Sam Hoover he thought he could trust. Sam, at least, had come to him
when they were taking him to prison, and had denounced the lethargy with
which his kinsmen were standing idle while he went into bondage.
The store was a frame shack, presenting at its front a barrel-littered
porch and a hitching-rack. Beyond one of the creek branches stood a
dilapidated "meeting house" in a flat, gravel-strewn area. Sam Hoover
himself sat at his door; a slouching giant in store clothes, coatless
and open of vest, collarless and soiled of linen. His movements were
ponderous, and his eyes were sunk in pouched sockets.
As Newt slouched up to the porch in the forenoon, the waves of heat were
playing over the earth, and the mountains were torpid with mid-day
stillness. This was a point about half-way between the two clan centers,
and the man who trafficked here presented to each faction in turn the
guise of friendship and to each played the tale-bearer under his smug
semblance of neutrality.
But the place was a point from which branched the road that Henry
Falkins must travel to Jackson, and the store-keeper would know when he
had last passed that way.
Now, it happened that, though the Deacon had invented on the spur of the
moment his news of Henry Falkins' departure, he had come much nearer the
truth than he himself guessed. Almost a week intervened before Saturday
and it had occurred to the young man, although he would have laughed had
someone else made the suggestion, that the Fourth of July held some
element of danger for himself. That being the case, he was possessed of
a desire to see the girl in Winchester in the meantime. It might be a
last chance. He had no intent of confiding in her anything that might
alarm her, but he thought that with her words of love fresh in his
memory he could undertake Saturday's work armed and accoutered with a
higher confidence. So, almost on the heels of the Deacon, when he had
left the Falkins house, Henry had ridden, bound for Jackson and
Winchester. Had Newt Spooner gone home on foot and by the county road
instead of with the Deacon and by sequestered trails, the two men must
have met near Hoover's store--and Henry Falkins would not have gone on
to Winchester.
Sam Hoover greeted the boy with a, "Howdy, Newt?" and the boy sat on the
floor of the porch with a silent nod, and leaned his shoulders against a
post. At last, he questioned casually:
"Hev ye seed anything of Henry Falkins here-abouts of late?"
"He rid by hyar this week," the store-keeper responded. "Hit war either
the day afore yistiddy or the day afore thet, I disremember which, but
he stopped to water his horse, and passed the time o' day with me. He
'lowed he war a-travelin' ter Winchester."
"Air ye plumb shore he hain't rid back?"
"He 'lowed he'd be back Satiddy--an' I hain't seen him pass by, so I
reckon he warn't a-lyin'."
Newt sat watching a flock of geese that waddled down the gravel to the
creek, and Hoover forbore to question him. After a space the boy rose,
stretched his arms and legs, and succinctly announced, "Reckon I'll be
a-startin' home." He did not know that men apportioned to that task by
the Deacon watched and reported his going and coming, even to the words
of the brief conversation at the wayside store. Sam Hoover, however,
gave his information impartially, and the Deacon was duly informed.
* * * * *
Henry Falkins was riding along the gleaming white ribbon of turnpike
near Winchester.
Over this land was brooding one of those days of rare charm that
sometimes come to the bluegrass about the first of July. While the
summer was yet young and while the gold-headed wheat was falling into
rich shocks behind the binder blade, there had drifted into the heat a
vagrant breath of Indian summer. The distances lay softened by a
mistiness that clung like a haze of dreams. Into the air stole an
insinuating freshness, which set the blood to a keener pulsing, and over
the breast of the undulating soil hung an impalpable, but unescapable,
mantle of romance.
The slim girl who sat her dancing saddle-mare with the easy grace of a
daughter of generations of horsemen, felt it and glanced sidewise at the
somewhat grave-faced young man by her side. He, too, felt it and drank
in long drafts of the incensed air. He was as well mounted as herself,
but his horsemanship lacked her instinctive freedom of poise. Henry
Falkins, though much of his life had been spent in the saddle, had been
reared to the ways of a country where men must ride rough and tortuous
roads and rarely ride well. The horse of race-track and show-ring and
hunting field were as alien there as the other bluegrass luxuries of
wainscoted halls and silent servants and groaning tables and
silver-surmounted sideboards.
