He had left the road mechanically where it was intersected by the
turn-row that led through Eli Strobe’s cornfield. All frosted and
melancholy and spectral were the gaunt stalks in the moonlight. He could
see the sky and the summit of a distant mountain through the meshes that
the intertwisted bare boughs of the orchard wrought against the horizon.
But the house on the further side of the fruit trees was still invisible,
embowered amongst the red and yellow sumach and dogwood foliage, that
seemed to find a prolongation of life in its genial vicinage. He stopped
twice, peering eagerly into its bosky surroundings; he was surprised to
gauge the disappointment he experienced that there was no glimmer of
light. It seemed that no one had awaited his return from the forge; it
had been accounted, perhaps, hardly worth the while, since none knew that
danger menaced him there, none except Marcella. He would go back, then,
to his lurking coadjutor, hidden in the mountains. He could come again,
and then he could thank her once more; he could never thank her enough.
As he turned, his heart leaped; a tiny red gleam came through the leaves,
and as he took his way back toward the gate with a quick step he saw in
the moonlight a slight figure, that he had learned to know, coming down
from the porch toward it.
Marcella distinguished him in the shadows as readily. She hesitated for a
moment, but by the time he had reached the gate she had turned back, and
she stood upon the porch as he came up the steps. The light streamed out
from the open door, and fell upon his face. She saw his eyes, at once
eager and soft and almost suffused, shining upon her as he held out his
hand to her.
She held out her own, but it was not a responsive gesture.
“Gimme that thar pick,” she remarked stiffly. “I’ll set it in the
shed-room. We-uns don’t tote tools in the house.”
Her staid manner seemed only an added charm in his eyes, whose glance she
would not meet as she took the implement in question and bore it away.
For he had only sought to thus silently reiterate his thanks, since Mrs.
Strobe and the master of the house were both summoned to the door by
Marcella’s words.
“Kem in, stranger!” cried Mrs. Strobe. “Ye war a power o’ time gittin’
yer pick mended. Take a cheer by the ha’th. A body would ’low ’twar
a powerful tejious business, ’cordin’ ter the time Marcelly hev been
keepin’ a lookout. Ef she hev been traipsin’ ter the gate wunst ter
look ter see ef ye war a-kemin’ back, she hev been fower hunderd an’
ninety-nine times. I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, she war a-hopin’
ye’d bring Clem Sanders back with ye. Clem’s a mighty favor_ite_ ’mongst
the gals.”
The fire was burning blithely on the hearth, with great beds of ashes
about it to attest the late hour and the waste throughout the day. The
room intimated a presentiment of winter, although the batten shutters
were unclosed and the door stood open. Bunches of herbs, that but lately
waved in the summer’s wind, were already dried and dangling from the
rafters. Seeds had been gathered, and fruit dried, and red peppers
strung, and gourds cut; and the tokens of this industry, marking the
passing of the season, the homely harvests of the primitive housewife,
all had place in the variegated pendants and festoons that swung above
their heads. There was no work afoot at this time of the night. Isabel
sat idle on an inverted noggin, seeming but just aroused from slumber.
Mrs. Strobe perched on her chair, with her feet on its rungs and her
hands clasped in her lap, and fixed her shrewd small eyes on her
visitor. It was never too late to smoke, and Eli Strobe was filling
his pipe with a dried tobacco-leaf, which he crumbled for the purpose.
Rathburn drew his chair aside, that he might still see Marcella, who had
sunk down on a low bench by the chimney-corner; and as he responded to
his host’s invitation to smoke he glanced at her, the glow of the coal
with which he kindled his pipe red on his face and in his eyes as her
father spoke.
