MYSTERIOUS FOOTSTEPS
Scarcely a moment had elapsed after Hallie’s last scream when she sprang
sobbing into Marion’s arms. Without a question regarding the cause of her
fright, the older girl gathered her up and went racing down the mountain.
It was a headlong flight. Now they were in danger of a plunge down the
steep slope, and now, having stepped upon a round pebble, Marion rolled
twice her length to land against a stout sapling that saved them from
dashing over a cliff. Yet, somehow, at last they found themselves safe in
Marion’s room, seated by the fire, with the door securely bolted behind
them. Then, and only then, did Hallie cease her sobbing to sit staring
round-eyed at the fire.
“What frightened you?” Marion asked.
“A man,” the little girl shuddered.
“Did he try to catch you?” Marion was eager now. She was sure she could
describe that man.
“No. He only stood and stared at me.”
“Then why were you afraid?”
“He was a very ugly man, and—and it seemed like I had seen him before
in—in—” she hesitated, “maybe in a bad dream.”
“Oh!” Marion was excited. Perhaps here was a clue to the little girl’s
lost identity. Perhaps she had seen the man before in that other life
lived before the blow on her head.
“If only I could find that man, perhaps he could tell me,” she told
herself. Yet she knew right well that nothing could induce her to return
to the mountain that night to search for him.
“Did he say anything?” she asked after a moment’s silence.
“Yes,” the little girl spoke quickly. “He said: ‘Hit’s her. Hit shorely
are’!”
Marion started. What further proof did she need that this was the man she
had seen peering in at their window? One more thing was certain, too; it
had been the little lost girl he had thought of when he said, “Hit’s
her.”
At the fireside council that night all the events of the day were
discussed. Mrs. McAlpin approved to the fullest extent the girls’ resolve
to make a stand in the interest of the mountain children and to do all in
their power to elect a school trustee who had the children’s interest at
heart. She would do all within her power to help win the election.
In regard to the mysterious man and little Hallie, it was decided that
should the man be seen again, every effort would be made to obtain
information from him regarding the identity of the child.
“In the meantime,” said Mrs. McAlpin, “we must keep an eye on the child
every moment. It is one thing to find her parents, quite another to have
her spirited away by one who may have no claim whatever upon her. At
school, at home, at work, at play, she must be carefully guarded.”
With this the council broke up and a few moments later Marion found
herself beneath the homespun coverlids, staring up at the brown beams and
dreaming that they were being slowly transformed into shining trenches
filled with Confederate gold.
Black Blevens was not long in carrying his election war into every
quarter. The summer school at once became a center of fire. At this time
the free summer school was more than half over and, though neither
Florence nor Marion had taught in day school before, they had met with
singular success. They had found these young feud fighters regular
storehouses of explosives, but once the children came to know that their
teacher meant to deal justly with them and that they had a deep and
abiding love for them, they had settled down to hard study in a way quite
remarkable.
Now, on the Monday after the election struggle had been determined upon,
there came a new pupil to the school. With two battered books and a half
of a tablet under his arm, he marched to the teacher’s desk and announced
his intentions of going to school.
His manner was meek enough to disarm the most wary of teachers. He was
sixteen. He was not badly dressed and an attempt had been made to comb
his unruly locks. Only in his restless blue eyes did there lurk a warning
signal of danger.
Florence’s lips trembled ever so slightly as she asked his name.
“Bud,” was the answer.
“Bud for Buddington, I suppose?”
“No’m, jest Bud.”
“All right, Bud,” Florence’s smile was a doubtful one. She was beginning
to suspect the truth.
“Bud Wax,” the boy added reluctantly.
Florence started. She had feared this. Bud Wax, known as the most
troublesome boy on Laurel Branch, a boy who had been known to ride
through the settlement at midnight shouting like a wild Indian and firing
his pistol in air. And worst of all, he was a distant relative of Black
Blevens and lived at his cabin.
What could be the answer? There could be but one; he had been sent to
make trouble. If Black Blevens could break up the summer school he could
all the more easily convince doubtful voters that these girls from the
outside were unqualified to handle the school.
For a moment she wavered. She could refuse to admit him. The control of
the summer school was in her hands. Yet there was no real reason to
offer. Bud was larger and older than most of the other children, yet
there were a few older than he.
“And besides,” she told herself as she set her lips tight, “to refuse to
admit him is to surrender without a battle. I won’t surrender.”
All this thinking took but a half dozen seconds. At the end of that time
she favored the boy with her very best smile and said:
“All right, Bud, you may have the seat by the back window on the right
side.”
For a moment the boy stared at her in silence. A seat by a back window is
at once a much coveted place and a spot quite advantageous for mischief
making. Bud knew this; yet this girl teacher gave him this place. Just
what his conclusions were regarding this move Florence could not even
guess.
