Chapter 2

“Wed we was,” the mountain-man went on; and an imperceptible pause followed the words. “We rid down to Garyville to be wed, an' we went from the jestice's office to the office of this here Dickert. He had a cuss with him that was no better'n him; an' when it come to the time in the signin' that our names was put down, an' my wife was to be 'examined privately and apart'--ez is right an' lawful--ez to whether I'd made her sign or not, this other cuss steps with her into the hall, an' Dickert turns an' says to me, 'You git a thousand dollars each fer your land--you an' that woman,' he says.

“I never liked the way he spoke--besides what he said; an' I says to him, 'The bargain was made fer five thousand dollars apiece,' says I, 'an' why do we git less?'

“'Beca'se,' says he, a-swellin' up an' lookin' at me red an' devilish,--'beca'se you take my leavin's--you fool! I bought the land of you fer a thousand dollars each--an' there's my deed to it, that you jest signed--I reckon you can read it. Ef I sell the land to the company--it's none o' your business what I git fer it.'

“Well, I can't read--not greatly. I don't know how I knowed--but I did know--that he was gittin' from the company the five thousand dollars apiece that we was to have had. I seen his eye cut round to the hall door, an' I thort he had that money on him (beca'se he was their agent an' they'd trusted him so far) fer to pay me and Euola in cash. With that he grabbed up the deed an' stuffed it into his pocket. Lord! Lord! I could 'a' shook it out o' him--an' the money too--hit's what I would 'a' done if the fool had 'a' kep' his mouth shut. But I reckon hit was God's punishment on him 'at he had to go on sayin', 'Yes, you tuck my leavin's in the money, an' you've tuck my leavin's agin to-day.' Euola was jest comin' into the room when he said that, an' he looked at her. I hit him.” He gazed down the length of his arm thoughtfully. “I ort to be careful when I hit out, bein' stronger than most. But I was mad, an' I hit harder than I thort. I reached over an' grabbed open the table drawer jest fer luck--an' thar was the money. I tuck it. The other cuss he was down on the floor, sorter whimperin' an' workin' over this feller Dickert; an' he begun to yell that I'd killed 'im. With that Euola she gives me one look--white ez paper she was--an' she says, 'Run, Andy honey. I'll git to ye when I kin.'” The mountain-man was silent so long that Kerry thought he was done. But he suddenly said:

“She ketched my sleeve, jest ez I made to start, an' said: 'I'll come, Andy. Mind, Andy, _I'll come to ye, ef I live_.'” Then there was the silence of sympathy between the two men.

So that was the history of the crime--a very different history from the one Kerry had heard.

“Hit's right tetchy business--er has been--a-tryin' to take Andy Proudfoot,” the outlaw continued; “but, Dan, I'd got mighty tired, time you come. An' Euola--”

Kerry rose abruptly, the memory hot within him of Proudfoot's offer of the night before. The mountaineer got slowly to his feet.

“They's somethin' I wanted to show ye, too, ye remember,” he said. They walked together down the bluff, to where another little cavern, low and shallow, hid itself behind huckleberry-bushes. “I kep' the money here,” Proudfoot said, kneeling in the cramped entrance and delving among the rocks. He drew out a roll of bills and fingered them thoughtfully.

“The reward, now, hit was fifteen hundred dollars--with what the State an' company both give, warn't it? Dan, I was mighty proud ye wouldn't have it--I wanted to give it to ye this-a-way. I don't know as I've got any rights on Euola's money. I reckon I mought ax you fer to take it to her, ef so be you could find her. My half--you kin have it, an' welcome.”

Fear was in Kerry's heart. “An' what'll you be doin'?” he inquired, huskily.

