“I picked up Mose’s gun, an’ in I kem. I barred up the door, an’ then I
sot down an’ lighted my pipe. An’ Jeb, he tuk ter tellin’ tales ’bout
all the folks ez he ever knowed ter be skeered haffen ter death”—
“Nare one of ’em war Jeb,” remarked the observant Mrs. Marvin, seizing
the salient trait of the romancer. “In all Jeb’s tales _he_ comes out’n
the big e-end o’ the hawn.”
“An’ ez I sot thar, jes’ wallin’ my eyes round the room, I seen suthin’
that, ef the t’others hed said they seen, I’d hev tole ’em they war
lyin’. ’Twar a couple o’ eyes an’ a white face peekin’ through the holes
in the chinkin’ o’ the walls, whar the daubin’ hed fell out. ’Twar right
close ter me at fust,—that war how I kem ter see it so plain. I ’lowed
ter jes’ stick my knife right quick inter one o’ them eyes. I ’lowed
’twar a raider. ’Fore I could move ’twar gone! Then all of a suddenty I
seen the face an’ eyes peekin’ in close ter the door. I jes’ flew at it
that time,—warn’t goin’ ter let nuthin’ hender”—
“I war ’twixt him an’ the door, an’ he jes’ run over me,” interpolated
the pullet. “Knocked me plumb over, head fust, inter a tub o’ beer. Hed
ter set in the sun all nex’ day fur my hair ter dry out, an’ I smelt like
a toper.”
Sam Marvin not ungenially permitted his family thus to share in telling
his story. He resumed with unabated ardor:—
“An’ I jumped through the door so quick that the spy jes’ did see me,
an’ war steppin’ out ter run when I cotch him by the collar. I don’t
reckon thar ever war a better beatin’ ’n I gin him. I hed drapped my
knife a-runnin’, an’ I hed no dependence ’ceptin’ my fists. His face war
so bloody I didn’t know him a-fust, when I dragged him in the house,
with his head under my arm. An’ when I seen him I knowed he never kem
of hisself, but somebody had sent him. An’ I say, ‘What did ye kem hyar
fur?’ An’ he say, ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ I say, ‘Who sent ye?’ An’ he say,
‘Lethe Sayles.’”
“Now, Lethe, see what a liar ye hev been fund out ter be!” said the
woman, scornfully. “Lord knows I never ’lowed ye would kem ter sech. I
knowed ye whenst ye war a baby. A fatter one I never see. Nobody would
hev b’lieved ye’d grow up sour, an’ preachified, an’ faultin’ yer elders,
an’ bide a single woman, ez ef nobody would make ch’ice o’ ye.”
Alethea looked vaguely from one to the other. Denial seemed futile. She
asked mechanically, rather than from any definite motive, “Did ye hear o’
enny revenuers arter that?”
“Didn’t wait ter,” said Marvin. “We hed hearn enough, knowin’ ez ye hed
tole, an’ the word hed got round the kentry, so ez the spy hed been sent
up ter make sure o’ the place. We-uns war too busy a-movin’ the still
an’ a-hustlin’ off. Ef thar hed been time enough fur ennything, I reckon
some o’ them boys would hev put a bullet through that thar sandy head o’
yourn. But the raiders never kem up with we-uns, nor got our still an’
liquor,—we-uns war miles an’ miles away from hyar the night arter Tad kem
a-spyin’.”
Alethea stood staring, speechless. “Tad!” she gasped at last. “_Tad!_”
They all stopped and looked at her through the wreathing smoke, as if
they hardly understood her.
“Lethe, ye air too pretensified ter be healthy!” Mrs. Marvin exclaimed at
last.
“O’ course ye knowed, bein’ ez ye tole him,” said the moonshiner. He did
not resume his work, but stood gazing at her. They were all at a loss,
amazed at her perturbation.
Her breath came fast; her lips were parted. One lifted hand clung to
the heavily enswathed ear of corn upon the tall, sere stalk; the other
clutched the kerchief about her throat, as if she were suffocating. Her
face was pale; her eyes were distended.
“I wouldn’t look so pop-eyed fur nuthin’,” remarked the pullet, in callow
pertness; she might not have been suspected of laying so much stress on
appearances.
“I’m tryin’ ter think,” said Alethea, dazed, “ef that war afore Tad war
drownded or arterward.”
Marvin turned, and leered significantly at his family.
“Mus’ hev been afore he war drownded, I reckon,” he said satirically.
“Lethe Sayles,” observed Serena reprehensively, “ye air teched in the
head.”
She tossed her own head with a conviction that, if not strictly
ornamental, it was level. Then, like the sane fowl that she was, she went
stepping about on her long, yellow feet with a demure, grown-up air.
“Oh,” said Alethea, fixing the dates in her mind, “it mus’ hev been
arterwards”—
“Likely,” interrupted Sam Marvin.
