Barney observed that these words produced a marked sensation. The crowd
began to press more closely around the deputy-sheriff's foaming horse.
"Who hev done turned State's evidence?" asked Jim Dow.
"Little Jeff Carew,--you've seen that puny little man a-many a
time--haven't you, Jim? He'd go into your pocket."
"He would, I know, powerful quick, ef he thunk I hed ennything in it,"
said Jim, with a gruff laugh.
"I didn't mean that, though it's true enough. I only went ter say that
he's small enough to go into any ordinary-sized fellow's pocket. Some of
the rest of them wanted to turn State's evidence, but they weren't
allowed. They were harder customers even than Jeff Carew,--regular old
jail-birds."
Barney began to vaguely understand that when a prisoner confesses the
crime he has committed, and gives testimony which will convict his
partners in it, this is called turning "State's evidence."
But how was it to concern Barney?
An old white-haired man had pushed up to the wagon; he polished his
spectacles on his coat-tail, then put them on his nose, and focused them
on Barney. Those green spectacles seemed to the boy to have a solemnly
accusing expression on their broad and sombre lenses. He shrank as the
old man spoke,--
"And is this the boy who was slipped through the window to steal from
Blenkins?"
"No," said the deputy, "this ain't the boy."
Barney could hardly believe his senses.
"Fact is," continued the deputy, with a brisk wave of his hand, "there
wasn't any boy with 'em,--so little Jeff Carew says. _He_ jumped through
the window-pane _himself_. We wouldn't believe that until we measured
one there at the jail of the same size as Blenkins's window-glass, and
he went through it without a wriggle."
Barney sprang to his feet.
"Oh, tell it ter me, folkses!" he cried wildly; "tell it ter me,
somebody! Will they keep me hyar all the same? An' when will I see
G'liath Mounting agin, an' be whar Melissy air?"
He had burst into tears, and there was a murmur of sympathy in the
crowd.
"Oh, that lets you out, I reckon, youngster," said Stebbins. "I'm glad
enough of it for one."
The old man turned his solemnly accusing green spectacles on Stebbins,
and it seemed to Barney that he spoke with no less solemnly accusing a
voice.
"He ought never to have been let in."
Stebbins replied, rather eagerly, Barney thought, "Why, there was enough
against that boy to have clapped him in jail, and maybe convicted him,
if this man hadn't turned State's evidence."
"We hed the fac's agin him,--dead agin him," chimed in Jim Dow.
"That just shows how much danger an innocent boy was in; it seems to me
that somebody ought to have been more careful," the old man protested.
"That's so!" came in half a dozen voices from the crowd.
Barney was surprised to see how many friends he had now, when a moment
before he had had none. But he ought to have realized that there is a
great difference between _being_ a young martyr, and _seeming_ a young
thief.
"I want to see the little fellow out of this," said the old man with the
terrible spectacles.
He saw him out of it in a short while.
There was an examination before a magistrate, in which Barney was
discharged on the testimony of Jeff Carew, who was produced and swore
that he had never before seen the boy, that he was not among the gang of
burglars who had robbed Blenkins's store and dwelling-house, and that he
had had no part in helping to conceal the plunder. In opposition to
this, the mere finding of a scrap of Barney's coat close to the
Conscripts' Hollow seemed now of slight consequence, although it could
not be accounted for.
When the trial was over, the old man with the green spectacles took
Barney to his house, gave him something to eat, and saw him start out
homeward.
As Barney plodded along toward the blue mountains his heart was very
bitter against Nick Gregory, who had lied and thrown suspicion upon him
and brought him into danger. Whenever he thought of it he raised his
clenched fist and shook it. He was a little fellow, but he felt that
with the strength of this grievance he was more than a match for big
Nick Gregory. He would force him to confess the lies that he had told
and his cowardice, and all Goliath Mountain should know it and despise
him for it.
"I'll fetch an' kerry that word to an' fro fur a thousand mile!" Barney
declared between his set teeth.
Now and then a wagoner overtook him and gave him a ride, thus greatly
helping him on his way. As he went, there was a gradual change in the
blue and misty range that seemed to encircle the west, and which he
knew, by one deep indentation in the horizontal line of its summit, was
Goliath Mountain. It became first an intenser blue. As he drew nearer
still, it turned a bronzed green. It had purpled with the sunset before
he could distinguish the crimson and gold of its foliage and its
beetling crags. Night had fallen when he reached the base of the
mountain.
There was no moon; heavy clouds were rolling up from the horizon, and
they hid the stars. Nick Gregory, lying on the ledge of the "Old Man's
Chimney," thirty feet above the black earth, could not see his hand
before his face. The darkness was dreadful to him. It had closed upon a
dreadful day. The seconds were measured by the throbs and dartings of
pain in his arm. He was almost exhausted by hunger and thirst. He
thought, however, that he could have borne it all cheerfully, but for
the sharp remorse that tortured him for the wrong he had done to his
friend, and his wild anxiety about Barney's fate. Nick felt that he,
himself, was on trial here, imprisoned on this tower of stone, cut off
from the world, from everything but his sternly accusing conscience and
his guilty heart.
For hours he had heard nothing but the monotonous rushing of the water
close at hand, or now and then the shrill, quavering cry of a distant
screech-owl, or the almost noiseless flapping of a bat's wings as they
swept by him.
He had hardly a hope of deliverance, when suddenly there came a new
sound, vague and indistinguishable. He lifted himself upon his left
elbow and listened again. He could hear nothing for a moment except his
own panting breath and the loud beating of his heart. But there--the
sound came once more. What was it? a dropping leaf? the falling of a
fragment of stone from the "Chimney"? a distant step?
It grew more distinct as it drew nearer; presently he recognized
it,--the regular footfall of some man or boy plodding along the path.
That path!--a recollection flashed through his mind. No one knew that
short cut up the mountain but him and Barney; they had worn the path
with their trampings back and forth from the "Old Man's Chimney."
He thought he must be dreaming, or that he had lost his reason; still he
shouted out, "Hold on, thar! air it ye, Barney?"
The step paused. Then a reply came in a voice that he hardly recognized
as Barney's; it was so fierce, and so full of half-repressed anger.
"Yes, it air Barney,--ef _ye_ hev any call ter know."
"How did ye git away, Barney?--how did ye git away?" exclaimed Nick,
with a joyous sense of relief.
"A _thief's_ word cl'ared me!"
This bitter cry came up to Nick, sharp and distinct, through the dark
stillness. He said nothing at the moment, and presently he heard Barney
speak again, as he stood invisible, and enveloped in the gloom of the
night, at the foot of the mighty column.
"'Twar my bes' frien' ez sunk me deep in trouble. But the _thief_, he
fished me up. He 'lowed ter the jestice ez I never holped him ter steal
nothin' nor ter hide it arterward, nuther."
Nick said not a word. The hot tears came into his eyes. Barney, he
thought, could feel no more bitterly toward him than he felt toward
himself.
"How kem my coat ter be tored down thar on the ledge, close ter the
Conscripts' Hollow, whar I hain't been sence the cloth war wove?"
There was a long pause.
"I wore it thar, Barney, 'stid o' mine," Nick replied at last. "I never
knowed, at fust, ez I hed tored it. I was so skeered when I seen the
stole truck, I never knowed nothin'."
"An' then ye spoke a lie! An' arterward, ye let the folks think ez 'twar
me ez hed tored that coat close by the Conscripts' Hollow!"
"I was skeered haffen ter death, Barney!"
Nick was very contemptible in his falsehood and cowardice,--even in his
repentance and shame and sorrow. At least, so the boy thought who stood
in the darkness at the foot of the great column. Suddenly it occurred to
Barney that this was a strange place for Nick to be at this hour of the
night. His indignation gave way for a moment to some natural curiosity.
"What air ye a-doin' of up thar on the Old Man's Chimney?" he asked.
"I kem up hyar this mornin' early, ter watch the wagon a-takin' ye off.
Then I fell and bruk my arm, an' I can't git down 'thout bein' holped a
little."
There was another silence, so intense that it seemed to Nick as if he
were all alone again in the immensity of the mountains, and the black
night, and the endless forests. He had expected an immediate proffer of
assistance from Barney. He had thought that his injured friend would
relent in his severity when he knew that he had suffered too; that he
was in great pain even at this moment.
But not a word came from Barney.
"I hed laid off ter ax ye ter holp me a little," Nick faltered meekly,
making his appeal direct.
There was no answer.
It was so still that the boy, high up on the sandstone pillar, could
hear the wind rising among the far spurs west of Goliath. The foliage
near at hand was ominously quiet in the sultry air. Once there was a
flash of lightning from the black clouds, followed by a low muttering
of thunder. Then all was still again,--so still!
Nick raised himself upon his left arm, and leaned cautiously over the
verge of the ledge, peering, with starting eyes, into the darkness, and
hoping for another flash of lightning that he might see below for an
instant. A terrible suspicion had come to him. Could Barney have slipped
quietly away, leaving him to his fate?
He could see nothing in the impenetrable gloom; he could hear nothing in
the dark stillness.
Barney had not yet gone, but he was saying to himself, as he stood at
the foot of the great obelisk, that here was his revenge, far more
complete than he had dared even to hope.
He could measure out his false friend's punishment in any degree he
thought fit. He could leave him there with his broken arm and his pangs
of hunger for another day. He deserved it,--he deserved it richly. The
recollection was still very bitter to Barney of the hardships he had
endured at the hands of this boy, who asked him now for help. Why did he
not refuse it? Why should he not take the revenge he had promised
himself?
And then he knew there was danger in now trying to climb the jagged
edges of the Old Man's Chimney. His nerves were shaken by the
excitements of the day; he was fagged out by his long tramp; the wind
was beginning to surge among the trees; it might blow him from his
uncertain foothold. But when it gained more strength, might it not drive
Nick, helpless with his broken arm, from that high ledge?
As this thought crossed his mind, he tore off his hat, coat, and shoes,
and desperately began the ascent. He thought he knew every projection
and crevice and bush so well that he might have found his way
blindfolded, and guided by the sense of touch alone. But he did not lack
for light. Before he was six feet up from the ground, the clouds were
rent by a vivid flash, and an instantaneous peal of thunder woke all
the echoes. This was the breaking of the storm; afterward, there was a
continuous pale flickering over all the sky, and at close intervals,
dazzling gleams of lightning darted through the rain, which was now
falling heavily.
"I'm a-comin', Nick!" shouted Barney, through the din of the elements.
Somehow, as he climbed, he felt light-hearted again. It seemed to him
that he had left a great weight at the foot of the gigantic sandstone
column. Could it be that bitter revenge he had promised himself? He had
thought only of Nick's safety, but he seemed to have done himself a
kindness in forgiving his friend,--the burden of revenge is so heavy!
His troubles were already growing faint in his memory,--it was so good
to feel the rain splashing in his face, and his rude playfellow, the
mountain wind, rioting around him once more. He was laughing when at
last he pulled himself up, wet through and through, on the ledge beside
Nick.
"It's airish up hyar, ain't it?" he cried.
