The old man nodded his head with deliberative gravity until she recommenced, when he relapsed into motionless attention.
“An’ Hil’ry fought in a heap o’ battles, and got shot a time or two, an’ war laid up in the horspital, an’ kem out cured, an’ fought agin. An’ one day he got inter a quar’l with one o’ his bes’ frien’s. They war jes’ funnin’ afust, an’ Hil’ry hit him harder’n he liked, an’ he got mad, an’ bein’ a horseback he kicked Hil’ry. An’ Hil’ry jumped on him ez suddint ez a painter, ter pull him out’n his saddle an’ drub him. Hil’ry never drawed no shootin’ irons nor nuthin’, an’ warn’t expectin’ ter hurt him serious. But this hyar Jack Bixby he war full o’ liquor an’ fury; he started his horse a-gallopin’, an’ ez Hil’ry hung on ter the saddle he drawed his bowie-knife an’ slashed Hil’ry’s arm ez war holdin’ ter him agin an’ agin, till they war both soakin’ in blood, an’ at last Hil’ry drapped. An’ the arm fevered, an’ the surgeon tuk it off. An’ so Hil’ry hed his discharge gin him, sence the Confeds hed no mo’ use fur him. An’ he walked home, two hunderd mile, he say.”
During this recital the young mountaineer gave no indication of its effect upon him, and offered no word of correction to conform the details to the facts. His mother had so often told his story with the negligence of the domestic narrator, that little by little it had become thus distorted, and he knew from experience that should he interfere to alter a phase, another as far from reality would be presently substituted, for Mrs. Knox cared little how the event had been precipitated, or for aught except that his arm was gone, that he was well, and that she had him at home again, from which he should no more wander, for she had endeavored to utilize the misfortune to reinforce her authority, and illustrate her favorite dogma of the infallibility of her judgment.
Her words must have renewed bitter reminiscences, but his face was impassive, and not a muscle stirred as he silently watched the ranks of the migrating birds fade into the furthest distance.
“An’ now Hil’ry thinks it air cur’ous ez I ain’t sorrowin’ ’bout’n his arm,” she continued. “Naw, sir! I’m glad he escaped alive an’ that he can’t fight no mo’—not ef the war lasts twenty year, an’ it ’pears like it air powerful persistin’.”
It still raged, but to the denizens of this sequestered district there seemed little menace in its fury. They could hear but an occasional rumor, like the distant rumbling of thunder, and discern, as it were, a vague, transient glimmer as token of the fierce and scathing lightnings far away desolating and destroying all the world beyond these limits of peace.
Episodes of civilized warfare were little dreaded by the few inhabitants of the mountains, the old men, the women and the children, so dominated were they by the terrors of vagrant bands of stragglers and marauders, classed under the generic name of bushwhackers, repudiated by both armies, and given over to the plunder of non-combatants of both factions in this region of divided allegiance. At irregular intervals they infested this neighborhood, foraging where they listed, and housing themselves in the old hotel.
Looking across the gorge from where the three sat in the cabin porch, there was visible on the opposite heights a great white frame building, many-windowed and with wide piazzas. There were sulphur springs hard by, and before the war the place was famous as a health resort. Now it was a melancholy spectacle—silent, tenantless, vacant—infinitely lonely in the vast wilderness. Some of the doors, wrenched from their hinges, had served the raiders for fuel. The glass had been wantonly broken in many of the windows by the jocose thrusts of a saber. The grassy square within surrounded by the buildings was overgrown with weeds, and here lizards basked, and in their season wild things nested. There was never a suggestion of the gayeties of the past—only in the deserted old ball-room when a slant of sunshine would fall athwart the dusty floor, a bluebottle might airily zigzag in the errant gleam, or when the moon was bright on the long piazzas a cobweb, woven dense, would flaunt out between the equidistant shadows of the columns like the flutter of a white dress. The place had a weird aspect, and was reputed haunted. The simple mountaineers did not venture within it, and the ghosts had it much of the time to themselves.
The obscurities of twilight were presently enfolded about it. The white walls rose, vaguely glimmering, against the pine forests in the background, and above the shadowy abysses which it overlooked.
The old man was gazing meditatively at it as he said, reprehensively, “’Pears like ter me, Hil’ry, ez ye oughter be thankful ye warn’t killed utterly—ye oughter be thankful it air no wuss.”
“Hil’ry ain’t thankful fur haffen o’ nuthin’.” Mrs. Knox interposed. “’Twar jes’ las’ night he looked like su’thin’ in a trap. He walked the floor till nigh day—till I jes’ tuk heart o’ grace an’ told him ez his dad bed laid them puncheons ter last, an’ not to be walked on till they were wore thinner’n a clapboard in one night. An’ yit he air alive an’ hearty, an’ I hev got my son agin. An’ I sets ez much store by him with one arm ez two.”
And indeed she looked cheerfully about the dusky landscape as she rose, rolling the sock on her needles and thrusting them into the ball of yarn. Old Jonas Scruggs hesitated when she told him alluringly that she had a “mighty nice ash cake kivered on the h’a’th,” but he said that his daughter-in-law, Jerusha, would be expecting him, and he could in no wise bide to supper. And finally he started homeward a little wistful, but serene in the consciousness of having obeyed the behests of Jerusha, who in these hard times had grown sensitive about his habit of taking meals with his friends. “As ef,” she argued, “I fed ye on half rations at home.”
