One day a letter was mailed in Colbury by an unknown hand, addressed
to Mrs. Persimmon Sneed and it fared deliberately by way of Sandford
Cross-Roads to its destination. It awoke there the wildest excitement
and delight, for although it brazenly asserted that Mr. Persimmon
Sneed was in the custody of the writer, and that he would be returned
safely to his home only upon the payment of one hundred dollars in a
mysterious manner described,--otherwise the writer would not answer
for consequences,--it gave assurance that he was alive and well, and
might even hope to see friends and home and freedom once more. In vain
the sheriff of the county expostulated with Mrs. Sneed, representing
that the law was the proper liberator of Persimmon Sneed, and that the
payment of money would encourage crime. The contradictory man's wife
was ready to commit crime, if necessary, in this cause, and would have
cheerfully cracked the bank in Colbury. And certainly this seemed
almost unavoidable at one time, for to possess herself of this sum of
her husband's hoard his signature was essential. The poor woman, in
her limp sunbonnet and best calico dress, clung to the grating of the
teller's window, and presented in futile succession her husband's
bank-book, his returned checks, and even his brand-new check-book,
each with a gush of tears, while the perplexed official remonstrated,
and explained, and rejected each persuasion in turn, passing them all
back beneath the grating, and alas! keeping the money on his side of
those inexorable bars. It seemed to poor Mrs. Sneed that the bank was
of opinion that Persimmon corporally was of slight consequence, the
institution having the true value of the man on deposit. To
accommodate matters, however, and that the poor woman should not be
weeping daily and indefinitely on the maddened teller's window, an
intermediary money-lender was found, who, having vainly sought to
induce the bank to render itself responsible, then Mrs. Sneed, who had
naught of her own, then a number of friends, who deemed the whole
enterprise an effort at robbery and seemed to consider Persimmon a
good riddance, took heart of grace and made the plunge at a rate of
interest which was calculated to cloy his palate forever after. The
money forthwith went a roundabout way according to the directions of
the letter.
It came to its destination in this wise.
Con Hite's distilling enterprise was on so small a scale that one
might have imagined it to be altogether outside the purview of the
law, which, it is said, does not take note _de minimis_. One of those
grottoes under a beetling cliff, hardly caves, called in the region
"rock houses," sufficed to contain the small copper and its
appurtenances, himself and his partner and the occasional jolly guest.
It was approached from above rather than from below, by a winding way,
beside the cliff between great boulders, which was so steep and
brambly and impracticable that it was hardly likely to be espied by
"revenuers." The rock house opened on space. Beyond the narrow path at
its entrance the descent was sheer to the bottom of the gorge below.
In this stronghold, one night, Con Hite sat gloomy and depressed
beside the little copper still for the sake of which he risked so
much. It held all it could of singlings, and it seemed to him a cheery
sight in the shadowy recesses of the rock house. He regarded it with
mingled pride and affection, often declaring it "the smartest still of
its capacity in the world." To him it was at once admirable as an
object of art and a superior industrial agent.
"An' I dunno why Narcissa be so set agin it," he muttered. "But for it
I wouldn't hev money enough ter git a start in this world. My mother
an' she couldn't live in the same house whenst we git married." He
meditated for a moment, and shook his head in solemn negation, for his
mother was constructed much after the pattern of Narcissa herself.
"An' _I_ wouldn't live a minit alongside o' Ben Hanway ef I war
Nar'sa's husband. Ben wouldn't let me say my soul's my own. I be
'bleeged ter mak the money fur a start o' cattle an' sech myse'f, an'
hev a house an' home o' my own."
And then he took the pipe from his mouth and sighed. For even his care
seemed futile. It was true that the fair-haired young stranger was
dead, and he had a pang of self-reproach whenever he thought of his
jealousy, as if he had wished him ill. But she had worn a cold white
unresponsive face when he had seen her last; she did not listen to
what he said, her mind evidently elsewhere. She looked at him as if
she did not see him. She did not think of him. He was sure that this
was not caprice. It was some deep absorbing feeling in which he had no
share.
The moon, like some fair presence, looked in at the broad portal.
Outside, the white tissues of her misty diaphanous draperies trailed
along the dark mountain slopes beneath the dim stars as she wended
westward. Afar down the gorge one might catch glimpses of a glossy
lustre where the evergreen laurel, white with frost, moved in the
autumn wind. He lifted his head to mark its melancholy cadence, and
while he listened, the moonlight was suddenly crowded from the door as
three men rushed in, half helping and half constraining a fourth man
forward.
"Durn my boots ef I didn't furgit the password!" cried Nick Peters
with his little falsetto laugh, that seemed keyed for a fleer,
although it was most graciously modulated now. "Ye mought hev shot us
fur revenuers."
