The officer laid his hand on the jagged lower ledge of the niche. His hat
and its shadow, like some double-headed monster, slowly appeared above
the verge as he climbed the crag. The sheep shrank back precipitately
into the cavernous place, their hoofs crowding over the young
mountaineer. He lay at full length in motionless suspense.
There was a moment’s pause. A cloud crossed the moon. Its shadow fell in
Hazel Valley. A gust of wind stole along the mountain slopes, sighing as
it went, as if its errand were of sorrow. Then, silence. The brilliant
lustre burst forth again, suffusing the heights above and the depths so
far below. In the midst of the craggy steeps the huddled sheep looked
mildly down, with bright, apprehensive eyes, at the constable.
“Nuthin’ but sheep,” he said, scanning the interior of the niche.
It seemed to Mink, hidden by his fleecy comrades, that the stone walls
of his refuge resounded with the loud throbbing of his heart, which must
betray him.
“D’ ye reckon,” said the sheriff below, “ez that woman could hev made a
mistake ’bout hevin’ seen him on this road?”
“Mrs. Beale knows Mink Lorey ez well ez I do,” declared the constable.
“Mought hev been foolin’ us some,” suggested the sheriff, suspiciously.
“She hain’t got no call,” the constable reasoned. As he partly stood on a
sharp projection, and partly hung by one arm to the ledges of the niche,
he took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and perilously gnawed at it.
“Waal, I reckon he ain’t round hyar-abouts,” said the sheriff, with an
intonation of disappointment “We hed better push on.”
The double-headed monster, chewing as he went, the action reproduced in
frightful pantomime on the floor of the cavern, slowly withdrew. There
was heavy breathing; the sound of falling clods and fragments of rock,
and of straining bushes and roots as the descending officer clutched
them. A sudden final thud announced that he had sprung upon his feet on
level ground.
A momentary interval, a clatter of hoofs, and the file of horsemen, with
their mounted shadows erect upon the vertical cliffs of the rock-bound
road, passed slowly along the wild, narrow way. Long after they had
disappeared the sound of the hoof-beats intruded upon the stillness, and
died away, and again smote the air with dull iteration, reverberating
from distant crags of the winding road.
When all was still, Mink’s mind turned again to his perplexities with a
sharpened sense of the necessity of decision. The project which Alethea
had suggested began to shape itself in his mind in full detail, as he lay
there and thought it over. The alternative of skulking about to avoid
arrest was too doubtful and limited to be contemplated.
“The sheriff air a-ridin’ now,” he said, “an’ the constable too—an’ what
made ’em fetch along fower other men ez a posse?” he broke off suddenly,
recognizing the incongruity.
His lip curled with satisfaction. “They mus’ hev been powerful ’feared o’
me,” he said, his heart swelling with self-importance, “ter think ’twould
take six men ter arrest me fur a leetle job like that.”
He appreciated, however, that the midnight caper at the mill had shaken
all the securities of the mountain community, and it was to the immediate
personal interest of every man within twenty miles that he should be
dealt with as harshly as the law would allow. But if, he argued, without
waiting for arrest, he should go down to-morrow,—not to old Griff (bold
as he was, he hardly dared encounter the miller’s rage), but to some man
of influence, some mediator, old Squire White, perhaps,—and tell what he
had done, and offer in reparation to give the miller all he possessed,
his mare, his gun, his hogs, might he not thus avert the more serious
phases of a prosecution, or perhaps escape altogether?
Turn as he might, he could see only the sacrifice of his little all as
the price of his orgy.
“I’d hev ter pay it ter the lawyer ter defend me; or mebbe old Griff
could git it out’n me ez damages ennyhow. I can’t holp losing it. I’ll
gin it up, an’ begin over, an’ make it up with Lethe,—I don’t keer a
straw fur all the t’others,—an’ git married an’ be stiddy. I never war so
wild nohow when me an’ her war promised. Mebbe bein’ jawed at, an’ sech,
air good fur folks, an’ holped ter keep me quiet in them days,—leastwise
ez quiet ez I war able ter be,” he qualified, the recollection of sundry
active vagaries constraining him.
Although doubts and fears still lurked in his mind, he found himself
waiting for dawn, not with hope or impatience, but with the dull
resolution of reluctant decision. He could hardly have said why, but he
experienced a disappointment as he noted the weather signs. The mists
thickened and pervaded the moonbeams in gigantic wavering spectral
effects. Over toward the Great Smoky they slowly tended, those veiled
mystic figures, with diaphanous trailing garments, and with sometimes a
lifted hand as if to swear by the heaven it almost touched. He watched
the throngs grow denser, lose the similitude of individuality, take
on the aspect of lowering clouds. The moonbeams glittered faintly and
failed. When the day broke at last, the light expressed itself only in
the dull visibility of the enveloping vapors. Not the depths of Hazel
Valley, not the slopes of Big Injun Mounting, could be seen as he
clambered out of the niche and down upon the road. Even the log at its
verge serving as a curb seemed a sort of defense against the usurping
immateriality which had engulfed the rest of the world. He heard the
moisture dripping from the summit of the craggy heights; sometimes, too,
the quick, tumultuous patter of a shower in Hazel Valley, as if a cloud
had lost its balance on the brink of the mountain and had fallen into the
depths beneath.
