In the deep obscurity of those dark hours before the moonrise, in the
effacement of all the visible expressions of material nature, save the
glitter of the stars and the glooming of the shadows, Felix Guthrie had
been alone, as it were, with his own soul. He had never known, native
of the wilderness though he was, so intense a sense of solitude. It
was as if his spirit had gone forth from the familiar world into the
vast voids of the uncreate. He took no heed of the dangerous way down
the steeps, but gave the horse the rein, and trusted to the keener
nocturnal sight of the animal. His dog ran on ahead pioneer-wise,
retracing his way from time to time and gambolling about his master's
stirrup irons, his presence only made known by a vague panting which
Guthrie neither heard nor heeded. Even to the voice of the mountain
torrent he was oblivious, although it seemed louder far by night than
by day, assertive, unafraid, congener of the solitude, the darkness,
and the melancholy isolations of the mountain woods. The rhododendron
blooming all unseen by the way touched his cheek with a soft petal
and a freshness of dew; now and again a brier clutched at his sleeve;
sometimes a stone rolled beneath his horse's hoofs, and fell into the
abyss at the side of the road, sonorously echoing and echoing as it
smote upon the rocky walls of the chasm, the decisive final thud so
long delayed that to judge thus of the unseen depths which lurked at
either hand might have daunted him had he listened. The horse would
hesitate at times, and send forth a whinnying plaint of doubt or fear
when the rushing torrent crossed the way, plunging in presently,
however, and, if need were, swimming gallantly, with the swimming dog
in his wake.
Guthrie's thoughts made all the way heavy; deeper than the glooms of
the night they shadowed his spirit.
"Though she may sing an' he may listen, I ain't a-goin' ter spy him
out fur no sher'ff ez ever rid with spurs. I ain't a-goin' ter hound
him an' track him, fur I ain't no dog; though I ain't got nuthin' agin
dogs, nuther. But"--with a hardening of the face--"I'll hold him ter
account ter me. I'll bring him ter jedgment. He'll 'low the law o' the
lan' hev got a toler'ble feeble grip compared with the way I'll take
holt o' him. He war warned. I told him ez I hed it in my heart ter kill
the man ez kem atwixt Litt an' me."
When he reached the levels of the cove the springy turf served to add
speed to the smooth, swinging, steady pace. He had hardly expected so
soon to see before him the steep gables of the old Rhodes homestead.
These were cut sharply against the sky, for the house stood in the
midst of its open fields. One or two sycamore-trees swayed above its
roof, and great overgrown bushes--lilac and snowball and roses--crowded
the yard. A garden, overgrown too, extended down the slope at the side,
and here as well were masses of shrubs blackly visible in contrast with
the open spaces.
Guthrie was a stranger here. He had never before seen so great a
house as the rambling old brick dwelling. When he had dismounted at
the fence he was for a moment at a loss how to enter. A porch was at
the front and another at the side, and while he hesitated a vague
glimmer of yellow light came through the masses of the foliage that
clustered about one of the windows. He opened the gate; his foot fell
noiselessly upon the weed-grown path. A great white lily was waving
in the gloom close by--he saw it glimmer--another, and another; and
as the file stood close in the border, the heavy rich perfume seemed
to make the air dense. The window glared forth suddenly--the light in
every tiny pane--when he had passed a great arbor-vitæ that stood near
it, trailing its branches on the ground. Within, unconscious, at ease,
unprescient, a man sat by a lamp, a book in his hand, his chair tilted
back, a pipe between his teeth. Save the light, vaporous curling of the
smoke above his head, there was no motion. The fire dwindled in the
chimney-place; the clock had stopped as if it fell a-drowsing on the
midnight hour. The wind had ceased even its vague stir, and the vines
that hung about the window were still. Guthrie stood for a moment as
if the inertia of the scene had fallen upon him, staring at the face
that he had learned to know rather in meditating upon it in its absence
than in the study of its traits. It was softer than he had thought,
younger; but he recognized anew, with an infinite change of sentiment,
that indefinable quality of expression, to which glance, contour, pose,
all contributed, which made it so likable. And if this had been patent
to him, why not to others--to Letitia? A new standpoint had wrought
a radical difference. The vague fascination that had once commended
Shattuck kindled Guthrie's hatred now. His eyes glowed like a panther's
from out of the darkness, and when Shattuck abruptly put up his hand
with the quick, decisive motion of keen interest and turned a page of
the volume, it broke the lethargic spell that seemed to have fallen
upon the mountaineer. Guthrie moved up suddenly close to the window,
his very touch upon the pane. There was an imperious look upon his
face. It seemed to hail the unconscious reader within, who with his
quick deft gesture presently turned another leaf. Guthrie could see
his intent eyes, full of light, shifting from side to side of the page
as they scanned the lines. He made no effort to attract Shattuck's
attention beyond that long steady, glowering look, albeit he wondered
that its effect should be so belated. He had noted often that strange
mesmeric influence of the eye; a wild beast in the woods would not
remain oblivious of the presence of his natural enemy were a human
being's gaze steadily fixed for some space upon him. Shattuck suddenly
put up his hand with a vaguely impatient air of interruption, and
passed it over his cheek; then he rose abruptly to his feet, crossed
the hearth with his quick, sure step, and reached up to the high
mantel-piece, dusky in the shadow. There was a sharp metallic click
outside amongst the honeysuckle vines--Guthrie had cocked his pistol.