"I mought hev shot ye fur wuss," Con Hite growled, rising slowly from
his chair, his big dark eyes betokening his displeasure. "I dunno how
_ye_ ever kem ter know this place."
"It'll go no furder, Con, I'll swear," said the horse-thief, lifting
his hand to Hite's shoulder, and affecting to see in his words an
appeal for secrecy. "This," he added blandly, "is Mr. Persimmon Sneed,
ez hev been a-visitin' me. Lemme make ye acquainted."
He seemed to perceive nothing incongruous in the fact that Mr.
Persimmon Sneed should be blindfolded. But as Con Hite looked at the
elder man, standing helpless, his head held slightly forward, the
sight apparently struck his risibilities, and his wonted geniality
rose to the occasion.
"An' do Mr. Persimmon Sneed always wear blinders?" he asked, with a
guffaw.
Peters seemed immeasurably relieved by the change of tone.
"Whilst visitin' me, he do," he remarked. "Mr. Persimmon hev got sech
a fine mem'ry fur localities, ye see."
Hite with a single gesture pulled off the bandage. "Waal, let him look
about him hyar. I s'pose ye hev ter be more partic'lar 'n me 'count o'
that stranger man's horse."
Peters changed countenance, his attention riveted. "What horse?" he
demanded.
"The horse of the man ez war kilt,--ye know folks hev laid that job
ter you-uns. Jerry," turning aside to his colleague, who had done
naught but stare, "whar's yer manners? Why n't ye gin the comp'ny a
drink?"
Hite shoved the chair in which he had been seated to Persimmon Sneed,
who was lugubriously rubbing his eyes, and flung himself down on a
boulder lying almost outside of the recess in the moonlight, his long
booted and spurred legs stretching far across the entrance. His hat on
the back of his head, its brim upturned, revealed his bluff open
face--it held no craft surely; he hardly seemed to notice how
insistently Peters pressed after him, unmindful of his henchmen and
Jerry imbibing appreciatively the product of the cheerful little
copper still.
"But I never done sech ez that," protested Peters. "I always stop
short o' bloodshed. I never viewed the man's beastis, ye'll bear me
witness, Con."
"Me?" said Con, with a laugh. "I dunno nuthin' 'bout yer doin's.
Whar's Mr. Sneed's horse?"
"Never seen him,--never laid eyes on him! How folks kin hev the heart
ter 'cuse me of sech doin's ez I never done!" he lifted his eyes as if
appealing to heaven.
"The killin' 's the wust; an' Mr. Sneed's critter bein' gone too
mought make folks lay it ter ye fur sure," persisted Hite.
"I ain't seen Mr. Sneed's horse. Mr. Sneed--ye wouldn't b'lieve it ter
look at him, but he's a ransomed saint! ha! ha! The money fur him
will be fotched hyar ter yer still. I sent fur it ter kem by Jake
Glenn; he knows ye, an' ye know him."
Con Hite's open brow did not cloud. If there were any significance
perceptible in the fact that Mr. Persimmon Sneed, with so fine a head
for locality, should be able to identify only the still among his
various shelters during his "visit" to Nick Peters, Con Hite made no
sign.
"Lord, how glad I'll be ter git rid o' him!" Peters said in an
undertone to Hite. "He hev mighty nigh argufied me ter death,--'bout
sperits, an' witches, an' salvation, an' law, an' craps, an'
horse-flesh, an' weather signs. I be sorter 'feard his wife won't pay
nuthin' ter git him again. He 'pears sorter under the weather now, or
eavesdroppin' or suthin'. The money 'll pay me mighty pore fur my
trouble. Thar--what's that?"
He paused to listen; there was a sound other than the tinkling of the
little rill near at hand or the blare of the autumn wind. A stone came
rolling down the path, dislodged by a cautious step,--then another.
Hite drew a revolver from his pocket, and, holding it in his right
hand, stepped out on the rugged little parapet and stood there, with
the depths of the gorge below him, looking up the ascent with the
moonlight in his face. He spoke in a low voice to some one
approaching, and was answered in the same tone. He stepped back to
give the new-comer space to enter, and as Jake Glenn came in held out
his hand for the package the messenger bore.
"Let's see it, Nick," he said, tearing it open; "it's the money sure
enough."
Old Persimmon Sneed turned his head with a certain alert interest.
Perhaps he himself had doubted whether his wife would think him worth
the money. There was a general flutter of good-natured gratulation,
and it seemed at the moment only some preposterous mistake that Con
Hite should put it into Persimmon Sneed's lean paw and close his
trembling fingers over it.
