Part 6

The group presently began to separate, some going down to Eskaqua Cove, where they would find their several homes if they could, but would at all hazards lay down their neighbors’ fences. Rood lingered for a time with Mink and one or two others who cherished the design of seeing old man Griff’s mill started before day. He turned off, however, when they had reached the open spaces of Piomingo Cove. It lay quiet, pastoral, encircled by the solemn mountains, with the long slant of the moonbeams upon it and the glister of the dew. The fields had all a pearly, luminous effect, marked off by the zigzag lines of the rail fences and the dark bushes that stood in corners. The houses, indicated by clumps of trees among which they nestled, were dark and silent. Not even a dog barked. When a cock crew the sudden note seemed clear and resonant as a bugle. “Crowin’ fur fower o’clock.” said Mink.

The road ran among woods much of the distance; through the trees could be caught occasional glimpses of the illuminated world without. But presently they gave way. A wide, deep notch in the summit of a mountain revealed the western sky. The translucent amber moon swung above these purple steeps, all suffused with its glamourous irradiation. Below, the shining breadth of the Scolacutta River swept down from the vague darkness. It was still night, yet one could see how the pawpaw and the laurel crowded the banks. The oblique line of the roof of the mill was drawn against the purple sky; its windows were black; its supports were reflected in the stream with a distinct reduplication; the water trickled down from crevices in the race with a lace-like effect, seeming never to fall, but to hang as if it were some gauzy fragment of a fabric. Beneath the great wheel, motionless, circular, shadowy, was a shoaling yellow light, pellucid and splendid,—the moon among the shallows. The natural dam, a glassy cataract, bursting into foam and spray, was whitely visible, with surging rapids below. The sound seemed louder than usual; it deadened the snap when Mink cut a pole from a pawpaw tree and hastily trimmed the leaves. He climbed gingerly upon the timbers of the race, then paused, looked back, and hesitated.

The others had reined in their horses, and stood, ill-defined equestrian shadows, on the bank watching him.

He placed the pole beneath the lever by which the gate was raised, its other end being within the building. There was no sound but the monotone of the river. Then with a great creak the gate was lifted. The imprisoned water came through with a tumultuous rush. Mink felt the stir beneath as the wheel began to revolve. There was a sudden jar, a jerk, the structure swayed beneath him, a crash among the timbers, a harsh, wrenching sound as they tore apart. He saw the faint stars reel as in some distraught vision. He heard the wild exclamations of the men on the bank. He could not distinguish what they said, but with an instinct rather than any appreciation of cause and effect he tried to draw away the pole to let the gate down.

Too late. Through the sunken wreck of the race the water still poured over the madly plunging wheel. Mink sprang upon the bank, fell upon his hands and knees, and as he struggled to his feet he saw beneath the race the grotesque distortions of the simple machinery. Some villain’s hand had adroitly contrived a series of clogs, each of insufficient weight to stop the wheel with the water still pouring over it, but as it crushed them—first an empty barrel, then a pole, then a fence-rail—giving it a succession of shocks that were fast breaking it in pieces. Thus what was designed for jest should result in destruction. The mill itself was a rotten old structure at best. Jarring with every convulsive wrench and jerk of the bewitched wheel, its supports tottered feebly in the water, and when all at once the race came down, and the wheel and the heavy beams were driven against its walls, for an instant it quivered, then careened, crashed. There was a great cloud of dust rising from the tumbled wreck on the bank. In the water, floating away on the swollen floods, were timbers, and barrels, and boards, and parts of the clapboard roof.

And then, from their midst, as if the old building had an appreciated agony in its dissolution, a great cry of pain went up. Mink turned with a white face, as he put his foot in the stirrup, to stare over his shoulder. Surely he was drunk, very drunk. Had the others heard? A twinkling light sprang up beyond the orchard boughs. The house had taken the alarm. His companions were getting away in haste. Sober enough for flight and flapping their elbows, they crowed in mockery. Mink leaped into his saddle to ride as ride he must, still looking with a lingering fear over his shoulder, remembering that quavering cry.

