novel which she had been reading as usual, and laid it on her lap. She
was always amused by these histrionic appearances of Alvarado which so
terrified most of the Oldfield people. It had indeed long been known all
over the Pennyroyal Region that, while other folks always drove hastily
into the nearest fence corner whenever they saw Alvarado coming, old
lady Gordon invariably kept straight along in the middle of the big
road--never turning one hair's breadth to the right or the left--and
that Alvarado was always the one who had to turn out. She said nothing
of this, however, and thought nothing of it; but she told her grandson
all that she knew or that any one knew of Alvarado.
He was a Spaniard who had suddenly appeared in the vicinity of Oldfield,
some twenty-five years before. No one had any knowledge of him previous
to that time, and no one had ever known where he came from. Yet, for
some reason never clearly understood, his coming had, nevertheless, been
associated from the first with the scattering of the Gulf pirates which
had followed the deposing of their last king. It is true that Lafitte
was long since gone to render his awful account of the terrible deeds
done in the body--with perhaps his desperate service at the battle of
New Orleans as the largest item on the other side of the blotted ledger.
But the death of Lafitte in 1826 did not immediately free the Gulf from
its fearful scourge. The passing of piracy was gradual, very gradual
indeed, and even long drawn out, as the traders of the Pennyroyal Region
knew only too well, through their close and continual connection with
New Orleans by route of the flatboat. There was, therefore, to the minds
of the Oldfield people, nothing improbable in the continued existence of
numbers of Lafitte's followers, who were younger than himself and
consequently not yet really old men. Still, while there was no
impossibility or even any improbability in Alvarado's being a comrade of
Lafitte, there appeared no actual proof that he ever had been. According
to old lady Gordon's account, the principal grounds of suspicion were
these: his appearance, which was otherwise unaccounted for, just at the
time that the pirates were being driven from the Gulf and out of the
Gulf states; his frequent, long, and mysterious absences at sea after
his coming to live in the vicinity of Oldfield; the fabulous sums of
gold and silver fetched home by him from these voyages, when he was
known not to have any visible means of making money; the many curious
weapons of marine warfare scattered through his strange house, which was
half a fort, half a farmhouse, and wholly barbaric in its rough richness
of furnishing; the generally credited rumor that he habitually wore a
coat of mail; the well-known fact--open for every passer-by to see--that
he kept a horse standing continually at his gate, day and night, for
years, saddled and bridled, with pistols in the holsters, apparently
ready for instant flight.
Many of these things old lady Gordon had seen with her own eyes. Most of
them she knew to be true, but she had never gone to his house, although
he had at one time received a measure of social recognition,
when--according to old lady Gordon--there had been something like real
society in Oldfield. He was rather a handsome man after a sinister,
foreign fashion, although he had been past youth when he first came to
Oldfield, and he had a dashing way with him which fascinated the
unobservant. It was in this manner that he was thrown with Alice
Fielding, the colonel's prettiest and youngest daughter, so old lady
Gordon said.
"You mean the old gentleman whom I saw yesterday? That stately,
beautiful old man with the silver hair curling on his shoulders, and
wearing the long black cloak?" Lynn said.
"That's the man, but I wish you might have seen him in those days. He
was just about as fiery as Alvarado, though in a slightly more civilized
way, and he never wanted Alice to have anything to do with him. He never
wanted the Spaniard around his house at all. No man like Colonel
Fielding--English in every drop of blood--ever wants anything to do with
any foreigner. But there's no use in trying to manage a girl like Alice
Fielding,--a little, soft, say-nothing, characterless thing,--there's
nothing in her strong enough to get a good firm hold on. She's blown
like a feather this way and that way by the strongest influence--good or
bad--that she falls under. You'll find the kind, and plenty of them, all
over the world. The Fielding negroes used to say Alvarado threw a spell
over Alice. I presume he did, but it was the spell which that sort of
man always throws over that sort of girl. She was a flighty, vain little
creature, and flattered of course by his being so madly in love. That
was plain enough for anybody to see. Nobody ever doubted that he loved
her. But she had never thought of marrying him until she was terrified
into doing it. She was probably in love with John Stanley so far as she
was capable of loving any man. It was said they were upon the verge of
becoming engaged to be married. I don't know about that, but there was
no doubt of John's loving her. It took him years to get over her
marriage to Alvarado."
