Black Pete's thumb was jammed between the back-drawn hammer and the firing pin.
CHAPTER VII
Henry Falkins and Lucinda Merton had not kept close count on the flying moments since they had entered the summer-house. The girl had promised to sit out two consecutive dances with him, since to-morrow morning he must go back to the mountains. So, having only a little while and much to say, he had plunged in, and, though his voice was low, his words came tumultuously. Of course, she knew that he was in love with her, but until to-night it had been a thing which had been given no concrete declaration. Except for a glow of confession in her eyes, she had said nothing of loving him. Yet now, when he wished to claim every moment for himself, she had asked him to tell her about his hills and their people, of whom she and her world knew so little.
"I want you to understand the life and conditions there," he told her, "and yet I don't want to talk of that to-night. I would like to paint for you true pictures of my mountains just as they look under this moon, as they will look when to-morrow's sun comes up over the peaks and begins to drive away the lingering mists; of the elder bushes and rhododendron and wild roses that bloom on the tangled slopes; but to-night I want to talk only of you and me."
He paused, and her voice carried a responsive thrill as she said:
"I should love your mountains! It must all be very beautiful—but so different from this." Her eyes traveled out with native pride over the smooth opulence of the country, which had seemed the Promised Land to the eyes of its pioneer discoverers.
"Yes," he admitted; "it is very different. We have rugged fields and rugged people. Down here you spring from Cavalier stock. But to-night there are in the world only ourselves. Let's talk of our private universe." His voice was feverishly eager. "Until I can in some way improve my fortunes, God knows I ought to be silent as to love." He leaned forward and added desperately: "But I can't be silent. After all, what is the use? You know I love you. If I never spoke a syllable of it, you would still know it. You can feel it in the tremor of my hand when I take yours in greeting. And if I lock my lips, my eyes give them the lie. You know I love you, but you will never know how much."
He leaned forward and his breath came fast while his heart pounded with the great anxiety of putting his fortunes to the touch. He had knowledge of other lovers who had come and gone; gone very reluctantly, from the quest of her heart.
He had known her a year, and friendship had grown into that intimacy which tacitly admits something deeper than the casual. In her house he had been accepted almost as a member of the family—but that need not mean that he was accepted as a lover. In his mountains such an association would have been tantamount to an engagement, but here in the bluegrass it was different.
There had been sometimes a quality in her smile which he had never seen on her lips or in her eyes for other men, and she must know of his love. Still, he had heretofore been content to hope without certainty—and now the moment had come when, if he had builded on false dreams, he must wake to a reality of which he could think only with terror.
For his own crude land, he was a rich man, whose status was the status of a baron; but, down here in the counties of aristocracy and wealth, he was poor and a mountaineer.
"I suppose," he went on, with a voice that came from a taut throat, which he forced into measured syllables, "I suppose that until I can offer you a home like this, I should not ask you to confess a love for me, even if you could feel it. I can't even ask you to marry me yet, and still because you must know it, because you have a heart that must tell you, it seems to me that it is only hypocritical to lock my lips. My heart is too full to be damned up. It must have utterance. It must say, 'I love you.' I can't go on any longer being just a favored friend." He paused a moment and wiped the moisture of his anxiety from his brow, and his voice was tensely even in its control. "It means too much now, for that. If I am living in a fool's paradise I must know it before it is too late. They say we men of the Cumberlands have somber natures that take things seriously. To hope too long—and then fail—" He broke off again and added quietly—"that would be a thing that would utterly ruin me. I love you."
The girl did not at once speak. He saw that her face was downcast and that her breast rose and fell, in an emotion which might be pity. Perhaps she, too, found speech difficult because she was merciful. A man and a girl were coming toward the summer-house, and Henry Falkins watched them with a fascination of fear lest they interrupt. The seconds seemed to stretch into an interminable suspense. Slowly he put out his hand, and took hers. Her fingers trembled in his grasp and slowly he bent and kissed her lowered head.
"I am waiting," he whispered; but something in the voice said more and told her of the torture of his doubt.
At last, very slowly, her face came up and her eyes met his. They were misty eyes, but smiling, and as he bent with a wild leaping of his pulses and took her in his arms, her lips, too, met his, responsive to his kisses.
Finally he rose, and now it was his own hands that trembled and his own senses that swam with the intoxication of a happiness which seemed to him miraculous.
"I suppose," laughed the girl, "I ought to be ashamed to surrender so quickly—but I'm not. I'm very proud."
For a moment after that they sat silent and across the moonlight came the band music and the softened laughter of the dancers. And it was at that moment that Newt Spooner, so close that they could almost have heard his breathing, was reaching into his pocket for his borrowed revolver. The pause was brief, for the girl, looking into her lover's eyes, became suddenly beset by a new thought—perhaps some subtle premonition—and in its wake came panic. She laid her hands on his shoulders and bent so close that he could feel the play of her breath on his forehead.
"But you are going back there," she exclaimed; "back to the mountains, and I'm afraid. Are you in any danger, because, if you are, you sha'n't go! I won't let you go. Why, only to-day, there in Winchester, think what happened!"
The man laughed.
"I sha'n't be hurt," he assured her. "Your love will be my talisman."
"If my love has such power," she exclaimed, "you will go on living to the end of time."
He took her two hands in his.
"Let's have no thought of danger to-night," he said. "To-night belongs to love, dearest: to love and to us."
And that was the exact moment at which Black Pete Spooner closed his hand over the pistol, thrusting his thumb between hammer and pin, and his forefinger between trigger and guard.
So suddenly interrupted at the threshold of his attainment, a man from the lowlands would have betrayed himself with oath or exclamation, or at least have struggled noisily in the grip that thwarted him. Newt Spooner was a mountaineer. Ambuscading caution was to him as instinctive as to the fox or weasel. He felt his hand drawn down at his back so forcibly that, crouching with his weight on one knee and one foot, he could not rise—yet he remained utterly noiseless. He carefully turned his head, and at the distance of a few inches recognized, even in the darkness, the drooping mustache and square jaw of the Deacon. The Deacon was holding a finger of the disengaged hand to his lips in an imperative command for silence. Black Pete was always a diplomat. He regarded this moment as one of rather desperate crisis, calling for extreme finesse.
No word of explanation could be spoken; the slightest sound of scuffling would give the alarm fatal to both. He knew that the implacable hatred of this single-idead boy was not a thing to yield readily. So he continued to put into his manner and touch something of subtle and friendly reassurance, lest Newt flare into reckless and needless antagonism. And Newt felt at the moment a wave of relief in recognizing one of his own people.