"Now, scoot!" he bawled out at the top of his voice, the little den
ringing with the echoes of his excitement, a second revolver drawn in
his left hand. "I'll gin ye a day's start o' these fellers." He
presented the muzzle of one pistol to Peters's head, and with the
other he covered one of the two henchmen in the recess of the little
rock house. The other sprang up from a barrel where he sat wiping his
mouth with the back of his hand; but Jerry, suddenly realizing the
situation, put out a dexterous foot, and the horse-thief fell full
length upon the floor, his pistol discharging as he went down. In the
clamor of the echoes, and the smoke and the flare, Persimmon Sneed
disappeared, hearing as he went a wild protest, and a nimbleness of
argument second hardly to his own, as Nick Peters cried out that he
was robbed, his hard earnings were wrested from him, the money was
his, paid him as a price, and Con Hite had let Mr. Persimmon Sneed run
off with it, allowing him nothing for his trouble.
"It war his money," Con Hite averred, when they had grown calmer, and
Jake Glenn had returned from a reconnoissance with the news that
Hite's father had lent the fleeing Persimmon a horse, and he was by
this time five miles away in the Cove. "_He_ could have paid you for
yer trouble in ketchin' him ef he had wanted ter."
"It war _not_ his money," protested Peters, with tears in his eyes.
"It war sent ter me willingly, fur a valid consideration, an' ye let
him hev the money, an' his wife hev got the valid consideration--an'
hyar I be lef' with the bag ter hold!"
It may be that Peters had absorbed some of the craft of argument by
mere propinquity to Persimmon Sneed, or that Con Hite's conscience was
unduly tender, for he long entertained a moral doubt touching his
course in this transaction,--whether he had a right to pay the ransom
money which Nick Peters had extorted from Persimmon Sneed's wife to
Persimmon Sneed himself, thereby defrauding Nick Peters of the fruit
of his labor. Perhaps this untoward state of dubitation came about
from Narcissa's scornful comment.
"Ye mought hev known that old man Persimmon Sneed would have made off
with the money," she said, remembering his reproving glare at her. "I
wouldn't hev trested him with a handful o' cornfield peas."
"But I expected him ter make off with it," protested the amazed Con;
"that's why I gin it ter him."
"Then ye air jes' ez bad ez he is," she retorted coldly.
And thus it was he examined his conscience.
Persimmon Sneed had no doubts whatever as to the ownership of the
money in his pocket, when one fine morning he walked into his own
door, as dictatorial, as set in his own opinion as ever; the only
change to be detected in his manners and conversation thereafter was
the enigmatical assertion at times that he was a "ransomed saint,"
followed by a low chuckle of enjoyment. Those who heard this often
made bold to say to one another that he "didn't act like it," and this
opinion was shared by the sheriff who futilely sought some information
from him touching the lair of the horse-thieves, looking to brilliant
exploits of capture. Such details as he could secure were so uncertain
and contradictory as to render him suspicious that the truth was
purposely withheld.
"Ye oughter remember these men air crim'nal offenders agin the law,
Mr. Sneed," he said.
"Mebbe so," assented Persimmon Sneed, "mebbe so;" but the situation of
Con Hite's still was the only locality which he had visited of which
he was sure, and in gratitude to his rescuer he held his peace.
That he was not so softened to the world at large was manifested in
the fact that he threatened to plead usury against the money-lender,
and forthwith brought him down with a run to the beggaries of the
legal rate. He was wont, moreover, to go to the teller of the bank at
Colbury and demand of that distracted man such of his papers as were
from time to time lost or mislaid, having learned from his wife that
she had made the official the custodian of his valuables, these being
his bank-book, the ancient returned checks, and the unused check-book.
The points which he had so laboriously made plain to the jury of view
proved a total loss of perspicacious reasoning, for the land was
forthwith condemned and the road opened, any oil-boring company being
allowed by law a right of way thirty feet wide. The heavy hauling of
the oil company had already made a tolerable wagon track, and the
passing back and forth of the men and teams and machinery added an
element of interest and excitement to the thoroughfare such as
Narcissa's wildest dreams had never prefigured. She had no heart for
it now. When the creak of wheels on the frozen ground, and the cries
of the drivers, and the thud of the hoofs of the straining four-horse
teams heralded an approach, she was wont to draw close the batten
shutter of the window and sit brooding over the fire, staring with
moody eyes into the red coals, where she saw much invisible to the
simple Ben. He knew vaguely that her grief was for the fair-haired
stranger, but he could not dream in what remorseful wise. She had not
failed to perceive her own agency in the betrayal of his secret, when
the story of the discovery of the oil was blazoned to all the world by
those mystically flaring waters in the deeps of the mountain night. It
was she who had idly kindled them; she who had robbed him of his
rights, of the wealth that these interlopers were garnering. She had
sent him to his grave baffled, beaten, forlorn, wondering at the
mystery of the hand that out of the dark had smitten him. She kept her
own counsel. Her white face grew set and stern. Her words were few.
