His gesture elicited a guffaw.
"Hold on, Buck," cried one of the men, affecting to clutch him to stay
his flight.
"'Stan' the storm; it won't be long,'" trolled out another, a rich
stave, with the resonance of the echoing walls. "What ye feared o',
Buck--the devil? He don't keer ter 'sociate none with we-uns ez long ez
ye air abroad an' afoot."
"I dun'no' what ails my eyes," said Cheever, visibly disconcerted, and
passing his hand across his brow, as he still stood near the entrance,
the bridle in his hand, the fine head of the impatient horse at his
shoulder.
"Think ye see the devil?" cried another, jeeringly.
Cheever colored, and frowned heavily. The ridicule elicited what other
means might have failed to lead forth. He could not brook this merry
insolence, these flouts at his momentary fright. He justified it.
"I 'lowed I seen _another man_, what ain't hyar, an' never war," he
said, gruffly, looking out at them from his drooping lids, his chin
high in the air. The words seemed to have subtly transferred his
transient terror. It took a longer lease in the exchange.
There was a momentary silence, while they stared with sudden gravity
at him. A sort of remonstrance, a struggle against credulity, was in
the square face of one burly fellow, seeming less a dark, illegible
simulacrum of a man than the others, since he stood at an angle where
the light fell slanting upon his features.
"What man, now?" Derridge said, in a deep bass voice, and the
argumentative accents of one who will tolerate in evidence only fact
and right reason. His tone seemed to challenge the name of the rash
being who, in corporal absence, should venture in similitude among them.
"Dad burn ye, shet up!" cried Cheever. "I couldn't see his face. He
turned it away. Whenst I looked at him he turned it away."
"In the name o' Gawd!" ejaculated one of the men, in a low-toned quaver.
Another, one Bob Millroy, Cheever's mainstay and lieutenant, glanced
over his shoulder. "He ain't hyar now?" he demanded, in expostulatory
haste.
"Naw, naw!" exclaimed Cheever, recovering himself, the more quickly
as a monition of the possible disintegration of his gang, under the
pressure of this mysterious recruit to their number, flitted across his
mind. "Naw; he went ez soon ez I kem. Thar, now!" he continued, more
lightly; "I know how it happens." He broke into a laugh that might have
seemed strained, save that the rocks made such fantastic riot in the
acoustics of the place. "It's Steve Yates. I'm used ter seem' _six_
men, an' whenst I count my chickens thar's _seven_. I looked ter see
jes' six!" and he laughed again.
"But Steve air over yander in the shadder!" expostulated Derridge, the
disciple of pure reason. "Ye couldn't hev seen him at all."
"Waal, then," sneered Cheever, "I seen double. They say thar air good
men, an' ministers o' the gospel, ez kin view a few more snakes 'n air
nateral ter thar vision whenst the liquor air strong; an' that thar
whiskey o' old Pettingill's kin walk a mile, I reckon, ef need war."
The others had hardly recovered from the superstitious thrill induced
by the explanation of the strange agitation that beset him upon his
entrance. They were ill-prepared to so summarily cast the subject
aside, and stood still, with preoccupied, dilated eyes, mechanically
gazing at him as he turned lightly toward Yates, who rose from a saddle
on which he had half reclined beside the fire. The young mountaineer's
face had a tinge of pallor, despite its sunburn. His dull brown eyes
were restless and anxious. He was hardly an apt scholar for scheming
and dissimulation, but he sought an air of ease and satisfaction as he
asked:
"Waal, did ye hear ennything o' my fambly in yer travels?"
Cheever, all himself again, clapped him on the shoulder with a
heartiness that made the blow ring through the high stone vault. "I
_seen_ 'em, my fine young cock, I _seen_ 'em. I wouldn't take no
hearsay on it. I seen Mis' Yates _herself_, an' talked a haffen hour
with her. An' I seen Moses."
Steve Yates made shift to glance at him once, then he turned his eyes
away toward the western sky, nodding repeatedly, but silently, to the
items of news with which Cheever favored him.
