With a mutter of distant thunder in his ears, the young mountaineer
plodded "slavishly" on under his load as night closed about him. The
path twisted among heaped up bowlders where a misstep might mean broken
bones and crawled through entanglements of fallen timber: of gnarled
rhododendron and thorn-leaved holly. It wormed into dew-drenched
thicknesses where branches lashed the burden-bearer's face with the
sting of whips, and soon the colossal barriers began to echo with the
storm roar of high places. The clouds were ripped with the blue-white
blades of lightning. The rock walls of the ranges seemed quaking under
the thunder's incessant cannonading, and the wind's shrieking mania.
Then through the rent and buffeted timber-tops the rain burst in a
lashing curtain of water as violent as a shot-shower.
Bear Cat Stacy, wet to the skin, with the steaming sweat of toil and
fight turned into a marrow-pinching chill, cast about him for a place
where he could protect his sack of meal until an abatement should come
to the storm's violence.
As he sat under a dripping roof of shelving rock to which he had groped
his way by the beacon of the lightning, a startled owl swept past him,
almost brushing his face with its downy wings.
His wet clothes hung to his flesh with what seemed icy coldness. His
shoulder throbbed with an abomination of pain and his bones ached with
a dull wretchedness.
But after a time the wind and thunder dropped away to whimpering
echoes. It was as if the hound pack of the furies had been whistled in,
its hunt ended.
Turner rose and stamped his numbed feet. There was yet a long way to go
before he arrived at the low-built shed, thatched with brush and
screened behind a fallen hemlock top, where the Stacy still lay hidden.
At last he was there, with every muscle proclaiming its location by the
outcry of sore tissues, and ahead of him lay the task of watching and
feeding the fire under the mash kettle until dawn.
"Ye kin lay down when ye're ready, Lee," he said shortly to the
stockily built man whom he was relieving from duty there. "I'll keep
ther fire goin' an' call ye round about dawn."
Taking up the rifle to which he had fallen heir, as picket, he made his
way from the sentinel's shelter to the still-house itself, stooping
low, so that the waning fire might not throw his figure or face into
relief. He piled a handful of wood under the kettle and crawled back
into the timber.
The heavens were full of stars now: not the small light-points of skies
arching over lowlands, but the gorgeous, great stars of the walled
highlands.
His mother had done this sort of work to keep him alive, while his
father was in prison! If he went on doing it, and if Blossom married
him, they faced a future of the same drab decay! At the thought of that
prospect he ground his chattering teeth and cursed under his breath.
The dull glow of the fire on a tin bucket and cup held his eyes with a
spell of fascination. It was white liquor, raw, sweetish and freshly
brewed. A gleam of craving flashed into his eyes: a craving that had
come down through generations of grandsires--even though his own father
had escaped it. Turner put out one hand, trembling with anticipation.
Here was warmth! Here was to be had for the taking a glow about the
heart and a quickened current in the veins. Here was the stuff from
which ease and waking dreams would come; release from his aching chill
and dulness of spirit!
Bear Cat's eyes burned thirstily. He seemed only a vessel of flesh
overflowing with craving--with a torture of craving--an utter hell of
craving! Then he drew back the eagerly extended hand.
"No," he said grimly. "Blossom air right. Ther stuff'll ruin me."
Resolutely he turned his back and stood facing the woods, listening to
the drip of drenched leafage. Through raw hours he struggled with his
appetite. Each time that he went back to throw fresh faggots on the
fire he moved warily around the bucket, seeking to keep his eyes
averted, but each time his gaze came back to it, and rested there
thirstily.
Twice as his watch drew near its end he dipped the cup into the pail
only to spill back the contents again, almost wildly, watching the thin
trickle; and greedily sniffing its sweetish invitation of odor. Once
the rim met his lips and the taste touched his tongue, but he violently
spat it out and wiped his lips on the sleeve of his shirt.
"Hits ther devil's holy water," he murmured to himself. "Thet's what
Brother Fulkerson says--an' I reckon he's right."
The evening star always reminded him of Blossom. He thought of it as
her star, and upon it, as upon her own face, he kept his eyes fixed for
encouragement as his spirit's resistance waned in the mounting tide of
exhaustion. But when even that beacon was gone behind the mountain-top
he felt the despair of one whose last ally has abandoned him to face
travail unsupported.
