Part 8

Remembering the relative proportions and force of Adelicia and himself, Espey and his woe were out of countenance for the nonce. He laughed a little sheepishly. "Naw," he admitted reluctantly. "She didn't hurt me none ter speak on."

Mrs. Larrabee's brow cleared. "Sonny, 'twar jes' love-licks," she suggested, in old-fashioned maternal phrase.

"Naw, sir! Naw, sir!" Espey shook his head with grave protest. "She war too leetle ter hurt me, she war bound ter know. She jes' wanted ter hurt my feelin's. An' she done it, too."

Mrs. Larrabee's face was all commiseration; and suddenly a truly feminine curiosity became manifest. "Whar do the gal live? Hyarabouts or in Tanglefoot?"

However far a man may trust a woman, he never trusts her completely. Jack Espey caught himself sharply. "It's fur off,--mighty fur, 'pears like ter me," he said mendaciously. "Now, Mis' Lar'bee, I wants ter git yer advices. What ails the gal ter treat me that-a-way, jes' 'kase I done her bid an' gin the t'other gal good-evenin', full perlite like she told me ter do? What ails her?"

"Pride," said Mrs. Larrabee sternly. She could be severe enough with people whom she did not see, and her mental image of a buxom termagant was far enough removed from the fragile and shrinking Adelicia.

Espey looked at her with doubtful, troubled eyes. "Jes' turned on me an' smit me!" he protested. "I feel like I'll never git over that lick. I'll die of it yit!"

"Pride!" fiercely reiterated Mrs. Larrabee. "An' ef ye wanter make her repent it, ye jes' perlite up the t'other gal fur true! Whenst I went back ter Tanglefoot Cove, I'd show sech manners ez it ain't used ter,--ye'd better b'lieve I would. That thar gal 'lows she kin git ye too easy, too powerful cheap. T'other gal good lookin'?"

"Waal," drawled Espey uneasily, evidently contemplating apprehensively this heroic treatment for the small smiter, "nobody don't look purty ter me but one, an' she's plumb beautiful, ter my mind."

"Oh, shucks!" Mrs. Larrabee exhorted him scornfully.

"T'other gal hev got the name of it, though," he said reluctantly, plainly jealous for the preëminence of his lady love. "T'other gal is named a reg'lar gyardin lily fur beauty."

"Waal, then, perlitin' 'round her won't go so turrible hard with ye," said Mrs. Larrabee discerningly. "Though mebbe ye hed better let the 'gyardin lily' inter the secret, 'kase she mought fall in love with ye an' yer perliteness."

But Jack Espey shook his head; he had bitter cause to distrust candor. "I can't go 'round warnin' the gals against me," he said sturdily. "Ef she falls in love with me, she'll jes' hev ter fall out agin, that's all."

He sat for a little time gazing moodily at the fire, and contemplating the details of this scheme of reprisal. Then, with a curt good-night, he rose and tramped off to the roof-room, which he shared with Jasper and a delegation of the larger boys; leaving Mrs. Larrabee covering the embers, and pausing now and again, as she knelt on the hearth, with the red light on her statuesque features, to ponder on the lover of her past youthful days, and the sensible advice she had given Jack Espey to reduce the inordinate pride of the arrogant, arbitrary damsel of his heart in Tanglefoot Cove.

But the bars so stoutly made fast against the door were not destined to keep their place that night. The moon had long before slipped from the vaguely illumined limited space of the sky, which her own light had rendered faintly blue, down behind a jutting crag of the western mountains; it glowed a sombre purple as the crescent passed, with a pearly gleaming mist half revealed against the black summits about it. The white stars, whiter still, pulsated in the darkening sky. So pervasive a sense of silence was in their mute splendor that even the benighted mountain wilderness seemed to assert many voices, strange, murmurous, unknown to the light. Espey, stretched upon his pallet in the recess of the dormer window above the porch, with his wakeful, troublous thoughts, languidly sought to differentiate the sounds. He heeded the rustle of a vagrant zephyr, the twitter of a nestling, the murmur of the spring in the rocks near at hand, the never silent chirring of the cicada of the Southern summer night. But what was it in the insensate world of crag and forest and mountain and chasm that drew a long breath, and paused, and once more sighed heavily, and again resigned itself to silence? He could see in the rifts of the clapboards above his head a palpitating white star,--how its heart of fire beat! He felt his own pulses throb heavily, and the next moment they seemed to cease. A new sound intruded into the monotony of the mountain stillness. He heard it once far away, and then silence. He lifted himself upon his elbow and listened, with dilating eyes. Only the sense of the noiseless dewfall, the cracking of a sun-dried clapboard, the swift scurrying of a mouse amongst the rafters, and once more silence, or that mysterious voice of the night which rose and fell in the cadence of sighs. He was about to lie down when the sound came again,--distinct this time, unmistakable, so close at hand that it seemed the very malice of fate that he should not have distinguished it earlier. It was the hoofbeat of horses, and they came at a swift gallop,--so swift that he had hardly a moment to take counsel with himself, in a turmoil of doubt and fear; his foot was barely on the stairway when a heavy tread fell upon the little porch, and a sturdy fist thundered at the door.

