friend'--he did--an' 'lowed he hed a right ter the word, fur ef ever a
man war befriended he hed been. He 'lowed ez he could never furget her.
An' Lord! how it tickled old man Bates ter read them sentiments--the
prideful old peacock! He would jes' stop an' push his spectacles back on
his slick bald head an' say, 'Ye hear me, Loralindy! he 'lows he'll
never furget the keer ye tuk o' him whenst he war shot an' ailin' an'
nigh ter death. An' no mo' he ought, nuther. But some do furget sech ez
that, Loralindy--some do!' An' them fellers at the mill, listenin' ter
the letter, could sca'cely git thar consent ter wait fur old man Bates
ter git through his talk ter Loralindy, that he kin talk ter every day
in the year! But arter awhile he settled his spectacles agin, an' tuk
another tussle with the spellin,' an' then he rips out the main p'int o'
the letter. This stranger-man he 'lowed he war bold enough ter ax
another favior. The cuss tried ter be funny. 'One good turn desarves
another,' he said. 'An' ez ye hev done me one good turn, I want ye ter
do me another.' An' old man Bates hed the insurance ter waste the time
a-laffin' an' a-laffin' at sech a good joke. Them fellers at the mill
could hev fund it in thar hearts ter grind him up in his own hopper, ef
it wouldn't hev ground up with him thar chance o' ever hearin' the e-end
o' that thar interestin' letter. So thar comes the favior. Would she dig
up that box he treasured from whar he told her he hed buried it, arter
he escaped from the attack o' the miners? An' would she take the box ter
Colb'ry in her grandad's wagin, an' send it ter him by express. He hed
tole her once whar he hed placed it--an' ter mark the spot mo' percisely
he hed noticed one Chilhowee lily bulb right beside it. An' then says
the letter, "Good bye, Chilhowee Lily!' An' all them fellers stood
staring."
A light wind was under way from the west. Delicate flakes of red and
glistening white were detached from the clouds. Sails--sails were
unfurling in the vast floods of the skies. With flaunting banners and
swelling canvas a splendid fleet reached half way to the zenith. But a
more multitudinous shipping still swung at anchor low in the west,
though the promise of a fair night as yet held fast.
"An' now," said Ozias Crann in conclusion, "all them fellers is
a-diggin'."
"Whut's in the box?" demanded Swofford, his big baby-face all in a
pucker of doubt.
"The gold an' silver he ought ter hev paid the miners, of course. They
always 'lowed they never tuk a dollar off him; they jes' got a long
range shot at him! How I wish," Ozias Crann broke off fervently, "how I
wish I could jes' git my hands on that money once!" He held out his
hands, long and sinewy, and opened and shut them very fast.
"Why, that would be stealin'!" exclaimed Kinnicutt with repulsion.
"How so? 't ain't his'n now, sure--he war jes' the agent ter pay it
out," argued Crann, volubly.
"It belongs ter the mine owners, then--the company." There was a
suggestion of inquiry in the younger man's tone.
"'Pears not--they sent it hyar fur the percise purpose ter be paid out!"
the specious Crann replied.
"Then it belongs ter the miners."
"They hedn't yearned it--an' ef some o' them hed they warn't thar ter
receive it, bein' out on a strike. They hed burnt down the company's
office over yander at the mine in Tanglefoot Cove, with all the books
an' accounts, an' now nobody knows what's owin' ter who."
Kinnicutt's moral protests were silenced, not satisfied. He looked up
moodily at the moon now alone in the sky, for only a vanishing segment
of the great vermilion sphere of the sun was visible above the western
mountains, when suddenly he felt one of those long grasping claws on his
arm. "Now, Rufe, bubby," a most insinuating tone, Crann had summoned,
"all them fool fellers air diggin' up the face of the yearth, wharever
they kin find a Chilhowee lily--like sarchin' fur a needle in a
haystack. But we uns will do a better thing than that. I drawed the idee
ez soon ez I seen you an' Pete hyar this evenin' so onexpected. 'Them's
my pardners,' I sez ter myself. 'Pete ter holp dig an' tote ef the box
be heavy. An' you ter find out edzac'ly whar it be hid.' You uns an'
Loralindy hev been keepin' company right smart, an' ye kin toll
Loralindy along till she lets slip jes' whar that lily air growin'. I'll
be bound ez she likes ye a sight better 'n that Renfrow--leastwise ef 't
warn't fur his letter, honeyin' her up with complimints, an' she hevin'
the chance o' tollin' him on through doin' him sech faviors, savin' his
life, an' now his money--shucks it's mo' _our_ money 'n his'n; 't ain't
his'n! Gol-darn the insurance o' this Renfrow! His idee is ter keep the
money his own self, an' make her sen' it ter him. Then 'Good-bye,
Chilhowee Lily!'"
