“I reckon that’ll about do for you, my pretty young men,” remarked Blatchley Turrentine as he put the last knot in the line with which he was securing Andy to a splint-bottomed chair.
His concluding words were the refrain of a familiar old ballad, and he continued to hum this as he straightened up and set his hands on his hips, regarding the twins through wickedly narrowed eyes. He was flushed with drink and inclined, as always at such times, to swagger with a sort of savage playfulness.
“Scalf, you ain’t got yo’ feller half tied,” he broke out, jerking the cord around Jeff. “Why, Lord A’mighty! I could pull myse’f a-loose from that mess o’ rope inside o’ five minutes,” and he set to work to make his cousin secure.
“Do yo’ own dirty work,” growled Scalf. “Yo’ the only one that’s a-goin’ to profit by it.”
It was after midnight. When the two boys had approached Blatch’s cabin as agreed, they had been set upon from behind, pinioned, and taken to the cave where the still was. Here they now sat bound and helpless.
“What do you aim to make out of it, Blatch?” asked Jeff, offering the first remark that had come from either of them since their capture.
“Is—uh—” Andy glanced at Scalf, and strove to keep Huldah’s name out of it—“is what we come for here yet?”
Blatch burst into a great horse laugh and slapped his thigh.
“What you come after,” he repeated enjoyingly. “Lord—Lord! What you come after! You was easy got. I counted on Jude to set you on, and I see I never counted none too much.”
“What do you aim to make out of it?” persisted Andy.
The light from the fire built at the back of the cave, whose smoke went up a cleft and entered the chimney of the cabin far above, illuminated the dark interior flickeringly. Blatch went to a jug on a shelf, noisily poured a drink into a tin cup, swallowed it, and then addressed himself to his cousins.
“Yo’ pappy ordered me off his land. My lease is up next month. I got to git out of here anyhow, and I aimed to raise a stir befo’ I went. This here town podner what I got after you-all quit me,” glancing negligently at Scalf, “has many a little frill to his plans, and he knows Dan Haley, the marshal, right well. Sometimes I misdoubt that he come up on Turkey Track to git in with me and git the reward that I’m told Haley has out for the feller that can ketch me stillin’.”
He wheeled and looked fully at Scalf with these words, and the town man made haste to turn his back, warming his hands at the blaze. Blatch laughed deep in his throat.
“Scalf’s on the make,” he asserted with grim humour. “He needed somebody to give up to Dan Haley, and as I hain’t got no likin’ for learnin’ to peg shoes in the penitentiary, I ’lowed mebbe the trade would suit you-all boys, an’ I sont over for ye.”
The twins writhed in their chairs as much as their tight bandings would permit. How simple they had been to trust the mercy of a desperate man. And they knew Blatch Turrentine. In days past, they had been on the inside, pupils and assistants in such work as this. They stole sheepish looks at each other. But the message he had sent them was yet to be explained. If Huldah was not with him, how had he known she was on the mountain at all?
“What made you send the word you did?” burst out Andy wrathfully.
Blatch had moved over by the fire.
“Oh, I hearn through old Dilsey Rust—that I’ve had a-listenin’ at key-holes and spyin’ through chinks—about Bonbright’s talk concernin’ Huldy, and I thort——”
At these words ancient Gideon Rust, posted as sentinel outside the cave’s entrance, keeping himself warily from view of the prisoners, craned forward and stared with fallen jaw, reckless of observation. Humble tenants, pensioners of Judith and the Turrentines, with these words Blatch had wantonly stripped the poor roof from above their grey heads, and turned them out defenceless, to the anger of that strong family. Come what would, he must protest.
“Now Blatch,” he whined, “you ort not to go a-namin’ names like you do. You said that Dilsey nor me, nary one, needn’t be known in this business.”
In his excitement he came fully into the light.
“I hope you-all boys understand that I didn’t aim to do ye a meanness. Yo’ pap—I—I hope he won’t hold this agin’ us. The Turrentines has been mighty good friends to Dilsey—and here’s Blatch lettin’ on to ’em like she was a spy.”
