Part 7
"I hev come hyar ter tell ye a word," said Budd Wray, meeting her tearful glance with a stern stolidity. He flung himself into a chair, and fixing his moody eyes on the fire went on: "A word ez I hev been a-aimin' an' a-contrivin' ter tell ye ever sence ye war married ter Josiah Tait, an' afore that,--ever sence ye tuk back the word ez ye hed gin me afore ye ever seen him, 'kase o' his hevin' a house, an' critters, an' sech like. He hain't got none now,--none of 'em. I hev been a-layin' off ter bring him ter this pass fur a long time, 'count of the scandalous way ye done treated me a year ago las' June. He hain't got no house, nor no critters, nor nuthin'. I done it, an' I come hyar with the deed in my pocket ter tell ye what I done it fur."
Her tears flowed afresh, and she looked appealingly at him. He did not remove his indignant eyes from the blaze, stealing timidly up the smoky chimney. "I never hed nuthin' much," he continued, "an' I never said I hed nuthin' much, like Josiah; but I thought ez how ye an' me might make out toler'ble well, bein' ez we sot consider'ble store by each other in them days, afore he ever tuk ter comin' a-huntin' yander ter Scrub-Oak Ridge, whar ye war a-livin' then. I don't keer nuthin' 'bout 'n it now, 'ceptin' it riles me, an' I war bound ter spite ye fur it. I don't keer nuthin' more 'bout _ye_ now than fur one o' them thar dead leaves. I want ye ter know I jes' done it ter spite ye,--_ye_ is the one. I hain't got no grudge agin Josiah ter talk about. He done like any other man would."
The color flared into the drooping face, and there was a flash in the weeping blue eyes.
"I s'pose I hed a right ter make a ch'ice," she said, angrily, stung by these taunts.
"Jes' so," responded Wray, coolly; "ye hed a right ter make a ch'ice a-twixt two men, but no gal hev got a right ter put a man on one eend o' the beam, an' a lot o' senseless critters an' house an' land on the t'other. Ye never keered nuthin' fur me nor Josiah nuther, ef the truth war knowed; ye war all tuk up with the house an' land an' critters. An' they hev done lef ye, what nare one o' the men would hev done."
The girl burst into convulsive sobs, but the sight of her distress had no softening influence upon Wray. "I hev done it ter pay ye back fur what ye hev done ter me, an' I reckon ye'll 'low now ez we air toler'ble even. Ye tuk all I keered fur away from me, an' now I hev tuk all ye keer fur away from ye. An' I'm a-goin' now yander ter the Settlemint ter hev this hyar deed recorded on the book ter the court-house, like Lawyer Green tole me ter do right straight. I laid off, though, ter come hyar fust, an' tell ye what I hev been aimin' ter be able ter tell ye fur a year an' better. An' now I'm a-goin' ter git this hyar deed recorded."
He replaced the sheet of scrawled legal-cap in his pocket, and rose to go; then turned, and, leaning heavily on the back of his chair, looked at her with lowering eyes.
"Ye're a pore little critter," he said, with scathing contempt. "I dunno what ails Josiah nor me nuther ter hev sot our hearts on sech a little stalk o' cheat."
He went out into the enveloping mountain mist with the sound of her weeping ringing in his ears. His eyes were hot, and his angry heart was heavy. He had schemed and waited for his revenge with persistent patience. Fortune had favored him, but now that it had fully come, strangely enough it failed to satisfy him. The deed in his breast-pocket weighed like a stone, and as he rode on through the clouds that lay upon the mountain top, the sense of its pressure became almost unendurable. And yet, with a perplexing contrariety of emotion, he felt more bitterly toward her than ever, and experienced a delight almost savage in holding the possessions for which she had been so willing to resign him. "Jes' kicked me out 'n the way like I war nuthin' more 'n that thar branch o' pisen-oak, fur a passel o' cattle an' sech like critters, an' a house an' land,--'kase I don't count Josiah in. 'Twar the house an' land an' sech she war a-studyin' 'bout." And every moment the weight of the deed grew heavier. He took scant notice of external objects as he went, keeping mechanically along the path, closed in twenty yards ahead of him by the opaque curtain of mist. The trees at the greatest distance visible stood shadow-like and colorless in their curious, unreal atmosphere; but now and then the faintest flake of a pale rose tint would appear in the pearly haze, deepening and deepening, till at the vanishing point of the perspective a gorgeous scarlet-oak tree would rise, red enough to make a respectable appearance on the planet Mars. There was an audible stir breaking upon the silence of the solemn woods, the leaves were rustling together, and drops of moisture began to patter down upon the ground. The perspective grew gradually longer and longer, as the rising wind cleared the forest aisles; and when he reached the road that ran between the precipice and the steep ascent above, the clouds were falling apart, the mist had broken into thousands of fleecy white wreaths, clinging to the fantastically tinted foliage, and the sunlight was striking deep into the valley. The woods about the Settlement were all aglow with color, and sparkling with the tremulous drops that shimmered in the sun.