“Marcelly seemed ter sense ez ef suthin’ mought be goin’ for’ard at
the forge,—some sort’n row, or suthin’,” he said. “Seemed ter listen
ez skeered an’ white! An’ fower or five times she wanted ter walk down
ter the e-end o’ the turn-row ter listen better.” He puffed his pipe
in silence for a moment. “But I told her ez ’twarn’t wuth while ter
be oneasy. This hyar kentry, stranger,” he continued impressively,
“air the peaceablest c’munity on the face o’ the livin’ yearth. Never
hev no c’motions hyar,—naw, sir; no fights nor”—He brought up short,
recollecting his own reduced state and his bandaged head, which were
hardly the kind of corroborative instances his statement needed.
“’Thout,” he qualified, “’thout it air ’lection time, an’ sech ez that.
Ye don’t hear o’ no ’sturbances in Brumsaidge, now, _do_ ye?” He turned
to Rathburn his haggard face, full of the pride of his charge, and
reiterated, “Now, _do_ ye?”
Rathburn had tilted his chair back slightly on its hind legs; he slipped
the tips of his fingers in his trousers pockets; his pipe was redly
aglow, and the firelight flickered over his face with its long yellow
mustache and his close-clipped hair, for he did not wear his hat in the
house as Eli Strobe did.
“You’ve been cooped up a good while, Mr. Strobe. Let me see,—how long has
it been since I came over here and prescribed for you? Well, no matter;
you didn’t know about that, when you were first ill. Broomsedge Cove
has been having it pretty much its own way ever since then, with the
constable laid up.”
Strobe looked a trifle crestfallen. Marcella, with a sudden anxious
impatience of manner, rose and passed to the other side of the room and
mechanically closed the batten shutter, then purposelessly opened it
again. Rathburn did not follow her with his eyes. They were still fixed
moodily on the fire. When she seated herself again, she looked at her
father with a clearing brow. A slow satisfaction, even triumph, was
creeping across Eli Strobe’s face. “They need me ter keep ’em straight,”
he observed. “Some powerful fractious boys in Brumsaidge Cove,” he
declared, with a slow, sidelong, convincing glance at Rathburn.
“I should think so, indeed,” Rathburn affirmed, with an accession of
significant emphasis. He hesitated a moment, then went on. “I fell in
to-night with the ringleader of a gang of lynchers, and if I hadn’t been
warned beforehand and known just how to talk to him I shouldn’t have got
off with my life.” He once more cast a swift glance at Marcella, charged
with much that he would fain have said; but her eyes were downcast, the
long lashes almost touching the rare rose a-bloom in her cheeks.
Eli Strobe turned his bovine stare of slowly kindling excitement upon the
speaker; his pipe-stem was quivering in his hand; his lips had parted,
as if an ejaculation were trembling upon them, but the alert maternal
comments forestalled him:—
“Dell-law! the crazy buzzards! What hed _ye_ been a-doin’ of, though,
ter hev sech a pursuit ez that take arter ye?” Mrs. Strobe fixed an
investigating eye upon the stranger which intimated a cautious reserve of
judgment.
“I’d like for you to guess; but you never could,” said Rathburn.
“It air in rank vi’lation o’ the law, no matter what he done nor what
he done it fur,” Eli Strobe declared impressively. Then he tremulously
replaced his pipe in his mouth.
“You see,” said Rathburn, leaning forward and tapping the burly
mountaineer on the knee, looking up at him the while with eyes that grew
fiery revealing the angry, smarting wounds to his pride, “I admit I was
fool enough to agree to Jake Baintree’s idiocy in keeping the matter
secret. I have been trying to strike silver that he found here a few
years ago, and when we broke our tools I undertook to mend and sharpen
them at the forge, being a sort of Jack-of-all-trades; and I did it at
night and in secret to humor him. I wanted to keep him as communicative
as I could, because the fool puts me off and deceives me from day to day
about the place,—the Lord knows why.” He paused. “I’d like to throttle
him,—I’d like to break his neck,” he said, as his preoccupied gaze dwelt
on the fire for a moment. Then flinging himself back in his chair in his
former attitude, and slipping his hands into his pockets he continued,
“That’s what like to have happened to me, though, I tell you. It was a
mighty close call. I got off by the skin of my teeth.”