The night had come at last, albeit almost as bright as day, but with so
ethereal, so chastened a splendor that naught of day seemed real. A
world of dreams it was, of gracious illusions, of far vague distances
that lured with fair promises that the eye might not seek to measure.
The gorgeous tints were gone, and in their stead were soft grays and
indefinite blurring browns, and every suggestion of silver that metal
can show flashed in variant glitter in the moon. The mountains were
majestically sombre, with a mysterious sense of awe in their great
height. There were few stars; only here and there the intense lustre of
a still planet might withstand the annihilating magnificence of the
moon.
Its glamour did not disdain the embellishment of humbler objects. As
Rufe Kinnicutt approached a little log cabin nestling in a sheltered
cove he realized that a year had gone by since Renfrow had seen it
first, and that thus it must have appeared when he beheld it. The dew
was bright on the slanting roof, and the shadow of oak trees wavered
over it. The mountain loomed above. The zigzag lines of the rail fence,
the bee-gums all awry ranged against it, the rickety barn and
fowl-house, the gourd vines draping the porch of the dwelling, all had a
glimmer of dew and a picturesque symmetry, while the spinning wheel as
Loralinda sat in the white effulgent glow seemed to revolve with flashes
of light in lieu of spokes, and the thread she drew forth was as silver.
Its murmuring rune was hardly distinguishable from the chant of the
cicada or the long droning in strophe and antistrophe of the water-side
frogs far away, but such was the whir or her absorption that she did not
perceive his approach till his shadow fell athwart the threshold, and
she looked up with a start.
"Ye 'pear powerful busy a-workin' hyar so late in the night," he
exclaimed with a jocose intonation.
She smiled, a trifle abashed; then evidently conscious of the bizarre
suggestions of so much ill-timed industry, she explained, softly
drawling: "Waal, ye know, Granny, she be so harried with her rheumatics
ez she gits along powerful poor with her wheel, an' by night she be
plumb out'n heart an' mad fur true. So arter she goes ter bed I jes'
spins a passel fur her, an' nex' mornin' she 'lows she done a toler'ble
stint o' work an' air consider'ble s'prised ez she war so easy put
out."
She laughed a little, but he did not respond. With his sensibilities all
jarred by the perfidious insinuation of Ozias Crann, and his jealousy
all on the alert, he noted and resented the fact that at first her
attention had come back reluctantly to him, and that he, standing before
her, had been for a moment a less definitely realized presence than the
thought in her mind--this thought had naught to do with him, and of that
he was sure.
"Loralindy," he said with a turbulent impulse of rage and grief; "whenst
ye promised to marry me ye an' me war agreed that we would never hev one
thought hid from one another--ain't that a true word?"
The wheel had stopped suddenly--the silver thread was broken; she was
looking up at him, the moonlight full on the straight delicate
lineaments of her pale face, and the smooth glister of her golden hair.
"Not o' my own," she stipulated. And he remembered, and wondered that it
should come to him so late, that she had stood upon this reservation and
that he--poor fool--had conceded it, thinking it concerned the
distilling of whisky in defiance of the revenue law, in which some of
her relatives were suspected to be engaged, and of which he wished to
know as little as possible.
The discovery of his fatuity was not of soothing effect. "'T war that
man Renfrow's secret--I hearn about his letter what war read down ter
the mill."
She nodded acquiescently, her expression once more abstracted, her
thoughts far afield.
He had one moment of triumph as he brought himself tensely erect,
shouldering his gun--his shadow behind him in the moonlight duplicated
the gesture with a sharp promptness as at a word of command.
"All the mounting's a-diggin' by this time!" He laughed with ready
scorn, then experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. Her face had
changed. Her expression was unfamiliar. She had caught together the two
ends of the broken thread, and was knotting them with a steady hand, and
a look of composed security on her face, that was itself a flout to the
inopportune search of the mountaineers and boded ill to his hope to
discover from her the secret of the _cache_. He recovered himself
suddenly.
"Ye 'lowed ter me ez ye never keered nuthin' fur that man, Renfrow," he
said with a plaintive appeal, far more powerful with her than scorn.
