The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories Part 8

"They'd say I was lying, I reckon," he hazarded. With an ebullition of laughter, he hastily scrambled to his feet and unhitched his horse; then, as he put his foot in the stirrup, he paused and added, "Or else, 'Better leave it be, sonny,'" with the effrontery of mimicry.

"'Mought set the mounting afire.'"

He forthwith swung himself into the saddle, and, with a jaunty wave of the hand in adieu, fared forth homeward, leaving her staring after him in wide-eyed amazement.

VII.

The love of contention served, in the case of old Persimmon Sneed, in the stead of industry, of rect.i.tude, of perseverance, of judgment, of every quality that should adorn a man. So eager was he to be off and at the road again that he could scarcely wait to swallow his refection. All the charms of the profusely spread board had not availed to decoy him from the subject, and the repast of the devoted jury of view was seasoned with his sage advice and vehement argument against the project, which its advocates, fully occupied, failed for the nonce to combat. Now and again Mrs. Minerva Slade sought to interpose in their behalf, and many a tempting trencher was thrust to his elbow to divert the tenor of his discourse. But despite his youthful vulnerability to the dainty which had won him his sobriquet, Persimmon Sneed's palate was not more susceptible to the allurements of flattery than his hard head or his obdurate heart. There was, however, at intervals, a lively clatter of his knife and fork, and some redoubtable activity on the part of his store teeth, frankly false, and without doubt the only false thing about him. Then he hustled up the jury of view and their _confreres_ to the resumption of their duties, and was the first man to put foot in stirrup. Certain other mountaineers would fain have lingered, as was manifest by the triangular slices of "apple custard pie" in their hands, as they stood, still munching, on the porch, watching the departing jury of view with their active and aged precursor, and by their loitering farewells and thanks to Aunt Minerva Slade. A beaming countenance did she wear this day. She had cooked to some cheerful purpose. Not one failure had marred the _menu_, in testimony of which, as she afterward remarked, "I never seen sc.r.a.ps so skimpy." Her spectacles reflected the bland light of the day as smilingly as the eyes above which they were poised, as she stood in the doorway, and with fluttering graciousness received the homage of her beneficiaries.

"That youngest one, Con Hite, was sorter mild-mannered an' meek," she afterward said, often recounting the culinary triumphs of the great day, "an' I mis...o...b..s but he hed the deespepsy, fur he war the only one ez didn't pitch in an' eat like he war tryin' to pervide fur a week's fastin'. I reckon they all knowed what sort'n pitiful table they sets out at Mis' Cornely Hood's, t'other side the mounting, whar they expected ter stop fur supper, an' war a-goin' ter lay up suthin'

agin dest.i.tution."

For an hour, perhaps, before reaching Hanway's, Con Hite had ridden with the jury of view. He had not much expectation of influencing the fate of the road in any respect by his presence, but he felt it was a matter of consistency to appear with the others of the opposition. He desired, too, to publicly urge, as his reason for objecting to the project, the insufficiency of hands in so spa.r.s.ely populated a region to make a road and keep it in repair; lest another reason, the wish to preserve the seclusion so dear to the moonshiner, be attributed to him. This matter of policy had been made very palatable by the probability that he would see Narcissa, and it was with a deep disappointment that he beheld Selwyn beside her, and received only a slight movement of her drooping eyelids as a token of recognition and welcome. He had been minded to dismount and walk with her, but his heart burned with resentment. Of what worth now were all his buoyant antic.i.p.ations, while she was listening to the sugared flatteries of the "town cuss"? He had this subject for cogitation, while, in a stifling room, he was regaled with hard cider and apple-jack by no more fascinating Hebe than old Mrs. Slade, with her withered sallow skin, her excited, anxious eye, her fluttered, tremulous, skinny fingers, her hysteric cap with its maddeningly flying strings, and her wonderfully swift venerable scamper in and out of the kitchen.

Con Hite was the last to go. He led his horse down to the watering-trough, oblivious of the stream, with its ample supply, a hundred yards or so further on and in full view; and as he stood there, with his hand on the animal's shoulder, he turned his eyes, somewhat wistful, though wont to be so bold and bright, upon Narcissa, still seated on the stile. Her own brown long-lashed eyes had a far-away look in them. They evidently pa.s.sed him over absently, and followed the squad of men swiftly trotting adown the road, all in good heart and good temper again, to take up their duty where they had laid it down. No faint vestige of a dimple was now in her daintily white cheek.