Even now, athrill with the joy of the moment, Henry Falkins felt at the
back of his mind an oppressive sense of the humorless and brooding
hills, and the humorless and brooding men who peopled them.
They were turning between stone gate-posts into a driveway that led
through shaded woodlands where thorough-bred dams grazed in sleek
aristocracy with leggy colts capering at their sides. Beyond was the
brick house, toned by its generations to an ancient richness, with its
harping pine and cedar trees about it, and at the left its garden,
giving a border of bright flower mosaic.
They had not been talking much. They were both happy enough to be silent
together, but as they turned into the home place Lucinda raised
sparkling eyes. He was riding close, and, as his horse swerved suddenly
to the side of her own mount, she leaned impulsively toward him and let
her gauntleted hand drop for a moment to his bridle arm, as she
whispered happily:
"My bluegrass is yours, and your mountains are mine--and all the life of
Kentucky is ours!"
At the broad verandah where a negro appeared to take their horses,
Colonel Cameron looked up from his paper and smiled his welcome. The
entire house seemed to smile a welcome. Late roses still clung along the
walls where their earlier brethren were fallen to pods. The girl sat in
a deep porch-chair and the setting sun gilded the landscape and rested
on her delicate coloring and features as she smiled on the two men whom
she loved: the old man of the passing order of chivalry and elegance,
and the young man of slowly awakening hills. And when night came the man
and the girl sat alone in the shadow of an oak. Soon he must be back in
the troubled highlands, but to-night was his, with its stars overhead;
its sense of security and delight; its whispered talk; and, drifting
from the negro cabins, the mellow cadence of songs and the tinkle of
banjos. When the girl fell silent and he spoke only by the telegraphy of
his hand-clasp on her slender fingers, there came to his ears the words
of an old song, forgotten save by these children and grandchildren of
slaves:
"Way down yander in de big bayou--
Whar de Yankee gunboats lay,
Ole Massa's tuck his hat an' coat--
An' I spec's he's runned away."
Yet, Henry Falkins was conscious of missing something that should go
with the night, for there was no calling of whippoorwills from the
overhead thickets of timber and no dark shadow-walls of mountains
closing in about him.
* * * * *
Early on the morning of Saturday, the Fourth of July, Newt Spooner left
the door of the cabin on Troublesome, and went across to the stable,
carrying his rifle. Under his coat was strapped Clem's revolver, and
again his pockets were "strutty with ca'tridges." He vouchsafed no
explanation, and Clem, though heavy-hearted with anxiety, asked no
questions and attempted no dissuasion. He merely stood looking on
stupidly, as the boy led out and saddled the one nag in the stable, and
swung the beast's head toward Jackson, riding away in the morning mists.
Over these roads, climbing, dropping, crossing water-courses sometimes
by a dozen fords to the mile, he did not hurry. He would not reach
Jackson by the north road until about ten o'clock, and then he would
drift quietly and unostentatiously about for a while, watching the
gathering of the two clans. There might be general trouble or there
might not; but until noon quiet would prevail. The Deacon had certain
plans and would be in command. The boy was learning the lesson of craft.
He meant to see the Deacon and assure him that he had given up his plan
of private revenge. He would even volunteer for such service to the clan
as Black Pete should suggest. Having so disarmed suspicion, he could
have a free hand, and, when his chance came, could employ it. Once
avenged, he was ready to answer for his treachery.
The usually deserted roads were no longer empty. From every trail men
were riding townward. The rumor had gone broadcast that to-day would be
eventful, and from both sides of the line the clans were gathering. Many
of them arrived early, and instinctively Spooners grouped themselves on
one side of the street and Falkinses on the other. Rifles were much in
evidence, but with this exception there was as yet no sign of trouble.
* * * * *
As Newt had ridden out of the stable-lot, Minerva had come to the door
of the cabin. On the Fourth of July there were no classes at the
college, and the girl was back. She saw her father gaze after the
departing horseman and then turn with a sagging jaw and an expression of
genuine alarm in his eyes. She heard him shout a summons to his younger
step-son, and a premonition of danger arose in her heart.
She ran over to the stable, and caught Clem Rawlins by the arm.
