Part 20

“Oh, shucks!” exclaimed Marvin, with a feint of sharing their incredulity. But he held his straggling beard in one hand, and looked at Alethea seriously. To him her manner constrained belief in what she had said. “Why, Lethe,” he broke out, abruptly, “’twarn’t long arter that evenin’ whenst I seen ye a-milkin’ the cow when the spy kem. We-uns war a-settin’ roun’ the still,—we kep’ it in the shed-room, me an’ my partners,—an’ we war a-talkin’ ’bout you-uns, an’ how ye acted; an’ M’ria, she war thar, an’ she went agin ye, an’ ’lowed ez we hed better make ye shet yer mouth; an’ some o’ the boys were argufyin’ ez ye war jes’ sayin’ sech ez ye done ter hear yerse’f talk, an’ feel sot up in yer own ’pinion. They ’lowed ye’d be feared ter tell, sure enough, but ye hankered ter be begged ter shet up. ’Twar a powerful stormy night. I never hear a wusser wind ez war a-cavortin’ round the house. An’ the lightnin’ an’ thunder hed been right up an’ down sniptious. A lightnin’ ball mus’ hev bust up on Piomingo Bald, ’kase nex’ day I see the ground tore up round the herders’ cabin, though Ben Doaks warn’t thar,—hed gone down ter the cove, I reckon. Waal, sir, it quit stormin’ arter a while, but everything war mighty damp an’ wet; the draps kep’ a-fallin’ off’n the eaves. We could hear the hogs in the pen a-squashin’ about in the mud. An’ all of a suddenty they tuk ter squealin’ an’ gruntin’, skeered mighty nigh ter death. An’ my oldest son, Mose, he ’lowed it war a varmint arter ’em; an’ he snatched his gun an’ runned out ter the hog-pen. An’ thar they war, all jammed up tergether, gruntin’ an’ snortin’; an’ Mose say he war afeard to shoot ’mongst ’em, fur fear o’ hittin’ some o’ them stiddier the varmint. An’ whilst he war lookin’ right keerful,—the moon hed kem out by then,—he seen, stiddier a wolf, suthin’ a-bowin’ down off’n the fence. An’ the thing cotch up a crust o’ bread, or a rind o’ water-million, or suthin’, out o’ the trough fur the hogs, an’ then sot up ez white-faced on the fence, a-munchin’ it an’ a-lookin’ at him. An’ Mose ’lowed he war so plumb s’prised he los’ his senses. He ’lowed ’twar a harnt,—it looked so onexpected. He jes’ flung his rifle on the groun’ an’ run. It’s mighty seldom sech tracks hev been made on the Big Smoky ez Mose tuk. We-uns ain’t medjured ’em yit, but Mose hev got the name ’mongst the gang o’ bein’ able ter step fourteen feet at a stride.”

He showed his long, tobacco-stained teeth in the midst of his straggling beard, and as he talked on he gnawed at a plug of tobacco, as if, being no impediment to thought, it could be none to its expression.

“Mose lept inter the house, declarin’ thar war a harnt a-settin’ on the fence. Ye know Jeb Peake?—hongry Jeb, they useter call him.” Marvin broke off suddenly, having forgotten the significance and purpose of the recital in the rare pleasure of recounting. Even his wife’s face bore only retrospective absorption, and Serena had lifted her head, and fixed an excited, steadfast eye upon him. “Waal, hongry Jeb war a-settin’ thar in the corner, an’ bein’ toler’ble sleepy-headed he hed drapped off, his head agin the chimbley. An’ when Mose kem a-rampagin’ in thar, with his eyes poppin’ out, declarin’ thar war a harnt settin’ on the fence, eatin’,—‘_Eatin’ what?_’ sez hongry Jeb, a-startin’ up. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Jeb ain’t never forgot the bottom o’ the pot yit,” chimed in the wife.

