retort floutingly; but as he turned, his jaw suddenly fell; his eyes
widened with a ghastly distension. With an unsteady arm extended he
pointed silently. Distinctly outlined on the lid of the coffin was the
simulacrum of the figure of a man.
One of his comrades, seated on the tailboard of the wagon, had discerned
a significance in the abrupt silence. As he turned, he, too, caught a
fleeting glimpse of that weird image on the coffin-lid. But he was of a
more mundane pulse. The apparition roused in him only a wonder whence
could come this shadow in the midst of the moon-flooded road. He lifted
his eyes to the verge of the bluff above, and there he descried an
indistinct human form, which suddenly disappeared as he looked, and at
that moment the simulacrum vanished from the lid of the box.
The mystery was of instant elucidation. They were suspected, followed.
The number of their pursuers of course they could not divine, but at
least one of the revenue-officers had trailed the wagon between the
precipice and the great wall of the ascent on the right, which had
gradually dwindled to a diminished height. Deep gullies were here and
there washed out by recent rains, and one of these indentations might
have afforded an active man access to the summit. Thus the pursuer had
evidently kept abreast of them, speeding along in great leaps through
the lush growth of huckleberry bushes, wild grasses, pawpaw thickets,
silvered by the moon, all fringing the great forests that had given way
on the shelving verge of the steeps where the road ran. Had he overheard
their unguarded, significant words? Who could divine, so silent were the
windless mountains, so deep a-dream the darksome woods, so spell-bound
the mute and mystic moonlight?
The group maintained a cautious reticence now, each revolving the
problematic disclosure of their secret, each canvassing the question
whether the pursuer himself was aware of his betrayal of his stealthy
proximity. Not till they had reached the ford of the river did they
venture on a low-toned colloquy. The driver paused in mid-stream and
stepped out on the pole between the horses to let down the check-reins,
as the team manifested an inclination to drink in transit; and thence,
as he stood thus perched, he gazed to and fro, the stretch of dark and
lustrous ripples baffling all approach within ear-shot, the watering of
the horses justifying the pause and cloaking its significance to any
distant observer.
But the interval was indeed limited; the mental processes of such men
are devoid of complexity, and their decisions prompt. They advanced few
alternatives; their prime object was to be swiftly rid of the coffin and
its inculpating contents, and with the "revenuer" so hard on their heels
this might seem a troublous problem enough.
"Put it whar a coffin b'longs--in the churchyard," said Wyatt; for at a
considerable distance beyond the rise of the opposite bank could be
seen a barren clearing in which stood a gaunt, bare, little white frame
building that served all the country-side for its infrequent religious
services.
"We couldn't dig a grave before that spy--ef he be a revenuer sure
enough--could overhaul us," Eugene Barker objected.
"We could turn the yearth right smart, though," persisted Wyatt, for
pickax and shovel had been brought in the wagon for the sake of an
aspect of verisimilitude and to mask their true intent.
Eugene Barker acceded to this view. "That's the dinctum--dig a few jes
fer a blind. We kin slip the coffin-box under the church-house 'fore he
gits in sight,--he'll be feared ter follow too close,--an' leave it thar
till the other boys kin wagon it ter the cross-roads' store ter-morrer
night."
The horses, hitherto held to the sober gait of funeral travel, were now
put to a speedy trot, unmindful of whatever impression of flight the
pace might give to the revenue-raider in pursuit. The men were soon
engrossed in their deceptive enterprise in the churchyard, plying pickax
and shovel for dear life; now and again they paused to listen vainly
for the sound of stealthy approach. They knew that there was the most
precarious and primitive of foot-bridges across the deep stream, to
traverse which would cost an unaccustomed wayfarer both time and pains;
thus the interval was considerable before the resonance of rapid
foot-falls gave token that their pursuer had found himself obliged to
sprint smartly along the country road to keep any hope of ever again
viewing the wagon which the intervening water-course had withdrawn from
his sight. That this hope had grown tenuous was evident in his
relinquishment of his former caution, for when they again caught a
glimpse of him he was forging along in the middle of the road without
any effort at concealment. But as the wagon appeared in the perspective,
stationary, hitched to the hedge of the graveyard, he recurred to his
previous methods. The four men still within the inclosure, now busied in
shovelling the earth back again into the excavation they had so swiftly
made, covertly watched him as he skulked into the shadow of the wayside.
