Part 9

The white line of light had yellowed, deepened, grown dull. The furnace needed fuel. Ab suddenly leaned down and threw open the door. The flare of the pulsing coals resuscitated the dim scene and the long dun-coloured shadows. Here in the broad red light were the stolid, meditative faces of the distillers, each with his pipe in his mouth and his hat on his head; it revealed the dilated eye and unconsciously dramatic gesture of the story-teller, sitting upon a barrel in their midst; the horse was distinct in the background, now dreaming and now lifting an impatient fore-foot, and his gigantic stall-mate, the simulacrum of the mastodon, moved as he moved, but softly, that the echoes might not know--the immortal echoes, who were here before him, and here still.

And behind all were the great walls of the vault, with its vague apertures leading to unexplored recesses; with many jagged ledges, devoted to shelf-like usage, and showing here a jug, and here a shot-pouch, and here a rat--fat and sleek, thanks to the plenteous waste of mash and grain--looking down with a glittering eye, and here a bag of meal, and here a rifle.

Suddenly Amos James broke off.

'Who's that?' he exclaimed, and all the echoes were sharply interrogative.

There was a galvanic start among the moonshiners. They looked hastily about--perhaps for the witch, perhaps for the frightful dogs, perhaps expecting the materialization of Mirandy Jane's raider.

Amos had turned half-round and was staring intently beyond the still. The man lying on the ground had shifted his position; his soft brown hat was doubled under his head. The red flare showed its long, tawny, tangled hair, of a hue unusual enough to be an identification. His stalwart limbs were stretched out at length; the hands he thrust above his head were unmanacled; as he moved there was the jingle of spurs.

'Why, thar be Rick Tyler!' exclaimed Amos James.

'Hev ye jes' fund that out?' drawled the man on the ground, with a jeering inflection.

'W-w-w-whyn't ye lie low, Rick?' demanded Pete aggressively. 'Ef ever thar war a empty cymblin', it's yer head. Amos an' that thar thin-lipped sneak ez called hisself a dep'ty air thick'n thieves.'

There was no hesitation in Amos James's character. He leaned forward suddenly and clutched Pete by the throat, and the old man and Solomon were fain to interfere actively to prevent that doughty member of the family from being throttled on the spot.

Pending the interchange of these amenities, Rick Tyler lay motionless on the ground; Ab calmly continued his task of replenishing the fire; and Ben asked, in a low monotone, the favour of leaving the furnace-door open for a 'spell, whilst I unkiver the kag in the corner, an' fill the jug, an' kiver the kag agin keerful, 'kase I don't want no rat in mine.'

When Pete, with a scarlet face and starting eyes and a throat full of complicated coughs and gurgles, was torn out of the young miller's strong hands, old Groundhog Cayce remonstrated:

'Lord A'mighty, boys! Can't ye set an' drink yer liquor sociable, 'thout clinchin' that-a-way? What did Pete do ter ye, Amos?'

'Nuthin'; he dassent,' said the panting Amos.

'Did he hurt yer feelin's?' asked the old man with respectful sympathy.

'Yes, he did,' said Amos, admitting vulnerability in that tender aesthetic organ.

'Never none--now--koo--koo!' coughed Pete. 'He hev got no f-f-f-feelin's, koo--koo! I hev hearn his own m-mam say so a-many a time.'

'He 'lowed,' said Amos, his black eyes flashing indignantly, his face scarlet, the perspiration thick in his black hair, 'ez I'd tell the deputy--kase he war toler'ble lively hyar, an' I got sorter friendly with him when I hed ter sarve on the posse--ez I seen Rick Tyler hyar. Mebbe ye think I want two hundred dollars--hey!'

He made a gesture as if to seize again his late antagonist.

'A-koo, koo, koo!' coughed Pete, moving cautiously out of reach.

All the echoes clamoured mockingly with the convulsive sound, and thus multiplied they gave a ludicrous suggestion of the whooping cough.

'I dunno, Mr. Cayce,' said Amos, with some dignity, addressing the old man, 'what call ye hev got ter consort with them under indictment for murder, an' offenders agin the law. But hevin' seen Rick Tyler hyar in a friendly way along o' you-uns, he air ez safe from me ez ef he war under my own roof.'

Rick Tyler drew himself up on his elbow, and turned upon the speaker a face inflamed by sudden passion.

