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THE ROOF TREE


  [Illustration: "_She stood there a little shyly at first; as slender
  and as gracefully upright as a birch_"]




THE ROOF TREE

BY
CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK


ILLUSTRATED
BY
LEE F. CONREY


GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921




BOOKS BY
CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

BATTLE CRY, THE
CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS, THE
CODE OF THE MOUNTAINS, THE
DESTINY
KEY TO YESTERDAY, THE
LIGHTED MATCH, THE
PAGAN OF THE HILLS, A
PORTAL OF DREAMS, THE
ROOF TREE, THE
TEMPERING, THE
TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS, THE
WHEN BEAR CAT WENT DRY




COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN




_With the wish that it were a richer
and worthier tribute, this book is
lovingly and gratefully dedicated_

_TO MY WIFE_




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"She stood there a little shyly at first; as slender and as gracefully
upright as a birch"                                       _Frontispiece_

                                                             FACING PAGE

"'Hit almost seems like,' she whispered, 'that ther old tree's
got a spell in hit--ter bewitch folks with'"                          66

"Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an ordeal, started
and almost let the leaning bridegroom fall"                          114

"Dorothy flashed past him ... and a few seconds later he heard the
clean-lipped snap of the rifle in a double report"                   186




THE ROOF TREE




CHAPTER I


Between the smoke-darkened walls of the mountain cabin still murmured
the last echoes of the pistol's bellowing, and it seemed a voice of
everlasting duration to the shock-sickened nerves of those within.

First it had thundered with the deafening exaggeration of confined
space, then its echo had beaten against the clay-chink wall timbers and
rolled upward to the rafters. Now, dwindled to a ghostly whisper, it
lingered and persisted.

But the house stood isolated, and outside the laurelled forests and
porous cliffs soaked up the dissonance as a blotter soaks ink.

The picture seen through the open door, had there been any to see, was
almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with
murky shadows against a fitful light. A ray of the setting sun forced
its inquisitive way inward upon the semi-darkness of the interior. A red
wavering from the open hearth, where supper preparations had been going
forward, threw unsteady patches of fire reflection outward. In the
pervading smell of dead smoke from a blackened chimney hung the more
pungent sharpness of freshly burned gun-powder, and the man standing
near the door gazed downward, with a dazed stare, at the floor by his
feet, where lay the pistol which gave forth that acrid stench.

Across from him in the dead silence--dead save for the lingering of the
echo's ghost--stood the woman, her hands clutched to her thin bosom, her
eyes stunned and dilated, her body wavering on legs about to buckle in
collapse.

On the puncheon floor between them stretched the woman's husband. The
echo had outlasted his life and, because the muzzle had almost touched
his breast, he sprawled in a dark welter that was still spreading.

His posture was so uncouth and grotesque as to filch from death its
rightful dignity, and his face was turned downward.

The interminability of the tableau existed only in the unfocussed minds
of the two living beings to whom the consequence of this moment was not
measurable in time. Then from the woman's parted lips came a long,
strangling moan that mounted to something like a muffled shriek. She
remained a moment rocking on her feet, then wheeled and stumbled toward
the quilt-covered four-poster bed in one dark corner of the cabin. Into
its feather billows she flung herself and lay with her fingernails
digging into her temples and her body racked with the incoherencies of
hysteria.

The man stooped to pick up the pistol and walked slowly over to the
rough table where he laid it down noiselessly, as though with that
quietness he were doing something to offset the fatal blatancy with
which it had just spoken. He looked down at the lifeless figure with
burning eyes entirely devoid of pity, then went with a soundless tread,
in spite of his heavy-soled boots, to the bed and spoke softly to the
woman--who was his sister.

"Ye've got ter quit weepin' fer a spell, honey," he announced with a
tense authority which sought to recall her to herself. "I'm obleeged ter
take flight right speedily now, an' afore I goes thar's things ter be
studied out an' sottled betwixt us."

But the half-stifled moan that came from the feather bed was a voice of
collapse and chaos, to which speech was impossible.

So the brother lifted her in arms that remained unshaken and sat on the
edge of the bed looking into her eyes with an almost hypnotic
forcefulness.

"Ef ye don't hearken ter me now, I'm bound ter tarry till ye does," he
reminded her, "an' I'm in right tormentin' haste. Hit means life and
death ter me."

As if groping her tortured way back from pits of madness, the woman
strove to focus her senses, but her wild eyes encountered the dark and
crumpled mass on the floor and again a low shriek broke from her. She
turned her horrified face away and surrendered to a fresh paroxysm, but
at length she stammered between gasps that wrenched her tightened
throat:

"Kiver him up first, Ken. Kiver him up ... I kain't endure ter look at
him thetaway!"

Although the moments were pricelessly valuable, the man straightened the
contorted limbs of the dead body and covered it decently with a quilt.
Then he stood again by the bed.

"Ef I'd got hyar a minute sooner, Sally," he said, slowly, and there was
a trace of self-accusation in his voice, "hit moutn't hev happened. I
war jest a mite too tardy--but I knows ye hed ter kill him. I knows ye
acted in self-defence."

From the bed came again the half-insane response of hysterical moaning,
and the young mountaineer straightened his shoulders.

"His folks," he said in a level voice, "won't skeercely listen ter no
reason.... They'll be hell-bent on makin' somebody pay.... They'll plum
hev ter hang SOME person, an' hit kain't be _you_."

The woman only shuddered and twisted spasmodically as she lay there
while her brother went doggedly on:

"Hit kain't be _you_ ... with yore baby ter be borned, Sally. Hit's been
punishment enough fer ye ter endure him this long ... ter hev been
wedded with a brute ... but ther child's got hits life ter live ... an'
hit kain't be borned in no jail house!"

"I reckon--" the response came weakly from the heaped-up covers--"I
reckon hit's _got_ ter be thetaway, Ken."

"By God, no! Yore baby's got ter w'ar a bad man's name--but hit'll hev a
good woman's blood in hits veins. They'll low I kilt him, Sally. Let 'em
b'lieve hit. I hain't got no woman nor no child of my own ter think
erbout ... I kin git away an' start fresh in some other place. I loves
ye, Sally, but even more'n thet, I'm thinkin' of thet child thet hain't
borned yit--a child thet hain't accountable fer none of this."

       *       *       *       *       *

That had been yesterday.

Now, Kenneth Thornton, though that was not to be his name any longer,
stood alone near the peak of a divide, and the mists of early morning
lay thick below him. They obliterated, under their dispiriting gray, the
valleys and lower forest-reaches, and his face, which was young and
resolutely featured, held a kindred mood of shadowing depression.
Beneath that miasma cloak of morning fog twisted a river from which the
sun would strike darts of laughing light--when the sun had routed the
opaqueness suspended between night and day.

In the clear gray eyes of the man were pools of laughter, too, but now
they were stilled and shaded under bitter reflections.

Something else stretched along the hidden river-bed, but even the
mid-day light would give it no ocular marking. That something which the
eye denied and the law acknowledged meant more to this man, who had
slipped the pack from his wearied shoulders, than did the river or the
park-like woods that hedged the river.

There ran the border line between the State of Virginia and the State of
Kentucky and he would cross it when he crossed the river.

So the stream became a Rubicon to him, and on the other side he would
leave behind him the name of Kenneth Thornton and take up the less
damning one of Cal Maggard.

He had the heels of his pursuers and, once across the state line, he
would be beyond their grasp until the Sheriff's huntsmen had whistled in
their pack and gone grumbling back to conform with the law's intricate
requirements. At that point the man-hunt fell into another jurisdiction
and extradition papers would involve correspondence between a governor
at Richmond and a governor at Frankfort.

During such an interlude the fugitive hoped with confidence to have lost
himself in a taciturn and apathetic wilderness of peak-broken land where
his discovery would be as haphazard an undertaking as the accurate
aiming of a lightning bolt.

But mere escape from courts and prisons does not assure full measure of
content. He had heard all his life that this border line separated the
sheep of his own nativity from the goats of a meaner race, and to this
narrow tenet he had given unquestioning belief.

"I disgusts Kaintuck'!" exclaimed the refugee half aloud as his strong
hands clenched themselves, one hanging free and the other still grasping
the rifle which as yet he had no intent of laying aside. "I plum
disgusts Kaintuck'!"

The sun was climbing now and its pallid disk was slowly flushing to the
wakefulness of fiery rose. The sky overhead was livening to turquoise
light and here and there along the upper slopes were gossamer dashes of
opal and amethyst, but this beauty of unveiling turrets and gold-touched
crests was lost on eyes in which dwelt a nightmare from which there was
no hope of awakening.

To-day the sparsely settled countryside that he had put behind him would
buzz with a wrath like that of swarming bees along its creek-bed roads,
and the posse would be out. To-day also he would be far over in
Kentucky.

"I mout hev' tarried thar an' fronted hit out," he bitterly reflected,
"fer God in Heaven knows he needed killin'!" But there he broke off into
a bitter laugh.

"God in Heaven knows hit ... _I_ knows hit an' _she_ knows hit, but
nairy another soul don't know an' ef they did hit wouldn't skeercely
make no differ."

He threw back his head and sought to review the situation through the
eyes of others and to analyze it all as an outsider would analyze it. To
his simplicity of nature came no thought that the assumption of a guilt
not his own was a generous or heroic thing.

His sister's pride had silenced her lips as to the brutality of this
husband whose friends in that neighbourhood were among the little czars
of influence. Her suffering under an endless reign of terror was a
well-kept secret which only her brother shared. The big, crudely
handsome brute had been "jobial" and suave of manner among his fellows
and was held in favourable esteem. Only a day or two ago, when the
brother had remonstrated in a low voice against some recent cruelty, the
husband's wrath had blazed out. Witnesses to that wordy encounter had
seen Thornton go white with a rage that was ominous and then bite off
his unspoken retort and turn away. Those witnesses had not heard what
was first said and had learned only what was revealed in the indignant
husband's raised voice at the end.

"Don't aim ter threaten me, Ken. I don't suffer no man ter do thet--an'
don't never darken my door henceforward."

Now it must seem that Thornton had not only threatened but executed, and
no one would suspect the wife.

He saw in his mind's eye the "High Court" that would try the alleged
slayer of John Turk; a court dominated by the dead man's friends; a
court where witnesses and jurors would be terror-blinded against the
defendant and where a farce would be staged: a sacrifice offered up.

There had been in that log house three persons. One of them was dead and
his death would speak for him with an eloquence louder than any living
tongue. There were, also, the woman and Thornton himself. Between them
must lie the responsibility. Conscientiously the fugitive summarized the
circumstances as the prosecution would marshal and present them.

A man had been shot. On the table lay a pistol with one empty "hull" in
its chamber. The woman was the dead man's wife, not long since a bride
and shortly to become the mother of his child. If she had been the
murdered man's deadly enemy why had she not left him; why had she not
complained? But the brother had been heard to threaten the husband only
a day or two since. He was in the dead man's house, after being
forbidden to shadow its threshold.

"Hell!" cried Thornton aloud. "Ef I stayed she'd hev ter come inter
C'ote an' sw'ar either fer me or ergin me--an' like es not, she'd break
down an' confess. Anyhow, ef they put her in ther jail-house I reckon
ther child would hev hits bornin' thar. Hell--no!"

He turned once more to gaze on the vague cone of a mountain that stood
uplifted above its fellows far behind him. He had started his journey at
its base. Then he looked westward where ridge after ridge, emerging now
into full summer greenery, went off in endless billows to the sky, and
he went down the slope toward the river on whose other side he was to
become another man.

Kenneth Thornton was pushing his way West, the quarry of a man-hunt, but
long before him another Kenneth Thornton had come from Virginia to
Kentucky, an ancestor so far lost in the mists of antiquity that his
descendant had never heard of him; and that man, too, had been making a
sacrifice.




CHAPTER II


Sprung from a race which had gone to seed like plants in a
long-abandoned garden, once splendid and vigorous, old Caleb Harper was
a patriarchal figure nearing the sunset of his life.

His forebears had been mountaineers of the Kentucky Cumberlands since
the vanguard of white life had ventured westward from the seaboard. From
pioneers who had led the march of progress that stock had relapsed into
the decay of mountain-hedged isolation and feudal lawlessness, but here
and there among the wastage, like survivors over the weed-choked garden
of neglect, emerged such exceptions as Old Caleb; paradoxes of rudeness
and dignity, of bigotry and nobility.

Caleb's house stood on the rising ground above the river, a substantial
structure grown by occasional additions from the nucleus that his
ancestor Caleb Parish had founded in revolutionary times, and it marked
a contrast with its less provident neighbours. Many cabins scattered
along these slopes were dismal and makeshift abodes which appeared to
proclaim the despair and squalor of their builders and occupants.

Just now a young girl stood in the large unfurnished room that served
the house as an attic--and she held a folded paper in her hand.

She had drawn out of its dusty corner a small and quaintly shaped
horsehide trunk upon which, in spots, the hair still adhered. The
storage-room that could furnish forth its mate must be one whose
proprietors held inviolate relics of long-gone days, for its like has
not been made since the life of America was slenderly strung along the
Atlantic seaboard and the bison ranged about his salt licks east of the
Mississippi.

Into the lock the girl fitted a cumbersome brass key and then for a long
minute she stood there breathing the forenoon air that eddied in
currents of fresh warmth. The June sunlight came, too, in a golden flood
and the soft radiance of it played upon her hair and cheeks.

Outside, almost brushing the eaves with the plumes of its farthest flung
branches, stood a gigantic walnut tree whose fresh leafage filtered a
mottling of sunlight upon the age-tempered walls.

The girl herself, in her red dress, was slim and colourful enough and
dewy-fresh enough to endure the searching illumination of the June
morning.

Dark hair crowned the head that she threw back to gaze upward into the
venerable branches of the tree, and her eyes were as dark as her hair
and as deep as a soft night sky.

Over beetling summits and sunlit valley the girl's glance went lightly
and contentedly, but when it came back to nearer distances it dwelt with
an absorbed tenderness on the gnarled old veteran of storm-tested
generations that stood there before the house: the walnut which the
people of her family had always called the "roof tree" because some
fanciful grandmother had so named it in the long ago.

"I reckon ye're safe now, old roof tree," she murmured, for to her the
tree was human enough to deserve actual address, and as she spoke she
sighed as one sighs who is relieved of an old anxiety.

Then, recalled to the mission that had brought her here, she thought of
the folded paper that she held in her hand.

So she drew the ancient trunk nearer to the window and lifted its
cover.

It was full of things so old that she paused reverently before handling
them.

Once the grandmother who had died when she was still a small child had
allowed her to glimpse some of these ancient treasures but memory was
vague as to their character.

Both father and mother were shadowy and half-mythical beings of hearsay
to her, because just before her birth her father had been murdered from
ambush. The mother had survived him only long enough to bring her baby
into the world and then die broken-hearted because the child was not a
boy whom she might suckle from the hatred in her own breast and rear as
a zealot dedicated to avenging his father.

The chest had always held for this girl intriguing possibilities of
exploration which had never been satisfied. The gentle grandfather had
withheld the key until she should be old enough to treat with respect
those sentimental odds and ends which his women-folk had held sacred,
and when the girl herself had "grown up"--she was eighteen now--some
whimsey of clinging to the illusions and delights of anticipation had
stayed her and held the curb upon her curiosity. Once opened the old
trunk would no longer beckon with its mystery, and in this isolated life
mysteries must not be lightly wasted.

But this morning old Caleb Harper had prosaically settled the question
for her. He had put that paper into her hand before he went over the
ridge to the cornfield with his mule and plow.

"Thet thar paper's right p'intedly valuable, leetle gal," he had told
her. "I wants ye ter put hit away safe somewhars." He had paused there
and then added reflectively, "I reckon ther handiest place would be in
ther old horsehide chist thet our fore-parents fetched over ther
mountings from Virginny."

She had asked no questions about the paper itself because, to her, the
opening of the trunk was more important, but she heard the old man
explaining, unasked:

"I've done paid off what I owes Bas Rowlett an' thet paper's a full
receipt. I knows right well he's my trusty friend, an' hit's my notion
thet he's got his hopes of bein' even more'n thet ter _you_--but still a
debt sets mighty heavy on me, be hit ter friend or foe, an' hit
pleasures me thet hit's sottled."

The girl passed diplomatically over the allusion to herself and the
elder's expression of favour for a particular suitor, but without words
she had made the mental reservation: "Bas Rowlett's brash and uppety
enough withouten us bein' beholden ter him fer no money debt. Like as
not he'll be more humble-like a'tter this when he comes a-sparkin'."

Now she sat on a heavy cross-beam and looked down upon the packed
contents while into her nostrils crept subtly the odour of old herbs and
spicy defences against moth and mould which had been renewed from time
to time through the lagging decades until her own day.

First, there came out a soft package wrapped in a threadbare shawl and
carefully bound with home-twisted twine and this she deposited on her
knees and began to unfasten with trembling fingers of expectancy. When
she had opened up the thing she rose eagerly and shook out a gown that
was as brittle and sere as a leaf in autumn and that rustled frigidly as
the stiffened folds straightened.

"I'll wager now, hit war a _weddin'_ dress," she exclaimed as she held
it excitedly up to the light and appraised the fineness of the ancient
silk with eyes more accustomed to homespun.

Then came something flat that fell rustling to the floor and spread into
a sheaf of paper bound between home-made covers of cloth, but when the
girl opened the improvised book, with the presentiment that here was
the message out of the past that would explain the rest, she knitted her
brows and sat studying it in perplexed engrossment.

The ink had rusted, in the six score years and more since its
inscribing, to a reddish faintness which shrank dimly and without
contrast into the darkened background, yet difficulties only whetted her
discoverer's appetite, so that when, after an hour, she had studied out
the beginning of the document, she was deep in a world of
romance-freighted history. Here was a journal written by a woman in the
brave and tragic days of the nation's birth.

That part which she was now reading seemed to be a sort of preamble to
the rest, and before the girl had progressed far she found a sentence
which, for her, infused life and the warmth of intimacy into the
document.

"It may be that God in His goodenesse will call me to His house which is
in Heaven before I have fully written ye matters which I would sett
downe in this journall," began the record. "Since I can not tell whether
or not I shall survive ye cominge of that new life upon which all my
thoughtes are sett and shoulde such judgement be His Wille, I want that
ye deare childe shall have this recorde of ye days its father and I
spent here in these forest hills so remote from ye sea and ye rivers of
our deare Virginia, and ye gentle refinements we put behind us to become
pioneers."

There was something else there that she could not make out because of
its blurring, and she wondered if the blotted pages had been moistened
by tears as well as ink, but soon she deciphered this unusual statement.

"Much will be founde in this journall, touching ye tree which I planted
in ye first dayes and which we have named ye roofe tree after a fancy of
my owne. I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and
growes stronge and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem
and branches of our family also will waxe stronge and robust, but that
when it falls, likewise will disaster fall upon our house."

One thing became at once outstandingly certain to the unsophisticated
reader.

This place in the days of its founding had been an abode of love
unshaken by perils, for of the man who had been its head she found such
a portrait as love alone could have painted. He was described as to the
modelling of his features, the light and expression of his eyes; the way
his dark hair fell over his "broade browe"--even the cleft of his chin
was mentioned.

That fondly inspired pen paused in its narrative of incredible
adventures and more than Spartan hardships to assure the future reader
that, "ye peale of his laugh was as clear and tuneful as ye fox horn
with which our Virginia gentry were wont to go afield with horse and
hound." There had possibly been a touch of wistfulness in that mention
of a renounced life of greater affluence and pleasure for hard upon it
followed the observation:

"Here, where our faces are graven with anxieties that besette our waking
and sleeping, it seemeth that most men have forgotten ye very fashion of
laughter. Joy seemes killed out of them, as by a bitter frost, yet _he_
hath ever kept ye clear peale of merriment in his voice and its flash in
his eye and ye smile that showes his white teeth."

Somehow the girl seemed to see that face as though it had a more direct
presentment before her eyes than this faded portraiture of words penned
by a hand long ago dead.

He must have been, she romantically reflected, a handsome figure of a
man. Then naïvely the writer had passed on to a second description: "If
I have any favour of comeliness it can matter naught to me save as it
giveth pleasure to my deare husbande, yet I shall endeavour to sette
downe truly my own appearance alsoe."

The girl read and re-read the description of this ancestress, then
gasped.

"Why, hit mout be _me_ she was a-writin' erbout," she murmured, "save
only I hain't purty."

In that demure assertion she failed of justice to herself, but her eyes
were sparkling. She knew that hereabout in this rude world of hers her
people were accounted both godly and worthy of respect, but after all it
was a drab and poverty-ridden world with slow and torpid pulses of
being. Here, she found, in indisputable proof, the record of her
"fore-parents". Once they, too, had been ladies and gentlemen familiar
with elegant ways and circumstances as vague to her as fable. Henceforth
when she boasted that hers were "ther best folk in ther world" she would
speak not in empty defiance but in full confidence!

But as she rose at length from her revery she wondered if after all she
had not been actually dreaming, because a sound had come to her ears
that was unfamiliar and that seemed of a piece with her reading. It was
the laugh of a man, and its peal was as clear and as merry as the note
of a fox horn.

The girl was speedily at the window looking out, and there by the
roadside stood her grandfather in conversation with a stranger.

He was a tall young man and though plainly a mountaineer there was a
declaration of something distinct in the character of his clothing and
the easy grace of his bearing. Instead of the jeans overalls and the
coatless shoulders to which she was accustomed, she saw a white shirt
and a dark coat, dust-stained and travel-soiled, yet proclaiming a
certain predilection toward personal neatness.

The traveller had taken off his black felt hat as he talked and his
black hair fell in a long lock over his broad, low forehead. He was
smiling, too, and she caught the flash of white teeth and even--since
the distance was short--the deep cleft of his firm chin.

Framed there at the window the girl caught her hands to her breast and
exclaimed in a stifled whisper, "Land o' Canaan! He's jest walked spang
outen them written pages--he's ther spittin' image of that man my dead
and gone great-great-great-gran'-mammy married."

It was at that instant that the young man looked up and for a moment
their eyes met. The stranger's words halted midway in their utterance
and his lips remained for a moment parted, then he recovered his
conversational balance and carried forward his talk with the gray-beard.

The girl drew back into the shadow, but she stood watching until he had
gone and the bend in the road hid him. Then she placed the receipt that
had brought her to the attic in the old manuscript, marking the place
where her reading had been interrupted, and after locking the trunk ran
lightly down the stairs.

"Gran'pap," she breathlessly demanded, "I seed ye a-talkin' with a
stranger out thar. Did ye find out who _is_ he?"

"He give ther name of Cal Maggard," answered the old man, casually, as
he crumbled leaf tobacco into his pipe. "He lows he's going ter dwell in
ther old Burrell Thornton house over on ther nigh spur of Defeated
Creek."

       *       *       *       *       *

That night while the patriarch dozed in his hickory withed chair with
his pipe drooping from his wrinkled lips his granddaughter slipped
quietly out of the house and went over to the tree.

Out there magic was making under an early summer moon that clothed the
peaks in silvery softness and painted shadows of cobalt in the hollows.
The river flashed its response and crooned its lullaby, and like
children answering the maternal voice, the frogs gave chorus and the
whippoorwills called plaintively from the woods.

The branches of the great walnut were etched against a sky that would
have been bright with stars were it not that the moon paled them, and
she gazed up with a hand resting lightly on the broad-girthed bole of
the stalwart veteran. Often she had wondered why she loved this
particular tree so much. It had always seemed to her a companion, a
guardian, a personality, when its innumerable fellows in the forest
were--nothing but trees.

Now she knew. She had only failed to understand the language with which
it had spoken to her from childhood, and all the while, when the wind
had made every leaf a whispering tongue, it had been trying to tell her
many ancient stories.

"I knows, now, old roof tree," she murmured. "I've done found out erbout
ye," and her hand patted the close-knit bark.

Then, in the subtle influence of the moonlight and the night that awoke
all the young fires of dreaming, she half closed her eyes and seemed to
see a woman who looked like herself yet who--in the phantasy of that
moment--was arrayed in a gown of silk and small satin slippers, looking
up into the eyes of a man whose hair was dark and whose chin was cleft
and whose smile flashed upon white teeth. Only as the dream took hold
upon her its spirit changed and the other woman seemed to be herself and
the man seemed to be the one whom she had glimpsed to-day.

Then her reveries were broken. In the shallow water of the ford down at
the river splashed a horse's hoofs and she heard a voice singing in the
weird falsetto of mountain minstrelsy an old ballade which, like much
else of the life there, was a heritage from other times.

So the girl brushed an impatient hand over rudely awakened eyes and
turned back to the door, knowing that Bas Rowlett had come sparking.




CHAPTER III


It was a distraite maiden who greeted the visiting swain that night and
one so inattentive to his wooing that his silences became long, under
discouragement, and his temper sullen. Earlier than was his custom he
bade her good-night and took himself moodily away.

Then Dorothy Harper kindled a lamp and hastened to the attic where she
sat with her head bowed over the old diary while the house, save for
herself, slept and the moon rode down toward the west.

Often her eyes wandered away from the bone-yellow pages of the ancient
document and grew pensive in dreamy meditation. This record was opening,
for her, the door of intimately wrought history upon the past of her
family and her nation when both had been in their bravest youth.

She did not read it all nor even a substantial part of it because
between scraps of difficult perusal came long and alluring intervals of
easy revery. Had she followed its sequence more steadily many things
would have been made manifest to her which she only came to know later,
paying for the knowledge with a usury of experience and suffering.

Yet since that old diary not only set out essential matters in the lives
of her ancestors but also things integral and germane to her own life
and that of the stranger who had to-day laughed in the road, it may be
as well to take note of its contents.

The quaint phrasing of the writer may be discarded and only the
substance which concerned her narrative taken into account, for her
sheaf of yellow pages was a door upon the remote reaches of the past,
yet a past which this girl was not to find a thing ended and buried but
rather a ghost that still walked and held a continuing dominion.

In those far-off days when the Crown still governed us there had stood
in Virginia a manor house built of brick brought overseas from England.

In it Colonel John Parish lived as had his father, and in it he died in
those stirring times of a nation's painful birth. He had been old and
stubborn and his emotions were so mixed between conflicting loyalties
that the pain of his hard choice hastened his end. Tradition tells that,
on his deathbed, his emaciated hand clutched at a letter from Washington
himself, but that just at the final moment his eyes turned toward the
portrait of the King which still hung above his mantel shelf, and that
his lips shaped reverent sentiments as he died.

Later that same day his two sons met in the wainscoted room hallowed by
their father's books and filled with his lingering spirit--a library
noted in a land where books were still few enough to distinguish their
owner.

Between them, even in this hour of common bereavement, stood a coolness,
an embarrassment which must be faced when two men, bound by blood, yet
parted by an unconfessed feud, arrive at the parting of their ways.

Though he had been true to every requirement of honour and punctilio,
John the elder had never entirely recovered from the wound he had
suffered when Dorothy Calmer had chosen his younger brother Caleb
instead of himself. He had indeed never quite been able to forgive it.

"So soon as my father has been laid to rest, I purpose to repair to
Mount Vernon," came the thoughtful words of the younger brother as their
interview, which had been studiedly courteous but devoid of warmth
ended, and the elder halted, turning on the threshold to listen.

"There was, as you may recall, a message in General Washington's letter
to my father indicating that an enterprise of moment awaited my
undertaking," went on Caleb. "I should be remiss if I failed of prompt
response."

       *       *       *       *       *

Kentucky! Until the fever of war with Great Britain had heated man's
blood to the exclusion of all else Virginia had rung with that name.

La Salle had ventured there in the century before, seeking a mythical
river running west to China. Boone and the Long Hunters had trod the
trails of mystery and brought back corroborative tales of wonder and
Ophir richness.

Of these things, General Washington and Captain Caleb Parish were
talking on a day when the summer afternoon held its breath in hot and
fragrant stillness over the house at Mount Vernon.

On a map the general indicated the southward running ranges of the
Alleghanies, and the hinterland of wilderness.

"Beyond that line," he said, gravely, "lies the future! Those who have
already dared the western trails and struck their roots into the soil
must not be deserted, sir. They are fiercely self-reliant and
liberty-loving, but if they be not sustained we risk their loyalty and
our back doors will be thrown open to defeat."

Parish bowed. "And I, sir," he questioned, "am to stand guard in these
forests?"

George Washington swept out his hand in a gesture of reluctant
affirmation.

"Behind the mountains our settlers face a long purgatory of peril and
privation, Captain Parish," came the sober response. "Without powder,
lead, and salt, they cannot live. The ways must be held open.
Communication must remain intact. Forts must be maintained--and the two
paths are here--and here."

His finger indicated the headwaters of the Ohio and the ink-marked spot
where the steep ridges broke at Cumberland Gap.

Parish's eyes narrowed painfully as he stood looking over the stretches
of Washington's estate. The vista typified many well-beloved things that
he was being called upon to leave behind him--ordered acres, books, the
human contacts of kindred association. It was when he thought of his
young wife and his daughter that he flinched. 'Twould go hard with them,
who had been gently nurtured.

"Do women and children go, too?" inquired Parish, brusquely.

"There are women and children there," came the swift reply. "We seek to
lay foundations of permanence and without the family we build on
quicksand."

       *       *       *       *       *

Endless barriers of wilderness peaks rose sheer and forbidding about a
valley through which a narrow river flashed its thin loop of water. Down
the steep slopes from a rain-darkened sky hung ragged fringes of
cloud-streamer and fog-wraith.

Toward a settlement, somewhere westward through the forest, a drenched
and travel-sore cortège was plodding outward. A handful of lean and
briar-infested cattle stumbled in advance, yet themselves preceded by a
vanguard of scouting riflemen, and back of the beef-animals came ponies,
galled of wither and lean of rib under long-borne pack saddles.

Behind lay memories of hard and seemingly endless journeying, of alarms,
of discouragement. Ahead lay a precarious future--and the wilderness.

The two Dorothys, Captain Caleb Parish's wife and daughter, were ending
their journey on foot, for upon them lay the duties of example and
_noblesse oblige_--but the prideful tilt of their chins was maintained
with an ache of effort, and when the cortège halted that the beasts
might blow, Caleb Parish hastened back from his place at the front to
his wife and daughter.

"It's not far now," he encouraged. "To-night, at least, we shall sleep
behind walls--even though they be only those of a block-house--and under
a roof tree."

Both of them smiled at him--yet in his self-accusing heart he wondered
whether the wife whose fortitude he was so severely taxing would not
have done better to choose his brother.

While the halted outfit stood relaxed, there sounded through the immense
voicelessness of the wilderness a long-drawn, far-carrying shout, at
which the more timid women started flutteringly, but which the vanguard
recognized and answered, and a moment later there appeared on the ledge
of an overhanging cliff the lithe, straight figure of a boy.

He stood statuesquely upright, waving his coonskin cap, and between his
long deerskin leggins and breech clout the flesh of his slim legs showed
bare, almost as bronze-dark as that of an Indian.

"That is our herald of welcome," smiled Caleb Parish. "It's young Peter
Doane--the youngest man we brought with us--and one of our staunchest as
well. You remember him, don't you, child?"

The younger Dorothy at first shook her head perplexedly and sought to
recall this youthful frontiersman; then a flash of recognition broke
over her face.

"He's the boy that lived on the woods farm, isn't he? His father was
Lige Doane of the forest, wasn't he?'

"And still is." Caleb repressed his smile and spoke gravely, for he
caught the unconscious note of condescension with which the girl used
the term of class distinction. "Only here in Kentucky, child, it is as
well to forget social grades and remember that we be all 'men of the
forest.' We are all freemen and we know no other scale."

       *       *       *       *       *

That fall, when the mountains were painted giants, magnificently
glorified from the brush and palette of the frost; when the first crops
had been gathered, a spirit of festivity and cheer descended on the
block-houses of Fort Parish. Then into the outlying cabins emboldened
spirits began moving in escape from the cramp of stockade life.

Against the palisades of Wautaga besieging red men had struck and been
thrown back. Cheering tidings had come of Colonel William Christian's
expedition against the Indian towns.

The Otari, or hill warriors, had set their feet into the out-trail of
flight and acknowledged the chagrin of defeat, all except Dragging
Canoe, the ablest and most implacable of their chiefs who, sullenly
refusing to smoke the pipe, had drawn far away to the south, to sulk out
his wrath and await more promising auspices.

Then Caleb Parish's log house had risen by the river bank a half mile
distant from the stockade, and more and more he came to rely on the one
soul in his little garrison whose life seemed talisman-guarded and whose
woodcraft was a sublimation of instinct and acquired lore which even the
young braves of the Otari envied.

Young Peter Doane, son of "Lige Doane of the forest," and not yet a man
in years, came and went through the wilderness as surely and fleetly as
the wild things, and more than once he returned with a scalp at his
belt--for in those days the whites learned warfare from their foes and
accepted their rules. The little community nodded approving heads and
asked no questions. It learned valuable things because of Peter's
adventurings.

But when he dropped back after a moon of absence, it was always to Caleb
Parish's hearth-stone that Peter carried his report. It was over Caleb
Parish's fire that he smoked his silent pipe, and it was upon Caleb
Parish's little daughter that he bent his silently adoring glances.

Dorothy would sit silent with lowered lashes while she dutifully sought
to banish aloofness and the condescension which still lingered in her
heart--and the months rounded into seasons.

The time of famine long known as the "hard winter" came. The salt gave
out, the powder and lead were perilously low.

The "traces" to and through the Wilderness road were snow-blocked or
slimy with intermittent thaws, and the elder Dorothy Parish fell ill.

Learned physicians might have found and reached the cause of her
malady--but there were no such physicians. Perhaps the longings that she
repressed and the loneliness that she hid under her smile were costing
her too dearly in their levies upon strength and vitality. She, who had
been always fearless, became prey to a hundred unconfessed dreads. She
feared for her husband, and with a frenzy of terror for her daughter.
She woke trembling out of atrocious nightmares. She was wasting to a
shadow, and always pretending that the life was what she would have
chosen.

It was on a bitter night after a day of blizzard and sleet. Caleb Parish
sat before his fire, and his eyes went constantly to the bed where his
wife lay half-conscious and to the seated figure of the tirelessly
watchful daughter.

Softly against the window sounded a guarded rap. The man looked quickly
up and inclined his ear. Again it came with the four successive taps to
which every pioneer had trained himself to waken, wide-eyed, out of his
most exhausted sleep.

Caleb Parish strode to the door and opened it cautiously. Out of the
night, shaking the snow from his buckskin hunting shirt, stepped Peter
Doane with his stoical face fatigue drawn as he eased down a bulky pack
from galled shoulders.

"Injins," he said, crisply. "Get your women inside the fort right
speedily!"

The young man slipped again into the darkness, and Parish, lifting the
half-conscious figure from the bed, wrapped it in a bear-skin rug and
carried it out into the sleety bluster.

That night spent itself through a tensity of waiting until dawn.

When the east grew a bit pale, Caleb Parish returned from his varied
duties and laid a hand on his wife's forehead to find it fever-hot. The
woman opened her eyes and essayed a smile, but at the same moment there
rode piercingly through the still air the long and hideous challenge of
a war-whoop.

Dorothy Parish, the elder, flinched as though under a blow and a look of
horror stamped itself on her face that remained when she had died.

       *       *       *       *       *

Spring again--and a fitful period of peace--but peace with disquieting
rumours.

Word came out of the North of mighty preparations among the Six Nations
and up from the South sped the report that Dragging Canoe had laid aside
his mantle of sullen mourning and painted his face for war.

Dorothy Parish, the wife, had been buried before the cabin built by the
river bank, and Dorothy, the daughter, kept house for the father whom
these months had aged out of all resemblance to the former self in knee
breeches and powdered wig with lips that broke quickly into smiling.

And Peter, watching the bud of Dorothy's childhood swell to the slim
charms of girlhood, held his own counsel and worshipped her dumbly.
Perhaps he remembered the gulf that had separated his father's log cabin
from her uncle's manor house in the old Virginia days, but of these
things no one spoke in Kentucky.

Three years had passed, and along the wilderness road was swelling a
fuller tide of emigration, hot with the fever of the west.

Meeting it in counter-current went the opposite flow of the
faint-hearted who sought only to put behind them the memory of hardship
and suffering--but that was a light and negligible back-wash from an
onsweeping wave.

Caleb Parish smiled grimly. This spelled the beginning of success. The
battle was not over--his own work was far from ended--but substantial
victory had been won over wilderness and savage. The back doors of a
young nation had suffered assault and had held secure.

Stories drifted in nowadays of the great future of the more fertile
tablelands to the west, but Caleb Parish had been stationed here and had
not been relieved.

The pack train upon which the little community depended for needed
supplies had been long overdue, and at Caleb's side as he stood in front
of his house looking anxiously east was his daughter Dorothy, grown tall
and pliantly straight as a lifted lance.

Her dark eyes and heavy hair, the poise of her head, her gracious
sweetness and gentle courage were, to her father, all powerful reminders
of the woman whom he had loved first and last--this girl's mother. For a
moment he turned away his head.

"Some day," he said, abruptly, "if Providence permits it, I purpose to
set a fitting stone here at her head."

"Meanwhile--if we can't raise a stone," the girl's voice came soft and
vibrant, "we can do something else. We can plant a tree."

"A tree!" exclaimed the man, almost irritably. "It sometimes seems to me
that we are being strangled to death by trees! They conceal our
enemies--they choke us under their blankets of wet and shadow."

But Dorothy shook her head in resolute dissent.

"Those are just trees of the forest," she said, whimsically reverting to
the old class distinction. "This will be a manor-house tree planted and
tended by loving hands. It will throw shade over a sacred spot." Her
eyes began to glow with the growth of her conception.

"Don't you remember how dearly Mother loved the great walnut tree that
shaded the veranda at home? She would sit gazing out over the river,
then up into its branches--dreaming happy things. She used to tell me
that she found my fairy stories there among its leaves--and there was
always a smile on her lips then."

The spring was abundantly young and where the distances lengthened they
lay in violet dreams.

"Don't you remember?" repeated the girl, but Caleb Parish looked
suddenly away. His ear had caught a distant sound of tinkling pony bells
drifting down wind and he said devoutly, "Thank God, the pack train is
coming."

It was an hour later when the loaded horses came into view herded by
fagged woodsmen and piloted by Peter Doane, who strode silently,
tirelessly, at their head. But with Peter walked another young man of
different stamp--a young man who had never been here before.

Like his fellows he wore the backwoodsman's garb, but unlike them his
tan was of newer wind-burning. Unlike them, too, he bowed with a
ceremony foreign to the wilderness and swept his coonskin cap clear of
his head.

"This man," announced Peter, brusquely, "gives the name of Kenneth
Thornton and hears a message for Captain Parish!"

The young stranger smiled, and his engaging face was quickened with the
flash of white teeth. A dark lock of hair fell over his forehead and his
firm chin was deeply cleft.

"I have the honour of bearing a letter from your brother, Sir," he said,
"and one from General Washington himself."

Peter Doane looked on, and when he saw Dorothy's eyes encounter those of
the stranger and her lashes droop and her cheeks flush pink, he turned
on his heel and with the stiffness of an affronted Indian strode
silently away.

"This letter from General Washington," said Caleb Parish, looking up
from his reading, "informs me that you have already served creditably
with our troops in the east and that you are now desirous to cast your
lot with us here. I welcome you, Sir."

Kenneth Thornton was swift to learn and when he went abroad with hunting
parties or to swing the axe in the clearings, his stern and exacting
task-masters found no fault with his strength or spirit.

Their ardent and humourless democracy detected in him no taint of the
patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid
his arrears of knowledge with the ready coin of eagerness.

So Kenneth Thornton was speedily accepted into full brotherhood and
became a favourite. The cheery peal of his laugh and his even cordiality
opened an easy road to popularity and confidence.

Thornton had been schooled in England until the war clouds lowered, and
as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities
of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive
listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked monument of wordless
resentment.

One summer night when the skies had spilt day-long torrents of rain and
the sun had set red with the woods still sobbing and chill, a great fire
roared on Caleb Parish's hearth. Before it sat the householder with his
daughter and Kenneth Thornton; as usual, too, silent and morose yet
stubbornly present, was Peter Doane.

Oddly enough they were talking of the minuet, and Kenneth rose to
illustrate a step and bow that he had seen used in England.

Suddenly the girl came to her feet and faced him with a curtsey.

Kenneth Thornton bent low from the waist, and, with a stately gesture,
carried her fingers to his lips.

"Now, my lord," she commanded, "show the newest steps that they dance at
court."

"Your humble servant, Mistress Dorothy," he replied, gravely.

Then they both laughed, and Caleb Parish was divided between smile and
tears--but Peter Doane glowered and sat rigid, thinking of freshly
reared barriers that democracy should have levelled.




CHAPTER IV


A week later Dorothy led Kenneth Thornton and Peter Doane to a place
where beside a huge boulder a "spring-branch" gushed into a natural
basin of stone. The ferns grew thick there, and the moss lay deep and
green, but over the spot, with branches spreading nobly and its head
high-reared, stood an ancient walnut and in the narrow circle of open
ground at its base grew a young tree perhaps three feet tall.

"I want to move that baby tree," said Dorothy, and now her voice became
vibrant, "to a place where, when it has grown tall, it can stand as a
monument over my mother's grave."

She paused, and the two young men offered no comment. Each was watching
the glow in her eyes and feeling that, to her, this ceremony meant
something more than the mere setting out of a random seedling.

"It will stand guard over our home," she went on, and her eyes took on
an almost dreamy far-awayness. "It will be shade in summer and a
reminder of coming spring in winter. It will look down on people as they
live and die--and are born. At last," she concluded, "when I come to die
myself, I want to be buried under it, too."

When the young walnut had been lifted clear and its roots packed with
some of its own native earth Kenneth Thornton started away carrying it
in advance while Dorothy and Peter followed.

But before they came to the open space young Doane stopped on the path
and barred the girl's way. "Dorothy," he began, awkwardly, and with
painful embarrassment, "I've got something thet must needs be said--an'
I don't rightly know how to say it."

She looked up into his set face and smiled.

"Can I help you say it?" she inquired, and he burst out passionately,
"Until _he_ come, you seemed to like me. Now you don't think of nobody
else but jest him ... and I hates him."

"If it's hatred you want to talk about," she said, reproachfully, "I
don't think I can help you after all."

"Hatred of him," he hastened to explain. "I've done lived in the
woods--an' I ain't never learned pretty graces ... but I can't live
without you, an' if he comes betwixt us...."

The girl raised a hand.

"Peter," she said, slowly, "we've been good friends, you and I. I want
to go on being good friends with you ... but that's all I can say."

"And him," demanded the young man, with white cheeks and passion-shaken
voice, "what of him?"

"He asked me an hour ago," she answered, frankly. "We're going to be
married."

The face of the backwoodsman worked spasmodically for a moment with an
agitation against which his stoic training was no defense. When his
passion permitted speech he said briefly, "I wishes ye joy of him--damn
him!"

Then he wheeled and disappeared in the tangle.

"I'm sorry, dearest," declared Thornton when she had told him the story
and his arms had slipped tenderly about her, "that I've cost you a
friend, but I'm proud beyond telling that this tree was planted on the
day you declared for me. To me too, it's a monument now."

That night the moon was clouded until late but broke through its
shrouding before Dorothy went to bed, and she slipped out to look at
the young shoot and perhaps to think of the man who had taken her in his
arms there.

But as she approached she saw no standing shape and when she reached the
spot she found that the freshly placed earth had been dug up. The tree
had been spitefully dragged from its place and left lying with its roots
extending up instead of its branches. Plainly it was an act of mean
vandalism and Dorothy feared an emblem of deeper threat as well.

Already in the girl's thought this newly planted monument had become a
sacred thing. To let it be so soon destroyed would be an evil augury and
submission to a desecration. To tell Kenneth Thornton would kindle his
resentment and provoke a dangerous quarrel. She herself must remedy the
matter. So Dorothy Parish went for her spade, and late into the night
she laboured at that second transplanting.

The roots had not had time to dry or burn, because they had been
upturned so short a time, and before the girl went to her bed the task
was finished, and she dreamed of birds nesting in broad branches and
other home-making thoughts more intimate, but also of vague dangers and
grudge-bearings.

But the next morning her face blanched when her father roused her before
dawn.

"Kenneth Thornton was waylaid and shot last night," he said, briefly.
"They fear he's dying. He's been asking for you."

About the door of Thornton's cabin in the gray freshness of that summer
dawn stood a clump of silent men in whose indignant eyes burned a sombre
light which boded no good for the would-be murderer if he were found. As
the girl came up, with her face pale and grief-stricken, they drew back
on either side opening passageway for her, and Dorothy went directly to
the bed.

Caleb, though, halted at the threshold in response to a hand laid
detainingly on his fringed sleeve.

"We hates to accuse a white man of a deed like this," said Jake Rowlett,
a time-gnawed old Indian fighter, "but Thornton made a statement to
us--under oath. He recognized Peter Doane--and Peter would of scalped
him as well as shot him only he heard somebody rustlin' the brush an'
got away."

"Peter Doane!" Caleb pressed a shaken hand to his bewildered forehead.
"Peter Doane--but I can't credit that! Peter has sat by my hearth night
after night ... Peter has eaten my salt ... Peter has been our
staunchest reliance!"

Caleb's glance travelled searchingly about the circle of faces and read
there unanimous conviction and grim determination.

"Peter has done growed to be half Injin hisself," came the decided
answer. "Thornton didn't swear to no lie when he knew he mout be dyin'."

Caleb straightened decisively and his eyes blazed in spurts of wrath.

"Go after him then," he ordered. "It won't do to let him get away."

The pursuit parties that spread into the woods travelled fast and
studiously--yet with little hope of success.

No man better than Peter Doane himself would recognize his desperation
of plight--and if he had "gone bad" there was but one road for his feet
and the security of the colony depended upon his thwarting.

Pioneer chronicles crowned with anathema unspeakable their small but
infamous roster of white renegades, headed by the hated name of Samuel
Girty; renegades who had "painted their faces and gone to the Indians!"

These were the unforgivably damned!

Now at the council-fires of Yellow-Jacket, even at the war-lodge of
Dragging Canoe himself, the voluntary coming of Peter Doane would mean
feasting and jubilation and a promise of future atrocities.

Inside Dorothy bent over the bed and saw the eyes of her lover open
slowly and painfully. His lips parted in a ghost of his old, flashing
smile.

"Is the tree safe?" he whispered.

The girl stooped and slipped an arm under the man's shoulders. The
masses of her night-dark hair fell brushing his face in a fragrant
cascade and her deep eyes were wide, unmasking to his gaze all the
candid fears and intensities of her love. Then as her lips met his in
the first kiss she had ever given him, unasked, it seemed to him that a
current of exaltation and vitality swept into him that death could not
overcome.

"I'm going to get well," he told her. "Life is too full--and without
you, heaven would be empty."

The next pack train did not arrive. But several weeks later a single,
half-famished survivor stumbled into the fort. His hands were bound, his
tongue swollen from thirst, and about his shoulders dangled a hideous
necklace of white scalps. When he had been restored to speech he
delivered the message for which his life had been spared.

"This is what's left of your pack train," was the insolent word that
Peter Doane--now calling himself Chief Mad-dog, had sent back to his
former comrades. "The balance has gone on to Yellow Jacket, but some day
I will come back for Thornton's scalp--and my squaw."

As the summer waned the young walnut tree sent down its roots to vigour
and imperceptibly lifted its crest. Its leaves did not wither but gained
in greenness and lustre, and as it prospered so Kenneth Thornton also
prospered, until when the season of corn shucking came again, he and
Dorothy stood beside it, and Caleb, who had received his credentials as
a justice of the peace, read for them the ritual of marriage.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the adze-smoothed table of a house which, for all its pioneer
crudity, reflected the spirit of tradition-loving inhabitants, sat a
young woman whose dark hair hung braided and whose dark eyes looked up
from time to time in thoughtful reminiscence.

She was writing with a goose-quill which she dipped into an ink-horn,
and as she nibbled at the end of her pen one might have seen that
whatever she was setting down lay close to her heart.

"Since I can not tell," she wrote, "whether or not I shall survive ye
comings of that new life upon which all my thoughts are set and should
such judgment be His Wille, I want that ye deare child shall have this
record of ye days its father and I spent here in these forest hills so
remote from ye sea and ye rivers of our dear Virginia and ye gentle
refinements we put behind us to become pioneers. This wish leads me to
the writing of a journall."

A shadow in the doorway cut the shaft of sunlight and the woman at the
writing table turned. On the threshold stood Kenneth Thornton and by the
hand he held a savage-visaged child clad in breech clout and moccasins,
but otherwise naked. Its eyes held the beady sharpness of the Indian,
and though hardly past babyhood, it stood haughtily rigid and
expressionless.

The face of the man was not flashing its smile now, but deeply grave,
and as his wife's gaze questioned him he spoke slowly.

"This is Peter Doane's boy," he said, briefly.

Dorothy Thornton shrank back with a gesture of repulsion, and the man
went on:

"A squaw with a travelling party of friendly Indians brought him in.
Mad-dog Doane is dead. His life ended in a drunken brawl in an Otari
village--but before he died he asked that the child be brought back to
us."

"Why?"

"Because," Thornton spoke seriously, "blood can't be silenced when death
comes. The squaw said Chief Mad-dog wanted his boy raised to be a white
brave.... He's half white, of course."

"And _he_ ventured to ask favours of _us_!" The woman's voice,
ordinarily gentle, hardened, and the man led the child over and laid his
own hand on her shoulder.

"The child is not to blame," he reminded her. "He's the fruit of
madness--but he has human life."

Dorothy rose, inclining her head in reluctant assent.

"I'll fetch him a white child's clothes," she said.

This was the story that the faded pages told and a small part of which
Dorothy Harper read as she sat in the lamplight of the attic a century
and a quarter later.




CHAPTER V


The old Thornton house on Defeated Creek had for almost two decades
stood vacant save for an occasional and temporary tenant. A long time
back a formal truce had been declared in the feud that had split in
sharp and bitter cleavage the family connections of the Harpers and the
Doanes. Back into the limbo of tradition and vagueness went the origin
of that "war".

The one unclouded certainty was that the hatred had grown until even in
this land of vendetta its levy of violent deaths had been appalling
beyond those of other enmities.

Yet, paradoxically enough, the Harpers in the later feud stages had
followed a man named Thornton and the Doanes had fought at the behest of
a Rowlett. Now on the same night that Dorothy read in her attic smoke
rose from the chimney of the long-empty house and a stranger, whose
right of possession no one questioned, was to be its occupant. He sat
now, in the moonlight, on the broken mill-stone that served his house as
a doorstep--and as yet he had not slept under the rotting roof. About
him was a dooryard gone to a weed-jungle and a farm that must be
reclaimed from utter wildness. His square jaw was grimly set and the
hands that rested on his knees were tensely clenched. His eyes held a
far-away and haunted fixity, for they were seeing again the cabin he had
left in Virginia with its ugly picture of sudden and violent death and
the body of a man he hated lying on the blood-stained floor.

The hysteria-shaken figure of the woman he had left alone with that
grisly companionship refused, too, to soften the troubling vividness of
its remembered misery.

He himself had not escaped his pursuers by too wide a margin, but he
_had_ escaped. He had come by a circuitous course to this place where he
hoped to find quiet under his assumed name of Maggard, nor was his
choice of refuge haphazard.

A distantly related branch of his own family had once lived here, and
the property had passed down to him, but the Thornton who had first
owned the place he had never known.

The Kentucky history of his blood was as unfamiliar to him as
genealogies on Mars, and while the night voices sounded in tempered
cadences about him and the hills stood up in their spectral majesty of
moonlight, he sat with a drawn brow. Yet, because the vitality of his
youth was strong and resilient, other and less grim influences gradually
stole over him and he rose after a while with the scowl clearing from
his face.

Into the field of his thoughts, like sunlight into a storm sky, came a
new image: the image of a girl in a red dress looking at him from an
attic window. The tight lips loosened, softened, and parted in a smile.

"Afore God," he declared in a low voice, "she war a comely gal!"

Kenneth Thornton--now self rechristened Cal Maggard, was up and his
coffee pot was steaming on the live coals long before the next morning's
sun had pierced its shafts into the gray opaqueness that cloaked the
valleys. He squatted on his heels before the fire, honing the ancient
blade of the scythe that he had found in the cock loft, and that blade
was swinging against the stubborn resistance of weed and briar-trailer
before the drench of the dew had begun to dry.

He did not stop often to rest, and before noon he straightened and stood
breathing deep but rhythmically to survey a levelled space where he had
encountered an impenetrable thicket.

Then Cal Maggard leaned his scythe and axe against a young hickory and
went over to the corner of the yard where a spring poured with a crystal
flow into a natural basin under the gnarled roots of a sycamore.
Kneeling there, stripped to the waist, he began laving his chest and
shoulders and dipping his face deep into the cold water.

So intent was he that he failed to hear the light thud of hoofs along
the sand-cushioned and half-obliterated road which skirted his
dilapidated fence line, and he straightened up at length to see a
horseman who had drawn rein there and who now sat sidewise gazing at him
with one leg thrown across his pommel.

The horseman, tall and knit for tremendous strength, was clad in jeans
overalls and a blue cotton shirt. His unshaven face was swarthy and high
of cheekbone and his black hat, though shapeless and weather-stained,
sat on his head with a jauntiness that seemed almost a challenge. Eyes,
both shrewd and determined, gave the impression of missing nothing, but
his voice was pleasant as he introduced himself.

"My name's Bas Rowlett, an' I reckon _you're_ Cal Maggard, hain't ye?
I've done heered ye 'lowed ter dwell amongst us."

Maggard nodded. "Come inside an' set ye a cheer," he invited, and the
horseman vaulted to the ground as lightly as though he carried no
weight, flinging his bridle rein over a picket of the fence.

For a short space when the host had donned his shirt and provided his
guest with a chair by the door the conversation ran laggingly between
these two newly met sons of a taciturn race, yet beneath their almost
morose paucity of words lay an itch of curiosity. They were gauging,
measuring, estimating each other under wary mantles of indifference.

Rowlett set down in his appraisement, with a touch of scorn, the
clean-shaven face and general neatness of the other, but as against this
effeminacy he offset the steady-eyed fearlessness of gaze and the smooth
power of shoulders and torso that he had seen stripped.

Maggard's rifle stood leaning against the chinked log wall near to the
visitor's hand and lazily he lifted and inspected it, setting its
heel-plate to his shoulder and sighting the weapon here and there.

"Thet rifle-gun balances up right nice," he approved, then seeing a red
squirrel that sat chattering on a walnut tree far beyond the road he
squinted over the sights and questioned musingly, "I wonder now, could I
knock thet boomer outen thet thar tree over yon."

"Not skeercely, I reckon. Hit's a kinderly long, onhandy shot," answered
Maggard, "but ye mout try, though."

Rowlett had hoped for such an invitation. He knew that it was more than
an "unhandy" shot. It was indeed a spectacularly difficult one--but he
knew also that he could do it twice out of three times, and he was not
averse to demonstrating his master-skill.

The rifle barked and the squirrel dropped, shot through the head, but
Maggard said nothing and Rowlett only spat and set the gun down.

After that he relighted his pipe. Had this newcomer from across the
Virginia border been his peer in marksmanship, he reasoned, he would not
have let the exploit rest there without contest, and his own competitive
spirit prompted him to goad the obviously inferior stranger.

"Thar's an old cock-of-the woods hammerin' away atter grubs up yon," he
suggested. "Why don't ye try yore own hand at him--jest fer ther fun of
ther thing?"

He pointed to a dead tree-top perhaps ten yards more distant than his
own target had been, where hung one of those great ivory-billed
woodpeckers that are near extinction now except in the solitudes of
these wild hills.

Maggard smiled again, as he shook his head noncommittally--yet he
reached for the rifle. That silent smile of his was beginning to become
provocative to his companion, as though in it dwelt something of quiet
self-superiority.

The weapon came to the stranger's shoulder with a cat-like quickness of
motion and cracked with seemingly no interval of aim-taking, and the
bird fell as the squirrel had done.

Rowlett flushed to his high cheekbones. This was a country of riflemen
where skill was the rule and its lack the exception, yet even here few
men could duplicate that achievement, or, without seeing it, believe it
possible. It had been characterized, too, by the incredible swiftness of
a sleight-of-hand performance.

"Hell's red hole," came the visitor's eruptive outburst of amazement.
"Ef ther man-person thet used ter dwell in this hyar house, and his
kinfolks, hed of shot thet fashion, I reckon mebby ther Rowletts
wouldn't never hev run old Burrell Thornton outen these mountings."

"Did they run him out?"

Rowlett studied his companion much as he might have studied someone who
calmly admits a stultifying ignorance.

"Hain't ye nuver heered tell of ther Harper-Doane war?" he demanded and
Maggard shook an unabashed head.

"I hain't nuver heered no jedgmatic details," he amended, "I knowed
thar was sich-like warfare goin' on here one time. My folks used ter
dwell in Kaintuck onc't but hit war afore my own day."

"Come on over hyar," prompted Rowlett, and he led the way to the back of
the house where half-buried in the tangle that had overrun the place
stood the ruins of a heavy and rotting log stockade.

"Old Burrell Thornton dwelt hyar in ther old days," he vouchsafed, "an'
old Burrell bore ther repute of being ther meanest man in these parts.
He dastn't walk in his own backyard withouten he kept thet log wall
betwixt hisself an' ther mounting-side. So long as him an' old Mose
Rowlett both lived thar warn't no peace feasible nohow. Cuss-fights an'
shootin's an' laywayin's went on without no eend, twell finely hit come
on ter be sich a hell-fired mommick thet ther two outfits met up an' fit
a master battle in Claytown. Hit lasted nigh on ter two days."

"What war ther upcome of ther matter?" inquired the householder, and the
narrator went on:

"Ther Harpers an' Thorntons went inside ther co'te house an' made a
pint-blank fort outen hit, an' ther Rowletts tuck up _thar_ stand in
ther stores an' streets. They frayed on, thet fashion, twell ther Doanes
wearied of hit an' sot ther co'te house afire. Some score of fellers war
shot, countin' men an' boys, and old Mose Rowlett, thet was headin' ther
Doanes, war kilt dead. Then--when both sides war plum frazzled ragged
they patched up a truce betwixt 'em an' ther gist of ther matter war
that old Burrell Thornton agreed ter leave Kaintuck an' not never ter
come back no more. He war too pizen mean fer folks ter abide him, an'
his goin' away balanced up ther deadenin' of Mose Rowlett."

"Ye sez thet old hellion used ter dwell in this hyar house onc't?"

