Part 36

“That war jes’ Josh Nixon,” said the elder of the herders, gravely shaking his head. “That war the very kind o’ hat he wore, an’ set the same.”

Three of the five hats in the room were of that exact description; in fact, it was a fashion common enough in the region for Jerry Price to have two alike, and the old one which Mrs. Purvine had lent the fugitive was hardly distinguishable from Mink’s own, floating down the Tennessee River.

It did not shadow a face altogether appreciative of his own pranks, as Mink drew it down over his brow and rode away in the mist, when convinced that the herders were likely to come out no more for the present.

“I can’t take no sure enough enjyemint in nuthin’,” he complained. “I feel so badgered an’ hunted.”

He looked about him doubtfully. A few strides of his horse and he would be across the state line, and safer than for many a day. He stood drearily contemplating the vacancy of the clouds above the Carolina side, as unresponsive to the imagination as his future, which in vain he sought to forecast. He suddenly wheeled.

“I’m bound ter see Lethe, though! I’m bound ter tell her I hev fund her out. She’ll know what I think o’ her afore I’m done.”

He pressed the horse, broken now to a steady gait, into the elusive ways of the herders’ trail through the weird, stunted woods along the ridge to the great Piomingo Bald; thence into a path that led down into Wild-Cat Hollow. He noted its well-worn and smooth curves.

“Ben Doaks hev made a reg’lar turnpike, a-travelin’ ter see Lethe Sayles,” he said, with some half scornful pity that would not bestir itself to be jealous.

He made a wide detour of the little house, nestling in the great cleft of the mountain, occasionally becoming dimly visible as the mist shook out its gauzy folds in long pervasive shivers, and anon obliterated as it dropped its denser curtain. Over the valley it was torn into fringes, a slant of sunlight gilding it, the blue of the sky showing through.

One of the sudden precipitous ascents from the deep depression of the hollow was distinctly imposed against the horizon. There were great rocks, with herbs and grasses growing in niches, on either side of a narrow gorge. Two splintered cliffs amongst them were like a rude and gigantic gateway giving access to the higher verdant slopes of the mountain. His eyes, turning mechanically toward the opening vista, were arrested by the sight of Alethea high up the gorge, standing in the clifty gateway. Her sun-bonnet, still tied under her chin, had fallen on her shoulders; her yellow hair was like the golden sunlight denied to the dreary heights; her familiar brown homespun dress was distinct against the tender green of the slope; a basket of herbs was on her arm. Now and then she moved a step and plucked a sprig from a niche, and again she would pause looking down upon the valley, where the white glister of the mist united with the suffusion of yellow sunshine beyond in a gauzy, splendid sheen that now and then parted to reveal the purple mountains, the blue sky, the silver river, the fields as radiantly green as the meadows of the blest. His heart beat with emotions he hardly comprehended, as he noted her luminous, grave, undimmed eyes, her fair, delicately tinted face.

He dismounted and hitched the horse by the halter to a tree. She did not see him; she heard nothing; she silently looked about her, and plucked the herb she sought. He took his way softly up the gorge among the fallen fragments of rock; he was standing still in the great rift that simulated a gateway when she turned slowly, and her eyes, widening with fear, with surprise, with rapture, fell upon him.

His heart could but thrill at her loud, wild cry of joy. He had meant to upbraid her. She was sobbing on his shoulder, and he held her in his arms.

The mists flickered and faded about them; the sunshine slanted down through the clouds. The wind lifted its wings, for they heard the flutter of the breeze, and beside some hidden nest amongst the gray old rocks a mocking-bird was suddenly singing—singing!

“Ye war pardoned! I know it!” she cried. “I know it!”

He had for once a thought for her,—a vain regret to annul her joy. When had Alethea looked thus?—the radiant spirit of love, the triumphant delight of the spring.

He delayed replying. He stooped to gather up the herbs that had fallen on the ground; for the old hound that followed her had smelt the basket, and was thrusting his intrusive muzzle among them.

“What be ye a-doin’ of, Lethe?” asked Mink, restoring them, and setting the basket up on a bowlder.

To detail the simple domestic errand relaxed the tense agitation of their meeting, and it was a relief to him to listen.

“A-getherin’ wild sallet fur dinner,” she drawled, her happy smiles and tears together in her eyes. “Our turnip patch never done nuthin’, sca’cely, an’ ez we-uns ain’t got no turnip-greens I ’lowed I’d gether a mess o’ wild sallet. The chillen hone so fur suthin’ green.”

