is scant affinity between whiskey and water. Nevertheless, in this
connection, Nehemiah Yerby developed an absorbing interest in the
watercourses of the coves and adjacent mountains, especially their more
remote and sequestered tributaries. He shortly made occasion to meet the
county surveyor and ply him with questions touching the topography of
the vicinity, cloaking the real motive under the pretence of an interest
in water-power sufficient and permanent enough for the sawing of lumber,
and professing to contemplate the erection of a saw-mill at the most
eligible point. The surveyor had his especial vanity, and it was
expressed in his frequent boast that he carried a complete map of
the county graven upon his brain; he was wont to esteem it a gracious
opportunity when a casual question in a group of loungers enabled him to
display his familiarity with every portion of his rugged and mountainous
region, which was indeed astonishing, even taking into consideration his
incumbency for a number of terms, aided by a strong head for locality.
Nehemiah Yerby's scheme was incalculably favored by this circumstance,
but he found it unexpectedly difficult to support the figment which he
had propounded as to his intentions. Fiction is one of the fine arts,
and a mere amateur like Nehemiah is apt to fail in point of consistency.
He was inattentive while the surveyor dilated on the probable value,
the accessibility, and the relative height of the “fall” of the various
sites, and their available water-power, and he put irrelevant queries
concerning ineligible streams in other localities. No man comfortably
mounted upon his hobby relishes an interruption. The surveyor would stop
with a sort of bovine surprise, and break out in irritable parenthesis.
“That branch on the t'other side o' Panther Ridge? Why, man alive, that
thread o' water wouldn't turn a spider web.”
Nehemiah, quaking under the glance of his keen questioning eye, would
once more lapse into silence, while the surveyor, loving to do what
he could do well, was lured on in his favorite subject by the renewed
appearance of receptivity in his listener.
“Waal, ez I war a-sayin', I know every furlong o' the creeks once down
in the Cove, an' all their meanderings, an' the best part o' them in the
hills amongst the laurel and the wildernesses. But now the ways of sech
a stream ez Hide-an'-Seek Creek are past finding out. It's a 'sinking
creek,' you know; goes along with a good volume and a swift current for
a while to the west, then disappears into the earth, an' ain't seen fur
five mile, then comes out agin running due north, makes a tre-menjious
jump--the Hoho-hebee Falls--then pops into the ground agin, an' ain't
seen no more forever,” he concluded, dramatically.
“How d'ye know it's the same creek?” demanded Nehemiah, sceptically, and
with a wrinkling brow.
“By settin' somethin' afloat on it before it sinks into the ground--a
piece of marked bark or a shingle or the like--an' finding it agin after
the stream comes out of the caves,” promptly replied the man of the
compass, with a triumphant snap of the eye, as if he entertained a
certain pride in the vagaries of his untamed mountain friend. “Nobody
knows how often it disappears, nor where it rises, nor where it goes at
last. It's got dozens of fust-rate millin' sites, but then it's too fur
off fur you ter think about.”
“Oh no 'tain't!” exclaimed Nehemiah, suddenly.
The surveyor stared. “Why, you ain't thinkin' 'bout movin' up inter the
wilderness ter live, an' ye jes applied fur the post-office down at the
crossroads? Ye can't run the post-office thar an' a sawmill thirty mile
away at the same time.”
Nehemiah was visibly disconcerted. His wrinkled face showed the flush of
discomfiture, but his craft rallied to the emergency.
“Moughtn't git the post-office, arter all's come an' gone. Nothin' is
sartin in this vale o' tears.”
“An' ye air goin' ter take ter the woods ef ye don't?” demanded the
surveyor, incredulously. “Thought ye war goin' ter keep store?”
“Waal, I dun'no'; jes talkin' round,” said Nehemiah, posed beyond
recuperation. “I mus' be a-joggin', ennyhow. Time's a-wastin'.”
As he made off hastily in the direction of his house, for this
conversation had taken place at the blacksmith's shop at the
cross-roads, the surveyor gazed after him much mystified.
“What is that old fox slyin' round after? He ain't studyin' 'bout no
saw-mill, inquirin' round about all the out-o'-the-way water-power in
the ken-try fifty mile from where he b'longs. He's a heap likelier to
be goin' ter start a wild-cat still in them wild places--git his whiskey
cheap ter sell in his store.”
