From the shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit
of neglect and shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that
should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit
gone slack.
Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway
there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long
wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with
a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget
that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin
figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back
comeliness of proportion.
The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small,
shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first
child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.
Under her feet the flooring of the porch creaked its complaint of
disrepair and the baby in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of
malnutrition.
As the mother clasped it closer and rocked it against her shrunken
breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced
slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:
"Kain't ye, no fashion, gentle him ter sleep, Sally?"
The mother shook her head despondently.
"My milk don't seem ter nourish him none," she answered, and the voice
which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.
Into the lawless tangle of the "laurel-hell" that came down the
mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human
habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew
back at the sight of the older woman.
This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his
slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through
rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands,
testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping
briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had
avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.
Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his
patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other
woman go away.
At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were
alive.
Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling
feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a
disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and
charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have
been a potato patch.
The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the
thicket--almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding
there.
But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent
proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills
along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.
That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the
baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the
yard.
Then Thornton let his whisper go out to her with an utterness of
caution: "Don't say nothin', Sally.... Walk back inter ther woods ...
outen sight of the house ... it's me ... it's yore brother, Ken."
For an instant she stood as tremulous as though she had seen or heard a
ghost, while in her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded. Then she
said: "I'll be thar d'reckly. I'll take ther baby back ter Mirandy."
"No," commanded the man, "bring hit with ye. I hain't nuver saw hit
yit."
* * * * *
Parish Thornton had come safely home, and in forest stretches where
fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were
fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist
of violet. "Sugar trees" blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in
the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet
of burgundy.
Before the house in the bend of the river the great walnut stood like a
high-priest lording it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond
maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush the drifting
cloud-fleece by day and the stars by night. It whispered with the
wandering voices of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.
Mellow now and tranquil in its day of fruitage it had the seeming of
meditation upon the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness
of death and the miracle of resurrection.
Yet the young wife searched its depths of foliage with an eye of anxiety
for, though she had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that
the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth and height with
a contagion of unhealth.
Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were gathering and piling the walnuts that
should in due season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away
for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was
the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the
desolation of winter.
Dorothy straightened and, looking off down the road, made sudden
announcement.
"Look thar, Cal. Ef hit hain't a stranger ridin' up on hoss-back. I
wonder now who _is_ he?"
With unhurried deliberation, because there was languor in the air that
day, the man rose from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted
figure his features stiffened and into them came the expression of one
who had been suddenly stricken.
Dorothy, still looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to
which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and
quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man
drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic
bearing of one who calmly accepts the inevitable.
By that time the horseman had halted and nodded. He dismounted and threw
his rein over a picket, then from the stile he accosted Thornton: "Ken,
I reckon ye knows me," he said, "an' I reckon ye knows what brought me."
Parish went forward, but before he reached the stile he turned and in a
level voice said, "Dorothy, this hyar man's Jake Beaver. He's ther
high-sheriff--from over in Virginny ... I reckon he seeks ter take me
back."
Dorothy stood with all her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her
deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or
exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair
as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace,
the sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, and fanned himself
with his hat.
The exact wording of the warrant was after all of no particular
consequence. The announcement of its purport had carried all its
necessary significance. Yet, before he spoke again, Kenneth Thornton,
also known as Parish Thornton and as Cal Maggard--these names being
included in the document as aliases--read it from preamble to signature
and seal at the end.
Then he inquired: "How come ye ter diskiver wh'ar I was at, Jake?"
The officer shook his head. "Thet's a question I hain't got ther power
ter answer ye, Ken. Somebody over thar got tidin's somehow and drapped a
hint ter ther Commonwealth's Attorney."
With a nod of comprehension the man who was wanted accepted that
explanation. He had not expected a fuller one.
Then, turning, he complied with the demands of courtesy. "Dorothy," he
asked, "hain't ye goin' ter invite Jake ter come in an' eat him some
dinner?"
The woman had not spoken. For her, stoic-bred though she was, it was
impossible to separate calmly the personal side of this stranger from
the abstract and menacing thing for which he stood. Now she gulped down
a hot and inhospitable impulse of refusal and said briefly to her
husband, "_You_ kin invite him ef ye've a mind ter, Cal. _I_ won't."
The officer flushed in embarrassment. Sheriffs, like bloodhounds, are
frequently endowed with gentle natures, and this mission was not of
Beaver's own choosing. It was a pursuit he followed with nothing of the
sportsman's zest.
"I reckon I mout es well git over an' done with all ther onpleasant jobs
I've got on hand," he announced, awkwardly, "air ye willin' ter waive
extradition, Ken, or does ye aim ter fight goin' back? Hit's jest a
matter of time either way--but ye've got the privilege of choosin'."
The man he had come after was carefully folding the warrant of arrest
along its folded lines as though it were important to preserve the exact
creasing of the paper.
"Does I keep this hyar thing, Jake," he asked, "or give hit back to ye?"
"Keep hit," replied the sheriff, with an equal gravity. "Hit b'longs ter
_you_."
There was a brief silence after that then Thornton said:
"This is a right grave matter ter me, Jake. Afore I decides what ter do
I've got ter hev speech with some of my neighbours."
The foreign official inclined his head.