There was no quivering sense of deprivation in her voice; the hardships of poverty would wear to-day the guise of triumphant expedient.

“I hev got about enough,” she said, smiling up at him. “Ye kem on ter the house an’ I’ll gin ye a soon dinner. Ye mus’ be tired an’ hongry with yer travels. They’ll all make ye welcome.”

He hesitated. In the supreme happiness of the moment, his face had in a measure lost the lines that anxiety and suffering had drawn. But now, as he stood doubtful of what he should say, she noted his changed expression.

“Reuben,” she cried, in tender commiseration, laying her hand on his arm, “what makes ye look like that? What hev happened ter you-uns?”

“Waal,” said Mink, leaning against the wall of rock behind him, “right smart o’ different things,—fust an’ last.”

The simple heart’s-ease in being near her again,—he had not realized how dear he held it,—in hearing her voice, full of solicitude for him, in the renewing of his unconscious reliance upon her love, had begun to give way to the antagonism inevitable between them, with their widely opposing views of life and duty, their uncongenial characters and aims.

He laughed satirically. “Ye talk ’bout pardon! I hain’t got no pardon. I ’low ye wimmin-folks hev got no feelin’ nor pride nuther. I wouldn’t hev no pardon off’n Gwinnan. I wouldn’t take a favior from him,—not ter save him from hell, nor me nuther. But I hev got no pardon.”

“Ye air foolin’ me, Reuben, ain’t ye?” she exclaimed, hopefully.

He shook his head.

She gazed gravely at him. “How’d ye git away?”

“Bruk an’ run.”

She stood still; her heart sank; her eyes filled with tears. “Oh,” she cried, with all the despair of a relinquished hope, “I couldn’t but b’lieve yestiddy, when Jacob Jessup kep’ a-lookin’ so secret an’ m’licious, ez thar war good news ez he wouldn’t lemme hear,—more ’n he told ’bout what Jedge Gwinnan said when he rid up ter the cabin, whilst we war all away ter the church-house ter the revival. An’ I b’lieved ’twar ez you-uns war pardoned. I hev drempt of it! I hev prayed fur it! I’d hev died fur it!”

“Look hyar, Lethe Sayles!” he exclaimed, tense and erect again. “That thar ain’t a true word ez ye air a-tellin’ me,—ez that thar man hev kem ter Wild-Cat Hollow!” His eyes blazed upon her.

She was deprecating and downcast. Her intuition warned her that it behooved her to be careful. She was too deliberate. He broke out vehemently:

“He hev! An’ ’twar ter see you-uns.”

“I know ’twar, Reuben, but”—

“I swear ter Heaven,” he cried, lifting his clenched right hand, “ez the Lord never afore built sech a fool ez me!” His self-pity and self-contempt were pathetic. “Ain’t I jes’ now been down yander ter Mis’ Purvine’s, an’ hear her tell how that man—oh, curse him, curse him!—air nigh dead in love with ye, an’ ye hed promised ter marry him!”

“No, Reuben, no! ’Tain’t true. It air jes’ one o’ aunt Dely’s notions.”

“An’ I kem hyar fit in mind ter kill ye dead,” he went on. “An’ the minit I see ye I furgit it all, an’ ye twist me round yer finger the same ez ef I war a bit o’ spun truck! G’way, Lethe!”—his voice broke; “don’t ye tech me.” He moved away, that she might not lay her remonstrant hand on his shoulder. “I wait on yer word like a child. Ye got me inter all this trouble through heedin’ yer wisdom ez turned out folly fur me. The foolishness o’ them ez air bereft air wise ter me! Ye done it!”

He struck his hands despairingly together as he thought of his forlorn past. Perhaps he was the happier that his reflective moods were so rare.

“I know, Reuben,—I know I did. But I never meant it. I jes’ wanted ye ter do what war right.”

“Yes, but I hev got ter abide by the consequences o’ what _ye_ think air right,—don’t ye know it?” he demanded.

“Ef I could hev suffered fur it, stiddier you-uns,” she declared, in tears, “I’d hev gone ter jail happy—happy.”

His manner changed suddenly. He was at once shocked and displeased. “What air ye talkin ’bout, Lethe?” he said, in stern rebuke. “Don’t ye know thar ain’t no ’spectable wimmin in jail?”

