A man whose outlook on life had been broader than Newt's, and whose
brain did not receive constant poisoning from within, would have
softened that fall and winter, because a new influence was working upon
him.
The influence was Minerva, and the boy found himself, as the splendid
fall died swiftly into the unspeakable desolation of a mountain winter,
counting the days between her visits to the cabin. But of this he said
nothing, and the only evidences he gave to her at first were mute
evidences, and a greater ferocity in suppressing the spirit of nagging
and persecution to which his mother and sister drifted with inevitable
perversity. When the girl returned at Christmas, after a longer absence
than usual, she found, to her astonishment, the contour of the cabin
altered. Newt had thrown against one end an additional room. It was a
simple annex of hewn logs and puncheon floor with a clay-daubed chimney
and no windows, but it was tight-chinked and solidly weather-tight. When
she asked about it, her step-mother sniffed contemptuously that it was
some of "Newty's foolishness." Later, when the boy himself came in and
saw her sitting with the family circle before the fire in the main
cabin, he shuffled his feet clumsily, and seemed unwilling to meet her
eyes. A great embarrassment was on him and he was more diffident in her
presence than he had ever been before. The girl saw it and wondered,
and, when she could do so without attracting too much attention, she
found an opportunity to lead him outside.
"M'nervy," the boy said shortly, when they were alone, "sence ye've been
a-consortin' with them-thar fotched-on teachers at the school, hit seems
like ye hain't got much use fer us plain folks. I reckon ye're
right-smart ashamed ter acknowledge ter them folks who yore kin air."
"Oh, Newty!" she exclaimed, with a world of surprise and reproach in her
voice. Her face flamed hotly; for, to the mountain idea, disloyalty to
"kith and kin" is the most unpardonable of offenses. It was the first
time she had ever called him Newty. They were standing out in the icy
air of the door-yard.
Inside the main cabin, the family huddled before the fire, as
uncommunicative as cattle. The pall of the black squalor had been
tightening about the girl's heart like an impalpable constrictor and
almost strangling it. Outside, the bitter wind lashed her calico skirt
about her slim ankles, and cut like a knife. The boy, who wore no
overcoat, stamped his feet, and thrust his chapped and reddened hands
into his threadbare pockets.
"Oh, Newty," she expostulated again indignantly, "I thought ye knew me
better then ter accuse me of bein' ashamed of my own folks!"
"They hain't your'n," snorted the lad in a queer, hard voice. "Thet is,
none of 'em hain't your'n barrin' yore pap. I hain't sayin' nothin'
'gainst Clem ter ye, cause ye're his gal; but the rest on 'em is my
folks and I reckon I kin say what I likes. I hain't never had a friend
in this house twell ye came hyar. I've sot in thar night atter night an'
listened at thet old man a-ravin' an' a cussin' twell, ef he wasn't my
great-gran'pap, I'd hev choked him. I hear'n them women folks a-pickin'
on ye an' a pesterin' ye, an' I knows ye'd shake the dirt of this place
offen yore feet an' quit hit for good, ef hit warn't thet ye 'lows they
needs ye. Ye had ought ter do hit, M'nervy. Nobody wouldn't blame ye."
The girl shook her head. The moon had peeped over the shoulder of a
sugar-loaf peak, and flooded the world in cobalt. The stark sycamores
along the creek-bank rose gaunt and gray, and the ragged picket fence
and stile and barn were black etchings against the frosted hills. On the
boy's face the silver light showed a tracery of bitterness and
weariness. To Minerva it ceased to be the face of an ex-convict and a
vindictive criminal. It was only the rather thin and wizened visage of a
prematurely aged boy, who had, in his wild-animal sort of way,
undertaken to be her champion. He had undertaken it much as the dog with
a name for ferocity might indicate its devotion to someone whose hand
had not been afraid to caress its unlovely muzzle. She impulsively
stretched out her hand and laid it on his coat-sleeve, and his arm
shook, not alone with the cold, but with a strange new agitation under
a touch of kindness.
"Newty," she said softly, "why don't you shake the dirt of this place
offen your feet?" Her talk mixed up strangely mountain vernacular and
the more correct form of speech which they had striven to teach her, at
the school.
Newt only looked at her with a short laugh.
"Whar'd I go?" he demanded fiercely. "What do I know? What could I do?
