Baintree lifted his sleek black head for a moment, and covertly surveyed
his fireside companion, whose eyes were fixed meditatively on the coals.
There was an expression of acute though surprised comprehension in the
face of the crafty mountaineer; his elevated eyebrows, keen, quick
glance, and thin pursed lips betokened much deft and agile deduction and
analysis, although none of these swift processes were indicated in the
reflective mien into which he had relapsed before Rathburn’s attention
once more reverted to him.
“Marcelly air pritty enough,” he said, still spreading his thin fingers
to the blaze. “Thar ain’t no two ways ’bout’n that. I reckon a man
mought take a righteous oath ez thar ain’t sech another lookin’ gal
in the Newnited States—but she ain’t like them young citified Glaston
gals, what walks with par’sols,—in no wise like them ez walks with
par’sols,” he repeated the phrase with relish of its aptness, for to him
it expressed the totality of the status. “An’ she don’t know none of
the things they know. Why shucks! even the men-folks in the mountings
air a thousand million o’ miles away behind the times. I fund that out
through jes’ goin’ ter jail in a sure-enough town. I reckon they would
fall down stunned ef they war ter see a three-story house. I’ll be
bound they would be plumb afeard ter go inside o’ one, thinkin’ bein’
so high it mought fall in onto ’em an’ mash ’em tee-totally!” He looked
up half laughing, half sneering at the thought of his compatriots’
ignorance, and Rathburn’s face wore a responsive gleam,—Jake Baintree’s
attitude of superiority expressed so definitely how relative a thing is
sophistication!
“The folks in the mountings don’t know nuthin’ sca’cely,” he went on,
evidently bitten by that tarantula of decrying the home-keeping things
which besets more learned travelers in wider circuits. “But they won’t
b’lieve that, though. Why, even me—I useter think thar warn’t no kentry
but Tennessee, an’ No’th Carliny, an’ Georgy, an’ sech. It liked ter
hev knocked me down whenst that man ez war my cell-mate in Glaston—ye
’member, he hed a chronic mis’ry in his throat—an’ bless the Lord, he
showed me Ashy an’ Africky an’ Europe on a map he hed, an’ I couldn’t
sleep none that night—the news liked ter hev tuk my breath away!”
He reached behind the chair to the wood-pile, lifted a great log split
in half, and flung it on the fire, which sent up a myriad of sparks and
a cloud of smoke, and then seemed to dwindle in discouragement for a
season, only now and then emitting a timorous blue or yellow flame to
coil like a thong around the bulk of the wood, disappearing the next
moment in the slowly ascending gray wreaths that had usurped the place
of the dancing blazes. The room had grown very nearly dark. Rathburn
could ill distinguish the crouching figure, with its elbows on its
knees, seated in the rickety chair on the opposite side of the hearth.
It seemed lighter without than within. He could see through the rift in
the batten shutter a section of the deeply purple sky athwart which the
leafless twigs of a bough near at hand moved fitfully, fretted by the
wind. Once in their midst a great white star shone, pulsating in some
splendid ecstasy, and then the clouds surged over it anew. The lash-like
blaze sprang out once more about the log, and he caught Baintree’s eye,
still illumined with a jeering laugh, and a twinkling appreciation of
the incongruity between his present fully-posted estate and his former
ignorance.
“Did ye see Eli?” he demanded presently.
Rathburn nodded.
“Hev he got sensible agin?” asked Baintree, remembering the constable’s
delirious condition when they visited the house together.
“He talked very sensibly indeed, this evening,” the physician replied
evasively, the professional punctilio instantly on the alert, “especially
about lynchers and law-breakers generally—sound views.”
Baintree became suddenly rigid.
“Ye warn’t fool enough,” he said, sitting stiffly upright, “ter go
tellin’ Eli Strobe, the off’cer o’ the law, ’bout’n them men _by
name_—they’d hang ye fur a informer, ef they hed nuthin’ else agin ye, ef
enny of ’em fund it out.”
“_That_ for their slip-knots!” cried Rathburn, snapping his fingers and
laughing in gay bravado. “I’m not in collusion with ’em, an’ I’ll do
nothing to protect ’em. I’ll give ’em away every time!”
Baintree visibly winced at the mere idea of this defiance. He made no
response for a moment, but looked doubtfully over his shoulder at the
broken batten shutter. It shivered and shook as if in sympathy with his
glance.
