When Jerry Binwell repaired to the sulphur spring that afternoon,
there was no waiting figure amongst the rocks beside it. He paused at
a little distance and glanced about with surprise. Then he slouched on
toward the trysting place. In all the long avenues of the woods that
seemed illumined by the clear amber tint of the dead leaves covering the
ground, on which the dark boles of the trees stood out with startling
distinctness, his roving eye encountered no living creature, except
indeed a squirrel. It was perched upright upon the flat slab that almost
hid the spring, eating a chestnut held between its deft paws; it scudded
away, its curling tail waving as it ran up a tree hard by, and Binwell
heard it chattering there afterward; more than once it dropped empty
nutshells upon the man’s hat as he waited half-reclining among the rocks
beside the spring. Time dawdled on; the sunshine adjusted itself to a
new slant; it deepened to a richer tint; the shadows became pensive; the
squirrel had fled long ago. Often Binwell lifted himself on his elbow
and glanced about him, frowning surlily; but the vast woods were utterly
solitary and very still this quiet day. Once a rustling sound caught
his ear, and as he sprang up looking about hopefully for the boy, his
motion alarmed some hogs that were roaming wild in the forest to fatten
on the mast. They stood still, and fixed small sharp eyes intently upon
him, then with an exclamatory and distrustful vociferation they ran off
through the woods hardly less fleetly than deer. Jerry Binwell muttered
his discontent, and glancing once more at the sky began to walk slowly
about, keeping the spring in sight. Still no Skimpy came. The man’s face
wore an expression both scornful and indignant as he paused at last.
The forest was remarkably free from undergrowth just here; the fiery
besoms of the annual conflagrations destroyed the young and tender
shoots, and left to the wilderness something of the aspect of a vast
park. Only on one side, and that was where the ground sloped suddenly
to the depths of a rugged ravine, an almost impenetrable jungle of
laurel reached from the earth into the branches of the trees. Its
ever-green leaves had a summer suggestion as the sun glanced upon them;
none had changed, none had fallen. And yet, as he looked, he noted a
thinning aspect, a sort of gap at a certain point in the massive wall
of interlacing boughs, made, he fancied, when some lumbering bear tore
a breach in search of winter quarters in those bosky securities. He was
an idle man, and trifles were wont to while away his time. His momentary
curiosity served to mitigate the tedium of waiting for Skimpy. He slowly
strolled toward the gap amidst the foliage, wondering whether the animal
had only lately passed, whether it was possible to come upon it in its
lair and surprise it. He was near enough to lay his hand on the laurel
leaves when he noticed there was a distinctly marked path threading its
way through the tangle. He could not see the ground, but a furrow amongst
the boughs indicated continual passing and repassing. For a few yards
this was visible as he stood looking through the gap of bent and broken
branches; then the rift among the leaves seemed to curve and he saw no
further. Still meditating on the bear, he experienced some surprise when
he observed in the marshy earth in the open space near where he stood the
print of a man’s boot; not his own, as he was half-inclined to think at
first. For as he held his foot above the track, he saw that the print in
the moist earth was much broader, and that the man walked with a short
pace, far different from his own long stride. The steps had not only gone
into the laurel but had come thence; often, too, judging from the number
and direction of the footprints.
“I wonder whar this path leads,” he said. “Somebody must be moonshinin’
hyar-abouts.”
He stood gazing down meditatively. The broad footprint was always the
same, the step always the short measure indicating a slow and heavy man.
This suggested the idea of old Corbin. The retort, in the nature of
a practical joke, played on the old codger at the store, had not
altogether satisfied Binwell’s enmity; this, in fact, was, in a measure,
reinforced by the surly silence and looks of aversion which had since
been meted out to him throughout the community. It was more than
curiosity which he now felt; it was a certain joy in secretly spying
upon his enemy, and there was a merry sneer in his eyes as he began to
push his way through the laurel. As the path curved, he saw the groove
among the leaves anew before him, and he had but to follow its twists
and turns. A long way it led him down the rugged descent, the laurel
leaves almost closing over his head, the great forest trees rising high
above the thicket, flinging their darkling shadows into the midst. He
was chuckling to think what a time of it old Corbin must have had to get
down. “An’ how in Kingdom Come did he ever git up ag’in?” he laughed.