He fell back on his dreams; dreams of what Lincoln had faced and
conquered; of what he, too, might achieve. But now he could see them
only dispiritedly as hollow shapes; misty things without hope or
substance. That bucket now--a sip from it would rehabilitate them, give
them at least the semblance of attainability. There lay relief from
despair!
His mind flashed back to his father's rebuke and his answer: "Ye says I
lay drunk. Thet's true an' hit's a shameful thing fer a man ter
admit.... But hit's a thing I've got ter fight out fer myself."
A great indignation against his father's misunderstanding possessed
him. He must fight in his own way! Even Blossom had only asked him not
to drink "too much."
When it needed only an hour more for the coming of dawn, his face grew
darkly sullen.
"Hit's hell thet I've got ter spend my whole life a-brewin' ther stuff
ergin my will--takin' chances of ther jail-house fer hit--an' yit I
kain't have a drink when I'm wet ter ther bone," he growled.
Going as if drawn by a power stronger than his own volition, he moved
balkingly yet with inevitable progress once more to the bucket. He half
filled the cup--raised it--and this time gulped it down greedily and
recklessly to the bottom.
Immediately his chilled veins began to glow with an ardent
gratefulness. The stars seemed brighter and the little voices of the
night became sweeter. The iron-bound gates of imagination swung wide to
a pageantry of dreams, and as he crouched in the reeking underbrush, he
half forgot his discontent.
Repeatedly he dipped and drained the cup. He was still on duty, but now
he watched with a diminished vigilance. Gradually his senses became
more blunt. The waking dreams were vaguer, too, and more absurd.
He still tended the fire under the kettle--but he laughed scornfully at
the foolish need of keeping his face always in the shadow. Then
suddenly he dropped down close to the dark earth, let the cup splash
into the bucket, and thrust forward his rifle.
His ears had caught a sound which might have been a raccoon stirring in
the brush--or a fox slipping covertly through the fallen hemlock top.
But there was no repetition, so he laughed again and with the first
pallid hint of dawn on the ridges he shook the shoulder of his sleeping
companion. Then he himself sank down in the heavy torpor of exhaustion
and drunkenness.
At the same time, because it would soon be light, the living creature
which had made the sound began creeping away, and in doing so it
avoided any other alarms. It was the figure of a man who had learned
what he came there to determine.
When Lone Stacy plodded up to his still-house some hours later, he
exchanged nods with the squat mountaineer whom he found waiting.
"Whar's Turner?" was his brief inquiry and the reply matched it in
taciturnity. "In thar--a-layin' drunk."
The father went over and looked scowlingly down at the prostrate figure
stretched awkwardly in open-mouthed stupor.
"I reckon," he announced succinctly, "thar hain't nothin' fer hit but
ter suffer him ter sleep hit off."
With the toe of his boot Lone Stacy stirred the insensate body which
sprawled there; all its youthful vitality stilled into grotesque
stagnation. But when the hired man, Lee, was out of sight the bearded
face twitched with a spasm of distress.
Its eyes traveled in a silent pathos from the sight of sagging jaw and
hunched shoulders to the unresponsive majesty of the calm hills as if
beseeching comfort there. In his only son's spirit had seemed to burn a
fire of promise which even he could not understand. Was that fire to be
quenched into the stale ashes of habitual drunkenness?
A groan rumbled in his throat.
Yet, had he remembered his Scriptures, Samson, the Mighty, had
surrendered in his moment of weakness to the allurements and the shears
of Delilah! Afterward, he had pulled down the pillars of the temple.
These hills that had stood upright in days when the Alps and the
Himalayas had not yet stirred in conception, looked down placid, and
unsympathetic. Perhaps the eternal spirit of the range was not ashamed
of this erring child, asleep on its bosom. Perhaps, cognizant alike of
tempest and calm, it recognized this son's kinship with itself. The
prophecy which dwells in the immemorial may have foreseen gathering
powers of hurricane and might, which should some day make him rise,
above lesser summits. Possibly as he slept the great, silent voices
were crooning a lullaby over offspring destined for mastery.
* * * * *
When Ratler Webb had turned away from the tub-mill his brain was still
half stunned from the jarring punishment of battle. He was thoroughly
conscious only of deep chagrin and a gnawing hunger for reprisal.
