semblance of the setter, with a knowing nod of his red head. "I war up
thar at the mill whenst the news kem ter-day, an' she war thar ter git
some seconds. I hev hearn women go off in high-strikes fer a lovyer's
death--even Mis' Simton, though hern was jes her husband, an 'a mighty
pore one at that. But Minta Elladine jes listened quiet an' composed, an'
never said one word."
The batten shutter was trembling in the ghost's hand. In fact, so
convulsive was his grasp that it shook the hook from the staple, and the
shutter slowly opened as he stood at gaze.
Perhaps it was the motion that attracted the attention of the dealer,
perhaps the influx of a current of fresh air. He lifted his casual
glance and beheld, distinct in the light from the kerosene lamp and
imposed on the white background of the mist, that familiar and
individual face, pallid, fixed, strange, with an expression that he had
never seen it wear hitherto. One moment of suspended faculties, and he
sprang up with a wild cry that filled the little shanty with its shrill
terror. The others gazed astounded upon him, then followed the direction
of his starting eyes, and echoed his frantic fright. There was a wild
scurry toward the door. The overturning of the lamp was imminent, but it
still burned calmly on the elevated hearth, while the shoeing-stool
capsized in the rush, and the red head of its lowly occupant was lowlier
still, rolling on the dirt floor. Even with this disadvantage, however,
he was not the hindmost, and reached the exit unhurt. The only specific
damage wrought by the panic was to the big barn-like doors of the place.
They had been stanchly barred against the possible intrusion of the
constable of the district, and the fastenings in so critical an
emergency could not be readily loosed. The united weight and impetus of
the onset burst the flimsy doors into fragments, and as the party fled
in devious directions in the misty moonlight, the calm radiance entered
at the wide-spread portal and illuminated the vacant place where late
had been so merry a crew.
[Illustration: THE UNITED WEIGHT AND IMPETUS OF THE ONSET BURST THE
FLIMSY DOORS INTO FRAGMENTS]
Walter Wyatt had known the time when the incident would have held an
incomparable relish for him. But now he gazed all forlorn into the empty
building with a single thought in his mind. "Not one of 'em keered a
mite! Nare good word, nare sigh, not even, 'Fare ye well, old mate!'"
His breast heaved, his eyes flashed.
"An' I hev loant money ter Jim, whenst I hed need myself; an' holped
George in the mill, when his wrist war sprained, without a cent o' pay;
an' took the blame when 'Dolphus war faulted by his dad fur lamin' the
horse-critter; an' stood back an' let Pete git the meat whenst we-uns
shot fur beef, bein' he hev got a wife an' chil'ren ter feed. All
_leetle_ favors, but nare _leetle_ word."
He had turned from the window and was tramping absently down the road,
all unmindful of the skulking methods of the spectral gentry. If he had
chanced to be observed, his little farce, that had yet an element of
tragedy in its presentation, must soon have reached its close. But the
fog hung about him like a cloak, and when the moon cast aside the
vapors, it was in a distant silver sheen illumining the far reaches of
the valley. Only when its light summoned forth a brilliant and glancing
reflection on a lower level, as if a thousand sabers were unsheathed at
a word, he recognized the proximity of the river and came to a sudden
halt.
"Whar is this fool goin'?" he demanded angrily of space. "To the
graveyard, I declar', ez ef I war a harnt fur true, an' buried sure
enough. An' I wish I war. I wish I war."
He realized, after a moment's consideration, that he had been
unconsciously actuated by the chance of meeting the wagon, returning by
this route from the cross-roads' store. He was tired, disheartened; his
spirit was spent; he would be glad of the lift. He reflected, however,
that he must needs wait some time, for this was the date of a
revival-meeting at the little church, and the distillers' wagon would
lag, that its belated night journey might not be subjected to the
scrutiny and comment of the church-goers. Indeed, even now Walter Wyatt
saw in the distance the glimmer of a lantern, intimating homeward-bound
worshipers not yet out of sight.
"The saints kep' it up late ter-night," he commented.
He resolved to wait till the roll of wheels should tell of the return of
the moonshiners' empty wagon.
