“The supper’s all ready for you boys,” Judith called in to Wade whose whistle sounded from his own room. “Hit’s a settin’, kivered, on the hearth; the coffee-pot’s on the coals. Would you-all mind to wait on yo’selves, an’ would you put the saddle on Selim for me? I’m goin’ over to Lusks’. I’ll eat supper there; I may stay all night; but I’ll be home in the mornin’ soon to git you-all’s breakfast.”
“Why—why, pap ’lowed——”
“Well, Uncle Jep ain’t here. Ef you don’t want to——”
“Oh, that’s all right Judith. Of course it’s all right. But you say you’re goin’ to ride to Lusks’?—to ride?” hesitated Wade uneasily. Judith flung up her head and stared straight at him with angry eyes.
“Yes,” she said finally, “when I leave this place for over night I’d ruther know whar my hoss is at. I’ll take him along.”
“Oh,—all right,” her cousin hastened to agree; “I never meant to make you mad, Jude. Of course I’d jest as soon saddle up for you. I don’t wonder you feel thataway. I never like to have anybody use my ridin’ critter.”
Judith had made her point. She let it pass, and went sombrely on with her preparation for departure. Wade still hesitated uneasily. Finally he said deprecatingly,
“Ef ye don’t mind waitin’ a minute I’ll eat my supper, an’ ride over with ye—I was a-goin’ after supper anyhow; I want to see Lacey Rountree ef he’s not gone back home yit.”
“I’ll be glad to have ye,” answered Judith quietly. “I don’t mind waitin’.” And Wade, plainly relieved, hurried out to the stables.
They rode along quietly in the late summer afternoon; the taciturn habit of the mountain people made the silence between them seem nothing strange. Arrived at the Lusks’, both girls came running out to welcome their visitor. She saw Wade’s sidelong glance take note of the fact that Grandpap Lusk led away Selim to the log stable. Lacey Rountree was gone home to the Far Cove, and Wade lingered in talk with Grandpap Lusk a while at the horse-block, then got on his mule and, with florid good-byes, rode back home, evidently at rest as to Judith.
The evening meal was over. Judith helped Cliantha and Pendrilla prepare a bit of supper for herself, aided in the clearing away and dish-washing, and after they had sat for a while with Granny Lusk and the old man in the porch, listening to the whippoorwills calling to each other, and all the iterant insect voices of a July night, went to their own room.
“Girls,” said Judith softly, drawing the two colourless little creatures to the bed, and sitting down with one on each side of her, “girls,” and her voice deepened and shook with the strain under which she laboured, “I want you to let me slip out the back door here, put my saddle on Selim, and go home, quiet, without tellin’ the old folks. I was goin’ home by daylight in the mornin’ anyhow, to get the boys’ breakfast,” as the girls stared at her in wordless surprise. “I’ve got a reason why I’d ruther go now—and I’d ruther the old folks didn’t know. Will ye do this for me?”
The sisters looked at each other across their guest’s dark eager face, and fluttered visibly. They would have been incapable of deceit to serve any purpose of their own; they were too timid to have initiated any actions not in strict accordance with household laws; but the same gentle timidity which made them subservient to the rules of their world, made them also abject worshippers at the shrine of Judith’s beauty and force and fire.
“Shore, shore,” they both whispered in a breath.
“I hate to have ye go Jude—” began Cliantha; but Pendrilla interrupted her.
“An’ yit ef Jude would ruther go—and wants to slip out unbeknownst, why we wouldn’t say nothin’ about it, and jest tell granny and grandpap in the mornin’ that she left soon to git the boys’ breakfast.”
They watched her pass quietly out the back door and toward the log stable, their big blue eyes wide with childish wonder and interest. Judith with her many suitors, moving in an atmosphere of romance, was to them a figure like none other, and she was now in the midst of tragic doings; the glamour that had always been upon her image was heightened by the last week’s occurrences. They turned back whispering and shut the door.
Thus it was that Judith found herself on Selim, moving, free from suspicion or espionage, toward the point below Foeman’s Bluff where she had sent word to Creed to meet her.
The big oaks shouldered themselves in black umbels against the horizon; pointed conifers shot up inky spires between them. The sky was only greyish black, lit by many stars, and Judith trembled to note that their dim illumination might almost permit one to recognise an individual at a few paces distance. Without misadventure she came to the spot designated, urged Selim in under the shadow of a tree, dismounted, and stood beside him waiting. Would Creed come? Would Huldah persuade him that the message was only a decoy? Would he come too late? Would some of the boys intercept him, so that he should never come at all?