But it was no weapon which Shattuck had grasped from the mantel-piece.
His train of thought was evidently still unbroken, for he came slowly
back into the circumference of the light of the lamp, as it stood on
the table, turning in his careful deft hands a curiously decorated jar.
Then, still standing, with the other hand he whirled over the leaves of
the book, and seemed to compare the jar which he held to an engraving
upon the page. That serene light of a purely intellectual pleasure was
upon his face, and its peculiar charm, its alertness, its mobility,
its sympathetic intimations, its clear candor, its courage, had never
been more individual, more marked. The man outside, with his pistol
cocked in his hand, keenly alive to all impressions that mutually
concerned them, sought to see him as once he had seemed. Jealousy
had tampered with Guthrie's vision, and he could no longer read
these patent characters; they were like a language that one has half
forgotten--a vague suggestion here and there, a broken association, a
dull misconception. The next moment their eyes met.
For one instant the sudden sight of that white cheek pressed close to
the glass drove the blood from Shattuck's face. He stood, the jar still
in his hand, his head bent down, his questioning, searching eye intent.
Then, still without recognizing the features of the man outside, he
placed the jar on the table, and walked slowly to the window, unarmed
as he was. He laid both hands on the sash to lift it; it was thrown
creakingly up, and the light fell full on the face without, its square
contour, its austere, sullen expression, its long yellow ringlets, all
framed by the big brim of the broad hat thrust far back.
"Is that you, Fee?" Shattuck said, in surprise. "You nearly scared me
to death. Why don't you come in?"
His tone was untroubled and casual. It implied a conscience void of
offence.
"He thinks I hain't fund him out," Guthrie commented to himself. Aloud
he replied, grimly: "'Tain't wuth while ter kem in. I kin say what I
hev got ter say right hyar."
Shattuck, all unnoting the pistol in his interlocutor's hand, sat down
upon the window-sill, leaning almost against its muzzle. He held one of
the cables of the many-stranded honeysuckle vine in his hand, by way
of assisting his equilibrium, as he looked down at his guest. There
was no more serious thought in his mind at the moment than the wish
that he could paint, or even sketch. It seemed a pity that so massive
and impressive an embodiment of the idea of manhood, of force, as that
which Felix Guthrie's face and figure presented should be known only to
his few and unappreciative neighbors as a "tarrifyin' critter, full o'
grudges, who shot mighty straight."
Guthrie was a trifle thrown off his balance by this serene
unconsciousness. He hesitated, expecting that Shattuck would ask him
what had brought him hither, unaware that the etiquette in which the
townsman was reared forbade him to inquire or to manifest curiosity
concerning the mission of even an untimely visitor. As Guthrie said
nothing, Shattuck essayed to break the pause.
"See my prehistoric jug?" he smilingly asked, pointing with the stem of
his empty pipe toward the quaint jar upon the table. "I dug that out of
Mr. Rhodes's mound. It's mightily like the cut of a Malay water-cooler
I came across in that book on the table--surprisingly."
Before the unsuspicious suavity of his face and manner Guthrie felt
a vague faltering, such as no ferocity or danger could have induced.
So conscious of this was he that he sought, with a sort of indignant
protest, to throw it off. He seized upon the first pretext to express
his enmity, albeit his judgment failed to approve it. He felt it all
inadequate to the passion which shook him, and far from what he had
intended to say.
"Content yerse'f with that," he exclaimed; "fur ye shall hev nuthin'
from the Leetle People. They hev tuk up thar rest on my lan', an' thar
shell they sleep in peace till the last trump sounds."
The hand that trifled with the heavily twisted vine was still
for a moment, and Shattuck looked down seriously into Guthrie's
eyes--seriously, but without anger.
"It shall be just as you say," he replied. "I don't wonder you feel
strongly about it. At first I was furious at being shot at in a way
that I can't resent, by a woman"--his eyes flashed, and his lips
trembled--"and I declared I would try it again. But afterward I felt we
were fortunate indeed that no one was killed except the colt. It might
have been your brother or Mr. Rhodes as well as myself. You see?" He
turned his head toward the light. Where the hair had been clipped to
the skin a red line showed that the rifle ball had grazed the flesh.
