Part 11

How the destructive element fared, whether by slow, insidious, fearful degrees, as of conscious but furtive evil intent, or as animated by a wild, tumultuous, riotous impulse, more and more rapacious with impunity, as of some turbulent, maddened thing escaping control, none but Bruin might say, for, save the impassive, neutral night, the event had no other witness. Before the flames had fairly taken hold of the studs and joists his cowardly fears had gained the ascendency over his gluttony. More than once he paused, in gnawing his trophy of a beef bone, to growl fiercely, his remonstrant, surprised eyes illuminated by this alien flicker. As the skies began to redden, and the pale moonlight to fail, and the great massive mountains to appear, dark and weird, from the deep and silent seclusions of the night, he left his booty and retreated toward the verge of the woods, pausing now and again in the dun-colored shadows, all veined with shifting pulsations of red and white, to look with eyes aglow, reflecting the fire, upon its ravages, growling fiercely at times; then, with his recurrent fears, setting out once more on a lumbering run.

Perchance the reflection flung upon the clouds, all lurid and alight, before which the stars shrank away invisible, apprised the traveler journeying in far-away coves and ranges, or the herder of the lofty solitudes of the balds, or the hunter in distant coverts, of the disaster in progress before the nearest neighbors were roused. The angry glare of the conflagration seemed to pervade the world, like the vivid searching terrors of the red day of doom, when the workmen, down in their sheltered nook beneath the crags and the dense shadows of the forest, discovered the untoward fate of their handiwork. Into the crevices of the batten shutters of Cap'n Lucy's glassless windows the keen rays at last pierced, like some sinister, pestilential, dazzling sunburst, illuminating the homely scenes with an uncanny flare, and displacing the broken dreams with a terrified awakening.

Naught could be done. It might be accounted a spectacle in some sort,--to watch the airy acrobatic feats of the lithe flames leaping from beam to brace, from joist to rafter, of the three tall stories, seeming of vaster proportions with all their detail illustrated in these living tints upon the subsidiary, flickering night. There was a series of wild, dancing, tangled blazes a-whirl in the lengths of the ball-room, white and red and orange and blue, an uncanny rout. High up on the battlemented turret a vermilion banner flaunted suddenly out to the moon, and then it was struck amidst a myriad of sparks, and the echoes clamored out against the crashing of the tower.

For days thereafter the smoking, charred ruin was the terminus of many a pilgrimage amongst the simple folk of the region, who had never beheld wreckage on such a scale. The idle workmen hovered about it, dispirited and anxious, awaiting orders. There was much mysterious talk of incendiarism, and a rumor pervaded the Cove that the matter had already been reported in this light to the authorities, and that Rodolphus Ross was on his way to the scene of action.

Cap'n Lucy, seated on the rocks about the limpid spring, at a comfortable distance from the hot, smouldering mass, smoked his pipe, as he contemplated it, in more placidity of mind than had for some time fallen to his share. He was not a man who would deliberately seek to injure his enemy in person or property; but Cap'n Lucy was eminently human, and he could but admire the wisdom of the uncovenanted dispensations of Providence, through which Mr. Kenniston's game was, as he conceived it, so handsomely blocked. He had a most buoyant sense of irresponsibility in the matter.

"I ain't so much as once spoke to the Lord 'bout'n that man," he said privately to Luther, as if his prayers must needs have been inflammable.

He was not the only one of the spectators who thought, in view of the magnitude of the ruin, that the whole project was necessarily ended, and who looked on Kenniston's invasion of the Cove as a thing already of the past. It was a matter of very general surprise when the "town man" suddenly reappeared upon the scene in a bounding fury, and, in the metaphorical phrase of the mountaineers, "primed and loaded for b'ar." They little dreamed how literal a reason he had to hold a grudge against Bruin.

X.

