Shattuck sprang up, crying out, "Stop him! Don't let him escape!" as
he rushed to lift his friend's bleeding head from the floor. Despite
the turmoil of his emotions, he appreciated with all his keenly
tutored senses the antithesis of the effect of Felix Guthrie's massive
immobility as he stood hard by wiping the blood from the butt of the
smoking pistol.
"Stop him!" he retorted; "hedn't ye better wait till I set out ter run
somewhar?"
There was a bravado in the situation not altogether distasteful,
Shattuck knew, to the spirit of the backwoodsmen, and although there
were muttered reproaches amongst them, no one laid hands on Felix
Guthrie, still looking about to the right and to the left with lowering
eyes, and still wiping the blood from his pistol with the soft brim of
his hat, that it might not rust upon the weapon to its injury.
The most vehement expressions of reprobation came from the host, who
loudly upbraided Felix Guthrie for his lack of "manners," and bewailed
the omen of the incident, as he knelt beside the wounded candidate with
one of the limp hands in his.
"Thar ain't been nobody died on these puncheons sence Sandy McVeigh
called my gran'dad ter the door an' shot him down in his tracks! Thar's
been cornsider'ble quiet hyar' sence. The old man war a powerful
fighter an' a tartar, an' the neighborhood war peacefuller with him
out'n it than in it, ef I _do_ say it myse'f. An' now Fee Guthrie kems
hyar a-killin' folks ter spite the infair--whenst we hev hed sech
luck with the weddin' an' the supper an' all--an' stain up these old
puncheons with a bloody death one more time!"
His gray shock head bobbed about over the prone figure, and as he
made his unique lament he sought to stanch the wounds, still bleeding
profusely. He rose with a sudden alacrity when, on the outskirts of the
crowd, a heralding cry announced that the doctor was coming. Even then
it was a question of propriety and hospitality which took precedence
with him.
"Let's git him onto a bed, boys; quick! quick! Don't let Doc Craig kem
hyar an' tell the whole kentry-side ez we-uns let Mr. Rhodes die on
the floor 'kase I don't vote on his side. I wonder I never thunk o' it
before. Let's git him onto a bed."
Shattuck's objections to moving him were overborne in the turmoil. A
dozen strong fellows seized the prostrate figure, and it was lifted
as if it had no weight, and swiftly borne up the narrow stairs to be
laid upon a bed in the roof-room. Shattuck, feeling helpless in the
midst of these coercive circumstances, could only follow, his protests
grinding between his teeth, almost unconsciously metamorphosed into
curses. But as he rose step by step on the steep narrow stair blockaded
by the crowd pressing after the wounded man, and the roof-room came
gradually into view, he grew more content, so palpably for the better
was the change. The window at each gable end stood open; into one fell
the silvery splendor of the moon; the other was dusky with shadows,
though beyond he caught the interfulgent rays amongst the sycamore
leaves. The batten shutters swayed gently in the wind. The air was full
of vaguely prophetic intimations of dawn. A pigeon that had nested in
the niche between the chimney and the wall was astir for a moment, and
cooed softly. The dust and glare of the room below seemed far away. The
tent-like roof and the simple furnishing--a bed, a cedar chest, a few
garments and some large wolf-skins hanging to the rafters--all were
made visible by the gracious courtesy of the moon.
Shattuck fancied that he heard his friend sigh faintly as they placed
him upon the great soft feather-bed--the whole structure of an uncommon
stature, but promising ease and comfort in proportionate amplitude.
He made haste to seize his host's arm. "Send them all down," he said,
in an imperative whisper; "you and I are enough to take the doctor's
instructions. He needs air and quiet; send them all down."
To his relief, Zack Pettingill seemed to appreciate the suggestion.
He turned abruptly to the great shadowy figures of the mountaineers,
repeatedly lifting both arms and letting them fall with emphasis, as if
he were driving a flock of sheep or poultry before him.