He shook his head sagely once for all, for the surveyor's mind was of
the type prompt in reaching conclusions, and he was difficult to divert
from his convictions.
A feature of the development of craft to a certain degree is the
persuasion that this endowment is not shared. A fine world it would
be if the Nehemiah Yerbys were as clever as they think themselves, and
their neighbors as dull. He readily convinced himself that he had given
no intimation that his objects and motives were other than he professed,
and with unimpaired energy he went to work upon the lines which he had
marked out for himself. A fine chase Hide-and-Seek Creek led him, to be
sure, and it tried his enthusiasms to the uttermost. What affinity
this brawling vagrant had for the briers and the rocks and the tangled
fastnesses! Seldom, indeed, could he press in to its banks and look
down upon its dimpled, laughing, heedless face without the sacrifice of
fragments of flesh and garments left impaled upon the sharp spikes
of the budding shrubs. Often it so intrenched itself amidst the dense
woods, and the rocks and chasms of its craggy banks, that approach was
impossible, and he followed it for miles only by the sound of its wild,
sweet, woodland voice. And this, too, was of a wayward fancy; now, in
turbulent glee among the rocks, riotously chanting aloud, challenging
the echoes, and waking far and near the forest quiet; and again it
was merely a low, restful murmur, intimating deep, serene pools and
a dallying of the currents, lapsed in the fulness of content. Then
Nehemiah Yerby would be beset with fears that he would lose this
whisper, and his progress was slight; he would pause to listen, hearing
nothing; would turn to right, to left; would take his way back
through the labyrinth of the laurel to catch a thread of sound, a mere
crystalline tremor, and once more follow this transient lure. As the
stream came down a gorge at a swifter pace and in a succession of
leaps--a glassy cataract visible here and there, airily sporting with
rainbows, affiliating with ferns and moss and marshy growths, the
bounding spray glittering in the sunshine--it flung forth continuously
tinkling harmonies in clear crystal tones, so penetrating, so definitely
melodic, that more than once, as he paced along on his jaded horse,
he heard in their midst, without disassociating the sounds, the _ping,
pang, ping, pang_, of the violin he so condemned. He drew up at last,
and strained his ear to listen. It did not become more distinct, always
intermingled with the recurrent rhythm of the falling water, but always
vibrating in subdued throbbings, now more acute, now less, as the
undiscriminated melody ascended or descended the scale. It came from the
earth, of this he was sure, and thus he was reminded anew of the caves
which Hide-and-Seek Creek threaded in its long course. There was some
opening near by, doubtless, that led to subterranean passages, dry
enough here, since it was the stream's whim to flow in the open sunshine
instead of underground. He would have given much to search for it had he
dared. His leathery, lean, loose cheek had a glow of excitement upon it;
his small eyes glistened; for the first time in his life, possibly, he
looked young. But he did not doubt that this was the stronghold of the
illicit distillers, of whom one heard so much in the Cove and saw so
little. A lapse of caution, an inconsiderate movement, and he might be
captured and dealt with as a spy and informer.
Nevertheless his discovery was of scant value unless he utilized it
further. He had always believed that his nephew had fled to the secret
haunts of the moonshiners. Now he only knew it the more surely; and what
did this avail him, and how aid in the capture of the recusant clerk and
assistant postmaster? He hesitated a moment; then fixing the spot in his
mind by the falling of a broad crystal sheet of water from a ledge
some forty feet high, by a rotting log at its base that seemed to
rise continually, although the moving cataract appeared motionless,
by certain trees and their relative position, and the blue peaks on a
distant skyey background of a faint cameo yellow, he slowly turned
his horse's rein and took his way out of danger. It was chiefly some
demonstration on the animal's part that he had feared. A snort, a
hoof-beat, a whinny would betray him, and very liable was the animal to
any of these expressions. One realizes how unnecessary is speech for the
exposition of opinion when brought into contradictory relations with
the horse which one rides or drives. All day had this animal snorted his
doubts of his master's sanity; all day had he protested against these
aimless, fruitless rambles; all day had he held back with a high head
and a hard mouth, while whip and spur pressed him through laurel almost
impenetrable, and through crevices of crags almost impassable. For were
there not all the fair roads of the county to pace and gallop upon if
one must needs be out and jogging! Unseen objects, vaguely discerned
to be moving in the undergrowth affrighted the old plough-horse of the
levels--infinitely reassured and whinnying with joyful relief when the
head of horned cattle showed presently as the cause of the commotion. He
would have given much a hundred times that day, and he almost said so
a hundred times, too, to be at home, with the old bull-tongue plough
behind him, running the straight rational furrow in the good bare open
field, so mellow for corn, lying in the sunshine, inviting planting.