"I hain't drapped no hint ter no man es ter what business brought me
hyar," he volunteered. "I 'lowed ter talk with ye in private fust. I
knows full well I'm amongst yore friends over hyar--an' I've got ter
trust myself in yore hands. This hain't no welcome task, Ken, any way ye
looks at hit."
"I gives ye my hand, Jake," the accused reassured his accuser, "no harm
hain't goin' ter come ter ye. Come on indoors and sot ye a cheer."
Parish Thornton stood under the black walnut again that afternoon and
with his jackknife he was carving a small basket out of one of the
walnuts that had fallen at his feet. About him stood a group including
the custodian of "the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia"
and the man who held like responsibility for the state of Kentucky.
Between the two, unexpressed but felt, lay the veiled hostility that had
grown up through generations of "crossing the border" to hide out; the
hostility of conflicting jurisdictions.
Hump Doane and Jim Rowlett were there, and Aaron Capper and Lincoln
Thornton--a handful who could speak with the voice of public opinion
thereabouts, and while he carved industriously at his watch-charm
basket, Parish Thornton glanced at the cripple.
"Mr. Doane," he said, "once, standin' on this identical spot, ye asked
me a question thet I refused ter answer. This man hes come over hyar,
now, ter answer hit fer me. Jake, tell these folks what brought ye
hither."
The sheriff cleared his throat and by way of preface remarked: "I didn't
come of my own choosin', gentlemen. Ther state of Virginny accuses
Parish Thornton of ther wilful murder of John Turk. I'm high-sheriff
over in Lee County whar hit tuck place."
A grave restraint prevented any expression of surprise, but all the eyes
were turned upon Thornton himself, and the accused gave back even glance
for even glance.
"Now I'm goin' ter give ye my side of hit," he began, though to give his
side in full justice he would have had to reveal a secret which he had
no intent of disclosing.
"My sister, Sally, married John Turk an' he abused her till she couldn't
endure hit no longer. Her pride was mighty high an' she'd hev cut her
tongue out afore she'd hev told her neighbours ther way she war
misused--but I knowed hit." As he paused his eyes darkened into sombre
memory. "I reasoned with John an' he blackguarded me, too, an' ferbid me
ter darken his door.... Deespite thet command I feared fer her life an'
I fared over thar ... I went in at ther door an' he war a-maltreatin'
her an' chokin' her. I railed out ... an' he hurt her wusser ... hit war
his life or her'n. Ef hit war all ter do over ergin I wouldn't act no
different." He paused again and no one offered a comment; so he resumed
his statement: "I hain't told ye all of hit, but I reckon thet's
enough. Thar warn't no witnesses ter holp me come cl'ar an' ther co'te
over thar wouldn't vouchsafe me no justice.... Hit's jedge b'longed ter
John Turk's kinfolks body an' soul ... so I come away."
"I reckon ye'd be plum daft ef ye didn't stay away," remarked the
Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance at his colleague from
another state. "Virginny officers hain't got no power of arrest in
Kaintuck."
The Virginian bit a trifle nervously from a twist of "natural leaf."
"Hit's my bounden duty, though," he declared, staunchly, "ter call on
_you_ ter arrest him an' hold him till I gits me them extradition papers
from Frankfort--an' then hit's _yore_ bounden duty ter fotch him ter
ther state line an' deliver him over ter me."
"I'm ther man thet decides what my duty is," came the swift retort, and
Thornton raised a hand to quell incipient argument.
"Thet hain't ther p'int, men," he reminded them. "Ther law kin reach in
an' take me out finally. We all knows thet--onless I forsook my home
hyar an' lived a refugee, hidin' out. Atter they once diskivered whar I
was, I mout jest es well be thar es hyar."
"Ther boy's right," ruled Hump Doane, judicially. "A man kain't beat
ther law in ther long run." Then the cripple wheeled on the sheriff.
"Mr. Beaver," he said, "we hain't got no quarrel with ye fer doin' yore
plain duty, but whether ye calls this man a criminal over thar in
Virginny or not we knows over hyar thet he's a godly upholder of ther
law--an' we don't aim ter see him made no scape-goat fer unlawful wrath
ef we kin hinder hit. In so fur es we kin legally compass hit we stands
ready ter fight ther state of Virginny from hell ter breakfast. All
he's got ter do is jest give us ther word."
"I hain't seekin' ter contrary ye none es ter thet, Mr. Doane," the
officer gave ready assurance.
"Ef Mr. Thornton takes my counsel," went on the deformed leader, "he'll
bid ye go back thar an' tell them folks ye comes from thet ef they'll
admit him ter bail, an' pledge him a fa'r day in co'te, he'll come back
thar without no conflict when ye sends fer him. But ye've got ter hev
'em agree ter let him stay over hyar till ther co'te sets ter try him.
Es fer his bond ye kin put hit at any figger ye likes so long es thar's
land enough an' money enough amongst us ter kiver hit."
The Virginia sheriff turned to the Kentucky officer.
"Will ye arrest this man an' hold him safe till I gits my order?" he
demanded, and the Kentuckian in turn inquired of Parish, "Will ye agree
to hold yoreself subject ter prompt response?"
Thornton nodded and casually the local officer replied:
"All right, Mr. Beaver. Ye kin ride on home now whenever ye gits ready.
I've got this prisoner in a custody thet satisfies me right now."