"_Git out_, boys," he said, in his most clamorous drawl. Shattuck's
nerves recoiled from the rasping tone. "We-uns don't want the
doctor-man around hyar preachin' an' namin' the devil like he seen
him yistiddy--always skeers me out'n my skin ter hear 'bout _him_ so
familiar--an' sayin' we air crowdin' round jes' out'n cur'osity an'
smotherin' the man an' ain't done all we could fur Candidate Rhodes. I
wisht Rhodes _could_ hev tuk another time and somebody else's place ter
git shot! _Git out'n hyar_, boys!" And as he advanced upon the retiring
crowd he once more lifted both arms high and let them fall.
"Hesh!" said one of the retreating mountaineers, in a warning tone--he
had descended three or four steps of the staircase that entered the
room at one corner, his head and shoulders still visible above the
floor. "The doctor's a-comin'." The dusky figures pressed close after
him. He glanced up once more, his face suddenly illumined with a vague
flicker. "_With a candle_," he added, under his breath, as if he
imparted significant matter.
Shattuck drew a long sigh of relief. At last he would be able to see
his friend in proper care, and would be free from that terrifying sense
of responsibility which sorely harassed him, hampered as he was by
the unaccustomed conditions of the place. He would have the aid and
sympathy of a man of some education, and on whose judgment he could
rely--one of his own nationality at least; for he suddenly felt an
alien amongst these men, whose springs of action so differed from his
own.
He waited breathlessly, watching the light grow stronger, casting a
gigantic shadow of the tousled head of the master of the house upon the
walls, as the heavy tread came nearer. The host leaned down to take
the candle from the doctor's hand, and in the flicker of the motion
the stranger was in the room before the light revealed him. Shattuck,
advancing eagerly, suddenly paused. A pang of disappointment--more,
despair--quivered through his heart. He beheld a tall, slow, shambling
man, clad in old brown jeans, with a broad-brimmed hat, and the heavy
boots affected by the mountaineers; he had a grave, meditative face,
and he fixed his eyes upon the patient on the bed with that expression
of proprietorship which everywhere marks the physician. Otherwise
Shattuck could not have believed his senses. "Are you--are you--"
he stammered, overlooking in his agitation the slight gesture of
salutation with which the stranger recognized his presence there--"are
you a regular graduate of a medical college?"
The mountaineer bent a lack-lustre eye upon him. "_Which?_" he said, in
amazement.
"What sort of doctor are you?" demanded Shattuck, troublous
recollections of the old idea of charms and spells rising to his mind.
"I be a yerb doctor, by the grace o' God," returned the mountain
practitioner. He took, without more ado, the candle from his host, and
with it in one hand looked fixedly down at the white face, all streaked
and stained, upon the pillow.
Shattuck, constrained by every sentiment of loyalty to his friend of
which he was capable, quivering with undeserved self-reproach that he
had not earlier made inquiries which might have elicited the nature of
the aid to be summoned, frantic with anxiety for the result, and lest
he omit some essential duty, turned hastily, and without another word
went straight down the stairs. With some instinctive policy animating
him, he sought out the bridegroom as most likely to be won over to his
theory. This was a tall, heavily built young mountaineer, pleased with
the conspicuousness of his position in proportion as his wife, a demure
and staid young woman, was abashed and overcome by it. He had that
universal bridal manner, intimating a persuasion that nobody else has
ever been married. He received Shattuck with the kindly condescension
likely to grace one who has attained so unique a distinction.
"I suppose, Mr. Pettingill," said Shattuck, craftily, "that you don't
feel at home here now, as you are going away to live among the Gossams.
I hear you have built a house across the creek from your father-in-law.
I suppose you feel quite one with the Gossams now."
"Oh, Lord, no! that I ain't," declared the bridegroom, with the
precipitate denial of one whose secret fear has been put into words,
and who seeks to boldly exorcise it. "I hain't married all the fambly;
one's a plenty, thanky. Ye needn't be afeared ter speak yer mind 'bout
'em ter me. I'd hev liked Malviny jes' ez well ef she hadn't been a
Gossam."
