Alethea stood motionless for some little time, still leaning on the
fence. A stalk of golden-rod, brown and withered, its glory departed,
touched the rails now and then. Its slight, infrequent swaying was the
only intimation of wind, except that the encompassing smoke, filling
the vast spaces between heaven and earth, shifted occasionally, the
dense convolutions silently merging into new combinations of ill-defined
shapes,—colorless phantasmagoria, dimly looming. It might have seemed as
if all the world had faded out, leaving only these blurred suggestions of
unrecognized forms, like the vestiges of forgotten æons.
Even the harvesters did not maintain always a human aspect. Through
the haze they were grotesque, distorted, gigantic; their hands vaguely
visible, now lifted, now falling, in their deliberate but ceaseless work.
They looked like vagrants from that eccentric populace of dreams, given
over to abnormal, inconsequent gestures, to shifting similitudes, to
preposterous conditions and facile metamorphoses of identity. Alethea
felt a strange doubt, in recognizing Sam Marvin, whether it were indeed
the moonshiner whom she saw.
An insistent silence possessed the air, broken only by the rustle of the
crisp husks as the three dim figures pulled the corn. Suddenly there
sounded a mad, scuttling rush, shrill canine yelps, and a series of
nimble shadows vaulted over the fence. The coon ran up a tree, while
the moonshiner’s dogs ranged themselves beneath it, with upturned heads
askew, and gloating, baffled eyes, and moans of melancholy frustration,
punctuated ever and anon with yaps of more poignant realization of the
coon’s inaccessibility. Tige, irresolute, showed fight at first to the
strangers; then he too sat down, and with quivering fore-paws and wagging
tail wheezed and yelped at his fireside companion, as if he had no
personal acquaintance with the raccoon, had held with him no relations of
enforced amity, and could not wait one moment to crunch his bones.
The half-grown girl, desisting from her work, turned her head in the
direction of the noise, and caught a glimpse of Alethea. She had an
excited eye, high cheek-bones, and a thin, prominent nose. Her face
looked peculiarly sharp inside her flabby sun-bonnet. She was at the
“growing age,” and her frock was consequently short for the bare,
sun-embrowned legs which protruded from it. Her bare feet were long and
bony. She seemed to be growing lengthwise only, for her shoulders were
narrow, her arms slim. She had a callow, half-fledged look, not unlike a
Shanghai pullet. Her manner was abrupt and fluttered, and her voice high
and shrill.
“Laws-a-massy!” she exclaimed, jumping precipitately backward on her
long, attenuated legs, “yander’s Lethe Sayles!”
Both the man and the woman started violently,—not because of the matter
of the disclosure, but of its manner, as was manifested in his rebuke.
“By Gosh, Sereny! ef ye ain’t mighty nigh skeered me ter death!” he cried
angrily. “S’pose it air Lethe Sayles!” He bowed his body grotesquely
amidst the smoke, as he emphasized his reproof. “Air she ennything so
powerful oncommon ez ye hev ter jump ez sprightly ez ef ye hed stepped on
a rattlesnake, an’ squeech out that-a-way? Howdy, Lethe,” he added, with
an odd contrast of a calm voice and a smooth manner, as if Alethea were
deaf to these amenities. “Thrivin’, I s’pose?”
Alethea faltered that she was well, and said no more. The imperative
consciousness of all that she had done against him, of all for which she
feared him, prevailed for a time. She knew that it would have been wiser
to venture some commonplace civility, and then go. But that insistent
conscience, strong within her, forbade this. She was all unprepared now
for the disclosure of her testimony in the court-room, but the fact that
she had ever intended to warn him made it seem as if this were due. She
felt as if she had missed a certain fortification of her courage in
that she had not had the privilege of trembling over the prospect, of
familiarizing herself with it, of approaching it slowly, but none the
less surely, by lessening degrees of trepidation. She wondered that he
did not look at her with more of the indignation which she knew he must
feel toward her. Bitterness, however, was acridly manifested in the
woman’s manner, her averted head, her sedulous silence. She continued
industriously pulling the corn, as if no word had been spoken, no
creature stood by. The gallinaceous girl, silent too, returned to her
work, but often looked askance at Alethea over her shoulder.
The man spoke presently. His face and figure were blurred now in the
smoke. It was as if a shadow had purloined a sarcastic voice. Alethea’s
nerves were unstrung by the surprise of the meeting, and the fact that
she could see only this elusive suggestion of his presence harassed and
discomposed her.