"Mis' Yates ain't wantin' fur nuthin', though Moses wants everything,
_'ceptin' teeth_; like ter hev took my horse-critter away from me,
willy-nilly! Mis' Yates hev got that thar ugly, leetle, frazzle-headed
Pettingill vixen ter 'company her, an' Baker Anderson with his rifle
bides thar o' nights. Mis' Yates war cheerful an' laffin'. 'Steve will
kem back whenst he gits tired,' she say. 'He an' me had words 'fore he
lef'. I'll hold out ez long ez he kin,' she say. 'I don't believe he
hev done nuthin' agin the law,' she say. 'But _ef_ he hev,' she say,
'he air better off away than hyar at home, 'kase lynchers air mighty
lawless round these parts.' An' she say, 'I know Steve air man enough
ter take keer o' hisself an' do fur the bes', an' I'm willin' ter bide
by what he do.'"
Alack! that a lie can so counterfeit the truth! To this wily and
specious representation Stephen Yates listened with his eyes full of
tears, afraid to trust a glance upon the face of his crafty companion.
"She say," Cheever went on, "ef Steve hev done ennything agin the law,
I hope he'll make hisself sca'ce.'"
The other men, now affecting to stroll about in the ample spaces of
the cavernous place, busying themselves with replenishing the fire
or feeding the horses, of which there were half a dozen in a shadowy
nook that seemed to extend downward to further subterranean regions,
all gave furtive heed to these domestic reports. Ever and again they
eyed the disingenuous face of the narrator with its half-closed lids
and flexible lips. Then they would look at one another, and slyly wink
their recognition of his craft. One of them, standing with his hands
in his pockets and with a fire-lit face above the blazing logs, after
a survey of this sort, grotesquely imitated the speaker's attitude and
gesture, and silently worked his jaws with abnormal activity, as if
in emulation of Cheever's ready eloquence, shook his head in affected
despair, and desisted amid a smothered titter from the rest.
"Moses hev got another tooth; mighty nigh ez long ez a elephint's I
seen at Colbury, I told him; an' it seemed ter make him mad--leastwise
madder'n he war at fust. He wouldn't take no notice o' me, 'ceptin'
whenst I put my finger in his mouth ter view his teeth, an' durned ef
he didn't nearly bite it off. Oh, ye needn't ter trouble, Steve; ye air
all right, an' hev done the bes' ye could, cornsiderin' all."
"I reckon so! I hope so!" said Yates, with something very like a sob.
They all sat around the fire late that night, after their supper of
venison broiled on the coals, and corn-bread baked in the ashes, and
washed down with a plentiful allowance of innocent-looking moonshine
whiskey, colorless and clear as spring-water. The stars seemed very
near, looking in at the wide portals of the niche; the tops of the
gigantic trees swaying without were barely glimpsed above the verge.
The shadows of the men lengthened over the floor, or fluctuated on
the wall as the flames rose or fell. Now and again the fire-light was
strong enough to show the horses at their improvised manger in those
recesses where the darkness promised further chambers of the cavern.
One steed lay upon the ground, the others stood, some still and
drowsing, but more than once the sharp pawing of an iron-shod hoof
challenged the abrupt echoes.
Outside, so sweet, so pure was the summer night; the buds of the
elder-bush were riven into blooms, the mocking-bird piped for the
rising moon, the katydids twanged a vibrant note, and the river
sang the self-same song it had learned in the prehistoric days of
the pygmies. Even so still, so calmly pensive was the time that the
far-away murmur of the water-fall came to Yates's ears, or it may be
to his memory only, which transmitted the fancy transmuted in sound to
his sense. He lounged, half pillowed upon his saddle, in the circle
about the fire, and strove to drink and laugh and talk with the rest.
Many a merry jest had those walls echoed, seeming almost sentient in
emulation of the boisterous joy. To-night, somehow, they had forgotten
their jovial wiles. More than once the echo of laughter quavered off
into strange sounds that the ear shrank to hear, and one after another
of the brawny fellows looked furtively over his shoulder.
A sudden jar--only a screech-owl shrilling in a tree on the river-bank
below--but one of the men was on his feet, all a-tremble, crying out,
"What's that?" And this was the bold Cheever.