She looked up at him with candid reassuring eyes. "I never keered none
fur him," she protested. "He kem hyar all shot up, with the miners an'
mounting boys hot foot arter him--an' we done what we could fur him.
Gran'daddy 'lowed ez _he_ warn't 'sponsible fur whut the owners done, or
hedn't done at the mine, an' he seen no sense in shootin' one man ter
git even with another."
"But ye kep' his secret!" Kinnicutt persisted.
"What fur should I tell it--'t ain't mine?"
"That thar money in that box he buried ain't _his'n_, nuther!" he
argued.
There was an inscrutable look in her clear eyes. She had risen, and was
standing in the moonlight opposite him. The shadows of the vines falling
over her straight skirt left her face and hair the fairer in the silver
glister.
"'Pears like ter me," he broke the silence with his plaintive cadence,
"ez ye ought ter hev tole me. I ain't keerin' ter know 'ceptin' ye hev
shet me out. It hev hurt my feelin's powerful ter be treated that-a-way.
Tell me now--or lemme go forever!"
She was suddenly trembling from head to foot. Pale she was always. Now
she was ghastly. "Rufe Kinnicutt," she said with the solemnity of an
adjuration, "ye don't keer fur sech ez this, fur _nuthin'_. An' I
promised!"
He noted her agitation. He felt the clue in his grasp. He sought to
wield his power, "Choose a-twixt us! Choose a-twixt the promise ye made
ter that man--or the word ye deny ter me! An' when I'm gone--I'm gone!"
She stood seemingly irresolute.
"It's nuthin' ter me," he protested once more. "I kin keep it an' gyard
it ez well ez you uns. But I won't be shet out, an' doubted, an' denied,
like ez ef _I_ wan't fitten ter be trested with nuthin'!"
He stood a moment longer, watching her trembling agitation, and feeling
that tingling exasperation that might have preceded a blow.
"I'm goin'," he threatened.
As she still stood motionless he turned away as if to make good his
threat. He heard a vague stir among the leaves, and turning back he saw
that the porch was vacant.
He had overshot the mark. In swift repentance he retraced his steps. He
called her name. No response save the echoes. The house dogs, roused to
a fresh excitement, were gathering about the door, barking in affected
alarm, save one, to whom Kinnicutt was a stranger, that came, silent and
ominous, dragging a block and chain from under the house. Kinnicutt
heard the sudden drowsy plaints of the old rheumatic grandmother, as she
was rudely awakened by the clamors, and presently a heavy footfall smote
upon the puncheons that floored the porch. Old Byars himself, with his
cracked voice and long gray hair, had left his pipe on the mantel-piece
to investigate the disorder without.
"Hy're Rufe!" he swung uneasily posed on his crutch stick in the
doorway, and mechanically shaded his eyes with one hand, as from the
sun, as he gazed dubiously at the young man, "hain't ye in an' about
finished yer visit?--or yer visitation, ez the pa'son calls it. He, he,
he! Wall, Loralindy hev gone up steers ter the roof-room, an it's about
time ter bar up the doors. Waal, joy go with ye, he, he, he! Come off,
Tige, _ye_ Bose, hyar! Cur'ous I can't l'arn them dogs no manners."
A dreary morrow ensued on the splendid night. The world was full of
mists; the clouds were resolved into drizzling rain; every perspective
of expectation was restricted by the limited purlieus of the present.
The treasure-seekers digging here and there throughout the forest in
every nook in low ground, wherever a drift of the snowy blossoms might
glimmer, began to lose hope and faith. Now and again some iconoclastic
soul sought to stigmatize the whole rumor as a fable. More than one
visited the Byars cabin in the desperate hope that some chance word
might fall from the girl, giving a clue to the mystery.
By daylight the dreary little hut had no longer poetic or picturesque
suggestion. Bereft of the sheen and shimmer of the moonlight its aspect
had collapsed like a dream into the dullest realities. The door-yard was
muddy and littered; here the razor-back hogs rooted unrebuked; the rail
fence had fallen on one side, and it would seem that only their
attachment to home prevented them from wandering forth to be lost in the
wilderness; the clap-boards of the shiny roof were oozing and steaming
with dampness, and showed all awry and uneven; the clay and stick
chimney, hopelessly out of plumb, leaned far from the wall.
