It was Nate who had been here,--Birt felt sure of that; Nate, who
had promised he would not come.
Convinced that his friend was playing a false part, Birt went at
once to the bark-mill in the morning, confident that he would not
find Nate at work in the tanyard according to their agreement.
It was later than usual, and Jubal Perkins swore at Birt for his
tardiness. He hardly heard; and as the old bark-mill ground and
ground the bark, and the mule jogged around and around, and the hot
sun shone, and the voices of the men handling the hides at the
tanpit were loud on the air, all his thoughts were of the cool,
dark, sequestered ravine, holding in its cloven heart the secret he
had discovered.
Rufus happened to come to the tanyard today. Birt seized the
opportunity.
"Rufe," he said, "ye see I can't git away from the mill, 'kase I'm
'bleeged ter stay hyar whilst the old mule grinds. But ef ye'll go
over yander ter Nate Griggs's house an' tell him ter come over hyar,
bein' ez I want to see him partic'lar, I'll fix ye a squir'l-trap
before long ez the peartest old Bushy-tail on the mounting ain't got
the gumption ter git out'n. An' let me know ef Nate ain't thar."
Rufe was disposed to parley. He stood first on one foot, then on
the other. He cast calculating eyes at the bark-mill and out upon
the deep forest. The exact date on which this promise was to be
fulfilled had to be fixed before he announced his willingness to set
out.
Ten to one, he would have gone without the bribe, had none been
suggested, for he loved the woods better than the woodpile, and a
five-mile tramp through its tangles wearied his bones not so much as
picking up a single basketful of chips. Some boys' bones are
constituted thus, strange as it may seem.
So he went his way in his somewhat eccentric gait, compounded of a
hop, and a skip, and a dawdle. He had made about half a mile when
the path curved to the mountain's brink. He paused and parted the
glossy leaves of the dense laurel that he might look out over the
precipice at the distant heights. How blue--how softly blue they
were!--the endless ranges about the horizon. What a golden haze
melted on those nearer at hand, bravely green in the sunshine! From
among the beetling crags, the first red leaf was whirling away
against the azure sky. Even a buzzard had its picturesque aspects,
circling high above the mountains in its strong, majestic flight.
To breathe the balsamic, sunlit air was luxury, happiness; it was a
wonder that Rufe got on as fast as he did. How fragrant and cool
and dark was the shadowy valley! A silver cloud lay deep in the
waters of the "lick." Why Rufe made up his mind to go down there,
he could hardly have said--sheer curiosity, perhaps. He knew he had
plenty of time to get to Nate's house and back before dark. People
who sent Rufe on errands usually reckoned for two hours' waste in
each direction. He had no idea of descending the cliffs as Birt had
done. He stolidly retraced his way until he was nearly home; then
scrambling down rocky slopes he came presently upon a deer-path.
All at once, he noticed the footprint of a man in a dank, marshy
spot. He stopped and looked hard at it, for he had naturally
supposed this path was used only by the woodland gentry.
"Some deer-hunter, I reckon," he said. And so he went on.
With his characteristic curiosity, he peered all around the "lick"
when he was at last there. He even applied his tongue, calf-like,
to the briny earth; it did not taste so salty as he had expected.
As he rolled over luxuriously on his back among the fragrant summer
weeds, he caught sight of something in the branches of an oak tree.
He sat up and stared. It looked like a rude platform. After a
moment, he divined that it was the remnant of a scaffold from which
some early settler of Tennessee had been wont to fire upon the deer
or the buffalo at the "lick," below. Such relics, some of them a
century old, are to be seen to this day in sequestered nooks of the
Cumberland Mountains. Rufe had heard of these old scaffolds, but he
had never known of the existence of this one down by the "lick." He
sprang up, a flush of excitement contending with the dirt on his
countenance; he set his squirrel teeth resolutely together; he
applied his sturdy fingers and his nimble legs to the bark of the
tree, and up he went like a cat.
He climbed to the lower branches easily enough, but he caused much
commotion and swaying among them as he struggled through the
foliage. An owl, with great remonstrant eyes, suddenly looked out
of a hollow, higher still, with an inarticulate mutter of mingled
reproach, and warning, and anxiety. Rufe settled himself on the
platform, his bare feet dangling about jocosely. Then, beating his
hands on either thigh to mark the time he sang in a loud, shrill
soprano, prone now and then to be flat, and yet, impartially, prone
now and then to be sharp: -
Thar war two sun-dogs in the red day-dawn,
An' the wind war laid--'t war prime fur game.
