The Code of the Mountains Part 17

In the months that followed, Henry Falkins organized and drilled into some semblance of military form a company of militiamen. His men were enlisted from Falkins and Falerin territory, and, though he invited the Spooners to join them, the distance made it impracticable. Henry believed that by military training these people might be weaned from lawless intolerance to a rudimentary acceptance of discipline.

One day, Newt Spooner, having ridden over to Jackson, saw these raw amateurs going through their manual of arms, and he stood at the side and sneered contemptuously as he watched. But the Deacon, who watched, too, did not sneer. With a constant diplomacy Black Pete had rehabilitated his reputation, and, if any of the Falkins clan still disbelieved in his sincerity, he was lonely in his scepticism. Men on both sides ceased to speak of the "truce," and called it by the more permanent name of "peace." But, reflected the far-sighted Deacon, there might come an outbreak some day, and then it would be no advantage to the Spooners to have a hundred Falkinses take to the brush with the high-power military rifles. It would be just as well, if this militia idea were a good one, to carry it further. The county should have not one company--but two. Over in the section where the Spooners held dominance, the second should be mustered. So, in the course of time, the Spooner platoons were duly organized and taken into the state guard. The Deacon himself consented only to become a sergeant. Yet, from the inception, it was the sergeant, rather than the captain or lieutenant, who dictated every matter of importance.

The feeling between the erstwhile enemies had become outwardly so cordial that a challenge was given and accepted for a compet.i.tive drill, and Newt, who had at first scoffed and then yielded to the lure of the military, marched with his comrades the little matter of twenty miles to Jackson, bearing a Springfield rifle and wearing a state uniform.

He had seen Henry Falkins only once since that Fourth of July, and it was now October. The hills were ablaze with gold and burgundy and scarlet. Newt knew that Captain Falkins would not command his company that day: that he was in fact "down below." Had he not been a.s.sured of this, he would have stayed at home and sulked in the woods.

He was biding his time. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven.

And yet, in spite of the black shadows of a life which exalted the vindictive and scowled on every gracious thing, Newt Spooner felt to-day the stirring of a new emotion. In this novel game of playing soldier, he found, rather against his will, an interest that threatened to become an enthusiasm. For the first time in his lonely life, he began to taste, with a tang of relish, the pleasures of companionship. These men with whom he hiked accorded him a rough fellowship. At first, he had been suspicious and surly, but now, when they called him the "tough kid of Troublesome," he grinned sheepishly and without resentment. Newt was waking out of a sleep that had lasted since babyhood and that had been all nightmare.

The flaming hills with their veils of violet haze across the distances; the cheerful rustle of crisp leaves under foot; the whole autumnal gamut of color and fragrance and spice was softening the world, even to its hard men of the mountains. They swung their rifles and kits with a tramp-like slouchiness, and when the noon grew warm they insisted on hiking with their shirt-tails outside their trousers; but in their swinging gait was a tireless energy that could walk armory-trained men off their feet, and then, if called on, go fresh into battle.

They swung down Jay-bird Creek, and pa.s.sed the mouth of Fist-fight, and there, lying above its saw-mill, came to view a bit of landscape as much out of the picture as though it had been torn from another page of the geography and pasted there by mistake. At the edge of a town, so sprawling and ragged that one did not see it until he stumbled upon it out of a creek-bed gulch, spread the smooth campus of the college.

But, before they reached that point, the commanding officer halted his command.

"Boys," was his informal suggestion, "we're about to pa.s.s thet-there new-fangled college. I reckon we mout es well give them folks a treat.

Let's fall in an' march by there like sh.o.r.e-'nough soldiers."

Newt Spooner happened to be the file of his four, and as they trailed by the cheering little group of students, the ex-convict saw "Clem's gal"

leaning on the palings, and though he did not know why, he felt something akin to pride and excitement, and straightened his shoulders, and bore his rifle more jauntily. Minerva leaned forward, waving her sun-bonnet, and called out, "Newt, I hope you boys win," and the lad marched on, strangely pleased.

In that picture of men marching in ordered ranks, and wearing the uniform which denoted service, she thought she saw a long step toward conversion, and an approach to a better standard, and Minerva, too, felt a flutter of pleasure as she watched the column disappear around the curve of the road with its yellow dust-cloud clinging in its wake.

The militia officer from the bluegra.s.s, who had come to act as umpire, masked his smile as he judged that contest. Then the amus.e.m.e.nt died, and he remembered Napoleon's criterion: "The best soldier is he who can bivouac shelterless, throughout the year."

