Part 17

He was gone at last, and Taft, returning to his prostrate comrade in the still, dismissed him from his mind, and thenceforward from his life, with a single comment. "That drunken shoat hev got an uncle in north Texas," he said, as he placed the lantern on the cold brick-work of the dead and fireless furnace. "I knowed that, so I fixed it so ez he'd light out fur them furrin parts d'rec'ly. He ain't dawdlin', I'm thinkin'."

Then, as he addressed himself to removing the gag and cutting the bonds of the elder distiller, his brow darkened.

"That cuss Lar'bee's work, hey?" he demanded gruffly; and as the liberated Copley gasped out an assent Taft growled a deep oath, his face scarlet, his hands trembling with rage, his anger unleashed, and his whole nature for the nonce unmasked.

"That kems from sparin' powder an' lead," he declared vindictively. "Whyn't ye or Sykes shoot him?"

"He war too suddint," gasped Copley. "Ye never see a painter so suddint an' sharp."

"An' whyn't ye be suddint, too?" retorted Taft aggressively.

Copley might have protested that in his own interest he had been as "suddint" as he could, and had done his best. He evidently felt, however, much in fault, and as, in silence, he ruefully rubbed his numb limbs, just free from their ligatures, tingling painfully with the renewal of the circulation of the blood, he gazed about, crestfallen and humbled, and even grief-stricken, at the scene of his wonted labors. It was but faintly revealed by the lantern on the masonry of the furnace,--the dimly white focus with divergent filaments of rays weaving only a tenuous web of light in the darkness which encompassed all. The great burly forms of tubs and barrels were but vaguely glimpsed as brownish suggestions in the blackness; a yellow gleam from the copper still gave the effect of an independent illumination rather than the resources of reflection, so dull and unresponsive was all else upon which the lantern cast its glimmer. Taft sat, according to his habit, upon the side of a barrel, his legs crossed, his elbow on one knee, his head bowed upon his hand, his big hat intercepting all view of his face. Copley gave a long sigh, as his spiritless glance noted the dejection of his friend; but his grooved and wrinkled face seemed as incapable of expressiveness as before, and, with its tanned tints and blunt, ill-cut features, resembled some unskillful carving in wood or a root. His thoughts swerved presently, almost with the moment of re-attaining his liberty, from the immediate disaster to the details of his drudgery which so habitually occupied his every waking faculty.

"That thar mash must be plumb ripe by this time," he remarked, his eyes fixed upon a spot in the darkness where presumably the tub in question was situated. "'Twar nigh ripe whenst Lar'bee jumped up demented, it 'peared like, an' tuk arter we-uns."

Taft lifted a red face and a scowling brow. With an air of reckless desperation he strode to the tub, and the next moment Copley heard the splash as the contents were poured out down the shaft.

"Laws-a-massy, 'Renzo!" with the decisive ring of anger in his voice and all the arrogations of the expert, "whyn't ye let me examinate it? Ye ain't got my 'speriunce; ye ain't ekal ter jedge like me. Whyn't ye"--

"Ye miser'ble mole!" Taft retorted angrily. "Ye may be a jedge o' fermentin' an' stillin' an' sech like, but ye hev got powerful leetle gumption 'bout'n the signs o' the times. Thar ye sit, a-yawpin' away 'bout yer mash, ripe or raw, an' I'm lookin' fur the shootin' irons o' the marshal's men under my nose every time I turn my head."

He suited the action to the word at the moment, looking down with a sudden squint which gave a frightfully realistic suggestion of the muzzle of a weapon held at his very teeth.

"The thing's busted!" Taft cried desperately. "It's done! Kin ye onderstan' that? We-uns hev got ter the jumpin'-off place!"

The bewildered Copley looked vaguely at the verge of the deep shaft, perilously near.

"That Lar'bee's loose now, full o' gredges fur bein' helt hyar," Taft continued. "We-uns oughter shot him, or let him shoot himself. An' the dep'ty sher'ff's on his track, 'lowin' ez Espey be Lar'bee an' s'picionin' moonshinin'. The dep'ty sher'ff ain't got nuthin' ter do with sech ez moonshinin' hisse'f, but he air tryin' ter find Lar'bee, an' settle his gredges with him; so he'll gin the revenue dogs the word 'bout Lar'bee an' distillin', an' whenst Lar'bee's tuk he'll take a heap o' pleasure in guidin' 'em hyar, I'll be bound. He mought even turn informer hisse'f, ter git even."

