The days dragged heavily for Plutina, after the departure of her
lover. She endured the period of tense waiting as best she might,
since endure she must, but this passive loneliness, without a word
from the man of her heart, was well-nigh intolerable. She did not
weep--after that single passionate outburst while yet her lips were
warm from his kiss. She was not of the weak fiber to find assuagement
in many tears, nor had she nerves that needed the chemical soothing of
flooded eyes. She had, indeed, strength sufficient for the trial. She
bore her sorrow bravely enough, but it pierced her through and
through. She knew her lover, and she knew herself. Because of that
knowledge she was spared the shameful suffering of a woman who fears,
with deadly fear, lest her lover be untrue. Plutina had never a doubt
as to the faith of the absent one. A natural jealousy sometimes leaped
in her bosom, at thought of him exposed to the wiles of women whom she
suspected of all wantonness. But she had no cowardly thought that the
fairest and most cunning of them could oust her from the shrine of
Zeke's heart. Her great grief lay in the failure of any word from the
traveler. The days became weeks; almost a month had gone since he held
her in his arms, and still no message came. This was, in truth,
strange enough to justify alarm. It was with difficulty that she drove
back a temptation to imagine evil happenings. She went oftener the six
miles to the Cherry Lane post-office.
When she descended the trail toward Thunder Branch this morning, she
saw Zeke's mother standing in the doorway of the cabin on the far side
of the stream. The bent figure of the old woman rested motionless,
with one hand lifted to shade her eyes from the vivid sunlight, as she
watched the girl's approach.
"Mornin', Tiny," she said tenderly, as the girl crossed the clearing.
"On yer way to the Lane, I reckon?"
"Mornin', Mis' Higgins," came the cheery answer. "Yes, I 'lowed as how
ye'd love to hear, an' I c'd git away. The corn's laid by; the sorghum
cane's done hoed. Alviry's gone to he'p Gran'pap with a bee-tree.
Hit's a big yaller poplar, up 'twixt Ted Hutchins' claim an' the ole
mine-hole. Gran'pap 'lows as how hit 'll have to be cut an' split, an'
wuth hit--over a hundred pounds, all sour-wood honey, 'cept 'bout ten
pounds early poplar. Gran'pap's right-smart tickled. I told Alviry to
watch out he don't go an' tote half of it up to thet-thar Widder
Brown. You-all must come over an' git what ye kin use o' the honey,
Mis' Higgins, afore the widder gits her fingers in the jar."
"Ye don't opine thet-thar gran'pap o' your'n aims to git hitched ag'in
at his age, do ye, Tiny? Hit'd be plumb scand'lous--an' him eighty
past. At thet age, he's bound to have one foot in the grave, fer all
he's so tarnation spry an' peart in his carryin's on."
"Lord knows what he'll do," the girl replied, carelessly. "He's allers
been given credit fer havin' fotchin' ways with women. I hope he
won't, though. They say, folks what marry upwards o' eighty is mighty
short-lived."
The topic led Zeke's mother to broach apprehension of her own:
"Tiny, ye don't have no idee thet our Zeke's gone daffy on some o'
them Evish-lookin' critters down below, like ye showed me their
picters in the city paper oncet?"
"Naw, no danger o' thet," was the stout assurance. "Zeke's got too
much sense. Besides, he hain't had no time to git rich yit. The paper
done said as how them kind's arter the coin."
As she went her way, the girl's mind reveled in thoughts of the days
to come, when Zeke should be rich in sooth, and his riches for her.
She swung her sun-bonnet in vigorous slaps against her bare legs, to
scatter the ravenous mosquitoes and yellow flies, swarming from the
thickets, and she smiled contentedly.
"P'r'aps, them women's got more edication 'n me," she mused aloud,
complacently, "but I kin fill them silk stockin's plumb up." Her face
grew brooding with a wistful regret in the sudden droop of the tender
red lips. "I 'low I jest orter 'a' swung onto thet-thar neck o' his'n
an' hollered fer Parson, and got spliced 'fore he went." She shook her
head disconsolately. "Why, if he don't come back, I'll be worse nor
the widders. Humph, I knows 'em--cats. They'll say: 'Tiny Siddon
didn't never have no chance to git married--her disperzition an' her
looks wa'n't compellin' 'nough to ketch a man.'"
The great dark eyes were clouded a little with bitter disappointment,
when, two hours later, the girl came swiftly down the steep slopes
from Cherry Lane, for once again there had been no letter for her.
Despite her courage, Plutina felt a chill of dismay before the mystery
of this silence. Though faith was unshaken, bewilderment oppressed her
spirit. She could not understand, and because she could not
understand, her grief was heavy to bear. Then, presently, she chanced
upon a new mystery for her distraction--though this was the easier to
her solving.
As she descended into a hollow by Luffman's branch, which joins
Thunder Branch a little way above the Higgins' clearing, Plutina's
alert ears caught a sound that was not of the tumbling waters. Through
all the noises of the stream where it leaped and sprayed in miniature
falls over cluttering bowlders and fallen pines, she could distinguish
the splashing of quick footsteps in the shallows. Some instinct of
caution checked the girl's advance. Instead of going forward openly,
she turned aside and approached the bank where crowding alders and ivy
formed a screen. Here, she parted the vines stealthily, and peered up
the water-course.