He trudged along, seeing nothing but the blank inexpressiveness of the
encompassing fog, with only the vaguest divination of the locality and
the distance.
“I wouldn’t feel so weighted ef the weather would clear,” he said.
Once he paused, suddenly recollecting that the county court was in
session, and that Squire White was doubtless at Shaftesville. When
he thought of the unaccustomed scenes of the town, the people, their
questions and comments, he wavered again. Then he remembered Alethea.
“She ’lowed ’twould be jestice an’ the bes’ ez I could do ennyhows, an’
somehows the critter ’pears ter be right in her jedgmints. So I reckon
I’ll jes’ ’bide by Lethe’s word.”
Presently the mists began to lift. He could see along the green aisles
of the forest how they wavered and shifted in the tops of the trees.
Everywhere the flowers were blooming,—the trumpet blossom and the
jewel-weed, the delicate lilac “Christmas flower,” the “mountain snow,”
the red cardinal blossoms, and, splendid illumination of the woods, the
Chilhowee lily. All along the wayside, silvery cascades tumbled over the
rocks amongst fantasies of ferns, and the laurel and the ivy crowded the
banks of the torrent. When he was fairly in the valley, fences bordered
the road, with poke-berries darkly glittering in corners crowded with
weeds. He was nearing Shaftesville now. A little house appeared here and
there, a stretch of open land, stacks of fodder, an occasional passer.
High up in the air were suggestions of sunshine, yellow, diffusive,
but not penetrating the vapors below. All at once the beams burst
through. The mists dallied for a moment longer; then with a suggestion
of spreading wings they rose in slow, shining, ethereal flights. Among
them, as he skirted the crest of a hill, appeared the roofs of the little
town, the tower of the court-house, the church steeple, all dissolving
into invisibility like some vain vagary of the mist, as he descended into
the intervenient dale.
The grass-grown streets were astir with jeans-clad countrymen already
in with wagons drawn by oxen, or with a flock of bleating sheep running
helter-skelter, and demonstrating their bucolic proclivities by a
startling lack of adaptation to the thoroughfares of Shaftesville; a few
loungers were sitting on the barrels and boxes in front of the doors of
the stores; Mink met no one he knew as he went. One man on the rickety
steps of the court-house knew him, perhaps, for he looked hard at him
as he passed; then turned and stared after him with an expression which
Mink could hardly analyze. He scowled fiercely in return, and took his
way into the room in which several of the justices sat, amicably chatting
together, for the day’s proceedings had not yet been inaugurated. With
a sudden irritation and bewilderment Mink beheld upon each countenance,
the moment they caught sight of him, the same amazed intentness which
had characterized the look of the man on the steps. He felt a sort of
dull ache in his heart, a turbulence in his blood pulsing fast, a heavy,
dazed consciousness which gave the scene the dim unreality of a dream:
the sunshine, pale and flickering, outlining the panes of the windows on
the dirty floor; the stove, that stood in its place winter and summer;
the circle of bearded, jeans-clad justices, all their faces turned toward
him, seeming not unlike, with the same expression upon each.
Mink began abruptly, but with an effort, addressing the chairman. “I kem
over hyar, Squair,” he said, “’kase I wanter leave ter men what I done.
I ain’t goin’ ter hide nuthin’ nor run away from nuthin’. I ain’t sayin’
what I done war right, but I’m willin’ ter abide by my deed ez fur ez
leavin’ it ter men, an’ furder.”
He was fluent now. There was an exhilaration in this close attention
from these men whom he esteemed mighty in the law, in this pose of
importance before them, in the generosity of the offer he was about to
make. He spoke responsive to the respectful surprise with which his fancy
had endowed them.
“I war drunk, Squair. I ain’t denyin’ it none. Naw, sir, I ain’t.”
He nodded his head, and pushed his broad hat further back on his long,
auburn locks.
“I’ll jes’ tell ye how it war, Squair.” He shifted his weight upon one
stalwart leg, and bent over a little, and looked down meditatively at
his boots as he arranged his ideas in his mind. “I war drunk, Squair,”
he reiterated, as he rose once more to the perpendicular. “How I kem so,
it don’t consarn me to say. But me an’ old man Griff, we hed hed words
’bout my l’arnin’ Tad ter play ‘five corn’; he ’lowed ’twar a gamblin’
game,—mighty old-fashioned game, ye know yerself, Squair,—an’ ez I kem
along back that night I ’lowed I’d start the mill an’ see him run out
skeered. An’ I dunno what I done ter the wheel, but it jes’ seemed ter
be plumb ’witched when I lifted the gate. It jes’ performed an’ cavorted
round like it hed the jim-jams;—ye never seen nuthin’ act like it done
sence ye war born, Squair. An’ I tried ter let the gate down, but war
plumb shuck off’n the race. An’ the mill begun ter shake, Squair, an’
fust I knowed down it went inter the ruver. An’ ez I seen a light in the
old man’s house I ’lowed he war a-comin’ fur me.” He laughed a little.
