On a spur of Black Mountain, beyond the Kentucky line, a lean horse was
tied to a sassafras bush, and in a clump of rhododendron ten yards away,
a lean black-haired boy sat with a Winchester between his stomach and
thighs--waiting for the dusk to drop. His chin was in both hands, the
brim of his slouch hat was curved crescent-wise over his forehead, and
his eyes were on the sweeping bend of the river below him. That was
the “Bad Bend” down there, peopled with ancestral enemies and the
head-quarters of their leader for the last ten years. Though they had
been at peace for some time now, it had been Saturday in the county town
ten miles down the river as well, and nobody ever knew what a Saturday
might bring forth between his people and them. So he would not risk
riding through that bend by the light of day.
All the long way up spur after spur and along ridge after ridge, all
along the still, tree-crested top of the Big Black, he had been thinking
of the man--the “furriner” whom he had seen at his uncle's cabin in
Lonesome Cove. He was thinking of him still, as he sat there waiting
for darkness to come, and the two vertical little lines in his forehead,
that had hardly relaxed once during his climb, got deeper and deeper,
as his brain puzzled into the problem that was worrying it: who the
stranger was, what his business was over in the Cove and his business
with the Red Fox with whom the boy had seen him talking.
He had heard of the coming of the “furriners” on the Virginia side. He
had seen some of them, he was suspicious of all of them, he disliked
them all--but this man he hated straightway. He hated his boots and his
clothes; the way he sat and talked, as though he owned the earth, and
the lad snorted contemptuously under his breath:
“He called pants 'trousers.'” It was a fearful indictment, and he
snorted again: “Trousers!”
The “furriner” might be a spy or a revenue officer, but deep down in the
boy's heart the suspicion had been working that he had gone over there
to see his little cousin--the girl whom, boy that he was, he had marked,
when she was even more of a child than she was now, for his own. His
people understood it as did her father, and, child though she was,
she, too, understood it. The difference between her and the
“furriner”--difference in age, condition, way of life, education--meant
nothing to him, and as his suspicion deepened, his hands dropped and
gripped his Winchester, and through his gritting teeth came vaguely:
“By God, if he does--if he just does!”
Away down at the lower end of the river's curving sweep, the dirt road
was visible for a hundred yards or more, and even while he was cursing
to himself, a group of horsemen rode into sight. All seemed to be
carrying something across their saddle bows, and as the boy's eyes
caught them, he sank sidewise out of sight and stood upright, peering
through a bush of rhododendron. Something had happened in town that
day--for the horsemen carried Winchesters, and every foreign thought in
his brain passed like breath from a window pane, while his dark, thin
face whitened a little with anxiety and wonder. Swiftly he stepped
backward, keeping the bushes between him and his far-away enemies.
Another knot he gave the reins around the sassafras bush and then,
Winchester in hand, he dropped noiseless as an Indian, from rock to
rock, tree to tree, down the sheer spur on the other side. Twenty
minutes later, he lay behind a bush that was sheltered by the top
boulder of the rocky point under which the road ran. His enemies were in
their own country; they would probably be talking over the happenings in
town that day, and from them he would learn what was going on.
So long he lay that he got tired and out of patience, and he was about
to creep around the boulder, when the clink of a horseshoe against
a stone told him they were coming, and he flattened to the earth and
closed his eyes that his ears might be more keen. The Falins were riding
silently, but as the first two passed under him, one said:
“I'd like to know who the hell warned 'em!”
“Whar's the Red Fox?” was the significant answer.
The boy's heart leaped. There had been deviltry abroad, but his kinsmen
had escaped. No one uttered a word as they rode two by two, under him,
but one voice came back to him as they turned the point.
