As they went, the deputy sheriff's manner was little characterized
by an official decorum. He seemed rather some bold roisterer who
himself might have had ample cause to dread the law that he was sworn
to administer. The rough humor of his sallies affected Espey as an
incongruous sort of fun, taken in connection with his interpretation
of their errand, and his recollection of the keen, sinister, thin
face, with its piercing dark eyes, and its sharp hooked nose, and the
straight, menacing eyebrows meeting above it. He had this mental vision
distinctly before his contemplation, as it had impressed him in the
flicker of Mrs. Larrabee's tallow dip, instead of the undistinguishable
equestrian shadow that in the black night pressed close to his horse's
flank, and now and again laid a sinewy hand upon his arm. For the
officer, in a spirit of mock confidence, was detailing, much to that
worthy's discomfort, the spectral fears of his friend from "the t'other
e-end of the county," a believer in ghosts, and making an elaborate
pretense of sharing them. Now and again, with a sepulchral voice and
an agitated manner, he would conjure Espey to say if he saw nothing
flickering, waving white, in some open stretch of the road that lay
vacant and vaguely glimmering in the starlight before them. Then,
hardly waiting for an answer, he would burst into a whoop of derisive
laughter, startling the solemn silence of the night-bound mountain
wilderness, and rousing strange echoes of weird mirth from rock and
ravine. More than once the uncanny tumult of these wild, insensate
cries moved the staid comrades of the deputy sheriff to remonstrance.
In the distance and the night and their repetitiousness, the sounds
seemed curiously unrelated to those that had evoked them.
"That ain't no rocks a-answerin' back," said the man from the Gap. "I
b'lieve somebody is a-hollerin' at ye."
The officer turned alertly in his saddle to look back over his
shoulder. "That wouldn't s'prise me none," said the capable deputy,
whose large experience would seem to furnish precedent for any given
phenomenon. "I knowed a man out our way,--mighty loud talker and a
toler'ble active cusser,--whilst callin' hawgs, hedn't tuk no special
notice o' the rocks answerin', till one day whenst he war 'dad-burnin''
an' 'all-firin'' round till the very shoats looked blue. He stopped
ter take breath, an' he hearn a voice, powerful coarse, out'n the
woods jes' yellin' like sin, 'Fire-burn!' 'Fire-burn!' an' he knowed
that minit who't war. An' in course he jes' hedn't no mo' interes' in
nuthin', an' jes' dwindled away."
He paused abruptly.
"But--but--who war it ez said 'Fire-burn' with a coarse voice?"
breathlessly demanded the believer in spectral manifestations.
"Why, Satan, to be sure, ye fool," replied the deputy. "I useter hear
him myself a-callin' in the woods, 'Fire-burn!' whenst Ad Peters would
git ter cussin' his hawgs! Jes' so"--He lifted his voice in a wild,
fantastic cadence, and throughout the long stretches of the mountain
fastnesses the words, as of some demented incendiary, echoed and
re-echoed, varied presently with mocking cries of unpleasant falsetto
laughter, set astir when the officer's gravity failed.
The patience of his friend had given way. "Look-a-hyar, 'Dolphus Ross,"
he broke out angrily, "this hyar ain't no way ter go ter apperhend
criminals, a-hollerin' like a plumb catamount through the woods."
"I don't want ter s'prise nuthin'," said the crafty deputy sheriff,
"that is nuthin' unyearthly, on its yerrands what no mortial knows
about, an' mebbe git s'prised myself plumb down ter the doors o' the
pit. Ye know them ez sees harnts either draps down dead or loses thar
minds, one. They 'low now'days ez all the crazies kem so from seein'
sperits. An' ye know yerse'f, an off'cer of the law needs brains."
"Ef ye don't know yer bizness no better'n that, I be goin' ter l'arn
it ter ye. Ye 'pear mo' like a jay-hawker'n a off'cer o' the law,"
retorted the other tartly.
But not even with this rude touch upon the sensitive nerves of official
pride could he control the elusive and slippery deputy. "That's a fac',
Pearce. But the truth is, I be all-fired 'feared in these hyar lonesome
places, whar humans air seldom an' few, o' seein' suthin' or hearin'
suthin' what no mortial eyes or ears air expected ter see an' hear. So
I like ter hear the sound o' my own voice,--let 'em know I'm a-comin'.
Even with two or three men with me, it's so darned fur an' lonesome!
I 'pear less like a harnt myself, an' less apt ter meet up with one,
ef I make myself sorter lively. I'm a mighty quiet cuss in town. I'm
a--What's--what's that?" he broke off sharply.
He drew rein suddenly, throwing his horse back upon the haunches.
The two men behind him, coming forward at the swift pace he had set,
collided heavily with the obstacle thus furnished them, a reckless
proceeding here on the narrow rocky road, on the verge above the
abysses of the valley on one side, and with the inaccessible heights
of the mountain rising sheerly on the other. They stood between heaven
and earth, on this craggy beetling promontory, with the pulsating
white stars above and the dark depths of the gorge below. His sight
becoming more accustomed to the night, Espey could distinguish through
the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the
heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague
moving whiteness which he knew to be the involutions of the mist in
the valley. He too had drawn up his horse, slightly in advance of the
others, and was looking forward in keen expectation of developments.
