On the morning after the convict's return, in the hour when the mists
still hung in wraith-like fogs over the slopes, Newt and the other men
of the household gathered around the kitchen table while his mother and
sister, maintaining their position of mere women, served them standing.
They ate in sordid silence, stooping low over their plates and
neglecting their forks.
The food was perhaps less good than that which the penitentiary
furnished its inmates. The bodies of dead bees floated in the wild honey
and to a palate accustomed to more delicate provender the reeking grease
in which everything floated would have induced nausea, but it was the
food upon which the former convict had been reared, and he greedily
bolted it. As soon as he had finished his breakfast he rose, and,
picking up his rifle, sauntered toward the door. This he did with a
belligerent air, for he knew the simple laws of native life. The land
and cabin had belonged to his father, and the boy felt that he needed no
invitation to return and take up his residence there. None the less, if
he was to stay, he would be expected to assume his just share in the
burdens of daily work. For the present, however, he meant to take a
vacation; to tramp the hillsides and see how far he had lost his knack
with the rifle. So, he filled his pocket with cartridges, and strolled
out of the door, kicking from his way several trespassing chickens that
were exploring the interior of the room. As he passed the barn, Clem and
"Little Luke" were feeding the mule and the hogs. Newt paused for a
moment and watched them, making no offer to assist, and they for their
part made no request that he lend a hand.
"Goin' huntin', Newt?" queried the step-father, pausing with a
shuck-basket of feed in his hands.
"Mebby so," growled the home-comer.
Clem regarded his uncommunicative law-kin with an expressionless stare
for a while, and then said slowly:
"Hit hain't none of my concern, I reckon, but I seen yore pockets was
strutty, an' I 'lowed ye mout be goin' tol'able fur."
"Mebby so," repeated Newt.
The pockets to which Clem alluded bulged with ammunition and a flask.
The phrase he used was slang in Scotland in the days when Queen Mary
reigned. It is common parlance to-day where these beleaguered
Anglo-Saxons retain the idioms of their ancestors, and live the life of
another century in mountains which were old before the Andes, the Alps,
the Rockies or the Himalayas were thrown above the level of the sea. The
Elizabethan gallant who was "strutty" threw out a swelling chest, hence,
that which bulges is strutty.
The household did not see Newt again until the sun was well into the
west, but at intervals they heard the sharp bark of his rifle growing
fainter as he penetrated farther into the hills.
For Newt had taken himself away into the thickness of the timber and
laurel for target practice. He went about it as systematically as though
he were a battleship at maneuvers. As he swung his way noiselessly along
forest paths, he would stop suddenly and throw the piece to his
shoulder, sighting on some knot or leaf picked out at random. On these
occasions he wasted no powder and lead. He was simply testing his
quickness of eye and steadiness of hand, and he smiled with grim
pleasure at the result. But at last a target showed high up on a walnut
trunk. There the figure of a giant woodpecker hung, drumming loudly, and
inviting a trial shot, by the very conspicuousness of its red, black and
white plumage. Newt leveled the rifle and fired, and the big bird came
tumultuously floundering to the ground.
The boy smiled unpleasantly:
"I reckon," he mused, "hit hain't only woodpeckers I kin hit."
As the day wore on, he practised more intricate feats. Gathering a
handful of hickory leaves, he fastened them about the gigantic girth of
a tulip poplar which towered nobly in a level place. Then, going back a
distance of fifty yards, he began running rapidly around the tree. At
every few yards of his course he would halt abruptly, wheel and fire at
one of the leaves. As he went up, panting, to inspect results, he smiled
again in grim satisfaction.
Along the creek-bed roads and over the mountain-scaling trails that day,
a girl was taking a twenty mile walk from the clean dormitory of the
college to the vermin-infested murk of a cabin on Troublesome. She
carried a small bundle, but the long march was a thing that did not seem
to trouble her.
Sometimes she came to places where the road ran down into the waters of
shallow fords, and then she stopped and took off her shoes and stockings
and waded to the other bank.
On either side of her rose the rustling forests, tuneful with the song
of birds. The laurel blossoms waved pink centers and the rhododendron
nodded at her.
