Part 19

For a moment Guthrie was a trifle bewildered--the story of the mysterious shots fired at the party in the pygmy burial-ground, the slain colt, Mrs. Yates's futile denials, all detailed by Ephraim, had been superseded in interest by his own adventures and the theories that he had deduced from them. "Waal," he said at last--formally taking her standpoint into account--"that ain't nuthin' ter you-uns; ye can't guide Mis' Yates's actions. It jes' shows another reason why ye oughter be at home. Mis' Yates s'prises me; she ain't the 'oman I took her fur; but ef she kills Mr. Shattuck fur her foolish notions 'bout opening the graves o' the Leetle People, _she'll_ hev ter answer ter the law. 'Tain't nuthin' ter _you-uns_."

He was not looking at her; he had plucked a blade of the sweet-flag that grew by the step, casually tearing its delicate stripes of white and green, all unnoting that her face had turned a pallid, grayish hue; that she sat as still as if petrified, her eyes dilated, and fixed with a sort of fascinated terror upon some frightful mental picture.

"Mis' Yates s'prises me," Guthrie resumed. "Eph says she 'lows ez her husband lef' her 'kase she swore she would fire that very rifle at Shattuck ef he opened a 'pygmy' grave, ez he calls it. I'll be bound, though, Steve didn't leave fur sech ez that. I ain't got nuthin' agin the Leetle People," he stipulated, with a quick after-thought. "I know no harm of 'em, an' I respec' 'em, though dead an' leetle. I wouldn't 'low nobody ter kerry thar bones off'n my lan', not even Mr. Shattuck, though I'd do mo' fur _him_ 'n ennybody else--he hev got sech a takin' way with him! I tole him he mought hev one o' thar pitchers ez air buried with 'em, an' I'd gin the leetle pusson one o' my pitchers out'n the house. I reckon 'twould be ez good ez his'n." He paused, meditating on the ethics of this exchange. "But I war glad when Shattuck 'lowed he hankered fur no pitcher, but jes' wanted ter take a look at thar jugs an' ornamints an' sech, fur the knowledge o' the _hist'ry o' the kentry_." He repeated these last words with a sort of solid insistent emphasis, as charged with impressiveness and importance, for the whole enterprise was repugnant to him, and he sought to justify it to himself by urging its utility, a magnified idea of which he had gleaned from Shattuck's talk. He had torn the blade of sweet-flag into shreds, and now he cast the fragments from him. "But it jes' shows ez Mis' Yates ain't a fit 'oman fur ye ter be with, firin' rifles an' sech, an' knowin' the hiding-place o' evil-doers, purtendin' all the time ter be so desolated an' deserted. Litt, air it jes' lately ye knowed whar Steve war, or did ye know it 'fore ye kem hyar ter keep her comp'ny?" Then, as she sat stonily gazing at him, he added, "Did ye know it them evenin's ez I kem a-visitin' down hyar?"

She spoke slowly, with a measureless wonderment on her face. "Air ye bereft, Felix Guthrie? I dun'no' whar Steve Yates air, an' Adelaide don't nuther."

It was hard to shake his confidence in her. Perhaps no words might have served--least of all any that Cheever could speak--save those accompanied by the savage, deep strokes of a bowie-knife aiming for his heart. The frank sincerities of the steel were coercive; it had been thus that her name had been cut into his very flesh, a slash for each syllable. They all ached in unison with the recollection.

"Ye air foolin' me," he said, reproachfully. But even then he sought to adduce a worthy motive. "Ye air doin' it fur the sake o' yer frien's, Litt. But ye can't mend thar mean, preverted natur'. Ye oughter go home; home is the place fur gals."

To an overbearing man, unfurnished with the authority of kindred, and restrained by even primitive etiquette from aught more coercive than advice, there was something painfully baffling in the headstrong impunity with which she cried, gayly, as she set her chair to rocking once more, "The angel Gabriel with his trumpet mought wake the dead an' 'tice 'em from the grave, but he couldn't say nuthin' ez would summons me from this spot."

