Part 5

Locked in the stony grasp of the mountains was Broomsedge Cove. Rugged with sudden deep depressions and abrupt declivities, heavily wooded here and anon broken by crags and defying cultivation, this limited basin was all unlike the neighboring coves, those fair nooks of the ranges, fertile and smiling, and level as a floor. The road, dry in summer, was the bed of a stream in winter, and the denizens of Broomsedge then cared little to rove abroad. Certain stretches of abandoned land, once cultivated, had given the place its name, and down their slopes flourished the graceless broomsedge,—pest, poverty-bitten, blight. It seemed to seek the manner of the worthier growths, to bear itself like wheat, or rye, or oats; it wore the semblance of a crop, as it shared with them the bounty of the sun and the benediction of the rain. It waved in the wind, half defiant, half forlorn. Wherever it encroached upon the fields, the grace of utility and the guerdon of labor were gone, and this flout of nature, this perversity of herbage, prospered unwelcome in their stead. But Broomsedge Cove could still boast a considerable acreage of grain, fair and thrifty enough, the unripe green tint contrasting with the red-brown tones of the sedge.

By daylight the Settlement was hardly so apparent to the casual eye as at night, when each red light was the exponent of a fireside. The houses, some of them a quarter of a mile apart, nestling amidst their orchards, were quite invisible while the foliage lasted. The inequalities of the ground further masked the extent of the hamlet; occasionally a blue curl of smoke from beyond a jagged hill gave the only intimation that its further slopes were preëmpted as a home. The blacksmith’s shop was on the extreme outskirts, beyond the fields and the abandoned spaces where the broomsedge grew. The massive wooded mountain rose close behind it; the gorge narrowed just beyond it, and between the cliffs a stream, with a swift arrowy motion, and now and then a white flash, shot down the steeps. The smith made it useful in his simple art, and its song was a solace to his idle hours. But this was not the only chant flung forth upon the air. Loud and long were the sounds of revelry often issuing from the forge, and in a diminuendo reaching even the ears of the far-away neighbors, who thanked their stars that they were no nearer. The elders, constrained alike by dignity and religion, were wont to shake their heads, and sourly marvel what could be going on at the forge; and the younger men frequently found themselves obliged to go over at once and investigate. The forge was the resort of certain hilarious spirits, among whom the smith himself was chief. Concerning these roisterers grim reports were bruited abroad. It was averred that a greasy pack of “playin’-kyerds” was cherished there, and that a “streak o’luck” seemed to be more desired than light on salvation. A jug of a portly grace had been descried, one day, lurking behind the elevated hearth of the forge,—quite empty, it is true, but an aroma lingered about its corn-cob stopper that was fresh and strong and unmistakable. They often sang; the blacksmith’s burly bass voice could be heard with the supplementing echoes over many a furlong of his native wilds. They pitched horse-shoes in lieu of “quates,” and wrestled and measured their strength in many good-humored combats. When the great barn-like doors were open and the forge fire flickered out into the night, the place under the overhanging ledge of the mountain was like the mouth of some vast cavern. To those chancing to look in from the glooms without, while the white light fell here and there in a brilliant gleam upon the faces within, and anon fluctuated, and then sank to a red glow, and so to darkness, the hearty mortal fellows at their turbulent sports were vaguely unfamiliar, and as uncanny as goblins, or gnomes, or troglodytes. And the Settlement seemed wise in wishing them no nearer.

It was a weird and isolated place, and with these impressions astir about it, there was little wonder that a wilder fantasy should presently gain a circulation.

Teck Jepson heard it for the first time one momentous August day. As he rode slowly along the circuitous ways of Broomsedge Cove he was conscious that he surveyed the scene with an interest which it had never before elicited. The porch of Eli Strobe’s cabin was vacant, but as he dismounted from his horse, and hitched him to the rack beside the door of the blacksmith’s shop, he glanced from time to time across the fields at the house. The hop and gourd vines hung motionless about it, for no wind stirred. Through their screen his sharp eyes descried a spinning-wheel—idle and motionless. No face at the tiny window, no flutter of a blue dress among the poultry in the door-yard. The place might have seemed deserted save for the tendril of smoke slowly curling out of the clay-and-stick chimney, and the dog of the “frequent visitor,” standing in the door, wagging his tail, which he had a call to do, Teck remembered, being “purty well treated.” He momentarily canvassed the dwellers on and about Chilhowee with a vague desire to identify the owner, but the dog in no respect resembled his master, and Teck’s musings were vain. Then he turned away, and sat down upon a log beside the blacksmith’s shop, and silently gazed at the blue mountains, against which, in an oblique line, the roof of Strobe’s cabin was drawn.

