Part 10

"An' the _sher'ff_ knows the place, too!" cried Derridge. "Waal"--he turned his eyes, at once furious and upbraiding and full of prescient terror, upon Cheever--"hell-fire be my portion ef I don't think ye hev tuk the mos' public place about the cove fur these hyar doin's"--he pointed at the saddle-bags. "An' a man in Colbury either dead by this time, with warrants sworn out for we-uns, or else on our track ter identify us fur the sher'ff."

"I tuk this place 'kase 'twar our reg'lar stampin'-groun'," cried Cheever, lifting his voice to defend himself against the burly, swelling tones of his accuser. "It air ez safe ez enny other. Thar ain't none o' us out o' place 'ceptin' Steve." He winked slyly at the others, for the young mountaineer lay a little in the shadow and a trifle behind him. So blunted was the conscience, the humanity in each, that the sense of possessing a scape-goat, the opportunity of profit on another's injury, had a suave and unctuous influence to heal their dissension. "_We-uns_, why, we-uns air some a-herdin' o' cattle twenty mile away on the Balds; some war in Car'liny yistiddy tradin' fur cattle"--he pointed at the mire on the boots of two of the party--"Buncombe County mud! An' _I_ hev jes' got back from ridin' in open daylight about the cove, with my mouth an' eyes stretched ter hear how Yates hev disappeared. I be a-goin' home ter-morrer ter git salt fur my cattle"--he put on a waggishly virtuous air. "An' _I_ war thar ter-day, ez my fambly kin testify. 'Tain't safe, though, I know, ter keep this truck hyar long"--he winked at the saddle-bags--"nor ter divide it yit."

The alert expression with which each man hearkened to the allusion of partition was eminently suggestive of the pricking-up of ears. Indeed, as they all sat indistinct in the shadow and the flicker, there was something dog-like or wolf-like in the whetted expectancy of their waiting attention.

"I laid off ter hide it hyar fur ter-night an' ter-morrer," continued Cheever, "an' whilst some gyards it, the t'others go off an' show tharsef's in place--'ceptin' Steve"--his thin, expressive lips were slightly elongated. "The news 'ain't got ter the cove yit, but time it do they will all be fur stringin' him up. _Him_--_knowed_ ter be on that road _that_ night at _that_ hour, _an' 'ain't never showed up no mo'_."

A grin of many conceits was upon his countenance, unseen by the subject of conversation, while the men in the full flare of the fire-light had some ado to suppress any facial response of relish. For in this circumstance the dullest amongst them found it easy to discern their safety. Some discussion ensued as to the best method of secreting the treasure until it should be safe to divide and use it.

"Jest ter think," remarked Cheever, with jovial hypocrisy, "o' the strange workin's o' Providence. All we-uns war arter war the man's horse--jes ter take the horse-critter an' turn the man afoot in the road--an' stiddier that we tuk this pile o' money. It'll buy a hundred sech horses."

Perhaps it was because of the succumbing of their fears in the drowsy influences of the hour, waxing late, perhaps because of the confidence engendered by elation and success, but a new sentiment of security, of capability, was perceptible upon the mere mention of their exploit, and several were disposed to dilate upon the future expenditure of their share rather than to devise means to properly secrete it. Here was where they seemed, strangely enough, Yates thought, to misunderstand Cheever. He took little part in the discussion; he listened to each with a sneering negation, half masked beneath his lowered eyelids, and Yates readily divined that none probably would know the hiding-place of the plunder but himself and Millroy, his loyal henchman, and the only one of them all in whom he really reposed any confidence.

Derridge sat gazing at the embers; once he offered a characteristic observation. "I know 'twouldn't do ter keep it hyar till the s'arch be over," he said, ponderingly, accepting Cheever's suggestion, "an' 'twouldn't do fur all o' we-uns ter light out fur Texas an' sech tergether. The folks would be a-talkin' 'bout our vamosin' like Steve done, an' the sher'ff would be on our track with a requisition. An' it hev ter be hid; not in the woods, 'kase we-uns might lose the spot, or a big rain mought wash the dirt off'n it, or sech."

