Birt, meanwhile, was trudging along in the woods, hardly seeing
where he went, hardly caring.
He had not had even a vague premonition when the tanner told him
that he might have the rest of the day off. He did not now want the
holiday which would once have so rejoiced him, and he said as much.
And then the tanner, making the disclosure by degrees, being truly
sorry to part with the boy, intimated that he need come back no
more.
Birt unharnessed the mule by the sense of touch and the force of
habit, for blinding tears intervened between his vision and the
rusty old buckles and worn straps of leather. The animal seemed to
understand that something was amiss, and now and then turned his
head interrogatively. Somehow Birt was glad to feel that he left at
least one friend in the tanyard, albeit the humblest, for he had
always treated the beast with kindness, and he was sure the mule
would miss him.
When he reached home he loitered for a time outside the fence,
trying to nerve himself to witness his mother's distress. And at
last his tears were dried, and he went in and told her the news.
It was hard for him nowadays to understand that simple mother of
his. She did nothing that he expected. To be sure her cheek paled,
her eyes looked anxious for a moment, and her hands trembled so that
she carefully put down upon the table a dish which she had been
wiping. But she said quite calmly, "Waal, sonny, I dunno but ye hed
better take a day off from work, sure enough, an' go a-huntin'.
Thar's yer rifle, an' mebbe ye'll git a shot at a deer down yander
by the lick. The chill'n haint hed no wild meat lately, 'ceptin'
squir'ls out'n Rufe's trap."
And then he began to cry out bitterly that nobody would give him
work, and they would all starve; that the tanner believed he had
stolen the grant, and was afraid to have him about the hides.
"'Tain't no differ ez long ez 'tain't the truth," said his mother
philosophically. "We-uns will jes' abide by the truth."
He repeated this phrase over and over as he struggled through the
tangled underbrush of the dense forest.
It was all like some terrible dream; and but for Tennessee, it would
be the truth! How he blessed the little sister that her love for
him and his love for her had come between him and crime at that
moment of temptation.
"So powerful peart!" he muttered with glistening eyes, as he thought
of her.
The grant was gone, to be sure; but he did not take it. They
accused him--and falsely!
It was something to be free and abroad in the woods. He heard the
wind singing in the pines. Their fine, penetrating aroma pervaded
the air, and the rusty needles, covering the ground, muffled his
tread. Once he paused--was that the bleat of a fawn, away down on
the mountain's slope? He heard no more, and he walked on, looking
about with his old alert interest. He was refreshed, invigorated,
somehow consoled, as he went. O wise mother! he wondered if she
foresaw this when she sent him into the woods.
He had not before noted how the season was advancing. Here and
there, in the midst of the dark green foliage, leaves shone so
vividly yellow that it seemed as if upon them some fascinated
sunbeam had expended all its glamours. In a dusky recess he saw the
crimson sumach flaring. And the distant blue mountains, and the
furthest reaches of the azure sky, and the sombre depths of the
wooded valley, and the sheeny splendors of the afternoon sun, and
every incident of crag or chasm--all appeared through a soft purple
haze that possessed the air, and added an ideal embellishment to the
scene. Down the ravine the "lick" shone with the lustre of a silver
lakelet. He saw the old oak-tree hard by, with the historic
scaffold among its thinning leaves, and further along the slope were
visible vague bobbing figures, which he recognized as the "Griggs
gang," seeking upon the mountain side the gold which he had
discovered.
Suddenly he heard a light crackling in the brush,--a faint footfall.
It reminded him of the deer-path close at hand. He crouched down
noiselessly amongst the low growth and lifted his rifle, his eyes
fixed on the point where the path disappeared in the bushes, and
where he would first catch a glimpse of the approaching animal.
He heard the step again. His finger was trembling on the trigger,
when down the path leisurely walked an old gentleman attired in
black, a hammer in his hand, and a pair of gleaming spectacles
poised placidly upon the bridge of an intellectual Roman nose. And
this queer game halted in the middle of the deer-path, all
unconscious of his deadly danger.
It was a wonder that the rifle was not discharged, for the panic-
stricken Birt had lost control of his muscles, and his convulsive
finger was still quivering on the trigger as he trembled from head
to foot. He hardly dared to try to move the gun. For a moment he
could not speak. He gazed in open-mouthed amazement at the
unsuspecting old gentleman, who was also unaware of the far more
formidable open mouth of the rifle.