There was an unwonted air of animation and activity pervading the place. To the court-house fence were hitched several lean, forlorn horses, with shabby old saddles, or sometimes merely blankets; two or three wagons were standing among the stumps in the clearing. The door of the store was occupied by a coterie of mountaineers, talking with unusual vivacity of the most startling event that had agitated the whole country-side for a score of years,--the winning of Josiah Tait's house and land at Old Sledge. The same subject was rife among the choice spirits congregated in the court-house yard and about the portal of that temple of justice, and Wray's approach was watched with the keenest interest.
He dismounted, and walked slowly to the door, paused, and turning as with a sudden thought threw himself hastily upon his horse; he dashed across the clearing, galloped heedlessly down the long, steep slope, and the astounded loiterers heard the thunder of the hoofs as they beat at a break-neck speed upon the frail, rotten timbers of the bridge below.
Josiah Tait had put his troubles in to soak at the still-house, and this circumstance did not tend to improve the cheerfulness of his little, home when he returned in the afternoon. The few necessities left to the victims of Old Sledge had been packed together, and were in readiness to be transported with him, his wife, and mother-in-law to Melinda's old home on Scrub-Oak Ridge, when her brother should drive his wagon over for them the next morning.
They never knew how to account for it. While the forlorn family were sitting before the smoking fire, as the day waned, the door was suddenly burst open, and Budd Wray strode in impetuously. A brilliant flame shot up the chimney, and the deed which Josiah Tait had that day executed was a cinder among the logs. He went as he came, and the mystery was never explained.
There was, however, "a sayin' goin' 'bout the mounting ez how Josiah an' Melindy jes' 'ticed him, somehow 'nother, ter thar house, an' held him, an' tuk the deed away from him tergether. An' they made him send back the critters an' the corn what he done won away from 'em." This version came to his ears, and was never denied. He was more ashamed of relenting in his vengeance than of the wild legend that he had been worsted in a tussle with Melinda and Josiah.
And since the night of Budd Wray's barren success the playing of Old Sledge has become a lost art at the Settlement.
THE STAR IN THE VALLEY.
He first saw it in the twilight of a clear October evening. As the earliest planet sprang into the sky, an answering gleam shone red amid the glooms in the valley. A star too it seemed. And later, when the myriads of the fairer, whiter lights of a moonless night were all athrob in the great concave vault bending to the hills, there was something very impressive in that solitary star of earth, changeless and motionless beneath the ever-changing skies.
Chevis never tired of looking at it. Somehow it broke the spell that draws all eyes heavenward on starry nights. He often strolled with his cigar at dusk down to the verge of the crag, and sat for hours gazing at it and vaguely speculating about it. That spark seemed to have kindled all the soul and imagination within him, although he knew well enough its prosaic source, for he had once questioned the gawky mountaineer whose services he had secured as guide through the forest solitudes during this hunting expedition.
"That thar spark in the valley?" Hi Bates had replied, removing the pipe from his lips and emitting a cloud of strong tobacco smoke. "'Tain't nuthin' but the light in Jerry Shaw's house, 'bout haffen mile from the foot of the mounting. Ye pass that thar house when ye goes on the Christel road, what leads down the mounting off the Backbone. That's Jerry Shaw's house,--that's what it is. He's a blacksmith, an' he kin shoe a horse toler'ble well when he ain't drunk, ez he mos'ly is."