Here and there a squirrel barked or a cock-quail sounded his "bob-white"
to his nesting mate. And as Minerva tramped on with that resilient,
tireless stride which was one of the few blessings of her hard heritage,
the cloud on her brow was dispelled and after a while her voice rose to
the crooning of an ancient "ballet," and she remembered only that she
was young and strong and that it was June. Perhaps she dreamed a little
of a make-believe world in which the men were not brutal and bestial,
but, like the Henry Falkins of her imagination, individuals who had
heard of chivalry and who even in this age preserved something of its
spirit and its spark.
Yet every now and then the picture of the cabin rose before her
imagination, and the smile died from her eyes, and her lips became
straight-set and taut. She saw the old imbecile in the chimney corner
and the shrewish step-mother, and the badgering step-sister, and even
in the father who had brought her here, she knew that she had no
effective ally. Clem Rawlins had his work cut out for him in protecting
himself in these matters, and he sought the path of least resistance by
taking refuge in surly silence until he was goaded to the point where
his temper broke into violent outburst.
At last, the walk ended, ended at the door-step of the cheerless cabin,
and there as Minerva crossed the stile stood her step-mother, on the
threshold with her arms akimbo and a clay pipe clamped between her
teeth.
"M'nervy," she said in a rasping tone, in which dwelt no note of
welcome, "I've done put yore b'longin's under Sis's bed. Thar hain't no
more pegs ter hang things on an' Newty's done fared back from down
b'low. He's a-goin' ter lay down on ther bed you've been usin'."
The girl halted before the door.
"Who's Newty?" she asked. The boy's name had not been often mentioned
since she had come over here, and she had forgotten the ragged lad she
had known years before, when instead of being a murderer he was only a
small shaver with sullen eyes and a tongue which he did not often use.
"Newty's my oldest boy," enlightened the elder woman briefly. "He's been
a sojournin' in Frankfort." Then in a tone of absolute commonplace she
added: "He's been in ther penitenshery."
Minerva Rawlins stood silent, but her cheeks blazed wrathfully. So,
beside the horrors of uncongeniality under this roof, she was now to be
turned out of her own bed to make way for an arrival from the state
prison.
Long ago she had learned to set a seal upon her lips and to endure in
silence what things must be borne, but into her eyes flashed an
insurgent gleam, and the hag-like woman in the doorway caught it and
scowled.
"I reckon Newty's got a license ter dwell in this-hyar house," she
belligerently asserted. "He was born hyar, an' he didn't come in hyar
taggin' along with no widderer. Newty hain't no step-child."
The speaker turned and disappeared into the general murk of the
interior, and the girl followed her without comment, but with a suddenly
born hatred for the man who had come from a cell back to the family
which she must call her own.
* * * * *
When Newt Spooner crossed the stile that afternoon, breathing deeply the
healing of the mountain air, he paused and scowled. Coming across the
yard from the "Spring-branch" with a bucket of water was the slender
figure of a girl. She was not his sister, but another girl whom he did
not recognize. She seemed to be about eighteen, and she was pretty, with
the transient bloom of mountain young womanhood, often as vivid and as
short-lived as that of the morning glory. But the thing which most
perplexed Newt, as he stood resentfully wondering how many other
invaders he was to encounter at the cabin, was the fact that her calico
dress was neater and her whole appearance more suggestive of civilized
self-respect than that of the other women of the household.
[Illustration: Coming across the yard from the "Spring-branch" was the
slender figure of a girl]
She was not barefooted, but wore shoes and stockings, and instead of
being lost in loose sack or slip-shod mother-hubbard, her slight waist
was trimly belted.
While Newt stared at her, she, too, looked up and saw him. For a moment
she seemed startled at the black-visaged apparition, but after a moment
she coolly returned his glance, and disappeared into the house.
