Part 16

"Don't ye do that, Julia," he said warningly. "It mought git ye or Cap'n Lucy liable ter the law. Don't ye do it. I'll make out somehows." Then seeing her reluctance, "Ef I need ennything, or want ter git communication with folks outside, I'll let ye know. I'll--I'll put this hyar pipe in a nick in them rocks, jes' west, clost inter the freestone spring nigh yer dad's house."

She listened, breathless, and beamed with delight at the feasibility of this plan.

"An' whenever I pass hyar," she said, with wide, illumined eyes and a flickering flush of excitement,--"an' I'll kem frequent,--I'll drap wild flowers in the road. An' ye will see 'em, an' know I hev been by an' been a-studyin' 'bout you-uns. An' that will be plumb comp'ny fur ye."

"'Twill that!" he cried. His eyes were soft and bright and dewy. Somehow it seemed to bind him--that chain of flowers--to the fair world without, which had been slipping away, away forever.

He turned, and looked out toward the rocky egress of the cave as if he almost expected to see already a cardinal flower flaming in the sun on the gray rock.

There was no sun. The rain fell, dense still,--dense enough, doubtless, to preclude all observation from without; but from among the shadows within his practiced eyes descried through the shifting, shimmering veil, now white and gray in shoaling effects, all blown aslant by the wind, a canvas-covered wagon lumbering by, albeit for the rush of the stream and the fall of the torrent she could not hear the slow creak of its wheels. His heart was a-flutter, although he knew that the danger of observation was past, as the swaying white hood had disappeared.

"That's 'Renzo Taft," he remarked. "He's gittin' back late from the cross-roads. I reckon the storm cotch him an' kep' him."

He hesitated. Then, with a sort of falter of humiliation, "I reckon I'd better go back ter my hidin' place, Julia. The rain's slackening so somebody passin' mought view me. Ye jes' set hyar right quiet an' wait fur the rain ter hold up."

He turned away; then looked back over his shoulder.

"Good-by," he said.

The girl's luminous eyes dwelt smilingly upon him.

"Good-by," she answered softly.

He took his way along the ledges above the treacherous stream to that blacker recess where the way deflected and the light failed; he turned once more.

"I'll be a-watchin' fur them flowers," he said.

Her smile itself was like a bloom; he, unaware, treasured the recollection. He seemed to reflect it in some sort. He was smiling himself, as he went down into those sunless depths.

He could not forbear partly retracing his way once, and looking at her as she sat, quite still, gazing out with her eyes of summer and sunshine upon the rain, and the dreary, sad, tear-stained aspect of the world without, whence sounded the sobbing of the troubled wind.

When he came yet another time, the rain had ceased, and she was gone.

XIV.

Lorenzo Taft's arrival at his home, that afternoon, might have seemed to the casual observer an event of the simplest significance. It is true, a country trader, on his return from a bout of barter at that emporium the cross-roads store, seldom casts about him so vigilant an eye, or sustains so controlled and weighty a manner, or wears a countenance of such discernment, its alert sagacity hardly at variance with certain predatory suggestions,--on the contrary, finding in them its complement of expression. But these points might only have argued ill for the profits of the bargainer with whom he had dealt. As the great lumbering canvas-hooded wagon came to a halt in the space beneath the loft of the log barn, under partial shelter, at least, and he began to unharness and turn out the two mules, the anxious glances he cast toward the house might have betokened impatient expectation of assistance in unloading the ponderous vehicle, and carrying into the store the cumbrous additions to its stock represented in saddles, cutlery, sugar, bolts of calico, stacks of hats,--the integrity of all more or less endangered by the weather. But no one emerged from the house, and after feeding the mules he turned hastily, took his way in great strides through the rain across the yard, which was half submerged in puddles and running water, and unlocked the door. As he entered, big, burly, and dripping with rain, prophetically at odds with the falling out of the yet unknown events, he gazed about the dim interior with a dissatisfied, questioning eye. All was much as usual, save dimmer and drearier for the storm without. Here the unseen rain asserted its presence by the fusillade on the roof and the plashing from the eaves. The wind rushed furiously in recurrent blasts against the windowless walls. Since the denizens within could not mark how it bent the greatest tree, they might thus judge of its force, and quake beneath its tempestuous buffets. Now and again the writhen boughs of the elm just outside beat as in frantic appeal on the clapboards of the roof. The chimney piped a tuneless, fifelike note, and occasional drops fell a-sputteriug into the dull blaze of the fire. Cornelia Taft herself was dull and spiritless of mien, as she sat on a low stool on the hearth knitting a blue yarn stocking. The room, lurking in a state of semi-obscurity, seemed the dreariest possible expression of a dwelling; only as the fitful blaze flared and fell were distortions of its simple furniture distinguishable,--the table with its blue ware, the bed and its gaudy quilt, the spinning-wheel, and the old warping-bars, where now merely skeins of cobwebs were wont to hang from peg to peg, since Cornelia Taft's precocity did not extend to weaving. A black cat sat blinking her yellow eyes before the fire. She had so conversational an aspect that it might seem that Taft had interrupted some conference,--of a dismal nature, doubtless, for there were traces of recent tears on the little girl's face, and a most depressed expression.

