|Herne the Hunter was tall, brown and grizzled. The extreme roundness
of his shoulders indicated strength rather than infirmity, while
the severing of his great neck at a blow would have made a feudal
executioner famous in his craft. An imaginative man might have divined
something comely beneath the complex conjunction of lines and ridges
that made up his features, but it would have been more by suggestion,
however, than by any actual resemblance to beauty traceable thereon. The
imprint of strength, severity and endurance was intensified by an open
contempt of appearance; only to a subtle second-sight was revealed aught
nobler, sweeter and sadder, like faint stars twinkling behind filmy
clouds.
Some town-bred Nimrod, with a misty Shakespearean memory, had added to
his former patronymic of “Old Herne” that of Windsor's ghostly visitor.
The mountaineers saw the fitness of the title, and “Herne the Hunter”
became widely current.
His place of abode was as ambiguous as his history, being somewhere
beyond the “Dismal,” amid the upper caves and gorges of the Nantahalah.
The Dismal was a weird, wild region of brake and laurel, walled in by
lonely mountains, with a gruesome outlet between two great cliffs,
that nearly met in mid-air hundreds of feet over a sepulchral Canyon,
boulder-strewn, and thrashed by a sullen torrent, that led from a
dolorous labyrinth, gloomy at midday, and at night resonant with fierce
voices and sad sighings.
Far down in Whippoorwill Cove, the mountaineers told savage tales of
adventure about the outskirts of the Dismal, yet, beyond trapping
round the edges or driving for deer, it was to a great extent a _terra
incognita_ to all, unless Herne the Hunter was excepted.
“The devil air in the man, 'nd hopes him out'n places no hones' soul
keers to pester hisse'f long of.”
This was common opinion, though a few averred that “Old Herne 'nd the
devil wern't so master thick atter all.” Said one: “Why, the dinged old
fool totes his Bible eroun' ez riglar ez he do his huntin'-shirt. Onct
when the parson wuz holdin' the big August meetin' down ter Ebeneezer
Meetin'-house, he stepped in. The meetin' was a gittin' ez cold ez hen's
feet, 'nd everybody a lookin' at Herne the Hunter, when down he draps
onto his knees, 'nd holdin' on by his rifle he 'gun ter pray like a
house afire. Wal, he prayed 'nd he prayed, 'twel the people, arter thur
skeer wuz over, 'gun ter pray 'nd shout too, 'nd fust they all knowed,
the front bench wuz plum full of mou'ners. Wal, they hed a hog-killin'
time fur a while, 'nd all sot on by Herne the Hunter, but when they
quieted down 'nd begun ter luk fer him--by jing!--he wern't thar. Nobody
hed seed him get erway, 'nd that set 'em ter thinkin', 'nd the yupshot
wuz they hed the bes' meetin' old Ebeneezer hed seed in many a year.”
Once a belated hunter discovered, when the fog came down, that he was
lost amid the upper gorges of the Nantahalahs. While searching for some
cranny wherein to pass the night, he heard a voice seemingly in mid-air
before him, far out over an abyss of seething vapor which he feared
concealed a portion of the dreaded Dismal. Memories of Herne the Hunter
crowded upon him, and he strove to retrace his steps, but fell into a
trail that led him to a cave which seemed to bar his further way. The
voice came nearer; his blood chilled as he distinguished imprecations,
prayers and entreaties chaotically mingled, and all the while
approaching him. He fled into the cave, and peering thence, beheld a
shadowy form loom through the mist, gesticulating as it came.
A whiff blew aside shreds of the fog, and he saw Herne the Hunter on the
verge of a dizzy cliff, shaking his long rifle, his hair disheveled, his
eyes dry and fiery, and his huge frame convulsed by the emotions that
dominated him. The very fury and pathos of his passion were terrifying,
and the watcher shrank back as old Herne, suddenly dropping his rifle,
clutched at the empty air, then paused dejectedly.
“Always thus!” he said, in a tone of deep melancholy. “Divine in
form--transfigured--beautiful--oh, so beautiful!--yet ever with the same
accursed face. I have prayed over these visitations. I, have sought in
God's word that confirmation of my hope which should yet save me from
despair; but, when rising from my supplications, the blest
vision confronts me--the curse is ever there--thwarting its
loveliness--reminding me of what was, but will never be again.”
