Kenniston's gracious mood was not of long continuance. He was of the
temperament which demands a prerequisite for good nature. Given an
adequate reason to be happy, and he could show you a fine article of
felicity. But his heart would not bubble with gratitude on general
principles for ordinary blessings enjoyed in common by humanity at
large. It was not enough for him that the fried chicken was fat; that
his cigar was good; that as he smoked after supper on the little porch,
the air was so fragrant, so fine, so dry; that the stars were brighter
for the great dark amphitheatre of mountains above whose summits,
serrated against the horizon, his far-reaching gaze sought them; that
Julia, as she sat on the step of the threshold, had an outline and a
coiffure that he would have discriminated as classic in marble; that
every trace of the battered beauty of old Cap'n Lucy's countenance
vanished, leaving it a unique ideal for a gargoyle, when his guest
chanced to intimate that he had written to the register in the county
town, who had furnished him with the calls from his title-deeds, and
that he felt very sure that Cap'n Lucy had inadvertently trespassed on
his neighbor's domain. Harmoniously ugly as his countenance was, Cap'n
Lucy's conduct was more so.
"Waal, sir," he said, after an interval of stunned dismay, during which
Kenniston leaned forward, drawing with his cane an imaginary line on
the floor, and repeating the measurements for the boundaries from the
paper in his hand, "ye an' the register may go to hell, sir, an' brile,
sir!"
Cap'n Lucy's face was very distinct in the light from the fire within
the door, as he sat tilted back in the chair against the post of the
porch, and a sudden sensation ensued amongst his household as they
gazed upon him, astounded by this unprecedented breach of all the
canons of hospitality. There was silence for a moment. Luther stirred
uneasily, the legs of his chair rasping harshly on the rough flooring
of the porch. Even Julia gave signs of having heard by turning her head
slowly, with a certain interest and excitement on her impassive face.
Adelicia's eyes dilated with alarm as she half rose from her seat on
the step of the porch; she had grown pale; her delicate, fine little
chin and her lips quivered with the agitation of the moment.
"Oh, uncle Lucy, ye don't mean that,--ye don't mean that, now!" she
urged.
"Oh, I ain't partic'lar ez ter _when_!" the old man blurted
out. And then he paused to chuckle in sinister fashion over his play
upon the double meaning of the word "now" in this connection. He had
a satisfaction, too, in thwarting the ever-ready peacemaker and
apologist, and in her look of balked surprise as she cogitated upon his
answer.
His grimly jocose pride in his cleverness relieved the tension of the
moment. It suddenly became more practicable for Kenniston to overlook
his rude rage, when the circumstances rendered it hardly possible for
him to take cognizance of it. His indignant repugnance to the situation
was sharply manifest in his face, however, which was of an expressive
type, but he compassed an off-hand manner as he said,--
"Oh, the register and I may be burned indefinitely and to your heart's
content, in due course of spiritual justice; but I fancy it won't be
the direct consequence of anything in the nature of muniments of title,
and it won't change the metes and bounds of this land by one rod,
perch, or pole."
Another voice broke into the discussion abruptly:
"What reason hev ye got ter 'low ez Cap'n Lucy be on yer land?"
The dull irradiation of the porch from the flicker of the fire within
the house barely sufficed to show Lorenzo Taft's burly form standing
beside the post. His approach had been unnoticed by the group, but his
question apprised them that he had joined them some moments previously,
and the pawing of his mare at the gate showed that she had been hitched
in anticipation of passing the evening there. In the excitement of
the situation the usual greetings were dispensed with, and Kenniston
not unwillingly recited anew the calls of the title papers, again
sketching the boundary line with his cane on the floor, and even taking
from his pocket a letter, and drawing upon the back of the envelope
a miniature plat of the irregularly shaped body of land. Even in his
preoccupation he could but note the intelligence of the attention which
the visitor closely bent upon his exposition and the rude draught, the
receptivity of his mind, the pertinence of his questions. Taft stood
leaning over the back of Kenniston's chair, his blue eyes fixed on the
paper in the slim deft fingers of the draughtsman, his own brawny hand
laid meditatively on his long yellow beard.
"Of course," said Kenniston, folding the paper, and by way of
concluding the matter, "I am ready to pay the colonel the full value of
his improvements. He has only to name his price."
