Lorenzo Taft's arrival at his home, that afternoon, might have seemed
to the casual observer an event of the simplest significance. It is
true, a country trader, on his return from a bout of barter at that
emporium the cross-roads store, seldom casts about him so vigilant
an eye, or sustains so controlled and weighty a manner, or wears a
countenance of such discernment, its alert sagacity hardly at variance
with certain predatory suggestions,--on the contrary, finding in them
its complement of expression. But these points might only have argued
ill for the profits of the bargainer with whom he had dealt. As the
great lumbering canvas-hooded wagon came to a halt in the space beneath
the loft of the log barn, under partial shelter, at least, and he
began to unharness and turn out the two mules, the anxious glances
he cast toward the house might have betokened impatient expectation
of assistance in unloading the ponderous vehicle, and carrying into
the store the cumbrous additions to its stock represented in saddles,
cutlery, sugar, bolts of calico, stacks of hats,--the integrity of
all more or less endangered by the weather. But no one emerged from
the house, and after feeding the mules he turned hastily, took his
way in great strides through the rain across the yard, which was half
submerged in puddles and running water, and unlocked the door. As he
entered, big, burly, and dripping with rain, prophetically at odds
with the falling out of the yet unknown events, he gazed about the dim
interior with a dissatisfied, questioning eye. All was much as usual,
save dimmer and drearier for the storm without. Here the unseen rain
asserted its presence by the fusillade on the roof and the plashing
from the eaves. The wind rushed furiously in recurrent blasts against
the windowless walls. Since the denizens within could not mark how it
bent the greatest tree, they might thus judge of its force, and quake
beneath its tempestuous buffets. Now and again the writhen boughs of
the elm just outside beat as in frantic appeal on the clapboards of
the roof. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional
drops fell a-sputteriug into the dull blaze of the fire. Cornelia Taft
herself was dull and spiritless of mien, as she sat on a low stool
on the hearth knitting a blue yarn stocking. The room, lurking in a
state of semi-obscurity, seemed the dreariest possible expression of
a dwelling; only as the fitful blaze flared and fell were distortions
of its simple furniture distinguishable,--the table with its blue
ware, the bed and its gaudy quilt, the spinning-wheel, and the old
warping-bars, where now merely skeins of cobwebs were wont to hang from
peg to peg, since Cornelia Taft's precocity did not extend to weaving.
A black cat sat blinking her yellow eyes before the fire. She had so
conversational an aspect that it might seem that Taft had interrupted
some conference,--of a dismal nature, doubtless, for there were traces
of recent tears on the little girl's face, and a most depressed
expression.
"Whar's Copley? Whar's yer uncle Cop?" he demanded, looking hastily
about the shadowy place.
She paused to roll up her work methodically, and thrust the
knitting-needles through the ball of yarn.
"He ain't hyar," she said, lifting reproachful eyes; "an' he ain't been
hyar since ye been gone."
He stared down at her in silent surprise.
"Ye jes' went off an' lef' me an' Joe hyar by ourse'fs, an' we been
mos' skeered ter death," she added, with a sob.
A sudden apprehension crossed Taft's face.
"I lef Cop hyar. Ain't he been in ter git his vittles?"
She shook her head.
"Did ye call him in the store?"
She nodded.
"Mebbe he war in the barn."
"I blowed the hawn fur him; he ain't eat a mite sence ye been gone."
Taft turned hastily toward the door, his florid face paling. Then he
turned back. "Whar's Joe?"
"He hev runned away!" cried Sis, with a burst of sobs. "Las' night
we-uns hearn sech a cur'ous hurrah--somewhar--I dunno--sech cur'ous
talk an' hollerin' 'way down in the groun'--an'--an'--diggin'--an'"--
He had paused, looking amazed at her. Then his face changed, with a
sort of aghast certainty upon it. "Jes' some boys diggin' in the Lost
Time mine," he urged, however, plausibly.
"But--but"--she protested--"Joe, _he_ say, they--they
air--_dead_."
She looked at him, hoping for some sufficient adult denial of this
terrible fantasy; but his face betokened only its confirmation, and she
fell to shivering and sobbing afresh.
"Whenst it got so turrible in the middle o' the night, Joe, he looked
out'n the winder upsteers, an' the moon hed riz. An' he clomb down by
the tree. He 'lowed he wouldn't bide no mo' an' listen. So he jes' skun
the cat out'n the winder. He war 'feared."
And once more she covered her face with her hands and wept.