"Yes, sir, thet's what I'm noratin' ter ye. Atter he put out his fire
an' called his dawgs an' went away Caleb Harper tuck over ther leadin'
of ther Harpers and my uncle Jim Rowlett did likewise fer ther Doanes.
Both on 'em war men thet loved law-abidin' right good an' when they
struck hands an' pledged a peace they aimed ter see thet hit
endured--an' hit did. But till word come thet old Burrell Thornton war
dead an' buried, folks didn't skeercely breathe easy nohow. They used
ter keep hearin' thet he aimed ter come back an' they knowed ef he
did----"

There the speaker broke off and shrugged his powerful shoulders.

A brief silence fell, and through the sunflecks and the deep woodland
shadows came the little voices that were all of peace, but into
Rowlett's eyes flashed a sudden-born ghost of suspicion.

"How come _you_ ter git possession of ther place hyar?" he demanded. "Ye
didn't heir hit from Old Burrell Thornton's folks, did ye?"

The new occupant was prepared for this line of interrogation and he
laughed easily.

"Long erbout a year back," he said, "a feller named Thornton thet dwelt
over thar in Virginny got inter debt ter me an' couldn't pay out. He
give me a lease on this hyar place, but I didn't hev no chanst ter come
over hyar an' look at hit afore now."

Rowlett nodded a reassured head and declared heartily:

"I'm right glad ye hain't one of thet thar sorry brood. Nobody couldn't
confidence _them_."

Rowlett, as he rekindled the pipe that had died in the ardour of his
narration, studied the other through eyes studiously narrowed against
the flare of his match.

The newcomer himself, lost in thought, was oblivious of this scrutiny,
and it was as one speaking from revery that he launched his next
inquiry.

"Ther gal thet dwells with old man Harper.... She hain't his wife, air
she?"

The questioner missed the sudden tensely challenged interest that
flashed in the other's eyes and the hot wave of brick-red that surged
over the cheeks and neck of his visitor.

But Bas Rowlett was too adroit to betray by more than a single unguarded
flash his jealous reaction to mention of the girl and he responded
quietly and unemotionally enough.

"She hain't no man's wife ... yit. Old Caleb's her grandpap."

"I've done seed some powerful comely gals in my day an' time," mused
Maggard, abstractedly, "but I hain't nuver seed ther like of _her_
afore."

Bas thoughtfully fingered his pipe, and when he spoke his words came
soberly.

"Seein' es how ye're a stranger hyarabouts," he suggested, "I reckon hit
hain't no more then plain charity ter forewarn ye. She's got a lavish of
lovers an' thar's some several amongst 'em that's pizen mean--mean
enough ter prove up vi'lent and murderous ter any new man thet comes
trespassin'."

"Oh, pshaw, thet's always liable ter happen. Anyhow, I reckon I don't
have ter worrit myself 'bout thet yit."

"Suit yoreself." This time the native spoke dryly. "But what ye says
sounds unthoughted ter me. Ef a man's mean enough ter foller murderin'
somebody over a gal, he's more like ter do hit afore ther feller gits
his holt on her then a'tterwards. When did ye see ther gal?"

Maggard shook himself like a dog roused from contented sleep and sat up
straight.

"I hain't nuver seed her but jest one time, an' I hain't nuver passed no
word of speech with her," he replied. "When I come by ther house an'
tarried ter make my manners with ther old man, she was a-standin' in an
upstairs winder lookin' out an' I seed her thar through ther branches of
that big old walnuck tree. She hed on a dress thet made me think of a
red-bird, an' her checks minded me right shrewdly of ivy blooms."

"Does ye aim ter name hit ter her thet she puts ye in mind of--them
things?"

"I kinderly hed hit in head ter tell her." Suddenly Maggard's frank
laugh broke out disconcertingly as he added an inquiry so direct that it
caused the other to flush.

"Rowlett, be ye one of these hyar lavish of lovers ye jest told me
erbout?"

The mountaineer is, by nature, secretive to furtiveness, and under so
outright a questioning the visitor stiffened with affront. But at once
his expression cleared of displeasure and he met frankness with a show
of equal candour.

"I'm one of ther fellers thet's seekin' ter wed with her, ef thet's what
ye means, albeit hit's my own business, I reckon," he said, evenly. "But
I hain't one of them I warned ye erginst on account of meanness. Myself
I believes in every person havin' a fair chanst an' ther best man
winnin'."

The other nodded gravely.

"I didn't aim at no offense," he hastened to declare. "I hain't nuver
met ther gal an' like as not she wouldn't favour me with no second look
nohow."

"I loves ter see a man talk out-right," avowed the Kentuckian with
cordial responsiveness. "Es fer me, I've done made me some sev'ral right
hateful enemies, myself, because I seeks ter wed with her, an' I 'lowed
ter warn ye in good time thet ye mout run foul of like perils."

"I'm beholden ter ye fer forewarnin' me," came Maggard's grave
response. "Ther old man hes done invited me ter sa'nter over thar an'
sot me a cheer some time, though--an' I reckon I'll go."

Rowlett rose and with a good-humoured grin stretched his giant body. In
the gesture was all the lazy power of a great cat.

"I hain't got no license ter dissuade ye, ner ter fault ye," he
declared, "but I hopes ter Goddlemighty she hain't got no time of day
fer ye."

That afternoon Maggard sat before the doorstep of Old Caleb Harper's
house when the setting sun was splashing from a gorgeous palette above
the ragged crests of the ridges. It was colour that changed and grew in
splendour with ash of rose and purpled cloud border and glowing orange
streamer. Against those fires the great tree stood with druid dignity,
keeping vigil over the roof it sheltered.

At length Maggard heard a rustle and turned his head to see the girl
standing in the doorway.

He was a mountain man and mountain men are not schooled in the etiquette
of rising when a woman presents herself. Yet now he came to his feet,
responding to no dictate of courtesy but lifted as by some nameless
exaltation at the sight of her--some impulse entirely new to him and
inexplicable.

She stood there a little shyly at first, as slender and as gracefully
upright as a birch, and her dark hair caught the fire of the sinking sun
with a bronze glow like that of the turkey's wing. Her eyes, over which
heavy lashes drooped diffidently, were bafflingly deep, as with rich
colour drowned in duskiness.

"This hyar's my gal, Dorothy," announced the old man and then she
disappeared.

That night Maggard walked home with a chest rounded to the deep draughts
of night air which he was drinking, and a heady elation in the currents
of his veins. She had slipped in and out of the room as he had talked
with the patriarch, after supper, flitting like some illusive shadow of
shyness. He had had hardly a score of words with her, but the future
would plentifully mend that famine.

In the brilliant moonlight he vaulted the picket fence of his own place
and saw the front of the cube-like house, standing before him, streaked
with the dark of the logs and the white of the chinking. About it was
the patch of scythe-cleared ground as blue as cobalt in the bright
night, and back of it the inky rampart of the mountainside.

But as he approached the door of the cabin the silver bath of light
picked out and emphasized a white patch at its centre, and he made out
that a sheet of paper was pinned there.

"I reckon Rowlett's done left me some message or other," he reflected as
he took the missive down and went inside to light his lantern and build
a fire on the hearth--since even the summer nights were shrewdly
chilling here in the hills.

When the logs were snapping and he had kicked off his heavy boots and
kindled his pipe, he sprawled luxuriously in a back-tilted chair and
held his paper to the flare of the blaze to read it.

At first he laughed derisively, then his brows gathered in a frown of
perplexity and finally his jaw stiffened into grimness.

The note was set down in crudely printed characters, as though to evade
the identifying quality of handwriting, and this was its truculent
message:

     No trespassin'. The gal ain't fer _you_. Once more of goin' over
     yon and they'll find you stretched dead in a creek bed. This is
     writ with God in Heaven bearin' witness that it's true.




CHAPTER VI


Cal Maggard sat gazing into the blaze that leaped and eddied fitfully
under the blackened chimney. In one hand drooped the sheet of paper that
he had found fastened to his door and in the other the pipe which had
been forgotten and had died.

He looked over his shoulder at the door which he had left ajar. Through
its slit he could see a moonlit strip of sky, and rising slowly he
circled the room, holding the protection of the shadowy walls until he
reached and barred it. That much was his concession to the danger of the
threat, and it was the only concession he meant to make.

Into this place he had come unknown and under this roof he had slept
only one night. He had injured no man, offended no woman or child, yet
the malevolent spirit of circumstance that had made a refugee of him in
Virginia seemed to have pursued him and found him out.

Perhaps Rowlett had been right. The Harper girl was, among other
mountain women, like a moon among stars. Her local admirers might hate
and threaten one another, but against an intruder from elsewhere they
would unite as allies. Such a prize would be fought for, murdered for if
need be--but one ray of encouragement played among the clouds. Any lover
who felt confidence in his own success would not have found such tactics
needful--and if she herself were not committed, she was not yet won by
any rival. In that conclusion lay solace.

The next morning found Maggard busied about his dooryard, albeit with
his rifle standing ready to hand, and to-day he wore his shirt with the
arm-pit pistol holster under its cover.

His vigilance, too, was quietly alert, and when a mule came in sight
along the trail which looped over the ridge a half mile distant and was
promptly swallowed again by the woods, his ears followed its approach by
little sounds that would have been silent to a less sensitively trained
hearing.

It was a smallish, mouse-coloured mule that emerged at length to view
and it looked even smaller than it was because the man who straddled it
dwarfed it with his own ponderous stature and a girth which was almost
an anomaly in a country of raw-boned gauntness.

The big man slid down, and his thick neck and round face were red and
sweat-damp though the day was young and cool.

"I made a soon start this mornin'," he enlightened: "ter git me some
gryste ground, an' I didn't eat me no vittles save only a few peanuts.
I'm sich a fool 'bout them things thet most folks round hyar calls me by
ther name of 'Peanuts.'"

"I reckon I kin convenience ye with some sort of snack," Maggard assured
him. "Ef so be ye're hungry--an' kin enjoy what I've got."

Fed and refreshed, "Peanuts" Causey started on again and before he had
been long gone Bas Rowlett appeared and sent his long halloo ahead of
him in announcement of his coming.

"I jist lowed I'd ride over an' see could I tender ye any neighbourly
act," he began affably and Maggard laughed.

"Thet thar's right clever of ye," he declared. "Fer one thing, ye kin
tell me who air ther big, jobial-seeming body thet gives ther name of
Peanuts Causey. I reckon ye knows him?"

Rowlett grunted. "He's a kind of loaferer thet goes broguein' 'round
scatterin' peanut hulls an' brash talk everywhich way an' yon," he gave
enlightenment. "Folks don't esteem him no turrible plenty. Hit's all
right fer hawgs ter fatten but hit don't become a man none. Myself I
disgusts gutty fellers."

Cal Maggard had drawn out his pipe and was slowly filling it. As though
the thought were an amusing one he inquired drawlingly:

"Be he one of ther fellers thet seeks ter wed Harper's gal, too?"

At that question Rowlett snorted his disdain.

"Him? Thet tub of fat-meat? Wa'al now ye names hit ter me, I reckon he
does loiter 'round thar erbout all he das't--he's ther hang-roundin'est
feller ye ever seed--but ther only chanst he's got air fer every other
man ter fall down an' die."

"I fared over thar last night," said Maggard with a level glance at his
companion, "an' I met ther gal. She seemed right shy-like an' didn't hev
much ter say one way ner t'other."

As he spoke he searched the face of his visitor but the only expression
that it gave forth in response to the announcement was one of livened
and amiable interest. Then, after a brief pause, the Virginian laid a
hand on the elbow of his neighbour and lowered his voice.

"I wisht ye'd come inside a minute. Thar's a matter I'd love ter hev ye
counsel me erbout."

With a nod of acquiescence the visitor followed the householder through
the door, and Maggard's face grew soberly intent as he picked up a sheet
of paper from the table and held it out.

"Yestiddy ye forewarned me thet ef I went over thar I'd gain me some
enemies," he said. "Hit 'pears like ye made a right shrewd guess ...
read thet.... I found hit nailed ter my door when I come home last
night."

Hewlett took the paper and corrugated his brows over its vindictive
message; then his high cheekbones flushed and from his unshaven lips
gushed a cascade of oath-embroidered denunciation.

"Afore God Almighty," he ripped out in conclusion, "kin any man
comprehend ther sneakin', low-down meanness of a feller thet seeks ter
terrify somebody sich fashion es thet? He don't das't disclose hisself
and yit he seeks ter run ye off!"

"He hain't a' goin' ter run me off none--whosoever he be," was the calm
rejoinder, and Rowlett looked up quickly.

"Then ye aims ter go right ahead?"

"I aims ter go over thar ergin termorrer evenin'.... I'd go terday only
I don't seek ter w'ar my welcome out."

Rowlett nodded. His voice came with convincing earnestness.

"I told ye yestiddy thet I aimed ter wed with thet gal myself ef so be I
proved lucky at sweetheartin' her. I hain't got no gay int'rest in
aidin' ner abettin' ye, but yit I don't hold with no such bull-dozin'
methods. What does ye aim ter do erbout hit?"

"I aims ter pin this hyar answer on ther door whar I found ther letter
at," replied Maggard, crisply, "An' ef hit comes ter gun-battlin' in
ther bresh--I don't seek ter brag none--but ye seed me shoot yestiddy."

Rowlett took and slowly read the defiant response which the other had
pencilled and a grim smile of approval came to his face:

     To whoever it consarns. I aim to stay here and go wherever I takes
     the notion. I aim to be as peaceable as I'm suffered to be--and as
     warlike as I has to be.

                                                     CAL MAGGARD.

"I wonders, now," mused Rowlett, half-aloud, "who that damn craven mout
be?"

Suddenly his swarthy face brightened with an idea and he volunteered:
"Let me hev thet thar paper. I won't betray ter no man what's in hit but
mebby I mout compare them words with ther handwrite of some fellers I
knows--an' git at ther gist of the matter, thet fashion."

It seemed a slender chance yet a possibility. A man who was everywhere
acquainted might make use of it, whereas the stranger himself could
hardly hope to do so.

But as Maggard thrust the note forward in compliance he took second
thought--and withdrew it.

"No," he said, slowly. "I'm obleeged ter ye--but ye mout lose this hyar
paper an' like es not, I'll hev need of hit herea'tter."

With evident disappointment Rowlett conceded the argument by a nod of
his head.

"Mebby ye're right," he said. "But anyhow we'd better s'arch round
about. Ef thar's a shoe-print left anywheres in ther mud or any
sich-like thing, I'd be more like ter know what hit denotes then what a
stranger would."

Together they went up and down the road, studying the dusty and
rock-strewn surface with backwoods eyes to which little things were more
illuminating than large print.

They circled back of the ruined stockade and raked the rising laurel
tangles with searching scrutiny. Finally Rowlett, who was several paces
in advance, beckoned to the other and gave a low whistle of discovery.

Behind a low rock the thick grass was downpressed as though some huge
rabbit had been huddled there.

"Some person's done fixed hisself a nestie hyar--ter spy on yore
dwellin' house," he confidently asserted, then as he stood studying the
spot he reached into the matted tangle and drew out a hand closed on
some small object.

For a moment he held it open before his own eyes, then tossed over to
Maggard a broken peanut shell.

Neither of them made any comment just then, but as they turned away
Rowlett murmured, as though to himself:

"Of course, _any_ feller kin eat peanuts."

All that afternoon Cal Maggard lay hidden in the thicket overlooking his
front door and, as a volunteer co-sentinel, Bas Rowlett lay in a
"laurel-hell" watching from the rear, but their vigilante was
unrewarded.

That night, though, while Maggard sat alone, smoking his pipe by his
hearth, two shadowy figures detached themselves, at separate times and
points, from the sooty tangle of the mountain woods some mile and a half
away, and met at the rendezvous of a deserted cabin whose roof was half
collapsed.

They held the shadows and avoided the moonlight and they moved like
silhouettes without visible features. They struck no matches and
conferred in low and guarded tones, squatting on their heels and
haunches in the abandoned interior.

"He went over ter Harper's house yestiddy evenin', an' he's like ter go
right soon ergin'," said one.

"All ye've got ter do air ter keep in tech with me--so any time I needs
ye I kin git ye. I hain't plum made up my mind yit."

The other shadowy and hunched figure growled unpleasantly, then bit from
a tobacco twist and spat before he answered.

"I hain't got no hankerin' fer no more laywayin's," he objected. "Ef ye
resolves that he needs killin', why don't ye do hit yoreself? Hit hain't
nothin' ter me."

"I've done told ye why I kain't handily do hit myself. Nobody hain't
ergoin'ter suspicion _you_--an' es fer what's in hit fer ye--ef so be I
calls on ye--we've done sottled that."

The other remained churlishly silent for awhile. Palpably he had little
stomach for this jackal task and it was equally obvious that he feared
refusal even more than acceptance of the stewardship.

"Hit hain't like as if I was seekin' ter fo'ce ye ter do suthin' ye
hedn't done afore," the persuasive voice reminded him, and again the
snarling response growled out its displeasure.

"No, an' ye hain't said nothin' cons'arnin' what ye knows erbout me,
nuther. Ye hain't even drapped a hint thet any time ye takes ther notion
ter talk out ter ther High-cote ye kin penitenshery me--but thet's jest
because ye knows ye don't haf ter. By God, sometimes I think's hit would
well-nigh profit me ter layway _you_ an' be shet of ye."

The second voice was purring now, with a hint of the claw-power under
the softness.

"Thet would be a right smart pity, though. Thar _is_ one other body thet
knows--an' ef so be I got kilt he'd be right speedy ter guess ther man
thet done hit--an' ther reason, too. I reckon hit'll profit ye better
ter go on bein' friends with me."

Again long silence, then grudgingly the murderer-elect rose to his feet
and nodded reluctant assent.

"So be it," he grumbled. "I gives ye my hand ter deaden him whensoever
ye says ther word. But afore we parts company let's talk ther matter
over a leetle more. I wouldn't love ter hev ye censure me for makin' no
error."

"Ther main thing," came the instruction of the employer, "air this: I
wants ter be able ter get ye quick an' hev ye ack quick--ef so be I
needs ye, no matter when that be."




CHAPTER VII


When Cal Maggard closed and locked his cabin door late the next
afternoon he stood regarding with sombre eyes his message of defiance
which, it seemed, no one had come to read.

Yet, as he turned his back a smile replaced the scowl, for he was going
to see a girl.

At the bend where the trail crossed the shallow creek, and a stray
razor-back wallowed at the roadside, Maggard saw a figure leaning
indolently against the fence.

"I suspicioned ye'd be right likely ter happen along erbout this time,"
enlightened Bas Rowlett as he waved his hand in greeting. "So I 'lowed
I'd tarry an' santer along with ye."

"I'm beholden ter ye," responded Maggard, but he knew what the other had
been too polite to say: That this pretended casualness marked the kindly
motive of affording escort because of the danger under which he himself
was travelling unfamiliar roads.

Over the crests heavy banks of clouds were settling in ominous piles of
blackness and lying still-heaped in the breathlessness that precedes a
tempest, but the sun still shone and Rowlett who was leading the way
turned into a forest trail.

As they went, single file, through a gorge into which the sun never
struck save from the zenith; where the ferns grew lush and the great
leaves of the "cucumber tree" hung motionless, they halted without a
word and a comprehending glance shot between them.

When two setters, trained to perfect team work, come unexpectedly upon
the quail scent in stubble, that one which first catches the
nostril-warning becomes rigid as though a breath had petrified him--and
at once his fellow drops to the stiff posture of accord.

So now, as if one hand had pulled two strings, Cal Maggard and Bas
Rowlett ceased to be upright animals. The sound of a crackled twig off
to the right had come to their ears, and it was a sound that carried the
quality of furtiveness.

Instantly they had dropped to their bellies and wriggled snake-like away
from the spots where they had stood. Instantly, too, they became almost
invisible and two drawn weapons were thrust forward.

There they lay for perhaps two minutes, with ears straining into the
silence, neither exaggerating nor under-estimating the menace that might
have caused that sound in the underbrush. After a while Rowlett
whispered, "What did ye hear?"

"'Peared like ter me," responded Maggard, guardedly, "a twig cracked
back thar in ther la'rel."

Rowlett nodded but after a space he rose, shaking his head.

"Ef so be thar's anybody a-layin' back thar in ther bresh, I reckon he's
done concluded ter wait twell he gits ye by yourself," he decided.
"Let's be santerin' along."

So they went forward until they came to a point where they stood on the
unforested patch of a "bald knob." There Rowlett halted again and
pointed downward. Beneath them spread the valley with the band of the
river winding tenuously through the bottoms of the Harper farm. About
that green bowl the first voices of the coming storm were already
rumbling with the constant growl of thunder.

"Thar's ther house--and thar's ther big tree in front of hit," said
Rowlett. "Ef I owned ther place I'd shorely throw ther axe inter hit
afore it drawed a lightnin' bolt down on ther roof."

Cal Maggard, who had known walnuts only growing in the forest, gazed
down now with something of wonderment at this one which stood alone. A
sense of its spreading magnificence was borne in upon him, and though
the simile was foreign to his mind, it seemed as distinct and separate
from the thousands of other trees that blended in the leagues of
surrounding forestry as might a mounted and sashed field marshal in the
centre of an army of common soldiery.

Even in the dark atmosphere of gathering storm its spread of foliage
held a living, golden quality of green and its trunk an inky blackness
that gave a startling vividness.

He did not know that this tree which grows stiff of head and narrow of
shoulder in the woods alters its character when man provides it with a
spacious setting, and that it becomes the noblest of our native growths.
He did not know that when Ovid wrote of folk in the Golden Age, who
lived upon:

    Acorns that had fallen
    From the towering trees of Jove,

he called acorns what we call nuts, and that it was not the oak but the
walnut that he celebrated.

But Maggard did know it had been through the leafage of that splendid
tree that he had first glimpsed the girl's face, and he did know that
never before had he seen a thing of trunk and branch and leaf that had
so impressed him with its stateliness and vital beauty.

If he were master at that house, he thought, he would not cut it down.

"I'm obleeged ter ye fer comin' thus fur with me," he observed, then
supplemented drily, "an' still more fer not comin' no further."

The other laughed. "I hain't ergoin' ter 'cumber yore projeck's none
ternight," he declared, good-humouredly, then added fairly enough, "but
termorrer night _I_ aims ter go sparkin' thar myself--an' I looks ter ye
to do as much fer me an' give me a cl'ar road."

Maggard had hardly reached the house when, with all the passionate
violence of the hills, the tempest broke. Safe inside, he talked and
smoked with the patriarch and his thoughts wandered, as he sat there by
the hearth, back to the room from which now and then drifted a fragment
of plaintively crooning song.

The stag horns over the fireplace and the flintlock gun that lay across
their prongs spoke of days long past, before the deer and bear had been
"dogged to death" in the Cumberlands. There were a few pewter pieces,
too--and these the visitor knew were found only in houses that went back
to revolutionary days.

This, mused Kenneth Thornton, was the best house and the most fertile
farm in all the wild surrounding country, and irony crept into his smile
with the thought that it was a place he could not enter save under an
anonymous threat of death.

By the time supper had been eaten, the storm voices had dwindled from
boisterous violence to exhausted quiet, and even the soft patter of warm
rain died away until through the door, which now stood ajar, the visitor
could see the moonlight and the soft stars that seemed to hang just out
of arm's reach.

Dorothy had slipped quietly into the room and chosen a seat at the
chimney corner where she sat as voiceless as a nun who has taken vows of
silence. Soon the old man's head began to nod in drowsy contentment. At
first he made dutiful resistance against the pleasant temptation of
languor--then succumbed.

The young man, who had been burning with impatience for this moment,
made a pretense of refilling his pipe. Over there out of the direct
flare and leaping of the flames the girl sat in shadow and he wanted to
see her face. Yet upon him had descended an unaccustomed embarrassment
which found no easy door opening upon conversation.

So they sat in a diffident silence that stretched itself to greater
awkwardness, until at last Dorothy rose abruptly to her feet and
Thornton feared that she meant to take flight.

"'Pears like ter me," she asserted, suddenly, "hit's nigh suffocatin'
hot in hyar."

"I war jest a-studyin' erbout thet myself," affirmed Maggard whose
quickness of uptake was more eager than truthful. "Ther moon's a-shinin'
outdoors. Let's go out thar an' breathe free."

As though breathing free were the most immediate of her needs, the girl
rose and stood for a moment with the firelight catching the pink of her
cheeks and bronzing her heavy hair, then she turned and led the way out
to the porch where, in the moisture of the fresh-washed air, the
honeysuckle vines were heavy with fragrance.

The walnut tree, no longer lashed into storm incantations, stood now in
quiet majesty, solitary though, at a respectful distance, surrounded.
The frogs and whippoorwills were voiceful, and from the silvery
foreground, shadow-blotted with cobalt, to the indigo-deep walls of the
ranges, the earth spilled over influences of sentient youth.

Maggard gazed down at the girl and the girl, with a hand resting on a
porch post, stood looking off out of eyes that caught and gave back the
soft light from the moon. To Maggard she seemed unconditionally lovely,
but the fetters of shyness still held them both.

"I don't know many folks hyarabouts yit," he said with impetuous
suddenness. "I'd plumb love ter hev ye befriend me."

Dorothy turned toward him and her lips relaxed their shyness into a
friendly smile--then impulsively she demanded: "Did yore foreparents
dwell hyarabouts a long time back?"

Thornton's face, with the moonlight upon it, stiffened into a mask-like
reticence at this touching upon the sensitive topic which threatened his
identification as a hunted man.

"I've done heered thet they lived somewhars in Kaintuck ginerations
afore my time," he made evasive answer. "What made ye ask me that
question?"

Then it was she who became hesitant but after a little she suggested,
"Come on down hyar under thet old walnuck tree. Seems like I kin talk
freer thar."

Together they went to the place where the shadows lay deep, like an
island in a lake of moonshine, and the girl talked on in the hurried,
shy fashion of one with a new secret and the need of a confidant.

"Ther mornin' ye fust come by ... an' stopped thar in ther high road ...
I'd jest been readin' somethin' thet ... was writ by one of my
foreparents ... way back, upwards of a hundred y'ars ago, I reckon." She
paused but he nodded his interest so sympathetically that she went on,
reassured; "She told how come she planted this hyar tree ... in them
days when ther Injins still scalped folks ... an' she writ down jest
what her husband looked like."

"What _did_ he look like?" inquired the man, gravely, and the girl found
herself no longer bashful with him but at ease, as with an old friend.

"Hit war right then I looked out an' seed ye," she said, simply, "an'
'peared like ye'd plum bodily walked outen them pages of handwrite.
Thet's why I asked whether yore folks didn't dwell hyar onc't. Mebby we
mout be kin."

Cal Maggard shook his head.

"My folks moved away to Virginny so fur back," he informed her, "thet
hit's apt ter be right distant kinship."

"This was all fur back," she reminded him, and in order that the sound
of her voice might continue, he begged:

"Tell me somethin' else erbout this tree ... an' what ye read in ther
book."

She was standing close to him, and as she talked it seemed to him that
the combined fragrances of the freshly washed night all came from her.
He was conscious of the whippoorwill calls and the soft crooning of the
river, but only as far-away voices of accompaniment, and she, answering
to dreamy influences, too, went on with her recitals from the journal of
the woman who had been a lady in Virginia and who probably lay buried
under the spot on which they stood.

"Hit's right amazin' ter listen at ye," he said at length. "But
plentiful amazin' things comes ter pass."

An amazing thing was coming to pass with him at that moment, for his
arms were twitching with an eagerness to close about her, and he seemed
struggling against forces of impulse stronger than himself.

It was amazing because he had sworn to avoid the folly of chancing
everything on too hasty a love declaration, and because the discipline
of patient self-control was strong in him. It was amazing, too, because,
with a warning recently received and appreciated, his ears had become
deaf to all sounds save her voice, and when the thicket stirred some
fifty yards away he heard nothing.

Even the girl herself would ordinarily have paused to bend her head and
listen to an unaccustomed sound, but in her as well as in him the
close-centred magic was working absorption.

Each of them felt the tense, new something that neither fully
understood, but which set them vibrating to a single impulse as the two
prongs of a tuning fork answer to one note. Neither of them thought of
the figure that hitched its way toward them--more cautious after that
first warning rustle--to watch and listen--the figure of an armed man.

For the girl reality seemed to recede into the gossamer of dreams. She
could fancy herself the other woman who had lived and died before
her--and the face of the man in the moonlight might have been that of
the pioneer Thornton. Fancy was stronger than actuality.

"Hit almost seems like," she whispered, "that ther old tree's got a
spell in hit--ter bewitch folks with."

"Ef hit has ... hit's a spell I loves right good," he fervently
protested.

He heard her breath come quick and sudden, as if under a hypnotic force,
and following the prompting of some instinctive mentor, he held out his
arms toward her.

Still she stood with the wide-eyed raptness of a sleepwalker, and when
Cal Maggard moved slowly forward, she, who had been so shy an hour ago,
made no retreat.

It was all as though each of them reacted to the command of some
controlling volition beyond themselves. The man's arms closed about her
slender body and pressed it close to his breast. His lips met her
upturned ones, and held them in a long kiss that was returned. Each felt
the stir of the other's breath. To each came the fluttering tumult of
the other's heart. Then after a long while they drew apart, and the
girl's hands went spasmodically to her face.

"What hev we been doin', Cal?" she demanded in the bewildered tone of
returning realization. "I don't skeercely know ye yit, nuther."

"Mebby hit war ther spell," he answered in a low but triumphant voice.
"Ef hit war, I reckon God Hisself worked hit."

The figure in the tangle had drawn noiselessly back now and slipped off
into the woods a few hundred yards away where it joined another that
stood waiting there.

"I hain't mad with ye, Cal," said Dorothy, slowly. "I hain't even
mortified, albeit I reckon I ought ter be sick with shame ... but I
wants ye ter go home now. I've got need ter think."

As they stood together at the fence they heard Bas Rowlett's voice
singing down the road, and soon his figure came striding along and
stopped by the stile.

"Howdy, Dorothy," he called, then recognizing that this was a
leave-taking he added, "Cal, ef ye're startin' home, I'll go long with
ye, fer comp'ny."

The moon was westering when the two men reached the turn of the road and
there Rowlett paused and began speaking in a cautious undertone.

"I didn't come along accidental, Cal. I done hit a-purpose. I got ter
studyin' 'bout that cracklin' twig we heered in ther bresh an' hit
worrited me ter think of yore goin' home by yoreself. I concluded ter
tarry fer ye an' guide ye over a trace thet circles round thet gorge
without techin' hit."

"I'm right sensibly beholden ter ye," answered Maggard, the more
embarrassed because he now knew this generous fellow to be a vanquished
rival. "But 'atter ternight ye've got ter suffer me ter take my own
chances."

Together they climbed the mountainside until they reached the edge of a
thicket that seemed impassable but through which the guide discovered a
narrow way. Before they had come far they halted, breathing deep from
the steep ascent, and found themselves on a shelf of open rock that
commanded a view of the valley and the roof of the Harper house, on
which the moonlight slept.


  [Illustration: "_'Hit almost seems like,' she whispered, 'that ther
  old tree's got a spell in hit--ter bewitch folks with.'_"]


"Thar's ther last glimpse we gits ternight of ther house an' ther old
tree," said Rowlett who stood a few feet away and, as Maggard turned to
look, the night stillness broke into a bellowing that echoed against the
precipice and the newcomer lurched forward like an ox struck with a
sledge.

As he fell Maggard's hand gripped convulsively at his breast and at the
corners of his mouth a thin trickle of blood began to ooze.

But before his senses went under the closing tide of darkness and
insensibility the victim heard Rowlett's pistol barking ferociously back
into the timber from which the ambushed rifle had spoken. He heard
Rowlett's reckless and noisy haste as he plowed into the laurel where
he, too, might encounter death, and raising his voice in a feeble effort
of warning he tried to shout out: "Heed yoreself, Bas ... hit's too late
ter save me."




CHAPTER VIII


To the man lying in the soaked grass and moss of the sandstone ledge
came flashes of realization that were without definite beginning or end,
separated by gaps of insensibility. Out of his limbs all power and
volition seemed to have evaporated, and his breath was an obstructed
struggle as though the mountain upon which he lay were lying instead
upon his breast. Through him went hot waves of pain under which he
clenched his teeth until he swooned again into a merciful numbness.

He heard in an interval of consciousness the thrashing of his
companion's boots through the tangle and the curses with which his
companion was vainly challenging his assailant to stand out and fight in
the open.

Then, for a little while, he dropped endlessly down through pits of
darkness and after that opened his eyes to recognize that he was being
held with his head on Rowlett's knee. Rowlett saw the fluttering of the
lids and whispered:

"I'm goin' ter tote ye back thar--ter Harper's house. Hit's ther only
chanst--an' I reckon I've got ter hurt ye right sensibly."

Bas rose and hefted him slowly and laboriously, straightening up with a
muscle-straining effort, until he stood with one arm under the limp
knees and one under the blood-wet shoulders of his charge.

For a moment he stood balancing himself with his feet wide apart, and
then he started staggering doggedly down the stony grade, groping, at
each step, for a foothold. In the light of the sinking moon the slowly
plodding rescuer offered an inviting target, with both hands engaged
beyond the possibility of drawing or using a weapon, but no shot was
fired.

The distance was not great, but the pace was slow, and the low moon
would shortly drop behind the spruce fringe of the ridges. Then the
burden-bearer would have to stumble forward through confused
blackness--so he hastened his steps until his own breath rattled into an
exhausted rasp and his own heart hammered with the bursting ache of
effort.

When he had reached the half-way point he put his load down and shouted
clamorously for help, until the black wall of the Harper house showed an
oblong of red light and the girl's voice came back in answer.

"I've got a dyin' man hyar," he called, briefly, "an' I needs aid."

Then as Maggard lay insensible in the mud, Bas squatted on his heels
beside him and wiped the sweat drench from his face with his
shirt-sleeve.

It was with unsteady eyes that he watched a lantern crawling toward him:
eyes to which it seemed to weave the tortuous course of a purposeless
glow-worm.

Then the moon dipped suddenly and the hills, ceasing to be visible
shapes, were felt like masses of close crowded walls, but at length the
lantern approached and, in its shallow circle of sickly yellow, it
showed two figures--that of the old man and the girl.

Dorothy carried the light, and when she held it high and let its rays
fall on the two figures, one sitting stooped with weariness and the
other stretched unconscious, her eyes dilated in a terror that choked
her, and her face went white.

But she said nothing. She only put down the lantern and slipped her arms
under the shoulders that lay in the wet grass, shuddering as her hands
closed on the warm moisture of blood, and Rowlett rose with an effort
and rallied his spent strength to lift the inert knees. While the old
man lighted their footsteps the little procession made its painful way
down what was left of the mountainside, across the road, and up into the
house.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Haggard opened his eyes again he was lying with his wounds already
bathed and roughly bandaged. Plainly he was in a woman's room, for its
clean particularity and its huge old four-poster bed spread with a
craftily wrought "coverlet" proclaimed a feminine proprietorship. A
freshly built fire roared on a generous hearth, giving a sense of space
broadening and narrowing with fickle boundaries of shadow.

The orange brightness fell, too, on a figure that stood at the
foot-board looking down at him with anxiety-tortured eyes; a figure
whose heavy hair caught a bronze glimmering like a nimbus, and whose
hands were held to her breast with a clutching little suspended gesture
of dread.

Voices vaguely heard in disjointed fragments of talk called him back to
actuality.

The old man was speaking:

"... I fears me he kain't live long.... 'Pears like ther shot war a
shore deadener...." and from Rowlett came an indignant response "... I
heered ther crack from right spang behind us ... I wheeled 'round an'
shot three shoots back at ther flash."

Then Maggard heard, so low that it seemed a joyous and musical whisper,
the announcement from the foot of his bed:

"I'm goin' ter fetch Uncle Jase Burrell now, ter tend yore hurts, Cal,"
she said, softly. "I jest couldn't endure ter start away twell I seed ye
open yore eyes, though."

Maggard glanced toward Bas Rowlett who stood looking solicitously down
at him and licked his lips. There was an acknowledgment which decency
required his making in their presence, and he keyed himself for a feeble
effort to speak.

"Rowlett thar...." he began, faintly, and a cough seemed to start fresh
agonies in his chest so that he had to wait awhile before he went on.

"Mighty few men would hev stood by me ... like he done.... Ef I'd been
his own blood-brother...." there he gulped, choked, and drifted off
again.

Cal Maggard next awoke with a strangely refreshed sense of recovery and
a blessed absence of pain. He seemed still unable to move, and he said
nothing, for in that strange realization of a brain brought back to
focus came a shock of new amazement.

Bas Rowlett bent above his pillow, but with a transformed face. The eyes
that were for the moment turned toward the door burned with a baleful
hatred and the lips were drawn into a vicious snarl.

This, too, must be part of the light-headedness, thought Maggard, but
instinctively he continued to simulate unconsciousness. This man had
been his steadfast and self-forgetful friend. So the wounded man fought
back the sense of clear and persistent reality, which had altered kindly
features into a gargoyle of vindictiveness, and lay unmoving until
Rowlett rose and turned his back.

Then, through the slits of warily screened eyes, he swept a hasty glance
about the room and found that except for the man who had carried him in
and himself it was empty. Probably that hate-blackness on the other face
was for the would-be assassin and not for himself, argued Maggard.

Rowlett went over and stood by the hearth, staring into the fire, his
hands clenching and unclenching in spasmodic violence.

This was a queer dream, mused Maggard, and more and more insistently it
refused to seem a dream.

More surely as he watched the face which the other turned to glare at
him did the instinct grow that he himself was the object of that bitter
animosity of expression.

He lay still and watched Rowlett thrust a hand into his overalls pocket
and scatter peanut shells upon the fire--objects which he evidently
wished to destroy. As he did this the standing figure laughed shortly
under his breath--and full realization came to the wounded man.

The revelation was as complete as it was ugly. As long as he lay
unmoving the pain seemed quiescent, and his head felt crystal clear--his
thought efficient. Perhaps he was dying--most probably he was. If so
this was a lucid interval before death, and in it his mind was playing
him no tricks. The supposed friend loomed in an unmasked and traitorous
light which even the preconceived idea could not confuse or mitigate.
Maggard did not want to give credence to the certainty that was shaping
itself--and yet the conviction had been born and could not be thrust
back into the womb of the unborn. All of Rowlett's friendliness and
loyalty had been only an alibi! It had been Rowlett who had led him,
unsuspecting, into ambush!

Maggard's coat and pistol-holster hung at the headboard of his bed. Now
with a cat-soft tread upon the creaking puncheons of the floor Rowlett
approached them. He paused first, bending to look searchingly down at
the white face on the pillow, and the eyes in that face remained almost
but not quite closed. The hand that rested outside the coverlet, too,
lay still and limp like a dead hand.

Reassured by these evidences of unconsciousness, Bas Rowlett drew a
deep breath of satisfaction. The diabolical thought had come to him that
by shaking the prone figure he could cause a hemorrhage that would
assure death--and the evil fire in his eyes as his hands stole out
toward his intended victim betrayed his reflection.

The seemingly insensible listener, with a Spartan effort, held his pale
face empty of betrayal as the two impulsive hands came closer.

But as quickly the arms drew back, and the expression clouded with
doubt.

"No...." reflected Bas without words. "No, hit ain't needful nohow ...
an' Jase Burrell mout detect I'd done hit."

The bending figure straightened again and its hands began calmly rifling
the pockets of the wounded man's coat.

Through the narrow slits of eyes that dissembled sleep Maggard watched,
while Rowlett opened and recognized the threatening letter that had been
nailed to the door. The purloiner nodded, and his lips twisted into a
smile of triumph, as he thrust the sheet of paper into his own pocket.

No longer now could there remain any vestige of doubt in Maggard's
mind--no illusion of mistaking the true for the untrue, and in the
vengeful fury that blazed eruptively through him he forgot the hurt of
his wounding.

He could not rise from his bed and give battle. Had the other not
reconsidered his diabolical impulse to shake him into a fatal hemorrhage
he could not even have defended himself. His voice, in all likelihood,
would not carry to the door of the next room--if indeed any one were
there.

Physically, he was defenseless and inert, but all of him beyond the
flesh was galvanized into quicksilver acuteness and determination. He
was praying for a reprieve of life sufficient to call this Judas friend
to an accounting--and if that failed, for strength enough to die with
his denunciation spoken. Yet he realized the need of conserving his
tenuous powers and so, gauging his abilities, he lay motionless and to
all seeming unconscious, while the tall figure continued to tower over
him.

Cal Maggard had some things to say and if his power of speech forsook
him before he finished it was better not to make the start. These
chances he was calculating, and after Rowlett had turned his back, the
man in the bed opened his eyes and experimented with the one word,
"Bas!"

He found that the monosyllable not only sounded clear, but had the quiet
and determined quality of tone at which he had striven, and as it
sounded the other wheeled, flinching as if the word had been a bullet.

But at once he was back by the bed, and Maggard's estimate of him as a
master of perfidy mounted to admiration, for the passion clouds had in
that flash of time been swept from his eyes and left them disguised
again with solicitude and friendliness.

"By God, Cal!" The exclamation bore a counterfeited heartiness. "I
didn't skeercely suffer myself ter hope y'd ever speak out ergin!"

"I'm obleeged, Bas." Maggard's voice was faint but steady now. "Thar's a
thing I've got ter tell ye afore my stren'th gives out."

Beguiled by a seeming absence of suspicion into the belief that Maggard
had just then awakened to consciousness, Rowlett ensconced himself on
the bedside and nodded an unctuous sympathy. The other closed his eyes
and spoke calmly and without raising his lids.

"Ye forewarned me, Bas.... We both of us spoke out p'int blank ...
erbout ther gal ... an' we both went on bein' ... plum friendly."

"Thet war ther best way, Cal."

"Yes.... Then ye proffered ter safeguard me.... Ye didn't hev no need
ter imperil yoreself ... but ye _would_ hev hit so."

"I reckon ye'd hev done likewise."

"No. I misdoubts I wouldn't ... anyhow ... right from ther outset on you
didn't hev ter be friendly ter me ... but ye was."

"I loves fa'r mindedness," came the sanctimonious response.

A brief pause ensued while Maggard rested. He had yet some way to go,
and the last part of the conversation would be the hardest.

"Most like," he continued at last, "I'll die ... but I've got a little
bitty, slim chanst ter come through."

"I hopes so, Cal."

"An' ef I _does_, I calls on God in heaven ter witness thet afore ther
moon fulls ergin ... I'm a-goin' ter _kill_--somebody."

"Who, Cal?"

The white face on the pillow turned a little and the eyes opened.

"I hain't keerin' none much erbout ther feller thet fired ther shot...."
went on the voice. "Ther man I aims ter git ... air ther one thet hired
him.... _He's_ goin' ter die ... _hard_!"

"What makes ye think"--the listener licked his lips furtively--"thar war
more'n one?"

"Because I knows who ... t'other one is."

Rowlett rose from his seat, and lifted a clenched fist. The miscreant's
thoughts were in a vortex of doubt, fear, and perplexity--but perhaps
Maggard suspected "Peanuts" Causey, and Rowlett went on with an
admirable bit of acting.

"Name him ter me, Cal," he tensely demanded. "He shot at both of us.
He's my man ter kill!"

"When ye lay thar ... by my house ... watchin' with me...." went on the
ambushed victim in a summarizing of ostensible services, "what made ye
discomfort yoreself, fer me, save only friendliness?"

"Thet war all, Cal."

"An' hit war ther same reason thet made ye proffer ter take away thet
letter an' seek ter diskiver who writ hit, warn't hit ... an' ter sa'rch
about an' find thet peanut hull ... an' ter come by hyar an' show me a
safe way home.... All jest friendliness, warn't hit?"

"Hain't thet es good a reason es any?"

The voice on the bed did not rise but it took on a new note.

"Thar couldn't handily be but jest ... one better one ... Bas."

"What mout thet be?"

"Ther right one. Ther reason of a sorry craven thet aimed at a
killin' ... an' sought ter alibi hisself."

Rowlett stood purple-faced and trembling in a transport of maniac fury
with which an inexplicable fear ran cross-odds as warp and woof. The
other had totally deluded him until the climax brought its accusation,
and now the unmasked plotter took refuge in bluster, fencing for time to
think.

"Thet's a damn lie an' a damn slander!" he stormed. "Ye've done already
bore witness afore these folks hyar thet I sought ter save ye."

"An' I plum believed hit ... then. Now I knows better. I sees thet ye
led me inter ambush ... thet ye planted them peanut hulls.... Thet ye
writ thet letter ... an' jest now ye stole hit outen my pocket."

"Thet's a lie, too. I reckon yore head's done been crazed. I toted ye in
hyar an' keered fer ye."

"Ye aimed ter finish out yore alibi," persisted Maggard, disdainfully.
"Ye didn't low I seed ye steal ther letter ... but I gives ye leave ter
tek hit over thar an' and burn hit up, Rowlett--same es them peanut
hulls.... I hain't got no need of nuther them ... nur hit."

Rowlett's hand, under the sting of accusation, had instinctively pressed
itself against his pocket. Now guiltily and self-consciously it came
away and he found himself idiotically echoing his accuser's words:

"No need of hit?"

"No, I don't want nuther law-co'tes ner juries ter help me punish a man
thet hires his killin' done second-handed.... All I craves air one day
of stren'th ter stand on my feet."

With a brief spasm of hope Rowlett bent forward and quickly decided on a
course of temporizing. If he could encourage that idea the man would
probably die--with sealed lips.

"I'm willin' ter look over all this slander, Cal," he generously
acceded; "ye've done tuck up a false notion in yore light-headedness."

"This thing lays betwixt me an' you," went on the low-pitched but
implacable voice from the bed, "but ef I ever gits up again--you're
goin' ter wisht ter God in Heaven ... hit war jest only ther
penitenshery threatenin' ye."

Again Rowlett's anger blazed, and his self-control slipped its leash.

"Afore God, ef ye warn't so plum puny an' tuckered out, I wouldn't stand
hyar an' suffer ye ter fault me with them damn lies."

"Is thet why ye was ponderin' jest now over shakin' me till I bled
inside myself?... I seed thet thought in yore eyes."

The breath hissed out of Rowlett's great chest like steam from an
over-stressed boiler, and a low bellow broke from his lips.

"I kin still do thet," he declared in a rage-choked voice. "I _did_ hire
a feller ter kill ye, but he failed me. Now I'm goin' ter finish ther
job myself."

Then the door opened and old Caleb Harper called from the threshold:

"Did I hear somebody shout out in hyar? What's ther matter, Bas?"

As the menacing face hung over him, Maggard saw it school itself slowly
into a hard composure and read a peremptory warning for silence in the
eyes. The outstretched hands had already touched him, and now they
remained holding his shoulders as the voice answered:

"Cal jest woke up. I reckon he war outen his head, an' I'm heftin' him
up so's he kin breath freer."

Old Man Harper came over to the bed and Rowlett released his hold and
moved away.

"I've done been studyin' whether Dorothy's goin' ter make hit acrost ter
Jase Burrell's or not," said Caleb, quaveringly. "I fears me ther storm
hes done washed out the ford."

Then he crossed to the hearth and sat down in a chair to light his
pipe.




CHAPTER IX


Cal Maggard lay unmoving as the old man's chair creaked. Over there with
his back turned toward the fire stood Bas Rowlett, his barrel-like chest
swelling heavily with that excitement which he sought to conceal. To
Caleb Harper, serenely unsuspicious, the churlish sullenness of the eyes
that resented his intrusion, went unmarked. It was an intervention that
had come between the wounded man and immediate death, and now Rowlett
cursed himself for a temporizing fool who had lost his chance.

He stood with feet wide apart and his magnified shadow falling
gigantically across floor and wall--across the bed, too, on which his
intended victim lay defenseless.

If Cal Maggard had been kneeling with his neck on the guillotine block
the intense burden of his suspense could hardly have been greater.

So long as Caleb Harper sat there, with his benign old face open-eyed in
wakefulness, death would stand grudgingly aloof, staring at the wounded
man yet held in leash.

If those eyes closed in sleep the restive executioner would hardly
permit himself to be the third time thwarted.

Yet the present reprieve would for a few moments endure, since the
assassin would hesitate to goad his victim to any appeal for help.

Slowly the fire began to dwindle and the shadows to encroach with a
dominion of somberness over the room. It seemed to the figure in the
bed as he struggled against rising tides of torpor and exhaustion that
his own resolution was waning with the firelight and that the murk of
death approached with the thickening shadows.

He craved only sleep yet knew that it meant death.

With a morose passion closely akin to mania the thoughts of the other
man, standing with hands clenched at his back, were running in turbulent
freshet.

To have understood them at all one must have seen far under the surface
of that bland and factitious normality which he maintained before his
fellows. In his veins ran a mongrelized strain of tendencies and vices
which had hardened into a cruel and monstrous summary of vicious
degeneracy.

Yet with this brain-warping brutality went a self-protective disguise of
fair-seeming and candour.

Rowlett's infatuation for Dorothy Harper had been of a piece with his
perverse nature--always a flame of hot passion and never a steadfast
light of unselfish love.

He had received little enough encouragement from the girl herself, but
old Caleb Harper had looked upon him with partiality, and since, to his
own mind, possession was the essential thing and reciprocated affection
a minor consideration, he had until now been confident of success. Once
he had married Dorothy Harper, he meant to break her to his will, as one
breaks a spirited horse, and he had entertained no misgivings as to his
final mastery.

Once unmasked, Bas Rowlett could never regain his lost semblance of
virtue--and this battered creature in the bed was the only accuser who
could unmask him. If the newcomer's death had been desirable before, it
was now imperative.

The clock ticked on. The logs whitened, and small hissing tongues of
blue flame crept about them where there had been flares of vermilion.

Like overstrained cat-gut drawn tauter and tauter until the moment of
its snapping is imminent, the tension of that waiting grew more crucial
and tortured.

Bit by bit into Cal Maggard's gropings after a plan crept the beginnings
of an idea, though sometimes under the stupefying waves of drowsiness he
lost his thread of thought.

Old Caleb was not yet asleep, and as the room grew chill he shivered in
his chair, and rose slowly, complaining of the misery in his joints.

He threw fresh fuel on the fire and then, over-wearied with the night's
excitement, let his head fall forward on his breast and his breath
lengthen to a snore.

Then in a low but peremptory voice Maggard said:

"Rowlett, come hyar."

With cautious but willing footfall Rowlett approached, but before he
reached the bedside a curt undertone warned him, "Stop right thar ... ef
ye draws nigher I'll call out. Kin ye hear me?... I aims ter talk low."

"I'm hearkenin'."

"All right. Give me yore pledge, full-solemn an' in ther sight of God
Almighty ... thet ye'll hold yore hand till I gits well ... or else
dies."

"Whar'fore would I do thet?"

"I'll tell you fer why. Ef ye don't ... I'll wake old Caleb up an' sw'ar
ter a dyin' statement ... an' I'll tell ther full, total truth.... Does
ye agree?"

The other hesitated then evaded the question.

"S'posin' I does give ye my pledge ... what then?"

"Then ef I dies what I knows'll die with me.... But ef I lives ... me
an' you'll settle this matter betwixt ourselves so soon es I kin walk
abroad."

That Maggard would ever leave that bed save to be borne to his grave
seemed violently improbable, and if his silence could be assured while
he lay there, success for the plotter would after all be complete. Yet
Rowlett pretended to ponder the proposition which he burned ardently to
accept.

"Why air ye willin' ter make thet compact with me?" he inquired
dubiously, and the other answered promptly:

"Because ter send ye ter sulter in ther penitenshery wouldn't pleasure
me ner content me ... no more then ter see ye unchurched fer
tale-bearin'. Ye've got ter _die_ under my own hands.... Ef ye makes
oath an' abides by hit ... ye needn't be afeared thet I won't keep mine,
too."

For a brief interval the standing man withheld his answer, but that was
only for the sake of appearances. Then he nodded his head.

"I gives ye my hand on hit. I sw'ars."

Something like a grunt of bitter laughter came from the bed.

"Thet hain't enough ... fotch me a Bible."

"I don't know whar hit's at."

"I reckon they've got one--in a godly dwellin'-house like this. Find
hit--an' speedily ... or I'll call out."

Rowlett turned and left the room, and presently he returned bearing a
cumbersome and unmistakable tome.

"Now kneel down," came the command from the bed, and the command was
reluctantly obeyed.

"Repeat these hyar words atter me ... 'I swa'rs, in ther sight an'
hearin' of God Almighty....'" and from there the words ran double, low
voiced from two throats, "'thet till sich time as Cal Maggard kin walk
abroad, full rekivered ... I won't make no effort ter harm ner
discomfort him ... no wise, guise ner fashion.... Ef I breaks this
pledge I prays God ter punish me ... with ruin an' death an' damnation
in hell hyaratter!"

"An' now," whispered Maggard, "kiss ther book."

As the weirdly sworn malefactor came slowly to his feet the instinct of
craft and perfidy brought him back to the part he must play.

"Now thet we onderstands one another," he said, slowly, "we're swore
enemies atter ye gits well. Meantime, I reckon we'd better go on
_seemin'_ plum friendly."

"Jist like a couple of blood-brothers," assented Maggard with an ironic
flash in his eyes, "an' now Blood-brother Bas, go over thar an' set
down."

Rowlett ground his teeth, but he laughed sardonically and walked in
leisurely fashion to the hearth.

There he sat with his feet outspread to the blaze, while he sought
solace from his pipe--and failed to find it.

Possibly stray shreds of delirium and vagary mingled themselves with
strands of forced clarity in Cal Maggard's thinking that night, for as
he lay there a totally unreasonable comfort stole over him and seemed
real.

He had the feeling that the old tree outside the door still held its
beneficent spell and that this magic would regulate for him those
elements of chance and luck without which he could not hope to survive
until Dorothy and Uncle Jase came back--and Dorothy had started on a
hard journey over broken and pitch-black distances.

Fanciful as was this figment of a sick imagination, the result was the
same as though it had been a valid conviction, for after a while Old Man
Caleb roused himself and stretched his long arms. Then he rose and
peered at the clock with his face close to its dial, and once more he
replenished the fire.

"Hit's past midnight now, Bas," he complained with a querulous note of
anxiety in his words. "I'm plum tetchious an' worrited erbout Dorothy."

For an avowed lover the seated man gave the impression of churlish
unresponsiveness as he made his grumbling reply.

"I reckon she hain't goin' ter come ter no harm. She hain't nobody's
sugar ner salt."

Caleb ran his talon-like fingers through his mane of gray hair and shook
his patriarchal head.

"Ther fords air all plum ragin' an' perilous atter a fresh like this....
I hain't a-goin' ter enjoy no ease in my mind ef _somebody_ don't go in
s'arch of her--an' hit jedgmatically hain't possible fer me ter go
myself."

Slowly, unwillingly, and with smouldering fury Rowlett rose from his
chair.

He was a self-declared suitor, a man who had boasted that no night was
too wild for him to ride, and a refusal in such case would stultify his
whole attitude and standing in that house.

"I reckon ye'll suffer me ter ride yore extry critter, won't ye?" he
inquired, glumly, "an' loan me a lantern, too."

       *       *       *       *       *

After the setting of the moon the night had become a void of blackness,
but it was a void in which shadows crowded, all dark but some more
inkily solid than others--and of these shadows some were forests, some
precipices, and some chasms lying trap-like between.

Dorothy Harper and the mule she rode were moving somewhere through this
world of sooty obscurity.

Sometimes in the bottoms, where the way ran through soft shale, teaming
wheels had cut hub-deep furrows where a beast could break a leg with a
miscalculated step. Sometimes, higher up, a path wide enough only for
the setting down of foot before foot skirted a cliff's edge--and the
storm might at any point have washed even that precarious thoroughfare
away in a gap like a bite taken out of a soft apple.

But along those uncertain trails, obeying something surer than human
intelligence, the beast piloted his rider with an intuitive steadiness,
feeling for his foothold, and the girl, being almost as wise as he,
forebore from any interference of command save by the encouragement of a
kindly voice.

Once in a swollen ford where the current had come boiling up mount and
rider were lifted and swept downstream, and for a matter of long moments
it was a toss-up whether water-power or mule-power would prevail.
Through the caldron roar of storm-fed waters, then, the girl could hear
the heavy, straining breath in the beast's lungs, and the strong lashing
of its swimming legs. She caught her lip till it bled between her teeth
and clung tight and steady, knowing her danger but seeking to add no
ounce of difficulty to the battle for strength and equilibrium of the
animal under her. And they had won through and were coming back.

At her side now rode Uncle Jason, the man of diverse parts who was
justice of the peace, adviser in dissension, and self-taught
practitioner of medicine.

He had been roused out of his sleep and had required no urging. He had
listened, saddled, and come, and now, when behind them lay the harder
part of the journey, they heard other hoofs on the road and made out a
shadowy horseman who wheeled his mount to ride beside them.

Then for the first time in a long while the girl opened her
tight-pressed lips to shape the gasping question which she was almost
terrified to ask.

"How is he, Bas? Air he still alive?"

When at last they stood by the bedside, the volunteer doctor pressed his
head to the hardly stirring chest and took the inert wrist between his
fingers. Then he straightened up and shook a dubious head.

"Thar hain't but jist only a flicker of pulse-beat left," he declared.
"Mebby he mout live through hit--but ef he does hit'll p'int-blank
astonish me."




CHAPTER X


Through the rest of that night Old Jase lay on a pallet spread before
the fire, rising at intervals out of a deathlike slumber to slip his
single suspender strap over his bent shoulder, turn up the lantern, and
inspect his patient's condition.

On none of these occasions did he find the girl, who spent that night in
a straight-backed chair at the bedside, asleep. Always she was sitting
there with eyes wide and brimming with suffering and fear, and a
wakeful, troubled heart into which love had flashed like a meteor and
which it threatened, now, to sear like a lightning bolt. It seemed to
her that life had gone aimlessly, uneventfully on until without warning
or preparation it had burst into a glory of discovery and in the same
breath into a chaos of destruction.

"Kain't ye give me no encouragement yit, Uncle Jase?" she whispered once
when he came to the bedside, with a convulsive catching at her throat,
though her eyes were dry and hot, and the old man, too ruggedly honest
to soften the edge of fact with evasion, shook his head.

"I hain't got no power ter say yit--afore I sees how he wakes up
termorrer," he admitted. "Why don't ye lay down, leetle gal? I'll
summons ye ef airy need arises."

But the girl shook her head and later the old man, stirring on his
pallet, heard her praying in an almost argumentative tone of
supplication:

"Ye sees, Almighty God, hit don't call for no master _big_ miracle ter
save him ... an' Ye've done fotched ther dead back ter life afore now."

That night Dorothy Harper grew up. For the first time she recognized the
call of her adult womanhood which centred about one man and made its own
universe. She would not be a child again.