"Perhaps that is the light from the forge," suggested Chevis.
"That thar forge ain't run more 'n half the day, let 'lone o' nights. I hev never hearn tell on Jerry Shaw a-workin' o' nights,--nor in the daytime nuther, ef he kin git shet of it. No sech no 'count critter 'twixt hyar an' the Settlemint."
So spake Chevis's astronomer. Seeing the star even through the prosaic lens of stern reality did not detract from its poetic aspect. Chevis never failed to watch for it. The first faint glinting in the azure evening sky sent his eyes to that red reflection suddenly aglow in the valley; even when the mists rose above it and hid it from him, he gazed at the spot where it had disappeared, feeling a calm satisfaction to know that it was still shining beneath the cloud-curtain. He encouraged himself in this bit of sentimentality. These unique eventide effects seemed a fitting sequel to the picturesque day, passed in hunting deer, with horn and hounds, through the gorgeous autumnal forest; or perchance in the more exciting sport in some rocky gorge with a bear at bay and the frenzied pack around him; or in the idyllic pleasures of bird-shooting with a thoroughly-trained dog; and coming back in the crimson sunset to a well-appointed tent and a smoking supper of venison or wild turkey,--the trophies of his skill. The vague dreaminess of his cigar and the charm of that bright bit of color in the night-shrouded valley added a sort of romantic zest to these primitive enjoyments, and ministered to that keen susceptibility of impressions which Reginald Chevis considered eminently characteristic of a highly wrought mind and nature.
He said nothing of his fancies, however, to his fellow sportsman, Ned Varney, nor to the mountaineer. Infinite as was the difference between these two in mind and cultivation, his observation of both had convinced him that they were alike incapable of appreciating and comprehending his delicate and dainty musings. Varney was essentially a man of this world; his mental and moral conclusions had been adopted in a calm, mercantile spirit, as giving the best return for the outlay, and the market was not liable to fluctuations. And the mountaineer could go no further than the prosaic fact of the light in Jerry Shaw's house. Thus Reginald Chevis was wont to sit in contemplative silence on the crag until his cigar was burnt out, and afterward to lie awake deep in the night, listening to the majestic lyric welling up from the thousand nocturnal voices of these mountain wilds.
During the day, in place of the red light a gauzy little curl of smoke was barely visible, the only sign or suggestion of human habitation to be seen from the crag in all the many miles of long, narrow valley and parallel tiers of ranges. Sometimes Chevis and Varney caught sight of it from lower down on the mountain side, whence was faintly distinguishable the little log-house and certain vague lines marking a rectangular inclosure; near at hand, too, the forge, silent and smokeless. But it did not immediately occur to either of them to theorize concerning its inmates and their lives in this lonely place; for a time, not even to the speculative Chevis. As to Varney, he gave his whole mind to the matter in hand,--his gun, his dog, his game,--and his note-book was as systematic and as romantic as the ledger at home.
It might be accounted an event in the history of that log-hut when Reginald Chevis, after riding past it eighty yards or so, chanced one day to meet a country girl walking toward the house. She did not look up, and he caught only an indistinct glimpse of her face. She spoke to him, however, as she went by, which is the invariable custom with the inhabitants of the sequestered nooks among the encompassing mountains, whether meeting stranger or acquaintance. He lifted his hat in return, with that punctilious courtesy which he made a point of according to persons of low degree. In another moment she had passed down the narrow sandy road, overhung with gigantic trees, and, at a deft, even pace, hardly slackened as she traversed the great log extending across the rushing stream, she made her way up the opposite hill, and disappeared gradually over its brow.
The expression of her face, half-seen though it was, had attracted his attention. He rode slowly along, meditating. "Did she go into Shaw's house, just around the curve of the road?" he wondered. "Is she Shaw's daughter, or some visiting neighbor?"
That night he looked with a new interest at the red star, set like a jewel in the floating mists of the valley.