"Put up yor pistol, ye darned idjit!" exclaimed Derridge, the disciple
of reason. "Don't ye know a squeech-owel whenst ye hear one? Ye must be
plumb sodden in Pettingill whiskey."
Cheever, with a half-articulate oath, sank back upon the saddle upon
which he half lay and half sat, and presently evolved an excuse for his
nervousness. He had something too in his face that implied a doubt, a
need of support, a wish for counsel.
"That gal at Yates's, I mean Litt Pettingill, sorter purtended ez she
b'lieved ez I knowed o' Steve's wharabouts. Now Steve's welcome to
shelter with we-uns. But I'd hate it powerful ef jes' 'kase he fell
in with we-uns that night ez he war a-goin' fur the doctor ter patch
Len Rhodes's head, 'twar ter be the means o' draggin' the law down on
we-uns, an' gittin' it onto our trail."
"Ye mus' hev said suthin'. _She_ couldn't jes' hev drawed the idee
out'n _nuthin'_," reasoned the deep bass voice of Derridge, who wore a
severe and reprehensive frown. "Ye air a smart man, Buck, an' I ain't
denyin' it none, but whenst a man talks ez much ez you-uns he _can't_
gin keerful heed ter _all_ his words, an' ye mus' hev said suthin' ez
gin her a hint. Folks kin talk too much, specially whenst they set up
ter be _smart_." He was a silent man himself, and was accounted slow.
Cheever sneered. "Ye air powerful brigaty ter-night. I reckon I be
ekal ter keepin' a secret from enny gal folks. Leastwise I hev knowed
a power o' secrets an' cornsider'ble gal folks. An' they never got
tergether ez I ever hearn tell on."
This was logic, and it silenced his interlocutor. They all sat
musing for a time, while the smoke mounted into the lofty dome of
the niche, and the fire leaped fitfully, casting its flicker on all
their faces, and the whole interior, a dull red and a dusky brown,
seemed a discordant contrast to the white, lucent light of the unseen
moon, stretching across the shadowy landscape. Dew there was on the
trees without; it scintillated now and then, and far away rose soft
and noiseless mists. More than once the night sighed audibly in sheer
pensiveness.
"Boys," said Bob Millroy, suddenly, "I be a believer in signs."
There was a motionless interest in every face turned toward him. A
contagion of credulity was in the very word.
"Hyar we-uns hev been," he went on, "a-goin' tergether fur many a day
in secret, an' sech ez our workin's air they ain't 'cordin' ter law nor
the 'pinion o' the cove. An' I ain't felt 'feard nowise--though some
mought say the hemp air growed an' spun, an' the rope air twisted--till
this evenin', whenst Buck Cheever seen an' extry man 'mongst we-uns, ez
turned away his face. Sence then the fire's cold!"
He spread out his hands toward it, shaking his head in token of the
futility of its swift combustion, with its flashes and sparkle and
smoke, as he chafed them together.
"Lord A'mighty, ye durned cowardly fool!" cried the leader of the
party, beside himself with anxiety and many a premonition. "Didn't I
tell ye agin 'twar jes' Steve, ez I never looked ter view, bein' ez he
ain't reg'lar 'mongst we-uns?"
"Ye 'lowed he turned his face away," said the believer in signs.
"Waal, hev Steve got enny crick in his neck that disables him from
a-turnin' of _his_ face away?" demanded Cheever.
"He war in the shadder; ye never seen Steve," said Derridge, slowly
shaking his logical head.
"He turned his face away so ez ye mought not view it," said Millroy,
with a credulity that coerced responsive conviction.
Cheever was shaken. He suddenly desisted from argument. "Who air ye
a-'lowin' 'twar?" he demanded from the opposite side of the fire.
The ligaments of his neck were elongated as he thrust his head forward.
The fire-light showed only a glassy glitter where it struck upon the
eyeballs beneath his half-closed lids. Bereft of the expression of his
eyes, it was wonderful how much of suspense, of petrified expectation,
of the presage of calamity, the hard lines of his face conveyed.
"'Twar him we met up with on the road that night," said Millroy, who
from the affluence of his resources of conjecture could afford to
dispense with mere proof and fact.
