VII.

As they went, the deputy sheriff's manner was little characterized by an official decorum. He seemed rather some bold roisterer who himself might have had ample cause to dread the law that he was sworn to administer. The rough humor of his sallies affected Espey as an incongruous sort of fun, taken in connection with his interpretation of their errand, and his recollection of the keen, sinister, thin face, with its piercing dark eyes, and its sharp hooked nose, and the straight, menacing eyebrows meeting above it. He had this mental vision distinctly before his contemplation, as it had impressed him in the flicker of Mrs. Larrabee's tallow dip, instead of the undistinguishable equestrian shadow that in the black night pressed close to his horse's flank, and now and again laid a sinewy hand upon his arm. For the officer, in a spirit of mock confidence, was detailing, much to that worthy's discomfort, the spectral fears of his friend from "the t'other e-end of the county," a believer in ghosts, and making an elaborate pretense of sharing them. Now and again, with a sepulchral voice and an agitated manner, he would conjure Espey to say if he saw nothing flickering, waving white, in some open stretch of the road that lay vacant and vaguely glimmering in the starlight before them. Then, hardly waiting for an answer, he would burst into a whoop of derisive laughter, startling the solemn silence of the night-bound mountain wilderness, and rousing strange echoes of weird mirth from rock and ravine. More than once the uncanny tumult of these wild, insensate cries moved the staid comrades of the deputy sheriff to remonstrance.

In the distance and the night and their repetitiousness, the sounds seemed curiously unrelated to those that had evoked them.

"That ain't no rocks a-answerin' back," said the man from the Gap. "I b'lieve somebody is a-hollerin' at ye."

The officer turned alertly in his saddle to look back over his shoulder. "That wouldn't s'prise me none," said the capable deputy, whose large experience would seem to furnish precedent for any given phenomenon. "I knowed a man out our way,--mighty loud talker and a toler'ble active cusser,--whilst callin' hawgs, hedn't tuk no special notice o' the rocks answerin', till one day whenst he war 'dad-burnin'' an' 'all-firin'' round till the very shoats looked blue. He stopped ter take breath, an' he hearn a voice, powerful coarse, out'n the woods jes' yellin' like sin, 'Fire-burn!' 'Fire-burn!' an' he knowed that minit who't war. An' in course he jes' hedn't no mo' interes' in nuthin', an' jes' dwindled away."

He paused abruptly.

"But--but--who war it ez said 'Fire-burn' with a coarse voice?" breathlessly demanded the believer in spectral manifestations.

"Why, Satan, to be sure, ye fool," replied the deputy. "I useter hear him myself a-callin' in the woods, 'Fire-burn!' whenst Ad Peters would git ter cussin' his hawgs! Jes' so"--He lifted his voice in a wild, fantastic cadence, and throughout the long stretches of the mountain fastnesses the words, as of some demented incendiary, echoed and re-echoed, varied presently with mocking cries of unpleasant falsetto laughter, set astir when the officer's gravity failed.

The patience of his friend had given way. "Look-a-hyar, 'Dolphus Ross," he broke out angrily, "this hyar ain't no way ter go ter apperhend criminals, a-hollerin' like a plumb catamount through the woods."

"I don't want ter s'prise nuthin'," said the crafty deputy sheriff, "that is nuthin' unyearthly, on its yerrands what no mortial knows about, an' mebbe git s'prised myself plumb down ter the doors o' the pit. Ye know them ez sees harnts either draps down dead or loses thar minds, one. They 'low now'days ez all the crazies kem so from seein' sperits. An' ye know yerse'f, an off'cer of the law needs brains."

"Ef ye don't know yer bizness no better'n that, I be goin' ter l'arn it ter ye. Ye 'pear mo' like a jay-hawker'n a off'cer o' the law," retorted the other tartly.

But not even with this rude touch upon the sensitive nerves of official pride could he control the elusive and slippery deputy. "That's a fac', Pearce. But the truth is, I be all-fired 'feared in these hyar lonesome places, whar humans air seldom an' few, o' seein' suthin' or hearin' suthin' what no mortial eyes or ears air expected ter see an' hear. So I like ter hear the sound o' my own voice,--let 'em know I'm a-comin'. Even with two or three men with me, it's so darned fur an' lonesome! I 'pear less like a harnt myself, an' less apt ter meet up with one, ef I make myself sorter lively. I'm a mighty quiet cuss in town. I'm a--What's--what's that?" he broke off sharply.

He drew rein suddenly, throwing his horse back upon the haunches. The two men behind him, coming forward at the swift pace he had set, collided heavily with the obstacle thus furnished them, a reckless proceeding here on the narrow rocky road, on the verge above the abysses of the valley on one side, and with the inaccessible heights of the mountain rising sheerly on the other. They stood between heaven and earth, on this craggy beetling promontory, with the pulsating white stars above and the dark depths of the gorge below. His sight becoming more accustomed to the night, Espey could distinguish through the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague moving whiteness which he knew to be the involutions of the mist in the valley. He too had drawn up his horse, slightly in advance of the others, and was looking forward in keen expectation of developments.

