Backward he edged to the far side of the rock, and on he went by a
detour which, in due course, brought him out to the road once more at
that panel of fence where Boone Wellver still sat perched in the deep
preoccupation of his thoughts. These reflections focussed about the
stranger who had lately ridden by, and as Gregory paused, with no
revealing sign in his face of the events of the past half-hour, the boy
blurted out the fulness of his interest.
"Asa, did ye find out who _is_ he? Did ye see thet _sward_ he hed
hangin' ter his saddle, an' did ye note all them qu'ar contraptions he
was totin' along with him?"
"I didn't hev overly much speech with him," was the grave response. "But
he 'lowed he'd done come from acrost ther waters--from somewhars in
t'other world. I reckon he's done travelled wide."
"His looks hain't none common nuther!" Boone's eyes were sparkling; his
imagination galloping free and uncurbed. "I've done read stories about
kings an' sich-like, travellin' hither an' yon unbeknownst ter common
folks. What does ye reckon, Asa, mout _he_ be su'thin' like thet? A king
or su'thin?"
"Ef so be he's a king," opined Asa Gregory drily, "he's shore done
picked him out a God-fersaken place ter go a'travellin' in." The dark
eyes riffled for a moment into a hint of covert raillery. "Ye didn't
chanst ter discarn no crown, did ye, Booney, pokin' a gold prong or two
up outen them saddle pockets?"
Boone Wellver flushed brick-red and straightway his words fell into a
hot disclaimer of gullibility. "I hain't no plum, daft idjit. I didn't,
ter say, _really_ think he was a king--but his looks _wasn't_ none
common."
The older kinsman granted that contention and for a while they talked of
Victor McCalloway, but at length Asa shifted the subject.
"A week come Monday," he informed the boy, "thar's a'goin' ter be a
monstrous big speakin' at Marlin Town. Ther Democrat candi_date_ fer
Governor aims ter speechify an' I 'lowed mebby ye'd love ter go along
with me an' listen at him."
Whenever Asa yielded to the temptation of teasing his young cousin he
hastened to make amends for the indulgence and now the boy's face was
ashine with anticipation.
Customarily in Kentucky from the opening of the campaign to the day of
election the tide and sweep of political battle runs hot and high. But
in that autumn of 1899 all precedents of party feeling were engulfed in
a tidal wave of bitterness and endowed with a new ferocity ominously
akin to war. The gathering storm centred and beat about the head of one
man whose ambition for gubernatorial honours was the core and essence of
the strife. He was, in the confident estimate of his admirers, a giant
whose shoulders towered above the heads of his lesser compatriots. An
election law bore his name--and his adversaries gave insistent warning
that it surrendered the state, bound hand and foot, to a triumvirate of
his own choosing.
Into the wolf-like battle-royal of his party's convention he had gone
seemingly the weakest of three aspirants for the Democratic nomination.
Out of it, over disrupted party-elements, he had emerged--triumphant.
Whether one called him righteous crusader or self-seeking demagogue, the
fact stood baldly clear that his name with an "ism" attached had become
the single issue in that State, and that hero-worship and hatred
attended upon its mention.
Back to the people of the inaccessible hills, living apart, aloof and
neglected, came some of the murmurs of the tempest that shook the
lowlands. Here at the edge of a normally Democratic State which had in
earlier times held slaves and established an aristocracy, the hillsmen
living by the moil of their own sweat had hated alike slave and
slave-holder and had remained solidly Republican. For them it was enough
that William Goebel was not of their party. Basing their judgment on
that premise, they passed on with an uncomplicated directness to the
conclusion that the deleterious things said of him by envenomed orators
were assertions of gospel truth.
Now that man was carrying his campaign into the enemy's country.
Realizing without illusion the temper of the audience which would troop
in from creek-bed and cove and the branch-waters "back of beyond," he
was to speak in Marlin Town where the cardinal faith of the mountains
is, "hate thine enemy!"
In the court-house square of Marlin Town, under the shadow of high-flung
hills, had gathered close-packed battalions of listeners. Some there
were who carried with them their rifles and some who looked as foreign
to even these rude streets as nomads ridden in from the desert.
A brass band had come with the candidate's special train and blared out
its stirring message. There was a fluttering of flags and a brave
showing of transparencies, and to Boone Wellver, aged fifteen, as he
hung shadow-close at Asa Gregory's elbow, it all seemed the splendour of
panoply and the height of pageantry.
From the hotel door, as the man and boy passed it, emerged two gentlemen
who were clothed in the smoother raiment of "Down below," and Boone
pointed them out to his companion.
"Who _air_ they, Asa?" he whispered, and his kinsman carelessly
responded:
"One of 'em's named Masters. He's a coal-mine boss--but I hain't never
seed t'other one, afore now."