At the last thought she started and leaned out recklessly to search the dark path with desperate eyes. Perhaps she had better venture forward and meet him. Perhaps after all it would be possible for her to get closer to Nancy Card’s. Then in the midst of her apprehensions came the sound of shod hoofs.
She had chosen this point for two reasons: first the old trail she meant to follow down the mountain passed in close to the spot; and second it was the last place they would expect Bonbright to approach; his way to it would never be guarded. But of course she ran the risk of Blatch himself or some of his friends and followers appearing. And now she held her breath in intense anxiety as the trampling came nearer.
There appeared out of the dense shadow of the bluff a man walking and leading a mule by its bridle. She knew the mule, because she got the silhouette of it against the sky, and directly after she saw that the man who led it was tall, with a bandaged head, which he carried in a manner unmistakable, and one shoulder gleaming white—she guessed that that was because his coat was off where the bandages lay under his white shirt and over the wound in his shoulder. It was Creed. With a throb of unspeakable thankfulness she realised that she had till now dreaded that if he came at all Huldah would be with him. She moved out from the dense shadow.
“Whar—whar’s Huldy?” she questioned before she would trust herself to believe. But Creed, full of the wonder of her message, dropped the mule’s bridle and came toward her his uninjured arm outstretched. He put the inquiry by almost impatiently.
“Huldah? She went on down to Hepzibah soon Saturday morning,” he said. “O Judith, did you mean it—that word you sent me by Little Buck?”
He came swiftly up to her, snatching her hand eagerly, pressing it hard against his breast, leaning close in the twilight to study her face.
“You couldn’t mean it,” he hurried on passionately, tremulously, “not now; you just pity me. Little Buck cried when he told me what you said, honey. He was jealous. But he needn’t have been—need he Judith? You just pity me.”
Creed’s manner and his words were instant reassurance to Judith’s womanly pride. But immediately on the relaxation of that pain rose clamouring her anxiety for his safety—his life.
“Yes, yes, Creed,” she murmured vehemently. “I did mean it—I sure meant every word of it. But we got to get right away from here. Do ye reckon ye can stand it to ride as far as the foot of the mountain? Ye got to go—and I’m here to take ye.”
They drew out of the path and into the deep blackness beneath the trees. There was but a hundredth chance that anybody would be passing here, or watching this point, yet that hundredth chance must be guarded against.
Poor Creed, he detained her, he clung to her hands hungrily, and invoked the sound of her voice. So much hate had daunted him, the strength and sweetness of her presence, the warm tenderness of her tones, were like balm to his lacerated spirit.
“I couldn’t go to-night—dear——” he faltered, abashed that the first word he uttered to her must be a denial. “You’re mighty sweet and good to offer to take me—I don’t know what I have ever done that you should risk this for me—but I’m to have a chance to talk to your Uncle Jephthah at moonrise to-night, and I can’t turn my back on that. He’s a fair-minded man and I’ll make this thing right yet.”
Judith shuddered. “Don’t you never believe it,” she urged in a panting whisper. “Uncle Jep hadn’t a thing on earth to do with that word goin’ to you. He’s left home. I can’t find him nowhars, or I’d have went straight to him and begged him to help me out when I found what the boys was aimin’ to do. Hit was Blatch planned it all. I tell ye Creed, Blatch Turrentine is alive—you never killed him when you flung him over the bluff—and while he lives you can’t stay here. He’s bound to kill ye.”
“Have you seen Blatch, yourself, Judith?” Creed asked quickly.
“Oh, laws, no. He’s a layin’ out in the woods somewheres, aimin’ to make Uncle Jep believe you killed him. But I heard him plain enough—I heard him and the boys fix it all up—hid out from Uncle Jep down in the grain-room. There’s to be seven of ’em a-waitin’ down by the big hollow, and when they git you betwixt them an’ the sky at moonrise they’re all promised to shoot at once, so that nary man dast to go back on the others when you’re killed.”
Wounded, appalled, the young fellow drew back from her and clung to the saddle of the old mule, with a boyish desire to hide his face against the arm which he threw over it.
