In Old Kentucky Part 21

"Don't, Joe!" said the girl, looking at the cartridge with the light of horror s.h.i.+ning in her eyes. "What you doin' with such devil's stuff?"

"I got it for th' revenuers," he said frankly. The mountaineers of the old c.u.mberland, to this day, make no secret of their deadly hatred for the agents of the government excise. "They're snoopin' 'round th'

mountings, an' if they find my still I plan to blow it into nothin', an'

them with it."

She recoiled from him. "No, no, Joe; you'd better gin th' still up, nor do such work as that!"

"I'll never gin it up!" said he, with a set face. "It's mine; it war my father's long before me. There's only one thing could ever make me gin it up."

"What's that?" The girl was still spellbound by the fascination of the dynamite which she had come so near to treading on. Her eyes were fixed upon the cartridge in his hand with horror, wonder.

He stepped closer to her. "I mout gin it up for you!"

"For me?"

"You know I've loved ye sence ye were that high," said he, and measured with his hand a very little way up the side of the old stump. "Many a time I've listened hyar to your evenin' hymn, an' thought I'd rather hear you singin' in my home than hear th' angels singin' in th' courts o' Heaven. Say th' word, Madge--say you'll be my little wife!"

The girl was woe fully affected. Her eyes filled and her bosom heaved with feeling. It cut her to the soul to have to hurt this playmate of her babyhood, defender of her youth, companion of her budding womanhood; their lives had been linked, too, by the great tragedy which, years ago, had orphaned both of them. But, of late, she had felt sure that she could never marry him. She would not admit, even to herself, just why this was; but it was so. "No, no, Joe; it can never be," she said.

He knew! "And why?" said he, his face blackening with bitter feeling, his brows contracting fiercely. "Because that furriner from the blue gra.s.s has come atween us!"

Madge, surprised that he should guess the secret which she had scarcely admitted, even to herself, was, for a second, frightened by his keenness. Had she shown her feelings with such freedom? But she quickly regained self-control and answered with a clever counterfeit of lightness. "Him? Oh, sho! He'd never think o' me that way!"

"Mebbe so," said Joe, "but I know you think more o' th' books he teaches you from than o' my company. From th' thickets borderin' th' clearin'

where you've studied, I've watched you settin' thar with him, wen I'd give th' world to be thar in his place. Why, I'd ennymost gin up my life for one kiss, Madge!" He looked at her with pitiful love and longing in his eyes; but this soon changed to a sort of mad determination. "I'll have it, too!" he cried, advancing toward her.

She was amazed, not in the least dismayed. Indeed the episode took from the moment some of its emotional strain. That he should try to do this utterly unwarrantable thing took a portion of the weight of guilty feeling from her heart. It had been pressing heavily there. "You shan't!" she cried. "Careful, Joe Lorey!"

She eluded him with ease and ran across her little bridge. He paused, a second, in astonishment, and, as he paused, she grasped the rope and pulled the little draw up after her.

"Look out, Joe; it air a hundred feet, straight down!" she cried, as she saw that the baffled mountaineer was trembling on the chasm's edge, as if preparing for a spring. "Good night, Joe. Take my advice--gin up th' still, an' all thought of makin' a wife of a girl as ain't willin'."

Half laughing and half crying she ran up the path which wound about among the thickets on the rocky little island where her rough cabin stood, secure, secluded.

The mountaineer stood, baffled, on the brink of the ravine. Much loneliness among the mountains, where there was no voice but his own to listen to, had given him the habit of talking to himself in moments of excitement.

"Gone! Gone!" he said. "Gone laughin' at me!" He clenched his fists.

"And it is him as has come atween us!" He turned slowly from the place, picked up his rifle, slung the game-sack, saggin with the weight of the dynamite, across his shoulder by its strap, and started from the place.

He had gone but a short distance, though, before he stopped, considering. Murder was in Joe Lorey's heart.

"She said he war comin' back," he sullenly reflected. "I'll ... lay for him, right hyar."

He looked cautiously about. His quick ear caught the sound of footsteps coming up the trail.

"Somebody's stirrin', now," he said. "Oh, if it's only him!"

He slipped behind a rock to wait in ambush.

But it was not his enemy who came, now, along the trail. Horace Holton, held to the mountains by his mysterious business, had left the others of the party to go home alone, as they had come, and returned to the neighborhood which housed the girl who owned the land he coveted.

Joe, suspicious of him, as the mountaineer who makes his living as a moons.h.i.+ner, is, of course, of every stranger who appears within his mountains, stepped forward, suddenly, his rifle in his hand and ready to be used. He had no idea that the man had been a member of the party from the bluegra.s.s.

