Part 6

“You, Seth, have more influence with the people than any one man in this county. You’re connected by family to every big clan in Breathitt. When you say peace, they keep the peace; when you say war, they fight. For years now there’s been no general trouble. That’s because, as you declared, war don’t pay. And you’re right, indeed you are, where feud wars are concerned. We’ve had enough of them, God knows!”

Todd continued: “Seth, they’re framing a draft bill there in Washington. They’re going to make men join the army if they won’t join it voluntarily. Now our boys never had to be kicked into battle, Seth. They’ve got the good old Kentucky warrior blood in their veins; and the better the cause, the harder they fight. Let’s show the country that Breathitt isn’t as bad as printer’s ink has painted her. Let’s not wait for that draft bill. Tell your men, Seth, that this is the worst war and the best war that ever happened. Tell ’em it’s the most wicked war and the holiest war in which a Kentuckian was ever privileged to draw a bead. Say the word, old friend, and every son of Breathitt will rally to the flag, to wipe the stains from their own hills and help clean the world’s slate for the universal writing of the name Democracy!”

Again old Seth shook his head. He waved his hand with a gesture of finality, then brought his fist to his knee with a dull thud.

“Yer a mighty purty talker, lawyer, and I ’low ye means what ye says—but, I tells ye, I ain’t got no consarn in this here war. Keeser and his Germins ain’t done nothin’ to me and my folks. Them men o’ Breathitt who wants to fight, can fight. I won’t stop ’em. But, lawyer, I ain’t a-goin’ to call ’em to war till that feller Keeser makes the fust move agin one o’ us. That’s what I says to Jim and that’s what I’m a-sayin’ to ye,” he added defiantly.

Lawyer Todd said nothing. He knew the mettle of his people. He believed in them. He also knew that old Seth was a victim of isolation and the teachings of a primitive creed; that his opposition sprang from ignorance, not disloyalty. It was the inborn nature of a mountaineer to prefer battle among his own hills, whose every rock and peak and cove he had studied with an eye to offense and defense, rather than wage war in the enemy’s country where he was a stranger. Besides, as Seth himself had said, the Brannons and their kin had not yet smelled blood. “Keeser and his Germins” must first offer direct injury to one of them before they could feel the personal touch of war and answer the challenge from oversea.

With this realization Todd broke the silence in a firm voice, pointing to the yellow envelope in the old man’s hand.

“Seth, that telegram holds bad news for you folks.”

Seth’s attitude of defiance relaxed. Taut cords stood out beneath the dry skin of his throat as the inner man gripped himself.

“Is Jim hurt?” There was a tremor of paternalism in the question. The yellow envelope fluttered to the ground near the mare’s feet.

Todd looked Seth steadily in the eyes. “Worse than hurt, old friend, yet better than hurt,” he replied. “Jim is dead.”

Not a cry, not a tear, not a groan, not even a quiver of the world-worn mouth and brow. Only an expression of incredulity that hardened into sternness.

“Dead?—dead! My Jim dead.” Then, after a while, “Hit’ll go plumb hard with his ma, her Jimmy dead.” The keen eyes widened and the wrinkled face was lifted to the hills.

Directly, in a calm, low voice: “Tell me, lawyer, who kilt him? How was he kilt, my Jim?”

“He was killed in action, Seth, killed by ‘Keeser and his Germins’ while bombing an enemy’s trench.”

“Bombing a trench! Whar in hell was his rifle-gun?”

“He wasn’t using it then.” Todd drew on his imagination. “But he sold out at a high figger, Seth, that boy of yours. A dozen Germans went down before they got him.”

The old man’s eyes flashed. “Ye say they did? Jim he kilt a dozen of ’em?” His friend nodded. “Lord!—now don’t that beat all!” Seth chuckled an unhealthy chuckle. “Kilt a dozen of ’em!”

When he next spoke, however, it was briefly and through lips parched and drawn.

“Wal, I reckon that settles hit. Yas, lawyer, I reckon that mighty nigh settles hit.” And with shoulders bent forward, his chin in his hand, the old man lapsed into lonely meditation.