"I don't understand. Why did she marry him?" asked Lynn.
"Through sheer fright mixed with a kind of silly romance, as nearly as
anybody ever could make out. It happened in this way. There was some
kind of a party at Colonel Fielding's. There always was something going
on while his girls were young and gay; and there is plenty of room in
the jailer's residence for any kind of entertainment--and many's the
ball and dinner they gave! That night Alvarado was one of the guests, as
he often was. Nobody knows what led up to the outbreak, but he suddenly
fell on the floor in convulsions, stiff and stark and black in the face,
and actually foaming at the mouth--a sight, they said, to make the
strongest shudder. The doctor was hurriedly called out of the supper
room and at once shut the door of the room in which Alvarado was
lying--at the point of death as everybody thought. As the guests huddled
together whispering, it flew all over the house that he had taken poison
and that he refused to take an antidote unless Alice would consent to
marry him. Your father was there and saw her go into the room, and he
said afterwards that she looked as much like a dead woman then, as she
did a year later when she lay in her coffin. No one, except those who
were in the room, ever knew what happened, but the colonel presently
came to the door and sent for the preacher. It was a dancing party, or
he would have been there already, as almost everybody else was. But it
didn't take long to fetch him, and he married Alvarado to Alice Fielding
then and there."
"And John Stanley?" inquired Lynn.
"He knew nothing of the marriage till he came to see Alice on the next
Sunday as he always did. He didn't live in Oldfield at that time. He had
gone away soon after another unlucky affair which most men wouldn't have
worried about, but which seems to have had a lifelong effect upon him.
He was always a sensitive, high-strung fellow and deeply religious--full
of lofty ideals and all that sort of thing--even then, when he was
hardly more than a lad. He had come here only a week or so before to
take an assistant's place in the clerk's office. He was a cousin of Jack
Mitchell, the county clerk--that's the way he happened to come. Well,
Jack Mitchell was a politician and as high a talker and as low a doer as
was to be found betwixt the Cumberland and Green River, which is saying
a good deal. I reckon he couldn't be more than matched in these days. I
haven't noticed much change in politicians during the last quarter of a
century. Jack had been elected by a large majority, and was reelected,
and had his hand fairly on a higher rung of the political ladder, when
he made a false step and slipped. The trouble came from a foolish
quarrel caused by drink. Jack Mitchell always was quarrelsome when in
liquor, and on that day he happened to accuse another Kentuckian of
cowardice. That, of course, was crossing the dead-line. It was just the
same then that it is now and always will be, till our blood and training
are different. And the fact that the man who had been branded as a
coward was a worthless loafer, made no more difference then then it
would make now. The wretch who had been 'insulted' rose up, as soon as
he was sober enough, and borrowed a shot-gun and went to wipe out his
dishonor, just as if he had been a real gentleman. Jack, with his usual
luck, was not in the office when his enemy, who was still drinking
heavily, suddenly appeared in the doorway, levelling the gun. He was not
so drunk, though, that he didn't know that he was aiming at a boy whom
he had never seen before, in place of the man whom he had come to kill.
He knew it well enough, for he muttered something about killing the
young one if he couldn't get the old one. But John Stanley was too quick
for him. Jack's pistol lay handy, as it always did, as pistols always
do, hereabouts. The boy hardly knew what was happening before he had
shot dead a man whose name he didn't know--a man whom he had never seen
or heard of before."
"What a strange story," Lynn said. "I think I have never heard a
stranger one."
"Oh, I don't know about it's being strange. Of course somebody had to be
killed," old lady Gordon responded indifferently.
"Somebody had to be killed--and why?" repeated Lynn, wonderingly; for,
although to the manner born he was not to the manner bred.