Every hour of that day seemed the hour before a thunder storm. Every
child in the room knew why Bud was there; and while as a whole they were
friendly to their teachers, they were at the same time normal children.
And where is the child who does not long for excitement.
The day passed as others had. The slow drone of bees outside, the murmur
of voices reciting lessons, loud shouts of play at noon and recess, then
the glad burst of joy as the sixty children went racing home.
“Bud was just like the rest,” Florence said to Ransom Turner that
evening. “Perhaps there’s nothing wrong after all.”
“Just you wait!” Ransom said with a shake of his head. “Old Black Blevens
ain’t sendin’ that boy to school fer book larnin’. Hit’s time for layin’
by of the corn. Took him right outen’ the field, he did. Don’t make
sense, that ar don’t, unless he hopes Bud’ll make trouble.”
Florence went to bed with a headache. Doubtless Ransom was right. She was
tempted to wish that they had never started the fight, that they had left
Black Blevens and Al Finley to collect their ill gotten school money.
“And the children without an education!” she whispered fiercely. “No!
Never! Never! We’ll fight, and by all that’s good, we’ll win!”
A whole week passed and nothing unusual happened. If Bud Wax and Black
Blevens meant any harm they were taking a long time to tamp powder and
lay fuse. All Ransom would say was:
“Jest you mind what I say. That Black Blevens is a plumb quare worker,
but he’s always at hit.”
Two little rumors came to Florence. A small child had told her that Bud
carried his pistol to school. An older boy had said that Bud was trying
to pick a quarrel with Ballard Skidmore. Ballard was larger and older
than Bud, a big, slow-going, red-headed fellow who somehow reminded
Florence of a St. Bernard dog. She put little faith in either of these
rumors, and as for picking a quarrel with this slow-going fellow, she did
not believe it could be done.
On Saturday something vaguely disturbing occurred. There were many
squirrels on the upper slopes of Little Black Mountain. Ralph had taught
Florence how to shoot with his long barreled .22 pistol. She decided to
try her hand at hunting. Had it not been Marion’s day for helping with
the work she would have asked her to go along. As it was, she struck away
alone over the tortuous cow path that led to the upper reaches of the
mountain.
Having donned a pair of canvas knickers, high boots and an old hunting
coat, she was prepared for a free, rough time of it. Free and rough it
was, too. Brambles tore at her, rocks slid from beneath her feet to send
her sprawling, a rotten tree trunk over which she was climbing suddenly
caved in and threatened to send her rolling down the mountain. She
enjoyed it all. A typical American girl, strong and brave, born for the
out-of-doors, she took the buffets of nature and laughed in its face.
As she reached a higher elevation the slope became gentler. Here she
found an abundance of beach and chestnut trees, and higher up a grove of
walnut.
Hardly had she reached the edge of the walnut grove when she caught a
flash of red, then a scolding chatter from a tall tree.
“A squirrel,” she breathed as she silently lifted the hammer of her long
pistol. “I wonder—I just wonder—”
Her wonderings were cut short by a sudden thud close by, then another.
Two frisking squirrels had come to the ground within a dozen paces of
her. Like a flash of light they were away over the moss and up another
tree. This tree was not large and the leaves were scanty. On tip-toe she
stalked it.
Gazing intently upward, she discovered a pair of small black eyes looking
down at her.
“There’s one.”
She lifted the shiny barrel, but at that instant the eyes vanished.
Off to the right she caught a chatter. Then, just as she went tip-toeing
away, a half-grown walnut dropped at her feet. She picked it up. The
shell had been half eaten away.
“You saucy things!” she exclaimed, shaking her fist in mock anger at the
frolickers.
With eyes wandering everywhere, tip-toeing, listening, pausing for a
moment to start quickly away, she at last crossed over into a grove of
chestnuts.
All this time the inside of her pistol’s barrel remained as shiny as when
she started. Always, as she prepared to shoot, she caught a shrill
chatter or saw the flash of a bushy tail. It was great fun, so she went
on with it until at last, quite tired out, she flung herself down beneath
a great chestnut tree to half bury herself in green and gray moss as soft
as a velvet cushion. There, flat on her back, breathing the fresh
mountain air, listening to the songs of forest birds far and near,
catching the distant melodious tink-tank of cow bells, squinting at the
flash of sunlight as it played among the leaves, she at last drifted off
into a dreamy sleep.
She did not sleep long, but when she awoke she was conscious of some
living creature near her. Then she heard a thump-thump among the leaves,
followed by a scratching sound. Without the least sound, she moved her
head from side to side. Then she saw him, an inquisitive red squirrel. He
was sitting on a stump, not ten feet away, staring at her. Instantly her
hand was on her pistol, but she did not lift it. Instead, she rolled over
and lifted up her head to look again.
The squirrel had retreated a little, but had mounted another stump for a
second look.