The thought of the rose that by any other name would smell as sweet
came incongruously into Shattuck's mind for the instant, but he
rejoined hastily:
"Well, if I could get speech of any member of the Pettingill family
that cares anything for the name, I would say that Mr. Pettingill has
behaved very strangely--sending for an herb doctor instead of the kind
of physician that Mr. Rhodes would have if he were at home."
"Lord!" exclaimed the young fellow, laying his hand on Shattuck's
shoulder and looking earnestly into his eyes, as they stood on the
porch beside one of the flaring windows, "Phil Craig, they say, kin
all but raise the dead; he's reg'lar gifted--a plumb yerb doctor. The
t'other kind--why, they _pizens_ ye"--kindly didactic, and with a
rising inflection.
"Well, people in Colbury will think it mighty strange that Mr.
Pettingill didn't send for the kind of doctor that Mr. Rhodes would
have had if he could have chosen," Shattuck retorted, with a frown.
"You all vote against Rhodes, don't you?"
The countenance of the bridegroom was embarrassed and troubled. Perhaps
he thought the festivities made to celebrate his happiness had been
sufficiently overcast without further clouding them with political
differences.
"But we-uns hain't got no gredge at Mr. Rhodes," he stipulated.
"I should be much grieved," continued Shattuck, "if Mr. Pettingill--he
seems to be a worthy man--should be included in the prosecution, or any
member of his family involved in any way; but of course Mr. Rhodes's
relatives and political friends will make things hot if--if he should
die here with medical attendance denied him."
"Good Lord!" the young man burst out, "_we-uns_ hed nuthin' ter do with
it--jes' Fee Guthrie. Do ye think they'd prosecute Fee? 'Twar jes' a
fight--a sorter fight--but _we-uns_--"
"If I knew where a sure-enough doctor lives, or could find anybody that
does know, I'd have him here if he had to come a hundred miles. I've
asked and asked, and nobody seems to know."
"Wait a minute"--the bridegroom turned to intercept old Zack Pettingill
as he came down the stairs.
Bold as Shattuck's policy had been, he quaked to witness his own
suggestion of political enmity, malicious denial of medical attendance,
and the possibility of prosecution, introduced as a threat into Zack
Pettingill's honest and hospitable consciousness. And yet he could but
laugh at the manner of it. In order to capture and speak apart to his
parent, the bridegroom had drawn the old man almost behind the door. In
fact, while the son stood visible, with earnest and urgent gestures and
grave and deprecatory countenance, the effect of his communication upon
the unseen Pettingill was only intimated by the agitation which beset
the door, as the old man floundered behind it in the activities of his
anger, and his contemptuous floutings of the suggested implication in
crime. Now the door quivered on its hinges; now it received a blow
that would have sent it flaunting wide had not the young man's hand
restrained it; and finally, when it became quiet, Shattuck divined
the success of his effort before the bridegroom turned away and the
liberated father emerged from behind it. He was not prepared, however,
for the glower of deep-seated hatred which Zack Pettingill cast upon
him through the open window before he turned toward the stairs.
Shattuck felt suddenly wounded; the blood mounted to his face as if he
had received a blow; and if he had for the moment forgotten that in
these mountains the poorest honest man holds his dignity as safe from
the imputation of crime as if he were a magnate and millionaire, and
resents it as dearly, what other course could he have pursued with the
interests he had at stake--his own conscience and his friend's life?
