The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories Part 10

I'll gin ye the bes' beastis I hev got ter ride, an' a pair o'

shootin'-irons and set ye in the valley road on the way home. Ye kin say ye war lost from them."

It is true that in this moment Persimmon Sneed remembered each of his contumacious comrades, and saw that they outnumbered by one the horse-thief's gang; he realized that they were out of leading-strings, and amply capable of taking care of themselves. He had that wincing terror which an unarmed man experiences at the sight of "shootin'-irons" in the grasp of other and antagonistic men. More than all, he looked at those h.e.l.l-lighted flames, as he esteemed them, rising out of the l.u.s.trous water, and believed the jocose barbarity of the threat of the brutal henchman might be serious earnest in its execution.

But the jury of view and their companions were all unprepared for molestation in such wise as menaced them. He reflected anew upon their dismounted condition, the horses. .h.i.tched at a distance, the saddles scattered on the ground in the darkness, with the holsters buckled to them and the pistols within. A sudden attack meant a successful robbery and perchance bloodshed.

"I'll die fust!" he said loudly, and he had never looked more painfully obstinate. "I'll die fust!" He lifted his quivering hand and shook it pa.s.sionately in the air. "I ain't no ransomed saint, an' I know it, but afore I'll betray that thar jury o' view what's been app'inted by the county court ter lay off the d.a.m.ned road, I'll die fust! I ain't no ransomed saint, I ain't, but I'll _die_ fust! I ain't no ransomed"--

"Stop, boys, stop!" cried the wiry little horse-thief, as the others gathered about Sneed with threatening eyes and gestures, while he vociferated amongst them, as lordly as if he were in his oft-time preeminence as the foreman of a jury. Nick Peters's face had changed.

There was a sudden fear upon it, uncomprehended by Persimmon Sneed. It did not occur to him until long afterward that he had for the first time used the expression "a jury of view," and that the horse-thief's familiarity with the idea of a jury was only in the sense of twelve men.

Peters spoke aside to the others, only a word or so, but there was amongst them an obvious haste to get away, of which Persimmon Sneed was cognizant, albeit his head was swimming, his breath short, his eyes dazzled by the fire which he feared. His understanding, however, was blunted in some sort, it seemed to him, for he could make no sense of Nick Peters's observation as he took him by the arm, although afterward it became plain enough.

"Ye'll hev ter go an' 'bide along o' we-uns fur awhile, Mr. Sneed," he said, choking with the laughter of some occult happy thought. "Ye ain't a ransomed saint yit, but ye will be arter awhile, I reckon, ef ye live long enough."

Their shadows skulked away as swiftly as they themselves, even more furtively, running on ahead, in great haste to be gone. The fire-light slanted through the woods in quick, elusive fluctuations, ever dimmer, ever recurrently flaring, and when the jury of view and their companions, alarmed by the long absence of Persimmon Sneed, followed the strange light through the woods to the brink of the burning spring, they found naught astir save the vagrant shadows of the great boles of the trees, no longer held to their accustomed orbit, but wandering through the woods with a large freedom.

That this fire, blazing brilliantly on the surface of the clear spring water, was kindled by supernatural power was not for a moment doubted by the mountaineers who had never before heard of such a phenomenon, and the spiriting away of Persimmon Sneed they promptly ascribed to the same agency. With these thoughts upon them, they did not linger long at the spot where he had met so mysterious a fate. Their ringing halloos, with which the woods were enlivened, took on vaguely appalled cadences; the echoes came back to them like mocking shouts; and they were glad enough to ride away at last through the quiet moonlit glades, their faltering voices silent, leaving that mystic fire slowly dying where it had blazed so long on the face of the water.

A more extended search, later, resulting as fruitlessly, the idea that Persimmon Sneed had been in some way lured bodily within the grasp of the devil prevailed among the more ignorant people of the community; they dolorously sought to point the moral how ill the headstrong fare, and speculated gloomily as to the topic on which he had ventured to argue with Satan, who in rage and retaliation had whisked him away.

