smith and his friends. The forge was the voting-place of the district,
and there, while the fire was flaring, the bellows blowing, the anvil
ringing, the echo vibrating, now loud, now faint, with the antiphonal
chant of the hammer and the sledge, a notice was posted to inform the
adjacent owners that Roger Purdee's land, held under an original grant
from the State, would be processioned according to law some twenty days
after date, and the boundaries thereof defined and established. The
fac-simile of the notice, too, was posted on the court-house door in the
county town twenty miles away, for there were those who journeyed so far
to see it.
"I wonder," said the blacksmith, as he stood in the unfamiliar street
and gazed at it, his big arms, usually bare, now hampered with his coat
sleeves and folded upon his chest--"I wonder ef he footed it all the way
ter town at the gait he tuk when he lit out from the forge?"
It was a momentous day when the county surveyor planted his
Jacob's-staff upon the State line on the summit of the bald. His sworn
chain-bearers, two tall young fellows clad in jeans, with broad-brimmed
wool hats, their heavy boots drawn high over their trousers, stood ready
and waiting, with the sticks and clanking chain, on the margin of the
ice-cold spring gushing out on this bleak height, and signifying more
than a fountain in the wilderness, since it served to define the
southeast corner of Purdee's land. The two enemies were perceptibly
conscious of each other. Grinnell's broad face and small eyes laden with
fat lids were persistently averted. Purdee often glanced toward him
gloweringly, his head held, nevertheless, a little askance, as if he
rejected the very sight. There was the fire of a desperate intention in
his eyes. Looking at his face, shaded by his broad-brimmed hat, one
could hardly have doubted now whether it expressed most ferocity or
force. His breath came quick--the bated breath of a man who watches and
waits for a supreme moment. His blue jeans coat was buttoned close about
his sun-burned throat, where the stained red handkerchief was knotted.
He wore a belt with his powder-horn and bullet-pouch, and carried his
rifle on his shoulder; the hand that held it trembled, and he tried to
quell the quiver. "I'll prove it fust, an' kill him arterward--kill him
arterward," he muttered.
In the other hand he held a yellowed old paper. Now and then he bent his
earnest dark eyes upon the grant, made many a year ago by the State of
Tennessee to his grandfather; for there had been no subsequent
conveyances.
The blacksmith had come begirt with his leather apron, his shirt-sleeves
rolled up, and with his hammer in his hand, an inopportune customer
having jeopardized his chance of sharing in the sensation of the day.
The other neighbors all wore their coats closely buttoned. Blinks
carried his violin hung upon his back; the sharp timbre of the wind,
cutting through the leafless boughs of the stunted woods, had a kindred
fibrous resonance. Clouds hung low far beneath them; here and there, as
they looked, the trees on the slopes showed above and again below the
masses of clinging vapors. Sometimes close at hand a peak would reveal
itself, asserting the solemn vicinage of the place, then draw its veil
slowly about it, and stand invisible and in austere silence. The
surveyor, a stalwart figure, his closely buttoned coat giving him a
military aspect, looked disconsolately downward.
"I hoped I'd die before this," he remarked. "I'm equal to getting over
anything in nature that's flat or oblique, but the vertical beats me."
He bent to take sight for a moment, the group silently watching him.
Suddenly he came to the perpendicular, and strode off down the rugged
slope over gullies and bowlders, through rills and briery tangles, his
eyes distended and eager as if he were led into the sylvan depths by the
lure of a vision. The chain-bearers followed, continually bending and
rising, the recurrent genuflections resembling the fervors of some
religious rite. The chain rustled sibilantly among the dead leaves, and
was ever and anon drawn out to its extremest length. Then the dull clank
of the links was silent.
"Stick!" called out the young mountaineer in the rear.
"Stuck!" responded his comrade ahead.
And once more the writhing and jingling among the withered leaves. The
surveyor strode on, turning his face neither to the right nor to the
left, with his Jacob's-staff held upright before him. The other men
trooped along scatteringly, dodging under the low boughs of the stunted
trees. They pressed hastily together when the great square rocks--Moses'
tables of the Law--came into view, lying where it was said the man of
God flung them upon the sere slope below, both splintered and fissured,
and one broken in twain. The surveyor was bearing straight down upon
them. The men running on either side could not determine whether the
line would fall within the spot or just beyond. They broke into wild
exclamations.
"Ye may hammer me out ez flat ez a skene," cried the blacksmith, "ef I
don't b'lieve ez Purdee hev got 'em."
"Naw, sir, naw!" cried another fervent amateur; "thar's the north. I jes
now viewed Grinnell's dad's deed; the line ondertakes ter run with
Purdee's line; he hev got seven hunderd poles ter the north; ef they air
a-goin' ter the north, them tables o' the Law air Grinnell's."