"Oh, well, when things get into that shape somebody's bound to be
killed! When a Kentuckian is accused of cowardice he has to kill
somebody to prove his courage. There's nothing else to be
done--apparently. And it might as well have been Betts as anybody else."
She yawned, and swayed her turkey-wing fan.
"It would all have blown over and have passed, as all such things pass
in this country, if John Stanley hadn't been morbid about it, if he had
been at all like other people. Of course he was acquitted at the
examining trial. There were plenty of witnesses to the fact that he
fired in self-defence. The family of the man who was killed never made a
motion toward taking the matter up, and they would have been ready
enough to do it if they could have found any pretext for blaming John.
They were, in fact, rather looked down on for taking it so easy. But
John has never forgiven himself; he has always thought he might have
done something else than what he did. He has rarely mentioned it to any
one, but I understand that he once told Miss Judy that, if it were to do
over again, he would run the risk of being killed himself rather than
take the life of any human being. As I have said, he was always very
religious, even then, and this was, I suppose, the reason why he brooded
so over the affair. To this day he's more like a praying monk shut up in
a cell than he's like the famous judge of a large circuit."
"Of course he never married," said Lynn.
"Oh, yes, he did--but not for a long time; not for years and years after
that Spanish tiger had made an end of that foolish little kitten. Alice
lived only a few months. They said that Alvarado wasn't unkind; that he
even tried to be kind in his way. But Alice seemed to hate him--as much
as she was capable of hating anybody--when she found out how he had
tricked her; that he hadn't taken poison at all when he pretended he
had, and that the awful-looking foam on his lips had come from chewing
soap."
"Don't--don't!" cried the young man. "Leave the romance. Tell me about
Judge Stanley--though he too has done what he could to spoil the story
by marrying. What sort of woman is his wife? Poor little Alice!"
"I've never seen his wife. She has been here only once or twice, for a
few days at a time. They say she is a high-flier and very ambitious.
John didn't begin to go up very high in the world till after he had
married her. She no doubt makes him a much better wife than Alice ever
could have made. A silly, big-eyed, clinging, crying little woman who
doesn't weigh a hundred pounds can drag down the strongest man like a
mill-stone around his neck. That apparently harmless little creature
managed to ruin the lives of two big strong men--each worth half a dozen
of her for all useful purposes. John Stanley certainly has never seen a
day's happiness, and there can be no sort of doubt that Alvarado has
been partially demented ever since her death. His craziness seems to
take the form of senseless litigation. He appears unable to keep away
from the court-house when he knows that John Stanley is here, and he is
always bringing lawsuits on ridiculous pretexts, so that the judge is
compelled to rule them out of court. Alvarado is forever trying to find
a chance to pick a quarrel with the judge, but he might just as well
give it up. He will never be able, no matter how hard he tries, or how
insulting he may be, to drag John Stanley into a duel or even into a
quarrel."
"Why?" asked the young man in surprise, not understanding. "Is the
Spaniard such a terrible person? Is the judge afraid?"
"Afraid--John Stanley afraid!" repeated old lady Gordon, scornfully. "He
never knew what fear was. For calm, cool, unflinching courage in the
face of the greatest danger, I have never known his equal. If I could
remember and tell you some of the brave things that that man has done.
Why, when he was only a lad he seized a lamp which had exploded and
coolly held it in his bare hands--with the blazing oil burning the flesh
to the bone--till he could carry it to a place of safety, rather than
endanger the lives of other people by throwing it down. No longer than a
year or two ago he nearly lost his own life by saving an old negro woman
from a runaway horse. John Stanley is no more afraid of Alvarado than he
is of me. It's all on account of his queer notions of religion, of
humanity, and of the sacredness of human life. It all grew out of that
unlucky accident of his youth, a matter that another man would not have
given a second thought to. His fear, his horror of shedding blood has
gradually grown more and more intense, until it seems to have become a
positive mania. Nothing now can ever drive him from it. Alvarado may as
well give up trying to provoke him into a quarrel. But he on his side is
quite as determined as John Stanley. He will never give it up; he's no
doubt been at the court-house hatching some plot this very day. I often
wonder what the end will be, should both of the men go on living. To
think of all the wrong and wretchedness that one foolish baby face can
cause!"