There were half a dozen men lounging about the forge, for it was seldom that Clem Sanders was alone; and besides his special cronies, the mountain gossips were wont to congregate here. The forge was silent; the smith himself was leaning against the anvil, his brawny arms folded across his chest, his pipe between his teeth, his languid eyes fixed on the majestic mountains without, dome on dome and range on range, stretching far away into the distance; while below, the sunlit valley smiled, with only the shadow of a flying bird or an uncertain mist, vague and vagrant, to mar the sheen. He was a tall, bluff fellow, with reddish brown hair, straight dark eyebrows, and a broad low forehead. He had many wrinkles in the corners of his eyes; not from age, for he was only some twenty-four or five, but from persistent twinkling. They were brown eyes and bright ones, not large, but long and narrow. He had a square face and a flexible mouth with merry curves, the better revealed since he wore no beard. His checked homespun shirt was open at his throat; the sleeve was rolled up, showing his great hammer-arm; its muscles were a source of perpetual pride to its possessor.

He took little part in the conversation, the twinkling wrinkles about his eyes expressing his interest when it waxed facetious. Eli Strobe was leaning back against the door in a rickety chair; two men who were sitting on the log moved slightly, to give Jepson more room. A tall, slim, jeans-clad young mountaineer, booted to the knee and accoutred with shot-pouch and powder-horn, and having long light hair showing a tendency to tousled ringlets, lay at length on the grass outside of the door.

“Howdy,” said Jepson, succinctly and comprehensively, to the group. Then suddenly addressing the two men on the log, “I seen ye two bucks thar on yer hoss-critters, at the baptizin’. Ye hain’t got no right ter mighty nigh ride down the saints that-a-way, ’mongst the congregation, an’ ef I hed noticed in time I’d hev made ye ’light an’ hitch.”

There was a momentary hesitation. Then one of them, Gideon Dake, a languid, lank, loose-jointed fellow, observed, with as little animation as if he were an automaton, “Oh, shet up, Teck! Ye air too robustious. Ye ’low ter fairly rule the Cove!”

The other, Joe Bassett, spoke more briskly. “I ain’t afeard ter be a sorter sinner, now, Teck. The devil’s got his hands so full a-lookin’ arter Clem Sanders hyar ez he ain’t goin’ ter stop jes’ fur me. Hev ye hearn ez he war viewed right hyar in the forge?”

“Shucks!” said Jepson, incredulously. Then leaning forward to look at the burly blacksmith within the shop, “That ain’t a true word, air it, Clem?”

“Dunno,” said the blacksmith cavalierly. “Let them say ez seen him.”

“Ef I do ride down the saints, I ain’t never hed Satan ter kem a-bulgin’ ter the Settlemint ter look arter me,” protested Bassett.

Jepson glanced about him doubtfully. “Who say they seen him?”

“Old Pa’son Donnard,” said Bassett, beginning to narrate the old story to a new listener with a relish proportionate to the rarity of the opportunity. “Old man war comin’ from Piomingo Cove, whar he hed hed preachin’ the day before. ’Twar toler’ble late. Thar warn’t no moon, an’ the dark, it overtuk him. Waal, sir, he kem nigh hyar along o’ the water-side. An’ he say all of a suddint he seen this blacksmith shop like a yawnin’ mouth o’ hell, ez ef the mounting hed opened. An’ the flames o’ the forge fire, they le’pt up, an’ sunk down, an’ flared out, kase Clem, he’d let one o’ them fool boys caper with the bellows. An’ pa’son, he see two o’ them boys a-wrastlin’ in that unholy light; an’ Jim Crane war a-dancin’ an’ a-shufflin’, an’ a-cuttin’ the pidgeon-wing; an Buck Blake war a-playin’ a reg’lar dancin’-chune on the fiddle; an’ Clem hyar an’ Mose Hull war a-playin’ kyerds, an’ a-bettin’. Clem war a-settin’ on the shoein’ stool, an’ Mose on a plow, an’ they laid thar kyerds on the top o’ a bar’l. An’ Clem war a-beatin’ Mose. An’ wunst in a while he’d fling back his head an’ holler, bein’ so glad! An’ suddint Pa’son Donnard say his eyes war opened. He seen settin’ in the midst, propped up on the anvil, Satan hisself. He hed horns, an’ he hed wings, suthin’ like a bat’s, looked sorter bat-wise, only big ez a man. An’ Pa’son Donnard say he knowed ’twar Satan even before he tuk notice o’ his feet,—one war a huff, an’ the t’other war a club-foot! An’ he hed ’em both propped up on the stump what the anvil sets on. An’ the devil war a-lookin’ over Clem’s shoulder at sech kyerds ez Clem held. An’ when Clem would beat, Satan would jes’ hug hisself, an’ rock back’ards an for’ards, an’ laff till his teeth flashed fire. An’ sometimes Satan would lean over and mighty nigh p’int out ter Clem which kyerd ter play. An’ pa’son say his eyes war opened agin.”