—“’kase that very evenin’ arter I seen ye at the cow-pen Elviry Crosby
kem an’ tole ez how Reuben Lorey hed bust down old man Griff’s mill, an’
his nevy Tad war in it, an’ war drownded in the ruver.”
“Laws-a-me!” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, clutching her sun-bonnet with both
hands, and thrusting it backward from her head, as if it intercepted the
news.
“Waal, sir!” cried the moonshiner, amazed.
“Oh,” cried Alethea, clasping both her hands, “ef I hed called ye back
that evenin’, an’ promised not ter tell, like I war minded ter do”—
“Ye ’lowed ’twarn’t right,” suggested the moonshiner.
—“ye would hev knowed ez Tad warn’t no spy, but war jes’ vagabondin’
round the kentry, a runaway, houseless an’ hongry; an’ ye would hev
tuk him back ter old man Griff, an’ Reuben wouldn’t hev been tried fur
killin’ him!”
“Shucks, Mink warn’t tried fur sech sure enough?” said Marvin, uneasily.
His face had changed. His wife was turning the corner of her apron
nervously between her fingers, and looking at him in evident trepidation.
“He hev been in jail fur months an’ months,” said Alethea. “An’ when he
war tried, I told on the witness stand ’bout glimpsin’ Tad one night
whenst I kem from camp,—mus’ hev been the same night whenst he went up
the mounting ter yer house, ’kase thar war a awful storm. An’ when I seen
him suddint I screamed, bein’ s’prised; an’ I reckon that war the reason
he said ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ at the trial they lowed I hed seen nuthin’
but Tad’s harnt, an’ the jury disagreed.”
“An’—an’—an’ air Mink in jail yit?” demanded the moonshiner, his jaw
falling in dismay.
“The rescuers tuk him out,” said Alethea.
“Waal, sir,” he exclaimed, with a long breath. “Ye see,”—he seemed to
feel that he must account for his excitement and interest,—“bein’ hid
out, I hain’t hearn no news, sca’cely, sence we-uns lef’.”
“Whar be Tad now?” Alethea asked suddenly, realizing that here was the
man who had seen him last.
He glanced quickly at her, then in perplexed dubitation at his wife. In
common with many women, she was willing enough to steer when it was all
plain sailing, but among the breakers she left him with an undivided
responsibility. She fell to pulling corn with an air of complete
absorption in her work.
He made a clumsy effort at diversion. “By Gosh,” he declared, waving his
hand about his head, “ef this hyar smoke don’t clar away, we-uns’ll all
be sifflicated in it.”
But the smoke was not now so dense. High up, its sober, dun-colored folds
were suffused with a lurid flush admitted from the wintry sunset. The
black, dead trees within the inclosure stood out distinctly athwart the
blank neutrality of the gray, nebulous background. The little house on
the rise was dimly suggested beyond the corn-field, across which skulked
protean shapes of smoke,—monstrous forms, full of motion and strange
consistency and slowly realized symmetry, as if some gigantic prehistoric
beasts were trembling upon the verge of materialization and visibility.
The wind gave them chase. It had lifted its voice in the silences.
Like a clarion it rang down the narrow ravine below. But Sam Marvin,
expanding his lungs to the freshened air, declared that he felt “plumb
sifflicated.”
“Whar be Tad now?” persisted Alethea.
He spat meditatively upon the ground. “Waal, Lethe,” he said at last,
“that’s more’n I know. I dunno whar Tad be now.”
She detected consciousness in the manner of the woman and the girl. She
broke out in a tumult of fear:—
“Ye didn’t harm Tad, did ye?” with wild, terrified eyes fixed upon him.
“Ye didn’t kill Tad fur a spy?—’kase he warn’t.”
“Shet up, ye blatant fool!” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, “layin’ sech ez that
at we-uns’s door.”
“An’ shet up yerse’f, M’ria. Least said, soonest mended,” Marvin
interposed. “Look-a-hyar, Lethe Sayles, ye hev done harm enough; it may
be ’kase it war right. Take sech satisfaction ez ye kin in yer notion. It
never turned out right,—turned out mighty wrong. I ain’t goin’ ter answer
ye nare nuther word. I hev got a question ter ax you-uns right now. Who
war it ye tole ’bout findin’ out ’twar me a-moonshinin’?”
She detailed tremulously the scene in the court-room, and the impression
it produced was altogether at variance with her expectations. Perhaps,
however, it was only natural that Sam Marvin should feel less interest in
the belated disclosure, which he had thought was made months previous,
than in the circumstances of the trial, Peter Rood’s death, the
imprisonment of the jury, and the riot of the rescuing mob. As to his
wife, she was chiefly shocked by the publicity attaching to testimony in
open court.
