Part 8

The disappointment which Amos James experienced found expression in much the same manner as that of many men of higher culture. He went down to his home in Eskaqua Cove, moody and morose. He replied to his chirping mother in discouraging monosyllables. In taciturn disaffection he sat on the step of the little porch, and watched absently a spider weaving her glittering gossamer maze about an overhanging mass of purple grapes, with great green leaves that were already edged with a rusty red and mottled with brown. A mocking-bird boldly perched among them, ever and anon, the airy grace of his pose hardly giving, in its exquisite lightness, the effect of a pause. The bird swallowed the grapes whole with a mighty gulp, and presently flew away with one in his bill for the refreshment of his family, whose vibratory clamour in an althea bush hard by mingled with the drone of the grasshoppers in the wet grass, louder than ever since the rain, and the persistent strophe and antistrophe of the frogs down on the bank of the mill-pond.

'Did they git enny shower up in the mounting, Amos?' demanded his mother, as she sat knitting on the porch--a thin little woman, with a nervous, uncertain eye and a drawling, high-pitched voice.

'Naw'm,' said Amos, 'not ez I knows on.'

'I reckon ye'd hev knowed ef ye hed got wet,' she said, with asperity. 'Ye hain't got much feelin', no ways--yer manners shows it--but I 'low ye _would_ feel the rain ef it kem down right smart, or ef ye war streck by lightnin'.'

There was no retort, and from the subtle disappointment in the little woman's eye it might have seemed that to inaugurate a controversy would have been more filial, so bereft of conversational opportunity was her lonely life, where only a 'gang o' men loped 'round the mill.'

She knitted on with a sharp clicking of the needles for a time, carrying the thread on a gnarled fourth finger, which seemed unnaturally active for that member, and somehow officious.

'I'll be bound ye went ter Cayce's house,' she said aggressively.

There was another long pause. The empty dwelling behind them was so still that one could hear the footsteps of an intruding rooster, as he furtively entered at the back door.

'Shoo!' she said, shaking her needles at him, as she bent forward and saw him standing in the slant of the sunshine, all his red and yellow feathers burnished. He had one foot poised motionless, and looked at her with a reproving side-glance, as if he could not believe he had caught the drift of her remarks. Another gesture, more pronounced than the first, and he went scuttling out, his wings half spread and his toe-nails clattering on the puncheon floor. 'Ye went ter Cayce's, I'll be bound, and hyar ye be, with nuthin' ter tell. Ef I war free ter jounce 'round the mounting same ez the idle, shif'less men-folks, who hev got nuthin' ter do but eye a mill ez the water works, I'd hev so much ter tell whenst I got home that ye'd hev ter tie me in a cheer ter keep me from talkin' myself away, like somebody happy with religion. An' hyar ye be, actin' like ye hed no mo' gift o' speech'n the rooster. Shoo! Shoo! Whar did ye go, ennyhow, when ye war on the mounting?'

'A-huntin',' said Amos.

'Huntin' D'rindy Cayce, I reckon. An' ye never got her, ter jedge from yer looks. An' I ain't got the heart ter blame the gal. Sech a lonesome, say-nuthin' husband ye'd make!'

The sharp click of her knitting-needles filled the pause. But her countenance had relaxed. She was in a measure enjoying the conversation, since the spice of her own share atoned for the lack of news or satisfactory response.

'Air old Mis' Cayce's gyarden-truck suff'rin' fur rain?'

There was a gleam of hopeful expectation behind her spectacles. With her reeking 'gyarden-spot' dripping with raindrops, and the smell of thyme and sage and the damp mould on the air, she could afford some pity as an added flavour for her pride.

'Never looked ter see,' murmured her son, between two long whiffs from his pipe.

His mother laid her knitting on her lap.

'I'll be bound, Amos Jeemes, ez ye never tole her how 'special our'n war a-thrivin' this season.'

'Naw'm,' said Amos, a trifle more promptly than usual, 'I never. 'Fore I'd go a-crowin' over old Mis' Cayce 'bout'n our gyarden-truck I'd see it withered in a night, like Jonah's gourd.'

'It's the Lord's han',' said his mother quickly, in self-justification. 'I ain't been prayin' fur no drought in Mis' Cayce's gyarden-spot.'