He sunk down suddenly on the barrel.

"It's powerful hard on me!" he cried. "I hev treated them boys like they war my own sons." He had forgotten, in this arrogation of age and paternal feeling, his recent youthfulness of matrimonial pretensions. "I hev tuk 'em in,"--he did not say in what sense,--"an' divided fair with 'em; an' they hev gotten mo' money out'n me than they'd ever elsewise view in thar whole lifetime. An' I hev been keerful an' kep' the place secret an' quiet. I hev tuk good heed ter all p'ints. An' we-uns mought hev gone on peaceful an' convenient till the crack o' doom, ef it hedn't been fur them. Oh, thar never war sech a place!" He looked round with the eyes of gloating admiration on the gruesome, shadowy den about him, so singularly suited to his vocation. "An' even the danger 'bout'n the hotel is done with, an' the lan' percessioned by now, I reckon, an' thar won't be no mo' packs o' strangers in the Cove; an' yit--an' yit--all fur nuthin'!"

He took off his hat, and rubbed his corrugated brow with his hand with a gesture of desperation.

It is a singular trait of what might perhaps be called sentimental economy that every individual in this world should be the object of the hero worship of some other. It may be submitted that there are no conditions so sterile as to induce a dearth of this perfectly disinterested, unrewarded admiration and acceptation of some embodied ideal. It is familiar enough in the higher walks of life and with worthy objects. But there may be a champion among beggars. It is a potent agent. Its purblind flatteries have advanced many a dullard to a foremost place. The plainest face has some devotee of its beauty; and even the most unpromising infant is a miracle of grace and genius to a doting grandmother. Hardly a hero of the world's history is more dignified on his elevated plane than was Lorenzo Taft in the eyes of his humble coadjutor. His wiliness was wisdom; his dictatorial aggressiveness, the preëminence of a natural captaincy; his self-seeking a cogent prudence; and his natural courage--with which, indeed, be was well endowed--the finest flower of the extravaganza of valor.

Copley looked at him now with the respectful sympathy which one might well feel in witnessing the fall of a very great man. He scarcely remembered his own interests, inextricably involved. Every inflection of the mellow, sonorous voice raised to a declamatory pitch found a vibrating acquiescence in chords of responsive emotion. Every unconscious gesture of the massive and imposing figure--as histrionically appropriate as if acquired by labor and tuition, since it was indeed the nature that art simulates--was marked with appreciative eyes. A rat in a trap is hardly esteemed a fit object for sympathy by civilized communities, but consider the aspect and magnitude of the catastrophe to his friends and neighbors, consider the emotional melodrama within the small circuit of the wires!

"Don't take it so tur'ble hard, 'Renzo," expostulated Copley, still seated on the floor.

For Taft was standing motionless, his eyes staring and fixed, his hat far back on his head, exposing his set, drawn face with its teeth hard clenched, one hand mechanically clutching his flowing yellow beard, the other continually closing and unclosing on the handle of a pistol which he had half drawn from his pocket,--a habit of his in moments of mental perplexity, as if he instinctively appealed to this summary arbiter to decide on questions far enough removed from its jurisdiction.

"Don't be so tur'ble desolated; some way out'n it, sure ez ye air born," urged Copley in a consolatory wheeze.

The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Taft. He caught himself with a start and turned hastily away, looking about as if in search of something. He took the lantern presently to aid him in this, and when it came back, glimmering through the dusk, he carried a box of tools in the other hand.

"Thar's one way out'n it, sure," he said in a muffled, changed voice, "though it's gone powerful hard with me ter git my own cornsent ter take it."

He placed the lantern upon the furnace, and, as he went vigorously to work, the astounded Copley, still upon the ground, began to perceive that he was taking the apparatus carefully apart; he was disconnecting the worm from the neck, when his amazed coadjutor found his voice.