Lynn did not cry out again, half in earnest and half in jest, begging
his grandmother to spare romance; but he got up, silently, and took a
turn or two about the room. He was genuinely shocked to find himself
feeling the repulsion which her lack of womanliness forced upon him. The
merciless cynicism revealed by everything that she said might have
amused him had he heard it from another person; but he was
uncontrollably repulsed by it coming from his father's mother. He was
glad when she began to speak of other subjects, and less moving ones,
although these also were interwoven with the history of the Pennyroyal
Region.
She was not a native of Oldfield. Her birth-place lay farther up in that
country on the "Pigeon Roost Fork of the Muddy, which is a branch of
Green River," on the very spot thus described by Washington Irving's
Kentucky classic. But Irving had only heard of "Blue Bead Miller," the
famous hunter and Indian fighter, whom he has immortalized in that
charming tale under his real name; and old lady Gordon had known him in
her childhood and early youth. Many a time she had seen him in her
father's house, where he would often come, bringing his rifle, "Betsy,"
for her mother to "unwitch." And this, her mother--who was young and
city-bred, and full of wondering interest in all these strange ways of
the wilderness--would always do with girlish delight, gravely running
her slim white fingers up and down the grimy barrel, as one who works a
beneficent charm, while the grim old woodsman looked on with
unquestioning faith.
Near this old home on the Pigeon Roost Fork was the Roost itself, that
marvellous mecca of the wild pigeons, where countless billions of gray
wings darkened the great woods on the sunniest midday; and where
unnumbered trillions of the weightless, feathered little bodies crushed
the great limbs of the mightiest giants of the forest. And this wondrous
sight, too, old lady Gordon had seen many times, long before Audubon saw
it to describe it for the wonderment of the whole world.
She had not much to tell of the bridegroom with whom she came as a young
bride to live in Oldfield; she spoke mainly of journeying on horseback
over the Wilderness Road, and of passing the place called "Harpe's
Head," which had then been very recently named for a most hideous
tragedy. It was a story full of grewsome romance, this tale of the
unheralded coming of two monsters among a simple, honest, scattered, yet
neighborly, woods-people. The two were brothers, or claimed to be, but
there was no outward likeness between them. One was small, and not in
any way calculated to attract attention; while the other was far above
the ordinary stature of men, and so ferocious of aspect that the very
sight of him chilled the beholder with fear. Neither of the men ever
wore any head covering, and both had wild, manelike, red hair, and
complexions of "a livid redness"--whatever that may have been--such as
left a lasting impression of horror upon all who encountered them. They
were soon known throughout the length of Wilderness Road as Big Harpe
and Little Harpe. They lived close to the road, and almost immediately
after their coming travellers began to disappear, never to be heard of
again, or to be found long afterward to have been murdered. A very pall
of terror spread gradually over the whole Pennyroyal Region; arson,
robbery, and atrocities unspeakable followed murder after murder, and
yet the few, far-apart people of the terror-stricken country could only
tremble in helpless fear, till the murder of a woman led to the tracing
of the long, wide, deep track of blood and crime to the door of the
Harpes.
"When they murdered a woman, the whole country rose up as one man. And
it was just the same then that it is now when the same thing happens,"
old lady Gordon said grimly. "The best men in the Pennyroyal Region--as
good and as God-fearing men as could be found in the world--hunted the
Harpes like wild beasts. They beat the whole wilderness for the
monsters, until they found them at last. Little Harpe managed to escape;
it was not known how, and he was never seen or heard of again. But it
was Big Harpe who had been the leader; he was the one that the men
wanted most, and they now had him fast like a wild animal in a trap. Yet
not one of his captors touched him; not one of them spoke to him; they
all merely sat still with their eyes on him, and waited for the woman's
husband to come."
"History repeats itself--especially in Kentucky," Lynn said.
Old lady Gordon smiled her most sardonic smile. "The skull of Big
Harpe's head stayed on the end of a pole by the side of the Wilderness
Road through a good many years. The place where it was put up is still
called 'Harpe's Head'--I presume it always will be."