The season seemed full of menace to the troglodytes of the Lost Time mine. The work went on about the still as hitherto, but with added precaution--various and vain, for the limits of their ingenuity had already been reached--and with a heavy sense of presage. The old moods that had prevailed here were gone, whether of brag and bluster, or wild hilarity, or jocose horse-play, or the leisurely and languid spinning of yarns to help the hour to pass. Even the industry of old Zeb Copley, the veteran of the force, was mitigated by sudden long pauses and a disposition to hearken fearfully for unaccustomed noises, and by eager and earnest urgency that the work should be pretermitted for a time. The youngest moonshiner of all felt it a dreary world to look at with sober eyes, and, despite his morose abstinence and surly staidness, a less discerning judgment than Taft's might have foreseen the brevity of this enforced drought and the danger of a relapse, with all his reminiscences at his thick tongue's end, were he free to fare about the world without. Espey's vacant place was ever significant of the reason for it, and Larrabee would sit for hours brooding over the untoward chances of his own fortunes; his gloomy eyes on the ever-glinting line of light playing through the furnace door, his motionless pipe full only of dead ashes in his heedless hand.

"Ye air a toler'ble dangersome neighbor," Taft remarked one day; for the complication of the mistaken identity had come to his ears during a sortie from his stronghold, and the threats of the deputy sheriff against the supposed Jasper Larrabee coupled with his suspicions as to moonshining.

Larrabee looked up fiercely. "Move, then, ef ye don't like yer neighbor."

He was like a fox run to earth; he had no further resource. His one idea of dealing with the law was by evasion and subterfuge and concealment. He had no remote expectation of justification. By a series of deceits he had persuaded his mother to go on an immediate visit to a bedridden great-aunt who lived in an adjoining county. The horse she rode belonged to a neighbor of the aged relative, who chanced to be in this locality, and who was taking home with him a led horse, a recent purchase. Jasper himself was to go after her in the indefinite period when the corn should be laid by and her own horse at leisure. The infant conqueror of the rickets went with her, mounted behind her, his chubby arms stretched at their utmost length clasping her gaunt waist, and with as unchastened a vainglory and pride in the earnest of this great journey and the envious wonderment of the other children as if his bourne were the north pole. Thus Mrs. Larrabee set out, with the grim-visaged neighbor of the aunt in advance, and with a frisky, dapper colt--already _en rapport_ with the pilgrim youth by reason of mutual juvenility, irresponsibility, and frivolity--kicking up his admired heels in the rear. And Henrietta Timson reigned in her stead under the queer little sylvan roof that seemed no more made with hands than the cups of a triple acorn.

Thus it was that Jasper Larrabee was roofless for the nonce, save for the strata of the Lost Time mine.

That Lorenzo Taft would fain be rid of him he saw grimly enough, and this he grimly refused to heed. He had incurred the suspicion of moonshining by reason of Espey's choosing to wear his name for an hour or so. He had incurred it through no fault of his own. The infringement of the law was common to them all, and involved a danger which they should share.

At all events, there would be nobody to answer for harboring the fugitive, should Espey's true identity become known to the law, and Rodolphus Ross find his way again to the little house on its airy perch. Taft had thought it wise that Larrabee, already tainted with suspicion in the mind of the officer of the law, and thus a source of great danger, should follow Espey to parts unknown. But the world, to the unlodged of earth, is doubtless of aspect like the face of the waters to the dove when first loosed from the ark, without foothold or friendly sign.

Larrabee replied even to the innuendo:--

"Go whar? An' leave you-uns a-cuddled down hyar so snug in the groun' that the devil hisse'f will sca'cely nose ye out on the Jedgmint Day? Naw, sir. I see nuthin' but resk fur me on all sides, but less hyar 'n ennywhars. I hev stood in ez much danger ez enny of ye. I hev tuk my sheer o' the resk 'thout wingin', but I won't be kicked out like a stray dog an' gin up ter the law 'kase you-uns air 'feared 'Dolphus Ross 'lows I be a moonshiner. He can't find or hear o' me hyar. I got ez much right hyar ez you-uns, 'Renzo Taft. I own my sheer in the business, an' hyar I be goin' ter 'bide."

