Part 18

Only the passion of rage had as yet unsated capacities. As he sat in the car, shackled, among his guards, he fixed his shining eyes, full of suppressed ferocity, on Gwinnan’s face, who was absorbed in a book and heedless of his fellow-travelers. The guards did not notice the prisoner’s gaze, and after a moment it was diverted for a time. For Mink had quick enough perceptions and no mean power of deduction. He divined that his guards and fellow-passengers were in much perturbation lest the train should be stopped. At every intersection of the country roads with the track there was a perceptible flurry amongst them, an anxious outlook to descry mounted and armed men.

He had himself no further expectation of deliverance.

“Nobody’s goin’ ter resk ten year in the Pen’tiary fur rescuin’ me in broad daylight whar they could be knowed. Ef the mob wanted ter hang me, though, _they would_,” he said, with the cynicism of the truth.

“Nobody wants ter hang you-uns, Mink, nor hurt ye no-ways. All ye need is a leetle patience ter wait fur another trial,” said the deputy.

“I ain’t got no mo’ patience,” said Mink drearily.

His fatigued faculties, that had almost sunk into stupor under the strain of excitement and suspense, roused themselves to take note of the surroundings. The motion of the train filled him with amaze. He held his breath to see the fantasies of the flying landscape without. The panting snorts and leaps of the engine, like some great living monster, the dull rolling of the wheels, the iterative alternating sound of the clanking machinery, each registered a new estimate of life upon his intent, expressive face. His eyes rested on the lamp fixtures shining in their places as if he beheld enchantment. The tawdry ornamentation, the paneling of light and dark woods with occasional glimmers of gilding, the red velvet of the seats, were to his unaccustomed eyes unparalleled magnificence. He asked no questions. He accepted it all simply, without comment, without consciousness. His fine head, with its rich coloring of complexion and eyes and hair, looked as if it might have been painted upon the panel of maple on which it leaned, he sat so still. His hat lay on the seat beside him; he was well used now not to wear it. It may have been because he was innocent, it may have been because he felt no shame, but the handcuffs on his wrists seemed not more ignominious than a wild creature’s captivity.

He had been so docile, so unresisting all the morning, that the deputy, who had grown to like the young fellow in their constrained intercourse, and valued him far more than a duller and a better man, was disposed to treat him as gently as was consistent with duty. The guards were jolly and they joked with him; but he had little to say, and presently they talked to each other, and looked over their shoulders at the rest of the company, covertly entertaining themselves with such fragments of the conversation as the roaring and clangor of the train permitted to be audible. They noticed after a time that the surroundings had ceased to interest him, and that he was looking with lowering and surly ferocity at Judge Gwinnan, intent upon his book.

“Look-a-hyar,” said one of the guards, nudging Mink violently, “ye ’pear like some wild varmint. Ye look ez keen an’ wicked an’ mean ez a mink. Quit eyin’ Jedge Gwinnan like that, else I’ll blindfold ye,—sure’s ye born, I will.”

Mink’s dilated eyes rested upon the unconscious, half-averted face for a moment longer. Then they turned to the face of the deputy in front of him.

“That thar man,” he said between his set teeth, and for all his voice was low it was distinct, even in the rumbling and noise of the train, so charged it was with the emphasis of intention, the definiteness of a cherished revenge,—“d’ye know what he hev done ter me? He put Pete Rood on the jury, though he knowed Pete hated me, an’ why. He put the jury in jail, ’kase they war fools, an’ ’lowed they hed a harnt on the panel, an’ bein’ jailed conflusticated ’em so they couldn’t find a verdict. _He_ knows an’ _they_ know Tad’s alive, but I hev got ter bide in jail fower month longer an’ resk the Pen’tiary agin, account o’ a drownded boy ez hev run away. An’ when my friends wanted ter take me out’n jail,—God A’mighty! I didn’t know I hed sech friends,—he goes out’n his way ter tell the sher’ff how ter flustrate ’em. An’ I war gagged an’ ironed, an’ toted out’n the back door, an’ kep’ at the sher’ff’s house, an’ am tuk off on the train. ’Twarn’t his business. Ye know thar warn’t ez much ez that done whenst the lynchers kem fur Tim Jenkins,—_not ter save the man’s life_.”