“Ef I git ye home wunst more, I'll be bound I'll leave ye thar,”
Nehemiah said, ungratefully, as they wended their way along; for without
the horse he could not have traversed the long distances of his search,
however unwillingly the aid was given.
He annotated his displeasure by a kick in the ribs; and when the old
equine farmer perceived that they were absolutely bound binward, and
that their aberrations were over for the present, he struck a sharp gait
that would have done honor to his youthful days, for he had worn out
several pairs of legs in Nehemiah's fields, and was often spoken of as
being upon the last of those useful extremities. He stolidly shook his
head, which he thought so much better than his master's, and bedtime
found them twenty miles away and at home.
Nehemiah felt scant fatigue. He was elated with his project. He scented
success in the air. It smelled like the season. It too was suffused
with the urgent pungency of the rising sap, with the fragrance of the
wild-cherry, with the vinous promise of the orchard, with the richness
of the mould, with the vagrant perfume of the early flowers.
He lighted a tallow dip, and he sat him down with writing materials at
the bare table to indite a letter while all his household slept. The
windows stood open to the dark night, and Spring hovered about outside,
and lounged with her elbows on the sill, and looked in. He constantly
saw something pale and elusive against the blackness, for there was no
moon, but he thought it only the timid irradiation with which his tallow
dip suffused the blossoming wands of an azalea, growing lithe and
tall hard by. With this witness only he wrote the letter--an anonymous
letter, and therefore he was indifferent to the inadequacies of his
penmanship and his spelling. He labored heavily in its composition, now
and then perpetrating portentous blots. He grew warm, although the fire
that had served to cook supper had long languished under the bank of
ashes. The tallow dip seemed full of caloric, and melted rapidly in
pendulous drippings. He now and again mopped his red face, usually so
bloodless, with his big bandanna handkerchief, while all the zephyrs
were fanning the flying tresses of Spring at the window, and the soft,
sweet, delicately attuned vernal chorus of the marshes were tentatively
running over _sotto voce_ their allotted melodies for the season. Oh,
it was a fine night outside, and why should a moth, soft-winged and
cream-tinted and silken-textured, come whisking in from the dark, as
silently as a spirit, to supervise Nehe-miah Yerby's letter, and travel
up and down the page all befouled with the ink? And as he sought to
save the sense of those significant sentences from its trailing silken
draperies, why should it rise suddenly, circling again and again about
the candle, pass through the flame, and fall in quivering agonies once
more upon the page? He looked at it, dead now, with satisfaction. It had
come so very near ruining his letter--an important letter, describing
the lair of the illicit distillers to a deputy marshal of the revenue
force, who was known to be in a neighboring town. He had good reason
to withhold his signature, for the name of the informer in the ruthless
vengeance of the region would be as much as his life was worth. The
moth had not spoiled the letter--the laborious letter; he was so glad of
that! He saw no analogies, he received not even a subtle warning, as he
sealed and addressed the envelope and affixed the postage-stamp. Then he
snuffed out the candle with great satisfaction.
The next morning the missive was posted, and all Nehemiah Yerby's plans
took a new lease of life. The information he had given would result in
an immediate raid upon the place. Leander would be captured among the
moonshiners, but his youth and his uncle's representations--for he
would give the officers an inkling of the true state of the case--would
doubtless insure the boy's release, and his restoration to those
attractive commercial prospects which had been devised for him.
