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Title: The story of Keedon Bluffs

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock

Release date: July 31, 2025 [eBook #76600]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888

Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS ***





_BOOKS BY_

“Charles Egbert Craddock.”

(MARY N. MURFREE)


IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.

DOWN THE RAVINE. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. A Novel 16mo, $1.25.

IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel 16mo, $1.25.

THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS. 16mo, $1.00.

                          HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
                           BOSTON AND NEW YORK.




                                    THE
                          STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS

                                    BY
                          CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
           AUTHOR OF “IN THE CLOUDS,” “DOWN THE RAVINE,” “IN THE
                 TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS,” “THE PROPHET OF THE
                       GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC.

                              [Illustration]

                            BOSTON AND NEW YORK
                       HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
                      The Riverside Press, Cambridge
                                   1888

                             Copyright, 1887,
                            BY MARY N. MURFREE.

                          _All rights reserved._

                     _The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
             Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.




THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS.




I.


Towering into the air, reflected deep in the river, the great height of
Keedon Bluffs is doubled to the casual glance and augmented in popular
rumor. Nevertheless a vast mass of rock it is, splintered and creviced,
and with rugged, beetling ledges, all atilt, and here and there a niche
which holds a hardy shrub, subsisting surely on the bounty of the air or
the smile of the sun, for scant sustenance can be coaxed from the solid
sandstone.

Here bats and lizards colonize, and amongst the trailing vines winged
songsters find a home, and sometimes stealthy, four-footed, marauding
shadows, famous climbers, creep in and out of the hollows of the rocks,
for it is in the very heart of the wilderness on a slope of the Great
Smoky Range. Naught was likely to behold them—save their own bright-eyed
images in the swift current below, or perhaps a wayfaring cloud above,
journeying adown the sky from the zenith—until one day a boy chanced
to come this way in driving home the cow; he paused on one side of the
horseshoe bend, which the river describes just here, and gazed fixedly
across the bight at the bluffs.

If at this moment one of the shy dwellers of the cliff had thrust forth
an unwary head there was no need to hastily withdraw it. The boy’s
attention was concentrated on a motionless object lying on a ledge; he
looked at it in doubting surprise. It was a cannon-ball, precariously
lodged where it had fallen, spent and harmless, years ago.

For Keedon Bluffs had not always been so silent. They had echoed the
clamors of artillery. Not that a battle was ever fought in these
fastnesses, but once from a distant point the woods in the cove were
shelled, and, ranging further than the bursting bombs, this solid round
shot cleared the river at the mountain’s base, and dropped at last on
the ledge, remaining the only memento of the day. Covered with rust,
half draped by a vine, peaceful and motionless and mute, it lay. And Ike
Guyther, looking at it, wished that he had lived in those times of riding
and raiding, when the batteries roared their sulphurous thunder, and
flung their shells, hurtling along these quiet woodland ways, with fuses
all a-flaring.

“Folks in them days hed a chance ter show thar grit, an’ ride, an’ fight,
an’ fire off them big guns,” he grumbled, when he had gone back to his
father’s cabin, in Tanglefoot Cove, three miles away, and had detailed
his discovery to the fireside group. “They war mos’ly boys, no older
sca’cely ’n me. An’ hyar _I_ be—_a-drivin’ up the cow_!”

“Waal, now,” exclaimed his mother in her consolatory drawl, “ye oughter
be powerful thankful ye hev got a cow ter drive. The gu’rillas made beef
o’ yer aunt Jemimy’s cow.”

“An’ fur goodness’ sake look at yer uncle Abner ef ye hanker so ter go
a-fightin’,” his aunt Jemima tartly admonished him.

There sat all day beside the wood-fire a man of middle age, but with a
face strangely young. It was like the face of a faded painting, changing
only in the loss of color. The hair, growing off a broad forehead, was
bleaching fast; the tints had become dim on cheek and lip, but time and
care had drawn no lines, and an expression of childlike tranquillity
hovered about the downcast eyes, forever shielded by the drooping
lids. Life seemed to have ended for him twenty years before, on a day
surcharged with disaster, when the great gun, which had been a sort of
Thor to him, and which he had served with an admiring affection and
reverent care, was spiked by its own cannoneers that it might fall
useless into the hands of the enemy. It was the last thing he ever
saw—this great silenced god of thunder—as he stood beside it with the
sponge-staff in his hand. For among the shells shrieking through the
smoky air, one was laden with his doom. A hiss close at hand, the din of
an abrupt explosion, and he fell unconscious under the carriage of the
piece, and there he was captured.

And when the war was over and he came forth alike from the prison and the
hospital, blinded and helpless, naught remained to him but to vaguely
ponder on what had been in the days that had gone forever, for he hardly
seemed to look to the future, and the present was empty-handed.

He had met his grief and the darkness with a stoicism difficult to
comprehend. He spent his days in calm unimbittered meditation, not
gentle, but with flashes of his old spirit to attest his unchanged
identity. Acclimated to sorrow, without hope, or fear, or anxiety, or
participation in life, time could but pass him by, and youth seemed to
abide with him.

The old martial interest flared up when Ike told of his discovery on the
ledge of Keedon Bluffs.

“What kind o’ ball, Ike?” he demanded.

But Ike had been born too late to be discerning as to warlike projectiles.

“I wisht I could lay my hand on it!” said the blind artillery-man.
“I’ll be bound I’d know, ef I jes’ could heft it wunst! Whar did it
lodge, Ike? Could I make out ter git a-nigh it? Could ye an’ me git thar
tergether?”

“Ye ’pear b’reft, Abner!” aunt Jemima cried out angrily. “Ye mus’ hev
los’ more ’n yer sight. Hev ye furgot how Keedon Bluffs look? Thar ain’t
nobody sca’cely ez could keep foot-hold ’mongst them sheer cliffs. An’ ye
oughtn’t ter be aggin’ on Ike ter climb sech places—git his neck bruk.
Ye hain’t got no call, sure, ter set store on no mo’ cannon-balls, an’
artillery, an’ sech. I ’low ez ye’d hev hed enough o’ guns, an’ I wish
ye’d never hed nuthin’ ter do with no rebels.”

For this was one of the divided families so usual in East Tennessee, and
while the elders had clung to the traditions of their fathers—the men
fighting staunchly for the Union—the youngest had as a mere boy fled
from his home to join the Confederate forces, and had stood by his gun
through many a fiery hail of battle storms. But the bitterness of these
differences was fast dying out.

“I hev gin the word,” said Ike’s father, and grizzled, and stern, and
gigantic, he looked eminently fitted to maintain his behests, “ez no mo’
politics air ter be talked roun’ this ha’th-stone, Jemimy.”

“I ain’t talkin’ no politics,” retorted aunt Jemima, sharply. “But I
ain’t goin’ ter hold my jaw tee-totally. I never kin git over hevin’ Ab
settin’ up hyar plumb benighted! plumb benighted!—ez blind ez a mole!”
She shook her head with a sort of acrimonious melancholy.

“Yes,” drawlingly admitted the blind artillery-man, all unmoved by this
uncheerful discourse. “Yes, that’s a true word.” He lifted his head
suddenly and tossed back the gray hair from his boyish face. “But I _hev_
seen—sights!”

Even less tolerated than politics were Ike’s repinings and longings for
some flaunting military exploit. “Take yer axe,” his soldier-father said
sternly, “an’ show what sort’n grit ye hev got at the wood-pile.”

The blind man with a laugh more leniently suggested, “Ye wouldn’t hev
been much use ter we-uns in our battery, Ike, throwin’ up a yearth-work
ter pertect the guns an’ sech, seein’ the way ye fairly _de_-spise a
spade.”

Ike had yet to learn that it is the spirit in which a deed is done that
dignifies and magnifies it.

He found the stories of the military glories he would have achieved, had
the opportunity fallen to his lot, much more gently treated by a certain
young neighbor, who had indeed a good and willing pair of ears, and much
readiness and adaptability of assent. Very pliable, withal, was “Skimpy”
Sawyer—by the nickname “Skimpy” he was familiarly known, a tribute to his
extreme spareness. He was peculiarly thin, and wiry, and loose-jointed.
He had a good-natured freckled face, paler for the contrast with a crop
of red hair; a twinkling and beguiling brown eye; great nimbleness of
limb; and many comical twists of countenance at command.

He accompanied Ike blithely enough to Keedon Bluffs, one afternoon, to
look at the cannon-ball on the ledge. A bridle-path, almost a road it
might have seemed—for the woods, bereft of undergrowth by the annual
conflagrations, gave it space—wound along the side of the mountain
near the verge of the cliffs. The river, all scarlet, and silver, and
glinting blue, was swirling far down in the chasm beneath them; the sheer
sandstone bank rose opposite, solid as a wall; and beyond, the cove—its
woods, and cabins, and roads, and fences, bounded by the interlacing
mountains—lay spread out like an open map.

Peaceful enough it was to-day, as the boys stood on the Bluffs. There
were wings, homeward bound, hurrying through the air, instead of shells
with fuses burning bright against the sunset sky. No bugle sang. The
river was murmuring low a plaintive minor lay that one might hear forever
and never tire. Scanty shrubs of dogwood and sour-wood flaunted, red and
orange, from the rifts of the great crags; here and there were fissures,
irregularly shaped, and dark, save that upon the upper arch of each a
ceaseless silvery light shimmered, reflected from the water. On one of
the many ledges the cannon-ball lay unstirred.

“Skimpy, I b’lieve I could actially climb down this hyar bluff an’ coon
it roun’ that thar ledge an’ git that ball,” said Ike, balancing himself
dangerously over the precipice.

So far did it overhang the river at this point that he was startled by
seeing a hat and face suddenly looking up at him from the depths below,
and it was a moment before he realized that the hat and face were his
own, mirrored in a dark pool.

“Ye couldn’t climb up ag’in with it in yer paw,” retorted Skimpy.

“Naw,” Ike admitted. “But ennyhow I’d like ter climb down thar an’ see
what’s in them hollows. I b’lieve I could git inter one o’ ’em.”

Skimpy had taken a handful of pebbles and was skipping them down the
river. He turned so suddenly that the one in his hand flew wide of the
mark and nearly tipped his friend’s hat off his head.

“What air ye a-hankerin’ ter git in one o’ them holes fur?” he demanded,
surprised, “so ez ye can’t git out ag’in? ’Pears-like ter me they’d be a
mighty tight fit on sech a big corn-fed shoat ez ye air. An’ then I’d
hev ter climb down thar an’ break my neck, I reckon, ter pull ye out by
the heels.”

“I wouldn’t git in ’thout thar ’peared ter be plenty o’ elbow room,” Ike
qualified.

“Who’s that?” said Skimpy, suddenly.

So absorbed had they been that until this moment they were not aware of
a slow approach along the road behind them. The sight of a stranger was
unusual, but so little curiosity do the mountaineers manifest in unknown
passers-by that if the man’s manner had had no appeal to the boys, they
would hardly have lifted their eyes; they would not even have stared
after his back was turned.

But the stranger was about to hail them. He had already lifted his hand
with an awkward wave of salutation. Still he fixed his eyes upon them and
did not speak as he slouched toward them, and the two boys were impressed
with the conviction that he had heard every word that they had been
saying.

He was a tall, dawdling fellow of forty, perhaps, carrying a rifle on his
shoulder, and dressed in an old brown jeans suit, ill-mended and patched
here and there, and with some rents not patched at all. His hair, long
and brown, streaked with gray, hung down to his collar beneath his old
broad-brimmed wool hat. His face was lined and cadaverous, his features
were sharp and shrewd. His eyes, bright, small, dark, and somehow not
reassuring, expressed a sort of anxiety and anger that the boys could not
comprehend.

There came along the road after him, plainly defined on the summit of the
great bluffs, between the woods and the sunset sky, with the river in the
abyss beneath and a gleaming star in the haze above, a grotesque little
cart, the wheels creaking dismally with every revolution and filling the
air with the odor of tar and wagon grease. A lean scraggy ox was between
the shafts; a cow shambled along at the tail-board; a calf and two or
three dogs trotted further in the rear. The man was moving, evidently,
for the poverty-stricken aspect of the vehicle was accented by the meagre
show of household utensils—frying-pan, oven, skillet, spinning-wheel—and
the bedding, and two or three chairs with which it was laden. On top of
it all, sitting in a snug nest of quilts, with a wealth of long yellow
hair, tousled and curling upon her shoulders, was a little girl, four
or five years old. Her infantile beauty had naught in common with his
down-looking, doubtful, careworn face, but she fixed the two boys with a
pair of grave, urgent, warning gray eyes, which intimated that whatever
the man might do or say he had a small but earnest backer. And though the
autumn leaves were red and yellow above her head, the roses of spring
bloomed on her cheek, and its sunshine was tangled in her hair; all its
buoyant joys were in her laugh when she chose to be merry, and her smile
brightened the world for him and for her. She was at the threshold of her
life—likely to be a poor thing enough and hedged with limitations, but it
had space for all the throbs of living, for all there is of bliss and woe.

The man glanced back at her as he spoke.

“Jes’ set a-top thar, Rosamondy; set right still an’ stiddy, leetle
darter. I hev got a word or two ter pass with these folkses. Howdy!
Howdy! Strangers! Do you-uns know whar old man Binwell hev moved ter
hyar-abouts? I stopped at his house a piece back, an’ thar warn’t nobody
thar, ’pears like; chimbly tore down; nare door in the cabin; empty.”

He had a strained rasping voice; his tone was not far from tears.

The two boys looked at one another. “Old man Binwell” was Ancient History
to them—like Cæsar or Hannibal to boys of wider culture.

“Him? he’s dead,” they said together, slowly producing the recollection.

“I war ’feared so,” said the stranger. “An’ whar’s ’Liza Binwell, an’
Aleck?”

These were more modern. “Waal—her,” said Ike, “I hev hearn tell ez
how she merried a man ez kem hyar in the war-times along o’ the Texas
Rangers; an’ he seen her then, an’ kem arter her when the fightin’ war
over. I disremember his name. An’ he persuaded Aleck an’ his fambly ter
move with them ter Texas.”

The man nodded his head in melancholy reception of the facts.

“They be my brother an’ sister,” he said drearily. “I hain’t hearn
nothin’ ’bout’n ’em fur a long time. But when we-uns lef’ cousin Zeke
Tynes’s this mornin’—we bided thar las’ night—an’ started fur Tanglefoot
Cove, he ’lowed they war hyar yit. I counted on stayin’ with ’em this
winter. Who’s a-livin’ hyar-abouts now ez mought be minded ter let us
bide with ’em fur ter-night?”

The boys prompting each other, mentioned the names of the few families
in the cove. The stranger’s face fell as he listened. There was no house
nearer than three or four miles, and the gaunt and forlorn old ox was not
a beast of unrivaled speed. The man looked up doubtfully at the ragged
edges of a black cloud, barely showing above the mountain summits, but
definitely in motion before a wind that was beginning to surge in the
upper regions of the air, although it hardly swayed the tops of the
trees on Keedon Bluffs. The evening had stormy premonitions, despite the
exquisite clearness of the western sky.

“I’m ’feared I’ll hev ter feed an’ water the beastis, else he won’t hold
out so fur,” he half soliloquized, looking at the ox, drowsing between
the shafts.

Then his attention reverted to the boys.

“Thanky, strangers, thanky fur tellin’ me. I dunno ye, ye see, but I war
born an’ bred hyar-abouts. Thanky. If thar’s enny favior I kin do fur
you-uns lemme know. Fish-in’?” he inquired suddenly.

Skimpy colored. To be asked if he were fishing from the great heights of
Keedon Bluffs savored of ridicule.

“How could we fish from sech a place ez this?” he said a trifle gruffly.

“Sure enough! Sure enough! I hed furgot how high ’twar,” and the stranger
came up and peered with them over the river. “I ain’t seen this spot
fur a good many seasons, folkses,” he said, his eyes fixed upon the
cavities of the great cliffs across the bend. The cow was munching the
half-withered grass by the roadside; the dogs laid their tired bones down
among the fallen leaves and went to sleep; Rosamond on her throne among
the household goods sat in the red after-glow of the sunset, all flushed
and gilded, and swung one plump bare foot, protruding its pink dimples
from beneath her blue checked homespun dress, and planted the other foot
recklessly upon her discarded dappled calico sunbonnet which she suffered
to lie among the quilts.

“I tell ye what,” he added, still looking about at the darkling forests,
at the swift current below the stern grim cliffs, at the continuous
shifting shimmer reflected upon the upper arch of the hollows, “you-uns
hev got mo’ resky ’n ever I be, ter bide ’roun’ this hyar spot when it
begins ter be cleverly dark.”

Both boys looked quickly at him.

“Hain’t ye hearn what the old folks tells ’bout them hollows in the rock?”

“Naw!” they exclaimed together.

Skimpy’s eyes were distended. He felt a sudden chilly thrill. Ike,
although as superstitious as Skimpy, experienced an incredulity before he
even heard what this man had to say.

“Waal,” resumed the stranger, and he lowered his voice, “the old folks
’low ez the witches lie thar in the daytime—ye know they never die—an’
the yearth grants ’em no other place in the day, so they takes ter the
hollows in the rock. An’ thar they keeps comp’ny with sech harnts ez air
minded fur harm ter humans—folks ez hev been hung an’ sech. An’ then in
the evenin’-time they all swarms out tergether.”

Skimpy glanced over his shoulder. It was doubtless his fancy, but the
foolish boy thought he saw a black head thrust suddenly out of one of the
hollows and as suddenly withdrawn.

Now Skimpy was afraid of nothing that went about in the daytime, and
indeed of nothing human and mortal. Witches, however, were, he felt,
of doubtful destiny and origin, malevolent in character, and he had a
vaguely frightful idea concerning their physiognomy and form. He revolted
at the prospect of a closer acquaintance.

“Kem on, Ike,” he said hastily, clutching his friend’s sleeve, “let’s go
home.” And he peered fearfully about in the closing dusk.

But Ike was steadily studying the stranger’s face, and the man looked at
him though he addressed Skimpy.

“Yes; it’s better ter be away from hyar betimes. They air special active
in the full o’ the moon.”

It had risen before the sun had set, and ever and again, from fleecy
spaces amongst the ranks of the dark clouds, its yellow lustre streamed
forth in myriads of fine fibrous lines slanting upon the tumultuous
palpitating purple vapors massed about it. Sometimes a rift disclosed its
full splendor as it rode supreme in the midst of the legions of the storm.

“But them witches an’ sech air in them holes all day an’ ef ennybody war
sech a fool ez ter go meddlin’ with ’em, ef so be they could git down
thar ennywise—_they’d ketch it_!”

He shook his head in a way that promised horrors.

“What would they do ter ’em?” asked the morbidly fascinated Skimpy. He
dared not look over his shoulder now.

The narrator was forced to specify, “Strangle ’em.”

Skimpy shuddered, but Ike was ready to laugh outright. He stared at the
speaker as if he found him far more queer than his story.

“Ye ’member old man Hobbs?” said the stranger suddenly.

“I hearn my dad tell ’bout’n him,” returned Ike. “Old man Hobbs said
he walked off’n the Bluffs through bein’ drunk an’ fell inter the
river—though ez he war picked up alive folks b’lieved he never fell off’n
the Bluffs, but jes’ said so, bein’ drunk an’ foolish.”

“Naw, it’s a fac’,” said the stranger, as if he knew all about it. “The
witches got ter clawin’ an’ draggin’ of him, an’ they drug him in the
water, bein’ ez he war a-foolin’ roun’ them hollows an’ this hyar spot
ginerally.”

“Oh, I’m goin’,” cried Skimpy; then as he started off, the idea of being
alone in the great woods, with the night settling down, came upon him
with overwhelming terror, and he renewed his pleas to Ike. “Kem on, Ike.
We-uns hev been hyar long enough.”

“Oh, shet up,” cried Ike roughly. “The witches ain’t goin’ ter strangle
ye ez long ez ye hev got me alongside ter pertect ye.”

He wanted to hear more of what this man had to say, for he placed a
different interpretation upon his words. But Rosamond had lifted her
voice, and seeing that her father was preparing to start anew on their
forlorn journeying was insisting on a change in the arrangement.

“I wants ye ter let the calf ride!” she cried in her vibrating musical
treble. “I wants the calf ter ri-ride!”

The calf added its voice to hers, and bleated as it ran along behind. It
had evidently come far and was travel-worn.

“I wants the calf ter ride wif _me_!” she cried again, with an imperious
squeal upon the last syllable.

“The calf can’t ride, Rosamondy,” the man said, in gentlest
expostulation. “He’s too heavy fur the steer—pore steer.”

“Naw, pore calf!” cried Rosamondy, and burst into tearful rage.

“Ah, Rosamondy, ain’t ye ’shamed ter be sech a bad leetle gal? Ain’t ye
’feared them boys’ll go off an’ tell ev’ybody what a bad leetle gal ye
be!”

But Rosamond evidently did not care how far and wide they published her
“badness,” and after the boys had turned off into the woods, leaving the
wagon creaking along the road with the ox between the shafts, and the man
driving the cow in advance, they still heard the piteous bleats of the
little calf trotting behind, and Rosamondy’s insistent squeal, “I wants
the calf ter ride wif _me_!”

In the dense woods the darkness was deeper; indeed they might only know
that as yet it was not night by seeing vaguely the burly forms of the
great boles close at hand. The shadowy interlacing boughs above their
heads merged indistinguishably into the mass of foliage. Every sound was
startlingly loud and in the nature of an interruption of some sylvan
meditation. The rustle of their feet in the crisp fallen leaves seemed
peculiarly sibilant, and more than once suggested a pursuer. Skimpy
looked hastily over his shoulder,—only the closing obscurity that baffled
his vision. A gust of wind swept through the woods rousing a thousand
weird utterances of bough, and leaf, and rock, and hollow, and died away
again into the solemn silence.

Skimpy quickened his pace. “Kem on, Ike,” he muttered, and started at the
sound of his own voice.

Suddenly Ike Guyther, without a word of warning, turned about and began
to retrace his way.

“Whar ye bound fur?” cried Skimpy, laying hold on his arm and striving to
keep him back.

“Bound fur the Bluffs,” said Ike. “’Twon’t take we-uns long. I jes’
wanter sati’fy myself whether that thar man air too ’feard o’ witches
ter water an’ feed his steer at that thar spring ’mongst the rocks nigh
Keedon Bluffs.”

“_We-uns!_” cried Skimpy. “I tell ye now, I’d be palsied in every toe an’
toe-nail too ’fore I’d go a inch.”

“Waal, I’ll ketch up with ye,” said Ike.

Skimpy made an effort to hold him, but the stronger boy pulled easily
away from him and ran. A whirl of the dry leaves, a whisking sound, and
he was lost among the trees.

He did not keep this speed. He had slackened his pace to a walk before he
emerged upon the road that ran between the verge of the bluffs and the
woods. It seemed much earlier now, for here was presented the definite
aspect of the evening instead of the uncertain twilight of the forest.
In the faint blue regions of the zenith still loitered gauzy roseate
reflections of the gorgeous sunset, not yet overspread by the black cloud
gradually advancing up the vast spaces of the heavens. The river, in its
cliff-bound channel, caught here and there a glittering moonbeam on its
lustrous dark current. The amber tints of the western sky shaded into a
pallid green above the duskily purple mountains. A pearl-colored mist,
most vaguely visible, lurked in the depths of the cove.

Suddenly the rocks by the roadside stood distinct and ruddy in a broad
flickering red flare; there were moving figures, grotesque elongated
shadows, among the trees. Ike Guyther stopped short, with a sudden
dread of the witches of Keedon Bluffs trembling within him. Then, for
he was stout-hearted, he ventured to creep along a few steps further.
There under the boughs of the pines and the scarlet oaks and the yellow
hickory trees a fire of pine knots flamed, throwing hilarious sparks
and frisking smoke high into the melancholy white mists gathering in
the woods; and grouped about it—not witches nor harnts—but the humble
travelers eating their supper by the wayside. Ike recognized the clumsy
cart in the shadowy background; the ox, out of the shafts, now munching
his well-earned feed; the cow lying on the ground licking the head of
her calf. And sitting by the fire with her yellow hair glittering, her
face illumined by the blaze, her pink feet presented to the warmth, was
Rosamondy, commenting gravely as her father broiled a bit of bacon on
the coals and deftly constructed an ash-cake. The dogs too sat beside
the fire, all upright and wide awake, and with an alert interest in the
proceedings. Now and then as the man turned the meat and the savory odor
would rise, one of them would twist his head admiringly askew and lick
his chops in anticipation.

The little girl talked continuously, her babyish voice clear on the still
air, and the man listened and affected amazement when she thought she
was astonishing him, and laughed mightily when she laughed, and agreed
punctiliously with whatever she might say. But indeed she seemed a person
who would tolerate little contradiction.

The picture vanished suddenly as Ike Guyther turned back into the sombre
depths of the woods.

“Waal, sir!” said the shrewd young fellow to himself, “whoever b’lieves
ez witches an’ harnts swarm out’n them hollows in the night times ter
strangle folks ez be nigh by, the man ez stops ter cook his supper a-top
o’ the Bluffs—don’t. An’ that air a true word.”

The more he reflected upon the circumstance, as he took his way through
the woods to rejoin Skimpy, the more he felt sure that this stranger
had overheard his proposal to climb down to those hollows, and had some
purpose to serve in frightening him away from the cavities in the cliffs.

Still pondering upon this mystery he looked back once after he and
Skimpy had reached the levels of Tanglefoot Cove. The advancing cloud
still surged over the summit of the range, throwing its darkling
shadows far down the steeps. In the mingled light of the dying day and
the fitful gleam of the moon he could yet distinguish the stern grim
crags, and below, on the slope where the grassy road wound in serpentine
convolutions, he saw the cart with the little girl once more perched
high, the ox between the shafts, the man driving the cow, the dogs and
the calf trotting in the rear—all the little procession on the way again
to seek shelter in some hospitable farmer’s cabin. And thus they fared
down the rugged mountain ways into the future of Tanglefoot Cove.




II.


When clouds gather over Tanglefoot Cove, and storms burst on the mountain
slopes, the sounds of the tempest are redoubled by the echoes of the
crags, trumpeting anew the challenge of the wind and reiterating the
slogan of the thunder. For begirt on every side by clifty ranges the
secluded valley lies. Ike’s mother, listening to the turmoil of the
powers of the air and the sinister response of the powers of the earth,
as the surly night closed in, waited with anxiety for the boy’s return,
and welcomed him with a brightening face as he entered.

A great fire flared on the hearth, illumining the ill-laid puncheon
floor; the high bed with its gayly tinted quilts; the warping bars; the
spinning-wheel; the guns upon their racks of deer-antlers; the strings
of red peppers, swaying overhead; the ladder leading up to the shadowy
regions of the roof-room through a black hole in the ceiling. The
fire-light even revealed in a dusky nook a rude box on rockers—which had
cradled in turn these stalwart soldiers, and later Ike, himself—and,
under a low shelf in the corner, a tiny empty chair.

The wind rushed down the chimney, and every cranny piped a shrill
fife-like note, and the thunder rolled.