"Do you know," he asked of Hi Bates, when the three men were seated, after supper, around the camp-fire, which sent lurid tongues of flame and a thousand bright sparks leaping high in the darkness, and illumined the vistas of the woods on every side, save where the sudden crag jutted over the valley,--"Do you know whether Jerry Shaw has a daughter,--a young girl?"
"Ye-es," drawled Hi Bates, disparagingly, "he hev."
A pause ensued. The star in the valley was blotted from sight; the rising mists had crept to the verge of the crag; nay, in the undergrowth fringing the mountain's brink, there were softly clinging white wreaths.
"Is she pretty?" asked Chevis.
"Waal, no, she ain't," said Hi Bates, decisively. "She's a pore, no 'count critter." Then he added, as if he were afraid of being misapprehended, "Not ez thar is any harm in the gal, ye onderstand. She's a mighty good, saft-spoken, quiet sort o' gal, but she's a pore, white-faced, slim little critter. She looks like she hain't got no sort'n grit in her. She makes me think o' one o' them slim little slips o' willow every time nor I sees her. She hain't got long ter live, I reckon," he concluded, dismally.
Reginald Chevis asked him no more questions about Jerry Shaw's daughter.
Not long afterward, when Chevis was hunting through the deep woods about the base of the mountain near the Christel road, his horse happened to cast a shoe. He congratulated himself upon his proximity to the forge, for there was a possibility that the blacksmith might be at work; according to the account which Hi Bates had given of Jerry Shaw's habits, there were half a dozen chances against it. But the shop was at no great distance, and he set out to find his way back to the Christel road, guided by sundry well-known landmarks on the mountain side: certain great crags hanging above the tree-tops, showing in grander sublimity through the thinning foliage, or beetling bare and grim; a dismantled and deserted hovel, the red-berried vines twining amongst the rotting logs; the full flow of a tumultuous stream making its last leap down a precipice eighty feet high, with yeasty, maddening waves below and a rainbow-crowned crystal sheet above. And here again the curves of the woodland road. As the sound of the falling water grew softer and softer in the distance, till it was hardly more than a drowsy murmur, the faint vibrations of a far-off anvil rang upon the air. Welcome indeed to Chevis, for however enticing might be the long rambles through the redolent October woods with dog and gun, he had no mind to tramp up the mountain to his tent, five miles distant, leading the resisting horse all the way. The afternoon was so clear and so still that the metallic sound penetrated far through the quiet forest. At every curve of the road he expected to see the log-cabin with its rail fence, and beyond the low-hanging chestnut-tree, half its branches resting upon the roof of the little shanty of a blacksmith's shop. After many windings a sharp turn brought him full upon the humble dwelling, with its background of primeval woods and the purpling splendors of the western hills. The chickens were going to roost in a stunted cedar-tree just without the door; an incredibly old man, feeble and bent, sat dozing in the lingering sunshine on the porch; a girl, with a pail on her head, was crossing the road and going down a declivity toward a spring which bubbled up in a cleft of the gigantic rocks that were piled one above another, rising to a great height. A mingled breath of cool, dripping water, sweet-scented fern, and pungent mint greeted him as he passed it. He did not see the girl's face, for she had left the road before he went by, but he recognized the slight figure, with that graceful poise acquired by the prosaic habit of carrying weights upon the head, and its lithe, swaying beauty reminded him of the mountaineer's comparison,--a slip of willow.
And now, under the chestnut-tree, in anxious converse with Jerry Shaw, who came out hammer in hand from the anvil, concerning the shoe to be put on Strathspey's left fore-foot, and the problematic damage sustained since the accident. Chevis's own theory occupied some minutes in expounding, and so absorbed his attention that he did not observe, until the horse was fairly under the blacksmith's hands, that, despite Jerry Shaw's unaccustomed industry, this was by no means a red-letter day in his habitual dissipation. He trembled for Strathspey, but it was too late now to interfere. Jerry Shaw was in that stage of drunkenness which is greatly accented by an elaborate affectation of sobriety. His desire that Chevis should consider him perfectly sober was abundantly manifest in his rigidly steady gait, the preternatural gravity in his bloodshot eyes, his sparingness of speech, and the earnestness with which he enunciated the acquiescent formulæ which had constituted his share of the conversation. Now and then, controlling his faculties by a great effort, he looked hard at Chevis to discover what doubts might be expressed in his face concerning the genuineness of this staid deportment; and Chevis presently found it best to affect too. Believing that the blacksmith's histrionic attempts in the _rôle_ of sober artisan were occupying his attention more than the paring of Strathspey's hoof, which he held between his knees on his leather apron, while the horse danced an animated measure on the other three feet, Chevis assumed an appearance of indifference, and strolled away into the shop. He looked about him, carelessly, at the horseshoes hanging on a rod in the rude aperture that served as window, at the wagon-tires, the plowshares, the glowing fire of the forge. The air within was unpleasantly close, and he soon found himself again in the door-way.