Cheever was conscious that the others were watching him with the urgent
anxiety of those who have a personal interest at stake. The sense of
emergency was substituted for courage.
"I wish 'twar," he said, coolly. "_He_ ain't dead--a mighty pity! I'd
give the bes' horse I ever see"--he nodded his head toward the gallant
roan--"ef I could view _his_ harnt."
There was an evident revulsion in the plastic minds of his followers.
They had no sense of consistency to sustain adherence to any dogma.
Millroy was in the minority when he said, still mysteriously shaking
his head, "I'll bet the minit ye seen him 'mongst we-uns an' he turned
his head away war the minit o' his takin' off."
"Ye air always skeered o' yer shadder, Bob," said Cheever; "an' I never
knowed a feller so rich in signs ez kem ter nuthin'. That man would
be powerful welcome hyar in the sperit. I be a heap more pestered
'kase we let him git off soul an' body tergether. I know he war shot.
I dun'no' who fired it"--he mechanically closed his right hand as upon
the handle of a pistol, his first finger extended and crooked upon
the imaginary trigger, while the observant Bob Millroy scanned with
unspoken deductions the unconscious, involuntary gesture. "I never
thunk he war much hurt, though ez he went scourin' off he war bowed ter
the saddle-bow, but that war ter escape the bullets ez kem arter him.
He'll live ter lead a posse an' the sher'ff ter the spot, mos' likely;
_I'm_ 'feared o' that. I'd _de_light ter see his harnt."
"Bob oughter hev a muzzle," said the reasonable Derridge,
irritably--"ter keep him from spittin' out signs hyar, whilst we-uns
oughter be cornsiderin' how the law mought be takin' us, red-handed,
with all our plunder ter convict us"--he cast a glance at certain
saddle-bags that lay close to Cheever's side. "He jes' sets up an' gins
us a sign fur this, an' a warnin' fur that, till we air plumb wore out
with his foolishness."
"This place be safe enough, I'm a-thinkin'; no use a-worryin' an'
a-fussin'," said the unctuous voice of Pete Beckett, always full of a
hopeful content, and like oil upon the troubled waters.
The others listened with clearing countenances, but Cheever shook
his head. "Revenuers know it; they raided a still hyar wunst." The
red fire-light on the circle of faces showed their alarm at the
recollection, the prophetic suggestion. "Old man Peake run it."
"Ye 'low ef they war ter s'picion ennybody roundabouts, they mought
s'arch hyar," said Derridge, drawing the logical conclusion.
"Edzac'ly," said Cheever, impatient of the waste of words by so patent
a deduction.
"They do say," remarked Millroy, sepulchrally, "that arter Zeb Tait
went deranged, he hid hyar whenst they wanted ter jail him ez a crazy."
"Too crazy ter want ter go ter jail," exclaimed Derridge, satirically.
"An'," pursued Millroy, lugubriously, "he starved hisself ter death
in this place; leastwise they fund his corpse hyar, though he mought
hev died from his ailment. But I dun'no' _ef_ folks _do_ die from jes'
bein' crazy an' bereft."
"Naw, they don't," said Cheever, suddenly, "else ye'd hev been dead
long ago, ez crazy a loon ez ever went a-gibberin' o' foolishness
around."
Somehow his magnetic quality was at fault. The others failed to fall
in with his humor. They all sat silent, staring at the red coals; the
image of the distraught, solitary creature, who had in the secret
stronghold of the mountains wrought out his terrible doom, was in the
mind of each.
Millroy spoke rather to their thought than to the words of Cheever,
when he said, "The buzzards an' the eagles flyin' an' flusterin' round
the body led the sher'ff ter the spot."
The prosaic word, full of worldly omen, broke the breathless spell.
"An' the _sher'ff_ knows the place, too!" cried Derridge. "Waal"--he
turned his eyes, at once furious and upbraiding and full of prescient
terror, upon Cheever--"hell-fire be my portion ef I don't think ye hev
tuk the mos' public place about the cove fur these hyar doin's"--he
pointed at the saddle-bags. "An' a man in Colbury either dead by this
time, with warrants sworn out for we-uns, or else on our track ter
identify us fur the sher'ff."