“I dunno when I ever hev seen sech a onexpected storm,” said Ike’s father
as he hung up the ox-yoke on the wall, having turned out the team from
his wagon.

“T’wouldn’t s’prise me none,” said aunt Jemima, “ef ’twar jes’ a big blow
ez tore down the fodder-stack an’ rooted up yer orcherd’ an’ never gin
ye nare drop o’ rain fur the drought;” she cast an almost reprehensive
glance upon him, as if it were through his neglect that he was threatened
with these elemental disasters.

“Waal,” he retorted, “I ain’t settin’ myself ter fault the Lord’s
weather. An’ my immortal hopes ain’t anchored in a fodder-stack, nuther
in the orcherd. An’ thar’s no dispensation ez kin happen ez I ain’t in
an’ about able ter stan’.”

Even aunt Jemima was rather taken aback by this sturdy defiance of fate.
She had nothing to say, which was rather rare, for she had given most
of her declining years to argument, and much practice had developed her
natural resources of contradiction, which were originally great. As Ike’s
father was himself testy and dogmatic, and the blind man often proclaimed
that he took “nuthin’ off’n nobody,” the family might have been divided
by dissension were it not for the placid temperament of Ike’s mother.
She received no credit, however, for—as people often observed—she was
not born a Guyther and had “no call to be high-strung an’ sperited.” She
had been a great beauty in her girlhood and had had lovers by the score,
but care and age and poverty had bereft her of her personal charms, and
she had neither culture nor grace of manner to fill the breach. Her hard
experience of life, however, had failed to sour her temper, and her
placidity had something of the buoyancy of youth, as she often declared,
“It’ll be all the same a hundred year from now.”

“’Pears like ter me ’twon’t blow that hard,” she remarked as she stirred
the corn-meal batter in a wooden bowl, “the wind don’t fool much with our
orcherd nohow.”

“I’d ruther hev the wind ’n, no rain,” said aunt Jemima, plaintively.

“I’m a-thinkin’ we’ll git rain too, jes’ ’bout enough. Yellimints don’t
neglec’ us noways ez I kin see. Seedtime an’ harvest shell never fail”—

“Kems mighty nigh it, wunst in a while,” said aunt Jemima, shaking
her head. “Ef ye hed enny jedgment an’ forecast, M’ria, ye’d look fur
troubles ahead like them ye hev seen.”

There was a shadow on the wasted placid face under Mrs. Guyther’s
sunbonnet as she knelt to put the potatoes with their jackets on in the
ashes to roast.

“Waal—let troubles go down the road. I wouldn’t hev liked thar looks no
better through viewin’ ’em ’fore I got ter ’em. I ain’t a-goin’ ter turn
roun’ now ter see ag’in how awful they war whenst they war a-facin’ me.
Let troubles go down the road.”

And so she covered the potatoes while aunt Jemima knit off another row.

The next moment both were besprinkled with ashes; the chimney-place
seemed full of a vivid white light never kindled on a hearthstone; there
was a frightful crack of thunder, then it seemed to roll upon the roof,
and the cabin rocked with the fierce assaults of the wind.

“That thar shot war aimed p’int blank,” said the blind artillery-man,
thrusting his hands deeper in his pockets, and stretching out his long
legs, booted to the knee. His gray hair had flakes of the white ashes
scattered upon it.

“Suthin’ mus’ hev been struck right hyar in the door-yard,” said aunt
Jemima. She had laid down her knitting with a sort of affronted and
expostulatory air. “I’ll be bound it’s the martin-house.”

“I’ll be bound it’s nuthin’ we want,” said Mrs. Guyther.

There was a hesitating drop, another, upon the clap-boards that roofed
the house; then came the heavy down-pour of the rain, the renewed gusts
of the wind, and amidst it all a husky cry.

They turned and looked at one another. Then Hiram Guyther lifted the
latch. The opening door let in the moist, melancholy air of the stormy
evening that seemed to saturate the room in pervading it. A crouching
figure, the sombre clouds, the slanting lines of rain, the tossing
dark woods, were barely visible without, until a sudden, blue forked
flash, of lightning played through this dusky landscape of grays and
browns. As it broadened into a diffusive red flare, it showed an ox with
low-hanging horns between the shafts of a queer little cart, piled high
with household goods. Among them half smothered in the quilts—wound
tightly about her shoulders—appeared the yellow head, and pink face, and
big, startled gray eyes of a little girl. It was only for a moment that
this picture was presented, then it faded away to the dark monotony of
the shapeless shadows of the woods; and as Ike went to the door he heard
the drawling voice of the man he had seen at Keedon Bluffs asking Hiram
Guyther for shelter for the night.

“We-uns hev been travelin’ an’ hoped ter git settled fur the winter ’fore
enny sech weather ez this lit onto us.”

“Kem in, traveler! Ye air hearty welcome ef ye kin put up with sech
ez we-uns kin gin ye,” the hospitable mountaineer drawled sonorously,
raising his voice that it might be heard above the blast.

“We’ll all hev pleurisy, though, ef ye don’t shet that thar door, an’
keep it shet,” muttered aunt Jemima, in her half articulate undertone.

She was silent the next moment, for there was slowly coming into the
room—nay, into the grim heart of aunt Jemima—a new power in her life. A
yellow-topped, cylindrical bundle, much like a silking ear of corn, was
set on end in the middle of the puncheon floor, and as the strange man
unwrapped the parti-colored quilts from about it, there stepped forth,
golden-haired, ragged, smiling, with one finger between her small and
jagged teeth, with dimples that graced the poverty and atoned for the
dirt, a little girl, looking quaintly askance at the group about the
fire, and making straight for the little chair under the shelf. She
did not move it. She sat there, under the shelf, smiling and pink and
affectedly shy.

Aunt Jemima stared over her spectacles. She too smiled as her eyes met
the child’s—a grim demonstration. Her features adapted themselves to it
reluctantly as if they were not used to it.

“Kem up by the fire, child,” she said.

But the little girl sat still under the shelf.

“Warm yer feet!” aunt Jemima further sought to beguile her.

The little guest’s pleased smile took on the proportions of an ecstatic
grin, but she only settled herself more comfortably in the small chair
under the shelf.

Aunt Jemima, tall, bent, raw-boned, rose and approached the little girl
with a seriousness that might have seemed formidable. She looked up with
her big gray eyes all shining in the firelight, but did not offer to
retreat. She only clutched fast the arms of the little chair that had
taken her delighted fancy, and since she evidently would not leave it for
a moment, the old woman pulled the chair, child and all, in front of the
fire, into the full genial radiance of the blazing hickory logs. Ike and
his mother and the hounds looked on at this proceeding, and one of the
dogs, following close after the chair when it was dragged over the floor,
squeaked in a low-spirited key and wheezed and licked aunt Jemima’s hand,
as it grasped the knob, seeking to call attention to himself. “Now ain’t
ye a nice one, a-goin’ on four legs an’ switchin’ a tail a-hint ye, an’
yit ondertakin’ ter be ez jealous ez folks,” she admonished him, and he
frisked a little, glad to be spoken to on any terms, and sat down between
her and the little girl, who still clutched the arms of the tiny chair.

“Waal now, it air a plumb shame fur her ter be bar’foot this weather,”
said aunt Jemima, contemplating the little guest.

The old woman was abashed when she glanced up and saw the child’s
companion, who, with Hiram Guyther, had just returned from the task of
stabling the ox and sheltering the wagon, for she had not intended that
the stranger should overhear this reflection.

“I know that,” he drawled in a desolate low-spirited cadence, his
eyes blinking in the light of a tallow dip that Mrs. Guyther had set
on the mantel-piece, and seeking with covert curiosity to distinguish
the members of the group. He paused suddenly, for at the sound of his
voice the blind man abruptly rose to his feet and stretched out his
arms gropingly. “Who—who?” he stuttered, as if his speech were failing
him—“who be this ez hev kem hyar ter-night?” He passed his hands angrily
across his eyes—“Ain’t it Jerry Binwell?”

Blind as he was, he was the first to recognize the newcomer with that
sharpening of the remaining senses which seeks to compensate for the loss
of one. But indeed Jerry Binwell had outwardly changed beyond recognition
in the twenty years since they had last seen him, when he and Abner were
mere boys in the Cove, and had run off together to join the Southern army.

Binwell took a step toward the door as if he regretted his entrance and
wished that he still might go.

“What hev gin ye the insurance ter kem a-nigh me!” Abner cried angrily,
still reaching out with hands that were far enough from what they sought
to clutch. The child, in her little chair at his feet, gazed up with
awe. “Arter all ye done in camp, a-lyin’ an’ a-deludin’ me; an’ then
slanderin’ an’ backbitin’ me ter the off’cers, an’ men; an’ every leetle
caper I cut, gittin’ me laid by the heels fur it; an’ ev’ry time ye got
in a scrape, puttin’ the blame on me. An’ at last—at last”—he cried,
raising his voice and smiting his hands together as if overborne anew
by the despair and scorn of it, “whenst we war flanked by the Feds ye
deserted! An’ ye gin ’em the word how ter surround our battery! An’
cannon, an’ cannoneers, an’ horses, an’ caissons, an’ battery-wagon, all
war captured! That war yer sheer o’ the fight.”

He paused for a moment. Then he took a step forward, his stalwart,
soldierly figure erect, his face flushed, his hand pointing toward the
door.

“G ’long!” he said roughly. “Go out. Haffen o’ this house is mine. An’ ye
sha’n’t bide in it one minute. I hev hed enough of ye an’ yer ways. Go
out!”

“It’s a plumb harricane out’n doors, Ab,” Mrs. Guyther pleaded timidly.
“Won’t ye—won’t ye jes’ let him bide till the storm’s over?”




III.


The lightning flashed; the thunder pealed. The blind man lifted his head,
listening. He hesitated between his righteous scorn, his sense of injury,
and the hospitality that was the instinct of his nature. He yielded at
last, shamefacedly, as to a weakness.

“Waal, waal,” he said, in an off-hand cavalier fashion, “keep Jerry dry;
he’s mighty val’y’ble. Good men air sca’ce, Jerry; take keer o’ yerse’f!”

He laughed sarcastically and resumed his chair. As he did so his booted
knee struck against the little girl, still staring at him with eyes full
of wonder.

“What’s this?” he cried sharply, his nerves jarring yet with the
excitement. He had not before noticed her. “I can’t see!” with a shrill
rising inflection, as if the affliction were newly realized.

A propitiatory smile broke upon her face.

“Jes’ Rosamondy.” Her voice vibrated through the room—the high quavering
treble of childhood that might have been shrill were it not so sweet.

“Jerry’s leetle gal,” said aunt Jemima.

“Shucks!” he exclaimed, contemptuously, and turned aside.

“Set down, Rosamondy,” said aunt Jemima, assuming a grandmotherly
authority. “Set down like a good leetle gal.”

But Rosamond was not amenable to bidding and paid no heed. She had risen
from her chair and stood by the side of the blind artillery-man.

“Set down,” aunt Jemima admonished her again. “_He_ can’t see.”

“Kin ye feel?” she said, suddenly laying her dimpled pink hand upon his.
She gazed up at him, her eyes bright and soft, her lips parted, her cheek
flushed. “Kin ye feel my hand?”

He looked surly, affronted for a moment. He shook the light hand from
his own. It fell upon his knee where Rosamond leaned her weight upon
it. There was a subtle change on his face. In his old debonair way
he drawled, “Yes, I kin feel. What’s this?”—he laid his hand upon her
hair—“Flax, I reckon. Hyar, Sis’ Jemimy, hyar’s that flax ye war goin’
ter hackle. Mus’ I han’ it over ter ye?”

He made a feint of lifting her by her hair, and she sank down beside him,
screaming with laughter till the rafters rang.

Aunt Jemima had taken the sock from her knitting needles and was swiftly
putting on the stitches for newly projected work.

“Lemme medjure ye fur a stockin’,” she said, reaching out for the little
girl. “Look at the stitches this child’s stockin’ will take! The fatness
of her is s’prisin’. An’ ef Ab air willin’,” she continued, “I want
Rosamondy ter bide hyar till I can knit her a couple o’ pair o’ stockin’s
an’ mend up her clothes.”

“I dunno ’bout’n that,” said Jerry Binwell. He had seated himself in a
chair, his garments dripping with rain, and small puddles forming from
them on the floor. “I dunno ez we-uns kin bide enny arter the rain’s
over.”

The capable aunt Jemima cast upon him a glance which seemed to contrast
his limp, forlorn, and ineffective personality with her own stalwart
moral value.

“I ain’t talkin’ ter you-uns, Jerry, nor thinkin’ ’bout ye, nuther,”
she remarked slightingly. “I done said my say,” she continued after
the manner of a proclamation. “That thar child air goin’ ter bide hyar
till I fix her clothes comfortable—ef it takes me a year.” Then with
a recollection of her brother’s grievance she again added, “Ef Ab’s
willin’.”

The stocking was already showing a ribbed top of an admirable
circumference. Aunt Jemima evidently felt a pride in its proportions
which was hardly decorous.

Jerry made no reply. He looked disconsolately at the fire from under the
brim of his rain-soaked hat, that now and then contributed a drop to his
cheek, which thus bore a tearful aspect. Presently he broke the silence,
speaking in a strained rasping voice.

“Ef I hed knowed ez Ab held sech a pack o’ old gredges ag’in me I
wouldn’t kem nigh hyar,”—he glanced at the stalwart soldierly form
bending to the little laughing maiden. “Ab dunno what I tole the en’my—he
warn’t thar. I never tole the en’my nuthin’. An’ ennybody ez be captured
kin be accused o’ desertin’—ef folks air so minded. I never deserted,
nuther. An’ sech gredges ez Ab hev got,” he continued, complainingly,
“air fur what I done, an’ what I ain’t done whenst I war nuthin’ but a
boy.”

Ab turned his imperious youthful face toward him. “Ye hesh up!” he said.
“Thar ain’t no truce hyar fur you-uns.”

His attention reverted instantly to the babyish sorceress at his knee,
who with an untiring repetition and an unfailing delight in the exercises
would rise from her chair and gently touch his hand or brow crying out,
with a joyous voice full of laughter, “Kin you-uns feel my hand!” Then he
would pinch her rosy cheeks and retort in a gruff undertone, “Kin you-uns
feel my hand!”

They all behaved, Ike thought, as if they had found something choice and
of rare value. And if the truth must be known, he watched the scene
with somewhat the same sentiments which animated the old dogs. He shared
their sense of supersedure, and he noticed how they whined and could take
comfort in no spot about the hearth; how they would walk around three
times and lie down with a sigh of renunciation, to get up suddenly with
an afflicted wheeze, and hunt about for another place where the distemper
of their jealous hearts might let them find rest for their lazy bones.
They all sought to intrude themselves upon notice. One of them crept
to aunt Jemima and humbly licked her foot, only to have that stout and
decided member deal him a prompt rebuke upon the nose, eliciting a yelp
altogether out of proportion to the twinge inflicted; for the dog, since
he was not going to be petted, was glad to have some grievance to howl
about, as he might thus more potently appeal to her sympathy. The hound
that was accustomed to lead the blind man was even more insistent in
his manifestations. He went and rested his head on his master’s knee,
while the little girl sat close in her chair on the opposite side, and
he wagged his tail and looked imploringly up in the sightless face. But
Rosamondy leaned across and patted the dog on the head, and let him take
her hand between his teeth, and jovially pulled his ears, and finally
caught him by both, when they lost their balance and went over on the
hearth together in a wild scramble, about to be “scorched an’ scarified
ter death,” as aunt Jemima said snappishly when she rescued the little
girl, who was a very red rose now, and with a tender shake deposited her
once more in her chair. Then the old dog left his master, and ran and sat
by her and sought to incite more gambols.

But Ike was not so easily reconciled. He did not appreciate the
gratulation in this acquisition that pervaded the fireside. She was
nothing but a girl, and a little one at that. Girls were not uncommon;
in fact they abounded. They were nothing to brag on—Ike was young as
yet. They couldn’t do anything that was worth while. To be sure the
miller’s daughter _was_ tolerably limber, and could walk on the timbers
of the race, which were high above the stream. But how she worked her
arms above her head to balance herself! And she pretended to shoot once
in a while; he would rather be the mark than stand forty yards from it.
That was the best he could say for her shooting. And she was the most
valuable and desirable specimen of girlhood in his acquaintance. He noted
with a sort of wonder that his mother, through sheer absorption, let the
hoe-cake burn to a cinder, and had to make up and bake one anew. And when
it was at last done, and placed on the table with the platter of venison
and corn dodgers, he did not admire particularly the simple but vivid
delight with which Rosamond greeted the prospect of supper. But even the
saturnine Hiram Guyther looked at her with a smile as she ran glibly
around the table, and with her hands on the edge stood on her tiptoes to
see what they were to have, and he turned and said to Jerry Binwell, “She
air a powerful bouncin’ leetle gal. I reckon we-uns’ll hev ter borry her,
Jerry—ef,” recollecting in his turn that this was the child of his blind
brother’s enemy, “ef Ab’s willin’.”

The dawdling Jerry, still staring disconsolately at the fire, drawled
non-committally, “I dunno ’bout’n that.”

Despite all her fervor of anticipation, Rosamondy was not hungry. She
knelt in her chair at the table to be tall enough to participate in the
exercises, and her beaming pink face, and her tossing yellow hair, and
her glittering rows of squirrel teeth—she showed a great many of them
when she laughed—irradiated the space between aunt Jemima and Ab. Her
conduct was what Ike mentally designated as “robustious.” She bounced
up and down; she fed her supper to the dogs; she let the cat climb up
the back of her chair and put two paws on her shoulder among her tangled
yellow curls and lap milk out of her saucer. She shrieked and bobbed
about till Ike did not know whether he was eating hoe-cake or sawdust.
She looked as if she were out in a high wind. Aunt Jemima vainly sought
to make her eat her supper, but the displeasure on her face was a feigned
rebuke for which Rosamond cared as little as might be. When she concluded
her defiance of all those observances, which Ike had been taught to
respect, by taking her empty saucer, inverting it and perching it on her
tousled yellow pate after the manner of a cap, Hiram Guyther, the meal
being ended, caught her up delightedly and rode her to the fireplace on
his shoulder.

“I declar’, Jerry,” he exclaimed cordially, his big bass voice booming
amidst the trilling treble laughter, “we-uns’ll hev ter steal this hyar
leetle gal from ye.”

And Jerry, demurely disconsolate, replied, “I reckon I couldn’t spare
her, right handy.”

Presently Ike began to notice that it was very difficult for Rosamondy
to get enough of a joke. She refused to descend from the gigantic
mountaineer’s shoulder, and when he tried to put her down clung to his
collar, around his neck, indeed she did not scruple to clutch his hair.
Hiram Guyther had not for a long time taken such active exercise—for in
this region men of his age assume all the privileges and ailments of
advanced years—as during the time that he trotted up and down the floor
with the little girl on his shoulder, playing he was a horse. A hard
driver he had, to be sure, and he was obliged to stamp, and shy, and
jump, and spurt, smartly. He did not look quite sensible Ike thought in
unfilial surprise.

The whole domestic routine was upset. His mother and aunt Jemima had left
the clearing away of the dishes and applied themselves to pulling out
the old trundle-bed—long ago too short for any of the family—and they
arranged it with loving care and much precaution against the cold and
draughts.

“I’m fairly feared she mought roll out, an’ git her spine bruk, or her
neck,” said aunt Jemima, knitting her wrinkled brows in affectionate
alarm as she looked at the trundle-bed that was about two feet from the
floor.

“I reckon not,” said Jerry meekly as he inoffensively watched the
arrangement of the cosy nest. “She never fell off ’n the top o’ the
kyart—an’ sometimes she napped ef the sun war hot.”

“An’ ye air the only man in Tennessee ez would hev sot the leetle critter
up thar—an’ her tender bones so easy ter break,” said aunt Jemima, tartly.

“Waal, I done the bes’ I could fur her,” drawled Jerry in his tearful
voice, looking harried and woeful.

And remembering how kind and gentle he had seemed to his little
daughter, Ike wondered that he did not feel sorry for Jerry when aunt
Jemima intimated that he was heedless of her safety and neglected her.
But watching the man Ike was even more disapproving of the wholesale
adoration which the family seemed disposed to lay at the feet of the
little girl and of her adoption into a solicitude and love that was
almost parental. He believed that Jerry had an inimical appreciation of
all the slighting consideration of him, but offered no objection to the
authority they had assumed over Rosamondy, thinking it well that she
should get all she could out of them.

Her hilarity seemed to increase as the hour waxed later, and when
aunt Jemima finally took her, squirming and wriggling and shouting
with laughter, from Hiram Guyther’s shoulder and tucked her into the
trundle-bed with a red quilt drawn up close under her dimpled white
chin and her long yellow hair, Ike expected to see the whole bed
paraphernalia rise up while she resurrected herself.

“Ye lie still, now,” said aunt Jemima sternly, laying a hand upon each
shoulder.

A vague squirm, a sleepy chuckle, and Rosamond was eclipsed for the night.

“Waal, that beats my time,” said the grim aunt Jemima softly. “Asleep
a’ready!”

She sat down and resumed her knitting. Hiram Guyther was mopping his brow
with his handkerchief.

“I feel like ez ef I’d los’ ten pound o’ flesh,” he said. And Ike thought
it not unlikely. His mother was washing the dishes; the blind man was
reflectively smoking his pipe; the dogs came and disposed themselves with
reproachful sighs prominently about the hearth. Jerry Binwell did not
share their relief. He stirred uneasily in his chair, the legs grating on
the puncheon floor, as if he feared that with this distraction removed
the more unfriendly attention of the family might be directed to him. No
one spoke for a moment, all listening to the tumult of the rain on the
roof; they had not before noticed that the violence of the storm had
subsided into a steady downpour. Then, after a glance at the sleeping
face, pensive now and ethereal and sensitive, framed in the yellow hair
that streamed over the red quilt, aunt Jemima turned a long calculating
gaze on Jerry Binwell.

As its result she observed bluntly, “Her mother mus’ hev been a mighty
pritty woman.”

If the inference that Rosamond inherited none of her beauty from her
father was apprehended by Jerry, he did not resent it. His eyes filled
with tears.

“Yes, she war,” he said, dropping his voice to a husky undertone. “She
war a plumb beauty whenst she war young, afore she tuk ter ailin’.”

Another pause ensued. The rain beat monotonously; the eaves dripped
and dripped; the trees on the mountain slopes swayed, and creaked, and
crashed together.

“It hev been mighty hard on me,” Jerry again lifted up his dreary voice,
“ter know how bes’ ter keer fur Rosamondy—not bein’ a ’oman myself an’
sech. I know she’s ragged, but I can’t mend her clothes so they’ll
stay; she jumps so onexpected. I can’t sew fitten fur much, though I hev
tried ter l’arn. I ’pear ter be slow an’ don’t get much purchase on it.
I can’t keep no stiddy aim with a needle, nuther. An’ all the wimmen
ez ever hed a chance at Rosamondy tuk ter quar’lin over her, like them
done ez Sol’mon hed ter jedge a-twixt, till I war actially afeared she
be tore in two. Ever since the war I hev been livin’ down in Persimmon
Cove an’ thar it war I merried. ’Bout a year ago Em’line she died o’
the lung complaint. An’ then the ’tother wimmen, her sister an’ mother,
they quar’led so over Rosamondy, an’ set tharse’fs so ter spite me every
which-a-way, ez I jes’ ’lowed I’d fetch her up hyar fur this winter ter
bide with my folks awhile. An’ I fund ’em all dead or moved away—jes’
my luck! Rosamondy an’ me hev hed a mighty hard time. I hev been mighty
poor, never could git no good holt on nuthin’. I ain’t felt much like
tryin’ noways sence Em’line lef’; ’pears mighty hard she couldn’t hev
been let ter bide awhile longer.” And once more his eyes filled with
tears.

“Waal, mournin’ the dead is grudgin’ ’em the glory,” said Mrs. Guyther in
her comforting tones.

“I know that,” said Jerry, “I hev tried ter bow my mind;” his eyes were
still full of tears. And Ike, looking at them, was disposed to wonder
where he got them, so little did they seem genuine.

The tallow dip on the mantel-piece went out in a splutter and left them
all sitting in the red glow of the fire, which was a mass of coals where
the white flames had been. It was far later than the usual bed-time of
the family, and thus they were reminded of it. Mrs. Guyther, kneeling on
the hearth, began to cover the coals with the plentiful ashes that lay
in great heaps on either side. The dogs, summoned by Hiram Guyther to
leave the house, pulled themselves into various efforts at an upright
posture, and sat gazing blinkingly at the fire with a determination to
misunderstand the tenor of his discourse. One of them glanced over his
shoulder at the door and shivered at the thought of the bleak dampness
outside. Another yawned shrilly and was adjured by aunt Jemima to
hesh his mouth—didn’t he know he’d wake the baby up if he kep’ yappin’
that-a-way.

“Let the dogs alone, Hiram,” said Mrs. Guyther, “they count on bein’
allowed ter stay till the las’ minit. Ye show Jerry whar he hev ter sleep
whilst I fix the fire.”

After the host had shown Jerry up the ladder to the shadowy roof-room,
Abner, who had not again spoken to the visitor, and seeming as if he were
gazing ponderingly into the fire, said suddenly to the two women:—

“What do that leetle gal look like?”

Mrs. Guyther paused with the shovel in her hand, as she still knelt on
the hearth.

Aunt Jemima dropped her knitting in her lap.

They replied in a breath:—

“The pritties’ yearthly human ever you see!”

“Bigges’ gray eyes!” cried Mrs. Guyther, “an’ black lashes!”

“An’ yaller hair—yaller ez gold an’ haffen a yard long,” exclaimed aunt
Jemima.

“Fine bleached skin, white ez milk,” said Mrs. Guyther.

“An’ yit she’s all pink—special when she laughs,” cried aunt Jemima,
“jes’ like these hyar wild roses—ye ’member ’em, don’t ye, Ab, growin’ in
the fence corner in the June weather”—

—“Sech a many of ’em over yander by Keedon Bluffs,” put in Mrs. Guyther.

“I ’member ’em,” said Ab.

“Jes’ the color of ’em when she laughs—jes’ like they be, a-blowin’ about
in the wind,” declared aunt Jemima.

“She’s named right—Rosy; she’s like ’em,” said Mrs. Guyther.

The red glow of the embers was full on the blind man’s face, encircled by
shadows. It seemed half smiling, or perhaps that was some illusion of the
fire-light, for it was pensive too, and wistful. He pondered for a while;
then—“I’d like ter see her,” he said, simply. “I would.”

Every word was distinctly audible in the roof-room. Jerry Binwell sat
in a rickety chair amongst the shadows, his head attentively bent down,
his hands on his knees, his hat drooping half over his face. The rifts
between the puncheons of the flooring admitted a red glow from the
fire-lit room below, and illumined the dusky loft with longitudinal
shafts of light. A triumphant smile played over his face as the women
talked of the beauty of the little Rosamond—a smile that might have
expressed only paternal pride and satisfaction in the comfortable results
of the evening. But when the blind man’s rich low voice sounded, “I’d
like ter see her—I would,” the listener’s face changed. The narrow
gleam of light from the cracks in the floor played upon the mocking
animosity in his eyes, the sneer on his lips as they parted. He stood
suddenly erect, in a tense soldierly position—among the shadows, and the
bags of “yerbs,” and the old clothes, and the peltry hanging from the
ridge-pole—brought his heels together with a swift precision, and then
the deserter mockingly carried his hand to his hat in a military salute.

