A Knight of the Cumberland Part 5

"They are real ones all right," said Marston. "One of them killed a revenue officer at that front door last week, and was killed by the posse as he was trying to escape out of the back window. That house will be in ashes soon," he added. And it was.

As we rode down the mountain we told him about our trip and the people with whom we had spent the night--and all the time he was smiling curiously.

"Buck," he said. "Oh, yes, I know that little chap. Mart had him posted down there on the river to toll you to his house--to toll YOU," he added to the Blight. He pulled in his horse suddenly, turned and looked up toward the top of the mountain.

"Ah, I thought so." We all looked back. On the edge of the cliff, far upward, on which the "blind Tiger" sat was a gray horse, and on it was a man who, motionless, was looking down at us.

"He's been following you all the way," said the engineer.

"Who's been following us?" I asked.

"That's Mart up there--my friend and yours," said Marston to the Blight. "I'm rather glad I didn't meet you on the other side of the mountain--that's 'the Wild Dog.'" The Blight looked incredulous, but Marston knew the man and knew the horse.

So Mart--hard-working Mart--was the Wild Dog, and he was content to do the Blight all service without thanks, merely for the privilege of secretly seeing her face now and then; and yet he would not look upon that face when she was a guest under his roof and asleep.

Still, when we dropped behind the two girls I gave Marston the Hon.

Sam's warning, and for a moment he looked rather grave.

"Well," he said, smiling, "if I'm found in the road some day, you'll know who did it."

I shook my head. "Oh, no; he isn't that bad."

"I don't know," said Marston.

The smoke of the young engineer's c.o.ke ovens lay far below us and the Blight had never seen a c.o.ke-plant before. It looked like Hades even in the early dusk--the snake-like coil of fiery ovens stretching up the long, deep ravine, and the smoke-streaked clouds of fire, trailing like a yellow mist over them, with a fierce white blast shooting up here and there when the lid of an oven was raised, as though to add fresh temperature to some particular male-factor in some particular chamber of torment. Humanity about was joyous, however. Laughter and banter and song came from the cabins that lined the big ravine and the little ravines opening into it. A banjo tinkled at the entrance of "Possum Trot," sacred to the darkies. We moved toward it. On the stoop sat an ecstatic picker and in the dust shuffled three pickaninnies--one boy and two girls--the youngest not five years old. The crowd that was gathered about them gave way respectfully as we drew near; the little darkies showed their white teeth in jolly grins, and their feet shook the dust in happy compet.i.tion. I showered a few coins for the Blight and on we went--into the mouth of the many-peaked Gap. The night train was coming in and everybody had a smile of welcome for the Blight--post-office a.s.sistant, drug clerk, soda-water boy, telegraph operator, hostler, who came for the mules--and when tired, but happy, she slipped from her saddle to the ground, she then and there gave me what she usually reserves for Christmas morning, and that, too, while Marston was looking on. Over her shoulder I smiled at him.

That night Marston and the Blight sat under the vines on the porch until the late moon rose over Wallens Ridge, and, when bedtime came, the Blight said impatiently that she did not want to go home. She had to go, however, next day, but on the next Fourth of July she would surely come again; and, as the young engineer mounted his horse and set his face toward Black Mountain, I knew that until that day, for him, a blight would still be in the hills.

V. BACK TO THE HILLS

Winter drew a gray veil over the mountains, wove into it tiny jewels of frost and turned it many times into a mask of snow, before spring broke again among them and in Marston's impatient heart. No spring had ever been like that to him. The coming of young leaves and flowers and bird-song meant but one joy for the hills to him--the Blight was coming back to them. All those weary waiting months he had clung grimly to his work. He must have heard from her sometimes, else I think he would have gone to her; but I knew the Blight's pen was reluctant and casual for anybody, and, moreover, she was having a strenuous winter at home. That he knew as well, for he took one paper, at least, that he might simply read her name. He saw accounts of her many social doings as well, and ate his heart out as lovers have done for all time gone and will do for all time to come.

I, too, was away all winter, but I got back a month before the Blight, to learn much of interest that had come about. The Hon. Samuel Budd had ear-wagged himself into the legislature, had moved that Court-House, and was going to be State Senator. The Wild Dog had confined his reckless career to his own hills through the winter, but when spring came, migratory-like, he began to take frequent wing to the Gap. So far, he and Marston had never come into personal conflict, though Marston kept ever ready for him, and several times they had met in the road, eyed each other in pa.s.sing and made no hipward gesture at all. But then Marston had never met him when the Wild Dog was drunk--and when sober, I took it that the one act of kindness from the engineer always stayed his hand. But the Police Guard at the Gap saw him quite often--and to it he was a fearful and elusive nuisance. He seemed to be staying somewhere within a radius of ten miles, for every night or two he would circle about the town, yelling and firing his pistol, and when we chased him, escaping through the Gap or up the valley or down in Lee. Many plans were laid to catch him, but all failed, and finally he came in one day and gave himself up and paid his fines. Afterward I recalled that the time of this gracious surrender to law and order was but little subsequent to one morning when a woman who brought b.u.t.ter and eggs to my little sister casually asked when that "purty slim little gal with the snappin' black eyes was a-comin' back." And the little sister, pleased with the remembrance, had said cordially that she was coming soon.