       *       *       *       *       *

The town of Lake Erie was no town at all, but a scant cluster of
shack-like buildings at the crossing of two roads, which were hardly
roads at all, either.

The place had been called Lake Erie when the veterans who had gone to
the "War of Twelve" came home from service with Perry--for in no war
that the nation has waged has this hermit people failed of response and
representation.

This morning it stood as an unsightly detail against a background of
impressive beauty. Back of it rose wooded steeps, running the whole
lovely gamut of greenery and blossoming colour to a sun-filled sky which
was flawless.

The store of Jake Crabbott was open and already possessed of its quorum
for the discussion of the day's news.

And to-day there _was_ news! A dozen hickory-shirted and slouch-hatted
men lounged against the wall or on empty boxes and broken chairs about
its porch and door.

The talk was all of the stranger who had come so recently from Virginia
and who had found such a hostile welcome awaiting him. Spice was added
to the debate by a realization in the mind of every man who joined in it
that the mysterious firer of those shots might be--and probably was--a
member of the present conclave.

Jake Crabbott who ran the store maintained, in all neighbourhood
differences, the studious attitude of an incorruptible neutral. Old
Grandsire Templey, his father-in-law, sat always in the same low chair
on the porch in summer and back of the stove in winter, with his palsied
hands crossed on his staff-head and his toothless gums mumbling in
inconsequential talk.

Old Grandsire was querulous and hazy in his mind but his memory went
back almost a century, and it clarified when near events were discarded
and he spoke of remoter times.

Now he sat mumbling away into his long beard, and in the door stood his
son-in-law, a sturdy man, himself well past middle-age, with a face that
was an index of hardihood, shrewdness, and the gift for knowing when and
how to hold his tongue.

On the steps of the porch, smiling like a good-humoured leviathan and
listening to the talk, sat "Peanuts" Causey, but he was not to be
allowed to sit long silent, because of all those gathered there he alone
had met and talked with the stranger.

"I fared past his dwellin' house day before yistiddy," declared Causey
in response to a question, "an' I 'lowed he war a right genial-spoken
sort of body."

The chorus of fresh interrogations was interrupted by a man who had not
spoken before. He rose from his seat and stepped across toward Peanuts,
and he was not prepossessing of appearance as he came to his feet.

Joe Doane, whom the pitiless directness of a rude environment had
rechristened "Hump" Doane, stood less than five feet to the crown of his
battered hat, and the hat sat on an enormous head out of which looked
the seamed and distorted face of a hunchback. But his shoulders were so
broad and his arms so long and huge that the man had the seeming of
gorilla hideousness and gorilla power.

The face, too, despite its soured scowl, held the alert of a keen
mentality and was dominated by eyes whose sleeping fires men did not
lightly seek to fan into blazes of wrath.

No man of either faction stood with a more uncompromising sincerity for
law and peace--but Hump Doane viewed life through the eyes of one who
has suffered the afflictions and mortification of a cripple in a land
that accepts life in physical aspects. His wisdom was darkened with the
tinge and colour of the cynic's thought. He trusted that man only who
proved his faith by his works, and believed all evil until it was
disproven. Like a nervous shepherd who tends wild sheep he feared always
for his flock and distrusted every pelt that might disguise and mask a
possible wolf of trouble.

"What did ye say this hyar stranger calls hisself, Peanuts?" he
demanded, bluntly, and when the other had told him he repeated the name
thoughtfully. Then he shot out another question with the sharp
peremptoriness of a prosecuting attorney, and in the high, rasping voice
of his affliction.

"What caused him ter leave Virginny?"

The stout giant grinned imperturbably.

"He didn't look like he'd relish ter be hectored none with sich-like
questions es thet, an' I wasn't strivin' ter root inter his private
business without he elected of his own free will ter give hit out ter
each an' every."

Young Pete Doane, the cripple's son, who fancied his own wit, hitched
his chair backward and tilted it against the wall.

"I reckon a man don't need no severe reason but jest plain common sense
fer movin' outen Virginny inter Kaintuck."

Hump swept a disdainful glance at his offspring and that conversational
volunteer ventured no further repartee.

"By ther same token," announced the elder Doane, crushingly, "thar's
trash in Virginny thet don't edify Kaintuck folks none by movin' in
amongst 'em."

Young Pete, whose entrance into the discussion had been so ruthlessly
stepped upon by his own sire, sat now sulkily silent, and his face in
that sombre repose was a study. Though his name was that of the ancestor
who had "gone to the Indians" and introduced the red strain into the
family there was no trace of that mingling in young Peter's physiognomy.
Indeed the changes of time had transferred all the recognizable aspects
of that early blood-line to the one branch represented by Bas Rowlett,
possibly because the Doanes had, on the distaff side, introduced new
blood with greater frequency.

Young Pete was blond, and unlike his father had the receding chin and
the pale eyes of a weak and impressionable character. Bas Rowlett was a
hero whom he worshipped, and his nature was such as made him an
instrument for a stronger will to use at pleasure.

The sturdy father regarded him with a strange blending of savage
affection and stern disdain, brow-beating him in public yet ready to
flare into eruptive anger if any other recognized, as he did, the
weaknesses of his only son.

The crowd paused, too, to receive and question a newcomer who swung
himself down from a brown mare and strolled into the group.

Sim Squires was a fellow of medium height and just under middle-age,
whose face was smooth shaven--or had been some two days back. He smiled
chronically, just as chronically he swung his shoulders and body with a
sort of swagger, but the smile was vapid, and the swagger an empty
boast.

"I jest heered erbout this hyar ruction a leetle while back," he
announced with inquisitive promptness, "an' I rid straightway over hyar
ter find me out somethin'."

"Thar comes Bas Rowlett now," suggested the storekeeper, waving his hand
toward the creek-bed road along which a mule and rider came at a placid
fox-trot. "He's ther feller that fotched ther stranger in, an' shot back
at ther la'rel. Belikes he kin give us ther true sum an' amount of ther
matter."

As Sim Squires and Peanuts Causey glanced up at the approaching figure
one might have said that into the eyes of each came a shadow of
hostility. On Sim's face the chronic grin for once faded, and he moved
carelessly to one side--yet under the carelessness one or two in that
group discerned a motive more studied. Though no one knew cause or
nature of the grievance, it was generally felt that bad blood existed
between Bas and Sim, and Sim was not presumed to court a collision.

When Bas Rowlett had dismounted and come slowly to the porch, the
loungers fell silent with the interest accorded one of the principal
actors in last night's drama, then the hunchback demanded shortly:

"Bas, we're all frettin' ourselves ter know ther gist of this hyar
trouble ... an' I reckon ye're ther fittin' man ter tell us."

The new arrival glanced about the group, nodding in greeting, until his
eyes met those of Sim Squires--and to Sim he did not nod. Squires, for
his part, had the outward guise of one looking through transparent
space, but Peanuts and Bas exchanged greetings a shade short of cordial,
and Peanuts did not rise, though he sat obstructing the steps and the
other had to go around him.

"I reckon ye've done heered all I kin tell ye," said Bas, gravely. "I'd
done been over ter ther furriner's house some siv'ral times bekase he
war a neighbour of mine--an' he seemed a mighty enjoyable sort of body.
He war visitin' at old man Harper's las' night an' I met up with him on
ther highway. He'd done told me he'd got a threatenin' letter from
somebody thet was skeered ter sign hit, so I proffered ter walk along
home with him, an' as we come by ther rock-clift somebody shot two
shoots.... I toted him back ter Harper's dwellin' house, an' he's layin'
thar now an' nobody don't know yit whether he'll live or die. Thet's all
I've got ther power ter tell ye."

"Hed this man Maggard ever been over hyar afore? Did he know ther
Harpers when he come?"

Hump Doane still shot out his questions in an inquisitorial manner but
Bas met its peremptory edginess with urbanity, though his face was
haggard with a night of sleeplessness and fatigue.

"He lowed ter me that his folks hed lived over hyar once a long time
back.... Thet's all I knows."

Hump Doane wheeled on the old man, whose life had stretched almost to
the century span, and shouted:

"Gran'sire, did ye ever know any Maggards dwellin' over hyar? Thar
hain't been none amongst us in my day ner time."

"Maggards ... Maggards?... let me study," quavered the frosty-headed
veteran in his palsied falsetto. "I kin remember when ther boys went off
ter ther war of Twelve ... I kin remember thet.... Thar war Doanes an'
Rowletts an' Thorntons...."

"I hain't askin' ye erbout no Doanes ner Thorntons. I'm askin' ye war
thar any Maggards?"

For a long time the human repository of ancient history pondered,
fumbling through the past.

"Let's see--this hyar's ther y'ar one thousand and nine hundred....
Thar's some things I disremembers. Maggards ... Maggards?... I don't
remember no Maggards.... No, siree! I don't remember none."

The cripple turned impatiently away, and Bas Rowlett speculatively
inquired:

"Does ye reckon mebby he war a-fleein' from some enemy over in
Virginny--an' thet ther feller followed atter him an' got him?"

"Seems like we'd hev heered of ther other stranger from some source or
other," mused Hump. "Hit hain't none of my business nohow--onless--" the
man's voice leaped and cracked with a belligerent violence--"onless
hit's some of Old Burrell Thornton's feisty kin, done come back ter tek
up his wickedness an' plaguery whar he left off at."

Bas Rowlett sat down on an empty box and his shoulders sagged wearily.

"Hit's Old Burrell's house he come ter," he admitted. "But yit he told
me he'd done tuck hit fer a debt. I hain't knowed him long, but him an'
me hed got ter be good friends an' ther feller thet shot him come nigh
gettin' me, too. Es fer me I'd confidence ther feller ter be all right."

"Ef he dies," commented the deformed cynic, grimly, "I'll confidence
him, too--an' ef he lives, I'll be plum willin' ter see him prove
hisself up ter be honest. Twell one or t'other of them things comes ter
pass, I hain't got nothin' more ter say."




CHAPTER XI


The room that Dorothy Harper had given over to the wounded man looked
off to the front, across valley slope and river--commanding the whole
peak and sky-limited picture at whose foreground centre stood the walnut
tree.

Uncle Jase came often and as yet he had been able to offer no greater
assurance than a doubtful shake of the head. Bas Rowlett, too, never let
a day pass without his broad shadow across the door, and his voice
sounding in solicitous inquiry. But Dorothy had assumed an autocracy in
the sick room which allowed no deviations from its decree of
uninterrupted rest, and the plotter, approaching behind his mask of
friendship, never found himself alone with the wounded man.

Between long periods of fevered coma Cal Maggard opened his eyes weakly
and had strength only to smile up at the face above him with its nimbus
of bronze set about the heaviness of dark hair--or to spend his scarcely
audible words with miserly economy.

Yet as he drifted in the shadowy reaches that lie between life and death
it is doubtful whether he suffered. The glow of fever through his
drowsiness was rather a grateful warmth, blunted of all responsible
thinking, than a recognized affliction, and the realization of the
presence near him enveloped him with a languorous contentment.

The sick man could turn his head on his pillow and gaze upward into cool
and deep recesses of green where the sun shifted and sifted golden
patches of light, and where through branch and twig the stir of summer
crooned a restful lullaby. Often a squirrel on a low limb clasped its
forepaws on a burgher-fat stomach, and gazed impudently down, chattering
excitedly at the invalid. From its hanging nest, with brilliant flashes
of orange and jet, a Baltimore oriole came and went about its
housekeeping affairs.

As half-consciously and dreamily he gazed up, between sleeping and
waking, the life of the tree became for him that of a world in
miniature.

But when he heard the door guardedly open and close, he would turn his
gaze from that direction as from a minor to a major delight--for then he
knew that on the other side of the bed would be the face of Dorothy
Harper. "Right smart's goin' ter _dee_pend on how hard he fights
hisself," Uncle Jase told Dorothy one day as he took up his hat and
saddle-bags. "I reckon ef he feels sartin he's got enough ter live
fer--he kin kinderly holp nature along right lavish."

That same day Maggard opened his eyes while the girl was sitting by his
bedside.

His smile was less dazzling out of a thin, white face, than it had been
through the tan of health, but such as it was he flashed it on her
gallantly.

"I don't hone fer nothin' else ter look at--when you're hyar," he
assured her. "But when you _hain't_ hyar I loves ter look at ther old
tree."

"Ther old tree," she replied after him, half guiltily; "I've been so
worrited, I'd nigh fergot hit."

His smile altered to a steady-eyed seriousness in which, too, she
recognized the intangible quality that made him seem to her different
from all the other men she had known.

He had been born and lived much as had the men about him. He had been
chained to the same hard and dour materialism as they, yet for him life
had another essence and dimension, because he had been born with a soul
capable of dreams.

"Thet fust night--when I lay a-waitin' fer ye ter come back--an'
misdoubtin' whether I'd last thet long," he told her almost under his
breath, "seemed like ter me thet old tree war kinderly a-safeguardin'
me."

She bent closer and her lips trembled.

"Mebby hit did safeguard ye, Cal," she whispered. "But I prayed fer ye
thet night--I prayed hard fer ye."

The man closed his eyes and his features grew deeply sober.

"I'd love ter know ther pint-blank truth," he said next. "Am I a-goin'
ter live or die?"

She struggled with the catch in her breath and hesitated so long with
her hands clenched convulsively together in her lap that he, still lying
with lids closed, construed her reticence into a death sentence and
spoke again himself.

"Afore I come over hyar," he said, quietly, "I reckon hit wouldn't hev
made no great differ ter me nuther way."

"Ye've got a chanst, Cal, and Uncle Jase 'lows," she bent closer and now
she could command her voice, "thet ef ye wills ter live ... survigrous
strong enough--yore chanst is a better one ... then ef ye ... jist don't
keer."

His eyes opened and his lips smiled dubiously.

"I sometimes lays hyar wonderin' whether I truly does keer or not."

"What does ye mean, Cal?"

He paused and lay breathing as though hardly ready to face so vital an
issue, then he explained:

"Ye said ye wasn't mad with me ... thet night ... under ther tree ...
but yit ye said, too ... hit war all a sort of dream ... like es ef ye
warn't plum shore."

"Yes, Cal?"

"Since then ye've jest kinderly pitied me, I reckon ... an' been plum
charitable.... I've got ter know.... War ye mad at me when ye pondered
hit in ther daylight ... stid of ther moonshine?"

The girl's pale face flushed to a laurel-blossom pink and her voice was
a ghost whisper.

"I hain't nuver been mad with ye, Cal."

"Could ye--" he halted and spoke in a tense undernote of hope that
hardly dared voice itself--"could ye bend down ter me an' kiss me ...
ergin?"

She could and did.

Then with her young arms under his head and her own head bowed until her
lips pressed his, the dry-eyed, heart-cramping suspense of these anxious
days broke in a freshet of unrestrained tears.

She had not been able to cry before, but now the tears came flooding and
they brought such a balm as comes with rain to a parched and thirsting
garden.

For a space the silence held save for the tempest of sobs that were not
unhappy and that gradually subsided, but after a little the rapt
happiness on the man's face became clouded under a thought that carried
a heavy burden of anxiety and he seemed groping for words that were
needed for some dreaded confession.

"When a man fust falls in love," he said, "he hain't got time ter think
of nuthin' else ... then all ther balance of matters comes back ... an'
needs ter be fronted. Thar's things I've got ter tell ye, Dorothy."

"What matters air them, Cal? I hain't thought of nuthin' else yit."

"Ye didn't know nuthin' erbout me when I come hyar ... ye jest tuck me
on faith, I reckon...."

He halted abruptly there, and his face became drawn into deep lines.
Then he continued dully: "When I crossed over ther Virginny line ... a
posse was atter me--they sought ter hang me over thar ... fer murder."

He felt her fingers tighten over his in spasmodic incredulity and saw
the stunned look in her eyes, but she only said steadily, "Go on ... I
knows ye _hed_ ter do hit. Tell me ther facts."

He sketched for her the grim narrative of that brief drama in the log
cabin beyond the river and of the guilt he had assumed. He told it with
many needful pauses for breath, but refused to stop until the story had
reached its conclusion, and as she listened, the girl's face mirrored
many emotions, but the first unguarded shock of horror melted entirely
away and did not return.

"Ef ye'd acted any other fashion," came her prompt and spirited
declaration when the recital reached its end, "I couldn't nuther love ye
ner esteem ye. Ye tuck blame on yoreself ter save a woman."

For a time she sat there gazing out through the window, her thoughts
busy with the grim game in which this man whom she loved had been so
desperately involved. She knew that he had spoken the whole truth ...
but she knew, too, that over them both must hang the unending shadow of
a threat, and after a little she acknowledged that realization as she
said with a new note of determination in her voice:

"Thar hain't no p'int in our waitin' over-long ter be wedded. Folks thet
faces perils like we does air right wise ter git what they kin outen
life--whilst they kin."

"We kain't be wedded none too soon fer me," he declared with fervour.
"Albeit yore grandpap's got ter be won over fust. He's right steadfast
to Bas Rowlett, I reckon."

As anxiously as Dorothy followed the rise and fall in the tide of her
lover's strength it is doubtful if her anxiety was keener than that of
Bas Rowlett, who began to feel that he had been cheated.

Unless something unforeseen altered the trend of his improvement, Cal
Maggard would recover. He would not keep his oath to avenge his
way-laying before the next full moon because it would require other
weeks to restore his whole strength and give back to him the use of his
gun hand, but the essential fact remained that he would not die.

Bas had entered into a compact based upon his belief that the other
_would_ die--a compact which as the days passed became a thing concrete
enough and actual enough to take reckoning of.

Of course Bas meant to kill his enemy. As matters now stood he must kill
him--but he would only enhance his own peril by seeking to forestall the
day when his agreement left him free to act.

So Bas still came to inquire with the solicitude of seeming friendship,
but outside that house he was busy breathing life into a scheme of broad
and parlous scope, and in all but a literal sense that scheme was a
violation of his oath-bound compact.

It was when Cal sat propped against pillows in a rocking chair, with his
right arm in a splint, and old Caleb smoked his pipe on the other side
of the window, that Dorothy suddenly went over and standing by Maggard,
laid her arm across his shoulders.

"Gran'pap," she said with a steadiness that hid its underlying
trepidation, "Cal an' me aims ter wed ... an' we seeks yore blessin'."

The old mountaineer sat up as though an explosion had shaken him out of
his drowsy complacency. The pipe that he held in his thin old fingers
dropped to the floor and spilled its ashes unnoted.

He gazed at them with the amazement of one who has been sitting blindly
by while unseen forces have had birth and growth at his elbow.

"Wed?" he exclaimed at last in an injured voice. "Why, I hedn't nuver
suspicioned hit was nuthin' but jest plain charity fer a stranger thet
hed suffered a sore hurt."

"Hit's been more then thet sence ther fust time we seed one another,"
declared the girl, and the old man shifted his gaze, altered its temper,
too, from bewilderment to indignation, and sat with eyes demanding
explanation of the man who had been sheltered and tended under his roof.

"Does ye aim ter let ther gal do all ther talkin'?" he demanded. "Hain't
ye got qualities enough ter so much as say 'by yore leave' fer
yoreself?"

Cal Maggard met his accusation steadily as he answered:

"Dorothy 'lowed she wanted ter tell ye fust-off her ownself. Thet's why
I hain't spoke afore now."

The wrath of surprise died as quickly as it had flared and the old man
sat for a time with a far-away look on his face, then he rose and stood
before them.

He seemed very old, and his kindly features held the venerable gravity
and inherent dignity of those faces that look out from the frieze of the
prophets. He paused long to weigh his words in exact justice before he
began to speak, and when the words at last came they were sober and
patient.

"I hain't hed nobody ter spend my love on but jest thet leetle gal fer a
lengthy time ... an' I reckon she hain't a-goin' ter go on hevin' me fer
no great spell longer.... I'm gittin' old."

Caleb looked infirm and lonely as he spoke. He had struggled through his
lifetime for a realization of standards that he vaguely felt to be a
bequest of honour from God-fearing and self-respecting ancestors--and
in that struggle there had been a certain penalty of aloofness in an
environment where few standards held. The children born to his
granddaughter and the man she chose as her mate must either carry on his
fight for principle or let it fall like an unsupported standard into the
mouldy level of decay.

These things were easy to feel, hard to explain, and as he stood
inarticulate the girl rose from her knees and went over to him, and his
arm slipped about her waist.

"I hain't nuver sought ter fo'ce no woman's will," he said at last and
his words fell with slow stress of earnestness. "But I'd always sort of
seed in my own mind a fam'ly hyar--with another man ter tek my place at
hits head when I war dead an' gone. I'd always thought of Bas Rowlett in
that guise. He's a man thet's done been, in a manner of speakin', like a
son ter me."

"Bas Rowlett----" began Dorothy but the old man lifted a hand in command
for silence. "Let me git through fust," he interrupted her. "Then ye kin
hev yore say. Thar's two reasons why I'd favoured Bas. One of them was
because he's a sober young man thet's got things hung up." There he
paused, and the quaint phrase he had employed to express prosperity and
thrift summed up his one argument for materialistic considerations.

"Thet's jest one reason," went on Caleb Harper, soberly, "an' save fer
statin' hit es I goes along I hain't got nuthin' more ter say erbout
hit--albeit hit seems ter me a right pithy matter fer young folks ter
study erbout. I don't jedgmatically know nothin' erbout _yore_ affairs,"
he nodded his head toward Maggard. "So fur's I've got any means ter
tell, ye mout be independent rich or ye mout not hev nothin' only ther
shirt an' pants ye sots thar in ... but thet kin go by, too. Ef my gal
kain't be content withouten ye, she kin sheer with ye ... an' I aims ter
leave her a good farm without no debt on hit."

The girl had been standing silent and attentive while he talked, but the
clear and delicate modelling of her face had changed under the resolute
quality of her expression until now it typified a will as unbreakable as
his own.

Her chin was high and her eyes full of lightnings, held back yet ready
to break, if need be, into battle fires.

Now her voice came in that low restraint in which ultimatums are spoken.

"Whatever ye leaves me in land an' money hain't nuthin' ter me--ef I
kain't love ther man I weds with. An' whilst I seeks ter be
dutiful--thar hain't no power under heaven kin fo'ce me ter wed with no
other!"

The old man seemed hardly to hear the interruption as he paused, while
in his eyes ancient fires seemed to be awakening, and as he spoke from
that point on those fires burned to a zealot's fervour.

"Nuther one of ye don't remember back ter them days when ther curse
of ther Harper-Doane war lay in a blood pestilence over these hyar
hills ... but I remembers hit. In them sorry times folks war hurtin' fer
vittles ter keep life in thar bodies ... yit no man warn't safe workin'
out in his open field. I tells ye death was ther only Lord thet folks
bowed down ter in them days ... and ther woman thet saw her man go forth
from ther door didn't hev no confident assurance she'd ever see him come
back home alive. My son Caleb--Dorothy's daddy--went out with a lantern
one night when ther dogs barked ... and we fotched him in dead."

He paused, and seemed to be looking through the walls and hills to
things that lay buried.

"Them few men thet cried out fer peace an' law-abidin' war scoffed at
an' belittled.... Them of us that preached erginst bloodshed was cussed
an' damned. Then come ther battle at Claytown ter cap hit off with more
blood-lettin'.

"One of ther vi'lent leaders war shot ter death--an' t'other one agreed
ter go away an' give ther country a chanst ter draw a free breath in
peace onc't more."

Again he fell silent, and when after a long pause he had not begun again
Dorothy restively inquired: "What's thet got ter do with me an Bas
Rowlett, Gran'pap?"

"I'm a-comin' ter thet ... atter thet pitch-battle folks began turnin'
ter them they'd been laughin' ter scorn ... they come an' begged me ter
head ther Thorntons an' ther Harpers. They went similar ter Jim Rowlett
an' besaught him ter do ther like fer ther Rowletts an' ther Doanes.
They knowed that despite all ther bad blood an' hatefulness me an' Jim
was friends an' thet more then we loved our own kin an' our own blood,
we loved peace fer every man ... us two!"

Cal Maggard was watching the fine old face--the face out of which life's
hardship and crudity had not quenched the majesty of unassuming
steadfastness.

"An' since we ondertook ter make ther truce and ter hold it unbroke,
hit's done stood unbroke!" The old man's voice rang suddenly through the
room.

"An' thet's been nigh on ter twenty ya'rs ... but Jim's old an' I'm
old ... an' afore long we'll both be gone ... an' nuther one ner t'other
of us hain't sich fools es not ter know what we've been holdin' down....
Nuther one ner t'other of us don't beguile hisself with ther notion thet
all them old hates air dead ... or thet ef wild-talkin', loose-mouthed
men gains a hearin' ... they won't flare up afresh."

He went over to the place where his pipe had fallen and picked it up
and refilled it, and when he fell silent it seemed as though there had
come a sudden stillness after thunder.

Then in a quieter tone he went on once more:

"Old Jim hain't got no boy ter foller him, but he confidences Bas. I
hain't got no son nuther but I confidences my gal. Ther two of us hev
always 'lowed thet ef we could see them wedded afore we lays down an'
dies, we'd come mighty nigh seein' ther old breach healed--an' ther old
hates buried. Them two clans would git tergither then--an' thar'd jest
be one peaceful fam'ly 'stid of two crowds of hateful enemies."

Dorothy had hardly moved since she had spoken last. During her
grandfather's zealous pronouncement her slender uprightness had remained
statue-like and motionless, but in her deep eyes all the powerful life
forces that until lately had slept dormant now surged into their new
consciousness and invincible self-assertion.

Now the head crowned with its masses of dark hair was as high as that of
some barbaric princess who listens while her marriage value is appraised
by ambassadors, and the eyes were full of fire too steadily intense for
flickering. The arch of her bosom only revealed in movement the
palpitant emotion that swayed her, with its quick rise and fall, but her
voice held the bated quiet of a tempest at the point of breaking.

"I'd hate ter hev anybody think I wasn't full loyal ter my kith an' kin.
I'd hate ter fail my own people--but I hain't no man's woman ter be
bartered off ner give away." She paused, and in the long-escaping breath
from her lips came an unmistakable note of scorn.

"Ye talks of healin' a breach, Gran'pap, but ye kain't heal no breach by
tyin' a woman up ter a man she kain't never love. Thar'd be a breach
right hyar under this roof ter start with from ther commencement." That
much she had been able to say as a preface in acknowledgment of the old
man's sincerity of purpose, but now her voice rang with the thrill of
personal liberty and its deeper claim. Her beauty grew suddenly gorgeous
with the surge of colour to her cheeks and the flaming of her eyes. She
stood the woman spirit incarnate, which can at need be also the tigress
spirit, asserting her home-making privilege, and ready to do battle for
it.

"Fam'ly means a man an' a woman--an' children," she declared, "an' ther
man thet fathers my babies hes need ter be ther man I _loves_!"

Caleb inclined his head. He had spoken, and now as one closes a book he
dismissed the matter with a gesture.

"I've done give ye my reasons," he said, "but I hain't nuver sought ter
fo'ce no woman, an' hit's too late ter start. Ther two of ye sets thar
like a jury thet's done heered ther argyment. My plan wouldn't be
feasible nohow onlessen yore heart war in hit, Dorothy, an' I sees es
plain as day whar yore heart's at. So I reckon I kin give ye my blessin'
ef ye're plum shore ye hain't makin' no error."




CHAPTER XII


The old man struck a match and held it to his pipe and then as he turned
to leave the room Maggard halted him.

"I kain't suffer ye ter go away without I tells ye suthin'," he said,
"an' I fears me sorely when ye hears hit ye're right like ter withhold
yore blessin' atter all."

The patriarch wheeled and stood listening, and Dorothy, too, caught her
breath anxiously as the young man confessed.

For a time old Caleb stood stonily immovable while the story, which the
girl had already heard, had its second telling. But as the narration
progressed the gray-haired mountaineer bent interestedly forward, and by
the time it had drawn to its close his eyes were no longer wrathful but
soberly and judicially thoughtful.

He ran his fingers through his gray hair, and incredulously demanded,
"Who did ye say yore grandsire was?"

"His name was Caleb Thornton--he went ter Virginny sixty ya'rs back."

"Caleb Thornton!" Through the mists of many years the old man was
tracking back along barefoot trails of boyhood.

"Caleb Thornton! Him an' me hunted an' fished tergither and worked
tergither when we wasn't nothin' but small shavers. We was like twin
brethren an' folks called us Good Caleb an' Bad Caleb. I was ther bad
one!" The old lips parted in a smile that was tenderly reminiscent.

"Why boy, thet makes ye blood-kin of mine ... hit makes yore business
my business ... an' yore trouble my trouble. I'm ther head of ther house
now--an' ye're related ter me."

"I hain't clost kin," objected Cal, quickly. "Not too clost ter wed with
Dorothy."

"Ey God, no, boy, ye hain't but only a distant cousin--but a hundred an'
fifty y'ars back our foreparent war ther same man. An' ef ye've got ther
same heart an' the same blood in ye thet them old-timers hed, mebby ye
kin carry on my work better than any Rowlett--an' stand fer peace and
law!" Here spoke the might of family pride and mountain loyalty to
blood.

"Then ye kin give us yore blessin' atter all--despite ther charge thet
hangs over me?"

"My blessin'? Why, boy, hit's like a dead son hed done come back ter
life--an' false charges don't damn no man!"

The aged face had again become suffused with such a glow as might have
mantled the brow of a prophet who had laboured long and preached fierily
for his belief, until the hoar-frost of time had whitened his head. It
was as if when the hour approached for him to lay down his scrip and
staff he had recognized the strength and possible ardour of a young
disciple to come after him.

But after a little that emotional wave, which had unconsciously
straightened his bent shoulders and brought his head erect, subsided
into the realization of less inspiriting facts.

"Atter all," he said, thoughtfully, "I've got ter hev speech with old
Jim Rowlett afore this matter gits published abroad. He's done held ther
same notions I have--about Dorothy an' Bas--an' I owes hit ter him ter
make a clean breast of what's come ter pass."

The wounded man in the chair was gazing off through the window, and he
was deeply disturbed. He stood sworn to kill or be killed by the man
whom these two custodians of peace or war had elected in advance as a
clan head and a link uniting the factions. If he himself were now
required to assume the mantle of leadership, it was hard to see how that
quarrel could be limited to a private scope.

"When I come over hyar," he said, steadily and deliberately, "I sought
ter live peaceable--an' quiet. I didn't aim, an' I don't seek now, ter
hold place as head of no feud-faction."

"Nuther did I seek ter do hit." The old man's voice was again the rapt
and fiery utterance of the zealot. "Thar wasn't nuthin' I wouldn't of
chose fust--but when a man's duty calls ter him, ef he's a true man in
God's eyes, he hain't got no rather in the matter which ner whether.
He's beholden ter obey! Besides--" the note of fanatical exaltation
diminished into a more placid evenness--"besides, I've done told ye I
only sought ter hev ye lead toward peace an' quiet--not ter mix in no
warfarin'."

So a message went along the waterways to the house where old Jim Rowlett
dwelt, and old Jim, to whose ears troubling rumours had already come
stealing, mounted his "ridin'-critter" and responded forthwith and in
person.

He came, trustful as ever of his old partner, in the task of shepherding
wild flocks, yet resentful of the girl's rumoured rebellion against what
was to have been, in effect, a marriage of state.

Before starting he had talked long and earnestly with his kinsman, Bas
Rowlett, and as a result he saw in Bas a martyr nobly bearing his
chastening, and in the stranger a man unknown and tinged with a
suspicious mystery.

Jim Rowlett listened in silent politeness to the announcement of the
betrothal and presently he rose after a brief, unbending visit.

"Caleb," he said, "through a long lifetime me an' you hev been endurin'
friends. We aims ter go on bein', an albeit I'd done sot my hopes on
things thet hain't destined ter come ter pass, I wishes these young
folks joy."

That interview was in the nature of a public announcement, and on the
same day at Jake Crabbott's store the conclave discussed it. It was
rumoured that the two old champions of peace had differed, though not
yet in open rupture, and that the stranger, whose character was
untested, was being groomed to stand as titular leader of the Thorntons
and the Harpers. Many Rowlett and Doane faces darkened with foreboding.

"What does Bas say?" questioned some, and the answer was always the
same: "Bas hain't a-talkin' none."

But Sim Squires, who was generally accredited with a dislike of Bas
Rowlett, was circulating among those Harpers and Thorntons who bore a
wilder repute than did old Caleb, and as he talked with them he was
stressing the note of resentment that an unknown man from the hated
state of Virginia should presume to occupy so responsible a position
when others of their own blood and native-born were being overlooked.

       *       *       *       *       *

One afternoon the girl and her lover sat together in the room where she
had nursed him as the western ridges turned to ashy lilac against a sky
where the sun was setting in a fanfare of delicate gorgeousness.

That evening hush that early summer knows, between the day's
full-throated orchestration and the night song of whippoorwills, held
the world in a bated stillness, and the walnut tree stood as unstirring
as some age-crowned priest with arms outstretched in evening prayer.

Hand in hand the two sat in the open window. They had been talking of
those little things that are such great things to lovers, but over them
a silence had fallen through which their hearts talked on without sound.

Slowly the sunset grew brilliant--then the foregrounds gave up their
detail in a soft veiling of purple dusk, and the tree between the house
and the road became a dark ghost-shape, etched in the unmoving majesty
of spread and stature.

"Hit hain't jest a tree," whispered the girl with an awe-touched voice,
"hit's _human_--but hit's bigger an' wiser an' stronger then a human
body."

The man nodded his head for so it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom
trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he
felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life
itself--as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, blight, and
storm.

"I wonder ef hit knows," said the girl, abruptly, "who hit war thet shot
ye, Cal?"

The man shook his head and smiled.

"Mebby hit don't jedgmatically _know_," he made answer, seeking as he
had often sought before to divert her thoughts from that question and
its secret answer: "But so long es hit stands guard over us, I reckon no
enemy won't skeercely _succeed_."




CHAPTER XIII


The blossom had passed from the laurel and rhododendron and the June
freshness had freckled into rustiness before the day came when Dorothy
Harper and Cal Maggard were to be married, and as yet the man had not
been able to walk beyond the threshold of the house, and to the people
of the neighbourhood his face had not become familiar.

Once only had Cal been out of doors and that was when leaning on the
girl's arm he had gone into the dooryard. Dorothy did not wish the
simple ceremony of their marriage to take place indoors, but that when
Uncle Jase, the justice of the peace, joined their hands with the words
of the simple ritual, they should stand under the shade of the tree
which, already hallowed as a monument, should likewise be their altar.

So one afternoon, when the cool breath of evening came between sunset
and dusk, they had gone out together and for the first time in daylight
he stood by the broad-girthed base of the walnut's mighty bole.

"See thar, Cal," breathed the girl, as she laid reverent fingers upon
the trunk where initials and a date had been carved so long ago that now
they were sunken and seamed like an old scar.

"Them letters an' dates stands fer ther great-great-great gran'mammy
thet wrote ther book--an' fer ther fust Kenneth Thornton. They're our
fore-parents, an' they lays buried hyar. Hit's all in ther front pages
of thet book upsta'rs in ther chist."

The ground on which they stood was even now, for the mounds so long ago
heaped there had been levelled by generations of time. Later members of
that house who had passed away lay in the small thicket-choked burial
ground a hundred yards to the side.

"Hit's a right fantastic notion," complained old Caleb who had come out
to join them there, "ter be wedded outdoors under a tree, stid of
indoors under a roof," but the girl turned and laid a hand on his arm,
and her eyes livened with a glow of feeling and tenderness.

"Hit was right hyar thet we diskivered we loved one another," she said,
softly, "an' ef ye'd ever read thet book upstairs I reckon ye'd
onderstand. Our foreparents planted this tree hyar in days of sore
travail when they'd done come from nigh ter ther ocean-sea at Gin'ral
George Washington's behest, an' they plum revered hit from thet time
on."

She paused, looking up fondly into the magnificent fulness of branches
where now the orioles had hatched their brood and taught the fledglings
to fly, then her eyes came back and her voice grew rapt.

"Them revolutionary folk of our own blood bequeathed thet tree ter
us--an' we heired hit from 'em along with all thet's good in us. They
lays buried thar under hit, an' by now I reckon hits roots don't only
rest in ther ground an' rock thet's underneath hit--but in ther graves
of our people theirselves. Some part of them hes done passed inter thet
old tree, I reckon, ter give virtue ter hits sap an' stren'th. Thet's
why thar hain't no other place ter be married at."

The July morning of their wedding day dawned fresh and cloudless, and
from remote valleys and coves a procession of saddled mounts, ox-carts,
and foot travellers, grotesque in their oddly conceived raiment of
festivity, set toward the house at the river's bend. They came to look
at the bride, whose beauty was a matter of local fame, and for their
first inquisitive scrutiny of the stranger who had wooed with such
interest-provoking dispatch and upon whom, rumour insisted, was to
descend the mantle of clan leadership, albeit his blood was alien.

But the bridegroom himself lay on his bed, the victim of a
convalescent's set-back, and it seemed doubtful whether his strength
would support him through the ceremony. When he attempted to rise, after
a night of returned fever, his muscles refused to obey the mandates of
his will, and Uncle Jase Burrell, who had arrived early to make out the
license, issued his edict that Cal Maggard must be married in bed.

But at that his patient broke into defiant and open rebellion.

"I aims ter stand upright ter be wed," he scornfully asserted, "ef I
don't nuver stand upright ergin! Ask Dorothy an' her gran'pap an' Bas
Rowlett ter come in hyar. I wants ter hev speech with 'em all together."

Uncle Jase yielded grudgingly to the stronger will and within a few
minutes those who had been summoned appeared.

Bas Rowlett came last, and his face bore the marks of a sleepless night,
but he had undertaken a role and he purposed to play it to its end.

In after days, days for which Bas Rowlett was planning now, he meant
that every man who looked back on that wedding should remember and say
of him: "Bas, he war thar--plum friendly. Nobody couldn't be a man's
enemy an' act ther way Bas acted." In his scheme of conspiracy the art
of alibi building was both cornerstone and arch-key.


  [Illustration: "_Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an
  ordeal, started and almost let the leaning bridegroom fall_"]


Now it pleased Cal, even at a time when other interests pressed so close
and absorbingly, to indulge himself in a grim and sardonic humour. The
man who had "hired him killed" and whom in turn he meant to kill
stood in the room where he himself lay too weak to rise from his bed,
and toward that man he nodded his head.

"Good mornin', Bas," he accosted, and the other replied, "Howdy, Cal."

Then Maggard turned to the others. "This man, Bas Rowlett," he said,
"sought to marry Dorothy hisself. Ye all knows thet, yet deespite thet
fact when I come hyar a stranger he befriended me, didn't ye, Bas?"

"We spoke ther truth ter one another," concurred Rowlett, wondering
uneasily whither the conversational trend was leading, "an' we went on
bein' friends."

"An' now afore ye all," Maggard glanced comprehensively about the group,
"albeit hit don't need no more attestin', he's goin' ter prove his
friendship fer me afresh."

A pause followed, broken finally from the bed.

"I kain't stand up terday--an' without standin' up I couldn't hardly be
rightfully wedded--so Bas air agoin' ter support me, and holp me out
thar an' hold me upright whilst I says ther words ... hain't ye, Bas?"

The hardly taxed endurance of the conspirator for a moment threatened to
break in failure. A hateful scowl was gathering in his eyes as he
hesitated and Maggard went on suavely: "Anybody else could do hit fer
me--but I've got ther feelin' thet I wants ye, Bas."

"All right," came the low answer. "I'll aim ter convenience ye, Cal."

He turned hastily and left the room, and bending over the bed Uncle Jase
produced the marriage license.

"I'll jest fill in these blank places," he announced, briskly, "with
ther names of Dorothy Harper an' Cal Maggard an' then we'll be ready fer
ther signatures."

But at that Maggard raised an imperative hand in negation.

"No," he said, shortly and categorically, "I aims ter be married by my
rightful name--put hit down thar like hit is--Kenneth Parish
Thornton--all of hit!"

Caleb Harper bent forward with a quick gesture of expostulation.

"Ef ye does thet, boy," he pleaded, "ye won't skeercely be wedded afore
ther officers will come atter ye from over thar in Virginny."

"Then they kin come," the voice was obdurate. "I don't aim ter give
Almighty God no false name in my weddin' vows."

Uncle Jase, to whom this was all an inexplicable riddle, glanced
perplexedly at old Caleb and Caleb stood for the moment irresolute, then
with a sigh of relief, as though for discovery of a solution, he
demanded:

"Did ye ever make use of yore middle name--over thar in Virginny?"

"No. I reckon nobody don't skeercely know I've got one."

"All right--hit belongs ter ye jist as rightfully as ther other given
name. Write hit down Parish Thornton in thet paper, Jase. Thet don't
give no undue holt ter yore enemies, boy, an' es fer ther last name
hit's thicker then hops in these parts, anyhow."

In all the numbers of the crowd that stood about the dooryard that day
waiting for the wedding party to come through the door one absence was
recognized and felt.

"Old Jim Hewlett didn't come," murmured one observant guest, and the
announcement ran in a whisper through the gathering to find an echo that
trailed after it. "I reckon he didn't aim ter countenance ther matter,
atter all."

Then the door opened and Dorothy came out, with a sweet pride in her
eyes and her head high. At her side walked the man whose face they had
been curiously waiting to see.

They acknowledged at a glance that it was an uncommon face from which
one gained feeling of a certain power and mastery--yet of candour, too,
and fearless good nature.

But the crowd, hungry for interest and gossip, breathed deep in a sort
of chorused gasp at the dramatic circumstance of the bridegroom leaning
heavily on the arm of Bas Rowlett, the defeated lover. Already Uncle
Jase stood with his back to the broad, straight column whose canopy of
leafage spread a green roof between the tall, waving grass that served
as a carpet and the blue of a smiling sky.

Through branches, themselves as heavy and stalwart as young trees, and
through the myriads of arrow-pointed leaves that rustled as they sifted
and shifted the gold flakes of sunlight, sounded the low, mysterious
harping of wind-fingers as light and yet as profound as those of some
dreaming organist.

The girl, with her eyes fixed on that living emblem of strength and
tranquillity, felt as though instead of leaving a house, she were
entering a cathedral--though of man-built cathedrals she knew nothing.
It was the spirit which hallows cathedrals that brought to her deep
young eyes a serenity and thanksgiving that made her face seem ethereal
in its happiness--the spirit of benediction, of the presence of God and
of human sanctuary.

So she went as if she were treading clouds to the waiting figure of the
man who was to perform the ceremony.

When the clear voice of the justice of the peace sounded out as the
pair--or rather the trio--stood before him at the foot of the great
walnut, the astonishment which had been simmering in the crowd broke
into audible being again and with a rising tempo.

The tone with which old Jase read the service was full and sonorous and
the responses were clear as bell metal. On the fringe of the gathering
an old woman's whispered words carried to those about her:

"Did ye heer thet? Jase called him Parish Thornton--I thought he give
ther name of Cal Maggard!"

Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an ordeal, started and
almost let the leaning bridegroom fall.

The loft of old Caleb's barn had been cleared for that day, and through
the afternoon the fiddles whined there, alternating with the twang of
banjo and "dulcimore." Old Spike Crooch, who dwelt far up at the
headwaters of Little Tribulation, where the "trails jest wiggle an'
wingle about," and who bore the repute of a master violinist, had vowed
that he "meant ter fiddle at one more shin-dig afore he laid him down
an' died"--and he had journeyed the long way to carry out his pledge.

He had come like a ghost from the antique past, with his old bones
straddling neither horse nor mule, but seated sidewise on a brindle
bull, and to reach the place where he was to discourse music he had made
a "soon start" yesterday morning and had slept lying by the roadside
over night.

Now on an improvised platform he sat enthroned, with his eyes
ecstatically closed, the violin pressed to his stubbled chin, and his
broganned feet--with ankles innocent of socks--patting the spirited time
of his dancing measure.

Outside in the yard certain young folk who had been reared to hold
dancing ungodly indulged in those various "plays" as they called the
games less frowned upon by the strait-laced. But while the thoughtless
rollicked, their elders gathered in small clumps here and there and
talked in grave undertones, and through these groups old Caleb
circulated. He knew how mysterious and possibly significant to these
news-hungry folk had seemed the strange circumstance of the
bridegroom's answering, in the marriage service, to a name he had not
previously worn and he sought to draw, by his own strong influence, the
sting of suspicion from their questioning minds.

But Bas Rowlett did not remain through the day, and when he was ready to
leave, old Caleb followed him around the turn of the road to a point
where they could be alone, and laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

"Bas," he said, feelingly, "I'd hate ter hev ye think I hain't a-feelin'
fer ye terday. I knows right well ye're sore-hearted, boy, an' thar
hain't many men thet could hev took a bitter dose like ye've done."

Rowlett looked gloomily away.

"I hain't complainin' none, Caleb," he said.

"No. But I hain't got master long ter live--an' when Jim an' me both
passes on, I fears me thar'll be stressful times ahead. I wants ye ter
give me yore hand thet ye'll go on standin' by my leetle gal an' her
fam'ly, Bas. Else I kain't die satisfied."

Bas Rowlett stood rigidly and tensely straight, his eyes fixed to the
front, his forehead drawn into furrows. Then he thrust out his hand.

"Ye've done confidenced me until now," he said simply, "ye kin go on
doin' hit. I gives ye my pledge."




CHAPTER XIV


Among the men who danced at that party were Sim Squires and Pete Doane,
but when they saddled and mounted at sunset, they rode divergent ways.

Each of the two was acting under orders that day, and each was spreading
an infection whose virus sought to stir into rebirth the war which the
truce had so long held in merciful abeyance.

Aaron Capper, who was as narrow yet as religious as an Inquisition
priest, had always believed the Thorntons to be God's chosen and the
Doanes to be children of Satan. The bonds of enforced peace had galled
him heavily. Three sons had been killed in the battle at Claytown and he
felt that any truce made before he had evened his score left him wronged
and abandoned by his kinsmen.

Now Sim Squires, mounted on a swift pacing mare, fell in beside Aaron,
his knee rubbing the knee of the grizzled wayfarer, and Sim said
impressively:

"Hit looks right bodaciously like es ef ther war's goin' ter bust loose
ergin, Aaron."

The other turned level eyes upon his informant and swept him up and down
with a searching gaze.

"Who give ye them tidin's, son? I hain't heered nothin' of hit, an' I
reckon ef ther Harpers war holdin' any council they wouldn't skeercely
pass me by."

"I don't reckon they would, Aaron." Sim now spoke with a flattery
intended to placate ruffled pride. "Ther boys thet's gittin' restive air
kinderly lookin' ter _you_ ter call thet council. Caleb Harper hain't
long fer this life--an' who's goin' ter take up his leadership--onless
hit be you?"

Aaron laughed, but there was a grim complaisance in the tone that argued
secret receptiveness for the idea.

"'Peared like hit war give out ter us terday thet this hyar young
stranger war denoted ter heir thet job."

"Cal Maggard!" Sim Squires spat out the name contemptuously and laughed
with a short hyena bark of derision. "Thet woods-colt from
God-knows-whar? Him thet goes hand in glove with Bas Rowlett an' leans
on his arm ter git married? Hell!"

Aaron took refuge in studied silence, but into his eyes had come a new
and dangerously smouldering darkness.

"I'll ponder hit," he made guarded answer--then added with humourless
sincerity, "I'll ponder--an' pray fer God's guidin'."

And as Sim talked with Aaron that afternoon, so he talked to others,
even less conservative of tendency, and Pete Doane carried a like gospel
of disquiet to those whose allegiance lay on the other side of the
feud's cleavage--yet both talked much alike. In houses remote and widely
scattered the security of the longstanding peace was being insidiously
undermined and shaken and guns were taken furtively out and oiled.

But in a deserted cabin where once two shadowy figures had met to
arrange the assassination of Cal Maggard three figures came separately
now on a night when the moon was dark, and having assured themselves
that they had not been seen gathering there, they indulged themselves in
the pallid light of a single lantern for their deliberations.

Bas Rowlett was the first to arrive, and he sat for a time alone smoking
his pipe, with a face impatiently scowling yet not altogether indicative
of despair.

Soon he heard and answered a triple rap on the barred door, and though
it seemed a designated signal he maintained the caution of a hand on his
revolver until a figure entered and he recognized the features of young
Peter Doane.

"Come in, Pete," he accosted. "I reckon ther other feller'll git hyar
d'reck'ly."

The two sat smoking and talking in low tones, yet pausing constantly to
listen until again they heard the triple rap and admitted a third member
to their caucus.

Here any one not an initiate to the mysteries of this inner shrine would
have wondered to the degree of amazement, for this newcomer was an
ostensible enemy of Bas Rowlett's whom in other company he refused to
recognize.

But Sim Squires entered unhesitatingly and now between himself and the
man with whom he did not speak in public passed a nod and glance of
complete harmony and understanding.

When certain subsidiary affairs had been adjusted--all matters of
upbuilding for Rowlett's influence and repute--Bas turned to Sim
Squires.

"Sim," he said, genially, "I reckon we're ready ter heer what ye've got
on _yore_ mind now," and the other grinned.

"Ther Thorntons an' Harpers--them thet dwells furthest back in ther
sticks--air a doin' a heap of buzzin' an' talkin'. They're right sim'lar
ter bees gittin' ready ter swarm. I've done seed ter that. I reckon when
this hyar stranger starts in ter rob ther honey outen thet hive he's
goin' ter find a tol'able nasty lot of stingers on his hands."

"Ye've done cautioned 'em not ter make no move afore they gits ther
word, hain't ye--an' ye've done persuaded 'em ye plum hates me, hain't
ye?"

Again Sim grinned.

"Satan hisself would git rightfully insulted ef anybody cussed an'
damned him like I've done _you_, Bas."

"All right then. I reckon when ther time comes both ther Doanes and
Harpers'll be right sick of Mr. Cal Maggard or Mr. Parish Thornton or
Mr. Who-ever-he-is."

They talked well into the night, and Peter Doane was the first to leave,
but after his departure Sim Squires permitted a glint of deep anxiety to
show in his narrow and shifty eyes.

"Hit's yore own business ef ye confidences Pete Doane in yore own
behalf, Bas," he suggested, "but ye hain't told him nuthin' erbout _me_,
hes ye?"

Bas Rowlett smiled.

"I hain't no damn fool, Sim," he reassured. "Thar don't nobody but jest
me an' you know thet ye shot Cal Maggard--but ye war sich a damn disable
feller on ther job thet rightly I ought ter tell yore name ter ther
circuit-rider."

"What fer?" growled the hireling, sulkily, and the master laughed.

"So's he could put hit in his give-out at meetin' an shame ye afore all
mankind," he made urbane explanation.

       *       *       *       *       *

July, which began fresh and cool, burned, that year, into a scorching
heat, until the torrid skies bent in a blue arch of arid cruelty and the
ridges stood starkly stripped of their moisture.

Forests were rusted and freckled and roads gave off a choke of dust to
catch the breath of travellers as the heat waves trembled feverishly
across the clear, hot distances.

Like a barometer of that scorched torpor, before the eyes of the slowly
convalescing Thornton stood the walnut tree in the dooryard. A little
while ago it had spread its fresh and youthful canopy of green overhead
in unstinted abundance of vigour.

Now it stood desolate, with its leaves drooping in fever-hot inertia.
The squirrel sat gloomily silent on the branches, panting under its fur,
and the oriole's splendour of orange and jet had turned dusty and
bedraggled.

When a dispirited wisp of breeze stirred in its head-growth its branches
gave out only the flat hoarseness of rattling leaves.

One morning before full daylight old Caleb left the house to cross the
low creek bed valley and join a working party in a new field which was
being cleared of timber. He had been away two hours when without warning
the hot air became insufferably close and the light ghost of breeze died
to a breathless stillness. The drought had lasted almost four weeks, and
now at last, though the skies were still clear, that heat-vacuum seemed
to augur its breaking.

An hour later over the ridge came a black and lowering pall of cloud
moving slowly and bellying out from its inky centre with huge masses of
dirty fleece at its margin--and in the little time that Dorothy stood in
the door watching, it spread until the high sun was obscured.

The distant but incessant rumbling of thunder was a chorussed growling
of storm voices against a background of muffled drum-beat, and the girl
said, a shade anxiously, "Gran'pap's goin' ter git drenched ter ther
skin."

While the inky pall spread and lowered until it held the visible world
in a gray-green corrosion of gloom the stillness became more pulseless.
Then with a crashing salvo of suddenness the tempest broke--and it was
as though all the belated storms of the summer had merged into one
armageddon of the elements.

A rending and splintering of timber sounded with the shriek of the
tornado that whipped its lash of destruction through the woods. The
girl, buffeted and almost swept from her feet, struggled with her weight
thrown against the door that she could scarcely close. Then the darkness
blotted midday into night, and through the unnatural thickness clashed a
frenzy of detonations.

Out of the window she and her husband seemed looking through dark and
confused waters which leaped constantly into the brief and blinding
glare of such blue-white instants of lightning as hurt the eyes. The
walnut tree appeared and disappeared--waving arms like a high-priest in
transports of frenzy, and adding its wind-song to the mighty chorus.

The sturdily built old house trembled under that assaulting, and when
the first cyclonic sweep of wind had rushed by the pelting of hail and
rain was a roar as of small-arms after artillery.

"Gran'pap," gasped Dorothy. "I don't see how a livin' soul kin
endure--out thar!"

Then came a concussion as though the earth had broken like a bursted
emery wheel, and a hall of white fire seemed to pass through the walls
of the place. Dorothy pitched forward, stunned, to the floor and at the
pit of his stomach Cal Maggard felt a sudden sickness of shock that
passed as instantly as it had come. He found himself electrically
tingling through every nerve as the woman rose slowly and dazedly,
staring about her.

"Did hit strike ... ther house?" she asked, faintly, and then with the
same abruptness as that with which darkness had come, the sky began to
turn yellowish again and they could see off across the road through the
amber thickness of returning daylight.

"No," her husband said, hesitantly, "hit warn't ther house--but hit was
right nigh!"

The girl followed his startled gaze, and there about the base of the
walnut tree lay shaggy strips of rent bark.

Running down the trunk in the glaring spiral of a fresh scar two
hand-breadths wide went the swath along which the bolt had plunged
groundward.

For a few moments, though with a single thought between them, neither
spoke. In the mind of Dorothy words from a faded page seemed to rewrite
themselves: "Whilst that tree stands ... and weathers the thunder and
wind ... our family also will wax strong and robust ... but when it
falls----!"

Cal rose slowly to his feet, and the girl asked dully, "Where be ye
goin'?"

"I'm goin'," he said as their eyes met in a flash of understanding, "ter
seek fer yore gran'pap."

"I fears me hit's too late...." Her gaze went outward and as she looked
the man needed no explanation.

"Ef he's--still alive," she added, resolutely, with a return of
self-control, "ther danger's done passed now. Hit would kill ye ter go
out in this storm, weak as ye be. Let's strive ter be patient."

Ten minutes later they heard a knock on the door and opened it to find a
man drenched with rain standing there, whose face anticipated their
questions.

"Me and old Caleb," he began, "was comin' home tergither ... we'd got es
fur as ther aidge of ther woods ..." he paused, then forced out the
words, "a limb blew down on him."

"Is he ... is he...?" The girl's question got no further, and the
messenger shook his head. "He's dead," came the simple reply. "The other
boys air fotchin' him in now."




CHAPTER XV


Into the grave near the house the rough pine coffin, which had been
knocked together by neighbour hands, was lowered by members of both
factions whose peace the dead man had impartially guarded.

No circuit-rider was available, but one or two godly men knelt there and
prayed and over the green valley, splendidly resurrected from the scorch
and thirst of the drought, floated untrained voices raised in the old
hymns.

Then as the crowd scattered along its several ways a handful of men
delayed their departure, and when the place had otherwise emptied itself
they led Cal Maggard to his front door where, without realization that
they were selecting a spot of special significance, they halted under
the nobly spread shade of the tree.

The walnut, with the blight of dry weeks thrown off, had freshened its
leafage into renewed vigour--and though its scar was fresh and raw, its
vital stalwartness was that of a veteran who has once more triumphed
over his wounding.

The few men who had remained were all Doanes, in clan affiliation if not
in name, and they stood as solemnly silent as they had been by the open
grave but with heads no longer uncovered and with a grimmer quality in
their sober eyes.

It was Hump Doane, the man with the twisted back, who broke the silence
as spokesman for the group, and his high, sharp voice carried the
rasping suggestion of a threat.

"Afore we went away from here," he said with a note of embarrassment,
"we 'lowed thet we hed need ter ask ye a few questions, Mr. Thornton."

"I'm hearkenin' ter ye," came the non-committal rejoinder, and the
hunchback went on:

"Ther man we've jest laid ter rest was ther leader of ther Harpers an'
ther Thorntons but over an' above thet he was ther friend of every man
thet loved peace-abidin' and human betterment."

That tribute Cal acknowledged with a grave inclination of his head, but
no word.

"So long as he lived ther truce thet he'd done made endured. Now thet
he's dead hit would be a right distressful thing ef hit collapsed."

Maggard's candid eyes engaged those of the others in level glance as he
inquired, "Is thar any self-respectin' man thet feels contrariwise, Mr.
Doane?"

"Thet's what we seeks ter find out. With Caleb dead an' gone, no man kin
handily foretell what ther Thorntons aims ter do--an' without we knows
we kain't breathe free."

"Why does ye come ter me?"

"Because folks tells hit thet ther old man named ye ter stand in his
stead--an' ef ye does thet we hev need ter put some questions up ter
ye."

"I hain't said I sought no leadership--but speak right out fer
yoreselves," invited Maggard.

"All right. We knows thet ye come hyar from _somewhars_ else--an' we
don't know whar from. Because ye're old Caleb's heir, what ye does an'
what ye says gets ter be mighty pithy an' pertinent ter us."

"I've done come ter kinderly reelize that, myself, hyar of late."

"Ye comes from Virginny, folks says; air thet true?"

"Thet's true."

"An' ye give one name when ye come an' tuck another atter ye'd been hyar
a while, air thet true likewise?"

Maggard stiffened but he bowed his head in assent.

"All right, then--I reckon ye kin see fer yorself thet ef we've got ter
trust our business in yore hands tor'ds keepin' ther truce, we've
jedgmatically got ter confidence ye. We seeks ter hev ye ter tell us why
ye left Virginny an' why ye changed yore name. We wants ter send a man
of our own pick an' choosin' over thar an' find out fer ourselves jest
what yore repute war in yore own home afore ye come hyar."

Cal could feel the tingling of antagonism in a galvanic current along
his spine. He knew that his eyes had flashed defiance before he had
quelled their impulse and controlled his features, but he held his lips
tight for a rebellious moment and when he opened them he asked with a
velvety smoothness:

"Ye says nobody didn't mistrust Caleb Harper. Why didn't ye ask him,
whilst he war still a-livin', whether he'd made an heir outen a man thet
couldn't be confidenced?"