He drew a tattered Bible from his bosom and searched it intently. He was
a sight at once forbidding and piteous, as he stood with wind-fluttered
garments, his foot upon the edge of a frightful precipice, his head bent
over the book as though devouring with his eyes some sacred antidote
against the potency of his sorrow. Then he looked up, and the Bible fell
from his hands. His eyes became fixed; he again clutched at the air,
then fell back with a despairing gesture, averting his face the while.
“Out of my sight!” he cried. “Your eyes are lightning, and your smile is
death. I will have no more of you--no more! And yet--O God! O God!--what
dare I--what can I do without you?”
He staggered back and made directly for the cavern. The watcher shrank
back, while Herne the Hunter brushed blindly by, leaving Bible and rifle
on the rock without. Then the wanderer, slipping out, fled down the
narrow trail as though there were less peril from the dizzy cliffs
around than in the society of the strange man whose fancies peopled
these solitudes with such soul-harrowing phantoms.
Thus for years Herne the Hunter had been a mystery, a fear, and a
fascination to the mountaineers; recoiling from men, abhorring women,
rebuffing curiosity, yet' at times strangely tender, sad, and ever
morbidly religious. He clung to his Bible as his last earthly refuge
from his darker self, and to the aspirations it engendered as a bane to
the fatalistic stirrings within him.
He was a mighty hunter and lived upon the proceeds of his skill. Once
or twice a year he would appear at some mountain store, fling down a
package of skins, and demand its worth in powder and lead. The jean-clad
loungers would regard him askance, few venturing to idly speak with
him, and none repeating the experiment. His mien daunted the boldest. If
women were there he would stand aloof until they left; on meeting them
in the road he would sternly avert his eyes as though from a distasteful
presence. One day the wife of a storekeeper, waiting on him in her
husband's absence, ventured to say, while wrapping up his purchases:
“I've all'ays wonnered, Mr. Herne, what makes ye wanter git outen the
wimmen folks' way? Mos' men likes ter have 'em eroun'.”
Herne the Hunter frowned heavily, but made no reply.
“I'm shore, if ye had a good wife long with ye way up thar whur ye
live, she'd make ye a leetle more like a man 'nd less like a--a--” she
hesitated over a term which might censure yet not give offense.
“Like a beast you would say.” He exclaimed then with vehemence: “Were
the necks of all women in one, and had I my hands on it, I'd strangle
them all, though hell were their portion thereafter.”
He made a gesture as of throttling a giant, snatched his bundle from the
woman's hand and took himself off up the road with long strides.
*****
That night was a stormy one. Herne the Hunter was covering the last ten
miles between him and the Dismal in a pelting rain. The incident at the
store, trivial as it was, had set his blood aflame. He prayed and fought
against himself, oblivious of the elements and the darkness, sheltering
his powder beneath his shirt of skins where his Bible lay secure. In his
ears was the roar of wind and the groans of the tortured forest. Dark
ravines yawned beside him, out of which the wolf howled and the mountain
owl laughed; and once came a scream like a child, yet stronger and more
prolonged. He knew the panther's voice, yet he heeded nothing.
At last another cry, unmistakably human, rose nearer by. Then he paused,
like a hound over a fresher scent, until it was repeated. He made his
way around a shoulder of the mountain, and aided by the gray light of a
cloud-hidden moon, approached the figures of a woman, a boy and a horse,
all three dripping and motionless.
“Thank God! we will not die here, after all,” exclaimed the female, as
Herne the Hunter grimly regarded them. “Oh, sir, we have missed the
way. This boy was guiding me to the survey camp of Captain Renfro, my
husband, on the upper Swananoa. He has sprained his foot, and we have
been lost for hours. Can you take us to a place of shelter? I will pay
you well--”
“I hear a voice from the pit,” said Herne, fiercely. “It is the way with
your sex. You think, though you sink the world, that with money you can
scale Heaven. Stay here--rot--starve--perish--what care I!”
