The Red Acorn Part 16

"No, Jim?"

"No," said he, slowly winding up the yarn, "Arter the fouten wuz thru with at the Gap I slipt down the mounting, an' come in on the r'ar uv those fellers, an' me an' this ere man drapt two on 'em."

"I kinder 'spected ye would do something uv thet sort."

"Then we tuk a short cut an' overtuk 'em agin, an' we drapt another."

Aunt Debby's eyes expressed surprise at this continued good fortune.

"An' then we tuk 'nuther short cut, an' saved 'nuther one."

Aunt Debby waited for him to continue.

"At last--jess ez they come ter the Ford--I seed OUR man."

"Seed Kunnel Bill Pennington?" The great gray eyes were blazing now.

"Yes." Fortner's speech was the spiritless drawl of the mountains, and it had now become so languid that it seemed doubtful if after the enunciation of each word whether vitality enough remained to evolve a successor. "Yes," he repeated with a yawn, as he stuck the ball of yarn upon the needles and gave the whole a toss which landed it in the wall-basket, "an' I GOT him, tew."

"O, just G.o.d! Air ye sh.o.r.e?"

"Jess ez sh.o.r.e ez in the last great day thar'll be some 'un settin' in judgement atween him an' me. I wanted him ter be jess ez sh.o.r.e about me. I came out in plain sight, and drawed his attention. He knowed me at fust glimpse, an' pulled his revolver. I kivered his heart with the sights an' tetcht the trigger. I'm sorry now thet I didn't shoot him thru the belly, so thet he'd been a week a-dyin' an' every minnit he'd remembered what he wuz killed fur. But I wuz so afeered that I would not kill him ef I hit him some place else'n the heart--thet's a wayall pizen varmints hev--thet I didn't da'r resk hit. I wuz detarmined ter git him, too, ef I had ter foller him clean ter c.u.mberland Gap."

"Ye done G.o.d's vengeance," said Aunt Debby sternly. "An' yit hit wuz very soon ter expect hit." She clasped her hands upon her forehead and rocked back and forth, gazing fixedly into the ma.s.s of incandescent coals.

"Hit's gwine to cla'r up ter-morrow," said Fortner, returning from an inspection of the sky at the door. "Le's potter off ter bed," he continued rousing up Harry. They removed their outer garments and crawled into one of the comfortable beds in the room.

Later in the night a sharp pain in one of Harry's over-strained legs awoke him out of his deep slumber, for a few minutes. Aunt Debby was still seated before the fire in her chair, rocking back and forth, and singing softly:

"Thy saints in all this glorious war, Shall conquer ere they die.

They see the triumph from afar-- By faith they bring hit nigh.

Sure I must suffer ef I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord.

I'll bear the toil, endure the pain."

He went to sleep again with the sweet strains ringing in his ears, as if in some way a part of the marvelous happenings of that most eventful day.

Chapter XII. Aunt Debby Brill.

Beneath the dark waves where the dead go down, There are gulfs of night more deep; But little they care, whom the waves once drown, How far from the light they sleep.

And dark though Sorrow's fearful billows be, They have caverns darker still.

O G.o.d! that Sorrow's waves were like the sea, Whose topmost waters kill.

-Anonymous.

It was nearly noon when Harry awoke. The awakening came slowly and with pain. In all his previous experiences he had had no hint even of such mental and bodily exhaustion as now oppressed him. Every muscle and tendon was aching a bitter complaint against the strain it had been subjected to the day before. Dull, pulseless pain smoldered in some; in others it was the keen throb of the toothache. Continued lying in one position was unendurable; changing it, a thrill of anguish; and the new posture as intolerable as the first. His brain galled and twinged as did his body. To think was as acute pain as to use his sinews. Yet he could not help thinking any more than he could help turning in the bed, though to turn was torture.

Every organ of thought was bruised and sore. The fearful events of the day before would continue to thrust themselves upon his mind. To put them out required painful effort; to recall and comprehend them was even worse. Reflecting upon them now, with unstrung nerves, made them seem a hundred-fold more terrible than when they were the spontaneous offspring of hot blood. With the reflection came the thoughts that this was but a prelude--an introduction--to an infinitely horrible saturnalia of violence and blood, through which he was to be hurried until released by his own destruction. This became a nightmare that threatened to stagnate the blood in his veins. He gasped, turned his back to the wall with an effort that thrilled him with pain, and opened his eyes.