II
The ordering of events is an intricate process, and to its successful
exploitation a certain degree of sagacious prescience is a prerequisite,
as well as a thorough mastery of the lessons of experience. For a day
or so all went well in the inner consciousness of Nehemiah Yerby. The
letter had satisfied his restless craving for some action toward the
consummation of his ambition, and he had not the foresight to realize
how soon the necessity of following it up would supervene. He first grew
uneasy lest his letter had not reached its destination; then, when the
illimitable field of speculation was thus opened out, he developed an
ingenuity of imagination in projecting possible disaster. Day after
day passed, and he heard naught of his cherished scheme. The
revenuers--craven wretches he deemed them, and he ground his teeth with
rage because of their seeming cowardice in their duty, since their duty
could serve his interests--might not have felt exactly disposed to risk
their lives in these sweet spring days, when perhaps even a man whose
life belongs to the government might be presumed to take some pleasure
in it, by attempting to raid the den of a gang of moonshiners on the
scanty faith of an informer's word, tenuous guaranty at best, and now
couched in an anonymous letter, itself synonym for a lie. Oh, what
fine eulogies rose in his mind upon the manly virtue of courage! How
enthusing it is at all times to contemplate the courage of others!--and
how safe!
Then a revulsion of belief ensued, and he began to fear that they might
already have descended upon their quarry, and with all their captives
have returned to the county town by the road by which they came--nearer
than the route through the crossroads, though far more rugged. Why had
not this possibility before occurred to him! He had so often prefigured
their triumphant advent into the hamlet with all their guarded and
shackled prisoners, the callow Leander in the midst, and his own
gracefully enacted rôle of virtuous, grief-stricken, pleading
relative, that it seemed a recollection--something that had really
happened--rather than the figment of anticipation. But no word, no
breath of intimation, had ruffled the serenity of the crossroads. The
calm, still, yellow sunshine day by day suffused the land like the
benignities of a dream--almost too good to be true. Every man with the
heart of a farmer within him was at the plough-handles, and making the
most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast
of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence
of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world
might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's
own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old
horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and
start at last of his own motion, dragging the plough, the share still
unanchored in the ground, half across the field before he could be
stopped. The vagaries of these “lands” that the absent-minded Nehemiah
laid off attracted some attention.
“What ails yer furrows ter run so crooked, Nehemiah?” observed a
passer-by, a neighbor who had been to the blacksmith-shop to get his
plough-point sharpened; he looked over the fence critically. “Yer
eyesight mus' be failin' some.”
“I dun'no',” rejoined Nehemiah, hastily. Then reverting to his own
absorption. “War it you-uns ez I hearn say thar war word kem ter the
crossroads 'bout some revenuers raid in' 'round some-whar in the woods?”
The look of surprise cast upon him seemed to his alert anxiety to
betoken suspicion. “Laws-a-massy, naw!” exclaimed his interlocutor. “Ye
air the fust one that hev named sech ez that in these diggin's, fur I'd
hev hearn tell on it, sure, ef thar hed been enny sech word goin' the
rounds.”
Nehemiah recoiled into silence, and presently his neighbor went
whistling on his way. He stood motionless for a time, until the man was
well out of sight, then he began to hastily unhitch the plough-gear.
His resolution was taken. He could wait no longer. For aught he knew the
raiders might have come and gone, and be now a hundred miles away with
their prisoners to stand their trial in the Federal court, his schemes
might have all gone amiss, leaving him in naught the gainer. He could
rest in uncertainty no more. He feared to venture further questions
when no rumor stirred the air. They rendered him doubly liable
to suspicion--to the law-abiding as a possible moonshiner, to any
sympathizer with the distillers as a probable informer. He determined to
visit the spot, and there judge how the enterprise had fared.
When next he heard that fine sylvan symphony of the sound of the falling
water--the tinkling bell-like tremors of its lighter tones mingling with
the sonorous, continuous, deeper theme rising from its weight and
volume and movement; with the surging of the wind in the pines; with
the occasional cry of a wild bird deep in the new verdure of the forests
striking through the whole with a brilliant, incidental, detached
effect--no faint vibration was in its midst of the violin's string,
listen as he might. More than once he sought to assure himself that he
heard it, but his fancy failed to respond to his bidding, although again
and again he took up his position where it had before struck his ear.
