XV.
The great gray sandstone heights of Keedon Bluffs began to glimmer in the midst of the black night when the yellow moon, slow and pensive, showed its waning disk, half veiled with a fibrous mist, in the gap of the eastern mountain. The woods were still densely dark on the other side of the road. A slender beech, white and spectral, was dimly suggested at their verge, shuddering and shivering in the last vagrant gust of the wind. Skimpy glanced fearfully at it for a moment as he came softly down the road and then he stood shivering too, with his hands in his pockets.
A swift, dark figure, as noiseless as if unhampered with substance, appeared at his side, and a husky, wheezing voice murmured suddenly—“Hyar we air, Skimp!”
Even so bated a tone did not elude the alert echo. “S-Skimp-imp-mp,” the Bluffs were sibilantly multiplying the tones. It seemed to Skimpy that some vague spy of the earth or of the air was repeating the sound to charge its memory with the word. He could ill trust even Keedon Bluffs with the secret of his name now, and he looked with futile deprecation over his shoulder at every whisper of the familiar word.
“Don’t talk!” he said nervously.
“Shucks!” exclaimed Binwell; “I’d sing ef I war minded ter—an’ ef I hed a pipe like yourn. What ails ye ter be so trembly? ’Tain’t no s’prisin’ job—it’s fun, boy! An’ ter-morrer ye and me will go an’ cut down them pines an’ git old Fat-sides’ ladder out’n ’em.”
Skimpy plucked up a little. The prospect of retrieving his folly reassured him. It was the hour, the secrecy of his escape from the roof-room window at home, the atmosphere of mystery that surrounded the adventure, he endeavored to think, rather than any distrust of Jerry Binwell, which shook his nerves. He lent himself with docile acquiescence to a sort of harness of rope which the man slipped over his head and secured beneath his armpits, one end fastened to Binwell’s arm. Its ostensible use was to aid the boy while climbing, in case he should slip among the ledges. A mind prone to suspicion might have deemed its utility most pronounced in preventing Skimpy from hiding anew or making off with anything of value which he might find hidden in the hollows.
There were no shadows on the brow of the precipice when the golden rays from the moon rested broadly upon the road or journeyed in long stately files down the sylvan vistas. Both man and boy had slipped from the verge, and were clambering along the jagged, oblique ledges of the Bluffs, Skimpy often stayed and helped by the strong hand of the other. The moon was higher now in the sky. A white radiant presence suddenly began to walk upon the water. Down between the banks it came, upon the lustrous darkness of the current and the mirrored shadows, diffusing softest splendor, most benignant and serene. Skimpy, pausing to rest, hearing the stir of the pines on the opposite bank and the musical monotone of the river, stood mopping his brow and clinging to the strong arm held out to him; he abruptly pointed out the reflection of the moon to his companion, and asked if it did not remind him of that night on a distant sea when Christ came walking along the troubled waves.
A sudden great lurch! It was not Skimpy, but Binwell—the athlete—who started abruptly, and almost fell from the Bluff into the water far below. He recovered himself with an oath.
“Ain’t ye got no better sense, ye weasel! ’n ter set out with sech senseless, onexpected gabble in sech a job ez this? Naw, it don’t look like nuthin’—nuthin’ but a powerful onlucky wanin’ moon, a-showin’ how the time’s a-wastin’. Ye hustle yer bones else I’ll drap ye down thar an’ then ye’ll find out what’s walked on the water.”
Skimpy said nothing; he heartily wished he was on the top of Keedon Bluffs once more. Their steps dislodged now and then a bit of stone from the rock that fell with a ringing sound against the face of the Bluffs into the river. Sometimes clods dropped with a muffled thud; every moment the moon grew brighter. There were no more stoppages on the way. Binwell urged the boy on whenever he would pause for breath, and it was not long before they were near the gaping cavities that looked grewsome and uninviting enough as Skimpy approached. He cast one despairing glance up at the face of the cliffs—it seemed that he could never again stand on the summit, so long, so toilsome was the way. He might have thought it short enough with some hearty comrade. For Binwell’s grasp was savage now on the boy’s arm; he cursed Skimpy under his breath whenever a step faltered. He no longer cared to be smooth, to propitiate. “He’d take me by the scruff o’ the neck, an’ pitch me into the ruver ef I didn’t do his bid now, bein’ ez I can’t holp myself,” thought Skimpy, appalled.
A pity that a boy cannot inherit his father’s experience—but must learn wisdom as it were under the lash!