As he paced to and fro the short limits of the porch, there sounded
almost immediately the quick thud of galloping hoofs down the rocky
hill, surging through the river, becoming fainter on the opposite bank,
and so dying away. In his preoccupation he attached no importance to
this, as the guests were now beginning to take leave. Only when young
Pettingill reappeared, a trifle breathless and with an excited eye,
and the comment, "We sent fur Doctor Ganey--seventeen mile--Steve
Yates rid fur him," did Shattuck connect the swift departure that he
had unconsciously remarked with the success of his mission. He did not
triumph in it as he had expected. His sensitiveness, with which he
was well enough endowed to keep him amply supplied with unhappiness,
was all astir within him; the knowledge of the wounds that he had
dealt--deep, bitter, and intentional--had developed a double edge and
a sharp retroaction. He doubted if in all Zack Pettingill's hard,
limited, and most respectable life he had ever been brought face to
face with the ignominy of such suspicions and such threats. Not that
the taking of life on a grievous provocation and an implacable quarrel
was held, in the mountain ethics, reprehensible; the deep turpitude
lay in the suggested circumstances--a conspiracy, a political grudge,
and the victim a guest. It would have been far indeed from his own
roof-tree could Zack Pettingill, the very soul of hospitality, have
contemplated the infamy of which Shattuck had affected to suspect
him. He wondered a trifle that so ignorant, so coarse, so violent,
so lawless a man should be so vulnerable in the more æsthetic
sensibilities, forgetting that traits of character are as the solid
wood, indigenous; and that cultivation is, after all, only surface
polish and veneer, and can never give to common deal the rich heart,
the weight, and the value of the walnut or the oak.
"My wife an' all her folks air a-goin' now, an' I reckon I'll hev
ter hustle along an' jine 'em," drawled the bridegroom, presently.
"I reckon they hev hed enough o' dancin' an' fiddlin' an' sech. Thar
ain't been ez much dancin' in the cove afore I got married sence
the Big Smoky war built--'thout," he qualified, meditatively, for
he was a man of speculation--"'thout 'twar the Injuns. Some 'low ez
Injuns war plumb gin over ter dancin' in the old times"--with the
sufficient air of an ethnological authority--"war dances an' scalp
dances." He smiled in slow ridicule. "Folks didn't dance none in the
war ez we hed hyarabouts--Fed and Cornfed--'thout ye call some o'
them quicksteps on the back track dancin'--_they_ war lively enough
for ennything! But"--with the manner of resuming the subject--"they
danced at the weddin' t'other night at Mr. Gossam's, an' they hev
danced at the infair, an' now I hope nobody ain't goin' ter gin no
mo' dances; leastwise not in complimint ter Malviny an' me. They air
toler'ble tiresome ter me," he protested, with a _blasé_ air. "An'
I ain't s'prised none ef they air devices o' the devil ennyhow, ez
ennybody mought know from the eend this one hev kem ter. Malviny ain't
no dancer, an' air mighty religious, an' all this hyar fiddlin' an'
glorifyin' hev been sorter terrifyin' ter her. I ain't pious myse'f,"
he concluded, with an air which to Shattuck's discerning observation
sufficiently identified his type as the incipient man of the world. "I
expec' ter go ter heav'n in partnership with Malviny--she's good enough
fur two."
He strolled off to join a group whose departure was impeded by much
hospitable insistence to remain longer, and by the presentation of
bundles of the supper wrapped in paper; for, alack! the disaster had
preceded the opening of the supper-room, and its triumphs were and
would ever be only a matter of conjecture. The disappointment was
stamped into the lines of Mrs. Pettingill's worn countenance. It seemed
a perversely withheld opportunity of joy in her restricted life, since
it was deemed unmeet that the formal feasting should proceed while
Leonard Rhodes lay up-stairs at the point of death. She could only cut
great slices of cake, and press them upon her guests, with the wheezing
adjuration, "Take it home, and _jedge_ what luck we hed with the
bakin'!"
She had been altogether despoiled of the fine show that the table in
full array would have made, but the apple-brandy that had constituted
Mr. Pettingill's share of the preparations, in circulation since
the first arrival, had by no means been in vain. He was disposed to
offer his example as one that might with profit be adopted. "I always
b'lieved in a _handed_ supper," he remarked. "Then, ef--ef--an accident
war ter happen' 'fore 'twar all over, folks wouldn't go away hongry
from yer house, nohow. But the wimmin-folks air so gin over ter pride
an' fixin's that they air obleeged ter set out a _table_ all tricked
up an' finified off."
