Part 10

“‘Oh-aw-ee-ye, Mister Kyune, Oh, Mister Kyune!’ That’s the way he ’lowed I sing.”

“Dell-law!” Obadiah’s flexible lips distended in a wide and comprehensive sneer that displayed many large irregular teeth, and was in more ways than one far from beautiful. But to Skimpy no expression had ever seemed so benignant, indicating as it did the strength of fraternal partisanship.

“He’s jes’ gredgin’ ye, Skimp,” cried Obadiah. “Else he be turned a bodacious idjit! He air a idjit fur the lack o’ sense! Shucks!”—his manner was the triumph of lofty contempt as he again lifted his violin to his ear—“don’t ye ’sturb me ag’in ’bout Ike Guyther. Don’t ye, now.”

The two boys who sat at the end of the bench talked together, so eager were they to express their scorn. “The whole Smoky Mountings knows better’n that!” cried one belligerently.

“Nobody kin sing like Skimpy—sings like a plumb red-headed mocking-bird, an’ Ike knows that fac’ ez well ez road ter mill,” said the other.

His mother had almost dropped the baby, who made a great lunge toward Bose. “Why,” she cried, “Skimpy gits his singin’ ways right straight from his gran-dad Grisham—_my_ dad—ez war knowed ter be the mos’ servigrous singer they hed ennywhar roun’ in this kentry fifty year ago. I hev hearn all the old folks tell ’bout’n his singin’ an’ his fiddlin’ when he war young, an’ I ’members he sung fune’l chunes whenst he war a old man; he hed gin up the ways o’ the worl’ an’ he wouldn’t sing none ’ceptin’ ’round the buryin’ groun’ whenst they war c’mittin’ some old friend ter the yearth. An’ his voice would sound strange—strange, an’ sweet an’ wild, like the water on the rocks in a lonesome place, or the voice of a sperit out’n the sky. Oh my!—oh my!”—she was rocking herself to and fro with the baby in her arms, her distended eyes looking far down the vistas of the past. “How I ’members it—how I ’members it!”

Hark! Skimpy starts with a sudden shock. Was that the beating of the boughs on the roof, drum-like, or a rub-a-dub measure played with two pea-sticks on the rail fence of the garden—the signal by which Jerry Binwell was to summon him should he conclude to try the hazardous enterprise this night? The wind—only the wind; wild weather without! Thankful he was to be left to this cheerful fireside, and the warm partisan hearts so near akin to him.

“I wonder ye didn’t larrup Ike, Skimpy,” said Obadiah. “Ye could do it. He’s heavy, but mighty clumsy. Ye could run aroun’ him fifty times whilst he war a-turnin’ his fat sides roun’.”

Obadiah knitted his brows and nodded confidently at Skimpy.

“I never thunk ’bout fightin’,” responded Skimpy. “My feelin’s war jes’ so scrabbled up I never keered fur nuthin’ else! Arter Ike an’ me hed been so frien’ly too!”

“That’s like my dad. Skimpy’s like his gran-dad,” said Mrs. Sawyer, dreamily. “He war tender an’ easy hurt in his feelin’s.”

Like that saintly old man! How _could_ she think it. Skimpy was ready to burst into tears. And yet, he argued, there was nothing wicked about what he was to do. He wished only to help Jerry Binwell to secure the box of papers that could do naught but harm now—to help a man who could have no other aid. Why did the enterprise terrify him as a crime might? he asked himself in exasperation. Certainly as far as he could see there was no mischief in it. As far as he could see! Alas, Skimpy! How shortsighted a boy is apt to be! He began to say to himself that it was because everybody was down on Binwell, being poor and therefore unpopular, that he too was influenced by the prevalent feelings, even when he sought to be friendly. Yet this reasoning was specious. If it had involved no disobedience, his heart would have been light enough. He could have gone along gayly with his father, whom he trusted, and explored every chasm and cavity in Keedon Bluffs, or, for the matter of that, in the Great Smoky Mountains. But as he listened for the summons—a faint travesty of a drum-beat on the rail fence—he would grow rigid and pale, and when the boughs swaying in the blast touched with quick, tremulous twigs the clapboards of the roof with a tapping sound, he shivered, and started from his seat, and fell back again, hot and cold by turns.