"Pretty good aim in the twilight. And perhaps since there is so strong
a feeling against disturbing the 'pygmies,' so called"--his second
nature of scientific exactitude unconsciously qualified the phrase--"I
ought to let them alone. Still, I am sorry about the little colt; and
as the disaster happened in my errand, I should like to offer some
indemnity." He made a motion toward his pocket.
"I hev a mind ter take ye by the nape o' yer neck an' break it
across the winder-sill!" cried Guthrie, his eyes blazing. "Ye think
I keer 'bout the wuth o' the leetle critter!" He snapped his fingers
scornfully in the air, holding his arm aloft with a fine free gesture.
"I be sorry he is dead, 'kase he hev got no hereafter, an' he war a
frisky beastis, an' loved ter live, an' we-uns will miss seein' him so
gayly prancin' in the pastur'. Ye think I kem hyar ter git a leetle pay
fur him?" He would not wait for Shattuck's protest that both eyes and
gesture preluded. "Naw!" he thundered. "I kem hyar ter-night ter take
yer life"--for the first time Shattuck marked the burnished glimmer on
the barrel of the pistol that he held in his hand--"an' ter do what I
hev never demeaned myself ter do afore--ter take back my promise."
"What promise?" Shattuck interjected.
"Ah, ye know! Ye know full well!" Guthrie shook his head, and in his
voice was a quaver of poignant reproach. "The promise ye got by talkin'
round me, 'kase ye 'lowed I war a ignorant cuss, and not able ter see
through yer deceit with all yer school l'arnin'--by praisin' her looks,
an' tellin' me ter keep up my courage, an' how I mought make out ter
git her ter marry me, arter all. 'Twon't make no difference takin' back
the promise, fur I mean ter take yer life with it. Ye surely remember
the word I said ter you-uns, ez 'twar in my heart ter kill the man ez
kem betwixt me an' Litt; an', by God! it is."
A sudden comprehension was dawning in Shattuck's eyes. He leaned
forward, and laid his hand on Guthrie's shoulder. "Now go slow, Fee,"
he said, soothingly. "Who is this man? Not _I_, and this I swear!"
The imperious face, its pallor distinct in the lamplight falling upon
it from within, the rest of the figure shadowy in the black darkness
without, looked up at him with a scathing contempt wrought in every
feature.
"An' so I swear that I'd be justified ef I war ter put a bullet through
yer heart, an' let yer soul go down ter hell with that word ter damn ye
ter all eternity!"
Shattuck withdrew his hand, frowning heavily. "Look here, my fine
fellow, this is strong language. If I didn't believe you are under some
strange mistake, I'd make you eat your words syllable by syllable. What
do you mean?"
"But I don't want ter murder ye," Guthrie went on, as if Shattuck
had not spoken. "I can't shoot ye down without a weepon in yer han',
like Mis' Yates tried ter do, though ye richly desarve it. Git yer
shootin'-iron an' come out--come out an' stan' up fur yerse'f." He
waved his hand with the pistol in it toward the more open space beyond
the shrubbery. "Come out, or I'll shoot ye ez ye set thar."
"Not one step will I stir until you tell me why you say that I have
come between you and Letitia."
"Bekase _she_ told me so."
Shattuck's unconscious reliance upon his mental supremacy, his
equipment of delicate tact, his assurance of a pleasing personality,
which was half his courage, began to give way. He had yet that
physical self-respect which would enable him to meet his enemy without
a pusillanimous shrinking, but he no longer hoped to command the
adroitness to evade the event. Still he strove to be calm.
"Impossible! Now, what did she say?" he demanded, in a reasonable
voice. Somehow, he had the key to Guthrie's confidence. Even now it
opened to him.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, in a voice of despair, throwing up the arm that
still grasped the weapon, "I knowed it ez much from what she _didn't_
say ez what she _did_. I seen it in her face. I hearn it in her
voice. I ain't blind! I ain't deef! An' then"--every line in his face
hardened--"she tole me how ye kem an' stood outside the winder ter
listen whilst she sung, an' seein' yer face suddint, lookin' in through
the batten shutter, she didn't know ye a-fust--not till arterward,
whenst hearin' yer pickaxe in the Leetle People's graveyard, did she
know 'twar you-uns. An' ye war waitin' fur the moon ter rise. An', damn
ye! what d'ye want ter hear her sing fur?"
Shattuck's face, with a startled astonishment upon it, had grown more
deeply grave. Every intimation of anger had fallen from his manner.
"Guthrie," he said, in a tone so coercive, so serious, that the other
looked up, newly intent, "is there no way to convince you? I never
heard her sing. I never was in the pygmy burying-ground but that one
time with your brother. Now, think! Is there no one else who might
loiter about that house; who might venture--I should never take such a
liberty--to look through the crevices of a closed window?"
Perhaps it was Shattuck's influence over Guthrie; perhaps the anxiety
of a lover to believe his despair unfounded, to hope against hope--at
all events, his long reflective pause indicated a change of mental
attitude.