A man was descending the run with hurried strides, wading with bare
feet, or springing from rock to rock where were the deeper pools. A
Winchester nestled in the crook of his left arm; two huge bear-traps,
the jaws wickedly fanged, were swung from a rope over his right
shoulder; a short-helved ax was thrust within his belt. He wore only a
cotton shirt open at the neck, dirty throughout, patched jeans
trousers, and a soft hat, green from long use. Beneath the shading
brim showed a loutish face, the coarse features swollen from
dissipation, the small black eyes bleared, yet alert and penetrating
in their darting, furtive glances. It was Dan Hodges, a man of
unsavory repute. The girl, though unafraid, blessed the instinct that
had guided her to avoid a meeting.
There were two prime factors in Plutina's detestation of Hodges. The
first was due to his insolence, as she deemed it, in aspiring for her
favor. With little training in conventional ideas of delicacy, the
girl had, nevertheless, a native refinement not always characteristic
of her more-cultured sister women. There was to her something
unspeakably repugnant in the fact that this bestial person should dare
to think of her intimately. It was as if she were polluted by his
dreaming of her kisses, of her yielding to his caresses. That he had
so aspired she knew, for he had told her of his desire with the coarse
candor of his kind. Her spurning of the uncouth advances had excited
his wrath; it had not destroyed his hopes. He had even ventured to
renew his suit, after the news of an engagement between Plutina and
Zeke had gone abroad. He had winced under the scourge of the girl'
scorn, but he had shown neither penitence nor remorse. Plutina had
forborne any account of this trouble to her lover, lest, by bad blood
between the two men, a worse thing befall.
The second cause of the girl's feeling was less direct, though of
longer standing, and had to do with the death of her father. That
Siddon, while yet in his prime, had been slain in a raid on a still
by the revenue officers, and that despite the fact that he was not
concerned in the affair, save by the unfortunate chance of being
present. Plutina, though only a child at the time, could still
remember the horror of that event. There was a singular personal
guiltiness, too, in her feeling, for, on the occasion of the raid, her
grandfather had been looking out from a balcony, and had seen the
revenue men urging their horses up the trail, the sunlight glinting on
their carbines. He had seized the great horn, to blow a warning to
those at the secret still on the mountain above. Plutina could
remember yet the grotesque bewilderment on his face, as no sound
issued--then the wrath and despair. The children, in all innocence,
had stuffed the horn with rags. The prank had thus, in a way, cost two
lives--one, that of "Young" Dick Siddon. The owner of the raided still
had been Dan Hodges, and him Plutina despised and hated with a
virulence not at all Christian, but very human. She had all the
old-time mountaineer's antipathy for the extortion, as it was
esteemed, of the Federal Government, and her father's death had
naturally inflamed her against those responsible for it. Yet, her
loathing of Hodges caused her to regret that the man himself had
escaped capture thus far, though twice his still had been destroyed,
once within the year.
[Illustration:
_Claudia Kimball Young under the direction of Louis J. Selznick._
A MOUNTAIN "STILL."]
A high, jutting wall of rock hid the stream where it bent sharply a
little way from Plutina's shelter. Presently, she became aware that
Hodges had paused thus beyond the range of her vision, and was busy
there. She heard the blows of the ax. General distrust of the man
stirred up in her a brisk curiosity concerning the nature of his
action in this place. On a previous day, she had observed that the
limpid waters of the brook had been sullied by the milky refuse from a
still somewhere in the reaches above. Now, the presence of Dan Hodges
was sufficient to prove the hidden still his. But the fact did not
explain his business here. That it was something evil, she could not
doubt, for the man and his gang were almost outlaws among their own
people. They were known, though unpunished, thieves, as well as
"moonshiners," and there were whispers of more dreadful things--of
slain men vanished into the unsounded depths of the Devil's Cauldron.
The gorge of the community--careless as it had been of some laws in
the past, and too ready to administer justice according to its own
code--had risen against the vicious living of the gang that accepted
Hodges as chief. It seemed to Plutina that duty conspired with
curiosity to set her spying on the man.
The espionage, though toilsome enough, was not otherwise difficult.
Toward the bend, the banks rose sharply on both sides of the stream,
forming a tiny cañon for the channel. The steep slope on the east
side, where the girl now ascended, was closely overgrown with laurel
and little thickets of ground pine, through which she was hard beset
to force her way--the more since she must move with what noiselessness
she might. But her strength and skill compassed the affair with
surprising quickness. Presently, she came to the brim of the little
cliff, and lying outstretched, cautiously looked down. Already, a
hideous idea had entered her mind, but she had rejected it with
horror. What she now saw confirmed the thought she had not dared to
harbor.
Within this bend of the brook, the lessening volume of the channel had
left a patch of rich soil, heavily overgrown with lush grasses and
clusters of flowering weeds. A faint trace of passing steps ran across
the bit of dry ground, the path of those that followed the stream's
course. Fair in this dim trail, near the center of the plot, a stake
had been driven deep. At the moment, Hodges was driving into the
ground a similar stake, a yard further down. It was evident that the
stakes had been previously left here in readiness, since he had not
carried them in his descent, and the iron rings bound to them must
have been attached in a forge. The two massive traps were lying
half-hidden in the luxuriant growth close by. As Plutina watched with
affrighted intentness, the man finished driving the second stake. He
lifted one of the traps, and carried it to the upper stake. With the
aid of a stone for anvil, he succeeded in clumsily riveting the trap's
length of chain to the ring on the stake. The like was done with the
other trap at the lower stake. Then, the man undertook the setting of
the traps. The task was accomplished very quickly for both, though the
strength of the jaws taxed his muscles to their utmost. Finally, he
strewed leaves, and bent grass, until no least gleam of metal betrayed
the masked peril of the trail. Plutina, sick with the treacherous
deviltry of the device, heard the grunt of satisfaction with which
Hodges contemplated his finished work. Forthwith, he picked up his
rifle, thrust the ax-helve within his belt, and set off up the gulch.