Part 2

"I don't want thar money,--ain't got no cur'osity 'bout the color of it," old Tems said tartly.

Neither of the younger Temses uttered a word. Luther smoked imperturbably, and Julia, as sleek, as lithe, as supple as a panther, bent her beautiful, clear-cut, distinct face above the cards, which she moved with a flexible elasticity that made it seem no labor. Every line about her was sharply drawn; the very plaits of her glossy hair showed their separate strands, over and under and over again, in the coil at the back of her head. Against the dark wall, she had a fixity, a definiteness of effect, like a cameo, in contrast with the somewhat tousled head which Adelicia held back to observe her completed industry. She lifted the mended coat in both hands before her, and contemplated the patch, set on indeed as if it should never come off again, but with what affront to the art of fine needlework!

She was not so absorbed, however, as to be unmindful of the disaffected state of feeling in the room below, and she must needs seek to improve it.

"We ain't so mighty easy tarrified, nohow," she remarked, suavely addressing the information more directly to Kenniston's pretended fears for their safety. "An' ez ter rocks fallin' an' sech,"--she turned her head askew to better observe the effect of the flagrant patch,--"I hev tuk notice ez trees streck by lightning mostly falls whar thar ain't no house."

"'Kase thar be mighty few houses whar the trees be lef'," observed old Tems, whose contradictory faculties were called into play every time she spoke.

"Waal, fower hev fell, lightning-streck, sence we-uns hev been a-livin' hyar, an' nare one teched us," she argued.

Kenniston caught his breath. "How long have you been living here, colonel?" The secret gibe came back to him with the sudden secret renewal of his hope.

"Five year, or thereabout," growled old Tems.

"Five year this comin' fall," put in Adelicia, with exactitude. "We-uns lived then nigher sunrise, on the flat o' the mounting, over thar." She nodded with her wealth of bronze curls toward the east to indicate the direction of the locality.

"And if you would move then, colonel, why not now?" demanded Kenniston.

It seemed as if old Tems would not reply. So deep a scowl had corrugated his face that in its wizard-like aspect not the faintest vestige of his famous ancient beauty remained.

"Burnt out," he growled at last.

"The fire-scald, ye see," explained Adelicia, turning her oval face upon Kenniston.

It had an old-fashioned, even a foreign cast, was his superficial thought, as he gazed up at her in the dusky shadows of the staircase; it reminded him of some antique miniature. But his recognized idea was expressed in the words, echoed in surprise and with a touch of dismay, "The fire-scald!"

"Fire war set out in the woods ter burn the bresh; but the wind sprung up, it did, an' the fire tuk the house an' fence an' all. Ye mus' hev noticed the fire-scald over yon?" Once more she nodded her head in intimation of the direction. "Then we-uns moved hyar an' raised this house."

Old Tems's surly, disaffected look caught her attention. "But this hyar house air a heap better 'n the burnt one; that war old, fur true, an' I tell ye the wind used ter shake it whenst stormin'. Roof leaked, too. Roof war so old that the clapboards war fastened on with wooden paigs stiddier nails. My great-gran'dad--Cap'n Lucy's gran'dad--didn't hev much modern improvemints, leastwise in blacksmith's gear, when he kem hyar ter settle from old Car'liny."

She glanced down, smiling. Her strangely old-fashioned little face was lovely in smiling, but Kenniston did not heed; he did not even hear her words; he was absorbed in a train of thought that came to him as she talked.

She looked slightly ill at ease for a moment, perceiving the defection of his attention; then, as if to make the best of it, she turned her head and glanced over her shoulder at the man in the corner.

"Ye hev hearn that?" she said.

He nodded. She saw the gleam of his full blue eye. "They called East Tennessee the 'Washington Deestric',' arter them days," he said, his big voice booming out. Then he went on to tell of an old house which he knew, in which wooden pegs also served as nails, as a set-off, it might seem, to the ancient dwelling that perished in the "fire-scald," and presently he was wrangling with old Tems as to the precise route that certain early settlers were said to have taken through the mountains, in which discussion even the silent Luther joined, and Kenniston was left undisturbed to his thoughts.