“Waal, Lethe, I dunno ez I be s’prised ter see ye. I hev seen ye sech a
many times whenst I never expected ye,—startin’ up yander at Boke’s barn
ez suddint ez ef ye hed yer headquarters in the yearth or the sky. An’
jes’ at this junctry, whenst we air a-tryin’ ter steal our _own_ corn
away from hyar, ye kem a-boundin’ out’n the smoke, like ye hed no abidin’
place more ’n a witch or that thar Herder on Thunderhead, or sech harnts.
I never see yer beat ez a meddler. Satan ain’t no busier with other
folkses’ souls.”
She made no reply. The shifting vapor hid the tree where the bright-eyed
coon hung fast by his claws, and the wheezing yapping of the foiled dogs
besieging his stronghold seemed strangely loud and near since they were
invisible.
The shucks rustled sibilantly. The ears of maize fell with a monotonous
sound upon the heaps in the turn row.
“What did the revenuers do when they kem up the mounting?” Marvin asked
suddenly. His tone was all alert now with curiosity. He could reserve his
rebukes till his craving for gossip should be satisfied. Conversation, a
fine art elsewhere, assumes the dignity of a privilege in these sparsely
settled wilds, where its opportunities are scant.
“They ain’t never kem, ez I knows on,” said Alethea tremulously. They
might come yet, and here he was still unwarned and at the mercy of
accident. She had climbed the fence, springing lightly down on the other
side, and had mechanically begun to assist them in their work,—the usual
courtesy of a guest in the mountains who finds the host employed.
“Slip-shuck it, Lethe,” he remarked, calling her attention to the fact
that the outer husks were left upon the stalks, and the ear, enveloped
merely in its inner integuments, was thrown upon the heap. “I hates
powerful ter be obleeged ter leave all this hyar good roughness;” he
indicated the long rows of shucks upon the stalks. “My cattle would be
mighty thankful ter hev sech fedded ter ’em. But the corn itself air
about ez much ez I kin haul so fur”—
“_Don’t_ ye tell her wharabouts we-uns lives nowadays,” broke out the
woman.
She was standing near Alethea, and she turned and looked at her. The
girl’s fresh and beautiful countenance was only more delicate, more
sensitive, with that half-affrighted perturbation on it, that piteous
deprecation. The elder woman’s face was furrowed and yellow in contrast;
her large, prominent eyes, of a light, hazel color, were full of tears,
and had a look as if tears were no unfamiliar visitants. She wiped them
away with the curtain of her pink sun-bonnet, and went on pulling the
corn.
“I dunno whar Sam Marvin lives, myself,” the moonshiner declared, with
reckless bravado. “I don’t go by that name no mo’.”
He straightened up and set his arms akimbo, as he laughed.
“Ye needn’t send no mo’ o’ yer spies, Lethe, arter me,” he declared. “My
neighbors way over yander dunno no sech man ez Sam Marvin.”
Alethea’s lifted hand paused upon the shuck on the sere stalk. As she
turned half round he saw her face in the smoke; her golden hair and
fresh cheek, and the saffron kerchief tied beneath the round chin. He
was not struck by her beauty; it always seemed a thing apart from her,
the slightest incident of her personality, so much more forceful were
the impressions of her character, so much more intimately her coercive
opinions concerned those with whom she came in contact. But in her clear
eyes he detected a surprise which he hardly understood at the moment. And
he paused to look at her, wondering if it were only simulated.
Her heart throbbed with a dull and heavy pain. So angry were they because
she would not promise to keep their secret. She shrank from their rage
when she should tell that she had voluntarily disclosed it.
“Ye’ll be purtendin’ ez ’twar somebody else ez sent the spy ter make sure
o’ the place whar we kep’ our still. I _know ye_!” He wagged his head in
more active assertion that her machinations could not avail against his
discernment.
“I never sent no spy,” faltered Alethea.
“Thar now! What did I tell ye!” he broke out, laughing disdainfully;
the woman added a high, shrill, unmirthful refrain; even Serena the
pullet, stepping about in the smoke on her long, yellow feet and in her
abbreviated garments, cackled scornfully.
“Ye may thank yer blessed stars,” cried the woman scathingly,—she could
hold silence no longer—“ez ye done nuthin’ agin we-uns. An’ the revenuers
never raided our still, nor got nare drap o’ our liquor, nor tuk nuthin’
o’ ourn. Yer bones would be a-bleachin’ on the hillside ef they hed!