"Whar's Copley? Whar's yer uncle Cop?" he demanded, looking hastily about the shadowy place.

She paused to roll up her work methodically, and thrust the knitting-needles through the ball of yarn.

"He ain't hyar," she said, lifting reproachful eyes; "an' he ain't been hyar since ye been gone."

He stared down at her in silent surprise.

"Ye jes' went off an' lef' me an' Joe hyar by ourse'fs, an' we been mos' skeered ter death," she added, with a sob.

A sudden apprehension crossed Taft's face.

"I lef Cop hyar. Ain't he been in ter git his vittles?"

She shook her head.

"Did ye call him in the store?"

She nodded.

"Mebbe he war in the barn."

"I blowed the hawn fur him; he ain't eat a mite sence ye been gone."

Taft turned hastily toward the door, his florid face paling. Then he turned back. "Whar's Joe?"

"He hev runned away!" cried Sis, with a burst of sobs. "Las' night we-uns hearn sech a cur'ous hurrah--somewhar--I dunno--sech cur'ous talk an' hollerin' 'way down in the groun'--an'--an'--diggin'--an'"--

He had paused, looking amazed at her. Then his face changed, with a sort of aghast certainty upon it. "Jes' some boys diggin' in the Lost Time mine," he urged, however, plausibly.

"But--but"--she protested--"Joe, _he_ say, they--they air--_dead_."

She looked at him, hoping for some sufficient adult denial of this terrible fantasy; but his face betokened only its confirmation, and she fell to shivering and sobbing afresh.

"Whenst it got so turrible in the middle o' the night, Joe, he looked out'n the winder upsteers, an' the moon hed riz. An' he clomb down by the tree. He 'lowed he wouldn't bide no mo' an' listen. So he jes' skun the cat out'n the winder. He war 'feared."

And once more she covered her face with her hands and wept. Nevertheless, between her fingers, as the tears trickled down them, she furtively surveyed him.

"Wunst," she said tentatively, "I 'lowed 'twar revenuers. An' then I wisht 'twar. I hed ruther hev hearn _them_ 'n--'n--dead ones."

His countenance did not change a muscle.

She was now alarmed by her own temerity. In the long ordeal of solitude and fright she had lost control of her small nerves, or she would not have overstepped her habitual caution so far. "Revenuers arter what?" he demanded. His incidental, unconcerned manner reassured her.

"Arter the 'wild-cat,' I reckon," she hazarded.

He affected to consider the suggestion.

"Some boys _mought_ be talkin' 'bout startin' a still down thar in the Lost Time mine. I'll roust 'em out mighty quick, ef they do! Ef thar's enny whiskey sold round hyar, I'm countin' on doin' it out'n my store, sure. I got a license ter sell."

She looked at him narrowly, suspiciously, hardly more credulous than he himself.

"I won't hev _my_ profits sp'iled. Whiskey's the best trade I got," he added, as he turned about. "Waal, I 'lowed Copley would be in hyar ter holp me tote the truck in; but, howsever, set a rock afore the door ter hold it open, Sis, whilst I make a start, ennyhow."