After this amazing outburst he turned away, but her terror of the night
overbore her fear of this strange repulse, and she grasped his arm. He
shook himself free, though the thrill accompanying her clasp staggered
him. For years no woman's hand had touched him; but at this rebuff she
sank down, crying brokenly:
“What shall I do? I should not have started. They warned me below, but I
thought the boy knew the way. Oh, sir! if you have a heart, do not leave
us here.”
“A heart!” he cried. “What's that? A piece of flesh that breeds endless
woes in bosoms such as yours. All men's should be of stone--as mine
is now!” He paused, then said abruptly: “Up with you and follow me. I
neither pity nor sympathize; but for the sake of her who bore me, I will
give you such shelter as I have.”
He picked up the boy, who, knowing him, had sat stupefied with fear, and
bade the woman follow him.
“But the horse?” she said, hesitating.
“Leave it,” he replied. “The brute is the best among you, but whither we
go no horse may follow.”
He turned, taking up the boy in his arms, and she dumbly followed him,
trembling, faint, yet nerved by her fears to unusual exertion. So rapid
was his gait, encumbered though he was, that she kept him in view with
difficulty. Through the gloom she could divine the perils that environed
their ever upward way. The grinding of stricken trees, the brawl of
swollen waters harrowed her nerves not less than the partial gleams
of unmeasured heights and depths revealed by the lightning. A sense of
helplessness exaggerated these terrors among the unknown possibilities
surrounding her.
It seemed as though they would never stop again. Her limbs trembled, her
heart thumped suffocatingly, yet their guide gave no heed, but pressed
on as though no shivering woman pantingly dogged his steps. They
traveled thus for several miles. She felt herself giving way totally
when, on looking up once more, she saw that the hunter had vanished.
“Where am I?” she cried, and a voice, issuing seemingly out of the
mountain-side, bade her come on. Her hands struck a wall of rock; on her
right a precipice yawned; so, groping toward the left, she felt as she
advanced that she was leaving the outer air; the wind and rain no longer
beat upon her, yet the darkness was intense.
She heard the voice of the boy calling upon her to keep near. Into the
bowels of the mountains she felt her way until a gleam of light shone
ahead. She hastened forward round a shoulder of rock into a roomy
aperture branching from the main cavern. The boy lay upon a pallet of
skins, while Herne the Hunter fixed the flaring pine-knot he had lighted
into a crevice of the rock. Then he started a fire, drew out of another
crevice some cold cooked meat and filled a gourd with water from a
spring that trickled out at one end of the cave.
“Eat,” he said, waving his hand. “Eat--that ye may not die. The more
unfit to live, the less prepared for death. Eat!”
With that he turned away and busied himself in bathing and bandaging the
boy's foot, which, though not severely sprained, was for the time quite
painful. Mrs. Renfro now threw back the hood of her waterproof and laid
the cloak aside. Even old Herne--women hater that he was--could not
have found fault with the matronly beauty of her face, unless with its
expression of self-satisfied worldliness, as of one who judged others
and herself solely by conventional standards, shaped largely by flattery
and conceit.
She was hungry--her fears were somewhat allayed, and though rather
disgusted at such coarse diet, ate and drank with some relish.
Meanwhile, Herne the Hunter turned from the boy for something, and
beheld her face for the first time. A water-gourd fell from his hands,
his eyes dilated, and he crouched as he gazed like a panther before its
unsuspecting prey. Every fibre of his frame quivered, and drops of cold
sweat stood out upon his forehead. The boy saw with renewed fear this
new phase of old Herne's dreaded idiosyncrasies. Mrs. Renfro at length
raised her eyes and beheld him thus. Instantly he placed his hands
before his face, and abruptly left the cavern. Alarmed at his
appearance, she ran toward the boy, exclaiming:
“What _can_ be the matter with him? Do you know him?”
“I knows more of him 'n I wants ter,” replied the lad. “Oh, marm, that's
old Herne, 'nd we uns air the fust ones ez hev be'n in hyar whar he
stays. I ganny! I thort shore he'd hev yeaten ye up.”
“Well, but who is he?”
“Well, they do say ez the devil yowns him, not but what he air
powerful 'ligyus. No one knows much 'bouten him, 'cep'n' he's all'ays a
projeckin' eround the Dismal whar no one yelse wants ter be.”
“Has he been here long?”