"Barney," said Nick miserably, "I dunno how I kin ever look at ye agin,
squar' in the face, while I lives."
"Shet that up!" Barney returned good-humoredly. "I don't want ter ever
hear 'bout'n it no more. I'll always know, arter this, that I can't
place no dependence in ye; but, law, ye air jes' like that old gun o'
mine; sometimes it'll hang fire, an' sometimes it'll go off at
half-cock, an' ginerally it disapp'ints me mightily. But, somehows, I
can't determinate to shoot with no other one. I'll hev ter feel by ye
jes' like I does by that thar old gun."
The descent was slow and difficult, and very painful to Nick, and
fraught with considerable danger to both boys. They accomplished it in
safety, however, and then, with Barney's aid, Nick managed to drag
himself through the woods to the nearest log cabin, where his arm was
set by zealous and sympathetic amateurs in a rude fashion that probably
would have shocked the faculty. They had some supper here, and an
invitation to remain all night; but Barney was wild to be at home, and
Nick, in his adversity, clung to his friend.
The rain had ceased, and they had only half a mile further to go.
Barney's heart was exultant when he saw the light in the window of his
home, and the sparks flying up from the chimney. He had some curiosity
to know how the family circle looked without him.
"Ye wait hyar, Nick, a minute, an' I'll take a peek at 'em afore I
bounce in 'mongst 'em," he said. "I'm all eat up ter know what Melissy
air a-doin' 'thout me."
But the sight smote the tears from his eyes when he stole around to the
window and glanced in at the little group, plainly shown in the flare
from the open fire.
Granny looked ten years older since morning. The three small boys,
instead of popping corn or roasting apples and sweet potatoes, as was
their habit in the evenings, sat in a dismal row, their chins on their
freckled, sunburned hands, and their elbows on their knees, and gazed
ruefully at the fire. And Melissy,--why, there was Melissy, a little
blue-and-white ball curled up on the floor. Asleep? No. Barney caught
the gleam of her wide-open blue eyes; but he missed something from
them,--the happy expression that used to dwell there.
He went at the door with a rush. And what an uproar there was when he
suddenly sprang in among them! Melissy laughed until she cried. Granny
whirled and whirled her stick, and nodded convulsively, and gasped out
eager questions about the trial and the "jedge." The little boys jumped
for joy until they seemed strung on wire.
Soon they were popping corn and roasting apples once more. The flames
roared up the chimney, and the shadows danced on the wall, and as the
hours wore on, they were all so happy that when midnight came, it caught
them still grouped around the fire.
A WARNING
It was night on Elm Ridge. So black, so black that the great crags and
chasms were hidden, the forest was lost in the encompassing gloom, the
valley and the distant ranges were gone,--all the world had disappeared.
There was no wind, and the dark clouds above the dark earth hung low and
motionless. Solomon Grow found it something of an undertaking to grope
his way back from the little hut of unhewn logs, where he had stabled
his father's horse, to the door of the cabin and the home-circle within.
He fumbled for the latchstring, and pulling it carelessly, the door flew
open suddenly, and he almost fell into the room.
"Why d' ye come a-bustin' in hyar that thar way, Sol?" his mother
demanded rather tartly. "Ef ye hed been raised 'mongst the foxes, ye
couldn't show less manners."
"Door slipped out'n my hand," said Sol, a trifle sullenly.
"Waal--air ye disabled anywhar so ez ye can't shet it, eh?" asked his
father, with a touch of sarcasm.
Sol shut the door, drew up an inverted tub, seated himself upon it, and
looked about, loweringly. He thought he had been needlessly affronted.
Still, he held his peace.
Within, there was a great contrast to the black night outside. The ash
and hickory logs in the deep fireplace threw blue and yellow flames high
up the wide stone chimney. The flickering light was like some genial,
cheery smile forever coming and going.
It illumined the circle about the hearth. There sat Sol's mother, idle
to-night, for it was Sunday. His grandmother, too, was there, so old
that she seemed to confirm the story told of these healthy mountains, to
the effect that people are obliged to go down in the valley to die, else
they would live forever.
There was Sol's father, a great burly fellow, six feet three inches in
height, still holding out his hands to the blaze, chilled through and
through by his long ride from the church where he had been to hear the
circuit-rider preach on "Forgiveness of Injuries."
He was beginning now to quarrel vehemently with his brother-in-law,
Jacob Smith, about the shabby treatment he had recently experienced in
the non-payment of work,--for work in this country is a sort of
circulating medium; a man will plough a day for another man, on
condition that the favor is rigorously reciprocated.
Jacob Smith had been to the still, and apparently had imbibed the spirit
there prevailing, to more effect than Sol's father had absorbed the
spirit that had been taught in church.
In plain words, Jacob Smith was very drunk, and very quarrelsome, and
very unreasonable. The genial firelight that played upon his bloated
face played also over objects much pleasanter to look upon,--over the
strings of red pepper-pods hanging from the rafters; over the bright
variegations of color in the clean patchwork quilt on the bed; over the
shining pans and pails set aside on the shelf; over the great, curious
frame of the warping-bars, rising up among the shadows on the other side
of the room, the equidistant pegs still holding the sized yarn that
Solomon's mother had been warping, preparatory to weaving.
On the other side of the room, too, was a little tow-headed child
sitting in a cradle, which, small as he was, he had long ago outgrown as
a bed.
It was only a pine box placed upon rude rockers, and he used it for a
rocking-chair. His bare, fat legs hung out on one side of the box, and
as he delightedly rocked back and forth, his grotesque little shadow
waved to and fro on the wall, and mocked and flouted him.
What he thought of it, nobody can ever know; his grave eyes were fixed
upon it, but he said nothing, and the silent shadow and substance swayed
joyously hither and thither together.
The quarrel between the two men was becoming hot and bitter. One might
have expected nothing better from Jacob Smith, for when a man is drunk,
the human element drops like a husk, and only the unreasoning brute is
left.
But had John Grow forgotten all the good words he had heard to-day from
the circuit-rider? Had they melted into thin air during his long ride
from the church? Were the houseless good words wandering with the rising
wind through the unpeopled forest, seeking vainly a human heart where
they might find a lodgment?
The men had risen from their chairs; the drunkard, tremulous with anger,
had drawn a sharp knife. John Grow was not so patient as he might have
been, considering the great advantage he had in being sober, and the
good words with which he had started out from the "meet'n'-house."
He laid his heavy hand angrily upon the drunken man's shoulder.
In another moment there would have been bloodshed. But suddenly the
dark shadows at the other end of the room swayed with a strange motion;
a great creaking sound arose, and the warping-bars tottered forward and
fell upon the floor with a crash.
The wranglers turned with anxious faces. No one was near the bars, it
seemed that naught could have jarred them; but there lay the heavy frame
upon the floor, the pegs broken, and the yarn twisted.
"A warning!" cried Sol's mother. "A warning how you-uns spen' the
evenin' o' the Lord's Day in yer quar'lin', an' fightin', an' sech. An'
ye, John Grow, jes' from the meet'n'-house!"
She did not reproach her brother,--nobody hopes anything from a
drunkard.
"A sign o' bad luck," said the grandmother. "It 'minds me o' the time
las' winter that the wind blowed the door in, an' straight arter that
the cow died."
"Them signs air ez likely ter take hold on folks ez on cattle," said
Jacob Smith, half-sobered by the shock.
There was a look of sudden anxiety on the face of Solomon's mother. She
crossed the room to the youngster rocking in the cradle.
"Come, Benny," she said, "ye oughter go ter bed. Ye air wastin' yer
strength sittin' up this late in the night. An' ye war a-coughin' las'
week. Ye must go ter bed."
Benny clung to his unique rocking-chair with a sturdy strength which
promised well for his muscle when he should be as old as his great,
strong brother Solomon. He had been as quiet, hitherto, as if he were
dumb, but now he lifted up his voice in a loud and poignant wail, and
after he was put to bed, he resurrected himself from among the
bedclothes, ever and anon, with a bitter, though infantile, jargon of
protest.
"I'm fairly afeard o' them bars," said Mrs. Grow, looking down upon the
prostrate timbers. "It's comical that they fell down that-a-way. I hopes
'tain't no sign o' bad luck. I wouldn't hev nothin' ter happen fur
nothin'. An' Benny war a-coughin' las' week."
She had not even the courage to put her fear into words. And she
tenderly admonished tow-headed Benny, who was once more getting out of
bed, to go to sleep and save his strength, and remember how he was
coughing last week.
"He hed a chicken-bone acrost his throat," said his father. "No wonder
he coughed."
Solomon rose and went out into the black night,--so black that he could
not distinguish the sky from the earth, or the unobstructed air from the
dense forest around.
He walked about blindly, dragging something heavily after him. The
weight of concealment it was. He knew something that nobody knew
besides.
At the critical moment of the altercation, he had stepped softly among
the shadows to the warping-bars,--a strong push had sent the great frame
crashing down. He was back in an instant among the others, and by reason
of the excitement his agency in the sensation was not detected.
Like his biblical namesake, Solomon was no fool. Had he been reared in a
cultivated community, with the advantages of education, he might have
been one of the bright young fellows who manage other young fellows, who
control debating societies, who are prominent in mysterious
associations, the secret of which is at once guarded and represented by
a Cerberus of three Greek letters.
But, wise as he was, Solomon was not a prophet. He had intended only to
effect a diversion, and stop the quarrel. He had had no prevision of the
panic of superstition that he had raised in the minds of these simple
people; for the ignorant mountaineer is a devout believer in signs and
warnings.
As Solomon wandered about outside, he heard his father stumbling from
the door of the house to the barn to see if aught of evil had come to
the cow or the horse. He knew how his grandmother's heart was wrung with
fear for her heifer, and he could hardly endure to think of his mother's
anxieties about Benny.
No prophetic eye was needed to foresee the terrors that would beset her
in the days to come, when she would walk back and forth before the
bars, warping the yarn to be woven into cloth for his and Benny's
clothes; how she would regard the harmless frame as an uncanny thing,
endowed with supernatural powers, and look askance at it, and shrink
from touching it; how she would watch for the sign to come true, and
tremble lest it come.
He turned about, dragging and tugging this weight of concealment after
him, reëntered the house, and sat down beside the fire.
His uncle Jacob Smith had gone to his own home. The others were telling
stories, calculated to make one's hair stand on end, about signs and
warnings, and their horrible fulfillment.
"Granny," said Solomon suddenly.
"Waal, sonny?" said his grandmother.
When the eyes of the family group were fixed upon him, Solomon's courage
failed.
"Nothin'," he said hastily. "Nothin' at all."
"Why, what ails the boy?" exclaimed his mother.
"I tell ye now, Solomon," said his grandmother, with an emphatic nod,
"ye hed better respec' yer elders,--an' a sign in the house!"
Solomon slept little that night. Toward day he began to dream of the
warping-bars. They seemed to develop suddenly into an immense animated
monster, from which he only escaped by waking with a sudden start.
