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The Prodigal Judge

by Vaughan Kester · English · Gutenberg #5129 · 672,398 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Prodigal Judge

Author: Vaughan Kester


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5129]
                Most recently updated: March 15, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5129

Credits: Produced by Polly Stratton, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRODIGAL JUDGE ***




Produced by Polly Stratton







THE PRODIGAL JUDGE BY VAUGHAN KESTER


By Vaughan Kester




CHAPTER I. THE BOY AT THE BARONY


The Quintards had not prospered on the barren lands of the pine woods
whither they had emigrated to escape the malaria of the low coast, but
this no longer mattered, for the last of his name and race, old General
Quintard, was dead in the great house his father had built almost a
century before and the thin acres of the Barony, where he had made his
last stand against age and poverty, were to claim him, now that he had
given up the struggle in their midst. The two or three old slaves about
the place, stricken with a sense of the futility of the fight their
master had made, mourned for him and for themselves, but of his own
blood and class none was present.

Shy dwellers from the pine woods, lanky jeans-clad men and sunbonneted
women, who were gathering for the burial of the famous man of their
neighborhood, grouped themselves about the lawn which had long since
sunk to the uses of a pasture lot. Singly or by twos and threes they
stole up the steps and across the wide porch to the open door. On the
right of the long hall another door stood open, and who wished could
enter the drawing-room, with its splendid green and gold paper, and the
wonderful fireplace with the Dutch tiles that graphically depicted the
story of Jonah and the whale.

Here the general lay in state. The slaves had dressed their old master
in the uniform he had worn as a colonel of the continental line, but the
thin shoulders of the wasted figure no longer filled the buff and blue
coat. The high-bred face, once proud and masterful no doubt, as became
the face of a Quintard, spoke of more than age and poverty--it was
infinitely sorrowful. Yet there was something harsh and unforgiving
in the lines death had fixed there, which might have been taken as the
visible impress of that mystery, the bitterness of which had misshaped
the dead man's nature; but the resolute lips had closed for ever on
their secret, and the broken spirit had gone perhaps to learn how poor a
thing its pride had been.

Though he had lived continuously at the Barony for almost a quarter of a
century, there was none among his neighbors who could say he had looked
on that thin, aquiline face in all that time. Yet they had known much
of him, for the gossip of the slaves, who had been his only friends in
those years he had chosen to deny himself to other friends, had gone far
and wide over the county.

That notable man of business, Jonathan Crenshaw--and this superiority
was especially evident when the business chanced to be his own--was
closeted in the library with a stranger to whom rumor fixed the name of
Bladen, supposing him to be the legal representative of certain remote
connections of the old general's.

Crenshaw sat before the flat-topped mahogany desk in the center of the
room with several well-thumbed account-books open before him. Bladen, in
riding dress, stood by the window.

“I suppose you will buy in the property when it comes up for sale?” the
latter was saying.

Mr. Crenshaw had already made it plain that General Quintard's creditors
would have lean pickings at the Barony, intimating that he himself was
the chiefest of these and the one to suffer most grievously in pocket.
Further than this, Mr. Bladen saw that the old house was a ruin,
scarcely habitable, and that the thin acres, though they were many and
a royal grant, were of the slightest value. Crenshaw nodded his
acquiescence to the lawyer's conjecture touching the ultimate fate of
the Barony.

“I reckon, sir, I'll want to protect myself, but if there are any of
his own kin who have a fancy to the place I'll put no obstacle in their
way.”

“Who are the other creditors?” asked Bladen.

“There ain't none, sir; they just got tired waiting on him, and when
they began to sue and get judgment the old general would send me word
to settle with them, and their claims passed into my hands. I was in too
deep to draw out. But for the last ten years his dealings were all with
me; I furnished the supplies for the place here. It didn't amount to
much, as there was only him and the darkies, and the account ran on from
year to year.”

“He lived entirely alone, saw no one, I understand,” said Bladen.

“Alone with his two or three old slaves--yes, sir. He wouldn't even see
me; Joe, his old nigger, would fetch orders for this or that. Once or
twice I rode out to see him, but I wa'n't even allowed inside that door;
the message I got was that he couldn't be disturbed, and the last time
I come he sent me word that if I annoyed him again he would be forced
to terminate our business relations. That was pretty strong talk, wa'n't
it, when you consider that I could have sold the roof from over his
head and the land from under his feet? Oh, well, I just put it down to
childishness.” There was a brief pause, then Crenshaw spoke again.
“I reckon, sir, if you know anything about the old general's private
affairs you don't feel no call to speak on that point?” he observed,
and with evident regret. He had hoped that Bladen would clear up the
mystery, for certainly it must have been some sinister tragedy that had
cost the general his grip on life and for twenty years and more had made
of him a recluse, so that the faces of his friends had become as the
faces of strangers.

“My dear sir, I know nothing of General Quintard's private, history. I
am even unacquainted with my clients, who are distant cousins, but his
nearest kin--they live in South Carolina. I was merely instructed
to represent them in the event of his death and to look after their
interests.”

“That's business,” said Crenshaw, nodding.

“All I know is this: General Quintard was a conspicuous man in these
parts fifty years ago; that was before my time, Mr. Crenshaw, and I take
it, too, it was before yours; he married a Beaufort.”

“So he did,” said Crenshaw, “and there was one child, a daughter; she
married a South Carolinian by the name of Turberville. I remember that,
fo' they were married under the gallery in the hall. Great folks,
those Turbervilles, rolling rich. My father was manager then fo' the
general--that was nearly forty years ago. There was life here then, sir;
the place was alive with niggers and the house full of guests from one
month's end to another.” He drummed on the desktop. “Who'd a thought it
wa'n't to last for ever!”

“And what became of the daughter who married Turberville?”

“Died years ago,” said Crenshaw. “She was here the last time about
thirty years back. It wa'n't so easy to get about in those days, no
roads to speak of and no stages, and besides, the old general wa'n't
much here nohow; her going away had sort of broken up his home, I
reckon. Then the place stood empty fo' a few years, most of the slaves
were sold off, and the fields began to grow up. No one rightly knew, but
the general was supposed to be traveling up yonder in the No'th, sir.
As I say, things ran along this way quite a while, and then one morning
when I went to my store my clerk says, 'There's an old white-headed
nigger been waiting round here fo' a word with you, Mr. Crenshaw.' It
was Joe, the general's body servant, and when I'd shook hands with him I
said, 'When's the master expected back?' You see, I thought Joe had been
sent on ahead to open the house, but he says, 'General Quintard's at the
Barony now,' and then he says, 'The general's compliments, sir, and will
you see that this order is filled?' Well, Mr. Bladen, I and my father
had factored the Barony fo' fifteen years and upward, but that was the
first time the supplies fo' the general's table had ever been toted here
in a meal sack!

“I rode out that very afternoon, but Joe, who was one of your mannerly
niggers, met me at the door and says, 'Mr. Crenshaw, the general
appreciates this courtesy, but regrets that he is unable to see you,
sir.' After that it wa'n't long in getting about that the general was a
changed man. Other folks came here to welcome him back and he refused to
see them, but the reason of it we never learned. Joe, who probably knew,
was one of your close niggers; there was, no getting anything out of
him; you could talk with that darky by the hour, sir, and he left you
feeling emptier than if he'd kept his mouth shut.”

They were interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Come in,” said Crenshaw, a trifle impatiently, and in response to his
bidding the door opened and a small boy entered the room dragging after
him a long rifle. Suddenly overcome by a speechless shyness, he paused
on the threshold to stare with round, wondering eyes at the two men.
“Well, sonny, what do you want?” asked Mr. Crenshaw indulgently.

The boy opened his mouth, but his courage failed him, and with his
courage went the words he would have spoken.

“Who is this?” asked Bladen.

“I'll tell, you presently,” said Crenshaw. “Come, speak up, sonny, what
do you want?”

“Please, sir, I want this here old spo'tin' rifle,” said: the child.
“Please, sir, I want to keep it,” he added.

“Well, you run along on out of here with your old spo'tin' rifle!” said
Crenshaw good-naturedly.

“Please, sir, am I to keep it?”

“Yes, I reckon you may keep it--least I've no objection.” Crenshaw
glanced at Bladen.

“Oh, by all means,” said the latter. Spasms of delight shook the small
figure, and with a murmur that was meant for thanks he backed from the
room, closing the door. Bladen glanced inquiringly at Crenshaw.

“You want to know about him, sir? Well, that's Hannibal Wayne Hazard.”

“Hannibal Wayne Hazard?” repeated Bladen.

“Yes, sir; the general was the authority on that point, but who Hannibal
Wayne Hazard is and how he happens to be at the Barony is another
mystery--just wait a minute, sir--” and quitting his chair Mr.
Crenshaw hurried from the room to return almost immediately with a tall
countryman. “Mr. Bladen, this is Bob Yancy. Bob, the gentleman, wants to
hear about the woman and the child; that's your story.”

“Howdy, sir,” said Mr. Yancy. He appeared to meditate on the mental
effort that was required of him, then he took a long breath. “It was
this a-ways--” he began with a soft drawl, and then paused. “You give me
the dates, Mr. John, fo' I disremember.”

“It was four year ago come next Christmas,” said Crenshaw.

“Old Christmas,” corrected Mr. Yancy. “Our folks always kept the old
Christmas like it was befo' they done mussed up the calendar. I'm agin
all changes,” added Mr. Yancy.

“He means the fo'teenth of December,” explained Mr. Crenshaw.

“Not wishin' to dispute your word, Mr. John, I mean Christmas,” objected
Yancy.

“Oh, very well, he means Christmas then!” said Crenshaw.

“The evening befo', it was, and I'd gone to Fayetteville to get my
Christmas fixin's; there was right much rain and some snow falling.” Mr.
Yancy's guiding light was clearly accuracy. “Just at sundown I hooked up
that blind mule of mine to the cart and started fo' home. As I got shut
of the town the stage come in and I seen one passenger, a woman. Now
that mule is slow, Mr. John; I'm free to say there are faster mules,
but a set of harness never went acrost the back of a slower critter
than that one of mine.” Yancy, who thus far had addressed himself to
Mr. Crenshaw, now turned to Bladen. “That mule, sir, sees good with his
right eye, but it's got a gait like it was looking fo' the left-hand
side of the road and wondering what in thunderation had got into it
that it was acrost the way; mules are gifted with some sense, but mighty
little judgment.”

“Never mind the mule, Bob,” said Crenshaw.

“If I can't make the gentleman believe in the everlasting slowness of
that mule of mine, my story ain't worth a hill of beans,” said Yancy.

“The extraordinary slowness of the mule is accepted without question,
Mr. Yancy,” said Bladen.

“I'm obliged to you,” rejoined Yancy, and for a brief moment he appeared
to commune with himself, then he continued. “A mile out of town I heard
some one sloshing through the rain after me; it was dark by that time
and I couldn't see who it was, so I pulled up and waited, and then I
made out it was a woman. She spoke when she was alongside the cart and
says, 'Can you drive me on to the Barony?' and it came to me it was the
same woman I'd seen leave the stage. When I got down to help her into
the cart I saw she was toting a child in her arms.”

“What did the woman look like, Bob?” said Crenshaw.

“She wa'n't exactly old and she wa'n't young by no manner of means;
I remember saying to myself, that child ain't yo's, whose ever it is.
Well, sir, I was willing enough to talk, but she wa'n't, she hardly
spoke until we came to the red gate, when she says, 'Stop, if you
please, I'll walk the rest of the way.' Mind you, she'd known without a
word from me we were at the Barony. She give me a dollar, and the last
I seen of her she was hurrying through the rain toting the child in her
arms.”

Mr. Crenshaw took up the narrative.

“The niggers say the old general almost had a fit when he saw her.
Aunt Alsidia let her into the house; I reckon if Joe had been alive she
wouldn't have got inside that door, spite of the night!”

“Well?” said Bladen.

“When morning come she was gone, but the child done stayed behind; we
always reckoned the lady walked back to Fayetteville sometime befo' day
and took the stage. I've heard Aunt Alsidia tell as how the old general
said that morning, pale and shaking like, 'You'll find a boy asleep
in the red room; he's to be fed and cared fo', but keep him out of my
sight. His name is Hannibal Wayne Hazard.' That is all the general ever
said on the matter. He never would see the boy, never asked after him
even, and the boy lived in the back of the house, with the niggers to
look after him. Now, sir, you know as much as we know, which is just
next door to nothing.”

The old general was borne across what had once been the west lawn to his
resting-place in the neglected acre where the dead and gone of his race
lay, and the record of the family was complete, as far as any man knew.
Crenshaw watched the grave take shape with a melancholy for which he
found no words, yet if words could have come from the mist of ideas in
which his mind groped vaguely he would have said that for themselves the
deeds of the Quintards had been given the touch of finality, and that
whether for good or for evil, the consequences, like the ripple which
rises from the surface of placid waters when a stone is dropped, still
survived somewhere in the world.

The curious and the idle drifted back to the great house; then the
memory of their own affairs, not urgent, generally speaking, but still
of some casual interest, took them down the disused carriage-way to the
red gate and so off into the heat of the summer day. Crenshaw's wagon,
driven by Crenshaw's man, vanished in a cloud of gray dust with the
two old slaves, Aunt Alsidia and Uncle Ben, who were being taken to the
Crenshaw place to be cared for pending the settlement of the Quintard
estate. Bladen parted from Crenshaw with expressions of pleasure at
having had the opportunity of making his acquaintance, and further
delivered himself of the civil wish that they might soon meet again.
Then Crenshaw, assisted by Bob Yancy, proceeded to secure the great
house against intrusion.

“I make it a p'int to always stay and see the plumb finish of a thing,”
 explained Yancy. “Otherwise you're frequently put out by hearing of what
happened after you left; I can stand anything but disapp'intment of that
kind.”

They passed from room to room securing doors and windows, and at last
stepped out upon the back porch.

“Hullo!” said Yancy, pointing.

There on a bench by the kitchen door was a small figure. It was Hannibal
Wayne Hazard asleep, with his old spo'tin' rifle across his knees. His
very existence had been forgotten.

“Well, I declare to goodness!” said Crenshaw.

“What are you going to do with him, Mr. John?”

This question nettled Crenshaw.

“I don't know as that is any particular affair of mine,” he said. Now,
Mr. Crenshaw, though an excellent man of business, with an unblinking
eye on number one, was kindly, on the whole, but there was a Mrs.
Crenshaw, to whom he rendered a strict account of all his deeds, and
that sacred institution, the home, was only a tolerable haven when
these deeds were nicely calculated to fit with the lady's exactions.
Especially was he aware that Mrs. Crenshaw was averse to children as
being inimical to cleanliness and order, oppressive virtues that drove
Crenshaw himself in his hours of leisure to the woodshed, where he might
spit freely.

“I reckon you'd rather drop a word with yo' missus before you toted him
home?” suggested Yancy, who knew something of the nature of his friend's
domestic thraldom.

“A woman ought to be boss in her own house,” said Crenshaw.

“Feelin' the truth of that, I've never married, Mr. John; I do as I
please and don't have to listen to a passel of opinion. But I was going
to say, what's to hinder me from toting that boy to my home? There are
no calico petticoats hanging up in my closets.”

“And no closets to hang 'em in, I'll be bound!” rejoined Crenshaw. “But
if you'll take the boy, Bob, you shan't lose by it.”

Yancy rested a big knotted hand on the boy's shoulder.

“Come, wake up, sonny! Yo' Uncle Bob is ready fo' to strike out home,”
 he said. The child roused with a start and stared into the strange
bearded face that was bent toward him. “It's yo' Uncle Bob,” continued
Yancy in a wheedling tone. “Are you the little nevvy what will help him
to hook up that old blind mule of hisn? Here, give us the spo'tin' rifle
to tote!”

“Please, sir, where is Aunt Alsidia?” asked the child.

Yancy balanced the rifle on his great palm and his eyes assumed a
speculative cast.

“I wonder what's to hinder us from loading this old gun, and firing this
old gun, and hearing this old gun go-bang! Eh?”

The child's blue eyes grew wide.

“Like the guns off in the woods?” he asked, in a breathless whisper.

“Like the guns a body hears off in the woods, only louder--heaps
louder,” said Yancy. “You fetch out his plunder, Mr. John,” he added in
a lower tone.

“Do it now, please,” the child cried, slipping off the bench.

“I was expectin' fo' to hear you name me Uncle Bob, sonny; my little
nevvies get almost anything they want out of me when they call me
that-a-ways.”

“Please, Uncle Bob, make it go bang!”

“You come along, then,” and Mr. Yancy moved off in the direction of his
mule, the child following. “Powder's what we want fo' to make this old
spo'tin' rifle talk up, and I reckon we'll find some in a horn flask
in the bottom of my cart.” His expectations in this particular were
realized, and he loaded the rifle with a small blank charge. “Now,” he
said, shaking the powder into the pan by a succession of smart taps on
the breech, “sometimes these old pieces go off and sometimes they don't;
it depends on the flint, but you stand back of your Uncle Bob, sonny,
and keep yo' fingers out of yo' ears, and when you say--bang!--off she
goes.”

There was a moment of delightful expectancy, and then--

“Bang!” cried the child, and on the instant the rifle cracked. “Do it
again! Please, Uncle Bob!” he cried, wild with delight.

“Now if you was to help yo' Uncle Bob hook up that old mule of hisn and
ride home with him, fo' he's going pretty shortly, you and Uncle Bob
could do right much shootin' with this old rifle.” Mr. Crenshaw had
appeared with a bundle, which he tossed into the cart. Yancy turned to
him. “If you meet any inquiring friends, Mr. John, I reckon you may say
that my nevvy's gone fo' to pay me a visit. Most of his time will be
agreeably spent shootin' with this rifle at a mark, and me holdin' him
so he won't get kicked clean off his feet.”

Thereafter beguiling speech flowed steadily from Mr. Yancy's bearded
lips, in the midst of which relations were established between the mule
and cart, and the boy quitted the Barony for a new world.

“Do you reckon if Uncle Bob was to let you, you could drive, sonny?”

“Can she gallop?” asked the boy.

Mr. Yancy gave him a hurt glance.

“She's too much of a lady to do that,” he said. “No, I 'low this ain't
'so fast as running or walking, but it's a heap quicker than standing
stock-still.” The afternoon sun waned as they went deeper and deeper
into the pine woods, but at last they came to their journey's end, a
widely scattered settlement on a hill above a branch.

“This,” said Mr. Yancy, “are Scratch Hill, sonny. Why Scratch Hill? Some
say it's the fleas; others agin hold it's the eternal bother of making a
living here, but whether fleas or living you scratch fo' both.”




CHAPTER II. YANCY TELLS A MORAL TALE


In the deep peace that rested like a benediction on the pine-clad slopes
of Scratch Hill the boy Hannibal followed at Yancy's heels as that
gentleman pursued the not arduous rounds of temperate industry which
made up his daily life, for if Yancy were not completely idle he was
responsible for a counterfeit presentment of idleness having most of the
merits of the real article. He toiled casually in a small cornfield and
a yet smaller truck patch, but his work always began late, when it began
at all, and he was easily dissuaded from continuing it; indeed, his
attitude toward it seemed to challenge interference.

In the winter, when the weather conditions were perfectly adjusted to
meet certain occult exactions he had come to require, Yancy could be
induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he
pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he
being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care of himself. He
made use of the dull days of mingled mist and drizzle for hunting, work
being clearly out of the question; one could get about over the brown
floor of the forest in silence then, and there was no sun to glint the
brass mountings of his rifle. The fine days he professed to regard with
keen suspicion as weather breeders, when it was imprudent to go far from
home, especially in the direction of the Crenshaw timber lands, which
for years had been the scene of all his gainful industry, and where he
seemed to think nature ready to assume her most sinister aspect.
Again in the early spring, when the young oak leaves were the size of
squirrel's ears and the whippoorwills began calling as the long shadows
struck through the pine woods, the needs of his corn ground battled with
his desire to fish. In all such crises of the soul Mr. Yancy was fairly
vanquished before the struggle began; but to the boy his activities were
perfectly ordered to yield the largest return in contentment.

The Barony had been offered for sale and bought in by Crenshaw for
eleven thousand dollars, this being the amount of his claim. Some six
months later he sold the plantation for fifteen thousand dollars to
Nathaniel Ferris, of Currituck County.

“There's money in the old place, Bob, at that figure,” Crenshaw told
Yancy.

“There are so,” agreed Yancy, who was thinking Crenshaw had lost no time
in getting it out.

They were seated on the counter in Crenshaw's store at Balaam's Cross
Roads, where the heavy odor of black molasses battled with the sprightly
smell of salt fish. The merchant held the Scratch Hiller in no small
esteem. Their intimacy was of long standing, for the Yancys going down
and the Crenshaws coming up had for a brief space flourished on the
same social level. Mr. Crenshaw's rise in life, however, had been
uninterrupted, while Mr. Yancy, wrapped in a philosophic calm and deeply
averse to industry, had permitted the momentum imparted by a remote
ancestor to carry him where it would, which was steadily away from
that tempered prosperity his family had once boasted as members of the
land-owning and slaveholding class.

“I mean there's money in the place fo' Ferris,” Crenshaw explained.

“I reckon yo're right, Mr. John; the old general used to spend a heap
on the Barony and we all know he never got a cent back, so I reckon the
money's there yet.

“Bladen's got an answer from them South Carolina Quintards, and they
don't know nothing about the boy,” said Crenshaw, changing the subject.
“So you can rest easy, Bob; they ain't going to want him.”

“Well, sir, that surely is a passel of comfort to me. I find I got all
the instincts of a father without having had none of the instincts of a
husband.”

A richer, deeper realization of his joy came to Yancy when he had
turned his back on Balaam's Cross Roads and set out for home through the
fragrant silence of the pine woods. His probable part in the young life
chance had placed in his keeping was a glorious thing to the man. He had
not cared to speculate on the future; he had believed that friends or
kindred must sooner or later claim Hannibal, but now he felt wonderfully
secure in Crenshaw's opinion that this was not to be.