These thoughts were significant enough. He had seen this vast property of his only once before in all the years that it had been in his possession. It had descended to him in due course, with the rest of the paternal estate, at the death of his father, who had been a successful merchant of Bretonville. He had had some little but well-restrained inclination for speculation, and these miles of mountain fastnesses were a single instance of it, looking to the future development of mineral resources. The abandoned mine in the gorge expressed the failure of hopes of silver and lead, which had led him only for a little while and only a short distance. He himself had never laid eyes on his purchase; but once, in a college vacation, the son, on a pedestrian tour, had explored to some purpose the woods up and down these steeps and across the line. Kenniston remembered now for the first time how the face of the country had impressed him then, for the fire-scald had so altered its aspect. The slope where the quaint little ante-Revolutionary house was perched had then seemed high and steep. In building anew, Luther Tems had selected a site on more level ground, considerably removed from the area of the burnt district. Possibly the fear of disaster when those blackened and decaying trees should finally complete their doom and fall, or the vicinage of springs for the essential water supply for man and beast, had served to influence his decision; but he had certainly made a very considerable journey from his former situation, and cut a large cantle out of the Cove in his present settlement.

Kenniston's mind was hard upon the trail of the boundary lines, as his absorbed eyes dwelt on the red fire. They were ill defined in his memory, for when the great body of a man's land, numbering thousands of acres, bears a merely nominal price, a few furlongs amiss here or there in the wild jungle of the laurel are hardly worth the counting. In this particular instance the accuracy of metes and bounds made a difference all apart from actual values. It was his recollection that his lines included all those slopes to the "backbone," a high craggy ridge that ran like a spinal column adown the mountain mass. If this were the case, old Tems had inadvertently set up his staff of rest on his neighbor's land, was himself a mere trespasser, and might be ejected without difficulty in due process of law.

Kenniston stirred uneasily as he contemplated this possibility. In its extreme unpopularity there was a very definite menace. He could ill afford to antagonize the whole countryside. The lawless, illogical mountain population would be arrayed as a unit against his interests. Even single-handed, old Cap'n Lucy seemed formidable, when active aggressions were contemplated. And he could appreciate, too, the seeming injustice, from the rustic standpoint, that, for the frivolous and flippant desire of keeping the landscape sightly for the fastidious gaze of the gentlefolk, an old man and his family must be turned out of house and home. Kenniston knew that although he might pay the full value of Cap'n Lucy's improvements, the popular censor would account this naught if the mountaineer were forced to quit his home against his will.

Nevertheless law is law, and Kenniston could easily forecast the triumphant result of a legal arbitrament. Tems had not been ensconced here, within his own inclosures, claiming as his own, long enough to acquire any title under the statute of limitations, even if he could establish adverse possession. The property was his own, and he would satisfy even every moral claim upon him in paying the interloper the full value of his improvements. At all events he would have the line run out, and perhaps the land formally processioned.