“I would,” dreamily reiterated the blind soldier in the room below.

The deserter, relaxing his martial attitude to his normal slouch,
noiselessly smote his thigh with his right hand, and burst into silent
laughter.




IV.


The next morning Ike woke with an odd, heavy sense of having sustained
some serious misfortune, and it was several moments before he
could identify it; when he did, he was amazed to find it only his
intuitive distrust of the stranger’s presence here, and an aversion
to its continuance. He upbraided himself in the same instant for the
inhospitable thought. “Hyar I be, actially a-grudgin’ the houseless ones
a shelter from the yellimints,” he said in shame.

He was disappointed, however, to observe that after breakfast there was
no sign of an impending departure; Jerry Binwell easily adapted himself
to the domestic routine and smoked and lounged before the fire, or
strolled lazily about the yard. Ike thought, for all he so readily made
himself at home, that his sordid, weak, sly face looked strangely alien
and out of place among the sterling, honest, candid countenances of the
family circle. So ill at ease did Ike feel with this vague anxiety that
he was glad enough when his mother bethought herself that she needed
logwood from the store. Mounted on the old gray mare he set out on this
errand, feeling liberated in a measure, riding against the fresh wind
that seemed to blow away the vexing distemper of his thoughts.

The rain had revivified the world; everything seemed made anew. The
colors were so luminously clear; how splendidly the maples deployed down
the mountain side, with red and amber and purple gleams; every needle of
the pines was tipped with a rain-drop, prismatically glittering. Mists
rose from the intermediate valleys between the ranges, and folded their
wings for a space, dallying on the summit, and then, drawn sunwards,
lifted with silent ethereal grace into the soft blue sky. How lofty the
mountains seemed to-day—how purple! Even the red mud beneath his mare’s
hoofs had depths of rich ocherous tints, restful to the eye. It splashed
monotonously under the steady jogging tread, so muffled that a squirrel,
nimbly speeding along the topmost rail of the wayside fence, had no
thought of an approach, and seemed a fellow-traveler; a swift one!—the
old mare is soon far behind. And now the river is crossed, swollen by
the rain and of a clay-color, instead of its wonted limpid silvery tint,
and deep enough in the middle to make the old mare flounder to the girth
and then unwillingly swim, while Ike gathers himself on his knees on
the saddle to keep out of the cold water. And now up the rocky bank in
the deep shadowy woods,—where there is no fence on either side of the
road, which seems merely a vagrant wheel-track here and there in the
mud, covered with the yellow and red and brown fallen leaves—and all the
bosky vistas are full of richest color. Everywhere the giant trees close
thickly in—no sign of mountains now, save the tonic balsamic air in proof
of the altitudes. Only the pines and cedars and the jungles of the laurel
are green, and green they will be all winter. Hear that! a fox barks in
that dense tangle—are the frost grapes ripe, old Crafty? And suddenly
between a scarlet oak and a yellow hickory a section of purple mountain
shows, a floating capricious sprite-like mist slips in and out of sight,
and there at the base of the range is the little store—a low white-washed
shanty of one room; further up the slope in the clearing a gray log-cabin
stands where Skimpy Sawyer lives.

Skimpy’s father kept the store, in a leisurely and unexcited
fashion—indeed many people might have considered that the store kept
itself. As Ike dismounted and hitched the mare to the fence, he gave a
peculiar whistle, a preconcerted signal, loud and shrill enough to summon
his friend if he had been anywhere in the vicinity. No one responded, and
Ike took his way to the open door of the store.

He had a certain pleasant anticipation; here congregated the mountain
cronies, and he loved to listen to their talk enriched with warlike
reminiscences, through which vibrated, as it were, some faint and far-off
echo of the strain of the bugle and the roll of the drum.

His hopes were suddenly destroyed. As he ascended the three or four
unhewn rocks that formed the steps to the door, he heard the long,
expressionless drawl of the storekeeper within, and then a fat man’s
husky laugh. Ike started guiltily at the sound. But the broad sunshine
had thrown a squatty shadow of him upon the floor within, and he
knew that this caricature was recognized, for the voice sang out
suddenly—“Ai—yi Ike; I see ye! Needn’t be hidin’! I’ll kem arter ye!”

Then as the boy, shamefaced and a little lowering, appeared in the
doorway, he continued, “Whar’s that buckeye tree ye war a-goin’ ter cut
down fur me so brash?”

“I plumb furgot it,” mumbled Ike, as if his contrition were more
acceptable when half articulate. “I furgot it, Mr. Corbin.”

“I’ll be bound ye did!” said the fat man vivaciously.

He was seated in one of the rickety chairs which hardly seemed adequate
to his weight. He wore an unbleached cotton shirt, a suit of blue jeans
much creased and crumpled, and a broad-brimmed hat, beneath which was
a face also creased and crumpled. He was slow and inactive rather than
old, and a man of his age who had lived a different life would hardly
have such gray hair as his, or so many wrinkles. Nevertheless he had
not entirely subsided into the chimney corner as is the habit of the
elderly mountaineer. He still plied his trade which was that of making
spinning-wheels and chairs, bread troughs and bowls, which require
mechanical dexterity rather than agility; thus it was that he had hired
Ike to find and cut down a sound and stalwart buckeye suitable for his
purposes, his own unwieldy bulk and sedentary habits making him averse to
undertaking the job himself.

Peter Sawyer, the storekeeper, was tall and lank. He had a long head,
an attenuated face, and a habit of basking in the sun, which was not
incongruous with a certain lizard-like aspect. He sat now with his
chair tilted against the frame of the doorway, and the sunshine poured
through upon him. He too wore his hat, and did not move while one of
his customers counted some pelts that he had brought to exchange and
announced the result. “Want some sugar an’ salt fur ’em?” demanded the
merchant lazily. “He’p yerse’f, neighbor; he’p yerse’f.”

The neighbor, who lived on the other side of the mountain, pottered
around among the merchandise in search of the sugar and salt, attended
only by the storekeeper’s dog, an earnest-minded and grave-mannered
brute, that guarded the store by night and seemed to clerk there by day,
following the customers about with sedulous politeness, and apparently
only hindered from waiting upon them by the lack of adaptability in
his paws. His urbanity did not extend to their followers. He measured
strength with all the dogs that came to the store. It was useless for any
pacifically disposed hound to sit under the wagon bed at a safe distance.
The clerk would rush out with a celerity that implied a hundred feet,
and the fracas under the wagon would be long and loud and bloody. But
he had not all the canine pluck in the Big Smoky, and thus it was that
one of his ears was slit, and he preferred to shut one eye, and his tail
was but a stump. He turned wagging it vivaciously as Ike came in, and
the storekeeper, regardless of old Corbin’s reproofs, said benignantly,
“Howdy, Ike, howdy? Make yerse’f at home. How’s the fambly, Ike, how’s
the fambly?”

“Jes’ toler’ble,” said Ike, taking a rickety chair near the door.

“Uncle Ab ez well ez common?” demanded the customer, still hunting about
for the salt. He was a tall, straight, soldierly fellow, and though he
had fought on the opposite side he felt a comrade-like sympathy for the
blinded artillery-man.

“He be jes’ ez peart ez ever—jes’ a-settin’-back,” said Ike, with
responsive interest. He had great love for his uncle and a special
veneration for a man so learned as he fancied Abner Guyther to be in the
science of gunnery. “He air jes’ ez lively ez a three-year-old colt.”

“Ain’t he a heap o’ trouble ter lead about an’ sech?” demanded old
Corbin, turning his crow’s-feet—one could hardly have said his glance,
for it was so deeply enveloped among the folds of wrinkles—upon Ike.

“Naw sir!” the boy repudiated the idea with a glowing cheek and a
flashing eye. “Uncle Ab air sech good comp’ny everybody in the fambly
jes’ hankers ter bide nigh him; the identical dogs fight one another fur
which one air ter be ’lowed ter lead him—sometimes ef we-uns air busy
he walks with a string ter the dog’s neck. Shucks! the main thing air
to _git_ ter lead him—jes’ ez apt ez not uncle Ab will set out by his
lone self. An’ he don’t often run over ennything—he ’pears ter hev a
heap o’ sense in his hands, an’ he knows whenst he air a-comin’ towards
ennything like a door or post, though he’ll walk ag’in cheers or tubs or
sech. ’Tother day—ye mought hev knocked me down I war so surprised—I kem
along the road ’bout a quarter o’ a mile from home, an’ thar sot uncle
Ab a-top o’ the rail fence—jes’ a-settin’ thar in the sun all alone an’
a-whistlin’ the bugle calls.”

“Ho! ho!” exclaimed the customer, “he always hed spunk,—Abner hed; an’ he
air a-showin’ it now, jes’ ez true ez when he sarved in his battery.”

“Yes, sir!” exclaimed Ike, gratified by this sign of appreciation.
Then warming to the subject he continued, “Uncle Ab ain’t ’feared o’
nuthin’—not even now, in the everlastin’ dark ez he be. Why, ’tother
day I see a old cannon-ball a-layin’ on a ledge over yander at Keedon
Bluffs, an’ when he learn ’bout’n it he war plumb trembly, he war so
excited, an’ he ’lowed he’d go ef I’d holp him a leetle, an’ climb down
them tremenjious cluffs, jes’ ter lay his hand on that cannon-ball,
ter remind hisself o’ that thar old gun o’ his’n, what he doted on so.
It fairly bruk his heart ter spike it. I hev heard him tell ’bout’n it
a-many-a-time.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Peter Sawyer, turning about in amaze, “a blind man climb
down Keedon Bluffs! ’Twould take a mighty spry feller with all his senses
fur that. I misdoubts ef ennybody hev ever done sech ez that—thout ’twar
Ab whenst he war young an’ limber, an’ wild ez a buck.”

Ike had become suddenly conscious that old Corbin was watching him
curiously.

“He don’t ’pear ter know he air blind, do he?” demanded the fat man,
slowly.

Ike detected some covert meaning in the tones. “Waal,” he said, vaguely
embarrassed and swinging his foot against the rung of the chair, “Uncle
Ab—he jes’ sets an’ laffs, an’ talks ’bout whar he hev been an’ what him
an’ his comrades done, an’ he don’t notice much what’s goin’ on now, nor
look out fur nuthin’ ez is ter kem.”

“He ain’t soured noways,” put in the customer, still intent on his
purchase.

There was a momentary silence. The flies buzzed about the sorghum barrel.
You might have heard the cat purring on the shelf.

“This hyar ’bout fair medjure, Pete?” the customer demanded lifting his
grave eyes as he helped himself to salt.

“I reckon so; I reckon so,” said the storekeeper casually.

Ike rose abruptly in awkward and eager haste; in a constrained and
nervous way he asked for the logwood he wanted. His quick instincts had
detected fault in something that he had said or the meaning that he had
conveyed. But his penetration was not so subtle as to descry wherein the
fault consisted. He was eager to get away. “’Fore I let my jaw git ter
wabblin’ ag’in. An’ then I hed better cut off the e-end o’ my tongue with
a hatchet an’ mebbe it wouldn’t be so powerful nimble.”

He expected old Corbin to say more, but the fat man sat solemnly puffing
his pipe, his face more than usually wrinkled, as he watched Ike with his
small twinkling eyes while Peter Sawyer procured the logwood and gave it
to the boy.

With some indefinite intention of propitiation Ike turned toward him at
the door. “I hev been toler’ble busy lately, but I’m a-goin’ ter cut down
that thar tree this evening, sure.”

“So do! So do!” assented old Corbin unreservedly. “Then I’ll gin ye that
thar rooster I war a-tellin’ ye ’bout. Powerful spry Dominicky.”

Ike looked back over his shoulder once as he trotted off on the old white
mare. The storekeeper and his clerk were standing in the doorway; the
ex-soldier had completed his purchases, and was riding off toward the
mountain; old Corbin was visible sitting within the door, a hand on
either knee, his eyes meditatively downcast. He solemnly shook his head
as he cogitated, and Ike was moved to wonder what he meant by it. “I
wisht I hedn’t tole what uncle Ab say ’bout climbin’ down them bluffs.
They ’pear ter think it be so cur’ous.”

And it was of Abner Guyther that the two gossips were talking as Ike rode
away out of sight.

“That be a powerful strange thing fur Abner ter be a-sayin’,” remarked
the storekeeper presently.

Old Corbin shook his head with a wise look; a wise smile wrinkled about
the corners of his mouth.

“In my opinion _he_ ain’t no blind man. He kin see _some_, mebbe more,
mebbe less. He air jes’ purtendin’. Set up thar an’ laff an’ joke ez spry
ez a boy o’ twenty, an’ talk ’bout climbin’ down the bluffs—an’ tell me
he ain’t hed his vision for all these years! I know Abner!”

“What makes ye ’low sech ez that, Jake?” demanded his crony, fairly
startled out of his composure by this proposition.

“Kase Abner always war a ’sateful an’ a plottin’ boy—look at the way he
fooled his folks when he run off ter jine the Secesh! I ain’t furgittin’
that. An sure’s ye air born thar’s suthin’ behind all them thar shet
eyeballs. Abner, he hain’t quit his plannin’ an’ sech. He hev got his
reason fur it. It’s slow a-showin’. But it’ll be made plain.”

The storekeeper puffed his cob-pipe, and silently watched the blue
wreaths curl from it. He did not enter readily into this opinion, for
he was a man of the practical views natural to those who associate much
with their fellows. Despite the sparse population of the district he had
a pivotal participation in such life as there was on the slopes and in
the cove, for it revolved about the store. But Corbin spent his days in
mere mechanical labor that left his mind free to wander. Thus speculation
and vague fancies were his companions, and there was scant wonder that he
should presently treat them as conclusions and facts.

In silent anticipation of the elucidation of the singular theory
advanced, Peter Sawyer drew from his pocket a strong clasp knife and
began to whittle a bit of wood which he picked up from the doorstep. But
old Corbin’s next remark seemed to have no relation to the subject.

“Who d’ye reckon I seen yestiddy up yander by that thar big vine-grown
spot what they calls Old Scratch’s vineyard?”

Pete Sawyer looked inquiringly doubtful, but silently puffed his pipe.

“_Jerry Binwell!_”

Old Corbin paused after he said this, smiling broadly and fixedly—all the
wrinkles about his mouth and eyes seemed to come out as if to enjoy the
sensation that this announcement occasioned.

The storekeeper stared blankly for a moment, then dropped his pipe upon
the ground. The fire rolled out.

“Laws-a-massy!” he exclaimed, unheeding.

“Yes, sir! same old Jerry; the wuss fur wear; some _de_-lapidated;
but—same old Jerry!”

“I ’lowed he war in Texas; folks said he went thar arter the war.”

“I hailed him; he purtended not ter know me a-fust, an’ he stopped, an’
we talked awhile. He ’lowed he had never been ter Texas. Jes’ down the
kentry a piece in Persimmon Cove. I dunno whether he war tellin’ the
truth.”

“I reckon he war,” said the storekeeper. “It air a mighty out-o’-the-way
place—Persimmon Cove; Satan hisself mought hid out in Persimmon an’ folks
in gineral never be the wiser ez the Enemy war enny nigher.”

“He ’lowed he married thar,” continued Corbin. “An’ what d’ye reckon he
hed along o’ him?”

He looked at his crony with a broad grin.

“A—leetle gal! Thar they war a-travelin’ along the slope. Hed a leetle
ox-cart an’ a steer geared up in it; he hed a cow critter too; calf
followed; an’ sech cheers an’ house-stuff ez he owned piled in the cart,
an’ settin’ a-top o’ it all this hyar leetle gal—’bout ez big ez a
shingle. She rid, bein’ ez she hain’t got no weight sca’cely.”

“An’ whar’s the ’oman?” asked the storekeeper, missing an important
factor in the family circle.

Corbin lowered his voice and his humorous wrinkles strove to retire
themselves.

“Dead,” he said gravely.

Peter Sawyer, bethinking himself of his pipe, filled it anew with a
crumpled leaf of tobacco, relighted it, and with the pipe-stem between
his teeth resumed the conversation.

“An’ what sorter welcome do he reckon he air goin’ ter find ’mongst the
mountings hyar. Do he ’low we hev furgot his sheer in the war, kase it
hev been right smart time since? Naw sir. I ’members like yestiddy whenst
old Jeemes Guyther—Abner’s dad, ye know—kem ter my store, lookin’ ez ef
he hed buried all his kin on yearth, an’ tole ez Abner hed run off ter
jine the Secesh along o’ Jerry Binwell. An’ the old man said he hoped Ab
mought die afore he reached the Rebel lines, kase he’d ruther mourn him
dead ’n know he hed raised his hand ag’in the Nunion.”

“But he wouldn’t, though,” said Corbin prosaically. “Them war days when
men talked mighty big.”

“An’ they acted mighty big too, sometimes,” retorted Sawyer.

“Waal, Abner war the apple o’ the old man’s eye,” said Corbin; “I b’lieve
he’d turn in his grave ef he could know how Ab war hurt. The whole fambly
jes’ the same, too. Look how Ab air pompered now. Ef Abner war blind sure
enough he couldn’t be better treated. His dad always put the blame o’
Ab’s goin’ on Jerry. An’ Jerry war a wuthless chance! He kem back inside
o’ a year—deserted! But Ab never kem back till arter the s’render.”

“What makes ye ’low ez Abner hev got his vision same ez common?” Sawyer
demanded again. “That notion ’pears powerful cur’ous ter me—seein’ him
led about hyar fur nigh on ter twenty year, now by Ike, an’ now by his
brother, an’ then ag’in by a dog an’ sech.”

Old Corbin looked cautiously over his shoulder through the open door
as if he feared some lurking eaves-dropper. The cabin on the slope
stood silent and motionless in the motionless yellow radiance of the
autumnal sun. But the winds were astir, and as they swayed the woods
they revealed bizarre sunbeams rioting hither and thither in glittering
fantasies among the leaves. No one sauntered down the curves of the
winding road nor along the banks of the shining river. The only creature
visible was the old dog asleep, but sitting upright, in a dislocated
posture, his head nodding spasmodically, and his lower jaw dropped.

“Ye hearn,” said Corbin softly, “that thar nevy o’ his, Ike Guyther, ’low
Ab want ter climb down Keedon Bluffs ter whar that old ball’s a-lyin’.
Now do ye reckon a _blind_ man ez hev got good sense air goin’ ter trest
his bones a-gittin’ down that jagged bluff ez sheer ez a wall with sech
holp ez that thar skitter-brained Ike kin gin?”

Sawyer, holding his pipe in one hand and his grizzled chin in the other,
meditatively shook his head.

“Naw sir,” said Corbin, putting the gesture into the more stalwart
negation of words. “A man, though, ez hed his vision, though his j’ints
be stiff some with age and laziness, mought do it, special ef he hed the
holp o’ some strong spry boy like Ike, ez be astonishin’ grown fur his
age, but ain’t got no mo’ sense an’ scrimination than a boy naterally
hev.”

Once more Peter Sawyer nodded his head—this time the action was vertical,
for the gesture intimated affirmation.

“What in the name o’ reason do Abner want ter go down whar the old ball
be lodged?” he asked in a speculative voice, as if he hardly expected an
answer.

But the ready Corbin, primed with surmises, first looked cautiously up
and down the road and then ventured a suggestion.

“Waal, sir; seein’ Jerry Binwell minded me o’ Abner Guyther, an’ how they
used ter consort together, an’ thinkin’ o’ Ab ’minded me o’ the store
old Squair Torbett used ter set on him. Ab war mighty nigh always at the
Squair’s house a-doin’ some leetle job or other, special arter the Squair
tuk ter agein’ so through worryin’ ’bout the war an’ his sons ez war in
the army. An’ Jerry Binwell war at the Squair’s too, bein’ Ab’s shadder.
Waal, ye know the Squair hed a power o’ money, an’ he hed drawed it
out’n the banks in the valley towns, ’count o’ the raidin’ soldiers an’
sech. An’ he hid it somehows. Some ’lowed he buried it, but most folks
said he let these hyar two boys inter the secret, an’ Ab clomb down
an’ hid the money in a strong box in a hole in Keedon Bluffs, whilst
Jerry watched. Ye hev hearn that word? Waal, sir, the Bluffs air like a
honeycomb; so full o’ holes ef a body didn’t know which one they hid it
in they couldn’t find it.”

“I hev hearn folks a-talkin’ ’bout it myself,” put in Pete Sawyer,
“though o’ late years they hev gin that up, mos’ly.”

“Yessir,” assented Corbin. “An’ the g’rillas they s’arched the Squair’s
house ag’in an’ ag’in, an’ couldn’t find nuthin’. These two boys hed run
off ter the Secesh army, by that time, else they’d hev been made ter tell
whar the plunder war hid. An’ though Jerry deserted an’ kem back, the
Southern sympathizers wouldn’t let him bide one single night in the cove,
but druv him off, an’ he ain’t dared ter show his face hyar sence, else I
reckon he’d hev stole the money, ef he hed knowed whar it war—the Squair
being dead mighty onexpected.”

The storekeeper’s eyes widened. “Ye—’low—the—money’s—thar—yit—hid in
Keedon Bluffs?” he panted.

“I know this,” said old Corbin. “’Twar hid thar, an’ I hearn with my
own ears the heirs say they never got no money out’n Keedon Bluffs—they
fairly scouted the idee. An’ now,” he pursued, “one of the heirs is dead;
an’ the t’ other’s moved ter Arkansas. An’ hyar kems one o’ the men ez
watched whilst the money war hid; an’ the t’ other ez hid it—a _blind_
man—be in a mighty hurry an’ disturbament ter climb down Keedon Bluffs. I
dunno why they hain’t got it afore. I can’t foller percisely the serpient
trail of the evil men. But ye mark my words—them two fellers will hev a
powerful big row—or”—his eyes twinkled—“they’ll divide the plunder an’
ye’ll hear o’ them consortin’ tergether like frien’s.”

He met with a triumphant leer the distended astonished gaze of the
storekeeper.

“Ho! ho! Keedon Bluffs don’t speak ’less they be spoke to fust,” he
continued, “but thar secrets git noised abroad. Thar’s suthin’ thar wuth
layin’ hands on ’thout foolin’ along of a old spent cannon-ball.”




V.


The arrival of Jerry Binwell and his little girl at Hiram Guyther’s cabin
soon became known throughout the Cove, and the fact, which Ike shortly
discovered, that the newcomers were regarded with disfavor by others
did not tend to further commend them to him. He felt an odd sinking of
the heart and a grotesque sort of mortification whenever he went to the
mill or the store and encountered questions and comments concerning his
father’s guests. Sometimes he was taken aside by a conservative old
codger, and the queries were propounded in a mysterious and husky whisper
which imparted additional urgency.

“They tell me ez _Jerry Binwell_ air a-visitin’ yer dad—air that a true
word?”

And Ike would sulkily nod.

“What did he kem fur?”

“Ter get out’n the storm.”

“Storm’s been over a week an’ better”—with an implacable logic. Then,
dredging with new energy for information—“When’s he goin’ away?”

“Dunno.”

“Whar’s he goin’ ter?” persistently.

“Dunno.”

“What’s he doin’ of?” changing the base of attack.

“Nuthin’.”

“What’s he say?”

“Ennything.”

“Waal sir!” in a tone of disappointment, the whole examination resulting
in the total amount of nothing.

Out of Ike’s presence public opinion expressed itself more freely and
it was unanimous. No one denied that it was a strange thing that Hiram
Guyther, one of the most solid, respectable, and reliable men of the
whole country-side, whose very name was a guarantee of good faith,
should be harboring a graceless, worthless, neer-do-weel like Jerry
Binwell, who was, moreover, suspected of treachery which had resulted
in Abner’s blindness. The lines of demarkation between those of high
character and those who lack the sterling virtues are strongly drawn
and rigorously observed in the mountains. The stern and grim old Hiram
himself was forced to recognize the incongruity of the situation and its
utter irreconcilability with the popular estimation of himself and his
household. But he maintained his ground as well as he might.

“Yaas,” he would drawl, “Jerry’s a-puttin’ up with we-uns now. Dunno how
long he’ll stay. Till the spring o’ the year, mebbe. Naw, him an’ Abner
don’t clash none. Naw, he don’t pester me, nuther.”

And with these baffling evasions he would ride away, leaving the gossips
at the store or the mill drawing their chairs closer together, and
knitting their brows, and shaking their heads.

It was all most ominous and depressing to Ike, for he was proud and
keenly sensitive to any decline in public esteem; sometimes he was fairly
tempted to tell that the old folks at his house had fallen victims to the
witching charms of a noisy little body three feet high, who made them
like everything she did, and do things of which they would never have
believed themselves capable. Thus they tolerated Jerry for her sake.
And then he held his peace for fear the gossips would say they were all
touched in the head.

For certain severe elderly people who had visited the house—it had more
visitors than usual—had observed in his hearing that they were sorry for
his mother and his aunt Jemima;—“ter be cluttered up at thar time o’ life
with a young child, special sech a one ez that, ez could no mo’ stan’
still ’n a pea on a hot shovel, an’ war a-laffin’ an’ a-hollerin’ all the
time till a-body couldn’t hear thar own ears.”

Ike felt peculiar resentment against the propounders of these strictures,
although he had not consciously fallen under the fascination of the
little Rosamond. He could not however always disregard her hilarious
challenges to play, but when he succumbed it was with a sort of surly
surprise at his own relenting. He even consented to see-saw with her,—a
pastime which she greatly affected,—although he was obliged to sit on
a very short end of the plank thrust between the rails of the fence
in order to balance her very small weight as she sat at the other
extremity, on the inside of the fence. And there, as she swayed high
and dropped low, beaming with smiles and pink with delight, she looked
like a veritable rose, blown about in the playful wind. But Ike was less
picturesque as he bobbed up and down very close indeed to the rails and
the leaning cross-stakes. “I’ll butt my brains out ag’in these rails like
a demented Billy-goat if I don’t mind,” he said to himself in dudgeon.

One day, when he and Skimpy had been visiting certain traps that they
had jointly set in the woods, their homeward way led them past the
store. They had had good luck with their snares, and their fine spirits
responded alertly to a robust chorusing laugh that suddenly rang out from
the dark interior of the building.

The boys quickened their steps; there was something unusual going on
inside.

The brown, unpainted walls within, the shadowy beams and dusky rafters
above, the burly boxes and barrels in the background, were dimly
illumined by the one fibrous slant of sunshine through the window, which
served to show too the long gaunt figure of the storekeeper standing near
the entrance. He was swaying backward, laughing as he smote his thigh,
and he called out, “Do it ag’in, Shanks! Do it ag’in!”

