The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge and Other Stories Part 12

A slow smoke still wreathed upward from the charred ruins of the court-house. Gossiping groups stood here and there, mostly the jeans-clad mountaineers, but there were a few who wore "store clothes,"

being lawyers from more sophisticated regions of the circuit. Court had been in session the previous day. The jury, serving in a criminal case--still strictly segregated, and in charge of an officer--were walking about wearily in double file, waiting with what patience they might their formal discharge.

The sheriff's dog, a great yellow cur, trotted in the rear. When the officer was first elected, this animal, observing the change in his master's habits, deduced his own conclusions. He seemed to think the court-house belonged to the sheriff, and thence-forward guarded the door with snaps and growls; being a formidable brute, his idiosyncrasies invested the getting into and getting out of law with abnormal difficulties. Now, as he followed the disconsolate jury, he bore the vigilant mien with which he formerly drove up the cows, and if a juror loitered or stepped aside from the path, the dog made a slow detour as if to round him in, and the melancholy cortege wandered on as before.

More than one looked wistfully at the group on the crag, for it was distinguished by that sprightly interest which scandal excites so readily.

"Ter my way of thinkin'," drawled Sam Peters, swinging his feet over the giddy depths of the valley, "Tobe ain't sech ez oughter be set over the county ez a ranger, noways. 'Pears not ter me, an' I hev been keepin' my eye on him mighty sharp."

A shadow fell among the group, and a man sat down on a bowlder hard by.

He, too, had just arrived, being lured to the town by the news of the fire. His slide had been left at the verge of the clearing, and one of the oxen had already lain down; the other, although hampered by the yoke thus diagonally displaced, stood meditatively gazing at the distant blue mountains. Their master nodded a slow, grave salutation to the group, produced a plug of tobacco, gnawed a fragment from it, and restored it to his pocket. He had a pensive face, with an expression which in a man of wider culture we should discriminate as denoting sensibility. He had long yellow hair that hung down to his shoulders, and a tangled yellow beard. There was something at once wistful and searching in his gray eyes, dull enough, too, at times. He lifted them heavily, and they had a drooping lid and lash. There seemed an odd incongruity between this sensitive, weary face and his stalwart physique. He was tall and well proportioned. A leather belt girded his brown jeans coat. His great cowhide boots were drawn to the knee over his trousers. His pose, as he leaned on the rock, had a muscular picturesqueness.

"Who be ye a-talkin' about?" he drawled.

Peters relished his opportunity. He laughed in a distorted fashion, his pipe-stem held between his teeth.

"_You-uns_ ain't wantin' ter swop lies 'bout sech ez him, Luke! We war a-talkin' 'bout Tobe Gryce."

The color flared into the new-comer's face. A sudden animation fired his eye.

"Tobe Gryce air jes the man I'm always wantin' ter hear a word about.

Jes perceed with yer rat-killin'. I'm with ye." And Luke Todd placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward with an air of attention.

Peters looked at him, hardly comprehending this ebullition. It was not what he had expected to elicit. No one laughed. His fleer was wide of the mark.

"Wa'al"--he made another effort--"Tobe, we war jes sayin', ain't fitten fur ter be ranger o' the county. He be ez peart in gittin' ter own other folkses' stray cattle ez he war in courtin' other folkses' sweetheart, an', ef the truth mus' be knowed, in marryin' her." He suddenly twisted round, in some danger of falling from his perch. "I want ter ax one o'

them thar big-headed lawyers a question on a p'int o' law," he broke off, abruptly.

"What be Tobe Gryce a-doin' of now?" asked Luke Todd, with eager interest in the subject.

"Wa'al," resumed Peters, nowise loath to return to the gossip, "Tobe, ye see, air the ranger o' this hyar county, an' by law all the stray horses ez air tuk up by folks hev ter be reported ter him, an' appraised by two householders, an' swore to afore the magistrate an' be advertised by the ranger, an' ef they ain't claimed 'fore twelve months, the taker-up kin pay into the county treasury one-haffen the apprais.e.m.e.nt an' hev the critter fur his'n. An' the owner can't prove it away arter that."