Strolling along the narrow plank runway that did service as a sidewalk,
the boy glimpsed also the mysterious stranger who had ridden in on a
mule, with a canvas-covered sword at his saddle ring.
Then the fanfare of the band fell silent and a thin figure in an ancient
frock coat stepped forward on the platform itself and raised its hands
to shout: "Fellow Citizens and Kentuckians of Marlin County!"
Ranged importantly behind the draped bunting stood the corporal's guard
of native Democratic leaders--leaders who were well-nigh without
followers--and who now stood as local sponsors for the Candidate
himself.
Boone caught his breath and listened, his eager eyes conspicuous among
the immobile and stolid faces of the unresponsive throng as the speaker
let flow his words of encomium.
Seeking to compensate by his own vehemence for the unreceptiveness of
his audience, the thin master of ceremonies heaped the Ossa of
fulsomeness upon the Pelion of praise. "And now, men of Marlin," he
shouted in his memorized peroration, "now I have the distinguished
honour of presenting to you the man whose loins are girt in the people's
fight--the--the--ahem,--unterrified champeen of the Commonwealth's
yeomanry--. Gentlemen, the next Governor of Kentucky!"
A peroration without applause is like a quick-step beat upon a loose
drum-head, and an the local sponsor stood back in the dispiriting
emptiness of dead silence--unbroken by a single hand-clap--his face
fell. For several moments that quiet hung like a paralyzing rebuff, then
from the outskirts of the crowd a liquor-thickened voice bellowed--"Next
gov'nor--of hell!"
To the front of the platform, with that derisive introduction,
calmly--even coldly, stepped a dark, smooth-shaven man, over whose
stocky shoulders and well-rounded chest a frock coat was tightly
buttoned.
For a while the Candidate stood looking out, gauging his audience, and
from him there seemed to emanate an assurance of power before his lips
parted. A heavy lock of coal-black hair fell over his forehead, across
almost disdainfully cold eyes went sooty lashes, and dark brows met
above the prominent nose. The whole face seemed drawn in bold charcoal
strokes, uncompromising of line and feature--a portrayal of force.
Then the resonant voice broke silence, and though it came calmly and
moderately pitched, it went out clarion-clear over the crowd like the
note of a fox horn.
"Some one out there shouted--'Next governor of hell!'" he began without
preamble. "I grant you that if any region needs improved government it
is hell, and if there is a state on this earth where a man might hope to
qualify himself for that task, it is this state. Let me try that first,
my friend. I believe in myself, but I am only human."
He launched forthright into arraignment of his enemies with sledge-blows
of denunciation untempered by any concession to time, place or
condition, and though scowls grew vindictively black about him, he knew
that he was holding his audience.
He was a Vulcan forging thunders with words and destructive batteries of
bolts with phrases, and Boone Wellver--trembling with excitement as a
pointer puppy trembles with the young eagerness of the covey-scent in
his nostrils--seemed to be in the presence of a miracle; the miracle of
eloquence.
"My God," breathed the less impressionable Asa Gregory under his breath,
"but thet feller hes a master gift fer lyin'!"
At the end, with one clenched fist raised high, the speaker thundered
out his final words of defiance: "The fight is on, and I believe in
fighting. I ask no quarter and I fear no foe!"
Again he paused, and again save for the valiant enthusiasm on the
platform at his back, he met with no response except a grim and negative
silence.
But this disconcerting stillness was abruptly ripped asunder by a pistol
shot and a commotion of confused voices, rising where figures began to
eddy and mill at the outskirts. The reception committee closed hastily
and protectingly about the candidate, whose challenge seemed to have
been accepted by some irresponsible gun-fighter, but he thrust them back
with a face of unaltered and stony calmness. Though he had finished, he
continued to stand at the front with hands idly resting on the platform
rail as if meaning to demonstrate his contempt for anything like
retreat.
While he still tarried there a tall figure elbowed its way through the
crowd until it stood near. It was the figure of Asa Gregory, and,
raising a hand for recognition, it called out in a full-chested voice:
"Thet shot war fired by a feller thet war full of white licker--an'
they're takin' him ter ther jail-house now. I reckon yore doctrine
hain't hardly converted nobody hyarabouts--but we don't aim ter insult
no visitor."
* * * * *
Victor McCalloway had come to Cyrus Spradling's house to remain until he
could arrange a more permanent residence. The purpose that lay behind
his coming was one which he had not felt called upon to explain, and
though he had much to learn of this new place of abode, still he had
come forearmed with some of the cardinals of a necessary understanding.
They were an incurious people with whom he had cast his lot, content
with their remoteness, and it was something that here a man could lose
himself from questions touching the past, so long as he answered frankly
those of the present. It suited McCalloway to seal the back pages and
the bearded men evinced no wish to penetrate them.