This had not occurred to her. She only sighed, and looked away at the shifting mist over the sunlit valley at the heavier masses of cloud dropping down upon the mountain above. A great eagle, near enough to show the gallant spread of his broad wings, swept from their midst, poised in the sunlight high above the cove, and swooped to the slopes below. Mink’s gaze followed the bird, his easily diverted interest quickening. Alethea strove to take advantage of the moment. “I jes’ want ter tell ye, Reuben”—she began.

“I don’t want ye ter tell me nuthin’!” he cried, fixing on her his brown fiery eyes, with a bright red spark in their pupils. “Ye make a fool out’n me. Ye don’t let me hev no mind o’ my own. I reckon it air ’kase I be in love with ye,—an’ nobody else. All the t’other gals war in love with me.”

There was none of his jaunty self-sufficiency as he said this,—only a dreary recognition of the fact.

“Ye hev cut me out’n a heap, Lethe; enny one o’ ’em would hev been mighty willin’ ter put up with me an’ my ways. They never harried me none, ez ef I couldn’t do nuthin’ right. I reckon I’d hev been happy an’ peaceable married ter enny o’ them.”

“I know, Reuben, an’ that’s the reason I wanter tell ye”—She paused, expecting to be interrupted. But he was looking at her coolly and calmly, waiting and listening. He was saying to himself that he might safely hear; it was best that he should know. He would be on his guard. He would not blindly fall again under her influence. He felt with secret elation, stern and savage, the handle of a pistol in his pocket. He had thought it no harm to borrow Jerry Price’s for the purpose of resisting arrest, finding it on the shelf in the spare room at Mrs. Purvine’s, the less because it was he who had given it to his friend, with his wonted free-handedness,—but indeed he had won it lightly, shooting for it at a match.

He stood with one hand on his hip, the other laid against the rock. His head was a little thrown back, his hair tossing slightly in the renewing breeze; he looked at her with dissent and doubt in every line of his face.

“Ye see, he kem hyar ter ax me ’bout Sam Marvin. Ye know I tole on the trial ’bout him moonshinin’.”

Mink nodded. The thought of those terrible alternations of hope and despair and remorse was very bitter to him still.

“An’ he ’lowed I knowed whar Marvin be now.”

“What’s he want along o’ Marvin?” demanded Mink, surprised.

“He wanted Marvin, but mostly Jeb Peake, ter testify fur him, ’kase he ’lows thar air goin’ ter be some sort’n trial agin him. Mr. Harshaw got it up, Jacob Jessup said. Jacob ’lowed the jedge war powerful outed ter find out ez Jeb war s’pected o’ hevin’ kilt a man, ’kase he war feared nare one o’ ’em could be tolled out ter testify fur him. An’ Jacob tole him ez Marvin hed quit this mounting, but he hed hearn ez down on one o’ them ridges nigh Thunderhead thar war a strange man ez war a-moonshinin’,—Jacob’s mighty apt ter know sech ez that,—an’ he hed tuk old man Craig’s house, what he hed lef’ ter go ter North Car’liny ter live with his son. An’ from the account Jacob hearn o’ these folks he wouldn’t be s’prised none ef them war Sam an’ Jeb. An’ the jedge knowed the house an’ whar it be. An’ he jes’ lit out ter ride over thar an’ see. He went yestiddy evenin’, an’ he air kemin’ back hyar ter-day. ’Kase he tole Jacob ef he couldn’t toll Sam or Jeb ter testify thar’d be no witnesses but his enemies. He ’lowed he’d stay all night at Bylor’s house, though Jake tole him ter be mighty keerful how he talked about Sam an’ Jeb thar, fur old man Bylor air runnin’ fur office,—sher’ff, or constable, or jestice, or suthin’,—an’ wouldn’t ax no better ’n ter git a chance ter harry law-breakers. An’ the jedge ’lowed ez things hed come ter a pretty pass with him, an’ rid off.”

She looked up at Mink gravely, earnestly. She had sat down on one of the rocks beside the basket; her hand toyed with a sprig of the herbs within; her dense golden hair, heavily undulating, was all the brighter for the contrast with the dark green vine that draped the gray rocks behind and above her, the delicate coloring of her face the finer, the tint of the saffron kerchief, knotted beneath her chin, the more intense. Her brown gown lay in straight, simple folds about her lithe figure; the gaunt old hound sat down at her feet and leaned his head on her knee.