At the idea of prompt action in the matter, his full red lips, only partially visible through his beard and mustache, were pressed together firmly; his teeth met with a certain stiffening of the jaw into a hard, determined expression; his eyes were cast up suddenly over the primitive humble interior of the cabin with a certain impatience of its uncouthness, so at variance with the gala trim of modern comforts, so homely, so American, so hopelessly, desperately, the presentment of the unprogressive backwoods. Built five years ago, said they! It might have graced the "Washington Deestric'." His white teeth showed, as he half sneered and half laughed. He would, if he might, with a wave of the hand, have swept it and all it represented out of existence; nay, into oblivion. As his eyes came once more to their former point of rest, the fire, they suddenly encountered the intent gaze of the man in the corner. It discomfited Kenniston in some sort, although he could not have said why. His glance fell; he nervously uncrossed and recrossed his legs, and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. A vague sense of sustaining covert enmity had begun to pervade his consciousness. He could not say whether this were induced by the mere inception of the unpopular idea of eviction, or whether it were a subtle perception of something antagonistic in the mental attitude toward him of the composed, watchful man who sat in the corner. It was not a furtive observation. It dwelt upon him openly, deliberately, steadily. It held no element of offensiveness; it was so calm, so incidental, so apparently, so naturally, the concomitant of the thoughtful, contemplative pipe, which now and again his hand steadied, or removed to release a wreath of the strong tobacco smoke which pervaded the apartment. Yet Kenniston felt, oddly enough, that it was not an incidental observation. It was charged with much discernment. A discriminating analysis was, he instinctively knew, coupled with it. He began, on his part, to more definitely gauge the two or three fragmentary contributions which the stranger had flung into the talk. The allusion to the solvency of a company and its responsibility in damages savored of a knowledge far beyond the ken of the Cove, this region of primitive barter where there is neither currency nor commerce; where the operations of far-away courts are but faintly echoed, as of retribution overtaking some reckless and unwary criminal, and the provisions of the law seem merely futile and disregarded devices of lawyers who seek to live upon the people by their enforcement. Then the crafty contrast of the differing estimates of the house, the one as a home, the other as a hut, intimated some definite capacity to play upon the springs of human emotions. He wondered if he had ever before seen this man. He had a good memory, but he did not charge it with the various mountaineers he met, and sometimes he forgot their names and occasionally their personality. He was restive under this slow, reflective gaze, and he pushed back his chair suddenly and walked away to the door. It was open and widely flaring, and he stood there as if scanning the weather signs.

For so long he had seen the castellated walls of his new building rise upon the great natural terrace of the mountain, above the series of crags, that he experienced a sort of subacute surprise to mark the loneliness and melancholy of the landscape. Only the pinnacles of the mists glimmered in the moon, as unsubstantial as the turrets of his fancy. Below were all the darkling spaces of the night-shadowed forests. Above, the heavily wooded slopes loomed vaguely in the dim light, for the moon was in her first quarter, here showing the gaunt face of a crag, and there a ravine made visible by thronging spectre-like vapors. The stars were bright. Near the great dome he marked the scintillating circlet of the Northern Crown; its splendors seemed enhanced, he thought, by the vicinage of that towering densely dark mass beneath. So still it all was! He heard the silvery tinkle of the liberated mountain springs near his own site sounding with such freshness, with such elfin spontaneity, with such flexible fantasies of cadence, that one would have imagined he must surely have bethought him how featly the chorusing oreads were singing; it only brought to his mind anew the chemical analysis, and the hordes of valetudinarians waiting to bring all their ills, real and imaginary, to lay them, with more valuable considerations, at the shrine of his Spa.

His sense of difficulties and discouragements took on a new lease, and as he turned impatiently away from the door he almost ran against young Luther Tems, who had come to gaze upon the clouds with that humble, expectant wistfulness characteristic of those votaries of the weather, the farmer class.

"Would you-uns jedge thar war rain in that batch o' clouds settin' ter the south?" he drawled seductively, as if he sought to influence favorably the unprejudiced opinion he asked.

"I'm no judge of weather signs," Kenniston returned succinctly, although in another mood it would have suited well his satiric bent to invent and promulgate a formula of fictitious barometrical science.