Before the snow flew the newcomer was to be housed under his own
roof-tree, and today in answer to the verbal announcement that he was to
have a "working" on the land he had bought, the community was present,
armed with hammer and saw, with adze and plane, mobilized under the
auspices of Cyrus Spradling who moved, like a shaggy patron saint, among
them.
There were men, working shoulder to shoulder, whose enmities were deep
and ancient, but who today were restrained by the common spirit of
volunteer service to a neighbour. Cyrus had seen to it that the
gathering at McCalloway's "house-raising" should not bear the
prejudicial colour of partisanship, but that Carrs and Gregories alike
should have a hand in the activities which were going robustly forward
at the head of Snag Ridge.
Back of Cedar Mountain no architect was available and no builders' union
afforded or withheld labour, but every man was carpenter and artisan in
his own right, and some were "practiced corner-men" as well.
Through the sun-flooded day with its Indian summer dream along the
skyline their axes rang in accompaniment to their homely jests, and the
earnest whine of their saws went up with the minors of voices raised in
the plaintive strains of folk-lore ballads.
The only wage accepted was food and drink. They would have thought as
readily of asking payment for participation in the rough festivities of
the "infare" with which the mountain groom brings his bride from her
wedding to his own house on a pillion at the back of his saddle.
Tomorrow some of these same men, meeting in the roadway, would perhaps
eye each other with suspicion. Riding on, after greetings, they would go
with craned necks, neither trusting the other to depart unwatched, but
today the rude sanctuary of hospitality to the stranger rested over them
and the timbers that went up were raised by the hands of friends and
enemies alike.
But toward sunset the newcomer chanced upon a fight that the simple code
had not safeguarded and that had gained headway before his interference.
Down by the creek-bed, with no audience, he found two boys rolling in a
smother of dust and, until he remembered that the hill code of "fist and
skull" bars neither shod-toe nor bared tooth, he was shocked at the
unmitigated savagery of the combat.
The strenuous pair rolled in a mad embrace, and as he approached, one of
the boys--whose back alone he could see--came to the top of the writhing
heap. While this one gouged, left handed, at eyes which the other
attempted to cover, his right hand whipped out a jack-knife which he
sought to open with his teeth. Out of the commotion came an animal-like
incoherence of snarls and panting profanity, and Victor McCalloway
caught the top boy by his shoulder and dragged him forcibly away from
what threatened to be maiming or worse.
So pried from his victim, on the verge of victory, the boy with a bloody
and unrecognized face stood for an instant heaving of breast and
infuriated, then wrenching himself free from the detaining hand, he gave
a leap as sudden as that of a frightened buck and disappeared behind the
screen of the laurel.
The other figure, with an eye blackened and bleeding from the raw
scratches of finger-nails about the lids, came more slowly to his feet,
his breath rasping with passion and exhaustion. He stood there before
his would-be rescuer--and McCalloway recognized Boone Wellver.
"I'd hev licked him--so his own mammy wouldn't 'a' knowed him ef ye
hadn't 'a' bust in on me," he panted. "I'd done had him down oncet afore
an' I war jest erbout ter turn him under ergin."
A light of suppressed drollery glinted into the eyes of the man whose
ruddy face remained otherwise unsmiling.
"It looked to me as though you were in a situation where nothing could
save you but reinforcements--or surrender," he commented, and the
heaving body of the rescued boy grew rigid while his begrimed face
flamed with chagrin.
"Surrender--knock under--ter _him_!" He spat out the words with a
venomous disgust. "Thet feller war a _Blair_! Did ye ever heer of a
Gregory hollerin' 'enough!' ter a Blair, yit!"
McCalloway stood looking down with an amusement which he was considerate
enough to mask. He knew that Boone, though his surname was Wellver, was
still in all the meaning of feud parlance a Gregory and that in the
bitterness of his speech spoke not only individual animosity but
generations of vendetta. So he let the lad have his say uninterrupted,
and Boone's words ran freshet-like with the churn and tumble of his
anger. "Ye jest misjudged he war a'lickin' me, because ye seed him on
top an' a'gougin' at my eye. But I'd _done been_ on top o' him--an' I'd
a got thar ergin. Ef you'd noted whar I'd done chawed his ear at he
wouldn't 'a' looked so good ter ye, I reckon."
"Suppose he had gotten that knife open." The man still spoke with that
unpatronizing gravity which carries an untold weight of conviction to a
boy's mind. "What would he have done?"
"I reckon he'd a'gutted me--but I didn't nuver aim ter let him git hit
open."
"Are you a fighter by habit, Boone?"