Just beyond the Barony, which was midway between Balaam's and the Hill,
down the long stretch of sandy road he saw two mounted figures, then as
they drew nearer he caught the flutter of skirts and recognized one of
the horsewomen. It was Mrs. Ferris, wife of the Barony's new owner. She
reined in her horse abreast of his cart.

“Aren't you Mr. Yancy?” she asked.

“Yes, ma'am, that's me--Bob Yancy.” He regarded her with large gray eyes
that were frankly approving in their expression, for she was more than
commonly agreeable to look upon.

“I am Mrs. Ferris, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“The same here,” murmured Yancy with winning civility.

Mrs. Ferris' companion leaned forward, her face averted, and stroked her
horse's neck with gloved hand.

“This is my friend, Miss Betty Malroy.”

“Glad to know you, ma'am,” said Yancy.

Miss Malroy faced him, smiling. She, too, was very good to look upon,
indeed she was quite radiant with youth and beauty.

“We are just returning from Scratch Hill--I think that is what you call
it?” said Mrs. Ferris.

“So we do,” agreed Yancy.

“And the dear little boy we met is your nephew, is he not, Mr. Yancy?”
 It was Betty Malroy who spoke.

“In a manner he is and in a manner he ain't,” explained Yancy, somewhat
enigmatically.

“There are quite a number of children at Scratch Hill?” suggested Mrs.
Ferris.

“Yes, ma'am, so there are; a body would naturally notice that.”

“And no school--not a church even!” continued Mrs. Ferris in a grieved
tone.

“Never has been,” rejoined Yancy cheerfully. He seemed to champion the
absence of churches and schools on the score of long usage.

“But what do the people do when they want to go to church?” questioned
Mrs. Ferris.

“Never having heard that any of 'em wanted to go I can't say just
offhand, but don't you fret none about that, ma'am; there are churches;
one's up at the Forks, and there's another at Balaam's Cross Roads.”

“But that's ten miles from Scratch Hill, isn't it?”

“It's all of that,” said Yancy. He sensed it that the lady before
him, was a person of much force and energy, capable even of reckless
innovation. Mr. Yancy himself was innately conservative; his religious
inspiration had been drawn from the Forks and Balaam's Cross Roads. It
had seemed to answer very well. Mrs. Ferris fixed his wavering glance.

“Don't you think it is too bad, Mr. Yancy, the way those children have
been neglected? There is nothing for them but to run wild.”

“Well, I seen some right good children fetched up that-a-ways--smart,
too. You see, ma'am, there's a heap a child can just naturally pick up
of himself.”

“Oh!” and the monosyllable was uttered rather weakly. Mr. Yancy's name
had been given her as that of a resident of weight and influence in the
classic region of Scratch Hill. Miss Malroy came to her friend's rescue.

“Mrs. Ferris thinks the children should have a chance to learn at
home. Poor little tots!--they can't walk ten or fifteen miles to
Sunday-school, now can they, Mr. Yancy?”

“Bless yo' heart, they won't try to!” said Yancy reassuringly. “Sunday's
a day of rest at Scratch Hill. So are most of the other days of the
week, but we all aspire to take just a little mo' rest on Sunday than
any other day. Sometimes we ain't able to, but that's our aim.”

“Do you know the old deserted cabin by the big pine?--the Blount place?”
 asked Mrs. Ferris.

“Yes, ma'am, I know it.”

“I am going to have Sunday-school there for those children; they shan't
be neglected any longer if I can help it--I should feel guilty, quite
guilty! Now won't you let your little nephew come? Perhaps they'll not
find it so very terrible, after all.” From which Mr. Yancy concluded
that when she invaded it, skepticism had rested as a mantle on Scratch
Hill.

“Every one said we would better talk with you, Mr. Yancy, and we were
hoping to meet you as we came along,” supplemented Miss Malroy, and her
words of flattery were wafted to him with so sweet a smile that Yancy
instantly capitulated.

“I reckon you-all can count on my nevvy,” he said.

When he reached Scratch Hill, in the waning light of day, Hannibal, in
a state of high excitement, met him at the log shed, which served as a
barn.

“I hear you-all have been entertaining visitors while Uncle Bob was
away,” observed Yancy, and remembering what Crenshaw had told him, he
rested his big hand on the boy's head with a special tenderness.

“There's going to be a school in the cabin in the old field!” said the
boy. “May I go?--Oh, Uncle Bob, will you please take me?”

“When's this here school going to begin, anyhow?”

“To-morrow at four o'clock, she said, Uncle Bob.”

“She's a quick lady, ain't she? Well, I expected you'd be hopping around
on one leg when you named it to me. You wait until Sunday and see what I
do fo' my nevvy,” said Yancy.

He was as good as his implied promise, but the day began discouragingly
with an extra and, as it seemed to Hannibal, an unnecessary amount of
soap and water.

“You owe it to yo'self to show a clean skin in the house of worship.
Just suppose one of them nice ladies was to cast her eye back of yo'
ears! She'd surely be put out to name it offhand whether you was black
or white. I reckon I'll have to barber you some, too, with the shears.”

“What's school like, Uncle Bob?” asked Hannibal, twisting and squirming
under the big resolute hands of the man.

“I can't just say what it's like.”

“Why, didn't you ever go to school, Uncle Bob?”

“Didn't I ever go to school! Where do you reckon I got my education,
anyhow? I went to school several times in my young days.”

“On a Sunday, like this?”

“No, the school I tackled was on a week-day.”

“Was it hard?” asked Hannibal, who was beginning to cherish secret
misgivings; for surely all this soap and water must have some sinister
portent.

“Well, some learn easier than others. I learned middling easy--it didn't
take me long--and when I felt I knowed enough I just naturally quit and
went on about my business.”

“But what did you learn?” insisted the boy.

“You-all wouldn't know if I told you, because you-all ain't ever been
to school yo'self. When you've had yo' education we'll talk over what I
learned--it mostly come out of a book.” He hoped his general statement
would satisfy Hannibal, but it failed to do so.

“What's a book. Uncle Bob?” he demanded.

“Well, whatever a body don't know naturally he gets out of a book. I
reckon the way you twist, Nevvy, mebby you'd admire fo' to lose an ear!”
 and Mr. Yancy refused further to discuss the knowledge he had garnered
in his youth.

Hannibal and Yancy were the first to arrive at the deserted cabin in the
old field that afternoon. They found the place had been recently cleaned
and swept, while about the wall was ranged a row of benches; there was
also a table and two chairs. Yancy inspected the premises with the eye
of mature experience.

“Yes, it surely is a school; any one with an education would know that.
Just look!--ain't you glad yo' Uncle Bob slicked you up some, now you
see what them ladies has done fo' to make this place tidy?”

Shy children from the pine woods, big brothers with little sisters and
big sisters with little brothers, drifted out of the encircling forest.
Coincident with the arrival of the last of these stragglers Mrs. Ferris
and Miss Malroy appeared, attended by a colored groom.

“It was so good of you to come, Mr. Yancy! The children won't feel so
shy with you here,” said Mrs. Ferris warmly, as Yancy assisted her to
dismount, an act of courtesy that called for his finest courage.

Mrs. Ferris' missionary spirit manifested itself agreeably enough on
the whole. When she had ranged her flock in a solemn-faced row on the
benches, she began by explaining why Sunday was set apart for a day
of rest, touching but lightly on its deeper significance as a day
of worship as well; then she read certain chapters from the Bible,
finishing with the story of David, a narrative that made a deep
impression upon Yancy, comfortably seated in the doorway.

“Can't you tell the children a story, Mr. Yancy? Something about their
own neighborhood I think would be nice, something with a moral,” the
pleasant earnest voice f Mrs. Ferris roused the Scratch Hiller from his
meditations.

“Yes, ma'am, I reckon I can tell 'em a story.” He stood up, filling
the doorway with his bulk. “I can tell you-all a story about this here
house,” he said, addressing himself to the children. He smiled happily.
“You-all don't need to look so solemn, a body ain't going to snap at
you! This house are the old Blount cabin, but the Blounts done moved
away from it years and years ago. They're down Fayetteville way now.
There was a passel of 'em and they was about as common a lot of white
folks as you'd find anywhere; I know, because I come to a dance here
once and Dave Blount called me a liar right in this very room.” He
paused, that this impressive fact might disseminate itself. Hannibal
slid forward in his seat, his earnest little face bent on Yancy.

“Why did he call you a liar, Uncle Bob?” he demanded.

“Well, I scarcely know, Nevvy, but that's what he done, and he stuck
some words in front of it that ain't fitten I should repeat.”

Miss Malroy's cheeks had become very red, and Mrs. Ferris refused
to meet her eye, while the children were in a flutter of pleased
expectancy. They felt the wholly contemporary interest of Yancy's story;
he was dealing with forms of speech which prevailed and were usually
provocative of consequences more or less serious. He gave them a wide,
sunny smile.

“When Dave Blount called me that, I struck out fo' home.” At this
surprising turn in the narrative the children looked their disgust, and
Mrs. Ferris shot Betty a triumphant glance. “Yes, ma'am, I struck out
across the fields fo' home, I didn't wish to hear no mo' of that loose
kind of talk. When I got home I found my old daddy setting up afo' the
fire, and he says, 'You come away early, son.' I told him what Dave
Blount had called me and he says, 'You acted like a gentleman, Bob, with
all them womenfolks about.”'

“You had a very good and sensible father, Mr. Yancy. How much better
than if--” began Mrs. Ferris, who feared that the moral might elude him.

“Yes, ma'am, but along about day he come into the loft where I was
sleeping and says to me, 'Sun-up, Bob--time fo' you to haul on yo' pants
and go back yonder and fetch that Dave Blount a smack in the jaw.'” Mrs.
Ferris moved uneasily in her chair: “I dressed and come here, but when
I asked fo' Dave he wouldn't step outside, so I just lost patience with
his foolishness and took a crack at him standing where I'm standing now,
but he ducked and you can still see, ma'am”--turning to the embarrassed
Mrs. Ferris--“where my knuckles made a dint in the door-jamb. I got him
the next lick, though!”

Mr. Yancy's moral tale had reached its conclusion; it was not for him to
boast unduly of his prowess.

“Uncle Bob, you lift me up and show me them dints!” and Hannibal slipped
from his seat.

“Oh, no!” said Betty Malroy laughing. She captured the boy and drew him
down beside her on a corner of her chair. “I am sure you don't want to
see the dents--Mr. Yancy's story, children, is to teach us how important
it is to guard our words--and not give way to hasty speech--”

“Betty!” cried Mrs. Ferris indignantly.

“Judith, the moral is as obvious as it is necessary.”

Mrs. Ferris gave her a reproachful look and turned to the children.

“You will all be here next Sunday, won't you?--and at the same hour?”
 she said, rising.

There was a sudden clatter of hoofs beyond the door. A man, well dressed
and well mounted had ridden into the yard. As Mrs. Ferris came from the
cabin he flung himself out of the saddle and, hat in hand, approached
her.

“I am hunting a place called the Barony; can you tell me if I am on the
right road?” he asked. He was a man in the early thirties, graceful and
powerful of build, with a handsome face.

“It is my husband you wish to see? I am Mrs. Ferris.”

“Then General Quintard is dead?” His tone was one of surprise.

“His death occurred over a year ago, and my husband now owns the Barony;
were you a friend of the general's?”

“No, Madam; he was my father's friend, but I had hoped to meet him.” His
manner was adroit and plausible.

Mrs. Ferris hesitated. The stranger's dress and bearing was that of a
gentleman, and he could boast of his father's friendship with General
Quintard. Any doubts she may have had she put aside.

“Will you ride on with us to the Barony and meet my husband, Mr.--?” she
paused.

“Murrell--Captain Murrell. Thank you; I should like to see the old
place. I should highly value the privilege,” then his eyes rested on
Miss Malroy.

“Betty, let me present Captain Murrell.”

The captain bowed, giving her a glance of bold admiration.

By this time the children had straggled off into the pine woods as
silently as they had assembled; only Yancy and Hannibal remained. Mrs.
Ferris turned to the former.

“If you will close the cabin door, Mr. Yancy, everything will be ready
for next Sunday,” she said, and moved toward the horses, followed by
Murrell. Betty Malroy lingered for a moment at Hannibal's side.

“Good-by, little boy; you must ask your Uncle Bob to bring you up to the
big house to see me,” and stooping she kissed him. “Good-by, Mr. Yancy,
I liked your story.”

Hannibal and Yancy watched them mount and ride away, then the boy said:

“Uncle Bob, now them ladies have gone, won't you please show me them
dints you made in the doorjamb?”




CHAPTER III. TROUBLE AT SCRATCH HILL


Captain Murrell had established himself at Balaam's Cross Roads. He
was supposed to be interested in the purchase of a plantation, and in
company with Crenshaw visited the numerous tracts of land which the
merchant owned; but though he professed delight with the country, he
was plainly in no haste to become committed to any one of the several
propositions Crenshaw was eager to submit. Later, and still in the guise
of a prospective purchaser, he met Bladen, who also dealt extensively
in land, and apparently if anything could have pleased him more than
the region about the Cross Roads it was the country adjacent to
Fayetteville.

From the first he had assiduously cultivated his acquaintance with
the new owners of the Barony. He was now on the best of terms with Nat
Ferris, and it was at the Barony that he lounged away his evenings,
gossiping and smoking with the planter on the wide veranda.

“The Barony would have suited me,” he told Bladen one day. They had
just returned from an excursion into the country and were seated in the
lawyer's office.

“You say your father was a friend of the old general's?” said Bladen.

“Years ago, in the north--yes,” answered Murrell.

“Odd, isn't it, the way he chose to spend the last years of his life,
shut off like that and seeing no one?”

Murrell regarded the lawyer in silence for a moment out of his deeply
sunk eyes.

“Too bad about the boy,” he said at length slowly.

“How do you mean, Captain?” asked Bladen.

“I mean it's a pity he has no one except Yancy to look after him,” said
Murrell, but Bladen showed no interest and Murrell went on. “Don't you
reckon he must have touched General Quintard's life mighty close at some
point?”

“Well, if so, it eluded me,” said Bladen. “I went through General
Quintard's papers and they contained no clue to the boy's identity that
I could discover. Fact is, the general didn't leave much beyond an old
account-book or two; I imagine that before his death he destroyed the
bulk of his private papers; it looked as if he'd wished to break with
the past. His mind must have been affected.”

“Has Yancy any legal claim on the boy?” inquired Murrell.

“No, certainly not; the boy was merely left with Yancy because Crenshaw
didn't know what else to do with him.”

“Get possession of him, and if I don't buy land here I'll take him West
with me,” said Murrell quietly. Bladen gave him a swift, shrewd glance,
but Murrell, smiling and easy, met it frankly. “Come,” he said, “it's
a pity he should grow up wild in the pine woods--get him away
from Yancy--I am' willing to spend five hundred dollars on this if
necessary.”

“As a matter of sentiment?”

“As a matter of sentiment.”

Bladen considered. He was not averse to making five hundred dollars, but
he was decidedly averse to letting slip any chance to secure a larger
sum. It flashed in upon him that Murrell had uncovered the real purpose
of his visit to North Carolina; his interest in land had been merely a
subterfuge.

“Well?” said Murrell.

“I'll have to think your proposition over,” said Bladen.

The immediate result of this conversation was that within twenty-four
hours a man driving two horses hitched to a light buggy arrived at
Scratch Hill in quest of Bob Yancy, whom he found at dinner and to
whom he delivered a letter. Mr. Yancy was profoundly impressed by the
attention, for holding the letter at arm's length, he said,

“Well, sir, I've lived nigh on to forty years, but I never got a piece
of writing befo'--never, sir. People, if they was close by, spoke to
me, if at a distance they hollered, but none of 'em ever wrote.” After
gazing at the written characters with satisfaction Mr. Yancy made a
taper of the letter and lit his pipe, which he puffed meditatively.
“Sonny, when you grow up you must learn so you can send writings to yo'
Uncle Bob fo' him to light his pipe with.”

“What was in the paper, Uncle Bob?” asked Hannibal.

“Writin',” said Mr. Yancy, and smoked.

“What did the writin' say, Uncle Bob?” insisted the boy.

“It was private,” said Mr. Yancy, “very private.”

“What's your answer?” demanded the stranger.

“That's private, too,” said Mr. Yancy. “You tell him I'll be monstrous
glad to talk it over with him any time he fancies to come out here.”

“He said something about some one I was to carry back with me,” objected
the man.

“Who said that?” asked Mr. Yancy.

“Bladen did.”

“How's a body to know who yore talking about unless you name him?” said
Yancy severely.

“Well, what am I to tell him?”

“It's a free country and I got no call to dictate. You-all can tell
him whatever you like.” Further than this Mr. Yancy would not commit
himself, and the man went as he came.

The next day Yancy had occasion to visit Balaam's Cross Roads.
Ordinarily Hannibal would have gone with him, but he was engaged in
digging out a groundhog's hole with Oglethorpe Bellamy, grandson of
Uncle Sammy Bellamy, the patriarch of Scratch Hill. Mr. Yancy forbore to
interrupt this enterprise which he considered of some educational value,
since the ground-hog's hole was an old one and he was reasonably certain
that a family of skunks had taken possession of it. When Yancy reached
the Cross Roads, Crenshaw gave him a disquieting opinion as to the
probable contents of his letter, for he himself had heard from Bladen
that he had decided to assume the care of the boy.

“So you reckon it was that--” said Yancy, with a deep breath.

“It's a blame outrage, Bob, fo' him to act like this!” said the merchant
with heat.

“When do you reckon he's going to send fo' him?” asked Yancy.

“Whenever the notion strikes him.”

“What about my having notions too?” inquired Yancy, flecked into
passion, and bringing his fist down on the counter with a crash.

“You surely ain't going to oppose him, Bob?”

“Does he say when he's going to send fo' my nevvy?”

“He says it will be soon.”

“You take care of my mule, Mr. John,” said Yancy, and turned his back on
his friend.

“I reckon Bladen will have the law on his side, Bob!”

“The law be damned--I got what's fair on mine, I don't wish fo' better
than that,” exclaimed Yancy, over his shoulder. He strode from the store
and started down the sandy road at a brisk run. Miserable forebodings of
an impending tragedy leaped up within him, and the miles were many that
lay between him and the Hill.

“He'll just naturally bust the face off the fellow Bladen sends!”
 thought Crenshaw, staring after his friend.

That run of Bob Yancy's was destined to become a classic in the annals
of the neighborhood. Ordinarily a man walking briskly might cover
the distance between the Cross Roads and the Hill in two hours. He
accomplished it in less than an hour, and before he reached the branch
that flowed a full quarter of a mile from his cabin he was shouting
Hannibal's name as he ran. Then as he breasted the slope he came within
sight of a little group in his own dooryard. Saving only Uncle Sammy
Bellamy, the group resolved itself into the women and children of the
Hill, but there was one small figure he missed, and the color faded from
his cheeks while his heart stood still. The patriarch hurried toward
him, leaning on his cane, while his grandson clung to the skirts of his
coat, weeping bitterly.

“They've took your nevvy, Bob!” he cried, in a high, thin voice.

“Who's took him?” asked Yancy hoarsely. He paused and glanced from one
to another of the little group.

“Hit were Dave Blount. Get your gun, Bob, and go after him--kill the
miserable sneaking cuss!” cried Uncle Sammy, who believed in settling
all difficulties by bloodshed as befitted a veteran of the first war
with England, he having risen to the respectable rank of sergeant in a
company of Morgan's riflemen; while at sixty-odd in '12, when there was
recruiting at the Cross Roads, his son had only been able to prevent his
tendering his services to his country by hiding his trousers. “Fetch his
rifle, some of you fool women!” cried Uncle Sammy. “By the Fayetteville
Road, Bob, not ten minutes ago--you can cut him off at Ox Road forks!”

Yancy breathed a sigh of relief. The situation was not entirely
desperate, for, as Uncle Sammy said, he could reach the Ox Road forks
before Blount possibly could, by going as the crow flies through the
pine woods.

“Hit wouldn't have happened if there'd been a man on the Hill, but there
was nothing but a passel of women about the place. I heard the boys
crying when Dave Blount lifted your nevvy into the buggy,” said Uncle
Sammy; “all I could do was to cuss him across two fields. I hope you
blow his hide full of holes!” for a rifle had been placed in Yancy's
hands.

“Thank you-all kindly,” said Yancy, and turning away he struck off
through the pine woods. A brisk walk of twenty minutes brought him to
the Ox Road forks, as it was called, where he could plainly distinguish
the wheel and hoof marks left by the buggy and team as it went to
Scratch Hill, but there was only the single track.

This important point being settled, sense of sweet peace stole in upon
Yancy's spirit. He stood his rifle against a tree, lit his pipe with
flint and steel, and rested comfortably by the wayside. He had not long
to wait, for presently the buggy hove in sight; whereupon he coolly
knocked the ashes from his pipe, pocketed it, and prepared for action.
As the buggy came nearer he recognized his ancient enemy in the person
of the man who sat at Hannibal's side, and stepping nimbly into the road
seized the horses by their bits. At sight of him Hannibal shrieked his
name in an ecstasy of delight.

“Uncle Bob--Uncle Bob--” he, cried.

“Yes, it's Uncle Bob. You can light down, Nevvy. I reckon you've rid far
enough,” said Yancy pleasantly.

“Leggo them horses!” said Mr. Blount, recovering somewhat from the
effect of Yancy's sudden appearance.

“Light down, Nevvy,” said Yancy, still pleasantly. Blount turned to the
boy as if to interfere. “Don't you put the weight of yo' finger on the
boy, Blount!” warned Yancy. “Light down, Hannibal!”

