The Red Debt Part 10

"Come, Lutts! Let's hike out of here," ordered the detective as he pulled the stupefied boy to his feet.

He half dragged Lem to the door of the church, saying:

"I guess I'll take you down to Frankfort. Mebby when you're there a while you'll tell where that d.a.m.n whisky shop is you've been running up here the last hundred years."

Near to the door in the dim light, a few scant feet to one side, the boy caught sight of a long, vertical streak of yellow rope crossing the dark background of the gloom. Then it was that, with a lightning-like quickness, Lem lunged sidewise and fastened his fingers like dog's teeth upon the length of hemp suspended from the belfry. With a growl of rage Burton sprung upon him.

He rained blow after blow down upon the boy's head and body, torrents of resounding smashes, awful, crushing, killing blows.

The terrific struggle, with the bell-rope for a prize, set the new bell ringing, and the reverberations carried for miles up and down h.e.l.lsfork.

Its frantic utterances resounded across the hills like the screams of a woman.

In despair the revenuer ceased his beating, and his fingers, reeking with the boy's blood, found Lem's neck.

His terrible hands garroted Lem's throat flat and stopped his breath.

With all his mighty strength, the revenuer choked him until the lad's face blackened and his tongue and eyes started.

Then, with a great heave upward, he shook his victim as a terrier shakes an old boot, and cast him away and stood panting in the dark and cursing breathlessly.

The damage was done. The revenuer knew that he could count himself lucky to get away alive now, far less drag a prisoner; even at that moment desperate men were hurrying to answer the call of that church-bell.

Burton fled into the night toward the spot where he knew that Jutt Orlick awaited him.

CHAPTER VII

DEDICATED WITH HIS BLOOD

Out into that troublous, tempestuous night a hundred alarmed militant mountaineers rushed down through the jungle shadows, over a score of savage, rugged trails. Onward they hastened, down toward the startling night-cry of the bell which they knew emanated from the new church on h.e.l.lsfork. That choking, desperate bell-scream had raked across their senses like the cracking of a hundred rifles. To them its importunities had resolved into the sanguine roar of a fusillade. It had aroused in them an audacious, desperate quickness to kill. They rushed hither, prepared to sprinkle the white-clover with their blood, and die there in the churchyard, or vanquish whatever the menace might be.

They pictured an a.s.sault on the church by the McGills or the revenuers, and in their fancy saw old Cap Lutts, his great figure in the forefront, spouting soft-nosed bullets from his hot rifle! The ringing of the bell inspired those on-coming loyal mountain hearts with a red-eyed animal fierceness, and lent a lightness to their heavy feet that brought them to the church within the hour.

Men and boys, and indeed a few women, with weapons of all sorts, descended on the church, wild and panting with the l.u.s.t of conflict.

When Lem Lutts opened his dazed eyes the place was half filled with frenzied people. Belle-Ann knelt beside him, bathing his wounds and uttering in her soothing, low drawl, little phrases of encouragement and condolence.

Buddy's hard little visage protruded out of the lantern light like a ghostly mask done in white marble.

Lem finally got to his feet and staggered toward the altar. A dozen lanterns were scattered about the church. The s.h.a.ggy band stood around gazing at their dead leader. Crazed with rage, they stood and wept, walked aimlessly and cursed, or knelt and prayed.

To a man they were for beating the mountains for the revenuers; but Lem held them back. He climbed upon the altar, and little Bud scrambled up beside him, hugging his father's rifle which he had hungrily recovered.

With the realization that Lem was now their leader, the Moon mountain men crowded up toward the pulpit, eager for his words.

Lem pointed one unsteady hand to the b.l.o.o.d.y cross at his feet, and the other to the dead form of his father stretched on the first bench. He raised his bruised, torn face upward; then, in a voice that was terrible in its calmness, he said the only prayer he knew, while the grief torn host fixed their eyes upon him and drank in every word:

"G.o.d Almoughty, plead thou my cose with them thet strive agin we-uns.

Lay a han' on yore shiel' an' buckler an' stan' up t' he'p we-uns. Let 'em be confound' an' put t' shame, fo' they hev privily laid thar net t'

destroy me withouten a cose--even withouten a cose hev they made a pit fo' my soul. Let th' sudden destruction c.u.m on our'n enemy onawares, an'

his net thet he hev laid privily keech hisse'f, thet he mought fall int'

his own mischief his ownse'f. Ahmen!"