The strategist gently shook the hand which held the weapon in hint that Newt should surrender it, while he nodded and laid the other hand conciliatingly on the boy's shoulder. But Newt, although he made no sound or motion, held tightly to the pistol, and so for a moment while Henry Falkins was boasting of his safety with the confidence of youth and love, his intended assassin crouched not six feet away while the man who sought to prevent his act bent over him, holding his hand, and the wills of the two wrestled in utter silence.
There is in all leaders, good or bad, a psychological, almost hypnotic element of power which can, at need, act without words. Black Pete was recognized so thoroughly as a man of leadership that the enemy talked peace only on the basis of his exile. Newt Spooner had always regarded him with awe as the leader of his clan. Moreover, the Deacon's attitude just now was rather that of a friend who carried a warning than that of an enemy. The hypnotism of his masterful quiet was telling on the infuriated boy and yet there flared anew in his breast a dangerous resentment against the balking of his purpose. How it might have ended is problematical, but as they held their strained pose, and as Henry Falkins talked on in false security, a second couple came strolling to the summer-house. Finding it occupied, they banteringly apologized for intrusion, while Miss Merton and her escort blushingly declared themselves on the point of departure, and went back to the dance. So the chance was gone. Slowly, Newt surrendered his pistol, and the Deacon silently rose to his feet and pointed off through the bushes. The boy strode sullenly on ahead and neither he nor his captor made a sound or spoke a word until they had progressed so far into the shadow that they were safe from overhearing. Then and then only Newt wheeled. His voice was almost a sob in its bitter and vibrant passion, as, with blazing eyes and snarling teeth, he demanded:
"What in hell did ye do thet fur? Damn ye, he b'longs ter me. Ye didn't hev no call ter interfere." He threw himself prone on the ground, clawing into it with his lean fingers as a frenzied animal might claw, and his thin body racked itself with silent sobs of anger and frustration. It ended in a fit of coughing which he could not control, and which he smothered in his two hands until the paroxysm passed.
The Deacon sought to soothe him. Most mountaineers speak with a nasal harshness, but this man had the exceptional quality that gave to his words an ingratiating and velvety smoothness.
"Don't worry, son. I wouldn't have interfered, only I was obliged to. He's your enemy, and he did you wrong, but this ain't the moment to kill him. Go back home and bide your time. If you need help, call on me after a little."
"Hits as fitten a time es any," blurted Newt tensely. "They hain't no manner of use puttin' hit off. I tells ye I'm ergwine ter git him. Hit hain't ergwine ter do no good to argify with me. Nothin' hain't ergwine ter change me none."
"Son," insisted the other calmly, "I ain't aimin' to change you. I've never let men change me, have I? But there's a time for everything, an' just now you must hearken to me." He sketched briefly and forcibly his interviews in the office of the commonwealth attorney and at the jail. He enlarged on the fatality of having another shooting by a mountaineer tread so close on the heels of the first tragedy.
"You ain't aimin' to put these boys' necks into ropes, son," he suggested chidingly at the end. "You can get your man without makin' your own kin pay such a steep price. All I ask of you is to pass me your word that you won't do anything until you get back to the hills. Seems to me that's fair enough."
Newt sat silent for a time, scowling blackly, but at last he rose and nodded.
"I gives ye my hand on thet—because I don't see no way ter holp myself," he capitulated. It is the mountain's formula of oath, and though the men who use it rarely shake hands, its utterance is a recognized bond.
"Come along to town with me," suggested the Deacon. "You can sleep at my boardin' place, and in the morning you can start out."
But to that proposition Newt shook his head.
"I aims ter start right now, es soon es I kin buy a snack ter put in my pocket," he announced decisively. "Which road goes towards Jackson?" When at last he did lie down for sleep that night, it was under the lee of a last year's straw stack and surrounded by the rustling spears of this year's corn, where he could look up at the stars and call defiantly upon them all to bear witness that he had no intention of being deterred by the interference of any man.
It had been a very exhausting day, strenuous with much footsore tramping; strenuous, too, with the buffeting of emotions as sudden and violent as the tempests which sometimes swept across his hills; bending the forests, lashing the sandstone ramparts, shrieking through valleys and cannonading along the slopes. And like the hills when such a storm has wreaked its noisy wrath and swollen all the thread-like streams to freshets, he lay by his straw stack supine and shaken. It seemed to him that he had only just stretched himself out on the straw when he opened his eyes to see the east pallidly kindling with the preface of dawn, yet it had been long enough for his limbs to have cramped and chilled under the moisture of the night. He rose and ate a small supply of his provender, and took a swig from the flask, wiping the mouth of the bottle with his palm, after the custom of his country. After that he started on with the gray dawn growing rosy at his front. At length, he halted and drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction, for already he was beginning to recognize, in the changing character of the country, harbingers of home. The smooth swell of the bluegrass began to break into a choppier formation and assume raggedness, while far away the sky-line was broken by a climbing back-bone of foothills.
Unless he could mend his rate of travel he had still ahead several days of journeying, but early in the afternoon, when he sat down to rest, it was by a woodland stream where the underbrush grew in a tangle and the wild roses were blooming among scrub oaks. Cornucopias of the trumpet-flower flared vividly, and here and there he caught a glimpse of a chinked log-cabin. That night he slept at Clay City, where the channel of Red River was almost choked with logs; logs floated down from higher up. Once more he slept in a "feather-bed," for a distant relative had taken him in, willing to "eat an' sleep him" for no greater remuneration than the news of what had happened in Winchester; willing even to produce from some hidden place a jug from which moonshine liquor ran white and colorless.
The next day brought such a dawn as he had not seen since he had left Jackson with cuffed wrists, a dawn in which the sun did not blaze forth at once unobscured, but came up to dissipate the mists and flare redly through their vanishing, before he stood forth master of the day. And even then the skies were full of sullen hinting at rain. Nature seemed to brood in accord with his own dreariness of mind; and wisps of cloud trailed down the summits, as he nodded with a curt, "I'm obleeged ter ye," and pushed onward, boring into hills that grew ever taller and wilder.
At last, he came to Jackson, the shack town that is the county seat of Breathitt, which the world knows as "bloody." But even the twisting and steep streets beyond the bridge offered this traveler no security for tarrying. Jackson knew that in Winchester Jake Falerin had fallen, and that Black Pete was back from the West, and Jackson was a Falerin strong-hold. The outlook was for stormy days, and it would be as well for the boy to push at once to his own section, some twenty miles away, where along the waters of Troublesome and Lost Creeks he would be among his own people. In front of the court-house and along the main street he saw groups of men, some of them Falkinses and some Spooners, and though there was no open hostility, they separated studiously into their own respective groups and their movements were characterized by an alertness which told of mutual and restive suspicion.