"So long es he lived," came the hunchback's quick and stingingly sharp
retort, "we didn't need ter ask no questions atall an' thar warn't no
prophets amongst us ter foresay he was goin' ter die suddent-like,
without tellin' us what we needed ter know. Will ye give us them facts
thet we're askin' fer--or won't ye?"

"I won't," said Maggard, shortly. "I stand ter be jedged by ther way I
demeans myself--an' I don't suffer no man ter badger me with questions
like es ef I war some criminal in ther jail-house."

The grotesque face of the hunchback hardened to the stony antagonism of
an issue joined. His dwarfed and twisted body seemed to loom taller and
more shapely as if the power of the imprisoned spirit were expanding its
ugly shell from within, and an undeniable dignity showed itself
flashingly through the caricatured features.

Back of him, his silent colleagues stiffened, too, and though they were
all tall men, with eyes flaming in unspoken wrath, they seemed smaller
in everything but bodily stature than he.

After a brief pause, Hump Doane wheeled and addressed himself to his
companions. "I reckon thet's all, men," he said, briefly, and Cal
Maggard recognized that the silence with which they turned away from him
was more ominous than if they had berated him.

Yet before he reached the stile Doane halted and stood irresolute with
his gaze groundward and his chin on his breast, then summoning his
fellows with a jerk of the thumb, he turned back to the spot where Cal
Maggard had remained unmoving at the base of the great tree, and his
face though still solemn was no longer wrathful.

"Sometimes, Mr. Thornton," he said with a slow weighing of his words,
"men thet aims at accord fails ter comprehend each other--an' gits ther
seemin' of cavillin'. Mebby we kinderly got off on ther wrong foot an' I
kain't go away from hyar satisfied without I'm plum sartain thet ye
onderstands me aright."

Maggard had learned to read the type of human features and human contact
clearly enough to place this man in his rightful page and column of
life. He recognized an honesty and sincerity that might be trusted under
the test of torture itself, purposes undeviatingly true--and the narrow
intensity of fanaticism. He would have liked to make an ally of this
man, and a friend, yet the question that had been raised could not be
answered.

"I hain't only willin' but plum anxious ter hear all ye've got ter say,
Mr. Doane," he made serious reply, and the other after a judicial pause
went on:

"Hit hain't no light an' frivolous sperit of meddlin' thet brings me
hyar askin' ye questions thet seems imp'dent an' nosy. Hit's a dire
need of safeguardin' ther peace of our folks--aye, an' thar lives, too,
like es not."

He paused, leaving room for an answer that would make easier his
approach to an understanding, but no answer came, and he continued:

"Ye hain't got no handy way of knowin' like me an' some of these other
men thet's always lived hyarabouts, what a ticklish balance things rests
on in this section. A feller mout reasonably surmise thet a peace what
hes stood fer twenty y'ar an' more would go on standin'--but mebby in
yore time ye've done seed a circus-show--hev ye?"

Maggard nodded, wondering what moral was to be drawn from tan-bark ring
and canvas top, and his interviewer continued:

"Then like es not ye've seed one of them fellers in tights an' tin
spangles balancin' a ladder on his chest with a see-saw atop hit--an' a
human bein' settin' on each eend of thet see-saw. Hit looks like he does
hit plum easy--but ef he boggles or stumbles, them folks up thar falls
down, sure as hell's hot."

"I reckon thet's right."

"Wa'al, thar's trouble-makin' sperits amongst both ther Doanes an' ther
Harpers--an' they seeks ter start all thet hell up a-bilin' ergin like
ther devil's own cauldron.... Ef we've done maintained peace 'stid of
war fer upwards of twenty y'ars hit's because old Caleb an' a few more
like him hes been balancin' thet ladder till th'ar hearts was nigh ter
bustin' with ther weight of hit. Peace hain't nuver stood upright
amongst us by hits own self--an' hit won't do hit now. Ef ye stands in
old Caleb's shoes, Mr. Thornton, ye've got ter stand balancin' thet
ladder, too."

"We hain't hed no disagreement es ter thet, Mr. Doane. I craves
law-abidin' life an' friendly neighbours as master strong es _you_
does."

"An' yit," continued the cripple, earnestly, "ef thet old-time war ever
busts loose afresh hit'll make these hyar numerous small streams, in a
manner of speakin', run red with men's blood an' salty with women's
tears, too, I fears me. I've done dream't of a time when all thet pizen
blight would be swep' away from ther hills like a fog--an' I sought ter
gain yore aid in hastenin' thet day. A man kain't skeercely plead with
his enemy but he kin with his friend--an' that's how I hoped I'd be
met."

"Yore friend is what I'd love ter be." Maggard stood with his hand
resting on the bark of the tree, as though out of it he might hope to
draw some virtue from the far past which it commemorated or from the
dust of those wiser men whose graves its roots penetrated. His eyes were
darkly clouded with the trouble and perplexity of his dilemma. To refuse
still was to stand on a seeming point either of over-stubborn pride or
of confessed guilt. To accede was to face the court that wanted him for
murder and that would prostitute justice to hang him.

"Them things ye dreams of an' hopes fer," he went on in a voice
thrilling with earnestness and sincerity, "air matters thet I've got
heart an' cravin' ter see come erbout. An' yit--I kain't answer yore
question. Hit's ther only test ye could seek ter put me ter--thet I
wouldn't enjoy ter meet outright----"

"Then, even atter what I've told ye, ye still refuses me?"

"Even atter what ye've told me, an' deespite thet I accords with all ye
seeks ter compass hyarabouts, I've _got_ ter refuse ye. I hain't got no
other choice."

This time Hump Doane and his delegation did not turn back, but crossed
the stile and passed stiffly on.

Thornton, for now it was useless to think of himself longer as Cal
Maggard, stood straight-shouldered until the turn of the road took them
beyond sight, then his head came down and his eyes clouded into a deep
misery.

That night the moon rode in a sky where the only clouds were wisps of
opal-fleece and the ranges were flat-toned and colossal ramparts of
cobalt. Down in the valley where the river looped its shimmering thread
the radiance was a wash of platinum softly broken by blue-gray islands
of shadow.

Dorothy Thornton stood, a dim and ghostly figure of mute distress, by
the grave in the thicketed burial ground where the clods had that day
fallen and the mound still stood glaringly raw with its freshly spaded
earth, and Parish Thornton stood by her side.

But while she mourned for the old man who had sought to be father and
mother to her, he thought, too, of the sagacious old shepherd without
whose guidance the flocks were already showing tendencies to stampede in
panic.

Parish Thornton would have given much for a word of counsel to-night
from those silent lips, and hardly realizing what impulse prompted him
he raised his eyes to the great gray-purple shadow-shape of the tree.
Its roots lay in those Revolutionary graves and its top-most plumes of
foliage seemed to brush the starry sky, where the spirits of the dead
might be having their longer and serener life.

Half comprehended yet disquieting with its vague portent, a new element
of thought was stirring in the mind of the young man. By nature he was
an individualist whose inherent prompting was to walk his own way
neither interfering with his neighbour nor permitting his neighbour to
encroach unduly upon him. Had he been a quoter of Scripture his chosen
text might have been, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

And if that had been the natural colour of his mind and nature it was
deepened and intensified by his circumstance. The man whom the law seeks
and whom it charges with murder must keep to himself and within himself
if he would escape notice and capture. Yet now the older impulses that
had driven and urged his pioneering ancestors were beginning to claim
voice, too, and this voice demanded of him "can any man live alone?"

Somehow that plea from the hunchbacked Doane had, with its flaming
sincerity, left its unforgettable mark upon him. His own affairs
included a need of hiding from Virginia sheriffs and of reckoning with
Bas Rowlett, and yet he began to wonder if his own private affairs were
not after all only part of a whole, and as such smaller than the whole.
If a man is born to play a part greater in its bearings than the merely
personal he cannot escape his destiny, and to-night some stirring of
that cloudy realization was troubling Thornton.

"Let's get some leaves offen ther old tree," suggested the girl in a
hushed voice, "an' make a kind of green kiverlet over him." She
shuddered as she added, "Ther ground's plum naked!"

When they had performed their whimsical service--these two
representatives of a grimly unimaginative race of stoics--they went
again and stood together under the tree and into the girl's grief and
the man's forebodings crept an indefinable anodyne of quiet and
consolation.

That tree had known death before, and always after death it had known
rebirth. It could stand serene and placid over hearts bruised as was her
own because it had heard the echoes of immortality and seen the
transient qualities of human grief.

Now she could realize only death and death's wounding, but to it the
seasons came and went as links in an unbroken chain. Beneath it slept
the first friends who had loved it. Somewhere in the great, star-strewn
spaces above it perhaps dwelt the souls of unborn men and women who
would love it hereafter. Somehow its age-old and ever-young message
seemed to come soothingly to her heart. "All end is but beginning, and
no end is final. The present is but hesitation between past and future.
Shadows and sunlight are abstract things until you see them side by
side--filtered through my branches. Winds are silent until they find
voice through my leaves.... My staunch column gives you your standard of
uprightness ... beneath me red men and white have fought and whispered
of love ... as my bud has come to leaf and in turn fallen so generation
has followed generation. For the present I bear the word of
steadfastness and courage. For the future, I bear the promise of hope."

Dorothy's lissome beauty took on a touch of something supernatural from
the magic of moonlight and soft shadow and the man slipped his arm about
her, while they looked off across the tempered nocturne of the hills and
heard the lullaby of the night breeze in the branches overhead.

"I war thinkin', Cal," said the girl in a hushed voice, "of what would
of happened ter me ef ye hedn't come. I'd be ther lonesomest body in
ther mountings of Kaintuck--but, thank God, ye _did_ come."

       *       *       *       *       *

An agency for disturbing the precarious balance of peace was at work,
and the mainspring of its operation was the intriguing mind of Bas
Rowlett.

Bas had had nothing to gain and everything to lose by weakening the
pacific power of old Caleb, whose granddaughter he sought to wed, but
with a successful rival, whom he must kill or be killed by, usurping the
authority to which he had himself expected to succeed, his interests
were reversed. If he could not rule, he could wreck, and the promiscuous
succession of tragedies that would follow in the wake of such an
avalanche had no terrors to give Bas pause. Many volunteers would arise
to strike down his enemy and leave him safe on the outskirts of the
conflict. He could stand apart unctuously crying out for peace and
washing his hands after the fashion of Pontius Pilate.

Manifestly the provocation must seem to come from the Harper-Thornton
faction in order that their Doane-Rowlett adversaries might righteously
take the path of reprisal.

The device upon which the intriguer decided was one requiring such
delicate handling in both strategy and marksmanship that he dared not
trust it to either young Pete Doane or the faithful Sim Squires.

Indeed, he could trust no one but himself, and so one evening he lay in
the laurel back of the house where dwelt his universally respected
kinsman, old Jim Rowlett.

Bas had no intention of harming the old man who sat placidly smoking,
yet he was bent on making it seem evident and certain that someone had
sought to assassinate him, and so it was not at the breast that he aimed
his rifle but at the peak of the tall-crowned slouch hat.

The sights of his rifle showed clean as the rustless barrel rested on a
log. Bas himself lay stretched full-length in that position which gives
the greatest surety of marksmanship.

His temples were moist with nervous sweat, and once he took the rifle
down from his shoulder and flexed his muscles in rest. Then he aimed
again and pressed the trigger.

He could not tarry now, but he paused long enough to see the punctured
hat spin downward from the aged head and the old man rise, bewildered
but unhurt, with a dazed hand experimentally rubbing his white crown.
Then Bas grinned, and edging backward through the brush as a woman
rushed screaming out, he made his way to the house of Parish Thornton.
The first gun had been fixed in the new Harper-Doane war.

Bas knew that the tidings of the supposed attempt on the patriarch's
life would go winging rapidly through the community, and it pleased his
alibi instinct to be at his enemy's house at a time which would seem
almost contemporaneous with the shooting. To have reached his own place
would have taken longer.

But when he arrived Thornton was not indoors. He was strong enough now
to move about the place a little, though he still fretted under a
weakness that galled him, so Bas found Dorothy alone.

"I reckon, leetle gal," he made a sympathetic beginning, "yore heart's
right sore these days since yore gran'pap died. My own heart's sore fer
ye, too."

"He was mighty devoted ter ye, Bas," said the girl, and the man who had
just come from an act of perfidy nodded a grave head.

"I don't know whether he ever named hit ter ye, Dorothy," came his slow
words, "but thet day when ye war wedded he tuck me off ter one side an'
besought me always ter stand by ye--an' befriend ye."

"Ye acted mouty true-hearted thet day, Bas," she made acknowledgment and
the conspirator responded with a melancholy smile.

"I reckon I don't hev ter tell ye, I'd do most anything fer ye, leetle
gal. I'd hed hopes thet didn't turn out--but I kin still be a friend.
I'd go through hell fer ye any time."

He rose suddenly from his seat on the kitchen threshold, and into his
eyes came a flash of feeling. She thought it love, but there was an
unexpectedly greedy quality in it that frightened her. Then at once the
man recovered himself, and turned away, and the girl breathed easy
again.

"I'm beholden ter ye fer many things," she said, softly.

Suddenly and with no reason that she could explain, his recent words,
"I'd do most anything fer ye," set her thoughts swirling into a new
channel ... thoughts of things men do, without reward, for the women
they love.

This man, she told herself in her ignorance of the truth, had sacrificed
himself without complaint. She knew of only one greater sacrifice, and
of that she could never think without a cloud of dread shutting off the
sunlight of her happiness.

Even Bas would hardly have done what her husband had done for his
sister: assumed a guilt of murder which made of himself an exile and a
refugee whom the future always threatened.

Then somehow, as Bas sat silent, she saw again that hunger in his eyes,
a hunger so wolf-like that it was difficult to harmonize it with his
record of generous self-effacement; a hunger so avidly rapacious that a
dim and unacknowledged uneasiness stirred in her heart.

But at that moment they heard a shout from the front, and Peanuts Causey
came hurriedly around the corner of the house. His great neck and fat
face were fiery red with heat and excitement, and he panted as he gave
them his news.

"Old Jim Rowlett's done been shot at from ther bresh!" he told them. "He
escaped death, but men says ther war's like ter bust, loose ergin
because of hit."

"My God!" exclaimed Bas Rowlett in a tone of shocked incredulity; "old
Jim hain't got no enemies. A man would hev need ter be a fiend ter harm
him! I've got ter git over thar straightway."

Yet the crater did not at once burst into molten up-blazing. For a while
yet it smouldered--held from eruption by the sober counsel of the man
who had been fired on and who had seemingly escaped death by a miracle.

Adherents of the two factions still spoke as they met on the road, but
when they separated each turned his head to watch the other out of sight
and neither trusted an unprotected back to the good faith of any
possible adversary.

To the house of Aaron Capper, unobtrusively prompted by Sim Squires,
went certain of the Harper kin who knew not where else to turn--ignoring
Parish Thornton as a young pretender for whom they had little more
liking than for the enemy himself.

The elderly clansman received them and heard their talk, much of which
was wild and foolish. All disclaimed, and honestly disclaimed, any
knowledge of the infamy that had been aimed at old Jim Rowlett, but even
in their frothy folly and yeasty clamour none was so bereft as to deny
that the Harpers must face accountability. If war were inevitable,
argued the hotheads, it were wisdom to strike the first blow.

Yet Aaron, who had during the whole long truce been fretting for a free
hand, listened now with a self-governed balance that astonished his
visitors.

"Men," said he with a ring of authority in his voice, "thar hain't no
profit in headlong over-hastiness. I've been foreseein' this hour an'
prayin' fer guidance. We've got ter hev speech with young Parish
Thornton afore we turns a wheel."

Sim Squires had not been enlisting his recruits from the ranks of those
who wished to turn to Thornton, and from them rose a yelping clamour of
dissent, but Aaron quelled that mutiny aborning and went evenly on.

"Ef warfare lays ahead of us we hev need ter stand tergether solid--an'
thar's good men amongst us thet wouldn't nuver fergive affrontin' old
Caleb's memory by plum lookin' over his gal's husband. Thet's my
counsel, an' ef ye hain't a-goin' ter heed hit----"

The quiet voice ripped abruptly into an explosiveness under which some
of them cowered as under a lash.

"Then I reckon thar'll be Thorntons an' Harpers thet _will_--an they'll
fight both ther Doanes an' your crowd alike."




CHAPTER XVI


Parish Thornton sat on the doorstep of the house gazing abstractedly
upward where through soft meshes of greenery the sunlight filtered.

Here, he told himself, he ought to be happy beyond any whisper of
discontent--save for the fret of his lingering weakness. Through the
open door of the house came the voice of Dorothy raised in song, and the
man's face softened and the white teeth flashed into a smile as he
listened. Then it clouded again.

Parish Thornton did not know all the insidious forces that were working
in the silences of the hills, but he divined enough to feel the brewing
of a storm, which, in its bursting, might strike closer and with more
shattering force than the bolt that had scarred the giant tree trunk.

Two passions claimed his deep acknowledgment of allegiance and now they
stood in conflict. One was as clear and flawlessly gracious as the arch
of blue sky above him--and that was his love; the other was as wild and
impetuous as the tempests which sprang to ungoverned life among these
crags--and that was his hate.

When he had sworn to Bas Rowlett that the moon should not "full again"
before he avenged his betrayal with death, he had taken that oath
solemnly and, he sincerely believed, in the sight of God. It was,
therefore, an oath that could be neither abandoned nor modified.

The man who must die knew, as did he himself and the heavenly witness to
the compact, that his physical incapacity had been responsible for his
deferred action--but now with returning strength he must make amends of
promptness.

He would set out to-day on that enterprise of cleansing his conscience
with performance. In killing Bas Rowlett he would be performing a
virtuous act. As to that he had no misgiving, but an inner voice spoke
in disturbing whispers. He could not forget Hump Doane's appeal--and
prophecy of tribulation. By killing Bas now he might even loose that
avalanche!

"An' yit ef I tarries a few days more," he argued stubbornly within
himself, "hit's ergoin' ter be even wusser. I'm my own man now--an'
licensed ter ack fer myself." He rose and stiffened resolutely, against
the tide of doubt, and his fine face darkened with the blood malignity
of his heritage.

He went silently into the house and began making his preparations. His
pistol holster should have fitted under his left arm-pit but it was
useless there now with no right hand to draw or use it. So Parish
Thornton thrust it into his coat pocket on the left-hand side, and then
at the door he halted in a fresh perplexity.

He could not embark on a mission that might permit of no returning
without bidding Dorothy good-bye--and as he thought of that farewell his
face twitched and the agate hardness wavered.

So he stood for awhile in debate with himself, the relentlessness of the
executioner warring obdurately with the tenderness of the lover--and
while he did so a group of three horsemen came into view on the highway,
moving slowly toward his house.

When the trio of visitors had dismounted, an elderly man, whose face
held a deadly sort of gravity, approached, introducing himself as Aaron
Capper and his companions as Sim Squires and Lincoln Thornton.

"Albeit we hain't well beknowest ter one another," Aaron reminded him,
"we're all kinfolks more or less--an' we've done rid over ter hev
speech with ye cons'arnin' right sober matters."

"Won't ye come inside an' sot ye cheers?" invited Parish, but the elder
man shook his head as he wiped his perspiring and dust-caked face on the
sleeve of his shirt.

"Ther breeze is stirrin' tol'able fresh out hyar," suggested Aaron, "an
thet old walnuck tree casts down a right grateful shade. I'd jest es
lieve talk out hyar--ef hit suits ye."

So under the tree, where a light breeze stirred with welcome tempering
across the river, the four men squatted on their heels and lighted their
pipes.

"Thar hain't no profit in mincin' matters none," began old Aaron,
curtly. "I lost me three boys when they fit ther battle of Claytown
twenty y'ars back--an' now hit looks powerful like ther war's fixin' ter
bust out afresh. Ef hit does I aims ter take me full toll fer tha'r
killin'."

Parish Thornton--who had ten minutes before been planning a death
infliction of his own--raised his brows at this unsoftened bluntness of
announcement, but he inquired of Aaron Capper as he had done of Hump
Doane: "Why does ye come ter me?"

"We comes ter ye," Aaron gave him unambiguous answer, "because ef ther
Harpers hev got ter fight, that hain't no health in divided leaderships
ner dilatary delays.... Some men seems ter hold thet because ye wed with
Old Caleb's gal, ye're licensed ter stand in Old Caleb's shoes ...
whilst others seems plum resolved not ter tolerate ye atall an' spits ye
outen thar mouths."

"Which of them lots does _you_ men stand with?"

The question came soberly, yet something like a riffle of cynical
amusement glinted in the eyes of Parish Thornton as he put it.

"I hain't made up my mind yit. All I knows is thet some fellers called
on me ter head ther Harpers ... an' afore I give 'em any answer, I
'lowed thet hit become us ter hev speech with ye fust. We owed ye thet
much because ther Doanes'll pint-blank deem thet ther trouble started
when ye wed Bas Rowlett's gal--an' whatever _we_ does, _they'll_ hold ye
accountable."

The heir to Caleb Harper's perplexities stood leaning against the tree.
There were still moments when his strength seemed to ebb capriciously
and leave him giddy. After a moment, though, he smiled quietly and
glanced about the little group.

"When I come over hyar," he said, "I didn't ask nothin' but ter be left
alone. I married Dorothy, an' old Caleb confidenced me. I've got my own
affairs ter tend an' I'm satisfied ter tend 'em. So fur es frayin' an'
fightin' goes"--his voice mounted suddenly and the half-whimsical humour
died instantly in his eyes--"I've got some of my own ter study
erbout--an' I don't have ter meddle with other folkses' quarrels."

"Then ye aims ter stand aside an' let things take thar own course?"

"Thet's what I 'lowed ter do, but ye've jest done told me thet the
Doanes don't aim ter _let_ me stand aside. S'pose ye tells me some
more."

"All right," said Aaron, brusquely. "Ef thet's what ye wants I'll tell
ye a lavish."

Dorothy had come to the front door and looked out, and seeing the men
still mopping hot faces, she had brought out a pitcher of cool
buttermilk and a pewter mug.

The backs of the three visitors were turned toward the house, and her
feet on the grass had made no sound so that only Parish himself had
known of her coming and he had, with a lifting of the brows, signalled
her to wait until old Aaron finished speaking.

"I've done sought by prayer an' solemn ponderin' ter take counsel with
Almighty God," declared the spokesman. "Ther blood of them three boys of
mine hes been cryin' out ter me fer twenty y'ars but yet I knows thet ef
ther war does come on again hit's goin' ter bring a monstrous sum of
ruination an' mischief. So I comes ter ye--es Caleb Harper's heir--ter
heer what ye've got ter say."

Dorothy Thornton's eyes widened as, standing with the pitcher and the
ancient mug in her hands, she listened to that speech. Then as the full
import of its feudal menace broke upon her understanding the blossom
colour flowed out of her smooth cheeks and neck, leaving them ivory
white.

She saw herself as the agency which had drawn her husband into this
vortex, and bitterly reflected that this had been her dowry and the gift
of her love!

Parish's glance held by that stunned fixety in her expression attracted
the attention of the others and old Aaron Capper, turning his head, saw
her and let a low oath of exasperation escape him.

"Send her away!" he snapped, angrily. "This hyar hain't no woman's
business. How much did she hyar?"

Parish Thornton went forward and took the pitcher and pewter mug from
his wife's hand, then he shook his head, and his voice altered to a new
ring, quiet, yet electrically charged with dominance.

"No," he ripped out, shortly. "I hain't ergoin' ter send her away. Ye
says hit hain't no woman's business, and yit she's Caleb Harper's
gran'daughter--an' because of her weddin' with me--Harpers an' Doanes
alike--ye won't suffer me ter foller out my own affairs in my own
fashion, onmolested!"

Aaron came to his feet, bristling indignantly and with new protests
rising to his lips, but an imperious gesture of command from Parish
silenced him into a bewildered obedience. It had become suddenly
impossible to brow-beat this man.

"Dorothy," said her husband, "I reckon ye heered enough ter know what
brought these men hyar. They norates thet ther Doanes holds me
accountable fer whatever ther Harpers does--good or evil--because I
stands as heir ter yore gran'pap. They tells me likewise thet ther
Harpers hain't got no settled leader, an' only two things hinders me
from claimin' thet job myself: Fust place, I don't crave ter mingle in
thar ructions, and second place they won't hev none of me. Seems like
I'm ther gryste betwixt two mill-stones ... an' bein' es ye're my wife,
thet's a state of things thet consarns _you_ es well es me."

A Valkyrie fire glowed in the dark eyes of the young woman and her hands
clenched themselves tautly. The colour that had gone out of her cheeks
came back with a rush of vividness which seemed to transform her as a
lighted wick transforms a candle.

"When my gran'pap war a-strivin' aginst all manner of odds fer peace,"
she said, disdainfully, "thar was them thet kept hamperin' him by
whoopin' on ther troublemakers--an' I've done heered him say thet one
turrible hard man ter reason with bore ther name of Aaron Capper."

The elderly spokesman of the delegation flushed brick-red and his heavy
lashes gathered close in a menacing scowl.

"No man didn't love Caleb Harper no better'n me," he protested,
indignantly, "but ef we've got ter fight hit profits us ter hit
fust--an' hit hard."

"Now, I've got somethin' ter tell ye," went on Parish, and though they
did not know just when or how the change had been wrought, each of the
three visitors began to realize that a subtle shifting of places had
come over their relations to their host.

At first they had spoken categorically and he had listened passively.
Now when he spoke they felt the compulsion of hearkening to him as to
one whose words carried authority. Personalities had been measured as
are foils in the hands of fencers, and Parish Thornton was being
recognized to hold the longest and keenest blade.

"I've done sought ter show ye, outen yore own mouths," he said, soberly,
"thet at one an' ther same time ye was demandin' ter know what I aimed
ter do an' tellin' me I couldn't do nothin'. Now I tells ye thar's one
thing I jedgmatically _hain't_ a-goin' ter do, an' thet is ter stand by
an' suffer them two mill-stones ter grind me ter no powder."

He paused, and the girl had moved forward until she stood at his side
with her outstretched hand resting against the bark of the old tree in a
reverent touch of caress. She ignored the others and spoke to her
husband.

"Back thar in ther beginnin's, Cal," she said, clinging to the name by
which she had first known him, "our foreparents planted this tree--an'
founded this country--an' held hit erginst ther Injuns. They was leaders
then--afore any man hed ever heered of Cappers an' Squireses an' ther
like. I reckon ef men needs a leader now, hit runs in yore blood ter be
one ... but a leader fer betterment--an' one thet gives orders 'stid of
takin' 'em."

She turned then, and with her chin regally high, she left them, and a
brief silence held after her going.

"I reckon I couldn't hardly hev said hit thet well, myself," announced
Parish Thornton, quietly, "but yit hit erbout sums up my answer ter ye."

"Whatever ye says from now on, erbout takin' me er leavin' me, ther
_enemy's_ done picked me out es ther head man of ther Harpers--an' what
they'd love best would be ter see ye all cavillin' amongst yoreselves.
Caleb Harper picked me out, too. Now I aims ter stand by his
choosin'--an' I aims ter be heeded when I talks."

Aaron and Parish stood eye to eye, searching and measuring each other
with gazes that sought to penetrate the surface of words and reach the
core of character. The older man, angry, and insulted though he felt
himself, began to realize about his heart the glow of that unwilling
admiration which comes of compulsion in the presence of human mastery
and pays tribute to inherent power. The quiet assurance of this
self-announced chieftain carried conviction that made argument idle--and
above all else the Thorntons needed an unchallengeable leader.

"Afore God," he murmured, "I believes ye're a _man_!" Then after a pause
he added: "But nobody don't know ye well enough--an' afore a man kin be
trusted ter give orders he's got ter prove hisself."

Parish Thornton laughed.

"Prove yoreself, then, Aaron," he challenged, "ye talks erbout yore
hunger ter avenge yore dead boys--albeit they fell in a pitch-battle an'
ye don't know who deadened 'em--an' ther fire of thet wrath's been
coolin' fer a full score of ya'rs. Why did ye let hit simmer so long?"

"Because I was pledged ter peace an' I wasn't no truce-buster. I sought
ter remain steadfast and bide my time."

"All right. Then ef fresh war-farin' kin be carcumvented, ye still
stands beholden by thet pledge, don't ye?"

"Ef hit kin be, yes--but how kin hit be?"

"Thet's what I aims ter show ye. Ye talks erbout yore grievance. Now
listen ter mine. Ther bullit wound hyar in my shoulder hain't healed
yit--an' thar hain't no hotter fire in hell then my own hate fer
whoever caused hit. So when ye talks ter me about grievances, ye talks
a language I kin onderstand without no lingster ter construe hit."

He paused a moment, unconscious that his term for an interpreter was one
that Englishmen had used in Chaucer's day, and, save here, not since a
long-gone time. Then he swept on, and Sim Squires listening to this man
whom for hire he had waylaid felt an unmanning creep of terror along his
spine; a fear such as he had not felt for any human being before. The
sweat on his face grew clammy, but with a mighty effort he held his
features mask-like.

"But atter you an' me hed evened our scores--what then? Air ye willin'
ter burn down a dwellin' house over ther heads of them inside hit, jest
ter scorch out a feisty dog that's done molested ye? Is thet leadin' men
forwards--or jest backwards like a crawfish?"

"Ye talks," said Aaron Capper, sharply, "like es if I'd stirred up an'
provoked tribulation. Them fellers air a-plottin' tergither right now
over at old Hump Doane's house--an' hell's broth air a-brewin' thar."

The younger man's head came back with a snap.

"Ye says they're holdin' a council over thar at Hump Doane's?" he
demanded.

"Yes--an' hit's a war conf'rence. I've hed men find thet out--they're
right sim'lar ter a swarm of hornets."

Parish Thornton took a step forward.

"Will ther Harpers stand to what ther two of us agrees on tergither in
full accord--an' leave cavillin' an' wranglin' amongst ourselves fer a
more seemly time?"

Aaron nodded his head. "So long as us two stands agreed we kin handle
'em, I reckon."

The young man nodded his head in a gesture of swift decision.

"All right then! I'm goin' over thar ter Hump Doane's house--an' reason
with them hotheads. I'm goin' ter advocate peace as strong es any man
kin--but I'm goin' ter tell 'em, too, thet ther Harpers kin give 'em
unshirted hell ef they disdains peace. I'm goin' ter pledge ourselves
ter holp diskiver an' penitenshery ther man thet shot at old Jim
Rowlett. Does thet suit ye?"

Aaron stood looking at Parish Thornton with eyes blankly dumfounded, and
the other two faces mirrored his bewilderment, then the spokesman broke
into bitterly derisive laughter, and his followers parroted his
mirthless ridicule.

"Hit _mout_ suit me," he finally replied, "save only hit denotes thet
ye're either p'intedly wishful ter throw yore life away--or else plum
bereft of reason."

"Thet's a _secret_ meetin' over thar," interposed Lincoln Thornton,
grimly, "with rifles in ther la'rel ter take keer of trespassers. They'd
stretch ye dead afore ye got nigh enough ter shout out--much less reason
with 'em. Some things is practical an' others is jest damn foolery."

"I took thought of them chances," replied Parish, quietly, "afore I made
my proffer."

This time there was no laughter but Aaron shook his head decisively.
"No," he declared, "hit won't do. Hit's a right bold idee but hit would
be sartain death. Ye're ther man they're cussin' an' damnin' over an'
above all others, over thar--right now."

"All right then," asserted Thornton, crisply, "ef I kin stop 'em from
cussin' an' damnin' me, mebby they mout quiet down again an listen ter
reason. Anyhow, ef ye agrees ter let me bind ye by my words, I'm a-goin'
over thar."

After that the talk was such a discussion of ways and means as takes
place between allies in complete harmony of agreement.

"Afore God in Heaven," exclaimed the old clansman at its end, "ye _air_
a man thet's cut out ter lead! Hev ye got yore pistol handy?"

"Hit's handy enough," answered Parish, "but I don't aim ter go over thar
armed--ef they kills me like ye foretells they will, they've got ter
murder me coldblooded--so all men kin see wh'ar ther fault lays at."




CHAPTER XVII


Parish Thornton and Aaron Capper stood for a few moments watching the
departure of the two other horsemen, one of whom was a spy and a
traitor--for Aaron himself meant to wait here until he could ride home
with some knowledge of the outcome of his new ally's mad project.

But Parish could not wait long, for the summer afternoon was already
half spent and his depleted strength would make travelling slow.

The thought that now oppressed him with the poignancy of an immediate
ordeal was the need of saying good-bye to Dorothy, and neither of them
would fail to understand that it might be a last good-bye. There was no
room for equivocation in this crisis, and as he gazed up into the full
and peaceful shade over his head, a flood of little memories, bound
tendril-like by sounds, sights, and fragrances to his heart, swept him
with disconcerting violence.

He steadied himself against that assaulting and went resolutely into the
room where Dorothy was standing with her back half turned so that she
did not at once see him.

She stood deep in thought--artlessly posed in lance-like straightness,
and on the smooth whiteness of her neck a breath of breeze stirred wisps
of bronzed and crisply curling hair. The swing of her shoulders was
gallant and the man thanked God for that. She would want her courage
now.

"Dorothy," he said, softly, standing close at her side, "I've got ter do
somethin' thet ye're goin' ter hate ter hev me ter ondertake--an' yet I
knows ye'll want me ter do hit, too."

She wheeled at the tenseness of his voice and he wondered whether some
premonition had already foreshadowed his announcement, for her cheeks
were pale as she raised her hands and locked her fingers behind his
head, standing off at arms' length so that she might look into his face.

He felt the hands tighten and tremble as he explained his mission, and
saw the lids close over the eyes as if to shut out pictures of
terror-stricken foreboding, while the lips parted stiffly in the pain of
repressed and tidal emotions. Dorothy swayed uncertainly on her feet,
then recovered self-command.

With a passionate impulse of holding him for herself, her arms closed
more rigidly about him and her soft body clung against his own, but no
sound of sobbing came from her lips and after a little she threw back
her head and spoke rapidly, tensely, with the molten fierceness of one
mountain-bred:

"I hain't seekin' ter dissuade ye ... I reckon I kinderly egged ye on
out thar under ther tree ... but ef any harm comes ter ye, Cal ... over
yon ... then afore God, even ef I'm only a woman ... I'll kill ther man
thet causes hit!"

It was Dorothy who saddled and bridled the easy-paced mule for the man
with the bandaged arm to mount, and who gave him directions for reaching
his destination. As he turned in his saddle he summoned the spirit to
flash upon her his old smile in farewell and she waved as though she
were speeding him on some errand of festival. Then while old Aaron paced
the dooryard with a grim face of pessimism bowed low over his chest, she
turned into the house and, beside the bed where her lover had so long
lain, dropped to her knees and clasped her hands in prayer.

Parish Thornton had told Aaron that he meant to go unarmed to that
meeting, but so many thoughts had crowded upon him that only when he
settled back against the high cantle of his saddle was he reminded, by
its angular hardness, of the pistol which bulged in his pocket.

He drew rein to take it back, then shook his head and rode on again.

"Goin' over an' comin' back," he told himself, "I'd jest as lieve be
armed, anyhow. Afore I gits thar I'll climb down an' hide ther thing in
some holler log."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hump Doane's house was larger than many of those lying scattered about
it, but between its long walls hung that smoky air of the rudely
mediæval that made a fit setting for so grim a conclave as that of
to-day. About the empty hearth of its main room men, uncouthly dressed
and unbarbered, sat, and the smoke from their pipes hung stale and
heavy. A door at the back and one at the front stood wide, but there
were no windows and along the blackened rafters went strings of peppers
and "hands" of home-grown tobacco. A dull glint here and there against
the walls proclaimed leaning rifles.

On the threshold of the back door sat Bas Rowlett gazing outward, and
his physical position, beyond the margin of the group proper, seemed to
typify a mental attitude of detachment from those mounting tides of
passion that held sway within.

"I'm ther feller thet got shot at, men," declared old Jim, rising
unsteadily from his chair and sweeping them all with his keen and
sagacious old eyes, "an' until terday ye've all stud willin' ter hearken
ter my counsel. Now ef ye disregards me an' casts loose afresh all them
old hates an' passions, I'd a heap ruther be dead then alive."

"Afore God, what fer do we waste good time hyar cavillin' an' backbitin'
like a passel of old granny-women?" demanded Sam Opdyke whose face was
already liquor-flushed, as he came tumultuously to his feet, overturning
his chair and lifting clenched fists above his head.

"When this hyar unknowed man come from Virginny ter start things up whar
old Burrell Thornton left 'em off at, he brung ther war with him. Thet
troublemaker's got ter die--an' when he's dead hit's time ter parley
erbout a new truce."

A low growl of approval ran in the throats of the hearers, but Hump
Doane rose and spoke with his great head and misshapen shoulders
reaching only a little way above the table top, and his thin voice
cutting sharp and stridently.

"I've always stood staunch by Jim Rowlett's counsel," he announced,
soberly, "but we kain't handily refuse ter see what our own eyes shows
us. Ef ther Harpers hed any survigrous leader thet hed come out strong
fer peace, I'd still sanction givin' him a chanst, but who hev they got?
I talked solemn with this new man, Parish Thornton, an' I didn't git no
satisfaction outen hem."

From the door Bas Rowlett raised an even voice of hypocrisy:

"I knows ther new man better then any of ye, I reckon ... an' I believes
him when he says he wants a quiet life ... but I don't skeercely deem
ther Harpers hev any notion of heedin' him."

"Men," old Jim, who felt his power slipping from him, and who was too
old to seize it back with the vigour of twenty years ago, rose again and
in his attitude was the pathos of decayed influence and bitter failure
at life's end.

"Men," he implored, "I beseeches ye ter hearken ter me one time more. A
man thet's got ter be kilt kin always be kilt, but one thet's dead
kain't be fotched back ter life. Hold off this bloodshed fer a spell
yit.... Suffer me ter counsel with two or three Harpers an' Thorntons
afore ye goes too fur!"

So long had this man's voice held a wizardry of influence that even now,
though the spirit of reconciliation had faint life in that meeting, a
silence of respect and veneration followed on his words, and while it
endured he gazed beseechingly around the group to meet eyes that were
all obdurately grim and adverse.

It was Hump Doane who broke the pause.

"Save fer a miracle of luck, Jim, ye'd be a dead man now--an' whilst we
tarries fer ye ter parley, you an' me an' others besides us air like ter
die. Over-hastiness is a sorry fault--but dilitariness is oftentimes
sorrier."

       *       *       *       *       *

Back in the house that had grown around the nucleus of a revolutionary
cabin sat the woman who had been for such a short time a wife--and who
might so soon be a widow.

She had risen from her knees at last after agonized praying, but even
through her prayers came horrible and persistent pictures of what might
be happening to the man who had smiled as he rode away.

The insupportable dread chilled and tortured her that the brief
happiness of her marriage had been only a scrap and sample, which would
leave all the rest of life and widowhood bleaker for its memory and
loss.

Dorothy sat by the window with a face ghost-pallid and fingers that
wound in and out of spasmodic clutchings.

She closed her eyes in an effort to forget her nightmare imaginings and
saw only more fantastic visions of a body sliding from its saddle and
lying still in the creek bed trail.

She rose at last and paced the room, but outside in the road her gaze
fell on old Aaron who was uneasily pacing, too, and in his drooping
shoulders and grimly set face she read no encouragement to hope. That
morose and pessimistic figure held her gaze with a fascination of terror
and she watched it until its pacing finally carried it around a twist of
the road. Then she went out and stood under the tree which in its
wordlessness was still a more sympathetic confidant than human beings.

She dropped on her knees there in the long grass at the roots of the
straight-stemmed walnut and for the first time some spark of hope crept
into her bruised soul. She began catching at straws of solace and had
she known it, placing faith and reliance in the source of all the
danger, yet she found a vestige of comfort in the process--and that was
something.

"I'd done fergot," she exclaimed as she rose from her knees. "Most like
Bas Rowlett's thar--so he'll hev one friend thet men won't skeercely
das't ter defy. Bas'll stand by him--like he done afore."




CHAPTER XVIII


Riding with the weariness of a long convalescence, Parish Thornton
passed the house where for two days only he had made his abode, and
turned into an upward-climbing trail, gloomily forested, where the
tangle brushed his stirrups as he rode. On a "bald-knob" the
capriciousness of nature had left the lookout of an untimbered summit,
and there he drew rein and gazed down into the basin of a narrow
creek-valley a mile distant, where, in a cleared square of farm land, a
lazy thread of smoke rose from a low roof.

That house was his objective, and from here on he must drop downward
through woods which the eye could penetrate for only a few paces in any
direction; where the poison ivy and sumac grew rank and the laurel and
rhododendron made entanglements that would have disconcerted a bear. He
realized that it was a zone picketed with unseen riflemen, and advisers,
who were by no means alarmists, had told him that he could not pass
through it alive. Yet he believed there was the possibility, and upon it
he was staking everything, that so long as he rode openly and with the
audacity of seemingly nickel-plated self-confidence, these watchers by
the way would, in sheer curiosity, pass him on to those superiors within
the house from whom they took their orders.

His life hung on the correctness of that assumption, but the hazard was
a part of the game. He thrust his pistol into a broken oak where a
woodpecker had nested, then flapped his reins and clucked to his mule.
For the sake of a bold appearance he raised his voice in a spirited and
cheerful ballad, but from time to time he broke off since he had stern
need for acute listening.

The mule carried him into--and through--a gorge where day-long a shadowy
gloom hung among the fern-fringed rocks, and where the austere wildness
of dripping cliffs and forbidding woods seemed a stage set for dark and
tragic happenings.

He passed not one but several rifles as he went--he even caught the
glint of one muzzle among the waxen rhododendron leaves but pretended
not to see it, and though on him every barrel was trained, not a trigger
was pressed.

The coming of a Harper clansman whom some men called a leader to the
conclave of the Doane chieftains was so astounding a phenomenon that it
would be a pity to cut it short until its intent was made manifest. So
the sentinels along the way held their breath--and their fire.

But Thornton came at last to the place where the forest ran out into
more open woods and the "trace" widened to a sledge-trail. He drew his
horse to a standstill and hallooed loudly, for he knew that at this
point all policy of experiment must end. The showdown could no longer be
delayed. From near by in the laurel came a prompt voice of response
though the speaker remained unseen.

"Halt whar ye're at," it commanded, gruffly. "What does ye want over
hyar?"

"I aimed ter hev speech with Hump Doane," answered Thornton, unruffled,
counterfeiting a tranquil ease, and from the thicket drifted the
unintelligible mingling of two low voices in consultation. Then a second
voice spoke:

"Wait right whar ye stands at an' don't aim ter move till I tells ye ye
kin."

Punctiliously, Parish Thornton obeyed that injunction, sitting quietly
in his saddle with a meditative gaze fixed on the twitching of his
mule's ears, until after so long a time a stir in the thicket announced
the return of the messenger and a command came succinctly from an
invisible speaker.

"Hitch yore critter an' light down. Hump 'lows he'll see ye."

The door at the front of the house was closed now but when Thornton had
dismounted and knocked, it opened, and straining his eyes at the
darkness of the interior he found himself in a room cloudy with tobacco
smoke and crowded with unoccupied chairs--yet empty of any humanity save
for himself and the hunchback who stood inhospitably bulking just beyond
the threshold.

The trap to the cock-loft was open, though, and the ladder was drawn up
so Thornton knew that this seeming of vacancy was specious and that in
all likelihood gun barrels were trained from above.

"I've done come," he said, steadily, and he raised his voice so that it
would also carry to those unseen individuals whom he believed to be
concealed near by, "ter see kin us two carcumvent bloodshed. I bears due
authority from ther Thorntons and ther Harpers. We seeks ter aid ye in
diskiverin' an' punishin' ther man thet sought ter kill Jim Rowlett--if
so be ye'll meet us halfway."

For a moment there was silence in the room, then with a skeptical note
of ridicule and challenge the hunchback demanded: "Why didn't ye go ter
Jim Rowlett hisself?"

Though he had not been invited to enter Parish Thornton took a forward
step into the room, and a bold effrontery proclaimed itself in both the
words and the manner of his response.

"I've done come ter both of ye. I knows full well I'm speakin' right now
in ther hearin' of numerous men hyar--albeit they're hidin' out from
me."

Again there was silence, then Parish Thornton turned his eyes, following
the cripple's gaze, toward the open door and found himself gazing into
the muzzles of two rifles presented toward his breast. He laughed
shortly and commented, "I thought so," then glancing at the cock-loft he
saw other muzzles and in the back door which swung silently open at the
same moment yet others gave back a dull glint of iron from the sunlight,
so that he stood ringed about with levelled guns.

Hump Doane's piercing eyes bored into the face of the intruder during a
long and uneasy silence. Then when his scrutiny had satisfied itself he
asserted with a blunt directness:

"Ye hain't skeercely got no means of knowin' who's inside my house
without ye come by thet knowledge through spyin' on me."

From the darkness of the cock-loft came a passionate voice of such rabid
truculence as sounds in the throat of a dog straining at its leash.

"Jest say one word, Hump ... jest say one word an' he won't know nothin'
a minute hence!... My trigger finger's itchin' right now!"

"Hold yore cacklin' tongue, Sam Opdyke, an' lay aside thet gun," the
cripple barked back with the crack of a mule whip in his voice, and
silence again prevailed up there and fell upon the room below.

Again the householder paused and after that he decided to throw aside
futile pretence.

"Come on back in hyar, men," he gave curt order. "Thar hain't no need of
our askin' no man's lieve ter meet an' talk nohow."

Slowly and somewhat shamefacedly, if the truth must be told, the room
refilled itself and the men who trooped heavily back through the two
doors, or slid down the lowered ladder, came rifle and pistol armed.

Parish Thornton had no trouble in identifying, by the malevolence on one
face, the man who had pleaded for permission to kill him, but the last
to saunter in--and he still stood apart at the far threshold with an air
of casual detachment--was Bas Rowlett.

"Now," began Hump Doane in the overbearing tone of an inquisitor, "we
don't owe ye no explanations as ter which ner whether. We've gathered
tergether, as we hev full right ter do, because you Harpers seems hell
bent on forcin' warfare down our throats--an' we aims ter carcumvent
ye." He paused, and a murmur of general approbation gave force to his
announcement, then he added, "But hit's right p'intedly seemly fer _you_
ter give us a reason why ye comes oninvited ter my house--at sich a time
as this."

It was to old Jim Rowlett that Parish Thornton turned now, ignoring the
spokesman who had addressed him, and his voice was clear and even:

"When I come hyar from Virginny," he declared, "I didn't never seek no
leadership--an' ther Thorntons in gin'ral didn't never press me ter take
over none--but thar was men hyar thet wouldn't look on me in no other
guise, an them men war _you Doanes_."

"Us Doanes," broke out the red-eyed Opdyke, explosively, "what hev we
got ter do with yore feisty lot?"'

"Yes, you Doanes," Thornton shot back at him with a stiffening jaw.
"When ther Harpers didn't want me, and I didn't want them, _you_ men
plum fo'ced me on 'em by seekin' ter hold me accountable fer all thar
doin's. Ef I'm goin' ter be accountable, I'm likewise goin' ter be
accounted _to_! Now we've done got tergither over thar an' they've
despatched me hyar ter give ye our message an' take back yore answer."

"Thet is ter say," amended the firebrand with significant irony,
"providin' _we_ concludes ter let ye take back _any_ message _atall_."

Thornton did not turn his head but held with his eyes the faces of old
Jim and Hump Doane and it was still to them that he addressed himself.

"I'm licensed ter bind ther Harpers an' Thorntons by my words--an' my
words air plain ones. We proffers ye peace or war, whichever ye chooses:
full peace or war ter ther hinges of hell! But peace air what we wants
with all our hearts an' cravin's, an' peace hit'll be onlessen ye denies
us." He paused for a moment only, then in altered voice he reminded
them: "Ef I _don't_ go back, my death'll be all the answer they'll need
over thar--but ther guilt fer bloodshed an' what follers hit will rest
on ther Doanes henceforth. We've done our damnedest."

"We're wastin' time an' breath. Kill ther damn moon-calf an' eend hit,"
clamoured the noisy agitator with the bloodshot eyes. "They only seeks
ter beguile us with a passel of fair-seemin' lies."

"No, we hain't wastin' breath, men!" Old Jim Rowlett was on his feet
again with the faded misery of defeat gone out of his eyes and a new
light of contest kindled in them.

"Every man hyar, save a couple of clamorous fools, hes declared hisself
thet ef ther Thorntons hed a trustworthy leader, he favoured dealin'
with him. This man says they've got tergither. Let's hear him out."

A muttering chorus of dissent sounded inarticulate protest that needed
only a spokesman and Hump Doane raised his hand.

"I've done already hed speech with Mr. Thornton--who come over hyar by
another name--an' he refused ter give me any enjoyment. I misdoubts ef
he kin do much better now. Nonetheless"--he stepped forward and turned
as he spoke, swinging his glance with compelling vigour about the rough
circle of humanity--"Nonetheless he's done come, an' claims he's been
sent. Stand over thar, Mr. Thornton, in front of the chimbley--an' I
aims ter see thet ye gits yore say!"

So Parish Thornton took his place before the hearth and began an
argument that he knew to be adversely prejudged.

"Thar's grievances festerin' amongst ther men of yore crowd an' mine
alike, but warfare won't ease 'em none," he said at the end; "I've got a
grievance myself thet calls fer avengin'--but hit hain't no Harper-Doane
matter. I hadn't dwelt hyar amongst ye three days afore I was
laywayed--an' I hadn't give just offence ter no man so fur es I knows
of."

"But sence ye've done tuck up preachin' a gospel of peace," came the
sneering suggestion from the fringe of the crowd, "I reckon ye're
willin' ter lay thet grudge by like a good Christian an' turn t'other
cheek, hain't ye?"

Thornton wheeled, and his eyes flamed.

"No," he exclaimed in a voice that filled the room. "I'd be a damn
hypocrite ef I claimed thet. I swore thet night, whilst I lay thar, thet
thet man belonged ter me ter kill, an' I hain't altered thet resolve no
fashion, degree ner whipstitch. But thet's a thing thet's separate an'
apart from ther war...."

He paused, realizing the difficulty of making clear so complicated and
paradoxical a position, while an outburst of derisive laughter fell on
the pause as he reached his period. Then someone made ironic comment:
"Hit's all beginnin' ter come out now. Ye aims ter hev everybody else
fergive thar enemies an' lay down like lambs tergither--atter ye gits
teetotally done with yore own shootin' an avengin'."

But Hump Doane seized the hickory staff that leaned against old Jim's
chair and pounded with it on the table.

"Silence!" he roared; "suffer ther feller ter git through!"

"I don't aim ter bushwack ner layway nobody," went on Thornton,
obdurately. "Hit wouldn't content me ef I wasn't facin' my enemy when I
sottled with him--an' hit's a private business--but this other matter
te'ches everybody. Hit denotes y'ars of blood-spillin' an' murder--of
women an' children sufferin' fer causes thet hain't no wise th'ar fault
ner doin'."

The cripple still stood regarding the man by the hearth with a brow knit
in absorption, and so tense was his expression that it seemed to bind
the others to a brief, waiting silence until Hump himself slowly broke
the tension.

"I said I aimed ter give ye a chanst ter hev yore say out.... Hev ye got
fur enough ter let me ask ye a question?"

The nodded head of assent gave permission and Doane inquired briefly:

"Does I onderstand ye ter plead fer ther Harpers an' ther Doanes ter
'bide by ther old truce--an' yit ter seek ter stand free yore own self
an' kill yore own enemy?"

Old Jim Rowlett leaned forward gripping his staff head with eyes of
incredulity, and from the chest of the others sounded long-drawn
breaths, inarticulate yet eloquent of scorn and sneering repudiation.

But Parish Thornton retained the earnest and resolute poise with which
he had spoken before as he made his answer.

"I means thet I don't aim ter suffer no craven betrayal an' not hit
back. I means thet ther feller thet sought my murder is _my man ter
kill_, but I aims ter kill him in f'ar combat. Hit jest lays between him
an' me an' hit hain't no Harper-Doane affair, nohow."

Hump Doane shook his head and there was in the gesture both decisiveness
and disappointment.

"What commenced ter look like a mighty hopeful chanst falls flat right
hyar an' now," he announced. "I'd begun ter hope thet atter all a leader
hed done riz up amongst us, but I sees when ye talks erbout peace ye
means a peace fer other folks thet don't bind ner hamper yoreself. Thar
hain't nuthin' but folly in seekin' ter build on a quicksand like thet."

"I told ye fust-off thet we war a-wastin' time an' breath," broke out
Opdyke, furiously. "A man only courts trouble when he seeks ter gentle a
rattlesnake--ther seemly thing ter do air ter kill hit."

Parish Thornton turned his eyes and studiously appraised the
hare-brained advocate of violence, then he said, again addressing Hump
Doane:

"An' yit hit's a pity, Mr. Doane, ef you an' me kain't some fashion git
tergither in accord. We've got ther same cravin's in our hearts, us
two."

"I come ter ye onc't afore, Mr. Thornton," the cripple reminded him,
"an' I asked ye a question thet ye didn't see fit ter answer. Now I asks
ye ter lay by one grudge, when ye calls on us ter lay by many--an' hit
happens ergin thet ye don't see fit ter yield no p'int. Mebby me an' you
_have_ got cravin's fer betterment in common betwixt us--but hit 'pears
like thar's always one diff'rence risin' up thet balks everything
else."




CHAPTER XIX


Even the peppery Opdyke did not venture to break heatedly in on the
pause that followed those regretful words. Into the minds of the
majority stole a sense, vague and indefinable it is true, that a tragic
impasse was closing on a situation over which had flashed a rainbow
gleam of possible solution. Ahead lay the future with its sinister
shadows--darker because of the alternative they had glimpsed in its
passing.

Old Jim Rowlett came to his feet, and drew his thin shoulders
back--shoulders that had been broad and strong enough to support heavy
burdens through trying years.

"Mr. Thornton," he said, and the aged voice held a quaver of emotion
which men were not accustomed to hearing it carry, "I wants ter talk
with ye with ther severe freedom of an' old man counsellin' a young
'un--an' hit hain't ergoin' ter be in ther manner of a Doane argyfyin'
with a Harper so much es of a father advisin' with a son."

The young Thornton met those eyes so full of eagle boldness yet so
tempered with kindness, and to his own expression came a responsive
flash of that winning boyishness which these men had not seen on his
face before.

"Mr. Rowlett," he made answer in a low and reverent voice, "I hain't got
no remembrance of my pappy, but I'd love ter think he favoured ye right
smart."

Slowly the low-pitched voice of the Nestor began to dominate the place,
cloudy with its pipe-smoke and redolent with the stale fumes of fires
long dead. Like some Hogarth picture against a sombre background the
ungainly figures of men stood out of shadow and melted into it: men
unkempt and tribal in their fierceness of aspect.

Old Jim made to blaze again before their eyes, with a rude and vigorous
eloquence, all the ruthless bane of the toll-taking years before the
truce. He stripped naked every specious claim of honour and courage with
which its votaries sought to hallow the vicious system of the vendetta.
He told in words of simple force how he and Caleb Harper had striven to
set up and maintain a sounder substitute, and how for the permanence of
that life-work they had prayed.

"Caleb an' me," he said at last, "we didn't never succeed without we put
by what we asked others ter forego. Yore wife's father was kilt most
foully--an' Caleb looked over hit. My own boy fell in like fashion, an'
my blood wasn't no tamer then thet in other veins--but yit I held my
hand. Ye comes ter us now, frettin' under ther sting of a wrong done ter
ye--an' I don't say yore wrath hain't righteous, but ye've done been
vouchsafed sich a chanst as God don't proffer ter many, an' God calls
fer sacrifices from them elected ter sarve him."

He paused there for a moment and passed his knotted hand over the
parchment-like skin of his gaunt temples, then he went on: "Isaac
offered up Jacob--or leastways he stud ready ter do hit. Ye calls on us
ter trust ye an' stand with ye, an' we calls on _you_ in turn fer a
pledge of faith. Fer God's sake, boy, be big enough ter bide yore time
twell ther Harpers an' Doanes hev done come outen this distemper of
passion. I tells ye ye kain't do no less an' hold yore self-esteem."

He paused, then came forward with his old hand extended and trembling in
a palsy of eagerness, and despite the turmoil of a few minutes before,
such a taut silence prevailed that the asthmatic rustiness of the old
man's breath was an audible wheezing through the room.

The young messenger had only to lift his hand then and grasp that
outheld one--and peace would have been established--yet his one free arm
seemed to him more difficult to lift in a gesture of compliance than
that which was bandaged down.

His own voice broke and he answered with difficulty: "Give me a leetle
spell ter ponder--I kain't answer ye off-hand."

Thornton's eyes went over, and in the lighted doorway fell upon Bas
Rowlett sitting with his features schooled to a masked and unctuous
hypocrisy, but back of that disguise the wounded man fancied he could
read the satisfaction of one whose plans march toward success. His own
teeth clicked together and the sweat started on his temples. He had to
look away--or forget every consideration other than his own sense of
outrage and the oath he had sworn to avenge it.

But the features of old Jim were like the solace of a reef-light in a
tempest; old Jim whose son had fallen and who had forgiven without
weakness.

If what Parish knew to be duty prevailed over the passionate tide that
ran high in temptation, what then? Would he live to serve as shepherd
when his undertaking under the private compact had been waived and the
other man stood free to indulge his perfidy?

Finally he laid his hand on the shoulder of the veteran.

"Mr. Rowlett," he declared, steadily, "I've got ter ask ye ter give me
full twenty-four hours afore I kin answer ye fer sartain. Will yore men
agree ter hold matters es they stands twell this time termorrer?"

Jim Rowlett glanced at Hump Doane and the cripple nodded an energetic
affirmation. He was hard to convince but when convinced he was done with
doubt.

"I'd ruther heer Mr. Thornton talk thetaway," he declared, crisply,
"then ter hev him answer up heedless an' over-hasty."

With his knee brushing against that of old Jim Rowlett, Parish Thornton
rode away from that meeting, and from the sentinels in the laurel he
heard no hint of sound.

When he had come to the place where his pistol lay hidden he withdrew it
and replaced it in his pocket, and a little farther on where the creek
wound its way through a shimmering glade and two trails branched, the
veteran drew rein.

"I reckon we parts company hyar," he said, "but I feels like we've done
accomplished a right good day's work. Termorrow Hump an' me'll fare over
ter yore house and git yore answer."

"I'm obleeged," responded the new chief of the Thorntons, but when he
was left alone he did not ride on to the house in the river bend.
Instead he went to the other house upon whose door his first letter of
threat had been posted, and hitching his horse in its dilapidated shed
he set out on foot for the near-by place where Bas Rowlett dwelt alone.