And a great volume of vibrant amens rose from the hot hearts present.

Lem talked from the altar for an hour; exhorting the clan to stick together and cleave to the tenets of his dead father. All through the discourse little Bud kept close to his brother on the pulpit, steadying the long rifle with one caressing hand and not once did a word escape him; his eyes were glued to his brother's face.

Finally, Lem wound up his appeal with a stern adjuration. His calmness deserted him at the end, and his voice soared to a frenzied pitch that carried it through the open windows, far out into the brooding night.

"Yo'-all heer me? Yo'-all heer me?" he shouted in vibrant tones. "Not a bein' o' yo'-all darst lift a han' t' harm the revenuer--not a han', yo'

heer? He air my houn'-dog t' kill.

"He belongs t' me, an' ef yo'-all ketch em, yore t' han' him t' me, ole Cap Lutts's boy whut stan's heah frontin' his pap's daid body, a callin'

on yo'-all t' see jestus done! I'll bring th' skunk heah, my men, an'

kill em heah--heah whar he kilt my pap!"

His mouth fairly frothed as with both clenched fists he beat his breast.

Bud beat his own thin chest and wrenched his peaked face into a terrible grimace, but said never a word.

The watchers relapsed into dumb, stunned silence and waited with their dead--waited for the saddest of all days; a day crowned with a grievous memory that followed them through life.

No Sabbath born to the mountains had ever dawned as this one. The early morning was charged with a sepulchral mist, impinging upon the senses like sounds vocal, telling of some great sorrow hanging on the crest of the world.

The first chill light saw the gospel-house holding its dead to its breast--the venerable sire that begot it. The dawn-breath floated down from the blue-wooded ridges to the clearing and stooped to kiss the pallid belfry.

And all the blossoms bowed down their tremulous heads and shed their dew-tears amidst the chanting of spirit-voices. The tumultuous cry of the cascade, wont to rant in the ragged throat of h.e.l.lsfork, was now hushed to a repining monotone.

The first beam of sunlight, pallid as a candle ray, parted the vapor shroud enveloping the gospel-house, and a dolorous ring-dove mourning on the pinnacle of a dead sycamore tolled her triple-noted angelus across the clearing in measured, solemn accents.

Before the day had fairly broken, an exodus of humanity had begun, bound for h.e.l.lsfork. For weeks and months the day of dedication had been discussed throughout the mountains. Hour after hour the rock-strewn highways of the hills were traversed by travel-worn crusaders. This stream of human souls converged at the church clearing, filling it up like the gradual rise of a tide.

They came on mule-back, on horse-back, in buck-boards. They came singly and in twos and threes.

Bed-ridden cripples were borne hither by their loved ones, that the great preacher might lay hands upon their infirmities and implore the merciful G.o.d to alleviate their sufferings. The halt and the maimed were come to sue for absolution and to be made whole again.

One misshapen hunchback--a veritable Quasimodo--with stubby bowed legs, abnormal arms, and ape-like visage, carried his helpless offspring eighteen miles to this sanctuary; begging prayers to relieve the creature's torture.

Every man and boy of them was armed in some fashion, and by high noon the clearing was filled with a mult.i.tude of people, sorrow-torn, racked with abject grief.

Over in Southpaw the enemy gazed down from the heights upon this spectacle in amazement. As young Sap McGill stood on a crag and watched, his eyes met a sight unlike any which the ranges of Kentucky had ever witnessed.

His old arch enemy's strength in death was a force that appalled him. It was only now that he fully realized the peculiar far-reaching power wielded by old Cap Lutts throughout his lifetime. The dead monarch had always ruled his followers through strength and love. Fear had never been a dictator. He repelled his enemies through a will and courage that never flinched, and elicited from them a meed of awesome respect.

The church was wofully inadequate and would not hold a twentieth of the ma.s.s. A great abundance of live laurel was cut and piled beneath a tree in the church clearing. And hundreds of eager hands hurried into the byways of the vale and returned with arms heaped with blossoms. These tender tributes were carefully placed on the couch of laurel until it rose to a great bier of fragrant petals.

Tender hands removed the old man's body from the church and laid him in this laurel-thatched casket of many-hued flowers.