XVII.

In Clem Sanders’s ingenuous face was expressed at this moment a sudden illogical, full-fledged anger and doubt, as in the slow processes of his brain was revolved the idea of the stranger’s claim to consideration on the score of a friendship with the Strobe family. He repudiated it as a figment. The normal repulsion for a cold-blooded lie, as he fancied this to be, chilled even his good nature. He had been weak, he knew, in treacherously revealing the secrets of his associates to Marcella, and he had incurred thereby heavy risks. He was willing, since it was her wish, that this folly should be utilized to save the man’s life. But he had revolted from sharing in the subsequent deceptions, from the double-masked character which he was forced to assume, one of the chief of the vigilantes and the secret ally of the culprit. His conclusions had a certain quality of absolute conviction, which triumphantly dispensed with logic.

“Ye don’t know the Strobe fambly!” he said suddenly. “Ye never hearn o’ nare one o’ ’em till this evenin’ in yer born days,—’thout ’twar through yer frien’ Jake Baintree’s vaporin’s an’ maunderin’s ’bout folks he ain’t fit ter ’sociate with. Eli bein’ a candidate fur office so frequent, he hev a heap o’ wuthless folks a-hangin’ round him, created by God A’mighty fur nuthin’ in this worl’ but ter vote at the polls. Naw, sir! ye ain’t reg’lar ’quainted with none o’ the Strobe fambly!”

He had ceased to work at the anvil. His brow showed several corrugations in straight lines, his eyebrows were elevated, his narrow, long eyes were grave, his square jaw was hard set. He still held the uplifted hammer in his hand, and as a specimen of physical force he might have been somewhat awe-inspiring to the slightly built stranger; but the paramount impression which he received was that this was Marcella’s informant, whose name she had not disclosed,—this bold and inconsequent Vulcan, the traitor to the League of Vigilantes.

“Now crow a little louder, my cock, and I’ll have _your_ friends wring _your_ neck, in short order!” he said to himself, feeling still master of the situation.

Outwardly he was dumb, silently marking the blacksmith’s demonstration with watchful eyes, leaning against the elevated hearth, the tips of his fingers thrust in the pockets of his trousers.

“Clem Sanders,” said the blacksmith’s mother, much displeased, “nuthin’ in this worl’ air so becomin’ ter a fool ez a shet mouth. Then folks kin only jedge o’ what God A’mighty war in his wisdom disposed ye should look like.”

But Clem, usually a dutiful son, gave her no notice.

“I’m a-reelin’ ye out cornsider’ble line, ennyhow,” he continued. “I’ll haul ye in, though, in about three shakes o’ a dead sheep’s tail, ef ye go ter tryin’ ter purtend ez ye an’ Jake Baintree air favored guests yander at Strobe’s.”

For the sake of carrying out the theory on which he had conducted his share in the episode, the stranger, feigning to understand no more than the surface of affairs might betoken, lifted his eyebrows as in surprise, and shrugged his shoulders with a sophisticated gesture intimating a facile concession.

“I meant no offense, I’m sure; I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I had no idea the Strobes were so exclusive!” He could not have forborne this fling, had his life depended on his withholding it. “But, my good fellow, don’t question me. Ask them if _they_ know _me_. They will tell you, and as you are so polite you will certainly believe them.”

The blacksmith lowered at him, the red light of the dwindling forge fire on his broad face and bare throat and herculean arm. Only a portion of the reply was intelligible to him, but he caught the covert satire it conveyed, and the method of glib enunciation, with quick, flexible motions of the eyelids and lips, the alert turn of the head, the gleam of innuendo in the eye implying bridled retorts that chafed at the curb of fear, all repelled him. He felt a sudden ebbing away of confidence, of his credulity. He began illogically to doubt every statement the stranger had made. Even the pick in his hand—how well it was mended, better than new; the goodly handicraft!—was in some sort a blind, a disguise, a subterfuge. He frowned more darkly still as he sought to divine the rascality that must lurk behind this feint of mining.

