The Code of the Mountains Part 9

"Thet's little Newt," shouted the mother, bending her lips close to his ear. The old man sat foolishly blinking for a time as his wandering thoughts came back to a focus.

Finally, he brandished his long staff and stormed weakly.

"Ye hadn't oughter suffered yeself ter be penitentiaried. In my day no Spooner wouldn't 'a' done hit. Ye air the fust one thet's ever wore stripes...."

"I wouldn't of gone thar nuther, ef my own kin hed a-stood by me,"

blazed the boy with an evil glitter in his eye.

"Don't pay him no mind, Newt," hastily admonished his mother; "he hain't noways responsible. He's plumb fitty."

"Why the h.e.l.l don't he die?" demanded the youth, gazing down contemptuously on the withered and decaying figure.

"I'm kinder tuckered out," he added a moment later. "I reckon I'll lay down."

Such was Newt Spooner's home-coming.

CHAPTER IX

On the morning after the convict's return, in the hour when the mists still hung in wraith-like fogs over the slopes, Newt and the other men of the household gathered around the kitchen table while his mother and sister, maintaining their position of mere women, served them standing.

They ate in sordid silence, stooping low over their plates and neglecting their forks.

The food was perhaps less good than that which the penitentiary furnished its inmates. The bodies of dead bees floated in the wild honey and to a palate accustomed to more delicate provender the reeking grease in which everything floated would have induced nausea, but it was the food upon which the former convict had been reared, and he greedily bolted it. As soon as he had finished his breakfast he rose, and, picking up his rifle, sauntered toward the door. This he did with a belligerent air, for he knew the simple laws of native life. The land and cabin had belonged to his father, and the boy felt that he needed no invitation to return and take up his residence there. None the less, if he was to stay, he would be expected to a.s.sume his just share in the burdens of daily work. For the present, however, he meant to take a vacation; to tramp the hillsides and see how far he had lost his knack with the rifle. So, he filled his pocket with cartridges, and strolled out of the door, kicking from his way several trespa.s.sing chickens that were exploring the interior of the room. As he pa.s.sed the barn, Clem and "Little Luke" were feeding the mule and the hogs. Newt paused for a moment and watched them, making no offer to a.s.sist, and they for their part made no request that he lend a hand.

"Goin' huntin', Newt?" queried the step-father, pausing with a shuck-basket of feed in his hands.

"Mebby so," growled the home-comer.

Clem regarded his uncommunicative law-kin with an expressionless stare for a while, and then said slowly:

"Hit hain't none of my concern, I reckon, but I seen yore pockets was strutty, an' I 'lowed ye mout be goin' tol'able fur."

"Mebby so," repeated Newt.

The pockets to which Clem alluded bulged with ammunition and a flask.

The phrase he used was slang in Scotland in the days when Queen Mary reigned. It is common parlance to-day where these beleaguered Anglo-Saxons retain the idioms of their ancestors, and live the life of another century in mountains which were old before the Andes, the Alps, the Rockies or the Himalayas were thrown above the level of the sea. The Elizabethan gallant who was "strutty" threw out a swelling chest, hence, that which bulges is strutty.

The household did not see Newt again until the sun was well into the west, but at intervals they heard the sharp bark of his rifle growing fainter as he penetrated farther into the hills.

For Newt had taken himself away into the thickness of the timber and laurel for target practice. He went about it as systematically as though he were a battleship at maneuvers. As he swung his way noiselessly along forest paths, he would stop suddenly and throw the piece to his shoulder, sighting on some knot or leaf picked out at random. On these occasions he wasted no powder and lead. He was simply testing his quickness of eye and steadiness of hand, and he smiled with grim pleasure at the result. But at last a target showed high up on a walnut trunk. There the figure of a giant woodp.e.c.k.e.r hung, drumming loudly, and inviting a trial shot, by the very conspicuousness of its red, black and white plumage. Newt leveled the rifle and fired, and the big bird came tumultuously floundering to the ground.

The boy smiled unpleasantly:

"I reckon," he mused, "hit hain't only woodp.e.c.k.e.rs I kin hit."

As the day wore on, he practised more intricate feats. Gathering a handful of hickory leaves, he fastened them about the gigantic girth of a tulip poplar which towered n.o.bly in a level place. Then, going back a distance of fifty yards, he began running rapidly around the tree. At every few yards of his course he would halt abruptly, wheel and fire at one of the leaves. As he went up, panting, to inspect results, he smiled again in grim satisfaction.

Along the creek-bed roads and over the mountain-scaling trails that day, a girl was taking a twenty mile walk from the clean dormitory of the college to the vermin-infested murk of a cabin on Troublesome. She carried a small bundle, but the long march was a thing that did not seem to trouble her.

Sometimes she came to places where the road ran down into the waters of shallow fords, and then she stopped and took off her shoes and stockings and waded to the other bank.

On either side of her rose the rustling forests, tuneful with the song of birds. The laurel blossoms waved pink centers and the rhododendron nodded at her.

Here and there a squirrel barked or a c.o.c.k-quail sounded his "bob-white"

to his nesting mate. And as Minerva tramped on with that resilient, tireless stride which was one of the few blessings of her hard heritage, the cloud on her brow was dispelled and after a while her voice rose to the crooning of an ancient "ballet," and she remembered only that she was young and strong and that it was June. Perhaps she dreamed a little of a make-believe world in which the men were not brutal and b.e.s.t.i.a.l, but, like the Henry Falkins of her imagination, individuals who had heard of chivalry and who even in this age preserved something of its spirit and its spark.