Then he found that a great white morning, full of snow, was breaking
upon the black night. And what a world it was now! The mountain was
graced with a soft white drapery; on every open space there were vague
suggestions of delicate colors: in this hollow lay a tender purple
shadow; on that steep slope was an elusive roseate flush, and when you
looked again, it was gone, and the glare was blinding.
The bare black branches of the trees formed strangely interlaced
hieroglyphics upon the turquoise sky. The crags were dark and grim,
despite their snowy crests and the gigantic glittering icicles that here
and there depended from them. A cascade, close by in the gorge, had
been stricken motionless and dumb, as if by a sudden spell; and still
and silent, it sparkled in the sun.
The snow lay deep on the roof of the log cabin, and the eaves were
decorated with shining icicles. The enchantment had followed the zigzag
lines of the fence, and on every rail was its embellishing touch.
All the homely surroundings were transfigured. The potato-house was a
vast white billow, the ash-hopper was a marble vase, and the
fodder-stack was a great conical ermine cap, belonging to some mountain
giant who had lost it in the wind last night.
"I mought hev knowed that we-uns war a-goin' ter hev this spell o'
weather by the sign o' the warpin'-bars fallin' las' night," said John
Grow, stamping off the snow as he came in from feeding his horse.
"I hope 'tain't no worse sign," said his wife. "But I misdoubts." And
she sighed heavily.
"'Tain't no sign at all," said Solomon suddenly. He could keep his
secret no longer. "'Twar me ez flung down them warpin'-bars."
For a moment they all stared at him in silent amazement.
"What fur?" demanded his father at last. "Just ter enjye sottin' 'em up
agin? I'll teach ye ter fling down warpin'-bars!"
"Waal," said the peacemaker, hesitating, "it 'peared ter me ez Uncle
Jacob Smith war toler'ble drunk,--take him all tergether,--an' ez he hed
drawed a knife, I thought that ye an' him hed 'bout quar'led enough. An'
so I flung down the warpin'-bars ter git the fuss shet up."
"Waal, sir!" exclaimed his grandmother, red with wrath. "Ez ef _my_ son
couldn't stand up agin all the Smiths that ever stepped! Ye must fling
down the warpin'-bars an' twist the spun-truck--fur Jacob Smith!"
"Look-a-hyar, Sol," said his father gruffly, "'tend ter yerself, an' yer
own quar'ls, arter this, will ye!"
Then, with a sudden humorous interpretation of the incident, he broke
into a guffaw. "I hev lived a consider'ble time in this tantalizin'
world, an' ez yit I dunno ez I hev hed any need o' Sol ter pertect
_me_."
But Sol had unburdened his mind, and felt at ease again; not the less
because he knew that but for his novel method of making peace, there
might have been something worse than a sign in the house.
AMONG THE CLIFFS
It was a critical moment. There was a stir other than that of the wind
among the pine needles and dry leaves that carpeted the ground.
The wary wild turkeys lifted their long necks with that peculiar cry of
half-doubting surprise so familiar to a sportsman, then all was still
for an instant.
The world was steeped in the noontide sunlight, the mountain air
tasted of the fresh sylvan fragrance that pervaded the forest, the
foliage blazed with the red and gold of autumn, the distant Chilhowee
heights were delicately blue.
That instant's doubt sealed the doom of one of the flock. As the turkeys
stood in momentary suspense, the sunlight gilding their bronze feathers
to a brighter sheen, there was a movement in the dense undergrowth. The
flock took suddenly to wing,--a flash from among the leaves, the sharp
crack of a rifle, and one of the birds fell heavily over the bluff and
down toward the valley.
The young mountaineer's exclamation of triumph died in his throat. He
came running to the verge of the crag, and looked down ruefully into the
depths where his game had disappeared.
"Waal, sir," he broke forth pathetically, "this beats my time! If my
luck ain't enough ter make a horse laugh!"
He did not laugh, however. Perhaps his luck was calculated to stir only
equine risibility. The cliff was almost perpendicular; at the depth of
twenty feet a narrow ledge projected, but thence there was a sheer
descent, down, down, down, to the tops of the tall trees in the valley
far below.
As Ethan Tynes looked wistfully over the precipice, he started with a
sudden surprise. There on the narrow ledge lay the dead turkey.
The sight sharpened Ethan's regrets. He had made a good shot, and he
hated to relinquish his game. While he gazed in dismayed meditation, an
idea began to kindle in his brain. Why could he not let himself down to
the ledge by those long, strong vines that hung over the edge of the
cliff?
It was risky, Ethan knew,--terribly risky. But then,--if only the vines
were strong!
He tried them again and again with all his might, selected several of
the largest, grasped them hard and fast, and then slipped lightly off
the crag.
He waited motionless for a moment. His movements had dislodged clods of
earth and fragments of rock from the verge of the cliff, and until these
had ceased to rattle about his head and shoulders he did not begin his
downward journey.
Now and then as he went he heard the snapping of twigs, and again a
branch would break, but the vines which supported him were tough and
strong to the last. Almost before he knew it he stood upon the ledge,
and with a great sigh of relief he let the vines swing loose.
"Waal, that warn't sech a mighty job at last. But law, ef it hed been
Peter Birt stid of me, that thar wild tur-r-key would hev laid on this
hyar ledge plumb till the Jedgmint Day!"
He walked deftly along the ledge, picked up the bird, and tied it to one
of the vines with a string which he took from his pocket, intending to
draw it up when he should be once more on the top of the crag. These
preparations complete, he began to think of going back.
He caught the vines on which he had made the descent, but before he had
fairly left the ledge, he felt that they were giving way.
He paused, let himself slip back to a secure foothold, and tried their
strength by pulling with all his force.
Presently down came the whole mass in his hands. The friction against
the sharp edges of the rock over which they had been stretched with a
strong tension had worn them through. His first emotion was one of
intense thankfulness that they had fallen while he was on the ledge
instead of midway in his precarious ascent.
"Ef they hed kem down whilst I war a-goin' up, I'd hev been flung plumb
down ter the bottom o' the valley, 'kase this ledge air too narrer ter
hev cotched me."
He glanced down at the sombre depths beneath. "Thar wouldn't hev been
enough left of me ter pick up on a shovel!" he exclaimed, with a tardy
realization of his foolish recklessness.
The next moment a mortal terror seized him. What was to be his fate? To
regain the top of the cliff by his own exertions was an impossibility.
He cast his despairing eyes up the ascent, as sheer and as smooth as a
wall, without a crevice which might afford a foothold, or a shrub to
which he might cling.
His strong head was whirling as he again glanced downward to the
unmeasured abyss beneath. He softly let himself sink into a sitting
posture, his heels dangling over the frightful depths, and addressed
himself resolutely to the consideration of the terrible danger in which
he was placed.
[Illustration: HOW LONG WAS IT TO LAST]
Taken at its best, how long was it to last? Could he look to any human
being for deliverance? He reflected with growing dismay that the place
was far from any dwelling, and from the road that wound along the ridge.
There was no errand that could bring a man to this most unfrequented
portion of the deep woods, unless an accident should hither direct some
hunter's step.
It was quite possible, nay, probable, that years might elapse before the
forest solitude would again be broken by human presence.
His brothers would search for him when he should be missed from
home,--but such boundless stretches of forest! They might search for
weeks and never come near this spot. He would die here, he would
starve,--no, he would grow drowsy when exhausted and fall--fall--fall!
He was beginning to feel that morbid fascination that sometimes seizes
upon those who stand on great heights,--an overwhelming impulse to
plunge downward. His only salvation was to look up. He would look up to
the sky.
And what were these words he was beginning to faintly remember? Had not
the circuit-rider said in his last sermon that not even a sparrow falls
to the ground unmarked of God? There was a definite strength in this
suggestion. He felt less lonely as he stared resolutely at the big blue
sky. There came into his heart a sense of encouragement, of hope.
He would keep up as long and as bravely as he could, and if the worst
should come,--was he indeed so solitary? He would hold in remembrance
the sparrow's fall.
He had so nerved himself to meet his fate that he thought it was a fancy
when he heard a distant step. But it did not die away, it grew more and
more distinct,--a shambling step, that curiously stopped at intervals
and kicked the fallen leaves.
He sought to call out, but he seemed to have lost his voice. Not a sound
issued from his thickened tongue and his dry throat. The step came
nearer. It would presently pass. With a mighty effort Ethan sent forth a
wild, hoarse cry.
The rocks reverberated it, the wind carried it far, and certainly there
was an echo of its despair and terror in a shrill scream set up on the
verge of the crag. Then Ethan heard the shambling step scampering off
very fast indeed.
The truth flashed upon him. It was some child, passing on an
unimaginable errand through the deep woods, frightened by his sudden
cry.
"Stop, bubby!" he shouted; "stop a minute! It's Ethan Tynes that's
callin' of ye. Stop a minute, bubby!"
The step paused at a safe distance, and the shrill pipe of a little boy
demanded, "Whar is ye, Ethan Tynes?"
"I'm down hyar on the ledge o' the bluff. Who air ye ennyhow?"
"George Birt," promptly replied the little boy. "What air ye doin' down
thar? I thought it war Satan a-callin' of me. I never seen nobody."
"I kem down hyar on vines arter a tur-r-key I shot. The vines bruk, an'
I hev got no way ter git up agin. I want ye ter go ter yer mother's
house, an' tell yer brother Pete ter bring a rope hyar fur me ter climb
up by."
Ethan expected to hear the shambling step going away with a celerity
proportionate to the importance of the errand. On the contrary, the step
was approaching the crag.
A moment of suspense, and there appeared among the jagged ends of the
broken vines a small red head, a deeply freckled face, and a pair of
sharp, eager blue eyes. George Birt had carefully laid himself down on
his stomach, only protruding his head beyond the verge of the crag, that
he might not fling away his life in his curiosity.
"Did ye git it?" he asked, with bated breath.
"Git what?" demanded poor Ethan, surprised and impatient.
"The tur-r-key--what ye hev done been talkin' 'bout," said George Birt.
Ethan had lost all interest in the turkey. "Yes, yes; but run along,
bub. I mought fall off'n this hyar place,--I'm gittin' stiff sittin'
still so long,--or the wind mought blow me off. The wind is blowin'
toler'ble brief."
"Gobbler or hen?" asked George Birt eagerly.
"It air a hen," said Ethan. "But look-a-hyar, George, I'm a-waitin' on
ye, an' ef I'd fall off'n this hyar place, I'd be ez dead ez a door-nail
in a minute."
"Waal, I'm goin' now," said George Birt, with gratifying alacrity. He
raised himself from his recumbent position, and Ethan heard him
shambling off, kicking every now and then at the fallen leaves as he
went.
Presently, however, he turned and walked back nearly to the brink of the
cliff. Then he prostrated himself once more at full length,--for the
mountain children are very careful of the precipices,--snaked along
dexterously to the verge of the crag, and protruding his red head
cautiously, began to parley once more, trading on Ethan's necessities.
"Ef I go on this yerrand fur ye," he said, looking very sharp indeed,
"will ye gimme one o' the whings of that thar wild tur-r-key?"
