THE NEAR ASSASSIN
The following day Lem Lutts arrayed himself in his newly purchased store
clothes and prepared to face a strange, unfriendly world of which he
knew little. Not a week, not a day, scarcely an hour had elapsed since
Belle-Ann had gone to Proctor that thoughts of her were not uppermost in
his mind. Indeed, it was the sustaining hope of seeing her that had held
his unhappy being together. It was seemingly a wretched measure of years
since that unforgettable day when he had kissed the little scar that
crossed the part in her curls, when she had stood before him and crossed
her heart, and pledged him that she would surely come back to him. But
the day of her return, as he had marked it in his mind, a scintillating
goal, promising an epoch of luxuriant life, had come, and long since
passed. He had, while in prison, written half a dozen crude letters
addressed to Belle-Ann at Beattyville. His credulous mind had always
supposed that these missives had reached their destination. As he had
never received any reply to his letters, he had deducted that either the
subtle influence of education and society had taken hold of her, weaning
her heart away from all thoughts of the mountains, or that some
unforeseen circumstance beyond her will had kept her silent. If it
developed that he could not find her at the school, he had determined,
next, to go down into the Big Sandy camps and hunt up her father.
In accordance with his sudden inception of this extended sojourn, he was
quick to realize that to mingle with the proud inhabitants of the
strange land, into which he sallied, he would be handicapped, and
doubtless be put to a retarding disadvantage by appearing among them in
the crude garb of a mountaineer. He had gleaned this bit of wisdom while
in prison. A credulous, guileless spirit can learn more of the world in
a city jail in one month, than he can learn in twenty years out on the
Godhead, in the geodetic domains allotted him by Providence. Therefore,
Lem had with rare forethought equipped himself in a manner not
unpleasing, and calculated to ward off disdain and ridicule. However, he
had postponed having his luxuriant locks shorn to the last minute,
deciding to sacrifice them when he struck the first big town. So that
now he looked a bit incongruous, his shining black derby contrasting
oddly enough with his long, curling hair.
Lem had bidden Slab farewell, and after spending a time up in the
Orchard beside the two mounds, he climbed up to Eagle Crown, his
favorite, endeared refuge, to take what might be his last survey of the
wild kingdom he loved so well. When he reached that dizzy height, he sat
down to gain his breath. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a small, round
object at his feet.
Instantly he picked it up, and with a reminiscent smile pressed it
fondly to his lips. It was a button off Belle-Ann's gingham gown.
Buddy in his impatience had wandered on down the trail toward the loop,
where he had been waiting for Lem for well on to an hour, for he meant
to accompany his brother as far as Boon's ford before taking leave. He
had sauntered along idly and had reached a point opposite the gap in the
spur, where he could look back and view the open trail, when a young
badger suddenly ambled out in the path and stood regarding him
curiously, with its pink snout working inquiringly. Buddy had no wish
for the young badger, but, boy-like, he could not resist shying a rock
at it, and at least inspire the creature with some sense of respect.
With a grin, he stepped over toward a spruce log half hidden beneath the
foliage of laurel and wild dewberry bushes. As he stooped down and took
up a small rock, a sight met his eyes that electrified him, causing him
to forget the little animal and to drop the stone as if it had been an
ember. In an instant he had his rifle at readiness. The object upon
which he had his eyes riveted would never have been detected by a lay
mind. But Buddy's little greenish eyes, versed in woodcraft, knew
instantly that the two round holes he had glimpsed meant the presence of
a shotgun! If there is anything that the mountain-born hates worse than
a revenuer, it is a shotgun. They regard this mongrel weapon with a
deep, cordial loathing not to be reconciled. The sight of a shotgun in
the mountains is always a forerunner of deviltry and treachery.
Bud looked around furtively, then he leaned over and with infinite
caution parted the laurel. He recoiled, stung with amazement.
