A FEW days after that, he started back again to his mountains. With Saul
in jail and his wife returning to her people, there was nothing further
to hold him here. Indeed, he was anxious now to get home. Like one who
has been bewildered by a plethora of new experiences, he needed time to
digest them, and above all he wanted to talk with Victor McCalloway,
whose wisdom was, to his thinking, as that of a second Solomon. There,
too, was his other hero, Asa, who had returned to the hills as quietly
as he had left them. Boone was burning to know whether, in the whirlpool
of excitement there at Frankfort, his efforts to secure executive
clemency had met with success or failure.
When, immediately upon crossing Cedar Mountain, he presented himself at
McCalloway's house, he was somewhat nonplussed at the grave, almost
accusing, eyes which the hermit gentleman bent upon him.
"I've jest got back hyar from ther big world down below," announced the
boy, "an' I fared straight over hyar ter see ye fust thing." He paused,
a little crestfallen, to note that reserve of silence where he had
anticipated a warmth of welcome, and then he went on shyly: "Thar was
hell ter pay down thar at Frankfort town--an' I seed a good part of ther
b'ilin' with my own eyes."
Very slowly Victor McCalloway made response. "You have witnessed a
tragedy--a crime for which the guilty parties should pay with their
lives. Even then a scar will be left on the honour of your State."
Boone crowded his hands into his coat pockets and shivered in the wet
wind, for as yet he had not been invited across the threshold.
"I don't know nothin' about who done hit," he made calm assertion. "But
fellers like Saul Fulton 'peared ter 'low he plum needed killin."
"Fellows like Saul Fulton!"
The retired soldier drew a long breath, and his eyes narrowed. "You went
down there, Boone, with a kinsman who now stands accused of complicity.
The law presumes his innocence until it proves him guilty, but I'm not
thinking of him much, just now. I'm thinking of _you_." He paused as if
in deep anxiety, then added: "A boy may be led by reckless and wilful
men into--well--grave mistakes.... I believe in you, but you must answer
me one question, and you must answer it on your word of honour--as a
gentleman."
The boy's pupils widened interrogatively, and held those older eyes with
an unfaltering steadiness. In their frank and engaging depths of blue,
as open as the sky, Victor McCalloway read the answer to his question,
and something like a sigh of relief shook him; something spasmodic that
clutched at his throat and his well-seasoned reserve. He had dreaded
that Boone might, in that fanatically bitter association, have brushed
shoulders with some guilty knowledge. He had refused that fear lodgment
in his thoughts as an ungenerous suspicion, but a lurking realization
had persisted. It might need only a short lapse from a new concept to an
inherited and ancient code to make heroes of "killers" for this
stripling.
Slowly and candidly the boy spoke.
"On my word of honour as a gentleman--" His utterance hung hesitantly on
that final word. It was a new thought that it might be applicable to
himself, yet this man was a better and more exacting judge of its
meaning than he, and his heart leaped to the quickened tempo of a new
pride.
"I don't know nothin'--save thet I heered hit named aforehand thet men
war acomin' from ther mountings ter see justice done, an' didn't aim ter
be gainsaid ner thwarted, I 'lowed, though, hit would come about in
fa'r fight--ef so-be hit bred trouble."
That same afternoon Asa Gregory happened by, and because McCalloway had
come to recognize, in his influence, the most powerful feudal force
operating upon the boy's thought, he waited somewhat anxiously to hear
whether the man would express himself on the topic of the assassination.
Since it was no part of wisdom to assail deep-rooted ferocities of
thought in minds already matured beyond plasticity, he did not himself
broach the matter, but he was pleased when Asa spoke gravely, and of his
own volition.
"I done hed hit in head ter go along down thar ter Frankfort with them
boys thet Saul gathered tergether, but now I'm right glad I went by
myself. Thet war a mighty troublous matter thet came ter pass thar."
"Did ye git yore pardon, Asa?" asked Boone, and the older kinsman
hesitated, then made a frank reply.
"I hain't talkin' much erbout thet, son. Ther Governor war hevin' a
right stressful time, an' any favours he showed ter mountain men war
bein' held up ergainst him by his enemies. But I reckon I kin trust both
of ye.... Yes, I got ther pardon."
Late in February an item of news filtered in through the ravines of the
hills which elicited bitter comment. The legislature had voted a reward
fund of $100,000 for the apprehension and conviction of those guilty of
the assassination of Senator Goebel, and, heartened by this spurring,
the pack of detectives, professional and amateur, had cast off full-cry.
Saul Fulton lay in jail all that winter without trial. Upon the motion
of the Commonwealth, his day in court was postponed by continuance after
continuance.
"I reckon," suggested Asa bluntly, "they aims ter let him sulter in jail
long enough ter kinderly fo'ce him ter drag in a few more fellers
besides himself--but hit won't profit 'em none."
That winter spent its dreary monotony, and through its months Boone
Wellver was growing in mind and character, as well as in bone and
muscle. McCalloway began to see the blossoming of his Quixotically
fantastic idea into some hope and semblance of reality. The boy's brain
was acquisitive and flaming with ambition, and Victor McCalloway was no
routine schoolmaster but an experimenter in the laboratory of human
elements. He was working with a character which he sought to bring by
forced marches from the America of a quaint, broad-hearted past to the
America of the present--and future. Under his hand the pupil was
responding.