Mrs. Sanders, still sitting on the keg, yawned with a somnolent vocal refrain, and then rose stiffly to her feet; this gesture roused little Silas from a state of galvanic jerks and nods in which he had been indulging, his white eyeballs quite eclipsed, or now and then half showing unnaturally upturned. He began to rub his eyes violently as he shuffled up from his seat on the hub, taking scant notice of the fact that where there is a hub, spokes are of the vicinage; he stumbled over one or two of these, and fell in sprawling fashion almost to the door. “Thar, now! What did I tell ye!” Mrs. Sanders exclaimed acridly. And yet she had not told him anything.

But Silas, who had voice enough for much loud whooping, when such demonstrations were timely, seemed to be frugal in volume on ordinary occasions, and it was in a very thin wheeze that he made haste to stipulate that he “warn’t hurt nowhar,” in a manner that implied that if he were injured he might expect to have his bruises multiplied at the hands of Mrs. Sanders, by way of annotating the lesson he had received to take more care.

Mrs. Sanders wore a disaffected air. All her interest in the events of the evening had evaporated in the prospect of a wrangle among the young men. She was of pacific principles, although her practices were not such as always tended to preserve the peace of the neighborhood, since she arrogated the prerogative of censorship in many particulars, and earnestly resented the right of reciprocation. If angry words were to be spoken, she liked them best of her own framing, and zealously and fearlessly applied them. But she sincerely deprecated a quarrel that was not of her own making, and her second yawn as candidly denoted that she was bored as her first.

“Ef ye boys air a-goin’ ter take ter quar’lin’, I be a-goin’ home,” she remarked, as if this were a threat.

There was no direct reply, but the stranger looked at her with covert alarm and shame and entreaty contending in his eyes. It humiliated him to be so definitely conscious of the fact, but her presence here was a protection to him in some sort, and he leaned even upon so slight a thing as the prepossession in his favor with which he had inspired her. She did not notice, or she did not interpret, the protest in his eyes, as she and little Silas took their way through the broad open door, and into that night of moonlight and shadow. Not all of pensive mystery, not all of melancholy magic, were these ethereal elements of contrast. Some elvish spirit informed a phase with fine-spun mirth, that failed not though none was there to see; a tricksy fantasy cut the leaves into grotesque shapes; with a delicate twanging note snapped a twig to test the acoustic properties of the crystalline silence; furnished the skulking fox with a nimble and crafty double to pursue him, at which he glanced over his shoulder askance; sprang up behind Mrs. Sanders and little Silas, following them in their own likeness to see them home through the woods,—the silhouette of her long, gaunt figure, with its grotesque sun-bonnet, and Silas’s small bifurcated image, with a slouched hat and a big head. The stranger did not watch them out of sight, for he became aware the next instant that Jepson had moved. The mountaineer had left the door, and was slowly advancing upon the two as they stood at the anvil. His face was quite unmoved, placid and dispassionate in its expression, but there was something in his eye which the stranger felt it might be well to note. Jepson paused, putting one hand upon the anvil, and looking full and searchingly into the intruder’s face he said,—

“What mought be yer name, stranger?”

“Rathburn,—Eugene Rathburn.”

Both mountaineers pondered upon this silently for a time.

“Ye ’lowed ye war a doctor?” said Jepson.

“Certainly I am,” replied Rathburn. “That’s how I happened to know Baintree. I attended him when he was ill in prison.”

“Waal,”—Jepson tapped the pickaxe significantly,—“ain’t this a powerful cur’ous bizness fur sech?”

“Why,”— Rathburn sought to laugh as he began to explain,—“I’m young as yet. I have no large practice. If I should find ore in quantities like the specimens Baintree shows,”—despite his fears his eyes glowed,—“I should be a wealthy man, a millionaire!”