Another long pause ensued. The sun shining through a bunch of grapes made them seem pellucid globes of gold and amber and crimson among others darkly purple in the shadow. The mocking-bird came once more a-foraging. A yellow and red butterfly flickered around in the air, as if one of the tiger-lilies there by the porch had taken wings and was wantoning about in the wind. On the towering bald of the mountain a cloud rested, obscuring the dome--a cloud of dazzling whiteness--and it seemed as if the mountain had been admitted to some close communion with the heavens. Below, the colour was intense, so deeply green were the trees, so clear and sharp a grey were the crags, so blue were the shadows in the ravines. Amos was looking upward. He looked upward much of the time.

'See old Groundhog?' inquired his mother, suddenly.

'Whar?' he demanded with a start, breaking from his reverie.

'Laws-a-massy, boy!' she exclaimed, in exasperation. 'Whenst ye war up ter the Cayces', this mornin'.'

'Naw'm,' said Amos. He had never admitted, save by indirection, that he had been to the Cayces'.

'War he gone ter the still?'

'I never axed.'

'I s'pose not, bein' ez ye never drinks nuthin' but buttermilk, do ye?'--this with a scathing inflection.

She presently sighed deeply.

'Waal, waal. The millinium an' the revenue will git thar rights one of these days, I hopes an' prays. I'm a favorin' of ennythink ez'll storp sin an' a-swillin' o' liquor. Tax 'em all, I say! Tax the sinners!'

She had assumed a pious aspect, and spoke in a tone of drawling solemnity, with a vague idea that the whisky tax was in the interest of temperance, and the revenue department was a religious institution. The delusions of ignorance!

'Thar ain't ez much drunk nohow now ez thar useter war. I 'members when I war a gal whisky war so cheap that up to the store at the Settlemint they'd hev a bucket set full o' whisky an' a gourd, free fur all comers, an' another bucket alongside with water ter season it. An' the way that thar water lasted war surprisin'--that it war! Nowadays ye ain't goin' to find liquor so plenty nowhar, 'cept mebbe at old Groundhog's still.'

Amos made no reply. His eyes were fixed on the road. A man on an old white horse had emerged from the woods, and was slowly ambling toward the mill. The crazy old structure was like a caricature; it seemed that only by a lapse of all the rules of interdependent timbers did it hang together, with such oblique disregard of rectangles. Its doors and windows were rhomboidal; its supports tottered in the water. The gate was shut. The whir was hushed. A sleep lay upon the pond, save where the water fell like a silver veil over the dam. Even this motion was dreamy and somnambulistic.

On the other side of the stream the great sandstone walls of the channel showed the water-marks of flood and fall of past years, cut in sharp levels and registered in the rock. They beetled here and there, and the verdure on the summits looked over and gave the deep waters below the grace of a dense and shady reflection. Above the dark old roof on every hand the majestic encompassing mountains rose against the sky, and the cove nestled sequestered from the world in this environment.

The man on the gaunt white horse suddenly paused, seeing the mill silent and lonely; his eyes turned to the little house farther down the stream.

'Hello!' he yelled. 'I kem hyar ter git some gris' groun'.'

'Grin' yer gris' yerse'f,' vociferated the miller, cavalierly renouncing his vocation. 'I hev no mind ter go a-medjurin' o' toll.'

Thus privileged, the stranger dismounted, went into the old mill, himself lifted the gate, and presently the musical whir broke forth. It summoned an echo from the mountain that was hardly like a reflection of its simple, industrial sound, so elfin, so romantically faint, so fitful and far, it seemed! The pond awoke, the water gurgled about the wheel, the tail-race was billowy with foam.

Presently there was silence. The gate had fallen; the farmer had measured the toll, and was riding away. As he vanished Amos James rose slowly, and began to stretch his stalwart limbs.

'I'm glad ye ain't palsied with settin' so long, Amos,' said his mother. 'Ye seem ter hev los' interes' in everythink 'ceptin' the doorstep. Lord A'mighty! I never thunk ez ye'd grow up ter be sech pore comp'ny. No wonder ez D'rindy hardens her heart! An' when ye war a baby--my sakes! I could set an' list'n ter yer jowin' all day. An' sech comp'ny ye war, when ye couldn't say a word an' hedn't a tooth in yer head!'

He lived in continual rivalry with this younger self in his mother's affections. She was one of those women whose maternal love is expressed in an idolatry of infancy. She could not forgive him for outgrowing his babyhood, and regarded every added year upon his head as a sort of affront and a sorrow.