Nevertheless, between her fingers, as the tears trickled down them, she
furtively surveyed him.
"Wunst," she said tentatively, "I 'lowed 'twar revenuers. An' then I
wisht 'twar. I hed ruther hev hearn _them_ 'n--'n--dead ones."
His countenance did not change a muscle.
She was now alarmed by her own temerity. In the long ordeal of solitude
and fright she had lost control of her small nerves, or she would not
have overstepped her habitual caution so far. "Revenuers arter what?"
he demanded. His incidental, unconcerned manner reassured her.
"Arter the 'wild-cat,' I reckon," she hazarded.
He affected to consider the suggestion.
"Some boys _mought_ be talkin' 'bout startin' a still down thar
in the Lost Time mine. I'll roust 'em out mighty quick, ef they do! Ef
thar's enny whiskey sold round hyar, I'm countin' on doin' it out'n my
store, sure. I got a license ter sell."
She looked at him narrowly, suspiciously, hardly more credulous than he
himself.
"I won't hev _my_ profits sp'iled. Whiskey's the best trade I
got," he added, as he turned about. "Waal, I 'lowed Copley would be in
hyar ter holp me tote the truck in; but, howsever, set a rock afore the
door ter hold it open, Sis, whilst I make a start, ennyhow."
His show of industry as he toiled across the rainy yard, now with a
keg, now with a box, on his shoulder, of anxiety for the safety of
his goods, his sedulous care in displaying them to the best advantage
on the shelves to lure customers, might have deceived a wiser head
than Cornelia Taft's. Her long-cherished suspicions were gradually
dispelled, as she ran hither and thither, carrying the lighter packages
in her arms, eagerly helping to bestow them, making place for them when
she could do no more. It was not until she had gone back briskly to her
task of preparing an early supper that he ventured to descend from the
store to the room below, and take his way along the dark tunnel to the
still in the recess of the mine. He paused surprised at the disordered
and careless disarray about the entrance to the tunnel: some of the
boards of the partition were on the ground, others aslant, none as
they were habitually adjusted. With a steady hand he rectified this,
and went forward forthwith, his lantern swinging in his grasp. Once he
paused to listen: no voice, no stir; only the heavy windless silence.
As he progressed, the faint tinkling of the running water smote his
ear, and presently he had crossed it. No sound came from about the
still; there was no suffusion of red light on the terra-cotta walls
that sometimes glowed at the terminus of the tunnel when the furnace
door stood open. He could hardly be said to have had a premonition. He
was prepared for disaster by the previous events; but he could scarcely
realize its magnitude, its conclusiveness, when the timid flare of
the lantern illumined the dreary walls of the moonshiners' haunt, the
dead cold furnace, the tubs of mash,--on the margin of one of which a
rat was boldly feeding, scarcely pausing to look around with furtive,
sinister bright eyes,--and his two lieutenants, whom he had left to
guard Larrabee, bound and gagged upon the floor.
The craft which characterized Lorenzo Taft was hardly predicable of
so massive an organization. It was an endowment of foxlike ingenuity,
sinuous, lithe, suggestive of darting swiftness and of doubled tracks.
The expression of blunt dismay on his big jowl dropping visibly beneath
his broad yellow beard, the widening stare in his round blue eyes as
he gazed about the dismal place, his heavy, lumbering motion as he
carefully set the lantern down upon the cold masonry of the fireless
furnace, gave no intimation of the speed with which his mind had
canvassed the situation, accepted the inevitable, and fixed upon his
future course. It was hardly a moment before he was on one knee beside
the prostrate form of the elder moonshiner, and had drawn from over his
head the grain sack that had served both to obscure his countenance
and more completely secure his gag. The glimmer of the lantern, like
a slow rill of light trickling feebly through the darkness, illumined
the expression of eager appeal in the haggard, wild face and eyes of
Copley. An instant longer was too long to wait, yet wait he must!
Taft jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the other prostrate form,
convulsed now in a frenzied effort to attract the attention of the
new-comer, whose footsteps had brought the only hope of speedy
deliverence.
"Drunk agin?" he asked, in a low voice.
Copley made shift to nod his head affirmatively. Then again that
frantic plea for release illumined his eyes and contorted his anxious
features.
Taft, regardless, rose, with the swinging motion which was
characteristic of him, and, with the lantern swaying in his hand, made
his way to the opposite side of the furnace, where the young drunkard
lay--very sober now, in good truth--cramped in every hard-bound limb,
racked with the tortures of thirst, and half famished. Taft had partly
unbound the ropes from about the furnace and cut them in twain, thus
dissevering the companions in misery; he swiftly knotted those that
held the elder moonshiner, while the ends of Dan Sykes's bonds lay
loose along the floor.