“I be glad fur ye ter hev no mo’ ter do with them Guythers, ennyhow,” said his father gravely. “They hev acted mighty strange bout’n Jerry Binwell—an’ ef they consorts with sech ez him me an’ mine can’t keep in sech comp’ny. Folks hev tuk ter specla’tin’ powerful bout’n Ab an’ him hevin’ been sech enemies—Ab war blinded through his treachery—an’ now livin’ peaceable together under one roof. Some folks ’low ez Ab hev got his reasons fur it, an’ they ain’t honest ones. I ain’t a-goin’ ter pernounce on that; I ain’t a-goin ter jedge, kase I don’t want ter be jedged. I reckon I’d show up powerful small—though honest—thar ain’t no two ways ’bout that, I thank the mercy. But ye done mighty well, Skimpy, ter gin up yer frien’ like I tole yer ter do thout no questions, kase this Binwell war thar. Ye’ll l’arn one day ez I hed a reason—a mighty good one, too.”

He sucked his pipe sibilantly. “Ye done mighty well, Skimpy,” he repeated with an earnest sidelong glance at his son.

Skimpy listened, half choking with the confession that crowded to his lips. And yet how could he divulge that he had given up Ike indeed for Binwell himself; how could he confide Binwell’s secret of the Bluffs, the story of the courier and his hidden box and the order to be shot as a deserter; and above all, how could he admit having assisted in throwing away old Corbin’s ladder—the malice and the mischief of it frightened him even yet.

“I’ll tell ez soon ez I kin put it back. I’ll tell dad ennyhows; I hev got ter holp Jerry Binwell this time, but arter that I’ll never go along o’ him ag’in,” he thought, as he stared pale and abstractedly at his father, who was tilted back in his chair contentedly smoking his pipe.

Obadiah twanged gleefully on his fiddle while the firelight and shadows danced to the measure; the other two boys scuffled merrily with one another, sometimes leaving the bench to “wrastle” about the floor, falling heavily from time to time. The baby sputtered and crowed and grabbed Bose’s ear in a strong mottled fist until that amiable animal showed the white of his eye in gazing pleadingly upward at the infantile tyrant. The wind whirled about the house, the door shook, and the branches of the tree close by thrashed the roof.

“Why, Skimpy, how mournful ye look!” exclaimed Mrs. Sawyer.

“Shucks!” said Obadiah fraternally, “ye needn’t be mournin’ over Ike an’ his comp’ny. I wouldn’t gin a pig-tail, nor a twist of one, fur Ike!”

“Ye hev got comp’ny a plenty at home,” exclaimed Mrs. Sawyer, “with yer three big brothers”—

“An’ the baby,” cried one of the wrestlers pausing for breath.

“An’ Bose,” added the other, red-faced and panting.

“Laws-a-massy, Skimp,” exclaimed Obadiah, rising to the heights of heroism, “I’ll gin ye the loan o’ my fiddle. Thar!”

He placed the instrument in Skimpy’s trembling hand, and laid the bow across his knee. And this from Obadiah, who had always seemed without feeling except for his own music!

Their kindness melted Skimpy, who held the instrument up to his agitated face as if to shield it from observation, and burst into tears.

“Waal, sir!” exclaimed the wrestlers in chorus.

“Tut—tut—Skimpy boy!” said his father in remonstrance.

Obadiah’s face was anxious. “Jes’ lean a leetle furder ter the right, Skimp,” he said, “don’t drap no tears inter the insides o’ that thar fiddle—might sp’ile it tee-totally.”

Skimpy held the violin well to one side, and wept as harmlessly as he might. He found a great relief in his sobs, a relaxation of the nervous tension—he might have told them all then had it not been for the inopportune solicitude of his mother.

“Ye hed better go ter bed, sonny. I know it’s early yit, but ye look sorter raveled out. Ye better go ter bed an’ git a good sleep, an’ ye won’t keer nuthin’ ’bout Ike an’ his aggervations in the mornin’.”

Skimpy, still carefully holding the precious violin, sat on the bench for a moment longer, struggling with that extreme reluctance to retire which is characteristic of callow humanity. But he felt that it would be better to be out of the sight of them all; he might be tempted to say or do something that he would regret afterward; he rose slowly, and with an averted face, held the fiddle and bow out toward Obadiah who grasped them with alacrity, glad enough that his generosity had not resulted in the total destruction of the instrument in which his heart was bound up. Skimpy with slow tread and a downcast look which greatly impressed the two sympathetic wrestlers, who were standing still now and gravely gazing after him, took his way up the ladder in the corner which ascended into the roof-room of the cabin. He paused when he had almost reached the top, turned and glanced down doubtfully at the group below.