Very black indeed the first of the cavities was as he passed; he hardly dared look within the embrasure-like place; no grim muzzle of a gun he beheld, no bursting shell flung forth; only a bat’s soft, noiseless wings striking him in the face as he climbed by on the ledge below. The second hollow was passed too, and now for the third. Binwell stopped the boy, and began to rearrange the cords beneath his arms. “Confound ye,” he said, his fingers trembling over the knots as he lifted his eyes reproachfully to the boy’s face, “ye hev got me plumb upset with yer fool talk—I ’lowed jes’ now I hearn leetle Rosamondy a-callin’ me.”
The rocks were vibrating softly—but could the echoes of Keedon Bluffs repeat the fancy of a sound!
Skimpy stretched his arm into the cavity as far as it might go, half expecting it to be snatched by the claw of a witch; but no—his empty palm closed only on the clammy air.
“Up with ye!” said Jerry impatiently.
One moment—and there were the duskily purple mountains, the gray obscurity of the misty intervals, the lustrous darkness of the river, the fair sky, and the reigning moon; then the vault-like blackness of the hollow.
The boy scuffled along it for a few moments, “snakin’ it,” he called the process, and feeling like so much pith in the bark. Binwell still paid out the cord as Skimpy crept further and further, and then—
What was the matter with the rocks! Endowed with Rosamond’s voice they called him again and again, with dulcet treble iteration that was like the fine vibrations of a stringed instrument all in tune. He listened, paling a little; it was no fancy; he was discovered. He stood his ground for the nonce. What affinity for harm and wrong! The coward might be brave for a space.
Another voice; he jerked nervously at the cord on Skimpy’s arm. It was Abner’s voice; he was on the summit of the Bluffs. He too was calling aloud:
“Kem up, Jerry, ’tain’t no use. Kem up.”
Jerry made no answer; he muttered only to himself, “Ye’ll fall off’n the aidge o’ that Bluff unbeknown ter yerse’f, ole mole!”
Abner began anew and all the echoes were pleading and insistent. “Kem up, Jerry! Ye’ll be deesgraced fur life, and hyar’s leetle Rosamondy a-waitin’ fur ye!”
Jerry was standing breathless, for Skimpy within was suddenly motionless. Then the cord grew slack in his hand, for the boy was coming out backward.
Binwell gave no heed to the commotion on the summit. A heavy, clanking metallic sound had caught his ear—it was the money-box of the Squire which the boy was dragging out, every moment coming nearer to that clutching, quivering hand.
Ah, Rosamond, calling in vain! Give it up, old soldier! No battle-cry of honor can rally comrades like this. But they pressed perilously close to the edge of the cliff—the blind man and the little child—beginning to sob together with dreary helplessness and futility, and casting their hopeless entreaties upon the night air, the echoes joining their pleas with wild insistence, and the forest silence holding its breath that no wistful word might be lost.
And thus others found them, shadowy figures as stealthily approaching as if the blind man could see, and the confiding little child wonder;—two, three, four, five figures pausing on the summit of the cliff, watching in intensest excitement the man on the ledge, and, slowly emerging from the cavity, dragging after him an iron box twelve inches square perhaps and weighty to handle, a boy, slight, agile, unmistakable.
Skimpy, covered with dust, choking, out of breath, confused by the sound of voices on the summit and the clamor of the echoes, hardly knew how it was that he should hear in the medley the familiar tones of his father calling on Heaven to pity him, for his son was a thief! He heard too the voice of the child and the blind soldier’s entreaties. And then the sharp tones of the constable rang out—“Surrender thar—or I fire!” His senses reeled as Binwell, catching the box from his hands, turned and with quick leaps like a fox’s clambered on down the ledges. The cord was still about Skimpy’s shoulders; with a sharp twist he came to his knees in great pain; then the end of the rope swung slack below, and he knew that Binwell had just cut it to liberate himself—a great splash in the river told that he had taken to the water and the constable’s bullet whizzed by the Bluffs a second too late.
“He’ll hev ter gin up the box time I light out arter him,” cried the constable; “I’ll meet up with him by the ruver-bank. He can’t run fur with a heavy box full o’ gold an’ silver.”
There was no use in keeping the secret longer.
“It’s full o’ sand!” cried the blind man with dreary contempt in the fact. “The Squair kerried it full o’ sand whenst he buried it—jes’ fur a blind. He knowed Jerry s’picioned he hed money an’ he never trested him. Jerry kep’ watch, an’ I clomb the Bluffs, an’ hid the box. Whar the Squair an’ me actially hid the money war in a hollow o’ one o’ the logs o’ his house, an’ thar’s whar the money war kep’ till the e-end o’ the war. The heirs knowed it all the time. Write ter Arkansas an’ ax the one ez be livin’ thar.”