"Why, Dan," he cried roughly, "what sort'n caper is this?"
The prostrate young fellow made an effort to rise, so strong that the
already loosened cords relaxed; and as Taft emphasized his demand by a
sharp kick in the ribs, and an urgent exhortation to the young sot to
"quit this damned fooling," the sack which Sykes had worn some twenty
hours as hood and gag, and which, since his wakening from his long
drunken sleep, he had strained in every fibre by his mad lurches of
fright and efforts for freedom, rolled off, his pinioned arms were at
liberty, and it seemed he had naught to do but to sit up and untie his
craftily bound feet and legs.
"Ye demented gopher!" cried Taft angrily, as Sykes sat up stupidly,
blinking in the gleam of the lantern. "What ails ye? Drunk agin?"
If his bursting skull were admissible testimony,--but he shook his head
stoutly in pious negation. Taft kicked him once more in the side with a
scornful boot.
"Then the worse fool you-uns! Look-a-hyar!" he cried furiously, as he
caught the young man by the collar and pulled him to his staggering
feet, cutting with one or two quick passes with the knife the ropes
about his legs. "Look-a-hyar, ye gallus-bird, what ye hev done in yer
drunken tantrums! Murder! murder! or mighty nigh it!"
He swung the lantern round, so that its flickering gleams might rest
on the figure of Copley, whose genuine bonds so closely resembled the
plight which Sykes had thought his own. His bloodshot eyes distended,
as he groped bending toward it in the darkness.
"Who's that? Lar'bee?" he said.
"Lar'bee!" exclaimed Taft scornfully. "Lar'bee's been out'n the still
ever since yestiddy evenin'."
It was Sykes's drunken recollection that Larrabee was here when Taft
departed; but alack! in a cranium which is occupied by a headache
of such magnitude, memory has scarce a corner to be reckoned on.
Nevertheless he blurted out:--
"Ye tole me ter watch him,"--he set his teeth in a sort of snarl,
and glanced up under his eyebrows with a leer still slightly
spirituous,--"ter gyard him like, a dog. 'Hold fast!' ye said, 'hold
fast!'"
Taft suddenly shifted the lantern, to throw its full glare upon his own
serious, grim, threatening face as he loomed up in the shadows.
"Sykes," he said, "this is a bad business fur you, an' ye'll swing fur
it, I'm a-thinkin'. Nobody never set sech a besotted cur ez ye ter
watch nobody. I let Lar'bee out myse'f. Ye an' Copley war lef' hyar
ter keep sober an' run the still; an' what do ye do? Ye murder him!"
As he lowered his big, booming, dramatic voice, the young fellow's
blood ran cold.
"Ye murder him, an' tie him up like that, an' then do yerse'f up sorter
fancy with bags an' a rope. Ye'll hev closer dealin's with a rope yit;
I kin spy out that in the day that's kemin'." His eyes gleamed with a
sinister smile.
Sykes's knees shook.
"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed wildly. "Air--air he dead? 'Twarn't me! God
A'mighty knows 'twarn't me!" The ready tears rushed to his eyes. "'Twar
Lar'bee! 'Twar Lar'bee!"
"Shucks!" Taft turned wearily away. "Ain't I tole ye I seen Lar'bee
set out 'fore I did? Blackenin' Lar'bee won't save ye, Dan!
_Drink--drink!_ I tole ye drink would ruinate ye; always brings
a man to a bad e-end. Pity ye hed n't put some water in the jug
beforehand, stiddier all them tears in the dregs o' yer spree." He
shook his head. "So it is! So it is!"
"Oh, is he dead,--air ye sure he is dead?" cried the young fellow in a
heart-rending voice of appeal, flinging himself upon his knees beside
the still, stark, motionless form of the elder moonshiner.
Taft swung the lantern slightly, and its lurid gleams played over
the haggard, cadaverous face, ghastly with fatigue and the pallor of
anxiety.
The boy drew back, with a shudder of repulsion. "Oh, I never went ter
do it! I never went ter do it! I war drunk! crazy drunk! devil drunk!
Oh"--
"They say," Taft interrupted suddenly,--"leastwise the lawyers do,--ez
a man bein' drunk in c'mittin' a crime ought n't ter influence a
jury,--the law makes no allowance; but," with an encouraging nod, "they
say, too, ez it _do_ influence the jury _every time_. An' the
court can't holp it. The jury _will_ allow suthin' fur a man bein'
drunk."