Into the dusky red darkness of the room below--for the glow of the embers could hardly be reckoned as light--a feeble white glimmer was stealing. Mrs. Larrabee, without her sunbonnet for once, had hustled on her homespun dress, buttoned all awry, and was striking a light for a tallow dip. Perhaps its dim flicker revealed the young man standing high in the deep shadows on the stair that led to the roof-room, or perhaps she only distinguished his step in the midst of the clamor at the door, for she called out suddenly to him, "Open the door, Jack, open the door, sonny, no matter who it be! Every chile in the house will be a-swarmin' up d'rectly ef that thar bangin' be 'lowed ter go on, an' I reckon we'll _never_ git the baby inter bed agin!"

The turkey was already awake and alert, its piercing pipe adding to the confusion and nervous stress of the situation, as Jack Espey, after one irresolute moment, strode to the door, and Mrs. Larrabee rose from her knees on the hearth and stood in the dusky brown background, shading with her hand the timorous flame of the candle.

Perhaps it was well for Jack Espey that the bars went down with so resolute and hearty a clangor, for, as he confronted the men at the door, they did not doubt that they faced the son of the house.

"Widder Lar'bee lives hyar?" said a keen, tall, dark-eyed man, with high cheek-bones and a hooked nose, above which his thick black eyebrows met. His soft black hat had a sort of peaked crown, and he wore a suit of plaided "store clothes," as befitted one having access to the towns, but which were much creased, and his boots were drawn, country fashion, over his trousers to the knees.

"Air that enny reason ter bust the door down?" demanded Espey, looking at the stout battens as if expecting to discern injury as it swayed in his hand.

Mrs. Larrabee interposed blandly, "I be Widder Lar'bee. 'Tain't no use ter talk loud. I got some mighty fractious chil'n hyar 'sleep."

The fractious turkey stood upon the hearth and piped till the end of its tail quivered with the energy of its vocalization. A cricket was shrilling keenly. The trivial sounds seemed to throb in Espey's brain when the visitor said, "I be dep'ty sher'ff o' this county, Mis' Lar'bee, an' I hear ez thar war a stranger in the Cove a-puttin' up hyar."

The two men behind the officer looked over his shoulder, their bearded faces sharply inquisitive.

"Naw, sir, I ain't got no stranger hyar; not but whut I would take 'em in,--me an' my son hev made a rule o' that,--but we-uns bide too fur off'n the road." She did not account Espey a stranger, so accustomed a figure had he become in the domestic circle.

There was a definite disappointment in the officer's keen, high-featured face.

Mrs. Larrabee turned to Espey. "Ye ain't hearn o' enny stray man hyarabouts, hev ye, sonny?"

"Thar be a stranger down at Tems's," said Espey; "though I reckon he ain't done nuthin' agin the law,--saaft-spoken an' perlite an' peaceable."

The high-featured face was contorted in a jocose grimace, to which the meeting of the black eyebrows gave a singularly sinister effect. Espey felt his heart sink as the official winked at him.

"Perliteness would have been wuth mo' ter this man ef he could hev showed manners sooner. War mighty onpolite indeed in Tanglefoot Cove, Mis' Lar'bee, an' shot a man."

"Kilt him?" she demanded in a bated voice, and turning pale. She held the candle awry, as she spoke, and the flickering light as the tallow melted and dripped heavily on the floor showed only her own straight features and masses of brown hair, dulled with gray, coiled at the back of her head.

Espey's overladen heart thumped heavily. The cold drops stood thick on his face, all in the shadow, white and drawn with suspense.