“Well, what else is she?” asked Blatch with an oath. “What else are any of ye? The last one of ye would sell yo’ own fathers and mothers. Don’t I know ye? A man’s only chance is to get ye scared of him, or give ye somebody else to tell tales on—and that’s what I’ve done.”
He turned his attention once more to Andy and Jeff, and left the old man staring aghast, plucking at his beard.
“I’ve bought me a good team, an’ I’m goin’ to move my plunder out of here,” he told them. “I’ve done picked me a fine place over yon,” jerking his head vaguely in the direction of the Far Cove. “Every stick and ravellin’ that belongs to me I’ll take, exceptin’ the run of whiskey that I’ll leave in the still here for to make the marshal shore he’s got the right thing. You might expect him any time to-morrow. Old Gid here will lead him in, or Scalf, and the testimony they stand ready to give means penitentiary to you two.”
“I reckon you-all won’t deny that you have made many a run of blockaded whiskey right here in this cave,” put in Scalf, nervously.
“That’s so—that’s so, boys, I’ve seed ye many a time,” whimpered Gideon Rust, almost beside himself with terror. “I hope ye won’t hold it ag’in us that we he’ped to have ye took instead of Blatch here. Blatch is a hard man to deal with—he’s been too much fer me—and hit wouldn’t do you all no manner of good ef he was took along with ye. I don’t see that yo’ any worse off ef he goes free.”
The twins looked at each other and forebore to reply. Blatch moved over to Scalf, and after some muttered parley with the town partner strode away into the dark. Scalf himself waited only long enough to be sure that Blatch had left, then slipped away, posting the old man down the path as lookout.
Alone in the cave, it was long before either boy spoke. Then came a rush of angry comment and bitter reflection which interrogated the situation from all sides, tending always to the conclusion that it was mighty hard, when a man had given up his evil courses, when he had just joined the church and was about to get married, to have the whole ugly score to pay. They sat cramped and miserable in their splint-bottomed chairs and the hours wore away till dawn in this dismal converse. Pappy was right—he was mighty right. If they ever got out of this—But there, Blatch wasn’t apt to make a failure.
It was broad daylight when at last Blatch Turrentine brought his team up and as close to the cave’s mouth as he dared. It was loaded already with a considerable amount of furniture and clothing from the cabin, and he climbed down the steep approach to take from the cave the jugged whiskey, and the keg or two which was aging there. His eyes were reddened; but the dark flush which had been on his face had now given place to a curious pallor. There was a new element in his mood, a different note in his bearing, a suggestion of furtive hurry and anxiety.
He was not afraid of the marshal. Haley could not be on the mountain before noon. But he had left that behind in the little log stable from which his team came that cried haste to his going.
Gord Bosang from whom he was to buy the horses was a man somewhat of Blatch’s own ilk. Cavalierly called out of bed after midnight and offered only a partial cash payment—all that Blatch had been able to raise—he had angrily refused to let the team be taken off the place. Turrentine’s situation was desperate. He must have the horses. In the quarrel that followed, he struck to clear this obstacle from his path; but whether he had left a dead man lying back there on the hay—whether it was a possible charge of murder he was now fleeing from—he had not stopped to find out. He had got back to his cabin with all haste, pitched his ready belongings into the wagon, and now he came down to the still to get the last, and see that all there was working out right.
As his foot reached the opening he uttered a loud exclamation, then leaped into the cave. Both chairs were empty, the ropes lying cut beside them. He sprang back to the rude doorway and gave the usual signal—the screech-owl’s cry. It was inappropriate at this time, yet he could not risk less, and he sent it forth again and again.
Getting no answer he ventured cautiously to call Gideon Rust’s name, and when this failed he looked about him and came to a decision. The boys were gone. The fat was in the fire. Yet—he returned to it—the marshal could not be there before noon. He had time to remove the whiskey if he worked hard enough. He glanced at the still. The worm and appurtenances were of value. He had saved money for nearly two years to buy the new copper-work. He wondered if he might empty and take it also.
For half an hour he toiled desperately, carrying filled jugs up the steep and hiding them carefully in his loaded wagon. The kegs he could not move alone, and set to work jugging the fluid from them. Sweat poured down his face, to which, though he drank repeatedly from the tin cup, no flush returned. His teeth were set continually on his under lip. His breath came heavily as he lifted and stooped. In the midst of his labours a slight noise at the cave entrance brought him to his feet, staring in terror. The sight of trembling Gideon Rust in the opening reassured him.