This is whar I b'longs." With a contemptuous jerk of his head toward the
cabin, he added: "Them's my kind o' folks. I was born amongst 'em, an' I
hain't been nowhars else except ther penitentiary."
It was on the point of her tongue to remind him that he had been to
school; that he could read and write, and was young and strong, and that
all the world lay open to him, but she waited. If she was to influence
him, she must go slowly and guardedly. So, instead, she asked a question
about the thing of which he had wanted to speak and concerning which he
found himself suddenly tongue-tied.
"What's the new room, Newty?" she demanded.
"Oh, hell!" ejaculated the boy with a sudden rush of color that even the
moonlight failed to hide. "Damned ef I didn't plumb fergit hit!" That
was a lie, for he had not forgotten, only he had been too bashful to
speak. Now he led her over and opened the door.
A fire was roaring inside on the hearth. The place was unfurnished
except for a chair, a bed and a table, all home-made, but all clean and
soundly carpentered. In the Frankfort prison, Newt had worked in the
chair-factory.
"Ye see, M'nervy," he went on, floundering for words, "ye see, I hain't
had nothin' much ter do round hyar, an' I thought hit mout kill some
time ter sort of build this-hyar contraption. I 'lowed ye mout be a
little more satisfied ef ye had a room of yore own, whar ye could go to,
an' put ther bar acrost the door, when them women folks pestered ye, an'
tell 'em ter go ter hell."
As the girl looked about the place--all her own--tears came welling to
her eyes. How could this boy--more nearly a wild beast than any other
human creature she had ever known--have had the delicacy to understand
that longing for privacy and self-withdrawal which at times had almost
maddened her with its intensity? She sank down in the one chair and sat
with the flames playing on her face and lighting the tears that flowed
noiselessly, and, when she looked up to thank her champion, he was
gazing down on her with a face set in a mask-like tautness,--less it
betray emotion of which he was ashamed.
But he had not missed the tears in her eyes and he knew that his humble
service had moved her. Suddenly he knew something else. It was not only
because she had been less unpleasant than the other members of the
household that he had missed her when she went away and had looked
forward to her home-coming. He had set up his shrine to hatred of
mankind. His experience had taught him much of enmity and little of
love. He knew in an impersonal fashion that men had sweethearts and went
"sparking" with girls, but for all this sort of thing he had retained in
his young manhood the same sort of contempt which most boys pass through
and out-grow in earlier life.
Now, he stood there before the roar of the fire on the hearth that he
had built and watched the shadows retreat into the corners of the room.
He saw Minerva sitting with her eyes still pensive and her lips still
smiling, and the flames awakening soft color on her cheeks and mahogany
glints in her hair.
She was beautiful. To a more discerning eye that would have long ago
been apparent, but until now beauty had meant nothing to Newt Spooner.
It had not existed.
So, with the stunning effect of light breaking on eyes that have been
sightless, the young man in the frayed and drab homespun, whose brain
had been even more colorless and somber than his clothes, felt a wild
hunger to take her in his arms and claim her for his own. That this
thing had been growing in his mind, unrealized until this moment, he did
not suspect. That it was much less sudden than it seemed, he did not
understand. He knew only that he, Newt Spooner, vassal to hate, was now
in love, and, as he acknowledged it to himself, his face became drawn
and pale, and his hands clenched themselves, for with the
self-confession came utter despair.
She sat there in the chair he had made, by the hearth he had reared, in
the room he had built--and the work had been that of a good craftsman
because they had compelled him to learn in the penitentiary. Outside the
winds were screaming about the roof-slabs he had nailed down. She was so
close that he could put out his hand and touch her--and because now he
wanted her beyond everything, even beyond the life of the man who had
ruined his life, it was terribly clear that she could never be close to
him except in such physical proximity as that of this moment.
The ex-convict was not accustomed to thought. In its stead, he had
substituted brooding. Thought is hard and tinged with torture for the
brain that has not been reflective. Yet now he must think.
Minerva had been to the college. She yearned for even a greater degree
of education. He had built this room because he understood how she
shrank from the squalid and unclean life of the mountain cabin--and in
all the mountains was no more squalid creature than himself. She
despised the idea of blood-reprisal, and to forego that would, by his
standards, mean a baser surrender than for a priest to repudiate his
cloth.