Then the boys observed that there was a large group of figures standing
at one side, although not easily distinguishable since their brown jeans
garb so assimilated with the mellow tint of the walls. The next minute
Ike reached the door and the whole scene was distinct before him. In the
midst of the circle stood Jerry Binwell, his coat lying on the floor,
his hat hanging on the knob of a rickety chair. His thin, long face was
flushed; he was laughing too and rubbing his hands, and walking to and
fro a few steps each way. “Do it ag’in, Shanks,” once more called out
Peter Sawyer.

There were friendly enough glances bent upon him, and everybody was
laughing pleasantly, despite the pipes held between strong discolored
teeth. Even old Jake Corbin had a reluctant twinkle among the many
wrinkles that encircled his eyes as he sat smoking, his rickety chair
tilted back against the wall.

“Pritty spry yit, fur a ole man,” declared Binwell, still rubbing his
hands.

“Do it ag’in, Shanks!” rang out from the bystanders.

Binwell looked up for a moment, drawing back to the extreme end of
the apartment. Suddenly he crouched and sprang into the air with an
incredible lightness. It was a long oblique jump to the beam on which he
caught; he did not wait a second but “skinned the cat” among the rafters
with an admirable dexterity and dropped softly on his feet at the doorway.

Once more there was a guffaw. “Go it, Shanks!” “He’s a servigrous jumper,
sure!” “Spry as a deer!”

It was a most pacific scene and the exhibition of agility seemed likely
to promote only good fellowship and the pleasant passing of the hour
until old Corbin remarked:

“Yes, Jerry’s a good jumper, an’ a good runner, too, I hev hearn.”

Binwell cast a quick glance over his shoulder; a light gleamed in his
small, dark, defiant eye. Whether he did not pique himself on his speed,
or whether he detected a sub-current of meaning in the comment, he was
moved to demand abruptly:

“Whar did ye ever see me run?”

Old Corbin’s delight in the opportunity broadened his face by an inch or
two. The display of intricate hieroglyphic wrinkles about his eyes was
more than one might imagine possible to be described by age and fatness.
His mouth distended to show the few teeth that had not yet forsaken his
gums; his burly sides were shaking with laughter before he said, “I never
_seen_ ye run, Jerry, but I hearn ez ye done some mighty tall runnin’ in
the old war time.”

There was a shout of derision from the crowd, most of the men having
served in one army or the other. The object of this barbed ridicule
looked as if he might sink through the floor. His face flushed, his
abashed eyes dropped, he stood quivering and abject before them all.

Ike had a quick pang of pity and resentment. And yet he was ashamed that
this was the man who sat by his father’s hearth and shared their bread.

It was only for a moment that he was sorry for Binwell. The recovery from
all semblance of shame or wounded pride was instantaneous as he retorted:

“That’s mighty easy ter say ’bout ennybody.” He whirled around on his
light heel. “Naw, folks,” he cried out, “I ain’t much on the run; never
footed it more’n jes’ fairly. But I tell ye—ef ye be tired o’ seein’ me
jump—my jumpin’ ain’t nuthin’ ter my heftin’. I kin lift the heaviest man
hyar an’ jump with him. Less see,” he affected to turn about and survey
the burly, stalwart crowd. “Who pulls the beam at the highest figger?”

He hesitated for a moment; then with a sudden dart that was like the
movement of a fish, he seized on old Corbin.

“Naw! naw!” wheezed the fat old fellow as the stringy, muscular arms
encircled him. He strove to hold to his chair; it fell over in the
fracas and eluded his grasp; he clutched at the window-sill—vainly; his
hat dropped off; his face was scarlet, and he roared for help.

It would doubtless have been extended had not the quick and agile Jerry
forestalled the heavy mountaineers. He lifted Corbin with a mighty
effort; he even carried out his boast of jumping—not high, after all, but
high enough for the wildly clutching old man to catch the low beam with
both hands.

Binwell suddenly loosed his hold and left him swaying ponderously to and
fro, two or three feet from the floor, in imminent danger of falling,
sputtering and wheezing, and red in the face and with eyes starting out
of his head. Then his tormentor, fearful doubtless of the recoil of
public opinion, caught up his hat and coat and with a loud scornful laugh
ran out of the store and disappeared up the leafy road.

To a man of ordinary weight and agility it would have been easy enough
to spring to the floor. But the cumbersome bulk and slow, clumsy habit
of old Corbin lent the situation real danger. There was a rush to his
assistance—some officious hand thrust an empty barrel beneath his feet,
hoping to afford him support, but it toppled under his weight and down he
came, amidst a great rending of staves, as the barrel collapsed beneath
him.

He was unhurt, although greatly shaken. He had been frightened at first;
perhaps there was never so angry a man in the limits of the Cove as he
was now. Again and again, as he was helped to his chair, he declared
that he would revenge himself on Jerry Binwell, and the sympathetic
crowd expressed their sense of the injury and the danger to which he had
been subjected, as well as the indignity offered him. To Ike’s extreme
amazement Binwell’s name was often coupled with that of his father, or
the blind man, his uncle. Now, ordinarily, Ike would have felt that
these two spirited and responsible people were amply able to answer
for themselves; but he knew that it was only by an odd combination of
circumstances that they were associated, almost with the intimacy of
family relations, with such a person as Binwell. It implied a friendship
for him which he knew they did not feel, and an indorsement of him which
they were not prepared to give. Secure in their own sense of rectitude
and good repute this possibility of a decline in public esteem had never,
he was sure, occurred to them. Alas, Rosamondy, he heartily regretted
that she had ever put her dimpled foot across their threshold, and yet he
stipulated again within himself that it was not in his heart to wish any
houseless creatures out of the shelter they had found.

He had a vague terror of this false position in which the family was
placed. He knew, with suddenly awakened forecast, that the antagonism to
Jerry Binwell would not end here. Old Corbin’s spleen that might once
have passed for naught was now rendered a valid and righteous anger
in public opinion, and he would have the sympathy and aid of all the
country-side. But how or why, in the name of justice, could it include
his father and his blind uncle, who had done naught after all but feed
the hungry, and forgive the enemy, and house the roofless vagrant.

He lingered for a time after old Corbin had gone to Sawyer’s house to get
“a bite an’ rest his bones,” listening to the younger men discuss the
incident, and comment on Binwell’s strength.

When Ike at last rose and started, Skimpy started too.

“Skimp!” called the storekeeper after him, “yer mam’s got suthin’ fur ye
to do at the house. Go thar!”

Skimpy obediently turned from the road into the by-path and Ike went
on, his heart swelling with indignation and his eyes hot with tears. He
knew that his friend was to be withheld from his association after this,
lest he might come under the influence of so worthless and injurious an
example as Jerry Binwell. He trudged along home, wishing that his father
might have beheld the scene and wondering if that would have urged him to
take some decided action in the case.

Ike had an odd indisposition to relate it all. He had been trained in a
maxim,—good enough so far as it goes,—“If you can’t say anything kind
of your neighbor, say nothing.” The only manifestation of his opinion
was expressed in deeds, not in words. His mother had looked sharply at
him from time to time during the past week, and this afternoon, as she
opened suddenly the shed-room door and saw him casting down a great pile
of bark, and chips, and sticks of wood, ready for the morning fires, she
said unexpectedly:

“Ike, ain’t ye ailin’ nowhar?”

“Naw’m,” he replied, drawing himself up with stalwart pride, “I feel ez
solid an’ sound ez a rock.”

“I ’lowed ye mus’ be sick—ye ’pear so sober-faced, an’ occupy yerself no
ways sca’cely, ’cept in workin’—tendin’ on the wood-pile, an’ packin’ the
water, an’ drivin’ the cow-critter. I ain’t hed ez much wood hyar ter
burn, nor water ter cook with, nor the cow ez constant at the bars, fur
ten year.”

Ike turned and glanced reflectively about him. The mountain, gorgeous
in autumnal array, loomed above; a blue sky looked pensively down; some
aerial craft had spread a cloud-sail, and the wind was fair.

“I never ’lowed ter feel sech pleasure in a wood-pile,” he said,
meditatively. “I hev made up my mind ez I ain’t a-goin’ ter ondertake to
be a shirk in this world.”

She understood him instantly. As the door swung a little ajar she looked
back over her shoulder through the shed-room into the main room of the
cabin. Binwell was not there; no one was visible in the ruddy glare of
the fire illuminating the brown walls but the little Rosamond and the
blind man. She had elected to consider herself some neighing, prancing
steed, and Abner held her by one long, golden curl, that served as reins.
A short tether, to be sure, but she curveted, and stamped, and laughed
as few horses have ever done. The reflection of her merriment was in the
smile on the blind man’s face. Her very shadow was glad, as it sported
with the firelight on the floor.




VI.


There is nothing so conducive to happiness as work—work done well and
willingly. It is in itself happiness. Ike wondered to find, as he bent
his mind and all his energy to his simple tasks—grown strangely light and
seeming few—how little he suffered from his exclusion from his friend’s
society and from the unjust discrimination made against him for no fault
of his; how amply his duty filled his horizon, and presently arrayed
itself in the glad garb of pleasure. He sang—he could but sing—as he
wielded the axe, as he fed the stock, as he went back and forth on his
errands through the lonely woods, sometimes hearing the voice of Keedon
Bluffs singing too, in fitful and fugue-like response.

Nevertheless, he was glad enough to be reassured of his friend’s loyalty
in their enforced separation, for when they presently met by accident
Skimpy seized upon him eagerly, “Ye ain’t holdin’ no gredge ag’in _me_,
air ye, Ike? I couldn’t holp it; ye know I couldn’t.”

This accidental meeting occurred one evening when all the boys of
Tanglefoot Cove and the mountain slopes had gathered for a coon-hunt.
The Sawyer lads were of the party, Skimpy and three brothers, all much
alike, all long-legged, red-haired, freckled-faced fellows, and not
fascinating to look upon, but they took a great deal of pleasure in
themselves, and there was considerable boy-nature to the square inch in
these four Sawyers. They were first-rate comrades too; could both take
a joke and make one; all had bright, honest, steady brown eyes, and
they were evidently destined to grow better looking as they grew older.
With one exception they were clad in whole, stout homespun garments,
well woven and well made, for their mother was a peculiarly precise,
neat, and industrious woman. Skimpy was the exception; his elbows were
out; his ankles could not wait for his trousers to grow, so they showed
themselves, right nimble and sturdy members, although the garment, which
was blue, had been encouraged lengthwise with a fresh contrasting piece
of copper-colored jeans; his knees bulged against the threadbare cloth in
a way that intimated they would not long be able to shelter themselves
in their flimsy retirement. He and his mother found it difficult to
reconcile their diverse theories of the uses and the care of clothes.
Although serious enough when they climaxed, these differences had no
depressing effect on Skimpy’s spirits, and did not suffice to save his
wardrobe. He harbored no unfilial resentment, but he thought his mother a
very queer and particular woman.

The Sawyers had brought with them the dutiful clerk, who was also
preëminent as a coon-dog. There he sat in his yellow hide, decorated
with his slit ear, and his docked tail, and his half-closed eyelid. When
away from the store his demeanor lacked the urbanity which characterized
him there. He bore himself now with the surly air of a magnate whose
affability has been swallowed up in the consciousness of importance.

The Sawyers specially piqued themselves on being the proud possessors
of Bose. Every now and then one would reverently glance at the animal,
as he sat upright lolling out an indifferent tongue, and say to those
unacquainted with him—“Mind how ye fool with Bose—he’s sharp” (with
an excited eye and a wag of the red head); “he’s mighty fierce.” And
the other Sawyers would nod their heads in confirmation of this report
of Bose’s belligerent qualities. They had a sort of hero-worshiping
reverence for this trait of dog-sharpness, but any one who did not think
respectfully of Bose was some one who did not care to go coon-hunting. He
was the central figure of the group that had collected in the woods by
a sulphur spring, on a slope of one of the minor ridges at the base of
the Great Smoky. The early dusk had not yet fallen, but the shadows were
lengthening fast, and night was on the way. The boughs of the trees above
their heads were drawn in fine distorted lines on a crimson sky; here and
there a slant of sunshine fell amongst the brown shadows upon some red
and yellow fantasy of foliage that so blazed with color and light in its
dusky surroundings that it might seem some outburst of fire which had
been slyly “set out” in the woods.

The sulphur spring had sought to hide itself, it might seem. Across a
narrow, rocky cleft lay a great flat slab, and a rill trickled away
somewhere; no one would have imagined that beneath this slab was a
spring with brown crystalline water, and a vibrant whisper, and some
exquisite perfumed breath of freshness borrowed from the dawn of day.
The dogs knew where it was, running to it with lolling tongues and with
much affectation of thirst, yet wanting only a drop or two. For other
dogs were there and they seemed to have heard and to have profited by
the Sawyers’ account of Bose, or perhaps the dignity of his mien awed
them, or experience admonished them, for none of them molested him,
although they became involved in noisy fights with each other, or gambols
as turbulent. The boys, ten or twelve in number, all had cow-horns to
blow and torches to carry, and while they waited for certain cronies
to arrive the talk was chiefly of the subject that had brought them
together. The coon seemed a fascinating study apart from his great
gifts of celerity. Mentally he is generously endowed. If Skimpy might
be believed the coon can do anything short of reading, writing, and
ciphering.

“Even mam, she hev ter ’low ez coons ain’t lackin’ fur head-stuffin’,”
he remarked, as he stood with his arms akimbo. “You-uns know the kind
o’ ways mam hev gin herself over ter—a-sweepin’, an’ a-scourin’, an’
a-cleanin’, till I actially looks ter see ef she won’t take ter washin’
the chickens’ faces an’ curryin’ the cat. Waal, Cousin Eph Bates, he
stopped thar one day with his pet coon. An’ mam she made him welcome an’
set out the table. An’ mam, she ’lowed the coon mus’ be hongry, so she
called it an’ gin it a nice piece o’ corn dodger. What’s that coon do?”
he cried, his eyes widening with the interest of the recital. “Popped up
on the aidge o’ the drinkin’ pail an’ ondertook ter wash that thar piece
o’ dodger ’twixt his fore paws, ’fore he would eat it. I wish ye could
hev seen mam’s face. I laffed till I like ter drapped in my tracks. An’
Cousin Eph—he jes’ hollered. An’ mam, she hed furgot, ef she ever knowed,
how coons do; she say, ‘Cousin Eph, ye needn’t bring no sech pertic’lar
vis’tor ter my house ag’in—a-washin’ the clean vittles _I_ gin him.’
Thar sot the coon, ez onconsarned, a-washin’ his hands an’ a-washin’ the
dodger.” Skimpy suited the action to the words and teetered up and down,
washing his paws and an imaginary piece of corn dodger. “I laffed an’
laffed. That coon like ter been the death o’ me ’fore he got away from
thar.”

“I know that thar coon o’ Eph Bates’s,” cried Ike. “I stayed up ter his
house one night along o’ his chill’n an’ ’twar bright moonlight whenst I
went ter bed in the roof-room, but after a while I woke up an’ I ’lowed
’twar a hailstorm goin’ on outside on the roof. Ye never hearn sech a
skedaddlin’ up an’ down them clapboards. Kem ter find out, ’twar nuthin’
but the coon a-playin’ tag with his shadder in the moonlight.”

“Oh, he’s a powerful tricky, Mister Coon air,” Skimpy declared, his
freckled face distended with relish of Mr. Coon’s smartness. “Mam an’
Cousin Eph hed sot tharselfs down afore the fire an’ got ter talkin’
’bout’n the folkses in the Cove, an’ how mighty few o’ ’em had enny sech
religion ez they purtended ter hev, when mam she put her hand in her
pocket fur ter git her knittin’. An’ there warn’t nuthin’ in her pocket
but a ball o’ yarn. An’ she looked up, an’ thar war a great long e-end o’
it a-stretchin’ ter the door. An’ thar on the steps sot Mister Coon with
them knittin’ needles, an’ the sock, a-holdin’ ’em like he war knittin’,
ez onconsarned—oh my! I laffed ag’in.”

“I’ll bet yer mam didn’t laff,” said an intimate of the family.

“Naw,” Skimpy admitted. “Mam, she’s mighty sober-sided. She’d like the
coon better ef he wore spec’s an’ cut wood. Cousin Eph, he axed her how
many rows that coon knit. An’ mam, she said—‘_None!_ He drug two needles
bodaciously out an’ spiled fower rows.’ Mam ’lowed ez she thought she
hed the mos’ mischievious created critter—meanin’ me—but she said she
b’lieved Cousin Eph mought take the prem_ium_. An’ Cousin Eph, he said
enny time she war minded ter swap he’d trade the coon fur me. An’ mam,
she cut her eye round at me an’ tole me I hed better mend my manners;
the mounting would talk mightily ’bout me ef I war traded off fur a coon
’thout enny boot.”

“That thar mus’ be the same coon ez Cousin Eph Bates fotched along o’
him ter the store when he kem ter trade, las’ summer,” said Obadiah, the
eldest Sawyer. “An’ dad, he tole Cousin Eph ter holp hisself. An’ nobody
noticed the coon till Cousin Eph war ready ter go, an’ tuk ter huntin’
fur him. I don’t reckon that coon could surely hev thunk ez dad meant it
fur _him_ whenst he told Cousin Eph ter holp hisself. But leastwise the
coon done it; he holped _his_-self. They fund him propped up on the aidge
o’ the sugar bar’l, an’ they say the way his whiskers war gormed with
sugar war a sight ter be seen. He hedn’t no expression ter his face, an’
he looked plumb cross-eyed with pleasure. Sugar in his paws, too, and
dad kerried on like he war mighty nigh demented. An’ he wanted Cousin Eph
ter pay for that sugar the coon hed eat, an’ said he wanted that thar
coon’s skin. But Cousin Eph, he snatched his coon up under his arm an’
’lowed he mought ez well try ter trade fur one o’ his chill’n’s hides. I
b’lieve he gin dad some money or suthin’, though. He sot out arter that
with his coon fur home.”

“Waal, he warn’t so ’fectionate with that thar coon las’ time I seen
him,” Ike added his testimony. “’Twar over yander at the church-house in
the gap. An’ whilst the folks war settin’ inside, a-listenin’ ter the
preachin’, we-uns hearn the biggest rumpus outside ’mongst the teams, an’
everybody looked plumb wretched, wonderin’ ef ’twar suthin’ hed happened
ter thar steer or horse critter. An’ dad whispered ter me ter go out an’
see. An’ thar, ’mongst all the wagins, an’ yokes o’ oxen, an’ saddle
horses under the trees, war a young claybank horse ez b’long ter Eph
Bates. An’ that thar coon he had slyed off an’ follered his master ter
the church-house, an’ stiddier goin’ inside—it’s a mercy he didn’t—he
seen Eph’s horse, an’ he clomb the tree, an’ drapped down on the pommel
o’ the saddle. Waal, sir, sech kickin’! that horse war young an’ skeery;
sech squealin’! An’ whenst I seen him he war tremblin’ like he hed a fit
o’ the ague, an’ then he’d turn his head an’ git a glimge o’ that thar
citizen in the saddle, an’ begin ter plunge an’ shy an’ snort ag’in. Jes’
’fore I got ter him he bruk his halter, an’ he lit out; around an’ around
that thar church-house he went a-cavortin’ an’ a-gallopin’, Mister Coon
settin’ in the saddle, a-holdin’ on fur life, an’ a-smilin’ from ear to
ear. An’ the folks in the church-house seen what war a-goin’ on, an’ Eph
an’ some o’ them nigh the door run out an’ hollered, ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ at the
horse. Didn’t do no good. Ez soon ez the critter seen he couldn’t shake
the coon off he bolted an’ run through the woods. Eph, he walked home
that Sunday, five mile, but Mister Coon, he rid.”

“Oh, Mister Coon, oh, Mister Coon,” Skimpy was murmuring, and presently
he broke into song:—

    “Bob Snooks, he eat up all in his plate,
    An’ he dreampt a dream that night right late.
    A-settin’ on a cloud war a big raccoon,
    A-eatin’ an’ a-washin’ his paws in the moon.
    ’Twar brimmin’ full o’ clabber an’ whey.
    His tail war ringed with black an’ gray;
    It hung plumb down ter the poplar-tree,
    An’ he wagged it up an’ down in glee.

        CHORUS.

        “Oh, Mister Coon! oh, Mister Coon,
        Oh, take them dirty paws out’n the moon.

    “He looked at Bob, ter wink an’ grin,
    An’ then Bob say—‘Ez sure ez sin
    I’ll yank ye off’n the aidge o’ that moon,
    Though ye air a mos’ surprisin’ coon.’
    Bob sicked on Towse—_Towse clomb the tree!_
    An’ grabbed the coon right nat’rally.
    An’ suddint Bob woke—thar war _no_ raccoon,
    Bob wisht he hed lef’ him up thar on the moon.

        CHORUS.

        “Oh, Mister Coon! oh, Mister Coon,
        Oh, why can’t ye once more balance on the moon.”

It was quite dark before they were fairly started. The shadows gloomed
thick about them. The stars were in the sky. The sound of the boyish
voices whooping and calling, and singing snatches of the coon-song,
echoed far and wide among the solemn woods and the listening rocks. The
dogs answered to the eager urgency of their masters by wheezing and
snuffing about the ground as they ran with their muzzles down, but the
best among them, even the preëminent Bose, could conjure no coon where no
coon was.

“What ails ’em ter take ter sech a piece o’ briars,” Skimpy cried out
suddenly with an accompaniment of a ripping sound. “Ef I tear up these
hyar clothes o’ mine enny mo’ I’ll hev some rents ter mend in my skin,
fur my mother hev sot it down ef I gin her so many repairs ter make
she’ll gin me some.”

This terrifying prospect did not unduly alarm Skimpy nor hinder his
joyous pursuit of the coon. He was the first fellow to fall into the
briars and to flounder into the branch. His nimble feet followed more
closely than any others their canine precursors. It was he who cried
out and encouraged the dogs and kept them together, and even the
self-sufficient and experienced Bose hearkened to his counsel and lent
himself to guidance. Skimpy was close upon the docked tail of this animal
when suddenly the wheezing Bose emitted a short sharp cry and sprang off
in the darkness with all the dogs after him.




VII.


The moon was just beginning to rise. A vague red glow suffused the
summit of the eastern mountains. It hardly revealed, but in some sort
it suggested, the presence of the vast forests of the Cove, that still
stood dusky and gloomily mysterious. The solemn silence, native to the
solitudes, was for the nonce annihilated. The whole night seemed to
ring with the shouting triumph of the boys. The cry of the dogs was
unintermittent. Naught impeded the wild chase, save that now and then a
projecting root caught an unwary foot, and a boy would go crashing to
the ground, his companions jumping over his prostrate form, or perhaps
falling upon him, then scrambling up together and away again hilariously.
Sometimes a horn would sound, and if one had cared to listen he might
have wondered to hear the countless blasts that the echoes wound, or
laughed to fancy how that mimic chase in the air did fare. Sometimes,
too, a voice would call out from the van of the line, “Oh, Mister Coon!”
And anon Keedon Bluffs repeated the words in a solemn staccato, as if
they were some uncomprehended incantation. “Oh, Mister Coon!”

What that gentleman thought of it all nobody can say. Whether he resented
the fact that his coat was considered too good for him, and just good
enough for a cap for somebody else; or whether he felt complimented that
he was esteemed so game that it was accounted a pleasure to see him
fight, singly, a score of savage dogs, and die in the jaws of the enemies
he crippled, nobody will ever know. The only certain thing is that he
carried his fat and his fur, and his palpitating identity inside of
them, as fast and as far as he could. And then in desperation he swiftly
climbed a tree, and sat there panting, looking down with eyes whose
dilated pupils defied the night, to mark how the fierce rout came at
full cry over the rise. The boys knew what he had done, notwithstanding
the dark forests that intervened, for the dogs announced in loud and
joyful barks that the coon was treed as they besieged the oak, springing
as high as they could about its trunk. There was a chorus, “Oh, Mister
Coon!” from the hunters as they came pelting over the hill, almost dead
beat with the run. For the coon had footed it bravely, and treeing him
was long delayed.

The torches, skimming swiftly about under the oak, which was close upon
a precipice, flared in the darkness far along the slopes, and the coon
hunt glimpsed from the distant cove was like an errant constellation,
run away from the skies. Nearer, flame and smoke flaunted back in the
wind, showing the colors of a limited section of the autumn woods close
about, and thus conjuring an oasis of gorgeous brilliance in that
desert of gloom. In the radiance of the fringed flaring lights might be
distinguished, in high relief against the dusky background, Ike’s eager
face, and Skimpy’s hatchet-like features,—as he bent to beseech Bose
to calm himself instead of bounding futilely about the tree which he
could not climb like the dream-dog,—and the muscular poses of Obadiah
Sawyer, who wielded the axe about the trunk of the tree. How the echoes
answered! How the rocks rang with the stalwart strokes! The chips flew
with every cleavage. The dogs leaped, and barked on every shrill key of
impatience. The coon, barely visible, crouched in the darkness, growled,
and looked down on his boisterous enemies. “Keep out’n the way o’ this
axe, I tell ye,” Obadiah Sawyer would cry as the backward motion would
threaten one of the boys or their four-footed comrades, who pressed so
close about the tree as to lose all sense of safety.

Suddenly, without any warning, the trunk of the tree not half severed,
the coon ran down almost over Obadiah into the midst of the dogs. There
was a frantic plunge amongst them; a fierce growling and yelping and
snapping; a crunching of teeth; and now and then as one suffered the
sharp fangs of the coon, a hideous clamor that seemed to pierce the sky.

The boys stood amazed at this innovation on the part of Mr. Coon, whose
sense of etiquette does not usually permit him to tackle the dogs until
the falling of the tree throws the hapless creature into their jaws. How
he distinguished the sound in all that shrill tumult Skimpy could never
say;—a low growl, exceeding in ferocity aught he had ever before heard,
caught his attention. He moved back a pace and held the torch aloft.
There, upon the bole of the tree, slowly descending from limb to limb,
with lissome noiseless tread, with great yellow eyes, illuminated by the
flare, was a full-grown female panther, made bold enough to face the
light by the imminence of the danger, for the cutting down of the tree
meant certain dislodgment amongst the dogs and the boys. This was the
denizen of the oak, the discovery of whom had made the coon prefer the
dogs.

Skimpy needed but a single glance. He said afterward that it flashed upon
him in a moment that the animal’s young were perhaps in a crevice of
the great wall of rock close at hand, and that for this reason she had
not fled from the noise and the lights. Skimpy dashed his torch to the
ground, and crying “Painter! Painter!” he set out at a pace which has
seldom been excelled. All the torches were flared upward. The creature
glared down at the boys and growled. There was not a gun in the party.
Obadiah in a sort of mental aberration flung his axe into the tree; it
almost grazed the animal’s nose, then fell upon the back of a yelping dog.

Each boy seemed to announce his flight by taking up the panic-stricken
cry of “Painter!” The dogs had discovered that more had been treed
than the coon, which at last had been killed. They would not heed the
whistlings and the callings of their masters, and as the boys ran a
tremendous yelping and growling announced that the panther had sprung
from the tree amidst the pack. Presently something, with its tail between
its legs, shot by the hindmost boy, and another, and yet another. The
dogs had felt the panther’s teeth and claws and were leaving, but none of
these fugitives was Bose.