The words had hardly escaped his lips before he emitted a husky cry of
surprise: he had come suddenly to his journey’s end. In the midst of a
clear patch of rocky ground, where even the sturdy laurel could not
strike root, were scattered shavings and bits of wood, and stretching
into the dense growth, so long they were, lay two staunch but slender
poles upon the ground. They were joined by rungs, well fitted in a
workman-like manner. It was in fact a great ladder, the like of which
had never been seen in Tanglefoot Cove, and, indeed, rarely elsewhere.
It might have reached from the river bank to the hollows of Keedon
Bluffs! As Binwell gazed with starting eyes he noted that it was nearly
completed—only a few rungs remained to be set in.
A sudden vibrating sound set all the stillness to jarring; he turned
abruptly, his nerves tense, an oath between his teeth. It was too late
for him to hide, to flee. He could only gaze in despair at Skimpy’s red
head, his white wool hat set on the back of it, bobbing along through the
laurel; his freckled, grinning face was bowed on Obadiah’s fiddle that
wailed and complained beneath his sawing arm.
Perhaps it was the urgency of the moment that made Binwell bold and
rallied his quick expedients. He did not even wonder how the boy had
happened to discover him. Skimpy had descried him from a distance in
the open woods, and had followed, bringing the fiddle according to
their agreement. Binwell looked gravely at the boy and motioned to him
to advance. The fiddle ceased to shiver beneath Skimpy’s inharmonious
touch, and with his eyes stretched, and his mouth too, for that matter,
he pressed on down to the spot. He could not restrain a wondering “Waal,
sir!” when Binwell pointed to the ladder.
“Don’t say nuthin’, Skimp,” said Binwell. “Lay the fiddle an’ bow thar
in the laurel; level em’ so ez they won’t fall; thar! Ye kin find ’em
ag’in by that thar rock. Now take a-holt of that thar ladder, ’bout hyar;
that’s the dinctum—an’ jes’ foller me.”
Skimpy recognized this as an odd proceeding, and yet he hardly felt
warranted in questioning Jerry Binwell. He could not refuse his
assistance in a mere matter of “toting”; he began to think that this
service was the reason his friend had appointed this place of meeting
on pretext of playing the fiddle. He did not definitely suspect anything
worse than a scheme to get a little unrequited work from him. More
especially were his doubts annulled by the quiet glance with which Jerry
Binwell met his eager inquiring look.
“Yes, take a-holt right thar”—as if this was an answer to all that the
boy was about to ask. Binwell himself had run swiftly ahead and had
caught up the other extremity of the ladder. He went straight forward,
breaking a path through the jungle by the aid of the ladder that he
allowed to precede him by ten or twelve feet. He did not hesitate,
although there was no rift here amongst the leaves to guide him. His
manner was as assured as if he were following a definite route that he
had traveled often. Skimpy had no doubt that he knew whither he was
going through that trackless desert. Nevertheless Binwell now and then
looked back over his shoulder at the sun, as if to make sure of the
direction which he was taking. He did not care to notice the anxious
freckled face, down the vista of the leaves, from which all jocundity had
vanished. For Skimpy, although the best-natured of boys, began to rebel
inwardly. He had a troublous consciousness that Jerry Binwell would not
be safe to trust, and wondered that he could have so disregarded his
father’s wish that he should not be brought into this association. It
seemed odd to Skimpy that the danger should have manifested itself so
close upon the heels of the warning. In common with many boys, he was apt
to regard the elders as too cautious, too slow. He had not learned as yet
that it is experience which has made them so. It was not merely mentally
that he was ill at ease. His bare feet were beginning to burn, for they
had now climbed long distances up the mountain slope amidst the laurel.