Jes’ afore yer spy kem them white-livered men—Sam thar, an’ the t’other
distillers—war a-talkin’ ’bout how they could make ye hesh up yer mouth,
ez ye wouldn’t keep it shet yerse’f. They ’lowed it never seemed right
handy ter them ter shoot a woman same ez a man, an’ I jes’ up-ed an’
tole ’em ez ye desarved no better ’n a bullet through that yaller head
o’ yourn, an’ they could git a shot at ye enny evenin’ whenst ye war
a-drivin’ up the cow. An’ I ’lowed ez whenst a woman went a-meddlin’ an’
informin’ like a man, let her take what a man hev ter take. Naw, sir!
but they mus’ run away, ’count o’ a meddler like you-uns, an’ go live
somwhar else! An’ I hed ter leave my home, an’ the three graves o’ my
dead chill’n, yander on the rise, ez lonesome an’ ez meagre-lookin’ ez ef
they war three pertater hills.”
She burst into a tumult of tears. The smoke wafted down, obscuring
her,—there was commotion in its midst, for the wind was rising,—and her
sobs sounded from out the invisibility that had effaced the earth as if
some spirit of grief were abroad in it.
“Shet up, M’ria! Ye talk like ye hed no mo’ sense ’n a sheep. The chill’n
ain’t in them graves,” Marvin said, with the consolations of a sturdy
orthodoxy.
“Thar leetle bones is,” said the spirit of grief from the densities of
the clouds.
And he could not gainsay this.
She wept on persistently for the little deserted bones. He could not feel
as she did, yet he could understand her feeling. His under-jaw dropped
a little; some stress of melancholy and solemnity was on his face, as
if a saddened retrospection were evoked for him, too. But it was a
recollection which his instinct was to throw off, rather than to cherish
as a precious sorrow, jealously exacting for it the extremest tribute of
sighs and tears.
“Lethe,” he said suddenly, with a cheerful note, “bein’ ez they never
cotch us, did they pay ye ennything ez informer? I ain’t right sure how
the law stands on that p’int. The law ’pears ter me ter be a mighty
onstiddy, contrariwise contrivance, an’ the bes’ way ter find out
ennything _sartain sure_ ’bout’n it air ter ’sperience it. Did they pay
ye ennything?”
“I never informed the revenuers,” declared Alethea, once more.
He turned upon her a look of scorn.
“I knowed ye war a powerful fool, a-talkin’ ’bout ‘what’s right,’ an’
preachin’ same ez the rider, an’ faultin’ yer elders. But I never knowed
ye war a liar an’ a scandalous hypocrite. The Bible say, ‘Woe ter ye,
hypocrites!’ I wonder ye ain’t hearn that afore; either a-wrastlin’ with
yer own soul, or meddlin’ with other folkses’ salvation.” It occurred to
him that he preached very well himself, and he was minded, in the sudden
vanity of the discovery, to reiterate, “Woe unto ye, hypocrite!”
“What makes ye ’low ez I gin the word ter the revenuers?” demanded
Alethea.
“’Kase the spy kem up thar with yer name on his lips. ‘Lethe Sayles,’ he
sez,—‘Lethe Sayles.’”
The girl stared wide-eyed and amazed at him.
Marvin’s wife noted the expression. “Oh, g’long, Lethe Sayles!” she cried
impatiently; “ye air so deceivin’!”
“The spy!” faltered Alethea. “Who war the spy? I never tole nobody ’bout
seein’ ye at Boke’s barn, nor whenst I war milkin’ the cow, nuther, till
a few weeks ago. Ye hed lef’ hyar fur months afore then.”
The woman, listening, with an ear of corn in her motionless hand, turned
and cast it upon the heap with a significant gesture of rejection, as if
she thus discarded the claims of what she had heard. She sneered, and
laughed derisively and shrill. The pullet, too, broke into mocking mirth,
and then both fell to pulling corn with a sort of flouting energy.
