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The Red Debt: Echoes from Kentucky

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Title: The Red Debt: Echoes from Kentucky

Author: Everett MacDonald


        
Release date: May 6, 2011 [eBook #36047]

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/)


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THE RED DEBT

Echoes from Kentucky

by

EVERETT MACDONALD

Illustrations from Original Drawings of William Oberhardt







G. W. Dillingham Co.
New York

_The Red Debt_

Copyright, 1916,
By G. W. Dillingham Company
All Rights Reserved

Published April, 1916

Printed in the United States of America
Linotype Composition, Electrotypes, Presswork and Binding
By the J. J. Little & Ives Company
425-435 East 24th Street
New York City
N. Y.




    WITH UNUTTERABLE LOVE I DEDICATE
            THIS VOLUME TO
              My Mother
             _THE AUTHOR_


[Illustration: "... use me as best you can for a grandfather?"]




CONTENTS


         I A Mighty Man

        II Belle-Ann Benson

       III The Traitor

        IV An Ultimatum

         V Orlick's money Spurned

        VI Upon the Altar

       VII Dedicated with his Blood

      VIII "Lessen he kills the Revenuer"

        IX Orlick works Evil

         X In Prison

        XI A Friend in Need

       XII The Stigma

      XIII Rubric Drops

       XIV "The onlyest Lutts"

        XV Buddy forces an Issue

       XVI The Murder Partners

      XVII Circuit Court

     XVIII The Graveyard Massacre

       XIX Hatfield overtakes the Traitor

        XX In the Hands of the Enemy

       XXI "Draw--now--Coward!"

      XXII The Mission School

     XXIII Belle-Ann visits Lexington

      XXIV The Guest of a Grandee

       XXV Know Ye the Truth

      XXVI Belle-Ann has a Vision

     XXVII A Grandfather

    XXVIII A Confession

      XXIX The Red Debt

       XXX The Shooting of Peter Burton

      XXXI In which Slab prophesies

     XXXII The Near Assassin

    XXXIII Belle-Ann comes back

     XXXIV The Reunion

      XXXV The Downfall of Sap McGill

     XXXVI Belle-Ann's Recanted Creed

    XXXVII The Ghost-Man

   XXXVIII The Haunted Church

     XXXIX The Flight

        XL His Rock of Ages

       XLI In which Providence takes a Hand




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


   "... use me as best you can for a grandfather?"

   "Yo' know where _they_ be"

   "He kilt my maw--he ded--an' he kilt my pap"

   "Who air th' head o' th' people--who air Cap'in heah in Moon?"

   "Hit air God's buryin' now"




THE RED DEBT




CHAPTER I

A MIGHTY MAN


No imagery can adequately picture the profound grandeur and wide wild
beauty of these Kentucky highlands. At the age when its purity was
whitest, a great moon hung midway between Southpaw peak and Moon
mountain. Its divine splendor, unalloyed with any tithe of partisanship,
laved with a mystic luster these two primeval ranges that had scowled
impenitently at each other, behind their mask of flowers and tinseled
verdure, across the lethal gulch separating them, for fifty
blood-touched, feudal years.

This wondrous effulgence purged every exposed crevice, naked rock and
open cove with its chastity. On the ground underneath the patch-quilt of
virgin petals and emerald leafage, it peopled a theatre of animated
pictures. And the coppice pooled the shadows, creating a hippodrome of
transitory caricatures, fanciful, grotesque and fearful. Each sullen
moss-hooded boulder flung its distorted, exaggerated image down and
fixed a creeping mummy hard by.

Still another white beacon leaned over the hills where, like a stellar
flambeau, the lead-star trembled and sputtered, kindled just on the apex
of Henhawk's knob. The chasm that furrowed between and, topographically,
held these two warring communities apart, sunk its rock-lined bed sheer
two hundred feet below. Through this sinuous adamantine artery the head
waters of Hellsfork dashed in rampant flight, beating themselves into a
madness against a troup of gigantic, orange-tinctured boulders polished
glassy by the torrents Nature had unloosed at the beginning of time.

The onrushing wavelets leaped like furious creatures at these menacing
things which evermore preyed upon their foaming, impotent wrath; shaping
crystal goblets that bubbled over and burst, and flung showers of
magical frothy flowers aloft. From across the silvery expanse of
spectral mist that overhung the mountains, near and afar, a hundred
voices of the wilderness night were calling.

That this barnacle of blood-lust should leech itself upon the fair face
of a modern civilization; that in this nineteen hundred and twelve epoch
of obeisant civism, hedged about with emollient Christian culture--such
a vast stratum of malignant strife should coil here, hidden amidst a
congress of Nature's sublime artistry, is an irony at once awesome and
hopelessly insoluble. Nevertheless, immured upon natural ramifications
on the shoulder of Moon mountain, old Cap Lutts, a strategist and
mountain despot of kingly renown, dominated as the head of an implacable
dynasty that boded ill to inimical invaders; be it agents of the
government or spies of the shaggy Southpaw clan where Sap McGill, who
had stepped into his father's war shoes at the end of their last fatal
encounter with Cap Lutts, now marshalled his horde of bush-whackers,
bent upon the speedy annihilation of the Lutts folk, kith and kin.

Supported on a platform-like plot projecting from the hip of Moon
mountain, the domicile of old Lutts stood out in the moonlight, traced
in silver brocade against a somber ribbon of scrub timber that girded
the waist of the mountain.

From the Lutts abode the eye traveled for miles along the gorge to the
right. To the left the chasm cut deeper into the hills, until it ended
in the valley where Boon Creek and Hellsfork intersected; where the
paw-paws and the ferns, the weeping willows and the familiar, unnamed
flowers were luxuriant.

Straight ahead, traversing the dry bed of a blind gulch, a train of
pigmy peaks, left dun and naked by a river dead a thousand years, rose
up and bared their serried spurs like hound's teeth.

On the opposite side of Hellsfork, lifted the stupendous Southpaw
range--the stronghold of the enemy--rearing its savage peaks higher and
higher, piling upward and onward until they pierced the myriad stars;
then tumbled downward into the russet realms of lilac mist.

Beyond the Lutts cabin and towering above it, a single monster boulder
jutted outward from the perpendicular wall of granite and hung
perilously over sheer space. This freakish rock, known as Eagle Crown,
looked like a ragged punctuation pause in a folk-lore story; a relic
tossed on high by some legendary, boastful giant.

The wonder was how Cap Lutts gained its forbidding lofty platform, for
surely there was no visible means of ascent. Howbeit, Eagle Crown had
been the old man's retreat for sixty-odd years. This imperishable shelf
of granite offered him sanctuary when travail and sorrow, that weighted
his life, pressed hard upon him. There he had spent his moody hours
since boyhood. There his father and his great-grandfather had gone to be
alone. And there to-night, high up and alone, his majestic form was
silhouetted plainly against the sky.

A mighty man, this Lutts. At seventy-six he stood six feet seven
inches--straight as an arrow; a seasoned ball-bearing pyramid of big
bones, mounted with iron-fibered muscles; and a drop of chilled steel
for a fighting heart. In the premises of peace, this same heart swelled
up to proportions of compassion and generosity that named him father of
all the community north of Hellsfork--a man who never failed his people;
one to whom they hurried with their woes when they needed material help,
succor, sympathy and protection.

From this height, the old man fondly turned his eyes downward toward the
clearing that now held his sacred treasure--a log church. There, high up
toward heaven, in the profundity of his loneness, only God knew this
somber, silent man's thoughts--this feud-hunted, law-hounded man whose
soul brimmed with his own religion; whose being was wrapped about with
that which he took for the right; whose heart spurned all that he
thought wrong.

His so-called bandit-spirit was insulated with the convictions of his
own peculiar faith. His every utterance and deed were tempered with the
tenets of a unique creed handed down by his mountain fore-fathers. In
his heart there murmured a runic cadence, the language of which was only
interpreted by the omnipotent, all-merciful Over-soul.

Why the menacing hand of an outer world was lifted against him was a
problem he had long since despaired of solving. Fondly now he gazed down
toward the spot where the new cedar clapboards of the meeting-house
shimmered like a disk of true gold beneath the moon's whiteness;
beckoning to him with an insistence that stirred his stoic heart to its
depths.

A tender look softened the old man's opaque mask-like features, as
fumbling in his shirt-pocket and bringing forth a worn tintype picture
of a woman, swathed in buckskin, he held it to the moon's rays and for a
full minute peered tenderly at the kindly pictured eyes and smiling
lips. Then, clasping the tintype reverently between his two mighty
hands, he leaned against the natural buttress at his back, and his great
head, crowned with its hoary white mane, was bowed down.

"To-morry--to-morry," he whispered, and he knew that the picture smiled
forgivingly and happily back to him.

With the proceeds of moonshine whiskey, backed by the brawn of heredity
and a righteous purpose, old Cap Lutts had at last realized the dream of
two lives--his own and that of his dead wife, Maw Lutts. Although
grievously late, he had now moulded this double dream into a tangible
reality; for now before him, in the center of the clearing at the
frowsy, feudal base of Moon mountain, and just where the rabid waters of
Hellsfork leaped like live, wild things in their down-grade race across
forty-odd rugged miles of Kentucky, this grizzled hillman viewed in
sober, pious exultation, the product of his log church, all but
finished.

A church is an acquisition strangely alien to this mountain-piled
country, where the strategy of family wars and illicit distilling is
religiously pursued. Nevertheless, he and Maw Lutts had dreamed in
unison for years and had longed for the culmination of this extravagant,
divine purpose.

Formerly, it had appeared to him that the propitious hour in their
furtive existence had not arrived, although daily he had clearly
foreseen it in the rising sun of the morrow. Always with the firm
intention to do, he had added postponement to delay, and another broken
promise on the creased brow of Maw Lutts and another prayer in her
sorrowing heart.

However, the belated church was finally upon the perilous premises. Then
with the poignant achings that many desirable citizens had felt before
him, the old man had gone to the orchard like a penitent truce-breaker,
where on his knees in supplicant whispers he had unfolded his tardy
atonement and laid it like a tarnished sceptre at the woman's mute,
unseeing grave-side.

Since the majority of native adults were babies, the magic name of Cap
Lutts was mouthed in every cabin on the border range. He held the novel
status where popularity was abreast with notoriety. Long since the
populace had heard of his intention to build a church. Looking across
the epitome of delay, they told themselves that this was the first
pledge the old man had ever made, which he had not kept, so now the
redeeming news of Cap Lutts' finished meeting-house and the day of
dedication had penetrated the remotest habitants of the mountains. This
intelligence had gone hither to friend and enemy, pious and wicked
alike, with the same mysterious agency and puzzling rapidity that
characterizes winged warnings of the on-coming revenuer.

Every man and woman in the district, big enough to pull a trigger, knew
that he held a certain latent stock in this meeting-house. It came like
an unknown heritage suddenly delivered. While some would,
surreptitiously, have exchanged their interest for a mustard plaster,
they knew that it was not negotiable. They lied aloud, but in their
hearts they knew that sooner or later they would follow that magnetic
spark Luttsward. They knew that they would either cross the hypnotic
threshold of that sanctuary into the halo of sacred enlightenment, or
halt without in the darkness of superstition and feudal malice and spend
their ammunition to help crush it.

There was no intermediate platform. There was no neutral grand-stand
wherein the indifferent could take refuge. The populace stood either for
or against. Even the lethargic, voteless clay-eaters sat up and took
notice like a nest of snakes in the sunshine. The relatives and friendly
factions representing the prospective congregation, did homage to Cap
Lutts and clamored to make the church a success. The enemy over in
Southpaw had already advanced the prophecy that they would take the
meeting-house. But the flapping of feudal wings did not perturb this
veteran hawk of the hills. His one apprehension was of the common enemy,
the "revenuer."

There was now but one day between the new church and its dedication. In
secret service circles, down in Frankfort, it had long been mooted that
the pet aim of Peter H. Burton was to capture old Cap Lutts.

Burton had, during his service, previously captured many members of the
Lutts faction. The commissioners were ready enough to bind them over,
but trials never carried a conviction. Burton had even juggled cases,
alternately, on venue writs, between the six Federal Courts in the
Eastern District, but the Lutts blood invariably cropped up, stealthful
and rich in sympathy, in the precincts of the petit jury room. Acquittal
followed acquittal.

But now Burton, feeling himself close upon the heels of the King of
Moonshiners, altered his procedure and, armed with a premature change of
venue to Frankfort, he hunted Lutts with a renewed zeal, keen and
pleasurable.

Indeed, the younger attaches of the office regarded Cap Lutts as an
historic myth. In jest, knowing Burton's affinity for wildcat skins,
they hinted that the Lutts in question was merely a wraith-pilot
pointing toward new skins--a favorite platitude upon which to stage
another hunting vacation. But to Chief Burton, the subject of this jest
was far removed from joking premises; mainly for the adequate reason
that he himself, like many of his predecessors, had eyed old Cap Lutts
more than once. His corporeal being had felt Lutts' lead.

Although the astute Burton had toiled a part of each season for eleven
consecutive years on the border trail of this subtle law-breaker, Lutts
had as yet never seen the county calaboose, or the barriers of a
blue-grass jail. Burton had surprised him time and again, but inventory
of these encounters always told the same trite story--the moonshiner had
simply melted into absence.

After the smoke of some of these sorties, Burton had either limped or
loped away with hopes mounting over a trail of blood. But these red
splotches never led to the man. This feud leader and distilling
chieftain of the range still reigned and the stereotyped report to
headquarters was simply dated and signed with open blanks, a form to
apprise headquarters that the officer was still alive.

Under pressure the county authorities periodically sought old Lutts. The
times when they did find him, they merely flirted mutually with the
faction and subsided harmlessly.

With the completion of the meeting-house, Cap Lutts had attained his
goal; nor had he suffered the neighboring denizens of the foothills to
raise an axe, or donate a single clapboard toward the erection of this
infantile sanctuary. It was an enshrined monument to Maw Lutts. It was a
mural hanging against Moon mountain, the place of her birth and the
scene of her death. It was her own cherished endowment to the
rifle-toting, tobacco-swallowing, snuff-chewing community. It was Maw
Lutts's and his individual, holy triumph. All Cap Lutts expected of the
people was, he told them:

"T' cum when th' ridin' pahson rid up t' ded'cate th' gawspel-house; an'
tote thar sins t' th' altar, an' donate 'em at th' cross t' be wyshed
'way with th' blood uv Calv'ry--an' keep on a comin' thet they mought be
clean an' onspotted an'--Gawd an' my gun'll damn ary hillbilly what
darst lift a han' to hender."

The church represented months of hard toil, interrupted only when Cap
Lutts fled up to the rock-ribbed pockets of the mountain or down into
some untrodden ravine to escape Burton, the revenuer. Even in such
intervals, the old man had sallied out into the night like the
crag-panther, when the moon had turned white; and climbed high, with
rifle ready and the hollow-flanked hound at his heels, to visit the
clearing and gloat in solitude beneath the trembling stars over the
progress of his sacred enterprise.

The church itself stood on "squatted" soil. Crowned with rhododendrons
and laurel blossoms, it reared its exotic head in defiant challenge to
Satan, like a single star upon the horizon of feudal gloom.

The level space had cost Lutts nothing but labor. The logs had cost him
nothing but work. With his own hands and crude appliances of the back
forests he had split, shaped and trimmed eleven thousand cedar
clapboards; but when it came to interior finish he was extravagant and
fastidious.

The white-pine tongue-and-grooved boards that he used to make the
platform and the altar, the window and door plates; and the wide, smooth
planks turned into benches, all represented cash--and cash was a rarity
in the sterile Moon mountain district. And, too, the new gold-hued bell,
which now nestled in its cotlike belfry, about to utter its virgin
exhortation across those Godless hills, cost money.

Cap Lutts had paid this money ungrudgingly, for it was his own. Had he
not, together with his son Lem, and Slab, the negro, and the two red
steers, plowed the slanting plot that hung on the hip of the mountain
and sown the grain, and tilled it, and reaped it, and carried it to the
hidden still, where he had brewed it into money?

It was Lutts's own scant, hard-earned dollars that had bought the
boards, the nails, and the bell.

True, it was not a regular church bell; but it was the largest farm bell
he could procure and it had taken the steers five hot days to go to Flat
Gap Junction and haul back the bell, and the nails, and the polished
boards and glass.




CHAPTER II

BELLE-ANN BENSON


Beneath Eagle Crown the four-room cabin reposed in a shelter of
spruce-pine, hemlock and cedar. Its plot was covered with countless
quaint flowers and its rock-hemmed path to the horse-block in front was
lined with pink wild roses and forget-me-nots. Here the creeping ivy and
honeysuckle ran wild.

Although the mound of Maw Lutts, in the scrub orchard behind the log
barn, was green again for the third time, her beloved flowers had come
back to earth each year with reassuring, tender messages for Belle-Ann
Benson, who had adopted them and had nourished and tended and cherished
them with a pathetic devotion.

Belle-Ann knew their language well. And when they died--more than at any
other season--the kindly, smiling face of old Maw Lutts followed the
girl all through the chilly fall days.

It was Belle-Ann who had folded Maw Lutts's two hands, one upon the
other, back on that terrible day. It was Belle-Ann whom the men found
after the battle, crouching in despair over the dear, still form lying
in the yard, and crying out to God for Him to make the mute lips speak
back to her.

Belle-Ann had never known her own mother, but she had found a mother in
Maw Lutts. So it was Belle-Ann who fed the martins, and encouraged the
wild birds, and the tame squirrels Maw Lutts had loved.

The Lutts family now consisted of the old man, two boys, the adopted
girl and an old negro who had fled from Lexington when a boy, in the
first days of the Rebellion, and who subsequently had found sanctuary at
the Lutts abode. He had been permitted to remain because no form of
persuasion could induce him to leave the premises, once fed, and had the
distinction of being the only negro on Hellsfork.

Belle-Ann was a daughter by proxy, since her own mother had died in her
babyhood and Maw Lutts had opened her heart and home to the child.
Belle-Ann was now some months past sixteen and her unusual physical
beauty was noted throughout the mountain community and wondered at by
the few strangers who chanced to reach the isolated cabin on Moon
mountain.

To-night the girl dropped a wooden bucket and gourd after watering the
plants, and walked briskly over the carpet of shadows, stepped out under
the radiant moon and stood gazing intently up to Eagle Crown, where she
saw the magnified outlines of Cap Lutts against the sky.

Near by a huge witch-elm butt, sawed into three steps, shaped a
horse-block. Upon the topmost step of the block she seated herself. Her
brow puckered slightly and she waited with an expectant air. Even the
pale moonlight revealed her marked loveliness.

Her form was tall for sixteen, with that subtle grace wholly
undefinable. Clinging about her head and mantling her shoulders, a mass
of natural curls clustered in riotous abundance, shimmering like
polished ebony in the moon's rays.

Her features were chiseled with a delicate, hellenic touch, and sweetly
oval. Her thin nose was straight and short and small; and her red mouth
told of unfathomable depths of emotion. Her wide, limpid eyes were like
two blue patches of early June sky.

Her sleeves were short of her dimpled elbows, and her skirt reached
scarce below her knees. Her graceful legs were bare, but her little feet
were incased in neat, cow-hide moccasins with the hair on, laced and
thonged about her round ankles.

A great measure of the girl's physical beauty had been transmitted by
her mother, who had been a gentle blue-grass woman, of noted beauty and
lineage, and who had in a fit of pique, married the picturesque trapper
of the Cumberlands and buried herself in her unloved husband's
wilderness existence.

Many pathetic tales were told of the great-hearted Tom-John Benson's
patient struggle to make his wife happy; but the most beautiful woman
the mountain people had ever seen had pined away and had gone to an
early end.

Belle-Ann's father now worked for a lumber company, down on the Big
Sandy. It was only now that he had saved sufficient money to send
Belle-Ann to the mission school at Proctor, and so fulfil his wife's
last request.

Belle-Ann had heard the news only three hours ago.

Jutt Orlick, returning from one of his mysterious, periodical visits
abroad, had stopped to say that her father had sent word that he would
come for her the following week and take her to the school at Proctor.
And Orlick, whom the girl distrusted, had not departed without the usual
flattery she always half resented.

As Belle-Ann sat on the horse-block her little heart was prey to many
emotions, and she was well-nigh reduced to tears.

Impatient to tell the tidings, she was waiting for the boys, who had
been away since early morning, and for the old man to come down from his
lofty station. From the cabin door a vague, lank shape came toward her
through the shadows.

"Yo', Slab!" she called.

"Heah me!" responded an old treble voice from the dappled path.

When Slab reached the horse-block, although he said nothing to the girl,
he took a posture that indicated pointedly that he expected something of
her; and she slipped from the horse-block and sat down on the big
grapevine family bench a few feet distant.

Here a blind hound appeared and, feeling his way slowly and uncertainly,
laid his old muzzle in the girl's lap and raised his sightless eyes to
where he knew her face must be.

Then Slab took Belle-Ann's place on the witch-elm block and produced his
beloved instrument--a cross between guitar and banjo, self-made of gut
and a gourd. Just as he had done every fair night for years, he was
ready to sing his favorite song.

He maintained vigorously that if he sat elsewhere than on the
horse-block the banjo fell bewitched and refused to answer its master's
fingers.

Tentatively, he plucked the strings; then launched abruptly into the
song he had rendered for years--a sad and stirring melody, telling the
early love-story that had been his before the days of emancipation:

    "You ask what makes this darky weep,
      Why he, like others, is not gay?
    What makes the tears roll down his cheek,
      From early morn till close of day?
    My story, darkies, you shall hear,
      For in my memory fresh it dwells,
    'Twill cause you then to drop a tear
      On the grave of my sweet Kitty Wells."

When the notes had died away Belle-Ann spoke up:

"Slab, ef pap er th' boys don't cum short now, I'll blow th' horn, I
reckon."

"No--no, honey; doan yo' blow dat horn. Yo' let dat horn blow itse'f if
it's got t' blow; but doan you blow it, honey. Yo' jist let pap
be--he'll cum heah soon. 'Sides, ain't Slab heah wif yo', honey--ain't
Slab heah?"

The old negro picked the strings with a preface to the second verse of
"Kitty Wells," his condolence being entirely lost on Belle-Ann.

As he gathered a solemn breath to begin, the disconsolate girl, sitting
on the vine-bench in the moonlight, raised a protesting hand and stopped
him.

"Slab, ef I don't blow th' horn I jest got t' cry."