"Halt, you!" he cried.

CHAPTER XI

Holton, full of scheming, was returning up the trail after having said good-bye to Barbara, Miss Alathea and the Colonel at the railway in the valley, climbing steadily and skillfully, without much thought of his surroundings. The locality, familiar to him years before (although he had at great pains indicated to everyone but Barbara that it was wholly strange to him) showed but superficial change to his searching, reminiscent eyes. His feet had quickly fallen into the almost automatic climbing-stride of the born mountaineer, and his thoughts had gradually absorbed themselves in memories of the past. Joe Lorey's sudden command to halt was somewhat startling, therefore, even to his iron nerves.

Instinctively and instantly he heeded the gruff order.

Dusk was falling and he could not very clearly see the moons.h.i.+ner, at first, as he stepped from behind the shelter of his rock. He moved slowly on, a step or two, hands half raised to show that they did not hold weapons, recovering quickly from the little shock of the surprise, planning an explanation to whatever mountaineer had thought his coming up the trail at that hour a suspicious circ.u.mstance. That he was one of Layson's friends from the low-country would, he thought, be proof enough that he was not an enemy of mountain-folk. Layson, he knew, was generally regarded with good will by the shy dwellers in this wilderness.

But when he clearly saw Joe Lorey's face a thrill shot through him far more lasting than the little tremor born, at first, of the command to halt.

He had not seen the youth before. Joe, half jealous, half contemptuous, of Layson's fine friends from the bluegra.s.s, had kept out of their sight, although he had watched them furtively from covert almost constantly; and, it chanced, had not been so much as mentioned by either Frank or Madge while the party from the bluegra.s.s lingered at the camp, save when Madge told the tragic story of her childhood while Holton stood aloof, for reasons of his own, hearing but imperfectly.

Now the unexpected sight of the young man, for some reasons, made the old one gasp in horror. There was that about the face, the att.i.tude, the very way the lithe moons.h.i.+ner held his gun, which made him seem, to the astonished man whom he had halted, like a grim vision from the past. "My G.o.d!" he thought. "Can the dead have come to life?"

For an instant he went weak. His blood chilled and the quick beating of his heart changed the deep breathing of his recent swinging stride into short, sharp gasps.

It was only for an instant, though. His life had not been one to teach him to falter long in the face of an emergency. Quickly he regained poise and reasoned calmly.

"No," he thought, "it's Joe, Ben Lorey's son. Th' father's layin' where he has been, all these years. I'm skeery as a girl."

Joe advanced upon him truculently. "Say," he demanded, "what's yer name an' what ye want here?" His ever ready rifle nested in the crook of his left arm, his brow was threatening, his mouth was firmly set an instant after he had spoken.

Holton, recovering himself quickly, spoke calmly, propitiatingly. "My name's Holton. I want to see th' gal as lives up yander. Want to buy her land of her."

Lorey, satisfied by this explanation that the stranger was not a government agent, as he had, at first suspected, relaxed his tense rigidity of muscles. From fear of revenuers his disturbed mind returned quickly to the bitterness of his resentment of what he thought Madge Brierly's infatuation for the young lowlander.

"It's too late," he said. "Thar's only one man as she'd let down that bridge for, now--th' man I thought ye might be--Frank Layson."

Holton, quick to see the possibility of gaining an advantage, realizing from the young man's tone that he was certainly no friend of Layson's, guessing, with quick cunning, at what the situation was, decided that the thing for him to do was to reveal the fact that, in his heart, he, also, hated Layson.

"So ye took me for a revenuer or Frank Layson, eh?" said he. "I know what th' mountings think o' revenuers, an' I reckon, from yer handlin'

o' that rifle, that you're no friend o' Layson's."

Joe, full of the fierce bitterness of his resentment, was ready to confide in anyone his hatred of the "furriner" who had come up and won the girl he loved. He let the barrel of his rifle slip between his fingers till its stock was resting on the ground.

"I hates him as I hates but one man in th' world!" he said, with bitter emphasis.

"Who's that?" said Holton, thoughtlessly, although, an instant afterward, he was sorry that he had pursued the subject.

"Lem Lindsay," Lorey answered; "him as killed my father. Frank Layson's come between me an' Madge Brierly, an' he's got to cl'ar my tracks!" His voice thrilled with the intensity of his emotion, and, suddenly, he caught his rifle up, again, into his crooked elbow, where it rested ready for quick usage. "If you plans to warn him--" he began.