“An’ ye jes’ stood up thar, Lethe Sayles, ez bold-faced ez a
biscuit-block, an’ lifted up yer outdacious voice afore all them men?
Waal, sir! Waal! I dunno what the wimmen air a-comin’ ter!”
“I war obligated ter tell sech ez I knowed,” Alethea contended against
this assumption of superior delicacy. “I never felt no more bold-faced
than in tellin’ ’speriunce ’fore the brethren at camp.”
“Oh, child!” cried Mrs. Marvin. “It’s the spirit o’ grace movin’ at camp,
but at court it’s the nimbleness o’ the devil.”
Alethea argued no further, for conversation was impeded by the succeeding
operations of gathering the crop. Marvin was leading the team of the
great wagon from one to another of the heaps of corn. The huge creaking
wheels crushed the ranks of stalks that fell in confusion on either side;
the white canvas cover had been removed from the hoops, in order to
facilitate the throwing of the corn into the wagon. Through the wreaths
of smoke appeared the long ears of a pair of mules. Sam Marvin had
apparently found his new home in a thirstier locality than his old, for
he was evidently thriving. The pair of mules might have been considered
a sorry team in point of appearance: their sides were rubbed bare with
the friction of the trace-chains; they were both unkempt, and one was
very tall and the other small, but they were stalwart and sure-footed and
fleet, and a wonderful acquisition in lieu of the yoke of slow oxen she
remembered. The continuous thud, as the ears of corn were thrown into the
wagon, enabled Marvin to affect not to hear Alethea’s reiteration as to
Tad’s fate.
“I wisht ye’d tell me suthin’ ’bout’n Tad,” she said piteously. “I wisht
I knew ye hedn’t hurt him, nor—nor”—
She paused in the work, looking drearily about her. The wind tossed her
garments; she was fain at times to catch her bonnet by the curtain, to
hold it. The smoke had taken flight; dragons, winged horses, griffins,
forgotten myths, all scurrying away before the strong blast. And still
they came and went, and rose once more, for the wind that lifted the
smoke fanned the fire. The flames were in sight along the base of Big
Injun Mounting, writhing now like fiery serpents, and now rising like
some strange growth in quivering blades; waving and bowing, appearing
and disappearing, and always extending further and further. They seemed
so alive, so endowed with the spirit of destruction, so wantonly alert,
so merciless to the fettered mountain that tossed its forests in wild
commotion, with many a gesture of abject despair, and spite of all could
not flee. Their strong, tawny color contrasted with the dull garnet
of the bare boughs and the deep, sombre green of the solemn pines. The
smoke carried from the fire a lurid reflection, fading presently in the
progress across the landscape of the long, dun-colored flights. The
wintry sunset was at hand. The sky was red and amber; the plains of the
far west lay vaguely purple beneath. On Walden’s Ridge, rising against
the horizon, rested the sun, from which somehow the dazzling fire seemed
withdrawn, leaving a sphere of vivid scarlet, indescribably pure and
intense, upon which the eye could nevertheless gaze undaunted.
Pensive intimations there were in its reduced splendors; in the deep
purple of Chilhowee, in the brown tints of the nearer ranges. Something
was gone from the earth,—a day,—and the earth was sad, though it had
known so many. And the night impended and the unimagined morrow. And thus
the averted Future turns by slow degrees the face that all flesh dreads
to see. The voice of lowing cattle came up from the cove. The fires in
the solitudes burned apace.
“I hev axed ye time an’ agin, Sam Marvin, whar Tad be. Ef ye don’t tell,
I’ll be bound ter b’lieve ye moonshiners hev done suthin’ awful ter him.”
They were about to depart on their journey. Already Serena was on her
uneasy bed of corn in the ear. But the pullet’s life had been made
up chiefly of rough jouncing, and never having heard of a wagon with
springs, she was in a measure incapable of appreciating her deprivation.
She had wrapped a quilt of many colors about her shoulders, for the
evening air was chill, and she looked out of the opening in the back
of the canvas-covered wagon in grotesque variegation. Mrs. Marvin was
climbing upon the wheel to her seat on the board in front. The moonshiner
stood by the head of one of the mules, busy arranging the simple
tackling. He looked with a sneer at Alethea over the beast’s neck.
“An’ I hev tole ye, Lethe Sayles, ez I dunno whar Tad be now. I’m a
mighty smart man, sure enough, but ’twould take a smarter one ’n me ter
say whar Tad be now, an’ what he be a-doin’.”
He looked at his wife with a grin. She laughed aloud in tuneless scorn.
The girl, gazing out of the back of the wagon as it jolted off, echoed
the derision in a shrill key. And as the clumsy vehicle went creaking
down the precipitous slope, beyond which could be seen only the flaming
base of the opposite mountain, all luridly aflare in the windy dusk, they
seemed to Alethea as if they were descending into Tophet itself.