As he glanced loweringly toward the fireside group, thrusting his hands into his pockets and advancing with long steps to his former chair, he was quick to observe that the man in the corner seemed to have determined on a leisurely departure. He had risen, and was returning to his pocket a brier-root pipe, taking the sedulous care to knock all the ashes out of it on the jamb of the fireplace, which betrays him whose pocket linings have more than once been the scene of an incipient conflagration. Kenniston regarded him, as he stood in the full light, with a disaffected interest, a sort of responsive enmity. And yet there was nothing of itself inimical in this man's bearing. On the contrary, suggestions of good fellowship predominated in his open manner and clear blue eye. He was exceedingly tall, not judging by Cap'n Lucy's elegant and slight proportions, nor by the burlier Luther's height, but by actual measurement. It had been long since he had shaved,--his full yellow beard hung like a golden fleece far down over the breast of his brown jeans coat; his long, straight yellow hair, of the same tint, had its edges upturned in the semblance of curl by the obstacle of his collar. He had a large, bony, hooked nose, which gave a certain strength to his countenance. The fashion of the feature was such as to suggest sagacity in some sort, as of keen instinctive faculties, but its expression was as ferocious as that of an eagle's beak. His mustache hid his lips and was lost in his beard. He wore great spurred boots drawn high over his brown jeans trousers, and a wide-brimmed black wool hat. A faded red handkerchief about his neck now and again showed amidst the hirsute abundance, for he turned his head quickly and vigilantly. He had an air of self-confidence which was somewhat imposing. It constrained in his interlocutor a sort of reluctant acceptance of his own estimate of himself. Kenniston, looking at him with an unacknowledged respect for the untrained natural forces his personality expressed, felt him to be formidable; how, or why, or when it was not manifest, nor in what sort his conciliation might be compassed, nor how it should be worth the effort. His bland phrases of departure set the man of etiquette ill at ease. Kenniston was accustomed to uncouthness in the mountaineers, even to lowering looks and open expressions of enmity when he or his plans impinged on their prejudices; polite duplicity, the native of drawing-rooms, seemed strangely out of place in this region of paradisaic simplicity of feeling and manner. His own acute social sense and his valued commercial acumen had given him an intuition of this man's aversion to him or his projects, or both; but his hand was feeling yet the stranger's cordial grip, and the sonorous invitation, "Obligated ter hev a visit over at Lost Time," was ringing in his ears.

"Who is that man?" he abruptly demanded of his host, as soon as the jingle of the spurs and the sound of the horse's hoofs were silent on the air. Then, seeking to make his question more incidental, he added, "Seems to be a friend of yours."

Cap'n Lucy and Luther looked at each other, exchanging a grin of derision. The two girls seemed unaccountably embarrassed.

"Waal, stranger," said the old man, "he's a widower, a sort of perfessional widower."

Luther broke out laughing with a hearty joviality. It surely was not he who had been deluded by the clouds and made the sport of the winds; it hardly seemed possible that he could take so much pleasure in aught save good prospects of the fruits of the earth.

"He hev gin me an' Luther a heap o' trouble, an' we-uns hev tuk a power o' counsel tergether ez ter what we-uns war goin' ter do 'bout it," old Tems continued.

Kenniston, conscious that he had roused some standing joke, cast his slightly satirical glance from one to the other, and with a sort of scornful patience waited their pleasure to enlighten him.

Adelicia, with heightened color and an affronted aspect, was making a great show of inattention; while Julia, with her sleek, deft grace, went on impassively carding cotton.

"He kems hyar a-visitin' the whole fambly, an' thar he sets an' sets; an' Luther loses his sleep, till, follerin' the plough nex' day, he dunno the share from the ploughtail, nor Gee from Haw; mighty nigh fit ter fall in the furrow, jes' walkin' in his sleep."

Once more Luther's crude boyish laughter rang against the rafters; this was at all events no somnambulistic demonstration.

"Ef thar was jes' _one_ gal in the fambly, Luther an' me would git off gyard jewty: but ez fur ez he lets on he jes' kems ter visit us all,--_all_; an' hyar we hev got ter set, an' watch him cast sheep's-eyes fust at one gal, then at t'other, till Luther an' me air plumb cross-eyed, looking two ways at once."

It was a great mutual possession to have so witty a father and so appreciative a son.

"A' fust," continued the old man, when the filial hilarity had somewhat subsided, "I jes' felt like I couldn't spar' either o' the gals. Whenst my darter was born, the fust thing I done war ter buy me a shootin' iron, express fur the fust feller ez kem a-sidlin' round, talkin' 'bout marryin' her, an' takin' her away, an' tryin' ter make her b'lieve ez he was a finer feller 'n her own dad: an' I didn't know--the insurance o' some folks is powerful survigrous--but he _mought_ set up ter purtend ter be _better lookin'_!"

His daughter might seem to have shown her appreciation of his famous good looks by adopting them all. As she lifted her eyes and smiled upon the narrator, the brilliant and spirited beauty of her face might indeed be a welcome reminiscence of the time when he, too, wore so fair a guise, and might impart a zestful relish of the resemblance.