“Me?” asked Andy, listlessly. “Euola she's done gone plumb back on me,” he explained. “I hain't heard one word from her sence the trouble, an' I've got that far I hain't a-keerin' what becomes of me. I like you, Dan; I'd ruther you had the money--”

“Oh, my Gawd! Don't, Andy,” choked the Irishman. “Let me think, man,” as the other's surprised gaze dwelt on him. Up to this time all Kerry's faculties had been engrossed in what was told him, or that which went on before his eyes. Now memory suddenly roused in him. The woman he had seen back at Asheville, the woman who called herself Mandy Greefe, but whom the police there suspected of being Andy Proudfoot's wife, whom they had twice endeavored, unsuccessfully, to follow in long, secret excursions into the mountains. What was the story? What had they said? That she was seeking Proudfoot, or was in communication with him; that was it! They had warned Kerry that the woman was mild-looking (he had seen her patient, wistful face the last thing as he left Asheville), but that she might do him a mischief if she suspected he was on the trail of her husband. “My Lord! Oh, my Lord! W'y, old man,--w'y, Andy boy!” he cried, joyously, patting the shoulder of the big man, who still knelt with the roll of money in his hands,--“Andy, she's waitin' fer you--she's true as steel! She's ready to go with you. Yes, an' Dan Kerry's the boy to git ye out o' this under the very noses o' that police an' detective gang at Asheville. 'Tis you an' me that'll go together, Andy.”

Proudfoot still knelt. His nostrils flickered; his eyes glowed. “Have a care what you're a-sayin',” he began, in a low, shaking voice. “Euola! Euola! You've saw me pretty mild; but don't you be mistook by that, like that feller Dickert was mistook. Don't you lie to me an' try to fool me 'bout her. One o' them fellers I shot had me half-way to Garyville, tellin' me she was thar--sick--an' sont him fer me.”

Kerry laughed aloud. “Me foolin' you!” he jeered. “'Tis a child I've been in your hands, ye black, big, still, solemn rascal! Here's money a-plenty, an' you that knows these mountains--the fur side--an' me that knows the ropes. You'll lend me a stake f'r the West. We'll go together--all four of us. Oh Lord!” and again tears were on the sanguine cheeks.

The Level of Fortune

BY ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH

She was the ambition of the younger girls and the envy of the less fortunate. Bessie Hall had _everything_, they said.

Her prettiness, indeed, was chiefly in slender plumpness and bloom. But it served her purpose as no classic mould would have done. She did not overestimate it. But she was probably better satisfied with it than with most of those conditions of her life that people were always telling her were ideal. They spoke of her as the only child in a way that implied congratulations on the undivided inheritance--and that reminded her how she had always wanted a sister. They talked of her idyllic life on a blue-grass stock-farm--when she was wheedling from her father a winter in Washington. They envied her often when they had the very thing she wanted--or, at least, she didn't have it. They enlarged on her popularity, and she answered, “Oh yes, nice boys, most of them, but--”

She had always said, “_When_ I marry,” not “_if_,” and had said it much as she said, “When I grow up.” And, yes, she believed in fate: that everybody who belonged to you would find you out; but--it was only hospitable to meet them half-way! So her admirers found her in the beginning hopefully interested, and in the end rather mournfully unconvinced. Her regret seemed so genuinely on her own account as well as theirs that they usually carried off a very kind feeling for her. She was equally open to enlistment in any other proposed diversion. For Bessie lived in a constant state of great expectation that something really nice would really happen to-morrow. There was always something wrong to-day.

“It's not fair!” she complained to Guy Osbourne, when he came to tell her good-by, all in the gray. “I'm positively discriminated against. If _I_ have an engagement, it's sure to rain! And now just when I'm beginning to be a grown young lady, with a prospect _at last_ of a thoroughly good time, a war has to break out!”

Her petulance was pretty. Guy laughed. “How disobliging!” he sympathized. “And how modest!” he added--which the reader may disentangle; Bessie did not. “_At last!_” he mocked her.

For Bessie Hall, whose community already moved in an orbit around her, and whose parents had, according to a familiar phrase, an even more circumscribed course around her little finger--for Bessie Hall to rail at fate was deliciously absurd, delightfully feminine!