Slab settled the banjo jerkily between his long, thin legs and rolled
indulgent eyes upon her.

"Now, looky heah, honey; yo' ain't gwine t' take on so, is you? Yo'
oughter be tickled inter a keniption fit, yo' ought, 'stead of actin'
up. Why, honey, jist give praise to de good Lord dat yo' at las' got de
chanst! Yo'll cum back home powerful smart an' edicated, like my missus
wus 'fore de war.

"An' when a li'le gal gits edication, she naturally gits purttier; an'
if yo' gits purttier dan yo' is now--why, honey, yo'll shore cum back er
angel! Now, doan be pesticatin'. Smile up, smile up! Gwine t' school
ain't gwine t' kill nobudy."

As Slab concluded these cheering words, he poised his banjo again and as
his lips parted the girl stopped him with a gesture.

"Slab, air thes my heart heah--right heah?" she queried, pressing a hand
upon her breast.

"Sho', honey!" Slab assured her testily, striving to disguise his own
impatience. "Now, tell me why yo' ax dat--jist tell Slab what fer yo' ax
sich er sorry question noways?"

"Slab, I 'low my heart'll burst in two when I got t' go 'way!" she
returned unsteadily, her black-fringed lids blinking bravely to keep
back the mist that would creep across the violet of her eyes.

Slab gazed at her speechless, and heaved a hopeless sigh.

Tenderly, Belle-Ann lifted the blind hound's reluctant head from her
lap, stepped nearer to the old negro, and held a profound, exacting
finger close to his face.

"Slab, will yo' promise me somethin'? I kin trust yo'-all, Slab, ef yo'
promise ag'inst the witch. Will yo' promise Belle-Ann somethin', Slab?"
urged the girl, and her sweet bell-voice fell subdued and imploring.

Slab's mouth opened slowly and he hesitated. He would have died for
Belle-Ann; but he was much opposed to dragging in the witch, because he
feared to make his sacred witch a party to any contract that carried the
slightest chance of rupture, and thereby hold him to eternal reprisal.

"Will yo' promise thes, Slab?" the girl urged solemnly.

"Air yo' sho' I kin do it, honey?" he probed, loose-lipped and with eyes
that rolled wider.

"Sho' yo' kin!"

"Ez yo' say I kin do it, me promises," he assented dubiously.

"Cross yo' heart on th' witch-block!" she demanded.

He solemnized the pledge with a gnarled and bony hand, and the girl's
eyes welled full and her throat pained.

"Slab, yo' must promise to be good to ol' Ben heah--feed em an' bed em
reg'lar, but don't give em no cracklin's. An', Slab, yo' must promise to
pick the flowers every Sabbath, jest like I alers do--yo' knows the ones
well's I do--pertic'lar th' for-get-me-nots over yon by th' grind-stone.
Yo' must pick 'em in th' mornin' early, Slab--every Sabbath--an' put 'em
on Maw Lutts's grave. Will yo' fergit?"

A deep breath relieved Slab's tenseness as he agreed effusively.

"Lord, goodness! Yo' jist leave it t' Slab, honey! He do dat ebry single
Sabbaf!"

"An', Slab, when hit gits cold an' th' leaves air gone an' th' flowers
air all daid, yo' must pick th' geraniums outer th' boxes inside an' put
'em on Maw's grave--an' when hit gits powerful cold an' snows hard an'
th' snow gits piled up on Maw's grave--would yo' care--would yo' go,
Slab, an'--an'--an'--push hit off--an'----"

Her petitions thickened, tumbled together in her aching throat, and
refused to cross her trembling lips.

She turned away quickly. At the log bench she sank slowly down with her
black head in her arm. The heavy curls clustered around her face and
caressed her neck. She sobbed in soft, whimpering outbursts.

The blind hound thrust his nose questioningly into her lap, licking her
free hand, and caught the tears from her young heart warm upon his gray
face. He whined aloud and reached for her wet cheek.

The old negro fumbled at random and did not speak.

Turning, he looked upward to where Cap Lutts sat in the flood of
moonlight on the palm of rock; as silent and motionless as the inanimate
pillar of granite under him. Slab's eyes wandered down to the trail and
he spoke hastily to the distressed girl.

"Honey, heah cum de boys!"




CHAPTER III

THE TRAITOR


Belle-Ann jumped instantly to her feet, looked, brushed her eyes with
her hand, and hastened to meet them, her curls bobbing and her bare legs
and arms gleaming in the moon's luster.

Little Bud turned off toward the cabin, but Lem's tall figure came
straight ahead.

"Lem," she cried excitedly, "I got t' go--dad sent word by Orlick. Dad's
a comin' heah t' take me t' th' mission school. Air yo' sorry, Lem?"

Lem halted as if struck. Then, recovering from the surprise, he took her
hand and they continued toward the witch-elm block. Slab had
disappeared.

"Sho', I'm sorry, Belle-Ann," Lem answered. "Yo'-all don't 'low I'd be
tickled t' lose yo', do yo'? But I 'low hit's fer th' best, an' yo' know
Maw wanted hit, too," he ended, with a touch of sadness.

"Yes, Lem," she agreed, "thet's why I'll try t' be brave, 'cause Maw
Lutts alers talked t' me 'bout my schoolin' same's she did 'bout th'
church. Lem, I do wish Maw could jest see th' new church now thet pap's
got hit finished! Hit looks jest like she said, Lem. I 'low she'd jest
cry fer gladness, wouldn't she?"

Lem nodded absently and quickly put a question that had been waiting
from the instant he heard of Orlick's visit.

"What time ded Orlick cum?"

"He cum short past sun-down," returned Belle-Ann as the two sat down on
the bench.

"Ded he parley 'bout long?"

"Jest a short spell. I wouldn't talk t' em much."

Lem stood up. He was long and lank, but broad of shoulder for a boy of
eighteen. He had a pleasing, intelligent countenance, with light,
steadfast eyes that never looked askance. He removed his wide, soft hat
and gazed up to Eagle Crown.

"Ded pap see Orlick?" he asked.

Belle-Ann shook her curls in the negative.

"Belle-Ann, ef yo' takes pertic'lar notice, every time Jutt Orlick cums
t' Moon mountain somethin' alers happens--somethin' goes wrong. 'Peers
like things starts back'ards."

"I 'low he air a hoodoo," observed Belle-Ann: "but he do look
soldierfied, don't he, Lem?" she added, with a subtle regard for
Orlick's military aspect and his bombastic airs.

Lem shot a jealous, reproachful look at the girl, turning sharply as she
rose, and pointed down to a gap in the scrub timber, which was half
lighted by the moon. They caught the fleeting shadow of a horseman
mounting the trail to the cabin.

"Hit's Orlick!" Lem announced.

The sound of metallic hoof-strokes came rapid and distinct. When the
rider had looped the spur they beheld the front of Orlick's horse coming
head on up the moon-path, his hocks now in the air. As always, Orlick
had flank-spurred his mount on the last lap, and the animal plunged,
panting, to the horse-block, and brought up stiff-legged, with
red-rimmed nostrils and distended jaws, fighting a cruel Spanish bit.

Orlick rolled out of the Mexican saddle, laughed shortly, and drawled:

"Howdy, yo'-all?" and smirked as he always did. "I hain't seen yo'-all
in a coon's age, Lem," he added cordially, though his evil eyes were
upon the girl as he extended his hand in greeting.

Lem Lutts touched the outstretched hand briefly.

Belle-Ann stood aloof with a look of suspicious admiration on her lovely
countenance.

"I hain't seen yo'-all 'bout much nuther," answered Lem, with a
contemptuous scrutiny of Orlick's brave trappings. Orlick chuckled.

"Yes--I'm gittin' over th' country a little nowadays. But, say, Lem, I
cum up to tell ye thar's a stranger down at th' cypress cut what wants
to come up. He's down yonder now a waitin'. He's got some business with
the cap'n."

Belle-Ann shrank away, shuddering.

"I rec'on hit's Burton, th' ghost-man," she muttered under her breath.

Always since that memorable day when she had knelt beside Maw Lutts'
dead body in the yard did the coming of a stranger thrill her with a
great fear--a fear that stirred the venom that already tenanted her
heart; a vivific thing, spawned at the killing of Maw Lutts. Time had
never healed this wound. Time had only nurtured its corrosive, growing
poison. Time that came to others of mankind to succor and heal, had
never assuaged Belle-Ann's heart-hurt.

Struggle as she would to forget, she only remembered that she had
struggled, and the aching grew on. It was a silent, self-contained
suffering,--a hatred for the law that sneaked into their home and dealt
death. This supernatural hulk, Burton, embodied the law. Burton, this
lupine, leering lover of blood--this killer of women.

When Orlick announced that a stranger had business with the old man, the
revenuer's ugly visage popped before the girl more vividly than ever.
That grim hated shadow of prey darted upon her tensioned senses and made
her shiver, sending a-scutter and a-scurry all the innate righteous
instincts whose home had been her heart; leaving in its void a well of
hate that congealed and turned into a live thing, that squirmed,
burrowed, and crawled to and fro in her soul; armed with a hundred claws
to goad and agonize and spread a misery through her young life. All this
warped the girl's spiritual being and imperiled the beauty of her
countenance, for at times it mingled the lettering of its presence with
the charms of her face.

Without a word, but with a significant look at Belle-Ann, Lem took the
cow-horn suspended over his shoulder by a rawhide, pointed it upward
toward the lone figure on the cliff and gave a long, sonorous blast.
Instantly the solitary figure on high moved and disappeared from view.

Belle-Ann drew apart, while the two men stood together, Orlick doing the
talking, and watched for the old man to come out into the trail.

There came a slight sound behind and, like a shadow, old Cap Lutts
stepped forth under the trees and confronted them, his polished rifle
gleaming in the moonlight, and a big, spotted hound hugging his heels.

His straight, powerful form rose to giant proportions. His very presence
pulsed keen discernment, subtle alertness, an agile, seemingly
implacable strength and aggressive tenacity.

He listened in silence as Orlick told his mission and then said quietly:

"Lem, you an' Orlick go down yonder an' lead th' party up heah ef he's
alone; if he ain't yo'-all blow the horn. An' yo', Orlick," the old man
added, with eyes that bored into Orlick's smirking face, "what air thes
I heered about your trapesin' around over yon in Southpaw?"

Orlick shifted his weight to the other foot.

"Yo'-all ain't 'lowin' to fix nothin' on Jutt Orlick--on a Orlick,
cap'n?" he cried huskily. "Where's my pap an' four brothers--where's
Hank an' Bill an' Tom Orlick, an' Tod an' old Elijah Lutts Orlick?

"Shot to pieces heah on Hellsfork, fightin' the revenuers an' th'
McGills! I kin lead yo' to their bones down yonder!" He pointed his
trooper's hat trembling in his outstretched hand.

"An' whut air I heah fer t'-night? Yo'-all ain't 'lowin' to fix nothin'
on the onlyst Orlick left, cap'n?"

Throughout this fervent defense not for one instant did the piercing,
chill eyes of old Lutts leave the boy's face.

"Orlick," he began slowly, "I hain't studyin' 'bout the past. Hit's the
time a comin'. I jest axed yo', have yo' been over in Southpaw?"

"Naw, I hain't!" declared Orlick, flushing slightly.

"Have yo' snooked with the revenuers below?"

"Not by er damn sight!"

"Leastways," observed the old man as he drew back, "I 'low yo're in bad
company, son; but ef yo' ever cross Hellsfork er I know plumb sho' thet
yo' snook with th' revenuers below, don't never 'low me t' git eyes on
ye', Orlick."

"Don't force th' old man t' lift a hand agin' yo' pint-blank, git out o'
th' mountings first. Now, yo' boys go an' fetch th' stranger party up.
Ef hit's thet infernal ghost-dog revenuer, don't skeer em off--bring em
up, quick! Ef hit's a sheriff, don't hurt his feelin's--bring em up,
cose I'm lonesome like."

Orlick fully understood the import of Cap Lutts' parting words, and,
casting a covert look toward the cabin where he knew Belle-Ann lingered
in the shadows, he swaggered along after Lem, leading his horse. And the
while a bold design shaped itself in his perfidious heart as he
pretended loyal friendship to the silent boy trudging beside him.

A cloud of dark suspicion hung over the head of Jutt Orlick.

Things had happened in the mountains the past two years which
subsequently pointed accusing fingers in his direction. Unless he was
present no one ever knew just where Orlick was.

Two years since he had disappeared and come back after nine months,
wearing soldier's garb, which he had affected ever since.

He told lurid tales of his conquests and adventures with the Mexican
revolutionists. He elaborated on the gilded splendor and the beautiful
things that the big cities held.

He recounted deeds of heroism abroad in which he was sole hero and he
poured these fabulous tales into Belle-Ann's ears at every opportunity.

At the end of his periodical migrations he always returned with a new
horse, and sums of money that astounded the humble mountaineers.

For more than two years, Orlick had been determined to possess himself
of Belle-Ann Benson. But he resolved first to free himself of Lem Lutts.

He had noted of late the subtle little courtesies exchanged between
Belle-Ann and Lem, and he knew that they had arrived at the realization
that they were not brother and sister. Was it not reasonable to conclude
that, in view of the girl's beauty, it was only a matter of time before
Lem would take Belle-Ann for his own?

The mere thought stirred Orlick's hot blood to a fury, as with a scowl
he fixed his eyes upon the figure leading the downward trail and he was
seized with a mad impulse to shoot Lem in the back.

His hand crept downward. The cool contact of steel in his holster woke
him to his folly and he trailed along, curbing his impatience, resolved
to follow to the letter the plan he had worked out to get Belle-Ann out
of the mountains and away, or bring ruin down on the whole Lutts family.

When Lem Lutts returned to the cabin an hour later, with a large, tired
man and a fagged-out horse, Orlick was not with them.

Old Lutts was pacing to and fro in the moonlight. He was occupied mainly
with thoughts of his new church and the dedication on Sunday.

The stranger below was to him a matter of secondary concern. He had been
a hunted man all his life. Therefore, there was neither novelty nor
consternation in the reflection.

The old man stalked up to the horse-block and greeted the stranger.

"Howdy? Sort o' warmish t'-night. Whut mought be yo'-all's business
seein' me?"

"This is Mr. Lutts, I take it?" ventured the newcomer.

"Thes air ol' Cap Lutts, o' Moon mountain," corrected the old man in a
precise tone.

"Yes, certainly," continued the man hastily. "Well, captain, I'm a
deputy sheriff. I was despatched to see you and deliver a message from
the sheriff."

Here he revealed his shield, then unbuckled his belt, containing a pair
of pistols, and hung them over the saddle-tree.

"And, captain," he pursued wearily but genially, "I'm dog tired. I've
been five hours coming up the last five miles. Can I talk with you a
bit, captain?"

The old man, who had listened intently, spoke up now, and there was a
touch of sarcasm in his drawl.

"Yo' air a new deputy, I 'low--hain't yo', sheriff?"

"You are right. I was appointed two weeks ago, and I'll get even with
somebody for sending me on this Godless trail--I smell some spite
somewhere."

"Wal, set down heah, sheriff, an' perceed," invited Lutts, with a
generous gesture toward the bench.

"I can state my position and my errand, captain, in very few words,"
began the new deputy, who had plainly lost a measure of his official
zeal along the almost impassable trail, and now appeared disgruntled.

"The sheriff, the district attorney, and the collector of this district
have gotten together and have drafted an ultimatum and I was chosen to
deliver it to you and get your answer. They propose to quash all the
various indictments now against you for illicit distilling and for
shootings alleged through warrants by some of the McGill faction."

"Both the Commonwealth, the civil and Federal authorities stand as a
unit to clear the dockets of these charges, providing that you come down
and sign an agreement to cease all further operations pertaining to feud
wars and the illicit distilling of liquor and turn over all your present
distilling property to the government. That's it in a nutshell. I just
want your answer--yes or no, captain--and my work is done."

The sheriff looked up into the inscrutable face for answer. The old man
smiled good-humoredly and tossed his long hair backward.

"I air all-fired sorry, sheriff," he responded calmly, "thet yo'-all hit
heah so late. I want t' show yo' th' gawspel-house. I built hit all
myself--every dang lick an' cut, sheriff; an' I air a givin' hit t'
Kaintucky, pertic'lar these parts whar hit's needed bad like. Lem, tote
thes hoss back an' rub em an' fresh em an' fill em an' stir thet Slab
roun'. Tell em t' step like a catamount an' hash up a hot snack fo' th'
sheriff. Pull a yaller young pullet offen the south limb o' th' burnt
cedar over yon. An', Lem-boy, yo'-all tell Belle-Ann t' jog thet Slab up
a pinch. Sheriff, yo' hain't a goin' 'way from heah, leastways till
mornin'.

"Ez I wus a sayin', sheriff, we-uns air bin a needin' a gawspel-house
hyarbouts fo' a hundred yeers--now hit's arriv'. Thar's some powerful
pesky folks hyarbouts, sheriff," with a deprecating gesture towards
Southpaw.

"Th' McGills mought hev j'ined in ef they'd ac'ed right. Maw wus fo'
peace--Maw Lutts wus--Maw alers hankered fo' peace. She air up yon in
th' groun' now. Thet damn ghost-man, Burton, kilt her!"

Lutts turned his face quickly away and was silent. A huge hand slid
coaxingly over the gleaming surface of the rifle-barrel between his
legs.

"Sheriff, hit hain't thes rifle-gun's fault--hit hain't my eye ner my
hand, I'll swear. Sheriff, I've hit thet damn ghost-revenuer ez many
times ez yo' see rocks at yore feet thar. He air holler inside, sheriff.

"Yo' know outside shoots hain't a hurtin' nobuddy--hit's when th'
bullets gits down in a buddy's in'ards an' gits tangled up with his
insides thet counts. Thet revenuer hain't got no insides. He air holler,
sheriff."

The old man paused in silence, his auditor pondering the manner of man
before him.

"Ez I wus a sayin', sheriff, th' McGills mought 'a' j'ined my
gawspel-house ef they had ac'ed half right. One Sabbath mornin', 'fore I
built th' gawspel-house, I follered Maw Lutts down t' th' brink of
Hellsfork, Maw a totin' a truce-flag.

"I hollers across t' ol' Sap McGill; an' I says, 'Sap McGill,' I
says--'seein' thet we-all air even up now on th' killin', ef yo'-all
lays down I lays down.' An' Maw Lutts up an' hollers across, too, an'
says: 'Sap McGill, ef yo'-all lays down yo' kin jine th' gawspel-house
pap 'lows t' built on Hellsfork, an' we-uns 'll all have our sins wyshed
away an' stop a fightin'.'

"Sheriff, ol' Sap, he hollers back, quick like, an' onery ez a varmint,
an' says: 'To hell with yore gawspel-house on Hellsfork! Hyars yo'
answer.' An' he shot me twice 'fore I could believe he wus so low-down
onery an' pesky as to do hit, an' Maw a holdin' up th' truce-flag! So I
had t' kill em."

The old man's eyes swept the moonlit distance that embraced the church
as he went on.

"I 'low we-uns 'll show yo' th' gawspel-house early in th' mornin',
sheriff. Ef yo' don't 'low t' go I'll pick yo' up in my arms an' tote
yo' down thar. Yo' got t' see hit. Thar hain't no purttier gawspel-house
down Blue-grass."

Belle-Ann stood before them.

"I 'low yo'-all kin be comin' along now, pap, 'fore th' snack gits
cold," she said shyly in her low, sweet drawl.

As the men rose the sheriff caught himself ogling. Following the
gliding, moccasined feet, he noted the grace and loveliness of her
lithe, round form. He assured himself that he had never beheld such
artless, unusual, natural beauty in a girl.

And he pondered soberly upon a lineage of blue blood manifest in her
face, her form, her voice, and manner.

A restless murmur rippled through the cool cedars where the birds had
gone to sleep. Cautiously a small shape with wizened face slid from out
the mystic shadows, lugging a rifle twice his length. Even for his
eleven years, Buddy Lutts was undersized.

His body was thin and small. His reasoning was little. But his heart was
big with hate for that devil-thing, the law. He vanished as noiselessly
and furtively as he had come. Little Bud had overheard every word the
sheriff had uttered.




CHAPTER IV

AN ULTIMATUM


A veil of azure morning mist lingered at the apex of Henhawk's knob. A
young eagle--aggressively bold in his youth--sallied forth into the
mystic dawn, setting himself high on Eagle Crown rock, and surveyed the
dim world with a challenge in his blinkless agate eye. The air was
fragrant with the perfume of a thousand blossoms.

Splashes of crimson and gold dappled the east, and a great sun shot its
lances of molten glory beyond the mountain-tops.

Before the sun showed half its russet disk the deputy sheriff sat his
horse at the witch-elm block in front of the Lutts cabin, preparatory to
departure.

The Lutts household, including Slab, was on hand with hospitable
farewells--though little Bud hung back suspiciously.

At no time during the sheriff's stop had Cap Lutts uttered a word of
reference to the business that had brought the officer to his door. Nor
had the sheriff broached the subject again. With keen understanding and
quick insight he waited patiently for the answer to his mission.

But now, as he sat his horse on the verge of departure, he looked at old
Lutts expectantly and with direct inquiry in his eyes. Lutts caught the
import, and answered with small concern.

"Oh, yes! Yo' jest tell th' sheriff an' them revenuers down below thet
ef they want th' ole man bad 'nough, t' cum up an' root em out."

The deputy knew this was final, and as the old moonshiner's great hand
closed over his in parting the officer secretly hoped that the arm of
the law would fall short of the Lutts domicile.

"Well, captain, I'm afraid they'll start something below--especially
that man over from Frankfort--that Burton. He's awful determined, and he
blames us some. Good-by!"

A short distance away the officer pulled up short and, turning in his
saddle, beckoned to the old man.

The deputy leaned over and spoke in undertones, as though the rocks and
trees had ears.

"Captain," he asked significantly, "is that fellow, Jutt Orlick, a
friend of yours? Remember, I haven't said a word, captain; not a word!"

For a full minute the old man stood looking after the rider. Then a new
light was added to his fixed suspicion of Jutt Orlick.

       *       *       *       *       *

High noon of the following day found Orlick riding slowly, with loose
rein, up the twisted trail toward the Lutts cabin. His horse was
lathered and blown.

He had covered the rugged distance from the junction since dawn, where
he had held all-night counsel with Peter Burton, the revenuer.