"Mrs. Yates's husband," suggested Shattuck, plying his advantage; "has
nothing been heard about him lately?"
"Lord, yes!" exclaimed Guthrie, his mind reverting to the sensation of
the day. "I seen him myself yestiddy 'mongst a gang o' horse-thieves
a-hidin' out in the woods. I hed ter run fur my life, ez they set on
me, six ter one. An' the sher'ff overhauled thar den jes ter-day."
His voice faltered a trifle. He looked shamefaced and downcast. The
sheriff's suspicion concerning Shattuck had recurred to him, and he
could not meet the man's eyes with this thought in his mind.
"Now, don't you see, Fee," argued Shattuck, "how likely a thing it is
that Steve Yates should hang around his own cabin, and peer through the
window to take a look at his own wife and child, whom he probably will
never see again, unless in some such way?"
Guthrie nodded, more than half convinced. Still, with his hidden
consciousness of that insult to Shattuck which he carried in his
recollection of the sheriff's menace, of the mission of espionage which
he had refused, he could not look up.
In some subtle way he knew that when Shattuck next spoke it was not to
him alone that he addressed the information, but that the fact might be
made manifest.
"Now I am going to give you a reason why I do not stand between you and
Letitia." At the name Guthrie lifted a listening face. "I am engaged to
be married to a lady in my own city. So Letitia may sing like an oread
and look like a flower, but she is nothing to me."
He said the words with a clear conscience, for if she had fixed her
affection upon him--somehow the idea aroused a vague sweet thrill in
that mortgaged heart of his--it had been unsought.
Guthrie, eager for his own peace of mind to believe him, drew a long
sigh of relief. "I reckon I take up sech notions jes 'kase I am so
all-fired jealous," he said. Then, with a half-laugh, "Litt never
actially said nuthin' nohow--though she air ekal ter sayin' anything
jes ter make me mo' jealous 'n I naterally be."
A mental mutiny possessed Shattuck. Was not this the conclusion that
he had labored in all good faith to precipitate? Where, then, was his
satisfaction in the logical result? Why should he cling in tenacious
triumph to another inference, drawn from her fancy that it was he who
had lingered outside her window to hear her sing? His pulses quickened
with the thought that the very fallacy wore the reflected hues of her
hope. There were other recollections pressing fast upon him--that she
had remembered his words, had recounted his strange stories, the look
in her eyes when she had caught down from the rack the rifle which she
believed had endangered his life. Her dream had in some sort fulfilled
itself. He had long appreciated the charm of her unique beauty, her
sprite-like individuality. His feeling suddenly expanded, glowing like
a bud into the rose at the first warm touch of the sun.
He looked down at Guthrie all oblivious of him, save for weariness of
the importunity of his threats, his constancy of woe, his confidences.
Shattuck was absorbed for the moment in his own emotion, and the world
had suddenly slipped away.
Abstractions befitted the hour. One might hardly think to see it
again--that sordid, dusty, daylight world, full of commerce and hard
bargains, and rigorous conventions of wealth and standing, prosaic
requisites of well-equipped happiness. It had rolled far away out
of consciousness. Upon the low summits of the thick growths of the
orchard gleamed the lustre of the dew and the yellow suffusions of
the rising moon. The shadows had become dense, symmetrical, sharply
outlined. The lilies, their chalices all pearl and gold, were so white
and stately and tall as they stood where the moonbeams conjured them
from out the darkness of the old-fashioned borders. The light drifted
through the fringes of the pines, dark themselves as ever; and between
their boughs, looking to the east, one could see a field of millet,
glistening with all the charmed illusions of a silver lake. And how the
mocking-bird loves the light! From out the midnight his jubilant song
went up to meet it.
Shattuck remembered the moment, the scene, many a year afterward, the
absorption that mulcted Guthrie's words of half their meaning, and more
than half their weight.
"I hev got suthin' else ter say," he began, uneasily. "I dun'no' how
ter tell it ter ye, nor whether I oughter tell it at all. Ef the
sher'ff hed ever seen ye he'd know he war a fool; but thar war a man
robbed an' kilt on the road that night whenst Steve Yates vamosed, an'
folks b'lieve he done it."
The superficial attention with which Shattuck hearkened to this
deepened the next moment.
"An' ez Steve Yates hed no idee o' goin' till ye sent him, the sher'ff
thinks ye might hev sent him on that yerrand."
An inarticulate exclamation of amazement, of indignation, broke from
Shattuck's lips. It was not Guthrie's intention to assuage his fears,
but he felt constrained to be the apologist of the suspicion.
"Ef he hed ever seen ye wunst," he observed, "he'd know better. Of
course he ain't never seen ye."
"Of course not," Shattuck assented, shortly, his confidence renewed.