"An' then Ad'licia, she kem hyar when her mother, my sister Amandy, died. My sister hed married a second time, a mighty mean man, an' whenst I tuk Ad'licia--she war 'bout three year old--I jes' said, 'Yer mam didn't hev much jedgmint in marryin', an' I reckon ye'll take the failin' arter her; an' ye'll show sech jedgmint ez ye kin l'arn in marryin' nobody.' An' she agreed: she warn't very young at three, jes' sorter youngish; an' though people mought think she hedn't hed a chance ter view the world on sech a p'int, she hed her senses powerful well in hand. So we made a solemn promise. An' I felt plumb sot up till lately. I don't want nare one of 'em ter marry. A fust-rate man ain't wuth a fifth-rate woman, much less a fust-rate woman," he declared chivalrously. "Leastwise, ye can't git the gals' daddies ter think so. An' now, jes' ez we air all so sot an' stiddy in our minds, hyar kems this widower, this _perfessional_ widower; fur he don't show no signs o' bein' nuthin' else! An' we dunno whether he kems ter listen at Julia hold her tongue, or Ad'licia talk, or hear Luther praise God fur the weather, or ter git my best advice on politics. We'd do ennything ter git shet o' him. He mought hev air one o' the gals, ef he'd only say _which_."

And he chuckled as he gazed into the fire.

"What's his business? Farmer, I suppose?" suggested Kenniston.

"Naw; he hev got a leetle store,--powerful leetle trade, 'count o' the cross-roads store at the settlemint, though he trades right smart. Liberal, too. He'll take ennything,--load o' corn, load o' wood, sech like heavy truck ez thar ain't no sale fur ginerally, 'count o' the wagonin' an' roads bein' so heavy. Whenst you-uns git yer railroad put through,"--he gave him a rallying wink at this aberration, as he esteemed the projected narrow gauge,--"ye'll mend all that."

"Oh, yes; you'll be in touch with the markets of the world then," said Kenniston, with his satiric laugh. "Only a little question of freight rates between you and New York."

This sarcasm did not cut so deeply as one might imagine. It would have been impossible to insert the idea--save with an axe--into old "Lucy" Tems's brain that New York was more important and metropolitan than Colbury, or essentially more remote.

"This Lorenzo Taft ain't been so sociable till lately. That's what makes me call him a _perfessional_ widower," old Tems went on, with a peculiar relish for the designation. "He hev two childern, gal an' boy, an' the gal hev been with her gran'mam down in Blount County till the old woman died; an' now he hev got 'Sis,' ez he calls her, with him, an' he wants a step-mammy fur her! He ain't a-courtin' a wife fur hisself; he's courtin' a step-mammy fur 'Sis.' An' in course his sheep's-eyes would go cornsider'ble furder with the gals than they do, ef they didn't know that he air jes' out a-trappin' fur 'Sis.'"

"Waal," said Adelicia suddenly, "I dunno ez folks oughter think hard of him fur that, 'kase 'Sis' did look powerful lonesome an' pitiful, settin' up all by herself 'mongst all the men at the store."

"Thar, now!" exclaimed Cap'n Lucy triumphantly, "makin' excuses fur folks agin! I told ye ez ye couldn't hold out till bedtime 'thout excusin' this one fur that, an' t'other one fur which."

"Waal," said Adelicia, "it's a mighty late bedtime."

She was rolling up the coat as carefully as if a first-class triumph of needlework had been accomplished upon it.

"'Sis' didn't 'pear ter me ter need enny lookin' arter whenst I seen her," said old Tems heartlessly. "She 'peared ter be some fower or five hunderd year old, an' stiddy an' settled ter accommodate."

"She be 'bout ten year old," said Adelicia gravely.

"I wonder," said Cap'n Lucy, with a twinkle of the eye, "I _do_ wonder ef that thar pernicious way o' makin' excuses fur folks's faults would hold out ef Ad'licia war ter set out ter be somebody's step-mammy!"