But there was a cla.s.s of citizens in Colbury who hearkened with elated sentiments to this story of the burning spring. A company of capitalists was promptly organized, every inch of attainable land on the mountain was quietly bought, and machinery for boring for oil was already at the spring when the news was brought to Selwyn by Hanway, who, not having seen the young stranger for the past week or so, feared he was ill. The flakes of the first snow of the season were whirling past the windows--no more on autumn leaves they looked, no more on far-off bare but azure mountains, feigning summer. The distant ranges were ghostly white. The skeleton woods near at hand were stark and black, and trembled with sudden starts, and strove wildly with the winds, and were held in an inexorable fate, and cried and groaned aloud.

Hanway was right in his surmise, for Selwyn was ill, and lay on the lounge wheeled up to the fire. His cheeks seemed still touched with color, the reflection from the ragged red smoking-jacket which he wore, but a sort of smitten pallid doom was on his brow and in his eyes. His gaze dwelt insistently on the doctor, the tall, thin pract.i.tioner of the surrounding country, who had just finished an examination and was slowly returning his spectacles to their case as he stood before the fire. It seemed as if the patient expected him to speak, but he said nothing, and looked down gravely into the red coals.

Then it was that Hanway narrated the sensation of the neighborhood. It roused Selwyn to a frenzy of excitement; his disjointed, despairing exclamations, in annotation, as it were, of the story, disclosed his own discovery of the oil, his endeavors to secure the opinion of an expert as to its value, his efforts to buy up the land, his reasons for opposing the premature opening of a road which might reveal the presence of the oil springs, when the law discriminating in favor of oil works and similar interests would later make the way thither a public thoroughfare at all events. He cried out upon his hard fate, when money might mean life to him; upon the bitter dispensation of the mysterious kindling of those hidden secluded waters to blazon his secret to the world, to enrich others through his discovery which should have made him so rich.

The dry, spare tone of the physician interrupted,--a trite phrase interdicting agitation.

"Why, doctor," said Selwyn, suddenly comprehending, "you think my present wealth will last out my time!"

Once more the physician looked silently into the fire. He had seen a great deal of dying, but he had lived a quiet ascetic life, which made his sensibilities tender, and he did not get used to death. "I wish you would stay with him, if you can," he said to Hanway at the outer door. "It will be a very short time now."

It was even shorter than they thought. The snow, falling then, had not disappeared from the earth when the picks of the grave-diggers cleft through the clods in the secluded little mountain burying-ground. It was easier work than they had antic.i.p.ated, although the earth was frozen; and the grave was almost prepared when they realized that the ground had been broken before, and that here was the deserted resting-place of the stranger who had come so far to see him. Hanway remembered Selwyn's words, his aversion to the idea that the spot was awaiting him, but the dark November day was closing in, the storm clouds were gathering anew, so they left him there, and this time the grave held its tenant fast.

X.