From childhood he retained no tender memories.
There was no one upon whom he had a claim of blood, and neighborhood
report had not let him forget that he was a woodscolt. In hill parlance
a woodscolt signifies one whose birth has been sanctioned by no prior
rites of matrimony.
Since he could remember he had existed only by virtue of the same
predatory boldness which gives the lean razor-back strength and innate
craftiness to live.
Just now his whole abundant capacity for hatred was centered on Bear
Cat Stacy, yet since Bear Cat's kinsmen peopled every creek and
spring-branch of this country he could not be casually murdered.
Any word slipped to the ear of the revenue man might be traced back to
him and after that he could no longer live among his native hills.
Still, he reflected as he slowly rubbed his fingers along his uneven
nose, time brings changes and chances. The possession of definite
evidence against his enemy might some day bear fruit.
So Ratler did not ride home after his encounter at the mill. He took
refuge instead in an abandoned cabin of which he knew, strategically
located within a mile of the place where he had surmised the Stacy
family were making illicit whiskey. While the storm raged, threatening
to bring down the sagging roof timbers about his ears, he sat before
its dead and ruined hearth, entertaining bitter thoughts.
Between midnight and dawn he stepped over the broken threshold and
began his reconnaissance. For two hours he crouched, wet and cramped,
in the laurel near enough to throw a stone against the kettle of the
primitive distillery--waiting for that moment of relaxed vigilance,
when the figure that moved in the shadows should permit a ray from the
fire to fall upon its features.
When dawn had almost come his vigil was rewarded and he had turned away
again.
Blossom Fulkerson knew none of these things at noon of the day
following the fight at the mill when, in the road, she encountered Lone
Stacy making his way back to his house for his midday dinner, but as
the old man stopped and nodded she read trouble in his eyes.
"Air ye worrited about somethin', Mr. Stacy?" she demanded, and for a
little space the man stood hesitantly silent.
At last he hazarded, "Little gal, thar's a thing I'd like ter name ter
ye. I reckon if anybody kin holp me hit mout be you."
The girl's eyes lighted with an instinctive sympathy--then shadowed
with a premonition of what was coming.
"Is hit--about--Turner?"
The father nodded his head gravely. His eyes wore the harassed disquiet
of a problem for which he knew no solution.
"Does ye mean thet he's--he's----" She broke off abruptly and Lone
Stacy answered her with unrelieved bluntness.
"He's a-layin' up thar drunk ergin, an' he's got a gash on one shoulder
thet's powder burned. I reckon he's been engagin' in some manner of
ruction."
For a moment the girl did not speak, but her cheeks paled and tears
swam abruptly in her eyes. She raised one hand and brushed them
fiercely away.
She had awakened this morning with a new and unaccountable happiness in
her heart. In all the lilt and sparkle of the world and all the
tunefulness of the young summer there had seemed a direct message to
herself. In her memory she had been hearing afresh the crude but
impassioned eloquence with which the boy had talked to her yesterday.
Now he lay up there at the distillery in the heavy sleep of the
drunkard.
"Ther boy's all I've got," announced Lone Stacy with an unaccustomed
break in his voice. "I reckon mebby ef I hadn't been so harsh I mout
hev more influence with him." Then he turned abruptly on his heel and
trudged on.
Blossom Fulkerson slipped into the woods and came to a sun-flecked
amphitheater of rock and rhododendron where the ferns grew lush and
tall, by the sparkle of water. There she sank down and covered her face
with her hands. Her sobs shook her for a while, and then washing the
tears away, she knelt and prayed with a passionate simplicity.
Sometimes she lifted a pale face and her lips twisted themselves
pathetically in the earnestness of her prayer.
The Almighty to Whom she made her plea, and Who knew everything, must
know, even as she knew, that Turner Stacy was not like those rowdy
youths who habitually disgraced the hills. That occasional smile which
lurked with its inherent sweetness under his affected sullenness must
mean _something_.
Turner had always been her willing vassal, and "sometime" she had
supposed, though hitherto that had always seemed a vaguely distant
matter like the purple haze on the horizon, they would be avowed
sweethearts.