'Go tell the dep'ty!' he screamed. 'I'll take no faviors from ye, Amos Jeemes. Kem on! Arrest me yerse'f!' He rose to his feet, and held out his bruised and scarred hands, smiting them together as if he were again handcuffed. The light fell full on his clothes, tattered by his briery flight, the long dishevelment of his yellow hair, his burning face, and the blazing fury in his brown eyes. 'Kem on! Arrest me yerse'f--ye air ekal ter it. I kin better bide the law than ter take faviors from you-uns. Kem on! Arrest me!'

Once more he held out his free hands as if for the manacles.

Their angry eyes met. Then, as Amos James still sat silent and motionless on the barrel, Rick Tyler turned, and with a gesture of desperation again flung himself on the ground.

There was a pause. Two of the moonshiners were arranging to decant some liquor into a keg, and were lighting a tallow dip for the purpose. In the dense darkness of the recess where they stood it took on a large and lunar aspect. A rayonnant circle hovered attendant upon it; the shadows about it were densely black, and in the sharp and colourless contrasts the two bending figures of the men handling the keg stood out in peculiar distinctness of pose and gesture. The glare of the fire in the foreground deepened to a dull orange, to a tawny red, even to a dusty brown, in comparison with the pearly, luminous effect of the candle. The tallow dip was extinguished when the task was complete. Presently the furnace door clashed, the group of distillers disappeared as with a bound, and that long, livid line of pulsating light emitted by the ill-fitting door cleft the gloom like a glittering blade.

'I s'pose ye don't mean ter be sassy in 'special, Amos, faultin' yer elders, talkin' 'bout consortin' with them under indictment,' said old Groundhog Cayce's voice. 'But I dunno ez ye hev enny call ter sot yerse'f up in jedgmint on my actions.'

'Waal,' said Amos, apologetic, 'I never went ter say nuthin' like faultin' nohow. Sech ez yer actions I leaves ter you-uns.'

'Ye mought ez well,' said the elder, unconsciously satiric. 'The Bible 'lows ez every man air a law unto hisself. An' I hev fund I gits peace mos'ly in abidin' by the law ez kems from within. An' I kin see no jestice in my denyin' a rifle an' a lot o' lead an' powder ter a half-starvin' critter ter save his life. Rick war bound ter starve, hid out, ef he hed nuthin' ter shoot deer an' wild varmints with, bein' ez his rifle war tuk by the sher'ff. I knows no law ez lays on me the starvin' o' a human. An' when that boy kem a-cropin' hyar ter the still this evenin', he got ez fair-spoke a welcome, an' ez much liquor ez he'd swaller, same ez enny comer on the mounting. I dunno ez he air a offender agin the law, an' 'tain't my say-so. I ain't a jedge, an' thar ain't enough o' me fur a jury.'

This lucid discourse, its emphasis doubled by the iterative echoes, had much slow, impersonal effect as it issued from the darkness. It was to Amos James, accustomed to rural logic, as if reason, pure and simple, had spoken. His heart had its own passionate protest. Not that he disapproved the loan of the rifle, but he distrusted the impulse which prompted it. To find the hunted fugitive here among the distillers added the force of conviction to his suspicions of a rescue and its instigation.

The personal interest which he had in all this annulled for a moment his sense of the becoming, and defied the constraints of etiquette.

'How'd Rick Tyler say he got away from the sher'ff, ennyhow?' he demanded bluntly.

'He warn't axed,' said old Groundhog Cayce quietly.

A silence ensued, charged with all the rigours of reproof.

'An' I dunno ez ye hev enny call ter know, Amos Jeemes,' cried out Rick, still prone upon the ground. 'That won't holp the sher'ff none now. Ye'd better be studyin' 'bout settin' him on the trail ter ketch me agin.'

The line of light from the rift in the furnace door showed a yellow gleam in the blackness where his head lay. Amos James fixed a burning eye upon it.

'I'll kem thar d'rec'ly an' tromp the life out'n ye, Rick Tyler. I'll grind yer skull ter pieces with my boot-heel, like ez ef ye war a copper-head.'

'Laws-a-massy, boys, sech a quar'lin', fightin' batch ez ye be! I fairly gits gagged with my liquor a-listenin' ter ye--furgits how ter swaller,' said Groundhog Cayce, suddenly fretful.

'Leave Rick be, Amos Jeemes,' he added, in an authoritative tone. And then, with a slant of his head toward Rick Tyler, lying on the ground, 'Hold yer jaw down thar!'

And the two young men lapsed into silence.