"What is it, pappy?" she demanded.
He turned a frightened face toward her, and licked his bearded lips. For
a moment he was silent, then he blurted out with no preface or
preparation:
"Newty's done sot out fer Jackson ter git Henry Falkins."
With a gasp which she struggled vainly to suppress, the girl reeled back
and stood leaning for support against the rough timbers of the stable.
For a moment she could not understand, and when she found words she
asked in a dazed voice:
"To get Henry Falkins--why?"
Over the hills the mists were slowly lifting. The upper peaks still
trailed over their heights, veil-like streamers of gray mists which
blotted out all outlines; but below them pale and iridescent patches of
color glowed with indescribable delicacy and beauty. The miracle of
awakening morning in the mountains was fulfilling itself. There before
her the girl saw the crude barn and heard the grunting of razor-backs
and the voices of the geese as they waddled down toward the water. She
saw her father brushing his arm across his face, and shouting at
intervals for his younger step-son. Once more she repeated:
"To get Henry Falkins--why?"
"Henry's ther man thet penitensheried Newt," came the response. "Newt's
done swore the blood-oath. He's done tried oncet afore, but he was
hindered. Thar's a meetin' over at Jackson terday, an' men air lookin'
fer trouble. Newt aims ter git Henry terday."
Suddenly the girl's stupor broke into a fury of inquisition.
"Does ye aim ter stand there an' suffer a man ter be murdered without
liftin' a finger ter save him?" Her questioning voice rose shrilly and
lapsed into dialect. "Why did ye stand by an' let Newt go?"
Clem Rawlins shook his head.
"What war I a-goin' ter do?" he perplexedly demanded. "Does ye reckon
Newty war liable ter take counsel offen me."
"Well, ye've got ter do suthin now, Clem Rawlins," she commanded, and
her voice was fiercely imperative. "Ther blood-curse hes laid on these
hyar hills full long, an' God Almighty will hold ye blameful ef ye don't
stop this killin'."
The man stood there dazed and frightened, and dropped his eyes before
the flaming accusation of her steady gaze.
His bare toes twisted themselves in the dust, and at last he spoke,
almost in a whine:
"Ther Deacon hes done bid me ter fotch word ter Jim Spooner's cabin ef
Newt fared forth terday. They aims ter send ther signal ahead with fox
horns, an' ther Deacon 'lows ter look atter Newty when he gits ter town.
Thet's what I'm a-callin' sonny fer. I wants ter send him over ter Jim's
house."
The girl laughed scornfully. This moment of need had transformed her
from Minerva of the schools to Minerva of the unrelenting hills. Her
mission was still the mission of the school, but her method was the
method of the hills.
"An' ye aims ter trust ther life of ther only real man in these
mountings ter ther dawdling of sonny?" The question was contemptuous.
She, who brooked day-long heckling without retort, must now be answered
without evasion. "No--I'll go myself, an' I won't stop thar. I'll borry
a ridin'-critter from Jim Spooner, an' I'll take the short cut over ther
ridges an' ther roughs, an' I'll git ter town ahead of Newt. I aims ter
carry a warnin' inter Jackson."
She wheeled and without sun-bonnet or hat plunged into the laurel
thickets of the hillside, and was climbing with a tireless stride up
slopes which would have winded a razor-back hog.
Later on, she could think: now, she must act. The life of the man she
had idealized was the prize for which she was fighting.
Suddenly the full significance of the boy's declaration that he would
accomplish his end if he had to "ride through hell on hossback" came to
her.
She had started out by hating Newt. Of late, she had felt that deep
sympathy for him which is the borderland of affection. She had resolved
on reclaiming him. Now, again, she hated him.
Fifteen minutes after she had started, she was riding away from the
stile of Jim Spooner's house on a borrowed mule. The short cut she
contemplated taking required a mule. There were fords where a horse,
with its less steady footing, would have probably hurled her to death.
There were washed out trails where the ride would be in the nature of
tightrope walking. But these things did not deter Minerva Rawlins. She
was a mountain woman with a mission to perform.
