For a little space the two men looked at each other, the Deacon to
outward seeming with the casual interest of a chance meeting, and the
boy with a lowering truculence which augured trouble.
The little mud-butterflies alighted again at the edge of the puddle, and
the squirrel whisked himself away.
Back on the hillsides the white elder blossoms and pink-hearted laurel
cups nodded in the sleepy languor of a summer afternoon. In the overhead
blue a buzzard drifted on tilting wings.
"You're right far off your beat, ain't you, son?" suggested Black Pete
at length.
The sullen visage did not alter or brighten.
"I hain't none too fur off," was the surly response. "I reckon I knows
what I'm a-doin'."
The Deacon nodded. He had been thankful for the momentary silence which
had afforded him an interval for fast and very necessary thinking, and
he had made use of the opportunity. Straight as a crow flies, Newt
Spooner was making his way across crest and cove and gulch to the house
of the man he had "marked down." He had been home three weeks now, and
his lungs had drunk in the splendid mountain air and the elixir had
begun to heal the soreness of his chest. The pallor had left his face
and the native brown had come again to his skin. Newt Spooner was
tough-fibered, and his recovery, as any eye could see, would now be
speedy and complete. Also, he had practised with his rifle until he no
longer doubted his ability to handle it, and he was going on this
tuneful and gracious day at the end of June to carry out his unalterable
purpose. All this the Deacon read from his eyes and from the
circumstances of the meeting. The Deacon had gone to the Falkins house
unarmed, as his pose of peace-advocate required, and the boy standing in
the road before him had shifted the rifle with a rather marked emphasis
of gesture, so that now it was cradled on his elbow, and his right hand
was almost caressingly toying with the lock. This time he could command
the situation, and his face said that he meant to do it.
"I reckon I know what you are aimin' to do, son," suggested the older
man as he swung one leg over the pommel, and sat sidewise, looking down.
The boy's eyes flashed.
"Hit hain't whut I'm _aimin'_ ter do," he declared. "Hit's whut I'm dead
shore _a-goin'_ ter do."
"It comes to the same thing," agreed Pete imperturbably. "When a feller
like you an' me has got his mind made up to a thing, there ain't much
difference between aimin' an' doin'."
Suddenly it occurred to the boy that the presence of the Deacon over
here was in itself worthy of explanation.
"Whut air ye a-doin' hyar?" he snapped out.
"I've just been over to Old Mack's house," replied the other frankly,
and he saw the boy's attitude stiffen from head to foot at the name. His
shoulders grew rigid and his eyes snapped. The rifle came half-way up,
and the rifle-bearer came a step forward.
"Ye didn't carry no warnin' over thar, did ye?" The question was a
snarling whisper.
Black Pete laughed. It was a thing so rare for him to laugh that the boy
was surprised, but at once he grew thoughtfully, even sadly grave again.
"Son," he reproached, "when we told you down in Winchester what we aimed
to do, an' you turned us down, did I act like I was afraid of your
warnin' anybody? Moreover, didn't I promise you that I'd help you in
this business?"
"I don't need no holpin'," declared the boy vehemently; "all I asts is
ter be let alone."
"All right." The Deacon swung his dangling foot back to the stirrup. "I
was just goin' to name it to you that Henry Falkins ain't there. If
you're set on walkin' these three miles more for nothin' and then
walkin' 'em back again, go right ahead. There'll be half-a-dozen
Falkinses to see you and spread the news that you've been skulkin' round
the place. You'll give the whole business away without findin' your man.
If that's the way you want to play your game, go ahead."
The boy gazed at his informant with disappointed eyes, and the Deacon
gazed back steadily.
"Air ye plumb shore thet he hain't thar? He was thar day before
yestiddy. I knows thet fer shore." The boy spoke eagerly, but the more
wily schemer shook his head with positiveness.
"He left this mornin' for Winchester. Seems he's got a girl in
Winchester. Ef you're inclined, you can get up behind me, an' I'll give
you a lift as far as I go."
Newt believed this story, but it only fired his wrath, and his voice was
sour, as he put his next question:
"Whut in hell wus you a-doin' over thar at McAllister Falkins' house?"
It was naturally no part of the Deacon's program to tell that. His mind
was even now working rapidly in the effort to devise some permanent
means of curbing Newt's sinister activities. The present device of
falsification was merely a play for time and would serve a very
transitory purpose.