He looked zestfully at the stolidly attentive mountaineers. They were alike incapable of sharing or understanding an enthusiasm such as this. A vague mental numbness, a sort of paralysis, began to steal over him, as he gradually realized how impossible it was to explain to them the greed for wealth, to move them to the love of riches. Yet he returned once more to the attempt:—

“Why, it would be a godsend to all this country. It would be opened out. You would all get rich,—new people in droves would come in. You would all get rich!”

The two mountaineers looked at one another.

“Thar ain’t nobody so special pore hyar, though some is better off ’n others,” observed Jepson calmly.

“You would all become educated and live high, like the ‘valley folks.’”

“Laws-a-massy, I pray ter God I’ll never be like no valley folks!” protested Clem. “Meanes’ blacksmith, ceptin’ you-uns, I ever knowed kem from Colbury. Yes, sir; Grenup war his name.”

“If you could strike paying ore on that little farm of yours,”—the stranger, turning to Jepson, still essayed the subject,—“you might sell it for thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“I couldn’t sell it at all,” said Jepson definitely. “My folks is all buried thar.”

Rathburn looked at him with an expression which precedes a burst of astonished laughter, caught himself in time, and said no more.

“So this air what hev brung ye from home an’ frien’s, an’ kith an’ kin, ter hunt the mountings along of a murderer fur a silver mine,” said Jepson sternly.

Rathburn quailed slightly, but sought to defend himself. “He is no murderer. The jury acquitted him.”

“D’ ye happen ter know whar’s Sam’l Keale, the man he _didn’t_ kill, then?”

“Of course I don’t,” said Rathburn, visibly nettled. “I can only take the verdict of the jury on such questions. I have no right to go behind that.”

“Waal, I don’t need twelve men ter swear my brains inter my head,” declared Jepson. “_Whar’s Sam’l Keale?_”

The words rang out with the sonorous intensity of his voice. A faint echo came from the crag above the forge. The moonlight stood motionless in the door. Without, the frosty woods glittered.

“Whar’s Sam’l Keale?” he cried again. “Look-a-hyar, stranger.” He turned abruptly, and, with a lowered tone and a fiery eye, he laid his hand upon Rathburn’s arm, who shrank under his touch. “Ye axed me whar’s the mouth o’ the cave whar Baintree hid him. The critter never tole! An’ _I_ fund Sam’l Keale’s coat. An’ _I_ fund Sam’l Keale’s hat in a gorge they never sarched. God an’ the mountings only know the hidden place, an’ in thar mystery they will not reveal it.”

The stranger broke forth impetuously. “Then you, _you_ can tell me where that gorge is, and we can search the chasms! I feel sure that the silver is there, where the man lost his life,—the silver”—

Jepson flung away from him with a gesture so abrupt that Rathburn paused suddenly.

“What ails ye, man,” cried the mountaineer, “to talk of silver in the midst o’ the wharfores o’ life an’ death, an’ a-sarchin’ the gorge fur gain stiddier jestice? The place air nuthin’ ter you-uns but the hope o’ gittin’ the riches what one man los’ his life fur, an’ the t’other man tuk it. What sorter critter be ye?” His eyes were blazing with reproach. “What sorter critter be ye?”

“A sane one, I hope,” retorted the stranger, fairly overtaken. “I’m not intrusted with the administration of the laws. I have no right to sit in judgment on the justice of Jake Baintree’s acquittal. And it won’t make Samuel Keale any deader than he is—if he is dead—for me to find silver where he looked for it.”

“Ye air free fur me ter find it,” said Jepson, “but some time ye’ll ’low the day ye los’ yer soul in the gorge, an’ tuk silver fur its price, war a powerful dark day,—the fore-runner o’ darker ones, an’ eternal gloom.”

“I’m not going to lose my soul there!” cried Rathburn. “I am going to take very excellent care of my soul. I am going to strike it rich and be mighty good. Nothing in this world combines like goodness and prosperity,—natural affinities. All the good people are prosperous, and that is why they are _so_ good. Adversity sours on the stomach, and deranges the nervous system, and produces crime.”

Jepson’s eyes rested slightingly upon him.