“Waal, he hed ter be hung some time, ennyhow,” said the deputy indisputably.

“What did this hyar Jedge Gwinnan do all this hyar fur?” continued Mink.

“Waal, Mink, he war obleeged ter, by his office. Ye know I don’t hold no grudge ter ye, yit I’m ’bleeged ter iron ye an’ gyard ye. I couldn’t set no mo’ store by ye ef ye war my own blood relation,” said the deputy.

“Naw, sir! naw!” exclaimed Mink. “This hyar man have tuk a notion ter Lethe Sayles,—I seen it; an’ he ’lows I ain’t good enough fur her, an’ he be doin’ sech ez he kin agin me on account o’ her.”

The deputy sheriff broke into a horse-laugh. The others laughed, too, more moderately. “Ye air teched in the head, Mink,” one of them remarked.

“Mebbe so,” Mink responded quietly enough, but with a glancing gleam in his dark eyes. “But I’ll remember what he hev done ter me. An’ I’ll git even with him fur it. By the Lord, I’ll git even with him fur it. An’ ye shell see the day.”

He leaned back against the window, with his eyes bright, his lips curving, tossing his tangled hair with a quick, excited gesture, as if he saw his revenge an accomplished fact.

Somehow his look impressed the guards.

“Naw, ye won’t,” said one of them. “Ye won’t do nuthin’ like it. Ye air goin’ ter jail _fower_ month, an’ arter that ter the Pen’tiary _five_ year, an’ time ye git out’n thar ye’ll be so powerful pleased ter be foot-loose ye’ll mind yer manners the rest o’ yer days, an’ ye will hev clean furgot Jedge Gwinnan.”

He evidently thought some harshness salutary. Mink made no reply, and they presently fell to talking together of their town affairs and gossip, excluding him from the conversation, in which, in truth, he desired to take no share.

XVI.

In contrast with the steam-cars, the old ox-cart was a slow way of getting through the world, and had little of that magnificence which forced itself upon Mink’s jaded and preoccupied faculties. But as Alethea turned her face toward the mountains, it seemed the progress into Paradise, so happy was she in the belief that the rescuers had prevailed. For she, aunt Dely, and Jerry Price had left town early that morning, before doubts and contradictions were astir. The waning yellow moon still swung high in the sky, above the violet vapors of the level west. Long shadows were stalking athwart the fields and down the woodland ways, as if some mystic beings of the night were getting them home. A gust of wind came shivering along the road once and again,—an invisible, chilly presence, that audibly rustled its weird garments and convulsively caught its breath, and was gone. Above the Great Smoky Mountains the inexpressible splendors of the day-star glowed and burned. She walked behind the cart much of the time with Jerry, while aunt Dely sat, a shapeless mass, within it. A scent of tar issued from its clumsy wheels, heavy with the red clay mire of many a mile; a rasping creak exuded from its axles, in defiance of wagon-grease. The ox between his shafts had a grotesque burliness in the moonlight. The square, unpainted little vehicle was a quaint contrivance. Four of the dogs ran beneath it, in leash with their nimble shadows. And aunt Dely’s sun-bonneted head, nodding with occasional lapses into sleep, was faithfully reproduced in the antics of the silhouettes upon the ground that journeyed with them.

