IN a flash of memory Rome saw the girl as vividly as when he last saw
her years ago. They had met at the mill, he with his father, she with
hers. There was a quarrel, and the two men were held apart. But the old
sore as usual was opened, and a week later Rome's father was killed
from the brush. He remembered his mother's rage and grief, her calls for
vengeance, the uprising, the fights, plots, and ambushes. He remembered
the look the girl had given him that long ago, and her look that day was
little changed.
When fighting began, she had been sent for safety to the sister of her
dead mother in another county. When peace came, old Jasper married again
and the girl refused to come home. Lately the step-mother, too, had
passed away, and then she came back to live. All this the old miller
told in answer to Rome's questions as the two walked away in the
twilight. This was why he had not recognized her, and why her face yet
seemed familiar even when he crossed the river that morning.
“Uncle Gabe, how do you reckon the gal knowed who I was?”
“She axed me.”
“She axed you! Whar?”
“Over thar in the mill.” The miller was watching the young mountaineer
closely. The manner of the girl was significant when she asked who Rome
was, and the miller knew but one reason possible for his foolhardiness
that morning.
“Do you mean to say she have been over hyeh afore?”
“Why, yes, come to think about it, three or four times while Isom was
sick, and whut she come fer I can't make out. The mill over thar wasn't
broke long, 'n' why she didn't go thar or bring more co'n at a time, to
save her the trouble o' so many trips, I can't see to save me.”
Young Stetson was listening eagerly. Again the miller cast his bait.
“Mebbe she's spyin'.”
Rome faced him, alert with suspicion; but old Gabe was laughing
silently.
“Don't you be a fool, Rome. The gal comes and goes in that boat, 'n'
she couldn't see a soul without my knowin' it. She seed ye ridin' by one
day, 'n' she looked mighty cur'us when I tole her who ye was.”
Old Gabe stopped his teasing, Rome's face was so troubled, and himself
grew serious.
“Rome,” he said, earnestly, “I wish to the good Lord ye wasn't in sech
doin's. Ef that had been young Jas 'stid o' Marthy, I reckon ye would
'a' killed him right thar.”
“I wasn't going to let him kill me,” was the sullen answer.
The two had stopped at a rickety gate swinging open on the road. The
young mountaineer was pushing a stone about with the toe of his boot.
He had never before listened to remonstrance with such patience, and old
Gabe grew bold.
“You've been drinkin' ag'in, Rome,” he said, sharply, “'n' I know it.
Hit's been moonshine that's whooped you Stetsons, not the Lewallens,
long as I kin rickollect, 'n' it ull be moonshine ag'in ef ye don't let
it alone.”
Rome made no denial, no defence. “Uncle Gabe,” he said slowly, still
busied with the stone, “hev that gal been over hyeh sence y'u tol' her
who I was?”
The old man was waiting for the pledge that seemed on his lips, but he
did not lose his temper.
“Not till to-day,” he said, quietly.
Rome turned abruptly, and the two separated with no word of parting.
For a moment the miller watched the young fellow striding away under his
rifle.
“I have been atter peace a good while,” he said to himself, “but I
reckon thar's a bigger hand a-workin' now than mine.” Then he lifted his
voice. “Ef Isom's too sick to come down to the mill to-morrer, I wish
you'd come 'n' holp me.”
Rome nodded back over his shoulder, and went on, with head bent, along
the river road. Passing a clump of pines at the next curve, he pulled a
bottle from his pocket.
“Uncle Gabe's about right, I reckon,” he said, half aloud; and he raised
it above his head to hurl it away, but checked it in mid-air. For a
moment he looked at the colorless liquid, then, with quick nervousness,
pulled the cork of sassafras leaves, gulped down the pale moonshine, and
dashed the bottle against the trunk of a beech. The fiery stuff does
its work in a hurry. He was thirsty when he reached the mouth of a brook
that tumbled down the mountain along the pathway that would lead him
home, and he stooped to drink where the water sparkled in a rift of
dim light from overhead. Then he sat upright on a stone, with his wide
hat-brim curved in a crescent over his forehead, his hands caught about
his knees, and his eyes on the empty air.
He was scarcely over his surprise that the girl was young Lewallen's
sister, and the discovery had wrought a curious change. The piquant
impulse of rivalry was gone, and something deeper was taking its place.
He was confused and a good deal troubled, thinking it all over. He
tried to make out what the girl meant by looking at him from the
mountain-side, by waving her bonnet at him, and by coming to old Gabe's
mill when she could have gone to her own. To be sure, she did not know
then who he was, and she had stopped coming when she learned; but why
had she crossed again that day? Perhaps she too was bantering him, and
he was at once angry and drawn to her; for her mettlesome spirit touched
his own love of daring, even when his humiliation was most bitter-when
she told him he warred on women; when he held out to her the branch
of peace and she swept it aside with a stroke of her oar. But Rome was
little conscious of the weight of subtle facts like these. His unseeing
eyes went back to her as she combed her hair. He saw the color in her
cheeks, the quick light in her eyes, the naked, full throat once more,
and the wavering forces of his unsteady brain centred in a stubborn
resolution-to see it all again. He would make Isom stay at home, if need
be, and he would take the boy's place at the mill. If she came there no
more, he would cross the river again. Come peace or war, be she friend
or enemy, he would see her. His thirst was fierce again, and, with this
half-drunken determination in his heart, he stooped once more to drink
from the cheerful little stream. As he rose, a loud curse smote the air.
The river, pressed between two projecting cliffs, was narrow at that
point, and the oath came across the water. An instant later a man led a
lamed horse from behind a bowlder, and stooped to examine its leg. The
dusk was thickening, but Rome knew the huge frame and gray beard of old
Jasper Lewallen. The blood beat in a sudden tide at his temples, and,
half by instinct, he knelt behind a rock, and, thrusting his rifle
through a crevice, cocked it softly.
Again the curse of impatience came over the still water, and old Jasper
rose and turned toward him. The glistening sight caught in the centre of
his beard. That would take him in the throat; it might miss, and he let
the sight fall till the bullet would cut the fringe of gray hair into
the heart. Old Jasper, so people said, had killed his father in just
this way; he had driven his uncle from the mountains; he was trying
now to revive the feud. He was the father of young Jasper, who had
threatened his life, and the father of the girl whose contempt had cut
him to the quick twice that day. Again her taunt leaped through his
heated brain, and his boast to the old miller followed it. His finger
trembled at the trigger.
“No; by ----, no!” he breathed between his teeth; and old Jasper passed on,
unharmed.