“Ye kin persevere, fur I ain’t of a mind ter hender.”

Rathburn looked wistfully at him; so flinchingly was he sensible of this arrogance of permission, so did he yearn to flout and retort. Much as he had dared, he hardly dared this.

“I see no harm in sech ez ye hev said o’ yer goin’s on, ’ceptin’ it air o’ the pride an’ the willfulness o’ the devil; an’ ef he hev a mind ter mark ye fur his own, I dunno ez I feel called on in ennywise ter stay his hand. But thar may be deceitfulness in yer words, fur I know ye war warned aforehand by a woman.”

Rathburn palpably started; his eyes distended as he gazed at his self-constituted judge. How omniscient the masterful mountaineer seemed!

Jepson lingered, he hardly knew why, on this phase, despite the pain with which it was fraught. “Leastwise a gal,” he continued, elaborately particularizing. “She warned ye. An’ ye hev hed time ter collogue with Jake Baintree,—a skeery devil; I s’pose he war ’fraid ter kem,—an’ make up lies ter tell when questioned. But ye know now ez ye air watched. Ef ye falter from the straight line, it’ll go hard with ye. Take heed ter yer feet, fur ye will find thar air men in Brumsaidge ez will medjure each pace.”

He terminated the interview abruptly, making no sign of conclusion or farewell, moving with his long, deliberate, supple stride toward the door and out along the moonlit road.

Clem Sanders lingered. He felt that he would like to close his doors behind the audacity that, unlearned in the art, essayed to work at his forge, and to protect the little tongs and swage and hammer—for each of which, in the moment of its danger, he felt an almost paternal solicitude—from all non-professional intermeddling. He was placing them in their wonted order, according to his habit, when he suddenly noticed that the stranger had not moved. Rathburn was still standing, gazing steadfastly after Jepson, his whole attitude informed with resentment and agitation and the thirst for revenge, and his face bespeaking the passion and turmoil of his heart.

He turned with a quick gesture, as he became conscious that the blacksmith’s eyes were upon him.

“What’s that man’s name?” he demanded.

Clem Sanders was aware that in some sort he had produced a less forceful impression than his ally; that his recent anger and taunts were easily overlooked, and his problematic opinions were held as of scant consequence. A trifle of surliness was engendered by the perception that he was thus ignored, and he mumbled rather than pronounced his coadjutor’s name.

“Well, what’s the reason he takes so much on himself, damn him!” cried Rathburn recklessly.

“Sorter robustious,” explained Jepson’s facile associate.

“_Sorter robustious!_ Good Lord! Sets me free, and conditions me, as if—Don’t anybody make any head against him?”

“’Tain’t wuth while ter try. Folks sorter like Teck, an’ sorter don’t. But they foller arter him. An’,” with a recurrent desire to do justice, “thar’s one thing ez goes a long way with most folks: he’s mighty religious.”

“Religious! Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Rathburn in a fervor of amazement.

Clem began to enjoy the _rôle_ of biographer, since so fevered an interest hung on his words.

“A plumb survigrous saint, he is. He hev got a mighty fine voice fur quirin’. When he sings, it sounds some like the mountings hed bruk out a-psalmin’.”

“How many men did he have at your barn to-night?”

Clem Sanders gave him a long stare. “Ye wanter know too much. Ef I war a smart man, I’d stop hyar an’ forge me an’ you-uns a chain ter tie up these hyar tongues o’ ourn. I hev done talked too much a’ready. Ef I hedn’t, ye’d be a-danglin’ powerful limp ter one o’ them trees,”—nodding his head toward the great bare limbs,—“stone dead, an’ the buzzards would be hevin’ a high time ’mongst yer bones by ter-morrer.”

It was not a pleasant picture under the blacksmith’s crude touch, but its power was heightened by a sense of its absolute veracity, and the very close propinquity it had to being an event instead of a possibility. Rathburn shuddered a little.

“It was you who let the secret slip, then,” he said, his face flushing slightly. A hot, infrequent moisture had risen suddenly to his eyes. “That lovely, noble girl!” he faltered.