"I tuk this place 'kase 'twar our reg'lar stampin'-groun'," cried
Cheever, lifting his voice to defend himself against the burly,
swelling tones of his accuser. "It air ez safe ez enny other. Thar
ain't none o' us out o' place 'ceptin' Steve." He winked slyly at
the others, for the young mountaineer lay a little in the shadow and
a trifle behind him. So blunted was the conscience, the humanity in
each, that the sense of possessing a scape-goat, the opportunity of
profit on another's injury, had a suave and unctuous influence to
heal their dissension. "_We-uns_, why, we-uns air some a-herdin' o'
cattle twenty mile away on the Balds; some war in Car'liny yistiddy
tradin' fur cattle"--he pointed at the mire on the boots of two of the
party--"Buncombe County mud! An' _I_ hev jes' got back from ridin' in
open daylight about the cove, with my mouth an' eyes stretched ter
hear how Yates hev disappeared. I be a-goin' home ter-morrer ter git
salt fur my cattle"--he put on a waggishly virtuous air. "An' _I_ war
thar ter-day, ez my fambly kin testify. 'Tain't safe, though, I know,
ter keep this truck hyar long"--he winked at the saddle-bags--"nor ter
divide it yit."
The alert expression with which each man hearkened to the allusion of
partition was eminently suggestive of the pricking-up of ears. Indeed,
as they all sat indistinct in the shadow and the flicker, there was
something dog-like or wolf-like in the whetted expectancy of their
waiting attention.
"I laid off ter hide it hyar fur ter-night an' ter-morrer," continued
Cheever, "an' whilst some gyards it, the t'others go off an' show
tharsef's in place--'ceptin' Steve"--his thin, expressive lips were
slightly elongated. "The news 'ain't got ter the cove yit, but time it
do they will all be fur stringin' him up. _Him_--_knowed_ ter be on
that road _that_ night at _that_ hour, _an' 'ain't never showed up no
mo'_."
A grin of many conceits was upon his countenance, unseen by the subject
of conversation, while the men in the full flare of the fire-light
had some ado to suppress any facial response of relish. For in this
circumstance the dullest amongst them found it easy to discern their
safety. Some discussion ensued as to the best method of secreting the
treasure until it should be safe to divide and use it.
"Jest ter think," remarked Cheever, with jovial hypocrisy, "o' the
strange workin's o' Providence. All we-uns war arter war the man's
horse--jes ter take the horse-critter an' turn the man afoot in the
road--an' stiddier that we tuk this pile o' money. It'll buy a hundred
sech horses."
Perhaps it was because of the succumbing of their fears in the drowsy
influences of the hour, waxing late, perhaps because of the confidence
engendered by elation and success, but a new sentiment of security, of
capability, was perceptible upon the mere mention of their exploit, and
several were disposed to dilate upon the future expenditure of their
share rather than to devise means to properly secrete it. Here was
where they seemed, strangely enough, Yates thought, to misunderstand
Cheever. He took little part in the discussion; he listened to each
with a sneering negation, half masked beneath his lowered eyelids, and
Yates readily divined that none probably would know the hiding-place of
the plunder but himself and Millroy, his loyal henchman, and the only
one of them all in whom he really reposed any confidence.
Derridge sat gazing at the embers; once he offered a characteristic
observation. "I know 'twouldn't do ter keep it hyar till the s'arch
be over," he said, ponderingly, accepting Cheever's suggestion, "an'
'twouldn't do fur all o' we-uns ter light out fur Texas an' sech
tergether. The folks would be a-talkin' 'bout our vamosin' like Steve
done, an' the sher'ff would be on our track with a requisition. An' it
hev ter be hid; not in the woods, 'kase we-uns might lose the spot, or
a big rain mought wash the dirt off'n it, or sech."
"I tell ye," interjected Beckett, with a swift look of inspiration.
"You know old Squair Beamen's fambly buryin'-groun'. Old Mis' Beamen
hev got a tombstone like a big box. Lift up the top, and put the truck
in thar."
"I'd like ter put ye in thar," replied Cheever, who had stolidly eyed
him during this prelection. "I wouldn't hev that truck that close ter a
jestice o' the peace fur nuthin'."
