XIX.
It was close upon dawn when Rathburn reached his destination. He could hardly have defined the time when he began to appreciate that daylight had invaded the mystic moonlit splendors. There the golden sphere still hung; out of it the fine ethereal fires were dying—paling, and growing yet more dim—above the purple Chilhowee; definiteness was gradually evolving out of the shadows; a valley was shaping its sinuous course where violet vagueness had seemed a plenitude of form and fixity before. A dull, gray, hard color never known in the fine lunar chromatics, lay upon a stretch of leafless woods. A dark, sombre green, cold and funereal, betokened the pines and the laurel groves. As the moon dulled and the day dallied, stars had suddenly bloomed out with palpitating splendor. One of a white glister shone above the rugged eastern crags, and was the herald of the dawn. He was feeling the strength of the matutinal resurrection in his veins, in his lungs, expanding to its fine, keen freshness. He hardly realized that he had been awake all night, after a long day’s tramp with his pick through the rugged gorges of the mountains. He had long since ceased to glance apprehensively to the right and left, lest there might be still an avenger lurking upon his track, as he took his way along the herder’s trail through the savage wilderness. Confidence came renewed with renewed freedom. He stopped to see, through a gap in the mountain, all along the summits of the misty purple ranges, a line of vermilion rise, expanding into the broad spaces of the pale sky, for the living sun was in the vital air. He hears an eagle cry, the sound infinitely wild and joyous with a savage enthusiasm in life; the splendid sweep of the great bird’s wings describe long curves in the light air, and the yellow glow slants so far, so far! A warm day,—for where is the frost? That fine vaporous tissue, all that there is to show for those premonitions of winter in the vanished white rime! All going down and down to Hang-Over Mountain, to lurk about the cold currents of the Little Tennessee.
There was moisture on the full yellow leaves of the hickory, the splendid red foliage of the scarlet oak and the sour-wood, shaken out afresh as bravely as if summer burned still in the sap; there were ferns green yet, here and there. He stooped to pick a spray of the lilac “Christmas flower,” and thrust it jauntily in the button-hole of his blue flannel shirt; then, as his path curved abruptly, he came within sight of the deserted cabin which he and Baintree had lately made their camp.
Somehow, with its dark little roof beneath that vast sky, so splendidly aflare, the gigantic vigorous trees on every hand, the gallant wind a-blaring all its bugles down the ravines, the sense of great openness and infinite space, it seemed doubly mean, and the plots devised there curiously sordid, and the episode and escape of last night grotesquely ignominious. In the midst of the conscious physical luxury that every respiration of the high air afforded, he wished he had never seen the place; his cherished scheme, for which he had risked so much, palled for the nonce. He became aware of a great infusion of bitterness toward Jake Baintree, that was not less strong because of contempt.
“And where has he gone, I wonder?” he said, as he approached the cabin.
For there was no smoke from the chimney and the place was silent. He checked his pace as he went toward the door. The unhewn logs that had once formed the steps to ascend to the threshold had rotted down at one side; the wood quaked and gave way anew under his tread, as he laid his hand on the latch. It was not fastened, and the door easily swung back under his touch.
The room was vacant, illumined less by the rifts in the broken batten shutter than by the pale stream of light that came down the chimney, for the embers had died on the hearth. A repugnance, a paroxysm of fastidiousness, seized him as he looked in at the desolate discomforts, the sordid bareness, of the place.
“This is no way to live!” he exclaimed, forgetful for the moment of the wealth that barely eluded his clutching hand; and as he remembered it he thought it would be hardly earned. He had not cared heretofore for the deprivations which he had endured although he had found scant congeniality in his comrade. The suspicion of crime, however, which attached to Baintree had seemed but the touch of romance to the backwoods desperado. But Jake had proved himself little fitted for that stanch rôle; and however natural his flight when he heard of the danger, Rathburn had not the dispassionate temperament to regard it leniently. He felt that it savored strongly of cowardice, he mentally designated his comrade a “contemptible cur,” and he began to feel a certain absorbing curiosity concerning the whereabouts of Samuel Keale and how he had met his fate.