“I ain’t a-grudgin’ him ter eat, though,” stipulated the moonshiner, “nor the harnt, nuther. I jes’ ’lowed ez that thar white-faced critter a-settin’ on the fence, a-thievin’ from the hog, mought take up a fancy ter Mose’s rifle, lef’ onpertected on the ground. So I goes out. Nuthin’ warn’t settin’ on the fence, ’ceptin’ the moonlight an’ that thar onregenerate young tur-rkey ez nuthin’ could hender from roostin’ on the rails o’ the hog-pen, stiddier on a limb o’ a tree, ’longside o’ the t’other tur-rkeys.”

“An’ thar a fox cotch her afore daybreak,” interpolated Mrs. Marvin, supplying biographical deficiencies.

“I always _did_ b’lieve ’twar them thar greedy old hogs,” said Serena.

Marvin went on, disregarding the interruption:—

“I picked up Mose’s gun, an’ in I kem. I barred up the door, an’ then I sot down an’ lighted my pipe. An’ Jeb, he tuk ter tellin’ tales ’bout all the folks ez he ever knowed ter be skeered haffen ter death”—

“Nare one of ’em war Jeb,” remarked the observant Mrs. Marvin, seizing the salient trait of the romancer. “In all Jeb’s tales _he_ comes out’n the big e-end o’ the hawn.”

“An’ ez I sot thar, jes’ wallin’ my eyes round the room, I seen suthin’ that, ef the t’others hed said they seen, I’d hev tole ’em they war lyin’. ’Twar a couple o’ eyes an’ a white face peekin’ through the holes in the chinkin’ o’ the walls, whar the daubin’ hed fell out. ’Twar right close ter me at fust,—that war how I kem ter see it so plain. I ’lowed ter jes’ stick my knife right quick inter one o’ them eyes. I ’lowed ’twar a raider. ’Fore I could move ’twar gone! Then all of a suddenty I seen the face an’ eyes peekin’ in close ter the door. I jes’ flew at it that time,—warn’t goin’ ter let nuthin’ hender”—

“I war ’twixt him an’ the door, an’ he jes’ run over me,” interpolated the pullet. “Knocked me plumb over, head fust, inter a tub o’ beer. Hed ter set in the sun all nex’ day fur my hair ter dry out, an’ I smelt like a toper.”

Sam Marvin not ungenially permitted his family thus to share in telling his story. He resumed with unabated ardor:—

“An’ I jumped through the door so quick that the spy jes’ did see me, an’ war steppin’ out ter run when I cotch him by the collar. I don’t reckon thar ever war a better beatin’ ’n I gin him. I hed drapped my knife a-runnin’, an’ I hed no dependence ’ceptin’ my fists. His face war so bloody I didn’t know him a-fust, when I dragged him in the house, with his head under my arm. An’ when I seen him I knowed he never kem of hisself, but somebody had sent him. An’ I say, ‘What did ye kem hyar fur?’ An’ he say, ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ I say, ‘Who sent ye?’ An’ he say, ‘Lethe Sayles.’”

“Now, Lethe, see what a liar ye hev been fund out ter be!” said the woman, scornfully. “Lord knows I never ’lowed ye would kem ter sech. I knowed ye whenst ye war a baby. A fatter one I never see. Nobody would hev b’lieved ye’d grow up sour, an’ preachified, an’ faultin’ yer elders, an’ bide a single woman, ez ef nobody would make ch’ice o’ ye.”

Alethea looked vaguely from one to the other. Denial seemed futile. She asked mechanically, rather than from any definite motive, “Did ye hear o’ enny revenuers arter that?”

“Didn’t wait ter,” said Marvin. “We hed hearn enough, knowin’ ez ye hed tole, an’ the word hed got round the kentry, so ez the spy hed been sent up ter make sure o’ the place. We-uns war too busy a-movin’ the still an’ a-hustlin’ off. Ef thar hed been time enough fur ennything, I reckon some o’ them boys would hev put a bullet through that thar sandy head o’ yourn. But the raiders never kem up with we-uns, nor got our still an’ liquor,—we-uns war miles an’ miles away from hyar the night arter Tad kem a-spyin’.”