He coveted the wing-feathers, not the joint of the fowl. The "whing" of
the domestic turkey is used by the mountain women as a fan, and is
considered an elegance as well as a comfort. George Birt aped the
customs of his elders, regardless of sex,--a characteristic of very
small boys.
"Oh, go 'long, bubby!" exclaimed poor Ethan, in dismay at the
dilatoriness and indifference of his unique deliverer. "I'll give ye
both o' the whings." He would have offered the turkey willingly, if
"bubby" had seemed to crave it.
"Waal, I'm goin' now."
George Birt rose from the ground and started off briskly, exhilarated by
the promise of both the "whings."
Ethan was angry indeed when he heard the boy once more shambling back.
Of course one should regard a deliverer with gratitude, especially a
deliverer from mortal peril; but it may be doubted if Ethan's gratitude
would have been great enough to insure that small red head against a
vigorous rap, if it had been within rapping distance, when it was once
more cautiously protruded over the verge of the cliff.
"I kem back hyar ter tell ye," the doughty deliverer began, with an air
of great importance, and magnifying his office with an extreme relish,
"that I can't go an' tell Pete 'bout'n the rope till I hev done kem back
from the mill. I hev got old Sorrel hitched out hyar a piece, with a bag
o' corn on his back, what I hev ter git ground at the mill. My mother
air a-settin' at home now a-waitin' fur that thar corn-meal ter bake
dodgers with. An' I hev got a dime ter pay at the mill; it war lent ter
my dad las' week. An' I'm afeard ter walk about much with this hyar
dime; I mought lose it, ye know. An' I can't go home 'thout the meal;
I'll ketch it ef I do. But I'll tell Pete arter I git back from the
mill."
"The mill!" echoed Ethan, aghast. "What air ye doin' on this side o' the
mounting, ef ye air a-goin' ter the mill? This ain't the way ter the
mill."
"I kem over hyar," said the little boy, still with much importance of
manner, notwithstanding a slight suggestion of embarrassment on his
freckled face, "ter see 'bout'n a trap that I hev sot fur squir'ls. I'll
see 'bout my trap, an' then I hev ter go ter the mill, 'kase my mother
air a-settin' in our house now a-waitin' fur meal ter bake corn-dodgers.
Then I'll tell Pete whar ye air, an' what ye said 'bout'n the rope. Ye
must jes' wait fur me hyar."
Poor Ethan could do nothing else.
As the echo of the boy's shambling step died in the distance, a
redoubled sense of loneliness fell upon Ethan Tynes. But he endeavored
to solace himself with the reflection that the important mission to the
squirrel-trap and the errand to the mill could not last forever, and
before a great while Peter Birt and his rope would be upon the crag.
This idea buoyed him up as the hours crept slowly by. Now and then he
lifted his head and listened with painful intentness. He felt stiff in
every muscle, and yet he had a dread of making an effort to change his
constrained position. He might lose control of his rigid limbs, and fall
into those dread depths beneath.
His patience at last began to give way. His heart was sinking. His
messenger had been even more dilatory than he was prepared to expect.
Why did not Pete come? Was it possible that George had forgotten to tell
of his danger?
The sun was going down, leaving a great glory of gold and crimson clouds
and an opaline haze upon the purple mountains. The last rays fell on the
bronze feathers of the turkey still lying tied to the broken vines on
the ledge.
And now there were only frowning masses of dark clouds in the west; and
there were frowning masses of clouds overhead.
The shadow of the coming night had fallen on the autumnal foliage in the
deep valley; in the place of the opaline haze was only a gray mist.
And now came, sweeping along between the parallel mountain ranges, a
sombre rain-cloud. The lad could hear the heavy drops splashing on the
treetops in the valley, long, long before he felt them on his head.
The roll of thunder sounded among the crags. Then the rain came down
tumultuously, not in columns, but in livid sheets. The lightnings rent
the sky, showing, as it seemed to him, glimpses of the glorious
brightness within,--too bright for human eyes.
He clung desperately to his precarious perch. Now and then a fierce rush
of wind almost tore him from it. Strange fancies beset him. The air was
full of that wild symphony of nature, the wind and the rain, the pealing
thunder, and the thunderous echo among the cliffs, and yet he thought he
could hear his own name ringing again and again through all the tumult,
sometimes in Pete's voice, sometimes in George's shrill tones.
He became vaguely aware, after a time, that the rain had ceased, and the
moon was beginning to shine through rifts in the clouds.
The wind continued unabated, but, curiously enough, he could not hear it
now. He could hear nothing; he could think of nothing. His consciousness
was beginning to fail.
George Birt had indeed forgotten him,--forgotten even the promised
"whings." Not that he had discovered anything so extraordinary in his
trap, for his trap was empty, but when he reached the mill, he found
that the miller had killed a bear and captured a cub, and the orphan,
chained to a post, had deeply absorbed George Birt's attention.
To sophisticated people, the boy might have seemed as grotesque as the
cub. George wore an unbleached cotton shirt. The waistband of his baggy
jeans trousers encircled his body just beneath his armpits, reaching to
his shoulder-blades behind, and nearly to his collar-bone in front. His
red head was only partly covered by a fragment of an old white wool hat;
and he looked at the cub with a curiosity as intense as that with which
the cub looked at him. Each was taking first lessons in natural history.
As long as there was daylight enough left to see that cub, did George
Birt stand and stare at the little beast. Then he clattered home on old
Sorrel in the closing darkness, looking like a very small pin on the top
of a large pincushion.
At home, he found the elders unreasonable,--as elders usually are
considered. Supper had been waiting an hour or so for the lack of meal
for dodgers. He "caught it" considerably, but not sufficiently to impair
his appetite for the dodgers. After all this, he was ready enough for
bed when small boy's bedtime came. But as he was nodding before the
fire, he heard a word that roused him to a new excitement.
"These hyar chips air so wet they won't burn," said his mother. "I'll
take my tur-r-key whing an' fan the fire."
"Law!" he exclaimed. "Thar, now! Ethan Tynes never gimme that thar wild
tur-r-key's whings like he promised."
"Whar did ye happen ter see Ethan?" asked Pete, interested in his
friend.
"Seen him in the woods, an' he promised me the tur-r-key whings."
"What fur?" inquired Pete, a little surprised by this uncalled-for
generosity.
"Waal,"--there was an expression of embarrassment on the important
freckled face, and the small red head nodded forward in an explanatory
manner,--"he fell off'n the bluffs arter the tur-r-key whings--I mean,
he went down to the ledge arter the tur-r-key, and the vines bruk an' he
couldn't git up no more. An' he tole me that ef I'd tell ye ter fotch
him a rope ter pull up by, he would gimme the whings. That happened
a--leetle--while--arter dinner-time."
"Who got him a rope ter pull up by?" demanded Pete.
There was again on the important face that indescribable shade of
embarrassment. "Waal,"--the youngster balanced this word judicially,--"I
forgot 'bout'n the tur-r-key whings till this minute. I reckon he's thar
yit."
"Mebbe this hyar wind an' rain hev beat him off'n the ledge!" exclaimed
Pete, appalled, and rising hastily. "I tell ye now," he added, turning
to his mother, "the best use ye kin make o' that thar boy is ter put him
on the fire fur a back-log."
Pete made his preparations in great haste. He took the rope from the
well, asked the crestfallen and browbeaten junior a question or two
relative to locality, mounted old Sorrel without a saddle, and in a few
minutes was galloping at headlong speed through the night.
The rain was over by the time he had reached the sulphur spring to
which George had directed him, but the wind was still high, and the
broken clouds were driving fast across the face of the moon.
When he had hitched his horse to a tree, and set out on foot to find the
cliff, the moonbeams, though brilliant, were so intermittent that his
progress was fitful and necessarily cautious. When the disk shone out
full and clear, he made his way rapidly enough, but when the clouds
intervened, he stood still and waited.
"I ain't goin' ter fall off'n the bluff 'thout knowin' it," he said to
himself, in one of these eclipses, "ef I hev ter stand hyar all night."
The moonlight was brilliant and steady when he reached the verge of the
crag. He identified the spot by the mass of broken vines, and more
indubitably by Ethan's rifle lying upon the ground just at his feet. He
called, but received no response.
"Hev Ethan fell off, sure enough?" he asked himself, in great dismay and
alarm. Then he shouted again and again. At last there came an answer,
as though the speaker had just awaked.
"Pretty nigh beat out, I'm a-thinkin'!" commented Pete. He tied one end
of the cord around the trunk of a tree, knotted it at intervals, and
flung it over the bluff.
At first Ethan was almost afraid to stir. He slowly put forth his hand
and grasped the rope. Then, his heart beating tumultuously, he rose to
his feet.
He stood still for an instant to steady himself and get his breath.
Nerving himself for a strong effort, he began the ascent, hand over
hand, up, and up, and up, till once more he stood upon the crest of the
crag.
And, now that all danger was over, Pete was disposed to scold. "I'm
a-thinkin'," said Pete severely, "ez thar ain't a critter on this hyar
mounting, from a b'ar ter a copper-head, that could hev got in sech a
fix, 'ceptin' ye, Ethan Tynes."
And Ethan was silent.
"What's this hyar thing at the e-end o' the rope?" asked Pete, as he
began to draw the cord up, and felt a weight still suspended.
"It air the tur-r-key," said Ethan meekly.
"I tied her ter the e-end o' the rope afore I kem up."
"Waal, sir!" exclaimed Pete, in indignant surprise.
And George, for duty performed, was remunerated with the two "whings,"
although it still remains a question in the mind of Ethan whether or not
he deserved them.
IN THE "CHINKING"
Not far from an abrupt precipice on a certain great mountain spur there
stands in the midst of the red and yellow autumn woods a little log
"church-house." The nuts rattle noisily down on its roof; sometimes
during "evenin' preachin'"--which takes place in the afternoon--a
flying-squirrel frisks near the window; the hymns echo softly, softly,
from the hazy sunlit heights across the valley.
"That air the doxol'gy," said Tom Brent, one day, pausing to listen
among the wagons and horses hitched outside. He was about to follow home
his father's mare, that had broken loose and galloped off through the
woods, but as he glanced back at the church, a sudden thought struck
him. He caught sight of the end of little Jim Coggin's comforter
flaunting out through the "chinking,"--as the mountaineers call the
series of short slats which are set diagonally in the spaces between the
logs of the walls, and on which the clay is thickly daubed. This work
had been badly done, and in many places the daubing had fallen away.
Thus it was that as Jim Coggin sat within the church, the end of his
plaid comforter had slipped through the chinking and was waving in the
wind outside.
Now Jim had found the weather still too warm for his heavy jeans jacket,
but he was too cool without it, and he had ingeniously compromised the
difficulty by wearing his comforter in this unique manner,--laying it on
his shoulders, crossing it over the chest, passing it under the arms,
and tying it in a knot between the shoulder-blades. Tom remembered this
with a grin as he slyly crept up to the house, and it was only the work
of a moment to draw that knot through the chinking and secure it firmly
to a sumach bush that grew near at hand.
