CONCERNING HAWK RUFE
Old wise men in esoteric idiom, unintelligible to the vulgar, have
endeavoured to write down in books how the human mind works in its
house,--and I believe they have not succeeded very well. They have
broken into this house when it was empty, and laboured to decipher the
mystic hieroglyphics written on its walls, and learn to what uses the
departed craftsman put the strange, delicate implements which they found
fastened so primly in their places.
They have got at but little, as I have heard them say, deploring the
brevity of life, and the tremendous magnitude of the labour. The
learned, as one put it, had barely time to explain to his successor that
he had found the problem unsolvable. I think they might as well have
gone about tracking the rainbow, for all they have learned of this
mysterious business.
In fewer moments than a singing maid takes to double back on her chorus,
I had forgotten all about the ghost. I was sitting idly in the saddle
now with the rein over my wrist. Jourdan's message from my brother had
given enough to think of. I knew that Ward in the preceding autumn had
bought the cattle of two great graziers south of the Valley River, to be
taken up during the October month, but I did not know that on a summer
afternoon he had sold these cattle to Woodford, binding himself to
deliver them within three days after they were demanded.
The trade was fair enough when the two had made it. But now the price of
beef cattle was off almost thirty dollars a bullock, and Woodford was in
a position to lose more money than his bald-faced cattle-horse could
carry in a sack. He had waited all along hoping for the tide to turn.
Suddenly, to-day he had demanded his cattle.
To-day, when Ward was on his back and the cattle far to the south across
the Valley River. It was the contract, and he had the right to do it,
but it was like Woodford. Ward, helpless in his bed, had sent Jourdan on
Red Mike to find us somewhere over the Gauley and bid us bring up the
cattle if we could. And so the old man had ridden as though the devil
were after him.
The proportions of Woodford's plan outlined slowly, and with it came a
sense of tremendous responsibility. If we carried out the contract to
the letter,--and to the letter it must be with this man,--I knew that
Woodford would meet the loss, if it stripped the coat off of his
shoulders,--meet it with a smile and some swaggering comment. And I knew
as well that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent the contract from
being carried out, he would do it with the devil's cleverness.
Only, I knew that the hand of Woodford would never rise against us in
the open. We might be balked by sudden providences of God, planned
shrewdly like those which a great churchman ruling France sometimes
called to his elbow.
For such gentle business, not old Richelieu was better fitted with a set
of arrant scoundrels. There was the cunning right hand of Hawk Rufe, the
slick, villainous intriguer, Lem Marks. No diplomatic imp, serving his
master in the kingdoms of the world, moved with more unscrupulous
smoothness. There was Malan with his clubfoot, owned by the devil, the
drovers said, and leased to Woodford for a lifetime. And there was
Parson Peppers, singing the hymns of the Lord up the Stone Coal and down
the Stone Coal. As stout a bunch of rogues as ever went trooping to the
eternal bonfire, handy gentlemen to his worship Woodford.
It was preposterous overmatching for a child. Hawk Rufe had laughed well
when I had heard him laughing last. If Ward were only back in the saddle
of the Black Abbot! But he was stretched out over yonder with the night
shining through his window, and there was on the turning world no one
but me to strip to this duel.
Still, I had better horses, and perhaps better men than Woodford. Jud
was one of the strongest men in the Hills, afraid of the dead, as I have
written, but not afraid of any living thing on the face of the earth.
They knew this over the Stone Coal; the club-footed giant Malan had a
lot of scars under his shirt that were not born on him. And there was
Ump, a crooked thing of a man truly, but a crooked thing of a man that
would hobnob with the king of all the fiends, banter for banter, and in
whose breast cowardice was as dead as Judas.
I looked down at the humble giant, shamefaced in the moonlight, tying
his broken bridle reins back in their rings, and drawing the knots tight
with his bronzed fingers that looked like the coupling-pins of a
cart,--and then at the hunchback doubled up in his saddle. Maybe,--and
my blood began to rise with it,--maybe when we looked close, the odds
were not so terrible after all. Here was bone and sinew tougher than
Malan's, and such cunning as might cry Marks a merrier run than he had
gone for many a day.
Then, as by some sharp turn, I caught a new light on the two hours
already gone. Man alive! We had been in the game for all of those two
blessed hours with our eyes sealed up tight as the lid of a jar.
"How high was the Gauley?" I almost shouted, pointing my finger at Red
Mike.
"'Mid sides," answered Jourdan, turning around in his saddle.
"'Mid sides!" I echoed; "and the logs? Was it running logs?"
"Nothin' but brush an' a few old rails. You can see the water mark on
Red Mike right here at the bottom of the saddle skirt." And the old man
reached down and put his finger on the smoking horse. "The Gauley ain't
up to stop nothin'."