Alethea stood staring, speechless. “Tad!” she gasped at last. “_Tad!_”

They all stopped and looked at her through the wreathing smoke, as if they hardly understood her.

“Lethe, ye air too pretensified ter be healthy!” Mrs. Marvin exclaimed at last.

“O’ course ye knowed, bein’ ez ye tole him,” said the moonshiner. He did not resume his work, but stood gazing at her. They were all at a loss, amazed at her perturbation.

Her breath came fast; her lips were parted. One lifted hand clung to the heavily enswathed ear of corn upon the tall, sere stalk; the other clutched the kerchief about her throat, as if she were suffocating. Her face was pale; her eyes were distended.

“I wouldn’t look so pop-eyed fur nuthin’,” remarked the pullet, in callow pertness; she might not have been suspected of laying so much stress on appearances.

“I’m tryin’ ter think,” said Alethea, dazed, “ef that war afore Tad war drownded or arterward.”

Marvin turned, and leered significantly at his family.

“Mus’ hev been afore he war drownded, I reckon,” he said satirically.

“Lethe Sayles,” observed Serena reprehensively, “ye air teched in the head.”

She tossed her own head with a conviction that, if not strictly ornamental, it was level. Then, like the sane fowl that she was, she went stepping about on her long, yellow feet with a demure, grown-up air.

“Oh,” said Alethea, fixing the dates in her mind, “it mus’ hev been arterwards”—

“Likely,” interrupted Sam Marvin.

—“’kase that very evenin’ arter I seen ye at the cow-pen Elviry Crosby kem an’ tole ez how Reuben Lorey hed bust down old man Griff’s mill, an’ his nevy Tad war in it, an’ war drownded in the ruver.”

“Laws-a-me!” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, clutching her sun-bonnet with both hands, and thrusting it backward from her head, as if it intercepted the news.

“Waal, sir!” cried the moonshiner, amazed.

“Oh,” cried Alethea, clasping both her hands, “ef I hed called ye back that evenin’, an’ promised not ter tell, like I war minded ter do”—

“Ye ’lowed ’twarn’t right,” suggested the moonshiner.

—“ye would hev knowed ez Tad warn’t no spy, but war jes’ vagabondin’ round the kentry, a runaway, houseless an’ hongry; an’ ye would hev tuk him back ter old man Griff, an’ Reuben wouldn’t hev been tried fur killin’ him!”

“Shucks, Mink warn’t tried fur sech sure enough?” said Marvin, uneasily. His face had changed. His wife was turning the corner of her apron nervously between her fingers, and looking at him in evident trepidation.

“He hev been in jail fur months an’ months,” said Alethea. “An’ when he war tried, I told on the witness stand ’bout glimpsin’ Tad one night whenst I kem from camp,—mus’ hev been the same night whenst he went up the mounting ter yer house, ’kase thar war a awful storm. An’ when I seen him suddint I screamed, bein’ s’prised; an’ I reckon that war the reason he said ‘Lethe Sayles.’ An’ at the trial they lowed I hed seen nuthin’ but Tad’s harnt, an’ the jury disagreed.”

“An’—an’—an’ air Mink in jail yit?” demanded the moonshiner, his jaw falling in dismay.

“The rescuers tuk him out,” said Alethea.

“Waal, sir,” he exclaimed, with a long breath. “Ye see,”—he seemed to feel that he must account for his excitement and interest,—“bein’ hid out, I hain’t hearn no news, sca’cely, sence we-uns lef’.”

“Whar be Tad now?” Alethea asked suddenly, realizing that here was the man who had seen him last.

He glanced quickly at her, then in perplexed dubitation at his wife. In common with many women, she was willing enough to steer when it was all plain sailing, but among the breakers she left him with an undivided responsibility. She fell to pulling corn with an air of complete absorption in her work.