Twenty-four hours had been all he could ask in reaching a decision on
such an issue, yet before he could make answer much remained to be
determined, and in that determination he must rely largely on chances
which he could not hope to regulate or force into a pattern of success.

He had, for example, no way of guessing how long it would be before Bas
returned to his farm or whether, when he came, he would be alone--and
to-morrow's answer depended upon an unwitnessed interview between them.

But he had arrived on foot and taken up his place of concealment at the
back of the log structure with only a half-hour of waiting when the
other man appeared, riding in leisurely unconcern and unaccompanied.

Thornton loosed his pistol and drew back into the lee of the square
stone chimney where he remained safe from discovery until the other had
passed into the stable and begun to ungirth his saddle.

The house stood remote from any neighbouring habitation, and the road at
its front was an infrequently used sledge trail. The stable was at its
side, while back of the buildings themselves, angling off behind the
screening shoulder of a steep spur of hillside, stretched a small
orchard where only gnarled apple trees and a few "bee-gums" broke a
small and level amphitheatre into which the possible passerby could not
see.

The lord of this manor stood bent, his fingers wrestling with the
stubbornness of a rusted buckle, when he heard at his back, low of tone
but startlingly staccato in its quality of imperativeness, the single
syllable, "Bas!"

Rowlett wheeled, leaping back with a hand sweeping instinctively to his
holster--but he arrested that belligerent gesture with a sudden
paralysis of caution because of the look in the eyes of the surprise
visitor who stood poised with forward-bending readiness of body, and a
revolver levelled in a hand of bronze steadiness.

"I'm on my feet now, Bas," came a quiet voice that chilled the hearer
with an inexplicable rigour, "I reckon ye hain't fergot my promise."

Rowlett gave way backward until the wall obstructed his retreat, and in
obedience to the unspoken command in the eyes of his visitor, he
extended both arms high above his head, but while he stood unmoving, his
adroit mind was racing.

He knew what he would do if the situation were reversed, and he
believed that the other was waiting only to punish him with a
castigation of vengeful words before he shot him down and left him lying
in the trampled straw and manure of that unclean stable.

Now he had to brace himself against the tortures of a physical fear from
which he had believed himself immune. So he stood breathing unevenly and
waiting, and while he waited the temper of his nerves was being drawn as
it is drawn from over-heated steel.

"Come on with me," commanded Thornton.

The surprised man obeyed sullenly, casting an anxious eye about in the
slender hope of interruption, and when they reached the orchard where
even that chance ended Parish Thornton spoke again:

"When us two tuck oath ter sottle matters betwixt ourselves--I didn't
skeercely foresee what was comin' ter pass. Now I kain't seek ter make
ther compact hold over till a fairer time, ner seek ter change hit's
terms, nuther, without ye're willin'."

"Suppose I hain't willin'?"

For answer Parish Thornton sheathed his weapon.

"Now," he said with a deadly quiet, "we're on even terms. Either you an'
me draws our pistols an' fights twell one of us draps dead or else----"

He paused, and saw the face of his enemy go green and pasty as Rowlett
licked his lips yet left his hands hanging at his sides. At length the
intriguer demanded, "Or else--what?"

Thornton knew then beyond doubt what he already believed. This man was
quailing and had no stomach for the fair combat of duel yet he would
never relinquish his determination to glut his hatred by subterfuge.

"Or else ye've got ter enter inter a _new_ compact."

"What's thet?" A ring of hope sounded in the question, since in any
fresh deal lies the possibility of better fortune.

"Ter go on holdin' yore hand twell this feud business blows over--an' I
sarves notice on ye thet our own private war's opened up ergin."

"I reckon," said Rowlett, seeking to masquerade his relief under the
semblance of responsible self-effacement, "common decency ter other
folks lays thet need on both of us alike."

"I'm offerin' ye a free choice," warned Thornton, "but onless ye're
ready ter fight hyar an' now ye've p'int-blank got ter walk in thar an'
set down in handwrite, with yore name signed at ther bottom, a full
confession thet ye hired me shot thet night."

"Like hell I will!" Bas roared out his rejection of that alternative
with his swarthy cheekbones flaming redly, and into his rapidly and
shiftily working mind came the comfort of a realization which in that
first surprise and terror had escaped him. It was not to his enemy's
first interest to goad him into a mortal clash, since that would make it
impossible to give a favourable answer to the leaders to-morrow--and
incidentally it would be almost certain to mean Thornton's own death.

Now he straightened up with a ghost of renewed bravado and shook his
head while an enigmatical grin twisted his lips.

"S'posin'," he made insolent suggestion, "I don't see fit ter do nuther
one ner t'other? S'posin' I jest tells ye ter go ter hell?"

Parish had anticipated that question and was prepared, if he were forced
so far, to back threat with execution.

"I aims ter _make_ ye fight--or agree--either one," he answered, evenly,
and when Bas laughed at him he stepped forward and, with lightning
quickness, struck the other squarely across the face.

Though the blow fell open-handed it brought blood from the nose and
spurts of insane fury from the eyes.

Rowlett still kept his arms down, but he lunged and sought to drive his
knee to his adversary's groin, meaning to draw and fire during the
moment of paralyzing pain that must ensue.

As it happened, though, Parish had also anticipated some such
manoeuvre of foul fighting, and he sprung aside in time to let the
unbalanced Rowlett pitch stumblingly forward. When he straightened he
was again looking into the muzzle of a drawn pistol.

Rowlett had been drawing his own weapon as he lunged, but now he dropped
it as if it had scalded his fingers, and once more hastily raised his
hands above his head.

The whole byplay was swift to such timing as belongs to sleight-of-hand,
but the split-second quickness of the left-hander was as conclusively
victorious as if the matter had been deliberate, and now he had margin
to realize that he need not fire--for the present.

"Ef ye'd been jest a mite quicker in drawin', Bas," he declared,
ironically, "or jest a mite tardier in throwin' down thet gun--I'd hev
hed ter kill ye. Now we kin talk some more."

The conflict of wills was over and Rowlett's voice changed to a whine as
he asked beseechingly: "What proof hev I got ye won't show ther paper
ter some outsider afore we fights hit out?"

"Ye've got my pledge," answered Thornton, disdainfully, "an' albeit ye
knows ye don't keep 'em yoreself, ye knows thet I don't nuver break 'em.
Ye've got ther knowledge, moreover, thet I hain't a-goin' ter be content
save ter sottle this business with ye fust handed--man ter man." He
paused there, and his tone altered when he continued: "Thet paper'll lay
whar no man won't nuver see hit save myself--unless ye breaks yore
word. Ef I gits murdered, one man'll know whar thet paper's at--but not
what's in hit. He'll give hit over ter ther Harpers an' they'll
straightway hunt ye down an' kill ye like a mad dog. What does ye say?"

The other stood with face demoniacally impassioned, yet fading into the
pasty gray of fear--the fear that was the more unmanageable because it
was a new emotion which had never risen to confront him before.

"I knows when I've got ter knock under," he made sullen admission, at
last, "an' thet time's done come now. But I hain't ther only enemy ye've
got. S'pose atter all ther war breaks out afresh an' ye gits slain in
battle--or in some fray with other men. Then I'd hev ter die jest ther
same, albeit I didn't hev no hand in ther matter."

Thornton laughed.

"I hain't seekin' ter make ye gorryntee my long life, Bas. Ef I falls in
any pitch-battle or gits kilt in a fashion thet's p'intedly an outside
matter, ye hain't a-goin' ter suffer fer hit."

As the long-drawn breath went out between the parted lips of Bas Rowlett
he wilted into a spectacle of abject surrender, then turning he led the
way to the house, found pencil and paper, and wrote laboriously as the
other dictated. At the end he signed his name.

Then Parish Thornton said, "Now I aims ter hev ye walk along with me
till I gits my horse an' starts home. I don't 'low ter trust ye till
this paper's put in a safe place, an' should we meet up with anybody
don't forgit--I won't fail ter shoot ef ye boggles!"




CHAPTER XX


The sun, dropping into a western sea of amber and opal, seemed to grow
in diameter. Then it dipped until only a naming segment showed and the
barriers darkened against the afterglow.

Still Parish Thornton had not come home and Dorothy standing back of the
open window pressed both hands over eyes that burned ember hot in their
sockets.

Old Aaron Capper had mounted his horse a half-hour ago and ridden away
somewhere--and she knew that he, too, had begun to fret against this
insupportable waiting, and had set out on the unpromising mission of
searching for the ambassador--who might already be dead.

A nervous chill shook the girl and she started up from the seat into
which she had collapsed; frightened at the incoherent lack of sanity
that sounded from her own throat.

She went again to the door and looked out into a world that the shadows
had taken, save where the horizon glowed with a pallid green at the edge
of darkness. Leaning limply against the uprights of the frame and
clasping her hands to her bosom, she distrusted her senses when she
fancied she heard voices and saw two horsemen draw up at the stile and
swing down from their saddles. Then she crumpled slowly down, and when
Aaron and Parish Thornton reached the house they found her lying there
insensible.

They carried her to the four-poster bed and chafed her wrists and
poured white whiskey between her pale lips until she opened her eyes in
the glow of the lighted lamp.

"Did they hearken ter ye?" she whispered, and the man nodded his head.

"I compassed what I aimed at," he told her, brokenly, "but when I seed
ye layin' thar, I feared me hit hed done cost too dear."

"I'm all right now," she declared five minutes later; "I war jest
terrified about ye. I had nervous treemors."

The stars were hanging low and softly magnified when Aaron Capper
mounted to ride away, and at the stile he leaned in his saddle and spoke
in a melancholy vein.

"I seeks ter be a true Christian," he said, "an' I ought ter be down on
my marrow-bones right now givin' praise an' thanksgivin' ter ther
Blessed Lord, who's done held back ther tormints of tribulation, but--"
he broke off there and his voice trailed off into something like an
internal sob--"but yit hit seems ter me like es ef my three boys air
sleepin' res'less an' oneasy-like in th'ar graves ternight."

Parish Thornton laid a hand on the horseman's knee.

"Aaron," he admitted, "I was called on ter give a pledge of faith over
yon--an' I promised ter bide my time, too. I reckon I kin feel fer ye."

Informal and seemingly loose of organization was that meeting of the
next afternoon when three Harpers and three Doanes met where the shade
of the walnut tree fell across dooryard and roadway. The sun burned
scorchingly down, and waves of heat trembled vaporously along the
valley, while over the dusty highway small flocks of white and lemon
butterflies hung drifting on lazy wings. From the deep stillness of the
forest came the plaintive mourning of a dove.

Jim Rowlett, Hump Doane, and another came as representatives of the
Doanes, and Parish Thornton, Aaron Capper, and Lincoln Thornton met them
as plenipotentiaries of the Harpers.

When commonplaces of greeting had ended, Jim Rowlett turned to Aaron
Capper as the senior of his group:

"Aaron," he said, "this land's hurtin' fer peace an' human charity. We
craves hit, an' Mr. Thornton hyar says _you_ wants hit no less. We've
come ter git yore answer now."

"Jim," responded Aaron, gravely, "from now on, I reckon when ye comes
ter ther Harpers on any sich matter as thet Parish Thornton's ther man
ter see. He stands in Caleb Harper's shoes."

That was the simple coronation ceremony which raised the young man from
Virginia to the position of responsibility for which he had had no wish
and from which he now had no escape. It was his acknowledgment by both
clans, and to him again turned Jim Rowlett, with an inexpressible
anxiety of questioning in his aged eyes.

Then Parish Thornton held out his hand.

"I'm ready," he said, "ter give ye my pledge an' ter take your'n."

The two palms met and the fingers clasped, and into six unemotional
faces flashed an unaccustomed fire.

"Thar's jest one thing more yit," suggested the practical minded
hunchback. "Some few wild fellers on both sides of ther line air apt ter
try out how strong we be ter enfo'ce our compact. Hit's kinderly like
young colts plungin' ergainst a new hand on ther bridle-rein--we've got
ter keep cool-headed an' patient an' ack tergether when a feller like
thet shows up."

Parish Thornton nodded, and Hump Doane took off his hat and ran his hand
through his bristling hair.

"An' now," he announced, "we'll ride on home an' pass ther word along
thet matters stands es they stud in old Caleb's day an' time." He paused
then, noting the weariness on the face of Jim Rowlett, added
tentatively: "All of us, thet is ter say, save Old Jim. He's sorely
tuckered out, an' I reckon ef ye invited him ter stay ther night with
ye, Mr. Thornton, hit would be a kinderly charitable act."

"He's mighty welcome," declared the host, heartily.

"Dorothy'll look atter him like his own daughter an' see that he gits
enjoyed."

       *       *       *       *       *

At Jake Crabbott's store the loungers were in full attendance on the
morning after Parish Thornton's ride to Hump Doane's house, and the
rumours that found currency there were varied and for the most part
inaccurate. But the fact that Parish Thornton had ridden through
picketed woods, promulgated some sort of ultimatum and come away
unharmed, had leaked through and endowed him with a fabulous sort of
interest.

Young Pete Doane was there, and since he was the son of the man under
whose roof the stirring drama had been staged, he assumed a magnified
importance and affected a sphinx-like silence of discretion to mask his
actual ignorance. Hump Doane did not confide everything he knew to this
son whom he at once loved and disdained.

Young Doane stood indulging in rustic repartee with bright-eyed Elviry
Prooner, a deep-bosomed Diana, who, next to Dorothy Thornton, was
accounted the "comeliest gal along siv'ral creeks."

When Bas Rowlett joined the group, however, interest fell promptly away
from Pete and centred around this more legitimate pole. But Bas turned
on them all a sullenly uncommunicative face, and the idlers were quick
to recognize and respect his unapproachable mood and to stand wide of
his temper.

After he had bought twist tobacco and lard and salt and chocolate drops,
Bas summoned Pete away from his temporary inamorata with an imperative
jerk of his head and the youthful hillsman responded with the promptness
of a lieutenant receiving instructions from his colonel. When the two
were mounted, the son of the hunchback gained a more intimate knowledge
of actual conditions than he had been able to glean at home.

"Ther upshot of ther matter's this, Pete," declared Bas, earnestly. "Sam
Opdyke lef' thet meetin' yestidday with his mind made up ter slay this
man Thornton--an' ther way things hev shaped up now, hit won't no
fashion do. He's got ter be halted--an' I kain't afford ter be knowd in
ther matter one way ner t'other. Go see him an' tell him he'll incense
everybody an' bring on hell's own mischief ef he don't hold his hand.
Tell him his chanst'll come afore long but right now, I say he's got ter
_quit hit_."

An hour later the fiery-tempered fellow, still smarting because his
advice had been spurned yesterday, straightened up from the place
outside his stable door where he was mending a saddle girth and listened
while the envoy from Bas Rowlett preached patience.

But it was Bas himself who had coached Sam Opdyke with the incitement
and inflammatory counsel which he had voiced the day before. Now the man
had taken fire from the flames of his own kindling--and that fire was
not easy to quench. He had been, at first, a disciple but he had
converted himself and had been contemptuously treated into the bargain.
The grievance he paraded had become his own, and the nature Bas had
picked for such a purpose was not an April spirit to smile in sunlight
twenty-four hours after it had fulminated in storm.

Opdyke gazed glumly at his visitor, as he listened, then he lied
fluently in response.

"All right. I had my say yestidday an' now I'm done. Next time ther
circuit-rider holds big meetin' I'm comin' through ter ther mourners'
bench an' howl out sanctimony so loud I'll bust everybody's eardrums,"
and the big man laughed sneeringly.

Yet an hour later Opdyke was greasing and loading his squirrel gun.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the supper dishes had been cleared away that night, Old Jim and
Parish Thornton sat for a long while in the front room, and because it
was a sultry night and peace had been pledged, both door and window
stood open.

Dorothy sat listening while they talked, and the theme which occupied
them was the joint effort that must be made on either side the old feud
line for the firm enforcement of the new treaty. They discussed plans
for catching in time and throttling by joint action any sporadic
insurgencies by which the experimentally minded might endeavour to test
their strength of leadership.

"Now thet we stands in accord," mused Old Jim, "jestice kin come back
ter ther cote-house ergin--an' ther jedge won't be terrified ter
dispense hit, with me sittin' on one side of him an' you on t'other. Men
hev mistrusted ther law so long es one crowd held all hits power."

Outside along the roadside margin of deep shadow crept the figure of a
man with a rifle in his hand. It was a starlit night with a sickle of
new moon, neither bright nor yet densely dark, so that shapes were
opaquely visible but not clear-cut or shadow-casting.

The man with the long-barrelled rifle none the less avoided the open
road and edged along the protecting growth of heavy weed stalk and wild
rose thicket until he came to a point where the heavier shadow of the
big walnut tree blotted all shapes into blackness. There he cautiously
climbed the fence, taking due account of the possible creaking-of
unsteady rails.

"I'd love ter see men enabled ter confidence ther co'te ergin," said
Parish Thornton, answering his old guest after a long and meditative
silence. "Hit would ease a heap of torment. Up ter now they've hed ter
trust tha'r rifle-guns."

As he spoke his eyes went to the wall by the door where during these
weeks of disuse his own rifle had stood leaning, and his wife smiled as
her glance followed his. She was thinking that soon both his arms would
be strong enough to use it again, and she was happy that he would need
it only for hunting.

The man outside had by this time gained the dooryard and stood beside
the tree trunk where the shadow was deepest. He raised his long barrel
and steadied it against the bark, not knowing that as coincidence would
have it the metal rested against those initials which had been carved
there generations before, making of the tree itself a monument to the
dead.

Through the raised window he could see two heads in the lamplight; those
of Parish Thornton and his wife, and it was easy to draw his sights upon
the point just below the left shoulder blade of the man's back. Old Man
Rowlett sat too far to one side to be visible.

High in the top of the walnut a shattered branch had hung in a hair
balance since the great storm had stricken it. High winds had more than
once threatened to bring this dead wood down, yet it had remained
there, out of reach and almost out of sight but still precariously
lodged.

The wind to-night was light and capricious, yet it was just as the man,
who was using that tree as an ambush, established touch between finger
and trigger, that the splintered piece of timber broke away from its
support and ripped its way noisily downward until a crotch caught and
held it. Startled by that unexpected alarm from above, given as though
the tree had been a living sentinel, the rifleman jerked his gun upward
as he fired.

The bullet passed through the window to bury itself with a spiteful thud
in the wall above the hearth. Both men and the woman came to their feet
with astonished faces turned toward the window.

Parish Thornton reached for the pistol which he had laid on the mantel,
but before he had gained the door he saw Dorothy flash past him, seizing
his rifle as she went, and a few seconds later he heard the clean-lipped
snap of its voice in a double report.

"I got him," panted the young woman, as her husband reached her side.
"Git down low on ther ground!" She did likewise as she added in a
guarded whisper, "I shot at his legs, so he's still got his rifle an'
both hands. He drapped right thar by ther fence."

They went back into the house and old Jim Rowlett said grimly: "Now let
me give an order or two. Thornton, you fotch yore pistol. Gal, you bring
thet rifle-gun an' give me a lantern. Then come out ther back door an'
do what I tells ye."

A few minutes later the voice of the old Doane was raised from the
darkness:

"Whoever ye be over yon," it challenged, "lift up both yore hands. I'm
a-goin' ter light a lantern now an' come straight to'rds ye--but thar's
a rifle-gun ter ther right of ye an' a pistol ter ther left of ye--an'
ef ye makes a false move both of 'em'll begin shootin'."

Out there by the fence a voice answered sullenly in recognition of the
speaker--and realization of failure: "I hain't ergoin' ter shoot no
more. I gives up."




CHAPTER XXI


They helped Opdyke into the house and bandaged a wound in his leg, but
old Jim sat looking on with a stony face, and when the first aid had
been administered he said shortly: "Parish Thornton an' me hev jest been
a-studyin' erbout how ter handle ther likes of _you_. Ye come in good
season--an' so fur as kin be jedged from ther place whar thet ball hit,
no man kin say which one of us ye shot at. We aims ter make a sample of
ye, fer others ter regulate theirselves by, an' I reckon ye're goin' ter
sulter in ther penitenshery fer a spell of y'ars."

And when County Court day came there rode into town men of both
factions, led by Hump Doane and Parish Thornton, and the courtroom
benches were crowded with sightseers eager to hear that examining trial.
It had been excitedly rumoured that Opdyke would have something of
defiant insurgency to say and that perhaps a force would be found at his
back sufficiently strong to give grim effect to his words.

The defendant himself had not been "hampered in the jail-house" but had
walked free on his own recognizance, and, if report were true, he had
been utilizing his freedom to organize his sympathizers for resistance.
All in all, it promised to be a court day worth attending, with a
measuring of neighbourhood influences, open and hidden.

Now the judge ascended the bench and rapped with his gavel, and when the
name of Sam Opdyke was called, heads craned, feet shuffled, and an
oppressive silence fell.

Then down the centre aisle, from rear door to crescent-shaped counsel
table, stalked Opdyke himself with a truculent glitter in his eyes and a
defiant swing to his shoulders, though he still limped from his recent
wounding. A pace behind him walked two black-visaged intimates.

He looked neither to right nor left, but held the eyes of the man on the
bench, and the judge, who was slight of stature, with straw-coloured
hair and a face by no means imposing or majestic, returned his glance
unwaveringly.

Then at the bar Opdyke halted, with nothing of the suppliant in his
bearing. He thrust a hand into each coat pocket, and with an eloquent
ringing of ironmongery, slammed a brace of heavy revolvers on the table
before him. The two henchmen stood silent, each with right hand in right
pocket.

"I heered my name called," announced the defendant in a deep-rumbling
voice of challenge, "an' hyar I be--but, afore God on high, I aims ter
git me jestice in this co'te!"

Had the man on the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to
disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for
breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable
calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when
a margin of pause had intervened to give his words greater effect he
spoke in a level voice that went over the room and filled it, and he
spoke, not to the defendant, but to Joe Bratton the "high-sheriff" of
that county.


  [Illustration: "_Dorothy flashed past him ... and a few seconds later
  he heard the clean-lipped snap of the rifle in a double report_"]


"Mr. Sheriff," he said, slowly and impressively, "the co'te instructs
you to disarm Sam Opdyke an' put him under arrest fer contempt. An',
Mr. Sheriff, when I says ter arrest him ... I mean to put him in ther
jail ... an' I don't _only_ mean to put him in ther jail but in a cell
and leave him there till this co'te gets ready for him. When this co'te
_is_ ready, it will let you know." He paused there in the dead hush of
an amazed audience, then continued on an even key: "An', Mr. Sheriff, if
there's any disquiet in your mind about your ability to take this
prisoner into custody, an' hold him securely in such custody, the co'te
instructs you that you are empowered by law to call into service as your
posse every able-bodied man in the jurisdiction of this county....
Moreover, Mr. Sheriff, the co'te suggests that when you get ready to
summons this posse--an' it had ought to be right here an' now--you call
me fer the fust man to serve on it, an' that you call Hump Doane and
Parish Thornton fer ther second an' third men on it...."

A low wave of astonished voices went whispering over the courtroom, from
back to front, but the judge, ignoring the two revolvers which still lay
on the table fifteen feet away, and the livid face of the man from whose
pockets they had been drawn, rapped sharply with his gavel.

"Order in the co'teroom," he thundered, and there was order. Moreover,
before the eyes of all those straining sight-seers, Opdyke glanced at
the two men who composed his bodyguard and read a wilting spirit in
their faces. He sank down into his chair, beaten, and knowing it, and
when the sheriff laid a hand on his shoulder, he rose without protest
and left his pistols lying where he had so belligerently slammed them
down. His henchmen offered no word or gesture of protest. They had seen
the strength of the tidal wave which they had hoped to outface, and they
realized the futility of any effort at armed resistance.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was when he had ridden home from the county seat after attending that
session of the County Court, that Parish Thornton found Bas Rowlett
smoking a pipe on his doorstep.

That was not a surprising thing, for Bas came often and maintained
flawlessly the pose of amity he had chosen to assume. In his complex
make-up paradoxes of character met and mingled, and it was possible for
him, despite his bitter memories of failure and humiliation, to smile
with just the proper nicety of unrestraint and cordiality.

Behind the visitor in the door stood Dorothy with a plate and dish towel
in her hand, and she was laughing.

"Howdy, Parish," drawled Bas, without rising, as the householder came up
and smiled at his wife. "How did matters come out over thar at co'te?"

"They come out with right gay success," responded the other, and in his
manner, too, there was just the proper admixture of casualness and
established friendship. "Sam Opdyke is sulterin' in ther jail-house
now."

"Thet's a God's blessin'," commended Bas, and then as Dorothy went back
to the kitchen Parish lifted his brows and inquired quietly, "Ye war
over hyar yistiddy an' the day afore, warn't ye, Bas?"

The other nodded and laughed with a shade of taunt in his voice.

"Yes. Hit pleasures me ter drap in whar I always gits me sich an
old-time welcome."

"Did ye aim ter stay an' eat ye some dinner?"

"I 'lowed I mout--ef so be I got asked."

"Well ye gits asked ter go on home, Bas. I'm askin' ye now--an'
hereatter ye needn't bother yoreself ter be quite so neighbourly. Hit
mout mek talk ef ye stayed away altogether--but stay away a heap more
than what ye've been doin'."

The other rose with a darkening face.

"Does ye aim ter dictate ter me not only when an' whar's we fights our
battles at, but every move I makes meanwhile?"

"I aims ter dictate ter ye how often ye comes on this place--an' I
orders ye ter leave hit now. Thar's ther stile--an' ther highway's open
ter ye. Begone!"

"What's become of Bas?" inquired the young wife a few minutes later, and
her husband smiled with an artless and infectious good humour. "He hed
ter be farin' on," came his placid response, "an' he asked me ter bid ye
farewell fer him."

But to Bas Rowlett came the thought that if his own opportunities of
keeping a surveillance over that house were to be circumscribed, he
needed a watchman there in his stead.

In the first place, there was a paper somewhere under that roof bearing
his signature which prudence required to be purloined. So long as it
existed it hampered every move he made in his favourite game of
intrigue. Also he had begun to wonder whether any one save Caleb Harper
who was dead knew of that receipt he had given for the old debt. Bas had
informed himself that, up to a week ago, it had not been recorded at the
court house--and quite possibly the taciturn old man had never spoken of
its nature to the girl. Caleb had mentioned to him once that the paper
had been put for temporary safekeeping in an old "chist" in the attic,
but had failed to add that it was Dorothy who placed it there.

Then one day Bas met Aaron Capper on the highway.

"Hes Parish Thornton asked ye ter aid him in gittin' some man ter holp
him out on his farm this fall?" demanded the elder who, though he
religiously disliked Bas Rowlett, was striving in these exacting times
to treat every man as a friend. Bas rubbed the stubble on his chin
reflectively.

"No, he hain't happened ter name hit ter me yit," he admitted. "But
men's right hard ter git. They've all got thar own crops ter tend."

"Yes, I knows thet. I war jest a-ridin' over thar, an' hit come ter me
thet ye mout hev somebody in mind."

"I'd love ter convenience ye both," declared Bas, heartily, "but hit's a
right bafflin' question." After a pause, however, he hazarded the
suggestion: "I don't reckon ye've asked Sim Squires, hev ye? Him an' me,
we hain't got no manner of use for one another, but he's kinderly kin
ter _you_--an' he bears the repute of bein' ther workin'est man in this
county."

"Sim Squires!" exclaimed old Aaron. "I didn't nuver think of him, but I
reckon Sim couldn't handily spare ther time from his own farm. Ef he
could, though, hit would be mighty pleasin'."

"I reckon mebby he couldn't," agreed Bas. "But ther thought jest
happened ter come ter me, an' he don't dwell but a whoop an' a holler
distant from Parish Thornton's house."

That same day, in pursuance of the thought "that just happened to come
to him," Bas took occasion to have a private meeting with the man for
whom "he didn't hev no manner of use," and to enter into an agreement
whereby Sim, if he took the place, was to draw double pay: one wage for
honest work and another as spy salary.

Three days later found Sim Squires sitting at the table in Parish
Thornton's kitchen, an employee in good and regular standing, though at
night he went back to his own cabin which was, in the words of his other
employer, "only jest a whoop an' a holler away."

Household affairs were to him an open book and of the movements of his
employer he had an excellent knowledge.




CHAPTER XXII


The earliest frost of late September had brought its tang to the air
with a snappy assertion of the changing season, when Parish Thornton
first broached to Dorothy an idea that, of late, had been constantly in
his mind. Somehow that morning with its breath of shrewd chill seemed to
mark a dividing line. Yesterday had been warm and languorous and the day
before had been hot. The ironweed had not long since been topped with
the dusty royalty of its vagabond purple, and the thistledown had
drifted along air currents that stirred light and warm.

"Honey," said the man, gravely, as he slipped his arm about Dorothy's
waist on that first cold morning, when they were standing together by
the grave of her grandfather, "I hain't talked much erbout hit--but I
reckon my sister's baby hes done hed hits bornin' afore now."

"I wonder," she mused, as yet without suspicion of the trend of his
suggestions, "how she come through hit--all by herself thetaway?"

The man's face twitched with one of those emotional paroxysms that once
in a long while overcame his self-command. Then it became a face of
shadowed anxiety and his voice was heavy with feeling.

"I've done been ponderin' thet day an' night hyar of late, honey. I've
got ter fare over thar an' find out."

Dorothy started and caught quickly at his elbow, but at once she removed
her hand and looked thoughtfully away.

"Kain't ye write her a letter?" she demanded. "Hit's walkin' right
inter sore peril fer ye ter cross ther state line, Cal."

"An' yit," he answered with convincing logic, "I'd ruther trust ter my
own powers of hidin' out in a country whar I knows every trail an' every
creek bed, then ter take chances with a letter. Ef I wrote one hit would
carry a post-office mark on ther envellop ter tell every man whence hit
come."

She was too wise, too sympathetic, and too understanding of that clan
loyalty which would deny him peace until he fulfilled his obligation, to
offer arguments in dissuasion, but she stood with trouble riffles in her
deep eyes until at last she asked:

"When did ye aim ter start--over yon?"

"Hit ought ter be right soon now, while travellin's good. Come snowfall
hit'll git ter be right slavish journeyin'--but I don't 'low ter tarry
there long. I kain't noways be content away from ye."

The thoughts that were occupying Dorothy were for the most part silent
ones but at length she inquired:

"Why don't ye bring her back with ye, ter dwell hyar with us--her an'
ther baby?"

Thornton shook his head, but his heart warmed because she had asked.

"Hit wouldn't do--jest yit. Folks mout seek ter trace me by follerin'
her. I kin slip in thar an' see her, though, an' mebby comfort her some
small degree--an' then slip back home ergin without no man's knowin'
I've ever been thar."

Instinctively the wife shuddered.

"Ef they _did_ find out!" she exclaimed in a low voice, and the man
nodded in frank comprehension.

"Ef they did," he answered, candidly, "I reckon hit would be hangin' or
ther penitenshery fer me--but they hain't agoin' ter."

"I don't seek ter hinder ye none," she told him in a faltering voice,
"despite hit's goin' ter nigh kill me ter see ye go. Somehow hit seems
like I wouldn't be so skeered ef ye war guilty yoreself ... but ter hev
ye risk ther gallers fer somethin' ye didn't nuver do----"

The words choked her and she stopped short.

"I'm goin' ter hev a mouty strong reason fer seekin' ter come home
safe," he said, softly. "But even ef hit did cost me my life, I don't
see as I could fail a woman thet's my sister, an' thet's been facin' her
time amongst enemies, with a secret like thet hauntin' her day an'
night. I've got ter take ther chanst, honey."

A sound came to them through their preoccupation, and they looked up to
see Bas Rowlett crossing the stile.

His case-hardened hypocrisy stood valiantly by him, and his face
revealed nothing of the humiliation he must feel in playing out his
farcical role of friendship before the eyes of the man to whom it was so
transparent.

"I war jest passin' by," he announced, "an I 'lowed I'd light down an'
make my manners. I'd love ter hev a drink of water, too."

Without a word Parish turned and went toward the well and the visitor's
eyes lit again to their avid hunger as he gazed at the girl.

Abruptly he declared: "Don't never fergit what I told ye, Dorothy. I'd
do most anything, fer _you_."

The girl made no answer, but she flushed under the intensity of his
gaze, and to herself she said, as she had said once before: "I wonder
would he do sich a thing fer me as Cal's doin' fer his sister?"

The scope and peril of that sacrifice seemed to stand between her and
all other thoughts.

Then Parish came back with a gourd dipper, and forced himself for a few
moments into casual conversation. Though to have intimated his purpose
and destination would have been a fatal thing, it would have been
almost as foolish to wrap in mystery the fact that he meant to make a
short journey from home, so as Bas mounted Parish said:

"I've got a leetle business acrost in Virginny, Bas, an' afore long I'm
goin' over thar fer a few days."

When Elviry Prooner had consented to come as temporary companion for
Dorothy, it seemed merely an adventitious happening that Sim, too, felt
the call of the road.

"I don't know es I've named hit to ye afore, Parish," he volunteered the
next day as the three sat around the dinner table, "but I've got a
cousin thet used ter be more like a brother ter me--an' he got inter
some leetle trouble."

"Is thet so, Sim?" inquired Parish with a ready interest. "War hit a
sore trouble?"

"Hit couldn't skeercely be holped--but he's been sulterin' in ther
penitenshery down thar at Frankfort fer nigh on ter two y'ars now.
Erbout once in a coon's age I fares me down thar ter fotch him tidin's
of his folks. Hit pleasures him."

Thornton began to understand--or thought he did, and again he inclined
his head.

"I reckon, Sim," he said, "ye wants ter make one of them trips now,
don't ye?"

"Thet's a right shrewd guess, Parish. Hit's a handy time ter go. I kin
git back afore corn-shuckin', an' thar hain't no other wuck a-hurtin'
ter be done right now."

"All right, Sim"--the permission came readily--"light out whenever ye
gits ready--but come back fer corn-shuckin'."

When Sim related to Bas Rowlett how free of complication had been the
arrangement, Bas smiled in contentment. "Start out--an' slip back--an'
don't let him git outen yore sight till ye finds out whar he goes an'
what he's doin'," came the crisp order. "He's up ter suthin' thet he
hain't givin' out ter each an' every, an' I'd love ter know what hit
is."

       *       *       *       *       *

Along the ridges trailed that misty, smoky glamour with which Autumn
dreams of the gorgeous pictures she means to paint, with the woods for a
canvas and the frost for a brush.

Bas Rowlett had shaved the bristle from his jowl and chin and thrown his
overalls behind his cabin door. He had dressed him in high-laced boots
and donned a suit of store clothes, for in his mind were thoughts
livened and made keen with the heady intoxication of an atmosphere like
wine.

He knocked on the door of the house which he knew to be manless, and
waited until it was opened by Elviry Prooner.

His swarthy face with its high cheekbones bequeathed from the shameful
mixing of his blood in Indian veins wore a challenging smile of
daredeviltry, and the buxom young woman stood regarding him out of her
provocative eyes. Perhaps she owned to a revival of hope in her own
breast, which had known the rancour of unacknowledged jealousy because
this man had passed her by to worship at Dorothy Harper's shrine.
Perhaps Bas Rowlett who "had things hung up" had at last come to his
senses and meant, belatedly, to lay his heart at her feet. If he did,
she would lead him a merry dance of doing penance--but she would nowise
permit him to escape.

But Bas saw in Elviry only an unwelcome presence interfering with
another tête-à-tête, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her
so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into
the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking
indignantly along the road toward Jake Crabbott's store at Lake Erie.

So Bas set his basket down and removed his hat and let his powerful
shoulders relax themselves restfully against the door frame. He was
waiting for Dorothy, and he was glad that the obnoxious Elviry had gone.

After a little Dorothy appeared. Her lips were innocent of the flippant
sneer that the other girl's had held and her beauty was not so
full-blown or material.

Bas Rowlett did not rise from his seat and the young woman did not
expect it. Casually he inquired: "Is Parish hyar?"

The last question came so innocently that it accomplished its purpose.

Bas seemed to hope for an affirmative reply, and his manner robbed his
presence of any apparent intent of visiting a husbandless wife. Since no
one but himself knew that his jackal Sam Squires was at that moment
trailing after Parish Thornton as the beagle courses after the hare, he
could logically enough make such an inquiry.

"No. Didn't ye know? He started out soon this mornin'. I reckon he's fur
over to'rds Virginny by now."

"Oh!" Bas Rowlett seemed surprised, but he made prompt explanation. "I
knowed he hed hit in head ter go--but I didn't know he'd started yit."
For more than an hour their talk went on in friendly channels of
reminiscence and commonplace, then the man lifted the basket he had
brought. "I fotched some 'simmons offen thet tree by my house. Ye used
ter love 'em right good, Dorothy."

"I does still, Bas," she smiled with that sweet serenity that men found
irresistible as she reached for the basket, but the man sat with eyes
brimming melancholy and fixed on the violet haze of the skyline until
she noticed his abstraction and inquired: "What ails ye, Bas? Ye're in a
brown study erbout somethin'."

He drew back his shoulders then, and enlightened, "Sometimes I gits
thetaway. I fell ter thinkin' of them days when you an' me used ter
gather them 'simmons tergether, little gal."

"When we was kids," she answered, nodding her head. "We hed fun, didn't
we?"

"God Almighty," he exclaimed, impetuously and suddenly. "How I loved
ye!"

The girl drew away, and her answer was at once sympathetic and
defensive. "Thet war all a right long time back, Bas."

The defeated lover came to his feet and stood looking at her with a face
over which the passion of his feeling came with a sweep and surge that
he made no effort to control.

In that instant something had slipped in Bas Rowlett and the madman that
was part of him became temporarily all of him.

"Hit hain't so long a time ago," he vehemently declared, "thet I've
changed any in hits passin'. So long es I lives, Dorothy, I'll love ye
more an' more--till I dies."

She drew back another step and shook her head reprovingly, and in the
gravity of her eyes was the dawning of indignation, disappointment, and
astonishment.

"Bas," she said, earnestly, "even ef Cal hadn't of come, I couldn't
nuver hev wedded with ye. He did come, though, an'--in thet way of
carin'--thar hain't no other man in the world fer me. I kain't never pay
ye back fer all thet I'm beholden ter ye ... fer savin' him an' fotchin'
him in when thet craven shot him ... fer stayin' a friend when most men
would hev got ter be enemies. I knows all them things--but don't seek
ter spile none of 'em by talkin' love ter me.... Hit's too late.... I'm
married."

For an instant he stood as though long-arrested passions were pounding
against the dams that had held them; then his words came like the
torrent that makes driftwood of its impediments.

"Ter hell with this man Thornton! Ye didn't never hev no chanst ter know
yore own mind.... Ye jest thinks ye loves him because ye pitied him. Hit
won't last noways."

"Bas," she spoke his name with a sharp and stinging note of command,
"I'm willin' ter look over what ye've said so fur--because of what I
owes ye--but don't say no more!"

In a frenzy of wild and sensuous abandon he laughed. Then leaping
forward he seized her and crushed her to him with her arms pinioned in
his and her body close against his own.

Her struggles were as futile as those of a bird held in a human hand--a
hand that takes no thought of how severely it may bruise but only of
making firm its imprisoning hold.

"I said 'ter hell with him'," repeated the man in a low voice but one of
white-hot passion. "I says hit ergin! From ther time thet ye fust begun
ter grow up I'd made up my mind thet ye belonged ter me--an' afore I
quits ye're _goin'_ ter belong ter me. Ye talks erbout bein' wedded an'
I says ter hell with thet, too! Mebby ye're his wife but ye're goin' ter
be my woman!"

The senses of the girl swirled madly and chaotically during those
moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that
held her powerless, and they seemed to her hours.

The hot breath of the face which had suddenly grown unspeakably horrible
to her burned her like a blast, and through her reeling faculties rose
that same impression of nightmare that had come to Parish when he lay
wounded on his bed: the need of altering at a flash her whole conception
of this man's loyal steadfastness to a realization of unbelievable and
bestial treachery.

The fact was patent enough now, and only the hideous possibilities of
the next few minutes remained doubtful. His arms clamped her so tightly
that she gasped stranglingly for breath, and the convulsive futility of
her struggles grew fainter. Consciousness itself wavered.

Then Rowlett loosened one arm and bent her head upward until he could
crush his lips against hers and hold them there while he surfeited his
own with an endlessly long kiss.

When again her eyes met his, the girl was panting with the exhaustion of
breath that sounded like a sob, and desperately she sought to fence for
time.

"Let me go," she panted. "Let me go--thar's somebody comin'!"

That was a lie born of the moment's desperation and strategy but,
somewhat to her surprise, it served its ephemeral purpose. Rowlett
released his hold and wheeled to look at the road, and with a flashing
swiftness his victim leaped for the door and slammmed it behind her.




CHAPTER XXIII


An instant later, with a roar of fury, as he realized the trick that had
been played upon him, Bas was beating his fists against the panels and
hurling against them the weight of his powerful shoulders. But those hot
moments of agitation and mental riot had left him breathless, too, and
presently he drew away for a quieter survey of the situation. He
strolled insolently over to the window which was still open and leaned
with his elbows on the sill looking in. The room was empty, and he
guessed that Dorothy had hurried out to bar the back door, forgetting,
in her excitement, the nearer danger of the raised sash.

Bas had started to draw himself up over the sill when caution prompted
him to turn first for a look at the road.

He ground his teeth and abandoned his intention of immediate entry for
there swinging around the turn, with her buxom vigour of stride, came
Elviry Prooner.

Rowlett scowled as he folded his arms and leaned by the window, and then
he saw Dorothy appear in the back door of the room and he cautioned her
in a low voice: "Elviry's comin' back. I warns ye not ter make no
commotion."

But to his astonishment Dorothy, whose face was as pale as paper no
longer, wore in her eyes the desperation of terror or the fluttering
agitation that seemed likely to make outcry. In her hand she held a
kitchen knife which had been sharpened and re-sharpened on the
grindstone until its point was as taperingly keen as that of a dirk.

She laid this weapon down on the table and hastily rearranged her
dishevelled hair, and then she said in a still and ominous voice, more
indicative of aggressive temerity than shrinking timidity:

"Don't go yit, Bas, I'm comin' out thar ter hev speech with ye--an' ef
ye fails ter hearken ter me--God knows I pities ye!"

Waiting a little while to recover from the pallid advertising of her
recent agitation she opened the front door and went firmly out as
Elviry, with a toss of her head that ignored the visitor, passed around
the house to the rear.

Dorothy's right hand, armed with the blade, rested inconspicuously under
her apron, but the glitter in her eyes was unconcealed and to Bas, who
smiled indulgently at her arming, she gave the brief command, "Come out
hyar under ther tree whar Elviry won't hear us."

Curious and somewhat mystified at the transformation from helplessness
to aggression of bearing the man followed her and as she wheeled to face
him with her left hand groping against the bark, he dropped down into
the grass with insolent mockery in his face and sat cross-legged,
looking up at her.

"Ef I'd hed this knife a minute ago," she began in a low voice,
throbbing like a muffled engine, "I'd hev cut yore heart out. Now I've
decided not ter do hit--jest yit."

"Would ye ruther wait an' let ther man with siv'ral diff'rent names
ondertake hit fer ye?" he queried, mockingly, and Dorothy Thornton shook
her head.

"No, I wouldn't hev him dirty his hands with no sich job," she answered
with icy disdain. "Albeit he'd t'ar hit out with his bare fingers, I
reckon--ef he knowed."

Bas Rowlett's swarthy face stiffened and his teeth bared themselves in
a snarl of hurt vanity, but as he started to speak he changed his mind
and sat for a while silent, watching the splendid figure she made as she
leaned against the tree with a breast rising and falling to the storm
tide of her indignation.

Rowlett's thoughts had been active in these minutes since the craters of
his sensuous nature had burst into eruption, and already he was cursing
himself for a fool who had prematurely revealed his hand.

"Dorothy," he began, slowly, and a self-abasing pretence of penitence
sounded through his words, "my reason plum left me a while ago an' I was
p'int blank crazed fer a spell. I've got ter crave yore pardon right
humbly--but I reckon ye don't begin ter know how much I loves ye."

"How much ye loves me!" She echoed the words with a scorn so
incandescent that he winced. "Love's an honest thing, an' ye hain't
nuver knowed ther meanin' of honesty!"

"Ye've got a right good license ter git mad with me, Dorothy," he made
generous concession, "an' I wouldn't esteem ye ef ye hedn't done
hit--but afore ye lets thet wrath settle inter a fixed hate ye ought ter
think of somethin' ye've done fergot."

He paused but received no invitation to present his plea in extenuation,
so he proceeded without it:

"I kissed ye erginst yore will, an' I cussed an' damned yore husband,
but I did both them things in sudden heat an' passion. Ye ought ter take
thought afore ye disgusts me too everlastin'ly much thet I've done loved
ye ever since we was both kids tergither. I've done been compelled ter
put behind me all ther hopes I ever hed endurin' my whole lifetime an'
hit's been makin' a hell of tormint outen my days an' nights hyar of
late."

He had risen now, and into his argument as he bowed a bared and
allegedly stricken head he was managing to put an excellent semblance of
sincerity.

But it was before a court of feminine intuition that Bas Rowlett stood
arraigned, and his specious contriteness fell flat as it came from his
lips. Dorothy was looking at him now in the glare of revelation--and
seeing a loathsome portrait.

"An hour ago," she declared with no relenting in the deep blaze of her
eyes, "I believed all good of ye. Now I sees ye fer what ye air an' I
suspicions iniquities thet I hedn't nuver dreamp' of afore. I wouldn't
put hit past ye ter hev deevised Cal's lay-wayin' yoreself. I wouldn't
be none astonished ef ye hired ther man thet shot him ... an' yit I'd
nigh cut my tongue afore I'd drap a hint of thet ter him."

That last statement both amazed and gratified the intriguer. He had now
two avowed enemies in this house and each stood pledged to a solitary
reckoning. His warfare against one of them was prompted by murder-lust
and against the other by love-lust, but the cardinal essence of good
strategy is to dispose of hostile forces in detail and to prevent their
uniting for defence or offence. It seemed to Bas that, in this, the
woman was preparing to play into his hands, but he inquired, without
visible eagerness:

"Fer why does ye say thet?"

Out of Dorothy's wide eyes was blazing upon him torrential fury and
contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She
had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at
the menace of his treachery against her man.

"I says hit," she answered, still in that level, ominously pitched voice
that spoke from a heart too profoundly outraged for gusty vehemence,
"because, now thet I knows ye, I don't need nobody ter fight ye fer me.
He trusts ye an' thinks ye're his friend, an' so long es ye don't lift
no finger ter harm him I'm willin' ter let him go on trustin' ye." She
paused, and to her ears with a soothing whisper came the rustle of the
crisp leaves overhead. Then she resumed, "Ef he ever got any hint of
what's come ter pass terday, I mout es well try ter hold back a
flood-tide with a splash-dam es ter hinder him from follerin' atter ye
an' trompin' ye in ther dirt like he'd tromple a rattlesnake.... But he
stands pledged ter peace an' I don't aim ter bring on no feud war ergin
by hevin' him break hit."

"Ef him an' me fell out," admitted Bas with wily encouragement of her
confessed belief, "right like others would mix inter hit."

"But ef _I_ kills ye hit won't start no war," she retorted. "A woman's
got a right ter defend herself, even hyar."

"Dorothy, I've done told ye I jest lost my head in a swivet of wrath.
Ye're jedgin' me by one minute of frenzy and lookin' over a lifetime of
trustiness."

"Ef I kills ye hit won't start no war," she reiterated, implacably,
ignoring his interruption, "an' betwixt ther two of us, I'm ther best
man--because I'm honest, an' ye're as craven as Judas was when he earned
his silver money. Ye needn't hev no fear of my tellin' Cal, but ye've
got a right good cause ter fear _me_!"

"All right, then," once more the hypocritical mask of dissimulation fell
away and the swarthy face showed black with the savagery of frustration.
"Ef ye won't hev hit no other way, go on disgustin' me--but I warns ye
thet ye kain't hold out erginst me. Ther time'll come when ye won't kick
an' fly inter tantrums erginst my kisses ... ye'll plum welcome 'em."

"Hit won't be in this world," she declared, fiercely, as her eyes
narrowed and the hand that held the knife crept out from under the
apron.

The man laughed again.

"Hit'll be right hyar on y'arth," he declared with undiminished
self-assurance; "you an' me air meant ter mate tergither like a pair of
eagles, an' some day ye're goin' ter come inter my arms of yore own free
will. I reckon I kin bide my time twell ye does."

"Eagles don't mate with snakes," she shot out at him, with a bosom
heaving to the tempest of her disgust. Then she added: "I don't even
caution ye ter stay away from this house. I hain't afeared of ye, an' I
don't want Cal ter suspicion nothin'--but don't come hyar too often ...
ye fouls ther air I breathes whenever ye enters hit."

She paused and brushed her free arm across her lips in shuddering
remembrance of his kiss, then she continued with the tone of finality:

"Now I've told ye what I wanted ter tell ye ... ef need arises ergin,
I'm goin' ter kill ye ... this matter lays betwixt me an' you ... an'
nobody else hain't agoin' ter be brung inter hit.... Does ye onderstand
thet full clear?"

"Thet's agreed," he gave answer, but his voice trembled with passion,
"an' I've done told _you_ what I wants ye ter know. I loves ye an' I'm
goin' ter hev ye. I don't keer no master amount how hit comes ter pass,
but sooner or later I gits me what I goes atter--an' from now on I'm
goin' atter _you_."

He turned and walked insolently away and the girl, with the strain of
necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the
walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after
awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and
realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread her
outstretched hands upward in embrace against the rough wood, as a
frightened child might throw its arms about a protecting mother.

When Sam Opdyke had been taken from the courtroom to the "jail-house"
that his wrath might cool into submissiveness, and when later he had
been held to the grand jury, he knew in his heart that ahead of him lay
the prospect of leaving the mountains. The hated lowlands meant to him
the penitentiary at Frankfort, and with Jim Rowlett and Parish Thornton
united against him, this was his sure prospect.

The two men who had shared with him the sensational notability of that
entrance and the deflated drama of that exit had gone home rankling
under a chagrin not wholly concerned with the interests of the
defendant.

Enmities were planted that day that carried the infection of bitterness
toward Harpers and Doanes alike, and the resentful minority began taking
thought of new organization; a thought secretly fanned and inflamed by
emissaries of the resourceful Bas Rowlett.

Back in the days following on the War of Secession the word Ku Klux had
carried a meaning of both terror and authority. It had functioned in the
mountains as well as elsewhere through the South, but it had been, in
its beginnings, a secret body of regulators filling a void left by the
law's failure, and one boasting some colour of legitimacy.

Since then occasional organizations of imitative origin had risen for a
time and fallen rapidly into decay, but these were all gangs of
predatory activity and outrage.

Now once more in the talk of wayside store and highroad meeting one
began to hear that name "Ku Klux" though it came vaguely from the tongue
as a thing of which no man had seen any tangible evidence. If it had
anywhere an actual nucleus, that centre remained as impalpable and
unmaterial as fox-fire.

But the rumour of night meetings and oath-bound secrecy persisted, and
some of these shreds of gossip came to Dorothy Thornton over the
dooryard fence as passersby drew rein in the shadow of the black walnut.
Nearer anxieties just now made her mind unreceptive to loose and
improbable stories of that nature, and she gave them scant attention.

She found herself coming out to stand under the tree often, because it
seemed to her that here she could feel the presence of the man who had
gone away on a parlous mission--and it was during that time of his
absence that she found more to fear in a seemingly trivial matter than
in the disquieting talk of a mysterious body of avengers stirring into
life.

When she looked up into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal
hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and
leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some
blight that diseased the vigour of the tree.

Her heart was ready to be frightened by small things, and through her
thoughts ran that old prophecy:

"I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and grows stronge
and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem and branches of
our family alsoe will waxe stronge and robust, but that when it fails,
likewise will disaster fall upon our house."




CHAPTER XXIV


From the shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit
of neglect and shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that
should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit
gone slack.

Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway
there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long
wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with
a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget
that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin
figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back
comeliness of proportion.

The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small,
shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first
child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.

Under her feet the flooring of the porch creaked its complaint of
disrepair and the baby in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of
malnutrition.

As the mother clasped it closer and rocked it against her shrunken
breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced
slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:

"Kain't ye, no fashion, gentle him ter sleep, Sally?"

The mother shook her head despondently.

"My milk don't seem ter nourish him none," she answered, and the voice
which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.

Into the lawless tangle of the "laurel-hell" that came down the
mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human
habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew
back at the sight of the older woman.

This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his
slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through
rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands,
testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping
briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had
avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.

Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his
patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other
woman go away.

At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were
alive.

Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling
feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a
disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and
charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have
been a potato patch.

The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the
thicket--almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding
there.

But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent
proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills
along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.

That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the
baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the
yard.

Then Thornton let his whisper go out to her with an utterness of
caution: "Don't say nothin', Sally.... Walk back inter ther woods ...
outen sight of the house ... it's me ... it's yore brother, Ken."

For an instant she stood as tremulous as though she had seen or heard a
ghost, while in her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded. Then she
said: "I'll be thar d'reckly. I'll take ther baby back ter Mirandy."

"No," commanded the man, "bring hit with ye. I hain't nuver saw hit
yit."

       *       *       *       *       *

Parish Thornton had come safely home, and in forest stretches where
fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were
fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist
of violet. "Sugar trees" blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in
the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet
of burgundy.

Before the house in the bend of the river the great walnut stood like a
high-priest lording it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond
maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush the drifting
cloud-fleece by day and the stars by night. It whispered with the
wandering voices of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.

Mellow now and tranquil in its day of fruitage it had the seeming of
meditation upon the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness
of death and the miracle of resurrection.

Yet the young wife searched its depths of foliage with an eye of anxiety
for, though she had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that
the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth and height with
a contagion of unhealth.

Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were gathering and piling the walnuts that
should in due season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away
for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was
the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the
desolation of winter.

Dorothy straightened and, looking off down the road, made sudden
announcement.

"Look thar, Cal. Ef hit hain't a stranger ridin' up on hoss-back. I
wonder now who _is_ he?"

With unhurried deliberation, because there was languor in the air that
day, the man rose from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted
figure his features stiffened and into them came the expression of one
who had been suddenly stricken.

Dorothy, still looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to
which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and
quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man
drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic
bearing of one who calmly accepts the inevitable.

By that time the horseman had halted and nodded. He dismounted and threw
his rein over a picket, then from the stile he accosted Thornton: "Ken,
I reckon ye knows me," he said, "an' I reckon ye knows what brought me."

Parish went forward, but before he reached the stile he turned and in a
level voice said, "Dorothy, this hyar man's Jake Beaver. He's ther
high-sheriff--from over in Virginny ... I reckon he seeks ter take me
back."

Dorothy stood with all her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her
deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or
exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair
as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace,
the sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, and fanned himself
with his hat.

The exact wording of the warrant was after all of no particular
consequence. The announcement of its purport had carried all its
necessary significance. Yet, before he spoke again, Kenneth Thornton,
also known as Parish Thornton and as Cal Maggard--these names being
included in the document as aliases--read it from preamble to signature
and seal at the end.

Then he inquired: "How come ye ter diskiver wh'ar I was at, Jake?"

The officer shook his head. "Thet's a question I hain't got ther power
ter answer ye, Ken. Somebody over thar got tidin's somehow and drapped a
hint ter ther Commonwealth's Attorney."

With a nod of comprehension the man who was wanted accepted that
explanation. He had not expected a fuller one.

Then, turning, he complied with the demands of courtesy. "Dorothy," he
asked, "hain't ye goin' ter invite Jake ter come in an' eat him some
dinner?"

The woman had not spoken. For her, stoic-bred though she was, it was
impossible to separate calmly the personal side of this stranger from
the abstract and menacing thing for which he stood. Now she gulped down
a hot and inhospitable impulse of refusal and said briefly to her
husband, "_You_ kin invite him ef ye've a mind ter, Cal. _I_ won't."

The officer flushed in embarrassment. Sheriffs, like bloodhounds, are
frequently endowed with gentle natures, and this mission was not of
Beaver's own choosing. It was a pursuit he followed with nothing of the
sportsman's zest.

"I reckon I mout es well git over an' done with all ther onpleasant jobs
I've got on hand," he announced, awkwardly, "air ye willin' ter waive
extradition, Ken, or does ye aim ter fight goin' back? Hit's jest a
matter of time either way--but ye've got the privilege of choosin'."

The man he had come after was carefully folding the warrant of arrest
along its folded lines as though it were important to preserve the exact
creasing of the paper.

"Does I keep this hyar thing, Jake," he asked, "or give hit back to ye?"

"Keep hit," replied the sheriff, with an equal gravity. "Hit b'longs ter
_you_."

There was a brief silence after that then Thornton said:

"This is a right grave matter ter me, Jake. Afore I decides what ter do
I've got ter hev speech with some of my neighbours."

The foreign official inclined his head.

"I hain't drapped no hint ter no man es ter what business brought me
hyar," he volunteered. "I 'lowed ter talk with ye in private fust. I
knows full well I'm amongst yore friends over hyar--an' I've got ter
trust myself in yore hands. This hain't no welcome task, Ken, any way ye
looks at hit."

"I gives ye my hand, Jake," the accused reassured his accuser, "no harm
hain't goin' ter come ter ye. Come on indoors and sot ye a cheer."

Parish Thornton stood under the black walnut again that afternoon and
with his jackknife he was carving a small basket out of one of the
walnuts that had fallen at his feet. About him stood a group including
the custodian of "the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia"
and the man who held like responsibility for the state of Kentucky.

Between the two, unexpressed but felt, lay the veiled hostility that had
grown up through generations of "crossing the border" to hide out; the
hostility of conflicting jurisdictions.

Hump Doane and Jim Rowlett were there, and Aaron Capper and Lincoln
Thornton--a handful who could speak with the voice of public opinion
thereabouts, and while he carved industriously at his watch-charm
basket, Parish Thornton glanced at the cripple.

"Mr. Doane," he said, "once, standin' on this identical spot, ye asked
me a question thet I refused ter answer. This man hes come over hyar,
now, ter answer hit fer me. Jake, tell these folks what brought ye
hither."

The sheriff cleared his throat and by way of preface remarked: "I didn't
come of my own choosin', gentlemen. Ther state of Virginny accuses
Parish Thornton of ther wilful murder of John Turk. I'm high-sheriff
over in Lee County whar hit tuck place."

A grave restraint prevented any expression of surprise, but all the eyes
were turned upon Thornton himself, and the accused gave back even glance
for even glance.

