"DRAW--NOW--COWARD!"
Here he slackened to a walk and, turning over, crossed into the road. He
felt of his shoulder gingerly. It did not appear to be bleeding much,
but the wound under his arm stung and burned and he could feel the warm
blood trickling down his side, and along his arm, also.
As he stood in the road extricating himself from the unusual manner in
which he had harnessed his rifle to his shoulders, he was startled by
the rapid hoofbeats of an approaching horse. Believing that the McGills
were coming after him again, Buddy ran across the road, then hurried
toward the river under cover of the wayside brush. He came suddenly upon
a broken-down shack, and as the sounds of the galloping hoofs grew more
distinct, Buddy dropped to his knees and crawled through a rent in the
dilapidated fence and lay down in the weeds with his face toward the
road, and waited for a few seconds.
Then he thrust his head between the broken pickets and looked up the
road. A horse was coming onward at a fearful, breakneck pace, and behind
him followed three or four other horsemen. In the moonlight, Buddy could
plainly see the white cloths around the foremost rider's head. It was
Sap McGill on the dun horse. Judging from the terrific rate at which the
lead horse was leaping over the road, Buddy felt sure that they would
pass him by. The boy drew his head in and waited, breathlessly. Then Sap
McGill dashed past, and just as he did so two shots rang out, and McGill
tumbled out of the saddle and sprawled in the middle of the road, where
he lay still, while his horse continued on.
At this unexpected turn, a great light broke in upon Buddy, and his
heart went apatter with joy. He knew now that the men following McGill
were his own people. He scurried through the aperture in the fence, but
the men had wheeled about and were galloping back as swiftly as they had
come.
Buddy hallooed at the top of his lungs, but the noise of their horses'
feet drowned his voice and they raced on and away. As Buddy reached back
through the fence and pulled his rifle to him, preparatory to running
after the men, he was arrested by the sound of a human voice. He stood
puzzled and mystified. He could see nothing, but the voice was uncannily
near; seemingly at his very feet.
Buddy cast an awesome look toward the battered, deserted shack with its
yawning, sinister windows, and a grave suspicion stole upon him, and
mounted to a fear that embraced his soul, and set his knees atremble.
The house was haunted!
Buddy shrank away from the fence, moved by a fear that nothing else
could inspire, and which has no kindred terror, but he only made two
steps. The same voice held him rooted to the spot. This time there was a
timbre in the inarticulate utterance that was strangely familiar to
Buddy. Then the mysterious voice formed words that were clearly
intelligible: "Now draw--draw now--coward--take yore pick--hear
me?--draw----"
Buddy knew that voice too well to question it further. He hurried around
the corner of the fence, and out under the chestnut tree, where he
stopped short for the space of a moment, spellbound and dismayed, mutely
gazing at the two prostrate forms stretched eerily before him in the
gleam of the moon. The next instant Buddy was on his knees beside
Hatfield.
"Johnse--Johnse--air yo' kilt--air yo' hurted bad----?"
"Air thet yo'--little Cap?" inquired Johnse feebly.
"Sho'--I bin a huntin' yo'--air yo' hit bad, Johnse?"
"I'm scratched up some, boy; twixt us two, I don't feel as skeetish as I
ded 'bout sun-down. Say, Buddy, th' coward won't draw--I knowed he
wouldn't--I jest knowed he'd throw in some ornery trick. Say, Buddy,
give me yore rifle-gun down heah--an' fix th' muzzle in his ear fo'
me--I lost my Colts--hurry long--han' yore gun down, Buddy----"
The boy had been making a hasty examination of the familiar form that
lay inert beside Hatfield. He now leaned over Johnse again.
"Orlick's daid," announced the boy.
"Oh, air he?" said Johnse. "I 'low I'll scuse em then fo' not drawin'--I
knowed I hit em hard--but I didn't think he 'lowed to die--th' way he
jest naturally hung on--he air so karnsarned tricky. Say, Buddy--how is
hit a goin'--air th' fellers at em yit?"
"Sho'--we'uns licked 'em bully, Johnse--they's jest a playin' tag now up
in town--Sap plugged me twict up by ole Hank's store, as I cum
by--Johnse, I got t' rack out now an' git th' men to tote yo' to th'
wagons--I reckon th' doc-man kin peert yo' up a pinch--does yo' hurt
bad, Johnse?"
"Ded Sap plug yo', Buddy?"
"Yep--hit don't hurt powerful bad though--an' our men jest plugged Sap,
jest now--didn't yo'-all heer th' shoots?"
"I mought hev, Buddy,--but I wus powerful busy arguing with Orlick--yo'
sho' they got Sap?"