Newt Spooner was not afraid, but just now he was not wasting his activities. Moreover, he was still half-sick and not courting quarrels save those of his own choosing. As he strolled through the streets of the town, no one seemed to notice him. He had been forgotten. He paused before the court-house with the small "jail-house" squatting in the yard and surveyed both with wormwood bitterness of unforgiving memory.
Across the street where brick banks and modern plate-glass store fronts stood jammed between frontier-like shacks, he halted once more. Court was adjourning for the noon recess, and a homicide jury came out of the dingy doors, marching in columns of twos, while behind, shirt-sleeved and collarless, stalked the sheriff, herding the panel to its mid-day meal and bearing a long hickory staff. They were rude and bearded men, for the most part spare and sinewy, but the elder among them tramped with a shambling gait that told of unrelieved drudgery.
Newt made his way to the north end of the town, and took the road across the hills. By nightfall he would be in his own territory.
Now he was once more treading familiar trails, and though he was tired and the way became steeper, he walked with a resilient stride. The roads along the valley gulches were only creek-beds, and where they looped over the tops of ridges they were uneven stairways of broken rock. Sometimes for a little space they ran level along high banks where the sand was like that of a beach. But Newt had taken off his shoes and as he splashed along the water courses, where straining "jolt-wagons" had cut smooth ruts almost hub-deep into the shaly beds, the grateful water stimulated him. About him were great forests almost virgin to the ax. Spruce pines and walnuts and poplars towered over him, and the road dipped often through a gloom like that of a dim chapel. Down there little cascades whispered, and out of fern banks rose huge brown and gray and green bowlders of sandstone, like altars of the Druids. The rhododendron, which his people called "laurel," and the laurel, which they called "ivy," cloaked the open slopes. It was a country where a good walker can travel faster afoot than mounted. He drank from wayside springs and from the flask which his kinsman had refilled. His mind turned to its magnet, and he planned anew the death of Henry Falkins, but now that he was at home he planned with confidence of success and in this conviction he found a certain contentment. It was something to be where he belonged and something to walk free of the chaingang. Around him the hills closed in comforting tiers of ramparts. From the high points of the road, he could look off over valleys to other peaks and see here and there the roof of a cabin with its small patch of corn and its rude out-houses. He passed tilting fields where red and blue calico dresses flashed as entire families worked with hoes, and roadside habitations of logs where raggedy children fled inside to gaze timidly around the corners of door-jambs. Razor-backed hogs and flocks of geese wandered near every habitation, and mules flapped their long ears as they looked out from primitive stables, fashioned by closing in with fence shelters under overhanging shelves of rock.
CHAPTER VIII
When the pitchiness of night closed in until it seemed that the mountains moved up and huddled closer together, Newt was on well-remembered roads and did not pause. In an hour or two the moon would be up, and he would reach the cabin which he called home.
With the coming of the moon the hills underwent a wizardry of beauty which was lost on the boy. First, silvery threads of light began to weave along the bristling ridges of the east and opalescent flecks to glimmer overhead. Then a soft blue-gray light filtered down the slopes; throwing the shoulders of the mountains into relief and bathing the lowlands in a luminous mist. The waters of Troublesome caught the glint and the frogs boomed out from bass to treble, while back in the timbered slopes the whippoorwills set up a plaintive chorus.
Ahead of him Newt saw his destination. A cabin of logs stood darkly at the side of the road, marking his journey's end. Though the moon struck across the small hard-tramped yard, the house threw its shadow forward and was itself a block of darkness from which shone no light. That was because there was no light to shine, except what came from the fireplace, and because there was no window through which it might show. But Newt needed no illumination. He knew every wretched detail by heart. There was one room only, except for the lean-to shed, which served as kitchen and dining-room, and that was reached by going outside and walking around the corner of the house. The one room was pictured on his mind almost as clearly as he trudged toward its door-step as it could be when he entered it. Through the slabs of the puncheon floor the wind came in gusty weather. In each of the four corners was a large double bed with feather mattresses, for the family, when he had left home, had numbered six. About the log walls on pegs driven into the chinking would be hanging such articles of clothing as were not in use, except such other articles as were thrust in disorder under the beds. Unless the family had "lain down" they would be huddling about the hearth with their shoes off, for even in June when the night chill came it was customary to kindle an evening fire. Always in the past, his great grandfather, old Luke Spooner, had sat at the right-hand corner of that hearth, mumbling into his long white beard. Newt wondered if he would still be there. He had been almost a centenarian when they took the grandson away to the penitentiary; his sight almost gone, his hearing almost gone, his brain wasted to a remnant of nightmare brooding, but his physical vitality holding out like a spent and stubborn fortress. Once he had been among the most feared of feudists, tireless, unafraid, vindictive and honest. He would hardly be there now, reflected Newt. He must have died by this time. One member of his family only would he greet with any feeling akin to welcome. His father had in his rough way been fond of him, and Newt in an equally wolfish fashion had reciprocated the feeling. It had never been expressed in words or demonstration, for of these things the mountaineer is as chary as a grizzly. Often in the long warfare of quarreling and bickering between his father and mother, which Newt regarded as a natural and universal incident of family life, his "pappy" had taken his side and rescued him from a "whopping."
Newt thought he would be glad to see his father.
He crossed the stile, hewn in rough steps from a poplar stump, and strode over to the broken mill-stone that served as a door-step. He shouted, "I'm a-comin' in," and pushed at the door. It was barred. That was a sign of the troublesome condition of the times. The mountaineer shouts an announcement of his coming from a distance to avoid the seeming of surreptitiousness, but, having reached the threshold, does not knock.
"Who's thet?" called a high-pitched, irritable voice from the interior. It was his mother's voice, and Newt replied:
"Hit's me, Mammy. Let me in."
No outburst or murmur of surprise broke from the cabin at the announcement of the prodigal's return. He heard only the rasping of a bar being drawn from its sockets, and then the door swung in. Newt entered, and with no offer to embrace his mother cast an appraising glance about the place, which the logs on the hearth revealed in a wavering light. The corners of the room were darkly shadowed, but the semicircle about the fireplace was red and yellow from the flames. The rafters were smoke-blackened, and an odor hung between the walls like that in a house used for curing hams.