"Now I'm goin' ter give ye my side of hit," he began, though to give his
side in full justice he would have had to reveal a secret which he had
no intent of disclosing.

"My sister, Sally, married John Turk an' he abused her till she couldn't
endure hit no longer. Her pride was mighty high an' she'd hev cut her
tongue out afore she'd hev told her neighbours ther way she war
misused--but I knowed hit." As he paused his eyes darkened into sombre
memory. "I reasoned with John an' he blackguarded me, too, an' ferbid me
ter darken his door.... Deespite thet command I feared fer her life an'
I fared over thar ... I went in at ther door an' he war a-maltreatin'
her an' chokin' her. I railed out ... an' he hurt her wusser ... hit war
his life or her'n. Ef hit war all ter do over ergin I wouldn't act no
different." He paused again and no one offered a comment; so he resumed
his statement: "I hain't told ye all of hit, but I reckon thet's
enough. Thar warn't no witnesses ter holp me come cl'ar an' ther co'te
over thar wouldn't vouchsafe me no justice.... Hit's jedge b'longed ter
John Turk's kinfolks body an' soul ... so I come away."

"I reckon ye'd be plum daft ef ye didn't stay away," remarked the
Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance at his colleague from
another state. "Virginny officers hain't got no power of arrest in
Kaintuck."

The Virginian bit a trifle nervously from a twist of "natural leaf."

"Hit's my bounden duty, though," he declared, staunchly, "ter call on
_you_ ter arrest him an' hold him till I gits me them extradition papers
from Frankfort--an' then hit's _yore_ bounden duty ter fotch him ter
ther state line an' deliver him over ter me."

"I'm ther man thet decides what my duty is," came the swift retort, and
Thornton raised a hand to quell incipient argument.

"Thet hain't ther p'int, men," he reminded them. "Ther law kin reach in
an' take me out finally. We all knows thet--onless I forsook my home
hyar an' lived a refugee, hidin' out. Atter they once diskivered whar I
was, I mout jest es well be thar es hyar."

"Ther boy's right," ruled Hump Doane, judicially. "A man kain't beat
ther law in ther long run." Then the cripple wheeled on the sheriff.

"Mr. Beaver," he said, "we hain't got no quarrel with ye fer doin' yore
plain duty, but whether ye calls this man a criminal over thar in
Virginny or not we knows over hyar thet he's a godly upholder of ther
law--an' we don't aim ter see him made no scape-goat fer unlawful wrath
ef we kin hinder hit. In so fur es we kin legally compass hit we stands
ready ter fight ther state of Virginny from hell ter breakfast. All
he's got ter do is jest give us ther word."

"I hain't seekin' ter contrary ye none es ter thet, Mr. Doane," the
officer gave ready assurance.

"Ef Mr. Thornton takes my counsel," went on the deformed leader, "he'll
bid ye go back thar an' tell them folks ye comes from thet ef they'll
admit him ter bail, an' pledge him a fa'r day in co'te, he'll come back
thar without no conflict when ye sends fer him. But ye've got ter hev
'em agree ter let him stay over hyar till ther co'te sets ter try him.
Es fer his bond ye kin put hit at any figger ye likes so long es thar's
land enough an' money enough amongst us ter kiver hit."

The Virginia sheriff turned to the Kentucky officer.

"Will ye arrest this man an' hold him safe till I gits my order?" he
demanded, and the Kentuckian in turn inquired of Parish, "Will ye agree
to hold yoreself subject ter prompt response?"

Thornton nodded and casually the local officer replied:

"All right, Mr. Beaver. Ye kin ride on home now whenever ye gits ready.
I've got this prisoner in a custody thet satisfies me right now."




CHAPTER XXV


Had those enterprising spirits who had undertaken to organize a
vigilance committee, modelled upon the old Ku Klux, been avowedly
outlaws, banded together only for the abuse of power, their efforts
would have died of inanition. The sort of lawlessness that has given the
Appalachian mountaineer his wild name is one that the outer world
understands as little as the hillsman understands the outer world, and
the appeal which the organization made was a warped and distorted sense
of justice, none the less sincere.

So now though the organizers of the new body were scheming rascals,
actuated by the basest and meanest motives, the tissue and brawn of
their recruiting was built up from the adventure-love of youth or the
grim and honest insurgency of maturer age.

As yet the membership was small and it met in shifting places of
rendezvous, with weird rites of oath-bound secrecy. To-night it was
gathered around a campfire in a gorge between towering cliffs to which
access was gained by a single and narrow gut of alley-way which was
sentinel-guarded.

The men were notably bi-partisan in make-up, for Sim Squires of the
Harper faction sat on the same short log with young Pete Doane of the
Rowletts, and so it ran with the rest.

"Couldn't ye contrive ter persuade Bas Rowlett ter jine us, Pete?"
inquired one of the two men who had swaggered with Sam Opdyke up the
court-house aisle, and gone out in crestfallen limpness. "Hit looks
like he'd ought ter hold with us. He war entitled ter leadership an'
they cast him over."

Pete shook his head and answered with the importance of an envoy:

"Bas, he's fer us, body an' soul, an' he aims ter succour us every way
he kin but he figgers he kin compass hit best fashion by _seemin'_ ter
stand solid with ther old leaders."

Sim Squires said nothing but he spat contemptuously when the name of Bas
Rowlett was mentioned.

"Ther fust task that lays ahead of us," declared the voice of Rick Joyce
who seemed to be the presiding officer of the meeting, "is ter see that
Sam Opdyke comes cl'ar in cote. When ther Doanes met in council, Sam war
thar amongst 'em an' no man denied he hed as good a right ter be
harkened to as anybody else. But they rid over him rough-shod. A few men
tuck ther bit in their teeth and flaunted ther balance of us. Now we
aims ter flaunt _them_ some."

"How air we goin' ter compass hit?" came a query, and the answer was
prompt.

"When ther panel's drawed ter try Sam we've got ter see that every man
on the jury gits secretly admonished thet atter he finishes up thar,
he's still got ter answer ter _us_--an' meantime we've got ter handle
some two-three offenders in sich a fashion thet men will fear ter
disobey us."

So working on that premise of injustices to be righted, malcontents from
the minorities of both factions were induced with fantastic ceremonials
of initiation into the membership of the secret brotherhood. And though
they were building an engine of menacing power and outlawry, it is
probable that more than half of them were men who might have turned on
their leaders, as a wolf pack turns on a fallen member, had they known
the deceit and the private grudge-serving with which the unseen hand of
Bas Rowlett was guiding them.

The dreamy languor of autumn gave way to the gusty melancholy of winds
that brought down the leaves from the walnut tree until it stretched out
branches disconsolate and reeking with only the more tenacious foliage
left clinging. Then Dorothy Thornton felt that the sand was running low
in the hour glass of respited happiness and that the day when her
husband must face his issue was terribly near.

Indian summer is a false glory and a brief one, with alluring beauty
like the music of a swan-song, and it had been in an Indian summer of
present possession that she had lived from day to day, refusing to
contemplate the future--but that could not go on.

The old journal which had fired her imagination as a door to a new life
had lain through these days neglected--but they had been days of nearer
and more urgent realities and, after all, the diary had seemed to belong
to a world of dreams.

One of these fall afternoons when the skies were lowering and Parish was
out in the woods with Sim Squires she remembered it with a pang of
guilty neglect such as one might feel for an ill-used friend, and went
to the attic to take it out of its hiding and renew her acquaintance.

But when she opened the old horsehide trunk it was not there and panic
straightway seized her.

If the yellowed document were lost, she felt that a guardian spirit had
removed its talisman from the house, and since she was a practical soul,
she remembered, too, that the note-release bearing Bas Rowlett's
signature had been folded between its pages! With her present
understanding of Bas that thought made her heart miss its beat.

Dorothy was almost sure she had replaced it in the trunk after reading
it the last time, yet she was not quite certain, and when Parish came
back she was waiting for him with anxiety-brimming eyes. She told him
with alarm in her face of the missing diary and of the receipt which had
been enclosed and he looked grave, but rather with the air of
sentimental than material interest.

"Thet old diary-book was in ther chist not very long ago," he declared.
"I went up thar an' got ther receipt out when I fared over ter Sam
Opdyke's arraignin'. I tuck hit ter ther co'te-house an' put hit ter
record thet day--ther receipt, I means."

"How did ye git inter ther chist without my unlockin' hit?" she inquired
with a relief much more material than sentimental, and he laughed.

"Thet old brass key," he responded, "war in yore key basket--an ye
warn't in ther house right then, so I jest holped myself."

That brass key and that ancient record became the theme of conversation
for two other people about the same time.

In the abandoned cabin which had come to be the headquarters of Bas
Rowlett in receiving reports from, and giving instructions to, his
secret agents, he had a talk with his spy Sim Squires, who had come by
appointment to meet him there. In the sick yellow of the lantern light
the lieutenant had drawn from his pocket and handed to his chief the
sheaf of paper roughly bound in home-made covers of cloth which he had
been commissioned to abstract from its hiding place.

"Hit's done tuck ye everlastin'ly ter git yore hands on this thing,"
commented Rowlett, sourly, as he held it, still unopened, before him.
"But seems like ye've done got holt of hit at last."

"Hit warn't no facile matter ter do," the agent defended himself as his
face clouded resentfully. "Ef I let folks suspicion me I wouldn't be no
manner of use ter ye in thet house."

"How did ye compass hit finally?"

"Thornton's woman always kep' hit in the old hoss-hair chist in ther
attic an' she always kep' ther chist locked up tight as beeswax." Sim
paused and grinned as he added, "But woman-fashion--she sometimes fergot
ter lock up ther key."

Rowlett was running through the pages whose ancient script was as
meaningless to him as might have been a papyrus roll taken from the
crypts of a pyramid.

"Old Caleb," he mused, "named hit ter me thet he'd done put thet paper I
wanted betwext ther leaves old this old book inside ther chist."

He ran through the yellow pages time after time and finally shook them
violently--without result. His face went blank, then anxious, and after
that with a profane outcry of anger he flung the thing to the floor and
wheeled with a livid face on Sim Squires.

"Hit hain't thar!" he bellowed, and as his passion of fury and
disappointment mounted, his eyes spurted jets of fury and suspicion.

"Afore God," he burst out with eruptive volleys of abuse, "I halfway
suspicions ye're holdin' thet paper yore own self ter barter an' trade
on when ye gits ther chanst ... an' ef ye be, mebbe ye've got thet other
document, too, thet ye pretends ye hain't nuver seed thar--ther one in
ther sealed envellup!"

He broke off suddenly, choked with his wrath and panting crazily.
Suppose this hireling who had once or twice shown a rebellious
disposition held his own signed confession! Suppose he had even read it!
Bas had never suspected the real course which Parish Thornton had taken
to safeguard that other paper and he had not understood why Sim had been
unable to locate it and abstract it from the house. Thornton had, in
fact, turned it over to the safekeeping of Jase Burrell, who was to hold
it, in ignorance of its contents, and only to produce it under certain
given conditions. Now Bas stood glaring at Sim Squires with eyes that
burned like madness out of a face white and passion distorted, and Sim
gave back a step, cringing before the man whose ungoverned fury he
feared.

But after an unbridled moment Bas realized that he was acting the
muddle-headed fool in revealing his fear to a subordinate, his hold over
whom depended on an unbroken pose of mastery and self-confidence.

He drew back his shoulders and laughed shamefacedly.

"I jest got red-headed mad fer a minute, Sim," he made placating avowal.
"Of course I knows full well ye done ther best ye could; I reckon I
affronted ye with them words, an' I craves yore pardon."

But Sim, who had never served for love, found the collar of his slavery,
just then, galling almost beyond endurance, and his eyes were sombrely
resentful.

"I reckon, Bas, ye'd better hire ye another man," he made churlish
response. "I don't relish this hyar job overly much nohow.... Ye fo'ced
me ter layway ther man ... but when ye comes ter makin' a common thief
outen me, I'm ready ter quit."

At this hint of insubordination Rowlett's anger came back upon him, but
now instead of frothy self-betrayal it was cold and domineering.

He leaned forward, gazing into the face upon which the lantern showed
spots of high-light and traceries of deep shadow, and his voice was one
of deliberate warning:

"I counsels ye ter take sober thought, Sim, afore ye contraries me too
fur. Ye says I compelled ye ter layway Parish Thornton--but ye kain't
nuver prove thet--an' ef I hed ther power ter fo'ce ye then hit war
because I knowed things erbout ye thet ye wouldn't love ter hev told. I
knows them things still!" He paused to let that sink in, and Sim Squires
stood breathing heavily. Every sense and fibre of his nature was in that
revolt out of which servile rebellions are born. Every element of hate
centred about his wish to see this arrogant master dead at his feet--but
he acknowledged that the collar he wore was locked on his neck.

So he schooled his face into something like composure and even nodded
his head.

"You got mad unduly, Bas," he said, "an' I reckon I done ther same. I
says ergin ef ye hain't satisfied with ther way I've acted, I'm ready
ter quit. If ye _air_ satisfied, all well an' good."

Bas Rowlett picked up the diary of the revolutionary Dorothy Thornton
and twisted it carelessly into a roll which he thrust out of sight
between a plate-girder of the low cabin and its eaves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jerry Black came one Saturday night about that time to the wretched
cabin where he and his wife, a brood of half-clothed children, two
hound-dogs, three cats, and a pig dwelt together--and beat his wife.

For years Jerry had been accustomed to doing precisely the same thing,
not with such monotonous regularity as would have seemed to him
excessive, but with periodical moderation. Between times he was a
shiftless, indulgent, and somewhat henpecked little man of watery eyes,
a mouth with several missing teeth, and a limp in one "sprung leg." But
on semi-annual or quarterly occasions his lordliness of nature asserted
itself in a drunken orgy. Then he went on a "high-lonesome" and whooped
home with all the corked-up effervescence of weeks and months bubbling
in his soul for expression. Then he proved his latent powers by knocking
about the woman and the brattish crew, and if the whole truth must be
told, none of those who felt the weight of his hand were totally
undeserving of what they got.

But on this occasion Jerry was all unwittingly permitting himself to
become a pawn in a larger game of whose rules and etiquette he had no
knowledge, and his domestic methods were no longer to pass uncensored in
the privacy and sanctity of the home.

His woman, seizing up the smallest and dirtiest of her offspring, fled
shrieking bloody murder to the house of the nearest neighbour, followed
by a procession of other urchins who added their shrill chorus to her
predominant solo. When they found asylum and exhibited their bruises,
they presented a summary of accusation which kindled resentment and
while Jerry slept off his spree in uninterrupted calm this indignation
spread and impaired his reputation.

For just such a tangible call to arms the "riders," as they had come to
be termed in the bated breath of terror, had been waiting. It was
necessary that this organization should assert itself in the community
in such vigorous fashion as would demonstrate its existence and
seriousness of purpose.

No offence save arson could make a more legitimate call upon a body of
citizen regulators than that of wife-beating and the abuse of small
children. So it came about that after the wife had forgiven her
indignities and returned to her ascendency of henpecking, which was a
more chronic if a less acute cruelty than that which she had suffered, a
congregation of masked men knocked at the door and ordered the quaking
Jerry to come forth and face civic indignation.

He came because he had no choice, limping piteously on his sprung leg
with his jaw hanging so that the missing teeth were abnormally
conspicuous. Outside his door a single torch flared and back of its
waver stood a semicircle of unrecognized avengers, coated in black
slickers with hats turned low and masks upon their faces. They led him
away into the darkness while more lustily than before, though for an
opposite reason, the woman and the children shrieked and howled.

Jerry trembled, but he bit into his lower lip and let himself be
martyred without much whimpering. They stripped him in a lonely gorge
two miles from his abode and tied him, face inward, to a sapling. They
cow-hided him, then treated him to a light coat of tar and feathers and
sent him home with most moral and solemn admonitions against future
brutalities. There the victims of that harshness for which he had been
"regulated" wept over him and swore that a better husband and father had
never lived.

But Jerry had suffered for an abstract idea rather than a concrete
offence, and both Parish Thornton and Hump Doane recognized this fact
when with sternly set faces they rode over and demanded that he give
them such evidence as would lead to apprehension and conviction of the
mob leaders.

Black shivered afresh. He swore that he had recognized no face and no
voice. They knew he lied yet blamed him little. To have given any
information of real value would have been to serve the public and the
law at too great a cost of danger to himself.

But Parish Thornton rode back, later and alone, and by diplomatic
suasion sought to sift the matter to its solution.

"I didn't dast say nuthin' whilst Hump war hyar," faltered the first
victim of the newly organized "riders," "an' hit's plum heedless ter
tell ye anything now, but yit I did recognize one feller--because his
mask drapped off."

"I hain't seekin' ter fo'ce no co'te evidence outen ye now, Jerry," the
young leader of the Thorntons assured him. "I'm only strivin' ter
fethom this matter so's I'll know whar ter start work myself. Ye needn't
be afeared ter trust me."

"Wa'al, then, I'll tell ye." They were talking in the woods, where
autumnal colour splashed its gorgeousness in a riot that intoxicated the
eye, and no one was near them, but the man who had been tarred and
feathered lowered his voice and spoke with a terrorized whine.

"Thet feller I reecognized ... hit war old Hump Doane's own boy ... Pete
Doane."

Parish Thornton straightened up as though an electric current had been
switched through his body. His face stiffened in amazement and the pain
of sore perplexity.

"Air ye plum onmistakably shore, Jerry?" he demanded and the little man
nodded his head with energetic positiveness.

"I reckon ye're wise not ter tell nobody else," commented Parish. "Hit
would nigh kill old Hump ter larn hit. Jest leave ther matter ter me."




CHAPTER XXVI


The window panes were frost-rimed one night when Parish Thornton and
Dorothy sat before the hearth of the main room. There was a lusty roar
in the great chimney from a walnut backlog, for during these frosty days
the husband and his hired man, Sim Squires, had climbed high into the
mighty tree and sawed out the dead wood left there by years of stress
and storm.

As it comforted them in summer heat with the grateful cool of its broad
shadowing and the moisture gathered in its reservoirs of green, so it
broke the lash and whip of stinging winds in winter, and even its
stricken limbs sang a chimney song of cheer and warmth upon the hearth
that pioneer hands had built in the long ago.

Through the warp and woof of life in this house went the influence of
that living tree; not as a blind thing of inanimate existence but as a
sentient spirit and a warder whose voices and moods they loved and
reverenced--as a link that bound them to the past of the overland
argonauts.

It stood as a monument to their dead and as the kindly patron over their
lovemaking and their marriage. It had been stricken by the same storm
that killed old Caleb and had served as the council hall where enmities
had been resolved and peace proclaimed. Under its canopy the man had
been hailed as a leader, and there the effort of an assassin had failed,
because of the warning it had given.

And now these two were thinking of something else as well--of the new
life which would come to that house in the spring, with its binding
touch of home and unity. They were glad that their child would have its
awakening there when the great branches were in bud or tenderly young of
leaf--and that its eyes would open upon that broad spreading of
filagreed canopy above the bedroom window, as upon the first of earthly
sights.

"Ef hit's a man-child, he's goin' ter be named Ken," said the young
woman in a low voice.

"But be hit boy or gal, one thing's shore. Hits middle name's a-goin'
ter be T-R-E-E, tree. Dorothy Tree Thornton," mused Parish as his laugh
rang low and clear and she echoed after him with amendment, "Kenneth
Tree Thornton."

They sat silent together for a while seeing pictures in flame and coals.
Then Dorothy broke the revery:

"Ye've done wore a face of brown study hyar of late, Cal," she said as
her hand stole out and closed over his, "an' I knows full well what
sober things ye've got ter ponder over--but air hit anything partic'lar
or new?"

Parish Thornton shook his head with gravity and answered with candour:

"Hump and old Jim an' me've been spendin' a heap of thought on this
matter of ther riders," he told her. "Hit's got ter be broke up afore
hit gits too strong a holt--an' hit hain't no facile matter ter trace
down a secret thing like thet."

After a little he went on: "An' we hain't made no master progress yit
to'rds diskiverin' who shot at old Jim, nuther. Thet's been frettin' me
consid'rable, too."

"War thet why ye rid over ter Jim's house yestidday?" she inquired, and
Parish nodded his head.

"Me an' Sim Squires an' old Jim hisself war a-seekin' ter figger hit
out--but we didn't git no light on ther matter." He paused so long after
that and sat with so sober a face that Dorothy pressed him for the
inwardness of his thoughts and the man spoke with embarrassment and
haltingly.

"I lowed when we was married, honey, that all ther world I keered fer
war made up of you an' me an' what hopes we've got. I was right sensibly
affronted when men sought ter fo'ce me inter other matters then my own
private business, but now----"

"Yes," she prompted softly. "An' now what?"

"Hit hain't thet ye're any less dear ter me, Dorothy. Hit's ruther thet
ye're dearer ... but I kain't stand aside no more.... I kain't think of
myself no more es a man thet jist b'longs ter hisself." Again he fell
silent then laughed self-deprecatingly. "I sometimes 'lows thet what ye
read me outen ther old book kinderly kindled some fret inside me....
Hit's es ef ther blood of ther old-timers was callin' out an' warnin' me
thet I kain't suffer myself ter shirk ... or mebby hit's ther way old
Hump and old Aaron talked."

"What is hit ye feels?" she urged, still softly, and the man came to his
feet on the hearth.

"Hit's like es ef I b'longs ter these people. Not jist ter ther Harpers
an' Thorntons but ter them an' ther Doanes alike.... 'Pears like them of
both lots thet wants right-livin' hes a call on me ... that when old
Caleb giv me his consent ter wed with ye, he give me a duty, too--a duty
ter try an' weld things tergither thet's kep' breakin' apart
heretofore."

Yet one member of the party that had gone to old Jim's had gained
enlightenment even if he had held his counsel concerning his discovery.

The investigators had encountered little difficulty in computing just
about where the rifleman had lain to shoot, but that had told them
nothing at all of his identity. Yet as the three had stood on the spot
where Bas Rowlett had crouched that day Sim's keen eye had detected a
small object half buried in the earth and quietly he had covered it with
his foot. Later, when the other two turned away, he stooped and picked
up a rusty jack-knife--and he knew that knife had belonged to Bas
Rowlett. Given that clue and attaching to it such other things as he
already knew of Bas, it was not hard for Sim to construct a theory that,
to his own mind at least, stood on all fours with probability.

So, when the mercenary reported to Rowlett what had occurred on that
afternoon he omitted any mention of the knife, but much later he
carelessly turned it over to its owner--and confirmed his suspicions.

"I diskivered hit layin' in ther highway," he said, innocently and Bas
had looked at the corroded thing and had answered without suspicion,
"Hit used ter be mine but hit hain't much use ter me now; I reckon I
must hev drapped hit some time or other."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bas Rowlett disappeared from his own neighbourhood for the period of ten
days about that time. He said that he was going to Clay City to discuss
a contract for a shipment of timber that should be rafted out on the
next "spring-tide"; and in that statement he told the truth, as was
evidenced by postcards he wrote back bearing the Clay City postmark.

But the feature of the visit which went unmentioned was that at the same
time, and by prearrangement, Will Turk came from over in Virginia and
met at the town where the log booms lie in the river the man whom he had
never known before, but whose letter had interested him enough to
warrant the journey and the interview.

Will Turk was a tall and loose-jointed man with a melancholy and almost
ministerial face, enhanced in gravity by the jet-black hair that grew
low on his forehead and the droop of long moustaches. In his own
country the influence which he wielded was in effect a balance of power,
and the candidate who aspired to public office did well to obtain Will
Turk's view before he announced his candidacy. The judge who sat upon
the bench made his rulings boldly only after consulting this overlord,
but the matter which gave cause to the present meeting was the
circumstance that Will Turk was a brother to John Turk, whom Parish
Thornton was accused of killing.

"I 'lowed hit mout profit us both ter talk tergether," explained Rowlett
when they had opportunity for discussion in confidence. "I'm ther man
thet sent word ter ther state lawyer whar Ken Thornton war a-hidin' at."

"I'm right obleeged ter ye," answered Turk, noncommittally. "I reckon
they've got a right strong case ergin him."

Bas Rowlett lighted his pipe.

"Ye knows more erbout thet then what I does," he said, shortly. "I heers
he aims ter claim thet he shot in deefence of ther woman's life."

"He hain't got no proof," mused Turk, "an' feelin' runs right high ergin
him. I'd mighty nigh confidence ther jury thet'll set in ther case ter
convict."

Bas Rowlett drew in and puffed out a cloud of smoke. His eyes were
meditative.

Here was a situation which called for delicate handling. The man whom he
had called to conference was, by every reasonable presumption, one who
shared an interest with him. His was the dogged spirit and energy that
had refused to allow the Virginia authorities to give up the cold trail
when Kenneth Thornton had supposedly slain his brother and escaped. His
was the unalterable determination to hang that defendant for that act.
Bas was no less eager to see his enemy permanently disposed of, yet the
two met as strangers and each was cautious, wily, and given to the
holding of his own counsel.

Rowlett understood that the processes of nominal law over in that strip
of the Virginia mountains were tools which William Turk used at his
pleasure, and he felt assured that in this instance no half-measures
would satisfy him--but Bas himself had another proposition of alliance
to offer, and he dared not broach it until he and this stranger could
lay aside mutual suspicions and meet on the common ground of conspiracy.
If there were any chance at all, however slight, that Parish Thornton
could emerge, alive and free, from his predicament in court Rowlett
wished to waylay and kill him on the journey home.

Over there where Thornton was known to have enemies, and where his own
presence would not be logically suspected Bas believed he could carry
out such a design and escape the penalty of having his confession
published. This man Will Turk might also prefer such an outcome to the
need of straining his command over the forms of law. If Parish could be
hanged, Bas would be satisfied--but if he escaped he must not escape
far.

"I'm right glad ter talk with ye," said the Virginian, slowly, "because
comin' from over thar whar he's been dwelling at, ye kin kinderly give
me facts thet ther Commonwealth would love ter know," and that utterance
sounded the keynote of the attitude Turk meant to assume and hold.

Bas was disconcerted. This man took his stand solidly on his lawful
interests as the presser of the prosecution, but declined to intimate
any such savagery of spirit as cried out for vengeance, legal or
illegal.

"Suppose he comes cl'ar over thar, atter all?" hazarded the Kentuckian,
sparring to throw upon his companion the burden of making advances.

"I've done told ye I'm confi_dent_ he won't."

"Confi_dent_ hain't plum sartain. Ef thar's any slip-up, what then?"

Will Turk shrugged his shoulders and shook a grave head. He was sitting
with the deeply meditative expression of one who views life and its
problems with a sober sense of human responsibility, and the long
fingertips of one hand rested against the tips of the other.

"I'd hate ter see any _dee_fault of jestice," he made response, "an' I
don't believe any co'te could hardly err in a case like this one.... Ken
Thornton war my brother-in-law an' him an' me loved one another--but
ther man he kilt in cold blood war my own brother by blood--an' I loved
him more. A crime like thet calls out louder fer punishment then one by
a feller ye didn't hev no call ter trust--an' hit stirs a man's hate
deeper down. I aims ter use all ther power I've got, an' spend every
cent I've got, ef need be, ter see Ken Thornton hang." He paused and
fixed the stranger with a searching interest. "I'm beholden ter ye fer
givin' us ther facts thet led ter ketchin' him," he said. "War he an
enemy of your'n, too?"

Rowlett frowned. The man was not only refusing to meet him halfway but
was seeking to wring from him his own motives, yet the question was not
one he could becomingly decline to answer, and if he answered at all, he
must seem candid.

"Him an' me got ter be friends when he come thar," he said,
deliberately. "Some enemy laywayed him an' I saved his life ... but he
wedded ther gal I aimed ter marry ... an' then he tuck up false
suspicions ergin me outen jealousy ... so long es he lives over thar, I
kain't feel no true safety."

"Why hain't ye nuver dealt with him yoreself, then?" inquired Turk, and
the other shook his head with an indulgent smile.

"Things hain't always as simple es they looks," he responded. "Matters
air so shaped up, over thar in my neighbourhood, thet ef I had any fray
with him, hit would bring on a feud war. I'm bounden in good conscience
ter hold my hand, but I hain't got no sartainty he'll do ther like.
Howsomever----" Bas rose and took up his hat, "I writ ter ye because I
'lowed a man ought ter aid ther law ef so be he could. Es fer my own
perils, I hain't none terrified over 'em. I 'lowed I mout be able ter
holp ye, thet's all."

"I'm obleeged ter ye," said Turk again, "ye've already holped me in
givin' us ther word of his wh'arabouts. I reckon I don't need ter tax ye
no further. I don't believe he'll ever come back ter pester nobody in
Kaintuck ergin."

But both the Virginian and the Kentuckian had gathered more of meaning
than had been put into words, and the impression was strong on Turk that
the other wished to kill Parish in Virginia, if need be, because he
dared not kill him in Kentucky. In that he had only an academic interest
since he trusted his own agencies and plans, and some of them he had not
divulged to Rowlett.

As he rose to take leave of his new acquaintance he said abstractedly:

"I'll keep ye posted erbout ther trial when co'te sots so thet afore hit
eends up ye'll hev knowledge of what's happenin'--an' ef he _should_
chance ter come cla'r, ye'll know ahead of time when he's startin' back
home. A man likes ter kinderly keep tabs on a feller he mistrusts."

And that was all Bas needed to be told.

One day during Rowlett's absence Parish met young Pete Doane tramping
along the highway and drew him into conversation.

"Pete," he suggested, "I reckon ye appreciates ther fact thet yore
pappy's a mouty oncommon sort of man, don't ye?"

The young mountaineer nodded his head, wondering a little at what the
other was driving.

"Folks leans on him an' trusts him," went on Thornton, reflectively.
"Hit ought ter be a matter of pride with ye, Pete, ter kinderly foller
in his footsteps."

The son met the steady and searching gaze of his chance companion for
only a moment before he shiftily looked away and, for no visible reason,
flushed.

"He's a mighty good man--albeit a hard one," he made answer, "but some
folk 'lows he's old-fashioned in his notions."

"Who 'lows thet, Pete--ther riders?"

Young Doane started violently, then recovered himself and laughed away
his confusion.

"How'd I know what ther riders says?" he demanded. "We don't traffick
with 'em none at our house."

But Parish Thornton continued to bore with his questioning eyes into the
other face until Pete fidgeted. He drew a pipe from one pocket and
tobacco crumbs from another, but the silent and inquisitorial scrutiny
disconcerted him and he could feel a hot and tell-tale flush spreading
on his face and neck.

Abruptly Parish Thornton admonished him in the quiet tone of
decisiveness.

"Quit hit, Pete! Leave them riders alone an' don't mix up with 'em no
more."

"I don't know what ye're talkin' erbout," disclaimed young Doane with
peppery heat. "I hain't got no more ter do with them fellers then what
ye hev yoreself. What license hev ye got ter make slurs like them
erginst me, anyhow?"

"I didn't hev nothin' much ter go on, Pete," responded Thornton, mindful
of his promise of secrecy to the unfortunate Jerry Black, "but ther way
ye flushed up jest now an' twisted 'round when I named hit put ye in a
kinderly bad light. Them men air right apt ter mislead young fellers
thet hain't none too thoughted--an' hit's my business ter look inter
affairs like thet. I'd hate ter hev yore pappy suspicion what _I_
suspicions erbout ye."

"Honest ter God," protested the boy, now thoroughly frightened, "I
hain't nuver consorted with 'em none. I don't know nothin' erbout
'em--no more'n what idle tattle I heers goin' round in common talk."

"I hain't askin' ye whether ye've rid with 'em heretofore or not, Pete,"
the other man significantly reminded him. "I'm only askin' ye ter give
me yore hand ye won't nuver do hit ergin. We're goin' ter bust up thet
crowd an' penitenshery them thet leads 'em. I hate ter hev ye mixed up,
when thet comes ter pass. Will ye give me yore hand?"

Readily the young member of the secret brotherhood pledged himself, and
Parish, ignorant of how deeply he had become involved in the service of
Bas Rowlett, thought of him only as young and easily led, and hoped that
an ugly complication had been averted.

When Joe Bratton, the Kentucky sheriff, came to the house in the bend of
the river to take his prisoner to the Virginia line, he announced
himself and then, with a rude consideration, drew off.

"I'll ride ter ther elbow of ther road an' wait fer ye, Parish," he
said, awkwardly. "I reckon ye wants ter bid yore wife farewell afore ye
starts out."

Already those two had said such things as it is possible to say. They
had maintained a brave pretence of taking brief leave of each other; as
for a separation looking to a speedy and certain reuniting. They had
stressed the argument that, when this time of ordeal had been relegated
to the past, no cloud of fear would remain to darken their skies as
they looked eastward and remembered that behind those misty ranges lay
Virginia.

They had sought to beguile themselves--each for the sake of the
other--with all the tricks and chimeras of optimism, but that was only
the masquerade of the clown who laughs while his heart is sick and under
whose toy-bright paint is the gray pallor of despair.

That court and that jury over there would follow no doubtful course. Its
verdict of guilty might as well have been signed in advance, and, while
the girl smiled at her husband, it seemed to her that she could hear the
voice of the condemning judge, inquiring whether the accused had "aught
to say why sentence should not now be pronounced" upon him.

For, barring some miracle of fate, the end of that journey lay, and in
their hearts they knew it with a sickness of certainty, at the steps of
the gallows. The formalities that intervened were little more than the
mummeries of an empty formula with which certain men cloaked the spirit
of a mob violence they were strong enough to wreak.

Parish Thornton halted at the stile, and his eyes went back lingeringly
to the weathered front of the house and to the great tree that made a
wide and venerable roof above the other roof. The woman knew that her
husband was printing a beloved image on his heart which he might recall
and hold before him when he could never again look upon it. She knew
that in that farewell gaze and in the later, more loving one which he
turned upon her own face, he was storing up the vision he wanted to keep
with him even when the hangman's cap had shut out every other earthly
picture--when he stood during the seconds that must for him be ages,
waiting.

Then the hills reeled and spun before Dorothy Thornton's eyes as
giddily as did the fallen leaves which the morning air caught up in
little whirlwinds. Their counterfeit of cheer and factitious courage
stood nakedly exposed to both of them, and the man's smile faded as
though it were too flippant for such a moment.

Dorothy caught his hand suddenly in hers and led him back into the yard
where the roots of the tree spread like star points which had their ends
under the soil and deep in the rock of which those mountains were built.

"Kneel down, Cal," she whispered, chokingly, and when they had dropped
side by side to postures of prayer, her voice came back to her.

"Lord God of Heaven an' y'arth," trembled the words on her bloodless
lips, "he hain't goin' so fur away but what Yore power still goes with
him ... keep him safe. Good Lord ... an' send him back ter me ergin ...
watch over him thar amongst his enemies ... Amen."

They rose after their prayer, and stood for a little while with their
hearts beating close in a final embrace, then Dorothy took out of her
apron pocket a small object and handed it to him.

"I nigh fergot ter give hit ter ye," she said, "mebby hit'll prove a
lucky piece over thar, Cal."

It was the small basket which he had carved with such neat and cunning
workmanship from the hard shell of a black walnut ... a trinket for a
countryman's watch chain--and intrinsically worthless.

"Hit's almost like takin' ther old tree along with ye," she faltered
with a forced note of cheer, "an' ther old tree hain't nuver failed us
yit."

Joe Bratton and his prisoner rode with little speech between them until
they came to those creek bottom roads that crossed at Jake Crabbott's
store, and there they found awaiting them, like a squad of cavalry,
some eight or ten men who sat with rifles across the bows of their
saddles.

Aaron Capper and Hump Doane were there in the van, and they rode as an
escort of friends.

When their long journey over ridge and forest, through gorge and defile,
came to its end at the border, the waiting deputation from Virginia
recognized what it was intended to recognize. East of the state line
this man might travel under strict surveillance, but thus far he had
come with a guard of honour--and that guard could, and would, come
further if the need arose.




CHAPTER XXVII


Parish Thornton had used all his persuasion to prevent Dorothy's going
with him to Virginia. He had argued that the solace of feeling her
presence in the courtroom would hardly compensate for the unnerving
effect of knowing that the batteries of the prosecution were raining
direct fire on her as well as on himself.

Twice, while he had waited the summons that must call him to face his
ordeal, the attorney who was to defend him had come over into Kentucky
for conference, and it was to the professional advice of this lawyer,
almost clairvoyant in his understanding of jury-box psychology, that
Dorothy had at last yielded.

"We'll want to have you there later on," he had told the wife. "Juries
are presumed to be all logic; in fact, they are two-thirds emotion--and
if you appear for the first time in that courtroom at precisely the
right moment with your youth and wholesomeness and loyalty, your arrival
will do more for your husband than anything short of an alibi. I'll send
for you in due season--but until I do, I don't want you seen there."

So Dorothy had stayed anxiously at home.

One crisp and frosty morning she went over to Jake Crabbott's store
where she found the usual congregation of loungers, and among them was
Bas Rowlett leaning idly on the counter.

Dorothy made her few purchases and started home, but as she left the
store the man upon whom she had declared irreconcilable war strolled out
and fell into step at her side. She had not dared to rebuff him before
those witnesses who still accounted them friends, but she had no relish
for his companionship and when they had turned the bend of the road she
halted and faced the fellow with determined eyes.

About them the hills were taking on the slate grays and chocolate tones
of late autumn and the woods were almost denuded of the flaunting
gorgeousness which had so recently held carnival there, yet the sodden
drabness of winter had in nowise settled to its monotony, for through
the grays and browns ran violet and ultramarine reflexes like soft and
creeping fires that burned blue, and those few tenacious leaves that
clung valiantly to their stems were as rich of tone as the cherry-dark
hues that come out on well-coloured meerschaum.

"I didn't give ye leave ter walk along with me, Bas," announced the girl
with a spirited flash in her eyes, and her chin tilted high. "I've got a
rather es ter ther company I keeps."

The man looked at her for a hesitant interval without answering, and in
his dark face was a mingling of resentment, defiance, and that driving
desire that he thought was love.

"Don't ye dast ter trust yoreself with me, Dorothy?" he demanded with a
smile that was half pleading and half taunt, and he saw the delicate
colour creep into her cheeks and make them vivid.

"I hain't afeared of ye," she quickly disavowed. "Ever sence thet other
time when ye sought ter insult me, I've done wore my waist
bloused--a-purpose ter tote a dirk-knife. I've got hit right now," and
her hand went toward her bosom as she took a backward step into the
brittle weed-stalks that grew by the roadside.

But Bas shook his head, and hastened to expound his subtler meaning.

"I didn't mean ye war skeered of no bodily vi'lence, Dorothy. I means
ye don't das't trust yoreself with me because ye're affrighted lest ye
comes ter love me more'n ye does ther man ye married in sich unthoughted
haste. I don't blame ye fer bein' heedful."

"Love ye!" she exclaimed, as the colour deepened in her cheeks and neck,
then went sweeping out again in the white and still passion of outraged
indignation. "I hain't got no feelin' fer ye save only ter despise ye
beyond all measure. A woman kain't love no craven an' liar thet does his
fightin' by deceit."

Bas Rowlett looked off to the east and when he spoke it was with no
reference to the insults that cut most deeply and sorely into mountain
sensibilities.

"A woman don't always know what she loves ner hates--all at onc't.
Betwixt them two things thar hain't no sich great differ noways. I'd
ruther hev ye hate me then not ter give me no thought one way ner
t'other.... Ye're liable ter wake up some day an' diskiver thet ye've
jest been gittin' ther names of yore feelin's mixed up." He paused in
his exposition upon human nature long enough to smile indulgently, then
continued: "So long es ye won't abide ter let me even talk te yer, I
knows ye're afear'd of me in yore heart--an' thet's because ye're
afeared of what yore heart hitself mout come ter feel."

"Thet's a right elevatin' s'armon ye preaches," she made scornful
answer, "but a body doesn't gentle a mad dog jest ter show they hain't
skeered of hit."

"Es fer Parish Thornton," he went on as though his musings were by way
of soliloquy, "ye kain't handily foller him whar he's goin' ter, nohow.
He's done run his course already."

A hurricane gust of dizzy wrath swept the woman and her voice came
explosively: "Thet's a lie, Bas Rowlett! Hit'll be _you_ thet dies with
a rope on yore neck afore ye gits through--not him!"

"Ef I does," declared the man with equanimity, "hit won't be jest yit. I
grants him full an' free right of way ter go ahead of me."

But abruptly that cool and disconcerting vein of ironic calm left him
and he bent his head with the sullen and smouldering eyes of a vicious
bull.

"But be thet es hit may. I claims thet ye kain't stand out erginst my
sweetheartin' ef ye trusts yoreself ter see me. _You_ claims
contrariwise, but ye don't dast test yore theory. I loves ye an' wants
ye enough ter go on eatin' insults fer a spell.... Mebby ther Widder
Thornton'll listen ter reason--when ther jury an' ther hangman gits
done."

The girl made no answer. She could not speak because of the fury that
choked her, but she turned on her heel and he made no effort to follow
her.

The steeply humped mountains on either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton
to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the
high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as to one who
smothers.

That evening, when Sim Squires came in to supper, he made casual
announcement that he understood Bas had gone away somewhere. His vapid
grin turned to a sneer as he mentioned Rowlett's name after the
never-failing habit of his dissembling, but Dorothy set down his plate
as though it had become suddenly too hot to hold.

"Whar did he go?" she demanded with a gasp in her voice, and the hired
man, drawing his platter over, drawled out his answer in a tone of
commonplace:

"Nobody didn't seem ter know much erbout hit. Some 'lowed he'd fared
over ter Virginny ter seek ter aid Parish in his trial." He paused, then
with well-feigned maliciousness he added, "but ef I war inter any
trouble myself, I'd thank Bas Rowlett ter keep his long fingers outen my
affairs."

Gone to help Parish! Dorothy drew back and leaned against the wall with
knees grown suddenly weak. She thought she knew what that gratuitous aid
meant!

Parish fighting for his life over there in the adjoining state faced
enemies enough at his front without having assassins lurking in the
shadows at his back!

Perhaps Bas had not actually gone yet. Perhaps he could be stopped.
Perhaps her rebuff that morning had goaded him to his decision. If he
had not gone he must not go! The one thought that seemed the crux of her
vital problem was that so long as he remained here he could not be
there.

And if he had not actually set out she could hold him here! His amazing
egotism was his one vulnerable point, the single blind spot on his
crafty powers of reasoning--and that egotism would sway and bend to any
seeming of relenting in her.

She was ready to fight for Parish's life in whatever form the need
came--and she had read in the old Bible how once Judith went to the tent
of Holifernes.

Dorothy shuddered as she recalled the apocryphal picture of the woman
who gave herself to the enemy, and she lay wide-eyed most of that night
as she pondered it.

She would not give herself, of course. The beast's vanity was strong
enough to be content with marking, as he believed, the signs of her
gradual conversion. She would fence with him and provoke him with a
seeming disintegration of purpose. She would dissemble her abhorrence
and aversion, refashioning them first into indulgent toleration, then
into the grudging admission that she had misjudged him. She would
measure her wit against his wit--but she would make Kentucky seem to him
too alluring a place to abandon for Virginia!

When she rose at dawn her hands clenched themselves at her sides. Her
bosom heaved and her face was set to a stern dedication of purpose.

"I'll lead him on an' keep him hyar," she whispered in a voice that she
would hardly have recognized as her own had she been thinking at all of
the sound of voices. "But afore God in Heaven, I'll kill him fer hit
atter-ward!"

So when Rowlett, who had really gone only on a neighbourhood journey,
sauntered idly by the house the next afternoon near sunset, Dorothy was
standing by the stile and he paused tentatively in the road. As though
the conversation of yesterday had not occurred, the man said:

"Howdy, Dorothy," and the girl nodded.

She was not fool enough to overplay her hand, so her greeting was still
disdainful, but when he tarried she did not send him away. It was,
indeed, she who first referred to their previous encounter.

"When I come home yistidday, Bas," she said, "I sot down an' thought of
what ye said ter me an' I couldn't holp laughing."

"Is thet so?" he responded. "Wa'al what seems ridic'lous to one body
sometimes seems right sensible ter another."

"Hit sounded mighty foolish-like ter me," she insisted, then, as if in
after thought, she added, "but I'd hate mightily ter hev ye think I
wasn't willin' ter give ye all ther rope ye wants ter hang yoreself
with. Come on over, Bas, whenever ye've a mind ter. Ef ye kin convert
me, do hit--an' welcome."

There was a shade of challenge in the voice such as might have come from
the lips of a Carmen, and the man's pulses quickened.

Almost every day after that found Bas Rowlett at the house and the
evenings found him pondering his fancied progress with a razor-edged
zest of self-complacency.

"She'll hold out fer a spell," he told himself with large optimism.
"But ther time'll come. When an apple gits ripe enough hit draps offen
ther limb."

       *       *       *       *       *

Over at the small county seat to the east the squat brick "jail-house"
sat in the shadow of the larger building. There was a public square at
the front where noble shade trees stood naked now, and the hitching
racks were empty. Night was falling over the sordid place, and the
mountains went abruptly up as though this village itself were walled
into a prison shutting it off from outer contacts.

The mired streets were already shadowy and silent save for the whoop of
a solitary carouser, and the evening star had come out cold and distant
over the west, where an amber stretch of sky still sought feebly to hold
night apart from day.

Through the small, grated window of one of the two cells which that
prison boasted, Parish Thornton stood looking out--and he saw the
evening star. It must be hanging, he thought, just over the highest
branches of the black walnut tree at home, and he closed his eyes that
he might better conjure up the picture of that place.

With day-to-day continuances the Commonwealth had strung out the
launching of his trial until the patience of the accused was worn
threadbare. How much longer this suspense would stretch itself he could
not guess.

"I wonder what Dorothy's doin' right now," he murmured, and just then
Dorothy was listening to Bas Rowlett's most excellent opinion of
himself.

It would not be long, the young woman was telling herself, before she
would go over there to the town east of the ridges--if only she could
suppress until that time came the furies that raged under her
masquerade and the aversion that wanted to cry out denunciation of her
tormentor!

But the summons from the attorney had never come, and Bas never failed
to come as regularly as sunrise or sunset. His face was growing more and
more hateful to her with an unearthly and obsessing antipathy.

One afternoon, when the last leaves had drifted down leaving the forests
stark and unfriendly, her heart ached with premonitions that she could
not soften with any philosophy at her command.

Elviry Prooner had gone away when Bas arrived, and the strokes of Sim
Squires' axe sounded from a distant patch of woods, so she was alone
with her visitor.

Bas planted his feet wide apart and stood with an offensive manner of
proprietorship on the hearth, toasting himself in the grateful warmth.

"We've done got along right well tergether, little gal," he deigned to
announce. "An hit all only goes ter show how good things mout hev been
ef we hedn't nuver been hindered from weddin' at ther start."

The insolent presumption of the creature sent the blood pounding through
Dorothy's temples and the room swum about her: a room sacred to clean
memories that were being defiled by his presence.

"Ther time hain't ripe," she found herself making impetuous declaration,
"fer ye ter take no sich masterful tone, Bas. Matters hain't ended yet."
But here she caught herself up. Her anger had flashed into her tone and
it was not yet time to let it leap--so she laughed disarmingly as she
read the kindling of sullen anger in his eyes and added, "I don't allow
no man ter brag thet he overcome my will without no fight."

Bas Rowlett roared out a laugh that dissipated his dangerously swelling
temper and nodded his head.

"Thet's ther fashion ter talk, gal. I likes ter see a woman thet kin
toss her head like a fractious filly. I hain't got no manner of use fer
tame folks."

He came close and stood devouring her with the passion of his lecherous
eyes, and Dorothy knew that her long effort to play a part had reached
its climax.

He reached out his hands and for the second time he laid them upon her,
but now he did not seek to sweep her into an embrace. He merely let his
fingers rest, unsteady with hot feeling, on her shoulders as he said,
"Why kain't we quit foolin' along with each other, gal? _He_ hain't
nuver comin' back ter ye no more."

But at that Dorothy jerked herself away and her over-wrought control
snapped.

"What does ye mean?" she demanded, breathlessly. A sudden fear possessed
her that fatal news had reached him before it had come to her. "Hes
anything happened ter him?"

Instantly she realized what she had done, but it was useless to go on
acting after the self-betrayal of that moment's agitation, and even
Rowlett's self-complacent egotism read the whole truth of its meaning.
He read it and knew with a fullness of conviction that through the whole
episode she had been leading him on as a hunter decoys game and that her
slow and grudging conversion was no conversion at all.

"Nothin' hain't happened ter him _yit_, so fur's I knows," he said,
slowly. "But ye doomed him ter death when ye flared up like thet, an'
proved ter me thet ye'd jest been lyin'."

Dorothy gave back to the wall and one hand groped with outstretched
fingers against the smoothly squared logs, while the other ripped open
the buttons of her waist and closed on the knife hilt that was always
concealed there.

Her voice came low and in a dead and monotonous level and her face was
ghost pale.

"Yes, I lied ter ye ter keep ye from goin' over thar an' murderin' him.
I knowed ther way ye fights--I hain't nuver feared ye on my own account
but I _did_ fear ye fer him ther same es a rattlesnake thet lays cyled
in ther grass."

She paused and drew a resolute breath and her words were hardly louder
than a whisper.

"Thar hain't no way on y'arth I wouldn't fight ter save him--even ef I
hed ter fight a Judas in Judas fashion. So I aimed ter keep ye hyar--an'
I kep' ye."

"Ye've kep' me thus fur," he corrected her with his swarthy face as
malevolent as had ever been that of his red-skinned ancestors. "But ye
told ther truth awhile ago--an' ye told hit a mite too previous. Ther
matter hain't ended yit."

"Yes, hit's es good es ended," she assured him with the death-like quiet
of a final resolve. "I made up my mind sometime back thet ye hed ter
die, Bas."

Slowly the right hand came out of her loosened blouse and the firelight
flashed on the blade of the dirk so tightly held that the woman's
knuckles stood out white.

"I'm goin' ter kill ye now, Bas," she said.

For a few long moments they stood without other words, the woman holding
the dirk close to her side, and neither of them noted that for the past
ten minutes the sound of the axe had been silent off there in the woods.

Then abruptly the door from the kitchen opened and Sim Squires stood
awkwardly on the threshold, with a face of wooden and vapid stupidity.
Apparently he had noted nothing unusual, yet he had looked through the
window before entering the house, and back of his unobservant seeming
lay the purpose of averting bloodshed.

"I war jest lookin' fer ye, Bas," he said with the artlessness of
perfect art. "I hollered but ye didn't answer. I wisht ye'd come out an
holp me manpower a chunk up on ther choppin' block. I kain't heft hit by
myself."

Bas scowled at the man whom he was supposed to dislike, but he followed
him readily enough out of the room, and when he had lifted the log, he
left the place without returning to the house.

A half-hour later old Jase Burrell drew rein by the stile and handed
Dorothy a letter.

"I reckon thet's ther one ye've been waitin' fer," he said, "so I
fetched hit over from ther post-office. What's ther matter, gal? Ye
looks like ye'd been seein' hants."

"I hain't seed nothin' else fer days past," she declared, almost
hysterically. "I've done sickened with waitin', Uncle Jase, an' I aimed
ter start out soon termorrer mornin', letter or no letter."




CHAPTER XXVIII


Across in Virginia, Sally Turk, the wife of the dead man and the sister
of the accused, had rocked her anæmic baby to sleep after a long period
of twilight fretfulness and stood looking down into its crib awhile with
a distrait and numbed face of distress. She was leaving it to the care
of another and did not know when she would come back.

"I'm right glad leetle Ken's done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with
forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits
back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n."
Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and
caught up her shawl and bonnet.

Out at the tumble-down stable she saddled and mounted a mule that
plodded with a limp through a blackness like a sea of freezing ink, and
she shivered as she sat in the old carpet-cushioned side-saddle and
flapped a long switch monotonously upon the flanks of her
"ridin'-critter."

The journey she was undertaking lay toward the town where her brother
was "hampered" in jail, but she turned at a cross-road two miles short
of that objective and kept to the right until she came to a two-storied
house set in an orchard: a place of substantial and commodious size. Its
windows were shuttered now and it loomed only as a squarish block of
denser shadow against the formless background of night. All shapes were
neutralized under a clouded and gusty sky.

Dogs rushed out barking blatantly as the woman slid from her saddle,
but at the sound of her voice they stilled their clamour--for dogs are
not informed when old friendships turn to enmity.

The front door opened upon her somewhat timid knock, but it opened only
to a slit and the face that peered out was that of a woman who, when she
recognized the outer voice, seemed half minded to slam it again in
refusal of welcome. Curiosity won a minor victory, though, over
hostility, and the mistress of the house slipped out, holding the door
inhospitably closed at her back.

"Fer ther land's sakes, what brings ye hyar, Sally Turk?" she challenged
in the rasp of hard unreceptiveness, and the visitor replied in a note
of pleading, "I come ter see Will ... I've jest _got_ ter see Will."

The other woman still held the door as she retorted harshly: "All thet
you an' Will hev got ter do kin be done in co'te termorrer, I reckon."

But Sally Turk clutched the arm of Will Turk's wife in fingers that were
tight with the obduracy of despair.

"I've got ter see Will," she pleaded. "Fer God's sake, don't deny me.
Hit's ther only thing I asks of ye now--an' hit's a matter of master
int'rest ter Will es well es me. I'll go down on my knees ef hit'll
pleasure him--but I've _got_ ter see him."

There was something in the colourless monotony of that reiteration which
Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny.
With a graceless concession she opened the door.

"Come inside, then," she ordered, brusquely. "I'll find out will he see
ye--but I misdoubts hit."

Inside the room the woman who had ridden across the hills sank into a
low, hickory-withed chair by the simmering hearth and hunched there,
faint and wordless. Now that she had arrived, the ordeal before her
loomed big with threat and fright, and Lindy, instead of calling her
husband, stood stolidly with arms akimbo and a merciless glitter of
animosity in her eyes.

"Hit's a right qu'ar an' insolent thing fer ye ter do," she finally
observed, "comin' over hyar thisaway, on ther very eve of Ken Thornton's
trial."

"I've got ter see Will," echoed the strained voice by the hearth, as
though those words were the only ones she knew. "I've got ter see Will."

"When John war murdered over thar--afore yore baby was borned," went on
Lindy as though she were reading from a memorized indictment, "Will stud
ready ter succour an' holp ye every fashion he could. Then hit come ter
light thet 'stid of defendin' ther fame of yore dead husband ye aimed
ter stand by ther man thet slew him. Ye even named yore brat atter his
coldblooded murderer."

The huddled supplicant in the chair straightened painfully out of her
dejection of attitude and her words seemed to come from far away.

"He war my brother," she said, simply.

"Yes, an' John Turk wasn't nothin' but yore husband," flashed back the
scathing retort. "Ye give hit out ter each an' every thet all yore
sympathy war with ther man thet kilt him--an' from thet day on Will an'
me war done with ye. Now we aims ter see thet brother of yourn
hanged--and hit's too tardy ter come a beggin' an' pleadin'."

Kenneth Thornton's sister rose and stood swaying on her feet, holding
herself upright by the back of the chair. Her eyes were piteous in their
suffering.

"Fer God's sake, Lindy," she begged, "don't go on denyin' me no more. We
used ter love one another ... when I was married ye stud up with me ...
when yore fust baby war born I set by yore bedside ... now I'm nigh
heart-broke!"

Her voice, hysterically uncontrolled, shrilled almost to a scream, and
the door of the other room opened to show Will Turk, shirt-sleeved and
sombre of visage, standing on its threshold.

"What's all this ter-do in hyar?" he demanded gruffly, then seeing the
wife of his dead brother he stiffened and his chin thrust itself outward
into bulldog obduracy.

"I kain't no fashion git shet of her," explained the wife as though she
felt called upon to explain her ineffectiveness as a sentinel.

Will Turk's voice came in the crispness of clipped syllables. "Lindy, I
don't need ye no more, right now. I reckon I kin contrive ter git rid of
this woman by myself."

Then as the door closed upon the wife, the sister-in-law moved slowly
forward and she and the man stood gazing at each other, while between
them lay six feet of floor and mountains of amassed animosities.

"Ef ye've come hyar ter plead fer Ken," he warned her at last, "ye comes
too late. Ef John's bein' yore husband didn't mean nuthin' ter ye, his
bein' my brother does mean a master lot ter _me_--an' ther man thet kilt
him's goin' ter die."

"Will," she began, brokenly, "ye was always like a real brother ter me
in ther old days ... hain't ye got no pity left in yore heart fer me...?
Don't ye remember nothin' but ther day thet John died...?"

The drooping moustaches seemed to droop lower and the black brows
contracted more closely.

"I hain't fergot nothin'.... I wanted ter befriend ye so long es I
could ... outside my own fam'ly I didn't love no person better, but thet
only made me hate ye wusser when ye turned traitor ter our blood."

She stepped unsteadily forward and caught at his hand, but the man
jerked it away as from an infection.

"But don't ye know thet John misused me, Will? Don't ye know thet he war
a-killin' me right then?"

"I takes notice ye didn't nuver make no complaint till ye tuck thought
of Ken's _dee_fence, albeit men knowed thar was bad blood betwixt him
an' John. Now I aims ter let Ken pay what he owes in lawful fashion....
I aims ter hang him."

Sally retreated to the hearth and stood leaning there weakly. With
fumbling fingers she brought from inside her dress a soiled sheet of
folded paper and drew a long breath of resolution, passing one hand over
her face where the hair fell wispy and straggling. Then she braced
herself with all the strength and self-will that was left her.

"Ken didn't nuver kill John," she said, slowly, forcing a voice that
seemed to have hardly breath enough to carry it to audibility. "I kilt
him."

For an instant the room was as still as a tomb with only lifeless
tenants, then Will Turk took one quick step forward, to halt again, and
his voice broke into an amazed and incredulous interjection:

"_You_ kilt him?"

"Yes, I kilt him.... He hed done beat me an' he war chokin' me.... His
misuse of me war what him an' Ken fell out erbout.... I war too proud
ter tell anybody else ... but Ken knowed.... I was faintin' away with
John's fingers on my throat.... We was right by ther table whar his own
pistol lay.... I grabbed hit up an' shot. Ken come ter ther door jest es
hit went off."

Facing this new statement of alleged fact the brother of the dead man
remained in his unmoving posture of amazed silence for a space, then he
responded with a scornfully disbelieving laugh. In a woman one would
have called it hysterical, but his words, when he spoke, were steady
enough.

"Thet's a right slick story, Sally, but hit don't pull no wool over my
eyes. Hit's too tardy fer right-minded folks ter believe hit."

The woman sought to answer, but her moving lips gave no sound. She had
thought the world stood always ready to accept self-confessed guilt, and
now her throat worked spasmodically until at last her dumbness was
conquered.

