Judith of the Cumberlands Part 17

"Huldah's a good girl, and I'm sorry if he thinks--I'd hate to be the one that----"

For a moment Judith stared at him with incredulous anger, then she wheeled sharply, went into the house and shut the door. Creed turned appealingly to the older man. He had great faith in Jephthah Turrentine's good sense and cool judgment. But the young justice showed in many ways less comprehension of these, his own people, than an outsider born and bred. Jephthah Turrentine was no longer to be reckoned with as a man--he was the head of a tribe, and that tribe was at war.

"I don't know as that thar gal is worth namin' at this time," he vouchsafed, almost plaintively. "Ef she had taken Jim Cal's Iley 'long with her, I could fergive the both of 'em and wish ye joy. As it is, she's neither here nor thar. Ef you had nothin' better to name to my son Wade, mebbe we'd as well talk of the c.r.a.ps, and about Steve Ma.s.sengale settin' out to run for the Legislature."

Creed stood up, and in so doing let the little packet of papers he held in his hand drop unnoted to the gra.s.s. He scorned to make an appeal for himself, yet it seemed worth while to let his adversaries know that he was aware what they would be at.

"Who found Blatch Turrentine's body and removed it?" he asked abruptly.

Blatch's body,--unknown to his uncle and Judith--at that moment reposing comfortably upon a bed in the loft room adjoining the porch, heaved with noiseless chuckles.

Old Jephthah's eyes narrowed. "We 'low that ye might answer that question for yo'self," he said coolly. "Word goes that you've done hid the body, so murder couldn't be proved."

The visitor sighed. He was disappointed. He had hoped the old man might have admitted--to him--that Blatch had not been killed.

"Mr. Turrentine," he began desperately, "I know what you people believe about me--but it isn't true; I'm not a spy. When I came upon that still, I was running for my life. I never wanted to know anything about blockaded stills."

"Ye talked sort o' like ye did, here earlier in the evenin'," said the old man, rearing himself erect in his chair, and glaring upon the fool who spoke out in broad daylight concerning such matters.

"I didn't mean that personally," protested Creed. "I wish to the Lord I didn't know anything about it. I'm sorry it chanced that I looked in the cave there and saw your son----"

"You needn't go into no particulars about whar you looked in, nor what you seed, nor call out no names of them you seed," cut in the old man's voice, low and menacing; and around the corner of the house Jim Cal, where he had stolen up to listen, trembled through all the soft bulk of his body like a jelly; and into his white face the angry blood rushed.

"Wish ye didn't know nothin? Yes, and you'll wish't it wuss'n that befo'

yo're done with it," he muttered under his breath.

"I don't intend to use that or any other information against a neighbour and a friend," Creed went on doggedly. "But they can't make me leave the Turkey Tracks. I'm here to stay. I came with a work to do, and I mean to do it or die trying."

The old man's head was sunk a bit on his breast, so that the great black beard rose up of itself and shadowed his lower face. "Mighty fine--mighty fine," he murmured in its voluminous folds. "Ef they is one thing finer than doin' what you set out to do, hit's to die a-tryin'. The sort of sentiments you have on hand now is the kind I l'arned myself out of the blue-backed speller when I was a boy. I mind writin' em out big an' plain after the teacher's copy."

Creed looked about him for Judith. He had failed with the old man, but she would understand--she would know. His hungry heart counselled him that she was his best friend, and he glanced wistfully at the door through which she had vanished; but it remained obstinately closed as he made his farewells, got dispiritedly to his mule and away.

Judith watched his departure from an upper window, smitten to the heart by the drooping lines of the figure, the bend of the yellow head.

Inexorably drawn she came down the steep stairs, checking, halting at every step, her breast heaving with the swift alternations of her mood.

The door of the boys' room swung wide; her swift glance descried Wade's figure just vanis.h.i.+ng into the grove at the edge of the clearing.

The tall, gaunt old man brooded in his chair, his black eyes fixed on vacancy, the pipe in his relaxed fingers dropped to his knee. Up toward the Jim Cal cabin Iley, one baby on her hip and two others clinging to her skirts, dodged behind a convenient smoke-house, and peered out anxiously.

Judith stepped noiselessly into the porch; the old man did not turn his head. Her quick eye noted the paper Creed had dropped. She stooped and picked it up un.o.bserved, slipped into the kitchen, studying its lines of figures which meant nothing to her, caught up her sunbonnet and, glancing warily about, made an exit through the back door. She ran through a long grape-arbour where great wreathing arms of Virgin's Bower aided to shut the green tunnel in from sight, then took a path where tall bushes screened her, making for the short cut which she guessed Creed would take.

