Through the rest of that night Old Jase lay on a pallet spread before
the fire, rising at intervals out of a deathlike slumber to slip his
single suspender strap over his bent shoulder, turn up the lantern, and
inspect his patient's condition.
On none of these occasions did he find the girl, who spent that night in
a straight-backed chair at the bedside, asleep. Always she was sitting
there with eyes wide and brimming with suffering and fear, and a
wakeful, troubled heart into which love had flashed like a meteor and
which it threatened, now, to sear like a lightning bolt. It seemed to
her that life had gone aimlessly, uneventfully on until without warning
or preparation it had burst into a glory of discovery and in the same
breath into a chaos of destruction.
"Kain't ye give me no encouragement yit, Uncle Jase?" she whispered once
when he came to the bedside, with a convulsive catching at her throat,
though her eyes were dry and hot, and the old man, too ruggedly honest
to soften the edge of fact with evasion, shook his head.
"I hain't got no power ter say yit--afore I sees how he wakes up
termorrer," he admitted. "Why don't ye lay down, leetle gal? I'll
summons ye ef airy need arises."
But the girl shook her head and later the old man, stirring on his
pallet, heard her praying in an almost argumentative tone of
supplication:
"Ye sees, Almighty God, hit don't call for no master _big_ miracle ter
save him ... an' Ye've done fotched ther dead back ter life afore now."
That night Dorothy Harper grew up. For the first time she recognized the
call of her adult womanhood which centred about one man and made its own
universe. She would not be a child again.
* * * * *
The town of Lake Erie was no town at all, but a scant cluster of
shack-like buildings at the crossing of two roads, which were hardly
roads at all, either.
The place had been called Lake Erie when the veterans who had gone to
the "War of Twelve" came home from service with Perry--for in no war
that the nation has waged has this hermit people failed of response and
representation.
This morning it stood as an unsightly detail against a background of
impressive beauty. Back of it rose wooded steeps, running the whole
lovely gamut of greenery and blossoming colour to a sun-filled sky which
was flawless.
The store of Jake Crabbott was open and already possessed of its quorum
for the discussion of the day's news.
And to-day there _was_ news! A dozen hickory-shirted and slouch-hatted
men lounged against the wall or on empty boxes and broken chairs about
its porch and door.
The talk was all of the stranger who had come so recently from Virginia
and who had found such a hostile welcome awaiting him. Spice was added
to the debate by a realization in the mind of every man who joined in it
that the mysterious firer of those shots might be--and probably was--a
member of the present conclave.
Jake Crabbott who ran the store maintained, in all neighbourhood
differences, the studious attitude of an incorruptible neutral. Old
Grandsire Templey, his father-in-law, sat always in the same low chair
on the porch in summer and back of the stove in winter, with his palsied
hands crossed on his staff-head and his toothless gums mumbling in
inconsequential talk.
Old Grandsire was querulous and hazy in his mind but his memory went
back almost a century, and it clarified when near events were discarded
and he spoke of remoter times.
Now he sat mumbling away into his long beard, and in the door stood his
son-in-law, a sturdy man, himself well past middle-age, with a face that
was an index of hardihood, shrewdness, and the gift for knowing when and
how to hold his tongue.
On the steps of the porch, smiling like a good-humoured leviathan and
listening to the talk, sat "Peanuts" Causey, but he was not to be
allowed to sit long silent, because of all those gathered there he alone
had met and talked with the stranger.
"I fared past his dwellin' house day before yistiddy," declared Causey
in response to a question, "an' I 'lowed he war a right genial-spoken
sort of body."
The chorus of fresh interrogations was interrupted by a man who had not
spoken before. He rose from his seat and stepped across toward Peanuts,
and he was not prepossessing of appearance as he came to his feet.
Joe Doane, whom the pitiless directness of a rude environment had
rechristened "Hump" Doane, stood less than five feet to the crown of his
battered hat, and the hat sat on an enormous head out of which looked
the seamed and distorted face of a hunchback. But his shoulders were so
broad and his arms so long and huge that the man had the seeming of
gorilla hideousness and gorilla power.
The face, too, despite its soured scowl, held the alert of a keen
mentality and was dominated by eyes whose sleeping fires men did not
lightly seek to fan into blazes of wrath.
No man of either faction stood with a more uncompromising sincerity for
law and peace--but Hump Doane viewed life through the eyes of one who
has suffered the afflictions and mortification of a cripple in a land
that accepts life in physical aspects. His wisdom was darkened with the
tinge and colour of the cynic's thought. He trusted that man only who
proved his faith by his works, and believed all evil until it was
disproven. Like a nervous shepherd who tends wild sheep he feared always
for his flock and distrusted every pelt that might disguise and mask a
possible wolf of trouble.
"What did ye say this hyar stranger calls hisself, Peanuts?" he
demanded, bluntly, and when the other had told him he repeated the name
thoughtfully. Then he shot out another question with the sharp
peremptoriness of a prosecuting attorney, and in the high, rasping voice
of his affliction.
"What caused him ter leave Virginny?"
The stout giant grinned imperturbably.
"He didn't look like he'd relish ter be hectored none with sich-like
questions es thet, an' I wasn't strivin' ter root inter his private
business without he elected of his own free will ter give hit out ter
each an' every."
Young Pete Doane, the cripple's son, who fancied his own wit, hitched
his chair backward and tilted it against the wall.
"I reckon a man don't need no severe reason but jest plain common sense
fer movin' outen Virginny inter Kaintuck."
Hump swept a disdainful glance at his offspring and that conversational
volunteer ventured no further repartee.
"By ther same token," announced the elder Doane, crushingly, "thar's
trash in Virginny thet don't edify Kaintuck folks none by movin' in
amongst 'em."
