One day McCalloway received a paper, several days old, that contained a
piece of news which he was anxious for Boone to see at once, and he
straightway set out to find the boy.
Araminta greeted him at the door of the Gregory cabin with apathetic
eyes. "Booney's done gone out with his rifle-gun atter squirrels," she
said. "I heered him shoot up on ther mountainside thar, not five minutes
back."
Before he followed the boy, McCalloway read to her and construed the
item in the paper, and for the first time in many weeks the hard
wretchedness of her heart softened to tears and a faint ray of hope
stole through her misery.
McCalloway began climbing the hillside, searching the thickets for the
boy, and at last he saw him while he himself remained unseen. Boone was
standing with his gaze turned toward Louisville--and its jail--two
hundred and more miles distant. His face was like that of a fanatic in a
religious trance, and his right hand gripped his rifle so tightly that
the knuckles showed out white splotched against the tanned flesh.
"I failed ye, Asa," came the self-accusing voice in a tight-throated
strain. "I bust out and got sent outen ther co'te room, when ye needed
me in thar ter give ye countenance, but God knows I hain't fergot ye."
He paused there, and his chest heaved convulsively. "An' God, He knows,
too, I aims ter avenge ye," he ended up, with a dedication of savage
sincerity, while his gaze still seemed to be piercing the hills toward
the city where his kinsman lay condemned.
McCalloway came forward then, and while he talked, Boone listened with
attentive patience, but an obdurate face.
The man sought to exact a promise that until he was twenty-one, Boone
should "hold his hand" so far as Saul Fulton was concerned. Given those
plastic years, he could hope to wean the lad gradually away from the
tigerish and unforgiving ferocity of his blood, but Boone could only
shake his head, unable either to argue or to yield.
Then McCalloway sketched the seemingly irrelevant narrative of what had
occurred in China; of the peril of the legations. He talked of an
emperor, captive to court intrigue, and slowly the lad's eyes, which had
been until now too preoccupied with his own wormwood to think of other
matters, began to liven into interest.
"But thet's all plumb acrost ther world from hyar, though," he asserted
in a pause, as though he begrudged the arresting of his attention.
"What's hit got ter do with me--an' Asa?"
General McCalloway cleared his throat. It came hard for him to talk of
himself and of a sacrifice made for another.
"It has this to do with you, my boy," he announced bluntly: "I have been
offered a soldier's job over there. I have been invited to aid in work
that would help to stabilize China--and I have refused."
Boone Wellver's lips parted in amazement.
"Refused," he gasped. "Fer God's sake, what made ye do hit!"
"Because of you," was the sober response. "I thought you needed me, and
I thought you were worth standing by."
"Fer me!" The lad was trembling again, but this time not with anger. "I
reckon I'll be powerful beholden ter ye, all my life, fer thet--but ye
hedn't ought ter hev done hit. They needs ye over thar, too--an' thar's
monstrous numbers of 'em, from what ye narrates."
"I know it, Boone," McCalloway spoke earnestly. "I've centred some very
ambitious dreams about your future. The time is hardly ripe to explain
them--but you have a great opportunity--unless you throw it away in
vengeful fury. If you won't trust me to guide you--until you come of
age, at least--I had much better have gone to China."
The boy turned away, and in his set face McCalloway could read that for
him this was an actual moment of Gethsemane. Through his nature as over
a hotly embattled field surged contrary and warring emotions--and
between them he was cruelly buffeted.
"God knows I'm wishful," he broke out at length. "An' God knows, atter
what ye've jest told me, I hain't got no license ter deny ye nothin' ye
asks--but--" The end of his sentence came like a sob. "But ye wouldn't
ask me ter be disloyal ter my own kith an' kin, would ye?"
"No--but I would ask you to have a higher loyalty."
Boone stood trembling like an ague victim. It was no light matter for
him to give so binding a pledge.
"No Gregory ner no Wellver hain't nuver died on ther gallows tree yit,"
he faltered. "Thar's two things I'd done swore ter do. One of 'em was
ter git Saul. I reckon, though, thet could wait."
"What is the other thing?"
"Thet afore they hangs him--some fashion or other--I've got ter git a
gun in thar ter Asa ... so he kin kill hisself. Hit hain't fitten thet
he should die by a rope like a common feller!"
The emotion-laden voice became almost shrill. "Even ther Carrs an'
Blairs don't _hang_. They come nigh ter hangin' one oncet, but a kinsman
saved him."
"How?" inquired McCalloway, and the boy responded gravely:
"He lay up on ther hillside an' shot his uncle ter death as they was
takin' him from the jail-house ter ther gallows."
Truly, reflected the soldier, he was modelling with grim and stiff clay,
but he only said:
"Promise me that, as to Saul, you will wait--until you are twenty-one."
Boone did not reply for five full minutes, but at the end of that time
he nodded his head. "I kain't deny ye nothin', atter what ye've done fer
me," he assented briefly.
Then McCalloway read from the paper his scrap of encouragement. The
Court of Appeals had granted the Secretary of State a rehearing.