The slate-gray ramparts of the hills reeked with the wet of thawing
snows. Watercourses swelled into the freshet-volume of the
"spring-tide." Into the breezes crept a touch of softer promise, and in
sheltered spots buds began to redden and swell. Then came the pale
tenderness of greens, and the first shy music of bird-notes. The sodden
and threadbare neutrality of winter was flung aside for the white
blossoming of dogwood, and in its wake came the pink foam of laurel
blossom.
On one of those tuneful days, while Boone sat on the doorstep of Victor
McCalloway's house, listening to a story of a campaign far up the Nile,
Asa Gregory came along the road, with his long elastic stride, and
halted there. He smiled infectiously as he took the proffered chair and
crumbled leaf tobacco between his fingers for the filling of his cob
pipe.
For a while the talk ran in simple neighbourhood channels. They spoke of
"drappin' an' kiverin'" in the corn fields, and the uncomplicated
activities of farm life. But, after a time, Asa reached into his hip
pocket and drew out a rumpled newspaper, which he tendered to Victor
McCalloway.
"Mr. McCalloway," he said quietly, "ye're a friend of mine, an' right
now I have sore need of counsel with a man of wisdom. I'd be beholden
ter ye ef so be ye'd read thet thar printed piece out loud."
The retired soldier took the sheet, several days old, and with the first
glance at its headlines, his features stiffened and his eyes blazed into
indignation.
"This is a slander!" he exploded. "It's an infamous libel. Do you
actually want me to read it aloud?"
Asa nodded, and, in a voice of protest, McCalloway gave audible
repetition to a matter to which he refused the sanction of belief.
"New Murders for Old." That was the first headline, and the subheads and
the item itself followed in due order:
"Commonwealth uncovers startling evidence.... Asa Gregory
indicted for firing fatal shot at Goebel.... Alleged he
received a pardon for prior offence as price of fresh infamy."
"Perhaps the most astounding chapter in a long serial of the
bizarre and melodramatic came to light today when the Franklin
Grand Jury returned a true bill against Asa Gregory, a
notorious mountain feudist, charging him with the assassination
of Governor Goebel. In the general excitement of those days,
the presence of Gregory in the state capitol escaped notice.
Now it develops, from sources which the Commonwealth declines
at this time to divulge, that on the day of the tragedy
Gregory, who already stands charged with the murder from ambush
of several enemies, came cold-bloodedly to town to seek a
pardon for one of these offences, and that in payment for that
favour he agreed to accept unholy appointment as executioner of
Governor Goebel. Gregory is now in hiding in the thicketed
country of his native hills, and it is foreseen that before he
is taken he may invoke the aid of his clansmen, and precipitate
further bloodshed."
McCalloway laid down the paper and stared at the blossom-burgeoning
slopes. It was strange, he reflected, that one could so swiftly yield to
the instincts of these high, wild places. For just now it was in his
heart to advise resistance. He thought that trial down there, before
partisan juries and biased judges, would be a farce which vitiated the
whole spirit of justice.
It might almost have been his own sentiments that he heard shrilled out
from the excited lips of the boy; a boy whose cheeks had gone pale and
whose eyes had turned from sky-blue to flame blue.
"They're jest a'seekin' ter git ye thar an' hang ye out of hand, Asa.
Tell 'em all ter go everlastin'ly ter hell! Ye kin hide out hyar in ther
mountains an' five hundred soldiers couldn't never run ye down. Ye kin
cross over inter Virginny an' go wharsoever ye likes--but ef ye suffers
yoreself ter be took, they'll hang ye outen pure disgust fer ther
hills!"
Yes, thought Victor McCalloway, that was just about what would happen.
The boy whom he had been educating to a new viewpoint had, at a stride,
gone back to all the primitive sources of his nature, yet he spoke the
truth. Then the voice of Asa Gregory sounded again with a measured
evenness.
"What does ye think, Mr. McCalloway? I was thar on thet day. I kin hide
out hyar an' resist arrest, like ther boy says, an' I misdoubts ef I
could git any lavish of justice down thar."
"I doubt it gravely, sir," snorted McCalloway. "By Gad, I doubt it most
gravely."
"An' yit," went on the other voice slowly, somewhat heavily, "ef I did
foller thet course hit mout mean a heap of bloodshed, I reckon. Hit'd be
mightily like admittin' them charges they're amakin' too." He paused a
moment, then rose abruptly from his chair. "I come ter ask counsel," he
said, "but afore I come my mind was already done made up. I'm agoin'
over ter Marlin Town termorrer mornin' an' I'm agoin' ter surrender ter
Bev. Jett, ther High Sheriff."
"Don't ye never do hit, Asa," shouted the boy. "Don't ye never do hit!"
but McCalloway had risen and in his eyes gleamed an enthusiastic light.
"It's a thing I couldn't have advised, Mr. Gregory," he said, in a
shaken voice. "It's a thing that may lead--God knows where--and yet it's
the only decent thing to do."