Young Pete, whose entrance into the discussion had been so ruthlessly
stepped upon by his own sire, sat now sulkily silent, and his face in
that sombre repose was a study. Though his name was that of the ancestor
who had "gone to the Indians" and introduced the red strain into the
family there was no trace of that mingling in young Peter's physiognomy.
Indeed the changes of time had transferred all the recognizable aspects
of that early blood-line to the one branch represented by Bas Rowlett,
possibly because the Doanes had, on the distaff side, introduced new
blood with greater frequency.
Young Pete was blond, and unlike his father had the receding chin and
the pale eyes of a weak and impressionable character. Bas Rowlett was a
hero whom he worshipped, and his nature was such as made him an
instrument for a stronger will to use at pleasure.
The sturdy father regarded him with a strange blending of savage
affection and stern disdain, brow-beating him in public yet ready to
flare into eruptive anger if any other recognized, as he did, the
weaknesses of his only son.
The crowd paused, too, to receive and question a newcomer who swung
himself down from a brown mare and strolled into the group.
Sim Squires was a fellow of medium height and just under middle-age,
whose face was smooth shaven--or had been some two days back. He smiled
chronically, just as chronically he swung his shoulders and body with a
sort of swagger, but the smile was vapid, and the swagger an empty
boast.
"I jest heered erbout this hyar ruction a leetle while back," he
announced with inquisitive promptness, "an' I rid straightway over hyar
ter find me out somethin'."
"Thar comes Bas Rowlett now," suggested the storekeeper, waving his hand
toward the creek-bed road along which a mule and rider came at a placid
fox-trot. "He's ther feller that fotched ther stranger in, an' shot back
at ther la'rel. Belikes he kin give us ther true sum an' amount of ther
matter."
As Sim Squires and Peanuts Causey glanced up at the approaching figure
one might have said that into the eyes of each came a shadow of
hostility. On Sim's face the chronic grin for once faded, and he moved
carelessly to one side--yet under the carelessness one or two in that
group discerned a motive more studied. Though no one knew cause or
nature of the grievance, it was generally felt that bad blood existed
between Bas and Sim, and Sim was not presumed to court a collision.
When Bas Rowlett had dismounted and come slowly to the porch, the
loungers fell silent with the interest accorded one of the principal
actors in last night's drama, then the hunchback demanded shortly:
"Bas, we're all frettin' ourselves ter know ther gist of this hyar
trouble ... an' I reckon ye're ther fittin' man ter tell us."
The new arrival glanced about the group, nodding in greeting, until his
eyes met those of Sim Squires--and to Sim he did not nod. Squires, for
his part, had the outward guise of one looking through transparent
space, but Peanuts and Bas exchanged greetings a shade short of cordial,
and Peanuts did not rise, though he sat obstructing the steps and the
other had to go around him.
"I reckon ye've done heered all I kin tell ye," said Bas, gravely. "I'd
done been over ter ther furriner's house some siv'ral times bekase he
war a neighbour of mine--an' he seemed a mighty enjoyable sort of body.
He war visitin' at old man Harper's las' night an' I met up with him on
ther highway. He'd done told me he'd got a threatenin' letter from
somebody thet was skeered ter sign hit, so I proffered ter walk along
home with him, an' as we come by ther rock-clift somebody shot two
shoots.... I toted him back ter Harper's dwellin' house, an' he's layin'
thar now an' nobody don't know yit whether he'll live or die. Thet's all
I've got ther power ter tell ye."
"Hed this man Maggard ever been over hyar afore? Did he know ther
Harpers when he come?"
Hump Doane still shot out his questions in an inquisitorial manner but
Bas met its peremptory edginess with urbanity, though his face was
haggard with a night of sleeplessness and fatigue.
"He lowed ter me that his folks hed lived over hyar once a long time
back.... Thet's all I knows."
Hump Doane wheeled on the old man, whose life had stretched almost to
the century span, and shouted:
"Gran'sire, did ye ever know any Maggards dwellin' over hyar? Thar
hain't been none amongst us in my day ner time."
"Maggards ... Maggards?... let me study," quavered the frosty-headed
veteran in his palsied falsetto. "I kin remember when ther boys went off
ter ther war of Twelve ... I kin remember thet.... Thar war Doanes an'
Rowletts an' Thorntons...."
"I hain't askin' ye erbout no Doanes ner Thorntons. I'm askin' ye war
thar any Maggards?"
For a long time the human repository of ancient history pondered,
fumbling through the past.
"Let's see--this hyar's ther y'ar one thousand and nine hundred....
Thar's some things I disremembers. Maggards ... Maggards?... I don't
remember no Maggards.... No, siree! I don't remember none."
The cripple turned impatiently away, and Bas Rowlett speculatively
inquired:
"Does ye reckon mebby he war a-fleein' from some enemy over in
Virginny--an' thet ther feller followed atter him an' got him?"
"Seems like we'd hev heered of ther other stranger from some source or
other," mused Hump. "Hit hain't none of my business nohow--onless--" the
man's voice leaped and cracked with a belligerent violence--"onless
hit's some of Old Burrell Thornton's feisty kin, done come back ter tek
up his wickedness an' plaguery whar he left off at."
Bas Rowlett sat down on an empty box and his shoulders sagged wearily.
"Hit's Old Burrell's house he come ter," he admitted. "But yit he told
me he'd done tuck hit fer a debt. I hain't knowed him long, but him an'
me hed got ter be good friends an' ther feller thet shot him come nigh
gettin' me, too. Es fer me I'd confidence ther feller ter be all right."
"Ef he dies," commented the deformed cynic, grimly, "I'll confidence
him, too--an' ef he lives, I'll be plum willin' ter see him prove
hisself up ter be honest. Twell one or t'other of them things comes ter
pass, I hain't got nothin' more ter say."