“Whar’s Jake, then?” Eli Strobe turned his bandaged head actively in
search of the supposed sharer of Rathburn’s peril, as if thinking him
near at hand. “Some o’ them boys air been keen ter see Jake stretch hemp
ever sence the jury acquitted him,—miser’ble, senseless critters; got no
mo’ ’spect fur the law ’n so many painters an’ sech. Whar’s Jake? They
didn’t ketch Jake, did they?” He rose stumblingly to his feet.
Rathburn laughed; the gleam of his white teeth, showing under his yellow
mustache, was capable of adding a geniality to his ordinary expression,
but now it gave only a certain fierceness to his face, so little mirth
did it imply.
“No, you may bet your immortal soul they didn’t. By this time he’s mighty
safe; no more to be found, I’ll warrant, than Samuel Keale,—ain’t that
his name? I reasoned with Baintree. I begged him to come boldly out with
me; we could afford to stand the scrutiny of the vigilantes; but he
wouldn’t. He’s afraid of your good, law-abiding population of Broomsedge,
Mr. Strobe.” He clasped his hands behind his head and tilted himself back
in his chair, as his eyes retrospectively rested on the coals. “Jake
threw down his pickaxe and started the instant we got a word of warning.”
“Waal, ye war powerful lucky. Ginerally, in Brumsaidge, the lynchers an’
sech keep too close a mouth fur enny words o’ warnin’ ter git a-goin’,”
said Eli Strobe, who, however he might congratulate himself in the
interests of law and humanity upon the result, felt a certain deprecation
of the futility of the enterprise as a work of art, as it were. “I dunno
how in this worl’ sech ez a word o’ warnin’ could hev kem ter ye.”
“It may have come through a woman, but it seemed to me through an angel
of mercy!” the young man declared, his glowing brown eyes swiftly seeking
Marcella’s flushed and grave and half-averted face.
Mrs. Strobe, unnoting the demonstration, gave a sharp little satiric
laugh, more like the fleering squawk of a jaybird than any merely human
flout.
“Dell-law, stranger, don’t ye b’lieve the haffen o’ that. ’Twarn’t no
n’angel o’ mercy! I ain’t ’quainted with n’angels much myself, but I know
enough ’bout ’em ter make mighty sure ez n’angels don’t go lopin’ ’round
the Big Smoky seein’ arter the welfare o’ two sech good-lookin’ young
men ez ye an’ Jake Baintree. It don’t need no wisdom from above ter know
it air mighty safe ter trest ye ter some young yearthly woman, ’thout
interruptin’ enny n’angel in her reg’lar business o’ quirin’ ’roun’ the
throne o’ grace. Don’t ye never make no sech mistake ez that.” And once
more it might be doubted whether it were the satiric old woman or some
gay cynic of a bird that gave a short shriek of laughter.
As a general rule, Rathburn cared little what these humble, illiterate
mountaineers said or how they esteemed him. But despite his appreciation
of its infinitesimal consequence he was at once surprised, and a
trifle offended by the ridicule. He had turned to retort, when he saw
Marcella’s face with the reflection of his own sentiment upon it. Those,
crystal-clear eyes of hers were widely opened; he noted the upward sweep
of the thick, fine lashes; and why, since her flush was so infrequent,
why did it wear that exquisite hue, deepening in the cheek, and merging
by indistinguishable degrees, like the fine sorceries of sunset, into
the warm whiteness of her brow, and chin, and throat? Her lips were more
deeply red still,—did ever a sculptor chisel a mouth like that, where all
sweet graces curved sedately? It trembled slightly, and the sight of the
quiver roused in him a new lease of gratitude for her timely word; even
now he could not measure the risk she ran in saying it. He would not be
laughed from his loyalty to the messenger who had brought him safety,
even rescued his life, perhaps.
“_May_ have been a woman,” he admitted; “she _looked_ like an angel.”
“A triflin’ chit, I’ll be bound,” Mrs. Strobe declared. “Hain’t she got
no better work ter do ’n ter keep her eye on the young men, an’ her ear
open ter all the talk ’bout’n em?”