“How they hate me!” he breathed at last. “Oh, I’ve failed—I’ve failed. I meant so well by them all—and I’ve got nothing but their hate. But I won’t run. I never ran from anything yet. I’ll stay here and take what comes.”
Perhaps in his extremity the despair of this speech was but an unconscious reaching out for Judith’s expressed affection, the warmth and consolation of her love. If this were so, the movement brought him what he craved. In terror she laid hold upon him, holding to his unwounded arm, pressing her cheek upon his shoulder, making her protest in swift passionate sentences.
“What good will it do for you to get yourself killed—tell me that? Every one of them men will be murderers, when you’ve stayed and seen it through. Lord, what differ is it whether sech critters as them love you or hate you? ’Pears to me I would ruther have their ill-will as their good-will. Don’t you have no regards for them that is good friends to you? I care. I understand what it was you was tryin’ to do. I thort it was fine. Air you goin’ to break my heart by stayin’ here to git yourself killed? Oh, don’t do it, Creed. You let me take you out of the mountains, or I’ll never know what it is to sleep in peace.”
His arm slipped softly round her waist and drew her close against his side, so close that the two young creatures, standing silent in the midst of the warm summer night, could almost hear the beating of each other’s heart. In spite of their desperate situation they were tremulously happy.
“I thank my God for you, Judith,” murmured Creed, bending to lay his cheek timidly against hers. “Never was a man in trouble had such a sweet helper. It’s mighty near worth it all to have found you. Maybe you never would have cared for me at all if this hadn’t come about—if I hadn’t needed you so bad.”
Judith’s lavish heart would have hastened to break its alabaster jar of ointment at love’s feet with the impetuous avowal that he had been dear to her since first she looked on him. But there was instant need of haste; the situation was full of danger; that confession, with all its sweetness, might well wait a more secure time and place. She got to her horse glowing with hope, feeling herself equal to the dubious enterprise before them.
“Whatever you say honey,” Creed assured her. “Do with me as you will. I’m your man now.”
They had wheeled their mounts toward the open.
“Hark! What’s that?” whispered Judith.
The quavering cry of a screech-owl came across the gulch to them. The girl crouched in her saddle, shivering slightly, and stroking Selim’s nose so that he might make no stir nor sound.
“They use—that—for a signal,” she breathed at last. “The boys is out guardin’ the trails. And ’pears like they’re a-movin’. We got to go quick.”
They set forth in silence; Judith riding ahead, skirted at a considerable distance the buildings on the old Turrentine place, then followed down a rocky stream-bed, dry now and leading abruptly into a ravine. Here the girl took her bearings by the summits she could see black against the star-lit sky, and, avoiding the open, made for the old Indian trail which would lead them directly down to Garyville. They could ride abreast sometimes, and they began to talk together in these broken intervals.
“And Little Buck cried when he told you,” Judith said, in that tender, brooding voice of hers. “That was my fault. I’m mighty sorry. I wouldn’t ’a’ hurt the child’s feelings for anything; but I never thought.”
“I fixed it up with him some,” said her lover, quickly. “I told him you only said that because I was hurt and you was sorry for me. I thought I was telling the truth.”
“Uncle Jep feels mighty bad about this business,” she began another time, hastening to offer what consolation she could. “Nothin’ would have made him willin’ to it, but the fear that when you brought the raiders up he’d get took hisself. He ain’t had nothin’ to do with stillin’ for more’n six year, but of course hit’s on his land, and the boys is his sons. He says he’s too old to go to the penitentiary.”
Creed reached out in the gloom and got the girl’s hand.
“Oh, Judith, darling!” he said eagerly. “Let me tell you right now, and make you understand—I never had any more notion of bringing raiders into the mountains than you have yourself. I do know that blockaded stills and what they mean are the ruin of this country; but honey, you’ve got to believe me when I say I never wanted to get any information about them or break them up.”
The girl harkened, with close attention to the man—the lover—but with simple indifference to the gist of what he was saying. It was plain that she would have loved and followed him had he been a revenue officer himself.
“I’ll tell Uncle Jep,” she said presently. “He’ll be mighty proud. He does really set a heap of store by you, and they all know it. But I ain’t never goin’ to let you talk like that to him,” she added, the note of proud possession sounding in her voice. “Ef you’re goin’ to live in the mountains you’ll have to learn not to have much to say about moonshine whiskey and blockaded stills—you never do know who you might be hittin’.”