"An' I hev hearn o' other truck bein' hid thar," objected Ben Tyson,
indignantly. "Them men ez robbed the cross-roads store up on Scolacutta
River--thar plunder war fund thar."
"Not fur a long time; 'twar powerful well hid," insisted Pete Beckett,
as if stating an essential value. But the other two laughed, and the
vexed question seemed hardly soon to be decided.
The waning moon in the skies had swung now so high that her white
light lay upon the verge of the niche with a sharply drawn and jagged
outline--the shadow of the roofing ledge. Momently this belt grew
broader, and the glow of the coals more dully red. The two mountaineers
who were deputed to watch while the others slept beguiled the tedium
by a game with a greasy pack of cards, using as a table the seat of a
saddle laid between them as they half reclined on the floor, and played
less by the light of the fire than the clear lustre streaming in at
the arched opening of the grotto. The prone figures of the others gave
evidence in heavy breathing of their unconscious slumbers. All was
silent without; the silver sheen made splendid the woods, although it
was invested with some strange yearning melancholy, belonging only to
the moon on its wane. The frogs had ceased their chanting; the katydid
was dumb; the earth seemed to sigh no more; the insensate vegetation
slept. Once across the white space at the verge, where fell on the
floor the sharp rugged shadow of the roof, there was in the midst of
the stillness a sudden movement; it came from the top of the precipice
above. The two gamesters sat as if petrified, the cards in their hands,
their burning eyes intent upon the shadow of the summit of the cliff.
Nothing--a long moment of suspense. Nothing! And then it came again;
the outline of a floating wing--a swift similitude of the night-hawk
sweeping in its noiseless flight through the air to seek its unwarned
prey. The two men did not so much as glance at one another as they
resumed their game; of these thrilling moments, charged with suspense
and danger, their lives counted many.
So still it was without that it seemed to Yates that he might lose
in sleep the consciousness of those few momentous hours that had
changed the whole current of his life. He went over them again and
again in his scanty dreams with a verisimilitude of repetition that
sufficed almost to prevent him from discerning his waking thoughts
from his slumber. Now and again as he reviewed them he so realized to
his imagination a different ordering of their sequence, which might
have been so readily effected at the time had he but foreseen, that
he experienced almost the relief of escape. Why had he not refused
old Pettingill's request to ride seventeen miles for the doctor? But,
indeed, had he not offered the service from the superabundance of his
good-nature? "I hope the old man got his horse again, like Cheever
say," he sighed; for in the interim his conscience had been loaded with
every ounce that the good bay weighed. And then, again, without the
fancy of what he might have done and what he wished, he would recall
the circumstances as they had befallen him. Never had impressions
been so burned into his consciousness as in those most significant
moments of his life. He could even now recollect the glow of friendly
feeling with which he said, "I don't b'lieve but what the yerb doctor
kin bring Len Rhodes through; but ter pleasure Mr. Shattuck _I'll_
ride fur the t'other doctor, Mr. Pettingill--_I'll_ ride fur him."
He could even feel again his foot in the stirrup, the quick, smooth
gallop of the fresh horse beneath him. And then, the winding lengths
of the sandy woodland roads, so sweet with the breath of the azaleas,
all white and star-eyed in dark bosky places, so fresh with the dew,
so idealized by the moon. And thinking no harm! Thinking of Adelaide,
with regrets for the harsh words between them, with resolutions that
they should be the last. Alack! they were likely to be the last indeed.
And of Moses--proteanwise! For he could see Moses as a half-grown lad,
tall and strong and straight; and then as a bearded man; sometimes
as a justice of the peace; sometimes the elastic paternal ambition
pre-empted for him a seat in the State Legislature; and then the image
dwindled, best of all, to the small limits of the cradle where he
slept, so pink and white and warm, the highest potentate in all the
land! Thinking of these things Yates was as the miles sped; hearing
once afar, afar, a horn wound in the stillness, and then only his
horse's hoofs with the alternate beat of the gallop.