"I tell ye," interjected Beckett, with a swift look of inspiration. "You know old Squair Beamen's fambly buryin'-groun'. Old Mis' Beamen hev got a tombstone like a big box. Lift up the top, and put the truck in thar."

"I'd like ter put ye in thar," replied Cheever, who had stolidly eyed him during this prelection. "I wouldn't hev that truck that close ter a jestice o' the peace fur nuthin'."

"An' I hev hearn o' other truck bein' hid thar," objected Ben Tyson, indignantly. "Them men ez robbed the cross-roads store up on Scolacutta River--thar plunder war fund thar."

"Not fur a long time; 'twar powerful well hid," insisted Pete Beckett, as if stating an essential value. But the other two laughed, and the vexed question seemed hardly soon to be decided.

The waning moon in the skies had swung now so high that her white light lay upon the verge of the niche with a sharply drawn and jagged outline--the shadow of the roofing ledge. Momently this belt grew broader, and the glow of the coals more dully red. The two mountaineers who were deputed to watch while the others slept beguiled the tedium by a game with a greasy pack of cards, using as a table the seat of a saddle laid between them as they half reclined on the floor, and played less by the light of the fire than the clear lustre streaming in at the arched opening of the grotto. The prone figures of the others gave evidence in heavy breathing of their unconscious slumbers. All was silent without; the silver sheen made splendid the woods, although it was invested with some strange yearning melancholy, belonging only to the moon on its wane. The frogs had ceased their chanting; the katydid was dumb; the earth seemed to sigh no more; the insensate vegetation slept. Once across the white space at the verge, where fell on the floor the sharp rugged shadow of the roof, there was in the midst of the stillness a sudden movement; it came from the top of the precipice above. The two gamesters sat as if petrified, the cards in their hands, their burning eyes intent upon the shadow of the summit of the cliff. Nothing--a long moment of suspense. Nothing! And then it came again; the outline of a floating wing--a swift similitude of the night-hawk sweeping in its noiseless flight through the air to seek its unwarned prey. The two men did not so much as glance at one another as they resumed their game; of these thrilling moments, charged with suspense and danger, their lives counted many.

So still it was without that it seemed to Yates that he might lose in sleep the consciousness of those few momentous hours that had changed the whole current of his life. He went over them again and again in his scanty dreams with a verisimilitude of repetition that sufficed almost to prevent him from discerning his waking thoughts from his slumber. Now and again as he reviewed them he so realized to his imagination a different ordering of their sequence, which might have been so readily effected at the time had he but foreseen, that he experienced almost the relief of escape. Why had he not refused old Pettingill's request to ride seventeen miles for the doctor? But, indeed, had he not offered the service from the superabundance of his good-nature? "I hope the old man got his horse again, like Cheever say," he sighed; for in the interim his conscience had been loaded with every ounce that the good bay weighed. And then, again, without the fancy of what he might have done and what he wished, he would recall the circumstances as they had befallen him. Never had impressions been so burned into his consciousness as in those most significant moments of his life. He could even now recollect the glow of friendly feeling with which he said, "I don't b'lieve but what the yerb doctor kin bring Len Rhodes through; but ter pleasure Mr. Shattuck _I'll_ ride fur the t'other doctor, Mr. Pettingill--_I'll_ ride fur him." He could even feel again his foot in the stirrup, the quick, smooth gallop of the fresh horse beneath him. And then, the winding lengths of the sandy woodland roads, so sweet with the breath of the azaleas, all white and star-eyed in dark bosky places, so fresh with the dew, so idealized by the moon. And thinking no harm! Thinking of Adelaide, with regrets for the harsh words between them, with resolutions that they should be the last. Alack! they were likely to be the last indeed. And of Moses--proteanwise! For he could see Moses as a half-grown lad, tall and strong and straight; and then as a bearded man; sometimes as a justice of the peace; sometimes the elastic paternal ambition pre-empted for him a seat in the State Legislature; and then the image dwindled, best of all, to the small limits of the cradle where he slept, so pink and white and warm, the highest potentate in all the land! Thinking of these things Yates was as the miles sped; hearing once afar, afar, a horn wound in the stillness, and then only his horse's hoofs with the alternate beat of the gallop.