“Come in here, you old davil, and help me jug this whiskey,” he cried out. “Whar’s Scalf? How come you an’ him to let them boys git away? What do you reckon I’m a-goin’ to do to you for it?”
“Why, is them fellers gone?” quavered the old man, craning his neck to look gingerly in. “I never seen nothin’ movin’ up here, but—they was a gal or so come norratin’ past on the path; I ’lowed when I seed calicker that it mought be Huldy, you named her so free.”
“Well, shut yo’ fool mouth and get yo’se’f to work,” ordered Blatch. “I’ve got to be out o’ this.”
He turned his back on old Gid and forgot him.
“Ef I thort I had time I’d take my still with me,” he ruminated, going close to it and laying a fond touch upon the copper-work. “I’m a mind to try it.”
“Hands up, Turrentine!” came a short sharp order from outside. Blatch whirled like a flash, and looked past Gideon Rust in the doorway. Over the old man’s shaking shoulders, he saw the levelled rifles of the marshal and his posse.
“Thar,” whispered ancient Gideon fairly weeping, as they closed in on Turrentine and snapped the handcuffs on his wrists, “now mebbe ye won’t name a pore old woman’s name so free, ef you have bought her to yo’ will, and set her to spy on them that’s been good friends to her.”
When Judith left Andy in charge of her patient and mounted the ladderlike stair to her own small room under the eaves, she felt no disposition to sleep. She did not undress, but sat down by the window and stared out into the black November night. Despite everything, there had come a sort of peace over her tumult, a stilling that was not mere weariness. She was like a woman who has just been saved from a shipwreck, snatched away from the imminent jaws of doom—chastened, and wondering a little. Intensely thankful for what she had escaped, she sat there in the dark, cold little room, Judith Barrier, safe from the sin of a godless union, from the life that would have been hers as Blatchley Turrentine’s wife.
In the light of her danger, familiar things took on a new face, strange, yet dear and welcome. She turned and gazed with childish eyes up at the decent beams of her rooftree, glad that they still sheltered her a maid, glad that the arms of her home were about her.
With remorseless honesty she went back over her years. Always in the past months of suffering she had blamed this or that extraneous circumstance with her undoing; now she saw and recognised and acknowledged that nothing and nobody had brought disaster upon her but herself. It was not because Blatchley Turrentine was a bad, lawless man, not because the boys were reckless fellows, led and influenced by him, that all this trouble had come. If she, Judith Barrier, had dealt fairly and humbly by her world, she might have had the lover of her choice in peace as other girls had—even as Cliantha and Pendrilla had. But no, such enterprises as contented these, such stir as they made among their kind, would not do her. She must seek to cast her spells upon every eligible man within her reach. She must try her hand at subjugating those who were difficult, pride herself on the skill with which she retained half a dozen in anxious doubt as to her ultimate intentions concerning them.
Her forehead drooped to the window pane and her cheeks burned as she recollected times and seasons and scenes that belonged to the years when Blatch was building up his firm belief that she loved him, and would sometime marry him. It had been a spirited, dangerous game to her then, nothing more.
Her passionate, possessive nature was winning to higher ground, leaving, with pain and travail of spirit, the plane on which her twenty years had been lived. The past months of thwarting, failure, and heart-hunger had prepared for this movement, to-night it was almost consciously making. She was coming to the place where, if she might not have love, she could at least be worthy of it. The little clock which had measured her vigils that night of the dumb supper slanted toward twelve. She got to her feet with a long sigh. She did not know yet what she meant to do or to forbear doing; but she was aware, with relief, of a radical change within her, a something awakened there which could consider the right of Creed—even of Huldah; which could submit to failure, to rejection—and be kind. Slowly she gathered up her belongings and took her way downstairs.