His show of industry as he toiled across the rainy yard, now with a keg, now with a box, on his shoulder, of anxiety for the safety of his goods, his sedulous care in displaying them to the best advantage on the shelves to lure customers, might have deceived a wiser head than Cornelia Taft's. Her long-cherished suspicions were gradually dispelled, as she ran hither and thither, carrying the lighter packages in her arms, eagerly helping to bestow them, making place for them when she could do no more. It was not until she had gone back briskly to her task of preparing an early supper that he ventured to descend from the store to the room below, and take his way along the dark tunnel to the still in the recess of the mine. He paused surprised at the disordered and careless disarray about the entrance to the tunnel: some of the boards of the partition were on the ground, others aslant, none as they were habitually adjusted. With a steady hand he rectified this, and went forward forthwith, his lantern swinging in his grasp. Once he paused to listen: no voice, no stir; only the heavy windless silence. As he progressed, the faint tinkling of the running water smote his ear, and presently he had crossed it. No sound came from about the still; there was no suffusion of red light on the terra-cotta walls that sometimes glowed at the terminus of the tunnel when the furnace door stood open. He could hardly be said to have had a premonition. He was prepared for disaster by the previous events; but he could scarcely realize its magnitude, its conclusiveness, when the timid flare of the lantern illumined the dreary walls of the moonshiners' haunt, the dead cold furnace, the tubs of mash,--on the margin of one of which a rat was boldly feeding, scarcely pausing to look around with furtive, sinister bright eyes,--and his two lieutenants, whom he had left to guard Larrabee, bound and gagged upon the floor.

The craft which characterized Lorenzo Taft was hardly predicable of so massive an organization. It was an endowment of foxlike ingenuity, sinuous, lithe, suggestive of darting swiftness and of doubled tracks. The expression of blunt dismay on his big jowl dropping visibly beneath his broad yellow beard, the widening stare in his round blue eyes as he gazed about the dismal place, his heavy, lumbering motion as he carefully set the lantern down upon the cold masonry of the fireless furnace, gave no intimation of the speed with which his mind had canvassed the situation, accepted the inevitable, and fixed upon his future course. It was hardly a moment before he was on one knee beside the prostrate form of the elder moonshiner, and had drawn from over his head the grain sack that had served both to obscure his countenance and more completely secure his gag. The glimmer of the lantern, like a slow rill of light trickling feebly through the darkness, illumined the expression of eager appeal in the haggard, wild face and eyes of Copley. An instant longer was too long to wait, yet wait he must! Taft jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the other prostrate form, convulsed now in a frenzied effort to attract the attention of the new-comer, whose footsteps had brought the only hope of speedy deliverence.

"Drunk agin?" he asked, in a low voice.

Copley made shift to nod his head affirmatively. Then again that frantic plea for release illumined his eyes and contorted his anxious features.

Taft, regardless, rose, with the swinging motion which was characteristic of him, and, with the lantern swaying in his hand, made his way to the opposite side of the furnace, where the young drunkard lay--very sober now, in good truth--cramped in every hard-bound limb, racked with the tortures of thirst, and half famished. Taft had partly unbound the ropes from about the furnace and cut them in twain, thus dissevering the companions in misery; he swiftly knotted those that held the elder moonshiner, while the ends of Dan Sykes's bonds lay loose along the floor.

"Why, Dan," he cried roughly, "what sort'n caper is this?"

The prostrate young fellow made an effort to rise, so strong that the already loosened cords relaxed; and as Taft emphasized his demand by a sharp kick in the ribs, and an urgent exhortation to the young sot to "quit this damned fooling," the sack which Sykes had worn some twenty hours as hood and gag, and which, since his wakening from his long drunken sleep, he had strained in every fibre by his mad lurches of fright and efforts for freedom, rolled off, his pinioned arms were at liberty, and it seemed he had naught to do but to sit up and untie his craftily bound feet and legs.

"Ye demented gopher!" cried Taft angrily, as Sykes sat up stupidly, blinking in the gleam of the lantern. "What ails ye? Drunk agin?"

If his bursting skull were admissible testimony,--but he shook his head stoutly in pious negation. Taft kicked him once more in the side with a scornful boot.

"Then the worse fool you-uns! Look-a-hyar!" he cried furiously, as he caught the young man by the collar and pulled him to his staggering feet, cutting with one or two quick passes with the knife the ropes about his legs. "Look-a-hyar, ye gallus-bird, what ye hev done in yer drunken tantrums! Murder! murder! or mighty nigh it!"

He swung the lantern round, so that its flickering gleams might rest on the figure of Copley, whose genuine bonds so closely resembled the plight which Sykes had thought his own. His bloodshot eyes distended, as he groped bending toward it in the darkness.

