Part 4

The musician was a wise man in his generation, and understood the human nature amongst which his lot was cast. He had kept sundry "Tuckers" dancing, as mechanically and unwillingly as if they trod on hot iron, long, long after they had despaired of ever hearing again the "Gen'lemen ter the right" which gave them their chance, often elusive, to escape. But he made Fee Guthrie's "Tucker" a short rôle. The spectators were hardly accustomed to him in the unbeloved character when the sudden command "To the right" smote sharply upon the air, and the circle was awhirl anew. Felix Guthrie, in the midst, manifested none of the precipitancy of his predecessors. His eyes were aglow; his feet moved softly in certain "steps" of his own invention; his whole attitude was one of expectancy, of abeyance. Scanning continually the revolving crowd, he looked like a panther ready to spring. When the word came at last, and he darted forward, the whole attack was most accurately adjusted to the moment. He had chosen to forestall Rhodes, who was balancing to Letitia Pettingill. There was only an instant's difference in the quick movements, but instead of "swinging" the man who came first, according to the rules, she suddenly swerved aside, passed under Guthrie's outstretched arm, and, with a radiant face and sapphire eyes, held out both hands to the candidate, who, bewildered, clasped them, and the two swung round in the customary revolution, leaving Guthrie "Tucker" as before. He stood as if petrified in the instant's silence that ensued. Then, as a great clamor of laughter and surprised comment arose, he sprang upon Rhodes, his grip on the candidate's throat. Rhodes, himself of a brawny strength, had put forth its uttermost to defend himself. A wave of wind went through the room, flickering all its candles and blending the fluctuating shadows. In their midst the bewildered guests saw, as in a dream, Guthrie deal, with the butt of the pistol clasped in his hand, a blow upon the candidate's head. The next moment the sharp crack of the discharged weapon pealed through the room, and the puncheons trembled with the heavy fall as Rhodes came down at full length on the floor. The violin quavered into silence, the crowd drew off suddenly, then again pressed close about the insensible figure; the wind once more went through the rooms, with all the shadows racing after; and only the baby, still dancing in the corner--although he, too, had stopped a moment and winked hard at the clamorous, jarring tone of the pistol--was unaware that "dancin' Tucker" at the infair had ended in bloodshed, and that the gayety was over for the time.

III.

Shattuck sprang up, crying out, "Stop him! Don't let him escape!" as he rushed to lift his friend's bleeding head from the floor. Despite the turmoil of his emotions, he appreciated with all his keenly tutored senses the antithesis of the effect of Felix Guthrie's massive immobility as he stood hard by wiping the blood from the butt of the smoking pistol.

"Stop him!" he retorted; "hedn't ye better wait till I set out ter run somewhar?"

There was a bravado in the situation not altogether distasteful, Shattuck knew, to the spirit of the backwoodsmen, and although there were muttered reproaches amongst them, no one laid hands on Felix Guthrie, still looking about to the right and to the left with lowering eyes, and still wiping the blood from his pistol with the soft brim of his hat, that it might not rust upon the weapon to its injury.

The most vehement expressions of reprobation came from the host, who loudly upbraided Felix Guthrie for his lack of "manners," and bewailed the omen of the incident, as he knelt beside the wounded candidate with one of the limp hands in his.

"Thar ain't been nobody died on these puncheons sence Sandy McVeigh called my gran'dad ter the door an' shot him down in his tracks! Thar's been cornsider'ble quiet hyar' sence. The old man war a powerful fighter an' a tartar, an' the neighborhood war peacefuller with him out'n it than in it, ef I _do_ say it myse'f. An' now Fee Guthrie kems hyar a-killin' folks ter spite the infair--whenst we hev hed sech luck with the weddin' an' the supper an' all--an' stain up these old puncheons with a bloody death one more time!"

His gray shock head bobbed about over the prone figure, and as he made his unique lament he sought to stanch the wounds, still bleeding profusely. He rose with a sudden alacrity when, on the outskirts of the crowd, a heralding cry announced that the doctor was coming. Even then it was a question of propriety and hospitality which took precedence with him.