The suspicion touching himself was not the kind of thing that a man
would willingly consider, even in its most hypothetical and tenuous
guise. That it should be seriously entertained was too terrifying, too
odious an idea to be gratuitously harbored. To seek to throw it off
was the instinct of self-respect, of self-preservation. His nerves
were still sensible of the shock, but his effort was to make light of
it, to treat it as the coarse pleasantry of the officer, perpetrated
concerning the only stranger within the vast circuit of mountainous
country. He felt no gratitude to Guthrie for his warning, as the
mountaineer had expected his revelation to be construed. He looked
down at him with repugnance and indignation in his eyes, and albeit
Guthrie was not skilled in deciphering subtle facial indications, he
understood the sentiment and deprecated it. He did not pursue the
subject further. He cast about in his clumsy way to make amends for
his offence, for thus it seemed to him now, of repeating the obnoxious
suggestion.
"I be powerful sorry I kem a-devilin' ye hyar this time o' night
fur nuthin'," he said. "I reckon ye think I'm plumb gone destracted
'bout Litt," with a pathetic uplifting of his long-lashed eyes to his
interlocutor, who was still sitting in the window. "Ye see a feller
like me is mighty forlorn, especially ez I oughter know ez Litt ain't
one o' them ez kin be hed fur the askin'. I reckon it'll all come right
arter a while?" wistfully interrogative.
"I reckon so," Shattuck was constrained to reply.
Guthrie was never before in so deprecatory or gentle a state of mind.
"I feel plumb outdone whenst I remember how I hev talked ter you-uns,
ez be so powerful perlite an' saaft-spoken ter all, an' considerin'
of feelin's"--Shattuck winced a trifle--"an' how I hev gone on 'bout
takin' back promises an' sech. Ye know I don't mean it. Ye air welcome
ter dig ennywhar ye wanter on my lan', an' I'll holp ye enny time; now,
ef ye like," Guthrie protested with an effort at reparation. "I dun'no'
but what it's ez good a time ez enny. Thar's light enough now, an' Mis'
Yates mus' be off her gyard; she mus' sleep o' nights--leastwise take
cat-naps." He looked up with a propitiatory laugh on his face. "An' I
ain't 'feard o' Baker Anderson, nor Litt, nor even Moses."
Shattuck hesitated. He had been more shaken than he would have
acknowledged even to himself by the crude suggestion that his name
was for a moment connected with one of the brutal and bloody mountain
crimes--a mere æsthetic horror, for his mind could not compass the
atrocity against probability that the suspicion should be seriously
harbored by an officer of the law. He foresaw a night of sleepless
irritability, revolving the idea, should he let Guthrie go, although he
felt that it should fairly be considered only a fit subject of flout,
of ridicule, of inextinguishable laughter. It was rather in the spirit
of defending himself against his own capacities for self-torment that
he readily turned toward the prospect of diverting his mind, occupying
himself with alien interests.
"The spade an' the pick mus' be right thar now," Guthrie observed, by
way of urgence. "Eph say he war so flustrated by Mis' Yates's shootin'
that he forgot ter fetch 'em back home."
Shattuck looked out at the sober solid shadow of the old brick house,
gable and chimney and porch, projected upon the thick herbage of the
yard; the silver-green sea of millet glimpsed between the dark branches
of the pines; the winding road that led the loitering way to the
mountains. "I'll get my hat," he said.
There was no light in the hall save that which the moon cast through
the high window on the landing of the stairs. It seemed fibrous,
skein-like, pendulous, as far as the balusters; then it fell upon the
hall floor below in a distinct, motionless image of the sash and pane,
all white and lustrous. By its radiance one could distinguish a hall
sofa, long and hard, covered with tattered black hair-cloth; above it,
hanging on the wall, the optimistic old barometer that once, perhaps,
had been weatherwise, but now insisted that all signs "set fair"; the
hall tree, whereon Rhodes's hat swung in its place, while its owner
lay unconscious in the room above, the door of which Shattuck need
pass with no solicitous tread, for, bating continuance, the pygmies
themselves slept not more soundly. The door of his own room stood ajar;
the moonlight and the sweet perfumes of the night came in through its
open windows. It had a sort of inhabited look, full of comfortable
suggestions; perhaps it was only because the fatigue of the day was
beginning to hang somewhat heavily on his senses, but as he entered, he
stood for a moment irresolute.
In the midst of the dusky uncertainty of sheen and shadow he was
abruptly startled to see a dim figure suddenly moving at the opposite
side of the room. He advanced a step, and recognized his own image in
the indistinguishable mirror. It had a strange, weird effect, this
half-seen simulacrum of himself, a skulking, uneasy, secret air that
belied its principal, and seemed its own independent attitude, rather
than reflected. It was coercive in some sort. He caught up his hat from
the table, strode down the hall to Rhodes's door, and thus took those
first steps destined never to be retraced. He knocked without response,
then opened the door, which creaked raspingly upon its unoiled hinges,
rusty with long disuse; and Guthrie, waiting at the window below,
amongst the silent pensive lustres of the moon, heard the ringing round
voice of Rhodes break forth in drowsy protest, incongruous, prosaic,
insistently utilitarian. The interval was short before Shattuck ran
down the stair, and sprang through the window, drawing the sash down
behind him, and then the two set forth together.