The white face of the boy, imposed against the darkness with all the
contour of youth, had hardly a characteristic that was not expressive
of age, so pinched, so lined, so drawn, so bloodless, was every
sharpened feature. The natural horror of his supposed deed, his
simple, superficial repentance of the involuntary crime, were suddenly
expunged; his whole being was controlled by a single impulse; a passion
of fear possessed him. Jury, crime, lawyer,--these words looking to
a legal arraignment first brought to his horror-stricken mind the
idea of a responsibility other than moral for his deed. What slight
independence of thought he had, what poor capacity for sifting and
judging and weighing the probabilities his easily influenced mind might
have exerted as he more and more recovered from his recent inebriation,
became nullified upon the instant. He did not look once again back to
the past, but to the future, wild, quaking, frenzied, as Taft elected
to foretell the event.
"That's why," Taft coolly said, nodding sagely, and inclining his head
toward the breathless, frantic, almost petrified creature, "I'd leave
it ter men."
Sykes recoiled, with a shudder.
"Yes," reiterated Taft, weightily and slowly. "The jury would take yer
drunk inter account; an' on the witness-stand I'd testify ez ye war gin
over ter the failin'."
The young fellow's gray, stony face did not change as Taft ceased to
speak. Taft felt its fixed look upon him as he stood, his head bent,
and his big hat thrust back on his yellow hair; one hand was laid
meditatively on his long beard, as he gazed down on the prostrate
figure of Copley; with the other hand he held the lantern, whose spare
white glimmers of light thrown out into the surrounding obscurity
seemed very meagre in the darksome place, which was never cheerful at
best, but without the roar and heat of the furnace, the keen, brilliant
glinting from the crevice of the door when closed or the red, suffusive
flare when it was swung ajar, the still-room was the dreariest
presentment of subterranean gloom.
"Yes," Taft continued thoughtfully, "I'd ruther leave it ter men--ter
the courts, ye know--'n ter hev the folks round hyar ez war frien'ly
ter Copley ondertake ter settle ye fur it; they'd--Hey?" he interrupted
himself.
For the young fellow had reached out his arm and laid his hand with
a vise-like grip upon Taft's wrist. His head was thrust forward;
he seemed about to speak, but his parted lips, drawn tight across
his large, prominent teeth, emitted not a sound, although his wild,
dilated, bloodshot eyes looked an eager protest. His voice had failed
in framing the obnoxious words, which, however, Taft spoke patly enough.
"Why, ye know, they would--they would. Jedge Lynch is the only court
fur this kentry. What sati'faction is it ter the folks hyarabout, ter
hev a man kerried ter jail, thirty mile away, ter stan' his trial in
the courthouse year arter nex', mebbe, an' then arter all's come an'
gone cheat hemp at las'? Yes, that's yer bes' chance; set out fur
Colbury straight, an' s'render yerse'f thar."
He paused, apparently thinking deeply.
"Ef ye hed enny kin, though, in enny out'n-the-way place, my advices
ter ye would be ter cut an' run, an' bide along o' them; fur this hyar
air a mighty bad job, an' it's goin' ter go hard with the man ez done
it."
Once more the pallid, evasive light flickered in feeble vibrations
across the long, motionless, rope-bound figure, and the stark face
curiously distorted and painfully repulsive with the gag in its
stretched jaws.
"Ye ain't got no kin in no'th Georgy?" Taft demanded.
"Naw," replied the boy huskily.
The suggestion seemed to have restored his voice, albeit muffled and
shaken; into his eyes, staring, wide and bloodshot, into the gloom,
was creeping a definiteness of expression, as if he beheld, instead of
the vacant black darkness, some scene projected there as a possibility
and painted by his expectation. His grip on Taft's arm had relaxed. It
had been close and hard, and Taft rubbed the wrist a trifle with the
hand that still held the lantern, setting the feeble glimmer a-swinging
swiftly about the dark walls.
"That's a pity,--that's a tur'ble pity," Taft averred gloomily; then,
with an air of rousing himself, "Waal, ye'll jes' hev ter leave it ter
men. That's the bes' ye kin do." He was turning briskly toward the
tunnel. "I'll ondertake ter gin ye the matter of a two hours' start of
the folks 'bout hyar by not tellin' 'bout old Copley till then. But ye
hed bes' ride with speed, fur they'll be hot shod on yer tracks, sure."