A relish was added to the excitement which the events produced throughout the Cove next day by the gossips’ speculations on Binwell’s disappointment—how he must have looked, what he must have said, when he felt sufficiently safe to open the box and found it full of sand. For he made good his escape, the pursuit being given over instantly upon the discovery that he had stolen nothing worth having. The constable contented himself with declaring that he should never again come within the district save to be ushered into the county jail. The neighborhood cronies congregated at the store and talked the matter over, each having some instance of Binwell’s duplicity to relate. All were willing enough to credit Peter Sawyer’s account of how Skimpy had been deluded into assisting Binwell’s scheme by the pretense that there were only papers hidden in the box which he had a right to destroy. Notwithstanding the fact that no suspicion rested upon him, Skimpy was not for a long time so blithe a lad as before he climbed down Keedon Bluffs. And he is ready now to believe that his father learned a good many things in those years of seniority which are still unknown to him, and he has some respect for experience. It is not necessary to scald him now in order to convince him that boiling water is—as it is said to be—hot.
The blind man’s story was amply confirmed by a letter from the surviving heir who had been told by his father of the hoax of the hidden box, and who had always relished its mystery, since it had served its purpose and had diverted plunder and search from the hoard concealed in the wall.
At Hiram Guyther’s cabin, however, the gossip had no zest. For the first time a deep gloom had fallen on the blind soldier’s face as he sat in his enforced inactivity, a-wasting his life away in the chimney corner. His gray hair hardly seemed so incongruous now, for an ashen furrowed pallid anxiety had replaced the florid tints of cheek and brow. Sometimes he would rise from his chair and stride back and forth the length of the room; now and again a deep sigh would burst from him.
“I wouldn’t mind it, Ab,” Mrs. Guyther would say in her comforting soft drawl. “Ye done all ye could—more ’n enny other man would, ’flicted with blindness. Fairly makes me shiver whenst I ’member ye an’ Rosamondy walkin’ along them cliffs in the dead o’ night like ye done.”
“She’ll never be able ter live through it when she finds out ’bout her dad; she’s a gal ez be a-goin’ ter hev a heap o’ feelin’s,” he would groan, with prescient grief for the gay Rosamond’s future woes. “It’ll plumb kill her ter know she don’t kem o’ honest folks. Ef it don’t—it’s wuss yit; fur it’ll break her sperit, an’ that’s like livin’ along ’thout a soul; sorter like walkin’ in yer sleep.”
And even Ike’s mother could say naught to this.
Only on aunt Jemima’s countenance a grim satisfaction began to dawn. She was not an optimist; nevertheless she contrived to extract a drop of honey from all this wormwood.
“It’s all fur the bes’—I’ve hearn that preached all my days. Ev’y body knowed ennyhow ez he war mean enough fur ennything—ter steal, ef ’casion riz. An’ he war her dad; couldn’t git roun’ that! All’s fur the bes’! Ef he hed hev stayed he mought hev tuk a notion ter kerry Rosamondy away from hyar. Now he don’t dare ter show his nose hyar ag’in. An’ we hev got Rosamondy safe an’ sure fur good an’ all.”
So she knitted on with a stern endorsement of the course of events expressed in her firmly-set lips and the decisive click of her needles.
Even this view did not mitigate Abner’s grief, and he sorrowed on for Rosamondy’s sake.
The secret of Keedon Bluffs once discovered was spread far and wide. The news, crossing the ranges, penetrated other coves, and was talked of round many a stranger’s hearth. Even to Persimmon Cove, where Jerry Binwell had married, the story came, albeit tardily. It was told first there by the sheriff, who had chanced to be called to that remote and secluded spot in pursuit of some evil doer hiding in the mountains, and he gave to the constable, as he passed through Tanglefoot Cove on his way to the county town, sundry items, gathered during his stay in Persimmon Cove, which that functionary felt it was his duty to communicate to the Guythers.
It was a widow whom Jerry Binwell had married in Persimmon Cove—a young woman with one child; and when he left the place after her death, he took his stepdaughter with him; some people said his motive was to spite her grandmother, with whom he had quarreled, and who had sought to claim her; others said that it was because the little Rosamond contrived to keep a strong hold on the heart of every creature that came near her, and had even won upon Jerry Binwell. Certain it was that old Mrs. Peters, her grandmother, had heard with great delight the tidings of Rosamond’s whereabouts, and the sheriff had promised her to acquaint with the facts the family with whom the child lived.
Every member of the household felt stunned as by a blow when the constable had left them to their meditations. Even Rosamond, with all her merry arts, could not win a smile from the grave and troubled faces grouped about the fire, and she desisted at last; she leaned her head, with its floating lengths of golden hair, against the brown logs of the wall, and looked wistfully at them all with a contemplative finger in her pink mouth.
“She hev ter go!” said the upright Hiram Guyther with a sigh, “she ain’t ourn ter keep.”
“We hev ter gin her up,” groaned the blind man.
Mrs. Guyther looked wistfully at her with moist eyes, and dropped a half-dozen stitches in her knitting.
