Part 9

But not even with this rude touch upon the sensitive nerves of official pride could he control the elusive and slippery deputy. "That's a fac', Pearce. But the truth is, I be all-fired 'feared in these hyar lonesome places, whar humans air seldom an' few, o' seein' suthin' or hearin' suthin' what no mortial eyes or ears air expected ter see an' hear. So I like ter hear the sound o' my own voice,--let 'em know I'm a-comin'. Even with two or three men with me, it's so darned fur an' lonesome! I 'pear less like a harnt myself, an' less apt ter meet up with one, ef I make myself sorter lively. I'm a mighty quiet cuss in town. I'm a--What's--what's that?" he broke off sharply.

He drew rein suddenly, throwing his horse back upon the haunches. The two men behind him, coming forward at the swift pace he had set, collided heavily with the obstacle thus furnished them, a reckless proceeding here on the narrow rocky road, on the verge above the abysses of the valley on one side, and with the inaccessible heights of the mountain rising sheerly on the other. They stood between heaven and earth, on this craggy beetling promontory, with the pulsating white stars above and the dark depths of the gorge below. His sight becoming more accustomed to the night, Espey could distinguish through the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague moving whiteness which he knew to be the involutions of the mist in the valley. He too had drawn up his horse, slightly in advance of the others, and was looking forward in keen expectation of developments.

"What's what?" he demanded of the deputy, who was managing his rearing horse with considerable skill.

"Something white--beckonin'," gasped the officer of the law.

Espey, with all the ignorant superstitions of his class, felt his blood run cold. Nevertheless he sought to reassure himself and his comrades.

"Jes' these elder-flowers, mebbe," he said, breaking off a great bough from a bush rooted in a crevice of the crag, and so profusely blooming that the black night itself could hardly nullify its whitely gleaming graces. He received full in his face the cool spray of the dew and the sweet breath of the flower, all unheeding, for the officer again protested in a loud, broken voice:--

"Beckonin'--beckonin'--Oh, my friends, somebody in this crowd is a sinner; somebody hev done wrong! An' he may be a saint in the church-house, or leastwise familiar with the mourner's bench,--an' he may escape jedge an' jury,--an' he may cheat hemp,--but in the dead o' the night an' in the lonely paths o' yearth he'll be betrayed by a v'ice, or he'll see a beckonin'"--

"Oh, shucks!" interrupted the believer in "harnts." "I'm a-goin' back ter Mis' Lar'bee's." He was essaying to wheel his horse on the narrow ledge. "'Tain't my bizness ter go 'long with ye, ter apperhend crim'nals in the middle o' the night. Ef ye can't take 'em in the daytime, go 'thout 'em, I say."

"Some truth in that. I wisht I could jine ye," said the deputy. "But my jewty lies ahead. I be bound ter go on; an' I reckon it can't be so fur from Tems's now,--air it, frien'?" he asked, turning to Espey.

With a sinking heart, Espey replied that it was not very far, and the wonder as to what lay before him in the unknown scenes to which he sped in such haste reasserted itself in his mind, as the deputy rode briskly up alongside once more.

It required, perchance, only a moment's reflection on the inexpressible loneliness of the miles of mountain woods, that must of necessity be traversed before the shelter of Mrs. Larrabee's house could be reached, to change the design of the deserter from the little party. The beat of his horse's hoofs annotated his continued presence, which was soon made even more indisputable by his raucous voice again lifted in remonstrance.

"Ye mus' see, now, 'Dolphus, ez n'ise an' ribeldry an' gamesomeness don't purvent ye from viewin' sech ez ye air intended ter view. Sech goin's-on ain't lawful fur citizens, much less off'cers o' the law."

"Ye ain't gone back, then?" commented 'Dolphus over his shoulder.

There was no answer to this, and after a pause the facetious deputy went on:--

"_I_ ain't fur hollerin' an' rampagin' an' sech. _I_ be a mighty quiet cuss in town, like I said,--a mighty quiet cuss indeed. The old man," he alluded thus to the high sheriff, "he sez ter me sometimes, 'I dunno, 'Dolphus, whether ye air in yer skin or no. Ye jes' 'pear ter be settin' thar, 'sleep or dead.' Wunst he tole me ez I warn't mo' lively 'n jes' a suit o' clothes hangin' outside the store door, an' a suit would cost less'n my pay ez a dep'ty. I tried ter brace up arter that."