The violinist, however, was esteemed in some sort exempt from the rule
of etiquette which necessitated the immediate dispersing of the company
without the formal supper. A curious eye might have discovered him
under the staircase which led to the wounded man's room. He sat with
the "lap-board"--usually used in cutting out the men's clothes--across
his knee, and here was ranged a liberal choice of the viands which the
shed-room had contained. Most of the household dogs--there were twenty
odd--were underfoot in the shed-room, presiding with a speechless
frenzy of interest in the partition of the good things; but two of
the younger ones sat at the fiddler's feet, and watched, with heads
canted askew and the glistening eyes of admiration, the prodigies of
his execution. The stiff tail of one of them--a pointer--sweeping the
floor, now and again came in contact with the violin that stood on end
in the corner, eliciting a discordant twanging of the strings, and
a low, hollow, resonant murmur; whereupon the dog would rise with a
knitted, puzzled brow and an air of irritated interruption, only to
seat himself anew, and with a bland and freshened interest resume his
earnest watch upon the violinist's movements. Again he would wag his
tail in the joy of his heart, again strike inadvertently the strings of
the instrument, and once more arise to vainly investigate the mystery
of "this music in the air."
Occasionally the closed door hard by opened suddenly to disclose Mrs.
Pettingill's anxious face and gray head, as she cast a searching
glance to discern what havoc the fiddler had succeeded in making
in the good things set before him. She added to the normal drawl of
the mountaineers an individual wheeze of singular propitiations,
and implying cordial and confidential relations. There may be more
beautiful sounds, but none of more suave and soothing effect than that
husky, "Jack, jes' try a glass o' this hyar cherry-bounce along with
a bite o' pound-cake"--as she extended the "bite," which, in point of
size, might have discouraged the jaws of the giant Cormoran, but never
Jack Brace's. "It'll _rest_ ye mightily, arter all the fiddlin' ye
hev done." And again, "Jack, hev ye ever tasted my sweet-spiced peach
pickles?"
Jack had, indeed. But Jack said he never had, in order that he might
renew the gustatory delights that he remembered.
Now and then less friendly eyes gazed in upon the nook. A gigantic
mountaineer, slowly strolling through the half-deserted scene, came
to a full halt hard by, leaned peeringly forward, took a step closer,
and, with his shaggy-bearded face inclined pharisaically over the
well-filled lap-board, demanded, in a tone of gruff reproof:
"What air ye a-doin' of hyar, gormandizing like ye hedn't hed nuthin'
ter eat fur a week an' better, an' a man dyin' up-steers?"
"Ye talk like I war a-nibblin' on Len Rhodes," cried Jack Brace,
angered by the mere suggestion that etiquette required that he should
desist. "My goin' hongry ain't a-goin' ter holp him, an' my eatin'
arter fiddlin' all night ain't a-goin' ter hender. Ef he can't go ter
heaven 'count o' me an' this leetle brandy peach"--as he held up the
appetizing morsel both the dogs rose up on their nimble hind-legs in
pathetic misapprehension of his intention, their eyes widening with
dismay as he withdrew the dainty effectually from view--"why, he ain't
got _enough_ religion ter git thar, that's all!"
Shattuck, going up-stairs, glanced down, upon hearing the words, at
the cosy nook and the fiddler, and was reminded anew of his friend's
danger, his sense of achievement in carrying his point having served
for a time to dull his anxiety. The room had taken on that strange,
discordant, forlorn effect which is characteristic of a scene of gayety
overpast, and is never compassed by mere bareness, or disarray, or
disuse. There was a pervasive sense of expended forces, as if all the
elation and effervescent spirit exhaling here had left a veritable
vacuum. The candles on shelf and niche and table were sputtering in
their sockets or burning dimly. Here and there mountaineers slouched
about, awaiting their womankind, who presently flustered out of the
shed-room wrapped in shawls, and with big bundles of the "supper" so
unhappily transformed into a "snack." There were chairs tilted back
against the walls as the spectators of the festivities had left them.