When the door of the sick-room closed behind the boys, she went and knelt down beside the bed and looked fixedly at the sleeper. With the birth of this new spiritual impulse the things Blatch Turrentine had said of Creed and Creed’s intentions dropped away from her as fall the dead leaves from the bough of that most tenacious of oak trees which holds its withered foliage till the swelling buds of a new spring push it off. He was a good man. She felt that to the innnermost core of her heart. She loved him. She believed she would always love him. As for his being married to Huldah, she would not inquire how that came about, how it could have happened while she felt him to be promised to herself. There was—there must be—a right way for even that to befall. She must love him and forgive him, for only so could she face her life, only so could she patch a little peace with herself and still the gnawing agony in her breast. Long she knelt thus.
Who that knows even a little the wonders of the subjective mind, who that has tested the marvellous communication between the mood of nurse and patient, will doubt that the sick man, lying passive, receptive, got now Judith’s message of peace and relaxation. The girl herself, powerful, dominating young creature, had been fought to a spiritual standstill. She was at last forced to her knees, and the atmosphere which her passionate struggles had long disturbed grew serene about her. Even a wavering note of something more joyous than mere peace, a courage, a strength that promised happiness must have radiated from her to him. For Creed’s eyes opened and looked full into hers with a wholly rational expression which had long been absent from their clear depths.
“Judith—honey,” he whispered, and fumbled vaguely for her hand upon the coverlet.
“Yes, Creed—what is it? What do you want?” she asked tremulously, taking the thin fingers in her warm clasp.
“Nothing—so long as I’ve got you,” he returned contentedly. “Can’t I sit up—and won’t you sit down here by me and talk awhile?”
Gently smiling, Judith helped him to sit up, and piled the pillows back of his head and shoulders, noting almost with surprise how well he looked, how clear and direct was his gaze.
“I’ve been sick a long time, haven’t I?” he asked.
“Yes,” the girl replied, drawing up a chair and seating herself. “Hit’s more’n six weeks that Uncle Jep an’ me has been takin’ care of you.”
He lifted her hand and stroked it softly.
“A body gets mighty tired of a sick fellow,” he said wistfully.
Judith’s eyes filled at the pitiful little plea, but she could not offer endearments to Huldah’s husband.
“I ain’t tired of you,” she returned in a low, choked voice. “I most wisht I was. Creed——”
She slipped from her chair dropping on her knees beside him.
“Creed, I want to tell you now while I can do it that the boys is gone to get Huldy. She can take care of you after this—but I’ll help. I ain’t mad about it. I was aimin’ to tell you that the next time she come in you should bid her stay. God knows I want ye to be happy—whether it’s me or another.”
Bewilderment grew in the blue eyes regarding her so fixedly.
“Huldah?” he repeated. And then again in a lower, musing tone, “Huldah.”
“Yes—yo’ wife, Huldy Spiller,” Judith urged mildly. “Don’t you mind namin’ it to me the first time she slipped in to visit you?”
An abashed look succeeded the expression of bewilderment. A faint, fine flush crept on the thin, white cheek.
“I—I do,” Creed whispered, with a foolish little smile beginning to curve his lips; “but there wasn’t a word of truth in it—dear. I’ve never seen the girl since she left Aunt Nancy’s that Saturday morning.”
“What made you say it then?” breathed Judith wonderingly.
“I—I don’t know,” faltered the sick man. “It seemed like you was mad about something; and then it seemed like Huldah was here; and then—I don’t know Judith—didn’t I say a heap of other foolishness?”
The simple query reproved his nurse more than a set arraignment would have done. He had indeed babbled, in his semi-delirium, plenty of “other foolishness,” this was the only point upon which she had been credulous.
“Oh Creed—honey!” she cried, burying her face in the covers of his bed, “I’m so ’shamed. I’ve got such a mean, bad disposition. Nobody couldn’t ever love me if they knew me right well.”
She felt a gentle, caressing touch on her bowed head.
“Jude, darling,” Creed’s voice came to her, and for the first time it sounded really like his voice, “I loved you from the moment I set eyes on you. I didn’t sense it for a spell, but I come to see that you were the one woman in the world for me. There never was a man done what went more against the grain than I the night I parted from you down at the railroad station and let you go back when you would have come with me—so generous—so loving—”
He broke off with a choking sigh, and Judith raised her head in a sort of consternation. Were these the exciting topics that her Uncle Jep would have banished from the sick-room? she wondered. But no, Creed had never looked so nearly a well man as now. He raised himself from the pillows.