Hilary rose at last from the doorstep, and turning slowly to go within, his absent glance swept the night-shadowed scene. He paused suddenly, and his heart seemed beating in his throat.
A point of red light had sprung up in the vague glooms. A will-o’-the-wisp?—some wavering “ghost’s candle” to light him to his grave. With his accurate knowledge of the locality he sought to place it. The distant gleam seemed to shine from a window of the old hotel, and this bespoke the arrival of rude occupants. He heard a wild halloo, a snatch of song perhaps—or was it fancy? And were the iterative echoes in the gorge the fancy of the stern old crags?
For the first time since he returned, maimed and helpless, and a non-combatant, were the lawless marauders quartered at the old hotel.
He stood for a while gazing at it with dilated eyes. Then he silently stepped within the cabin and barred the door with his uncertain and awkward left hand.
The cheerful interior of the house was all aglow. The fire had been mended, and yellow flames were undulating about the logs with many a gleaming line of grace. Blue and purple and scarlet flashes they showed in fugitive iridescence. They illumined his face, and his mother noted its pallor—the deep pallor which he had brought from the hospital.
“Ye hev got yer fancies ag’in,” she cried. Then with anxious curiosity, “Whar be yer right hand now, Hil’ry?”
She alluded to that cruel hallucination of sensation in an amputated arm.
“Whar it oughter be,” he groaned; “on the trigger o’ my carbine.”
His grief was not only that his arm was gone. It was to recognize the fact that his heart no longer beat exultantly at the mere prospect of conflict. And he was anguished with the poignant despair of a helpless man who has once been foremost in the fight.
The next day he was moody and morose, and brooded silently over the fire. The doors were closed, for winter had come at last. The hoar frost whitened the great gaunt limbs of the trees, and lay in every curled dead leaf on the ground, and followed the zigzag lines of the fence, and embossed the fodder stack and the ash-hopper and the roofs with fantastic incongruities in silver tracery.
The sun did not shine, the clouds dropped lower and lower still, a wind sprung up, and presently the snow was flying.
The widow esteemed this as in the nature of a special providence, since the dizzying whirl of white flakes veiled the little cabin and its humble surroundings from the observation of the free-booting tenants of the old hotel across the gorge. “It air powerful selfish, I know, ter hope the bushwhackers will forage on somebody else’s poultry an’ sech, but somehows my own chickens seem nigher kin ter me than other folkses’ be. I never see no sech ten-toed chickens ez mine nowhar.”
Reflecting further upon the peculiar merits of these chickens, ten-toed, being Dorking, reinforced by the claims of consanguinity, she presently evolved as a precautionary measure a scheme of concealing them in the “roof-room” of the cabin. And from time to time, as the silent day wore on, like the blast of a bugle the crow of a certain irrepressible young rooster demonstrated how precarious was his retirement in the loft.
“Hear the insurance o’ that thar fowel!” she would exclaim in exasperation. “S’pose’n the bushwhackers war hyar now, axin fur poultry, an’ I war a-tellin’ ’em, ez smilin’ an’ mealy-mouthed ez I could, that we hain’t got no fowels! That thar reckless critter would be in the fryin’-pan ’fore night. They’ll l’arn ye ter hold yer jaw, I’ll be bound!”
But the bushwhackers did not come, and the next day the veil of the falling snow still interposed, and the familiar mountains near at hand, and the long reaches of the unexplored perspective were all obscured; the drifts deepened, and the fence seemed dwarfed half covered as it was, and the boles of the trees hard by were burlier, bereft of their accustomed height. The storm ceased late one afternoon; over the white earth was a somber gray sky, but all along the horizon above the snowy summits of the western mountains a slender scarlet line betokened a fair morrow.
Hilary, in the weariness of inaction, had taken note of the weather, and with his hat drawn down over his brow he strolled out to the verge of the precipice.
Overlooking the familiar landscape, he detected an unaccustomed smoke visible a mile or more down the narrow valley. Although but a tiny, hazy curl in the distance, it did not escape the keen eyes of the mountaineer. He could not distinguish tents against the snow, but the location suggested a camp.
The bushwhackers still lingered at the old hotel across the gorge. He could already see in the gathering dusk the firelight glancing fitfully against the window. He wondered if it were visible as far as the camp in the valley.
He stood for a long time, gazing across the snowy steeps at the desolate old building, with the heavy pine forests about it and the crags below—their dark faces seamed with white lines wherever a drift had lodged in a cleft or the interlacing tangles of icy vines might cling. In the pallid dreariness of the landscape and the gray dimness of the hovering night the lighted window blazed with the lambent splendors of some great yellow topaz. His uncontrolled fancy was trespassing upon the scene within. His heart was suddenly all a-throb with keen pain. His idle, vague imaginings of the stalwart horsemen and what they were now doing had revived within him that insatiate longing for the martial life which he had loved, that ineffable grief for the opportunity of brave deeds of value which he felt he had lost.
The drill had taught him the mastery of his muscles, but those more potent forces, his impulses, had known no discipline. A wild inconsequence now possessed him. He took no heed of reason, of prudence. He was dominated by the desire to look in upon the bushwhackers from without—they would never know—undiscovered, unimagined, like some vague and vagrant specter that might wander forlorn in the labyrinthine old house.