She spoke all unaware that the belittled “n’angel” was one of her own
fireside, or that any words of hers were serving to deepen the flush on
Marcella’s cheek.
So preoccupied had Rathburn been hitherto in the significant and
absorbing events of the evening that his mind had had little tendency to
even unconscious processes of deduction which did not immediately pertain
to the imminence of his danger and the security of his escape. It had
not as yet occurred to him to speculate upon the influences which had
moved Marcella to so unprecedented a course as to lure away the secret
from one of the lynchers, and come with it to the rescue of a stranger
and the ostracized Baintree. Mrs. Strobe’s logic, all unwitting though
she was to whom she applied it, had kindled an idea in his brain that
glowed and burned, and presently leaped like wild-fire from conjecture
to conclusion, carrying all before it in its irresistible exhilaration.
He was not a stranger to Marcella. She had not forgotten him, evidently.
Perchance it was some nearer, more coercive, more personal interest
that had nerved her; how else, indeed, could it be? He had not hitherto
thought of her save that her beauty had impressed him as strangely
incongruous with the poverty of her surroundings,—incompetent even to
afford the foil to the jewel, and of jarring and discordant effect; and
earlier to-night his heart had only been stirred toward her with genuine
gratitude. It was moved now with the sweet vanity of believing himself
beloved. He perhaps would have esteemed his state of mind coxcombical in
another man, but poor human nature is provided with a keen vision for the
defects of others, and a purblind perception of those same traits closer
at home. He felt a strong zest, a renewing interest, in reviewing the
circumstances, when Mrs. Strobe, drawing from her pocket a corn-cob pipe,
proceeded to crumble into its bowl a leaf of tobacco, asking the while,
“An’ whar did this n’angel find ye?”
Once more he glanced at Marcella, who sat quite still, quite grave,
listening sedately.
“She started up the mountain, thinking she would go to Baintree’s people,
and that may be they would know where he was; but she heard the picks as
we were digging in a gorge, and so she found us.”
Mrs. Strobe seemed to revolve this statement when it was finished,
nodded her head several times, and emitted two or three deliberate puffs
of smoke. “She did, did she?” she observed, in default of more acrid
comment, but bent upon ridicule.
“Then she told us all she knew”—
“Mighty easy done, I’ll bet,” interpolated the little dame.
—“Or had heard about the affair, and begged us not to tell who told us”—
“Tuk a power o’ pains ter keep herself safe from the lynchers, I’ll be
bound”—
“That she didn’t!” cried the young fellow. “That’s all she said about it,
and left the rest to our discretion.”
“Waal, _that_ war a pore dependence, I will gin up,” said Mrs. Strobe,
her pipe in her hand, her puckered lips, with a laugh well hid in their
corrugations, ostensibly grave.
The color surged to the young man’s face. He was realizing how few
friends one has in the world; how alone, how piteously solitary, amongst
the multitudes of one’s kind. He felt that Mrs. Strobe and her son,
and all Broomsedge besides,—microcosmic illustration,—would have cared
little had the event resulted differently. One would have blustered a
trifle about the outraged dignity of the law. The other would have said
some primitively witty things, hardly decent of one so recently dead,
and, hampered by her sense of decorum, would have thought still more
witty things, which she would reluctantly have refrained from saying.
In Glaston and Colbury his most lenient obituary would have been, “Poor
fool!” And his memory would have served as a tradition in the mountains
to warn the next addle-pate that came prying into their hidden chambers,
seeking silver and gold and worldly treasures! Only this girl would
have risked aught to save his life. Only this girl truly cared that
his life was saved. She seemed at the moment the only friend he had
in the world,—surely, surely the best! That better nature of his, in
its facile oscillations, was reasserted anew. He forgot the flattering
personal tribute which he had been disposed to arrogate to himself. He
did not speculate about her interest in him. He began to entertain a more
definite intention as he talked. There was something—it had almost been
forgotten—that he must let her know.