“Yurs 'nd yurs, they say.” Tommy shook his head as though unable to
measure the years during which Herne the Hunter had been acquiring his
present unsavory reputation, but solved the riddle by exclaiming: “I
reckon he hev all'ays be'n that-a-way.”
An hour or more passed. Tommy fell asleep, while the lady sat musing by
his side. She did not feel like sleeping, though much fatigued. Finally
she heard a deep sigh behind her, and turning saw the object of her
fears regarding her sombrely. The sight of her face appeared to shock
him, for he turned half away as he said:
“You have eaten the food that is the curse of life, in that it sustains
it. Yet such we are. Sleep, therefore, for you have weary miles to go,
ere you can reach the Swananoa.”
There was an indescribable sadness in his tone that touched her, and she
regarded him curiously.
“Who are you,” she asked, “and why do you choose to live in such a place
as this?”
“Ask naught of me,” he said, with an energy he seemed unable to repress.
“Ask rather of yourself who am I and how came I--thus.”
He struck himself upon the breast, and without awaiting an answer again
abruptly left the cave. She sat there wondering, trying to-weave into
definite shape certain vague impressions suggested by his presence,
until weariness overcame her and she slept.
Hours after, Herne the Hunter reentered the cave, bearing a torch. His
garments were wet, the rain-drops clung to his hair, and his face was
more haggard than ever. He advanced towards the slumbering woman softly,
and stood over her, gazing mournfully upon her, while large tears rolled
down his cheeks. Then his expression changed to one that was stern and
vindictive. His hand nervously toyed with the knife in his belt. Milder
thoughts again seemed to sway him, and his features worked twitchingly.
“I cannot, I cannot,” he whispered to himself. “The tears I thought
forever banished from these eyes return at this sight. There has never
been another who could so move me. Though thou hast been my curse, and
art yet my hell--I cannot do it. Come! protector of my soul; stand thou
between me and all murderous thoughts!”
He drew his Bible from his bosom, kissed it convulsively, then held it
as though to guard her from himself, and drawing backward slowly, he
again fled into the storm and darkness without.
*****
The gray light of morning rose over the Dismal, though within the cave
the gloom still reigned supreme, when Herne the Hunter again stood at
the entrance holding a flaring light. Then he said aloud: “Wake, you
that sleep under the shadow of death! Wake, eat, and--pass on!” Mrs.
Renfro aroused herself. The boy, however, slept on. Herne fixed
his torch in the wall, and replenished the fire. Then he withdrew,
apparently to give the lady privacy in making her toilet.
She was stiff in limb and depressed in mind. After washing at the
spring, she wandered listlessly about the cave, surveying old Herne's
scanty store of comforts. Suddenly she paused before a faded picture,
framed in long, withered moss, that clung to an abutment of the rock.
It was that of a girl, fair, slender and ethereal. There was a wealth of
hair, large eyes, and features so faultless that the witching sense of
self-satisfaction permeating them, added to rather than marred their
loveliness.
The lady--glancing indifferently--suddenly felt a thrill and a pain.
A deadly sense of recognition nearly overcame her, as this
memento--confronting her like a resurrected chapter of the past--made
clear the hitherto inexplicable behavior of their host. She recovered,
and looked upon it tenderly, then shook her head gently and sighed.
“You cannot recognize it!” said a deep voice behind her. “You dare
not! For the sake of your conscience--your hope in heaven--your fear of
hell--you dare not recognize and look upon me!”
She did not look round, though she knew that Herne the Hunter stood
frowning behind, but trembled in silence as he went on with increasing
energy:
“What does that face remind you of? See you aught beneath that beauty
but treachery without pity, duplicity without shame? Lo! the pity and
the shame you should have felt have recoiled upon me--me, who alone have
suffered.” He broke off abruptly, as though choked by emotion. She dared
not face him; she felt incapable of a reply. After a pause, he resumed,
passionately: “Oh! Alice, Alice! The dead rest, yet the living dead can
only endure. Amid these crags, and throughout the solitude of years, I
have fought and refought the same old battle; but with each victory it
returns upon me, strengthened by defeat, while with me all grows weaker
but the remorselessness of memory and the capacity for pain.”
She still stood, with bowed head, shivering as though his words were
blows.