All this was before old lady Gordon came as a young bride to live in
Oldfield; but another band of robbers and assassins still terrorized
that part of the Pennyroyal Region. The cavern in which the band made
its den was on the other side of the Ohio River, but it was Kentucky
that suffered most from its ravages. Many a richly laden flatboat was
never heard of after it was known to have stopped at the entrance to
Cave-in-Rock, as the place was called in the beginning of the last
century, and as it is called at the present time. Many a gold-laden
boatman, who had unknowingly passed down the river without stopping at
the Cave-in-Rock, was beguiled into entering it on his way
homeward--only to vanish forever off the face of the earth. The cavern
would seem to have offered powerful temptations to the unwary traveller.
The cave itself was then as it is now a most curious and interesting
survival of prehistoric times. It is a single chamber in the solid rock,
opening at the river's brink, two hundred feet long and eighty feet
wide, its sides rising by regular stages after the manner of the seats
in an amphitheatre. Its walls are covered with strange carvings cut deep
in the stone; there are representations of several animals unknown to
science, and there are also inscribed characters which have led those
learned in such matters to believe the cavern to have been the council
house of some ancient race. But nothing was known of these things while
Cave-in-Rock remained the hiding-place of robbers and assassins. The
terrified country round about Oldfield knew the place only by vague
hearsay as a drinking, gambling resort, wherein boatmen and all unwary
travellers going up or down the Ohio were lured to destruction. No one
who entered the awful mystery of the cavern ever came out to tell what
he had seen or what had befallen him. It seemed--so old lady Gordon
said--as if the hand of the law would never be able to lay hold upon
actual proof of the crimes committed at Cave-in-Rock, but when the band
was ultimately run to earth, an upper and secret chamber was found to be
filled with the bones of human beings.
The grandmother and the grandson sat silent for a space after she grew
weary of story-telling. They were thinking in widely different ways of
the wild, true tales of these terrific passion storms which had swept
Kentucky throughout her existence. Was another fair portion of the good
green earth ever so deep-dyed in the blood of both the innocent and the
guilty?
"And yet through all we have always been a most religious people," the
young man said musingly.
"Very!" responded the old lady, who was growing hungry. "None more so.
We've about all the different religions that anybody else ever had, and
we've started one or two of our own."
X
RELIGION IN OLDFIELD
It is in the quiet village, remote, as this was, from the rushing change
of city life, that the fervor of religion always appears warmest and
seems to linger longest.
In Oldfield everybody went to church twice a day on Sunday, in winter
and in summer, and through the rain as well as through the sunshine.
That is to say, everybody except old lady Gordon and Miss Judy Bramwell,
neither of whom ever went at all.
There was nothing strange or inconsistent in old lady Gordon's staying
away. She was generally held by everybody to be as an out-and-out
heathen, whereas in reality she was merely a good deal of a pagan. And
she was not in the habit of accounting to anybody for what she did or
did not do, being equally indifferent to private and public opinion.
But Miss Judy's never going was a much harder thing to understand. For
the little lady was not only the model for the whole community in
week-day matters, but she was also known to be a most devout
Episcopalian, so that, taken altogether, the fact that she never went to
church remained always an impenetrable mystery, notwithstanding that the
Oldfield church-goers discussed it untiringly on almost every Sunday of
their lives. Nor did Miss Judy, who was the soul of guileless frankness
in everything else, ever offer any sort of an explanation for this
unaccountable remissness. She could not make any untrue excuses, and she
would not give the real reason; her gentle heart being much too tender
of her neighbors' feelings to admit of her mentioning the truth, so long
as she was able to hide what she was bound in conscience to feel.
"They are doing the best they can, you know, sister Sophia," she would
say, almost in a whisper, as the neighbors passed on Sundays; and she
would steal on tiptoe to close the door, so that Merica might not
overhear. "They are not to blame, poor things; it is their misfortune
and not their fault, that they don't know the difference between a
meeting-house and the Church, and between a lecture and the Service."