"Sho," reassured Buddy. "He air a layin' up on th' road yonder now--I
got t' rack out an' git yo' away from heah now."
"An' I got ole Hank--Gawd'll Moughty!--hain't we'uns in luck?"
Hatfield's voice sunk now to a thin, lingering whisper.
"Buddy," he muttered wearily, "'fore yo' go--kin yo' fetch me a speck o'
water--jest a mouthful o' water somehow----"
The boy hurried behind the old shack in quest of something that would
hold water. He found an old tomato can, but there was a rent in its
bottom. Presently, he caught sight of a rusty tin bucket hanging by a
wire, against a rotting porch post. He dumped the earth and dried roots
out of this and held the bucket up to the moon. Then he ran toward the
river. When he returned a few minutes later with the water, he was
trailing Hatfield's piebald mare after him. The wounded man gulped the
water greedily and Buddy unknotted the handkerchief about his neck and
bathed his head.
"I air goin' now, Johnse," said Buddy. "Yo' jest lay easy like, an' I'll
be back with somebuddy 'fore a goat kin wig his tail."
Whereupon, Buddy mounted the mare and galloped toward the courthouse,
unafraid. In less than half an hour, Buddy galloped back, accompanied by
six horsemen. They lifted the maimed, unconscious Hatfield and bore him
away. As the cortege moved slowly up the moonlit road bearing their
wounded leader, little Buddy turned the mare back, and cantered down
toward the river to the spot where he had seen Sap McGill tumble out of
the saddle when the Lutts' had fired upon him. But the boy was acutely
disappointed. McGill was gone. And three bony, starved dogs with
ravenous, wolfish eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, wore licking at a
pool of blood in the road.
The immeasurable canopy above the hills was clear and pearly, save a
narrow reef of low clouds that anchored over the serried peaks of
Southpaw. Clouds frowning against the sun, grim and somber and splotched
with a sable film that seemingly reflected a stratum of despair and
gloom that tides of time could not erase.
Down upon the Moon mountain range, the sun smiled with an affiliating
mellowness that found grateful response in the hearts of the denizens,
despite the fact that the coves were scarred with new-made mounds, and
their cabins were not without the wounded.
And dividing these two mighty ranges of victory and defeat, the frenzied
waters of Hellsfork dinned a neutral warning, reiterating an idiom that
boomed like the omen of a tom-tom.
For the past three weeks the Lutts' cabin had been utilized as an
improvised hospital. Three of the men who had lingered there had
departed to their respective homes, leaving Johnse Hatfield propped up
in the "four-poster" alone.
Buddy Lutts' hurts, while painful and stubborn, were flesh wounds, and
the boy had spurned the bed. Slab, the negro, was a willing and deft
helper. And Buddy attended Johnse with the devotion born of idolization.
In Buddy's boyish appreciation Johnse Hatfield was now a hero, seconded
only by his dead father's memory. One bullet had gone entirely through
Hatfield, leaving six lodged therein. The surgeon from Hazard had
extracted every other one, leaving three inside of Johnse. The doctor
did not advance any prophecies direct, because he was not interrogated,
but he told the "Ridin' parson" who had been up to the Lutts' house,
that in two weeks more Johnse would be up and out, a little heavier, but
sound as a grind-stone.
Just at dawn each day, Johnse would open his eyes, yawn and vent an
observation he had repeated regularly for three weeks:
"Well--I 'low I'll go up t' th' still long 'bout noontime, Buddy--air
yo' a goin' long?--little Cap?"
Whereupon, Buddy would bring in the breakfast which old Slab had ready
for him. Then Buddy would go to the "what-not" and get the treasured
newspaper, and without protest, Johnse would read it all over to the
boy, just as he had done each day since the paper had arrived. Logan,
the audacious lawyer from the Blue-Grass, who had bearded the McGill
faction in their own courthouse, had, thoughtfully, sent Johnse Hatfield
a Frankfort newspaper, as a significant token of some sort of respect.
The front side of this daily bore a picture, gotten up from description,
of Johnse Hatfield. And under this spurious representation were three
full-length columns presenting a graphic description of the "Bloodiest
Clash in the History of Feudal Warfare," followed by details of the
"Graveyard Massacre" by an eye-witness.
According to these reporters, out of some eighty-eight men, who dashed
down the road on that fateful night to slaughter the Lutts clan,
forty-two of them never got away alive from the graveyard facade.
To Buddy Lutts' keen appreciation, the only flaw in this wholesome
narrative was the printed rumor that Sap McGill had escaped and was
slowly recuperating over in Southpaw.