"Let's git him onto a bed, boys; quick! quick! Don't let Doc Craig kem hyar an' tell the whole kentry-side ez we-uns let Mr. Rhodes die on the floor 'kase I don't vote on his side. I wonder I never thunk o' it before. Let's git him onto a bed."

Shattuck's objections to moving him were overborne in the turmoil. A dozen strong fellows seized the prostrate figure, and it was lifted as if it had no weight, and swiftly borne up the narrow stairs to be laid upon a bed in the roof-room. Shattuck, feeling helpless in the midst of these coercive circumstances, could only follow, his protests grinding between his teeth, almost unconsciously metamorphosed into curses. But as he rose step by step on the steep narrow stair blockaded by the crowd pressing after the wounded man, and the roof-room came gradually into view, he grew more content, so palpably for the better was the change. The window at each gable end stood open; into one fell the silvery splendor of the moon; the other was dusky with shadows, though beyond he caught the interfulgent rays amongst the sycamore leaves. The batten shutters swayed gently in the wind. The air was full of vaguely prophetic intimations of dawn. A pigeon that had nested in the niche between the chimney and the wall was astir for a moment, and cooed softly. The dust and glare of the room below seemed far away. The tent-like roof and the simple furnishing--a bed, a cedar chest, a few garments and some large wolf-skins hanging to the rafters--all were made visible by the gracious courtesy of the moon.

Shattuck fancied that he heard his friend sigh faintly as they placed him upon the great soft feather-bed--the whole structure of an uncommon stature, but promising ease and comfort in proportionate amplitude.

He made haste to seize his host's arm. "Send them all down," he said, in an imperative whisper; "you and I are enough to take the doctor's instructions. He needs air and quiet; send them all down."

To his relief, Zack Pettingill seemed to appreciate the suggestion. He turned abruptly to the great shadowy figures of the mountaineers, repeatedly lifting both arms and letting them fall with emphasis, as if he were driving a flock of sheep or poultry before him.

"_Git out_, boys," he said, in his most clamorous drawl. Shattuck's nerves recoiled from the rasping tone. "We-uns don't want the doctor-man around hyar preachin' an' namin' the devil like he seen him yistiddy--always skeers me out'n my skin ter hear 'bout _him_ so familiar--an' sayin' we air crowdin' round jes' out'n cur'osity an' smotherin' the man an' ain't done all we could fur Candidate Rhodes. I wisht Rhodes _could_ hev tuk another time and somebody else's place ter git shot! _Git out'n hyar_, boys!" And as he advanced upon the retiring crowd he once more lifted both arms high and let them fall.

"Hesh!" said one of the retreating mountaineers, in a warning tone--he had descended three or four steps of the staircase that entered the room at one corner, his head and shoulders still visible above the floor. "The doctor's a-comin'." The dusky figures pressed close after him. He glanced up once more, his face suddenly illumined with a vague flicker. "_With a candle_," he added, under his breath, as if he imparted significant matter.

Shattuck drew a long sigh of relief. At last he would be able to see his friend in proper care, and would be free from that terrifying sense of responsibility which sorely harassed him, hampered as he was by the unaccustomed conditions of the place. He would have the aid and sympathy of a man of some education, and on whose judgment he could rely--one of his own nationality at least; for he suddenly felt an alien amongst these men, whose springs of action so differed from his own.

He waited breathlessly, watching the light grow stronger, casting a gigantic shadow of the tousled head of the master of the house upon the walls, as the heavy tread came nearer. The host leaned down to take the candle from the doctor's hand, and in the flicker of the motion the stranger was in the room before the light revealed him. Shattuck, advancing eagerly, suddenly paused. A pang of disappointment--more, despair--quivered through his heart. He beheld a tall, slow, shambling man, clad in old brown jeans, with a broad-brimmed hat, and the heavy boots affected by the mountaineers; he had a grave, meditative face, and he fixed his eyes upon the patient on the bed with that expression of proprietorship which everywhere marks the physician. Otherwise Shattuck could not have believed his senses. "Are you--are you--" he stammered, overlooking in his agitation the slight gesture of salutation with which the stranger recognized his presence there--"are you a regular graduate of a medical college?"