So small, so feminine, and yet so easily and amply victorious!--it was hardly in his imperative nature to submit gracefully to so inconsiderable an adversary. "An' thar's daddy Pettingill," he cried, angrily, "a-quar'lin' 'kase his craps hev got too much rain, or too leetle, an' stare-gazin' the clouds, so sulky an' impident, I wonder the lightnin' don't strike him fur his sass. An' thar's mammy Pettingill makin' quince preserves, an' callin' all the created worl' ter see how cl'ar they be. An' thar's that fool, Josh Pettingill, mus' take this junctry ter marry Malviny Gossam, an' go off ter live, an' leave _nobody_ ter take keer of his own _sister_. An' ye air lef' hyar ter 'company a 'oman ez fires off rifles at peaceful passers, an' ter know the secrets o' whar Steve Yates an' Buck Cheever be hid out. Ef ye war _my_ darter"--severely paternal--"I would put ye right now up on that horse ahint o' me, an' ride off _home_ with ye; an' _darned_ ef I hain't got a good mind ter tote ye back ter them absent-minded Pettingills ennyhow!"

There was no absolute intention in his words, but he had risen as he spoke, and she cowered a little; there was something in his proportions that constrained respect, and her spirit of defiance was abated somewhat.

"Fee," she said, seeking to effect a diversion, "what makes ye 'low ez Adelaide an' me know whar Steve Yates be hid out?"

"'Kase yestiddy whenst I run agin a gang o' fellers, hid out--I reckon they air arter some mischief--an' Steve war 'mongst 'em, Buck Cheever 'lowed ez 'twar you-uns ez told me. They air workin' agin the law, I _know_."

She did not at once remember the hasty chance shot--the keen divination--in the mock message she had sent to Steve Yates by Cheever; but the expression on the horse-thief's face came back to her presently, as if it had been held indissolubly in her mind for future recall. Evidently Cheever had believed that in some incomprehensible way she had possessed herself of the knowledge, and spoke from its fulness.

She sat still, absently gazing at the flax. "An' ye 'lowed I knowed sech ez that, an' be in league with folks ez work agin the law--thievin' or sech--an' yit ye kem down hyar an' ax me ter marry ye?"

"'Kase I be dead sure, Litt, ez ye wouldn't do no harm _knowin' it_," he replied, precipitately. "I wish I hed faith in Heaven like I hev in you-uns. I war jes' feared Mis' Yates an' them war foolin' ye 'bout'n it, an' hed tangled ye up in suthin' ez ye didn't onderstand the rights of." He looked down eagerly at her, but her face was inscrutable.

"I ain't so easily fooled," she observed, succinctly.

He glanced about him, evidently on the eve of reluctant departure, but still lingering. The infantile mocking-bird at intervals piped his strident vibrant "C-a-a-ant! c-a-a-ant! c-a-a-ant!" The parent bird's keen, clear call rang out, so full of meaning that it seemed strange that it should be inarticulate, and ever and anon his white wing feathers, as he whirled in the air, shone dazzlingly in the sunshine. Moses continued to experiment with the possibilities of flax for food, sometimes constrained to sputter by his misdirected ardor. Guthrie would fain prolong the pleasant peaceful time.

"I mus' be a-joggin'," he said, however. "I feel powerful foolish ridin' another man's horse. An' I be a-goin' ter turn him over ter the constable o' the deestric', an' tell how I got him by accident, so flustered by the fight."

For the first time she recognized Cheever's horse at the gate.

"War thar a fight?" she said.

He nodded.

"_Ye_ didn't take a hand in it? Waal, I be s'prised--_ye_, ez hev sot out ter be a saint o' the Lord!"

"That don't make no diff'unce," he said, hastily defending his piety. "The reason thar ain't no mo' fightin' 'mongst the saints an' disciples the Bible tells about air 'kase thar warn't no fire-arms in them days; I hev hearn pa'son say thar warn't none. An' that's why peace war so preached up then, fur mighty few men like ter kem ter close quarters with a knife."

His own wounds ached anew with the suggestion, but with a savage pride in his prowess he said naught of them; he would not have admitted their existence to the man who had dealt them; Cheever might take only what testimony he could from the blood on his knife.

She was looking at him with that admiration, so essentially feminine, of his valor, his ready hand, his fierce spirit. "So ye j'ined in?" she said, smiling.

"Ef firin' a dozen pistol-shots be j'inin' in," he replied, his eye alight at the recollection.

She changed color. "War ennybody hurt?" she quavered.