"Oh," he said casually, "I don't mind tellin' you, but I wouldn't like
it to get round much, son. I was pullin' the wool over their eyes, an'
tryin' to help out those boys that shot Jake Falerin."
But, if Black Pete Spooner could have looked far enough into the future,
he would have allowed his lawless cousin to go his way and satisfy his
vengeance, and would have taken his own chance on escape.
The two rode on together, up steep ascents and down into fragrant gorges
where the waters whispered and the dampness of fern and moss lay
between dripping bowlders. They went through densely tangled trails
where the incense of the elder and catalpa was heavy to the nostrils,
and climbed over steep and precipitous heights, and to neither came a
throb of enthusiasm for the profligate beauty of the vistas.
* * * * *
"Clem's gal" had gone back to school some time ago, and it was only on
vacations and Saturdays that she returned to the cabin on Troublesome.
But this afternoon, when Newt trudged in from his futile expedition
across the hills, he saw her crossing the yard in the gathering
twilight, and this time the boy did not growl in his throat like a
quarrelsome dog at the sight of her. He would not admit to himself that
he liked her, but he disliked her less than the others. She was too much
like a "furriner" to please him, and too quiet. There was no element in
his creed of intolerance, which could understand her gentleness. It was
sheer weakness, yet in that very weakness was an appeal to something in
himself, which he did not seek to analyze. At all events, "Clem's gal"
in a way interested him. She was young and lithe and strong; stronger
than the women whom she permitted to badger her with incessant
shrewishness. Also, she must be "smarter" than they, for she had been
away to school. This fondness for "larnin'" in itself indicated a
reprehensible spirit of acceptance for the "stuck-up" ideas of the outer
world. But for that she had some excuse. Her shiftless father, for whom
the boy entertained a deep contempt, had humored his daughter's
ambitions so that she might in the end secure her teacher's certificate
and contribute to his support. It was not an unselfish motive, but the
girl, eager for education, had not questioned motives.
When Lucinda Merton had taken Newt in her buggy on the outskirts of
Winchester, a vague sense of sunshine had struck through the fog of his
friendlessness, and he had, for the first time, a conception of feminine
graciousness. In his brief talks with Minerva the same incomprehensible
thing occurred. Some unaccountable glow of sympathy awoke in him, and he
felt that he need not be on the defensive, alert for treachery and
enmity.
When she went away, a sort of dull loneliness settled over him, and when
she came back, an unacknowledged pleasure stole into his heart.
After the supper things were put away Newt went sulkily out of the cabin
and took himself to the quiet of the creek-bank, some distance away.
There was no moon, and in the starlight the mountains loomed very dark
and somber against the steely night sky. The trees were unstirring and
no wind moved even in their uppermost fronds. The boy sat hunched at the
top of the bank with his face in his two hands and his elbows on his
knees. At last, he reached into his pocket for his pipe and a few crumbs
of tobacco. In the spurt of the match, his features were for an instant
lighted, and Minerva, who also had slipped out of the crowded cabin for
the peace of the open air and the stars, saw in the momentary
illumination that it was a face very black and brooding and unhappy.
She, too, was unhappy. She was thinking how at this hour back there in
the school, the little family of teachers and such pupils as had not had
to come away would be sitting on the latticed porch, looking off over
the campus. Later on, in the comfortable library, the man who guided the
institution with a sure and sympathetic wisdom would be reading to them
under the shaded lamp, giving them wonderful glimpses of another world
through the windows of books. Reflecting on these things, the girl had
strayed farther away from the house than she had expected, and had come
upon Newt, brooding in solitary wretchedness over the day's failure.
"Newt," she said shyly, when she came up to him, "ye looks like as ef
somethin' was a-botherin' ye. Is anything wrong?"
The boy turned his head slowly, then shook it in silence.
"Nothin' to tell a gal," he answered.
In the darkness he was a black silhouette except that as he drew deep
puffs the pipe-bowl reddened and gave momentary outline to his tight
jaws and scowling mouth.
They sat together without talk for a time. Once a small owl flapped to a
branch overhead and sent its mournful quaver out across the night. After
awhile the boy groped around for a stick, and, rising with a sudden
angry oath, hurled it viciously at the bird.
"Damn thet owl," he complained. "Hit worrits me."