Todd left him there, seated on the stile, and with a sigh of relief that his mission had been thus far accomplished, rode his mare around to the barn. The Breathitt country that day vibrated with a silent but compelling call. Bare-footed couriers, wizards of short cut and bypath, slipped through valley and over ridge, up rocky creek bed and down steep decline, bearing a message from their chief. The lesser clan heads received the message; and from beneath their clapboard roofs, they in turn sent forth couriers to their followers. Along the waters of Troublesome, Middle Fork, Quicksand and Kentucky River, the word flashed. A hushed suspense closed over the hills. Men greeted one another in undertones, sensing rather than speaking what each had in mind. Action was the necessity of the hour; swift, tense action that tarried neither to question nor to reason, but obeyed.

But little time elapsed after Lawyer Todd left old Seth at the stile, before the Brannons and their kinsmen began to gather at the cabin of their chief. They straggled in by ones and twos and threes, some mounted and some on foot. Among them were grandfathers, with stooped shoulders and snowy beards; others were mere boys.

Most of the men bore modern rifles and revolvers; a few had shotguns. One, on whom the hookworm had set its blight, had been able to muster only a pitchfork. Another was armed with a kitchen knife and a hickory club. Besides their weapons all the equipment the men carried was a bundle of food, done up in a greasy paper, consisting of chunks of corn bread, a bit of salt and several strips of bacon.

Some of the “neighbor wimmen” had come to Seth’s cabin to tender their services and sympathies to the bereaved mother. Old Seth himself sat alone on the edge of the weather-warped porch, brooding. His rifle lay across his knees, and while one hairy hand stroked the polished stock, his eyes were fastened on the horizon above the eastern hills. The only hint of emotion in his face was the dumbness of an emotion too deep for expression.

The men stood about the yard in little groups. Out in the barn lot several of the younger men pitched horseshoes. Others played mumble-peg near the stile block, or lounged against the rail fence, whittling. The patriarchs of the clan squatted at a respectful distance from their chief, waiting to be called to council.

And upon them all poured the warming rays of the afternoon sun. The pine-fringed mountains, green with the fresh, soft green of spring, closed in grim but kindly embrace about the little army in the valley below. A dove cooed plaintively from a near-by hollow; beneath the cabin porch the cur whined and howled with a sense of approaching crisis.

After a while old Seth arose, steadying himself against the corner of the porch. And silently his followers gathered about him.

“Boys,” he said, “I reckon ye all know why I sent fer ye. Jim’s been kilt. Him that was o’ my flesh and blood, and o’ yer flesh and blood, is dead. Keeser and his Germins kilt him, boys. Nothin’ on this airth that me or ye can do will bring him back to life.

“When Jim went to war, he went withouten my lief. I’d fought a lot in my time and I wanted him to keep outen sech trouble. But he went; he got the notion he ought to go, and all I could say wouldn’t stop him. Jim says that Keeser and his Germins ’as killin’ wimmen and chil’ren over yan. He says this country’d soon be at war and that we folks o’ Breathitt ought to git ready and fight same as the rest o’ the people. I studied on hit a heap then—and today I’ve studied on hit some more.

“As Jim ’lowed hit’d be, boys, this here country’s at war. I don’t understand all about hit myself, about this de-mocracy we’re a-fightin’ fer or what we’re goin’ to do with the thing after we gits hit. Lawyer Todd says hit’s jest another name fer freedom and liberty. Maybe hit is. Anyway, boys, since I’ve thought hit over, thar ain’t been a war yet when us fellers o’ the hills ain’t took a hand. Some fought fer the Union, some fer the South. Some fought in Cuby, and some o’ our kin helped whop them sassy niggers in the Fillerpines.

“Whenever we’ve fought, boys, we’ve had a reason fer hit, a mighty good reason. Do ye remember back thar, several year ago, when Bulger Allen plugged Hal Brannon in the heart as Hal ’as comin’ home from meetin’ with his gal? Do ye recollect how hit riled us and how we got our rifle-guns and went after them Allens? They’d kilt one o’ our folks, they’d broke the peace. But afore we got through with ’em, they seen hit ’as healthiest to leave our folks alone and keep their lead to themselves!”

Seth paused, swallowed, then went on:

“Boys, Jim’s been kilt. Yesterd’y we weren’t holdin’ nothin’ agin’ Keeser and his Germins. They hadn’t hurt none o’ we’uns. What devilment they’d done, they’d done outsider these hills whar we ain’t got no concarn. But now hit’s different. Hit’s jest another case o’ them Allens, boys. Hit means we got to draw blood fer blood. Had Jim been one o’ ye or yer sons, I’d say the same thing. A Brannon’s life has been took: ye and me and all our folks has got to take lives to pay fer hissen. That’s the way we do hit up here in these mountings. That’s the way we got to do hit with Keeser and his Germins.”