“Don’t!” she called sharply, as she sprang up and slipped a capable arm under his shoulders, laying his head on her breast. “You ort not to do thataway,” she reproached him. “When you want anything I’ll git it.”
“I don’t want a thing, but this,” whispered Creed, looking up into her eyes. “Nothing, only——”
Judith read the mute prayer aright, and tears of exquisite feeling blinded her. As she looked at him, there was loosed upon her soul the whole tide of passionate tenderness which had gathered there since first she saw him standing, eager, fearless, selfless, on the Court House steps at Hepzibah. The yellow head lay on her arm now; those blue eyes which, in many bitter hours since that time, had seemed as unattainable to her love as the sky itself, were raised to her own, they were pleading for her kiss. She bent her face; the full red lips met Creed’s. The weary longing was satisfied; the bitterness was washed away.
They remained quietly thus, Creed drinking in new life from her nearness, from her dearness. When she would have lifted her head, his thin hand went up and was laid over the rounded cheek, bringing the sweet mouth back to his own.
“I’ll need a heap of loving, Judith,” he whispered,—“a heap. I’ve been such a lone fellow all my days. You’ll have to be everything and everybody to me.”
Judith’s lavish nature, so long choked back upon itself, trembled to its very core with rapture at the bidding. It seemed to her that all of Heaven she had ever craved was to do and be everything that Creed Bonbright needed. She answered with an inarticulate murmur of tenderness, a sound inexpressibly wooing and moving. All that she had felt, all that she meant for the future, surged strong within her—was fain for utterance. But Judith was not fluent; she must content herself with doing and being—Creed could speak for her now. She cherished the fair hair with loving touch, nestling the thin cheek against her soft, warm one.
The beautiful storm-rocked craft of Judith’s passion was safe at last in Love’s own harbour; the skies were fair above it, and only Love’s tender airs breathed about its weary sails.
“We’ll be wedded in the spring,” Creed’s lips murmured against her own. “I’ll carry home a bride to the old place. Oh, we’ll be happy, Judith.”
All through the latter part of the night, while the two lovers were drawing out of the ways of doubt and pain and misunderstanding, into so full and sweet a communion, the November breeze had been rising; toward dawn it moved quite steadily. And with its impulse moved the cedar tree, a long, smooth swaying, that set free that tender, baritone legato to which Judith’s ears had harkened away last March, when she came home from Hepzibah after first seeing Creed Bonbright. It was the voice which had talked to her throughout the spring, the early summer, through autumn’s desolate days, when the waiting in ignorance of his whereabouts and of his welfare seemed almost more than she could bear; it was the voice which had called upon her so tragically, so insistently, the night of the raid on Nancy Card’s cabin. But Creed himself was here now; Creed’s own lips spoke close to her ear. The cedar tree had its song to itself once more; she no longer needed its music. Its sound was unheard by her, as the flame of a candle is unseen in the strong light of the sun.
Over the shoulder of Yellow Old Bald up came the sun, bannered and glorious; the distant ranges glowed in his splendours; the sere fields about the place were all gilded. The small-paned eastern window of the sick-room let in a flood of morning light. Gone was the bird choir that used to welcome his earliest rays, swept south by the great tide of migration. Those that remained, snowbird, cardinal, and downy woodpecker—the “checkerbacker” of the mountaineer,—harboured all night and much of the day in the barn loft and in Judith’s cedar tree. Their twittering sounded cheerily about the eaves.
Back and forth in the puncheon-floored kitchen trudged old Dilsey Rust’s heavy-shod foot, carrying her upon the appointed tasks of the day.
In the quiet sick-room, where the low, alternating voices had subsided into an exchange of murmured words, suddenly Creed dropped his head back to stare at his companion with startled eyes.
“Judith!” he exclaimed. “Where are the boys?”
He glanced at the window, then about the room.
“It’s broad day. That word Blatch sent was a decoy; Huldah Spiller isn’t on the mountain. Somebody must go over there.”
Judith rose swiftly to her feet.
