THE FLIGHT.
About ten days after Ralph's return to Flat Creek things came to a
crisis.
The master was rather relieved at first to have the crisis come. He had
been holding juvenile Flat Creek under his feet by sheer force of will.
And such an exercise of "psychic power" is very exhausting. In racing on
the Ohio the engineer sometimes sends the largest of the firemen to hold
the safety valve down, and this he does by hanging himself to the lever
by his hands. Ralph felt that he had been holding the safety-valve down,
and that he was so weary of the operation that an explosion would be a
real relief. He was a little tired of having everybody look on him as a
thief. It was a little irksome to know that new bolts were put on the
doors of the houses in which he had staid. And now that Shocky was gone,
and Bud had turned against him, and Aunt Matilda suspected him, and even
poor, weak, exquisite Walter Johnson would not associate with him, he
felt himself an outlaw indeed. He would have gone away to Texas or the
new gold fields in California had It not been for one thing. That
letter on blue foolscap paper kept a little warmth in his heart.
His course from school on the evening that something happened lay
through the sugar-camp. Among the dark trunks of the maples, solemn and
lofty pillars, he debated the case. To stay, or to flee? The worn nerves
could not keep their present tension much longer.
It was just by the brook, or, as they say in Indiana, the "branch[26],"
that something happened which brought him to a sudden decision. Ralph
never afterward could forget that brook. It was a swift-running little
stream, that did not babble blatantly over the stones. It ran through a
thicket of willows, through the sugar-camp, and out into Means's
pasture. Ralph had just passed through the thicket, had just crossed the
brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, as he emerged from
the water-willows on the other side, he started with a sudden shock. For
there was Hannah, with a white, white face, holding out a little note
folded like an old-fashioned thumb-paper.
"Go quick!" she stammered as she slipped it Into Ralph's hand,
inadvertently touching his fingers with her own--a touch that went
tingling through the school-master's nerves. But she had hardly said the
words until she was gone down the brookside path and over into the
pasture. A few minutes afterward she drove the cows up into the lot and
meekly took her scolding from Mrs. Means for being gone sech an awful
long time, like a lazy, good-fer-nothin piece of goods that she was.
Ralph opened the thumb-paper note, written on a page torn from an old
copy-book, in Bud's "hand-write" and running:
"Mr. Heartsook
"deer Sur:
"I Put in my best licks, taint no use. Run fer yore life. A plans on
foot to tar an fether or wuss to-night. Go rite off. Things is awful
juberous[27].
"BUD."
The first question with Ralph was whether he could depend on Bud. But he
soon made up his mind that treachery of any sort was not one of his
traits. He had mourned over the destruction of Bud's good resolutions by
Martha Hawkins's refusal, and being a disinterested party he could have
comforted Bud by explaining Martha's "mitten." But he felt sure that Bud
was not treacherous. It was a relief, then, as he stood there to know
that the false truce was over, and worst had come to worst.
His first impulse was to stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong
enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man
behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that
his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite
suspicion. There was no time to be lost. So he started.
Once run from a danger, and panic is apt to ensue. The forest; the
stalk-fields, the dark hollows through which he passed, seemed to be
peopled with terrors. He knew Small and Jones well enough to know that
every avenue of escape would be carefully picketed. So there was nothing
to do but to take the shortest path to the old trysting place, the
Spring-in-rock.
Here he sat and shook with terror. Angry with himself, he inly denounced
himself for a coward. But the effect was really a physical one. The
chill and panic now were the reaction from the previous strain.
For when the sound of his pursuers' voices broke upon his ears early in
the evening, Ralph shook no more; the warm blood set back again toward
the extremities, and his self-control returned when he needed it. He
gathered some stones about him, as the only weapons of defense at hand.
The mob was on the cliff above. But he thought that he heard footsteps
in the bed of the creek below. If this were so, there could be no doubt
that his hiding-place was suspected.
"O Hank!" shouted Bud from the top of the cliff to some one in the creek
below, "be sure to look at the Spring-in-rock--I think he's there."
This hint was not lost on Ralph, who speedily changed his quarters by
climbing up to a secluded, shelf-like ledge above the spring. He was
none too soon, for Pete Jones and Hank Banta were soon looking all
around the spring for him, while he held a twenty-pound stone over
their heads ready to drop upon them in case they should think of looking
on the ledge above.
When the crowd were gone Ralph knew that one road was open to him. He
could follow down the creek to Clifty, and thence he might escape. But,
traveling down to Clifty, he debated whether it was best to escape. To
flee was to confess his guilt, to make himself an outlaw, to put an
insurmountable barrier between himself and Hannah, whose terror-stricken
and anxious face as she stood by the brook-willows haunted him now, and
was an involuntary witness to her love.
Long before he reached Clifty his mind was made up not to flee another
mile. He knocked at the door of Squire Underwood. But Squire Underwood
was also a doctor, and had been called away. He knocked at the door of
Squire Doolittle. But Squire Doolittle had gone to Lewisburg. He was
about to give up all hope of being able to surrender himself to the law
when he met Squire Hawkins, who had come over to Clifty to avoid
responsibility for the ill-deeds of his neighbors which he was powerless
to prevent.
"Is that you, Mr. Hartsook?"
"Yes, and I want you to arrest me and try me here in Clifty."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 26: I have already mentioned the absence of _pail_ and _pare_
from the ancient Hoosier folk-speech. _Brook_ is likewise absent. The
illiterate Indiana countryman before the Civil War, let us say, had no
pails, pared no apples, husked no corn, crossed no brooks. The same is
true, I believe, of the South generally. As the first settlers on the
Southern coast entered the land by the rivers, each smaller stream was
regarded as a branch of the larger one. A small stream was therefore
called a _branch_. The word brook was probably lost in the first
generation. But a small stream is often called a _run_ in the Middle and
Southern belt. Halliwell gives _rundel_ as used with the same
signification in England, and he gives _ryn_ in the same sense from an
old manuscript.]
[Footnote 27: _Juberous_ is in none of the vocabularies that I have
seen. I once treated this word in print as an undoubted corruption of
_dubious_, and when used subjectively it apparently feels the influence
of dubious, as where one says: "I feel mighty juberous about it." But it
is much oftener applied as in the text to the object of fear, as "The
bridge looks kind o' juberous." Halliwell gives the verb _juberd_ and
defines it as "to jeopard or endanger." It is clearly a dialect form of
_jeopard_, and I make no doubt that _juberous_ is a dialect variation of
_jeopardous_, occasionally used as a form of _dubious_.]