About the fire sat the family group, but none of them rose to welcome him. At the right hand corner sat old Luke. He was not dead then, after all, though just now he was sleeping with his bearded, mummy-like face fallen forward and his long hickory staff resting between his knees. Newt's younger brother, "Little Luke," grown since he had left home from a boy of thirteen to a gawky and angular young cub of sixteen, and his sister, who had been twelve and was now fifteen, stared at him in shy silence. His mother who was only a little more than forty had all the seeming of sixty. She was bent and slovenly. But of his father he saw nothing, though a man sat in the remaining chair, and when this interloper leaned forward, holding down his beard with his forefinger as he spat at the ashes, Newt recognized Clem Rawlins, a distant kinsman. Clem's presence surprised him little, for it would have been quite natural for Clem or any other man who found himself benighted to stop and "stay all night."
His mother came forward, and invited:
"Take my cheer, Newt. I'll set on the bed."
Newt dropped into the seat, and inquired:
"Where's pappy?"
"Daid," was his mother's laconic reply.
"When did he die?"
Clem Rawlins answered in a deep, drawling voice:
"He failed tol'able fast-like after ye left, Newt. He had the weak treemers, an' died erbout cawn-plantin' time a-follerin' of yore goin' down below."
The boy said nothing. He sat mutely scowling into the fire.
A constrained silence fell on the gathering, which was at last broken by the boy's mother in a tone of dubious embarrassment.
"With yore old gran-pap on my hands, Newt, an' yore pap daid an' Little Luk kind of puny-like, I couldn't hardly git along withouten some man on the place an' so—" She paused again, then added with a note half-apology, half-defiance: "An' so I married Clem. I was plumb driv ter hit."
She knew that the boy had never liked his kinsman, Clem Rawlins, but now Newt sat with his brow drawn and his gaze fixed on the embers, making no response. Clem waited stolidly, puffing at his pipe, though he, too, would be glad when the moment of explanation was ended. At last, the boy dismissed the topic with the curt comment:
"I reckon thet's yore business."
After a while, he rose and went to the corner of the room where once his few belongings had been kept. He evidently failed to find that for which he sought, for he came back to the fire and demanded:
"Whar's my rifle-gun?"
His mother was still sitting on the edge of the bed. She had filled her clay pipe and lighted it with a coal from the fire. Once more her voice carried the note of anxious embarrassment, and she tried to give it also an ingratiating quality, as she replied.
"Well, ye see, Newty, atter yore pappy died we had a heap of trouble. 'Peared like the good Lord hed done plumb forgot us in his provi-dence. The hail kilt all the cawn, an' the hawgs died off like es ef they was blighted, an' so—" She paused, and the boy finished for her in a voice very metallic, though not reproachful.
"So ye went an' sold my rifle-gun. Is thet what ye war a-tryin' ter say?"
"Thet's hit," she acknowledged. Then in exculpation she went on: "Ye see, Newt, I wouldn't 'a' done hit, only I didn't reckon ye'd want hit no more. We didn't hardly 'low ye'd ever come back hyar noways."
Newt Spooner rose from his chair and stood facing them. His fists were tight-clenched at his sides. The spurting blaze of the slowly dying fire sent his shadow wavering out across the semicircle of light.
"You-all didn't 'low I'd need my rifle-gun no more," he repeated slowly, with forced restraint. "Ye didn't hardly reckon I'd ever come back hyar-abouts. Ye 'lowed I wuz buried alive in thet damned penitentiary whar ye let me go without a-holpin' me none. Ye 'lowed I'd jest stay thar an' rot." He paused and his breath came heavily. Then his utterance quickened. "Well, ye 'lowed plumb wrong. I'm hyar an' thar's a thing I'm hyar ter do, an' hit's a thing thet calls fer a gun. Ye done married this-hyar man. Thet's yore business an' his'n. 'Pears like ter me ye mout 'a' done a sight better, but I hain't got no call ter say nothin' erbout thet."
With a vague idea of placating both sides of what might become a family rupture, the woman suggested in a milder tone than usual:
"I mout 'a' done a sight wusser, too, Newt."
The boy sniffed.
"I don't hardly see how," he retorted. "Now I've done been robbed of my gun. What's become of my pappy's gun?"
His mother hesitated, then confessed:
"I done give it ter Clem."
The son nodded his head.
"Thet's what I 'lowed. Now thet gun b'longs ter me. I've done lawfully heired hit from my pap." He turned suddenly to Clem Rawlins, and his voice rang out in sharp and peremptory outburst.
"Go git hit!"
Rawlins rose in quick obedience, and went to his own corner whence he fetched the repeating rifle that had been the elder Spooner's.
Newt stood before the fireplace, testing and loading the magazine, while his mother looked on in anxious scrutiny.
Then the centenarian across the hearth roused up, lifting his ancient and withered face, in which the jaw muscles worked loosely and flabbily.
"Who air thet feller?" he demanded in a quavering, accusing voice, gazing up without recognition at the tall, spare figure which towered over him.
"Thet's little Newt," shouted the mother, bending her lips close to his ear. The old man sat foolishly blinking for a time as his wandering thoughts came back to a focus.
Finally, he brandished his long staff and stormed weakly.
"Ye hadn't oughter suffered yeself ter be penitentiaried. In my day no Spooner wouldn't 'a' done hit. Ye air the fust one thet's ever wore stripes...."
"I wouldn't of gone thar nuther, ef my own kin hed a-stood by me," blazed the boy with an evil glitter in his eye.
"Don't pay him no mind, Newt," hastily admonished his mother; "he hain't noways responsible. He's plumb fitty."
"Why the hell don't he die?" demanded the youth, gazing down contemptuously on the withered and decaying figure.
"I'm kinder tuckered out," he added a moment later. "I reckon I'll lay down."
Such was Newt Spooner's home-coming.
CHAPTER IX
On the morning after the convict's return, in the hour when the mists still hung in wraith-like fogs over the slopes, Newt and the other men of the household gathered around the kitchen table while his mother and sister, maintaining their position of mere women, served them standing. They ate in sordid silence, stooping low over their plates and neglecting their forks.
The food was perhaps less good than that which the penitentiary furnished its inmates. The bodies of dead bees floated in the wild honey and to a palate accustomed to more delicate provender the reeking grease in which everything floated would have induced nausea, but it was the food upon which the former convict had been reared, and he greedily bolted it. As soon as he had finished his breakfast he rose, and, picking up his rifle, sauntered toward the door. This he did with a belligerent air, for he knew the simple laws of native life. The land and cabin had belonged to his father, and the boy felt that he needed no invitation to return and take up his residence there. None the less, if he was to stay, he would be expected to assume his just share in the burdens of daily work. For the present, however, he meant to take a vacation; to tramp the hillsides and see how far he had lost his knack with the rifle. So, he filled his pocket with cartridges, and strolled out of the door, kicking from his way several trespassing chickens that were exploring the interior of the room. As he passed the barn, Clem and "Little Luke" were feeding the mule and the hogs. Newt paused for a moment and watched them, making no offer to assist, and they for their part made no request that he lend a hand.