Was he drunk, or did he hear? Could any creature have been in the mill, undisturbed,—for they were so craftily quiet,—asleep till awakened by those death throes of the little building? Could it have been a pet fawn bleating with almost a human intonation in that common anguish of all life, the fear of death,—a pet cub? What! his heart ached for it,—he, the hardy hunter? Oh, was his conscience endowed with some subtle discernment more acute than his senses? It seemed a surly fate that had crept up on the unwitting creature in the dark, in the humble peace of its slumbers. And he was sorry, too, for the old man’s mill; and then a vague terror possessed him when he thought of the trickery with the wheel. Surely the hand of another had compassed its destruction, yet when or why he could not understand, could not guess; or was he himself the miscreant? He could not remember what he had done; he had been so very drunk.

Ah, should he ever again see Chilhowee thus receive the slant of the sunrise, and stand revealed in definite purple heights against the pale blue of the far west? Should he ever again mark that joyous matutinal impulse of nature as the dawn expanded into day? The note of a bird, sweet, thrilling with gladness, came from the woods, so charged with the spirit of the morning that it might have been the voice of the light. And the dew was rich with the fragrance of flowers, and as he galloped along the bridle-path they stretched their rank growth across his way, sometimes smiting him lightly in the face, like a challenge to mirth. When he climbed the steep ridge from which were visible the domes of the Great Smoky, all massive and splendid against the dispersing roseate tints in the sky, the sunlight gushing down in a crimson flood while the dazzling focus rose higher than the highest bald, he cared less to look above than into the shadowed depths of Piomingo Cove. Did he fancy, or could he see a stir there? An atom slowly moved down the lane, and across the red clay slope of a hill,—another, and yet one more. Was the settlement already roused with the news of the disaster to the mill? He turned and pressed his mare along the rocky road, up slopes and down again, still ascending and descending the minor ridges that lie about the base of the Smoky. Sometimes he wondered at himself with a harsh, impersonal reprehension, as if his deed were another’s. “How’s the old man goin’ ter make out ter barely live ’thout his mill?” he demanded of himself; “an’ them gran’chil’n ter keer fur, an’ Tad, an’ all.”

Then would come again the recollection of that strange muffled scream, and though the sun was warm he shivered.

Often he drew up the mare and listened with a vague sense of pursuit. Stillness could hardly be more profound. Not the stir of a leaf, never a stealthy tread. Then as he started again down the rocky way, some vagrant echo, or a stone rolling under his mare’s hoof, would bring to him again that sudden affright, and he would swiftly turn to see who dogged him.

There were many curves in the path, and once in its opening vista he saw before him a girl with yellow hair outlined against the green and gold foliage of the sunlit woods, clad in brown homespun, partly leading and partly driving a dun-colored ox, with a rope knotted about his long horns.

She paused, swaying hard on it to check the animal, when she beheld the horseman, and her brown eyes were full of surprised recognition.

Mink gravely nodded in response to her grave salutation. He seemed at first about to pass without stopping, but when it was evident that she intended to let the ox trudge on he drew up the mare.

“Howdy, Lethe,” he said.

“Howdy,” returned Alethea.

“Enny news?”

She shook her head without speaking.

“Whar be ye a-goin’ with Buck?” he asked.

“Arter the warpin’ ars. They war loaned ter aunt Dely, an’ she hain’t got but one steer ter haul ’em home. So Buck hed ter go.”

The ox had reached up his dun-colored head for the leaves, all green and flecked with golden light. She had loosed her hold upon the rope, and seriously gazed at Mink.

“I war down ter Crosby’s yestiddy evenin’,” he observed, watching her.

“I hopes ye enjyed yerse’f,” she said, with tart self-betrayal.

He laughed a little, and turned the reins in his hands. He relished infinitely the sight of the red and angry spot on either cheek, the spark in her eye.

“I did,” he said jauntily, noting the effect of his words. “I seen Elviry.”

She made an effort at self-control.

“Waal,” she returned, calmly, although her voice trembled a little, “I hope ye kin agree with her better ’n ye ever done with me. We warn’t made fur one another, I reckon, no-ways.”

“Oh, I hain’t never axed Elviry; ’tain’t never gone ez fur ez that. I ’lowed ez mebbe ye an’ me mought make it up some day.”

