V.

In the light of after events, one might wonder if the genial, care-free

Edward Briscoe remembered any detail of the discarded arrangement of the

previous evening for the transportation of his transitory guest, Frank

Dean, to Shaftesville; if he realized that at the moment when the revenue

officer would have been starting on the journey, as the host had

insistently planned it, he was himself at the turn of the road and just

beyond the jutting crag; if he divined that the vibrations of the

telephone wire had betrayed the matter to a crafty listening ear on the

party-line in the vacant hotel across the ravine--or was the time too

short for the consideration? Did he even recognize the significance of

the apparition when a swift, erect figure stepped openly from under the

shadowy boughs of the balsam firs into the middle of the road, that the

bead might be drawn straight? Did he appreciate that the flash is sooner

sped than the missile and know his fate before the rifle-ball crashed

into his skull!--or was the instant all inadequate and did he enter

eternity ere he was well quit of this world?

Frightened by the sudden appearance of the man in the middle of the

thoroughfare, the funnel-shaped flare of light, the sharp report of the

weapon, the mare, trotting at full speed, swerved, plunged, backed, the

reins hanging loose about her heels, her driver having fallen forward

upon the dashboard. The dog-cart began to careen to one side as the

animal continued to back and rear, deterred from flight by the figure

standing still directly in the road. Suddenly she sought to turn in the

restricted narrow space, and instantly the wheels were over the verge of

the precipice.

All useless were the convulsive efforts of the creature to maintain her

footing on the rocky brink, the clutching hoofs, the elastic bounds. With

the weight of the vehicle, the dead man leaning heavily on the dashboard,

it was but a moment of suspense--then like a thunderbolt the whole went

crashing down into the valley, the depth to be conjectured by the

considerable interval of time before the sound of rending boughs and

surging foliage in the air gave token that the wreck was hurtling through

the trees on the levels a thousand feet below.

Two other men, armed with rifles, had sprung from among the firs and

stood aghast and listening on the verge of the crag. There was no longer

a sound. The tragedy was complete, irrevocable, before a word was

uttered.

"'T warn't _him_!" gasped the youngest--hardly more than a boy indeed.

His broad, beardless face was ghastly white, and his lips trembled as

violently as his shaking hand.

"Lawd! That was _Edward Briscoe_! What a pity, _sure_! It war a plumb

mistake, Copenny," plained an elder man, whose rifle had not been fired.

There was a regretful cadence in his voice akin to tears, and he held his

long, ragged red beard in one hand as he peered down into the

unresponsive depths.

"You oughter hev made sure afore ye teched the trigger, Copenny, that he

_war_ the revenuer!" cried the young fellow, Alvin Holvey, with a sudden

burst of petulance, despite the tragic realization expressed in his

quivering face. "Ye're sech a dead shot that ye could hev spared a minute

ter make sure of the revenuer, afore _he_ could hev pulled a

shooting-iron."

The man who had fired the fatal shot had seemed hitherto stunned, silent

and motionless. Now he exclaimed in self-justification: "Why, I war sure,

plumb sure, I thought. We-uns chased that man Dean clear to Briscoe's

house last night--his horse went lame and he got lost from his posse--but

when I fund he hed sheltered with Briscoe, we-uns went into the empty

hotel ter wait and watch fur him ter go. Not knowin' how many men Briscoe

hev got thar, we-uns didn't want ter tackle the house. An' whilst at the

hotel the Briscoes' tellyfun-bell rung--ye know it's on a party line with

the hotel connection--an' I tuk down the thing they call the receiver an'

listened. An' that's jes' the way Briscoe planned it: ter send the

revenuer down an hour by sun with the dog-cart an' his fine mare. Shucks!

Ef Briscoe war minded ter step into Frank Dean's shoes, he hev jes' hed

ter take what war savin' up fur the revenuer, that's all!" Once more he

relapsed into silent staring at the brink, balked, dumfounded, and

amazed.

Suddenly he seemed to respond to some inward monition of danger, of

responsibility. "I be enough of a dead shot ter stop all that dad-burned

talk of yourn!" he drawled in a languid, falsetto, spiritless voice, but

with an odd intimation of a deadly intention. "Ye both done the deed the

same ez ef ye hed pulled the trigger; ye holped ter plan it, an' kem

along ter see it done an' lend a hand ef needed. Ye both done the deed

the same ez me--that's the law, an' ye know it. That is sure the law in

Tennessee."

"Waal, now, Phineas Copenny, 't warn't right nor fair ter we-uns ter

clumsy it up so," protested the young mountaineer. "Ef it hed been the

revenuer, I'd hev nare word ter say. I'd smack my lips, fur the deed

would taste good ter me, an' I'd stand ter it. But this hyar Mr.

Briscoe--why, we-uns hev not even got a gredge agin him."

"No, nor nobody else that ever I hearn of. Mr. Briscoe war a plum

favor_ite_, far an' nigh," said old Jubal Clenk, the eldest of the party.

"But shucks!" he continued, with a change of tone and the evident

intention of preserving harmony among the conspirators. "'Twar jes' an

accident, an' that's what it will pass fur among folks ginerally. Mr.

Briscoe's mare skeered an' shied an' backed off'n the bluff--that air

whut the country-side will think. Whenst his body is fund his head will

be mashed ter a jelly by the fall, an' nobody kin say he kem otherwise by

his death--jes' an accident in drivin' a skittish horse-critter."