“You’ll take good care of me, won’t you Judith?” he said fondly, pressing the hand he held. “And I reckon I need it—I surely do manage to get into misunderstandings with people. But that wasn’t the trouble with Blatch Turrentine—he never thought any such thing as that I was a spy. He was mad at me about something else—and I don’t know yet what it was.”
Judith laughed softly, low in her throat, so far had they come from the uncertainty, strain, and distress of an hour before. When next the trail narrowed and widened again, she came up on his left, the side of the injured arm, but which brought her nearer to him, leaned close and laying her hand on his shoulder, whispered,
“I reckon I know. I reckon you’ll have to blame me with Blatch’s meanness.”
“Why, of course that was it!” exclaimed Creed. He looped the bridle on his saddle horn, reached up and drew her hand across his shoulders and around his neck. “That’s what comes of getting the girl that everybody else wants,” he said with fond pride. “But nobody else can have her now, can they? Say it Judith—say it to me, dear.”
Judith made sweet and satisfying response, and they rode in silence a moment. Then she halted Selim thoughtfully.
“This path takes off to Double Springs, Creed,” she said, mentioning the name of a little watering place built up about some wells of chalybeate and sulphur water. “We might—do ye think mebbe we’d better go there?”
Creed, who felt his strength ebbing, calculated the distance. They had seen, as they made the last turn under the bluff, the lights flaring at the Garyville station. Double Springs was more than a mile farther. “I reckon Garyville will be the best, dear,” he returned gently. Then, “I wish I had cut a little better figure in this business—on account of you,” he added wistfully. “You’re everything that a man could ask. I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
“Ashamed of you!” Judith’s deep tones carried such love, such scorn of those who might not appreciate the man of her choice, that he was fain to be comforted.
“If we had known each other better from the first I reckon you would have kept me out of these fool mistakes I’ve made,” the young fellow said humbly.
“You ain’t made no mistakes,” Judith declared with reckless loyalty, “Hit’s the other folks—Blatch Turrentine and them that follers him—no good person could git along with them. Are you much tired Creed? Does yo’ shoulder pain you?”
“No, dear,” he said softly, laying his cheek against the hand which he had drawn around his neck. “Nothing pains me any more. I’m mighty happy.”
And together thus they rode forward in darkness, toward Garyville and safety.
In the sickly yellow flare of the kerosene lamps around the Garyville station Judith got her first sight of Creed’s face: sunken, the blood drained from it till it was colourless as paper, the eyes wild, purple rimmed, haggard—it frightened her. She was off of Selim in a moment, begging him to get down and sit on the edge of the platform with her, here on the dark side where nobody would notice them, and they could decide what was to be done next.
He dismounted slowly, stumblingly, gained the edge of the platform, and there sat with drooping head. Judith tied the two animals and ran to sit beside him.
“Ye ain’t goin’ to faint air ye?” she asked anxiously. “Lean on me, Creed. I wish’t I knew what to do for ye!”
The young fellow, half unconscious indeed, put his head down upon her shoulder with a great shuddering sigh.
“I’ll be better in a minute, dear,” he whispered. “I reckon I got a little tired—riding so far.”
For some time Judith sat there, Creed’s head on her shoulder, the black night all about them, the little lighted station empty save for the clicking of the telegraph instrument, and the footsteps of the station master who had opened up for the midnight train. She was desperately anxious and at a loss which way to turn. And yet through all her being there rolled a mighty undernote of joy. As to the dweller on the coast the voice of the sea is the undertone to all the sounds of man’s activities, so beneath all her virginal hesitancies, her half terror of what she had done, surged and sang the knowledge that Creed was hers, her avowed lover. She, Judith, had him here safe; she had brought him away out of the mountains, from those who would have harmed him—and those who would have loved him too well. In all her plannings up to this time she had never quite been able to see clearly what should come after getting Creed down into the valley. Over her stormily beating heart now there rose and fell a little packet of bills, savings above necessary expenditures on the farm, and her own modest expenses, savings which had been accumulating since Uncle Jephthah rented the place, and now amounted to some hundreds of dollars. These she had put in the bosom of her frock when she set out on this enterprise, with, as she now realised, the vaguest expectation of ever returning to her uncle’s house.
“Creed,” she whispered, “air ye better?”