"What's what?" he demanded of the deputy, who was managing his rearing
horse with considerable skill.
"Something white--beckonin'," gasped the officer of the law.
Espey, with all the ignorant superstitions of his class, felt his blood
run cold. Nevertheless he sought to reassure himself and his comrades.
"Jes' these elder-flowers, mebbe," he said, breaking off a great bough
from a bush rooted in a crevice of the crag, and so profusely blooming
that the black night itself could hardly nullify its whitely gleaming
graces. He received full in his face the cool spray of the dew and
the sweet breath of the flower, all unheeding, for the officer again
protested in a loud, broken voice:--
"Beckonin'--beckonin'--Oh, my friends, somebody in this crowd is
a sinner; somebody hev done wrong! An' he may be a saint in the
church-house, or leastwise familiar with the mourner's bench,--an' he
may escape jedge an' jury,--an' he may cheat hemp,--but in the dead
o' the night an' in the lonely paths o' yearth he'll be betrayed by a
v'ice, or he'll see a beckonin'"--
"Oh, shucks!" interrupted the believer in "harnts." "I'm a-goin'
back ter Mis' Lar'bee's." He was essaying to wheel his horse on the
narrow ledge. "'Tain't my bizness ter go 'long with ye, ter apperhend
crim'nals in the middle o' the night. Ef ye can't take 'em in the
daytime, go 'thout 'em, I say."
"Some truth in that. I wisht I could jine ye," said the deputy. "But my
jewty lies ahead. I be bound ter go on; an' I reckon it can't be so fur
from Tems's now,--air it, frien'?" he asked, turning to Espey.
With a sinking heart, Espey replied that it was not very far, and the
wonder as to what lay before him in the unknown scenes to which he sped
in such haste reasserted itself in his mind, as the deputy rode briskly
up alongside once more.
It required, perchance, only a moment's reflection on the inexpressible
loneliness of the miles of mountain woods, that must of necessity be
traversed before the shelter of Mrs. Larrabee's house could be reached,
to change the design of the deserter from the little party. The beat
of his horse's hoofs annotated his continued presence, which was soon
made even more indisputable by his raucous voice again lifted in
remonstrance.
"Ye mus' see, now, 'Dolphus, ez n'ise an' ribeldry an' gamesomeness
don't purvent ye from viewin' sech ez ye air intended ter view. Sech
goin's-on ain't lawful fur citizens, much less off'cers o' the law."
"Ye ain't gone back, then?" commented 'Dolphus over his shoulder.
There was no answer to this, and after a pause the facetious deputy
went on:--
"_I_ ain't fur hollerin' an' rampagin' an' sech. _I_ be a
mighty quiet cuss in town, like I said,--a mighty quiet cuss indeed.
The old man," he alluded thus to the high sheriff, "he sez ter me
sometimes, 'I dunno, 'Dolphus, whether ye air in yer skin or no. Ye
jes' 'pear ter be settin' thar, 'sleep or dead.' Wunst he tole me ez I
warn't mo' lively 'n jes' a suit o' clothes hangin' outside the store
door, an' a suit would cost less'n my pay ez a dep'ty. I tried ter
brace up arter that."
He had braced up considerably from the quiescent state he described
if the sudden yell that he emitted might be received as evidence of
his more stalwart condition. The sharp exclamations of surprise from
the rest of the party afforded him intense delight, which was not
mitigated by a blood-curdling shriek, as it were in response, set up
by a catamount on the opposite heights, so close at hand by the direct
line across the spaces above the valley through the air, despite the
intervening miles of trackless mountain desert below, that they could
hear the creature snarl before it lifted its thin, keen, inarticulate
voice shrilling again into the black night.
There was no definite remonstrance, for he forestalled their outbreak,
beyond a few words, by declaring tumultuously that he saw it
again,--something a-waving, a-beckoning.
"No use talkin'!" he exclaimed. "The guilty sinner is 'mongst us, an'
hyar he be!"
He leaned out of his saddle and passed one arm around Espey, pinioning
the young fellow's right arm to his side. Espey, startled beyond
control, despite his expectation of this contingency, with which,
however, hope and suspense had juggled painfully, detected with
sharpened senses the dull clanking of handcuffs. He hardly knew how it
came there, he had no definite intention of resisting arrest, but a
pistol was in the hand over which the rude wristlets dangled; a jet of
red light that showed the dark-eyed, laughing, grimacing face near to
his own, the whizzing of a bullet so close between the officer's side
and arm that the blazing powder singed and burned his "store clothes,"
an abrupt report, and once more the night, rent by the sound, clamored
with echoes.
From the dense darkness the officer's voice, with a changed tone, a
sharp note of surprise, was crying, "Look out! Look out!"
The other men were stunned with amazement. They had only a vague sense
of struggling mounted figures which the darkness did not suffer them to
descry. And suddenly a second swift funnel-shaped glare for an instant
invaded the gloom,--it came from the officer's pistol this time,--a
second clamorous report rang amongst the rocks. The frightful, almost
human scream of a wounded horse, a wild plunging on the side of the
rocky bridle-path, and Espey and the yellow roan disappeared over the
verge of the cliff. The three men standing in the road, hearing with
sickening horror the dull thud far below, might judge of the terrors of
the fall by the time elapsing before the sound reached their ears.