"Goin' huntin', Newt?" queried the step-father, pausing with a shuck-basket of feed in his hands.
"Mebby so," growled the home-comer.
Clem regarded his uncommunicative law-kin with an expressionless stare for a while, and then said slowly:
"Hit hain't none of my concern, I reckon, but I seen yore pockets was strutty, an' I 'lowed ye mout be goin' tol'able fur."
"Mebby so," repeated Newt.
The pockets to which Clem alluded bulged with ammunition and a flask. The phrase he used was slang in Scotland in the days when Queen Mary reigned. It is common parlance to-day where these beleaguered Anglo-Saxons retain the idioms of their ancestors, and live the life of another century in mountains which were old before the Andes, the Alps, the Rockies or the Himalayas were thrown above the level of the sea. The Elizabethan gallant who was "strutty" threw out a swelling chest, hence, that which bulges is strutty.
The household did not see Newt again until the sun was well into the west, but at intervals they heard the sharp bark of his rifle growing fainter as he penetrated farther into the hills.
For Newt had taken himself away into the thickness of the timber and laurel for target practice. He went about it as systematically as though he were a battleship at maneuvers. As he swung his way noiselessly along forest paths, he would stop suddenly and throw the piece to his shoulder, sighting on some knot or leaf picked out at random. On these occasions he wasted no powder and lead. He was simply testing his quickness of eye and steadiness of hand, and he smiled with grim pleasure at the result. But at last a target showed high up on a walnut trunk. There the figure of a giant woodpecker hung, drumming loudly, and inviting a trial shot, by the very conspicuousness of its red, black and white plumage. Newt leveled the rifle and fired, and the big bird came tumultuously floundering to the ground.
The boy smiled unpleasantly:
"I reckon," he mused, "hit hain't only woodpeckers I kin hit."
As the day wore on, he practised more intricate feats. Gathering a handful of hickory leaves, he fastened them about the gigantic girth of a tulip poplar which towered nobly in a level place. Then, going back a distance of fifty yards, he began running rapidly around the tree. At every few yards of his course he would halt abruptly, wheel and fire at one of the leaves. As he went up, panting, to inspect results, he smiled again in grim satisfaction.
Along the creek-bed roads and over the mountain-scaling trails that day, a girl was taking a twenty mile walk from the clean dormitory of the college to the vermin-infested murk of a cabin on Troublesome. She carried a small bundle, but the long march was a thing that did not seem to trouble her.
Sometimes she came to places where the road ran down into the waters of shallow fords, and then she stopped and took off her shoes and stockings and waded to the other bank.
On either side of her rose the rustling forests, tuneful with the song of birds. The laurel blossoms waved pink centers and the rhododendron nodded at her.
Here and there a squirrel barked or a cock-quail sounded his "bob-white" to his nesting mate. And as Minerva tramped on with that resilient, tireless stride which was one of the few blessings of her hard heritage, the cloud on her brow was dispelled and after a while her voice rose to the crooning of an ancient "ballet," and she remembered only that she was young and strong and that it was June. Perhaps she dreamed a little of a make-believe world in which the men were not brutal and bestial, but, like the Henry Falkins of her imagination, individuals who had heard of chivalry and who even in this age preserved something of its spirit and its spark.
Yet every now and then the picture of the cabin rose before her imagination, and the smile died from her eyes, and her lips became straight-set and taut. She saw the old imbecile in the chimney corner and the shrewish step-mother, and the badgering step-sister, and even in the father who had brought her here, she knew that she had no effective ally. Clem Rawlins had his work cut out for him in protecting himself in these matters, and he sought the path of least resistance by taking refuge in surly silence until he was goaded to the point where his temper broke into violent outburst.
At last, the walk ended, ended at the door-step of the cheerless cabin, and there as Minerva crossed the stile stood her step-mother, on the threshold with her arms akimbo and a clay pipe clamped between her teeth.
"M'nervy," she said in a rasping tone, in which dwelt no note of welcome, "I've done put yore b'longin's under Sis's bed. Thar hain't no more pegs ter hang things on an' Newty's done fared back from down b'low. He's a-goin' ter lay down on ther bed you've been usin'."
The girl halted before the door.
"Who's Newty?" she asked. The boy's name had not been often mentioned since she had come over here, and she had forgotten the ragged lad she had known years before, when instead of being a murderer he was only a small shaver with sullen eyes and a tongue which he did not often use.
"Newty's my oldest boy," enlightened the elder woman briefly. "He's been a sojournin' in Frankfort." Then in a tone of absolute commonplace she added: "He's been in ther penitenshery."
Minerva Rawlins stood silent, but her cheeks blazed wrathfully. So, beside the horrors of uncongeniality under this roof, she was now to be turned out of her own bed to make way for an arrival from the state prison.
Long ago she had learned to set a seal upon her lips and to endure in silence what things must be borne, but into her eyes flashed an insurgent gleam, and the hag-like woman in the doorway caught it and scowled.
"I reckon Newty's got a license ter dwell in this-hyar house," she belligerently asserted. "He was born hyar, an' he didn't come in hyar taggin' along with no widderer. Newty hain't no step-child."
The speaker turned and disappeared into the general murk of the interior, and the girl followed her without comment, but with a suddenly born hatred for the man who had come from a cell back to the family which she must call her own.
When Newt Spooner crossed the stile that afternoon, breathing deeply the healing of the mountain air, he paused and scowled. Coming across the yard from the "Spring-branch" with a bucket of water was the slender figure of a girl. She was not his sister, but another girl whom he did not recognize. She seemed to be about eighteen, and she was pretty, with the transient bloom of mountain young womanhood, often as vivid and as short-lived as that of the morning glory. But the thing which most perplexed Newt, as he stood resentfully wondering how many other invaders he was to encounter at the cabin, was the fact that her calico dress was neater and her whole appearance more suggestive of civilized self-respect than that of the other women of the household.
Coming across the yard from the "Spring-branch" was the slender figure of a girl.
She was not barefooted, but wore shoes and stockings, and instead of being lost in loose sack or slip-shod mother-hubbard, her slight waist was trimly belted.
While Newt stared at her, she, too, looked up and saw him. For a moment she seemed startled at the black-visaged apparition, but after a moment she coolly returned his glance, and disappeared into the house.
