Heart of the Blue Ridge Part 4

From the deck above came a contusion of fierce voices, a strident uproar of shouts and curses. Then, _The Bonita_ righted herself, tremulously, languidly, as one sore-stricken might sit up, very feebly. The sailors in the fore-peak, with a chorus of startled oaths, leaped from the bunks, and fled to the deck. Zeke followed.

Clinging to a stanchion, the mountaineer could distinguish vaguely, in the faint lights of the lanterns, the bows of a three-masted schooner, which had sheared through the port-side of _The Bonita_. The bowsprit hung far over the smaller ship, a wand of doom. The beating of the waves against the boat's side came gently under the rasping, crunching complaint of timber against timber in combat. The schooner's sails flapped softly in the light breeze. Zeke, watching and listening alertly, despite bewilderment, heard the roaring commands of a man invisible, somewhere above him, and guessed that this must be the captain of the schooner. He saw the crew of _The Bonita_ clambering one after another at speed, up the anchor chain at the bow of the destroyer. He realized that flight was the only road to safety. But, even as he was tensed to dart forward, he remembered his treasure of money under the bunk pillow.

On the instant, he rushed to the fore-peak, seized the wallet and the black bag, and fled again to the deck. At the moment when he reappeared, a gust of quickening breeze filled the schooner's sails.

The canvas bellied taut. The grinding, clashing clamor of the timbers swelled suddenly. The schooner wrenched herself free, and slipped, abruptly silent, away into the night and the mist. Ere Zeke reached the rail in his leap, the schooner had vanished. For a minute, he heard a medley of voices. Then, while he stood straining his eyes in despair, these sounds lessened--died. The mountaineer stood solitary and forsaken on the deck of a sinking ship.

Finally, Zeke spoke aloud in self-communion. The words rang a little tremulous, for he realized that he was at grips with death.

"Hit's what I gits fer fergittin'," was his regretful comment. "I reckon, if so be I'd ever got onto thet-thar schooner with this-hyar d.a.m.n' bag, she'd 'a' sunk, too. Or, leastways, they'd have chucked me overboard like Jonah, fer causin' the hull cussed trouble with this pesky black bag o' mine."

Zeke perceived that the doomed vessel was settling by the head. He surmised that time was short. Nevertheless, he took leisure for one duty he deemed of prime importance. With all his strength in a vicious heave, he cast the black bag from him into the sea.

"I hain't superst.i.tious," he remarked, sullenly; "thet is, not exzackly. An' I reckon I'm gittin' rid o' that conjure satchel a mite late. I guess. .h.i.t's done hit's d.a.m.nedest a'ready."

Inquiries during the leisurely voyaging through the ca.n.a.l had given Zeke knowledge concerning the life-belts. Now, he buckled one of them about his body hastily, for even his ignorance could not fail to interpret the steady settling of the vessel into the water. The strain of fighting forebears in the lad set him courageous in the face of death. But his blood was red and all a-tingle with the joy of life, and he was very loath to die. His heart yearned for the girl who loved him. His desire for her was a stabbing agony. The thought of his mother's dest.i.tution, deprived of him in her old age, was grievous.

But his anguish was over the girl--anguish for himself; yet more for her. The drizzle of the fog on his cheeks brought again a poignant memory of the mist that had enwrapped them on the stark rocks of the mountain. A savage revolt welled in him against the monstrous decree of fate. He cried out roughly a challenge to the elements. Then, in the next instant, he checked the futile outburst, and bethought him how best to meet the catastrophe.

The instinct of flight from the rising waters led Zeke to mount the pilot-house. The lanterns shed a flickering light here, and the youth uttered a cry of joy as his eyes fell on the life-raft. The shout was lost in the hissing of steam as the sea rushed in on the boilers. All the lights were extinguished now, save the running lamps with their containers of oil. Quickly, the noise from the boiler-room died out, and again there was silence, save for the occasional bourdoning of the horns or the mocking caress of the waves that lapped the vessel's sides--like a colossal serpent licking the prey it would devour betimes. In the stillness, Zeke wrought swiftly. He wasted no time over the fastenings. The blade of his knife slashed through the hemp lashings, and the raft lay clear. He made sure that it was free from the possibility of entanglement. Then, as the boat lurched sickeningly, like a drunken man to a fall, Zeke stretched himself face downward lengthwise of the tiny structure, and clenched his hands on the tubes. There was a period of dragging seconds, while _The Bonita_ swayed sluggishly, in a shuddering rhythm. Came the death spasm. The stern was tossed high; the bow plunged for the depths. Down and down--to the oyster rocks of Teach's Hole, in Pamlico Sound. As the vessel sank, the raft floated clear for a moment, then the suction drew it under, buffeted it--spewed it forth. It rode easily on the swirling waters, at last. As the commotion from the ship's sinking ceased, the raft moved smoothly on the surface, rocking gently with the pulse of the sea. Zeke, half-strangled, almost torn from his place by the grip of the water in the plunge, clung to his refuge with all the strength that was in him. And that strength prevailed. Soon, he could breathe fully once again, and the jaws of the sea gave over their gnawing. After the mortal peril through which he had won, Zeke found his case not so evil. The life was still in him, and he voiced a crude phrase of gratefulness to Him who is Lord of the deep waters, even as of the everlasting hills.