The little "church-house," with all its windows whitely aglare in the
moonlight, reflected the pervasive sheen, and silent, spectral, remote,
it seemed as if it might well harbor at times its ghastly neighbors from
the quiet cemetery without, dimly ranging themselves once more in the
shadowy ranks of its pews or grimly stalking down the drear and deserted
aisles. The fact that the rising ground toward the rear of the building
necessitated a series of steps at the entrance, enabled the officer to
mask behind this tall flight his crouching approach, and thus he
ensconced himself in the angle between the wall and the steps, and
looked forth in fancied security.
The shadows multiplied the tale of the dead that the head-boards kept,
each similitude askew in the moonlight on the turf below the slanting
monument. To judge by the motions of the men engaged in the burial and
the mocking antics of their silhouettes on the ground, it must have been
obvious to the spectator that they were already filling in the earth.
The interment may have seemed to him suspiciously swift, but the
possibility was obvious that the grave might have been previously dug in
anticipation of their arrival. It was plain that he was altogether
unprepared for the event when they came slouching forth to the wagon,
and the stalwart and red-faced driver, with no manifestation of
surprise, hailed him as he still crouched in his lurking-place. "Hello,
stranger! Warn't that you-uns runnin' arter the wagon a piece back
yonder jes a while ago?"
The officer rose to his feet, with an intent look both dismayed and
embarrassed. He did not venture on speech; he merely acceded with a nod.
"Ye want a lift, I reckon."
The stranger was hampered by the incongruity between his rustic garb,
common to the coves, and his cultivated intonation; for, unlike his
comrade Browdie, he had no mimetic faculties whatever. Nevertheless, he
was now constrained to "face the music."
"I didn't want to interrupt you," he said, seeking such excuse as due
consideration for the circumstances might afford; "but I'd like to ask
where I could get lodging for the night."
"What's yer name?" demanded Barker, unceremoniously.
"Francis Ronan," the raider replied, with more assurance. Then he added,
by way of explaining his necessity, "I'm a stranger hereabouts."
"Ye air so," assented the sarcastic 'Gene. "Ye ain't even acquainted
with yer own clothes. Ye be a town man."
"Well, I'm not the first man who has had to hide out," Ronan parried,
seeking to justify his obvious disguise.
"Shot somebody?" asked 'Gene, with an apparent accession of interest.
"It's best for me not to tell."
"So be." 'Gene acquiesced easily. "Waal, ef ye kin put up with sech
accommodations ez our'n, I'll take ye home with me."
Ronan stood aghast. But there was no door of retreat open. He was alone
and helpless. He could not conceal the fact that the turn affairs had
taken was equally unexpected and terrifying to him, and the moonshiners,
keenly watchful, were correspondingly elated to discern that he had
surely no reinforcements within reach to nerve him to resistance or to
menace their liberty. He had evidently followed them too far, too
recklessly; perhaps without the consent and against the counsel of his
comrades, perhaps even without their knowledge of his movements and
intention.
Now and again as the wagon jogged on and on toward their distant haven,
the moonlight gradually dulling to dawn, Wyatt gave the stranger a
wondering, covert glance, vaguely, shrinkingly curious as to the
sentiments of a man vacillating between the suspicion of capture and the
recognition of a simple hospitality without significance or danger. The
man's face appealed to him, young, alert, intelligent, earnest, and the
anguish of doubt and anxiety it expressed went to his heart. In the
experience of his sylvan life as a hunter Wyatt's peculiar and subtle
temperament evolved certain fine-spun distinctions which were unique; a
trapped thing had a special appeal to his commiseration that a creature
ruthlessly slaughtered in the open was not privileged to claim. He did
not accurately and in words discriminate the differences, but he felt
that the captive had sounded all the gamut of hope and despair, shared
the gradations of an appreciated sorrow that makes all souls akin and
that even lifts the beast to the plane of brotherhood, the bond of
emotional woe. He had often with no other or better reason liberated
the trophy of his snare, calling after the amazed and franticly fleeing
creature, "Bye-bye, Buddy!" with peals of his whimsical, joyous
laughter.