When the boy later on went to the door, the westering sun sent a long golden shaft into the primitive interior, down which the dust motes danced, although the corners remained somberly obscure. In the room were only the "women-folks"; his mother sitting huddled over her pipe; his sister lying idly stretched on one of the beds with an ill-natured frown in her eyes, and the strange girl. The strange girl sat, not near the cold hearth, where now there was no fire, but in the sun, and the sun fell upon and sparkled in her brown hair and awakened dull glints like the luster of polished mahogany. She was holding her lips rather tightly drawn, as in self-repression, and there was a mistiness about her eyes that hinted at unshed tears.
"I reckon," Newt's mother was saying in a spitefully hard voice, as the boy's figure darkened the door, "ye thinks sence ye went off ter school and got ter consartin' with them fotched-on teachers, thet ye're better'n what we be."
The girl made no reply, but she bent over the sewing in her lap, and her fingers trembled. Mrs. Rawlins looked up and, with a jerk of her head, announced for the benefit of her son:
"This here air Clem's gal, Minervy. I married a widderer." The last sentence was snapped out in a tone of deep complaining, from which one might infer that in the train of marrying a widower followed many melancholy consequences.
At that the girl raised her face and into it swept a sudden flush of anger. She looked challengingly at Newt and her eyes told him that, if she was silent under the shrewish heckling of the woman, she was quite ready to give him battle. But the boy had no intention of insulting her. He did not know that already she was finding herself in that most pathetic of all positions, the status of being just enough educated to be unplaced at home, and too little educated to be placed elsewhere. She had been thrown, by her father's second marriage, under the persecutions of a shrew, a jealous step-sister, and a century-old imbecile. She looked at Newt and reflected that his arrival added a murderer to the group. "Clem's gal" was longing for that different and more wholesome life over there at the college. But Newt had seen the look in her eyes and recognized that she like himself was here among people who offered no friendship. It was a rude bond of sympathy, and though she was "Clem's gal," and, in consequence, of the enemy, he rose to her defense.
"I reckon," he remarked sullenly, "she hain't no more tee-totally tickled about yore a-marryin' of a widderer then what you be."
The girl's eyes were lifted with an amazed expression from the calico dress upon which she was working, and her face swiftly softened. But Newt, a stranger to tender emotions, and bent on presenting to every man and woman a face of defiance, gave no further sign of sympathy.
He went to the bed which had been assigned to him, and threw himself on his back, from which position he lay scowling up at the smoked rafters and resting.
Presently, his mother began again her querulous bickering. The conversation was one-sided, and the boy, lying silent in his dark corner, noted that Minerva merely bent her head as one may bend it against the buffeting of gusty wind or rain. But he was himself less long suffering, and so he raised his voice with the dictatorial authority of a man rebuking a quarreling harem.
"Mammy," he ordered curtly, "I'm plumb sick an' tired o' heerin' all this-hyar blamed fursin', an' I wants ye ter shet up. If Clem's gal is a willin' ter endure all thet jawin', I hain't."
For an hour there was no sound in the cabin except the low, monotonous voice of Newt's sister, crooning an ancient "ballet" that once was sung in Scotland before the Pilgrims landed in the western world.
About sunset that afternoon, Newt came upon the Rawlins girl milking near the barn. When she raised her head from the flank of the cow and saw him standing a short distance away, a sudden stream of color came flooding to her cheeks and temples. He had not yet heard her speak a word, but now after stammering a moment she said:
"Hit was mighty good of ye, Newt, ter take up fer me. I'm much obliged."
The acknowledgment was somewhat difficult to make. This black sheep of her acquired family stood for all the things that the knightly Henry Falkins had deplored in speaking of the lawless spirit of the mountains. He was the sullen impersonation of the murder-spirit which shoots from ambush. He had come from prison and it was Mercy, not Justice, that had opened the iron gates to set him free. She did not know that the testimony of Falkins had put him there, or that Newt's set purpose was revenge, but she had shaped her heart to despise him, and he had in a rough way stood forth her champion. Perhaps, after all, he too had been a victim of conditions bigger and blacker than his own nature.
Newt's scowl darkened. He was not accustomed to gratitude and in it found embarrassment.
"Huh!" he growled. "Hit warn't nothin'. I jest natcherly hates ter heer so much damn' naggin'. Why don't ye jaw back at 'em? Air ye sceered?"
The girl shook her head. "I ain't here much," she said, "an' I reckon thar's enough squabblin' in this house without me joinin' in."
"Well, thet's yore business," commented the ex-convict, "but if I was you I'd stand up to 'em." He turned on his heel and left her.
To the house of McAllister Falkins "furriners" from the outside world came as to an oasis in a desert, or perhaps, more properly speaking, as to the tent of a great sheik set in the oasis, for the father of young Henry Falkins was "the grand old man of the mountains."
His forefathers had come from Virginia with the ideas of the old chivalric régime. It was the tradition that when the first Falkins set his face to the unbroken west, he had brought with his pioneer outfit a retinue of negroes, a string of race-horses and a coop of fighting cocks. The game birds and the gamer horses had not been game enough to survive the hardships of the wilderness road, but the main stem of the Falkins stock had retained its stamina and refused through a century to degenerate. Collateral branches had one by one lapsed into the semi-barbarism of a cruelly isolated life. Nephews and cousins bearing the same name had succumbed to intermarriage and degeneracy, yet the main stem had grown straight. Old McAllister Falkins was a college man and a lawyer who did not practise. Though he was the foremost bearer of the name which stood linked with that of Spooner as giving title to a feud that had bathed the country in bloodshed for generations, neither he nor his direct ancestors nor his direct descendant had ever been drawn into its vortex. In some miraculous fashion he had been able to stand aside, admired by his tempestuous kinsmen; respected even by the equally vindictive Spooners. To have raised a hand against "Old Mack" Falkins would have been to defy both clans. To have raised a hand against his son would not have occurred to any Spooner other than young Newt, mad with rage and private hatred. Old McAllister Falkins had represented his district in Congress, by a vote of both factions, and his retirement had been voluntary. It was his hope that his son, too, might become the shepherd of these wild, goat-like sheep, and wield an influence for peace. Now, both father and son were deeply disquieted at the menace of a fresh up-flaring. The death of Falerin would fire the Falkins clansmen, and if that dreaded intriguer, Black Pete, showed his face in the hills it was difficult to see how calamitous days could be averted. As yet the Deacon had not appeared save in Winchester, but on Friday the Clark County court was to hear a motion for bail, made by the two defendants, and, if it were granted, Saturday would see them back in Jackson—and then the deluge! Saturday is a day for gathering at the county seat and for drinking white liquor. The Falkinses would without doubt be there, too, in force, ready to recognize and resent insult, and the town would be much like a powder-magazine used as a smoking-room. McAllister Falkins had advised such of the Falkins leaders as he could reach to keep the clan out of Jackson, or, if that were impossible, to hold the dogs of passion and carousal in leash. He meant to be there in person to aid in the work of pacification. If only Red Newton and the Deacon did not reappear, like Mohammedan prophets among wild tribesmen, the dangerous day might yet dawn and spend itself without bloodshed.