As he went forward with his swinging, elastic stride, swaying the
lantern back and forth, according to his wont, to illumine the path,
his manner, his words, his expression, so tallied with the situation he
had invented and the role he had played that even the most discerning
might have descried no discrepancy in point of fact. The young
moonshiner, barely sobered and wholly frightened, was easily to be
deluded by a verisimilitude far less complete. He followed, his clumsy
feet stumbling and stepping awry, as if his gait were still subject
to spirituous influences from which his brain was freed. His cramped
limbs yet felt the numbness of their long constraint and the pain of
his bonds, for Larrabee's ropes had not been adjusted with due regard
to the free circulation of the blood. His progress was far slower than
his host's, who paused from time to time and waited to be overtaken.
On these occasions it soon became apparent that there was something
in his mind on which he had begun to ponder deeply; for whereas at
first he had visibly hastened to join Taft on seeing him whirl around,
the lantern describing in the distance a wheel of pallid white light
against the dense darkness of the tunnel, he now continued to plod
heavily, slower and slower, even when the light settled to a shining
focus, again motionless. Taft lifted it once as Sykes approached,
throwing its force full upon the swollen, mottled, absorbed face,
the fixed introspective eyes, the heavy slouching shoulders and bent
head. At that moment of careful reconnoitre a genuine expression was
on Taft's face, keen, furtive, triumphant; it passed unobserved. He
whirled around again, leading the way with the lantern, and it was with
a perfectly cloaked satisfaction that he began to observe the young
fellow's convulsive haste to depart as they neared the exit from the
tunnel, his flimsy pretense of heed to his elder's advice, and finally
his heedlessness altogether, no longer able to maintain attention or
its semblance.
He was gone at last, and Taft, returning to his prostrate comrade in
the still, dismissed him from his mind, and thenceforward from his
life, with a single comment. "That drunken shoat hev got an uncle in
north Texas," he said, as he placed the lantern on the cold brick-work
of the dead and fireless furnace. "I knowed that, so I fixed it so ez
he'd light out fur them furrin parts d'rec'ly. He ain't dawdlin', I'm
thinkin'."
Then, as he addressed himself to removing the gag and cutting the bonds
of the elder distiller, his brow darkened.
"That cuss Lar'bee's work, hey?" he demanded gruffly; and as the
liberated Copley gasped out an assent Taft growled a deep oath, his
face scarlet, his hands trembling with rage, his anger unleashed, and
his whole nature for the nonce unmasked.
"That kems from sparin' powder an' lead," he declared vindictively.
"Whyn't ye or Sykes shoot him?"
"He war too suddint," gasped Copley. "Ye never see a painter so suddint
an' sharp."
"An' whyn't ye be suddint, too?" retorted Taft aggressively.
Copley might have protested that in his own interest he had been as
"suddint" as he could, and had done his best. He evidently felt,
however, much in fault, and as, in silence, he ruefully rubbed his numb
limbs, just free from their ligatures, tingling painfully with the
renewal of the circulation of the blood, he gazed about, crestfallen
and humbled, and even grief-stricken, at the scene of his wonted
labors. It was but faintly revealed by the lantern on the masonry of
the furnace,--the dimly white focus with divergent filaments of rays
weaving only a tenuous web of light in the darkness which encompassed
all. The great burly forms of tubs and barrels were but vaguely
glimpsed as brownish suggestions in the blackness; a yellow gleam from
the copper still gave the effect of an independent illumination rather
than the resources of reflection, so dull and unresponsive was all else
upon which the lantern cast its glimmer. Taft sat, according to his
habit, upon the side of a barrel, his legs crossed, his elbow on one
knee, his head bowed upon his hand, his big hat intercepting all view
of his face. Copley gave a long sigh, as his spiritless glance noted
the dejection of his friend; but his grooved and wrinkled face seemed
as incapable of expressiveness as before, and, with its tanned tints
and blunt, ill-cut features, resembled some unskillful carving in wood
or a root. His thoughts swerved presently, almost with the moment of
re-attaining his liberty, from the immediate disaster to the details of
his drudgery which so habitually occupied his every waking faculty.
"That thar mash must be plumb ripe by this time," he remarked, his eyes
fixed upon a spot in the darkness where presumably the tub in question
was situated. "'Twar nigh ripe whenst Lar'bee jumped up demented, it
'peared like, an' tuk arter we-uns."
