The old man struck a match and held it to his pipe and then as he turned
to leave the room Maggard halted him.
"I kain't suffer ye ter go away without I tells ye suthin'," he said,
"an' I fears me sorely when ye hears hit ye're right like ter withhold
yore blessin' atter all."
The patriarch wheeled and stood listening, and Dorothy, too, caught her
breath anxiously as the young man confessed.
For a time old Caleb stood stonily immovable while the story, which the
girl had already heard, had its second telling. But as the narration
progressed the gray-haired mountaineer bent interestedly forward, and by
the time it had drawn to its close his eyes were no longer wrathful but
soberly and judicially thoughtful.
He ran his fingers through his gray hair, and incredulously demanded,
"Who did ye say yore grandsire was?"
"His name was Caleb Thornton--he went ter Virginny sixty ya'rs back."
"Caleb Thornton!" Through the mists of many years the old man was
tracking back along barefoot trails of boyhood.
"Caleb Thornton! Him an' me hunted an' fished tergither and worked
tergither when we wasn't nothin' but small shavers. We was like twin
brethren an' folks called us Good Caleb an' Bad Caleb. I was ther bad
one!" The old lips parted in a smile that was tenderly reminiscent.
"Why boy, thet makes ye blood-kin of mine ... hit makes yore business
my business ... an' yore trouble my trouble. I'm ther head of ther house
now--an' ye're related ter me."
"I hain't clost kin," objected Cal, quickly. "Not too clost ter wed with
Dorothy."
"Ey God, no, boy, ye hain't but only a distant cousin--but a hundred an'
fifty y'ars back our foreparent war ther same man. An' ef ye've got ther
same heart an' the same blood in ye thet them old-timers hed, mebby ye
kin carry on my work better than any Rowlett--an' stand fer peace and
law!" Here spoke the might of family pride and mountain loyalty to
blood.
"Then ye kin give us yore blessin' atter all--despite ther charge thet
hangs over me?"
"My blessin'? Why, boy, hit's like a dead son hed done come back ter
life--an' false charges don't damn no man!"
The aged face had again become suffused with such a glow as might have
mantled the brow of a prophet who had laboured long and preached fierily
for his belief, until the hoar-frost of time had whitened his head. It
was as if when the hour approached for him to lay down his scrip and
staff he had recognized the strength and possible ardour of a young
disciple to come after him.
But after a little that emotional wave, which had unconsciously
straightened his bent shoulders and brought his head erect, subsided
into the realization of less inspiriting facts.
"Atter all," he said, thoughtfully, "I've got ter hev speech with old
Jim Rowlett afore this matter gits published abroad. He's done held ther
same notions I have--about Dorothy an' Bas--an' I owes hit ter him ter
make a clean breast of what's come ter pass."
The wounded man in the chair was gazing off through the window, and he
was deeply disturbed. He stood sworn to kill or be killed by the man
whom these two custodians of peace or war had elected in advance as a
clan head and a link uniting the factions. If he himself were now
required to assume the mantle of leadership, it was hard to see how that
quarrel could be limited to a private scope.
"When I come over hyar," he said, steadily and deliberately, "I sought
ter live peaceable--an' quiet. I didn't aim, an' I don't seek now, ter
hold place as head of no feud-faction."
"Nuther did I seek ter do hit." The old man's voice was again the rapt
and fiery utterance of the zealot. "Thar wasn't nuthin' I wouldn't of
chose fust--but when a man's duty calls ter him, ef he's a true man in
God's eyes, he hain't got no rather in the matter which ner whether.
He's beholden ter obey! Besides--" the note of fanatical exaltation
diminished into a more placid evenness--"besides, I've done told ye I
only sought ter hev ye lead toward peace an' quiet--not ter mix in no
warfarin'."
So a message went along the waterways to the house where old Jim Rowlett
dwelt, and old Jim, to whose ears troubling rumours had already come
stealing, mounted his "ridin'-critter" and responded forthwith and in
person.
He came, trustful as ever of his old partner, in the task of shepherding
wild flocks, yet resentful of the girl's rumoured rebellion against what
was to have been, in effect, a marriage of state.
Before starting he had talked long and earnestly with his kinsman, Bas
Rowlett, and as a result he saw in Bas a martyr nobly bearing his
chastening, and in the stranger a man unknown and tinged with a
suspicious mystery.
Jim Rowlett listened in silent politeness to the announcement of the
betrothal and presently he rose after a brief, unbending visit.
"Caleb," he said, "through a long lifetime me an' you hev been endurin'
friends. We aims ter go on bein', an albeit I'd done sot my hopes on
things thet hain't destined ter come ter pass, I wishes these young
folks joy."
That interview was in the nature of a public announcement, and on the
same day at Jake Crabbott's store the conclave discussed it. It was
rumoured that the two old champions of peace had differed, though not
yet in open rupture, and that the stranger, whose character was
untested, was being groomed to stand as titular leader of the Thorntons
and the Harpers. Many Rowlett and Doane faces darkened with foreboding.
"What does Bas say?" questioned some, and the answer was always the
same: "Bas hain't a-talkin' none."
But Sim Squires, who was generally accredited with a dislike of Bas
Rowlett, was circulating among those Harpers and Thorntons who bore a
wilder repute than did old Caleb, and as he talked with them he was
stressing the note of resentment that an unknown man from the hated
state of Virginia should presume to occupy so responsible a position
when others of their own blood and native-born were being overlooked.
* * * * *
One afternoon the girl and her lover sat together in the room where she
had nursed him as the western ridges turned to ashy lilac against a sky
where the sun was setting in a fanfare of delicate gorgeousness.
That evening hush that early summer knows, between the day's
full-throated orchestration and the night song of whippoorwills, held
the world in a bated stillness, and the walnut tree stood as unstirring
as some age-crowned priest with arms outstretched in evening prayer.
Hand in hand the two sat in the open window. They had been talking of
those little things that are such great things to lovers, but over them
a silence had fallen through which their hearts talked on without sound.
Slowly the sunset grew brilliant--then the foregrounds gave up their
detail in a soft veiling of purple dusk, and the tree between the house
and the road became a dark ghost-shape, etched in the unmoving majesty
of spread and stature.
"Hit hain't jest a tree," whispered the girl with an awe-touched voice,
"hit's _human_--but hit's bigger an' wiser an' stronger then a human
body."
The man nodded his head for so it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom
trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he
felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life
itself--as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, blight, and
storm.
"I wonder ef hit knows," said the girl, abruptly, "who hit war thet shot
ye, Cal?"
The man shook his head and smiled.
"Mebby hit don't jedgmatically _know_," he made answer, seeking as he
had often sought before to divert her thoughts from that question and
its secret answer: "But so long es hit stands guard over us, I reckon no
enemy won't skeercely _succeed_."