He crossed the river on the little foot-bridge and took his way
languidly along the road toward the deserted church. He was close to the
hedge that grew thick and rank about the little inclosure when he
suddenly heard the sound of lamentation from within. He drew back
precipitately, with a sense of sacrilege, but the branches of the
unpruned growth had caught in his sleeve, and he sought to disengage the
cloth without such rustling stir as might disturb or alarm the mourner,
who had evidently lingered here, after the dispersal of the
congregation, for a moment's indulgence of grief and despair. He had a
glimpse through the shaking boughs and the flickering mist of a woman's
figure kneeling on the crude red clods of a new-made grave. A vague,
anxious wonder as to the deceased visited him, for in the sparsely
settled districts a strong community sense prevails. Suddenly in a
choking gust of sobs and burst of tears he recognized his own name in a
voice of which every inflection was familiar. For a moment his heart
seemed to stand still. His brain whirled with a realization of this
unforeseen result of the fantastic story of his death in Eskaqua Cove,
which the moonshiners, on the verge of detection and arrest, had
circulated in Tanglefoot as a measure of safety. They had fancied that
when the truth was developed it would be easy enough to declare the men
drunk or mistaken. The "revenuers" by that time would be far away, and
the pervasive security, always the sequence of a raid, successful or
otherwise, would once more promote the manufacture of the brush whisky.
The managers of the moonshining interest had taken measures to guard
Wyatt's aged father from this fantasy of woe, but they had not dreamed
that the mountain coquette might care. He himself stood appalled that
this ghastly fable should delude his heart's beloved, amazed that it
should cost her one sigh, one sob. Her racking paroxysms of grief over
this gruesome figment of a grave he was humiliated to hear, he was
woeful to see. He felt that he was not worth one tear of the floods with
which she bewept his name, uttered in every cadence of tender regret
that her melancholy voice could compass. It must cease, she must know
the truth at whatever cost. He broke through the hedge and stood in the
flicker of the moonlight before her, pale, agitated, all unlike his
wonted self.
She did not hear, amid the tumult of her weeping, the rustling of the
boughs, but some subtle sense took cognizance of his presence. She half
rose, and with one hand holding back her dense yellow hair, which had
fallen forward on her forehead, she looked up at him fearfully,
tremulously, with all the revolt of the corporeal creature for the
essence of the mysterious incorporeal. For a moment he could not speak.
So much he must needs explain. The next instant he was whelmed in the
avalanche of her words.
[Illustration: WITH ONE HAND HOLDING BACK HER DENSE YELLOW HAIR ... SHE
LOOKED UP AT HIM]
"Ye hev kem!" she exclaimed in a sort of shrill ecstasy. "Ye hev kem so
far ter hear the word that I would give my life ter hev said before. Ye
knowed it in heaven! An' how like ye ter kem ter gin me the chanst ter
say it at last! How like the good heart of ye, worth all the hearts on
yearth--an' _buried hyar_!"
With her open palm she smote the insensate clods with a gesture of
despair. Then she went on in a rising tide of tumultuous emotion. "I
love ye! Oh, I _always_ loved ye! I never keered fur nobody else! An' I
war tongue-tied, an' full of fool pride, an' faultin' ye fur yer ways;
an' I wouldn't gin ye the word I knowed ye war wantin' ter hear. But now
I kin tell the pore ghost of ye--I kin tell the pore, pore ghost!"
She buried her swollen, tear-stained face in her hands, and shook her
head to and fro with the realization of the futility of late repentance.
As she once more lifted her eyes, she was obviously surprised to see him
still standing there, and the crisis seemed to restore to him the
faculty of speech.
"Minta Elladine," he said huskily and prosaically, "I ain't dead!"
She sprang to her feet and stood gazing at him, intent and quivering.
"I be truly alive an' kickin', an' ez worthless ez ever," he went on.
She said not a word, but bent and pallid, and, quaking in every muscle,
stood peering beneath her hand, which still held back her hair.
"It's all a mistake," he urged. "This ain't no grave. The top war dug a
leetle ter turn off a revenuer's suspicions o' the moonshiners. They put
that tale out."
Still, evidently on the verge of collapse, she did not speak.
"Ye needn't be afeared ez I be goin' ter take fur true all I hearn ye
say; folks air gin ter vauntin' the dead," he paused for a moment,
remembering the caustic comments over the deal of the cards, then added,
"though I reckon _I_ hev hed some cur'ous 'speriences ez a harnt."
She suddenly threw up both arms with a shrill scream, half nervous
exhaustion, half inexpressible delight. She swayed to and fro, almost
fainting, her balance failing. He caught her in his arms, and she leaned
sobbing against his breast.
"I stand ter every word of it," she cried, her voice broken and lapsed
from control. "I love ye, an' I despise all the rest!"
"I be powerful wild," he suggested contritely.
"_I_ ain't keerin' ef ye be ez wild ez a deer."
