Boone had stood for a moment in the lighted door, and in that interval
the shrewd old eyes of Cyrus Spradling had told him that the boy too had
known sleeplessness and that the clear-chiselled features bore
unaccustomed lines of misery.
If they had both suffered equally, reasoned the rude philosopher, it
augured a quarrel not wholly or guiltily one-sided.
So a few minutes later he watched them walking away together toward the
creek bed, where the voice of the water trickled and the moonlight lay
in a dreamy lake of silver.
"I reckon," he reassured himself, "they'll fix matters up ternight.
Hit's a right happy moon for lovers ter mend th'ar quarrels by."
"Happy," began Boone, with moisture-beaded temples, when they had
reached a spot remote enough to assure their being undisturbed, "I
reckon I don't need to tell you that I haven't slept much since I saw
you. I haven't been able to do anything at all except--just think about
it."
"I've thought about it--a good deal--too," was her simple response, and
Boone forced himself on, rowelling his lagging speech with a determined
will power.
"I see now--that I didn't act like a man. I ought to have told you long
ago--that I--that my heart was just burning up--about Anne."
"I reckon I ought to have guessed it.... I'd heard hints."
"It seemed a slavish hard thing to write," he confessed heavily. "I
tried it--more than once--but when I read it over it sounded so
different from what I meant to say that--" There he paused, and even had
she been inclined to visit upon him the maximum instead of the minimum
of blame, there was no escaping his sincerity or the depth of his
contrition. "That, until I saw you--night before last--I didn't have any
true idea--how much you cared."
"I didn't aim that you ever should--have any idea."
"Happy," he rose and with the blood receding from his skin looked down
at her, as she sat there in the moonlight, "Happy, it seems like I never
knew you--really--until now."
She was, in her quietly borne distress, an appealing picture, and the
hands that lay in her lap had the unmoving stillness of wax--or death.
It had to be said, so he went on. "I never realized before now how fine
you are--or how much too good you are for me. I've come over here
tonight to ask you to marry me--if it ain't too late."
The girl flinched as if she had been struck. Not even for a moment did
her eagerness betray her into the delusion that this proposal was
anything other than a merciful effort to soothe a hurt for which he felt
himself blamable.
Just as she had meant to keep from him the extent of her heart's
bruising, so he was seeking now to make amends at the cost of all his
future happiness. Having blundered, he was tendering what payment lay in
possibility.
"No, Boone," she said firmly. "We'd both live in hell for always--unless
we loved each other--so much that nothin' else counted."
"I've got to be honest," he miserably admitted. "It wouldn't be fair to
you not to be. I've got to go on loving her--while there's life in me, I
reckon--loving her above all the world. But she's young--and there'll be
lots of men of her own kind courtin' her. I reckon"--those were hard
words to say, but he said them--"I reckon you had the right of it when
you said I was fixin' to break my heart anyhow. They won't ever let her
marry me."
It did not seem to him that it would help matters to explain that even
now he felt disloyal to his whole religion of love, and that he had
asked her only because he realized that no other man here could bring
Happy's life to fulfilment, while Anne could only step down to him in
condescension.
The decision which he had reached after tossing in a fevered delirium of
spirit lacked sanity. From no point of view would it conform to the
gauge of soundness. In giving up Anne, when Anne had told him he might
hope, he had construed all the sacrifice as his own. As to Anne's rights
in the matter, he was blinded by the over-modest conviction that she was
giving all and he taking all and that she could never _need_ him.
He would in later years have reasoned differently--but he had been
absorbing too fast to digest thoroughly, and the concepts of his
new-found chivalry had become a distorted quixoticism. He meant it only
for self-effacing fairness--and it was of course unfairness to himself,
to Anne, and even to Happy. But she divined his unconfessed thought with
the certitude of intuition.
"Boone," she told him, as she rose and laid a tremulous hand on his arm,
"you've done tried as hard as a man can to make the best of a bad
business. It wasn't anybody's fault that things fell out this way. It
just came to pass. I'm going to try to teach some of the right young
children over at the school next autumn--so what little I've learned
won't be wasted, after all. I want that we shall go on being good
friends--but just for a little while we'd better not see very much of
each other. It hurts too bad."
That was an unshakeable determination, and when, in obedience to the
edict, Boone had not come back for a week, Cyrus asked his daughter
briefly:
"When do you an' Boone aim ter be wedded?"
The girl flinched again, but her voice was steady as she replied:
"We--don't--never aim to be."
The old fellow's features stiffened into the stern indignation of an
affronted Indian chief. He took the pipe from between his teeth as he
set his shoulders, and that baleful light, that had come rarely in a
life-span, returned to his eyes.