I clapped my teeth together. So much for the solicitous care of Hawk
Rufe. If we had gone by the Hacker's Creek road we should have missed
Jourdan and lost the good half of a day. Woodford knew that Ward would
send by the shortest road. It was the first gleam of the wolf tooth
shining for a moment behind the woolly face of the sheepskin.
I looked down at Ump. The hunchback put his elbow on the horn of his
saddle and rested his jaw in the hollow of his hand.
"Old Granny Lanum," he said, "her that's buried back on the Dolan Knob,
used to say that God saw for the little pup when it was blind, but after
that it was the little pup's business. An' I reckon she knowed what she
said."
Wiser heads than mine have pondered that problem since the world began
its swinging,--but with greater elegance, but scarcely more clearly than
Ump had put it. Old Liza used to tell me when I was very little that if
I fought with those who were smaller than myself, I was fighting the
wards of the Father in heaven, and it was a lot better to get a broken
head from some sturdy urchin who was big enough to look out for himself.
And I have always thought that old Liza was about as close to the Ruler
of Events as any one of us is likely to get. Anyway I doubted not that
if the good God rode in the Hills, He was far from stirrup by stirrup
with Woodford.
Red Mike was beginning to shiver in his wet coat, and Jourdan gathered
up his reins.
"Mr. Ward," he said, "told me to tell you to stay with old Simon Betts
to-night, an' git an early start in the mornin'." Then he rode away, and
we watched him disappear in the hollow out of which he had come carrying
so much terror.
We were a sobered three as we turned back into the woods. Ghosts and all
the rumours of ghosts had fled to the chimney corners. No witch rode and
there walked no spirit from among the dead. Above us the oaks knitted
their fantastic tops, but it made no fairy arch for the dancing minions
of Queen Mab. The thicket sang, but with the living voices of the good
crickets, and the owl yelled again, diving across the road, but his
piping notes had lost their eerie treble.
There is something in the creak of saddle-leather that has a way of
putting heart in a man. To hear the hogskin rubbing its yellow elbows is
a good sound. It means action. It means being on the way. It means that
all the idle talking, planning, doubting is over and done with. Sir
Hubert has cut it short with an oath and a blow of his clenched hand
that made the glasses rattle, and every swaggering cutthroat has his
foot in the stirrup.
It is good, too, when one feels the horse holding his bit as a man might
hold a child by the fingers. No slave this, but a giant ally, leading
the way up into the enemy's country. Out of the road, weakling!
We travelled slowly back toward the Stone Coal. Far away a candle in
some driver's window twinkled for a moment and was shut out by the
trees. In the low land a fog was rising, a climbing veil of grey, that
seemed to feel its path along the sloping hillside.
I heard the boom of the Stone Coal tumbling over the welts in its
bedding as we turned down toward the old Alestock mill. The clouds had
packed together in the sky, and the moon dipped in and out like a
bobbin. As we swept into the turnpike by the long ford, Ump stopped,
and, tossing his rein to Jud, slipped down into the road. El Mahdi
stopped by the Cardinal. When I looked, the hunchback was on his knees.
"What are you doing?" I said.
Ump laughed. "I'm lookin' for hawks' feathers. Where they fly thick,
there ought to be feathers."
He nosed around on the road for some minutes like a dog, and then
disappeared over the bank into the willow bushes. The Stone Coal lay
like a sheet of silver, broken into long hissing ridges, where it went
driving over the ragged strata. On the other side, the Hacker's Creek
road lifted out of the ford and went trailing away through the hills. In
the moonlight it was a giant's ribbon.
I had no idea of what Ump was up to, but I should learn no earlier by a
volley of questions. So I thrust my hands into my pockets and waited.
Presently he came clambering up the bank and got into his saddle.
"Well," I said; "did you find any feathers?"
"I did," he answered; "fresh ones from the meanest bird of the flock,
an' he's flyin' low. I think that first turn into the Stone Coal fooled
him. But he will know better by midnight."
Then I understood it was horse tracks he had been looking for.
"How do you know he's trailing us?" I asked.
"Quiller," he answered, "when Come-an'-go-fetch-it rides up an' down,
he's lookin' for somethin'. An' I reckon we're are about ready to be
looked for."
We were clattering up the turnpike while Ump was speaking. All at once,
rising out of the far away hills, I heard a voice begin to bellow:
"They put John on the island. Fare ye well, fare ye well.
An' they put him there to starve him. Fare ye well, fare ye well."
It was Parson Peppers, and of his reverence be it said that no Brother
of the Coast, rollicking drunk on a dead man's chest, ever owned a finer
bellow.
I turned around in my saddle. "Peppers!" I cried. "Man alive! How did
you know that it was the old bell-wether's horse?"
Ump chuckled. "I saw her shod once. A number six shoe an' a toe-piece."