The mountaineer bent a lack-lustre eye upon him. "_Which?_" he said, in amazement.

"What sort of doctor are you?" demanded Shattuck, troublous recollections of the old idea of charms and spells rising to his mind.

"I be a yerb doctor, by the grace o' God," returned the mountain practitioner. He took, without more ado, the candle from his host, and with it in one hand looked fixedly down at the white face, all streaked and stained, upon the pillow.

Shattuck, constrained by every sentiment of loyalty to his friend of which he was capable, quivering with undeserved self-reproach that he had not earlier made inquiries which might have elicited the nature of the aid to be summoned, frantic with anxiety for the result, and lest he omit some essential duty, turned hastily, and without another word went straight down the stairs. With some instinctive policy animating him, he sought out the bridegroom as most likely to be won over to his theory. This was a tall, heavily built young mountaineer, pleased with the conspicuousness of his position in proportion as his wife, a demure and staid young woman, was abashed and overcome by it. He had that universal bridal manner, intimating a persuasion that nobody else has ever been married. He received Shattuck with the kindly condescension likely to grace one who has attained so unique a distinction.

"I suppose, Mr. Pettingill," said Shattuck, craftily, "that you don't feel at home here now, as you are going away to live among the Gossams. I hear you have built a house across the creek from your father-in-law. I suppose you feel quite one with the Gossams now."

"Oh, Lord, no! that I ain't," declared the bridegroom, with the precipitate denial of one whose secret fear has been put into words, and who seeks to boldly exorcise it. "I hain't married all the fambly; one's a plenty, thanky. Ye needn't be afeared ter speak yer mind 'bout 'em ter me. I'd hev liked Malviny jes' ez well ef she hadn't been a Gossam."

The thought of the rose that by any other name would smell as sweet came incongruously into Shattuck's mind for the instant, but he rejoined hastily:

"Well, if I could get speech of any member of the Pettingill family that cares anything for the name, I would say that Mr. Pettingill has behaved very strangely--sending for an herb doctor instead of the kind of physician that Mr. Rhodes would have if he were at home."

"Lord!" exclaimed the young fellow, laying his hand on Shattuck's shoulder and looking earnestly into his eyes, as they stood on the porch beside one of the flaring windows, "Phil Craig, they say, kin all but raise the dead; he's reg'lar gifted--a plumb yerb doctor. The t'other kind--why, they _pizens_ ye"--kindly didactic, and with a rising inflection.

"Well, people in Colbury will think it mighty strange that Mr. Pettingill didn't send for the kind of doctor that Mr. Rhodes would have had if he could have chosen," Shattuck retorted, with a frown. "You all vote against Rhodes, don't you?"

The countenance of the bridegroom was embarrassed and troubled. Perhaps he thought the festivities made to celebrate his happiness had been sufficiently overcast without further clouding them with political differences.

"But we-uns hain't got no gredge at Mr. Rhodes," he stipulated.

"I should be much grieved," continued Shattuck, "if Mr. Pettingill--he seems to be a worthy man--should be included in the prosecution, or any member of his family involved in any way; but of course Mr. Rhodes's relatives and political friends will make things hot if--if he should die here with medical attendance denied him."

"Good Lord!" the young man burst out, "_we-uns_ hed nuthin' ter do with it--jes' Fee Guthrie. Do ye think they'd prosecute Fee? 'Twar jes' a fight--a sorter fight--but _we-uns_--"

"If I knew where a sure-enough doctor lives, or could find anybody that does know, I'd have him here if he had to come a hundred miles. I've asked and asked, and nobody seems to know."

"Wait a minute"--the bridegroom turned to intercept old Zack Pettingill as he came down the stairs.