“The wind is harsh ter-night,” he said again.
“I’m through with this skulking and hiding,” said Rathburn, the
superficial composure and friendly tone that he had maintained giving way
suddenly. “I’ll say what I mean, and what I think, and what I feel. And
I’m going to hire twenty—fifty hands—to sink shafts in both those gorges
where the best indications are.”
Baintree had been startled by his sudden change of tone, and had
listened with relaxing muscles and lips parted. A certain hardening took
possession of his features as the final words fell on the air. A covert
triumph, a definite appreciation of his own cleverness, shone in his
eyes, incongruously enough with the mild tenor of his speech as he said,
“Waal, Eugene, I wish ye well—I wish ye well! Ye an’ me hev been mighty
frien’ly tergether an’ I hev enjyed yer comp’ny.”
Rathburn, tilted back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his
head, looked, with curling lip and sarcastic, glowing eye, the sneering
protest that it was futile to speak. Since he had been so free with his
company he could not logically quarrel with Baintree for presuming to
find it agreeable.
“I be sorry ye hev got tired o’ me. I ain’t ez school-larned ez ye,
though I ain’t like a ignorant mountaineer, nuther. I hev larned some in
books, an’ I be one o’ them ez kin larn out’n ’em, too. Thar’s a heap o’
things I know—through jes’ bein’ knowin’.” His look was the very essence
of boastful slyness as he cast his eyes up obliquely at the flushing face
of the young townsman. He had his elbows once more on his knees, and
his chin in his long bony hand, and his drawl was not as distinct, thus
hampered, as it might have been. “Eli Strobe hev been ter Glaston time
I war tried, likewise Teck Jepson. They never larnt thar what I larned
’bout town ways; they never seen thar what I seen! Though Teck Jepson
hev got sech a survigrous vision ez he kin view the prophets o’ the Lord
lopin’ around the Big Smoky Mountings!—when the men never war out’n
Ashy in all thar born days, ’ceptin’ they hed a sorter stampin’-ground
o’ captivity in Egypt.” He gave the self-flattering laugh of conscious
cleverness, and then went on with that manner compounded of mock-humility
and fraternal familiarity which had become so offensive to Rathburn.
“But I ain’t ekal ter sech ez you-uns, Eugene, an’ I don’t wonder none
ef ye hev in an’ about hed enough o’ me. I don’t wish ye nuthin’ but
well. Mebbe ye mought hire some o’ them men ez war along o’ Teck Jepson
at the blacksmith’s barn ter-night ter kem an’ dig an’ sink shafts.” He
rubbed his chin in pretended cogitation upon ways and means. “Folks in
Brumsaidge ain’t gin over ter diggin’ much—seems ez ef it in an’ about
kills ’em ter hev ter scratch the top o’ the ground enough with thar
shallow plowin’ ter put in the leetle bit o’ corn an’ sorghum an’ sech
ter keep the life in ’em. But mebbe ef ye war ter hire ’em, they would
be cured o’ thar dad-burned laziness, an’ would jes’ jump fur jye fur the
pleasure o’ diggin’ down sixty or sebenty feet in the hard groun’. They
would git used ter giant-powder an’ sech, too, arter a while—an’ wouldn’t
’low the Devil war in it.”
Eugene Rathburn was chewing the end of his mustache, now and then pausing
with his white teeth set, and looking at Baintree with antagonistic eyes,
his anger held in bounds only by the sense of being at a disadvantage,
and the demoralizing effect of sustaining an unrequitable rebuff,—for
Baintree’s sarcasm admitted of no successful retort. It was merely for
the sake of going through the motions of self-confidence and asserting
independence, that he said in an offhand way, “Oh, I meant laborers from
Glaston—Irish ditchers; they are willing to dig, I fancy.”
Jake Baintree affected to receive this with solemn consideration.
“Yes, sir! _They’d_ dig. Useter see a gang a-workin’ on that thar new
railroad—whilst lookin’ out’n the jail winder.”
It seemed a wide and varied expression of the world and of life that that
jail window had given upon, so much had the crafty observation been able
to glean therefrom.