With astuteness and cunning Orlick had instigated a conspiracy that
would have done credit to a city-bred malefactor, and for which Burton
praised him extravagantly and, incidentally, liquorously.

Burton had offered to secure Orlick an appointment as deputy marshal in
the eighth district at Danville as recompense for his espionage and
treason against his people. But even Orlick's audacious spirit cast the
thought of this honor out of his mind decisively, and not without a
shudder.

Providing the raid succeeded, upon the plea that Orlick feared the
Luttses, Burton had pledged himself to keep Lem and old Captain Lutts in
jail to the last technical hour. He further promised to frustrate any
attempt at communication with the Lutts faction and intercept any
messages that they might attempt to launch from the prison.

Burton confided to Orlick that his chief aim now was to capture and take
the Luttses to Frankfort, out of the jurisdiction of the county, and
isolate them from the subtle influences that had always favored them in
the surrounding counties.

The revenuer admitted that he entertained grave doubts as to taking old
Captain Lutts alive; but he hoped to capture Lem Lutts, at any rate, and
break the boy's stoic spirit and coerce him into disclosing the
whereabouts of the old still that had flooded Hellsfork with moonshine
for two decades.

But Burton did not know Lem as Orlick knew him, and to Orlick the
prospect of a long term of confinement for Lem Lutts was very pleasing.
Notwithstanding, Orlick knew that Lem would get out of jail
subsequently, and that he--Orlick--might by then be a marked man.

Orlick was fully aware that when the suspicions already against him on
Hellsfork had shaped themselves into convincing proofs of treason, his
life would be worth nothing in Kentucky.

The Lutts faction would follow him even into the blue-grass precincts.
They would dog him to the very threshold of the sheriff's office. His
undoing would be swift and certain--and pitiless.

But all this was now a remote contingency in the face of his unbridled
passion for Belle-Ann, and it was with a sense of bravado that he
realized it was a mere matter of time before the calamity of exposure
would overtake him.

But against the advent of this unerring nemesis, he banked on at least a
few weeks, and probably a few months, during which, he told himself, he
might win out and have Belle-Ann ensconced safely in some big city, far
removed from the arm of the law and the limits of Kentucky.

After that he did not care.

He had cast the die, and had staked his life upon the outcome. If by any
ill luck the outcome demanded his life, he stood ready to pay the toll.
That Lem Lutts should never get Belle-Ann he had fully determined.

He regretted that Peter Burton had not killed Lem long ago, as he had
always hoped.

He would have risked the chance and steered Burton up to the Lutts
still, but he could not do so for the ample reason that he did not know
where it was. He had known, so long as he had remained a mountaineer in
good standing; but old Captain Lutts had moved the still in the early
stages of Orlick's mysterious sojourns, and the faction had not since
volunteered to tell him its whereabouts, and he was loath to jeopardize
his own skin in looking for it.

However, while Orlick was serving Burton, he had served himself doubly.
The smooth, unruffled manner in which his plans were unfolding up to
date filled him with high glee, and his spirits soared to the skies.

Wild and desolate as this wilderness country is, it is nevertheless
almost impossible for an outsider to invade its precincts without his
presence being mysteriously communicated to the denizens of the hills.
Whenever an invasion is accomplished secretly it is invariably
engineered by some traitor who knows every nook and cranny in the
mountains.

But Orlick had determined to double-cross Burton and circumvent his
plan, if Belle-Ann manifested any substantial symptom of requiting his
suit for her hand or yielded to his persuasions.

To-day as Orlick halted in the shade of a poplar to rest his spent
horse, he rolled a cigarette contemplatively with a half smile on his
lips. If Belle-Ann favored him, he told himself that he would remove
every seeming obstacle that promised to come between them. This was a
compact ratified with himself when he rolled the cigarette and smiled;
and if he could not win her, he would at least deprive her of Lem Lutts,
through the medium of a quick, desperate coup, the details of which he
had already confided to Burton.

As Orlick lit his cigarette, cast the match away, and hooked his right
leg over the saddle-horn, he gave himself up to the favorite meditation
upon which his fancy had fed for months. With a vain-glorious grunt he
regarded his new trooper's outfit.

He was exuberantly conscious of the great roll of bank-notes bulging in
his pocket. And, too, it was all easy money. He confessed this as he
muttered above his breath:

"Dead easy--easier 'n easy!"

In truth, he had never imagined that one man could get hold of so much
money so easily as he had done since his lucky affiliations with a
certain one-eyed gentleman known as Red Herron, who engineered a
nocturnal business in Louisville.

Money was a necessary adjunct, especially to a lover, and lent an
atmosphere of reality to this lover's stock of artifices.

Moreover, Orlick nurtured a robust desire to see Belle-Ann's physical
beauty adorned and enhanced with smart attire in emulation of the
handsome girls that met his admiring eyes in the streets of Louisville.
Orlick's fancy, furthermore, had the hardihood to picture his wedding
tour, with Belle-Ann as his wife.

Their trip on a luxurious Pullman train to Omaha! Ah, how the people
would stare at this lovely, stylish girl--his wife! And he had the money
in his pocket at this moment, and knew where to get more.

So excited was he by this scintillating dream of requited love that, as
if to hasten to its glorious reality, he threw his foot suddenly into
the stirrup, rolled the spur against the horse's ribs, and proceeded
toward the Lutts abode, flushed with a mighty confidence.

Nearing the cabin, Orlick's brow grew black as he thought that Lem
Lutts's possible presence at home might thwart his conquest.

A young hound, with a fore-leg bandaged in splints, lay in the shade
near the horse-block. The dog, emitting barks of alarm, sidled up on
three legs and sniffed suspiciously.

The Lutts' dogs knew Orlick well enough, but they had always met him
with growls of distrust, and had never become reconciled to his
presence.

Orlick cast his eyes about, but he saw no signs of the family. He
stripped the horse; and, picking up a cob, made shift to clean the
animal's hind quarters, where the lather had congealed into hard, salty
cakes, while his eyes were searching the premises for the object of his
visit.

Leaving the horse to follow his own will, Orlick sat down on the bench
and waited.

He remained there for a full half-hour, in compliance with ethics of the
mountains, which prescribes that a caller shall wait at a distance,
especially where there are womenfolk, until invited to advance.

When the dogs bark and the inmates fail to appear there is all the more
reason why he should wait.

With the peculiar instinct a horse has for locating water, Orlick's
animal had taken himself off at a brisk trot toward the log stable.

Missing his horse, Orlick looked about and caught a fleeting glimpse of
him through the vista of trees, and, knowing that if he got to the water
in his heated condition he would founder, Orlick dashed away in pursuit.

Thus it happened that he came unexpectedly upon Belle-Ann, who stood at
the horse-trough, urging Orlick's animal away from the water. Orlick
stopped short, regarded her confusedly; then, removing his trooper's
hat, executed a bow and smirked copiously.

His heart thumped wildly in that instant. Each time he saw Belle-Ann he
vowed mentally that she was more beautiful than before. The sight of her
invariably threw him into a state of nervous flurry, and drove from his
mind the pretty things he had previously decided to say to her.

Small wonder then that he stood abashed before her. Never in all his
travels had he seen her equal.

"Yo' wusn't jest a lookin' fo' me--eh--Belle-Ann?" he managed to say
awkwardly. She scanned him deprecatingly.

"No--I jest wusn't," she agreed. "Th' boys hain't home, Orlick," she
added pointedly, seating herself upon an inverted wagon-bed near by.

Orlick sauntered over and sat down, too, now regaining his poise.

"I didn't know I wus comin', either--till a short spell 'fore I
started," he said tentatively.

Belle-Ann eyed the horse, now standing under a poplar, too tired to
crop.

"Yo' must hev started frum th' ocean, didn't yo'?" she asked, with a
gesture toward the animal.

"Aw--he's soft, Belle-Ann. I 'lowed I'd rest em up a bit--till th' boys
cum," he ended lamely.

"Why don't yo'-all buy a mountain hoss? Thes hoss wasn't cut out fo'
thes country," observed Belle-Ann.

"Mabby hit's 'cause I hain't aimin' t' stay in thes country, Belle-Ann."

She shot a quick look at him. He met her eyes and noted a glint of
suspicion in them, so he hurried to forestall any utterance in reference
to his mysterious sojourns the past two years.

"Yo' see, I'm layin' off t' git married, Belle-Ann," he explained,
watching her oval features narrowly; "an' when I do, I 'low t' settle
down below, whar th' folks stan's t' give a honest man a chanst."

Belle-Ann turned wondering eyes upon him.

She had never before heard anything coming from Orlick but arrogant
self-praise; hence she marveled at his meek voice and doleful aspect.

"Whut makes yo' look so sorry--air yo're gal so powerful ugly?" Try as
she would, she could not restrain a sudden burst of mirth, and she
laughed outright.

Now, if Belle-Ann's accents were soothing and captivating in speech,
verily, her laugh rivaled the rippling sweetness of the lute. It trailed
across Orlick's mood like a tonic and fired his face with a hot flush of
anticipation.

"Ugly!" he ejaculated--"ugly--no, Belle-Ann. She air th' all-fired'st
purttiest gal in all Kentucky--an' she hain't fer away, either, I 'low!"

Saying this, he came perilously near to overrunning the ethics of the
mountains and seizing her in his arms and smothering her with his
kisses.

With an effort he restrained himself.

His vehement words had startled her. She scrutinized his countenance
keenly. What she saw brought the hot blood to her cheeks and left no
doubt in her mind as to the significance of his eulogy and his
impassioned eyes.

His look was an insult. She rose and tossed the elf-curls back from her
dimpled face. Orlick sat a moment speechless, his mouth open, and
studied the graceful length of her back.

Now she faced him again and spoke, and her words carried a volume of
reproach.

"Orlick," she began, "why do yo'-all cum t' see th' boys fo'--when
you're a drinkin'?"

By way of denial he suddenly gave vent to a raucous guffaw and whipped
his knee with his hat, which artifice he calculated would enhance his
prestige off-hand. On the contrary, his strident laugh grated strangely
upon the girl's mood.

"Drinkin'--drinkin'!" he cried out, amazed. "Why, Belle-Ann, I hain't
teched a drap o' liquor fo' six months! An' what's a heap sight mo',
Belle-Ann, I hain't never a goin' t'!"

Here he stood up and raised his hand high over his head. "An' I hope
Gawd'll paralyze me daid ef I ever touch th' stuff agin!" he declared
with a profound, solemn flourish, calculated to emphasize a pledge.

A sudden look of pity grew in the girl's eyes as she studied his face, a
look which Orlick mistook for interest.

"Yo' hain't a gittin' down on me like th' tuther fools, air yo',
Belle-Ann?"

Belle-Ann smiled ambiguously, lifted her pretty arched brows, and
centered her azure eyes upon a red-head which at that instant was
hammering a hole into a dead sycamore hard by. Orlick sighed.

"Yo' orten t' git down on a feller lessen he's done somethin' pesky," he
resumed tentatively. "What hev I done more'n cum an' go peaceable--an'
make more money than any of 'em? Yo' see, Belle-Ann, our people hain't
got no use fer a feller whut's got spunk enough t' git out o' th'
mountains an' make money. Hit's hard draggin' when a feller's tryin' t'
do right an' everybuddy ag'in em."

His words stopped. Belle-Ann gazed his way. Orlick looked like a martyr,
the very picture of persecuted righteousness. The left corner of his
mouth, usually tilted, descended in emulation of its mate.

His woebegone eyes followed the sky-line, and he appeared to be on the
verge of an oral prayer.

Belle-Ann's tender, unsophisticated heart was momentarily swayed with
compassion. She glanced covertly at his averted, forlorn face, and her
frigidity thawed a trifle as she was cognizant of an element of truth in
Orlick's claims.

She knew that a mountaineer was respected and eligible only while he
stayed closely in the mountains.

Orlick sat rigid, immobile, with eyes afar and apparently utterly
oblivious of Belle-Ann's presence at that moment. She walked back to the
wagon-bed.

Her low, dulcet voice roused him out of his lethargy.

"Orlick," she said, "why don't yo'-all stop traipsin' round an' snookin'
below--an' cum Sabbath an' jine pap's church? Don't yo'-all want t' be a
Christian?"

If all the sins of Orlick's past had taken life and come up out of the
ground at his feet to confront him he would have been less shocked. He
flushed guiltily.

He started perceptibly and squirmed in speechless discomfort.
Belle-Ann's wide, clear eyes were upon him, and as he hesitated her lips
parted to speak.

"Eh?" he gurgled.

"I say--don't yo'-all----"

As though not daring to hear that seductive voice repeat its query, he
spoke up hastily.

"Why, sho', Belle-Ann!" he blurted in confusion. "O' course, I'd like t'
be a Christian--an' I'll sho' be at th' ded'cation Sabbath. Belle-Ann,
air yo' down on me 'cose I go below t' make money what I can't make th'
likes of hyarbouts?"

Orlick suddenly produced the roll of bank-notes, and, shuffling them up,
rained them down in one greenish, crisp pile of opulence upon the
wagon-bed.

This unexpected spectacle staggered the girl's senses for the moment.
She had never seen so much money in all her life before. Her eyes grew
round with astonishment.




CHAPTER V

ORLICK'S MONEY SPURNED


"Oh, Orlick!" she breathed in amazement.

Unconsciously she sat down on the wagon-bed, with the pile of money
beside her; and thus, wholly enthralled, she muttered faint
exclamations. Orlick's eyes glittered in their devouring scrutiny, fixed
upon Belle-Ann's beauty.

"Oh, Orlick," she reiterated, "is thes all yore money? Where did yo' git
all thes money, Orlick?"

For an instant he fumbled blindly for words; then found them at the end
of his short, ingratiating laugh. He lied with a gusto that reddened his
face.

"Git hit!" he echoed blatantly. "Why, Belle-Ann, I worked fo' hit! I'm
trainin' hosses below, I git a hundred a month, Belle-Ann; an' I don't
drink, an' I 'low t' save my money, I do, 'cose yo' know I 'low t' git
married, Belle-Ann; an' hit takes a powerful sight o' money t' keep a
wife like I'm aimin' t' do.

"I hain't aimin' t' keep my wife in these mountains. She'll dry up an'
blow away 'fore a buddy kin git to her to bury her. I air a goin' t' buy
a nice house in Louisville an' fill hit up with fancy fixin's, an', talk
about fine, fancy clothes--well, mebby my wife won't hev some fine
things, 'cose I got th' money t' git 'em with, Belle-Ann!"

"Orlick," she said, "how much do yo' 'low is heah?"

So engrossed was she in lifting the bills one by one out of the tangled
heap, examining both sides minutely, and laying them in one smooth
stack, that she had heard little of Orlick's discourse, being vaguely
conscious only that he was talking.

"Why, Belle-Ann," said he, "hit's fo' hundred dollars!"

He chuckled immoderately and pressed his cowlick down, which defiant
tuft popped instantly back to its position of attention.

"Yes," he went on, noting every look that crossed her lovely face as she
proceeded, deeply absorbed in handling this dazzling pile of wealth.
"Yes--an' a hundred a month comin' long all th' time. Thet hain't
powerful bad fo' a boy like me--air hit, Belle-Ann?"

Orlick rubbed his hands in the throes of self-exaltation and added a
laugh that grated upon the girl's senses, inspiring her with a sudden
impulse to end this conversation without delay.

"I reckon I'll be a goin'. Slab'll cum soon from th' mill, an' I got
some bakin' t' do."

She made as if to rise. With a swift stride Orlick stood close to her,
defeating this move. The money lay in one even, smooth pyramid on the
wagon-bed.

With one hand he snatched up the bills and laid them in Belle-Ann's lap.

She tossed her curls, lifted her face, and fixed an inquiring look upon
him. Above her his face had changed to something evil. His features were
shot with a dull red from chin to brow. His lips were a-quiver with the
words that clamored in his throat.

"Belle-Ann, thet money 'is all yo'ren," he blurted out, "an' all I
make's yo'ren, Belle-Ann; an' I want yo' t' run away with me an' marry
me, eh? I want yo' t' go now!"

This effrontery brought her to her feet, and the money spilled out on
the ground. He stepped quickly in front of her and held up a restraining
hand, blocking her intent to move away.

"I bin a lovin' yo', Belle-Ann, I hev. I bin a lovin' yo'-all fo' mo'
than two year gone. I'm a goin' t' keep on a lovin' yo', I air, an' I
hain't 'lowin' t' let any man take yo' away from me. I make mo' money in
a month than Lem makes in six, Belle-Ann. Yo'-all hain't got no business
in these mountains noways.

"Yo' belong down below where th' worl' kin see yo'--down in Louisville,
er Lexington, among th' fine folks where yo' maw wus born, an' all
dressed up like I'm lovin' t' dress yo', with a diamond ring, an' a
watch, an' a gold bracelet; an' a trap with a cob-hoss which has a hock
fling t' em--an' a fine house full o' fixin's."

"Thet's the place yo'-all belongs by rights, an' thet's th' place I'm a
goin' t' take yo'. I bin in all th' big towns below, an' in Mexico, an'
I'll swear t' Gawd I hain't never seen a gal with yore purtiness! They
hain't no gal a livin' with curls fixed aroun' a face like yo'ren! Gawd
only made one pair o' blue eyes--yo' got 'em! Heah, Belle-Ann, I want
yo' t' marry me, eh? Cap an' th' boys air gone, an' Slab's away. Let's
hurry off now, eh, Belle-Ann?" he urged in breathless tremor, his eyes
afire with the quest that trumpeted in his heart.

Throughout this impassioned discourse Belle-Ann had covertly maneuvered
inch by inch toward the cabin. But Orlick had hedged in front, and they
now stood scarce twenty feet from the wagon-bed.

His words stirred her to a resentment that at first suffused her neck
and face with a flood of crimson indignation; a humiliation that ebbed
slowly away before the chill of a fear that now crept into her
countenance, leaving her sweet, bowed lips a trifle pallid.

"What ails yo', Belle-Ann--don't yo' 'low t' go?" he blurted out
fiercely.

She pointed toward the wagon-bed. In his voice she had sensed a note
that boded ill.

"Pick up yore money, Orlick; yo' mought need hit," she advised with calm
dignity, while he stooped and gathered up the bills in a flurry of
haste, stuffing them in a tangled mass into his pocket. When he turned
about Belle-Ann was walking leisurely, but directly toward the cabin. He
was at her side in a trice.

He kept pace with her, dinning into her ears an avalanche of torrid
appeals, urging her to flee with him. To his onslaught of frantic words
she maintained a stoic silence.

This apparent indifference seemed to enrage him beyond all
self-restraint. At a point near the open door of the kitchen, he
suddenly grasped her wrist and pulled her toward him. With a dexterous
turn she put her back to him, twisting her arm so a cry of pain rose to
her throat, though she closed her teeth hard upon it.

He held on, and she felt the wheeze of his hot, fierce breath beating
against her shoulder.

She could not alter her position without throwing herself face to face
with him, so she leaned outward, and then slowly turned her head and
their eyes met; and in that instant Orlick loosened his grip as though a
hot bar had been laid across his two hands.

Sin had long been Orlick's adopted brother. Since early boyhood odious
temptings and wild deeds had been his running-mates. When a soul has
known naught but abasement and evil the sight of good is appalling. He
stood away now, puzzled at first and strangely disturbed.

She still stood half smiling. It was a pitying smile. Orlick was
dismayed and crestfallen, and in that minute he knew that he had
jeopardized his last hope.

With a tenacious persistence, born to the breed of his kind, he ventured
a lame apology. With his perfunctory laugh he suddenly stammered the
fragments of words, confused and inarticulate.

"Sho'," he was muttering. "I wus jest a funnin', Belle-Ann. Yo' thought
I wus a goin' t' kiss yo'. I warn't. Ha! ha! ha!--thet's one on yo'-all!
Yo' thought I wus a meanin' thet. I wus jest a funnin', Belle-Ann," he
ended in a faltering attempt at vindication.

"I air powerful sorry," she breathed in her soft tones, "I've hearn lots
th' folks says, Orlick; but I wusn't a believin' thet yo'-all'd hurt a
gurl thet-away."

Her mild reproach stirred him to a vehement defense. He sprang forward.
In two strides he was beside her.

With a hand that shook perceptibly he strove gently to touch her hand.
But she deftly raised her hands and locked them safely behind her head;
a posture which seemed to fix the crucifixion of his one last, fleeting
hope.

"Good Gawd, Belle-Ann," he cried, "yo' hain't hurted! I wus only
foolin'. I wouldn't darst kiss yo', Belle-Ann, lessen yo' let me. I'd
die daid ten times 'fore I'd hurt yo'-all! Don't be mad, Belle-Ann," he
pleaded guiltily.

"I air powerful sorry--sorrier than I kin say--thet I ever knowed a
man's name whut'd hurt a gurl. I don't know what pap an' Lem 'll say."

The terrible look that flamed up into Orlick's face stopped her words.
The mention of Lem's name had a galvanic effect upon him.

It seemed to rake across all the rampant, violent passions of his
nature.

He was transformed instantly from a penitent subject to a dangerous
animal-thing that knew naught but the power of its own brute strength. A
scowl of jealous rage distorted his features. He stepped near to her.

"I want yo' t' marry me, Belle-Ann," he panted. "Air yo' a goin' t' run
away an' marry me? Jest say yes or no."

The desperate, unbridled fury in his eyes sent a chill to her heart.
Notwithstanding this, she preserved her outward calm and smiled back
serenely upon his menacing grimace.

"Well--yo' better saddle up. See, yore hoss is at th' trough. I'll wait
at th' block."

For a moment he stood nonplused. His shifting eyes lighted with the back
tide of hope that had all but ebbed away.

"Yo're a meanun' t' go?" he cried out in a voice husky with new
exultation.

"I said fo' you'-all t' saddle an' I'll meet yo' at th' block," she
repeated.

He started away, then jerked about and looked searchingly into her face,
the light of a sudden suspicion a-glitter in his eyes.

"Yo're aimin' t' run in an' shet th' door on me, hain't yo'?"

Indignation was now in her eyes as she tossed her mass of curls and
regarded him with a sense of outraged veracity.

"I said I'd wait fo' you'-all at th' witch-block," she said once more.

He turned quickly and hurried after his horse.

True to her word, Belle-Ann was waiting for Orlick at the horse-block.
She sat serenely, watching his advance. At the ends of a rawhide thong a
cow-horn dangled at her side, and there was no longer any fear in her
heart.