"Does ye think ... hit's ther sort of lie I'd tell willin'ly?" she
asked. "Don't hit put me right whar Ken's at now ... with ther gallows
ahead of me?" She broke off, then her words rose to a shrill pitch of
excitement.

"Fer God's sake, heed me in time! Ye seeks ter hang somebody fer killin'
John. I'm ther right one. Hang me!"

Will Turk paced the room for several meditative turns with his head low
on his breast and his hands gripped at his back. Then he halted and
stood facing her.

"What does ye aim ter do with thet thar paper?" he demanded.

"Hit's my confession--all wrote out ... an' ready ter be swore ter," she
told him. "Ef ye won't heed me, I've got ter give hit ter ther jedge--in
open co'te."

But the man who gave orders to judges shook his head.

"Hit won't avail ye," he assured her with a voice into which the flinty
quality had returned. "Hit's jest evidence in Ken's favour.... Hit don't
jedgmatically sottle nothin'. I reckon bein' a woman ye figgers ye kin
come cl'ar whilst Ken would be shore ter hang--but I'll see thet nothin'
don't come of thet."

"Does ye mean"--Sally was already so ghost pale that she could not turn
paler--"Does ye mean they'll go on an' hang him anyhow?"

Will Turk's head came back and his shoulders straightened.

"Mayhap they will--ef I bids 'em to," he retorted.

"Listen at me, Will," the woman cried out in such an anguish of
beseeching that even her present auditor could not escape the need of
obeying. "Listen at me because ye knows in yore heart I hain't lyin'.
I'm tellin' ther whole truth thet I was afeared ter tell afore. I let
him take ther blame because I was skeered--an' because ther baby was
goin' ter be borned. I hain't nuver been no liar, Will, an' I hain't one
now!"

The man had half turned his back as if in final denial of her plea, yet
now, after a momentary pause, he turned back again and she thought that
there was something like a glimmer of relenting back of his gruffness as
he gave curt permission: "Go on, then, I'm hearkenin'."

Late into that night they talked, but it was the woman who said most
while the man listened in non-committal taciturnity. His memory flashed
disturbingly back to the boyhood days and testified for the supplicant
with reminders of occasional outcroppings of cruelty in his brother as a
child. That outward guise of suavity which men had known in John Turk he
knew for a coat under which had been worn another and harsher garment of
self-will.

But against these admissions the countryside dictator doggedly stiffened
his resistance. His brother had been killed and the stage was set for
reprisal. His moment was at hand and it was not to be lightly forfeited.

Yet to take vengeance on an innocent scapegoat would bring no true
appeasement to the deep bruise of outraged loyalty. If Ken Thornton had
assumed a guilt, not his own, to protect a woman, he had no quarrel with
Ken Thornton, and he could not forget that until that day of the
shooting this man had been his friend.

He must make no mistake by erring on the side of passion nor must he,
with just vengeance in his grasp, let it slip because a woman had
beguiled him with lies and tears.

Finally the brother-in-law went over to where Sally was still sitting
with her eyes fixed on him in a dumb tensity of waiting.

"Ye compelled me ter harken ter ye," he said, "but I hain't got no
answer ready fer ye yit. Hit all depends on whether ye're tellin' me
ther truth or jest lyin' ter save Ken's neck, and thet needs ter lie
studied. Ye kin sleep hyar ternight anyhow, an' termorrer when I've
talked with ther state lawyer I'll give ye my answer--but not afore
then."

Will Turk did not sleep that night. His thoughts were embattled with the
conflict of many emotions, and morning found him hollow-eyed.

In its sum total, this man's use of his power had been unquestionable
abuse. Terrorization and the prostitution of law had been its keystone
and arch, but he had not yet surrendered his self-respect, because he
thought of himself as a strong man charged with responsibility and
accountable to his own conscience. Now he remembered the Ken Thornton
who had once been almost a brother. Old affections had curdled into
wormwood bitterness, but if the woman told the truth, her narration
altered all that. Somehow he could feel no resentment at all against
her. If _she_ had killed John, she had acted only at the spur of
desperation, and she had been feminine weakness revolting against brutal
strength. As he pondered his determination wavered and swung to and fro,
pendulum fashion. If she were lying--and he would hardly blame her for
that, either--he would be her dupe to show mercy and likewise, if she
were lying, mercy would be weakness.

Sally Turk rested no more peacefully than he that night, and when in
the gray of dawn she looked searchingly into his face across the kitchen
table, she could read nothing from the stony emptiness that kept guard
over his emotions.

A little later she rode at his saddle skirt in a crucial suffering of
suspense, and whenever she cast an agonized glance at him she saw her
companion's face staring stiffly ahead, flintily devoid of any
self-revelation.

Once she ventured to demand, "Whatever ye decides, Will, will them
co'te-house fellers heed ye, does ye reckon?"

For a moment Turk glanced sidewise with narrowed eyes.

"I don't seek ter persuade them fellers," he made brief and pointed
reply, "I orders 'em."

At the court house door Will Turk left her with a nod and went direct
into the judge's chamber and the Commonwealth's attorney followed
him--but of what law was being laid down there, she remained in
heart-wracking ignorance.

Beyond the court house doors, plastered with notices of sheriff's sales
and tax posters, the county seat simmered with an air of excitement that
morning.

Street loungers, waiting for the trial to begin, knew the faces of those
who had been neighbours, friendly or hostile, for many years; but to-day
there were strangers in town as well.

Soon after daylight these unknown men had arrived, and one could see
that they came from a place where life was primitive; for even here,
where the breadth of a street was at their disposal, they did not ride
abreast but in single file, as men do who are accustomed to threading
narrow trails. They were led by a patriarchal fellow with a snowy beard
and a face of simple dignity, and behind him came a squat and twisted
hunchback who met every inquisitive gaze with a sharp challenge that
discouraged staring. Back of these two were more than a dozen others,
and though their faces were all quiet and their bearing courteous,
rifles lay balanced across their saddle-bows.

But most challenging in interest of all the newcomers was a young woman
whose bronzed hair caught the glint of morning sunlight and whose dark
eyes were deep and soft like forest pools.

"Ther Kaintuckians," murmured onlookers along the broken sidewalks as
that cavalcade dismounted in the court house square to file quietly
through the entrance doors, and eyes narrowed in a sinister augury of
hostile welcome.

These visitors seated themselves together in a body on one side of the
aisle and when the old bell had clanged its summons and Sheriff Beaver
sang out his "Oyez, Oyez," the judge looked down upon them with more
than passing interest.

From the door at one side of the bench Ken Thornton was brought in and
as a gratuitous mark of indignity he came with his wrists manacled.

But from the Kentucky group, even from Dorothy herself, that
circumstance wrung no murmur of resentment and the accused stood for a
moment before he took his seat with eyes ranging over the place until
they came to the section of the dingy room where he encountered the
unscowling faces of friends.

There were his supporters who had come so far to raise their voices in
his behalf, and perhaps to share the brunt of hatred that had been fired
into blazing against him, and there--he felt a surge of emotion under
which his face burned--was Dorothy herself!

They had not brought her to the jail to see him, and on the advice of
Jim Rowlett she had not signalized her coming by insistence--so their
eyes met without prior warning to the man.

It was to Kenneth Thornton as if there were sunlight in one corner of
that cobwebbed room with its unwashed windows and its stale smells, and
elsewhere hung the murk of little hope. A few staunch friends, at least,
he had, but they were friends among enemies, and he steeled himself for
facing the stronger forces.

Back of the rostrum where the judge sat squalidly enthroned a line of
dusty and cobwebbed volumes tilted tipsily in ironical reminder of the
fact that this law-giver took his cue less from their ancient principles
than from whispers alien to their spirit.

A shuffling of muddy feet ensued; then a lesser sound that came with the
giving out of many breaths; a sound that has no name but which has been
known since days when men and women settled back in the circus of the
Cæsars and waited for the lions to be turned into the arena where the
victims waited.

From the bench was drawled the routine query, "Has the Commonwealth any
motions?" and the Commonwealth's attorney rose to his feet and
straightened the papers on his desk.

"May it please your Honour," he said, slowly, "in the case of the
Commonwealth against Kenneth Thornton, charged with murder, now pending
on this docket, I wish to enter a motion of dismissal and to ask that
your Honour exonerate the bond of the defendant."

The man in the prisoner's dock had come braced against nerve-trying, but
now he bent forward in an amazement that he could not conceal, and from
the back of the courtroom forward ran an inarticulate sound from human
throats that needed no words to voice its incredulity--its
disappointment.

There was a light rapping of the gavel and the state's representative
went evenly on:

"The trial of this defendant would only entail a fruitless cost upon
the state. I hold here, duly attested, the confession of Sally Turk,
sister of the accused and widow of the deceased, that it was she and not
Kenneth Thornton who shot John Turk to death. I have sworn out a warrant
for this woman's arrest, and will ask the sheriff to execute it
forthwith and take her into custody."

Kenneth Thornton was on his feet with a short protest shaping itself on
his lips, but his eyes met those of his sister who rose from her place
against the wall as her name was spoken and he read in them a
contentment that gave him pause and an unspoken plea for silence.

Answering to the restraining hand of his own lawyer on his elbow he sank
back into his seat with a swimming head and heard the calm, almost
purring voice from the bench directing, "Mr. Clerk, let the order be
entered." After that, astonishment mounted to complete dumfounding as he
saw standing in the aisle Will Turk, the backbone and energy of the
entire prosecution--and heard his voice addressing the judge:

"May it please your Honour, I'd love ter be tuck on Sally Turk's bond
when ther time comes. I've done satisfied myself thet she kilt my
brother in self _dee_fence."




CHAPTER XXIX


Outside on the straggling streets clumps of perplexed men gathered to
mull over the seven days' wonder which had been enacted before their
eyes.

Slowly they watched the Kentuckians troop out of the court house, the
late prisoner in their midst, and marvelled to see Will Turk join them
with the handshaking of complete amity. Many of these onlookers
remembered the dark and glowing face with which Turk had said yesterday
of the man upon whom he was now smiling, "Penitenshery, hell! Hit's got
ter be ther gallows!"

Public amazement was augmented when Kenneth Thornton and his wife went
home with Will Turk and slept as guests under his roof.

"Ye needn't hev no fear erbout goin' on home, Ken, an' leavin' Sally
hyar," said Turk when he and Thornton sat over their pipes that night.
"I gives ye my hand thet she's goin' ter go free on bond an' when her
case is tried she'll come cl'ar."

Kenneth Thornton knew that he was listening to the truth, and as his
fingers, groping in his pocket for a match, touched the small
walnut-shell basket, he drew it out and looked at it. Then turning to
Dorothy, who sat across the hearth, he said seriously: "Ther luck piece
held hits charm, honey."

But an hour later, when Kenneth had gone out to see to his horse in the
barn and when Lindy was busied about some kitchen task, Will Turk rose
from his seat and standing before Dorothy began to speak in a
low-pitched and sober voice:

"Ye seems ter me like a woman a man kin talk sense ter," he said, "an'
I'm goin' ter tell ye somethin' either you or yore man ought ter know.
Ken hain't plum outen danger yit. He's got an enemy over thar in
Kaintuck: an' when he starts back thet enemy's right like ter be
watchin' ther trail thet leads home."

Dorothy held his eyes steadily when she questioned him with a name, "Bas
Rowlett?"

Will Turk shook his head as he responded deliberately: "Whatever I knows
come ter me in secrecy--but hit was at a time when I miscomprehended
things, an' I sees 'em different now. I didn't say hit was Bas Rowlett
ner I didn't say hit wasn't nuther, but this much I kin say. Whoever
this feller is thet aims ter layway Ken, he aims ter do hit in Virginny.
Seems like he dastn't ondertake hit in Kaintuck."

Dorothy drew a breath of relief for even that assurance, and for the
duration of a short silence Turk again paced the floor with his head
bent and his hands at his back, then he halted.

"You go on home termorrer an' leave Ken hyar," he enjoined, "he wants
ter see his sister free on bail afore he leaves, anyhow. When he gits
ready ter start back I'll guide him by a way I knows, but one a woman
couldn't handily travel, an' I'll pledge ye he'll crost over ter
Kaintuck es safe as he come."

So on the morrow Dorothy rode with the same cavalcade that had escorted
her to Virginia, and near sunset a few days later, when low-hanging
clouds were sifting down a thick veil of snow and the bare woods stood
ghostly and white, Bas Rowlett lay numb with cold but warm with
anticipation by the trail that led from the county seat in Virginia to
the gap that gave a gateway into Kentucky.

He huddled under a tangle of briars, masking an ambuscade from which his
rifle could rake the road and his eyes command it for a hundred yards to
its eastern bend, and he had lain there all day. Kenneth Thornton would
ride that trail, he felt assured, before dark, and ride it alone, and
here, far from his own neighbourhood, he would himself be suspected of
no murderous activity.

But as Bas lay there, for once prepared to act as executioner in person
instead of through a hireling, Kenneth Thornton and Will Turk were
nearing the state border, having travelled furtively and unseen by a
"trace" that had put the bulk of a mountain between them and ambuscade.

The winter settled after that with a beleaguering of steeps and broken
levels under a blockade of stark hardship. Peaks stood naked save for
their evergreens, alternately wrapped in snow and viscid with mud.
Morning disclosed the highways "all spewed up with frost" and noon found
them impassably mired. Night brought from the forests the sharp
frost-cracking of the beeches like the pop of small guns, and in wayside
stores the backwoods merchants leaned over their counters and shook
dismal heads, when housewives plodded in over long and slavish trails to
buy salt and lard, and went home again with their sacks empty.

Those who did not "have things hung up" felt the pinch of actual
suffering, and faces in ill-lighted and more illy ventilated cabins
became morose and pessimistic.

Such human soil was fallow for the agitator, and the doctrine which the
winter did not halt from travelling was that incitement preached by the
"riders."

Every wolf pack that runs on its food-trail is made up of strong-fanged
and tireless-thewed beasts, but at its head runs a leader who has
neither been balloted upon nor born to his place. He has taken it and
holds it against encroachment by title of a strength and boldness above
that of any other. He loses it if a superior arises. The men who are of
the vendetta acknowledge only the chieftainship which has risen and
stands by that same gauge and proving.

Parish Thornton, the recent stranger, had come to such a position. He
had not sought it, but neither, when he realized the conditions, had he
evaded it. Now he had made a name of marvellous prowess, which local
minstrels wove into their "ballets." He was accounted to be possessed of
an almost supernatural courage and invulnerability; of a physical
strength and quickness that partook of magic. Men pointed to his record
as to that of a sort of superman, and they embellished fact with fable.

He had been the unchallenged leader of the Harpers since that interview
with old Aaron Capper, and the ally of Jim Rowlett since his bold ride
to Hump Doane's cabin, but now it was plain that this leadership was
merging rapidly into one embracing both clans.

Old Jim had not long to live, and since the peace had been
reestablished, the Doanes no less than the Harpers began to look to, and
to claim as their own, this young man whose personal appeal had laid
hold upon their imaginations.

But that is stating one side of the situation that the winter saw
solidifying into permanence. There was another.

Every jealousy stirred by this new regime, every element that found
itself galled by the rearrangement, was driven to that other influence
which had sprung up in the community--and it was an influence which was
growing like a young Goliath.

So far that growth was hidden and furtive, but for that reason only the
more dangerous. The riders had failed to free Sam Opdyke, and Sam was in
prison--but the riders were not through. It pleased them to remain
deceptively quiet just now but their meetings, held in secret places,
brought a multiplied response to the roll call. Plans were building
toward the bursting of a storm which should wreck the new dykes and
dams--and the leaders preached unendingly, under the vicarious urging of
Bas Rowlett, that the death of Parish Thornton was the aim and end
beyond other aims and ends.

The riders were not striking sporadic blows now, as they had done at
first, in petty "regulatings." They were looking to a time when there
was to be one ride such as the mountains had never seen; a ride at whose
end a leader living by the river bend, a judge, a Commonwealth's
attorney living in town and the foreman of a certain jury, should have
paid condignly for their offences.

Christmas came to the house in the bend of the river with a crystal
sheeting of ice.

The native-born in the land of "Do Without" have for the most part never
heard of Christmas trees or the giving of gifts, but they know the old
legend which says that at the hour when the Saviour was born in a manger
the bare and frozen elder bushes come to momentary bloom again in the
thickets and the "critters and beasties" kneel down in their stalls,
answering to some dumb mandate of reverence. This, however, is myth, and
the fact is more substantially recognized that at this period the
roisterous ride the highways, shooting and yelling, and the whiskey jug
is tilted and tragedy often bares her fangs.

But Dorothy and Parish Thornton had each other, and the cloud that their
imaginations had always pictured as hanging over the state border had
been dispelled. Their hearts were high, too, with the reflection that
when spring came again with its fragrances and whispers from the south
there would be the blossoming of a new life in that house, as well as
along the slopes of the inanimate hills.

But now on Christmas morning, as Dorothy looked out of a window, whose
panes were laced with most delicate traceries of frost rime, there was a
thorn-prickle of fear in her heart.

Parish came in and stood looking outward over her shoulder, and his
smile flashed as it had done that first day when it startled her,
because, before she had seen it, she had read of just such a smile in a
journal written almost a century and a half ago.

"Hit's plum beautiful--out thar," she murmured, and the man's arm
slipped around her. It might almost have been the Kenneth Thornton who
had seen Court life in England who gallantly responded, "Hit's still
more beautiful--in _hyar_."

There had been an ice storm the night before, following on a day of
snowfall, and the mountain world stood dazzling in its whiteness with
every twig and branch glacéd and resplendent under the sun.

On the ice-bound slopes slept shadows of ultramarine, and near the
window the walnut tree stood, no more a high-priest garbed in a green
mantle or a wind-tossed cloak of orange-brown, but a warrior starkly
stripped of his draperies and glitteringly mailed in ice.

He stood with his bold head high lifted toward the sky, but bearing the
weight of winter, and when it passed he would not be found unscarred.

Already one great branch dropped under its freighting, and as the man
and woman looked out they could hear from time to time the crash of
weaker brethren out there in the forests; victims and sacrifices to the
crushing of a beauty that was also fatal.

Until spring answered her question, Dorothy reflected, she could only
guess how deep the blight, which she had discovered in the fall, had
struck at the robustness of the old tree's life. For all its
stalwartness its life had already been long, and if it should die--she
closed her eyes as though to shut out a horror, and a shudder ran
through her body.

"What is it, honey," demanded the man, anxiously, as he felt her tremor
against his arm, "air ye cold?"

Dorothy opened her eyes and laughed, but with a tremulousness in her
mirth.

"I reckon I hain't plum rekivered from ther fright hit give me when ye
went over thar ter Virginny," she answered, "sometimes I feels plum
timorous."

"But ther peril's done past now," he reassured her, "an' all ther
enemies we had, thet's wuth winnin' over, hev done come ter be friends."

"All thet's wuth winnin' over, yes," she admitted without conviction,
"but hit's ther other kind thet a body hes most cause ter fear."

Into the man's thought flashed the picture of Bas Rowlett, and a grim
stiffness came to his lips, but she could hardly know of that remaining
danger, he reflected, and he asked seriously, "What enemies does ye
mean, honey?"

She, too, had been thinking of Bas, and she, too, believed that fear to
be her own exclusive secret, so she answered in a low voice:

"I was studyin' erbout ther riders. I reckon they've done tuck thought
thet you an' Hump hev been seekin' evi_dence_ erginst 'em."

The man laughed.

"Don't disquiet yoreself erbout them fellers, honey. We _hev_ been
seekin' evi_dence_--an' gittin' hit, too, in some measure. Ef ther
riders air strong enough ter best us we hain't fit ter succeed."

The smile gave slowly way to a sterner and more militant expression, the
look which his wife had come to know of late. It had brought a gravity
to his eyes and a new dimension to his character, for it had not been
there before he had dedicated himself to a cause and taken up the
leadership which he had at first sought to refuse. Dorothy knew that he
was thinking of the fight which lay ahead, before the scattered enmities
of that community were resolved and the disrupted life welded and
cemented into a solidarity of law.




CHAPTER XXX


Sim Squires was finding himself in a most intricate and perplexing maze
of circumstance; the situation of the man who wears another man's collar
and whose vassalage galls almost beyond endurance.

It was dawning on Squires that he was involved in a web of such
criss-cross meshes that before long he might find no way out. He had
been induced to waylay Parish Thornton at the demand of one whom he
dared not incense on pain of exposures that would send him to the
penitentiary.

His intended victim had not only failed to die but had grown to an
influence in the neighbourhood that made him a most dangerous enemy; and
to become, in fact, such an enemy to Sim he needed only to learn the
truth as to who had fired that shot.

Squires had come as Rowlett's spy into that house, hating Thornton with
a sincerity bred of fear, but now he had grown to hate Rowlett the more
bitterly of the two. Indeed, save for that sword of Damocles which hung
over him in the memory of his murderous employment and its possible
consequences, he would have liked Parish, and Dorothy's kindness had
awakened in the jackal's heart a bewildering sense of gratitude such as
he had never known before.

So while compulsion still bound him to Bas Rowlett, his own sympathies
were beginning to lean toward the fortunes of that household from which
he drew his legitimate wage.

But complications stood irrevocably between Sim and his inclinations.
His feeling against Bas Rowlett was becoming an obsession of venom fed
by the overweening arrogance of the man, but Bas still held him in the
hollow of his hand, and besides these reefs of menace were yet other
shoals to be navigated.

Squires had been compelled by Rowlett not only to join the "riders" who
were growing in numbers and covert power, but to take such an active
part in their proceedings as would draw down upon his head the bolts of
wrath should the organization ever be brought to an accounting.

There was terrible danger there and Sim recognized it. Sim knew that
when Rowlett had quietly stirred into life the forces from which the
secret body was born he had been building for one purpose--and one
purpose only. To its own membership, the riders might be a body of
vigilantes with divers intentions, but to Bas they were never anything
but a mob which should some day lynch Parish Thornton--and then be
themselves destroyed like the bee that dies when it stings. Through
Squires as the unwilling instrument Rowlett was possessing himself of
such evidence as would undo the leaders when the organization had served
that one purpose.

Yet Sim dared reveal none of these secrets. The active personality who
was the head and front of the riders was Sam Opdyke's friend Rick
Joyce--and Rick Joyce was the man to whom Bas could whisper the facts
that had first given him power over Sim.

For Sim had shot to death Rick's nephew, and though he had done it while
drunk and half responsible; though he had been incited to the deed by
Bas himself, no man save the two of them knew that, and so far the
murderer had never been discovered.

It seemed to Sim that any way he turned his face he encountered a
cul-de-sac of mortal danger--and it left him in a perplexity that
fretted him and edged his nerves to rawness.

Part of Christmas day was spent by the henchman in the cabin where he
had been accustomed to holding his secret councils with his master, Bas
Rowlett, and his venom for the man who had used him as a shameless pawn
was eclipsing his hatred for Parish Thornton, the intended victim whom
he was paid to shadow and spy upon. For Dorothy he had come to
acknowledge a dumb worship, and this sentiment was not the adoration of
a lover but that dog-like affection which reacts to kindness where there
has been no other kindness in life.

It was not in keeping with such a character that he should attempt any
candid repudiation of his long-worn yoke, or declare any spirit of
conversion, but in him was a ferment of panic.

"I'm growin' right restive, Bas," whined Sim as the two shivered and
drank whiskey to keep themselves warm in that abandoned shack where they
were never so incautious as to light a fire. "Any time this feller
Parish finds out I shot him, he'll turn on me an' kill me. Thar hain't
but jest one safe way out. Let me finish up ther job an' rest easy."

Bas Rowlett shook his head decisively.

"When I gits ready ter hev ye do thet," he ruled, imperiously, "I'll let
ye know. Right now hit's ther last thing I'd countenance."

"I kain't no fashion make ye out," complained Sim. "Ye hired me ter do
ther job an' blackguarded me fer failin'. Now ye acks like ye war paid
ter pertect ther feller from peril."

Rowlett scowled. It was not his policy to confide in his Myrmidons, yet
with an adherent who knew as much as Squires it was well to have the
confidential seeming.

"Things hev changed, Sim," he explained. "Any heedless killin's right
now would bring on a heap of trouble afore I'm ready fer hit--but ye
hain't no more fretful ter hev him die then what I be--an' thet's what
we're buildin' up this hyar night-rider outfit ter do."

"Thet's another thing thet disquiets me, though," objected Squires. "I'm
es deep inter thet es anybody else, an' them fellers, Thornton and Old
Hump, hain't nuver goin' ter rest twell they penitensheries some of ther
head men."

Bas Rowlett laughed, then with such a confidential manner as he rarely
bestowed upon a subordinate, he laid a hand on his hireling's arm.
"Thet's all right, Sim. Ther penitenshery's a right fit an' becomin'
place fer them men, when ye comes ter study hit out. We hain't objectin'
ter thet ourselves--in due time."

Sim Squires drew back and his face became for the moment
terror-stricken. "What does ye mean?" he demanded, tensely, "does ye aim
ter let me sulter out my days in convict-stripes because I've done
s'arved yore eends?"

But Bas Rowlett shook his head.

"Not you, Sim," he gave assurance. "I'm goin' ter tek keer of _you_ all
right--but when ther rest of 'em hev done what we wants, we hain't got
no further use fer them riders. Atter thet they'll jest be a pest an'
burden ter us ef they goes on terrifyin' everybody."

"I don't no fashion comprehend ye, but I've got ter know whar I stands
at." There was a momentary stiffening of the creature's moral backbone
and the employer hastened to smooth away his anxiety.

"I hain't nuver drapped no hint of this ter no man afore," he confided,
"but me an' you air actin' tergither es pardners, an' ye've got a
license ter know. These hyar riders air ergoin' ter handle ther men that
stands in my light--then I'm goin' ter everlastin'ly bust up ther
riders. I wouldn't love ter see 'em git too strong. Ye fights a forest
fire by buildin' back-fires, Sim, but ef ye lets ther back-fires burn
too long ye're es bad off es ye war when ye started out."

"How does ye aim ter take keer of me?" inquired the listener and Bas
replied promptly: "When ther time comes ter bust 'em up, we'll hev
strength enough ter handle ther matter. Leave thet ter me. You'll be
state's evi_dence_ then an' we'll prove thet ye ji'ned up ter keep watch
fer me."

Over Sim Squires' face spread the vapid grin that he used to conceal his
emotions.

"But thet all comes later on," enjoined Bas. "Meanwhile, keep preachin'
ter them fellers thet Thornton's buildin' up a case erginst 'em. Keep
'em skeered an' wrought up."

"I reckon we'd better not start away tergither," suggested Sim when they
had brought their business to its conclusion, "you go on, Bas, an' I'll
foller d'reckly."

When he stood alone in the house Sim spent a half-hour seeking to study
the ramifications of the whole web of intrigue from various angles of
consideration, but before he left the place he acted on a sudden thought
and, groping in the recess between plate-girder and overhang, he drew
out the dust-coated diary that Bas had thrust there and forgotten, long
ago. This Sim put into his pocket and took with him.

       *       *       *       *       *

The winter dragged out its course and broke that year like a glacier
suddenly loosened from its moorings of ice. A warm breath came out of
the south and icicled gorges sounded to the sodden drip of melting
waters. Snowslides moved on hundreds of steeply pitched slopes, and fed
sudden rivulets into freshet roarings.

The river itself was no longer a clear ribbon but a turgid flood-tide
that swept along uprooted trees and snags of foam-lathered drift.

There was as yet neither bud nor leaf, and the air was raw and
bone-chilling, but everywhere was the restless stirring of dormant life
impulses and uneasy hints of labour-pains.

While the river sucked at its mud bank and lapped its inundated
lowlands, the walnut tree in the yard above the high-water mark sang
sagas of rebirth through the night as the wind gave tongue in its naked
branches.

But in the breast of Sim Squires this spirit of restlessness was more
than an uneasy stirring. It was an obsession.

He knew that when spring, or at the latest early summer, brought
firmness to the mired highways and deeper cover to the woods, the
organization of which he was a prominent member would strike, and stake
its success or failure upon decisive issue. Then Parish Thornton, and a
handful of lesser designates, would die--or else the "riders" would
encounter defeat and see their leaders go to the penitentiary.

Bas Rowlett, himself a traitor to the Ku Klux, had promised Sim safety,
but Sim had never known Bas to keep faith, and he did not trust him now.

Yet, should he break with the evil forces to which he stood allied,
Sim's peril became only the greater. So he lay awake through these gusty
nights cudgelling his brain for a solution, and at the end, when spring
had come with her first gracious touches of Judas-tree and wild plum
blossoming, he made up his mind.

Sim Squires came to his decision one balmy afternoon and went, with a
caution that could not have been greater had he contemplated murder, to
the house of Hump Doane, when he knew the old man to be alone.

His design, after all, was a simple one for a man versed in the art of
double-crossing and triple-crossing.

If the riders prevailed he was safe enough, by reason of his charter
membership, and none of his brother vigilantes suspected that his
participation had been unwilling. But they might not prevail, and, in
that event, it was well to have a friend among the victors.

He meant, therefore, to tell Hump Doane some things that Hump Doane
wished very much to know, but he would go to the confessional under such
oath of secrecy as could not recoil upon him. Then whoever triumphed, be
it Bas, the white-caps, or the forces of law and order, he would have a
protector on the winning side.

The hunchback met his furtive visitor at the stile and walked with him
back into the chill woods where they were safe from observation. The
drawn face and the frightened eyes told him in advance that this would
be no ordinary interview, yet he was unprepared for what he heard.

When Squires had hinted that he came heavy with tidings of gravest
import, but must be given guarantees of protection before he spoke, Hump
Doane sat reflecting dubiously upon the matter, then he shook his head.
"I don't jest see whar hit profits me ter know things thet I kain't make
no use of," he demurred, and Sim Squires bent forward with haunted eyes.

"They're _facts_," he protested. "Ye kin use them facts, only ye mustn't
tell no man whar ye got 'em from."

"Go ahead, then," decided Hump Doane after weighing the proposition even
further. "I'm hearkenin', an' I stands pledged ter hold my counsel es
ter yore part in tellin' me."

The sun was sinking toward the horizon and the woods were cold. The
informer rose and walked back and forth on the soggy carpet of rotted
leaves with hands that clasped and unclasped themselves at his back. He
was under a stress of feeling that bordered on collapse.

The dog that has been kicked and knocked about from puppyhood has in it
the accumulated viciousness of his long injuries. Such a beast is ready
to run amuck, frothing at the mouth, and Sim Squires was not unlike that
dog. He had debated this step through days and nights of hate and
terror. He had faltered and vacillated. Now he had come, and the
long-repressed passions had broken all his dams of reserve, transforming
him, as if with an epilepsy. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks were
putty-yellow and, had he been a dog instead of a man, his fangs would
have been slathered with foam.

Heretofore he had spoken hesitantly and cautiously. Now like the
epileptic or the mad dog, he burst into a volcanic outpouring in which
wild words tumbled upon themselves in a cataract of boiling abandon. His
fists were clenched and veins stood out on his face.

"I'm ther man thet shot Parish Thornton when he fust come hyar," was his
sensational beginning, "but albeit my hand sighted ther gun an' pulled
ther trigger hit was another man's damn dirty heart that contrived ther
act an' another man's dollars thet paid fer hit. I was plum fo'ced ter
do hit by a low-lived feller thet hed done got me whar he wanted me--a
feller thet bull-dozed an' dogged me an' didn't suffer me ter call my
soul my own--a feller thet I hates an' dreads like I don't nuver expect
ter hate Satan in hell!"

The informer broke off there and stood a pitiable picture of rage and
cowardice, shaken with tearless sobs of unwonted emotion.

"Some men ruins women," he rushed on, "an' some ruins other men. _He_
done thet ter me--an' whenever I boggled or balked he cracked his whip
anew--an' I wasn't nuthin' but his pore white nigger thet obeyed him. I
ached ter kill him an' I didn't even dast ter contrary him. His name's
Bas Rowlett!"

The recital broke off and the speaker stood trembling from head to foot.
Then the hearer who had listened paled to the roots of his shaggy hair
and his gargoyle face became a mask of tragic fury.

At first Hump Doane did not trust himself to speak and when he did,
there was a moment in which the other feared him almost more than he
feared Bas Rowlett.

For the words of the hunchback came like a roar of thunder and he seemed
on the verge of leaping at his visitor's throat.

"Afore God, ye self-confessed, murderin' liar," he bellowed, "don't seek
ter accuse Bas Rowlett ter me in no sich perjury! He's my kinsman an' my
friend--an' I knows ye lies. Ef ye ever lets words like them cross yore
lips ergin in my hearin' I'll t'ar ther tongue outen yore mouth with
these two hands of mine!"

For a space they stood there in silence, the old man glaring, the
younger slowly coming back from his mania of emotion as from a trance.

Perhaps had Sim sought to insist on his story he would never have been
allowed to finish it, but in that little interval of pause Hump Doane's
passion also passed, as passions too violent to endure must pass.

After the first unsuspected shock, it was borne in on him that there are
confessions which may not be doubted, and that of them this was one. His
mind began to reaccommodate itself, and after a little he said in a
voice of deadly coldness:

"Howsoever, now thet ye've started, go on. I'll hear ye out."

"I'm tellin' ye gospel truth, an' sometimes ther truth hurts," insisted
Sim. "Bas war jealous of Dorothy Harper--an' I didn't dast ter deny
him. He paid me a patch of river-bottom land fer ther job, albeit I
failed."

Hump Doane stood, his ugly face seamed with a scowl of incredulous
sternness, his hand twitching at the ends of his long and gorilla-like
arms. "Go on," he reiterated, "don't keep me waitin'."

Under the evening sky, standing rigid with emotion, Squires doggedly
went on. He told, abating nothing, the whole wretched story from his own
knowledge: how Bas had sought to bring on the war afresh in order that
his enemy Parish Thornton might perish in its flaming; how with the same
end in view Bas had shot at Old Jim; how he himself had been sent to
trail Thornton to Virginia that his master might inform upon him, and
how while the Virginian was away, in jeopardy of his life, the
arch-conspirator had pursued his wife, until she, being afraid to tell
her husband, had come near killing the tormentor herself.

"Hit war Bas thet stirred up ther riders into formin'," declared the spy
in conclusion. "He didn't nuver take no part hisself, but he used two
men thet didn't dast disobey him--two men thet he rules over like nigger
slaves--an' ther riders hev got one object over an' above everything
else, thet he aims ter hev 'em carry through. Thet is ter kill Parish
Thornton."

Hump Doane walked over and stood looking up from his squat, toad-like
deformity into the face of the man who towered above him, yet in his
eyes was the blaze with which a giant might look down on a pigmy.

"Ye says he used two men, Sim," the falsetto of the hunchback's voice
was as sharp as a dagger's point. "Ef ye came hyar fer any honest
purpose, I calls on ye, now, ter give me them two names."

Squires' face turned even paler than it had been. The veins along his
temple were pulsing, and his words caught and hung in hesitancy; but he
gulped and said in a forced voice: "I was one of 'em, Hump."

"An' t'other one? Who war he?"

Again the informer hesitated, this time longer than before, but in the
end he said dully:

"Hump, t'other one war--yore own boy, Pete."




CHAPTER XXXI


Strangely enough it was as though the old man's capacity for being
shocked or infuriated had been exhausted. There was no roar of maddened
wrath or denunciation of denial now. Never had Sim seen on a human face
such a despair of stricken grief. Hump Doane only passed an open palm
across his forehead. Somehow this hideous recital, which had made him an
old man in the space of a few minutes, blasting him like a thunder bolt,
could not be seriously doubted. It was not allegation but revelation.

Pete was young and impressionable. He was clay upon the wheel of Bas
Rowlett's domination, and of late he had been much away from home.

The father tried to straighten his twisted shoulders and his warped
back. He turned his eyes to the west where the fires of sunset were
crimson and purple, then he spoke again in a manner of recovered and
hard-held self-control.

"Ef these things ye tells me be true," he said, "I hev need ter know 'em
an' I'm beholden ter ye. Ef they're false ye've done struck me a blow I
kain't nuver fergive, an' I don't see how you an' me kin both go on
livin'. I aims ter find out fer myself, an' meanwhile--I'll keep my
pledge ter ye." He paused, then the leader triumphed over the stricken
individual.

"Keep right on goin' ter every meetin' ther riders holds," he directed,
quietly. "Don't suffer 'em ter suspicion no falsity."

But when Sim had left him Hump Doane stood there while the sunset faded,
while the afterglow livened and died, while the cold twilight settled.

He was thinking of the son he loved and despised, of the soft human
metal that had been hammered into debauchery by this other man whom he
had trusted.

He was acknowledging, too, that if the riders numbered among their
secret adherents such men as Bas Rowlett and his own boy, his fight was
upon a poison that had struck deeper and more malignantly into the
arteries of the community than he had heretofore dreamed.

He must talk with Parish Thornton, whose strength and judgment could be
trusted. He would see him to-night.

But at that point he halted. As yet he could not reveal his
unsubstantiated information to another. A pledge of sacredly observed
confidence had been the price of his learning these things--and over
there at the Thornton house a baby was expected before long. It would be
both wise and considerate to defer the interview that must of necessity
bring the whole crisis to violent issue until the young father's
thoughts were less personally involved. It was a time to make haste
slowly. Old Hump Doane laughed bitterly. He was a father himself, and
to-night he had learned how the heart of a parent can be battered.

But before he went to his bed he had talked with his son, while his son
sat cowering. It had been a stormy interview during which Pete had
denied, expostulated, and at the end broken down in confession, and when
Hump Doane rose he had abandoned that slender shred of hope to which, in
the teeth of conviction, he had been clinging, that his boy might still
be able to clear himself.

"Ye've done lied ter me, an' ye've done broke my heart," declared the
hunchback, slowly, "but ye've done confessed--an' I'm too damn weak ter
turn ye over ter ther law like my duty demands. Don't nuver go ter no
other meetin', an' ef they questions why ye don't come, tell 'em ter ask
me! An' now"--the old man crumpled forward and buried his great head in
his knotted hands--"an' now git outen my sight fer a spell, fer I kain't
endure ther sight of ye!"

But when he rode abroad the next day no man suspected the cataclysm
which had shattered Hump Doane's world into a chaos of irretrievable
wreck.

A closer guard of caution than ever before he set upon his speech and
bearing, while he sought to run down those devastating truths that had
come to him with such unwelcome illumination.

       *       *       *       *       *

In those days of first bud and leaf Dorothy Thornton looked out of her
window with a psychological anxiety. If the first hint of life that came
to the great tree were diseased or marked with blight, it would be an
omen of ill under which she did not see how she could face her hour, and
with fevered eyes she searched the gray branches where the sap was
rising and studied the earliest tinge of green.

"Ef harm hed done come ter hit," she argued with herself, "hit would
show, by this time, in them leetle buds an' tossels," but she was not
satisfied, and reaching through the attic window she broke off from day
to day bits of twig to see whether the vitality of rising sap or the
brittleness of death proclaimed itself in the wood.

Slowly, under soft air and rain, the buds broke into tiny spears, too
small and tender, it seemed to her, to live against the unkind touch of
harsh winds, and the rudimentary filaments spread and grew into leaves.

But the time that seemed to Dorothy to lag so interminably was passing,
and the veils of misty green that had scarcely showed through the
forest grays were growing to an emerald vividness. Waxen masses of
laurel were filling out and flushing with the pink of blossom. The
heavy-fragranced bloom of the locust drooped over those upturned
chalices of pink, and the black walnut was gaunt no more, but as
brightly and lustily youthful as a troubador whom age had never touched.

Warm with swelling life and full throated with bird music the beginnings
of summer came to the hills, and the hills forgot their grimness.

But Old Jim Rowlett, over there in his house, was failing fast, men
said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully
palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was
coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So
toward the younger and more robust influence of Parish Thornton his
adherents turned in his stead.

In those places where secret night sessions were held were the stir of
preparation and the talk of punishing a traitor--for young Pete had
deserted the cause, and the plotters were divided in sentiment. A
majority advocated striking with stunning suddenness toward the major
purpose and ignoring the disaffection of the one young renegade, but a
fiercer minority was for making him an example, and cool counsels were
being taxed.

To Dorothy Thornton's eyes contentment had returned because gay and
hopeful young flags of green flew from every twig of the tree of augury,
and in her deep pupils dwelt the serene sweetness that broods on
thoughts of approaching motherhood.

Then one morning before dawn Uncle Jase Burrell and a neighbour woman,
versed in the homely practises of the midwife, came to the room where
Parish Thornton sat with tightly clenched hands before the ruddy
hearth.

"He's done been borned," said Uncle Jase, cheerily; "he's hale an'
survigrous an' sassy--an' he's a boy."

Sim Squires had not gone home that night, and now he rose from his chair
and picked up his hat. "I reckon I'll be farin' on," he announced,
"hit's all over now but ther shoutin'." At the door, though, he turned
back and from his coat pocket drew a roll of sheafed paper bound in a
limp cloth.

"I found this hyar thing layin' behind a barrel up thar in ther attic,"
he lied, as he restored the lost journal of the revolutionary
ancestress. "I 'lowed hit mout be somethin' ye prized."

       *       *       *       *       *

One night, when June had come to her full-bosomed richness, young Pete
Doane did not return to his father's house and the old hunchback's face
darkened anxiously.

The warm night was a blue and moonlit glory of summer tranquillity and
from the creek bottom came the full-throated chorus of the frogs. Back
in the dark timber sounded the plaintive sweetness of the whippoorwills,
and from everywhere drifted an intangible blending of fragrances.

But Hump sat alone and morose in the house where no one dwelt but
himself and his son--save the neighbour woman who came in the daytime to
cook and clean house for the widower. He sat there until midnight had
passed and the moon was riding low to the west; he was still sitting in
the darkness that comes before dawn, and young Pete had not yet come.
Then when even June could not make gracious that dismal hour that brings
fog and reek before the first gray streaks the east, the old man heard a
voice outside his door and rose heavily to answer it.

He was a marked man, and should not have been so incautious, but in
these days death held no threat for Hump Doane. It was life that brought
him torture.

So he ignored those precepts of wariness which had been taught him by
years of experience, and when he stood unarmed in the doorway, against a
background of pale lamplight, he felt the thrust of a rifle muzzle
against his ribs, and heard a disguised voice ordering, "Come with us."

Hump did not flinch or give back. Neither did he obey. Instead, he
laughed with a hollow callousness and replied, "Shoot ef ye've a mind
ter. I hain't goin' ter stir a step ter foller ye."

But masked men closed in and caught his misshapen elbows, and the voice
that had first accosted him went on in the level tones of its disguise:

"We don't aim ter harm ye, Hump; leastways not yit--but we aims ter show
ye somethin' we've brought ye fer a gift."

They led him, too dull and apathetic of spirit to resist, too
indifferent of any consequence to protest, out and across his own
fog-wrapped yard and down to the sledge-trail road.

There in the bleak obscurity of blackness his eyes could make out a
squad of silent figures, but nothing more.

"Ye kain't rightly see hit yit, Hump," announced the spokesman, "but
thar's a fodder-sledge standin' thar at ther aidge of ther road--an' on
hit thar's somethin' thet b'longs ter ye. Hyar's a pine faggot thet's
soaked with kerosene--an' hyar's matches ter light hit with--but--on
pain of death--wait twell we've done gone away."

Into the heavy indifference of the old man's mood flashed a sickening
shaft of dread. He took the torch and the matches, and then with a
cowardice that was alien to his character he stood trembling like a
frightened child, while the dark figures disappeared as though they had
melted.

Hump Doane was afraid to kindle his torch, not afraid because of any
threat to himself, but terrified for what he might see.

Then he braced himself, and with his back turned, struck the match and
saw the guttering flames leap greedily upon the oiled pine splinter.

Slowly he wheeled, and his eyes fell on the illuminated sledge--his own
sledge stolen from his barn--and there stretched lifeless, and
shamefully marked with the defacement of the hangman's rope, lay what
was left of his son.

Old Hump Doane, who had never stepped aside from any danger, who had
never known tears since babyhood, stood for a moment gulping, then the
light dropped from his hand and the agony of his shriek went quavering
across the silent hills and reëchoed in the woods.

The pine splinter burned out in the wet grass and old Hump lay beside it
insensible, but after a while he awakened out of that merciful sleep and
crawled on his hands and knees over to where the sledge stood, and he
knelt there with his face buried on the lifeless breast.

"God fergive me," he murmured with a strangled voice. "He didn't nuver
hev no mammy ter raise him up aright. I reckon I failed him when he
needed me most--but Bas Rowlett's accountable ter _me_!"

When the neighbour woman came the next morning to prepare breakfast she
fled screaming away from the gruesome sight that met her eyes: the sight
of a dead man lying on a sledge, and a hunchback, who seemed dead, too,
stretched unconscious across the body. It was so that men found them
later, and carried them in, and it would have been more merciful had
Hump Doane been as lifeless as he seemed instead of coming back to the
ordeal he must face.

       *       *       *       *       *

Through a community stunned and appalled into breathlessness the news
ran like quicksilver, and the easy-pacing mule from Parish Thornton's
barn was lathered with sweat as the young man called upon it to
annihilate time and space over the broken ways between his house and
that of his stricken friend.

At Hump Doane's stile Thornton flung himself out of his saddle and
paused for no word with those neighbours who stood gathered about the
dooryard. He heard the whine of a saw and the pounding of a hammer off
somewhere to the rear, and knew that volunteer and amateur undertakers
were fashioning a coffin--but he hurled himself like a human hurricane
across the threshold and demanded briefly: "War's Hump at?"

The room was dim and murky at its corners, but through the two doors
poured a flood of morning light, and into its shaft projected an
unhinged shutter supported on two saw-horses, with a sheeted burden upon
it. As his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom beyond the room's
centre, Parish could make out the hunched figure that sat at the head of
the body, still mercifully wrapped in something like lethargy and too
numbed for full acuteness of feeling.

Other figures to the number of two or three moved as silently as dark
wraiths about the place, but when Parish entered they drifted out,
leaving him alone with his friend, and one of the doors closed upon
their going.

Then the lightnings of outraged wrath that seemed to crackle in the
young clansman's eyes stilled themselves and altered into something like
tenderness as he moved with catlike softness of footfall to where the
elder man sat, and let a hand fall on his malformed shoulder.

"Hump," he said, briefly, "my heart's plum sufferin' fer ye. I jest
heared of hit."

Hump Doane stirred and looked stupidly at him for a space, then with
laboured slowness he came to his feet, and his only answer was the
eloquent gesture with which one hand swept toward the dead body.

A stupefaction of grief had held him since they had brought him in this
morning from the road where they had found him, and thought had moved so
haltingly that it had scarcely been thought at all.

But now the vitalizing light of sympathy and outrage in those other eyes
seemed to rouse him out of his long coma with an awakening like that
which comes after ether.

As gray dawn quickens gradually out of darkness, a numbed indignation in
his pupils began to liven into unquenchable wrath.

"I hain't been able ter talk ... ter these hyar kindly neighbours of
mine...." he faltered, "but somehow, I believes I kin with _you_."

"I'm hyar ter s'arve ye, howsoever I kin, Hump," Parish assured him. "Ef
ye was my own father I couldn't love ye better."

Hump Doane held out a crumpled paper that had been crushed in his taut
hand, and Thornton stepping to the light smoothed it and read, pencilled
in roughly printed characters, "A warning to all traitors."

"Hit war pinned on him...." explained the father. "Ther riders done
hit ... _he'd_ done jined 'em ... an' he quit."

Parish Thornton stood with the light full on his face and the paper
grasped in his hand. The angle of his clean-cut jaw seemed to harden
from the plastic texture of flesh to the hardness of granite, and in his
narrowed eyes spurted jets of those blue-and-white fires that hold
intensest heat.

"I always aimed ter raise him up in godly ways," went on the father with
self-accusing misery, "but I war a hard man, an' I never gentled him
none. I reckon I driv him ter others ... thet debauched an' ruint him."

He had been, to that point, the man conscious only of his hurt, but now
his face became contorted and livid with a sudden hurricane of rage.

"But them thet hanged him," he cried out in abrupt violence, "vile es
they war ... they warn't nothin' ter ther man thet made a dupe out of
him ... ther man thet egged them on.... Bas Rowlett's accountable ter
me--an' afore ther sun sets I aims ter stand over his dead body!"

Parish Thornton flinched at the name. He had turned his face toward the
sheeted figure, but now he wheeled back, crouching and straightening
with the spasmodic quickness of a boxer who sidesteps a blow.

"Bas Rowlett!" he echoed in a low but deadly tensity of voice. "Steady
yoreself, man, an' construe what ye means!"

Hump Doane had shaken off his torpor now and stood trembling under all
the furies of repressed years. His words came in a torrent of vehemence
that could not be stemmed, and they mounted like gathering winds.

"I've preached peace day in an' day out.... I've striven ter keep
hit ... an' I knows I did aright ... but this day I'm goin' ter stultify
myself an' kill a man ... an' when I finishes him, I'm going ter keep
right on till I'm either kilt myself or gits all them thet's accountable
fer _this_!" He paused, breathing in gasps, then rushed on again:
"I trusted Bas Rowlett ... I believed in him ... some weeks back I
l'arned some things erbout him thet shocked me sore, but still I held
my hand ... waitin' ter counsel with _you_ atter yore baby hed been
borned."

"What war hit ye l'arned, Hump?" The younger man's voice was almost
inaudibly low, and the answer came like volley-firing with words.

"Hit war Bas thet hired ye laywayed.... Hit war Bas thet egged Sam
Opdyke on ter kill ye.... Hit war Bas thet sent word over inter Virginny
ter betray ye ter ther law.... Hit war Bas thet shot through old Jim's
hat ter make a false appearance an' foment strife.... Hit war Bas thet
stirred men up ter organizin' ther riders ... an' used my boy fer a
catspaw!"

"Listen, man!" Parish Thornton was breathing his words through lips that
scarcely moved as he bent forward with the tautness of a coiled spring.
"I knowed Bas Rowlett hired me shot ... but we'd done pledged ourselves
ter settle thet betwixt us.... I held my hand because of ther oath I
give ye when we made ther truce ... but these other things, I hain't
nuver even dremp' of ther like afore. Does ye know aught more of him?"

"I knows thet whilst ye war away in Virginny he went over an' sought ter
make love ter yore wife ... an' she come nigh killin' him fer hit ...
but she feared fer bloodshed ef she bore thet tale ter _you_."

The old man paused, and Parish Thornton made no answer in words, but
between his lips the breath ran out with the hiss of sobbing waters.

"I kain't prove none of them things in law," went on Hump, and his eyes
travelled back to the hideous fascination of the sheeted body, "yit I
knows, in my heart, every one of 'em's true--an' thet's enough fer me.
Now I'm goin' ter be my own law!"

The cripple turned and walked unsteadily to the corner of the room, and
from its place behind a calico curtain he took out a repeating rifle.

"Thar's my co'te of jestice," he declared, and his voice trembled as
with hunger and thirst.

But Parish Thornton had thrown back his head and unaccountably he
laughed as he laid on the other's arm fingers that closed slowly into a
grip of steel and rawhide.

"Hump," he said, "hit would be a turrible pity fer us ter quarrel--but I
don't aim ter be robbed, even by _you_! Thet man belongs ter _me_ ...
an' I aims ter claim him now. When my blood war bi'lin' like a mortal
fever ... right hyar in this room ... didn't ye fo'ce me ter lay aside
my grudge till sich day es ye give me license ter take hit up ergin?...
an' hain't thet day come now?... From thet time till this I've kep' my
word ... but hell hitself couldn't hold me back no longer.... Ye kain't
hev him, Hump. He's _mine_!"

He paused, then with something like a sob he repeated in a dazed voice,
"An' ye says he aimed ter fo'ce Dorothy with his love-makin'. God!"

Hump Doane was still clinging to the rifle upon which Thornton had laid
his hands, and they stood there, two claimants, neither of whom was
willing to surrender his title to a disputed prize--the prize of Bas
Rowlett's life.

But at length the older fingers loosened their hold and the older man
took a stumbling step and knelt by his dead. Then the younger, with the
gun cradled in his elbow, and a light of release in his eyes--a light
that seemed almost one of contentment--went out through the door and
crossed the yard to the fence where his mount was hitched.




CHAPTER XXXII


Sim, standing at the barn door, had watched Parish Thornton ride away
that morning with a troubled heart, as he wondered what sequel these
events would bring for himself. Then he went to the house and called
softly to Dorothy. She was crooning a lullaby, behind the closed door of
her room, to the small mite of humanity that had come, in healthy
pinkness, to the comparatively mature age of one month.

"Thar hain't nuthin' ter be done right now," the hired man told her,
"an' I've got ter fare over ter my own place fer a spell. A man's comin'
ter haggle with me over a cattle deal."

But Sim was not going to his own house. He was acting under standing
orders which might in no wise be disobeyed.

The organization that had been born in secret and nurtured to malignant
vigour had never held a daylight session before. No call had gone out
for one now, but an understanding existed and an obligation,
acknowledged by its membership in the oath of allegiance.

If ever at any time, day or night, shine or storm, such an occasion
developed as carried the urge of emergency, each rider must forthwith
repair to his designated post, armed and ready for instant action.

This prearranged mobilization must follow automatically upon the event
that brought the need, and it involved squad meetings at various points.
In its support a system of signalling and communication had been
devised, whereby separated units might establish and hold unbroken
touch, and might flow together like shattered beads of quicksilver.

Unless Sim Squires was profoundly mistaken, such a time had come.

But Sim went with a heavy heart of divided allegiance. He dared not
absent himself, and he knew that after last night's happening the space
of twenty-four hours could scarcely pass without bringing the issue of
decisive battle between the occult and the open powers that were warring
for domination in that community.

He realized that somehow a hideous blunder had been committed and he
guessed with what a frenzy of rage Bas Rowlett had learned that the
organization into which he had infused the breath of life had murdered
one of his two confidential vassals.

At the gorge that men called a "master shut-in", which was Sim's
rendezvous for such an emergency meeting, he found that others had
arrived before him, and among the faces into which he looked was that of
Rick Joyce, black with a wrath as yet held in abeyance, but promising
speedy and stormy eruption.

The spot was wild beyond description, lying in the lap of mountains that
had in some day of world infancy been riven into a mighty boulder-strewn
fissure between walls of sheer and gloomy precipices.

It was a place to which men would come for no legitimate purpose; a
place which the hounded bear and deer had avoided even when hard driven,
and inviting only to copperhead, skunk, and fox. About it lay
"laurel-hells" thick-matted and gnarled, briars that were like
entanglements of barbed wire, and woods so black of recess that bats
flew through their corridors of pine at midday. But these men had cut,
and used familiarly, tortuous and hidden zig-zags of entry and exit,
and they came separately from divergent directions.

When Sim arrived they were waiting for their informal quorum, but at
last a dozen had assembled and in other places there were other dozens.
Each group had a commander freshly come from a sort of staff meeting,
which had already decided the larger questions of policy. There would be
little debate here, only the sharp giving of orders which none would
venture to disobey.

Rick Joyce took inventory of the faces and mentally called his roll.
Then he nodded his head and said brusquely, "We're ready ter go ahead
now."

The men lounged about him with a pretence of stoical composure, but
under that guise was a mighty disquiet, for even in an organization of
his own upbuilding the mountaineer frets against the despotic power that
says "thou shall" and "thou shalt not."

"Thar's been treason amongst us," announced Rick Joyce, sharply, and
every man seemed to find that wrathful glance resting accusingly upon
himself. "Thar's been treason that's got ter be paid in full an' with
int'rest hereatter. Thet thing thet tuck place last night was mighty
damnable an' erginst all orders. Ther fellers thet did hit affronted
this hyar army of riders thet they stood sworn ter obey."

Whether among those followers gathered about him there were any who had
participated in last night's murder Rick Joyce did not know, but he knew
that a minority had run to a violence which had been neither ordered nor
countenanced. They had gotten out of hand, wreaked a premature
vengeance, and precipitated the need of action before the majority was
ready. But it was now too late to waste time in lamentation. The thing
was done, and the organization saddled with that guilt must strike or be
struck down.

The Ku Klux had meant to move at its own appointed time, with the
irresistible sweep and force of an avalanche. Before the designated
season a lighter snowslide had broken away and the avalanche had no
choice but to follow.

To-morrow every aroused impulse of law and order would be battle-girt
and the secret body would be on the defensive--perhaps even on the run.
If it were to hold the offensive it must strike and terrorize before
another day had dawned--and that was not as it had planned its course.

"Hit's too late now ter cry over spilt milk," declared Joyce with a burr
in his voice. "Later on we'll handle our own traitors--right now thar's
another task thet won't suffer no delay."

He paused, scowling, then enlightened his hearers briefly:

"We warn't ready ter finish up this matter yit but now we hain't got no
choice. Hit's ternight or never. We stands disgusted by all mankind, an'
in sheer self-defence we've got ter terrify mankind so they won't dast
utter what disgust they feels. Old Jim's nigh ter death an' we don't
need ter bother with him; Hump Doane kin wait--one blow's done fell on
him already--but thar's yit another man thet won't never cease ter dog
us whilst he lives, an' thet's Parish Thornton--so ternight we aims ter
hang him."

Once more there was a pause, then as though pointing his moral the
spokesman supplemented his remarks:

"Hit hes need ter be a thing," he said, solemnly, "thet's goin' ter
terrify this whole country in sich dire fashion thet fer twenty y'ars
ter come no grand juror won't dast vote fer no investigation."

There remained those exact details that should cause the elaborate
operation to function together without hitch or miscarriage, and to
these Rick Joyce addressed himself.

The mob was to participate in force of full numbers and no absentees
were to be tolerated.

"When ther game starts up hit's got ter go quick as a bat flyin' through
hell," enjoined the director. "Every man teks his slicker an' his
false-face, an' goes one by one ter ther woods eround Thornton's house
es soon es dusk sottles. Every man's got ter be nigh enough afore
sun-down ter make shore of gettin' thar on time. Then they all draws in,
holdin' ter ther thickets. Ther signal will be ther callin' of
whippoorwills--a double call with a count of five betwixt 'em. When
we're all drawed up eround ther house, so no way hain't left open thet a
rabbit could break through, I'll sing out--an' when I does thet ye all
closes in on ther run. Thar's a big walnuck tree right by ther door ter
hang him on--an' termorrer mornin' folks'll hev a lesson thet they kin
kinderly take ter heart."