Hannibal instantly availed himself of the invitation. At the same moment
Blount struck at Yancy with his whip and his horses reared wildly,
thinking the blow meant for them. Seeing that the boy had reached the
ground in safety, Yancy relaxed his hold on the team, which instantly
plunged forward. Then as the buggy swept past him he made a dexterous
grab at Blount and dragged him out over the wheels into the road, where,
for the second time in his life, he proceeded to fetch Mr. Blount
a smack in the jaw. This he followed up with other smacks variously
distributed about his countenance.

“You'll sweat for this, Bob Yancy!” cried Blount, as he vainly sought to
fend off the blows.

“I'm sweating now--scandalous,” said Mr. Yancy, taking his unhurried
satisfaction of the other. Then with a final skilful kick he sent Mr.
Blount sprawling. “Don't let me catch you around these diggings again,
Dave Blount, or I swear to God I'll be the death of you!”

Hannibal rode home through the pine woods in triumph on his Uncle Bob's
mighty shoulders.

“Did you get yo' ground-hog, Nevvy?” inquired Mr. Yancy presently when
they had temporarily exhausted the excitement of Hannibal's capture and
recovery.

“It weren't a ground-hog, Uncle Bob--it were a skunk!”

“Think of that!” murmured Mr. Yancy.




CHAPTER IV. LAW AT BALAAM'S CROSS-ROADS


But Mr. Yancy was only at the beginning of his trouble. Three days later
there appeared on the borders of Scratch Hill a lank gentleman armed
with a rifle, while the butts of two pistols protruded from the depths
of his capacious coat pockets. He made his presence known by whooping
from the edge of the branch, and his whoops shaped themselves into the
name of Yancy. It was Charley Balaam, old Squire Balaam's nephew. The
squire lived at the crossroads to which his family had given its name,
and dispensed the little law that found its way into that part of the
county. The whoops finally brought Yancy to his cabin door.

“Can I see you friendly, Bob Yancy?” Balaam demanded with the lungs of a
stentor, sheltering himself behind the thick bole of a sweetgum, for he
observed that Yancy held his rifle in the crook of his arm and had no
wish to offer his person as a target to the deadly aim of the Scratch
Hiller who was famous for his skill.

“I reckon you can, Charley Balaam, if you are friendly,” said Yancy.

“I'm a family man, Bob, and I ask you candid, do you feel peevish?”

“Not in particular,” and Yancy put aside his rifle.

“I'm a-going to trust you, Bob,” said Balaam. And forsaking the shelter
of the sweetgum he shuffled up the slope.

“How are you, Charley?” asked Yancy, as they shook hands.

“Only just tolerable, Bob. You've been warranted--Dave Blount swore hit
on to you.” He displayed a sheet of paper covered with much writing and
decorated with a large seal. Yancy viewed this formidable document with
respect, but did not offer to take it.

“Read it,” he said mildly. Balaam scratched his head.

“I don't know that hit's my duty to do that, Bob. Hit's my duty to
serve it on to you. But I can tell you what's into hit, leavin' out the
law--which don't matter nohow.”

At this juncture Uncle Sammy's bent form emerged from the path that led
off through the woods in the direction of the Bellamy cabin. With the
patriarch was a stranger. Now the presence of a stranger on Scratch
Hill was an occurrence of such extraordinary rarity that the warrant
instantly became a matter of secondary importance.

“Howdy, Charley. Here, Bob Yancy, you shake hands with Bruce
Carrington,” commanded Uncle Sammy. At the name both Yancy and Balaam
manifested a quickened interest. They saw a man in the early twenties,
clean-limbed and broad-shouldered, with a handsome face and shapely
head. “Yes, sir, hit's a grandson of Tom Carrington that used to own the
grist-mill down at the Forks. Yo're some sort of wild-hog kin to him,
Bob--yo' mother was a cousin to old Tom. Her family was powerful upset
at her marrying a Yancy. They say Tom cussed himself into a 'pleptic fit
when the news was fetched him.”

“Where you located at, Mr. Carrington?” asked Yancy. But Carrington was
not given a chance to reply. Uncle Sammy saved him the trouble.

“Back in Kentucky. He tells me he's been follerin' the water. What's the
name of that place where Andy Jackson fit the British?”

“New Orleans,” prompted Carrington good naturedly.

“That's hit--he takes rafts down the river to New Orleans, then he comes
back on ships to Baltimore, or else he hoofs it no'th overland.” Uncle
Sammy had acquired a general knowledge of the stranger's habits and
pursuits in an incredibly brief space of time. “He wants to visit the
Forks,” he added.

“I'm shortly goin' that way myself, Mr. Carrington, and I'll be pleased
of your company--but first I got to get through with Bob Yancy,” said
Balaam, and again he produced the warrant. “If agreeable to you, Bob,
I'll ask Uncle Sammy, as a third party friendly to both, to read this
here warrant,” he said.

“Who's been a-warrantin' Bob Yancy?” cried Uncle Sammy, with shrill
interest.

“Dave Blount has.”

“I knowed hit--I knowed he'd try to get even!” And Uncle Sammy struck
his walking-stick sharply on the packed earth of Yancy's dooryard.
“What's the charge agin you, Bob?”

“Read hit,” said Balaam. “Why, sho'--can't you read plain writin', Uncle
Sammy?” for the patriarch was showing signs of embarrassment.

“If you gentlemen will let me--” said Carrington pleasantly. Instantly
there came a relieved chorus from the three in one breath.

“Why, sure!”

“Would my spectacles help you any, Mr. Carrington?” asked Uncle Sammy
officiously.

“No, I guess not.”

“They air powerful seein' glasses, and I'm aweer some folks read a heap
easier with spectacles than without 'em.” After a moment's scrutiny of
the paper that Balaam had thrust in his hand, Carrington began:

“To the Sheriff of the County of Cumberland: Greetings.”

“He means me,” explained Balaam. “He always makes 'em out to the
sheriff, but they are returned to me and I serve 'em.” Carrington
resumed his reading,

“Whereas, It is alleged that a murderous assault has been committed on
one David Blount, of Fayetteville, by Robert Yancy, of Scratch Hill,
said Blount sustaining numerous bruises and contusions, to his great
injury of body and mind; and, whereas, it is further alleged that said
murderous assault was wholly unprovoked and without cause, you will
forthwith take into custody the person of said Yancy, of Scratch Hill,
charged with having inflicted the bruises and contusions herein set
forth in the complaint of said Blount, and instantly bring him into our
presence to answer to these various and several crimes and misdemeanors.
You are empowered to seize said Yancy wherever he may be at; whether on
the hillside or in the valley, eating or sleeping, or at rest.

           “De Lancy Balaam, Magistrate.

“Fourth District, County of Cumberland, State of North Carolina. Done
this twenty-fourth day of May, 1835.

“P.S. Dear Bob: Dave Blount says he ain't able to chew his meat. I
thought you'd be glad to know.”

Smilingly Carrington folded the warrant and handed it to Yancy.

“Well, what are you goin' to do about hit, Bob?” inquired Balaam.

“Maybe I'd ought to go. I'd like to oblige the squire,” said Yancy.

“When does this here co't set?” demanded Uncle Sammy.

“Hit don't do much else since he's took with the lumbago,” answered
Balaam somewhat obscurely.

“How are the squire, Charley?” asked Yancy with grave concern.

“Only just tolerable, Bob.”

“What did he tell you to do?” and Yancy knit his brows.

“Seems like he wanted me to find out what you'd do. He recommended I
shouldn't use no violence.”

“I wouldn't recommend you did, either,” assented Yancy, but without
heat.

“I'd get shut of this here law business, Bob,” advised Uncle Sammy.

“Suppose I come to the Cross Roads this evening?”

“That's agreeable,” said the deputy, who presently departed in company
with Carrington.

Some hours later the male population of Scratch Hill, with a gravity
befitting the occasion, prepared itself to descend on the Cross Roads
and give its support to Mr. Yancy in his hour of need. To this end those
respectable householders armed themselves, with the idea that it might
perhaps be necessary to correct some miscarriage of justice. They were
shy enough and timid enough, these remote dwellers in the pine woods,
but, like all wild things, when they felt they were cornered they were
prone to fight; and in this instance it was clearly iniquitous that Bob
Yancy's right to smack Dave Blount should be questioned. That denied
what was left of human liberty. But beyond this was a matter of even
greater importance: they felt that Yancy's possession of the boy was
somehow involved.

Yancy had declared himself simply but specifically on this point. Law
or no law, he would kill whoever attempted to take the boy from him, and
Scratch Hill believing to a man that in so doing he would be well within
his rights, was prepared to join in the fray. Even Uncle Sammy, who
had not been off the Hill in years, announced that no consideration
of fatigue would keep him away from the scene of action and possible
danger, and Yancy loaned him his mule and cart for the occasion. When
the patriarch was helped to his seat in the ancient vehicle he called
loudly for his rifle.

“Why, pap, what do you want with a weapon?” asked his son indulgently.
“If there air shootin' I may take a hand in it. Now you-all give me a
fair hour's start with this mule critter of Bob's, and if nothin' busts
I'll be at the squire's as soon as the best of you.”

Uncle Sammy was given the time allowance he asked and then Scratch Hill
wended its way down the path to the branch and the highroad. Yancy led
the straggling procession, with the boy trotting by his side, his little
sunburned fist clasped in the man's great hand. He, too, was armed.
He carried the old spo'tin' rifle he had brought from the Barony, and
suspended from his shoulder by a leather thong was the big horn flask
with its hickory stopper his Uncle Bob had fashioned for him, while a
deerskin pouch held his bullets and an extra flint or two. He understood
that beyond those smacks he had seen his Uncle Bob fetch Mr. Blount, he
himself was the real cause of this excitement, that somebody, it was
not plain to his mind just who, was seeking to get him away from Scratch
Hill, and that a mysterious power called the Law would sooner or later
be invoked to this dread end. But he knew this much clearly, nothing
would induce him to leave his Uncle Bob! And his thin little fingers
nestled warmly against the man's hardened palm. Yancy looked down and
gave him a sunny, reassuring smile.

“It'll be all right, Nevvy,” he said gently.

“You wouldn't let 'em take me, would you, Uncle Bob?” asked the child in
a fearful whisper.

“Such an idea ain't entered my head. And this here warranting is just
some of Dave Blount's cussedness.”

“Uncle Bob, what'll they do to you?”

“Well, I reckon the squire'll feel obliged to do one of two things.
He'll either fine me or else he won't.”

“What'll you do if he fines you?”

“Why, pay the fine, Nevvy--and then lick Dave Blount again for stirring
up trouble. That's the way we most in general do. I mean to say give him
a good licking, and that'll make him stop his foolishness.”

“Wasn't that a good licking you gave him on the Ox Road, Uncle Bob?”
 asked Hannibal.

“It was pretty fair fo' a starter, but I'm capable of doing a better
job,” responded Yancy.

They overtook Uncle Sammy as he turned in at the squire's.

“I thought I'd come and see what kind of law a body gets at this here
co't of yours,” the patriarch explained to Mr. Balaam, who, forgetting
his lumbago, had hurried forth to greet him.

“But why did you fetch your gun, Uncle Sammy?” asked the magistrate,
laughing.

“Hit were to be on the safe side, Squire. Where air them Blounts?”

“Them Blounts don't need to bother you none. There air only Dave, and he
can't more than half see out of one eye to-day.”

The squire's court held its infrequent sittings in the best room of the
Balaam homestead, a double cabin of hewn logs. Here Scratch Hill was
gratified with a view of Mr. Blount's battered visage, and it was
conceded that his condition reflected creditably on Yancy's physical
prowess and was of a character fully to sustain that gentleman's
reputation; for while he was notoriously slow to begin a fight, he
was reputed to be even more reluctant to leave off once he had become
involved in one.

“What's all this here fuss between you and Bob Yancy?” demanded the
squire when he had administered the oath to Blount. Mr. Blount's
statement was brief and very much to the point. He had been hired by Mr.
Bladen, of Fayetteville, to go to Scratch Hill and get the boy who
had been temporarily placed in Yancy's custody at the time of General
Quintard's death.

“Stop just there!” cried the magistrate, leveling a pudgy finger at
Blount. “This here co't is already cognizant of certain facts bearing on
that p'int. The boy was left with Bob Yancy mainly because nobody else
would take him. Them's the facts. Now go on!” he finished sternly.

“I only know what Bladen told me,” said Blount sullenly.

“Well, I reckon Mr. Bladen ought to feel obliged to tell the truth,”
 said the squire.

“He done give me the order from the judge of the co't--I was to show it
to Bob Yancy--”

“Got that order?” demanded the squire sharply. With a smile, damaged,
but clearly a smile, Blount produced the order. “Hmm--app'inted guardeen
of the boy--” the squire was presently heard to murmur. The crowded room
was very still now, and more than one pair of eyes were turned pityingly
in Yancy's direction. When the long arm of the law reached out from
Fayetteville, where there was a real judge and a real sheriff, it
clothed itself with very special terrors. The boy looked up into Yancy's
face. That tense silence had struck a chill through his heart.

“It's all right,” whispered Yancy reassuringly, smiling down upon him.
And Hannibal, comforted, smiled back, and nestled his head against his
Uncle Bob's side.

“Well, Mr. Blount, what did you do with this here order?” asked the
squire.

“I went with it to Scratch Hill,” said Blount.

“And showed it to Bob Yancy?” asked the squire.

“No, he wa'n't there. But the boy was, and I took him in my buggy and
drove off. I'd got as far as the Ox Road forks when I met Yancy--”

“What happened then?--but a body don't need to ask! Looks like the law
was all you had on your side!” and the squire glanced waggishly about
the room.

“I showed Yancy the order--”

“You lie, Dave Blount; you didn't!” said Yancy. “But I can't say as it
would have made no difference, Squire. He'd have taken his licking just
the same and I'd have had my nevvy out of that buggy!”

“Didn't he say nothing about this here order from the colt, Bob?”

“There wa'n't much conversation, Squire. I invited my nevvy to light
down, and then I snaked Dave Blount out over the wheel.”

“Who struck the first blow?”

“He did. He struck at me with his buggy whip.”

“What you got to say to this, Mr. Blount?” asked the squire.

“I say I showed him the order like I said,” answered Blount doggedly.
Squire Balaam removed his spectacles and leaned back in his chair.

“It's the opinion of this here co't that the whole question of assault
rests on whether Bob Yancy saw the order. Bob Yancy swears he didn't see
it, while Dave Blount swears he showed it to him. If Bob Yancy didn't
know of the existence of the order he was clearly actin' on the idea
that Blount was stealin' his nevvy, and he done what any one would have
done under the circumstances. If, on the other hand, he knowed of this
order from the co't, he was not only guilty of assault, but he
was guilty of resistin' an officer of the co't.” The squire paused
impressively. His audience drew a long breath. The impression prevailed
that the case was going against Yancy, and more than one face was turned
scowlingly on the fat little justice.

“Can a body drap a word here?” It was Uncle Sammy's thin voice that cut
into the silence.

“Certainly, Uncle Sammy. This here co't will always admire to listen to
you.”

“Well, I'd like to say that I consider that Fayetteville co't mighty
officious with its orders. This part of the county won't take nothin'
off Fayetteville! We don't interfere with Fayetteville, and blamed
if we'll let Fayetteville interfere with us!” There was a murmur of
approval. Scratch Hill remembered the rifles in its hands and took
comfort.

“The Fayetteville co't air a higher co't than this, Uncle Sammy,”
 explained the squire indulgently.

“I'm aweer of that,” snapped the patriarch. “I've seen hit's steeple.”

“Air you finished, Uncle Sammy?” asked the squire deferentially.

“I 'low I am. But I 'low that if this here case is goin' agin Bob Yancy
I'd recommend him to go home and not listen to no mo' foolishness.”

“Mr. Yancy will oblige this co't by setting still while I finish this
case,” said the squire with dignity. “As I've already p'inted out, the
question of veracity presents itself strongly to the mind of this here
colt. Mr. Yancy has sworn to one thing, Mr. Blount to another. Now
the Yancys air an old family in these parts; Mr. Blount's folks air
strangers, but we don't know nothing agin them--”

“And we don't know nothing in their favor,” Uncle Sammy interjected.

“Dave's grandfather came here from Virginia about fifty years back and
settled near Scratch Hill--”

“We never knowed why he left Virginia or why he came here,” said Uncle
Sammy, and knowing what local feeling was, was sure he had shot a
telling bolt.

“Then, about twenty-five years ago Dave's father pulled up and went to
Fayetteville. Nobody ever knowed why--and I don't remember that he ever
offered any explanation--” continued the squire.

“He didn't--he just left,” said Uncle Sammy.

“Consequently,” pursued the squire, somewhat vindictively, “we ain't had
any time in which to form an opinion of the Blounts; but for myself, I'm
suspicious of folks that keep movin' about and who don't seem able to
get located permanent nowheres, who air here to-day and away tomorrow.
But you can't say that of the Yancys. They air an old family in the
country, and naturally this co't feels obliged to accept a Yancy's
word before the word of a stranger. And in view of the fact that the
defendant did not seek litigation, but was perfectly satisfied to let
matters rest where they was, it is right and just that all costs should
fall on the plaintiff.”




CHAPTER V. THE ENCOUNTER


Betty Malroy had ridden into the squire's yard during the progress of
the trial and when Yancy and Hannibal came from the house she beckoned
the Scratch Hiller to her. She was aware that Mr. Yancy, moving along
the line of least industrial resistance, might be counted of little
worth in any broad scheme of life. Nat Ferris had strongly insisted
on this point, as had Judith, who shared her husband's convictions;
consequently, the rumors of his present difficulty had merely excited
them to adverse criticism. They had been sure the best thing that could
happen the boy would be his removal from Yancy's guardianship, but this
was not at all her conclusion. She considered Mr. Bladen heartless and
his course without justification, and she regarded Yancy's affection for
the boy as in itself constituting a benefit that quite outweighed his
unprogressive example.

“You are not going to lose your nephew, are you, Mr. Yancy?” she asked
eagerly, when Yancy stood at her side.

“No, ma'am.” But his sense of elation was plainly tempered by the
knowledge that for him the future held more than one knotty problem.

“I am very glad! I know Hannibal will be much happier with you than with
any one else,” and she smiled brightly at the boy, whose small sunburned
face was upturned to hers.

“I think that-a-ways myself, Miss Betty, but this trial was only for
my smacking Dave Blount, who was trying to steal my nevvy,” explained
Yancy.

“I hope you smacked him well and hard!” said the girl, whose mood was
warlike.

“I ain't got no cause to complain, thank you,” returned Mr. Yancy
pleasantly.

“I rode out to the Hill to say good-by to Hannibal and to you, but they
said you were here and that the trial was today.”

Captain Murrell, with Crenshaw and the squire, came from the house, and
Murrell's swarthy face lit up at sight of the girl. Yancy, sensible
of the gulf that yawned between himself and what was known as “the
quality,” would have yielded his place, but Betty detained him.

“Are you going away, ma'am?” he asked with concern.

“Yes--to my home in west Tennessee,” and a cloud crossed her smooth
brow.

“That surely is a right big distance for you to travel, ma'am,” said
Yancy, his mind opening to this fresh impression. “I reckon it's rising
a hundred miles or mo',” he concluded, at a venture.

“It's almost a thousand.”

“Think of that! And you are that ca'm!” cried Yancy admiringly, as a
picture of simply stupendous effort offered itself to his mind's eye.
He added: “I am mighty sorry you are going. We-all here shall miss
you--specially Hannibal. He just regularly pines for Sunday as it is.”

“I hope he will miss me a little--I'm afraid I want him to!” She glanced
down at the boy as she spoke, and into her eyes, very clear and very
blue and shaded by long dark lashes, stole a look of wistful tenderness.
She noted how his little hand was clasped in Yancy's, she realized the
perfect trust of his whole attitude toward this big bearded man, and she
was conscious of a sudden feeling of profound respect for the Scratch
Hiller.

“But ain't you ever coming back, Miss Betty?” asked Hannibal rather
fearfully, smitten with the awesome sense of impermanence which dogs our
footsteps.

“Oh, I hope so, dear--I wish to think so. But you see my home is not
here.” She turned to Yancy, “So it is settled that he is to remain with
you?”

“Not exactly, Miss Betty. You see, there's an order from the
Fayetteville co't fo' me to give him up to this man Bladen.”

“But Uncle Bob says--” began Hannibal, who considered his Uncle Bob's
remarks on this point worth quoting.

“Never mind what yo' Uncle Bob said,” interrupted Yancy hastily.

“Oh, Mr. Yancy, you are not going to surrender him--no matter what the
court says!” cried Betty. The expression on Yancy's face was so grim and
determined on the instant with the latent fire that was in him flashing
from his eyes that she added quickly, “You know the law is for you as
well as for Mr. Bladen!”

“I reckon I won't bother the law none,” responded Yancy briefly. “Me and
my nevvy will go back to Scratch Hill and there won't be no trouble
so long as they leave us be. But them Fayetteville folks want to keep
away--” The fierce light slowly died out of his eyes. “It'll be all
right, ma'am, and it's mighty good and kind of you fo' to feel the way
you do. I'm obliged to you.”

But Betty was by no means sure of the outcome Yancy seemed to predict
with such confidence. Unless Bladen abandoned his purpose, which he was
not likely to do, a tragedy was clearly pending for Scratch Hill.
She saw the boy left friendless, she saw Yancy the victim of his own
primitive conception of justice. Therefore she said:

“I wonder you don't leave the Hill, Mr. Yancy. You could so easily go
where Mr. Bladen would never find you. Haven't you thought of this?”

“That are a p'int,” agreed Yancy slowly. “Might I ask what parts you'd
specially recommend?” lifting his grave eyes to hers.

“It would really be the sensible thing to do!” said Betty. “I am sure
you would like West Tennessee--they say you are a great hunter.” Yancy
smiled almost guiltily.