The irate glance which Cap'n Lucy shot at him served to steady him a
trifle, to tame his buoyant sense of triumph. He had an ample fund
of physical courage; that is, in his fresh, healthy, normal mental
impulses he never thought of fear. But he had seldom been brought into
actual personal danger, and the details of sundry lawless and furious
feuds that had come to his knowledge during his stay in the mountains
were brought suddenly to his remembrance by that swift, scathing look;
he was further reminded that few of these bloody chronicles recounted
so definite a provocation as the effort at eviction. Nevertheless,
the sense of proprietorship was strong within him, and the active
aggressiveness of a man with the coercions of that weapon in his hand,
the law of the land, made his blood stir when Cap'n Lucy, wagging his
arbitrary old head, retorted, "An' s'pose I say--like I hev said--ez
my h'a'thstone ain't got no price! S'pose I won't sell, an' I won't
gin in, an' I keep my line whar I know my line hev got a right ter
be,--whut then, hey?"
But for his gray head, so did his manner and expression reach the
climax of aggravation, it might have seemed righteousness to smite
him. Kenniston, held in the bonds of such considerations, controlled
himself with difficulty. He was unused to self-restraint, or to
occasions that necessitated it. The color had overspread his face; he
was hot, impatient, indignant. "Why, then, there's nothing for it but
to procession the land and establish the boundary," he declared.
Cap'n Lucy stared in amazement. This possibility seemed never to have
occurred to him as a solution.
"Percession my lan'!" he cried at last, as if the extremity of insult
had been offered him. "Percession my lan'!" His face was scarlet; his
eye blazed; his hand, held out with a gesture of insistence toward
Kenniston, shook with fury.
"Or _my_ land," Kenniston sneered. "'Tisn't capital punishment.
Plenty of men have survived the processioning of land,--thriven on it!
My land, then; the process won't hurt it. Get the line,--that's what I
want."
Once or twice Adelicia sought, in her agitation, to interpose. Now
she rose and came to Cap'n Lucy's side, taking hold of the shaking
hand which he brought ever nearer to Kenniston's face, who would not
draw back, nor mitigate nor postpone his demand, in the front of this
threatening gesture. "Oh, uncle Lucy--don't--don't! Sweet uncle Lucy,
don't! Thar's room enough in the mountings fur all o' we-uns! Look at
the mountings--how big they air--toler'ble roomy fur sure! Don't quar'l
'bout _lan'_, uncle Lucy,--whenst we-uns hev got all out o' doors
fur lan',--an' git in a fight, mebbe, an' git hurt, an'"--
"Ad'licia," snarled "sweet uncle Lucy," with a gasp, pretermitting
his attentions to Kenniston to turn upon her his corrugated face,
"Ad'licia, I tole that man ez war so dead set ter marry ye ez I
wouldn't let him hev ye. But I hev changed my mind. I'll tell him he
kin cart ye off from hyar ter-morrer, an' welcome, mighty welcome, ef
so be he ain't changed his mind; fur I can't abide ye an' yer 'peace
talks,' like a Injun, an' yer interferin' with yer elders, an' yer
purtenses, no mo'! Thar, now!" he exclaimed in triumph, as she fell
back quite speechless because of this disclosure of the matrimonial
proposition. "I reckon ye'll set down now, an' stay set!"
Then he turned to Kenniston with an accession of fury, the fiercer for
the momentary stemming of the tide.
"An' I say, hyar I be, an' yer percessionin' don't tech me nowhar. An'
hyar I'll 'bide, no matter whut! An' I won't sell out, an' I won't take
no price fur my h'a'thstone, no matter whut!"
"Then," said Kenniston hotly, "you'll be ejected in due process of
law,--that's all."
He changed color the next moment and bit his lip, for he had put
himself in a false position.
"That's toler'ble tall talk ter a man under his own roof," said Cap'n
Lucy, suddenly cool, and not without dignity.
Kenniston was out of countenance for the nonce. He felt that there was
scant grace or utility in forcing the matter, which was beyond the
control of either, to this unseemly issue. He had been hurried by his
impatience of contradiction and Cap'n Lucy's illogical and arbitrary
temper far beyond his intention, which was originally merely to propose
to have the surveyor run out the boundary line in order to demonstrate
for the old man's enlightenment the fact that he was a trespasser, and
to offer to pay the full value of the improvements. But he was not of
the type from whom penitents are developed. The acknowledgment of being
in the wrong was inexpressibly repugnant to him. Perhaps he could not
have constrained himself to make it but that he foresaw the reversal of
their mutual position.
"You're more than half right, colonel. I am out of place here. I feel
that. And, under the circumstances, I think I had better take myself
off."