“Oh,” cried Skimpy, “le’s go back—le’s go back—Bose will be bodaciously
eat up! Le’s go back an’ call Bose off!”

“Call the painter on, ye mean!” exclaimed Ike. “Ye can’t do nuthin’ ter
hurt a painter ’thout ye hed a gun!”

“Oh Bose!” plained another of the Sawyers in a heart-wrung voice.
“What’ll mam do ’thout Bose! Sech a shepherd! Sech a dog ter take keer
o’ the baby, too! Sech a gyard dog!” For Bose’s virtues were not all
belligerent, but shone resplendent in times of peace. “Oh _Bose_,” he
shrieked down the wind, “let the painter be!”

“Oh _Bose_!” cried Obadiah in a tone of obituary. “Sech a coon dog!
_Bose!_ An’ a swimmer! _Bose!_ How he used ter drive up the cow! Oh,
_Bose_!”

“Ye talk like nobody in the mountings hed a dog but you-uns,” panted
one of the fleeing hunters. “Ye ought ter be thankful ye air out’n the
painter’s jaws—’thout no gun!”

“Oh, Bose ain’t no common dog!” cried the bereaved Skimpy; “Bose is like
folks! Bose _is_ folks!” rising to the apotheosis of grief.

He did not run like folks. Deserted both by boys and dogs he had bravely
encountered the panther. It required not only a broken rib and repeated
grips of the creature’s teeth, but the stealthy approach of its mate to
convince Bose how grievously he was overmatched. Then this gifted dog,
whose prowess was only exceeded by his intelligence, saw that it was time
to run. He passed the boys with the action of a canine meteor. He sought
the seclusion beneath the house and he did not leave it for days.

When Ike struck into the road that leads by Keedon Bluffs he was feeling
considerably nettled by the result of the adventure, and resolved that
hereafter he would always carry a gun for any presumable panther that
might hang upon the outskirts of a coon-hunt. He walked on slowly for a
time, sure that the panther would hardly follow so far, if indeed she had
followed at all. He listened now and then, hearing no sound of the hunt
or of the hunters. It was growing late, he knew as he glanced at the sky.
The moon had risen high—a waning moon of a lustrous reddish tint, sending
long shafts of yellow light down the dusky woods, and, despite its
brightness, of grewsome and melancholy suggestions. As the road turned
he came upon the great Bluffs towering above the river, and he noted the
spherical amber reflection in the dark current below, with trailing
lines of light and gilded ripples seeming to radiate from it. A vague
purple nullity had blurred the familiar distances, but close at hand all
was wonderfully distinct. The gloomy forest on one side of the road drew
a sharp summit line along the sky. A blackberry bush, denuded of all
but a few leaves, was not more definite than the brambly wands of its
shadow on the sandy road. As he drew nearer he noted how dark the water
was, how white in the slant of the yellow moonlight rose the great sheer
sandstone Bluffs; how black, how distinct were the cavities in the rock.
And the voiceless beams played about the old cannon-ball on the ledge.
How silent! Only his crunching tread, half muffled in the soft sand;
the almost imperceptible murmur of the deep waters; the shrilling of a
cricket somewhere, miraculously escaped from the frost. Near midnight, it
must have been. He realized how tired he was. He suddenly sat down on the
verge of the Bluffs, his feet dangling over, and leaned his back against
a bowlder behind him.

He drew a long sigh of fatigue and gazed meditatively below. The next
moment he gave a quick start. There along the ledges and niches of the
great Bluffs, climbing down diagonally with the agility of a cat, was a
dark figure, that at the instant he could hardly recognize as beast or
man—or might it be some mysterious being that the cavities of the rock
harbored! As he remembered the stories of the witches of Keedon Bluffs,
which he had flouted and scorned, he felt a cold thrill quiver through
every limb.

A sharp exclamation escaped his lips. Instantly he saw the climbing
creature give a great start and then stand still as if with responsive
fright. He bent forward and strained his eyes.

He had not yet recovered his normal pulse; his heart was still plunging
with wild throbs; nevertheless he noted keenly every movement of the
strange object, and as it turned in the direction whence came the
intrusive voice, it looked up apprehensively. Ike said nothing, but gazed
down into the pallid face lifted in the white moonlight.




VIII.


“Hello!” cried out the figure.

“Hello!—hello!—hello!” the echoing voices of Keedon Bluffs sepulchrally
hailed the boy.

Now Ike would have been indignant had some one suspected him of being
afraid of the witches of the Bluffs. But he was immensely relieved by
this form of address. For although he had never held intimate converse
with witches he felt sure they did not say “Hello!”

He leaned over and responded in a sturdy tone “Hello, yerse’f!”

“Hello yerse’f!” cried out the prompt echoes. Ike drew back a little.
Although he had acquitted the climbing man of being a witch, he could not
repulse an odd uncomfortable feeling that scores of mischievous invisible
spirits of the rock were assisting at the conversation. He could imagine
that they nudged each other as they repeated the words. Perhaps they all
fell to silently laughing when a belated voice far down the river called
in a doubtful and hesitant tone, “Hello yerse’f!”

“Who’s that up thar?” demanded the man, still looking up.

“Ike Guyther,” the boy replied.

He could not accurately distinguish the sound, so confused was he by the
iteration of the meddlesome echoes, but it seemed to him that the man
uttered a sudden gruff imprecation at the revelation of his name, and
surely the tell-tale rocks were presently grumbling in an uncertain and
displeased undertone.

Ike strained his eyes to recognize the features, but the man looked down
suddenly and coughed dubiously.

There was something vaguely familiar in his voice that might have served
to establish his identity but for the repetitious sounds that followed
every word.

“What air ye doin’ up thar?” demanded the man, and all the echoes became
inquisitorial.

“Been a-coon-huntin’. What ye doin’ down thar?” said Ike, at last
thinking it but fair that he should ask a few questions himself.

The white face was once more turned downward, and the man coughed and
seemed to try to spit out his doubt. It had evidently not occurred to him
that he himself was unrecognized, for with a tone that indicated that he
sought to make the best of an awkward situation he said, “Why, I hearn
Ab talkin’ wunst in a while ’bout climbin’ down Keedon Bluffs, ter that
old cannon-ball on that ledge, an’ I ’lowed I’d try ef the thing could be
done—jes’ fur fun—ha! ha! Toler’ble tough fun, though.”

The vain effort at jollity, the strained nervous tone, the merciless
echoes exaggerated a thousand fold. But Ike Guyther sat unheeding, more
perturbed than he could well have expressed.

It was Jerry Binwell, his father’s guest. How had he escaped, Ike
wondered, from the roof room where his host thought he lay sleeping? Had
he stolen out from amongst the unconscious family, leaving the doors
ajar that any marauder might enter? He could not. Old Hiram slept as
lightly as a cat, and the blind man was often wakeful and restless. And
what could be his object here in the stealthy midnight, risking life and
limb—nay, neither! Ike Guyther, watching him climbing—with the frightful
depths below into which a false step would instantly precipitate him—lost
that morbid and nervous fascination which a feat of great danger induces
in the spectator, and began suddenly to experience a sort of confidence,
merging into certainty. He was amazed at the lightness, the strength,
the marvelous elasticity, the fine precision of every movement. Strain
credulity as he might, he could not believe Binwell when he said
suddenly, “But I ain’t goin’ ter try it enny furder—break my neck! This
hyar chicken is a-gittin’ old an’ stiff; couldn’t git down thar ter save
my life.”

He climbed up and up, his silent shadow climbing with him till he neared
the spot where Ike sat, when he suddenly paused. “Git up, Ike,” he said;
“that’s the only place whar thar’s purchase enough ter pull up by.”

He evidently knew all the ground. Ike dragged himself out of the way,
and, with his hands in his pockets, stood pensively watching him as he
pulled himself to the verge, and then upon his knees, and so to his
feet on the roadside. He paused for a moment, panting. He looked at his
companion with an expression which had no relation to the words on his
lips. Many a boy might not have detected this yawning gulf between what
he meant and what he said, but Ike’s senses were sharpened by suspicion
and anxiety.

“Whew! Great Molly Har’!” Jerry mopped his brow with his red cotton
handkerchief. “I’m too old fur sech didoes as this hyar—old man’s a-goin’
fas’. Knees plumb bent. Don’t ye laff, Ike! Don’t ye laff.” Ike had shown
no sign of merriment. “An’ ’fore everything don’t ye tell Ab ez I tried
ter climb down Keedon Bluffs ter that old ball, an’ couldn’t. I wouldn’t
hev the mounting ter git a-holt o’ that thar joke on me fur nuthin’!”

He looked sharply at the boy, who said not a word, but simply stared at
him as he stood on the verge of the Bluff in the slanting melancholy
yellow light of the waning moon. There was a quiver in Binwell’s nostril,
a nervous motion of the lips, a keen inimical gleam of the eyes under his
hat brim. He was giving Ike more notice than he had ever before bestowed
on him.

“Hey!” he cried jocularly, clapping the boy on the shoulder, “don’t ye
tell on me, Ike—ye won’t, will ye?”

This direct appeal brought an answer. But Ike was on his guard.

“Mebbe then uncle Ab would quit thinkin’ ez how _he_ could,” he said
cautiously.

Jerry Binwell suddenly changed his tactics.

“Tell ennybody ye want ter, ye wide-mouthed shoat, ye! Ef I can’t climb
down thar nobody else kin, an’ nobody air a-goin’ ter try. Got too tender
feelin’s fur thar necks. I ain’t ashamed o’ gittin’ old nohow! Ye’ll be
whar I am some day, Ike, ef ye don’t die fust.”

He strode on ahead with a deft free step. Ike, doubtful and grievously
ill at ease, followed. Come what might he felt that he would tell his
father all, and let him solve the mystery about this strange guest. Then
he began to reflect how slight this “all” was. There were the innuendoes
of the men at the store; but his father knew as well as he how little
Jerry Binwell had been liked in his early youth, how strong the prejudice
remained. The affront to old Corbin was indeed reprehensible, but as to
climbing about the rocks at night surely any one might do that who was
foolish or idle or nimble enough.

Ike was surprised that although he found in summing up there was no
positive heinous wickedness involved, his aversion to the man remained
and his resolution was strong. He would tell his father all that he had
heard, that he had seen. He would shift the responsibility. His shoulders
were not strong enough to carry it.

Jerry’s long, lean figure, with the company of his longer and leaner
shadow which dogged his steps like some pursuing phantom of sorrow or
dismay that might materialize in the fullness of time, kept steadily down
the road. He made no pretense of silence or concealment, but whistled
blithely and loud—a sound to pierce the pensive hour with discordant
interruption. Did it awaken the birds? A peevish, intermittent chirring
rose drowsily from the woods, and then was still, and anon sounded again.
Or was it that the dawn was coming hardily upon the slowly departing
night, long lingering, loath to go? The moon showed no paling sign; belts
of pearly vapors, catching its light, were rising from the furthest
reaches of the purple mountains. And here the river was dark and deep;
and there it flowed in translucent amber waves, with a silver flash of
foam, all the brighter for the shadow of the rock hard by. And now it
was out of sight and there were the long stretches of the familiar woods
on either hand, with no suggestion of the vivid tints of autumn, only a
dusky black alternating with a gleaming gold strewn like the largess of a
dream fantasy all a-down the winding ways.

Morning surely; the thrush sings a stave. And silence again.

The shadows falter, though the pensive lunar light yet lingers. And again
the thrush—fresh, thrilling, a quiver of ecstasies, a soaring wing,
though it catches the yellow moonbeams. The sky reddens. Alas, for the
waning moon! Oh, sorry ghost; how pale! how pale!

For the prosaic day is in the awakening woods. The mountains rise above
their encompassing mists and shadows. Beneath them, brown and gray, with
closed batten shutters, Ike sees, slowly revealed, his father’s house,
the sheep lying huddled at one side, barely astir—a head lifted now, and
then dropped—the cow drowsing in a fence corner; the chickens beginning
to jump down from the althea bushes, where, despite the autumnal chill,
they still roost. And, as the first slanting sun ray shoots up over the
mountains, the door opens, and there is thrust out the pink face of
Rosamond, dimpling with glee at the sight of them, and her shout of glad
recognition is loud enough to waken all the sluggards in the cabin, or
for that matter in the Cove.

The cabin, however, was already astir. Ike learned, with emotions not
altogether relating to the recital, that his father’s aunt who had
brought him up from infancy had been taken ill, and a runner having been
sent to apprise him he had gone over to the Carolina side, and would not
return until the old woman should be better or the worst over.

Ike had postponed his disclosures too long. There was little good, he
thought, as he swung his axe at the wood-pile—as wide awake as though
he had participated in no coon-hunt—to tell his mother; she had cares
enough—and what could she do? And truly he had nothing to tell except
to put into words vague suspicions; nay, his thoughts were not so well
defined; to canvass actions and accents and looks that displeased him.
They all knew—at least they would not be surprised to learn that Jerry
Binwell had not outlived the malice of his youth. Aunt Jemima would
regard the slightest word against him as an effort to bereave her of
this late-blooming pleasure and joy of her life, the little Rosamond.
Ike hopefully considered for a time the blind man’s aversion to Binwell.
Abner would never hear nor reply when he spoke—and since the first night,
he had not spoken to Binwell, except indeed one day when he chanced to
stumble against the sprawling loafer before the fire. Abner struck at him
fiercely and called out imperiously—“Get out of my way—or I will kick you
out!”

Jerry had moved, but there was an odd glancing expression from his
half-closed lids that alarmed Ike, so malignant it seemed. The little
girl had run gayly up, caught Abner by the hand, and guided him to his
place by the fire. For she it was who had superseded all the others,
and had made the blind artillery-man her special charge. All day she
was laughing beside him. Any time the oddly assorted couple could be
met, she leading him carefully, holding two of his bronzed fingers, as
they strolled down the sunset road, or they might be seen sitting on the
wood-pile while he told her stories or sang. And she sang also, loud
and clear—gayly too, whatever might have been the humble poet’s mood—in
no wise dismayed or hindered by the infantile disability of not being
able to carry a tune. She had a thousand quirks and conceits, incredibly
entertaining to him in his enforced idleness. She had watched wide-eyed
when Hiram Guyther read from an old and tattered Testament, for the
accomplishment of reading was rare in the region, and had not before been
brought to her observation. Often thereafter she equipped herself with a
chip, held sturdily before her dancing eyes, and from this unique book
she droned forth, in imitation of Hiram’s gruff voice, strange stories of
beasts and birds, and the human beings about her, pausing only to scream
with laughter at her own wit, and then gruffly droned on once more. She
fell ill once for a day or so—a red and a swollen throat, and a flushing,
dull-eyed fever. Aunt Jemima and Ike’s mother exhausted their skill and
simple remedies, and went about haggard and nervous; and the blind man,
breaking a long silence, said suddenly, “Ef ennything war ter happen ter
that thar child I’d ’low the Lord hed fursook me.”

A neighbor, who happened to be at the house, eyed him curiously. “Ef I
war you-uns, Ab,” he said, “I’d ’low ez He hed fursook me whenst He let
my eyes git put out.”

The brave fellow had had no repinings, not even when the war was his
daily thought. Now he seemed to have forgotten it, so full, and varied,
and cheerful an interest had this little creature brought into his life.
Often aunt Jemima would tell in gladsome superlatives what she looked
like, and when she spoke he would turn an intent smiling face toward her
as if he beheld some charming image.

What was the use of talking, Ike thought, remembering all this. They
would not jeopardize the loan of this treasure for all that Jerry Binwell
could do or say.

He cut away vehemently at the wood, making the chips fly and the mountain
echoes ring. He responded curtly, but without discourtesy, when Jerry
Binwell came out of the house, took a seat upon the wood-pile, and began
to talk to him. Jerry had a confidential tone, and he slyly laughed at
the folks in the Cove, and he took on a comrade-like manner—implying a
certainty of appreciation and sympathy—that might once have flattered
Ike, coming from one so much older than himself. Now, however, Ike merely
swung the axe in silence, casting an occasional distrustful glance at
the thin sharp face with its long grayish goatee. More than once he
encountered a keen inquiring look that did not seem to agree with the
careless, casual nature of the talk.

“Old Jake Corbin—ye know him; oh yes, ye seen me h’ist him up on the beam
thar at the store—waal, he be powerful keen ter get a chance ter torment
other folks, but cut a joke on him, an’ I tell ye, old Jake’ll git his
mad up, sure. I seen him the ’tother day, an’ he plumb looked wild-cats
at me—fairly glared. Tell ye, Ike, ye an’ me’ll git round him some day,
an’ hev some fun out’n him—git his dander up an’ see him hop.” He winked
at Ike and chewed resolutely on his huge quid of tobacco.

“Naw, I won’t,” said Ike suddenly. “I hev’ been raised ter respec’ my
elders. An’ I’m a-goin’ ter do it now jes’ the same ez afore ye kem.”

“Bless my bones!” cried Jerry Binwell, affecting contemptuous surprise
and speaking in a jeering falsetto voice. “Jes’ listen how leetle Sally
do talk—ye plumb perlite leetle gal!” He leered unpleasantly at the
flushing boy. Then he suddenly resumed his natural tone and his former
manner, as if he had borne no part in this interlude.

“Ye oughter hear how he talks ’bout you-uns, Ike—’lows ye air plumb lazy.”

“That war a true word whenst he said it,” interpolated Ike.

“An’ never done yer work, an’ war onreliable, an’ onstiddy, an’ hedn’t no
grit ter stan’ up ter yer word, an’ thar war no sech thing ez makin’ a
man out’n ye. I hearn him say that an’ mo’, ’fore twenty other men.”

Ike’s axe had dropped to the ground. He listened with a red cheek and a
glowing eye. The other watched him intently.

“Waal, that’s pretty tough talk,” said Ike.

“’Tis _that_!” assented Binwell.

“But I hev been shirking some an’ no mistake, an’ I reckon the old man
’lowed that war jes’ the kind o’ stuff I be made out’n, totally. Now I be
a-goin’ ter show him ’tain’t nuthin’ more ’n a streak.”

And the steady strokes of the axe rang, and the chips flew, and the
mountains echoed the industrial sound.

Jerry Binwell looked unaccountably disappointed and disturbed. He changed
the subject. “Why war ye axin’ Ab fur the loan o’ his gun this mornin’?”

“Kase dad hev kerried his’n off, an’ I be a-goin’ ter git up the boys an’
go arter that thar painter. It riles me powerful ter go a-huntin’ a coon
an’ git run by a painter. So I ’lowed we-uns would go ter-night.”

Again the man slouching on the wood-pile seemed unaccountably worried
and ill at ease. This reminded Ike of that curious nocturnal climbing of
the rocks, and when he went up to the roof-room for some lead to mould
bullets for the gun, he stood looking about him and wondering how Jerry
Binwell contrived to escape from his hospitable quarters without rousing
the family who slept in the room and in the shed-room below. There was no
window; the long tent-like place was illumined only by the many cracks in
the wall and roof. They had a dazzling silvery glister when one looked
steadily at the light pouring through them amongst the brown timbers, and
the many garments, and bags, and herbs, and peltries, hanging from the
ridge-pole. One of these rifts struck him as wider than he had thought
any of them could be. He reached up and touched the clapboard. It was
loose; it rose with the pressure. A man not half so active as Binwell
could have sprung through and upon the roof, and thence swung himself to
the ground.

The panther was surprised and killed that night. Jerry Binwell, and
several other men who heard of the adventure, joined the party. They
were all in high feather going home, and Skimpy sang a number of his
roundelays, as he had often done before without exciting any particular
admiration. He sang from animal spirits, as the other boys, less
musically endowed, shouted and grotesquely yelled. Nevertheless, with
the musician’s susceptibility to plaudits, his ear was attuned to Jerry
Binwell’s exclamation, addressed to one of the men in the rear, “Jes’
listen how that thar young one kin sing! ’Pears plumb s’prisin’!”

And the good-natured mountaineer returned, “That’s a fac’. Wouldn’t be
s’prised none ef Skimp shows a reg’lar gift fur quirin’.”

“He sings better now’n all the folkses in the church-house,” said the
guileful Jerry.

The flattered Skimpy!

He knew that the society of Ike had been forbidden to him, lest he should
come in contact with this elderly reprobate, but he felt a great flutter
of delight when Binwell, coming up beside him, as he trotted along in the
moonlight, said again that he could sing like all possessed, and declared
that if he had a fiddle he could teach Skimpy many new tunes that he had
heard when he lived down in Persimmon Cove. “Mighty fiddlin’ folks down
thar,” he added, seductively.

Now there was hanging on the wall at the Sawyer house—and it is barely
possible that Jerry Binwell may have seen it there—a crazy old fiddle and
bow. It was claimed as the property of Obadiah, the eldest of the boys,
who had his share of such musical talent as blessed the Sawyer family. In
him it expressed itself in fiddling to the exclusion of his brothers—for
very intolerant was he of anybody who undertook to “play the fool with
this fiddle,” as he phrased it. A critical person might have said that he
played the fool with it himself, or perhaps that it played the fool with
him. But such as the performance was, he esteemed the instrument as the
apple of his eye, and was very solicitous of not breaking its “bredge.”
Therefore Skimpy was a very bold boy, and preposterously hopeful, when
he suggested to Binwell that he could borrow Obadiah’s fiddle, and thus
the treasures of sound so rapturously fiddled forth by the dwellers in
Persimmon Cove might rejoice the air in Tanglefoot.

“Naw, naw, don’t ’sturb Obadiah,” said the considerate Jerry. “Jes’
to-morrer evenin’, two hours by sun, whenst he ain’t needin’ it an’ ain’t
studyin’ bout’n it, ye jes’ git it, an’ ye kem an’ meet me by the sulphur
spring, an’ I kin l’arn ye them new chunes.”

Skimpy’s ridiculous attenuated shadow thumped along in front of them;
Jerry’s eyes were fixed upon it—he was too cautious to scan the boy
himself. It stumped its toe presently on a stone which Skimpy was too
much absorbed to see, and so it had to hop and limp for a while. Skimpy
said nothing, for he was wondering how it would be easiest and safest to
undertake to play the fool with that fiddle of Obadiah’s.

They were a considerable distance in advance of the others and nearing
Keedon Bluffs; the whoopings of their invisible companions, who were
hidden by the frequent turns in the road, came now and again upon the
air, arousing the latent voices of the rocks; occasionally there was only
the sound of loud indistinguishable talking, as if the powers of the
earth and the air had broken out in prosaic communion.

“Pipe up, sonny,” said the paternal Jerry, seeing that the conversation
was not likely to be resumed. “Gin us that one bout’n ‘Dig Taters;’ that
thar one air new ter me.”

To his surprise Skimpy refused. “I can’t ’pear ter git no purchase on it
hyar. Them rocks keep up sech a hollerin’.”

They trudged on in silence for a few minutes. Then said Skimpy, glancing
back over his shoulder, “I wish them boys would stir thar stumps an’
overhaul us. I hate ter be with sech a few folks arter night-fall ’roun
Keedon Bluffs,”—he shrank apprehensively from the verge.

“What fur?” demanded Jerry sharply.

“Kase,” Skimpy lowered his voice and slipped nearer to his companion,
“the folkses ’low ez thar be witches ’round hyar of a night arter it gits
cleverly dark an’ lays by day in them hollows in the Bluffs, an’ kem out
of a night ter strangle folkses.” He suddenly remembered from whom he had
heard these fables. “Ye know ’twar _you-uns_ ez war a-tellin’ me an’ Ike
’bout them witches fus’ evenin’ we ever seen ye—along this hyar road
with yer kyart an’ yer leetle gal.”

Binwell was silent for a moment. Then he began to laugh in a chuckling
way, and the Bluffs responded in muffled and sinister merriment. “’Twar
jes’ a pack o’ lies, Skimp!” he said jovially. “I jes’ done it ter skeer
that thar boy ez war along o’ you-uns—Ike Guyther. He be powerful easy
skeered, an’ I wanted ter see how he’d look! I tell ye of a night he
jes’ gathers his bones tergether an’ sets close ter the ha’th. Ef enny
witches take arter him, they’ll hev ter kem down the chimbly afore all
the fambly. Ike, he puts them witches on thar mettle ter ketch him.”

“Waal, sir!” exclaimed the candid Skimpy, “it skeered me a sight wuss’n
it did Ike. I ’lowed I’d never git home; ef I hed hed ez many feet ez a
thousand-legs I could hev fund a use fur ’em all. An’ them two I did hev
mos’ weighed a ton. Ike never ’peared ter me ter skeer a speck.”

There was no doubt in his tones. He was a friendly fellow himself, and he
looked only for fair-dealing in others.

“Waal, I never went ter skeer _you-uns_,” said Jerry in his companionable
manner. “I seen from the fust jes’ what sort’n boy you-uns war—stiddy,
an’ reliable, an’ the kind o’ feller ez a body kin put dependence in—know
jes’ whar ter find ye.”

Skimpy listened in tingling delight to this sketch—it would not have been
recognized at home. His mother might have considered it ridicule.

“I jes’ wanted ter skeer that thar t’other boy”—he was looking Skimpy
over very closely as he spoke, his eyes narrowing, his lips pursed up
in a sort of calculation—he might have seemed to be mentally measuring
Skimpy’s attenuated frame. “I jes’ wanted ter skeer that thar t’other
boy. He’s powerful mean, Ike is. He air always a-purtendin’ ter like
ennybody, an’ then a-laffin’ at ’em ahint thar backs. I didn’t know him
then, but I knowed his uncle Ab, an’ I seen the minit I clapped eyes on
him ez they war jes’ alike. An’ ez I hed a reason fur it, I skeered him.
He’s mighty cantankerous ahint ennybody’s back,” Jerry continued as he
strode on, swinging his right arm. “I hev hearn him declar’ ez that
thar old cur o’ yourn, Bose, air the bes’-lookin’ member o’ the Sawyer
fambly.” He glanced sharply at Skimpy, steadily stamping along the sandy
road.

“Waal, ye know,” said Skimpy in a high excited voice, “Bose, ye know, is
a plumb special coon-dog. An’ he’s sharp; mighty few gyard-dogs sech ez
Bose. An’ he air a shepherd too. I’ll be bound none o’ our sheep air ever
missin’ or kilt. An’ Bose sets ez much store by the baby ez enny o’ the
fambly do; he jes’ gyards that cradle; he’ll snap at me if I so much ez
kem nigh it—nobody but mam kin tech that baby arter Bose takes his stand.
An’ Bose, he kin go out an’ find our cow out’n fifty an’ fetch her home.”

Binwell had long ago perceived that he had touched the wrong chord.
Skimpy was quite content to be rated as secondary in beauty to the
all-accomplished and beloved Bose.

“I know Bose,” he admitted. “Bose is hard to beat.”

“_Yes_, sir! Yes, _sir_!” And Skimpy wagged his convinced head.

“But Ike ’lows he be ugly.”

“Shucks! I say ugly!” cried Skimpy scornfully; he was willing to be
considered no beauty himself—but _Bose_!