"Ye be powerful sparin' o' speech ter-day," he remarked.

Her eyes did not move from the distant landscape. "Folks ez hev got nuthin' ter say would do well ter say it."

He flushed. "Ye hed mo' ter say ter the stranger-man."

"Don't see him so powerful frequent. When a thing is sca'ce, it's apt ter be ch'ice," she retorted.

She experienced a certain satisfaction in her acridity. For his sake, lest suspicion befall him, she had sought to inaugurate an investigation--nay, a persecution--of this man, and he a stranger; and but that circ.u.mstance was kind to him, her effort might have resulted cruelly. And now that she had done so much for Con Hite, it was her pleasure to take it out on him, as the phrase goes. All unaware of this curious mental att.i.tude, he winced under her satire.

"Waal, I kin make myself sca'ce, too," he said, an impulse of pride surging in his heart.

"It mought be better fur ye," she replied indifferently.

His momentary independence left him suddenly.

"Narcissa," he said reproachfully, "ye didn't always talk this way ter me."

"That ain't news ter me. Ben 'lows ez I talk six ways fur Sunday."

"Ye dunno how I feel, not knowin' how ye be set towards me, an'

hevin' ter see ye so seldom, a-workin' all the time down yander, a-moonshinin'"--

"I wouldn't talk 'bout it so turr'ble loud." She glanced apprehensively over her shoulder. "An' ye'd better quit it, ennyhows."

"Ye 'lows it be wrong," he said, his bold bright eyes all softened as he looked at her, "bein' agin the law?"

"I ain't keerin' fur the law. Ef the truth war knowed, the law is aimin' ter git all the benefit o' whiskey bein' drunk itself. That's whar the law kems in. I only keer fur"--She stopped abruptly. She had nearly revealed to him that she cared only lest some disaster come to him in his risky occupation; that she would like him to be ploughing in a safe level field at the side of a cabin, where she might sit by the window and sew, and look out and see that no harm befell this big bold man, six feet two inches high. "Con Hite!" she exclaimed, her face scarlet, "I never see a body ez hard-hearted an' onmerciful ez ye air. Whyn't ye water that sufferin' beast, ez air fairly honing ter drink? Waal," she continued, after a pause in which he demonstrated the axiom that one may lead a horse to water, but cannot make him drink, "then whyn't ye go? I ain't got time ter waste, ef ye hev."

She rose as if for departure, and he put his foot in the stirrup. "I wish ye wouldn't be so harsh ter me, Narcissa," he said meekly.

"Waal, thar be a heap o' saaft-spoken gals ter be hed fur the askin'.

Ye kin take yer ch'ice."

And with this he was fain to be content, as he mounted and rode reluctantly away.

She sat down again, and was still for a long time after the last echo of his horse's hoofs had died on the air. Her thoughts did not follow him, however. They turned again with renewed interest to the fair-haired young stranger. Somehow she was ill at ease and vaguely disillusioned. She watched mechanically, and with some unaccustomed touch of melancholy, the burnished shimmering golden haze gradually invest far blue domes and their purple slopes, and the brown valleys, and the rugged rocky mountains nearer, with a certain idealized slumberous effect like the landscape of a dream. In these still s.p.a.ces naught moved now save the imperceptible lengthening of the shadows. It had never occurred to her to deem the scene beautiful; it was the familiar furniture of her home. Upon this her eyes had first opened.

She had never thought to compare it to aught else,--to the suffocating experience of one visit to the metropolitan glories of the little town in the flat woods known as Colbury. It had seemed, indeed, magnificent to her ignorance, and the temerity of the architecture of a two-story house had struck her aghast. She had done naught but wonder and stare.

The trip had been a great delight, but she had never desired to linger or to dwell there. Certain sordid effects came over her; reminiscences of the muddy streets, the tawdry shops, the jostling, busy-eyed people.