Mink had not always been definitely aware of her beauty,—it was not of the type which most appeals to the rural admirer; but its subtle, unrealized fascinations had swayed him unconsciously. Now he looked at her critically, speculatively, striving to behold her as she appeared to Gwinnan, to adjust his estimate to Mrs. Purvine’s report of the florid judicial compliments. He cared naught for the rumor of the impending trial. He felt no gratulation that Harshaw had been able to compass the jeopardy, if not the disgrace, of the man he hated. He gazed at her with sedulous attention, to see her with Gwinnan’s eyes.

“Lethe,” he said, suddenly,—he had dropped down upon the ground near her feet, and leaned back against the rock,—“did Jedge Gwinnan say ennything ter you-uns ’bout me?”

She was in a tremor instantly.

He did not seem to notice. He was affecting to offer the dog a morsel in a deceptive bit of stone, and as the creature, with a dubiously wrinkling and sniffing nose, would attempt to take it he would snatch it away. “Did he?” he persisted, looking up at her from under the brim of the old white hat.

“Whenst I talked ter him an’ begged him ter git ye a pardon or suthin’,” she said. She was not without the tact to avail herself of discreet ellipses; but she forecast with dread that with these he would not be content.

“What did he say?” He was suffering the hound to lick the stone in baffled reproach, and turn away disdainful. Mink’s lip was curling with fierce sarcasm as he reiterated, “What did he say?”

“I couldn’t ondertake ter remember all he said, Reuben. ’Twar down yander at the post-office at Locust Levels. Me an’ Jerry Price rid thar in the wagin ter see ef thar war enny letter fur Mis’ Purvine.”

“I’ll be bound I kin tell ye suthin’ _ye_ said!” exclaimed Mink. “Ye tole him ez he war powerful good ter hold no gredge agin me.”

She turned her despairing eyes upon him. He could read the truth in their clear depths.

“An’ he tole ye ez ye war too good ter marry me.”

There was no need to answer.

“An’ ye b’lieved him!”

“Oh, Reuben, ye know better ’n that!” she exclaimed, reassured to speak freely. “He jes’ talked ’bout’n ye like my step-mother, an’ aunt Dely, an’ Jake Jessup’s wife; none o’ them air gamesome, an’ they don’t set store on gamesome ways. ’Twar jes’ sech talk ez theirn.”

He listened, his chin in his hand, his elbow on the rock. She should not delude him again; he would not succumb to her influence. He felt the handle of the pistol in his pocket. There was affirmation in its very touch.

“Gamesome ain’t what _he_ said. He ’lowed I war m’licious.”

Once more he glanced up to read the truth in her eyes.

He slowly pulled himself to his feet. He stood for a moment, erect and jaunty, his hand thrust in his leather belt, his eyes bright and confident, his hair tossing back as he moved his head.

“Ye tole him how good he war,” his merciless divinations went on.

She cowered beneath his serene and casual glance.

“Ye don’t deny it, an’ yit ye expec’ me ter not b’lieve what the whole kentry air a-sayin’,—ez ye hev promised ter marry him an’ hev gin me the go-by.”

He turned abruptly away. “Reuben,” she cried, “air ye goin’ agin, when ye hev jes’ kem back?” She laid her importunate hands upon his arm. His resolution was strong now; he could afford to be lenient and to humor her.

“’Bleeged ter, Lethe,” he said softly, looking down upon her with the calmness of finality. She did not loose her hold. “Ef ye keep me a-foolin’ hyar longer ’n I oughter stay, I mought git cotched agin,” he warned her—“fur twenty year! Jake Jessup would ez soon arrest me ez not.”

She relaxed her grasp, looking fearfully about her in the mist and at the summit of the great rocks. She followed him, the old hound by her side, down to the spot where the horse still stood hitched.

“But ye’ll kem back agin, Reuben?” she said, her heart-break in her voice, her eyes full of tears.

“Laws-a-massy, yes; times an’ times. I kin whistle plumb like a mocking-bird, an’ whenever ye hear one a-singin’ the same chune three times ye kem out ’mongst the rocks an’ ye’ll find me.”

Once more he held her at arm’s length and looked searchingly at her tearful face. Suddenly he mounted his horse and rode away.

XXX.

He did not maintain this sedulous semblance of calmness as he galloped the wild young horse along the mountain slopes in the mist. His eyes burned; his teeth were fiercely set; sometimes he lifted his right hand and shook it clenched as if he held his vengeance within his grasp and would not lightly let it go. Over and again he cried aloud a curse upon the man he hated, and then he would fall to muttering his grudges, all unforgotten, all registered indelibly in his mind despite its facile laxity, despite its fickle traits. He reviewed the events since the morning that Alethea had stood by the judge’s desk, and he laid down his pen to gaze, to the afternoon when, amongst the blossoms and the sunshine and the birds, they had talked together, and she had asked a futile thing, doubtless to beguile the hour, and he had warned her solemnly.