"In an' about,--a sorter livin' death. An' sence he hev got so much worse his folks want the malefactor apprehended straight. We hearn ez he air hyarabouts or in Persimmon Cove, one. An' ez the constable o' this deestric' air sick abed,--ailin' old cattle like him oughtn't ter be 'lowed ter hold office!--the high sher'ff sent me ter look arter him, ef I could come up with him. Waal,"--he was turning away,--"I'm sorry I hed ter roust ye and yer son up this time o' night."

Mrs. Larrabee took no note of this misdescription. Her thoughts were engrossed by a sudden hospitable intention.

"Wouldn't a bite an' a sup hearten ye up sorter, arter so much ridin' in the night wind?" she drawled amiably.

The deputy, despite his lean, lank, ill-nourished air, was susceptible to the allurements of the pleasures of the table. He hesitated, and a very little urgency sufficed to induct him into a chair by the side of the fire, while Mrs. Larrabee ransacked her stores for the bite and sup, which were more easily promised than provided.

He was new to his office, and disposed to magnify its dignities and difficulties, as he and his two companions waited for the refection, while Espey stirred up the fire and rescued the turkey, which had burrowed into a mound of dead ashes, still permeated, however, with the grateful warmth of the embers.

"Ye'd be plumb s'prised, Mis' Lar'bee, at the slyness o' sech malefactors, an' the trouble they'll gin. Now I be a stranger ter this e-end o' the county, an' what with the constable sick everybody sorter holds back 'bout informin' the officer o' the law; turrible 'fraid lest the folks in gineral takes it out on them, ye know. Some 'lows I be a-trappin' moonshiners; an' that ain't my business at all. I got no mo' agin moonshiners 'n I hev agin whiskey. It's all one ter _me_. I don't c'lect the tax, an' I don't pay it nuther. I drinks mos'ly on treats, sech ez this." He held up his glass, for Espey had proffered the product of the Lost Time still, and it seemed to him at the moment that the very jug looked conscious. "I couldn't git a critter ter kem with me ter-night 'thout reg'lar summonsin' a posse: one man ailin'; t'other man, sick wife; another man, sore foot; another man, lame horse. Course _I_ could hev _made_ 'em kem," waving the hand with the glass in it with a capable gesture; "but I didn't want ter be harsh an' requirin' with the citizens, 'kase, ye know," with a sudden sly geniality illumining his countenance, "I mought want ter run fur sher'ff myse'f some day,--that is, ef the old man was ter git done with the office," he added, mindful of his tenure through the favor of the high sheriff. "Now this hyar man," pointing out one of his followers, who bore with a sort of wooden equanimity the united gaze of Mrs. Larrabee and Espey, "he be a stranger hyarabouts, too,--kems from my deestric', frien' o' mine,--so o' course he warn't acquainted hyarabout, nuther."

Mrs. Larrabee's perceptions detected something embarrassing to a sensitive nature in this invited survey of the silent, bearded man, who had not opened his mouth except to put a biscuit into it. As amends, she handed him the plate anew, and the second biscuit silently went the way of the first.

"Now this hyar other man,"--the officer indicated a short, square-set fellow,--"he war powerful leetle 'quainted round hyar, though he kem from neighboring ways, the Gap; so he ondertook ter p'int out yer house"--

The short man interposed in great haste, and with his mouth full:--

"Though I hev never hed nuthin' agin you-uns, Mis' Lar'bee, an' I hope ye won't lay it up agin me, marm. I knowed 't war mighty safe,--'kase you-uns warn't the sort ter harbor evil-doers 'gainst the law an' sech ez that,--hevin' been powerful well 'quainted with yer husband whenst he war a boy; an' this hyar dep'ty war so powerful partic'lar, an' I didn't see how ter git out'n it, an'"--The crumbs in his throat and the scruples in his heart combined to choke his utterance, and as the climax came in a paroxysm of coughing, Mrs. Larrabee turned to the officer.

"I got nobody hyar wuss'n yerse'f, sher'ff," she drawled, with a slow smile.

"Waal, now, Mis' Lar'bee," said the officer, probably mindful of political hopes, "ef ever ye want ennything of me, ye jes' lemme know. I wanter show ye how I'll remember this hyar squar meal ter-night. I ain't one o' them ez can't remember dinner till it's dinner time agin." He smiled gallantly upon her from under his superabundance of brows. Then he turned to Espey. "I been so well treated it makes me plumb bold ter ax another favior. I want ye ter git on yer horse an' ride with me ter set me in the road ter Tems's. Nare one o' these men air 'quainted with the way."