One day a letter was mailed in Colbury by an unknown hand, addressed to Mrs. Persimmon Sneed and it fared deliberately by way of Sandford Cross-Roads to its destination. It awoke there the wildest excitement and delight, for although it brazenly a.s.serted that Mr. Persimmon Sneed was in the custody of the writer, and that he would be returned safely to his home only upon the payment of one hundred dollars in a mysterious manner described,--otherwise the writer would not answer for consequences,--it gave a.s.surance that he was alive and well, and might even hope to see friends and home and freedom once more. In vain the sheriff of the county expostulated with Mrs. Sneed, representing that the law was the proper liberator of Persimmon Sneed, and that the payment of money would encourage crime. The contradictory man's wife was ready to commit crime, if necessary, in this cause, and would have cheerfully cracked the bank in Colbury. And certainly this seemed almost unavoidable at one time, for to possess herself of this sum of her husband's h.o.a.rd his signature was essential. The poor woman, in her limp sunbonnet and best calico dress, clung to the grating of the teller's window, and presented in futile succession her husband's bank-book, his returned checks, and even his brand-new check-book, each with a gush of tears, while the perplexed official remonstrated, and explained, and rejected each persuasion in turn, pa.s.sing them all back beneath the grating, and alas! keeping the money on his side of those inexorable bars. It seemed to poor Mrs. Sneed that the bank was of opinion that Persimmon corporally was of slight consequence, the inst.i.tution having the true value of the man on deposit. To accommodate matters, however, and that the poor woman should not be weeping daily and indefinitely on the maddened teller's window, an intermediary money-lender was found, who, having vainly sought to induce the bank to render itself responsible, then Mrs. Sneed, who had naught of her own, then a number of friends, who deemed the whole enterprise an effort at robbery and seemed to consider Persimmon a good riddance, took heart of grace and made the plunge at a rate of interest which was calculated to cloy his palate forever after. The money forthwith went a roundabout way according to the directions of the letter.

It came to its destination in this wise.

Con Hite's distilling enterprise was on so small a scale that one might have imagined it to be altogether outside the purview of the law, which, it is said, does not take note _de minimis_. One of those grottoes under a beetling cliff, hardly caves, called in the region "rock houses," sufficed to contain the small copper and its appurtenances, himself and his partner and the occasional jolly guest.

It was approached from above rather than from below, by a winding way, beside the cliff between great boulders, which was so steep and brambly and impracticable that it was hardly likely to be espied by "revenuers." The rock house opened on s.p.a.ce. Beyond the narrow path at its entrance the descent was sheer to the bottom of the gorge below.

In this stronghold, one night, Con Hite sat gloomy and depressed beside the little copper still for the sake of which he risked so much. It held all it could of singlings, and it seemed to him a cheery sight in the shadowy recesses of the rock house. He regarded it with mingled pride and affection, often declaring it "the smartest still of its capacity in the world." To him it was at once admirable as an object of art and a superior industrial agent.

"An' I dunno why Narcissa be so set agin it," he muttered. "But for it I wouldn't hev money enough ter git a start in this world. My mother an' she couldn't live in the same house whenst we git married." He meditated for a moment, and shook his head in solemn negation, for his mother was constructed much after the pattern of Narcissa herself.

"An' _I_ wouldn't live a minit alongside o' Ben Hanway ef I war Nar'sa's husband. Ben wouldn't let me say my soul's my own. I be 'bleeged ter mak the money fur a start o' cattle an' sech myse'f, an'

hev a house an' home o' my own."

And then he took the pipe from his mouth and sighed. For even his care seemed futile. It was true that the fair-haired young stranger was dead, and he had a pang of self-reproach whenever he thought of his jealousy, as if he had wished him ill. But she had worn a cold white unresponsive face when he had seen her last; she did not listen to what he said, her mind evidently elsewhere. She looked at him as if she did not see him. She did not think of him. He was sure that this was not caprice. It was some deep absorbing feeling in which he had no share.

The moon, like some fair presence, looked in at the broad portal.

Outside, the white tissues of her misty diaphanous draperies trailed along the dark mountain slopes beneath the dim stars as she wended westward. Afar down the gorge one might catch glimpses of a glossy l.u.s.tre where the evergreen laurel, white with frost, moved in the autumn wind. He lifted his head to mark its melancholy cadence, and while he listened, the moonlight was suddenly crowded from the door as three men rushed in, half helping and half constraining a fourth man forward.

"Durn my boots ef I didn't furgit the pa.s.sword!" cried Nick Peters with his little falsetto laugh, that seemed keyed for a fleer, although it was most graciously modulated now. "Ye mought hev shot us fur revenuers."

"I mought hev shot ye fur wuss," Con Hite growled, rising slowly from his chair, his big dark eyes betokening his displeasure. "I dunno how _ye_ ever kem ter know this place."