“My Lord, Creed! I forgot all about ’em,” she said contritely. “Ye don’t reckon Blatch would harm the boys? And yet yo’ right—it does look bad. I don’t know what to do, honey. They ain’t a man on the place till Uncle Jep comes. But maybe he’ll be along in about an hour.”
She hurried to the window and stared over toward the Gulch; and at the moment a group of people topped the steep, rising into view one after the other out of the ravine, and coming on toward the house.
“Here they are now,” she said with relief in her tones. “Thar’s Andy—Jeff, Pendrilly—why, whatever—The Lusk girls is with ’em! They’s another—Creed, they have got Huldy! And that last feller—no, ’tain’t Blatch—of all things—it’s Wade! They’re comin’ straight to this door. Shall I let them in?”
“Yes,” said Creed’s steady voice. “Let them right in.”
She ran swiftly to slip an extra pillow under her patient’s shoulders, straighten the covers of the bed, and put all in company trim. Her eye brightened when she saw him sitting so erect and alert almost like his old self. Somebody rattled the latch.
“Come in, folks,” Creed called, speaking out with a roundness and decision that it did her heart good to hear.
They all pushed into the room, the men shouldering back a little, glancing anxiously at the sick man, the Lusk girls timid, but Huldah leading the van.
“How’s Creed?” cried the irrepressible one, bounding into the room and looking about her. “Wade got yo’ letter, Cousin Judy, an’ I says to him that right now was the time for us to make a visit home. Wade’s got him a good place on the railroad, and I like livin’ in the settlement; but bridal towers is all the go down thar, and we ’lowed we’d take one.”
Every inch of her raiment bespoke the bride, and it did not take Creed many moments to understand the situation, put out a thin white hand and, smiling, offer his congratulations. Wade received them with some low-toned, hesitating words of apology.
“Law, Cousin Creed’s ready to let bygones be bygones, Wade, honey!” his wife admonished him.
“Cousin Creed?” echoed the obtuse Jeff.
Wade’s wife whirled to put a ready arm around Judith’s waist. “Why, you an’ him is a-goin’ to be wedded, ain’t you Judy? I always knowed, and I always said to everybody that I named it to, that you was cut out and made for each other. We heared tell from everybody in the Turkey Tracks that you an’ Creed was goin’ to be wedded as soon as he got well—then I reckon he’ll be my cousin, won’t he?”
Creed looked past the whispering girls to where Andy and Jeff stood. As the boys moved toward the bed.
“Did you find Blatch?” he asked, with a man’s directness. “How did you-all make out?”
Andy opened his lips to answer, when there was a clatter of hoofs outside. As they all turned to the window, Jephthah Turrentine’s big voice, with a new tone in it, called out to somebody.
“Hold on thar, honey—lemme lift ye down.”
“Ain’t Uncle Jep goin’ to be proud when he sees how well you air?” Judith, stooping, whispered to Creed. “He went off to get somebody to he’p nurse you, because he said I done you more harm than good.”
“Your Uncle Jep don’t know everything,” returned Creed softly.
No mountaineer ever knocks on a door, but Jephthah Turrentine made considerable racket with the latch before he entered the room.
“Oh—you air awake,” he said cautiously, then, looking about at the others, “an’ got company so airly in the mornin’.” He glanced from the newcomers to his patient. “You look fine—fine!” he asserted with high satisfaction; then turning over his shoulder, “Come right along in, honey—Creed’ll be proud to see ye.”
He paused on the threshold, reaching back a hand and entered, pulling after him Nancy Card—who was Nancy Card no longer. A wild-rose pink was in her withered cheeks under the frank grey eyes. She smiled as Judith had never imagined she could smile. But even then the young people scarcely fathomed the situation.
“Creed,” cried the old man, “I’ve brung ye the best doctor and nurse there is on the mountings. Nancy she run off and left us, and I had to go after her, and I ’lowed I’d make sartain that she’d never run away from me again, so I’ve jest—we jest——”
“Ye ain’t married!” cried Judith, sudden light coming in on her.
“We air that,” announced old Jephthah radiantly.