His dark eyes hardened under his sinister black brows, and Espey, who had taken heart of grace, felt his hope of escape annihilated in the instant. His eyes were fastened with a fixed stare on the officer's face; his nerves were all a-quiver; his heart seemed to stand still; a cold, insidious thrill crept along the fibres of his skin. The conviction seized him that the conversation which had seemed so incidental was merely a blind devised for the purpose of getting him apart from the women and children, that he might be captured with less ado or less danger to the bystanders, perhaps further from the chance of rescue. He thought of rescue, himself, of Jerusha's husband blind drunk in the shed-room, of Jasper away at the Lost Time mine. Through some other sense than that of conscious sight he was aware of the movements of the deputy's comrades: that one, seated in the chair, was carefully examining his revolver; that the other was standing beside the door with his hand on the latch. But Espey's eyes never quitted the face of the sheriff, who apparently took note of this fixed, unresponsive gaze.

"Air he deef?" he demanded of Mrs. Larrabee, and was about to repeat his demand in a louder key, when his hostess interposed.

"No deefer than them in gineral be who ain't willin' ter hear," she muttered. "Go saddle yer critter, Jack. 'Twon't take ye long." Then, in a lower aside, "Ye'll jes' hev ter guide 'em ez fur ez Tems's, ennyhow."

Her insistence constrained him; and indeed no alternative was definite to his mind. He turned with a bewildered, submissive mien toward the door.

The chill midnight air, blowing freshly on his face as he held it open and the draught rushed through, revived him like the very breath of freedom. The obvious opportunity flashed through his mind like an inspiration. He could give them the slip while saddling the horse. He would have the start of them even if by only a few paces. Let him but once get foot in the stirrup again, with the kindly shield of the darkness about him, and he would give them a good run through this pathless mountain wilderness. He caught up his saddle that lay upon the floor, and made for the door again with a sudden eager alacrity.

He heard an abrupt clanging noise, as one hears a sound in sleep, muffled, unreal, distant. It was only when he saw one of the men stoop and rise again and follow him that he realized what had happened. One of the stirrup irons had fallen from the saddle, unbuckled perhaps in the unwarranted juvenile curiosity of the meddling youngsters of the house. The deputy sheriff also followed. "I'll put that on agin whilst ye air a-ketchin' an' a-bridlin' of the nag," he said.

Espey heard the loud, strident tones of his hasty farewells as he took leave of Mrs. Larrabee,--he evidently intended to return no more,--and then he was by the young man's side in the barn, followed by his two companions. For the horse was not in the pasture lot; he had repaired to the shelter of the barn, and had stretched himself on his bed of straw. At the first indication of the prospect of journeying the roan struggled up, and, with a sound of greeting that was almost articulate, came out from the stall, ready and willing to be saddled and bridled. Espey experienced a sort of animosity toward the creature for his unreasoning alacrity. He was even denied the poor respite which the usual delay in catching the horse might have given.

In his numbing, silent despair as he buckled the girth and slipped the bridle over the horse's head and the bit into his mouth, he took no definite heed of his surroundings, and yet they were all impressed upon his consciousness. He noted, uncaring, how the horse tossed up his head askance at the stranger's touch, when one of the men laid his hand on the powerful shoulder and opined that he must be a "toler'ble good goer." He was aware, somehow, of the blue-black, translucent gloom of the air, and the differing darkness with its effect of solidity, of the fodder stack looming close by, of the fantastic roof of the little log cabin against the stars, and of a vague sense of motion where the invisible smoke curled up from the chimney, faring off into the dense shadow of the foliage of the great trees. The door was still open, and the yellow light fell far out into the darkness; in the interior he could see the gaunt, tall form of Mrs. Larrabee walking back and forth, and in her arms the baby, who had been roused by the falling of the spur. The child needed little tenderness, in his robust self-sufficiency, and was elderly indeed for such infantile coddling. His fat legs stuck far out of her arms, and his bawling objections to the interruption of slumber attested temper rather than delicacy. Espey realized how her heart would go out to a real trouble,--how she would feel for him if she only knew! Somehow the thought of that fictitious anguish of sympathy soothed him for the moment, and he was resigned to say to himself that it was best as it was. She could have done naught. He was no child like the others to cling to her in a sort of fervid faith in her omnipotence. No; resistance would only have endangered her and hers. And so he was strengthened to put his foot in the stirrup and ride away, with the sheriff at his right hand, and the other men close behind, all looking alertly forward into the gloom. The roan horse, fresh from slumber, was beginning to feel his hay and corn, snuffing the quickening wind, pulling on the bit, and forging on at a more speedy gait. The other men noticed this, for now and again, with a touch of the spur, they closed up, and the roan horse was in the centre of the squad.