When Orlick caught sight of the cow-horn he stopped as though a gun was
leveled at him. A flash of fury swept his face. Then she raised the horn
to her lips.

"Lord!" he ejaculated; "don't blow, Belle-Ann. They hain't no need--I'm
a ridin' now."

His rage had instantly given place to a sudden meekness, and he came on,
his twitching features the hue of chalk and the gloom of utter defeat in
his eyes.

Belle-Ann slowly swung the horn to her side. She leaned against the
horse-block and watched him saddle. Her look was neither triumphant nor
scathing. Orlick did not glance at her, nor did he speak, being
strenuously engaged with the horse which, having recovered its spirits,
fought the bit determinedly. The saddle was double-cinched, and when
Orlick tightened the flank girth the animal revolved, kicking in a
circle like a bucker.

When he had leaped into the saddle Orlick wheeled about facing the girl,
grinning, arrogant, and bombastic. The only sign of his thoughts was a
peculiar glitter playing in the depths of his eyes.

"I'll say good-day t' yo'-all, Miss Benson," he said, with mockery in
his tone and giving vent to a laugh, though it carried a threatening
note.

"I 'low yo'-all'd be happier, Orlick," ventured Belle-Ann, "ef yo'd
change a bit an' jine pap's church thes Sabbath a comin', an' settle
down in th' mountains an' marry some gurl thet's better matched t'
yo'-all."

His vibrant laugh cut into her words.

"Belle-Ann Benson," he cried, glowering down upon her placid face, with
one arm pointing downward across the sunlit valley, "yo' know where
_they_ be. My pap an' my fo' brothers air asleep down yander under th'
willers on Pigeon Creek. They died fo' the Luttses, they ded--shot t'
pieces a fightin' fo' yo'-all!

"Who knows hit better 'n yo'? An' this day yo'-all run th' last Orlick
off en yore place. Whut fer--'cause I'm a lovin' yo'? Whut fer air
yo'-all so stuck up? 'Cose yore beaut'f'l, an' 'cose yore mother wus a
blue-grasser, an' 'cose yore a goin' below t' school?

"Yes, I reckon yo' an' Lem Lutts 'll be satisfied now--yo'-all run th'
last Orlick offen yore place."

[Illustration: "Yo' know where _they_ be."]

With a vicious jerk he turned the horse's head around and spurred the
animal so cruelly that it reared and plunged away down the steep, rocky
trail at a gallop that threatened disaster to both horse and rider. And
above the jumbled clatter of the horse's shod hoofs the echoes of
Orlick's wild, defeated laugh came back to Belle-Ann's ears.

She lingered a while at the horse-block, and pondered soberly upon the
advisability of acquainting the old man and Lem with Orlick's visit.
There could be only one consequence if she did this.

Presently she decided humanely to keep her own counsel, and, slipping to
the ground, she walked slowly toward the cabin.

She walked slowly to allow the two unfortunate dogs tagging at her heels
to keep pace with her. One was old Ben, the blind hound, the other a pup
with a broken fore-leg which Belle-Ann had bolstered up with splints. As
she approached the kitchen door, she beheld Slab standing in the yard,
rigid, and looking at her with a beaming countenance. Slab, always an
optimist, ever presented a hopeful face. But at this moment when she
noted his presence with the tail of her eye, she glimpsed something so
extraordinarily illuminating as straightway to pique her curiosity, and
she stopped short and regarded him inquiringly. A prodigious grin now
lured the corners of his mouth beyond sight; inspiring the freakish
suspicion that they met at the back of his head.

"Lan's sake'--what ails yo'--Slab?" she interrogated.

The sound of her voice seemed to fuse some combustible deposit of
exultation cached within him. Instantly he began leaping up and down in
a most frantic and alarming manner, yelling in loud outbursts, causing
the girl mentally to question his sanity.

"I tol' ye so--I tol' ye so--I tol' ye so----"

"What ails yo'-all?"

"Halliluja'--halliluja'----" he answered, keeping time with a grotesque
dance.

"Slab--have yo' gone plum offin' yore haid?"

Belle-Ann watched his antics curiously. Presently he ceased this
puzzling exposition as abruptly as he had startled her, and advanced,
smearing the sweat over his seamed face with one gnarled hand, and she
noticed that he kept the other hand concealed behind his back. His
unique plaudits having subsided, he stood before her. He screwed his
head around and looked furtively about, his sable features now drawn
into a visage of deep and profound solemnity. He spoke in low,
mysterious accents.

"Lil'le gal," he began softly, "lil'le gal,--sompin' hev drap--some
mammon hev drap--some mammon, lil'le gal--drap plunk inter de ole man's
han's. I got sompin' heah ter show yo'-all,--sompin' whut makes dis ole
man nigh bus' wif gratatudness an' praise fo' de good Lo'd,--no--no--now
yo' jest wait, honey--Slab'll show yo'--I mos' bus' when dis mammon drap
down ter de ole man--drap down ter Slab, lil'le gal,--jest like olen
times when de good Lo'd drap mammon down ter his starvin' chillens--de
good Lo'd do sho' love dis ole niggah man, same ez he do good white
folks. Belle-Ann--fo' seben nights Slab, he pray jes' ez hard--he pray
de good Lo'd fo' wharwithal ter buy some flannel shirts wif. I done pray
fo' seben nights, lil'le gal--den las' night, er big ole owl he sot on
dat sycamore, an' he call me outen ma sleep--den I snuck down dar by dat
wagon-bed, an' I wait, an' when Mr. Owl say 'hoo-ho' I say 'hoo-hoo'
back--den when owl say 'hoo-ho' seben times, he goed away--Slab, he know
zacly what dat mean--den I look roun' an' fine er lil'le bitty
obeah-stone, an' lay it on de wagon-bed. Den dis morn'n' 'fore I goed
ter de mill, I tuk er peek--but de obeah-stone war jes' zacly whar I lay
him--den on ma way back jes' now, I tuk er nudder peek--obeah wus goed
away. Den I look all roun' an' ma eyes see sompin' layin' clost up ter
de wagon-bed--den ma han' reches down an' picks it up--an', lil'le gal,
I mos' bus' wif happiness--whut yo' think I pluck, lil'le
gal?--looky--looky--jes' look at dat bull, feedin' on dat green."

A triumphant, gloating grin broke over his face again, as he exhibited
to the impatient girl a crisp, new five-dollar bill, with a buffalo
engraved thereon.

As Belle-Ann took a bucket and gourd, and proceeded to water the flowers
on the shady side of the house, a knowing smile lingered at the
up-turned corners of her little red mouth. Again she was holding her own
counsel.




CHAPTER VI

UPON THE ALTAR


The following morning, being Saturday, Cap Lutts held a conclave in the
cavern that concealed the illicit still. When the conference was over
half a dozen men were scattered about the mountain to watch for the
approach of the law, which now seemed likely.

Not until late in the day did Lutts and the boys reach the clearing and
the gospel-house. By the time they had placed the last window casement
and hung the church door nightfall was near at hand.

As the old man sat rigid on a log in the clearing, at an angle where he
could view the church--front, side, and bell-crowned roof--he was filled
with a profound, soul-satisfying joy.

Beside him sat Lem and little Bud; and the family of three regarded the
church in silent admiration, for all was now ready for the great
dedication to-morrow.

The sun had turned from yellow to a crimson glory as it made for a niche
in the haze-shrouded peaks. The billows of emerald, capped with frothy
banks of blossoms that tumbled down from the savage heights above, grew
somber as the shadows reached out and wrapped their arms about Moon
mountain.

Silhouetted across the clearing, the little church contributed a quaint
design.

In the cool laurel thickets a hidden chorus arose. A redbird dipped
through space from across the creek, and his florid wings shed a flash
of blood as he forded a shaft of fleeting sunlight.

The long-drawn cry of a she-panther echoed up from the shaggy maw of the
ravine, answered straightway by the quick, broken squall of her mate,
betraying an early forage plot. With magic minstrelsy issuing from the
thickets the wilderness evening drifted in.

With common impulse the two boys awoke from their reverie and looked up
at their father.

The joy of a moment since had gone from his eyes. As he stared in blank
pathos at the church a face rose up and blotted out the vision of the
belfry--the smiling face of his dead wife.

"Ef Maw had lived t' see thes, Lem!" deplored the old man in a faint
voice.

"Yes, ef Maw had lived, pap!" echoed Lem.

"Ef Maw had lived!" repeated the small voice at the end of the log.

"Leastways, Maw's better off 'n we-uns, boys," consoled Cap Lutts,
"'cause she air up thar whar they hain't no sorry--ner pain--ner
fightin' an' killin'--an' I 'low as how Maw air a lookin' down on hit
all now--on th' gawspel-house an' on we-uns, boys. An' say, boys, mebby
yo' pore good Maw hain't glad like--eh? Why, I kin jest see her now--I
kin see Maw now jest as plain--a smilin' an' a smilin'--an' whar----"

"Yes--so kin I," interrupted Lem reflectively.

"I kin see Maw now," supplemented little Bud.

Suddenly a look shot into the old man's eyes like the florid tongue of
flame at the muzzle of a gun. Instantly it was communicated to the two
brothers. If the volcanic fires reflected in the eyes of the men were
terrible, the molten, satanic hatred that crossed the countenance of
little Bud was appalling because of his tender years. Each knew of what
the other was thinking. Each recalled that hillside fight when Big Pete
Burton had again struggled to do his duty and a misdirected bullet had
killed Maw Lutts.

The old man kicked viciously at a root, then pointed to the belfry.

"I kin see Maw jest this minnut," he resumed, "a smilin' an' a smilin'
an' a walkin' 'mong th' folks an' a shakin' han's like she done down
Sandy thet air time th' ridin' pahson stuck fo' two weeks. I kin jest
heer her now a tellin' 'em as how Gawd an' we-uns walcums every pizen
sinnah in thes end o' Kaintucky--an' as how th' spurrut o' Gawd 'll he'p
we-uns an' stop all th' fightin' an' killin' an' cheatin' an' lyin' an'
cussin' an' chawin' 'mong th' weemanfolk.

"Jes' wait till Sabbath day--an' thet's to-morry; jest wait till th'
ridin' pahson cum t' ded'cate th' gawspel-house--I bets yo'll see a
rousin', whoppin', boostin', prayin' 'vival--yo' sho' will, boys,"
promised the old man in the heat of growing anticipation as he wafted
the rebellious hair backward with a jerk of his head.

"Aw--my soul!" ejaculated little Bud.

"An' I kin tell yo' a heap sight more, boys; I kin," promised the old
man, rubbing his huge hands together gloatingly. "One day nigh yo'll see
th' steers a pullin' a real slappin' new organ machine into th'
clearin'--yo'll see th' steers cum jest in 'twix' yon two spruces an'
pull jest roun' thar, an' stop jest a frontin' th' do'r!"

At this moment the long, ominous blast of a cow-horn echoed across the
ravine with startling import, and the utterance failed and died in the
old man's throat.

Immediately the faint note of a bell reached their ears, followed by a
second horn-call, strong and clear, farther up the gulch. The three rose
to their feet simultaneously, and the old man felt instinctively about
him for something that was not there. For the first time in his career
his groping hands encountered neither stock nor steel. The rifle was
absent!

A pallor overspread his face. With head reared like a bull elk he
listened to the portentous sounds of mountain warfare that floated into
his brain.

The pallor was not from fear. It was the mantle of chagrin--he had
forgotten for the moment where he had rested the rifle. He stood
befuddled, but alert.

His gun gone, he felt that a part of his big body had suddenly been
dismembered. The thought that he had been such a fool seemed to lock his
two feet to the ground.

Again the blare of the horn followed the notes of the bell.

"Sompin's sho' bust loose, boys!" growled the old man as the three
listened through several tense seconds. In his extremity he wondered if
he could coax the lost information out of the lad behind him.

"Han' hit heah, Lem! han' me hit!" Without turning his head he thrust
both hands behind him, his working fingers begging for the gun.

The boy, as innocent of the whereabouts of the weapon as his father,
only muttered and pointed toward the rim of the clearing. The next
second came the crackling noise of dead brush, then the sound of a rush
to the left.

The old man clenched his teeth as a horse mouths the bit, and his
birdlike eyes snapped when he saw the disheveled figure of a girl burst
through the wall of laurel that bordered the clearing. She halted for an
instant, then dashed toward them.

"Hit's Belle-Ann!" cried the awe-stricken Bud.

The girl fairly leaped over the space that intervened. Her black curls
streamed in the wind. She was wild-eyed and panting. Her bare legs were
bleeding from brush scratches, and the tatters of her torn skirt were
weighted with burs.

"He's cum! He's got through, he air! He's a cumin' now! Go! Go! Run,
Lem! Run away!" she cried in a choking riot of fear, throwing her body
against Lem and fairly pushing him before her.

"Whar's yo' gun, pap? Whar's yo' gun? Run, Lem! Fo' Gawd's sake, run
away! He's follerin' right ahin' o' me--thah! thah! thah!" she screamed
in her terror, pointing, heaving, gazing with charmed stare at the spot
where she had emerged from the thicket.

Despairing, horrified at the stunned inactivity of the Lutts men, the
frantic girl grabbed little Bud by one arm and half dragged, half
carried him across the clearing. Together they disappeared into the
undergrowth.

Then, rousing suddenly, stung to action, the old man remembered his gun
and started for the church, while Lem fell prostrate and lay close
behind the log on which they had been seated.

Old Lutts had no more than gained the threshold of the sanctuary when a
giant figure, with heaving chest, sprang into the open behind the church
and just to the right. It was Peter Burton, and the surprise was full
and complete, for his rifle was leveled at the old man's blue
shirt-front as he called:

"None of your damned nonsense now, Lutts! I've got you at last, and I
want you alive! Stand where you are!"

His voice rang triumphantly as he hurried nearer, and he leered and
cried:

"Maybe I'll take you down Blue Grass this time, eh? Well, I guess yes!"

Cap Lutts hesitated for just the fraction of a second.

In that fleeting time a horde of impossibilities raced through his
brain. The downfall that had haunted him for years was at hand.

Fear of death was beyond his comprehension, but the sting of defeat was
agonizing.

Then, glaring defiance and hatred, he whirled about and fled into the
church, and there he leaped toward the altar. With a feline bound the
big revenue detective was through the door and into the church after
him.

And now the old man had gained the pulpit itself, and was reaching for
the rifle he had left leaning against the wall.

Through the little church an ear-splitting crash rang out that fairly
rocked the walls!

In the pulpit the war-scarred moonshiner drew gently, deliberately
backward, leaving the rifle untouched. Straightening up with strange
majesty, he turned half around, and the malevolence melted away and left
his face empty of all hatred.

His eyes grew very soft, gazing upward at something beyond this world;
his lips moved in soundless speech.

Then, abruptly, his legs crumpled beneath him. He sagged and swayed for
an instant; there was a ghastly, ragged, spongy gap between his
shoulders.

Then, with a crash, the mighty form sank to the altar, and lay there
motionless upon its back, legs close together, the arms stretched
straight outward from the body.

Burton mopped his wet features and eyed his awful work without emotion.

A little the hard-breathing man-hunter pondered. Then, having taken a
fresh quid of tobacco, he levied upon his strength and lifted the body
from the pulpit, and placed it upon a bench. He wiped the blood from his
clothes and shoes and, rolling his handkerchief into a ball, tossed it
away.

He stared at the pulpit for a time.

The red blood had crawled upward and touched the old man's hoary crown.
It had traveled downward toward his heavy boots. It had followed the
coat-sleeves of his two sprawling arms.

And now that the body had been taken away, the vermilion imprint of a
ragged, dripping cross was clearly etched upon the smooth pine of the
unpainted altar.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the crash of the gun had died away, Lem raised his head and peered
over the log toward the church, expecting to see his father emerge. He
waited several seconds. He wondered why the old man did not call. He
yearned for his own gun now, inside the church.

Then he lay down behind the log again with a sober fear creeping upon
him. Then he remembered whose son he was, and almost snickered aloud at
his fears. The boy could not conceive any odds that his father, Cap
Lutts, could not vanquish. His thoughts flew backward to the valorous
achievements of his parent.

Now he crawled to the end of the log and peered again toward the church
door. He told himself that the old man would come out of that door where
he had gone in. He knew that the old man would come out of the church
dragging the revenuer after him--hauling the thing as he had seen him
haul a half-dead, struggling bear.

Lem lay on his stomach and waited.

Presently he spied a yellowish-white vapor trailing out of the church
door into the lifeless air. Instinct told him that it was not his
father's gun that had spoken. He started to his feet.

A terrible, sickening apprehension filtered into his numbed senses.
Then, weaponless and forgetful of the prowess of the uncanny man-tiger
within, the boy grabbed a huge wooden mallet near by and rushed inside.

As he ran toward the altar his fire-shot eyes swept the church for the
old man. He saw only the towering hulk of the hated Burton standing
erect, with hands in his trousers-pockets, calmly eyeing his approach.

When Lem reached the altar he halted short, dumb, fear-stricken,
trembling. He stared at the bloody cross. He whirled around.

His eyes fell upon the still form on the bench, and he knew. With an
inarticulate scream he fell one step backward and aimed a terrific,
deadly blow at the unblinking, fishy eyes of the animal-headed thing
before him.

Some minutes later Lem Lutts crouched upon a bench, hunched up, naked to
the waist, broken, bleeding, panting, heaving, piteously weeping, his
chin down till it touched his bare, lacerated breast.

Without, amidst the darkling shades of night, the she-panther crept from
the gloomy haunting depths of the ravine, up to the very rim of the
clearing. Up-reared, with her bowed fore-legs upon a scrub cedar stump,
the big cat's spotted lips parted and she cried out a tremulous
portentous wail across the dusk. Then came the sound of the pattering of
padded jungle feet as she skulked back to her lair down in the bristling
bowels of the shadow-peopled gulch.

The man of iron who stood scowling over the conquered, broken youth,
felt a compelling loneliness picking upon his steely nerves.

"Come, Lutts! Let's hike out of here," ordered the detective as he
pulled the stupefied boy to his feet.

He half dragged Lem to the door of the church, saying:

"I guess I'll take you down to Frankfort. Mebby when you're there a
while you'll tell where that damn whisky shop is you've been running up
here the last hundred years."

Near to the door in the dim light, a few scant feet to one side, the boy
caught sight of a long, vertical streak of yellow rope crossing the dark
background of the gloom. Then it was that, with a lightning-like
quickness, Lem lunged sidewise and fastened his fingers like dog's teeth
upon the length of hemp suspended from the belfry. With a growl of rage
Burton sprung upon him.

He rained blow after blow down upon the boy's head and body, torrents of
resounding smashes, awful, crushing, killing blows.

The terrific struggle, with the bell-rope for a prize, set the new bell
ringing, and the reverberations carried for miles up and down Hellsfork.
Its frantic utterances resounded across the hills like the screams of a
woman.

In despair the revenuer ceased his beating, and his fingers, reeking
with the boy's blood, found Lem's neck.

His terrible hands garroted Lem's throat flat and stopped his breath.
With all his mighty strength, the revenuer choked him until the lad's
face blackened and his tongue and eyes started.

Then, with a great heave upward, he shook his victim as a terrier shakes
an old boot, and cast him away and stood panting in the dark and cursing
breathlessly.

The damage was done. The revenuer knew that he could count himself lucky
to get away alive now, far less drag a prisoner; even at that moment
desperate men were hurrying to answer the call of that church-bell.

Burton fled into the night toward the spot where he knew that Jutt
Orlick awaited him.




CHAPTER VII

DEDICATED WITH HIS BLOOD


Out into that troublous, tempestuous night a hundred alarmed militant
mountaineers rushed down through the jungle shadows, over a score of
savage, rugged trails. Onward they hastened, down toward the startling
night-cry of the bell which they knew emanated from the new church on
Hellsfork. That choking, desperate bell-scream had raked across their
senses like the cracking of a hundred rifles. To them its importunities
had resolved into the sanguine roar of a fusillade. It had aroused in
them an audacious, desperate quickness to kill. They rushed hither,
prepared to sprinkle the white-clover with their blood, and die there in
the churchyard, or vanquish whatever the menace might be.

They pictured an assault on the church by the McGills or the revenuers,
and in their fancy saw old Cap Lutts, his great figure in the forefront,
spouting soft-nosed bullets from his hot rifle! The ringing of the bell
inspired those on-coming loyal mountain hearts with a red-eyed animal
fierceness, and lent a lightness to their heavy feet that brought them
to the church within the hour.

Men and boys, and indeed a few women, with weapons of all sorts,
descended on the church, wild and panting with the lust of conflict.

When Lem Lutts opened his dazed eyes the place was half filled with
frenzied people. Belle-Ann knelt beside him, bathing his wounds and
uttering in her soothing, low drawl, little phrases of encouragement and
condolence.

Buddy's hard little visage protruded out of the lantern light like a
ghostly mask done in white marble.

Lem finally got to his feet and staggered toward the altar. A dozen
lanterns were scattered about the church. The shaggy band stood around
gazing at their dead leader. Crazed with rage, they stood and wept,
walked aimlessly and cursed, or knelt and prayed.

To a man they were for beating the mountains for the revenuers; but Lem
held them back. He climbed upon the altar, and little Bud scrambled up
beside him, hugging his father's rifle which he had hungrily recovered.

With the realization that Lem was now their leader, the Moon mountain
men crowded up toward the pulpit, eager for his words.

Lem pointed one unsteady hand to the bloody cross at his feet, and the
other to the dead form of his father stretched on the first bench. He
raised his bruised, torn face upward; then, in a voice that was terrible
in its calmness, he said the only prayer he knew, while the grief torn
host fixed their eyes upon him and drank in every word:

"God Almoughty, plead thou my cose with them thet strive agin we-uns.
Lay a han' on yore shiel' an' buckler an' stan' up t' he'p we-uns. Let
'em be confound' an' put t' shame, fo' they hev privily laid thar net t'
destroy me withouten a cose--even withouten a cose hev they made a pit
fo' my soul. Let th' sudden destruction cum on our'n enemy onawares, an'
his net thet he hev laid privily keech hisse'f, thet he mought fall int'
his own mischief his ownse'f. Ahmen!"

And a great volume of vibrant amens rose from the hot hearts present.

Lem talked from the altar for an hour; exhorting the clan to stick
together and cleave to the tenets of his dead father. All through the
discourse little Bud kept close to his brother on the pulpit, steadying
the long rifle with one caressing hand and not once did a word escape
him; his eyes were glued to his brother's face.