He had ridden hard, since it might be a case of life and death; but
there was a bad stretch of road ahead, a long hill to climb, and the
horse was blown. It was a saving of time, he thought, as he slackened
the pace and went slowly, slowly up the rugged ascent. The grass was
thick on the margin; he drew his horse to the side where the hoofs
might fall on the smooth dank sward. He could scarcely hear his saddle
creak. The animal paused at the summit to snatch a mouthful of cool wet
sassafras leaves, munching with relish, despite the hindrance of the
bit.
Suddenly a wild hoarse scream rang out, startling the night; a tumult
of voices sounded; a pistol shot split the air, another; and, as he
looked from the summit of the hill down the declivity, he saw a group
of horsemen in fierce altercation in the middle of the road. Scant
as the moment was, so bright was the moon that he recognized more
than one face. And the moment was scant, for the central figure, his
whole pose vigorously resistant, fired again, wide of the mark, the
ball whizzing by the ear of Zack Pettingill's bay horse. The animal
uttered a sharp neigh, almost articulate, wheeled abruptly, and,
heedless of either whip or spur, breaking into an unmanageable run,
fled frantically homeward. Behind there were swifter hoofs than his. It
was hardly a moment before Cheever's splendid horse was alongside; his
burly strength re-enforced Steve Yates's pull on the reins. Whether,
in the confusion of the moment, Cheever and his gang had mistaken
the neighing of Pettingill's horse and the sound of his hoofs for
pursuit and incontinently fled, or whether they thus divined that
they were discovered, Yates did not then definitely understand, nor
was it clearer to him afterward. Certainly they dreaded the escape of
the witness who beheld the deed, and knew its perpetrators by face
and name, far more than that of the plundered wayfarer, who, upon the
diversion effected in his favor, made good use of his horse's hoofs
upon the road that he had so lately travelled. Beyond a pistol ball
or two, one of which Yates thought undoubtedly took effect, they did
not offer to pursue him. They rode alongside of their protesting and
unarmed captive, and discovering shortly how efficacious was the
suggestion that he would doubtless be accused of the deed, since so
many knew of his errand at this unusual hour and on this unfrequented
road, they caused him to be pondering heavily upon the dreary
possibilities of circumstantial evidence before they had gone many
miles. Not that he did not offer resistance and seek flight. "What's
the use o' swallerin' this bullet whether or no, Steve?" Cheever had
demanded, as he presented a pistol to his captive's mouth. "I don't
want ye ter eat lead, an' how would that mend the matter fur you-uns?"
And when Yates sought to urge his horse into a gallop, it was but a
shamble in comparison with the smooth, swift gait of the splendid
animal that Cheever bestrode. He could do naught at the time, not even
by screams arouse a wayside habitation, for they had soon plunged into
unfrequented forests, and were far away from the haunts of men.
That they had not used him more unkindly than the interests of their
own safety necessitated made no claim upon his gratitude. Perhaps,
although he had not the courage to court it, he would have preferred
death. He only took advantage of their leniency to stipulate that
Pettingill's horse should be turned loose to return. "He mought be
viewed 'mongst our'n some time. He's too close a neighbor ennyhow,"
said Cheever, and so he consented. Even the trivial detail of the
creature's bewilderment was still in the young man's mind--how the
horse persistently trotted along in the cavalcade, with his lustrous
surprised eyes and his empty saddle, his erstwhile rider mounted behind
one of the other men. More than once after he was driven back he
reappeared from behind a sharp curve of the road, nimbly cantering and
with an appealing whinny. Finally blows prevailed, and from the crest
of a ridge they afterward saw him ambling erratically homeward along
the white moonlit road, now and again stopping by the wayside to crop
the grass or bushes.
"Ef he keeps on that-a-way he'll git home next week," Cheever had
commented.
Even now, reviewing the disaster, Yates could not say definitely what
he should have done, but it seemed that some rescue would have waited
upon his effort had his slow brain but devised it. More than all,
above all, the sight of the saddle-bags containing a considerable sum
of money taken from the stranger had a horror for him. He dwelt upon
the idea that among the people of the cove he must be believed to
have committed the crime, until he had a morbid sense of complicity.
His mind was, as he knew, but a poor tool for scheming, but he was
imperatively, urgently moved by some inward power to make an effort
which might result in the restoration of the money to its proper owner.