A saddle or two and a trace-chain and some bits of harness were lying
about the floor, where they had been temporarily disposed by the
owners, engaged in "gearing up" the teams without. Now and again voices
could be heard calling refractory beasts to order, but dulled by the
distance, and partaking of the languor of the hour. The baby, who had
danced as assiduously as the best, albeit its walking days were not yet
well ushered in, had succumbed at last, and lay, a slumbering heap of
pink flesh and blue calico, upon the floor. Its attitude demonstrated
the elasticity of its youthful limbs, and its hands clutched one of the
pink feet that had done such yeoman service earlier in the evening. An
old hound, bound to the spot by the talismanic phrase, "Guard him!"--a
duty from which only death itself could lure him--sat bolt-upright by
the prostrate figure, and looked now with sleepy eyes and cavernous
yawns at the departing guests, and now became preternaturally vigilant,
and uttered wistful wheezes of despair and envy as the hopeful gambols
of the young dogs about the munching fiddler caught his attention.
The whole picture grew dim and hazy with its flickering lights, and
fluctuated suddenly into darkness, as if it had slipped from actuality
into a mere memory, as Shattuck went farther up the stair and the
roof-room gathered shape and consistency before him. The window at one
end still held the glamour of the moonlight, the silver green of the
swaying foliage, the freshness and the sparkle of the dew. He heard
the pigeons cooing drowsily. The wolf-skins swinging from the rafters
caught the gleam of the candle, and borrowed a sleek and rich lustre.
The focus of the tallow dip itself glowed yellow in the midst of its
divergent rays, that grew dim as they stretched ever farther among the
duskily brown shadows of the place. Now and again it was eclipsed as
figures, ministering to the wounded man, passed before it. Suddenly
they drew back. Rhodes's face, distinct upon the pillow, caught the
light full upon it. Shattuck started forward, a great throb of relief
astir at his heart, and a loud exclamation, incoherent, upon his lips.
For his friend had opened his eyes, alight with his own old identity;
his face, pallid, and with smears of blood faintly discernible,
although much of it had been washed away, wore a languid smile. It
seemed that the element of his being which was strongest in him, his
sense of postulance, of candidacy before the people, was reasserted
first of all his faculties.
"Did I--did I--hurt anybody?" he faltered; "I didn't mean to hurt
anybody." Then, as he seemed to realize his surroundings, his memory
revived.
"Where's Fee? Fee didn't get hurt, did he? Where am I?" He lifted
himself upon his elbow and looked waveringly about. "Lord!" he
exclaimed, impressed by the silence, "you didn't stop the dancing on
_my_ account, Mr. Pettingill? I've spoiled the party! Well! well! I'll
never be able to look Mrs. Pettingill in the face again." And he sank
back on the pillow.
The surly countenance beneath the host's grizzled shock of hair took on
a milder expression. The stiff grooves and lines of the lips relaxed,
and might be said to have released a smile. "We kin spare the party,
Mr. Rhodes--spare it a sight easier'n we kin spare you-uns." Then, as
Shattuck unwisely pressed up to the side of the bed, the old man's eyes
suddenly assumed a hard glitter of triumph with the hot anger that made
him breathe quickly and stertorously, and curved the lines of his stiff
old mouth.
"Thar be _some_," he remarked, "ez will 'low I be jes' glad ter git
shet o' bein' prosecuted. _Me_ prosecuted, 'kase ye an' Fee tuk ter
tusslin' in the middle o' the dancin', an' Fee war the bes' man.
_Prosecuted!_" He snorted out the word with a repulsion that made the
very tone odious.