"Hold on, 'Renzo," he remonstrated; "ye ain't a-goin' ter take the contraption down, surely"--

"Ruther hev the revenuers do it?" said Taft, showing his teeth in a sarcastic smile as he looked up. "They'll make wuss slarter with the worm 'n I will." Then, pausing, with a frown of rancorous reminiscence, "I hed a still o' bigger capacity 'n this one over yander in Persimmon Cove, an' they cut it up in slivers, an' the worm war lef' in pieces no longer 'n that," measuring with both hands, "an' the furnace all tore up. I never seen sech a sight ez whenst I croped back ter view the wreck. I 'lowed I'd never git forehanded enough ter start ter manufacture sperits agin in this worl'."

He stood idly gazing down these vistas of memory grimly enough for a moment; then, turning back to the still, "I'll make a try ter save the property this time, so when the storm blows over we kin git started agin another way an' another day. I'll fix it so ez when Lar'bee tells, his words will be cast back in his teeth fit ter knock 'em all down his own throat. He'll be sorry enough, sure's ye air born. They'll be hard swallowin'."

The natural fortitude of Taft's character, the elastic quality of his strength, his big, bluff mental methods, combined to support him in this ordeal to a degree which contrasted advantageously with the weak, almost supine grief that Copley manifested. Perhaps, too, Taft's dinner was a material element which gave cohesion and decision to his mental resolves. Now, Copley, half starved, nervous, wild with anxiety, dread for the future, regret for the past, doubt of the present, would angrily protest, even while he aided in dismantling the apparatus; and then, after a word or two of argument, would admit its necessity, its urgency, and again lament it as futile. He almost wept when the object of his solicitude, which he had served as if it were a fetich, was finally dismembered, and he found only a partial consolation in being himself permitted to pack it, secure from injury, in boxes which Taft brought down from the store. This scanty satisfaction was short-lived, for, despite his objection, Taft poured out upon the ground the liquor which remained after the shipment of the two barrels to the cross-roads. The tubs were cut into pieces in true "revenuer" fashion, the mash was poured out, the furnace was demolished out of all semblance to its former proportions and uses, before Taft began to lay the train to blow the place up, and thus effectually silence its testimony forever.

"S'pos'n'--s'pos'n'"--Copley shivered--"s'pos'n' somebody war in the Lost Time mine down thar"--

Taft paused, with a lot of tow in his hands which he was arranging for a fuse; he glanced around, the lantern swinging on his arm, as if waiting for the sequel to the unfinished sentence; then, as Copley remained vaguely staring as if at a vision of possible laborers in the Lost Time mine, "Skeer 'em powerful, I reckon," he said casually, and bent once more to his work.

"But--but"--Copley recommenced, in a tone so urgent that Taft once more desisted to listen, with an inquiring look on his half-turned face--"but--but--s'pos'n' the--a--'splosion o' the powder war--war ter bring down the rocks an' the timbers in some o' them tunnels an' open shafts, an' somebody war in thar, hey? hey?" with eager insistence.

"Shut 'em in thar fur good an' all, I reckon,--git buried a leetle before thar time, that's all," said Taft coolly, and went on with his work as before.

Perhaps some vague premonition, perhaps an intuition of subterranean proximity to an unsuspected wanderer in the Lost Time mine, perhaps only a morbid aversion to the whole project, induced by the lack of that conscience-fortifying force, dinner, actuated Copley, but for the third time he sought to disaffect Taft's mind toward it.

"Mebbe somebody mought be passin' an' hear the 'splosion; moughtn't they low 'twar cur'us? What would they make of it?"

Taft did not now pause in his work; he answered still bending down to the ground laying the train.

"Yearthquake," he said composedly, "or else jes' some o' the rottin' timbers o' the mine settlin' an' givin' way. Besides," he added, straightening himself up, "nobody's passin' at this time o' night, nohow."

"Night!" exclaimed Copley. "Is it night?"

"Midnight," replied Taft laconically.

He stood silent, thinking, a moment, and resting after the labor of cautiously adjusting the charges of powder; and then, so quiet it all was, not the stir of a breath, not the whisper of a word, not the silken rustle of a ribbon of flame in the demolished furnace, he heard, what he had never before heard so far as here in the still-room, the reiterated strokes of a pick echoing down the tunnel, and cleaving the ground with the regularity of a practiced workman. He said not a word to Copley; he walked along the tunnel toward the sound, a chill thrill stealing over him despite the fact that his temerity was a trifle more pronounced than usual because he was about to leave the place forever. The strokes continued, now growing louder, now more muffled, always accurately timed; and suddenly the faint clamors of that high, queer, false-ringing voice that seemed to seek out and shock every nerve within him. He recoiled with fright and an unreasoning anger. He turned himself about, and swiftly changed the position of a can filled with powder which was to aid in the demolition of the place, arranging it in a niche in the earth close to the wall whence the sound came.