“An’ he ’lows he’d jes’ ez lief hear Bose howl ez you-uns sing.”

Skimpy paused, turning his astonished face up to Binwell, the moonlight
full upon its stung and indignant expression. Now Bose had never been
considered musical—not even by Skimpy. He drew the line that bounds
perfection at Bose’s dulcet utterances. He was almost incredulous at
this, despite his confiding nature.

“Why, I hev jes’ sot an’ sung fur Ike till I mighty nigh los’ my breath.”

“Ye oughter hear him mock ye, arter ye gits gone. Oh, Mister Coon! Oh,
e-aw, Mister Kyune!” mimicked Jerry in an insulting falsetto. “He ’lows
it gin him the year-ache; ye ’members how bad he had it.”

“Dellaw!” exclaimed the outdone and amazed Skimpy, stopping in the road,
his breath short, his face scarlet.

“Made me right up an’ down mad,” said Jerry. “Oh, I knowed that Ike,
minit I set eyes on him! I knowed his deceivin’ natur’. I wanted ter
skeer him away from Keedon Bluffs. I never minded you-uns. I’d jes’ ez
lief tell you-uns ez not why I wanted ter keep him off’n ’em.”

“What fur?” said Skimpy, once more trudging along.

“Waal, hyar I be whar my road turns off from yer road,” said Jerry,
pausing. He stood at the forks of the road, half in the light of the
moon, half in the shadow of the thinning overhanging foliage. The mists
were in the channel of the river, and the banks were brimming with the
lustrous pearly floods; the blue sky was clear save that the moon was
beset by purple broken clouds—all veined about with opalescent gleams.
The shadows were black in the woods; the long shafts of light, yellow and
slanting, penetrated far down the aisles, which seemed very lonely and
silent; an acorn presently fell from the chestnut oak above Binwell’s
head into the white sandy road, so unfrequented that the track of a
wagon which had passed long before would hardly be soon displaced unless
by the wind or the rain.

“I tell ye,” said Jerry, looking down into the candid upturned face
beneath the torn brim of the old white wool hat, “ye fetch Obadiah’s
fiddle ter-morrer, an hour ’fore sundown, ter the sulphur spring, an’
I’ll l’arn ye them new chunes. An’ I’ll tell ye all ’bout Ike, an’ what
he said an’ why I wanter keep sech ez him off’n them Bluffs.”

“Waal,” assented Skimpy, “I kin make out ter git the fiddle, I reckon.”

But it was with little joyous anticipation that he turned away. Ike’s
words, as reported by Binwell, rankled in his heart; it was hot and heavy
within him. He even shed a forlorn tear or two—to thus make acquaintance
with the specious delusions of friendship. It was not so much the sting
of wounded vanity, although he was sensible too of this—but that Ike
should affect to esteem him so dearly and ridicule him behind his back!
He was generous enough, however, to seek to make excuses to himself
for his friend. “I reckon,” he muttered, “it mus’ hev been arter dad
wouldn’t lemme go with Ike no mo’ an’ it riled him, an’ so he tuk ter
tongue-lashin’ me. I reckon he never thunk ez I couldn’t holp it.”

And thus he disappeared down the woodland ways, leaving Jerry Binwell
standing in the road and looking meditatively after him.

“I reckon it’s better ennyhow,” Binwell soliloquized. “Ike’s a hundred
times smarter’n him, but he air smart enuff. Bes’ not be too smart. An’
though he be ez tall ez Ike he’s a deal stringier; he’s powerful slim.
Ike ain’t much less’n me—an’ I be a deal too bulky—git stuck certain.
Skimpy’s the boy.”

He remained silent for a time, vacantly gazing down the woods. Then
suddenly he turned and betook himself homeward.




IX.


Circumstances the next day seemed adverse to Skimpy’s scheme. Obadiah
for some time past had not been musically disposed, and the violin had
hung silent on the cabin wall in company with strings of red peppers, and
bags of herbs, and sundry cooking utensils. That afternoon the spirit of
melody within him was newly awakened.

Skimpy, who had been lurking about the place, watching his opportunity,
was dismayed to see Obadiah come briskly out of the cabin door with the
instrument in his hand, and establish himself in a rickety chair on the
porch. He tilted this back on its hind-legs until he could lean against
the wall, stuck the violin under his chin, and with his long lean arm
in a fascinating crook, he began to bow away rapturously. They were
very merry tunes that Obadiah played—at least the tempo was lively and
required a good many quick jerks and nods of the head, and much flirting
and shaking of his long red mane to keep up with it. Occasionally his
bow would glance off the strings with a very dashing effect, when he
would hold it at arm’s-length, and grin with satisfaction, and wink
triumphantly at Skimpy, who had come and seated himself on the steps
of the porch hard by. He looked up from under the wide brim of his hat
somewhat wistfully at Obadiah.

The violinist was happier for an audience, although he could have sat
alone till sunset, with one leg doubled up under the other, which swayed
loosely from the tilted elevation of the chair, and played for his own
appreciative ear, and found art sufficient unto itself. But applause is
a pleasant concomitant of proficiency and he loved to astonish Skimpy.
His hat had fallen on the floor, and the kitten, fond of queer places to
sleep, had coiled herself in the crown, and now and then lifted her head
and looked out dubiously at Skimpy. Just above Obadiah was a shelf on
which stood a pail of water and a gourd. What else there was up there an
inquisitive young rooster was trying to find out, having flown over the
heedless musician, still blithely sawing away.

“He oughter hev his wings cropped, so ez he couldn’t fly around that
a-way,” said Skimpy suddenly. “Oughtn’t he, Oby?”

Now one would imagine that when Obadiah was harmoniously disposed all
the chords of his nature would be attuned to the fine consonance which
so thrilled him. On the contrary the vibrations of his temper were most
discordant when his mood was most melodic. He had one curt effective
rejoinder for any remark that might seek to interrupt him.

“Hesh up!” he said, tartly.

His mother, a tall gaunt woman of an aggressively neat appearance, was
hanging out the clothes to dry on the althea bushes in the sun. She was
near enough to overhear the conversation, and she suddenly joined in it.

“Nobody oughter want ter tie up other folkses tongues till they be right
sure they hev got no call ter be tongue-tied tharself.”

To this reproof Obadiah refrained from making any unfilial reply, but
scraped away joyously till Skimpy, longing for silence and the fiddle,
felt as if the mountains shimmering through the haze were beginning to
clumsily dance, and experienced a serious difficulty in keeping his own
feet still, so nervous had he become in his eagerness to lay hold of the
bow himself.

Sunset would be kindling presently—he gazed anxiously toward the western
sky across the vast landscape, for the cabin was perched well up on the
mountain slope, and the privilege of overlooking the long stretches of
valley and range and winding river was curtailed only by the limits of
vision. The sun was as yet a glittering focus of dazzling white rays, but
they would be reddening soon, and doubtless his new friend was already
waiting for him at the sulphur spring.

“I wisht ye’d lemme hev that thar fiddle a leetle while, Oby,” he said
suddenly, his manner at once beguiling for the sake of the favor he
sought, and reproachful for the denial he foresaw.

Obadiah’s arm seemed electrified—there was one terrific shriek from
the cat-gut, and then his quivering hand held the bow silent above the
strings.

“Air ye turned a bodacious idjit, Skimp?” he cried, positively appalled
by the audacity of the request. “I wouldn’t hev ye a-ondertakin’ ter play
the fool with this hyar fiddle, fur”—he hesitated, but his manner swept
away worlds of entreating bribes—“fur _nuthin’_.”

The young rooster, finding that there was nothing upon the shelf except
the water-pail and gourd, and hardly caring to appropriate them, had
made up his mind to descend. After the manner of his kind, however,
he teetered about on the edge of the shelf in some excitement, unable
to determine just at what spot to attempt the leap. Twice or thrice
he spread his bronzed red and yellow wings, stretched his neck, and
bowed his body down—to rise up exactly where he was before. At last
the adventurous fowl decided to trust himself to providence. With a
squawk at his own temerity he fluttered awkwardly off the shelf, and
almost alighted on the musician’s head, giving a convulsive clutch at
it with his claws as he flopped past. There was a distressful whine
from the fiddle-strings in Obadiah’s sudden perversion of the bow; he
had forgotten all about the rooster on the shelf; he jumped back with a
galvanic jerk, as he felt the fluttering wings about his head and the
scrape of the yellow claws, and emitted a sharp cry of startled dismay.

Bose, who had been lying close beside a clumsy wooden box on rockers,
growled surlily, fixing a warning eye on the boy; then his voice rose
into a gruff bark. There was no longer use in his keeping quiet and
guarding the cradle. Beneath the quilts was a great commotion; the
personage enveloped therein, although sleeping according to infantile
etiquette with its head covered, had no mind to be thus eclipsed when
broad awake. There presently emerged a pair of mottled fists, the red
head of the Sawyer tribe, an indignant, frowning red face, and a howl so
vigorous that it seemed almost visible. It had no accompaniment of tears,
for the baby wept for rage rather than grief, and sorrow was the share
of those who heard him.

Mrs. Sawyer turned and looked reproachfully at the group on the porch.

“’Twarn’t _me_, mam, ’twar the rooster ez woke the baby,” Obadiah
exclaimed, seeking to exculpate himself.

Bose was stretching himself to a surprising length, all his toe-nails
elongated as he spread out his paws, and still half-growling and
half-barking at Obadiah, the utterance complicated with a yawn.

“’Twar the rooster,” reiterated Obadiah—“the rooster, an’—an’—Bose.”

“’Twarn’t Bose!” exclaimed Skimpy, loyally.

“Hesh up!” said the dulcet musician.

“Needn’t tell me nuthin’ ag’in Bose—I know Bose!” said Mrs. Sawyer
emphatically—thus a good name is ever proof against detraction. “Hang
up that thar fiddle, Oby,” she continued. “I wonder the baby ain’t been
woked up afore considerin’ the racket ye kep’ up. An’ go down yander
ter the ’tater patch an’ see ef yer dad don’t need ye ter holp dig the
’taters. I don’t need ye hyar—an’ that fiddle don’t need ye nuther. I
be half crazed with that thar everlastin’ sawin’ an’ scrapin’ o’ yourn,
keep-in’ on ez ef yer muscles war witched, an’ ye _couldn’t_ quit.”

She sat down on a chair beside the cradle and began to rock it with her
foot, readjusting the while the quilts over the head of the affronted
infant, who straightway flung them off again that he might have more room
for his vocalization.

Obadiah went obediently and hung up the fiddle, and presently looking
down the slope Skimpy saw him wending his way toward the potato patch.

“I dunno how kem Oby ’lows that thar old fiddle b’longs to him, more’n
it do ter the rest o’ we-uns,” Skimpy observed discontentedly, when the
baby’s vociferations had subsided into a sort of soliloquy, keeping
time with the rhythmic motions of the rockers. It was neither mutter
nor wail nor indicative of unhappiness, but it expressed a firmly
perverse resolution not to go to sleep again if he could help it, and
rose instantly into a portentous howl if the monotonous rocking was
intermitted for a moment.

“’Twar yer gran’dad’s fiddle,” said Mrs. Sawyer. “That’s the only sure
enough owner it ever hed—he never gin it ter nobody in partic’lar whenst
he died. An’ it jes’ hung thar on the wall till Obadiah ’peared ter take
a kink ter play it.”

Obadiah doubtless considered himself entitled to the fiddle by the right
of primogeniture—though Obadiah did not call it by this name. As Skimpy
reflected upon the nature of his brother’s claim he felt that there was
no reason why he should not insist on sharing the ownership. It was not
Obadiah’s fiddle—it belonged to the family.

The baby’s voice sank gradually to a jerky monotone, then to a murmur and
so to silence. The rockers of the cradle jogged thumpingly up and down
the floor for a few minutes longer. And then Mrs. Sawyer betook herself
once more to her task of hanging out the clothes, while Bose guarded the
cradle, and Skimpy still sat on the steps, his elbows on his knees, and
his pondering head held between his hands.

The lengthening yellow sunbeams poured through the cabin door, venturing
gradually up the walls to where the silent instrument hung, filling it
with a rich glow and playing many a fantasy though never stirring a
string.




X.


When Jerry Binwell repaired to the sulphur spring that afternoon,
there was no waiting figure amongst the rocks beside it. He paused at
a little distance and glanced about with surprise. Then he slouched on
toward the trysting place. In all the long avenues of the woods that
seemed illumined by the clear amber tint of the dead leaves covering the
ground, on which the dark boles of the trees stood out with startling
distinctness, his roving eye encountered no living creature, except
indeed a squirrel. It was perched upright upon the flat slab that almost
hid the spring, eating a chestnut held between its deft paws; it scudded
away, its curling tail waving as it ran up a tree hard by, and Binwell
heard it chattering there afterward; more than once it dropped empty
nutshells upon the man’s hat as he waited half-reclining among the rocks
beside the spring. Time dawdled on; the sunshine adjusted itself to a
new slant; it deepened to a richer tint; the shadows became pensive; the
squirrel had fled long ago. Often Binwell lifted himself on his elbow
and glanced about him, frowning surlily; but the vast woods were utterly
solitary and very still this quiet day. Once a rustling sound caught
his ear, and as he sprang up looking about hopefully for the boy, his
motion alarmed some hogs that were roaming wild in the forest to fatten
on the mast. They stood still, and fixed small sharp eyes intently upon
him, then with an exclamatory and distrustful vociferation they ran off
through the woods hardly less fleetly than deer. Jerry Binwell muttered
his discontent, and glancing once more at the sky began to walk slowly
about, keeping the spring in sight. Still no Skimpy came. The man’s face
wore an expression both scornful and indignant as he paused at last.

The forest was remarkably free from undergrowth just here; the fiery
besoms of the annual conflagrations destroyed the young and tender
shoots, and left to the wilderness something of the aspect of a vast
park. Only on one side, and that was where the ground sloped suddenly
to the depths of a rugged ravine, an almost impenetrable jungle of
laurel reached from the earth into the branches of the trees. Its
ever-green leaves had a summer suggestion as the sun glanced upon them;
none had changed, none had fallen. And yet, as he looked, he noted a
thinning aspect, a sort of gap at a certain point in the massive wall
of interlacing boughs, made, he fancied, when some lumbering bear tore
a breach in search of winter quarters in those bosky securities. He was
an idle man, and trifles were wont to while away his time. His momentary
curiosity served to mitigate the tedium of waiting for Skimpy. He slowly
strolled toward the gap amidst the foliage, wondering whether the animal
had only lately passed, whether it was possible to come upon it in its
lair and surprise it. He was near enough to lay his hand on the laurel
leaves when he noticed there was a distinctly marked path threading its
way through the tangle. He could not see the ground, but a furrow amongst
the boughs indicated continual passing and repassing. For a few yards
this was visible as he stood looking through the gap of bent and broken
branches; then the rift among the leaves seemed to curve and he saw no
further. Still meditating on the bear, he experienced some surprise when
he observed in the marshy earth in the open space near where he stood the
print of a man’s boot; not his own, as he was half-inclined to think at
first. For as he held his foot above the track, he saw that the print in
the moist earth was much broader, and that the man walked with a short
pace, far different from his own long stride. The steps had not only gone
into the laurel but had come thence; often, too, judging from the number
and direction of the footprints.

“I wonder whar this path leads,” he said. “Somebody must be moonshinin’
hyar-abouts.”

He stood gazing down meditatively. The broad footprint was always the
same, the step always the short measure indicating a slow and heavy man.

This suggested the idea of old Corbin. The retort, in the nature of
a practical joke, played on the old codger at the store, had not
altogether satisfied Binwell’s enmity; this, in fact, was, in a measure,
reinforced by the surly silence and looks of aversion which had since
been meted out to him throughout the community. It was more than
curiosity which he now felt; it was a certain joy in secretly spying
upon his enemy, and there was a merry sneer in his eyes as he began to
push his way through the laurel. As the path curved, he saw the groove
among the leaves anew before him, and he had but to follow its twists
and turns. A long way it led him down the rugged descent, the laurel
leaves almost closing over his head, the great forest trees rising high
above the thicket, flinging their darkling shadows into the midst. He
was chuckling to think what a time of it old Corbin must have had to get
down. “An’ how in Kingdom Come did he ever git up ag’in?” he laughed.

The words had hardly escaped his lips before he emitted a husky cry of
surprise: he had come suddenly to his journey’s end. In the midst of a
clear patch of rocky ground, where even the sturdy laurel could not
strike root, were scattered shavings and bits of wood, and stretching
into the dense growth, so long they were, lay two staunch but slender
poles upon the ground. They were joined by rungs, well fitted in a
workman-like manner. It was in fact a great ladder, the like of which
had never been seen in Tanglefoot Cove, and, indeed, rarely elsewhere.
It might have reached from the river bank to the hollows of Keedon
Bluffs! As Binwell gazed with starting eyes he noted that it was nearly
completed—only a few rungs remained to be set in.

A sudden vibrating sound set all the stillness to jarring; he turned
abruptly, his nerves tense, an oath between his teeth. It was too late
for him to hide, to flee. He could only gaze in despair at Skimpy’s red
head, his white wool hat set on the back of it, bobbing along through the
laurel; his freckled, grinning face was bowed on Obadiah’s fiddle that
wailed and complained beneath his sawing arm.

Perhaps it was the urgency of the moment that made Binwell bold and
rallied his quick expedients. He did not even wonder how the boy had
happened to discover him. Skimpy had descried him from a distance in
the open woods, and had followed, bringing the fiddle according to
their agreement. Binwell looked gravely at the boy and motioned to him
to advance. The fiddle ceased to shiver beneath Skimpy’s inharmonious
touch, and with his eyes stretched, and his mouth too, for that matter,
he pressed on down to the spot. He could not restrain a wondering “Waal,
sir!” when Binwell pointed to the ladder.

“Don’t say nuthin’, Skimp,” said Binwell. “Lay the fiddle an’ bow thar
in the laurel; level em’ so ez they won’t fall; thar! Ye kin find ’em
ag’in by that thar rock. Now take a-holt of that thar ladder, ’bout hyar;
that’s the dinctum—an’ jes’ foller me.”

Skimpy recognized this as an odd proceeding, and yet he hardly felt
warranted in questioning Jerry Binwell. He could not refuse his
assistance in a mere matter of “toting”; he began to think that this
service was the reason his friend had appointed this place of meeting
on pretext of playing the fiddle. He did not definitely suspect anything
worse than a scheme to get a little unrequited work from him. More
especially were his doubts annulled by the quiet glance with which Jerry
Binwell met his eager inquiring look.

“Yes, take a-holt right thar”—as if this was an answer to all that the
boy was about to ask. Binwell himself had run swiftly ahead and had
caught up the other extremity of the ladder. He went straight forward,
breaking a path through the jungle by the aid of the ladder that he
allowed to precede him by ten or twelve feet. He did not hesitate,
although there was no rift here amongst the leaves to guide him. His
manner was as assured as if he were following a definite route that he
had traveled often. Skimpy had no doubt that he knew whither he was
going through that trackless desert. Nevertheless Binwell now and then
looked back over his shoulder at the sun, as if to make sure of the
direction which he was taking. He did not care to notice the anxious
freckled face, down the vista of the leaves, from which all jocundity had
vanished. For Skimpy, although the best-natured of boys, began to rebel
inwardly. He had a troublous consciousness that Jerry Binwell would not
be safe to trust, and wondered that he could have so disregarded his
father’s wish that he should not be brought into this association. It
seemed odd to Skimpy that the danger should have manifested itself so
close upon the heels of the warning. In common with many boys, he was apt
to regard the elders as too cautious, too slow. He had not learned as yet
that it is experience which has made them so. It was not merely mentally
that he was ill at ease. His bare feet were beginning to burn, for they
had now climbed long distances up the mountain slope amidst the laurel.
The weight of the ladder asserted itself in every straining muscle, and
yet he realized that his callow strength would hardly have enabled him
to carry one end, were it not for the aid of the upholding boughs of the
laurel, that would not suffer it to touch the ground, even when his
grasp sometimes relaxed in spite of himself. He dreaded to think how he
would fare when they should emerge into the open woods. “I won’t tote my
e-end no furder,” he said to himself, still striving to look upon himself
as a free agent.

He called once or twice to Binwell, who feigned not to hear. His deafness
suddenly vanished when Skimpy stopped and the ladder lay upon the
interlacing laurel-boughs. “Whar be we-uns a-goin’ ter tote this hyar
contrivance, ennyways?” the boy demanded.

“Jes’ a leetle furder, sonny,” said Jerry Binwell paternally, turning
upon him a quiet face, immovable save for the industriously ruminant
jaws, subduing a great quid of tobacco; he was apparently so unaware
of any cause for suspicions that they were erased from Skimpy’s mind.
He took up his end of the ladder again, thinking it probably belonged
to Binwell, and thankful that he had put into words no intimation of
his vague but uneasy doubts. He even hummed a song as he stumped along,
willing enough to be cheerful if the adventure only signified a little
work for no pay. “But I’d hev ruther not l’arn them chunes folks fiddle
down in Persimmon Cove ef I hed knowed I hed ter skitter up the mounting
this-a-way.”

For they were in truth near the summit, not ascending the great bald,
but in a gap between two peaks. The laurel had given way to open woods,
and Skimpy’s end of the ladder almost dragged. The trees, instead of the
great forest kings on the mountain slopes below, were the stunted growths
peculiar to the summit. They heard no call of herder, no tinkle of bell,
for the cattle that found summer pasturage here had been rounded up and
driven home to the farms in the “flat-woods.” The silence was intense;
they saw no living creature save a buzzard circling high in the red skies
of the sunset. Skimpy thought for a moment they were going down on the
North Carolina side; he was about to protest; the way was indescribably
rocky and tortuous; the night was coming on. Suddenly Binwell paused.

“Kem along, sonny; take the ladder in the middle an’ feed it out ter me.”

Skimpy, wondering, took the ladder in the middle, giving it a series of
shoves toward Binwell, who suddenly lifted the end, and with one effort
flung it from him—and out of the world, as it seemed to Skimpy.

He listened for a moment, hearing it crash among the tree-tops as it
went falling down the precipice whence Binwell had thrown it. A moment
after there was silence as intense as before. Then Binwell knelt on the
verge and looked down the abyss. He raised a triumphant grinning face,
and silently beckoned to Skimpy. The boy went forward and knelt too,
to look over. At first he could see nothing but the shelving side of
the mountain; the deep abyss gloomed with shadows, the richness of the
autumnal colors sombre and tempered beneath the purple dusk. And then
he discovered one end of the ladder, barely perceptible in the top of a
pine-tree.

“It lodged ’mongst them pines,” said the jubilant Binwell. “It’s safe,
summer or winter; nobody’ll find it but the birds or the squir’ls.”

Skimpy could no longer resist. “Air—air—it yourn?” he faltered,
struggling with his instinct of politeness.

Binwell had risen to his feet; he was rubbing the earth off his
hands—recklessly bedaubed when he had knelt down—and also from his
trousers, nimbly raising first one knee, then the other, for the purpose.
He was chuckling unpleasantly as he looked at the boy.

“Ever see folks fling thar own ladders off’n the bluffs, an’ land ’em
’mongst the tree-tops fur the birds ter roost in?”

Skimpy stared, and ruefully shook his head.

“Waal then! what ye talkin’ ’bout?” Binwell’s tone was cheerful,
triumphant; a sinister triumph.

The dumfounded Skimpy faltered,—

“Whose war it, then?”

“Dunno edzac’ly,” cried the blithe Binwell.

“Waal, now, that ain’t fair!” protested Skimpy, indignantly. “I’m goin’
right down ter the Cove, and tell.”

“Naw, ye won’t! Naw, ye won’t!” exclaimed the undismayed Binwell. “Ef ye
do, ye’ll git jailed quick’n never war seen.”

“I ain’t done nothin’,” cried Skimpy, recoiling.

“Ain’t ye! Tote a man’s ladder up the mounting, over ter the Carliny
side, an’ tumble it down ’mongst the pine tops, whar he’d hev ter make
another ter reach it. Mebbe the constable an’ old Greeps, ez be jestice
o’ the peace, don’t ’low ez that’s suthin’, but I reckon they will!”

Skimpy was silent in acute dismay. Into what danger, what wrong-doing,
had he not thrust himself by his disobedience! He looked at the grinning
face, flushed by the fading remnant of the roseate sunset, feeling that
he was in Binwell’s power, wondering what he should do, how he should be
liberated from the toils spread for him.

“See now, Skimp,” said Binwell beguilingly, and the poor boy’s heart
leaped up at the kindly tone, for he sought to put the best construction
on Jerry Binwell’s intentions, if only to calm his own despair and
distress. “I could jes’ take ye under my arm—so,” he tucked Skimpy’s
head under his arm and lightly lifted him high off his feet—“an’ strong
ez I be I could fling ye off’n that bluff half down that thar gorge; thar
wouldn’t be enough o’ ye lef’ ter pick up on a shovel; an’ that would
keep ye from tellin’ tales on me, I reckon.” He swung the boy perilously
close to the edge of the precipice, then set him gently on his feet. “But
I don’t want ter hurt ye, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter do it. I know ye air a
plumb honer’ble, good sorter boy, an’ ain’t goin’ ter make a tale-tell o’
yerse’f, even if ye wouldn’t git jailed. I wouldn’t trest no boy I ever
see but you-uns. I wouldn’t trest Ike Guyther fur nuthin’. I war goin’
ter tell you-uns all ’bout’n it ennyways, even ’fore I fund that thar
ladder. An’ then ye kin jedge whether I be right or wrong.”

Skimpy, eager to be reassured, felt his heart lighten with the words. He
strained his credulity to believe in Jerry Binwell. Surely he had not
done so very wrong; there might be no harm in the man, after all. He drew
a deep breath of relief, and then picked up his hat which had fallen
from his head when Jerry Binwell was illustrating the terrible fate he
might decree for the lad if he chose. The man was closely studying his
face when their eyes met once more, but Binwell said simply that they had
better go after Obadiah’s fiddle or night would overtake them before they
found it.

He talked as they went.

“Ye see, Skimpy,” he said, “my tongue don’t lay holt nat’rally ter the
words, kase I hev got some things ter tell ez I ain’t right proud on.”

He glanced down at the wondering, upturned face, with its eyes wide
with anticipation, and its mouth opening as if to swallow, without the
customary grain of salt, any big tale which might be told.

“Ye hearn old Corbin say, yander at the store that day, ez I run durin’
the War. An’ I h’isted him up on the beam fur shamin’ me ’fore all them
folks. Waal, I oughtn’t ter done it, kase ’twar true—_jes’ one time_! I
felt powerful ’shamed ter hear ’bout it ag’in—plumb bowed down.”

The crafty eyes scanning Skimpy’s ingenuous face saw that he was
sympathetic.

“War ain’t a healthy bizness, nohow,” continued Jerry. “But thar air lots
o’ men, ez run heap more’n me, ez don’t hev it fetched up ag’in ’em every
day. Lots o’ runnin’ war done in the War—but folks nowadays ginerally
talks ’bout thar fightin’. Some nimble fellers showed their heels in them
times—folks ez live right hyar in the Cove. But I be the only one ez hev
got ter hear ’bout it in these days. It’s kase I’m pore, Skimp. Ef I hed
a good cabin an’ right smart cornfield, an’ consider’ble head o’ stock,
ye wouldn’t hear ’bout my runnin’ that time.”