"But I'm goin' to quit gamesome company an' playin' kyerds an' sech. I
expec' ter mend my ways now," he promised eagerly.
"Ye kin mend 'em or let 'em stay tore, jes ez ye please," she declared
recklessly. "I ain't snatched my lovyer from the jaws o' death ter want
him otherwise; ye be plumb true-hearted, _I know_."
"I mought ez well hev been buried in this grave fer the last ten year'
fer all the use I hev been," he protested solemnly; "but I hev learnt a
lesson through bein' a harnt fer a while--I hev jes kem ter life. I'm
goin' ter _live_ now. I'll make myself some use in the world, an' fust
off I be goin' ter hinder the murder of a man what they hev got trapped
up yander at the still."
This initial devoir of his reformation, however, Wyatt found no easy
matter. The event had been craftily planned to seem an accident, a fall
from a cliff in pursuing the wagon, and only the most ardent and cogent
urgency on Wyatt's part prevailed at length. He argued that this
interpretation of the disaster would not satisfy the authorities. To
take the raider's life insured discovery, retribution. But as he had
been brought to the still in the night, it was obvious that if he were
conveyed under cover of darkness and by roundabout trails within
striking distance of the settlements, he could never again find his way
to the locality in the dense wilderness. In his detention he had
necessarily learned nothing fresh, for the only names he could have
overheard had long been obnoxious to suspicion of moonshining, and
afforded no proof. Thus humanity, masquerading as caution, finally
triumphed, and the officer, blindfolded, was conducted through devious
and winding ways many miles distant, and released within a day's travel
of the county town.
Walter Wyatt was scarcely welcomed back to life by the denizens of the
cove generally with the enthusiasm attendant on the first moments of his
resuscitation, so to speak. He never forgot the solemn ecstasy of that
experience, and in later years he was wont to annul any menace of
discord with his wife by the warning, half jocose, half tender: "Ye hed
better mind; ye'll be sorry some day fur treatin' me so mean. Remember,
I hev viewed ye a-weepin' over my grave before now."
A reformation, however complete and salutary, works no change of
identity, and although he developed into an orderly, industrious,
law-abiding citizen, his prankish temperament remained recognizable in
the fantastic fables which he delighted to recount at some genial
fireside of what he had seen and heard as a ghost.
"'Pears like, Watt, ye hed more experiences whenst dead than living',"
said an auditor, as these stories multiplied.
"I did, fur a fack," Watt protested. "I war a powerful onchancy, onquiet
ghost. I even did my courtin' whilst in my reg'lar line o' business
a-harntin' a graveyard."
A CHILHOWEE LILY
Tall, delicate, and stately, with all the finished symmetry and
distinction that might appertain to a cultivated plant, yet sharing that
fragility of texture and peculiar suggestion of evanescence
characteristic of the unheeded weed as it flowers, the Chilhowee lily
caught his eye. Albeit long familiar, the bloom was now invested with a
special significance and the sight of it brought him to a sudden pause.
The cluster grew in a niche on the rocky verge of a precipice beetling
over the windings of the rugged primitive road on the slope of the
ridge. The great pure white bloom, trumpet-shaped and crowned with its
flaring and many-cleft paracorolla, distinct against the densely blue
sky, seemed the more ethereal because of the delicacy of its stalk, so
erect, so inflexibly upright. About it the rocks were at intervals green
with moss, and showed here and there heavy ocherous water stain. The
luxuriant ferns and pendant vines in the densely umbrageous tangle of
verdure served to heighten by contrast the keen whiteness of the flower
and the isolation of its situation.
Ozias Crann sighed with perplexity as he looked, and then his eye
wandered down the great bosky slope of the wooded mountain where in
marshy spots, here and there, a sudden white flare in the shadows
betokened the Chilhowee lily, flowering in myraids, holding out lures
bewildering in their multitude.
"They air bloomin' bodaciously all over the mounting," he remarked
rancorously, as he leaned heavily on a pickaxe; "but we uns hed better
try it ter-night ennyhows."
It was late in August; a moon of exceeding lustre was in the sky, while
still the sun was going down. All the western clouds were aflare with
gorgeous reflections; the long reaches of the Great Smoky range had
grown densely purple; and those dim Cumberland heights that, viewed from
this precipice of Chilhowee, were wont to show so softly blue in the
distance, had now a variant amethystine hue, hard and translucent of
effect as the jewel itself.
The face of one of his companions expressed an adverse doubt, as he,
too, gazed at the illuminated wilderness, all solitary, silent, remote.