"Thanky," said Luke Todd, dryly. "S'pose ye teach yer gran'mammy ter suck aigs. I knowed all that afore."

Peters was abashed, and with some difficulty collected himself.

"An' I knowed ye knowed it, Luke," he hastily conceded. "But hyar be what I'm a-lookin' at--the law 'ain't got no pervision fur a stray horse ez kem of a dark night, 'thout n.o.body's percuremint, ter the ranger's own house. Now, the p'int o' law ez I wanted ter ax the lawyers 'bout air this--kin the ranger be the ranger an' the taker-up too?"

He turned his eyes upon the great landscape lying beneath, flooded with the chill matutinal sunshine, and flecked here and there with the elusive shadows of the fleecy drifting clouds. Far away the long horizontal lines of the wooded spurs, converging on either side of the valley and rising one behind the other, wore a subdued azure, all unlike the burning blue of summer, and lay along the calm, pa.s.sionless sky, that itself was of a dim, repressed tone. On the slopes nearer, the leafless boughs, ma.s.sed together, had purplish-garnet depths of color wherever the sunshine struck aslant, and showed richly against the faintly tinted horizon. Here and there among the boldly jutting gray crags hung an evergreen-vine, and from a gorge on the opposite mountain gleamed a continuous flash, like the waving of a silver plume, where a cataract sprang down the rocks. In the depths of the valley, a field in which crab-gra.s.s had grown in the place of the harvested wheat showed a tiny square of palest yellow, and beside it a red clay road, running over a hill, was visible. Above all a hawk was flying.

"Afore the winter fairly set in las' year," Peters resumed, presently, "a stray kem ter Tobe's house. He 'lowed ter me ez he fund her a-standin' by the fodder-stack a-pullin' off'n it. An' he 'quired round, an' he never hearn o' no owner. I reckon he never axed outside o'

Lonesome," he added, cynically. He puffed industriously at his pipe for a few moments; then continued: "Wa'al, he 'lowed he couldn't feed the critter fur fun. An' he couldn't work her till she war appraised an'

sech, that bein' agin the law fur strays. So he jes ondertook ter be ranger an' taker-up too--the bangedest consarn in the kentry! Ef the leetle mare hed been wall-eyed, or lame, or ennything, he wouldn't hev wanted ter be ranger an' taker-up too. But she air the peartest little beastis--she war jes bridle-wise when she fust kem--young an' spry!"

Luke Todd was about to ask a question, but Peters, disregarding him, persisted:

"Wa'al, Tobe tuk up the beastis, an' I reckon he reported her ter hisself, bein' the ranger--the critter makes me laff--an' he hed that thar old haffen-blind uncle o' his'n an' Perkins Bates, ez be never sober, ter appraise the vally o' the mare, an' I s'pose he delivered thar certificate ter hisself, an' I reckon he tuk oath that she kem 'thout his procure_mint_ ter his place, in the presence o' the ranger."

"I reckon thar ain't no law agin the ranger's bein' a ranger an' a taker-up too," put in one of the bystanders. "'Tain't like a sher'ff's buyin' at his own sale. An' he hed ter pay haffen her vally into the treasury o' the county arter twelve months, ef the owner never proved her away."

"Thar ain't no sign he ever paid a cent," said Peters, with a malicious grin, pointing at the charred remains of the court-house, "an' the treasurer air jes dead."

"Wa'al, Tobe hed ter make a report ter the jedge o' the county court every six months."

"The papers of his office air cinders," retorted Peters.

"Wa'al, then," argued the optimist, "the stray-book will show ez she war reported an' sech."

"The ranger took mighty partic'lar pains ter hev his stray-book in that thar court-house when 'twar burnt."

There was a long pause while the party sat ruminating upon the suspicions thus suggested.

Luke Todd heard them, not without a thrill of satisfaction. He found them easy to adopt. And he, too, had a disposition to theorize.