With an alert step he turned and strode away into the little cabin. It was very cheerful around the hearth, and the first words he heard reminded him of the season.
His younger brother, a robust lad of thirteen, was drawling reminiscences of other and happier Christmas-tides.
“Sech poppin’ o’ guns ez we-uns used ter hev!” said the tow-headed boy, listlessly swinging his heels against the rungs of the chair.
“The Lord knows thar’s enough poppin’ of guns now!” said his mother. She stooped to insert a knife under the baking hoe-cake for the purpose of turning it, which she did with a certain deft and agile flap, difficult of acquirement and impossible to the uninitiated.
“I ’members,” she added, vivaciously, “we-uns used ter always hev a hollow log charged with powder an’ tech it off fur the Chris’mus. It sounded like thunder—like the cannon the folks hev got nowadays.”
“An’ hawg-killin’ times kem about the Chris’mus,” said the boy, sustaining his part in the fugue.
“Folks had hawgs ter kill in them days,” was his mother’s melancholy rejoinder as she meditated on the contrast of the pinched penury of the present with the peace and plenty of the past when there was no war nor rumor of war.
“Ef ye git a hawg’s bladder an’ blow it up an’ tie the eend right tight an’ stomp on it suddint it will crack ez loud!” said the noise-loving boy. “Peas air good ter rattle in ’em, too,” he added, with a wistful smile, dwelling on the clamors of his happy past.
“Waal, folks ez hed good sense seen more enjyement in eatin’ spare-ribs an’ souse an’ sech like hawg-meat than in stomping on hawgs’ bladders. I hev never favored hawg-killin’ times jes’ ter gin a noisy boy the means ter keep Christian folks an’ church members a-jumpin’ out’n thar skins with suddint skeer all the Chris’mus.”
This was said with the severity of a personality, but the boy’s face distended as he listened.
Suddenly his eyes brightened with excitement. “Hil’ry,” he cried, joyously, “be you-uns a-goin’ ter fire that thar pistol off fur the Chris’mus?”
Mrs. Knox rose from her kneeling posture on the hearth and stared blankly at Hilary.
He had come within the light of the fire. His eyes were blazing, his pale cheeks flushed, his long, lank figure was tense with energy. The weapon in his hand glittered as he held it at arm’s length.
“Bein’ ez it air ready loaded I reckon mebbe I ain’t so awk’ard yit but I could make out ter fire it ef I war cornered,” he muttered, as if to himself. “Leastwise, I’ll take it along fur company.”
“Air ye goin’ ter fire it ’kase this be Chris’mus eve?” she asked in doubt.
He glanced absently at her and said not a word.
The next moment he had sprung out of the door and they heard his step crunching through the frozen crust of snow as he strode away.
There were rifts in the clouds and the moon looked out. The white, untrodden road lay, a glittering avenue, far along the solitudes of the dense and leafless forests. Sometimes belts of vapor shimmered before him, and as he went he saw above them the distant gables of the old hotel rising starkly against the chill sky. In view presently in the white moonlight were the long piazzas of the shattered old building, the shadows of the many tall pillars distinct upon the floor. He heard the sound of the sentry’s tread, and down the vista between the columns and the shadowy colonnade he saw the soldierly figure pacing slowly to and fro.
He had not reckoned on this precaution on the part of the bushwhackers. But the rambling old building, in every nook and cranny, was familiar to him. While the sentry’s back was turned, he silently crept along the piazza to an open passageway which led to the grassy square within.
The rime on the dead weeds glistened in the moonbeams; the snow lay trampled along the galleries on which opened the empty rooms; here and there, as the doors swung on their hinges, he could see through the desolate void within, the bleak landscape beyond. There were horses stabled in some of them, and in the center of the square two or three were munching their feed from the old music-stand, utilized as a manger. One of them, a handsome bay, arched his glossy neck to gaze at the intruder over the gauzy sheen of gathering vapor, his full dilated eyes with the moonlight in them. Then with a snort he went back to his corn.
Only one window was alight. There was a roaring fire within, and the ruddy glow danced on the empty walls and on the hilarious, bearded faces grouped about the hearth. The men, clad in butternut jeans, smoked their pipes as they sat on logs or lounged at length on the floor. A festive canteen was a prominent adjunct of the scene, and was often replenished from a burly keg in the corner.
As Hilary approached the window he suddenly recognized a face which he had cause to remember. He had not seen this face since Jack Bixby looked furiously down from his saddle, hacking the while with his bowie-knife at his comrade’s bleeding right arm. No enemy had done this thing—Hilary’s own fast friend.
He divined readily enough that after this dastardly deed Bixby had not dared to seek to rejoin Captain Bertley’s squadron, and thus had found kindred spirits among this marauding band of bushwhackers. His face was not flushed with liquor now—twice the canteen passed Jack Bixby unheeded. His big black hat was thrust far back on his shock of red hair; he held his great red beard meditatively in one hand, while the other fluttered the pages of a letter. He slowly read aloud, in a droning voice, now and then, from the ill-spelled scrawl. He looked up sometimes laughing, and they all laughed in sympathy.