“Have you nothing to say?” he asked. “Does that picture of your own
youth recall no vanished tenderness for one who--self-outcast of
men--fell to that pass through you?”
“I have a husband,” she murmured, almost in a whisper.
“Aye, and because of that husband I have no wife--no wife--no wife!”
His wailing repetition seemed absolutely heartbroken; but sternly he
continued: “You have told me where he is. I say to you--hide
him--hide him from me! Even this”--he struck his bosom with his Bible
feverishly--“may not save him. I have prayed and wrought, but it is as
nothing--nothing--when I think--when I remember. Therefore, hide him
from me--lest I slay him--”
“You would not--you dare not harm him!” She faced him now, a splendid
picture of an aroused wife and mother. “He is not to blame--he knew you
not--he has been good to me--and--and--I love him.”
He shrank from the last words as though from a blow, and stood cowering.
Then he hissed out:
“Let me not find him. Hide him--hide him!”
Tommy here awoke with a yawn, and announced that his foot was about
well. Herne, closing his lips, busied himself about preparing breakfast,
which cheerless meal was eaten in silence. When they finally emerged
from the cave the sun was peeping into the Dismal below them; bright
gleams chased the dark shadows down the cliffs, and the morning mists
were melting. The storm was over; there was a twitter of birds, the
tinkle of an overflowing burn, and a squirrel's bark emphasizing the
freshness of the morn. The pure air entered the lips like wine, and Mrs.
Renfro felt her depression roll off as they retraced the devious trail
of the night before.
They found the lady's horse standing dejectedly near where he had been
left. The fog, in vast rolls, was climbing out of the Dismal, disclosing
dark masses of forest below. The flavor of pine and balsam slept
beneath the trees, every grass blade was diamond-strewn, and every sound
vivified by the sense of mighty walls and unsounded depths.
After Mrs. Renfro had mounted, Herne the Hunter swept an arm around. The
scene was savage and sombre, despite the sunlight. The intensity of the
solitude about them dragged upon the mind like a weight.
“Behold,” he said sadly, “this is my world. I can tolerate no other.”
She inwardly shuddered; then a wave of old associations swept over her
mind. Beneath the austerity of the man, beyond his selfish nurture of
affliction, she--for the moment--remembered him as he once was, homely,
kindly, enthusiastic and true. Had _she_ indeed changed him to this? Or
was it not rather the imperativeness of a passion, unable to endure
or forget her preference of another? Whatever the cause, her heart now
ached for him, though she feared him.
“Come with us,” she said. “You were not made to live thus.”
“I cannot--I dare not. It will take months to undo the misery of this
meeting.”
“My husband--”
“Do not name him!” he cried fiercely; then abruptly lowering his tone,
he said, with infinite sadness: “Ask me no more. Yonder, by that white
cliff, lies the Swan-anoa trail you missed yesterday. The kindest thing
you can do is to forget that you have seen me. Farewell!”
He turned away and swung himself down the mountain-side into the Dismal.
She saw the rolling mists close over him, and remained motionless in a
reverie so deep that the boy spoke twice to her before she turned her
horse's head and followed him.
* * * * *
Above the surveyor's camp lay the Swananoa Gap, a gloomy, precipitous
gorge through which the river lashed itself into milder reaches below.
Mrs. Renfro found her husband absent. With a single assistant he had
started for the upper defiles, intending to be gone several days. They
told her that he would endeavor to secure the services of Herne the
Hunter as a guide, as one knowing more of that wilderness than any one
else.
Here was fresh food for wifely alarm. Herne had never met her husband,
yet the latter's name would make known his relationship to herself. She
shuddered over the possibilities that might result from their sojourn
together--far from aid--in those wild mountains, and made herself
wretched for a week in consequence.
Meanwhile the transient fine weather passed; the rains once more
descended, and the peaks of Nantahalah were invisible for days amid a
whirl of vapor. The boom of the river, the grinding of forest limbs,
the shriek of the wind, made life unusually dreary at the camp. She lay
awake one night when the elements were apparently doing their worst. Her
husband was still absent--perhaps alone with a possible maniac, raving
over the memory of fancied wrongs.
Finally another sound mingled with and at last overmastered all
others--something between a crash and a roar, interblended with
sullen jars and grindings. Near and nearer it came. She sprang to the
tent-floor and found her feet in the water. The darkness was intense.