Sanders lost the final words in his eagerness to impress his theory of the clemency extended to the intruder, or it might have been tempered.

“Ye see, stranger, I hev got a tongue ez ’minds me o’ a cow a-swimmin’. Ter see the critter ker-wallop round in the water ye’d think ’twarn’t goin’ nowhar in ’special, an’ ’fore ye know it the beastis air out’n ear-shot. An’ Teck air a sorter—I-dunno-what—I tell all I know when he air around; an’ ef ye’ll b’lieve me, he got it outer me ez we-uns war a-kemin’ down hyar, ez I hed let out the secret ter Marcelly Strobe, an’ she war agin hangin’. I dunno how he guessed ’twar her ez warned ye,—jes’ kase nobody else knowed it. But that’s how kem ye ain’t dead now,—kase Marcelly war agin it.”

“Is he in love with her?”

“Yes,” assented Clem, “but,” with decision, “he air barkin’ up the wrong tree. Ye kin put _that_ in yer pipe an’ smoke it.”

Rathburn was silent for a few moments, while Clem clatteringly completed the orderly arrangement of the tools about the forge. Then they both stood together in the road, after the great barn-like doors were closed.

The moon hung near the meridian; the shadows had dwindled. There were wider avenues of frosty brilliance in the dense woods; the full splendor of the night was climaxing. The stars were few, however, and very faint; the wide spaces of the indefinitely blue sky were a desert, save here and there a vague scintillation that one might hardly distinguish as sidereal glinting or some elusive twinkle of frost in the air. Midnight, doubtless, and a cock was crowing. A muffled resonance the sound had, intimating that the fowl was housed in lieu of camping out among the althea bushes,—in imminent danger of fox and mink,—according to the recent summertide wont of the mountain poultry. A faint blare of a horn from the dense coverts of the distance, and an elfin shout of hilarity, barely discernible, betokened a coon-hunt on some far-away mountain. Then there fell again the deep silence of the windless night. When it was suddenly broken by a sharp sound, the interruption smote with a jar the senses, lulled and quiescent in the muteness of the resting nature. As Rathburn lifted his head, he discriminated the tones of raucous disputatious voices rising vehemently, and anon sinking down. There was an unconscious inquiry, perchance, in his eyes as he turned them upon Clem Sanders, who replied with a guttural chuckle, “Them boys at the barn a-quar’lin’ with Teck.”

A renewed anxiety beset Rathburn.

“You reckon they won’t agree with him?”

“They never do, sca’cely. Teck’s all one ter hisse’f. But they don’t do nuthin’ agin his say-so. Dunno why, but they don’t. He be so durned robustious.”

The blacksmith presently quickened his pace. Then with a drawling “Good-by” he began to run lightly along the hard, whitened road, feeling an accession of interest in what might be going forward at the barn, his curiosity concerning his companion flagging in this new prospect of excitement. His footfalls sounded, regular and rhythmic as machinery, long after he had disappeared amongst the white frosted wands of the bare brambles and the silver-tipped leaves of the luxuriant laurel.

Rathburn, thus summarily deserted, stood still for a moment, then took his way alone. He had a certain pride in the fact that even under these circumstances he could keep his steps deliberate and even. He scrutinized his gait to assure himself on this point. Albeit policy had prompted his course and the event had so far justified its wisdom, he was well aware of the abundant resources of courage that had made it possible. Still he listened with sharpened sense, with every nerve tense, with an insidious chill stealing upon him, and he felt a rage of humiliation that he should be subjected to an anguish of fear like this, which but for its physical testimony he would not acknowledge to himself. If the voices rose or fell, he heard them only in the midst of the beat of his own footsteps, for he would not pause. Sometimes he fancied that another tramp was on the air, other footfalls—hasty, deranged, pursuing footfalls—were hard upon his track. He walked on deliberately, however that curious icy thrill crept along his nerves, and now desisted, and now renewed its chilling quiver.