He had intended to get the better of his host. But his most cruel
desire could never have sought to compass the deep humiliation of
vanquishment which had befallen poor Cap'n Lucy. The implied reflection
upon his hospitality, the consciousness that his own hasty words
justified it, the receding and diminishing aspect of the provocation
common to the mental vision at such moments, with the magnifying of
the offense, all combined to render him a chopfallen and lugubrious
old noncombatant in the space of a second. But Cap'n Lucy's talent for
open confession and repentance was not more marked than Kenniston's. He
sat grum, crestfallen, afflicted of mien, but silent. His keen eye had
no longer an alert interest; it was fixed with an absorbed, reflective
stare on an intermediate point some two feet from the floor, with the
air of insight rather than outward vision. Kenniston was not prepared,
either, for the protest from the younger and ordinarily acquiescent
members of the family.
"Thar, now!" exclaimed the apathetic Luther, rising to the occasion
like a man of this world. "Ye hev actially got ter the p'int o'
quar'lin' over yer old land an' worldly goods an' sech. An' what
diff'unce do it make? The line is thar, no matter what air one of ye
say, an' I reckon the county surveyor air man enough ter find it.
Mebbe ye 'low ye air powerful interestin', but I ain't listenin' much,
through wantin' to interjuice this hyar plumb special apple-jack I got
this evenin' from the cross-roads. Ye 'lowed ye hed never tasted sech,
Mr. Kenniston. Now try this, sir, an' ye'll feel good enough ter set
out an' sing psalms an' hymes an' speritchul chunes the rest of the
evenin'."
Adelicia took a pitcher which the languid Julia had alertly fetched.
She spoke for her, as if Julia were dumb. She looked up at Kenniston,
with her delicately tinted old-fashioned oval face set in smiles.
"Ef ye want ter temper it enny?" she suggested.
"Git out'n the way, Ad'licia, with that pernicious jug o' cold water!"
exclaimed Luther, shoving her aside. "Take it straight, stranger; don't
spile the good liquor."
The feminine members of the family had observed that Kenniston's
glass was usually diluted, and in their eagerness to facilitate peace
they gave him no excuse. He hardly liked to nullify his bluster of
incipient farewell by accepting this show of good fellowship and
further hospitality, and yet he could not rudely repel it. He felt
that both he and his host had gone too far, much farther than he had
intended. Yet nevertheless his was not the nature nor the practice to
overlook an affront. He took the glass, with a slight laugh and the
outward show of amity, but he was determined to adhere to his threat of
departure. Their interests were too adverse to make a longer sojourn
appropriate; time would render them even more inimical, and he was
under no obligations to put up with indignities at the hands of Cap'n
Lucy or any other man. Could he have thought anything humorous that
affected his interests, he must have been moved by the serio-comic
aspect of the old man, sedulously silent lest his tongue escape him,
solemnly sampling the new liquor,--for his son had filially and with
great show of courtesy waited upon him,--a sort of aged pallor upon the
wrinkles of his face, where erstwhile his rage had glowed so ruddily.
In drinking, Taft had unconsciously a knowing and discriminating air.
He was comparing the quality of the beverage with the apple brandy
of the Lost Time still. He looked very thoughtful as he lowered the
glass, and let the flavor permeate his palate, and once more took a
careful, considerate draught. It was more like business than pleasure.
Luther himself did not indulge beyond the merest swallow for form's
sake. He was occupied in guiding the conversation clear of difficulties
and bellicose suggestions; and, considering his limited and uncouth
experience, his efforts to reëstablish the decorums of peace were
worthy of praise. He evidently considered that he had failed utterly
when Kenniston rejoined him in the porch, after the rest of the family
had retired for the night, and communicated his intention of immediate
departure. "I can make the cross-roads by daylight or breakfast time,
no doubt," he said, "if you will let me have my horse; and I can rest
there an hour or so, and then ride on and reach the train, the night
express, as it passes the tank and stops for water, about sundown."
In vain Luther protested. Kenniston declared this his original
intention. He would save time, and prevent making both journeys
by daylight. "I don't believe I could stand the sun two days in
succession, at this season. And if I like, I'll lie over at the
cross-roads, and make another night ride." He urged Luther to say
nothing to Cap'n Lucy or the other members of the family, as he did not
want to combat any objections to his departure. "The old cap'n will
think I bear malice, and--really I must go."
Luther's hesitation in the matter was a trifle nettling to a free
agent. He evidently hardly liked to take the responsibility of acting
without the autocratic paternal concurrence. Kenniston himself felt the
irking of leading-strings. "Cap'n Lucy or no Cap'n Lucy, I'm going," he
said to himself, making a dash for liberty, as it were. "I believe the
man thinks Cap'n Lucy owns the earth."