Cynicism is eminently infectious. Skimpy wagged his head significantly.
“You wouldn’t indeed!” the gesture seemed to say.

“They don’t like me jes’ kase I’m pore. An’ kase I’m pore they call
me shif’less. I hev hed a heap o’ trouble; sech truck ez I hed I war
obleeged ter spen’ fur doctors’ ’tendance on my wife, ez war ailin’
always, an’ arter all she died at last.”

The unromantic Skimpy, meditating on the case, felt that at least the
doctors’ bills were at an end.

“An’ now I be homeless, an’ a wanderer, an’ hev my leetle gal ter feed.
Folks actially want ter take her away from me. Ef ’twarn’t fur her, them
Guythers wouldn’t let me stay thar a day.”

Skimpy knew that this was true. Ike had confided so much to him of the
family feeling on the matter.

“An’ now folks in the Cove air a-fixin’ ter drive me out’n it—me an’
little Rosamondy. They can’t set the law onto me, fur I never done
nothin’ ag’in it—so they be a-goin’ ter laff me out’n it. Ye wanter know
whose ladder that is?” he broke off with apparent irrelevance.

Skimpy nodded an eager assent.

“It’s old Corbin’s, I’ll be bound, an’ I’ll tell ye why I ’low sech; no
man but him kin do sech a job. Waal, ye know what he wants it fur? He
wants somebody ez be light an’ handy ter climb up Keedon Bluffs by it ter
them hollows. An’ ye wanter know what fur? Ter git suthin’ ez air hid in
one o’ ’em. An’ ye wanter know what that be?”

Skimpy’s face in the closing dusk might have been cut out of stone, so
white and set it was—such a petrified expectancy upon it. The man’s eyes
glittered as he held his own face nearer and spoke in a hissing whisper,
albeit in the lonely wilderness none could hear his words.

“Some war maps, an’ orders in a box what a courier—thinkin’ he war
a-goin’ ter be captured—hid thar; an’ he war killed afore ever he got
’em ag’in. An’ long o’ ’em air a letter a-tellin’ ’bout me a-runnin’
an’ a-orderin’ me ter be shot fur a deserter. An’ old Corbin, bearin’ a
gredge ag’in me, air a-goin’ ter perduce ’em an’ fairly laff me out’n the
Cove. An’ I ain’t got nowhar ter go.”

“He’s mighty mean!” cried Skimpy, his heart swelling with indignation.

“Waal, I wanter scotch his wheel!” exclaimed Binwell. “I don’t want him
ter do it.”

“How kin ye purvent it?” said Skimpy, briskly. Surely there was no
malice, no mischief on Binwell’s part in this. His spirits had risen to
their normal high pitch.

“Waal, Skimp, I hev been a-studyin’ bout’n it. But till I fund that
ladder—it air too long fur enny mortal place but Keedon Bluffs—an’ made
sure o’ what he war a-doin’ of, I warn’t sati’fied in my mind. Ef ye’ll
holp me—kase I be too bulky nowadays ter creep in one o’ them hollows—ef
I’ll kerry ye down thar will ye snake in an’ git the box? Ye ’feared?”

For Skimpy had drawn back at this proposition. “Naw,” he faltered, but
with an affirmative tendency. He saw Binwell’s teeth and eyes gleam
through the dusk. This man _who ran_ was laughing at him for being afraid
of the great heights of Keedon Bluffs, of the black abysses below!

“We hed better hev tuk the ladder ter climb by,” suggested Skimpy.

“An’ hev old Corbin come along the river bank an’ take it down whilst we
war on it? I’m better’n enny ladder ye ever see, bein’ so strong. Feel
my arm,” he held it out. “Shucks, boy! Fust time I ever see ye, ye war
talkin’ ter Ike ’bout climbin’ down thar ’thout enny holp. But mebbe ef
ye don’t want ter go, Ike will. I hain’t axed him yit. I’d ruther hev
you-uns. But I reckon he ain’t _afeard_.”

In addition to Skimpy’s sympathy for the ostracized Binwell his terror of
being considered a coward was very great. “Naw—I’ll go—I ain’t ’feared;
but I be powerful oneasy an’ troubled bout’n that thar ladder.”

“Waal, arter we git the box—the papers air in it—we’ll go over to yon
side o’ the mounting with a axe, an’ cut down the tree ez cotched the
ladder, an’ tote it back whar we fund it.”

Skimpy’s objections vanished at the prospect of being able to undo soon
the harm he had done. He hoped fervently that old Corbin would not miss
his ladder before it was replaced.

“Hyar’s Obadiah’s fiddle!” exclaimed Binwell, who led the way while the
boy followed through the laurel, grown quite dark now; and when they
emerged into the open woods they beheld the stars glistening in the
shallows of the branch, and many a pensive glimmer came through the bare
boughs, and through the thinning leaves.




XI.


The ladder was early missed; indeed it was the next morning that old
Corbin puffed and pushed through the laurel to the bare space where his
handiwork had been wont to lie and to grow apace, rung by rung. He did
not at first notice its absence. He put his box of tools on the ground.
Then he sat down on a rock and mopped his brow with his red bandana
handkerchief and gazed meditatively down the vistas of the woods. The
Indian summer was abroad in the land, suffusing it with languor and
light—a subtly tempered radiance; with embellishments of color, soft and
brilliant; with fine illusions of purpling haze; with a pensive joy in
sheer existence. How gracious it was to breathe such air, such aromatic
perfumes; to hear such melodic sounds faintly piped with the wind among
the boughs. Ah, summer, not going, surely! for despite the sere leaf one
must believe it had barely come.

They were not poetic lungs which Mr. Corbin wore, encased in much fat,
but they expanded to the exquisite aroma of the morning as amply as if
they differentiated and definitely appreciated it. He drew several long
luxurious sighs, and then it seemed as if he would breathe no more. He
gasped; turned red; his eyes started from his head. He had taken notice
at last that the ladder had been removed. He arose tremulously and
approached the spot where it usually lay. There was no trace of it. He
staggered a few steps backward in dismayed recoil. His spectacles fell to
the ground, the lenses shattering on the stones.

“Witches!” he spluttered. “Witches!” He cast one terrified appealing look
at the solitudes about him, half-fearing to see the mystic beings that
his superstition deemed lurking there; then he began to waddle—for he
could hardly be said to run—as fast as he could go along the path through
the laurel.

Tremulous alike with his years and the shock of surprise, his condition
was pitiable by the time he reached the store—for he at once sought his
friend and crony the storekeeper. And some time elapsed before he could
be restored to his normal calmness and make intelligible the detail of
what had befallen him. Peter Sawyer was a man of considerable acumen. He
was far more disposed to believe that the ladder had been found by some
freakish boys who had mischievously hidden it in the laurel hard by, than
that it had been spirited away by witches. He considered, however, that
his old friend had been victimized beyond the limits of fun, and before
setting out for the spot he summoned the constable of the district to
their aid, for he felt that arrests for malicious mischief were in order.
Both he and the officer were prepared to beat the laurel and patrol the
neighborhood and ferret out the miscreants. They arranged their plans as
they trudged on together, now and then pausing to wait for old Corbin as
he pounded along behind them. The storekeeper was detailing, too, to the
constable the reasons for the manufacture of the long ladder—for he was
the confidential friend of Jake Corbin, and in fact had suggested the
scheme.

“We mought ez well let ye inter the secret fus’ ez las’, kase this hyar
case air one fur the strong arm o’ the law.” He threw back his narrow
lizard-like head and laughed, showing his closely-set tobacco-stained
teeth.

“Strong ez it air ’tain’t plumb long enough!” he added.

The constable, a thick-set, slow man, cocked his head inquiringly askew.

“’Tain’t long enough,” continued Sawyer, enjoying the involutions of
the method of disclosure he had adopted. “The arm o’ the law ain’t long
enough ter reach up ter them hollows in Keedon Bluffs!”

“In Keedon Bluffs!” echoed the amazed officer.

“Jes’ so,” said Sawyer, laughing and nodding. “So we hev lengthened its
reach by the loan of a ladder.” He strode on silently for a few moments
beside the constable, their two shadows following them down the red clay
road, in advance of old Corbin, who was lumbering on behind attended by
a portly, swaying, lunging image of himself, impudently magnified and
nearly twice as big.

“Ye see,” resumed Sawyer, “Jake Corbin b’lieves ez some o’ old Squair
Torbett’s money an’ sech, what he hid in the war times, air right up
_yander_ in one o’ them holes—’twar this hyar Jerry Binwell, ez war
a slim boy then, an’ Ab Guyther ez holped ter hide it. Waal, ye know
how things turned out. The Squair died ’fore many months were over an’
them boys had run away to the Wars. Waal, ye know how cur’ous the heirs
acted—looked sorter sideways when questioned, an’ swore they never hed
hed no money out’n Keedon Bluffs.”

“I ’member,” said the constable, “Ed declared out he never b’lieved thar
war no money thar.”

“Waal, Ed’s dead, an’ the tother heir moved ter Arkansas, an’ the
kentry-side ginerally b’lieved like them—that thar warn’t no money
thar—big fool tale. Waal, hyar kems back Jerry Binwell, arter twenty
year, bein’ pore ez Job’s tur-r-key, an’ takes ter a-loafin’ roun’
them Bluffs; I seen him thar twict myself. An’ Ab Guyther hev tuk ter
declarin’ he wants ter climb down Keedon Bluffs an’ lay his hand on that
thar old cannon-ball.”

“Wants ter lay his hand on Squair’s old money-box, ye better say,”
exclaimed Corbin.

“Waal now, I ain’t goin’ ter b’lieve nuthin’ ag’in Ab!” exclaimed the
constable excitedly.

“Ennyhow,” wheezed old man Corbin, “we-uns ’lowed we’d git a ladder an’
summons a officer an’ take down that box, ef we could git a boy ter climb
in, an’ turn it over ter the law. Jerry Binwell ain’t done nuthin’ ez yit
ter warrant arrestin’ him, but we jes’ ’lowed we-uns warn’t a-goin ter
set by an’ let him put folks on beams an’ steal money, an’ loaf around ef
thar war enny way ter pervent it.”

The constable seemed to approve of the plan, and only muttered a
stipulation that he did not believe Ab had anything to do with any
rascality.

Little was said as they pushed through the tangle of the laurel. The
storekeeper was ahead, leading the way, for he knew it well, having
often come to consult his crony. “Waal, sir!” he exclaimed in indignant
ruefulness when the bare rocky space was revealed along which the great
ladder was wont to stretch. He glanced around excitedly at the constable,
directing his attention to the spot, then called aloud, “Why, Jake,” in a
voice of exasperated compassion.

A cold chill was upon old Corbin as he waddled through the last of the
tangled bushes; it required no slight nerve for him to again approach the
place. He quivered from head to foot and wailed forth tumultuously, “I
hev been snared by the witches. Le’s git out’n these hyar witched woods!
Don’t ye reckon ’twar the witches? It mus’ hev been the witches!”

A new idea suddenly struck Peter Sawyer. “’Twarn’t no witches,” he
declared abruptly. “An’ ’twarn’t no mischievous boys! ’Twar Jerry
Binwell; that’s who hev got that ladder. Ef we-uns could ketch him a-nigh
hyar I’d git him ’rested sure. He hev fund out what we air wantin’ ter
do.”

“Better find the ladder an’ git the box fust. We-uns don’t want him—a
rascal—ez much ez the law wants the Squair’s money-box ter gin it back
ter the heirs,” said the cautious constable. “Go slow an’ sure. Besides
I don’t wanter make no foolish arrests. The jestice would jes’ discharge
him on sech evidence ag’in him ez we kin show—kase we can’t tell all we
know,—fur the word would git all over the Cove, an’ some limber-legged
fellow mought climb up thar, an’ ef he didn’t break his neck he mought
git the box. I tell ye—I’m a-goin’ ter set a watch on them Bluffs from
day-dawn till it’s cleverly dark. An’ ef that thar ladder be in these
hyar woods I’ll find it.”

These wise counsels were heeded. Old Corbin started back to the store
with his friend after one more apprehensive, tremulous, and searching
glance for the witches’ lair in the laurel which he dreaded to discover,
and the constable took his way cautiously through the woods toward the
river.

The morning wore on to the vertical noontide when the breeze died, and
the shadows collapsed, and the slumberous purple haze could neither
shift nor shimmer, but brooded motionless over the ravines and along the
mountain slopes; the midday glowed, and burned with color more richly
still, until the vermilion climax of the sunset made splendid the west,
and tinged the east with gold and pink reflections. And all day the
constable himself, hidden in a clump of crimson sour-wood, knelt on the
summit of the Bluffs, watching the deep silent gliding of the river and
the great sand-stone cliffs—with here a tuft of grass or a hardy bush in
a niche, with sheer reaches and anon crevices, and on a ledge the ball
from the deadly gun, lying silent and motionless in the sun.

Nothing came except a bird that perched on the cannon-ball; a
mocking-bird, all newly plumed. He trimmed his jaunty wing, and turned
his brilliant eye and his delicately poised head upward. Then, with his
white wing-feathers catching the light, away he went to where the echoes
awaited him. A star was in the river—its silver glitter striking through
the roseate reflections of the clouds; and presently the darkness slipped
down.

And the constable’s joints were very stiff when he clambered out of the
clump of sour-wood shoots.




XII.


It was a very dark night. The wind freshened; leaves were set adrift in
the black void spaces; the jarring of bare boughs, continually clashing
together, pervaded the gloom: the water was ruffled, and the reflection
of the stars was distorted or annulled amongst the vacillating ripples as
the faint beams fell. No other sound near Keedon Bluffs, no other stir.

By the fireside of Hiram Guyther’s house one could hardly be unconscious
of the tumult of the mountain forest, or of the swirl of the wind in the
funnel-like depths of the Cove, however deep the reverie, however the
fire might crackle as the big blazes sprang up the chimney, however the
little Rosamondy might laugh or might sing.

“How the wind blows!” the blind man said from time to time, lifting his
gray head and his young face. And aunt Jemima would remark on “the
powerful clatter” of the orchard boughs and the rustling swish of the
Indian corn standing dead and stark in the fields.

As the trumpeting blast came down the chimney once more Ab roused himself
anew and exclaimed, “’Minds me o’ the night Rosamondy kem.”

“Did the wind blow me hyar?” cried Rosamondy, as she sat in her little
chair.

“The bes’ wind that ever blew!” declared aunt Jemima, her gleaming
spectacles intercepting her caressing glance.

Jerry Binwell turned a trifle aside in his chair to hide the scornful
curve of his lips. There was no need to shift his posture. Aunt Jemima’s
eyes were bent once more upon her knitting, and Abner was blind alike to
sneers and smiles. Rosamond’s attention was fixed upon a big red apple
roasting and sputtering between two stones that served as fire-dogs.
Now and then, with the aid of a stick, she turned the other side of the
apple to the heat. Only the blinking cat saw the jeer on his face, and
this animal was too frequently ridiculed to care to cultivate any fine
distinctions in the nature of laughs. Curiously enough, the cat wore a
queer gown of blue-checked homespun and a ruffled cap that was often
awry, for she sometimes put up a disaffected paw to scrape it off, or it
became disarranged in hasty or too energetic washings of her face. She
had been thus accoutered by aunt Jemima to appease Rosamondy’s craving
for a live doll. The cat was very much alive, and seated before the fire
she had an antique and dame-like look, which was highly appreciated by
her owner, but which was totally destroyed when she walked on all-fours.
The live doll was eminently satisfactory to Rosamond, and except for the
tyranny of her garments was in danger of being killed by kindness.

The laugh on Jerry Binwell’s face was only a transient gleam. He relapsed
into brooding gravity and meditatively eyed the fire.

“Ab,” he said suddenly, when aunt Jemima had left the room to join Mrs.
Guyther, who was “sizin’” yarn in the shed-room, and he could hear their
voices in animated controversy as to the best methods. “Ab, I’ll tell ye
what this windy night in the fall of the year ’minds me of.”

His voice had the most agreeable inflections of which it was capable,
but it elicited no response, for Abner had not relented toward his old
comrade, and seldom would seem aware of his existence. Binwell’s face
contorted into a disagreeable grimace. This secret taunt the blind man
was spared. Then Binwell’s smooth tones went on as if he had not expected
a rejoinder.

“’Minds me o’ that night in the old War time whenst me an’ you-uns holped
old Squair Torbett ter hide his plunder from g’rillas an’ sech—ye ’member
how the wind blowed?”

Abner’s fire-lit face glowed with more than the reflection of the flames.
His lip curled; the reminiscence seemed to afford him some occult
amusement.

“I ’member! I ’member!” he said slowly; then he chuckled softly to
himself.

Binwell’s eyes were fixed upon him with an antagonistic intentness, as
if he would fain seize upon his withheld thought in some unconscious
betrayal of face. But the blind man could only hear his voice, languid
and reminiscent, drawling on, aimlessly, it seemed. “Waal, I ’members
it too, mighty well. How flustry the old man war! Wonder if we’ll be
that-a-way when we-uns git ez old ez him? He gin us the box, an’ we-uns
kerried it ter the top o’ the Bluffs, an’ ye clomb down whilst I watched.
An’ wunst in a while the old man would nudge me,” then with a quick
change of voice—“‘Ain’t that a horse a-lopin’, Jerry? hear it? hear it?’
An’ I’d say, ‘It’s the wind, Squair—the wind, a-wallopin’ up the gorge.’
An’ then he’d rest fur a minit an’ say, ‘Air sign o’ Ab? That thar boy’ll
break his neck, I’m ’feared.’ An’ I’d say, ‘I hear the clods in the
niches a-fallin’ whilst he climbs, Squair; he’s a-goin’ it.’ An’ then
he’d clutch me by the arm, an’ say, whispery an’ husky, ‘Jerry! Jerry!
what’s that down the road—the jingle o’ spurs, the clank o’ a sabre?’ An’
I’d say—‘It’s jes’ the dead leaves, Squair, a-rustlin’ as they fly in the
wind.’ An’ he warn’t easy one minit till ye clomb up the Bluffs ag’in,
empty-handed an’ the box hid.”

As he talked, Rosamond’s hands had fallen still in her lap while she
listened with the wide-eyed wonder of childhood. Her curling yellow hair,
ruddily gleaming in the firelight, hung down over her shoulders, her
cheek was flushed, her great gray eyes, full of starry lights and yet
pensively shadowed by her long black lashes, were fixed upon his face.
When the tension slackened she sighed deeply and stirred, and then lapsed
into intent interest again.

The blind man had bent forward, his elbows on his knees. “I ’members,” he
said again.

“I never did know, Ab, whether ye fund them hollows in the Bluffs a
toler’ble tight fit, nor how fur back they run in them rocks; but ye war
a mighty slim boy in them days.”

“Warn’t slim enough ter git inter the fust nor the second,” spoke up the
blind soldier briskly, with awakened interest.

“So ye put it inter the thurd?” demanded Jerry.

If he could have seen himself how well he would have thought it that his
old comrade could not see him! His head was thrust forward till all the
ligaments in his long thin neck were visible, strained and stretched. His
eyes were starting. His breath was quick, and his under jaw had dropped.
Rosamond had a half affrighted look as she sat in her chair on the hearth
beside the sleeping dogs and the grotesquely attired cat that was gravely
washing its face.

The blind man nodded. “Yes,” he said simply, “I put it in the thurd, an’
pritty far back, too.”

The chimney was resounding with the burden of the blast as it sang
without; its tumultuous staves echoed far up the mountain slopes. Abner
lifted his head to listen, hearing perhaps the faint din of the winds of
memory blowing as they listed about Keedon Bluffs. The next instant his
attention was recalled. In the momentary absorption the sharpened hearing
of the blind had failed him. He subtly knew that there was a change in
the room, but what it was he could not say. He stretched out his hand
with a groping gesture. “Jerry,” he called out in a friendly voice. There
was no answer.

The puzzled expression deepened on his face. He heard the stirring of the
child. “Rosamondy,” he said, “who’s hyar?”

“Nobody,” the vibrant, sweet voice answered, “nobody but me—an’ Mis’ Cat.”

“Whar’s Jerry?” he demanded.

“Gone out,” she said promptly. “Sech walkin’ on tiptoes I never see.”

There sounded instantly a queer thumping on the puncheon floor, a
tumble, a great gush of treble laughter; then the eccentric thumping was
renewed and Abner knew that Rosamondy was imitating the deft celerity of
Binwell’s exit on tiptoes. He did not laugh. He leaned back in his chair
with doubt and perplexity corrugating his brow.

A step was upon the ladder, descending from the roof-room—not Ike’s usual
light step, but he it was, slowly appearing from the shadows. Even after
he had emerged into the genial firelight their gloom seemed still to
rest upon his face, and his eyes were at once anxious and mournful. He
withstood as well as he could the shock of welcome with which Rosamond
rushed upon him, seizing him round the knees till he almost toppled
over, and was constrained to wildly wave his arms in order to regain his
equilibrium. She fell into ecstasies of delight because of the awkward
insecurity he exhibited, and as with outstretched arms, and flying hair,
and tangled feet, and rippling, gurgling cries, she mimicked him, he
found himself at liberty to sink into a chair. And then while Rosamond,
always long in exhausting her jokes, still toppled about the floor, he
silently brooded over the fire.

Once or twice he raised his eyes and looked toward his uncle who seemed
too lost in reverie. Sometimes Abner lifted his head to listen to the
rioting winds and again bent it to his dreams. The white firelight
flickered, and now the brown shadow wavered. He was presently subtly
aware of a new presence by the hearth, unseen by others as all must be by
him.

“Ye hev got trouble alongside o’ ye, Ike,” he remarked. “Ye’re mighty
foolish. It’s a great thing ter be young, an’ strong, an’ hev all yer
senses. The beastises hev got mo’ gumption than ye. Ever see a young
strong critter, free an’ fat, that war mournful? Naw; an’ ye ain’t goin’
ter. Ye hev got the worl’ in a sling. An’ ye set an’ mope.”

Ike made an effort to rouse himself. “I know I oughtn’t,” he said in a
strained voice, “but I be mighty—mighty troubled.”

“Jes’ so,” said the blind man.

Ike looked at the flickering white flames for a moment, at the pulsing
red coals, at the vacillating brown shadows. Rosamondy had rushed into
the shed-room to exhibit her imitation of Ike to his mother and aunt
Jemima. He listened to the chorus of voices for a moment, then he said,
“I dunno but what I’m foolish, uncle Ab, but I hearn what ye tole Jerry
Binwell jes’ now ’bout whar ye hid the Squair’s money-box, an’—an’ I
wisht ye hedn’t done it.”

“What fur?” the blind man lifted his face lighted with sudden interest,
“ye be ’feared ez he mought ’low it’s thar yit an’ go arter it an’ git
his neck bruk.”

Ike moved uneasily.

“That’s jes’ the reason he tried to keep me an’ Skimpy Sawyer from
climbin’ down thar one evenin’—fust time I ever seen him; tried ter skeer
we-uns with witches an’ sech. The Squair’s money-box air what he war
arter, I be bound, the night o’ the coon hunt whenst I cotch him thar.
I’m feared he’ll git it. I dunno what to do! I s’picioned suthin’, but I
never ’lowed ’twar money. He’ll git arrested ef he don’t mind.”

“I wisht he would,” said Abner; he chuckled fiercely and fell to
revolving his old grudges.

“Waal, I’d hate that mightily,” said Ike dolorously, “arrested out’n
we-uns’s house. I war goin’ ter tell dad nex’ day, but he war gone ’fore
I got home. I wisht Jerry Binwell bed never kem hyar!”

“Why, Ike,” Abner retorted cogently, “then leetle Rosamondy would never
hev kem!”

“I seen old Corbin an’ the constable with thar heads mighty close
tergether ter-day,” Ike went on drearily, “an’ arterward I passed down
the river-bank on the opposite side ter Keedon Bluffs, an’ I see the
constable a-hidin’ hisself in a clump o’ sour-wood. I dunno what ter
do. I feel ’sponsible, somehows. I don’t want him ter git the money—a
thievin’ scamp—and yit I don’t want him ter git arrested.” He paused in
astonishment.

Abner Guyther was laughing in sardonic delight. “He ain’t goin’ ter git
the money!” he cried. “An’ I dunno nobody ez needs arrestin’ ez bad ez he
do—somebody oughter scotch his wheel, sartain! G’long, Ike; g’long ter
bed. An’ quit addlin’ yer brains ’bout’n yer elders.”

Ike was not reassured by the reception of his disclosure. And he had not
told the worst of his troubles. More than once of late he had seen Skimpy
and Binwell together. He had felt no resentment that his friend had
been forbidden association with him, to avoid contact with this elderly
villain. It seemed wise in Skimpy’s father, and he only wished that his
own had been sufficiently uninfluenced and firm to have determined upon
a similar course. Noting the constable in the clump of sour-wood, and
with his own recollection of Binwell climbing down Keedon Bluffs, he had
been smitten with terror for Skimpy’s sake. He knew that Binwell had some
reason of his own for affecting the lad’s society. In cudgeling his mind
for the man’s motive he had brought to light the true one which might not
have been so readily presented were not Keedon Bluffs so continually in
his thoughts of late. He was sure that Binwell wished Skimpy, being light
and slim, to explore the hollows of the Bluffs—with what end in view he
had not definitely known until to-night. Nevertheless the conviction that
his simple-hearted friend had become involved in serious danger had been
strong enough that afternoon to induce him to go to Skimpy’s home. Old
man Sawyer sat on the porch morosely smoking his pipe, and Ike paused at
the fence and whistled for Skimpy—a shrill, preconcerted signal; it was
in the deepest confidence that he was about to impart his suspicions and
his warnings and he did not feel justified in including the elder Sawyer
in the colloquy. It might be a slander on Jerry Binwell, after all. “An’
I don’t wanter be a backbiter like him,” said Ike to himself.

The whistle brought Skimpy promptly out from the barn. To Ike’s surprise,
however, he did not approach the fence, which was at some distance from
the house. He simply stood near the porch with his old hat on the back of
his red head, his long arms crooked, his hands thrust into his pockets,
and upon his face a sardonic grin that seemed broader than anything in
his whole physical economy.

“Kem down hyar. I hev a word ter say ter ye,” called Ike.

He felt as if he were dreaming when instead of replying Skimpy swayed
himself grotesquely and mockingly about, and began to sing with
outrageous fluctuations from the key “Oh-aw-e-Mister Coon! Oh-aw-i-Mister
Ky-une.”

It seemed a frenzied imitation of himself, and Ike was about to speak
when Skimpy, putting his fingers in his ears that he might not hear Ike,
although to the casual observer it might well seem that he had good
reasons for not wanting to hear himself, bellowed and piped mockingly,
“Oh-aw-i-Mister Kyune! That’s the way he ’lows I sing,” he observed in
an aside to his father, who might have been carved from a corn-cob, for
all the animation he showed, except to silently smoke his corn-cob pipe.