Near Teach's Hole, Ocrac.o.ke Inlet offers a shallow channel between the dunes from Pamlico Sound to the open sea. Here the varying tides rush angrily, lashed by the bulk of waves behind. To-night, the ebb bore with it a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l on which a lad clung, shivering. But the soul was still strong in him for all his plight. He dared believe that he would yet return safe to the mountains, to the love that awaited him there.

Once the castaway smiled wryly:

"I hain't superst.i.tious none--leastways, I dunno's I be," he muttered, doubtfully. "But hit's plumb lucky I got rid o' thet-thar dum black bag jest as I did, or I'd 'a' been a goner, sh.o.r.e!"

CHAPTER VI

The days dragged heavily for Plutina, after the departure of her lover. She endured the period of tense waiting as best she might, since endure she must, but this pa.s.sive loneliness, without a word from the man of her heart, was well-nigh intolerable. She did not weep--after that single pa.s.sionate outburst while yet her lips were warm from his kiss. She was not of the weak fiber to find a.s.suagement in many tears, nor had she nerves that needed the chemical soothing of flooded eyes. She had, indeed, strength sufficient for the trial. She bore her sorrow bravely enough, but it pierced her through and through. She knew her lover, and she knew herself. Because of that knowledge she was spared the shameful suffering of a woman who fears, with deadly fear, lest her lover be untrue. Plutina had never a doubt as to the faith of the absent one. A natural jealousy sometimes leaped in her bosom, at thought of him exposed to the wiles of women whom she suspected of all wantonness. But she had no cowardly thought that the fairest and most cunning of them could oust her from the shrine of Zeke's heart. Her great grief lay in the failure of any word from the traveler. The days became weeks; almost a month had gone since he held her in his arms, and still no message came. This was, in truth, strange enough to justify alarm. It was with difficulty that she drove back a temptation to imagine evil happenings. She went oftener the six miles to the Cherry Lane post-office.

When she descended the trail toward Thunder Branch this morning, she saw Zeke's mother standing in the doorway of the cabin on the far side of the stream. The bent figure of the old woman rested motionless, with one hand lifted to shade her eyes from the vivid sunlight, as she watched the girl's approach.

"Mornin', Tiny," she said tenderly, as the girl crossed the clearing.

"On yer way to the Lane, I reckon?"

"Mornin', Mis' Higgins," came the cheery answer. "Yes, I 'lowed as how ye'd love to hear, an' I c'd git away. The corn's laid by; the sorghum cane's done hoed. Alviry's gone to he'p Gran'pap with a bee-tree.

Hit's a big yaller poplar, up 'twixt Ted Hutchins' claim an' the ole mine-hole. Gran'pap 'lows as how hit 'll have to be cut an' split, an'

wuth hit--over a hundred pounds, all sour-wood honey, 'cept 'bout ten pounds early poplar. Gran'pap's right-smart tickled. I told Alviry to watch out he don't go an' tote half of it up to thet-thar Widder Brown. You-all must come over an' git what ye kin use o' the honey, Mis' Higgins, afore the widder gits her fingers in the jar."

"Ye don't opine thet-thar gran'pap o' your'n aims to git hitched ag'in at his age, do ye, Tiny? Hit'd be plumb scand'lous--an' him eighty past. At thet age, he's bound to have one foot in the grave, fer all he's so tarnation spry an' peart in his carryin's on."

"Lord knows what he'll do," the girl replied, carelessly. "He's allers been given credit fer havin' fotchin' ways with women. I hope he won't, though. They say, folks what marry upwards o' eighty is mighty short-lived."

The topic led Zeke's mother to broach apprehension of her own:

"Tiny, ye don't have no idee thet our Zeke's gone daffy on some o'

them Evish-lookin' critters down below, like ye showed me their picters in the city paper oncet?"