Luther's obduracy gave way presently, although he persisted in
saddling his own horse, also, and accompanying his guest as far as the
cross-roads. Kenniston was oppressed with the sense of so punctilious
a host, and the long ride in the dewy night, along the deserted roads,
under the white silent stars, would have accorded better with his
humor had he been solitary. But the freshening wind that came with the
daybreak had a sense of liberty in the broad spread of its wings. Under
the slow revelation of the clear gray skies of dawn, he marked how
far the tumult of its flight extended in the stirring of the forests
on the mountain sides, awakening from the lethargies of the night.
He experienced a certain quickening interest in the unrolling of an
unfamiliar landscape from the obscurities of the darkness. He had a
keen zest for its beauty, the splendid symmetry of its setting amidst
a new and strange conformation of the mountains; he was responsive,
too, to that touch of pensive melancholy, that sense of loss, which
one must feel in noting the day-star fade, the quenching of that
white, tremulous, supernal lustre in the midst of the roseate mists;
but his strong mundane heart stirred to see the sun sail majestically
up amidst the full argosy of scarlet and amber clouds, freighted with
the future, and the breathless expectation of the quiescent landscape
merge into the certainty of largess to the present moment. And he had a
yet deeper satisfaction: he noted the inferiority of the magnificence
about him to the scene he had left, his own, his very own, and he dwelt
upon the recollection of it with a personal triumph, as if he had
himself designed and built it. It was with an influx of hopefulness,
of content, of renewed interest in the world, that he shook hands with
Luther, glad enough to part with him.
The mountaineer looked after him with a certain wistfulness. His
experience was too limited, his idea of the world beyond too vague,
for his thoughts to follow the traveler. It was only the sudden dim
perception of that fresh, vital, alert turning to fields beyond his ken
that smote upon him with a sense of deprivation or of discontent, too
subtle to be definitely discriminated.
It was, fortunately, fleeting. Luther's satisfaction to discover that
old Cap'n Lucy approved of his course, and in fact was secretly pleased
to be rid of Kenniston's presence, dominated every other consideration.
As the day wore on, the old man's jaunty self-importance returned.
From various meditative pauses, in which he evidently argued anew the
situation, he visibly derived self-justification. He was altogether at
ease and himself again in an indefinitely short time, for the father
was hardly more worldly-wise than the son. He considered Kenniston's
departure final. He assumed that his taunt and his sturdy resistance
had bluffed the man off from the design of processioning the land,
which, being a thing undreamed of hitherto, Cap'n Lucy vaguely feared,
albeit sure enough that he stood well within his own boundaries. As
time went by without incident or news, he began even to speak of the
projected hotel as a thing of the past, a sort of mental mirage of a
crack-brained visionary.
It came upon him, therefore, with the force of an unexpected blow when
Luther one day burst into the house with a paper in his hand giving
notice of the proposed processioning, and blurted out that he had seen
the public notice posted, according to law, at the voting-place of the
district, which was the gristmill on Tomahawk Creek.
Cap'n Lucy, lapsed in the soft securities of peace, was stunned for
a moment. That valiant essence, his temper, of all his faculties
recovered its vitality first. He mounted his horse and rode to Sawyer's
Mill, where, confronting the obnoxious notice, conspicuous upon the
doorpost, he stood for an instant the centre of a curious group of
idlers, frowningly contemplating it; then, with a single irate gesture,
he promptly tore it down, in defiance of the law. He silently got upon
his horse and rode away, leaving Luther and the kindly miller to patch
the fragments together, and to replace the notice as before, where,
the fractions not perfectly adjusted, it haltingly and disconnectedly
continued to proclaim the date, some twenty days hence, when said
Kenneth J. Kenniston designed to cause his land to be processioned,
stating the corner at which he intended to begin, to ascertain and
establish its boundary line.
Kenniston's absence, however, Cap'n Lucy still appreciated as a
boon. He was free to flounder about amongst the dense jungles of the
laurel, "huntin' fur the line ez ef 'twar hid 'mongst the bushes like
a rattlesnake, an' he mought find it by hearin' it rattle," Luther
observed, with his first unfilial criticism. Since the full value of
the improvements would doubtless be paid, should it be ascertained
that the land was Kenniston's, the son could only think it a matter
of inconvenience to be obliged to move, and a misfortune to that
extent. But he regarded the contingency as untenable as a _casus
belli_, having no realization of the reserves of obduracy in Cap'n
Lucy's mind, or of that aversion to change so characteristic of the
home-loving aged. He deemed the surveyor the fit discoverer of the
line, and deprecated his father's long jaunts up and down the mountain
from one "monument of boundary" to the other; for since there was no
adversary to relish the spectacle, Cap'n Lucy's pride did not preclude
him from daily patrolling the extent of his possessions so far as his
strength and his horse's legs might serve. But Luther came to think
this a frivolous objection indeed, in comparison with his view of his
father's standpoint later.