The lilies bloomed at the gate, their chalices full of dew. The
mocking-bird sang to the silent moon. Far, far away some watercourse
had lifted loud a sylvan song it was not wont to sing by day.
"How still it is! Hear Wild-Duck Creek on the rocks!" Shattuck said
as he buckled his saddle-girth and put his foot in the stirrup. The
eastern windows were all aflare with a white, opaque radiance in
broadened, vitreous, distorted reduplications of the moon. The deep,
elongated shadows of the house lay among the orchard boughs. He looked
around at the old building when once in the saddle, to see its gables
and its chimneys rise anew against the clear sky and the vague outlines
of the mountains, only because it pleased him--its solid decency, even
dignity, in its honest, unornamented validity, touched his receptive
æsthetic sense--not because he divined that he was looking his last
upon it. How finite a creature is man; how little he knows his way
along these earthly paths--adown which soon or late he goes to meet his
fate, never aware how near its approach--one might realize, thinking
on a time like this, when these two, all unprescient, rode together
to the burial-ground of the "Leetle People." The wind was in their
faces--how fresh, how free! The dew glittered in the air; the moon,
although yellow and waning, with a melancholy presage in her lessening
splendors, made the night like some pensive, softly illuminated day of
dreamtides. Their escort of mounted shadows galloped beside them; the
turf stretched out into long miles behind their horses' hoofs. They
met naught save a fox scudding over a stretch of sward with stealthy
speed, and a bundle of feathers between his jaws. The Yates cabin,
that Guthrie was first to see, a dimly glimmering gray, was as silent
and still as if it housed no life within its walls--as silent and as
still as that long slope, with the shadows of the great trees and the
intervenient sheen of the moon all adown it, where the Little People
had slept this many a day, knowing no waking.
Shattuck led the way. He had turned once more to the tall isolated
laurel-bush, almost of tree-like proportions, where he had begun his
labors before. He did not at once throw himself from his horse; he
was taking note of a strange thing, something that he had not marked
heretofore. That mass of bloom and foliage rose between the grave whose
stone coffin his pickaxe had struck and any possible surveillance from
the Yates cabin. A doubt for the first time stirred in his mind whether
it were indeed Adelaide who had fired that murderous rifle ball. The
next moment the absorptions of his intentions, his opportunity, usurped
all else. He flung himself to the ground, breathless, elated, with an
electrical energy in his muscles, as he seized the pickaxe on which
Guthrie leaned irresolute, and struck the first blow.
The mountaineer turned his softened moonlit face upon him with a slow
smile in his eyes. "I be glad ye hed the grit ter begin; I hain't."
The dew had bereft his long curls of their wonted crispness; they
hung in lengthened tendrils and dishevelled on his broad shoulders.
He pushed his hat far back on his head. His heavy spurred boots were
deeply sunken in the long grass. He slowly placed one upon the spade
as he drove it down into the mould. "I can't holp bein' sorry fur the
Stranger People, ez they air leetle, an' air dead, an' hev been waitin'
so long in the dark fur the las' day an' thar summons ter rise."
That sharp smiting of metal upon stone jarred the moonlit quietude, and
Guthrie looked up with dilated eyes, his hand quivering on the spade.
"This ain't no common grave," he cried; "the ground is loose!"
He was not given to logical deductions; he did not speculate; he only
stood staring with wonder; while Shattuck, all unaccustomed to the
practical phenomena of digging, apprehended only cause of gratulation
that the investigation was to be the less hindered. He made no
reply, briskly shovelling out the earth. Presently, with a silent
sign to Guthrie, he reached the topmost slab of the strange small
sarcophagus. How long since it had seen the light that now fell upon
the clay-incrusted stone! When it was first laid here, in what quarter
was the moon? How often had it waxed and waned afterward, unmindful?
The vibrations of the cataract filled the air with the full pulsings
of nature's heart. The wind--wanderer!--came and went, as it did in
the days of the pygmies. A flower from the laurel--a mere tissue of a
bloom, so fine, so fragile of texture--was wafted down, and fell upon
the slab, as transitory, as futile, as unheeded, as ye, O forgotten
Little People!
Then the slab was lightly lifted, albeit with trembling hands. With
averted eyes Guthrie shrank back, and, as his shadow withdrew, the
moon shone straight into the tiny crypt, and Shattuck leaned forward
to look. An exclamation, not of triumph, of horror, smote the air
sharply. The mountaineer, with all his pulses aquiver, looked down into
his coadjutor's white, startled face. Shattuck was kneeling beside
the open grave, holding the coveted jug in his hand, full of silver
currency. The slow mountaineer, hardly mastering the idea, turned to
the coffin. If it still held bones, they lay beneath a pair of folded
saddle-bags that filled the narrow space.