“‘Pete Blake he axed ’bout ye, an’ sent his respec’s, an’ Jerry Dunders says tell ye ‘Howdy’ fur him, though ye be fightin’ on the wrong side,’”
“Jerry,” he explained in a conversational tone, “he jined the Loyal Tennesseans over yander in White County.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder westward, and one of the men said that he had known Jerry since he was “knee-high ter a duck.”
In a strained, unnatural tone Jack Bixby laboriously read on.
“‘Little Ben prays at night fur you. He prayed some last night out’n his own head. He said he prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from all harm.’”
The man’s eyes were glistening. He laughed hurriedly, but he coughed, too, and the comrade who knew Jerry at so minute a size seemed also acquainted with little Ben, and said a “pearter young one” had never stepped. “‘He prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from all harm,’” Jack Bixby solemnly repeated as he folded the letter. And silence fell upon the group.
Hilary, strangely softened, was turning—he was quietly slipping away from the window when he became suddenly aware that there were other stealthy figures in the square, and he saw through the frosty panes the scared face of the sentry bursting into the doorway with a tardy alarm.
There was a rush from the square. Pistol shots rang out sharp on the chill air, and the one-armed man, conscious of his helpless plight, entrapped in the mêlée, fled as best he might through the familiar intricacies of the old hotel—up the stairs, through echoing halls and rooms, and down a long corridor, till he paused panting and breathless in the door of the old ball-room.
The rude, unplastered, whitewashed walls were illumined by the moonlight, for all down one side of the long apartment the windows overlooking the gorge were full of the white radiance, and in glittering squares it lay upon the floor.
He remembered suddenly that there was no other means of egress. To be found here was certain capture. As he turned to retrace his way he heard swift steps approaching. Guided by the sound of his flight one of the surprised party had followed him, lured by the hope of escape.
There was evidently a hot pursuit in the rear. Now and then the long halls reverberated with pistol shots, and a bullet buried itself in the door as Jack Bixby burst into the room. He stared aghast at his old comrade for an instant. Then as he heard the rapid footfalls, the jingle of spurs, the clamor of voices behind him, he ran to one of the windows. He drew back dismayed by the sight of the depths of the gorge below. He was caught as in a trap.
Hilary Knox could never account for the inspiration of that moment.
At right angles with the loftier main building a one-story wing jutted out, and the space within its gable roof and above its ceiling, which was on a level with the floor of the ball-room, was separated from that apartment only by a rude screen of boards.
Hilary burst one of these rough boards loose at the lower end, and held it back with the left hand spared him.
“Jump through, Jack!” he cried out to his old enemy. “Jump through the plaster o’ the ceilin’ right hyar. The counter in the bar-room down thar will break yer fall.”
Jack Bixby sprang through the dark aperture. There was a crash within as the plaster fell.
The next moment a bullet whizzed through Hilary’s hat, and the ball-room was astir with armed men; among them Hilary recognized other mountaineers, old friends and neighbors who had joined the “Loyal Tennesseans.”
“I never would hev thought ye would hev let Jack Bixby git past ye arter the way he treated ye,” one of them remarked, when the search had proved futile.
“Waal,” said Hilary, miserably, “I hain’t hed much grit nohows sence the surgeon took off my arm.”
His interlocutor looked curiously at the hole in the young fellow’s hat, pierced while he stood his ground that another man might escape. Hilary had no nice sense of discrimination. His idea of courage was the onslaught.
The others crowded about, and Hilary relished the suggestions of military comradeship that clung about them, albeit they were of the opposing faction, for they seemed so strangely cordial. Each must needs shake his hand—his awkward left hand—and he was patted on the back, and one big, bluff soul, who beamed on him with a broadly delighted smile, gave him a severe hug, such as a fatherly bear might administer.
“Hil’ry ain’t got much grit, he says,” one of them remarked with a guffaw. “He jes’ helped another feller escape whut he hed a grudge agin, while he stood ez onconsarned ez a target, an’ I shot him through the hat an’ the ball ploughed up his scalp in good fashion. Glad my aim warn’t a leetle mended.”
Hilary’s hat was gone; one of the men persisted in an exchange, and Hilary wore now a fresh new one instead of that so hastily snatched from him as a souvenir.
He thought they were all sorry for him because of the loss of his arm; yet this was strange, for many men had lost limb and life at the hands of this troop, which was of an active and bloody reputation. He could not dream they thought him a hero—these men accustomed to deeds of daring! He had no faint conception of the things they were saying of him to one another, of his gallantry and his high and noble courage in risking his life that his personal enemy might escape, when there was a chance for but one—his false friend, who had destroyed his right arm—as they mounted their horses and rode away to their camp in the valley with the prisoners they had taken.
Hilary stood listening wistfully to the jingling of their spurs and the clanking of their sabers and the regular beat of the hoofs of the galloping troop—sounds from out the familiar past, from thrilling memories, how dear!
Then as he plodded along the lonely wintry way homeward he was dismayed to reflect upon his own useless, maimed life—upon what he had suffered and what he had done.
“What ailed me ter let him off?” he exclaimed in amaze. “What ailed me ter help him git away—jes’ account o’ the word o’ a w’uthless brat. Fur me ter let him off when I hed my chance ter pay my grudge so slick!”