“I like a little spo't now and then yes, ma'am, I do hunt some,” he
admitted.

“Miss Betty, Uncle Bob's the best shot we got! You had ought to see him
shoot!” said Hannibal.

“Mr. Yancy, if you should cross the mountains, remember I live near
Memphis. Belle Plain is the name of the plantation--it's not hard to
find; just don't forget--Belle Plain.”

“I won't forget, and mebby you will see us there one of these days.
Sho', I've seen mighty little of the world--about as far as a dog can
trot it a couple of hours!”

“Just think what it will mean to Hannibal if you become involved further
with Mr. Bladen.” Betty spoke earnestly, bending toward him, and Yancy
understood the meaning that lay back of her words.

“I've thought of that, too,” the Scratch Hiller answered seriously.
Betty glanced toward the squire and Mr. Crenshaw. They were standing
near the bars that gave entrance to the lane. Murrell had left them
and was walking briskly down the road toward Crenshaw's store where his
horse was tied. She bent down and gave Yancy her slim white hand.

“Good-by, Mr. Yancy--lift Hannibal so that I can kiss him!” Yancy swung
the child aloft. “I think you are such a nice little boy, Hannibal--you
mustn't forget me!” And touching her horse lightly with the whip she
rode away at a gallop.

“She sho'ly is a lady!” said Yancy, staring after her. “And we mustn't
forget Memphis or Belle Plain, Nevvy.”

Crenshaw and the squire approached.

“Bob,” said the merchant, “Bladen's going to have the boy--but he made
a mistake in putting this business in the hands of a fool like Dave
Blount. I reckon he knows that now.”

“I reckon his next move will be to send a posse of gun-toters up from
Fayetteville,” said the squire.

“That's just what he'll do,” agreed Crenshaw, and looked disturbed.

“They certainly air an unpeaceable lot--them Fayetteville folks! It's
always seemed to me they had a positive spite agin this end of the
county,” said the squire, and he pocketed his spectacles and refreshed
himself with a chew of tobacco. “Bladen ain't actin' right, Bob. It's a
year and upwards since the old general 'died. He let you go on thinking
the boy was to stay with you and now he takes a notion to have him!”

“No, sir, it ain't right nor reasonable. And what's more, he shan't have
him!” said Yancy, and his tone was final.

“I don't know what kind of a mess you're getting yourself into, Bob,
I declare I don't!” cried Crenshaw, who felt that he was largely
responsible for the whole situation.

“Looks like your neighbors would stand by you,” suggested the squire.

“I don't want them to stand by me. It'll only get them into trouble,
and I ain't going to do that,” rejoined Yancy, and lapsed into momentary
silence. Then he resumed meditatively, “There was old Baldy Ebersole who
shot the sheriff when they tried to arrest him for getting drunk down in
Fayetteville and licking the tavern-keeper--”

“Sho', there wa'n't no harm in Baldy!” said the squire, with heat. “When
that sheriff come along here looking for him, I told him p'inted that
Baldy said he wouldn't be arrested. A more truthful man I never knowed,
and if the damn fool had taken my word he'd be living yet!”

“But you-all know what trouble killing that sheriff made fo' Baldy!”
 said Yancy. “He told me often he regretted it mo' than anything he'd
ever done. He said it was most aggravatin' having to always lug a gun
wherever he went. And what with being suspicious of strangers when he
wa'n't suspicious by nature, he reckoned in time it would just naturally
wear him out.”

“He stood it until he was risin' eighty,” said Crenshaw.

“His, father lived to be ninety, John, and as spry an old gentleman as
a body'd wish to see. I don't uphold no man for committing murder, but
I do consider the sheriff should have waited on Baldy to get mo'
reasonable, like he'd done in time if they'd just let him alone--but
no, sir, he reckoned the law wa'n't no respecter of persons. He was a
fine-appearin' man, that sheriff, and just elected to office. I remember
we had to leave off the tail-gate to my cart to accommodate him. Yes,
sir, they pretty near pestered Baldy into his grave--and seein' that
pore old fellow pottering around year after year always toting a gun was
the patheticest sight I most ever seen, and I made up my mind then if
it ever seemed necessary for me to kill a man, I'd leave the county or
maybe the state,” concluded the squire.

“Don't you reckon it would be some better to leave the state afo' you.
done the killing?” suggested Yancy.

“Well, a man might. I don't know but what he'd be justified in getting
shut of his troubles like that.”

When Betty Malroy rode away from Squire Balaam's Murrell galloped
after her. Presently she heard the beat of his horse's hoofs as he came
pounding along the sandy road and glanced back over her shoulder. With
an exclamation of displeasure she reined in her horse. She had not
wished to ride to the Barony with him, yet she had no desire to treat
him with discourtesy, especially as the Ferrises were disposed to like
him. Murrell quickly gained a place at her side.

“I suppose Ferris is at the Barony?” he said, drawing his horse down to
a walk.

“I believe he is,” said Betty with a curt little air.

“May I ride with you?” he gave her a swift glance. She nodded
indifferently and would have urged her horse into a gallop again, but
he made a gesture of protest. “Don't--or I shall think you are still
running away from me,” he said with a short laugh.

“Were you at the trial?” she asked. “I am glad they didn't get Hannibal
away from Yancy.”

“Oh, Yancy will have his hands full with that later--so will Bladen,” he
added significantly. He studied her out of those deeply sunken eyes of
his in which no shadow of youth lingered, for men such as he reached
their prime early, and it was a swiftly passing splendor. “Ferris tells
me you are going to West Tennessee?” he said at length.

“Yes.”

“I know your half-brother, Tom Ware--I know him very well.” There was
another brief silence.

“So you know Tom?” she presently observed, and frowned slightly. Tom was
her guardian, and her memories of him were not satisfactory. A burly,
unshaven man with a queer streak of meanness through his character.
She had not seen him since she had been sent north to Philadelphia, and
their intercourse had been limited to infrequent letters. His always
smelled of strong, stale tobacco, and the well-remembered whine in the
man's voice ran through his written sentences.

“You've spent much of your time up North?” suggested Murrell.

“Four years. I've been at school, you know. That's where I met Judith.”

“I hope you'll like West Tennessee. It's still a bit raw compared with
what you've been accustomed to in the North. You haven't been back in
all those four years?” Betty shook her head. “Nor seen Tom--nor any one
from out yonder?” For some reason a little tinge of color had crept into
Betty's cheeks. “Will you let me renew our acquaintance at Belle Plain?
I shall be in West Tennessee before the summer is over; probably I shall
leave here within a week,” he said, bending toward her. His glance dwelt
on her face and the pliant lines of her figure, and his sense swam.
Since their first meeting the girl's beauty had haunted and allured
him; with his passionate sense of life he was disposed to these
violent fancies, and he had a masterful way with women just as he had
a masterful way with men. Now, however, he was aware that he was viewed
with entire indifference. His vanity, which was his whole inner self,
was hurt, and from the black depths of his nature his towering egotism
flashed out lawless and perverted impulses. “I must tell you that I am
not of your sort, Miss Malroy--” he continued hurriedly. “My people were
plain folk out of the mountains. For what I am I have no one to thank
but myself. You must be aware of the prejudices of the planter class,
for it is your class. Perhaps I haven't been quite frank at the
Barony--I felt it was asking too much when you were there. That was a
door I didn't want closed to me!”

“I imagine you will be welcome at Belle Plain. You are Tom's friend.”
 Murrell bit his lip, and then laughed as his mind conjured up a picture
of the cherished Tom. Suddenly he reached out and rested his hand on
hers. He lived in the shadow of chance not always kind, his pleasures
were intoxicating drafts snatched in the midst of dangers, and here was
youth, sweet and perfect, that only needed awakening.

“Betty--if I might think--” he began, but his tongue stumbled. His
love-making was usually of a savage sort, but some quality in the girl
held him in check. The words he had spoken many times before forsook
him. Betty drew away from him, an angry color on her cheeks and an angry
light in her eyes. “Forgive me, Betty!” muttered Murrell, but his heart
beat against his ribs, and passion sent its surges through him. “Don't
you know what I'm trying to tell you?” he whispered. Betty gathered up
her reins. “Not yet--” he cried, and again he rested a heavy hand on
hers. “Don't you know what's kept me here? It was to be near you--only
that--I've been waiting for this chance to speak. It was long in coming,
but it's here now--and it's mine!” he exulted. His eyes burned with a
luminous fire, he urged his horse nearer and they came to a halt. “Look
here--I'll follow you North--I swear I love you--say I may!”

“Let me go--let me go!” cried Betty indignantly.

“No--not yet!” he urged his horse still nearer and gathered her close.
“You've got to hear me. I've loved you since the first moment I rested
my eyes on you--and, by God, you shall love me in return!” He felt her
struggle to free herself from his grasp with a sense of savage triumph.
It was the brute force within him that conquered with women just as it
conquered with men.

Bruce Carrington, on his way back to Fayetteville from the Forks, came
about a turn in the road. Betty saw a tall, handsome fellow in the first
flush of manhood; Carrington, an angry girl, very beautiful and very
indignant, struggling in a man's grasp.

At sight of the new-comer, Murrell, with an oath, released Betty, who,
striking her horse with the whip galloped down the road toward the
Barony. As she fled past Carrington she bent low in her saddle.

“Don't let him follow me!” she gasped, and Carrington, striding forward,
caught Murrell's horse by the bit.

“Not so fast, you!” he said coolly. The two men glared at each other for
a brief instant.

“Take your hand off my horse!” exclaimed Murrell hoarsely, his mouth hot
and dry with a sense of defeat.

“Can't you see she'd rather be alone?” said Carrington.

“Let go!” roared Murrell, and a murderous light shot from his eyes.

“I don't know but I should pull you out of that saddle and twist your
neck!” said Carrington hotly. Murrell's face underwent a swift change.

“You're a bold fellow to force your way into a lover's quarrel,” he said
quietly. Carrington's arm dropped at his side. Perhaps, after all,
it was that. Murrell thrust his hand into his pocket. “I always give
something to the boy who holds my horse,” he said, and tossed a coin in
Carrington's direction. “There--take that for your pains!” he added. He
pulled his horse about and rode back toward the cross-roads at an easy
canter.

Carrington, with an angry flush on his sunburnt cheeks, stood staring
down at the coin that glinted in the dusty road, but he was seeing the
face of the girl, indignant, beautiful--then he glanced after Murrell.

“I reckon I ought to have twisted his neck,” he said with a deep breath.




CHAPTER VI. BETTY SETS OUT FOR TENNESSEE


Bruce Carrington came of a westward-looking race. From the low coast
where they had first settled, those of his name had followed the rivers
to their headwaters. The headwaters had sent them forth toward the
foot-hills, where they made their, clearings and built their cabins in
the shadow of the blue wall that for a time marked the furthest goal of
their desires. But only for a time. Crossing the mountains they found
the headwaters once more, and following the streams out of the hills saw
the roaring torrents become great placid rivers.

Carrington's father had put the mountains at his back thirty years
before. The Watauga settlements had furnished him a wife, and some
four years later Bruce was born on the banks of the Ohio. The senior
Carrington had appeared on horseback as a wooer, but had walked on foot
as a married man, each shift of residence he made having represented
a descent to a lower social level. On the death of his wife he had
embarked in the river trade with all that enthusiasm and hope he had
brought to half-a-dozen other occupations, for he was a gentleman of
prodigious energy.

Bruce's first memories had to do with long nights when he perched beside
his father on the cabin roof of their keel-boat and watched the stars,
or the blurred line of the shore where it lay against the sky, or the
lights on other barges and rafts drifting as they were drifting, with
their wheat and corn and whisky to that common market at the river's
mouth.

Sometimes they dragged their boat back up-stream, painfully,
laboriously; three or four months of unremitting toil sufficed for this,
when the crew sweated at the towing ropes from dawn until dark, that
the rich planters in Kentucky and Tennessee might have tea and wine for
their tables, and silks and laces for their womenfolk. More often
they abandoned their boat and tramped north, armed and watchful, since
cutthroats and robbers haunted the roads, and river-men, if they had not
drunk away their last dollar in New Orleans, were worth spoiling. Or,
if it offered, they took passage on some fast sailing clipper bound for
Baltimore or Philadelphia, and crossed the mountains to the Ohio and
were within a week or two of home.

Bruce Carrington had seen the day of barge and raft reach its zenith,
had heard the first steam packet's shrieking whistle which sounded the
death-knell of the ancient order, though the shifting of the trade was
a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pass over to the new at
once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and
in the Homeric carousals of some ten thousand of the half-horse,
half-alligator breed that nightly gathered in New Orleans. Broad-horns
and mud-sills they were called in derision. A strange race of aquatic
pioneers, jeans and leather clad, the rifle and the setting-pole equally
theirs, they came out of every stream down which a scow could be thrust
at flood-time; from tiny settlements far back among the hills; from
those bustling sinks of iniquity, the river towns. But now, surely, yet
almost imperceptibly, their commerce was slipping from them. At all the
landings they were being elbowed by the newcomers--men who wore brass
buttons and gold braid, and shiny leather shoes instead of moccasins;
men with white hands and gold rings on their fingers and diamonds in
their shirts--men whose hair and clothing kept the rancid smell of oil
and smoke and machinery.

After the reading of the warrant that morning, Charley Balaam had shown
Carrington the road to the Forks, assuring him when they separated that
with a little care and decent use of his eyes it would be possible to
fetch up there and not pass plumb through the settlement without knowing
where he was. But Carrington had found the Forks without difficulty. He
had seen the old mill his grandfather had built almost a hundred years
before, and in the churchyard he had found the graves and read the
inscriptions that recorded the virtues of certain dead and gone
Carringtons. It had all seemed a very respectable link with the past.

He was on his way to Fayetteville, where he intended to spend the night,
and perhaps a day or two in looking around, when the meeting with
Betty and Murrell occurred. As Murrell disappeared in the direction of
Balaam's, Carrington took a spiteful kick at the unoffending coin, and
strode off down the Fayetteville pike. But the girl's face remained with
him. It was a face he would like to see again. He wondered who she was,
and if she lived in the big house on the other road, the house beyond
the red gate which Charley Balaam had told him was called the Barony.

He was still thinking of the girl when he ate his supper that night
at Cleggett's Tavern. Later, in the bar, he engaged his host in idle
gossip. Mr. Cleggett knew all about the Barony and its owner, Nat
Ferris. Ferris was a youngish man, just married. Carrington experienced
a quick sinking of the heart. A fleeting sense of humor succeeded--had
he interfered between man and wife? But surely if this had been the case
the girl would not have spoken as she had.

He wound Mr. Cleggett up with sundry pegs of strong New England rum. He
had met a gentleman and lady on the road that day; he wondered, as he
toyed with his glass, if it could have been the Ferrises? Mounted? Yes,
mounted. Then it was Ferris and his wife--or it might have been Captain
Murrell and Miss Malroy the captain was a strapping, black-haired chap
who rode a big bay horse. Miss Malroy did not live in that part of
the country; she was a friend of Mrs. Ferris', belonged in Kentucky or
Tennessee, or somewhere out yonder--at any rate she was bringing her
visit to an end, for Ferris had instructed him to reserve a place for
her in the north-bound stage on the morrow.

Carrington suddenly remembered that he had some thought of starting
north in the morning himself, but he was still undecided. How about it
if he deferred his decision until the stage was leaving? Mr. Cleggett
consulted his bookings and was of the opinion that his chances would
not be good; and Carrington hastily paid down his money. Later in the
privacy of his own room he remarked meditatively, viewing his reflection
in the mirror that hung above the chimneypiece, “I reckon you're plain
crazy!” and seemed to free himself from all further responsibility for
his own acts whatever they might be.

The stage left at six, and as Carrington climbed to his seat the next
morning Mr. Cleggett was advising the driver to look sharp when he
came to the Barony road, as he was to pick up a party there. It was
Carrington who looked sharp, and almost at the spot where he had seen
Betty Malroy the day before he saw her again, with Ferris and Judith and
a pile of luggage bestowed by the wayside. Betty did not observe him as
the coach stopped, for she was intent on her farewells with her friends.
There were hasty words of advice from Ferris, prolonged good-byes to
Judith, tears--kisses--while a place was being made for her many boxes
and trunks. Carrington viewed the luggage with awe, and listened without
shame. He gathered that she was going north to Washington; that her
final destination was some point either on the Ohio or Mississippi,
and that her name was Betty. Then the door slammed and the stage was in
motion again.

Carrington felt sensibly enriched by the meager facts now in his
possession. He was especially interested in her name. Be liked the
sound of it. It suited her. He even tried it under his breath softly.
Betty--Betty Malroy--next he fell to wondering if those few hurried
words she had addressed to him could possibly be construed as forming a
basis for a further acquaintance. Or wasn't it far more likely she would
prefer to forget the episode of the previous day, which had clearly been
anything but agreeable?

All through the morning they swung forward in the heat and dust and
glare, with now and then a brief pause when they changed horses, and at
midday rattled into the shaded main street of a sleepy village and drew
up before the tavern where dinner was waiting them--a fact that was
announced by a bare-legged colored boy armed with a club, who beat upon
a suspended wagon tire.

Betty saw Carrington when she took her seat, and gave a scarcely
perceptible start of surprise. Then her face was flooded with a rich
color. This was the man who saw her with Captain Murrell yesterday I
What must he think of her! There was a brief moment of irresolution and
then she bowed coldly.

“You just barely managed it. I reckon nobody could misunderstand that.
By no means cordial--but of course not!” Carrington reflected. His own
handsome face had been expressionless when he returned her bow, and
Betty could not have guessed how consoled and comforted he was by it.
With great fortitude and self-denial he forbore to look in her direction
again, but he lingered at the table until the last moment that he might
watch her when she returned to the coach. Mr. Carrington entertained
ideals where women were concerned, and even though he had been the
one to profit by it he would not have had Betty depart in the minutest
particular from those stringent rules he laid down for her sex.
Consequently that distant air she bore toward him filled him with
satisfaction. It was quite enough for the present--for the present--that
three times each day his perseverance and determination were rewarded by
that curt little acknowledgment of her indebtedness to him.

It was four days to Richmond. Four days of hot, dusty travel, four
nights of uncomfortable cross-road stations, where Betty suffered
sleepless nights and the unaccustomed pangs of early rising. She
occasionally found herself wondering who Carrington was. She approved of
the manner in which he conducted himself. She liked a man who could be
unobtrusive. Traveling like that day after day it would have been so
easy for him to be officious. But he never addressed her and refused
to see any opportunity to assist her in entering or quitting the stage,
leaving that to some one else. Presently she was sorry she had bowed
to him that first day--so self-contained and unpresuming a person as he
would evidently have been quite satisfied to overlook the omission.
Then she began to be haunted by doubts. Perhaps, after all, he had not
recognized her as the girl he had met in the road! This gave her a very
queer feeling indeed--for what must he think of her? And the next time
she bowed to this perfect stranger she threw a chilling austerity into
the salutation quite at variance with her appearance, for the windy
drive had tangled her hair and blown it in curling wisps about her face.
This served to trouble Carrington excessively, and furnished him with
food for reflection through all his waking moments for the succeeding
eight and forty hours.

The next morning he found himself seated opposite her at breakfast. He
received another curt little nod, cool and distant, as he took his seat,
but he felt strongly that a mere bowing acquaintance would no longer
suffice; so he passed her a number of things she didn't want, and
presently ventured the opinion that she must find traveling as they
were, day after day, very fatiguing. Surprised at the sound of his
voice, before she knew what she was doing, Betty said, “Not at all,”
 closed her red lips, and was immediately dumb.

Carrington at once relapsed into silence and ventured no further opinion
on any topic. Betty was left wondering whether she had been rude, and
when they met again asked if the stage would reach Washington at the
advertised hour. She had been consulting the copy of Badger's and
Porter's Register which Ferris had thrust into her satchel the morning
she left the Barony, and which, among a multiplicity of detail as to
hotels and taverns, gave the runnings of all the regular stage lines,
packets, canal-boats and steamers, by which one could travel over
the length and breadth of the land. “You stop in Washington?” said
Carrington.

Betty shook her head. “No, I am going on to Wheeling.”

“You're fortunate in being so nearly home,” he observed. “I am going on
to Memphis.” He felt it was time she knew this, or else she might think
his movements were dictated by her own.

Betty exclaimed: “Why, I am going to Memphis, too!”

“Are you? By canal to Cumberland, and then by stage over the National
Road to Wheeling?”

Betty nodded. “It makes one wish they'd finish their railroads, doesn't
it? Do you suppose they'll ever get as far west as Memphis?” she said.

“They say it's going to be bad for the river trade when they're built
on something besides paper,” answered Carrington. “And I happen to be a
flatboat-man, Miss Malroy.”

Betty gave him a glance of surprise.

“Why, how did you learn my name?” she asked.

“Oh, I heard your friends speak it,” he answered glibly. But Betty's
smooth brow was puckered thoughtfully. She wondered if he had--and if he
hadn't. It was very odd certainly that he should know it.

“So the railroads are going to hurt the steamboats?” she presently said.

“No, I didn't say that. I was thinking of the flatboats that have
already been hurt by the steamers,” he replied. Now to the western mind
the river-men typified all that was reckless and wild. It was their
carousals that gave an evil repute to such towns as Natchez. But this
particular river-man looked harmless. “Carrington is my name, Miss
Malroy,” he added.

No more was said just then, for Betty became reserved and he did not
attempt to resume the conversation. A day later they rumbled into
Washington, and as Betty descended from the coach, Carrington stepped to
her side.

“I suppose you'll stop here, Miss Malroy?” he said, indicating the
tavern before which the stage had come to a stand. “Yes,” said Betty
briefly.

“If I can be of any service to you--” he began, with just a touch of
awkwardness in his manner.

“No, I thank you, Mr. Carrington,” said Betty quickly.

“Good night... good-by,” he turned away, and Betty saw his tall form
disappear in the twilight.