He made a clumsy effort at diversion. “By Gosh,” he declared, waving his hand about his head, “ef this hyar smoke don’t clar away, we-uns’ll all be sifflicated in it.”

But the smoke was not now so dense. High up, its sober, dun-colored folds were suffused with a lurid flush admitted from the wintry sunset. The black, dead trees within the inclosure stood out distinctly athwart the blank neutrality of the gray, nebulous background. The little house on the rise was dimly suggested beyond the corn-field, across which skulked protean shapes of smoke,—monstrous forms, full of motion and strange consistency and slowly realized symmetry, as if some gigantic prehistoric beasts were trembling upon the verge of materialization and visibility. The wind gave them chase. It had lifted its voice in the silences. Like a clarion it rang down the narrow ravine below. But Sam Marvin, expanding his lungs to the freshened air, declared that he felt “plumb sifflicated.”

“Whar be Tad now?” persisted Alethea.

He spat meditatively upon the ground. “Waal, Lethe,” he said at last, “that’s more’n I know. I dunno whar Tad be now.”

She detected consciousness in the manner of the woman and the girl. She broke out in a tumult of fear:—

“Ye didn’t harm Tad, did ye?” with wild, terrified eyes fixed upon him. “Ye didn’t kill Tad fur a spy?—’kase he warn’t.”

“Shet up, ye blatant fool!” exclaimed Mrs. Marvin, “layin’ sech ez that at we-uns’s door.”

“An’ shet up yerse’f, M’ria. Least said, soonest mended,” Marvin interposed. “Look-a-hyar, Lethe Sayles, ye hev done harm enough; it may be ’kase it war right. Take sech satisfaction ez ye kin in yer notion. It never turned out right,—turned out mighty wrong. I ain’t goin’ ter answer ye nare nuther word. I hev got a question ter ax you-uns right now. Who war it ye tole ’bout findin’ out ’twar me a-moonshinin’?”

She detailed tremulously the scene in the court-room, and the impression it produced was altogether at variance with her expectations. Perhaps, however, it was only natural that Sam Marvin should feel less interest in the belated disclosure, which he had thought was made months previous, than in the circumstances of the trial, Peter Rood’s death, the imprisonment of the jury, and the riot of the rescuing mob. As to his wife, she was chiefly shocked by the publicity attaching to testimony in open court.

“An’ ye jes’ stood up thar, Lethe Sayles, ez bold-faced ez a biscuit-block, an’ lifted up yer outdacious voice afore all them men? Waal, sir! Waal! I dunno what the wimmen air a-comin’ ter!”

“I war obligated ter tell sech ez I knowed,” Alethea contended against this assumption of superior delicacy. “I never felt no more bold-faced than in tellin’ ’speriunce ’fore the brethren at camp.”

“Oh, child!” cried Mrs. Marvin. “It’s the spirit o’ grace movin’ at camp, but at court it’s the nimbleness o’ the devil.”

Alethea argued no further, for conversation was impeded by the succeeding operations of gathering the crop. Marvin was leading the team of the great wagon from one to another of the heaps of corn. The huge creaking wheels crushed the ranks of stalks that fell in confusion on either side; the white canvas cover had been removed from the hoops, in order to facilitate the throwing of the corn into the wagon. Through the wreaths of smoke appeared the long ears of a pair of mules. Sam Marvin had apparently found his new home in a thirstier locality than his old, for he was evidently thriving. The pair of mules might have been considered a sorry team in point of appearance: their sides were rubbed bare with the friction of the trace-chains; they were both unkempt, and one was very tall and the other small, but they were stalwart and sure-footed and fleet, and a wonderful acquisition in lieu of the yoke of slow oxen she remembered. The continuous thud, as the ears of corn were thrown into the wagon, enabled Marvin to affect not to hear Alethea’s reiteration as to Tad’s fate.