Whether it was a sound, whether it was a movement, none of the group was

accurately aware. It may have been merely that mesmeric influence of an

intently concentrated gaze that caused them suddenly to turn. They beheld

standing in the road--and they flinched at the sight--a witness to all

the proceedings. A small, a simple, object to excite such abject terror

as blanched the faces of the group--a little boy, a mere baby, staring at

the men with wide blue eyes and unconjecturable emotions. He had

doubtless been enveloped in the rug which had fallen from the vehicle as

it first careened in the road, and which now lay among the wayside weeds.

His toggery of the juvenile mode made him seem smaller than he really

was; his scarlet cloth coat, embroidered in Persian effects, was thick

and rendered his figure chubby of aspect; his feet and legs were encased

in bulky white leggins; he wore a broad white beaver hat, its crown

encircled by a red ribbon, and his infantile jauntiness of attire was

infinitely incongruous with the cruel tragedy and his piteous plight.

Although perhaps stunned at first by the shock of the fall, he was

obviously uninjured, and stood sturdily erect and vigilant. He looked

alert, inquiring, anxious, resolved into wonder, silently awaiting

developments. His eyes shifted from one speaker to another of the strange

party.

"Lord! He'll tell it all!" exclaimed Alvin Holvey, appalled and in

hopeless dismay.

"Naw, he won't, now," snarled Copenny rancorously. "Thar will be a way

ter stop his mouth."

"Why, he is too leetle ter talk. He don't sense nuthin'," cried old

Clenk, with an eager note of expostulation, attesting that he was human,

after all. "Don't do nuthin' else rash, Phineas Copenny, fur the love of

God!"

Jubal Clenk dropped on one knee in front of the little boy, and the two

were inscrutably eyeing each other at close quarters. "Hello, Bubby!

Whar's yer tongue? Cat got it?" he asked in a grandfatherly fashion,

while the other men looked on, grim and anxious, at this effort to gauge

the mentality of the child and their consequent danger from him.

Still staring, the little boy began slowly to shake his head in negation.

"What's yer name, Squair? What's yer name?"

But the child still stared silently, either uncomprehending or perceiving

that his safety lay in incompetency.

Clenk rose to his feet in sudden relief. "He don't sense nuthin'! He's

too little to talk. He can't tell wuth shucks! We will jes' leave him

hyar in the road, an' the folks that find what's down thar in the valley

will find him too. I wonder somebody ain't passed a'ready. An' sure

we-uns oughter be a-travellin'."

But Holvey revolted against this offhand assumption of confidence. He

made a supplemental effort on his own account. "Why don't ye tell yer

name, Bubby?" he asked cajolingly.

"'Tause," the child answered abruptly, "I tan't talk."

Copenny burst into sudden sardonic laughter, with wondrous little mirth

in the tones, and the other miscreants were obviously disconcerted and

disconsolate, while the small schemer, whose craft had failed midway,

looked affrighted and marvelling from one to another, at a loss to

interpret the mischance.

"Dadburn it!" said the mercurial Clenk, as depressed now as a moment

earlier he had been easily elated. "We-uns will jes' hev ter take him

along of us an' keep him till he furgits all about it."

"An' when will ye be sure o' that?" sneered Copenny. "He is as tricky as

a young fox."

Half stunned by the tremendous import of the tragedy he had witnessed,

the child scarcely entered into its true significance in his concern for

his own plight. He realized that he was being riven from his friends, his

own, and made a feeble outcry and futile resistance, now protesting that

he would tell nothing, and now piteously assuring his captors that he

could not talk, while they gathered him up in the rug, which covered head

and feet, even the flaunting finery of his big, white beaver hat.

In the arms of the grandfatherly Clenk he was carried along the

bridle-path in the dulling sunset, and presently dusk was descending on

the austere mountain wilderness; the unmeasured darkness began to pervade

it, and silence was its tenant. As the party went further and further

into the woods, the struggles of the child grew fitful; soon he was

still, and at last--for even Care must needs have pity for his callow

estate--he was asleep, forgetting in slumber for a time all the horror

that he had seen and suffered.

But when he came to himself he was a shivering, whimpering bundle of

homesick grief. He wanted his mother--he would listen to naught but

assurances that they were going to her right away--right away! It was a

strange place wherein he found himself--all dark, save for flaring

torches. He could not understand his surroundings, and indeed he did not

try. He only rubbed his eyes with his fists and said again and again that

he wanted his mother. He was seated on a small stone pillar, a stalagmite

in a limestone cavern, where there were many such pillars and pendants of

like material hanging from the roof, all most dimly glimpsed in the

torch-light against an infinitude of blackness. The men who had brought

him hither, and others whom he had not heretofore seen, were busied about

a dismantled stone furnace, gathering up such poor belongings as had

escaped the wreckings of the revenue force. Now and then a glitter from

the fragments of the copper still and the sections of the coils of the

worm marked the course their ravages had taken, and all the chill,

cavernous air was filled with the sickly odor of singlings and the

fermenting mash adhering to the broken staves of the great riven tanks,

called the beer-tubs. The moonlight came into this dark place at the

further end, for this was one of the many caves among the crags that

overhang the Little Tennessee River, and once, looking toward the jagged

portal, Archie saw a sail, white in the beams on the lustrous current,

and asked if they were going in that boat to his mother, for, he said, he

knew that she did not live in this cellar.

"Yes, yes," Clenk assured him. They were making ready to leave now,

though not in that boat. "An' look-a-hyar! What a pretty! Ye kin hev this

ter play with ef ye will be good."

He led the little boy up to a tallow dip blazing on the head of a barrel,

that he might have light to examine the token. It was a small bit of the

cavernous efflorescence, which, growing on subterranean walls, takes

occasionally definite form, some specimens resembling a lily, others

being like a rose; the child tried feebly to be grateful, and put it with

care into one of the pockets of his little red coat--his pockets in which

he had once felt such plethora of pride!