He was experiencing now a similar sequence of sentiments in noting the
wild-eyed eagerness with which the captured raider took obvious heed of
every minor point of worthiness that might mask the true character of
his entertainers. But, indeed, these deceptive hopes might have been
easily maintained by one not so desirous of reassurance when, in the
darkest hour before the dawn, they reached a large log-cabin sequestered
in dense woods, and he found himself an inmate of a simple, typical
mountain household. It held an exceedingly venerable grandfather,
wielding his infirmities as a rod of iron; a father and mother, hearty,
hospitable, subservient to the aged tyrant, but keeping in filial check
a family of sons and daughters-in-law, with an underfoot delegation of
grandchildren, who seemed to spend their time in a bewildering
manoeuver of dashing out at one door to dash in at another. A
tumultuous rain had set in shortly after dawn, with lightning and
wind,--"the tail of a harricane," as the host called it,--and a terrible
bird the actual storm must have been to have a tail of such dimensions.
There was no getting forth, no living creature of free will "took water"
in this elemental crisis. The numerous dogs crowded the children away
from the hearth, and the hens strolled about the large living-room,
clucking to scurrying broods. Even one of the horses tramped up on the
porch and looked in ever and anon, solicitous of human company.
"I brung Ben up by hand, like a bottle-fed baby," the hostess
apologized, "an' he ain't never f'und out fur sure that he ain't folks."
There seemed no possible intimation of moonshine in this entourage, and
the coffin filled with jugs, a-wagoning from some distillers' den in the
range to the cross-roads' store, might well have been accounted only the
vain phantasm of an overtired brain surcharged with the vexed problems
of the revenue service. The disguised revenue-raider was literally
overcome with drowsiness, the result of his exertions and his vigils,
and observing this, his host gave him one of the big feather beds under
the low slant of the eaves in the roof-room, where the other men, who
had been out all night, also slept the greater portion of the day. In
fact, it was dark when Wyatt wakened, and, leaving the rest still torpid
with slumber and fatigue, descended to the large main room of the cabin.
The callow members of the household had retired to rest, but the elders
of the band of moonshiners were up and still actively astir, and Wyatt
experienced a prescient vicarious qualm to note their lack of heed or
secrecy--the noisy shifting of heavy weights (barrels, kegs, bags of
apples, and peaches for pomace), the loud voices and unguarded words.
When a door in the floor was lifted, the whiff of chill, subterranean
air that pervaded the whole house was heavily freighted with spirituous
odors, and gave token to the meanest intelligence, to the most
unobservant inmate, that the still was operated in a cellar, peculiarly
immune to suspicion, for a cellar is never an adjunct to the ordinary
mountain cabin. Thus the infraction of the revenue law went on securely
and continuously beneath the placid, simple, domestic life, with its
reverent care for the very aged and its tender nurture of the very
young.
It was significant, indeed, that the industry should not be
pretermitted, however, when a stranger was within the gates. The reason
to Wyatt, familiar with the moonshiners' methods and habits of thought,
was only too plain. They intended that the "revenuer" should never go
forth to tell the tale. His comrades had evidently failed to follow his
trail, either losing it in the wilderness or from ignorance of his
intention. He had put himself hopelessly into the power of these
desperate men, whom his escape or liberation would menace with
incarceration for a long term as Federal prisoners in distant
penitentiaries, if, indeed, they were not already answerable to the law
for some worse crime than illicit distilling. His murder would be the
extreme of brutal craft, so devised as to seem an accident, against the
possibility of future investigation.
The reflection turned Wyatt deathly cold, he who could not bear unmoved
the plea of a wild thing's eye. He sturdily sought to pull himself
together. It was none of his decree; it was none of his deed, he
argued. The older moonshiners, who managed all the details of the
enterprise, would direct the event with absolute authority and the
immutability of fate. But whatever should be done, he revolted from any
knowledge of it, as from any share in the act. He had risen to leave the
place, all strange of aspect now, metamorphosed,--various disorderly
details of the prohibited industry ever and anon surging up from the
still-room below,--when a hoarse voice took cognizance of his intention
with a remonstrance.
"Why, Watt Wyatt, _ye_ can't go out in the cove. Ye air dead! Ye will
let that t'other revenue-raider ye seen into the secret o' the bresh
whisky in our wagon ef ye air viewed about whenst 'Gene hev spread the
report that ye air dead. Wait till them raiders hev cleared out of the
kentry."