“I wonder if the other boys ketched young Dave?” He could not catch the
answer to that--only the oath that was in it, and when the sound of the
horses' hoofs died away, he turned over on his back and stared up at the
sky. Some trouble had come and through his own caution, and the mercy
of Providence that had kept him away from the Gap, he had had his escape
from death that day. He would tempt that Providence no more, even by
climbing back to his horse in the waning light, and it was not until
dusk had fallen that he was leading the beast down the spur and into a
ravine that sank to the road. There he waited an hour, and when another
horseman passed he still waited a while. Cautiously then, with ears
alert, eyes straining through the darkness and Winchester ready, he went
down the road at a slow walk. There was a light in the first house, but
the front door was closed and the road was deep with sand, as he knew;
so he passed noiselessly. At the second house, light streamed through
the open door; he could hear talking on the porch and he halted. He
could neither cross the river nor get around the house by the rear--the
ridge was too steep--so he drew off into the bushes, where he had to
wait another hour before the talking ceased. There was only one more
house now between him and the mouth of the creek, where he would be
safe, and he made up his mind to dash by it. That house, too, was
lighted and the sound of fiddling struck his ears. He would give them a
surprise; so he gathered his reins and Winchester in his left hand, drew
his revolver with his right, and within thirty yards started his horse
into a run, yelling like an Indian and firing his pistol in the air.
As he swept by, two or three figures dashed pell-mell indoors, and he
shouted derisively:
“Run, damn ye, run!” They were running for their guns, he knew, but
the taunt would hurt and he was pleased. As he swept by the edge of a
cornfield, there was a flash of light from the base of a cliff straight
across, and a bullet sang over him, then another and another, but he
sped on, cursing and yelling and shooting his own Winchester up in the
air--all harmless, useless, but just to hurl defiance and taunt them
with his safety. His father's house was not far away, there was no sound
of pursuit, and when he reached the river he drew down to a walk and
stopped short in a shadow. Something had clicked in the bushes above him
and he bent over his saddle and lay close to his horse's neck. The moon
was rising behind him and its light was creeping toward him through the
bushes. In a moment he would be full in its yellow light, and he was
slipping from his horse to dart aside into the bushes, when a voice
ahead of him called sharply:
“That you, Dave?”
It was his father, and the boy's answer was a loud laugh. Several men
stepped from the bushes--they had heard firing and, fearing that young
Dave was the cause of it, they had run to his help.
“What the hell you mean, boy, kickin' up such a racket?”
“Oh, I knowed somethin'd happened an' I wanted to skeer 'em a leetle.”
“Yes, an' you never thought o' the trouble you might be causin' us.”
“Don't you bother about me. I can take keer o' myself.”
Old Dave Tolliver grunted--though at heart he was deeply pleased.
“Well, you come on home!”
All went silently--the boy getting meagre monosyllabic answers to his
eager questions but, by the time they reached home, he had gathered the
story of what had happened in town that day. There were more men in
the porch of the house and all were armed. The women of the house moved
about noiselessly and with drawn faces. There were no lights lit, and
nobody stood long even in the light of the fire where he could be seen
through a window; and doors were opened and passed through quickly. The
Falins had opened the feud that day, for the boy's foster-uncle, Bad
Rufe Tolliver, contrary to the terms of the last truce, had come home
from the West, and one of his kinsmen had been wounded. The boy told
what he had heard while he lay over the road along which some of his
enemies had passed and his father nodded. The Falins had learned in some
way that the lad was going to the Gap that day and had sent men after
him. Who was the spy?
“You TOLD me you was a-goin' to the Gap,” said old Dave. “Whar was ye?”
“I didn't git that far,” said the boy.
The old man and Loretta, young Dave's sister, laughed, and quiet smiles
passed between the others.
“Well, you'd better be keerful 'bout gittin' even as far as you did
git--wharever that was--from now on.”
“I ain't afeered,” the boy said sullenly, and he turned into the
kitchen. Still sullen, he ate his supper in silence and his mother asked
him no questions. He was worried that Bad Rufe had come back to the
mountains, for Rufe was always teasing June and there was something
in his bold, black eyes that made the lad furious, even when the
foster-uncle was looking at Loretta or the little girl in Lonesome
Cove. And yet that was nothing to his new trouble, for his mind hung
persistently to the stranger and to the way June had behaved in the
cabin in Lonesome Cove. Before he went to bed, he slipped out to the
old well behind the house and sat on the water-trough in gloomy unrest,
looking now and then at the stars that hung over the Cove and over the
Gap beyond, where the stranger was bound. It would have pleased him
a good deal could he have known that the stranger was pushing his big
black horse on his way, under those stars, toward the outer world.