Part 5

Shattuck, going up-stairs, glanced down, upon hearing the words, at the cosy nook and the fiddler, and was reminded anew of his friend's danger, his sense of achievement in carrying his point having served for a time to dull his anxiety. The room had taken on that strange, discordant, forlorn effect which is characteristic of a scene of gayety overpast, and is never compassed by mere bareness, or disarray, or disuse. There was a pervasive sense of expended forces, as if all the elation and effervescent spirit exhaling here had left a veritable vacuum. The candles on shelf and niche and table were sputtering in their sockets or burning dimly. Here and there mountaineers slouched about, awaiting their womankind, who presently flustered out of the shed-room wrapped in shawls, and with big bundles of the "supper" so unhappily transformed into a "snack." There were chairs tilted back against the walls as the spectators of the festivities had left them. A saddle or two and a trace-chain and some bits of harness were lying about the floor, where they had been temporarily disposed by the owners, engaged in "gearing up" the teams without. Now and again voices could be heard calling refractory beasts to order, but dulled by the distance, and partaking of the languor of the hour. The baby, who had danced as assiduously as the best, albeit its walking days were not yet well ushered in, had succumbed at last, and lay, a slumbering heap of pink flesh and blue calico, upon the floor. Its attitude demonstrated the elasticity of its youthful limbs, and its hands clutched one of the pink feet that had done such yeoman service earlier in the evening. An old hound, bound to the spot by the talismanic phrase, "Guard him!"--a duty from which only death itself could lure him--sat bolt-upright by the prostrate figure, and looked now with sleepy eyes and cavernous yawns at the departing guests, and now became preternaturally vigilant, and uttered wistful wheezes of despair and envy as the hopeful gambols of the young dogs about the munching fiddler caught his attention. The whole picture grew dim and hazy with its flickering lights, and fluctuated suddenly into darkness, as if it had slipped from actuality into a mere memory, as Shattuck went farther up the stair and the roof-room gathered shape and consistency before him. The window at one end still held the glamour of the moonlight, the silver green of the swaying foliage, the freshness and the sparkle of the dew. He heard the pigeons cooing drowsily. The wolf-skins swinging from the rafters caught the gleam of the candle, and borrowed a sleek and rich lustre. The focus of the tallow dip itself glowed yellow in the midst of its divergent rays, that grew dim as they stretched ever farther among the duskily brown shadows of the place. Now and again it was eclipsed as figures, ministering to the wounded man, passed before it. Suddenly they drew back. Rhodes's face, distinct upon the pillow, caught the light full upon it. Shattuck started forward, a great throb of relief astir at his heart, and a loud exclamation, incoherent, upon his lips. For his friend had opened his eyes, alight with his own old identity; his face, pallid, and with smears of blood faintly discernible, although much of it had been washed away, wore a languid smile. It seemed that the element of his being which was strongest in him, his sense of postulance, of candidacy before the people, was reasserted first of all his faculties.

"Did I--did I--hurt anybody?" he faltered; "I didn't mean to hurt anybody." Then, as he seemed to realize his surroundings, his memory revived.

"Where's Fee? Fee didn't get hurt, did he? Where am I?" He lifted himself upon his elbow and looked waveringly about. "Lord!" he exclaimed, impressed by the silence, "you didn't stop the dancing on _my_ account, Mr. Pettingill? I've spoiled the party! Well! well! I'll never be able to look Mrs. Pettingill in the face again." And he sank back on the pillow.

The surly countenance beneath the host's grizzled shock of hair took on a milder expression. The stiff grooves and lines of the lips relaxed, and might be said to have released a smile. "We kin spare the party, Mr. Rhodes--spare it a sight easier'n we kin spare you-uns." Then, as Shattuck unwisely pressed up to the side of the bed, the old man's eyes suddenly assumed a hard glitter of triumph with the hot anger that made him breathe quickly and stertorously, and curved the lines of his stiff old mouth.

"Thar be _some_," he remarked, "ez will 'low I be jes' glad ter git shet o' bein' prosecuted. _Me_ prosecuted, 'kase ye an' Fee tuk ter tusslin' in the middle o' the dancin', an' Fee war the bes' man. _Prosecuted!_" He snorted out the word with a repulsion that made the very tone odious.