What could be the matter? Fear overcame her resolution and she shrieked
aloud.
A man bearing a lantern burst into the tent with a hoarse cry. Its
gleams showed her Herne the Hunter, drenched, draggled, a ghastly cut
across his face, with the blood streaming down, his long hair flying,
and in his eyes a fierce flame.
“I feared I would not find you,” he shouted, for the roar without was
now appalling. “It is a cloud-burst above. In five minutes this hollow
will be fathoms deep. The tents lower down are already gone. Come!”
He had seized and was bearing her out.
“Save--alarm the others!” she cried.
“You first--Alice.”
In that dread moment she detected the hopelessness with which he called
her thus, as though such recognition was wrung from his lips by the pain
he hugged, even while it rended him.
“My husband?” she gasped, growing faint over the thought of his possible
peril--or death.
“Safe,” he hissed through his clenched teeth, for his exertions were
tremendous. With a fierce flap the tent was swept away as they left
it. About his knees the waters swirled, while limbs and other floating
débris swept furiously by.
What seemed to her minutes--though really seconds--passed amid a
terrific jumble of sounds, while the rain fell in sheets. It seemed
as though the invisible mountains were dissolving. They were, however,
slowly rising above the floods. She heard Herne's hard breathing, and
felt his wild heart-throbs as he held her close. Something heavy struck
them, or rather him, for he shielded her. One of his arms fell limp, and
he groaned heavily. Then she swooned away, with a fleeting sensation of
being grasped by some one else.
Later, when she revived, there was a great hush in the air. Below, the
river gently brawled-; there was a misty darkness around, and the gleam
of a lantern held before a dear and familiar form.
“Husband--is it you?” she murmured.
“Yes, yes,” said Captain Renfro, “I thought I had lost you. You owe
your life to Herne the Hunter. In fact, but for him I would have been
overwhelmed myself.”
“Where is he?” she asked feebly.
“The men are searching for him. Just as one of them got hold of you, he
fell back--something must have struck him, and the flood swept him off.
I tell you, Alice, that man--crazy or not--is a hero. We were on our way
down and had camped above the Gap, when the cloud-burst came. We knew
you all would be overwhelmed before we could get round here by the
trail; so what does Herne do but send us on horseback by land, while
he scoots down that Canyon in a canoe--little better than an eggshell.
Risked his life in that awful place to get here in time. I insisted on
going with him at first.”
“Just like you, George,” said the wife fondly, though in her mind's eye
came a vision of Herne the Hunter battling with that Niagara to save
and unite the two, through whom his own life had been made a burden. She
sighed and clasped her husband's hand, while he resumed:
“I was a fool, I expect, for the canoe would have swamped under both of
us. He knew this, and ordered me off with a look I did not like;
there was madness in it. Well, we hurried round by the trail with, one
lantern; Herne took the other. When we got here, you were apparently
dead, Herne and two of the men swept off--the camp gone from below, and
so on.”
A cry was now heard. Several men hastened down, and soon lights were
seen returning. Four of them bore Herne the Hunter. One arm and a leg
were broken, and his skull crushed in; yet the wonderful vitality of the
man had kept him alive and sensible.
“We found him clinging to a sapling,” said one. “But he's about
gone--poor fellow!”
Poor fellow, indeed! Mrs. Renfro felt the lumps rise in her throat as
she gazed upon that wreck, and thought. Presently Herne opened his
eyes--already filling with the death-mist--and his gaze fell upon her
face.
“Alice,” he whispered, “my troubles--are over. This”--he tugged at
something in his bosom with his uninjured arm, when some one drew forth
his Bible, drenched and torn--“this saved me. I could have killed him--”
he glanced at Renfro, who amid his pity now wondered. “I could--but--I
saved you. And--now--Jesus--have mercy--”
These were his last words, for in another minute Herne the Hunter was a
thing of the past, and a weeping woman bent over him. After that there
was silence for a while. Then the wife said to her husband, while the
others removed the dead man:
“It was his misfortune, not my fault, that he loved me. Has he not made
amends?”
And the husband, with his hands clasped in hers, could find no other
heart than to say:
“Aye--most nobly!”