"Who's that? Lar'bee?" he said.

"Lar'bee!" exclaimed Taft scornfully. "Lar'bee's been out'n the still ever since yestiddy evenin'."

It was Sykes's drunken recollection that Larrabee was here when Taft departed; but alack! in a cranium which is occupied by a headache of such magnitude, memory has scarce a corner to be reckoned on. Nevertheless he blurted out:--

"Ye tole me ter watch him,"--he set his teeth in a sort of snarl, and glanced up under his eyebrows with a leer still slightly spirituous,--"ter gyard him like, a dog. 'Hold fast!' ye said, 'hold fast!'"

Taft suddenly shifted the lantern, to throw its full glare upon his own serious, grim, threatening face as he loomed up in the shadows.

"Sykes," he said, "this is a bad business fur you, an' ye'll swing fur it, I'm a-thinkin'. Nobody never set sech a besotted cur ez ye ter watch nobody. I let Lar'bee out myse'f. Ye an' Copley war lef' hyar ter keep sober an' run the still; an' what do ye do? Ye murder him!"

As he lowered his big, booming, dramatic voice, the young fellow's blood ran cold.

"Ye murder him, an' tie him up like that, an' then do yerse'f up sorter fancy with bags an' a rope. Ye'll hev closer dealin's with a rope yit; I kin spy out that in the day that's kemin'." His eyes gleamed with a sinister smile.

Sykes's knees shook.

"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed wildly. "Air--air he dead? 'Twarn't me! God A'mighty knows 'twarn't me!" The ready tears rushed to his eyes. "'Twar Lar'bee! 'Twar Lar'bee!"

"Shucks!" Taft turned wearily away. "Ain't I tole ye I seen Lar'bee set out 'fore I did? Blackenin' Lar'bee won't save ye, Dan! _Drink--drink!_ I tole ye drink would ruinate ye; always brings a man to a bad e-end. Pity ye hed n't put some water in the jug beforehand, stiddier all them tears in the dregs o' yer spree." He shook his head. "So it is! So it is!"

"Oh, is he dead,--air ye sure he is dead?" cried the young fellow in a heart-rending voice of appeal, flinging himself upon his knees beside the still, stark, motionless form of the elder moonshiner.

Taft swung the lantern slightly, and its lurid gleams played over the haggard, cadaverous face, ghastly with fatigue and the pallor of anxiety.

The boy drew back, with a shudder of repulsion. "Oh, I never went ter do it! I never went ter do it! I war drunk! crazy drunk! devil drunk! Oh"--

"They say," Taft interrupted suddenly,--"leastwise the lawyers do,--ez a man bein' drunk in c'mittin' a crime ought n't ter influence a jury,--the law makes no allowance; but," with an encouraging nod, "they say, too, ez it _do_ influence the jury _every time_. An' the court can't holp it. The jury _will_ allow suthin' fur a man bein' drunk."

The white face of the boy, imposed against the darkness with all the contour of youth, had hardly a characteristic that was not expressive of age, so pinched, so lined, so drawn, so bloodless, was every sharpened feature. The natural horror of his supposed deed, his simple, superficial repentance of the involuntary crime, were suddenly expunged; his whole being was controlled by a single impulse; a passion of fear possessed him. Jury, crime, lawyer,--these words looking to a legal arraignment first brought to his horror-stricken mind the idea of a responsibility other than moral for his deed. What slight independence of thought he had, what poor capacity for sifting and judging and weighing the probabilities his easily influenced mind might have exerted as he more and more recovered from his recent inebriation, became nullified upon the instant. He did not look once again back to the past, but to the future, wild, quaking, frenzied, as Taft elected to foretell the event.

"That's why," Taft coolly said, nodding sagely, and inclining his head toward the breathless, frantic, almost petrified creature, "I'd leave it ter men."

Sykes recoiled, with a shudder.

"Yes," reiterated Taft, weightily and slowly. "The jury would take yer drunk inter account; an' on the witness-stand I'd testify ez ye war gin over ter the failin'."

The young fellow's gray, stony face did not change as Taft ceased to speak. Taft felt its fixed look upon him as he stood, his head bent, and his big hat thrust back on his yellow hair; one hand was laid meditatively on his long beard, as he gazed down on the prostrate figure of Copley; with the other hand he held the lantern, whose spare white glimmers of light thrown out into the surrounding obscurity seemed very meagre in the darksome place, which was never cheerful at best, but without the roar and heat of the furnace, the keen, brilliant glinting from the crevice of the door when closed or the red, suffusive flare when it was swung ajar, the still-room was the dreariest presentment of subterranean gloom.