He was ignorant, penniless, vindictive. She was, to his thinking,
learned, fastidious and pledged to the new "fotched-on" order.
Should he tell her that he loved her, provided he could imagine his
stoic lips shaping such phrases, she could only be offended and
distressed. He must not tell her. That one thing seemed certain, and,
as he stood there, masking the storm in his thin breast under a
scowling visage of tightly compressed lips and drawn brow, he was being
racked by a yearning greater than he had ever known or imagined.
How long he remained rigid and silent he did not know, but at last he
heard her voice, speaking very softly:
"Newty, you have been very good to me. You did all this for me--and yet
even you don't know how much it means to me."
"Hit warn't nothin'," he answered in a dead voice. Then, having resolved
not to betray himself, he found himself crying out to his own surprise,
in a tumult of fierce and passionate feeling: "I'd go plumb down inter
hell, fer ye, M'nervy."
The girl looked up, then she rose unsteadily, and laid a hand on his
arm. Her eyes were gazing very fixedly into his, and she spoke eagerly:
"You say you'd do that--for me. Do something else, Newty. Come--out of a
life that's not much better than hell--for me."
He spoke quietly again, though under her finger-touch his arm shook as
if it were suddenly palsied:
"I don't jest plumb understand ye."
"Give it all up, Newty." She was talking excitedly, and her words came
fast. "Give up this idea of vengeance. It's all wrong and mistaken--and
wicked. It hurts you most of all. You said out there to-night that this
was the only life you ever knew--"
"This an' ther penitenshery," he corrected her; and a harsh note stole
into the words as he uttered them.
"There are other lives you can know. Can't you forego this idea of
vengeance? Can't you forget it?"
The man gave a short and hollow laugh.
"I reckon so," he answered. Then, as his eyes flashed wildly, his
utterance rose and snapped out the remainder of his response. "When
Henry Falkins is dead an' buried--damn him!"
Minerva stood looking into the face that was close to her own. It was a
face branded and stamped with so fierce a vindictiveness that she
realized the hopelessness of argument. It would have been as easy to
persuade a maniac to become sane by asking him to lay aside his lunacy.
She turned and dropped into her chair, then, looking straight ahead at
the blazing logs, she went on, holding her voice steady and even:
"When you were in jail, Newty--at Jackson--I tried to see you. But
they--they wouldn't let me."
The bitterness left his eyes, and he bent suddenly forward.
"Ye tried ter see me--in ther jail-house? What fer did ye do thet?"
"I wanted to tell you, I was sorry--and to beg you to give up--your
idea. I didn't know until that day that you were nursing a
grudge--against Mr. Falkins."
For a while, Newt stood silent. Finally, he said curtly:
"I'm obleeged ter ye."
"But that isn't all, Newt." Minerva's hands were clasped in her lap, and
the fingers twined themselves nervously and tightened as she went on.
"I've got to tell you all of it. I heard that morning--what you aimed to
do--and I went to Jackson--to warn him."
The mountaineer drew back, and over his pale face passed a paroxysm of
bitterness, which at first left him wordless. His posture grew rigid,
and, if Minerva Rawlins had been capable of physical fear, she would
have felt it then, because she was looking into eyes burning with the
fire of mono-mania. But, at last, he spoke in the same dead voice, and
only to ask a question:
"How did ye know? Who betrayed me?"
"I can't tell you that. I knew that, if you succeeded, you would ruin
your life--as well as end his. You are bound to see sometime that all
this idea of a man's being his own judge and jury and executioner is
wicked, and then--if you had succeeded--" She raised her hands in a
despairing gesture, and broke off.
Once more the boy had become stiff in his attitude, and his face seemed
a gargoyle of hatred.
"Ef I'm goin' ter be so plumb miserable erbout hit," he said slowly, "I
mout as well suffer fer a couple as fer one. Who war hit thet betrayed
me?"
Minerva shook her head.
"You think of Henry Falkins as your bitter enemy. He isn't, Newt. He's
not any man's enemy. Only he has lived in the civilized world as well as
here, and he knows that a system that's built on murder is wrong. You
know only the Henry Falkins that you've imagined. I know how terrible it
must have been down there--at Frankfort.... I know that you had little
else to think about.... But just for that very reason you can't trust
the ideas that came to you down there. The real Henry Falkins isn't the
man you think."