"Naw, no danger o' thet," was the stout a.s.surance. "Zeke's got too much sense. Besides, he hain't had no time to git rich yit. The paper done said as how them kind's arter the coin."

As she went her way, the girl's mind reveled in thoughts of the days to come, when Zeke should be rich in sooth, and his riches for her.

She swung her sun-bonnet in vigorous slaps against her bare legs, to scatter the ravenous mosquitoes and yellow flies, swarming from the thickets, and she smiled contentedly.

"P'r'aps, them women's got more edication 'n me," she mused aloud, complacently, "but I kin fill them silk stockin's plumb up." Her face grew brooding with a wistful regret in the sudden droop of the tender red lips. "I 'low I jest orter 'a' swung onto thet-thar neck o' his'n an' hollered fer Parson, and got spliced 'fore he went." She shook her head disconsolately. "Why, if he don't come back, I'll be worse nor the widders. Humph, I knows 'em--cats. They'll say: 'Tiny Siddon didn't never have no chance to git married--her disperzition an' her looks wa'n't compellin' 'nough to ketch a man.'"

The great dark eyes were clouded a little with bitter disappointment, when, two hours later, the girl came swiftly down the steep slopes from Cherry Lane, for once again there had been no letter for her.

Despite her courage, Plutina felt a chill of dismay before the mystery of this silence. Though faith was unshaken, bewilderment oppressed her spirit. She could not understand, and because she could not understand, her grief was heavy to bear. Then, presently, she chanced upon a new mystery for her distraction--though this was the easier to her solving.

As she descended into a hollow by Luffman's branch, which joins Thunder Branch a little way above the Higgins' clearing, Plutina's alert ears caught a sound that was not of the tumbling waters. Through all the noises of the stream where it leaped and sprayed in miniature falls over cluttering bowlders and fallen pines, she could distinguish the splashing of quick footsteps in the shallows. Some instinct of caution checked the girl's advance. Instead of going forward openly, she turned aside and approached the bank where crowding alders and ivy formed a screen. Here, she parted the vines stealthily, and peered up the water-course.

A man was descending the run with hurried strides, wading with bare feet, or springing from rock to rock where were the deeper pools. A Winchester nestled in the crook of his left arm; two huge bear-traps, the jaws wickedly fanged, were swung from a rope over his right shoulder; a short-helved ax was thrust within his belt. He wore only a cotton shirt open at the neck, dirty throughout, patched jeans trousers, and a soft hat, green from long use. Beneath the shading brim showed a loutish face, the coa.r.s.e features swollen from dissipation, the small black eyes bleared, yet alert and penetrating in their darting, furtive glances. It was Dan Hodges, a man of unsavory repute. The girl, though unafraid, blessed the instinct that had guided her to avoid a meeting.

There were two prime factors in Plutina's detestation of Hodges. The first was due to his insolence, as she deemed it, in aspiring for her favor. With little training in conventional ideas of delicacy, the girl had, nevertheless, a native refinement not always characteristic of her more-cultured sister women. There was to her something unspeakably repugnant in the fact that this b.e.s.t.i.a.l person should dare to think of her intimately. It was as if she were polluted by his dreaming of her kisses, of her yielding to his caresses. That he had so aspired she knew, for he had told her of his desire with the coa.r.s.e candor of his kind. Her spurning of the uncouth advances had excited his wrath; it had not destroyed his hopes. He had even ventured to renew his suit, after the news of an engagement between Plutina and Zeke had gone abroad. He had winced under the scourge of the girl'

scorn, but he had shown neither penitence nor remorse. Plutina had forborne any account of this trouble to her lover, lest, by bad blood between the two men, a worse thing befall.

The second cause of the girl's feeling was less direct, though of longer standing, and had to do with the death of her father. That Siddon, while yet in his prime, had been slain in a raid on a still by the revenue officers, and that despite the fact that he was not concerned in the affair, save by the unfortunate chance of being present. Plutina, though only a child at the time, could still remember the horror of that event. There was a singular personal guiltiness, too, in her feeling, for, on the occasion of the raid, her grandfather had been looking out from a balcony, and had seen the revenue men urging their horses up the trail, the sunlight glinting on their carbines. He had seized the great horn, to blow a warning to those at the secret still on the mountain above. Plutina could remember yet the grotesque bewilderment on his face, as no sound issued--then the wrath and despair. The children, in all innocence, had stuffed the horn with rags. The prank had thus, in a way, cost two lives--one, that of "Young" d.i.c.k Siddon. The owner of the raided still had been Dan Hodges, and him Plutina despised and hated with a virulence not at all Christian, but very human. She had all the old-time mountaineer's antipathy for the extortion, as it was esteemed, of the Federal Government, and her father's death had naturally inflamed her against those responsible for it. Yet, her loathing of Hodges caused her to regret that the man himself had escaped capture thus far, though twice his still had been destroyed, once within the year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Claudia Kimball Young under the direction of Louis J. Selznick._ A MOUNTAIN "STILL."]