He was only trying her, but the vaunted feminine intuition did not detect this. Her cheek crimsoned. Her eyes were full of liquid lights. She laughed, a low gurgling laugh of happiness, that, nevertheless, broke into a sob.

“I dunno ’bout that,” she said, evasively, belying the rapture in her face.

She was very beautiful at the moment A cultivated man, versed in the harmonies of line and color, tutored to discriminate expressions and gauge feelings and recognize types, might have perceived something innately noble in her, foolish though the affection was which embellished her.

Even he was impressed by it. “I hev never axed nobody but ye,” he said. “Not even arter we quar’led.”

He was not bound by this, which he knew full well, and it promised nothing. But it held her love and loyalty for him, if ever he should want them.

Nevertheless, while he piqued himself on his domination, he was under her influence at the fleeting moment when he was with her. Perhaps her presence induced some tender affinity for the better things. He said with a sigh, “I hev done gone an’ got in a awful scrape, Lethe. I reckon nobody never hed sech a pack o’ troubles in this worl’.”

With a sort of pitying deprecation of the wiles of old Tobias Winkeye she gravely listened. Once she unconsciously put up her hand and stroked his mare. He was petulant, like a spoiled child, when he told how he only meant a jest and such woful destruction had ensued. “An’ me so boozy I dunno _what_ I done. An’ that thar pore old man! An’ his mill plumb ruined! An’ all his gran’chillen an’ Tad ter keer fur!”

Her face had become very pale. Her voice trembled as she said,—

“Ain’t sech agin the law, Reuben?”

She always called him by his name, rather than the sobriquet his pranks had earned. He was unfamiliar with himself thus dignified, and it gave him an added sense of importance.

“Yes, but ’tain’t nuthin’ but ten dollar fine, mebbe, an’ a few days in jail,”—she gasped,—“_ef_ they ketches me.”

He looked at her with a swift, crafty brightness that was wonderfully like the little creature whose name he bore.

“I wouldn’t keer fur that, though,” he added after a pause. “Bein’ in jail fur rollickin’ roun’ the kentry jes’ fur fun ain’t a disgrace, like fur stealin’ an’ sech. What pesters me so is studyin’ ’bout the old man and his mill, plumb ruined. Lord! Lord! I’d gin my mare an’ hogs an’ gun ef it hed never happened!”

She stood meditative and motionless against the leafy background, all dark and restful verdure close at hand, opening into a vista of luminous emerald lightened in the distance to a gilded green where the sunshine struck aslant with a climax of gold.

“I reckon ye think so, Reuben, but ye wouldn’t,” she said at last, with her fatal candor.

He winced. He was both hurt and angry as he rejoined, “An’ why wouldn’t I?”

“Why, ye be ’bleeged ter know ef ye war ter gin the old man yer mare an’ gun an’ hogs, he’d be more ’n willin’ ter gin it up agin ye. The mill stones air thar yit under the water, an’ he could sell that truck o’ yourn an’ build ez good a shanty ez he hed afore,—better, ’kase ’twould be new.”

He looked down at her, tapping his heavy boot with the hickory switch in his hand.

“Ye ain’t changed none, since we war promised to marry,” he said slowly. “Then ye war forever a-jawin’ an’ a-preachin’ at me ’bout what I done an’ what I oughter do, same ez the rider. Ye talk ’bout jewty ez brash ez ef _ye_ never hed none, same ez he does ’bout religion. He ain’t hurt with _that_, ef ye watch him fresk ’round when they air pourin’ him out a dram or settin’ out the table. That’s sech grace ez he hev got, but he kin talk powerful sober ter other folks; jes’ like you-uns. I’m sorry I ever tole ye about it, enny ways. I’m sorry I met up with ye this mornin’”—

The girl’s face was as visibly pained as if he had cruelly struck her. He went on tumultuously, aggregating wrath and a sense of injury and a desire of reprisal with every word.

“I’m sorry I ever seen ye! Ye ’mind me o’ that thar harnt o’ a Herder on Thunderhead the folks tells about Ef ye happen ter kem upon him suddint, an’ don’t turn back but ketch his eye, that year air withered. Nuthin’ ye plant will grow, an’ ef the craps air laid by they won’t ripen. He can’t kill ye; he jes’ spiles yer chance. An’ ye ’minds me o’ him.”