“I wisht ye’d tell me suthin’ ’bout’n Tad,” she said piteously. “I wisht I knew ye hedn’t hurt him, nor—nor”—

She paused in the work, looking drearily about her. The wind tossed her garments; she was fain at times to catch her bonnet by the curtain, to hold it. The smoke had taken flight; dragons, winged horses, griffins, forgotten myths, all scurrying away before the strong blast. And still they came and went, and rose once more, for the wind that lifted the smoke fanned the fire. The flames were in sight along the base of Big Injun Mounting, writhing now like fiery serpents, and now rising like some strange growth in quivering blades; waving and bowing, appearing and disappearing, and always extending further and further. They seemed so alive, so endowed with the spirit of destruction, so wantonly alert, so merciless to the fettered mountain that tossed its forests in wild commotion, with many a gesture of abject despair, and spite of all could not flee. Their strong, tawny color contrasted with the dull garnet of the bare boughs and the deep, sombre green of the solemn pines. The smoke carried from the fire a lurid reflection, fading presently in the progress across the landscape of the long, dun-colored flights. The wintry sunset was at hand. The sky was red and amber; the plains of the far west lay vaguely purple beneath. On Walden’s Ridge, rising against the horizon, rested the sun, from which somehow the dazzling fire seemed withdrawn, leaving a sphere of vivid scarlet, indescribably pure and intense, upon which the eye could nevertheless gaze undaunted.

Pensive intimations there were in its reduced splendors; in the deep purple of Chilhowee, in the brown tints of the nearer ranges. Something was gone from the earth,—a day,—and the earth was sad, though it had known so many. And the night impended and the unimagined morrow. And thus the averted Future turns by slow degrees the face that all flesh dreads to see. The voice of lowing cattle came up from the cove. The fires in the solitudes burned apace.

“I hev axed ye time an’ agin, Sam Marvin, whar Tad be. Ef ye don’t tell, I’ll be bound ter b’lieve ye moonshiners hev done suthin’ awful ter him.”

They were about to depart on their journey. Already Serena was on her uneasy bed of corn in the ear. But the pullet’s life had been made up chiefly of rough jouncing, and never having heard of a wagon with springs, she was in a measure incapable of appreciating her deprivation. She had wrapped a quilt of many colors about her shoulders, for the evening air was chill, and she looked out of the opening in the back of the canvas-covered wagon in grotesque variegation. Mrs. Marvin was climbing upon the wheel to her seat on the board in front. The moonshiner stood by the head of one of the mules, busy arranging the simple tackling. He looked with a sneer at Alethea over the beast’s neck.

“An’ I hev tole ye, Lethe Sayles, ez I dunno whar Tad be now. I’m a mighty smart man, sure enough, but ’twould take a smarter one ’n me ter say whar Tad be now, an’ what he be a-doin’.”

He looked at his wife with a grin. She laughed aloud in tuneless scorn. The girl, gazing out of the back of the wagon as it jolted off, echoed the derision in a shrill key. And as the clumsy vehicle went creaking down the precipitous slope, beyond which could be seen only the flaming base of the opposite mountain, all luridly aflare in the windy dusk, they seemed to Alethea as if they were descending into Tophet itself.

XVIII.