Sap McGill lay close up against the log, with an empty whiskey flask in
his relaxed palm! The boy drew back and his brain began to work with
great rapidity. The last time he had seen Sap he was tumbled in the road
by a bullet at Junction City. McGill was now in ambush; hidden here,
bent upon a killing, and had involuntarily fallen into a drunken
slumber, overcome by liquor, as evidenced by the empty bottle. Then
suddenly Buddy deducted a hypothesis that decided him irrevocably.
McGill could be in waiting for no one other person than his (Buddy's)
brother. McGill was hidden here waiting for Lem to come down the trail,
when he would rise up and send two loads of buckshot into the back of
Lem's head. Buddy's lips tightened fiercely. With a quick, deft movement
he reached over and, taking the shotgun by the muzzle, drew it
noiselessly out to him. Swiftly he broke the gun, extracted the two
shells and placed them in his pocket. He then carefully replaced the gun
in the position he had found it, and stealthily secreted himself behind
a boulder less than thirty feet distant. Here he lay down on his stomach
with his rifle trained through a crevice, over the spot where McGill
lay.
To Buddy's tense nerves the minutes seemed like long hours. He lay so
long in this one position, not daring to move to another shelter, that a
dull aching began to traverse his arm, which he feared would jeopardize
his aim. This was the only position he could command here, where he
could see the log held by McGill and at the same time hold a direct aim.
From where Bud lay he could see the open trail through the gap for a
distance of fifty yards without stirring.
But for McGill to get a glimpse of the path it was necessary for him to
thrust his head far out from his place of concealment. Just at a time
when Bud thought that he must surely risk a change in his position, a
half-dozen razorbacks trotted up from behind. When they saw Bud lying on
the ground in plain view, they uttered a series of affrighted grunts,
and dashed ahead, two of them swerved and jumped over the very log that
hid McGill, and must have come perilously near to jumping squarely upon
him. The next instant McGill's head was thrust stealthfully out of the
laurel, his eyes fixed intently on the scrub cedars that jutted out into
the trail leading down from the Lutts cabin. As McGill waited to waylay
Lem, his life in these minutes hinged upon a seemingly irrelevant and
insignificant act.
The moment that McGill broke his gun and discovered that it had been
tampered with, he would naturally replace the shells. And the instant
that he replaced the shells, Buddy Lutts meant to send a rifle ball into
his brain.
On the eve of leaving his sequestered haunts in the hills, none but the
omniscient Providence could tell for how long, Lem Lutts was loath to
turn his eyes toward the blue-grass country. So it was that he lingered,
feasting his gaze upon the panoramic view that lay beneath Eagle Crown,
every spur and nook and cove and gulch of which he had been familiar
with all his life. With a heaviness weighing his heart, but a
determination unabated, he swept his eyes over the purple distance with
one last farewell, and turning started his descent. His head had
disappeared downward when suddenly, as if in response to a voice, he
halted and, not knowing his own purpose precisely, he climbed back and
stood up on the ledge, sending his gaze afar to the glistening patch of
water that marked the Boon Creek ford; immortalized in his soul, with
the last beckonings of her whom he adored with a flaming, compelling,
deathless love that eclipsed and obliterated all else in life. His gaze
dwelt here for a full minute. Then he turned half-way, then looked
quickly back. Something there had attracted him. With his hand half
raised, he pushed to the brink of the precipice. He now discerned the
burnished coat of a blood-bay horse standing in the ford. Lem's mouth
dropped ajar. As he strained his eyes downward, his breath paused with
the miraculous thought that slowly filtered into his brain. From this
vast, hazy height he could not determine whether the equestrian was male
or female. But an exciting intuition seized his senses as he descried
some object flashing methodically in the sunlight.
Unmistakably the distant rider was waving to him!
Then the signal changed to something white, flaunting against the azure
space, and Lem's heart smote his ribs with a great bound of suffocating
joy, as the influx of a scintillating realization obsessed him, and he
started down that perilous descent faster than he had ever gone in his
life.