"Newt--" the girl's voice was softly reproachful--"why did you drive it
away? It wasn't hurtin' anything."
"Hit warn't a-fotchin' joy ter nobody," he sullenly rejoined. "I hain't
a-feelin' in no fit humor ter be pestered."
Once more she inquired:
"Is anything the matter?"
He rose, and his voice broke out passionately.
"Every man's hand is sot ergin me--but hit hain't no use. I 'lows ter
accomplish my task, ef I has ter go through hell on hossback ter do
hit!"
She did not know, or vaguely suspect, that the thing he "'lowed" to do
was to kill the man whom she had set high on the pedestal of her
hero-worship; that his avowal was the avowal of the vendetta's lust for
blood. She saw only his isolation and need of friendliness. She did not
know that in letting himself out in even that small measure of
confidence, he was paying tribute to her increasing importance in his
life. She knew only that her sympathy was stirred and that an affection
such as she might have felt for some unlovely dog, starving for
affection, made her want to befriend him.
"My hand ain't against you," she assured him, and, as the pipe glowed
with a long, half-fierce inhalation, she saw his eyes on her face with a
dumb, half-worshiping expression, for which his lips found no utterance.
But all the man said was:
"I'm obleeged ter ye," and after that they sat for an hour in silences
rarely broken with a disconnected conversation. It was the conversation
of two very lonely people groping for companionship, but one was very
shy and the other was fettered with a taciturnity too strong to break,
so the groping brought little more than an incoherent sympathy.
Neither of them heard the footfalls of a horse on the sandy road above
them, and neither of them knew that Black Pete Spooner went into the
cabin and spent a half-hour there. His coming was at once a surprise and
an event, for the people in that house had not heard that he had
reappeared in the hills, and they knew that where he went trouble went
with him.
"Where's little Newt?" he inquired, peering about the dark corners of
the room.
"He's done went out somewhars," replied his mother. "When did ye git
hyar, Pete? I heered tell that ye had gone off to some place the other
side of the world."
"Didn't Newt tell you I was back?"
"Newt don't never tell us nothin'," complained Clem.
The Deacon nodded. Then he drew Clem aside.
"Do you know what little Newt aims to do?" he accusingly demanded.
Clem shook his head, and his bearded face mirrored anxiety.
"I done told ye he don't never tell us nothin'."
"Well, he's aimin' to kill Henry Falkins, an' if he does it, there's
goin' ter be merry hell to pay in these mountains. You've got to keep an
eye on him."
"My God!" exclaimed the step-father in genuine fright and perplexity.
"What kin I do? He don't pay no mind to me--none whatsoever. Thet boy's
a rattle-snake in human form."
The Deacon looked the other contemptuously up and down.
"No, he ain't," was the prompt retort. "A rattle-snake gives warnin',
Newt don't. I'm havin' him watched pretty close. I don't want him hurt,
but he mustn't kill Henry. Don't tell him I've been here, but if he
starts over towards the Falkins place, send word to Jim Spooner's cabin.
Jim will go up to the ridge an' blow his fox horn, an' they'll pass it
along. Try to keep him home from Jackson Saturday, but if he does go,
send word to Jim when he's started, and we'll take care of him when he
gets there." The Deacon turned and disappeared through the door. He had
several other houses to visit, and he had selected the night because in
its darkness he could give his movements a highly beneficial secrecy.
But, on the following day, Newt met an acquaintance on a hill-trail, who
stopped him for conversation and planted seeds of suspicion in his mind.
He spoke of a rumor traveling from cabin to cabin to the effect that the
Deacon had returned to the hills to act as a pacificator, instead of a
leader of war.
Newt said nothing and contented himself with listening, but deep in his
suspicious nature uneasy doubts began to stir. A peace might be welcomed
by his people, but to him it threatened the paralyzing of his
trigger-finger. Possibly the wily Deacon had lied to him and turned him
back for some deeper reason than merely to save him the remainder of a
profitless journey.
So Newton Spooner, as soon as he had the opportunity, began strolling
from cabin to cabin along the way toward the Falkins house once more. He
heard, but did not know the significance of the fox horns that carried
clearly from ridge to ridge, and when he had reached the wayside store
of Sam Hoover, standing on a sandy stretch in the crotch of two creeks,
he instituted active inquiries.