Rhodes, visibly agitated, pulled himself into a sitting posture. "Who--who--said that--such a thing?" Still dazed and confused though he was, his eyes, sweeping the by-standers, rested with the certainty of reproach upon Shattuck. There was a momentary silence. "Understand one thing, Mr. Pettingill," he said at length, with a quick flush upon his pale face that had seemed to grow lean in the last hour--"understand this: alive or dead, no man speaks for me."

He sank back once more upon his pillow, which the herb doctor had readjusted with a hand that was as soft and listless as any fine lady's; he lifted the injured man's head into another position.

"It air mo' level," he observed, learnedly. "This slit in his head air a-goin' ter cure up right off," he continued, looking with mild blue eyes at Shattuck, who stood flushed and indignant among them all, feeling repudiated in the odd turn that affairs had taken. "'Tain't goin' ter inflame none, hevin' bled so much. He warn't shot nowhar; jes' cut on the head. His hair is singed some, whar the powder burnt it, I reckon. He mustn't git up, though, ter-day nor ter-morrow, else he'll fever."

If Shattuck, with the cowardice that is the essential sequence of a well-intentioned mistake, hoped that no more might be said by Mr. Pettingill, he understood little of the pertinacity and endurance that can animate him who presses his breast against the thorn. The host had been unspeakably afflicted by the bare suggestion of foul play. It had served as a goad when naught else might have moved him. Even although its efficacy was nullified, he could not pass it by, but again and again in review he evoked all its capacities of poignancy. "Ye shet up, Phil Craig," he said, his manner of rebuke palpably affected. "Ye ain't fitten ter doctor the 'quality.' I hev hed ter send Steve Yates a-cavortin' _seventeen_ mile in the midnight ter fetch a doctor ter physic Mr. Rhodes fur a leetle gash side o' the head! May keep we-uns from bein' _prosecuted_, though; leastwise we'll hope so."

Rhodes, appalled, could only stare with amazement at Shattuck. How his friend could have brought himself to consider bodily health before political advantage, and yet call himself a friend, was a thing which he could not comprehend. It was all too fresh for even the sophistical comfort of believing that he had tried to do all for the best. He could only look at Shattuck with eyes full of wonder and reproach, doubly effective from his reduced and prone estate; and Shattuck, indignant and resentful, could only turn short about and walk away. He repented that he had done aught. And then he wondered how any man of sense could have done aught else. His dignity was affronted by the position in which he found himself. He despised his friend for the pusillanimous time-serving of his hearty endorsement of all that the mountaineers had done and said. And yet he could but acknowledge that this was ample. He despised himself for his vicarious fright, his over-serious treatment of the incident. And yet, as he recalled the scene--the two struggling, swaying figures, the savage blow with the butt end of the pistol, the sudden discharge of the weapon, the heavy fall, the long insensibility--it seemed as if the issue were phenomenally fortunate, rather than such as might have been expected. Amidst all the nettling subjects of contemplation, one recurred with continually harassing suggestions--how he should meet the physician whom he had caused to be summoned in the midnight from the distance of seventeen miles, when the learning or the ignorance of the simple herb doctor had so amply sufficed for the emergency. Caused to be summoned! He thought of Steve Yates riding the horse's back sore, believing that a dying man lay in the house. As he heard Rhodes's rollicking laughter--a trifle quavering, to be sure--he quailed before the idea that there was nothing to offer the physician when he should arrive. He felt that he would have been glad of a diseased liver or an injured brain to justify his proceedings. He began in a nervous state of expectancy to pause whenever he reached the shadowy window, and to look through the silvered branches of the sycamore-tree, fearing to descry perchance a mounted figure approaching along the winding road. All vacant it was as it curved, now in the clear sheen, now lost in the black shadow, reappearing at an unexpected angle, as if in the darkness the continuity were severed, and it existed only in sinuous sections. Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with her lover. An ox-cart lumbering slowly along, with its burly, nodding team, through the illumined spaces, and disappearing in intervals of obscurity, the motion of the oxen's horns somehow vaguely discerned before they emerged again from the shadow, illustrated the leisurely ideal of mountain travel. After it had quite vanished, and even the sharp, grating creak of its unoiled running-gear had been lost in the distance, a swift canine figure, distorted by speed to a mere caricature of its species, with tail drooping, with ears laid back close to its head, darted along the serpentine curves--one of the visitors' dogs, just made aware of his master's departure, and in his haste to overtake the jogging vehicle adding farcical suggestions of comparison to its slow progress.