He had ridden hard, since it might be a case of life and death; but there was a bad stretch of road ahead, a long hill to climb, and the horse was blown. It was a saving of time, he thought, as he slackened the pace and went slowly, slowly up the rugged ascent. The grass was thick on the margin; he drew his horse to the side where the hoofs might fall on the smooth dank sward. He could scarcely hear his saddle creak. The animal paused at the summit to snatch a mouthful of cool wet sassafras leaves, munching with relish, despite the hindrance of the bit.

Suddenly a wild hoarse scream rang out, startling the night; a tumult of voices sounded; a pistol shot split the air, another; and, as he looked from the summit of the hill down the declivity, he saw a group of horsemen in fierce altercation in the middle of the road. Scant as the moment was, so bright was the moon that he recognized more than one face. And the moment was scant, for the central figure, his whole pose vigorously resistant, fired again, wide of the mark, the ball whizzing by the ear of Zack Pettingill's bay horse. The animal uttered a sharp neigh, almost articulate, wheeled abruptly, and, heedless of either whip or spur, breaking into an unmanageable run, fled frantically homeward. Behind there were swifter hoofs than his. It was hardly a moment before Cheever's splendid horse was alongside; his burly strength re-enforced Steve Yates's pull on the reins. Whether, in the confusion of the moment, Cheever and his gang had mistaken the neighing of Pettingill's horse and the sound of his hoofs for pursuit and incontinently fled, or whether they thus divined that they were discovered, Yates did not then definitely understand, nor was it clearer to him afterward. Certainly they dreaded the escape of the witness who beheld the deed, and knew its perpetrators by face and name, far more than that of the plundered wayfarer, who, upon the diversion effected in his favor, made good use of his horse's hoofs upon the road that he had so lately travelled. Beyond a pistol ball or two, one of which Yates thought undoubtedly took effect, they did not offer to pursue him. They rode alongside of their protesting and unarmed captive, and discovering shortly how efficacious was the suggestion that he would doubtless be accused of the deed, since so many knew of his errand at this unusual hour and on this unfrequented road, they caused him to be pondering heavily upon the dreary possibilities of circumstantial evidence before they had gone many miles. Not that he did not offer resistance and seek flight. "What's the use o' swallerin' this bullet whether or no, Steve?" Cheever had demanded, as he presented a pistol to his captive's mouth. "I don't want ye ter eat lead, an' how would that mend the matter fur you-uns?" And when Yates sought to urge his horse into a gallop, it was but a shamble in comparison with the smooth, swift gait of the splendid animal that Cheever bestrode. He could do naught at the time, not even by screams arouse a wayside habitation, for they had soon plunged into unfrequented forests, and were far away from the haunts of men.

That they had not used him more unkindly than the interests of their own safety necessitated made no claim upon his gratitude. Perhaps, although he had not the courage to court it, he would have preferred death. He only took advantage of their leniency to stipulate that Pettingill's horse should be turned loose to return. "He mought be viewed 'mongst our'n some time. He's too close a neighbor ennyhow," said Cheever, and so he consented. Even the trivial detail of the creature's bewilderment was still in the young man's mind--how the horse persistently trotted along in the cavalcade, with his lustrous surprised eyes and his empty saddle, his erstwhile rider mounted behind one of the other men. More than once after he was driven back he reappeared from behind a sharp curve of the road, nimbly cantering and with an appealing whinny. Finally blows prevailed, and from the crest of a ridge they afterward saw him ambling erratically homeward along the white moonlit road, now and again stopping by the wayside to crop the grass or bushes.

"Ef he keeps on that-a-way he'll git home next week," Cheever had commented.

Even now, reviewing the disaster, Yates could not say definitely what he should have done, but it seemed that some rescue would have waited upon his effort had his slow brain but devised it. More than all, above all, the sight of the saddle-bags containing a considerable sum of money taken from the stranger had a horror for him. He dwelt upon the idea that among the people of the cove he must be believed to have committed the crime, until he had a morbid sense of complicity. His mind was, as he knew, but a poor tool for scheming, but he was imperatively, urgently moved by some inward power to make an effort which might result in the restoration of the money to its proper owner. He began to feel that integrity is not a repute; it is an attribute of the mind and a spontaneous emotion of the heart. "'Tain't ter hev folks _say_ ye're honest; it air ter _be_ honest."