"Ain't this ez good?" she said to herself, as the vast scene suddenly fluctuated beneath a flare of wind amidst the sunshine, and light, detached white flakes of cloud went winging athwart the blue sky; their shadows followed them fast across the sunlit valley,--only their dark and lifeless semblances, like the verbal forms of some white illumined thought that can find no fit expression in words. The breath of the pines came to her, the sound of the water, the sudden fanfare of the unseen wind in the sky heralding the clouds. "Ain't this ez good?" she said again, with that first deadly, subtle distrust of the things of home, that insidious discontent so fatal to peace. He evidently did not deem it as good, and the obvious fact rankled in her. The mountain men, and their lack of enterprise, and their drawling speech which he had mimicked,--they too shared his disparagement; and she was conscious that she herself did not now think so well of them,--so conscious that she made a loyal struggle against this sentiment.

"So shif'less, so thrif'less," she echoed his words. "An' I dunno ez _I_ ever viewed a waste-fuller critter'n this hyar very Mister Man."

She stooped down, gathering together the handful of matches that Selwyn had inadvertently pulled from his pocket with the one which he had used in ill.u.s.trating his suggestion of setting the waters of a spring afire. "Ef he keeps on ez wasteful ez this, he'll get out o'

matches whar he lives over yander; an' I mis...o...b..s ef, smart ez he 'lows he be, he could kindle the wood ter cook his breakfus' by a flint rock,--ef he air so boastful ez ter 'low ez he kin set spring water afire."

She made the matches into a compact little budget and slipped them into her pocket, and as she rose and looked about uncertainly, she heard her aunt Minerva calling to her from the house that it was high time to go and drive up the cows.

Aunt Minerva had not bethought herself to summon the girl to dinner.

The whole world seemed surfeited to her, so had dinner occupied her day. Narcissa herself, under the stress of the abnormal excitements, felt no lack as she slowly trod the familiar paths in search of the bovine vagrants.

Her thoughts bore her company, and she was far from home when the aspect of the reddening sun smote her senses. She stood and watched the last segment of the vermilion sphere sink down out of sight, and, as she turned, the October dusk greeted her on every side. The shadows, how dense in the woods; the valleys, darkling already! Only on the higher eastern slopes a certain red reflection spoke of the vanishing day. She looked vainly as yet for some faint silvery suffusion which might herald the rising of the moon; for it was to be a bright night. She was glad of the recollection. She had not hitherto realized it, but she was tired. She would rest for a little while, and thus refreshed she would be the sooner home. She sat down on a ledge of the outcropping rock and looked about her. The spot was unfamiliar, but in the far stretch of the darkening scene she identified many a well-known landmark. There was the gleaming bend of the river in the valley, lost presently amidst the foliage of its banks; and here was an isolated conical peak on a far lower level than the summit of the range, and known as Thimble Mountain; and nearer still, across a narrow bight of the Cove, was a bare slope. As she glanced at it she half rose from her place, for there was the witch-face, twilight on the grim features, yet with the aid of memory so definitely discerned that they could hardly have been more distinct by noonday,--a face of inexplicably sinister omen. "Oh, why did I see it to-day!" she exclaimed, the presage of ill fortune strong upon her, with that grisly mask leering at her from across the valley. But the day was well-nigh gone; only a scant s.p.a.ce remained in which to work the evil intent of fate. She seated herself anew, for in the shadowy labyrinth of the woods her path could scarcely be found. She must needs wait for the moon.

She wondered, as she sat and gazed about, how far she might be from that new dwelling where he lived who so scorned the mountain, and who owed to it his every breath. There was no sound, no suggestion of human habitation. The shadowy woods stood dense about the little open ledgy s.p.a.ce on three sides; toward the very verge of the mountain the rocks grew shelving and precipitous, and beyond the furthest which she could see, the gray edge of which cut sharply against the base of a distant dun-tinted range, she knew the descent was abrupt to the depths of the valley. Looking up, she beheld the trembling lucid whiteness of a star; now and again the great rustling boughs of an oak-tree swayed beneath it, and then its glister was broken and deflected amidst the crisp autumnal leaves, but still she saw it shine. It told, too, that there was water near; she caught its radiant multiplied reflection, like a cl.u.s.ter of scintillating white gems, on the l.u.s.trous dark surface of a tiny pool, circular and rock-bound, close beneath the ledge on which she sat. She leaned over, and saw in its depths the limpid fading red sky, and the jagged brown border of the rocks, and a grotesque moving head, which she recognized, after a plunge of the heart, as her own sunbonnet. She drew back in dismay; she would have no more of this weird mirror of the rocks and woods, and looked up again at the shining of the star amidst the darkening shadows of the scarlet oak. How tall that tree was, how broad of girth! And how curiously this stranger talked! What was there to do with all these trees! Would he cut down all the trees on the mountain?