"But thet hain't Asa," objected the boy. "I don't keer nothin' erbout
thet feller."
McCalloway smiled.
"It's a similar case, tried by the same court, and involving the same
principles. It indicates that Asa will have a new trial, too."
"Ef he comes cl'ar," announced Boone, with the suddenly rocketing
spirits of boyhood, "I reckon Asa kin handle his own affairs."
McCalloway had set himself to preparing Boone within a year from that
fall for entrance into the state university. There was but a faint
background of prior attainment against which to paint many things, but
there was an avidly acquisitive pupil, a tireless teacher, and an
intensive plan of education.
Gregory was still in the Louisville jail--where, indeed, a half dozen
other years were yet to find him. The Secretary of State had come
through his second trial with a second conviction, and had once more
been granted a rehearing.
Saul Fulton, the star witness in Asa's trial, had disappeared, and
report had it that he had gone to South America--but the record of his
former testimony remained fixed in the stenographer's notes and was
fully available for later use--so that his going lifted no shadow from
Asa's future.
"I reckon they squshed ther indictment ergin him," Boone commented
bitterly to McCalloway, "an' paid him off with some of thet thar blood
money."
He paused and then went on, holding his finger between the pages of the
book he was studying. "He's done fared a long way off--but, some day
he'll fare back again. I stands full pledged--twell I comes of age, an'
I aims ter keep my word. Atter thet, I hain't makin' no brash promises.
Ther hate in my heart, hit don't seem ter slacken none. I mistrusts hit
won't--never."
But if the festering grievance did not "slacken," at least it seemed
just now partly submerged in the great adventure of going down to the
world below and becoming a collegian.
He went early in the autumn when he was seventeen, and McCalloway, who
accompanied and matriculated him, came away smiling. He had felt as
though he were leading a wolf-cub into a kennel of blooded hounds. But
when he had watched the self-poise with which his registrant bore
himself and how quickly amused smiles faded away under his level gaze,
he left with a reassured confidence.
When the days began to grow crisp the uncouth scholar saw for the first
time the lads in leather and moleskin tackling and punting out on the
campus--in the early try-outs of the season's football practice. He
looked on at first with a somewhat satirical detachment, but when the
scrimmages took on the guise of actual ferocity his interest altered
from tepid disapproval for "sich foolery" to a realization that it was
"no gal's play-party."
Several afternoons later Boone shyly intercepted the coach as he led out
the practice squads.
"Does thet thar football business belong ter a club--er somethin'," he
inquired, "er kin any feller git inter hit?"
The coach looked at the roughly dressed lad with the unruly hair, who
talked in barbaric phrases--and his practised eye took in the sinewy
strength of the well-muscled body. He appraised the power of the broad
shoulders, and the slim, agile lines of waist and legs, and gave him a
chance.
From the beginning it was evident that Boone Wellver would make the
scrub team. He was a tornado from the instant the ball was snapped--"an
injia rubber idjit on a spree," and yet this mystifying wolf-cub from
the hills came back to the coach in less than a week with an almost
sullen face and announced shortly:
"I hain't goin' ter play no more football, I aims ter quit hit."
"Quit it! Why?"
"I've been studyin' hit over," the retiring candidate explained
gloomily. "A man thet hain't no blood kin ter me is payin' what hit
costs ter send me hyar. I hain't hardly nothin' but a charity feller,
nohow--an' until he says hit's all right, I don't aim ter spend ther
time he's payin' fer out hyar playin' fool games--albeit I likes hit."
At the solemness and the unconscious self-righteousness of the tone, a
laugh went up, and Boone turned with a straight-lined mouth to meet the
derisive outburst.
"But I'm out here now, though," he added pointedly, lowering his head as
does a bull about to charge, "an' I kin stay a leetle longer. If any of
you fellers, or ther whole damn passel of ye, thinks I'm quittin'
because I'm timorous, I'd be right glad ter take ye on hyar an'
now--fist an' skull."
There was no acceptance of the invitation, and Boone, turning, with his
shoulders straight, marched away.
But when McCalloway read his letter, he promptly responded:
"A razor is made to shave with--. Its purpose is work and only work.
Still, if it isn't honed and stropped it loses its edge. It's hardly
fair to regard as wasted the time spent on keeping that edge keen. I
want you to get the most out of college, and that doesn't mean only what
you get out of the books. If I were you, I'd play football and play it
hard."
Boone went down the stairs, four steps at a time. He could hear the
coach's whistle out on the campus and he came like a hound to the chase.
"Hi, thar!" he yelled, "kin I git back in thet outfit? _He_ 'lows hit's
all right fer me ter play."
* * * * *
Back in the hills Victor McCalloway was more than a little lonely. He
began to realize how deeply this boy--at first almost a waif--had stolen
into the affections of his detached life. Once or twice he went to
Lexington to see how his protege progressed, and he had several brief
visits from General Prince and more than several from Larry Masters.
After what seemed a very long while indeed, Boone came home for his
first summer vacation.
Araminta Gregory had a brother at her farm now, so the boy went direct
to the house of Victor McCalloway, which was henceforth to be his home.