“’Pears ter me they war stretched toler’ble wide a-fust,” grumbled Clem. Although this graphic detail was no news to him, he was beginning to look much disaffected. He mechanically moved away from the anvil upon which Satan had made himself so much at home. He came and stood outside, with arms still folded, leaning against the door.

“An’ pa’son’s eyes war opened anew,” Bassett drawled on. “An’ thar, he say, whilst the wrastlin’ war a-goin’ on, an’ the dancer war a-dancin’ an’ a-shakin’ his foot all around the floor, an’ the fiddler war a-playin’ an’ the fire war a-flarin’ red an’ a-flamin’ white over ’em all, an’ Clem war a-laffin’ an’ a-hollerin’, tickled ter death, an’ a-playin’ his kyerds, an Satan war a-lookin’ over his shoulder an’ grinnin’ till the smoke shot out’n his nose, an’ eyes, an’ ears, an’ ye could see him spit fire wunst in a while, the back winder o’ the forge opened slow. An’ thar stood on the outside—who d’ye reckon?”

“Oh, shucks!” said Clem uneasily.

The others said nothing, and the narrator went on:—

“The back winder o’ the shop opened, an’ thar, holdin’ the batten shutter in his han’, plain,—it bein’ so dark ahint him an’ so light inside,—war Clem hisself! Like he mought look in death, white, an’ solemn, an’ stony, a-gazin’ in on hisself ez he looks in life, hearty, an’ sunburnt, an’ laffin’, an’ a-playin’ o’ kyerds, with the devil, tickled ter death, peepin’ over his shoulder. An’ pa’son say the bleached, white, dead Clem ketched his eye of a suddint, an’ clap! bang! the winder war shet, an’ thar warn’t nuthin’ settin’ on the anvil, an’ Clem war a-gapin’, an’ a-stretchin’ his arms, an’ sayin’ ’twar bed-time, an’ tellin’ that Jeemes boy ter quit playin’ the fool with that bellows, else he’d shoe him all round with red-hot horse-shoes.”

Teck Jepson listened in silence, his absorbed eyes upon the ground, now and then lifting them to the narrator’s face with a glance of excited surprise.

The person most nearly interested in the chronicle spoke abruptly:—

“Pa’son Donnard never see sech ez that, sure enough; he air sorter moon-eyed, ef the truth war knowed. An’ ez the boys war a-dancin’ an’ a-cavortin’, he jes’ _’lowed_ he see it.”

“Pa’son Donnard wouldn’t be the fust, ef he _did_ see the devil,” argued Teck Jepson. “Plenty o’ them the Bible tells about seen him.”

The blacksmith’s eyes had no merry twinkle in them now. He looked off loweringly at the scene, so familiar to him in its multitudinous phases, as he spoke.

“Waal, I don’t b’lieve pa’son see nuthin’. Satan don’t lope round in Broomsaidge none ginerally; never war seen afore. Takes pa’son ter view him. An’ I ain’t dead,” he added, with a live insistence. “An’ yit he seen me dead.”

“Ye will be some day,” said Jepson bluntly.

Sanders looked down, darkly frowning.

“Whyn’t he take somebody else ter go lookin’ inter a winder at thar dead se’fs, stiddier me?” he complained. “I ain’t the only mortial man in the Cove! I jes’ didn’t know fur awhile what I war goin’ ter do ’bout’n it. An’ at las’ I went up ter pa’son’s house, an’ I called his son Jube out. An’ I say ter Jube, ‘Jube, ye an’ me hev been powerful frien’ly since we useter play ’longside o’ one another in the wood-pile, ’fore we could walk. An’ I hope I won’t break none o’ yer bones ez ye can’t spare or git the doctor ter set agin right handy, kase I’m useter hammerin’ tougher stuff’n ye be. But I’m a-goin’ ter take yer dad’s visions out on ye, bein’ ez I can’t thrash a old man an’ a preacher. Ye’ll see mo’ sights ’n ever he done.’”

“What did Jube do?” asked Jepson.

A dreary sense of futility was expressed in the strong man’s face.

