Quiet did not immediately ensue. After Harshaw had been ushered up the
rickety ladder to the roof-room he heard voices below in low-toned
conference. Occasionally he noted the peculiar chuckle of “hongry
Jeb,” suppressed even beneath its usual undertone; for it was a sort
of susurrus of laughter, never absolutely vocal,—a series of snorts
and pantings. It was not jocular at best, and now conveyed sinister
suggestions to Harshaw, as he listened to the vague sound of words he
could not distinguish. He had not been conscious of an effort of close
observation during the evening, and he was surprised to discover how
definitely he could differentiate the murmurs, the mere methods of
speech, of the various members of the household. As they discussed his
fate, he knew who urged measures, who was overpowered in argument, who
doubted. Now and then a word or two in the woman’s shrill voice broke
from the huskiness of her whisper, for she was the most insistent of the
group. He divined that her views were not mild, and he took hope from
the intimations of opposition in the tones of the men as they gruffly
counseled quiet. She it was, he felt sure, whom most he had to fear.
He had thrown himself, dressed as he was, on the sorry couch, which was
made by placing two poles between the logs of the house, supported at
the other end by a cross-bar laid in two crotched uprights on the floor.
It was not a stable contrivance, nor, although it upheld a heavy feather
bed, conducive to slumber, but Harshaw cared little for sleep.
The rain came through the leaks in the roof, now in an intermittent,
sullen pattering, and now the drops falling in quick succession, tossed
by the wind that whistled through the crevices, and piped a shrill
refrain to the sonorous cadences trumpeted by the great chimney. Once, in
a sudden flash of lightning, which was far distant and without thunder,
he saw through gaps in the chinking, the white clouds pressing close to
the house.
Again and again his courage would reassert itself, of its own sheer
force, and he would experience a sort of affront that it had ever
lapsed. He hardly knew how he could hereafter face that fact in his
consciousness. Then, in arguing to reinstate his self-respect, he would
review the dangers of his position,—and thus rouse anew the fears he had
sought to still. He would wonder that he did not die of fright; that
he made no effort to escape, to fire the house and force his way out
in the confusion,—his fingers even fumbled the matches in his pocket;
that he could lie still and listen to the sound of words impossible to
distinguish; that he could turn, with the heavy gesture of one roused
from sleep, when he heard a footfall on the rude stairs, and look yawning
over his shoulder, and demand in a slumbrous voice, “Why in the hell do
you make such a racket?”
A glimmer of light quivered on the brown rafters; it grew momently less
flickering; it revealed the wretched apartment, the slanting floor,
one or two pallets rolled up against the wall. And finally, as from a
trap-door of a theatre, through the rude aperture in the floor, Jeb’s
gaunt black head appeared among the shadows which the tallow dip, that he
carried in his hand, could not dispel.
He came in, and placed the sputtering light on a strut that supported one
of the rafters, and was converted to shelf-like utility. Marvin followed,
sitting down on the foot of Harshaw’s bed. His face was more lowering
than that of the other man; he leaned his hands ponderingly on his
knees, his elbows turned outward, and bent his eyes on the floor in deep
meditation.
There was a short silence.
“Hello?” said Harshaw interrogatively, raising himself on his elbow and
boldly taking the initiative. “Anything the matter?”
Jeb sat down on a keg close to the chimney, and the perturbed hosts
glanced at one another.
“Waal, stranger,” said Marvin, “ye hev gone an’ put us in a peck o’
troubles, ter kem interruptin’ us in this fur place, whar we hev been
hunted an’ hounded ter.”
“Yes, sir,” remarked “hongry Jeb,” “same ez the varmint, ez be specially
lef’ out’n salvation by the Bible.”
Marvin cast a glance over his shoulder at Harshaw. Then he continued,
evidently striving to put the worst possible interpretation on the
situation and to work himself into a rage: “We-uns air a-thinkin’ ez ye
mought be a spy fur the revenuers.”
Harshaw let his head fall back on the pillow. His resonant, burly laugh
rang out, jarring the rafters, and rousing in its hearty jocundity the
reciprocity of a smile on “hongry Jeb’s” cadaverous face. Even Marvin,
casting another hasty look over his shoulder, was mollified.
“Ye’d better be keerful how ye wake Philetus up, with his nap haffen out;
ye’ll ’low ye air neighborin’ a catamount,” he admonished his guest.