Now and again the Scolacutta River crossed their way in wide, shining curves scintillating with the stars, and then Alethea would perch upon the tail-board, and Jerry would clamber into his place as driver, and the dogs would yelp and wheeze on the bank, reluctant to swim, and the ox would plunge in, sometimes with a muttered low of surprise to find the water so cold. Fording the stream was slow work; the wheels often scraped against great hidden bowlders, threatening dislocation and destruction to the running gear. The transit was attended with a coruscation of glittering showers of spray, and left a foaming track across the swift current. Sometimes it was a hard pull up the steep, rocky bank opposite. The old ox had a sober aspect, a resolute tread, and insistently nodding horns. His sturdy rustic demeanor might have suggested that he was glad to be homeward bound, and to turn his back upon the frivolities of civilization and fashion. Not so aunt Dely. It seemed for a time as if her enforced withdrawal from these things had impaired her temper. She woke up ever and anon with caustic remarks.

“I reckon now, Lethe Ann Sayles, ye be goin’ ter bide along o’ yer step-mother?”

“Ye know that’s my home. I hev ter, aunt Dely.”

The girl’s voice was clear, sweet, thrilling with gladness, like some suddenly awakened bird’s singing a stave before dawn.

“I b’lieve ye!” satirically. “Ennybody but you-uns would be ’shamed ter own up ez ye hev got no home. Old ez ye be, an’ ye ain’t married yit! How old be ye? Lemme see,”—with a tone intimating that she would give no quarter,—“nineteen year, five month, an’ fower days. It’s plumb scandalous,” she muttered, arranging her shawl about her. “Ye Bluff!” addressing the ox in a querulous crescendo, “ye goin’ ter jolt the life out’n me, a-tryin’ ter ape the gait o’ the minchin’ sinners ye seen in Shaftesville! Actially the steer hev got the shuffles! I tell ye, Sodom an’ G’morrah warn’t nowhar fur seethin’ sin ter Shaftesville. The devil be a-gatherin’ his harvest thar. His bin an’ barn air full. Them folks will know some day ez store clothes ain’t no defense agin fire. They hev bartered thar salvation fur store clothes. But I do wisht,” she broke off suddenly, dropping her voice from her sanctimonious whine to her cheery drawl, “I hed one o’ them ready-made sun-bonnets. I hed traded off all my feathers an’ truck for store sugar an’ sech afore I seen ’em. I was so full o’ laff that I couldn’t keep my face straight whenst I viewed the contrivance.”

The darkness had fled; the moonlight had failed; the fine, chastened pallor of the interval—the moment’s pause before the dawn—showed the colorless sky, the massive dusky mountains, the stretches of woods below, almost leafless now, the gaunt, tawny fields here and there, the zigzag lines of the rail fences, the red clay road. There were gullies of such depth on either side that the ox, who received so little supervision that he appeared to have the double responsibility of drawing and driving the cart, demonstrated, in keeping out of pitfalls, ampler intellectual capacities than are usually credited to the bovine tribe. But indeed his gifts were recognized. “I ain’t s’prised none ef some day Bluff takes ter talkin’,” his mistress often averred, with her worldly pride in her possessions.

The wind freshened; the white frost gleamed; a pale flush, expanding into a suffusion of amber light, irradiated the sky; and the great red wintry sun rose slowly above the purple ranges.

They had barely passed through a gap of the mountains and entered Eskaqua Cove, when they saw riding along an intersecting road close to the bank of the river a girl in a yellow homespun dress, with a yellow bonnet on her head, and mounted on a great white mare. She had the slaie of a loom in her hand which she had borrowed of a neighbor, and which served to explain her early errand.

Alethea, in her joy, had forgotten Elvira Crosby’s sneers and gibes the night she had brought to the Hollow the raccoon which Mink had given her. All other considerations were dwarfed by the rapturous idea that he was at liberty. Eager to tell the news, she sprang forward.

“Elviry!” she cried. The girl drew up her mare and turned about. Alethea ran down the road and caught the bridle. “Elviry,” she reiterated, “Reuben air out o’ jail! He’s free! He’s free!”

The news was not received as she expected. Elvira put back her bonnet from the soft rings of short hair that lay about her head. She fixed her dark eyes on Alethea in doubting surprise.