“I ain’t goin’ ter North Car’liny, an’ leave ’em hyar tergether,” he declared vehemently. “I’ll meet up with him somewhar this side o’ the Craig house. I’ll dare him ter fight, an’ ef he don’t kill me I’ll kill him, an’ kiss the hand that does the deed!”

The mists shivered to listen; the rocks repeated the threat, and again in hesitant dread, and still once more a word in an awed and tremulous staccato. On and on he went,—never abating speed, flying over the broken ground; deaf to the sound of horn and hounds borne fitfully from the slopes below on some hardly perceptible current of the air, and again dying to the dumbness of the shrouded woods; blind to the burly apparition of a bear trotting out of the clouds and in again, although the horse reared and pawed the air; callous to the keen chill of the torrent, swollen out of its banks with the spring rains till it surged about his limbs as he forded through. Over and again the mountain water-courses intercepted his path, but only once his attention was attracted to his surroundings, and this was because there seemed here a check upon his progress, and he must needs take heed of his way. The stream known as Gran’dad’s creek showed in the thickening mist a turbulent volume, a swollen breadth, covering rocks and brush and gullies, and washing the boles of trees far from its normal channel; he hardly knew where he might safely take the ford. Now the water elusively glimmered, swift, foaming, full of enormous bowlders, and with trees standing in its midst; and as he went down to the verge in a cleft of the rock the vapors closed again, and it seemed to recede into invisibility. The horse had become restive. He resisted and snorted, and finally deliberately faced about, as he was recklessly urged to enter the stream. He was forced again to the margin, when suddenly Mink thought he was dreaming. The fluctuating vapors parted once more, and in the rifts he saw on the opposite bank the man he sought. He stood in numb surprise; a strange overwhelming sense of hatred possessed him with the image thus palpably presented; he quivered with a recollection of all his wrongs. This was no dream. It was Gwinnan returning from the moonshiners’ house. He rose from his stirrups and waved his hand with a smile. Mink heard his ringing halloo. Then Gwinnan pressed his roan colt down to the margin of the water and took the ford.

“Saved us wettin’ our feet agin, Grasshopper,” Mink observed. He was very distinct as he sat on the bareback stray; his feet dangling without stirrups, his big wool hat, his flaunting auburn hair, his keen, clear-cut face, all definitely painted on the opaque white background of the mist; a bole was barely outlined here and there behind him, or a towering crag, as if there were other elements of the picture merely sketched in. More than once Gwinnan lifted his grave eyes toward him. But when the mist came between them, surging in a great cloudy volume, Mink drew the pistol from his pocket.

“Ye don’t kerry straight. I ’member yer tricks. I reckon he hev got a six-shooter, but I’ll resk ye, ennyhows. I’ll wait till he kems across an’ then dare him to fight.”

As he waited it might have seemed that he was the only human creature in the world, so desolately vacant were the barren mists, so unresponsive to the sense of the landscape that they hid, so null, so silent, save for the river, forever flowing on like life, resistless as eternity. The interval was long to his impatience,—so long that, alarmed at last lest his revenge be snatched from him by some mischance, at this supreme moment when it had seemed the fierce joy he had craved was vouchsafed, he hastily rode along the clifty bank above the tumultuous current. Once more the mist lifted. Suddenly he saw the roan colt, his full eyes starting from his head, his scream almost human in its frantic terror, pawing the cliffs, to the base of which the encroaching waters had risen; finding no footing, no shallows, only the forbidding inaccessibilities of the rocks. The saddle was vacant. The rider had been swept away by the wanton vagaries of the current.

The young mountaineer stared stolidly and uncomprehendingly for a moment. In a sort of daze he dismounted from his horse. He hardly realized what had happened, until, as he climbed deftly down among the splintered crags, lithe, agile, sure-footed as a deer, he saw clinging to a bramble growing from a fissure, and supported on a ledge of the rock, the unconscious figure familiar to his dream of vengeance. It was forestalled! The wild freak of the mountain torrent had given him his heart’s desire, and yet his hands were clean. The wolves, the wild dogs, and the vultures would not leave the man to creep away were there yet life left in him.

And there was life. He noted the convulsive fluttering of breath, the trembling clutch of the fingers; for the nerves remembered the saving boughs that the senses had forgotten.