The spring, rising among the barren rocks, chanted aloud its prescient sylvan song of the woodland ways, and the glancing beam, and the springing trout, and the dream of the drifting leaf, as true of tone and as delicately keyed to the dryadic chorus in the forest without as if the waters that knew but darkness and the cavernous sterilities were already in the liberated joys of the gorge yonder, reflecting the sky, wantoning with the wind, and swirling down the mountain side. The spirits dripped from the worm, the furnace roared, the men's feet grated upon the rocks as they now and then shifted their position.

'Waal,' said Amos at last, rising, 'I'd better be a-goin'. 'Pears like ez I hev wore out my welcome hyar.'

He stood looking at the line of light, remembering desolately Dorinda's buoyant, triumphant mood. Its embellishment of her beauty had smitten him with an afflicted sense of her withdrawal from all the prospects of his future. He had thought that he had given up hope, but he began to appreciate, when he found Rick Tyler in intimate refuge with her kindred, how sturdy an organism was that heart of his, and to realize that to reduce it to despair must needs cost many a throe.

'I hev wore out my welcome, I reckon,' he repeated dismally.

'I dunno what ails ye ter say that. Ye hev jes' got tired o' comin' hyar, I reckon,' said old man Cayce. 'Wore out yer welcome--shucks!'

'Mighty nigh wore me out,' said Pete, remembering to cough.

'Waal,' said Amos, slightly salved by the protestations of his host, 'I reckon it air time I war a-puttin' out, ennyhow. Jes' set that thar furnace door on the jar, Pete, so I kin see ter lay a-holt o' the beastis.'

The door opened, the red glow flared out, the figures of the moonshiners all reappeared in a semicircle about the still, and as Amos James took the horse's bridle and led him away from the wall the mastodon vanished, with noiseless tread, into the dim distance of the unmeasured past.

The horse's hoofs reverberated down the cavernous depths, echoed, re-echoed, multiplied indefinitely. Even after the animal had been led through the tortuous windings of the passage his tramp resounded through the gloom.

X.

The displeasure of his fellows is a slight and ephemeral matter to a man whose mind is fixed on a great essential question, charged with moral gravity and imperishable consequence; whose physical courage is the instinct of his nature, conserved by its active exercise in a life of physical hardship.

Kelsey had forgotten the gander-pulling, the impending election, the excitement of the escape, before he had ridden five miles from the Settlement. He jogged along the valley road, the reins on the horse's neck, his eyes lifted to the heights. The fulness of day was on their unpeopled summits. Infinity was expressed before the eye. On and on the chain of mountains stretched, with every illusion of mist and colour, with every differing grace of distance, with inconceivable measures of vastness. The grave delight in which their presence steeped the senses stirred his heart. They breathed solemnities. They lent wings to the thoughts. They lifted the soul. Could he look at them and doubt that one day he should see God? He had been near--oh, surely, He had been near.

Kelsey was comforted as he rode on. Somehow, the mountains had for his ignorant mind some coercive internal evidence of the great truths. In their exalted suggestiveness were congruities; so far from the world were they--so high above it; so interlinked with the history of all that makes the races of men more than the beasts that perish, that conserves the value of that noble idea--an immortal soul. On a mountain the ark rested; on a mountain the cross was planted; the steeps beheld the glories of the transfiguration; the lofty solitudes heard the prayers of the Christ; and from the heights issued the great Sermon instinct with all the moralities of every creed. How often He went up into the mountain!

The thought uplifted Kelsey. The flush of strong feeling touched his cheek. His eyes were fired with that sudden gleam of enthusiasm as remote from earthly impulses as the lightnings of Sinai.

'An' I will preach his name!' the parson exclaimed, in a tense and thrilling voice. He checked his horse, drew out of his pocket a thumbed old Bible, clumsily turned the leaves and sought for his text.

No other book had he ever read: only that sublime epic, with its deep tendernesses and its mighty portents; with its subtleties of prophecy in wide and splendid phrase, and their fulfilment in the barren record of the simplest life; with all the throbbing presentment of martyrdom and doom and death, dominated by the miracle of resurrection and the potency of divinity. Every detail was as clearly pictured to his mind as if, instead of the vast, unstoried stretches of the Great Smoky Mountains, he looked upon the sanctities of the hills of Judaea.

He read as he rode along--slowly, slowly. A bird's shadow would flit across the holy page, and then away to the mountain; the winds of heaven caressed it. Sometimes the pollen of flowering weeds fell upon it; for in the midst of the unfrequented road they often stood in tall rank rows, with a narrow path on either side, trodden by the oxen of the occasional team, while the growth bent elastically under the passing bed of the waggon.