Yet every now and then the picture of the cabin rose before her imagination, and the smile died from her eyes, and her lips became straight-set and taut. She saw the old imbecile in the chimney corner and the shrewish step-mother, and the badgering step-sister, and even in the father who had brought her here, she knew that she had no effective ally. Clem Rawlins had his work cut out for him in protecting himself in these matters, and he sought the path of least resistance by taking refuge in surly silence until he was goaded to the point where his temper broke into violent outburst.

At last, the walk ended, ended at the door-step of the cheerless cabin, and there as Minerva crossed the stile stood her step-mother, on the threshold with her arms akimbo and a clay pipe clamped between her teeth.

"M'nervy," she said in a rasping tone, in which dwelt no note of welcome, "I've done put yore b'longin's under Sis's bed. Thar hain't no more pegs ter hang things on an' Newty's done fared back from down b'low. He's a-goin' ter lay down on ther bed you've been usin'."

The girl halted before the door.

"Who's Newty?" she asked. The boy's name had not been often mentioned since she had come over here, and she had forgotten the ragged lad she had known years before, when instead of being a murderer he was only a small shaver with sullen eyes and a tongue which he did not often use.

"Newty's my oldest boy," enlightened the elder woman briefly. "He's been a sojournin' in Frankfort." Then in a tone of absolute commonplace she added: "He's been in ther penitenshery."

Minerva Rawlins stood silent, but her cheeks blazed wrathfully. So, beside the horrors of uncongeniality under this roof, she was now to be turned out of her own bed to make way for an arrival from the state prison.

Long ago she had learned to set a seal upon her lips and to endure in silence what things must be borne, but into her eyes flashed an insurgent gleam, and the hag-like woman in the doorway caught it and scowled.

"I reckon Newty's got a license ter dwell in this-hyar house," she belligerently a.s.serted. "He was born hyar, an' he didn't come in hyar taggin' along with no widderer. Newty hain't no step-child."

The speaker turned and disappeared into the general murk of the interior, and the girl followed her without comment, but with a suddenly born hatred for the man who had come from a cell back to the family which she must call her own.

When Newt Spooner crossed the stile that afternoon, breathing deeply the healing of the mountain air, he paused and scowled. Coming across the yard from the "Spring-branch" with a bucket of water was the slender figure of a girl. She was not his sister, but another girl whom he did not recognize. She seemed to be about eighteen, and she was pretty, with the transient bloom of mountain young womanhood, often as vivid and as short-lived as that of the morning glory. But the thing which most perplexed Newt, as he stood resentfully wondering how many other invaders he was to encounter at the cabin, was the fact that her calico dress was neater and her whole appearance more suggestive of civilized self-respect than that of the other women of the household.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coming across the yard from the "Spring-branch" was the slender figure of a girl]

She was not barefooted, but wore shoes and stockings, and instead of being lost in loose sack or slip-shod mother-hubbard, her slight waist was trimly belted.

While Newt stared at her, she, too, looked up and saw him. For a moment she seemed startled at the black-visaged apparition, but after a moment she coolly returned his glance, and disappeared into the house.

When the boy later on went to the door, the westering sun sent a long golden shaft into the primitive interior, down which the dust motes danced, although the corners remained somberly obscure. In the room were only the "women-folks"; his mother sitting huddled over her pipe; his sister lying idly stretched on one of the beds with an ill-natured frown in her eyes, and the strange girl. The strange girl sat, not near the cold hearth, where now there was no fire, but in the sun, and the sun fell upon and sparkled in her brown hair and awakened dull glints like the l.u.s.ter of polished mahogany. She was holding her lips rather tightly drawn, as in self-repression, and there was a mistiness about her eyes that hinted at unshed tears.

"I reckon," Newt's mother was saying in a spitefully hard voice, as the boy's figure darkened the door, "ye thinks sence ye went off ter school and got ter consartin' with them fotched-on teachers, thet ye're better'n what we be."

The girl made no reply, but she bent over the sewing in her lap, and her fingers trembled. Mrs. Rawlins looked up and, with a jerk of her head, announced for the benefit of her son:

"This here air Clem's gal, Minervy. I married a widderer." The last sentence was snapped out in a tone of deep complaining, from which one might infer that in the train of marrying a widower followed many melancholy consequences.

At that the girl raised her face and into it swept a sudden flush of anger. She looked challengingly at Newt and her eyes told him that, if she was silent under the shrewish heckling of the woman, she was quite ready to give him battle. But the boy had no intention of insulting her.

He did not know that already she was finding herself in that most pathetic of all positions, the status of being just enough educated to be unplaced at home, and too little educated to be placed elsewhere. She had been thrown, by her father's second marriage, under the persecutions of a shrew, a jealous step-sister, and a century-old imbecile. She looked at Newt and reflected that his arrival added a murderer to the group. "Clem's gal" was longing for that different and more wholesome life over there at the college. But Newt had seen the look in her eyes and recognized that she like himself was here among people who offered no friendship. It was a rude bond of sympathy, and though she was "Clem's gal," and, in consequence, of the enemy, he rose to her defense.