One day Cap'n Lucy rode up to the side of the cornfield, a late
planting, where Luther, with a bull-tongue plough, was industriously
engaged in "bustin' out the middles," since the land had been planted,
in view of the backwardness of the season, without the preliminary
"breaking up." The young man reluctantly came to the fence, his ruddy
countenance shadowy, glimpsed beneath his broad-brimmed hat.
"Mount an' kem along straight," commanded his father.
Obedience, implicit and unquestioning, had been Luther's lifelong
habit. He looked with desperation at his suffering corn. "Why, dad, I
ain't got on no shoes," he ventured to urge.
"I aint keerin' ef ye ain't got on no skin," the arbitrary elder
declared. "Git on yer beastis an' kem along with me."
The surprised old plough horse was released, and, with his clanging
gear still rattling about him, and his owner on his saddleless back,
began to take his way, following Cap'n Lucy's lead, up the precipitous
slope of the mountain. The dark forests closed high above their heads.
The change from the glare of the noontide of the open field to the
chill twilight of the shade was grateful to the senses. The undergrowth
and the jungle of the laurel seemed well-nigh impenetrable, except
indeed for the traces in broken boughs and bruised leaves of Cap'n
Lucy's former transits. They had journeyed nearly to the summit, and
Luther was ruefully meditating on the loss of two good hours of farming
weather, when the old man turned his head, glanced over his shoulder,
and drew rein.
"Luther," he said, excitement shining in his blue eyes and the color
rejuvenating his face, "ye know that Kenn'ston 'lows his southeast
corner air at that boulder, 'known ez Big Hollow Boulder,'"--he quoted
from the notice with a sneer,--"ez ef it could hev been known ez a
peegeon-aig boulder or sech."
Luther nodded in surprise.
"Waal, he gins notice ez he begins thar."
Luther nodded again in assent.
"Waal, sir, that thar boulder hev been moved."
The young man stared for a moment. Then a blank alarm settled on his
face.
"Why, dad, it's onpossible!" he exclaimed.
"Kem an' see! Kem an' see." And Cap'n Lucy rode on as before.
Luther was never sure whether he really came upon the old landmark
earlier than he expected to see it, or whether the anticipation of
something novel and incongruous colored his mind. There it was,
presently, lying on the steep slope in the midst of the wilderness,
as he had always known it,--a vast boulder, weighing many tons,
with a cavity in it which almost pierced through its bulk, and was
large enough to accommodate a man standing at full height. The slope
above was bare, for it was near the bald of the mountain, and with
outcropping ledges of rock; athwart these several trees were lying,
one apparently old and lightning-scathed long ago, the others freshly
storm-riven, for the winds had raged in a recent tempest, and instances
of its fury were elsewhere visible in broken branches in the woods.
"The wind couldn't hev done it," observed Luther, as his father pointed
at the boulder with a wave of the hand.
"Wind?--ye sodden idjit!"
"'Pears like ter me it air whar it always war," said Luther, seeking
refuge in conservatism from the hazards of conjecture.
"Luther," said his father impressively, "I know that thar rock war the
fust thing my gran'dad viewed in Tennessee, whenst he wagoned 'crost
the range ter settle. I hev hearn him say that word time an' agin. He
said he camped by it, 'count o' the spring close by, up over thar. I
hev knowed it familiar fur better'n fifty year, an' I tell ye ez it
useter war around the curve o' the bend o' the mounting up over thar,
a-nigh the spring."
"Hev ye viewed that spot lately?" asked Luther, drawing his horse to
one side, and gazing blankly at the big hollow boulder.
"Nuthin' ter view,--jes' rock an' laidges an' sech."
"Why, dad, how could it hev kem down hyar?" demanded Luther.
Old Cap'n Lucy broke into a high, derisive laugh.
"Ax Mr. Kenn'ston; don't ax me. I ain't 'quainted with them things
he talks 'bout by the yard medjure,--'splosives an' giant powder an'
daminite." (Thus Cap'n Lucy profanely denominated a certain cogent
compound.) "Enny one o' them would be ekal ter fetchin' the rock 'known
ez Big Hollow Boulder' down hyar whar he wants it to be."
"Whut fur, dad?" demanded Luther.
"Whut fur, ye fool? Ter make the line run ter suit him, ter take my
house an' lot an' sech in his boundary, ter turn me out 'n house an'
home ter suit his pleasure. He can't buy it, so he's a-fixin' ter take
it,--take it by changing the corner fur the start o' the survey."
His eyes dilated with anger, and his chin shook with the weakness of
age and the vehemence of his emotion.