"'Pears like ter me it mought be powerful public," Pete Swofford
objected. He had a tall, heavy, lumpish, frame, a lackluster eye, a
broad, dimpled, babyish face incongruously decorated with a tuft of dark
beard at the chin. The suit of brown jeans which he wore bore token
variously of the storms it had weathered, and his coarse cow-hide boots
were drawn over the trousers to the knee. His attention was now and
again diverted from the conversation by the necessity of aiding a young
bear, which he led by a chain, to repel the unwelcome demonstrations of
two hounds belonging to one of his interlocutors. Snuffling and nosing
about in an affectation of curiosity the dogs could not forbear growling
outright, as their muzzles approached their shrinking hereditary enemy,
while the cub nestled close to his master and whimpered like a child.
"Jes' so, jes' so, Honey. I'll make 'em cl'ar out!" Swofford replied to
the animal's appeal with ready sympathy. Then, "I wish ter Gawd, Rufe,
ye'd call yer dogs off," he added in a sort of aside to the youngest of
the three mountaineers, who stood among the already reddening sumac
fringing the road, beside his horse, athwart which lay a buck all gray
and antlered, his recently cut throat still dripping blood. The party
had been here long enough for it to collect in a tiny pool in a crevice
in the rocky road, and the hounds constrained to cease their harassments
of the bear now began to eagerly lap it up. The rifle with which Rufe
Kinnicutt had killed the deer was still in his hands and he leaned upon
it; he was a tall, finely formed, athletic young fellow with dark hair,
keen, darkly greenish eyes, full of quickly glancing lights, and as he,
too, scanned the sky, his attitude of mind also seemed dissuasive.
"'Pears like thar won't be no night, ez ye mought call night, till this
moon goes down," he suggested. "'Pears nigh ez bright ez day!"
Ozias Crann's lank, angular frame; his narrow, bony face; his nose, long
yet not large, sharp, pinched; his light grey eyes, set very closely
together; his straggling reddish beard, all were fitting concomitants to
accent the degree of caustic contempt he expressed. "Oh, to be sure!" he
drawled. "It'll be powerful public up hyar in the mounting in the
midnight,--that's a fac'!--an' moonlight is mighty illconvenient to them
ez wants ter git spied on through totin' a lantern in cur'ous places."
This sarcasm left the two remonstrants out of countenance. Pete Swofford
found a certain resource in the agitations of his bear, once more
shrinking and protesting because of the dogs. "Call off yer hound-dogs,
Rufe," he cried irritably, "or I'll gin 'em a bullet ter swallow."
"Ye air a plumb fool about that thar bar, Pete," Kinnicutt said sourly,
calling off the hounds nevertheless.
"That thar bar?" exclaimed Swofford. "Why, thar never war sech a bar!
That thar bar goes ter mill, an' kin fetch home grist,--ef I starts him
out in the woods whar he won't meet no dogs nor contrairy cattle o' men
he kin go ter mill all by his lone!--same ez folks an' the bes' kind o'
folks, too!"
In fact the bear was even now begirt with a meal-bag, well filled, which
although adding to his uncouth appearance and perhaps unduly afflicting
the sensibilities of the horse, who snorted and reared at the sight of
him, saved his master the labor of "packing" the heavy weight.
Swofford had his genial instincts and in return was willing to put up
with the cubbishness of the transport,--would wait in the illimitable
patience of the utterly idle for the bear to climb a tree if he liked
and pleasantly share with him the persimmons of his quest;--would never
interfere when the bear flung himself down and wallowed with the bag on
his back, and would reply to the censorious at home, objecting to the
dust and sand thus sifting in with the meal, with the time honored
reminder that we are all destined "to eat a peck of dirt" in this world.
"Whenst ye fust spoke o' diggin'," said Kinnicutt, interrupting a
lengthening account of the bear's mental and moral graces, "I 'lowed ez
ye mought be sayin' ez they air layin' off ter work agin in the
Tanglefoot Mine."
