Judith of the Cumberlands Part 12

"I was told it was a short cut," said Bonbright controlling his temper. A man who was justice of the peace, going home to get ready to try a case on the morrow, must not embroil himself.

"Good Lord!" scoffed Blatch. "You claim to be mountain raised, and tell me you think this is a short cut from whar you was at to Nancy Cyard's? I reckon you'll have to make up another tale."

Bonbright became suddenly aware that he was surrounded, two of the men who were with Turrentine having slipped past him and appearing now as blots of blacker shadow against the trees on either side of the path by which he had come. Turrentine and the remaining man barred the way ahead; on the one side was the sheer descent of the bluff; on the other the rough, broken rise.

It was like a bad dream. With his usual forthright directness he spoke out.

"What is it you want of me--all of you? This meeting never came about by chance."

Blatch shook his head. "Yo' mighty right it didn't," he said. "Me an' the boys has a word to speak with you, and when we ketch you walkin' on our land in the middle o' the night--with whatever intentions--we think the time has come for talkin'."

"Andy! Jeff! Is that you?" Creed, the rash, called over his shoulder to the two behind him.

An inarticulate growl answered, and then a boyish voice began,

"Yo' mighty free with folks' names, you Creed Bonbright. Me and my brother both told you what we thought o' you when you come to the jail. I told you then you'd be run out of the Turkey Tracks ef you tried to come up here. We don't want no spies."

"Spies!" echoed Creed with a rising note of anger in his voice. "Who said I was a spy? What should I be spying on?"

"Yo' friend Mr. Dan Haley might 'a' said you was a spy," suggested Andy's higher pitched tones. "As for what you'd be a-spyin' on you know best.

We're all mighty peaceable, law-abidin' folks in the Turkey Tracks. I don't know of nothin' that we're apt to break the law about 'less'n it would be beatin' up and runnin' out a spy that----"

The childish bravado of this speech evidently displeased Blatch, who wanted the thing done and over with. His heavier, grating tones broke in,

"They's jest one thing to be said to you, Creed Bonbright. You've got to get out of the Turkey Tracks--and get quick. Air ye goin'?"

"No!" Creed flung back at him. "When I take my orders from you it will be a mighty cold day. I came up here in the Turkey Tracks to do a good work among my own people. I'm going to stay here and do it in my own way. Is that you, Wade Turrentine? What have you got to say to me?"

The second of the men who faced him stirred uneasily at the mention of his name. It rankled in the expectant bridegroom's heart that all he could complain of concerning Creed Bonbright was that Huldah had thrown herself in his way and forced a kiss upon him--not that Bonbright had been the amatory aggressor!

"I say what Blatch says," growled Wade as though the words stuck in his throat.

More and more the whole thing was like a nightmare to Creed; he felt as though with sufficient effort he might throw it off and wake. The four men hung at the path-side eyeing him, motionless if he were still, moving only if he stirred. Even this scarcely gave him a complete understanding of the gravity of his situation.

"Well," he said finally, "I'm going on home. If any of you boys has anything to say to me, to-morrow or any day after--you know where to find me."

He made as though to pa.s.s; but Blatch Turrentine stepped swiftly to the middle of the pathway and stood breathing a little short.

"No, by G.o.d, we don't!" he panted. "Ef we let you to go this night--we don't know whar we'll ever find you again. Mebbe you've got yo' budget made up--on yo' way to yo' friend Mr. Dan Haley right now. _Ye don't go from here_!"

Instinctively Creed fell back a step. It was out at last--this was neither more nor less than a waylaying. Did they mean to kill him? Blatch Turrentine had crouched where he stood, and even as the question went through the victim's mind, he launched himself with that sudden frightful quickness bodily upon Creed.

It would seem that the slighter man must be borne down by the onset. But Bonbright gathered himself, his arms shot out and gripped his a.s.sailant midway. Struggling, panting, gasping, stamping, they wrenched and swayed, the three who watched them holding aloof. Then with a sheer effort of strength Creed tore the heavier man from his footing and lifted him clear of the ground.

With a little sobbing oath Andy ran in. Bonbright could have heaved the man he held over his shoulder in that terrific fall well known to deadly wrestling. Wade's stern, "Sst! Git back there!" stopped the boy. Even as Creed's muscles knotted themselves to the supreme effort came sudden memory of what he must stand for to these people. It was his right to defend his own life; he must not, in any extremity, take that of another.

His grip relaxed. Turrentine partially got his feet again; his arms were free; the right made a swift movement, and Creed caught the gleam of a knife-blade. Without volition of his own he flung all his weight and strength into one mighty movement that hurled man and weapon from him.

Plunging, staggering, clutching at the air, Turrentine gave ground. The moonlight flickered on the blade in his upflung hand as, with a strangled hoa.r.s.e cry he reeled backward over the bluff.

There was a rending sound of breaking branches, a noise of rolling rocks; then deadly silence. For a long moment the men left standing on the cliff strained eyes and ears to where Blatch had gone down, then,

"Keep off!" shouted Creed as the three others began silently to close in on him. "Stand back, boys. We've had enough of this. Draw off and let me get down and see what's happened to him." He kept slowly backing away, striving not to be hemmed in against the rock behind him. The others warily followed.