“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Marvin, with a feint of sharing their
incredulity. But he held his straggling beard in one hand, and looked
at Alethea seriously. To him her manner constrained belief in what she
had said. “Why, Lethe,” he broke out, abruptly, “’twarn’t long arter
that evenin’ whenst I seen ye a-milkin’ the cow when the spy kem. We-uns
war a-settin’ roun’ the still,—we kep’ it in the shed-room, me an’ my
partners,—an’ we war a-talkin’ ’bout you-uns, an’ how ye acted; an’
M’ria, she war thar, an’ she went agin ye, an’ ’lowed ez we hed better
make ye shet yer mouth; an’ some o’ the boys were argufyin’ ez ye war
jes’ sayin’ sech ez ye done ter hear yerse’f talk, an’ feel sot up in
yer own ’pinion. They ’lowed ye’d be feared ter tell, sure enough, but
ye hankered ter be begged ter shet up. ’Twar a powerful stormy night.
I never hear a wusser wind ez war a-cavortin’ round the house. An’ the
lightnin’ an’ thunder hed been right up an’ down sniptious. A lightnin’
ball mus’ hev bust up on Piomingo Bald, ’kase nex’ day I see the ground
tore up round the herders’ cabin, though Ben Doaks warn’t thar,—hed
gone down ter the cove, I reckon. Waal, sir, it quit stormin’ arter a
while, but everything war mighty damp an’ wet; the draps kep’ a-fallin’
off’n the eaves. We could hear the hogs in the pen a-squashin’ about
in the mud. An’ all of a suddenty they tuk ter squealin’ an’ gruntin’,
skeered mighty nigh ter death. An’ my oldest son, Mose, he ’lowed it
war a varmint arter ’em; an’ he snatched his gun an’ runned out ter
the hog-pen. An’ thar they war, all jammed up tergether, gruntin’ an’
snortin’; an’ Mose say he war afeard to shoot ’mongst ’em, fur fear o’
hittin’ some o’ them stiddier the varmint. An’ whilst he war lookin’
right keerful,—the moon hed kem out by then,—he seen, stiddier a wolf,
suthin’ a-bowin’ down off’n the fence. An’ the thing cotch up a crust
o’ bread, or a rind o’ water-million, or suthin’, out o’ the trough fur
the hogs, an’ then sot up ez white-faced on the fence, a-munchin’ it an’
a-lookin’ at him. An’ Mose ’lowed he war so plumb s’prised he los’ his
senses. He ’lowed ’twar a harnt,—it looked so onexpected. He jes’ flung
his rifle on the groun’ an’ run. It’s mighty seldom sech tracks hev been
made on the Big Smoky ez Mose tuk. We-uns ain’t medjured ’em yit, but
Mose hev got the name ’mongst the gang o’ bein’ able ter step fourteen
feet at a stride.”
He showed his long, tobacco-stained teeth in the midst of his straggling
beard, and as he talked on he gnawed at a plug of tobacco, as if, being
no impediment to thought, it could be none to its expression.
“Mose lept inter the house, declarin’ thar war a harnt a-settin’ on the
fence. Ye know Jeb Peake?—hongry Jeb, they useter call him.” Marvin
broke off suddenly, having forgotten the significance and purpose of the
recital in the rare pleasure of recounting. Even his wife’s face bore
only retrospective absorption, and Serena had lifted her head, and fixed
an excited, steadfast eye upon him. “Waal, hongry Jeb war a-settin’ thar
in the corner, an’ bein’ toler’ble sleepy-headed he hed drapped off,
his head agin the chimbley. An’ when Mose kem a-rampagin’ in thar, with
his eyes poppin’ out, declarin’ thar war a harnt settin’ on the fence,
eatin’,—‘_Eatin’ what?_’ sez hongry Jeb, a-startin’ up. Ha! ha! ha!”
“Jeb ain’t never forgot the bottom o’ the pot yit,” chimed in the wife.
“I ain’t a-grudgin’ him ter eat, though,” stipulated the moonshiner,
“nor the harnt, nuther. I jes’ ’lowed ez that thar white-faced critter
a-settin’ on the fence, a-thievin’ from the hog, mought take up a fancy
ter Mose’s rifle, lef’ onpertected on the ground. So I goes out. Nuthin’
warn’t settin’ on the fence, ’ceptin’ the moonlight an’ that thar
onregenerate young tur-rkey ez nuthin’ could hender from roostin’ on the
rails o’ the hog-pen, stiddier on a limb o’ a tree, ’longside o’ the
t’other tur-rkeys.”
“An’ thar a fox cotch her afore daybreak,” interpolated Mrs. Marvin,
supplying biographical deficiencies.
“I always _did_ b’lieve ’twar them thar greedy old hogs,” said Serena.