Naught that he saw reminded him of the preceding day. Sunny peace and contentment reigned. The door stood wide open, and as it faced the south, the noonday sun pushed in--clear to the opposite wall--a broad band of mellow light, vividly telling of the glory he was shedding where roof nor shade checked his genial glow. On the smooth, hard, ashen floor, in the center of this bright zone, sat a matronly cat, giving with tongue and paw dainty finis.h.i.+ng touches to her morning toilet, and watching with maternal pride a kittenish game of hide-and-seek on the front step. Through the open doorway came the self-complacent cackling of hens, celebrating their latest additions to their nests, and the exultant call of a c.o.c.k to his feathered harem to come, admire and partake of some especially fat worm, which he had just unearthed.

Farther away speckled Guinea chickens were clamoring their satisfaction at the improvement in the weather. Still farther, gentle tinklings hinted of peacefully-browsing sheep.

Inside the house, bunches of sweet-smelling medicinal herbs, hanging agains the walls to dry, made the air heavy with their odors. Aunt Debby was at work near the bright zone of sun-rays, spinning yarn with a "big wheel." She held in one hand a long slender roll of carded wool, and in the other a short stick, with which she turned the wheel. Setting it to whirling with a long sweep of the stick against a spoke, she would walk backward while the roll was twisted out into a long, thin thread, and then walk forward as they yarn was wound upon the spindle. When she walked backward, the spindle hummed sharply; when she came forward it droned. There was a stately rhythm in both, to which her footsteps and graceful sway of body kept time, and all blended harmoniously with the camp-meeting melody she was softly singing:

"Jesus, I my cross have taken, All to leave and follow Thee; Naked, poor, despised, forsaken, Thou from hence my all shalt be.

Perish every fond ambition-- All I've sought, or hoped, or known; Yet how rich is my condition-- G.o.d and Heaven still my own."

A world of memories of a joyous past, unflecked by a single one of the miseries of the present, crowded in upon Harry on the wings of this well-remembered tune. It was a favorite hymn at the Methodist church in Sardis, and the last time he had heard it was when he had accompanied Rachel to the church to attend services conducted by a noted evangelist.

Ah, Rachel!--what of her?

He had not thought of her since a swift recollection of her words at the parting scene on the piazza had come to spur up his faltering resolution, as the regiment advanced up the side of Wildcat. Now one bitter thought of how useless all that he had gone through with the day before was to rehabilitate himself in her good opinion was speedily chased from his mind by the still bitterer one of the contempt she must feel for him, did she but know of his present abject prostration.

After all, might not the occurrences of yesterday be but the memories of a nightmare? They seemed too unreal for probability. Perhaps he was just recovering consciousness after the delirium of a fever.

The walnut sticks in the fireplace popped as sharply as pistols, and he trembled from head to foot.

"Heavens, I'm a bigger coward than ever," he said bitterly, and turning himself painfully in bed, he fixed his eyes upon the wall. "I was led to believe," he continued, "that after I had once been under fire, I would cease to dread it. Now, it seems to me more dreadful than I ever imagined it to be."

Aunt Debby's wheel hummed and droned still louder, but her pleasant tones rode on the cadences like an Aeolian harp in a rising wind:

"Man may trouble and distress me, 'T will but drive me to Thy breast; Life with trials hard may press me; Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.

O, 'tis not in grief to harm me, While Thy love is left to me.

O, 'twere not in joy to charm me, Were that joy unmixed with Thee."

He wondered weakly why ther were no monasteries in this land and age, to serve as harbors or refuge for those who shrank from the fearfulness of war.

He turned over again wearily, and Aunt Debby, looking toward him, encountered his wide-open eyes.

"Yer awake, air ye?" she said kindly. "Hope I didn't disturb you. I wuz tryin' ter make ez little noise ez possible."

"No, you didn't rouse me. It's hard for me to sleep in daylight, even when fatigued, as I am."

"Ef ye want ter git up now," she said, stopping the wh.e.l.l by pressing the stick against a spoke, and laying the "roll" in her hand upon the wheel-head, "I'll hev some breakfast fur ye in a jiffy. Ye kin rise an'

dress while I run down ter the spring arter a fresh bucket o' water."

She covered her head with a "slat sun-bonnet," which she took from a peg in the wall, lifted a cedar waterpail from a shelf supported by other long pegs, poured its contents into a large cast-iron teakettle swinging over the fire, and whisked out of the door. Presently the notes of her hymn mingled in plaintive harmony with the sparkling but no sweeter song of a robin redbreast, twittering his delight in the warm suns.h.i.+ne amid the crimson apples of the tree that overhung the spring.