Newt Spooner took two slow steps, and stood before her. As he
half-turned, the fire fell on one side of his face, gleaming yellow and
vermilion on the gaunt angle of his jaw and chin, and kindling the other
and more baleful fire in his pupils. He talked in a monotone, and, as he
talked, the girl seemed to see a spirit dying in darkness and
confinement, as a potted plant might die in a cellar.
"Ye says I didn't hev nothin' ter do down thar in ther peniten'shery but
ter study over false notions. Mebby ye're right, but I've done studied
hit all out--an' I've got 'em settled. I reckon ye hain't got no proper
idee of what a feller gits down thar in them damned stone walls, with
stripes on his clothes an' no decent air ter breathe an' no water ter
drink outen a runnin' spring-branch. Hev ye ever tried ter raise a young
hawk in a bird-cage, an' watched hit sicken an' die? They aims ter
reform fellers down thar. Well, jest watch an' see how good they've
reformed me." It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make,
but he was not through yet, and she did not interrupt. "Who sent me
thar? This Henry Falkins thet ye're braggin' about. Why did he do hit?
Out of the sneekin' meanness of his heart. War I ther fust feller
hyar-abouts thet ever kilt anybody? Why didn't ther rest of 'em go down
thar? Hit war because I war a kid thet didn't know no better then ter do
what I war bid, an' because them what bid me didn't stand behind me." He
paused and wiped his forehead on his coat-sleeve. "I didn't 'low thet
thar war anybody in ther world a feller could trust. Then I came back
hyar. I found my pappy dead, an' my ma married ergin, an' my rifle-gun
sold.... Then--" His words ended in a sort of wretched gasp.
"Then you came hyar. I reckon I'd ought to hev knowed better by this
time then ter be beguiled, but I 'lowed I could trust you. Ye war ther
one body in ther world I'd 'a' swore by ... an' ye rid over thar an'
warned him, an' hed me throwed inter ther jail-house."
He drew his shoulders back and turned slowly, starting toward the door;
but, with his hand on the latch, he paused, and added with cold
bitterness:
"Ye've done succeeded in a-balkin' me oncet, M'nervy; but ye've done
'complished another thing besides thet. I only aimed ter kill Henry
Falkins oncet, but atter what ye've told me, ef thar war a way under
God's sun ter do hit--I'd kill him twicet."
The girl rose and came over, and her hands fell on the boy's arm.
"Newty," she pleaded with tears of desperation in her eyes. "Newty, you
must try to understand me. It was for you as much as for him. It would
have ruined your life. Besides, you misunderstand him--"
The young man shook her hands roughly away.
"I reckon my life's done been ruint a'ready," he declared. Then, with an
up-leaping voice, he demanded as he fiercely caught her fore-arms in an
iron grasp: "Ye says I don't understand Henry Falkins. What does ye know
about him beyond what I knows?" The jealousy that rang through the
question was the only declaration of love he had ever made to her, and
his fingers unconsciously bit into her arms until they ached.
"He came down to the school," she said faintly, "and he gave me this
medal because I had--I had tried to study hard."
She had succeeded in withdrawing her hands, and groped at her throat for
the small metal disc, which she held out to him. But he drew back, his
eyes gleaming venomously.
"I'd ruther tech a rattle-snake," he declared in a voice which she
hardly recognized, "then ter lay hands on anything thet damned dog hed
teched." She stood dazed, and he went on in the high-timbered shrillness
of excitement: "Some day I'm a-goin' to have a reckonin' with thet
feller, an', when I gits through, he won't go roun' givin' medals to no
other gals." He wheeled and stamped out of the room, and the girl did
not know that for hours he tramped the snowy woods of the mountainsides,
cursing under his breath, and redoubling his oath of reprisal.
* * * * *
News from the outside world percolates slowly into the quarantine of the
beleaguered hills. A fever that rushes hotly through the arteries of the
nation from sea to sea, is hardly a flush to the country that leads its
own isolated life. From Washington to 'Frisco, men were gathering at
bulletin boards and clinging with hot excitement to the latest word of
tidings. In city armories, militiamen were inspecting kits and drilling
overtime. The _Maine_ had been blown up in Havana harbor. The war fever
was burning thousands into fitful patriotism, but back there in the
Cumberland mountains, where men scarcely knew who was President of the
United States, life was going more placidly than usual. The war which
this country knew most about had waned into a two-years' truce. Less
than for two decades was there thought of fighting and blood-letting.