"Let you down and finish him, ye mean--don't ye?" screamed Andy with all a boy's senseless rage.

"You're a fine one to bring law and order into the Turkey Tracks," Wade taunted savagely. "You've brought murder--that's what you've done."

"He drew a knife on me," cried Bonbright. "You all saw that. I only shoved him away. I never meant to throw him over the bluff."

"n.o.body seen no knife but you, Creed Bonbright," Jeff doggedly a.s.severated. "All three of us seen you fling Blatch over the bluff. You ain't in no court of law now. Yo' lies won't do you no good. Yo' where we kill the feller that done the killin'."

"How?" said Creed, still backing, feeling his way slowly, seeking for some break in the rise behind, the others coming a little closer. "By jumpin' on to him somewhere out at night, four to one--or even three to one?"

"Yes, by G.o.d! thataway, ef we cain't do it no better way," panted Wade.

Years before--heaven knows how many--a little seep of water began to gather between two huge stones in the small broken bluff behind Creed.

Winter after winter the crevice through which the trickle came enlarged, the water caught in a natural basin and froze with all its puny might to heave the stones apart. The winter before this slow process had closed leaving a wedge of rock trembling upon its base, ready to fall into a crevice. Yet the opening was masked with vine leaves, and when the spring rains finally washed away the mould and the crude doorway tottered and sank, the gap thus left was unnoted, invisible to the sharpest eye.

Bonbright pressing close against the rock to pa.s.s, stepping warily when it was forward, but hugging his barrier as a safety, missed his footing, and slipped almost without a sound into this opening. For a moment he sustained himself holding to tree roots, hearkening to the voices of those above him.

"Wade--you fool! What did you let him get a-past you for?"

And then Wade's heavier tones, "I didn't. He run back yo' way."

He could hear their footsteps pounding to and fro, their hoa.r.s.e cries which finally settled down into a demand for a lantern.

"We can't find Blatch nor do nothing for him, nor git on the track of Bonbright nor nothin' else, without a lantern. You Jeff, run round to the still; me and Andy'll go back and fetch pap."

Creed sought cautiously for footing, lost all hold, and began a headlong descent.

Low limbs thrashed his face and body; again and again his head was dashed against rocks or tree stems; his forehead was gashed; the blood poured into his eyes; he rolled and bounded and slid down and down and down the crevice, and into the ravine, bruised, bleeding, breathless, blinded and choked by blood and earth and gravel. He was more than half unconscious when he brought up at last with a rib-smashing thump upon a sapling, and there he clung like a dazed animal, gasping.

Slowly, as his breath came back to him, and he cleared the blood and dust from his eyes, Creed became aware of a dim glow coming through the bushes in one direction. For some time he watched it, making ready to get away as quickly as possible, since this must be on Blatch Turrentine's land, and the light came probably from some of Blatch's party searching for Turrentine himself, or for Creed.

But when he noted that the illumination was steady and stationary, he began to move hesitatingly in its direction. He had gone probably two or three hundred feet when he came to a place whence he had an un.o.bstructed view. The light shone out from the cramped opening of a cave. He went nearer in a sort of daze. There was n.o.body to intercept him, Blatch and the boys, whom he had left on the bluff above, when he so unexpectedly descended from it, being the only sentinels out. No approach was looked for from the quarter where he now was, and he found himself, gazing directly into Blatch Turrentine's blockaded still. He could distinctly see Jim Cal and the fellow Taylor Stribling moving about within the cave.

They were attending to a run of whiskey. While Bonbright stood motionless, not yet fully comprehending the sinister colour his presence might wear, there was the thud of running footsteps, Jeff Turrentine rounded the boulder on the other side of the cave and called aloud to those within,

"Jim Cal! Taylor! Buck! Creed Bonbright's killed Blatch--flung him clean over the bluff--and got plumb away from us! Bring a lantern you-all.

We've got to hunt for Blatch in under Foeman's Bluff--I'll show you whar."

Silently Creed drew back into the dense undergrowth. He knew where he was, now. As he retreated swiftly in the opposite direction from that in which Jeff had approached, he could vaguely hear the excited voices at the still, questioning, replying, denouncing, exclaiming. Presently he came out upon the main trail, rounded the Gulch, heading for the big road and Nancy Card's cabin, his soul sick within him at the events of the evening, bitterly regretting the explicit and unwelcome knowledge of the secret still which had been forced upon him, feeling himself now a spy indeed--a spy and a murderer.

He walked with long nervous strides; beaten and bruised though he was, he was unconscious of fatigue; the grief and regret that surged within him were as an anodyne to physical pain, and it was less than half an hour later that he opened the door of Nancy Card's cabin, his white face scratched and bleeding, his torn hands, too, covered with blood, his clothing rent and earth-stained, his eyes wild and pain-bright.

"Good Lord, boy! What's the matter with ye?" cried the old woman, coming toward him in terror, both hands out. "I sot up for ye, 'caze Pony he jest come from Hepzibah an' said that spiled-rotten Andy an' that feisty Jeff 'lowed ye was a spy an' they was a-goin' to run ye out of the Turkey Tracks."

She laid hold of him and examined him with anxious eyes.

"I was plumb werried about ye. I knowed in reason they was a-goin' to be trouble at that fool play-party."