Thereafter the Wild Dog was in town every day, and he behaved well until one Sat.u.r.day he got drunk again, and this time, by a peculiar chance, it was Marston again who leaped on him, wrenched his pistol away, and put him in the calaboose. Again he paid his fine, promptly visited a "blind Tiger," came back to town, emptied another pistol at Marston on sight and fled for the hills.

The enraged guard chased him for two days and from that day the Wild Dog was a marked man. The Guard wanted many men, but if they could have had their choice they would have picked out of the world of malefactors that same Wild Dog.

Why all this should have thrown the Hon. Samuel Budd into such gloom I could not understand--except that the Wild Dog had been so loyal a henchman to him in politics, but later I learned a better reason, that threatened to cost the Hon. Sam much more than the fines that, as I later learned, he had been paying for his mountain friend.

Meanwhile, the Blight was coming from her Northern home through the green lowlands of Jersey, the fat pastures of Maryland, and, as the white dresses of schoolgirls and the shining faces of darkies thickened at the stations, she knew that she was getting southward. All the way she was known and welcomed, and next morning she awoke with the keen air of the distant mountains in her nostrils and an expectant light in her happy eyes. At least the light was there when she stepped daintily from the dusty train and it leaped a little, I fancied, when Marston, bronzed and flushed, held out his sunburnt hand. Like a convent girl she babbled questions to the little sister as the dummy puffed along and she bubbled like wine over the midsummer glory of the hills. And well she might, for the glory of the mountains, full-leafed, shrouded in evening shadows, blue-veiled in the distance, was unspeakable, and through the Gap the sun was sending his last rays as though he, too, meant to take a peep at her before he started around the world to welcome her next day. And she must know everything at once. The anniversary of the Great Day on which all men were p.r.o.nounced free and equal was only ten days distant and preparations were going on. There would be a big crowd of mountaineers and there would be sports of all kinds, and games, but the tournament was to be the feature of the day.

"A tournament?" "Yes, a tournament," repeated the little sister, and Marston was going to ride and the mean thing would not tell what mediaeval name he meant to take. And the Hon. Sam Budd--did the Blight remember him? (Indeed, she did)--had a "dark horse," and he had bet heavily that his dark horse would win the tournament--whereat the little sister looked at Marston and at the Blight and smiled disdainfully. And the Wild Dog--DID she remember him? I checked the sister here with a glance, for Marston looked uncomfortable and the Blight saw me do it, and on the point of saying something she checked herself, and her face, I thought, paled a little.

That night I learned why--when she came in from the porch after Marston was gone. I saw she had wormed enough of the story out of him to worry her, for her face this time was distinctly pale. I would tell her no more than she knew, however, and then she said she was sure she had seen the Wild Dog herself that afternoon, sitting on his horse in the bushes near a station in Wildcat Valley. She was sure that he saw her, and his face had frightened her. I knew her fright was for Marston and not for herself, so I laughed at her fears. She was mistaken--Wild Dog was an outlaw now and he would not dare appear at the Gap, and there was no chance that he could harm her or Marston. And yet I was uneasy.

It must have been a happy ten days for those two young people. Every afternoon Marston would come in from the mines and they would go off horseback together, over ground that I well knew--for I had been all over it myself--up through the gray-peaked rhododendron-bordered Gap with the swirling water below them and the gray rock high above where another such foolish lover lost his life, climbing to get a flower for his sweetheart, or down the winding dirt road into Lee, or up through the beech woods behind Imboden Hill, or climbing the spur of Morris's Farm to watch the sunset over the majestic Big Black Mountains, where the Wild Dog lived, and back through the fragrant, cool, moonlit woods.

He was doing his best, Marston was, and he was having trouble--as every man should. And that trouble I knew even better than he, for I had once known a Southern girl who was so tender of heart that she could refuse no man who really loved her she accepted him and sent him to her father, who did all of her refusing for her. And I knew no man would know that he had won the Blight until he had her at the altar and the priestly hand of benediction was above her head.

Of such kind was the Blight. Every night when they came in I could read the story of the day, always in his face and sometimes in hers; and it was a series of ups and downs that must have wrung the boy's heart bloodless. Still I was in good hope for him, until the crisis came on the night before the Fourth. The quarrel was as plain as though typewritten on the face of each. Marston would not come in that night and the Blight went dinnerless to bed and cried herself to sleep. She told the little sister that she had seen the Wild Dog again peering through the bushes, and that she was frightened. That was her explanation--but I guessed a better one.