The other two moonshiners, Copley and young Dan Sykes, regarded him askance and with sullen eyes. This minority might seem to be fraught with no small danger. His chief fear lest Espey should be overtaken, and the details of his refuge with the Larrabees be elicited, involving himself and his mother as accessories to the crime, he never mentioned. It so absorbed his thoughts, however, that for a time he did not observe a symptom of the antagonism of his confrères which deeply augured its seriousness.

A shaft hard by the still-room, if such the nook where the apparatus was worked might be called, which was sunk into the very deepest limits of the mine, came near relieving them of their perplexity on this score, one day. Larrabee's foot slipped in the rotting refuse of pomace on the verge while he was handling the bags of grain, and as he came heavily to the floor, barely saving himself, he saw like a flash a sudden irradiation of hope on the flushed, foolish face of the boy, a keen expectation in Taft's eyes, and even in the elderly drudge's wooden wrinkles a sort of disappointed resignation as he scrambled to his feet, that daunted him more than the immediate danger.

His precious book he read no more by the light of the furnace flicker, after this. Not that he now brooded over his cares, but his watchfulness never flagged. Whether the accident suggested the idea to Taft, or whether it were the flimsy fiction of the inimical atmosphere and his own alert apprehensiveness, Larrabee thought that he was given several opportunities to take leave inadvertently of the world. Once, in cleaning a pistol said to be unloaded, the ball in the last chamber whizzed sharply by his head. Again and again he was set to handle the heavy bags of grain on the slippery verge of the shaft. After a time a new cause of alarm was developed. Despite his crafty vigilance in his determination to remain at all hazards, he did not notice, until it became very marked, their unwillingness that he should leave the still at all, and Taft's expertness in disallowing every pretext. The truth dawned upon him at last, with its most valid reason. Although they would be glad were he to quit the country, yet, since his permanent absence could not be compassed, any chance excursion into the Cove or neighborhood was fraught with danger, as he might be seen, identified as Larrabee, and followed by the man who had spotted him as a moonshiner to Taft's house, where, spending days and nights, the mystery would soon be unfolded.

Larrabee came upon this discovery with a suffocating sense as of a prisoner. Instantly he was possessed by a wild urgency for the outer air and the freedom beyond that seemed as if its own impetus might break through the barriers of a thousand feet of the solid ground. He almost felt the wind blow in the strength of his keen desire; and when he set himself instantly to compass his deliverance, eagerness outran tact in his first demonstration.

"Hello, 'Renzo," he said in a cheerful, incidental voice, strikingly at variance with the gruff tones that had of late served him in the absolutely essential colloquies between them touching the work.

Taft's keen senses instantaneously apprehended the difference. He glanced around with a quick eye, illumined by the feeble white gleam of the lantern in his hand, for he had but just emerged from the tunnel. He did not simulate. He looked as he felt, interrogative, expectant, as he sat down on the side of a barrel without pausing to extinguish the lantern. Its pallid glow suffused his florid face and yellow beard, and brought out the tint and effect of translucency in his blue eyes. They were fixed steadily on Larrabee, who was suddenly out of countenance. He had intended a more casual disclosure of his project than the impending interview permitted,--a sort of unpremeditated announcement of his determination, as of being free to do as he would. He felt that his face had changed, and he knew that the change was noted. A new rush of alarm seemed to surge through his nerves. For, guarded as Taft evidently was, he too had betrayed somewhat the importance which he attached to the plans, even the words, of his employee, or his partner, or his prisoner, as Larrabee might be variously regarded. It daunted Larrabee: the latent ferocity that lurked in Taft's character, repudiated in his burly good comradeship of manner and in his florid face,--save for a certain beaklike outline of the nose that gave a rapacious, cruel intimation,--was instinctively known to the young mountaineer, who was not skilled in the craft of a knowledge of his kind, and had no habit of analysis. He somehow flinched to be made anew so definitely aware that he was a factor, and a troublous one, in Taft's schemes. He felt no match for the elder tactician. He wished he had gone long before, when the moonshiner sought so openly to be rid of him. At all events, he would go now, and without chicanery or subterfuge. He blurted out his plan, which he had intended to trench upon with great care and circumspection, and which should have appeared a natural evolution and outcome of the conversation.