“Well, Jude, I jest had to take him,” apologised Nancy. “Here was him with the rheumatics every spring, an’ bound and determined that he’d lay out in the bushes deer-huntin’ like he done when he was twenty, and me knowin’ in reason that a good course of dandelion and boneset, with my liniment well rubbed in, would fix him up—why, I jest had to take him.”
She looked about her for support, and she got it from an unexpected quarter.
“Well, I think you done jest right,” piped up Huldah, who had been a silent spectator as long as she could endure it, “I’m mighty glad I’ve got a new mother-in-law, ’caze I know Pap Turrentine’s apt to be well taken keer of in his old days.”
His old days! Nancy looked indignantly from the red-haired girl to her bridegroom who, in her eyes, was evidently still a sprightly youth.
“Huh!” she remarked enigmatically. Then with a sudden change; “Yit whilst we are a-namin’ sech, honey, won’t you jest run out to my saddle and bring me the spotted caliker poke off’n hit—hit’s got my bundle of yarbs in it. I’ll put on a drawin’ of boneset for you befo’ I set down.”
“All right, Nancy—but I reckon I’ll have to clear these folks out of this sick-room fust,” responded old Jephthah genially. “We’re apt to have too much goin’ on for Creed.”
But as they were marshalled to leave, the noise of a new arrival in the kitchen brought the curious Huldah to the door and she threw it wide to admit Iley, into whose arms she promptly precipitated herself with voluble explanations, which covered her career from the time she left Jim Cal’s cabin till that moment.
“You an’ Wade are wedded? Why couldn’t you let a body know?” inquired Iley wrathfully, grasping her by the shoulder, holding her off for somewhat hostile inspection.
“That’s what I say,” echoed Jim Cal’s voice from the doorway where he harboured, a trifle out of sight. “Ef you-all gals would be a little mo’ open an’ above-bo’d about yo’ courtin’ business hit would save lots of folks plenty of trouble. Here’s Iley got some sort o’ notion that Huldy was over at Blatch’s, an’ she put out an’ run me home so fast that I ain’t ketched my breath till yit.”
“Over at Blatch’s?” old Jephthah looked angrily about him, and Judith made haste to explain the whole matter, detailing everything that had led up to the trouble.
“We-all talked it over, Uncle Jep, and as you wasn’t here we made out to do the best we could, and the boys went.”
“After me!” crowed Huldah. “An’ thar I was on the train ’long o’ Wade comin’ to Garyville that blessed minute.”
“Well, Blatch had us hog-tied an’ waitin’ for the marshal to come an’ cyart us down and send us to the penitentiary,” Jeff set forth the case. “But you know how Blatch is, always devilin’ folks; he made old Gid Rust mad, an’ when Clianthy an’ Pendrilly met the old man out on the road soon this mornin’, he told ’em to take a knife and come up to the cave an’ they could keep what they found.”
“I never was so scairt in my life,” Cliantha asseverated. Her china-blue eyes had not yet resumed their normal size or contour, and the assertion was easily believed.
“Nor me neither,” agreed Pendrilla. “I says to him, says I, ‘Now you, Gid Rust, do you ’low we’re crazy? We’re a-lookin’ for old Boss and Spot, an’ we ain’t a-goin’ up yon nary step.’ An’ he says to us, says he, ‘Gals, you never mind about no cows,’ he says. ‘Hit’ll shore be the worse for Andy and Jeff Turrentine ef you don’t git yo’selves up thar an’ git up thar quick.’ An’ with that he gives us his knife out of his pocket, ’caze we didn’t have none, and we run the whole blessed way, and cut the boys a-loose.”
“I was that mad when I seen ’em tied up thataway,” chimed in Cliantha, “that I wouldn’t a ’cared the rappin’ o’ my finger ef old Blatch Turrentine hisself had been thar. I’d ’a’ stood right up to him an’ told him what I thort o’ him an’ his works.” There are conditions, it is said, in which even the timid hare becomes militant, and doves will peck at the intruder.
“Well, I reckon I got to get you folks out of here now for sartain,” said Jephthah as she made an end. “Nancy, honey, is the yarbs you wanted for Creed in with them you’re a-goin’ to use on me?”
