The Red Debt Part 13

He placed his hands on her soft curls and pressed his lips to the little white scar that crossed the part in her hair. He had kissed it before.

Many times now, did he press it.

His throat pained terribly as he poured his fervent kisses of adoration upon this tiny scar that he had accidentally inflicted years ago, in the excitement of a sham battle.

She suddenly tore away from him and ran ahead. She dared not trust herself to linger longer. He followed, a tribute of grief in his resigned, dull eyes, like a man with flowers to put on a mound.

When Lem left the spot, Orlick ducked sneakingly out of a dense clump of laurel where he had watched the love scene with burning eyes--eyes glittering with hate and jealousy.

Unheard and un.o.bserved, he slunk away through the pawpaw thicket into the impenetrable rhododendrons. For hours he had followed Lem that morning. But he had been too far away to overhear anything that pa.s.sed between him and the girl.

Now that old Cap Lutts was gone, Orlick had hidden here with the intention of killing Lem. He had worked his way up on his stomach and was just inching his rifle into position, when the girl appeared, and he desisted for some remote reason of his own. However, he slunk away, his foul heart beating high with hate.

If he could not have Belle-Ann, he would make sure that Lem would not.

As she neared the horse-block, Belle-Ann turned and waited for Lem.

"Will yo' sho' kill th' ghost-man, Lem?" she reminded him in parting.

He nodded apathetically. He was beyond the heat of any enthusiasm in this tense minute. He only knew that she was going away from him.

In her drawling, sweet voice she continued as they proceeded toward the horse-block where they could see Benson and the horses ready.

"Ef yo' do, Lem, hit'll smoke all th' sorry outen my heart, an' I'll be glad agin, like 'fore maw an' pap wus kilt--gladness th' kind whut hain't a-carin' ef hit rains, or ef hit suns. Don't be sad, Lem,"

glancing into his woful, tragic eyes. "Belle-Ann'll be a-prayin' fo'

yo'-all. An', Lem, when I c.u.m back, mebby yo'll kiss me heah," she ended with a finger on her puckered, red lips.

Buddy and Slab and the dogs were mingling with the restive horses in the suns.h.i.+ne. Benson had already mounted.

Forgetful of her precious dress, Belle-Ann dropped on her knees in the dirt beside old Ben and, with her arms around the blind hound's neck, she hugged the old dog to her and kissed his soft ears. Buddy hung on to her with appeals for her early return. Old Slab shuffled around her with a medley of adjurations.

She turned in the saddle and called back:

"Keep a-watchin' an' a-tryin', Lem--an' yo', Slab--don't yo' fergit whut yo' promised against th' witch."

Her voice was unsteady now.

Benson was leading the way a few rods ahead. As they looped the spur and headed down the trail toward the cypress cut, Belle-Ann could no longer combat her feelings. Bending low over the saddle horn, she wept inconsolably.

At the gap below she looked back. Lem stood up on the horse-block waving to her. Through dim eyes she looked and flourished her wet handkerchief above her head.

Far down in the valley, where they struck the faint wagon trail and the horses came out to the ford at Boon Creek, Belle-Ann turned her eager eyes up toward Moon mountain and there, as she had expected, she discerned Lem's outline high up on the apex of Eagle Crown.

And as the horses paused in mid-stream to drink, she caught flashes in the sunlight, and she knew that Lem was waving his hat to her, and she knew he was straining his eyes and his heart for her.

In these troublesome times, gray and somber with woe, the Lutts cabin on Moon mountain was a dismal and cheerless abode.

Lem and little Buddy were inconsolable, and the monotonous days following Belle-Ann's departure were sad and long--and very lonely.

Slab was tireless in his efforts to keep the boys cheered up.

On pleasant nights he would sit on the witch-elm block before the cabin and sing "Kitty Wells." This sacred duty over, he would turn his talent to enlivening negro melodies, interspersed with doubtful tales, well put together, dealing with war times in general, and the wonders of Lexington in particular.