The flames, yellow and red, filled all the chimney, and the little room was brave in the golden glow. Already the two wrestlers were again matching strength in friendly rivalry, seizing each other by the waist, and swaying hither and thither with sudden jerks to compass a downfall—their combined shadow on the wall reeling after them seemed some big, frightful two-headed monster. Obadiah’s cheek was tenderly bent upon the violin; a broad smile was on his face as the whisking bow in his deft handling drew out the tones. The baby’s stalwart grip on Bose’s ear had begun to elicit a long, lingering, wheezing whine for mercy, not unlike the violin’s utterance; it ended in a squeak before Mrs. Sawyer noticed how the youngster was enjoying himself.

“Pore Bose!” she cried as she unloosed the mottled pink and purple fist, and then with a twirl she whisked the baby around on her lap with his back to his victim. A forgiving creature was Bose, for as the baby’s bald head turned slowly on its neck and the staring round eyes looked after the dog, Skimpy could hear his stump of a tail wagging in cheerful fealty to the infant, and thwacking the floor—although the wrestlers were unusually noisy, although the violin droned and droned, and although the winds sang wildly without and the sibilant leaves whirled.

Skimpy hesitated even then for a moment as he stood on the ladder; finally he mounted the remaining rungs, his story untold.

It was not very dark in the roof-room; through the aperture in the floor, where the ladder came up, rose the light from the fire below, and there were many cracks which served the same purpose of illumination. Skimpy could see well enough the two beds where he and his brothers were wont to sleep. Garments hung from the rafters, familiar some of them and often worn, and others were antique and belonged to elders in the family long ago dead; these had never been taken down since placed there by their owners; several were falling to pieces, shred by shred, others were still fresh and filled out, and bore a familiar air of humanity.

Skimpy did not approach the beds, he quietly crossed the room to the gable end, paused to listen, then opened the batten shutter of a little glassless window beside the chimney. Dark—how dark it was as he thrust out his head; he started to hear a dull swaying of the garments, among the rafters, as if they clothed again life and motion. Only the illusion of the wind, he remembered, as he strove to calm the tumultuous throbbing of his heart, his head instinctively turning toward the fluttering vestments that he could barely see.

The wind still piped—not so sonorous a note, however; failing cadences it had and dying falls, as of a song that is sung to the end. Once again the boughs beat upon the eaves—and, what was that! Skimpy’s heart gave a great plunge, and he felt the blood rush to his head. A faint clatter—a ra-ta-ta, beaten drum-like on the rail fence of the “garden spot”—or was it his fancy?

The wind comes again down the gorge. The althea bushes and the holly shiver together. The dead Indian corn, standing writhen and bent in the fields, sighs and sighs for the sere season. And the boughs of the tree lash the roof. An interval. And once more—ra-ta-ta! from the garden fence! And ra-ta-ta, again.

XIV.

The group below took no heed how the time passed. Thinking of it afterward, they said it seemed only a few moments before they heard amongst the fitful gusts of the wind, wearing away now, and the dull stirring of the tree without, a hurried, irregular footstep suddenly falling on the porch, a groping, nervous hand fumbling at the latch.

“Hev ye los’ yer manners ez ye can’t knock at the door,” said Peter Sawyer sardonically, speaking through his teeth, for he still held his pipe-stem in his mouth.

Ike had burst in without ceremony and stood upon the threshold, holding the door in one hand and gazing about with wild eyes, half blinded by the light, uncertain whether Skimpy was really absent or overlooked among the rest.

“I—I—kem ter see Skimpy,” he faltered.

Mrs. Sawyer had set the baby on the floor beside Bose, and had folded her arms stiffly. She looked at Ike with heightened color and a flashing eye.

“Waal, I ain’t keerin’ ef ye never see Skimpy ag’in,” she said indignantly, “considerin’ the way ye treat him. That thar boy air tender in his feelin’s, an’ he hev been settin’ hyar an’ cryin’ his eyes out ’count o’ you-uns. Ye want ter torment him some mo’, I s’pose.”

Ike stared bewildered. “I ain’t never tormented Skimp none ez I knows on.”

“Ye ain’t!” exclaimed Obadiah, scornfully. Then grotesquely distorting his face he careened to one side and began to wheeze distractingly—“Oh—aw—yi-i, Mister Ky-une, Oh—aw—ee-ee, Mister Ky-une.”

As Ike still stood holding the door open, the flames bowed fantastically before the wind, sending puffs of smoke into the room and scurrying ashes about the hearth.

“Kem in, ef ye air a-comin’, an’ go out ef ye air a-goin’,” said Mrs. Sawyer tartly. “Ennyhow we-uns will feel obligated ef ye’ll shet that door.”