"Can I get some water here?" he asked, as Jerry Shaw reëntered, and began hammering vigorously at the shoe destined for Strathspey.
The resonant music ceased for a moment. The solemn, drunken eyes were slowly turned upon the visitor, and the elaborate affectation of sobriety was again obtrusively apparent in the blacksmith's manner. He rolled up more closely the blue-checked homespun sleeve from his corded hammer-arm, twitched nervously at the single suspender that supported his copper-colored jeans trousers, readjusted his leather apron hanging about his neck, and, casting upon Chevis another glance, replete with a challenging gravity, fell to work upon the anvil, every heavy and well-directed blow telling with the precision of machinery.
The question had hardly been heard before forgotten. At the next interval, when he was going out to fit the horse, Chevis repeated his request.
"Water, did ye say?" asked Jerry Shaw, looking at him with narrowing eyelids, as if to shut out all other contemplation that he might grapple with this problem. "Thar's no fraish water hyar, but ye kin go yander ter the house and ax fur some; or," he added, shading his eyes from the sunlight with his broad, blackened hand, and looking at the huge wall of stone beyond the road, "ye kin go down yander ter the spring, an' ax that thar gal fur a drink."
Chevis took his way, in the last rays of sunshine, across the road and down the declivity in the direction indicated by the blacksmith. A cool gray shadow fell upon him from the heights of the great rocks, as he neared them; the narrow path leading from the road grew dank and moist, and presently his feet were sunk in the still green and odorous water-loving weeds, the clumps of fern, and the pungent mint. He did not notice the soft verdure; he did not even see the beautiful vines that hung from earth-filled niches among the rocks, and lent to their forbidding aspect something of a smiling grace; their picturesque grouping, where they had fallen apart to show this sparkling fountain of bright up-springing water, was all lost upon his artistic perceptions. His eyes were fixed on the girl standing beside the spring, her pail filled, but waiting, with a calm, expectant look on her face, as she saw him approaching.
No creature could have been more coarsely habited: a green cotton dress, faded to the faintest hue; rough shoes, just visible beneath her skirts; a dappled gray and brown calico sun-bonnet, thrown aside on a moss-grown bowlder near at hand. But it seemed as if the wild nature about her had been generous to this being toward whom life and fortune had played the niggard. There were opaline lights in her dreamy eyes which one sees nowhere save in sunset clouds that brood above dark hills; the golden sunbeams, all faded from the landscape, had left a perpetual reflection in her bronze hair; there was a subtle affinity between her and other pliant, swaying, graceful young things, waving in the mountain breezes, fed by the rain and the dew. She was hardly more human to Chevis than certain lissome little woodland flowers, the very names of which he did not know,--pure white, star-shaped, with a faint green line threading its way through each of the five delicate petals; he had seen them embellishing the banks of lonely pools, or growing in dank, marshy places in the middle of the unfrequented road, where perhaps it had been mended in a primitive way with a few rotting rails.
"May I trouble you to give me some water?" asked Chevis, prosaically enough. She neither smiled nor replied. She took the gourd from the pail, dipped it into the lucent depths of the spring, handed it to him, and stood awaiting its return when he should have finished. The cool, delicious water was drained, and he gave the gourd back. "I am much obliged," he said.
"Ye're welcome," she replied, in a slow, singing monotone. Had the autumn winds taught her voice that melancholy cadence?