"I make ye my partin' compliments," he said, with a sarcastic smile and a mocking wave of the hand to the gruesome unknown. The next moment his expression changed to a frightened gravity, and he ran through the black tunnel as if he consciously had the devil at his heels, pausing not until he was safe in the cellar beneath the store.

The paroxysm, if so it might be called, passed in a moment, and he was laughing as he stood at the aperture of the tunnel, holding the lantern, red-faced and a trifle shamefaced, when Copley, left far behind, came hobbling up slowly and painfully. Taft was quite restored; it was with his own assured, definite manner and elastic stride that he presently took his way along the tunnel again and applied the match to the fuse. He evidently accomplished his work thoroughly, for he had no doubts of its efficacy when he returned and stood leaning against a pile of boxes, waiting quite carelessly as here and there tiny stellular lights sprang up along that darksome way that was not wont to blossom out such constellations.

Stars? No; lines of fire, vermicular, writhing, growing, serpentine, swiftly gliding, armed with venom, with destruction under their forked tongues; for suddenly a flare, a frightful clap as of thunder, a wrench as if the foundations of the earth were torn asunder, and the two men were thrown to the ground and the lantern extinguished in the jar.

The reverberations were slow to die away; only gradually quiet came. A stillness ensued, stifling with dust, and with such strong sense of alternation with that moment of deafening detonation that the pulses quivered with expectancy, and the slightest movement set the nerves to jarring. Taft had groped for a light, and as the faint coruscation of a match, then the steadier gleam of the lantern, pierced the darkness, the nearest results of the explosion were open to view. The timbers roofing the tunnel had been shaken down, and close at hand masses of earth had fallen with them and lay banked at the very door. If Taft had been warned in a dream, he could hardly have made his defense more perfect. He and his one trusted adherent worked there the rest of the night. The old original timbers of the house, partly rotten and time-stained, were replaced as formerly, leaving no trace that there had ever been an entrance into the abandoned mine; and when at last Taft clambered through the aperture of the counter into the store, he left the door broadly flaring after him.

"Trust Sis ter notice it," he remarked. "She'll git used ter it in ten minits, an' it'll 'pear like she always knowed 't war thar."

The still was conveyed some miles away and buried in a marked spot, and thus the business of moonshining was abandoned at the moment when the project of the summer hotel, from which it had so much to fear, was pretermitted amidst its varied entanglements, and the Cove, which certainly could not have comfortably contained both, was left without either for the nonce.

XV.

As Julia entered her father's house, quite fresh and dry after the tumults of the storm, each of the group gathered about the fireside was too insistently preoccupied at the moment to notice the discrepancy between her spotless attire and the aspects of the weather, except indeed Luther. The details of their attire she marked at once, and dimpled at the sight. These rain-lashed victims of the processioning had hustled themselves into their cast-off gear; and albeit the fashions of the day were not exigent in the Cove, very forlorn appeared these ancient garments, having long ago seen the best of their never very good days. Cap'n Lucy's brown coat was like a russet old crinkled leaf, as it clung, out of shape and ruffled by unskillful folding, about him; Luther wore one of his own of former years, far too small now for his burly shoulders that threatened to burst out of it at every seam, and his long arms that protruded their blue shirt-sleeves only half covered from the elbow. He met her glance with a resentful glare, as if he could imagine now no cause for mirth, which was untimely in its best estate. His Sunday coat graced the form of Jasper Larrabee, who sat on the other side of the fire, and who albeit not of the processioning party, had been caught in the rain in coming hither. Although as tall as Luther, he was much more slender, and he seemed to have shrunk, somehow, in the amplitude of his host's big blue coat. He gave Julia a formal greeting, and was apparently much perturbed by the untoward state of mind in which he found Cap'n Lucy. And indeed Cap'n Lucy's face seemed to have adopted sundry wrinkles from his coat, so old, so awry, so crinkled, so suggestive of better days, had it suddenly become. Julia was reminded all at once of the business interests at stake.