Lawyer Todd, standing on the edge of the company, frowned and bit his lip. He had been listening to the speech. Inwardly he had rejoiced. But now he felt a pang of disappointment. Seth, he feared, was about to overshoot the mark in his newly aroused enthusiasm. He was reckoning on personal vengeance against “Keeser and his Germins,” something that could not be but which would be hard for him to realize.

Todd, trying to attract as little notice as possible, edged through the crowd until he stood at the old chief’s elbow. As he paused in his delivery, the lawyer caught his attention.

“Seth,” he began in an undertone, “Seth, it doesn’t pay to be too hasty about this thing you’re doing. You know, those people at Washington don’t believe in fighting exactly the way we do down here. They go about it different. It’s the young men who are sent to war. The government takes only those who are in their prime, and it’s the government that picks out the guns they’ll shoot and the clothes they’ll wear and tells ’em how to act and what to do. Don’t misunderstand me, Seth. It’s all right for you to want to go to Europe and whip ‘Keeser and his Germins,’ but Seth, you just naturally can’t go.”

The old man looked at the lawyer in surprise.

“Can’t go?” he repeated aloud. “Ye mean to say I’m too old to go?” There was wrath in the tone. Those near by moved closer, listening. “Why, lawyer, I’m as young in feelin’s as any boy here. I can tromp as fer, shoot as straight and stand as much as any sodjer the gover’nent’s got.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Todd; “that all may be very true. But it’s only the young fellows they want. Lead your men down to Jackson, let the recruiting officers there pick those who are fit: then you and the rest come back here to your farms, raise more crops, pray for them that’s gone, and be good citizens. That’s your part in the war, old friend.”

“I’ll be damned if hit is!” Seth threw up his grizzled head in anger. “I can fight as well as the best of ’em. I reckon I’m an Amerikin too. Hit’s my country and my war and my Jim what’s been kilt. Won’t they let a pa fight them as murdered his son? Won’t they let him shoot them as shot him? By Gawd! o’ course they will, lawyer, and nothin’ in all creation can make me stay home!”

Todd stepped back. He saw the futility of further argument. He even doubted the wisdom of his speaking as much as he had.

Seth wrestled with his emotions for some moments in silence. Then the passion left his wrinkled features. He was thoughtful, debating with himself. Finally, his selfcontrol regained, he turned to the waiting multitude before him.

“Maybe Lawyer Todd’s right, boys,” he said with sudden frankness. “Maybe hit’s so that we can’t all go to war agin’ them as kilt our Jim.” He flashed a friendly glance of reassurance over the heads of his followers to where the lawyer stood. “Hit’s different outsider these hills ’an hit is here. We ain’t the only ones a-fightin’ Keeser and his Germins. The whole nation’s a-got hits dander up. Lawyer Todd says that afore the break o’ another spring thar’ll be more’n a million sodjers ’long side o’ us, ready to whop them Germins. I reckon I spoke kinda hasty jest now. We can’t have hit all our way. We’ll jest have to fit in with the rest wharever we can. Hit may be a close fit and hit may pinch at times, boys, but hit’s best. Lawyer Todd and them army men knows. We’ll try and make up our minds to do what they ’lows is fer the good o’ all o’ us.

“So we’ll go down to Jackson town, to that re-cruitin’ office, and axe them sodjer fellers thar to git us to Eurip. They’re showin’ others the way and I reckon they’ll show us. Some o’ us won’t come back, boys, like Jim won’t come back. Some o’ us is liable to lose a arm or a leg. But remember this, boys, wharever ye go or whoever ye’re fightin’, that ye’re men o’ Breathitt. Remember ve’re not only goin’ to kill Germins but to kill the bad name that the world ’as give us. Me and Lawyer Todd stands together on that. We’re goin’ to stop wastin’ powder on our own folks. We’re goin’ to show them people in the Blue Grass and all over the country, that the men o’ these mountings is men no different from them when hit comes to shoulderin’ a rifle-gun and pertectin’ their homes and wimmen and chil’ren. We’re goin’ to make Breathitt stand fer somethin’ else besides Breathitt blood.”