"Ef he don't aim ter wed with ye," came the slow pronouncement, "thar
hain't no fashion he kin escape an accountin' with me."
For a moment Happy did not speak. It seemed to her that the raising of
such an issue was the one thing which she lacked present strength to
face; but after a little she replied, with a resolution no less
iron-strong because the voice was gentle:
"Unless ye wants ter break my heart fer all time--ye must give me your
pledge to--keep hands off."
After a moment she added, almost in a whisper:
"He's asked me--and I've refused to marry him."
"You--refused him?" The voice was incredulous. "Why, gal, everybody
knows ye've always thought he was a piece of the moon."
"I still think so," she made gallant response. "But I wants ye to--jest
trust me--an' not ask any more questions."
The father sat there stiffly gazing off to the far ridges, and his eyes
were those of a man grief-stricken. Once or twice his raggedly bearded
lips stirred in inarticulate movements, but finally he rose and laid a
hand on her shoulder.
"Little gal," he said in a broken voice, "I reckon I've got ter suffer
ye ter decide fer yoreself--hit's yore business most of all--but I don't
never want him ter speak ter me ergin."
So Boone went out upon the hustings with none of the eager zest of his
anticipations. That district was so solidly one-sided in political
complexion that the November elections were nothing more than
formalities, and the real conflict came to issue in the August
primaries.
But with Boone's announcement as candidate for circuit clerk, old
animosities that had lain long dormant stirred into restive mutterings.
The personnel of the "high court" had been to a considerable extent
dominated by the power of the Carrs and Blairs.
Now with the news that Boone Wellver, a young and "wishful" member of
the Gregory house, meant to seek a place under the teetering clock tower
of the court house, anxieties began to simmer. Into his candidacy the
Carrs read an effort to enhance Gregory power--and they rose in
resistance. Jim Blair, a cousin of Tom Carr, threw down his gauntlet of
challenge and announced himself as a contestant, so that the race began
to assume the old-time cleavage of the feud.
On muleback and on foot, Boone followed up many a narrowing creek bed to
sources where dwelt the "branch-water folk." Here, in animal-like want
and squalor, the crudest of all the uncouth race lived and begot
offspring and died. Here where vacuous-eyed children of an inbred strain
stared out from the doors of crumbling and windowless shacks, or fled
from a strange face, he campaigned among the illiterate elders and
oftentimes he sickened at what he saw.
Yet these people of yesterday were his people--and they offered him of
their pitiful best even when their ignorance was so incredible that the
name of the divinity was to them only "somethin' a feller cusses
with"--and he felt that his campaign was prospering.
One day, however, when he returned to his own neighbourhood after an
absence across the mountain, he seemed to discover an insidious and
discouraging change in the tide--a shifting of sentiment to an almost
sullen reserve. An intangible resentment against him was in the air.
It was Araminta Gregory who construed the mystery for him. She had heard
all the gossip of the "grannies," which naturally did not come to his
own ears.
"I'm atellin' ye this, Boone, because _somebody_ ought ter forewarn ye,"
she explained. "Thar's a story goin' round about, an' I reckon hit's
hurtin' ye. Somebody hes done spread ther norration thet ye hain't
loyal ter yore own blood no more.--They're tellin' hit abroad thet ye've
done turned yore back on a mountain gal--atter lettin' her 'low ye aimed
ter wed with her." She paused there, but added a moment later: "I reckon
ye wouldn't thank me ter name no names--an', anyhow, ye knows who I
means."
"I know," he said, in a very quiet and deliberate voice. "Please go
on--and, as you say, it ain't needful to call no names."
"These witch-tongued busybodies," concluded the woman, her eyes flaring
into indignation, "is spreadin' hit broadcast thet ye plumb abandoned
thet gal fer a furrin' woman--thet wouldn't skeercely wipe her feet on
ye--ef ye laid down in ther road in front of her!"
Boone's posture grew taut as he listened, and it remained so during the
long-ensuing silence. He could feel a furious hammering in his temples,
and for a little time blood-red spots swam before his eyes. But when at
length he spoke, it was to say only, "I'm beholden to you, Araminty. A
man has need to know what his enemies are sayin'."
It was one of those sub-surface attacks, which Boone could not
discuss--or even seem to recognize without bringing into his political
forensics the names of two women--so he must face the ambushed
accusation of disloyalty without striking back.
In Marlin Town, one court day, Jim Blair was addressing a crowd from the
steps of the court house, and at his side stood Tom Carr, his kinsman.
Boone was there, too, and when that speech ended he meant to take his
place where his rival now stood, and to give back blow for blow. At
first Jim Blair addressed himself to the merits of his own candidacy,
but gradually he swung into criticism of his opponent, while the
opponent himself listened with an amused smile.