A sudden doubt of his sanity crossed her mind. It was the first, and her heart stood still for a moment. But as she slowly canva.s.sed the idea, it accounted for much otherwise impossible to comprehend: his evident poverty and his efforts toward the purchase of lands; his illness and his bluff insistence on his strength; his wild talk of enterprise and his mysterious intimations of phenomenal opportunities.

Confirmations of the suspicion crowded upon her; above all, the mad boast that with a match he could set the waters of a spring afire.

With a sad smile at the fatuity of the thing, in her idle waiting she drew one of his matches from her pocket; then she struck it briskly on the rugged rock, and cast it, blazing lightly, into the bubbling waters of the spring.

The woods, the rocks, the black night, the fleering, flouting witch-face, all with an abrupt bound sprang into sudden visibility. A pyramid of yellow flame was surging up from the bubbling surface of the water. Long, dark, slim shadows were speeding through the woods, with strange slants of yellow light; the very skies were a-flicker.

She cowered back for a moment, covering her face with her hands. Then, affrighted at her own sorceries, she fled like a deer through the wilderness.

VIII.

One by one, as the afternoon wore on, the spectators began to desert the jury of view, their progress over the mountain being slower than had been antic.i.p.ated. So often, indeed, did insoluble difficulties arise touching the location of the road and questions of dispute that it might be wondered that the whole body did not perish by faction.

After the party had pa.s.sed the boundary line of Persimmon Sneed's tract, where he seemed to consider the right of eminent domain merged in nothingness in comparison to his lordly prerogatives as owner in fee simple, he ceased to urge as heretofore. He dictated boldly to the jury. He rode briskly on in advance, as if doing the honors of his estate to flattered guests, now and again waving his hand to ill.u.s.trate his proposition, his keen, high-pitched voice overcoming in its distinct utterance the sound of hoofs and spurs, and the monotonous ba.s.s contradictions proffered by Silas Boyd.

And the jury of view, silent and circ.u.mspect, rode discreetly on.

Persimmon Sneed's mare seemed as fresh as himself, and when he would turn, as he often did, to face the fatigued, wilted, overwhelmed jury jogging along on their jaded steeds, tired out with the long day's jaunt and the rough footing, the mare would move swiftly backward in a manner that would have done credit to the manege of a circus. And at this extreme advantage Persimmon Sneed and his raised adjuring forefinger seemed impossible to be gainsaid. His arguments partook of the same unanswerable character.

"Ye don't see none o' my cattle, do ye?" He waved his hand toward the woods flecked with the long slantings of the sun. "I hev got more 'n a hunderd head grazin' right hyar in the bresh. Cattle-thieves could call an' salt 'em easy enough, but they couldn't drive 'em off through the laur'l thar; it's thick ez h.e.l.l!" pointing to the dense jungle.

"But ef we-uns hed this hyar road what ye air aimin' ter lay off, why, a leetle salt an' a leetle drivin' an' a moonlight night would gather 'em, an' the whole herd would be in Georgy by daybreak. I wouldn't hev the hawn of a muley cow lef'. Now, ez it be, them cattle air ez safe from sight ez ef I hed swallowed 'em!" And he whirled again, and led the column.

The jury of view rode disconsolately on.

They experienced a temporary relief when they had pa.s.sed the confines of his tract,--for it was across but a protruding tongue of the main body of his land that the road was expected to run,--and entered upon the domain of the "valley man with the lung complaint;" for this diverted Persimmon Sneed to the more amiable task of narrating how the stranger had sought to buy land of him, and the high prices he had scornfully refused, the adaptability of his land to his own especial needs being so phenomenally apt.

A sudden query from Silas Boyd rendered their respite short: "What's that man Selwyn want so much land fur, ennyhows? He hev been tryin'

ter buy all that 'crost the gorge, too." He waved his hand toward the gloomy woods darkening on the opposite slope.