"What's what?" he demanded of the deputy, who was managing his rearing horse with considerable skill.

"Something white--beckonin'," gasped the officer of the law.

Espey, with all the ignorant superstitions of his class, felt his blood run cold. Nevertheless he sought to reassure himself and his comrades.

"Jes' these elder-flowers, mebbe," he said, breaking off a great bough from a bush rooted in a crevice of the crag, and so profusely blooming that the black night itself could hardly nullify its whitely gleaming graces. He received full in his face the cool spray of the dew and the sweet breath of the flower, all unheeding, for the officer again protested in a loud, broken voice:--

"Beckonin'--beckonin'--Oh, my friends, somebody in this crowd is a sinner; somebody hev done wrong! An' he may be a saint in the church-house, or leastwise familiar with the mourner's bench,--an' he may escape jedge an' jury,--an' he may cheat hemp,--but in the dead o' the night an' in the lonely paths o' yearth he'll be betrayed by a v'ice, or he'll see a beckonin'"--

"Oh, shucks!" interrupted the believer in "harnts." "I'm a-goin' back ter Mis' Lar'bee's." He was essaying to wheel his horse on the narrow ledge. "'Tain't my bizness ter go 'long with ye, ter apperhend crim'nals in the middle o' the night. Ef ye can't take 'em in the daytime, go 'thout 'em, I say."

"Some truth in that. I wisht I could jine ye," said the deputy. "But my jewty lies ahead. I be bound ter go on; an' I reckon it can't be so fur from Tems's now,--air it, frien'?" he asked, turning to Espey.

With a sinking heart, Espey replied that it was not very far, and the wonder as to what lay before him in the unknown scenes to which he sped in such haste reasserted itself in his mind, as the deputy rode briskly up alongside once more.

It required, perchance, only a moment's reflection on the inexpressible loneliness of the miles of mountain woods, that must of necessity be traversed before the shelter of Mrs. Larrabee's house could be reached, to change the design of the deserter from the little party. The beat of his horse's hoofs annotated his continued presence, which was soon made even more indisputable by his raucous voice again lifted in remonstrance.

"Ye mus' see, now, 'Dolphus, ez n'ise an' ribeldry an' gamesomeness don't purvent ye from viewin' sech ez ye air intended ter view. Sech goin's-on ain't lawful fur citizens, much less off'cers o' the law."

"Ye ain't gone back, then?" commented 'Dolphus over his shoulder.

There was no answer to this, and after a pause the facetious deputy went on:--

"_I_ ain't fur hollerin' an' rampagin' an' sech. _I_ be a mighty quiet cuss in town, like I said,--a mighty quiet cuss indeed. The old man," he alluded thus to the high sheriff, "he sez ter me sometimes, 'I dunno, 'Dolphus, whether ye air in yer skin or no. Ye jes' 'pear ter be settin' thar, 'sleep or dead.' Wunst he tole me ez I warn't mo' lively 'n jes' a suit o' clothes hangin' outside the store door, an' a suit would cost less'n my pay ez a dep'ty. I tried ter brace up arter that."

He had braced up considerably from the quiescent state he described if the sudden yell that he emitted might be received as evidence of his more stalwart condition. The sharp exclamations of surprise from the rest of the party afforded him intense delight, which was not mitigated by a blood-curdling shriek, as it were in response, set up by a catamount on the opposite heights, so close at hand by the direct line across the spaces above the valley through the air, despite the intervening miles of trackless mountain desert below, that they could hear the creature snarl before it lifted its thin, keen, inarticulate voice shrilling again into the black night.

There was no definite remonstrance, for he forestalled their outbreak, beyond a few words, by declaring tumultuously that he saw it again,--something a-waving, a-beckoning.

"No use talkin'!" he exclaimed. "The guilty sinner is 'mongst us, an' hyar he be!"

He leaned out of his saddle and passed one arm around Espey, pinioning the young fellow's right arm to his side. Espey, startled beyond control, despite his expectation of this contingency, with which, however, hope and suspense had juggled painfully, detected with sharpened senses the dull clanking of handcuffs. He hardly knew how it came there, he had no definite intention of resisting arrest, but a pistol was in the hand over which the rude wristlets dangled; a jet of red light that showed the dark-eyed, laughing, grimacing face near to his own, the whizzing of a bullet so close between the officer's side and arm that the blazing powder singed and burned his "store clothes," an abrupt report, and once more the night, rent by the sound, clamored with echoes.

From the dense darkness the officer's voice, with a changed tone, a sharp note of surprise, was crying, "Look out! Look out!"

The other men were stunned with amazement. They had only a vague sense of struggling mounted figures which the darkness did not suffer them to descry. And suddenly a second swift funnel-shaped glare for an instant invaded the gloom,--it came from the officer's pistol this time,--a second clamorous report rang amongst the rocks. The frightful, almost human scream of a wounded horse, a wild plunging on the side of the rocky bridle-path, and Espey and the yellow roan disappeared over the verge of the cliff. The three men standing in the road, hearing with sickening horror the dull thud far below, might judge of the terrors of the fall by the time elapsing before the sound reached their ears.