It never occurred to him that the resounding doxology could fail to
rouse that small, tow-headed, freckle-faced boy, or that the
congregation might slowly disperse without noticing him as he sat
motionless and asleep in the dark shadow.
The sun slipped down into the red west; the blue mountains turned
purple; heavy clouds gathered, and within three miles there was no other
human creature when Jim suddenly woke to the darkness and the storm and
the terrible loneliness.
Where was he? He tried to rise: he could not move. Bewildered, he
struggled and tugged at his harness,--all in vain. As he realized the
situation, he burst into tears.
"Them home-folks o' mine won't kem hyar ter s'arch fur me," he cried
desperately, "kase I tole my mother ez how I war a-goin' ter dust down
the mounting ter Aunt Jerushy's house ez soon ez meet'n' war out an'
stay all night along o' her boys."
Still he tried to comfort himself by reflecting that it was not so bad
as it might have been. There was no danger that he would have to starve
and pine here till next Sunday, for a "protracted meeting" was in
progress, service was held every day, and the congregation would return
to-morrow, which was Thursday.
His philosophy, however, was short-lived, for the sudden lightning rent
the clouds, and a terrific peal of thunder echoed among the cliffs.
"The storm air a-comin' up the mounting!" he exclaimed, in vivacious
protest. "An' ef this brief wind war ter whurl the old church-house
off'n the bluff an' down inter the valley whar-r--would--I--be?"
All at once the porch creaked beneath a heavy tread. A clumsy hand was
fumbling at the door. "Strike a light," said a gruff voice without.
As a lantern was thrust in, Jim was about to speak, but the words froze
upon his lips for fear when a man strode heavily over the threshold and
he caught the expression of his face.
It was an evil face, red and bloated and brutish. He had small,
malicious, twinkling eyes, and a shock of sandy hair. A suit of
copper-colored jeans hung loosely on his tall, lank frame, and when he
placed the lantern on a bench and stretched out both arms as if he were
tired, he showed that his left hand was maimed,--the thumb had been cut
off at the first joint.
A thickset, short, swaggering man tramped in after him.
"Waal, Amos Brierwood," he said, "it's safes' fur us ter part. We
oughter be fur enough from hyar by daybreak. Divide that thar traveler's
money--hey?"
They carefully closed the rude shutters, barred the door, and sat down
on the "mourners' bench," neither having noticed the small boy at the
other end of the room.
Poor Jim, his arms akimbo and half-covered by his comforter, stuck to
the wall like a plaid bat,--if such a natural curiosity is
imaginable,--feverishly hoping that the men might go without seeing him
at all.
For surely no human creature could be more abhorrent, more incredibly
odious of aspect, than Amos Brierwood as he sat there, his red, brutish
face redder still with a malign pleasure, his malicious eyes gloating
over the rolls of money which he drew from a pocket-book stolen from
some waylaid traveler, snapping his fingers in exultation when the
amount of the bills exceeded his expectation.
The leaves without were fitfully astir, and once the porch creaked
suddenly. Brierwood glanced at the door sharply,--even fearfully,--his
hand motionless on the rolls of money.
"Only the wind, Amos, only the wind!" said the short, stout man
impatiently.
But he, himself, was disquieted the next moment when a horse neighed
shrilly.
"That ain't my beastis, Amos, nor yit your'n!" he cried, starting up.
"It air the traveler's, ye sodden idjit!" said Brierwood, lifting his
uncouth foot and giving him a jocose kick.
But the short man was not satisfied. He rose, went outside, and Jim
could hear him beating about among the bushes. Presently he came in
again. "'Twar the traveler's critter, I reckon; an' that critter an'
saddle oughter be counted in my sheer."
Then they fell to disputing and quarreling,--once they almost
fought,--but at length the division was made and they rose to go. As
Brierwood swung his lantern round, his malicious eyes fell upon the poor
little plaid bat sticking against the wall.
He stood in the door staring, dumfounded for a moment. Then he clenched
his fist, and shook it fiercely. "How did ye happen ter be hyar this
time o' the night, ye limb o' Satan?" he cried.
"Dunno," faltered poor Jim.
The other man had returned too. "Waal, sir, ef that thar boy hed been a
copper-head now, he'd hev bit us, sure!"
"_He mought do that yit_," said Amos Brierwood, with grim significance.
"He hev been thar all this time,--'kase he air tied thar, don't ye see?
An' he hev _eyes_, an' he hev _ears_. What air ter hender?"
The other man's face turned pale, and Jim thought that they were afraid
he would tell all he had seen and heard. The manner of both had changed,
too. They had a skulking, nervous way with them now in place of the
coarse bravado that had characterized them hitherto.
Amos Brierwood pondered for a few minutes. Then he sullenly demanded,--
"What's yer name?"
"It air Jeemes Coggin," quavered the little boy.
"Coggin, hey?" exclaimed Brierwood, with a new idea bringing back the
malicious twinkle to his eyes. He laughed as though mightily relieved,
and threw up his left hand and shook it exultingly.
The shadow on the dark wall of that maimed hand with only the stump of a
thumb was a weird, a horrible thing to the child. He had no idea that
his constant notice of it would stamp it in his memory, and that
something would come of this fact. He was glad when the shadow ceased to
writhe and twist upon the wall, and the man dropped his arm to his side
again.
"What's a-brewin', Amos?" asked the other, who had been watching
Brierwood curiously.
They whispered aside for a few moments, at first anxiously and then with
wild guffaws of satisfaction. When they approached the boy, their manner
had changed once more.
"Waal, I declar, bubby," said Brierwood agreeably, "this hyar fix ez ye
hev got inter air sateful fur true! It air enough ter sot enny boy on
the mounting cat-a-wampus. 'Twar a good thing ez we-uns happened ter kem
by hyar on our way from the tan-yard way down yander in the valley whar
we-uns hev been ter git paid up fur workin' thar some. We'll let ye out.
Who done yer this hyar trick?"
"Dunno--witches, I reckon!" cried poor Jim, bursting into tears.
"Witches!" the man exclaimed, "the woods air a-roamin' with 'em this
time o' the year; bein', ye see, ez they kem ter feed on the mast."
He chuckled as he said this, perhaps at the boy's evident terror,--for
Jim was sorrowfully superstitious,--perhaps because he had managed to
cut unnoticed a large fragment from the end of the comforter. This he
stuffed into his own pocket as he talked on about two witches, whom he
said he had met that afternoon under an oak-tree feeding on acorns.
"An' now, I kem ter remind myself that them witches war inquirin' round
'bout'n a boy--war his name Jeemes Coggin? Le''s see! That boy's name
_war_ Jeemes Coggin!"
While Jim stood breathlessly, intently listening, Brierwood had twisted
something into the folds of his comforter so dexterously that unless
this were untied it would not fall; it was a silk handkerchief of a
style never before seen in the mountains, and he had made a knot hard
and fast in one corner.
"Thar, now!" he exclaimed, holding up the fragment of knitted yarn, "I
hev tore yer comforter. Never mind, bubby, 'twar tore afore. But it'll
do ter wrop up this money-purse what b'longs ter yer dad. He lef' it
hid in the chinking o' the wall over yander close ter whar I war sittin'
when I fust kem in. I'll put it back thar, 'kase yer dad don't want
nobody ter know whar it air hid."
He strode across the room and concealed the empty pocket-book in the
chinking.
"Ef ye won't tell who teched it, I'll gin a good word fur ye ter them
witches what war inquirin' round fur ye ter-day."
Jim promised in hot haste, and then, the rain having ceased, he started
for home, but Brierwood stopped him at the door.
"Hold on thar, bub. I kem mighty nigh furgittin' ter let ye know ez I
seen yer brother Alf awhile back, an' he axed me ter git ye ter go by
Tom Brent's house, an' tell Tom ter meet him up the road a piece by that
thar big sulphur spring. Will ye gin Tom that message? Tell him Alf said
ter come quick."
Once more Jim promised.
The two men holding the lantern out in the porch watched him as he
pounded down the dark road, his tow hair sticking out of his tattered
black hat, the ends of his comforter flaunting in the breeze, and every
gesture showing the agitated haste of a witch-scared boy. Then they
looked at each other significantly, and laughed loud and long.
"He'll tell sech a crooked tale ter-morrer that Alf Coggin an' his dad
will see sights along o' that traveler's money!" said Brierwood,
gloating over his sharp management as he and his accomplice mounted
their horses and rode off in opposite directions.
When Jim reached Tom Brent's house, and knocked at the door, he was so
absorbed in his terrors that, as it opened, he said nothing for a
moment. He could see the family group within. Tom's father was placidly
smoking. His palsied "gran'dad" shook in his chair in the chimney-corner
as he told the wide-eyed boys big tales about the "Injuns" that harried
the early settlers in Tennessee.
"Tom," Jim said, glancing up at the big boy,--"Tom, thar's a witch
waitin' fur ye at the sulphur spring! Go thar, quick!"
"Not ef I knows what's good fur me!" protested Tom, with a great
horse-laugh. "What ails ye, boy? Ye talk like ye war teched in the
head!"
"I went ter say ez Alf Coggin air thar waitin' fur ye," Jim began again,
nodding his slandered head with great solemnity, "an' tole me ter tell
ye ter kem thar quick."
He took no heed of the inaccuracy of the message; he was glancing
fearfully over his shoulder, and the next minute scuttled down the road
in a bee-line for home.
Tom hurried off briskly through the woods. "Waal, sir! I'm mighty nigh
crazed ter know what Alf Coggin kin want o' me; goin' coon-huntin',
mebbe," he speculated, as he drew within sight of an old
lightning-scathed tree which stood beside the sulphur spring and
stretched up, stark and white, in the dim light.
The clouds were blowing away from a densely instarred sky; the moon was
hardly more than a crescent and dipping low in the west, but he could
see the sombre outline of the opposite mountain, and the white mists
that shifted in a ghostly and elusive fashion along the summit. The
night was still, save for a late katydid, spared by the frost, and
piping shrilly.
He experienced a terrible shock of surprise when a sudden voice--a voice
he had never heard before--cried out sharply, "Hello there! Help! help!"
As he pressed tremulously forward, he beheld a sight which made him ask
himself if it were possible that Alf Coggin had sent for him to join in
some nefarious work which had ended in leaving a man--a stranger--bound
to the old lightning-scathed tree.
Even in the uncertain light Tom could see that he was pallid and
panting, evidently exhausted in some desperate struggle: there was blood
on his face, his clothes were torn, and by all odds he was the angriest
man that was ever waylaid and robbed.
"Ter-morrer he'll be jes' a-swoopin'!" thought Tom, tremulously untying
the complicated knots, and listening to his threats of vengeance on the
unknown robbers, "an' every critter on the mounting will git a clutch
from his claws."
And in fact, it was hardly daybreak before the constable of the
district, who lived hard by in the valley, was informed of all the
details of the affair, so far as known to Tom or the "Traveler,"--for
thus the mountaineers designated him, as if he were the only one in the
world.