"Listen at the female 'oman!" he exclaimed, in exasperation, because of the contradictions of sentiment she presented. "Fairly dotes on the idee o' other folks a-fightin', an' yit can't abide the notion o' nobody gittin' hurt! The Guthries hev the name o' shootin' straight, Litt Pettingill, an' I'd be powerful 'shamed ef in twelve shots I done no damage. 'Tain't been my policy nor my practice ter waste lead an' powder."

He stood leaning against the post, vainly speculating concerning the probable execution of his revolvers when he had escaped, firing them with both hands. It was for a moment with absent, unseeing eyes that he mechanically regarded her, but the image that had so great a fascination for him presently broke through the absorptions of his retrospect, and asserted itself anew--so dainty, so blithe, so bird-like, so lightly swaying as she sat in the rocking-chair.

Her association with these incongruous elements of suspected fraud, and ill-favored deeds, and unfitting companions seemed a profanity, and his eager wish to have her removed far from them, shielded, inaccessible, was renewed.

"Mr. Shattuck hain't got no need o' you-uns, Litt, ter pertect him," he urged, suddenly. "He'd laff at the idee, ef he warn't ashamed of it; ennybody o' yer size an' sex a-settin' out ter pertect a able-bodied man from rifle-balls."

He looked down at her with a laugh of ridicule and a sneering eye, calculated to put out of countenance her valorous intention.

She said nothing; but determination, immobility, could hardly have had more adequate expression than in her face, her soft and delicate lips closed fast, her eyes bright and fearless.

"But shucks!"--he sought to make light of it--"Shattuck ain't a-goin' ter kem agin ter the Leetle People's buryin'-groun'--leastwise not when Mis' Yates be out an' stirrin'." A dim prospect of organizing a nocturnal expedition for Shattuck's assistance was shaping itself in his mind. "She can't be on watch night and day."

Letitia looked up, her interest in all that interested Shattuck shining in her eyes. "That's the very word what _I_ told him," she said. "He'd better kem an' dig at night, whenst the moon shines, like he done afore."

A sudden angry pain thrilled through Guthrie. It was only yesterday that Shattuck had received his permission to make these investigations upon his land; had sought it with deepening deference and solicitude, as if it were essential. And when at last it had been granted, it was in disregard of previous refusals, in despite of his repugnance, and his primitive sense of sacrilege. Thus he had been overborne by the facile influence of this suave stranger, with his ready smile and his pleasant eyes, and his frank off-hand speech. It must have been that to work freely and openly in broad daylight had become a necessary condition of Shattuck's success, for evidently he had been here before--when the moon shone!

Whether it were because of some inward monition, which by an unconscious process served Guthrie's interest, or some latent, undeveloped suspicion astir in his mind, he gave no intimation of his thought; he held himself plastic to the discovery which he felt imminent in the air. He could not, however, meet her eyes; as he sought an alternative, perhaps it was as happy an idea as any that could have come at a more propitious and reflective moment to draw out one of the pistols that he wore in his belt and turn it in his hand; he had an incidental preoccupied air as he glanced successively into the empty chambers.

"Did he find ennything _then_, d'ye know, Litt?"

"I dun'no'. I ain't seen him sence till las' night," she replied, unsuspiciously.

He had snapped the barrel in place and silently sighted the pistol at a flying bird, as if he had in view some experiment of marksmanship. Moses had ceased his femininely domestic labors, with the wisp of flax hanging motionless in his limp hand. Here was matter more to his mind, attesting his inherent masculine taste; he winked very hard at every sharp clash of the steel, but bent forward with wide uplifted eyes, a tremulous, absorbed, open mouth, and watched the big man's attitude as he held up the weapon to a line with his eye, his whole massive figure, from the great slouch hat to his jingling spurs, clearly imposed upon the fair morning sky.

A pointer, who had been asleep under the house, had rushed out upon recognizing the click of the cocking of a weapon, and stood in tremulous, wheezing agitation, now scanning the prospect for the threatened game and eagerly snuffing the air, now glancing up, surprised at the abnormal inactivity of this presentment of the genus sportsman.

"What makes ye 'low 'twar Shattuck, Litt?" Guthrie observed in the tone of a casual gossip.