A wild chorus ensued.
"Naw!" "Yes!" "Thar they go!" "A-bearin' off that-a-way!" "Beats my
time!" as they stumbled and scuttled alongside the acolytes of the
Compass, who bowed down and rose up at every length of the chain.
Suddenly a cry from the chain-bearers.
"Out!"
Stillness ensued.
The surveyor stopped to register the "out." It was a moment of thrilling
suspense; the rocks lay only a few chains further; Grinnell, into whose
confidence doubt had begun to be instilled, said to himself, all
a-tremble, that he would hardly have staked his veracity, his standing
with the brethren, if he had realized that it was so close a matter as
this. He had long known that his father owned the greater part of the
unproductive wilderness lying between the two ravines; the land was
almost worthless by reason of the steep slants which rendered it utterly
untillable. He was sure that by the terms of his deed, which his father
had from its vendor, Squire Bates, his line included the Moses' tables
on which Purdee had built so fallacious a repute of holiness. He looked
once more at the paper--"thence from Crystal Spring with Purdee's line
north seven hundred poles to a stake in the middle of the river."
Purdee too was all a-quiver with eagerness. He had not beheld those
rocks since that terrible day when all the fine values of his gifted
vision had been withdrawn from him, and he could read no more with eyes
blinded by the limitations of what other men could see--the infinitely
petty purlieus of the average sense. He had a vague idea that should
they say this was his land where those strange rocks lay, he would see
again, he would read undreamed-of words, writ with a pen of fire. He
started toward them, and then with a conscious effort he held back.
The surveyor took no heed of the sentiments involved in processioning
Purdee's land. He stood leaning on his Jacob's-staff, as interesting to
him as Moses' rocks, and in his view infinitely more useful, and wiped
his brow, and looked about, and yawned. To him it was merely the
surveying for a foolish cause of a very impracticable and steep tract of
land, and the only reason it should be countenanced by heaven or earth
was the fees involved. And this was what he saw at the end of Purdee's
line.
Suddenly he took up his Jacob's-staff and marched on with a long stride,
bearing straight down upon the rocks. The whole _cortege_ started
anew--the genuflecting chain-bearers, the dodging, scrambling, running
spectators. On one of the strange stunted leafless trees a colony of
vagrant crows had perched, eerie enough to seem the denizens of those
weird forests; they broke into raucous laughter--Haw! haw! haw!--rising
to a wild commotion of harsh, derisive discord as the men once more gave
vent to loud, excited cries. For the surveyor, stalking ahead, had
passed beyond the great tables of the Law; the chain-bearers were
drawing Purdee's line on the other side of them, and they had fallen, if
ever they fell here from Moses' hand and broke in twain, upon Purdee's
land, granted to his ancestor by the State of Tennessee.
He could not speak for joy, for pride. His dark eyes were illumined by a
glancing, amber light. He took off his hat and smoothed with his rough
hand his long black hair, falling from his massive forehead. He leaned
against one of the stunted oaks, shouldering his rifle that he had
loaded for Grinnell--he could hardly believe this, although he
remembered it. He did not want to shoot Grinnell; he would not waste the
good lead!
And indeed Grinnell had much ado to defend himself against the sneers
and rebukes with which the party beguiled the way through the wintry
woods. "Ter go a-claimin' another man's land, an' put him ter the
expense o' processionin' it, an' git his line run!" exclaimed the
blacksmith, indignantly. "An' ye 'ain't got nare sign o' a show at
Moses' tables!"
"I dunno how this hyar line air a-runnin'," declared Grinnell, sorely
beset. "I don't b'lieve it air a-runnin' north."
The surveyor was hard by. He had planted his staff again, and was once
more taking his bearings. He looked up for a second.
"North_west_," he said.
Grinnell stared for a moment; then strode up to the surveyor, and
pointed with his stubby finger at a word on his deed.
The official looked with interest at it; he held up suddenly Purdee's
grant and read aloud, "From Crystal Spring seven hundred poles
north_west_ to a stake in the middle of the river."
He examined, too, the original plat of survey which he had taken to
guide him, and also the plat made when Squire Bates sold to Grinnell's
father; "north_west_" they all agreed. There was evidently a clerical
error on the part of the scrivener who had written Grinnell's deed.
In a moment the harassed man saw that through the processioning of
Purdee's land he had lost heavily in the extent of his supposed
possessions. He it was who had claimed what was rightfully another's.
And because of the charge Purdee was the richer by a huge slice of
mountain land--how large he could not say, as he ruefully followed the
line of survey.