“Yes,” responded her charge, “yes—I’m better.” But he made no movement to raise his head, and with eyes long accustomed to darkness she was able to see that his lids were still closed.
“Creed,” she began again, “what shall I do for you now? Must I go ask at the hotel will they give you a room? Have you—have you got money with you?”
Bonbright roused himself.
“I’m all right now,” he said in a strained tone. “Yes, dear, I’ve got some money with me, and a little more in the bank at Hepzibah. I can get hold of that any time I want to. I don’t know just what I’ll do,” he looked around him bewildered. This had not been his plan, and the long ride down the mountain, and above all the happiness of being with Judith, of her avowals had made him forgetful of its exigencies. “I reckon I’ll make out. You needn’t worry about me any more, Judith. I’m safe down here.”
These words sounded dreadfully like a dismissal to the girl. She locked her hands hard together in her lap and fought for composure. An older or a more worldly woman would have said to him promptly that she could not leave him in this case, and that if they were ever to be married it must be now. But all the traditions of the mountain girl’s life and upbringing were against such a course. She gazed at him helplessly.
“I ain’t got but one friend on this earth, looks like,” began Creed wearily, as he got to his feet, “and now I’m obliged to send her away from me.”
It was more than Judith could bear. She lifted her swimming eyes to him in the dusk; he was recovering self command and strength, but he was still white, shaken, the bandaged head and shoulder showing how close he had been to death. Her love overbore virgin timidity and tradition.
“Don’t send me away then,” she said in the deepest tones of that rich, passionate voice of hers. “Ef hit’s me you’re namin’ when you speak of having but one friend—don’t send me away, Creed.”
He came close and caught her hand, looking into her face with wondering half comprehension of her words. That face was dyed with sudden, burning red. She hoped and expected that he would make the proffer which must come from him. When he did not, she burst out in a vehement, tense whisper,
“If—if you love me like you said you did——”
Creed hesitated, bewildered. He was too ill to judge matters aright, but he knew one thing.
“I do love you,” he said with mounting firmness. “I may be a mighty poor sort of a fellow—I’ve begun to think so of late—but I love you.”
Judith put out both hands blindly toward him whispering,
“And I love you. I don’t want nothin’ but to be with you an’ help you, an’ take keer of you. I’ll never leave you.”
For a moment the young fellow felt only the dizzy rapture of her frank confession. In that instant he saw himself accepting her sacrifice, taking her in his arms; in anticipation he tasted the sweetness of her lips. Then pure reason, that shrew who had always ruled his days, spoke loud, as the bitterness of his situation rolled back upon him.
“No—no!” he cried. “Judith—honey—I can’t do that. Why, I’d be robbing you of everything in the world. Your kin would turn against you. Your farm would be lost to you, I reckon—I don’t know when I’ll be able to go back and claim mine.”
In the moment of strained silence that followed this speech, with a sense of violent painful revulsion the girl pushed him back when he would timidly have clung to her. What woman ever appreciated prudence in a lover? It is not a lover’s virtue. Her farm—her farm! He could listen to her confession of love for him, and speculate upon the chances of her losing her farm by it! She had one shamed, desperate instant when she would have been glad to deny the words she had spoken. Then Creed, reading her anger and despair by the light of his own sorrows, said brokenly:
“You feel—you’re offended at me now—but Judith, you wouldn’t love me if I had taken you at your word, and ruined all your chances in life. I—Judith—dear—I’ll make this thing right yet. I’ll come back—and you’ll forgive me then.”
With a sudden flaring up of strength he took quiet mastery of the situation. He kissed her tenderly, but sadly, not such a kiss as either could ever have imagined their first would be.
“I love you too well to let you wed a man that’s fixed like I am—a man that’s made such a failure of life—a fugitive—a fellow that has nothing to offer you, and no more standing with your people than a hound dog. I love you better than I do myself or my comfort—or even my life.”
In anguished silence Judith received the caress; dumb with misery she got to her horse. Creed stood looking up at her for their last words, when, with a rattle and clang, the train from the North swept in and halted. Selim jibed and fought the bit as any sensible mountain horse feels himself entitled to do under similar circumstances; but Judith heeded him almost not at all.
“My Lord—who’s that?” she cried, staring toward the lighted train where the figure of a man mounted the platform.
“What is it?” queried Creed.
“Hit looked like Blatch,” whispered the girl; “but I reckon it couldn’t a-been.”