He had braced up considerably from the quiescent state he described if the sudden yell that he emitted might be received as evidence of his more stalwart condition. The sharp exclamations of surprise from the rest of the party afforded him intense delight, which was not mitigated by a blood-curdling shriek, as it were in response, set up by a catamount on the opposite heights, so close at hand by the direct line across the spaces above the valley through the air, despite the intervening miles of trackless mountain desert below, that they could hear the creature snarl before it lifted its thin, keen, inarticulate voice shrilling again into the black night.

There was no definite remonstrance, for he forestalled their outbreak, beyond a few words, by declaring tumultuously that he saw it again,--something a-waving, a-beckoning.

"No use talkin'!" he exclaimed. "The guilty sinner is 'mongst us, an' hyar he be!"

He leaned out of his saddle and passed one arm around Espey, pinioning the young fellow's right arm to his side. Espey, startled beyond control, despite his expectation of this contingency, with which, however, hope and suspense had juggled painfully, detected with sharpened senses the dull clanking of handcuffs. He hardly knew how it came there, he had no definite intention of resisting arrest, but a pistol was in the hand over which the rude wristlets dangled; a jet of red light that showed the dark-eyed, laughing, grimacing face near to his own, the whizzing of a bullet so close between the officer's side and arm that the blazing powder singed and burned his "store clothes," an abrupt report, and once more the night, rent by the sound, clamored with echoes.

From the dense darkness the officer's voice, with a changed tone, a sharp note of surprise, was crying, "Look out! Look out!"

The other men were stunned with amazement. They had only a vague sense of struggling mounted figures which the darkness did not suffer them to descry. And suddenly a second swift funnel-shaped glare for an instant invaded the gloom,--it came from the officer's pistol this time,--a second clamorous report rang amongst the rocks. The frightful, almost human scream of a wounded horse, a wild plunging on the side of the rocky bridle-path, and Espey and the yellow roan disappeared over the verge of the cliff. The three men standing in the road, hearing with sickening horror the dull thud far below, might judge of the terrors of the fall by the time elapsing before the sound reached their ears.

VIII.

The household at the Tems cabin were keeping late hours that night. Except for a certain reserve of cogitation, which at times held him silent with a burning thought in his eye, his superficially moving lips framing unspoken words, and occasionally a keen, sarcastic smile irradiating his features with the light of some satiric expectation, Cap'n Lucy had resumed his wonted aspect and mental attitude and the habits of his simple existence.

"Ye fetch yer book out'n yer pocket," he said imperatively to Jasper Larrabee early in the evening, when the young man had joined them on the porch. "The gals ain't goin' ter run away,--leastwise 'thout cornsider'ble mo' incourage_mint_ 'n they hev hed. They'll keep! Ye jes' sot awhile by that thar taller dip in thar an' read yer book, an' I'll listen out hyar."

The penalties of the acquisition of knowledge, from the days of the Garden of Eden to those of the hero of the horn-book, have not been few. They fell somewhat heavily on Jasper Larrabee, debarred the fresh air, heavy with perfumed dew; the vicinage of dank vines; the glimmer of the firefly in the bosky gloom; the scintillating stars in the sky above the massive mountains; the sweet, low voices of the two girls, silenced now; and the trivial chatter so dear to the heart of youth. The room, with the low red glow of the embers, was warm to-night; the tallow dip melted and sputtered and cast a wan, melancholy, ineffective radiance into the dusky spaces, rendering the aspect of the familiar furnishings strange and spare and dull, instead of all ruddily a-flicker with the dancing firelight in which he was accustomed to see them. Even the dogs had deserted the hearthstone, and went in and out with lolling tongues, and hot, sleepy eyes, and an inattentive manner. Moths and strange winged fire-worshipers, unknown to his observation hitherto, would fly in from the cool darkness without, circle swiftly about the white jet of the candle, and now and then, with a sudden dart, would fall, shriveled cinders but for the convulsive throes of lingering life, on the page of the volume.

He wondered sometimes, as he droned on and on, if Adelicia were listening, or if Julia could see him from where she sat. From the lighted spaces he could not distinguish their shadowy figures, albeit Cap'n Lucy, close at hand and with the red glow of his pipe, was plain enough. Sometimes Larrabee felt the vague sense of a gaze fixed upon his clear-cut face, all etherealized, illumined by the soft pallid white light within against the brown shadows. He was unaware of any valid embellishment of his aspect from the pensive gleam, the irradiated square of the window, the ascetic gravity of his expression, intent and pondering on the longer words, which it was his pride that he need not pause to spell. On the contrary, he was often conscious of cutting a sorry figure when Cap'n Lucy, with the rigor of a most rational reason and all the fervid insistence of a personal interest, would plunge at him, and require him to recant, to spell out syllable by syllable some questioned dogma, and at last, with all the nonchalance of a sophisticated theologian, take refuge in the equivalent of a plea of mistranslation.