In the confusion that beset his senses, he did not discriminate
the thunderous sound that rose upon the air: the flimsy bridge was
vibrating under the reckless gallop of a score of horsemen. He only
knew, as in a dream, that the moonlight was presently full of swift
mounted shadows bearing down upon them, Shattuck still with the jar in
his hand, although starting to his feet, and he himself leaning upon
the spade. The air reverberated with a savage cheer of triumph. The
sheriff had thrown himself to the ground, and with a smile of scornful
elation held his pistol at Guthrie's head.
"Ye air no spy, air ye, Fee?" he cried out, with ringing sarcasm.
"Got a mighty good reason not ter be. An' I reckon, my pretty Mister
Town-man," turning to Shattuck, "ye air no spy nuther. But I'll gin in,
Fee, I never war so fooled ez I hev been in you-uns. I never thunk ter
set a thief ter ketch a thief this-a-way."
Upon the word, Guthrie, into whose stunned consciousness the truth had
gradually sifted, turned, with a flaring color and a fiery eye, and
dealt the officer a terrible blow in the face with his whole force. The
next moment the two men, their arms interlocked, were swaying to and
fro on the brink of the open grave, so nearly matched in strength that
it was hard to say which might have prevailed, had not a swift flash of
red light sprung out in the pallid moonlight, and a sharp report rung
upon the air. They fell apart, the officer staggering backward, but
Guthrie sinking down upon the ground, whence he would rise no more.
A mingled clamor, terrible, full of fierce meaning, was suddenly loud
upon the night. The shifting temper of the populace was never more
aptly illustrated. In an instant the officer was a prisoner in the
hands of his posse, and his posse was an infuriated mob. The hoarse
cry, "String him up! string him up!" arose more than once. And those
who spoke calmly, and with reason and argument, were equally formidable
as they called upon the officer to justify his deed.
"Air this the law? No trial! no jury! Not a minute gin him to explain!
Call him thief, an' shoot him down, unarmed, in cold blood!"
They pressed about him with eyes hardly less luminous than the eyes
of wolves, hardly so gentle, while the officer protested first
self-defence.
"With twenty men at yer back?" "An' Guthrie's pistols over yander
in the holsters on his saddle?" the refutation rang out. Then, on
the repetition of the terrible cry, "String him up!" the effort at
exculpation shifted to a claim of the accidental discharge of the
weapon. And still the fierce clamor rose anew.
Meantime Felix Guthrie lay very still in the pale moonlight, heedless
of vengeance. His long hair stretched backward on the dank grass; his
face, upturned to the moonbeams, was calm and untroubled; his hands
were listless and limp, and one of the younger men mechanically chafed
them as he now and again bent over to seek some sign of life in the
fixed eyes.
Shattuck stood bewildered, looking with a sort of numb stupefaction
at the prostrate figure upon the grass, and then at the agitated and
furious group about the sheriff. The catastrophe, the very scene before
him, he could not realize. He felt as in a horrible dream, when the
consciousness of fantasy opens before the oppressed senses. More than
once a touch upon his arm failed to rouse him. When he turned his head
at last he saw, half hidden by the boughs of the blooming laurel,
Letitia crouching tremulously in the shadow. He did not wonder how
she came there now, nor note that the door of the little log cabin
was open, and its inmates, roused by the tumult, were standing on the
porch. He only saw her pale elfin face looking out from among the
blooms as if she were native to the laurels. Her voice, though it was
but a whisper, vibrated with urgency.
"Mount an' ride--_ride_ for yer life!" she said; she held his horse by
the bridle. "Thar'll be lynchin' 'fore day." Her tones grew steadier.
"Nobody knows who, nor why."
"I'm not afraid of the law," he said, indignantly.
"This ain't law! Gin yerse'f up in town ef ye want law. But ride
now--ride off in the shadder! Ride fur yer life!"
From the leafy screen she stepped forth, throwing the reins over the
head of the horse, which was frightened and restive, and held the
stirrup for Shattuck. The clamorous voices of those angered men rose
to a hoarse scream, and the agitated tones of the officer, pleading,
arguing, justifying himself, were overborne. Shattuck put his foot in
the stirrup. The next moment he was in the saddle. As he looked down,
he saw Letitia's face distinctly in the moonlight that trickled through
a bough; something of that love of hers, which Guthrie had at once
divined and denied and revealed, was expressed in it.
"Ye'll kem back again--some day--some day?" she said.
He clasped her hand as she lifted it.
"Come back? I'd come back if it were from the ends of the earth!" he
protested.