Bold as Shattuck's policy had been, he quaked to witness his own suggestion of political enmity, malicious denial of medical attendance, and the possibility of prosecution, introduced as a threat into Zack Pettingill's honest and hospitable consciousness. And yet he could but laugh at the manner of it. In order to capture and speak apart to his parent, the bridegroom had drawn the old man almost behind the door. In fact, while the son stood visible, with earnest and urgent gestures and grave and deprecatory countenance, the effect of his communication upon the unseen Pettingill was only intimated by the agitation which beset the door, as the old man floundered behind it in the activities of his anger, and his contemptuous floutings of the suggested implication in crime. Now the door quivered on its hinges; now it received a blow that would have sent it flaunting wide had not the young man's hand restrained it; and finally, when it became quiet, Shattuck divined the success of his effort before the bridegroom turned away and the liberated father emerged from behind it. He was not prepared, however, for the glower of deep-seated hatred which Zack Pettingill cast upon him through the open window before he turned toward the stairs. Shattuck felt suddenly wounded; the blood mounted to his face as if he had received a blow; and if he had for the moment forgotten that in these mountains the poorest honest man holds his dignity as safe from the imputation of crime as if he were a magnate and millionaire, and resents it as dearly, what other course could he have pursued with the interests he had at stake--his own conscience and his friend's life? As he paced to and fro the short limits of the porch, there sounded almost immediately the quick thud of galloping hoofs down the rocky hill, surging through the river, becoming fainter on the opposite bank, and so dying away. In his preoccupation he attached no importance to this, as the guests were now beginning to take leave. Only when young Pettingill reappeared, a trifle breathless and with an excited eye, and the comment, "We sent fur Doctor Ganey--seventeen mile--Steve Yates rid fur him," did Shattuck connect the swift departure that he had unconsciously remarked with the success of his mission. He did not triumph in it as he had expected. His sensitiveness, with which he was well enough endowed to keep him amply supplied with unhappiness, was all astir within him; the knowledge of the wounds that he had dealt--deep, bitter, and intentional--had developed a double edge and a sharp retroaction. He doubted if in all Zack Pettingill's hard, limited, and most respectable life he had ever been brought face to face with the ignominy of such suspicions and such threats. Not that the taking of life on a grievous provocation and an implacable quarrel was held, in the mountain ethics, reprehensible; the deep turpitude lay in the suggested circumstances--a conspiracy, a political grudge, and the victim a guest. It would have been far indeed from his own roof-tree could Zack Pettingill, the very soul of hospitality, have contemplated the infamy of which Shattuck had affected to suspect him. He wondered a trifle that so ignorant, so coarse, so violent, so lawless a man should be so vulnerable in the more æsthetic sensibilities, forgetting that traits of character are as the solid wood, indigenous; and that cultivation is, after all, only surface polish and veneer, and can never give to common deal the rich heart, the weight, and the value of the walnut or the oak.

"My wife an' all her folks air a-goin' now, an' I reckon I'll hev ter hustle along an' jine 'em," drawled the bridegroom, presently. "I reckon they hev hed enough o' dancin' an' fiddlin' an' sech. Thar ain't been ez much dancin' in the cove afore I got married sence the Big Smoky war built--'thout," he qualified, meditatively, for he was a man of speculation--"'thout 'twar the Injuns. Some 'low ez Injuns war plumb gin over ter dancin' in the old times"--with the sufficient air of an ethnological authority--"war dances an' scalp dances." He smiled in slow ridicule. "Folks didn't dance none in the war ez we hed hyarabouts--Fed and Cornfed--'thout ye call some o' them quicksteps on the back track dancin'--_they_ war lively enough for ennything! But"--with the manner of resuming the subject--"they danced at the weddin' t'other night at Mr. Gossam's, an' they hev danced at the infair, an' now I hope nobody ain't goin' ter gin no mo' dances; leastwise not in complimint ter Malviny an' me. They air toler'ble tiresome ter me," he protested, with a _blasé_ air. "An' I ain't s'prised none ef they air devices o' the devil ennyhow, ez ennybody mought know from the eend this one hev kem ter. Malviny ain't no dancer, an' air mighty religious, an' all this hyar fiddlin' an' glorifyin' hev been sorter terrifyin' ter her. I ain't pious myse'f," he concluded, with an air which to Shattuck's discerning observation sufficiently identified his type as the incipient man of the world. "I expec' ter go ter heav'n in partnership with Malviny--she's good enough fur two."