He was almost happy. The clamours of his insistent heart were still. His conscience, his memory, his self-reproach, had loosed their hold. His keen and subtile native intellect stretched its unconscious powers, and discriminated the workings of character, and reviewed the deploying of events, and measured results. He was far away, walking with the disciples.

Suddenly, like an aerolite, he was whirled from high ethereal spaces by the attraction of the earth. A man was peering from between the rails of a fence by the wayside.

'Kin ye read yer book, pa'son, an' ride yer beastis all ter wunst?' he cried out with the fervour of admiration.

That tree of knowledge--ah, the wily serpent!

Galilee--it was thousands of miles away across the deep salt seas.

The parson closed his book with a smile of exultation.

'The beast don't hender me none. I kin read ennywhar,' he said, proud of the attainment.

'Waal, sir!' exclaimed the other, one of that class, too numerous in Tennessee, who can neither read nor write. 'Air it the Good Book?' he demanded, with a sudden thought.

'It air the Holy Bible,' said the parson, handing him the book.

The man eyed it with reverence. Then, with a gingerly gesture, he gave it back. The parson was looking down at him, all softened and humanized by this unconscious flattery.

'Waal, pa'son,' said the illiterate admirer of knowledge, with a respectful and subordinate air, 'I hearn ez ye war a-goin' ter hold fo'th up yander at the meet'n-house at the Notch nex' Sunday. Air that a true word?'

'I 'lows ter preach thar on the nex' Lord's day,' replied the parson.

'Then,' with the promptness of a sudden resolution, 'I'm a-goin' ter take the old woman an' the chillen an' waggon up the Big Smoky ter hear the sermon. I 'low ez a man what kin ride a beastis an' read a book all ter wunst mus' be a powerful exhorter; an' mebbe ye'll lead us all ter grace.'

The parson said he would be glad to see the family at the meeting-house, and presently jogged off down the road.

One might regard the satisfaction of this simple scene as the due meed of his labours; one might account his pride in his attainments as a harmless human weakness. There have been those of his calling, proud, too, of a finite knowledge, and fain to conserve fame, whose conscience makes no moan--who care naught for humility, and hardly hope to be genuine.

The flush of pleasure passed in a moment. His face hardened. That fire of a sublimated anger or frenzy touched his eyes. He remembered Peter, the impetuous, and Thomas, the doubter, and the warm generosities of the heart of him whom Jesus loved, and he 'reckoned' that they would not have left Him standing in the road for the joy of hearing their learning praised.

He rebuked himself as caring less for the Holy Book than that his craft could read it. His terrible insight into motives was not dulled by a personal application. Introverted upon his own heart, it was keen, unsparing, insidiously subtle. He saw his pride as if it had been another man's, except that it had no lenient mediator; for he was just to other men, even gentle.

He took pitiless heed of the pettiness of his vanity; he detected pleasure that the man by the wayside should come, not for salvation, but to hear the powerful exhorter speak. He saw the instability of his high mood, of the gracious re-awaking of faith; he realized the lapse from the heights of an ecstasy at the lightest touch of temptation.

'The Lord lifts me up,' he said, 'ter dash me on the groun'!'

No more in Judaea, in the holy mountains; no more among the disciples. Drearily along the valley road, glaring and yellow in the sun, the book closed, the inspiration fled, journeyed the ignorant man, who would fain lay hold on a true and perfected sanctity.

He despatched his errand in the valley--a secular matter, relating to the exchange of a cow and a calf.

The afternoon was waning when he was again upon the slopes of the Big Smoky; for the roads were rough, and he had travelled slowly, always prone to 'favour the beastis.' He stopped in front of Cayce's house, where he saw Dorinda spinning on the porch, and preferred a request for a gourd of water.

The old woman heard his voice, and came hastily out with hospitable insistence that he should dismount and 'rest his bones, sence he hed rid fur, an' tell the news from the Settlemint.' There was a cordial contrast between this warm esteem and his own unkind thoughts, and he suffered himself to be persuaded.

He sat under the hop-vines, and replied in monosyllables to the old woman's animated questions, and gave little news of the excitements at the Settlement which they had not already heard.