A little thing to say, wrung out of the impassioned moment, when,
in good sooth, there was no time to measure phrases or take heed of
the cadences of the voice. It changed the world for her. He never
forgot that radiant face in its sprite-like beauty amongst the moonlit
flowers. If there were other eyes in the world so tender, so pathetic,
so exquisite, he never saw them before or afterward. No other creature
of the earth so looked like one of the air. Even as he sought his
escape through the shadows, the dull sound of his horse's hoofs making
scant impression in the midst of the pawing of the posse's steeds,
he turned to catch through the trees a flitting glimpse of her light
dress, her volant attitude, as she sped silently and secretly back to
the waiting group on the porch. Then he rode away--rode for his life,
as she had bidden him.
And he had good need of speed. How the distorted idea gained credence
amongst the infuriated mountaineers it would be difficult to say.
It might have been colored by the circumstance that Guthrie could
logically be presumed to have had no connivance with the robbers whom
he had slain, and no knowledge of where they had hidden their booty;
it might have been suggested by the crafty sheriff as a diversion of
attention; but the suspicion presently permeated the group that Guthrie
had surprised Shattuck in the act of securing the plunder hidden in
the pygmy grave. The discovery of the stranger's flight added the
semblance of confirmation, and lent energy to the pursuit, which,
leading in diverse directions, served to disperse the posse, and thus
annul that formidable engine of the law which the strange happenings
of the night had turned against the sheriff, who had himself summoned
it into existence. It was doubtless with a view to his own safety that
he selected for his share of the search the road back to the county
town, and with no expectation of the result that awaited him there. The
imputation of flight, and of seeking to elude the responsibility of his
act, which might otherwise have attached to this precipitate return,
was in a measure eliminated by the fact that the fugitive had arrived
before him, and had already surrendered to the authorities.
It was a time to which Shattuck could never look back without a
wincing loathing for the part he was constrained to play, although, in
truth, he fared much better than he could have hoped. It so chanced
that the justice of the peace, an old, gentle, friendly man, whom in
those early morning hours he had roused, had himself the spirit of an
antiquarian; his conversation was replete with the ancient and fading
traditions of the Great Smoky Mountains, and he could well appreciate
the strength of the archæological interest which had led Shattuck to
open the pygmy grave. It seemed in the magistrate's estimation an ample
justification for many risks. They were talking of these things quietly
in the justice's office when the sheriff joined them. To his prosaic
amaze, instead of details of the operation of the law indigenous to the
office--points of examining trials and subpœnaings of witnesses, of
arrest and commitment--he heard legends of the old Cherokee settlement,
Chota, the "beloved town," city of refuge, where even the shedder of
blood was safe from vengeance; of the mysterious Ark before which
sacrifices were offered; of Hebraic words in the Indian ritual of
worship; of the great chieftain Oconostota, and his wonderful visit
to King George in London; of the bravery of Atta-Culla-Culla; of the
Indian sibyl known as the Evening Cloud, and the strange fulfilment of
her many strange prophecies.
Thus submitting his motives to no uncomprehending utilitarian
arbitrament, all the rigors of the misunderstanding that Shattuck
feared were averted, and he doubtless owed his admission to bail to
this fortuitous circumstance. That he never came to trial he was
indebted to a chance as friendly, for Millroy, before his death, so far
recovered as to make a sworn statement which inculpated only Cheever
and the horse-thief's gang, thus relieving Yates as well as Shattuck
of all suspicion of complicity in the murder and the robbery.
The mere passing remembrance that his name had ever been mentioned
in connection with these crimes was like the thrust of a knife in
Shattuck's heart for years thereafter, most of all as his enthusiasms
abated, and the more serious interests of life were asserted, and
his worldly consequence increased. Sometimes, amidst the wreaths of
a post-prandial cigar, a sprite-like face, that seemed even in his
unwilling and disaffected recollection supremely fair, was present to
him again, and left him with a sigh half pleasure, half pain. Further
than this his words were naught, and easily forgotten.
Easily forgotten! Every day that dawned to Letitia's expectant faith
held an hour that would bring him. Never a sunset came that was not
bright with his promise for the morrow. Down any curve in the road,
as it turned, she might look to see him. For did he not say he would
come?--and so surely he would! The years of watching wore out her
life, but not her faith. And she died in the belief that her doom fell
all too soon, and that he would come to find her gone. And she clung
futilely to earth for his fancied sorrow.
[Illustration: "EVERY DAY THAT DAWNED."]
Since those days the Little People's burying-ground is doubly deserted.
But few pass, and they eye it askance. And by many a fireside is told
the story of the heavy doom that fell on all who carried their schemes
therein and sought to know its secrets. But the birds nest in its
deep shades. Every year the laurel blooms anew. And Adelaide, looking
with pensive eyes upon it from her home, happy once more, can still
forecast the coming of that fair spring when the morning stars shall
sing together in the vernal dawn of a new heaven and a new earth, and
this mortality shall put on immortality.
Meantime the Little People sleep well.