“Mebbe,” Mrs. Strobe resumed, the pause not being conducive to
entertainment,—“mebbe the gal, or the n’angel, ’lowed ez ye hed been
doin’ suthin’ a heap wuss, though not so foolish, ez sarch the mountings
fur silver. From the way ye an’ Jake Baintree talked the night ye kem
hyar ter physic Eli, me an’ Marcelly ’lowed ye mus’ hev killed a man—I
don’t mean through physickin’ him, but with a pistol or suthin’—an’ war
a-hidin’ from jestice.”
“Killed a man! Great Lord!” exclaimed Rathburn, aghast. He turned and
looked at Marcella, reproach eloquent in his eyes. Had she ever thought
this of him?
The girl incoherently sought to defend herself—“Leastwise, granny
said—’twar granny’s word”—and fell tremulously silent.
“’Peared mighty reason’ble ter me,” asserted the unabashed little dame.
“Mebbe that’s what the n’angel thunk too.”
“If she thought it, she didn’t say so,” he replied slowly. “But I wanted
it to seem to the lynchers as if it were by accident that I went to
the forge and worked. So I came over betimes, and went from here to
the blacksmith’s house, and couldn’t find him; and his mother gave me
permission to open the forge, and I told her I had worked there once or
twice before.”
“I’ll be bound Clem war one o’ the lynchers!” cried Mrs. Strobe
vivaciously. “Did they swaller that tale?” she demanded abruptly.
“No they didn’t,” he rejoined. “Their leader knew I had been
warned—and—knew who had warned me.”
“Marcelly, set _down_!” exclaimed the old woman, with a sharp note of
reproof. “Ef ye hed been a harnt a-poppin’ up out’n a grave, ye couldn’t
hev skeered me wuss with yer suddint motions!”
For the girl had started abruptly to her feet, her distended eyes
fastened upon Rathburn, her face paling, her hand half outstretched,
trembling violently.
“The leader!” she echoed, sinking back upon the low bench under the
coercive touch of Mrs. Strobe’s hand. “Who told him?”
“He didn’t say, but somehow he got it out of the man who let the secret
slip.”
Marcella knitted her brows, and fixed her pondering eyes upon the fire;
her breath was quick; the rich color had deserted her cheek. With one
hand she mechanically tossed back the brown curling hair that fell
heavily forward from her half-bent head, and ever and again she put back
the locks with the same tremulous, unconscious gesture.
“Hed them men no masks nor nuthin’?” demanded Eli Strobe, a hand on
either knee, as he leaned slightly forward; he spoke with his pipe-stem
fast between his teeth.
“Faces bare as my hand,” replied Rathburn, holding up the member in the
light of the fire.
“Waal, sir, they be powerful brigetty an’ bold!” said Eli Strobe with
displeasure. “They oughter hed the grace ter kiver thar faces, knowin’ ez
thar actions be plumb agin the law,—conspiracy, an’ riot, an’ ef they hed
hung ye, murder; it air agin the law.”
“That’s why I am telling you,” said Rathburn. “They are a lawless gang,
and if anything happens to me, you, as an officer of the law, are in
possession of the facts, and know just how and where to lay your hand
on the men, the ringleader especially. I only saw two of them; the
other, the blacksmith, is a hap-hazard fellow, and does his bidding. The
ringleader is the soul of the iniquity; it couldn’t move an inch without
him.”
The fire had been burning clearly; the sticks across the andirons had
gradually become each an entire glowing coal, of a live vermilion tint,
and half translucent, yet still retaining the shape of the hickory
logs they had once been; here and there an elusive amethystine flame
flickered, but the salient red and white blaze of the earlier stages
was quenched, and the room was all in a dusky red shadow save for now
and then a livid purple gleam. Isabel nodded as she sat on the inverted
noggin; sleep seemed with her in some sort an ailment, since it so
reduced her from her normal state of conversation. It was as if a
palsy had fallen upon her faculties, and her face, bereft of its wonted
animation, was unfamiliar, and pathetic, and forlornly reflective. The
dog of the “frequent visitor” took note even in his slumbers of the
dwindling state of the fire, and, with a countenance much solemnized
by sleep and preternaturally sober, came and stood before it for a
time, steadfastly regarding it. Then with a loud yawn, intrusive in the
silence, he stretched his elastic length, rasping his nails on the stones
of the hearth, and lay down once more before it. A cock crew, a muffled
alarum in the distance; no other sound from the frosty midnight without.