Rhodes, visibly agitated, pulled himself into a sitting posture.
"Who--who--said that--such a thing?" Still dazed and confused though he
was, his eyes, sweeping the by-standers, rested with the certainty of
reproach upon Shattuck. There was a momentary silence. "Understand one
thing, Mr. Pettingill," he said at length, with a quick flush upon his
pale face that had seemed to grow lean in the last hour--"understand
this: alive or dead, no man speaks for me."
He sank back once more upon his pillow, which the herb doctor had
readjusted with a hand that was as soft and listless as any fine
lady's; he lifted the injured man's head into another position.
"It air mo' level," he observed, learnedly. "This slit in his head
air a-goin' ter cure up right off," he continued, looking with mild
blue eyes at Shattuck, who stood flushed and indignant among them all,
feeling repudiated in the odd turn that affairs had taken. "'Tain't
goin' ter inflame none, hevin' bled so much. He warn't shot nowhar;
jes' cut on the head. His hair is singed some, whar the powder burnt
it, I reckon. He mustn't git up, though, ter-day nor ter-morrow, else
he'll fever."
If Shattuck, with the cowardice that is the essential sequence of a
well-intentioned mistake, hoped that no more might be said by Mr.
Pettingill, he understood little of the pertinacity and endurance that
can animate him who presses his breast against the thorn. The host had
been unspeakably afflicted by the bare suggestion of foul play. It had
served as a goad when naught else might have moved him. Even although
its efficacy was nullified, he could not pass it by, but again and
again in review he evoked all its capacities of poignancy. "Ye shet
up, Phil Craig," he said, his manner of rebuke palpably affected. "Ye
ain't fitten ter doctor the 'quality.' I hev hed ter send Steve Yates
a-cavortin' _seventeen_ mile in the midnight ter fetch a doctor ter
physic Mr. Rhodes fur a leetle gash side o' the head! May keep we-uns
from bein' _prosecuted_, though; leastwise we'll hope so."
Rhodes, appalled, could only stare with amazement at Shattuck. How his
friend could have brought himself to consider bodily health before
political advantage, and yet call himself a friend, was a thing which
he could not comprehend. It was all too fresh for even the sophistical
comfort of believing that he had tried to do all for the best. He
could only look at Shattuck with eyes full of wonder and reproach,
doubly effective from his reduced and prone estate; and Shattuck,
indignant and resentful, could only turn short about and walk away.
He repented that he had done aught. And then he wondered how any man
of sense could have done aught else. His dignity was affronted by
the position in which he found himself. He despised his friend for
the pusillanimous time-serving of his hearty endorsement of all that
the mountaineers had done and said. And yet he could but acknowledge
that this was ample. He despised himself for his vicarious fright,
his over-serious treatment of the incident. And yet, as he recalled
the scene--the two struggling, swaying figures, the savage blow with
the butt end of the pistol, the sudden discharge of the weapon, the
heavy fall, the long insensibility--it seemed as if the issue were
phenomenally fortunate, rather than such as might have been expected.
Amidst all the nettling subjects of contemplation, one recurred with
continually harassing suggestions--how he should meet the physician
whom he had caused to be summoned in the midnight from the distance
of seventeen miles, when the learning or the ignorance of the simple
herb doctor had so amply sufficed for the emergency. Caused to be
summoned! He thought of Steve Yates riding the horse's back sore,
believing that a dying man lay in the house. As he heard Rhodes's
rollicking laughter--a trifle quavering, to be sure--he quailed before
the idea that there was nothing to offer the physician when he should
arrive. He felt that he would have been glad of a diseased liver or an
injured brain to justify his proceedings. He began in a nervous state
of expectancy to pause whenever he reached the shadowy window, and to
look through the silvered branches of the sycamore-tree, fearing to
descry perchance a mounted figure approaching along the winding road.