Something in the intonation caused the lad to flush afresh, this time
with the feeling that he had been unduly bragging, and he responded in a
lowered voice. "I hain't nuver tuck part in no gun-battles yit--but when
hit comes ter fist an' skull, I'm accounted ter be a right practiced
knocker an' I kin rass'le right good. What made ye ask me thet
question?"
McCalloway held the angelic blue eyes, so paradoxically set in that
wrath-enflamed face, with his own steady gray ones, and spoke quietly:
"Because if you are going to be a fighting man, it's important that you
should fight properly, I thought perhaps you'd like to talk to me about
it sometime. You see, I've been fighting all my life. It's been my
profession."
Over the freckled face surged a wave of captivated interest. The Blair
boy was forgotten and the voice thrilled into earnest solicitation.
"Would ye l'arn me more about hit some time? What style of fightin' does
ye foller?"
"The fair kind, I trust. Civilized warfare. The trade of soldiering."
"I hain't nuver follered no unfa'r sort nuther," disclaimed Boone, and
his companion smiled enigmatically while he replied meditatively,
"What is fair or unfair--what is courageous or cowardly--is largely a
matter of viewpoint. Some day I dare say you'll go out into the world
beyond the hills and out there you'll find that gouging eyes and chewing
ears isn't called fair--that shooting an enemy from ambush isn't called
courageous."
That was a doctrine, Boone felt, which savoured of sacrilege. If it were
categorically true then his own people were cowards--and to his ardent
hero worship the Gregories and the Wellvers were exemplars of high
bravery, yet this man was no ordinary individual, and he spoke from a
wisdom and experience based on a lifetime of soldiering. A seed of
dilemma had fallen into the fallow soil of the lad's questioning mind,
and as he stood there in a swirl of perplexity he heard the other voice
explaining with a sort of comforting reassurance, "As I said, notions of
right and wrong vary with locality and custom--but it's good for a man
to know more than one standard--one set of ideas. If you ever go out in
the world you'll need that knowledge."
After a period of reflection the boy demanded bluntly,
"Whar-at war ye a'soldierin'?"
For the first time, McCalloway's glance hardened and his tone sharpened.
He had not meant to throw open the discussion to a wide review of his
own past.
"If you and I are going to be good friends, you mustn't ask too many
questions," he said curtly. "It doesn't make a boy popular."
"I axes yore pardon; I didn't aim at no offence." The apology was
prompt, yet puzzled, and carried with it a note of injured dignity. "I
'lowed ye proffered ter tell me things--an' even ef ye told me all ye
knowed, I wouldn't go 'round blabbin' no-whars. I knows how ter hold my
own counsel."
This time it was the seasoned man of experience who flushed. He felt
that he had first invited and then rebuffed a natural inquiry, and so
he, in turn, spoke apologetically: "I shall tell you things that may be
useful--but I sha'n't answer every question."
After a long silence Boone spoke again, with the altered voice of
diffidence:
"I reckon I hain't got nothin' more ter say," he contributed. "I reckon
I'll be farin' on."
"You looked as if you were spilling over with things to say."
"I had hit in head ter say some sev'ral things," admitted the youthful
clansman, "but they was all in ther manner of axin' more questions, so I
reckon I'll be farin' on."
Victor McCalloway caught the deep hunger for information that showed out
of those independent young eyes, and he caught too the untutored
instinct of politeness, as genuine and unaffected as that of a desert
Sheik, which forced repression. He laid a kindly hand on the boy's
shoulder.
"Go ahead and ask your questions, then," he directed, "and I'll answer
what I like and refuse to answer the rest. Is that a fair arrangement?"
The brown face glowed. "Thet's es fa'r es airy thing kin be," was the
eager response. "I hain't nuver seed nothin' but jest these hyar
hills--an' sometimes hit kinderly seems like ter me thet ef I kain't
light out an' see all ther balance, I'll jest plain swell up an' bust
with ther cravin'."
"You study history--and geography, don't you, Boone?"
"Huh-huh." The tousled head nodded. "But thar's a passel of thet book
stuff thet a man kain't believe nohow. Hit ain't _reasonable_."
"What books have you read?"
"Every single damn one thet I could git my hands on--but thet hain't
been no lavish plenty." With a manner of groping for some point of
contact with the outer world, he added, "I've got a cousin thet's in
ther army, though. He's in ther Philippines right now. Did you soldier
in ther Philippines?" Abruptly Boone broke off, and then hastily he
prompted as he raised a hand in a gesture of caution, "Don't answer thet
thar question ef ye hain't got a mind ter! I jest axed hit heedless-like
without studyin' what I war a'doin'."
McCalloway laughed aloud. "I'll answer it. No, I've never soldiered in
the Philippines nor anywhere under the American flag. My fighting has
all been with what you call the 'outlanders.'"