He felt himself forever blasted; he doubted if, in any event, he would ever dare to return to his home. He had known of men with far less evidence against them than these perverse lies, that masqueraded as facts in his case, strung up to a tree without judge or jury. He would do himself, his wife, his child scant favor in courting that ignoble doom. He only revolved the robbery for the sake of honesty alone, that he might devise some scheme to frustrate the highwaymen and restore the money.

Somehow, as he lay looking out at the gibbous moon, visible now, all distorted and weird in the purple sky, and no less lustrously yellow because of the sense of dawn gradually stealing upon the air, he could not disassociate Shattuck from his train of ideas despite the lack of logical connection. It was perhaps, he thought dully in recognizing the fact, because it was upon Shattuck's errand that he had gone to this dreadful fate; perhaps because the mention of a box-like tombstone had suggested to him the strange underground sarcophagi, also box-like and of stone, of the pygmy burying-ground in which Shattuck was interested. And suddenly he caught his breath and lay still, thinking, a long time.

So languid-footed was the night, but he smelt the rose in its morning blossoming! A mocking-bird sang, all faint and sweet and fresh, and dreamed again. Stars were fading; the great valley of East Tennessee was beginning to be outlined, with ridges and smaller valleys and rivers and further mountains, with a sense of space and of large symmetry that outdoes the imagination. And still the moon shone in his face.

"Buck," he said, suddenly, for all the others slept, and it was Cheever's turn to watch, "did you-uns ever hear tell o' the Leetle Stranger People?"

Cheever, smoking his pipe near at hand, as he lay on the floor, lifted himself upon one elbow. He nodded. "Many a time."

"Folks 'low they useter hev this kentry. They seem sorter small ter hev ter die."

"I dun'no' but what they do," said Cheever, impressed by the hardship of the common fate which overtook even such "leetle people." "An' folks hev fairly furgot they ever lived, too."

Yates nodded his head.

"I dun'no' ez I hev hearn the Leetle People named fur thirty year an' better. My gran'mam tole me 'bout 'em whenst I war a boy. What ailed you-uns ter git a-goin' 'bout 'em?"

"Jes' thinkin' 'bout home. Thar buryin'-groun' ain't more'n haffen mile from my house," replied Yates, casually. "Ye hev hearn tell how they coffins the dead in stone boxes, two feet undergroun', an' I reckon that fool talk 'bout Mis' Beamen's tombstone bein' like a stone box reminded me of 'em."

Cheever held his pipe in his hand. The coal had dwindled to an ash as he listened. A thought was astir in his crafty brain. Dull at scheming as Yates was, he could almost divine its processes.

"I dun'no' _when_ I hev hearn the Leetle People named afore," Cheever said, meditatively.

"The old folks used ter talk 'bout 'em sometimes," rejoined Steve, apparently inadvertently, "though few knows now they ever lived, nor whar they lie. One grave air right on the south side o' that thar laurel bush--the only laurel on the slope; I know, fur the ground sounds hollow thar; I sounded it one day."

He cast a covert glance at Cheever. The robber's eyes, opened widely for once, were full of light as they glanced swiftly and searchingly at the sleeping men, all unconscious, about them. Then he said, in a casual tone, "I reckon thar's a heap o' lie in all that thar talk 'bout the Leetle People." And his earnest, intent, breathless face belied his words as he spoke them.

Yates sank back upon the improvised pillow of saddle and blanket, breathing quick, feeling alive once more. He had relied on Cheever's ignorance of Shattuck's intention--known, indeed, to few, and infinitely unimportant in their estimation--since the horse-thief's protective seclusion debarred him from much gossip. To this spot beneath the laurel Yates himself had directed Shattuck's attention. Now if the treasure should be concealed there, and Shattuck's enthusiasm should not fail, the discovery would be made and noised abroad, and some right at last would blossom out of all this wrong.

VII.