He strolled off to join a group whose departure was impeded by much hospitable insistence to remain longer, and by the presentation of bundles of the supper wrapped in paper; for, alack! the disaster had preceded the opening of the supper-room, and its triumphs were and would ever be only a matter of conjecture. The disappointment was stamped into the lines of Mrs. Pettingill's worn countenance. It seemed a perversely withheld opportunity of joy in her restricted life, since it was deemed unmeet that the formal feasting should proceed while Leonard Rhodes lay up-stairs at the point of death. She could only cut great slices of cake, and press them upon her guests, with the wheezing adjuration, "Take it home, and _jedge_ what luck we hed with the bakin'!"

She had been altogether despoiled of the fine show that the table in full array would have made, but the apple-brandy that had constituted Mr. Pettingill's share of the preparations, in circulation since the first arrival, had by no means been in vain. He was disposed to offer his example as one that might with profit be adopted. "I always b'lieved in a _handed_ supper," he remarked. "Then, ef--ef--an accident war ter happen' 'fore 'twar all over, folks wouldn't go away hongry from yer house, nohow. But the wimmin-folks air so gin over ter pride an' fixin's that they air obleeged ter set out a _table_ all tricked up an' finified off."

The violinist, however, was esteemed in some sort exempt from the rule of etiquette which necessitated the immediate dispersing of the company without the formal supper. A curious eye might have discovered him under the staircase which led to the wounded man's room. He sat with the "lap-board"--usually used in cutting out the men's clothes--across his knee, and here was ranged a liberal choice of the viands which the shed-room had contained. Most of the household dogs--there were twenty odd--were underfoot in the shed-room, presiding with a speechless frenzy of interest in the partition of the good things; but two of the younger ones sat at the fiddler's feet, and watched, with heads canted askew and the glistening eyes of admiration, the prodigies of his execution. The stiff tail of one of them--a pointer--sweeping the floor, now and again came in contact with the violin that stood on end in the corner, eliciting a discordant twanging of the strings, and a low, hollow, resonant murmur; whereupon the dog would rise with a knitted, puzzled brow and an air of irritated interruption, only to seat himself anew, and with a bland and freshened interest resume his earnest watch upon the violinist's movements. Again he would wag his tail in the joy of his heart, again strike inadvertently the strings of the instrument, and once more arise to vainly investigate the mystery of "this music in the air."

Occasionally the closed door hard by opened suddenly to disclose Mrs. Pettingill's anxious face and gray head, as she cast a searching glance to discern what havoc the fiddler had succeeded in making in the good things set before him. She added to the normal drawl of the mountaineers an individual wheeze of singular propitiations, and implying cordial and confidential relations. There may be more beautiful sounds, but none of more suave and soothing effect than that husky, "Jack, jes' try a glass o' this hyar cherry-bounce along with a bite o' pound-cake"--as she extended the "bite," which, in point of size, might have discouraged the jaws of the giant Cormoran, but never Jack Brace's. "It'll _rest_ ye mightily, arter all the fiddlin' ye hev done." And again, "Jack, hev ye ever tasted my sweet-spiced peach pickles?"

Jack had, indeed. But Jack said he never had, in order that he might renew the gustatory delights that he remembered.

Now and then less friendly eyes gazed in upon the nook. A gigantic mountaineer, slowly strolling through the half-deserted scene, came to a full halt hard by, leaned peeringly forward, took a step closer, and, with his shaggy-bearded face inclined pharisaically over the well-filled lap-board, demanded, in a tone of gruff reproof:

"What air ye a-doin' of hyar, gormandizing like ye hedn't hed nuthin' ter eat fur a week an' better, an' a man dyin' up-steers?"

"Ye talk like I war a-nibblin' on Len Rhodes," cried Jack Brace, angered by the mere suggestion that etiquette required that he should desist. "My goin' hongry ain't a-goin' ter holp him, an' my eatin' arter fiddlin' all night ain't a-goin' ter hender. Ef he can't go ter heaven 'count o' me an' this leetle brandy peach"--as he held up the appetizing morsel both the dogs rose up on their nimble hind-legs in pathetic misapprehension of his intention, their eyes widening with dismay as he withdrew the dainty effectually from view--"why, he ain't got _enough_ religion ter git thar, that's all!"