And when the storms came, and the lightning crackled, and the cascade in h.e.l.lsfork raged, and the las.h.i.+ng trees soughed in the rain and tempest, Slab would render the same musical program in the big front room, but vary his plots of fiction woven about his beloved Lexington. In case Lem and Buddy glanced at each other approvingly, or applauded his comics with even a half smile, his old face showed plainly that he was amply repaid.

Lem had eight trusty men working "The Worm" up in the secret cave, but spent most of the time each day, after counting the demijohns to be turned over to the bootleggers, in wandering aimlessly over the mountains. He was always alert and watchful.

Over in Southpaw there were evidences of unrest, and Lem looked for an attack from the revenuers at any hour.

Indeed, so furtive had this habit of vigilance become, that in these days he rarely traveled the trails, but moved under cover parallel with the paths.

One day he stepped out in the open trail and picked up a fledgling hawk that had tumbled out of its nest. Ahead was a group of boulders, one of which was immediately under a spruce sapling.

To these he walked leisurely and, resting his rifle against the first rock, he climbed up to put the youngster beyond reach of the badgers and razorbacks.

He was in the act of reaching up when, at a slight sound, he turned and looked straight into the round, black end of a rifle, less than six feet from his chest!

Down at the stock was the big bull-dog face of the ghost-man, leering at him triumphantly.

The peculiar, erratic impulses of the psychological moment are ever puzzling and insoluble. Lem gazed calmly, almost unconcernedly, down upon Peter Burton. Indeed, at this instant, there was no more evidence of excitement in Lem's face and mien, than had the revenuer been a venturesome fox squirrel gamboling about.

Lem almost grinned pleasantly, as he turned and reaching up, placed the young hawk safely on a low branch.

The little creature threw out his wings. Lem steadied it with careful deliberation, then leaped down from the boulder. The instant his feet struck the ground it seemed to shock his very blood into icy currents that congealed and left him befuddled and s.h.i.+vering.

As he stared into the revenuer's insolent face, the earth looked like a pinwheel.

Suddenly the film lifted from his brain and he was conscious for the first time that the revenuer had taken his rifle. The man's thick lips were moving. He was talking to him. Lem's poise came back. Fully aroused, his face went livid with rage. The revenuer perceived this and thrust the rifle muzzle closer.

"You don't doubt that I'll shoot, do you?" he inquired, with his eyes fixed savagely upon Lem.

"Naw, houn'-dog," returned the boy in low, quavering tones. "Yo'd kill a female baby."

The revenuer laughed.

"Don't you know when I first saw you on that rock training that hawk to sit up, you kind of scared me?" He expelled a volume of tobacco juice.

"You scared me some, Mr. Lutts. I thought you was fixing to ring a church bell on me."

He let loose of Lem's rifle and it fell behind him. He held his own, pistol-fas.h.i.+on, under his arm, with his finger in the guard, as he stepped nearer and shook a huge menacing fist in the boy's pallid face.

"You'll have a swell chance ringing anything on me again unless you've got a church bell in your pocket. You pulled a swell trick on me that night, didn't ye? You thought the bunch that galloped down to your dog-house would get me that night, didn't ye? Young man, I'm going to bust this gang of thieves up here, or I'll drink h.e.l.lsfork dry! And you--you--you're not only carrying on your daddy's business----"

A blinding, reckless fury that fired Lem with the strength and savagery of a tiger propelled his body through the air like a catapult. He landed on the revenuer's neck and with his naked hands he tried to kill him.

He learned speedily why Burton had not fired, for a second man who had been concealed behind the boulders, together with Jutt Orlick, sprang out and upon him. These two heavyweights soon overpowered and handcuffed the boy, while Orlick lay with gloating eyes, peering out at the scene.

Burton rolled Lem over on his back, and left him to exhaust the maledictions he was heaping upon their heads.