“I tell you,” said Harshaw, clasping his hands behind his yellow head as
he lay at length, “you fellows live up here in these lonesome woods till
your brains are addled. Why on earth would I, single-handed, mind you, a
lawyer, a member of the legislature, with a good big farm of my own and
half a dozen houses in town,” (he had never before thought to brag of
them,) “risk myself here, for the little reward I could get _if_—mighty
big _if_, folks—if I could get away again?”
He lifted his eyes, with a bluff challenge of fair play.
“You know who _I_ am. You’ve seen me in Shaftesville. You know my farm
down there in Kildeer County, on Owl Creek. Spy! Shucks! it makes me
laugh. Do the quality often come spying for the revenuers in this
neighborhood?”
Ten days ago he could not have believed that, however closely harried,
his tongue would ever so forget its formula as thus to repudiate his
alignment with the Plain People, and to claim to rank with “the quality.”
Under other circumstances the two mountaineers might have resented
this arrogation of superiority. They were, however, by virtue of their
law-breaking, a trifle more worldly-wise than their stolid compatriots
of the hills. It had been in some sort an education; had familiarized
them with the springs of commercial action, the relations of producer and
consumer, the value of money or its equivalent; had endowed them with an
appreciation of emergency and an ingenuity in expedients and makeshifts;
had forced upon their contemplation the operations of the law; and their
great personal risk had superinduced care, thoughtfulness, and the
exercise of a certain rude logic.
As they unconsciously sought to realize Harshaw’s position in the world,
resources, opportunity, their suspicion that he was a spy gradually waned.
There was a pause. The candle sputtered on the timber where it had
been placed, the flame now rising apparently with an effort to touch a
resinous knot in the wood just above it, and now crouching in a sudden
gust from a crevice hard by. The rain came down with redoubled force for
a few moments, then subsided again into its former steady, monotonous
fall. Harshaw’s senses, preternaturally keen now, detected an almost
imperceptible stir on the ladder that ascended to the loft. He knew as
well as if he had seen the coterie that Marvin’s wife and the rest of
the moonshiners were sitting on the rounds, listening and awaiting the
announcement of his fate. Perhaps it was this which prompted his reply,
when Marvin said pettishly,—
“It air all M’ria’s fault. Ef she hedn’t been so powerful quick ter git
down the gun, ye’d hev never knowed nor axed whar ye war, nor s’picioned
nuthin’.”
“Yes, I would, though,” Harshaw declared.
Marvin once more looked over his shoulder, and the lawyer quaked at the
risk he ran.
“I saw Tad, you know, and I was figurin’ round, big as all-out-of-doors,
how I was going to produce him in court, and she thought I meant right
off. Then, the minute I saw _you_ I knew you,—and I had heard that girl
say you were moonshining.”
“Ai-yi! Sam Marvin!” cried a shrill feminine voice from the primitive
stairway, “that’s what ye got fur tryin’ ter put the blame on me!”
Sam Marvin turned his bushy head toward the aperture in the floor.
It might seem that Mrs. Marvin had left him nothing to say, but the
versatility of the conjugal retort is well-nigh limitless, and he could
doubtless have defended himself with an admirable valor had not Jeb “the
hongry” interfered.
“Shet up, Sam,” he said, looking positively famished in his lean anxiety.
“We-uns hedn’t thunk o’ that. Mink Lorey hev got ter be tried agin.”
It was all that Harshaw could do to restrain some expression of despair
at this infelicitous turn given to the consultation, at which he seemed
to assist to devise his own doom. He found a certain relief in shifting
his position, and still, with his hands clasped under his head, briskly
participated in the conversation.
“Yes,” he assented in a debonair way which caused Marvin to look at him
in lowering amazement, “I’m Mink’s lawyer, but I couldn’t testify for
him. I couldn’t swear of my own knowledge that this Tad is the same boy,
for I never saw him before.”
Both of the men lapsed into the attitude of laborious pondering. Now and
then each looked at the other, as if to descry some intimation of the
mutual effect.
Harshaw, with another bold effort to possess the situation, yawned widely
and stretched his muscles.
“Oh—oh—oh—oh!” he exclaimed on a steadily descending scale. “Well,
gentlemen,” his features once more at rest, his voice normal, “I
should be glad to continue our conversation to-morrow”—he waved his
hand bluffly—“or next week. I ain’t used to huntin’,—that is, huntin’
deer,—and I’m in and about knocked up. If you’ve got anything to say to
me, say it now, or keep it till to-morrow.”
The two looked doubtfully at each other.
“Mr. Harshaw,” said Marvin, “we-uns air feared to let you-uns go.”
“Go to sleep?” asked Harshaw jocosely.