Finally, Lem wound up his appeal with a stern adjuration. His calmness
deserted him at the end, and his voice soared to a frenzied pitch that
carried it through the open windows, far out into the brooding night.

"Yo'-all heer me? Yo'-all heer me?" he shouted in vibrant tones. "Not a
bein' o' yo'-all darst lift a han' t' harm the revenuer--not a han', yo'
heer? He air my houn'-dog t' kill.

"He belongs t' me, an' ef yo'-all ketch em, yore t' han' him t' me, ole
Cap Lutts's boy whut stan's heah frontin' his pap's daid body, a callin'
on yo'-all t' see jestus done! I'll bring th' skunk heah, my men, an'
kill em heah--heah whar he kilt my pap!"

His mouth fairly frothed as with both clenched fists he beat his breast.
Bud beat his own thin chest and wrenched his peaked face into a terrible
grimace, but said never a word.

The watchers relapsed into dumb, stunned silence and waited with their
dead--waited for the saddest of all days; a day crowned with a grievous
memory that followed them through life.

No Sabbath born to the mountains had ever dawned as this one. The early
morning was charged with a sepulchral mist, impinging upon the senses
like sounds vocal, telling of some great sorrow hanging on the crest of
the world.

The first chill light saw the gospel-house holding its dead to its
breast--the venerable sire that begot it. The dawn-breath floated down
from the blue-wooded ridges to the clearing and stooped to kiss the
pallid belfry.

And all the blossoms bowed down their tremulous heads and shed their
dew-tears amidst the chanting of spirit-voices. The tumultuous cry of
the cascade, wont to rant in the ragged throat of Hellsfork, was now
hushed to a repining monotone.

The first beam of sunlight, pallid as a candle ray, parted the vapor
shroud enveloping the gospel-house, and a dolorous ring-dove mourning on
the pinnacle of a dead sycamore tolled her triple-noted angelus across
the clearing in measured, solemn accents.

Before the day had fairly broken, an exodus of humanity had begun, bound
for Hellsfork. For weeks and months the day of dedication had been
discussed throughout the mountains. Hour after hour the rock-strewn
highways of the hills were traversed by travel-worn crusaders. This
stream of human souls converged at the church clearing, filling it up
like the gradual rise of a tide.

They came on mule-back, on horse-back, in buck-boards. They came singly
and in twos and threes.

Bed-ridden cripples were borne hither by their loved ones, that the
great preacher might lay hands upon their infirmities and implore the
merciful God to alleviate their sufferings. The halt and the maimed were
come to sue for absolution and to be made whole again.

One misshapen hunchback--a veritable Quasimodo--with stubby bowed legs,
abnormal arms, and ape-like visage, carried his helpless offspring
eighteen miles to this sanctuary; begging prayers to relieve the
creature's torture.

Every man and boy of them was armed in some fashion, and by high noon
the clearing was filled with a multitude of people, sorrow-torn, racked
with abject grief.

Over in Southpaw the enemy gazed down from the heights upon this
spectacle in amazement. As young Sap McGill stood on a crag and watched,
his eyes met a sight unlike any which the ranges of Kentucky had ever
witnessed.

His old arch enemy's strength in death was a force that appalled him. It
was only now that he fully realized the peculiar far-reaching power
wielded by old Cap Lutts throughout his lifetime. The dead monarch had
always ruled his followers through strength and love. Fear had never
been a dictator. He repelled his enemies through a will and courage that
never flinched, and elicited from them a meed of awesome respect.

The church was wofully inadequate and would not hold a twentieth of the
mass. A great abundance of live laurel was cut and piled beneath a tree
in the church clearing. And hundreds of eager hands hurried into the
byways of the vale and returned with arms heaped with blossoms. These
tender tributes were carefully placed on the couch of laurel until it
rose to a great bier of fragrant petals.

Tender hands removed the old man's body from the church and laid him in
this laurel-thatched casket of many-hued flowers.

Later, a great yellow mule paced out of the west, bearing a tall figure
garbed in black, and the voices were hushed to a murmur and the
church-bell began its tolling.

When the circuit rider reached the clearing the mass of awed humanity
parted and opened an aisle leading to the mammoth bier, where smiling
death reposed, cradled amidst billows of blossoms. The parson had been a
lifelong friend of old Cap Lutts.

His towering figure moved on toward the bier and his clean-shaven
features were drawn in a terrible sorrow. When his anguished eyes rested
upon the still form, a great sob convulsed him; and like an echo the
pent-up achings burst in a horde of throats; subdued, piteous weeping
ebbed and rolled over the dead hero of the host.

Two benches had been carried from the church and placed near the dead
man. One was for the parson; on the other sat Lem and Bud and Belle-Ann.
Little Bud crouched like a shrunken, lifeless thing. Belle-Ann's
beautiful eyes were swollen and her heart wrung dry of tears.

Lem's eyes, too, were dry as bone; not a single tear had he shed. For
hours he sat staring over the heads of the people, and on his bruised
and swollen face was stamped a grief more soul-searing than words or
tears could tell.

At eventide a cortege reaching from the church to the cabin bore the old
man to the barren orchard, and there they laid him beside Maw Lutts. Old
Cap Lutts, monarch of Moon mountain, had passed out of feudal history,
and beyond Federal jurisdiction; his church on Hellsfork had been
dedicated with his blood!




CHAPTER VIII

"LESSEN HE KILLS THE REVENUER"


Tom-John Benson did not come up to Moon mountain the following week, nor
the next. But at the end of the third week he appeared to take Belle-Ann
below to Beattyville and across the Kentucky River to the mission school
at Proctor.

He came riding a strong, mountain horse and leading another for
Belle-Ann. He unwrapped a huge bundle, and displayed an entire new
outfit for the girl--two blue sailor dresses with white collars, shoes,
hat, and kindred articles of apparel.

Belle-Ann dressed herself in these store things; and while Slab prepared
a lunch for Benson, she walked out and down toward the spring, where she
thought Lem was lingering. But Lem was not there, and she continued on
to the old honeybee tree, where he sat on a log in deep meditation.

He wished to see her alone. He knew she would find him.

He looked up with a smile when he saw her trim, round figure approach,
beautiful even in the cheap clothes.

She tossed the black curls from her oval face, smiled back at him, and
stood demurely waiting his approval of her apparel.

"Yo' sho' do look purty, Belle-Ann," he observed. "Air yore pap ready
yet?"

"Yes. When he's done his snack, I 'low we-uns 'll be goin', Lem," she
answered, with an assumed cheerfulness she was far from feeling.

Although her heart ached, she had determined before she came to meet Lem
that she would not cry. She had been steeling herself for days for the
ordeal of this parting. Down in the depth of her heart she held fast to
one great purpose; and if she gave way to her feelings and cried, she
knew that it would be shattered.

"I 'lowed yo'-all wanted t' say good-by, Lem," she said presently. He
aroused himself and stood up before her, his eyes full of a meaning she
had never seen there before.

"Naw, Belle-Ann, I hain't wantin' t' say good-by; but I 'low I hev t'.
But thar air one thing I air wantin' yo' t' promise me, Belle-Ann," he
said soberly as he reached down and took her small, tanned hand.

Belle-Ann's heart was throbbing wildly now. This was the crucial moment
she had foreseen, and now was the time to summon all the forces at her
command.

"Mebby I cayn't promise hit, Lem," she rejoined almost inaudibly, with
violet eyes that wandered guiltily away from his face.

He stared at her. There was a timbre in her tone that startled him. He
saw and felt instinctively that she had discerned what he held in his
mind. The fact that she had divined correctly, and answered in this way,
filled him with a sudden, sinking apprehension.

Her words shocked him into a stupor. He thought that he knew her very
soul as he knew his own soul. Had the years that had unfolded her young
life before him, betrayed him and withheld deep things from his
understanding? Things that would join in the pursuit with other searing
grievances to sting and urge his being onward toward desperation? There
was, in truth, a depth to this girl, whom he had known all her life,
that his cursory penetration had failed utterly to fathom. When Lem's
parents had been killed by the revenuer, then it was that an inexorable
avowal had resolved itself in the soul of Belle-Ann. An inviolable
thing, the evulsion of which could never obtain save at the shrine of
death--the death of the hated Ghost-man. Lem had only a general and
superficial conception of the intrinsic intensity of this thing that had
taken hold of the girl. Little did he know of the doleful hours she had
brooded away over this theme of vengeance. Long, brain-dulling hours
during her waking time. Haunting, troublous hours during her dream-time.
And always in the imaginings of her girl-heart she nurtured and built up
an ideal, who would kill the revenuer. A hero who would hasten to her
with the affiliating tribute, and lay the crimson laurels of the deed at
her feet. She well knew that Lem thirsted for the life of this uncanny
man, who had come and deprived him of his beloved mother and father. She
knew that day and night as he traversed the hills he was ever waiting
and watching for him. She was keen, and appreciatively sensible to this,
and ever prayed that Lem would succeed. But all this was not the deed.
Theoretically, it occupied the tenure of a debt. A premise that looked
for no advancement save payment. Until this thing was done they would
both suffer. She told herself over and over again that she would never
betray her true feelings to Lem until he had killed Burton, and appeased
her vengeance. Love him as she thought she did, some vital element was
poignantly amiss. However unwarranted, and fatuous, an indefinable
barrier would stand between them until the culmination of the yearning
that had made ugly crosses in her heart.

Never could she forget the past. As she stood now before Lem, with
downcast eyes, the past rushed upon her more vividly than ever. That
sun-smitten day, made dark and dreadful, when she had hovered over the
still form of Maw Lutts in the yard. Maw Lutts, who from Belle-Ann's
baby-days to the woman's last minute in the yard, had never uttered to
the girl a cross word, or cast her an impatient look. Her parting smile
was rooted in Belle-Ann's soul, climbing and wrapping its tendrils
around her heart like an evergreen.

Even at this instant in her gloomy retrospection, she could put her
finger on her own bosom, precisely where the bullet had struck. That
reddish-purple spot that did not bleed. Very often the vision of that
small, round death-sore multiplied and floated in one gesticulating
mirage before her eyes. Often they consolidated into one compact darkish
background, against which would develop the satanic, puffed visage of
the revenuer who had done this thing. When old Cap Lutts' spirit went
out by the same hand, the girl's soul had sickened to a distortion of
mingled fear and hate, which at times bade fair to drive her primitive
mind bereft.

A devouring monitor of revenge had skulked into her life, following her
better self relentlessly, as a panther stalks a spent beast. To her it
was all like the happening of the past hour. Three weeks only had
elapsed since she had witnessed the last withering stroke of this evil
creature bent upon their destruction. Across her every mood the
prickling echoes of that frantic bell-scream raked. It filled her ears
when she strove to shut it out, and projected its curse into her
slumbering hours.

She felt that unhallowed hour upon her--the moonlit night when the very
trees shuddered as she and little Buddy, clinging to each other, had
crept through the ghastly shadows back to the meeting-house after the
mad bell's appeal had died and the demon had gone.

Never, while reason held its throne, could she obliterate from her eyes
what they two saw in the church that night. So it was that Belle-Ann had
long since, secretly, reared a citadel within her, and down in a remote
grotto therein, had locked away her love; isolated it from her impulses
and fealty.

With valiant, tender delicacy, she always tried not to sully and
overshadow Lem's life with this that she knew was in her. She knew that
Lem had a cross of his own to bear. Although she fancied, as humans are
prone to do, that his burden did not parallel her own. But she would not
contaminate the boy's love with the presence of this red-rare oath
sticking like a projectile in her being. This rubric, monastic avowal of
vengeance that now hung in her soul like a garnet etching. But always
she prayed that God might direct Lem to avenge her, and thus tear down
this phantom picture that overshadowed her life, and thereby redeem her
peace.

Like animated photography, all this dashed through the girl's mind in a
trice when Lem expressed a wish that she would promise him something.
And with it her cryptic avowal centralized and surged up strong within
her. Taking a firm hold on her will, she raised her eyes full upon his
supplicant figure suing before her. Lem looked, and acted like a man who
had been stunned by a blow. He was confronted with a new and unexpected
phase of her nature. As his own gaze met her eyes, he discerned the
indelible lettering of some palpable, deep purpose. What strange alien
agency had laid hold of her? Was this the call of her blue-grass blood
asserting itself in this, the hour of parting? The celerity of the
transition, from his romping, hilarious play-fellow, to this serious,
solemn, sudden incarnation, who denied him so unexpectedly, the pledge
upon which he had staked his future, was a cyclonic blow that left his
faculties bereft and numbed. Belle-Ann was looking fixedly at him. His
lips were palsied. His mouth moved mutely to form words. Suddenly he
found his voice and launched forth out of a daze.

"Why, Belle-Ann, yo' kin sho' promise me thes, cyan't yo' now?"

"Yo' hain't tol' me whut hit air yet, Lem," she protested faintly.

"Belle-Ann," he blurted out huskily, "I air pizen sho' yo'-all knows
whut I air a firin' at."

She shook the silken mass of black curls that would insist in tumbling
down on her small face, and elevated her pretty brows negatively. But
beneath her drooping lids a flicker of tell-tale light was playing.

"Looky heah, Belle-Ann,"--his voice dropped to pleading tones--"Lem
wants thet yo' should promise em sompin' 'fore yo'-all goes away. I want
yo' t' promise, Belle-Ann," he went on earnestly, recovering the hand he
had dropped in his amazement. "I want yo' t' promise thet when yo'-all
cums back t' home thet yo'll marry me--eh?"

Not rudely, but reverently and slowly she drew her hand away from him.
With eyes averted, her bosom stirred and she struggled with the choking
in her throat.

She removed her sun-hat, and stood swinging it in her perturbation. With
a great will she steadied her voice.

"I cyan't promise thet, Lem--leastways not now," she answered slowly,
without looking at him.

He fell back, crestfallen and hurt.

For a minute silence stood between them. Never before had he seen her so
bewitching.

Then she turned her matchless violet eyes upon him.

"I hain't a spitin' yo', Lem," she explained hurriedly. "I hain't a
spitin' you, cose yo' air a good boy an'--an' I like yo', Lem. But I
jest cyant promise whut yo' want me t' now."

Astounded, he stood fumbling for words. Then he suddenly tossed his long
hair back with a jerk of his head--a gesture that had characterized his
father.

"Belle-Ann," he cried hotly, "whut ails yo', little gal; air hit some
tuther bein' yo' love? Air thet Jutt Orlick bin a pesterin' yo' an'
yo're afeerd t' tell me? Belle-Ann, little gal, do yo'-all love Orlick?
Air hit em whut yo' love, an' afeerd t' own on hit? Air ye 'lowin' t'
get shut o' me, Belle-Ann?" he pursued vehemently.

She faced about and fixed her liquid eyes upon him. Her heart hurt and
she turned away again. And he was instantly sorry that he had accused
her.

She stepped over and sat on the spruce-log, dangling her hat and
regarding her tan shoes.

"Looky heah," he burst out fervently, "cum, deah little Belle-Ann; cum
kiss me."

Very slowly she shook her raven curls.

"I cyant, Lem," she said; "not now." At this refusal from her a pallor
swept his features. Utterly crushed, he walked to and fro, a prey to
conflicting emotions.

Her mysterious mien and unaccountable frigidity drove the chill of
another fear into his being. Could it be that this was the first bud of
a fruit that had already started to thrive in Belle-Ann's heart, before
she had even reached the school?

She was going out into a new world away from him. Did she already regard
herself exalted above the things that made up his humble life?

He looked at her sitting on the log, silent, beautiful,
mysterious--another girl from the one he had known all his life.

Abruptly he halted before her. Her eyes sought his face. He fell back a
few paces, now white to the lips with feelings that tore him. He
stretched his two arms toward her beseechingly.

"Looky heah, Belle-Ann! Look t' me now, little gal!" he cried out in
words that tumbled over each other, "Hain't I fittin'? Gawd cyan't find
th' bein' thet loves yo'-all like me, Belle-Ann! Hain't I honest? Hain't
I knowed yo' all yore little life, Belle-Ann? Whut would maw say, seein'
yo'-all driftin' away from me like thes? Do yo' 'low t' go below an'
never cum back, Belle-Ann? Hain't I alers fit fo' yo'-all, Belle-Ann?
Hain't I fit for yo' all my life?"

He took a step nearer, and with his two strong hands ruthlessly ripped
his flannel shirt open and exposed his naked breast to her eyes.

Transfixed, the girl stared at the twenty wide, white scars that
criss-crossed his bosom. At sight of this, with sheer will and gallant
courage she fought back the tears into her aching heart--fought them
back desperately, just as he had fought off the she-bear that had made
those marks when they two were children--fought her off single-handed
with a club, and saved Belle-Ann's life.

With wide eyes she regarded him as he reached out for her.

His impassioned words penetrated to her very soul. She heard him on
vaguely, struggling to control herself. The tide of emotion past, his
petitions came now in low, entreating accents.

"Gawd 'lows I air honest, Belle-Ann. I hain't pesky, Gawd 'll tell; I
hain't sneakin', Gawd 'll tell. Lem wus rise up 'long side o' yo', deah
little gal; an' he loves yo' now, same as alers. Why, I'd stan', ef yo'd
say th' word, with a laff on my face an' let yo'-all fire on me, an' die
a grinnin'--cose I knowed yo' done hit, Belle-Ann.

"I air jest pore regular Lem, little gal, whut has loved yo' all yore
life--frum a little bitty gal up t' now. An' my heart's jest heah whar
hit alers was--jest heah fo' yo', Belle-Ann, with nothin' hidin' out!"

With back-flung head he paused, his pleading eyes still upon her.

Throughout this, Belle-Ann did not meet his eyes directly. She dared
not. She prayed he would stop.

She could no longer withstand his pleadings. She rose up from the log
and, in her turn, though more slowly, her little feet trod where Lem had
walked.

Unconsciously, her hat dropped to the ground as her fingers relaxed and
she placed her two hands upon her bosom. She looked full into his eyes.

"Lem," she breathed, the carmine leaving her cheeks, "yo' axed me t'
marry yo' when I cum back. I cyant promise. Yo' axed t' kiss me, Lem;
oh, please, please don't kiss me. I--I----"

She shut her teeth tightly, and pressed hard upon her turbulent bosom.
Alarmed, he sprang up to catch her. With a quick gesture she held him
off.

"Lem, I took a vow--I did," she panted. "I took a vow on th'
witch-block. I took hit t' myself--nobuddy but Gawd knows. Now, I got t'
tell yo' all, Lem. _I took a vow that no livin' bein' 's gain' t' kiss
my face lessen he kills th' revenuer!_ I took a vow thet I'll
never--never--_never_--marry nobuddy, till th' revenuer's daid; I vowed
on hit, Lem!"




CHAPTER IX

ORLICK WORKS EVIL


Lem listened in awe to her panting, hurried words, looking down into her
pain-swept features, struck dumb with the earnest vehemence of her
avowal. The girl went on:

"I couldn't bust my vow, Lem. Hit air jest heah in my breast by day an'
by night. Hit follers me alers, Lem--follers me like a hant. I don't lay
no store by nuthin' till hit air gone away--an' hit'll never go away
till th' ghost-man's daid."

Lem lunged forth out of a stupor.

"Gawd'llmoughty, Belle-Ann, yo'-all hain't a-lowin' thet I don't want t'
kill em, air yo'?" he cried, in a tempest of chagrin and amazement.

"No, no, no!" she interposed hastily. "I know thet yore a-watchin' an'
a-waitin' an' a-lookin' fo' em."

She took the hat Lem picked up from the ground, saying:

"Yo'll do somethin' perticlar like, Lem, when yo' do kill em. Keep
a-watchin', an' a-tryin', Lem, but don't 'low em t' git first bead on
yo', Lem. He air a hant."

"Ef I air lucky, an' kill em--will yo'-all promise then, Belle-Ann?"
implored the boy in low, yearning tones. Side by side they were walking
now.

"Yo' jest ax me when th' revenuer's daid, Lem," she returned, looking
up, the dimples playing and her small Grecian face aflush with the
thought.

He could not mistake the light that flickered between her fluttering
lids. There was an answer hovering about the red, bowed lips. Her
enhanced loveliness in the new sailor dress ravished his senses.

Such a girl! She had always been his, he told himself. He knew she would
come back to him. Then a sober fear assailed him again, that
contradicted his faith.

"Belle-Ann," he queried, "when yo'-all git yore deah little haid stuffed
with th' larnin', an' th' high-tucked ways at th' school--an' know all
'bout books an' sich, mebby yo'-all won't never 'low t' cum back heah
agin? Mebby I won't never see yo'-all agin, deah little gal, eh?"

She stopped and stood rigid.

"I kin promise thet, Lem. Heah, watch me, I cross my heart thesaway,
Lem--see? Now kiss my han'. I'll sho' cum back some day, Lem--I
promise."

Eagerly, ravenously, he grasped her small hand, brown, but
fine-textured. A dozen times he kissed it hotly, fervently, wrung with
sorrow. So much might happen before he saw her again!

At this juncture, a cow-horn sounded, and they knew that Belle-Ann's
father was waiting. The time of parting was at hand. That vibrant
horn-call sank deep into Lem's smarting soul.

"Kiss me heah, Lem," the girl said, showing the top of her head. He well
knew what she meant.

He placed his hands on her soft curls and pressed his lips to the little
white scar that crossed the part in her hair. He had kissed it before.
Many times now, did he press it.

His throat pained terribly as he poured his fervent kisses of adoration
upon this tiny scar that he had accidentally inflicted years ago, in the
excitement of a sham battle.

She suddenly tore away from him and ran ahead. She dared not trust
herself to linger longer. He followed, a tribute of grief in his
resigned, dull eyes, like a man with flowers to put on a mound.

When Lem left the spot, Orlick ducked sneakingly out of a dense clump of
laurel where he had watched the love scene with burning eyes--eyes
glittering with hate and jealousy.

Unheard and unobserved, he slunk away through the pawpaw thicket into
the impenetrable rhododendrons. For hours he had followed Lem that
morning. But he had been too far away to overhear anything that passed
between him and the girl.

Now that old Cap Lutts was gone, Orlick had hidden here with the
intention of killing Lem. He had worked his way up on his stomach and
was just inching his rifle into position, when the girl appeared, and he
desisted for some remote reason of his own. However, he slunk away, his
foul heart beating high with hate.