“Oh, Reuben!” the girl cried, in deprecation.

“Ye do,—ye do! I tole ye, ’kase I lowed mebbe ye mought holp me,—more fool me!—leastways ye mought be sorry. Shucks! And now I’m sorry I tole ye.”

He struck the mare suddenly and slowly rode past. He glanced back once. If Alethea had been looking wistfully after him he might have paused. He expected it; he had even listened for her to call. The light fell with a rich tinge on her golden hair and her delicate profile as she reached up to adjust the rope on the long horns of the dun-colored ox. The vacillating color of the leaves shoaling in the wind and the sunshine seemed the more fantastic for the sober hue of her brown gown and the crude red clay path. Even when the ox resumed his journey she did not once look back, and presently the fluctuating leaves hid her from sight.

Mink’s gust of temper had served to divert him for the moment from the contemplation of his perplexities. Now they reasserted themselves. Before, however, he had seen no hope of extrication. But Alethea’s words had given him something. He began to appreciate the necessity of a definite plan of action. If he should go up to Piomingo Bald he would be taken at the herders’ cabin by the officers of the law. His home could be no refuge. He felt a respite essential. He craved the time to think of Alethea’s suggestion, to canvass the ground, to judge what was possible. At last he dismounted and turned his mare out; even here he could hear the occasional jangling bells of the herds, and the animal would soon follow the familiar sound. He took his way on foot down the mountain and through Eskaqua Cove. “The news’ll travel slower ’n me,” he said.

He hardly felt hunger; he did not realize his fatigue. The red clay roads were vacant, the few daily passers were not yet astir. He avoided, as far as he might, the possibility of meeting them by taking short cuts over the mountains and through valleys. His instinct was to remove himself from his accustomed haunts. Nevertheless, he had no definite intention of hiding, for after traversing Hazel Valley, he struck boldly into the county road that leads up the eastern slope of Big Injun Mountain. He had no thought of resisting arrest. He walked along meditatively, hardly conscious even of the company of his shadow climbing the mountain with him, until he suddenly found that it had skulked away and he was bereft of this vague similitude of a comrade. For the sun was already west of Big Injun. A pensive shade lay far down the slope, but below there was again the interfulgent play of sunshine itinerant with the wind among the leaves.

Once he sat down on a rock close by the road, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, and sought again to adjust his course to the best interests of conscience and policy. A woman with a bag of fruit on her back passed him presently. He replied to her “howdy;” then after a time rose and trudged up and up the road. He had known repentance before, for he was plastic morally. But in his experience there had been no perplexity. It seemed to him, with the urgency of decision and the turmoil of doubt pressing upon him, that it was happier to be resolutely reckless. The harassments of uncertainty had affected his nerves, and he gave a quick start when the abrupt jangle of a bell smote the air. On the opposite side of the road, among the great craggy steeps, there was a wide, low niche in the face of the cliff, with a beetling roof and a confusion of rocks and bushes below. Sheep had climbed into it; some were standing looking down at him, now and then stirring and setting the bell to clanking fitfully; others lay motionless in the shadowy nook. He was about to go on; suddenly he turned and began to scale the huge fragments of rock to the niche in the cliff.

“Ye clar out,” he said to the sheep as they scuttled away at his approach; “ye hev got the very spot I want.”

They huddled together as he crept in; two or three hastily ran out upon the rocks,—only a little frightened, for they began presently to nibble the grass growing in the rifts. He lay down, pillowing his head upon his arm, and turning his eyes on the scene without. He could see far below into the depths of Hazel Valley, with hill and dale in undulatory succession. The light glanced here and there on the minute lines of a zigzag fence; on a field in which the stark and girdled trees stood in every gaunt attitude of despair; on a patch striped with green where tobacco grew in orderly ranks,—all amongst the dense forests, upon which these tiny suggestions of civilization seemed only some ephemeral incident, ineffective, capable of slightest significance. Beyond, the wooded mountains rose in the densities of unbroken primeval wilderness, with irregular summit-lines, with graduating tones from bronze-green to blue-gray, with a solemnity that even the sunshine did not abate. Still further, the Great Smoky, veiled with mist and vague with distance, stood high against the sky,—so high that but for the familiar changeless outline it must have seemed the fiction of the clouds.