       *       *       *       *       *

On his way back from Hump Doane's house that morning Parish Thornton
made a detour for a brief visit upon Jase Burrell, the man to whose
discretion he had entrusted the keeping of Bas Rowlett's sealed
confession. From the hands of that faithful custodian he took the
envelope and thrust it into his breast pocket. Now that his own pledge
of suspended vengeance had been exonerated he would no longer need that
bond of amnesty. Moreover, he knew now that this compact had been a rope
of sand to Bas Rowlett from the beginning, and would never be anything
else. It only served to divert the plotter's activities and treacheries
into subtler channels--and when the sun set to-day there would be either
no Bas Rowlett to bind or no Parish Thornton to seek to bind him.

Then he rode home.

Thornton entered his own house silently, but with the face of an
avenging spirit, and it was a face that told his story.

The rigid pose and the set jaw, the irreconcilable light in the eyes,
were all things that Dorothy understood at once and without explanation.
As she looked at her husband she thought, somehow, of a falcon or eagle
poised on a bare tree-top at a precipice edge. There was the same alert
restiveness as might have marked a bird of prey, gauging the blue
sky-reaches with predatory eye, and ready to strike with a winged bolt
of death.

Quietly, because the baby had just fallen asleep, she rose and laid the
child on the bright patterned coverlet of the fourposter, and she
paused, too, to brace herself with a glance into the cool shadows and
golden lights of the ample branches beyond the window.

Then she came back to the door and her voice was steady but low as she
said, "Ye've done found out who did hit. I kin read thet in yore eyes,
Ken."

He nodded, but until he had crossed the room and laid a hand on each of
her shoulders, he did not speak.

"Since ther fust day I ever seed ye, honey," he declared with a sort of
hushed fervour, "standin' up thar in ther winder, my heart hain't nuver
struck a beat save ter love ye--an' thet war jest erbout a y'ar ago."

"Hit's been all my life, Ken," she protested. "Ther time thet went ahead
of thet didn't skeercely count atall."

Her voice trembled, and the meeting of their gaze was a caress. Then he
said: "When I wedded with ye out thar--under thet old tree--with ther
sun shinin' down on us--I swore ter protect ye erginst all harm."

"Hain't ye always done thet, Ken?"

"Erginst all ther perils I knowed erbout--yes," he answered, slowly,
then his tone leaped into vehemence. "But I didn't suspicion--until
terday--thet whilst I was away from ye--ye hed ter protect yoreself
erginst Bas Rowlett."

"Bas Rowlett!" the name broke from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic
heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not
know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning
had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted,
that reckoning belonged to to-day and would be neither diverted nor
postponed.

Her old fear of what the consequence would be if this revelation came to
his knowledge rose chokingly and overpoweringly.

Why had she not killed Bas herself before Sim Squires came in to
interfere that day? Why had she allowed the moment to pass when a stroke
of the blade might have ended the peril?

Atavistic impulses and contradictions of her blood welled confusedly up
within her. This was her own battle and she wanted to fight it out for
herself. If Rowlett were to be executed it should be she herself who
sent him to his accounting. She was torn, as she stood there, between
her terror for the man she loved and her hatred for the other--a hatred
which clamoured for blood appeasement.

But she shook her head and sought to resolve the conflicting emotions.

"I hid ther truth from ye, Ken," she said, "because I feared fer what
mout happen ef ye found out. I wasn't affrighted of Bas fer myself--but
I war fer _you_. I knowed ye trusted him an' ef ye diskivered he war a
traitor----"

"Traitor!" the man interrupted her, passionately, "he hain't never
deluded me es ter thet since ther fust night I laid in thet thar bed
atter I'd been shot. Him an' me come ter an' understandin' then an'
thar--but he swore ter hold his hand twell we could meet man ter man,
jest ther two of us."

A bitter laugh came with his pause, then he went on: "I 'lowed you
trusted him an' I didn't seek ter rouse up no needless fears in yore
heart--but now we both knows ther truth, an' I'm startin' out d'reckly
ter sottle ther score fer all time."

Dorothy Thornton caught his shoulders and her eyes were full of
pleading.

"Ye've done built up a name fer yoreself, Ken," she urged with burning
fervour. "Hit war me thet told ye, thet day when Aaron Capper an' them
others come, thet ye couldn't refuse ter lead men--but I told ye, too,
ye war bounden ter lead 'em to'rds peace an' law. Ye've done led 'em
thetaway, Ken, an' folks trusts ye, Harpers an' Doanes alike. Now ye
kain't afford ter start in leadin' 'em wrong--ye kain't afford ter dirty
yore hands with bloodshed, Ken. Ye kain't afford ter do hit!"

The man stood off looking at her with a love that was almost awe, with
an admiration that was almost idolatry, but the obduracy persisted in
his eyes.

"Partly ye're talkin' from conscience thet don't traffic ner barter with
no evil, Dorothy," he made sober response, "an' partly, too, ye're
talkin', woman-fashion, outen a fear thet seeks ter shield yore man. I
honours both them things, but this time I hain't follerin' no fox-fire
an' I kain't be stayed." He paused, and the hand that closed over hers
was firm and resolute for all the tenderness of its pressure.

"Hit's warfare now ter ther hilt of ther knife, honey, but hit's ther
warfare of them that strives fer decency an' law erginst them thet
murders in ther night-time. An' yit ther riders has good men amongst
'em, too--men thet's jest sorely misguided. I reckon ye don't know thet,
either, but Bas Rowlett's ther one body thet brought 'em ter life an'
eggs 'em on. When he dies ther riders'll fall apart like a string of
beads thet's been cut in two. Terday I aims ter cut ther thread."

The woman stood trembling with the fervour of outraged indignation as he
told her all he knew, but when he finished she nodded her head, in a
finale of exhortation, toward the bedroom. Possibly she was not unlike
the lawyer whose duty is to argue for legal observances even though his
heart cries out mutinously for a hotter course.

"Air hit wuth while--orphanin' him--an' widderin' me fer--Ken?"

"Hit's wuth while his growin' up ter know thet he wasn't fathered by no
craven, ner yit borne by a woman thet faltered," answered Parish
Thornton; then he set Hump Doane's rifle in the corner and took out his
own with the particularity of a man who, for a vital task, dares trust
no tool save that with which he is most familiar.

When he had gone Dorothy sat down in her chair again. She remembered
that other time when her mind had reeled under anxieties almost too
poignant for endurance. Now she was nursing a baby, and she must hold
herself in hand. Her eyes wandered about the place, seeking something
upon which her mind might seize for support, and at length she rose and
ran up the boxed-in stairway to the attic.

When she came back again to the bedroom she carried the journal that had
been so mysteriously lost and recovered, and then she drew a chair to
the window and opened the document where she had left off in her
reading. But often she laid the book absent-mindedly in her lap to
listen with an ear turned toward the bed, and often, too, she looked out
into the spreading softness of golden-green laced through by dove-gray
and sepia-brown branches on which played baffling reflexes of soft and
mossy colours.

       *       *       *       *       *

Parish Thornton did not approach the house of his enemy from the front.
He came upon it from behind and held to the shelter of the laurel as
long as that was possible, but he found a padlock on the door and all
the windows closed.

For an hour or more he waited, but there was no return of the owner and
Parish carried his search elsewhere.

Bas, he reflected, was busy to-day conferring with those leaders of the
riders from whom he ostensibly stood aloof, and the man who was hunting
him down followed trail after trail along roads that could be ridden and
"traces" that must be tramped. Casual inquiries along the highway served
only to send him hither and yon on a series of wild goose chases.

This man and that had seen Bas Rowlett, and "Bas he seemed right
profoundly shocked an' sore distressed," they said. They gave Thornton
the best directions they could, and as the clan-leader rode on they
nodded sage heads and reflected that it was both natural and becoming
that he should be seeking for Bas at such a time. The man who had been
murdered last night was Rowlett's kinsman and Thornton was Rowlett's
friend. Both men were prominent, and it was a time for sober counsel.
The shadow of the riders lay over the country broader and deeper than
that which the mountains cast across the valleys.

So from early forenoon until almost sunset Parish Thornton went doggedly
and vainly on with his man-hunt. Yet he set his teeth and swore that he
must not fail; that he could not afford to fail. He would go home and
have supper with Dorothy, then start out afresh.

He was threading a blind and narrow pathway homeward between laurel
thickets, when he came to the spot where he and Bas Rowlett had stood on
that other June night a year ago, the spot where the shot rang out that
had wounded him.

There he paused in meditation, summing up in his mind the many things
that had happened since then, and the sinister strands of Rowlett's
influence that ran defacingly through the whole pattern.

Below that shelf of rock, kissed by the long shadow of the mountain, lay
the valley with its loop of quietly moving water. The roof of his own
house was a patch of gray and the canopy of his own tree a spot of green
beneath him. At one end, the ledge on which he stood broke away in a
precipice that dropped two hundred feet, in sheer and perpendicular
abruptness, to a rock-strewn gorge below. Elsewhere it shelved off into
the steep slope down which Bas had carried him.

Suddenly Thornton raised his head with abrupt alertness. He thought he
had heard the breaking of a twig somewhere in the thicket, and he drew
back until he himself was hidden.

Five minutes later the man he had spent the day seeking emerged alone
from the woods and stood ten yards from his own hiding place.

This was a coincidence too remarkable and providential to be credited,
thought Thornton, yet it was no coincidence at all. Bas knew of the
drama that was to be played out that night--a drama of which he was the
anonymous author--and he was coming, in leisurely fashion, to a lookout
from which he could witness its climax while he still held to his pose
of detachment.

The master-conspirator seated himself on a boulder and wiped his brow,
for he had been walking fast. A little later he glanced up, to see bent
upon him a pair of silent eyes whose message could not be misread. In
one hand Thornton held a cocked revolver, in the other a sealed
envelope.

Rowlett rose to his feet and went pale, and Parish advanced holding the
paper out to him.

"Ther day hes come, Bas," said Thornton with the solemnity of an
executioner, "when I don't need this pledge no longer. I aims ter give
hit back ter ye now."




CHAPTER XXXIII


One might have counted ten while the picture held with no other sound
than the breathing of two men and the strident clamour of a blue-jay in
a hickory sapling.

Rowlett had not been ordered to raise his hands, but he held them
ostentatiously still and wide of his body. The revolver in its holster
under his armpit might as well have been at home, for even had both
started with an equal chance in the legerdemain of drawing and firing,
he knew his master, and as it was, he stood covered.

Now, too, he faced an adversary no longer fettered by any pledge of
private forbearance.

This, then, was the end--and it arrived just a damnable shade too soon,
when with the falling of dusk he might have witnessed the closing scenes
of his enemy's doom. To-morrow there would be no Parish Thornton to
dread, but also to-morrow there would be no Bas Rowlett to enjoy
immunity from fear.

"Hit war jest erbout one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable
inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap
hes done come ter pass since then--don't ye want yore envellip, Bas?"

Silently and with a heavily moving hand, Rowlett reached out and took
the proffered paper which bore his incriminating admissions and
signature, but he made no answer.

"Thet other time," went on Thornton with maddening deliberation, "hit
was in ther moonlight thet us two stud hyar, an' when ye told me ye war
befriendin' me I war fool enough ter b'lieve ye. Don't ye recollict how
we turned and looked down, an' ye p'inted out thet big tree--in front of
ther house?"

The intriguer ground his teeth, but from the victor's privilege of
verbose taunting he had no redress. After all, it would be a transient
victory. Parish might "rub it in" now, but in a few hours he would be
dangling at a rope's end.

"Ye showed hit ter me standin' thar high an' widespread in ther
moonlight, an' I seems ter recall thet ye 'lowed ye'd cut hit down ef ye
hed yore way. Ye hain't hed yore way, though, Bas, despite Satan's
unflaggin' aid. Ther old tree still stands thar a-castin' hits shade
over a place thet's come ter be my home--a place ye've done vainly
sought ter defile."

Still Rowlett did not speak. There was a grim vestige of comfort left in
the thought that when the moon shone again Parish Thornton would have
less reason to love that tree.

"Ye don't seem no master degree talkative terday, Bas," suggested the
man with the pistol, which was no longer held levelled but
swinging--though ready to leap upward. Then almost musingly he added,
"An' thet's a kinderly pity, too, seein' ye hain't nuver goin' ter hev
no other chanst."

"Why don't ye shoot an' git done?" barked Rowlett with a leer of
desperation. "Pull yore trigger an' be damned ter ye--we'll meet in hell
afore long anyhow."

When Thornton spoke again the naked and honest wrath that had smouldered
for a year like a banked fire at last leaped into untrammelled blazing.

"I don't strike down even a man like _you_ outen sheer hate an'
vengeance," he declared, with an electrical vibrance of pitch. "Hit's a
bigger thing then thet an' ye've got ter know in full what ye dies for
afore I kills ye--ye hain't deluded me as fur es ye thinks ye have--I
knows ye betrayed me in Virginny; I knows ye shot at old Jim an'
fathered ther infamies of ther riders; I knows ye sought ter fo'ce
yoreself on Dorothy; but I didn't git thet knowledge from _her_. She
kep' her bargain with ye."

"A man right often thinks he knows things when he jest suspicions 'em,"
Bas reminded him, with a forced and factitious calm summoned for his
final interview, but the other waved aside the subterfuge.

"Right often--yes--but not always, an' this hain't one of them
delusions. I knows ther full sum an' substance of yore infamies, an' yit
I've done held my hand. Mebby ye thought my wrath war coolin'. Ef ye did
ye thought wrong!"

Parish Thornton drew a long breath and the colour gradually went out of
his brown face, leaving it white and rapt in an exaltation of passion.

"I've been bidin' my time an' my time hes come," he declared in a voice
that rang like a bronze bell. "When I kills ye I does a holy act. Hit's
a charity ter mankind an' womankind--an' yit some foreparent bred hit
inter me ter be a fool, an' I've got ter go on bein' one."

A note of hopefulness, incredulous, yet quickening with a new lease on
courage, flashed into the gray despair of the conspirator's mind and he
demanded shortly:

"What does ye mean?"

Thornton recognized that grasping at hope, and laughed ironically.

"I hain't goin' ter shoot ye down like ye merits," he said, "an' yit I
misdoubts ef hit's so much because I've got ter give ye a chanst, atter
all, es ther hunger ter see yore life go out under my bare fingers."

Slowly dying hope had its redawning in Bas Rowlett's face. His
adversary's strength and quickness were locally famous, but he, too,
was a giant in perfect condition, and the prize of life was worth a good
fight.

He stood now with hands held high while Thornton disarmed him and flung
his pistol and knife far backward into the thicket. His own weapon, the
Harper leader still held.

"Now, me an' you are goin' ter play a leetle game by ther name of
'craven an' damn fool'," Thornton enlightened him with a grim smile.
"I'm ther damn fool. Hit's fist an' skull, tooth an' nail, or anything
else ye likes, but fust I'm goin' ter put this hyar gun of mine in a
place whar ye kain't git at hit, an' then one of us is goin' ter fling
t'other one offen thet rock-clift whar she draps down them two hundred
feet. Does ye like thet play, Bas?"

"I reckon I'll do my best," said Rowlett, sullenly; "I hain't skeercely
got no rather in ther matter nohow."

Thornton stripped off his coat and rolled his sleeves high and the other
man followed suit. Bas even grinned sardonically in appreciation when
the other at length thrust his pistol under a rock which it strained his
strength to lift. The man who got that weapon out would need to be one
who had time and deliberation at his disposal--not one who snatched it
up in any short-winded interval of struggle.

Then the two stood glaring into each other's faces with the naked
savagery of wild beasts, and under the stress of their hate-lust the
whites of their eyes were already bloodshot and fever-hot with
murder-bent.

Yet with an impulse that came through even that red fog of fury Parish
Thornton turned his head and looked for the fraction of an instant down
upon the gray roof and the green tree where the shadows lay lengthed in
the valley--and in that half second of diverted gaze Rowlett launched
himself like a charging bull, with head down to ram his adversary's
solar plexus and with arms outstretched for a bone-breaking grapple.

It was a suddenness which even with suddenness expected came bolt-like,
and Thornton, leaping sidewise, caught its passing force and stumbled,
but grappled and carried his adversary down with him. The two rolled in
an embrace that strained ribs inward on panting lungs, leg locking leg,
and fingers clutching for a vulnerable hold. But Thornton slipped
eel-like out of the chancery that would have crushed him into
helplessness and sprang to his feet, and if Rowlett was slower, it was
by only a shade of difference.

They stood, with sweat already flowing in tiny freshets out of their
pores and eyes blazing with murderous fire. They crouched and circled,
advancing step by step, each warily sparring for an advantage and ready
to plunge in or leap sidewise. Then came the impact of bone and flesh
once more, and both went down, Thornton's face pressed against that of
his enemy as they fell, and Rowlett opened and clamped his jaws as does
a bull-dog trying for a grip upon the jugular.

That battle was homerically barbaric and starkly savage. It was fought
between two wild creatures who had shed their humanity: one the stronger
and more massive of brawn; the other more adroit and resourceful. But
the teeth of the conspirator closed on the angle of the jawbone instead
of the neck--and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and
writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of
dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While
he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed
to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch of
darkening sky went black.

It was only the collapse of the human mass in his arms into dead weight
that brought Parish Thornton again out of his mania and back to
consciousness. The battle was over, and as he drew his arms away his
enemy sank shapeless and limp at his feet.

For a few seconds more Thornton stood rocking on unsteady legs, then,
with a final and supreme effort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight
that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid.

With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man
from side to side, gaining momentum.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-shiny and
tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett
outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock.

How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now,
Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which
there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging
over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon
him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol--so there must have
been time enough for that.

But his perplexed brain reeled to the realization that he still lay up
here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken
two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning
consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity.

But Thornton's unaccountable whims had flown at another tangent.

"Git up, Bas," he commanded, briefly, "yore life b'longs ter me. I won
hit--an' ye're goin' ter die--but my fingers don't ache no more fer a
holt on yore throat--they're satisfied."

"What air--ye goin' ter do, now?" Rowlett found words hard to form; and
the victor responded promptly, "I've done concluded ter take ye down
thar, afore ye dies, an' make ye crave Dorothy's pardon on yore bended
knees. Ye owes hit ter her."

Slowly Rowlett dragged himself to a sitting posture. His incredulous
senses wanted to sing out in exultation, but he forced himself to demur
with surly obduracy.

"Hain't hit enough ter kill me without humiliatin' me, too?"

"No, hit hain't enough fer me an' hit's too tardy fer _you_ ter make no
terms now."

Bas Rowlett exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for
taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle
of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come
and the moon had risen, it would prove not only a respite but a full
pardon--capped with a reserved climax of triumph.

Down there at that house the mob would soon come, and circumstance would
convert him, at a single turn of the wheel, from humbled victim to the
avenger ironically witnessing the execution of his late victor.

After a while he rose and stood experimentally on his legs.

"I reckon I kin walk now," he said, drearily, "ef so be ye lets me go
slow--I hain't got much of my stren'th back yit."

"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste," responded Thornton; "we've got all
night afore us."

       *       *       *       *       *

When they reached the house, it stood mistily bulked among shadows, with
its front door open upon an unlighted room.

The men had tramped down that slope in silence, and they crossed the
threshold in silence, too, the captive preceding his captor; and the
householder paused to bolt the door behind him.

Then, holding a vigilant eye on the forced guest who had not spoken,
Thornton lighted a lamp and backed to the closed bedroom door at whose
sill he had seen a slender thread of brightness. In all his movements he
went with a wary slowness, as though he were held by a cord, and the
cord was the line of direct glance that he never permitted to deviate
from the face of his prisoner.

Now while his right hand still fondled the revolver, he groped with his
left for the latch and opened the door at his back.

"Dorothy," he called in a low voice, "I wisht ye'd come in hyar, honey."

From within he heard a sound like a low moan; but he knew it was a sigh
of relief loosening tight nerve cords that had been binding his wife's
heart in suspense.

"Thank God, ye're back, Ken," she breathed. "Air ye all right--an'
unharmed?"

"All right an' unharmed," he responded, as he stepped to the side of the
door frame and stood there a rigid and unmoving sentinel.

But when Dorothy came to the threshold, she took in at once the whole
picture, pregnant with significance: the glint of lamplight on the ready
revolver, the relentless, tooth-marked face of her husband, and the
figure of the vanquished plotter with its powerful shoulders hunched
forward and its head hanging.

On the mantel ticked the small tin clock, which Bas Rowlett watched from
the tail of a furtive eye.

As Dorothy Thornton stood in gracious slenderness against the background
of the lighted door with a nimbus about her head, she was all feminine
delicacy and allurement. But in that moment she stiffened to an
overwhelming rush of memories which incited her to a transport of wrath
for which she had no words.

She saw Bas Rowlett stripped naked to the revolting bareness of his
unclean soul, and she drew back with a shudder of loathing and
unmoderated hate.

"Why did ye dally with him, Ken?" she demanded, fiercely; "don't ye know
thet whilst ye lets him live yere jest handlin' an' playin' with a
rattlesnake?"

"He hain't got long ter live," came the coldly confident response, "but
afore he dies, he wants ter crave yore pardon, Dorothy, an' he wants ter
do hit kneelin' down."

Bas Rowlett shot a sidelong glance at the clock. Time was soul and
essence of the matter now and minutes were the letters that spelled life
and death. He listened tensely, too, and fancied that he heard a
whippoorwill.

There were many whippoorwills calling out there in the woods but he
thought this was a double call and that between its whistlings a man
might have counted five. Of that, however, he could not be sure.

"I hain't got no choice, Dorothy," whined the man, whose craven soul was
suffering acutely as he fenced for delay--delay at any cost. "Even ef I
hed, though, I'd crave yore pardon of my own free will--but afore I does
hit, thar's jest a few words I'd love ter say."

Dorothy Thornton stood just inside the door. Pity, mercy, and tenderness
were qualities as inherent in her as perfume in a wild flower, but there
was something else in her as well--as there is death in some perfumes.
If he had been actually a poisonous reptile instead of a snake soul in
the body of a man Bas Rowlett could have been to her, just then, no less
human.

"Yes," she said, slowly, as a memory stirred the confession of her
emotions, "thar's one thing I'd like ter say, too--but hit hain't in no
words of my own--hit's somethin' thet was said a long spell back."

From the mantel shelf she produced the old journal, and opened its
yellowed pages.

"I've been settin' hyar," said Dorothy Thornton, in a strained quietness
of voice, "readin' this old book mighty nigh all day--I _hed_ ter read
hit--" her voice broke there, then went steadily on again--"or else go
mad, whilst I was waitin'--waitin' ter know whether Ken hed kilt ye or
_you'd_ kilt _him_." Again she paused for a moment and turned her eyes
to her husband. "This book sheds light on a heap of things thet we all
needs ter know erbout--hit tells how his foreparent sought ter kill ther
tree thet our ancestors planted--an' hit's kinderly like an indictment
in ther high co'te."

While Dorothy Thornton accused the blood sprung from the renegade and
his Indian squaw out of those ancient pages the men listened.

To the husband it was incitement and revelation. The tree out there
standing warder in the dark became, as he listened with engrossed
interest, more than ever a being of sentient spirit and less than ever a
thing of mere wood and leaf.

To Bas Rowlett it should have been an indictment, or perhaps an excuse,
with its testimony of blood strains stronger than himself--but from its
moral his mind was wandering to a more present and gripping interest.

Now he was sure he had heard the double whippoorwill call! In five
minutes more he would be saved--yet five minutes might be too long.

Dorothy paused. "Ye sees," she said with a deep gravity, "from ther
start, in this country, our folks hev been despitefully tricked an'
misused by ther offspring of thet Indian child thet our foreparents tuck
in an' befriended. From ther start, ther old tree hes held us safe with
hits charm erginst evil! Ever since----"

She broke off there and paused with astonished eyes that turned to the
door, upon which had sounded a commanding rap. Then she rose and went
over cautiously to open it an inch or two and look out.

But when she raised the latch a man, rendered uncognizable by a black
slicker that cloaked him to his ankles and a masked face, threw it wide,
so that the woman was forced, stumbling, back. Then through the opening
poured a half dozen others in like habiliments of disguise.

All held outthrust rifles, and that one who had entered first shouted:
"All right, boys, ther door's open."

Parish Thornton had not been able to shoot at the initial instant
because Dorothy stood in his way. After that it was useless--and he saw
Bas Rowlett step forward with a sudden change of expression on his pasty
face.

"Now, then," said Bas, exultantly, "hit's a gray hoss of another
colour!"




CHAPTER XXXIV


When Parish Thornton had brought his captive down the slope that
afternoon he had left his rifle in safe concealment, not wishing to
hamper himself with any weapon save the revolver, which had never left
his palm until this moment.

Now with the instant gone in which he might have used it to stem the
tide of invasion, he was not fool enough to fire. A silent and steady
current of black-clad humanity was still flowing inward across the
threshold, and every man was armed.

Yet at the ring of victorious elation in Bas Rowlett's voice the impulse
to strike down that master of deceit before his own moment came almost
overpowered him--almost but not quite.

He knew that the bark of his weapon would bring chorused retort from
other firearms, and that Dorothy might fall. As it was, the mob had come
for him alone, so he walked over and laid his revolver quietly down on
the table.

But the girl had seen the by-play and had rightly interpreted its
meaning. For her the future held no promise--except a tragedy she could
not face, and for a distracted moment she forgot even her baby as she
reacted to the bitterness of her vendetta blood. So she caught up Hump
Doane's rifle that still rested against the wall near her hand and threw
the muzzle to Rowlett's breast.

"I'll git _you_, anyhow," she screamed between clenched teeth, and it
was a promise she would have kept; a promise that would have turned
that room into a shambles had not one of the masked figures been
dexterous enough in his intervention to reach her and snatch the gun
from her grasp--still unfired.

Dorothy stepped back then, her eyes staring with the fury of failure as
she gazed at the man who had disarmed her--while one by one other dark
and uniformed figures continued to enter and range themselves about the
wall.

The night-rider who held the captured rifle had not spoken, but the
woman's eye, as it ranged up and down, caught sight of a shoe--and she
recognized a patch. That home-mending told her that the enemy who had
balked her in the last poor comfort of vengeance was Sim Squires, a
member of her own household, and her lips moved in their impulse to call
out his name in denunciation and revilement.

They moved and then, in obedience to some sudden afterthought, closed
tight again without speaking, but her eyes did speak in silent anathema
of scorn--and though she did not know or suspect it, the thoughts
mirrored in them were read and interpreted by the mob-leader.

Dorothy crossed the floor of the room, ringed with its border of grimly
cloaked humanity, and took her stand by the side of the man who leaned
stoically at the corner of his hearth. At least she could do that much
in declaration of loyalty.

Thornton himself folded his arms and, as his eyes ran over the anonymous
beings who had come to kill him, he fell back on the only philosophy
left him: that of dying with such as unwhining demeanour as should rob
them of triumph in their gloating.

At length the door closed, and it was with a dramatic effect of climax
that the last man who entered bore, coiled on his arm, the slender but
stout rope which was to be both actual instrument and symbol of their
purpose there.

Parish felt Dorothy, whose two hands were clasped about his folded arm,
wince and shudder at the sinister detail, and unwilling to remain
totally passive, even with the end so near and so certain, he chose to
speak before they spoke to him.

"I knows right well what ye've come fer, men," he said, and in the level
steadiness of his voice was more of disdain than abjectness, "but I
hain't got no lamentation ter make, an' somehow I hain't es much
terrified as mebby I ought ter be."

"Ye've got a right good license ter be terrified," announced the
disguised voice of the masked leader, "onlessen death's a thing ye
favours over life. Even ef ye does thet, hangin's a right shameful way
ter die."

But Parish Thornton shook his head.

"Hit hain't hangin' hitself thet's shameful," he corrected the other,
"hit's what a man hangs fer." He paused, then with the note of entire
seriousness he inquired: "I reckon ye don't aim ter deny me ther
privilege of sayin' a few words fust, does ye? I've always heered thet
they let a man talk afore he got hung."

"Go on," growled the other, "but mebby ye'd better save hit, twell we've
done tried ye. We aims ter give ye a hearin' afore ye dies."

Thornton inclined his head gravely, more sensible of the clutching grasp
of his wife's fingers on his tensed biceps than of more fateful matters.

"When ye gits through hangin' me," he told them by way of valedictory,
"I wants ye ter recall thet thar's somethin' ye hain't kilt yit in these
hills--an' won't nuver kill. Thar's a sperit that some of us hes
fostered hyar, and hit'll go on jest ther same without us--hit's a
bigger thing then any man, an' hit's goin' ter dog ye till hit gits ye
all--every sneakin' mother's son an' every murderin' man-jack of yore
sorry outfit! What things we've ondertook hain't a-goin' ter die with me
ner with no other man ye gang murders--an' when ther high co'te sets
next time, thar'll be soldiers hyar thet hain't none affrighted by ther
repute ye b'ars!"

He paused, then added soberly, yet with a conviction that carried
persuasiveness: "Thet's all I've got ter say, an' albeit _I'm_ ther
victim right now, God in Heaven knows I pities all of ye from ther
bottom of my heart--because I'm confident that amongst ye right now air
some siv'ral thet, save fer bein' deluded by traitors an' cravens, air
good men."

The individual who was acting as spokesman bent forward and thrust his
face close to that of the man they had come to lynch.

"Nuther yore brag nor yore threats hain't agoin' ter avail ye none,
Parish Thornton--because yore time is done come. Thar's a hugeous big
tree astandin' out thar by yore front door, an' afore an hour's gone by,
ye're goin' ter be swingin' from hit. Folks norrates thet yore woman an'
you sets a heap of store by thet old walnuck an' calls hit ther roof
tree, an' believes hit holds a witch-spell ter safeguard ye.... We're
goin' ter see kin hit save ye now."

He paused, and at the mention of the walnut Dorothy clutched her hands
to her breast and caught her breath, but the man went on:

"Ye hain't no native-born man hyar, Thornton, albeit ye've done sought
ter run ther country like some old-time king or lord beyond ther
water.... Ye hain't nuthin' but a trespassin' furriner, nohow--an' we
don't love no tyrant. This roof-tree hain't yourn by no better right
then ther nest thet ther cuckoo steals from ther bird thet built
hit...."

Again he paused, then, added with a sneer:

"We don't even grant ye ownership of thet old walnuck tree--but we aims
ter loan hit ter ye long enough ter hang on." He halted and looked about
the place, then with cheap theatricism demanded:

"Who accuses this man? Let him stand ter ther front."

Three or four dark figures moved unhurriedly toward the centre of the
circle, but one who had not been rehearsed in his part stepped with a
more eager haste to the fore, and that one was Bas Rowlett.

"I don't know es I've rightly got no license ter speak up--amongst men
that I kain't _ree_cognize," he made hypocritical declaration, "but yit,
I kain't hardly hold my peace, because ye come in good season fer
me--an' saved my life."

After a momentary pause, as if waiting for permission to be heard, he
went on:

"This man thet I saved from death one time when somebody sought ter kill
him laywayed me an hour or so back, an' atter he'd done disarmed an'
maltreated me, he fotched me home hyar ter insult me some more in front
of his woman--afore he kilt me in cold blood.... He done them things
because I wouldn't censure an' disgust you men thet calls yoreself ther
riders."

Parish Thornton smiled derisively as he listened to that indictment,
then he capped it with an ironic amendment.

"We all knows ye're ther true leader of this murder-gang, Bas--ye don't
need ter be bashful erbout speakin' out yore mind ter yore own slaves."

Rowlett wheeled, his swarthy face burning to its high cheekbones with a
flush that spread and dyed his bull-like neck.

"All right, then," he barked out, at last casting aside all subterfuge.
"Ef they h'arkens ter what I says I'll tell 'em ter string ye up, hyar
an' now, ter thet thar same tree you an' yore woman sots sich store by!
I'll tell 'em ter teach Virginny meddlers what hit costs ter come
trespassin' in Kaintuck." He was breathing thickly with the excited
reaction from his recent terror and despair.

"Men," he bellowed, almost jubilantly, "don't waste no time--ther
gallows tree stands ready. Hit's right thar by ther front porch."

Dorothy had listened in a stunned silence. Her face was parchment-pale
but she was hardly able yet to grasp the sudden turn of events to
irremediable tragedy.

The irrevocable meaning of the thing she had feared in her dreams seemed
too vast to comprehend when it drew near her, and she had not clearly
realized that minutes now--and few of them--stood between her husband
and his death. Her scornful eyes had been dwelling on the one figure she
had recognized: the figure of Sim Squires, whom it had never occurred to
her to distrust.

But when several night-riders pushed her brusquely from her place beside
her man, and drew his hands together at his back and began whipping
cords about his unresisting wrists, the horror broke on her in its
ghastly fullness and nearness.

The stress they laid on the mention of the tree had brought her out of
the coma of her dazed condition into an acute agony of reality.

There was a fiendish symbolism in their intent.... The man they called a
usurper must die on the very tree that gave their home its significance,
and no other instrument of vengeance would satisfy them. The old
bitterness had begun generations ago when the renegade who "painted his
face and went to the Indians" had sought to destroy it, and happiness
with it. Now his descendant was renewing the warfare on the spot where
it had begun, and the tree was again the centre of the drama.

Dorothy Thornton thought that her heart would burst with the terrific
pressure of her despair and helplessness.

Then her knees weakened and she would have fallen had she not reeled
back against the corner of the mantel, and a low, heart-broken moan
came, long drawn, from her lips.

There was nothing to be done--yet every moment before death was a moment
of life, and submission meant death. In the woman's eyes blazed an
unappeasable hunger for battle, and as they met those of her husband
they flashed the unspoken exhortation: "Don't submit ... die fighting!"

It was the old dogma of mountain ferocity, but Parish Thornton knew its
futility and shook his head. Then he answered her silent incitement in
words:

"Hit's too late, Dorothy.... I'd only git you kilt as well as me.... I
reckon they hain't grudgin' _you_ none, es things stands now."

But the mob leader laughed, and turning his face to the wife, he
ruthlessly tore away even that vestige of reassurance.

"We hain't makin' no brash promises erbout ther woman, Thornton," he
brutally announced. "I read in her eyes jest now thet she _ree_co'nized
one of us--an' hit hain't safe ter know too much."

They were still working at the ropes on the prisoner's wrists and the
knots were not yet secure. The man had gauged his situation and resigned
himself to die like a slaughter-house animal, instead of a mountain
lion--in order to save his wife. Now they denied him that.

Suddenly his face went black and his eyes became torrential with fury.

His lunging movement was as swift and powerful as a tiger-spring, and
his transition from quiet to earthquake violence as abrupt and deadly as
the current of the electric chair.

His shoulders and wrists ripped at their bonds, and the men busied about
them were hurled away as with a powder blast. The arms came free and the
hands seized up a chair. A human tornado was at work in a space too
crowded for the use of firearms; and when the insufficient weapon had
been shattered into splinters and fallen in worthless bits there were
broken crowns and prostrate figures in that room.

Faces were marked with bruise and blood and laceration--but the odds
were too overwhelmingly uneven, and at last they bore him down, pounded
and kicked, to the puncheon floor, and when they lifted him to his feet
again the ropes that fastened him were firm enough to hold.

Then Parish Thornton spoke again: spoke with a passion that seemed
almost as destructive as the short-lived chair he had been swinging
flail-like, though the panting exertion made his voice come in
disjointed and sob-like gasps.

"Ye hain't done yit," he shouted into their maddened faces as they
crowded and yapped about him. "By dint of numbers ye've done tuck me
alive, but thar's still a reckonin' ahead!"

Above the answering chorus of jeers rang his berserk fury of defiance.

"Ye kin go ahead an' hang me now--an' be damned ter ye! Ye kin even
murder a woman ef ye've got a mind ter--but thar's a baby in this house
thet's comin' ter manhood some day."

"Ye won't be hyar ter train him up fer vengeance," came the sneering
voice of Bas Rowlett who had stood clear of that conflict; and glaring
at him Thornton managed a bitter laugh.

"He won't need no trainin' up," he retorted. "Hit's bred in his blood
an' his bone ter hate snakes an' kill 'em. He's drunk hit in at his
mother's breast an' breathed hit in ther air.... He'll settle our scores
some day!"




CHAPTER XXXV


Sim Squires knew that when the brief farce of the trial took place he
would be called forward to testify with a few prearranged lies. In his
mouth was a pebble, put there to change his voice--but in his mutinous
heart was an obsession of craving to see Bas Rowlett in such a debased
position as that which Parish Thornton occupied--for, of all men, he
feared and hated Bas most.

This unrelished participation in the mob spirit was more abhorrent than
it had been before. The scorn of Dorothy's eyes had a scorpion sting
that he could not escape--and this woman had given his life an
atmosphere of friendliness and kindliness which it had not known before.

"Now," announced the masked spokesman, "we're well-nigh ready, an' thar
hain't no virtue in bein' dilitary--albeit we don't aim ter hang him
untried. Witness Number One, come forward."

Witness Number One was Sim Squires, and as though his tongue had been
stricken with sudden dumbness and his limbs with paralysis, he hung back
when he had been called. Slowly he looked at Parish Thornton, whose face
was pale, but set once more to the calm of resoluteness--and at the
ghost-terror and the lingering contempt in the deep and suffering eyes
of the wife.

"Thar's a man hyar in this room," began Sim Squires, "thet's done been
seekin' evi_dence_ erginst ther riders, an' he's done secured a lavish
of hit, too." So far, his words were running in expected grooves, and
as the voice went on a little indistinct because of the pebble under the
tongue, his impatient audience accorded him only a perfunctory
attention.

"He's done hed spies amongst ye an' he's got evi_dence_ thet no co'te
kain't fail ter convict on," proceeded the witness, slowly. "He aims ter
penitenshery _you_," his finger rose and settled, pointing toward the
man who had acted as spokesman, and who was Rick Joyce. Then it rose
again and fell on others, as Sim added, "an' _you_--an' _you_!"

"We don't aim ter give him no chanst," interrupted Joyce, and it was
then that Sim Squires branched into unanticipated ways.

Suddenly this amazing witness ripped off his mask and threw aside his
hat. Then he spat out the pebble that interfered with his enunciation
and annoyed him, and like the epilepsy victim who slides abruptly from
sane normality into his madness, the man became transformed. The
timidities that had fettered him and held him a slave to cowardice were
swept away like unconsidered drift on the tide of a passion that was
willing to court death, if vengeance could come first. He had definitely
crossed the line of allegiance and meant to swing the fatal fury of that
mob from one victim to another, or die in his effort to that end. His
eyes were the ember pupils of the madman or the martyr, his face was the
frenzied face of a man to whom ordinary considerations no longer count;
whose idea as fixed and single, and to whom personal consequences have
become unimportant. His body was rigid yet vibrant, and his voice rang
through the room as his finger rose and pointed into the face of Bas
Rowlett.

"Thet man," he shouted, "hes bore ther semblance of yore friend, but he
aims ter _dee_stroy ye.... I knows because I've done been his slave an'
he's told me so ... he aims ter hev ye murder Parish Thornton fer him
fust ... an' then ter penitenshery ye fer doin' his dirty work. Ye
hain't nothin' on God's green y'arth but only his dupes!"

Squires paused for breath, and instead of the clamour and outcry for
which he had braced himself he encountered a hushed stillness through
which he could hear the hammering of his own heart.

Rowlett had started to bellow out an enraged denial, but he had swiftly
reconsidered and chosen instead to treat the accusation with a quieter
and more telling contempt. Now he laughed derisively as he turned toward
Joyce.

"I reckon," he suggested, "I don't even need ter gainsay no sich damn
lie es thet, does I?"

But of late there had been so much traitorousness that no man knew whom
he could trust. Now to Rowlett's astonished discomfiture he recognized
the stern and ominous note of doubt in Joyce's response.

"Ef I was you, I wouldn't only gainsay hit, but I'd strive master hard
ter _prove_ my denial."

"I hain't done yit," shouted Sim with a new vigour of aggressiveness,
and at the sight of this human hurricane which had developed out of a
man heretofore regarded as unimportant, the tempest violence of the mob
hung suspended, inquisitive, astonished.

The tanned face of the witness had become pallid, but out of it his eyes
shot jets of fire, hysterical to madness, yet convincing in an
earnestness that transcended the fear of death and carried indubitable
conviction. His body shook with a palsy as he confronted the man whom,
next to Bas Rowlett, he had feared above all others; and now in evidence
of his impassioned sincerity he blurted out his own confession.

"I kilt Joe Joyce," announced Sim Squires, "an' I sought ter kill Parish
Thornton, too, when he fust come hyar, but I done both them deeds
because I didn't dast gainsay ther man thet bade me do 'em. His
bull-dozin' terrified me ... his power over me made me a craven, an' his
dollars in my pocket paid me fer them dasterdly jobs. Thet man war Bas
Rowlett thar!"

The leader of the mob stood for an instant with the stunned senses of an
ox struck by a cleaver, and after that first dumfounded moment he wanted
the truth, as a starving man wants food. Joe Joyce had been his nephew,
and if this witness were telling the truth it would not appease him to
take vengeance on the servant only. A more summary punishment was owing
to the master.

Now he gulped down the tight constriction of his throat and ordered, "Go
on! Tell hit all!"

Rowlett again thrust himself forward, but Rick Joyce, scarcely looking
at him, sent him reeling backward with an open-handed blow against his
chest.

With torrential and cascading onrush came the capitulation of the long
and black record against the master plotter from its beginning in
jealousy to its end in betrayal of the Ku Klux.

"He come over hyar when this man Thornton lay in jail an' sought ter
make love ter thet woman," shouted the frenzied witness, but Dorothy,
who had been leaning unnerved and dazed against the wall, raised a
warning hand and interrupted.

"Stop!" she shouted. "I've done told Parish all thet! Whatever he heers
erbout this man, he heers from me. We don't need no other testimony!"

Then it was that the room began to waver and spin about Dorothy
Thornton, until with the drone of the hired man's voice diminishing in
her ears she fell swooning, and was lifted to a chair.

When her eyes opened--even before they opened--she was conscious again
of that voice, but now it was one of dominating confidence, stinging
with invective; scourging with accusations that could be verified;
ripping away to its unbelievable nakedness all the falsity of Bas
Rowlett's record--a voice of triumph.

In the altered attitudes of the attentive figures the woman could read
that the accuser was no longer talking to a hostile audience, but to one
capriciously grown receptive, and educated to the deceits of the
accused. They knew now how Bas had craftily set the Harpers and the
Doanes at one another's throats, and how Thornton had tranquilized them;
they knew how their own grievances against the man they had come to hang
had been trumped up from carefully nourished misconceptions. But above
all that, they saw how they themselves had been dupes and tools,
encouraged to organize and jeopardize their necks only that they might
act as executioners of Rowlett's private enemy, and then be thrown to
the wolves of the law.

"I come inter this house," declared Sim Squires, "at Bas Rowlett's
behest, ter spy on Parish Thornton--an' I j'ined ther riders fer ther
same reason--but I'm done with lyin' now! Hit's Bas Rowlett thet made a
fool of me an' seeks ter make convicts outen _you_."

He paused; then wheeling once more he walked slowly, step by step, to
where Bas Rowlett stood cowering.

"Ye come hyar ter hang ther wrong man, boys," he shouted, "but ther
right man's hyar--ther rope's hyar, an' ther tree's hyar! Hang Bas
Rowlett!"

There was a silence of grim tension over the room when the accuser's
voice fell quiet after its staccato peroration of incitement. The masked
men gave no betrayal of final sentiment yet, and the woman rose
unsteadily from her chair and pressed her hands against the tumultuous
pounding of her heart. She could not still it while she waited for the
verdict, and scarcely dared yet to hope.

Rowlett had been long trusted, and had there been left in him the
audacity for ten adroitly used minutes of boldness, he might have been
heard that night in his own defence. But Bas had, back of all his brutal
aggressions, a soul-fibre of baseness and it had wilted.

Now, with every eye turned on him, with the scales of his fate still
trembling, the accused wretch cast furtive glances toward the door,
weighing and considering the chances of escape. He abandoned that as
hopeless, opened his lips and let his jaw sag, then crouched back as
though in the shadow of the room's corner he hoped to find concealment.

"Look at him, men!" shouted Sim Squires, following up the wreck of
arrogance who through years had brow-beaten him, and becoming in turn
himself the bully. "Look at him huddlin' thar like a whipped cur-dawg!
Hain't he done es good es made confession by ther guilty meanness in his
face?"

He paused, and then with a brutal laugh he struck the cowering Rowlett
across his mouth--a blow that he had dreamed of in his sleep but never
dared to think of when awake--and Rowlett condemned himself to death
when he flinched and failed to strike back.

"Jest now, men," rushed on the exhorter, "ye seed Thornton thar facin'
death--an' he showed ye how a man kin demean himself when he thinks his
time hes come. Take yore choice between them two--an' decide which one
needs hangin'!"

Then feeding on the meat of new authority, Sim Squires, who had always
been an underling before, seized up from the hearth, where the ashes
were dead, a charred stick--and it happened to be a bit of black walnut
that had grown and died on the tree which was about to become a
gallows.

With its blackened end Sim drew a line across the planks of the floor
between himself and Rick Joyce.

"Thar, now," he passionately importuned his hearers. "Thar hain't room
in this country fer a lot of warrin' enemies thet would all be friends
save fer mischief makers. Parish Thornton hes done admitted thar's good
men amongst ye, an' we've agreed ter punish them briggatty fellers thet
kilt Pete Doane, so thar hain't rightfully no grudge left outstandin'. I
takes up my stand on this side of thet line, along with Parish Thornton,
an' I summonses every man thet's decent amongst ye all ter come over
hyar an' stand with us. We aims ter hev our hangin' without no
_dee_fault, but with a diff'rent man swingin' on ther rope!"

For the space of forty seconds that seemed as many minutes a
thunder-brooding tension hung in the stillness of the room--then without
haste or excitement Rick Joyce took off his hat and dropped it to the
floor. After it he flung his mask, and when he had crossed the line, he
turned.

"Come on, men," he gave brusque and half-peremptory invitation, "this
hyar's whar we b'longs at."

At first they responded singly and hesitantly, but soon it was a small
stampede--save for those who kept guard at the doors--and ten minutes
later Parish Thornton stood free of limb and Bas Rowlett trembled, putty
pale, in the centre of the room with bound wrists and a noose draped
across his shoulders.

"I only asks one thing of ye," faltered Bas, from whose soul had oozed
the last drop of manly resistance, "I come hyar ter crave this woman's
pardon--I still wants ter do thet--without nobody else ter heer what I
says."

"Ef she's willin' ter listen, we'll let ye talk," acceded Squires, who
found himself unchallenged spokesman now. "But we won't take no chances
with ye. When ther rope's over ther limb an' everything's ready, then
ye kin hev yore say."

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside the night was as gracious as had been the last, when Old Hump
Doane had sat waiting vainly for the return of his son; but across the
moonlit sky drifted squadrons of fleecy cloud sails, and through the
plumed head of the mighty walnut sounded the restive whisper of a
breeze.

The house stood squarely blocked with cobalt shadows about it, and the
hills were brooding in blue-black immensities--but over the valley was a
flooding wash of platinum and silver.

Fragrances and quiet cadences stole along the warm current, but the song
of the whippoorwill was genuine now, and plaintive with a saddened
sweetness.

The walnut tree itself, a child of the forest that had, through
generations, been the friend of man, stood like a monument in the
silence and majesty of its own long memories.

Under its base, where the roots sank deep into the foundations of the
enduring hills, slept the dead who had loved it long ago. Perhaps in its
pungent and aromatic sap ran something of the converted life and essence
that had been their blood. Its bole, five feet of stalwart diameter,
rose straight and tapering to the first right-angle limbs, each in
itself almost a tree. Its multitude of lance-head leaves swept outward
and upward in countless succession to the feathery crests that stirred
seventy feet overhead--seeming to brush the large, low-hanging stars
that the moon had dimmed.

All was tranquil and idyllic there--until the house door opened and a
line of men filed out, bringing to his shameful end a human creature who
shambled with the wretchedness of broken nerves.

Over the lowest branch, with business-like precision, Sim Squires
pitched a stone on the end of a long cord, and to the cord he fastened
the rope's end. All that was needed now was the weight which the rope
was to lift, and in the blue-ink shadow that mercifully cloaked it and
made it vague they placed the bound figure of their man.




CHAPTER XXXVI


As though to mask a picture of such violence the tree's heavy canopy
made that spot one of Stygian murk, and even the moon hid its face just
then, so that the world went black, and the stars seemed more brilliant
against their inky velvet. But the light had held until the grim
preparations were finished, and then when Bas Rowlett had taken his
appointed place, tethered and wearing the hempen loop, when the other
end of the long line had been passed through the broken slat of the
closed window shutters, where it would be held by many hands in
assurance against escape, Sim Squires kept his promise.

His followers trooped callously back into the house and he himself
remained there, on watch, only until with the stiffness of a sleep
walker Dorothy Thornton appeared for a moment in the open door and came
slowly to the foot of the tree.

She could scarcely see the two men shrouded there in the profundity of
shadow, and she had almost walked into the one who was to die before she
realized his nearness and drew back shuddering.

Then Sim, who was holding the loose end of the rope so that it would not
slacken too freely, put it in her hand and, as their fingers touched,
found it icy.

"Ye'll hev ter take hold of this," he directed, "we've got t'other end
indoors. When ye're ready for us--or should he seek ter git away--jest
give hit a tight jerk or two. We won't interfere with ye ner come out
till we gits thet signal--but don't suffer him ter parley overlong."

Then the man left her, and the woman found herself standing there in the
darkness with a terrible sense of Death hovering at her shoulder.

For a moment neither spoke, and Dorothy Thornton lifted her eyes to the
tree from which had always emanated an influence of peace. She needed
that message of peace now. She looked at the dark human figure, robbed
of its menace, robbed of all its own paltry arrogance, and the furies
that had torn her ebbed and subsided into a sickness of contemptuous
pity.

Then the cloud drifted away from the moon and the world stood again out
of darkness into silvery light; the breeze that had brought that
brightening brought, too, a low wailing voice from high overhead, where
the walnut tree seemed to sob with some poignant suffering; seemed to
strive for the articulate voice that nature had denied it.

That monument to honoured dead could never shed its hallowed spirit of
peace again if once it had been outraged with the indignities of a
gibbet! If once it bore, instead of its own sweetly wholesome produce,
that debased fruit of the gallows tree, its dignity would be forever
broken! There in the flooding moonlight of the white-and-blue night it
was protesting with a moan of uneasy rustling. The thing could not be
tolerated--and suddenly, but clearly, Dorothy knew it. This man deserved
death. No false pity could blind her to that truth, and death must ride
at the saddle cantle of such as he; must some day overtake him. It might
overtake him to-night--but it must not be here.

"Bas," she broke out in a low and trembling voice of abrupt decision, "I
kain't suffer hit ter happen--I kain't do hit."

The varied strains and terrors of that day and night had made her voice
a thing of gasps and catching breath, but while the man stood silent she
gathered her scattered powers and went on, ignoring him and talking to
the tree.

"He needs killin', God knows," she declared, "but he mustn't die on yore
branches, old Roof Tree--hit was love thet planted ye--an' love thet
planted ye back ergin when hate hed tore ye up by ther roots--I kain't
suffer ye ter be defiled!"

She broke off, and somehow the voice that stirred up there seemed to
alter from its note of suffering to the long-drawn sigh of relief; the
calm of a tranquilized spirit.

The young woman stood for a moment straight and slim, but with such an
eased heart as might come from answered prayer in the cloistered dimness
of a cathedral.

It was, to her, a cathedral that towered there above her, with its
single column; a place hallowed by mercy, a zone of sanctuary; a spot
where vengeance had always been thwarted; where malevolence had
failed--and her voice came in a rapt whisper.

"Ye stands ternight fer ther same things ye've always stud fer," she
said, "ye stands fer home an' decency--fer ther restin' place of dead
foreparents--an' ther bornin' of new gin'rations--fer green leaves an'
happiness--an' ther only death ye gives countenance to is thet of folks
thet goes straight ter God, an' not them thet's destined fer torment."

Inside the room the conclave maintained a grim silence. The shuttered
window screened from their sight the interview to which they were
submitting with a rude sense of affording the man they had condemned
some substitute for extreme unction: an interval to shrive his soul with
penitence and prayer.

But through the opening of the broken slat, high up in the shutter which
gave sliding room, passed the rope, and at its other end stood the man
upon whose neck it was fixed: the man whose hands and feet were tethered
and whose movements were being watched by the woman.

They shifted uneasily and impatiently on their feet in there. Sim
Squires and Rick Joyce standing shoulder to shoulder held the free end
of the rope in their hands. The others breathed heavily and their faces
were implacable, restive of this time being vouchsafed to an idea, yet
steadfast in their resolve to keep the word given their victim.

"She's lettin' him talk too long," growled a voice, and in monosyllables
Rick Joyce growled back, "Shet up--he'll be dead a long time."

But outside Dorothy had turned again to the man.

"You an' yore foreparents hev plotted an' worked evil since ther fust
days ther white man come hyar, Bas," she declared. "Thar hain't no death
too shameful fer ye--an' ther hain't no hate deeper then thet I feels
fer ye. Ye've betrayed an' wronged me an' everybody I ever loved, an' I
swore I'd kill ye myself ef need be. I'm half sorrowful I didn't do
hit--but from them fust days this hyar tree hes spread peace an' safety
over this house an' them thet dwelt in hit. Hit's been holy like some
church thet God hed blessed, an' I aims ter keep hit holy. Ef they hangs
ye somewhars else, I reckon they'll do simple jestice--but hit hain't
goin' ter be on this tree. My child hain't ergoin' ter look up in them
branches an' see no shadow of evil thar. I hain't goin' ter lay buried
in hits shade some day with yore black sperit hoverin' nigh. Sin ner
shame hain't nuver teched hit yit. They hain't nuver ergoin' ter. Ther
bright sun an' ther clean wind air goin' ter come ter hit an' find hit
like hit's always been. God's breath is goin' ter stir in hit ther same
es hit's always done."

Just then a heavier cloud shut off the moonlight, and still holding the
rope steadily enough to prevent its sudden jerking in premature signal,
she came close to Bas Rowlett and ordered in clipped syllables of
contempt, "Turn round! I aims ter sot ye free."

She handed the loose rope to the man, and knowing full well the vital
need of keeping it undisturbed, he held it gingerly.

The other end of that line still rested in the hands of his
executioners, who waited with no suspicion of any confederacy between
their victim and the woman.

Dorothy loosened the noose and slipped it from his neck, and her fingers
busied themselves nervously with his wrist-knots.

She worked fast and anxiously, for she had promised to set frugal limits
on the duration of that interview and the interval of clouded darkness
was precious, but while she freed the cords, she talked:

"I hain't doin' this fer yore sake, Bas. Ye richly merits ter die--an' I
misdoubts ef ye escapes fur--but I hain't ergoin' ter suffer ye ter
contam'nate this tree--an' I aims ter give ye a few minutes' start, ef I
kin."

Now she rose from the ankle fetters and the man took a step, to find
himself free.

"Begone," ordered the woman, tensely. "Don't tarry--an' don't nuver let
me see ye ergin'!"

She saw him cross the fence in the heavy shadow, hardly discernible even
to her straining eyes that had grown accustomed to the dark. She heard
the light clatter of his feet and knew that he was running, with the
speed and desperation of a hounded deer, then she straightened and
lifted her eyes to the rustling masses of cool serenity overhead.

Across the ranges came a warm, damp scent that promised rain, and the
clouds once more parted bringing the tranquil magic of a silver-toned
nocturne. The tree stood with its loftiest plumes moving lightly, as
though brushing the heavens, where the clouds were flakes of opal
fleece. Then the breeze stiffened a little and the branches swayed with
an enhancement of movement and sound--and the murmur was that of a
benediction.

Dorothy waited as long as she dared, and her soul was quiet despite the
anger which she knew would shortly burst in an eruption over the
threshold of her house. When she had stretched her allotted interval to
its limit she gave the rope its designated signal of jerk, and saw the
door swing to disgorge its impatient humanity. She saw them coming with
lanterns held high, saw them halt halfway, and heard their outbursts of
angry dismay when the yellow light revealed to them the absence of the
victim they had left in her keeping.

But Dorothy turned and stood with her back against the great trunk and
her fingers clutching at its seamed bark, and there she felt the
confidence of sanctuary.

"I couldn't suffer hit--ter happen hyar," she told them in a steady
voice. "Us two was married under this old tree--hit's like a church ter
me--I couldn't let no man hang on hit--I turned him loose."

For an instant she thought that Sim Squires would leap upon her with all
the transferred rage that she had thwarted on the eve of its glutting.
The others, too, seemed to crouch, poised, waiting for their cue and
signal from Sim, but Parish Thornton came over and took her in his arms.

Then with an abrupt transition of mood Sim Squires wheeled to his
waiting cohorts.

"Men," he shouted, "we kain't handily blame her--she's a woman, an' I
honours her fer bein' tenderhearted, but any other tree'll do jest as
well! He kain't hev got fur off yit. Scatter out an' rake ther woods."

She saw them piling over the fence like a pack of human hounds, and she
shuddered. The last man carried the rope, which he had paused to pull
from the limb. They had already forgotten her and the man they had come
to kill. They were running on a fresh scent, and were animated with
renewed eagerness.

For a few minutes the two stood silent, then to their ears came a shout,
and though he said nothing, the husband thought he recognized the
piercing shrillness of the hunchback's voice and the resonant tones of
the sheriff. He wondered if Hump Doane had belatedly received an inkling
of that night's work and gathered a posse at his back.

There followed a shot--then a fusilade.

But Parish Thornton closed Dorothy in his arms and they stood alone.
"Ther old tree's done worked hits magic ergin, honey," he whispered,
"an' this time I reckon ther spell will last so long es we lives."


THE END




[Illustration]

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS,
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.




THE
ROOF TREE

_by_ Charles Neville Buck

_Author of "The Tempering," "The Call of the Cumberlands," "The Clan
Call," etc._


The very breath of the Kentucky Hills is in Charles Neville Buck's
novels. In interpreting its elemental life, and its big-boned and
big-hearted people, he takes his place beside John Fox, Jr.

Here he tells a tale, the beginnings of which are laid several
generations in the past. Then the roof tree was planted, a token of love
to celebrate the wedding of Thornton and the first Dorothy Parrish. But
the same soil held the blood-watered seed of feud war, and now it was
bringing forth bitter fruit again, in the romance of the new Dorothy
Parrish and Thornton's descendant.

Under the name of Cal Maggard he had fled from Virginia, where, with the
juries packed against him, justice would have been a travesty. In
self-defense his sister had killed her husband, and he had taken the
guilt.

He sought only a refuge. Returning from a friendly visit to his
neighbor's where he met Dorothy, he found nailed to his door, a threat
of death if he repeated the visit.

What follows; the strange reopening of an ancient feud, the treachery
and hatred--and the conquering loyalty and love; and how in its course,
war ends forever in these mountains, makes a story of compelling power
and tensity.