When the boy later on went to the door, the westering sun sent a long
golden shaft into the primitive interior, down which the dust motes
danced, although the corners remained somberly obscure. In the room were
only the "women-folks"; his mother sitting huddled over her pipe; his
sister lying idly stretched on one of the beds with an ill-natured frown
in her eyes, and the strange girl. The strange girl sat, not near the
cold hearth, where now there was no fire, but in the sun, and the sun
fell upon and sparkled in her brown hair and awakened dull glints like
the luster of polished mahogany. She was holding her lips rather tightly
drawn, as in self-repression, and there was a mistiness about her eyes
that hinted at unshed tears.
"I reckon," Newt's mother was saying in a spitefully hard voice, as the
boy's figure darkened the door, "ye thinks sence ye went off ter school
and got ter consartin' with them fotched-on teachers, thet ye're
better'n what we be."
The girl made no reply, but she bent over the sewing in her lap, and her
fingers trembled. Mrs. Rawlins looked up and, with a jerk of her head,
announced for the benefit of her son:
"This here air Clem's gal, Minervy. I married a widderer." The last
sentence was snapped out in a tone of deep complaining, from which one
might infer that in the train of marrying a widower followed many
melancholy consequences.
At that the girl raised her face and into it swept a sudden flush of
anger. She looked challengingly at Newt and her eyes told him that, if
she was silent under the shrewish heckling of the woman, she was quite
ready to give him battle. But the boy had no intention of insulting her.
He did not know that already she was finding herself in that most
pathetic of all positions, the status of being just enough educated to
be unplaced at home, and too little educated to be placed elsewhere. She
had been thrown, by her father's second marriage, under the persecutions
of a shrew, a jealous step-sister, and a century-old imbecile. She
looked at Newt and reflected that his arrival added a murderer to the
group. "Clem's gal" was longing for that different and more wholesome
life over there at the college. But Newt had seen the look in her eyes
and recognized that she like himself was here among people who offered
no friendship. It was a rude bond of sympathy, and though she was
"Clem's gal," and, in consequence, of the enemy, he rose to her defense.
"I reckon," he remarked sullenly, "she hain't no more tee-totally
tickled about yore a-marryin' of a widderer then what you be."
The girl's eyes were lifted with an amazed expression from the calico
dress upon which she was working, and her face swiftly softened. But
Newt, a stranger to tender emotions, and bent on presenting to every man
and woman a face of defiance, gave no further sign of sympathy.
He went to the bed which had been assigned to him, and threw himself on
his back, from which position he lay scowling up at the smoked rafters
and resting.
Presently, his mother began again her querulous bickering. The
conversation was one-sided, and the boy, lying silent in his dark
corner, noted that Minerva merely bent her head as one may bend it
against the buffeting of gusty wind or rain. But he was himself less
long suffering, and so he raised his voice with the dictatorial
authority of a man rebuking a quarreling harem.
"Mammy," he ordered curtly, "I'm plumb sick an' tired o' heerin' all
this-hyar blamed fursin', an' I wants ye ter shet up. If Clem's gal is a
willin' ter endure all thet jawin', I hain't."
For an hour there was no sound in the cabin except the low, monotonous
voice of Newt's sister, crooning an ancient "ballet" that once was sung
in Scotland before the Pilgrims landed in the western world.
About sunset that afternoon, Newt came upon the Rawlins girl milking
near the barn. When she raised her head from the flank of the cow and
saw him standing a short distance away, a sudden stream of color came
flooding to her cheeks and temples. He had not yet heard her speak a
word, but now after stammering a moment she said:
"Hit was mighty good of ye, Newt, ter take up fer me. I'm much obliged."
The acknowledgment was somewhat difficult to make. This black sheep of
her acquired family stood for all the things that the knightly Henry
Falkins had deplored in speaking of the lawless spirit of the mountains.
He was the sullen impersonation of the murder-spirit which shoots from
ambush. He had come from prison and it was Mercy, not Justice, that had
opened the iron gates to set him free. She did not know that the
testimony of Falkins had put him there, or that Newt's set purpose was
revenge, but she had shaped her heart to despise him, and he had in a
rough way stood forth her champion. Perhaps, after all, he too had been
a victim of conditions bigger and blacker than his own nature.
Newt's scowl darkened. He was not accustomed to gratitude and in it
found embarrassment.