By reason of the message which Jim had delivered, and its strange
result, they suspected the Coggins, and as they rode together to the
justice's house for a warrant, this suspicion received unexpected
confirmation in a rumor that they found afloat. Every man they met
stopped them to repeat the story that Coggin's boy had told somebody
that it was his father who had robbed the traveler, and hid the empty
pocket-book in the chinking of the church wall. No one knew who had set
this report in circulation, but a blacksmith said he heard it first from
a man named Brierwood, who had stopped at his shop to have his horse
shod.
It was still early when they reached Jim Coggin's home; the windows and
doors were open to let out the dust, for his mother was just beginning
to sweep. She had pushed aside the table, when her eyes suddenly
distended with surprise as they fell upon a silk handkerchief lying on
the floor beside it. The moment that she stooped and picked it up, the
strange gentleman stepped upon the porch, and through the open door he
saw it dangling from her hands.
He tapped the constable on the shoulder.
"That's my property!" he said tersely.
The officer stepped in instantly. "Good-mornin', Mrs. Coggin," he said
politely. "'T would pleasure me some ter git a glimpse o' that
handkercher."
"Air it your'n?" asked the woman wonderingly. "I jes' now fund it, an' I
war tried ter know who had drapped it hyar."
The officer, without a word, untied the knot which Amos Brierwood had
made in one corner, while the Coggins looked on in open-mouthed
amazement. It contained a five-dollar bill, and a bit of paper on which
some careless memoranda had been jotted down in handwriting which the
traveler claimed as his own.
It seemed a very plain case. Still, he got out of the sound of the
woman's sobs and cries as soon as he conveniently could, and sauntered
down the road, where the officer presently overtook him with Alf and his
father in custody.
"Whar be ye a-takin' of us now?" cried the elder, gaunt and haggard, and
with his long hair blowing in the breeze.
"Ter the church-house, whar yer boy says ye hev hid the traveler's
money-purse," said the officer.
"_My boy_!" exclaimed John Coggin, casting an astounded glance upon his
son.
Poor Alf was almost stunned. When they reached the church, and the men,
after searching for a time without result, appealed to him to save
trouble by pointing out the spot where the pocket-book was concealed, he
could only stammer and falter unintelligibly, and finally he burst into
tears.
"Ax the t'other one--the leetle boy," suggested an old man in the crowd.
Alf's heart sank--sank like lead--when Jim, suddenly remembering the
promised "good word" to the witches, piped out, "I war tole not ter tell
who teched it,--'kase my dad didn't want nobody ter know 'twar hid
thar."
John Coggin's face was rigid and gray.
"The Lord hev forsook me!" he cried. "An' all my chillen hev turned
liars tergether."
Then he made a great effort to control himself.
"Look-a-hyar, Jim, ef ye hev got the truth in ye,--speak it! Ef ye know
whar I hev hid anything,--find it!"
Jim, infinitely important, and really understanding little of what was
going on, except that all these big men were looking at him, crossed the
room with as much stateliness as is compatible with a pair of baggy
brown jeans trousers, a plaid comforter tied between the shoulder-blades
in a big knot, a tow-head, and a tattered black hat; he slipped his
grimy paw in the chinking where Amos Brierwood had hid the pocket-book,
and drew it thence, with the prideful exclamation,--
"B'longs ter my dad!"
The officer held it up empty before the traveler,--he held up, too, the
bit of comforter in which it was folded, and pointed to the small boy's
shoulders. The gentleman turned away, thoroughly convinced. Alf and his
father looked from one to the other, in mute despair. They foresaw many
years of imprisonment for a crime which they had not committed.
The constable was hurrying his prisoners toward the door, when there was
a sudden stir on the outskirts of the crowd. Old Parson Payne was
pushing his way in, followed by a tall young man, who, in comparison
with the mountaineers, seemed wonderfully prosperous and well-clad, and
very fresh and breezy.
"You're all on the wrong track!" he cried.
And his story proved this, though it was simple enough.
He was sojourning in the mountains with some friends on a "camp-hunt,"
and the previous evening he had chanced to lose his way in the woods.
When night and the storm came on, he was perhaps five miles from camp.
He mistook the little "church-house" for a dwelling, and dismounting, he
hitched his horse in the laurel, intending to ask for shelter for the
night. As he stepped upon the porch, however, he caught a glimpse,
through the chinking, of the interior, and he perceived that the
building was a church. There were benches and a rude pulpit. The next
instant, his attention was riveted by the sight of two men, one of whom
had drawn a knife upon the other, quarreling over a roll of money. He
stood rooted to the spot in surprise. Gradually, he began to understand
the villainy afoot, for he overheard all that they said to each other,
and afterward to Jim. He saw one of the men cut the bit from the
comforter, wrap the pocket-book in it, and hide it away, and he
witnessed a dispute between them, which went on in dumb show behind the
boy's back, as to which of two bills should be knotted in the
handkerchief which they twisted into the comforter.
The constable was pressing him to describe the appearance of the
ruffians.
"Why," said the stranger, "one of them was long, and lank, and
loose-jointed, and had sandy hair, and"--He paused abruptly, cudgeling
his memory for something more distinctive, for this description would
apply to half the men in the room, and thus it would be impossible to
identify and capture the robbers.
"He hedn't no thumb sca'cely on his lef' hand," piped out Jim, holding
up his own grimy paw, and looking at it with squinting intensity as he
crooked it at the first joint, to imitate the maimed hand.
"No thumb!" exclaimed the constable excitedly. "Amos Brierwood fur a
thousand!"
Jim nodded his head intelligently, with sudden recollection. "That air
the name ez the chunky man gin him when they fust kem in."
And thus it was that when the Coggins were presently brought before the
justice, they were exonerated of all complicity in the crime for which
Brierwood and his accomplice were afterward arrested, tried, and
sentenced to the State Prison.
Jim doubts whether the promised "good word" was ever spoken on his
behalf to the witches, who were represented as making personal inquiries
about him, because he suspects that the two robbers were themselves the
only evil spirits roaming the woods that night.
ON A HIGHER LEVEL
As Jack Dunn stood in the door of his home on a great crag of Persimmon
Ridge and loaded his old rifle, his eyes rested upon a vast and imposing
array of mountains filling the landscape. All are heavily wooded, all
are alike, save that in one the long horizontal line of the summit is
broken by a sudden vertical ascent, and thence the mountain seems to
take up life on a higher level, for it sinks no more and passes out of
sight.
This abrupt rise is called "Elijah's Step,"--named, perhaps, in honor of
some neighboring farmer who first explored it; but the ignorant boy
believed that here the prophet had stepped into his waiting fiery
chariot.
He knew of no foreign lands,--no Syria, no Palestine. He had no dream of
the world that lay beyond those misty, azure hills. Indistinctly he had
caught the old story from the nasal drawl of the circuit-rider, and he
thought that here, among these wild Tennessee mountains, Elijah had
lived and had not died.
There came suddenly from the valley the baying of a pack of hounds in
full cry, and when the crags caught the sound and tossed it from
mountain to mountain, when more delicate echoes on a higher key rang out
from the deep ravines, there was a wonderful exhilaration in this sylvan
minstrelsy. The young fellow looked wistful as he heard it, then he
frowned heavily.
"Them thar Saunders men hev gone off an' left me," he said reproachfully
to some one within the log cabin. "Hyar I be kept a-choppin' wood an' a
pullin' fodder till they hev hed time ter git up a deer. It 'pears ter
me ez I mought hev been let ter put off that thar work till I war
through huntin'."
He was a tall young fellow, with a frank, freckled face and auburn hair;
stalwart, too. Judging from his appearance, he could chop wood and pull
fodder to some purpose.
A heavy, middle-aged man emerged from the house, and stood regarding his
son with grim disfavor. "An' who oughter chop wood an' pull fodder but
ye, while my hand air sprained this way?" he demanded.
That hand had been sprained for many a long day, but the boy made no
reply; perhaps he knew its weight. He walked to the verge of the cliff,
and gazed down at the tops of the trees in the valley far, far below.
The expanse of foliage was surging in the wind like the waves of the
sea. From the unseen depths beneath there rose again the cry of the
pack, inexpressibly stirring, and replete with woodland suggestions. All
the echoes came out to meet it.
"I war promised ter go!" cried Jack bitterly.
"Waal," said his mother, from within the house, "'tain't no good nohow."
Her voice was calculated to throw oil upon the troubled waters,--low,
languid, and full of pacifying intonations. She was a tall, thin woman,
clad in a blue-checked homespun dress, and seated before a great
hand-loom, as a lady sits before a piano or an organ. The creak of the
treadle, and the thump, thump of the batten, punctuated, as it were, her
consolatory disquisition.
Her son looked at her in great depression of spirit as she threw the
shuttle back and forth with deft, practiced hands.
"Wild meat air a mighty savin'," she continued, with a housewifely
afterthought. "I ain't denyin' that."
Thump, thump, went the batten.
"But ye needn't pester the life out'n yerself 'kase ye ain't a-runnin'
the deer along o' them Saunders men. It 'pears like a powerful waste o'
time, when ye kin take yer gun down ter the river enny evenin' late,
jes' ez the deer air goin' ter drink, an' shoot ez big a buck ez ye hev
got the grit ter git enny other way. Ye can't do nothin' with a buck but
eat him, an' a-runnin' him all around the mounting don't make him no
tenderer, ter my mind. I don't see no sense in huntin' 'cept ter git
somethin' fitten ter eat."
This logic, enough to break a sportsman's heart, was not a panacea for
the tedium of the day, spent in the tame occupation of pulling fodder,
as the process of stripping the blades from the standing cornstalks is
called.
But when the shadows were growing long, Jack took his rifle and set out
for the profit and the pleasure of still-hunting. As he made his way
through the dense woods, the metallic tones of a cow-bell jangled on the
air,--melodious sound in the forest quiet, but it conjured up a scowl on
the face of the young mountaineer.
"Everything on this hyar mounting hev got the twistin's ter-day!" he
exclaimed wrath-fully. "Hyar is our old red cow a-traipsing off ter Andy
Bailey's house, an' thar won't be a drap of milk for supper."
This was a serious matter, for in a region where coffee and tea are
almost unknown luxuries, and the evening meal consists of such
thirst-provoking articles as broiled venison, corn-dodgers, and sorghum,
one is apt to feel the need of some liquid milder than "apple-jack,"
and more toothsome than water, wherewith to wet one's whistle.
In common with everything else on the mountain, Jack, too, had the
"twistin's," and it was with a sour face that he began to drive the cow
homeward. After going some distance, however, he persuaded himself that
she would leave the beaten track no more until she reached the cabin. He
turned about, therefore, and retraced his way to the stream.
There had been heavy rains in the mountains, and it was far out of its
banks, rushing and foaming over great rocks, circling in swift
whirlpools, plunging in smooth, glassy sheets down sudden descents, and
maddening thence in tumultuous, yeasty billows.
An old mill, long disused and fallen into decay, stood upon the brink.