"Yes," Taft continued thoughtfully, "I'd ruther leave it ter men--ter the courts, ye know--'n ter hev the folks round hyar ez war frien'ly ter Copley ondertake ter settle ye fur it; they'd--Hey?" he interrupted himself.

For the young fellow had reached out his arm and laid his hand with a vise-like grip upon Taft's wrist. His head was thrust forward; he seemed about to speak, but his parted lips, drawn tight across his large, prominent teeth, emitted not a sound, although his wild, dilated, bloodshot eyes looked an eager protest. His voice had failed in framing the obnoxious words, which, however, Taft spoke patly enough.

"Why, ye know, they would--they would. Jedge Lynch is the only court fur this kentry. What sati'faction is it ter the folks hyarabout, ter hev a man kerried ter jail, thirty mile away, ter stan' his trial in the courthouse year arter nex', mebbe, an' then arter all's come an' gone cheat hemp at las'? Yes, that's yer bes' chance; set out fur Colbury straight, an' s'render yerse'f thar."

He paused, apparently thinking deeply.

"Ef ye hed enny kin, though, in enny out'n-the-way place, my advices ter ye would be ter cut an' run, an' bide along o' them; fur this hyar air a mighty bad job, an' it's goin' ter go hard with the man ez done it."

Once more the pallid, evasive light flickered in feeble vibrations across the long, motionless, rope-bound figure, and the stark face curiously distorted and painfully repulsive with the gag in its stretched jaws.

"Ye ain't got no kin in no'th Georgy?" Taft demanded.

"Naw," replied the boy huskily.

The suggestion seemed to have restored his voice, albeit muffled and shaken; into his eyes, staring, wide and bloodshot, into the gloom, was creeping a definiteness of expression, as if he beheld, instead of the vacant black darkness, some scene projected there as a possibility and painted by his expectation. His grip on Taft's arm had relaxed. It had been close and hard, and Taft rubbed the wrist a trifle with the hand that still held the lantern, setting the feeble glimmer a-swinging swiftly about the dark walls.

"That's a pity,--that's a tur'ble pity," Taft averred gloomily; then, with an air of rousing himself, "Waal, ye'll jes' hev ter leave it ter men. That's the bes' ye kin do." He was turning briskly toward the tunnel. "I'll ondertake ter gin ye the matter of a two hours' start of the folks 'bout hyar by not tellin' 'bout old Copley till then. But ye hed bes' ride with speed, fur they'll be hot shod on yer tracks, sure."

As he went forward with his swinging, elastic stride, swaying the lantern back and forth, according to his wont, to illumine the path, his manner, his words, his expression, so tallied with the situation he had invented and the role he had played that even the most discerning might have descried no discrepancy in point of fact. The young moonshiner, barely sobered and wholly frightened, was easily to be deluded by a verisimilitude far less complete. He followed, his clumsy feet stumbling and stepping awry, as if his gait were still subject to spirituous influences from which his brain was freed. His cramped limbs yet felt the numbness of their long constraint and the pain of his bonds, for Larrabee's ropes had not been adjusted with due regard to the free circulation of the blood. His progress was far slower than his host's, who paused from time to time and waited to be overtaken. On these occasions it soon became apparent that there was something in his mind on which he had begun to ponder deeply; for whereas at first he had visibly hastened to join Taft on seeing him whirl around, the lantern describing in the distance a wheel of pallid white light against the dense darkness of the tunnel, he now continued to plod heavily, slower and slower, even when the light settled to a shining focus, again motionless. Taft lifted it once as Sykes approached, throwing its force full upon the swollen, mottled, absorbed face, the fixed introspective eyes, the heavy slouching shoulders and bent head. At that moment of careful reconnoitre a genuine expression was on Taft's face, keen, furtive, triumphant; it passed unobserved. He whirled around again, leading the way with the lantern, and it was with a perfectly cloaked satisfaction that he began to observe the young fellow's convulsive haste to depart as they neared the exit from the tunnel, his flimsy pretense of heed to his elder's advice, and finally his heedlessness altogether, no longer able to maintain attention or its semblance.