"Ye can't haffen read, boy!" he would exclaim roughly. "Ye don't read ekal ter what ye hev done. Keep on goin' back'ards, an' ye'll git thar arter a while. 'Agree with thine adversary!' My stars! ef ye war wuth a grain o' gunpowder, ye could see ez that air obleeged ter be '_Dis_-agree with thine adversary.' It stands ter reason! '_Dis_-agree' with him, early and often, else the dad-burned critter will git up the insurance ter disagree with you-uns. I know thine adversary! Been 'quainted with him this many a year! Read on, read on, Jasper; git shet o' thine adversary."

Thus it was that, with the shadowy, snarling, intent old face vaguely visible in the dusk, just at his elbow, outside the window, ready to spring forward at the first intimation of an unacceptable doctrine; with the sense of responsibility for all the biblical dogmas irreconcilable with Cap'n Lucy's tenets and the tenor of his way; with the spectacle of glamour, lure, catastrophe, and death furnished by the unrestrainable moths, Jasper Larrabee found his preëminence of learning a comfortless pinnacle, and even the wonted sweet solaces of complacence in his superiority were denied him. He was forced to appear before the eyes of his lady love as an ignorant pretender, of ridiculous and inadequate assumptions,--and that by a man who could not read his own name,--humiliated and browbeaten; for how dared he answer Cap'n Lucy? More than once he wished himself back at the Lost Time mine, where he knew Espey thought him to be, and where Lorenzo Taft needed him. The work, unpalatable as he often found it, would be welcome indeed, and his untutored, unquestioning, often inattentive audience there a happy exchange from Cap'n Lucy in the character of polemic. He made some effort to shift the subject, to turn from the preceptive and doctrinal pages upon which he had chanced to fall to the chronicle of events in the nature of historical detail, as less liable to elicit Cap'n Lucy's contradictory faculties. It availed him naught. Cap'n Lucy's interest was fairly roused, and he imperatively negatived the proposition. The guest felt, still later, that it was not hospitality in its truest sense which so flatly declined to heed the suggestion of departure. And thus constrained, he read on, so conscious of the shadowy face at his elbow that he seemed to see it, with the light of excitement in the wide blue eyes, the alertness in every line, the lips intently parted, the glow of the pipe dying out as it was supported motionless by the uplifted hand.

"Hey!" shrieked out Cap'n Lucy suddenly, as if he had been poignantly pinched. "Ef he takes yer coat, gin him yer cloak! Jasper, ye air demented! Ye ain't 'quainted with the dad-burned ravelings out o' the alphabit, let alone the weft of it! My sakes!" in an outraged falsetto, "ye tell me that's sot up ez Christian doctrine in the Book! Take yer coat, gin yer cloak! Whar's the man ez hev done it! Trot him out! Great Moses an' Aaron! I'd like ter look at him! Take yer corner-stone an' monimint o' boundary, an' gin him yer line an' yer lan'!--ha! ha! ha! Let him take yer rock known ez Big Hollow Boulder, an' gin him yer corner-stone!--ha! ha!"

Luther rose precipitately. The significance of the paternal discovery of the removal of the corner-stone was fraught with great perplexity and foreboding, and he hardly knew what ill-judged disclosure was to follow. He had intended to interpose, albeit he scarcely had a pretext. It came to him at the moment.

"What's that? I 'lowed I hearn suthin'!" he exclaimed.

Cap'n Lucy turned upon him with the breathless acrimony of one interrupted in some cherished pursuit.

"Hearn suthin'? Jes' the rustlin' o' yer own long ears,--that's all. I"--He stopped abruptly.