He paused on the jagged verge of a crag and looked absently over the vast dim landscape, bounded by the snowy ranges about the horizon. Here and there mists hovered above the valley, but the long slant of the moonbeams pervaded the scene and lingered upon its loneliness with luminous melancholy. The translucent amber sphere was sinking low in the vaguely violet sky, and already the dark summits of the westward pines showed a fibrous glimmer.
In the east a great star was quivering, most radiant, most pellucid. He gazed at it with sudden wistfulness. Christmas dawn was near—and this was the herald of redemption. So well it was for him that science had never invaded these skies! His simple faith beheld the Star of Bethlehem that the wise men saw when they fell down and worshiped. He broke from his moody regrets—ah, surely, of all the year this was the time when a child’s prayer should meet most gracious heed in heaven, should most prevail on earth! His heart was stirred with a strange and solemn thrill, and he blessed the impulse of forgiveness for the sake of a little child.
A roseate haze had gathered about the star, deepening and glowing till the sun was in the east, and the splendid Day, charged with the sanctities of commemoration, with the fulfillment of prophecy, with the promises of all futurity, came glittering over the mountains.
But the sun was a long way off, and its brilliancy made scant impression on the intense cold. Thus it was he noticed, as he came in sight of home, that, despite the icy atmosphere, the cabin door was ajar. It moved uncertainly, yet no wind stirred.
“Thar’s somebody ahint the door ez hev seen me a-comin’ an’ air waitin’ ter ketch me ‘Chris’mus Gift,’” he argued, astutely.
To forestall this he took a devious path through the brush, sprang suddenly upon the porch, thrust in his arm, and clutched the unwary party ambushed behind the door.
“Chris’mus Gift!” he shouted, as he burst into the room.
But it was Delia waiting for him, blushing and embarrassed, and seeming nearer tears than laughter. And his mother was chuckling in enjoyment of the situation.
“Now, whyn’t ye let Dely ketch you-uns Chris’mus Gift like she counted on doin’, stiddier ketchin’ her? She hain’t got nuthin’ ter gin yer fur Chris’mus Gift but herself.”
Hilary knew her presence here and the enterprise of “catching him Christmas Gift” was another overture at reconciliation, but when he said, “Waal, I’ll thank ye kindly, Dely,” she still looked at him in silence, with a timorous eye and a quivering lip.
“But, law!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, still laughing, “I needn’t set my heart on dancin’ at the weddin’. Dely ain’t no ways ter be trusted. She hev done like a Injun-giver afore now. Mebbe she’ll take herself away from ye agin.”
Delia found her voice abruptly.
“No—I won’t, nuther!” she said, sturdily.
And thus it was settled.
They made what Christmas cheer they could, and he told them of a new plan as they sat together round the fire. The women humored it as a sick fancy. They never thought to see it proved. At the school held at irregular intervals before the war he had picked up a little reading and a smattering of writing. This Christmas day he began anew. He manufactured ink of logwood that had been saved for dyeing, and the goose lent him a quill. An old blank book, thrown aside when the hotel proprietors had removed their valuables, served as paper.
As his mother had said it was not Hilary’s nature to be thankful for the half of anything; he attacked the unpromising future with that undismayed ardor that had distinguished him in those cavalry charges in which he had loved to ride. With practice his left hand became deft; before the war was over he was a fair scribe, and he often pridefully remarked that he couldn’t be flanked on spelling. Removing to one of the valley towns, seeking a sphere of wider usefulness, his mental qualities and sterling character made themselves known and his vocation gradually became assured. He was first elected register of the county of his new home, and later clerk of the circuit court. Other preferments came to him, and the world went well with him. It became broader to his view and of more gracious aspect; his leisure permitted reading and reading fostered thought. He learned that there are more potent influences than force, and he recognized as the germ of these benignities that impulse of peace and good will which he consecrated for the sake of One who became as a Little Child.
THE PANTHER
OF
JOLTON’S RIDGE
A certain wild chasm, cut deep into the very heart of a spur of the Great Smoky Mountains, is spanned by a network, which seen from above is the heavy interlacing timbers of a railroad bridge thrown across the narrow space from one great cliff to the other, but seen from the depths of the gorge below it seems merely a fantastic gossamer web fretting the blue sky.
It often trembles with other sounds than the reverberating mountain thunder and beneath other weight than the heavy fall of the mountain rain. Trains flash across it at all hours of the night and day; in the darkness the broad glare of the headlight and the flying column of pursuing sparks have all the scenic effect of some strange uncanny meteor, with the added emphasis of a thunderous roar and a sulphurous smell; in the sunshine there skims over it at intervals a cloud of white vapor and a swift black shadow.
“Sence they hev done sot up that thar bridge I hain’t seen a bar nor a deer in five mile down this hyar gorge. An’ the fish don’t rise nuther like they uster do. That thar racket skeers ’em.”
And the young hunter, leaning upon his rifle, his hands idly clasped over its muzzle, gazed with disapproving eyes after the flying harbinger of civilization as it sped across the airy structure and plunged into the deep forest that crowned the heights.