There was a touch of rose in her cheek. "Waal, I warn't sartain a-fust. I 'lowed it _couldn't_ be. Till toler'ble late, arter the moon hed riz, I hearn a pickaxe strikin' on rock up in the pygmy buryin'-ground" (he noticed that she had discarded the colloquial "Leetle People" for Shattuck's more scientific term), "an' then I knowed it couldn't be nobody but him. I didn't say nothin' 'bout'n it afore, 'kase I didn't know till las' night ez he hed got yer say-so ez he mought dig on yer land." She looked up with an unsuspicious smile; then, with the glow of mirth in her eyes, she burst suddenly into a peal of laughter. "Baker Anderson would hev it ez 'twar _you-uns_ ez 'peared suddint at the winder whilst I war a-singin' a song. I wisht ye could hev seen Baker offerin' ter take down his rifle an' go arter ye fur hevin' gin me an' Mis' Yates sech a skeer. Ye could run Baker with yer ramrod! Baker 'lows yit ez 'twar you-uns. We-uns couldn't make out the man's face clear; jes' seen it fur a minit ez he looked through the winder. But ez soon ez I hearn that pick strike on the rock, I guessed mighty easy who hed been hangin' roun' the porch listenin' ter the singin', waitin' fur the moon ter rise."

A miracle could not have more stringently coerced his credulity; and, in truth, the circumstances wore all the sleek probability of fact. No man familiarized by song and story since the Middle Ages with the idea of the cavalier lingering without the castle walls to hear a lady's lute could have more definitely grasped its significance than did this primitive lover. It lent a strong coherence to every word that Shattuck had uttered; the praises of her beauty, to which he had hearkened with such simple joy; of her mind, of her unique grace, so at variance with the uncouth conditions of her life. And what new light was thrown upon her strangely retentive memory hoarding Shattuck's words; her eager determined vigilance in his behalf, from which the trump that might summon the dead from their graves would be futile to lure her; that radiant freshened beauty in her sapphire eyes! "Religion itself couldn't make her look more like an angel in the eyes!" Guthrie had said to himself, with a lover's alert and receptive recognition of an embellished loveliness. And Shattuck had come, in good sooth, to listen and linger without to hear her sing while he waited for the moon to rise.

He remembered, with an angry quickening of his pulse, his own simple-minded confidences to Shattuck yesterday in the barley fields. What! in his unsuspicious folly he had even told the man how she talked of him, how she treasured his words, how she valued his great learning, for thus she was minded to regard those acquisitions which the more staid and experienced people of the country-side esteemed crack-brained fantasies. And somehow this reflection operated as a check upon the bounding fury that possessed him; it held an element of self-reproach. He had unwittingly revealed to this stranger the sentiment which Letitia would have guarded as a sacred secret--if, indeed, she herself were aware of it. His face was set and hard; but the strong hand trembled that held the pistol, silent and empty and harmless enough now, albeit so recently flinging out its fate-freighted balls and its wild barbaric shriek.

"She never war gin ter 'settin' caps' arter folks, like other gals; she sorter sets store on herse'f 'kase the common run o' boys didn't like her. She feels too ch'ice fur enny or'nary cuss; an' I reckon she'd be hoppin' mad--" And then he paused with the conviction that she did not esteem Shattuck an "or'nary cuss." This revelation would probably only result in facilitating an understanding between them. "Ef he ever sees her agin," he said, between his set teeth. There recurred to him suddenly his words yesterday, amongst the waving barley--that he had it in his heart to kill any man who came between him and Letitia. He had spoken them with other intentions, with the thought of Rhodes in his mind; but Shattuck was warned, already warned. And if he had spoken too freely, it was at least not equivocally. "Ef ever he sees her agin," he once more muttered.

"What air you-uns sayin'?" she demanded, suddenly, all unsuspicious of his train of thought. "Mose kin converse ez well ez that. The only trouble with Mose's talk is that grown folks air too foolish ter onderstan' it. Ain't it, Mose?"

But the child gave her no heed, still fixing his upturned gaze on the pistol in Guthrie's hand, as eager of expression as the uplifted muzzle of the dog, who writhed and wagged his tail, and wheezed about the great boots.