"Now, ain't ye lackin' fur head-stuffin'?" suddenly yelled out Birt,
from his hiding-place.
The startled old man jumped, with the most abrupt alacrity. In
fact, despite his age and the lack of habit, he bounded as
acrobatically from the ground as the expected deer could have done.
He was, it is true, a learned man; but science has no specific for
sudden fright, and he jumped as ignorantly as if he did not know the
difficult name of any of the muscles that so alertly exercised
themselves on this occasion.
Birt rose at last to his feet and looked with a pallid face over the
underbrush. "Now, ain't ye lackin' fur head-stuffin'," he faltered,
"a-steppin' along a deer-path ez nat'ral ez ef ye war a big fat
buck? I kem mighty nigh shootin' ye."
The old gentleman recovered his equilibrium, mental and physical,
with marvelous rapidity.
"Ah, my young friend,"--he motioned to Birt to come nearer,--"I want
to speak to you."
Birt stared. One might have inferred, from the tone, that the
gentleman had expected to meet him here, whereas Birt had just had
the best evidence of his senses that the encounter was a great
surprise.
The boy observed his interlocutor more carefully than he had yet
been able to do. He remembered all at once Rufe's queer story of
meeting, down the ravine, an eccentric old man whom he was disposed
to identify as Satan. As the stranger stood there in the deer-path,
he looked precisely as Rufe had described him, even to the baffling
glitter of his spectacles, his gray whiskers, and the curiously
shaped hammer in his hand.
Birt, although bewildered and still tremulous from the shock to his
nerves, was not so superstitious as Rufe, and he shouldered his gun,
and, pushing out from the tangled underbrush, joined the old man in
the path.
"I want," said the gentleman, "to hire a boy for a few days--weeks,
perhaps."
He smiled with two whole rows of teeth that never grew where they
stood. Birt wished he could see the expression of the stranger's
eyes, indistinguishable behind the spectacles that glimmered in the
light.
"What do you say to fifty cents a day?" he continued briskly.
Birt's heart sank suddenly. He had heard that Satan traded in souls
by working on the avarice of the victim. The price suggested seemed
a great deal to Birt, for in this region there is little cash in
circulation, barter serving all the ordinary purposes of commerce.
As he hesitated, the old man eyed him quizzically. "Afraid of work,
eh?"
"Naw, sir!" said Birt, sturdily.
Ah, if the bark-mill, and the old mule, and the tan-pit, and the
wood-pile, and the cornfield might testify!
"Fifty cents a day--eh?" said the stranger.
At the repetition of the sum, it occurred to Birt, growing more
familiar with the eccentricity of his companion, that he ought not
in sheer silliness to throw away a chance for employment.
"Kin I ask my mother?" he said dubiously.
"By all means ask your mother," replied the stranger heartily.
Birt's last fantastic doubt vanished. Oh no! this was not Satan in
disguise. When did the enemy ever counsel a boy to ask his mother!
Birt still stared gravely at him. All the details of his garb,
manner, speech, even the hammer in his hand, were foreign to the
boy's experience.
Presently he ventured a question. "Do you-uns hail from hyar-
abouts?"
The stranger was frank and communicative. He told Birt that he was
a professor of Natural Science in a college in one of the "valley
towns," and that he was sojourning, for his health's sake, at a
little watering-place some twelve miles distant on the bench of the
mountain. Occasionally he made an excursion into the range, which
was peculiarly interesting geologically.
"But what I wish you to do is to dig for--bones."
"BONES?" faltered Birt.
"Bones," reiterated the professor solemnly.
DID his spectacles twinkle?
Birt stood silent, vaguely wondering what his mother would think of
"bones." Presently the professor, seeing that the boy was not
likely to ask amusing questions, explained.
He informed Birt that in the neighborhood of salt licks--"saline
quagmires" he called them--were often found the remains of animals
of an extinct species, which are of great value to science. He gave
Birt the extremely long name of these animals, and descanted upon
such conditions of their existence as is known, much of which Birt
did not understand. Although this fact was very apparent, it did
not in the least affect the professor's ardor in the theme. He was
in the habit of talking of these things to boys who did not
understand, and alack! to boys who did not want to understand.