CHAPTER VII. THE FIGHT AT SLOSSON'S TAVERN


Murrell had ridden out of the hills some hours back. He now faced the
flashing splendors of a June sunset, but along the eastern horizon
the mountains rose against a somber sky. Night was creeping into their
fastnesses. Already there was twilight in those cool valleys lying
within the shadow of mighty hills. A month and more had elapsed since
Bob Yancy's trial. Just two days later man and boy disappeared from
Scratch Hill. This had served to rouse Murrell to the need of immediate
action, but he found, where Yancy was concerned, Scratch Hill could keep
a secret, while Crenshaw's mouth was closed on any word that might throw
light on the plans of his friend.

“It's plain to my mind, Captain, that Bladen will never get the boy.
I reckon Bob's gone into hiding with him,” said the merchant, with
spacious candor.

The fugitives had not gone into hiding, however; they had traversed
the state from east to west, and Murrell was soon on their trail and
pressing forward in pursuit. Reaching the mountains, he heard of them
first as ten days ahead of him and bound for west Tennessee, the ten
days dwindled to a week, the week became five days, the five days three;
and now as he emerged from the last range of hills he caught sight of
them. They were half a mile distant perhaps, but he was certain that the
man and boy he saw pass about a turn in the road were the man and boy he
had been following for a month.

He was not mistaken. The man was Bob Yancy and the boy was Hannibal.
Yancy had acted with extraordinary decision. He had sold his few acres
at Scratch Hill for a lump sum to Crenshaw--it was to the latter's
credit that the transaction was one in which he could feel no real pride
as a man of business--and just a day later Yancy and the boy had
quitted Scratch Hill in the gray dawn, and turned their faces westward.
Tennessee had become their objective point, since here was a region to
which they could fix a name, while the rest of the world was strange to
them. As they passed the turn in the road where Murrell had caught
his first sight of them, Yancy glanced back at the blue wall of the
mountains where it lay along the horizon.

“Well, Nevvy,” he said, “we've put a heap of distance between us and old
Scratch Hill; all I can say is, if there's as much the other side of
the Hill as there is this side, the world's a monstrous big place fo' to
ramble about in.” He carried his rifle and a heavy pack. Hannibal had a
much smaller pack and his old sporting rifle, burdens of which his Uncle
Bob relieved him at brief intervals.

For the past ten days their journey had been conducted in a leisurely
fashion. As Yancy said, they were seeing the world, and it was well to
take a good look at it while they had a chance. He was no longer fearful
of pursuit and his temperament asserted itself--the minimum of activity
sufficed. Usually they camped just where the night overtook them; now
and then they varied this by lodging at some tavern, for since there
was money in his pocket, Yancy was disposed to spend it. He could not
conceive that it had any other possible use.

Suddenly out of the silence came the regular beat of hoofs. These grew
nearer and nearer, and at last when they were quite close, Yancy faced
about. He instantly recognized Murrell and dropped his rifle into the
crook of his arm. The act was instinctive, since there was no reason to
believe that the captain had the least interest in the boy. Smilingly
Murrell reined in his horse.

“Why--Bob Yancy!” he cried, in apparent astonishment.

“Yes, sir--Bob Yancy. Does it happen you are looking fo' him, Captain?”
 inquired Yancy.

“No--no, Bob. I'm on my way West. Shake hands.” His manner was frank and
winning, and Yancy met it with an equal frankness.

“Well, sir, me and my nevvy are glad to meet some one we've knowed
afore. The world are a lonesome place once you get shut of yo'r own
dooryard,” he said. Murrell slipped from his saddle and fell into step
at Yancy's side as they moved forward.

“They were mightily stirred up at the Cross Roads when I left, wondering
what had come of you,” he observed.

“When did you quit there?” asked Yancy.

“About a fortnight ago,” said Murrell. “Every one approves of your
action in this matter, Yancy,” he went on.

“That's kind of them,” responded Yancy, a little dryly. There was no
reason for it, but he was becoming distrustful of Murrell, and uneasy.

“Bladen's hurt himself by the stand he's taken it this matter,” Murrell
added.

They went forward in silence, Yancy brooding and suspicious. For the
last mile or so their way had led through an unbroken forest, but
a sudden turn in the road brought them to the edge of an extensive
clearing. Close to the road were several buildings, but not a tree had
been spared to shelter them and they stood forth starkly, the completing
touch to a civilization that was still in its youth, unkempt, rather
savage, and ruthlessly utilitarian. A sign, the work of inexpert hands,
announced the somewhat dingy structure of hewn logs that stood nearest
the roadside a tavern. There was a horse rack in front of it and a
trampled space. It was flanked by its several sheds and barns on one
hand and a woodpile on the other. Beyond the woodpile a rail fence
inclosed a corn-field, and beyond the barns and sheds a similar fence
defined the bounds of a stumpy pasture-lot.

From the door of the tavern the figure of a man emerged. Pausing by the
horse rack he surveyed the two men and boy, if not with indifference, at
least with apathy. Just above his head swung the sign with its legend,
“Slosson--Entertainment”; but if he were Slosson, one could take the last
half of the sign either as a poetic rhapsody on the part of the painter,
or the yielding to some meaningless convention, for in his person,
Mr. Slosson suggested none of those qualities of brain or heart that
trenched upon the lighter amenities of life. He was black-haired and
bull-necked, and there was about him a certain shagginess which a recent
toilet performed at the horse trough had not served to mitigate.

“Howdy?” he drawled.

“Howdy?” responded Mr. Yancy.

“Shall you stop here?” asked Murrell, sinking his voice. Yancy nodded.
“Can you put us up?” inquired Murrell, turning to the tavern-keeper.

“I reckon that's what I'm here for,” said Slosson. Murrell glanced about
the empty yard. “Slack,” observed Slosson languidly. “Yes, sir, slack's
the only name for it.” It was understood he referred to the state of
trade. He looked from one to the other of the two men. As his eyes
rested on Murrell, that gentleman raised the first three fingers of
his right hand. The gesture was ever so little, yet it seemed to have a
tonic effect on Mr. Slosson. What might have developed into a smile had
he not immediately suppressed it, twisted his bearded lips as he made
an answering movement. “Eph, come here, you!” Slosson raised his voice.
This call brought a half-grown black boy from about a corner of the
tavern, to whom Murrell relinquished his horse.

“Let's liquor,” said the captain over his shoulder, moving off in the
direction of the bar.

“Come on, Nevvy!” said Yancy following, and they all entered the tavern.

“Well, here's to the best of good luck!” said Murrell, as he raised his
glass to his lips.

“Same here,” responded Yancy. Murrell pulled out a roll of bills, one of
which he tossed on the bar. Then after a moment's hesitation he detached
a second bill from the roll and turned to Hannibal.

“Here, youngster--a present for you;” he said good-naturedly. Hannibal,
embarrassed by the unexpected gift, edged to his Uncle Bob's side.

“Ain't you-all got nothing to say to the gentleman?” asked Yancy.

“Thank you, sir,” said the boy.

“That sounds a heap better. Let's see--why, if it ain't ten
dollars--think of that!” said Yancy, in surprise.

“Let's have another drink,” suggested Murrell.

Presently Hannibal stole out into the yard. He still held the bill in
his hand, for he did not quite know how to dispose of his great wealth.
After debating this matter for a moment he knotted it carefully in one
corner of his handkerchief. But this did not quite suit him, for he
untied the knot and looked at the bill again, turning it over and over
in his hand. Then he folded it carefully into the smallest possible
compass and once more tied a corner of his handkerchief about it, this
time with two knots instead of one; these he afterward tested with his
teeth.

“I 'low she won't come undone now!” he said, with satisfaction. He
stowed the handkerchief away in his trousers pocket, ramming it very
tight with his fist. He was much relieved when this was done, for
wearing a care-free air he sauntered across the yard and established
himself on the top rail of the corn-field fence.

The colored boy, armed with an ax, appeared at the woodpile and began to
chop in the desultory fashion of his race, pausing every few seconds to
stare in the direction of his white compatriot, who met his glance
with reserve. Whereupon Mr. Slosson's male domestic indulged in certain
strange antics that were not rightly any part of woodchopping. This yet
further repelled Hannibal.

“The disgustin' chattel!” he muttered under his breath, quoting his
Uncle Bob, with whom, in theory at least, race feeling was strong. Yancy
appeared at the door of the bar and called to him, and as the boy slid
from the fence and ran toward him across the yard, the Scratch Hiller
sauntered forth to meet him.

“I reckon it's all right, Nevvy,” he said, “but we don't know nothing
about this here Captain Murrell--as he calls himself--though he seems a
right clever sort of gentleman; but we won't mention Belle Plain.” With
this caution he led the way into the tavern and back through the bar to
a low-ceilinged room where Murrell and Slosson were already at table. It
was intolerably hot, and there lingered in the heavy atmosphere of the
place stale and unappetizing odors. Only Murrell attempted conversation
and he was not encouraged; and presently silence fell on the room
except for the rattle of dishes and the buzzing of flies. When they had
finished, the stale odors and the heat drove them quickly into the bar
again, where for a little time Hannibal sat on Yancy's knee, by the
door. Presently he slipped down and stole out into the yard.

The June night was pulsing with life. Above him bats darted in short
circling flights. In the corn-field and pasture-lot the fireflies lifted
from their day-long sleep, showing pale points of light in the half
darkness, while from some distant pond or stagnant watercourse came the
booming of frogs, presently to swell into a resonant chorus. These were
the summer night sounds he had known as far back as his memory went.

In the tavern the three men were drinking--Murrell with the idea that
the more Yancy came under the influence of Slosson's corn whisky the
easier his speculation would be managed. Mr. Yancy on his part believed
that if Murrell went to bed reasonably drunk he would sleep late and
give him the opportunity he coveted, to quit the tavern unobserved at
break of day. Gradually the ice of silence which had held them mute at
supper, thawed. At first it was the broken lazy speech of men who were
disposed to quiet, then the talk became brisk--a steady stream of rather
dreary gossip of horses and lands and negroes, of speculations past and
gone in these great staples.

Hannibal crossed to the corn-field. There, in the friendly gloom, he
examined his handkerchief and felt of the rolled-up bill. Then he made
count of certain silver and copper coins which he had in his other
pocket. Satisfied that he had sustained no loss, he again climbed to the
top rail of the fence where he seated himself with an elbow resting on
one knee and his chin in the palm of his hand.

“I got ten dollars and seventy cents--yes, sir--and the clostest
shooting rifle I ever tossed to my shoulder.” He seemed but small to
have accomplished such a feat. He meditated for a little space. “I
reckon when we strike the settlements again I should like to buy my
Uncle Bob a present.” With knitted brows he considered what this should
be, canvassing Yancy's needs. He had about decided on a ring such as
Captain Murrell was wearing, when he heard the shuffling of bare feet
over the ground and a voice spoke out of the darkness.

“When yo' get to feelin' like sleep, young boss, Mas'r Slosson he says I
show yo' to yo' chamber.” It was Slosson's boy Eph.

“Did you-all happen to notice what they're doing in the tavern now?”
 asked Hannibal.

“I low they're makin' a regular hog-killin' of it,” said Eph smartly.
Hannibal descended from the fence.

“Yes, you can show me my chamber,” he said, and his tone was severe.
What a white man did was not a matter for a black man to criticize. They
went toward the open door of the tavern. Mr. Slosson's corn whisky had
already wrought a marked transformation in the case of Slosson himself.
His usually terse speech was becoming diffuse and irrelevant, while
vacant laughter issued from his lips. Yancy was apparently unaffected
by the good cheer of which he had partaken, but Murrell's dark face
was flushed. The Scratch Hiller's ability to carry his liquor exceeded
anything he had anticipated.

“You-all run along to bed, Nevvy,” said Yancy, as Hannibal entered the
room. “I'll mighty soon follow you.”

Eph secured a tin candle-stick with a half-burnt candle in it and led
the way into the passage back of the bar.

“Mas'r Slosson's jus' mo' than layin' back!” he said, as he closed the
door after them.

“I reckon you-all will lay back, too, when you get growed up,” retorted
Hannibal.

“No, sir, I won't. White folks won't let a nigger lay back. Onliest time
a nigger sees co'n whisky's when he's totin' it fo' some one else.”

“I reckon a nigger's fool enough without corn whisky,” said Hannibal.
They mounted a flight of stairs and passed down a narrow hall. This
brought them to the back of the building, and Eph pushed open the door
on his right.

“This heah's yo' chamber,” he said, and preceding his companion into the
room, placed the candle on a chair.

“Well--I low I clean forgot something!” cried Hannibal.

“If it's yo' bundle and yo' gun, I done fotched 'em up heah and laid 'em
on yo' bed,” said Eph, preparing' to withdraw.

“I certainly am obliged to you,” said Hannibal, and with a good night,
Eph retired, closing the door after him, and the boy heard the patter of
his bare feet as he scuttled down the hall.

The moon was rising and Hannibal went to the open window and glanced
out. His room overlooked the back yard of the inn and a neglected truck
patch. Starting from a point beyond the truck patch and leading straight
away to the woodland beyond was a fenced lane, with the corn-field and
the pasture-lot on either hand. Immediately below his window was the
steeply slanting roof of a shed. For a moment he considered the night,
not unaffected by its beauty, then, turning from the window, he moved
his bundle and rifle to the foot of the bed, where they would be out of
his way, kicked off his trousers, blew out the candle and lay down. The
gossip of the men in the bar ran like a whisper through the house, and
with it came frequent bursts of noisy laughter. Listening for these
sounds the boy dozed off.

Yancy had become more and more convinced as the evening passed that
Murrell was bent on getting him drunk, and suspicion mounted darkly to
his brain. He felt certain that he was Bladen's agent. Now, Mr. Yancy
took an innocent pride in his ability to “cool off liquor.” Perhaps it
was some heritage from a well living ancestry that had hardened its head
with Port and Madeira in the days when the Yancys owned their acres and
their slaves. Be that as it may, he was equal to the task he had set
himself. He saw with satisfaction the flush mount to Murrell's swarthy
cheeks, and felt that the limit of his capacity was being reached.
Mr. Slosson had become a sort of Greek chorus. He anticipated all the
possible phases of drunkenness that awaited his companions. He went from
silence to noisy mirth, when his unmeaning laughter rang through the
house; he told long witless stories as he leaned against the bar; he
became melancholy and described the loss of his wife five years before.
From melancholy he passed to sullenness and seemed ready to fasten a
quarrel on Yancy, but the latter deftly evaded any such issue.

“What you-all want is another drink,” he said affably. “With all you
been through you need a tonic, so shove along that extract of cornshucks
and molasses!”

“I'm a rip-staver,” said Slosson thickly. “But I've knowed enough sorrow
to kill a horse.”

“You have that look. Captain, will you join us?” asked Yancy. Murrell
shook his head, but he made a significant gesture to Slosson as Yancy
drained his glass.

“Have a drink with me!” cried Slosson, giving way to drunken laughter.

“Don't you reckon you'll spite yo' appetite fo' breakfast, neighbor?”
 suggested Yancy.

“Do you mean you won't drink with me?” roared Slosson.

“The captain's dropped out and I 'low it's about time fo' these here
festivities to come to an end. I'm thinking some of going to bed
myself,” said Yancy. He kept his eyes fixed on Murrell. He realized
that if the latter could prevent it he was not to leave the bar. Murrell
stood between him and the door; more than this, he stood between him and
his rifle, which leaned against the wall in the far corner of the room.
Slosson roared out a protest to his words. “That's all right, neighbor,”
 retorted Yancy over his shoulder, “but I'm going to bed.” He never
shifted his glance from Murrell's face. Scowling now, the captain's eyes
blazed back their challenge as he thrust his right hand under his coat.
“Fair play--I don't know who you are, but I know what you want!” said
Yancy, the light in his frank gray eyes deepening. Murrell laughed and
took a forward step. At the same moment Slosson snatched up a heavy club
from back of the bar and dealt Yancy a murderous blow. A single startled
cry escaped the Scratch Hitler; he struck out wildly as he lurched
toward Murrell, who drew his knife and drove it into his shoulder.

Groping wildly, Yancy reached his rifle and faced about. His scalp
lay open where Slosson's treacherous blow had fallen and his face was
covered with blood; even as his fingers stiffened they found the hammer,
but Murrell, springing forward, kicked the gun out of his hands. Dashing
the blood from his eyes, Yancy threw himself on Murrell. Then, as
they staggered to and fro, Yancy dully bent on strangling his enemy,
Slosson--whom the sight of blood had wonderfully sobered--rushed out
from the bar and let loose a perfect torrent of blows with his club.
Murrell felt the fingers that gripped him grow weak, and Yancy dropped
heavily to the floor.


How long the boy slept he never knew, but he awoke with a start and a
confused sense of things. He seemed to have heard a cry for help. But
the tavern was very silent now. The distant murmur of voices and the
shouts of laughter had ceased. He lifted himself up on his elbow
and glanced from the window. The heavens were pale and gray. It was
evidently very late, probably long after midnight but where was his
Uncle Bob?

He sank back on his pillow intent and listening. What he had heard, what
he still expected to hear, he could not have told, but he was sure he
had been roused by a cry of some sort. A chilling terror that gripped
him fast and would not let him go, mounted to his brain. Once he thought
he heard cautious steps beyond his door. He could not be certain, yet
he imagined the bull-necked landlord standing with his ear to some crack
seeking to determine whether or not he slept. His thin little body grew
rigid and a cold sweat started from him. He momentarily expected the
latch to be lifted, then in the heavy silence he caught the sound of
some stealthy movement beyond the lath and plaster partition, and an
instant later an audible footfall. He heard the boards creak and give,
as the person who had been standing before his door passed down the
hall, down the stairs, and to the floor below.

Limp and shivering, he drew his scanty covering tight about him. In the
silence that succeeded, he once more became aware of the tireless
chorus of the frogs, the hooting of the owls, and the melancholy and
oft-repeated call of the whippoorwill. But where was his Uncle Bob? Why
didn't he come to bed? And whose was that cry for help he had heard?
Memories of idle tales of men foully dealt with in these lonely taverns,
of murderous landlords, and mysterious guests who were in league with
them, flashed through his mind.

Murrell had followed them for this--and had killed his Uncle Bob, and
he would be sent back to Bladen! The law had said that Bladen could
have him and that his Uncle Bob must give him up. The law put men in
prison--it hanged them sometimes--his Uncle Bob had told him all about
it--by the neck with ropes until they were dead! Maybe they wouldn't
send him back; maybe they would do with him what they had already done
with his Uncle Bob; he wanted the open air, the earth under his feet,
and the sky over his head. The four walls stifled him. He was not afraid
of the night, he could run and hide in it--there were the woods and
fields where he would be safe.

He slid from the bed, and for a long moment stood cold and shaking, his
every sense on the alert. With infinite caution he got into his trousers
and again paused to listen, since he feared his least movement might
betray him. Reassured, he picked up his battered hat from the floor and
inch by inch crept across the squeaking boards to the window. When the
window was reached he paused once more to listen, but the quiet that was
everywhere throughout the house gave him confidence. He straddled the
low sill, and putting out his hand gripped the stock of his rifle and
drew that ancient weapon toward him. Next he secured his pack, and was
ready for flight.

Encumbered by his belongings, but with no mind to sacrifice them, he
stepped out upon the shed and made his way down the slant of the roof
to the eaves. He tossed his bundle to the ground and going down on his
knees lowered his rifle, letting the muzzle fall lightly against the
side of the shed as it left his hand, then he lay flat on his stomach
and, feet first, wriggled out into space. When he could no longer
preserve his balance, he gave himself a shove away from the eaves and
dropped clear of the building.

As he recovered himself he was sure he heard a door open and close, and
threw himself prone on the ground, where the black shadow cast by the
tavern hid him. At the same moment two dark figures came from about a
corner of the building. He could just distinguish that they carried
some heavy burden between them and that they staggered as they moved.
He heard Slosson curse drunkenly, and a whispered word from Murrell. The
two men slowly crossed the truck patch, and the boy's glance followed
them, his eyes starting from his head. Just at the mouth of the lane
they paused and put down their burden; a few words spoken in a whisper
passed between them and they began to drag some dark thing down the
lane, their backs bent, their heads bowed and the thing they dragged
bumping over the uneven ground.

They passed out of sight, and breathless and palsied, Hannibal crept
about a corner of the tavern. He must be sure! The door of the bar stood
open; the lamps were still burning, and the upturned chairs and a broken
table told of the struggle that had taken place there. The boy rested
his hand on the top step as he stared fearfully into the room. His palm
came away with a great crimson splotch. But he was not satisfied yet.
He must be sure--sure! He passed around the building as the men had
done and crossed the truck patch to the mouth of the lane. Here he slid
through the fence into the corn-field, and, well sheltered, worked his
way down the rows. Presently he heard a distant sound--a splash--surely
it was a splash--.

A little later the men came up the lane, to disappear in the direction
of the tavern. Hannibal peered after them. His very terrors, while they
wrenched and tortured him, gave him a desperate kind of courage. As
the gloom hid the two men, he started forward again; he must know the
meaning of that sound--that splash, if it was a splash. He reached the
end of the cornfield, climbed the fence, and entered a deadening of
slashed and mutilated timber. In the long wet grass he found where the
men had dragged their burden. He reached down and swept his hand to
and fro--once--twice--the third time his little palm came away red and
discolored.

There was the first pale premonition of dawn in the sky, and as he
hurried on the light grew, and the black trunks of trees detached
themselves from the white mist that filled the woods and which the
dawn made visible. There was light enough for him to see that he was
following the trail left by the men; he could distinguish where the dew
had been brushed from the long grass. Advancing still farther, he heard
the clear splash of running water, an audible ripple that mounted into
a silver cadence. Day was breaking now. The lifeless gray along the
eastern horizon had changed to orange. Still following the trail, he
emerged upon the bank of the Elk River, white like the woods with its
ghostly night sweat.