The example of the old hound had caused Mrs. Strobe to yawn too, with
that epidemic appreciation of fatigue which the demonstration usually
produces. She was not sorry for this, despite her ample repositories of
what she collectively termed “manners.” She was in hopes Rathburn would
note it, and draw the natural inference.
“He ’lowed he wouldn’t bide all night, so he mought jes’ ez well take the
hint an’ stir his stumps away from hyar. I never see sech a ow-_el_ ez
the man,” she thought.
But Glaston and Colbury hours were later than those kept in the
mountains, and although Rathburn was aware that his stay exceeded the
customary limits, he had no idea of its unprecedented extent. He went on
after a momentary pause:—
“He is a very dangerous customer. The eye of the law couldn’t be better
employed than fixed on that man. In Glaston, or Colbury, or anywhere
else, they’d be awfully pleased to get up any kind of a charge against
such a domineering blusterer as that, which would lock him up somewhere,
safe out of harm’s way.”
He nodded his head once or twice in emphatic confirmation of the burden
of his thoughts. He felt suddenly as if civilization, the world, all
the mechanism of law and art and knowledge that he seemed to have been
familiarized with in some previous state of existence on some alien
planet, were not so far away, after all, save in sentiment. What could
be easier than to place the headstrong despot of Broomsedge Cove under
the surveillance of a law stronger even than that which he wielded with
so arrogant and absolute a temper? He was not so far from the county
authorities, who might take more cognizance of such matters than the
constable of Broomsedge Cove; as lynch-law and the domination of a
community according to the will of regulators might to them perchance be
less familiar. The recollection, ignominious he felt it to be, of his
fear; the terrible strain on his nerves; the mere chance that had saved
his life,—this girl’s word of warning and his own clever diplomacy in its
use,—all were bitter still to him, and his escape held none of the sweets
of triumph.
He would rejoice to be revenged: not upon Clem Sanders, who seemed, in
his hap-hazard lack of logic, as irresponsible as a child—not upon the
unnumbered, unindividualized, unimagined vigilantes at the barn, but upon
Teck Jepson. With all the fervor of a deep, suddenly awakened hatred he
longed to see him cringe and cower. He resented his lofty serenity, his
calm admission of the usurpation of power, his deliberate, open avowal
of his intentions and of his conditional clemency. He should like to see
this doughty mountaineer face the law he had insulted. His lip curled at
the thought; he stroked his mustache in the satisfaction that the mental
picture afforded him. He too could follow out a scheme; he too could
plot, and lie in wait, and capture. “With stronger toils, my fine fellow!”
He encountered a sudden rebuff in the sequence of the idea,—the ridicule
that would attach to the revelation in Glaston that in his perfectly tame
and lawful prospecting for silver he should have been hauled up before
the captain of vigilantes. He felt, too, that there was a certain element
of derogation in his very enterprise. Unless he should find silver, he
hardly cared that it should be known in his world that he had sought it.
And yet he quivered with eagerness at the very thought of vengeance upon
Teck Jepson. Fine sport, to be sure, to run down this big game of the
Smoky Mountains.
“For all he is so pious!” he exclaimed with a sneer.
Eli Strobe turned a slow glance upon him.
“Who be ye a-talkin’ ’bout?” he demanded quietly.
“That fellow I saw over at the forge there,—the ringleader of the
lynchers. Teck Jepson is his name.”