Guthrie looked down at Letitia, his eyes changed and strange, and little to be understood. She paused as her own encountered them, holding the wisp of flax motionless in her hand, vaguely and superficially aware that a crisis had supervened, albeit beyond her ken.

"I mus' be a-goin'," he said, absently, still looking at her, his eyes freighted with his unread thoughts.

Their dull solemnity grated upon her mood, so far afield was it from any standpoint yet revealed in his words. She resented his motionless, intent, pondering survey.

She sought to shake off the responsive gravity his mien induced. "Goin'!" she cried, her eyes growing brighter and deeper and darker as they dilated. "Waal, we'll hev ter try ter spare ye. Waal! waal!" with an affected sigh.

The familiar note of irony seemed to rouse him to more immediate intention. He thrust his pistol in his belt, and with a nod turned away down the path.

Moses, who could never be prevailed upon to greet a visitor, always took welcome heed of departure. To his mind the dearest behest of hospitality was speeding the parting guest. Without prompting, he sent a jubilant cry of "Bye! bye!" after Guthrie's retreating form, and beamed upon him with a damp and gummy sputtering smile, graced by all his glittering teeth.

Letitia, too, gazed after the guest, whose manner had suddenly presented an enigma. "Looked all of a suddint ez ef he hed fund suthin' he didn't want, like a rattlesnake; or hed furgot suthin' he couldn't do without, like his breakfast, or a thimble, or his brains."

He went slowly and thoughtfully along the dank path, over which the heavy long-tasselled grasses leaned. Pinks bordered it here, and anon the jimson weed; again it was enlivened by the glow of a great red rose, with the essence of summer in its fresh breath, as it swayed on a long, full-leaved, thorny wand. This clutched at his coat, and as he paused to disengage the cloth, he looked back at the house--the mountain looming behind it, with a horizontal band of mist athwart the slope; the little roof still dank and shining with dew; the tiny porch all wreathed with vines that stretched a surplusage of their blooming lengths across to the window; the little glassless square where the batten shutter swung. Here it was, he thought, that Shattuck had stood, knee-deep in the lush thick grass, when the shutter was closed, and colors were null, and the black night gloomed, and she sang within while he waited, and the moon rose all too soon! He turned and looked at the gorge, as if he expected to see there the pearly disk amidst the dark obscurements of the night-shadowed mountains. It was instead a vista of many gleaming lights: the sunshine on the river, and the differing lustre of the water in the shadow; the fine crystalline green of the cataract, and the dazzling white of the foam and the spray; the luminous azure of the far-away peaks, and the enamelled glister of the blue sky--all showing between the gloomy, sombre ranges close at hand. And while he still looked, he mounted the horse at the gate and rode away.

XIV.

It was a fine sensation for the group of gossips that always seemed an essential appurtenance to the blacksmith shop at the cross-roads when, this bright morning, the sheriff of the county, an infrequent and unfamiliar apparition, rode up to the open doors, and drew rein under the branches of the overhanging oak-tree. So broadly spreading were these branches that not even the diminishing shadow, ever waning as the day waxed on to noon, had bereft the space beneath of its gray-green gloom and its sense of dew. A wagon, one wheel lying tire-less on the ground, and a stout stave lashed crutch-like in its place, stood near by in the full yellow glare, with a reduced cartoon of itself, sadly out of drawing, on the sand beneath it, supplemented by a caricature of two men who sat upon its pole. The interior of the shop looked dark and cool, and the blacksmith's father, bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves in a rickety chair by the door, caught the softening effect of its twilight in his aged and minutely wrinkled face. Two or three dim figures were indistinct within; upon a bench outside a couple of loafers smoked, while still another utilized as a seat the roots of the tree. The shadow of its foliage played on the clapboards of the roof, long ago broken here and there, and still unmended, for the rain and the snow were welcome to wreak their worst, drizzling through upon the republican simplicity of the "dirt floor" within. Hardly a curl of smoke ascended from the chimney, and as the officer cast his eye along the two red clay winding roads, both of a most irresponsible and vagrant-like aspect, as if they had no goal in expectation, there was no other sign of habitation in sight; the woods closed in, limiting the prospect; here and there mountains rose, seeming, as always, nearer than reality warrants; and it was a most sequestered, slumberous spot to which the sheriff had betaken his brisk individuality and the energetic potentiality of his official presence.