The weight of the ladder asserted itself in every straining muscle, and
yet he realized that his callow strength would hardly have enabled him
to carry one end, were it not for the aid of the upholding boughs of the
laurel, that would not suffer it to touch the ground, even when his
grasp sometimes relaxed in spite of himself. He dreaded to think how he
would fare when they should emerge into the open woods. “I won’t tote my
e-end no furder,” he said to himself, still striving to look upon himself
as a free agent.
He called once or twice to Binwell, who feigned not to hear. His deafness
suddenly vanished when Skimpy stopped and the ladder lay upon the
interlacing laurel-boughs. “Whar be we-uns a-goin’ ter tote this hyar
contrivance, ennyways?” the boy demanded.
“Jes’ a leetle furder, sonny,” said Jerry Binwell paternally, turning
upon him a quiet face, immovable save for the industriously ruminant
jaws, subduing a great quid of tobacco; he was apparently so unaware
of any cause for suspicions that they were erased from Skimpy’s mind.
He took up his end of the ladder again, thinking it probably belonged
to Binwell, and thankful that he had put into words no intimation of
his vague but uneasy doubts. He even hummed a song as he stumped along,
willing enough to be cheerful if the adventure only signified a little
work for no pay. “But I’d hev ruther not l’arn them chunes folks fiddle
down in Persimmon Cove ef I hed knowed I hed ter skitter up the mounting
this-a-way.”
For they were in truth near the summit, not ascending the great bald,
but in a gap between two peaks. The laurel had given way to open woods,
and Skimpy’s end of the ladder almost dragged. The trees, instead of the
great forest kings on the mountain slopes below, were the stunted growths
peculiar to the summit. They heard no call of herder, no tinkle of bell,
for the cattle that found summer pasturage here had been rounded up and
driven home to the farms in the “flat-woods.” The silence was intense;
they saw no living creature save a buzzard circling high in the red skies
of the sunset. Skimpy thought for a moment they were going down on the
North Carolina side; he was about to protest; the way was indescribably
rocky and tortuous; the night was coming on. Suddenly Binwell paused.
“Kem along, sonny; take the ladder in the middle an’ feed it out ter me.”
Skimpy, wondering, took the ladder in the middle, giving it a series of
shoves toward Binwell, who suddenly lifted the end, and with one effort
flung it from him—and out of the world, as it seemed to Skimpy.
He listened for a moment, hearing it crash among the tree-tops as it
went falling down the precipice whence Binwell had thrown it. A moment
after there was silence as intense as before. Then Binwell knelt on the
verge and looked down the abyss. He raised a triumphant grinning face,
and silently beckoned to Skimpy. The boy went forward and knelt too,
to look over. At first he could see nothing but the shelving side of
the mountain; the deep abyss gloomed with shadows, the richness of the
autumnal colors sombre and tempered beneath the purple dusk. And then
he discovered one end of the ladder, barely perceptible in the top of a
pine-tree.
“It lodged ’mongst them pines,” said the jubilant Binwell. “It’s safe,
summer or winter; nobody’ll find it but the birds or the squir’ls.”
Skimpy could no longer resist. “Air—air—it yourn?” he faltered,
struggling with his instinct of politeness.
Binwell had risen to his feet; he was rubbing the earth off his
hands—recklessly bedaubed when he had knelt down—and also from his
trousers, nimbly raising first one knee, then the other, for the purpose.
He was chuckling unpleasantly as he looked at the boy.
“Ever see folks fling thar own ladders off’n the bluffs, an’ land ’em
’mongst the tree-tops fur the birds ter roost in?”
Skimpy stared, and ruefully shook his head.
“Waal then! what ye talkin’ ’bout?” Binwell’s tone was cheerful,
triumphant; a sinister triumph.