A temporary rifle-range had been established, and in the improvised pit, with a fifty-year-old sergeant acting as target-marker, sat the officer from "down below." The mountaineer squatted like a clay effigy on his heels, and smoked a cob pipe.

"Sergeant," suggested the officer in a pause, during the overhead shrieking of rifle-bullets, "in case trouble started down here in the hills--I mean if soldiers were called out--what do you think these men would do? Could they be relied on?"

The mountaineer drew a long puff from his pipe, and smiled grimly.

"Wall, now, _lew_-tenant," he drawled thoughtfully, "I'll jest tell ye ther truth. Ef thar was ter be trouble _somewhars else_ these-here fellers would be all right; but jest right round hyar--well, I hain't so plumb sh.o.r.e."

"Then you think--?" The officer left the question unfinished, and the target-marker again grinned.

"I hain't thinkin' nothin' much, but ye kin jedge yerself, _lew_-tenant, thet ef a couple of hundred fellers with these-hyar fur-shootin' guns was ter take ter the brush, thar mout be some h.e.l.l ter pay fer a spell.

I kinder reckon," he added gravely, "thet, ef things bust loose hyar-abouts, hit mout be a right-good idee ter take all these fellers up to Loueyville and lock 'em up in the jail-house thar. It mout be a right-good idea."

CHAPTER XV

A man whose outlook on life had been broader than Newt's, and whose brain did not receive constant poisoning from within, would have softened that fall and winter, because a new influence was working upon him.

The influence was Minerva, and the boy found himself, as the splendid fall died swiftly into the unspeakable desolation of a mountain winter, counting the days between her visits to the cabin. But of this he said nothing, and the only evidences he gave to her at first were mute evidences, and a greater ferocity in suppressing the spirit of nagging and persecution to which his mother and sister drifted with inevitable perversity. When the girl returned at Christmas, after a longer absence than usual, she found, to her astonishment, the contour of the cabin altered. Newt had thrown against one end an additional room. It was a simple annex of hewn logs and puncheon floor with a clay-daubed chimney and no windows, but it was tight-c.h.i.n.ked and solidly weather-tight. When she asked about it, her step-mother sniffed contemptuously that it was some of "Newty's foolishness." Later, when the boy himself came in and saw her sitting with the family circle before the fire in the main cabin, he shuffled his feet clumsily, and seemed unwilling to meet her eyes. A great embarra.s.sment was on him and he was more diffident in her presence than he had ever been before. The girl saw it and wondered, and, when she could do so without attracting too much attention, she found an opportunity to lead him outside.

"M'nervy," the boy said shortly, when they were alone, "sence ye've been a-consortin' with them-thar fotched-on teachers at the school, hit seems like ye hain't got much use fer us plain folks. I reckon ye're right-smart ashamed ter acknowledge ter them folks who yore kin air."

"Oh, Newty!" she exclaimed, with a world of surprise and reproach in her voice. Her face flamed hotly; for, to the mountain idea, disloyalty to "kith and kin" is the most unpardonable of offenses. It was the first time she had ever called him Newty. They were standing out in the icy air of the door-yard.

Inside the main cabin, the family huddled before the fire, as uncommunicative as cattle. The pall of the black squalor had been tightening about the girl's heart like an impalpable constrictor and almost strangling it. Outside, the bitter wind lashed her calico skirt about her slim ankles, and cut like a knife. The boy, who wore no overcoat, stamped his feet, and thrust his chapped and reddened hands into his threadbare pockets.

"Oh, Newty," she expostulated again indignantly, "I thought ye knew me better then ter accuse me of bein' ashamed of my own folks!"

"They hain't your'n," snorted the lad in a queer, hard voice. "Thet is, none of 'em hain't your'n barrin' yore pap. I hain't sayin' nothin'

'gainst Clem ter ye, cause ye're his gal; but the rest on 'em is my folks and I reckon I kin say what I likes. I hain't never had a friend in this house twell ye came hyar. I've sot in thar night atter night an'

listened at thet old man a-ravin' an' a cussin' twell, ef he wasn't my great-gran'pap, I'd hev choked him. I hear'n them women folks a-pickin'

on ye an' a pesterin' ye, an' I knows ye'd shake the dirt of this place offen yore feet an' quit hit for good, ef hit warn't thet ye 'lows they needs ye. Ye had ought ter do hit, M'nervy. n.o.body wouldn't blame ye."