A high, jutting wall of rock hid the stream where it bent sharply a little way from Plutina's shelter. Presently, she became aware that Hodges had paused thus beyond the range of her vision, and was busy there. She heard the blows of the ax. General distrust of the man stirred up in her a brisk curiosity concerning the nature of his action in this place. On a previous day, she had observed that the limpid waters of the brook had been sullied by the milky refuse from a still somewhere in the reaches above. Now, the presence of Dan Hodges was sufficient to prove the hidden still his. But the fact did not explain his business here. That it was something evil, she could not doubt, for the man and his gang were almost outlaws among their own people. They were known, though unpunished, thieves, as well as "moonshiners," and there were whispers of more dreadful things--of slain men vanished into the unsounded depths of the Devil's Cauldron.

The gorge of the community--careless as it had been of some laws in the past, and too ready to administer justice according to its own code--had risen against the vicious living of the gang that accepted Hodges as chief. It seemed to Plutina that duty conspired with curiosity to set her spying on the man.

The espionage, though toilsome enough, was not otherwise difficult.

Toward the bend, the banks rose sharply on both sides of the stream, forming a tiny canon for the channel. The steep slope on the east side, where the girl now ascended, was closely overgrown with laurel and little thickets of ground pine, through which she was hard beset to force her way--the more since she must move with what noiselessness she might. But her strength and skill compa.s.sed the affair with surprising quickness. Presently, she came to the brim of the little cliff, and lying outstretched, cautiously looked down. Already, a hideous idea had entered her mind, but she had rejected it with horror. What she now saw confirmed the thought she had not dared to harbor.

Within this bend of the brook, the lessening volume of the channel had left a patch of rich soil, heavily overgrown with lush gra.s.ses and cl.u.s.ters of flowering weeds. A faint trace of pa.s.sing steps ran across the bit of dry ground, the path of those that followed the stream's course. Fair in this dim trail, near the center of the plot, a stake had been driven deep. At the moment, Hodges was driving into the ground a similar stake, a yard further down. It was evident that the stakes had been previously left here in readiness, since he had not carried them in his descent, and the iron rings bound to them must have been attached in a forge. The two ma.s.sive traps were lying half-hidden in the luxuriant growth close by. As Plutina watched with affrighted intentness, the man finished driving the second stake. He lifted one of the traps, and carried it to the upper stake. With the aid of a stone for anvil, he succeeded in clumsily riveting the trap's length of chain to the ring on the stake. The like was done with the other trap at the lower stake. Then, the man undertook the setting of the traps. The task was accomplished very quickly for both, though the strength of the jaws taxed his muscles to their utmost. Finally, he strewed leaves, and bent gra.s.s, until no least gleam of metal betrayed the masked peril of the trail. Plutina, sick with the treacherous deviltry of the device, heard the grunt of satisfaction with which Hodges contemplated his finished work. Forthwith, he picked up his rifle, thrust the ax-helve within his belt, and set off up the gulch.

CHAPTER VII

There could be no doubt. Those ma.s.sive traps, with their cruel teeth of steel, meant by the makers for the holding of beasts, had been set here by Hodges for the snaring of men. The contrivance was fiendishly efficient. From her coign of vantage on the cliff top, Plutina could see, on a height above, the brush-covered distillery. A thin, blue column of smoke rose straight in the calm air, witness that the kettle was boiling over hickory logs, that a "run" of the liquor was being made. Plutina recalled that, in a recent raid against Hodges, the still had been captured and destroyed though the gang had escaped.