And then for a time Shattuck, pacing the length of the room and pausing at the window, marked neither approach nor departure. The shadows were lengthening; the moon was low in the sky; the neighboring massive mountains were darkly and heavily empurpled against the pensively illumined horizon. At their base the valley slept; it wot little of the opaline mists that gathered above it, and enmeshed elusive enchantments of color, which vanished before the steady gaze seeking to grade them as blue or amber or green, and to fix their status in the spectrum. A strange pause seemed to hold the world. Only the pines breathed faintly. Beneath their boughs he saw suddenly Letitia Pettingill sitting on a log of the great wood-pile. Her pale-blue homespun dress seemed white in the moonlight. She leaned back, her hands clasping her head, which rested upon the higher logs behind her, her eyes fixed contemplatively upon the slow sinking of the reddening moon.

Another had observed her there. It was only a moment or two before a tall figure sauntered out from the house and stood near by with a casual air, surveying not her, but the aspects of the departing night or the coming day, as retrospection or anticipation might denominate the hour. Shattuck with a frown recognized the figure; it was easily marked; its height and breadth and muscle would suffice to distinguish it, without the added testimony of the long tousled ringlets and the square, stern, martial face, overshadowed by a broad-brimmed hat. Guthrie's pistol and a knife gleamed in his leather belt. His long boots jingled with the replaced spurs, but he made no move toward departure, and his horse still stood, half in the shadow and half in the sheen, drowsing under a dogwood-tree. It was only after he had waited some time thus silent and motionless that he slowly cast his surly, long-lashed eyes toward Letitia. If she had seen him, she made no sign. Still clasping the back of her shapely head with both uplifted hands, she sat, half reclining, against the logs, and watched the moon go down. The initiative was forced upon him. There was a latent capacity for expressiveness suggested in the surprise and uncertainty and subtle disappointment depicted upon his face. He advanced slowly to the wood-pile, and sat down on one of the lower logs, his booted and spurred legs stretched out before him, one hand upon his hip, his hat thrust back, his ringleted head bare to the dew and the sheen. Still she did not move nor glance toward him. As his eyes absently traversed the space about them, he caught sight of Shattuck turning away from the roof-room window. Whether from a full heart, or in despair that she would break the silence, or on a sudden impulse which the glimpse of the stranger roused, he spoke abruptly, reverting to the scenes of the evening.

"I reckon ye air in an' about sati'fied now with what ye hev up-ed an' done," he drawled, slowly.

She unclasped her hands that she might turn her head and look steadily at him for a moment. Her lustrous illumined blue eyes either showed their fine color in the ethereal light of the moon, or the recollection of it was substituted for the sense of it in the sudden adequateness of their expression. Her gaze relaxed, and she resumed her former attitude. The interval was so long before she spoke that the reply seemed hardly pertinent.

"Ever see _me_ wear a shootin'-iron?" she demanded. Her voice was not loud, but it had a vibratory quality like that of a stringed instrument, rather than a flute-like tone.

He stared at her. "Hey?" he demanded. "What ye say?"

She did not change her posture now. "Ever see _me_ pound ennybody on the head with a shootin'-iron?" she continued.

"Shucks!" he cried, slowly apprehending her meaning; "ye can't git out'n it that-a-way."

"I never war in it. When ye see somebody o' my size in a fight with one o' yer size, let _me_ know it."

"'Twar _yer_ fault, an' ye know that full well," he made himself plain, with an intonation of severity.

"_My_ fault? _Mercy!_" she cried, "_I_ wouldn't hev bruk up that dance fur a bushel o' sech ez ye an' Rhodes!" She gave a gurgling laugh of retrospective pleasure.

A moment's silence ensued, while he pushed back his hair to look gloweringly at the half-reclining figure, which, although not moving, had contrived to take on an air of flouting indifference.