As she rode away from the stile, she heard a deep mellow note, which was
not loud, but which she knew would carry for miles--the note of a fox
horn. It was once the signal of the moss-troopers. It had rung over the
heather and gorse in Scotland hundreds of years ago. To-day it would
ring as truly over the Cumberland ridges where these belated Scotch
high-landers lived the old life in the old, unalleviated way.
She leaned forward in her saddle, lashing her mule with a hickory
branch, and listened, and at last her lips curved in a momentary smile
of satisfaction. Far ahead of her, more faintly and more distantly, she
heard it again. The message was being relayed.
But in that long, hard ride, with the forests tuneful in their color and
their unspeakable beauty, yet eloquent in their silences, she had ample
opportunity for reflection, and as she reflected, the bitterness oozed
out of her heart, and in its place came compassion.
Now, she realized that she was not fighting only to save the life of the
man whom she had idealized, who to her was the one knightly person she
had ever known; but, also, to save from himself the boy with the black
obsession.
At first, Newt had seemed only a murder-driven miscreant whose aims she
must thwart. Now, she saw him from a different angle. He was the victim
of the false order, which those men and women at the school sought to
amend. She, also, was seeking to amend it, but while she must give
battle to Newt Spooner and defeat his purpose, she could do so with the
realization that his guilt was only the guilt of a sort of lunacy, for
which he was scarcely responsible.
His was one idea. He was a prison-reformed man, which is often to say an
embittered man.
Of course, she knew that, when he learned what she had done, Newt would
believe that the one friend he had ever known had become his
irretrievable enemy. Of course, in honesty, if he did not learn it from
another source, she must herself tell him what part she had played in
this day's happenings. That she would do, and in the end perhaps he
would thank her.
At last, on a spent and limping mule, she rode into Jackson. Finally,
she stood face to face with the venerable old man, to whom she gave her
message. Henry Falkins had not yet reached the town, but she conveyed
her warning to his father, and, when she did so, she learned that the
pre-arranged code of fox-horn signals had already brought the tidings,
so she slipped away and hid herself indoors at the house of a kinsman.
* * * * *
It happened that just as Newt rode his horse around the bend of the
north road and turned into Main Street, his eyes narrowed and his jaws
clamped, and the lines that ran from his nose down around the corners of
his mouth grew deeper and harder. He had heard the whistle of a train,
and he knew that it was a signal announcing the approach of his victim.
In point of fact, it heralded not only Henry Falkins, but Red Newton,
and Buddy Spooner, his accomplice, freshly released on bond from the
Winchester jail, and returning, perhaps, to fire the waiting volcano.
Henry Falkins had seen the two defendants sitting quietly and peaceably
in the smoking-car, and they had nodded affably to him. The young man
stood now in the car vestibule, as the train roared over the trestle
and slowed down at the station. On the platform were two groups of men.
They stood with a space between them and eagerly watched the incoming
cars. As Henry Falkins swung himself down from the step, he noted,
despite the general and studied calmness of deportment, several details
which were to his eye significant. He saw in both groups the faces of
men from far away in the recessed fastnesses of the hills, who came to
town rarely, save in answer to the call of the clan. These men were even
more uncouth of apparel and wilder of visage than their brethren. Their
dialect, too, was quaint, and some of them carried muzzle-loading
squirrel-guns of a pattern long obsolete, save in the antiquated life of
"over yon."
McAllister Falkins met his son on the platform, and together they
crossed the toll-bridge into the meandering streets of the town proper,
where the shacks and houses sprawled like pieces thrown haphazard from a
dice-box on a dozen levels and slants. At length, Old Mack voiced his
apprehension:
"It looks ugly, my boy," he said. "Jake Falerin's son, young Jake, has
assumed the leadership, and his one song is punishment of his father's
murder. He's drinking and excited, and he has a strong and
nasty-tempered force behind him. I've been with him, urging peace, and
several of his older advisers seem inclined to listen. I've gotten their
promise that they will make every mortal effort to delay any outbreak
until I've made my speech at noon. That's as far as I can move them."
"And the other fellows--the Spooners?" inquired the son anxiously.
"What's their mood? If they commence celebrating the return of these
assassins, the situation will become hopeless."
McAllister nodded.