If he could not have Belle-Ann, he would make sure that Lem would not.
As she neared the horse-block, Belle-Ann turned and waited for Lem.

"Will yo' sho' kill th' ghost-man, Lem?" she reminded him in parting.

He nodded apathetically. He was beyond the heat of any enthusiasm in
this tense minute. He only knew that she was going away from him.

In her drawling, sweet voice she continued as they proceeded toward the
horse-block where they could see Benson and the horses ready.

"Ef yo' do, Lem, hit'll smoke all th' sorry outen my heart, an' I'll be
glad agin, like 'fore maw an' pap wus kilt--gladness th' kind whut
hain't a-carin' ef hit rains, or ef hit suns. Don't be sad, Lem,"
glancing into his woful, tragic eyes. "Belle-Ann'll be a-prayin' fo'
yo'-all. An', Lem, when I cum back, mebby yo'll kiss me heah," she ended
with a finger on her puckered, red lips.

Buddy and Slab and the dogs were mingling with the restive horses in the
sunshine. Benson had already mounted.

Forgetful of her precious dress, Belle-Ann dropped on her knees in the
dirt beside old Ben and, with her arms around the blind hound's neck,
she hugged the old dog to her and kissed his soft ears. Buddy hung on to
her with appeals for her early return. Old Slab shuffled around her with
a medley of adjurations.

She turned in the saddle and called back:

"Keep a-watchin' an' a-tryin', Lem--an' yo', Slab--don't yo' fergit whut
yo' promised against th' witch."

Her voice was unsteady now.

Benson was leading the way a few rods ahead. As they looped the spur and
headed down the trail toward the cypress cut, Belle-Ann could no longer
combat her feelings. Bending low over the saddle horn, she wept
inconsolably.

At the gap below she looked back. Lem stood up on the horse-block waving
to her. Through dim eyes she looked and flourished her wet handkerchief
above her head.

Far down in the valley, where they struck the faint wagon trail and the
horses came out to the ford at Boon Creek, Belle-Ann turned her eager
eyes up toward Moon mountain and there, as she had expected, she
discerned Lem's outline high up on the apex of Eagle Crown.

And as the horses paused in mid-stream to drink, she caught flashes in
the sunlight, and she knew that Lem was waving his hat to her, and she
knew he was straining his eyes and his heart for her.

       *       *       *       *       *

In these troublesome times, gray and somber with woe, the Lutts cabin on
Moon mountain was a dismal and cheerless abode.

Lem and little Buddy were inconsolable, and the monotonous days
following Belle-Ann's departure were sad and long--and very lonely.

Slab was tireless in his efforts to keep the boys cheered up.

On pleasant nights he would sit on the witch-elm block before the cabin
and sing "Kitty Wells." This sacred duty over, he would turn his talent
to enlivening negro melodies, interspersed with doubtful tales, well put
together, dealing with war times in general, and the wonders of
Lexington in particular.

And when the storms came, and the lightning crackled, and the cascade in
Hellsfork raged, and the lashing trees soughed in the rain and tempest,
Slab would render the same musical program in the big front room, but
vary his plots of fiction woven about his beloved Lexington. In case Lem
and Buddy glanced at each other approvingly, or applauded his comics
with even a half smile, his old face showed plainly that he was amply
repaid.

Lem had eight trusty men working "The Worm" up in the secret cave, but
spent most of the time each day, after counting the demijohns to be
turned over to the bootleggers, in wandering aimlessly over the
mountains. He was always alert and watchful.

Over in Southpaw there were evidences of unrest, and Lem looked for an
attack from the revenuers at any hour.

Indeed, so furtive had this habit of vigilance become, that in these
days he rarely traveled the trails, but moved under cover parallel with
the paths.

One day he stepped out in the open trail and picked up a fledgling hawk
that had tumbled out of its nest. Ahead was a group of boulders, one of
which was immediately under a spruce sapling.

To these he walked leisurely and, resting his rifle against the first
rock, he climbed up to put the youngster beyond reach of the badgers and
razorbacks.

He was in the act of reaching up when, at a slight sound, he turned and
looked straight into the round, black end of a rifle, less than six feet
from his chest!

Down at the stock was the big bull-dog face of the ghost-man, leering at
him triumphantly.

The peculiar, erratic impulses of the psychological moment are ever
puzzling and insoluble. Lem gazed calmly, almost unconcernedly, down
upon Peter Burton. Indeed, at this instant, there was no more evidence
of excitement in Lem's face and mien, than had the revenuer been a
venturesome fox squirrel gamboling about.

Lem almost grinned pleasantly, as he turned and reaching up, placed the
young hawk safely on a low branch.

The little creature threw out his wings. Lem steadied it with careful
deliberation, then leaped down from the boulder. The instant his feet
struck the ground it seemed to shock his very blood into icy currents
that congealed and left him befuddled and shivering.

As he stared into the revenuer's insolent face, the earth looked like a
pinwheel.

Suddenly the film lifted from his brain and he was conscious for the
first time that the revenuer had taken his rifle. The man's thick lips
were moving. He was talking to him. Lem's poise came back. Fully
aroused, his face went livid with rage. The revenuer perceived this and
thrust the rifle muzzle closer.

"You don't doubt that I'll shoot, do you?" he inquired, with his eyes
fixed savagely upon Lem.

"Naw, houn'-dog," returned the boy in low, quavering tones. "Yo'd kill a
female baby."

The revenuer laughed.

"Don't you know when I first saw you on that rock training that hawk to
sit up, you kind of scared me?" He expelled a volume of tobacco juice.
"You scared me some, Mr. Lutts. I thought you was fixing to ring a
church bell on me."

He let loose of Lem's rifle and it fell behind him. He held his own,
pistol-fashion, under his arm, with his finger in the guard, as he
stepped nearer and shook a huge menacing fist in the boy's pallid face.

"You'll have a swell chance ringing anything on me again unless you've
got a church bell in your pocket. You pulled a swell trick on me that
night, didn't ye? You thought the bunch that galloped down to your
dog-house would get me that night, didn't ye? Young man, I'm going to
bust this gang of thieves up here, or I'll drink Hellsfork dry! And
you--you--you're not only carrying on your daddy's business----"

A blinding, reckless fury that fired Lem with the strength and savagery
of a tiger propelled his body through the air like a catapult. He landed
on the revenuer's neck and with his naked hands he tried to kill him.

He learned speedily why Burton had not fired, for a second man who had
been concealed behind the boulders, together with Jutt Orlick, sprang
out and upon him. These two heavyweights soon overpowered and handcuffed
the boy, while Orlick lay with gloating eyes, peering out at the scene.

Burton rolled Lem over on his back, and left him to exhaust the
maledictions he was heaping upon their heads.

As Lem scrambled to his feet, Burton launched forth as he deftly cut the
leather thong and relieved Lem of his cow-horn.

"Lutts--your family owes the government a million dollars and then some.
And you're going to pay in some shape or form--you're in the hands of
the law now. You ain't monkeyin' with these county people. You're on
your way to Frankfort now--and I think I'll be able to send you to
Atlanta for a while. Eh, Tom?"

Burton turned to his perspiring companion.

"Sure--they say the punk tastes like cake down there, too."

"Now, Lutts," resumed the revenuer with his bullying insolence, "you've
got one chance, and if you could see what's ahead of you, you'd take it
quick! You lead us to that layout of yours and you're free. Otherwise,
you're going to jail for a year anyway. I got the evidence all right.
What you going to do about it?"

Lem's brain was busy.

If he had been sure that there were only the two of them he would have
been only too eager to comply with Burton's proposition--because he knew
that these two men would never again report for duty. But how was he to
know how many men Burton had hiding to trail them.

Upon second thought Lem declined to put his own people in jeopardy.

"Well," growled Burton, "don't be afraid to talk. Are you going to lead
me to that liquor hole?"

"Yo' kin blow my brains out first," replied Lem scornfully and
emphatically.

"Well, fool, you're on your way. Tom, let's get busy. Bring his gun."

The revenuer produced a length of strap and, tying one end to the short
chain connecting the iron cuffs, he motioned Tom ahead.

The iron cut into Lem's flesh at the slightest pressure, and acted like
a bull-ring. In their desire to get the prisoner away with as much
secrecy as possible they avoided the trails, traveling cautiously under
cover.

A few minutes after the revenuer and their captive had departed, Orlick
crept out from the rocks like a reptile, and warily dodged along in
their wake.




CHAPTER X

IN PRISON


At high-noon the next day Lem Lutts was landed at Frankfort, a United
States prisoner. This dismal trip represented the first ride Lem had
ever made on a railroad. The terrible chagrin and consternation that
obsessed him, and the bullying presence of his furiously hated arch
enemy made it one that lingered long in his memory.

In the early hours of the trip the revenue officer and his deputy had
plied the boy with a torrent of questions in their vain attempt to break
him down. This cross-fire finally wearied Burton, as Lem acted like a
man deaf, dumb, and blind; and the surly officer desisted with a series
of dire predictions, mingled with some exquisite punctuations of choice
profanity.

A pall of far-stretching clouds obscured the sky and a film of drizzling
rain veiled the atmosphere. Through this thin downpour Burton walked his
shackled prisoner to the Federal Building.

After a wait of almost an hour--which added nervous agony to Lem's grim
speculations--he was led into the austere presence of the commissioner.

A row of ornate heavy chairs was lined up against the east wall of the
high-ceilinged room. Across the room on the west side, the commissioner
sat at a long claw-footed table, hemmed about with various other pieces
of massive office furniture, while to the left of him a pale, icy blonde
woman hammered a typewriter.

On the walls were the portraits of five men, presumably former
commissioners.

The whole atmosphere of the chamber was charged with a chill that went
to the heart of the prisoner. When they first entered the room the two
officers escorted Lem to one of the chairs against the wall. While the
deputy remained seated here with Lem, Burton swaggered his damp hulk
across the room and halted before the commissioner, his big shoulders
slumping awkwardly. Here he stood mopping his sweaty, heavy features.

Lem's eyes were fastened upon his blunt profile. When the commissioner
threw his pen down and looked up, Burton met his gaze with a leering
grin, the while wetting his thick lips with his tongue and jerking his
thumb toward Lem and the deputy with some words that were inaudible.

As Burton grinned now, Lem had seen his own dog grin, and, at this tense
moment, the analogy almost coaxed a smile to Lem's tight lips. Lem had
seen his own hound lay a limp, dead rabbit at his feet and look up, and
lick his lips with his tongue, and grin just as Burton grinned now.

A subdued and lengthy conversation followed between the commissioner and
Burton. From their expressions and gestures it was apparent that Burton
was describing the killing of old Cap Lutts. Finally Burton beckoned the
deputy, who led Lem across the great room and stood him before the
commissioner.

The latter leaned backward and slightly to one side, while with
curiously wrinkled brow he started at Lem's boots and glanced slowly and
critically up Lem's corduroy trousers, past his heavy belt, across his
gray flannel shirt front, and finally rested his keen eyes upon Lem's
face.

He did not see a hang-dog criminal.

He saw before him a young mountaineer, in height a good six feet; spare
of flesh, but with back-flung shoulders that promised to develop at
maturity into the frame of a mighty man. He saw a candid, open
countenance, though now a trifle pale, little short of handsome, and
absolutely free from any indications of dissipation.

He noted a well-shaped, firm mouth above a square chin; a thin, hawklike
nose leading to a wide vertical forehead.

Throughout this acute examination Lem's steady gray eyes never wandered
from the commissioner's face. He focused his own gaze upon the
commissioner's eye as intently as he would have watched a groundhog hole
in the hills. Then the commissioner leaned forward and, taking up his
pen, spoke softly:

"So you are old Lutts's boy?"

"He's a dangerous man, Cap'n," interposed Burton. "He ain't no boozer.
He makes the stuff, but he don't drink it himself so you can notice it;
and that makes him more dangerous. I can hook seventeen rummy-shiners
before I can get half-way to a sober one. Then again, he's got the nerve
of the old man, and that helps some, I reckon. He's the old man over and
over--he's fixin' to lead us a dog's life, Captain."

The commissioner studied Lem again.

"I knew your father, Lutts," he said. "In fact, I have a small piece of
lead inside me yet that your father put there." He paused again and,
oddly enough, the severe frown with which he had raked the prisoner at
first now vanished. He continued evenly:

"Do you see those portraits along the wall? They are men who worked
themselves up in the service during the thirty-five years that I can
remember. They all looked for your father; they all found him. But none
of them ever brought him in."

The commissioner shifted his eyes to Burton.

"So it was left to you, eh? Well--well, of course, I rather
expected--that is, I hoped to get old Lutts alive, but----"

He broke off abruptly and added his signature to the blue printed blank
he had filled in, then handed the slip to Burton with:

"I'll continue the hearing for further evidence--take him over to the
jail, Burton."

He now looked at Lem.

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

Throughout all this the boy had stood straight and unflinching. His
features were pale but his jaws were hard set. Friendless and moneyless,
he knew his chances were small. He knew that he stood on the perilous
brink of some dire happening. He understood the import of the
commissioner's order to hold him for additional evidence, and while he
was not wholly unafraid, he stood tense and determined, boding no
retreat, like a brave horse taking a deep, wide ditch in the dark, with
yawning depths beneath him, and the gush of waters in his ears.

"I said, have you got anything to say?" repeated the impatient
commissioner.

"I hain't got nothin' t' say--only--only----" he began, in a voice that
split and ruptured in crowding past the lump that choked him. He turned
his gray eyes and fixed them upon the bloated, triumphant visage of
Burton.

"Only," he struggled on, quaveringly, as he lifted his two cuffed hands
and leveled them at the revenuer, "he kilt my Maw--he ded--an' he kilt
my pap, he ded--an'--an'----"

[Illustration: "He kilt my maw--he ded--an' he kilt my pap."]

Burton grabbed one shoulder with a snort, the deputy the other, and they
led him out.

As the door closed, the blonde typist resumed her machine, and her
chilly eyes were moist. She glanced covertly at the commissioner. His
downward drawn mouth was ajar, and he was gazing blankly at a familiar
ink spot on his desk.

Once again Lem found himself marching through the rain between his
captors, and all the unknown strange noises of a city consolidated and
merged into a tumult that harried his very soul. His next distinct
impression came when he realized that Burton was unlocking his
handcuffs.

He was now inside of a jail. He stood before a desk and a man in uniform
was putting various questions to him in a curt and gruff voice,
concerning his age and residence, to which Lem answered in an apathetic,
dazed way. The man made a record of these responses in a book. While he
was thus occupied, Lem was eyeing his awesome surroundings.

Now for the first time, he was conscious that Burton and his deputy had
disappeared, and another man in uniform stood at his side. The desk-man
presently handed this officer a pink slip, and he in turn told Lem to
follow, leading the way across a big rotunda of concrete to a huge
iron-barred gate which he unlocked. He ushered the prisoner into a long
corridor, and transferred him to the care of a second uniformed guard,
who proceeded to search Lem's clothes with a skill and deftness that
would have inspired envy in the bosom of a professional pickpocket.

The guard seated Lem on a bench which was already occupied by two men in
blue cotton shirts, and the perversely striped trousers of convict garb.

"Blinky," said the guard, "where's Last Time?" addressing a huge convict
with red hair, a mop and a bucket.

"He's over at the bath house."

"Send him front when he comes back. And you," turning to Lem, "sit there
till you're wanted."

Whereupon, with the pink slip in his hand, he walked to a small desk at
the farther side of the corridor and sat in an arm-chair with his back
toward the three now on the wooden bench, waiting for Lem knew not what.

In the meantime, Lem's eyes roved about making a grim inventory of this
great merciless cage that had engulfed his body. He was inside a mammoth
arcade-like structure that stretched its repellent length out a thousand
feet and more to a blind, sinister end. Along its sides, equi-distant,
appeared high arched double windows, bolted and barred with a
lattice-work of iron. Wherever Lem perceived a spot of God's light, a
cold, forbidding hand lay across it like a blasphemy, spreading out its
unyielding, black, skeleton fingers to enmesh a human soul.

Moreover, this stupendous, invulnerable shell incased and jealously
protected a second structure equally strong and grisly, for as Lem
looked, he noted this other structure occupying the center of the
arcade. It was a tomb within a tomb, and the boy's already heavy heart
sickened as his eyes slid down the seemingly interminable vista of small
iron-barred doors, some four feet apart, that diminished in perspective
toward the distant end until they shrank to the size of a newspaper.

The doors in this cunning edifice were accessible by means of a steel
skeleton-work forming lengthwise porches five stories high, where even a
sluggish imagination could visualize convenient gibbets stationed just
outside these black, mysterious doors, awaiting the condemned necks of
the inmates.

While Lem made further notations in undisguised wonderment, convicts
were constantly passing to and fro. They were "short time" men who had
their allotted duties, working about the tiers and corridors.

Presently, Lem became suddenly conscious that the two men at the other
end of the bench were eyeing him curiously. Their interchange of looks
and low words to each other made it obvious that Lem was a subject of
comment. Now that Lem was looking straight at them, the man nearest slid
along the bench, smiled good-humoredly, then whispered:

"What did ye draw, bo?" The man watched Lem's mute lips for response.

"What did they give ye, pal?" he repeated, while the second man slid
over and craned his neck for the answer. Lem still looked puzzled, but
finally answered.

"Nothin'."

The other started a laugh which was squelched with an elbow punch in the
ribs from his companion.

"I mean, pal," pursued Lem's inquisitor, "did ye git a sentence in this
jail, er did they bind ye over?"

"I air continued," replied the boy gloomily, "wherever thet takes me."

"Oh, yes--is this your first pinch?"

Lem risked a nod, with only a vague notion of what "pinch" meant.

Presently the man spoke again.

"Say, pal, you ain't never been in jail before, have ye?"

"Naw," responded Lem without hesitation, "an' I 'low I want out o' heah,
too."

He delivered this earnest sentiment with such guileless sincerity that
both men snickered.

"Don't you care. You'll feel dopy for a day er two--then ye won't mind
it. It'll git your nanny the first time. This is my fifth time in this
joint," he volunteered. "I got eight spots ahead of me. Say, pal, sneak
me th' makin's, will ye?"

Lem did not answer.

"Have ye got any tobacco on ye?"

"Ef I had, yo'd be welcome to hit--I never use hit."

The man looked disappointed.

"Say--when the bull frisked ye--did he git all your matches--ain't ye
got no matches either?"

"I haint got nary a match."

Here a big, husky fellow in stripes, who walked as if he had springs for
shoe-soles, passed by. Then he stopped, and turning back, looked keenly
into Lem's face. Lem met his gaze and noted that he wore a livid scar
from the right cheek-bone down to the chin. He did not appear to see the
other two men on the bench, but stood looking with open interest at Lem.

"Hello, Last Time," greeted the man next to Lem. Wherefore, the newcomer
shifted his gaze searchingly, then grinned. With a furtive backward
glance toward the guard's desk, he thrust his hand out.

"What did you draw, Rox?" he probed.

"Eight."

"A mere speck--I could stand on my head that long. I may see you
to-night." He hurried on with his elastic tread toward the guard's desk.

"I'm dead sure we'll git some tobacco now," predicted the man beside
Lem. "That's 'Last Time'--he's a time-lock expert--believe me,
gents--he's some cracker, too. I met him in Joliet, and I met him agin
in San Quinten. Say, Monk, do ye remember readin' about that back-track
stunt Last Time pulled off five years ago? No? Well, that was a funny
caper. You see, Last Time touched a big joint in Cincy and got four
thousand bucks. Then he beat it west. Two days later he got stewed in
Chi--then he boarded a train with a bottle of booze, thinkin' he was
bound fer Omaha; but he woke up that night and walked smack into the
arms of the fly cops in Cincy. What do ye think of that? They didn't
prove it on him very strong, but he drawed two spots at Columbus on
general principles. I wonder what he turned this time. I met him last
winter in St. Louis and I was up aginst it good and strong, too, but
Last Time slipped me fifty as easy as dirt. He's got a heart as big as a
cow's. Don't you worry--we'll git tobacco now. I wonder how much longer
they'll keep us here," he faced about and addressed Lem. "I'm waiting to
git my top-knot clipped--I reckon ye wouldn't want to lose your hair,
would ye, pal?" he observed, regarding Lem's flowing locks.

"I reckon he will lose 'em, though," projected a raspy voice.

The three looked up. Blinky was standing over them with a pair of
clippers in his hand.

"What are you, anyhow," chided Blinky, sneeringly. "Are you a cowboy or
a preacher?"

Lem felt a warm sting rise to his cheeks, as he fixed his eyes
inquiringly upon Blinky's insolent face.

"What else could he be," interposed a new arrival, "but a preacher? He
ain't no convict--the Captain jest sent fer him. He's goin' to live here
amongst us and reform a lot of you bad guys."

At this juncture, still another convict came up, bearing a blue cotton
shirt and a pair of prison trousers over his arm.

"Is this the new duck?" he queried.

"Duck--duck," echoed Blinky. "Ain't ye got no manners? I'm ashamed of
ye--ain't ye got no respect for a preacher? This is Brother Silsand--he
got a call--here."

"Oh, excuse me. Well, Brother Silsand, you'll carry these elegant pants
and this fancy shirt on your arm when Last Time comes to escort you to
the beach. When you come back, you'll feel like a gentleman sure
enough."

Other men were attracted, and now a little group clustered around the
bench, all eyes turned upon Lem, as though he were some strange animal.
And all in turn contributed their jest calculated to furnish fun for the
others.

"Here comes Brizz now," announced Blinky. "Ha, there, Brizz--I brought
your clippers down. Pipe this guy's hair--you'll never git that reaped
twixt this and sun-down. Say, Shorty, you been bellerin' for a mattress
ever since I knowed ye--now's yer chance--rake this pretty hair up as
fast as Brizz mows it, and feed it to that hungry tick of yourn. I'll
bet my plug Saturday to three matches that the bell won't wake ye up."

At this moment, Brizz, a heavy man with a ponderous paunch, crowded in
and took the clippers out of Blinky's hand. Brizz was the official
reception room barber.

"It do look uncommon extensive, don't it?" said Brizz.

All this while, Lem had grown more and more uneasy, and his first
resentment was rapidly amounting to real anger under these unkind
criticisms, and the jeering faces that now encircled the bench.

"I'll swear it do," reiterated Brizz. "Still, I'm a regular old rip when
it comes to mowin'--come here young feller," he urged with a
business-like flourish of the clippers. "Let's start early so's we'll
get done for supper."