The little old woman felt of Creed’s fingers, she laid a capable hand upon his brow. Then she flashed one of her quick, youthful smiles at her husband.
“You named it to me about Jude and Creed being at the outs,” she said frankly; “but I see they’ve made up their troubles. The boy don’t need no medicine.”
Jephthah stared at his transformed patient, and admitted that it was so.
“Well he does need some peace and quiet,” the head of the house maintained as he ushered his clan into the adjoining room.
“Uncle Jephthah,” called Creed’s quiet voice, with the ring of the old enthusiasm in it, as his host was leaving the room. “Do you remember telling me that the trouble with my work on the mountain was, I was one man alone? Do you remember saying that if I was a member of a big family—a great big tribe—that I’d get along all right and accomplish what I set out for?”
“I say sech a lot of foolishness, son, I cain’t ricollect it all. Likely I did say that. Hit mought have some truth in it.”
“Well,” said Creed, carrying the hand he held to his lips, “I reckon I’ll be a member of a big tribe now; maybe I can take up the work yet, and do some good.”
The old man looked at him. Here was the son of his heart—of his mind and nature—the congenial spirit; the welcome companion, interested like himself in abstractions, willing to stake all on an idea. Days of good comradeship stretched before these two. He reached down a brown right hand, and Creed’s thin white one went out to meet it in a quick, nervous clasp.
“Son,” spoke out Jephthah in that deep, sonorous voice of his, “Creed, boy, what you set out to do was a work for a man’s lifetime; but God made you for jest what you aimed then to do and be. Yo’ mighty young yet, but you air formed for a leader of men. To the last day of its life an oak will be an oak and a willer a willer; and yo’ head won’t be grey when you find yo’ work and find yo’self a-doin’ it right.”
“Pap Turrentine!” called Huldah from the kitchen, “Maw wants ye out here.”
The door swung wide; it showed a vision of Nancy Turrentine, flushed, bustling, capable, the crinkled grey hair pushed back above those bright eyes of hers with a prideful hand, entering upon the administration of her new realm. Oh, it had not been easy for one of her spirit to be a poor little widow, living out on the Edge, with nobody but slack Doss Provine to do for her, hardly dishes enough to set the table, often not much to put in them, eking out a scanty living by weaving baskets of white-oak splits. When Judith rode up to the cabin on the Edge that evening of late March, it was the hardest time of the year; now was the mountaineer’s season of cheer and abundance—his richest month. Outside, nuts were gathering, hunting was good, and she had for her provider of wild meat the mightiest hunter in the Turkey Tracks. Jephthah Turrentine’s home was ample and well plenished. There was good store of root crops laid up for winter. Judith had neglected such matters to tend on Creed, but Nancy was already putting in hand the cutting and drying of pumpkins, the threshing out of beans. Here were milk vessels a-plenty to scald and sun—and filling for them afterward. Oh, enough to do with!—the will to do had always been Nancy’s—and for yokefellow in the home, one who would carry his share and pull true—a real man—the only one there had ever been for Nancy.
“Pap,” called Huldah’s insistent voice again.
“All right—I’m a-comin’,” declared Jephthah, then, with the door in his hand, turned back, meaning to finish what had been in his mind to say to Creed.
Jephthah Turrentine was himself that day a bridegroom, wedded to the one love of his life; he appreciated to the full that which had come to Creed. He had thought to say to the boy that now was the opening of great things, to remind him that one must first live man’s natural life, must prove himself as son, brother, husband, father, and neighbour, before he will be accepted or efficient in the larger calling. He would have said that life must teach the man before the man could teach his fellows.
But the words of homely wisdom in which he would have clothed this truth remained unspoken. He glanced back and saw the dark head bent close above the yellow one, as Judith performed some little service for Creed. The girl’s rich brown beauty glowed and bloomed before the steady, blue fire of her lover’s eyes. She set down her tumbler and knelt beside him. Their lips were murmuring, they had forgotten all the world save themselves and their love. Jephthah looked at the rapt young faces; these two were on the mount of transfiguration; the light ineffable was all about them.
“Lord, what’s the use of a old fool like me sayin’ I, ay, yes or no to sech a pair as that?” he whispered as he went out softly and closed the door.