Old Seth picked up his rifle from where he had leaned it against the porch wall. His hand was steady; he pressed the gun over his heart as if to breathe into its lifeless mechanism a part of his own warrior spirit.

“Boys, time’s up,” he said. “War’s on. Jim’s body over yan is callin’ us to come. Hit’s a-callin’ us men o’ the hills, us men o’ Breathitt. We’re a-goin’”—he raised his voice. “Wars on, I say, boys, war’s on; and Keeser and his Germins is goin’ to catch hell—Breathitt hell—and hell a-plenty!”

As their chief concluded a wild yell burst from ten score mountain throats, a weird and ringing yell that surged through the neighboring valleys, beat against the stolid walls of rock and pine, and bounded upward and beyond, the answer of the Breathitt folk to humanity’s call to arms.

Lawyer Todd, a smile lifting the weariness from his face, sat his mare and watched the departure of the little army. There was no saying of farewells to the women and children; there were no handclasps or tears. Old Seth, astride a long-eared mule, led the way. The others straggled after him in irregular order. Those who had mounts rode them; the rest followed on foot. With their packs of food slung over their shoulders, their guns in the crook of their arms, the men filed out of the cabin yard and through the valley toward a distant gap in the hills.

“My people, my people!” softly exclaimed Todd, as he moved after them. “Kentuckians all, Americans all, this day you give the lie to the slander put upon your mountain race. My people, my noble people!”

Dry-eyed women, shading their brows with toil-scarred hands, lingered at their cabin doors, their children clustered about them, and watched their men go by. Occasionally one of them waved, and an answering salute came from among the irregular ranks.

Beyond the western ridges the sun dropped into a saffron sky, crowning with a halo of gold the reborn feudland, touching with mellow light the crags and peaks that stood out proudly in the dusk. High above the misty valleys a bald eagle circled, forward, backward, forward, backward, over the country of warrior clans; while through the distant gap marched mountain men, men of soul and heart and brawn.

Breathitt was at war!

_Lewis H. Kilpatrick_.

THE FORGIVER

Religion, said the mining man, sometimes puts me in mind of one of those new blasting powders; there’s no just telling when it’ll go off or whom it’ll blow up.

I was thinking then of Radway and Billsky: “Bad” Radway, him that beat up Ellis at Borromeo and shot Fargue O’Leary. You will have heard of him. Every one was hearing of him at one time, and then all the talk kind of faded out. By and by Radway himself faded out. It was Billsky that faded him.

Billsky was a little, serious, hairy fellow, not much higher than Radway’s elbow; a good little fellow, that never gave any trouble to any one. He always seemed, in a meek sort of way, puzzled over existence in general and his own share in it in particular. Men liked him. He was awful kindhearted, but he’d the same sense of humor as an Apache. Primitive, that’s what he was. He was part Russian, and he’d a primitive sort of name that no one ever tried to pronounce. Billsky came near enough.

He scarcely ever came in Rad’s way, though he moved with the same crowd. Rad was in the center, you see, Billsky just wanderin’ on the outskirts. They got mixed up pretty close, though, later.

It began with a girl, of course, a girl at Borromeo. No need for names. She was a nice girl, and a nice-lookin’ girl, just one of many, thank God. No one so much as guessed Billsky was sweet on her till she went away suddenly and was seen no more, and her folks moved away. It was put down to Rad, and he didn’t deny it; sort o’ smiled and looked knowin’. You know the kind. Then Billsky heard of it. He was working up at the Joyeux then, for that was before the irrigation was put through, and it was all cattle. He sent a message through to Radway. “I’m coming down to kill you,” said the message, “soon as I can get my time. Don’t go away.”

Well, that was Billsky all over, and most men thought it was a great joke. Radway did. “What does the little rat take me for?” he said. “I guess he’s in no hurry. I’ll have some time to wait.” Most men thought so, too, but not all.

Meanwhile, Billsky stuck to his job till he could quit without giving inconvenience. Then he got his time. He sunk every dollar of his pay in a fine pony, a quick goer. And down he came the eighty miles to Borromeo, like a fire in grass.

The betting was all on Rad, of course. It was said he thought Billsky too good a joke to shoot; he’d just beat him up a bit if he was troublesome, and let him go.

Twenty miles out of Borromeo, Billsky had to stop at a preacher’s. And there he got religion.