When Bessie was most unreasonable one only wanted to kiss her. Guy's privileges in that line had passed with the days when he used to pick up bodily his lithe little playfellow to cross a creek or rain-puddled road. But to-day seemed pleasantly momentous; it called for the unusual. “I say, Bibi, when a knight went off to fight, you know, his lady used to give him a stirrup-cup at good-by. Don't you think it would be really sweet of you--”

She held off, only to be provoking. She would have thought no more of kissing Guy than a brother--or she thought she wouldn't. To be sure, she hadn't for years; there was no occasion; and then, of course, one didn't. She laughed and shook her head, and retreated laughing. And he promptly captured her.... She freed herself, suddenly serious. And Guy stood sobered--sobered not at going to the war, but at leaving her.

“There now, run along.”

“Well, good-by.” But he lingered. There was nothing more to say, but he lingered. “Well, good-by. Be good, Bibi.”

“It looks as if that was all I'd have a chance to be.” The drawl of the light voice with its rising inflection was so engaging, no one called it nasal. “And it's so much more difficult and important to be charming!”

He was sobered at leaving her, but he never thought of not going with the rest. He went, and all the rest. And Bessie found herself, just when nature had crowned her with womanhood, a princess without a kingdom. To be sure, living on the border gave her double opportunities, and for contrasting romances. There were episodes that comforted her with the reflection that she was not getting wholly out of practice in the arts. And there was real adventure in flying and secret visits from Guy and the rest--Guy, who was never again just the same with her; but, for that matter, neither was she just the same with him. But, on the whole, as she pouted to him afterward, she wouldn't call that four years' war exactly entertaining!

The Halls personally did not suffer so deeply as their neighbors except from property loss. All they could afford, and more, they gave to the South, and the Northern invader took what was left. When there was nothing left, he hacked the rosewood furniture and made targets of the family portraits, in the mere wantonness of loot that, as a recriminative compliment, cannot be laid to the charge of any one period or section. Most of the farm negroes crossed the river. Funds ran low.

There had been ease and luxury in the family always, and just when Bessie reached the time to profit by them she remarked that they failed.

Even if the Halls were not in mourning, no one lives through such a time without feeling the common humanity. But Bessie, though she lingered on the brink of love as of all the other deeps of life--curious, adventurous, at once willing and reluctant--was still, in the end, quite steady.

When the war was over, the Halls were poor, on a competence of land run to waste, with no labor to work it, and no market to sell it. And Mr. Hall, like so many of his generation, was too hampered by habit and crushed by reminiscence to meet the new day.

It was the contrast in Guy's spirit that won Bessie. His was indeed the immemorial spirit of youth--whether it be of the young world, or the young male, or the young South--to accept the issue of trial by combat and give loyalty to one proved equally worthy of sword or hand.

“We're whipped,” he told her, “and that settles it. Now there's other work for us than brooding over it. All the same, the South has a future, Bibi, and that means a future for you and me.”

“Not in the manufacture of poetry, I'm afraid,” she laughed. “You dropped a stitch.”

She did not seem to take his prowess, either past or to come, very seriously; and her eyebrows and her inflection went up at the assumption of the “we” in his plans. But--she listened.

His definiteness was itself effective. She herself did not know what she wanted. Something was wrong; or rather, everything was. She was finding life a great bore. But what would be right, she couldn't say, except that it must be different.

Guy looked sure and seasoned as he poured out his plans; and together with the maturing tan and breadth from his rough life, there was an unconquerable boyishness in the lift of his head and the light of his eyes.

“This enthusiasm is truly beautiful!” she teased.

It was, in truth, infectious.

Why! it was love she had wanted. The four years had been so empty--without Guy.

She went into it alert, receptive, optimistic. But it nettled her that everybody should be so congratulatory, and nobody surprised. It wasn't what _she_ would call ideal for two impoverished young aristocrats to start life on nothing but affection and self-confidence.

It did seem as if the choicest fruit always came to _her_ specked.

“Never mind,” Guy encouraged her. “Just give me ten years. It will be a little hard on you at first, Bibi dear, I know, but it would be harder at your father's now. And it won't be long!”

There was only one comment of whose intention Bessie was uncertain: “So Guy is to continue carrying you over the bad places, Bessie?”

Hm! She had been thinking it rather a fine thing for _her_ to do. And that appealed to her.