The girl shook her head. The moon had peeped over the shoulder of a sugar-loaf peak, and flooded the world in cobalt. The stark sycamores along the creek-bank rose gaunt and gray, and the ragged picket fence and stile and barn were black etchings against the frosted hills. On the boy's face the silver light showed a tracery of bitterness and weariness. To Minerva it ceased to be the face of an ex-convict and a vindictive criminal. It was only the rather thin and wizened visage of a prematurely aged boy, who had, in his wild-animal sort of way, undertaken to be her champion. He had undertaken it much as the dog with a name for ferocity might indicate its devotion to someone whose hand had not been afraid to caress its unlovely muzzle. She impulsively stretched out her hand and laid it on his coat-sleeve, and his arm shook, not alone with the cold, but with a strange new agitation under a touch of kindness.

"Newty," she said softly, "why don't you shake the dirt of this place offen your feet?" Her talk mixed up strangely mountain vernacular and the more correct form of speech which they had striven to teach her, at the school.

Newt only looked at her with a short laugh.

"Whar'd I go?" he demanded fiercely. "What do I know? What could I do?

This is whar I b'longs." With a contemptuous jerk of his head toward the cabin, he added: "Them's my kind o' folks. I was born amongst 'em, an' I hain't been nowhars else except ther penitentiary."

It was on the point of her tongue to remind him that he had been to school; that he could read and write, and was young and strong, and that all the world lay open to him, but she waited. If she was to influence him, she must go slowly and guardedly. So, instead, she asked a question about the thing of which he had wanted to speak and concerning which he found himself suddenly tongue-tied.

"What's the new room, Newty?" she demanded.

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the boy with a sudden rush of color that even the moonlight failed to hide. "d.a.m.ned ef I didn't plumb fergit hit!" That was a lie, for he had not forgotten, only he had been too bashful to speak. Now he led her over and opened the door.

A fire was roaring inside on the hearth. The place was unfurnished except for a chair, a bed and a table, all home-made, but all clean and soundly carpentered. In the Frankfort prison, Newt had worked in the chair-factory.

"Ye see, M'nervy," he went on, floundering for words, "ye see, I hain't had nothin' much ter do round hyar, an' I thought hit mout kill some time ter sort of build this-hyar contraption. I 'lowed ye mout be a little more satisfied ef ye had a room of yore own, whar ye could go to, an' put ther bar acrost the door, when them women folks pestered ye, an'

tell 'em ter go ter h.e.l.l."

As the girl looked about the place--all her own--tears came welling to her eyes. How could this boy--more nearly a wild beast than any other human creature she had ever known--have had the delicacy to understand that longing for privacy and self-withdrawal which at times had almost maddened her with its intensity? She sank down in the one chair and sat with the flames playing on her face and lighting the tears that flowed noiselessly, and, when she looked up to thank her champion, he was gazing down on her with a face set in a mask-like tautness,--less it betray emotion of which he was ashamed.

But he had not missed the tears in her eyes and he knew that his humble service had moved her. Suddenly he knew something else. It was not only because she had been less unpleasant than the other members of the household that he had missed her when she went away and had looked forward to her home-coming. He had set up his shrine to hatred of mankind. His experience had taught him much of enmity and little of love. He knew in an impersonal fashion that men had sweethearts and went "sparking" with girls, but for all this sort of thing he had retained in his young manhood the same sort of contempt which most boys pa.s.s through and out-grow in earlier life.

Now, he stood there before the roar of the fire on the hearth that he had built and watched the shadows retreat into the corners of the room.

He saw Minerva sitting with her eyes still pensive and her lips still smiling, and the flames awakening soft color on her cheeks and mahogany glints in her hair.

She was beautiful. To a more discerning eye that would have long ago been apparent, but until now beauty had meant nothing to Newt Spooner.

It had not existed.

So, with the stunning effect of light breaking on eyes that have been sightless, the young man in the frayed and drab homespun, whose brain had been even more colorless and somber than his clothes, felt a wild hunger to take her in his arms and claim her for his own. That this thing had been growing in his mind, unrealized until this moment, he did not suspect. That it was much less sudden than it seemed, he did not understand. He knew only that he, Newt Spooner, va.s.sal to hate, was now in love, and, as he acknowledged it to himself, his face became drawn and pale, and his hands clenched themselves, for with the self-confession came utter despair.

She sat there in the chair he had made, by the hearth he had reared, in the room he had built--and the work had been that of a good craftsman because they had compelled him to learn in the penitentiary. Outside the winds were screaming about the roof-slabs he had nailed down. She was so close that he could put out his hand and touch her--and because now he wanted her beyond everything, even beyond the life of the man who had ruined his life, it was terribly clear that she could never be close to him except in such physical proximity as that of this moment.