Taft lifted a red face and a scowling brow. With an air of reckless
desperation he strode to the tub, and the next moment Copley heard the
splash as the contents were poured out down the shaft.
"Laws-a-massy, 'Renzo!" with the decisive ring of anger in his voice
and all the arrogations of the expert, "whyn't ye let me examinate it?
Ye ain't got my 'speriunce; ye ain't ekal ter jedge like me. Whyn't
ye"--
"Ye miser'ble mole!" Taft retorted angrily. "Ye may be a jedge o'
fermentin' an' stillin' an' sech like, but ye hev got powerful leetle
gumption 'bout'n the signs o' the times. Thar ye sit, a-yawpin' away
'bout yer mash, ripe or raw, an' I'm lookin' fur the shootin' irons o'
the marshal's men under my nose every time I turn my head."
He suited the action to the word at the moment, looking down with a
sudden squint which gave a frightfully realistic suggestion of the
muzzle of a weapon held at his very teeth.
"The thing's busted!" Taft cried desperately. "It's done! Kin ye
onderstan' that? We-uns hev got ter the jumpin'-off place!"
The bewildered Copley looked vaguely at the verge of the deep shaft,
perilously near.
"That Lar'bee's loose now, full o' gredges fur bein' helt hyar," Taft
continued. "We-uns oughter shot him, or let him shoot himself. An'
the dep'ty sher'ff's on his track, 'lowin' ez Espey be Lar'bee an'
s'picionin' moonshinin'. The dep'ty sher'ff ain't got nuthin' ter do
with sech ez moonshinin' hisse'f, but he air tryin' ter find Lar'bee,
an' settle his gredges with him; so he'll gin the revenue dogs the
word 'bout Lar'bee an' distillin', an' whenst Lar'bee's tuk he'll take
a heap o' pleasure in guidin' 'em hyar, I'll be bound. He mought even
turn informer hisse'f, ter git even."
He sunk down suddenly on the barrel.
"It's powerful hard on me!" he cried. "I hev treated them boys like
they war my own sons." He had forgotten, in this arrogation of age and
paternal feeling, his recent youthfulness of matrimonial pretensions.
"I hev tuk 'em in,"--he did not say in what sense,--"an' divided fair
with 'em; an' they hev gotten mo' money out'n me than they'd ever
elsewise view in thar whole lifetime. An' I hev been keerful an' kep'
the place secret an' quiet. I hev tuk good heed ter all p'ints. An'
we-uns mought hev gone on peaceful an' convenient till the crack o'
doom, ef it hedn't been fur them. Oh, thar never war sech a place!"
He looked round with the eyes of gloating admiration on the gruesome,
shadowy den about him, so singularly suited to his vocation. "An' even
the danger 'bout'n the hotel is done with, an' the lan' percessioned by
now, I reckon, an' thar won't be no mo' packs o' strangers in the Cove;
an' yit--an' yit--all fur nuthin'!"
He took off his hat, and rubbed his corrugated brow with his hand with
a gesture of desperation.
It is a singular trait of what might perhaps be called sentimental
economy that every individual in this world should be the object of
the hero worship of some other. It may be submitted that there are
no conditions so sterile as to induce a dearth of this perfectly
disinterested, unrewarded admiration and acceptation of some embodied
ideal. It is familiar enough in the higher walks of life and with
worthy objects. But there may be a champion among beggars. It is a
potent agent. Its purblind flatteries have advanced many a dullard
to a foremost place. The plainest face has some devotee of its
beauty; and even the most unpromising infant is a miracle of grace
and genius to a doting grandmother. Hardly a hero of the world's
history is more dignified on his elevated plane than was Lorenzo Taft
in the eyes of his humble coadjutor. His wiliness was wisdom; his
dictatorial aggressiveness, the preëminence of a natural captaincy; his
self-seeking a cogent prudence; and his natural courage--with which,
indeed, be was well endowed--the finest flower of the extravaganza of
valor.
Copley looked at him now with the respectful sympathy which one
might well feel in witnessing the fall of a very great man. He
scarcely remembered his own interests, inextricably involved. Every
inflection of the mellow, sonorous voice raised to a declamatory
pitch found a vibrating acquiescence in chords of responsive emotion.
Every unconscious gesture of the massive and imposing figure--as
histrionically appropriate as if acquired by labor and tuition,
since it was indeed the nature that art simulates--was marked with
appreciative eyes. A rat in a trap is hardly esteemed a fit object
for sympathy by civilized communities, but consider the aspect and
magnitude of the catastrophe to his friends and neighbors, consider the
emotional melodrama within the small circuit of the wires!