“Blatch!” echoed Creed, all on fire in an instant—where now was her poor invalid whose head she had pillowed, of whom she had thought to take care? “Blatch Turrentine!—Good-bye, honey—you mustn’t be seen with me. If Blatch is here I’ve got to find and face him. You see that, don’t you?—You understand.”
And he turned and left her so. Oh, these men, with their quarrels and their nice points of honour—while a woman’s heart bleeds under the scuffling feet!
She watched him hurry to the train, his staggering step advertising how unfit he was for any such attempt, watched him mount the platform where she had seen the man that looked like Blatch; and then the conductor swung his lantern, the wheels began to revolve, she half cried out, and Selim at the end of his patience, bolted with her and never stopped running till he had topped the rise above the village.
Here, with some ado, she got him quieted, brought to a standstill, got off and tightened the girth, for the saddle was slipping dangerously. She climbed on once more, mounting from a fallen tree, and was moving again up the trail when, down toward Garyville, someone called her name.
“Judith!”
She did not turn her head. She knew to whom the voice belonged. As he rode up to her:
“What you doin’ here, Blatch Turrentine?” she demanded fiercely, “an’ what’ll the boys say to you for slippin’ away from ’em to-night?”
He took her inferred knowledge of all his enterprises without a word of comment. Bringing his mule up closer to her where she sat on Selim he answered:
“The boys know whar I’m at. We got word last evenin’ that the man I sell to was waitin’ for me in Garyville. He don’t know nobody but me in the business, and nobody but me could do the arrent. I hauled a load down, an’ I would have been back in plenty time, ef I hadn’t met you and Bonbright right thar whar that old Cherokee trail comes into the Garyville road.”
Judith started, her face burned in the darkness, but she said nothing. Blatch peered curiously at her as he went on:
“I reckon you never took notice of the waggon that was under the bluff thar by the turn, but that was my waggon, and I was a-settin’ on it. I wheeled myse’f round, when I seed ’twas Bonbright, and follered you two down to Garyville, and put up my mules.”
Again he peered sharply at her.
“Jude,” as she still sat silent, “I won’t tell the boys what kept me—I won’t tell them nary thing about you. I’ll just let on that I happened to see Bonbright at Garyville.”
“You tell what you’re a mind to,” said Judith bitterly. “I don’t keer what you say.”
Blatchley took the retort coolly. But his light grey eyes narrowed under the black brows.
“Bonbright seemed mightily upsot,” he commented. “Went off on the train an’ left his mule a-standin’.”
Went off on the train! Judith’s heart leaped, then stood still.
“Ye needn’t werry about it—I had Scomp put it up, ’long o’ my other ’n. He’ll send ’em both up a Wednesday. I reckon it ain’t to be wondered at Bonbright was flustered. Who do you ’low he went with on the railroad train? Jude, air you so easy fooled as to think it was a new notion for him to go to Garyville? Didn’t he name it to you that it was a better place than Double Springs?”
Leaning close and watching her face, he saw in it confirmation.
“Shore. They was a little somebody on the railroad train waitin’ to go on with him—after he’d done kissed you good-bye—and left you!”
Judith sat, head up, staring at him. Her less worthy nature was always instantly roused by this man’s approach. Savage resentment, jealousy, hate, stirred in her crushed spirit; they raised their heads; their movement crowded out grief and humiliation. It must be true—she had proposed Double Springs, and he had said Garyville would be better. He had refused in so many words her offer of herself. He had kissed her——
“No!—no!—no!” she cried to the man before her, “don’t you look at me—don’t you speak to me.”
“Why, Judith,” he protested, hanging on Selim’s flank and talking to her as she whirled the sorrel into the road and put him at the slope at a pace which that petted animal very much resented, “why Judith, ef one feller goes back on you thataway you be mad at him—he’s the one to be mad at. Here’s me, I stand willin’ to make it up. Creed Bonbright has shamed you—he’s left you; but you could make him look like a fool if you would only say the word—and you and me would——”
“Now you go back!” Judith turned upon him as one speaks to a dog who is determined to follow. “I ain’t nary ’nother word to say to you. Leave me alone!”
“But Judith, hit ain’t safe for you to be ridin’ up here in the night time, thisaway,” Blatch insisted. “Lemme jest go along with you——”
“I’ll be a mighty heap safer alone than I’d be with you,” Judith told him, urging Selim ahead, “and anybody that knows you well will say so. You—go—back.”