Down the little dell through which she herself had ridden that first day with what wonderful thoughts of him in her heart, she got sight of him, going slowly, the lagging gait of the old mule seeming to speak his own depression. The trees were all vigorous young second growth here, and curtained the slopes with billows of green. The drying ground sent up a spicy mingling of odours--decaying pine needles, heart leaf, wintergreen berries, and the very soil itself.

b.u.mblebees shouldered each other clumsily about the heads of milk-weed blossoms. Cicada droned in long, loud crescendo and diminuendo under the hot sun of mid forenoon. A sensitive plant, or as Judith herself would have said, a "shame briar," caught at her skirts as she hastened. Dipping deeper into the hollow, the man ahead, riding with his gaze upon the ground, became aware of the sound of running feet behind him, and then a voice which made his pulses leap called his name in suppressed, cautious tones. He looked back to see Judith hurrying after him, her cheeks aflame from running, the sunbonnet carried in her hand, and her dark locks freeing themselves in little moist tendrils about her brow where the tiny beads of perspiration gathered.

"You dropped this," she panted, offering the paper when she came abreast of him.

For a moment she stood by the old mule's shoulder looking up into the eyes of his rider. It was the reversal of that first day when Creed had stood so looking up at her. Some memory of it struggled in her, and appealed for his life, anyhow, from that fierce primitive jealousy which would have sacrificed the lover of the other woman.

"I--I knowed the paper wasn't likely anything you needed," she told him.

"I jest had to have speech with you alone. I want to warn you. The boys is out after you. They ain't no hope, ef the Turrentines gits after you.

Likely we're both watched right now. You'll have to leave the mountains."

Creed got quickly from the mule and stood facing her, a little pale and very stern.

"Do you hold with them?" he asked. "I had no intention of killing Blatch.

The quarrel was forced on me, as they would say if they told the truth."

"Well, they won't tell the truth," said Judith impatiently. "What differ does it make how come it? They're bound to run ye out. Hit's a question of yo' life ef ye don't go. I--I don't know what makes me come an' warn ye--but you and Huldy had better git to the settlement as soon as ye can."

Creed saw absolutely nothing in her coupling of his name with Huldah Spiller's, but the fact that both were under the displeasure of the Turrentines. She searched his face with hungry gaze for some sign of denial of that which she imputed. Instead, she met a look of swift distress.

"I've got to see Wade about Huldah," Creed a.s.serted doggedly. "I promised her--I told her----"

Judith drew back.

"Well, see Wade then!" she choked. "There he is," and she pointed to the wall of greenery behind which her quicker eyes had detected a man who stole, rifle on shoulder, through the bushes toward a point by the path-side.

"What do I care?" she flung at him. "What is it to me?--you and your Huldy, and your grand plans, and your killin' up folks and a-gittin' run out o' the Turkey Tracks! Settle it as best ye may--I've said my last word!"

Her breast heaved convulsively. Bitter, corroding tears burned in her flas.h.i.+ng eyes; rage, jealousy, thwarted pa.s.sion, tenderness denied, and utter terror of the outcome--the time after--all these tore her like wild wolves, as she turned and fled swiftly up the path she had come.

The pale young fellow with the marred, stricken face, standing by the mule, looked after her heavily. Those flying feet were carrying away from him, out of his life, all that made that life beautiful and blest. Yet Creed set his jaw resolutely, and facing about once more, addressed himself to the situation as it was.

"Wade--Wade Turrentine!" he called. "Come out of there. I see you. Come out and talk to me."

With all the composure in life Wade slouched into the opening of the path.

"You've got good eyes," was his sole comment. Then, as the other seemed slow to begin, "What might you want speech with me about?" he inquired.

"It's about Huldah," Creed opened the question volubly now. "You love her, and she loves you. She came over to warn me because we are old acquaintances and friends, and I guess she don't want you to get into trouble. Is it true that her life is not safe if she stays here on the mountain?"

Wade's pleasant hazel eyes narrowed and hardened.

"You're a mighty busy somebody about things that don't consarn ye," he remarked finally.

"But this does concern me," Creed insisted. "I can't be the cause of breaking up a match between you and Huldah----"

He would have gone further, but Wade interrupted shaking his head.

"No--I reckon you cain't. Hit'd take more than you to break up any match I was suited with. Mebbe I don't want no woman that's liable to hike out and give me away whenever she takes the notion."

"Oh, come now, Wade," said Bonbright, with good-natured entreaty in his voice. "You know she wouldn't give you away. She didn't mean any harm to you. I'll bet you've done plenty of things twice as bad, if Huldah had the knowing of them."

"Mebbe I have," agreed Wade, temperately, and suddenly one saw the resemblance to his father. "Mebbe I have--but ye see I ain't the one that's bein' met up with right now. I ain't carin' which nor whether about Huldy Spiller; but _you've_ got to walk yo'self from the Turkey Tracks--and walk sudden and walk straight, Mr. Creed Bonbright--or you'll come to more trouble with the Turrentines. I tell ye this in pure good will."

Chapter XIII