"Don't take it so tur'ble hard, 'Renzo," expostulated Copley, still
seated on the floor.
For Taft was standing motionless, his eyes staring and fixed, his hat
far back on his head, exposing his set, drawn face with its teeth hard
clenched, one hand mechanically clutching his flowing yellow beard, the
other continually closing and unclosing on the handle of a pistol which
he had half drawn from his pocket,--a habit of his in moments of mental
perplexity, as if he instinctively appealed to this summary arbiter to
decide on questions far enough removed from its jurisdiction.
"Don't be so tur'ble desolated; some way out'n it, sure ez ye air
born," urged Copley in a consolatory wheeze.
The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Taft. He caught himself with
a start and turned hastily away, looking about as if in search of
something. He took the lantern presently to aid him in this, and when
it came back, glimmering through the dusk, he carried a box of tools in
the other hand.
"Thar's one way out'n it, sure," he said in a muffled, changed voice,
"though it's gone powerful hard with me ter git my own cornsent ter
take it."
He placed the lantern upon the furnace, and, as he went vigorously to
work, the astounded Copley, still upon the ground, began to perceive
that he was taking the apparatus carefully apart; he was disconnecting
the worm from the neck, when his amazed coadjutor found his voice.
"Hold on, 'Renzo," he remonstrated; "ye ain't a-goin' ter take the
contraption down, surely"--
"Ruther hev the revenuers do it?" said Taft, showing his teeth in a
sarcastic smile as he looked up. "They'll make wuss slarter with the
worm 'n I will." Then, pausing, with a frown of rancorous reminiscence,
"I hed a still o' bigger capacity 'n this one over yander in Persimmon
Cove, an' they cut it up in slivers, an' the worm war lef' in pieces
no longer 'n that," measuring with both hands, "an' the furnace all
tore up. I never seen sech a sight ez whenst I croped back ter view
the wreck. I 'lowed I'd never git forehanded enough ter start ter
manufacture sperits agin in this worl'."
He stood idly gazing down these vistas of memory grimly enough for a
moment; then, turning back to the still, "I'll make a try ter save the
property this time, so when the storm blows over we kin git started
agin another way an' another day. I'll fix it so ez when Lar'bee tells,
his words will be cast back in his teeth fit ter knock 'em all down his
own throat. He'll be sorry enough, sure's ye air born. They'll be hard
swallowin'."
The natural fortitude of Taft's character, the elastic quality of
his strength, his big, bluff mental methods, combined to support him
in this ordeal to a degree which contrasted advantageously with the
weak, almost supine grief that Copley manifested. Perhaps, too, Taft's
dinner was a material element which gave cohesion and decision to his
mental resolves. Now, Copley, half starved, nervous, wild with anxiety,
dread for the future, regret for the past, doubt of the present, would
angrily protest, even while he aided in dismantling the apparatus;
and then, after a word or two of argument, would admit its necessity,
its urgency, and again lament it as futile. He almost wept when the
object of his solicitude, which he had served as if it were a fetich,
was finally dismembered, and he found only a partial consolation in
being himself permitted to pack it, secure from injury, in boxes
which Taft brought down from the store. This scanty satisfaction was
short-lived, for, despite his objection, Taft poured out upon the
ground the liquor which remained after the shipment of the two barrels
to the cross-roads. The tubs were cut into pieces in true "revenuer"
fashion, the mash was poured out, the furnace was demolished out of
all semblance to its former proportions and uses, before Taft began to
lay the train to blow the place up, and thus effectually silence its
testimony forever.
"S'pos'n'--s'pos'n'"--Copley shivered--"s'pos'n' somebody war in the
Lost Time mine down thar"--
Taft paused, with a lot of tow in his hands which he was arranging
for a fuse; he glanced around, the lantern swinging on his arm, as if
waiting for the sequel to the unfinished sentence; then, as Copley
remained vaguely staring as if at a vision of possible laborers in the
Lost Time mine, "Skeer 'em powerful, I reckon," he said casually, and
bent once more to his work.
"But--but"--Copley recommenced, in a tone so urgent that Taft once
more desisted to listen, with an inquiring look on his half-turned
face--"but--but--s'pos'n' the--a--'splosion o' the powder war--war ter
bring down the rocks an' the timbers in some o' them tunnels an' open
shafts, an' somebody war in thar, hey? hey?" with eager insistence.