All vacant it was as it curved, now in the clear sheen, now lost in
the black shadow, reappearing at an unexpected angle, as if in the
darkness the continuity were severed, and it existed only in sinuous
sections. Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a
maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling
to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with
her lover. An ox-cart lumbering slowly along, with its burly, nodding
team, through the illumined spaces, and disappearing in intervals of
obscurity, the motion of the oxen's horns somehow vaguely discerned
before they emerged again from the shadow, illustrated the leisurely
ideal of mountain travel. After it had quite vanished, and even the
sharp, grating creak of its unoiled running-gear had been lost in
the distance, a swift canine figure, distorted by speed to a mere
caricature of its species, with tail drooping, with ears laid back
close to its head, darted along the serpentine curves--one of the
visitors' dogs, just made aware of his master's departure, and in his
haste to overtake the jogging vehicle adding farcical suggestions of
comparison to its slow progress.
And then for a time Shattuck, pacing the length of the room and pausing
at the window, marked neither approach nor departure. The shadows were
lengthening; the moon was low in the sky; the neighboring massive
mountains were darkly and heavily empurpled against the pensively
illumined horizon. At their base the valley slept; it wot little of the
opaline mists that gathered above it, and enmeshed elusive enchantments
of color, which vanished before the steady gaze seeking to grade them
as blue or amber or green, and to fix their status in the spectrum.
A strange pause seemed to hold the world. Only the pines breathed
faintly. Beneath their boughs he saw suddenly Letitia Pettingill
sitting on a log of the great wood-pile. Her pale-blue homespun dress
seemed white in the moonlight. She leaned back, her hands clasping her
head, which rested upon the higher logs behind her, her eyes fixed
contemplatively upon the slow sinking of the reddening moon.
Another had observed her there. It was only a moment or two before
a tall figure sauntered out from the house and stood near by with a
casual air, surveying not her, but the aspects of the departing night
or the coming day, as retrospection or anticipation might denominate
the hour. Shattuck with a frown recognized the figure; it was easily
marked; its height and breadth and muscle would suffice to distinguish
it, without the added testimony of the long tousled ringlets and the
square, stern, martial face, overshadowed by a broad-brimmed hat.
Guthrie's pistol and a knife gleamed in his leather belt. His long
boots jingled with the replaced spurs, but he made no move toward
departure, and his horse still stood, half in the shadow and half in
the sheen, drowsing under a dogwood-tree. It was only after he had
waited some time thus silent and motionless that he slowly cast his
surly, long-lashed eyes toward Letitia. If she had seen him, she made
no sign. Still clasping the back of her shapely head with both uplifted
hands, she sat, half reclining, against the logs, and watched the
moon go down. The initiative was forced upon him. There was a latent
capacity for expressiveness suggested in the surprise and uncertainty
and subtle disappointment depicted upon his face. He advanced slowly to
the wood-pile, and sat down on one of the lower logs, his booted and
spurred legs stretched out before him, one hand upon his hip, his hat
thrust back, his ringleted head bare to the dew and the sheen. Still
she did not move nor glance toward him. As his eyes absently traversed
the space about them, he caught sight of Shattuck turning away from the
roof-room window. Whether from a full heart, or in despair that she
would break the silence, or on a sudden impulse which the glimpse of
the stranger roused, he spoke abruptly, reverting to the scenes of the
evening.
"I reckon ye air in an' about sati'fied now with what ye hev up-ed an'
done," he drawled, slowly.
She unclasped her hands that she might turn her head and look steadily
at him for a moment. Her lustrous illumined blue eyes either showed
their fine color in the ethereal light of the moon, or the recollection
of it was substituted for the sense of it in the sudden adequateness
of their expression. Her gaze relaxed, and she resumed her former
attitude. The interval was so long before she spoke that the reply
seemed hardly pertinent.
"Ever see _me_ wear a shootin'-iron?" she demanded. Her voice was
not loud, but it had a vibratory quality like that of a stringed
instrument, rather than a flute-like tone.