He began to feel that integrity is not a repute; it is an attribute of
the mind and a spontaneous emotion of the heart. "'Tain't ter hev folks
_say_ ye're honest; it air ter _be_ honest."
He felt himself forever blasted; he doubted if, in any event, he would
ever dare to return to his home. He had known of men with far less
evidence against them than these perverse lies, that masqueraded as
facts in his case, strung up to a tree without judge or jury. He would
do himself, his wife, his child scant favor in courting that ignoble
doom. He only revolved the robbery for the sake of honesty alone, that
he might devise some scheme to frustrate the highwaymen and restore the
money.
Somehow, as he lay looking out at the gibbous moon, visible now, all
distorted and weird in the purple sky, and no less lustrously yellow
because of the sense of dawn gradually stealing upon the air, he could
not disassociate Shattuck from his train of ideas despite the lack of
logical connection. It was perhaps, he thought dully in recognizing the
fact, because it was upon Shattuck's errand that he had gone to this
dreadful fate; perhaps because the mention of a box-like tombstone had
suggested to him the strange underground sarcophagi, also box-like and
of stone, of the pygmy burying-ground in which Shattuck was interested.
And suddenly he caught his breath and lay still, thinking, a long time.
So languid-footed was the night, but he smelt the rose in its morning
blossoming! A mocking-bird sang, all faint and sweet and fresh, and
dreamed again. Stars were fading; the great valley of East Tennessee
was beginning to be outlined, with ridges and smaller valleys and
rivers and further mountains, with a sense of space and of large
symmetry that outdoes the imagination. And still the moon shone in his
face.
"Buck," he said, suddenly, for all the others slept, and it was
Cheever's turn to watch, "did you-uns ever hear tell o' the Leetle
Stranger People?"
Cheever, smoking his pipe near at hand, as he lay on the floor, lifted
himself upon one elbow. He nodded. "Many a time."
"Folks 'low they useter hev this kentry. They seem sorter small ter hev
ter die."
"I dun'no' but what they do," said Cheever, impressed by the hardship
of the common fate which overtook even such "leetle people." "An' folks
hev fairly furgot they ever lived, too."
Yates nodded his head.
"I dun'no' ez I hev hearn the Leetle People named fur thirty year an'
better. My gran'mam tole me 'bout 'em whenst I war a boy. What ailed
you-uns ter git a-goin' 'bout 'em?"
"Jes' thinkin' 'bout home. Thar buryin'-groun' ain't more'n haffen mile
from my house," replied Yates, casually. "Ye hev hearn tell how they
coffins the dead in stone boxes, two feet undergroun', an' I reckon
that fool talk 'bout Mis' Beamen's tombstone bein' like a stone box
reminded me of 'em."
Cheever held his pipe in his hand. The coal had dwindled to an ash as
he listened. A thought was astir in his crafty brain. Dull at scheming
as Yates was, he could almost divine its processes.
"I dun'no' _when_ I hev hearn the Leetle People named afore," Cheever
said, meditatively.
"The old folks used ter talk 'bout 'em sometimes," rejoined Steve,
apparently inadvertently, "though few knows now they ever lived, nor
whar they lie. One grave air right on the south side o' that thar
laurel bush--the only laurel on the slope; I know, fur the ground
sounds hollow thar; I sounded it one day."
He cast a covert glance at Cheever. The robber's eyes, opened widely
for once, were full of light as they glanced swiftly and searchingly
at the sleeping men, all unconscious, about them. Then he said, in a
casual tone, "I reckon thar's a heap o' lie in all that thar talk 'bout
the Leetle People." And his earnest, intent, breathless face belied his
words as he spoke them.
Yates sank back upon the improvised pillow of saddle and blanket,
breathing quick, feeling alive once more. He had relied on Cheever's
ignorance of Shattuck's intention--known, indeed, to few, and
infinitely unimportant in their estimation--since the horse-thief's
protective seclusion debarred him from much gossip. To this spot
beneath the laurel Yates himself had directed Shattuck's attention. Now
if the treasure should be concealed there, and Shattuck's enthusiasm
should not fail, the discovery would be made and noised abroad, and
some right at last would blossom out of all this wrong.