"Ye air a mighty small matter," he said, scathingly, "fur me an' Rhodes ter make ourselves sech fools about."

"An' sech _big_ fools!" she cried, with animation. "Whenst I feel obligated ter see I'm a fool, it's sech a comfort ter know I ain't much of a fool."

He said nothing in reply, feeling too clumsy and ponderous to follow the attack with so lithe and elusive an enemy. He did not definitely realize it, but in dropping his aggressions he assumed far more potent weapons.

"O my Lord A'mighty!" he groaned, putting his head in one hand, and covering his eyes as he supported his elbow upon the log behind him; "it don't make much diff'ence whose fault 'tis. _I_ hev ter suffer fur it. _I_ hev ter suffer fur everything. Sufferin' air what I war born fur, I reckon. Leastwise I ain't seen nuthin' else."

Something faintly stirred the trees; it was not the wind, for it did not seem to come again or to pass further. It was as if they were awakening from some subtleties of sleep, unknown to science, that had stilled their pulses. Fragrance was in the air; the great red rose in the grass by the gate was bursting its buds. The rank weeds asserted their identity. Even the wood-pile gave evidence of walnut and hickory and the resinous pine. And still the moon, ever reddening, ever dulling, sank lower, and the stars were brightening in the darkening sky.

Once more he groaned. "I never war cut out for a fighter," he declared. "Whenst I war a leetle bit o' a boy, an' my dad married agin an' brung that everlastin' wild-cat o' a step-mam o' mine home, I war in a mighty notion o' bein' frien'ly--leetle liar--leetle cowardly fox! I knowed what war good fur me, an' which side my bread war buttered on, an' she couldn't beat me hard enough ter make me hit back or sass her. I war fur givin' up an' takin' mild ez a lam' everything she hed a mind ter do ter me. But arter a while I got so ez whenst she beat my leetle brother it made me winge an' winge--she couldn't hurt sech a calloused time-server ez _me_! An' so I tuk ter hidin' him in the bresh whenst she got mad at him. An' one day whenst she fund him, an' tuk ter larrapin' him, I jes' flew at her, an' I bit her arm 'mos' through. She let Ephraim alone. She war skeered at me. I seen it. An' I tuk ter bitin' arter that like a cur-dog. My dad lemme 'lone. Vis'tors ez kem ter the house war warned off'n me. I begun ter git my growth. I hed an arm ez growed so it could lam a man like a sledge-hammer; it kep' all the boys an' everybody else off'n Ephraim, ez never war a fighter, an' let him git some growth, an hold up his head, an' try ter do like folks."

He had dropped his hand and was staring at her with surprised eyes. She was leaning forward, the golden moonlight still on her face. Her finely cut lips were smiling. She held out, with an air of gay, mysterious confidence, a tiny object between her finger and thumb.

"'Hold fast what I give ye,'" she quoted, with a low, gurgling triumphant laugh.

He reached out and took from her with slow suspicion a pistol ball, turning it around, and looking at her with an air of suspended comprehension and doubt.

"I fund it hyar at the wood-pile; it never teched Rhodes. He ain't much hurt--his senses jes' knocked out'n him. They can't do nuthin' ter you-uns fur sech ez that."

"They better not try!" he cried, belligerently. Then, with the accents of scorn: "D'ye 'low ez I be a-troublin' _my_se'f 'count o' sech cattle ez Rhodes? Naw, sir! Nobody air a-goin' ter pester me! The whole mounting, an' the home folks an' all, hev got mighty perlite ter me, an' hev been fur a long time." He paused meditatively. "Yes, sir," he exclaimed; "peace hev kem ter me by the pound!" He smote his massive chest.

Then, after another silence, he sighed. "But I be troubled," he resumed, "'kase hyar one day 'bout a year ago I goes ter the church house. I always loved the Lord, fur He war persecuted, an' I knowed He felt fur me. I never war so tuk up with this worl'. I hain't hed no pleasure in it. I yearned fur a better one. An' durned ef the thin-lipped, turnip-hearted preacher didn't git up an' gin out the doctrine ef enny war ter hit ye on one cheek, ye mus' turn the tother one; fur that's religion! That ain't my policy, an' 'tain't my practice. An' I reckon I'll hev ter go ter hell jes' whenst I war a-settin' myself in the hope o' heaven."