“_They’d_ ’stonish the mounting folks! Thar ain’t no sech dirt-slingers
nowhar. But ’pears like ter me, Eugene, they mought be sorter
expensive—ef—ef, ye know—it war ter turn out ez thar _warn’t_ silver in
payin’ quantities. Ye know bes’, Eugene, what with yer book-larnin’,
yer g’ology an’ sech, an’ yer leetle assayin’ consarns, but ez fur
ez I kin jedge, ye air powerful welcome ter enny min’ral in them two
gorges. I’m willin’ ter gin ye my sheer!” He had spoken gravely, but
suddenly a glancing smile lighted up his eyes and curved his lips with so
spontaneous an expression of malicious enjoyment that it seemed in his
rare relish of the situation his will had lost control of his muscles. He
instantly recovered himself, and although he noted the fact that Eugene
Rathburn, quietly looking at him, had marked the dropping of the mask,
he went on in the same mock-fraternal vein, “I dunno ez I be hopeful
’bout’n it, Eugene—but I wish ye well, I wish ye well, Eugene.”
Rathburn was holding his every muscle in a sedulous placidity. There was
a conscious, intent, exacting calmness upon his face and in his voice.
“Baintree,” he said slowly, “I am glad I slept to-day. I am glad I have
my nerves abnormally under my control. Otherwise I should kill you,—I
should strike you dead where you are. No man under ordinary circumstances
could resist the temptation.”
Baintree cast a searching glance upon him; then emboldened by his
quiescent aspect, he sneered as he laughed.
“Then I’m glad, too, ye slept. Thanky kindly, sir! But I hain’t slept
none. An’ I know ye wouldn’t ’low ez I war right perlite ef I war ter
kill ye an’ take yer life, kase I hain’t hed my nap. _I’m_ glad, too; I
never s’picioned afore how much interest I oughter take in yer sleepin’
sound an’ satisfactory.”
Rathburn felt the blood rush to his temples, and he heard his hurrying
pulses beat surcharged with the impetus of rage. He did not stir. He
still sat with his hands clasped behind his head, his chair tilted
on the hind legs. He looked very trim, and sinewy, and lithe in his
close-fitting blue flannel shirt and trousers, with the well-shaped high
boots coming to the knee, in contrast with the long and lean Baintree,
upon whose gaunt frame his ill-made brown jeans hung with many a crease
and wrinkle. Beside the florid young physician, the jail-bird seemed to
have no blood in his veins, so pallid was his clearly-cut face. As they
steadfastly gazed at one another, the comparison might have interested
a third party looking on in the firelight, now richly aglow once more;
but they were alone in the vastness of the Great Smoky Mountains, the
slope of this lofty dome inhabited by naught else save bear, or panther,
or wolf. Only the mist peered in at the rift of the batten shutter,
white-faced, and wild, and disheveled, fleeing forever before the
ousting wind that made the timorous silent thing a vagrant. It seemed as
if to escape the antagonistic element that it sought to enter the rift
in the shutter, sending in a hesitating wreath, slow-stealing, pausing
aghast in the glow of the fire, and disappearing in the instant.
As the two comrades faced each other it was hard to say which had the
advantage, the clever man with the aid of culture, or the clever man so
clever despite the lack of culture.
Baintree’s insidious sarcasms, with their ever-ready thrust, had acquired
an edge from the attrition with his malicious mirth. And Rathburn found
that his seriousness weighted his anger and, since he would not sanction
its outburst, made his defense clumsy.
“I don’t understand you, Jake,” he said at last in a mollifying tone,—“to
save my life I can’t understand you. You go fooling me along with a bait
of rich float from month to month pretending to show me where you found
it. And when I tell you that it is impossible that you could have found
it here, and there, and elsewhere, because the formation proves you a
liar, you make out all at once that you were mistaken, and we plod about,
and you affect to recognize other landmarks, and so we have the whole
tomfoolery over again. If you were half as smart as you think you are,
you would realize that you can’t light hap-hazard on any similar rich
spot—you have got to go where you found that piece of float, and follow
it up or dig there.”
“Laws-a-massy, Eugene,” said Baintree, adopting in turn a more pacific
tone, and holding out both empty hands with the palms upward as if
to express a vacuity of unworthy intention, “don’t I try an’ try ter
find the percise spot, an’ ef I fool ye don’t I fool myse’f too? ’Twar
toler’ble long ago whenst I fund that rock, an’ the Big Smoky Mountings
seem sorter roomy whenst ye take ter huntin’ fur one percise leetle yard
medjure o’ groun’, whar a boy five year ago picked up a rock.”