Civilization offered no recompense to the few inhabitants of the gorge for the exodus of deer and bear and fish. It passed swiftly far above them, seeming to traverse the very sky. They had no share in the world; the freighted trains brought them nothing—not even a newspaper wafted down upon the wind; the wires flashed no word to them. The picturesque situation of the two or three little log-houses scattered at long intervals down the ravine; the crystal clear flow of a narrow, deep stream—merely a silver thread as seen from the bridge above; the grand proportions of the towering cliffs, were calculated to cultivate the grace of imagination in the brakemen, leaning from their respective platforms; to suggest a variation in the Pullman conductor’s jaunty formula, “’Twould hurt our feelings pretty badly to fall over there, I fancy,” and to remind the out-looking passenger of the utter loneliness of the vast wilds penetrated by the railroad. But they left no speculations behind them. The terrible sense of the inconceivable width of the world was spared the simple-minded denizens of the woods. The clanging, crashing trains came like the mountain storms, no one knew whence, and went no one knew whither. The universe lay between the rocky walls of the ravine. Even this narrow stage had its drama.
In the depths of the chasm spanned by the bridge there stood in the shadow of one of the great cliffs a forlorn little log hut, so precariously perched on the ledgy slope that it might have seemed the nest of some strange bird rather than a human habitation. The huge natural column of the crag rose sheer and straight two hundred feet above it, but the descent from the door, though sharp and steep, was along a narrow path leading in zigzag windings amid great bowlders and knolls of scraggy earth, pushing their way out from among the stones that sought to bury them, and fragments of the cliff fallen long ago and covered with soft moss. The path appeared barely passable for man, but upon it could have been seen the imprint of a hoof, and beside the hut was a little shanty, from the rude window of which protruded a horse’s head, with so interested an expression of countenance that he looked as if he were assisting at the conversation going on out-of-doors this mild March afternoon.
“Ye could find deer, an’ bar, an’ sech, easy enough ef ye would go arter ’em,” replied the young hunter’s mother, as she sat in the doorway knitting a yarn sock. “That thar still-house up yander ter the Ridge hev skeered off the deer an’ bar fur ye worse’n the railroad hev. Ye kin git that fur an’ no furder. Ye hev done got triflin’ an’ no ’count, an’ nuthin’ else in this worl’ ails ye,—nur the deer an’ bar, nuther,” she concluded, with true maternal candor.
“It war tole ter me,” said an elderly man, who was seated in a rush-bottomed chair outside the door, and who, although a visitor, bore a lance in this domestic controversy with much freedom and spirit, “ez how ye hed done got religion up hyar ter the Baptis’ meetin’-house the last revival ez we hed. An’ I s’posed it war the truth.”
“I war convicted,” replied the young fellow, ambiguously, still leaning lazily on his rifle. He was a striking figure, remarkable for a massive proportion and muscular development, and yet not lacking the lithe, elastic curves characteristic of first youth. A dilapidated old hat crowned a shock of yellow hair, a sunburned face, far-seeing gray eyes, and an expression of impenetrable calm. His butternut suit was in consonance with the prominent ribs of his horse, the poverty-stricken aspect of the place, and the sterile soil of a forlorn turnip patch which embellished the slope to the water’s edge.
“Convicted!” exclaimed his mother, scornfully. “An’ sech goin’s-on sence! Mark never hed no religion to start with.”
“What did ye see when ye war convicted?” demanded the inquisitive guest, who spoke upon the subject of religion with the authority and asperity of an expert.
“I never seen nuthin’ much.” Mark Yates admitted the fact reluctantly.
“Then ye never hed no religion,” retorted Joel Ruggles. “I knows, ’kase I hev hed a power o’ visions. I hev viewed heaven an’ hung over hell.” He solemnly paused to accent the effect of this stupendous revelation.
There had lately come a new element into the simple life of the gorge,—a force infinitely more subtle than that potency of steam which was wont to flash across the railroad bridge; of further reaching influences than the wide divergences of the civilization it spread in its swift flight. Naught could resist this force of practical religion applied to the workings of daily life. The new preacher that at infrequent intervals visited this retired nook had wrought changes in the methods of the former incumbent, who had long ago fallen into the listless apathy of old age, and now was dead. His successor came like a whirlwind, sweeping the chaff before him—a humble man, ignorant, poor in this world’s goods, and of meager physical strength. It was in vain that the irreverent sought to bring ridicule upon him, that he was called a “skimpy saint” in reference to his low stature, “the widow’s mite,” a sly jest at the hero-worship of certain elderly relicts in his congregation, a “two-by-four text” to illustrate his slim proportions. He was armed with the strength of righteousness, and it sufficed.
It was much resented at first that he carried his spiritual supervision into the personal affairs of those of his charge, and required that they should make these conform to their outward profession. And thus old feuds must needs be patched up, old enemies forgiven, restitution made, and the kingdom set in order as behooves the domain of a Prince of Peace. The young people especially were greatly stirred, and Mark Yates, who had never hitherto thought much of such subjects, had experienced an awakening of moral resolve, and had even appeared one day at the mourners’ bench.