Dorinda, her wheel awhirl, one hand lifted holding the thread, the other poised in the air to control the motion, her figure thrown back in a fine, alert pose, looked at him with a freshened pity for his downcast spirit, and with intuitive sympathy. He sorrowed not because of the things of this world, she felt. It was some high and spiritual grief, such as might pierce a prophet's heart. Her eyes, full of the ideality of the sentiment, dwelt upon him reverently.

He marked the look. With his overwhelming sense of his sins, he was abased under it, and he scourged himself as a hypocrite.

'Thar air goin' ter be preachin' at the meetin'-house Sunday, I hearn,' she observed presently, thinking this topic more meet for his discussion than the 'gaynder-pullin'' and the escape, and such mundane matters.

The tempered green light fell upon her fair face, adding a delicacy to its creamy tint; her black hair caught a shifting golden flake of sunshine as she moved back and forth; her red lips were slightly parted. The grasshoppers droned in the leaves an accompaniment to the whirr of her wheel. The 'prince's feathers' bloomed in great clumsy crimson tufts close by the step.

Mirandy Jane, seated on an inverted noggin, listened tamely to the conversation, her wild, uncertain eyes fixed upon the parson's face; she dropped them, and turned her head with a shying gesture, if by chance his glance fell upon her.

From this shadowed, leafy recess the world seen through the green hop-vines was all in a great yellow glare.

'Be you-uns a-goin' ter hold fo'th,' demanded the old woman, 'or Brother Jake Tobin?'

'It air me ez air a-goin' ter preach,' he said.

'Then I'm a-comin',' she declared promptly. 'It do me good ter hear you-uns fairly make the sinners spin. Sech a gift o' speech ye hev got! I fairly see hell when ye talk o' thar doom. I see wrath an' I smell brimstone. Lord be thanked, I hev fund peace! An' I'm jes' a-waitin' fur the good day ter come when the Lord'll rescue me from yearth!' She threw herself back in her chair, closing her eyes in a sort of ecstasy, and beating her hands on her knees, her feet tapping in rhythm.

'Though ef ye'll b'lieve me,' she added, sitting up straight with an appalling suddenness, and opening her eyes, 'D'rindy thar ain't convicted yit. Oh, child,' in an enthused tone of reproof, 'time is short--time is short!'

'Waal,' said Dorinda, speaking more quickly than usual, and holding up her hand to stop the wheel, 'I hev hed no chance sca'cely ter think on salvation, bein' ez the weavin' war hendered some--an'----'

She paused in embarrassment.

'That air a awful word ter say--puttin' the Lord ter wait! Whyn't ye speak the truth ter her, pa'son? Fix her sins on her.'

'Sometimes,' said the parson abruptly, looking at her as if he saw more or less than was before him, 'I dunno ef I hev enny call ter say a word. I hev preached ter others, an' I'm like ter be a castaway myself.'

The old woman stared at him in dumb astonishment. But he was rising to take leave--a simple ceremony. He unhitched the horse at the gate, mounted, and, with a silent nod to the group on the porch, rode slowly away.

Old Mrs. Cayce followed him with curious eyes, peering out in the gaps of the hop-vines.

'D'rindy,' she said, 'that thar Pa'son Kelsey--we-uns useter call him nuthin' but Hi--he's got suthin' heavy on his mind. It always 'peared ter me ez he war a mighty cur'ous man ter take up with religion an' sech. A mighty suddint boy he war--ez good a fighter ez a catamount, an' always 'mongst the evil, bold men. Them he consorted with till he gin his child morphine by mistake, an' its mammy quine-iron; an' she los' her senses arterward, an' flunged herse'f off'n the bluff. 'Pears like to me ez them war jedgments on him--though Em'ly warn't much loss; ez triflin' a ch'ice fur a wife ez a man could make. An' now he hev got suthin' on his mind.'

The girl said nothing. She stayed her wheel with one hand, holding the thread with the other, and looked over her shoulder at the receding figure riding slowly along the vista of the forest-shadowed road. Then she turned, and fixed her lucent, speculative eyes on her grandmother, who continued:

'Calls hisself a castaway! Waal, he knows bes', bein' a prophet an' sech. But it air toler'ble comical talk fur a preacher. Brother Jake Tobin kin hardly hold hisself together, a-waitin' fur his sheer o' the joys o' the golden shore.'

'Waal, 'pears like ter me,' said Mirandy Jane, whose mind seemed never far from the culinary achievements to which she had been dedicated, 'ez Brother Jake Tobin sets mo' store on chicken fixin's than on grace, an' he fattens ev'y year.'