In the midst of his strident raised tones an alien sound smote his attention. There was an approach of horsemen from down the road. Cap'n Lucy's acrimony was merged in curiosity and excited expectation. Still holding his pipe, filled with dead ashes, as stiffly and cautiously before him as if its wonted coals glowed in the cob-bowl, he rose from his chair, and advanced a pace or two nearer the rude steps, peering out into the darkness. The two girls had turned their heads toward the sound. Larrabee was leaning on his arms in the window, and Luther had started down the path to the bars. His deep bass voice sounded in a bated, thunderous mutter, as he rebuked the barking dogs, whose menace subsided into low growls, punctuated now and then by a clamorous yelp. Perhaps the insistent tone of these canine threats influenced the new-comers, for it was at a goodly distance that the party called a halt and hailed the house.

Luther returned the halloo with a ringing response in kind, but Cap'n Lucy added a genial "'Light and hitch" to the unknown guest that the midnight had convoyed hither, his habit of broad hospitality all unmindful of the individuality or intent of the new-comers. "Me an' Luther air ekal ter all sorts," he would sturdily answer to the occasional remonstrance that times were not what they once were, and that he might thus "at sight unseen" be inviting in the marauder or the devil. "Me an' Luther air ekal ter 'em."

The tone of this hospitality seemed a sore-needed encouragement in this instance. Rodolphus Ross had flung himself, metaphorically, upon the fraternal bosom of Luther, as he hastily sought to summarize the misfortunes that had befallen him; the slow young mountaineer, all unprepared for so dramatic a recital, staring, uncomprehending and amazed, at his interlocutor, hardly knowing whether to ascribe his fluent diction to drink or to histrionic talents; as fact he did not take it into account.

"Yes, sir!" the wild-eyed Ross was saying as he came up the steps, "flung over the bluffs, horse an' all,--dead or alive, I dunno! Cap'n Tems, yes, sir; plumb proud ter shake hands," mechanically acknowledging the introduction to the head of the house. "Jes' purtendin' ter handcuff the fool,--jes' fur fun,--an' he fired at me! Yes, sir, fired at the off'cer o' the law! I dunno what ailed him, 'thout he thunk I war in earnest. But Lord! he war bound ter know I war arter another man. I tole him so. I hed nuthin' agin this hyar Lar'bee. I war jes' purtendin' ter handcuff him, jes' shuck the bracelets at him, jes' fur fun,--ye know, Cap'n Tems, it's powerful dull an' drowsy a-ridin' so stiddy arter malefactors 'thout no sort'n entertainment or enjyemint,--an' this hyar Jasper Lar'bee jes' ups an' fires at the off'cer o' the law, jes' scorched my clothes." He held up his arm, and caught the pallid light of the candle on his coat and powder-singed sleeve. "Not that I keer fur the josie, 'ceptin' it's too durned near the meat fur thar ter be enny fun in shootin' through it."

He laughed in a constrained falsetto tone,--his wonted laugh, but with all the mirth eliminated from it. It had a sort of wooden quality, and ended with a nervous catch in his throat. The light falling through the window showed his dark eyes, set a trifle too close together, and the straight black brows meeting above them. His teeth gleamed, for the laugh left his lips mechanically distended. Larrabee, leaning on his folded arms in the window, a mere silhouette upon the pallid lustre of the aureola of the candle behind him, gazed silently on the stranger's face.

One is apt, in thinking of a man of experience, to associate sophistication with the idea. But life presents varied aspects of mental development, and the caution, the silence, the reserve of judgment, with which Cap'n Lucy hearkened might have seemed gleaned from the observation of the juggle of cause and effect in a far wider sphere. The two comrades of the deputy sheriff said not a word, and once more the officer began to elaborate the justification of his conduct.

"It takes a toler'ble stiff backbone ter set on a saddle an' let a man shoot at ye fur nuthin'. It 'stonished me powerful. I war jes' funnin', an' purtended ter be aimin' ter handcuff this young rooster, an' he jes' whurled roun' an' let the bullet fly. I b'lieve he 'lowed I war in earnest, yes, sir. This hyar Lar'bee hev been up ter suthin' agin the law,--moonshinin', I reckon,--else he wouldn't hev been so dad-burned handy with his fi'crackers."

"Why--why"--blurted out Luther, amazed at the lack of symmetry in the situation, and incapable of the paternal wisdom of silently awaiting developments, with the incongruity of the sight of Larrabee in the window mutely hearkening to the reflections upon the "Larrabee" who took so vehement a part in the officer's reminiscences--"'twarn't Lar'bee, mebbe; some other fellow."