“Old Griff be a powerful survigrous old man when his dander hev riz, so I
jes’ rid off ez fas’ ez I could.”
There was no responsive smile upon the stony, staring faces turned toward
him. But he was quite at ease now. He hardly cared to notice that a man
went hurriedly out of the room and came back. “I’m mighty sorry fur the
old man, Squair,” he resumed, “surely I am. An’ ter prove it, me an’
the gal I’m a-goin’ ter marry, we-uns ’greed tergether ez I’d gin him
my mare, an’ my hogs, an’ a gun, an’ fower sheep, an’ ’twould build him
another mill better ’n the one he hed, ef he could git the mill-stones
hefted. I’d go holp myself.”
Still not a word from the justices. Other men had begun to come in. They,
too, stood silently listening. Mink was all debonair and cheery again,
so fairly had he exploited his mission. As to the man who had gone out
and returned, Mink stared hard at him, for he was not an acquaintance,
yet he approached and held out his hand. Mink slowly extended his own. A
sudden grip of iron encircled the unsuspecting member; the other hand was
caught in a rude grasp. A harsh, grating sound, the handcuffs were locked
upon his wrists, and the deputy sheriff lifted a countenance scarlet
with repressed excitement. He passed his hands quickly all along the
prisoner’s side to make sure that he carried no concealed weapons, then
ejaculated, “Now ye’re all right!”
The young mountaineer’s head was in a whirl. His heart beat tumultuously.
His voice sounded to him far away. His volition seemed to rebel. Surely
he did not utter the stammering, incoherent, foaming curses that he
heard. They terrified him. He strove with futile strength to tear off
these fetters, every muscle strained. For the first time in his life,
he, the wild, free creature of the woods, felt the bonds of constraint,
the irking touch of a man he could not strike. Old Squire White, who had
moved out of the way with an agility wonderful in a man of his years,
exhorted the deputy to his duty.
“Ye mus’ gin him the reason fur his arrest, ez he hev axed fur it, Mr.
Skeggs, sech bein’ the law o’ Tennessee. Ye’d better tell him, sence
the sher’ff hev kerried off the warrant, that he air arrested fur the
drownding o’ Tad Simpkins.”
Mink hardly heard. He did not heed. He only tore desperately at the
handcuffs, every cord standing out, every vein swelled to bursting;
stamping wildly about while the scuttling, excited crowd nimbly kept out
of his way. He turned the glare of reddened eyes upon the deputy, who
mechanically repeated the justice’s words, still following the prisoner
with soothing insistence. Suddenly Mink made a burst toward the door;
he was seized by a dozen willing hands, thrown down and pinioned. He
fainted, perhaps, for it was only the free outer air that roused him
to the knowledge that he was borne through the streets, followed by a
gaping, hooting crowd, black and white. Then ensued another interval
of unconsciousness. When he came to himself he stared blankly at his
unfamiliar surroundings.
He was alone. He felt weak, sore. He turned his bewildered eyes toward
the light. The window was barred. He sprang up from the bed on which he
lay, and tried the door. He beat upon it and shouted in baffled rage.
Stealthy footsteps sounded outside from time to time, excited whispers,
and once a low titter.
Somehow, ridicule conquered him as force could not. He slunk back to
the bed, and there he lay quiet, that no stir might come to the mocker
without. Sometimes he would lift his head and listen with a sort of
terror for the step, for the suppressed breathing, for the low laugh.
Often his eyes would rest, dilated, fascinated, on the door. Then he
would fall back, reviewing futilely the scenes through which he had
passed. What was that strange thing they had said? It was indistinct
for a time; he could not constrain his reluctant credulity. But those
terrible words, the drowning of Tad Simpkins, beset his memory, and came
back to him again and again. And then he recalled that weird cry from
out the crash of the falling timbers of the mill. Could the ill-treated
little drudge have slept there? He had a vague idea that he had once
heard that when the old man was angry he would swear that he would not
give Tad house-room, and would cast him out into the night, or shut him
into the mill and lock the door upon him. And remembering that cry of
despair, so anguished an echo rose to Mink’s lips that he turned and
buried his head in the pillow because of the scoffer in the hall without.
The room darkened gradually; shadows were glooming about him. The moon
rose after a time. The beams in radiant guise came slanting in, and
despite the bars stood upon the floor, a lustrous presence, and leaned
against the wall. It reminded him of the angel of the Lord,—tall,
ethereal, fair, and crowned with an amaranthine wreath,—who burst the
bars and appeared to the disciple in prison. With that arrogation of all
spiritual bounties, so pathetically human, he perceived no incongruity
that such a similitude should appear to him. In some sort it comforted
him. It moved from time to time, and slowly crossed, pace by pace, the
floor of the cell.