VI. THE GREAT DAY

It was a day to make glad the heart of slave or freeman. The earth was cool from a night-long rain, and a gentle breeze fanned coolness from the north all day long. The clouds were snow-white, tumbling, ever-moving, and between them the sky showed blue and deep. Gra.s.s, leaf, weed and flower were in the richness that comes to the green things of the earth just before that full tide of summer whose foam is drifting thistle down. The air was clear and the mountains seemed to have brushed the haze from their faces and drawn nearer that they, too, might better see the doings of that day.

From the four winds of heaven, that morning, came the brave and the free. Up from Lee, down from Little Stone Gap, and from over in Scott, came the valley-farmers--horseback, in buggies, hacks, two-horse wagons, with wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, in white dresses, flowered hats, and many ribbons, and with dinner-baskets stuffed with good things to eat--old ham, young chicken, angel-cake and blackberry wine--to be spread in the sunless shade of great poplar and oak. From b.u.m Hollow and Wildcat Valley and from up the slopes that lead to Cracker's Neck came smaller tillers of the soil--as yet but faintly marked by the gewgaw trappings of the outer world; while from beyond High k.n.o.b, whose crown is in cloud-land, and through the Gap, came the mountaineer in the primitive simplicity of home spun and cowhide, wide-brimmed hat and poke-bonnet, quaint speech, and slouching gait. Through the Gap he came in two streams--the Virginians from Crab Orchard and Wise and d.i.c.kinson, the Kentuckians from Letcher and feudal Harlan, beyond the Big Black--and not a man carried a weapon in sight, for the stern spirit of that Police Guard at the Gap was respected wide and far. Into the town, which sits on a plateau some twenty feet above the level of the two rivers that all but encircle it, they poured, hitching their horses in the strip of woods that runs through the heart of the place, and broad ens into a primeval park that, fan-like, opens on the oval level field where all things happen on the Fourth of July. About the street they loitered--lovers hand in hand--eating fruit and candy and drinking soda-water, or sat on the curb-stone, mothers with babies at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and toddling children clinging close--all waiting for the celebration to begin.

It was a great day for the Hon. Samuel Budd. With a cheery smile and beaming goggles, he moved among his const.i.tuents, joking with yokels, saying nice things to mothers, paying gallantries to girls, and chucking babies under the chin. He felt popular and he was--so popular that he had begun to see himself with prophetic eye in a congressional seat at no distant day; and yet, withal, he was not wholly happy.

"Do you know," he said, "them fellers I made bets with in the tournament got together this morning and decided, all of 'em, that they wouldn't let me off? Jerusalem, it's most five hundred dollars!" And, looking the picture of dismay, he told me his dilemma. It seems that his "dark horse" was none other than the Wild Dog, who had been practising at home for this tournament for nearly a year; and now that the Wild Dog was an outlaw, he, of course, wouldn't and couldn't come to the Gap. And said the Hon. Sam Budd:

"Them fellers says I bet I'd BRING IN a dark horse who would win this tournament, and if I don't BRING him in, I lose just the same as though I had brought him in and he hadn't won. An' I reckon they've got me."

"I guess they have."

"It would have been like pickin' money off a blackberry-bush, for I was goin' to let the Wild Dog have that black horse o' mine--the steadiest and fastest runner in this country--and my, how that fellow can pick off the rings! He's been a-practising for a year, and I believe he could run the point o' that spear of his through a lady's finger-ring."

"You'd better get somebody else."

"Ah--that's it. The Wild Dog sent word he'd send over another feller, named Dave Branham, who has been practising with him, who's just as good, he says, as he is. I'm looking for him at twelve o'clock, an' I'm goin' to take him down an' see what he can do on that black horse o'

mine. But if he's no good, I lose five hundred, all right," and he sloped away to his duties. For it was the Hon. Sam who was master of ceremonies that day. He was due now to read the Declaration of Independence in a poplar grove to all who would listen; he was to act as umpire at the championship base-ball game in the afternoon, and he was to give the "Charge" to the a.s.sembled knights before the tournament.

At ten o'clock the games began--and I took the Blight and the little sister down to the "grandstand"--several tiers of backless benches with leaves for a canopy and the river singing through rhododendrons behind.

There was jumping broad and high, and a 100-yard dash and hurdling and throwing the hammer, which the Blight said were not interesting--they were too much like college sports--and she wanted to see the base-ball game and the tournament. And yet Marston was in them all--dogged and resistless--his teeth set and his eyes anywhere but lifted toward the Blight, who secretly proud, as I believed, but openly defiant, mentioned not his name even when he lost, which was twice only.

"Pretty good, isn't he?" I said.

"Who?" she said indifferently.

"Oh, n.o.body," I said, turning to smile, but not turning quickly enough.

"What's the matter with you?" asked the Blight sharply.

"Nothing, nothing at all," I said, and straightway the Blight thought she wanted to go home. The thunder of the Declaration was still rumbling in the poplar grove.

"That's the Hon. Sam Budd," I said.

"Don't you want to hear him?"

"I don't care who it is and I don't want to hear him and I think you are hateful."