“I never!” cried Ike indignantly; “somebody hev been settin’ ye ag’in
me—a backbitin’ scamp! An’ I’ll be bound I know who ’twar.”

But Skimpy’s fingers were in his ears, and he was still swaying back and
forth and making the air shudder with his mock vocalizations. At last Ike
turned away in sheer futility, angered and smarting, but as anxious and
troubled as before.

Now he was sorry he had not persisted for he had not realized how
immediate and terrible was the danger to Skimpy. He sat still for a
moment, afraid to say aught of the perplexities that racked him, lest
being mistaken he might needlessly implicate Skimpy in any crime that
Binwell might commit. Presently he rose with a look of determination
on his face. The sound of the lifting latch, the cold in-rushing of
the air, the light touch of the flakes of ashes set a-flying from the
hearth, notified Abner that he was solitary by the fire. He heard the
cat purring, the low murmuring of the flames in the chimney, the wind
outside, the voices of the two women busy in the shed-room.

Another stir of a latch and a presence entered bright even to the blind
man. “All alone-y by hisself-y!” Rosamondy cried as she pattered across
the floor and flung herself into his arms. He shared much baby talk with
Mrs. Cat, but he was not jealous of that esteemed friend, for he was
Rosamondy’s preferred crony. Through her, life had come to mean for him
a present as well as a past, and to hold for him a future and a vista.
He planned for her with the two old women. He had let it be known to all
his relatives that all he had in the world—his horse, his cows, his share
of the cabin, his gun, a captured sabre—was to be hers at his death.
Always in his simple dreams for enriching her, and for her fair fate,
Jerry Binwell’s image would be intruded like some ugly blight upon it
all. He had heretofore thrust away the thought of him, and dreamed on
resolutely. Somehow he could not do this to-night. As he patted her on
the head and heard the silken rustle of her hair beneath his hand, he
could but remember that it was her father risking his life on the rocks,
his liberty, the lurking officer and everlasting ignominy, which must
surely rebound upon her.

“She wouldn’t know nuthin’ ’bout it now, ef he war branded ez a thief,
but she air a-goin’ ter be a gal ez will keer mightily fur a good name
an’ sech. Jerry Binwell hain’t never hed a good name wuth talkin’ ’bout,
but he ain’t never yit been branded ez a thief.”

Mrs. Cat was brought and perched upon his knee, and he was required to
shake hands and inquire after her health and that of her family, which
ceremony both he and the poor animal performed lugubriously enough,
although with a certain dexterity, having been trained to it by frequent
repetitions. Rosamondy, however, found herself a better improvisor than
he of conversation for Mrs. Cat, and as she prattled on his anxious
thoughts reverted to the subject.

“He air her dad, an’ he’ll be disgraced fur life, an’ I could hev
purvented it. Too late! Too late!” he groaned aloud.

He felt like a traitor as she passed her soft little arm around his neck
and kissed his cheek—pale now, although it had never blanched for shot or
shell. He had both her and Mrs. Cat to hold, and although both were of
squirming tendencies his mind could still steadily pursue its troublous
regrets.

“But I oughtn’t ter hev done it jes’ fur Rosamondy, nuther. I oughter
hev done it fur the sake of—_folks_! A man oughter keep another man
from doing wrong, ef he kin, same ez ter keep his own score clear—them
ez kin stan’ ter thar guns oughter keer ter keep the whole line from
waverin’, stiddier a-pridin’ tharse’fs on the aim o’ thar one battery.
Laws-a-massy; I wish I hed tole him. I wish I hed gin him a word. He mus’
be nigh thar now. Ef I jes’ could ketch him! Ef I jes’ could find my way!
I ain’t been nigh thar fur twenty year. Fur one hour o’ sight ter save a
man from crime! Fur one hour o’ sight to hold the battle-line! Fur one
hour o’ sight to do the Lord’s kind will!”

He was speaking aloud. He had risen from his chair, the little girl and
her cat slipping softly down upon the floor. He took a step forward, both
groping hands outstretched. “Fur one hour o’ sight!”

“I’ll lead ye, unky Ab,” the child compassionately exclaimed, putting up
her soft, warm hand to his cold trembling fingers.

“Lead me! yes! Lead me ter Keedon Bluffs,” he cried eagerly. “She kin do
it! She kin save him! Stop,” he caught himself. “Look out, Rosamondy. Air
the night dark?”

She opened the door; a mild current of air flowed in above her yellow
head, for the wind now was laid. She saw the dark woods gloom around;
the stars glimmer in the vast spaces of the sky; but about the mountain
summit shone an aureola of burnished gold.

“The moon’s a-risin’,” she said.

He placed his hand in hers; she stepped sturdily upon the ground. The
door closed, and the hearth was vacant behind them but for the flicker of
the flames, the drowsing dogs, and the purring Mrs. Cat.




XIII.


That night as Skimpy sat with the family group by the fireside in
his father’s cabin, he had much ado to maintain a fictitious flow of
spirits, for at heart he was far from cheerful. Often he would pause, the
laugh fading from his face, and he would lift his head as if listening
intently. Surely the wind had no message for him as it came blaring down
the mountain side! What significance could he detect in the clatter of
the bare boughs of the tree by the door-step that he should turn pale at
their slightest touch on the roof? Then recognizing the sound he would
draw a deep breath of relief, and glance covertly about the circle to
make sure that he had been unobserved. So expert in feigning had poor
Skimpy become that he might have eluded all but the vigilance of a
mother’s eye.

“Air ye ailin’, Skimpy?” she demanded anxiously. “Ye ’pear ter feel the
wind. Ye shiver every time it blows brief. Be thar enny draught thar in
the chinkin’?”

“Naw’m!” said Skimpy hastily. “I war jes’ studyin’ ’bout that thar song—

    “‘The sperits o’ the woods ride by on the blast,
    An’ a witch they say lives up in the moon.
    Heigh! Ho! Jine in the chune!
    Jine in, neighbor, jine in the chune!’

“It jes’ makes my marrer freeze in my bones ter sing that song,” Skimpy
said when his round fresh voice had quavered away into silence—somehow he
could not sing to-night.

“Waal, I never set no store by sech,” said his mother. She looked
reassuringly at him over the head of the baby, who slept so much during
the day that he kept late hours, and did his utmost to force the family
to follow his example. He sat on her knee, sturdily upright, although
she held her hand to his back under the mistaken impression that his
youthful spine might be weak; but he had more backbone—literally and
metaphorically—than many much bigger people. He was munching his whole
fist, for his mouth seemed not only large but flexible, and as he gazed
into the fire he soliloquized after an inarticulate fashion. His face
was red; his head was bald except for a slight furze, which was very red,
along the crown; notwithstanding his youth he looked both aged and crusty.

Bose was at his mistress’s feet. He too sat upright, meditatively
watching the fire with his one eye, and now and then lifting the remnants
of his slit ears with redoubled attention as the wind took a fiercer
twirl about the chimney. Occasionally as the baby’s monologue grew loud
and vivacious, Bose wagged the stump of his tail in joy and pride, and it
thwacked up and down on the floor.

It was a very cheerful hearth—the grinding tidiness of Mrs. Sawyer showed
its value when one glanced about the well-ordered room; at the clean pots
and pans and yellow and blue ware on the shelves; at the bright tints of
the quilts on the bed and of the hanks of yarn and strings of peppers
hanging from the rafters that harbored no cobwebs; at the clear blazes
unhindered by ashes.

Obadiah with his fiddle under his chin was directly in front of the
fire. He was tightening and twanging the strings; now and then cocking
the instrument close to his ear to better distinguish the vibrations.
There are few musicians who have a more capable and discerning air than
Obadiah affected in those impressive moments of preparation. His three
brothers sat on a bench, drawn across the hearth in the chimney corner,
its equilibrium often endangered, for the two at one end now and again
engaged in jocose scuffling, and Skimpy in the corner was barely heavy
enough to keep it from upsetting. Sometimes their father, solemnly
smoking his corn-cob pipe, would, with a sober sidelong glance and a deep
half-articulate voice, admonish them to be quiet, and their efforts in
this direction would last for a few moments at least. In one of these
intervals their father spoke suddenly to Skimpy.

“I war downright glad ye tuk Ike up ez short ez ye done this evenin’,
Skimp,” he said. “Though,” he added, with an afterthought, “I don’t want
ye to gin yerse’f up ter makin’ game o’ folks.”

“’Twar him ez fust made game o’ me,” said Skimpy, ruefully, the taunt
devised by the ingenious Binwell still rankling deep in his simple heart.

The twanging fiddle-strings were suddenly silent. Obadiah looked up with
a fiery glance. “What gin the critter the insurance ter make game o’
you-uns, Skimp?” he demanded angrily.

Until today Skimpy had never mentioned his grievance, so deeply cut down
was his self-esteem, and so reduced his pride in his “gift in quirin’.”
He had hardly understood it himself, but he dreaded to have the family
know how low his powers were rated lest they too think poorly of them.
For Skimpy himself had come to doubt his gift—the insidious jeer had
roused the first self-distrust that had ever gnawed him. His voice no
longer sounded to him so full, so sweet, and loud, and buoyant. He sang
only to quaver away, forlorn and incredulous after the first few tones.
No more soaring melodies for him. He could only fitfully chirp by the
wayside.

“He ’lowed,” said Skimpy, turning red, “ez I couldn’t sing—ez Bose,
thar, could sing better’n _me_—hed a better voice; Bose, yander, mind ye.”

Bose at the sound of his name looked up with a sleepy inquiry in his
single eye. Skimpy did not notice, but began to wheeze and rasp forth,—

“‘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.”

Skimpy plucked up a little. The prospect of retrieving his folly
reassured him. It was the hour, the secrecy of his escape from the
roof-room window at home, the atmosphere of mystery that surrounded the
adventure, he endeavored to think, rather than any distrust of Jerry
Binwell, which shook his nerves. He lent himself with docile acquiescence
to a sort of harness of rope which the man slipped over his head and
secured beneath his armpits, one end fastened to Binwell’s arm. Its
ostensible use was to aid the boy while climbing, in case he should slip
among the ledges. A mind prone to suspicion might have deemed its utility
most pronounced in preventing Skimpy from hiding anew or making off with
anything of value which he might find hidden in the hollows.

There were no shadows on the brow of the precipice when the golden
rays from the moon rested broadly upon the road or journeyed in long
stately files down the sylvan vistas. Both man and boy had slipped from
the verge, and were clambering along the jagged, oblique ledges of the
Bluffs, Skimpy often stayed and helped by the strong hand of the other.
The moon was higher now in the sky. A white radiant presence suddenly
began to walk upon the water. Down between the banks it came, upon the
lustrous darkness of the current and the mirrored shadows, diffusing
softest splendor, most benignant and serene. Skimpy, pausing to rest,
hearing the stir of the pines on the opposite bank and the musical
monotone of the river, stood mopping his brow and clinging to the strong
arm held out to him; he abruptly pointed out the reflection of the moon
to his companion, and asked if it did not remind him of that night on a
distant sea when Christ came walking along the troubled waves.

A sudden great lurch! It was not Skimpy, but Binwell—the athlete—who
started abruptly, and almost fell from the Bluff into the water far
below. He recovered himself with an oath.

“Ain’t ye got no better sense, ye weasel! ’n ter set out with sech
senseless, onexpected gabble in sech a job ez this? Naw, it don’t look
like nuthin’—nuthin’ but a powerful onlucky wanin’ moon, a-showin’ how
the time’s a-wastin’. Ye hustle yer bones else I’ll drap ye down thar an’
then ye’ll find out what’s walked on the water.”

Skimpy said nothing; he heartily wished he was on the top of Keedon
Bluffs once more. Their steps dislodged now and then a bit of stone from
the rock that fell with a ringing sound against the face of the Bluffs
into the river. Sometimes clods dropped with a muffled thud; every
moment the moon grew brighter. There were no more stoppages on the way.
Binwell urged the boy on whenever he would pause for breath, and it was
not long before they were near the gaping cavities that looked grewsome
and uninviting enough as Skimpy approached. He cast one despairing glance
up at the face of the cliffs—it seemed that he could never again stand
on the summit, so long, so toilsome was the way. He might have thought
it short enough with some hearty comrade. For Binwell’s grasp was savage
now on the boy’s arm; he cursed Skimpy under his breath whenever a step
faltered. He no longer cared to be smooth, to propitiate. “He’d take me
by the scruff o’ the neck, an’ pitch me into the ruver ef I didn’t do his
bid now, bein’ ez I can’t holp myself,” thought Skimpy, appalled.

A pity that a boy cannot inherit his father’s experience—but must learn
wisdom as it were under the lash!

Very black indeed the first of the cavities was as he passed; he hardly
dared look within the embrasure-like place; no grim muzzle of a gun
he beheld, no bursting shell flung forth; only a bat’s soft, noiseless
wings striking him in the face as he climbed by on the ledge below. The
second hollow was passed too, and now for the third. Binwell stopped
the boy, and began to rearrange the cords beneath his arms. “Confound
ye,” he said, his fingers trembling over the knots as he lifted his eyes
reproachfully to the boy’s face, “ye hev got me plumb upset with yer fool
talk—I ’lowed jes’ now I hearn leetle Rosamondy a-callin’ me.”

The rocks were vibrating softly—but could the echoes of Keedon Bluffs
repeat the fancy of a sound!

Skimpy stretched his arm into the cavity as far as it might go, half
expecting it to be snatched by the claw of a witch; but no—his empty palm
closed only on the clammy air.

“Up with ye!” said Jerry impatiently.

One moment—and there were the duskily purple mountains, the gray
obscurity of the misty intervals, the lustrous darkness of the river,
the fair sky, and the reigning moon; then the vault-like blackness of the
hollow.

The boy scuffled along it for a few moments, “snakin’ it,” he called the
process, and feeling like so much pith in the bark. Binwell still paid
out the cord as Skimpy crept further and further, and then—

What was the matter with the rocks! Endowed with Rosamond’s voice they
called him again and again, with dulcet treble iteration that was like
the fine vibrations of a stringed instrument all in tune. He listened,
paling a little; it was no fancy; he was discovered. He stood his ground
for the nonce. What affinity for harm and wrong! The coward might be
brave for a space.

Another voice; he jerked nervously at the cord on Skimpy’s arm. It was
Abner’s voice; he was on the summit of the Bluffs. He too was calling
aloud:

“Kem up, Jerry, ’tain’t no use. Kem up.”

Jerry made no answer; he muttered only to himself, “Ye’ll fall off’n the
aidge o’ that Bluff unbeknown ter yerse’f, ole mole!”

Abner began anew and all the echoes were pleading and insistent. “Kem
up, Jerry! Ye’ll be deesgraced fur life, and hyar’s leetle Rosamondy
a-waitin’ fur ye!”

Jerry was standing breathless, for Skimpy within was suddenly motionless.
Then the cord grew slack in his hand, for the boy was coming out backward.

Binwell gave no heed to the commotion on the summit. A heavy, clanking
metallic sound had caught his ear—it was the money-box of the Squire
which the boy was dragging out, every moment coming nearer to that
clutching, quivering hand.

Ah, Rosamond, calling in vain! Give it up, old soldier! No battle-cry of
honor can rally comrades like this. But they pressed perilously close to
the edge of the cliff—the blind man and the little child—beginning to
sob together with dreary helplessness and futility, and casting their
hopeless entreaties upon the night air, the echoes joining their pleas
with wild insistence, and the forest silence holding its breath that no
wistful word might be lost.

And thus others found them, shadowy figures as stealthily approaching as
if the blind man could see, and the confiding little child wonder;—two,
three, four, five figures pausing on the summit of the cliff, watching in
intensest excitement the man on the ledge, and, slowly emerging from the
cavity, dragging after him an iron box twelve inches square perhaps and
weighty to handle, a boy, slight, agile, unmistakable.

Skimpy, covered with dust, choking, out of breath, confused by the sound
of voices on the summit and the clamor of the echoes, hardly knew how it
was that he should hear in the medley the familiar tones of his father
calling on Heaven to pity him, for his son was a thief! He heard too the
voice of the child and the blind soldier’s entreaties. And then the sharp
tones of the constable rang out—“Surrender thar—or I fire!” His senses
reeled as Binwell, catching the box from his hands, turned and with quick
leaps like a fox’s clambered on down the ledges. The cord was still
about Skimpy’s shoulders; with a sharp twist he came to his knees in
great pain; then the end of the rope swung slack below, and he knew that
Binwell had just cut it to liberate himself—a great splash in the river
told that he had taken to the water and the constable’s bullet whizzed by
the Bluffs a second too late.

“He’ll hev ter gin up the box time I light out arter him,” cried the
constable; “I’ll meet up with him by the ruver-bank. He can’t run fur
with a heavy box full o’ gold an’ silver.”

There was no use in keeping the secret longer.

“It’s full o’ sand!” cried the blind man with dreary contempt in the
fact. “The Squair kerried it full o’ sand whenst he buried it—jes’ fur
a blind. He knowed Jerry s’picioned he hed money an’ he never trested
him. Jerry kep’ watch, an’ I clomb the Bluffs, an’ hid the box. Whar the
Squair an’ me actially hid the money war in a hollow o’ one o’ the logs
o’ his house, an’ thar’s whar the money war kep’ till the e-end o’ the
war. The heirs knowed it all the time. Write ter Arkansas an’ ax the one
ez be livin’ thar.”

A relish was added to the excitement which the events produced
throughout the Cove next day by the gossips’ speculations on Binwell’s
disappointment—how he must have looked, what he must have said, when he
felt sufficiently safe to open the box and found it full of sand. For
he made good his escape, the pursuit being given over instantly upon
the discovery that he had stolen nothing worth having. The constable
contented himself with declaring that he should never again come within
the district save to be ushered into the county jail. The neighborhood
cronies congregated at the store and talked the matter over, each having
some instance of Binwell’s duplicity to relate. All were willing enough
to credit Peter Sawyer’s account of how Skimpy had been deluded into
assisting Binwell’s scheme by the pretense that there were only papers
hidden in the box which he had a right to destroy. Notwithstanding the
fact that no suspicion rested upon him, Skimpy was not for a long time
so blithe a lad as before he climbed down Keedon Bluffs. And he is ready
now to believe that his father learned a good many things in those years
of seniority which are still unknown to him, and he has some respect for
experience. It is not necessary to scald him now in order to convince him
that boiling water is—as it is said to be—hot.

The blind man’s story was amply confirmed by a letter from the surviving
heir who had been told by his father of the hoax of the hidden box, and
who had always relished its mystery, since it had served its purpose and
had diverted plunder and search from the hoard concealed in the wall.

At Hiram Guyther’s cabin, however, the gossip had no zest. For the first
time a deep gloom had fallen on the blind soldier’s face as he sat in his
enforced inactivity, a-wasting his life away in the chimney corner. His
gray hair hardly seemed so incongruous now, for an ashen furrowed pallid
anxiety had replaced the florid tints of cheek and brow. Sometimes he
would rise from his chair and stride back and forth the length of the
room; now and again a deep sigh would burst from him.

“I wouldn’t mind it, Ab,” Mrs. Guyther would say in her comforting soft
drawl. “Ye done all ye could—more ’n enny other man would, ’flicted with
blindness. Fairly makes me shiver whenst I ’member ye an’ Rosamondy
walkin’ along them cliffs in the dead o’ night like ye done.”

“She’ll never be able ter live through it when she finds out ’bout her
dad; she’s a gal ez be a-goin’ ter hev a heap o’ feelin’s,” he would
groan, with prescient grief for the gay Rosamond’s future woes. “It’ll
plumb kill her ter know she don’t kem o’ honest folks. Ef it don’t—it’s
wuss yit; fur it’ll break her sperit, an’ that’s like livin’ along ’thout
a soul; sorter like walkin’ in yer sleep.”

And even Ike’s mother could say naught to this.

Only on aunt Jemima’s countenance a grim satisfaction began to dawn. She
was not an optimist; nevertheless she contrived to extract a drop of
honey from all this wormwood.

“It’s all fur the bes’—I’ve hearn that preached all my days. Ev’y body
knowed ennyhow ez he war mean enough fur ennything—ter steal, ef ’casion
riz. An’ he war her dad; couldn’t git roun’ that! All’s fur the bes’! Ef
he hed hev stayed he mought hev tuk a notion ter kerry Rosamondy away
from hyar. _Now_ he don’t dare ter show his nose hyar ag’in. An’ we hev
got Rosamondy safe an’ sure fur good an’ all.”

So she knitted on with a stern endorsement of the course of events
expressed in her firmly-set lips and the decisive click of her needles.

Even this view did not mitigate Abner’s grief, and he sorrowed on for
Rosamondy’s sake.

The secret of Keedon Bluffs once discovered was spread far and wide.
The news, crossing the ranges, penetrated other coves, and was talked
of round many a stranger’s hearth. Even to Persimmon Cove, where Jerry
Binwell had married, the story came, albeit tardily. It was told first
there by the sheriff, who had chanced to be called to that remote and
secluded spot in pursuit of some evil doer hiding in the mountains,
and he gave to the constable, as he passed through Tanglefoot Cove
on his way to the county town, sundry items, gathered during his stay
in Persimmon Cove, which that functionary felt it was his duty to
communicate to the Guythers.

It was a widow whom Jerry Binwell had married in Persimmon Cove—a young
woman with one child; and when he left the place after her death, he
took his stepdaughter with him; some people said his motive was to spite
her grandmother, with whom he had quarreled, and who had sought to claim
her; others said that it was because the little Rosamond contrived to
keep a strong hold on the heart of every creature that came near her, and
had even won upon Jerry Binwell. Certain it was that old Mrs. Peters,
her grandmother, had heard with great delight the tidings of Rosamond’s
whereabouts, and the sheriff had promised her to acquaint with the facts
the family with whom the child lived.

Every member of the household felt stunned as by a blow when the
constable had left them to their meditations. Even Rosamond, with all
her merry arts, could not win a smile from the grave and troubled faces
grouped about the fire, and she desisted at last; she leaned her head,
with its floating lengths of golden hair, against the brown logs of the
wall, and looked wistfully at them all with a contemplative finger in her
pink mouth.

“She hev ter go!” said the upright Hiram Guyther with a sigh, “she ain’t
ourn ter keep.”

“We hev ter gin her up,” groaned the blind man.

Mrs. Guyther looked wistfully at her with moist eyes, and dropped a
half-dozen stitches in her knitting.

And aunt Jemima suddenly threw her blue-checked cotton apron over her
head, and burst into a tumult of passionate tears. “I wisht,” she
exclaimed—wicked old soul!—“thar warn’t no sech thing ez right an’ wrong!
But I don’t keer fur right. An’ I don’t keer fur wrong. They shan’t take
my child away from hyar.”

Although it wrung their hearts they decided to relinquish their household
treasure. But they temporized as well as their scanty tact would enable
them. A message was sent to old Mrs. Peters, coupled with an invitation
to come and make them a visit. And thus they eked out the weeks.

One day—a day of doom it seemed to them—there rode up to the door a small
wizened old woman, sharp-eyed, with a high voice and a keen tongue; she
was riding a white mare with a colt at her heels. She scarcely seemed
perturbed by Rosamond’s reluctance to recognize her. The alert eyes took
in first with an amazed stare the child’s cleanly and whole attire,
her delicately tended flowing hair, her fine, full, glowing look of
health; then with more furtive glances she expended what capacity for
astonishment remained to her on the scoured puncheon floor, the neat
women and men, the loom, with a great roll of woven cloth of many yards
hanging to it; the evidences of a carefully adjusted domestic routine, of
thrift and decorum and moral worth; the cooking and quality of the meal
presently set forth on the table. She had not lived so long in this world
to be unable to recognize sterling people when she met them.

They all talked on indifferent topics for a time. But presently she broke
forth.

“I dunno ez I oughter up an’ remark it so flat-footed—but I never
expected ter find Jerry Binwell’s friends sech ez you-uns. I wouldn’t hev
rid my mare’s back sore ef I hed. I dunno ez I’d hev kem at all.”

“Waal,” said Hiram Guyther, “I reckon ’twar leetle Rosamondy ez jes’
tangled herself up in our heart-strings—an’ that made us put up with
Jerry. We ’lowed he war her dad.”

“I’m powerful glad he ain’t!” said Abner.

“I say!” cried the sharp little woman scornfully. “_Her dad_ war a
mighty solid, ’sponsible, ’spectable young man, an’ good-lookin’ till
you couldn’t rest! He’d hev lived till he war eighty ef his gun hedn’t
bust an’ killed him. I dunno what ailed Em’line ter marry sech ez Jerry
arterward. He made way with everything her fust husband lef’ her, an’
mighty nigh all I hed, ’mongst his evil frien’s an’ drinkin’. But he
always war mighty good ter Rosamondy. I’ll gin him that credit.”

“Ennybody would be good ter sech a child ez Rosamondy!” cried aunt Jemima.

“Waal, we war all frien’s ter Jerry, ez fur ez he’d let us be, an’ ter
the leetle gal,” said Hiram, solidly, “an’ I hope, mum, ye’ll let her
spen’ cornsider’ble of her time with us.”

This was the cautious way it began, although it fired aunt Jemima’s blood
to hear the permission humbly craved instead of claimed as a right.

But Mrs. Peters smilingly accorded it. She herself had entered upon
a long visit; whenever she made a motion to return, the family so
vehemently demurred that she relented, only stipulating that when she
should depart aunt Jemima should accompany her. She took a sad pleasure
in the talk of the blind artillery-man, her own son, who was killed in
battle, having been in the same command. Abner remembered him after a
time, and told her many things of his army life which she had not before
known. She had a sort of maternal tenderness for his comrade, and loved
to see how Rosamond had blossomed in the waste places of his life.

“I don’t think ’twould be right ter take her away from Ab,” she said,
when the visit was at last at an end. And so only the two old women went
to Persimmon Cove; together they came back after a time. And thus for
years, the old cronies, cherishing so strong a bond of friendship, have
vibrated on visits to and fro. But whoever comes or goes Rosamond has
never yet left the hearthstone made brighter by her presence.

And when she and the blind artillery-man walk hand in hand down the shady
road to Keedon Bluffs, she always cries out gleefully when she sees the
great cannon-ball arrested midway on the ledge, and he tells her again
how it must have burst forth from the muzzle of the gun far away, and,
sounding its shrill battle cry, whirled through the air, describing a
great arc against the sky, dropping at last, spent and futile, on the
ledge there above the river.

“Sometimes,” he says, “sometimes, Rosamondy, I feels ez ef I’d like ter
lay my hand on that ball ef I could git nigh it—’minds me so o’ the war
times; ’twould bring ’em nigher; they seems a-slippin’ away now.”

“I hate that cannon-ball; it kem so nigh a-killin’ somebody,” says
Rosamondy, “an’ I hate war times. An’ I don’t want folks ter be hurted no
mo’.”

And in the deep peace of the silent mountain fastnesses and the sheltered
depths of the Cove, they leave the old ball, spent and mute and harmless,
lying on the ledges of Keedon Bluffs, above the reddening river, and take
their way homeward through the sunset glow.




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