He drooped his head upon his hand again and groaned aloud. "I hev wondered," he resumed, his voice somewhat muffled by his attitude, "ef the cuss read that in the Good Book, or jes' made it up out'n his own head. But that sayin' hev tormented me in the midnight, an' tuk my sleep from me. I sorter feel it in me like it _mus'_ be true. Religion can't be so easy ez jes' lovin' the Lord. It's this hyar hevin' ter love yer fellow-man ez makes religion so durned hard on ye."

A cloud was in the west, not continuous, but with dusky brown strata across the gilded spaces above the purple mountains; its shadows lay on the mists below in dull streaks amidst the shining pearly tone. When the moon, so golden, so great now and glamourous, passed behind one of these bars of vapor, and even the sullen cloud was tenderly tinted and showed radiating verges of dull gold, one might see the bereft world in the prosaic gray medium of the day that was to come.

Once more he looked about him and sighed. "Why," he argued, "I couldn't hev got on with all the smitin' folks wanted ter do ter me an' Ephraim, 'specially Ephraim. But then I 'low ez I hev got the mounting too much skeered ter fool with Ephraim or me nuther now, an' mebbe ef I sot out ter repent right hearty I mought make out yit. But I furgits--I furgits! I can't repent more'n a haffen hour at a time. An' hyar ter-night--jes' on account o' you-uns--I hauls off agin, an' mighty nigh kills Rhodes!"

"'Twarn't 'count o' me," she drawled, with the musical vibration that seemed to follow each tone. She had resumed her former attitude and her air of mocking gayety. "Ye air carryin' it all wrong. 'Twarn't account o' _me_ ye half killed Rhodes. 'Twar all account o' 'Tucker'!"

He caught the gleam of her laughing eyes as he sat with his elbows on his knees and glowered sidelong at her.

"I am small," she protested, in dimpling merriment. "I can't ondertake more'n my sheer. Let 'Tucker' take the blame. Ye warn't dyin' ter dance with me. Ye war dyin' _not_ ter dance with yerse'f."

His face had flushed. His eyes were full of grave resentment as they met her laughing glance. "I didn't 'low ez ye war so onfeeling ez ye 'pear ter be," he said, reproachfully. "Ever sence that time at the church house whenst all were convicted of sin, or saints, 'ceptin' ye an' me settin' alongside o' one another, I hev been sorter sorry fur ye, an' 'lowed ye war sorter sorry fur me."

She only replied with a laugh, and he evidently deemed futile the bid for sympathy on the score of religious or irreligious fellowship, for he recurred to it no more.

There was a stir along the path; a great high-stepping turkey gobbler was slowly coming down it, pausing now and then, and turning his wattled head askew to bring his eye to bear upon some incident of the high dewy weeds, that might promise a preliminary bit to a morning meal. The rest of his tribe, yet roosting on a bare branch of an otherwise full-leaved tree, looked big and burly against the roseate sky; each long inquisitive neck now and again stretched downward, each clutching claw ever and anon moving uncertainly along the perch with a fluctuating intention to descend, was growing momently more distinct as the gray light more and more encroached upon the moon, all obscured now by one of those cloud strata.

In this interval of eclipse Guthrie asked, suddenly, from out the dusk: "Ye know I warn't 'Tucker' by rights. Whyn't ye wanter dance with me?"

The shadow made her face uncertain. He could only see that she did not move. "Did I say I didn't want ter dance with you-uns? I don't 'pear ter remember it." Her tones, vibrant with mockery, were a trifle louder upon the air--a trifle strained; or was it that the world seemed more silent, muffled in the cloud that hid the moon?

"What's the reason ye wanted ter dance with Rhodes?" he demanded, pursuing the subject.

"Did I say I wanted ter dance with Rhodes?" She asked the counter-question with the sharp note of inquiry.

He detected its spuriousness, but her enigmatical intention embarrassed him. "Ye hed ruther dance with him than with me," he said, forlornly, losing his balance.

"Waal, it looks sorter that-a-way, now don't it?" she replied, in casual, irrelevant accents, as of an unconcerned third person.