When he had kindled a fire and sat down before it, clasping his hands behind his head, waiting for the coals that he might prepare the primitive meal, which in his rough experience he had learned to cook, he entered upon a continuous expectation of Baintree’s return. This grew to an irritable suspense. More than once he rose, walked to the door, and stood looking over the vast landscape and scanning the little path that their feet had worn to the spring, with the vivid intimation that in another instant he should see the tall, thin figure, the cadaverous face, the sleek black hair, emerge from the clustering laurel. But except for a rabbit, leaping along, and pausing to feed itself upon a succulent green leaf, held very humanly between its fore-paws,—except for this wayfarer, and the slow paces of the sunlight loitering on to noon, naught came and naught went. Sometimes when Rathburn returned to the fire he examined anew the specimens which together they had found,—all strangely inferior, strangely meagre, in contrast to the rich bits of “float” which Baintree had showed him in the prison, and with which he had lured him on from day to day.
“He never found this beside that torrent in the gorge,—he may swear till he is blue!” Rathburn looked at the bit of rock, shook his head, and replaced it on the rude shelf that served as mantel-piece. And once more he went to the door.
There should be no more delays, no more tortuous lies, with which he had borne merely seeking to humor the ignorant mountaineer, to familiarize him with the idea of a coadjutor, to wear out the constitutional distrust of the man. He would wait no longer; let him lay hands again on Jake Baintree,—he unconsciously clenched them,—and he would have out of him the secret he so foolishly, so zealously, guarded. And yet he thought that daily Baintree intended to reveal it; and when they would set forth to find the spot, the mountaineer would first become preoccupied, then silent, and presently stop short and pretend in clumsy fiction to recognize landmarks, and both would go through a fruitless feint of digging to find mineral that both knew was still far to seek.
“There has been enough of it!” Rathburn declared between his set teeth, in his reverie.
The prospect had all apparently seemed equitable to Baintree. He had rejoiced at the idea of securing an expert in some sort as a partner; he had voluntarily offered to divide. Perhaps the inchoate wealth of his secret had become more precious to him; perhaps he merely doubted the good faith of his partner. But the summer months had gone, and autumn was waning. “And it’s time there was an end of it,” Rathburn said, still looking out of the door.
Exhaustion prevailed at last and overpowered vigilance. He had lain down upon the floor, pillowing his head on a saddle that had been flung there, intending merely to rest; but he was soon asleep, and the sun swung vertically above the Great Smoky, and gradually took its way down the steep western slopes, and presently the light faded from the purple earth, and the stars were in the great altitudes of the sky, alternating with vast spaces of gloom, for the night had brought clouds, and the moonrise was impenetrably veiled. Still he slept, unheeding that the fire had died to an ember on the hearth, unheeding that the wind howled in the gorge. The door shook in its rude grasp; the roof creaked; sharp draughts came through the crannies, and scattered the dry ashes about the floor. Suddenly there was a sound outside other than the swirl of the dead leaves about the rotting threshold. A stealthy step came to the window. A face peered in through the rifts of the batten shutter.
Rathburn might have seen it, for the embers sent up at that moment a fitful blue gleam which played over the room, showing its dishevelment and his own recumbent figure, with its yellow head on the old dark saddle, and showing as well the face that looked in,—but he was too deep, far too deep, in his dream.
The tiny flame dropped; the red ember glowed; the room was lighter than the black wilds without, and perhaps the recumbent figure beside the hearth was still visible to the peering eyes, themselves now invisible from within. The subtile influence of their long, steadfast scrutiny shook even the deep securities of slumber. It pervaded Rathburn’s consciousness,—how, with all his science he might hardly have explained. He shifted his attitude once or twice; then with a great start he struggled up to his feet.
For a moment the stupefying pain of a sudden awakening possessed his torpid consciousness. The next, he heard the wind trumpeting a blast that he had learned to know, and he reluctantly realised his surroundings. Once more he felt the chill of those scrutinizing eyes upon him,—a vague uneasiness which he could not recognize. His long-drawn sigh of somnolent reaction was checked midway. He stooped to the fire, and vainly sought to coax the embers to kindle anew. The sound of his own voice in an impatient exclamation had a strange echo in the empty loneliness of the place. He had matches in his pockets, or, like the provident mountaineers, he would not have suffered the fire to die. It was only a moment or two before the long, ribbon-like unfurlings of the white flames of pine knots were flying up the chimney, and there was no face at the window, and no sound but the riotous play of the wind without.