The effort at detention, to interfere with his liberty, added redoubled
impetus to Wyatt's desire to be gone. He suddenly devised a cogent
necessity. "I be feared my dad mought hear that fool tale. I ain't much
loss, but dad would feel it."
"Oh, I sent Jack thar ter tell him better whenst he drove ter mill
ter-day ter git the meal fer the mash. Jack made yer dad onderstand
'bout yer sudden demise."
"Oh, yeh," interposed the glib Jack; "an' he said ez _he_ couldn't abide
sech jokes."
"Shucks!" cried the filial Wyatt. "Dad war full fresky himself in his
young days; I hev hearn his old frien's say so."
"I tried ter slick things over," said the diplomatic Jack. "I 'lowed
young folks war giddy by nature. I 'lowed 't war jes a flash o' fun. An'
he say: 'Flash o' fun be consarned! My son is more like a flash o'
lightning; ez suddint an' mischeevious an' totally ondesirable.'"
The reproach obviously struck home, for Wyatt maintained a disconsolate
silence for a time. At length, apparently goaded by his thoughts to
attempt a defense, he remonstrated:
"Nobody ever war dead less of his own free will. I never elected ter be
a harnt. 'Gene Barker hed no right ter nominate _me_ fer the dear
departed, nohow."
One of the uncouth younger fellows, his shoulders laden with a sack of
meal, paused on his way from the porch to the trap-door to look up from
beneath his burden with a sly grin as he said, "'Gene war wishin' it war
true, that's why."
"'Count o' Minta Elladine Riggs," gaily chimed in another.
"But 'Gene needn't gredge Watt foot-hold on this yearth fer sech; _she_
ain't keerin' whether Watt lives or dies," another contributed to the
rough, rallying fun.
But Wyatt was of sensitive fibre. He had flushed angrily; his eyes were
alight; a bitter retort was trembling on his lips when one of the elder
Barkers, discriminating the elements of an uncontrollable fracas, seized
on the alternative.
"Could you-uns _sure_ be back hyar by day-break, Watt?" he asked, fixing
the young fellow with a stern eye.
"No 'spectable ghost roams around arter sun-up," cried Wyatt, fairly
jovial at the prospect of liberation.
"Ye mus' be heedful not ter be viewed," the senior admonished him.
"I be goin' ter slip about keerful like a reg'lar, stiddy-goin' harnt,
an' eavesdrop a bit. It's worth livin' a hard life ter view how a
feller's friends will take his demise."
"I reckon ye kin make out ter meet the wagin kemin' back from the
cross-roads' store. It went out this evenin' with that coffin full of
jugs that ye lef' las' night under the church-house, whenst 'Gene seen
you-uns war suspicioned. They will hev time ter git ter the cross-roads
with the whisky on' back little arter midnight, special' ez we-uns hev
got the raider that spied out the job hyar fast by the leg."
The mere mention of the young prisoner rendered Wyatt the more eager to
be gone, to be out of sight and sound. But he had no agency in the
disaster, he urged against some inward clamor of protest; the
catastrophe was the logical result of the foolhardiness of the officer
in following these desperate men with no backing, with no power to
apprehend or hold, relying on his flimsy disguise, and risking
delivering himself into their hands, fettered as he was with the
knowledge of his discovery of their secret.
"It's nothin' ter _me_, nohow," Wyatt was continually repeating to
himself, though when he sprang through the door he could scarcely draw
his breath because of some mysterious, invisible clutch at his throat.
He sought to ascribe this symptom to the density of the pervasive fog
without, that impenetrably cloaked all the world; one might wonder how a
man could find his way through the opaque white vapor. It was, however,
an accustomed medium to the young mountaineer, and his feet, too, had
something of that unclassified muscular instinct, apart from reason,
which guides in an oft-trodden path. Once he came to a halt, from no
uncertainty of locality, but to gaze apprehensively through the blank,
white mists over a shuddering shoulder. "I wonder ef thar be any other
harnts aloose ter-night, a-boguing through the fog an' the moon," he
speculated. Presently he went on again, shaking his head sagely. "I
ain't wantin' ter collogue with sech," he averred cautiously.