He laid a hand on Lem's shoulder. Whereupon, Lem rose up, his jaws set,
his muscles tense, while a steady light shot his gray eyes.

"Ef yo'-all tech me with them things," he said, low and steady, "I'll
take em away from yo' an,'--an' hit yo' with 'em."

The men were so enthralled with these festive proceedings that they
failed to notice Last Time sneak up from behind, where he was taking it
all in. When Lem stood up and showed fight, a chorus of low derisive
laughter rippled around the circle which was instantly disrupted as Last
Time burst ruthlessly into their midst, throwing one of the convicts
completely off his feet.

"What you fixin' to do, Brizz?" he growled.

"Who--me?--I'm here to cut this man's hair," wherefore, the barber
applied the clippers so unexpectedly and so roughly to the head of the
man who had been seated next to Lem, that the unlucky fellow protested
loudly. Last Time turned upon Blinky. He scowled at him for a second,
his lips curled away fiercely, emphasizing an under-shot jaw.

"You old clothes thief," he hissed, "you rod-ridin', cheap, ugly
leather-snatcher--you forgot the hammerin' I handed you last month, eh?"
Last Time shot a quick look across the corridor at the guard's back.
Then he reached out and took a clutching handful of Blinky's
shirt-front, and thrust his right fist close to Blinky's nose. Blinky,
who was a head taller, now hung away, white and dumb.

"You let this new man alone--do you get me? You let him alone. The next
time I get at you I'll take your jaw off--I'll send you across the lot
for many a day--get away--get," he snarled, with a violent, contemptuous
push.

The minute the other onlookers had noted Last Time's attitude toward
Lem, they faded noiselessly away like so many rats. All except Shorty.
He stood meekly, holding the shirt and the trousers across his arm.

"That's the bully of the jail," said the convict, following Blinky with
a belligerent look. "He's got 'em all bluffed--but one," he added with a
scornful laugh.

"What you waitin' on?" he demanded of Shorty.

"Here's his clothes," replied Shorty, indicating Lem with a jerk of his
head. Last Time scathed him with a withering look.

"Say, I had a trained cockroach once that could learn things quicker
than you--you get dumber and dumber day by day. This man is on the court
side--he keeps his own clothes. Take them things back to the
dud-cubboard, and put 'em back where you got 'em from. Let's see--you're
Lutts, ain't you?" he broke off, producing from his pocket the pink slip
Lem had seen the guard have when he was first brought into the cell
house.

"Yes--I air ole Cap Lutts' boy o' Moon mountain."

The convict shot a curious look at Lem.




CHAPTER XI

A FRIEND IN NEED


"Sure--that's right," he assented. "Well, Lutts, come with me now. You
have to take a bath--everybody that comes in here has to take a bath,
the first dash out the box. You ain't never been in a place like this
before, have you? A blind man can see that," he conjectured, gnawing a
chew off a very black prison plug. "Have a chew?"

"I never hankered fo' t'baccy," declined Lem, smilingly, with a gesture
which he meant for a polite curtsy in lieu of thanks.

As they proceeded across the graveled prison yard, toward the bath
house, Lem's keen inherent sense of penetration had analyzed the man
beside him as accurately as Last Time had read the artless, simple soul
of the big mountain boy, and notwithstanding that Lem knew instinctively
that this bull-necked, scar-faced fellow was a bad and desperate
character, he at the same time felt a warm feeling springing up within
him toward this man. He felt that he had a friend in Last Time, who was
the first and only one to give him a kind look or word since his arrest,
and a sympathetic look or a cheering word coming from any quarter was
indeed a welcome offering to a person in Lem's unfortunate and
distressing position.

As they walked, the convict talked along in a friendly way, and noting
Lem's roving eyes, he proceeded to tell the boy about the various
buildings scattered about the great lot.

"That's the Chapel over there," he said. "That's where you will go to
church on Sunday, if you want to. If you don't, you'll stay locked in
your cell. There's the dining-hall back there by the left wing of the
cell-house. That long shed over there open on all sides is where the
shop men stop to wash up. There's three hundred men over there now at
work. They make brushes and wire fences and shoes and a lot of other
things, but you won't work there--cause you're held for Court--but I'd a
damn sight rather work than stay locked up all day--night's bad enough.

"I hope you don't come back here after your trial. Any man with as much
intellect as an oyster can see that you don't belong here. And there's a
few more like you here, that don't deserve bein' in a place like this--a
waller for the scum of the earth. Don't look at me, Lutts--that don't
include me--I got off damn light. I was due for five spots in the pen.
You see that little brick coop over there, Lutts--without any windows,
and a solid iron door? That's Calcutta--the dungeon--they call it the
'hole.' That's where they put the bad actors. Inside, there's a solid
sheet-iron cell, with an iron cot, and an iron bucket in it--that's
all--not a crack of light. They chain 'em to the bed an' leave 'em--once
a day they give 'em fresh water and toss in a piece of punk. When the
men march in at night, you'll notice the Captain standing at the
cell-house door making the count, and you'll see a bull standing by him,
pullin' men out of line. When you see a guy pulled out, it's Calcutta
for him."

"I've been here nine months, and I've been in that 'hole' five times,
'cause I can't stand these fresh stiffs around here. The last time was
for makin' hamburger out of Blinky. See them little wooden houses away
'cross there up on the wall? Them's for the lookouts. See, there goes
one now, walking on the wall with his cannon in his hand.

"Here's where you get your bath, Lutts. Upstairs over here is the
Hospital. That's where I sent Blinky and a couple more of his cowards."

Last Time's laugh predicated a deep, pleasurable reminiscence, as they
entered the bath house. There was no one in the bath house at this time
save the convict attendant. He handed Lem a towel which in dimensions
resembled a large table napkin, and a piece of yellow soap which in size
looked like a chewing-gum wafer. Here, Last Time reached out and took
the mite of soap and the meagre towel out of Lem's hands.

"Hoggie, I'll look after him. You stay up at the door and watch the
big-top. If you see the bull come out and pike over uneasy, you squeak.
Wait, Lutts--I'll get you a decent piece of soap."

With this he climbed up on a box, and reaching up behind a series of
steam pipes, he produced a half-bar of white soap and a towel of coarse
fabric, but clean and ample. Lem then busied himself with the bath,
which was sunken into the concrete floor. As this new-made friend talked
along, trying to acquaint Lem with the rules of the prison, he noticed
that the boy fumbled, and hesitated, and was plainly abashed when it
came to divesting himself of his clothes. Last Time thoughtfully left
the mountaineer to himself, saying:

"I'll help Hoggie watch for old Caladadac--you can wash your hair if you
want to--that soap is O. K."

Some fifteen minutes later, when Lem had concluded his hasty bath and
joined his conductor at the door of the bath house, a high-keyed bell
suddenly pealed out. It was the first familiar sound Lem had heard since
he left the mountains.

"That's the recall," said Last Time. "Stay back in the door a minute and
you'll see the file come out--they've stopped work now--it's four
o'clock."

The celerity with which these convicts got out of the shops was
remarkable. Hardly had the tower bell ceased when five long rows of
stripes stood ready to march. The guards each blew a mouth-whistle in
turn, and the columns moved across the plaza toward the wash-shed like a
great dragon with hundreds of legs. Then out of the wash-shed the
columns crawled, bent around the dungeon-house, and marched into the big
dining hall, with the scraping rise and fall of the lock-step--a
peculiar, sinister sound.

Lem had peeped out at the bath-house door upon this spectacle with
awesome eyes. He stood in open-mouthed wonder, and was aroused only when
Last Time spoke and touched his arm.

"The night bull 'll come on now, and he'll be hollerin' for me--we
better git along," he said. "You won't eat with them men. You'll git
yours in the dining hall inside."

Upon reaching the cell-house, Last Time conducted Lem to the tables at
the front end of the basement corridor where the Court prisoners were
already at supper, and then left him. A soup-bowl, filled with a
substance that at least resembled coffee; a plate of beans, and a thick
piece of bread were placed in front of Lem by a convict waiter.

Lem felt at the moment that he never again would want to eat anything.
Not only was his appetite wholly gone, but the mere sight of this food
was nauseating, although he had not tasted anything since he had eaten
breakfast at home the day before.

While he sat looking about him with lugubrious eyes, the man next to
him--an uncouth individual indeed--whispered surreptitiously:

"Ain't ye goin' to eat your punk?"

Lem shook his head.

"Kin I have it?"

Lem pushed the whole fare over to him gladly. Presently a gong rasped
out two harsh, reverberating notes. At this the men, some forty in
number, rose, fell into line and straggled up the basement steps to the
main corridor. At the head of the steps Lem met Last Time, who was
apparently waiting for him.

"I'll show you your cell now. You're 420--right next to me on the first
tier."

Here a great commotion of hurrying feet sounded below and overhead on
the tiers above, mingled with the metallic ring of keys and the cold
clanking of steel doors and the rattle of iron. And from far up the dim
corridor Lem heard a sound that, somehow, filled him with a strange
dread. It was the rising and falling of a scraping, tide-like
rhythm--the muffled rhapsody of a hundred-legged lock-step. The last
column of convicts was marching into the cell-house from the dining hall
on the plaza.

It was the on-coming of a grisly, striped, argus-eyed multiped, with
fifty heads. This ugly sound reverberated soft and stealthful at first;
like the padded feet of some fabulous, carnivorous monster sneaking into
this cavernous mortuary to gloat over the dead souls it had cached here.
Then again, beneath the nearer tumult, this natant, ill rhythm died down
to a measured, sinister moan, echoing through the stone corridors in
soughing jabs, like sounds marking the visitation of some maimed Hydra.

The denotation of this eery evil tread of ruined lives grated terribly
on Lem's highly tensioned nerves. And oddly enough, he did not seek to
shut it out--this revolting, dreadful scrape, that nothing can ever
imitate. On the contrary, he strained his ears for it, impelled by the
same indefinable, weird influence that charms one to turn again and look
back upon a horror that has fascinated the eyes. Thus was Lem fascinated
by this hateful noise. Enthralled in this that had dominated his senses,
for the moment, he had unconsciously ascended the skeleton iron stairs.

When he aroused himself, Last Time was pointing into the cell allotted
him, and looking at him pityingly. Lem shot one swift look into this
dark hole, then withdrew his startled eyes and fastened them upon the
convict's scarred visage. The boy's eyes were freighted with the igneous
luster of some unnamable terror that seemed to stultify his senses,
leaving his manly instincts in the grip of some perverted agency that he
did not know was there.

If Lem Lutts had possessed a pistol, he would have killed himself in
that instant. Quaking perceptibly, he hung back from the cell door. His
hand trembled as he held to the railing of the iron porch. His lips
moved, and he tried to tell the convict something. The world seemed to
be falling about his ears, carrying his soul down into the fumes of
hades. Of all the subtle, dormant influences that awake, and invade the
scheme of human life to sway the impulses of men, there is none so
bewildering as this phase of psychological prompting which holds its
profound mystery intact, and baffles solution.

Where is the abode, and what is the origin of this plenipotent conjurer?
Certainly Lem Lutts trembled at the threshold of this stone cell. Last
Time could see that. What sweeping, pillaging power was this that
assaulted Lem's will, causing him to quake thus like an aspen. Surely it
was an abstruse form of fear.

Verily, it could not have been the stigma of cowardice. Lem Lutts had
never known fear. From the very cradle his life had been enveloped in
danger. Deeds stood out boldly to refute this suspicion of weakness.
Scores of times in Lem Lutts' life he had looked into the grim teeth of
on-coming death unflinchingly and unafraid, with a self-forgetfulness
that spells sublime courage. But here he stood now, on the brink of a
moment that was in some strange, exaggerated way, awful to him. He
stood, pale and shaken, in front of this black jail-cell, undeniably
fear-stricken.

Perhaps this was the same quality of fear that caused Napoleon to
dismount, cursing his horse, pale, sick, and unsteady for an hour,
because his steed had crushed a camp cat with its hoofs. Possibly it was
the same subtle thing that inspired the late C. K. Hamilton, the most
daring of all aviators, to rush in panic from a dental chair. It may
have been the same brand of unknown dread that impelled one of the
greatest war conquerors in American history to shun a graveyard after
nightfall. Some time or other this strange power lays hold of the
bravest hearts. It had Lem Lutts now, and he was backing away and trying
to get down the stairs. Last Time spoke to him gently, as he took his
arm and urged him slowly into 420.

"Hurry up, Lutts--don't you hear 'em? They're lockin' up now, and I've
got to run the tier for the bull--there now--I know just how you
feel--I've forgot all the other times, but I've never forgot the
first--and God knows I never will. You can't tell me--but you'll be all
right--I'll come and talk to you after a while. They don't lock me up
until eleven o'clock."

Lem had stepped inside gingerly, as if he expected the floor to collapse
and engulf him. There was a dull rolling, a click, and the iron-barred
door was closed upon him.

"Stand up at your door until the bull makes the count," imparted Last
Time, as he hurried along the tier looking into each cell. Then he came
back, and pulling a great lever at the end of the tier, locked all the
doors automatically. Now he started back, again calling into the cells
as he passed.

"Stand up--stand up--stand up!"

A big guard followed close behind the convict, with a gliding tread that
did not give forth the slightest sound. He dashed a cold, penetrating
stare in at the faces that hovered at the bars. When the guards had made
the count for the night, a babble of conversation began between the
prisoners all over the place. They called to each other by the cell
numbers, or nicknames; and the talk waxed to an incoherent, mixed medley
that tangled itself into nothing intelligible. Though strange to record,
this did not seem to bother or confuse those talking.

The door of Lem's cell seemed to be as sensitive to every sound as a
telephone receiver. A voice at the farthest end of the corridor trailed
into Lem's cell as distinctly as a voice two cells away. Thus, a sound
two cells away might be interpreted as emanating from the remotest cell
in the place. Lem, sad, dejected, and with a weight of gloom at his
heart that submerged his spirit and held him in a lethargy, still stood
at the door with his fingers twined around the chill bars. His eyes,
starry with the emotions that swept over him, were fixed upon the only
thing he could see--the blank stone wall opposite, laced with a series
of steam pipes, and the high windows blotted with a skein of iron.




CHAPTER XII

THE STIGMA


He was in jail now--he, Lem Lutts,--old Cap Lutts' boy--was gunless
to-night; hanging on to the bars of a jail door. His father, seventy-six
when he fell in the Church of Hellsfork, had never been in a jail.
Crowding up amidst other lamentations, and superseding them for the
moment, Lem felt keenly the stigma and sting of this scandal. It was a
disgrace on the whole Lutts faction that he, their leader, now should
stand behind the iron bars of a jail door. The irony of it was deeply
excruciating--that he, their chieftain, should succumb to a revenuer.

Moreover, was it not unspeakably shameful that this revenuer who took
him was the man who had invaded his home and killed his mother? He had
waited a little and killed his father. Then he tore him away from his
domain and his people; and caged him where he stood to-night--gunless,
in an iron and concrete hole, with the cold, unyielding bars between him
and his free, wide, high Cumberland Kingdom.

Lem probed his conscience for the hundredth time in quest of the crime
he had committed to bring him to this hell. And when a small voice
answered back from out its castle of inherent chauvinism, and told him
that he sinned against no man--then it was that the smouldering, dormant
hate, sleeping in his heart, stirred and welled up into a mighty tide,
effacing all other kindred emotions that had traversed his being upon
being jailed. This new force aroused him to action, and somehow he felt
better.

How strange are the workings of that mystically mated pair--the human
heart and brain! How appallingly strange that a phase of hate should
assuage the pain in any heart. But this was a truism that for the time
inspired Lem to action and forgetfulness of his environments, for now
his previously dull eyes were afire, as he turned back into his cell for
the first time. He felt his way to the limits of the wall. The distance
was a mere three steps for him. Then he turned and took the three steps
back to the door. Then back again he went. And thus he took up this
three-step march, the while the ugly visage of the revenuer projected
itself against the gloom, and he saw Burton's dog-grin. He saw him smear
the sweat off his leering face, and fancied he heard his vaunting words
of triumph to the commissioner, gloating over the killing of Lem's
father, and the taking of himself.

And here, while Lem paced to and fro, he forgot all else save his thirst
for revenge. And through these walls he heard dim voices from two graves
in the hills urging him onward, and he invoked God to give him strength
to endure. He vowed that he would be patient and endure, even to the
crack of doom, that he might stand face to face with this man-brute,
when he, Lem Lutts, would hold the upper hand, in that great day, over
this wanton blood-lover who had done these things.

Lem's life was linked to this Nemesis by an inexorable blood-debt. He
was bonded to the revenuer, with the rigid, unmalleable nexus of hate
that naught but annihilation of one or the other could sever. Thus, with
these hurtful thoughts whirling through his brain, Lem forgot in a
measure, which mitigated the dejection and chagrin imposed by his
terrible predicament.

Wherefore, he continued to follow these stormy thoughts as from door to
wall he paced--three steps backward, then three strides to the bars,
walking, turning, walking and turning again--until presently he stopped,
transfixed, startled, and blinking. A flood of brilliant light, had
dashed into his cell. The boy had heard of this wonderful invention, but
he had never before seen an electric globe. This magic effulgence that
rushed in and drove the darkness from his cell was a most welcome
visitation, but it added to his strange, uncanny surroundings, and
perplexed him deeply. He stood rigid for a long minute gazing intently
at the incandescent globe that stuck put from the wall, irradiating its
brightness in so mystifying a manner. He approached this bottle-like
device, and examined the wall around it minutely. He raised one hand
cautiously and with a forefinger touched the globe gingerly, as if he
feared it might burn him. While he was thus engaged pondering upon the
necromancy of this light which smacked so strongly of witchcraft, and
upon the avenue that conveyed it hither and the puzzling power that
sustained it, he heard a slight sound at the door. Whereupon, he wheeled
quickly and met Last Time's scarred face grinning through the bars at
him pleasantly, and obviously amused. Knowing that the fellow had been
watching his antics around the electric globe, and acutely conscious of
his own crudeness, Lem stepped to the door with an abashed smile.

"How are you now?" inquired the convict.

"I ain't powerful happy," returned Lem lugubriously. "This air the
all-fired'st cave I ever been into. I 'low I'll never git used t'
hit--leastways I air glad thet yo'-all come round t' talk. I ain't much
on th' talk myse'f--I never could talk much, someways,--th' folks up my
ways air all putty much thet-away--they don't any of 'em spill over with
talkin'--'pears like they got so much to think about thet hit keeps
their tongues stalled all th' time, most--but ef I can't say much--I air
glad yo'-all come round, 'cause I like to heer yo' talk. Gawd'll
Moughty! hit's powerful lonesome-like in heah."

"Sure," sympathized the convict. "It's lonesome'ern hell; but it ain't
that altogether thet hurts a first-timer, Lutts--it's the gang of
old-timers he's bound to meet inside every jail."

Lem smiled wearily, in a mirthless way, and delivered his short,
eloquent gesture, implying acquiescence and approval, as he watched the
convict's face with interest. Silently, Last Time produced a small tin
box containing a bit of woolen rag and a tiny piece of flint, together
with a button through which two cords passed through separate holes.
Standing, he lifted his knee, placed the box thereon, and with dextrous
skill started the button like an improvised buzz-saw against the flint.
The spark flew and ignited the woolen rag. He then lighted his
cigarette, replacing the box, and leaning his big shoulder against the
bars, forced the smoke through his nostrils reflectively.

"I don't know what brought you here, Lutts--I ain't askin' you--it's
none of my business--but I hope you don't come back here after your
trial--it's the old-timers, like me, that the cul meets in jail that
makes the criminals of this country. Just listen to that talk now--that
ain't up-liftin', is it?--Sure not. Just hark to that swearing and them
rabby songs--sure, that's all aginst the rules of the prison, but what
can they do to stop it? Nothin'. They'd have to keep a bull at each
door. The men are allowed to talk a little while to each other from
their cells before the lights go out. They can't speak during the
day--they got to let them talk some time or other in a place like
this--if they didn't, they'd all go crazy--then where would the
politicians and the prison contractors be?

"Then when these guys start in to talk, what do you hear? But there
ain't much of that stuff comin' from the first-timers, Lutts--they're
too thoughtful to-night--they ain't hard enough yet--but wait till they
come back--very soon. If they do, they won't get any jobs when they get
out, believe me--it's me that knows. What happens when a guard starts
out to catch some of these cursers? A bull's got to be almost in front
of his cell to be sure. And you take three hundred convicts with
two-thirds of them cussin' all at the same time, and the echoes all
jumbled up--he might as well try to take the ocean up in his arms--they
get them--sometimes. When a bull slips up and starts along the tier, he
don't no more than get started, when the guys that he's already passed
gives out the signal and you won't hear a peep until the bull's gone
down again--then they'll all give him the merry ha-ha, and cuss him for
sneaking up. It's the people you meet here that makes the criminals,
Lutts. I hope you don't come back here. If you do, you're gone--not that
you want to be gone, but the world 'll sizzle you to a frazzle--they
will want none of you--it's me that knows."

Lem was profoundly attentive. He pressed against the door and listened
to the convict's words with growing interest. Last Time rolled another
cigarette, manipulated the tinder-box, lighted up, and continued:

"It makes my gizzard ache," he said, "every time I see a first-timer.
Their stories are all the same. If you'll listen, Lutts, I'll tear off
nine rods of my own life, right at the spot, where I first got in jail."

"Once I had one of them good mothers--like everybody has or had. My
daddy was killed in a mine, and my mother died three months later. They
sent my little sister to an orphan asylum, and I went to work for a
dairy-man for my board and clothes. I sure did sling the work--from four
in the mornin' to eight at night, sometimes later. He fed me good
enough, but the old stiff wouldn't give me a cent to spend--only two
jits on Sunday to toss to the preacher. Course he didn't agree to give
me any money, but if he had just a slipped me two bits on Saturday he
could have squared my feelin'. I didn't kick out loud, and wouldn't a
felt so bad at that if he had let me see my little sister once in a
while. I begged him every month, but he turned me down cold."

"Well, I got to wantin' to see my sister so damn bad after a year that I
swiped a set of single harness from the old guy. I kept them hid for two
weeks, then I dug them up, sold them, and skated. I left a note tellin'
ole Storman that I had gone West to make my fortune, like they say in
books. Well, I see now that I hadn't ought to a stole the harness--I
hadn't ought to a throwed that trick. Anyhow, them two months was the
happiest I've seen since.