“And think what an amusing anecdote it will make after a while, Guy,--how, with all your worldly goods tied up in a red bandanna, and your wife on your arm instead of her father's doorstep, you set out to make your fortune, and to live meanwhile in the City of Un-Brotherly Love!”

But Bessie had the standards of an open-handed people to whom economy was not a virtue. There had always been on her mother's table for every meal “salt-risin' light bread” and corn pone or griddle-cakes, half a dozen kinds of preserves, the staples in proportion. Her mother would have been humiliated had there been any noticeable diminution in the supply when the meal was over; and she and the cook would have had a council of war had a guest failed to eat and praise any single dish.

Bessie had not realized how inglorious their meagreness would be, until Mrs. Grey, at the daughter's table, grew unctuously reminiscent about the mother's.

“Dear me!” Guy tried afterward to comfort the red eyelids and tremulous lips, “do you want a table so full it takes your appetite at sight?”

“I'm afraid I can't joke about disgrace!” Bessie quivered.

“But, Bibi dear, Mrs. Grey is simply behind the times. The _rationale_ of those enormous meals was not munificence, but that a horde of house-servants had to be fed at a second table.”

Certainly Guy and his good spirits were excellent company. And Bessie came of a race of women used to gay girlhoods and to settling down thereafter, as a matter of course, into the best of house-mothers.

But there was a difference between the domestic arts she had been taught as necessary to the future lady of a large household and the domestic industries she had to practise. Supervising and doing were not the same. For her mother, sewing and cooking had been accomplishments; for her they were work. She had to do things a lady didn't do.

However, she was as fastidious about what she did for herself as about what was done for her. She was quick and efficient. People said Bessie Osbourne had the dearest home in town, was the best housekeeper, the most nicely dressed on nothing. You might know Bessie Hall would have the best of everything!

And when Bessie began to wonder if that was true, she had entered the last circle of disappointment.

The fact was that, after the first novelty, things seemed pretty much the same as before. Bessie Osbourne was not so different from Bessie Hall. She might have appreciated that as significant; but doubtless she had never heard the edifying jingle of the unfortunate youth who “wandered over all the earth” without ever finding “the land where he would like to stay,” and all because he was injudicious enough to take “his disposition with him everywhere he went.” It was as if she had been going in a circle from right to left, and, after a blare of drums and trumpets and a stirring “About--face!” she had found herself going in the same circle from left to right. It all came to the same thing, and that was nothing. Guy was apparently working hard; but, after all, in real life it seemed one did not plant the adepts' magic seed that sprouted, grew, bloomed, while you looked on for a moment. For herself, baking and stitching took all her time, without taking nearly all her interest, or seeming to matter much when all was said and done. If she neglected things, they went undone, or some one else did them; in any case Guy never complained. If she did what came up, each day was filled with meeting each day's demands. All their lives went into the means and preparation for living. Other people--Or was it really any different with them? Nine-tenths of the people nine-tenths of the time seemed to accomplish only a chance to exist. She had heard women complain that such was the woman's lot in order that men might progress. But it struck her very few men worked beyond the provision of present necessities, either. Was it all a myth, then--happiness, experience, romance? Was this all there was to life and love? What was the sense, the end? Her dissatisfaction reproached the Cosmos, grew to that _Weltschmerz_ which is merely low spirits and reduced vitality, not “an infirmity of growth.”

She constantly expected perfection, and all that fell below it was its opposite extreme, and worthless. She began to suspect herself of being an exceptional and lofty nature deprived of her dues.

Guy was a little disappointed at her prudent objection to children until their success was established. Prudence was mere waste of time to his courage and assurance. And he believed, though without going into the psychology of the situation, that Bessie would be happier with a child or two.

“Oh, how can we do any more?” she answered, in her pretty, spoiled way. “We're trying to cut a two-yard garment out of a one-yard piece now.” At least, she was; and so Guy was.

Well, it wasn't a great matter yet. It is not in the early years of marriage that that lack is most felt. And Bessie was not very strong; she never seemed really well any more. She developed a succession of small ailments, lassitudes, nerves. She dragged on the hand of life, and complained. The local physician drugged her with a commendable spirit of optimism and scientific experiment. But the drawl of the light voice with its rising inflection became distinctly a whine.