It was a painful suggestion of collapsed energies, despite its
picturesque drapery of vines. No human being could live there, but in
the doorway abruptly appeared a boy of seventeen, dressed, like Jack, in
an old brown jeans suit and a shapeless white hat.
Jack paused at a little distance up on the hill, and parleyed in a
stentorian voice with the boy in the mill.
"What's the reason ye air always tryin' ter toll off our old red muley
from our house?" he demanded angrily.
"I ain't never tried ter toll her off," said Andy Bailey. "She jes' kem
ter our house herself. I dunno ez I hev got enny call ter look arter
other folkses' stray cattle. Mind yer own cow."
"I hev got a mighty notion ter cut down that thar sapling,"--and Jack
pointed to a good-sized hickory-tree,--"an' wear it out on ye."
"I ain't afeard. Come on!" said Andy impudently, protected by his
innocence, and the fact of being the smaller of the two.
There was a pause. "Hev ye been a-huntin'?" asked Jack, beginning to be
mollified by the rare luxury of youthful and congenial companionship;
for this was a scantily settled region, and boys were few.
Andy nodded assent.
Jack walked down into the rickety mill, and stood leaning against the
rotten old hopper. "What did ye git?" he said, looking about for the
game.
"Waal," drawled Andy, with much hesitation, "I hain't been started out
long." He turned from the door and faced his companion rather
sheepishly.
"I hopes ye ain't been poppin' off that rifle o' your'n along that
deer-path down in the hollow, an' a-skeerin' off all the wild critters,"
said Jack Dunn, with sudden apprehension. "Ef I war ez pore a shot ez ye
air, I'd go a-huntin' with a bean-pole instead of a gun, an' leave the
game ter them that kin shoot it."
Andy was of a mercurial and nervous temperament, and this fact perhaps
may account for the anomaly of a mountain-boy who was a poor shot. Andy
was the scoff of Persimmon Ridge.
"I hev seen many a gal who could shoot ez well ez ye kin,--better,"
continued Jack jeeringly. "But law! I needn't kerry my heavy bones down
thar in the hollow expectin' ter git a deer ter-day. They air all off in
the woods a-smellin' the powder ye hev been wastin'."
Andy was pleased to change the subject. "It 'pears ter me that that thar
water air a-scuttlin' along toler'ble fast," he said, turning his eyes
to the little window through which the stream could be seen.
It _was_ running fast, and with a tremendous force. One could obtain
some idea of the speed and impetus of the current from the swift
vehemence with which logs and branches shot past, half hidden in foam.
The water looked black with this white contrast. Here and there a great,
grim rock projected sharply above the surface. In the normal condition
of the stream, these were its overhanging banks, but now, submerged,
they gave to its flow the character of rapids.
The old mill, its wooden supports submerged too, trembled and throbbed
with the throbbing water. As Jack looked toward the window, his eyes
were suddenly distended, his cheek paled, and he sprang to the door
with a frightened exclamation.
Too late! the immense hole of a fallen tree, shooting down the channel
with the force and velocity of a great projectile, struck the tottering
supports of the crazy, rotting building.
It careened, and quivered in every fibre; there was a crash of falling
timbers, then a mighty wrench, and the two boys, clinging to the
window-frame, were driving with the wreck down the river.
The old mill thundered against the submerged rocks, and at every
concussion the timbers fell. It whirled around and around in eddying
pools. Where the water was clear, and smooth, and deep, it shot along
with great rapidity.
The convulsively clinging boys looked down upon the black current, with
its sharp, treacherous, half-seen rocks and ponderous driftwood. The
wild idea of plunging into the tumult and trying to swim to the bank
faded as they looked. Here in the crazy building there might be a
chance. In that frightful swirl there lurked only a grim certainty.
The house had swung along in the middle of the stream; now its course
was veering slightly to the left. This could be seen through the window
and the interstices of the half-fallen timbers.
The boys were caged, as it were; the doorway was filled with the heavy
debris, and the only possibility of escape was through that little
window. It was so small that only one could pass through at a
time,--only one could be saved.
Jack had seen the chance from far up the stream. There was a stretch of
smooth water close in to the bank, on which was a low-hanging
beech-tree,--he might catch the branches.
They were approaching the spot with great rapidity. Only one could go.
He himself had discovered the opportunity,--it was his own.
Life was sweet,--so sweet! He could not give it up; he could not now
take thought for his friend. He could only hope with a frenzied
eagerness that Andy had not seen the possibility of deliverance.
In another moment Andy lifted himself into the window. A whirlpool
caught the wreck, and there it eddied in dizzying circles. It was not
yet too late. Jack could tear the smaller, weaker fellow away with one
strong hand, and take the only chance for escape. The shattered mill was
dashing through the smoother waters now; the great beech-tree was
hanging over their heads; an inexplicable, overpowering impulse mastered
in an instant Jack's temptation.
"Ketch the branches, Andy!" he cried wildly.
His friend was gone, and he was whirling off alone on those cruel,
frantic waters. In the midst of the torrent he was going down, and down,
and down the mountain.
Now and then he had a fleeting glimpse of the distant ranges. There was
"Elijah's Step," glorified in the sunset, purple and splendid, with red
and gold clouds flaming above it. To his untutored imagination they
looked like the fiery chariot again awaiting the prophet.
The familiar sight, the familiar, oft-repeated fancy, the recollection
of his home, brought sudden tears to his eyes. He gazed wistfully at the
spot whence he believed the man had ascended who left death untasted,
and then he went on in this mad rush down to the bitterness of death.
Even with this terrible fact before him, he did not reproach himself
with his costly generosity. It was strange to him that he did not regret
it; perhaps, like that mountain, he had suddenly taken up life on a
higher level.
The sunset splendor was fading. The fiery chariot was gone, and in its
place were floating gray clouds,--the dust of its wheels, they seemed.
The outlines of "Elijah's Step" were dark. It looked sad, bereaved. Its
glory had departed.
Suddenly the whole landscape seemed full of reeling black shadows,--and
yet it was not night. The roar of the torrent was growing faint upon
his ear, and yet its momentum was unchecked. Soon all was dark and all
was still, and the world slipped from his grasp.
[Illustration: IN THE MIDST OF THE TORRENT]
"They tell me that thar Jack Dunn war mighty nigh drownded when them men
fished him out'n the pond at Skeggs's sawmill down thar in the valley,"
said Andy Bailey, recounting the incident to the fireside circle at his
own home. "They seen them rotten old timbers come a-floatin' ez
peaceable on to the pond, an' then they seen somethin' like a human
a-hangin' ter 'em. The water air ez still ez a floor thar, an' deep an'
smooth, an' they didn't hev no trouble in swimmin' out to him. They
couldn't bring him to, though, at fust. They said in a little more he
would hev been gone sure! Now"--pridefully--"ef he hed hed the grit ter
ketch a tree an' pull out, like I done, he wouldn't hev been in sech a
danger."
Andy never knew the sacrifice his friend had made. Jack never told him.
Applause is at best a slight thing. A great action is nobler than the
monument that commemorates it; and when a man gives himself into the
control of a generous impulse, thenceforward he takes up life on a
higher level.
CHRISTMAS DAY ON OLD WINDY MOUNTAIN
The sun had barely shown the rim of his great red disk above the sombre
woods and snow-crowned crags of the opposite ridge, when Rick Herne, his
rifle in his hand, stepped out of his father's log cabin, perched high
among the precipices of Old Windy Mountain. He waited motionless for a
moment, and all the family trooped to the door to assist at the
time-honored ceremony of firing a salute to the day.
Suddenly the whole landscape catches a rosy glow, Rick whips up his
rifle, a jet of flame darts swiftly out, a sharp report rings all around
the world, and the sun goes grandly up--while the little tow-headed
mountaineers hurrah shrilly for "Chris'mus!"
As he began to re-load his gun, the small boys clustered around him,
their hands in the pockets of their baggy jeans trousers, their heads
inquiringly askew.
"They air a-goin' ter hev a pea-fow_el_ fur dinner down yander ter
Birk's Mill," Rick remarked.
The smallest boy smacked his lips,--not that he knew how pea-fowl
tastes, but he imagined unutterable things.
"Somehows I hates fur ye ter go ter eat at Birk's Mill, they air sech a
set o' drinkin' men down thar ter Malviny's house," said Rick's mother,
as she stood in the doorway, and looked anxiously at him.
For his elder sister was Birk's wife, and to this great feast he was
invited as a representative of the family, his father being disabled by
"rheumatics," and his mother kept at home by the necessity of providing
dinner for those four small boys.
"Hain't I done promised ye not ter tech a drap o' liquor this Chris'mus
day?" asked Rick.
"That's a fac'," his mother admitted. "But boys, an' men-folks
ginerally, air scandalous easy ter break a promise whar whiskey is in
it."
"I'll hev ye ter know that when I gin my word, I keeps it!" cried Rick
pridefully.
He little dreamed how that promise was to be assailed before the sun
should go down.
He was a tall, sinewy boy, deft of foot as all these mountaineers are,
and a seven-mile walk in the snow to Birk's Mill he considered a mere
trifle. He tramped along cheerily enough through the silent solitudes of
the dense forest. Only at long intervals the stillness was broken by the
cracking of a bough under the weight of snow, or the whistling of a gust
of wind through the narrow valley far below.
All at once--it was a terrible shock of surprise--he was sinking! Was
there nothing beneath his feet but the vague depths of air to the base
of the mountain? He realized with a quiver of dismay that he had
mistaken a huge drift-filled fissure, between a jutting crag and the
wall of the ridge, for the solid, snow-covered ground. He tossed his
arms about wildly in his effort to grasp something firm. The motion only
dislodged the drift. He felt that it was falling, and he was going
down--down--down with it. He saw the trees on the summit of Old Windy
disappear. He caught one glimpse of the neighboring ridges. Then he was
blinded and enveloped in this cruel whiteness. He had a wild idea that
he had been delivered to it forever; even in the first thaw it would
curl up into a wreath of vapor, and rise from the mountain's side, and
take him soaring with it--whither? How they would search these bleak
wintry fastnesses for him,--while he was gone sailing with the mist!
What would they say at home and at Birk's Mill? One last thought of the
"pea-fow_el_," and he seemed to slide swiftly away from the world with
the snow.
He was unconscious probably only for a few minutes. When he came to
himself, he found that he was lying, half-submerged in the great drift,
on the slope of the mountain, and the dark, icicle-begirt cliff towered
high above. He stretched his limbs--no bones broken! He could hardly
believe that he had fallen unhurt from those heights. He did not
appreciate how gradually the snow had slidden down. Being so densely
packed, too, it had buoyed him up, and kept him from dashing against the
sharp, jagged edges of the rock. He had lost consciousness in the jar
when the moving mass was abruptly arrested by a transverse elevation of
the ground. He was still a little dizzy and faint, but otherwise
uninjured.