The invitation was none too cordial, but Ike availed himself of the opportunity to speak, since the matter was so important.

He closed the door and sat down on the end of the bench where Skimpy had been sitting so short a time before.

“Skimp ’lows that’s the way ye mocked him,” said Obadiah. “An’ ye wants ter see him ag’in, do ye? Ef I war Skimp I’d gin ye sech a dressin’ ez ye wouldn’t want ter see _me_ ag’in soon.” He winked fiercely at Ike and nodded his head. Then he stuck his violin under his chin and began to saw away once more as if nothing had happened.

Ike gave a great gulp as if he literally swallowed a bitter dose in taking Obadiah’s defiance; the strain on his temper was severe, but he succeeded in controlling himself. It was in a calm and convincing voice that he said:—

“Oby, ye an’ me, an’ Skimp, and the t’others”—pointing to the tangled-up wrestlers—“hev been too good frien’s ter be parted by folks tattlin’ lies an’ tales from one ter ’nother. I never said sech. I never mocked Skimpy’s singin’ sence I been born. I hev sot too much store by Skimp fur that, an’ he oughter know it.”

Mrs. Sawyer’s expression softened. “Ye only would hev proved yerse’f a idjit ef ye hed faulted Skimpy’s singin’,” she said. Then, still more genially—“Set up closer ter the fire. It mus’ be airish out’n doors. Who d’ye reckon tole Skimp sech a wicked, mean story on ye?”

Ike trembled in his eagerness to tell. “I dunno fur true, Mis’ Sawyer, and mebbe I oughtn’t ter say, but I b’lieves it be Jerry Binwell, kase Skimpy hev been goin’ a powerful deal with him lately, an’”—

Peter Sawyer turned suddenly upon the boy. “The truth ain’t in ye, Ike Guyther. Ye knows ez yer dad an’ yer uncle, an’ yerse’f an’ yer folks ginerally, air the only critters in the Cove ez would ’sociate with Jerry Binwell, an’ live in fellowship with him under the same roof. I ’low they air crazy—plumb bereft. It’s yer folks ez hev harbored him hyar, an’ ye can’t tar Skimpy with sayin’ he consorts with sech. I forbid Skimp ever ter go with you-uns enny mo’, so’s ter keep him out’n Binwell’s way. Now, sir; ye can’t shoulder him off on Skimpy!”

Ike’s face turned scarlet. “I hev glimpsed Skimp with him ag’in an’ ag’in. An’ I b’lieves he be a-goin’ ter git Skimp inter mischief.”

Obadiah laid his fiddle down on his knee, pursed up his lips, and looked aggravatingly cross-eyed at Ike, up from his toes to the crown of his head.

“’Twouldn’t take much mo’, Ike, ter make _me_ settle you-uns,” he observed.

“I ain’t keerin’ fur you-uns, Obadiah!” cried Ike. “I hev kem ter say my say—an’ I’m a-goin’ ter do it. I b’lieve Jerry Binwell air arter old Squair Torbett’s money what folks ’low he hid in a box in a hollow o’ Keedon Bluffs.”

Peter Sawyer’s pipe had fallen from his hand, and the fire and tobacco and ashes rolled out upon the hearth. He gave it no heed. He sat motionless, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his surprised, intent eyes fixed upon the boy’s face.

“I never s’picioned at fust what he war arter, though I seen him foolin’ roun’ them Bluffs an’ a-climbin’ on the ledges. But I knowed ’twar suthin’ cur’us. An’ whenst I seen Skimp along o’ him so much I kem hyar this evenin’ an’ tried ter warn him. But ter-night I hearn Jerry Binwell ax uncle Ab—him it war ez holped the Squair hide the box whilst Jerry Binwell watched—what hollow he hid it in.”

“An’—an’—did Ab tell him?” demanded Peter Sawyer, leaning down, his excited face close to Ike’s, his eyes full of curiosity and more—intention, suspicion.

Once again Ike recognized the false position into which his uncle was thrust. How could any man’s honest repute survive a misunderstanding like this? He realized that in his eager desire to save his friend his tongue had outstripped his prudence.

“I jes’ wanter tell Skimp what I hearn,” he said, declining to answer categorically, “an’ then let him go on with Binwell ef he wants ter. I war feared he’d purvail on Skimp, by foolin’ him somehows, ter snake inter them hollows an’ git that box fur him. Whar be Skimp?”

“Asleep in bed, whar he oughter be, Ike,” said Skimpy’s mother contentedly rocking by the fire.