"'Renzo," he said, with a distinct abatement of his former genial inflections, but still with a pliable, amiable tone,--and for his life he could not suppress an intonation of appeal,--"'Renzo, I'm a-studyin' 'bout takin' yer advice. Ye air old'n me an' hev got mo' 'speriunce an'"--

"What advice?" Taft interrupted succinctly. The sentence seemed very short in his big, mellow, sonorous voice; it was like a key struck inadvertently on some great organ; the heavy vibrations in themselves seemed to promise continuity.

"'Bout goin' out'n the Cove. I been studyin' it all out, an' I 'low 'twould be safer fur all consarned ef I war ter cut an' run."

Taft remained silent. His illumined eyes were glassy and fixed; somehow, the absorbed, introspective thought seemed to eliminate their expression.

"Jes' cl'ar out," said Larrabee, as if in explanation; he could not repress the manner of asking a permission, although he raged inwardly at himself.

"Whar'bouts?" Taft's great voice boomed out once more as it were inadvertently.

"Ter Buncombe County in old Car'liny, whar I got some kinfolks a-livin'," said Larrabee. "That's what I war a-studyin' 'bout," he added, still striving for a more incidental effect.

The furnace door was open, for the fire was low, the still but just emptied, and the work intermitted for the nonce. The bed of red coals filled the place with a dull glow. In its dreamy light he saw suddenly the broad, flabby face of Dan Sykes, the youngest of the moonshiners, distorted with silent mirth, like the face of a caricature. He sat upon a billet of wood in a lowly attitude, frog-like with his upturned head which was supported by his two hands, his elbows resting on his knees drawn high under his chin. His distended grin of evident delight in Taft's answer showed that it was not unexpected.

"Why, law, Jasper," exclaimed Taft,--but the unctuous tone would not mix with the lie of the intent, and floated in its midst like oil on water,--"I couldn't make out _now_, jes' _now_, 'thout you-uns. I be short-handed now, 'count o' Espey, an' I got word ter-day from the cross-roads fur two barrels o' corn juice quick ez it kin be got thar. Yer kin in Buncombe,"--his eye twinkled, for he suspected the kin in Buncombe to be of that airy folk known only to dreams and deceits,--"they'll keep. Ye'll hev jes' ter put off goin' fur a leetle spell,--bein' so short-handed, ye know."

"What air they aimin' ter pay fur them bar'ls?" demanded Larrabee calmly.

Thus he drew the conversation aside to the commercial aspects of the situation, as if he acquiesced in Taft's view, and recurred to his proposition no more. He controlled his voice, but his heart sunk like lead. He had not dreamed but that they would be glad to let him go if he quitted the region. He had not even feared that this resource was in jeopardy. He could not imagine the turn of events which must needs preclude his flight abroad, as well as his familiar appearance in his wonted haunts about the Cove. He cursed his fatuity again and again that he had not escaped when he could. What were the dangers of the world at large in comparison with the mysterious menace that environed him here? He dwelt continuously on these thoughts for a time, and it was only gradually, and chiefly by reason of Sykes's leering grin and secretly gleeful eye, that he became aware that this Benjamin amongst them had been specially deputed to watch him. In the days of his own terrors of the world without, he had ceased to go out for his meals or to sleep. He subsisted on "snacks" which Taft fetched down from his own table,--which abstraction caused no surprise to his small housekeeper, for Miss Cornelia Taft had long since exhausted her capacities for astonishment at any prodigies of food consumption on the part of her father, who took such big bites in comparison with old Mrs. Jiniway's custom,--and he slept at broken intervals, as his uneasy thoughts permitted, on the empty meal sacks in the shadow of the piles of barrels. This life continued now of necessity, as formerly of choice. Larrabee's apparent acquiescence, he had a vague idea, surprised and perturbed the others. They were evidently prepared for resistance and harsh measures. They had lost their balance in some sort; their attitude was like that of one who makes ready for a running leap, and stops short of the jump. Thus, their unsteady, balked surprise bore scant relation to their persistent, unchanged purpose, for their watch upon him was not for one moment relaxed. Even in the network of wrinkles about the sunken eyes of the elder distiller, a sort of staggered, dumfounded suspicion expressed itself, in conjunction with an observant heed of Larrabee's every movement which hitherto would not have been allowed to absorb so much of the attention he was wont to bestow on the still.