While the two enlightened men of the name were sitting one afternoon on the porch of their house, discussing these matters, they saw a horseman riding down the road which looped over the mountain. The traveler sat his saddle with straight shoulders and his height approached the gigantic. Before he had reached the palings of the yard fence, the angle of his black hat and the tilt of his chin proclaimed him the Deacon.
Old McAllister Falkins rose with a suppressed exclamation of dismay, and Henry bit off an oath.
Black Pete Spooner rode along at an easy amble, and outside the fence he drew rein and sang out in a grave and utterly unembarrassed voice:
"Gentlemen, may I alight and have speech with you?"
The two Falkinses rose and walked down to meet the unexpected visitor, uncertain what attitude to take in the face of such stupendous effrontery. The dark giant offered his hand, and said:
"I reckon you gentlemen are a little surprised to see me, and I guess when you know why I came you'll be still more surprised."
CHAPTER X
Gravely restraining their protests until the visitor should have spoken, yet heavy-hearted with premonition, the elder and younger Falkins led the way up the flagstone path to the porch. Had the head of the house of Montagu strolled casually in, his hands still red with murder, for an afternoon call at the strong-hold of the Capulets, his advent could hardly have been more unexpected or unwelcome. The Honorable McAllister Falkins and his son were mountaineers, and to the mountaineer the voluntary arrival of a guest under the roof-tree is a mandate to consideration so long as he remains there.
The Deacon disposed himself in a heavy split-bottomed rocker, and for a time a survey of the landscape seemed to absorb him.
The house sat in its yard overlooking the twisting road and the steep banks of the middle fork of Kentucky River. For that unlettered land it was a mansion, with its two-story height and painted weather-boarding. Its glazed, green-shuttered windows gave it a certain dignity. Instead of puncheon floors, there were carpets and such furniture as one might have seen in the outer world, mingled strangely with old-fashioned reminders of pioneer life. At one end of the porch leaned a discarded spinning wheel, and an arm's length away stood the phonograph with which the two Falkins men had been soothing their anxieties with the strains of "Il Trovatore."
Off to the side of the house stretched an orchard in whose shadowed rim of lingering locust bloom ranged a trim line of ancient "bee gums." It was a simple and rambling farmhouse, but in a country of squalid habitations it partook of a certain grandeur, and one must needs go far to find a more ruggedly magnificent outlook, over park-like stretches of patriarchal timber, palisading river-banks and towering mountains, than that commanded from its verandah.
For a few moments the Deacon sat in his rocker with as little seeming realization of his unwelcomeness as though he were an old friend and constant visitor. He sat upright, his hat lying on the floor at his side and his hands resting on his large-boned knees. Both the men of the Falkins house acknowledged anew how unusual and commanding was that face, and how difficult it was to recognize upon it any hall-mark of crime or villainy. The dark eyes were steadfastly gentle, and even under the long drooping mustache the lips held a sort of dreamer's curve. Finally, the visitor spoke.
"The more I study about it, the more I'm afraid that Saturday can't hardly pass by without trouble."
McAllister Falkins rose from his chair and paced the porch. At last, he paused before Black Pete Spooner, and began steadily:
"I don't know why you have come to me." The old gentleman's voice was self-contained, though his eyes bored accusingly into those of his visitor. "I certainly shall express no criticism until you have said in full whatever you came here to say. You must know that I have always held aloof from feud-bickerings. You must know that I have always counseled impartially and truly such men as have come to me from both factions. But above all you must know that, if there is bloodshed in Jackson on Saturday, no other thing will be so directly responsible for it as your reappearance in the county. Your presence and Falerin's death will be the twin causes. If you seek to avoid a holocaust, you are pursuing a strange course."
While Falkins talked, the Deacon listened attentively, acknowledging the force of each remark with a grave nod of his head. At the end of the speech he sat awhile with his brows judicially drawn, then answered:
"There's a heap of truth and good sense in all that. I don't expect you to take my word on any matter, but I'm here to propose doin' things, not just sayin' things. I think there is one way to keep these boys from mischief, if you two men and me can act together." He paused after that a moment, then his voice came deeply resonant and full of warning. "And I tell you that whether I'm at the North Pole or right here, unless we three do get together, there's goin' to be hell in Jackson next Saturday."
He held them both with so steady and guileless a gaze that for a moment both of the advocates of peace and law wondered if they were not actually talking with a convert; wondered half-convinced, despite all they knew of his history. Henry Falkins filled his pipe in silence, and then, as the three settled themselves in their chairs, Black Pete began again:
"You men both know what a bad name I had when I left these mountains. I was guilty of several crimes to start with, and my reputation did the rest. Whatever meanness broke loose got laid to my door. I'm not complainin'. Enough of them accusations were true to give fellers license to suspect me in the balance. Then I went away."
"With the understanding that you were to stay away," interrupted McAllister Falkins.
The Deacon nodded his head.
"I'm comin' to that," he answered with tranquillity. "Anyhow, I went away, and I've come back with just one hatred left."
"What is that?" demanded Henry Falkins. This man with one hatred was more to be feared than another with many.
"Hatred of lawlessness and the sort of meanness that assassinates and quarrels," was the quiet and surprising response.
There was no offer to argue or deny, and after a moment he went on.
"That sounds a little funny from my lips, I reckon, but all I ask is a chance to prove it."
"And simply going away wrought this conversion?" It was the elder man who put the question, and his voice was frank in its scepticism.
The Deacon shook his head.
"No, not only that. It's a long story, and there's no need for tellin' it all. But some of my time out West I was prospectin' in Old Mexico. I was took down with fever, and they nursed me at a monastery. I caught on to considerable Spanish, and—well, to cut it short—I got religion. But as far as my past record goes, maybe just because I've got the name of being so mean and troublesome, there are some men here-abouts that would hearken to my counsel when they wouldn't listen to a better man."
He paused and sat staring absently across the river, but his eyes were taking in everything, and, as he turned his grave glance on his auditors, he was keenly studying their faces.
"What plan did you have to propose?" inquired Henry Falkins.