And aunt Jemima suddenly threw her blue-checked cotton apron over her head, and burst into a tumult of passionate tears. “I wisht,” she exclaimed—wicked old soul!—“thar warn’t no sech thing ez right an’ wrong! But I don’t keer fur right. An’ I don’t keer fur wrong. They shan’t take my child away from hyar.”
Although it wrung their hearts they decided to relinquish their household treasure. But they temporized as well as their scanty tact would enable them. A message was sent to old Mrs. Peters, coupled with an invitation to come and make them a visit. And thus they eked out the weeks.
One day—a day of doom it seemed to them—there rode up to the door a small wizened old woman, sharp-eyed, with a high voice and a keen tongue; she was riding a white mare with a colt at her heels. She scarcely seemed perturbed by Rosamond’s reluctance to recognize her. The alert eyes took in first with an amazed stare the child’s cleanly and whole attire, her delicately tended flowing hair, her fine, full, glowing look of health; then with more furtive glances she expended what capacity for astonishment remained to her on the scoured puncheon floor, the neat women and men, the loom, with a great roll of woven cloth of many yards hanging to it; the evidences of a carefully adjusted domestic routine, of thrift and decorum and moral worth; the cooking and quality of the meal presently set forth on the table. She had not lived so long in this world to be unable to recognize sterling people when she met them.
They all talked on indifferent topics for a time. But presently she broke forth.
“I dunno ez I oughter up an’ remark it so flat-footed—but I never expected ter find Jerry Binwell’s friends sech ez you-uns. I wouldn’t hev rid my mare’s back sore ef I hed. I dunno ez I’d hev kem at all.”
“Waal,” said Hiram Guyther, “I reckon ’twar leetle Rosamondy ez jes’ tangled herself up in our heart-strings—an’ that made us put up with Jerry. We ’lowed he war her dad.”
“I’m powerful glad he ain’t!” said Abner.
“I say!” cried the sharp little woman scornfully. “Her dad war a mighty solid, ’sponsible, ’spectable young man, an’ good-lookin’ till you couldn’t rest! He’d hev lived till he war eighty ef his gun hedn’t bust an’ killed him. I dunno what ailed Em’line ter marry sech ez Jerry arterward. He made way with everything her fust husband lef’ her, an’ mighty nigh all I hed, ’mongst his evil frien’s an’ drinkin’. But he always war mighty good ter Rosamondy. I’ll gin him that credit.”
“Ennybody would be good ter sech a child ez Rosamondy!” cried aunt Jemima.
“Waal, we war all frien’s ter Jerry, ez fur ez he’d let us be, an’ ter the leetle gal,” said Hiram, solidly, “an’ I hope, mum, ye’ll let her spen’ cornsider’ble of her time with us.”
This was the cautious way it began, although it fired aunt Jemima’s blood to hear the permission humbly craved instead of claimed as a right.
But Mrs. Peters smilingly accorded it. She herself had entered upon a long visit; whenever she made a motion to return, the family so vehemently demurred that she relented, only stipulating that when she should depart aunt Jemima should accompany her. She took a sad pleasure in the talk of the blind artillery-man, her own son, who was killed in battle, having been in the same command. Abner remembered him after a time, and told her many things of his army life which she had not before known. She had a sort of maternal tenderness for his comrade, and loved to see how Rosamond had blossomed in the waste places of his life.
“I don’t think ’twould be right ter take her away from Ab,” she said, when the visit was at last at an end. And so only the two old women went to Persimmon Cove; together they came back after a time. And thus for years, the old cronies, cherishing so strong a bond of friendship, have vibrated on visits to and fro. But whoever comes or goes Rosamond has never yet left the hearthstone made brighter by her presence.
And when she and the blind artillery-man walk hand in hand down the shady road to Keedon Bluffs, she always cries out gleefully when she sees the great cannon-ball arrested midway on the ledge, and he tells her again how it must have burst forth from the muzzle of the gun far away, and, sounding its shrill battle cry, whirled through the air, describing a great arc against the sky, dropping at last, spent and futile, on the ledge there above the river.
“Sometimes,” he says, “sometimes, Rosamondy, I feels ez ef I’d like ter lay my hand on that ball ef I could git nigh it—’minds me so o’ the war times; ’twould bring ’em nigher; they seems a-slippin’ away now.”
“I hate that cannon-ball; it kem so nigh a-killin’ somebody,” says Rosamondy, “an’ I hate war times. An’ I don’t want folks ter be hurted no mo’.”
And in the deep peace of the silent mountain fastnesses and the sheltered depths of the Cove, they leave the old ball, spent and mute and harmless, lying on the ledges of Keedon Bluffs, above the reddening river, and take their way homeward through the sunset glow.