Yes, it’s a fact; he got it overnight. What he told the preacher, or the preacher said to him, I don’t know. I don’t begin to know. But Billsky went off afoot into the desert, five miles maybe; and it is pretty much of a desert round there. He had nothing with him but the gun he was going to shoot Radway with, and a Bible. He laid them both under a sagebush, and all night he knelt in front of them, and waited for the Lord to begin on him. There isn’t much in the desert at night, you know, but stars; and a sky back of ’em that makes even the planets look cheap. The Lord must have had His way with Billsky, without fear or favor, for at dawn he came staggering back to the preacher, drenched with sweat and dew. He had only the Bible with him.

“I believe,” he said to the preacher, “and as I hope for forgiveness, so I forgive the man it was in my heart to kill. Tell him so from me,” he said; “but it’s laid on me,” said Billsky, “that I’ll never save my soul till I tell him so myself. So tell him, too, to wait for me, for I’m a-coming to forgive him.” Then he went down in a heap at the preacher’s feet.

That old man was a real Christian, and he put Billsky to bed and looked after him like a father. He’d never had an out-and-out hot-on-the-spot convert like that before, and he was so worked up and excited over it that he saddled his old horse and rode into Borromeo himself to give Radway the message of forgiveness.

I was in Duluth’s, with some of the other fellows, looking at some new saddles he had in; and Rad was there, too, and there was a good deal of talk going on of one kind and another. Some one must have told the old preacher where Rad was, for he pulled up his old white nag outside Duluth’s, and “Mr. Radway!” he called, in a high voice, “Mr. Radway! I have a message for you.”

“Hello!” said Rad, winking at his cronies,—I wasn’t one,—“Is Billsky coming with his gun? I must get ready to hide.” And there was laughing.

Sitting his old horse straight as an Indian, the old preacher raised his head and took his hat off. His white hair shone in the sun. There seemed to be more than sun shining on his face. “Mr. Radway,” says he, “the message I bring is one of forgiveness. You have nothing to fear from Billsky. He forgives you. And I was to tell you that he will never rest until he himself can assure you of that forgiveness. And may the Lord have mercy on you,” said the old man, and put on his hat and rode away. I give you my word, I never heard Duluth’s so quiet! There wasn’t a sound till Radway caught his breath and began to curse.

Funny what’ll get a man’s nerve, eh? It sent Rad quite wild to think Billsky wanted to forgive him!

Billsky was sick at the preacher’s some time. He came into Borromeo looking queerer and hairier than ever, and simply eaten alive with the longin’ to forgive Rad. “’Tisn’t him I’m thinking of,” he explained in his careful way, “he’ll get what’s coming to him, anyway; it’s me,” he said. “How’m I to save my soul if I don’t forgive him?”

“Well, you can’t forgive him just yet,” said the man he was talking to, sort of soothing. “He ain’t here. He’s on a new job: foreman at the Llindura, and went out last week.”

“Oh!” said Billsky. He looked all around him, kind of taken aback and hurt. “Oh! Why’d he do that?”

“He didn’t do it because he was afraid of you, old sport,” said the other man, laughing fit to hurt himself, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Billsky looked more hurt than ever. He’d big collie-dog eyes in his furry face, and now they fairly filled with tears. “Why should I think that?” he said earnestly. “I only want to forgive him. I only want to tell him I forgive him.” And he went away, all puzzled at the contrariety of things in general.

He kept pretty small and quiet about Borromeo for a few days; and then I saw him looking awful pleased with himself. “Gray Thomas,” he told me, “he’s going out to the Llindura with some mules, and he’ll take me along. So now I’ll be able to forgive Radway,” he said, “and get it off my mind.”

He went out to the Llindura with the mules. When he got there, he found Rad had been sent to Sageville with a bunch of calves the day before.

He stayed a week at the Llindura, almost too worried to earn his keep, waiting for Radway. Radway didn’t come. At the end of the week, he lit out for Sageville. Halfway there, he met the rest of Rad’s outfit, coming back. “Rad’s been bit with the mining fever,” they told Billsky, “and he’s off into the Altanero country with a man he met in Sageville. The boss’ll be mad with him.” Billsky looked more grieved than ever.

“Did he know I was waiting for him?” said he.

“No,” said they, “how should he?”

Well, how should he? But I believe he did. You see, Billsky’s forgiveness had got on his nerves.

It was a close call in Sageville that Radway’d get forgiven in spite of himself. He actually rode out one end of the town with his new partner as Billsky came in at the other.