“Waal,” she demanded, as if herself sitting in judgment, “who killed Tad?”

“Tad be alive ez I be!” cried Alethea, harried by the reawakening of those questions which she had thought were forever set at rest.

“An’ did the jury say sech?” Elvira asked. It might have seemed that with the breach between her and Mink irreparable, she was not rejoiced to hear of his good fortune.

“The jury couldn’t ’gree,” said Alethea breathlessly. “The rescuers tuk him out.”

“Sech ez that be agin the law,” said Elvira staidly.

“I ain’t keerin’ fur the law!” cried Alethea. “He hev done no harm, an’ all the kentry knowed it. An’ ’twarn’t right ter keep him cooped in jail. So they tuk him out.”

She lifted her head and smiled. Ah, did she indeed look upon a wintry landscape with those eyes? So irradiated with the fine lights of joy, so soft, they were, it might seem they could reflect only endless summers. The gaunt, bleak mountains shivered in the niggardliness of the averted sun; the wind tossed her loose locks of golden hair from beneath her brown bonnet as if they were flouts to the paler beams.

Elvira looked down at her with the pitiless enmity of envy.

“Waal,” she said, “’twixt ye two ye hev done me a powerful mean turn. Mink kep’ a-tryin’ ter cut out Pete Rood till I didn’t know my own mind. An’ then ye a-tellin’ them tales ’bout harnts till Pete drapped dead,—ye knowin’ he hed heart-disease! Yes, sir, he’s dead; buried right over yander in the graveyard o’ the church-house in the cove. An’ I reckon ye be sati’fied now,—ef _ye kin_ be sati’fied.”

She looked away over the swift flow of the river, and began to fleck her shoe with the hickory switch she carried.

Alethea’s face fell. She still stood holding the mare’s rein, but aunt Dely’s voice had broken upon the silence. For Bluff had followed Alethea when she turned from the main road, and had refused to be guided by Mrs. Purvine’s acrid remonstrance. As to Jerry, he was stalking on ahead, unaware that the others were not close on his steps. Sawing upon the ropes on Bluff’s horns which served for reins, Mrs. Purvine succeeded in drawing him up when she reached the spot where the two girls stood. She suddenly joined in the conversation with an astute intention.

“Yes, sir, Mink’s out,” she said, confirming her niece’s statement. “An’ ye’ll hev ter do mighty little tollin’ ter git him back agin, Elviry,” she added beguilingly.

“I don’t want no jail-bird roun’ me,” said Elvira, with a toss of her head.

“Mebbe ye air right, child!” cried Mrs. Purvine. “That’s edzacly what I tole Lethe.” She nodded gayly, and her head-gear, swaying with the expressive gesture, could not have seemed more jaunty had it been a ready-made sun-bonnet from the store. “Ye mark my words, Lethe air goin’ ter marry a man she seen in Shaftesville.” Elated with this effort of imagination, she continued, inspirationally, “He ’lowed she war a plumb beauty, beat ennything he ever dreampt could hev kem out’n the mountings. He air a town man, an’ he be a fust-rate one.”

“Oh, aunt Dely!” faltered Alethea, amazed and almost speechless.

But aunt Dely, charmed with the image she had conjured up, had no mind to relinquish this mythical man, and added another touch of verisimilitude: “He’s well off, too. Lethe, she don’t keer nuthin’ ’bout riches, but bein’ ez I hev ’sociated so much with town folks, I sorter set store by worldly goods,—though not enough ter resk my soul’s salvation, nuther.”

Aunt Dely’s evident desire was to combine spiritual and material welfare, and in this she was not unlike more sophisticated religionists.