He strode away, still gloomily downcast, and when the woman next looked up she saw him mounted on his bay horse, and riding toward the base of the mountain.

'Waal, sir!' she exclaimed, taking off her spectacles and rubbing the glasses on her blue-checked apron, 'D'rindy Cayce'll hev ter marry that thar boy ter git shet o' him. I hev never hearn o' nobody ridin' up that thar mounting twict in one day 'thout they hed suthin' 'special ter boost 'em--a-runnin' from the sher'ff, or sech.'

But Amos James soon turned from the road that wound in long, serpentine undulations to the mountain's brow, and pursued a narrow bridlepath, leading deep into the dense forests. It might have seemed that he was losing his way altogether when the path disappeared among the boulders of a stream, half dry.

He followed the channel up the rugged, rock-girt gorge for perhaps a mile, emerging at length upon a slope of out-cropping ledges, where his horse left no hoof-print.

Soon he struck into the laurel, and pressed on, guided by signs distinguishable only to the initiated: some grotesque gnarling of limbs, perhaps, of the great trees that stretched above the almost impenetrable undergrowth; some projecting crag, visible at long intervals, high up and cut sharply against the sky.

All at once, in the midst of the dense laurel, he came upon a cavity in the side of the mountain. The irregularly shaped fissure was more than tall enough to admit a man.

He stood still for a moment, and called his own name. There was no response save the echoes, and, dismounting, he took the bridle and began to lead the horse into the cave. The animal shied dubiously, protesting against this unique translation to vague subterranean spheres. The shadow of the fissured portal fell upon them; the light began to grow dim; the dust thickened.

As Amos glanced over his shoulder he could see the woods without suffused with a golden radiance, and there was a freshness on the intensely green foliage as if it were newly washed with rain. The world seemed suddenly clarified, and tiny objects stood out with strange distinctness; he saw the twigs on the great trees and the white tips of the tail-feathers of a fluttering bluejay. Far down the aisles of the forest the enchantment held its wonderful sway, and he felt in his own ignorant fashion how beautiful is the accustomed light.

When the horse's stumbling feet had ceased to sound among the stones, the wilderness without was as lonely and as unsuggestive of human occupation or human existence as when the Great Smoky Mountains first rose from the sea.

IX.

Amos and his steed made their way along a narrow passage, growing wider, however, and taller, but darker, and with many short turns--an embarrassment to the resisting brute's physical conformation.

Suddenly there was a vague red haze in the dark, the sound of voices, and an abrupt turn brought man and horse into a great subterranean vault, where dusky distorted figures, wreathing smoke, and a flare of red fire suggested Tartarus.

'Hy're, Amos!' cried a hospitable voice.

A weird tone repeated the words with precipitate promptness.

Again and again the abrupt echoes spoke; far down the unseen blackness of the cave a hollow whisper announced his entrance, and he seemed mysteriously welcomed by the unseen powers of the earth.

He was not an imaginative man nor observant, but the upper regions were his sphere, and he had all the acute sensitiveness incident to being out of one's element. Even after he had seated himself he noted a far, faint voice crying, 'Hy're, Amos!' in abysmal depths explored only by the sound of his name.

And here it was that old Groundhog Cayce evaded the law, and ran his still, and defied the revenue department, and maintained his right to do as he would with his own.

'Lord A'mighty, air the corn mine, or no?' he would argue. 'Air the orchard mine, or the raiders'? An' what ails me ez I can't make whisky an' apple-jack same ez in my dad's time, when him an' me run a sour mash still on the top o' the mounting in the light o' day, up'ards o' twenty year, an' never hearn o' no raider. Tell me that's agin the law, nowadays! Waal, now, who made that law? I never; an' I ain't a-goin' ter abide by it, nuther. Ez sure ez ye air born, it air jes' a Yankee trick fotched down hyar by the Fed'ral army. An' if I hed knowed they war goin' ter gin tharse'fs ter sech persecutions arter the war, I dunno how I'd hev got my consent ter fit alongside of 'em like I done fower year fur the Union.'

A rude furnace made of fire-rock was the prominent feature of the place, and on it glimmered the pleasing rotundities of a small copper still. The neck curved away into the obscurity. There was the sound of gurgling water, with vague babbling echoes; for the never-failing rill of an underground spring, which rose among the rocks, was diverted to the unexpected purpose of flowing through the tub where the worm was coiled, and of condensing the precious vapours, which dripped monotonously into their rude receiver at the extremity of the primitive fixtures.