"It takes a mighty mean man ter steal a horse," he said. "Stealin' a horse air powerful close ter murder. Folkses' lives fairly depend on a horse ter work thar corn an' sech, an' make a support fur em. I hev knowed folks ter kem mighty close ter starvin' through hevin thar horse stole. Why, even that thar leetle filly of our'n, though she hedn't been fairly bruk ter the plough, war mightily missed. We-uns hed ter make out with the old sorrel, ez air nigh fourteen year old, ter work the c.r.a.p, an' we war powerful disapp'inted. But we ain't never fund no trace o'

the filly sence she war tolled off one night las' fall a year ago."

The hawk floating above the valley and its winged shadow disappeared together in the dense glooms of a deep gorge. Luke Todd watched them as they vanished.

Suddenly he lifted his eyes. They were wide with a new speculation. An angry flare blazed in them. "What sort'n beastis is this hyar mare ez the ranger tuk up?" he asked.

Peters looked at him, hardly comprehending his tremor of excitement.

"Seems sorter sizable," he replied, sibilantly, sucking his pipe-stem.

Todd nodded meditatively several times, leaning his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed on the landscape. "Hev she got enny partic'lar marks, ez ye knows on?" he drawled.

"Wa'al, she be ez black ez a crow, with the nigh fore-foot white. An'

she hev got a white star spang in the middle o' her forehead, an' the left side o' her nose is white too."

Todd rose suddenly to his feet. "By gum!" he cried, with a burst of pa.s.sion, "she air _my_ filly! An' 'twar that thar durned horse-thief of a ranger ez tolled her off!"

Deep among the wooded spurs Lonesome Cove nestles, sequestered from the world. Naught emigrates thence except an importunate stream that forces its way through a rocky gap, and so to freedom beyond. No stranger intrudes; only the moon looks in once in a while. The roaming wind may explore its solitudes; and it is but the vertical sunbeams that strike to the heart of the little basin, because of the ma.s.sive mountains that wall it round and serve to isolate it. So nearly do they meet at the gap that one great a.s.sertive crag, beetling far above, intercepts the view of the wide landscape beyond, leaving its subst.i.tuted profile jaggedly serrating the changing sky. Above it, when the weather is fair, appear vague blue lines, distant mountain summits, cloud strata, visions. Below its jutting verge may be caught glimpses of the widening valley without.

But pre-eminent, gaunt, sombre, it sternly dominates "Lonesome," and is the salient feature of the little world it limits.

Tobe Gryce's house, gray, weather-beaten, moss-grown, had in comparison an ephemeral, modern aspect. For a hundred years its inmates had come and gone and lived and died. They took no heed of the crag, but never a sound was lost upon it. Their drawling iterative speech the iterative echoes conned. The ringing blast of a horn set astir some phantom chase in the air. When the cows came lowing home, there were lowing herds in viewless company. Even if one of the children sat on a rotting log crooning a vague, fragmentary ditty, some faint-voiced spirit in the rock would sing. Lonesome Cove?--home of invisible throngs!

As the ranger trotted down the winding road, mult.i.tudinous hoof-beats, as of a troop of cavalry, heralded his approach to the little girl who stood on the porch of the log-cabin and watched for him.

"Hy're, Cunnel!" he cried, cordially.

But the little "Colonel" took no heed. She looked beyond him at the vague blue mountains, against which the great grim rock was heavily imposed, every ledge, every waving dead crisp weed, distinct.

He noticed the smoke curling briskly up in the sunshine from the clay and stick chimney. He strode past her into the house, as Eugenia, with all semblance of youth faded from her countenance, haggard and hollow-eyed in the morning light, was hurrying the corn-dodgers and venison steak on the table.

Perhaps he did not appreciate that the women were pining with curiosity, for he vouchsafed no word of the excitements in the little town; and he himself was ill at ease.

"What ails the Cunnel, 'Genie?" he asked, presently, glancing up sharply from under his hat brim, and speaking with his mouth full.

"The cat 'pears ter hev got her tongue," said Eugenia, intending that the "Colonel" should hear, and perhaps profit. "She ain't able ter talk none this mornin'."