The opinionated Bluff being induced to turn around at last, Mrs. Purvine let fly a Parthian dart: “But ez ter you-uns, Elviry, I dunno whether ye hed better be lookin’ down on fust one boy, an’ then another. Ye’ll git lef’ hyar a lonesome single woman, the fust thing ye know,—_the only one in the cove_! But then, mebbe ye’d better jes’ bow yer mind ter the dispensation, fur arter all ye moughtn’t be able ter ketch Mink. The gals honey him up so ez he air toler’ble sp’iled; they ’low he air special good-lookin’, though I hev never been able ter see good looks in him sence he kem ter my house, one night, an’ bedeviled my front steps so ez they hev never been so stiddy sence.”

“Aunt Dely,” cried Alethea, when they were once more on their homeward way, “what ailed ye ter tell Elviry sech a pack o’”—Respect for her elders restrained her.

“I war prompted by my conscience!” replied the logical Mrs. Purvine, unexpectedly. “I can’t be at peace with my conscience ’thout doin’ all I kin ter purvent a spry, good-lookin’ gal like you-uns from marryin’ a wuthless critter sech ez Mink Lorey.” She made no secret of her designs. “He be good a plenty an’ ter spare fur that thar snake-eyed Elviry Crosby, but I want ye ter marry Jerry Price, an’ kem an’ live along o’ me.”

The immaterial suitor evolved by Mrs. Purvine’s conscience dwelt in Alethea’s mind with singular consistency and effect afterward. When she was once more in Wild-Cat Hollow, and day after day passed,—short days they were, of early winter,—and Mink did not come, expectation was supplanted by alternations of hope and disappointment, and they in their turn by fear and despair. Was it possible, she asked herself, that he could have heard and credited this fantastic invention of Mrs. Purvine’s affection and pride; that Elvira had poisoned his mind; that he was jealous and angry; that for this he had held aloof? Then the recollection of their old differences came upon her. His sorrows had obliterated them in her contemplation. It did not follow, however, that they had brought her nearer to him. He had long ago fallen away from her. Why should she expect that he would return now? She remembered with a new interpretation his joyous relief the morning that she had told to him and his lawyer in the jail the story of her glimpse of Tad; although she had shared his gratulation, it was for his sake alone. She remembered his burning eyes fixed with fiery reproaches upon her face in the court-room, when the disclosure was elicited that it was in a graveyard she had seen the missing boy. After all, she had done nothing for him; her testimony had fostered doubt and roused superstition, and other and stronger friends had effected his release.

She became silent, sober-eyed, and absorbed, and went mechanically about the house. Her changed demeanor occasioned comment from Mrs. Jessup, who sat idle, with a frowzy head and an active snuff-brush, by the fireside instead of on the porch, as in the summer days. “When Lethe fust kem back from Shaftesville she ’peared sorter peart an’ livened up. Her brain war shuck up, somehow, by her travels. I ’lowed she war a-goin’ ter behave arter this like sure enough folks,—but shucks! she ’pears ter be feared ter open her mouth, else folks’ll know she hev got a tongue ’twixt her teeth.” For Alethea found it hard now to reply to the continued queries of Mrs. Sayles and Mrs. Jessup, who had relished her opportunity, and in the girl’s observation of village life were enjoying all the benefits of travel without impinging upon their inertia or undertaking its fatigues. The elder woman sat smoking in the corner, her pink sun-bonnet overhanging her pallid, thin face, ever and anon producing a leaf of badly cured tobacco, and drying it upon the hearth-stone before serving her pipe. Now and then she chuckled silently and toothlessly at some detail of the gossip. It had hurt the girl to know how little they cared for the true object of the expedition. Mink Lorey was naught to them, and they did not affect a picturesque humanity which they did not feel.

“Waal, sir!” Mrs. Sayles would say, “I’ll be bound them town folks air talkin’ ’bout Dely Purvine yit. I jes’ kin view in the sperit how she went a-boguein’ roun’ that town, stare-gazin’ everything, like she war raised nowhar, an’ warn’t used ter nuthin’. Didn’t the folks laff powerful at yer aunt Dely?”

“I never seen nobody laffin’,” protested Alethea, loyally.