"Ther feller that's runnin' erginst me," confessed the orator, "kin talk
ter ye in finer phrases then I kin ever contrive ter git my tongue
around. I reckon when he steps up hyar he'll kinderly dazzle ye with
his almighty gift of speech. I've spent my days right hyar amongst ye in
slavish toil--like ther balance of you boys--hev done. My breeches air
patched--like some o' yourn be. He's done been off ter college, l'arnin'
all manner of fotched-on lore. He's done been consortin' with ther kind
of folks thet don't think no lavish good of us. He's done been gettin'
every sort of notion savin' them notions thet's come down in our blood
from our fore-parents--but when he gits through spell-bindin' I wants ye
all ter remember jest one thing: I'll be plumb satisfied if I gits ther
vote of every man thet w'ars a raggedy shirt tail and hes a patch on the
seat of his pants. _He's_ right welcome ter ther balance."
Boone joined in the salvo of laughter that went up at that sally, but
the mirth died suddenly from his face the next moment, for the applause
had gone to Blair's head like liquor and fired him to a more philippic
vein of oratory.
"I reckon I might counsel this young feller ter heed ther words of
Scripture an' 'tarry a while in Jericho fer his beard ter grow.' Mebby
by thet day an' time he mout l'arn more loyalty fer ther men--yea, an'
fer ther _women_, too--of his own blood and breed!"
Once more the red spots swam before Boone Wellver's eyes, but for a
hard-held moment he kept his lips tight drawn. There was a tense silence
as men held their breath, waiting to see if the old Gregory spirit had
become so tamed as to endure in silence that damning implication; but
before Blair had begun again Boone was confronting him with dangerously
narrow eyes, and their faces inches apart.
Blair was a short, powerfully built man with sandy hair and a red jowl
swelling from a bull-like neck. Standing on the step below, Boone's eyes
were level with his own.
"Either tell these men what you mean," commanded the younger candidate
in a voice that carried its ominous level to the farthest fringe of the
small crowd, "or else tell 'em you lied! Wherein have I been disloyal to
my blood?"
"You'll hav yore chancet ter talk when I gits through here," bellowed
Blair. "Meanwhile, don't break in on me."
"Tell 'em what you mean--or take it back--or fight," repeated Boone,
with the same fierce quietness.
It was no longer possible to ignore the peremptory challenge, and the
speaker was forced into the open. But he was also enraged beyond sanity
and he shouted out to the crowd over the shoulders of the figure that
confronted him, "Ef he fo'ces me ter name ther woman I'll do hit.
Hit's--"
But the name was never uttered. With a lashing out that employed every
ounce of his weight and strength, Boone literally mashed the voice to
silence, and sent the speaker bloody-mouthed down the several steps into
the dust of the square.
Despite his middle-aged bulk, Jim Blair had lost none of his catlike
activity, and while the more timid members of the crowd, in anticipation
of gunplay, hastily sought cover or threw themselves prone to the
ground, he came to his feet with a revolver ready-drawn and fired
point-blank. But, just as of two lightning bolts, one may have a shade
more speed than the other, so Boone was quicker than Jim. He struck up
the murderous hand, and the two candidates grappled. An instant later,
Boone stood once more over a prostrate figure, that was this time slower
in recovering its feet. Wellver broke the pistol and emptied it of its
cartridges, then contemptuously he threw it down beside its owner in the
dust of the court house yard.
But as he turned, Tom Carr was standing motionless at arm's length away,
and Boone was looking into Tom's levelled revolver.
"Ye hain't quite done with this matter yet," snarled that partisan, as
his eyes snapped malignantly. "Ye've still got me ter reckon with. Throw
up them hands, afore I kills ye!"
Boone did not throw them up. Instead, he crossed them on his breast and
remained looking steadily into the passionate face of the black-haired
leader of Asa's enemies.
"Shoot when you get ready, Tom; I haven't got a gun on me," he said
calmly. "But if you shoot--you'll be breaking the truce--that you
pledged your men to, when you and Asa shook hands. If the war breaks out
afresh, today, it will be your doing." Other hands now were fondling
weapons out there in front of the two; men who were mixed between
Gregory and Carr sympathies and who were rapidly filtering themselves
out of a conglomerate mass into two sharply defined groups.
"Hain't ye a'ready done bust thet truce--jest now?" demanded Tom, and
Boone shook his head.
Again there was a purposeful ring in his voice.
"No, by God--I handled a liar--like he ought to be handled--and if there
are any Gregories out there that wouldn't do the same--I hope they'll
line up with _you_!"