For a long time that night Alethea sat on the cabin porch in Wild-Cat Hollow, absently watching the limited landscape seen through the narrow gap of the minor ridges superimposed upon the great mountain. The sky was dark but for the light that came from the earth. The flames were out of sight behind the intervening ranges. Weird fluctuating gleams, however, trembled over the cove below, and summoned from the darkness that stately file of peaks stretching away along the sole vista vouchsafed to the Hollow. Sometimes the illumination was a dull red suffusion, merging in the distance into melancholy gradations of tawny yellow and indeterminate brown, and so to densest gloom. Again it was golden, vivid, fibrous, divergent, like the segment of a halo about some miraculous presence, whose gracious splendor was only thus suggested to the debarred in Wild-Cat Hollow. The legions of the smoke were loosed: down in the cove, always passing in endless ranks what way the wind might will; along the mountain side, marshaled in fantasies reflecting from the fires subtle intimations of color,—of blue and red and purple; deploying upward, interposing between the constellations, that seemed themselves upon the march. There were clouds in the sky; the night was chill. Alethea gathered her shawl over her head. Now and then Tige, who sat beside her, wheezed and glanced over his shoulder at the door ajar, as if to urge her to go in. Sometimes he ran thither himself, looking backward to see if she would follow him. Then, as she continued motionless, he would come and sit beside her, with a plaintive whine of resignation. Tige was pensive and humble to-night, and was making an edifying show of repentance. On the homeward walk he had been disposed to follow the example of the moonshiner’s dogs and harass the coon, thereby becoming acquainted with the teeth of the smiling creature, and incurring Alethea’s rebukes and displeasure.

It was a cheerful scene within, glimpsed through the half-open door, contrasting with the wild, dark world without, and its strange glares and fluctuating glooms and far-off stars and vast admeasurements of loneliness. The old woman knitted and nodded in her rocking-chair; Jessup and Mr. Sayles smoked their pipes, and ever and anon the old man began anew to detail—the pipe-stem between his teeth—the legends that his grandfather had learned from the Indians of the hidden silver mines in these mountains, found long ago, and visited stealthily, the secret of the locality dying with its discoverer, who thus carried out of the world more than he brought with him. Their eyes gloated on the fire as they talked, seeing more than the leaping yellow flames or the white heats of the coals below. It might seem as if the craving for precious metal is a natural appetite, since these men that knew naught of the world, of the influence of wealth, of its powers, of its infinite divergences, should be a-hungered for it in their primitive fastnesses, and dream of it by night.

“On the top of the Big Smoky Mountings, on a spot whar ye kin see the Tennessee River in three places at once,” said the old man, repeating the formula of the tradition.

Jessup puffed his pipe a moment in silence, watching the wreathing smoke. “I know twenty sech spots,” he said presently.

The old man sighed and shifted his position. “Me too,” he admitted. “But thar it be,” he observed, “fur the man ez air a-comin’.”

They fell silent, perhaps both projecting a mental ideal of the man of the future, and the subservient circumstance that should lead him to stand one day on these stupendous heights, with sunshine and clouds about him and the world at his feet, and to look upon the mystic curves of the river, trebly visible, strike his heel upon the ground, and triumphantly proclaim, “It is here!”

The dogs lay about the hearth; one, a hound, in the shadow, with his muzzle stretched flat on the floor between his fore-paws, had saurian suggestions,—he was like an alligator. Leonidas and Lucinda had gone to bed, but the baby was still up and afoot. The fiat of nursery ethics that gentry of his age should be early asleep had been complied with only so far as getting him into his night-gown, which encased his increasing plumpness like a cylinder. He wore a queer night-cap, that made him look incongruously ancient and feminine. He plodded about the puncheon floor, in the joy of his newly acquired powers of locomotion, with reckless enthusiasm. His shadow accompanied him, magnified, elongated,—his similitude as he might be in years to come; he seemed in some sort attended by the presentiment of his future. The energy, however, with which he had started on his long journey through life would presently be abated. In good sooth, he would be glad to sit down often and be still, and would find solace in perching on fences and whittling, and would know that hustling through this world is not what one might hope. He had fallen under the delusion that he could talk as well as walk, and was inarticulately loquacious.

Alethea’s errand outside was to gather chips from the wood-pile hard by, to kindle the morning’s fires. It had been long since rain had fallen, but the routine of spreading them upon the hearth, to dry during the night, was as diligently observed as if the reason that gave rise to the habit now existed. The splint baskets filled and redolent of the hickory bark, stood at her feet, yet she did not move.