“How easy!” she thought, silently gripping her pistol.
There came a rustle from the right, then one at the left. The ground was
alive with squirrels who had made a party of it and had come for a look
at this sleeping nymph of the woods. She caught the gleam of their
peering eyes from leaf pile, low bush, stump and fallen trees.
“No!” she whispered at last. “I couldn’t kill one of you. Not one. But
it’s been heaps of fun to hunt you.”
At that she sat up and began shaking the dead leaves from her hair.
Instantly her furry visitors vanished.
But what was that? She caught a sound of heavier movements in the leaves.
Instantly she was on her knees, peering through the bushes. What could it
have been? Surely not a squirrel. Too heavy for that. There it was again!
Rustle! Rustle! Rustle!
Then again there was silence, a silence that was frightening. The girl
felt the hair rising at the back of her neck. She was alone on the
mountain. Was it a bear? There were bears on the mountain. Was it a man?
An enemy?
As she glanced about she realized with a little burst of fright that,
like sparrows at sight of a hawk, the squirrels had vanished. This indeed
was an ominous token.
Springing to her feet, she thrust her long barreled pistol into an inside
pocket of her jacket, where it could be snatched out at a moment’s
notice. Yet, even as she did this, she realized how absurd a weapon is a
long barrelled .22 when one faces real danger.
For a moment, standing like a wild deer, poised on tip-toe ready for
instant flight, she stood there listening. All she heard was the wild
beating of her own heart and the faint tink-tank of cow bells in the
valley below.
The sound of these bells increased her fear. Their very faintness told
her the distance she had wandered away over the mountain.
The next moment, walking on tip-toe, scarcely breathing, with her pistol
snugly hidden in her coat, she was making good her retreat.
It was not until Monday morning that the real truth of this mountain
experience came to her. Then it came with a suddenness and force that was
strong enough to bowl over even a man of strong heart.
She was on her way to school when Ransom Turner, having called her into
the store and closed the door, said in a low husky tone that told her of
deep feeling:
“There’s a warrant out for your arrest, but don’t you care narry bit!”
“For my arrest?” Florence stared. “What have I done?”
“Hit’s for carryin’ concealed weapons, a pistol gun, I reckon.”
“Why, I never—”
The girl paused and caught her breath. It all came to her like a flash.
Those stealthy movements on the mountain had been made by some of Black
Blevens’ men. They had been spying on her. She blushed as she realized
that they might have seen her sleeping there in the leaves. But her face
was flushed with anger as she realized that, having seen her pocket that
all but harmless pistol, they had taken a mean advantage and had sworn
out a warrant for her arrest.
“Don’t you keer,” said the little mountain man, putting a hand on her
arm. “Don’t you keer narry bit. This store’s mine, an’ all them goods.
I’ll mortgage hit all to go your bond. You go right on teaching your
school. We’ll take keer of old Black Blevens and all them of his sort.”
Quick tears blinded her, but she brushed them away. It was hard to be
treated as a criminal in a strange land and by the very people you were
trying to help.
Quickly, instead of tears, there was a gleam of battle in her eyes.
“We’ll beat it!” said Ransom, clinching his fists hard. “Down here in the
mountings law’s a club to beat your enemies with. Hit’s quare, but hit’s
true. We’ll git a lawyer from the court house. We’ll beat old Black
Blevens, just you wait and see!”
Three times more that morning Florence was reduced to tears by
rough-clad, shuffling mountaineers who came to knock timidly at the
schoolhouse door and to assure her that they had heard of her plight and
were ready to go her bail and to help in any way. “If hit takes the roof
off from over my ole woman an’ the last hog shoat I got runnin’ in the
branch,” as one of them expressed it.
It is always good to know that one has friends, and when one is among
comparative strangers it is gratifying indeed.
And yet, as the day came to an end and the sudden mountain darkness fell,
it found Florence with a heavy heart. To be tried by a Justice of the
Peace for a crime, this was a cross indeed.
“Tried by a Justice,” she thought to herself. “Who is the Justice?
Pellage Skidmore! One of Black Blevens’ henchmen! It’s a plot. They’ll
fine me and let me go; perhaps give me ten days in the county jail. Ten
days in that place!” Her heart stopped beating. She had seen that jail—a
dark and dirty place full of vermin.
“Oh, I couldn’t!” she breathed.
Then of a sudden a new thought came to her. The least fine that could be
imposed was twenty-five dollars; one of the men had told her that.
“In the Constitution of the United States,” she whispered to herself, “it
says that in trials over matters amounting to twenty-five dollars, or
over, the defendant may call for a jury. I’ll call for one. If I must
have a trial, I’ll have a real one!”
At that she stamped the ground with her foot and felt immensely relieved.
There is a great comfort to be had sometimes when one has something to
say about his own hanging.