"Shut 'em in thar fur good an' all, I reckon,--git buried a leetle
before thar time, that's all," said Taft coolly, and went on with his
work as before.
Perhaps some vague premonition, perhaps an intuition of subterranean
proximity to an unsuspected wanderer in the Lost Time mine, perhaps
only a morbid aversion to the whole project, induced by the lack of
that conscience-fortifying force, dinner, actuated Copley, but for the
third time he sought to disaffect Taft's mind toward it.
"Mebbe somebody mought be passin' an' hear the 'splosion; moughtn't
they low 'twar cur'us? What would they make of it?"
Taft did not now pause in his work; he answered still bending down to
the ground laying the train.
"Yearthquake," he said composedly, "or else jes' some o' the rottin'
timbers o' the mine settlin' an' givin' way. Besides," he added,
straightening himself up, "nobody's passin' at this time o' night,
nohow."
"Night!" exclaimed Copley. "Is it night?"
"Midnight," replied Taft laconically.
He stood silent, thinking, a moment, and resting after the labor of
cautiously adjusting the charges of powder; and then, so quiet it all
was, not the stir of a breath, not the whisper of a word, not the
silken rustle of a ribbon of flame in the demolished furnace, he heard,
what he had never before heard so far as here in the still-room, the
reiterated strokes of a pick echoing down the tunnel, and cleaving the
ground with the regularity of a practiced workman. He said not a word
to Copley; he walked along the tunnel toward the sound, a chill thrill
stealing over him despite the fact that his temerity was a trifle more
pronounced than usual because he was about to leave the place forever.
The strokes continued, now growing louder, now more muffled, always
accurately timed; and suddenly the faint clamors of that high, queer,
false-ringing voice that seemed to seek out and shock every nerve
within him. He recoiled with fright and an unreasoning anger. He turned
himself about, and swiftly changed the position of a can filled with
powder which was to aid in the demolition of the place, arranging it in
a niche in the earth close to the wall whence the sound came.
"I make ye my partin' compliments," he said, with a sarcastic smile and
a mocking wave of the hand to the gruesome unknown. The next moment
his expression changed to a frightened gravity, and he ran through the
black tunnel as if he consciously had the devil at his heels, pausing
not until he was safe in the cellar beneath the store.
The paroxysm, if so it might be called, passed in a moment, and he
was laughing as he stood at the aperture of the tunnel, holding the
lantern, red-faced and a trifle shamefaced, when Copley, left far
behind, came hobbling up slowly and painfully. Taft was quite restored;
it was with his own assured, definite manner and elastic stride that
he presently took his way along the tunnel again and applied the match
to the fuse. He evidently accomplished his work thoroughly, for he had
no doubts of its efficacy when he returned and stood leaning against
a pile of boxes, waiting quite carelessly as here and there tiny
stellular lights sprang up along that darksome way that was not wont to
blossom out such constellations.
Stars? No; lines of fire, vermicular, writhing, growing, serpentine,
swiftly gliding, armed with venom, with destruction under their forked
tongues; for suddenly a flare, a frightful clap as of thunder, a wrench
as if the foundations of the earth were torn asunder, and the two men
were thrown to the ground and the lantern extinguished in the jar.
The reverberations were slow to die away; only gradually quiet came.
A stillness ensued, stifling with dust, and with such strong sense of
alternation with that moment of deafening detonation that the pulses
quivered with expectancy, and the slightest movement set the nerves to
jarring. Taft had groped for a light, and as the faint coruscation of
a match, then the steadier gleam of the lantern, pierced the darkness,
the nearest results of the explosion were open to view. The timbers
roofing the tunnel had been shaken down, and close at hand masses of
earth had fallen with them and lay banked at the very door. If Taft
had been warned in a dream, he could hardly have made his defense more
perfect. He and his one trusted adherent worked there the rest of
the night. The old original timbers of the house, partly rotten and
time-stained, were replaced as formerly, leaving no trace that there
had ever been an entrance into the abandoned mine; and when at last
Taft clambered through the aperture of the counter into the store, he
left the door broadly flaring after him.
"Trust Sis ter notice it," he remarked. "She'll git used ter it in ten
minits, an' it'll 'pear like she always knowed 't war thar."
The still was conveyed some miles away and buried in a marked spot,
and thus the business of moonshining was abandoned at the moment when
the project of the summer hotel, from which it had so much to fear,
was pretermitted amidst its varied entanglements, and the Cove, which
certainly could not have comfortably contained both, was left without
either for the nonce.