Yesterday, though, as she walked back from the meeting on the ridge it
had seemed as if she had spent a moment in that languourous land where
the far mists drouse,--and yet the glamour had not faded. She hadn't
sought to analyze then, she had only felt a new thrill in her heart as
she instinctively broke clusters of pink-hearted bloom from the laurel.
She left the woods after a while and as she came out again to the high
road, she heard a voice raised in the high-pitched, almost falsetto,
minors of mountain minstrelsy.
It was not a pleasing voice, nor was the ballad a cheery one. As for
the singer himself, the twisting of the way still concealed him from
view, so that his song proclaimed him like a herald in advance.
"He stobbed her to ther heart an' she fell with a groan.
He threw a leetle dirt _ov_-er her, an' started fer home,"
wailed the dolorous voice of the traveler. There was a splashing of
hoofs in shallow water, then a continuation
"His debt ter ther devil now William must pay,
Fer he fell down an' died afore break of day."
Thus announced, a mule plodded shortly into sight, and upon his back,
perching sidewise, sat a tow-headed lout of a boy with staring, vacant
eyes and a mouth which hung open, even when he desisted from song.
With an access of callow diffidence he halted his mount at sight of
Blossom, staring with a nod and a bashful "Howdy."
"Howdy, Leander," accosted the girl. "How's all your folks?"
Leander White, of Crowfoot Branch, aged fifteen, gulped twice with
prodigious and spasmodic play of his adam's apple, before he eventually
commanded voice to reply:
"They're all well.... I'm obleeged ... ter ye." Then, however,
reassured by the cordial smile on the lips of Blossom Fulkerson, his
power of speech and his hunger for gossip returned to him in unison.
"But old Aunt Lucy Hutton, over acrost ther branch, she fell down
yistiddy an' broke a bone inside of her, though."
"Did she?" demanded the girl, readily sympathetic, and Leander, thus
given sanction as a purveyor of tidings, nodded and gathered
confidence. "Huh-huh, an' Revenuers raided Joe Simmons's still-house on
ther headwaters of Skinflint an' cyarried off a _beau_tiful piece o'
copper--atter they'd punched hit full o' holes."
"Revenuers!" Into the girl's voice now came a note of anxiety.
"Huh-huh, revenuers. Folks says they're gittin' bodaciously pesky these
days."
"Ye ain't--ye ain't seen none of 'em yourself, have ye, Leander?" The
question came a bit breathlessly and the boy forgot his bashfulness as
he expanded with the importance of his traveler's tales.
"Not to know 'em fer sich," he admitted, "but I met up with a furriner
a few leagues back along ther highway. He was broguein' along mighty
brash on his own two feet. La! But he was an elegant party ter be
a-ridin' on shoe-leather, though!"
"What manner of furriner was he, Leander?" demanded Blossom with a
clutch of fright at her heart, but the boy shook his head stupidly.
"Wa'al he was jest a feller from down below. Ter tell hit proper, I
didn't hev much speech with him. We jest met an' made our manners an'
went our ways. He 'lowed ter go ter Lone Stacy's house."
"Lone Stacy's house," echoed the girl faintly.
"Reckon' I'll be a-ridin' on," drawled the young horseman nonchalantly.
"Reckon I've done told ye all ther tidings I knows."
Blossom stood, for a while, rooted where he had left her, listening to
the splash of the mule's feet along the creek. If a prying eye should
discover the Stacy still to-day it would find not only "a beautiful
piece of copper" but Bear Cat lying there incapacitated and helpless!
Her heart missed its beat at the thought. The hills seemed to close in
on her stiflingly with all their age-old oppression of fears and
impending tragedies, and she sat down by the roadside to think it out.
What should she do?
After a while she saw the tall figure of the elder Stacy climbing the
mountainside, but he was taking a short cut--and would not come within
hailing distance. Her eye, trained to read indications, noted that a
rifle swung in his right hand.
Bitterly she had been taught by her father to resent the illicit
business to which Turner's service was grudgingly given. But above all
ethical hatred of law-breaking rose the very present danger to Turner
himself. Laws were abstract things and Turner was Turner!
There was only one answer. She must watch and, if need arose, give
warning.
Just where the brook that trickled down from the still gushed out to
the creek and the road which followed its course, lay a steeply sloping
field of young corn. Along its back grew rows of "shuckybeans," and
here Blossom took her station for her self-appointed task of sentry
duty.