Winter drew a gray veil over the mountains, wove into it tiny jewels of
frost and turned it many times into a mask of snow, before spring broke
again among them and in Marston's impatient heart. No spring had ever
been like that to him. The coming of young leaves and flowers and
bird-song meant but one joy for the hills to him--the Blight was coming
back to them. All those weary waiting months he had clung grimly to his
work. He must have heard from her sometimes, else I think he would have
gone to her; but I knew the Blight's pen was reluctant and casual for
anybody, and, moreover, she was having a strenuous winter at home. That
he knew as well, for he took one paper, at least, that he might simply
read her name. He saw accounts of her many social doings as well, and
ate his heart out as lovers have done for all time gone and will do for
all time to come.
I, too, was away all winter, but I got back a month before the Blight,
to learn much of interest that had come about. The Hon. Samuel Budd had
ear-wagged himself into the legislature, had moved that Court-House, and
was going to be State Senator. The Wild Dog had confined his reckless
career to his own hills through the winter, but when spring came,
migratory-like, he began to take frequent wing to the Gap. So far, he
and Marston had never come into personal conflict, though Marston kept
ever ready for him, and several times they had met in the road, eyed
each other in passing and made no hipward gesture at all. But then
Marston had never met him when the Wild Dog was drunk--and when sober, I
took it that the one act of kindness from the engineer always stayed his
hand. But the Police Guard at the Gap saw him quite often--and to it he
was a fearful and elusive nuisance. He seemed to be staying somewhere
within a radius of ten miles, for every night or two he would circle
about the town, yelling and firing his pistol, and when we chased him,
escaping through the Gap or up the valley or down in Lee. Many plans
were laid to catch him, but all failed, and finally he came in one day
and gave himself up and paid his fines. Afterward I recalled that
the time of this gracious surrender to law and order was but little
subsequent to one morning when a woman who brought butter and eggs to my
little sister casually asked when that “purty slim little gal with the
snappin' black eyes was a-comin' back.” And the little sister, pleased
with the remembrance, had said cordially that she was coming soon.
Thereafter the Wild Dog was in town every day, and he behaved well until
one Saturday he got drunk again, and this time, by a peculiar chance, it
was Marston again who leaped on him, wrenched his pistol away, and put
him in the calaboose. Again he paid his fine, promptly visited a “blind
Tiger,” came back to town, emptied another pistol at Marston on sight
and fled for the hills.
The enraged guard chased him for two days and from that day the Wild Dog
was a marked man. The Guard wanted many men, but if they could have had
their choice they would have picked out of the world of malefactors that
same Wild Dog.
Why all this should have thrown the Hon. Samuel Budd into such gloom
I could not understand--except that the Wild Dog had been so loyal a
henchman to him in politics, but later I learned a better reason, that
threatened to cost the Hon. Sam much more than the fines that, as I
later learned, he had been paying for his mountain friend.
Meanwhile, the Blight was coming from her Northern home through the
green lowlands of Jersey, the fat pastures of Maryland, and, as the
white dresses of schoolgirls and the shining faces of darkies thickened
at the stations, she knew that she was getting southward. All the way
she was known and welcomed, and next morning she awoke with the keen air
of the distant mountains in her nostrils and an expectant light in her
happy eyes. At least the light was there when she stepped daintily from
the dusty train and it leaped a little, I fancied, when Marston, bronzed
and flushed, held out his sunburnt hand. Like a convent girl she babbled
questions to the little sister as the dummy puffed along and she bubbled
like wine over the midsummer glory of the hills. And well she might, for
the glory of the mountains, full-leafed, shrouded in evening shadows,
blue-veiled in the distance, was unspeakable, and through the Gap the
sun was sending his last rays as though he, too, meant to take a peep at
her before he started around the world to welcome her next day. And she
must know everything at once. The anniversary of the Great Day on which
all men were pronounced free and equal was only ten days distant and
preparations were going on. There would be a big crowd of mountaineers
and there would be sports of all kinds, and games, but the tournament
was to be the feature of the day.
“A tournament?” “Yes, a tournament,” repeated the little sister,
and Marston was going to ride and the mean thing would not tell what
mediaeval name he meant to take. And the Hon. Sam Budd--did the Blight
remember him? (Indeed, she did)--had a “dark horse,” and he had bet
heavily that his dark horse would win the tournament--whereat the little
sister looked at Marston and at the Blight and smiled disdainfully. And
the Wild Dog--DID she remember him? I checked the sister here with a
glance, for Marston looked uncomfortable and the Blight saw me do it,
and on the point of saying something she checked herself, and her face,
I thought, paled a little.
That night I learned why--when she came in from the porch after Marston
was gone. I saw she had wormed enough of the story out of him to worry
her, for her face this time was distinctly pale. I would tell her no
more than she knew, however, and then she said she was sure she had seen
the Wild Dog herself that afternoon, sitting on his horse in the bushes
near a station in Wildcat Valley. She was sure that he saw her, and his
face had frightened her. I knew her fright was for Marston and not for
herself, so I laughed at her fears. She was mistaken--Wild Dog was an
outlaw now and he would not dare appear at the Gap, and there was no
chance that he could harm her or Marston. And yet I was uneasy.
It must have been a happy ten days for those two young people. Every
afternoon Marston would come in from the mines and they would go off
horseback together, over ground that I well knew--for I had been all
over it myself--up through the gray-peaked rhododendron-bordered Gap
with the swirling water below them and the gray rock high above where
another such foolish lover lost his life, climbing to get a flower for
his sweetheart, or down the winding dirt road into Lee, or up through
the beech woods behind Imboden Hill, or climbing the spur of Morris's
Farm to watch the sunset over the majestic Big Black Mountains, where
the Wild Dog lived, and back through the fragrant, cool, moonlit woods.
He was doing his best, Marston was, and he was having trouble--as every
man should. And that trouble I knew even better than he, for I had once
known a Southern girl who was so tender of heart that she could refuse
no man who really loved her she accepted him and sent him to her father,
who did all of her refusing for her. And I knew no man would know that
he had won the Blight until he had her at the altar and the priestly
hand of benediction was above her head.
Of such kind was the Blight. Every night when they came in I could read
the story of the day, always in his face and sometimes in hers; and
it was a series of ups and downs that must have wrung the boy's heart
bloodless. Still I was in good hope for him, until the crisis came
on the night before the Fourth. The quarrel was as plain as though
typewritten on the face of each. Marston would not come in that night
and the Blight went dinnerless to bed and cried herself to sleep. She
told the little sister that she had seen the Wild Dog again peering
through the bushes, and that she was frightened. That was her
explanation--but I guessed a better one.