Somehow as he became less acrid the temper of the other waxed stronger,
feeling the opposition lessen. With this spirit encroaching upon his
self-control Rathburn said suddenly, “I don’t believe one word of it. You
know the spot well enough. You are afraid to go to it.”
Baintree, whose attitude remained unchanged, barely having had time to
shift to a defiant sneer the deprecating earnest look he had worn, seemed
petrified for one moment as he sat still holding out his hands, his laugh
rigid on his startled face.
“’Fraid!” he echoed, glancing over his shoulder at the spectral mists
that came in at the crevice in the shutter and paused at the sight of the
fire, and shivered into invisibility. “’Fraid!”
Suddenly the rain came down on the roof with a thousand tentative touches
upon the clapboards, as if to try their sonorous capacities, and elicit
what element of melody so unpromising an instrument might add to the
music of the storm. Through its iterative staccato beat might be heard
the blended, unindividualized fall of the floods in the distance, a low,
mellow resonance. A chill blast came in under the door. The chimney
piped. The pallid mists were torn from the rift in the shutter, and
one could see upon the black and limited space of darkness without
certain fine gray palpitating lines of rain, close at hand, continuously
shifting, but never ceasing nor breaking into drops.
“I believe,” continued Rathburn, “that the silver is at the spot where
you ki—where that man Samuel Keale lost his life.” He did not fail to
note that Baintree winced at the name. “And you are afraid to go there,
and—ignorant fool that you are!—you think because silver is there, it is
anywhere else, and if we dig hard enough we will find it _somewhere_ in
the mountains.”
Baintree said nothing. He sat moistening his thin dry lips with the tip
of his tongue, and looking at Rathburn with eyes small, bright, and
with an expression that reminded him of the eyes of a rat in a trap,
timorous, furtive, and bespeaking mercy that it did not hope to receive.
“Where is that cave? Tell me that,” urged Rathburn, all his eager desire
for the hidden treasure goading him anew with the recollection of how
long he had been forced to dally upon the verge of an opulent discovery.
“Where is that cave?” he demanded. He was fain to raise his voice to
be heard above the din of the elements, and the commanding tones added
to the sense of power that possessed him more and more as Baintree’s
confidence collapsed. “I don’t ask you to tell me where the float was
found—simply where is that cave?”
Still Baintree met his eye like a caged and helpless thing. He
nevertheless had something in his power,—to be speechless; and as
Rathburn perceived a resolution in his dumbness he persisted more
vehemently.
“Tell me! Tell me! Then, if you won’t, Teck Jepson will be ready enough
to tell me where he found the man’s coat and hat, and I suppose the cave
can’t be far away in the gorge. I shall find it—I shall find it—I shall
never cease to search until”—
As he spoke he caught a glint of triumph in Baintree’s eyes. He realized
how far afield his hopes had carried him, that long and devious distances
lay between the spot to which he might be guided and the spot he sought.
With a sudden savage cry and the agility of a panther he flung himself
upon the man at the fireside and grappled at his throat.
“Tell me!” he ground out between his set teeth. “Tell me!”
A hoarse, half-strangled, intermittent scream for help filled the
log-cabin, and penetrated to the stormy voids of the wilderness without.
How vain! The heedless rain beat upon the roof. The unrecking wind passed
by. They were alone in the lofty fastnesses of the mountains, and one
was at the mercy of the other. Eugene Rathburn had never thought to
put his knowledge of the mechanism of the human throat to such uses,
but the mountaineer’s superior strength had enabled him only to rise
and to writhe helplessly upon the verge of strangulation, under the
scientific pressure of those fine and slender hands upon his bare throat,
practically demonstrating how nearly a man may be choked and still live.
For now and again their grasp relaxed, not to permit that hoarse, futile
cry which twice and thrice ensued, but as the essential means of an
answer to the question,—
“Tell me, where did you find it?”
Baintree, taken by surprise, his eyes starting out of his head, his face
almost purple, both unnerved hands grasping Rathburn’s lifted arms,
seemed in these intervals, in catching his breath, to regain a modicum
of his faculties. He ceased his instinctive efforts to tear away the
strong clutch at his throat. He swiftly passed his arms around the
waist of his assailant, and with a sudden wrench sought to fling him
to the floor. But the lithe Rathburn kept his feet, and the two went
staggering together across the room; crashing over the chairs; dragging
the saddle that lay on the floor under their clumsy, stumbling steps,
the stirrup-irons clattering on the puncheons; now swaying this way
and now that; overturning the table, with its scanty store of crockery
breaking unheeded on the hearth-stone. The red firelight, sole witness of
the strife, flickered bravely on the brown walls; the green wood, with
the sap still in the fibres, sang a mellow elfin song, fine and faint,
all unheard. Their shadows had lost the pacific habit of many evenings
of fraternal communings when the silhouettes smoked many a pipe in
Barmecidal fashion, and drank together in dumb show, and imitated their
hilarious, genial, and hopeful gestures. Now, adopting their example
anew, they reeled furiously after them as they went.