"Naw, sir," returned the deputy. "This hyar man," laying his hand on his bulky companion's shoulder, "knowed whar Lar'bee's mother, a widder lady, lived, an' we-uns called him 'Lar'bee' an' 'Jasper,' an' he answered ter 'em both; an' his mother called him 'Sonny.' He's a wild-catter, sure. He's"--He caught himself suddenly, remembering the prepossession against the revenue force which often animates even law-abiding citizens of this region. "But he needn't hev fired at _me_! I got nuthin' agin moonshiners. I b'long ter the County, not ter the Nunited States,--to the County!"

"Whar's this man now?" demanded Cap'n Lucy circumspectly.

The alert, sinister face of the deputy changed. But he sought to bluff off the anxieties and conscious criminations which crowded upon him. He swung his hat, which had a bullet-hole in it, gayly in his light grasp, and his dark eyes twinkled as he met the gaze of his host.

"Ye air a powerful good hand at axin' riddles, but this'n air too hard fur me! I _dunno_, an' these men _dunno_! I fired back in self-defense at the miserable fool--I hed been funnin' all along, cap'n. I shot his horse, I know, an' the critter slipped, an' the whole caboodle went back'ards over the bluffs--an'--an'--he mought be dead or alive--Air--air that a cheer?"

He had suddenly lost his self-control; he sank back into a seat and seemed gasping for breath.

The details of their immediate errand thus devolved upon his comrades,--a lantern and a guide to search the slope where the victim of the deputy's pleasantry had fallen.

"'Dolphus air sech a turrible bouncin' wild buck," said his friend from "the t'other e-end o' the county," who had begun to resume his remonstrant air, as of "I-told-you-so." He was a slow and serious-minded man, with a scant appreciation of even the most symmetrical jest, but when the joke seemed furnished with such distortions of sequelæ his gravity grew aggressive. "'Dolphus kin crack a toler'ble funny joke wunst in a while, but this hyar one air goin' ter make him laff on the t'other side o' his mouth."

"Who war it ez ye war arter, sure enough?" asked Cap'n Lucy.

"A stranger what they 'lowed war puttin' up with you-uns, Cap'n Tems."

"Hey?" cried Cap'n Lucy, with a high quaver of excited delight. "He hev gone; but, my stars! what a hearty welcome ye mought hev hed with him!"

"What's he done?" demanded Larrabee, speaking for the first time, addressing the friend of the deputy.

"Shot a man in Tanglefoot Cove," he replied, looking somewhat intently at the silhouette in the window.

"What did ye 'low his name war?" asked Larrabee, placing one hand behind his ear as if he had not heard what indeed they had not disclosed.

"Espey,--John Espey from Tanglefoot, o' course. He hev been hidin' out cornsider'ble time."

There was a sudden significant silence which the stranger felt, but did not comprehend. Then Cap'n Lucy, recovering his poise, remarked:--

"Waal, the stranger ez we-uns hev hed hyar air named Kenneth Kenn'ston, from Bretonville. He air a town man, an' aimin' ter build some sort'n tavern in the Cove."

The three men--for the officer was himself again--looked at one another with the pathetic helpless disgust of hunting dogs on a false trail.

It seemed that their quest was hopeless from the beginning, and in its interests they had deeply involved themselves in the toils of the law which they sought to aid.

"Waal," said the deputy's friend, "we-uns hed better git the lantern, an' take ter the woods agin an' find the corpse,"--the deputy winced at the word so palpably that even his sturdy, literal-minded companion was moved to seek some euphemism; "leastwise find out what's the damage we-uns hev been an' done."

His stolid, unflinching shouldering of such responsibility in the matter as might fall to his share was oddly contrasted with the nervous excitement and agitation of the man from the Gap, who had served as guide to the party to Mrs. Larrabee's house.

"Waal, _I_ ain't done none o' the damage," he protested, nodding his head emphatically. "I thunk I hed ter kem along o' the off'cer o' the law whenst required. I hed no idee o' junketin' 'roun' with the wildes' buck this side o' hell, a-caperin' like a possessed lunatic, an' a-shootin' of 'spectable citizens off'n the bluffs. Jasper Lar'bee done nuthin' ter me,--never laid eyes on him afore. _I_ done none o' the damage. I call ye ter witness, Cap'n Tems, ez I hed nuthin' ter do with his takin' off."

Cap'n Lucy, always adorning the opposition, gave a high, fleering laugh. "_Me ter witness!_ Me! Why, man, I been settin' hyar sence dark, a-readin' o' the Holy Scriptur's. I hev no part in yer ridin' an' raidin'."