Such loss was disastrous, for the new copper and worm and fermenters meant a cost of a hundred dollars, a sum hard to come on in the mountain coves. Usually, the outfit is packed on the men's backs to hiding in the laurel, afterward shifted to another obscure nook by running water. It was plain that Hodges had grown more than ever venomous over the destruction of his still, and had no scruples as to the means he would employ to prevent a repet.i.tion of such catastrophe. No need now to fear lest sentinels be not alert. The natural path to the still was along the course of the stream. The unwary pa.s.ser over the tiny stretch of greensward on which the girl looked down, would follow the dim trail of footsteps, and so inevitably come within the clutch of the great jaws, which would hurl themselves together, rending and crunching the flesh between. The victim's shrieks of anguish under the a.s.sault would be a warning to the lawless men above. They would make ready and flee with their possessions, and be lost in the laurel once again. Yes, the device was simple, diabolically simple, and adequate. It required only that its executant should be without bowels of compa.s.sion.

Plutina, strong-nerved as she was, found herself shuddering as she realized the heinousness of this thing. The soft bloom of the roses in her cheeks faded to white; the dark radiance of the eyes was dimmed with horror; the exquisite lips were compressed harshly against their own quivering weakness. For Plutina, despite strength of body and sane poise of soul, was a gentle and tender woman, and the brutal project spread before her eyes was an offense to every sensibility. Then, very soon, the mood of pa.s.sive distress yielded to another emotion: a l.u.s.t for vengeance on the man who would insure his own safety thus, reckless of another's cost. A new idea came to the girl. At its first advent, she shrank from it, conscience-stricken, for it outraged the traditions of her people. But the idea returned, once and again. It seemed to her that the evil of the man justified her in any measure for his punishment. She had been bred to hate and despise a spy, but it was borne in on her now that duty required of her to turn informer against Dan Hodges. There was more even than the inflicting of punishment on the outlaw; there was the necessity of safeguarding the innocent from the menace of those hidden man-traps. Any "furriner"

from down below might wander here, whipping the stream; or any one of the neighborhood might chance on the spot. The Widow Higgins' heifers sometimes strayed; the old woman might come hither, seeking them.

Plutina shuddered again, before the terrible vision of the one who was like a mother to her, caught and mangled by the pointed fangs waiting amid the gra.s.ses below.

The question as to her right conduct in the affair remained with the girl, as she descended from the cliff, and made her way slowly homeward. She temporized by a precautionary measure. At the widow's cabin, she secured the old woman's promise not to go beyond the clearing in quest of the cattle. But the difficulty as to her course was not abated. Inclination urged her to advise the authorities concerning the locations of still and traps, and inclination was reinforced by justice. Yet, over against this, there were the powerful influence of her upbringing, the circ.u.mstances of her environment, the tragedy of her father's death, the savage resentment of her grandfather, already virulent against her lover--all forces to inspire enmity against the representatives of a law regarded as the violation of inalienable rights. True, there was growing an insidious change in the sentiment of the community. Where all had once been of accord, the better element were now becoming convinced that the illicit liquor-making cursed the mountains, rather than blessed. Undoubtedly, some effect of this had touched the girl herself, without her knowledge, else she had never thought to betray even such a miscreant as Hodges. There was, however, an abiding hate of the informer here, as always among decent folk, though along with it went reprobation of the traffic in moonshine. Plutina felt that she could never justify her action in the sight of her people, should she bring the revenue men into the mountain. Her own grandfather would curse her, and drive her forth. His feeling had been shown clearly in the case of Zeke. So, in her period of uncertainty and stress, there was none of whom the girl could take counsel. But, in the end, she decided that she must give warning to the United States marshal. The task demanded care. On absolute secrecy depended, in all likelihood, her very life.

The trove of honey had come opportunely, since the sale of a portion afforded Plutina plausible excuse for her trip to Joines' store.

There, a telephone had been recently installed, and it was the girl's intention to use this means of communication with the marshal. That the danger of detection was great, she was unhappily aware, but, she could devise no plan that seemed less perilous. So, early in the morning of the day following her discovery, she made her way along the North Wilkesboro' road, carrying twenty pounds of the sour-wood honey.

At the store, she did her trading, and afterward remained loitering, as is the custom of shoppers in the region. The interval of waiting seemed to her interminable, for trade was brisk. There was always someone near enough the telephone to overhear, for it was unprotected by a booth. But, finally, the customers lessened. The few remaining were in the front of the store, at a safe distance from the instrument which was on a shelf at the back. Plutina believed that her opportunity was come. She knew the amount of the toll, and had the necessary silver in her hand to slip into the box. Then, just as she was about to take down the receiver, her apprehensive glance, roving the room, fell on Ben York, who entered briskly, notwithstanding his seventy years, and came straight toward her. Plutina's lifted hand fell to her side, and dread was heavy on her. For Ben York was the distiller in Hodges' gang.