Occasionally the moonlight fell in expansive splendor through a rift in
the white vapor; amidst the silver glintings a vague, illusory panorama
of promontory and island, bay and inlet, far ripplings of gleaming
deeps, was presented like some magic reminiscence, some ethereal replica
of the past, the simulacrum of the seas of these ancient coves, long
since ebbed away and vanished. The sailing moon visibly rocked, as the
pulsing tides of the cloud-ocean rose and fell, and ever and anon this
supernal craft was whelmed in its surgings, and once more came
majestically into view, freighted with fancies and heading for the haven
of the purple western shores.
In one of these clearances of the mists a light of an alien type caught
the eye of the wandering spectre--a light, red, mundane, of prosaic
suggestion. It filtered through the crevice of a small batten shutter.
The ghost paused, his head speculatively askew. "Who sits so late at the
forge?" he marvelled, for he was now near the base of the mountain, and
he recognized the low, dark building looming through the mists, its roof
aslant, its chimney cold, the big doors closed, the shutter fast. As he
neared the place a sudden shrill guffaw smote the air, followed by a
deep, gruff tone of disconcerted remonstrance. Certain cabalistic words
made the matter plain.
"High, Low, Jack, _and_ game! Fork! Fork!" Once more there arose a high
falsetto shriek of jubilant laughter.
Walter Wyatt crept noiselessly down the steep slant toward the shutter.
He had no sense of intrusion, for he was often one of the merry blades
wont to congregate at the forge at night and take a hand at cards,
despite the adverse sentiment of the cove and the vigilance of the
constable of the district, bent on enforcing the laws prohibiting
gaming. As Wyatt stood at the crevice of the shutter the whole interior
was distinct before him--the disabled wagon-wheels against the walls,
the horse-shoes on a rod across the window, the great hood of the forge,
the silent bellows, with its long, motionless handle. A kerosene lamp,
perched on the elevated hearth of the forge, illumined the group of wild
young mountaineers clustered about a barrel on the head of which the
cards were dealt. There were no chairs; one of the gamesters sat on a
keg of nails; another on an inverted splint basket; two on a rude bench
that was wont to be placed outside the door for the accommodation of
customers waiting for a horse to be shod or a plow to be laid. An
onlooker, not yet so proficient as to attain his ambition of admission
to the play, had mounted the anvil, and from this coign of vantage
beheld all the outspread landscape of the "hands." More than once his
indiscreet, inadvertent betrayal of some incident of his survey of the
cards menaced him with a broken head. More innocuous to the interests of
the play was a wight humbly ensconced on the shoeing-stool, which barely
brought his head to the level of the board; but as he was densely
ignorant of the game, he took no disadvantage from his lowly posture.
His head was red, and as it moved erratically about in the gloom, Watt
Wyatt thought for a moment that it was the smith's red setter. He
grinned as he resolved that some day he would tell the fellow this as a
pleasing gibe; but the thought was arrested by the sound of his own
name.
"Waal, sir," said the dealer, pausing in shuffling the cards, "I s'pose
ye hev all hearn 'bout Walter Wyatt's takin' off."
"An' none too soon, sartain." A sour visage was glimpsed beneath the
wide brim of the speaker's hat.
"Waal," drawled the semblance of the setter from deep in the
clare-obscure, "Watt war jes a fool from lack o' sense."
"That kind o' fool can't be cured," said another of the players. Then he
sharply adjured the dealer. "Look out what ye be doin'! Ye hev gimme
_two_ kyerds."
"'Gene Barker will git ter marry Minta Elladine Riggs now, I reckon,"
suggested the man on the anvil.
"An' I'll dance at the weddin' with right good will an' a nimble toe,"
declared the dealer, vivaciously. "I'll be glad ter see that couple
settled. That gal couldn't make up her mind ter let Walter Wyatt go, an'
yit no woman in her senses would hev been willin' ter marry him. He war
ez onresponsible ez--ez--fox-fire."
"An' ez onstiddy ez a harricane," commented another.
"An' no more account than a mole in the yearth," said a third.
The ghost at the window listened in aghast dismay and became pale in
sober truth, for these boon companions he had accounted the best friends
he had in the world. They had no word of regret, no simple human pity;
even that facile meed of casual praise that he was "powerful pleasant
company" was withheld. And for these and such as these he had bartered
the esteem of the community at large and his filial duty and obedience;
had spurned the claims of good citizenship and placed himself in
jeopardy of the law; had forfeited the hand of the woman he loved.