An uncomprehended sensation, of which Rathburn nevertheless was aware,
swept through the circle. He felt a vague surprise to see Marcella start
up in the dusky red glow of the dwindling fire, and sink back uncertain,
with a pallid, distraught face. In the puckers of Mrs. Strobe’s wizened
little countenance, dimly white in the gloom, his transitory glance
detected a strange embarrassment and discomfort. Isabel had roused
herself, and was peering at him from her lowly seat. His host’s head was
bent toward him, the long neck outstretched, his tangled locks and beard
hanging forward, as he stared in the utmost amazement.
“Ye never seen Teck Jepson to-night at the forge, young man.”
“But I did,” protested Rathburn. “That was what Clem Sanders called
him,—a tall, powerfully built man.”
“Light-complected?” asked Strobe.
“As a girl,—and he has blue eyes, and very dark hair and beard, and is
slow stepping, and solemn spoken.”
Eli Strobe had thrown himself back in his chair. The deep bass rumble of
his laughter sounded a trifle muffled. He was laughing to himself. “Ye
never seen Teck Jepson.”
A crash, and the women cried out, startled; but it was only the breaking
of the logs, long delayed, and the chunks falling, some within and some
beyond the andirons, were sending up streams of white flame. Rathburn
turned instantly back to see the constable lying at ease in his chair,
the laughter fading from his face as he reiterated, “Ye never seen Teck
Jepson.”
He pulled himself forward, and leaning over laid his hand on the guest’s
knee; looking into Rathburn’s face, he said significantly, “He’s dead!”
Rathburn sat silent for a moment, as if doubting his senses, “I saw him,
he spoke to me, not half an hour ago,” he insisted.
“Ye never seen him.” Eli Strobe shook his head, with its long, melancholy
locks, slowly from side to side. “Ye never seen him. Ye seen his harnt.
He hev sot out ter walk. I seen his harnt wunst, myself. He’s dead!”
He sank back in his chair, while Rathburn, perplexed and uncomprehending,
gazed startled at him. The white firelight had conjured all the room
from out the dusky nullity that had been creeping over it. The pendent
trophies from the rafters seemed to sway as the light chased the shadows
through their midst. The glad scarlet of the strings of peppers asserted
its tint anew, and many hanks of saffron yarn lent it contrast and
company. Marcella’s fair face shone out upon the background of flickering
brown and fleeting gold, and the night seemed to have grown younger
with this sense of movement and life and light; the nerves took less
heed of the lateness of the hour. The dog turned his neck in a way that
challenged dislocation, and looked about the room; then rose slowly and
stiffly, taking it for granted that, with this new cheer, it was day, and
now and then wagging a languid tail as he glanced around at Marcella,
expecting to see her set about getting breakfast. Not once did Rathburn’s
absorption flag as he sat and steadfastly gazed at his host; he hardly
moved an eyelash, so tense, so fixed, so strained, was his attention.
As Eli Strobe glanced up from the fire he encountered the intent inquiry
in Rathburn’s face.
“Ye seen his harnt,” he reiterated, in reply to the look. “He’s dead. I
kilt Teck Jepson myself, an’ I oughter know. He’s dead.”
A sudden swift expression crossed the stranger’s face like a flash of
light. Marcella saw the gleam of his teeth, white under his yellow
mustache; he put up one hand and stroked it, as was his wont in
excitement.
“Why, now, that’s a fact!” he rejoined coolly. “I had forgotten that I
had heard that.”
The next moment he leaned forward, extending the other hand half closed,
and with a delicate tentative gesture he laid it on the constable’s wrist.
“Let me feel your pulse, Mr. Strobe,” he said irrelevantly. “You are
still getting better, I suppose?”
The constable silently submitted. Then pursuing the subject, he added.
“They can’t do nuthin’ ter me fur it, though,—me bein’ officer o’
the law, an’ Teck engaged in a onlawful act. I pulled Teck off’n his
hoss-critter an’ bruk his neck.” He nodded his head in doughty triumph.
“I war sorry some arterwards. Teck war a good man in the main.”