Peter Sawyer hesitated for a moment. Then he slowly rose. “’Twon’t hurt Skimp ter wake him up. He mought ez well hear this ez not.”

He winked at his wife. He thought that if Skimpy were present he himself would hear more of the whereabouts of the box, which might prove of service in the constable’s search for it, when the ladder could be found or a substitute provided. He walked toward the primitive stairway, feeling very clever and a trifle surprised at the promptitude and acumen of his decision. He himself would wake Skimpy in order to give him a quiet caution not to become involved in any quarrel that might restrain or prevent Ike’s disclosure. He tramped slowly and heavily up the ladder as if he were not used to it, and indeed he seldom ascended into the roof-room, its chief use being that of a dormitory for the boys. As he left the bright scene below, suffused with mellow light, the shadows began to gloom about him as if they came down a rung or two to meet him or to lend him a helping hand; he raised his eyebrows and peered curiously about. His head was hardly above the level of the floor of the loft before he became aware that the roof-room was full of motion. He gave a sudden start, and stood still to stare, to collect his senses that surely had played him false. No,—solemnly wavering to and fro, a pace here, a measure there, was the gaunt company of old clothes, visible in the glimmer through the crevices of the floor, and bearing the semblance of life in the illusions of the faint light and the failing shadow, as if they had outwitted fate somehow, despite their owners’ mounds in the little mountain graveyard. Peter Sawyer gasped—then he shivered. And it was, perhaps, this involuntary expression of physical discomfort which led his mind to judge of cause and effect. “The winder mus’ be open,” he said through his chattering teeth.

The next moment he saw it—he saw the purplish square amidst the darkness of the walls; the naked boughs of the tree without; and high, high—for he was looking upward—the massive looming mountain, and the moon, the yellow waning moon, rising through the gap in the range.

“The wind’s laid,” he muttered, “or the flappin’ o’ that thar shutter would hev woke the boy afore this time.”

He clumsily ascended the remaining rungs and strode across the floor to Skimpy’s bed, looking now with curious half-averted eyes at the lifelike figures of the old clothes, and then at the yellow moon shining through the little window into the dusky place, and drawing the shadow of the neighboring tree upon the floor.

Sawyer’s hand touched the pillow.

“Skimpy!” he said. And again, “Skimpy!”

It was a louder tone. A penetrating quality it had, charged as it was with a sudden, keen fear.

“Fetch a light!” he cried, running to the top of the ladder, dashing away the spectral garments. “Fetch the lantern, Oby, or a tallow dip.”

Below they heard his quick footsteps returning to the bed as they sprang up, affrighted, yet hardly knowing what had happened.

“Skimpy!” his voice sounded strong again—reassured; he could not, would not believe this thing. “Quit foolin’, sonny; whar hev ye hid?”

Skimpy’s mother had waited for neither the candle nor the lantern; she mounted the ladder by the light of the fire, and she understood what had happened almost as soon as Ike did, as pale and dismayed he looked over her shoulder into the dusky garret. The golden moonlight fell through the little window upon the slowly-pacing clothes, and drew the image of the bare tree upon the floor, and slanted upon the empty bed by which Peter Sawyer stood crying aloud—“He hev gone, wife; he hev gone!”

XV.

The great gray sandstone heights of Keedon Bluffs began to glimmer in the midst of the black night when the yellow moon, slow and pensive, showed its waning disk, half veiled with a fibrous mist, in the gap of the eastern mountain. The woods were still densely dark on the other side of the road. A slender beech, white and spectral, was dimly suggested at their verge, shuddering and shivering in the last vagrant gust of the wind. Skimpy glanced fearfully at it for a moment as he came softly down the road and then he stood shivering too, with his hands in his pockets.

A swift, dark figure, as noiseless as if unhampered with substance, appeared at his side, and a husky, wheezing voice murmured suddenly—“Hyar we air, Skimp!”

Even so bated a tone did not elude the alert echo. “S-Skimp-imp-mp,” the Bluffs were sibilantly multiplying the tones. It seemed to Skimpy that some vague spy of the earth or of the air was repeating the sound to charge its memory with the word. He could ill trust even Keedon Bluffs with the secret of his name now, and he looked with futile deprecation over his shoulder at every whisper of the familiar word.

“Don’t talk!” he said nervously.

“Shucks!” exclaimed Binwell; “I’d sing ef I war minded ter—an’ ef I hed a pipe like yourn. What ails ye ter be so trembly? ’Tain’t no s’prisin’ job—it’s fun, boy! An’ ter-morrer ye and me will go an’ cut down them pines an’ git old Fat-sides’ ladder out’n ’em.”