She got a way of surprising Guy and upsetting his calculations with unannounced extravagances. “What's the good of all this drudgery? We're making no headway, getting nowhere; we might as well have what good we can as we go along.”

There was a negro woman in the kitchen now, and in the sitting-room one of the new sewing-machines. And Guy, who, so far, had been only excavating for the cellar of his future business house, was beginning to feel that good foundation walls were about to start.

But, even when peevish, Bessie had a way of turning up her eyes at him that reduced him to helplessness and adoration. And she was delicate! “I know,” he sympathized with her loyally, “it's like trying to work and be jolly with a jumping tooth; or rather, in your case, with a constant buzzing in your head.”

The jumping tooth was his own simile. The headaches that had begun while he was soldiering were increasing. He had intermittent periods of numbness in the lower half of his body. It was annoying to a busy man. He could offer no explanation, nor could the doctors. “Overwork,” they suggested, and advised the cure that is of no school--“rest.” That was “impossible.” Besides, it was all nonsense. He put it aside, went on, kept it from Bessie.

The end came, as it always does, even after the longest expectation, with a rush. He was suffering with one of his acute headaches one night, when Bessie fell asleep beside him. She woke suddenly, with no judgment of time, with a start of terror, a sense of oppression, or--death?

“Guy!” she screamed.

The strangeness of his answering voice only repeated the stab of fear. She was on her feet, had made a light....

He was not suffering any more. He was perfectly conscious and rational. But from the waist down he could not move nor feel.

The doctors came and talked a great deal and said little; they reminded them that not much was known of this sort of thing; they would be glad to do what they could....

“You don't mean to say this is permanent? Paralyzed? I? Oh, absurd!” Awful things happened to other people, of course--scandal, death--but to one's self--“Oh, it doesn't sound true! It can't be true. Paralyzed? _I_?”

And Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_.

The explanation was hit on long afterward, when in one of his campaign stories Guy mentioned a fall from his horse, with his spine against a rock, that had laid him unconscious for twenty-two hours.

And so the war, which had been responsible for their starting together with only a past and a future, was responsible for their having shortly only a past. Guy was not allowed his ten years.

Though he had now less actual pain, the shock seemed to jar the foundations of his life, and the sharp change in the habits of an active and vigorous body seemed to wreck his whole system. For months and months and months he seemed only a bundle of exposed nerves--that is, where he had any movement or sensation at all.

Now a past, however escutcheoned and fame-enrolled, is even more starvation diet than a future of affection and self-confidence. No help was to be had from either of their homes; it was the day of self-help for all.

Bessie wondered why this had been sent on _her_, but she took a couple of boarders at once, she sold sponge-cake and beaten biscuit, she got up classes in bread-making. And Guy stopped her busy passing to draw her hand to his lips, or watched her with dumb eyes.

Several of her friends, after trying her sewing-machine, then still something of a novelty, ordered duplicates. Guy suggested as a joke that she charge the makers a commission.

“The idea of trading on friendship?” Bessie laughed.

“Oh, I don't know,” Guy reflected, more seriously. “How about these boarders, then? That's trading on hospitality.”

It was one of those minute flashes of illumination that, multiplied and collected, become the glow of a new light, the signal of a revolution. The country was full of them in those days. The old codes were melting in the heat of change. Standards were fluid. Personally, it ended in Bessie's selling machines, first in her town, then in neighboring ones.

In the restlessness that youth thinks is aspiration for the ideal, particularly for the ideal love, is a large element of craving for place and interest. After her marriage, at least, Bessie might have had enough of both; but the obvious purpose was too limited to appeal to her. Now two appetites and the four seasons supplied motive enough for industry. There was nothing magnificent in this manifest destiny, but it had the advantage of being imperative and constant. It was no small tax on her acquired delicacy, but it gave less time for hunting symptoms. It did not answer the _Whence, Whither, and Why;_ it pointedly changed the subject. Her work began to carry her out of herself.

“Bibi dear, what a sorry end to all my promises!”