He had not hitherto, in his comings and goings, been insensible of the majesty of these dark ranges, the pervasive effects of awe and silence of this nocturnal scene,—never so august, never so austere, as on this night of mingled lustre and gloom; but now a sort of repulsion for the inanimate mountain forms possessed him. He experienced that strong hatred of place, a thousand times more potent than the vaunted local attachments. He would fain have never seen these grim encircling heights; if he might, he would have swept them away into vague annihilation. There rose in his heart a sentiment, too, of reproach to the insensate scene, grown so familiar; and then he saw it, purple or duskily brown, with heavy shadows lined about with mystic strokes of luminous white and with that pure pale sky above,—saw it all through a shimmer, for the hot tears had risen to his eyes, smitten out by his helpless rage. This shabby ordeal, as he felt it,—how little he had deserved it! Even these ignorant savages could find no flaw in aught that he had done, albeit they had thirsted for his blood. They were bereft of pretext by the integrity of his intentions. Such interest, such sense of adventure, as the secret nocturnal expeditions to the forge had possessed had given way utterly before this exigent necessity to account for his freak. He began to appreciate more definitely than before the danger that had waited upon it. And yet, he thought, what sane being would not have ventured upon a trifle of mystery rather than alienate a man who held a secret like Jake Baintree’s, now half revealed, and again with a miserly clutch concealed? Always Baintree’s clumsy subterfuges grew clumsier; always his reticent, suspicious nature was relaxing more and more. It seemed only a little waiting yet, and still a little time. And if these clods of mountaineers could not comprehend the value of even the remote possibility of veins of ore commensurate in richness with the specimen in Baintree’s possession, Eugene Rathburn congratulated himself that he could, and felt anew that he stood ready to risk much—very much of bodily harm and mental indignity and anguish of fright—for the bare hope to live to possess the treasure. With this, he felt he was soothsayer enough to read his future,—the long lapse of years filled with the satisfied cravings his heart held dear; without it, he could scarce foresee the dull to-morrow that should follow to-day, and of which naught save sequence might be predicted,—the empty, empty time! He had a sudden spasm of an unnamed affection, very well defined, however, the reverse of nostalgia, as there arose the poignant recollection of his office in Glaston, where he sat idle much of the time, in company with a fly, that droned on the window-pane, and whence he was summoned at inconceivably long intervals to attend some charity patient. The reward of this exertion was a local reputation of having intentionally assisted the demise of certain well-known indigent worthies; the popular, logical surmise concerning his motive for the commission of the deed being that he thought “pore folks” cumberers of the ground. Science, although furnishing many rich and varied instances of transformation, fails to give data concerning the gradual development of the professional man,—artist, author, physician, lawyer,—from the waiting, eager grub; what causes assist at the metamorphosis, what influences favor it, what casualties retard it, what circumstances preclude it utterly. Time seems no factor, and the poor worm, with no instinct of forecast, must writhe indefinitely, not knowing whether his sinuous carcass contains the possibilities of splendid wings, or merely continued wriggles. Rathburn had turned his eyes far afield; he yearned for the great cities that he had known as a medical student, and their ampler opportunities. He thought that he longed for wealth as a stepping-stone to the worthy practice of his chosen profession, rather than his profession as a stepping-stone to wealth. He was eager to forsake this state of elaborately equipped idleness, this farce of postulance, this endless waiting, with no certain result in view. But consciously or unconsciously, most of all he thirsted for riches; it fired his blood to think of the avaricious grasp of the great rocky gorges. He dreamed by day as well as by night; and sometimes, so little was there that he would not risk, that he would not do for his cherished hope, he dreamed that it might be well to lay his strong hands on Jake Baintree’s neck—that had escaped such catastrophe so closely—and tighten their grasp, till the secret that the foolish, suspicious, obstructive, ignorant marplot so jealously guarded should be choked out or remain with him, hopeless, inert, and indeed incapable of telling his tale if he would. But as yet Rathburn dreamed this chiefly by night.