The "falling weather" came hard upon its prophecy. All that day the clouds mustered. Films, lace-like and fretting the roseate heavens, thickened as the light gradually dawned, and were dense before the sun rose--dense, but white and semi-translucent, and a certain focus of opaque glister, slowly mounting and mounting the sky, gave token how the great chariot of the sun fared along the celestial highways to the zenith. No fierce monitions in this noiseless eclipse of the diurnal splendors of the rich summertide; the landscape lay in a lethargic shadow, and time seemed to wait somewhere and to drowse dully, so long the hours loitered, so little did they change; the leaves hung still; a breathless, sultry pause bated the pulses of the world. In the afternoon--one who judged of time by the sun might hardly know were it the impending cloud or the approach of night--this long monotony of the atmosphere was broken by a gradual darkening, and presently an almost imperceptible rain was gently falling. The air was dank, the lungs expanded to longer and longer respirations, and the clouds were coming down the mountain-side--coming in fleecy ranks along the dark purple indentations which marked the ravines, the vanguard with broken flakes that suggested woolly leaders of flocks.

"Look yander at the sheep, Moses," Letitia adjured the infant as he sat on the floor of the porch--"look yander at the flocks o' the old man ez herds the clouds on the bald o' the mounting."

Moses stared with inconceivable impressions at the fictitious sheep, and more than once looked up with a contemplative eye and a sensitive lip at Letitia to hear again of the fabled herder whose flocks wore this tenuous guise. How much he believed, how much he understood, must ever remain a matter of conjecture. He hearkened to all that was told to him which trenched upon the wonderful lore of the nursery, but maintained the while the inscrutable, impenetrable reticence of the infant who can but who will not talk. And now all similitude of flocks was lost in a sudden precipitation of the cloud masses toward the valley. Gullies, abysses, the river, every depression seemed to exude vapors, that hung suspended in the air, till they were met by the downward rush. All at once a louder patter was on the little slanting roof of the porch, and upon its floor the drops, glittering in their elastic rebound, multiplied till Letitia, catching Moses under the arms, bore him within, his feet sticking straight out, conserving his sitting posture, and placed him on the broad hearth before the fire. And at last--whether the night or only its dull simulacrum--darkness descended. Letitia, looking forth from the open door, could see the pale shifting mists rather by the glow from the hearth than by the aid of such gray and sombre twilight as might linger without. The rain fell invisibly in the midst of the vapors; only the detached drops that pattered upon the edge of the floor of the porch gave out a steely gleam as they smartly rebounded and fell again. The room was all the cheerier for the dull and dank aspect of the world outside. The spinning-wheel drawn up to one corner of the hearth promised an evening full of quiet industry and a musical whirring pleasant to hear. The warping bars, on the opposite side of the brown wall, were full of color, much red predominating in many shades, for Moses had early seemed to notice the rich, brilliant tint, and it had won his rare approval. Indeed, so much Turkey red went into the fashioning of his garments that the hanks of yarn and cotton designed for them and hanging from the ceiling served to brighten the room, as if a bizarre decorative effect had been intentionally sought. The fire blazed merrily, and the light flashed back from the barrel of the rifle that rested on its rack of deer antlers against the chimney.

Letitia, in her faint-blue dress, moved deftly about, giving a touch here and there to set things in their eventide order, murmuring as she went a little song, scarcely a tune--more like the fragmentary melodies that the mountain brooks sing on their way to the valley. "A cur'ous sort'n psalmin' what she makes up out'n her own head," her mother used to say, with that rural distrust of all out of the usual experience. An ash cake was baking under the clean silver-gray mounds at one side of the great fire, which was too large for comfort--for the air was not chilly, albeit both doors and windows stood open--and too hot even for its purpose of cooking supper, for now and again the eggs, also roasting under the ashes, gave token by a sharp crack that one had succumbed unduly to the heat, had burst and spilled its yolk. On each occasion Moses, sitting after his lowly habit on the floor before the fire, gave a nervous little jerk, and looked with a certain anxiety at his mother, aware that all was not well in the domestic administration. Adelaide, kneeling by the hearth, frowned almost mechanically, and forgot the mishap the next moment. Presently she looked up at the grayish blackness that filled the door and window.