VII.

As they went, the deputy sheriff's manner was little characterized by an official decorum. He seemed rather some bold roisterer who himself might have had ample cause to dread the law that he was sworn to administer. The rough humor of his sallies affected Espey as an incongruous sort of fun, taken in connection with his interpretation of their errand, and his recollection of the keen, sinister, thin face, with its piercing dark eyes, and its sharp hooked nose, and the straight, menacing eyebrows meeting above it. He had this mental vision distinctly before his contemplation, as it had impressed him in the flicker of Mrs. Larrabee's tallow dip, instead of the undistinguishable equestrian shadow that in the black night pressed close to his horse's flank, and now and again laid a sinewy hand upon his arm. For the officer, in a spirit of mock confidence, was detailing, much to that worthy's discomfort, the spectral fears of his friend from "the t'other e-end of the county," a believer in ghosts, and making an elaborate pretense of sharing them. Now and again, with a sepulchral voice and an agitated manner, he would conjure Espey to say if he saw nothing flickering, waving white, in some open stretch of the road that lay vacant and vaguely glimmering in the starlight before them. Then, hardly waiting for an answer, he would burst into a whoop of derisive laughter, startling the solemn silence of the night-bound mountain wilderness, and rousing strange echoes of weird mirth from rock and ravine. More than once the uncanny tumult of these wild, insensate cries moved the staid comrades of the deputy sheriff to remonstrance.

In the distance and the night and their repetitiousness, the sounds seemed curiously unrelated to those that had evoked them.

"That ain't no rocks a-answerin' back," said the man from the Gap. "I b'lieve somebody is a-hollerin' at ye."

The officer turned alertly in his saddle to look back over his shoulder. "That wouldn't s'prise me none," said the capable deputy, whose large experience would seem to furnish precedent for any given phenomenon. "I knowed a man out our way,--mighty loud talker and a toler'ble active cusser,--whilst callin' hawgs, hedn't tuk no special notice o' the rocks answerin', till one day whenst he war 'dad-burnin'' an' 'all-firin'' round till the very shoats looked blue. He stopped ter take breath, an' he hearn a voice, powerful coarse, out'n the woods jes' yellin' like sin, 'Fire-burn!' 'Fire-burn!' an' he knowed that minit who't war. An' in course he jes' hedn't no mo' interes' in nuthin', an' jes' dwindled away."

He paused abruptly.

"But--but--who war it ez said 'Fire-burn' with a coarse voice?" breathlessly demanded the believer in spectral manifestations.

"Why, Satan, to be sure, ye fool," replied the deputy. "I useter hear him myself a-callin' in the woods, 'Fire-burn!' whenst Ad Peters would git ter cussin' his hawgs! Jes' so"--He lifted his voice in a wild, fantastic cadence, and throughout the long stretches of the mountain fastnesses the words, as of some demented incendiary, echoed and re-echoed, varied presently with mocking cries of unpleasant falsetto laughter, set astir when the officer's gravity failed.

The patience of his friend had given way. "Look-a-hyar, 'Dolphus Ross," he broke out angrily, "this hyar ain't no way ter go ter apperhend criminals, a-hollerin' like a plumb catamount through the woods."

"I don't want ter s'prise nuthin'," said the crafty deputy sheriff, "that is nuthin' unyearthly, on its yerrands what no mortial knows about, an' mebbe git s'prised myself plumb down ter the doors o' the pit. Ye know them ez sees harnts either draps down dead or loses thar minds, one. They 'low now'days ez all the crazies kem so from seein' sperits. An' ye know yerse'f, an off'cer of the law needs brains."

"Ef ye don't know yer bizness no better'n that, I be goin' ter l'arn it ter ye. Ye 'pear mo' like a jay-hawker'n a off'cer o' the law," retorted the other tartly.