"It'll go no furder, Con, I'll swear," said the horse-thief, lifting his hand to Hite's shoulder, and affecting to see in his words an appeal for secrecy. "This," he added blandly, "is Mr. Persimmon Sneed, ez hev been a-visitin' me. Lemme make ye acquainted."

He seemed to perceive nothing incongruous in the fact that Mr.

Persimmon Sneed should be blindfolded. But as Con Hite looked at the elder man, standing helpless, his head held slightly forward, the sight apparently struck his risibilities, and his wonted geniality rose to the occasion.

"An' do Mr. Persimmon Sneed always wear blinders?" he asked, with a guffaw.

Peters seemed immeasurably relieved by the change of tone.

"Whilst visitin' me, he do," he remarked. "Mr. Persimmon hev got sech a fine mem'ry fur localities, ye see."

Hite with a single gesture pulled off the bandage. "Waal, let him look about him hyar. I s'pose ye hev ter be more partic'lar 'n me 'count o'

that stranger man's horse."

Peters changed countenance, his attention riveted. "What horse?" he demanded.

"The horse of the man ez war kilt,--ye know folks hev laid that job ter you-uns. Jerry," turning aside to his colleague, who had done naught but stare, "whar's yer manners? Why n't ye gin the comp'ny a drink?"

Hite shoved the chair in which he had been seated to Persimmon Sneed, who was lugubriously rubbing his eyes, and flung himself down on a boulder lying almost outside of the recess in the moonlight, his long booted and spurred legs stretching far across the entrance. His hat on the back of his head, its brim upturned, revealed his bluff open face--it held no craft surely; he hardly seemed to notice how insistently Peters pressed after him, unmindful of his henchmen and Jerry imbibing appreciatively the product of the cheerful little copper still.

"But I never done sech ez that," protested Peters. "I always stop short o' bloodshed. I never viewed the man's beastis, ye'll bear me witness, Con."

"Me?" said Con, with a laugh. "I dunno nuthin' 'bout yer doin's.

Whar's Mr. Sneed's horse?"

"Never seen him,--never laid eyes on him! How folks kin hev the heart ter 'cuse me of sech doin's ez I never done!" he lifted his eyes as if appealing to heaven.

"The killin' 's the wust; an' Mr. Sneed's critter bein' gone too mought make folks lay it ter ye fur sure," persisted Hite.

"I ain't seen Mr. Sneed's horse. Mr. Sneed--ye wouldn't b'lieve it ter look at him, but he's a ransomed saint! ha! ha! The money fur him will be fotched hyar ter yer still. I sent fur it ter kem by Jake Glenn; he knows ye, an' ye know him."

Con Hite's open brow did not cloud. If there were any significance perceptible in the fact that Mr. Persimmon Sneed, with so fine a head for locality, should be able to identify only the still among his various shelters during his "visit" to Nick Peters, Con Hite made no sign.

"Lord, how glad I'll be ter git rid o' him!" Peters said in an undertone to Hite. "He hev mighty nigh argufied me ter death,--'bout sperits, an' witches, an' salvation, an' law, an' c.r.a.ps, an'

horse-flesh, an' weather signs. I be sorter 'feard his wife won't pay nuthin' ter git him again. He 'pears sorter under the weather now, or eavesdroppin' or suthin'. The money 'll pay me mighty pore fur my trouble. Thar--what's that?"

He paused to listen; there was a sound other than the tinkling of the little rill near at hand or the blare of the autumn wind. A stone came rolling down the path, dislodged by a cautious step,--then another.

Hite drew a revolver from his pocket, and, holding it in his right hand, stepped out on the rugged little parapet and stood there, with the depths of the gorge below him, looking up the ascent with the moonlight in his face. He spoke in a low voice to some one approaching, and was answered in the same tone. He stepped back to give the new-comer s.p.a.ce to enter, and as Jake Glenn came in held out his hand for the package the messenger bore.