Baintree’s vise-like grip failed when the pressure on his throat was
renewed; the strength of the convulsive struggle, in which all his
unconscious physical forces were asserted, proved futile. There was a
different expression in his bulging eyes—he was beginning to believe that
the reply to the question was the price of his life. Perhaps Rathburn
noticed and interpreted the sign of subduement. The pressure of the deft
fingers relaxed again.
“Where did you find the float—tell me!” he reiterated.
“I never fund it,” Baintree gasped. The fingers tightened on his throat,
then loosened, for he was about to speak again. “Sam’l Keale fund it.”
“Where—where?” demanded Rathburn, his teeth set hard and his breath
fluttering.
“I dunno,” gasped the victim,—“he wouldn’t never tell me!”
“You killed him for that?” Rathburn asked swiftly—suddenly his fingers
began to tremble. Had he too been tempted to this hideous crime through
the lure of that bit of float? “What ever became of him?”
He asked this question less with the desire of response than with an
instinctive effort to elude even to his own conscience the tracing of so
repulsive a parallel. But Baintree could not divine his train of thought
nor that aught had served to weaken that clutch upon his throat save the
wish to facilitate reply. He was in momentary expectation of its renewal.
He had yielded and yielded utterly.
“I never knowed,” he sputtered,—“ez the Lord air my witness I never
knowed. He jes’ disappeared one day, an’ I traced his steps ter the mouth
o’ a cave,—thar hed been a rain,—an’ I never seen him agin.”
“Was the cave where Jepson found his hat and coat?” Rathburn demanded.
“Naw!” exclaimed Baintree, his eyes growing suddenly intent with anger.
“Naw! Ef I hed knowed at the trial ez Teck Jepson war a-goin’ ter find
them old clothes in the gorge, an’ make sech a power o’ a ’miration over
’em arter ward at the baptizin’, I’d hev tole whar the cave war sure
enough whenst they put me on the stand. An’ Teck Jepson wouldn’t hev
liked that so mighty well, I reckon, kase all the kentry knowed ez him
an’ Sam’l war at loggerheads.”
“Why?—what would Jepson have cared?” cried Rathburn.
It was only because of the revived interest of the moment that his
muscles grew tense, but his grasp had the intimation of coercion to
Baintree, who instantly responded, with a nod of the head,—
“Kase the cave’s on his land—in Teck Jepson’s woods. That’s why! An’
folks war powerful worked up an’ excited then, an’ mought hev s’picioned
him.”
Rathburn’s hands fell from Baintree’s throat to his shoulders. “Jake,” he
said, amazed, his voice bated with uncertainty and excitement, “why did
you never tell this before, if you had no hand in Keale’s death?”
“What did I want ter tell fur? How’d I know what ter tell an’ what not
ter tell? Nobody knowed how nuthin’ would strike the jury—not even the
lawyer. An’ I ’lowed ef they fund Sam’l thar,”—he shivered a little at
the suggestion,—“he’d hev looked turrible, mebbe, an’ hev hed his bones
bruk—an’ that would hev made it all go harsher at the trial. Ev’rybody
knowed he had been consortin’ with me, a-sarchin’ fur silver, an’ war
seen las’ along o’ me. So I jes’ purtended I couldn’t find the spot agin,
an’ the steps ez led ter the cave; it hed rained mo’, an’ the groun’ war
washed up cornsider’ble. An’ they all ’lowed ’twar up in the gorge whar
them clothes war fund. Whyn’t I tell, an’ whyn’t I tell?” he reiterated.
“I be sorry now I hev tole what I hev tole.”
He cast his anxious eyes absently about the room with a harried, hunted
look. Evidently the disclosure he had made was of paramount importance
to him, and precluded for the moment consideration or realization of the
coercion which had elicited it.
“That’s of no importance—you couldn’t be tried again for the same
offense,” said Rathburn reassuringly.