One point, however, he made very clear. With the hope of some such
"find," he was anxious to investigate this particular lick,--about
which indeed he had heard a vague tradition of a "big bone"
discovery, such as is common to similar localities in this region,--
and for this purpose he proposed to furnish the science and the
fifty cents per diem, and earnestly desired that some one else
should furnish the muscle.
He was accustomed to think much more rapidly than the men with whom
Birt was associated, and his briskness in arranging the matter had
an incongruous suggestion of the giddiness of youth. He said that
he would go home with Birt to fetch the spade, and while there he
could settle the terms with the boy's mother, and then they could
get to work.
He started off at a dapper gait up the deer-path, while Birt, with
his rifle on his shoulder, followed.
A sudden thought struck Birt. He stopped short.
"Now _I_ dunno which side o' that thar lick Nate Griggs's line runs
on," he remarked.
"Never mind," said the professor, waving away objections with airy
efficiency; "I shall first secure the consent of the owner of the
land."
Birt cogitated for a moment. "Nate Griggs ain't goin' ter gin his
cornsent ter nobody ter dig ennywhar down the ravine, ef it air
inside o' his lines," he said confidently, "'kase I--'kase he--
leastwise, 'kase gold hev been fund hyar lately, an' he hev entered
the land."
The professor stopped short in the path.
"Gold!" he ejaculated. "Gold!"
Was there a vibration of incredulity in his voice?
Birt remembered all at once the specimens which he had picked up
that memorable evening, down the ravine, when he shot the red fox.
Here they still were in his pocket. They showed lustrous, metallic,
yellow gleams as he placed them carefully in the old man's
outstretched hand, telling how he came by them, of his mistaken
confidence, the betrayed trust, and ending by pointing at the group
of gold-seekers, microscopic in the distance on the opposite slope.
"I hev hearn tell," he added, "ez Nate air countin' on goin'
pardners with a man in Sparty, who hev got money, to work the gold
mine."
Now and then, as he talked, he glanced up at his companion's face,
vaguely expecting to discover his opinion by its expression, but the
light still played in a baffling glitter upon his spectacles.
Birt could only follow when the professor suddenly handed back the
specimens with a peremptory "Come--come! We must go for the spade.
But when we reach your mother's house I will test this mineral, and
you shall see for yourself what you have lost."
Mrs. Dicey's first impression upon meeting the stranger and learning
of his mission was not altogether surprise as Birt had expected.
Her chief absorption was a deep thankfulness that the floors all
preserved their freshly scoured appearance.
"Fur ef Rufe hed been playin' round hyar ter-day, same ez common,
the rubbish would have been a scandal ter the kentry," she
reflected.
In fact, all was so neat, albeit so poor, that the stranger felt as
polite as he looked, while he talked to her about employing Birt in
his researches.
Birt, however, had little disposition to listen to this. He was
excited by the prospect of testing the mineral, and he busied
himself with great alacrity in preparing for it under the
professor's directions. He suffered a qualm, it is true, as he
pounded the shining fragments into a coarse powder, and then he drew
out with the shovel a great glowing mass of live coals on the
hearth.
The dogs peered eagerly in at the door, having followed the stranger
with the liveliest curiosity. Towse, bolder than the rest, entered
intrepidly with a nonchalant air and a wagging tail, for he and
Rufe, having failed to find Birt, had just returned home. The small
boy paused on the threshold in amazed recognition of the old
gentleman who had occasioned him such a fright that day down the
ravine.
The professor gesticulated a great deal as he bent over the fire and
gave Birt directions, and, with his waving hands and the glow on his
hoary hair and beard, he looked like some fantastic sorcerer.
Somehow Rufe was glad to see the familiar countenances of Pete and
Joe, and was still more reassured to note that his mother was
quietly standing beside the table, as she stirred the batter for
bread in a wooden bowl. Tennessee had pressed close to Birt, her
chubby hand clutching his collar as he knelt on the hearth. He held
above the glowing coals a long fire shovel, on which the pulverized
mineral had been placed, and his eyes were very bright as he
earnestly watched it.
"If it is gold," said the old man, "a moderate heat will not affect
it."
The shovel was growing hot. The live coals glowed beneath it. The
breath of the fire stirred Tennessee's flaxen hair. And Birt's
dilated eyes saw the yellow particles still glistening unchanged in
the centre of the shovel, which was beginning to redden.