One day, Newt met a trader riding a spent mule through the mired roads
with a newspaper protruding from his splattered saddle-bags.
"I reckon you soldiers'll get a chance ter sashay out an' show what's in
ye now," said the trader with a grin, as though he found the idea highly
humorous.
"What does ye mean?" demanded the boy, resting on his grounded rifle and
fixing the other with steady, incurious eyes. "Hes the Falkinses busted
the truce?"
The trader laughed.
"Wuss then thet. This country's a-goin' ter declare war on Spain." He
made the announcement with the superior air of one in touch with large
and distant affairs.
"Who's Spain?" Newt Spooner put the question gravely and with no sense
of betraying untoward ignorance. In the log school-house years ago he
might have been told the answer to that question, but such matters had
since then escaped his attention.
"Spain," enlightened the trader, whose geographical ideas had also until
recently been vague, "is a country in ther other world--you has to go
acrost the ocean ter git thar."
"Who lives thar?" inquired the lad.
"Hit's a country of outlanders."
Newt stood for a moment gazing across the dreary wastes of broken
ridges.
"Well," he said calmly, "I reckon we kin go over thar an' lick 'em, ef
need be."
But, if the fever came slowly to the hills, it infected the men of the
two new companies thoroughly enough when it did come. So far, each
organization was drilling in its own territory, and, when the boy
thought of Henry Falkins, it was not in connection with the war with
Spain, but as the principal enemy in another war. On the lintel of the
cabin door was a series of notches cut by his pocket-knife. Each month
he added a fresh one at the end of the line. When he had cut twelve, he
would have complied with his promise to the Deacon, and would once more
tramp across the mountains on the mission which had been too often
thwarted. Already there were seven of these cryptic reminders, and in a
few days more the eighth would be added.
Minerva came and went, and Newt at first spoke to her as little as
possible; but, when the other women of the family nagged her, he rose
fiercely to her defense. The girl sought by gentleness and diplomacy to
win him back to open friendship, but he held sullenly aloof.
At last, she said:
"Newty, can't we be friends again? Even if you can't understand what I
did, can't you believe me when I say I did it as much for you as for
him?"
He stood twisting his brogan toe in the hard-tramped dirt of the cabin
yard. His face was expressionless. He looked at her, and turned away his
face, while over it went a spasm of pain.
"I reckons what ye did appeared right ter ye, M'nervy," he generously
acceded. "I reckon I've got more quarrel with them new-fangled notions
they l'arns ye down thar at ther college then what I hev with you. They
aimed ter l'arn me them same things at ther penitenshery--but I wasn't
ter be corrupted. But all I kin see is thet ye warned my enemy, an' thet
ye made common cause with him ergin me."
On the fourth of next July, Newt was going to have a celebration all
his own. In his "marked-down" enemy, Newt saw a man whom he had never
injured and who had, with smug hypocrisy, attacked him in a cowardly
manner and made a felon of him. In his diseased imagination he pictured
Falkins gloating over this triumph. That score he meant to settle. It
was simple and immutable.
Then came the day when once more the company from Troublesome hiked
across the hills to Jackson. Once more the college students were drawn
up at the palings to see them pass. Again they marched raggedly, but
their faces, instead of being good-humored and full of frolic, were
serious now. They were leaving the only country they had ever known.
They were going to cross the ocean, and invade a land as foreign to
their conceptions and ken as a continent on Mars.
Minerva Rawlins was leaning across the fence, and, as Newt passed her,
he caught once more the flutter of her handkerchief. There was no
leave-taking, and she did not know that, as he left the cabin that
morning, his last words had been a warning to his mother and sister,
that, if they "pestered Clem's gal" while he was away, he would hold
them strictly to account on his return.
At the railroad station in Jackson, the outfit was joined by the other
company; but, as Newt stood on the platform, his eyes somberly searching
the space where the men were gathered, he sought vainly for the figure
of Henry Falkins. At last, a corporal told him that the first
lieutenant was in command, and Newt made no audible comment. But to
himself he said:
"I reckon the damn' coward was skeered ter come along. He kain't fight
Spain in no witness-cheer."