The dull beat of the child's heart quickened as he gazed out on the
swift current that was hurrying on with its dreadful secret. Then
the full comprehension of his loss seemed to overwhelm him and he was
utterly desolate. Sobs shook him, and he dropped on his knees, holding
fast to the stock of his rifle.

“Uncle Bob--Uncle Bob, come back! Can't you come back!” he wailed
miserably. Presently he staggered to his feet. Convulsive sobs still
wrenched his little body. What was he to do? Those men--his Uncle Bob's
murderers--would go to his room; they would find his empty bed and their
search for him would begin! Not for anything would he have gone back
through the corn-field or the lane to the road. He had the courage to
go forward, but not to retrace his steps; and the river, deep and
swift, barred his path. As he glanced about, he saw almost at his feet a
dug-out, made from a single poplar log. It was secured to an overhanging
branch by a length of wild grape-vine. With one last fearful look off
across the deadening in the direction of the tavern, he crept down to
the water's edge and entered the canoe. In a moment, he had it free from
its lashing and the rude craft was bumping along the bank in spite of
his best efforts with the paddle. Then a favoring current caught it and
swept it out toward the center of the stream.

It was much too big and clumsy for him to control without the stream's
help, though he labored doggedly with his paddle. Now he was broadside
to the current, now he was being spun round and round, but always he
was carried farther and farther from the spot where he had embarked. He
passed about a bend; and a hundred yards beyond, about a second bend;
then the stream opened up straight before him a half-mile of smooth
running water. Far down it, at the point where the trees met in the
unbroken line of the forest and the water seemed to vanish mysteriously,
he could distinguish a black moving object; some ark or raft, doubtless.

In the smoother water of the long reach, Hannibal began to make head
against the flood. The farther shore became the nearer, and finally he
drove the bow of his canoe up on a bit of shelving bank, and seizing
his pack and rifle, sprang ashore. Panting and exhausted, he paused just
long enough to push the canoe out into the stream again, and then, with
his rifle and pack in his hands, turned his small tear-stained face
toward the wooded slope beyond. As he toiled up it in the wide silence
of the dawn, a mournful wind burst out of the north, filling the air
about him with withered leaves and the dead branches of trees.




CHAPTER VIII. ON THE RIVER


Betty stood under a dripping umbrella in the midst of a drenching
downpour, her boxes and trunks forming a neat pyramid of respectable
size beside her. She was somewhat perturbed in spirit, since they
contained much elaborate finery all in the very latest eastern fashion,
spoils that were the fruit of a heated correspondence with Tom, who
hadn't seemed at all alive to the fact that Betty was nearly eighteen
and in her own right a young woman of property. A tarpaulin had been
thrown over the heap, and with one eye on it and the other on the
stretch of yellow canal up which they were bringing the fast packet
Pioneer, she was waiting impatiently to see her belongings transferred
to a place of safety.

Just arrived by the four-horse coach that plyed regularly between
Washington and Georgetown, she had found the long board platform beside
the canal crowded with her fellow passengers, their number augmented
by those who delight to share vicariously in travel and to whom the
departure of a stage or boat was a matter of urgent interest requiring
their presence, rain or shine. Suddenly she became aware of a tall,
familiar figure moving through the crowd. It was Bruce Carrington. At
the same moment he saw her, and with a casual air that quite deceived
her, approached; and Betty, who had been feeling very lonely and very
homesick, was somehow instantly comforted at sight of him. She welcomed
him almost as a friend.

“You're leaving to-night?” he asked.

“Yes--isn't it miserable the way it rains? And why are they so slow--why
don't they hurry with that boat?”

“It's in the last lock now,” explained Carrington.

“My clothes will all be ruined,” said Betty. He regarded the dress she
wore with instant concern. “No--I mean the things in my trunks; this
doesn't matter,” and Betty nodded toward the pile under the steaming
tarpaulin. Carrington's dark eyes opened with an expression of mild
wonder. And so those trunks were full of clothes--Oh, Lord!--he looked
down at the flushed, impatient face beside him with amusement.

“I'll see that they are taken care of,” he said, for the boat was
alongside the platform now; and gathering up Betty's hand luggage, he
helped her aboard.

By the time they had reached Wheeling, Betty had quite parted with
whatever superficial prejudice she might have had concerning river-men.
This particular one was evidently a very nice river-man, an exception
to his kind. She permitted him to assume the burden of her plans, and
no longer scanned the pages of her Badger's and Porter's with a puckered
brow. It reposed at the bottom of her satchel. He made choice of the
steamer on which she should continue her journey, and thoughtfully chose
The Naiad--a slow boat, with no reputation for speed to sustain. It
meant two or three days longer on the river, but what of that? There
would be no temptation in the engine-room to attach a casual wrench or
so to the safety-valve as an offset to the builder's lack of confidence
in his own boilers. He saw to it that her state-room was well
aft--steamers had a trick of blowing up forward.

Ne had now reached a state of the utmost satisfaction with himself and
the situation. Betty was friendly and charming. He walked with her, and
he talked with her by the hour; and always he was being entangled deeper
and deeper in the web of her attraction. “When alone he would pace the
deck recalling every word she had spoken. There was that little air
of high breeding which was Betty's that fascinated him. He had known
something of the other sort, those who had arrived at prosperity with
manners and speech that still reflected the meaner condition from which
they had risen.

“I haven't a thing to offer her--this is plain madness of mine!” he kept
telling himself, and then the expression of his face would become grim
and determined. No more of the river for him--he'd get hold of some land
and go to raising cotton; that was the way money was made.

Slow as The Naiad was, the days passed much too swiftly for him. When
Memphis was reached their friendly intercourse would come to an end.
There would be her brother, of whom she had occasionally spoken--he
would be pretty certain to have the ideas of his class.

As for Betty, she liked this tall fellow who helped her through the
fatigue of those long days, when there was only the unbroken sweep of
the forest on either hand, with here and there a clearing where some
outrageous soul was making a home for himself. The shores became duller,
wilder, more uninteresting as they advanced, and then at last they
entered the Mississippi, and she was almost home.

Betty was not unexcited by the prospect. She would be the mistress of
the most splendid place in West Tennessee. She secretly aspired to be a
brilliant hostess. She could remember when the doors of Belle Plain
were open to whoever had the least claim to distinction--statesmen
and speculators in land; men who were promoting those great schemes of
improvement, canals and railroads; hard-featured heroes of the two
wars with England--a diminishing group; the men of the modern army, the
pathfinders, and Indian fighters, and sometimes a titled foreigner. She
wondered if Tom had maintained the traditions of the place. She found
that Carrington had heard of Belle Plain. He spoke of it with respect,
but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, for how could he feel
enthusiasm when he must begin his chase after fortune with bare
hands?--he suffered acutely whenever it was mentioned. The days, like
any other days, dwindled. The end of it all was close at hand. Another
twenty-four hours and Carrington reflected there would only be good-by
to say.

“We will reach New Madrid to-night,” he told her. They were watching the
river, under a flood of yellow moonlight.

“And then just another day--Oh, I can hardly wait!” cried Betty
delightedly. “Soon I shall hope to see you at Belle Plain, Mr.
Carrington,” she added graciously.

“Thank you, your--your family--” he hesitated.

“There's only just Tom--he's my half-brother. My mother was left a widow
when I was a baby. Later, some years after, she married Tom's father.”

“Oh--then he's not even your half-brother?”

“He's no relation at all--and much older. When Tom's father died my
mother made Tom, manager, and still later he was appointed my guardian.”

“Then you own Belle Plain?” and Carrington sighed.

“Yes. You have never seen it?--it's right on the river, you know?” then
Betty's face grew sober: “Tom's dreadfully queer--I expect he'll require
a lot of managing!”

“I reckon you'll be equal to that!” said-Carrington, convinced of
Betty's all-compelling charm.

“No, I'm not at all certain about Tom--I can see where we shall have
serious differences; but then, I shan't have to struggle single-handed
with him long; a cousin of my mother's is coming to Belle Plain to
make her home with me--she'll make' him behave,” and Betty laughed
maliciously. “It's a great nuisance being a girl!”

Then Betty fell to watching for the lights at New Madrid, her elbows
resting on the rail against which she was leaning, and the soft curve
of her chin sunk in the palms of her hands. She wondered absently what
Judith would have said of this river-man. She smiled a little dubiously.
Judith had certainly vindicated the sincerity of her convictions
regarding the importance of family, inasmuch as in marrying Ferris she
had married her own second cousin. She nestled her chin a little closer
in her palms. She remembered that they had differed seriously over Mr.
Yancy's defiance, of the law as it was supposed to be lodged in the
sacred person of Mr. Bladen's agent, the unfortunate Blount. Carrington,
with his back against a stanchion, watched her discontentedly.

“You'll be mighty glad to have this over with, Miss Malroy--” he said at
length, with a comprehensive sweep toward the river.

“Yes--shan't you?” and she opened her eyes questioningly.

“No,” said Carrington with a short laugh, drawing a chair near hers and
sitting down.

Betty, in surprise, gave him a quick look, and then as quickly glanced
away from what she encountered in his eyes. Men were accustomed to talk
sentiment to her, but she had hoped--well, she really had thought that
he was, superior to this weakness. She had enjoyed the feeling that here
was some one, big and strong and thoroughly masculine, with whom she
could be friendly without--she took another look at him from under the
fringe of her long lashes. He was so nice and considerate--and good
looking--he was undeniably this last. It would be a pity! And she had
already determined that Tom should invite him to Belle Plain. She didn't
mind if he was a river-man--they could be friends, for clearly he was
such an exception. Tom should be cordial to him. Betty stared before
her, intently watching the river. As she looked, suddenly pale points of
light appeared on a distant headland.

“Is that New Madrid?--Oh, is it, Mr. Carrington?”' she cried eagerly.

“I reckon so,” but he did not alter his position.

“But you're not looking!”

“Yes, I am--I'm looking at you. I reckon you'll think me crazy, Miss
Malroy-presumptuous and all that but I wish Memphis could be wiped off
the map and that we could go on like this for ever!--no, not like this
but together--you and I,” he took a deep breath. Betty drew a little
farther away, and looked at him reproachfully; and then she turned to
the dancing lights far down the river. Finally she said slowly:

“I thought you were--different.”

“I'm not,” and Carrington's hand covered hers.

“Oh--you mustn't kiss my hand like that--”

“Dear--I'm just a man--and you didn't expect, did you, that I could see
you this way day after day and not come to love you?” He rested his arm
across the back of her chair and leaned toward her.

“No--no--” and Betty moved still farther away.

“Give me a chance to win your love, Betty!”

“You mustn't talk so--I am nothing to you--”

“Yes, you are. You're everything to me,” said Carrington doggedly.

“I'm not--I won't be!” and Betty stamped her foot.

“You can't help it. I love you and that's all there is about it. I
know I'm a fool to tell you now, Betty, but years wouldn't make any
difference in my feeling; and I can't have you go, and perhaps never
see you again, if I can help it. Betty--give me a chance--you don't hate
me--”

“But I do--yes, I do--indeed--”

“I know you don't. Let me see you again and do what I can to make you
care for me!” he implored. But he had a very indignant little aristocrat
to deal with. She was angry with him, and angry with herself that in
spite of herself his words moved her. She wouldn't have it so! Why,
he wasn't even of her class--her kind! “Betty, you don't mean--” he
faltered.

“I mean--I am extremely annoyed. I mean just what I say.” Betty regarded
him with wrathful blue eyes. It proved too much for Carrington. His arm,
dropped about her shoulders.

“You shall love me--” She was powerless in his embrace. She felt his
breath on her cheek, then he kissed her. Breathless and crimson, she
struggled and pushed him from her. Suddenly his arms fell at his side;
his face was white. “I was a brute to do that!--Betty, forgive me! I am
sorry--no, I can't be sorry!”'

“How do you dare! I hope I may never see you again--I hate you--” said
Betty furiously, tears in her eyes and her pulses still throbbing from
his fierce caress.

“Do you mean that?” he asked slowly, rising.

“Yes--yes--a million times, yes!”

“I don't believe you--I can't--I won't!” They were alongside the New
Madrid wharf now, and a certain young man who had been impatiently
watching The Naiad's lights ever since they became visible crossed the
gang-plank with a bound.

“Betty--why in the name of goodness did you ever, choose this
tub?--everything on the river has passed it!” said the newcomer. Betty
started up with a little cry of surprise and pleasure.

“Charley!”

Carrington stepped back. This must be the brother who had come up the
river from Memphis to meet her--but her brother's name was Tom! He
looked this stranger--this Charley--over with a hostile eye, offended by
his good looks, his confident manner, in which he thought he detected an
air of ownership, as if--certainly he was holding her hands longer
than was necessary! Of course, other men were in love with her, such
a radiant personality held its potent attraction for men, but for all
that, she was going to belong to him--Carrington! She did like him; she
had shown it in a hundred little ways during the last week, and he would
give her up to no man--give her up?--there wasn't the least tie between
them--except that kiss--and she was furious because of it. There was
nothing for him to do but efface himself. He would go now, before the
boat started--and an instant later, when Betty, remembering, turned to
speak to him, his place by the rail was deserted.




CHAPTER IX. JUDGE SLOCUM PRICE


On that day Hannibal was haunted by the memory of what he had heard and
seen at Slosson's tavern. More than this, there was his terrible sense
of loss, and the grief he could not master, when his thin, little body
was shaken by sobs. Marking the course of the road westward, he clung
to the woods, where his movements were as stealthy as the very
shadows themselves. He shunned the scattered farms and the infrequent
settlements, for the fear was strong with him that he might be followed
either by Murrell or Slosson. But as the dusk of evening crept across
the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him
forth into the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger
smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter
loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.

“I couldn't forget Uncle Bob if I tried--” he told himself, with
quivering lips, as he limped wearily along the dusty road, and the
tears welled up and streaked his pinched face. Now before him he saw
the scattered lights of a settlement. All his terrors, the terrors that
grouped themselves about the idea of pursuit and capture, rushed back
upon him, and in a panic he plunged into the black woods again.

But the distant lights intensified his loneliness. He had lived a whole
day without food, a whole day without speech. He began to skirt the
settlement, keeping well within the thick gloom of the woods, and
presently, as he stumbled forward, he came to a small clearing in the
center of which stood a log dwelling. The place seemed deserted. There
was no sign of life, no light shone from the window, no smoke issued
from the stick-and-mud chimney.

Tilted back in a chair by the door of this house a man was sleeping. The
hoot of an owl from a near-by oak roused him. He yawned and stretched
himself, thrusting out his fat legs and extending his great arms. Then
becoming aware of the small figure which had stolen up the path as
he slept and now stood before him in the uncertain light, he fell to
rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his plump hands. The pale night
mist out of the silent depths of the forest had assumed shapes as
strange.

“Who are you?” he demanded, and his voice rumbled thickly forth from his
capacious chest. The very sound was sleek and unctuous.

“I'm Hannibal,” said the small figure. He was meditating flight; he
glanced over his shoulder toward the woods.

“No, you ain't. He's been dead a thousand years, more or less. Try
again,” recommended the man.

“I'm Hannibal Wayne Hazard,” said the boy. The man quitted his chair.

“Well--I am glad to know you, Hannibal Wayne Hazard. I am Slocum
Price--Judge Slocum Price, sometime major-general of militia and
ex-member of congress, to mention a few of those honors my fellow
countrymen have thrust upon me.” He made a sweeping gesture with his two
hands outspread and bowed ponderously.

The boy saw a man of sixty, whose gross and battered visage told its own
story. There was a sparse white frost about his ears; and his eyes,
pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore
a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck
was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above
it. His figure was corpulent and unwieldy.

The man saw a boy of perhaps ten, barefoot, and clothed in homespun
shirt and trousers. On his head was a ruinous hat much too large for
him, but which in some mysterious manner he contrived to keep from quite
engulfing his small features, which were swollen and tear-stained. In
his right hand he carried a bundle, while his left clutched the brown
barrel of a long rifle.

“You don't belong in these parts, do you?” asked the judge, when he had
completed his scrutiny.

“No, sir,” answered the boy. He glanced off down the road, where lights
were visible among the trees. “What town is that?” he added.

“Pleasantville--which is a lie--but I am neither sufficiently drunk nor
sufficiently sober to cope with the possibilities your question offers.
It is a task one should approach only after extraordinary preparation,”
 and the sometime major-general of militia grinned benevolently.

“It's a town, ain't it?” asked Hannibal doubtfully. He scarcely
understood this large, smiling gentleman who was so civilly given to
speech with him, yet strangely enough he was not afraid of him, and his
whole soul craved human companionship.

“It's got a name--but you'll excuse me, I'd much prefer not to tell you
how I regard it--you're too young to hear. But stop a bit--have you so
much as fifty cents about you?” and the judge's eyes narrowed to a slit
above their folds of puffy flesh. Hannibal, keeping his glance fixed
on the man's face, fell back a step. “I can't let you go if you are
penniless--I can't do that!” cried the judge, with sudden vehemence.
“You shall be my guest for the night. They're a pack of thieves at the
tavern,” he lowered his voice. “I know 'em, for they've plucked me!” To
make sure of his prey, he rested a fat hand on the boy's shoulder
and drew him gently but firmly into the shanty. As they crossed the
threshold he kicked the door shut, then with flint and steel he made a
light, and presently a candle was sputtering in his hands. He fitted
it into the neck of a tall bottle, and as the light flared up the boy
glanced about him.

The interior was mean enough, with its rough walls, dirt floor and
black, cavernous fireplace. A rude clapboard table did duty as a desk,
a fact made plain by a horn ink-well, a notary's seal, and a rack with a
half-dozen quill pens. Above the desk was a shelf of books in worn calf
bindings, and before it a rickety chair. A shakedown bed in one corner
of the room was tastefully screened from the public gaze by a tattered
quilt.

“Boy, don't be afraid. Look on me as a friend,” urged the judge, who
towered above him in the dim candle-light. “Here's comfort without
ostentation. Don't tell me you prefer the tavern, with its corrupt
associations!” Hannibal was silent, and the judge, after a brief moment
of irresolution, threw open the door. Then he bent toward the small
stranger, bringing his face close to the child's, while his thick lips
wreathed themselves in a smile ingratiatingly genial. “You can't look
me squarely in the eye and say you prefer the tavern to these scholarly
surroundings?” he said banteringly.

“I reckon I'll be glad to stop,” answered Hannibal. The judge clapped
him playfully on the back.

“Such confidence is inspiring! Make yourself perfectly at home. Are you
hungry?”

“Yes, sir. I ain't had much to eat to-day,” replied Hannibal cautiously.

“I can offer you food then. What do you say to cold fish?” the judge
smacked his lips to impart a relish to the idea. “I dare swear I can
find you some corn bread into the bargain. Tea I haven't got. On the
advice of my physician, I don't use it. What do you say--shall we light
a fire and warm the fish?”

“I 'low I could eat it cold.”

“No trouble in the world to start a fire. All we got to do is to go out,
and pull a few palings off the fence,” urged the judge.

“It will do all right just like it is,” said Hannibal.

“Very good, then!” cried the judge gaily, and he began to assemble
the dainties he had enumerated. “Here you are!” he cleared his throat
impressively, while benignity shone from every feature of his face. “A
moment since you allowed me to think that you were solvent to the
extent of fifty cents--” Hannibal looked puzzled. The judge dealt him a
friendly blow on the back, then stood off and regarded him with a glance
of great jocularity, his plump knuckles on his hips and his arms akimbo.
“I wonder”--and his eyes assumed a speculative squint “I wonder if you
could be induced to make a temporary loan of that fifty cents? The sum
involved is really such a ridiculous trifle I don't need to point out
to you the absolute moral certainty of my returning it at an early
date--say to-morrow morning; say to-morrow afternoon at the latest; say
even the day after at the very outside. Meantime, you shall be my
guest. The landlady's son has found my notarial seal an admirable
plaything--she has had to lick the little devil twice for hooking
it--my pens and stationery are at your disposal, should you desire to
communicate to absent friends; you can have the run of my library!” the
judge fairly trembled in his eagerness. It was not the loss of his money
that Hannibal most feared, and the coin passed from his possession into
his host's custody. As it dropped into the latter's great palm he was
visibly moved. His moist, blue eyes became yet more watery, while
his battered old face assumed an expression indicating deep inward
satisfaction. “Thank you, my boy! This is one of those intrinsically
trifling benefits which, conferred at the moment of acute need, touch
the heart and tap the unfailing springs of human gratitude--I must step
down to the tavern--when I return, please God, we shall know more of
each other.” While he was still speaking he had produced a jug from
behind the quilt that screened his bed, and now, bareheaded, and with
every indication of haste, took himself off into the night.

Left alone, Hannibal gravely seated himself at the table. What the
judge's larder lacked in variety it more than made up for in quantity,
and the boy was grateful for this fact. He was half famished, and
the coarse, abundant food was of the sort to which he was accustomed.
Presently he heard the judge's heavy, shuffling step as he came up the
path from the road, and a moment later his gross bulk of body filled the
doorway. Breathing hard and perspiring, the judge entered the shanty,
but his eagerness, together with his shortness of breath, kept him
silent until he had established himself in his chair beside the table,
with the jug and a cracked glass at his elbow. Then, bland and smiling,
he turned toward his guest.

“Will you join me?” he asked.

“No, sir. Please, I'd rather not,” said Hannibal.

“Do you mean that you don't like good liquor?” demanded the judge. “Not
even with sugar and a dash of water?--say, now, don't you like it that
way, my boy?”

“I ain't learned to like it no ways,” said Hannibal.