The iron door of the furnace was open now as Ab Cayce replenished the fire. It sent out a red glare, revealing the dark walls; the black distances; the wreaths of smoke, that were given a start by a short chimney, and left to wander away and dissipate themselves in the wide subterranean spaces; and the uncouth, slouching figures and illuminated faces of the distillers. They lounged upon the rocks or sat on inverted baskets and tubs, and one stalwart fellow lay at length upon the ground.

The shadows were all grotesquely elongated, almost divested of the semblance of humanity, as they stretched in unnatural proportions upon the rocks.

Amos James's horse cast on the wall an image so gigantic that it seemed as if the past and the present were mysteriously united, and he stood stabled beside the grim mastodon whom the cave had sheltered from the rigours of his day long before Groundhog Cayce was moved to seek a refuge.

The furnace door clashed; the scene faded; only a glittering line of vivid white light, emitted between the ill-fitting door and the unhewn rock, enlivened the gloom. Now and then, as one of the distillers moved, it fell upon him, and gave his face an abnormal distinctness in the surrounding blackness, like some curiously cut onyx.

'Waal, Amos,' said a voice from out the darkness, 'I'm middlin' glad ter see you-uns. Hev a drink.'

A hand came out into the gleaming line of light extending with a flourish of invitation a jug of jovial aspect.

'Don't keer ef I do,' said Amos politely.

He lifted the jug, and drank without stint. The hand received it back again, shook it as if to judge of the quantity of its contents, and then, with a gesture of relish, raised it to an unseen mouth.

'Enny news 'round the mill, Amos?' demanded his invisible pot companion.

'None ez I knows on,' drawled Amos.

'Grind some fur we-uns ter-morrer?' asked Ab.

'I'll grind yer bones, ef ye'll send 'em down,' said Amos accommodatingly. 'All's grist ez goes ter the hopper. How kem you-uns ter git the nightmare 'bout'n the raiders? I waited fur Sol an' the corn right sharp time Wednesday mornin'; jes' hed nuthin' ter do but ter sot an' suck my paws, like a b'ar in winter, till 't war time ter put out an' go ter the gaynder-pullin'.'

'Waal'--there was embarrassment in the tones of the burly shadow, and all the echoes were hesitant as Groundhog Cayce replied in Ab's stead: 'Mirandy Jane 'lowed ez she hed seen a strange man 'bout'n the spring, an' thought it war a raider--though he'd hev been in a mighty ticklish place fur a raider, all by himself. Mirandy Jane hev fairly got the jim-jams, seein' raiders stiddier snakes; we-uns can't put no dependence in the gal. An' mam, she drempt the raiders hed camped on Chilhowee Mounting. An' D'rindy, she turned fool: fust she 'lowed ez we-uns would all be ruined ef we went ter the gaynder-pullin', an' then she war powerful interrupted when we 'lowed we wouldn't go, like ez ef she wanted us ter go most awful. I axed this hyer Pa'son Kelsey, ez rid by that mornin', ef he treed enny raiders in his mind. An' he 'lowed none, 'ceptin' the devil a-raidin' 'roun' his own soul. But 'mongst 'em we-uns jest bided away that day. I wouldn't hev done it, 'ceptin' D'rindy tuk ter talkin' six ways fur Sunday, an' she got me plumb catawampus, so ez I didn't rightly know what I wanted ter do myself.'

It was a lame story for old Groundhog Cayce to tell. Even the hesitating echoes seemed ashamed of it. Mirandy Jane's mythical raider, and mam's dream, and D'rindy's folly--were these to baffle that stout-hearted old soldier?

Amos James said no more. If old Cayce employed an awkward subterfuge to conceal the enterprise of the rescue, he had no occasion to intermeddle. Somehow, the strengthening of his suspicions brought Amos to a new realization of his despair. He sought to modify it by frequent reference to the jug, which came his way at hospitably short intervals. But he had a strong head, and had seen the jug often before; and although he thought his grief would be alleviated by getting as drunk as a 'fraish b'iled ow_el_,' that consummation of consolation was coy and tardy. He was only mournfully frisky after a while, feeling that he should presently be obliged to cut his throat, yet laughing at his own jokes when the moonshiners laughed, then pausing in sudden seriousness to listen to the elfin merriment evoked among the lurking echoes. And he sang, too, after a time, a merry catch, in a rich and resonant voice, with long, dawdling, untutored cadences and distortions of effect--sudden changes of register, many an abrupt crescendo and diminuendo, and 'spoken' interpolations and improvisations, all of humorous intent.