“Waal—_that_ rule don’t hold good in Jedge Lynch’s court,” returned
Baintree gloomily.
Rathburn walked away a few steps with his hands in his pockets. It was
difficult to assume a casual air after the episode of the evening, but
his efforts were aided by Baintree’s fixed attention upon the engrossing
subject of Keale’s disappearance rather than his recent injuries.
He stopped short suddenly. “Thought you and he were scuffling and playing
when he fell into the chasm?” He looked at Baintree with a revival of
suspicion.
“I ’lowed that whenst I war confused an’ didn’t know what ter say,”
replied Baintree. “We warn’t playin’ nor nuthin’. He lef’ me a-diggin’
in the gorge—an’ lef’ his hat an’ coat thar—an’ ’lowed he war a-goin’
ter a spot ter peck at the rocks a leetle furder down; an’ I waited
an’ waited,—I waited a week fur him, whenst I fund his track ter the
cave—’feard ter go home. He ain’t kem yit.”
Rathburn sank down into his chair beside the fire with a dazed, baffled
sense of loss. He was trembling with excitement, and exhausted by the
struggle. His eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the fire, and he panted
heavily as he drew out his handkerchief and passed it over his forehead.
“Why didn’t you tell me before that it was he who found the float; that
you didn’t know where in this big, thrice-accursed wilderness it came
from?”
“Kase I war ’feard ye wouldn’t ’low ’twar wuth while ter sarch, then,”
responded Baintree, with the promptitude of the instinct of self-defense.
“I ’lowed ef Sam’l Keale, knowin’ the leetle he did ’bout min’ral, could
find sech ez that, ye with _all_ yer book-larnin’ could. What’s the good
o’ yer g’ology, an’ all yer other gear, ef ye can’t?”
“I can’t find silver if it isn’t in the rock,” returned Rathburn. This
was not said in the tone of a retort. A gnawing sense of shame, a
burning self-reproach, had the ascendancy in his consciousness,—even
the vanishing prospects of wealth, diminishing gradually in the far
perspective of probability, were secondary for the time. He could not
justify his deed—he blushed for his motives. He felt in this cooler
moment of reflection as if he had suffered some metamorphosis—some
translation into another sordid entity, whose every impulse was followed
by an anguish of remorse. He gazed down at his hands, still red and
smarting with the strain to which he had subjected them, as if he could
hardly endure to acknowledge them after the work which they had done for
him so well and cleverly. His lids drooped a little as he looked up at
Baintree, and he evasively glanced hastily away.
“Jake,” he said in an embarrassed and husky tone,—the mountaineer had
seated himself opposite and was unwinding a large handkerchief which he
had worn around his throat, the folds, as they fell, showing the bruised
and swollen flesh,—“I am sorry I got to quarreling with you. I don’t know
what in the world made me do it.”
Baintree paused in unrolling his neck-gear, and glanced keenly at the
troubled and downcast face.
“I dunno what made ye do it, nuther. I be sorry, too. I hev got reason
ter be. An’ if ye call it _quar’lin’_—it’s toler’ble survigrous
quar’lin’, I will say.”
The flames in the chimney cowered as the wind swept down, and crouched
like a beaten thing. The smoke puffed into the room. The gusts had a
wild, insurgent, menacing note. The batten shutter rattled. The rain
redoubled its force upon the roof. The place seemed infinitely solitary,
and distant, and forlorn.
“I wish I had never heard of the silver. I wish I had let it alone,” said
Rathburn, from out his moody reflections.