Ozias Crann lifted a scornful chin. "I reckon the last disasters thar
hev interrupted the company so ez they hain't got much heart todes
diggin' fur silver agin over in Tanglefoot Cove. Fust," he checked off
these misfortunes, by laying the fingers of one hand successively in the
palm of the other, "the timbers o' one o' the cross cuts fell an' the
roof caved in an' them two men war kilt, an' thar famblies sued the
company an' got mo' damages 'n the men war bodaciously wuth. Then the
nex' thing the pay agent, ez war sent from Glaston, war held up in
Tanglefoot an' robbed--some say by the miners. He got hyar whenst they
war out on a strike, an' they robbed him 'cause they warn't paid cordin'
ter thar lights, an' they did shoot him up cornsider'ble. That happened
jes' about a year ago. Then sence, thar hev been a awful cavin' in that
deep shaft they hed sunk in the tunnel, an' the mine war flooded an' the
machinery ruint--I reckon the company in Glaston ain't a-layin' off ter
fly in the face o' Providence and begin agin, arter all them leadin's
ter quit."
"Some believe he warn't robbed at all," Kinnicutt said slowly. He had
turned listlessly away, evidently meditating departure, his hand on his
horse's mane, one foot in the stirrup.
"Ye know that gal named Loralindy Byars?" Crann said craftily.
Kinnicutt paused abruptly. Then as the schemer remained silent he
demanded, frowning darkly, "What's Loralindy Byars got ter do with it?"
"Mighty nigh all!" Crann exclaimed, triumphantly.
It was a moment of tense suspense. But it was not Crann's policy to
tantalize him further, however much the process might address itself to
his peculiar interpretation of pleasure. "That thar pay agent o' the
mining company," he explained, "he hed some sort'n comical name--oh, I
remember now, Renfrow--Paul Renfrow--waal--ye know he war shot in the
knee when the miners way-laid him."
"I disremember now ef it war in the knee or the thigh," Swofford
interposed, heavily pondering.
Kinnicutt's brow contracted angrily, and Crann broke into open wrath:
"An' I ain't carin', ye fool--what d' ye interrupt fur like that?"
"Wall," protested Swofford, indignantly, "ye said 'ye know' an' I didn't
_know_."
"An' I aint carin'--the main p'int war that he could neither ride nor
walk. So the critter crawled! Nobody knows how he gin the strikers the
slip, but he got through ter old man Byars's house. An' thar he staid
till Loralindy an' the old 'oman Byars nussed him up so ez he could bear
the pain o' bein' moved. An' he got old man Byars ter wagin him down ter
Colb'ry, a-layin' on two feather beds 'count o' the rocky roads, an'
thar he got on the steam kyars an' he rid on them back ter whar he kem
from."
Kinnicutt seemed unable to longer restrain his impatience. He advanced a
pace. "Ye appear ter 'low ez ye air tellin' news--I knowed all that
whenst it happened a full year ago!"
"I reckon ye know, too, ez Loralindy hed no eyes nor ears fur ennybody
else whilst he war hyar--but then _he war_ good-lookin' an' saaft-spoken
fur true! An' now he hev writ a letter ter her!"
Crann grinned as Kinnicutt inadvertently gasped. "How do you uns know
that?" the young man hoarsely demanded, with a challenging accent of
doubt, yet prescient despair.
"'Kase, bubby, that's the way the story 'bout the lily got out. I was at
the mill this actial day. The miller hed got the letter--hevin' been
ter the post-office at the Crossroads--an' he read it ter her, bein' ez
Loralindy can't read writin'. She warn't expectin' it. He writ of his
own accord."
A sense of shadows impended vaguely over all the illuminated world, and
now and again a flicker of wings through the upper atmosphere betokened
the flight of homing birds. Crann gazed about him absently while he
permitted the statement he had made to sink deep into the jealous,
shrinking heart of the young mountaineer, and he repeated it as he
resumed.
"She warnt' expectin' of the letter. She jes' stood thar by the
mill-door straight an' slim an' white an' still, like she always be--ter
my mind like she war some sort'n sperit, stiddier a sure enough
gal--with her yaller hair slick an' plain, an' that old, faded, green
cotton dress she mos' always wears, an' lookin' quiet out at the water
o' the mill-dam ter one side, with the trees a-wavin' behind her at the
open door--jes' like she always be! An' arter awhile she speaks slow an'
saaft an axes the miller ter read it aloud ter her. An' lo! old man
Bates war rej'iced an' glorified ter the bone ter be able ter git a
peek inter that letter! He jes' shet down the gates and stopped the mill
from runnin' in a jiffy, an' tole all them loafers, ez hangs round thar
mos'ly, ter quit thar noise. An' then he propped hisself up on a pile o'
grist, an' thar he read all the sayin's ez war writ in that letter. An'
a power o' time it tuk, an' a power o' spellin' an' bodaciously
wrastlin' with the alphabit."
He laughed lazily, as he turned his quid of tobacco in his mouth,
recollecting the turbulence of these linguistic turmoils.