Judith reached the Top in the grey, disillusioning light of early dawn. The moon, a ghastly wraith, was far down in the west, the east had not yet taken any hint of rose flush, but held that pallid line of greyish white that precedes sunrise.
She clambered across the Gulch, her tired horse stumbling with drooping head over the familiar stones, and rode slowly up to the home place. The huddle of buildings looked gaunt, deserted, inhospitable. There was light here enough to see the life which in daytime made all homelike, but which now, quenched and hidden, left all desolate, forbidding. As sleep takes on the semblance of death, so the sleeping house took on the semblance of desertion. The chickens were still humped on their perches in the trees, the cows had not come up to the milking-pen, their calves lay in a little bunch by the fence fast asleep. To the girl’s heavy heart it seemed a spot utterly forlorn in the chill, sad, ironic half-light of the slow-coming morning.
She rode directly to the barn, unsaddled, and put her horse out. As she was coming back past her uncle’s cabin, she saw the old man himself sitting in the door. He was fully dressed; his hat lay on the doorstone beside him, and against the jamb leaned Old Sister. He looked up at her with a sort of indifferent, troubled gaze.
“So you got back, Jude,” he said quietly.
“Yes, Uncle Jep,” she returned as quietly.
He made no comment on her riding skirt which she held up away from the drenching dew. He asked no questions as to where she had been, or what her errand. She noted that he looked old and worn.
“I’m mighty sorry it happened,” he began abruptly, quite as though he was continuing a conversation which they had intermitted but a few moments, “mighty sorry; but I don’t see no other way. I’ve studied a heap on it. Folks that stirs up trouble, gits trouble. I——”
He broke off and sat brooding.
“I’m glad you ain’t mad at me for the part I’ve tuck in it,” Judith began finally.
“Don’t tell me.” He raised a hasty, protesting hand. “I don’t want to know nothin’ about it. All is, I couldn’t have things according to my ruthers, and they had to go as they must. Hit ain’t what a man means that makes the differ—hit’s what he does that we count. Them that stirs up trouble, finds trouble.”
“I reckon so, Uncle Jep,” said the girl, drooping as she stood.
“They ain’t been a roof between my head and the sky sence I left this house,” the old man’s big voice rumbled on monotonously, hollowly. “I tromped the ridges over to’ds Yeller Old Bald. I left mankind and their works behind me, and I have done a power of thinking; but I can’t make this thing come out no other way.”
He ceased and sat looking down. The girl could fancy his solitary meals where he cooked what he had killed and ate it, to lie down under the sky and sleep. Women are denied this fleeing to the desert to be alone with God and their sorrow. She envied him the privilege. She had no heart to repeat to him Creed’s statements that he was not a spy. That was all past—wiped out by the parting between her and her lover.
“Yes, Uncle Jep,” she uttered low, and with bent head she moved dejectedly on toward the house.
Here all the boys were sleeping noisily after their vigils of the night before. About three o’clock, or a little after, they had come home to find their father turning in at the gate. With their disappointment fresh upon them they broke through his command of silence, and Wade told him how they and Blatch had planned the ambush, how Blatch had been called away, how they had waited in the hollow for Creed, who had promised to “come and talk to them,” how he had never come, but how Arley Kittridge a few minutes ago had ridden up to notify them that Bonbright was gone from Nancy Card’s, and that the mule was gone with him. None of the watchers could say what direction he took, except to give earnest assurances that he had not left by any trail leading down the mountain. “He’s bound to be over here somewhars,” Wade concluded, “and Blatch not havin’ got back from Garyville, they two has met somewhars.”
The old man listened in silence, and when his son had made an end offered neither comment nor reply. He passed over without a word the revelation of the deceit about Blatch’s supposed killing. It was as though, weary and foredone, he dismissed the young fellows to the logic of events—to life itself—for response, explanation, or punishment.
Judith changed her dress, bathed her pale face, and set about preparing breakfast. And that was a strange meal when she had finally put it on the table and bidden them to it. The sons sat in their places like chidden schoolboys, furtively studying their father’s ravaged visage, looking at each other and muttering requests or replies. They were all aware of the ugliness of their several offences. Creed’s strange disappearance, Blatch’s failure to return, the utter collapse of their errand, these had shaken them terribly.
About a third of the way through the meal Jim Cal shuffled in.