“That ain’t goin’ ter do ye no good,” declared Baintree suddenly. “Ye’ll
go right back ter it, same ez a frog ter water. Them ez hanker arter it
hev got the love of it rooted in ’em. Hey, Lord! I ’lowed wunst ez I
hed enough o’ it. I ’lowed thar war a everlastin’ curse on it. Arter
Sam’l Keale, he jes’ vamosed like he done, an’ they ’rested me, an’ I
hed ter go ter jail an’ be tried fur my life—an’ paid everything I hed
in the world, even my gun, an’ my pistol, ter the lawyer, fur defendin’
me—I ’lowed ’twar kase I hed hankered arter the silver ez the Lord hid
away in the hills. An’ I didn’t keer no mo’ fur it then. Not even whenst
ye kem ter physic me, an’ seen that piece o’ float I hed kerried jes’
by accident in my pocket. Not even whenst ye ’peared so streck of a
heap, an’ kep’ sayin’ how rich,—how rich ’twar. Naw, sir! An’ whenst
I kem home, I tuk cornsider’ble pains ter git religion. I ’lowed I
warn’t goin’ ter gin the Lord no mo’ excuse fur goin’ back on me. I got
religion an’ sot out ter save my soul. I hed hed enough o’ sarchin’ arter
silver an’ hevin’ nuthin’ ter kem o’ it, so I hed sot out a-sarchin’
arter salvation. I wanted ter find suthin’ this time! I wanted ter be
a prosperous saint o’ the Lord, an’ what with knowin’ how ter read an’
write, I mought git ’lected ter office some day, ef I stood well in
the church. Couldn’t find salvation, nuther! This hyar Teck Jepson kem
a-pouncin’ down on me at the very water’s aidge, whenst I war a-goin’
ter be baptized an’ wash my sins away, an’ git the right sperit ter lead
my feet ter heaven, an’ he war a-totin’ Sam’l’s old gyarments what I hid
ter be rid of ’em, an’ Pa’son renounced me. So now I hev got ter go ter
hell—but hevin’ lived sech a life in Brumsaidge ez hev been my sheer, I
reckon ’twon’t be sech a turr’ble change ez most folks find it.”
“Come, Jake, you don’t have to be baptized to go to heaven!” exclaimed
Rathburn. He was looking at his fireside companion with an anxious
commiseration upon his deprecatory, flushed face, despite the laugh that
fluctuated over it.
But the rustic, however he may be awakened to a sense of his ignorance
of mundane matters, stoutly maintains all the arrogations of a spiritual
adept. The mountaineer sneered the theological proposition scornfully
away.
“_Ye_ dunno nuthin’ ’bout’n it—I hev hearn _ye_ say things ez makes me
’low ye ain’t haffen a b’liever; ye ’pear ter sense religious things
mighty porely! Ef ye read the Bible mo’, an’ yer g’ology an’ min’rology,
ez ye call ’em, less, ye’d be mo’ able ter entertain the sperit, ef ye
ever war ter hev a chance.”
As he shook his head drearily over the fire, the sombre reflections
evoked by his review of his forlorn, distraught fate imprinted on his
pallid, clear-cut face, his throat momentarily showing more definitely
the marks of the fingers that had clutched it, his poverty, and its
concomitant hopelessness, despite his native cleverness, expressed in
his rough jeans clothes, and his broken boots, and his bent old hat,
Rathburn’s heart smote him anew.
“Jake,” he said, an insistent inward monitor clamoring against him, “you
don’t know how sorry I am that I was so—so harsh.” He adopted in his
uncertainty a word that Baintree often used; it expressed for him many
phases of the physical and temporal world. “You don’t know how badly I
feel about it.”
“Waal,” said Baintree, carefully abstaining from any intimation of being
appeased, although he made no definite sign of resentment. “I feel
toler’ble bad myse’f.” He touched his throat with a gingerly gesture,
as he rearranged his neck-gear. It appealed to Rathburn with all the
power that the sight of physical injury, however slight, exerted upon
him. He could without compunction have lacerated his fellow-creature’s
sentiments, but for his cuticle he had a humane professional regard, and
remorse found him an easy prey.
“I’d give a hundred dollars if I hadn’t done it,” he said.
“Waal—_I_ wouldn’t,” Baintree protested, with mock earnestness, “kase I
never hed a hunderd dollars in all my life ter give,” he added dryly.
Rathburn turned aside, clearing his throat with a sound that was much
like a stifled groan.
There was silence for some moments between them. The rain splashed
ceaselessly into the gullies below the eaves. The roof leaked in more
than one place, and now and then a solemn, intrusive series of drops fell
upon the floor, with a deliberate iteration of chilly intimations. Once
Rathburn thought he heard a wolf howl at no great distance, and then
doubted if it were not the wind sounding a new and savage pipe.
He began to fancy that Baintree, relishing his contrition, was disposed
to make the most of it, and give him as much to be sorry for as his
capacity for repentance could accommodate. But he strove to banish this
caviling mood, incongruous with the injury he had done, and the regret
and humiliation that it had entailed. His perceptions, however, could not
be denied the prominent lugubriousness of Baintree’s mien, albeit his
mental faculties were interdicted any deductions therefrom.