He had taken a chair before the fire when his alert ear discriminated in the elemental stir a step that deliberately approached. There was a hand upon the latch.
“Come in!” he sang out, without rousing himself, or hardly turning his head. He felt sure of the identity of the new-comer. He could measure, too, the deprecating envy and embarrassment that the contemplation of his serenity and bravado would excite in the wary and timorously suspicious Baintree, and he was in the mood to-night when that display of manly superiority was a grateful solace to his feelings and pride, so seriously jarred by the events of last evening. He did not look up until Baintree was drawing the other rickety chair to the fire, turning toward him an eager, inquiring face, every muscle of which expressed surprise, suspicion, and an earnest plea to disarm criticism.
“Howdy do, Jake,” observed Rathburn, enjoying his suspense. “The weather is getting to be ‘some,’ if not more, ain’t it? Listen at the wind, will you.”
“The wind’s sorter harsh ter-night,” said Baintree. He sat down quietly in his chair, taking his cue from Rathburn’s manner and emulating his composure. Nevertheless, to the trained medical eye he was showing many symptoms of overwrought nerves, of long, harassing anxiety; he had doubtless been without food, without sleep, for many an hour.
Rathburn was conscious that in the coming interview he would derive an advantage from the long, restful slumber in which the day had passed, and which had given brain and will again into his own control. The professional conscience, however, stirred at the sight of physical need.
“Get you something to eat, Jake,” he said with his professional manner. “You want it. Must be something on the shelf.”
But Baintree, rubbing together his long, thin hands, a trifle chilled, for the temperature without had changed, declared that he was not hungry.
“All right,” returned the doctor, lightly. “I can lead a horse to water, but I can’t make him drink.”
The last word seemed to remind Baintree that there was a bottle on the shelf as well as food. He got up with his alert, soft step, took a long pull at it, and came back to his comrade with its effects distinctly apparent in the aroma upon his breath and the confidence which it served to impart to his manner. He pushed his hat far back on his sleek black head, rubbed his face once or twice between his hands, and then, leaning his elbows on his knees, he spread out his thin, almost transparent fingers over the blaze. He looked craftily up, presently, at Rathburn, who sat gazing placidly into the fire, one hand stroking his long yellow mustache. Few people could have augured from his easy composure and his debonair grace that he had lately been in danger of his life at the hands of a mob, or that he owed his security to aught that he could plan or compass.
“Marcelly Strobe mus’ hev been foolin’ we-uns some. Funnin’, I s’pose,” Baintree hazarded.
“She told the truth, as she always does, I am sure.”
Baintree’s outspread hands quivered despite the fictitious courage imparted by apple-jack. His eyes dilated.
“War—war thar ennybody thar sure enough?”
“Plenty of ’em. But only two came to the forge.”
“What—what did they say?”
“Oh, they were civil enough,” returned Rathburn in an offhand fashion.
“How did you git away from ’em?”
“Oh, I had no trouble. I did just as I told you I should: went to the blacksmith’s house and roused up his mother, and pretended to be hunting for him.”
“Did that tale go down?” asked Baintree, his relish of deceiving the enemy even by proxy causing his eyes to glitter.
“Not a bit of it. That devil Teck Jepson had got wind of our being warned, and of who warned us. He just felt sort o’ good, I suppose, and let me off.”
“He wouldn’t ef I had been thar,” said Baintree with a pessimistic nod of the head.
“He would!”
Baintree did not retaliate with a counter-retort. He was silent for a moment. Then he observed, “Teck an’ Marcelly useter keep comp’ny tergether. I’ll bet she got skeered arter she warned us, an’ let him know she hed gin us the word.”
“She ain’t one of that kind. She don’t scare worth a cent. She’s worth any ten men!”
There was something so fervent in his tone that it seemed to give a new and unique direction to Jake Baintree’s thoughts.
Presently he said, “She air a powerful good an’ pritty gal, Marcelly air! But she ain’t in no wise like them young town gals in Glaston. I useter see ’em on the street whenst I war fetched from the jail ter the court. Them’s the sort ye been ’quainted with,—the kind that walks with par’sols. She ain’t in no wise like them fine town gals.”
“And what if she ain’t? She’s better than them all put together, and a thousand times prettier.”
It was hardly twenty-four hours since she had bestirred herself to save his life, and his heart was still warm toward her.