Within it was not more cheerful; the fire smoked gustily into the dim
little room, illumined only by the flicker of the blaze and the
discouraged daylight from the open door, for the batten shutters of the
unglazed window were closed. The puncheon floor was grimy--the feet that
curiosity had led hither brought much red clay mire upon them. The
poultry, all wet and dispirited, ventured within and stood about the
door, now scuttling in sudden panic and with peevish squawks upon the
unexpected approach of a heavy foot. Loralinda, sitting at her spinning
wheel, was paler than ever, all her dearest illusions dashed into
hopeless fragments, and a promise which she did not value to one whom
she did not love quite perfect and intact.
The venerable grandmother sat propped with pillows in her arm-chair, and
now and again adjured the girl to "show some manners an' tell the
neighbors what they so honed to know." With the vehemence of her
insistence her small wizened face would suddenly contract; the tortures
of the rheumatism, particularly rife in such weather, would seize upon
her, and she would cry aloud with anguish, and clutch her stick and
smite her granddaughter to expedite the search for the primitive
remedies of dried "yarbs" on which her comfort depended.
"Oh, Lord!" she would wail as she fell back among the pillows. "I'm
a-losin' all my religion amongst these hyar rheumatics. I wish I war a
man jes' ter say 'damn 'em' once! An' come good weather I'll sca'cely be
able ter look Loralindy in the face, considerin' how I hector her whilst
I be in the grip o' this misery."
"Jes' pound away, Granny, ef it makes ye feel ennywise better," cried
Loralinda, furtively rubbing the weales on her arm. "It don't hurt me
wuth talkin' 'bout. Ye jes' pound away, an' welcome!"
Perhaps it was her slender, elastic strength and erect grace, with her
shining hair and ethereal calm pallor in the midst of the storm that
evoked the comparison, for Ozias Crann was suddenly reminded of the
happy similitude suggested by the letter that he had heard read and had
repeated yesterday to his cronies as he stood in the road. The place was
before him for one illumined moment--the niche in the cliff, with its
ferns and vines, the delicate stately dignity of the lilies outlined
against the intense blue of the sky.
The reminiscence struck him like a discovery. Where else could the
flower have been so naturally noticed by this man, a stranger, and
remembered as a mark in the expectation of finding it once more when the
bulb should flower again--as beside the county road? He would have been
hopelessly lost a furlong from the path.
Crann stood for a moment irresolute, then silently grasped his pickaxe
and slunk out among the mists on the porch.
He berated his slow mind as he hurried invisible through the vast clouds
in which the world seemed lost. Why should the laggard inspiration come
so late if it had come at all? Why should he, with the clue lying half
developed in his own mental impressions, have lost all the vacant hours
of the long, bright night, have given the rumor time to pervade the
mountains, and set all the idlers astir before he should strike the
decisive blow?
There, at last, was the cliff, beetling far over the mist-filled valley
below. A slant of sunshine fell on the surging vapor, and it gleamed
opalescent. There was the niche, with the lilies all a-bloom. He came
panting up the slope under the dripping trees, with a dash of wind in
his face and the odor of damp leafage and mold on the freshening air.
He struck the decisive blow with a will. The lilies shivered and fell
apart. The echoes multiplied the stroke with a ringing metallic
iteration.
The loiterers were indeed abroad. The sound lured them from their own
devious points of search, and a half dozen of the treasure-seekers burst
from the invisibilities of the mists as Ozias Crann's pickaxe cleaving
the mold struck upon the edge of a small japanned box hidden securely
between the rocks, a scant foot below the surface. A dangerous spot for
a struggle, the verge of a precipice, but the greed for gain is a
passion that blunts the sense of peril. The wrestling figures, heedless
of the abyss, swayed hither and thither, the precious box among them;
now it was captured by a stronger grasp, now secured anew by sheer
sleight-of-hand. More than once it dropped to the ground, and at last in
falling the lock gave way, and scattered to the wind were numberless
orderly vouchers for money already paid, inventories of fixtures, bills
for repairs, reports of departments--various details of value in
settling the accounts of the mine, and therefore to be transmitted to
the main office of the mining company at Glaston.
"Ef I hed tole ye ez the money warn't thar, ye wouldn't hev believed
me," Loralinda Byars said drearily, when certain disappointed wights,
who had sought elsewhere and far afield, repaired to the cabin laughing
at their own plight and upbraiding her with the paucity of the _cache_.
"I knowed all the time what war in that box. The man lef' it thar in the
niche arter he war shot, it bein' heavy ter tote an' not wuth much. But
he brung the money with him, an' tuk it off, bein', he said, without
orders from the owners, the miners hevin' burnt down the offices, an'
bruk open the safe an' destroyed all the papers, ceptin' that leetle
box. I sewed up the man's money myself in them feather beds what he lay
on whenst he war wagined down 'ter Colb'ry ter take the kyars. He 'lowed
the compn'y mought want them papers whenst they went into liquidation,
ez he called it, an' tole me how he hed hid 'em."