At first the discovery came near to breaking down Larrabee's reserve of endurance. His heart thumped so loudly, so heavily, that he sometimes thought they must hear its treacherous clamors as he sat and smoked in the dull red glow, assuming a calm and somnolent, satisfied aspect. Occasionally, with that terrible sense of the key turned, the door closed, the realization of restricted liberty, so overwhelming to the free habit of the mountaineer and the woodsman, with a charter to wander as wide as the wilderness, the blood would surge to his head, the copper boiler spin round and round, his companions slowly wheel about in that dim space of shadow and light; and he thought he lost consciousness at these times. But always when he came to himself he was sitting as before, calmly smoking in his wonted place, seeming a trifle disposed to shirk his work, perchance; and latterly he had begun to drink heavily, as it were upon the sly. He could not have said how the idea had come to him: it was not gradual; the scheme was full fledged in an instant. He knew that his every movement was under surveillance, and that he was under the special guard of the young drunkard, who had been longer sober now, perhaps, than for many a month. Dan Sykes watched with glistening eyes Larrabee's furtive hand reaching for the jug of whiskey, the trick of the hasty swallow aside, and presently Larrabee had a companion in his covert potations. He trembled lest the young fellow's scanty powers of self-restraint should not be adequate to conceal long enough to serve his plan the swift ravages of drink in his recent abstinence. He seemed insatiable and frantically keen of thirst, and the necessity of concealing his indulgence from Taft, who had evidently sent forth some fiat against it, developed an almost incredible deftness of craft. On the day that the liquor was barreled and removed, Sykes had been drinking almost without cessation. His share in the work was scant, his duties as guard serving in substitution. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because of the absorption in the enterprise, neither of the two elder moonshiners noticed his condition; and indeed he had become singularly skilled in assuming a sort of veneer of sobriety. It passed muster in this instance.

Taft got away early in the night with his load, taking note, apparently, of nothing beyond some extra hazard of the enterprise, as Larrabee gathered from the caution with which he loaded his revolvers and his frequent conferences aside with Copley, who enjoyed his special confidence, being his near kinsman as well as coadjutor. The barrels were to be concealed in the wagon under bags of feathers, dried fruit, ginseng, and other strictly rural commodities of barter. Two barrels of innocent and saccharine sorghum found themselves, too, in the unholy company of those barrels that the still had furnished forth. It was somewhat difficult to make out the load. Copley was eager for it to be off, notwithstanding, but Taft persisted until all the probabilities had been satisfied. There was much passing back and forth in the tunnel; through its long lengths Larrabee could hear the commotion in the room beneath the store. When the preparations were completed at last, he knew as well as if he had seen it how the great white canvas-covered wagon looked, standing with its two stanch mules before the door of the store, under the early dusky night sky and the burly overhanging purple heights, the yellow light streaming out from the open door upon it, and all the cheerful bustle of departure rife as it were in the very air. Taft came back at the last moment for his coat. As he swung himself alertly into it, and crushed his big hat down on his big yellow head, he had all the breezy impetus of one who is about to start on a pleasant and successful journey.

"All loaded!" he cried cheerfully. "A kentry merchant a-goin' ter buy goods can't be too keerful--oughter take along all the gear he kin ter trade--ha! ha! ha! Good-by! Take keer o' yerse'fs!"

And thus he strode out with his light, elastic tread. Larrabee listened as it beat on the dirt path, and then to the echoes that duplicated its progress, till it ceased to sound.