Thus he had once gone up to be prayed for, “convicted of sin,” as the phrase goes in those secluded regions. But the sermons were few, for the intervals were long between the visitations of the little preacher, and Mark’s conscience had not learned the art of holding forth with persistence and pertinence, which spiritual eloquence (not always welcome) is soon acquired by a receptive, sensitive temperament. Mark was cheerful, light-hearted, imaginative, adaptable. The traits of the wilder, ruder element of the district, the hardy courage, the physical prowess, the adventurous escapades appealed to his sense of the picturesque as no merit of the dull domestic boor, content with the meager agricultural routine, tamed by the endless struggle with work and unalterable poverty, could stir him. He had no interest in defying the law and shared none of the profits, but the hair-breadth escapes of certain illicit distillers hard by, their perpetual jeopardy, the ingenuity of their wily devices to evade discovery by the revenue officers and yet supply all the contiguous region, the cogency of their arguments as to the injustice of the taxation that bore so heavily upon the small manufacturer, their moral posture of resisting and outwitting oppression—all furnished abundant interest to a mind alert, capable, and otherwise unoccupied.
Not so blunt were his moral perceptions, however, that he did not secretly wince when old Joel Ruggles, after meditating silently, chewing his quid of tobacco, reverted from the detail of the supposed spiritual wonders, which in his ignorance he fancied he had seen, to the matter in hand:
“Hain’t you-uns hearn ’bout the sermon ez the preacher hev done preached agin that thar still?—he called it a den o’ ’niquity.”
“I hearn tell ’bout’n it yander ter the still,” replied Mark, calmly. “They ’lowed thar ez they hed a mind ter pull him down out’n the pulpit fur his outdaciousness, ’kase they war all thar ter the meetin’-house, an’ he seen ’em, an’ said what he said fur them ter hear.” He paused, a trifle uncomfortable at the suggestion of violence. Then reassuring himself by a moment’s reflection, he went on in an off-hand way, “I reckon they ain’t a-goin’ ter do nuthin’ agin him, but he hed better take keer how he jows at them still folks. They air a hard-mouthed generation, like the Bible says, an’ they hev laid off ter stop that thar talk o’ his’n.”
“Did ye hear ’em sayin’ what they war a-aimin’ ter do?” asked Ruggles, keenly inquisitive.
“’Tain’t fer me ter tell what I hearn whilst visitin’ in other folkses’ houses,” responded the young fellow, tartly. “But I never hearn ’em say nuthin’ ’ceptin’ they war a-goin’ ter try ter stop his talk,” he added. “I tells ye that much ’kase ye’ll be a-thinkin’ I hearn worse ef I don’t. That air all I hearn ’em say ’bout’n it. An’ I reckon they don’t mean nuthin’, but air talkin’ big whilst mad ’bout’n it. They air ’bleeged ter know thar goin’s-on ain’t fitten fur church members.”
“An’ ye a-jowin’ ’bout’n a hard-mouthed generation,” interposed his mother, indignantly. “Ye’re one of ’em yerself. Thar hain’t been a bite of wild meat in this hyar house fur a month an’ better. Mark hev’ mighty nigh tucken ter live at the still; an’ when he kin git hisself up to the p’int o’ goin’ a-huntin’, ’pears like he can’t find nuthin’ ter shoot. I hev hearn a sayin’ ez thar is a use fur every livin’ thing, an’ it ’pears ter me ez Mark’s use air mos’ly ter waste powder an’ lead.”
Mark received these sarcasms with an imperturbability which might in some degree account for their virulence and, indeed, Mrs. Yates often averred that, say what she might, she could not “move that thar boy no more’n the mounting.”
He shifted his position a trifle, still leaning, however, upon the rifle, with his clasped hands over the muzzle and his chin resting on his hands. The quiet radiance of a smile was beginning to dawn in his clear eyes as he looked at his interlocutors, and he spoke with a confidential intonation:
“The las’ meetin’ but two ez they hev hed up yander ter the church they summonsed them thar Brices ter ’count fur runnin’ of a still, an’ a-gittin’ drunk, an’ sech, an’ the Brices never come, nor tuk no notice nor nuthin’. An’ then the nex’ meetin’ they tuk an’ turned ’em out’n the church. An’ when they hearn ’bout that at the still, them Brices—the whole lay-out—war pipin’ hot ’bout’n it. Thar warn’t nare member what voted fur a-keepin’ of ’em in; an’ that stuck in ’em, too—all thar old frien’s a-goin’ agin ’em! I s’pose ’twar right ter turn ’em out,” he added, after a reflective pause, “though thar is them ez war a-votin’ agin them Brices ez hev drunk a powerful lot o’ whisky an’ sech in thar lifetime.”
“Thar will be a sight less whisky drunk about hyar ef that small-sized preacher-man kin keep up the holt he hev tuk on temperance sermons,” said Mrs. Yates a trifle triumphantly. Then with a clouding brow: “I could wish he war bigger. I ain’t faultin’ the ways o’ Providence in nowise, but it do ’pear ter me ez one David and G’liath war enough fur the tales o’ religion ’thout hevin’ our own skimpy leetle shepherd and the big Philistines of the distillers at loggerheads—whenst flat peebles from the brook would be a mighty pore dependence agin a breech-loading rifle. G’liath’s gun war more’n apt ter hev been jes’ a old muzzle-loader, fur them war the times afore the war fur the Union; but these hyar moonshiners always hev the best an’ newest shootin’-irons that Satan kin devise—not knowin’ when some o’ the raiders o’ the revenue force will kem down on ’em—an’ that makes a man keen ter be among the accepted few in the new quirks o’ firearms. A mighty small man the preacher-man ’pears ter be! If it war the will o’ Providence I could wish fur a few more pounds o’ Christian pastor, considering the size an’ weight ez hev been lavished on them distillers.”