"So far they seem quiet enough, but they are all armed to the teeth and
keyed to concert pitch. Black Pete has kept religiously out of sight,
and seems to be acting in good faith. He slipped secretly into town
before sunrise, and has been under cover ever since in the court-house.
He has talked to several of his leaders in my presence. They, too, have
promised to hold their hands until I have spoken. My God, Henry, the
single chance seems to hang on the possibility of my being able to sweep
them off their feet--and if I fail--!" He broke off suddenly, and his
eyes wore the torture of weariness.
They walked between swelling crowds, always separated by the width of
the street into opposing forces, but from both groups the glances that
fell upon father and son were glances of confidence and admiration. If
there was any man living whose voice could penetrate, with a message of
harmony, their armored hatreds, that man was McAllister Falkins. But he
had won and held his influence by his total aloofness of attitude. Now,
he was to take a central and pivotal position, and, if he failed, his
prestige would go down to wreck with his effort, and the work of a
lifetime would collapse like a pin-pricked balloon.
No women or children were to be seen on the streets. Doors were closed,
and the more public hitching-racks were empty. Horses and mules had been
relegated to back streets and sheltered places. But as yet from the
gathering storm-cloud had broken no rumble of thunder and no flash of
lightning. There was only a constant tightening of nerves to the point
where they must be released or snap.
To the eyes of Henry Falkins, the answer was hideously clear. They meant
to hear his father patiently as a matter of respect; but they had no
intention of being influenced by what he said. When he reached his
conclusion, the gathered tempest would break; and, when it had subsided,
another bloody chapter would have been added to the history of these
mud-rutted and twisting streets. It could not be undone.
Meanwhile, even the complimentary restraint could not last, if a single
fanatic broke from the order of the ranks.
The hours crawled with heavy suspense toward noon. Crowds that had been
attenuated strings along the sidewalks began drawing in and
concentrating at the court-house square. On the right, the Spooners
gathered around the figures of the two returned defendants, while on the
left the Falkinses drew about a raw-boned young giant whose baleful eyes
never left the faces of Red Newton and Buddy Spooner. This was "Young
Jake," itching to be about his work of reprisal and impatient of delay.
Stragglers drifted in until only the brick path and a few feet of
hard-tramped earth at its margin separated the two armies. Newt Spooner
was going up and down the street sorely perplexed, because he had been
unable to locate the Deacon and make the pretended peace-pact, which was
a prerequisite to his own arrangements. Wherever he went, a half-dozen
men went also. They were not always the same men, but they were always
the same in number, and he knew that he was being watched by an escort
of the Deacon's selection, and that until he satisfied that leader, he
could not shake them off.
Then he saw McAllister and Henry Falkins, coming toward the court-house.
The sun was directly overhead now, and the shadows were short. Newt
tightened his grip on his rifle, and, as he did so, the unconfessed
body-guard closed around him and worried him with casual conversation.
The boy ground his teeth and waited.
Then, as McAllister and Henry Falkins turned into the court-house yard,
something happened.
Young Jake Falerin had made his way through his own crowd to the foot of
the court-house steps, as befitted the claimant to feud leadership. From
that place of vantage he could hear what was said and give his orders
when the speech ended. Red Newton and Buddy Spooner had acted on a
similar impulse from their side of the path, and as the recently
orphaned youth raised his eyes, to find them gazing into those of his
principal enemies, his promise to wait became a forgotten thing.
With an oath, his hand swept under his coat, and came out armed. Red
Newton had been equally swift, and for an instant the two men stood
facing each other with leveled pistols.
At that cue, the clicking of scores of rifle-hammers ran along the
waiting lines. Yet, for a second or two, there followed no other sound.
The knowledge that to draw a trigger indubitably meant to fall oneself
in the same breath, was holding them in check for an undecided breathing
space. If a gun cracked now, it meant wholesale carnage along those
ranks. Both lines knew it--and hesitated.
Then, while they stood tensed of muscle and blazing of eye, old
McAllister Falkins stepped between the ringleaders, and held up his
arms. At his side stood his son Henry, and on the quiet of indrawn and
tight-held breaths the elder's words broke with almost as staccato a
sharpness as that which would have come from the lips of the guns.