“You amaze me--well--well--the greater the joy to which you may
reasonably aspire. The splendid possibilities of youth are yours. My
tenderest regards, Hannibal!” and he nodded over the rim of the cracked
glass his shaking hand had carried to his lips. Twice the glass was
filled and emptied, and then again, his roving, watery eyes rested
meditatively on the child, who sat very erect in his chair, with his
brown hands crossed in his lap. “Personally, I can drink or not,”
 explained the judge. “But I hope I am too much a man of the world to
indulge in any intemperate display of principle.” He proved the first
clause of his proposition by again filling and emptying his glass. “Have
you a father?” he asked suddenly. Hannibal shook his head. “A mother?”
 demanded the judge.

“They both of them done died years and years ago,” answered the boy.
“I can't tell you how long back it was, but I reckon I don't know much
about it. I must have been a small child.”

“Ho--a small child!” cried the judge, laughing. He cocked his head
on one side and surveyed Hannibal Wayne Hazard with a glance of comic
seriousness. “A small child and in God's name what do you call yourself
now? To hear you talk one would think you had dabbled your feet in the
Flood!”

“I'm most ten,” said Hannibal, with dignity.

“I can well believe it,” responded the judge. “And with this weight of
years, where did you come from and how did you get here?”

“From across the mountains.”

“Alone?”

“No, sir. Mr. Yancy fetched me--part way.” The boy's voice broke when he
spoke his Uncle Bob's name, and his eyes swam with tears, but the judge
did not notice this.

“And where are you going?”

“To West Tennessee.”

“Have you any friends there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You've money enough to see you through?” and what the judge intended
for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of infinite cunning.

“I got ten dollars.”

“Ten dollars--” the judge smacked his lips once. “Ten dollars” he
repeated, and smacked his lips twice. There was a brief silence, in
which he seemed to give way to pleasant reveries.

From beyond the open door of the shanty came a multitude of night
sounds. The moon had risen, and what had been a dusty country road was
now a streak of silver in the hot light. The purple flush on the judge's
face, where the dignity that belonged to age had gone down in wreck,
deepened. The sparse, white frost above his ears was damp with sweat.
He removed his stock, opened his shirt at the neck, and cast aside his
coat; then he lighted a blackened pipe, filled his glass, and sank back
in his chair. The long hours of darkness were all before him, and his
senses clothed themselves in rich content. Once more his glance rested
on the boy. Here, indeed, was a guest of whom one might make much and
not err--he felt all the benevolence of his nature flow toward him. Ten
dollars!

“Certainly the tavern would have been no place for you! Well, thank God,
it wasn't necessary for you to go there. You are more than welcome here.
I tell you, when you know this place as I know it, you'll regard every
living soul here with suspicion. Keep 'em at arm's length!” he sank his
voice to an impressive whisper. “In particular, I warn you against a
certain Solomon Mahaffy. You'll see much of him; I haven't known how to
rebuff the fellow without being rude--he sticks to me like my shadow.
He's profited by my charity and he admires my conversation and affects
my society, but don't tell him you have so much as a rusty copper, for
he will neither rest nor eat nor sleep until he's plucked you--tell him
nothing--leave him to me. I keep him--there--” the judge extended his
fat hands, “at arm's length. I say to him metaphorically speaking--'so
close, but no closer. I'll visit you when sick, I'll pray with you when
dying, I'll chat with you, I'll eat with you, I'll smoke with you,
and if need be, I'll drink with you--but be your intimate? Never! Why?
Because be's a damned Yankee! These are the inextinguishable feelings
of a gentleman. I am aware they are out of place in this age, but
what's bred in the bone will show in the flesh. Who says it won't, is
no gentleman himself and a liar as well! My place in the world was
determined two or three hundred years ago, and my ancestors spat on such
cattle as Mahaffy and they were flattered by the attention!” The judge,
powerfully excited by his denunciation of the unfortunate Mahaffy,
quitted his chair and, lurching somewhat as he did so, began to pace the
floor.

“Take me for your example, boy! You may be poor, you may possibly be
hungry you'll often be thirsty, but through it all you will remain that
splendid thing--a gentleman! Lands, niggers, riches, luxury, I've had
'em all; I've sucked the good of 'em; they've colored my blood, they've
gone into the fiber of my brain and body. Perhaps you'll contend that
the old order is overthrown, that family has gone to the devil? You are
right, and there's the pity of it! Where are the great names? A race
of upstarts has taken their place--sons of nobody--nephews of
nobody--cousins of nobody--I observe only deterioration in the trend of
modern life. The social fabric is tottering--I can see it totter--” and
he tottered himself as he said this.

The boy had watched him out of wide eyes, as ponderous and unwieldy he
shuffled back and forth in the dim candlelight; now shaking his head and
muttering, the judge dropped into his chair.

“Well, I'm an old man-the spectacle won't long offend me. I'll die
presently. The Bench and Bar will review my services to the country, the
militia will fire a few volleys at my graveside, here and there a flag
will be at half-mast, and that will be the end--” He was so profoundly
moved by the thought that he could not go on. His voice broke, and he
buried his face in his arms. A sympathetic moisture had gathered in
the child's eyes. He understood only a small part of what his host was
saying, but realized that it had to do with death, and he had his own
terrible acquaintance with death. He slipped from his chair and stole
to the judge's side, and that gentleman felt a cool hand rest lightly on
his arm.

“What?” he said, glancing up.

“I'm mighty sorry you're going to die,” said the boy softly.

“Bless you, Hannibal!” cried the judge, looking wonderfully cheerful,
despite his recent bitterness of spirit. “I'm not experiencing any of
the pangs of mortality now. My dissolution ain't a matter of to-night
or to-morrow--there's some life in Slocum Price yet, for all the rough
usage, eh? I've had my fun--I could tell you a thing or two about that,
if you had hair on your chin!” and the selfish lines of his face twisted
themselves into an exceedingly knowing grin.

“You talked like you thought you were going to die right off,” said
Hannibal gravely, as he resumed his chair. The judge was touched. It had
been more years than he cared to remember since he had launched a decent
emotion in the breast of any human being. For a moment he was silent,
struck with a sense of shame; then he said:

“You are sure you are not running away, Hannibal? I hope you know
that boys should always tell the truth--that hell has its own especial
terrors for the boy who lies? Now, if I thought the worst of you, I
might esteem it my duty to investigate your story.” The judge laid a fat
forefinger against the side of his nose, and regarded him with drunken
gravity. Hannibal shook with terror. This was what he had feared.
“That's one aspect of the case. Now, on the other hand, I might draw
up a legal instrument which could not fail to be of use to you on
your travois, and would stop all questions. As for my fee, it would be
trifling, when compared with the benefits I can see accruing to you.”

“No, I ain't running away. I ain't got no one to run away from,” said
the boy chokingly. He was showing signs of fatigue. His head drooped and
he met the judge's glance with tired, sleepy eyes. The latter looked at
him and then said suddenly:

“I think you'd better go to bed.”

“I reckon I had,” agreed Hannibal, slipping from his chair.

“Well, take my bed back of the quilt. You'll find a hoe there. You can
dig up the dirt under the shuck tick with it--which helps astonishingly.
What would the world say if it could know that judge Slocum Price makes
his bed with a hoe! There's Spartan hardihood!” but the boy, not
knowing what was meant by Spartan hardihood, remained silent. “Nearing
threescore years and ten, the allotted span as set down by the
Psalmist--once man of fashion, soldier, statesman and lawgiver--and
makes his bed with a hoe! What a history!” muttered the judge with weary
melancholy, as one groping hand found the jug while the other found the
glass. There was a pause, while he profited by this fortunate chance.
“Well, take the bed,” he resumed hospitably.

“I can sleep most anywhere. I ain't no ways particular,” said Hannibal.

“I say, take the bed!” commanded the judge sternly. And Hannibal quickly
retired behind the quilt. “Do you find it comfortable?” the judge asked,
when the rustling of the shuck tick informed him that the child had lain
down.

“Yes, sir,” said the boy.

“Have you said your prayers?” inquired the judge.

“No, sir. I ain't said 'em yet.”

“Well, say them now. Religion is as becoming in the young as it is
respectable in the aged. I'll not disturb you to-night, for it is God's
will that I should stay up and get very drunk.”




CHAPTER X. BOON COMPANIONS


Some time later the judge was aware of a step on the path beyond
his door, and glancing up, saw the tall figure of a man pause on his
threshold. A whispered curse slipped from between his lips. Aloud he
said:

“Is that you, Mr. Mahaffy?” He got no reply, but the tall figure,
propelled by very long legs, stalked into the shanty and a pair of keen,
restless eyes deeply set under a high, bald head were bent curiously
upon him.

“I take it I'm intruding,” the new-comer said sourly.

“Why should you think that, Solomon Mahaffy? When has my door been
closed on you?” the judge asked, but there was a guilty deepening of the
flush on his face. Mr. Mahaffy glanced at the jug, at the half-emptied
glass within convenient reach of the judge's hand, lastly at the judge
himself, on whose flame-colored visage his eyes rested longest.

“I've heard said there was honor among thieves,” he remarked.

“I know of no one better fitted to offer an opinion on so delicate a
point than just yourself, Mahaffy,” said the judge, with a thick little
ripple of laughter.

But Solomon Mahaffy's long face did not relax in its set expression.

“I saw your light,” he explained, “but you seem to be raising first-rate
hell all by yourself.”

“Oh, be reasonable, Solomon. You'd gone down to the steamboat landing,”
 said the judge plaintively. By way of answer, Mahaffy shot him a
contemptuous glance. “Take a chair--do, Solomon!” entreated the judge.

“I don't force my society on any man, Mr. Price,” said Mahaffy, with
austere hostility of tone. The judge winced at the “Mr.” That registered
the extreme of Mahaffy's disfavor.

“You feel bitter about this, Solomon?” he said.

“I do,” said Mahaffy, in a tone of utter finality.

“You'll feel better with three fingers of this trickling through your
system,” observed the judge, pushing a glass toward him.

“When did I ever sneak a jug into my shanty?” asked Mahaffy sternly,
evidently conscious of entire rectitude in this matter.

“I deplore your choice of words, Solomon,” said the judge. “You know
damn well that if you'd been here I couldn't have got past your place
with that jug! But let's deal with conditions. Here's the jug, with some
liquor left in it--here's a glass. Now what more do you want?”

“Have I ever been caught like this?” demanded Mahaffy.

“No, you've invariably manifested the honorable disabilities of a
gentleman. But don't set it all down to virtue. Maybe you haven't had
the opportunity, maybe the temptation never came and found you weak
and thirsty. Put away your sinful pride, Solomon--a sot like you has no
business with the little niceties of selfrespect.”

“Do I drink alone?” insisted Mahaffy doggedly.

“I never give you the chance,” retorted his friend. Mr. Mahaffy drew
near the table. “Sit down,” urged the judge.

“I hope you feel mean?” said Mahaffy.

“If it's any satisfaction to you, I do,” admitted the judge.

“You ought to.” Mahaffy drew forward a chair. The judge filled his
glass. But Mr. Mahaffy's lean face, with its long jaws and high
cheek-bones, over which the sallow skin was tightly drawn, did not relax
in its forbidding expression, even when he had tossed off his first
glass.

“I love to see you in a perfectly natural attitude like that, Solomon,
with your arm crooked. What's the news from the landing?”

Mahaffy brought his fist down on the table.

“I heard the boat churning away round back of the bend, then I saw
the lights, and she tied up and they tossed off the freight. Then she
churned away again and her lights got back of the trees on the bank.
There was the lap of waves on the shore, and I was left with the
half-dozen miserable loafers who'd crawled out to see the boat come in.
That's the news six days a week!”

By the river had come the judge, tentatively hopeful, but at heart
expecting nothing, therefore immune to disappointment and equipped
for failure. By the river had come Mr. Mahaffy, as unfit as the judge
himself, and for the same reason, but sour and bitter with the world,
believing always in the possibility of some miracle of regeneration.

Pleasantville's weekly paper, The Genius of Liberty, had dwelt at length
upon those distinguished services judge Slocum Price had rendered the
nation in war and peace, the judge having graciously furnished an array
of facts otherwise difficult of access. That he was drunk at the time
had but added to the splendor of the narrative. He had placed his ripe
wisdom, the talents he had so assiduously cultivated, at the services of
his fellow citizens. He was prepared to represent them in any or all
the courts. But he had remained undisturbed in his condition of
preparedness; that erudite brain was unconcerned with any problem beyond
financing his thirst at the tavern, where presently ingenuity, though it
expressed itself with a silver tongue, failed him, and he realized that
the river's spent floods had left him stranded with those other odds and
ends of worthless drift that cumbered its sun-scorched mud banks.

Something of all this passed through his mind as he sat there sodden and
dreamy, with the one fierce need of his nature quieted for the moment.
He had been stranded before, many times, in those long years during
which he had moved steadily toward a diminishing heritage; indeed,
nothing that was evil could contain the shock of a new experience. He
had fought and lost all his battles--bitter struggles to think of even
now, after the lapse of years, and the little he had to tell of
himself was an intricate mingling of truth and falsehood, grotesque
exaggeration, purposeless mendacity.

He and Mahaffy had met exactly one month before, on the deck of the
steamer from which they had been put ashore at the river landing two
miles from Pleasantville. Mahaffy's historic era had begun just there.
Apparently he had no past of which he could be brought to speak. He
admitted having been born in Boston some sixty years before, and was a
printer by trade; further than this, he had not revealed himself, drunk
or sober.

At the judge's elbow Mr. Mahaffy changed his position with nervous
suddenness. Then he folded his long arms.

“You asked if there was any news, Price; while we were waiting for the
boat a raft tied up to the bank; the fellow aboard of it had a man he'd
fished up out of the river, a man who'd been pretty well cut to pieces.”

“Who was he?” asked the judge.

“Nobody knew, and he wasn't conscious. I shouldn't be surprised if he
never opens his lips again. When the doctor had looked to his cuts, the
fellow on the raft cast off and went on down the Elk.”

It occurred to the judge that he himself had news to impart. He must
account for the boy's presence.

“While you've been taking your whiff of life down at the steamboat
landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary
coincidence.” The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes
Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. “Back east--” the judge jerked
his thumb with an indefinite gesture “back east at my ancestral
home--” Mahaffy snorted harshly. “You don't believe I had an ancestral
home?--well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns
across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet long. I had
the distinguished honor to entertain General Andrew Jackson there.”

“Did you get those dimensions out of the jug?” inquiry Mahaffy, with a
frightful bark that was intended for a sarcastic laugh.

“Sir, it is not in your province to judge me by my present degraded
associates. Near the house I have described--my father's and his
father's before him, and mine now--but for the unparalleled misfortunes
which have pursued me--lived a family by the name of Hazard. And when I
went to the war of '12--”

“What were you in that bloody time, a sutler?” inquired Mahaffy
insultingly.

“No, sir--a colonel of infantry!--I say, when I went to the war, one of
these Hazards accompanied me as my orderly. His grandson is back of that
curtain now--asleep--in my bed!” Mahaffy put down his glass.

“You were like this once before,” he said darkly. But at that instant
the shuck tick rattled noisily at some movement of the sleeping boy.
Mahaffy quitted his chair, and crossing the room, drew the quilt aside.
A glance sufficed to assure him that in part, at least, the judge spoke
the truth. He let the curtain fall into place and resumed his chair.

“He's an orphan, Solomon; a poor, friendless orphan. Another might
have turned him away from his door--I didn't; I hadn't the heart to. I
bespeak your sympathy for him.”

“Who is he?” asked Mahaffy.

“Haven't I just told you?” said the judge reproachfully. Mahaffy
laughed.

“You've told me something. Who is he?”

“His name is Hannibal Wayne Hazard. Wait until he wakes up and see if it
isn't.”

“Sure he isn't kin to you?” said Mahaffy.

“Not a drop of my blood flows in the veins of any living creature,”
 declared the judge with melancholy impressiveness. He continued with
deepening feeling, “All I shall leave to posterity is my fame.”

“Speaking of posterity, which isn't present, Mr. Price, I'll say it is
embarrassed by the attention,” observed Mahaffy.

There was a long silence between them. Mr. Mahaffy drank, and when
he did not drink he bit his under lip and studied the judge. This was
always distressing to the latter gentleman. Mahaffy's silence he
could never penetrate. What was back of it--judgment, criticism,
disbelief--what? Or was it the silence of emptiness? Was Mahaffy dumb
merely because he could think of nothing to say, or did his silence
cloak his feelings-and what were his feelings? Did his meditations
outrun his habitually insulting speech as he bit his under lip and
glared at him? The judge always felt impelled to talk at such times,
while Mahaffy, by that silence of his, seemed to weigh and condemn
whatever he said.

The moon had slipped below the horizon. Pleasantville had long since
gone to bed; it was only the judge's window that gave its light to the
blackness of the night. There was a hoofbeat on the road. It came nearer
and nearer, and presently sounded just beyond the door. Then it ceased,
and a voice said:

“Hullo, there!” The judge scrambled to his feet, and taking up the
candle, stepped, or rather staggered, into the yard. Mahaffy followed
him.

“What's wanted?” asked the judge, as he lurched up to horse and rider,
holding his candle aloft. The light showed a tail fellow mounted on a
handsome bay horse. It was Murrell.

“Is there an inn hereabouts?” he asked.

“You'll find one down the road a ways,” said Mahaffy. The judge said
nothing. He was staring up at Murrell with drunken gravity.

“Have either of you gentlemen seen a boy go through here to-day? A
boy about ten years old?” Murrell glanced from one to the other. Mr.
Mahaffy's thin lips twisted themselves into a sarcastic smile. He turned
to the judge, who spoke up quickly.

“Did he carry a bundle and rifle?” he asked. Murrell gave eager assent.

“Well,” said the judge, “he stopped here along about four o'clock and
asked his way to the nearest river landing.” Murrell gathered up his
reins, and then that fixed stare of the judge's seemed to arrest his
attention.

“You'll know me again,” he observed.

“Anywhere,” said the judge.

“I hope that's a satisfaction to you,” said Murrell.

“It ain't--none whatever,” answered the judge promptly. “For I don't
value you--I don't value you that much!” and he snapped his fingers to
illustrate his meaning.




CHAPTER XI. THE ORATOR OF THE DAY


“Hannibal!” the judge's voice and manner were rather stern. “Hannibal, a
man rode by here last night on a big bay horse. He said he was looking
for a boy about ten years old--a boy with a bundle and rifle.” There was
an awful pause. Hannibal's heart stood still for a brief instant, then
it began to beat with terrific thumps against his ribs. “Who was that
man, Hannibal?”

“I--please, I don't know--” gasped the child.

“Hannibal, who was that man?” repeated the judge.

“It were Captain Murrell.” The judge regarded him with a look of great
steadiness. He saw his small face go white, he saw the look of abject
terror in his eyes. The judge raised his fist and brought it down with
a great crash on the table, so that the breakfast dishes leaped and
rattled. “We don't know any boy ten years old with a rifle and bundle!”
 he said.

“Please--you won't let him take me away, judge I want to stop with you!”
 cried Hannibal. He slipped from his chair, and passing about the table,
seized the judge by the hand. The judge was visibly affected.

“No!” he roared, with a great oath. “He shan't have you--I'll see him in
the farthest corner of hell first! Is he kin to you?”

“No,” said Hannibal.

“Took you to raise, did he--and abused you--infernal hypocrite!” cried
the judge with righteous wrath.

“He tried to get me away from my Uncle Bob. He's been following us since
we crossed the mountains.”

“Where is your Uncle Bob?”

“He's dead.” And the child began to weep bitterly. Much puzzled, the
judge regarded him in silence for a moment, then bent and lifted him
into his lap.

“There, my son--” he said soothingly. “Now you tell me when he died, and
all about it.”

“He were killed. It were only yesterday, and I can't forget him! I don't
want to--but it hurts--it hurts terrible!” Hannibal buried his head in
the judge's shoulder and sobbed aloud. Presently his small hands stole
about the judge's neck, and that gentleman experienced a strange thrill
of pleasure.

“Tell me how he died, Hannibal,” he urged gently. In a voice broken by
sobs the child began the story of their flight, a confused narrative,
which the judge followed with many a puzzled shake of the head. But as
he reached his climax--that cry he had heard at the tavern, the men in
the lane with their burden--he became more and more coherent and his
ideas clothed themselves in words of dreadful simplicity and directness.
The judge shuddered. “Can such things be?” he murmured at last.

“You won't let him take me?”

“I never unsay my words,” said the judge grandly. “With God's help
I'll be the instrument for their destruction.” He frowned with a
preternatural severity. Eh--if he could turn a trick like that, it would
pull him up! There would be no more jeers and laughter.

What credit and standing it would give him! His thoughts slipped
along this fresh channel. What a prosecution he would conduct--what a
whirlwind of eloquence he would loose! He began to breathe hard. His
name should go from end to end of the state! No man could be great
without opportunity--for years he had known this--but here was
opportunity at last! Then he remembered what Mahaffy had told him of the
man on the raft. This Slosson's tavern was probably on the upper waters
of the Elk. Yancy had been thrown in the river and had been picked up in
a dying condition. “Hannibal,” he said, “Solomon Mahaffy, who was here
last night, told me he saw down at the river landing, a man who had been
fished up out of the Elk--a man who had been roughly handled.”

“Were it my Uncle Bob?” cried Hannibal, lifting a swollen face to his.

“Dear lad, I don't know,” said the judge sympathetically. “Some people
on a raft had picked him up out of the river. He was unconscious and no
one knew him. He was apparently a stranger in these parts.”

“It were Uncle Bob! It were Uncle Bob--I know it were my Uncle Bob! I
must go find him!” and Hannibal slipped from the judge's lap and ran for
his rifle and bundle.

“Stop a bit!” cried the judge. “He was taken on past here, and he was
badly injured. Now, if it was your Uncle Bob, he'll come back the moment
he is able to travel. Meantime, you must remain under my protection
while we investigate this man Slosson.”