The others listened with the universal greedy appetite for entertainment which might have been supposed to have dwindled and died of inanition in their serious and deprived lives. Pete Cayce first revolted from the strain on his attention, subordination, and acquiescence. It was not his habit to allow any man to so completely absorb public attention.

'Look-a-hyar, Amos, fur Gawd's sake, shet up that thar foolishness!' he stuttered at last. 'Thar's n-no tellin' how f-f-fur yer survigrus bellerin' kin be hearn. An' besides, ye'll b-b-bring the rocks down on to we-uns d-d'rectly. They tell me that it air dangerous ter f-f-f-fire pistols an' jounce 'round in a cave. Bring the roof down.'

'That air jes' what I'm a-aimin' ter do, Pete,' said Amos, with his comical gravity. 'I went ter meetin' week 'fore las', an' the pa'son read 'bout Samson; an' it streck my ambition, an' I'm jes' a-honin' ter pull the roof down on the Philistine.'

'Look-a-hyar, Amos Jeemes, ye air the b-b-banged-est critter on this hyar m-mounting! Jes' kem hyar ter our s-still an' c-c-call me a Ph-Ph-Philistine.'

The jug had not been stationary, and as Pete thrust his aggressive face forward the vivid, quivering line of light from the furnace showed that it was flushed with liquor, and that his eyes were bloodshot. His gaunt head, with long, colourless hair, protruding teeth, and homely, prominent features, as it hung there in the isolating effect of that sharp and slender gleam--the rest of his body cancelled by the darkness--had a singularly unnatural and sinister aspect. The light glanced back with a steely glimmer. The drunken man had a knife in his hand.

'Storp it, now!' his younger brother drawlingly admonished him. 'Who be ye a-goin' ter cut?'

'Call m-m-me a Philistine! I'll bust his brains out!' asseverated Pete.

'Ye're drunk, Pete,' said old Groundhog Cayce, in an explanatory manner.

There was no move to defend the threatened guest. Perhaps Amos James was supposed to be able to take care of himself.

'Call me a Ph-Philistine--a Philistine!' exclaimed Pete, steadying himself on the keg on which he sat, and peering with wide, light eyes into the darkness, as if to mark the whereabouts of the enemy before dealing the blow. 'Jes' got insurance--c-c-c-call me a Philistine!'

'Shet up, Pete. I'll take it back,' said Amos gravely. '_I'm_ the Philistine myself; fur pa'son read ez Samson killed a passel o' Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, an' ez long ez ye be talkin' I feel in an' about dead.'

Amos James had bent close attention to the sermon, and had brought as much accurate information from meeting as was consistent with hearing so sensational a story as Samson's for the first time. In the mountains men do not regard church privileges as the opportunity of a quiet hour to meditate on secular affairs, while a gentle voice drones on antiquated themes. To Amos, Samson was the latest thing out.

Pete did not quite catch the full meaning of this sarcasm. He was content that Amos should seem to recant. He replaced his knife, but sat surly and muttering, and now and then glancing toward the guest.

Meantime that vivid white gleam quivered across the dusky shadows; now and then the horse pawed, raising martial echoes, as of squadrons of cavalry, among the multitudinous reverberations of the place, while his stall-companion, that the light could conjure up, was always noiseless; the continuous fresh sound of water gurgling over the rocks mingled with the monotonous drip from the worm; occasionally a gopher would skud among the heavily booted feet, and the jug's activity was marked by the shifting for an interval of the red sparks which indicated the glowing pipes of the burly shadows around the still.

The stories went on, growing weird as the evening outside waned, in some unconscious sympathy with the melancholy hour--for in these sunless depths one knew nor day nor night--stories of bloody vendettas, and headless ghosts, and strange provisions, and unnamed terrors. And Amos James recounted the fable of a mountain witch, interspersed with a wild vocal refrain:

Cu-vo! Cu-vo! Kil-dar! Kil-dar! Kil-dar!

Thus she called her hungry dogs that fed on human flesh, while the winds were awhirl, and the waning moon was red, and the Big Smoky lay in densest gloom.