The wild minstrelsy of the woods felt no lack, and stream and wind
and harping pine and vagrant bird lifted their voices in their wonted
strains. He could hardly accept the fact; he would verify anew the
landmarks he had made and again return to the spot, his hat in his hand,
his head bent low, his face lined with anxiety and suspense. No sound,
no word, no intimation of human presence. The moonshiners were doubtless
all gone long ago, betrayed into captivity, and Leander with them. He
had so hardened his heart toward his recalcitrant young kinsman and his
Sudley friends, he felt so entirely that in being among the moonshiners
Leander had met only his deserts in coming to the bar of Federal
justice, that he would have experienced scant sorrow if the nephew had
not carried off with his own personality his uncle's book-keeper and
postmaster's clerk. And so--alas, for Leander! As he meditated on the
untoward manner in which he had overshot his target, this marksman
of fate forgot the caution which had distinguished his approach, for
hitherto it had been as heedful as if he fully believed the lion still
in his den. He slowly patrolled the bank below the broad, thin, crystal
sheet, seeing naught but its rainbow hovering elusively in the sun, and
its green and white skein-like draperies pendulous before the great dark
arch over which the cataract fell. The log caught among the rocks in
the spray at the base was still there, seeming always to rise while the
restless water seemed motionless.
No trace that human beings had ever invaded these solitudes could he
discover. No vague, faint suggestion of the well-hidden lair of the
moonshiners did the wild covert show forth. “The revenuers war smarter'n
me; I'll say that fur 'em,” he muttered at last as he came to a
stand-still, his chin in his hand, his perplexed eyes on the ground. And
suddenly--a footprint on a marshy spot; only the heel of a boot, for the
craggy ledges hid all the ground but this, a mere sediment of sand in
a tiny hollow in the rock from which the water had evaporated. It was a
key' to the mystery. Instantly the rugged edges of the cliff took on the
similitude of a path. Once furnished with this idea, he could perceive
adequate footing all adown the precipitous way. He was not young; his
habits had been inactive, and were older even than his age. He could
not account for it afterward, but he followed for a few paces this
suggestion of a path down the precipitous sides of the stream. He had
a sort of triumph in finding it so practicable, and he essayed it still
farther, although the sound of the water had grown tumultuous at closer
approach, and seemed to foster a sort of responsive turmoil of the
senses; he felt his head whirl as he looked at the bounding, frothing
spray, then at the long swirls of the current at the base of the fall
as they swept on their way down the gorge. As he sought to lift his
fascinated eyes, the smooth glitter of the crystal sheet of falling
water so close before him dazzled his sight. He wondered afterward how
his confused senses and trembling limbs sustained him along the narrow,
rugged path, here and there covered with oozing green moss, and slippery
with the continual moisture. It evidently was wending to a ledge. All at
once the contour of the place was plain to him; the ledge led behind
the cataract that fell from the beetling heights above. And within were
doubtless further recesses, where perchance the moonshiners had worked
their still. As he reached the ledge he could see behind the falling
water and into the great concave space which it screened beneath the
beetling cliff. It was as he had expected--an arched portal of jagged
brown rocks, all dripping with moisture and oozing moss, behind the
semi-translucent green-and-white drapery of the cascade.
But he had not expected to see, standing quietly in the great vaulted
entrance, a man with his left hand on a pistol in his belt, the mate of
which his more formidable right hand held up with a steady finger on the
trigger.
This much Nehemiah beheld, and naught else, for the glittering profile
of the falls, visible now only aslant, the dark, cool recess beyond,
that menacing motionless figure at the vanishing-point of the
perspective, all blended together in an indistinguishable whirl as his
senses reeled. He barely retained consciousness enough to throw up both
his hands in token of complete submission. And then for a moment he knew
no more. He was still leaning motionless against the wall of rock when
he became aware that the man was sternly beckoning to him to continue
his approach. His dumb lips moved mechanically in response, but any
sound must needs have been futile indeed in the pervasive roar of the
waters. He felt that he had hardly strength for another step along
the precipitous way, but there is much tonic influence in a beckoning
revolver, and few men are so weak as to be unable to obey its behests.
Poor Nehemiah tottered along as behooved him, leaving all the world,
liberty, volition, behind him as the descending sheet of water fell
between him and the rest of life and shut him off.
“That's it, my leetle man! I thought you could make it!” were the first
words he could distinguish as he joined the mountaineer beneath the
crag.