Rufe Kinnicutt wondered that she should have been so unyielding. She did
not speculate on the significance of her promise. She did not appraise
its relative value with other interests, and seek to qualify it. Once
given she simply kept it. She held herself no free agent. It was not
hers.
The discovery that the lure was gold revealed the incentive of her
lover's jealous demand to share the custody of the secret. His intention
was substituted for the deed in her rigid interpretation of integrity.
It cost her many tears. But she seemed thereafter to him still more
unyielding, as erect, fragile, ethereally pure and pale she noted his
passing no more than the lily might. He often thought of the cheap lure
of the sophisms that had so deluded him, the simple obvious significance
of the letter, and the phrase, "Good-bye, Chilhowee Lily," had also an
echo of finality for him.
THE PHANTOM OF BOGUE HOLAUBA
Gordon never forgot the sensation he experienced on first beholding it.
There was no mist in the midnight. The moon was large and low. The
darkness of the dense, towering forests on either hand impinged in no
wise on the melancholy realm of wan light in which the Mississippi lay,
unshadowed, solitary, silent as always, its channel here a mile or more
in breadth.
He had been observing how the mighty water-course was sending out its
currents into a bayou, called Bogue Holauba, as if the larger stream
were a tributary of the lesser. This peculiarity of the river in the
deltaic region, to throw off volume instead of continually receiving
affluents, was unaccustomed to him, being a stranger to the locality,
and for a moment it focussed his interest. The next, his every faculty
was concentrated on a singular phenomenon on the bank of the bogue.
He caught his breath with a gasp; then, without conscious volition, he
sought to explain it to his own shocked senses, to realize it as some
illusion, some combination of natural causes, the hour, the pallor
pervading the air, the distance, for his boat was near the middle of the
stream,--but the definiteness of the vision annulled his efforts.
There on the broad, low margin, distinct, yet with a coercive conviction
of unreality, the figure of a man drawn in lines of vague light paced
slowly to and fro; an old man, he would have said, bent and wizened,
swaying back and forth, in expressive contortions, a very pantomime of
woe, wringing gaunt hands and arms above his head, and now and again
bowing low in recurrent paroxysms of despair. The wind held its breath,
and the river, mute as ever, made no sign, and the encompassing alluvial
wilderness stood for a type of solitude. Only the splashing of the
paddle of the "dug-out" gave token of the presence of life in all the
land.
Gordon could not restrain his wonder. "What--what--is--that Thing--over
there on the bank of the bogue?" he called out to the negro servant who
was paddling the canoe.
He was all unprepared for the effect of his words. Indeed, he was fain
to hold hard to the gunwales. For the negro, with a sudden galvanic
start, let slip the paddle from his hand, recovering it only by a mighty
lunge in a mechanical impulse of self-preservation. The dug-out, the
most tricksy craft afloat, rocked violently in the commotion and
threatened to capsize. Then, as it finally righted, its course was
hastily changed, and under the impetus of panic terror it went shooting
down the river at a tremendous speed.
"Why, what does all this mean?" demanded Gordon.
"Don't ye talk ter me, boss!" the boatman, with chattering teeth,
adjured his passenger. "Don't ye talk ter me, boss! Don't tell me ye
seed somepin over dar on Bogue Holauba--'kase ef ye _do_ I'se gwine ter
turn dis dug-out upside down an' swim out ter de Arkansas side. I ain't
gwine ter paddle dis boat fur no ghost-seer, sure's ye are born. I ain't
gwine ter have no traffickin' wid ghosts nur ghost-seers nuther. I'd die
'fore de year's out, sure!"
The sincerity of the servant's fright was attested by the change in his
manner. He had been hitherto all cheerful, though respectful,
affability, evidently bidding high for a tip. Now he crouched
disconsolate and sullen in his place, wielding the paddle with all his
might, and sedulously holding down his head, avoiding the stranger's
eye.
Gordon felt the whole situation in some sort an affront to his dignity,
and the apparition being withdrawn from view by the changed direction,
he was in better case to take account of this,--to revolt at the uncouth
character of the craft and guide sent for him; the absence of any member
of his entertainer's family to welcome the visitor, here at their
instance and invitation; the hour of the night; the uncanny incident of
the inexplicable apparition,--but when that thought recurred to him he
sheered off precipitately from the recollection.