"When I left I meant to work for some one near the asylum who would pay
me till I got money enough to pay for the harness and go back, as the
old man had promised to pay me wages when I was eighteen, but I struck
such luck that I forgot to go back; but I paid him for the harness--like
a dub--and what did I get for it?

"I was a husky lad and knew the dairy business. I got a job near the
asylum--saw my sister every day--and got twenty-five bucks a month. The
harness was my first bad break, and it worried me. The second month, I
sent old Storman a postal order for twenty dollars and told him I took
the harness and was sorry. He cashed the order and had me pinched the
next day. They tried me and slammed me into the booby-hatch for six
months; so I was on my way.

"Lutts, I'll never forget that first night--not me. When I got out I
went back to my last job and got the throw-down. He said it was good for
me to confess and pay for the harness, but that every one knew I had
been in jail, and he couldn't have me around. Then I went back to my own
town like a fool--everybody gave me the go-by--even the church that I
had carried money to every Sunday wouldn't have me. I saw then I was a
dead one. I hiked out then. Every time I'd get a good grip on a job,
long would come that convict-hunch, and I'd have to make my by-by. I
ain't tellin' you how hard I tried for a year, Lutts--but I'm tellin'
you now that I ain't tryin' any more, and don't mean to. I quit tryin'
and hunted up a guy I met in jail, and when I found him in St. Louis I
was hungry and ragged and ugly as a wet dog.

"He was the whitest guy I ever met. He staked me and I stuck to him, and
worked with him until he got shot dead the night I got this scar you
see. Believe me, Kid, Morgan was the smoothest blower that ever lifted
the front off a safe--and I want to tell you, Lutts, when I'm outside I
ain't ragged and hungry any more--not me--and I don't mix with tin-horn
trash like Blinky and this gang in here. I live right, Lutts, when I'm
out. I got twenty-three hundred bucks planted right this minute, where
no one will get it but me--at that, Lutts, I'd go back and work for five
dollars a week if I could, but I know I can't--there's no turning back
for an old-timer--he's gone.

"I know as well as I know I'm talkin' now, that in the end they'll plant
me in the potter's field, and the chances are that I won't die
natural--they wouldn't even let a guy like me into a decent
graveyard--the life has big draw-backs--and when you get out, Lutts, you
remember the advice from a party that knows--you side-step anything that
looks crooked--even if you do see ready money--you blow it--it's a
boomerang--I'd rather die a beggar than a rich thief--blow it, Lutts--it
ain't too late for you--if you don't come back. Say, Lutts, you must be
hungry--I know you didn't eat anything downstairs--wait a minute----"

Last Time broke off abruptly, and slipped into his cell. He returned
with a paper sack which he thrust through the bars to Lem.

"Here's some crackers and cream cheese--the bull gave it to me--you eat
it all--I got all I want. Hello--there goes the quarter--the lights 'll
go out in fifteen minutes. 'Creepin' Jesus' 'll wake up now. I got to
bring the night bull's lunch from the kitchen and take the towels over
to the Hospital, and turn the hot water off at the bath house, and a
string of other old-woman stunts before they lock me up--so-long."




CHAPTER XIII

RUBRIC DROPS


Lem ate the cheese and crackers thrust upon him by the generous convict,
more to assuage the acute pangs of hunger that now assailed him than to
indulge his palate, the while he pondered over the convict's story.

Suddenly the electric lights went out and left his cell in darkness save
a glimmer across the corridor. The scores of obstreperous, profane
tongues that had scathed the fetid atmosphere now subsided, and Lem sank
on the side of his cot and gazed with empty eyes between the bars at the
dim light across the stone hall, and the full force of his unlucky
predicament rushed upon him again.

This gas jet, which burned all night, was some fifteen feet from the
corridor floor, bringing it up to a level with the tier porch. The jet
flung a faint, orange-hued ray obliquely toward Lem's cell door.
Although he was mentally worn out and weary of body, still he could not
bring himself to lie down. Finally, he took the straw pillow from his
cot, placed it on the cement floor close to the door, and sat down with
his mind astray and his unseeing eyes fixed blankly upon the gas light.

At this instant, he was suddenly blinded, as "Creeping Jesus" flashed
his lamp in his face, turned a cold stare on him, and glided on like a
ghost. Lem clutched the bars and tried to look after the apparition that
seemed to be borne along on air. While he was pressing against the door,
a sudden medley of noises disrupted the quiet. As it came nearer, it
gathered volume, and the somber stillness was quickened with the discord
of voices, and the shuffling of padded feet, accompanied by the baser
scrape of a heavier tread. Seemingly, this confusion stopped and
centralized directly over his cell, but what tier it was on he could
form no conjecture.

In a momentary lull came the rasping of a key; then the subtle roll of a
cell door, followed instantly by a frightened voice that rang through
the dead corridors with a jumble of protesting, begging utterances that
rended the solemnity of the place.

"Oh, no, no! Not in there! Not there! I--I----"

"Shut up--you'll wake every dog in the place--get in."

"I won't go in there! I won't! I can't go in there!"

"Will you get in there? You get in there--you damn fool!"

"Don't put me in there--don't--don't! I won't run away--how can I? I'll
stay right here--but please don't put me in there."

"Take hold of him, Sam--throw him in--get hold of his leg."

"Wait--wait--wait--please listen just a minute--I'm not a
criminal--don't put me in--my parents don't know where I am--let me stay
out here--my father is rich--he will send for me--he will pay you--he
will come for me--please don't put me in that place--I----"

"Say, Kid--you're the limit! For the last time--are you goin' to get in
there? If you don't--we'll throw you in."

"I won't!--I can't!--I'll smother in there. I'll die there and my mother
will never know--oh--oh--you're choking me--stop--you're
chok--cho--ch----"

For a scant minute there came the panting hiss of labored breaths,
heaved through clinched teeth; a combat of footsteps, mingled with the
sound of ripping garments. Then came a dull thud overhead, a slight
rumble, the click of a cell door, followed by an agonizing groan, ending
with the pang of a sob that impinged cruelly upon the awesome, dead
solitude.

While these hateful sounds still lingered hurtfully in Lem's ears, two
feet and a pair of striped legs confronted him. He looked up from his
position on the floor. It was Last Time.

"Ain't you asleep yet, Lutts?" he whispered, then went on, "Did you hear
them slam that first-timer in? He's right over you in 520. God, but he
hated to go in there--but he went in. He's no mongrel--he's a swell
looker--only a kid--the poor devil. It's eleven o'clock--there's the
bull lookin' now--night."

The convict stepped into his cell and slammed his door noisily as a
signal to notify the guard, who stood waiting at the end of the tier,
that he had closed the door tight. Then the big lever ground back into
position, and Lem sat motionless with a horde of curious thoughts
trailing across his benumbed brain. It seemed like an age that he sat
there, throughout the pitiless hours like a distorted image; the
deserted habitat of a soul with its tenant gone. He was only aroused
momentarily when hour after hour "Creeping Jesus" hung at his door for
an instant, like a great nocturnal humming-bird, then darted away like a
winged phantom.

The boy had the comforting, though fatuous notion, that the nearer to
the door he managed to get, the nearer to freedom was he. Under an
apathetic spell his thoughts fled back to the hills. With quick, wistful
breaths, each a cry from a stifling soul, and his hot forehead pressed
against the iron, he crouched there on the floor by the cell door. His
body was imprisoned between these grim, impassable walls; but his soul
was yet uncaged. For in spirit he was once again back amidst the
beauteous wild hills of the Cumberland with the feel of his rifle,
hunting and hunted in turn, but with the pungent aroma of odoriferous
blossoms in his nostrils; the purl of crystal waters in his ears; and
the illimitable arch of opalescent sky over him, and the free fraternal
rocks beneath his feet.

And in his vision, framed in blissful hours, his retrospection conjured
a seraphic face--a luring, misty vision, with a bowed red spot for a
mouth, and great black-fringed eyes--eyes tinted like robins' eggs--eyes
that held an unworldly baby look; and curls--a riotous billow of satiny
curls. Ah, even as he crouched here, he could see the little pale scar
that crossed the part in her curls--his scar--his scar to kiss,--that
little scarab-like mark that fascinated his lips.

The longer he stared at the rufus halo that encircled the gas light, the
wider it expanded; and as it grew, its burning gamut embraced a
multiplicity of changing scenes representing hours of his life. Like
cinematographic pictures, it held a stirring pantomime boldly up to his
intent gaze.

As he looked again, a beautiful nascent wraith slowly developed and
occupied the nimbus of the buff light. Her meaning lips were slightly
parted, her eyes saw him, and there was a specific message therein. He
knew that if some sorceristic agency could put her down by him now in
this black midnight hour, that she would put her hands in to him and
would give her lips between these unbreakable iron bars. The price of
her kiss to-night would be one look at his haggard, haunted face.

In fancy, he took her in his arms and fled, galloping across the clouds
to the Cumberlands, racing with the shadows that traversed the valleys
like eagle wings. Once again his eyes were gladdened with the vast
colored panorama that crowded in one limitless circle around Eagle
Crown. Now the cascade in Hellsfork was beating in his ears, the
soothing rhyme of its endless monotone, a cadence he loved so well. And
now the sun had followed a shower, and he was sitting with Belle-Ann
under the big magnolia tree on the spot that was ever dry, and they were
holding out their hands and catching the crystal raindrops that rolled
off the leaves overhead.

Half consciously, he now thrust his hand out toward this scene his own
imagery held before him. And even now the warm drops came down from
overhead--dripping, dripping, dripping. He could feel them splash and
burst now on the back of his outstretched hand, just as they did in the
joysome days agone when the drops tickled their palms, and he could hear
the music of the girl's dulcet laughter. Again he caught more of these
drops.

Suddenly and rudely, Lem was jerked out of this beatific reverie by the
fearful howls of some convict, night-mare ridden. These hideous
screeches aroused Lem's senses, and he blinked and rubbed his hands. His
hands were wet. Instinctively he looked up and discerned the crack in
the tier porch overhead from whence these warm drops trickled down and
splashed in front of his cell. Wherefore, a shock of suspicion jerked
him out of his rambling thoughts. He leaned close and stared at the back
of his hand, getting to his feet at the same time. It was smeared with
red. Even in the semi-darkness, Lem knew that the stain on the back of
his hand was blood.

In an under-tone he called repeatedly to Last Time in the adjoining
cell, but the convict slept on and did not respond. Lem searched for
something with which to knock on the wall to wake him. Failing in this,
he backed up against the wall and hammered with the heel of his heavy
boot. Presently, Last Time's voice awoke sleepily and from afar.

"What's the matter--is that you, '20?"

"Yes," returned Lem in a whisper. "Yo'-all come t' th' door."

"What's the matter, Lutts?"

"They's blood a comin' down overhaid."

"Blood!"

"Yes--hit's a drippin' down heah."

"You sure it's blood?"

"Yes," reassured Lem. "Hit's sho' blood--'cause I got some on my han'."

"Wait a minute."

Lem heard him rummaging around in his cell. The convict made a long,
rigid roll out of a newspaper and thrusting this out and around at arm's
length he said:

"Here, Lutts, get the end of this--stick it in the blood and hand it
back."

Lem manipulated the paper. Reaching as far out as he could, he rubbed
one end in the dark pool in front of his cell, and handed it back to the
convict. Lem heard Last Time exclaim:

"The hell--I thought that guy'd do something."

The next minute the convict was scraping a tin cup across the bars of
his door, a performance that sent metallic echoes from end to end of the
corridor. A guard responded with surprising alacrity.

"What's the rumpus here, Last Time?" he demanded.

"That cul up in 520's croaked himself--pipe the blood in front of next
door."

The guard turned his reflector upon the pool, then hastily unlocked Last
Time's cell.

"Come along," he ordered.

He then ran to the end of the tier, and pulled the lever to allow Last
Time to open his door and follow. After that, Lem heard nothing overhead
save subdued whispers, cautious steps, and guarded movements. He did not
hear Last Time return to his cell.

When the first gray light of dawn filtered through the high arched
windows of the cell-house, and drove the gas light pallid, it found Lem
still awake. Without, the English sparrows set up their garrulous
chirpings, and like a draught of some blessed elixir, a faint breath of
early morning, dew-damp air was wafted through the outer bars into the
sodden cells. The bell on the prison tower rang, and there was a great
stirring of convicts, mingled with a multitude of harsh jail noises.

While the keys were grating on the tiers above, Last Time hustled up to
Lem's cell with a bucket of water and a mop, and in silence washed every
vestige of the blood-stain away. As he took up the bucket to go, he
turned to Lem.

"He's over in the dead-room now. Ain't it hell, though?--and him only a
kid at that. He had a fine face, too,--he cut his throat with a broken
pocket mirror. There comes the bull for the count--so-long."

As the cracksman went, Lem saw a film of moisture glisten in his eyes.




CHAPTER XIV

"THE ONLYEST LUTTS"


Up on Eagle Crown, dim crest of his benighted world, Buddy Lutts' small
shape made a vague shadow, fusing with the dawn-mists that dipped and
lifted and swathed the peaks like a nun's veil. The boy crawled far out
on this majestic point that divided night from day. On one side the sun
had poised its jewelled lance against the east. On the other, the
vanquished morning moon was hiding his pallid face amidst the naked
peaks.

Buddy crawled farther along the dew-chilled brink of the ledge like a
young, lean catamount whelp. Here he sprawled at full length upon his
stomach with his thin face propped up between his hands. Here, alone on
the sanctum-rock of Eagle Crown, he lay, his moody eyes gazing beneath
and across the limitless expanse of purple fog.

There was a great ache in his heart, and he was lonelier than any boy
could well be and live. By and by he discerned the top of the church
belfry floating on the sea of fog like a buoy, and the mere sight of
this replenished the fires of vengeance that had reduced his puerile
being to a hard cinder of hate.

No human foot had ventured across the door block of that death place
since that serene Sabbath morning, more than a year since, when they had
lifted the dead body of his father off the virgin altar and laid him on
the pyramid of flowers built up in the clearing by the hundreds who had
come to witness the dedication of the church. Although this deed stood
foremost and fresh and even more vivid now in his memory, still, the
calendar day of its enactment, seemingly, held a grim unforgettable spot
on the apex of a grievous avalanche of immeasurable vengeance.

The boy wearily withdrew his truculent gaze and his eyes softened with
an unutterable sadness as he fixed them on the tops of the apple trees,
behind the log barn, grouped about the two sodden graves of his father
and mother--both dead at the hands of the despised law. His heart was
dead to all else save one hope--to avenge the death of his parents and
his brother Lem, whom he now believed to have been murdered by Sap
McGill. He would not count his young life amiss with all its hardships
and heart-aches, if only he could see the dawn of this triumphant day
for which he lived. He was hoping and waiting and watching--waiting
evermore.

It seemed that the torturous days, weeks and months that he wandered
through the hills furtively and alone, waiting and watching since his
father's killing and since Lem and Belle-Ann had slipped away and out of
his life, was time enough to make a decrepit, aged man. An insufferable
loneliness had wrapped its tentacles around his being, and had, like a
cruel tourniquet, crushed all the joy out of his soul. At times in
retrospective indulgence he felt that his soul could not endure. Tears
might have alleviated the misery within him, but Buddy's grievous
repining and loneliness was of a tearless brand.

Buddy Lutts was a boy in size and in years only, for it was with an
adult stoicism that he valiantly fought this creeping madness. In his
weaker moments this brooding would seize him and drag him back to the
brink of utter hopelessness and despair; but always his purpose would
fly to his rescue and beckon a renewed promise, and he would awake out
of these lethargies armed with a buoyant sense of patience and inspired
with a mighty will to wait and watch.

In these periodical relapses it was his wont to humor his fevered fancy
with lurid and extravagant sequences to his protracted term of
espionage. Among these vagaries was a pet dream representing the
revenuer and Sap McGill creeping upon him in single file; whereupon, he
fired and his single ball tore both their hearts out and made him dance
and clap his hands with sheer joy, and he was merrier than any orphan
had ever been before him. His conscience acquitted him blithely, and his
spirits soared skyward.

Deprived of these monopolistic creations of reprisal to alleviate the
tension of his hate, the bonds of his perverse reason would have burst
asunder and left him bereft.

But now again, there arose a cheering prophecy in the advent of spring.
Since Lem Lutts had dropped out of the mountain so mysteriously, the
bitter nights and days had rolled into weary months. And the brooding
months had waxed into riotous winter tempests and had dragged in
endless, eternal deluges of ice and snow, adding cold agony to Buddy's
already misanthropic heart. But finally the crows rode up on the soft
winds out of the South, and a benign sun broke the grip of these
frost-bound hills, and gradually emptied their pockets of snow. The
ridges and coves, and the emerald hulks of the mountains smiled
gratefully back. And through this expanse of tangled scenic splendor,
the rhododendrons and laurels wove a banner of multicolored tones. The
sassafras and poplar and dogwood bloomed and the cascade sang a new ode.
The calling of the lark came up from the lowland, mingled with the
blatant scream of jay-birds in the orchard. And the warble of the
blue-birds filled the odoriferous somnolent air.

Buddy lay motionless out on the crag with his thoughts, and watched the
sun unveil the spurs below him. Then he divided his gaze between the
distant splash of water that marked Boon's Ford, shining back like the
glint of a sun-perch, and the yellow length of trail across Hellsfork
that marked the path to Sap McGill's stronghold. Then he twisted his
head around unconsciously, and his eyes caressed the rifle that rested
behind him--his father's rifle. And an inarticulate muttering answered
the reiterated avowal in his heart, inspired each time he looked at
this, his father's rifle--a sacred relic bequeathed to him and vested
with a stupendous responsibility. He reasoned that now as he was the
last of the Luttses, he was rightfully the Captain of the faction. In
view of this heritage he argued that he should at least have a voice in
the counsel of the clan.

But Johnse Hatfield had a smooth, persuasive mien with him, and while he
and all the men facetiously recognized young Buddy as their "Captain,"
they had, through Johnse, kept Buddy artfully in the background. The
disgruntled boy did not relish this lack of due recognition and these
periods of inaction. He did not favor postponements. Time and again he
had appealed to Johnse Hatfield to issue a call and muster every man and
boy in the Moon mountains range, and cross Hellsfork and storm the
McGills, win or lose. Ultimately, Johnse always twisted this sanguine
project away from him, through flattery and cajolery; making amendments
bit by bit, until Buddy's pet scheme had petered down to another
postponement to which he readily acquiesced at the time. But always his
truant acumen told him later that Johnse Hatfield did not consider him
"fitten."

This morning Buddy crawfished backward away from the brink of the
overhanging rock. He threw the rifle-strap over his shoulder, and as he
made the dangerous descent, there was etched on his grim little face the
outlines of some new, inexorable resolution.

The type of man who now stood as dictator and leader by proxy, of the
Lutts' faction in the Moon mountain range, was an individual possessing
a peculiarly complex and many-sided nature. In stature Johnse Hatfield
was of medium height. He was deep-chested and thick of neck, but his
legs were straight and incongruously slender in comparison with his
shoulders. His face was a mask of black, close-cropped hair, save the
complete exposure of the mouth.

The hair growth halted below the lower lip and, from constant biting or
use of the shears, the hair on his upper lip held aloof; hence, the
mouth, thick-lipped and wide and tilted upward at the corners, bore the
aspect of one perpetual smile. But, oddly enough, the eyes were a total
and surprising antonym of this smiling mouth. They were markedly small,
close set, and of a singular amber hue, glinting like needle points and
carrying the fire of direct and instant demand. Thus, these closely
coupled, unwinking eyes contradicted and specifically denied the
smiling, placatory, diplomatic mouth so prominent across his black
visage.

It was said of Johnse Hatfield that at the moment marking his advent
into the world he had interrupted his mother who was working a pump-gun
from behind a grind-stone, in her will to help the men-folks repulse an
attack upon their home cabin. She claimed that she "sho' wud a fetched
thet 'onery Tod McCoy," whose head she was angling for behind a turnip
mound, "ef little Johnsie hed a waited an' hadn't bin so all-fired
anxious t' git hisse'f into th' rumpus."

As a lad Johnse had carried arms with his notorious father and brothers
against the McCoys. Then he had drifted up Hazard way and had, through
blood relationship, become entangled in the French-Eversole war. Eight
years since he had come up to Moon mountain to visit "Maw" Lutts, who
was a blood cousin, and he never went back.

While his life had been practically one prolonged fight, there was,
nevertheless, a commiserating, gentle side to his nature. This
incorruptible fealty and trustworthiness was an element that had
attracted old Cap Lutts, and in time Johnse Hatfield had become the old
man's first lieutenant. He had since served gallantly through many
fierce sorties with the McGills and the revenuers.

Johnse's friends pretended that he was a source of deep anxiety to them
when near the water, because if he unfortunately fell in, there was
enough lead in him to take him to the very bottom and keep him there.

Hatfield had a smattering of education, and was reputed as upstanding as
a mountain fighter could well be. Certainly, Johnse did not stand up and
invite hot pellets of lead. He did not scorn a rock or a tree any more
than did his opposing belligerents. But throughout his life the value of
his given word was equal to a fulfillment. Those who bargained for this
man's word felt that on the spot where Johnse defaulted they would find
his dead body.

When Lem Lutts had disappeared so inexplicably from the mountains,
Hatfield had, after a hasty search, hied himself out and visited every
calaboose and county jail in the surrounding country. He knew the
cunning of Burton, the revenuer, well enough, but little did he
anticipate such a flagrant irregularity as the transfer of a
"moonshiner" to the capital of the State, with a dozen counties
separating the place of offense. Such a procedure was depriving a
defendant of all constitutional rights, and an effrontery to county
jurisprudence, the enormity of which Hatfield could not ascribe to the
power of even the wily, murderous revenuer.




CHAPTER XV

BUDDY FORCES AN ISSUE


After getting authentic information from the offices of the six Federal
commissioners in the eastern district, and finding, to his deep chagrin,
absolutely no trace of Lem Lutts, Johnse returned, and calling fifty
men, he instituted a search that lasted for weeks. He beat every
mountain side up to its crest. He scoured every cave and cove, and creek
bottom. There was not a square yard of rock or earth or tangled brush
that had escaped his search for Lem. But they did not find Lem's bones,
and finally, Hatfield had resumed the regular routine amidst daily
conjectures and prophecies, and dire maledictions from the men, directed
toward the McGills.

While Johnse made no outward preparations for hostilities, his mind was
busy. This dis

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