The sheep came back and crowded about him,—he lay so still. Once he was conscious of their motion; he intended to rouse himself in a moment and drive them off. And once afterward he was vaguely aware of the tinkle of the bell. Then he heard no more.

The afternoon wore on. The sunlight deepened to orange and burned to red. The mountains were all garbed in purple. The sky above that splendid summit-line of the Great Smoky caught the reflection from the west and was delicately roseate. Cow-bells were clanking in Hazel Valley, faintly, faintly. A star, most serene, was at the zenith.

The sheep in the dark niche of the crags stirred, and huddled together again, and were quiet. The moon came and looked coyly in, as if she sought Endymion. The face of the mountaineer, its reckless spirit all spent, was gentle and young in the soft, shy light.

All at once he was awake. The sheep were crowding timorously about him. A voice broke with sudden discord into the harmonies of the night.

“Nuthin’ but sheep, I reckon.”

There was a great scuffling among the rocks and bushes, and Mink ventured to lift his head.

He saw the mist-filled valley below; the glister of the moon in the skies above; the infinite expanse of mountain forms all along the background; and in the stony road on the verge of the precipice an equestrian group standing motionless in shadow and sheen.

He recognized the sheriff of the county among them, and the constable from Piomingo Cove was in the act of clambering up the rocks.

V.

The officer laid his hand on the jagged lower ledge of the niche. His hat and its shadow, like some double-headed monster, slowly appeared above the verge as he climbed the crag. The sheep shrank back precipitately into the cavernous place, their hoofs crowding over the young mountaineer. He lay at full length in motionless suspense.

There was a moment’s pause. A cloud crossed the moon. Its shadow fell in Hazel Valley. A gust of wind stole along the mountain slopes, sighing as it went, as if its errand were of sorrow. Then, silence. The brilliant lustre burst forth again, suffusing the heights above and the depths so far below. In the midst of the craggy steeps the huddled sheep looked mildly down, with bright, apprehensive eyes, at the constable.

“Nuthin’ but sheep,” he said, scanning the interior of the niche.

It seemed to Mink, hidden by his fleecy comrades, that the stone walls of his refuge resounded with the loud throbbing of his heart, which must betray him.

“D’ ye reckon,” said the sheriff below, “ez that woman could hev made a mistake ’bout hevin’ seen him on this road?”

“Mrs. Beale knows Mink Lorey ez well ez I do,” declared the constable.

“Mought hev been foolin’ us some,” suggested the sheriff, suspiciously.

“She hain’t got no call,” the constable reasoned. As he partly stood on a sharp projection, and partly hung by one arm to the ledges of the niche, he took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and perilously gnawed at it.

“Waal, I reckon he ain’t round hyar-abouts,” said the sheriff, with an intonation of disappointment “We hed better push on.”

The double-headed monster, chewing as he went, the action reproduced in frightful pantomime on the floor of the cavern, slowly withdrew. There was heavy breathing; the sound of falling clods and fragments of rock, and of straining bushes and roots as the descending officer clutched them. A sudden final thud announced that he had sprung upon his feet on level ground.

A momentary interval, a clatter of hoofs, and the file of horsemen, with their mounted shadows erect upon the vertical cliffs of the rock-bound road, passed slowly along the wild, narrow way. Long after they had disappeared the sound of the hoof-beats intruded upon the stillness, and died away, and again smote the air with dull iteration, reverberating from distant crags of the winding road.

When all was still, Mink’s mind turned again to his perplexities with a sharpened sense of the necessity of decision. The project which Alethea had suggested began to shape itself in his mind in full detail, as he lay there and thought it over. The alternative of skulking about to avoid arrest was too doubtful and limited to be contemplated.

“The sheriff air a-ridin’ now,” he said, “an’ the constable too—an’ what made ’em fetch along fower other men ez a posse?” he broke off suddenly, recognizing the incongruity.

His lip curled with satisfaction. “They mus’ hev been powerful ’feared o’ me,” he said, his heart swelling with self-importance, “ter think ’twould take six men ter arrest me fur a leetle job like that.”