"How did the percessionin' turn out, dad?" she inquired, as she stood with her hand on the back of a chair, and looked across the fire at him.

If any eyes might watch Fortune's wheel undismayed, whether it swing high or low, one might deem them these surely, with perpetual summer blooming there, as if there were no frosts, no winter's chill, no waning of time or love or life. What cared she for land or its lack?

The fore-legs of Cap'n Lucy's chair came to the floor with an irascible thump. He turned and surveyed the room; then, looking at her, "Air yer eyesight good?" he demanded.

"Toler'ble," she admitted.

"D'ye see that thar contraption?" he continued, leaning forward, and pointing with great _empressement_ at a spinning-wheel in the corner.

"I see it," she said, meeting his keen return glance.

"D'ye know what it's made fur?" he inquired, dropping his voice, and with an air of being about to impart valuable information.

"Fur spinning" she answered wonderingly.

"Oh, ye know, do ye? Then--mind it."

And thus he settled the woman question, in his own house at least, and repudiated feminine interest and inquisitiveness in his business affairs, and spurned feminine consolation and rebuke as far as he could,--poor Cap'n Lucy!

Larrabee had that sense of being ill at ease which always characterizes a stranger whose unhappy privilege it is to assist at a family quarrel. He was divided by the effort to look as if he understood nothing of ill temper in the colloquy, and the doubt as to whether he did not appear to side with one or the other,--to relish Julia's relegation to the spinning-wheel, or to resent Cap'n Lucy's strong measures; or perhaps he might seem lightly scornful of both.

He gazed steadily out of the open door, where a great lustrous copper-tinted sky glassed itself in myriads of gleaming copper-tinted ponds made in every depression by the recent rains; between were the purplish-black mountains cut sharply on the horizon. He heard a mocking-bird singing, and what a medley the frogs did pipe! Then rushed out into the midst the whir of Julia's spinning-wheel, which made all other songs of the evening only its incidental burden. She sat near the door, her figure imposed upon those bright hues of sky and water as if she were painted on some lustrous metal. Their reflection was now and again on her hair; she might have seemed surrounded by some glorious aureola. Not that he definitely discerned this. He only felt that she was fairer than all women else, and that the evening gleamed. The bird's song struck some chord in his heart that silently vibrated, and the whir of her wheel was like a hymn of the fireside. He wished that he had never left it for Taft and his gang, and the hope of making money for a home of his own, since his mother's hospitality had well-nigh left him homeless. The thought roused him to a recollection of his errand.

"I kem hyar ter git yer advices, Cap'n Lucy," he began.

Cap'n Lucy turned upon him a silent but snarling face. He needed all his "advices" for himself.

"I ain't got nuthin' ter hide from you-uns," Larrabee continued, after a pause for the expected reply. "Ye know all I do,"--a fleeting recollection of the still came over him,--"that I'm able ter tell," he added; for the idea of betraying the secrets involving Taft and the other moonshiners had never entered his mind.

Cap'n Lucy's scornful chin was tossed upward.

"We-uns feel toler'ble compliminted," he averred, "ter hev it 'lowed ez we-uns knows _all_ you-uns do, fur that's a heap, ez ye air aimin' ter tell."

"I mean--I went ter say, Cap'n Lucy"--Jasper Larrabee's words, in their haste, tripped one over the other, as they sought to set their meaning in better array.

"He jes' means, uncle Lucy, ez it ain't no new thing," Adelicia interposed to expound, touched by the anxious contrition of the younger man, who was leaning eagerly forward, his elbow on his knee, toward the elder, and to allay the contrariety of spirit of "uncle Lucy."

"An' meddlin' ain't no new thing, nuther, with you-uns, Ad'licia," snarled Cap'n Lucy, much overwrought. "I wish ter Gawd, with all the raisin' an' trainin' I hev hed ter gin ye, I could hev larnt ye ter hold yer jaw wunst in a while whenst desir'ble, an' show sech manners ez--ez T'bithy thar kin." He pointed at the cat on the hearth, and gave a high, fleering laugh, in which the sarcastic vexation overmastered every suggestion of mirth.