But alas--that thoroughfare which is supposed to be paved exclusively
with good resolutions, had benefited greatly by Slocum Price's labors in
the past, and he was destined to toil still in its up-keep. He borrowed
the child's money and spent it, and if any sense of shame smote his
torpid conscience, he hid it manfully. Not so Mr. Mahaffy; for while
he profited by his friend's act, he told that gentleman just what
he thought of him with insulting candor. On the eighth day there was
sobriety for the pair. Deep gloom visited Mr. Mahaffy, and the judge was
a prey to melancholy.

It was Saturday, and in Pleasantville a jail-raising was in progress.
During all the years of its corporate dignity the village had never
boasted any building where the evil-doer could be placed under
restraint; hence had arisen its peculiar habit of dealing with crime;
but a leading citizen had donated half an acre of ground lying midway
between the town and the river landing as a site for the proposed
structure, and the scattered population of the region had assembled for
the raising. Nor was Pleasantville unprepared to make immediate use of
the jail, since the sheriff had in custody a free negro who had knifed
another free negro and was awaiting trial at the next term of court.

“We don't want to get there too early,” explained the judge, as they
quitted the cabin. “We want to miss the work, but be on hand for the
celebration.”

“I suppose we may confidently look to you to favor us with a few
eloquent words?” said Mr. Mahaffy.

“And why not, Solomon?” asked the judge.

“Why not, indeed!” echoed Mr. Mahaffy.

The opportunity he craved was not denied him. The crowd was like most
southwestern crowds of the period, and no sooner did the judge appear
than there were clamorous demands for a speech. He cast a glance of
triumph at Mahaffy, and nimbly mounted a convenient stump. He extolled
the climate of middle Tennessee, the unsurpassed fertility of the soil;
he touched on the future that awaited Pleasantville; he apostrophized
the jail; this simple structure of logs in the shadow of the primeval
woods was significant of their love of justice and order; it was a
suitable place for the detention of a citizen of a great republic; it
was no mediaeval dungeon, but a forest-embowered retreat where, barring
mosquitoes and malaria, the party under restraint would be put to no
needless hardship; he would have the occasional companionship of the
gentlemanly sheriff; his friends, with such wise and proper restrictions
as the law saw fit to impose, could come and impart the news of the day
to him through the chinks of the logs.

“I understand you have dealt in a hasty fashion with one or two
horse-thieves,” he continued. “Also with a gambler who was put ashore
here from a river packet and subsequently became involved in a dispute
with a late citizen of this place touching the number of aces in a pack
of cards. It is not for me to criticize! What I may term the spontaneous
love of justice is the brightest heritage of a free people. It is this
same commendable ability to acquit ourselves of our obligations that is
making us the wonder of the world! But don't let us forget the law--of
which it is an axiom, that it is not the severity of punishment, but the
certainty of it, that holds the wrong-doer in check! With this safe
and commodious asylum the plow line can remain the exclusive aid to
agriculture. If a man murders, curb your natural impulse! Give him
a fair trial, with eminent counsel!” The judge tried not to look
self-conscious when he said this. “If he is found guilty, I still say,
don't lynch him! Why? Because by your hasty act you deny the public
the elevating and improving spectacle of a legal execution!” When the
applause had died out, a lank countryman craning his neck for a sight of
the sheriff, bawled out over the heads of the crowd:

“Where's your nigger? We want to put him in here!”

“I reckon he's gone fishin'. I never seen the beat of that nigger to go
fishin',” said the sheriff.

“Whoop! Ain't you goin' to put him in here?” yelled the countryman.

“It's a mighty lonely spot for a nigger,” said the sheriff doubtingly.

“Lonely? Well, suppose he ups and lopes out of this?”

“You don't know that nigger,” rejoined the sheriff warmly. “He ain't
missed a meal since I had him in custody. Just as regular as the clock
strikes he's at the back door. Good habits--why, that darky is a lesson
to most white folks!”

“I don't care a cuss about that nigger, but what's the use of building a
jail if a body ain't goin' to use it?”

“Well, there's some sense in that,” agreed the sheriff.

“There's a whole heap of sense in it!”

“I suggest”--the speaker was a young lawyer from the next county--“I
suggest that a committee be appointed to wait on the nigger at
the steamboat landing and acquaint him with the fact that with his
assistance we wish completely to furnish the jail.”

“I protest--” cried the judge. “I protest--” he repeated vigorously.
“Pride of race forbids that I should be a party to the degradation of
the best of civilization! Is your jail to be christened to its high
office by a nigger? Is this to be the law's apotheosis? No, sir! No
nigger is worthy the honor of being the first prisoner here!” This was
a new and striking idea. The crowd regarded the judge admiringly.
Certainly here was a man of refined feeling.

“That's just the way I feel about it,” said the sheriff. “If I'd
athought there was any call for him I wouldn't have let him go fishing,
I'd have kept him about.”

“Oh, let the nigger fish--he has powerful luck. What's he usin',
Sheriff; worms or minnies?”

“Worms,” said the sheriff shortly.

Presently the crowd drifted away in the direction of the tavern.
Hannibal meantime had gone down to the river. He haunted its banks as
though he expected to see his Uncle Bob appear any moment. The judge and
Mahaffy had mingled with the others in the hope of free drinks, but in
this hope there lurked the germ of a bitter disappointment. There was
plenty of drinking, but they were not invited to join in this pleasing
rite, and after a period of great mental anguish Mahaffy parted with
the last stray coin in the pocket of his respectable black trousers, and
while his flask was being filled the judge indulged in certain winsome
gallantries with the fat landlady.

“La, Judge Price, how you do run on!” she said with a coquettish toss of
her curls.

“That's the charm of you, ma'am,” said the judge. He leaned across
the bar and, sinking his voice to a husky whisper, asked, “Would it be
perfectly convenient for you to extend me a limited credit?”

“Now, Judge Price, you know a heap better than to ask me that!” she
answered, shaking her head.

“No offense, ma'am,” said the judge, hiding his disappointment, and with
Mahaffy he quitted the bar.

“Why don't you marry the old girl? You could drink yourself to death in
six months,” said Mahaffy. “That would be a speculation worth while--and
while you live you could fondle those curls!”

“Maybe I'll be forced to it yet,” responded the judge with gloomy
pessimism.

With the filling of Mahaffy's flask the important event of the day
was past, and both knew it was likely to retain its preeminence for a
terrible and indefinite period; a thought that enriched their thirst
as it increased their gravity while they were traversing the stretch of
dusty road that lay between the cavern and the judge's shanty. When they
had settled themselves in their chairs before the door, Mahaffy, who was
notably jealous of his privileges, drew the cork from the flask and
took the first pull at its contents. The judge counted the swallows
as registered by that useful portion of Mahaffy's anatomy known as his
Adam's apple. After a breathless interval, Mahaffy detached himself
from the flask and civilly passing the cuff of his coat about its neck,
handed it over to the judge. In the unbroken silence that succeeded the
flask passed swiftly from hand to hand, at length Mahaffy held it up to
the light. It was two-thirds empty, and a sigh stole from between his
thin lips. The judge reached out a tremulous hand. He was only too
familiar with his friend's distressing peculiarities.

“Not yet!” he begged thickly.

“Why not?” demanded Mahaffy fiercely. “Is it your liquor or mine?” He
quitted his chair end stalked to the well where he filled the flask with
water. Infinitely disgusted, the judge watched the sacrilege. Mahaffy
resumed his chair and again the flask went its rounds.

“It ain't so bad,” said the judge after a time, but with a noticeable
lack of enthusiasm.

“Were you in shape to put anything better than water into it, Mr.
Price?” The judge winced. He always winced at that “Mr.”

“Well, I wouldn't serve myself such a trick as that,” he said with
decision. “When I take liquor, it's one thing; and when I want water,
it's another.”

“It is, indeed,” agreed Mahaffy.

“I drink as much clear water as is good for a man of my constitution,”
 said the judge combatively. “My talents are wasted here,” he resumed,
after a little pause. “I've brought them the blessings of the law, but
what does it signify!”

“Why did you ever come here?” Mahaffy spoke sharply.

“I might ask the same question of you, and in the same offensive tone,”
 said the judge.

“May I ask, not wishing to take a liberty, were you always the same old
pauper you've been since I've known you?” inquired Mahaffy. The judge
maintained a stony silence.

The heat deepened in the heart of the afternoon. The sun, a ball of
fire, slipped back of the tree-tops. Thick shadows stole across the
stretch of dusty road. Off in the distance there was the sound of
cowbell. Slowly these came nearer and nearer--as the golden light
slanted, sifting deeper and deeper into the woods.

They could see the crowd that came and went about the tavern, they
caught the distant echo of its mirth.

“Common--quite common,” said the judge with somber melancholy.

“I didn't see anything common,” said Mahaffy sourly. “The drinks weren't
common by a long sight.”

“I referred to the gathering in its social aspect, Solomon,” explained
the judge; “the illiberal spirit that prevailed, which, I observe, did
not escape you.”

“Skunks!” said Mahaffy.

“Not a man present had the public spirit to set 'em up,” lamented the
judge. “They drank in pairs, and I'd blistered my throat at their damn
jail-raising! What sort of a fizzle would it have been if I hadn't been
on hand to impart distinction to the occasion?”

“I don't begrudge 'em their liquor,” said Mahaffy with acid dignity.

“I do,” interrupted the judge. “I hope it's poison to 'em.

“It will be in the long run, if it's any comfort to you to know it.”

“It's no comfort, it's not near quick enough,” said the judge
relentlessly. The sudden noisy clamor of many voices, highpitched and
excited, floated out to them under the hot sky. “I wonder--” began the
judge, and paused as he saw the crowd stream into the road before the
tavern. Then a cloud of dust enveloped it, a cloud of dust that came
from the trampling of many pairs of feet, and that swept toward them,
thick and impenetrable, and no higher than a tall man's head in the
lifeless air. “I wonder if we missed anything,” continued the judge,
finishing what he had started to say.

The score or more of men were quite near, and the judge and Mahaffy made
out the tall figure of the sheriff in the lead. And then the crowd, very
excited, very dusty, very noisy and very hot, flowed into the judge's
front yard. For a brief moment that gentleman fancied Pleasantville had
awakened to a fitting sense of its obligation to him and that it was
about to make amends for its churlish lack of hospitality. He rose from
his chair, and with a splendid florid gesture, swept off his hat.

“It's the pussy fellow!” cried a voice.

“Oh, shut up--don't you think I know him?” retorted the sheriff tartly.

“Gentlemen--” began the judge blandly.

“Get the well-rope!”

The judge was rather at loss properly to interpret these varied remarks.
He was not long left in doubt. The sheriff stepped to his side and
dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Mr. Slocum Price, or whatever your name is, your little game is up!”

“Get the well-rope! Oh, hell--won't some one get the well-rope?” The
voice rose into a wail of entreaty.

The judge's eyes, rather startled, slid around in their sockets. Clearly
something was wrong--but what--what?

“Ain't he bold?” it was a woman's voice this time, and the fat landlady,
her curls awry and her plump breast heaving tumultuously, gained a place
in the forefront of the crowd.

“Dear madam, this is an unexpected pleasure!” said the judge, with his
hand upon his heart.

“Don't you make your wicked old sheep's eyes at me, you brazen thing!”
 cried the lady.

“You're wanted,” said the sheriff grimly, still keeping his hand on the
judge's shoulder.

“For what?” demanded the judge thickly. The sheriff had no time in which
to answer.

“I want my money!” shrieked the landlady.

“Your money--Mrs. Walker, you amaze me!” The judge drew himself up
haughtily, in genuine astonishment.

“I want my money!” repeated Mrs. Walker in even more piercing tones.

“I am not aware that I owe you anything, madam. Thank God, I hold
your receipted bill of recent date,” answered the judge with chilling
dignity.

“Good money--not this worthless trash!” she shook a bill under his nose.
The judge recognized it as the one of which he had despoiled Hannibal.

“You have been catched passing counterfeit,” said the sheriff. A light
broke on the judge, a light that dazzled and stunned. An officious and
impatient gentleman tossed a looped end of the well-rope about his neck
and the crowd yelled excitedly. This was something like--it had a taste
for the man-hunt! The sheriff snatched away the rope and dealt the
officious gentleman a savage blow on the chin that sent him staggering
backward into the arms of his friends.

“Now, see here, now--I'm going to arrest this old faller! I am going to
put him in jail, and I ain't going to have no nonsense--do you hear me?”
 he expostulated.

“I can explain--” cried the judge.

“Make him give me my money!” wailed Mrs Walker.

“Jezebel!” roared the judge, in a passion of rage.

“Ca'm's the word, or you'll get 'em started!” whispered the sheriff.
The judge looked fearfully around. At his side stood Mahaffy, a yellow
pallor splotching his thin cheeks. He seemed to be holding himself there
by an effort.

“Speak to them, Solomon--speak to them--you know how I came by the
money! Speak to them--you know I am innocent!” cried the judge,
clutching his friend by the arm. Mahaffy opened his thin lips, but the
crowd drowned his voice in a roar.

“He's his partner--”

“There's no evidence against him,” said the sheriff.

A tall fellow, in a fringed hunting-shirt, shook a long finger under
Mahaffy's aquiline nose.

“You scoot--that's what--you make tracks! And if we ever see your ugly
face about here again, we'll--”

“You'll what?” inquired Mahaffy.

“We'll fix you out with feathers that won't molt, that's what!”

Mr. Mahaffy seemed to hesitate. His lean hands opened and closed, and he
met the eyes of the crowd with a bitter, venomous stare. Some one gave
him a shove and he staggered forward a step, snapping out a curse.
Before he could recover himself the shove was repeated.

“Lope on out of here!” yelled the tall fellow, who had first challenged
his right to remain in Pleasantville or its environs. As the crowd fell
apart to make way for him, willing hands were extended to give him the
needed impetus, and without special volition of his own.

Mahaffy was hurried toward the road. His hat was knocked flat on his
head--he turned with an angry snarl, the very embodiment of hate--but
again he was thrust forward. And then, somehow, his walk became a run
and the crowd started after him with delighted whoopings. Once more,
and for the last time, he faced about, giving the judge a hopeless,
despairing glance. His tormentors were snatching up sods and stones and
he had no choice. He turned, his long strides taking him swiftly over
the ground, with the air full of missiles at his back.

Before he had gone a hundred yards he abandoned the road and, turning
off across an unfenced field, ran toward the woods and swampy bottom.
Twenty men were in chase behind him. The judge was the sheriff's
prisoner--that official had settled that point--but Mr. Mahaffy was
common property, it was his cruel privilege to furnish excitement; his
keen rage was almost equal to the fear that urged him on. Then the woods
closed about him. His long legs, working tirelessly, carried him over
fallen logs and through tall tangled thickets, the voices behind him
growing more and more distant as he ran.




CHAPTER XII. THE FAMILY ON THE RAFT


That would unquestionably have been the end of Bob Yancy when he was
shot out into the muddy waters of the Elk River, had not Mr.
Richard Keppel Cavendish, variously known as Long-Legged Dick,
and Chills-and-Fever Cavendish, of Lincoln County, in the state of
Tennessee, some months previously and after unprecedented mental effort
on his part, decided that Lincoln County was no place for him. When
he had established this idea firmly in his own mind and in the mind of
Polly, his wife, he set about solving the problem of transportation.

Mr. Cavendish's paternal grandparent had drifted down the Holston and
Tennessee; and Mr. Cavendish's father, in his son's youth, had poled
up the Elk. Mr. Cavendish now determined to float down the Elk to its
juncture with the Tennessee, down the Tennessee to the Ohio, and if need
be, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and keep drifting until he found
some spot exactly suited to his taste. Temperamentally, he was well
adapted to drifting. No conception of vicarious activity could have been
more congenial.

With this end in view he had toiled through late winter and early
spring, building himself a raft on which to transport his few belongings
and his numerous family; there were six little Cavendishes, and they
ranged in years from four to eleven; there was in addition the baby, who
was always enumerated separately. This particular infant Mr. Cavendish
said he wouldn't take a million dollars for. He usually added feelingly
that he wouldn't give a piece of chalk for another one.

June found him aboard his raft with all his earthly possessions bestowed
about him, awaiting the rains and freshets that were to waft him
effortless into a newer country where he should have a white man's
chance. At last the rains came, and he cast off from the bank at that
unsalubrious spot where his father had elected to build his cabin on a
strip of level bottom subject to periodic inundation. Wishing fully to
profit by the floods and reach the big water without delay, Cavendish
ran the raft twenty-four hours at a stretch, sleeping by day while Polly
managed the great sweep, only calling him when some dangerous bit of the
river was to be navigated. Thus it happened that as Murrell and Slosson
were dragging Yancy down the lane, Cavendish was just rounding a bend in
the Elk, a quarter of a mile distant. Leaning loosely against the long
handle of his sweep, he was watching the lane of bright water that ran
between the black shadows cast by the trees on either bank. He was in
shirt and trousers, barefoot and bareheaded, and his face, mild and
contemplative, wore an expression of dreamy contentment.

Suddenly its expression changed. He became alert and watchful. He had
heard a dull splash. Thinking that some tree had been swept into the
flood, he sought to pierce the darkness that lay along the shore. Five
or six minutes passed as the raft glided along without sound. He was
about to relapse into his former attitude of listless ease when he
caught sight of some object in the eddy that swept alongside. Mr.
Cavendish promptly detached himself from the handle of the sweep and ran
to the edge of the raft.

“Good Lord--what's that!” he gasped, but he already knew it was a face,
livid and blood-streaked. Dropping on his knees he reached out a pair
of long arms and made a dexterous grab, and his fingers closed on the
collar of Yancy's shirt. “Neighbor, I certainly have got you!” said
Cavendish, between his teeth. He drew Yancy close alongside the raft,
and, slipping a hand under each arm, pulled him clear of the water. The
swift current swept the raft on down the stream. It rode fairly in the
center of the lane of light, but no eye had observed its passing. Mr.
Cavendish stood erect and stared down at the blood-stained face, then he
dropped on his knees again and began a hurried examination of the still
figure. “There's a little life here--not much, but some--you was well
worth fishing up!” he said approvingly, after a brief interval. “Polly!”
 he called, raising his voice.

This brought Mrs. Cavendish from one of the two cabins that occupied the
center of the raft. She was a young woman, still very comely, though
of a matronly plumpness. She was in her nightgown, and when she caught
sight of Yancy she uttered a shriek and fled back into the shanty.

“I declare, Dick, you might ha' told a body you wa'n't alone!” she said
reproachfully.

Her cry had aroused the other denizens of the raft. The tow heads of the
six little Cavendishes rose promptly from a long bolster in the smaller
of the two shanties, and as promptly six little Cavendishes, each draped
in a single non-committal garment, apparently cut by one pattern and not
at all according to the wearer's years or length of limb, tumbled forth
from their shelter.

“Sho', Polly, he's senseless! But you dress and come here quick. Now,
you young folks, don't you tetch him!” for the six small Cavendishes,
excited beyond measure, were crowding and shoving for a nearer sight of
Yancy. They began to pelt their father with questions. Who was it? Sho',
in the river? Sho', all cut up like that--who'd cut him? Had he hurt
himself? Was he throwed in? When did pop fish him out? Was he dead? Why
did he lay like that and not move or speak--sho'! This and much more
was flung at Mr. Cavendish all in one breath, and each eager questioner
seized him by the hand, the dangling sleeve of his shirt, or his
trousers--they clutched him from all sides. “I never seen such a
family!” said Mr. Cavendish helplessly. “Now, you-all shut up, or I 'low
I'll lay into you!”

Mrs. Cavendish's appearance created a diversion in his favor. The six
rushed on her tumultously. They seized her hands or struggled for a
fragment of her skirt to hold while they poured out their tale. Pop had
fished up a man--he'd been throwed in the river! Pop didn't know if he
was dead or not--he was all cut and bloody.

“I declare, I've a mind to skin you if you don't keep still! Miss
Constance,” Polly addressed her eldest child, “I'm surprised at you! You
might be a heathen savage for all you got on your back--get into some
duds this instant!” Cavendish was on his knees again beside Yancy, and
Polly, by a determined effort, rid herself of the children. “Why, he's a
grand-looking man, ain't he?” she cried. “La, what a pity!”

“You can feel his heart beat, and he's bleeding some,” said Cavendish.

“Let me see--just barely flutters, don't it? Henry, go mind the sweep
and see we don't get aground! Keppel, you start a fire and warm some
water! Connie, you tear up my other petticoat for bandages now, stir
around, all of you!” And then began a period of breathless activity.
They first lifted Yancy into the circle of illumination cast by the fire
Keppel had started on the hearth of flat stones before the shanties.
Then, with Constance to hold a pan of warm water, Mrs. Cavendish deftly
bathed the gaping wound in Yancy's shoulder where Murrell had driven his
knife. This she bandaged with strips torn from her petticoat. Next she
began on the ragged cut left by Slosson's club.

“He's got a right to be dead!” said Cavendish.

“Get the shears, Dick--I must snip away some of his hair.”

All this while the four half-naked youngest Cavendishes, very still
now, stood about the stone hearth in the chill dawn and watched their
mother's surgery with a breathless interest. Only the outcast Henry at
the sweep ever and anon lifted his voice between sobs of mingled rage
and disappointment, and demanded what was doing.

“Think he is going to die, Polly?” whispered Cavendish at length. Their
heads, hers very black and glossy, his very blond, were close together
as they bent above the injured man.

“I never say a body's going to die until he's dead,” said Polly. “He's
still breathing, and a Christian has got to do what they can. Don't you
think you ought to tie up?”

“The freshet's leaving us. I'll run until we hit the big water down by
Pleasantville, and then tie up,” said Cavendish.

“I reckon we'd better lift him on to one of the beds--get his wet
clothes off and wrap him up warm,” said Polly.

“Oh, put him in our bed!” cried all the little Cavendishes.

And Yancy was borne into the smaller of the two shanties, where
presently his bandaged head rested on the long communal pillow. Then his
wet clothes were hung up to dry along with a portion of the family wash
which fluttered

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