“Flung his arm around my neck, an’ begged an’ begged,” he said, baffled. “He ’lowed his dad wanted ter break up them meetin’s at the forge,—gredges we-uns our fun. He never war young hisself, ye know.” He attempted to point the weak sarcasm with a sneer. “But Jube sneaks off, an’ kems ter the forge every chance he gits. He war thar the night o’ the vision. Old man war so bent on seein’ Satan, an’ dead folks ez air live an’ hearty, he didn’t see his own son Jube ’mongst the sinners. An’ Jube war a-walkin’ round on his hands, like a plumb catamount, with his heels six feet high up in the air, a-wavin’ round.”

“Mebbe that war why he didn’t see Jube, his head bein’ so nigh the groun’,” suggested Jepson. “Jube don’t ginerally kerry his heels a-top o’ him.”

The blacksmith listened, but made no response.

“I told Jube,” he resumed presently, “I’d let him off, ef his dad didn’t put me in none o’ his preachin’.”

“Ev’ybody in Brumsaidge an’ the mountings round knows ’bout’n it, ennyhow,” said Eli Strobe. “Ye needn’t be so powerful partic’lar.”

“Waal, ennyhows, ’twould in an’ about kill me ef he war ter go ter blatin’ out in the church-house, ’fore all the congregation, ’bout the devil a-laffin’ at me whilst playin’ kyerds, an’ me dead, lookin’ through the winder at my live self. Shucks!”

This unique slander had sunk deep into Clem Sanders’s good-natured heart. He looked so harried and hopeless that he might well have excited sympathy, but the circumstance had certain grotesque phases which Eli Strobe could not fail to relish.

“Ye hain’t done no work sence on that anvil, hev ye?” he demanded, with his slow side-glance and his air of burly jocundity, which did not always commend itself to his interlocutor.

The blacksmith shook his head.

“Waal, sir,” exclaimed Eli, bringing his tilted chair upon its forelegs with an abrupt thump, and placing a hand on either knee, “ef ye an’ that thar striker o’ yourn gits enny mo’ afeard o’ that thar anvil ’n ye hev always been, all the critters in the Cove’ll be bar’foot ’fore long.”

“Clem’s jes’ a-purtendin’,” said Gideon Dake. “He war a-workin’ night afore las’. What ails ye ter be sech a liar, Clem? Ye want us ter gin ye the credit o’ bein’ convicted o’ sin an’ acceptin’ o’ warnin’s, whenst ye air jes’ sodden in the ways o’ the worl’.”

“I warn’t at the forge, night afore las’,” said the blacksmith, flustered and uncertain. “What would I be a-doin’ of, workin’ of a night? I ain’t kep’ busy in the day, let alone bein’ obligated ter work of a night.”

“I dunno what ye war a-doin’ of,” said Dake, altogether unaware of the significance of his disclosure. “I _know_ the forge fire war lighted, an’ the anvil a-ringin’, an’ the bellows a-blowin’, an’ the hand-hammer an’ sledge a-strikin’, fur I hearn ’em ’bout midnight, kase I war obligated ter go arter the doctor fur granny, ez war tuk powerful bad, an’ looked like ter die.”

Sanders gazed at the speaker in blank amazement for a moment. Then his color began to change. He grew as pale as his swarthy tints might ever blanch,—an ashen pallor,—like that white Thing, perhaps, which Parson Donnard had beheld gazing into the window at its hale and full-pulsed simulacrum. Was it this that repaired to the forge in the dead of the night, and kindled the fires and beat out that metallic melody, as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice?

“Who strikes fur me, then, I wonder?” he said to himself; he was beginning to adopt this pallid, and joyless, and solemn identity. A sudden recollection of the malevolent presence on the anvil, a suggestion of an association with him as striker, and all at once Clem gave way. “Move up thar on that log!” he cried, as he sank down by the other men, outside of the forge where he had spent all his days since first he was old and strong enough to strike for his father, succeeding at last from the sledge to the hand-hammer, which the elder had laid down forever. He had never thought to shrink from its very walls, to glance back over his shoulder into its familiar dusky recesses, and wince in prophetic dread of what he might chance to see. His heart beat so loud, with so erratic and tumultuous a throb, that he wondered the other men did not hear, did not notice his agitation. They had not appreciated the significance of this testimony to him who had been asleep at home on that night and at that hour, when the forge fire was kindled in the midnight, and the anvil rang, and so strange an essence as that pallid identity of a live man so strangely busied itself, and handled his tools, and aped his gestures, and did his work. “Knows jes’ whar ter find things,—hammer, an’ nails, an’ swage, an’ tongs, I reckon.” The others were talking of trivial matters. How could they? he wondered. And then he was glad that they could, and that they noted him not, had forgotten him.