“Well, his ‘harnt’ ain’t a good ‘harnt,’” the young man flippantly
declared.
His tone jarred upon Marcella, so sensitive she was for her father’s
sake, so wounded in the pride she had once felt in his preëminence.
The wound ceased to ache as she noticed the deep attention with which
Rathburn regarded the invalid. In truth, Eli Strobe well and hearty
was not half the man, in his estimation, that Eli Strobe was with this
strange malady, and the contemplation of the perfection of reason could
not have so enthralled and invigorated his jaded perceptions as did
this forlorn folly of a mental delusion. He made no further allusion to
the spectral ringleader, although more than once he turned again and
surveyed with his keen professional gaze the constable’s face. In his
deft choosing of a subject of discussion, he seemed to experiment with
the invalid’s capacities, and Marcella was amazed to note how rationally,
with what strong good sense, Eli Strobe talked, reminding her of “dad’s
conversation” of yore, in which she had experienced such filial pride.
At last the guest rose to go, and she listened, as she stood in the
doorway, to the faint footfalls on the hard ground, growing ever fainter
as the distance increased,—listened and looked out at the still and
solitary night, so white with the moon and the frost in the midst of its
normal gloom. So mute it was, so replete with a sense of loneliness. It
seemed that not even some belated vigilante could be astir in that desert
of dark mountains, and icy white glintings, and profundity of silences.
The fear that could but quiver at the thought grew still after a moment,
and she became conscious that her grandmother had twice spoken to her.
“Marcelly,” cried the irate little dame, “what ails ye ter stan’ thar in
the door a-lookin’ out at the moon ez big-eyed ez a ow-_el_, ez ef ye war
bound ter watch ter see the man go? I ain’t a-wonderin’ at ye nuther”
(sarcastically); “he makes the shortes’ visits o’ enny o’ the fool folks
ez kems ter this house. Bein’ ez he air a doctor-man, nex’ time he kems
I be a-goin’ ter ax him ef he hain’t got enny lotium ez will brace up a
sensible woman’s back ter endure the strain o’ hearin’ a young fool talk
fower hour at a stretch. Ye needn’t stan’ thar stare-gazin’ the moon, I
tell ye, a-thinkin’ ye look so powerful pritty an’ enticin’, with yer
eyes stretched so big an’ shinin’,” becoming suddenly sensible of the
ethereal beauty in the girl’s fair face. “Thar’s lots o’ wimmen in this
worl’ ez spends thar time lookin’ pritty fur nuthin’. Fur ye mark my
words,—ye can’t cut out that n’angel o’ a gal ez brung him the news ’bout
the lynchers; he air dead in love with her, else all signs fail!”
“Oh,” faltered Marcella, “I ’low ye mus’ be mistaken—’twar jes’—jes’”—
“Jes’ what? I reckon I know folks in love whenst I see ’em. Strange ez
it may ’pear, I war wunst a fool o’ that kind myself,” she added, with
a whimsical pucker of the lips, as she began to cover the fire with the
abundant ashes, that it might last till morning.
She paused presently with a deeply reflective countenance, shown half
in the glow of the fire, and half in the brilliant moonlight, falling
through the open window and door. “I wonder which o’ these hyar mounting
gals the idjit ’lows looks like a n’angel. Mus’ hev been Em’line
Bolter, ’ceptin’ I reckon no n’angel air ez freckled ez her,—reg’lar
tur-r-key-aig; or else Ar’bella Jane Perkins, though she air some
cornsider’ble red-headed. But laws-a-massy, that don’t make no diff’ence.
When a man sets out ter be a fool, an’ fall in love, Providence in its
mercy warps his judgment, an’ mos’ enny gal mought ’pear like a n’angel.
Ye Marcelly, quit hangin’ on that door, a-saggin’ it off’n the henges an’
a-stare-gazin the moon.”
It was lower now in the sky, and showed through the fringes of the pines;
its pensive light was in the girl’s lustrous eyes a moment longer, and
then the door was closed.