“It air scandalous fur a church member ter be a gittin’ drunk an’ foolin’ round the still-house an’ sech,” said Joel Ruggles, “an’ ef ye hed ever hed any religion, Mark, ye’d hev knowed that ’thout hevin’ ter be told.”
“An’ it’s scandalous fur a church member to drink whisky at all,” said Mrs. Yates, sharply, knitting off her needle, and beginning another round. A woman’s ideas of reform are always radical.
Joel Ruggles did not eagerly concur in this view of the abstinence question; he said nothing in reply.
“Thar hain’t sech a mighty call ter drink whisky yander ter the still,” remarked young Yates, irrelevantly, feeling perhaps the need of a plea of defense. “It ain’t the whisky ez draws me thar. The gang air a-hangin’ round an’ a-talkin’ an’ a-laughin’ an’ a-tellin’ tales ’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech. An’ thar’s the grist mill a haffen mile an’ better through the woods.”
“Thar’s bad company at the still, an’ it’s a wild beast ez hev got a fang ez bites sharp an’ deep, an’ some day ye’ll feel it, ez sure ez ye’re a born sinner,” said Mrs. Yates, looking up solemnly at him over her spectacles. “I never see no sense in men a-drinkin’ of whisky,” she continued, after a pause, during which she counted her stitches. “The wild critters in the woods hev got more reason than ter eat an’ drink what’ll pizen ’em—but, law! it always did ’pear to me ez they war ahead in some ways of the men, what kin talk an’ hev got the hope of salvation.”
This thrust was neither parried nor returned. Joel Ruggles, discreetly silent, gazed with a preoccupied air at the swift stream flowing far below, beginning to darken with the overhanging shadows of the western crags. And Mark still leaned his chin meditatively on his hands, and his hands on the muzzle of his rifle, in an attitude so careless that an unaccustomed observer might have been afraid of seeing the piece discharged and the picturesque head blown to atoms.
Through the futility of much remonstrance his mother had lost her patience—no great loss, it might seem, for in her mildest days she had never been meek. Poverty and age, and in addition her anxiety concerning a son now grown to manhood, good and kind in disposition, but whose very amiability rendered him so lax in his judgment of the faults of others as to slacken the tension of his judgment of his own faults, and whose stancher characteristics were manifested only in an adamantine obstinacy to her persuasion—all were ill-calculated to improve her temper and render her optimistic, and she had had no training in the wider ways of life to cultivate tact and knowledge of character and methods of influencing it. Doubtless the “skimpy saint” in the enlightenment of his vocation would have approached the subject of these remonstrances in a far different spirit, for Mark was plastic to good suggestions, easily swayed, and had no real harm in him. He understood, too, the merit and grace of consistency, of being all of a piece with his true identity, with his real character, with the sterling values he most appreciated. But the quality that rendered him so susceptible to good influences—his adaptability—exposed him equally to adverse temptation. He had spoken truly when he had said that it was only the interest of the talk of the moonshiners and their friends—stories of hunting fierce animals in the mountain fastnesses, details of bloody feuds between neighboring families fought out through many years with varying vicissitudes, and old-time traditions of the vanished Indian, once the master of all the forests and rocks and rivers of these ancient wilds—and not the drinking of whisky, that allured him; far less the painful and often disgusting exhibitions of drunkenness he occasionally witnessed at the still, in which those sufficiently sober found a source of stupid mirth. Afterward it seemed to him strange to reflect on his course. True he had had but a scanty experience of life and the world, and the parson’s reading from the Holy Scriptures was his only acquaintance with what might be termed literature or learning in any form. But arguing merely from what he knew he risked much. From the pages of the Bible he had learned what the leprosy was, and what, he asked himself in later years, would he have thought of the mental balance of a man who frequented the society of a leper for the sake of transitory entertainment or mirth to be derived from his talk? In the choice stories of “bar” and “Injuns,” innocent in themselves, he must needs risk the moral contagion of this leprosy of the soul.
Nevertheless he was intent now on escaping from his mother and Joel Ruggles, since it was growing late and he knew the cronies would soon be gathered around the big copper at the still-house, and he welcomed the diversion of a change of the subject. It had fallen upon the weather—the most propitious times of plowing and planting; an earnest confirmation of the popular theory that to bring a crop potatoes and other tubers must be planted in the dark of the moon, and leguminous vegetables, peas, beans, etc., in the light of the moon. Warned by the lengthening shadows, Joel Ruggles broke from the pacific discussion of these agricultural themes, rose slowly from his chair, went within to light his pipe at the fire, and with this companion wended his way down the precipitous slope, then along the rocky banks of the stream to his own little home, half a mile or so up its rushing current.
As he went he heard Mark’s clear voice lifted in song further down the stream. He had hardly noted when the young fellow had withdrawn from the conversation. It was a mounted shadow that he saw far away among the leafy shadows of the oaks and the approaching dusk. Mark had slipped off and saddled his half-broken horse, Cockleburr, and was doubtless on his way to his boon companions at the distillery.
The old man stood still, leaning on his stick, as he silently listened to the song, the sound carrying far on the placid medium of the water and in the stillness of the evening.