“Do you mind givin’ me some breakfast, Jude?” he asked humbly. “Iley an’ the chaps is all sound asleep. I hate to wake ’em, an’ I never was no hand to do for myse’f.”
“Set and welcome,” said Judith, mechanically placing a chair for the one who had been most resolute of all that Creed must die. So it was that they were all seated about the board when Blatch Turrentine, without a word, made his appearance in the door. Without moving his head Jephthah turned those sombre eyes of his upon his nephew, and regarded him steadily. The younger man stopped where he was on the threshold.
“So ye ain’t dead?” inquired his uncle finally.
“I reckon that ain’t news to you, is it?” asked Blatch, making as though to come in and take his place at the table.
For a moment the loyalty of the tribal head, the hospitality of the mountaineer, warred in old Jephthah’s heart with deep, strong resentment against this man. Then he said without rising,
“Yes, hit’s news. But you may take it that hit’s news I ain’t heard. I reckon we’ll just leave it that you air dead. The lease on the ground over thar runs tell next spring. I’ll not rue my bargain, but no son of mine sets his foot on yo’ land and stays my son, and you don’t put yo’ foot in this house again. You give it out that you was dead—stay dead.”
“Oh, I see,” said Blatch. “Yo’ a-blamin’ the whole business on me, air ye? Well, that’s handy. What about them fine fellers that’s settin’ at meat with ye now? I reckon the tale goes that I led ’em into all their meanness.”
Jim Cal dropped his head and stared at the bit of cornbread in his pudgy fingers; Wade glanced up angrily; the twins stirred like young hounds in leash; but Jephthah quieted them all with a look.
“Blatch,” began the head of the house temperately, even sadly, “yo’ my brother’s son. Sam and me was chaps together, and I set a heap of store by him. Sam’s been gone more than ten year, and in that time I’ve aimed to do by you as I would by a son of my own. I felt that hit was something I owed to Sam. But ef I owed hit hit’s been paid out. Yo’ Sam’s son, but also yo’ a Blatchley, and I reckon the Blatchley blood had to show up in ye. My boys is neither better nor worse than others, but when I say that I don’t aim to have you walk with ’em, I say what is my right. What I owed yo’ daddy, and my dead brother, has been paid out—hit’s been paid plumb out.”
Now that it was made plain, Blatch took the dismissal hardily. Perhaps he had been more or less prepared for it, knowing as he would have phrased it that his uncle wanted but half a chance to break with him. He was aware, too, that the secret of his illicit traffic was safe in the old man’s hands, and that indeed Jephthah would strain a point to defend him for the name’s sake if for nothing else.
“All right,” he said, “ef them’s yo’ ruthers, hit suits me. What do you-all boys say?—I reckon Unc’ Jep’ll let ye speak for yo’selves—this one time.”
“I say what pap says,” came promptly from Wade. And, “Jeff an’ me thinks it’s about time pap’s word went with his boys,” put in the younger and more emotional Andy.
“All right, all right,” agreed Blatch in some haste, finding the battle to go thus sweepingly against him. “I wont expect no opinions from you, podner, tell you’ve had time to run home an’ ax Iley what air they. Ye ain’t named Judith, Unc’ Jep,” he went on, glancing to where the girl knelt on the hearthstone dishing up corn pones from the Dutch oven. “Cain’t she come over and visit me when she has a mind?”
“Judith’s her own mistress. She can use her ruthers,” returned Jephthah briefly, “but I misdoubt that you’ll be greatly troubled with her company.”
“Help me git my things out of the cupboard thar, Jude, won’t ye?” asked Blatch civilly enough.
Without reply, without glancing at him, Judith preceded him into the fore-room, opened the doors and sought out his clean clothing, making it into a neat pile on the table.
“You come over and see me sometimes, won’t ye, Judy?” whispered the tall man as he bundled these up. “I won’t tell who I seen you with.”
Judith looked at him with wordless contempt. Her own pain was so great that even anger was swallowed up in it.
“Tell anybody you’re a mind to,” she said listlessly. “I ain’t a-carin’.”
“I may git word of him, Jude,” persisted Blatch as he was departing. “Ef I do would you wish to hear it? Ef you say yes, I’ll send ye notice.”
Again she glanced at him with that negligent disdain. What could he do to her now who had lost all? She was beyond the reach of his love or his malice.