"Huh!" he growled. "Hit warn't nothin'. I jest natcherly hates ter heer
so much damn' naggin'. Why don't ye jaw back at 'em? Air ye sceered?"
The girl shook her head. "I ain't here much," she said, "an' I reckon
thar's enough squabblin' in this house without me joinin' in."
"Well, thet's yore business," commented the ex-convict, "but if I was
you I'd stand up to 'em." He turned on his heel and left her.
* * * * *
To the house of McAllister Falkins "furriners" from the outside world
came as to an oasis in a desert, or perhaps, more properly speaking, as
to the tent of a great sheik set in the oasis, for the father of young
Henry Falkins was "the grand old man of the mountains."
His forefathers had come from Virginia with the ideas of the old
chivalric regime. It was the tradition that when the first Falkins set
his face to the unbroken west, he had brought with his pioneer outfit a
retinue of negroes, a string of race-horses and a coop of fighting
cocks. The game birds and the gamer horses had not been game enough to
survive the hardships of the wilderness road, but the main stem of the
Falkins stock had retained its stamina and refused through a century to
degenerate. Collateral branches had one by one lapsed into the
semi-barbarism of a cruelly isolated life. Nephews and cousins bearing
the same name had succumbed to intermarriage and degeneracy, yet the
main stem had grown straight. Old McAllister Falkins was a college man
and a lawyer who did not practise. Though he was the foremost bearer of
the name which stood linked with that of Spooner as giving title to a
feud that had bathed the country in bloodshed for generations, neither
he nor his direct ancestors nor his direct descendant had ever been
drawn into its vortex. In some miraculous fashion he had been able to
stand aside, admired by his tempestuous kinsmen; respected even by the
equally vindictive Spooners. To have raised a hand against "Old Mack"
Falkins would have been to defy both clans. To have raised a hand
against his son would not have occurred to any Spooner other than young
Newt, mad with rage and private hatred. Old McAllister Falkins had
represented his district in Congress, by a vote of both factions, and
his retirement had been voluntary. It was his hope that his son, too,
might become the shepherd of these wild, goat-like sheep, and wield an
influence for peace. Now, both father and son were deeply disquieted at
the menace of a fresh up-flaring. The death of Falerin would fire the
Falkins clansmen, and if that dreaded intriguer, Black Pete, showed his
face in the hills it was difficult to see how calamitous days could be
averted. As yet the Deacon had not appeared save in Winchester, but on
Friday the Clark County court was to hear a motion for bail, made by the
two defendants, and, if it were granted, Saturday would see them back in
Jackson--and then the deluge! Saturday is a day for gathering at the
county seat and for drinking white liquor. The Falkinses would without
doubt be there, too, in force, ready to recognize and resent insult, and
the town would be much like a powder-magazine used as a smoking-room.
McAllister Falkins had advised such of the Falkins leaders as he could
reach to keep the clan out of Jackson, or, if that were impossible, to
hold the dogs of passion and carousal in leash. He meant to be there in
person to aid in the work of pacification. If only Red Newton and the
Deacon did not reappear, like Mohammedan prophets among wild tribesmen,
the dangerous day might yet dawn and spend itself without bloodshed.
While the two enlightened men of the name were sitting one afternoon on
the porch of their house, discussing these matters, they saw a horseman
riding down the road which looped over the mountain. The traveler sat
his saddle with straight shoulders and his height approached the
gigantic. Before he had reached the palings of the yard fence, the angle
of his black hat and the tilt of his chin proclaimed him the Deacon.
Old McAllister Falkins rose with a suppressed exclamation of dismay, and
Henry bit off an oath.
Black Pete Spooner rode along at an easy amble, and outside the fence he
drew rein and sang out in a grave and utterly unembarrassed voice:
"Gentlemen, may I alight and have speech with you?"
The two Falkinses rose and walked down to meet the unexpected visitor,
uncertain what attitude to take in the face of such stupendous
effrontery. The dark giant offered his hand, and said:
"I reckon you gentlemen are a little surprised to see me, and I guess
when you know why I came you'll be still more surprised."