An old dog had trotted over from Eli Strobe’s,—the dog which Teck Jepson had recognized as the property of the “frequent visitor.” He came along with the easy, confident manner appertaining to both dogs and people who are more highly appreciated than they deserve; for he was not useful, being too good-natured for a watch-dog, and having no particular nose for game and no compensating energy or joy in its pursuit, and he was by no means comely. His long tongue lolled out, his eyes looked hot. He showed no signs of recognition of any of the men, but sat down gravely in front of them.

“I b’lieve that thar old dog hain’t got no owner,” Jepson said tentatively to Eli Strobe, with a craft of which he was ashamed. “Yer darter tole me the t’other day ’twarn’t hern.”

Eli Strobe’s slow side-glance was directed toward the long-haired youth, who lay at length on the grass, and who had not spoken. “Andy’s,” he said curtly,—“Andy Longwood’s.”

Jepson felt the blood mount to his face. So _this_ was the “frequent visitor,” whose name she would not speak; this was the riddle she had left him to guess,—this long-haired, curly-pated creature. “I’d shear him like a sheep,” he said contemptuously to himself.

The young man, at the sound of his name, turned upward a gentle, placid face. “Talkin’ ter me?” he drawled slowly.

Eli Strobe gave him a sidelong glower, and shook his head.

“Sheep, fur true!” Jepson thought, scanning his mild countenance. “I’ll be bound he kin say ‘Ba-a!’” He looked with an easy contempt after the young fellow, as he rose and strolled away, the old dog at his heels. “Ef ennybody war ter take a notion ter Marcelly Strobe, he needn’t mind that thar leetle chuckle-headed Woolly.” Jepson watched Andy Longwood take his way toward Eli Strobe’s cabin without one qualm of distrust or displeasure. This the vaunted “frequent visitor”!

So strong a factor is jealousy in sentiment at this stage that, relieved of his unacknowledged apprehensions, Jepson’s sudden assumption that he had only a sort of paternal or fraternal interest in Marcella, equally divided with the callow Isabel, was altogether sincere, and he was unaware of those subtle mental processes by which he was self-deceived. He produced much the same impression upon himself that he did on Eli Strobe, when he said with a casual smile, “He’s a-danglin’ arter Marcelly, ain’t he?”

Eli Strobe sullenly nodded. “He mought ez well dangle _off_, too.” He cast an authoritative side-glance at Jepson, which intimated the possibility of paternal interference in matters of the heart. “Marcelly ain’t sech ez ter take a likin’ ter him, but somehows she can’t git rid o’ the critter.”

“I hev hearn,” said Joe Bassett animatedly, “ez how Marcelly and Clem”—the blacksmith had strolled off, his hands in his pockets, his hat pulled far over his gloomy face—“hev been keepin’ comp’ny tergether.”

There was no cloud now upon the paternal brow. But Eli Strobe affected doubt or ignorance. “No countin’ on gals; no way ter find ’em out. They will ter-day, an’ they won’t ter-morrer, like the wind blows. Yes, sir.” He rose ponderously from his chair. “Waal, Teck,” he continued, “I be powerful sorry ye won’t bide along o’ we-uns ter-night. I never done ye this-a-way, whenst I war on the mounting.”

For Jepson had declined his hospitality, and had expected to ride up the mountain before dark. He hesitated now, and glanced toward the gray little cabin, with its background of a roseate sky and an amethystine mountain. A flutter among the vines,—a flitting blue dress, was it? How the grudging distance denied him!

“Ax me agin!” he exclaimed, letting his hand fall heavily on his host’s arm. And so they strolled toward the cabin together.

Clement Sanders, moodily loitering along the river bank, followed them with anxious eyes.

“All them cussed critters a-waitin’ on Marcelly! She’ll take a notion ter some o’ ’em, whilst I’m bein’ lured by Satan. I reckon I ain’t been doin’ right; them kyerds hed a snare in ’em surely. I never won nuthin’ sca’cely, nohow, an’ it’ll go powerful hard with me ter lose Marcelly at sech a game.”

Everything spoke of approaching night. The long, low nocturnal susurrus of the woods was already on the air. A bat came noiselessly flitting past. The color was fading out of the west. A whip-poor-will plained in the dense foliage hard by. A wind, willful wanderer, had sprung up somewhere, and was abroad in the slopes. The forge fire had not been kindled that day, and the ashes were gray on the hearth. He went within, despite some secret perturbation, and with the care characteristic of a good workman saw that his tools were in place; he closed the doors, fastened the shutters, and betook himself homeward. He paused when he had nearly reached home and looked back. How lonely was the dark little shanty, with the looming mountain beetling above,—how far from any other building! Anything might happen there.