"It's this way," came the prompt reply. "There are just two men in this country that can talk to a Spooner an' a Falkins alike an' be hearkened to by both. You are the two men. But there are a few Spooners that won't even listen to you—and they are the meanest of the lot. It's the meanest men that make the most trouble—and these are the men that will listen to me. If we three are in town Saturday—"
"If you are in town Saturday, mingling with the Spooners and inflaming the Falkinses, the entire state militia couldn't maintain order," broke out old McAllister with vehement heat.
"Now, wait a minute!" And not for one minute, but ten, the returned exile talked. As they listened, the father and son saw unfold a plan of unexampled boldness and danger, particularly of danger to its proposer, but as it outlined and developed itself they began to see also a dawn of hope. The very effrontery of the thing might carry it through peril to success.
"I won't equivocate," responded the head of the Falkins family with blunt directness. "If you are honest, you deserve to be treated frankly, and, if you are not honest, there is no use in flattering you. It's not my way to flatter men. You have always been a plausible talker, and you have cloaked many criminal acts under that plausibility. On the other hand, I can't see anything which you could gain in this matter by deceit. On its face it looks fair enough—and if you come through alive, it may bring peace to the county."
Again the Spooner leader nodded gravely.
"That's worth taking a chance for, ain't it?" he inquired.
"Have you talked to any of your people?" demanded the old man as he agitatedly paced his verandah.
"No—I haven't seen a soul except those in my own house—and you. I didn't want it known yet that I was in the county. But in the next two nights I'm goin' to have speech with a half-dozen Spooners, an' they'll be a half-dozen of the strongest men."
McAllister Falkins considered for a time, and put a pertinent question.
"Can you and your half-dozen hold the Spooner crowd in check? Saturday will be the fourth of July. There will be heavy drinking in Jackson. Can you answer for your rank and file?"
For just an instant, the grave face of the dark-haired giant lost its impassivity and something like a snort of contempt escaped his lips.
"When you drive sheep," he demanded curtly, "do you consult the fool beasts? Give me the sheep-men an' the sheep-dogs, an' I'll pretty nigh tell you where the sheep are going to."
The visitor rose and stood looking from the eyes of one to those of the other.
"We will both be in Jackson on Saturday," said McAllister Falkins.
"Me, too," said the giant. "But I'll be there unbeknownst until the minute comes for me to show myself."
The Deacon had taken up his hat and reached the top step of the porch. There he turned and, looking at the younger man, suggested:
"I was goin' to advise that you didn't go, Henry. Your father can do what's got to be done."
"Why?" demanded the son sharply. "You arrange that my father shall take his life into his hands in an effort to quiet a frenzied mob, and then suggest that I let him go alone? Why?"
The visitor seemed to sympathize with the sentiment.
"That's right," he conceded. "After all, you've got to go. I don't think Mr. Falkins is runnin' much risk. I don't think there's a man in these parts that would harm him or let him be harmed. But it's a little different with you. Little Newt Spooner has been pardoned out of the penitentiary. I guess you knew that?"
"So I heard. What has that to do with me?"
"Well, he's a mean little devil, that boy is, an' he's holdin' it up against you that your testimony busted his alibi."
"Now, Spooner," Old Mack spoke quietly but with an ominous force, "you have just said you could herd your sheep. If you can't handle the youngest and blackest of them, we might as well abandon the bigger experiment. If through this boy any harm comes to my son, I give you the fairest warning that for once I shall take the law in my own hands—and kill you."
Henry Falkins laughed.
"Father," he said, "there's no occasion to excite yourself. I'm not troubled about Newt."
But there was no spark of resentment in the Deacon's face. His eyes lost none of their thoughtful gentleness. He held out his hand and spoke deliberately:
"If Newt hurts Henry, Mr. Falkins, you can hold me accountable. If either of you men were hurt by one of my family, my life wouldn't be worth two bits. I reckon you know that, and you know that I know it. I'll see to little Newt, but it wouldn't hardly have been honest not to tell Henry that the boy is nursin' a grudge." He turned and went down to the stile and turned his mule back for the twenty miles that lay between the house of McAllister Falkins and the section of Troublesome where the Spooners held dominion.
The Deacon had much to think of. He had come back from the West because he was homesick; because as the warden had told Newt: "Every mountain man that goes away drifts back to the mountains. God knows why they do it, but they do." As long as Jake Falerin influenced his tribe from Winchester Black Pete's return would be impossible. As long as the Honorable Cale Floyd lived, his influence would reach back and bear fruit in the mountains. For those reasons the Deacon had staged the shooting in Winchester. Now, with the brain and counsel of Jake Falerin stilled, he saw, in a great peace movement, a chance to beguile the lesser leaders of his foes. Having satisfied his private designs, it was nothing to him that others with equally strong grievances must pocket them and sit silent under the truce he meant to make. For a time he intended that this truce should be honestly kept, but later—
The Deacon was thinking several moves ahead. Yet he, who could dictate to a fierce faction, stood in fear of little Newt. He had stopped him once, and had promised the boy his future assistance. Newt wanted one of the only two men in the country who must not be killed; whose assassination would bring down the wrath of the state and flood the county with soldiers, and make even a timid judiciary more afraid to shield than to punish. Yet, how to stop this boy puzzled Black Pete to such an extent that, as he rode, his brow was deeply corrugated. Inwardly he cursed bitterly the ladies who had sympathized and the Governor who had pardoned. It would have been much better to let the troublesome prisoner rot in the penitentiary.
The Deacon was not riding the county roads back to Troublesome. He was taking a shorter and steeper trail, which led over the mountains. Travel by this way was slow and arduous, but it was an isolated way and offered a better route for a man who wished to ride unseen.
At a point where the narrow trail doubled sharply around the shoulder of a hill-top and where the soft earth deadened the hoofbeats of his horse, he came unexpectedly on a walking figure. The mounted man had come around the angle so unwarnedly that he seemed to rise from nowhere. The walking figure had made an instinctive dive for the cover of the roadside brush and tangle, and then, with a realization that it was too late to escape detection, had halted and stood with his bare feet planted in the soft mud of the road and his face slowly blackening. The man on foot was Newt Spooner. He was once more dressed in mountain jeans and butternut, and at his side his swinging right hand clutched a repeating rifle.
The Deacon drew his horse to a standstill with an amicable nod.
"Howdy, Newt?" he greeted. The boy made no response, and shifted his weight from foot to foot, while his eyes kindled with growing fury. About a little roadside puddle fluttered a small flock of white and lemon butterflies, disturbed by human invasion, and on a branch overhead a squirrel ran out and stopped cautiously.
"There's a squirrel, Newt," suggested the Deacon casually. "I reckon you're squirrel-huntin', ain't you?"
But the boy did not answer, and the Deacon knew why. He was thirteen miles from home, and was stalking bigger game than squirrels.