I went ter the woods betimes that morn,
An' tuk my flint-lock, "Nancy," by name;
An' thar I see, in the crotch of a tree,
A great big catamount grinnin' at me.
A-kee! he! he! An' a-ho! ho! he!
A pop-eyed catamount laffin' at me!
And, as Rufe sang, the anger and remonstrance in the owl's demeanor
increased every moment. For the owl was a vocalist, too!
Bein' made game of by a brute beastis,
War su'thin' I could in no ways allow.
I jes' spoke up, for my dander hed riz,
"Cat--take in the slack o' yer jaw!"
He bowed his back--Nance sighted him gran',
Then the blamed old gal jes' flashed in the pan!
A-kee! he! he! An' a-ho! ho! he!
With a outraged catamount rebukin' of me!
As Rufe finished this with a mighty CRESCENDO, he was obliged to
pause for breath. He stared about, gaspily. The afternoon was
waning. The mountains close at hand were a darker green. The
distant ranges had assumed a rosy amethystine tint, like nothing
earthly--like the mountains of a dream, perhaps. The buzzard had
alighted in the top of a tree not far down the slope, a tree long
ago lightning-scathed, but still rising, gaunt and scarred, above
all the forest, and stretching dead stark arms to heaven. Somehow
Rufe did not like the looks of it. He was aware of a revulsion of
feeling, of the ebbing away of his merry spirit before he saw more.
As he tried to sing: -
I war the mightiest hunter that ever ye see
Till that thar catamount tuk arter me! -
his tongue clove suddenly to the roof of his mouth.
He could see something under that tree which no one else could see,
not even from the summit of the crags, for the tree was beyond a
projecting slope, and out of the range of vision thence.
Rufe could not make out distinctly what the object was, but it was
evidently foreign to the place. He possessed the universal human
weakness of regarding everything with a personal application. It
now seemed strange to him that he should have come here at all;
stranger still, that he should have mounted this queer relic of days
so long gone by, and thus discovered that peculiar object under the
dead tree. He began to think he had been led here for a purpose.
Now Rufe was not so good a boy as to be on the continual lookout for
rewards of merit. On the contrary, the day of reckoning meant with
him the day of punishment. He had heard recounted an unpleasant
superstition that when the red sunsets were flaming round the
western mountains, and the valleys were dark and drear, and the
abysses and gorges gloomed full of witches and weird spirits, Satan
himself might be descried, walking the crags, and spitting fire, and
deporting himself generally in such a manner as to cause great
apprehension to a small person who could remember so many sins as
Rufe could. His sins! they trooped up before his mental vision now,
and in a dense convocation crowded the encompassing wilderness.
Rufe felt that he must not leave this matter in uncertainty. He
must know whether that strange object under the tree could be
intended as a warning to him to cease in time his evil ways--
tormenting Towse, pulling Tennessee's hair, shirking the woodpile,
and squandering Birt's rifle balls. He even feared this might be a
notification that the hour of retribution had already come!
He scuttled off the platform, and began to swing himself from bough
to bough. He was nervous and less expert than when he had climbed
up the tree. He lost his grip once, and crashed from one branch to
another, scratching himself handsomely in the operation. The owl,
emboldened by his retreat, flew awkwardly down upon the scaffold,
and perched there, its head turned askew, and its great, round eyes
fixed solemnly upon him.
Suddenly a wild hoot of derision rent the air; the echoes answered,
and all the ravine was filled with the jeering clamor.
"The wust luck in the worl'!" plained poor Rufe, as the ill-omened
cry rose again and again. "'Tain't goin' ter s'prise me none now,
ef I gits my neck bruk along o' this resky foolishness in this
cur'ous place whar owELS watch from the lookout ez dead men hev
lef'."
He came down unhurt, however. Then he sidled about a great many
times through "the laurel," for he could not muster courage for a
direct approach to the strange object he had descried. The owl
still watched him, and bobbed its head and hooted after him. When
he drew near the lightning-scathed tree, he paused rooted to the
spot, gazing in astonishment, his hat on the back of his tow head,
his eyes opened wide, one finger inserted in his mouth in silent
deprecation.
For there stood a man dressed in black, and with a dark straw hat on
his head. He had gray whiskers, and gleaming spectacles of a mildly
surprised expression. He smiled kindly when he saw Rufe.
Incongruously enough, he had a hammer in his hand. He was going
down the ravine, tapping the rocks with it. And Rufe thought he
looked for all the world like some over-grown, demented woodpecker.