Now a great perplexity took hold on him. How was he to make his way back
up the mountain, he asked himself, as he looked at the inaccessible
cliffs looming high into the air. All the world around him was
unfamiliar. Even his wide wanderings had never brought him into this
vast, snowy, trackless wilderness, that stretched out on every side. He
would be half the day in finding the valley road that led to Birk's
Mill. He rose to his feet, and gazed about him in painful indecision.
The next moment a thrill shot through him, to which he was
unaccustomed. He had never before shaken except with the cold,--but this
was fear.
For he heard voices! Not from the cliffs above,--but from below! Not
from the dense growth of young pines on the slope of the mountain,--but
from the depths of the earth beneath! He stood motionless, listening
intently, his eyes distended, and his heart beating fast.
All silence! Not even the wind stirred in the pine thicket. The snow lay
heavy among the dark green branches, and every slender needle was
encased in ice. Rick rubbed his eyes. It was no dream. There was the
thicket; but whose were the voices that had rung out faintly from
beneath it?
A crowd of superstitions surged upon him. He cast an affrighted glance
at the ghastly snow-covered woods and sheeted earth. He was remembering
fireside legends, horrible enough to raise the hair on a sophisticated,
educated boy's head; much more horrible, then, to a young backwoodsman
like Rick. On this, the most benign day that ever dawns upon the world,
was he led into these endless wastes of forest to be terrified by the
"harnts"?
Suddenly those voices from the earth again! One was singing a drunken
catch,--it broke into falsetto, and ended with an unmistakable hiccup.
Rick's blood came back with a rush.
"I hev never hearn tell o' the hoobies gittin' boozy!" he said with a
laugh. "That's whar they hev got the upper-hand o' humans."
As he gazed again at the thicket, he saw now something that he had been
too much agitated to observe before,--a column of dense smoke that rose
from far down the declivity, and seemed to make haste to hide itself
among the low-hanging boughs of a clump of fir-trees.
"It's somebody's house down thar," was Rick's conclusion. "I kin find
out the way to Birk's Mill from the folkses."
When he neared the smoke, he paused abruptly, staring once more.
There was no house! The smoke rose from among low pine bushes. Above
were the snow-laden branches of the fir.
"Ef thar war a house hyar, I reckon I could see it!" said Rick
doubtfully, infinitely mystified.
There was a continual drip, drip of moisture all around. Yet a thaw had
not set in. Rick looked up at the gigantic icicles that hung to the
crags and glittered in the sun,--not a drop trickled from them. But this
fir-tree was dripping, dripping, and the snow had melted away from the
nearest pine bushes that clustered about the smoke. There was heat below
certainly, a strong heat, and somebody was keeping the fire up steadily.
"An' air it folkses ez live underground like foxes an' sech!" Rick
exclaimed, astonished, as he came upon a large, irregularly shaped rift
in the rocks, and heard the same reeling voice from within, beginning to
sing once more. But for this bacchanalian melody, the noise of Rick's
entrance might have given notice of his approach. As it was, the
inhabitants of this strange place were even more surprised than he,
when, after groping through a dark, low passage, an abrupt turn brought
him into a lofty, vaulted subterranean apartment. There was a great
flare of light, which revealed six or seven muscular men grouped about a
large copper vessel built into a rude stone furnace, and all the air was
pervaded by an incomparably strong alcoholic odor. The boy started back
with a look of terror. That pale terror was reflected on each man's
face, as on a mirror. At the sight of the young stranger they all sprang
up with the same gesture,--each instinctively laid his hand upon the
pistol that he wore.
Poor Rick understood it all at last. He had stumbled upon a nest of
distillers, only too common among these mountains, who were hiding from
the officers of the Government, running their still in defiance of the
law and eluding the whiskey-tax. He realized that in discovering their
stronghold he had learned a secret that was by no means a safe one for
him to know. And he was in their power; at their mercy!
"Don't shoot!" he faltered. "I jes' want ter ax the folkses ter tell me
the way ter Birk's Mill."
What would he have given to be on the bleak mountain outside!
One of the men caught him as if anticipating an attempt to run. Two or
three, after a low-toned colloquy, took their rifles, and crept
cautiously outside to reconnoitre the situation. Rick comprehended their
suspicion with new quakings. They imagined that he was a spy, and had
been sent among them to discover them plying their forbidden vocation.
This threatened a long imprisonment for them. His heart sank as he
thought of it; they would never let him go.
After a time the reconnoitring party came back.
"Nothin' stirrin'," said the leader tersely.
"I misdoubts," muttered another, casting a look of deep suspicion on
Rick. "Thar air men out thar, I'm a-thinkin', hid somewhar."
"They air furder 'n a mile off, ennyhow," returned the first speaker.
"We never lef' so much ez a bush 'thout sarchin' of it."
"The off'cers can't find this place no-ways 'thout that thar chap fur a
guide," said a third, with a surly nod of his head at Rick.
"We're safe enough, boys, safe enough!" cried a stout-built, red-faced,
red-bearded man, evidently very drunk, and with a voice that rose into
quavering falsetto as he spoke. "This chap can't do nothin'. We hev got
him bound hand an' foot. Hyar air the captive of our bow an' spear,
boys! Mighty little captive, though! hi!" He tried to point jeeringly at
Rick, and forgot what he had intended to do before he could fairly
extend his hand. Then his rollicking head sank on his breast, and he
began to sing sleepily again.
One of the more sober of the men had extinguished the fire in order that
they should not be betrayed by the smoke outside to the revenue officers
who might be seeking them. The place, chilly enough at best, was growing
bitter cold. The strange subterranean beauty of the surroundings, the
limestone wall and arches, scintillating wherever they caught the
light; the shadowy, mysterious vaulted roof; the white stalactites that
hung down thence to touch the stalagmites as they rose up from the
floor, and formed with them endless vistas of stately colonnades, all
were oddly incongruous with the drunken, bloated faces of the
distillers. Rick could not have put his thought into words, but it
seemed to him that when men had degraded themselves like this, even
inanimate nature is something higher and nobler. "Sermons in stones"
were not far to seek.
He observed that they were making preparations for flight, and once more
the fear of what they would do with him clutched at his heart. He was
something of a problem to them.
"This hyar cub will go blab," was the first suggestion.
"He will keep mum," said the vocalist, glancing at the boy with a
jovially tipsy combination of leer and wink. "Hyar is the persuader!" He
rapped sharply on the muzzle of his pistol. "This'll scotch his wheel."
"Hold yer own jaw, ye drunken 'possum!" retorted another of the group.
"Ef ye fire off that pistol in hyar, we'll hev all these hyar rocks"--he
pointed at the walls and the long colonnades--"answerin' back an'
yelpin' like a pack o' hounds on a hot scent. Ef thar air folks outside,
the noise would fotch 'em down on us fur true!"
Rick breathed more freely. The rocks would speak up for him! He could
not be harmed with all these tell-tale witnesses at hand. So silent now,
but with a latent voice strong enough for the dread of it to save his
life!
The man who had put out the fire, who had led the reconnoitring party,
who had made all the active preparations for departure, who seemed, in
short, to be an executive committee of one,--a long, lazy-looking
mountaineer, with a decision of action in startling contrast to his
whole aspect,--now took this matter in hand.
"Nothin' easier," he said tersely. "Fill him up. Make him ez drunk ez a
fraish b'iled ow_el_. Then lead him to the t'other eend o' the cave,
an' blindfold him, an' lug him off five mile in the woods, an' leave him
thar. He'll never know what he hev seen nor done."
"That's the dinctum!" cried the red-bearded man, in delighted approval,
breaking into a wild, hiccupping laugh, inexpressibly odious to the boy.
Rick had an extreme loathing for them all that showed itself with
impolitic frankness upon his face. He realized as he had never done
before the depths to which strong drink will reduce men. But that the
very rocks would cry out upon them, they would have murdered him.
In the preparations for departure all the lights had been extinguished,
except a single lantern, and a multitude of shadows had come thronging
from the deeper recesses of the cave. In the faint glimmer the figures
of the men loomed up, indistinct, gigantic, distorted. They hardly
seemed men at all to Rick; rather some evil underground creatures,
neither beast nor human.
And he was to be made equally besotted, and even more helpless than
they, in order that his senses might be sapped away, and he should
remember no story to tell. Perhaps if he had not had before him so vivid
an illustration of the malign power that swayed them, he might not have
experienced so strong an aversion to it. Now, to be made like them
seemed a high price to pay for his life. And there was his promise to
his mother! As the long, lank, lazy-looking mountaineer pressed the
whiskey upon him, Rick dashed it aside with a gesture so unexpected and
vehement that the cracked jug fell to the floor, and was shivered to
fragments.
Rick lifted an appealing face to the man, who seized him with a strong
grip. "I can't--I won't," the boy cried wildly. "I--I--promised my
mother!"
He looked around the circle deprecatingly. He expected first a guffaw
and then a blow, and he dreaded the ridicule more than the pain.
But there were neither blows nor ridicule. They all gazed at him,
astounded. Then a change, which Rick hardly comprehended, flitted across
the face of the man who had grasped him. The moonshiner turned away
abruptly, with a bitter laugh that startled all the echoes.
"_I--I_ promised _my_ mother, too!" he cried. "It air good that in her
grave whar she is she can't know how I hev kep' my word."
And then there was a sudden silence. It seemed to Rick, strangely
enough, like the sudden silence that comes after prayer. He was
reminded, as one of the men rose at length and the keg on which he had
been sitting creaked with the motion, of the creaking benches in the
little mountain church when the congregation started from their knees.
And had some feeble, groping sinner's prayer filled the silence and the
moral darkness!
The "executive committee" promptly recovered himself. But he made no
further attempt to force the whiskey upon the boy. Under some whispered
instructions which he gave the others, Rick was half-led, half-dragged
through immensely long black halls of the cave, while one of the men
went before, carrying the feeble lantern. When the first glimmer of
daylight appeared in the distance, Rick understood that the cave had an
outlet other than the one by which he had entered, and evidently miles
distant from it. Thus it was that the distillers were well enabled to
baffle the law that sought them.
They stopped here and blindfolded the boy. How far and where they
dragged him through the snowy mountain wilderness outside, Rick never
knew. He was exhausted when at length they allowed him to pause. As he
heard their steps dying away in the distance, he tore the bandage from
his eyes, and found that they had left him in the midst of the wagon
road to make his way to Birk's Mill as best he might. When he reached
it, the wintry sun was low in the western sky, and the very bones of the
"pea-fow_el_" were picked.
On the whole, it seemed a sorry Christmas Day, as Rick could not know
then--indeed, he never knew--what good results it brought forth. For
among those who took the benefit of the "amnesty" extended by the
Government to the moonshiners of this region, on condition that they
discontinue illicit distilling for the future, was a certain long, lank,
lazy-looking mountaineer, who suddenly became sober and steady and a
law-abiding citizen. He had been reminded, this Christmas Day, of a
broken promise to a dead mother, and this by the unflinching moral
courage of a mere boy in a moment of mortal peril. Such wise, sweet,
uncovenanted uses has duty, blessing alike the unconscious exemplar and
him who profits by the example.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Young Mountaineers, by Charles Egbert Craddock