She had no tears. And Ben, who found his tyrant only the harder and
the colder, scarcely remonstrated, and could only marvel when one
keen, chill afternoon she sprang up, throwing her brown shawl over her
head, and declared that she was going to the oil wells to see for
herself what progress was making there.
All sylvan grace had departed from the spot. As the two stood on the
verge of the clear space, now gashed deep in every direction in the
woods and larger by a hundred acres, grim derricks rose sharply
outlined against the wintry sky. It was barred with strata of gray
clouds in such sombre neutrality of tint that one, in that it was less
gloomy than the others, gave a suggestion of blue. Patches of snow lay
about the ground. Cinders and smoke had blackened them here and there.
The steam-engine, with its cylindrical boiler, seemed in the dusk some
uncanny monster that had taken up its abode here, and rejoiced in the
desolation it had wrought, and lived by ill deeds. It was letting off
steam, and now and then it gave a puffing sigh as if it were tired
after its day's work. The laborers were of a different type from the
homely neighbors, and returned the contempt with which the
mountaineers gazed upon them. Great piles of wood showed how the
forests were being rifled for fuel. Many trees had been felled in
provident foresight, and lay along the ground in vast lengths,
awaiting the axe; so many that adown the avenues thus opened toward
the valley a wan glimmering caught the girl's eye, and she recognized
the palings of the little mountain graveyard.
She clutched her brother's arm and pointed to it. Her eyes grew
dilated and wild, her face was pale and drawn; her hand trembled as
she held it out.
"Ye see, Ben, he's close enough ter view it all--an' mebbe he
does--an' he knows now who he hev got ter thank fur it all--an' I
wisht he war hyar, whar I am, an' I war thar, whar he is."
Her brother thought for the moment that she was raving. The next she
caught her shawl over her head, hoodwise, the wind tossing her bright
hair, and declared that she was cold, and upbraided him for bringing
her on this long, chilling tramp, and protested that she would come
never again.
He came often afterward. The spot seemed to have a fascination for
him. And within sound of the cheerful hubbub and busy whir of the
industry he would lean over the palings and look at the grave, covered
sometimes with a drift of leaves, and sometimes with a drift of snow,
and think of the two men that it had successively housed, and nurse
his grudge against the company. With an unreasoning hatred of it,
Hanway felt that both were victims of the great strong corporation
that was to reap the value of the discovery which was not its own save
by accident. He could not appraise the justice of the dispensation by
which the keen observation of the one man, and the science and
experience that the other had brought to the enterprise, should fall
so far short of achievement, while an idle story, the gossip of the
day, should fill the hands of those who were strangers to the very
thought. He grudged every augury of success; he welcomed every detail
of difficulty. As time went on, the well was said to be of
intermittent flow, and new borings resulted in naught but vast floods
of sulphur water. Finally, when the admitted truth pervaded the
community,--that the oil was practically exhausted, that it had long
since ceased to pay expenses, that the company was a heavy loser by
the enterprise,--he was as a man appeased.
The result was succeeded by a change in Narcissa so radical and
immediate that Constant Hite could but perceive the fact that it was
induced by the failure and abandonment of the work. She grew placid as
of yore, and was softened, and now and again the gentle melancholy
into which she fell suggested sad and reminiscent pleasure rather than
the remorseful and desperate sorrow that she had known. He began to
realize that it was no sentimental and love-stricken grief she had
felt for Selwyn, but a sympathy akin to his own and to her brother's;
and since the disappointment of the hope of fortune must needs have
come to Selwyn at last, they made shift to resign themselves, and were
wont to talk freely of the dead with that affectionate and immediate
interest which seems to prolong the span of a mortal's day on earth,
like the tender suffusive radiance of the afterglow of a sunken sun.
The road fell quickly into disuse after the abandonment of the work.
In the storms of winter, trees were uprooted and thrown athwart the
way; overhanging rocks, splitting in the freeze, precipitated
obstructive avalanches upon the dim serpentine convolutions; the wind
piled drifts of dead leaves above the turns; and in the spring grass
began to grow in the tracks of the wheels.
It held no woeful memories now for Narcissa. She loved to sit on the
step of the stile and watch through the leafless sunlit trees the
silver haze shimmering in the valley, where the winter wheat was all
of an emerald richness, and the blue mountains afar off so near akin
to the aspect of heaven that one might hardly mark where the horizon
line merged the sweet solitudes of earth into the solitary sky. Many
a day, the spring, loitering along the shadow-flecked vistas, with the
red maple-blooms overhead and violets underfoot, was the only traveler
to be seen on the deserted road. And the pensive dusk was wont to
deepen into the serene vernal night, sweet with the scent of the
budding wild cherry, and astir with timorous tentative rustlings as of
half-fledged breezes, and illumined only with the gentle lustre of the
white stars; for never again was the darkness emblazoned with that
haggard incandescence so long the mystery of Witch-Face Mountain.